NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 196, 28 May 1940, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

LITTLE KNOWN COMMANDERS. One of the strangest aspects of this very strange war is that the politicians continue to hold the limelight while the soldiers, sailors and airmen operate under conditions of virtual anonymity; notes Atticus in the “Sunday Times.” A reasonably well-informed citizen copld give the names of nearly all the British Cabinet Ministers, could recall Daladier, Reynaud, Bonnet and Flandin in France, and recite without any hesitation the entire political hierarchy of the Nazis. On the other hand, he knows only two British generals—Gort and Ironside; he is rather vague about an admiral named Sir Dudley Bound and, as likely as not, he cannot tell you who is in command of the Royal Air Force of second in command. Ho knows one French general, Gamelin, and could not name any German general, although lie would recognise one or two if they appeared in print. - .

GERMAN IDEA OF HONOUR. “Some years ago, about the end of 1933, a German officer was talking to a senior member of the British Embassy in Berlin,’’ related Mt W. A. Sinclair, in a recent broadcast talk. “He made the rather odd remark that the British are gentlemen, hut the French are not. When lie was asked to explain what he meant, he related this illuminating incident. He said this: ‘After the war, in 1920, I was in charge of a barracks. One day some of the Military Control Commission, under a French officer and a British officer, came to my barracks. They said they had reason to believe that 1 had a store of rifles concealed behind a brick wall, contrary to the terms of the Peace Treaty. I denied this. I said, ‘1 give you my word of -honour as a German officer that I have no rifles concealed in the bai racks. Well, your British officer was a gentleman.' He accepted my word of honour and he went away. But that French officer was not a gentleman. He would not accept my word of honour. And he pulled down the brick wall. And lie took away my rifles.’ Now, that German officer would never have dreamt of lying, and deliberately acting dishonourably in this wav, to another Gorman. The old German Aimy was extremely punctilious about questions of personal honour. But he obviously did not feel obliged to tell the truth, or behave honestly, to persons who were not Germans, whore anything to the advantage of Germany was concerned.”