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'STOP ELECTING LIFE PEERS'
By TREVOR WILLIAMS
   A MOVE to stop Mr. Gaitskell from nominating any more Labour
life Peers is to be made at a meeting of Labour M Ps tomorrow.
   Mr. Michael Foot has put down a resolution on the subject and
he is to be backed by Mr. Will Griffiths, M P for Manchester
Exchange.
   Though they may gather some Left-wing support, a large majority
of Labour M Ps are likely to turn down the Foot-Griffiths
resolution.
'ABOLISH LORDS'
   Mr. Foot's line will be that as Labour M Ps opposed the
Government Bill which brought life peers into existence, they should
not now put forward nominees.
   He believes that the House of Lords should be abolished and that
Labour should not take any steps which would appear to "prop up" an
out-dated institution.
   Since 1958, 13 Labour life Peers and Peeresses have been created.
   Most Labour sentiment would still favour the abolition of the
House of Lords, but while it remains Labour has to have an adequate
number of members.
AFRICANS DROP RIVALRY TO FIGHT SIR ROY
By DENNIS NEWSON
   THE two rival African Nationalist Parties of Northern Rhodesia
have agreed to get together to face the challenge from Sir Roy
Welensky, the Federal Premier.
   Delegates from Mr. Kenneth Kaunda's United National
Independence Party (28, members) and Mr. Harry Nkumbula's
African National Congress (4,) will meet in London today to
discuss a common course of action.
   Sir Roy is violently opposed to Africans getting an elected
majority in Northern Rhodesia, but the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Iain
Macleod, is insisting on a policy of change.
   Sir Roy's United Federal Party is boycotting the London talks on
the Protectorate's future.
   Said Mr. Nkumbula last night: "We want to discuss what to do
if the British Government gives in to Sir Roy and the talks fall
through. There are bound to be demonstrations."
All revealed
   Yesterday Sir Roy's chief aide, Mr. Julius Greenfield,
telephoned his chief a report on his talks with Mr. Macmillan at
Chequers.
   Mr. Macleod went on with the conference at Lancaster House
despite the crisis which had blown up. He has now revealed his full
plans to the Africans and Liberals attending.
   These plans do not give the Africans the overall majority they
are seeking. African delegates are studying them today.
   The conference will meet to discuss the function of a proposed
House of Chiefs.
No secret talks- Macleod
By HUGH PILCHER
   MR. IAIN MACLEOD, the Colonial Secretary, denied in the
Commons last night that there have been secret negotiations on
Northern Rhodesia's future.
   The Northern Rhodesia conference in London has been boycotted
by the two main settlers' parties- the United Federal Party and the
Dominion Party.
   But representatives of Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the
Central African Federation, went to Chequers at the week-end for talks
with Mr. Macmillan. Northern Rhodesia is a member of the
Federation.
   Mr. Macleod was not at the week-end meeting. But he told M
Ps yesterday: "I have no knowledge of secret negotiations."
   He said Britain had an obligation to consult the Federal
Government. But the final decision remained with the British
Government.
   Mr. James Callaghan, Labour's Colonial spokesman, said Sir
Roy had no right to delay progress in the talks by refusing to sit
round the conference table.
   Mr. Macleod thought the two Rhodesian parties had refused to
attend the talks because Sir Roy had found messages sent from the
Government were "unsatisfactory."
   African delegates to the talks yesterday called on Mr.
Macmillan to cease his negotiations with Sir Roy's representative,
Mr. Julius Greenfield. He was at Chequers last week-end.
   They said they regarded with "growing anger" the "gross and
unconstitutional" interference by Sir Roy's Federal Government in
the talks. Informal talks at Lancaster House will resume today.
DEEP SOUTH SMEARS JACK'S NEGRO
   PRESIDENT KENNEDY today defended the appointment of a Negro
as his Housing Minister. It has aroused strong opposition from the
anti-Negro senators of the Deep South.
   The negro is Mr. Robert Weaver of New York. One of his tasks
will be to see there is no racial discrimination in Government and
State housing projects.
   Senator Allen Ellender, of Louisiana, sparked off the opposition
by telling a television audience it was "current Washington gossip"
that Weaver once had Communist affiliations.
A letter
   The Senate Banking Committee, which is headed by another
Southern Senator- Willis Robertson, of Virginia- met today in closed
session to discuss Weaver's appointment.
   Senator Robertson later disclosed he had sent a letter to Mr.
Kennedy saying he had received several complaints about Weaver's
loyalty.
   He said these concerned Mr. Weaver's alleged association with
organisations black-listed by the Government.
   Immediately Mr. Kennedy rushed a letter to Senator Robertson
saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation had reported on Mr.
Weaver.
   He believed he would perform "outstanding service" in his
post.
   Senator Robertson's committee has to pass Mr. Weaver's
nomination before it can be considered by the full Senate.
Gold-hunting Kennedy shocks Dr. A
GERMANY MUST PAY
Offer of +357m is too small
   PRESIDENT KENNEDY is ready to get tough over West Germany's
cash offer to help America's balance of payments position.
   He said bluntly in Washington yesterday that the offer-
+357million- was not good enough. And he indicated that his
Government would try to get Germany to pay more.
   He did not mention personal talks with Dr. Adenauer, the West
German Chancellor. But he said discussions "on a higher level than
in the past" might be useful.
   The President will probably discuss the problem with Dr.
Brentano, the West German Foreign Minister, who is due in Washington
next week.
   A big slice of Germany's "aid" is the early payment of a
+21million debt to America. United States officials quickly point
out that this is money due to America anyway.
   And they are unimpressed by the Germans' claim that they cannot
pay more than +357million without upsetting their own economy.
   The Americans say Germany is having it too good and is not paying
for the past or for the present.
Tough spot
   The Adenauer Government flatly rejected attempts by the
Eisenhower Government to get them to pay a regular sum towards the
cost of keeping American troops in Germany.
   These support costs are a big drain on America's dollar reserves.
Dr. Adenauer's answer is the once-and-for-all cash offer of
+357million.
   President Kennedy's rejection of it is a painful blow to the West
German Government.
   It will now have to pay more- and increase taxation to do so-
or run the obvious risks in upsetting the new American administration.
   And, since this is election year in West Germany, Dr. Adenauer
is in a tough spot.
Waiting
   Joyce Egginton cables: President Kennedy at his Washington
Press conference admitted he did not know whether America was lagging
behind Russia in missile power. He said he was waiting for his senior
military aides to come up with the answer on February 2.
   This surprising statement was a sharp about-face from his
warnings during the Presidential election campaign. He claimed
slackness in the Eisenhower Administration had caused America to lag
behind Russia in nuclear development.
   President Kennedy did his best to avoid giving Pressmen a direct
answer.
HORRIFIED
That's a Tory doctor's reaction to the new health charges, says
George Brown
'PROBE THE DRUG PROFITS AND DON'T TAKE IT OUT OF MOTHERS AND
CHILDREN'
By HUGH PILCHER
   TWO men who are poles apart in personality last night dominated
Parliament's fiercest battle since the 1959 election- Mr. George
Brown and Mr. Enoch Powell, the Health Minister.
   Mr. Brown, passionate and warm-hearted, led Labour's attack
on the higher health charges. Mr. Powell, white-faced and outwardly
unemotional, replied with a statistical statement- and ended by
inciting Labour M Ps to angry uproar.
   One dealt with the human issue behind the Health Service; the
other tried to show that the balance-sheet must always come first.
   The result of the vote was not in doubt. For the Tories were
massed in answer to their whips to defeat a censure motion on the
Government for "undermining the Health Service" and placing heavy
burdens on those least able to bear them.
   Mr. Brown declared that the policy under censure was monstrous.
It had offended many people far beyond the ranks of Labour
supporters. The Press, many doctors and public were denouncing the
proposals.
THE LETTER
   He quoted from this letter which Mr. Gaitskell had received:
   "My background is a doctor of 68, who has practised medicine
for 43 years, chiefly as a panel doctor.
   "I am a lifelong Conservative. I am horrified and amazed by my
party's proposal to prostitute the whole principle of the State
service and to render that service a hardship to poor people.
   "After a lifetime of helping others and healing the sick, my
considered opinion is that anybody supporting the increased charges is
a wicked, old-."
   Mr. Brown went on: "We are dealing with a noble edifice
which needs an imaginative architect to improve it, but it has got a
quantity surveyor. We have descended from the real problems to
fiddling about with bills of cost.
   "We believe that a comprehensive medical service, free to the
patient at the point of need and with one standard for all sick
people, is good and attainable.
<END QUOTE>
DIFFERENT
   "We remain for it. But the Tories never were."
   Interrupted by angry Tories, Mr. Brown retorted: "The
jackals bay when there is nothing better they can do."
   He told them that their conception of social services was wholly
different- fundamentally different from that of Labour.
   They would provide an ambulance service for the absolutely
wretched- but it would not be too comfortable nor too easy to get.
   Answering jeers that it was Labour which first put a ceiling on
health spending and started charges, Mr. Brown reminded the hostile
Government benches that was done in 195 because of the financial
strain of the Korean war.
   In fact, the Tories made it worse now for the sick and needy than
Labour had to make it in 195. And as a percentage of social service
expenditure, health had fallen from 28.5 to 23.1 per cent.
   Then Mr. Brown swung his attack directly to the unsmiling Mr.
Powell.
   He demanded that instead of taking it out of the patients Mr.
Powell should take ruthless action against the drug making industry,
whose profits had risen by up to 4 per cent. in the last eight
years.
   "Mr. Powell finds it easier to take it out of mothers,
children and sick people than to take on this vast industry," Mr.
Brown commented icily.
   "Let us have a full inquiry into the cost of drugs and the
pharmaceutical industry."
   The health of children today owed much to the welfare food
scheme. It was maintained during the war. Now in conditions of Tory
affluence it seemed it could not be carried on.
   When Mr. Brown sat down Labour M Ps cheered for a full
minute- and even his bitterest opponents on defence joined in.
THE CHOICE
   Mr. Powell devoted half his speech to giving details of plans
for improving the hospital service, on which indeed the Government is
making progress.
   His basic defence of the Health Service cuts was that "even
after the proposed changes the net cost of the service to the
Exchequer will have increased over three years by 2 per cent.
   "That cannot continue without either development being limited
or an adjustment being made in financing."
   The Government decided to adjust the financing- which Mr.
Powell claimed was underpinning- not undermining- the service.
   Answering the attack on "economic charges" for welfare foods,
Mr. Powell said that all these foods would still be free in families
receiving regular National Assistance grants.
   Of the doubled prescription charge his argument was: "It is
ludicrous exaggeration to say that by and large a 2s. charge is any
more of a burden than a 1s. charge was in 1949."
'RESIGN'
   Uproar from the Labour side grew as Mr. Powell made more and
more claims with which M Ps disagreed.
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MAC PICKS HIS MARKET TEAM
Our man in Paris is No 1 aide to Heath
By JOHN DICKIE
   MR. MACMILLAN has picked a strong "brains trust" team to
negotiate terms for joining the Common Market.
   And he has abandoned plans to visit President de Gaulle this
month to smooth the way.
   General de Gaulle's official welcome last week to Britain's
moves towards the Six was taken as a friendly gesture in Whitehall,
but no more than that. So the idea of a personal mission by the Prime
Minister to Paris was dropped.
   Instead Mr. Macmillan will rely on a hand-picked team under the
leadership of Sir Pierson Dixon, Britain's Ambassador to France, to
back Mr. Edward Heath, Lord Privy Seal, who is charged with the
conduct of negotiations with the Six.
In touch
   At the same time the Prime Minister has offered Commonwealth
Governments every facility possible to safeguard their interests.
   Seven Commonwealth countries have told Mr. Sandys, Commonwealth
Relations Secretary, that they wish to be kept in touch in London.
   Three of them- Canada, Australia, and New Zealand- will have
strong delegations at an opening meeting in London on Monday.
   Once the Common Market's Council of Ministers draws up the
procedure for negotiations in a fortnight's time, these Commonwealth
countries can arrange for observers to advise the British negotiating
team.
   The team is composed of experienced negotiators in several
fields.
   Sir Pierson Dixon has a wide reputation as a skilful
backstage negotiator since his days as Britain's chief UN
delegate.
The team
   Second in command is Mr. Eric Roll, 53-year-old Deputy
Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries.
   The Foreign Office is represented by Sir Roderick Barclay,
who has taken part in all the detailed Common Market exchanges over
the past year with the French, Germans, and Italians.
   Other leading members are: Sir Henry Lintott from the
Commonwealth Relations Office, Sir William Corell-Barnes (Colonial
Office), Mr. G. R. Bell (Treasury), and Mr. G. H.
Andrew (Board of Trade).
   They will accompany Mr. Heath next month when he goes to
Brussels, headquarters of the Common Market Commission, or wherever
the Six decide negotiations should be held.
   Some of the problems were reviewed yesterday at a meeting in
Paris between M. Couve de Murville, French Foreign Minister, and
Mr. Heath.
Selwyn in strikeland
From WILLIAM FORREST ACCRA, Monday
   MR. Selwyn Lloyd- a man with troubles enough back home-
seems fated to fly into trouble abroad.
   Last year it was the riots in Istanbul, which enlivened the
NATO Council meeting.
   Now we have the strikes and demonstrations in Ghana coinciding
with the meeting of the Commonwealth Economic Consultative Council-
the first to be held in Africa.
   Only a few hours after Mr Lloyd and his 24-strong delegation
landed at Accra this morning, hundreds of shop assistants demonstrated
outside the British-owned Kingsway Stores, the largest in town.
   The stores had been hit by the same strike wave that has
paralysed the port of Takoradi for the past week.
   Root of the discontent: The austerity Budget, including a
compulsory savings scheme which the Ghana Government introduced in
July.
   Ghana's strong man is not here to face the storm. President
Nkrumah, having made his contribution to the neutrals' conference in
Belgrade, has resumed his holiday on the Black Sea and no one here
professes to know when he will return.
   But in his absence his chief lieutenants have not let him down.
The strong arm of authority has been raised against the strikers and
is now beginning to tell.
   Today's Ghanaian Times (motto: ~"The welfare of the people
is the supreme law") reports: "The Government has been urged to
take immediate action to deal ruthlessly with the strikers."
   The urge came from a conference of activists of Nkrumah's
Convention Party "after powerful addresses by Comrades Krobo Edusei,
Tawia Adamafio," and others.
Ultimatum
   Strong deeds followed strong words. In Takoradi a "limited
state of emergency" was declared, giving the Government adequate
power to maintain all essential services and ensure food supplies.
   Thus it becomes an offence punishable with imprisonment for
anyone who "publishes a report likely to cause alarm or prejudicial
to public safety."
   And up to ten years' imprisonment can be imposed on anyone
convicted of sabotage.
   These stern measures had the desired effect today at Kumasi where
the strikers gave in, but in Takoradi, the chief storm centre, they
are still holding out despite the presence of 1,4 police and 16
armoured cars.
   And how did the Government react when the strikers demonstrated
in Accra?
   At 9.4 Mr. Edusei, Minister of Transport and probably the
toughest man in Mr. Nkrumah's team, drove up to the Kingsway Stores
and faced the demonstrators, most of them shopgirls in overalls.
   "If you have not dispersed by ten o'clock," he told them,
'the police will act.' At five to ten a posse of police arrived
and in less than two minutes the crowd had gone.
   If the threatened "counter-revolution" was not enough to bring
the President back from his travels it might have been thought that
the muster from the 13 States of the Commonwealth was an occasion
worthy of his presence.
   After all it was Mr. Nkrumah who suggested that this year the
Economic Consultative Council should meet in Accra.
   It has been left, however, to Mr. Goka, Ghana's Finance
Minister, to do the honours as host, in which capacity he held a
reception tonight in Accra's Ambassador Hotel.
PHONE TAPS
Disarmers accuse the Cabinet
   POLICE, on direct orders from the Cabinet, are openly
intimidating members of Earl Russell's nuclear-disarming Committee of
1, the Committee claimed yesterday.
   It said pressure was being put on members and associates all
over the country.
   It alleged:
   Phones were being tapped and going out of action;
   Police were visiting people "on no pretext whatsoever,
except to pass the time of day";
   Supporters had been warned- one that his connection with the
committee was going too far; another that anti-apartheid agitation was
all right, but support for the committee was not. A third man's house
was watched for four days by plain-clothes men.
   Committee-member Mr. George Clark commented at a Press
conference: "The most extraordinary things are happening."
   Fifty committee members will appear at Bow-street today,
including Lord Russell, Lady Russell, Lord Boyd-Orr, the Rev.
Michael Scott, and Mr. Clark.
A 'plant'
   They are required to show why they should not be bound over for
disturbing the peace and for inciting a breach of the peace. The
summonses say they are "likely to persevere in such unlawful
conduct."
   Lord Russell, 89, was putting his affairs in order, and packing a
case, at his Chelsea home yesterday. His secretary, American-born
Mr. Ralph Schoenman, said: "He is not going to agree to be bound
over. That will probably mean jail and, though frail, he is very fit
and will take the rigours of prison in his stride. He hopes to be
allowed to do some writing."
   Back at the Press conference, Mr. Clark said two committee
members tried a "plant" call on a suspect phone. They discussed a
sit-down at Watford at 5.3 p.m.- none was planned but police
turned up.
Sir Roy attacks Kaunda's 'vicious monster'
From HARVEY WARD Salisbury, Monday
   SIR Roy Welensky said today that he no longer accepted the
good faith of Mr. Kenneth Kaunda.
   Sir Roy, Federal Rhodesian Prime Minister, said that Mr.
Kaunda's United National Independence Party was a monster as vicious
as the Zambia National Congress, which was led by Mr. Kaunda until
he was outlawed in 1959.
   The record of lawlessness among UNIP supporters went
back a long way, Sir Roy told the Federal Parliament in Salisbury.
   He cited cases in which hundreds of UNIP supporters had
been arrested or convicted since last year on charges of creating
disturbances.
Convicted
   During the first three weeks of the present trouble 287
incidents had been reported in Northern Rhodesia.
   More than 5 people- 167 of them members of the UNIP-
were convicted last month in the Northern Province alone.
   "Against this background must be taken Mr. Kaunda's repeated
statements that all he is doing is in the name of non-violence,"
said Sir Roy.
   "I am now compelled to say that I don't accept his good
faith."
   He said Mr. Kaunda must know that his statements had stimulated
violence, but he had done nothing to stop it.
   "It is true he made a point of again being absent from Northern
Rhodesia when his followers have indulged in such violence."
   But Sir Roy pointed out that a few months ago Mr. Kaunda said
that if UNIP did not get its way what would happen would make
the Mau Mau in Kenya "seem like a child's picnic."
   JOHN DICKIE writes: Mr. Macmillan gave top priority to the
clash over Northern Rhodesia on his return from Scotland yesterday.
   He summoned Mr. Iain Macleod, Colonial Secretary, and Mr.
Duncan Sandys, Commonwealth Relations Secretary for an hour's talks at
Admiralty House.
   A statement is expected today to hold the door open for
modifications to the new Constitution provided law and order is
maintained in Northern Rhodesia.
   Its terms have set the Prime Minister an exacting problem.
   Mr. Sandys has warned of the risk of a strong reaction from Sir
Roy Welensky to any suggestion that there may be fresh concessions to
the African nationalists.
   Mr. Macleod has ample evidence from talks with Sir John Moffat,
Northern Rhodesian Liberal leader, and Mr. Kaunda, that the bulk of
moderates and Africans will reject the Constitution unless it is
modified.
IN AFRICA A CLASH: IN LONDON A WELCOME
   A ROYAL welcome for the Kabaka of Buganda (King Freddie)
from Princess Elizabeth Bagaya of Toro, kneeling at the foot of his
airliner's steps at London Airport yesterday. Forty other Africans
greeted him, kneeling with heads bowed.
   The princess, aged 24, is now studying history at Cambridge,
where she is a friend of Prince William of Gloucester.
   King Freddie and three other hereditary rulers of native kingdoms
in Uganda arrived for talks with Colonial Secretary Mr. Iain
Macleod, before the Uganda Constitutional conference opens next
Monday. The question: Their status in an independent Uganda.
   The thorniest problem for next week's conference is to settle the
relationships between them and the rest of the country. A Government
report has recognised their rights and recommended a form of federal
association, but the four kings are not committing themselves and not
attending the actual conference, although Buganda politicians have
agreed to do so at the last minute.
   Instead, the kings will remain in London and wait to hear the
conference's proposals. Then their views will be transmitted back.
Russell jailed but ban-the-bomb fight goes on
RAB CRACKS DOWN
75 extra police will bar Sunday squatters
By Daily Mail Reporter
   MR. BUTLER, the Home Secretary, has decided to meet head-on
the biggest challenge to Government authority yet presented by the
"Ban-the-Bomb" demonstrators.
   Police leave has been cancelled and secret plans prepared to
deal with the mass sit-down rally planned for Sunday in
Parliament-square by the Committee of 1, the anti-nuclear arms
group.
   It was Mr. Butler who authorised action which ended yesterday
in 32 members of the Committee of 1 being imprisoned for inciting a
breach of the peace.
   The committee's president 89-year-old Earl Russell and his
61-year-old wife were each jailed for a week.
   Playwrights Arnold Wesker (The Kitchen) and Robert Bolt
(The Flowering Cherry) were jailed for a month.
Measures
   The possibility that the Government might invoke the Public
Order Act, 1936, and declare the whole rally illegal- whether the
demonstrators sit down or not- was being discussed in Whitehall last
night.
   It was last used a year ago, to deal with the St. Pancras rent
riots.
   Today Mr. Butler will have talks with Police Commissioner Sir
Joseph Simpson to draw up final plans for the "Battle of Parliament
Square." Measures agreed so far include:
   1. A mass call-out of police, special constables and reserves,
with 75 policemen posted from outlying districts to stations in the
area- West End Central, Bow-street, and Cannon-row.
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MR. TOURE IN ZAGREB
PRES. TITO'S POLICY FOR NEUTRALISM
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
VIENNA, Jan. 9
   President Tito and Mr. Se?2kou Toure?2 arrived today in
Zagreb, where crowds of people welcomed the Yugoslav leader's guest,
who is celebrating his thirty-ninth birthday there.
   The state visit of the President of Guinea is evidently regarded
by the Yugoslav leader as an emphasis on Yugoslavia's affinity with
Asian and African countries and, moreover, an opportunity to underline
his support for anti-colonial movements. Coming as it did, soon after
the conference at Casablanca, the Yugoslav press has written much on
the significance of the meeting of leaders of Africa, placing
particular stress on the urgency to settle the Congolese and Algerian
problems and condemning the "intervention of colonial and
neo-colonial" Powers.
   Mr. Se?2kou Toure?2's stay in Yugoslavia is one in the series
of forthcoming visits of neutralist leaders from those continents, and
President Tito has already indicated that soon he is to travel to some
of those countries. Today, for example, the Foreign Minister of
Indonesia arrived in Belgrade as the guest of the Yugoslav Foreign
Minister.
CONFERENCE FAVOURED
   In fact such Yugoslav activity has been particularly
intensified in the past year or so and though so far, apart from joint
action in the United Nations, these exchanges have not been seen on
any wider basis, President Tito is known for some time to have
favoured a conference of neutralist leaders.
   The wish was particularly apparent in comments on the occasion of
the conference in Casablanca and, in particular, in Yugoslav approval
of the idea of an inter-African consultative assembly which would
coordinate activity on the political and economic sphere; and it is
not difficult to see that President Tito would like some such idea
extended also to the whole uncommitted world.
   But he now feels, in view of a changed international situation
and especially in view of fresh problems facing the new and
independent countries of Africa, that the time is ripe to have more
frequent consultations between the uncommitted countries and even to
work out common stands on various problems facing those nations.
   Two subjects, the Congo and Algeria, are the main topics of the
talks in Belgrade- and on both the two leaders have identical ideas.
LAOS INVITATION TO PRINCE SOUVANNA
REQUEST TO RETURN
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
SAIGON, Jan. 9
   Two emissaries from the Laotian Government of Prince Boun Oum
have arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to invite Prince Souvanna
Phouma, the former Prime Minister, to return to Laos. No details of
their mission have been disclosed, but it was reported earlier in Laos
that Prince Boun Oum was considering asking Prince Souvanna Phouma to
join his Government.
   Prince Souvanna Phouma has not yet replied to the mission, but
recent statements made by him in Phnom Penh indicate that he still
regards himself as the only legal Prime Minister of Laos.
   His policy of strict neutrality from 1951 to 1958 kept the
kingdom in peace, though at the cost of virtual partition of the
country into the pro-communist north and the pro-western centre and
south.
"LEGAL GOVERNMENT"
   Prince Souvanna's former Minister of Information, Mr. Quinim
Pholsena, who claims to be his representative in Laos, yesterday
addressed all officers of the pro-communist forces occupying the
province of Xieng Khouang and emphasized that Prince Souvanna's
Government was the only legal one in the country.
   Prince Souphannouvong, leader of the pro-communist Neo Lao Haksat
Party, also spoke to the officers in the same terms. This emphasis on
the legality of the former Government suggests that all is not well
with the political and military leadership of the pro-communists.
Most of the province of Xieng Khouang and the tactically useful Plain
of Jars, however, appear still to be firmly in their hands.
   The Government has claimed the recapture of Vang Vieng, the
pro-communists' former base 6 miles north of Vientiane, but this
claim had been made before the end of last month. A correspondent who
travelled yesterday to within a few miles of Vang Vieng was told by
officers that this village was still held by the pro-communists.
NEW IMAGE OF LIBERAL PARTY LEADER FOR CANADIANS
From Our Own Correspondent
OTTAWA
   With the Prime Minister sunning himself in Jamaica and his
Cabinet out in the grass roots making 16 speeches in 8
constituencies in 1 days, the Liberal Party are holding a national
conference here with some 2, delegates, the biggest gathering since
1958 when Mr. Lester Pearson was chosen as party leader.
   In some ways it will be a testing occasion for him, although some
think his position unassailable simply because there is no one else in
sight to supplant him. So the conference will concentrate on laying
the foundations on which to win the next election.
CONSERVATIVE STOCK LOW
   The rally comes at a time when in spite of carefully worded
statements by the Prime Minister there is an air of electoral
expectancy. Members of the Cabinet are basing their speeches on a new
Conservative booklet called The Record Speaks which outlines in
some detail the accomplishments of the party since it came to office
three and a half years ago. Nevertheless there is little illusion in
the Conservative Party that their stock at home has fallen in the face
of heavy unemployment and an uncertain economy.
   Last year saw the defeat of two Conservative provincial
governments, Quebec and New Brunswick, and in the four federal
by-elections last October the party fared badly. They are now faced
with four other by-elections, one at Esquimalt Saanich, British
Columbia, one in Leeds, Ontario, and the other two in the Maritimes-
Restigouche Madawaska, New Brunswick, and Kings, Prince Edward Island.
All four were Conservative strongholds.
   Last September a public poll showed that for the first time since
the Administration came to power in 1957 the Liberals were ahead (43
per cent were in favour of "The Grits" if a federal election had
been held last autumn, 38 per cent for the Conservatives and 12 per
cent for the C.C.F.). However, a separate poll revealed that
Mr. Diefenbaker was still ahead in terms of popularity as an
individual leader (for Mr. Diefenbaker 36 per cent, for Mr.
Pearson 34 per cent).
   How far is Mr. Lester Pearson acceptable to the people of
Canada as a Prime Minister? Many observers at the national rally will
be seeking an answer. It is difficult for many to see Mr. Pearson
in the role of a popular orator at the hustings, the spellbinder that
Mr. Diefenbaker was in the last two campaigns. The impression
remains that the Liberal leader is still the diplomatist, more at home
in the chancery, or the corridors of the United Nations, not the
father figure, so necessary in Canadian leadership, or the practical
politician, able to talk about sewage problems in Algoma East. On the
other hand, Mr. Pearson excels in meeting people informally, but
many still regard him "as some sort of cross between an egghead and a
missionary".
BOW TIE GONE
   His party advisers are now trying to correct that image. The
bow tie has gone; he is having lessons on television techniques and is
being coached by speech experts. Everything is being done to promote
a new image. Certainly, he is now a much tougher character
politically than when he took over the leadership. He was mercilessly
trounced by Mr. Diefenbaker in the House in those early days. It
has been a hard road back but now, with plenty of political ammunition
given him by the Government in recent sessions, he is leading the
Opposition with skill and assurance and is a match for the Prime
Minister across the floor.
   Mr. Pearson is now talking about "his new and dynamic
liberalism" and this week will show perhaps how far "Mike" will
go. The main topic under review is unemployment, but there will be 21
committees examining subjects ranging from foreign investment in
Canada to the problems of the Atlantic provinces.
   However, be this election year or not, Mr. Pearson, with his
party increasingly confident of return to power, must convey to the
nation that he has the stamp of a Prime Minister of Canada.
BONN DOUBTS ON EUROPEAN SPACE PROJECT
MR. THORNEYCROFT'S TASK TO REMOVE SCEPTICISM
From Our Own Correspondent
BONN, Jan. 9
   Mr. Thorneycroft, the Minister of Aviation, who arrives in Bonn
tomorrow for talks with the Federal Government on a European space
satellite project, will find the Germans interested in the principle
of space research, but rather sceptical about British plans for
organizing it. Stated more bluntly, they are still unconvinced that
this is not primarily an effort on Britain's part to salve Blue
Streak, which was abandoned last summer as a military project; or that
the new European space satellite is indeed to be purely scientific in
character.
   Mr. Thorneycroft's main purpose will be to remove these doubts,
and to persuade the Federal Government that the financial burden
involved is really worth while, at a time when any increase in
budgetary commitments would almost certainly involve a corresponding
rise in taxation- something no one is prepared to contemplate in an
election year.
DUPLICATED EFFORT
   The cost of the European satellite project is estimated to be
at least +6m. spread over five years. A Foreign Ministry
spokesman said today that west Germany, mainly for budgetary reasons,
had not signed a resolution adopted at an international conference in
Geneva last December, which called for the drawing up of a European
convention on a space satellite project.
   But, at the same time, there is reason to believe that the
Federal Government is not convinced, on the basis of the information
it has so far, that such a project would be justified from a
scientific point of view; and not merely constitute a "prestige"
satellite, duplicating to some extent American efforts, as Die
Welt suggests today in a highly critical editorial article.
   On the specific question of the use of Blue Streak, Mr.
Thorneycroft's task will be easier. He can point out that this is the
only rocket and launcher in Europe to have reached a sufficient stage
of development for adaptation as the first stage in putting a heavy
satellite into outer space. There has also been some talk of adopting
another British rocket, Black Knight, for the second stage, but the
French have one of their own called Veronique which they would like to
see used.
MISSILE FEARS
   Perhaps one of the main reasons for German misgivings is the
fear that the French may not be especially interested in scientific
research as such, but more anxious to develop something which could
carry an atomic warhead of their own manufacture. The Federal
Government has made it clear that it would have no part in any project
for the development of long-range missiles- which in any case would
contravene the provisions of the Brussels treaty. The Foreign
Ministry spokesman added today, however, that the Brussels Treaty was
irrelevant, because research on the various rocket stages had already
been concluded, and only cooperation on the type of capsule was
involved.
   A lesser obstacle to German participation is the absence of any
Ministry or Minister directly responsible for it- and therefore of
any budget under which funds could be appropriated.
   Meanwhile, Professor Eugen Sa"nger, chairman of the German
Society for Rocket and Space Travel, has arrived in London as a
representative of the Federal Government, together with experts from
other countries, to study Blue Streak. He will be taking part in an
international conference on the space project which will meet on
January 3 in London.
OTHER VENTURES
   During his two-day stay in Bonn, Mr. Thorneycroft will also
have talks with Herr Strauss, the Minister of Defence, Professor
Erhard, the Minister of Economics, Herr von Brentano, the Foreign
Minister, and Dr. Seebohm, the Transport Minister. He will discuss
various plans for joint research and development of military items,
and in particular, it is understood, a vertical take-off fighter
aircraft. This is expected eventually to replace the Fiat G-91, and
the F 14 Starfighter, the backbone of the German Air Force.
# 214
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MAC GIVEN HIS ORDERS
Must join Common Market, says Kennedy
Daily Worker Reporters
   PRESIDENT KENNEDY renewed his pressure on Mr. Harold
Macmillan to join the Common Market during their talks at Admiralty
House, Whitehall, yesterday.
   Much of their three hours, 2 minutes of discussion is believed
to have been devoted to this main point of American policy.
   It arose during talks following President Kennedy's report to the
British Prime Minister of the outcome of his recent visit to Paris.
   There General de Gaulle had made clear that he would accept
Britain into the Common Market only if there were no conditions laid
down to meet the Commonwealth and other reservations.
   Mr. Kennedy told Mr. Macmillan that he still wanted him to
apply for membership of the Common Market, even if it meant an
unconditional surrender.
LAOS, BERLIN
   There were also brief discussions on Laos, Berlin and other
foreign questions, after Mr. Kennedy had informed Mr. Macmillan of
his discussions with Mr. Krushchov.
   With the exception of 4 minutes when Lord Home, Foreign
Secretary, and Mr. McGeorge Bundy, the President's special assistant
for security affairs, were brought in, the two men talked alone.
   An attempt to get more information about the Admiralty House
meeting will be made in the House of Commons this afternoon. Labour
M.P.s already have many questions to the Prime Minister asking
for a statement.
   President Kennedy flew from London Airport last night to arrive
in Washington this morning. He is to make a 3-minute nation-wide
broadcast and television report on his talks with Mr. Krushchov this
evening.
COMMUNIQUE
   The joint communique on Mr. Kennedy's and Mr. Macmillan's
third talks- the first were at Key West, Florida, the second in
Washington- said:
   "Their discussions covered the major problems, both economic and
political, and revealed once again the close agreement of the two
Governments in pursuing their common purposes.
   "Occasion was given to review the need for economic co-operation
and expansion in the general interests of developed and underdeveloped
countries alike."
   It said that the President and Premier noted "with
satisfaction" the agreement in Vienna on the need for an effective
Laos ceasefire, which should lead to progress toward a Laos agreement
at the Geneva conference.
   "Particular attention was also given to the nuclear tests
conference and to the question of disarmament.
   "The situation in regard to Germany was reviewed, and there was
full agreement on the necessity of maintaining the rights and
obligations of the allied Governments in Berlin."
   Apart from their formal Admiralty House talks, followed by lunch
given by Lady Dorothy Macmillan with Mrs. Kennedy and other guests
present, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Macmillan met three more times
yesterday.
PESSIMISTIC
   In PARIS, Mr. Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State,
gave a 9-minute briefing on the Vienna talks to the 15-nation Nato
council. Some of his listeners said he was "rather pessimistic"
and talked of a Berlin crisis later this year.
   From Nato headquarters Mr. Rusk went to see President de
Gaulle and informed him of the Vienna outcome. Last night Mr. Rusk
arrived in London in time to join the Buckingham Palace dinner and to
fly home with the President.
   In DUESSELDORF, Chancellor Adenauer said the Vienna talks
"might be the beginning of a slight improvement," but no big
changes should be expected in the political situation.
MR K GETS HOME IN HIGH SPIRITS
   RELAXED, smiling and clearly in the best of spirits, Mr.
Krushchov yesterday returned to Moscow after his two days of talks
with President Kennedy, writes Dennis Ogden from Moscow.
   The good beginning made at Vienna must be followed up by new
efforts for peace, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda
declared yesterday.
   Events in Vienna "gave hope to people of goodwill who hate the
cold war, and to all who are striving for a stable peace," write the
paper's two correspondents from the Austrian capital.
GOOD BEGINNING
   "Thinking over the results of the Vienna meeting, peace-loving
people will say 'a good beginning.'"
   Mr. Krushchov remained at the airport to join President
Brezhnev in welcoming Dr. Sukarno, President and Prime Minister of
Indonesia, who arrived by Boeing 77 jet on a state visit 4 minutes
after Mr. Khrushchov had arrived from Vienna.
   A cheering, delighted crowd of Indonesian students broke through
crash barriers to surround their President on the tarmac for several
minutes, chanting his name and waving flowers.
FAREWELL SPEECH
   In VIENNA, before flying off to Moscow, Mr. Khrushchov
said he hoped his weekend talks with President Kennedy would help "to
establish an enduring peace between nations."
   Replying to a farewell speech from Austrian President Schaerf,
the Soviet Premier thanked Austria for the hospitality and welcome he
had received.
   "The Soviet Union has always striven and is striving to
safeguard an enduring peace for the peoples, to secure an early
solution of the disarmament problem, and to bring about a peaceful
settlement of international disputes through negotiations," he said.
Gaitskell defends Polaris, Nato and himself
From GEORGE SINFIELD
HASTINGS, Monday
   MR. GAITSKELL today delivered a full-blooded defence of
the Polaris missile base. And by implication he supported the
establishment of sites in Britain for the training of German troops.
   His main theme was that nuclear weapons were necessary to defend
Britain, that Britain must depend on Nato and "the West" must have
nuclear weapons so long as the Soviet Union has them.
   Addressing the annual congress of the National Union of General
and Municipal Workers, he said he felt sure the Labour movement was
coming round in support of his views.
   Obviously conscious of the fierce and widespread resentment over
the U.S. Polaris base in Britain, Mr. Gaitskell said that he
even noticed that supporters of unilateral nuclear disarmament were
changing their tactics by switching most of their emphasis on to the
missile.
   Mr. Gaitskell said that a member of an alliance could not deny
facilities to nations to which it was allied. But governments should
be free to negotiate and refuse proposals with which they did not
agree.
Outdated Thor
   The Labour Party opposed Thor missiles, because, he said, they
were out of date and vulnerable and would attract enemy action.
   That argument did not apply to the Polaris submarine. So long as
the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons, the West, somewhere, must have
them too.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   It was far better for a weapon used for retaliatory purposes to
be under the sea rather than on land. This was why the Labour Party
did not think it right to oppose the Polaris depot ship.
<END INDENTATION>
   The party agreed that it was unwise to locate the base in the
Holy Loch, only 3 miles from Glasgow, a city with two million people.
It should be sited in a more remote area.
   Mr. Gaitskell added that the Scarborough conference decisions
did not, in his view, truly reflect the opinions of the majority of
party members and still less the party's supporters in the country.
   He was afraid lest the decisions would mean the labelling of the
party at a future General Election that it did not "care about the
defence and security of our country."
   After saying that Mr. Khrushchov believed Russian power to
retaliate had stopped a U.S. attack upon the Soviet Union, Mr.
Gaitskell said that what stopped the Russians in the last resort from
aggressive nuclear war was the certainty that they would be
annihilated.
   Mr. Gaitskell added that agreement with the unilateralists was
not possible, though he respected their views.
   He saw by reports that "those who organise these things" were
recommending the supporters of unilateral nuclear disarmament to shift
the emphasis of their intervention away from straight opposition to
the official document on to opposition to the Polaris base.
Nuclear spread
   To Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Gaitskell said the Prime Minister
should begin to take seriously the danger of the spread of nuclear
weapons within the Nato alliance.
   "Let us say to Macmillan that he should press, I hope with the
agreement of Kennedy, in talks with the Soviet Union, for the
establishment in central Europe of a zone of controlled
disarmament."
   He thought, he said, that the Soviet Union would be prepared to
reach an agreement on a zone of controlled disarmament in Europe.
   Mr. Gaitskell concluded, declaring that the present was the
beginning of a great period of opportunity for the party. It was a
great chance that should be grasped.
   Inter-union jealousies prevent the fulfilment of a common policy
for wages and other major questions, Mr. Jack Cooper, president,
declared when congress opened.
Gap widened
   He complained that the gap between earnings of manual workers
in local government, compared with the average in all industries for
men over 21, had widened over the past ten years from 34s to 73s a
week.
   Mr. Cooper suggested that the distortion arose from enhanced
payments agreed at local level. Local negotiations and bargaining by
branch officers and shop stewards had come to stay and some way must
be found to integrate and co-ordinate their activities in official
negotiating machinery.
   The General Council of the Trades Union Congress should therefore
consider the matter. Consideration should also be given to the
regrouping of unions and the modification of their structures to meet
the growing concentration of capital.
Common benefits
   Mr. Cooper argued that a common industrial contribution was
urgent- particularly in unions serving workers in the same industry-
along with common benefits paid during strikes and lock-outs.
   Suggesting that a total T.U.C. membership of eight million
was a "poor show" compared with some countries, he argued that the
position needed examination.
'TAKE POLARIS AWAY' LETTER
Russell plea to President
Daily Worker Reporter
   BEFORE President Kennedy met Mr. Macmillan yesterday
morning he was given the views of a wide section of the British people
about Polaris submarine bases in this country.
   An open letter written by Earl Russell hoping that the
President's visit to London "will prove fruitful" was handed in at
the American Embassy by representatives of the Committee of 1.
   Earl Russell, President of the Committee of 1, told Kennedy
that he should take notice of "that very large and growing section
which is opposed to the establishment of a Polaris base, whether at
Holy Loch or elsewhere on British territory."
   He pointed out that already there have been protests but that
"very much larger protests are to be expected and are being
planned."
   There are three kinds of reasons that justify the protests and
these should carry weight with the U.S. Government, Earl Russell
suggested.
   "The first of these reasons is the importance of preserving the
hitherto cordial relations between the U.S. and Great Britain,
not only in Government circles, but in public opinion."
   Earl Russell says it is inevitable, though profoundly
regrettable, that the agitation against the Polaris base has generated
some antagonism to the policy of the United States.
   The second reason is concerned with doubts as to the safety of
the people of Great Britain; "in a time of crisis it would probably
be impossible for the British authorities to exercise any degree of
control over the action of Polaris submarines."
IN AN HOUR
   He argues that there is a distinct possibility that so long as
there is a Polaris base in Britain the Soviet Union might retaliate
against Britain alone.
   "Such retaliation might, and probably would, destroy the whole
population of Britain in the course of, at the most, an hour"
without provoking American retaliation.
   Earl Russell believes: "It is very questionable whether British
membership of Nato and British permission of American bases on our
territory add anything to the strength of America, while, on the
contrary, they impose upon America an onerous obligation which it may
prove impossible to fulfil."
   The third reason is that the supreme interest for the whole
world- East and West and uncommitted nations- is the prevention of
nuclear war.
   "A rapidly growing body of opinion in this country believes that
Britain could be more effective in preventing a nuclear war as a
neutral by helping to suggest agreements which could be accepted by
both East and West."
# 26
<5 TEXT A5>
"ONE FORCE" AIM FOR SERVICES
Mr. Watkinson at work on five-year plan
4, REGULARS AND NO CALL-UP
By H. B. BOYNE,
Daily Telegraph Political Correspondent
   THE next White Paper on defence, to be published in March,
is likely to contain a five-year plan for the three Services. Its aim
will be to produce superbly equipped, all-Regular forces of about
4, men.
   The three Services would be "integrated" to a greater extent
than ever before. Short of wearing the same uniform, which is not
contemplated, the Navy, Army and Royal Air Force would become, for
practical purposes, a single defence force.
   There would be complete co-operation at all levels in training
and operations. This would apply also in the command structure and
central administrative organisation.
   Mr. Watkinson, Minister of Defence, has been working on the
plan for some months, with the Prime Minister's approval. He has had
numerous meetings with the Service Ministers.
   He has also had talks with the Earl of Home, Foreign Secretary,
and with other Ministers concerned with overseas aspects of defence
policy.
VOLUNTARY FORCES
Recruiting Confidence
   Details of the scheme are now being worked out by the Chiefs of
Staff, a process that may take four or five months. The scheme will
be subject to Cabinet approval.
   Mr. Watkinson remains convinced that the policy initiated in
1957, in Mr. Sandys's time as Minister of Defence, is still correct.
This was to return to the tradition of all-Regular voluntary forces,
with the last National Serviceman out of uniform by the end of 1962.
   The Minister regards the recent trend of recruiting figures as
encouraging. He is confident the aim can be achieved.
   While the possibility of an eventual return to National Service
in some form cannot be entirely discounted, he does not agree that the
point has been reached where this need even be considered.
SERVICE CHIEFS
No Question of Dispute
   If National Service is ever resorted to, engagement would
probably have to be for three years. It is thought this would be the
minimum necessary for the extended training modern arms require and to
enable each man to serve at least a year overseas.
   There is no truth in suggestions that Mr. Watkinson is at odds
with the Service chiefs over the decision to dispense with National
Service, or over any other aspect of defence policy.
   Criticisms about Army manpower appear to have come mainly from
retired officers who have held high positions but are out of touch
with the existing situation.
   Mr. Watkinson has had the utmost support from the
C.I.G.S., Field-Marshal Sir Francis Festing, who believes
completely in the principle of an all-Regular army. Gen. Sir
Richard Hull, who is to succeed Sir Francis, is equally convinced
Mr. Watkinson is right.
COMMAND CHANGE
Delay Due to Berlin
   Sir Francis is to hand over to Sir Richard as from Nov. 1.
The hand-over, due in September, was delayed because of the Berlin
crisis.
   Mr. Watkinson and his advisers felt the change would be unwise
at a moment when attention had to be concentrated on possible need for
important military operations.
   For this reason Sir Francis stayed on, and sacrificed his leave.
Now that the Berlin situation seems more stable, it is felt he can
relinquish his duties.
   As a field-marshal, he remains on the Active List. He may be
asked to take another important post.
GAINS FOR Dr. VERWOERD'S PARTY
From COLIN REID,
Daily Telegraph Special Correspondent
CAPE TOWN, Thursday.
   AN electronic computer which has accurately forecast the
results of previous general elections put the new South African House
early this morning at 14 Nationalists and 52 United Party and
National Union members.
   There was a computed 8.4 per cent. swing towards the
Nationalist party of Dr. Verwoerd, the Prime Minister. This implies
the disappearance of the Progressive party from the House.
   Early results in yesterday's general election showed Nationalists
being returned in their strongholds, like Bloemfontein and the
Transvaal, with slightly increased majorities.
   In the Cape, the veteran United Party politician, Mr. Harry
Lawrence, standing as a Progressive, was defeated in his constituency,
Salt River, by the United party candidate, Mr. H. M. Timoney.
DR. STEYTLER DEFEATED
   The defeat of the leader of the Progressive party, Dr.
Steytler, in Port Elizabeth South, announced immediately afterwards by
the United party candidate, Mr. Plewman, left the Progressives
deprived of both their chief figures.
   Dr. Verwoerd and the Leader of the Opposition, Sir de Villiers
Graaff, have been returned unopposed. The contests were for 86 seats
as 7 Nationalists and 2 United party candidates are unopposed.
   Long before polling closed at 8 p.m. it was evident that
voters were bored by the Government's frequent appeals to the
electorate.
   The election was the fourth in four years. In most
constituencies it may go down as the most apathetic in the country's
history.
MOBILISATION IF NECESSARY, SAYS PREMIER
FRESH CHECK ON FALL-OUT ORDERED
   THE Prime Minister disclosed in the Commons last night that
he had considered early in the Parliamentary recess whether to
mobilise reserves necessary to bring the British Army of the Rhine on
to a war footing. He decided that it would be a great error to do so
and to recall Parliament.
   But there would be no hesitation in mobilising if a further
deterioration in the situation warranted such a step. It would have
to be accompanied by other measures of a military, economic and
political kind.
   Mr. Macmillan, who was winding up the foreign affairs debate,
said the Government could not be party to accepting as a matter of
principle the imposed division of Germany. "We must not be rattled
into surrender, but we must not- and I am not- be <SIC> afraid
of negotiation."
   Mr. Godber, Minister of State, Foreign Office, said earlier
that the Government had asked the Medical Research Council to reassess
the fall-out position in view of the Russian tests. The Council's
findings would be made public.
"STAND FIRM" CALL
Lord Avon's Maiden Speech
   With a vigour and authority which delighted old Parliamentary
friends and foes alike, the Earl of Avon, the former Sir Anthony Eden,
in his maiden speech in the House of Lords last night, gave a warning
that appeasement over Berlin could only lead to war.
   To stand firm, he declared, was not to invite war, but the surest
way to avert it. The free world could not yield to "atomic
blackmail" and survive.
GETTING USED TO ANXIETY
PREMIER'S SPEECH
By T. F. LINDSAY
Daily Telegraph Special Correspondent
WESTMINSTER, Wednesday.
   "WE must get accustomed to anxiety," said the Prime
Minister to the House of Commons to-night, "and not let ourselves
drift or be pushed into panic. We must not be rattled into surrender,
and we must not be, and I am not, afraid of negotiations."
   It was the end of a rather curious speech in which Mr.
Macmillan wound up the two-day debate on foreign affairs. He began in
a low, almost chatty monotone, and his voice never rose to any accent
of urgency.
   He passed in rapid review the United Nations Secretariat; nuclear
tests; the canard about British interference with the United Nations
in the Congo; Kuwait; and South-East Asia.
   He spent most of his short half-hour on Berlin. He deplored the
possibility of some "new myth" about betrayal of Germany by the
Allies.
RUSSIA'S AIM
Irrevocable Division
   "We do not," he said, "really know what the Russians
want." But he was certain that they wanted to establish a final and
irrevocable division of Germany.
   Britain could not be a party to an imposed division. But
negotiation, as the debate had shown, could be undertaken on a variety
of bases.
   Mr. Macmillan explained that he had deliberately refrained
during the summer from recalling Parliament or ordering mobilisation
by proclamation, such as would be necessary to bring the British Army
of the Rhine on to a fully active footing.
   That would have created a thoroughly undesirable atmosphere of
panic. He thought that the situation was rather more hopeful.
   The Russians now realised its seriousness. The French doubts
were more about procedure than about substance.
   The Prime Minister's attitude of studied calm brought down the
temperature of the debate, which never at any time rose to fever
pitch, to a remarkable degree of sub-normality.
   Throughout Mr. Macmillan's speech the Earl of Home, Foreign
Secretary, was listening in the Peers' Gallery.
   The early speakers in the debate each severely rated the speech
of his predecessor. These strictures were all too well justified.
   We started with the plaintive wailings of Mr. Healey,
"Shadow" Foreign Secretary, described by Mr. Godber, Minister of
State, Foreign Office, as "pedantic and obscure on Berlin, damaging
and obscure on the Congo."
   In turn, Mr. Godber was censured by Mr. Shinwell, former
Labour Defence Minister, for having read the House an ill-prepared
essay.
TOO WIDE A RANGE
Free-for-All
   The trouble about such debates is that they range too widely.
They remind one of the Rugby match in "Tom Brown's Schooldays," in
which all the boys were welcome to take part, and only those who
"really meant business" removed their jackets.
   Not many metaphorical braces were visible in the early stages of
to-night's debate. Mr. Healey had another tilt at the Prime
Minister's golf-course Press conference, which he described as "a
display of flabby and fatuous complacency which takes us straight back
to Neville Chamberlain."
   A reference to the reunification of Germany brought a bark of
~"Start another war!" from Mr. Ellis Smith (Lab., Stoke on
Trent S.). Then Mr. Healey launched out on his pet theme of
limitation of armaments in Europe.
   This could, he suggested, be linked with prohibition of the
production of atomic weapons in any part of Europe. Inspection and
control would be much easier to establish in these territories.
   Mr. Healey denounced the Government for using double standards.
Ministers had rebuked the unaligned nations for not condemning the
new Russian tests, but they themselves had no condemnation for events
in Angola or Algeria.
   It was not for the Government, said Mr. Healey, to take up
moral attitudes, "especially when the temple of their religion is the
bingo-parlour." This puzzled such students of comparative religion
as had failed to detect this cult.
   But Mr. Healey had a partial and limited success. He rallied
behind him the Left-wing opinion so coolly snubbed last night by his
leader, Mr. Gaitskell.
SCORN MERITED
Mr. Godber's Speech
   Mr. Godber's performance merited all the mild scorn heaped on
it by Mr. Shinwell. True, he did tell the House that the Government
had asked the Medical Research Council to reassess the fall-out
position in view of the Russian tests, and said that the council's
findings would be published.
   He was not so happy in his defence of the Government's failure to
condemn France for her nuclear tests in the Sahara on the grounds that
they were only little ones. This was too reminiscent of the nursemaid
and her illegitimate baby.
   For the most part, Mr. Godber muttered his way through a
cliche-ridden Foreign Office brief. He resembles the elephant seal,
an otherwise endearing creature whose articulation is limited, we are
told, to a series of heavy sighs.
M.P.s PROTEST AT EMBASSY
RUSSIAN TESTS
By Our Political Staff
   Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas, M.P. for Leicester N.E., a
former Labour Solicitor-General, and Mrs. Barbara Castle, M.P.
for Blackburn, a member of the Labour party National Executive,
delivered a letter to Mr. Soldatov, the Russian Ambassador, last
night protesting against the Russian nuclear tests. It was signed by
6 Labour M.P.s, many of them Left-wing sympathisers.
   It condemned "the pollution of the world's atmosphere as a crime
against humanity."
   A personal letter of protest against the tests from Canon
Collins, chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, addressed
to Mr. Khruschev, was also taken to the Russian Embassy.
Mass Lobbying
   A POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT writes: Ban-the-bomb demonstrators
thronged the Central Lobby of the House of Commons last night and
formed a queue stretching for more than 2 yards outside in Old
Palace Yard. About 2, lobbied M.P.s and harangued them on
disarmament.
# 25
<6 TEXT A6>
Mac and Lloyd whisper...
EARLY CURB ON THE PROFIT SHARKS
By MICHAEL STEVENSON
   MR SELWYN LLOYD may speed up his plans to catch speculators
in shares and property.
   The first hint of the Chancellor bowing to public opinion over
his "July Budget" came dramatically in the Commons yesterday.
   Mr. Lloyd said on Tuesday that he proposed to deal in his next
regular Budget with some profits which now escape tax.
   Sir Edward Boyle, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said
yesterday that the Government does not like retrospective legislation.
   He went on to describe the kind of people the Chancellor hopes to
tax.
   These are people buying and selling shares within a short period,
those "stagging" on a new issue and property dealers who form a
chain of companies and put one property deal through each.
   Mr. Harold Wilson, Shadow Chancellor, jumped up to offer the
Government an easy passage for such legislation.
   "Why don't you make proposals to legislate in the autumn?"
Mr. Wilson asked.
   "We wouldn't call it an Autumn Budget. You can call it a
Taxation Management Bill, if you like."
Nodded
   While Mr. Wilson was speaking, the Prime Minister and Mr.
Lloyd had a whispered conversation.
   They nodded at each other and Sir Edward rose to say that the
Chancellor would bear Mr. Wilson's offer in mind.
   Guy Eden writes: Treasury experts are already working on the
scheme.
   Profits of genuine investors in industry will not be affected,
but only quick in-and-out speculator deals.
FOULKES REFUSES SUICIDE
   FRANK FOULKES, Communist president of the ETU, refused
yesterday to "commit suicide" at the TUC's invitation.
   He was announcing his executive's rejection of the ultimatum to
the ETU.
   In reply to the call for his resignation he said:
   "Our rules say that if an official resigns he is not allowed to
run again for three years.
   "I have only 2 1/2 years to go before I retire, so this is an
invitation from my good friends of the TUC that I should commit
hara-kiri.
<END QUOTE>
The terms
   The other TUC demands:
   Five leading Communists must not hold office for five years;
   Sub-committees set up to strip secretary John Byrne of his powers
must disband in ten days.
   These the ETU executive rejected as "wholly
unacceptable" and "unwarranted interference."
   But it agreed to postpone operation of the sub-committees.
   The union now lays itself open to suspension from the TUC
followed by expulsion. A TUC committee will decide next month at
a special meeting.
UTOPIA 198...
BUT Mr. K SHOWS HIS TEETH
WARLIKE FLOWS THE NEVA
   THE biggest naval show ever seen on the River Neva was staged
yesterday by Mr. Kruschev as Russia read his promises of a Communist
Utopia by 198.
   Among the 6 ships were rocket-carrying craft ranging in size
from torpedo-boats to cruisers, and submarines "able to strike mighty
blows," according to a TV commentator.
   The small rocket craft, for destroying big ships, are controlled
automatically, even to the preparations for launching their rockets.
Red NATO
   Applauding on the river banks at Leningrad were thousands now
told that in 2 years they will have free food, housing, light, heat,
transport and medical treatment- all for a working week of 34 to 36
hours.
   "The whole naval might of the Soviet Union can be seen here-
a truly inspiring and proud sight," said Moscow radio's commentator.
   The parade was reviewed by Marshal Andrei Grechko, commanding the
forces of the Warsaw Pact countries- the Communist "Nato."
   He said rocket-carrying atomic submarines now formed the basis of
the Soviet Navy.
As Mac reveals his momentous decision to join the Six
LONE TORY MP LASHES PREMIER
By MICHAEL STEVENSON
   MR. MACMILLAN'S announcement in the Commons of his
momentous decision to apply for membership of the Common Market
provoked a violent personal attack by one- just one- of his
backbenchers.
   Mr. Anthony Fell (Yarmouth) called the decision "shocking"
and added:
   "It is the most disastrous thing any Prime Minister has done
for many, many generations."
MPs SHOCKED
   He concluded: "The best service the Prime Minister can do
would be to resign."
   The outburst shocked MPs of all parties.
   Even close friends were signalling Mr. Fell to stop.
   There were loud cries of "shame" from all parts of the
Conservative side.
   Mr. Fell appeared to be in tears as he sat down.
   A few minutes later, Mr. Fell got up and left the chamber.
   He returned five minutes later to stand just inside the doorway
looking more composed.
   In the middle of the amazing scene, Mr. Macmillan waved his
hand at Mr. Fell.
   This seemed to infuriate Mr. Fell even more.
   "I cannot be told to sit down by the Prime Minister."
   Protests had been expected from Tory rebels. But Mr. Fell's
attack was unprecedented.
   He accused the Prime Minister of "political double talk."
'DISASTER'
   "It had the effect on one former supporter that he now thinks
this Prime Minister is a national disaster," he said.
   Most MPs agreed that Mr. Fell's attack had, if anything,
rallied support to the Prime Minister.
   This apparently, was Mr. Macmillan's assessment.
   He confined his reply to the observation that Mr. Fell had
probably "maximised his support."
   There were no other attacks of such ferocity.
   But there was ample evidence of Conservative and Labour
opposition, which will be aired in the debate tomorrow and on
Thursday.
   As Mr. Macmillan made his announcement, the House was
crowded.
   He said: "No British Government could join the European
Economic Community without prior negotiation with a view to meeting
the needs of the Commonwealth countries, of our European Free Trade
Association partners and of British agriculture."
'IT'S RIGHT'
   Near the end of a long statement, Mr. Macmillan stated the
Government's intention:
   "After long and earnest consideration, Her Majesty's Government
have come to the conclusion that it would be right for Britain to make
a formal application.. for negotiations with a view to joining the
Community."
   At this point, Mr. Paul Williams (Cons., Sunderland) called
out "Shame."
   Mr. Williams is a close associate of Mr. Fell.
   Mr. Macmillan said, if negotiations were brought to a
conclusion, there would be consultation with Commonwealth countries
before the matter was put to the Commons.
MAC SEES EUROPE A COMMONWEALTH
By MICHAEL STEVENSON
   MR. MACMILLAN yesterday looked forward to a Commonwealth-
of Europe.
   This was his vision of the Western Europe which he hopes
Britain can join through the Common Market.
   But Mr. Macmillan rejected a suggestion that Britain would
lose its identity in some future political merger.
   "The concept of a federal system, like the United States, was
unreal," he said.
   "Europe is too old, too diverse in tradition, language and
institutions, for that."
In tune
   But a Commonwealth of Europe was much more in tune with their
national traditions and ours.
   The Premier was opening a two-day debate in the Commons on the
Common Market.
   He claimed that, unless we were in the Common Market, we should
not be able to play any part in determining its future.
   "We can lead better from within," he said.
   Mr. Macmillan dealt with the main objection raised by Tory
critics.
   Mr. Anthony Fell, who created a scene on this point on Monday,
took up a position almost hidden behind the Serjeant at Arms' chair.
Tribute
   Mr. Macmillan said we could be more help to the Commonwealth
through the strength we would gain in the Common Market than by
isolation.
   He paid tribute to the development of the Common Market.
   "The Community (Common Market) has imparted an impetus and an
economic growth to The Six. Above all, it is an idea which has
gripped men's minds," he said.
   Referring to previous negotiations, Mr. Macmillan looked
towards Mr. Reginald Maudling.
   "These were negotiations in which the President of the Board of
Trade played a conspicuous part," the Premier said.
   He dismissed the idea that Britain would be swamped by cheap
labour.
   Our industry, he said, would probably gain.
   "Many people feel we have had, perhaps, too much shelter," he
went on.
   "We cannot draw up a precise balance-sheet for our industry."
   But the balance of advantage probably lay in the size of markets
which would be available- something comparable to the United States
or Russia.
   Mr. Hugh Gaitskell argued that no final decision should be
taken until a conference of Commonwealth Premiers had been held.
   Conservatives protested when Mr. Gaitskell said he had been
told in Europe last weekend that we were looked upon as a liability.
   He had been told this "by some people of considerable
authority," he retorted.
   "I agree with the Prime Minister that I do not think we are
necessarily bound for federalism in Europe," he went on.
Tariffs
   If we joined the Common Market, our food subsidies would
probably be replaced by a system of tariffs.
   "That will mean a rise in the cost of living."
YES, IT'S A GOLD RUSH, SELWYN
   BUDGETTE or no Budgette YOU are spending more as the
summer holiday season moves into top gear.
   On the eve of August Bank Holiday the spending spree is at a
new all-time peak.
   Note circulation soared for the sixth successive week- this time
by more than +15,, last week.
   And that brought the figure to a record +2,415,,.
   This was +1,, more than the corresponding week last
year and +37,, up on the 196 record set last Christmas.
   Now look at the other side of all these coins.
   The big "squeeze" means that it is going to be more
difficult to arrange a loan or overdraft.
   And banks will be stricter in recalling existing overdrafts.
   This is underlined in the Central Bank's weekly return...
   ...which shows that more than +163,, of the banks' money is
now frozen in the form of special deposits with the Bank of England.
   Banks have paid in a first instalment of almost +8,, in
response to the Budgette appeal.
   About another +7,, is due by September 2. For nearly
a year about +15,, has been frozen.
K CRIES I SPY NAZIS
   MR. KRUSCHEV raises the bogy of German militarism in his
replies to the West on Berlin.
   And he repeats that the problem "must be solved this year."
   The Notes to the Big Three and a memorandum to West Germany were
published in Moscow yesterday. They tell:
   The U.S.- It is false to say the absence of a peace treaty
with Germany causes no real danger.
   West Germany, with its militarists and revenge-seekers, is
becoming a hotbed of war danger in Europe.
Barbarously bombed
   Even now, aided by the U.S., Britain and France, it has
more than enough forces and arms to touch off a world war.
   BRITAIN- One cannot but wonder at British bases being put
at the disposal of those very militarists who razed Coventry and
barbarously bombed London and other British cities.
   FRANCE- One can hardly conceive the French are not
alarmed....
   Next door, in West Germany, before everyone's eyes there has
sprung up a regular army led by former Nazi generals and officers.
   With fire and sword France denies Algeria the right to
self-determination and tramples on Tunisians' right to independence.
   WEST GERMANY- Russia would like to see a clear realization
that West Germany would not survive even a few hours of a third world
war.
   The best way to rule out such a tragic contingency would be to
sign a peace treaty to remove the cancerous growth of West Berlin's
occupation status.
   Behind Bonn's slogan of German self-determination is the
intention to impose on East Germany the regime existing in West
Germany.
THOUSANDS SCARED BY K TREK OUT
   REFUGEES are pouring out of East Germany into West Berlin
faster than ever.
   Mr. K's latest speech scared 1,157 East Germans to cross into
West Berlin's reception centre DURING MONDAY NIGHT. And officials
expect the total to leap to 3, a day.
   This figure has been surpassed only on the eve of the East
German disturbances on July 17, 1953.
   And officials fear it may be too much for the city's refugee
camps. They will overflow and private houses will have to be used.
# 28
<7 TEXT A7>
FOLLOW WINTER AT SANDOWN
Team Spirit nap to repeat his Mildmay win
By THE SCOUT
   TEAM SPIRIT, winner of the Mildmay Memorial 'Chase last
January, returns to Sandown today in an attempt to stage a repeat.
   Strictly on the book, he has little chance of beating Dandy
Scot- assuming that Fred Winter's mount would have made it a very
close thing 12 months ago had he not capsized at the last fence.
   Team Spirit is 12lb. worse off this time, but on the other hand
is two years younger than his rival, and is likely to have made the
greater improvement.
   Also, there is little doubt that he has a brighter turn of
finishing speed than Dandy Scot, who only held on to second place in
the Rhymney Breweries 'Chase through his own indomitable courage and
the relentless driving of his jockey.
GOOD FORM
   Limonalt, brought down by Chavara when well to the fore at
Cheltenham last month, earlier beat Frenchman's Cove here- form that
looked all the better when the runner-up went on to trounce Mandarin
at Kempton.
   Limonalt is nothing to look at but is tough and game, and will
stay this trip well.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   He is suggested as the best each-way long-shot and, together with
Dandy Scot, the danger to Team Spirit (2.35 nap).
<END INDENTATION>
   Even if he fails on Dandy Scot, Fred Winter is unquestionably the
jockey to follow. He should score on Flame Gun (1.3), Some Alibi
(3.5), and Tovaritch (3.3).
   Blinkers made all the difference to Tovaritch at Hurst Park and,
similarly equipped today, he looks much too good for his Village
Hurdle rivals.
   Best of the opposition may be Chinese Pintall, favourably noted
when sixth, running-on, behind Luminarch here last month.
   Flame Gun, unbeaten here, seems well suited to giving away lumps
of weight in small fields such as he faces in the Londesborough
'Chase.
CAPSIZED
   It is impossible to say whether Some Alibi would have won had
he not capsized three fences out at Windsor last Saturday.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   But he was several lengths ahead of King's Nephew at the time,
and would have probably made a close race of it.
<END INDENTATION>
   He should have too much speed, providing he stands up, for Hal's
Hope, still far from a clever fencer, in the Stand Novices' 'Chase.
   Top novices' clash is at Birmingham, where Retour de Flamme
(2.), Tokoroa, and Bandalore meet in the Packington 'Chase.
   Retour de Flamme allies his always bright turn of speed to
brilliant fencing, and he should be too strong at the finish for his
rivals.
   Commandeer (3.3) is one of the best four-year-old hurdlers seen
out so far- though that is not saying much. He should have an easy
task in the last event.
RETOUR DE FLAMME FOR THE 'REPLAY'
By PETER O'SULLEVAN
   THE finishing order in the 1958 Champion Hurdle, won by
Bandalore from Tokoroa and Retour de Flamme (2. nap), may be
reversed in a unique replay this afternoon, when the trio clash at
Birmingham over fences.
   Retour de Flamme was frequently backed to beat Tokoroa over
hurdles, but in six encounters he never succeeded.
   And after each had staged an impressive first-time effort over
fences Fred Rimell bet Syd Warren that Tokoroa would again triumph the
first time they met in a 'chase.
   The Packington 'Chase will determine the bet, and if Syd Warren
proves the winner, as I expect, Bob McCreery will complete an unusual
hat-trick.
   For on the two previous occasions he partnered this novice
National entry, he won on him at Lewes (on the flat) and over hurdles
at Newton Abbot.
   Anyway it should be a great race. For Tokoroa's Hurst Park
running was undoubtedly an incorrect reflection on his true ability.
While Bandalore had no chance last time out to endorse his notable
first fencing effort.
THE BLOT?
   Northern Mildmay hope, Springbok arrived at Sandown yesterday
in fine trim after leaving Middleham at 5 a.m. He could prove a
blot on the handicap- as connections hope.
   Merganser also seems well treated, and Johnny Lehane is confident
of a bold bid by Miss Popsi Wopsi.
   Me, I am going along with Dandy Scot (2.3 e.w.) on his
seventh run over the course where his first effort in the 1955-6
season was a fall two from home in a novices' 'chase.
   Since then he has won two 'chases here and been beaten a short
head over hurdles.
   Gerry Madden's luck finally changed yesterday- and what a
reception his fellow jockeys gave him- when King's last-fence fall
handed the Stanley 'Chase to Mandarin.
   There is now no doubt that the winner's confidence was shaken by
his Chepstow fall, and he'll miss the National in favour of a Gold Cup
preparation.
   And, of course, 29-year-old Gerry, to whom Mme Kilian Hennessy
has remained so loyal, will continue to partner him henceforth.
   Problem horse Mossreeba even defied Johnny Gilbert's skill in the
Metropolitan Hurdle.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   He struck the front after jumping the last but as Keith Piggott
says: "He'll come and beat anything,  but as soon as he gets his
head in front up it goes- and he doesn't want to know."
<END INDENTATION>
   Avala compensated the stable when a doubtful issue was clinched
by Beldon Hall's last-fence fall in the Mole Handicap.
League v Players- replay Wednesday
MINISTRY STAGE A LAST-CHANCE PEACE TALK
By CLIVE TOYE
   AN urgent peace move by the Ministry of Labour last night could
stop Soccer's headlong flight into a strike. The Ministry have called
the Football League and the players' leaders together for a conference
in London next Wednesday- 72 hours before the players' strike is due
to begin.
   The conference could end in, at least, a postponement of the
strike notices. For the players' leaders are keen to tell the League:
"We wish to negotiate on one of YOUR ideas- an eased form of
the retain and transfer system."
   This new system was suggested by the Football League management
committee on December 29, accepted by the players, then rejected by
the Football League club chairmen this week, causing the present
crisis.
'FIRST-CLASS IDEA'
   Players' leader Jimmy Hill said last night: "It was an
absolutely first-class idea by the League, and it would really work in
practice.
   "The League clubs feared this proposal because they thought it
could rob them of too many players at one time. That isn't so.
   "With new, longer contracts, a manager could sign some of his
players for one year, some for two and some for three. At the end of
any one season, only a small number of players would be in a position
to ask for a move."
   League president Joe Richards said last night at his Barnsley
home that he would go to next Wednesday's meeting "if my presence
means avoiding a strike."
   He added: "But I am not going to waste time. I am not budging
on the issue of the transfer system."
   The players now believe that, if it is necessary, the final
instrument for the defeat of the Football League is the case of
26-year-old former England B inside-forward Alfie Stokes.
STRONG CASE
   Stokes is ready to take legal action against Fulham, his last
League club, claiming they have no right to keep him out of League
football.
   Stokes, the players have been advised, has an even stronger case
against the League's present contract than George Eastham, the
Newcastle star transferred to Arsenal after a long, bitter wrangle
with Newcastle.
   Under the system suggested by the League management on December
29, a player due to be offered a new contract by his club would be
given details of his terms by May 19, accepting or refusing by May 31.
If he refused to sign, the League would find him another club before
June 3.
   If a player was not transferred by June 3, and his club wished
to retain him, the club would have to pay him a minimum of +15 a week
until he was transferred.
Mr. X will be happy with 1%
By ROBERT FINDLAY
The Sports Editor
   THE mysterious Mr. X sat drinking coffee in the back room
of his modest Charterhouse-street, London, office.
   Mr. X, accused by Football League secretary Alan Hardaker as
being the man behind the strike. <SIC>
   Mr. Hardaker hinted Mr. X wanted to enrol all footballers
under his banner, then hire them out to clubs at his price. Wasn't
Jimmy Hill, chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, one
of his men?
   I decided on a frontal attack. "You are trying a Soccer
take-over," I accused the fresh-faced, fortyish character who
offered me coffee in an Irish brogue. "You want to dictate to the
League clubs."
His name
   Mr. X sighed helplessly. "Not on your life. I'm only a
literary agent trying to earn 1 per cent to keep the wolf from the
door."
   Bagenal Harvey is the name. His partner sat opposite him. His
name? Denis Compton.
   Eleven years ago the enterprising Mr. Harvey began to
specialise in contributions by well-known sportsmen. He enrolled them
on 1 per cent commission to endorse articles for newspapers,
periodicals, books, broadcasts, and advertising.
   He guided the feet of Denis Compton, Godfrey Evans, John Surtees,
Danny Blanchflower, Johnny Haynes, Trevor Bailey, and dozens of other
sportsmen through the pitfalls of Fleet-street towards contracts based
on their fame and personality as sportsmen.
   "And that's all I'm interested in," said Mr. Harvey
helplessly. "Ten per cent and the right to help sportsmen make
something out of their great reputations."
   Mr. Harvey is extremely successful in his aims, though he
creates enemies in sport and in Fleet-street through his activities in
putting a price on sportsmen's contributions.
   "But to say I am behind the strike is so much nonsense,"
declared Mr. Harvey heatedly. "WHY? I can't make players'
contracts. I can't make a club pay a player so much a week. And,
what's more, I don't want to.
   "A strike's the last thing I want. It would put my clients out
of business, and then where would I be?
   "Mr. Hardaker knows Jimmy Hill is on my list of contributors,
but our deals are strictly business.
<END QUOTE>
His business
   "Jimmy has legal and other advisers much better qualified to
help him than I am.
   "And in any case I have enough to do minding my own business
without wasting time dispelling silly rumours."
   On the walls of his office hung pictures of sporting celebrities
signed in "many thanks" terms. On his shelves stood sporting books
by his contributors.
   Denis Compton broke in with: "And, believe it or not, Bagenal
is the only man an England cricket team ever invited to go on tour at
their expense.
   "It was before the 1957-58 tour of South Africa, when Bagenal
said half-jokingly before some of the team: 'I wish I was going with
you so-and-so's.'
   "The next thing the M.C.C. lads had whipped round the
necessary +5 and invited Bagenal, through their captain, Freddie
Brown, to go with them.
   "He didn't because he took ill shortly afterwards, but the
gesture was what I call 'highly commended' in any language."
   I said adieu and left Mr. X stripped of his mystery, to finish
his coffee and calculate the week's takings at 1 per cent.
CHEUNG from CHINA FACES WOLVES
By MIKE LANGLEY
   OUT with the half-time lemon and in with the chop-suey... for
here comes Cheung Chi Doy, the first full Chinese to play in the
Football League. He is Blackpool's outside left against Wolves today.
And Aston Villa assistant manager Dick Taylor, who saw 19-year-old
Cheung bamboozle Villa reserves on New Year's Eve, offers this
testimonial:-
   "I've not seen such a perfectly balanced player for years. I
just can't understand why he hasn't been in the first team sooner."
   Cheung called in at Blackpool last summer on his way to Rome,
where he was due to play for Formosa in the Olympics. He decided he
liked Lancashire, forgot Rome, and signed professional for Blackpool
in October.
   Ten reserve games, the last five at centre forward, and seven
goals- that's Cheung's record.
# 22
<8 TEXT A8>
Rugby Union
NEWPORT NEARLY STICK IN THE MUD
Oxford Fail to Combine: Willcox Outstanding at Full-back
By RUPERT CHERRY
Newport... 14pts
Oxford University... 5
   THIS was harder work for Newport than the score suggests.
Come rain, slime or mud- and all were present at Rodney Parade-
Newport always try to retain their famous and spectacular technique of
handling and backing-up. This time, however, it almost came unstuck,
or rather stuck in the mud.
   True they scored two tries, but one was almost a gift. Their
second penalty goal was in the same category, so that the margin of a
goal, two penalty goals and a try to a goal was, on the whole,
somewhat flattering.
   Oxford put up a splendid fight and none more so than their
courageous captain, Willcox. His fielding, tackling and covering were
a complete justification of his selection for England against Ireland.
   Oxford had their share in the open but, unlike Newport, could not
combine as a team. So their movements were short as well as few and
far between.
   The centres, after one or two tentative thrusts early on when the
ground was not cut up, soon found they were reduced to kicking. This
they did all too often straight to the opposition.
   In the circumstances, Brown, in place of Sharp at fly-half, was
probably justified in preferring to kick rather than to set his line
going over ground in which the lightest step made a deep imprint.
EARLY RHYTHM
Griffith's Poor Day
   Newport had no such qualms and swung at once into their
handling rhythm. But Griffiths, at fly-half, had a bad day. He
dropped many passes and even those that came well to hand. However,
within the first few minutes, a break by Britton in his own half led
to handling by more than half the side and ended with Ford dropping
the ball with Wills waiting for the scoring pass.
   Lewis soon kicked the first of his two penalty goals from the 25
while Willcox failed with a similar shot. But the Oxford full-back
redeemed himself immediately with a splendid tackle on Lewis.
   Just after half-time an unfortunate mistake by Oxford caused the
first Newport try. Ware rushed in from the wing attempting to field a
high punt in the centre of the field, which Willcox had well covered.
They collided, neither secured the ball and, with the right-wing
unguarded, Wills was able to collect and score. Lewis converted with
a fine kick.
LIGHTS ON
Oxford Encouraged
   Oxford's best means of progress was by the boot and it was in
this manner that they secured their only success. McPartlin and
Stafford hacked the ball from halfway, Lewis fell and missed it and
McPartlin went on to score, Willcox converting.
   The introduction of the white ball and floodlights gave Oxford
encouragement. An interception by McPartlin almost led to another
try. Griffiths caught him and Ware was only just held as he struggled
with three Newport men clinging to him towards the line.
   However, Newport recovered their poise and a fine run by Jones
brought another try. Willcox stopped him but Wills was there to make
the touch-down. Lewis just missed the conversion but, when Roberts
was caught off-side in front of the Oxford posts the Newport full-back
added three more points with the last kick of the game.
EASTERN COUNTIES WITHOUT JEEPS
BARBARIANS DOUBT
   R. E. G. Jeeps, England's scrum-half and captain, has had
to withdraw from the Eastern Counties team to meet Devon in the
semi-final of the County Championship at Torquay to-morrow.
   He injured a shoulder playing for Northampton at Bath last week.
R. J. Kent, of Wasps, takes his place.
   Jeeps is playing against Ireland at Lansdowne Road to-morrow week
and he hopes to-morrow's rest will ensure a complete recovery.
   Cyril Davies, the Wales and Cardiff centre, who sustained a
collapsed knee tendon and burst a blood vessel in the match against
England at Cardiff on Jan. 21, may not play for the Barbarians
against the South Africans at Cardiff. He will have a fitness test
to-day.
   Since Davies has also been selected to play for Wales against
Scotland at Murrayfield to-morrow week, it is unlikely that he will
take any risks in turning out for the Barbarians.
Coventry at Guy's
   Price, Coventry's second-row forward and new England
"cap" against Ireland, is recovering from a cold and may not play
against Guy's Hospital at Coundon Road.
   Coventry's other England player, hooker Robinson, has been
selected for the game but may stand down.
   H. J. Wyman, a senior from Bablake School, Coventry,
replaces Cheltenham freshman D. Protherough as hooker for
Cambridge against the Army at Grange Road.
   This will be the only change from the side which drew at
Gloucester last week.
NAVY'S WEAK COVERING LETS SWANSEA THROUGH
By ARTHURIAN
Swansea... 16 pts
Royal Navy... 3
   SWANSEA were too strong for the Royal Navy on a muddy St.
Helens pitch in heavy rain yesterday. Having to concede weight
forward proved too much for the seamen and they lost by two goals and
two tries to a try.
   A lack of determined defence in midfield and casual defensive
covering allowed Swansea to score tries, but it was the greater
experience and vigour of Swansea, with five internationals, which
carried the day.
   After their good display against Newport the Navy failed to
reproduce the same form. Although playing with the wind in the first
half they were never able to control the play.
   At half-back Rodd was closely marked and his partner Francis did
not have a happy match. Consequently the Navy threequarters saw
little of the ball, although Tyrrell tried hard. Cormack was
particularly sound at full-back. Thomas, Jones and Palmer were the
best forwards.
BEST FORWARD
Williams Outstanding
   Swansea's front row of Williams, Gale and Lewis played strongly
with Williams the outstanding forward on the field. Two new halves,
Phillips and Lewis, showed promise, while Mainwaring was a powerful
centre.
   Swansea took the lead after 33min when Navy passing broke down
inside their own half. Harding booted through and followed up,
beating Sinclair and Cormack, to score just short of the dead-ball
line.
   The Navy replied with a try when Thomas robbed Harding after a
line-out and ran through to send Rodd over from 25 yards.
   Early in the second half Swansea took the lead. E. Lewis went
away from a scrum-five outside the Navy line and a long pass to Young
enabled the centre to give Bebb a clear run-in. Mainwaring kicked a
good goal from far out.
   Five minutes later Gale gathered in a short line and dived over
the Navy line for another try. After 15 minutes the Navy again
dropped the ball during passing and Mainwaring gathered to race away
and jink inside Cormack for a good try which he converted.
HOSPITALS MATCH OFF
   The second-round Hospitals Cup-tie between Guy's and Bart's at
Richmond athletic ground yesterday, was postponed because of the state
of the pitch. It has been provisionally arranged for next Thursday.
Squash Rackets
AZAM TOP SEED
   Azam Khan, Pakistan, Open squash rackets champion for the past
three years, is top seed for the Professional championship at the
RAC, London, from Feb. 15-2.
Sporting Commentary
HOCKEY
JOHN CONROY OUT FOR THE SEASON
BY OUR HOCKEY CORRESPONDENT
   OPPONENTS of England on the hockey field this season will no
doubt breathe more freely at the news that John Conroy, the best
inside-forward of his time and one of the best this country has ever
had, is laid as firmly by the heels as a man can be outside prison.
He is in hospital and there he will stay for the next three weeks to
have a broken ankle bone pinned.
   After that prolonged rest will be necessary. Conroy is out for
the season and the selectors have a problem on their hands in shaping
the England attack, which will make the more senior members, such as
Mr. Harry Lewis and Mr. H. L. Holliwell, think back uneasily
to the 1956-57 season.
   At that time Conroy was in Canada, where he had gone from
Melbourne following the Olympic Games. In his absence England put
into the field the most ill-assorted attack I can ever remember. In
five internationals, ten forwards were selected, the line never played
in the same order twice and England scored just three goals, losing to
South Africa and Germany, beating Wales and Scotland and playing a
goalless draw with Ireland.
   These facts and figures are the measure of the problem facing the
selectors at this moment, with Conroy injured and two other likely
candidates for the forward line, internationals N. M. Forster and
P. B. Austen, not available. They are also the answer to those
critics of Conroy who complained that he slowed up the attack.
   What they meant, of course, was that Conroy did not belong to the
school that bash on regardless and hope for the best. R. D.
Smith, who played outside Conroy on both wings for England, always
says that nobody else could place the ball so perfectly to create an
opening.
   I am sure Smith is right. I am equally sure that more could and
should have been made of Conroy's remarkable gift of ball-control by
moulding the attack round him. That calls for a carefully planned
programme of coaching and training, which in spite of the drive and
enthusiasm of the former match secretary of the Hockey Association,
Mr. L. S. E. Jones, has never so far been achieved.
Lessons from Abroad
   In this respect England, and the other home countries, too, lag
behind what is common practice on the Continent. There it is accepted
that natural talent is not enough and a man must be taught the finer
points of a team game as scientific as football and twice as fast.
   Nothing is left to chance that careful preparation can obviate
and in some cases professional coaches of Indian origin have been
employed.
   Without going as far as that England have for some time had a
national team coach in S. D. Dickins whose methods have made
Hounslow one of the most successful club sides in the country over the
last ten years. Unhappily, Dickins has not so far enjoyed the
financial and administrative backing that a coach must have if he is
to produce results.
TURN OF THE TIDE?
Holland Match Preparation
   There are, however, some signs that the sting of many defeats
suffered at the hands of Continental countries since the war is slowly
creating its own antidote. Plans are afoot, I gather, for a training
programme during the summer aimed at producing an England team to play
Holland in the autumn, a team which will do justice to a match marking
the 75th anniversary of the Hockey Association.
   The idea is to get the probable players and reserves together for
two full week-ends of coaching and training, to include a trial and
wind up with a match which would be a dress rehearsal for the Holland
fixture in October.
   This is good news. England have not beaten Holland in the five
matches played since the war. It is time the tide was turned.
WELCOME EXPERIMENT
Penalty-shot Proposal
   An experiment which all ranks in the game are likely to have on
their hands next season concerns the penalty bully which has been
under fire for some time, mainly on the ground that it is not severe
enough on the offending team. So far no one has produced an
acceptable alternative.
   Now, however, the International Federation are to propose to the
International Hockey Board, the body which makes the rules, that a
penalty shot at goal be substituted for the penalty bully.
   This, it seems, would be a flick or push shot, not a hit, and the
ball would have to be kept below shoulder height. But many details
are still under discussion, such as the distance from which the shot
should be taken.
   The proposal is due to come before the IHB next May. Until
more is known of the details, judgment must be reserved, but the
initiative is to be welcomed.
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William Hickey
Jockey judge will ride on Circuit
   MR. JUSTICE DIPLOCK, a 53-year-old Queen's Bench Division
judge, is setting out on Circuit on April 15 despite the pleas of his
wife, Lady Diplock. Circuit, I should add, is the name of his
trusted mount in the Bar point-to-point.
   And Sir Kenneth Diplock, who has ridden in it- and lost- as a
Q.C., will be taking part for the first time as a High Court
judge.
   His wife views the undertaking with some trepidation.
   At their home in the Temple last night she told me: "Circuit is
getting old and though my husband rides him every week with the
Cottesmore Hunt I do hope he will not ride him next month.
   "I don't want him to get hurt again."
   But no doubt Lady Diplock recalls an accident in 1957 when her
husband's horse fell and he was badly thrown. His arm was broken and
later he presided at the Old Bailey with his arm in a sling, hidden
under his robes.
   Actually, for any young barrister who wants to have a few modest
shillings on the judge, I am told he is a brilliant rider.
   He will be racing against five barristers.
   
