WAR NERVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 151, 27 June 1940, Page 5

WAR NERVES.

"COCKTAIL" FRONT.

FIRST LINE TROOPERS. AN AMERICAN VIEWPOINT. (By CHARLES ESTCOURT.) NEW YORK, May 20. As far as this city is concerned, and no doubt it's true wherever else it's going on, a part of the attempt to get the United States into the war involves a lot of fun and includes champagne on the side.

This part of the attempt to get us into the war is known as the social or cork-popping front. The British, as usual, have rushed up the greatest force to this front. There's hardly a cocktail party a man can go to these days without meeting someone with a title, and a bit of London fog in his throat.

The French have improved since the last war, and are not letting the English do all the work. But the Germane .have slipped almost out of sight. They don't seem to have the money to carry on that kind of war any more. As for the Italians, those rich, dashing young men who once shone like pomade in gatherings around town—no one seems to know what has become of them. The theory is their hearts are with the Allies but tiieir bodies are elsewhere eince they have an axis to grind. Some Famous French Troops. The fighting is so thick these nights that even your Uncle Charlie, who jumps out of his skin every time he' ■hears a garter snap, got mixed up in: it. In the course of minding his own business he wa* run over by these French troops: Charles Boyer, a beautiful man; Eve Curie, a beautiful woman; Rene Blum, brother of the former French Premier and a powerful persuader; and Archduke Otto von Hapsburg, the unemployed emperor.

And he got run down by these English soldiers: Julian duxley, the scientist: Noel Coward, the song,* dance and word,

man; Novelists Stuart Cloete and Cecil Forester and Actors Gertrude Lawrence and Sir Alan Xapier.

In addition, there hae been a wild and dizaying sparkle before Uncle Charlie's eyes to indicate that the Allies have mobilised the gala international set into an elegant regiment with the Duchess of Windsor ae commanding officer. The order most frequently given is "company, at ease!" and the company takes its* ease among crumpets and teacups, cocktails and canapes set out by the Duchess' dear friends—Kitty Miller, Mona Williams, Mrs. Ector Munn, Elsa Maxwell, and so forth. Denies Selling War. We had a heart-to-heart talk with one of these foreign soldiers and told him to come clean. This he did, eventually, or at least led us to believe that he was giving us the lowdown. We asked him who put him up to the business of selling the United States the war, whether it was a plot, whether he was being paid for it, whether he was handed a line of talk to utter along with his passport and whether he reported back to anyone on the progress he was making. He eaid there was no plot and he wasn't selling us a war. This is how he proved it:—

"You have to have a pretty good reason," he told us, "to get a passport to leave the country. It is true that influential people, or people who are prominent in their particular fields, generally have good reasons. If nothing else, they come to the United States make dollars and take those dollars back where they are very welcome. I don't think this is so much plot on the part of those granting the passports as good sense. Naturally, people who are known to be unsympathetic with the viewpoints of their Governments on the war will not have influence enough to get a passport.

"That's all there is to it really. We come here and we have friends. Our friends and our friends' friends want to :hear the latest news or gossip, so we are much in demand at parties. All we know is what we read in the newspapers, but they all seem to think that because we were some miles nearer events we would know more about them —inside information and so forth.

"Well, now, when we are asked what we think, what should we say? Should we be traitors to our own countries in

the interests of American neutrality? We should like nothing better than to have America fighting at our side, but of course we don't say that because we think our hosts might find it offensive."

Xo, they don't say that. They just try to be ae charming as they can and win Americans over to their point of view and give them a frame of reference by which to judge the news that has come out of Europe and the news that will come out of there. Propaganda Fright. "Well, now," the foreign trooper said, "you wouldn't want us to go around being nasty, would tod, or ill-mannered, just because when we're not Americans like us and like what we stand for, and feel sad or angry when what we stand for is in danger?" He said, too, that when a distinguished visitor had no friends.here, life friends at home provided him with letters of introduction. "This, too, is only natural," he explained. "A trip here is such a great event nowadays that everybody wants it to be pleasant and everybody want* news from the other side, personal chitchat and that sort of thing." The loudest echo we have heard thus far of this cork-popping war came from Jules Bache. the banker friend of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and of most of Burke's Peerage. Mr. Bache, who is 78 and without cone or grandsons of fighting age, ears with fine scorn that "the professional isolationists in the United States are simply after the votes of parents who do not want their sons to go to war."

Anyway, the foreign trooper's explanation makes this latest etory a'.-out Charles Boyer, rushed to us by 'plane from Hollywood, more understandable. Mr. Boyer. the actor, wa« mobilised in the French Army and set to counting horses. Then he was taken out of uniform and allowed to come to thi* country to make movies and dollars. A lot of people started screaming that these foreijrn propagandists ought to be barred from our shores.

The other day. Boyer was sitting with a friend of ours and feeling sombre about all the gaiety around him. He asked our friend whether his fans would not criticise him for being out of*"enife»rm.

'•"Xot at all." our friend said. "Everyone does his bit as he can. The eoldier with the sword, Zola, with the pen, Pasteur with the test tube . . ."

"Yes," interrupted the actor, "and Boyer with the toupee."—(X.A-N JL)