People That Do Not Like Us

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24135, 29 November 1941, Page 15

People That Do Not Like Us

BLAKE once suggested to a friend that he should become his enemy, for friendsship's saker So often had that friendship imposed burdens on him that he at last decided the most' signal manifestation of genuine interest in him and concern for his welfare would be a change from friendship to enmity. Enmity' could not possibly be more exacting, and. at least he would know where he stood. Blake was something of a prophet in the usual obscure fashion of all oracles ; he! might have been forecasting something of the British attitude to Italy's intervention in the war. Her enmity might really be a better proof of friendship than her devotion. But however that may be we have never become completely reconciled to the idea ~ that this old friend of ours through many centuries has lined up with our bitterest fee, and has managed to pump up, under German guidance, a very colourful imitation of genuine hatred for the sincere, friend of other years. Twisting the' News The Italian radio, which is now completely controlled by Germany, is of imagination all compact. It has ,ong ceased to be irritating and has achieved the splendour of a star comedy-turn. Last week I heard the lugubrious announcer in the Italian American scrvice quota from a speech by Mr. Eden, in which he had declared that the Versailles treaty had not been savage, if anything it erred o>n the side of leniency. This proves. Haiti the announcer. Ijeyond any possibility of doubt, that Britain had engineered the present war with one purpose in view, the crushing of Germany in order to compel her to accept much more rigorous conditions than those imposed at Versailles That this infantile maundering should be considered suitable pabulum for the great American public is perhaps the worst insult America has ever received. Unless indeed the announcer, who is obviously an American, has based his opinion of the American on his association with Wheeler and isoVJosists of his kidney. On the same day there was an dually brilliant excursion into fiction.

The 8.8.C. in its North American service announced at 4.30 that there had been very slight air activity over Britain that night. Casualties were very few and damage negligible. An hour or two later this information, filtered through an Italian mastermind, appeared in the Italian Pacific service. And this was the result: German bombers heavily attacked Britain last night. The 8.8.C. admits that casualties were very heavy and a great amount of damage was done. 1 suppose that sort of thing is happening every day. The Italian radio has managed to get the services of an American of some notoriety in the world of letters to reinforce its own heavy-footed irruptions into the field of fiction. Ezra Pound, a writer whom the fantastic mentality of the post-war intelligentsia has exalted to the dignity of a major poet, has comd on the air in Italy as a fervent pro-Axis, anti-British expositor. For my sins I have waded through reams of his stuff. He is the champion of j the- modern' qhspurity-plus-faked-erudrtion school. Curiously I have kept in my mind only one line of all he has written. Jn one poem he suddenly breaks into his line of thought with this address to himself: "1 believe I am half cracked." The impression left on my mind was that he was singularly optimistic about that fraction. The London that once sheltered him has become anathema to him. What

By KOTARE

reputation he has iri Britain and America is to be used to belittle, them t both. The anti-British vein in him we | take as a matter of course, because unfortunately there are many that do not love us, and a few more or les? mako 110 difference. But his antiAmerican bias, liis bitter hostility to President Roosevelt in an alien land, will take some explaining to his fellowcountrymen. The American is more sensitive on these matters than we are. A Lord Haw-liaw becomes a British joke; but one cannot see Ezra Pound becoming an acknowledged element in modern American humour, Wodehouse Britain did not show her usual readiness to appreciate a humorist when P. G. Wodehouse began broadcasting from Berlin to show what fine fellows the Nazis were. Somehow Wodehouse was different. British people, the men and women and children of his own blood, were suffering the most savage ordeal of their history arid proving the mettle of their pasture by rising undismayed from every new horror of mental and physical torment. And lie, presumably of the sanie, breed ; was - winning the comfort of elaborate German hotels by : broadcasting how delightful life was in war-time Germany. • For. the first time the humorist was not getting his stuff across. By whatever sophistries he justified his actions to his own confused mind lie had completely miscalculated the temper oi suffering Britain; we can stand a lot hut anything that smacks of treason in the hour, of the nation's peril will soon find the granitic hardness that lies at tiie foundation of the life of Britain. It was his misfortune to be babbling his inanities just when circumstances had uncovered the rockribs of the British character. And Wodehouse the man has become for all time a hissing and an astonishment to his valiant countrymen. In America That we have many enemies in America we have always known. Probably we shall never wholly overcome the traditional hatreds that the course of history inevitably creates and that keep smouldering 011 iri narrow minds and hearts. The splendid manifestation of so much genuine friendship on so vast a scale throughout all sections of the American public is so heartening and inspiring so unexpected too we might say, that we can leave our American enemies to the growing anger of their ashamed fellow countrymen.