   NEW ZEALAND'S greatest fighter ace, Group Captain Alan
(Lucky) Deere, who destroyed 21 enemy aircraft during the war, has
been appointed aide-de-camp to the Queen in place of Group Captain
H. E. Brufton, who is retiring from the R.A.F.
   Deere, who is 43 and married with two children, is at present
Deputy Director of Personnel (Air) at the Air Ministry.
WORK AGAIN
   CHARMIAN SCOTT, 18-year-old niece of the Duchess of
Gloucester, returned to modelling yesterday for the first time since
the car accident that put her in hospital four weeks ago.
   A fast disappearing scar on her left leg, and a slightly
discoloured eye- well-camouflaged by make-up- were the only visible
reminders of the accident, which occurred when a car in which she was
travelling overturned at Hyde Park Corner.
   "I still have one or two other bruises," said Miss Scott,
"but fortunately they can't be seen by the public."
   She was appearing in a fashion show put on by a Piccadilly firm
in a Park-lane hotel. Among those watching her were her mother,
Lady George Scott, and her elder sister, Georgina, who is a
sales-girl for the firm.
   Georgina does not envy her sister's much photographed fame.
   "I'm honest with myself," she said with a smile. "I know
perfectly well that I haven't got the shape for modelling. So I just
sell the clothes she models."
SEPARATE
   THE German Ambassador, Dr. Hans von Herwarth, has
left London to go ski-ing in the Italian Alps.
   His wife left on the same day for winter sports in Southern
Germany and the Tyrol.
   Said a spokesman for the ambassador yesterday: "They usually
take their winter holidays separately. No special significance in
that.
   "The ambassador seems to prefer Italy to Austria. I suppose it
is just one of those things."
Pioneering spirit is still there
   DOROTHY, LADY BRUNTISFIELD, who left England to farm in Kenya
1 years ago, has returned to this country. She has bought a house in
Belgravia, and hopes to move in after Easter.
   When she left England in 1951 she said that Kenya was "a country
of freedom, wonderful climate and no restrictions." She remained on
her farm- a lone white woman- throughout the Mau Mau troubles.
   "I was frightened, of course- who wouldn't be?- but there was
something worth fighting for," she told me yesterday.
   "Things are different now. We have been let down. And with all
these African politicians making trouble it might blow up into another
Congo any day."
   Lady Bruntisfield- first wife of Lord Bruntisfield- sold
everything before leaving Kenya.
   Lady Bruntisfield, in her late fifties, still retains the
pioneering spirit. "I find building a new home again rather
exciting. It's a challenge you know. And I like a challenge."
DRAWBACK
   KATHARINE WORSLEY, the Duke of Kent's fiance?2e, made
her first public appearance with the Queen in a theatre outing
last night.
   And unwittingly, poor girl, she committed a minor social sin.
Her deep red dress, I'm told by the women with an eye for these
things, clashed with the Queen's black and plum sequined dress.
   She also discovered one of the drawbacks of royal protocol: she
wasn't able to sit with her fiance?2. The Duchess of Kent sat
between them.
   Also in the party were Prince Philip and Princess
Alexandra.
   The play at the Vaudeville Theatre? Appropriately "The Bride
Comes Back."
OLD BOYS
   ONE of London's odder reunions took place last night.
Herr Reinhold Eggers, a former German schoolmaster who was the
security officer at Colditz Castle, the camp for important prisoners
of war, met up with some of his "old boys."
   He had dinner with Group Captain Douglas Bader at his London
mews house. "I had tea occasionally with him at Colditz," said
Herr Eggers urbanely. "I always admired his spirit."
   Earlier I had joined him and Pat Reid, the British escape
officer at Colditz, for a drink in a Knightsbridge pub.
   Herr Eggers has a sense of humour but has never, apparently, lost
his schoolmasterly sense of pained surprise that his "boys" did not
abide by the rules.
   "Now Reid," he said, "was one of my biggest headaches. When
he escaped I was hauled over the coals and almost wished I had escaped
with him."
   The habit of Reid's which Eggers found most infuriating was when
he sat in his punishment cell blowing derisive blasts of his trumpet
during roll call.
   "I can't understand Lord Harewood's interest in music after
Reid's performance."
   The Earl of Harewood was another of his prisoners. "A splendid
fellow," said Eggers.
COOKING
   PRETTY 24-year-old Vanessa Marsh, whose father, Mr.
Marcus Marsh, trained horses for the late Aga Khan, has deserted the
heaths of Newmarket for the kitchens of the officers' club at
Catterick Camp.
   She lives in as a +6 1s-a-week assistant cook, preparing
lunch and dinner for the officers.
   Vanessa, who two years ago was to be seen dancing with Mr.
Martin Parsons, half-brother of Mr. Antony Armstrong-Jones,
tells me: "I got tired of riding horses and wanted a change. And
I'd taken a cookery course."
LANDLORD
   FROM the juke box Elvis Presley throbbed "Are You
Lonesome Tonight?" And on the table-tennis table the portly
gentleman in baggy tweeds finished his game with an adroit smash which
landed the ball smack in the face of his 16-year-old shop-assistant
opponent.
   The Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, in slightly
unaccustomed surroundings, was opening a new coffee bar at the Arundel
youth club last night.
   The club has 8 members and two rules: no credit and no obscene
language. And since the duke is the landlord of the building (rent
1s. a year) he was the obvious choice as guest of honour.
   The duke obviously enjoyed his table tennis ~("We have a table
at the castle and I play with the children"), but Presley left him
unimpressed.
   "I am a bit old," he explained almost apologetically, "for
that sort of thing."
Princess's new house gets +7, refit
   THAT'S an end to all those rumours about jobs in the
Commonwealth for Princess Margaret and Mr. Antony Armstrong-Jones.
   After all, no one- not even the Ministry of Works- spends
+7, on doing up a house if the occupiers are about to go abroad
for a few years. It is clear that the Princess and her husband are
settling down in London and for this purpose 1a, Kensington Palace
(above)
<REFERS TO PICTURE>
is well suited.
   The house, in the south wing of Clock Court, is one of Sir
Christopher Wren's finest examples of domestic architecture. It was
built about 169. The front door leads out into the court, giving the
couple far more privacy than they have at No. 1.
   It will take 18 months to put No. 1a in habitable order. It
suffers from bomb damage, dry rot, bad plumbing, and inefficient
heating.
   The money to be spent on Princess Margaret's new home is only a
fraction of a +36, plan to give the Royal Family and their staffs
up-to-date accommodation.
William Hickey
Now young Mr. Clore heads for the top
   MR. CHARLES CLORE, The Whitechapel tailor's son who, by his
own ability, has become Britain's best-known man of property, seems to
have passed some of his own brilliance on to his son.
   At an age when most schoolboys are merely preparing for the
G.C.E., 16-year-old Alan Evelyn Clore has been accepted for
Lincoln College, Oxford.
   A fairly remarkable achievement, but I am told that young Clore
has a very lively mind.
   His school friends at Le Rosay School in Switzerland (the old
boys include the Duke of Kent, the Shah of Persia, and the
Aga Khan) describe him as a very likeable lad.
   He has been admitted to Lincoln College without taking an
examination because, I am told, his school work was so outstanding.
   A spokesman for the college says: "He has been accepted as a
Commoner for the academic year beginning in 1962."
   Mr. Clore adds the information, proud as any parent would be,
that his son will study philosophy, politics, and economics. After
taking his degree he will read for the Bar.
   Mr. Clore's marriage to his French-born wife Francine was
dissolved in 1957. Their two children Alan and his sister Vivien,
who is two years younger, were made wards of court in the previous
year.
   There have been suggestions recently of a reconciliation. Mrs.
Clore, who lives in Paris, is at the moment staying in London.
   But Mr. Clore describes the stories as "a lot of nonsense."
And his ex-wife tells me her visit is to shop and see her doctor and
dentist.
FLYING OUT
   NINE-YEAR-OLD Christina Onassis, daughter of Mr.
Aristotle Onassis and his ex-wife Mme. Tina Livanos, left
England for Paris yesterday after a few days in Oxford where she has
been visiting her mother, who is in hospital recovering from a ski-ing
accident.
   Christina was driven from Oxford to London Airport in a grey
Jaguar- accompanied by her nanny, Miss Lehane.
   At the airport they went aboard the aircraft an hour before the
other passengers.
WANTED: A STAR
   MADAME LILY PAYLING, the Australian contralto who many times
packed the Royal Albert Hall before the war, is looking for a British
singer to make into a star.
   Mme. Payling, who now teaches in London, started the Payling
Musical Society after the war. Through it she encouraged many an
unknown singer from obscurity to concert status.
   Qualifications required, apart from a good voice? "Patience and
a lot of hard work," she said last night.
GOLF BARGAIN
   IT is an object lesson in the concessions one has to make
after marriage. Former Wimbledon champion Budge Patty marries on
April 5 in Switzerland when some of his London friends will be flying
out there.
   At 36 he is giving up full-time tennis, but fears that he will
still be too good to be given a game by his wife.
   And his 26-year-old fiance?2e Macina Sfezzo who has lived
most of her life in Switzerland is an expert skier- far better than
Patty is likely to become now.
   So they have struck a bargain. Both have started to play golf.
Patty got the idea when he was given a set of clubs for a wedding
present.
   To his surprise he has discovered that although he plays tennis
right-handed he plays golf left-handed.
Cavanagh designs for Katharine
   JOHN CAVANAGH, the crinkle-faced Irishman who started his
career "picking up pins in a Paris salon" and is now London's
leading couturier, has been chosen by Katharine Worsley to design
her wedding-dress of the year for her marriage to the Duke of Kent.
   Said Cavanagh, 46 and for years the favourite designer of
Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of Kent: "This is one of
the most thrilling things that has happened to me since my shop opened
nine years ago."
   Mr. Cavanagh has already met Miss Worsley at Kensington Palace
to talk over ideas.
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Paul Tanfield
As Tony and topper make an Ascot debut...
THE GRANDSTAND ELITE PLAY ONE-UPMANSHIP
   IT was 6.55 yesterday morning when the Duke of Norfolk
wandered across the green lawns of Ascot. The new +1,, stand
that he had watched rise, brick-by-brick, was clouded with rain. And
the wind had littered the paddock with leaves.
   His Grace ordered the leaves to be removed and the sweepers came
out.
   He prodded the turf and announced that the going would be "a
little soft." But he looked hopefully at the sky and guessed that
all would come well.
LUNCH CONTEST
   All did. The weather decided to co-operate and Ascot 1961
opened in all its glory.
   The crazy costumes and ridiculous hats... The Royal Family
driving up the course... Antony Armstrong-Jones making his Ascot
debut (he and Princess Margaret were on their honeymoon during the
meeting last year).
   This year there are two sports at Ascot. There is the
horse-racing- and there is the one-upmanship in the boxes of the new
grandstand.
   Butlers and waitresses join in the second game along with those
who have taken the boxes. They vie with each other to produce the
most impressive lunch.
   This is more difficult than it may seem, for the Ascot caterers
provide all the food. So it is the same for everyone- from Charles
Clore to the Maharanee of Baroda, from Lew Grade to Lord
Cornwallis.
PASS THE MUSTARD
   Yesterday it was melon and smoked salmon and lobster or a cold
collation (pronounced coalition by at least half the waitresses I
spoke to) and strawberries and cream. Then there were wines to order.
Most people had champagne- of course.
   Mrs. John Valentine arrived from Sunbury-on-Thames
clutching her cartwheel hat in one hand and a pot of mustard in the
other. "I always like my mustard made with sherry," she explained.
She wasn't going to risk having the watered kind.
HYLTON'S WINE
   Jack Hylton brought his own wine. A few doors down the
corridor someone had brought a lace tablecloth to replace the damask
ones provided.
   John Topliss-Smith came with a laundry hamper containing
crab- a present for his host. "Everyone seems to have lobster,"
he said, "but really crab is much nicer.
   "The laundry basket? It's the done thing to carry food about in
a hamper, isn't it? And I didn't actually have another hamper."
   On went the one-upmanship.
   Knowing something of the advantages of a good display, sales
consultant Major Cyril Dennis had pink and white carnations sent
down to Ascot to replace the sweet peas and cornflowers provided in
each box.
   Before anyone arrived in Charles Clore's box part of the flower
display had disappeared "borrowed" for another box.
   There was some swift china-changing, too. Someone slipped into
Lord Moynihan's box and swapped a cracked plate for a sound one
there. And since it was all regulation red and white Ascot crockery,
no one could do much about it.
   George St. John Ervine arrived bearing a silver cigarette
box. An impressive touch, this.
   "I was asked to bring it along," he told me blandly, "to make
the place seem a bit more like home.
   "After all, when you come to Ascot you don't want to feel you
are picnicking, do you?"
And of course the family is delighted
   It was the happiest moment of Royal Ascot. The Queen's
three-year-old filly Aiming High had won the Coronation Stakes- her
Majesty's first Ascot success since 1959.
   And the Royal Family, clearly delighted, went down to the
unsaddling enclosure.
   All the more reason for celebration last night when the Queen
gave her Ascot guests an evening out. They occupied the front two
rows of Windsor's Theatre Royal balcony to see the new musical of
"Jane Eyre."
   Among the guests- that eligible bachelor Nicholas Eden,
3-year-old son of Sir Anthony. He sat next to Princess Alexandra.
   We're-all-human quote: During the interval the Queen was heard
to ask: "Please tell me, someone, has this got a happy or a sad
ending? I quite forget."
Paul Tanfield
Fabiola regrets... but baby is still unofficial
THE STATE VISIT OFF- FOR 'HER STATE OF HEALTH'
   IT is not altogether surprising that the Belgian royal family
so often seems to find itself at loggerheads with its subjects.
   Even royal babies, usually a source of national rejoicing, seem
to drive a wedge between King Baudouin and his people.
   There was that rumpus last week when the Pope let slip the
news that Queen Fabiola is expecting a baby.
   But, despite the row, no official announcement followed.
   Yesterday the baby was (unofficially) in the news again. King
Baudouin and his queen postponed next month's State visit to London.
But nobody was prepared to admit (officially) that the baby was the
reason.
   The king's counsellors couched their communique in vague terms.
It merely said: "The queen's state of health and the care it
requires led King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola to express the wish that
the visit be postponed."
   Not a word about the baby.
   I asked a Brussels palace spokesman if the queen's "state of
health" meant what everybody knew it meant.
NO NEWS
   "Of course," he said, "but we cannot say so officially. We
can only refer to the queen's state of health.
   "The fact that the queen is expecting a baby will not be
official until an official announcement has been made."
   Even our own Queen did not mention the baby when she sent a
telegram to King Baudouin. Taking its tone presumably from Brussels,
it said simply: "I and my husband are so sorry that we shall not be
able to welcome your majesties to London in July.
   "We hope soon to hear good news of Queen Fabiola's health and
send you both our best wishes."
   In Belgium last night, Queen Fabiola's subjects were hoping that
they, too, might hear some good news about her health. Well, some
news, anyway...
SURVIVAL
   Wilfred Noyce, mountaineer, writer and schoolmaster, who was
in Sir John Hunt's Everest expedition in 1953, is giving up his
job as an assistant master at Charterhouse, the Surrey public school,
to concentrate on writing.
   His book South Col described the successful assault on
Everest, and now, I understand, Heinemann will soon be publishing his
latest mountaineering book. It deals with the Anglo-American
Karakoram expedition which he led last year.
   The new life looks promising for Mr. Noyce.
   His wife, Rosemary, told me that Heinemann have also asked
him to write a book on survival- he published an article on the
survivors of the Agadir earthquake in French Morocco last year- and
Nelson have commissioned him to edit an atlas of the world's mountain
ranges.
   Another book, on survival in concentration camps, may follow
later.
   Altogether, it looks as if the ex-schoolmaster will have no
difficulty in surviving himself.
Take your pick, says Stokowski
   THAT former fire-eating conductor Leopold Stokowski is a
mellowed man these days.
   In fact, when I talked to him yesterday after his rehearsals for
Sunday's concert with the Philharmonia Orchestra, he told me of his
remarkable experiment in orchestral democracy.
   Time was when this great disciplinarian of the rostrum- as
fierce as Toscanini in a rage- had his own starch-like ideas about
orchestral positioning.
   But this week he is allowing the Philharmonia players to decide
for themselves where they sit.
   "We try my way and then their way," said Stokowski. "Then
they will vote on it.
   "If they decide that their way will give a better concert I
shall just say 'O.K.- let's have the good concert.'"
   He shook his white head and insisted: "But you know, on matters
of intonation and the technicalities I am still more than a martinet-
I'm a martinetissimo!"
   London-born Stokowski, now 79, has a reputation for highly
individual interpretations. But he is quite prepared, these days, to
be hissed by those who don't approve.
   As he says: "If a man accepts applause when people like what he
does he should be man enough to accept hissing from people who don't
like it."
ASCOT ENVY
   THEY already have the Kentucky Derby. Now the Americans
would like to imitate inimitable Ascot.
   Mrs. Evelyn Sharp, widow, hotel owner, and millionairess,
is here on behalf of the New York State Racing Commission to
investigate the subtleties of this distinctly British occasion.
   "We have our stylish races in America, of course," she told
me. "But Ascot has an image of its own. We think of it as something
special. The fashions, the parties... everything."
The Duke of Kent hires a honeymoon plane
COMPLETE WITH HOT AND COLD RUNNING MUSIC...
   The Duke of Kent is going on the second stage of his
honeymoon, to Majorca, in a +42, aircraft known as "the
Rolls-Royce of the air," which he has chartered through Hughie
(Double Your Money) Green.
   The plane is a demonstration model of the 35-m.p.h.
Grumman Gulfstream, the executive aircraft which has already been
bought by such connoisseurs of luxury travel as Greek shipping
millionaire Stavros Niarchos and Fiat millionaire Umberto
Agnelli.
   The Duke's plane, N358AA, is the one in which Mr. Green,
trying to quadruple his money through his partnership in an aircraft
distributing firm, flew the Atlantic earlier this year.
   It has since been on a 7,-mile tour of 25 countries in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa, during which it was flown by
King Hussein of Jordan.
SNACKS...
   The Duke and his new Duchess will travel in comfort. The
24ft. passenger cabin is fitted with a thick royal blue carpet. It
has seating for 12- in cosily-padded swivel armchairs.
   The plane has hot and cold running water, a galley where snacks
and hot drinks can be whipped up, a roomy wardrobe, and a handsome
cocktail cabinet.
   And, 6en route, the couple will be able to enjoy the strains
of I'd Do Anything For You, Dear, Anything, and music from other
current London musicals.
...AND STEREO
   Arthur Willcox, spokesman for the firm which makes the plane
told me: "The plane has a built-in stereo tape-recorder which can
play for the whole four hours it will take to fly to Majorca.
   "We are recording hits from the London shows on it. We
understand the Duke likes them."
   I understand it was Air Commodore Sir Edward Fielden, Captain
of the Queen's Flight, who recommended the aircraft to the Duke after
seeing it at the Paris Air Show.
   "This plane is purely a demonstration model," said Mr.
Willcox. "We don't normally do charters. But we are naturally
honoured that the Duke should have chosen our plane and happy to
oblige him."
   The Duke and Duchess are expected to fly from Birkhall in
Scotland, where they have spent the first part of their honeymoon, to
London on Sunday. It is likely that they will take off for Majorca on
Monday.
AMERICAN PILOT
   The Grumman, an American plane with 24 p.c. British
components, will be flown by an American, Captain Mike Guididas,
who is the Atlantic Aviation Corporation's senior pilot.
BITTER FIGHT
   Prince William of Gloucester, apparently the only member of
the Royal Family allowed to travel abroad without an escort, spurned
even V.I.P. treatment at Southend Airport yesterday.
   He was off to Calais with a friend, Nicholas Tollemache, son
of Lord Tollemache, and a new car, a Sunbeam Rapier convertible.
   But when the airport commandant, Bernard Collins, invited him
into the special lounge- cool, quiet and empty- the Prince turned
him down and went to fight for a ham sandwich and a half of bitter in
the bar.
   He had to wait five minutes before being served.
   Afterwards, drinking his bitter, he explained that he would be
away for about a month or six weeks. "We are going to Paris for a
few days," he said. "Then making for Greece via Yugoslavia.
   "We haven't booked up anywhere. We shall just go where the mood
takes us."
Today's the day for Bacall
   Lauren Bacall, widow of Humphrey Bogart, is to marry in Vienna
today- providing some missing documents arrive in time from America.
   She and her fiance, actor Jason Robards, had planned a secret
wedding yesterday.
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<11 TEXT A11>
TUDOR SURPRISE IN TREASURY OFFICE WORK
3FT. LONG WALL AND TURRET
   Reconstruction work on the Treasury offices in Whitehall, which
has been going on for some months behind masses of scaffolding on the
street side and high wooden fences on Horse Guards Parade, has
surprised the Ministry of Works by the amount of Tudor brickwork it
has revealed.
   The most impressive discovery is a length of wall, 3ft. by
16ft., roughly parallel with Whitehall, which includes a great stone
window 2ft. high and 8ft. broad. This is part of the west wall
of the great hall, later converted into a tennis court, which Henry
=8 built as an adjunct to Whitehall Palace for the recreation of his
court. The north-west turret of the building, standing to a height of
at least 4ft., has also been uncovered, its upper part faced with a
decorative pattern of flint and stone.
IRON REINFORCEMENT
   The east front of the hall, abutting on to Whitehall, was
demolished by Sir Charles Barry when he rebuilt the Treasury offices
in 1847, but he is credited now with unsuspected forbearance in having
left so much of the west front on the park side. Indeed, the way in
which Barry reinforced the floors with iron albeit at the expense of
thrusting the iron into Tudor window arches- is assumed by some
experts to indicate that he was deliberately striving to preserve the
west wall of Henry =8's hall.
   Another, but smaller, tennis court which stood near the great
hall was destroyed in the eighteenth century except for its north end
wall. This wall has now been freed from the plaster that has covered
it through the centuries. Today it stands to almost its full height,
with its original windows, of which one, on the ground floor, retains
its Tudor ironwork.
   A two-storeyed gallery, connecting the great hall and the smaller
tennis court, was known to have survived all rebuilding operations in
this part of Whitehall. But the stripping of its wall coverings has
now revealed most of the original window openings and, incidentally,
proved that some of the so-called Tudor windows incorporated in
rebuilding operations were fakes. In the upper part of the gallery
this is clearly demonstrated by a stone Tudor fireplace now uncovered
being considerably out of the line of these sham Tudor windows.
COCKPIT PASSAGE
   The lower part of the gallery- it was known in former times as
Cockpit Passage by reason of its leading to the long vanished Tudor
cockpit- has remained in fair shape though cluttered inordinately
with pipes, cabling and all the modern apparatus of a basement given
over to heating and lighting. Eventually it will be cleared of these
things and tidied up to become once more a decent historical passage.
   When the present reconstruction is completed- probably by
August, 1962- there will be incorporated in the new Treasury offices
part of the wall of the Tudor hall and one of its great windows at the
end of a series of corridors.
   The end wall of the small tennis court overlooks Treasury Green,
in the middle of which stands a noble plane tree. When once again
people are allowed to walk from Downing Street to Horse Guards Parade
through Treasury Passage they will see the wall of the small tennis
court and the exterior of Cockpit Passage.
   The original estimate for the reconstruction of the Treasury
offices was +75, but it is expected that that figure may be
considerably exceeded.
BENCH REJECT PLEA OVER HANDCUFFS
FOUR MEN ACCUSED OF BANK ROBBERY
   Cardiff Magistrates yesterday rejected an application that two
of four men in the dock should be allowed to have their hands free and
not handcuffed to one another.
   The four men were charged jointly with breaking and entering
Lloyds Bank in Cardiff between January 14 and January 16 and stealing
+9,465 and other property including watches and jewelry.
   Before the Court were: Colin David Baldwin, aged 26, of Braunton
Avenue, Llanrumney, Cardiff; Albert Augustus King, aged 32, of
Southmead, Bristol; Maurice Charles Harry, aged 32, of Northam Avenue,
Llanrumney, Cardiff; and James Bernard Powell, aged 32, of Penarth
Road, Cardiff.
'COURT HEAVILY GUARDED'
   They were also jointly charged with stealing a car belonging to
Herbert Arthur Peel at Bristol between January 1 and January 2.
   King and Baldwin were handcuffed together, with Harry on one side
and Powell the other side.
   Mr. C. Stuart Hallinan, defending King, asked that the
handcuffs should be removed. "This court is very heavily guarded and
King is prepared to give an undertaking that he will make no attempt
to escape", he said.
   Mr. K. Rees, for Baldwin, made a similar application.
   Mr. D. A. Roberts Thomas, for the prosecution, opposing
the application, said that when arrested King had stated that he would
not be in custody for long. The two men ought to be held in restraint
because of the danger of escape.
   Mr. Thomas said that entry to the strong room was gained by
blowing a hole through the 18in. thick side wall. More than +3,
had not been recovered. A fifth man, whose identity was known, was
involved but not before the Court.
   The hearing was adjourned until today.
THE CITY'S SHOPS CUT BY HALF SINCE 1939
"FIRM STAND BEING TAKEN WITH DEVELOPERS"
   There has been a decrease of 53 per cent in the number of shops
in the City of London since 1939 and 18 per cent in the number of
restaurants, it was stated by counsel for the Corporation of London at
an inquiry yesterday into an appeal heard by a Ministry of Housing and
Local Government inspector. Winmor Properties Ltd. appealed against
a condition imposed by the corporation that provision must be made for
the incorporation of shops in at least two-thirds of the frontage in a
project for rebuilding Nos. 35, 37 and 39, Moorgate as offices.
   Mr. S. M. Haines, architect for the developers, said the
building proposed would be of seven storeys with provision for a car
park. If shops were incorporated in the development they would be
small and spoil the building both architecturally and economically.
The building was intended as an office block.
   Mr. W. J. Glover, for the corporation, said it was the
policy of the Town Planning Committee that existing shops and
restaurants should be replaced in new development. Mr. H. A.
Meeland, planning officer to the corporation, said there had been a
great tendency by developers to omit shops from their plans and the
corporation were having to take a firm stand in the matter.
   The inquiry was concluded.
FORMER HOSPITAL SOLD FOR +7,6
TRING'S CAMPAIGN OVER PROPERTY FAILS
FROM OUR ESTATES CORRESPONDENT
TRING Feb. 21
   More than 1 local residents crowded into Church House here
today to attend an auction sale at which the former Tring Isolation
Hospital was finally knocked down to a London financial firm for
+7,6. It went to Mr. A. J. Cruickshank, an estate agent of
Berkhamsted, acting for Bland and Company (Investments) Ltd., of
Wimpole Street, London.
   The final figure compares with a price of +5, at which the
buildings were originally offered to the council by the Ministry of
Health, the present vendors, when the hospital became redundant and
which was refused by the council. The sale marks the apparent end of
a lengthy campaign for the hospital buildings to be returned to the
town for at the most a nominal sum.
   Originally a gift to the townspeople by Lord Rothschild in 191,
the hospital was taken over under the National Health Act in 1948 but
soon afterwards was closed as a hospital and has since been used
partly for storage purposes and also to accommodate a hospital board
official. When the Ministry decided to dispose of the buildings they
were first offered to the council at the district valuer's figure of
+5,. It was stated that the Ministry had no power to return the
property to the council at no cost.
HEAVY ATTENDANCE
   At the sale, conducted by Knight, Frank and Rutley, local
feelings were shown by the heavy attendance rather than by indecorous
behaviour, and bidding which started at +2,, rose rapidly to
+6,, mainly by +25 and +5 advances, changing to +1 advances
in the final stages.
   The buyer declined to give any indication of the future of the
buildings, which lie on a site of just over two acres and include a
five-bedroomed detached house, two small hospital blocks and various
outbuildings. Planning permission has been given in the past for the
conversion of the two ward blocks into residential accommodation, but
the site lies in an area of high landscape value, which would make
extensive development unlikely.
   Mr. F. J. Bly, chairman of Tring Urban District Council,
who with a number of other councillors attended the sale, said
afterwards that the whole procedure which had culminated in the sale
had been grossly unjust. "It was given to the town as a gift," he
said, "and should have been returned.
<END QUOTE>
PRESS COUNCIL MEMBER RESIGNS
CLASH ON 'CHATTERLEY' CASE
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BOLTON, Feb. 21
   Mr. Frank Singleton, editor of the Bolton Evening News, and
president of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors, has resigned from
the Press Council. At its last meeting the council expressed
disapproval of the handling of the Lady Chatterley's Lover case by
The Guardian, The Observer, and The Spectator. Mr.
Singleton wrote a letter to The Guardian dissociating himself from
this action.
   Mr. Singleton said tonight that Mr. George Murray, the
chairman of the Press Council, had written to him, saying that the
council would almost certainly regard him as responsible for a breach
of confidence, and that since he had made his views known without
informing the council, he (Mr. Murray) intended to mention the
matter in a letter to The Guardian.
   In his letter of resignation Mr. Singleton wrote to Mr.
Murray: "Rightly or wrongly I felt justified in correcting the
impression in the statement issued to the press that the opinion of
the council was unanimous... It is with sincere regret that I sever
my association with the council on which I have always thought it a
great honour to serve."
ETON RATE RELIEF
TOWN NOT AFFECTED, SAYS MR. BROOKE
   The rating of public schools was a matter on which the Commons
as a whole should express an opinion, Mr. Mitchison (Kettering,
Lab.) said yesterday when the Standing Committee on the Rating and
Valuation Bill continued its discussion on an Opposition amendment to
rate public schools fully rather than give them 5 per cent relief.
   Mr. Mitchison said that a large public school in an urban
district was anomalous. He hoped to raise the matter at a later
stage.
   The amendment was withdrawn.
   In a general discussion on clause 8, which concerns the reduction
and remission of rates payable by charitable and other organizations,
Mr. Brooke, Minister of Housing and Local Government, said that
boarding schools- though there were exceptions- tended to be in the
country in rating areas which were not wealthy. Therefore in many
cases any effect of loss of rates due to the mandatory 5 per cent
derating would be made up by rate deficiency grant.
MADE UP BY GRANT
   In the case of Eton, which had attracted some attention, though
there might be some marginal effect on the county rate, so far as he
could ascertain there would be no effect on the urban district council
rate, because any loss of rate through mandatory relief would be fully
made up by deficiency grant.
   Mr. Brooke said that there was a weakness in the case for
assisting such bodies as learned societies by rate relief because it
meant that local people would have to put their hands deeper into
their pockets. If any such bodies could establish their claim for
relief by means of further contribution from the Exchequer, that would
lie outside the scope of the Bill.
   The clause was approved and the committee adjourned until
tomorrow.
CHARGES AGAINST LONDON VICAR
TO FACE CONSISTORY COURT
   A consistory court will sit in London next month to hear
charges against Dr. W. Bryn Thomas, Vicar of the Church of the
Ascension Balham Hill, S.W.
# 232
<12 TEXT A12>
Missing girl found in attic
HUNT FOR A GINGER-HAIRED MAN
   ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Nancy O'Brien, the girl who was missing from
her home for four days, was kept locked in an attic, it was revealed
yesterday.
   As Nancy haltingly told the story of her four-day ordeal to
police last night, another great search began... this time for a
ginger-haired man the police thought might be able to help in their
enquiries.
   Nancy, who had been missing from her home at Burneside,
Westmorland, since last Thursday, was found yesterday in the locked
attic of a house in Chambres-road, Southport, Lancs.
Hysterical
   The windows of the attic were boarded over. Nancy was
wild-eyed and hysterical... and shoeless. But she was unharmed.
   Last night she was reunited at Southport police station with her
aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson, with whom she lives at
Burneside.
   Last night, too, the police announced: "We want to interview
Horatio Richard Seddon, 28, who can possibly help us in our
enquiries."
   The police statement added: "We have alerted Interpol <the
international police organisation> and all ports and airports in our
effort to trace this man."
   A police description of Seddon said he was about 5ft. 1in.
to 6ft., long-legged, very slim, ginger-haired and wearing
tortoiseshell glasses.
No Reply
   He was believed to be driving an old-type black Standard 14
saloon number ZH214.
   This was how little Nancy was found yesterday at the house in
Chambres-road...
   At about 11 a.m. screams of ~"Help!" were heard by
Mrs. Winifred Hoyles, 28, who lives next door. She was playing with
her three-year-old daughter, Julie, at the time.
   Mrs. Hoyles said later: "I went next door and shouted, but I
got no reply and thought that perhaps I was hearing things.
   "I listened again, and it WAS someone screaming for
help...
   "The cries seemed to come from the attic windows.
   "I could see these windows were barricaded with boards, which
seemed to be nailed across.
   "I rushed downstairs... telling Julie we were just playing a
game, so that she would not get upset.
<END QUOTE>
Ladder
   "I went down into the street and stopped two men. They began
to get a ladder to put up to the attic window, and I went to call for
the police.
   "The police and the fire brigade arrived and they broke a
window and got into the house.
   "I made a cup of cocoa and took it to the attic... and there
was this girl, wearing a green blazer and a dress. She was in her
stockinged feet.
   "There were tins of food all over the floor, and there were
women's magazines scattered around. There were also pieces of bread.
There was no bed in the room- only a mattress.
   "Nancy said a man had left her in the attic on Thursday. She
told me:
   "He took my shoes away and said it didn't matter how much I
screamed because no one would come.
<END QUOTE>
Screaming
   "He locked the door and I couldn't get out. I've been
screaming all the time, and I've been eating out of tins."
   Police thought last night that Nancy's screams had not been heard
because of thick red-and-white-striped wallpaper which was plastered
over the boards nailed against the attic windows.
   As far as Nancy was concerned, there might have been no window at
all in the room. The only light was from an electric bulb. So, for
four days, she did not know the difference between night and day.
12 MINUTES OF THE DUKE ON TV
   THE Duke of Edinburgh made a twelve-minute appearance on
BBC television last night- and looked more relaxed than his
interviewer, Richard Dimbleby.
   It was the Duke's first interview on British TV and he
came across like an unflurried man having a cosy fireside chat.
   This pre-recorded interview was for the weekly programme
"Panorama."
   It was concerned with the Commonwealth Technical Training Week
which opened yesterday.
   The aim of the Week's campaign is to draw attention to the need
for technical training.
   Twenty-eight Commonwealth countries are taking part and in this
country 188 local councils have helped to arrange special events to
boost the campaign.
   In his TV interview the Duke was obviously enthusiastic
about the whole project.
Difficult
   And he had a lot to say about Britain's unskilled workers.
   There were not enough people in industry, he said, who were
technically trained.
   He added: "By far the most difficult problem is this tremendous
attraction of relatively highly paid jobs for unskilled people."
   Anyone who went into unskilled work, he said, went in at the rate
for the job, regardless of age.
   What many parents did not seem to realise was that a relatively
high wage now might be a rather poor one in after years.
   Britain, said the Duke, could not hope to compete in foreign
markets if industry went on using unskilled labour.
   The Duke pointed out that of 55, school leavers aged from
fifteen to seventeen, who started work last year, only 13, took
SKILLED jobs.
Snapped Up
   "There are all too many people who say: ~'Well, we're not
going to bother to train anybody in our industry because they'll
promptly get snapped up by another industry,'" the Duke added.
   During the training Week, factories all over the country will be
holding "open days" to show their apprenticeship schemes to school
leavers and their parents.
A MAN WHO DOES FOUR JOBS
   A BARRISTER told a court yesterday about the man with four
jobs.
   This, Mr. Anthony McCowan told magistrates at Steyning,
Sussex, is the working life of fifty-six-year-old Richard Gilroy:
   As a POULTRY FARMER he works till late afternoon.
   Then he turns to his problems as boss of a WINDOW-CLEANING
business.
Factory
   Five nights a week he works as a LATHE OPERATOR at a
factory.
   In his spare time he becomes a HOME-HELP because his wife is
paralysed
   His total income: About +22 a week.
   Mr. McCowan said Mr. Gilroy, father of two, worked so hard
because his poultry business had not been doing too well.
   Gilroy, of Mill-hill, Shoreham, Sussex, admitted driving while
under the influence of drink.
   He was fined +4, was disqualified from driving for a year, and
was ordered to pay +12 costs.
BARONET'S WIFE NAMED
   A BARONET'S wife was alleged yesterday to have committed
misconduct with a farmer.
   She is Lady (Juliana) Cunliffe-Owen, 32, wife of Sir Dudley
Cunliffe-Owen.
   In the Jersey Royal Court, Mrs. Diana Roberts, wife of farmer
John Roberts, of St. Ouen, Jersey, sought a legal separation on the
ground of her husband's alleged adultery with Lady Cunliffe-Owen.
   In a counter-petition Mr. Roberts asked the court to dissolve
his marriage and give him custody of their two children.
What Labour is 5+acking..
By JAMES BEECROFT
   LABOUR'S cash problems were discussed last night by Mr. Len
Williams, the Party's National Agent and Deputy General Secretary.
   The Party's National Executive, he said, was considering ways
of increasing Labour's income.
   But whatever was done, the Party would never have funds on the
Tory scale.
   Mr. Williams was talking to more than 3 Young Socialists
attending their organisation's national rally at Skegness, Lincs.
   He stressed that last year +213, of the Labour Party's
+25, income was contributed by the trades unions.
   The average contribution from individual Party members, he
said, was only 4s. a year.
   "Even with the support of the unions," he went on, "the
amount of money we have today is not sufficient for our Party to do
its job adequately.
   "Most of the Constituency Parties are always short of cash.
Many of them are in debt for the last election."
   The trades unions, said Mr. Williams, had not only been the
main financial support of the Labour Party- they had been, through
their steadiness, "the ballast which has kept the ship upright in
heavy seas."
BLOW BY FATHER BLINDED HIS BABY
An 'inhuman man' gets six months
   A FATHER struck his six-month-old son across the face so hard
that the baby will be blind for life, a court was told yesterday.
   The father, Charles Wildridge, told the magistrates at Hull,
Yorks: "I lost my temper when he would not take his feed."
   Wildridge, 37, of Rimswell-road, Hull, pleaded guilty to
assaulting and neglecting the baby, Michael, in a way likely to cause
unnecessary suffering. He was gaoled for six months.
'Severest'
   The chairman of the magistrates, Mr. J. H. Tarbitten, told
Wildridge: "You are a most inhuman man.
   "As a result of striking the baby, he is blind for life. Any
father who does that deserves the severest punishment."
   Mr. J. F. Croft, prosecuting, said that because of family
circumstances, Michael was kept in hospital for a time after his
birth.
   When taken home, he was normal and healthy.
   Two months later Wildridge- who has five other children- took
the baby to a doctor's surgery and said: 'He has had a bash in the
face.'
   The doctor was out but his wife called an ambulance when she
saw the child. She thought he was dying.
   Mr. Croft added that in hospital Michael was found to be
blind in both eyes. Most of his face was bruised and X-rays showed
that one leg had been broken but had healed.
Temper
   Wildridge, who is unemployed, told the magistrates: "I was
preparing a meal for my sick wife and the children were coming home
from school.
   "When the baby would not take his feed I lost my temper. I have
not neglected or ill-treated the child, and it did fall off a
settee."
Gardener accused
   ANTHONY Reginald Hitchcock, 29, was remanded in custody at
Newport, Isle of Wight, yesterday, charged with the murder of John
Clarence Neale, 35, his partner in a jobbing gardening business run
from their home, Parkside, Boulnor Park, near Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.
   Neale was found dead, with severe head injuries, in the garden of
the house on Sunday. Hitchcock appeared in court handcuffed to a
police officer. He covered his face with his free hand when the
charge was read. The court was told that he had made a statement to
the police.
SHE FELL INTO HP 'SNARE'
   A WIFE led a perfectly blameless life... until she was
"ensnared in the hire-purchase network," a court was told
yesterday.
   Said Mr. Patrick Mayhew at East Kent Quarter Sessions in
Canterbury: "In this easy-come system, expensive goods came into her
possession for small 'down' payments."
   Then, added Mr. Mayhew, the wife "succumbed to temptation"
and sold hire-purchase goods so as to keep up the payments on them
   He went on: "The pace got hotter, and the whole nightmare of
deceit collapsed."
+1,
   Mr. Mayhew was defending the wife, Mrs. Mollie Joyce
Hawkins, 31, of Hamilton-road, Dover, on charges of theft and fraud.
   More than +1, worth of goods- including washing machines,
TV sets and typewriters- were involved.
   Mrs. Hawkins mother of four children, was gaoled for fifteen
months
MORE GO ON STRIKE
   THERE were more strikes- and more people on strike- last year
than in 1959, but FEWER working days were lost, said the Ministry
of Labour yesterday.
   There was a total of 2,849 strikes, compared with 2,15 in the
previous year.
   The number of working days lost was 3,24,, compared with
5,27, in 1959.
   There were more strikes in coal mining in 196 than in any other
industry- 1,666 stoppages, involving 171, men.
   The car industry had 129 stoppages- involving 122, men.
Get cracking, Britain, says a union chief
   LACK of leadership, second-rate men in top jobs, and a
general complacency in Britain were slammed yesterday by Mr. Ray
Gunter, MP.
   He was making his presidential speech at the annual conference
of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association at Folkestone, Kent.
   Britain, he said, could no longer afford to allow many leading
positions in industry to be occupied by second-raters who were there
only because of class and patronage
Leadership
   Mr. Gunter, who is Labour MP for Southwark, London,
insisted that the nation's greatest need was dynamic, adventurous
leadership.
   Politicians, trade unionists and businessmen should all
"search their souls" and look ahead.
# 23
<13 TEXT A13>
LINER SINKS, BURNING
Full death toll may never be known
   THE British liner Dara, abandoned after being gutted by fire
in the Persian Gulf on Saturday, sank yesterday while being towed by
the Glasgow tug Ocean Salvor. There was no one on board when she went
down.
   Salvage vessels were being used in an attempt to beach the
liner to let the fire die out completely before she was towed to
Bahrein, but she sank in about 6ft of water five miles off shore.
   It is now estimated that 212 people lost their lives, but it will
probably never be known how many Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs were
travelling as deck passengers.
   Among those still missing are 3 of the crew, a few Europeans,
and an American couple.
   All known survivors have been landed at Dubai or Bahrein. There
is little hope of finding any more.
   Rumours that the fire was caused by a bomb have been discounted.
Indications are that an explosion took place in a boiler space.
+785, insurance
   The Dara, 5,3 tons, had more than 7 people aboard when she
caught fire. She was owned by the British India Steam Navigation
Co., a subsidiary of the P. and O. Line.
   Three British frigates helped in the two-day battle to get the
fire out, and it was planned to tow her into Bahrein yesterday.
   The insured value of the hull of the Dara was +785,. A
proportion of this amount was taken by the owners, and was therefore
uninsured. Of the remainder approximately +15, of the reinsurance
was placed at Lloyds.
   The Ministry of Transport will fly out a senior engineer and
surveyor today to make a preliminary investigation into the ship's
loss. A decision whether to hold a public inquiry in London will be
taken after they report.
2, stop as convener is suspended
   TWO THOUSAND workers at the American-owned Burroughs
business machine factory at Cumbernauld, near Glasgow, struck
yesterday when their convener was suspended along with two other shop
stewards, the convener, Mr. Callaghan, was meeting the management
over a pay dispute. He was suspended when he refused an ultimatum to
operate the firm's bonus system rejected by the workers.
   On Friday the men had decided to work to rule unless the firm
reconsidered their claim for roughly +1 a week more. They claim the
firm's bonus system only pays flat-rate wages.
   Skilled workers average about +14 to +15 a week.
   Semi-skilled about +11 to +12. Unskilled start at +9 5s.
   A mass meeting will be held outside the strike-picketed factory
this morning.
TEENAGE BAN ROW
Thrasher quits the council
   BECAUSE he thinks an example should be made of teenage
rowdies by "taking their breeches down and thrashing their
backsides," Mr. Peter Firth has resigned from the urban council at
Stevenage, Herts, where teenagers were banned from the local cinema.
   Tory Mr. Firth, who is 39, said yesterday in letters to the
B.B.C. and Associated-Rediffusion, referring to their programmes
on the cinema ban:
   "The aspect of this which appals me is that you took your
cameras to the trouble-spot and to the cafes to <SIC> which the
lay-abouts were when not engaged in creating trouble.
   "What is the remedy? Is it to spend more money on youth which
we parents eventually have to pay? I do not think so. I think we
must teach by example...
   "The thrashing need not be hard. The indignity of having their
trousers taken down would be most salutary and effective. It is also
imperative that we give back to our policemen the 'teeth' that they
once had."
THE 'POOR PEASANTS' OF BRITAIN
   A QUARTER of Britain's food is produced by small farmers,
including hill farmers who are "little more than peasants, sweating
out each day without thought or hope of tomorrow," the Country
Landowners' Association was told yesterday.
   Giving a lecture in Cirencester (Glos), Mr. Travers Legge,
1959 Fison Award winner, said there were 166, farms of under 2
acres.
   The hill farmer's life was one of pointless, profitless drudgery,
with "no money to spare for improvements to farm or home or even
things which most of us take for granted."
   If Britain could reach a stage at which the minimum was 35 to 4
acres of the better land, it would be able to offer competition in the
Common Market "which no country in Europe could match."
'BANISH KILLER DUST' CALL BY WELSH PITS
Daily Worker Reporter
CARDIFF, Monday.
   A CALL for an all-out effort to banish the scourge of
killer dust from the pits has been made by the executive council of
the South Wales area of the National Union of Mineworkers.
   Drastic revision of the approved dust standard, which he says is
not a safe standard, is urged by safety officer Linden James, writing
in the current issue of the area's magazine.
   "Publicity is the first necessity if we are to get the
extraordinary measures implemented that are necessary to rid mining of
dust disease," says Mr. James.
   "Such measures will cost money and, as there is some reluctance
to spend money, there will be resistance."
346 in a year
   Dust kills many more people than gas, bad roofs, haulage,
explosives, electricity, and all the other hazards of the mines put
together, he says.
   Between 1951 and 1958 in the whole of Great Britain 183 lives
were lost as a result of explosions in the pits. In South Wales 346
died from dust in 1959 alone.
   Miners who had worked during the long period of "dust-approved
conditions," including younger men whose whole working lives were
completely within the "suppression era," had contracted the
disease.
   In some coalfields dust was merely a nuisance. In South Wales it
was a matter of life or death.
Not an excuse
   Present approved standards could be achieved throughout the
coalfield, and in many cases without difficulty.
   As the achievement of these standards was now the ultimate aim,
"the standard has been reduced from an incentive to suppress dust to
an excuse not to suppress it."
   The existing standard was no longer effective, "and should
therefore be discarded as a hindrance to progress," says Mr.
James.
   Urging a campaign for improved conditions, he asks the miners to
set their own house in order and make full use of the suppressive
equipment provided.
   "Dust kills; if we make dust unnecessarily, we are killers,"
he warns.
POP & GAS BARON FOR AUSTRALIA
Daily Worker Reporter
   THE Queen has appointed a Tory, aristocratic, soft drink,
beer, insurance, gas light and coke, match, banking and estate company
chief to be Governor-General of Australia.
   He is 51-year-old Viscount de l'Isle, V.C., chosen to
replace Lord Dunrossil, former Speaker of the House of Commons, who
died in February.
   Lord de l'Isle's appointment has caused a certain protocol
confusion, with the Melbourne Herald announcing it first and
congratulating Mr. Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, on his
"acceptable choice."
   A little later yesterday Mr. Menzies said he was "delighted"
with the appointment.
   Chief among the new Governor-General's business connections has
been the managing director's post in Schweppes, balanced, of course,
by a directorship in Courage and Barclays.
   He claims descent from the Elizabethan poet and hero Sir Philip
Sidney. Early in the 19th century one of his ancestors named Shelley
came into the Sidney property and had the name added by Royal Licence.
Later he dropped the Shelley.
An Anzio V C
   An Eton and Cambridge boy, he served with distinction in the
Grenadier Guards, winning the V.C. at Anzio.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   He was Tory M.P. for Chelsea for a year at the end of the
war, joint treasurer of the Conservative Party and- for four years-
Secretary of State for Air.
<END INDENTATION>
   He followed the 3rd Baron de l'Isle, who married a daughter of
the 4th Viscount Gort in 192 and himself married the daughter of the
6th Viscount Gort in 194. They have four children.
   Australian Labour Party leader Arthur Calwell said yesterday:
"There are many Australian citizens who will fill the office as well
or better than Lord de l'Isle will fill it."
   The Australian Labour Party's attitude was that the
Governor-General must be an Australian, Mr. Calwell added. This
view was supported by the "overwhelming majority" of the Australian
people.
CID IN BREWERY SHARES QUIZ
Daily Worker Reporter
   THE C.I.D. yesterday entered the mysterious situation
surrounding the anonymous +21 million bid for the Liverpool brewing
concern, Bents' Breweries.
   Mr. T. Halton, Bents' chairman, said he understood the City
of London Police and Liverpool C.I.D. were "examining the whole
matter."
   Two C.I.D. officers saw him and asked him about the
take-over. He told reporters that he welcomed the inquiries.
   The council of the Stock Exchange decided yesterday to allow the
resumption of dealings in shares of the brewery.
Unknown bidder
   Dealing were <SIC> banned on Friday because of lack of
information about the bidder, who still has not made himself known.
   Mr. Halton said that he was very pleased dealings had been
resumed. "We did not stop dealings, but we are glad they were
stopped," he said.
   The brewery owns more than 5 pubs in the North-West. The bid
was made known through Anglasi Nominees. When dealings restarted
yesterday shares fell from the 47s 6d they reached last week.
They closed at 42s.
SUKARNO'S CALL FROM BANDUNG
   PRESIDENT SUKARNO of Indonesia yesterday called for a full
conference of Afro-Asian Powers. "Urge your Governments to agree to
holding the conference," he told delegates to the Council for
Afro-Asian Solidarity, which opened a four-day meeting in Bandung.
   Major issues are expected to be the situations in West Irian, the
Congo, Laos and Algeria.
   President Sukarno said: "West Irian is still under colonialism.
Let us be united in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism
for the establishment of a new world and world peace."- Reuter.
17 years in a home, she wins release
   THE National Council for Civil Liberties has won the first
case it has taken up before the newly established Mental Health Review
Tribunals.
   The patient, a single woman, aged about 3, whose home is in
Cornwall, is to be released from Rampton in a few days, the council
announced yesterday.
   She had been in mental hospitals since 1944 and the council first
took up her case in 1957.
   The case was presented to the tribunal by one of the voluntary
panel set up by the council to help patients wishing to appeal against
their detention under the new Act.
   An officer of the council said it had hundreds of other cases on
the files.
Easier to hook a man in A D 2 says registrar
   WOMEN should find it easier to get a husband in the coming
years, the Registrar-General forecasts. But, if present trends
continue, they are more likely to suffer a fatal accident in the home.
   The "surplus" of women over men in England and Wales-
1,51, in 196- will have fallen to only 44, by the year 2.
   By then, the Registrar-General says in his return for the quarter
ending last December, the total population- 45,862, last June-
will have risen to 55,646,.
Marriage rate
   The marriage rate for 196- 15 people per 1,- was the same
as in 1959.
   In the third quarter of 196 the rate of stillbirths and deaths
of babies under a week old was 32 per 1,- the lowest recorded.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Although the total of fatal accidents in the December quarter-
4,288- was 75 fewer than in the previous December quarter, fatal
accidents in the home rose from 1,65 to 1,684.
<END INDENTATION>
   Of these 298 were from coal-gas poisoning.
   Only 19 people died from polio in the first nine months of 196,
compared with 53 in the same period of 1959. But there were three
deaths from diphtheria- none in the previous period.
Coventry to greet bomb march today
Daily Worker Reporter
COVENTRY, Monday
   TRADE union officials, shop stewards, trades council
leaders, aldermen and councillors are among the local personalities
who have urged support for the London to Holy Loch Polaris protest
marchers when they arrive here after completing their 14-mile stint
from Daventry tomorrow.
   Appealing to workers here to turn out to welcome the marchers,
they say: "Throughout Britain indignation is growing at the cynical
way in which the Government allows American bases to be set up in our
land."
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   A meeting will be held at 12.45 p.m. in the heart of the
Precinct, which has arisen out of the ruins of the city centre
shattered by the bombs of the last war.
<END INDENTATION>
   Workers have been asked by officials and stewards of half a dozen
different unions to obtain passouts from the factories to attend the
meeting.
   "Rally in the Precinct at lunch-time to welcome the marchers and
take your stand with all those who stand for peace," says the
statement.
Striking tribute to achievement of Morris
Daily Worker Reporter
   A COLOURFUL exhibition commemorating the centenary of a
remarkable event opens today at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South
Kensington. It is "Morris and Company 1861-194," a tribute to
Morris and his associates 1 years after they started their firm.
   On April 11, 1861, the seven young men, poets, painters, an
architect, an engineer and a mathematician, launched their
undertaking, which marked a new epoch in British cultural life.
# 23
<14 TEXT A14>
College servants join union at Cambridge
By our Cambridge Correspondent
   The first trade union branch for college servants at Cambridge
University was formed last night by 4 men and women- porters,
gardeners, kitchen staff, and maintenance workers.
   Mr. A. Butterworth, assistant national officer of the
National Union of Public Employees, who advised them on how to form
the new branch, said afterwards that there were more than 1, men
and women working in Cambridge colleges who had no agreements on pay
or working conditions.
   "The union will strive to bring them all into membership and
seek for them rights equal to those of similar workers in local
government, the health services, and at other universities. From what
I have already heard, the pay and conditions in Cambridge are below
those operative under agreements we have elsewhere."
   Mr. Butterworth added that one of the first tasks of the union
would be to ask colleges to establish agreements.
   "Each college has autonomy. But perhaps the colleges may agree
to some form of negotiating jointly."
NO CONTRIBUTION
   The Ministry of Housing and Local Government has rejected a
proposal by Barnes borough council to contribute five guineas from the
rates to the Fleming Memorial Fund for Medical Research. The Ministry
considers that contributions to such a fund should be met from
voluntary donations rather than from rates compulsorily levied.
The day everything went backwards
By our Luton Correspondent
   The South Eastern Electricity Board yesterday apologised to
consumers in Leighton Buzzard, Beds., because a technical error
caused their electrical machinery to operate backward.
   The trouble started on Thursday afternoon with a fault on the
main 33, volt transmission line and an attempt to end the three and
a half hour blackout by temporarily linking secondary lines was
abortive.
   Mr. Terry Lestor, production manager at a clothing factory,
said:
   "Everything went haywire. A light came on warning that power
was restored and the bench motors were started. Sewing machines
worked backwards and the vacuum pressing plant instead of holding
garments down blew them into the air."
   Other factories sent workers home because there was no power. An
electricity board spokesman said yesterday: "A letter of apology and
explanation has gone to the major consumers. We have explained that a
new supply system will come into use in 1 days and this should never
happen again."
DRIVING BAN ON JUDGE
Fined in drink case
   Judge David Eyfion Evans, a county court judge in the mid-Wales
and Shropshire circuit, was fined +5 and disqualified from driving
for 12 months yesterday for driving while under the influence of
drink.
   Judge Evans, who appeared at Builth Wells, was ordered to pay
+38 19s costs.
   His address was given as Plasgwyn, Aberedw, in Builth Wells. He
pleaded guilty.
   Mr. D. Prys Jones, prosecuting, said that on September 22,
Judge Evans's car collided with a stationary car at a cross-road at
Howey. The other car was driven by a Mr. Elwyn Jones, who saw Judge
Evans in the driving seat of his car looking dazed.
   He did not get out and did not answer Mr. Jones when he asked
what he thought he was doing. The two cars were freed, and the judge
reversed away. Mr. Jones again tried to speak to him, but without
success.
   Mr. Jones followed the judge for over three miles, Mr. Prys
Jones said. Both Mr. Jones and his son, who was with him, had said
that the judge drove erratically. His speed varied from about 3 to
5 mph.
   Eventually the judge stopped and told Mr. Jones who he was. He
got out of the car and Mr. Jones had said he staggered on the road.
Mr. Jones supported him to stop him from falling.
   Eventually the judge agreed to allow Mr. Jones to drive him
home in his own car, but on the way began to use threatening language,
and tried to grapple with Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones stopped. Two
police officers then arrived and one helped the judge towards the
police car.
Impeccable record
   County court Judge Rowe Harding, of Swansea, for the defence,
said that he presided over a meeting of the mid-Wales and
Herefordshire branch of the Magistrates' Association at Llandrindod
Wells which was attended by Judge Evans. He had "what appeared to be
a bronchial cold."
   Dr. John Emrys Jenkins, said he had attended Judge Evans since
1958. His condition had resulted in outbursts of anger and he had
been sharp in his tongue. "I am perfectly sure they were not the
result of alcoholic drinking."
   Dr. Jack Abbot Hobson, physician at the Middlesex Hospital,
London, submitted a report on the judge's condition. He said that on
the morning of September 22, Judge Evans took three bottles of light
ale and a sherry with his lunch. In the afternoon he attended a
meeting at Llandrindod Wells. He tried to appear normal, although he
did not feel well.
   Dr. Hobson said that Judge Evans was examined at the Middlesex
Hospital, and it was found he suffered from a condition which could
produce symptoms of drunkenness, make him unsteady in his movements
and in his eyes while his speech might be thick. It could also result
in mental disturbances.
   Mr. Alun T. Davies, defending, said that the judge's driving
record was "impeccable." Twelve months ago he passed the test for
advanced motorists. There was no question of him driving again until
his condition was remedied.
Cashiers coshed and robbed near bank
   Two cashiers employed by Independent Milk Suppliers Ltd. were
attacked by three or four men armed with coshes and robbed of about
+2, at Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale, London, yesterday. They were
knocked to the ground outside Barclays Bank.
   One cashier was taken to Paddington General Hospital for
treatment. The gang escaped in a car, which was found abandoned
nearby.
Costs for Lord Mayor
BYELECTION CASE DISMISSED
   The Manchester Stipendiary Magistrate (Mr F. Bancroft
Turner) yesterday dismissed a summons against the Lord Mayor of
Manchester (Alderman Lionel Biggs) alleging that, as returning officer
at the Moss Side parliamentary byelection, he failed to discharge his
statutory obligations by not being present on October 25 to receive
nomination papers- handed in by Mr Walter Hesketh, the British
Union Movement's candidate. Mr Bancroft Turner awarded 2 guineas
costs against Mr Hesketh as a contribution to the defence costs.
   Mr Hesketh said that on October 25 he and Mr Max Moseley, his
agent, visited the town hall to deliver the nomination papers. The
returning officer was not there and, for 5 minutes, town hall
officials were unable to obtain the Lord Mayor. Mr Hesketh said:
"For a long time we were wandering through the passages of the town
hall until I was finally obliged to defer the submission of my
nomination papers."
Matter of courtesy
   Mr F. P. R. Hinchliffe, for the Lord Mayor, said that
Alderman Biggs, as returning officer, had the right to appoint a
deputy- in this case the town clerk- who, in turn, was authorised to
appoint deputies.
   Mr Moseley agreed with Mr Hinchliffe that Mr Hesketh had
received an invitation from the Lord Mayor for all the candidates to
attend the town hall with their nomination papers on Friday, October
27.
   Mr Hinchliffe:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
Was your reason for not accepting the invitation to appear on Friday
because you didn't wish to be associated with the other candidates in
any way?- Yes, that was one reason.
<END QUOTE>
   Mr Hinchliffe said it had been a practice in the city, as a
matter of courtesy, for the Lord Mayor, to extend an invitation to all
the parliamentary candidates to attend at the town hall at a certain
time with their nomination papers. It was done to prevent the
returning officer or the acting returning officer from being
incarcerated in a certain building from 1 a.m. to 3 p.m. on
five successive days.
   Mr Moseley said that the election officer (Mr Norman de
Gruchy) told him at the town hall on October 25 that he was no more
authorised to accept nomination papers from Mr Hesketh than a
corporation dustman.
   In evidence Mr de Gruchy said he did not recall saying he was
not authorised to accept the nomination papers.
   In dismissing the summons, Mr Bancroft Turner said Mr Hesketh
and Mr Moseley had been labouring under a sense of grievance and, to
some extent, it was a legitimate grievance. The important
consideration, however, was that if a member of the public wished to
be nominated as a candidate between certain statutory dates at certain
times, his position should be carefully safeguarded.
Minister rejects corporation's high street plan
By our own Reporter
   A proposal by Southend Corporation for a second high street,
parallel to the existing one, has been rejected by the Minister of
Housing and Local Government, Dr Charles Hill.
   In a letter to the town clerk published yesterday, he says that
the fundamental defect was that the street would serve both for
shopping and as a through-traffic route and the mixture of functions
would be a hindrance to traffic and a danger to pedestrians.
   The proposal formed part of a development plan for the town
centre providing for the expansion of the shopping area, a civic
centre, an office block area, a bus station, car parks and an inner
ring road.
   A public inquiry held last year recommended that the scheme should
be rejected. The Minister, however, has said that he is prepared to
amend it to include all but the new high street and shopping area.
   A spokesman for the corporation said last night: "We have had
the full text of the inspector's report which runs to over 12 pages
...there will be a report to the next council meeting."
Mr HANNEN SWAFFER
   Mr Hannen Swaffer, aged 82, the journalist, is to enter
University College Hospital, London, today for a minor operation. He
expects to be out in two or three days if all goes well.
SOVIET MINISTER ON TESTS
"No radiation danger"
   Mr Konstantine Rudnev, a deputy chairman of the Soviet
Council of Ministers, arrived in London yesterday from Moscow at the
head of a seven-man Soviet delegation of scientific and industrial
experts. He said that it was considered that the level of
radioactivity resulting from Russian nuclear tests is not dangerous.
Russia was not proposing to supply dried milk to children as a result
of recent tests, he added.
   Mr Rudnev, who was chairman of the State Committee for Defence
Technology until last year, was asked what benefit the recent tests
brought to Soviet scientific research. He replied: "I personally am
not a specialist in nuclear weapons and I cannot add anything to the
official statements of the Soviet Government.
<END QUOTE>
FAMILY KILLED IN BUNGALOW FIRE
   A former Bristol Rovers footballer, Mr John David Hamilton,
his wife Margaret, and their three-months-old daughter, all died in a
fire in their three-room bungalow at Hall Lane, Olveston,
Gloucestershire, yesterday.
   Firemen called by a neighbour discovered the bodies buried under
wreckage. Mr Hamilton had apparently gone to the baby's bedroom and
was still clutching her. Another neighbour, Mr Edward Greaves, and
his son, who tried to get inside, were beaten back by the heat and
smoke. By the time the fire brigade arrived, he said, the bungalow
was a "roaring mass of flames."
More students from the Dominions?
By our own Reporter
   The Council for Education in the Commonwealth believes that, in
spite of the establishment of new educational institutions in
Commonwealth countries, the number of students coming to this country
will increase. "Informed opinion," the council says, puts the
increase at 1 or 15 per cent.
   The council, in a memorandum to the Robbins Committee on Higher
Education, expresses the hope that the committee will estimate the
demand accurately and allow for it in its recommendations.
   Two new organisations are envisaged. One of these might keep
questions of technical education and training for Commonwealth
students under constant review. It should concern itself with
personal cases, and help in the distribution of students.
   It might be empowered to use quota systems and other methods to
control distribution.
# 211
<15 TEXT A15>
EUROPEAN AIR FARES MAY BE RAISED
AIRLINES START SPECIAL TALKS IN PARIS TO-DAY
By Our Air Correspondent
   Air fares in Europe may be increased- possibly by amounts
between 2 and 5 per cent.- from April 1 as a result of a special
private meeting of European airlines which opens in Paris this
morning.
   The meeting has been called to discuss the need for the
increases by the International Air Transport Association- the world's
airline Parliament- in response to urgent requests from a number of
European airlines who have become alarmed at continually rising costs,
in particular the U.K. Ministry of Aviation's decision to raise
landing fees at its airports by about one-third from April 1.
   All the European carriers, including British European Airways,
will attend, and most of the long-haul operators, including British
Overseas Airways Corporation, who are not directly involved but who
fly over parts of Europe, will be sending observers.
   It is thought likely that at the meeting B.E.A. will fight
any proposal to raise fares, especially at such short notice. The
airline has booked many hundreds of thousands of passengers on the
basis of existing or planned fares levels already agreed, and it is
likely to argue that the administrative problems involved in raising
fares now would be enormous, besides cutting across B.E.A.'s
entire philosophy of getting fares down and keeping them down.
   It is understood that the prime movers behind this virtually
emergency session of the I.A.T.A. are several of the smaller
European carriers, who have in the past been strong opponents of
fares-cutting airlines, such as B.E.A.
TRAFFIC TALKS
Ending "Fares Freeze"
   The problem of these smaller airlines is not difficult to
gauge. Substantial cuts in European air fares were agreed, after long
and even bitter argument, at the I.A.T.A. traffic conference in
Honolulu in the Autumn of 1959, to become effective from April 1,
196.
   At the 196 annual traffic conference, held in Cannes last
autumn, these earlier cuts were confirmed, and a few further special
European reductions were also agreed, to become effective from April
1, this year.
   The Cannes conference also took the unprecedented decision
however, of declaring what amounted to "fares freeze" for a period
of two years, agreeing that there would be no further traffic
conference until the autumn of 1962, when fares would be fixed for the
traffic year starting April 1, 1963.
LANDING FEES UP
Effect on Costs
   The effect of this would have been to keep European air fares
at their existing levels right up to the spring of 1963, in the face
of rising costs and steadily expanding capacity as more and more jets
joined the airlines' fleets.
   In the event, these rising costs have already overtaken the
airlines. In particular, a good deal of concern has been caused in
European air transport by the decision of the Ministry of Aviation to
raise landing fees at the U.K. airports it controls by about
one-third from April 1.
   A Comet 4B, for example, will now have to pay a basic rate of
about +59 to land at London Airport if the flight originates within
Europe, and a full rate of +115 if the flight originates at a point
beyond Europe. The existing fees are about +44 basic and +84 full.
For a Viscount, the basic rate goes up from about +17 to +23, and
the full rate from about +3 to +41.
   The effect will be to put up B.E.A.'s landing fees for
U.K. domestic flights alone by +44, in a full year, and by
probably as much again on its landing fees for international flights.
   B.E.A. has already been forced to counter this by raising
many of its domestic tourist fares by 3 1/2 per cent. from April 1,
cancelling out part of the cuts in those fares it proposed to make
from that date.
FOREIGN AIRLINES
Openly Critical
   Every foreign airline flying to the U.K. is in the same
position. They are openly critical about the higher landing fees, and
it is understood that the Ministry's decision will be cited by many at
the Paris meeting as one of the principal reasons why air fares in
Europe must rise- and rise from the same date that the higher landing
fees become effective.
   In order to protect its bookings position- and its avowed
long-term aim of slashing fares- B.E.A. will probably try to
resist the strong efforts that will be made in Paris to raise fares,
but it may well be obliged to concede something.
   One possibility is that it may win a respite, with fares being
raised by small amounts at a date later in the summer or in the
autumn. Whatever the outcome, it is already clear that the Paris
meeting will be difficult, and perhaps even stormy.
+12m. Order for Boiler Consortium
By Our Industrial Correspondent
   The first boiler contract for the recently formed consortium of
John Brown Land Boilers and Foster Wheeler was announced yesterday by
the Central Electricity Generating Board.
Shared Contracts
   The consortium, which was formed last month, is to supply four
35, kilowatt boilers, at a cost of over +12m., to the Tilbury B
power station. The steam condensers are to be supplied by Richardsons
Westgarth (Hartlepool).
   There is considerable over-capacity in the boiler industry, and
it has become the C.E.G.B.'s practice to spread the large
contracts between two manufacturers. Thus the boiler order for the
new West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire was shared between
Simon-Carves and International Combustion, and, as reported last week,
a further +2m. order was awarded to Babcock and Wilcox and Yarrow
and Company.
   The new Tilbury contract will represent a much-needed addition of
new work for the two companies concerned. Lord Aberconway, chairman
of John Brown, said last year that the 1959 boiler order for the
Bankside power station was the only order received by the company from
a British generating authority for more than four years.
Service Dates
   The first two turbo-alternators are due for commissioning in
1965 and the remaining two in 1966. The generators, as reported
earlier this week, are being supplied by General Electric at a cost of
+8m.
CHAIN OF SHOE SHOPS FOR CO-OPERATIVES
From Our Own Correspondent
MANCHESTER, March 22.
   The Co-operatives are to set up a country-wide chain of shoe
stores known as Society Footwear. If the new organisation is a
success, it is likely to spread to other trades, including radio, and
electrical goods.
   Fifty-six Co-operative retail societies have already indicated
their readiness to join the English and Scottish Wholesale Societies
in the new venture which follows the independent commission's
recommendation in 1958 that the Co-ops. should establish chains of
specialist shops.
   Some of the largest retail societies are among those joining.
They include the London Society, the Royal Arsenal, the South
Suburban, Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth, Newcastle-on-Tyne and
the Co-operative Retail Service, a big amalgamation of societies.
   Each retail society will invest +5, for every shoe shop it
plans to open. This will give the chain an initial capital of over
+5,- half provided by the retail societies and half by the
C.W.S. and S.C.W.S. The shops will not stock only
C.W.S. shoes. "We realise that the customer wants a range of
choice," said a spokesman in Manchester to-day.
   Existing Co-operative shoe shops will not be affected. "We
shall start shops in places where there is the trade available and
where the societies have not been able to develop so far."
   Mr. R. Southern, chairman of the C.W.S. Board's retail
trading committee and one of four directors nominated by the wholesale
societies to act as a caretaker Board in the early stages, said
to-day: "Behind the new organisation will be the vast financial and
technical resources of the C.W.S. and the S.C.W.S. Our
shops will be as attractive and modern as any in the country."
   It is not yet known how many shops the new chain is likely to
have, but the immediate target will probably be in the region of 1.
France to Cut Some Customs Duties 5% on April 1
From Our Own Correspondent
PARIS, March 22.
   New tariff cuts of 5 per cent., to come into force on April
1, were approved by the French Council of Ministers to-day.
   Reductions apply specifically to the Six countries of the
Common Market but, in some circumstances, they will also affect
imports from outside. It is understood, however, that British and
American cars will not benefit from the reductions.
   The full details of the reductions will not be known until the
decree appears in the official journal to-morrow or even a day after.
In Anticipation
   It was stated that the decision was taken in anticipation of
the 1 per cent. reduction within the Common Market which takes
place automatically at the end of the year. It was indicated at the
same time that the cuts would apply to all countries providing that
the resulting duties did not fall below the common external tariff of
the Six.
   One of the immediate results will be to nullify the effects of
the recent revaluation of the D-Mark on the prices of German exports
in the French market. It is not quite clear exactly how the
reductions are to be applied. In the past few weeks there has been a
prolonged discussion between Ministries as to whether the cuts should
apply uniformly across the board or should vary with different
products. It is, however, reported that the tariff on textiles and
cars imported from the Common Market are <SIC> to be reduced by 1
per cent.
Checking Prices
   The Ministry of Finance said that the reductions now approved
were designed to check the upward trend in prices. This is one more
indication of the French Government's determination to sweep away
protective habits of mind.
DR. HELLER SEES SIGNS OF U.S. RECOVERY
From Our U.S. Correspondent
NEW YORK, March 22.
   The widespread belief that the recession may have reached its
turning point was endorsed to-day by President Kennedy's chief
economic adviser, Dr. Walter Heller.
   Dr. Heller said that with signs pointing to a bottoming-out of
the recession the "odds are not very strongly in favour" of a
temporary tax cut to stimulate business.
Aid for Workless
   The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers made his
remarks as Congress was preparing to send the first of Mr. Kennedy's
anti-recession Bills to the White House for signature. The Bill,
providing $99m. (+353,57,) in additional aid for unemployed
who have exhausted their benefits, followed on the heels of the Feed
Grains Bill passed earlier in the day- after two months in office
President Kennedy has now seen his first major proposals enacted into
law.
   So far his programme has survived its progress through Congress
relatively unscathed, but the most contentious matters have still to
come up for consideration. The chances of some of the latter may
suffer through a pick-up in business conditions which, Dr. Heller
said to-day, might be relatively early. But he emphasised that only a
relatively slow return to full employment could be expected.
   The Administration is striving to persuade Congress that a
turn-round in business does not obviate the need for such measures as
pension liberalisation- scheduled for April 1 by the President but so
far given no attention by Congress- and a rise in the minimum wage,
which comes up for House debate this week.
   The sluggishness of the Congressional pace is partly explained by
conservative opposition to much of the President's programme.
   But another reason is that Congress is simply not geared to cope
with the flood of proposals that has poured from the White House on a
scale only matched under President Roosevelt.
AN IRREGULAR TURN IN EQUITIES
GRATTAN WAREHOUSES' PROFITS UP 12%
By LEX
   Industrial equities developed an irregular turn yesterday.
Early marking down on the view that the rise had been a little fast
failed to bring out much stock. Price movements were finally mixed
with a slight bias to a lower level. Breweries came back further.
   Volume was substantial again and the undertone still firm.
# 23
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GEORGE McCARTHY In The City
Palmerston House, E.C.2.
London Wall 3431.
A SIXPENNY BARGAIN AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE
   AN unchanged dividend of 3 per cent. is being paid on the
Ordinary shares of Neville Developments. And thereby hangs a tale-
and a great deal of money.
   Neville Developments is a Birmingham company run by shrewd
chartered accountants. It has a number of operating subsidiaries, but
its main function is that of an issuing house specialising in
transforming private companies into public concerns.
   And highly profitable that business has proved. The company's
shares are among the cheapest ever brought to market.
   Their nominal value is 6d., but their market value is around
5s. Earlier this year they were worth more than +3 each.
   Profit figures for 1961, out this morning, will prove rather
disappointing to shareholders. They amount to +471,, which is a
drop of +312, from the year before.
   But these shareholders are in no need of sympathy. They are in
the big money. Let me briefly retrace the golden road.
MAKING MONEY
   In 1958 the then 2s. Ordinary shares are placed at 3s.
each. In September, 1959, they were divided into one sixpenny
Ordinary share and three sixpenny Deferred Ordinary shares. The
Deferred get no dividend until 2s. had been paid on the Ordinary.
   Anybody who invested +1 in these shares in 1958 would now have
666 Ordinary shares worth more than +1,3, plus 2, Deferred
shares- which have no market quotation yet but are surely going to be
valuable later.
BEER WEDDING
   EVERY expert in the beer business has been prophesying that
the trade will be concentrated into fewer and fewer units.
   Today the big Yorkshire combine, John Smith's Tadcaster Brewery,
reports that it is having merger talks with Warwick and Richardson,
the brewers of Newark, Notts.
   Already this year John Smith's has bought up Yates' Castle
Brewery.
   The 5s. shares of Warwicks and Richardsons are currently quoted
at around 22s. So the take-over terms should be interesting.
SHARES MOVE UP
   AFTER a dull start, prices moved ahead again yesterday on
the Stock Exchange.
   Business was small, but some of the gains were worth having.
Steel Company of Wales rose 1s. 3d. to 35s. 6d., Pru 'A'
17s. 6d. to +23 18s. 9d., and Threlfall's Brewery 2s. to
9s.
   In the paper section, Bowater put on 1s. 3d. at 46s. 3d.,
while Penguins rose 1 1/2d. to 2s. 4 1/2d.
   Imperial Chemicals gained a further 1s. at 61s. 6d. and
Typhoo Tea 1s. 3d. at 35s. 4 1/2d.
   In oils, Burmah, which announces a three-million-dollar share
purchase in Great Plains Development Co. of Canada, and a
4,5,-dollar option on more shares, rose 1s. to 34s. 1 1/2d.
WHERE MONEY GOES
   HOW do we invest the millions of pounds we all own as
tax-payers? A White Paper, out today, reports that expenditure on the
programmes of the nationalised industries, the public corporations and
the Post Office accounts for one half of all public investment.
   Largest absorber of capital is the electricity industry, followed
by the British Transport Commission and the Post Office.
   About two-fifths of our public money goes to local authorities,
who spend it chiefly on housing and education.
   Enormous sums are involved. Total investment this year is
estimated at +1,755million. And next year- that is, the year
ending April 1963- it might be +2million more.
RISING VALUES
   THE +1 Ordinary shares of Sopers of Harrow, Middx, the
store firm, are worth +48 1s. each. That is what Debenhams, which
already owns most of those in issue, are offering for the remaining
4,135.
Boom time- and Bank rate may be clipped
   ALL was merry and bright along the golden pavements of the
City yesterday. Everybody believes the Bank rate will be cut again
today.
   If it is not, some bold speculators will lose money. Yesterday
they were backing their fancy with hard cash, and shares enjoyed their
best day for a long time.
   The Financial Times index rose by 4.6 points, which
represents a jump of many millions in share values.
   Metal Box, the can giant, rose 2s. 4 1/2d., Imperial
Chemicals 2s., Beechams 1s. 9d., Typhoo Tea 2s.
   In banks, Westminster "B" and Lloyds both put on 1s. 9d.,
while Prudential "A" rose +1 to +24 18s. 9d.
   Courage and Barclay frothed up 1s. 6d. and Bents Brewery rose
2s. There was less excitement in the gilt-edged market. But gains
of up to 6s. 3d. were recorded.
EXPANSION
   SIR CLAVERING FISON'S report should be in the hands of his
shareholders today. But it is already out of date.
   He reports that the capital projects approved total +13,5,,
most of which is for the proposed great nitrogen plant at Milford
Haven.
   Sir Clavering told me yesterday that this figure has now become
an overstatement. The Milford Haven project has been modified. There
is now no plan to raise fresh capital, certainly not in this financial
year.
   Although group sales of this great fertiliser and chemical
combine rose by +3million last year to +54million, the profit came
down by +9, to +3,67,. Even so it was the second highest
figure in the company's history.
BOOMING BUTLIN
   MR. BILLY BUTLIN was host last year to more than 6,
paying guests. This year the figure should be larger still, because a
new camp, in Minehead, Somerset, will be open.
   The joy in the chalets certainly spreads to the shareholders, who
must regularly rise and bless the name of Butlin.
   Last June these lucky owners, having had a dividend for the year
of 8 p.c., learned that their shares were being doubled by a
capital bonus.
   Yesterday, Mr. Butlin announced that the interim dividend on
this new capital is raised to 15 p.c., and he forecast a final of
not less than 4 p.c.- a total of 55 p.c.
   He also revealed that the full figures for this year will show an
increase in revenue of +1,5,. He added that the rise in the
half-yearly dividend is small only because the Chancellor has called
for restraint.
PROFITS JUMP
   THERE is surprisingly good news this morning from Sir Ivan
Stedeford, master of mighty Tube Investments.
   He reports a jump in profits of +3million to a record
+27million. The figure, of course, includes for the first time the
profits of acquired Raleigh Industries, but we already know that these
declined last year.
   In addition, the figures now out reveal that the earnings of a
major subsidiary, British Aluminium fell last year by +1,5,.
   So the group profits make pleasant reading to shareholders.
Dividend is 14 p.c. which is the equivalent of 18 p.c. paid
last year.
   This news came after the stock market had closed. But it was
greeted with a cheer. In after-hour dealings the +1 shares jumped
5s. to 67s. 6d. No wonder.
A NEW WEAPON IS LAUNCHED IN THE LAGER WAR
   FOUR big brewers have joined in an unequal partnership to
produce and market a new lager, Harp.
   They are Guinness, Courage, Barclay and Symonds, Mitchells and
Butler and the Scottish and Newcastle Breweries.
   And it was Lord Boyd, vice-chairman of Guinness- formerly Mr.
Lennox Boyd- who in his best front-bench manner yesterday launched a
campaign at the Dorchester Hotel to make us drink Harp on a national
scale.
   Now nearly all the big brewers- Bass is a notable exception-
are committed to the struggle for the new drinking market.
BIG BUSINESS
   HUGE money is at stake. Ind Coope is spending millions to
make and market Skol. The four groups who will strum the harp have
combined assets of over +2million.
   Can these huge investments pay off? The brewers think so and
they will be right if enough of the drinking classes change their
taste.
DIVIDEND SHOCK
   SHOCK news for shareholders of Gas Purification and
Chemical, the Grundig company. They are to get no dividend this year.
Last time they were paid 35 p.c.
   No wonder! Against last year's profit of +811,, there is
this year a loss of +15,.
   When the news broke yesterday the 5s. shares dipped to 5s.
9d. But they recovered later to 6s. 7 1/2d., a fall of 1
1/2d. on the day.
MORE DOWN
   STOCK markets yesterday were still falling under the
influence of recent adverse company news.
   Wiggins Teape, papermakers, tumbled 2s. 3d. to 5s. 9d.
and Villiers Engineering, on bad results, 1s. 3d. to 6s. 9d.
   Full details of the merger lowered both Rank Organisation and
Gaumont British by a shilling.
HOLDING THE LINE
   DIRECTORS of Ault and Wiborg, the makers of printers' inks,
have continuing good news for their shareholders.
   Half year's profit to September 3 last is +14, higher at
+515, and the interim dividend of 3 1/4 p.c. is the
equivalent of 6 1/2 p.c. paid last year before the hand-out of a
1 p.c. capital bonus.
NO BONUS
   SHAREHOLDERS of Fry's (London), makers of Enox hand tools,
must do without a special bonus this year- last time it was 2 1/2
p.c.
   A final dividend of 1 p.c. brings the total distribution up
to 17 1/2 p.c. compared with 2 p.c. a year ago. Reason for
the cut is a +19, fall in profits at +54,3
WAGON TAKE-OVER
   DIRECTORS of Winget, the Kent engineers, and the Gloucester
Railway Carriage and Wagon Company have at last agreed on terms for a
merger.
   Winget will offer the following share-exchange terms to holders
of Gloucester Wagon shares: two Winget Ordinary, plus +4 19s.
nominal of Convertible loan stock, for every nine Gloucester shares.
   Last month Sir William Morgan, chairman of Gloucester Wagon, said
that when existing orders are completed the company would stop making
rolling stock for railways, and the main works would be closed down.
The merger should alter things.
HOME SEEKERS FACING BAD WINTER
   WHAT do you do nowadays if you must buy a house? One major
authority on the subject today declares: "It will be a hard winter
for the home buyer."
   The authority is the Building Societies Gazette. And I
agree with it.
   The facts are, as the Gazette points out, that when the banks
and insurance companies are not lending money all home buyers turn to
the building societies.
BARGAINS
   These, although they have large funds, haven't got anything
like enough money to meet the huge demand. And building society
managers are not keen to lend large sums on expensive houses.
   Some houses, it is true, might now fall in price, particularly
the pre-1919 houses, since the Government's lending scheme on these
has been abandoned.
   But the societies don't want to lend money on these old houses.
So in that case, too, the young home-builders will be frustrated.
   For these houses, and some others, the winter could be a bargain
time for the man with ready cash who can pay the full price. But how
many young home-makers are in that position?
   So young lovers move into a queue that goes on lengthening.
   Says the Gazette: "We wish them joy as they trudge from
society to society. We wish that Mr. Selwyn Lloyd could go with
them to listen to their interviews with building society branch
managers. Or perhaps they would prefer more cheerful company."
   Perhaps they could have the cheerful company of Mr. Lloyd's new
right-hand man, Mr. Henry Brooke, whose set-the-people-free Rent Act
brought about this remarkable situation. The tragedy is that he's
proud of it.
PROFITS SLIM
   TWO major British companies, Courtaulds, the man-made
textile giant, and Wiggins Teape, the paper-making combine, issue
ominous statements. The theme is the same: higher sales but smaller
profit.
   Cortaulds' sales for the half-year to September 3 were
+3,6, higher at +83,451, but profit in the six months
declined by nearly +2 million to +7,586,.
   And there is a small but severe shock for shareholders. Their
interim dividend is cut from 1d. to 9d.- that is, from 4 1-6
p.c. to 3 3/4 p.c.
   Final dividend last year was 5 5-6 p.c. to make 1 p.c.
for the year.
   "Present indications suggest," say the directors, "that
profits for the second half-year should be of the same order."
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Familiarity Breeds Discrimination
World of Music: By MARTIN COOPER
   AS Europe and America slowly approach a cultural unity
which must eventually shame the politicians into following suit, the
old concept of local or national reputations in the arts is being
discarded.
   Until 194 it was an observable fact that there were composers
whose music was highly prized in some countries and entirely neglected
by their neighbours, and this was explained by the difference in
national characters.
   It is not so very long ago that Brahms met with bored
incomprehension in Latin countries, that Bruckner and Mahler were
regarded as exclusively Teutonic, Faure?2 exclusively French, and
Nielsen exclusively Scandinavian, while Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians
marvelled at their own particular appreciation of Sibelius, Delius or
Vaughan Williams.
   Now, however, the wider musical exchanges made possible by
broadcasting, recording and the international tours of major
orchestras have made ignorance and prejudice inexcusable and greatly
reduced the area in which national temperament seriously limits the
appreciation of any music. What were formerly regarded as limitations
in the sensibility or intelligence of the public begin to appear
rather as flaws in the composers concerned, and the importance of
those flaws is revealed in each case by the degree to which an
international, as opposed to a merely local, public can be persuaded
to overlook them.
   Brahms is now universally accepted at an estimate well below that
current in Britain and Germany when he was placed beside Bach and
Beethoven, but enormously higher than that which once virtually
dismissed him from French and Italian programmes. Bruckner is
gradually becoming known and appreciated outside the Germanic
countries in exactly the same way, not as the equal (let alone the
superior, as some enthusiasts have suggested) of Beethoven but as a
great and unique figure in the history of the symphony.
   
