PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24325, 15 June 1940, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

A new technique of international diplomacy —a diplomacy of the market-place and the mob—is the declaration of war from a palace balcony before a perspiring crowd. Only in the Cisalpine and Transalpine lands of magniloquent and perfervid grand opera are such things possible without the heroics being dissolved in laughter. Carefully staged, too, was Mussolini’s entrance upon the boards—purposely an hour late to dramatize still more the effect of his appearance. A whipped-up crisis fanned for weeks by a “ good press ” had put the world on the tip-toe of expectancy. The world’s eyes were fixed on Italy, those of Italy on Rome, those of Rome on the windows of the Palazzo Venezia. For only the Duce himself—said Count Ciano—knew the day, the hour, the moment. The true grand operatic manner, too, he observed in his vociferated grievances. But he sprang a surprise. He who on a memorable Easter proudly boasted that he had “ liberated ” the people of Albania in three days might well have proclaimed, without the blinking of an eyelid, a further " crusade of liberation ” against Jugoslavia and Greece. Egypt and Switzerland. By a world familiar with Mussolini this would have been understood. His countrymen in America have already spilt all the secrets of gangsterdom. So why mention the obvious? And besides this is not grand opera. Instead Mussolini preferred to preach a holy war against the “ effete democracies.” And “ the foolish crowd of Fascist youth continued its terrific cheering for five minutes.” , Zounds! I was never so bethumpted with words Since first X called my brother’s father " dad.” The chatterbug in Britain is being smitten hip and thigh. His offences are as many sided as his nature, and his guilt varies accoi'dingly. But let it be widely known that quite as dangerous as any other kind of chatterbug is the one who chatterbugs in the innocence of his little heart —knowing no better. His may be that facile pessimism which in these tense and critical hours is much worse than facile optimism. The “ chatterbox ” is said to be prevailingly of the feminine gender, and “ chatterbug ” may be its masculine. But so many chatterbugs are women that the gender of the word must be common Inveterate is the desire of some men and women to display independence and originality of thought by carelessly throwing off a pessimistic thought. And they nod their heads the while with an air of profundity. Internment of these would once and for all de-chatter them. With others it is pure “ nerves.” Such chatterbugs as these may in one small way lighten their cloud of blackness. Let them cease to study day by day the press maps of the immediate war areas. Let them take instead a map of France in its entirety and study the immense area of France still untrodden by the invader. The wararea mao that is so conducive to despair will then be seen to contain merely a small fractional northern comer of France. Paris, it is true, is on its fringe, and is now at bay. But the possession of Paris is a moral, not a material issue. And every hour and every day the enemy is dragging the ever-lengthening chain of a dangerous line of communications. An adequate supply of aeroplanes would produce a crash such as the world has never known before. Of more than academic interest is the famous Curse of Garibaldi, now appropriately recalled. It throws into relief the contrast between Old Italy and the degenerate New, and records the debt which the Italy of Mazzini and Victor Emmanuel owed to Britain. Giuseppe Garibaldi, the unifier of Italy, who by his crowning triumph of 1860 made Italy no longer “ a geographical expression ” but a people and a State, was the idol of the British public. The passionate enthusiasm which attended his visit to England in 1864 made all merely regal progresses by comparison dull and insignificant. For, mutatis mutandis, he was as close an approach to a Cincinnatus as a modern world can produce. No farmer was he, like Cincinnatus, but a sailor, fired from his esrly years with a revolutionary zeal to free the Italian States from the foreign oppressor. Exiled to Brazil, he took a hand in the broils of South America, espousing the cause of Uruguay against her larger neighbours. In 1859 he returned to Italy, took service under Victor Emmanuel in the unification of Italy. English volunteers flocked to his standard: Early in the autumn of 1860 an advertisement appeared simultaneously in several London newspapers intimating that a party of Englishmen about to visit Italy were making arrangements for the journey at a given address in the Strand, and invited others to join the excursion. It was further intimated that, as the country which was to be visited “ was much infested by brigands," it was expedient for every member of the party to carry firearms. Within a few days thousands of intending “ tourists ” reported at the rendezvous. More varied and tumultuous than falls to the lot even of revolutionary leaders was the life of Garibaldi, And few men held more tenaciously to a fixed idea. Whether sailing in his father’s ship in die Mediterranean, or conspiring with the young men of Genoa, whether fighting the battles of Uruguay or rearing cattle on the Pampas, whether fleeing from peasant hut to hut in Italy, or living by candle-making in New York, whether commanding a merchantman in the Atlantic or leading his red-shirted soldiers on the slopes of Sardinia, whether dining with an English lord or eating a sausage with a sailor in a back-alley, he was always the same simple, rugged, incorruptible Guiseppe Garibaldi with one idea —the liberty of the Italian people. His work done, lie retired to his farm and gardens on the Island of Cam-era, purchased for him by his English sympathisers. To Englishmen he was a man after their own heart. And long after lie passed quietly from the world’s stage the song was sung in England: There is One in Heaven, Garibaldi, Whose Face we have not seen; But thinner to you than to us lies The veil that hangs between. He has made you for His own work, He has kept you spotless through: And you know better than we can, What He has called you to do . So our hopes are with you, whether Your fortunes rise or fall; For—you are Garibaldi, And God is over all. Memories in Italy are short. The present Garibaldis are Albanian and Abysinnian.

