In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 135, 4 December 1937, Page 21

In the Public Eye

Ignace Paderewski, the pianist and composer, has re-entered Polish politics by joining the Labour" Party, a new political organisation that is a fusion of the Christian Democrats and the National Workers. He gave his blessing to the new party in a letter from Morges, Switzerland, which was read at a meeting recently. The letter severely criticised^ the idea of "government by an elite" advanced by the regime of the late Marshal Joseph Pilsudski. "Poland needs a strong Government, it said, "but only through the people and by the people. The Pole never will be a slave of his ruler. Poland wants no dictatorship. The Poles, a Christian people, base their political faith and humanitarian principles pn equal rights and' equal law for all. M Paderewski is regarded as the spiritual leader of the new party, which, with the Peasant Party, will play a part in the moderate and democratic Centre .in Polish politics—between the totalitarian Fascist Nationalist group on the Right and the Socialists on the Left. Former President -Wojciechowski, President Moscicki's predecessor, who resigned after Marshal Pilsudski s coup d'etat; outlined the party's programme at the conference. He appealed for consolidation of all democratic forces. General Josef Haller, the World War hero who organised a Polish army- in France and the United States near the end of the war, was elected chairman. Wojciech Korfanty, an Upper Silesian leader with a strong following, is the virtual leader of the party. The new party should not be confused with Labour Parties in other countries. It is not Socialistic. On the contrary, it is mildly nationalistic and Catholic. pro-French, hostile to Germany, and ready to co-operate with Slav minorities in Poland. It seeks in emigration a solution of the Jewish problem.

Mr. Ronald Burghcs. Professor J. B. S. Haldane's stepson Ronald Burghes, a youth of eighteen, who, on-leaving St. Paul's Schoo last December, went to .Spain to fight in the International Brigade, came home for his first holiday recently, Sy in the confidence of his Spanish acquaintances that they are going to win the war, according to the chester Guardian." They say that if Mussolini sends 150 000 troops.it wil only delay the victory which must come in the end, and Mr. Burghes says that not only is *c Government army now well trained, supple, and capable of carrying on a defence, but that working in the fields an hour before sTnriSrashing late at night, working cSively in thasmaller villages and sometimes sending groups-, to -help other villages a long way off. . The result was that the towns, }i ouately fed, were not starving, and it seemed they had always plenty of beans and fruit. _ Mr. Burghes worked as, a Jorry :&SS"S are ■.■**£«£ nital on the coast, where he was well FoSked after, though the hospital was •so short of medical supplies that lor m 7 o i the operations nothing more ton a local anaesthetic could be given He went back to transport woik, dr V me up to heights where even m midneeded that he once had onl. V ** bump would jar a wounded man.

Mr. Louis B. Wasey. An interesting personality recently slipped into London-Mr Louis B. Wasey, known as "Master of Cat Cay^ Fifty miles off the coast of Florida almost due east of Miami and ten miles south of the famous fishing grounds of Bimini, a new island paradise has been discovered. It is called Cat Cay Four years ago Mr. Wasey bought the .island, imported an American architect !who understood the principles of imitating Old English design, and started to beautify the bare islet. It now_ has a fine and spacious manor house, bunt on the lines of an Old English inn, and seven attractive cottages. A little bit of England has slipped to the other side of the world, a strange sight in a strange atmosphere, for palm trees have been transplanted and fine Bermuda grass has been sown. Right on the eastern edge of the Gulf Stream, the deep warm, waters of Cat Cay are the breeding grounds of the giant blue marlin, the coveted striped marlin, the huge tuna, the lovely big game saiiflsh, and the sporting bonefish. It is probably the best fishing ground in the world for mixed fishing and contains the biggest and gamest of all kinds that the true deepsea sportsman most covets. Eric, the native fisherman who looks after the little fleet of boats, and who knows all the tricks of the big sportsmen of the deep, will tell you of his fourteen hours'fight with a 10001b tuna: of the eight-hours' fight with the 6001b blue marlin that now proudly decorates the Manor House over the big open hearth; o£ many move true and exciting fishing stories that even fiction could not rival. But four years of keeping up Cat Cay has cost Mr. Wasey nearly £10,000 a year but this is not altogether an unpleasant luxury, for Mr. Wasey has saved some of his income tax, because all land in the Bahamas is tax free. _ This year, however, as an experiment he is turning the island into a fishing club and evening the Manor House and the cottages to paying guests If you can afford £5 a day the pleasures of the millionaires are yours- ~ , . 1 . Cat Cay has a romantic history. In the seventeenth century it was a pirates' rendezvous, and somewhere beneath its coral rocks is still hidden pirate treasure. In 1874, Queen Victoria made a grant of the- island to William Henry Stuart in recognition of his valuable services to tho_Empire.