   MAHLER's case is slightly different, since he has always
been neglected in his native Austria and has appealed more to
individuals (Casella, for instance, was an improbable champion) than
to national groups. The uneven value of his symphonies becomes
clearer as they are more performed, but at least three of them are now
repertory works here and in America, and the remaining six obtain
festival or occasional performances, while the songs are universally
acknowledged.
   Faure?2, once dismissed as a French trifler, is now recognised
as a minor master in the field of piano and chamber music, and
something greater as a song-writer (could anyone have prophesied even
2 years ago that the greatest German lieder-singer of the day would
record a Faure?2 song-cycle as Fischer-Dieskau has done?). Nielsen,
like Mahler, has a strong personal following outside Scandinavia and
individual works have found their place in the repertory here.
   The position of the great Anglo-Saxon favourites, on the other
hand, is quite different owing to the extraordinary instability of the
Anglo-Saxon public, which has shown itself infinitely suggestible,
knowing nothing between uncritical enthusiasm and blank
incomprehension. This lack of critical discrimination, which can be
observed in our attitude towards performers as well as composers, is
the price we pay for our provincial position on the periphery of the
great Western European musical tradition, our failure over two
centuries to sustain any strong national musical tradition of our own.
   Handel, Mendelssohn and Gounod were all in their turn
astonished- and, being human, delighted- by the adoration that their
works received in this country. In our own day Delius was quite aware
that his music was enjoying a vogue that carried no guarantee of
duration and Harold Johnson has recently revealed Sibelius's pleased
but uneasy astonishment at finding himself acclaimed in England and
America as the greatest living composer.
   Vaughan Williams's position as chief of the belated nationalist
revival in this country seemed to promise greater security for his
music; but, like Delius and Sibelius, he has not grown into a larger,
more universal musical figure since his death.
   
   SEVERAL correspondents have recently accused me of
belittling, or at best "damning with faint praise," the music of
these three composers. But any praise must seem faint after the
extravagant paeans that it has prompted in the past; and is it
belittling a composer who has been too easily proclaimed a giant to
attempt a more objective estimate? The violent opposition that these
composers have certainly aroused in some quarters does not spring from
an objective valuation of their music so much as from the fact that
their music was used as a kind of smokescreen to hide from the public
the revolutionary works of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok.
   Now that we have begun to become familiar with these, we can also
begin to discriminate in our judgments of Delius, Sibelius and Vaughan
Williams- to sift their major from their minor achievements and to
see them in perspective against the music of their great
contemporaries.
Gaining from the Right Setting
   THERE can be few sights in Northern Europe more beautiful
than the first view of the three massive towers of Bruges, giant
figures dominating a rather desolate landscape, as one approaches the
town across the flat coastal plain.
   Bruges itself, with its belfry "old and brown," still
preserves many signs of its mediaeval prosperity and it provides an
incomparable setting for the Se?2minaire Europe?2en de Musique
Ancienne.
   Some five years ago the Belgian Ministry of Education, a
department generous in its subsidies to the arts, conceived the
admirable idea of asking Stafford Cape, the musicologist and director
of Pro Musica Antiqua, to organise at the College of Europe in
Bruges a summer course in mediaeval and renaissance music.
   Every year since 1957 students from all over the Continent,
recommended by their Governments, have met in Bruges for three weeks.
The complete course takes three of these sessions, so that this year
was the second year of the second course.
   There were altogether 24 students from 14 countries, among them
three students from England and one, a lutenist, from distant Finland.
Each day they attended lectures and made music informally together.
COINCIDENCE
   By a happy chance, the course coincides every second year with
the Biennale Internationale de Poe?2sie, a gathering of poets
from all over the world, in the nearby seaside town of Knokke, and it
has now become the custom for the students of the Se?2minaire, under
Stafford Cape's direction, to give an evening concert in the Casino.
This they did last weekend, offering to a large international
audience a fascinating programme of French and Italian 14th-century
music and works of the Burgundian school. Almost every student took
part, either playing or singing, sometimes putting aside an instrument
to join in an unaccompanied motet or movement from a Mass.
   Remembering that these students had been working together for
only a few weeks, that many of them had little previous knowledge of
early music and that some were not professional musicians, one could
only marvel at the progress they had made, not only in individual
performance but in a general musical understanding of a period that
often seems remote and inaccessible.
   In Dufay's "La belle se siet," for example, two sopranos,
one from France, the other from England, sang easily and with obvious
enjoyment in old French, as though they had been preparing the piece
for months instead of weeks. Much of the music performed was of great
contrapuntal complexity and profound religious feeling; that they were
able to bring to it such style and insight after working together for
so short a time was proof both of the students' devotion and of the
enlightened direction of Mr. Stafford Cape.
   JOHN LADE
The Only Real Guide to Play-going
About the Theatre: By W. A. DARLINGTON
   PEOPLE quite often write to ask me to choose plays for
them, and it is quite natural that they should. Here I am at their
service, and I do my best to comply. But I sometimes wonder if they
realise how difficult the task is. They are asking me to look at
plays through their eyes, when my whole working life is spent
examining them through my own.
   It is like being made to read through somebody else's spectacles.
   All valid criticism is informed personal opinion. That is a
truism which will be questioned hardly anywhere, except in some
quarters in America, where the collective opinion of the uninformed
man in the street is thought to have a mystic significance.
   My old friend and colleague, Campbell Dixon, used to tell of a
conversation he had with a New York film-critic, a lady, who heard
with an air of shocked incredulity that what he offered his public was
his own private and unsupported opinions. "But surely," he said to
her, "that's what you do, isn't it?"
   "Certainly not."
   "Then what do you do?"
   "I stand in the foyer and listen to what people are saying."
   Well, I'm not of this lady's persuasion. My opinions, such as
they are, are my own, formed in accordance with my own needs and
beliefs, my own experience. Nobody is likely, or even encouraged, to
agree with the opinions unless he has the same needs and beliefs. It
follows that a good number of the people who write to me about the
plays they are to see are appealing to one whose tastes and views they
do not share.
   To take the simplest example possible, I get letters asking me to
select plays "suitable for a family outing" or "suitable for
children". If I were to answer this according to my own beliefs, I
should probably say, ~"Take your family (or your children) to
anything you think won't bore them"; but it would be the wrong kind
of answer to anyone who thinks "suitability" all that important.
Common Sense
   It is, to me, a matter of plain common sense. At any given
moment there are sure to be plays running in London to which the label
"for adults only" might with propriety be fixed. An actual label
is not necessary, because everybody knows which these plays are, or
can easily find out; and nobody in his senses would dream of taking a
child or an innocent maiden aunt (should such exist) to one of them.
Outside this category there are many plays of a mild degree of
unsuitability; and to these I personally should not hesitate to take
any member of my family.
   When I was a young schoolboy I used to sneak off to the local
dust-hole week by week, and saw many plays of which my parents, if
consulted, might not have approved; and they never did me a mite of
harm. Later, when I myself was a parent, I exercised only the
lightest of censorship on my children's play-going, and they took no
harm either. How, then, can I help other people to impose a ban in
which I do not believe?
   Anyway, once you begin to look at the problem, there is almost
nothing you can take a child to. Shakespeare is impossible, of
course- all those frank references to sex. And pantomime is worse.
Peter Pan?- very little sex there. True, but there are other
horrors. I remember sitting behind a small boy who bounced in his
chair with glee at the opening scene- the dog-nurse, the flying
lesson. But he fell oddly silent when the curtain rose, and when the
scene began to fill with wolves and Red Indians, pirates and
crocodiles he got off his seat, turned his back to the stage, and-
except for occasional terrified glances over his shoulder- spent the
rest of the act gazing longingly over my right shoulder at the
illuminated word EXIT.
   It's just as difficult with adults. What can one do when asked
to recommend a play "suitable" for a party of 3 people (sex, age
and tastes all unspecified) except play safe and recommend "My Fair
Lady" or "The Mouse-Trap"?
   To my mind, people do much better picking their own
entertainments, even at random. I know of a Women's Institute which,
on the strength of having enjoyed Sandy Wilson's pure "Boy Friend,"
went off blithely on an outing to Brighton to see his
hyper-sophisticated "Valmouth."
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Advise and condense
by W. J. Weatherby
   AT a recent Washington party a garrulous American egghead
tried to explain the difference between the Senate and the House of
Representatives to confused foreign visitors. But the more he tried
the more confused his audience looked- and at last, too deep into
references to populations, finance, and presidential recommendations,
he began to sound confused himself.
   It was like a symbolical explanation of why so many outsiders
fail to understand American politics and why- to them- the
presidential leadership sometimes looks less decisive than it really
is. One of the best popular accounts of the complex system of checks
and balances in operation in Washington is Allen Drury's recent best
seller, "Advise and Consent," and even that was too involved and
tortuous for some foreign readers. The decision then to make a
massive Hollywood production of Mr Drury's novel is like a challenge
to succeed where so many others have failed, for to be a success-
artistically as well as financially- the film will have to be true to
the reality of Washington and yet be simple enough for international
audiences to understand.
   As the director, Otto Preminger, began to film recently in
Washington, our old friends Reality and Illusion were busy providing
some choice examples of their relationship in film terms. They met
head-on at one party when an actor playing a senator learnt that the
stranger he was chatting with was a real senator. The Hollywood
"senator" had a noble looking image- as public relations prose
sometimes puts it- and the gracious manners of an old plantation
patriarch, whereas the real senator had the kind of untypical and
unsaleable personality that might belong to a shopkeeper or a
millionaire and would not get heroic film billing anywhere outside a
home movie. The "senator" looked too right, almost as the outsider
might have expected him to look, whereas the real one had an
unexpectedness about him, as if he could not possibly be cast as
anyone but himself.
   Much of the gap between Illusion and Reality is caused by the
problem of time. Mr Drury's President and senators who reveal
themselves gradually through 76 pages (at least in the American
paperback edition) have had to be transformed into Mr Preminger's
Franchot Tone, Don Murray, Lew Ayres, and the rest of an experienced
team who can make the most of their split-second timing to create
their characters in a matter of minutes. The real test of the film in
the end will be how much has had to be oversimplified or glossed over
to keep up with the clock.
   Mr Drury chose a comparatively melodramatic incident- the
selection of a controversial Secretary of State and the conflict
between the White House and much of the Senate over it- and threw in
a few skeletons in the senatorial cupboards to show off when the
reader got too bogged down in the political manoeuvres. Mr Drury, a
former political reporter in Washington for the "New York Times,"
is a great believer in the moderates' way in politics, and his book in
one way is a tribute to his belief, in that it was moderate enough in
tone to be fair even to extremists like the arch conservative from the
South, Seab Cooley. Charles Laughton, who still has a Yorkshire ring
to his voice, described his preparation for playing Cooley as "an
Eliza Doolittle job." He studied the right accent with a phonetics
expert and did some extra homework in conversation with some real
senators from the South. In the only scene I saw him play, he made
his point with lightning professional speed and also managed a
suggestion of an iceberg of character waiting to be revealed under the
surface. This was clearly how to make the most of the time and how
best to try to bridge the old Reality-Illusion gap.
   Whether or not Mr Drury's moderate tone will be preserved in
the speed-up will depend very much on Mr Preminger, and if he loses
it, the ill-informed abroad may simply become the misinformed, with
Washington seeming a melodramatic circus rather than the complex
meeting-place of all the States, the focus of a nation's myriad
viewpoints. Mr Preminger's deep Austrian roots may help him there
for although now an American citizen, he may see Washington with both
an experienced eye and an objective one, which will enable him to find
its essence without getting lost in detail or disastrously
overglossing. His record suggests he is a believer in best-sellers as
a basis for a film, and a man who knows him suggests this is because
he usually becomes excited about one of the characters. This is
probably the former actor coming out in him, and certainly on the set
he often gives the impression of a caged actor on the wrong side of
the camera yearning to give a performance himself. This may explain
why sometimes his films let personality do the work of imagination and
perhaps why they are generally so well cast. In "Advise and
Consent," for example, he has chosen a group of mature film actors-
men like Ayres, Tone, Fonda, Pidgeon, not to mention Laughton- who
could act most of the younger stars today off the screen.
   The Preminger name seemed to be unlocking most doors in
Washington. How refreshing then it was for Reality to assert itself
in the person of a little tailor. One of Mr Preminger's assistants
went along to his shop to hire some tuxedos for the big banquet scene
and assumed he- or rather Mr Preminger- would naturally be given
credit. The Preminger name worked no miracles with the little man (he
was only little physically) and he threw in for good measure that he
would need cash even if the President of the United States came in to
hire a tuxedo. His image wasn't smooth or glossy or predictable, but,
oh, my goodness, he was alive. If only all those foreign outsiders
could grasp he is more typical of Americans than any of the
politicians (even President Kennedy) or any of the film stars (even
"President" Tone), perhaps Reality would win after all.
FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI
by Gareth Lloyd Evans
   FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI, whose explosive production of "Romeo
and Juliet" shook the Old Vic out of its Shakespearean sloth, is now
at Stratford on Avon setting the fuses for "Othello," which opens
next week. Yet, in spite of what we saw at the Old Vic, our
expectations for "Othello," and his very name (like a hissing
firework) he only occasionally fulfils prognostications of a mercurial
Italian. Without his long leather black jacket (redolent of
Florentine back-street conspiracy) he could be mistaken for a tired
young English director uniformed in the easy darkness of black slacks,
black sneakers, and dull pullover. His accent is slight, his voice
even-toned, his gestures spare. The eyes are restless, but sometimes
pause on you with disconcerting acuteness. He slips into first
acquaintance easily, and smokes Salems like a furnace.
   From his "Romeo and Juliet" one might expect a vivid staccato
modern with the customary irreverence for tradition, but the great
surprise is his imaginative, eloquent "feel" for historical
process, and his sense of Western civilisation as an entity. He seems
to feel his own presence in England now as a reflection of an
historical logic which made sixteenth-century England the natural heir
of the Florentine renaissance- this is not conceit, but an implied
affirmation of the staying power of cultural unity. Florence was the
starting-point of Western culture, and for him personally. He studied
architecture there and began his theatre work directing opera in
Siena. He mentions other Italian cities ~("The Romans were the
whores of Western civilisation") but Florence penetrates his
conversation.
   
