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Hongkong Telegraph.
Friday, February 16, 1940.
Wyndham St., Hongkong Telephone: 20615
THE prefix "Spreist to the Telegraph" is used by the "longkong Telegraph" to indicate news which le strictly copyright under the provision of the Telecommuni cations Ordinanen. 1936. Such new bears the Indlestion "UP is received in Hongkong on the date of publication by the United Pres Associations, who serve oil rights and forbid repubitration. either wholly or in part without previous Arrangement
Rights Of Shipping
Neutral reactions to Germany's campaign of murder by U-Boat on the seaways are swiftly becoming clear. The real issue was again im- pressed upon all the maritime nations this week by the mining of the Dutch erime steamship Berjerdijk. That adds point to the curlier comment that they are heavy sacrifices which neutrals have to bear. By, the crip- pling of the Berjerdijk the Nether- lands becomes the heavicat sufferer of all the neutral countries,
وا
It must be gall and wormwood to
that neutral Hitlerism
countries should resent his piracy-The-duty- enjoined upon them by the diatribes now foaming from Berlin is to forget the injuries and insults he has in- flicted and protest against the re- prisals which the Allies are taking in defence of the rights of shipping. At the outset of the last wor the United States was the most energetic champion of the complete freedom of neutrals. The American people are not less intent upon maintaining their neutrality now. Nevertheless, we read that little criticism of the blockade of German exparts is to be heard and no more to be expected. Indiscriminate minclnying, it
retaliation, compelled recognised, Though some American Importers may be annoyed, sympathy will not await those who wish to go on doing the In business with Hitlerism. Scandinavian countries it is recognis- ed that though the reprisals will restrict the work of their 'merchant morine we were bound to take action. From Berlin comes the characteris- tle thrent that neutrals may be ac- cused of violating their neutralliy if they are unable to carry. German exports. We have to acknowledge 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 fairness and desire to avold hardship will be shown. But neutrals must ask themselves what is the alternative to the blockade. It is that Germany should continue her destruction of their seamen and their shipping as long as she has a sub- marine and a mine 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," in the brag of Berlin. It is a suicidal policy.
EXCHEQU
NATIONAL
CERTIFICATES
DEFENCE BONDS
SAVE POUNDS! SAVE SHILLINGS! SAVE PENCE!
Agitated Adolf: "I'll be lucky if I can SAVE my SKIN!”.
IT'S NO JOKE
says so.
in Germany Now!
NEY days, these, for Germany. And they are becoming "greyer and greyer." Dr. Goebbels
So the Relch Minister for Public Enlightenment and Cul- Lure and What-Not Is trying to put a smile back on the face of Germany.
He won't find it casy. For years it has been dangerous, even if it' were ' possible, to laugh in Germany.
I have been listening to Nazi Jokes on the German radio. I have 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 kicked me out."
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 cannot speak Swedish,"
Can you see anything funny in that story? Nor can the der- 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 like this: "I tear out one of your eye- lashies 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 mako 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 he brought a big wooden case on the stage. In it he 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 caso: DON'T UPSET,
Next day he was under arrest.
*
Valentin, the Munich comedian, came on the stage 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
י
make jokes about the Nazi salute.
On another occasion Valentin told his audience:
"Last night I saw a marvellous, huge limousine. Out stepped, to my great surprise, an 8.S. loader." Again the Gestapo warned him not to accuse the 6.5. leaders of extravagant life, 80 he decided to tell his story differently.
Last night," Valentin said, "I saw a marvellous, huge limousine. Out stepped, to my great surprise
no 6.6. leader."
The German doesn't hear Jokes like that now.
*
But the Nazis revelled-long be- fore the war started-in jokes about Englishmen. For instance:
Two Englishmen are travelling together in a compartment,
Оло
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 Englishman gets up and leaves the compartment. With a man who always quarrels," he says, "I do not care to travel."
It is a joke designed to make fun of the monosyllability of British people.
This is an example of non-poll- tical Nazi humour: 1 found it in the best known humorous columu 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 course, in the Nazi Press. They show you, for instance, a British officer taking off his braces (and losing his trousers) because the W.AT's need them now.
Cartoonista 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¬ one that was not made in Ger- many, but merely came out of it.
It was brought from Berlin by an American Journalist.
**They told me in Germany," he Bald.
that 9 per cent, of the Ger< man people are behind their Fuch- rer. Fancy my bad luck-meeting only the remaining one per cent.1" Can you imagine the German Minister for Mirth laughing at that one?