Famed as the author of "Jew Suss" and notorious for his statistical mania, Lion Feuchtwanger, a shock-headed Munich-born Jew, recently turned his talents to proving in 478 pages that there is no new thing under the sun. Though he wrote in "The False Nero" of Terence, a foolish potter who aped Nero when that Emperor had been mouldering in his grave for thirteen years, his point of attack was Adolf Hitler. . • ■' • ' . .

Feuchtwanger, the literal translation of whose surname is "wet cheek," has nu less reason to hate Hitler than the Fuhrer has to reciprocate. After 527,000 copies of four of Fauchtwanger's novels had been sold in Germany the remainder were proscribed and burnt; tne MSS of his second volume of "Jusephus" was destroyed. Refusing ' a large sum to lecture on the German Government m America, Feuchtwanger replied by criticising the Fuhrer's own .literary style. The 140,000 words of "Mem Kampf," lie averred, contained no less than 139,900 errors of fact. In return Feuchtwanger's German fortune was confiscated and he was deprived of German citizenship. The destruction of his property, he explained, was four times declared by the police to have been carried out on the orders of the Minister of the Interior, and four times as the work of renegade Communists who had disguised themselves as National Socialists.

Licking his wounds, Germany's literary lion complained that he had suffered 943 extremely crude libels published against him in 1584 Govern-ment-inspired newspapers and 327 radio talks, had been telephoned 714 times by anonymous persons, who shouted obscenities at him. Continuing his figures, he added that of 4000 odd persons who had been officially registered as imbeciles in Berlin before Nazism came in three now held very high official positions in the Nazi Party. Further, he recalled that in one of his plays performed in Germany he had failed to correct a typographical error in the list of characters. For more than 2000 performances forty-one lines were completely senseless, a fact which had been noticed neither by critics nor audiences. Vice-Admiral Darlan. Both Vice-Admiral Darlan and General Fequant, who as chiefs respectively of the French naval and air force general staffs attended the Council of Ministers recently held to discuss the Mediterranean situation, were in London in May. They were members of the French delegation to the Coronation. Vice-Admiral Darlan comes of a family of seamen. "We have been seamen for generations," he said recently, "but my father was an exception. He went wrong and ended up as Minister for Justice." At 56 Vice-Admiral Darlan is the youngest of France's viceadmirals. Like many 'other French naval officers, he first fought during the Great War on land. With 500 fishermen and 25 naval guns, he went from place to place on the front line. "These guns," he said, "were our first motorised batteries." The Admiral has the gift of lucid expression. Briand once said of him, "Darlan is a man whom I can always understand." In the event of war, Vice-Admiral Darlan would become admiralissimo of the French Navy. All three heads of the French defence forces—Admiral Darlan, General Fequant, and General ( Gamelin—have one characteristic in common. They all.wear mufti when they are at work in their Paris offices. General Fequant, whose opposite number in London is Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall, learned to fly in 1910. He was the forty-ninth Frenchman to obtain a pilot's licence. Sir Cyril learnt a year later. His licence number is 144. During the war General Fequant commanded air squadron N. 65, which in eight months brought down 37 enemy planes and five balloons. He rose rapidly, becoming commander of an air brigade and then C.G.S. of the Ist Air Division. He was mentioned five times in dispatches. In April last year he was again mentioned for bravery and presence of mind when an aeroplane without floats in which he was inspecting North African bases fell into the sea three miles from the coast of Tunis. Although injured himself he took all possible measures to save the lives of his crew of nine. As the plane was gradually sinking he and his crew were rescued by fishermen. Colonel F. G. Peakc. News that the £9,250,000 oil pipeline which crosses the desert wastes from Irak to Haifa has been fired at three different points led to the cancellation of leave in the Arab Legion commanded by Peake Pasha (Colonel F. G Peake), Director of Public Security in Transjordan. The raiders escaped after cutting the telegraph wires in the desert. In Amman, the capital of the territory, the attack on the pipeline was regarded as part of a concerted plan to wreck British interests. There silent. Arabs watch parties oi the legion assemble and leave for their journey across the desert And behind it all they know there is the tall, blueeyed Peake Pasha, tanned almost as deeply as themselves after nearly thirty years in the East, a man who knows the desert as well as the Bedouin himself. Colonel Peake, known throughout the Near East as the "Lawrence of Transjordania," leads the strangest police force in the world-a legion ot Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, and Uuiks —with a camel corps, horsemen, infantry and an armoured car section. Aeed 51, he received his commission in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment in 1906, and has served in India, the Sudan, and during the war was with Lawrence of. Arabia in the Hecfjaz. He was put in charge of the administration when Britain was given a mandate over Transjordan. Early in the year he married Miss Elspetli Ritchie, of St. Boswells, Roxburghshire, after a romantic meeting in Amman.