   IT is easy, say, for a Florentine to accept foreigners, but
they do not usually see the reality behind the fac?6ade of Tuscan
easy-going optimism. It hides a preoccupation with death, a
questioning of what life means, and a practical attitude towards art.
For Zeffirelli, the genius of the Florentine renaissance lies in its
workmanship- "The Tuscans do not believe in fairy tales."
Shakespeare, he knows, could never have been in Italy, or he would
have realised all this. "Romeo and Juliet" is very un-Italian-
"There are many English girls like Juliet. An Italian girl would
never dare to do what she did- they are too practical." But "As
You Like It" is very Florentine, and full of a workmanlike
questioning. As he said this he gouged a geometrical pattern on the
posh tablecloth of the theatre restaurant. He believes himself to be
a typical Florentine.
   A limited stake in the Bard might be inferred from the fact that
he has directed, in England, two of Shakespeare's "Mediterranean"
plays. He firmly repudiates this. He will probably direct
"Hamlet" soon. This should be an event worth waiting for. His
approach to a play is to discover "one simple idea, the creative
idea, like a poet." The idea for "Romeo and Juliet" was the
irresponsibility of young love pushed into tragedy by Shakespeare.
"Othello" is the "sentimental" tragedy of a cultivated, brave
man who comes to love too late, and does not know what to do with it.
"It is a tragedy not to know what to do with love."
Zeffirelli does not mention the colour of Othello's skin, but his
knife traced another geometrical pattern. He gets an idea, and must
stick to it. In the face of this, I tempted disaster by raising the
bogy of cutting Shakespeare, and scholarly interpretation. The former
he shrugged away, and I assumed that, for him, the "idea" justifies
the means. With the latter he toyed for an instant, then, his smile
tightening into patience, he gave the benefice of the preservation of
a tradition to the scholar.
   