Britain is said to be an “ old nation,” doomed to go the way of old nations of the past. A cartoonist recently in a foreign journal, whose wish fathered his thought, gave a pseudo-prophetic picture of the doom of the British Empire. Over a sullen sea is moving a line of ships—on towards a blur on the horizon labelled for our benefit “ Decay and Oblivium.” First comes a Persian galley, then a Greek, then a Roman trireme, then a Spanish galleon, and finally a British battleship. And underneath are the helpful and necessary words: “ The British Empire goes the way of the rest.” Necessary words are these, for without them the picture might have been a symbolic vision of the British fleet sweeoing the seas of undesirables. The cartoonist —a brooding student of the repetitions of history rather than of cartoonery —was likening the so-called British Empire to a figment of his imagination. For history never before knew a free association of independent nations close-bound by ties of race, religion and language. Repetition of a situation which never before existed is as good a " bull ” as the following;— A theatrical manager, on seeing but three persons in his audience, boldly made the following announcement: *‘ Ladies and gentlemen, as there is nobody here. I’ll dismiss you all. The performance of to-night will not be performed but will be repeated to-morrow evening” If Britain herself be “ old,” the Empire is as young as Canada, Australia. South Africa and New Zealand. In fact, by every argument the German can put forth, the British Commonwealth of Nations is the youngest unified State now existing in the world. For information on a nation’s habits and customs, you cannot do better than go to its similes. And from a mixture of similes you can easily separate out the nations to which they belong. Try your hand on the following, selected from a list given by E. V. Lucas:— Slow as a newsboy giving change through a street-car window. Old-fashioned as a blush. Relaxed as a deep-sea diver taking a bath. Precarious as a dinner with the Borgias. , Nervous as a barber waiting for the results of the 3.30. Competent as a homely stenographer. Officious as the assistant manager when the manager is out of town. Interesting as a conversation you can’t quite overhear. Hen-pecked as the man who has lace curtains on the side windows of his Ford car. Busy as a bride remodelling her self-made husband. Happy as the radio announcer who is asked whether he is EngCertain as the sunset at the end of a travel picture. Pompous as the headmaster of a military school returning the salute of a six-year-old cadet. Happy as a mosquito in a nudist colony. Superfluous as the mistletoe. Dear Civis,—Speaking this week of the endorsement by the German people of Hitler’s actions, Mr Duff Cooper said, “ Now this series of crudities which have made a horror of Europe are not the crimes of one man, nor are they the crimes of a small band of criminals. These are the crimes of a whole people—a whole people and a whole nation.” Strangely enough, I read the same day in a London periodical the following extract from Gibbon’s “ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ”: “To solicit by labour what might be ravished by arms was not esteemed worthy of a German spirit.” And the comment was added that the passage is quoted from the Germania of Tacitus. Tacitus, as we know, was bom about 55 A.D.,. and was the author of “ Germania,” an ethnographical work on the Germans or Huns, Clearly the German spirit of militarism (or shall we say bullying?) is deep and farrooted in the race, and merits Duff Cooper’s indictment. It will take a lot of pruning. This Germanic characteristic was evidently well known in Imperial Rome. It was Lucan, a little earlier than Tacitus, who wrote of the “ Furor Teutonicus.” Civis.