1940-02-16 — Page 16

Friday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

February. 16, 1940

Teorgs shit

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Friday, February 16, 1940.

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TILE prenx "Special to the Telegraph I used by the "Hongkong Telegraph Indieate news which is strictly copyright under the provisions of the Telecommuni- eations Ordinance, 1910. Such new as bears the indication "Up" is received in Jongkong on the date of publication by the United Press Associations, who re serve all rights and forbid republication. eiller wholly or in part without previous arrangement

Rights Of Shipping

Neutral reactions to Germany's campaign of murder by U-Bol

on

the seaways are swiftly becoming elcar. The real issue was again Im- pressed upon all the maritime nations this week by the raining of the Dutch crime sleamship Berjerdijk. That adds point to the earlier comment that they are heavy sacrifices which neutrals have to bear. By the crip- pling of the Berjerdijk the Nether- lands becomes the heaviest sufferer

of all the neutral countries, ·

that

It must be gall and wormwood to Hitlerism

neutral countries should resent his piracy. The duty enjoined upon them by the diatribes now foam.ng from Berlin is to forget the injuries and insults he has in- Aleted and protest against the re- prisals which the Allies are taking in defence of the rights of shipping. At the outset of the last war the United States was the most energetic champion of the complete freedom of neutrals. The American people are not less intent upon maintaining Nevertheless, their neutrality now.

we read that little criticism of the blockade of German exports is to be heard and no more to be expected. Indiscriminate minclaying, it

compelled recognised,

retaliation.. Though some American importers may be annoyed, sympathy will not awall those who wish to go on doing

Hitlerism. business with

In the Scandinavian countries it is recognia. ed that though the reprisals will restrict the work of their merchant marine we were bound to take action. From Berlin comes the characteris- tie threat that neutrals may banc- cused of violating their neutrality if they are unable to carry German exports. We have to acknowledgo that the earning power of the ship- ping of neutral countries may be diminished for a time by the loss of cargoes from Germany. The block- ade thus far has been operated with a conspicuous lack of friction and delay and protest. In its intensifica- tion the same falmess and desire to ovold hardship will be shown, But neutrals must ask themselves what le the alternative to the blockade. It la that Germany should continuo her destruction of their scamen and their shipping as long as she has a sub- marino and a mina to put in the sea, Her declared objective is to frighten into uselessness all their ships which

she cannot destroy. Routes, which touch England lead to death," is the brog of Berlin. It is a "Buteldol policy.

EXCHEQUER

NATIONAL

CERTI

DEFENCE

BONDS

SAVE POUNDS! SAVE SHILLINGS! SAVE PENCE!

Agitated Adolf: "I'll be lucky if I can SAVE my SKIN!"

IT'S NO JOKE

G

says so,

in Germany Now!

REY days, these, for Germany. And they are · becoming "greyer and Dr. Goebbels Kreyer."

Bo the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Cul- ture and What-Not is trying to put a smile back on the face of Germany.

He won't find it easy. For years it has been dangerous, even if it wero possible, to laugh in Germany,

I have been listening to Nazi jokes on the German radio. I havo scoured the Nazi Press and magazines for something to smile at. I haven't heard or seen one yet.

*

Here are two jokes that are sup- posed to make Berliners roar with laughter:

A man says: "I have just been to a furniture sale and they kleked

out."

mo

71

Why did they kick you out? " Because it was no sale at all: it was just a removal"

Funny, isn't it? Or this one; Mother: "Why did you not for- bid that Swede to kiss you?"

Daughter: "Sorry, mother, but I innot speak Swedish."

Can you see anything funny in that story? Nor can the Ger- man people,

They really have nothing to laugh about these days. What would you do If your song writers were determined to popu- larise a song with a refrain liko this: "I tear out one of your eye- lashes and stab you in the back with it "?

I am not surprised that the German people are gloomy and dreary, But Goebbels will have a tough job trying to make a nation laugh. Even the idea of a man like Goebbels attempting to do it won't raise a German smile.

The Germans who could make jokes have long been confined in concentration camps. Fink, Ber- lin's greatest (Aryan) entertainer, is now in a labour, gang in the Westwall.

The last time he appeared before the German public ho brought a big wooden case on the stage. In " the packed, one after another. pictures of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels and other members of the Nazi Government.

Then he produced a huge label and stuck it on the case: DON'T UPSET.

Next day he was under arrest.

★

Valentin, the Munich comedian. came on the slago with his hand upraised (as for the Nazi salute):

"That high lies the snow in the Bavarian mountains," he said.

The Gestapo warned him not to

make jokes about the Nazi salute. On another occasion Valentin told his audience:

." Last night I saw a marvellous. huge limousine. Out stepped, te my great surprise, an S.S. leader." Again the Gestapo warned him not to accuse the 9.3. leaders of extravagant life. So he decided to tell his story differently.

"Last night," Valentin said. "I saw a marvellous, huge limousine. Out stepped, to my great surprise -no B.. leader."

The German doesn't hear jokes like that now.

*

But the Nazis reveiled-long be- fore the war started-in jokes about Englishmen. For instance:

Two Englishmen are travelling Опи together in a compartment.

of them, looking out of the win- dow, points 'to the green and says, "There is a cow.'

An hour passes, after which the other Englishman says. "It-was- an ox."

After another hour the first Engilshman gets up and leaves the compartment. "With a man who always quarrels," he says, "I do not care to travol"

It is a joke designed to make fun of the monosyllability of British people.

This is an example of non-pull- tical Nazi humour: I found it in the best known humorous column In the Berlin Press.

"The young girls of to-day do not look as young as twenty years ago."