   IN spite of his apparently complete immersion in theatre,
there is a paradox in his character. He seems unhappy inside the core
of his response to all that art means in terms of beauty, vitality,
and work. He complained that he is always surrounded by theatre
people, but one suspects that he would wither away if taken away for
too long. It may be that his ubiquitous talent (he supervises costume
down to the last buttonhole) exhausts him. It may be that he is
typically Florentine, fighting death along the theatre's shore-line of
make-believe. One's guess is that the war (he was a partisan) left
him immeasurably fearful of what man can do to man.
   He spoke bitterly of Germany. The only Brecht play he would
consider directing is "Mother Courage." "Alienation" is
contrary to all his beliefs about art and men, but there is more to it
than this. "Brecht is the Wagner of modern Germany. Germany has
done terrible things to the soul of man." Perhaps it is
sympathetic fear which prompts his friendliness to other people. He
is at home with scene-shifters, ASMs, and strangers who stop to
ask about his high-powered sports car. He thinks of a theatre in
terms of a family. In so far as he can be content, he is so in the
British Theatre. "You have the best theatre in the world, the best
actors, the best audiences." Under pressure he admits some
Stratford audiences seemed dead, but ~"English audiences are the
best... English people live in a pattern, and theatre-going is part
of that pattern." He admires English actors for their discipline,
"but they have weaknesses." What they were he did not say,
except obscurely to declare that you cannot separate the artistic and
personal life.
   When the conversation turned away from Shakespeare, from the
unequivocally great in the art or the intensely human, Zeffirelli's
mind seemed to drop several degrees in temperature. Yes, he knew
about Wesker and Delaney; yes, they seemed powerful, but all report.
The trouble was that they were too late, old-fashioned. All this
naturalism, he says, has been done such a long time ago in France and
elsewhere. But, implying and mitigating their weakness in one breath,
he added that perhaps at the beginning of any movement you had to have
"roughness, where things have to be hacked out, until everything
runs smoothly."
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THE WELL-BRED SNEERS THAT WOULD STIFLE TALENT...
by BERNARD LEVIN
   LONG, long ago, Mr. Noel Coward wrote an autobiography
called "Present Indicative."
   In Part Five he is invited to a house-party, where he meets some
of the bright young people of the time.
   'Their shirts and flannels were yellow and well used against
which mine seemed too newly white, too immaculately moulded from
musical comedy. Their socks, thick and carelessly wrinkled round
their ankles, so unlike mine of too thin silk, caught up by intricate
suspenders.
   Their conversation, too, struck a traditional note in my ears. I
seemed to know what they were going to say long before they said it.
I sensed in their fledgling jokes and light, unsubtle badinage a
certain quality of youthfulness that I had never known. And although
I was the same age, if not younger than many of them, I felt suddenly
old, over-experienced and quite definitely out of the picture.'
No change
   THAT was in 1922, and Mr. Coward hasn't changed a bit. For
this last couple of weeks he has been shooting off his predictably
pursed mouth on the British theatre of today, in the Sunday Times.
   And Mr. Coward is still obsessed by the immensely important
fact that other people do not dress exactly as he does.
   He still feels old and over-experienced. He still has the air of
resentful superiority to more successful people. And he is still
terribly, terribly, definitely out of the picture.
   In fact, the only advance- and that a slight one- is that he
seems to have stopped writing sentences with no verbs in them.
   Now a man who was too old in 1922 can hardly be expected to have
much idea of what is going on in 1961. And from Mr. Coward's
petulant, bewildered, inaccurate, and shabby attack on the playwrights
and players of today anyone foolish enough to trust him as a guide to
the current theatrical scene would get a quite lunatic idea of what
was going on in it.
Success
   THEY would not learn, for instance, that our stages are
fuller of good stuff, and our auditoriums of enthusiastic audiences,
than for many years.
   They would have no idea that the current British theatrical
renaissance is having an effect far beyond the West End of London, so
that Broadway is heavily influenced by the highly successful plays of
today that it has imported from Britain.
   They would never discover that our writers and players are
exciting as well as excited, that they speak in tones of passion and
belief and deep, proud faith. They would not be told that the
technical accomplishment displayed by some of these members of our New
Wave is astonishing in its range and completeness.
   Above all, they would never, never know that the New Wave- and
it is the one thing that Mr. Coward can no more forgive than he can
understand- is supremely successful, or that his own latest offering
to Britain's ungrateful stage ("Waiting in the Wings") is being
withdrawn shortly, having failed, as they say in the profession, to
attract an audience.
So nice
   YET it is Mr. Coward- too old nearly 4 years ago, mark
you- who offers himself as the man to lead the poor, stumbling
audiences out of the theatrical dark and into the bright, brave
noonday where it is always perfect anyone-for-tennis weather, and
where nothing as vulgar and squalid as a stove is ever mentioned, but
where lots of nice, jolly, fun-giving adultery- to the immense,
brittle amusement of The Master- is.
   I think it is time that the case for the British theatre of today
was made, and made loud and clear. Hitherto it has had nothing but
its talent and its success to speak for it against the well-bred
sneers (getting a little tight around the jaw-muscles by now) of those
whom the New Wave has been washing higher and drier up the beach.
   It is ridiculous, to begin with, to speak in the same breath of
such vastly diverse talents and outlooks as those of John Osborne,
Robert Bolt, Arnold Wesker, John Mortimer, Shelagh Delaney, John
Arden, N. F. Simpson, Harold Pinter, Lionel Bart, Peter Shaffer,
Willis Hall. They write about a gigantic range of different people,
classes, and situations.
   Mr. Bolt in "A Man for All Seasons," took us to the Court of
Henry =8, and in "The Tiger and the Horse" to an Oxford college.
   In the one, a dark, rich portrait of a saint wrestling with his
conscience; in the other, an agonisingly brilliant study of a half-man
who grows whole under the impact of tragedy.
Exquisite
   MR. WESKER, in his exquisite trilogy, ranges from the
pre-war East End of London to the post-war Norfolk, from the
semi-literate old Jewish immigrants to the intense and musical young
Ronnie, from the dying of the old to the rebirth of the young.
   Mr. Shaffer, in his mercilessly observed "Five Finger
Exercise," and Mr. Mortimer, in his "The Wrong Side of the
Park," explored the hearts of characters middle-class enough to
satisfy even Mr. Coward.
   From Mr. Mortimer and Mr. Simpson we have come to expect wit,
style and elegance- three things that the false prophets of decay try
to tell us have disappeared from our stages. And Mr. Simpson's
lunatic logic has a freshness, a lightness about it that would make
"Waiting in the Wings" seem bad even if it weren't.
   From Miss Delaney we get the authentic accents of the young; and
from Mr. Bart we get a large number of very good tunes, which some
more traditional quarters have found hard to come by lately. In
short, from them all we get a huge, bursting cornucopia of every kind
of writing, every kind of plot, every kind of setting, every kind of
character.
Belief
   AND to all this theatrical richness, the poor darling dodos
can only squeak "kitchen sink" and "dustbin" drama. In fact,
only one play in the last few years has had a dustbin in it, and that
was by an Irishman who writes in French. Only one has a kitchen sink
in it, and that one- Mr. Wesker's- was the one which above all
proclaimed its faith in beauty, goodness, and truth, and turned
savagely to rend squalor and those who perpetuate it.
   Which brings me to what I think is the clue- the common factor
shared by many of our younger playwrights, and the element which above
all produces uncomprehending rage in Mr. Coward.
   In a single word, it is Belief.
Poets without Appointments
by PETER CHAMBERS
   AT the top of 14 uncarpeted stairs in a Notting Hill mews
lives Christopher Logue, poet. "Come up and have a drink," he
yelled out of the window. I went up and lay down.
   This was obligatory, because Logue owns one typewriter, 5
books, and almost no furniture. I lay on the bed. Logue lay on the
floor. The only chair in the room was occupied by Burns Singer, a
Scottish poet who chain-smoked cigarettes made out of loose tobacco,
and remarked from time to time: "Do 2ye not find the whisky in
London terrible?"
   Nobody seems to care about any modern poet nowadays except John
Betjeman, who writes agreeably in praise of buttered toast and railway
stations, and became a best seller almost By Appointment after
Princess Margaret said she liked his verse.
   But what are the other fellows up to? How do they live? I got
some interesting answers from Logue and Singer, and later from an
American, Theodore Roethke, who has actually made poetry pay.
Money
   CHRISTOPHER LOGUE is a dark, narrow, energetic man of 34. If
he were an actor, I would type-cast him as Shakespeare's Iago.
   He has published half a dozen books of poetry and achieved a
wider reputation when he wrote the lyrics for the Royal Court Theatre
musical "The Lily-White Boys."
   "I actually made quite good money then," said Logue. "For
the eight weeks the show ran I earned +85 a week. But that
represented six months' work, don't forget. Average it out and you
see I was really getting less than a waiter."
Noisy
   A CURRENT book of poetry, "Songs," has earned Logue +1.
He was paid exactly that for one article in the American teenage
magazine Mademoiselle.
   Christopher Logue writes fierce, noisy poems about war, love, and
Logue. Son of a Southampton civil servant, he was brought up by
Jesuits.
   "I now believe in the total abolition of private property," he
said.
   He got up off the floor, rattled some coal into the stove, and
lay down again.
   A gleam of gold shone in the front teeth of Burns Singer as he
lit his fifth home-made cigarette. He said: "Of course, Christopher
believes that propaganda and politics are part of poetry.
   "For me, it's different. It's almost like psychoanalysis. I'll
do no work for weeks and then write solidly for 12 hours. I think
what I'm really seeking all the time is the source of Original Sin in
myself."
   Logue leaped to his feet at this heresy and shouted: "Original
Sin! What are you talking about?"
   Logue looks like a man who would punch anybody on the nose. But
then who could punch Burns Singer? A mass of gold hair frames his
face, he has the air of a spiritualised Viking whom the bigger men
left at home when they set out in their long-prowed ships to raid
England.
Flames
   "JIMMY" to his friends, Burns Singer is actually the son
of a Glaswegian mother and a Jewish salesman from Manchester. I count
him the most inflammable poet on the English scene, because the way he
showers burning tobacco strands on his flossy gold beard he is bound
to go up in flames one day.
   In love, he wrote:-
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   I cannot see
   Smiles in another.
   And every tear
   I brush aside
   I find you hidden within it
   like a bride
<END QUOTE>
   He wrote that for Marie, the woman he made his bride five years
ago. She is a New York-born Negress with a Harley-street practice in
psychotherapy.
   Dreamers only part of the time, poets show an acute interest in
money, mainly because of the difficulty they have in laying their
hands on it.
   Most magazines pay +1 1s. for a short poem, and the rates at
the B.B.C. go down to 1d. a line for longer broadcast works.
Poets write reviews and do journalism to make a living.
   "I'm never sloppy about money," said Christopher Logue in a
raging voice. "I want a car. I want to eat out in restaurants. You
know who I'd like to be? I'd like to be president of U.S.
Steel!"
   Burns Singer, once a fish-chasing zoologist at Aberdeen Marine
Laboratory, said: "I'd like to be Spyros K. Skouras. I just fancy
the glamour of working in films."
Professor
   THE world does not owe poets a living, but it pays more than
a modest competence to Theodore Roethke (pronounced 5ret-key), a
great shambling American poet big as a house and earning enough money
to live in one in smart Belgravia during his London visit.
   Dwarfing a glass of sherry with his big hand, 52-year-old Roethke
told me: "My great year was 1958, when I picked up +1, in
various prizes, including an award from the Ford Foundation.
   "As a working Professor of English at the University of
Washington, Seattle, I teach poetry for +4,5 a year."
   But the amount he gets by actually writing poetry and getting it
published is only about +1, a year.
Journey
   ROETHKE'S best man when he married, was W. H. Auden, who
sang his songs for more than sixpence as the best-known British poet
of the 193s. "But even Auden can't make a living just writing
poetry," said Roethke. "I doubt if anybody does, except maybe
Robert Frost."
   Let's face it, poems will never be as popular as football
coupons, and what America offers is just bigger subsidies.
   As characters, poets range from rhyming layabouts to saintly
travellers who have embarked on the greatest journey of all: the
journey into the mind and spirit of man.
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ARMY RESERVE TO BE STRENGTHENED
Statement to M.P.s This Week:
B.A.O.R. Will Get Key Men
SMALL CALL-UP POSSIBLE
BY OUR MILITARY REPORTER
   PLANS for strengthening Britain's strategic reserve
division will be announced by Mr Watkinson, Minister of Defence, in
the Commons this week. Some units have been recently redeployed to
form a division for service in Germany should the situation there
continue to deteriorate.
   No indication has been given of what this increase will be, or
where the troops will be found. While conscription can be ruled out,
it may be that some limited numbers of reserve units may be affected.
Steps have been taken to meet some key deficiencies in B.A.O.R.
by transferring about 1 ancillary troops from overseas.
   As B.A.O.R. is short of specialists it is likely that the
strategic reserve division in Britain is also deficient, and to bring
it to full strength it is unlikely that further depletion of overseas
garrisons can be countenanced.
AMERICAN CRITICISM
   How far Britain's moves to strengthen her reserves will meet
American criticism remains to be seen. But it is unlikely that
America's plan for a three-stage defence structure will be followed.
   Under this plan Washington aims to meet an initial enemy
conventional onslaught with conventional weapons. If these fail
tactical nuclear weapons will be used, and finally strategic nuclear
weapons.
   But the British defence policy, as laid down in the 1957 Sandys
Plan, is showing signs of wobbling. Defence spokesmen now qualify the
statement that nuclear retaliation would be used in any major Russian
aggression by saying that the use of nuclear weapons would depend on
the circumstances, strength and area of the attack.
   Privately, some defence officials go even further and say that
the original Sandys policy is "dead as a dodo."
DE GAULLE WILL SEE PREMIER ON BERLIN
BY GORDON BROOK-SHEPHERD
Sunday Telegraph Diplomatic Correspondent
   PRESIDENT and Madame de Gaulle will pay a private visit to
Britain from Nov. 24 to 26 as guests of Mr Macmillan and his wife.
A French statement on the visit said both leaders felt the time had
come for "a frank exchange of views on the international situation
and especially about the tactics to be adopted towards easing tension
with Russia."
   It is believed in London that nearly all the weekend visit will
be devoted to what one British official described as "quiet and
intense business talks."
   I understand the main purpose of the meeting will be to plot an
agreed Western approach to the Berlin and German issues. At present
the West is moving forward in a sort of ragged Indian file with the
French almost out of contact in the rear.
Concession Made
   In the last few days General de Gaulle is reported to have won
what amounts to an important concession from his allies. A major
policy switch has been tentatively agreed between the British,
Americans and West Germans which partly reflects the French line of
remaining "tough" with Mr Khruschev.
   It is understood that the British and American envoys in Moscow
have been empowered if necessary to seek an emergency standstill
agreement with the Russians on the Berlin situation alone as a first
step to broader negotiations. This could be informal in the sense
that no document need be signed.
Short-term Basis
   It could be reached at ambassadorial level, taking the form of
an East-West declaration re-affirming Allied rights and
responsibilities in Berlin, if only on a short-term basis. The
purpose would be to remove the fuse from the Berlin bomb.
   This approach would represent a complete change of strategy from
that favoured in the talks with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr.
Gromyko, less than a month ago. Then the Anglo-American emphasis was
on seeking a broader agenda to avoid a debate on the vulnerable
question of Berlin alone.
   French and West German fears that such a broader agenda would
involve the West in dangerous concessions have contributed to the
latest change. So has the mounting tension in Berlin.
   The West now seems to have adopted Mr. Khruschev's famous
"salami" tactics in trying to solve the problem slice by slice. If
a short term stabilisation agreement can be reached on Berlin in the
next few weeks the problem of increasing contacts between East and
West Germany could be tackled as a separate step.
   The final phase would be a formal top level agreement.
   The possibility is not ruled out in London that Mr. Khruschev
may try to exploit President Kennedy's impatience with Western
differences of opinion. This he would do by trying to bargain direct
with Washington.
Private Contacts
   As part of this campaign an invitation may well be sent to the
American Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Rusk, to visit Moscow.
   The Russians are thought to have been encouraged along these
lines by the progress made in New York towards solving the United
Nations crisis through repeated private contacts between the Soviet
and American chief delegates there, Mr. Zorin and Mr. Stevenson.
RUSSIA AND CHINA IN STRUGGLE FOR AFRICA
BY OUR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
   NEW evidence has reached London of the struggle between the
Russians and the Chinese to dominate the mind of Africa. It
illustrates that global rivalry between Peking and Moscow, of which
the current dispute over Albania is only the symbol.
   In at least one of the new African states, Somalia, the two
Communist powers have begun to clash head-on. The Russians, who have
built up a huge Embassy with a staff of nearly 3 in Mogadishu, the
capital, support the established Government.
   The Chinese operate through a smaller mission, but have a New
China News Agency in addition, whereas the Russians have no Tass
representation. The Chinese policy is one of outright support for the
dissident opposition groups, including the extremist Pan-Somali
Movement.
   This aims at uniting all Somalis, including those in neighbouring
Kenya and Ethiopia, under one rule.
   Chinese support takes the form of secret money subsidies, and the
inviting of Somali dissidents to Peking. Here some of them are said
to have been given guerrilla training, on the pattern recently
reported for candidates from the Cameroun Republic.
Moscow Concern
   Russian disavowal of the Pan-Somalis is partly based on
Moscow's concern for good relations with Ethiopia, where a major
Soviet effort is being made. But the issue is also a basic
ideological one.
   Throughout Africa, the Chinese are putting forward their militant
brand of Communism as the true model for the new black states and are
openly decrying the more moderate Soviet line.
   To support this campaign, the Chinese have developed a radio
propaganda barrage nearly twice as heavy as the Russian effort.
Peking Radio now has a total output of 91 hours a week broadcasting
to Africa. This is far more than any other station in the world and
compares with the Soviet Union's tally of 54 1/2 hours a week.
   Seven different Chinese agencies have been identified running
operations inside Africa itself. All have been founded in the last 18
months and three sprang into life this year.
The Difference
   They operate along unorthodox but highly effective lines.
Whereas the Russians keep mainly to standard cultural missions and
student training schemes, the Chinese get down to jungle roots.
   They are covering the dark continent with troupes of acrobats,
dancers and jugglers who travel from village to village. Needless to
say the jugglers start spinning Marxist slogans as soon as they have
finished their advertised act.
   The Somali pattern of more or less open conflict is repeated in
Guinea. The other main centres of Chinese penetration are the Cote
d'Ivoire, Zanzibar and Mozambique.
   A major Chinese agitation is predicted by Western observers soon
among the black population of South Africa. This would give Peking a
hold on the tip of the continent, as well as at strategic points up
both the East and the West coasts.
Soviet Tanks "Out-Faced" by Americans
From REGINALD PECK
Sunday Telegraph Special Correspondent
BERLIN, Saturday.
   THE withdrawal of Russian and American tanks from the
Friedrichstrasse crossing point today brought some relaxation of
tension in Berlin. But the opposing tanks remained within a mile of
each other.
   First to back down in the war of nerves were the Russians, and as
their T-34 tanks rumbled away an American official was heard to say:
"We seem to have faced the Russian Ivan." About 9 minutes later
the 1 American tanks retired.
   The Americans have now stated that they intend for the time being
to give up their practice of enforcing their right of uncontrolled
access to East Berlin by sending officials through the
Friedrichstrasse checkpoint with armed escorts. They say, "our point
has now been made."
U.S. plane's defiance
   Less than half an hour after the American tanks had withdrawn,
a United States Air Force C-47 defied a Russian protest against
overflying East Berlin. It circled for about ten minutes at about 6
feet over an area where 4 Russian tanks were parked.
   Col. Soloviev, the Russian Commandant in Berlin last night sent
two letters to the American Commandant, one of which protested against
United States helicopters flying over East Berlin. The American
mission in Berlin today said their planes have every right to fly over
all of the city.
   Up to this morning it had seemed that the dangerous situation
that built up suddenly at dusk last night when the Russian tanks
arrived might continue indefinitely. Angry West Berliners twice
mobbed Russian cars, booing and kicking the vehicles.
   Before the departure of the Russian tanks the East German
Communists staged a propaganda demonstration by sending youths and
girls to present the crews with flowers and chocolates. Earlier, West
Berlin civilians had taken flowers to the crews of the two foremost
American tanks.
   It had been reported that more Russian tanks have reached East
Berlin. I drove through the Eastern sector but saw nothing more than
military jeeps outside the ruins of the Prinzenpalais in Unter den
Linden, where the first Russian tanks were based 48 hours ago.
   At "checkpoint Charlie" my passport was examined by Communist
guards and I was asked if I was carrying East German money, coffee or
cocoa. The only civilian in sight was a grey-haired woman who said
she had lost her way but gave the impression she had hoped to slip
through to the West.
MR. BROWN "WORRIED" BY B.A.O.R.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH REPORTER
   MR. GEORGE BROWN, the Labour Party's spokesman on
defence, arrived at London Airport yesterday after a four-day
inspection of the British Army of the Rhine. He said he was more
worried after his visit than before.
   Although no units were dangerously undermanned, the Army was a
few thousand short of its peacetime establishment and well below the
strength that would be needed in war. There was a particular shortage
of men in medical units.
   In equipment there was a shortage of radios, some arms and
armoured personnel carriers.
   Britain's commitment in Europe should be given top priority.
Other overseas commitments, particularly in the Far East, should be
re-examined to see if such large numbers of men need be tied down.
Conscription was not the answer to the need for men.
   Asked if Britain was capable of fulfilling its role in the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation, he replied: "We are as well able to do
it as anyone else.
   "The men are well trained and well deployed. But it is the role
of the whole N.A.T.O. army that worries me and our role in that.
   "While I am clear myself on what that role is, I am not sure
whether the politicians' statements are clear to the military generals
and to Air Force chiefs."
DORNIERS FOR NEW KATANGA AIR FORCE
FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
ELIZABETHVILLE, SATURDAY.
   FIVE twin-engined German Dorniers for the new Air Force
which President Tshombe is forming, have been delivered to
Elizabethville. They are the first of nearly 5 planes which have
been ordered to strengthen Katanga's defences.
   I flew here from Munich in one of the planes after meeting the
pilots, two British, one Belgian and two French.
# 21
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BOMBERS RACING TO KUWAIT
More troops ready to go
NEWS OF THE WORLD DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
   MORE British troops, aircraft and warships are racing to
Kuwait this morning from Germany, Cyprus, Kenya and even the Far East.
The British military authorities describe the operation as "a very
rapid build-up."
   In New York the Security Council is meeting at 11 a.m.
today at the special request of both Britain and Kuwait. And in
Washington the State Department of the United States has endorsed
Britain's show of force, expressing the hope that it will help to
assure the preservation of peace.
   In London yesterday, as the first British troops and aircraft
went in and Royal Navy warships circled in the off-shore Gulf
heat-haze Mr. Macmillan called an emergency meeting of Cabinet
Ministers and Service Chiefs. Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the
Opposition, went to Admiralty House to hear the inside story of the
situation from the Premier.
   Then last night at Bowood, Calne, Wilts, the Premier,
speaking to the Wessex area Conservative Rally, explained what the
Government is doing about the threat by Premier Kassem of Iraq to
annexe Kuwait- and why.
   "I still trust that threats against Kuwait are no more than
words and that the Government of Iraq will refrain from any aggressive
action," he said.
   But he added, "We must take no risk and in view of the language
that is being used and the indications of a military build-up which
may threaten Kuwait, we have thought it right to respond to the urgent
and formal request which the ruler has made to us that we should give
him some protectionary strength."
TANKS
   Mr. Gaitskell, speaking at Bristol, said he could not see how
Britain could have refused to help Kuwait. But our troops should not
stay there a day longer than necessary. The United Nations should be
asked to put in a force to replace them as soon as possible.
   The first British troops in, about 6 Royal Marines of 42
Commando and 15 men of the Third Dragoon Guards with 14 Centurion
tanks, went ashore at Kuwait in a shade temperature of 12 degrees.
   The Marines had come racing up the searingly hot Persian Gulf
in the Royal Navy carrier Bulwark, which set out from Karachi on
Thursday.
   And the Dragoon Guards were put ashore from the tank landing
ship Striker, which arrived with an amphibious warfare squadron.
   Almost simultaneously a squadron of R.A.F. Hawker Hunter jet
fighters came screaming in for a landing. They are believed to have
flown from Kenya.
   Off-shore, meanwhile, the British frigate Loch Alvie and the
vessels of the amphibious warfare squadron circled before anchoring,
apparently just outside the three-mile limit.
ALERTED
   Soon afterwards it was announced in Kuwait that an unknown
number of Saudi Arabian troops had also arrived. And that eight
R.A.F. Canberra jet bombers from Germany had reached the Persian
Gulf air base at Sharjah.
   Two squadrons of Canberra bombers from Cyprus were reported to
have arrived at Aden on their way to Kuwait.
   Men of the Devonshire and Dorset Regiments and the 2nd
Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in Cyprus were said to have been
alerted for a move.
   And from Kenya there were reports that the men of the
Coldstream Guards and King's Regiment were soon ready to be airlifted
North as soon as aircraft became available.
   In Kuwait plans were being made to evacuate the 3, or so
Britons who live there. But it was stated officially that there are
no thoughts of evacuation unless the situation deteriorates seriously.
   And the Kuwait Supreme Council announced that the frontier with
Iraq had been closed.
Terms before we join Common Market
   BRITAIN has made it quite clear that she must make conditions
before joining the Common Market "in its present form," said Mr.
R. A. Butler yesterday.
   "We are determined to safeguard the interests of our farmers,
our Commonwealth partners and our friends in the European Free Trade
Association," he told Conservatives at Harrogate.
   Mr. Butler, who was speaking as Chairman of the Conservative
Party, said no decision had yet been reached even to enter into formal
negotiations for joining.
   If we reached some agreement there would have to be major
changes, he said. He warned that industry would have to face more
competition from European goods.
   A paper published yesterday by the non-Party P.E.P.
(Political and Economic Planning) says most British farmers will not
be adversely affected if Britain joins the Market.
   Some farmers might gain. But horticulturists "would have to
meet keener competition unless imports were restricted by some other
means than tariffs."
   The National Farmers' Union said the P.E.P. study did not
show that farmers would be as well-off on a long-term basis under
Common Market terms.
NOW KRUSCHEV HOTS UP THE BERLIN CRISIS
From A. NOYES THOMAS
WEST BERLIN, Saturday.
   MR. KRUSCHEV today made two ominous moves- and another
threatening statement- on the heightening German crisis. He
suspended all planned reductions in Soviet armed forces. He
stepped-up Soviet military expenditure by more than 3 per cent. And
he said:-
   "We shall sign a peace treaty with East Germany and order our
armed forces to administer a worthy rebuff to any aggressor if he
raises his hand against the Soviet Union or our friends.
   "It is best for those who think of war not to imagine that
distance will save them. ... We have everything at our disposal to
solve successfully the responsible tasks facing us."
   The speech, broadcast by Moscow radio, coincided with a meeting
on the Berlin and German problem between President Kennedy and his top
advisers.
Razor edge
   And while the Soviet leader was talking the Nato Council in
Paris received from Washington the text of a Note which the United
States Government will shortly deliver to the Kremlin.
   The contents of the Note, which is in reply to one handed to
President Kennedy in Vienna on June 4, are not known. But it is
believed to reject Mr. Kruschev's demands.
   As the news pours in from around the world, beleagured <SIC>
Berlin this weekend is a city on a razor's edge.
   Until 24 hours or so ago West Berliners, who have been building
up vast stocks of food against the possibility of another siege of
their city, believed the West was determined to stand fast in the face
of all Communist threats.
   But then from Washington came seemingly authoritative reports
that the Americans might not be prepared to risk war on these issues
after all.
   From this distance it appears that the United States Government
is ready to accept East German control of the West's tenuous
life-lines through the Communist Zone to the isolated city.
   I have just had a long talk with the man at the centre of the
crisis, Herr Willy Brandt, Mayor of West Berlin and a strong candidate
for the Chancellorship of Western Germany.
   Kruschev, he believes, has become "a prisoner of his own
words." After years of bluffing over East Germany and West Berlin
the Soviet leader is faced at last with the necessity of doing
something about it, whether he likes it or not.
   One reason: to satisfy the impatient leaders of impoverished,
struggling East Germany who, says Herr Brandt, in many respects tend
to be more Russian than the Russians.
   Herr Brandt has no doubt whatsoever that Mr. Kruschev really
does intend this time to make a separate peace treaty with East
Germany.
   Privately, though, Herr Brandt is not at all convinced that the
Russians see eye to eye with the East Germans over a change in the
status of West Berlin.
   This in spite of the fact that Soviet propaganda frequently
refers to the present set-up as "a thorn in the flesh," "a bone in
the throat" and "a base for hostile, provocative activity."
   "Look at it this way," says the young handsome mayor "Every
week between 4, and 5, East Germans escape into West Germany,
many of them through West Berlin.
   "Every day crowds of East Berliners come into West Berlin to
goggle at the prosperity here before returning to their own drab side
of the city where, 16 years after the war, meat and butter are still
rationed.
   "All this is galling to the East German authorities, but the
Russians, I suspect, see West Berlin as a safety valve. It calms the
feelings of many in East Germany to know that their symbol of freedom
is here, close by; to know that there is a way out.
   "Remove that safety valve and things might begin to happen in
East Germany. Not a revolution, maybe. But sabotage, more go-slow
campaigns, all kinds of passive resistance."
   Herr Brandt believes that until now the Russians have actually
vetoed East German plans to stop the flow of refugees.
   Today Gerhard Eiseler, the East German propaganda chief, made a
speech hinting at a new war of nerves against West Berlin.
   Says Herr Brandt: "If it comes it may be far less dramatic,
though no less dangerous, than most people expect."
   He cannot see it taking as blunt a turn as a new blockade on the
scale of the last one.
COME ON BRITAIN!
By The Chancellor
We've got to pull up our socks
BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
   GRIM-FACED and speaking with quiet emphasis, Mr. Selwyn
Lloyd gave the country a tough pep talk yesterday. Come on, Britain,
we've got to pull up our socks- that was the burden of his fighting
speech in which he announced that he will tell the House of Commons on
Tuesday week the means he proposes to take to get Britain out of the
red.
   He added that on this "Little Budget Day" he will recommend
"such action as I think necessary, however unpopular or
unexpected."
   "I am not afraid," he said, "to ask the British people to
bear the necessary burdens or accept the necessary disciplines
designed to secure not just the survival but also the maintenance of
our position as an up-to-date, progressive, dynamic influence on the
world."
   Today the Chancellor will go to Chequers to join a Cabinet
house-party where his new measures to deal with Britain's financial
crisis will be on the agenda.
   Here are other points from his speech yesterday, delivered at a
Conservative fete at Hawarden, Flintshire.
   "The trade balance at the present time, in spite of better
figures announced yesterday is unsatisfactory.
   "In a tough competitive world, we as a nation are not doing well
enough. That is not a new discovery. I have warned the country again
and again of this since I became Chancellor.
<END QUOTE>
THE TASK
   "The time is long past when as individuals, or as a nation we
can expect to live beyond our means. In the long run, as individuals,
we cannot take out in real income more than we contribute in
production or services.
   "We cannot achieve stability, let alone speed up our economic
growth, until we have made an improvement in our export performance
far beyond anything we have yet achieved.
   "We cannot hope to do this without a tougher and more
competitive spirit in industry, a far more critical attitude towards
costs, whatever their origin, a relentless rooting-out of all
inefficiency, restrictiveness and waste, whether it be of capital
resources or of labour.
   "We cannot afford the restrictive practices, whether of
management or labour, that are far too readily accepted now.
   "We cannot afford the easy complacency with which increases in
costs derived from these and similar inefficiencies are added to
prices in the confidence that the customer will pay.
   "It is not just a matter of working a good deal harder before we
really earn the incomes that are paid.
   "Harder work is needed; but above all we need more drive and
better direction, more efficiency and economy in our effort.
<END QUOTE>
OVERDRAWN
   "And an inner conviction that these things really matter- and
indeed are essential if we are not to slip back into becoming a
second-rate economy with declining standards of living.
   "We cannot reward ourselves in advance of actual achievement by
increased money incomes, whether in the form of dividends, profits or
wages.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 215
<22 TEXT A22>
SUPER RACING
PIC SPONSORS WORLD SPEEDWAY SURPRISE
By Don Clarke
   GOT your ticket for the Sunday Pictorial sponsored World
Championship Speedway British Final (start 7.15 p.m.) at Wembley
Stadium on Saturday?
   Don't waste time. The meeting is not being televised, and
although admission can be obtained on the night, tickets for this
"Night of Nights" are going fast.
   Speedway history should be made at Wembley. Sixteen top British
stars, and possibly two Continental aces, will battle for
Pic-sponsored championships.
   Never before have fans been promised such a feast of speed with
reigning World Champion Ove Fundin sparking the flame that could set
the meeting alight.
   Fundin holds the Pic's British Match Race and "Golden Helmet"
title, and is defending his crown against Southampton's Bjorn
Knutsson.
   At Southampton Fundin was beaten in two straight runs and
suffered the indignity of crashing and wrecking his machine in his
effort to conquer Knutsson. Temper and the needle element flared.
A SCORCHER AT NORWICH
   THE second leg takes place at Norwich next Friday- and Fundin
should even the score.
   If this happens, the final leg will be decided at Wembley next
Saturday, before the sixteen riders stake claims for the British title
and +72 Pic prize money, which will be presented by stage and screen
comedian Terry-Thomas.
   In the field will be four former World Champions, Ronnie Moore,
Jack Young, Barry Briggs and Peter Craven.
   For Wimbledon's Ronnie Moore, twice Champion, this may be his
last season after ten World Finals. Jack Young is also a doubtful
starter next year.
   Plymouth's Jack Scott, introduced to speedway by Jack Young, is
the only Provincial League rider in a star-studded line-up.
   Last year he won a sizeable sum of money on the football pools
and wisely invested part of his winnings in buying good equipment.
   The fact that he rides in such exalted company will not deter
Scott.
MIKE MEANS BUSINESS
   NINE months ago Mike Broadbanks (Swindon) was advised by his
doctors to quit speedway.
   But the "Red Devil" possesses a stubborn streak, and has
proved them all wrong by battling his way to Wembley.
   That is a pen picture of half a dozen aces. The other ten
competitors can well upset the applecart for the favourites.
   Ron How, Bob Andrews, Cyril Maidment (Wimbledon); Peter Moore,
Ray Cresp (Ipswich); Ken McKinlay (Leicester); Doug. Davies (New
Cross); Neil Street (Swindon); Ronnie Genz (Oxford), and Nigel Boocock
(Coventry) are capable of ignoring reputations.
   Looks like being quite a dust up. I say once again, book your
tickets NOW.
   These can be obtained from your local tracks until Tuesday, or
direct from Speedway Box Office, Wembley Stadium, Wembley, Middlesex.
   Prices are: Covered seats: 21s., 12s. 6d., 1s. 6d.
Uncovered: 8s., 6s. Standing: 3s. 6d.
PLUCKY GELSON
Brentford 1. Reading 2.
   GOAL-HAPPY Reading turned in the kind of powerhouse
performance that has brought them twelve goals in their opening three
games of the season.
   They also handed out a vital Soccer lesson to unfortunate
Brentford- how to snap up chances!
   Brentford played some promising stuff in midfield, but were
unable to put it to advantage.
   Reading were matched in approach work; never in finishing power.
   Peter Gelson, their burly young centre half, was Brentford's
defensive star in pluckily holding out the determined Reading raids
for long periods.
   Webb scored Reading's second-half winner, a Vallard penalty being
their other. An own goal from Splers was Brentford's only
consolation.
Sillett off
A. Villa 3. Chelsea 1.
   TRAGEDY hit this match in the sixty-fifth minute when Chelsea
skipper and left back Peter Sillett broke a leg, writes ARCHIE
QUICK.
   Chelsea, inspired by the trickery of little David Cliss, played
delightful attacking football till the interval, but, as usual, they
flattered to deceive, and had fallen from their standard before the
Sillett accident.
   Chelsea moved well at the start, despite Villa's seventh-minute
lead. Bobby Thompson headed through following a corner.
   Chelsea, however, equalised after twenty-four minutes. Cliss
cleverly flicked the ball to Ron Tindall, who pushed it through for
Bobby Tambling to score.
   Dougan's persistency enabled young Harry Burrows to put Villa
ahead seconds after the interval, and he bustled to good purpose in
the goalmouth when the other winger, Jimmy MacEwan, got No. 3 from
long distance.
DYSON GRAB
Spurs 4, Arsenal 3: By SAM LEITCH
   CHEEKY, cocky left winger Terry Dyson and his
hell-of-a-hat-trick squeezed both points Spurs' way. But, oh, what
vile luck for the Gunners!
   Eighteen minutes from the end, Spurs were trailing 2-3 after
having led 2- inside twenty minutes.
   After an Alan Skirton goal, an Arsenal transformation was worked
by the magic head of Mel Charles. Twice he outjumped the tall,
commanding Tottenham defenders. Twice he scored- in the 67th and
72nd minutes.
   Two glorious goals- again Mel looked every inch as good as his
big brother John in getting them- and they put Arsenal in command.
Then enter whirlwind Dyson. He had already notched one
superbly-headed goal in the first half. But never was his punch and
pace needed so much as now by his gasping, back-pedalling team-mates.
   There were ten minutes left. Arsenal strutted. Arsenal looked
mighty good...
   But tiny Terry wagged his foot at a Cliff Jones corner and the
ball was scrambled home for a dramatic Spurs equaliser.
   Arsenal descended on referee Reg Leafe in an angry swarm. Dyson
had handled, they said. Leafe decisively let the goal stand.
   The Gunners and their fans were still fuming when Dyson lammed in
Spurs' match-winner off the post.
   This is a good Arsenal side. They will not meet Dyson's devilish
opportunism every week. And they won't have so much bad luck.
   Their first-half inferiority was caused by the total inability of
Mel Charles to get by centre half Maurice Norman.
   Mel wandered like a big boy lost. In that time a Les Allen
header put Spurs one up, and Dyson got the second.
   Arsenal keeper McLelland, who had to leave the field three
minutes before the end after colliding with Allen, has slight
concussion.
LESLIE IN SPIN TRAP
Wolves 3, West Ham 2: By STAN HALSEY
   WEST HAM took the lead in eighteen minutes. Musgrove
side-stepped a defender and scored a masterly goal with a twenty-yard
rising drive. And though Murray equalised in thirty-three minutes,
West Ham were still going steadily. Then disaster struck.
   It was in the fifty-fifth minute. Alan Hinton, Wolves' left
winger who was playing his first League game, harassed Kirkup into
conceding a corner.
   Deeley, his opposite number, took a hopeful kind of hook shot.
The ball seemed to be going away and West Ham's goalkeeper, Laurie
Leslie, thought danger had been averted.
   But the ball developed such a crazy spin that Leslie could not
cope with it.
   That goal was just the tonic Wolves needed, and in the
sixty-third minute Murray, capping a slick combined move, made the
score 3-1.
   Three minutes from the end a typical bit of Woosnam Soccer
technique laid on a ball from which Sealey scored West Ham's second
goal.
Grimsby... 3
   Southend... 1
   WITHIN thirty seconds of the start, Grimsby 'keeper Malcolm
White had his hands warmed by shots from Southend leader Norman
Bleanch and right winger Tony Bentley and he got little respite from
the visiting sharpshooters.
   But despite their superiority Southend's ninth minute goal had
more than a rub of good fortune about it.
   A blind drive by Bleanch went off a defender to outside left Bob
Kellard, who easily beat White with a close range shot.
   Ron Rafferty headed Grimsby's sixtieth minute <SIC> and Mike
Cullen grabbed the lead by finishing off another Rafferty header.
   And only a minute from the end, left winger Cliff Jones cut in to
net just inside the near post.
Cool Neill is twice given slip
Bolton 2, Arsenal 1: By JIM BEECROFT
   BURLY Billy McAdams, Bolton centre forward, and Terry Neill,
lanky centre half of Arsenal, set a poser for the Northern Ireland
selectors, some of whom watched this game at Burnden.
   For large parts of a moderate match young Neill, regarded as a
fine international prospect, snuffed the experienced McAdams
completely out of the play.
   Often Neill's cool and resourceful covering made Arsenal's
suspect defence seem better than it really was, and left McAdams
looking far from a top-line leader.
BRILLIANT
   But twice, the tough and persistent McAdams evaded the Neill
obstacle with two brilliant pieces of opportunism and chalked up two
goals which deservedly gave Bolton their second victory of the season.
   First of these came in the thirty-sixth minute when McAdams
swiftly snapped up a chance inside the penalty area, swivelled in a
flash and fired smartly past the bewildered McLelland.
   This goal, which wiped out a similar effort by Arsenal centre
forward Mel Charles, was the only thing McAdams had done right until
then. And he did little else until he scored another fine goal in
seventy-five minutes when he beat two men in a yard or so and whizzed
a terrific 2-yard shot into the net.
   Though the Arsenal goal had had several narrow escapes,
especially when shots from Holden and Pilkington hit the bar, it was
not until after the second McAdams goal that Bolton assumed full
command.
   But neither team looked as if they had any chance of becoming
championship contenders.
BRILLIANT BRIGGS IS TOP MAN
   NEW ZEALAND and Southampton Speedway ace Barry Briggs won the
Sunday Pictorial-sponsored British final of the world championship at
Wembley Stadium last night.
   After twenty pulsating heats Briggs, winner of the world title
in 1957 and 1958, showed his world class when he notched fifteen
immaculate points to win the Pic's first prize of +3, presented to
him by comedian Terry-Thomas.
   Pint-sized Peter Craven (Belle Vue and England) took the second
prize of +15, while Wimbledon and New Zealand star Ronnie Moore
gained third place for a prize of +8.
MY HEROES
   Without detracting from the superb performance of Briggs,
Craven and Moore, my heroes of the night were two Englishmen-
Swindon's Mike Broadbanks and Wimbledon's Cyril Maidment.
   Both these boys set the 5, crowd alight in Heat 4 when
Maidment, last out of the starting gate, showed he had no big night
nerves in his first Wembley final.
   For four laps, he and Broadbanks put up a terrific tussle, with
Broadbanks just clinching victory.
   Maidment continued his rip-roaring, full-throttle riding in his
next four rides.
   Although outclassed in his last outing, he notched seven points
on the night to stake a claim for the world final at Malmo on
September 15.
TRAGEDY
   Tragedy struck Broadbanks after his first ride.
   An attack of asthma left him gasping for air and how he managed
to stay on his machine for four more rides, let alone score four more
points and a place at Malmo is beyond me.
   Beside riding for +72 Pic prize money, the sixteen riders were
also battling for nine places in the World Final at Malmo, and results
proved that class tells.
   The other six riders who go forward to the Malmo final are from:
   Ron How, Bob Andrews (Wimbledon), Ken McKinlay (Leicester), 9
pts.; Ray Cresp (Ipswich), 8 pts., Jack Young (Coventry), Ronnie
Genz (Oxford), Cyril Maidment (Wimbledon) and Mike Broadbanks
(Swindon), 7 pts.
   Young, Genz, Maidment and Broadbanks will have to run to decide
who will be odd man out at Malmo on September 15, where they clash
with seven Continentals for the honour of wearing the World crown.
   The seven Continentals are: Reigning World Champion Ove Fundin
(Sweden), Bjorn Knutsson (Sweden), Igor Piechanov (Russia), Rune
Sormander (Sweden), Florian Kapala (Poland), Stanislaw Txocz
(Czechoslovakia) and Gote Nordin (Sweden).
<LIST>
BIG SEARCH IN SCOTLAND
by STAN HALSEY
   Cheque in Scotland! Excuse the play on words, but that's what
it could amount to where Spurs and Chelsea are concerned.
   Bill Nicholson, Spurs boss, has money to spend to maintain
Tottenham's Double Top League and Cup glamour.
   He made another quiet trip across the border the other day and
had a look at Third Lanark outside right, David Hilley, who wouldn't
mind a tilt at Sassenach fame and fortune.
#218
<23 TEXT A23>
Only Avon's Pride gives full value in Cesarewitch
by TOM FORREST
   HORSE-RACING'S happiest invalid today is jockey Bobby Elliot.
He broke a collarbone only last Thursday, yet his specialist declares
that in three or four days he should be fit for riding gallops... and
then for the plum job of the week- pushing home Avon's Pride in
the Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday.
   Young bones mend quickly. But the back of a big-race favourite
is no place for a jockey with one wing trailing, so Elliot will have
to pass a pretty stiff midweek try-out- or trainer Dick Hern must
find a substitute.
   Top-class riders are still available... like Ron Hutchinson or,
at a pound or two overweight, Scobie Breasley or Eph Smith, the most
likely choice as he rode Avon's Pride in his gallop yesterday morning.
   Avon's Pride becomes my final selection, because he alone of the
three Cesarewitch horses recommended a week ago for Autumn Double bets
remains as a first-rate value-for-money proposition.
TUMBLED
   El Surpriso, 33-1 last week-end, has been slashed to 12-1. And
Alcoa's odds have tumbled from 25-1 to 14-1.
   They could still win, but if you have to take these new prices it
looks as if you have already "missed the boat."
   Avon's Pride has been reduced too, but less spectacularly- from
14-1 to 12-1. This is a rate that could still be confidently accepted
without the feeling of being short-changed. The four-year-old's
chance is outstanding.
   He has the speed... any horse who can play so powerful a part
in shorter races, as in the 1 1/4-mile Vaux Gold Tankard and Ebor
Handicap, will not be found short of sheer pace with half a mile
further to go.
   He has the stamina... the big win of the season for Avon's
Pride was in Epsom's Roseberry Handicap, of the same 2 1/4-mile length
as the Cesarewitch.
   He has the courage... no horse can do without a stout heart
under the ordeal of that long, lung-bursting Cesarewitch straight.
And in Avon's Pride's whole career he has been often outpointed but
never outbattled.
   The weight. At 7st. 11lb., 3lb. below the middle of
the range, the handicapper has certainly taken an indulgent line.
   Direct form, this season's form, suggests that two of his most
heavily backed rivals- Angazi (12-1) and Trelawny (14-1)- must
produce quite unexpected reserves to beat Avon's Pride this week. And
through these horses most of the others can be declared safely held.
   Technique, rather than tactics, will be needed from the jockey.
The Cesarewitch is always a hard-run struggle from the start... that
will suit Avon's Pride, but the rider must use a hustling, strong-arm
style, or the colt might well idle his chance away.
AUTHORITY
   El Surpriso is one they all have to beat. There was no
mistaking the authority of her win at Nottingham last week, and with a
mere 7st. 1lb., and the energetic Ray Reader riding, this filly
could be the weak link to wreck the whole handicap.
   Almost as lightly burdened at 7st. 2lb., is Alcoa.
Though less obviously "thrown in" at the weights, Alcoa is such
a rugged, unrelenting stayer that Mick Greening is sure to be driving
her down the straight with glowing visions of galloping them all into
the ground.
   Among the class horses- the top half dozen, with weights of
8st. 9lb. or more- Lester Piggott's mount, Sunny Way (2-1),
is the only one I seriously fear.
   Morecambe is left out because no eight-year-old has ever won
the race; Farrney Fox because his recent form is sadly degenerate;
New Brig because he has not raced since May; Agreement because
he no longer has the force that once won him two Doncaster Cups;
Trelawny because it takes almost 2 1/4 miles before he starts
to warm up.
   Neither 1959 winner Come to Daddy nor his stablemate and
brother Usurper has lived up to high hopes this season. While
Honest Boy Aristarchus, Cold Comfort, Tarquinian and Narratus
are run-of-the-mill stayers who could run well... but hardly well
enough.
SUSPECT
   Persian Lancer's stamina is suspect for a horse at the short
odds of 12-1- I believe he will last out only on the best of going.
And Utrillo (25-1) will not race at all on soft ground- he sulks
unless he can hear his feet rattle.
   Hock-deep mud would be ideal though for Annotation (2-1) and
Python (2-1), both powerful but one-paced plodders. And game
little Angazi is a proven mudlark.
   In Python's stablemate, Night Porter, we have the crankiest
character of them all- but a real live one at 4-1, if you care to
take a chance on his missing any mud that may be flying from his
rivals' heels. He will refuse to race if any hits his face.
   None of the others seems at all likely to win, and I rate Night
Porter and Sunny Way the best of the long shots. But the final
placings I hope for are AVON'S PRIDE 1, El Surpriso 2, Alcoa 3.
JUST GREAT OUR 'ARC' BEST
   A BRAVE turnout of British horses- Just Great, High Hat and
Tenacity- take the field at Longchamp this afternoon to challenge the
Swashbuckling European champion, Right Royal =5, in the +5, Prix
de l'Arc de Triomphe.
   Ours is a team without a captain. But even with the stay-at-home
ace St. Paddy, waiting for a second-division fade-out at Newmarket
on Friday, Britain's prestige need not suffer in Paris.
   Nobody would call the three raiders a force to flash triumphantly
through the richest race this side of the Atlantic.
   But neither are they, as the French believe, just so many sitting
targets to be blasted aside in the hurricane rush of Right Royal.
   JUST GREAT is no sitter... though he staged something like a
sit-down strike at the starting gate to lose his St. Leger chance.
He lost the Derby too through rough-house treatment by other horses.
   In four remaining races this year, Just Great had a fair chance,
and won them all. I make him best of the British.
   New partner Lester Piggott must get him off with the rest, steer
clear of trouble... and who knows to what heights Just Great may rise?
Formidable
   HIGH HAT is less of a mystery. We know he is no match for
St. Paddy, but he has matched, and mastered, Petite Etoile.
That is a formidable qualification. Duncan Keith rides.
   TENACITY has not yet attacked the top class. But what an
improver this enormous, late-developing filly is.
   Yet to make any of our trio more than an each-way bet would be
more patriotic than prudent. Right Royal is not the only star in
opposition.
   Match =3 will be there... cantering winner of the French St.
Leger. So will stablemate Dicta Drake, on whom Max Garcia has a
chance to make amends for the suicidal tactics which cost them the
Doncaster St. Leger.
   Italian crack Molvedo, with a runaway success at Deauville on his
last French trip, shapes like another Ribot. So he should- he is a
son of Ribot, and Ribot's jockey, veteran Enrico Camiel rides him too.
   But in that chestnut-strewn Longchamp paddock they will all be
dominated by the magnificence of the loose-limbed giant RIGHT ROYAL.
And all logic points to his being as dictatorial on the track as in
the pre-race parade.
   T. F.
This is Lochroe all over again says DICK FRANCIS
   I TOOK a ride, a few days ago, on an echo from the past-
on a small-framed, brown four-year-old named Vulgate. The echo?-
from Lochroe. They are half brothers out of the mare Loch Cash, and
were sired by the top jumping stallions Vulgan and King Hal.
   Vulgate looks as intelligent and handles as easily as Lochroe-
and jumps in the same style. If he moves less perfectly, it is
because Lochroe was the best-moving 'chaser I have known.
   Trained by Bill Marshall at Cheltenham, the beautifully broken-in
youngster can be seen on Saturday at Fontwell, where he comes out for
the first time this season in the handicap hurdle (4.15).
   At home he does not wear shoes on his hind feet. None of the
Marshall horses do. This ensures that if a hindleg strikes a
foreleg- a frequent occurrence- the injury is restricted to
bruising.
   No shoes are needed for road work. The stable yard, on the top
of Cleeve Hill overlooking Cheltenham racecourse leads straight out on
to open commons.
   It is usual for a mare who has produced one winning jumper to
produce others, even if not of the same standard, and generally in
steeplechasers it is the influence of the mare which predominates.
   If one of her progeny jumps well, they all do, (and if one jumps
appallingly they all do!), regardless of the sire.
   Most remarkable examples of half-brothers are Gay Donald and Pas
Seul. Both these Gold Cup winners- by Gay Light and Erin's Pride
respectively- had Pas de Quatre for their dam.
   Both, broken and trained by different trainers, were blundering
jumpers until they were seven, at which age they began to outgrow
their carelessness, and their getaway burst of speed took over.
RELATED
   In Northumberland, the sparkling Kerstin's full brother and
sister- Vindicated (now with Guy Cunard) and Lady Nenagh- made their
mark for Verly Bewicke, many of whose horses are related to each
other.
   Another North-country star, Rough Tweed, winner of Manchester's
Champion Novice 'Chase last April, will have a full-brother running
over here this season.
   It is four-year-old Holy Loch, trained by Bobby Norris in
Northamptonshire, who makes his racecourse debut- over hurdles-
early in December.
   And I will be most interested in this Irish Youngster's progress.
I gave him his first schooling over jumps in this country last
month- and he showed he is an apt pupil learning fast.
HONEYMOOR OUT
   Honeymoor, ante-post favourite for the Cambridgeshire
(Newmarket, October 28), has been scratched from the race. He was
cast in his box on Thursday and an X-ray revealed that he had a leg
injury.
   Some bookmakers yesterday made Rachel and Golden Sands joint
favourites at 16-1.
RUGBY UNION SPECIALS
Phil Taylor charge sinks the Scots
London Scottish 6 Northampton 8: by JOHN REED
   ONE must hand it to skipper Phil Taylor and his burly
Northampton men. They shook Richmond rigid three weeks ago at the
Athletic Ground with a grip of iron. Yesterday on the same ground
they retained their unbeaten record (six victories in seven games)
with a superb recovery after the sinewy Scots had led 6- for nearly
an hour.
   Five sparkling minutes of fluid, exciting Rugby did the trick.
And the Saints showed what a great side they can be. How rewarding,
then, that the winning try should be scored by beefy Taylor himself.
   After 21 minutes of the second-half England scrum-half Dickie
Jeeps booted the ball high ahead, and Scottish full-back Gordon
Macdonald knocked on.
   It was to prove an expensive error. For the rampaging
Northampton forwards were up in a flash, Clive Daniels whipped the
ball to Taylor and the Northampton captain burst through for the line.
   It would have taken a brick wall to stop him, as he dived over in
the corner for an unconverted try.
   Five minutes earlier the London Scottish defence had been split
asunder. Right wing Frank Sykes, dodging and darting past grasping
hands found himself surrounded.
   He threw out a long, overhead, 2-yard pass to the centre of the
field as if he was a cricketer, fly-half John Shurvington picked it up
neatly on the bounce and shot through to score under the posts.
Full-back Roger Hosen converted.
Great rally
   Northampton had staged a great rally. In the first half they
had looked listless and a little tired in comparison with the
energetic alert Scots. But what a change after the interval.
   Their massive scrum gained firm control in the tight, where Andy
Johnson, who may well win an England trial this season, outhooked
David Hayburn, who was deputising for Scottish international Norman
Bruce (injured) and won the ball frequently against the head.
# 26
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Ernie wants a showdown on the beer bid
   A PETROL pump attendant who found himself mixed up in a
+21,, takeover bid, said last night he was going to have a
"show-down" with his managing director.
   "I want to get this mess sorted out," said 51-year-old
Ernest Clements. "It's ridiculous.
   "I'm mixed up in a deal involving millions- and I earn only
+12 a week.
   "A few hours ago I didn't even know I was a director of this
firm."
   Mr. Clements, of Ifield Road, Fulham, is registered as a
director of Anglasi Nominees, a +1 company in the City.
   After Anglasi announced a +21,, takeover bid for Bent's
Brewery, Liverpool, the Stock Exchange Council banned dealings in
Bent's shares.
Stepbrothers
   Managing director of Anglasi Nominees is Mr. George Burgess.
"Financial adviser" is Mr. Ron Foster.
   "I know them both- they're my stepbrothers," said Mr.
Clements, as he downed a double Scotch in a London pub last night.
   "But I haven't seen them for years. I've signed no forms, and
I've never bought a share in my life.
   "I don't know what's in this. But I'm going to find out. I'm
going to Burgess's office on Monday for a show-down."
   Then Ernie Clements downed another Scotch. "The very idea- a
brewery bid. I never touch beer..."
SACK THE MANAGER CRY FANS
   FOUR HUNDRED angry Soccer fans chanted ~"Sack the manager"
outside Newcastle United Football Club's ground yesterday.
   United had just been thrashed 4- by Everton, and now look
certain to be relegated to the Football League's Division Two.
Newcastle's manager is ex-winger Charlie Mitten.
   At half-time, with United two goals down, one disgusted fan
climbed the club's flagpole and hauled the Union Jack to half mast.
   It was a riotous day for soccer...
   HORDES of angry supporters besieged referee Mr. B. J.
Matthews in his dressing room for more than half-an-hour after Hitchin
Town lost 2-1 to Southall in an Athenian League game at Hitchin,
Herts.
   APPLE CORES and orange peel were thrown at policemen at
Arsenal's Highbury Stadium.
HUNGER CITY CALLS MAYOR
   MAYOR, stop your roaming. Come home and help your hungry
citizens, instead of trying to kid the world they are NOT hungry.
   That is the call from Labour leaders in the breadline city of
Toronto, to Mayor Nathan Phillips.
   Mayor Phillips, wealthy head of a law firm, is more than 4,
miles away on a holiday tour of Europe with his wife- and issuing
denials that there is hunger in his home city.
   As "The People" revealed recently, Britons going to Canada
will find Toronto a city without jobs. A city where hungry men, women
and children line up for food at charity soup kitchens.
   Mayor Phillips was challenged by a Toronto newspaper to tour the
city and see the distress for himself. But the Mayor announced:
~"There is no hunger"- and left for Europe.
   "I'm going to let the people of Europe know that these stories
of starvation in Toronto are all wrong," he said.
   IN DUBLIN Mayor Phillips said: "There may be some
unemployment in Toronto- but no widespread hunger or hardship."
   Earlier, in London, where the Mayor and his wife stayed in the
West End at the expensive Westbury Hotel, he attacked the recent
"People" series on the hardship a Briton met in Canada and
insisted: "There is no starvation in Toronto."
   And at home in Toronto last Thursday 25 of the Mayor's civic
employees were laid off by the city council.
Ten nurses flop exams- and a row blows up
   FOR three years, a hospital trained ten student nurses. Then
the girls took their final examinations to become State Registered
Nurses. And then all failed.
   It was not the first time this had happened at the 134-bed
General Hospital at Great Yarmouth.
   Last October, another batch of student nurses trained there
failed the examinations.
   And when the latest batch of results was revealed yesterday, it
started a storm at Great Yarmouth.
   An angry parent of one student nurse who failed said: "This
hundred-per-cent. failure is shocking.
   "I don't see how it can be all the fault of the girls."
   The secretary of Great Yarmouth General Hospital, Mr. John
Egerton, said: "I cannot comment on our results in the State
Registered Nurse examinations.
   "A hospital committee meeting is being called to discuss the
matter."
   The hospital is controlled by the Norwich, Lowestoft and Great
Yarmouth Hospital Management Committee.
   Its matron is named in the Hospital Year Book as Miss G.
Embleton.
   There are two units in the hospital- the Surgical Unit, in Great
Yarmouth, and the Medical Unit at neighbouring Gorleston-on-Sea.
   The hospital is on the officially approved list of those which
give complete training in nursing.
DON'T SHOW YOUR LEGS: BY ORDER
   FASHION-CONSCIOUS policewomen in Nottingham have been told
by their spinster boss to stop shortening their skirts.
   The girls thought their skirts were too old fashioned so they
shortened them by tucking them over at the waist. Then Chief
Inspector Jessie Alexander found out.
   Miss Alexander, who wears a long skirt, is also angry with the
tailors who supply uniforms.
   She claims that one of her policewomen, newly-wed Mrs. Sheila
Williams, has been issued with a skirt that is far shorter than
regulation length.
   "There has been a slip-up," she said. "In fact my own new
uniform was out of shape and I have sent it back."
   Mrs. Williams said yesterday: "I do not think my skirt is too
short. It is just below my knees.
   "I do not see why I should lengthen the skirt- long skirts look
old fashioned- but if Miss Alexander insists, I suppose it will have
to be done."
   MALE COMMENT: Nottingham's Chief Constable- Mr. Thomas
Moore- said: "There is a standard pattern for the length of
policewomen's skirts, so we must follow it."
All worked up about statue of a worker
   A UNION ordered a +1 statue to represent the British
engineer at work. But when the union members saw how the statue was
shaping they were FURIOUS...
   For the statue- designed by 31-year-old sculptor John Paddison
for the Amalgamated Engineering Union's Wolverhampton district
committee- shows an engineer with his coat half on and half off.
   Sculptor Paddison says the engineer is taking his coat OFF-
eager to get to work.
   But the Wolverhampton engineers say the man is putting his coat
ON- eager to get AWAY from work.
Coat on- or off?
   And that, they complain, creates a false impression that the
British workman is interested only in dashing off as soon as the
whistle blows.
   Said factory engineer John Williams: "It's quite obvious from
the man's posture he is putting his coat on in a hurry.
   "Outsiders will get the impression engineers are only interested
in getting out of the factory as soon as possible."
   Said Mr. Paddison, of Riches Street, Wolverhampton: "As far
as I'm concerned, the man is taking his coat off- and that's the way
it's staying."
   The 4 ft. high statue will be finished in six weeks and shown
at the local art gallery.
THE B-AND-B RAIDER
   POLICE were yesterday searching for the bed-and-breakfast
raider. After breaking into a factory at Soho Hill, Handsworth,
Birmingham, he set an alarm clock belonging to one of the staff and
went to sleep in the managing director's chair.
   He stole about +3 from the canteen, which he entered with the
help of factory tools, and also helped himself to eggs and milk.
Gaoled woman let out- to steal
   A WOMAN serving a two-year sentence at Holloway was taken
from the prison to a mental hospital at Friern Barnet. On Friday she
was allowed out for four hours.
   She went to the West End and committed her 14th crime; she stole
two blouses from a store, it was said at Marlborough Street yesterday.
   The magistrate, Mr. Paul Bennett, V.C., discharged Mrs.
Kathleen Clark, of Grenville Street, King's Cross, absolutely and
ordered her return to hospital.
Bow-WOW of a party
   FIFTY dogs will sit down to pop and buns, or biscuits, at
their own garden party at Blaxton, near Doncaster, today. Their
"guests" will be dog lovers from all over the country.
MOTHER SOLD CHILD- FOR 28s.
   A MOTHER was arrested yesterday and charged with selling her
five-year-old daughter for +1 8s.
   She is 33-year-old Mrs. Elsie Joseph, of Seattle, Washington
State, whose husband, August, is wanted by the police on a similar
charge.
   They have seven children.
   Seattle police say that a Mr. Wilbert Bippus, 35, told them he
and his wife had wanted to adopt a child and he offered to buy the
Josephs' daughter.
   He paid +1 8s. and took the girl home, but his wife made him
return the child.
Banker's son Jeremy sued for debt
   THE banking family of Lubbock has had its biggest shock since
son Jeremy, fresh down from university, flouted mother when she
pleaded, "Darling, DON'T become a musician."
   Jeremy Lubbock, now 3 and a piano player in a West End night
club, has not paid up a debt, it was said in the High Court.
   So a Receiving Order in Bankruptcy has been served on him- and
some of Jeremy's friends are wondering: What would grandfather have
said about that?
   For GRANDFATHER Cecil Lubbock, 83 when he died in 1956, was a
boss of the Bank of England, 32 years a director and for two years
deputy governor.
Spurned
   And what is FATHER saying? For father Michael Lubbock, a
cousin of Lord Avebury, followed the tradition that Jeremy spurned and
is a director of the Bank of London and South America, and the banking
firm of S. G. Warburg and Co.
   Pianist Jeremy himself took time off from the keys to tell what
HE thinks about it. "It's most unfortunate," he said.
   But is the banker's son (family motto ~"The Author Makes the
Value") likely to be made a bankrupt? "No, I can promise you there
is no prospect of that," said Jeremy.
   "My assets exceed my liabilities. Everything is being ironed
out. I have the money although I am disputing the debt."
   "You know," he said, "I'm no dabbler at music. It is my
career."
BISHOP ASKS COUPLE TO FORGIVE PARSON
   THE Bishop of Coventry is to ask a vicar why he did not marry
two teenage parishioners.
   "I shall go into this matter very fully," said the Bishop,
Dr. Cuthbert Bardesley.
   The vicar is the Rev. Eric Jarvis, of the Warwickshire village
of Ansley, who was to have married 19-year-old Barry Wright and
Margaret Wilson, 18, at St. Thomas's Church, Coventry.
   But five days before Mr. Jarvis told the couple he would not
marry them unless he was ordered to by his Bishop.
   As a result, Barry and Margaret got married at another church,
after a delay of eight days.
   Barry's mother protested to the Bishop. He has written back
saying he is glad the marriage did take place, and adding:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "I hope that now you and your son and daughter-in-law will
forgive and forget, and that you will urge the young couple to receive
all the help they can through prayer and worship."
<END INDENTATION>
   Last night Barry, of Birmingham Road, Ansley, said: "From the
first time we met the vicar he seemed to have something against us.
   "He was particularly interested in finding out why we weren't
having a white wedding. At the wedding rehearsal the vicar told us he
would write to the Bishop and tell him that he had two non-active
Christians in the parish.
   "He said that if he were told to marry us he would resign.
   "Margaret was terribly upset," added Barry.
   "I went back and told the vicar that we would be married in
another church. There was nothing else I could do- it might have
meant his resignation otherwise."
   At Ansley vicarage, Mr. Jarvis said: "The decision to go
elsewhere was theirs.
   "But I did tell them that in a certain set of circumstances I
would write to the Bishop and if he told me to marry them I would have
to consider resigning."
# 26
<25 TEXT A25>
Mr. Forte To The Rescue?
   A SCHEME to unscramble the so-called Jasper group of
companies may be announced before the end of this month. For some
time now negotiations have been going on between the State Building
Society and a group believed to be headed by Mr. Charles Forte, the
caterer.
   The basis of the talks have been, firstly, that the depositors of
the State should at least be repaid 2s. in the pound, even if they
may suffer some loss of interest, and secondly, that there should be
an offer- on the basis of independent accountants' valuations- for
all the shares in all the group companies, whose stock exchange
quotations have been suspended.
   Altogether, the State has lent about +7 million to various
companies in the group, but the chief problem is the +3 1/4 million
borrowed by Friedrich Grunwald, its driving force, at present serving
a five-year prison sentence.
   Grunwald also borrowed +1 1/2 million from Mr. Maxwell Joseph,
the hotelier, and it seems certain that a solution will depend on
Mr. Joseph foregoing a considerable part of this, as well as on
Mr. Grunwald and Herbert Murray (formerly of the State Building
Society, now also in prison) surrendering the greater part of their
own personal holdings in group companies.
   Mr. Forte's interest in taking over the group plainly lies in
the catering opportunities offered. Among the group's assets are the
Piccadilly, Rubens and Rembrandt hotels in London, as well as a number
of provincial hotels.
   It also owns a number of news theatres and, among others, the
"Classic" chain of repertory cinemas. Finally, there are 43
billiard halls for which Mr. Forte may well have other plans.
   But there is also a substantial property interest, above all the
+4 million Dolphin Square block of flats. The scheme therefore
hinges on finding a property group to take over this aspect of the
Grunwald "empire."
   More than one property company has already shown an interest in
this, but a well-known +15 million London group specialising in
residential property seems at present the most likely bet.
   Things at last seem to be looking up for the thousands of
long-suffering State Building Society depositors. Even if the present
scheme falls through- which now seems unlikely- there is a City
merchant bank now waiting quietly on the sidelines with an alternative
scheme in its pocket.
New Recruit
   MR. GERALD GLOVER'S election last week to the board of City
of London Real Property provides an interesting link between one of
the most active property development groups and a company whose
immense possibilities has <SIC> made eyes other than those of
Mr. Cotton and Mr. Clore take a long, lingering, glance in its
direction.
   Among other things, Mr. Glover is chairman of Edger
Investments, the development company whose latest achievement has been
the Carlton Tower Hotel in Sloane Street, London. Like many another
property company it has attracted the backing of a leading insurance
company- none other than the Prudential.
   Perhaps even more important, however, for Edger is the backing it
enjoys from Development Securities, which owns one-third of the
equity. This company, whose principal asset is the Dorchester Hotel
and whose shares have so far this year risen from 81s. to a new high
of 11s, is in turn controlled by the wealthy McAlpine family.
   Until now the only connection between CLRP and the
McAlpine-Glover interests lay in the vast Stag Brewery site at
Victoria, which is 51 p.c. owned by CLRP, 25 p.c.
by Development Securities and 24 p.c. by Edger.
   The new move should at least serve to boost the pace of
developing this site, from which the +4 million Edger should-
proportionately- benefit most. With a yield of little more than 1
p.c. at the current price of 28s. 3d. the shares are
essentially a long-term investment. But one which should prove
rewarding.
ICI's Bad Example
   IMPERIAL CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES should certainly have no
difficulty in finding underwriters for its next "rights" issue. As
a result of its decision to revert to the bad old practice, gradually
being rejected by the more progressive companies, of letting the
underwriters get the benefit of the rights inadvertently not taken
up- in this case nearly 3 per cent. of the +34 million issue-
there has been an underwriting "bonus" of no less than +28,.
   It is of course true, as Mr. Paul Chambers, the ICI
chairman, has pointed out, that at the time of the issue the rights
were worth only 9d. a share, and that if the shares not taken up
were to be sold for the benefit of the shareholders whose rights they
were- the normal modern practice- this would involve considerable
administrative work.
   But this is a matter of principle. Underwriters are adequately
recompensed for the services they perform without the necessity of a
pourboire at the expense of innocently negligent- or merely absent-
shareholders. ICI should be setting a better example than
this.
Forward Strip
   WHAT tax changes are likely in this month's Budget? One
innovation the Government has been seriously considering- and which
may yet come about- is the introduction of a flat rate Corporation
Tax to replace the present combination of income tax and profits tax
on company profits.
   This would have the obvious merit of recognising the important
difference between company and personal taxation. It would also, I
believe, be welcomed by the inland Revenue (normally averse to any
major change) as a means of helping them in their endless battle
against the dividend strippers.
   For those few readers unacquainted with this sport I should
perhaps explain that dividend stripping is essentially a device for
extracting accumulated reserves from a private trading company without
paying tax. In its simplest form it used to work in the following
way.
   The trading company with, say, +1, of reserves and +5,
of other assets is sold to a finance company for +15,. The
finance company then pays itself a dividend of +1, and sells the
trading company back to its original owners for +5,. The latter
are then left with the company plus +1, in cash- the object of
the exercise.
   The finance company, however, whose business is dealing in shares
and other property and is thus taxed on capital gains, can offset the
+1, loss in buying and reselling the business against the
dividend received. Hence it, too, has no tax liability.
Revenue's Chagrin
   Last year's Finance Act- in particular the "blanket"
Section 28- was meant to have put a stop to all this. But although
the crude method just outlined is no longer possible, a roaring trade
is still being done- much to the Revenue's chagrin- in some of the
more esoteric refinements of dividend stripping. Among them are the
methods known among the professionals as the "Scissors," Stock
Shunting and the Forward Strip.
   The first two are highly complex operations, usually used in
property deals. The forward strip, however, was specially designed
for those people who have not yet made their profits- actors, for
example. Here, a company is formed to exploit the actor's services
over the next five years.
   In essence what happens is that the drop in value of the shares
in this company (at the end of the five years they are worthless) is
offset against the actor's earnings over the period. How many of our
leading actors are anxiously waiting for April 17 to find out whether
they will be able to continue their forward strip?
THIS WEEK'S DIVIDENDS
Reyrolle: Phoenix
   HIGHLIGHT of this week's dividend news will come from A.
Reyrolle, the big North-country electrical engineers who report on
Friday. The difficulties through which the heavy electrical industry
has passed in recent years are well enough known and they haven't left
Reyrolle scatheless.
   These went further than a mere check to growth, and at one time
brought trading profits down from the peak of +3,99, in 1955 by
nearly +1 million.
   Last year trading profits had climbed back to +3,134,, but
the market is not particularly sanguine that 196 will have seen much
further recovery- profit margins were probably too slim for that.
Last year's agreement with Associated Electrical Industries for joint
research has probably not been in force long enough to bring big
savings yet, but it should do so in time.
   Meanwhile Reyrolle has never cut its dividend which has been held
at the equivalent of 8 1/4 per cent on present capital for the past
four years. Earnings a year ago were 25 per cent. The interim has
been maintained this year at 3 1/4 per cent and expectation is that
the final will again be 5 1/2 per cent- anything more would please
the market. The shares have risen in the past two months by about
7s. in line with other heavy electricals, on hopes that the industry
has now passed its worst.
Chemicals Prosperity
   Better profits are expected from Associated Chemical
Companies when the figures for 196 are announced next Thursday.
A.C.C., formerly British Chrome & Chemicals, has expanded
rapidly in recent years and is now a sizeable group controlling assets
worth more than +11 million. Trading profits have risen from about
+25, to +1,345, in the past 1 years.
   Last year's total distribution of 15 p.c. came from earnings
of 38 p.c. so an increase is well within the company's powers
especially as the cash position is good. On the other hand the
directors may be conservative again because of expansion plans.
   A free scrip issue cannot be ruled out. It must surely come some
day with reserves and undistributed profits now totalling nearly +4
million by comparison with an issued equity capital of +2,154,.
The last scrip issue was seven years ago.
   Profits of Mitchells, Ashworth & Stansfield, the Lancashire
manufacturers, dyers and printers of felts who now have considerable
interests in the carpet trades, are expected to be lower. This will
have been caused by running-in troubles with their new plant.
   There can hardly be much fear, however, of a reduced
distribution, so strong is the company's financial position. For
several years past the company has added a 6 1/2 p.c. tax free
distribution from capital profits to its dividend.
Cash Resources
   A year ago the balance sheet disclosed cash and investments
totalling nearly +8, by comparison with an issued capital which
is still only +417, after the one-for-four scrip issue.
Two-thirds of the investments are in quoted stocks and some
shareholders have been pressing for a return of capital.
   Steps are in hand to repay the +119, of Preference capital
and interest in the company's report centres chiefly on what further
moves will be made to distribute some of the surplus cash resources.
   The 5s. shares of Phoenix Assurance have risen about 3s.
this year and 5s. from the low point last year. This reflects
market hopes that there will at last be an increase on the 1
p.c. dividend maintained for the past six years, albeit with one
tiny scrip issue of one-for-2.
   Nevertheless Phoenix shares at around 16s. still yield just
over 3 p.c. This is high by comparison with the 1 1/4 to 1 3/4
p.c. returns shown by such companies as Equity Law, General
Accident, Legal & General and Eagle Star. But after the 'no
change' shock from Legal and General it would be as well not to
expect much.
<TABLE>
Italy Seeks Firms From Britain
   ITALY is actively looking for British firms wishing to
start manufacturing within the Common Market. Already Inbucon, a
British firm of business consultants has been engaged by Finmeccanica,
the large holding company, to look for suitable candidates.
   Finmeccanica has substantial interests in Alfa-Romeo and Ansaldo,
the important Genoa shipyard. It is offering to finance wholly or in
part new British manufacturing ventures in Italy.
   Finmeccanica is itself owned by the vast semi-autonomous
Government agency, the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction
(I.R.I.); which has majority shareholdings in a large number of
Italian heavy industrial concerns, public utilities and banks.
No Future For Small Atomic Reactors?
   News that Hawker Siddeley is withdrawing from the nuclear power
business has confirmed the growing belief that the making of small
atomic reactors has a long way to go before it becomes a commercial
proposition.
# 233
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THE BIGGEST CONTEST IN THE WORLD
After four months' travel in Russia and the United States MERVYN
JONES compares life in the two competing super-Powers and the
attitudes of their people
   TO say that it is nice to be home, after four months and
seven thousand miles of travel in America and Russia, is true in more
than one way. Appreciation of living in England, now amply
reinforced, is the least of it. The greatest relief is not to be at
either pulling end in the global tug-of-war.
   Whether we call it cold war or peaceful competition, the contest
between the two super-Powers is a burden of which they will never be
free in what we can discern of the future. The material weight of
this burden, considerable in America, is enormous in Russia. Its
psychological weight is incalculable for two peoples whose
inclination, from reasons of geography and tradition, is to want the
rest of the world to stop bothering them.
   This is evident, notably, with regard to the race to the moon.
For us in England, according to individual outlook, the exploration
of space is either a silly game or a glorious endeavour of the human
spirit. For the contestants, it is no joke and no fun either. It is
something that has to be done because the other side is doing it.
Teacher's view of space flights
   For Americans, Russia's lead in the race is as grim a matter as
Japan's initiative after Pearl Harbour. Of the possible reactions,
sheer denial was commoner than I could have expected. A famous
columnist explained in detail how the Gagarin and Titov flights had
been (not "might have been") fabricated. A mother, sensible enough
to believe in them, asked me what she should say to her child after
the teacher had told the class they were a fake. "Tell her what you
think," I said; but in a conformist small town this was evidently as
hard as for an atheist parent to challenge religious instruction.
   Belief in the flights necessarily implied gloom. As I bought my
paper at the candy store on the day of the Titov flight, the headlines
were big and black. The shopkeeper's wife glanced at them and said:
"Isn't it just too awful?"
   The third reaction was to take comfort in America's way of doing
things. "Ours," said a young teacher, "is a democratic space
programme." By this he meant that it was attended by publicity and
by care for human life. I had been assured several times that
half-a-dozen Russians are whirling dead through space. "We could
have a man on the moon in six months if we just shot them off
regardless," said the teacher.
   None of these people was excited by the thought of an American in
space. "The whole thing's crazy when you think of half the world
starving," said an economics student at Cleveland. But he added:
"I guess we've got to do it."
Getting ready for massacre
   For the Russians, who enjoy the lead, one might expect it to be
an inspiration. For some of them, it is. A woman pulling potatoes on
an especially primitive collective farm, and lunching as I spoke to
her on dry bread and gherkins, said: "Don't judge our country by
what you see- we've got the first man in space." The surprise was
to meet Russians (not intellectuals, but common folk) who took a
contrary view.
   An engineer: "It's not the right way to use millions of
roubles, with conditions as they are." A miner's wife: "It won't
do any harm, if we can believe it's for peaceful purposes, but it
would have been better to build more hospitals." A tractor driver:
"We don't say this publicly, you understand, but most of us think
it's a waste of money."
   At this, the tractor driver's mate grinned and said: "People
say Titov was really sent up to photograph America." I asked if he
thought the space flights justified. He shrugged: "Might do one
good thing- prove once and for all there's no God up there."
   What is taken for granted, both in America and in Russia, is that
there would be no sputniks if there were no military rockets. Which
brings me to the gloomiest aspect of my journey: the spectacle of two
great peoples getting ready to massacre each other.
   It is a cliche?2 to say that neither the American nor the
Russian people want war, but it is true. With the Russians, it is a
simple matter of scars yet unhealed. Time and again, people gripped
me by the arm, told ghastly stories of the Nazi invasion, and asked:
"Can you imagine that we would start a war?" It is impossible to
doubt their sincerity.
   With the Americans, there are several strands. They have a great
deal to lose. They have, even now, a deep suspicion of militarism, of
"the brass," of the gearing of the nation to war. A young
ornithologist, asked how he came to choose his profession, explained:
"After I graduated I was in chemistry, but I found they were using
it for war. I switched to electronics, and it was the same. I sat
down to figure out what they couldn't use for war, and what I came up
with was birds."
No real awareness of nuclear threat
   Add to this a still potent distrust of foreign entanglements.
The evening after the President's July 25 speech, announcing a
readiness to fight for Berlin and an increase in the call-up- a
speech which caused more alarm over interrupted careers than
satisfaction- I chatted over a coffee with a factory worker. He was
all enthusiasm: it was a wonderful speech, he was behind Kennedy all
the way. Then he said abruptly: "A good thing we haven't got Truman
in the White House now. Never was any need to fight in Korea, and if
he was around we'd be fighting in Germany now."
   But, sad to relate, "they want peace" is not the whole story.
One has to add that both Americans and Russians are ready to
contemplate war. The reason is that neither people has any real
awareness of what nuclear war would mean.
   Union Square in New York is a public forum, comparable to
Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. As a listening-post, it is more
instructive than Hyde Park because nobody gets on a platform. A man
with something on his mind starts to talk, and those around him join
in.
   "You 2gotta admit," a young man was saying as I neared a
sizeable group, "that things advance when there's a war. We got
penicillin because of the last war, and we'll get something else next
time."
   A religious pacifist intervened: "Did you ever see a picture of
Hiroshima?" The first speaker countered: "Aw, Hiroshima- did you
ever see a man mangled by a bus?"
   Another man observed with an air of sagacity: "Wars are fought
for real estate. They kick it around for a bit, then they divide it
up. Look at Korea, look at Vietnam." Another summed up: "There
always will be wars, it don't matter how much you talk." I broke in
to ask if anyone disagreed with this proposition. Among about fifty
people, nobody did.
Lecture on need for disarmament
   Nobody in Russia would talk about the benefits of war. But
when a Russian talks of the horrors of war, he is talking a different
language from a nuclear disarmer. The very intensity of past
experience inhibits thought of a worse future.
   Once, a man who had experienced Nazi occupation told me how the
Germans knocked people about and turned them out of their homes to
freeze. He wound up, inevitably: "We don't want to see that
again." I said: "One thing that's certain is that you won't.
You'll see either peace or death in a split second." He stared at
me, wondering what I was talking about.
   At a restaurant in Kursk, three Russians lectured me on the need
for disarmament and cited the speech Khrushchev had made the previous
day at Stalingrad (sorry, Volgograd). Nettled by some remarks by de
Gaulle, the Soviet Premier had declared that France would be
obliterated in another war and added: "However, it is impossible to
destroy the Soviet Union."
Americans' inborn optimism
   I said that Khrushchev was quite right about France, and
Britain, too, but unduly sanguine about his own country. Nuclear
weapons, I went on, could destroy the human race. Signalling to the
waitress for another round of Cuban rum, one of the Russians said
positively: "Not the Soviet Union."
   It is equally inconceivable for Americans that their country
could cease to function as an organised society. Paradoxically, the
civil defence drive strengthens this feeling. Estimates of how many
people would be killed, however horrific, merely suggest how many
would be saved. With their inborn optimism, many Americans envisage
the aftermath of nuclear attack as a period of getting back on their
feet, like the day after a hurricane.
   The point is often made that Americans have never known modern
war on their soil. It is sometimes forgotten that Russians have never
known long-range bombing. The blitz on London was a frustrated
substitute for invasion. Leningrad was shelled and many Russian towns
were devastated by street-fighting, but Moscow- with the Germans
almost in the suburbs- never had an air raid on the London scale, and
behind the lines was behind the lines. It is natural to think with
some confidence of keeping the enemy out next time.
   Russians do, of course, know about nuclear bombs and missiles.
But everyone hopes that his home town will not be a target, and they
have been told very little about fallout. Defence, therefore, means
defence for them.
Views that go unchallenged
   To this, one has to add the general conviction that "our
side" is in the right, and acting defensively, over what Russians
call the German question and Americans the Berlin crisis. The view
that Khrushchev is simply trying to settle the German problem on a
sensible basis is, of course, never publicly challenged in Russia.
The view that Kennedy is simply trying to maintain a position
unreasonably attacked by the Soviet Union is seldom publicly
challenged in America. For people who do not rule out "war if
necessary," the mood is not far on either side from: "We don't
want to fight, but by jingo if we do..."
   Any glossary of the Russo-American political vocabulary (and I am
thinking of everyday speech as well as official statements) must
include these entries: "Threat: a bellicose move made by our
opponents. Warning: a bellicose move made by us." I have met both
Americans and Russians who were genuinely saddened by the resumption
of nuclear tests, which was in the offing while I was in America and
happened while I was in Russia. It meant that hopes had been dashed,
and it showed how bad things were getting. But I met nobody who
thought it actually wrong if their leaders found it necessary.
   One might sum up by recording two posters in the same street in
Kiev. The first showed a mother clutching a child and read: "For
their sake, we must have peace." The other showed a steel-helmeted
soldier with levelled bayonet and read: "Ready for the defence of
the Motherland." I feel sure that both meet with general approval.
   Cold war, nevertheless, is less intense than hot war in more than
one respect. The antagonism is less total, and among both peoples
there is a refreshing absence of the undiscriminating hatred known in
the last war as Vansittartism.
   This is easy for the Americans. They reason that, since one can
be loyal to America and oppose Kennedy, one can be fond of Russia
while loathing Khrushchev. There is in fact a certain vogue for
Russia in the United States. Far more young people are learning the
Russian language than in Britain, and they are not all hoping for jobs
with the Voice of America.
# 24
<27 TEXT A27>
A.E.U. National Committee's Demand May Cost +3 Million
ENGINEERS' THREE-WEEK HOLIDAY CALL
Revised Pay Basis Claim
   THE resumed conference of the A.E.U. National Committee
at Eastbourne today passed a resolution reaffirming the demand for a
third week's holiday, and eight statutory holidays with pay for three
million workers.
   It also asked for a revision of holiday pay to be based on
average earnings for all and a minimum of +2 13s. 6d. a day for
time workers.
   It is estimated that this claim, if conceded, would cost the
employers between +25 to +3 million a year.
   Mr. L. Smith (Sidcup), the mover, said that many employed in
public service already had three weeks holiday and also many white
collar workers, including draughtsmen, who were winning the day in
negotiations with individual firms.
   He thought Britain was lagging behind many on the Continent who
had longer holidays.
WORK STRAIN
   Mr. W. J. Daniel (Worcester) urged that it was vitally
necessary to have longer breaks from work because of the stress and
strain of working 5 weeks in the year.
   "Mental hospitals and homes are being filled because of the
strain of modern industry," he declared.
   "I think we can get the British Medical Association and
hospital authorities on our side on this," he said.
   Mrs. M. E. Sparks (Birmingham) said that employers were
beginning to recognise that tea breaks were necessary because they
revitalised the workers' energy. Under automation work was getting
more monotonous and that was bringing mental and bodily illness.
NEW GRADE
   Mr. W. J. Carron (President) pointed out that in some
sections of industry, under the pressure of the rank and file,
increased holidays had been agreed based on length of service and
other qualifications.
   There had also been an extension of a new grade known as manual
staff where attractions, including longer holidays, were being offered
to the rank and file and were being accepted.
Short-time Figures Slashed in Car Factories
   IMPROVEMENT in the motor industry situation was reflected in
figures issued after today's monthly meeting of the Midland Regional
Board for Industry.
   The number of people estimated to be on short time has dropped
from a total of 29,4 including 21,5 car workers a month ago, to a
total of 12, including just under 8, car workers.
   The total number unemployed in the last month has fallen by 2,8
to just over 29,.
   Major C. R. Dibben, chairman of the board, told a Press
conference, that most workers in the industry were now back to a full
working week. "Although the revival in car sales appears to be
largely in the home market and difficulties in the exports' markets
have continued, there is hope in the industry that the success of
British cars at recent motor shows abroad foreshadows further
increases in activity in the industry during the next four or five
months," he said.
EXPORT CAMPAIGN
   In Coventry, on April 1, there were 3,44 unemployed including
7 on short time.
   A greater awareness of the need for exports by Midland
manufacturers was reported by Mr. C. J. Holman, regional
director of the Board of Trade. As a result of the Government's
export campaign, inquiries to the Board's Birmingham offices from
firms had increased by 55 per cent. They came from about 6 firms
all over the Midlands.
   A change to a decimal coinage system: "as quickly as possible"
was recommended by the regional board after hearing views of members.
Motor Exports Down in First Quarter
   CAR exports for the first quarter of this year at 85,219,
represented the lowest quarterly figure since 1956, the Board of Trade
said today.
   It was 5, below the figure for the final quarter of 196 and
nearly 1, below that for the first quarter of 196.
   Car output for the quarter, at 218,3, was well below any
quarterly figure for 1959 and 196.
   But the Board's monthly statistics showed a brighter picture for
commercial vehicles. The totals for exports in the quarter, at 48,358
and production, at 119,745, were both well above corresponding figures
for any quarter in 1959-6. ("Motor Industry Expansion Hopes
Questioned"- Page 6.)
ALGERIAN PARATROOP ATTACK BEATEN OFF
First Shots in Revolt
   FIRST fighting in the Algeria revolt broke out today when
loyal forces repulsed an attempt by paratroops to storm the naval base
of Mers el Kebir, near Oran, western Algeria.
   According to official sources quoted by the French agency a
French light cruiser fired warning shots as paratroops approached the
base.
   Unconfirmed reports said troops and Marines resisted the attack
and the paratroops withdrew soon afterwards.
   Two battalions of French motorised infantry were reported to have
crossed the Rhine into France today, as the Armed Forces Ministry
announced the recall of troops and armour from the 6, strong force
in Germany to strengthen the Paris area.
   The capital had passed a second night of vigil against a possible
airborne invasion from Algeria.
Food Rush
   It was also announced that 1, reservists had been recalled
and the 16th Infantry Division put on a war footing.
   A message from President De Gaulle will be read to the French
National Assembly and Senate this afternoon.
   The French Grocers' Federation appealed to people today not to
create a rush on foodstuffs. They said there was no reason to fear a
food shortage.
   The appeal follows a rush by Parisian housewives yesterday to
stock up with food.
LAOS CEASE-FIRE NEAR?
   THE Royal Laotian Government has accepted the appeal made
yesterday by the co-chairmen of the Geneva agreement (the British and
Soviet Foreign Ministers), for a cease-fire in Laos.
   A Foreign Office spokesman said in London today: "We very much
welcome the Royal Laotian Government's acceptance of the cease-fire
appeal."
   The Soviet Government is taking steps to bring the cease-fire
appeal to the notice of the Left-wing Pathet Lao forces.
Move for Coach Drinks Fails
   A MOVE to enable alcoholic drinks to be sold to passengers in
public vehicles on specified services was defeated today.
   Mr. William Clark, Conservative M.P. for Nottingham
South, proposed a new clause to the Government's Licensing Bill so
that such drinks could be permitted.
   He told the Standing Committee on the Bill: "You can eat in a
long-distance coach in this country, you can softly drink, but you
cannot have alcoholic drink."
   Mr. Marcus Lipton (Lab., Brixton) said he supported the new
clause but he would not like to see "24 hours drinking going on-
combined cruising and boozing while enjoying the beauties of the
countryside."
Public Concern
   Mr. Dennis Vosper, Minister of State, Home Office, said there
ought not to be a close association of alcohol and road transport when
there was so much public concern about road accidents.
   Mr. Harold Boardman (Lab., Leigh) said: "Miners hire a
private coach and fill up the boot with beer cases. People come down
for the Cup Final in coaches carrying more beer bottles than
passengers." (laughter.)
Ceylon Cabinet Orders General Mobilisation
   THE Ceylon Government today ordered general mobilisation and
called out on active service nine units of volunteers and reservists
of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Home Guards.
   The units were ordered to report for duty immediately. The Prime
Minister, Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, said in a broadcast to the
nation today that the Government had received information that various
other organisations besides the recently banned opposition Federal
Party were secretly planning to undermine the Government.
DEATH PENALTY
   The estate strike yesterday morning was aimed at this and
certain elements were using the bank clerks' strike to cause great
economic harm to the country, she declared.
   Mrs. Bandaranaike called upon "all patriotic Ceylonese to give
their full support to the Government."
   By a proclamation last night, the death penalty for looting and
arson, and other punishment for offences such as the breaking of
bridges, obstruction to roads and damage to buses and trains was
extended to the whole of the island.
   The measures had previously applied only to certain areas
affected by recent trouble in Ceylon, arising out of a civil
disobedience campaign in the Tamil-speaking northern and eastern
provinces against the adoption of Sinhalese as the official language.
London Jew Faces Eichmann After 23 Years
   A BRITISH estate agent, Mr. Moliz Fleischmann, of St.
John's Wood, London, told the court trying Adolf Eichmann, today, of
the occasion 23 years ago when he faced the Nazi leader across a desk
in the Gestapo's Vienna headquarters.
   Mr. Fleischmann, a former Jewish leader in Vienna, where he was
born, escaped on one of the last trains out of the city before the
outbreak of war.
   In March, 1938, he and other Jewish leaders were called to the
Hotel Metropole, Gestapo headquarters, and taken before Eichmann.
   "He sat at a large desk- we had to stand," Mr. Fleischmann
said. "He was in uniform, the black S.S. uniform which became
very familiar to us later.
   "He told us his task was to purify Vienna and Austria from Jews
in the quickest possible way.
<END QUOTE>
   Today, as he recalled those words, Mr. Fleischmann again faced
Eichmann. The witness box from which he spoke is directly opposite
the bulletproof glass-covered dock in which Eichmann sat.
   "The influence of Eichmann's activity and the fear which
developed in the heart of Viennese Jewry was felt immediately," said
Mr. Fleischmann.
   Part of Mr. Fleischmann's testimony added to the mystery of
Eichmann's birth. He said that at the Vienna interview Eichmann told
him: "I speak Hebrew and Yiddish fluently because I was born in
Sharona" (a German community near Tel Aviv, Israel).
   But in interrogation Eichmann has told his captors that he was
born at Solingen, Germany, and cannot understand how the idea got
about that he is Palestine-born.
Protest Over Berkswell Footpaths
   THREE Berkswell footpaths and one at Bickenhill, which are
all used by visitors, ramblers and residents in the areas, should not
be closed, Meriden R.D.C. is to tell British Railways.
   Asking for closure orders, British Railways say the footpaths
cross railway lines and will be affected by the Coventry-Birmingham
main line electrification scheme.
   People who live in the neighbourhood and ramblers were asked
their opinion before Meriden R.D.C. came to its decision.
   Berkswell Parish Council strongly opposes any proposal to close
the footpath which runs from the south of Truggist Lane, crossing the
railway line short of the eastern side of Berkswell Station.
ASSOCIATION'S EVIDENCE
   It considered that this path was an important right of way
linking the southern part of the parish with the village and the
church. The Ramblers' Association also confirmed that this path was
used by their Coventry-based clubs.
   The association provided evidence to prove that paths which
linked Kenilworth Road with Wootton Lane and Bradnocks Marsh Lane were
frequently used, although the parish council raised no objections to
closures.
   The closing of a fourth footpath, connecting Old Station Road
with Church Lane, Bickenhill, is being opposed by the local parish
council and the Ramblers' Association.
BILL 'GIVES LICENSEES MORE PROTECTION'
   COVENTRY and Leamington members of the Midlands Womens'
<SIC> Auxiliaries who attended their association's annual rally at
Sutton Coldfield yesterday were told that the new Licensing Bill would
bring more protection from teenage drinkers as well as more competition.
   Nearly 4 wives and relatives of licensees belonging to the
association were at the rally. They are responsible for a great deal
of charity work, both nationally and in the licensed trade.
"GOING CONTINENTAL"
   They were told by Rear-Admiral W. G. Brittain, director of
the National Trade Development Association, a body which helps to
co-ordinate relations between the brewer and the publican, that under
the new Bill the penalty for under-age drinkers would go up from +2
to +25.
   "I hope that will choke off some of them from their games and
give you a more peaceful life in your houses," he said.
   Rear-Admiral Brittain said the Government had clearly decided
that the country must "go Continental" and give drink licenses to
restaurants and boarding houses. For better or for worse this would
bring competition to the licensed trade.
   He said: "That leads us to the importance of catering, but it
doesn't have to be a 'Ritzy' meal."
# 217
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They turned out to see Jacqueline, say surprised police
2, PARISIANS GO WILD OVER KENNEDY
Confetti welcome in Rue de Rivoli
   PARIS gave President and Mrs. Kennedy a gay welcome today,
and crowds estimated at 2, cheered them on their drive from Orly
Airport.
   President de Gaulle sat beside Mr. Kennedy in an open car as
the American leader- 26 years his junior- stood up to acknowledge
the cheers, flag-waving and hand-clapping of the crowds. Surprised
police said there were more people in the streets than for
ex-President Eisenhower or for Mr. Kruschev.
   As soon as the official motorcade entered the city limits a
11-gun salute began to boom out.
   Cannon beside the Seine were still firing as President Kennedy
reached the Quai d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry, where he will
stay until Saturday morning.
   Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy received a particularly hearty welcome
from students outside the Sorbonne University- where Mrs. Kennedy
once studied.
   Confetti was showered down the Rue de Rivoli, where Parisians
thronged office windows as well as pavements.
   At the airport, Mr. Kennedy praised his host as "a captain in
the field in the defence of the West" for over 2 years, adding that
his leadership and sense of history were needed more than ever today.
   It was Mrs. Kennedy who drew the crowds, said police.
   The President stood bare-headed in his car to acknowledge the
cheers, but Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in a pale blue coat and matching
blue straw hat, was half-hidden from the crowds as she rode by in her
enclosed car, waving and smiling.
MEETING
   This three-day visit is President Kennedy's first to Europe
since he took office.
   The first meeting between the Presidents lasted 4 minutes.
   They began their discussions, which will take up nine hours in
five meetings over the next three days, two hours after Mr. Kennedy
flew in.
   General de Gaulle greeted Mr. Kennedy on the steps of the
Elysee Palace and Republican Guards gave full military honours.
   Later President de Gaulle gave a luncheon party in the Palace in
honour of Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy.
   The 4 guests included M. Debre, the French Prime Minister.
   Of his planned three-day discussions with President de Gaulle,
Mr. Kennedy said: "I have neither held nor planned any talks that
are more important."
   He added: "I am here to pay tribute to France, not for her past
glory but for her present greatness- her leadership in Europe and
Africa, in science and industry, the productivity of her workers, the
brilliance of her universities, the grandeur of her mission in
carrying the torch of liberty to new nations throughout the world."
   In his reply, President de Gaulle told him: "We have never
known Americans here other than as friends and allies, and as such we
welcome you."
Cheers all the way for President Swart
   THOUSANDS of South Africans, citizens of a republic since
midnight, today saw 66-year-old Mr. Charles Swart drive in
procession to the Groote Kerk Church in Pretoria, where he took the
oath as their first President.
   Representatives of all sections of the population had places in
the church to witness the President's inauguration ceremony.
   They included Africans, Coloureds (mixed race), Indians and
Chinese. Leaders of eight African national units were headed by the
Paramount Chief of the Zulus, Cyprian Dinizulu.
   Mr. Swart drove to church with a guard of mounted police in
front and behind.
   The crowd, six deep in places, cheered him enthusiastically.
Many had waited since 6 a.m. in the rain, and the square was a
sea of umbrellas.
11-gun salute
   Salutes of 11 guns and the peal of church bells greeted the
birth of the republic at midnight, ending ties with the British Crown
that went back 155 years.
   In his inauguration speech, Mr. Swart said South Africa wanted
to decide its own domestic policy "without interference from
outside."
   He paid tribute to the Queen, expressing appreciation of her
"courtesy, friendliness and graciousness," and said he hoped for
cordial relations in the future.
   The Queen sent a cable of good wishes, and Mr. Macmillan sent a
message to Dr. Verwoerd, the Prime Minister.
Mr. Kruschev in Czechoslovakia
   Mr. Kruschev arrived today in Czechoslovakia on his way to
the weekend meeting with President Kennedy in Vienna, the Soviet news
agency Tass reported.
   Tass did not name the town in Czechoslovakia where the Soviet
Prime Minister had arrived. Mr. Kruschev left Kiev, in the Ukraine,
by rail.
Conservatives put their man in at hectic meeting
LABOUR OUTVOTED- SO A TORY GETS THE CHAIR
By MICHAEL PICKERING
Our Municipal Correspondent
   CONSERVATIVE Councillor Bob Henderson was elected chairman of
Newcastle Housing Management Committee today- but he will hold the
position for only one meeting.
   His election followed a hectic half-hour during the meeting
when the Labour group, with only three members out of ten present,
fought to keep control of the chair.
   They were out-voted by the Conservatives who were at full
strength with five members present.
   Following custom, the Lord Mayor, Ald. Henry Russell, took the
chair at the beginning of the meeting during the election of chairman
and vice-chairman for the coming year.
   The Labour group was represented by Coun. Mrs. C. M.
Lewcock, Coun. A. P. Gurd, and Ald. R. W. Hanlan.
FIVE VOTES TO THREE
   Coun. Mrs. Lewcock proposed Coun. Jack Johnston for
chairman. He is at present on holiday in Paris, and was vice-chairman
last year.
   The Conservatives voted against.
   Coun. Gurd then proposed Coun. Mrs. Lewcock as chairman for
the one meeting.
   Again the Conservatives voted against and won.
   Coun. Bob Henderson then proposed Ald. John Burton, the
former Housing Management Committee chairman, who was voted out of his
chairmanship by the Labour group at a meeting shortly before last
week's aldermanic elections.
   Conservative Councillor Mrs. M. E. Graham seconded the
proposal, but as Ald. Burton was not at the meeting and had not
given his permission, the nomination was withdrawn.
   Conservative Councillor Mrs. I. McCambridge then proposed
Coun. Bob Henderson and the Tories voted him into the chair by five
votes to three.
   Coun. Henderson will remain chairman only for today's meeting,
as members of the opposition party are not entitled to hold the chair
of any Corporation committee, and it is expected that at the next
meeting of the committee the Labour members will arrive in force to
put matters right.
Councillor accuses Labour paper
   COUN. MRS. ETHEL CHALK has protested vigorously against
"misrepresentation of the facts" in the Newcastle Labour Record- a
news sheet published at the time of the municipal elections.
   "In this paper," she says, "the Socialists say they built the
Mary Magdalen home for old people.
   "The home was built by the Schools and Charities Committee with
money left to the City."
   The sentence in the paper reads: "We have built old people's
homes such as the Mary Magdalen homes."
   Mrs. Chalk also complains that the paper stated that the
Welfare Committee would complete two new homes for the elderly during
1961.
   "I challenged this statement at this week's meeting of the
Welfare Committee," she said "and the chairman was forced to admit
that neither of the new homes would be open until next year."
COMIC-STRIP PARIS SEND-OFF
Smiles, handshake as K. and K. meet
   PRESIDENT JOHN KENNEDY, young leader of the West, today shook
hands with Premier Nikita Kruschev, wily, experienced leader of the
Communist bloc, in neutral Vienna.
   Mr. Kennedy was smiling, Mr. Kruschev beaming, as they met
for the first time on the steps of the American Ambassador's home.
   As they grasped hands at the top of the nine stone steps leading
to the residence door, Mr. Kennedy said to his interpreter: "Ask
him if it would be all right to shake hands again for the
photographers."
   Mr. Kruschev agreed, and they vigorously shook hands again.
   Then they went inside to the white-walled music room to begin
their first talks- over lunch.
CHEERS
   As President Kennedy drove from the airport, people stood and
cheered in the rain.
   Some carried banners reading "Help Berlin." One said:
"Give him hell, Jack."
   Mr. Kruschev drove into the grounds of the residence in a black
Zil limousine with his Foreign Minister, Mr. Gromyko, about 25
minutes after Mr. Kennedy and his Secretary of State, Mr. Rusk.
   After lunch, the talks were to continue until 6 p.m. round a
coffee table in a small room furnished in red and grey in early
American style.
   Mrs. Kennedy reached the residence earlier at the head of
another convoy of cars, having driven direct from the airport.
COMIC STRIP
   A series of comic-strip mishaps frustrated President Kennedy's
attempts to leave Paris. Eventually his aircraft took off- a quarter
of an hour behind schedule.
   First the CAR carrying Mr. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State,
broke down on the way to the airport. It was pushed off the road and
another one was produced, but the party was ten minutes late reaching
the airport.
   Then just as the Presidential jet was about to taxi on to the
runway another group of the party rushed on to the tarmac and a packet
of NEWSPAPERS was also thrown aboard.
   At last the plane's doors were again closed and it taxied off.
But then a massive American SECRET SERVICE MAN ran after it,
gesticulating and shouting for it to stop.
   He was breathlessly followed by Providencia, Mrs. Kennedy's
COLOURED MAID, who had apparently got left behind while she
searched for a lost suitcase.
THE MAID
   No sooner was Providencia on board than yet another late-comer
was seen running across the tarmac. It was "Tish," Mrs.
Kennedy's SOCIAL SECRETARY, Miss Letitia Baldridge.
   Then, with all passengers apparently aboard, the jet finally got
under way for Vienna.
   There were cries of ~"Goodbye Jackie" and ~"Goodbye Madame"
as Mrs. Kennedy, wearing a light blue woollen overcoat, a white
straw hat and gloves, walked towards the aircraft just behind the
President.
   With them were M. Debre, the French Prime Minister, M.
Maurice Couve de Murville, Foreign Minister, and the Austrian
Ambassador, Herr Adria Rotter.
New Summit? Mac and Kennedy weigh up chances
By JOSEPH TOBIN, Our Political Correspondent.
   MR. MACMILLAN and President Kennedy today considered the
next critical steps towards a full Summit conference of the major
powers.
   With Summit diplomacy revived in a spectacular fashion by the
Vienna meeting with Mr. Kruschev, the President considered with the
Prime Minister the chances of a meeting of the Big Four soon.
   This was the highlight of the review of East-West relations in
the meeting between the President and the Prime Minister.
   The talks lasted for three hours. This was a surprise, for they
had only been scheduled to last two hours.
   But it is understood that the Prime Minister and the President
extended their meeting to consider fully Mr. Kruschev's tough
attitude on several major questions at the Vienna meeting.
   The Russians are said to be taking up a tougher attitude on many
problems, particularly on Berlin.
   There was complete agreement between the Premier and the
President on the West's policy concerning Berlin.
   The two men met alone in the Prime Minister's study at Admiralty
House.
ARRIVED EARLY
   The President surprised the Prime Minister's staff by arriving
ten minutes early for the talks.
   In their man-to-man exchanges they also considered the situation
in Laos.
   Above all, they considered the future of "Summitry." They had
to answer the question: "Does the Vienna meeting, with its vague
goodwill, but no practical results, justify further steps along the
same road."
COMMON MARKET
   The President also reported on Mr. Kruschev's attitude to
nuclear testing and disarmament. All reports are that Mr. Kruschev
was unyielding on these two issues.
   It is understood that Mr. Macmillan also questioned the
President on his earlier talks with President de Gaulle. This