John Nicho
THE ODD
SP1 FOT
"Stale of miles
À THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD Swansea schoolboy kicked a Rugby football and it did not touch the ground for Ave miles. It dropped into a motor-lorry passing along a main road by the field, and the game was abandoned while the players on cycles chased the lorry,
They stopped it at Mumbles, five miles away.
SNAP SECOND AIR RAID WARNING IN SHETLANDS
THIS AFFEC
ALL CLEAR AFTER 42 HIRS;
Hermits
in the
Limelight
T
By STUART FLETCHER
HE Shetlands seem an ived, 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 I had I am sure the censor would have suppressed my discovery; but I found out a great deal that was interesting.
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.
The islanders earn their livings as crofters or flahermen-very often as both. At Lerwick in June there
$1
herring-madness. The town's population swolls to more than ten thousand, and the aen is black with hundreds of drifters arriving back from their all-night fishing excursions.
You see, I had never taken ad- vantage of the daily air service which, until the war broke out, would deliver a Londoner starting
Peat is the main fuel in the from his home at ten in the morn- *ing to the Shetland Islands by-- islands. It is cut in rectangular- early evening.
blocks by means of a special spade called a tuskar (Icelandic for turf- cutter).
Indeed, I had nover visited the Shetlands at all. All I knew about' was Shetland ponies at the sex- side, Fair Isle Jumpers scintillating on the manly chests of my friends, and a dear old lady of 90 with a hand-loom at Olympia, who had a Ince which combined a Rembrandt-
esque wisdom with the complexion of a three-year-old. So I made a voyage to the Shetlands with the ald of guide-books, history books, The maps, and encyclopædias. weather being what it is, it was a vory comfortable Journey.
The Arst thing that I learnt about these one hundred islands in the sixtieth latitude-they are nctually 60 miles north of Green- land's most southerly point-was that they are mortgaged to Britain. Years agoBearly 500-King Christian I of Norway married off his daughter, Margaret, to James I of Scotland.
The amounted to 10,000 florins.
But
poor Christian raise all this money, so he gaVO James the Orkneys and the Shet- lands as a surety.
Christian
dowry
couldn't
By the time Margaret actually | left" Copenhagen for Scotland ian had found only 2,000 forins of the required total, and when by 1472-four years after tho 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 Margarova dowry.
The steadily decreasing popu- lation of the 29 inhabited Shetland Islands amounts to some 25,000 people. The long straggio of islands extends northwards for about 50 miles, and there is no point any- where on them more than three miles from the sea.
At midsummer there is brilliant light at midnight, and it is possible but no guide-book can even hint at the exciting beauty of this-to watch the paling sunset merge into the roay glow of early dawn and the darting gicams of sunrise,
The inhabitants of the Shetlands are what are often described by city dwellers as simple folk. That is to say, they have for centuries
-
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 lorries are now taking their place the little Shetland ponies bear home the peats in panhiera slung across them.
Peat moorland gives way at times to
The shcop pasture. Shotland sheep. like the Bhetland pony, is diminutive, and is said to be identical with the wild sheep of Biberia.
Shetland wool is not shorn but plucked direct from the necks of these sheep, Fair Isle, where they make the jumpers, is a typical Shetland falet, two and threo quartor miles long by one broad. One hundred people living in sturdy, clean, white-washed-cot- tages, each dotted on its croft. A church, a couple of light-houses, a school-house, pasture and moor- land, and a quiet life.
mall-boat. Twice a wook a crosses a stretch of open Atlantio to this island which has been made famous by a trick' its in- habitants
learnt
from tho- Spaniards,
In the sixteenth century one of the retreating galleons of the Spanish Armada was wrecked on Fair Isle,
Two hundred men 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 present-day Fair Xale crofter having a dark- skinned handsomeness which con- trasts atrikingly
with
the Unital Shetland blondo
complexion. The Spanlarda also repaid the
Fair Isle women for their hospit allty by teaching them how to knit the Moorish patterns which hava: made Fair Lalo jumpers famous,
Natural beauty, abundant food,. the satisfying rhythm of peasant Itto, and a seasoning of mechanical progress seem (If the guide-books, are to be belloved) to have pro- duced something approaching a northern paradise In the sixtieth latitude.
"ལྟན་¡t
I think.I must go there sonic- time when the bombs. have. stopped dropping..
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