Quito true-some of them are almost ten years older now."

That's all. It is a joke in Ger- many,

*

Political jokes predominate, of They course, in the Nazi Press. show you, for instance, a British officer taking off his braces (and losing his trousera) because the W.A.T.. need them now.

Cartoonists and professional en- tertainers favour Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Churchill, the British lion and John Bull. They dare not lock: nearer home.

.

Perhaps the best German joke is ono that was not made in Ger- many, but merely came out of it.

It was brought from Berlin br an American journalist.

"They told me in Germany," he said, "that 09 per cent. of the Ger- mani people are behind their Fuch- rer. Fancy my bad luck-meeting. only the remaining one per cent.!" Can you imagine the German Minister for Mirth laughing at that one7

John Nicho

THE ODD

SP

2

Stále of miles

4

OT

A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLU 'Swansen schoolboy kicked a Rugby, football and it did not touch the ground for live. miles. It dropped into a motor-lorry passing along a main road by the field, and the game was, abandoned while the playera on cycles chased the lorry.

They stopped it at Mumbles, five miles away.`

GRAP - SECOND AIR RAID WARNING IN SHETLANDS THIS AFFH.SHALL CLEAR AFTER 42 MINS,

Hermits

in the

Limelight

T

By STUART FLETCHER

march of civilisation. Who is to say that they have not been for tunate?

At last, however, civilisation has caught them up, announcing its arrival with bombs.

08

HE Shetlands seem An lived a life uninfluenced by the odd place to choose for bomb-dropping. So odd that when I read that Shetlands schoolchildren were scurrying into shelters while German planes roared above I decided to look into the matter.

I failed to find any particular reason for the German visitations ~even if had I am sure the censor would have suppressed my discovery: but I found out a great deal that was interesting.

You see, I had never taken ad- vantage of the daily air service which, until the war broke out, would deliver a Londoner starting from his home at ten in the morn- ing to the Shetland Islands by early evening.

Indeed, I had never visited the Shetlands at all. All I knew about was Shetland ponies at the sea- side, Fair Isic jumpers scintillating on the manly chests of my friends, and a dear old lady of 00 with a hand-loom at Olympia, who had a face which combined a Rembrandt- esque wisdom with the complexion of a three-year-old. Bo voyage to the Shetlands with the ald of guide-books, history books, The maps, and encyclopædias. weather being what it is, it was a very comfortable journey.

made a

The first thing that I learnt about these one hundred Islands in the sixtieth latitude-they are actually 60 miles north of Green- land's most southerly point-was that they are mortgaged to Britain, ago nearly 500--King Years Christian I of Norway married off his daughter, Margaret, to James III

The

dowry of Scotland. amounted to 60.000 norina. But рост Christian

couldn't raise all this money, so he gave · James the Orkneya and the Shet- lands as a surety.

By the time Margaret actually for Scotland left Copenhagen Christian had found only 2,000 florins of the required total, and when by 1472-four years after the wedding-day he still hadn't paid up, the islands were annexed by the Scottish Crown,

To this day, however, they may be got out of pawn by Norway on payment of Margaret's dowry.

The steadily decreasing popu lation of the 20 Inhabited Shetland Islands amounts to some '25,000 Deople. The long straggle of islands extends northwards for about 60 miles, and there is no point any- where on them more than threa miles from the sex, ·

At midsummer there is brillant light at midnight, and it is possible but no guide-book can even hint at the exciting beauty of this-t watch the paling sunset merge into the ropy glow of early dawn and the darting gleams of sunrise.

The inhabitants of the Shotlarida are what are often described by city dwellers as simple folk. That is to say, they have for centuries

The islanders earn their livings

or crofters fishermen-very often as both. At Lerwick in June there is herring-madness. The town's population awells to more than ten thousand, and the sea is black with hundreds of drifters arriving back from their all-night Ashing excursions.

Peat is the main fuel in the islands. It is cut in rectangular blocks by means of a speelal spade called a tuskar (Icelandic for turf- cutter),

You can still see women carrying the dried peats to their homesteads over the moors in straw baskets on their backs the women knitting as they got And often-though lorrien are now taking their place- the little Shetland ponies bear home the peats in panniers slung across them.

Peat moorland, gives way at The times

to sheep pasture. Shetland sheep, like the Shetland pony,

is diminutive, and is said to be identical with the wild sheep. of Siberia.

Shetland wool is not shom but plucked direct from the necks of these sheep. Fair Lale, where they typical make the jumpers, is

throo two and Shetland islet, quarter miles long by one broad. One hundred people living in sturdy, clean, white-washed cot tages, each dotted on its crott. A church, a couple of light-houses, a school-house, pasture and moor-. land, and a quiet life.

Twice

mall-boat:

weck crosses a stretch of open Atlantic to this island which has been made famous by a trick its in-

learnt from

the- habitants Spaniards.

In the sixteenth century one of

retreating galleons at the- Spanish Armada was wrecked on. Fair Zale.

tho

Two hundred mon came ashore- and caused a famine on the tiny island. But when they went away. a year later they left behind them many reasons for the prosent-day Fair Isls crofter having a dark- skinned handsomeness which con- trasts strikingly with the usual, Shetland blonde complexion.

The Spaniards also repaid the Fair Iste

women for their hospit ality by teaching them how to knit. the Moorish patterns which have made Fair Inle jumpers famous.

Natural beauty, abundant food, the antiefying rhythm of peasant life, and a seasoning of mechanical progress scem (if the guldo-books. are to be believed) to have pro.... duced something approaching a northern paradise in the sixtieth.

latitudo.

I think I must go there-so-

the bombs are: time--when stopped dropping.