meeting may have a crucial bearing on Britain's possible entry into
the common market.
AT THE PALACE
   This evening the Premier and President will issue a communique
on their talks.
   Tonight the Kennedys will go to Buckingham Palace for dinner with
the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
# 27
<29 TEXT A29>
WATER GUNS HOSE BERLINERS ON BORDER
U.S. troops threatened in a second incident
   East German police to-day shot streams of water at West
Berliners standing within 1yds. of the border, on the Western
side, West Berlin police reported.
   The East German Interior Ministry on Tuesday told West
Berliners to keep 1yds. from the borders. The Western
commandants, ordering Allied troops up to the border yesterday,
described this as "effrontery."
   In another incident, an East German police officer to-day called
on American soldiers standing just behind the sector border
demarcation line to withdraw, and when the Americans did not move a
water cannon lorry drove up on the East Berlin side, a West German
News Agency reported. But after a while the water hose was withdrawn
with the Americans still in position.
   East Berlin police last night threw several tear gas grenades
into a group of 4 West Berliners listening to a West Berlin
loudspeaker van which had drawn up close to the border to broadcast
news.
   Winds blew the tear gas back across the border and someone in the
crowd threw one of the grenades back, a police spokesman said.
"Showing flag"
   Meanwhile British, American and French troops, backed by tanks,
to-day stood guard along the city's dividing line.
   The troops took station yesterday along the city sector boundary
after the East German Government introduced stringent new regulations
for passage from one half of the city to the other.
   They remained on guard all night, and to-day British forces, with
tanks and armoured cars, took part in their second "show-the-flag"
exercise in three days.
   The Dutch and Swedish consulates in Berlin said to-day they had
received reports that foreign residents in East Germany were having
difficulties in leaving the territory.
   In East Berlin, Foreign Ministry officials said they had not
heard of any new regulations banning foreigners from going to West
Berlin.
Offices shut
   No offices of the East German travel agency were opened in West
Berlin to-day "because the West Berlin City Government refused
permission," an East German railway official said.
   Moscow Radio said in an English-language broadcast beamed at
Britain that ~"Whitehall is playing a dangerous game with fire across
a powder magazine" over the Berlin issue.
   "Such deeds are fraught with the danger of a military
catastrophe in which Britain, too, would be involved," said the
broadcast.
THREAT TO AIR CORRIDOR 'SERIOUS'
   Britain would regard any threat to the air communications with
Berlin as "an extremely serious matter," said a Foreign Office
spokesman in London to-day.
   He had been asked about the Berlin air corridors which, it is
understood, are referred to in the new Soviet Note on the Berlin
situation. He would not, however, make any official comment on the
Note itself.
   It is understood that the references on the air corridors
introduces <SIC> a new element into the situation, writes a
diplomatic correspondent.
Being studied
   The full text of the Note was received by the Foreign Office
to-day from the British Embassy in Moscow. Similar Notes have been
delivered to the United States and French Governments.
   The Notes are being studied by the three Western powers and will
also be discussed by the ambassadorial steering group in Washington,
on which Britain, the U.S., France and West Germany are
represented.
   According to the Soviet news agency Tass- quoted by Reuter- the
Soviet Government have protested in the Notes against the use of the
air corridors to West Berlin for "subversive and revenge-seeking aims
of West German militarists."
"Provocative"
   The Notes demanded that the Western powers take "immediate
measures to end the unlawful and provocative activities" of the West
German Government in West Berlin.
   The Notes also said there had been "a flagrant breach of the
agreement reached in 1945 under which air corridors were set aside for
the three Western powers, on a temporary basis, to ensure the needs of
their military garrisons, and not for subversive and revanchist
purposes of West German militarism."
   Russia insisted that the Western powers "take immediate measures
to put an end to the unlawful and provocative actions of the Federal
German Republic in West Berlin."
ROW FLARES AT BERLIN STATION
But Premier optimistic
   Tension in Berlin soared again to-day with angry protests over
travel restrictions imposed by the East Germans and a threat by the
West of "necessary action."
   On the brighter side, Mr. Macmillan gave an impromptu news
conference on the Gleneagles golf course and said he thought no-one
would fight over Berlin, and Mr. Khrushchev was quoted as saying
that he was willing to talk over the difficulties.
   The East German restriction which caused to-day's trouble
concerned the issuing of permits for West Berliners wishing to travel
to the East on the overhead railway.
   The Western Commandants authorised the City Government to take
"necessary action" against the issuing of permits.
   Angry West Berliners, shouting, ~"Get out, you pigs,"
gathered outside the Zoo railway station to-day after the East German
officials who run it started issuing permits.
   Six policemen kept the crowd of 5 to 6 people at a distance,
but one woman who went up to the ticket window to get an application
form for a permit was spat on by a fellow West Berliner.
Offices shut
   Finally the office was shut, along with a similar office at
Westkureuz Station.
   The U.S. Commandant in Berlin has made an oral protest to
his Soviet counterpart "concerning the illegal regulations issued by
East German authorities in recent days and incidents arising
therefrom."
   The 1st Battalion the Welch Regiment <SIC> increased patrols
on the border between the British sector of West Berlin and East
Germany to-day to counter increased East German activity on the other
side.
   Mr. Macmillan, who is holidaying in Scotland, spoke to
reporters on the 18th fairway of the golf course. He declared:
"Berlin is one of those things we have to be careful about- that
nobody does anything foolish.
'Risk of folly'
   "I think there would be much more danger of war if weapons
were not so destructive. Fifty years ago we could have had a war.
Now it is not much fun for anybody.
   "But there is always the danger of folly. I think the way it is
going on is very worrying, but nothing more."
   To-morrow Mr. Macmillan is to discuss the Berlin situation with
Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, at Gleneagles. It was learned
to-day that Lord Home will afterwards go to stay privately with Queen
Elizabeth the Queen Mother at Birkhall.
   In Copenhagen, Drew Pearson, syndicated American newspaper
columnist, said that Mr. Krushchev had told him he was willing to
meet Western leaders "as soon as possible."
'Strongest protest' over Caldon Canal closure plan
URGENT MATTER, SAY CHEADLE R.D.C.
   Cheadle Rural Council's Town Planning and Plans Committee
decided yesterday to protest "in the strongest possible terms"
against the proposal to close part of the Caldon Canal between
Hazelhurst New Locks and Froghall. Later the full council endorsed
this step "as a matter of urgency."
   At their last meeting the committee were told by the Deputy
Area Planning Officer, Mr. B. Skelland, that it was planned
eventually to "reintegrate" that section of the canal with the
adjoining land.
   Yesterday the committee were informed that the proposal to close
the canal had been made by the British Transport Commission to the
Inland Waterways Redevelopment Advisory Committee.
   In a letter, the Inland Waterways Protection Society told the
committee that in the case of each threatened canal, they carried out
an inspection of every yard of the waterway and eventually submitted a
scheme to the Redevelopment Committee showing how the canal under
review could, if properly managed, be made to pay its way.
   Claiming that their schemes had always been ignored, the society
maintained that all details concerning the closing of the Caldon
Branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal were worked out years ago and
were one further step towards the "elimination" of the inland
waterways.
   The society pointed out that the present capital value of the
Caldon Canal was in the region of +2 millions.
"Alarmed"
   It was also reported that the Service of Youth Scheme and
Kingsley and Ipstones Parish Council were unanimously opposed to the
proposed closure of the canal.
   The Froghall firm of Thomas Bolton and Sons Ltd., said they
were "alarmed" at the possibility of the canal being closed, and
the elimination of the water-feed from the canal to their works would
have "extremely serious consequences" and might result in the
closing of much plant unless satisfactory alternatives were provided.
   Another firm affected by the proposed closure, W. Podmore and
Sons Ltd., of Shelton, who have a factory at Consall, pointed out
that any extraction of water would seriously affect their interests.
   Brittains Ltd., of Cheddleton Paper Mills, said their own use
of the canal had diminished over the years, and if the time came for
disposal of parts of the canal, they would be very interested in
considering the purchase of that portion which lay alongside their
factory.
   The Chairman of the Planning Committee, Mr. J. H. Aberley,
recommended that the council should protest most strongly against the
closure. He pointed out that the council were not in a position to
put in a piped water supply to factories.
"Lifeblood"
   Mr. T. P. Brindley suggested that firms taking water
from the canal should be asked to contribute towards its upkeep.
Instead of thinking of closing the canal, he said, steps should be
taken to find out if the silt could be removed and the canal restored
to its full industrial use, particularly as the railway was now closed
to passenger traffic.
   Mr. F. R. Ford commented: "It is time this country spent
a bit more money on canals. They are the lifeblood of some countries,
and they can still do a lot for this country." He suggested that
the money for "reintegrating" the canal with the adjoining land
would be better spent in cleaning it up and making it usable again."
BERLIN PUTS BLANKET ON BOMB TALKS
British effort at Geneva
   Mr. David Ormsby-Gore, leader of the British delegation at
the Geneva conference on the banning of nuclear tests, which started
to-day, said before leaving London Airport: "I am not very
optimistic in the present climate."
   Former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, he added: "But
we mean to make a real effort to get the Russians moving again in
these negotiations."
   He added that it would probably be his last attendance at the
talks before taking up his fresh post as Britain's Ambassador in
Washington in October.
   Mr. Ormsby-Gore, asked if he was hopeful of a solution being
found in view of the Berlin crisis, said: "I think the general
political atmosphere is not conducive to progress in any negotiations
with the Soviet Union at the present time.
   "I do not say it has eliminated any hope of settlement, but
clearly the Soviet Union do not appear at the moment to be very
interested in reaching any agreements with the West."
Deadlock
   Asked if the deadlock was likely to continue in the talks, he
said: "I do not know at all. It will depend upon the instructions
Mr. Tsarapkin (the Russian delegate) has brought back with him from
Moscow."
   In the talks, the West were making yet another determined bid to
try to get a nuclear test ban treaty with Russia.
   The U.S. delegation, led by Mr. Arthur Dean, are under
instructions from President Kennedy to make the maximum effort to
reach agreement with Russia. The talks began three years ago and have
been deadlocked for the past five months.
   Diplomatic observers said the biggest obstacle to agreement was
the Soviet "Troika" proposal, demanding that the International
Control Organisation, which would "police" a test ban, should be
headed by three administrators- one each from the Communist, Western
and neutral groups- instead of one.
CASTRO URGES BRAZILIANS: 'RISE AND FIGHT OLD GUARD'
Fears attack on Cuban Government
   With events in Brazil leading to fears of anarchy, Dr. Fidel
Castro to-day urged the country to "make use of the experience of
Cuba and hurl itself into battle."
# 214
<3 TEXT A3>
CLR. BROOK BECOMES HUDDERSFIELD'S 61st MAYOR
A momentous year in prospect
   CLR. HARRY FRANCE BROOK became Huddersfield's sixty-first
Mayor and was also elected an alderman at the annual meeting of the
Town Council this afternoon.
   Ald. Brook has been a Liberal representative for the Birkby
Ward since 1944. He is chairman of directors and founder of the firm
of Messrs. H. F. Brook and Co. Ltd., woollen merchants and
clothiers, St. John's Road, Huddersfield. His daughter, Mrs. Jean
W. Nicholson, is the new Mayoress.
   More than 1,5 flowers and potted plants, delicately arranged by
the Corporation Parks Department staff, provided a brilliant
background for the Town Hall ceremony.
   Ald. Day, the retiring Mayor, presided over the ceremony. He
and Mrs. Day are to serve as the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress.
   Clr. A. J. Hazelden, moving the resolution to elect Clr.
Brook, said: "The name of Brook has for scores of years been
associated with Huddersfield, and for nearly the lifetime of the
county borough since its incorporation 1868 there has been a Brook a
member of this Council.
   "Our new Mayor will be the fifth of that name in the long
history of Huddersfield," he went on.
   Clr. Hazelden said that Brook was a good old Anglo-Saxon
name- and one with two meanings. The first meaning- that of
"stream"- was appropriate having regard to the number of Brooks
who had served the Council today and in the past. The second
meaning- "to suffer insult or injury"- would, they all sincerely
hoped, not be the lot of the Mayor-elect!
   Clr. Brook began his education in two of the local schools.
   As a boy and a man his interests had covered a very wide field-
he (Clr. Hazelden) understood that in the world of sport,
particularly, the new Mayor had shown considerable ability as a
footballer and a cricketer and, more latterly, as a bowler.
   His work on the Council over the many years of his service had
been outstanding in more than one respect.
   "Among the many committees of which he has been a member it
cannot be said that his sincerity and purpose have been lacking in any
degree," said Clr. Hazelden.
   Clr. Hazelden went on to refer to the various committees on
which Clr. Brook served- including the Children's Committee, of
which he was Chairman, the Watch Committee of which he was also
Chairman, and the Mental Health Sub-Committee of the Health Committee.
Desire to "play the game"
   "All of us know the remarks made about the Watch Committee-
and they are not always too kind," said Clr. Hazelden.
   "The source of law and order is not always very popular, but is
still very essential, and Clr. Brook, the chairman, has a knowledge
of police administration not only locally but nationally, for he was a
member of the Police Committee of the Association of Municipal
Corporations and a representative on the Police Training College
Board."
   Clr. Brook saw to it that certain minimum standards were
conformed with and no-one could deny his fairness. "His views,
although not accepted, are in accordance with the earnest desire- be
it in the civic field of duty or on the field of sport- to 'play the
game.'"
   The new civic year could be a momentous one for Huddersfield.
It might well be that the foundations of the "new Huddersfield"
would be laid, and never before had such tremendous innovations and
plans for the future been contemplated.
   Not only were the Council there to acknowledge the new Mayor,
said Clr. Hazelden, but for the second time in Huddersfield's long
history they were to honour their new Mayor with an aldermanic seat.
   Clr. Hazelden recalled that in 1873, when Clr. Henry Brook
was elected Mayor, he too was made an alderman at the same time.
   Clr. Hazelden's election motion was supported by Clrs. Mrs.
R. Townsend and C. C. Hoyle.
   Clr. Mrs. Townsend said that people should be grateful that
men of Clr. Brook's calibre and business acumen gave their services
to the community.
Severe test of stamina
   Clr. Hoyle said that a Mayor's life was a severe test of
physical and moral stamina. The year of office was filled to capacity
with deputations, speeches, receptions and many other duties-
including about 7 meetings concerned with Council affairs.
   Notwithstanding this terrific strain, the Mayors impressed
everyone not only by their ability but by their strength of character
and sincerity of thought.
   Clr. Brook possessed those qualities in high degree. "Here is
someone whose friendship is a possession to be cherished," Clr.
Hoyle added.
   On his return to the Council meeting attired in the Mayoral
robes, and after taking the oath of office, the new Mayor thanked the
Council for the honour they had accorded to him. He was very proud to
be Mayor of his native town- a town for which he had a great
affection. He was proud of Huddersfield's name in municipal
government. "We who serve on the Town Council have our critics,"
Clr. Brook continued. "While criticism of a constructive kind is
good, I have little patience with he who praises with enthusiastic
tone all centuries but this, and every town but his own."
   All members of the Council, irrespective of their political
views, were animated by the desire to make Huddersfield worthy of its
citizens. It was true to say of everyone entering local government-
not least a mayor- that he or she became a visionary.
More delectable place
   "I have a vision of Huddersfield of the not-too-distant future
when the great schemes, some already nearing completion, have come to
fruition," the Mayor continued.
   "Huddersfield will then be a more delectable place."
   After listing the various developments the Mayor said that all
these were necessary schemes that could only be carried out at cost
and some inconvenience. It was important, therefore, that they should
take the public into their confidence and seek their support for these
latest efforts in municipal enterprise.
   In many of the functions of a local authority it was not enough
that a task should be done efficiently, but that it must also be done
sympathetically.
   Impersonality and coldness would alienate and repel, however
impressive the achievement, and however faultless the organisation.
   Speaking of the fact that his daughter would be undertaking the
duties of Mayoress, Clr. Brook stressed the point that she would
seek to combine her official duties with those of having to run a home
and a very young family. He hoped that the demands made on her during
working hours would not be too great.
   He concluded: "I am very conscious of the confidence you have
reposed in me and I trust that when, a year hence, the time comes for
me to surrender my regalia of office, I shall be able to pass it on
unsullied to my successor, and you will feel that that confidence was
not misplaced."
Put Huddersfield on the map
   A vote of thanks to the retiring Mayor was proposed by Clr.
E. L. Thackray and supported by Clrs. D. Sisson and B.
M. Schofield.
   Clr. Thackray said that their warmest thanks were due to Ald.
and Mrs. Day, who had not spared themselves in carrying out their
duties.
   Ald. Day had lost no opportunity of "selling Huddersfield"
on official visits, and he had put Huddersfield on the map with
dignity. He himself had always remained a very likeable person, and
had presided efficiently over Council meetings.
   Clr. Sisson spoke of the fine co-operation Ald. Day had had
from his employers, Messrs. Thomas Broadbent and Sons Ltd.,
engineers, which had enabled him to perform all his Mayoral duties.
   Clr. Schofield remarked that he had served under Ald. Day's
chairmanship on the Markets and Fairs Committee all the time that he
(Clr. Schofield) had been on the Council. He praised the valuable
work Ald. Day had done during his long association with that
committee.
People "made us feel at home"
   Ald. Day said in reply that he and the retiring Mayoress had
had the feeling during their period of office that they were the heads
of a "large and united family."
   "The people of Huddersfield, of all ages, classes, creeds and
colour, have made us feel at home and welcome on all occasions. We
look back with very happy memories on the year which is now
passing."
   Ald. Day recalled that twelve months ago he expressed the
hope that during his Mayoralty he would see much of the old property
in the town demolished and derelict sites made more presentable.
   "I venture to say that since that day there have never been
more buildings pulled down and new ones put up in any one year of our
lifetime," he told the Council.
   "I think it can truly be said that Huddersfield is
experiencing the biggest 'face-lift' in its history, and the boom
in new buildings and road construction indicates 'full steam ahead'
for a long time to come."
   Ald. Day paid tribute to the Mayoress for her support and also
thanked the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress (Clr. and Mrs. F. Lawton),
the Town Clerk (Mr. H. Bann), the Mayor's Secretary (Mr. W.
Stoney) and other Corporation officials for their assistance.
DISAGREEMENT OVER ELECTION OF TWO ALDERMEN
Labour protest by not voting
   LABOUR councillors at this afternoon's meeting of
Huddersfield Town Council made it clear beforehand that they would
abstain from voting on the matter of the elevation to the aldermanic
bench of two former members defeated at the polls in the recent
Municipal Elections.
   In addition to the Mayor, the two defeated councillors at the
elections- Mr. Clifford Stephenson (Lib.) and Mr. F. W.
Fielding (Con.)- had been nominated as new aldermen to fill the
places of Ald. C. Hickson and Ald. G. E. Tomlinson
(retiring) and a seat vacated by Labour.
   Aldermen J. F. C. Cole, J. T. Gee, H. A. Bennie
Gray, N. Day and Mrs. M. L. Middlebrook Haigh were being
nominated for a further term of six years.
   The elevation of Clr. Brook creates a by-election in Birkby
ward.
   News of Labour's abstention came in a statement to "The
Examiner" by Clr. Reginald Hartley, leader of the Labour group on
the Council, before he went into the annual meeting. He and his
colleagues, he said, had decided to support the majority of aldermanic
proposals, but would not support the election of Messrs. Stephenson
and Fielding.
"Opposed in principle"
   The statement read:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The Labour group on the Council are opposed in principle to the
election of persons to the office of alderman from outside the elected
representatives to the Council.
   We fully appreciate that such elections are legally admissible,
and that in fact such elections have been made from time to time by
all parties in various towns and cities of this country. Nevertheless
we feel that it is contrary to our democratic principles to elect
people to the office of alderman, enabling them to have equal rights
in the government of our town with those persons who have been
democratically elected as councillors by the votes of the people.
   Indeed, we had every reason to believe that this principle would
be accepted by all parties on the Council in view of the fact that, by
signed agreement between the parties concerning the filling of
aldermanic vacancies, such vacancies should be filled from the elected
representatives at the time in proportion to party strength- the
exception being that when, for some special reason, a nomination is
made from outside elected representatives, this should only be done by
agreement among all parties.
"We shall refrain"
   We therefore feel that by the nominations on this occasion both
Liberal and Conservative Parties have violated the spirit of such
agreement in addition to the principle of democratic election by the
people.
   Therefore on this occasion we intend to support the election of
the nominees of the Liberal and Conservative parties who are members
at the time of election but we shall refrain from supporting the two
nominees who are not members of this authority.
<END QUOTE>
# 24
<31 TEXT A31>
TRUJILLO: A SUSPECT AND PRIEST HELD
   THE Dominican Government announced today it had taken into
custody one of the suspected killers of Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo
together with a priest accused of harbouring him on the night of the
murder.
   The suspect was identified as Huascar Tejeda Reina and his
alleged protector as Father Gabriel Maduro.
   Still at large are Gen. Juan Diaz, retired, who is said to be
the chief assassin, and at least four alleged accomplices- his
brothers Rafel and Antonio and two friends, Amado Garcia Guerrero and
Pedro Lirio Sedeno.
   Police said Tejeda admitted he was at the priest's house on the
night of the killing, but denied any part in the murder. Father
Maduro has denied harbouring Tejeda.
   The arrests were announced a few hours after Trujillo's son,
Gen. Rafael, had taken up the reins of power his father held for
more than 3 years.
U.S. will oppose aggression- Kennedy
   PRESIDENT KENNEDY said in Paris today the United States was
determined to oppose any aggression, whatever its strength and
whatever the strength needed to resist it.
   He said Soviet development in the field of ballistic missiles and
nuclear weapons had made the United States vulnerable.
   "All this has modified the very conception of defence and has
made this defence indivisible, Washington is today closer to Moscow
than any city in Europe has been in the past."
Berlin
   He said Berlin would be one of the subjects he would discuss
with Mr. Kruschev in Vienna this weekend.
   Mr. Kennedy said he and General de Gaulle were agreed it was
not desirable that force should be used to settle this problem.
   His meeting with Mr. Kruschev would be to discuss the
interests of the United States and her allies and the interests of the
Soviet Union and her associates.
Laos
   On Laos, Mr. Kennedy said the U.S. would continue to
participate in the Laos conference as long as there was any hope of
reaching a solution.
   Mr. Kruschev left Bratislava today by train for Vienna for his
meeting with President Kennedy.
MAC PUTS ACCENT ON YOUTH IN 'TEAM' RESHUFFLE
   THE Prime Minister has now almost completed plans for a
considerable reshuffle in the middle ranks of the Government- and
promotions for a number of younger M.P.s are confidently
expected.
   The changes follow the appointment of Mr. David Ormesby-Gore as
British Ambassador in Washington.
   Mr. Ormesby-Gore has now resigned as Minister of State at the
Foreign Office, while another reason for the reshuffle is the
appointment of a new Minister to help the Colonies- the first
Minister for Technical Co-operation.
"PLUM" JOBS
   Both these posts- at the Foreign Office and at the new
Ministry- are "plum" jobs, and it is understood that Mr.
Macmillan has already decided on the appointments.
   Sir Edward Boyle, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, is
favoured for the new Technical Co-operation Ministry.
K. meets K. round a coffee table in Vienna
   THE two most powerful men in the world met round a coffee
table in a small cosily-furnished Vienna music room today for talks on
East-West issues which may shape the destinies of millions of people
throughout the world.
   President John Kennedy, 44 last Monday and in power only four
months, met Mr. Kruschev, who at 67, has wielded supreme power in
the Soviet Union for four years.
   These two men of vastly different backgrounds- a millionaire and
the other the revolutionary son of a coal-miner- will meet for a
total of 1 hours to size each other up.
   The two men met at the American Ambassador's residence on the
outskirts of the city shortly after President Kennedy flew in from
Paris with his wife after his talks with President De Gaulle.
Range
   Mrs. Kruschev is also in Vienna- she spent some time this
morning at an art gallery.
   Tomorrow the two men will meet again.
   The two leaders will discuss a wide range of world problems,
although both have made clear there will be no negotiations.
   Mr. Kruschev said when he arrived in Vienna that he wanted to
make personal contact with Mr. Kennedy and to discuss the main
issues in Soviet-American relations.
   Mr. Kennedy came to Vienna to try to find out from Mr.
Kruschev whether any progress could be made in the stalled Geneva
conferences- on Laos and on a nuclear weapons test ban treaty.
For the man of the moment, another grand hand...
   LONDON gave President Kennedy another big hand to-day when he
left Buckingham Place, the home of his wife's sister.
   For his part, the President was in genial form (left).
   The enthusiasm was renewed when he later went to Admiralty House
for talks and lunch with Mr. Macmillan.
<ILLUSTRATION>
KENNEDY, MAC LOOK AHEAD TO NEW SUMMIT
They weigh up value of Vienna talks
By JOSEPH TOBIN
   MR. MACMILLAN and President Kennedy today considered the next
steps towards a full summit conference of the major Powers.
   The Summit diplomacy revived in a spectacular fashion by the
Vienna meeting with Mr. Kruschev. President Kennedy considered with
Mr. Macmillan the chances of a meeting of the Big Four soon.
   This was the highlight of a two-hour review of East-West
relations in the meeting between the President and the Prime Minister.
   The two men met alone in the Prime Minister's study in Admiralty
House. From this first floor room overlooking Whitehall they could
see the crowds waiting to greet Mrs. Kennedy as she joined the men
and other guests for lunch.
CONTRAST
   This meeting between the two Western leaders in the room
normally used by the First Lord of the Admiralty- the Prime Minister
is using it while 1, Downing Street is being rebuilt- is in contrast
to the opulent surroundings in which the President met Mr. Kruschev
in Vienna.
   The President surprised the Prime Minister's staff by arriving
1 minutes early for the talks.
   Behind the spectacle of the cheering crowds in the sunshine
there were a number of queries hanging over President Kennedy's report
to Mr. Macmillan on the talks with Mr. Kruschev.
   In their man-to-man exchanges they considered the future policy
on Berlin- on which differences of opinion between Britain and the
U.S. are reported- and the situation in Laos and Mr.
Kruschev's reaction to this.
   Above all, they considered the future of "summitry." They
had to answer the question: "Does the Vienna meeting, with its vague
good-will but no practical results, justify further steps along the
same road."
   President Kennedy also reported on Mr. Kruschev's attitude to
nuclear testing and disarmament. All reports are that Mr. Kruschev
was unyielding on these issues.
   It is understood that Mr. Macmillan also questioned the
President on his earlier talks with President de Gaulle. This
meeting may have a crucial bearing on Britain's possible entry into
the Common Market.
   President Kennedy has been attempting to use his good office to
this end.
   Among the prominent guests at the lunch at Admiralty House were
the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr.
Selwyn Lloyd, and the new British Ambassador to the United States,
Mr. David Ormsby-Gore.
   Tonight President and Mrs. Kennedy go to Buckingham Palace for
dinner with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh.
   It was expected that a communique on today's talks would be
issued later today.
   The U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Rusk, was "not
encouraging" in his view of the Kennedy-Kruschev weekend talks,
according to reports in Paris.
MAC KEEPS SILENT ON TALKS WITH KENNEDY
   MR. MACMILLAN refused to be drawn when answering questions
in the Commons this afternoon on his talks with President Kennedy
yesterday.
   He had nothing to add to the communique which was issued after
the talks, he said.
   "Mr. Kennedy wished to have a private conversation with me and
it was agreed it should be private," the Prime Minister continued.
"If I were to publish afterwards what we said to each other it would
not be private."
   He added: "I do not think it would be in the public interest
for me to make a detailed statement on the specific points raised."
   "The British and U.S. administrations are in constant touch
on these matters.
<END QUOTE>
   There were loud cries of Lab., Newcastle-under-Lyme) <SIC>
~"No" when Mr. S. T. Swingler asked: "Are we not entitled
to know what the British Prime Minister said? Is he not responsible
to the whole House?"
   There was laughter when the Prime Minister replied:
"Discourteous as it would be for me to give an account of what the
President said, it would be almost more discourteous of me to give an
account of what I said."
WORTLEY PUT THEIR CASE AGAINST CITY 'TAKEOVER'
   REPRESENTATIVES of Wortley Rural Council today met the Local
Government Commission in London to discuss the proposals of other
authorities affecting the rural district.
   Wortley are very much concerned about Sheffield's proposals,
which could reduce the population of the rural district by more than
4 per cent and the rateable value by more than 22 per cent.
3,6 HOUSES
   Sheffield, whose case is based on housing grounds, are seeking
to extend their boundaries to take in part of the Ecclesfield and
Bradfield parishes.
   If successful, they would take into the city more than 3,
houses which they have built in the Parson Cross area, and more than
6 Wortley council houses, as well as eight schools, a clinic and two
parks.
   Wortley Council have offered to buy all Sheffield Corporation
houses built in the rural district and to administer them as part of
their own housing programme.
OTHER PURPOSES
   Concerning Bradfield parish, Sheffield proposes substantial
Corporation housing at Stannington adjoining existing development,
partly private and partly the Rural Council's.
   Rotherham Corporation are seeking to take into their boundary
that part of Thorpe Hesley which is in Wortley district.
Councils agree to merger plan
   Three of four local authorities concerned in a merger plan for
local government re-organisation in the Barnsley area have agreed to
the scheme.
   They are Penistone Rural and Dodworth and Penistone Urban
Councils. The fourth authority, Stocksbridge Urban Council, are to
discuss the plan this month.
   The scheme will probably be put forward by the West Riding County
Council during discussions with the Local Government Boundaries
Commission in London next month. The four districts have a combined
population of about 3,.
Gromyko brings fear of breakdown in Geneva talks on Laos
BRITAIN HITS BACK AS MR K ACCUSES
Reds turn on the heat over Berlin
By JOSEPH TOBIN
   BRITAIN is to give a short and sharp rebuff to Mr. Kruschev's
latest attempt to stir up an international crisis over West Berlin.
   The British Government is to reject out of hand the Russian
complaint that W. Berlin is being used for the organisation of
"international provocations endangering peace."
   The Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, is preparing his reply to
Russia's complaint. The terms of the reply are expected to be
delivered late tonight.
   The cause of the present clash with the Russians is the decision
of the West Germans to hold Parliamentary committee meetings in Berlin
and a session next week of the Federal Parliament's upper house there.
REJECTED
   The West German President, Herr Luebke, today rejected the
Russian complaints. Lord Home's reply will be on similar lines.
   The Russians have protested to the United States, France, and
Britain at "unlawful" meetings of the West German Parliamentary
committees in West Berlin.
   I understand that the Foreign Secretary will say in his reply
to Mr. Kruschev that Britain does not think these meetings are
against the four-Power status of the city.
   He will remind Mr. Kruschev that similar meetings have been
held in the past.
SURPRISED
   Although President Kennedy described his talks on Germany and
Berlin with the Soviet leader as "most sombre" observers were
surprised today that Russia should raise the Berlin issue with the
Western powers so quickly after the Vienna meeting.
   Meanwhile, Western delegates fear that Mr. Andrei Gromyko,
the Russian Foreign Minister, has returned empty-handed to the Geneva
international conference on Laos, which is in danger of completely
breaking down over the question of a ceasefire.
   In Vienna, Mr. Kruschev had acknowledged the importance of an
effective cease-fire in Laos.
# 213
<32 TEXT A32>
TO CONTEST WOOD DITTON STAKES
Pinturischio Has Impressed
By OLD ROWLEY
NEWMARKET, Thursday.
   PINTURISCHIO is expected to make his long-awaited debut in
the Wood Ditton Stakes at our Craven meeting a week today. Even
though he has not been seriously tried at home, let alone raced, this
colt whom Noel Murless trains for Sir Victor Sassoon, is already
ante-post favourite for the Derby.
   On Saturday morning, Pinturischio did his most informative work
to date, but it would be presumptuous to say that observers were left
a great deal wiser as to his ability. The gallop took place over a
mile on the Racecourse Side, where he was accompanied by Aurelius
(Lester Piggott), Hunter's Song and Magnificat, three other maidens.
   Throughout most of the trip Pinturischio was held up about a
length behind his workmates, who were galloping in line abreast. Then
with half a furlong left, his pilot let out a reef and asked him to
run up to them. Pinturischio responded instantaneously and shot up to
them, only to be steadied again. The manner in which he accelerated
when given the "office" was that of a high-class horse, and
reminiscent of what we used to see St. Paddy do at this time last
year.
   Whatever Pinturischio has been asked to do to date, he has
accomplished in effortless style, and his future is obviously
extremely bright. By and large it is usually as well to dismiss
home-trained colts that did not race at two years of age from one's
calculations on the Derby.
Long Stride
   It stands to reason that if a horse is too backward to race
during his first season in training, he is most unlikely to be
sufficiently mature to beat the best of his generation in the late May
or early June of the following year, and it is a number of years now
since a horse that embarked upon its three-year-old career unraced has
won the Derby.
   Captain Boyd-Rochfort's Prince Simon came within an ace of
doing so in 195, and it is interesting to note that he made a winning
debut in the Wood Ditton Stakes.
   The foregoing precedent need not prejudice our assessment of
Pinturischio's prospects unduly, as there are extenuating
circumstances in his case.
   He did start to come to himself last back-end, and he impressed
on several occasions when his long stride enabled him to lay up in
seven furlong spins with more forward companions. Such was his
progress during those Autumn months that Noel Murless had intended to
give him an outing on the Rowley Mile course here, but unfortunately
the going came up heavy and the project was abandoned.
Stern Opposition
   Although the Wood Ditton Stakes is confined to three-year-olds
that have never run at starting, the opposition is likely to be stern
enough to test Pinturischio.
   Jack Jarvis's Allenby and Captain Boyd-Rochfort's Sagacity have
been working as though they will prove particularly formidable rivals
to him. Allenby is much more forward than Pinturischio and the other
morning he was not disgraced in a seven furlong gallop with Test Case,
Pinzon and Bold Liver.
   Of course Allenby has no claims to being the peer of the
stable's Derby horse Test Case, but he fared well enough in the
latter's company to suggest that he will be a factor with which to be
reckoned in any maiden race.
   The morning of the day in which Harry Carr met with his
accident at Lincoln, he rode Sagacity in a six furlong gallop with
Pardao (D. Smith), Good Old Days (T. Lowrey) and the four-year-old
Polo (W. Snaith) on the Racecourse Side. Carr held Sagacity a
couple of lengths behind the others from start to finish in this spin,
and considering that the trip was too sharp for such a big horse as
this handsome son of Le Sage he acquitted himself extremely well.
   Sagacity could be the one to give Pinturischio most to do if they
meet next Thursday.
An Omen
   Pinturischio has impressed so much by the way in which he has
done his work rather than what he has done in it, that I fully expect
him to lay a solid foundation to his claims to be considered the Derby
winner by scoring on the first occasion he faces the racecourse's acid
test.
   There are flowers on the Poor Boy's grave, the resting place of
a shepherd boy, who committed suicide after losing his master's sheep
about 1 years ago, situated between the Limekilns and Waterhall, and
the superstitious say it is an omen that a Newmarket horse will win
the Derby.
   If they are right, Pinturischio need not necessarily be the one
to oblige. In our enthusiasm over this dark 2'un, we must not forget
about Test Case. He proved he was a good horse by winning three of
his four races last year.
   Furthermore Pinturischio is not the only string to Murless's
powerful bow. Golden Voice, Hunter's Song, Aurelius and So Cozy are
all very nice colts with the scope to train on into fancied Derby
candidates. I suspect that Lester Piggott has a particularly soft
spot for Aurelius, as he has ridden the horse on each of the last
three galloping mornings, and each time has had a good ride.
Great Promise
   The only time that Aurelius ran last year, he showed great
promise by running on well to take fourth place behind Beta, Dual and
Orbit in the Royal Lodge Stakes at the Ascot Heath meeting transferred
to Newbury.
   As he has done so well in his recent work he is more than likely
to make a successful reappearance in the Craven Stakes, run over a
mile here next Tuesday.
   Alternatively Murless's interests could be represented by
either Magnificat or So Cozy in that event, but as it is Aurelius's
only engagement of the week it seems likely that he will run.
   Both Jack Langley's Prince Tudor and John Oxley's Eagle are
expected to wait for the Free Handicap on Wednesday, when Prince Tudor
will be ridden by his Guineas jockey Bill Rickaby.
   Thus the most dangerous rivals to Aurelius could be Jack Jarvis's
Pinzon, and Dick Hern's Penhill.
   Pinzon shone in a gallop over seven furlongs with Test Case last
week and Penhill must be respected by reason of his having finished
fast to run Morgan to half a length in the Coventry Stakes, at Kempton
Park on Monday.
   Besides the Wood Ditton Stakes and the Craven Stakes, the Free
Handicap could also be an informative classic trial. Among those
holding the engagement in whom I am interested are Eagle, Prince
Tudor, Smuggler's Joy, and Pardao.
Obvious Choice
   As Eagle won his gallop from the older Zanzibar last Saturday,
he would appear the obvious choice in this race, but neither
Smuggler's Joy or Pardao will be easy to beat.
   Smuggler's Joy, like Pinzon, has been putting in some good work
upsides Test Case, while Pardao shaped well in the work with Sagacity
and Good Old Days referred to above. Since then Pardao has received
an indirect compliment by Good Old Days having run Dual to a neck in
the 2, Guineas Trial Stakes at Kempton Park.
   Plenty of rain has fallen here lately, so the going should be
perfect next week. By the end of it we should be in a far better
position to anticipate the outcome of both the 2, Guineas and the
Derby.
Today's Nap
   Without Doug Smith having to bring pressure to bear, Crown
Imperial ran on well to finish third to the older horse Prince Chamier
and Final Problem in a seven-furlong trial on the Limekilns the Monday
before Easter. Since then the colt has been noted moving very
smoothly in all his work.
   Reproduction of the trial form should enable Crown Imperial, who
is the nap, to win the Bardolph Plate (4-).
   Cingle, who is under orders for the Round Tower Handicap
(3-3), is expected to become Jack Langley's first winner since he
took charge of Mr. W. J. Weston-Evans' horses at Herringswell
Manor.
   The four-year-old Cingle has been moving strongly on the regular
occasions that he has led work for the classic horse Prince Tudor.
   Jack Jarvis made use of the Railway Land to give some of his
team good sharpening-up work over five and six furlongs.
   Test Case (E. Larkin) was noted working well when accompanied
by Bold Lover over six furlongs. Sticky Case, Divine Comedy and Beta
were also sent over a similar distance.
   Jaquetta and Saint Sybil had sharpening-up exercise.
   Welsh Rake and Bass Rock covered five furlongs at a sharp pace,
and Sybil's Comb, Fringe, Kilifi and Lion's Mantle were similarly
employed.
   G. Brooke also sharpened up some of his older horses over
five furlongs, these being Felix, with Menelek and Court Imperial.
   Quota and Kathie were noted having a similar spin.
   J. F. Watts, H. Thomson Janes and W. Hern also gave
their teams exercise on the Railway Land.
   On the Racecourse side B. van Cutsem's Seam (E. Smith)
was accompanied by Prince Bula in a nice-pace gallop over seven
furlongs. Other teams seen on these training grounds were those of
G. Barling, H. Cottrill, Reg Day and John Waugh, where work was
confined to cantering.
Latest from Epsom
Nightingall May Have a Double
   WALTER NIGHTINGALL and his stable jockey Duncan Keith should
follow up yesterday's success of Release with a double at Windsor,
which may be initiated by Duke Toledo in the Round Tower Handicap
(3-3) and completed by King's Probity, who goes for the Hatch Bridge
Handicap (4-3).
   Duke Toledo demonstrated that he is an early-season performer
by winning over today's distance, an extended mile at the
corresponding meeting last year, when he comfortably beat Indian Rock
and Martian, a winner at Hurst Park on Wednesday.
   Following this victory, Walter Nightingall ran the colt at the
Epsom Spring Meeting where he was defeated by his burden of 9st.
3lb. and then he failed against some of the best milers in Royal
Ascot's Queen Anne Stakes. He had only one other outing, at Kempton
Park in soft going, which was probably the cause of his poor showing.
   If Duke Toledo reproduces his form of 12 months ago he should
find little difficulty in accounting for today's opposition.
   The three-year-old, King's Probity, was a most consistent
juvenile, never being out of the first four in six attempts. He lost
his maiden allowance at Brighton in September, when he easily beat
Dolaucothi and should be ready to do the trick here.
   Mambo, from Peter Ashworth's Treadwell stables, could be the one
to give King's Probity most trouble, as he wound up a promising
two-year-old career with a win at Yarmouth, but Nightingall's charge
may just have the edge.
Cost 6,5gns.
   Staff Ingham's horses, who usually register early successes,
seem to be more backward this year, but the stable can get off the
mark in the Cannon Yard Plate (3-) with Red Imp, a 1,5 guineas
Magic Red colt, who is preferred to Jackie Sirett's Baba.
   Another winner for Ingham may well be Mr. Bernard Sunley's
Raincourt, who was one of the highest priced yearlings of 1959,
costing 6,5 guineas.
   The son of Court Martial has made only one public appearance in
which he showed considerable promise by putting in his best work
during the closing stages behind Blue Sash at Headquarters in
September. This experience should be enough to give Raincourt victory
in the Bardolph Plate (4-).
   Fridolanna, who finished fourth to Troilus at Lincoln, will find
the one and a half miles of the Upper Sixpenny Handicap (5-) to
her liking and is fancied to beat Harold Wallington's Hanbury Lad.
Prince Midge is Windsor Nap
   CLASSIC contender Prince Midge, making his only appearance
prior to the 2, Guineas, returns to the scene of his solitary
success in four ventures last term at Windsor, where he is napped to
win the Robert Wilmot Plate (5-) today.
   R. J. Colling has already made his mark with some of his
charges, and the Hurst Park winner Welsh Huntress, a galloping
companion of Prince Midge, gives a line to the well being of Mr.
J. Astor's colt who is reported one of the most forward of the team.
# 233
<33 TEXT A33>
THIS CRICKET RECORD IS TOO BAD
Pakistan are dreary
   While in Australia, cricket is fairly exploding into life,
and in England top players and administrators are loud with pious
hopes that the contagion of excitement may spread here, look at what
is happening to the first-class game in India.
   In Amritsar, whose name in Sanskrit means "pool of
immortality," Pakistan's cricketers have just taken a further step
toward deathless record-book fame in its dreariest form. They drew
the 13th match of their Indian tour, just as they had drawn all the
other 12.
   There is significance for England in this dolorous record. Given
good weather, the coming summer- when the Australians are the
visitors- should be a fair one for the first-class game.
   But 1962 may well be critical for by then the new look to be
given to the game by the MCC committee charged with that task
should begin to take shape.
   And who comes here in 1962? Pakistan. These visitors from a hot
climate could deliver a most damaging cold douche on all our good
intentions and once more drive the crowds away. It is time that they
took note of what is happening elsewhere in the Commonwealth of
cricket.
Still aglow
   Back to the comparative calm of his car-hire business in
Croydon today, but still glowing mentally, was MARTIN TURNER,
whose refereeing of the Barbarians v. Springboks game on Saturday
contributed largely to a great robust match which was never allowed to
get out of hand.
   Turner (39) himself a former Barbarian, an Old Whitgiftian and
Cambridge Blue, was twice capped by England as a wing three-quarter in
his playing days. He has been refereeing for the six years since. He
was appointed to the County panel only this season.
   Of Saturday's match, he told me: "It was an awfully nice game
to handle. Too tough? Of course not. When you have 3 of the
world's best players on the field, it's got to be a hard game.
   "Baa-Baas rose to the occasion and were given full credit by the
South Africans, who are very nice fellows. It was the second time I
had refereed them. I was in charge of their game against Combined
Services on Boxing Day.
   "Of course, every player has an occasional swear at the
referee- I know I did when I played."
Sales slump
   MRS. BARBARA HITCHCOCK, non-golfing wife of Master golfer
JIMMY HITCHCOCK, is finding business rather slack in her role of
deputy professional at the Ashford Manor, Middlesex, club.
   While her husband is away in South Africa- he plays in the South
African open at East London on February 16-18- she is looking after
the shop. And with the course closed by rain, she has run into a
sales slump.
   She tells me her husband had thought of going to America to
compete in the U.S. Masters tournament. "But it clashed with
the British season and he must be back to play his way into the Ryder
Cup team."
   Hitchcock, who is 3, has an ambition outside the sport which I
find refreshing.
   "I want to earn enough money from golf to enable my father to
stop working," he says.
   It is the kind of ambition many sportsmen shelve when they meet
with success.
Chelsea stand by
   If Huddersfield are knocked out in their FA Cup replay with
Barnsley this afternoon, they may be forced to part with their English
international left-back, RAMON WILSON. Chelsea are waiting on the
sidelines ready to make a bid.
   This is no reflection on Chelsea's 17-year-old back ALAN
HARRIS.
   TED DRAKE, Chelsea manager, says of them: "They are both
great prospects. But Wilson has invaluable experience and he is the
enthusiastic type of player who would be a great help to our
youngsters."
   Wilson earned a regular place in the England team last season,
but lost it to McNEIL, of Middlesbrough, this season because of
a cartilage injury. He is 26, and would welcome a move to First
Division football.
Soccer art
   If England and Fulham captain JOHNNY HAYNES is anxious to
avoid any further half-time dressing room wrangles with his club
team-mates, he might well take a look at the FA Book for Boys.
   It contains an article by Fulham's JIMMY HILL, who was
strongly critical of Haynes after their match against Chelsea, on the
art of captaining a soccer side.
   But when I asked Hill today whether, in his capacity as chairman
of the Professional Footballers' Association, he was prepared to say
anything about captains who gesticulate, show their displeasure and
sometimes disgust when passes go astray, he refused.
   But, surely, as the man who led the fight- and won- for higher
pay, Hill should be just as anxious to ensure "officially" that his
Association members conform to the highest code of behaviour-
captains included.
Amateur golf championship to cost more this year
By JOHN INGHAM
   The amateur golf championship is to cost more- the entrance
fee shooting up from +2 to +4 4s. for the 1961 event, which begins
at Turnberry, Scotland, on June 12.
   Another shock for golfers is that only 25 (with handicaps of
three or better) will be allowed to compete. This restricted entry
will be enforced by a ballot, to be held on May 12.
   Qualifying rounds, played in recent years, have been abandoned,
making a limit clause essential.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   If you won the amateur title, where would you put the trophy?
The Royal and Ancient insist: "The trophy shall be held by the club
from which the winner entered." And not, apparently, on your
mantelpiece.
<END INDENTATION>
   But if golfers are seeing trophies-before-the-eyes, I should
point out that Joe Carr will be defending his title.
DOWNES FIGHTS RODRIGUEZ
By WALTER BARTLEMAN
   Terry Downes, Britain's middleweight champion, is to meet a
cruiser at Wembley on March 7 when he takes on the Californian
"Kid" Sixto Rodriguez over ten rounds at 12 stone.
   The 23-year-old Rodriguez who is a former Californian
cruiserweight champion, began boxing as a professional in 1956 and has
a record that is liberally sprinkled with inside-the-distance
victories.
   Downes has made a swift recovery from the nose injuries he
received in his unsuccessful world middleweight title fight with Paul
Pender in Boston last month.
   Now, in meeting a cruiserweight, he will safeguard any further
world championship aspirations.
Millwall plan cuts- and no manager
By HAROLD PALMER
   There is a new outlook at Millwall after Saturday's home defeat
by Oldham. Hope of promotion is practically abandoned. New plans are
being made- and they do not include a replacement for Reg Smith, the
manager they sacked three weeks ago.
   The emphasis is likely to be on coaching, with general
administration resting in the hands of the present staff.
   Chairman Micky Purser tells me he is preparing the new plan,
which he hopes to present to the board within the next two weeks.
   Playing staff is to be reduced from 26 to about 18, because
whatever the Football Combination decide Millwall will not field
reserve teams on Saturdays next season.
No long journeys
   Millwall will also refuse to take part in a reserve competition
even in mid-week if long journeys are involved.
   "The competition must be regional to suit us," says Purser.
"Otherwise we shall hope to get Queen's Park Rangers, Charlton,
Leyton Orient and Fulham to join us in a new reserve competition. We
would only need to have a dozen clubs to make the League
worthwhile."
   ARSENAL look like losing Scottish international Jackie
Henderson for two or three weeks. He has a bad ankle injury.
   I should think this will mean David Herd, out with flu on
Saturday, finding inside-left his position when he resumes.
   LEYTON ORIENT take advantage of having a League fixture at
Liverpool on Saturday to put in a week's special training at
Southport- with the following week's Cup tie particularly in mind.
   They took 13 players, Saturday's team plus Terry McDonald
(outside-left) and Malcolm Lucas (wing-half) North today.
   John Richards returns to the ALDERSHOT team at inside-left
for tonight's second replay of the fourth round FA Cup tie with
Stoke at Wolverhampton (7.15).
Richards is back
   Richards was missing from the Aldershot team on Saturday for
the first time since he joined them last October. With his return
Parnell moves back to the wing to the exclusion of Burton.
   Both SOUTHAMPTON and BURNLEY will lack their star
inside-rights for tonight's quarter-final in the Football League Cup
at Southampton (7.).
   Irish international Jimmy McIlroy, who has recently had a broken
nose, flu and a cut knee, has been advised to rest. Southampton's
George O'Brien received a leg injury on Saturday and is replaced by
Clifton.
'My future is here'
JIMMY GREAVES HAS TWO AIMS
By BERNARD JOY
   Before leaving for Liverpool for training with the England team
tonight, Chelsea inside-forward Jimmy Greaves told me: "Barcelona?
My immediate future lies with Chelsea and probably my long-term
future as well."
   He then went off to telephone Chelsea to give the assurance to
manager Ted Drake.
   Greaves told me: "I am concerned with two things at the moment,
helping Chelsea to a respectable position in the table- and that is
the aim of every Chelsea player- and getting my own form back.
   "I have no intention of asking for a transfer. It is highly
probable that I shall be staying with Chelsea for a good while or even
indefinitely."
   Having knocked Real Madrid out of the European Cup, Barcelona are
determined to hold on to the prize of supremacy in Spain, and even
Europe.
Nothing hasty
   Free-scoring Greaves- who will be 21 in a fortnight's time-
would fit into their attack and naturalisation is an easy matter for
imported foreign stars- like Di Stefano, Kubala and Martinez.
   Italian clubs have also made approaches for Greaves, although
they are barred from obtaining new players from abroad until after the
1962 World Cup.
   Greaves comments: "I was told at Stamford Bridge on Saturday
that a Barcelona representative was at the match. I would be
interested, of course, but I wouldn't be so hasty as a couple of
months ago before the new set-up was introduced into English
football."
   Greaves was restless two months ago and the rumour was current
that he wanted to leave Chelsea.
   When I asked if his changed attitude meant that he was now happy,
he replied quickly: "I'm not happy. I'm having a bad time and the
club are having a bad time. You can't be happy under those
conditions.
   "But I have shelved all ideas of making a move from Chelsea."
Three on short list
   The short list of three for the post of coach is Vic
Buckingham, the former West Bromwich manager and coach of Ajax, the
Dutch champions, Bobby Campbell, coach of Reading, and Tom Docherty,
the Arsenal and Scotland wing-half. Roy Bentley, the Fulham and
former Chelsea player, is not in the list because Chelsea are looking
for a man with FA coaching qualifications.
   Buckingham, 45, steered West Bromwich in nearly carrying off the
Cup and League double in 1953-4. A former Spurs defender, he left
West Bromwich two seasons ago.
   A big point in his favour is that he struck up a personal
friendship with Ted Drake when they were stationed together in the
RAF.
   Campbell, a Scottish international winger, played for Chelsea for
six seasons before going to Reading in 1954.
Dave Dick is fined for 'chase error: Ragd falls
From PETER SCOTT: Fontwell Park, Monday
   Crack Epsom jockey Dave Dick was right out of luck here at
Fontwell Park this afternoon. He had two fancied mounts for Bryan
Marshall's Lambourn stable but Bold Ruler, the first of them, cost him
a +15 fine from the Stewards. The second, Ragd, tumbled at the first
fence in the Horsham Handicap 'Chase.
   Dick's fine was for carelessness in mistaking a plain fence in
Division =1 of the Findon Novices 'Chase for the water jump which
followed it. The water obstacle had been excluded because of the very
heavy going.
   Bold Ruler was in the lead when Dick made his mistake four fences
from home.
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Excavation Work Identifies Shrine Chapel
WALSINGHAM EVIDENCE
   EXCAVATION of the small building on the north side of the
ruined Priory church at Walsingham has shown this to be the remains of
the Chapel of the Shrine of Our Lady, visited and described by William
of Worcester in 1479.
   The shrine, a small wooden building, was founded, according to
tradition, in A.D. 161- though historians have in general
placed it a little later- and a generation later the Priory was
established to guard the shrine.
   At a later date, the stone chapel was built to cover and protect
the original shrine and this building, the "Novum Opus" of
William, is first recorded in his description. It was also seen by
Erasmus in 1511.
   For more than a century, since the first test excavation by Canon
James Lee Warner, there has been some controversy, both on the nature
of his findings and on the date of the various buildings. These new
excavations, directed by the archaeological consultant to the Ministry
of Works, Mr. Charles Green, on behalf of the Walsingham Excavation
Committee, were designed to resolve these difficulties.
Remodelled
   The existing remains of the Priory church have long made it
clear that extensive building took place in the 14th century, when the
original Norman church was replaced by a great aisled church with a
central tower. This was again modified early in the 15th century when
the east window was remodelled in the Perpendicular style.
   Embedded in the north wall of this church were found remains of
the original Norman church and some direct evidence of the central
tower which before had been known only from the medieval description.
   The excavations also showed that, shortly after the church itself
was rebuilt, the Chapel of the Shrine was erected. Further
confirmation of its purpose was seen in its layout. It lay at an
angle to the church, showing that its contents were of more importance
even than the church. Its massive walls, too, gave evidence of its
precious contents.
Post-Holes
   Of the original wooden shrine there was little direct evidence.
After the building of the chapel, it is known to have stood above the
chapel floor. As this floor had been almost completely destroyed, no
remains of the shrine could be detected.
   Furthermore, the levelling of the sloping site by the chapel
builders had destroyed much of the original surface. But indications
of a few post-holes and supports which belonged to a period before the
chapel, in use until the chapel was built, gave evidence of a
contained wooden building, though their remnants were not sufficient
to determine its exact size and plan.
   This levelling had another, unexpected, result. It had brought
close to the surface an Anglo-Saxon cemetery of much earlier date and
these graves were seen to have been cut through and destroyed by the
chapel builders.
Pagan Site?
   With them occurred a series of post-holes of similar date,
forming a pattern not closely related to the later buildings. The
date and nature of these suggest the possibility of an early pagan
Saxon shrine on this site. It is well known that early Christian
priests often built their new churches on pagan sites, thus hallowing
the temple sites of the heathen deities.
   A strong "treasure house" or sacristy had later been added to
the east end of the chapel. A great porch at the west end, of still
later date, was probably being built in 1511 when Erasmus described
the chapel as "unfinished."
   In the centre of the chapel was a great stone-built tomb,
probably that of Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, who died in 1369, and a
smaller stone coffin was perhaps of the last canon in charge before
the Dissolution in 1539.
Second Pilot Vessel Launched at Lowestoft
   THE PILOT VESSEL Preceder, second of two sister ships which
Brooke Marine are building for Trinity House, was launched at
Lowestoft yesterday by Mrs. Galpin, wife of Capt. R. J.
Galpin, an Elder Brother of the Corporation.
   Among the launching party were Field-Marshal Sir Claude
Auchinleck, chairman of Dowsett Holdings, the parent company of Brooke
Marine, Mr. H. L. Dowsett, chairman of Brooke Marine, and
Capt. D. Mansfield, superintendent pilot at Harwich.
   Before being launched the ship was blessed by the Rector of
Lowestoft (the Rev. W. J. Westwood).
   The Preceder, sister ship to Patrol, which was launched in June,
is 39 feet long with a beam of 24 feet and a draught of ten feet five
inches. She is powered by two six-cylinder Lister engines which
develop 495 b.h.p. driving a single screw, and she has a designed
speed of just under 13 knots.
   She will be equipped with radar and echo sounder, a combined
A.M.S.M./ VHF set, and medium frequency radio telephone.
Accommodation will be provided for a crew of 2 with Pullman-type
bunks for 12 pilots, and she will carry two boarding boats and
inflatable life rafts.
   When completed in December she will take up duties as a tender
between Harwich and the pilot cutter on station at the Sunk, where she
will speed up the service considerably, as she is to replace a
nine-knot ship.
Nine Per Cent. Drop in Farm Incomes
   FARM INCOMES in England and Wales in 1959 fell by nearly
nine per cent. on the previous year, according to a booklet
published yesterday by the National Farmers' Union.
   Figures given in the booklet, based on the union's farm accounts
scheme, show that except for cereal growers, the long dry summer of
1959 was not generally favourable to farmers. In particular, the
shortage of grazing caused by drought necessitated heavy purchases of
feeding stuffs.
   Record cereal crops largely account for an increase of nearly
nine per cent. in the earnings of the specialist arable farms, which
the previous year fell by about 1 per cent.
Dairy Farms
   According to the booklet, the livestock sector fared worse than
any other in 1959, as it had in 1958.
   A fall of 17 per cent. that year was followed by a reduction of
18 per cent. in 1959. On mixed livestock farms, incomes fell by
over 11 per cent.
   On dairy farms and mixed dairy farms, profits fell by more than
1 per cent. A slight increase in revenue was "substantially
outweighed" by heavy increases in feeding stuff expenditure.
   The booklet also says that the substantial increase in egg output
in 1959 led to a reduction in price, and as a result of a decline in
income, and an increase in expenditure, the profits of specialist egg
producers fell by over 58 per cent. Profits on mixed farms where
egg production was the largest single enterprise fell by over seven
per cent.
   The results, says the booklet, are based on sample accounts of
379 farms whose year-ending date fell between June 1st, 1959, and May
31st, 196.
West Raynham Airman Sent for Trial
   PATRICK JOSEPH MALONEY (27), of 36, Airmen's Married
Quarters, R.A.F. West Raynham, was committed to Quarter Sessions
at Fakenham Court yesterday on a charge of breaking and entering a
lock-up coffee bar in Bridge Street, Fakenham, between August 1th and
11th and stealing a quantity of sweets, chocolates, and money, to a
total value of +4 18s. 8 1/2d.
   Mr. Brian John Bedford, a service engineer, of 28, Grange Road,
Bushey, Hertfordshire, said he was acting manager of the coffee bar.
   When he went to it one morning, the first thing he noticed was
that the shelf on which chocolates and sweets were placed, was bare.
He found that the rear door of the premises had been forced.
Green Fibres
   P.C. A. D. Willsher said that he examined the coffee
bar and found several green fibres in a door post and also on two
crates of soft drinks. Later Maloney produced the clothing he had
been wearing the previous day and this included a green wool sweater.
   Maloney was cautioned and he said, "If you come round to my
house at 4.3 I will give you the stuff." He later produced the
sweets and chocolates in a cardboard box from his car and then went
into the house and gave them two piggy banks which contained 18s. 7
1/2d. in cash saying, "That is the money I took."
   In a statement to P.C. Willsher, Maloney said, "I had a
row with my wife. I lost my head and went on the booze. I would not
have done it if I had not had so much to drink." He was sorry for
the inconvenience he had caused the coffee bar manager.
   In court Maloney said he would like to confirm what he had said
in his statement and would like to add that he was thoroughly ashamed
of the whole business.
   He was granted bail.
Felmingham Funeral of Mrs. E. T. Lawrence
   The funeral of Mrs. Lucy May Lawrence, wife of Mr. Ernest
Thomas Lawrence, of 1, Heath View, Felmingham, took place at St.
Andrew's Church, Felmingham. The Assistant Curate of North Walsham,
the Rev. Michael Pavey, officiated, assisted by the superintendent
minister of the North Walsham Methodist Circuit, the Rev. Charles
Staden.
   Born at Worstead 77 years ago, Mrs. Lawrence was a land worker
throughout the first world war and received a diploma from the
Minister of Agriculture. For 17 years she was a National Savings
collector in the parish.
   Mrs. Lawrence leaves her husband, two sons and two daughters.
   Family mourners were: the widower; Mr. and Mrs. G. Foulger,
Mr. and Mrs. E. Amies, Mr. E. T. Lawrence, jun., Mr.
and Mrs. A. Lawrence, Mr. and Mrs. P. Cross, Mr. and
Mrs. P. Bindley, Mrs. P. Lester, Mr. and Mrs. P.
Lawrence, Mr. J. Foulger, Mr. B. Foulger, Mr. R. Amies,
Mr. and Mrs. G. Hicks, Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Hicks, Mr.
T. Hicks, Mr. and Mrs. F. Hicks, Mr. T. Hicks, Mrs. D.
Williams, Miss S. Cox, Miss B. Tyrrell, Mr. R. Baker, Mrs.
A. Hicks, Mrs. W. Lane and Mr. P. Cross, jun. Mrs.
E. T. Lawrence, jun., and Mr. A. Hicks were unable to
attend. The North Norfolk Constituency Labour Party was represented.
THEFT BY ROLLS ROYCE VAN MAN
   A police constable was cycling on his beat at Foulsham when he
saw a young man removing piping from huts on the derelict airfield,
near the village, Reepham magistrates were told yesterday.
   Anthony Bower (21), a carpenter, of Rake's Progress, Guestwick,
pleaded guilty to stealing asbestos guttering, pipe and outlets valued
at +2 9s. 2d., belonging to the Air Ministry.
   He was fined +5 after admitting that he used a Rolls-Royce van
without insurance.
   Inspector John Kenny, prosecuting, said that P.C. James Dent
saw Bower removing the guttering. Nearby stood Bower's Rolls-Royce
van with some guttering inside.
Derelict Cottage
   In a statement to the police Bower was alleged to have said
that he had got possession of a derelict cottage in Guestwick rent
free and intended to use the guttering for repairs. The inspector
said defendant <SIC> had been very helpful to the police.
   When the chairman, the Hon. Mrs. Barclay, asked Bower if he
would accept probation, Bower asked what was the alternative. He was
told it might be a fine.
   Bower: How much would the fine be?- Mrs. Barclay: We don't
know.
   Bower: All right. I will accept probation.
   He was put on probation for 12 months.
VERY UNSATISFACTORY MARRIAGE, COURT TOLD
   HOW PEOPLE thought they could build a happy married life
when their sole object, whenever they had enough money, was to
separate and spend the evening in different public-houses was
difficult to imagine, said Judge Carey Evans, sitting as Commissioner
for Divorce, at Norwich Divorce Court yesterday.
   He granted a decree nisi to Mr. Arthur George Boyce, of 29,
Green Lane Estate, Fakenham, on the grounds of his wife's desertion
and her adultery with an unknown man. He exercised his discretion in
favour of the husband's admitted adultery.
   The wife, Mrs. Nancy Audrey Boyce, of 9, Green Lane Estate,
Fakenham, denied her husband's allegations and alleged cruelty,
desertion and adultery on his part.
# 23
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COURT QUIZ ON IDENTITY METHODS
   Police methods of holding identity parades were questioned in a
Darlington court today by Mr. Colin Black, defending solicitor for
28-year-old unemployed labourer, James Rudd Fenwick of Estoril Road,
Darlington.
   Det.-Con. Henry Hammond gave evidence that he and Mr. James
Hughes, another witness in the case, had been standing in Northgate on
Sunday, October 8. Mr. Hughes had recognised a man who had asked
D.C. Hammond for a light.
Cross-examination
   Cross-examining, Mr. Black asked: "Did you suggest to Mr.
Hughes that this could be the man?"- "No."
   "Why were you in Northgate?"- "We were there with a view to
identifying the defendant. I had asked Mr. Hughes to come along."
   "Ah, is this the way to carry out an identity parade?" Mr.
Stanley Walton, prosecuting, stood up. "I object. It was not an
identity parade."
Question reframed
   Mr. Black: "I'll reframe the question. You have been
trained in methods of identity parade. Is this the correct way?"-
"There is no strict way."
   "You refuse to give a straight answer?"- "No, sir. I
answered your question."
   Mr. Walton rose again: "He has said there is no strict
way."
   Mr. Black: "Let me reframe again. Is there any recommended
method?"- "Yes, when applicable."
   "This wasn't such a case?"- "No."
   "Why were you particularly in Northgate?"- "I knew the
defendant was coming along. Some member of the force had asked him to
come to the police station."
   "Had Hughes been shown photographs of the defendant?"-
"Yes."
   "And other men?"- "Yes."
Sent for trial
   Fenwick was sent for trial to the next Durham Quarter Sessions
on charges of taking a car without the owner's consent, stealing a car
radio and driving while disqualified. Bail was allowed and a defence
certificate granted. Through Mr. Black, Fenwick denied all three
charges and reserved his defence.
   When he elected to go for trial on a third count, a fourth case
of driving while uninsured was adjourned 6sine die.
   When Fenwick arrived at the court- 2 minutes late- Mr. Black
apologised for him. "He has two children and his wife is expecting
another," he said. "He has had to arrange for his mother-in-law to
come in before he could come out." Fenwick was on his way to court
when police were sent to look for him.
Parked car
   Darlington company director Mr. Brian Neasham said he had
parked the company's car on waste ground next to their Bowes Street
premises. This was on October 4. When he returned an hour later the
car was gone. It was returned to him by Middlesbrough police the next
day. "It wasn't damaged in any way, but the radio was missing."
   Outlining the case, Mr. Walton said: "In fairness to the
defendant he wasn't with the car when it was found abandoned."
   Mr. Hughes, a garagehand at Neasham's said he was sweeping the
yard when a man he recognised as the defendant came to the gate. He
said he was wanting a van or something, and Mr. Hughes said he would
have to see Mr. Burley, the commercial manager. The defendant said
he was waiting for his brother, waited some time and then went. Later
he returned.
   When he returned, said Mr. Hughes, "I pointed Mr. Burley out
to him." Later Mr. Hughes saw that the car had gone.
   Cross examined by Mr. Black, Mr. Hughes agreed that he had
never seen the man before, and had only seen him once since. He was
certain that the defendant was the same man. "He was wearing a light
fawn coloured mac and a greyish flat cap," said Mr. Hughes. But
he agreed: "I wasn't taking much notice of the man. I wasn't
suspicious or anything." When he saw Fenwick on the Sunday he was
wearing "a suit of a khaki drill colour."
Heard car
   Mr. Kenneth Burley could not give a positive identification
of anyone in court. But he had seen a man at the gate.
   Said Mr. Burley: "He was supposed to be waiting for his
brother and interested in a van."
   Objected Mr. Black: "Surely that's hearsay?"
   Retorted Mr. Walton: "If you don't want it, we'll miss it
out."
   Mr. Burley said he heard the engine of Mr. Neasham's car
start up and stall twice. He realised that it was not one of their
drivers or Mr. Neasham in the car, and ran towards it. It moved off
across the waste ground towards Brunswick Street.
   "I ran after the car as it turned into Brunswick Street. The
driver looked back and I could see it was the same man who had stood
at the gate. He was wearing a light coloured raincoat and a cloth
cap."
At Middlesbrough
   Middlesbrough welder Mr. Alan Breckon, of Snowdon Street told
the court he was in Middlesbrough on the corner of Sussex Street and
Richmond Street on the night of October 4. A man came out of a cafe
and asked him the way to Darlington, and then to Stockton. He
recognised the man as the defendant.
   The man got into a car about 15 yards away and drove off. It was
a green Ford Consul, he said. Cross examined he said: "It was an
ordinary green Ford Consul with a hard top- like an ordinary saloon.
It was definitely not a convertible."
   He was sure it was a Consul and not a Zephyr. The man was
wearing "a greyish coloured jacket, no raincoat." There was a
street lamp on the other side of the road about 24 feet away.
On duty
   Re-examined by Mr. Walton he said he could not tell the
difference between a Consul and a Zephyr and this car "was going away
fast."
   Middlesbrough policeman Colin Redman said he was on duty in
Gosford Street walking towards Sussex Street when he saw a green Ford
Zephyr parked outside a cafe. "Before I came on duty I had received
information that made me interested in this car."
   When it drove towards him with headlights full on, he put up his
hand and flashed his torch. The driver ignored the signal and he had
to jump out of the way. He recognised the defendant as the driver.
He was wearing "a corduroy flat cap, sports jacket and dark
trousers."
   Cross examined he said he was about 2 yards from the man when he
got into the car. It was definitely a convertible. The street
lighting was sulphur lights on standards about 3 feet high.
At Northgate
   He agreed with Mr. Black that sulphur lighting sometimes cast
a peculiar colour on people's faces, but "the cafe strip lighting was
also on and the car was outside." The nearest light was "about six
feet in front of the car." Was he sure of that, asked Mr. Black.
"I'm fairly sure of my answer."
   "So the last witness must be wrong if he says 24 feet?" went
on Mr. Black.- "Yes."
   D. C. Hammond said the defendant had asked him for a light
in Northgate on the Sunday. He had been with Mr. Hughes in
Northgate. The defendant had been wearing "a green checked suit."
Reserved defence
   When charged at the police office with taking without consent,
Fenwick said: "I've never been anywhere near the place (Neasham)".
He said he was in Middlesbrough on the Wednesday and came back by
taxi about midnight. "I had a girl to meet, but I went on the bus
about six o'clock. I didn't take any car."
   Charged with the other offences later he made no reply.
   Durham policeman John Middlemiss said Fenwick had been convicted
of taking without consent, driving while disqualified, using an
uninsured vehicle, and using obscene language at a Durham court in
1956. He had then been banned from driving for ten years.
   When the charges were read to him in court, through Mr. Black,
Fenwick said: "I plead 'Not Guilty' and reserve my defence."
LADY CHAYTOR FINED +5 AND BANNED
   Lady Patricia Chaytor- well-known as a horse lover- was fined
+5 and banned from driving for six months at Bishop Auckland today
following a collision involving two National Hunt jockeys.
   The wife of Sir William Chaytor, she lives in the 5-roomed
Witton Castle in the picturesque village of Witton-le-Wear.
DENIED CHARGE
   On the advice of her solicitor Lady Chaytor, who denied a
charge of dangerous driving, did not go into the witness box.
   Jerry Scott (last year's winner of the Grand National) and his
jockey friend Pat McCarron, gave evidence for the prosecution.
   "These two men almost ended up in the West Auckland Cemetery-
in more senses than one," said Mr. H. Hewitt, prosecuting.
   While driving towards Darlington through West Auckland they saw
another car approaching- on their side of the road.
QUICK THINKING
   "Only the quick thinking of Pat saved a head-on collision,"
Scott told the court. He said that as the other car drew near
McCarron swung their car sharply to the other side of the road. "But
there was still a slight collision and the other car drove on. I
could not repeat what I said then!"
   The two jockeys in Scott's car turned around using the open gates
of the cemetery and chased after the other car. They finally caught
up with it at West Auckland.
   "I kept my eye on it from the moment it smashed into us,"
Scott said.
   "When I got out of my car- if you will excuse the expression-
I said to the woman driver, 'What the hell are you doing?' But
she did not reply."
SLIGHT DAMAGE
   PC John Peacock said that when he arrived he found some
slight damage on the nearside of Lady Chaytor's car. She refused to
make a statement, he said, and told him: "I have never had an
accident before, and I was never on the wrong side of the road."
When told about proceedings being taken she was alleged to have said,
"You can do what you like."
   For Lady Chaytor, Mr. N. Foster, of Darlington, said that she
did not think that bringing his client into the witness-box would be
of any assistance "Because she cannot recollect this incident."
   He said she had been driving for 25 years and had no previous
convictions.
RECEIVED DRUGS
   "She stoutly denies this charge and she has not the slightest
recollection of this accident."
   Two days before this, he said, Lady Chaytor had been in hospital
for observation and during that time had received drugs, some of which
contained an element of pheno-barbitone.
   "The only conclusion she can come to regarding this accident is
that when it happened she was suffering from drowsiness as a result of
the drugs which had been given to her."
YOUTHS STOLE PETROL FROM PARKED CAR
   A +2 motor-cycle bought to keep a 16-year-old youth out of
trouble landed him in a court before the first hire-purchase payment
was due.
   Speaking on behalf of her son before a Darlington court today a
working mother said that "his heart had been so set on a
motor-bike" that she had paid a +5 deposit so that he could have
one for his birthday.
   She added that she had not yet begun to pay the balance at the
rate of +2 1s a week.
SAID HE WOULD HELP
   Asked by the chairman of the Bench, Mr. J. Hemingway, how
much her son paid for his keep out of the +3 18s he had just begun
to earn, she replied: "I let him keep it for himself; he has had to
pay for tax and insurance but said he would help out with the
payments."
   The youth appeared with another motor-cyclist, Henry Ernest
Chapman (19), of Railway Cottages, Hurworth Place, on a joint charge
of stealing petrol. They pleaded guilty.
   Prosecuting, Chief-Insp. James Richardson said that two
policemen found Chapman and the youth hiding in a yard off
Skinner-gate on the evening of October 3.
   Asked what they were doing they said they were looking for a
motor-cycle, but when further questioned, Chapman said: "O.K.
They've found us out."
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WARWICK RACECOURSE IS STILL IN THE RED
   WARWICK Racecourse is still in the red and is still showing a
loss, said Racecourse Committee chairman Alderman Guy Nelson at the
July meeting of Warwick Town Council. Because of that, the committee
had refused to increase prize money when asked to do so by the Jockey
Club.
   Alderman Nelson was replying to two questions from members of the
council, who asked why the committee had not carried out the Jockey
Club's request. Councillor Fred Vittle said he thought that owners
and trainers would stop running their horses at Warwick if the prize
money was not increased.
POSTPONED
   Councillor Fred Walters asked why the committee had refused the
increase before it found out about other racecourses. "Is our prize
money as high as theirs?" he asked.
   Alderman Nelson said the committee had only said that the
increase should be postponed until a decision on betting levy
contributions to racecourse executives had been received.
   "We shall still get plenty of horses. The horses that come to
Warwick do not come for the prize money, but for the public to bet
on," he added.
Extensions at Chesford Grange will cost +5,
   BETTER known to Birmingham, Coventry and Leamington
connoisseurs for the excellence of its food and wines, but known by
guests from all parts of the country, Chesford Grange Hotel will soon
have an additional 21 luxurious modern bedrooms and a conference hall
seating 2 delegates or 12 diners.
   The new bedrooms, each of which will have its own private bath or
shower, are all on the first floor, over the new conference hall,
which has its own entrance, bar, cloakrooms, and a laid dance-floor.
The new hall, to be called the Lilac Room, can be used either
separately or in conjunction with the main hall, and is a very
valuable extension of the already comprehensive conference facilities.
CLEAN AND MODERN
   The new structure, which links the hotel to the ballroom, has a
white rendered finish to the ground floor and timber facings to the
first floor. The conference hall entrance is faced with green slate,
and the architectural treatment of the new building is clean and
modern, but still blends with the existing traditional architecture of
the older buildings it links.
   The work, which includes complete modernisation of the entire
drainage system, will cost about +5, and will be completed by
Christmas of this year. Main contractors are Turriff Construction
(Warwick) Ltd., the well-known Warwick and London builders.
Unemployment decrease
   "The number of unemployed has fallen during the past three
months," said Miss N. L. Munton, manager of the Leamington and
Warwick Employment Exchange, at a meeting of the Leamington and South
Warwickshire Local Employment Committee held under the chairmanship of
Miss L. I. Bell, J.P.
   The percentage for the area covered by this committee
(Leamington, Warwick, Stratford and Southam) is just under .5 compared
with .8 for the Midland Region and 1.2 for the country as a whole.
   There are varied vacancies for both men and women, for the latter
especially in shops, cafes, hotels and domestic work, as well as
nursing and electrical work.
Council questions on Warwick's overdraft
   IF Warwick Town Council's bank overdraft stopped, would all
the capital works undertaken by the council come to an end? asked
Councillor Fred Walters at the July meeting of the council. And, if
that happened, would council house rents be affected?
   Councillor Walters was speaking on a Finance Committee
recommendation that the council should increase its overdraft to
+25,. The proposal was approved.
   He said he had been surprised that the chairman of the committee
had not made a statement to the council, and added that he did not
think it necessary to have such a large overdraft for a town of
Warwick's size.
WAS IT WISE?
   Before the chairman of the Finance Committee had chance
<SIC> to reply, Councillor Fred Vittle asked if it was wise to
increase the overdraft during the national economic crisis.
   Councillor E. Lloyd-Averns Finance Committee chairman, said the
overdraft was not a large one, as many towns smaller than Warwick had
greater overdraft facilities.
   "Its main purpose is to act as a buffer," he said.
   "In so far as council house rents are concerned, they are run on
a completely different basis and cannot possibly be affected."
Warwick and scheme for joint crematorium
   At a special meeting, Warwick General Purposes Committee
instructed the Crematorium Sub-Committee to oppose the proposals to
build a crematorium near the junction of the Banbury and Heathcote
roads. The sub-committee will press for the crematorium to be built
on the original site- by Leamington's Brunswick Street cemetery.
   Warwick Town Council originally decided to build its own
crematorium, but in April last year it abandoned the idea and entered
into a joint scheme with Leamington Town Council and Warwick Rural
District Council. After representatives of the councils had met it
was decided to build the crematorium near Leamington cemetery.
+1, EXTRA
   After representatives of the firm of architects which built the
Medway Crematorium at Chatham had inspected five possible sites,
within Warwick and Leamington and Warwick rural district, they
recommended the site on rising ground at the junction of the Banbury
and Heathcote roads. The size of the site is 15 acres.
   The chairman of Warwick Estates Committee, Alderman H. J.
Ansell, outlined the history of the proposed crematorium at the
special meeting of the General Purposes Committee. He said his
committee decided against the Heathcote Road site because of the extra
cost- about +1,.
PIECEMEAL
   Chairman of the new Planning and Development Committee,
Councillor H. R. C. Walden, said it would be piecemeal
development for the Heathcote area. He said that would be one of the
few areas that Warwick could develop if the Green Belt inquiry proved
successful and it was wrong to spoil it by building the crematorium.
   Councillor Leo Howlett said the eventual cost was likely to be
about +125,, of which Warwick would have to pay one fifth. "If
we have got +25, to spend let's spend it on the living," he
said.
Maiden speech
   Councillor Donald Round made his first speech at a council
meeting when he asked the chairman of the Housing Committee what was
being done about the pavements and street lighting at Spinney Hill,
Warwick.
   Councillor W. L. Tarver, the chairman of the Housing
Committee, said that the pavements and street lighting should be
installed within the next few months.
A SILVER "THANK YOU"
   To mark his services to the league- and also his silver
wedding- Mr. Walter Leslie, secretary of Warwick Hospital League of
Friends, has been presented with a pair of silver candlesticks.
   The presentation took place in the hospital's new recreation
hall- which Mr. Leslie helped to get.
Warwick Mayor to campaign for by-pass
   ALTHOUGH proposed more than 25 years ago, it would be at
least four years before anything was done about the Warwick by-pass,
said the Mayor of Warwick (Alderman James McGrouther) at a special
meeting of Warwick General Purposes Committee. He told the committee
that he was going to write to the Minister of Transport asking if he
would receive a deputation from the council.
   To strengthen his case, said the Mayor, he would approach
transport federations and commission films of local traffic
congestion. He asked the Press for support and said he would take all
press cuttings he could find relating to the traffic conditions in the
town.
   Councillor Fred Walters, leader of the Socialist group, said the
council had tried to do several small things in an effort to alleviate
the traffic congestion. "Each time they have been refused by people
who have never been to Warwick," he added.
Council's action on smokeless zones
Alderman says: "We have got to be realists"
   IN A FRANK speech to the delegates at the annual meeting of
the Warwickshire Clean Air Council at Leamington, Alderman E. H.
Fryer told them the reasons why Leamington Town Council had postponed
its smokeless zones programme. But he promised that Leamington would
not hang back when there were sufficient supplies of smokeless fuels
available.
   Welcoming the delegates on behalf of the Mayor (Councillor Miss
Christine Ledger), who was attending the Royal garden party at
Buckingham Palace, Alderman Fryer said he had been against smoke
control for Leamington right from the word go.
MUST BE REALISTS
   "Criticism was levelled at us for going back on what we had
started to do, but we have got to be realists. If you are going to
change the Englishman's way of life you cannot do it in a hurry," he
said.
   "It must be done very gradually indeed. In other words, one
must make haste slowly.
   "The zones that were revoked covered a large area in which a lot
of old people lived. It was on their behalf, mainly, that the
programme was revoked.
<END QUOTE>
TEMPERAMENTAL
   "You yourselves said there were insufficient supplies of
smokeless fuel and so coke must be used. Coke is temperamental; it
can make a good fire, or it can be a most depressing sight.
   "Unless we can give people a similar fuel to coal, at a similar
price, then we are up against the wall. These are the reasons why the
smoke control zones in Leamington were rejected.
   "When smokeless fuel is produced in abundance, and when it is a
reasonable price, I can assure you that Leamington Spa will not hang
back," added Alderman Fryer.
DOCTOR'S LETTER
   At the quarterly meeting of the council, held at Sutton
Coldfield, the vice-chairman of the council, Councillor Robert
Loosley, of Coventry, claimed that Councillor Dr. H. Gibbons Ward,
of Leamington, had started the campaign against the smoke control
zones in Leamington by writing to the local Press. He asked the
council to deplore the doctor's action.
   At the annual meeting, Dr. Gibbons Ward said unfortunately he
had not been at the Sutton Coldfield meeting and he wished to "put
two or three things right."
"MY PRIVILEGE"
   "I did not start the campaign by writing to the local Press.
I do not think it is the wish of this council that any member shall
not at any time disagree with decisions of the council.
   "I should have thought that one would have been able to express
an opinion without being rebuked. It is my privilege to differ from
the council at any time," he added.
   Later, Councillor Loosley said: "I feel it is wrong for the
people of this council to get up at another meeting and decry our
efforts. It is the duty of a member of this council to support these
decisions outside the council. If not, at least they can keep
quiet."
RADFORD SEMELE RAISES +1,
   ALTHOUGH formed only 18 months ago, Radford Semele Playing
Field Committee has raised +1, towards amenities for the village
play <SIC> field.
   After buying playground equipment, the committee still has a
credit balance of +736, it was reported at the July meeting.
   The committee agreed that it would push ahead as fast as possible
with fund raising schemes to make the playing field one of the finest
in Warwickshire.
   Committee chairman Mr. P. Bramhall called for full village
support in the venture.
Allotment land should be a playground, council told
   LAND originally set aside for allotments on the Percy
Estate, Warwick, would be very suitable for a children's playground,
said Councillor Mrs. E. A. Brown at the July meeting of Warwick
Town Council.
   "Land behind the garages of Mill Road and Pattens Road was
originally allocated for allotments, but as the land has not yet been
allocated to the Allotments Committee could it be used for a
children's playground? I know it would not help all the children, but
it would help some," she said.
   Councillor W. L. Tarver, Housing Committee chairman, said
the borough surveyor was looking into the playgrounds problem. If any
question of urgency arose during the school holiday, then the surveyor
and the mayor could get together to decide what was best, he added.
NEW OFFICER
   A Midland woman is to be commissioned as a Church Army officer
at a ceremony in London next week.
# 219
<37 TEXT A37>
At 18, Diana has met the Queen, studies in Paris, visits U S
A and SHE'S TO BE A DEBUTANTE AT VERSAILLES
by William Burgess
   SHE was a child when her father took her name and her picture
as the trademark of a business which today has branches across two
continents. She is the symbol of a romance of industry who herself is
fast becoming one of its most efficient practitioners.
   She is Miss Diana Cowpe, 18-year-old daughter of textile tycoon
Mr Eric Cowpe, of Thornton Cleveleys and Anchorsholme, and the
glittering apex of her young career to date will be her "coming
out" celebration at the highlight of the French social season, the
debutantes' ball at the Palace of Versailles.
   The Cowpe family came to live here seven years ago from Burnley,
where blossomed the business which today supplies the demands of
customers in over 6 different countries.
   Eric Cowpe, debonair industrialist, is the managing director of
the Diana Cowpe Organisation engaged in the production of bedspreads,
bath mats, toilet sets, dressing gowns, housecoats, beach wear and
candlewick by the yard.
   And at the heart of it is the golden girl a fluent linguist, an
expert in public relations, who is fast making herself conversant with
every branch of the industry.
   Today the organisation has over 2, employees and uses seven
mills. In 196 the company further extended its interests by becoming
the United Kingdom distributors for Cannon Mills, who are the world's
largest manufacturers of household textiles.
   In maintaining his global contacts, Mr Cowpe travels on an
average 6, miles a year, mostly by air.
   His Fleetwood office, a spot of elegance in inelegant
surroundings, buzzes with ideas and amiability and remarkable for a
high-powered executive, he has not a single ulcer!
Her friends
   Diana is currently enrolled at L'Acade?2mie, 1,
guinea-a-term plus finishing school in Paris, where her schoolmates
include Miss Charlotte Ford, 19-year-old daughter of car king Henry
Ford =2, and Miss Singer, daughter of the president of the Singer
Sewing Machine firm, whose wedding incidentally she will soon be
attending in New York.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   In a few weeks' time Miss Singer and a party will be coming to
stay with the Cowpes in Norbreck-road.
<END INDENTATION>
   Diana who will be 19 in May, is staying with La Comtesse de
la Forest Divonne, in the Avenue de Wagram, while she is
attending L'Academie, which is associated with the famed Maxim.
   A finishing school 6par excellence, its curriculum ranges
over all aspects of French culture.
The programme
   Studies at the Sorbonne include acquaintance with the best of
French civilisation, from history to art, architecture to 6haute
couture, from the Louvre to the house of Dior, from the drama to
the opera. Not forgetting, of course, la cuisine.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   For the ball at Versailles, there will be a dress from Dior and
an escort from a noted French family.
<END INDENTATION>
   This will be a night of nights, with representatives of the
government and leaders of French society as well as a dazzling display
of the world of fashion.
   Ahead lie dates in New York for the Singer wedding, San
Francisco, England, including the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, and a
spell in Madrid.
   Diana was educated originally at Roedean at Brighton, and even at
an early age was already an experienced traveller.
   No playgirl, despite the glitter and the globe-trotting, she has
kept a shrewd eye on the family business, worked hard both at home and
abroad at public relations.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   At the Earl's Court Exhibition, where the company was
represented, she was presented to the Queen, and there was an informal
chat.
<END INDENTATION>
   The incident was later seen on television, and father records
that his daughter was a good deal more composed than he was. A
photograph of this occupies pride of place on his desk in the
Fleetwood office.
   "Since she was very young," says her proud father, "she has
always taken a great interest in the business, and that is why I chose
her for the company's trade name. I have confidence in her ability.
A great girl!"
In Switzerland
   After Roedean, she went to another school at Neuchatel in
Switzerland has already visited the United States and studied
production in the mills of the "Deep South."
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Last November Mr Cowpe had further proof of his daughter's
versatility when she won golden opinions for her performance in
"Invitation to Saturn," a new play by Lady Aylwen, which was
presented at the Scala in London in aid of the Greater London Fund for
the Blind.
<END INDENTATION>
   Small wonder that father has a wealth of photographs of his
daughter, among which the one reproduced on this page takes pride of
place. It was taken by Stara, noted French photographer of Paris and
Cannes, whose pupils included the late great English photographer
Baron.
   Diana Cowpe is a young lady on her way, and an example of beauty
and brains in this modern age.
Spoke about colour bar
   "WE are trying to bring about equal rights for all civilised
men," said the Rev E. Thornley, the northern area secretary for
the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, when he spoke to members
of the St Chad's Church of England Men's Society on Monday.
   Mr Thornley asked, "What is the colour bar?"
   He said that there were many forms. The first was a local colour
bar, such as was found in the Union of South Africa and which was
known as apartheid.
   Mr Thornley said that apartheid was revolting, and although the
basis of it was theology it was rank bad theology.
   Another type of colour bar was the economic form which existed in
the Federation and which also formed the basis for the colour bar in
the United States.
   The third form was the social colour bar which, said Mr
Thornley, was pretty well universal.
   "Our mission is striving to create a multi-racial community
where all may enjoy fundamental rights and responsibilities, and where
a man's status and opportunities depend not on the colour of his skin
but on his character and competence," he added.
   Mr S. Holden, chairman, presided and Mr F. Shaw thanked
Mr Thornley.
Inspiration in a garage
A PEN picture of Bispham artist Miss Kate Smith by MAUREEN
McCONVILLE
   FROM the outside, and on first glance, the garage at 19,
Stainforth-avenue, Bispham, looks like any other garage.
   But there the resemblance abruptly and completely ends.
   Inside, in an atmosphere pungent with linseed oil and turpentine,
it is furnished for use with fluorescent lighting supplementing the
daylight from the large windows, and for comfort with thick matting on
the floor, curtains and chairs.
   Inside, the ordered chaos of artistic activity prevails.
Centrepiece
   Even to the uninitiated, this building, masquerading as an
ordinary suburban garage, is a working artist's studio.
   The working artist to whom it belongs is Kate Smith, three of
whose pictures have been hung as the centrepiece of the Lancashire Art
Exhibition, which opened at the Harris Gallery, Preston, on Wednesday.
   Miss Smith came to Blackpool from the Midlands in April last
year and this is the first time she has exhibited in Lancashire.
   It is not, by a long way, her first experience of exhibiting, for
Miss Smith has been painting most of her life, striving to express in
oils on hardboard the ideas that come too fast for her to cope with.
"Imaginative"
   She has little of the exhibitionism that people associate with
artists. Instead of producing a facile flow of ideas about artistic
theory and personal aims, she gropes for words to express her sense of
the seriousness of painting.
   She knows what she believes and feels about art, but she handles
language with something less than the complete assurance with which
she handles paint.
   Considering whether she qualified as a "modern" artist or
not, she told me: "I'm just an imaginative painter, really."
   This modest personal appraisal needs elaboration.
Bible-inspired
   Many of Miss Smith's paintings are inspired by incidents in the
New Testament and express divine and human qualities in the life of
God-made Man.
   The expression is achieved by a heavy reliance on symbolism,
which simplifies, concentrates and distorts reality to make the
symbolism clear and powerful.
   The result is far from traditional, though it has nothing of the
shock value of, say, action painters and other anti-humanists.
Striking
   In fact, the human feeling in her paintings is one of their
most striking aspects and one which has gained her adherents in
unexpected quarters.
   Coming to Blackpool has influenced her choice of subject to
some extent, though now, she told me, she was returning to
"religious" work.
   In her studio, I saw several pictures directly inspired by the
local scene. One was a composite of Blackpool's pleasures, another a
colourful sketch of the Illuminations.
Rhythmic
   One I particularly liked was a study of three girls preparing
to swim. The rhythmic flow of their bodies made an interesting and
satisfying composition.
   Horses from the Tower Circus were featured on a small painting
full of vigour and delight in movement.
   Miss Smith has taught painting- in sanatoriums, which inspired
one of the paintings now exhibited in Preston, and in mental
hospitals- but it has always been her aim to be a full-time painter.
   Now she has achieved it. She paints all through the day every
day, starting at 8 a m, taking time off for lunch, and working
until 6 p m.
Month to paint
   A full-sized picture takes about a month to complete and
afterwards, she relaxes for a few days before starting another.
   Soon she will be employing one of her relaxation periods for
another sort of painting. She is going to decorate her sittingroom.
   "It will be my first attempt," she told me.
RED LIGHT PLAIN TO ALL
BY 'ZEPHYRUS'
   AT last people are genuinely worried. One resignation, two
resignations, even three resignations from the Blackpool Town Council
they were prepared to accept as more or less normal wastage.
   But when, last week, the total rose to six with the impending
departure of Marton's 7-year-old Coun James Shepherd Leigh,
ratepayers suddenly recognised as a very real thing the red light
which this column has been flashing for months.
   At function after function this week I am told, it has been said,
"The situation is serious. We can't afford to lose experienced
administrators at this rate."
Of course not
   Well, of course we can't. What is more, unless the political
parties themselves are prepared to admit that one way or another the
rot must be stopped, local government in Blackpool could be in trouble
before very long.
   How can the parties help? Obviously, I should think, by taking
their councillors on one side and telling them it is time they started
behaving like intelligent adults.
   Members of the council are not unaware why many of their
colleagues are quitting the municipal scene, or why quite a number of
others are sick to the teeth.
   They know, as one or two have said publicly, that they are going
because they feel that under the existing set-up it is well nigh
impossible to have even the most insignificant questions discussed
without the political and personal element creeping into them.
Disunity
   Indeed, disunity has become a matter for joking.
   The other day eight members of the Estates and Housing Committee,
and four Corporation officials, made the long journey into
Staffordshire to inspect some old people's housing schemes.
   The outward journey was halted for morning coffee, and I hear
that when councillors saw the name of the hotel one of them wanted to
know if, in making the arrangements, a Town Hall official had tried to
be sarcastic.
   The name of the hotel? "The Good Companions"!
   By themselves, committees function reasonably well.
   It seems to be when committees join forces and become either the
General Purposes Committee or a public meeting of the Town Council
that feathers begin to fly.
   All hail, therefore, to one of the most recent proposals to come
out of the Town Clerk's Department.
Scrapped
   It is- as long advocated by this column- that the General
Purposes Committee as at present constituted (it consists of all
members of the council) should be scrapped, and replaced by a more
compact and workable body.
# 233
<38 TEXT A38>
Finance page
+143,78 FOR COMPULSORY PURCHASE
   THE Minister of Housing and Local Government is to be asked
by Dudley Corporation for consent to borrow +146,367, most of which
is needed for the compulsory acquisition of property.
   Block valuation given by the district valuer for the new dock
areas is +53,72; for the Highgate-road, Woodside areas, +1,12;
for the Yew Tree Hills area, +14,1. These, with other sums for the
Windmill End and St. John-street, Netherton areas, make a total of
+18,415.
   The grand total includes +23,365 for 19, Hall-street, and
+12, for the Britannia Inn and 97, Hall-street.
Lower profits from motor cycles
   The reimposition of the credit controls and the wet summer of
196 had a particularly adverse effect on the activities of motor
cycle dealers and resulted in a fall in the group profits of Jenkin
and Purser (Holdings), before tax, from +82,545 to +36,91 during
the year ended September 8 last.
   Although much of the group's business is effected on hire
purchase terms, the company's experience in this respect has been
satisfactory, as the machines sold to retail customers on credit are
retained as security until fully paid for.
   In his statement, the chairman emphasises that in any event the
group's reserves are adequate to meet all contingencies.
   The board have recommended a total distribution of 1 per cent.
less tax, against 22 1/2 per cent. previously, while the chairman
refuses to forecast future business as current turnover continues "to
be substandard."
NEW COMPANIES
   Royle and Stanley, Ltd.- Private company. Registered
January 9. Capital +5,. Objects: To carry on the business of
builders etc. Permanent directors: Harry Royle and Connie Royle,
both of 14, Bhylls-crescent, Merry Hill, Wolverhampton; Joseph A.
Stanley and Dorothy H. Stanley, both of Broadways, Brenton-road,
Penn, Wolverhampton. Secretary: A. Bretherick. Registered office:
Sun-street, Wolverhampton.
Appointments
   Mr. N. R. R. Brooke has been appointed a director of
Guest Keen and Nettlefolds. He is managing director of Guest Keen
and Nettlefolds (South Wales) and is a director of certain other group
companies.
   Mr. P. S. Watson and Mr. J. G. Nutman have been
appointed directors of Smith and Nephew.
Eastbourne Mutual Building Society.
   Total assets during 196 increased by over +75, and now
exceeded +8,5,. Sum advanced during year rose by +28, to
+1,34,.
Building society 196 reports
W'ton and District Permanent
   The total assets of the Wolverhampton and District Permanent
Building Society now amount to +7,887,647, having increased during
196 by +518,12.
   Mortgage assets amount to +6,538,695, the net increase in the
year being +458,842.
   New mortgage advances, secured chiefly on owner occupied private
dwelling houses, total +1,28,92.
   Share and deposit investment received during the year amount to
+1,232,153. Allowing for withdrawals and the capitalisation of
interest accrued, share and deposit balances increased to +7,24,214.
   The society's liquid funds at the close of the year totalled
+1,297,743, being equivalent to 16.4 per cent. of total assets.
(The national average in 1959 was 14.6 per cent.)
   Total reserves have increased to +495,, representing 6.6 per
cent. of total assets, compared with the national average in 1959 of
4.56 per cent.
   Leek and Moorlands Building Society.- During 196 assets
and liabilities of Nalgo Building Society and of The Stockport Atlas
Building Society were transferred to Leek and Moorlands. These
transfers are included in the results for 196 which show assets
+63,5,- an increase of +17,5,. Mortgage advances during
the year +8,, (+7,95,). Reserves increased by +673,
to +2,93,. Tax amounted to +785,. Investments in trustee
securities and cash +1,65,.
   Leicester Temperance Building Society.- Total assets at
end-196 were +23,36,, or +1,882, more than at end-1959.
Balance outstanding on mortgages totalled +18,988,, also and
<SIC> increase of +1,882,. Investments and cash at bankers
aggregated +3,88,, representing 16.6 per cent. of total assets,
while Reserve Funds are 4.26 per cent. of assets. Advances during
the year of +4,2, were a record for the society, and 96 per
cent. of the total amount advances was on owner-occupied private
dwelling houses.
Markets are irregular
LONDON
   AFTER making a hesitant start to the New Account, stock
markets have taken some encouragement today from the trade figures,
which are better than expected, and quietly irregular conditions
prevail.
   Gold shares are very firm despite the sharp fall in the gold
price following the U.S. ban on gold hoarding, sentiment being
encouraged by the belief that Americans will switch from gold into
gold shares.
   There is a widespread advance in gold share prices, ranging
6d. to 5s., the latter seen in F. S. Geduld.
   Industrials are mixed, but with sentiment helped by a
favourable reading of the trade figures. The leaders have rallied
from a dull start. Glaxo, however, remain a depressed spot at 6/1
1/2 on the cut in selling prices.
   Textiles are firm on talks of further possible mergers, with good
gains by Bleachers and Bradford Dyers. Stores have recovered part of
their earlier falls.
   Steels are often a few pence easier but a number of firm spots
are seen in engineerings. Buildings have gone ahead.
   Oils are firm with Shells strong.
   New prices quoted today:
<LIST>
BIRMINGHAM
   Modest improvements in engineering today include Radiation
34/9, Wolseley-Hughes 49/-, Smith's Stamp. 3/-, Wilkins and Mitchell
13/4 1/2xd., Midland Bright 14/-, Midland Iron 5/9, Duport 12/1 1/2
and Cope Allman 22/3.
   Guest new have been bought at 44/3. Clarksons, however, have
dipped to 28/3 and Valor 15/-.
   B.M.C. have shed 6d. to 15/6, and Rovers 3d. to 14/7
1/2, but Standards are hard at 1/6, while S. Smith are supported at
17/4 1/2.
   Stores are a fairly strong counter, with Wigfalls outstanding at
32/-. Susan Small look well at 29/-.
   Albrights are 25/3 and Baggeridge Brick 8/9.
HIGHER PROFITS AND PAYMENT BY EDGE TOOL
   Good results are announced by Edge Tool Industries, of
Wolverhampton.
   Group profits, before tax, for the year to September 3, are
reported at +223,878, compared with +147,126 previously, with tax
taking +19,26 against +68,829, net profits come out at +114,618,
against +78,297.
   Allocation to reserves is +1, against +7,, and +1,1
against nil is written off trade marks. The loss of exchange-turning
on the company's Brazilian Subsidiary was +1,415 against +1,25.
   Edge Tool's final dividend is maintained at 12 1/2 per cent.,
but it means a total payment of 2 per cent., against 17 1/2 per
cent.- the interim having been raised from 5 per cent. to 7 1/2
per cent.
   The Brazilian subsidiaries' figures are not consolidated with
the results of the home companies in the group, but the figures show
that the Brazilian company has another good year with net profits up
from 9,7, cruzeiros to 1,5, cruzeiros.
   Home companies in the group include Chillington Tool Co.,
Edward Elwell, Ltd., and Midland Heat Treatments.
   The annual meeting will be held on February 1. Mr. H. W.
Hunt is chairman.
Dividend increased by P. J. Evans
   An increase in trading profit from +78,648 to +1,648, and a
2 1/2 per cent. rise in the dividend total for the year to September
3, 196, are reported by P. J. Evans, the Birmingham motor
vehicle distributors.
   Following the higher 7 1/2 per cent. (5 per cent.) interim,
the final is being maintained at 15 per cent.
   After depreciation, etc., of +18,378 (+16,442) and tax
+42,514 (+31,739), the net profit is up from +3,467 to +39,756.
The carry-forward is +99,613 (+76,395).
   Annual meeting, February 24.
H. J. BARLOW SHARES
   The 2s. Ordinary shares in H. J. Barlow and Co.
have been made available to those who, on December 3, held 1 or
more Neville Developments Ordinary Shares.
   Holders of 1 Developments Ordinary take part in a ballot for
1 Barlow Ordinary and holders of 2 or more receive 1 Barlow for
every complete 1 Developments with a maximum allocation of 1,.
   Acceptance letters will be posted today and dealings are expected
to start in Birmingham tomorrow.
ISSUE SUCCESS
   The directors of Concentric Manufacturing Co. announce
that of the 1,2, Ordinary 2s. shares offered to shareholders on
a rights basis at 1s. a share, 994,91 shares, representing 97.5
per cent. of the total, have been taken up on the rights terms.
   The remaining 25,9 shares have been sold in accordance with the
terms of the issue for the benefit of the company.
HANDFORD GREATREX
   It is understood that terms of a counter-bid for the Ordinary
shares of Handford Greatrex and Co., of Walsall, producers of
upper leather and hide processors, may be put before Ordinary
shareholders this week.
   Behind the counter-bid are understood to be Mr. Bernard Owens,
a Birmingham insurance broker, and Mr. Alan G. Higgs, a Coventry
businessman.
   Meanwhile, Harvey and Sons, tanners and curriers, of Nantwich
and Bury, have announced (as reported in the "Express and Star" on
Saturday) that, having received acceptances in excess of 65 per
cent., they have declared unconditional their offer for the Ordinary
capital of Handford Greatrex. The share exchange offer is worth about
12s. a share, and the final date for acceptances has been extended
to February 28.
   Mr. G. Greatrex, chairman of Handford Greatrex, said today
that shareholders would have a full opportunity to consider both
offers. He and his family and other directors control more than 6
per cent. of the company's shares and have recommended other holders
to accept the Harvey offer.
   The +9, capital includes +5, in Ordinary shares.
Company reports
   The Volkes Group, a holding company of manufacturers of
filtration and silencing equipment and specialised engineering
products, is raising the interim dividend from the equivalent of 4.58
per cent. to 5 1/2 per cent. on a capital increased by a
one-for-five scrip issue. The total equivalent distribution for the
year ended March 31, 196, was 15.42 per cent.
   Group profits, before tax, of R. B. Pullin and Co.,
electrical engineers and scientific instrument makers, increased
from +316,99 to +361,39 for the year to September 3, 196.
   The previous year's effective 25 per cent. dividend total is
maintained with an unchanged 2 per cent. final. The 5 per cent.
interim for the previous year was paid prior to a two-for-five rights
issue.
   Tax takes +17,247, against +167,131, leaving the net balance
up from +149,859 to +191,62.
LONDON GAZETTE
   Order annulled and rescinded.- Simon Nadel, residing at 8,
School Lane-close, Rickerscote, Stafford, engineering draughtsman,
receiving order dated September 1, 1953, rescinded. Adjudication
dated April 6, 1954 annulled. Petition dated September 1, 1953,
dismissed. All on December 16, 196. Debts paid in full.
Gold price lowest for six weeks
   President Eisenhower's order forbidding U.S. citizens to
hold gold overseas brought a sharp fall in price on the London bullion
market today.
   At today's official fixing by the five leading dealers, it was
cut by 2s. 4d. per fine ounce- the lowest point for six weeks.
   The dollar equivalent is 35.43 against the U.S. official
price of 35 dollars.
   The fall is the biggest recorded at a fixing since October 27
when, after the City's big gold rush passed its peak, the price dipped
6s. to 254s.
   The dramatic U.S. move to check the flow of gold from
America was a top talking point in the City today. It sparked off
selling in a market devoid of buyers, until the price went down. Then
buyers came in.
   The market later became steadier, and the price rose to around
253s. on further buying.
   Of the Eisenhower ban- announced over the weekend and six days
before he leaves office- one big dealer said: "In all probability
it will create a certain amount of panic selling by Americans.
   "It is also going to strengthen the views of outsiders that
devaluation of the Dollar, in their opinion, is imminent. So there
may well be a return of heavy buying by them. This would push the
price up."
Accountants say: 'Abolish Schedule A'
   The abolition of the Schedule A tax on owner-occupied
residential properties is among a number of tax recommendations made
to Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by the
Association of Certified and Corporate Accountants, for his
consideration prior to the Budget.
   The association says that while it recognises that abolition of
Schedule A would involve a loss of revenue, there would be
considerable administrative savings.
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SHOW PAGE
Theatre
CREAM OF VOICES PITCH TOO HIGH FOR US
By ALAN BENDLE
   NONE of the singers who has already won through to the rank
of international artist will be with the Covent Garden Company when it
opens its week's visit to Manchester on Monday.
   As Sir David Webster, the Garden's general administrator, has
been pointing out, the reasons are two- the international artists
have too many engagements elsewhere and they are too expensive. The
company cannot afford to hire them for touring.
   I asked Sir David to make the second reason even plainer. How
much must the company pay for the services of one of the great ones, a
Callas, a Gobbi, a Christoff, and nowadays a Joan Sutherland or a
Geraint Evans?
   He shrugged his shoulders. "Anything from +3 to +8," he
said. "Oh, yes, for one performance."
   It is therefore on real hard cash that he bases his argument that
if Manchester is ready to pay the top price of, say, 25s. a seat,
and fill the theatre, Manchester can expect more of the world-famous
ones- always provided that her claims do not unhappily conflict with
those of La Scala, New York's Metropolitan Opera, Vienna, Venice,
Paris, San Francisco, and the rest of the world's leading opera
houses.
   The career of an international opera singer is not a particularly
long one. The harvest of fame must be collected in some 15 years at
most, and to-day, with the tax-gatherer in hot pursuit, no-one is
likely to rival the fortune of a Caruso or a Melba.
   
