HATS AND SALUTES

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXIX, Issue 82, 3 April 1934, Page 7

HATS AND SALUTES

PROBLEMS EOR TRAVELLERS PERPLEXED ENGLISHMAN In a recent article “The Times” touched lightly upon a problem with which Englishmen, and indeed all male members of the British Empire, are finding themselves faced when travelling in modern Europe. What, it is asked, is now the. standard Englishman to do when he walks the streets of a German town Is he to keep his hat on his head while he salutes in the manner of the Fascist, or the Nazi Or shall he raise his right arm no higher than will enable him to take his English hat off — whether in the usual fashion or according to the more decorative and stylistic manner of Air George Robey or Air Charles Chaplin—to any swastika or other symbol or person that he may think it wise to salute?

“The Times” says: —In Rome, we know, it is good to do as the Romans do; in Berlin as the Berliners do —up to ’a point. But most Englishmen will feel inclined to take refuge in an adaption of Shylock’s ultimatum to Bassanio, and to say: We will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following which is to include, perhaps, dance with you and court with you—moreover, we will most certainly and gladly cat with you and drink with you. But we will not salute with you. We do not salaam in India nor kowtow in Japan. We do not shake hands with ourselves in China, nor rub noses in Africa, nor sav ‘Pleased to meet you’ in America.

“We are a shy and undemonstrative people, and, though we did not mind holding up our arms and shouting ‘Hail!’ when we were being ancient Romans and things of that sort in Air Louis Parker’s pageants before the war, we need to be in fancy dressfancier even than any English hatbefore we can do it now.”