Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 28 January 1939, Page 8

Timely Topics

? “The sinister call to rearmament is I equivalent to saying, ‘We have avoided war so far, but the day will come

| BRITAIN’S i PROSPECT. I V

when we shall be unable to do so,’ ” writes Dr. W. F. Lofthouse, of Handsworth College, in

|the “Birmingham Post.” I “Is this the prospect we have to jiface? On all sides, it seems to be quietly, if sullenly, taken for granted! Is our gratitude for Munich merely the gratitude for a respite, purchased at a price which is seen to be more | severe every day? Or is it possible to rise above this miserable bargaining where, in a room in which gunII powder is strewn thick all round us, ' the only serious argument is to ■ threaten sooner or later to light a ,! match? ” " ' as « ■ g s

Verona is to have its new museum, to the memory of Romeo 'and Juliet, and an expert is on his way to Strat-

ROMEO AND JULIET ' MUSEUM. '

ford fo collect materials. It is a

fine thought, says “The Times” (London),; and it should be very good for that beautiful old city to have some extra sites, and in particular a balcony and a tomb, into which 1 the tourist can pay his humble tourist lir|i to peep. But not everybody will be equally pleased, and two very disghauntied shades may haunt the scene. Romeo may have enjoyed a certain pre-eminence as a lover, but he loved Juliet rather than Verona. But Proteus was content to bear the gibes about home-keeping youths . having homely wits, staying in Verona; and, if he too was there because of a love affair, that only removes any possible justification for favouring Romeo to this marked extant. The Two Gentler men must have their n'ames added to the musueum, and no doubt, adds “The Times,” they would if they, could have contrived to get more tragedy into their lives. But there is all the | difference in the world, from the 'point of view of being museum fodj der, between ending as the gentlemen end. - "> Vvv.;v

One feast, one house, one mutual happiness, and the much more striking ... . ' I For never was a story of more woe I Than this of Juliet and Romeo, And, while We can Easily imagine the Othello Museum in Venice and the Macbeth Museum at Inverness and Glamis and the Hamlet Museum at Elsinore, in connection with Baltic cruises," we feel ho such inevitability about anything being done ait Windsor for the Merry Wives, or that there will be an offers from Athens for Authentic relics of Bottom and dried bottles of his hay.