   THERE is a more sensible attitude than that adopted by some
of Manchester's opera fans.
   Taking recent years as an example, Joan Sutherland may now be
shuttling between the States and Italy; Canadian Jon Vickers may have
been stolen away by New York and Chicago; and Geraint Evans may be
conquering Vienna, but we have heard them all in the near past.
   And there are singers with us next week who are destined for
world renown but are still here to be listened to. Why should we let
nostalgic longings spoil the pleasure of picking out to-morrow's world
favourites?
   Let us, like the gentlemen of the Turf, choose half a dozen to
follow. My own list is: soprano Joan Carlyle ("Der
Rosenkavalier" and "Boheme"); soprano Marie Collier
("Boheme"); bass Michael Langdon ("Der Rosenkavalier");
mezzo-soprano Josephine Veasey ("Carmen" and "Peter Grimes");
and baritone David Ward ("Aida").
   
   THAT admirable singer Michael Langdon has one passion that
must endear him to a wider public.
   When he is not using his voice as Baron Ochs in "Der
Rosenkavalier"- he sang the role at Covent Garden in November and
repeats it in Manchester- he is putting it to what I believe he
secretly considers an equally good purpose.
   "I'm Wolverhampton-born," he said, "and I try to be free as
often as possible when the Wolves are playing so that I can go and
cheer them on."
   Well over six feet tall, he has no crowd difficulties in watching
soccer with an expert eye. But he finds his height a handicap when it
comes to his other hobby- gardening. "The garden," says Michael,
"is such a long way down!"
   He has been with the company for 13 years, and already in 195
was singing solo roles. The drunken monk Varlaam, in "Boris
Gudonov," gave him a notable start, and the Grand Inquisitor, in
"Don Carlos"- as one of the cast that included Tito Gobbi and
Boris Christoff- was his biggest break.
   He went to Vienna last year to study Baron Ochs under Alfred
Jerger, who had sung the part with Richard Strauss conducting. He has
achieved a ripe humour without clowning, and as a result is to sing
the Baron with the Hamburg State Opera.
   
   IS the Covent Garden tour repertory too familiar?
   Well, you know what happens when a new work appears- an
inevitable and heavy financial loss.
   When "Peter Grimes" made its first appearance in Manchester
the house was half-empty. On its second visit there was a slight
improvement. Next week what will the answer be?
   The same thing happens in London. This season is the first in
which "Peter Grimes" has sold out for several performances.
Placed on record
By Roderick Random
Backing to the front
   SOMETIMES when you listen to a record, the backing, however
unobtrusive it may be, attracts your attention more than the singer.
   I mean no slight on Mr. Gary Miller when I confess that this is
what happened when I heard his record "Dream Harbour" (Pye,
7N.15338).
   The accompaniment, a soft, oriental rhythm, came through
entrancingly. It was, I discovered, the work of one of the busiest
back-room boys of the recording world- Bill Shepherd.
   
   I note that he has credits on two other records this week-
"Model Girl," by Davy Jones (Pye, 7N.2572) and "Kookie Talk,"
by Scott Peters (Pye 7N.15343).
   I met Bill for a few minutes just before he began yet another
session for a BBC programme. Chubby, cheerful, duffle-coated and
carrying a bag containing 4 precious band arrangements.
   "I've done all sorts of things," he said. "I was a singer
with a group called the Coronets. I've played a few instruments, and
I was once a journalist. But I'm happy just now to be one of the
people behind the big vocal stars."
   Bill spends his spare time with the other sort of stars- his
hobby is astronomy.
She's dead set on singing
   ONE thing about Billie Laine. She has got determination.
   So much of it that you feel that if she set her mind on swimming
the Channel or breeding champion poodles, or anything, she'd do it.
   As it is she just wants to sing.
   "When I was a little girl," said the 24-year-old shapely miss
from Trinidad, "my mother said I ought to learn to type or do
dressmaking, or something like that. But I wanted to sing- so I just
sang."
   She began on the West Indies radio station's equivalent of
Children's Hour. Then she graduated to her weekly programmes.
   She sang in clubs and in concerts, until she looked around one
day and asked herself: "Where do I go from here?"
   The answer was London. With her usual determination she arrived
last July. She didn't know a single soul.
   
   BUT she started to sing- and that was enough. She has
just made her first record for Philips, called "Kiss Me" (326547,
BF).
   "It's a pop song," she admitted. "And I want to sing jazz.
Jazz, jazz, jazz, that's for me."
   She called herself Billie (although her real name is Grace) after
her model, her idol, the late Billie Holliday. "There will never be
another like her," she said.
   Next month Billie makes her first EP- as a genuine jazz
singer- with Bill McGuffie providing the backing.
   
   THEY keep burying rock 'n roll- but it just won't lie
down. "Pony Time," a fast piece of work by Chubby Checker
(Columbia, 45-DB.4591) and Ray Garnett (R.C.A. 1228) will
probably be as popular here as it is in the States.
   That goes for "Gee Whiz," by Clara Thomas (London,
HLK.931), too.
   But my record of the week is the new Bobby Vee one- "More
Than I Can Say" (London, HLG.9316).
CLASSICAL LOOK
   THOUGH one thinks of Tchaikovsky mainly as a lightly popular
orchestral composer, he did write more than 1 songs, many of them
very fine indeed. But, apart from "None But The Weary Heart," few
of them are generally known.
   Just how rewarding these songs are may be judged from the
fourteen selected by Boris Christoff in a new LP recital
(HMV ALP 1793). Christoff, whose gifts are well known at Covent
Garden, admirably varies the use of his splendid bass voice to suit
the mood of the songs- from, for instance, the vigour of "Don Juan's
Serenade" to an enchanting mezza-voce in the gentler moments.
   The value of the disc is enhanced by a phonetic version of the
Russian text, with an English translation alongside.
The "Rose Marie" girl is happy in the swim
Neville Wareham's Show Round-up
   VIRGINIA COURTNEY straightened a strand of coal-black hair,
added a touch to her coppery complexion, and said: "I think my
mother had visions of my swimming the Channel. I could swim before I
ever learned to dance, and I started that when I was three and a
half."
   Miss Courtney's skin is normally as white as any English city
dweller's, and her hair, she told me, "is really like yours- an
ordinary, mousy shade."
   As I straightened a strand of my ordinary, mousy hair, she added:
"The management pays me to keep it dyed as long as I'm playing
Wanda."
   
   WE were talking in her dressing-room at Manchester's Palace
Theatre, where Miss Courtney is giving an exciting performance as the
sultry Indian girl in "Rose Marie," and sometimes we had to talk
pretty loudly.
   From a dressing-room down the corridor came the sounds of David
Whitfield limbering up his voice, now almost back to normal volume
after an illness which recently kept him out of the show for two
weeks.
   And from the pipes in the corner came less musical gurglings as
the water from the bathroom upstairs drained away.
   "I count the number of baths people have during the evenings,
to be sure there'll be enough hot water left for me," said Miss
Courtney. "I need that bath badly."
   She has to wash off the coppery make-up which covers most of her
body, and, particularly on days when there are two performances, that
means a good deal of washing.
   
   BUT Miss Courtney is perfectly happy in any amount of
water, provided it's not too cold. As a child she lived at Herne Bay,
and her mother, a professional swimmer, diver, and dancer, soon had
little Virginia following in her wake.
   "I just cannot remember a time when I couldn't swim," she told
me. "It's quite possible that I might have swum the Channel, though
the longest measured distance I ever covered was only five miles.
   "In open water, distance doesn't bother me as long as I can
take my time and just plod on."
   She is also an expert skin diver, and between dancing and
acting engagements has appeared in big aqua shows and modelled
swim-suits under water.
   While dancing in a "Five Past Eight" revue in Glasgow she was
called on to do some swimming in a Royal Command performance.
   
   "IT'S funny," mused Morton Fraser, "to think that last
year Don Arroll was working for me. And next week he'll be top of the
bill at Manchester Hippodrome with the Harmonica Gang in support.
   "Not that I mind at all. He's a very nice lad with a lot of
talent and we're happy to be working with him on this variety tour."
   "All the same the rapid rise of the young comic is a prime
example of the potency of TV, for without his spell as compere of
the Sunday Palladium show, Don Arroll would still be using his
undoubted talent in much lowlier spots on the bill.
   Fraser and his gang have spent most of this week in Manchester,
although their Hippodrome date does not begin until Monday. They have
been working on a new BBC TV musical show which makes its debut
next Saturday, and on Thursday were in Edinburgh for a TV show
with Charlie Chester.
   For the last eight years Fraser has left the stage performances
to his gang, and has concentrated behind the scenes on management
problems and finding a steady supply of bookings.
   
