Jolly boating weather

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 14

Jolly boating weather

The irony of the Eton Boating Song’s being played at a banquet in the Great Hall of the People in Peking this week could not have been lost on one hearer, familiar though he must be with the Chinese tradition of deference to honoured guests. As he listened to the Central Band of the People’s Liberation Army, did Sir Alec Douglas-Home, an old boy of Eton, speculate on the reaction of his hosts to this decadent Western jingle? Fortunately, the words are probably untranslatable into any Chinese dialect, let alone the Thoughts of Chairman Mao. Jolly boating weather, braced by a cooling breeze, Blades on the feather, great days are these . . . Nothing shall sever the chain that is around us now. “ Jolly boating weather, indeed ”, Sir Alec Douglas-Home might have mused; “I hope it stays “ that way on Hong Kong harbour ”. For the future of the colony’s harbour—indeed, of the whole way of life in the colony—depends on the good will of Peking. The fervent hope of all who make their living in the colony must be that “ nothing shall “ sever the chain that is around us now ”.