   NOT many people know that his decision to stay in the
background was made at Oldham, and was initiated by an implacable
doctor.
   Fraser told me: "We had been playing Cardiff, and I arrived at
the Oldham Empire with the gang and a dreadfully sore throat.
   "The theatre manager sent for a doctor, who told me: 'There's
no show for you this week. You're going straight to bed- unless you
want to be the central figure in a show you won't know anything
about.'
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BROTHER JOHN AND THE GRANDAD ROACH
by David Hanington
   THERE are too many fish in the old monks' pool. One
especially is causing Brother John a certain amount of concern. "It
is a roach," said Brother John, in tones of respectful piety.
"Huge chap. Sometimes we see him swimming about beneath the water
lilies, as big as a submarine."
   The fish on Brother John's 3-acre estate present a problem,
certainly. But they are unlikely to daunt him. For Brother John has
hooked bigger fish in his time.
   Barrister... coal-miner... flying-officer... farmer...
M.P.... and father of six sons.
   John Faithful Fortescue Platts-Mills is not a Brother in the
monastic sense. His fellow trade-unionists have adopted it as a
nickname, for Mr. Platts-Mills is a staunch union man. He belongs
to the Transport and General Workers' Union. "As a farm worker, I
qualify," he says.
   Last weekend Brother John threw open the grounds of his
magnificent home near Buxted for a union rally. More than 1, union
men and their families arrived to play bowls, eat barbecued chicken
and row on his fish-infested lake.
   Brother John is one of those complex characters- a landowner
with vigorous Socialist (with a small "s") theories.
   His energy and enterprise have brought him wealth: he spent the
money from his first big brief in buying a farm in Essex just before
the war. But he still adheres to a strong union outlook. "Property
in Britain is privately owned, so I own property," he said. "But I
am still in favour of the nationalisation of land for all new
buildings."
   He wore sandals and an open-necked shirt when I met him this
week. His baggy grey flannels were supported by a polka-dot tie
instead of a belt.
   "Today is the last day of my holiday," he explained. (His
"holiday," incidentally, has consisted of working on his farm with
a vigour which would dismay most other men on the shady side of 5).
   Mr. Platts-Mills's career details read like a plot for a
schoolboy adventure story. He was born in New Zealand, won a Rhodes
Scholarship to Oxford, and got his M.A. (1st Class), and Bachelor
of Civil Law. At Oxford he rowed, played rugby for his college and
was in the Varsity boxing team as a heavyweight.
   He married, and when war started he joined the R.A.F. By
1944 he was a collier in Yorkshire, the first professional man to
become one of the "Bevin boys." He joined the miners' union, and
in 1945 became M.P. for Finsbury.
   But drastic differences of opinion developed. Platts-Mills
quarrelled with Attlee and Bevin about the stand being taken by the
Government over the Cold War. "I was promoted out of the Labour
Party," he said, with a wry grin at his own choice of words. For
two years he sat as an Independent Labour member. At the next
election he lost his seat, and has not turned to politics since.
   He still believes, however, in the policy of amity piercing the
Iron Curtain. Brother John is chairman of the British-Soviet
Friendship Society. His four older sons have all walked on
ban-the-bomb marches.
   The house they have lived in for four years is spacious. As
Mr. Platts-Mills explained: "We're tall chaps- and there are a
lot of us. We need a lot of room."
   His eldest son, Tim, 24, is a timber worker on the estate. The
others are variously engaged at Oxford, in the manufacturing world,
and as a film editor. The two youngest- "babies," their father
calls them, although they are 12 and 1 respectively- are at boarding
school.
   Mr. Platts-Mills breeds prize pigs- there are about 3 of
them,- and they respond admirably to his farming techniques. "They
regard me," he says, "as one of the family."
   The other side of his career is as a successful barrister, based
in Temple, E.C.4. He was one of the defending counsel at the
preliminary hearing of the Worthing bank murder case.
   Politics seem far away, as one strolls casually round his lovely
13th century house, formerly a monastery and after that a rectory-
the Platts-Mills still have to pay an annual tithe for their property.
   But Mr. Platts-Mills is a man of many parts. "It may be that
I may take up politics again," he said. "But so far I haven't
given it much serious thought."
   If he does, I imagine Brother John will set about it with the
same determination he shows in every other way: whether he is
directing an impassioned plea in wig and gown, or denouncing
unscrupulous bosses to his fellow-workers.
   I don't envy the future of that grand-daddy roach!
Spotlight on Shoreham Harbour
A VISITOR IN THE VIKING TRADITION
BY CAPT. J. FOGGITT
   WOODEN ships and iron men were the boast of seamen long ago,
and one would be justified in thinking the old adage no longer
applied. But the spirit of those old days was revived at Shoreham
Harbour last weekend when the Norwegian vessel Presthus 2 berthed at
the east end of Aldrington basin.
   Constructed in the manner of the old Viking ships so famous in
the history books, this sturdy little craft of only 118ft. length
and 89 net tons is, except for the engines and accompanying equipment,
built entirely of wood.
   Norwegian built at Rosendal in 1943, the hull is planked with 4
1/2 inch pitch-pine on 6in. by 6in. frames drawing down to a
2ft. by 4ft. keel, frames being spaced from 6in. to a foot
apart.
   There is an inner lining of similar construction to that of the
outer planking, and the space between the two shells is insulated
throughout against the effects of outside temperatures, hatch combings
and covers being built-up and insulated in like manner. Although
designed on trawler lines, she was expressly built for the carrying of
frozen goods.
   She is something more than a refrigerator ship though, and is in
fact a deep freeze carrier. She brought 12 tons of deep frozen
vegetables, mostly peas, from Antwerp to Shoreham for distribution to
the deep freeze food markets. This is a new venture in the port and
this first cargo will open yet another type of trade to Shoreham
harbour.
   Powered by a Norwegian-type diesel engine, this little ship has
made many deep-water passages, crossing the North Atlantic on a number
of occasions to Iceland, Greenland and Canadian ports. There is
something of the Nelson touch about Capt. Gloppholm, the master of
this tough little craft, and his crew of six stalwarts when they tell
of the exciting trips they have made together and the manner of their
boasting of the seaworthiness of the ship in which they serve.
   Although there were complaints of the liveliness of her capers in
heavy weather and of being thrown out of their bunks on many
occasions, they were quick to point out that she is a first-class
sea-boat.
   Apart from the radio and a small Decca set, there are none of the
modern aids to navigation on board so the skipper and his mate must
needs be masters of their craft.
Paper cargo
   Most of the foreign ships this week have been Dutchmen.
Henriette B and Zaanstroom from Amsterdam came to the inner lay-by,
Molensingel loaded spent oxide at the gasworks for Nantes, Equator
brought fir logs from Kristiansund, Norway, to Aldrington Basin for
the Marley Tile Co., and Aerdenhout came from Isnas, Finland, with
timber and paper.
   There was a newcomer to the power station on Wednesday with the
arrival of the B.E.A. collier Cliff Quay, named after the power
station at Ipswich.
   The wine and spirit trades still continue to flourish with the
British m.v. Drake bringing brandy from Tonnay Charente early in
the week and the Spanish m.v. Canton Pequena bringing sherry from
Spain.
Getting up steam for celebration
   RAILWAY enthusiasts are getting up steam for a really
important anniversary celebration- the 1th birthday of the Shoreham
to Steyning line along which the Steyning Flier, the most famous train
in West Sussex, still puffs every day.
   But, despite the painstaking research which occupies the
leisure hours of the keener enthusiasts, this anniversary nearly
slipped by unnoticed.
   It was 18-year-old Steyning Grammar School boy Michael Keeney,
of Atherton, Jarvis-lane, Steyning, who came upon the fact that the
Shoreham to Henfield railway, via Steyning, opened on July 1, 1861.
   He got to work immediately. He and the headmaster of Steyning
County Primary School, Mr. E. C. G. Lewis, went delving into
the files of newspapers of 1 years ago. Some fascinating facts were
unearthed, which today are not without their touch of humour.
   Take the story of "A Narrow Escape." It happened shortly
before the track was officially opened, when a ballast train was
chugging down the line. It concerns a character called Humphry of
Henfield, an unfortunate lad who suffered from deafness.
   He was observed 15 yards in front of the engine, walking between
the metals with an eel-spear over his shoulder.
   In dramatic prose, the report takes up the story: "The engine
driver blew his whistle but no heed was taken. Fortunately a
gentleman was on the engine who knew the lad to be deaf so that it
would be impossible by sound to make him aware of his danger. The
brake was applied, and every means used to stop the train, fortunately
with success."
   The report does not say so, but one hopes that Humphry just kept
on walking between the metals, blissfully unaware of the iron monster
behind him, until, in his own good time, he reached his destination
and put down his eel-spear, waving cheerily to the engine driver as he
passed.
   Facts about the opening ceremony of the line will come in useful,
for schoolboy Michael is hard at work talking British Railways into a
commemoration run with an ancient engine.
   He dreams of prising period costumes from their mothballs in the
railways' museum to be worn by officials on the big day. He may
succeed if enough enthusiasts get in touch with him, and he can
guarantee a train load of guests.
   If it comes off, it should be quite a day, but it is unlikely to
finish with a dinner of the scale provided at the White Horse,
Steyning, 1 years ago.
   Then, 7 or 8 persons sat down. Says a newspaper report: "The
dinner was altogether excellent and the champagne of the finest
vintage."
   After the loyal toasts, the health of "The Army", "The
Navy" and "The Volunteers" were successively drunk. Almost as an
afterthought came the toast "Health and success to the directors,
managers and officials of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
Company."
   Meanwhile, the Storrington Rifle Band were in action with a piece
called "The Nightingale," upon which, says the report, the party
broke up.
   The band, preceded by flags, marched again to the station,
followed by a large concourse of people.
   When the train set off "a genuine cheer from Sir George Pompey
was taken up all along the line and repeated again and again, and this
completed one of the jolliest days in the records of Old Steyning."
   There is only one sad note about it all. Humphry of Henfield
appeared to take no notice.
Commonwealth Exhibition
AND NOW THERE ARE TWELVE
   SIX years ago there were eight independent members of the
Commonwealth. Today there are 12. Who are the other peoples of the
Commonwealth? Why are they so important to us and we to them? What
holds us together?
   For the answers to these and many other questions which vitally
affect the lives of us all you should visit the Commonwealth
Exhibition at Hove, which is divided into seven sections, each
designed to give an insight into the various aspects of the
Commonwealth in our midst and its influence on the lives of each one
of us.
   HOW much do you know about the Commonwealth of the present
day? Almost every day we hear something about its importance to us.
We hear of the wealth and untapped resources of the countries which
belong to it and of their strength and growth.
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Pat Answers A Fir Park Prayer
MOTHERWELL 5, HIBS 1. (Half-time- 2-1.)
<LIST>
   DELIGHTFUL! When Motherwell play like this that's the only
possible way to describe them.
   And, glory be, they now have somebody to stick them in the net.
Sure, big Pat Delaney missed some pinches. About a dozen as a
conservative estimate.
   But he scored three goals, laid on one, hit the post with a
header, and had two more net-stretchers disallowed for infringements.
   So altogether you can say Jimmy Delaney's boy had a reasonably
successful afternoon.
   There was a laugh before the start when 'Well skipper Willie
McSeveney came out some 2 yards ahead of his team mates. It looked
for a moment as if he were going to tackle Hibs single-handed.
   From the final score, you might think he could have done, at
that.
   Not so. Until they were latterly demoralised by the jinking
homesters, this was quite a good Hibs team. Lack of forward cohesion
was the rock on which they foundered.
   A Bobby Young "goal" disallowed for offside in the fifth
minute set the game alight.
   But the first legitimate counter went to Hibs. Weir stopped a
Stevenson shot, dropped it, then scooped it out straight to Preston,
who drove home through a crowded goalmouth.
   A deft Delaney header from a McPhee cross restored equality.
Then came tragedy for Simpson, who had executed wonder saves from
Hunter, Delaney, and McPhee. A long, down-the-middle ball eluded
Preston and Delaney. Simpson ran out, completely missed his kick, and
Delaney walked it home.
   After the turn 'Well ran riot. Roberts shivered the bar.
Shots flew everywhere around Simpson's goal.
   Delaney wrapped number three up in silver paper for McPhee.
Next Pat netted an "offside" one. Then he sent Young off, and was
in position to capitalise the youngster's cross. And in the last
minute Pat rocketed home another, only to find the whistle had gone
for a penalty for Baird fouling Quinn.
   Pat Quinn, as is his custom, made no mistake with the spot kick.
   Quinn has been called "the little General." Here he was a
combination of Montgomery, Napoleon, Horrocks, and all the Generals
you ever heard of.
   Just a hair's-breadth behind was Willie Hunter. Thomson was a
topper, too. And Delaney, of course. But 'Well really hadn't a
failure.
   The home crowd goosed Sammy Baird unmercifully for a few minor
indiscretions. But Sam, along with Grant, Easton, and Simpson, was a
real Hibs stalwart.
   Yes, Simpson. Never mind that second goal. Crowd- 55.
<LIST>
LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD- WITH A HAT-TRICK
DUNFERMLINE ATHLETIC 6, AIRDRIE 2. (Half-time- 1-.)
<LIST>
   WHAT a dream debut for young 19-year-old Jackie Sinclair!
Playing his first League game before the home crowd, the ex-Blairhall
junior, who lives in Dunfermline, scored a glorious hat-trick and
fitted into the scheme of things perfectly.
   Sure, he still has a bit to go- but one thing he CAN do is
put the ball in the net, and that's good enough to go on with.
   Take a good look at the names of the other goal-scorers. Not a
solitary from Messrs Charles Dickson and his inside-forward cronies.
This is no criticism of the trio, but it illustrates how potentially
good this Dunfermline team can be.
   It took them a long time to get the first goal, but the writing
was always on the wall, and once they found the net there was no
stopping them.
   Two Airdrie goals within a minute of each other late in the
second half jolted them, but that was all.
   These goals apart, all Airdrie had to offer was a stout-hearted
defence and excellent sportsmanship. They were outmanoeuvred all
along, but refused to go under and never stooped to a shady action.
   After a first half of frustration, young Sinclair showed the way.
Just on the half-time whistle he hit a Cunningham free-kick past
Dempster close to the near post.
   After the interval, Miller scored the best goal of the game.
Over came a Melrose corner. The left-half ran a good 15 yards from
around the penalty spot and his header flew into the net.
TWO BEAUTIES.
   Then George Peebles decided to take a hand. Within five
minutes he fired a couple of beauties into the net. Sinclair finished
off the Dunfermline scoring.
   First he hit a left-footer cleanly into the net, and then sank
a penalty like a veteran after Shanks had handled his first shot,
which finished over the line.
   Storrie and Hinshelwood were the Airdrie scorers. Both beat
Connachan from around the 2-yard mark.
   No criticism of the Dunfermline defence- they were never
stretched. All three halves were immense while the forward line,
switching and changing, had a real field day.
   Very few bouquets for Airdrie. Say Johnstone, McNeil, and
Newlands earned pass marks, and that's about it. Crowd- 8.
<LIST>
CLYDE STAGE A FADE-OUT
ALBION ROVERS 2, CLYDE 3.
(Half-time- -3)
<LIST>
   FOR the first 15 minutes Clyde showed why they are favourites
for a return to the big time. In that period they shattered Rovers'
defence with three snappy goals.
   But for the remaining 75 minutes they proceeded to show why they
have faltered in recent weeks. Slackness and complacency allowed
Rovers to come right back into the picture with two good goals, and
for the last 15 minutes Clyde were a worried lot.
LEARY STARS.
   Main reason for the sway of fortune centred round Dennis Leary,
the Rovers' pivot. After a disastrous start he found his feet, and
from then on his wing halves, Harvey and McLure, got to grips with the
attack, and the early Shawfield promise faded completely.
   McLaughlin capably led Clyde's attack in the early spell and had
two good goals in 5 and 15 minutes. Between times, big John Colrain,
who finished limping on the wing, got the other goal- in the 7th
minute.
   Stewart led the Coatbridge rally to score in the 72nd minute, and
Livingstone made up the brace six minutes later. Crowd- 1.
<LIST>
UNITED HAD THEIR FANS IN A SWEAT
DUNDEE UNITED 2, STIRLING ALBION . (Half-time- -.)
<LIST>
   ALBION look doomed for a slide back to the second grade.
Certainly they're already playing Second Division football. They
were all triers, but they had no plan, no science, no cohesion, in
fact, not a clue.
   And, worse still, they brought United down to the same dreadful
level. Some of the attempts at ball control and passing were
positively ludicrous.
   For 81 minutes this hopeless spectacle shaped like a goalless
draw because over-anxious United, with all the territorial advantage,
didn't seem to know how to circumvent a desperate defence.
   First "goal," in six minutes came for Albion from Rowan, but
the winger was obviously offside.
   Somewhat laboriously the Tannadice team built up attack after
attack. There was little fluency in their movements, and certainly no
finish. Carlyle and Gillespie missed inviting chances. Then Neil
Mochan tingled Jim Brown's fingers. Again the goalie saved the Albion
bacon when he fisted over a whizzer from Dennis Gillespie.
   The once-in-a-while Stirling raids came mainly through Kilgannon
and Rowan, for not one of the inside trio measured up to anything like
First Division standard.
   The encouraging Tannadice howl had become a despairing ~"2Och,
come on, United" groan before Tommy Neilson made the vocalists happy
by beating Brown.
   Like magic, the strain left the team. Mochan swerved a ball to
Walter Carlyle five minutes later, and the centre settled the
destination of the points.
GORDON IN FORM.
   Good players were extremely scarce. Albion were well served by
Brown and Weir in the rear. Only Myles, Kilgannon, and Rowan made
attacking sorties.
   Of the home lot, Alex. Brown was practically unemployed, Gordon
the best back afield, Neilson the only half-back with any finesse, and
Gillespie the only real footballer in either front line.
   Bonar came by a knee injury and swopped wings with Mochan. This
didn't help to improve the game, which should be quickly forgotten.
Crowd- 7.
<LIST>
Tight Defence Foils Morton
ALLOA 2, MORTON 1.
(Half-time- 1-.)
<LIST>
   A HARD game, with both sides giving everything they had. The
Wasps had that extra sting, which earned them victory.
   For the first 2 minutes they were on top and Foley gave them a
deserved lead. Then Morton came more and more into the game, but had
nothing to show for it.
   McKenna put Alloa further ahead in the second half in a breakaway
raid. But Easson cancelled that seven minutes later.
   From then it was a question of whether Morton could equalise.
They might have, but poor finishing robbed them of goals. And they
were foiled by a watertight home defence.
   Hodge, E. Docherty, Vint, and J. Docherty all deserve mention
for Alloa with Smith outstanding at centre-forward.
   For Morton, Boyd, Franks, and Cowie stood out in a hard, fighting
combine, and Jackie Ferguson and Allan McGraw can fly back to Germany
feeling they didn't let the side down either. Crowd- 2.
<LIST>
TEST MATCH RECORD
   AFTER Ted Dexter had won the toss, England's opening pair,
Geoff Pullar and Peter Richardson, gave them a fine start in the first
test against India at Bombay with an opening partnership of 159.
   This beat the previous best opening against India- 146 by Pullar
and Gilbert Parkhouse at Leeds in 1959.
   By the close of play England had scored 288 for the loss of three
wickets.
Then Up Popped Patterson
MONTROSE 2, QUEEN OF THE SOUTH 3.
(Half-time- 2-)
<LIST>
   MONTROSE sacrificed everything in a bid for two points which
would have hoisted them into second place. Having taken two
first-half goals, they sat back with that "what we have we hold"
attitude.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   What a mistake it proved to be. In seven minutes Queen's
transformed things. Big Jim Patterson banged in a goal eight minutes
from time. Three minutes later he nodded in another for the
equaliser. Then McMillan and Martin pulled off a dramatic winner
between them.
<END INDENTATION>
   What was the Montrose defence doing all this time? The three
goals followed the same pattern- crosses from the wings. First two
were from corner kicks. All three might have been cleared.
   But if the home supporters became critical over the defence they
should really lambast those forwards who were shot-shy against a
strong Queens defence starring McTurk and Rugg. Take Frank Sandeman
out of the attack- especially second half- and there would not have
been a try from the lot of them.
   Queens had some excuse in that Patterson- delayed in arrival
because of fog- was obviously not fully fit. He pottered about on
the right wing for 85 minutes and did all the damage in that
three-minute burst. Until then Phil Grieve scarcely had a save.
Crowd- 2.
FIGHTING FORFAR
FORFAR 2 BERWICK RAN. 2.
Half-time- 1-2.
<LIST>
   BOBBY LEGGE, the ex-Buckie Thistle inside forward, made an
impressive home debut for Forfar. In addition to clever leading-out
work Bobby, though obviously short of a gallop, scored the goal that
brought his side a point.
   Forfar were the more impressive side in the first half, when Ross
put them ahead in five minutes. Their forward line cut the Berwick
defence to ribbons, but could not get another goal, and gradually
Rangers came more and more into the picture.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   McCulloch (twice) and Imrie both went close before the game
took a dramatic turn in their favour. In an innocuous-looking attack
Knox, on the goal-line, was adjudged to have handled. Right-half
Smith banged home the penalty. He did the same three minutes later
when McCulloch, tearing through, was downed by Berrie.
<END INDENTATION>
   To Forfar's credit, they tightened up sufficiently to come back
fighting 2 minutes from the end. In an all-out attack Legge rammed
home the equaliser.
   Berwick carried most danger in their left wing. Forfar's forward
line, good in the first half, tapered off after the interval. Crowd-
1.
<LIST>
Stranraer Dominate
STRANRAER 4, BRECHIN CITY .
(Half-time- 1-.)
<LIST>
   BRECHIN tried hard, but there was only one team in it.
Stranraer dominated throughout, and only forward failings deprived
them of at least another four goals.
   What little football there was, Stranraer played it.
# 22
<42 TEXT A42>
County Gossip
Air Minister Drops In For A Chat
   A ROYAL AIR FORCE helicopter of the Queen's Flight put down
some distinguished visitors to the U.S.A.F. station at Daws
Hill, High Wycombe, on Friday last, chief among whom was the Air
Minister, the Right Hon. Julian Amery.
   Accompanying the Minister on his visit, which also included a
tour of RAF Upper Heyford, were Air Chief Marshal Sir Edmund
Hudleston, Vice-Chief of Air Staff, Sir Maurice Dean, Permanent
Under-Secretary of State for Air, Mr. John Roberts, the Minister's
Private Secretary, Air Marshal Sir Douglas Jackman, Co-ordinator of
Anglo-American relations, Air Ministry, and Squadron Leader Peter
Scott, Personal Air Secretary to Mr. Amery.
   The Secretary of State and his party were greeted by
Major-General Charles B. Westover, Strategic Air Command's 7th Air
Division commander, who talked over with the Minister the command's
activities and mission in the United Kingdom.
Never A Dull Moment
   THE life of a headmistress in school is not all sunshine and
brightness, said Miss K. A. Walpole, of Wycombe Abbey School,
when she presented her last annual report at the school's speech day
on Friday.
   Miss Walpole, who retires at the end of the year, said there were
shadows even for a headmistress, with the care and administration of a
school. But she had loved the life. There was never a dull moment
for the head of a community of 4 or so people.
   One never knew what the next day would bring forward- it might
be a challenge.
Sad Goodbye
   APPOINTED to the school in 1948, Miss Walpole said it would
mean a sad goodbye to many friends in High Wycombe. She had received
much kindness from borough councillors, education officials in the
county and the Wycombe division, and local school heads.
   Miss Walpole, who told parents and visitors that she could look
back over 4 years in the profession and 27 as a headmistress, heard
words of tribute from Sir Ambrose Dundas, chairman of the school
council.
   Sir Ambrose said that at school speech days Miss Walpole had paid
tribute to staff, girls, parents and members of the council.
   "I won't say these tributes are not deserved," he said "but
you have never once paid tribute to the person to whom a lion's share
is due- yourself."
Regiment's Visit
   THE county regiment of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the
1st Green Jackets, 43rd and 52nd, at present stationed in Wiltshire,
will be visiting the parent counties during September, the 'Free
Press' learns.
   Detailed plans are still to be made but it is likely that the
tour will start in Bucks in late August, when a Rifle Company group,
including mortar and anti-tank detachments, will be here for about ten
days.
   There will be public displays and the men of the regiment hope to
challenge local clubs at various sports.
   Supporting the company will be the Regimental Band and Buglers
and a demonstration drill squad. A number of other activities are to
be arranged to coincide with the visit.
Honours List
   VISCOUNT CURZON, chairman of Bucks Education Committee, and
Dr. G. W. H. Townsend, County Medical Officer and Chief
Welfare Officer for Bucks, were congratulated at the June meeting of
Bucks Education Committee on their award of the C.B.E. in
the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
   Col. F. W. Watson said Lord Curzon's honour was one much
deserved, not only for the work he did in the county but outside also.
Lord Curzon offered the committee's congratulations also to Dr.
Townsend.
   Among other awards in the Queen's Birthday Honours were- Mr.
Frederick Hugh Dalziel Pritchard, Secretary-General of the British Red
Cross, of Gerrards Cross, made a C.B.E.; Group-Captain Angus
Archibald Norman Nicholson, of Lakes-lane, Beaconsfield,
C.B.E.; and Lt.-Col. William Cavendish Carter, R.A.,
of Sandels-way, Beaconsfield, O.B.E.
Now He Is Their Leader
   A MAN who joined the High Wycombe Squadron of the Air
Training Corps as a cadet in 1941, soon after the unit's formation, on
Monday became its new commanding officer.
   Pilot Officer Edward Maddox, aged 36, of 26 Squirrel-lane High
Wycombe, took over command of No. 332 (High Wycombe) Squadron from
Flight Lieutenant Harry Drinkwater, who is leaving the High Wycombe
area after receiving a civil service promotion.
   Pilot Officer Maddox, who is married, with one daughter, left the
A.T.C. with the rank of Leading Cadet in March 1943. He went
straight into the Royal Air Force, did aircrew training in the United
States and received his pilot's wings.
   Towards the end of the second world war he flew unarmed Stinson
Reliant aircraft on communications and air-evacuation flights in the
Burma theatre of operations and left the R.A.F. with the rank
of Warrant Officer Pilot in April 1948.
   In September, 1959, he received a commission in the R.A.F.
Volunteer Reserve training branch and has since served as equipment
officer of the High Wycombe A.T.C. Squadron.
   A technical representative with the High Wycombe firm of Richard
Graefe Ltd., Pilot Officer Maddox is also treasurer of High Wycombe
Wye Valley Angling Club.
Plans For Future
   THE man he succeeds, Flight Lieutenant Drinkwater, lives at
12 Shelley-road, High Wycombe. Married with two daughters and a son
who is a member of the Marlow Squadron of the A.T.C., he is
employed at the High Wycombe Valuation Office.
   Flight Lieutenant Drinkwater, who served as an administrative
officer in the R.A.F. from 194-46 including tours of duty in
Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast is a former adjutant of
Marlow A.T.C. Squadron and a former commander of No. 757
(Vectis) Squadron in the Isle of Wight.
   Present strength of the High Wycombe squadron is well over 4.
There were seven new recruits at Monday's meeting and the unit hopes
next spring to take possession of a new-type cedar hut, designed
specifically for the A.T.C., which will be erected in the
area of High Wycombe Territorial Army barracks.
Musical Barge
   WHEN the American Symphony Orchestra arrive in Marlow on July
15 they will use an 18-foot barge as their auditorium.
   At the Regatta Enclosure at Marlow the 65 musicians will play
from the barge, which has large flaps 1 feet long by 6 feet to
provide a stage depth of 32 feet.
   The craft, built at Dartford for the orchestra's Thames tour
was specially designed to negotiate the river's lock and bridges. It
is also equipped to give a fireworks display after each performance.
   Established at Pittsburg, U.S.A., in 1957, the orchestra
has played in many countries of the world, including Japan, Mexico and
China.
   When the orchestra arrives in Marlow, the musicians hope to be
entertained in the homes of local people. Marlow Urban Council has
given the visit every support and appeals have been made for residents
to entertain the players. So far 6 of the 65 players have been
guaranteed accommodation.
Exchange Visits
   THE 27 teenagers and three adults who are visiting Amersham
from Amersfoort, Holland, at the end of July, for an official
seven-day visit, have been invited to bring over their national
costumes to wear at one of the two parties organised in their honour.
   One of the parties will be on the day after they arrive, on July
22, at Amersham Community Centre. Amersham Ladies' Circle have
offered to provide refreshments on that occasion.
   The other party will be in the form of an official "farewell"
on July 27, the day before they return home. A party of a similar
size will go with them from Amersham for a stay in Amersfoort.
   At the final party Amersham Inner Wheel will provide
refreshments, and plans are being made for an exhibition of Scottish
dancing.
   Finishing touches were this week being put to the programme for
the visitors. Amersham estate agent and historian Mr. L. Elgar
Pike, is taking the party on a history tour of the district by car.
Reading Trends
   ALTHOUGH the Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan, and
other Commonwealth Prime Ministers, have been among the borrowers of
books from Princes Risborough's branch library, the public seems less
keen on reading, the library's annual report reveals. The number of
books issued has dropped by 1, compared with last year.
   Closing of the library on Wednesday morning probably accounted in
part for the decrease in the number of books issued, but the extra
morning enabled more time to be given to administrative work, as a
result of which new books have been more quickly circulated, books
needing repair have had more regular revision and readers' requests
have been speeded up.
   More people have been using the library as a source of
information, especially children, and the library has also played its
part in the recreational and cultural life of Princes Risborough.
   Last summer the library served as a point of contact between a
lecturer from Oxford University and people likely to be interested in
a class in modern literature- and such a class was successfully
launched in the autumn, books for the class being lent from the
library's headquarters.
Social And Personal
   A 21-YEAR-OLD Prestwood man, Mr. Roy Taylor, son of Mr.
and Mrs. J. E. Taylor, of High-street, Prestwood, has gained a
first class honours B.Sc. degree from Leeds University. Three years
ago he won a County Scholarship to the University from Dr.
Challoner's Grammar School at Amersham. He is planning a career in
engineering, starting with a year's spell with a Leeds firm.
   Mr. Brian James Bond, only son of Mr. and Mrs. P. H.
Bond, of Ferry-lane, Medmenham, a former head boy of Sir William
Borlase's School, Marlow, has been appointed tutor in the Department
of History at Exeter University. He graduated at Worcester College,
Oxford, in 1959, and is at present a research student at King's
College, London.
Bright Prospects For A Bigger Wycombe School
   OFFICIALS and supporters of High Wycombe Show, taking heart
from the present brilliant summer weather and the bright forecasts of
more to come, are striving to make this year's show in September
bigger and better than ever.
   It will be the first show since the appointment of the new
secretary, Mr. Wilfred Heritage- former High Wycombe police
superintendent. And his all-consuming ambition at the moment is to
put the show on to a firm financial footing.
   A bad-weather spell last year cost the show a credit reserve
which had been slowly built up, and a committee was appointed to
explore ways in which funds could be raised during the year. It has
made a good start. But still it must be emphasised that to ensure the
show's continued existence for the general benefit and advertisement
of the town and district, more subscribing members and vice-presidents
are needed.
   Officials feel that they must have a regular income on which to
rely- lessening their dependence on the weather.
   This year the show will stage the southern area finals of the
"Foxhunter" competition, the winners going on direct to the main
show in London. The Green Jackets will stage a marching band display,
and there will be, among other attractions, a session of American
baseball.
   Already there is a demand for trade stand space, and in the
horticultural section, always a strong feature, there will be some new
exhibits.
New Deputy Chairman
   THE approval of the Lord Chancellor is being sought for the
appointment of Mr. John R. T. Hooper, a well-known barrister
and resident of Chalfont St. Peter, as a deputy chairman of Bucks
Quarter Sessions.
   This was announced by Sir Arthian Davies, chairman, when the
Midsummer Quarter Sessions opened at Aylesbury on Monday. Mr.
Hooper, he said, had been a practicing <SIC> barrister for some 2
years and had had considerable judicial experience as an assistant
Recorder and as a member of the Midland Circuit.
   Mr. Hooper lives at Beech Lawn, Chalfont Heights, and earlier
this week was appointed a member of the Beaconsfield magisterial
Bench.
New Tractor His Prize
   A LITTLE MARLOW farmer, Mr. Richard Barnes, of Wood Barn
Farm, will have a very happy visit to the Royal Show at Cambridge on
Thursday, July 6.
   There, on the Dow Agrochemicals Ltd. stand, he will meet Ted
Moult, farmer and B.B.C. personality, to be presented with the
first prize which he has won in the ~"Know Your Enemy" competition
organised by the agricultural chemical firm.
# 233
<43 TEXT A43>
Carlisle men accused of attack on girl
   A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl's evidence was heard 6in camera
by Wigan magistrates on Wednesday when three Carlisle men were charged
with an offence against her.
   The magistrates (Mr. E. Routledge and Mr. J. Holiday) sat
all day listening to evidence in the case against John Earl (28) a
painter, address given as 16 Brookside, Raffles; Eldon Edward Cole
(25), labourer, address given as 32 Castle Street, and Lawrence Dixon
(22), labourer, address given as 87 Dalton Avenue, Raffles.
   The case was adjourned until August 16th because a witness from
the N.W. Forensic Laboratories at Preston, was unable to attend.
   The men who were represented by Mr. Lionel Lightfoot, Carlisle,
appeared, on remand, and their bail in the sum of +5 each was
extended.
   Mr. A. Carr, Wigton, prosecuting said that the girl met Dixon
at a fair earlier and went for a walk with him. He pulled her down
and interfered with her clothes inspite of her struggles and pleas.
They walked back to the fair together, and she later agreed to him
taking her home. When they reached the Silloth Cafe the other two
accused drew up in a van and said they would give her a lift home.
She refused because she did not like the other two.
"LIFTED INTO VAN"
   As she was walking up the street the van stopped beside her and
one of the men lifted her into it and shut the door. She did not have
time to shout or struggle and the van drove off.
   Mr. Carr alleged that all three men committed offences against
the girl in the van despite her protests and struggles.
   The girl was taken on to Carlisle and Cole told her she had
better stay at his place for the night, and there Mr. Carr alleged,
Cole committed two more offences against her. She was taken to the
station on Sunday and given 7/6d for her fare home.
   When the three were charged they all denied the offence.
"But" added Mr. Carr, "evidence is available which corroborates
the girl's account."
   Dr. Robert M. Yule, of Silloth said in evidence that he
examined the girl on July 9, and the result of his examination could
be compatible with rape.
REPORTED MISSING
   Constable James Armstrong said that the girl was reported
missing by her parents at 1 a.m. on Sunday July 9. A search was
made, but she was not found until she was seen walking towards her
home having come off the afternoon train from Carlisle.
   Interviewed, Dixon made a statement which was put in as evidence
and the Constable alleged that Cole said that he had a clear
conscience.
   Constable G. Lowther alleged that Earl told him that he had not
touched the girl. They had gone to the fair in Silloth on the
Saturday night and his pal "Lol" (Dixon) picked up a girl. They
took her with them to Carlisle in the back of the van. They stopped
at a cafe and "Collo" (Cole) took her a cup of tea and some
biscuits. He (Earl) offered to take her back to Silloth but she said
it was too late to go home and she went into the house with
"Collo". They put her on the 1 p.m. train for Silloth. The
Constable added that when he cautioned and charged Earl with an
offence against the girl he said he had nothing to say.
USED BARN AS PLAYGROUND, YOUTHS FINED
   FIVE youths who made a Sunday night playground of farmer
Anthony Dalzell Spedding's barn at Mill Hill, Cleator Moor, were
severely punished by Whitehaven Bench on Thursday.
   In fines, restitution and special costs, they were each ordered
to pay a total of +5 7s 2d, and told by the chairman, Mr.
Jos. D. Miller, "You must have respect for other people's
property. You had no right to be there and, indeed, were trespassing,
and damage like this is a serious matter for a farmer."
   William Dobson, aged 18; Dennis Smith (17), of Devon Road,
Hensingham and three sixteen-year-olds denied doing wilful damage to a
hay mew, estimated at +1.
   Mr. Spedding told the Court that on Sunday night, July 2, when
he and his family were returning home from a visit to friends, he
heard a disturbance in the barn and tried to catch the culprits.
"Three or four young men rushed out of the barn and got away," he
said.
FOUND IN BARN.
   The following Sunday night there was a similar incident in the
barn.
   "I telephoned for the police," said Mr. Spedding, "and when
P.C. Vallance arrived we entered the barn and found these lads
there. About 3 or 4 bales of hay had been pulled down and were
scattered over the barn. Much of the hay had to be rebaled and it
took my son and I all day on Monday to get the place in order
again."
   P.C. Joseph Vallance stated that all five were on top of the
mew "jumping about" and a large amount of hay was loose and
trampled.
   One of the defendants told the Magistrates "We thought we'd
just have a 2laal bit of fun in the barn. We didn't do all that
damage. The farmer's wife said it could have been done by some boys
who had pulled down dykes before."
   None of the other four gave evidence in support of their "not
guilty" plea.
Cleator Moor wants a swimming bath
   CLEATOR Moor's claims for a swimming bath to serve the
whole Ennerdale Rural District were put forward by Coun. John
Collighan at Monday night's meeting of the parish council.
   "I feel we are the most central for the Frizington, Arlecdon and
southern areas," he said. Referring to Egremont, who are also in
the running for the baths, he added "I do not want there to be any
feeling of jealousy between the two towns in this."
   A letter from Mr. G. S. Bessey, Cumberland Director of
Education stated that the County Youth Committee could not support
Cleator Moor's claim but wished to know of developments. Remarked
Councillor Collighan: "I feel we will get no help from the County
Council, except on the planning side."
   He thought they would get help from Ennerdale R.D.C., if
that Council agreed there should be a swimming bath in its area.
IN OLD MARKET?
   The Clerk, Mr. Ian Brown, recalled that it had been suggested
that the old covered market might be suitable. Proceeds from the
pending sale of Bowthorn Recreation Ground could be devoted to the
cost of the baths.
   It was agreed to forward the suggestions to Ennerdale
R.D.C.
   It was decided to ask the R.D.C. to adopt a by-law
prohibiting parking on Cleator Moor Market Square. Coun. Collighan
said there had been an improvement on the square, where the buses were
now parking at the rear instead of in front of the library.
Broke windows "for daftness"
   THE quarter-inch thick plate glass window of a
confectioner's shop in Whitehaven Market Place was shattered by a blow
from 24-years-old Edward Orr, 3, Cart Road, Ginns, late on Monday
night- the first day of his annual holiday from work!
   The crash was heard by young P.C. Fallowfield, walking home
in civilian clothes, said Supt. Edward F. Nixon in Whitehaven
magistrates' Court on Thursday when Orr pleaded "guilty" to the
damage, and to being drunk and disorderly.
   With him was William John James Cavanagh (26) of 41, Fell View
Avenue, Woodhouse, who admitted a breach of the peace.
   P.C. Fallowfield showed the men his warrant card, continued
Supt. Nixon, and questioned them about the incident. They became
"difficult," refused their names and addresses, and a passing
motorist was requested to find assistance for Constable Fallowfield.
   P.C. Benn joined him, and Orr, who was by that time
aggressive, was arrested. Cavanagh tried to interfere with the police
and, before Orr was taken into the police station, he had become
violent.
   "I did it for daftness, I can't remember a thing about it,"
Orr said, referring to the broken window. He was ordered to pay fines
and damages amounting to +15 and Cavanagh was fined +2 for breach of
the peace.
New Minister for Wigton
   THE Rev. Ferdinand Arnold Nicholson, at present
Congregational minister at Tillingham and Steeple, Essex, has been
appointed as new minister to Wigton Congregational Church, and he
takes over his new living on Sunday Nov. 5th.
   Before training for the ministry at Edinburgh University and the
Yorkshire United Independent College, Bradford, Mr. Nicholson, who
is 7, spent nine years with a Hull firm of Chartered accountants. He
has been a minister to nine churches having been called to his present
church in 1957.
   Mr. Nicholson was chairman of the Cornwall Congregational Union
1943-44, Youth and Education secretary of the Cornwall Congregational
Union from 1938 to 1946, member of the Council of the Congregational
Union of England and Wales from 1943 to 1947, President of the Free
Church Federal Council at Looe, Cornwall from 1939 to 1945 and at Deal
from 1947 to 1948 and he is at present President of the Maldon and
Dirk Free Church Council.
   In Freemasonry he is at present Provincial Grand Chaplain of the
Province of Suffolk and a past Provincial Grand Chaplain of the
Province of Cornwall.
   Mr. Nicholson, a widower, is to be married on August 14 in
Workington to Miss Laurie Taylor, elder daughter of the late Captain
John Taylor, for many years harbour master at Workington.
Boltongate garden fete
   THE annual garden fete held in aid of the Boltongate Church
funds last Saturday was again a big success and it brought in +178.
It was at Quarry Hill by permission of Mr. and Mrs. G. E.
Shaw.
   The fete was opened by Mrs. M. Peat, of Silloth. She was
introduced by Mr. Shaw and thanked by Mr. R. Brame and Miss
Grindley, and also presented with a flowering plant by Miss Brenda
Messenger. Buttonholes were presented to other members of the
Committee by Jean Armstrong, Gillian Robinson, Christine Moore, Hazel
Carruthers, Sylvia Temple, Anne Tudhope and Audrey Armstrong.
   The fancy dress carnival comprised three classes for the
prettiest, comic and most original. It drew 18 competitors and was
judged by Mrs. Peat.
   The goods on various well filled stalls were sold quickly, teas
were provided and children's sports followed.
Holding on
   PAINTER Joe Jackson, aged 41, rode a pedal cycle up
Egremont main street with his small son "clinging to his back and
holding on to him by the neck," Whitehaven Bench heard on Thursday.
   When Sergt. Holdsworth stopped him and told him he would be
reported Jackson, who lives at 9, The Crescent, Smithfield, replied:
"I am going to see the Inspector. You have got it in for me."
   Jackson was not in Court when fined +1 for being one of two
persons carried on a pedal cycle not adapted for the purpose.
   
   Curious visitors to Frizington main street on July 11 were seven
cows, subsequently claimed by farmer Mossop Irving, of Steele Bank.
"He said he had been unable to repair the fences in the field where
the cattle had been grazing because an accident had disabled him,"
said Inspector Tom Gresham in Whitehaven magistrates court on Thursday
when Mossop was fined 3s for allowing the animals to stray.
LOCAL WEDDINGS
<ILLUSTRATION>
   THERE was a large congregation in St. Joseph's Church,
Cockermouth, on Saturday, to witness the wedding of Miss Brigid
Elizabeth Ball, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. Ball, of 41, Sullart
St., Cockermouth, to Mr. Derek Cameron, son of Mr. and Mrs.
J. E. Cameron, of Townscroft, Dearham. The Rev. Father Tootall
officiated.
   Given in marriage by her father, the bride wore a gown of French
lace over taffeta, a waist-length veil and coronet and carried a
bouquet of red roses.
   There were four bridesmaids, Miss Freda Cameron, Miss Mary
McKenzie, Miss Eleanor Waling and Miss Margaret Ball. Two were in
lavender and two in blue flock nylon over taffeta. All carried Prayer
Books and flower sprays.
# 24
<44 TEXT A44>
+16 1/2 MILLION ESTIMATES FOR EDUCATION
Cheshire make provision for increased numbers
   IN the next financial year Cheshire Education Committee
proposes to spend +16,499,935, an estimate which represents an
increase of +1,265,71 over the estimated figure for 196.
   This was agreed at the last meeting of the Committee when it was
stated that the estimated income for the year was +1,459,2. The
difference between this and the expenditure has to be found from rates
and taxes.
   Commenting on the proposal, Dr. J. G. Kellett, the County
Director of Education, says that in formulating the estimates for
1961, the Committee has had to make provision, not only for
maintaining and improving the standards in the 568 schools and
colleges throughout the county, but also for the large increase in the
number of pupils in primary and secondary schools, and students
undertaking further education.
   The number of pupils on the roll of primary schools is at present
79,72 and the estimated number next year is 8,755, an increase of
1,35.
   This increase is brought about by the natural increase in the
County's population and also by the continual migration of people into
the County.
   Cheshire is attractive from the point of view of residence, and
the development of industry within the County and in neighbouring
areas means an ever-increasing influx of new population. Added to
this the total population is increased by overspill developments.
SMALLER CLASSES
   However, despite the continuing high level of the primary
school population in Cheshire, considerable progress continues to be
made, as a result of new schools and additional classrooms, in the
direction of the elimination of over-sized classes (i.e. classes
with over 4 on roll).
   Whereas in 1957 the percentage of such classes was 32.9, at
September, 196, the percentage had been reduced to 23.6. This is the
lowest figure of any year since 1949 and compares favourably with the
year 1953, when the percentage of over-sized classes was 43.2.
   It is noteworthy that the percentage of classes with between 3
and 4 on roll rises steadily and now comprises 38. of all primary
school classes. There is also a continued rise in the percentage of
classes with under 3 on roll. In 1953 the percentage of these was
27.7, but at present it is 38.4. The percentage of classes with under
4 on roll grew from the figure of 56.8 in 1953 to 76.4 in 196.
MORE AT GRAMMAR SCHOOLS
   On the secondary side, the number of grammar school pupils will
increase from 2,163 at present to 21,482 in 1961. The increase is
1,319 pupils, which is the equivalent of two new grammar schools at
over 6 pupils each.
   The number of secondary modern school pupils will remain at the
high level of approximately 33,. This is due partly to the
"bulge" which continues to pass through the secondary schools, but
also, as in the case of primary schools, to the migration of
population into the County and to the increasing number of pupils who
are staying at secondary modern schools beyond the normal
school-leaving age and in sixth-forms at grammar schools.
AN ACHIEVEMENT
   It is interesting to note that in a period when the County is
faced with such large increases of primary and secondary school
pupils, it has been possible to complete the replacement of All-age
schools by new secondary schools, and to build new grammar schools, so
that appropriate secondary education is available throughout the
County for all pupils according to their age, ability and aptitude.
   This in itself is a noteworthy achievement in a county with such
a wide variety of conditions- rural and urban, agricultural and
industrial, and residential.
   Also it should be noted that as well as the building of new
grammar and secondary modern schools, good progress is being made with
the improvement of facilities in existing grammar and secondary modern
schools.
   In further education, provision is being made for new and
improved technical colleges. Major extensions are now in course of
construction at the Carlett Park (Eastham), and Mid-Cheshire
(Hartford) Central Colleges of Further Education at a cost of
+465, and +3, respectively.
EXTENSIONS
   Work is due to begin in February on a +26, extension at
the North Cheshire College at Sale. Planning permission has just been
received for the building of a Technical College at Hyde, and the
estimated cost of this will be +398,5, and a new College of Further
Education at Crewe costing +6, is to be built by the Cheshire
Authority in 1961/62.
   There is also a steady growth in the number of students at
universities and technical colleges. In the past five years there has
been an increase of nearly 2 per cent. in the number of students
attending Cheshire Technical Colleges, and this increase will continue
over the next five years as the new and enlarged colleges come to
completion.
   It is interesting to note that, at the present time, the County
Education Committee is making grants to 1,565 university students and
it is anticipated that there will be approximately 5 additional
students receiving grants in 1961/62.
   This is reflected in increased grants to students and increased
fees at colleges of further education outside Cheshire which some
County students attend. In total some 2,94 students are receiving
financial aid for their training in Universities, Teachers' Training
Colleges, Technical Colleges and Schools of Art and Music.
   In conclusion it should be pointed out that, based on the net
rate and grant-borne expenditure per thousand population, Cheshire's
expenditure for all branches of education service (including primary,
secondary and special schools, further education, the training of
teachers, medical inspection and treatment, provision of milk and
meals, the transport of pupils and agricultural education) is +12,893
as opposed to the average of all counties in England and Wales of
+13,22.
A-I THEME FOR ROYALTY PLAY
   "FORBIDDEN FLESH," the controversial play at the Royalty
Theatre next week, is by punch-packing author Eugene Hamilton. His
previous play, "A Girl Called Sadie," packed the Royalty on visits
by two different touring companies.
   His new play deals with the question of artificial insemination.
The author raises the query as to whether a father will feel the same
towards a child obtained by these means as to one normally conceived.
   His leading character finds himself about to become a father to
two different children, one through artificial insemination. On the
one hand is the wife trying to tie him down to a secure suburban
marriage, and on the other is Eily, the wild Irish girl played with
flashing eyes and a tongue like a whip-lash by dark-haired Sarah
Travis, who is herself Irish.
   Two points of interest to Cestrians. The play is set in
Liverpool, where it takes place in the Irish quarter. And when it was
first performed in Manchester, the Lord Mayor, who was invited to the
premiere, made national news headlines by refusing to allow his
18-years-old daughter to attend.
   The play has since been banned in Eire because of its outspoken
nature, although it has done capacity business in all the principal
cities and towns of England, especially those with large Irish
populations. At Chester it will be presented for adults only.
IT IS EASY TO KEEP UP WITH THE JONES'S IN SWEDEN'S THINGWALL
"NEWS and Advertiser" reader Mr. H. Arnold, who received
his "News and Advertiser" "Spirit of Wirral" Calendar in
Karlstad, Sweden, has written this article.
   TURNING over the "Spirit of Wirral" calendar I see that
the February picture is of Thingwall whose Viking name was Tingralla.
It is snowbound. I am writing this from another place once named
Tingralla- there are others in Europe- which is also snowbound, but
here the comparison stops.
   In 1584 King Charles the Ninth gave it a charter as a borough,
after which it changed its name to Karlstad (Charlestown). It became
the seat of a bishop. Like many other Swedish towns of wooden
buildings huddled together, it was burnt down.
   It has since been re-planned with wide streets and boulevards,
and more fire-resisting buildings. It has important industries based
on the forests (timber, pulp and paper) and is a celebrated centre for
engineering.
SEABORNE TRADE
   Excepting for about two months in each year commencing about
now it has a seaborne trade through Lake Varen and the Trollhattan
Canal. Ice put a stop to navigation last week, and traffic has to be
routed by rail or road to and from ice-free ports such as Gottenburg,
until the oncoming of spring.
   Although there are papers in neighbouring towns not more than
forty miles away, Karlstad, with a population of 4,, supports two
morning daily papers, one Conservative, the other Socialist.
   They are by no means solely 'provincial'. For example,
yesterday's Conservative paper discusses in its leading article the
effect of the Common Market on Swedish agriculture, mentioning several
times the views of Mr. Woolley, the Cheshire farmer who is now
chairman of the National Farmers' Union.
   There is a good deal of interest in the advertising columns.
   A fortnight ago there were many 'Acknowledgements' under which
one-inch single column entries were inserted by individual postmen and
lorry drivers collecting milk for the creameries thanking publicly all
those who had given them Christmas boxes.
   Dog taxes became due on January 1st. The amount is fixed by
local authorities and varies from place to place. Hereabouts the
standard seems to be the equal of 55s. per dog over three months
old. Official advertisements remind dog-owners that the charge will
be doubled if it is not met by January 31st.
   Other authorities offer rewards for the extermination of pests-
27s. 6d. for a fox and 55s. for a mink. These animals are very
destructive to poultry. Escapees from fur farms, they find abundant
shelter in the forests.
REFUSE IN BAGS
   There is no mystery about Council, health, water, fishery or
other authorities' proceedings. The agenda for forthcoming meetings
appear as paid advertisements.
   Yesterday the Council of a small local town gave notice in a
six-inch column advertisement that household rubbish must in future be
put into paper bags before being put into the garbage bins. It
claimed that in summer this would reduce the stench of decaying matter
and in winter would lighten and speed up the work of dustmen as they
would not have to dig frozen refuse from inside the bins.
   In more than one town the collected refuse is burnt under boilers
which supply hot water to houses, thus cutting out the need for
individual heating plants.
TAX REGISTERS
   Folk interested in public affairs can learn a lot in Sweden.
They can even learn that newsagents and booksellers sell annuals
(called taxation registers) wherein everybody's assessable income
within the area of the authority is shown.
   It may be difficult for people in Britain to know if they are
keeping up with the Jones's. In Sweden they have only to look into
the local taxation register to know whether or not they are keeping up
with the Svenssons (Swedish Jones's).
From Dee to Dublin was so difficult
   ONE of the most interesting features of local history is the
way in which Wirral's Deeside villages came to be regarded over the
centuries, as the main ports for the Irish trade, not only locally,
but for England. The only rival was Holyhead, but many travellers
preferred the longer sea voyage to the difficult travel in reaching
the Anglesey port.
   Except for the fact that Chester had been established at the head
of the estuary, and when the river silted the Wirral villages were
used as ports instead, it is probable that the estuary would never
have gained any commerce. As a haven, a place for ships to shelter,
the Dee shore of the peninsula was as an inhospitable place as it
could possibly be.
   Shelter from westerly winds was virtually non-existent, but the
worst fault from a shipping point of view was that craft could sail
down the channel and so to the open sea only when the wind came from
the easterly quarter.
# 21
<END>
<45 TEXT B1>
EDITORIAL
Dilemma of South Africa
   PRIME Minister after Prime Minister speaks out in revulsion
against the South African Government's policy of apartheid as we wait
for the curtain to rise on the Commonwealth Conference in London.
   Will it end with South Africa's exclusion from the Commonwealth?
The issue is touch and go.
   There is a possibility that it will not be settled at this
conference. It may be agreed to wait until South Africa actually
becomes a Republic later in the year.
   But if a final decision is to be faced now, on which side do the
strongest arguments lie?
A MISTAKE
   THE Archbishop of Capetown has shown that the matter is not
clear-cut. The Archbishop has long been a courageous fighter against
apartheid. He must be heard with attention.
   On purely practical grounds he holds that it would be a mistake
to expel South Africa, weakening the whites who are working for a
change of policy. In his view it would also be against the interests
of the Africans.
   He holds that more pressure can be put on South Africa while she
remains in the Commonwealth than could be exercised were she cut off
from it.
   On the other hand, those who favour expulsion, including African
leaders, feel that nothing less than the shock of expulsion will
weaken the grip of Dr. Verwoerd and the Nationalists. They point
out that Dr. Verwoerd refuses to consider abandoning the apartheid
policy.
WIDER PICTURE
   THE Commonwealth is a multi-racial society. A policy of
racial discrimination in any of its countries is surely the one thing
that it could not survive.
   Whatever statesmen say at the conference table in London,
millions at home would regard as fraudulent a Commonwealth which had
room for a racist South Africa. And this is a Commonwealth in which
five citizens are coloured for every one who is white.
   Seen in this wider picture, a South Africa that clings to
apartheid is a menace to the Commonwealth and a liability to the whole
Western world.
   A practical solution would be for the Commonwealth to draft a set
of principles excluding race discrimination. And so leave South
Africa to make the grade, or go out.
The Queen's return
   THE Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh come home tonight from
their tour in the East.
   The duke's trigger-finger and the ritual slaughter of beasts have
taken the headlines in this country.
   Nevertheless, the tour has been an immense success. The Queen
has won a triumph.
   It would be pleasanter if such cruel and feudal performances as
tiger and rhino hunts were dropped from future Royal programmes. But
the Queen and the Duke have pleased millions by their visit. The
warmth of their welcome in India and Pakistan are happy memories.
Becoming a better neighbour
   WEST GERMANY- followed yesterday by the Dutch- has made the
gesture of a good neighbour. She has put up the value of her money.
   Certainly, the rise is very small. But it is a step in the
direction of live-and-let-live.
   Hopes will now grow brighter of further international
co-operation, which is the only way to solve the payments difficulties
that upset the Western world.
   Britain and the U.S., which have problems with their
balances, will gain some immediate help. What it means in practical
terms is that our exports to Germany will now be a little cheaper for
Germans to buy, while the goods which Germany exports will be made a
little dearer.
UNPOPULAR
   BOOMING Germany is deliberately encouraging more imports as
a means to curb rising prices at home.
   She is also aware how unpopular she has been growing by failing
until now to co-operate as a creditor nation should.
   Germany exports much more than she imports. For upwards of five
years the world's reserves of dollars have been drained into Germany.
There they have stayed uselessly locked up because Germany has no
tradition of trading abroad.
   In addition the strength of Germany's trading position has
attracted speculators to hold marks rather than pounds or dollars,
hoping for the mark to rise, as has now happened.
IS IT ENOUGH?
   WILL the new valuation be enough to correct Germany's massive
trading surplus and choke off speculation against dollar and pound?
That is doubtful.
   If, however, in addition to her new good-neighbour gesture,
Germany takes a really big share in giving aid to underdeveloped
nations, the world outlook will be brighter.
   What gives rise to optimism is the sign that Germany and the
other leading Western nations are at long last moving towards a
solution of currency problems by co-operation.
An advertisement
   A CURIOUS advertisement appears on page nine, paid for by
that curious body Moral Re-Armament. Those who lend their names to
this kind of advertisement are worthy people, a little innocent of
politics, perhaps, or carried away by the idea that moral regeneration
would solve all our problems. So it would. While we are waiting for
the millenium, however, most of us would prefer to put our hopes for
earthly justice in instruments of democracy, such as trade unions and
our local and national Parliaments.
   Should the Herald publish such advertisements? This is a
difficult question. It would obviously be wrong to refuse all
political advertisements with which we disagree. When an
advertisement contains statements whose factual truth is doubtful, or
where the total content would be deeply repugnant to our readers, it
is right to exercise editorial discretion. The MRA advertisement
falls into neither category, though many readers will dislike it. We
publish it in the belief that the alert readers of the Herald will
not be beguiled by this kind of soft-soap.
The hard way of peace
   THE authority of the United Nations has suffered grave injury
in the Congo. It must be restored.
   A United Nations force composed of 135 Sudanese has been disarmed
and expelled from the supply port of Matadi, after being heavily
attacked by a much stronger force of Colonel Mobutu's Congolese
troops.
   The first reaction of the Sudanese Government was to denounce the
United Nations for "negligence and impotence," and to say that its
4 troops in the Congo would be taken home.
   The reaction can be understood. The Sudan's concern for its men
is natural. But this could hardly be a dignified exit.
WRONG TARGET
   IF the UN is blamed for being weak, it would be more
logical to send in more men, not weaken it further by desertion.
   It is unjust to pass the buck to Mr. Hammarskjold and the
UN's servants. The responsibility rightly belongs to the nations
which have undertaken the task of preserving peace in the Congo. That
is not a ceremonial duty, and the soldiers have every right to blame
the politicians unless they see it through.
   When the United Nations instructed Mr. Hammarskjold to use
force if necessary to prevent civil war, it was clear that new dangers
would arise unless it gave him the physical power to comply with the
policy. That was the first point that Mr. Hammarskjold made.
   India has responded handsomely by providing 3, men, who must
take about a fortnight to arrive. If the UN forces were thick
enough on the ground, such incidents as that at Matadi would not
happen.
U.S. SHIPS
   THE UN's ability to keep peace depends simply on
adequate support by the nations which have set their hands to this
plough.
   The big Powers involved in the Cold War must of course keep out.
The Americans were justified in diverting naval ships in case
non-combatant help was wanted; but they stressed that there was no
intention to intervene in fighting. Yesterday the ships turned away
again, satisfied that they were not required.
   It is to be hoped that the UN will be re-established in
their port by negotiation and that there will be no more outrages.
But back, Mr. Hammarskjold is determined, they must go.
   The best news for the Congo would be agreement between its rival
political leaders. Through the patient efforts of UN
conciliators they are meeting for the first time, in Malagasy
(formerly Madagascar).
ONLY SAFEGUARD
   THE world will sigh with relief when this strife-torn land
gets itself a government which all outsiders can recognise.
   Nobody will want to police the Congo when the Congo itself can do
the job. All the UN contingents will be glad to go home.
   Meanwhile every statesman in Africa must realise that there must
be far worse consequences if the UN had to abandon its task.
Small nations would not remain free for long in this world if the
UN was not their bulwark.
The smile on the face of Verwoerd
   THE British public has now had the chance to take a
close-up look at Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South
Africa, the foremost apostle of the pernicious doctrine of "racial
purity."
   He has made a strong impression. But not, perhaps, quite the
impression that he intended.
   For most people the sight of that bland, unctuous, impregnably
righteous face, wreathed in smiles, has been enough to make their
blood run cold.
   Some misguided people might have a sneaking sympathy for a man
who defends a racial policy on supposedly practical grounds. At least
it would be possible to argue with him rationally.
   But a man who believes, like Dr. Verwoerd, that a basically
evil policy is good, that it has the sanction of religion and is a
bulwark of Christianity, is beyond the reach of reason.
COCOONED
   ONLY a man wrapped in the impenetrable cocoon of what he
regards as a divine mission could have spoken of apartheid as "a
policy of good neighbourliness."
   We may be sure that he is not being hypocritical. That is what
he really believes.
   A good neighbour to those Africans who, under apartheid, will be
forced back to their tribal reserves with no prospect but a cramped
and primitive existence.
   A good neighbour to those Africans who will continue to live as
hewers of wood and drawers of water in the white areas of South
Africa, without rights and without hope.
NIGHTMARE
   THE same sort of good neighbour that he proved to be to the
Jews fleeing from Hitler in the thirties. It was Dr. Verwoerd who
led a protest against admitting any of them because they would
"defile" the national white stock.
   It is impossible to make contact with Dr. Verwoerd in his
nightmare world. It is this that makes illusory any hopes that he may
be influenced to change course.
   The Archbishop of Capetown, Dr. Joost de Blank, has pleaded
that South Africa should be allowed to stay in the Commonwealth.
Otherwise, he says, those inside the country who still oppose
apartheid will be left even more isolated and alone.
   The views of the Archbishop, who has maintained an unflinching
witness to what Christianity really means, must carry weight.
   But what, in fact, can the other Commonwealth countries do to
bring support and comfort to this gallant minority?
EXPULSION?
   THERE is no evidence that the policy of appeasement has
modified the actions of the Nationalists. On the contrary, apartheid
is being applied ever more ruthlessly.
   The shock of expulsion from the Commonwealth now seems to be the
only way left to try to bring home to the people of South Africa that
Dr. Verwoerd is leading them to disaster.
   It may be that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers will decide
against this final step.
   If that is their decision they should also go unequivocally on
record that they regard apartheid as evil and indefensible.
   Unless they do at least that, Dr. Verwoerd will be able to
return home claiming a triumph. His smile will be blander than ever.
The old routine
   WE are in for it again: another Royal Wedding. Between now
and June, when the Duke of Kent will marry Miss Worsley, hardly a day
will pass without a story or a picture or probably both, about the
nuptial arrangements.
   Men readers may grow more than a little weary of it all. So may
a few emancipated women who pride themselves on their commonsense.
# 21
<46 TEXT B2>
Time to start talking
   One of the grim oddities of the Berlin crisis is that everyone
is in favour of talking but nobody seems to know how to start. The
State Department keeps approving of "meaningful negotiations" and
so even does President de Gaulle, though his notion of what makes
talks useful or timely is a lot more restrictive than other people's.
In the intervals of bandying about threats of annihilation Mr
Khrushchev too sees "a glimmer of hope" for talks, preferably on
terms that would give him right from the start everything he wants.
Yet hardly anything is done to bring talks nearer. On the Western
side the chief obstacles, apart from the stiffening of the diplomatic
joints which afflicts everybody, have been two: the West German
election campaign and the objections of France. When the Western
Foreign Ministers meet in Washington tomorrow the first of these will
be nearly out of the way. It will be time for the Ministers to get
down in earnest to the business of working out a common approach to
Russia on Germany and Berlin.
   The means of setting talks going are clear enough provided that
the Soviet Government wishes to talk at all. The session of the
United Nations Assembly which opens on Tuesday should anyhow bring
together the Foreign Ministers of Britain, the United States, and
Russia. The French Government largely ignores the "tumultuous and
scandalous" Assembly. But that might give President de Gaulle a
convenient excuse for keeping out of talks if he still thought this
was not the time to start them. What seems certain is that those who
advocate putting off any approach until Mr Krushchev gives evidence
of a change of heart (whatever that may mean) would have us run risks
greater than the West ought to run- and greater than President
Kennedy's most influential advisers seem disposed to face. The real
question is what we should put to the Soviet Government as a basis for
talks: and that means working out what we know to be the essential
interests of the West in Berlin and what we suppose that the Soviet
Government may now be after.
   The West needs to make it absolutely clear that the freedom of
West Berlin and free access to it are vital interests not to be
retreated from in the present state of Europe. Yet the question
remains, as before: is the Soviet Government interested chiefly in
sealing off East Germany and securing some kind of general recognition
for it? Or is it determined to do away with the freedom of West
Berlin and free access to it (on the excuse of keeping out
"revanchists" and so on) at almost any risk? If the first, the
signs now are that Britain and the United States at all events might
well exchange some kind of recognition for an up to date guarantee of
access, perhaps to be supervised by a commission of the four powers
and the two Germanies, and that West Germany might well fall in with
this, however reluctantly. (Mr Diefenbaker's proposal of United
Nations supervision has the drawback that, like other proposed ways of
bringing in the United Nations, it would presumably mean admitting
both Germanies to the organisation- and that would be a lot for a lot
of people to swallow all at once). If, however, the Soviet Government
seems determined to swallow up West Berlin then there is little for
the West to do except stand firm.
   This is where many people see with horror the prospect of a
nuclear war: if everyone stands firm, they ask, will not the next step
be a clash leading inexorably to mutual annihilation? After looking
upon such a prospect Bertrand Russell has chosen to take the way of
civil disobedience and go to prison. All honour to him for acting
once again on his beliefs whatever the consequences. But those who
differ with his analysis are not necessarily less concerned at the
dreadful risks we all run. Nor need they be less concerned than Mr
Victor Gollancz, who in a letter on this page proposes that Mr
Macmillan should proclaim his readiness to negotiate "naked" and
unconditionally for the sake of saving the world. Why this should
move our allies or Mr Khrushchev- or indeed what it would mean- is
not clear. The choice lies not between nuclear war and Soviet
domination; it lies between the constant risk that attends the
exchanges of human beings formidably armed and the perilous
self-dissolution of the West that would come of a surrender of West
Berlin. On this reading what Mr Gollancz calls manoeuvring, and
what we should call cool-headed and inventive negotiation, is a means
not to destruction but to safety.
Second revise
   The Government's pompous little statement on Northern Rhodesia
does not say much, but it says what is necessary- that the Northern
Rhodesia Constitution is open to revision. This is news, however much
the Government tries to disguise it by saying that the revision would
be "in accordance with normal practice." The formula which has
caused all the trouble is itself a revision, brought about in
deference to Sir Roy Welensky, of proposals which the Colonial
Secretary tabled in February; "reasonable representations," which
the Government now invites, have been made against it for many weeks.
The Government is now saying that consideration of these reasonable
representations is being delayed by the outbreak of violence. In
fact, the cart and the horse are the other way round: the violence
broke out because the reasonable representations went unheeded.
   The request which all interested parties (except the United
Federal) have made is that the Legislative Council elected under Mr
Macleod's system of three blocks of seats shall contain a
representative majority. Formula One, which appeared in February,
appeared to make this likely; Formula Two, which appeared in June,
made it very unlikely; if Formula Three restores the original
principle, that is all that need be required of it. It is a pity that
the Government should ever have been led away from this principle. It
is a great pity that the Government should give the appearance of
responding, not to Mr Kaunda's reasonable representations, but to
the violence which he tried to prevent.
Programme for Katanga
   The United Nations had already had a bad press before reports
were received yesterday of alleged indiscipline by some of its troops
in Elisabethville. A full account of these incidents will no doubt be
demanded by the General Assembly next week.
   The general feeling is that if the United Nations wanted to clean
up the Congo it could have started with stables more Augean than M.
Tshombe's. But Katanga has for so long been represented- not
altogether falsely- as a secure and industrious little state beset by
wild and envious politicians that its less agreeable side has been
overlooked. It can equally be seen as an alliance between M.
Tshombe and the Union Miniere (which has a substantial British
shareholding) to apply the huge copper revenues properly belonging to
the whole Congo for the unbalanced development of only a part of it.
A long time will be needed, of course, to bridge the gap between the
admirable industrial welfare services provided for copper employees
and the general lot of rural Congolese. This will be true however the
money is shared. But the disproportion between Katanga's
happy-go-lucky expansion and the perpetual Budget deficits of the
Congolese Central Government has for too long been an obstacle to the
rebuilding of the Congo.
   It is odd that the very people who apply this argument to the
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and who blanch at the thought of
losing Northern Rhodesia's copper revenues, should not see that it
applies even more forcibly to the Congo, where there is little light
industry and no European agriculture (apart from the plantations) to
bolster up the rest of the economy. The explanation may be that in
neither case is the argument disinterested. M. Tshombe has once or
twice been brought to see the discrepancy, and has even talked of
sharing his revenues. But he has never signed the cheque.
   Independent Katanga has never, in truth, looked like a permanent
proposition, which is why no country has recognised it, and why most
of the Europeans serving in its forces have been ne'er-do-wells. The
jolt had to come; and unfortunately it does not seem to have come as
cheaply as at first appeared. Dr O'Brien may have taken one of the
tides in the affairs of men; omitted, Katanga might have straggled on
to a worse tragedy.
   It remains to consolidate the reunion of Katanga with the Congo,
and for this purpose the Central Government is sending a commissioner
formerly associated with M. Gizenga's Stanleyville regime. The
development may sound more sinister than it is. M. Gizenga has
notably failed to make capital out of his succession to Lumumba: it is
too early to say that he is not a Marxist at all, but if he is he
comes from a peculiarly Congolese strain. The Russians seem to have
no time for him. Thus his accomplice now sent to Elisabethville may
be no more than a personification of the Central Government's new
authority. But this is not the way for the Congo-Katanga dispute to
be ended.
   The key to a solution surely lies in the continued recognition by
the United Nations of M. Tshombe as President of Katanga Province.
If he has taken flight he should be invited to return to head the
provincial Government. An attempt has already been made to organise
the Congolese States into a confederation. Now that President Tshombe
has been shown that independence is not allowed he should strive for
as much provincial autonomy as the other States will give him. He
should not despair of keeping a large part of his copper revenue.
Dr O'Brien has praised the valour of Katanga soldiers. M.
Tshombe should not encourage them to drive the point home. Instead of
putting up a desperate resistance he should spend an hour reading the
Nigerian Constitution.
The first step
   It is encouraging news that Mr Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign
Minister, will meet Mr Dean Rusk in New York next week for a talk
about German problems. The Soviet Government has lost no time in
taking up President Kennedy's suggestion, made on Wednesday, that such
a meeting should be arranged while Mr Gromyko is over for the United
Nations General Assembly.
   No one supposes that Mr Gromyko and Mr Rusk will settle the
problems of Berlin and the two Germanys on their own. But, as Mr
Modibo Keita said after his talk with Mr Kennedy on Wednesday, a
Summit meeting must be prepared at a lower diplomatic level. This is
the necessary first step. And indeed it is the first time since the
crisis began that any specific arrangement for serious discussion
between the two sides has been made. There have been plenty of
general declarations about willingness to meet and talk, but
conspicuously no mention of time and place. To be able to say "New
York next week" is an important advance. We must not be
overconfident that this meeting will lead on to further and decisive
ones; but without it, we could not look for them.
Getting it over
   Federal Germany votes tomorrow and not a day too soon. There
can seldom have been an election campaign which more people in and out
of the country wanted to see over and done with. To Germany's Western
allies the campaign has been a millstone weighing down and almost
paralysing their efforts to work out sensible ways of dealing with the
Berlin crisis. It need not have been such a burden if Western
Governments had not been convinced that they must do nothing to harm
even remotely Dr Adenauer's chances of being returned as Chancellor.
But they were so convinced and they have had to take the
consequences. Meanwhile in Germany itself the course of the campaign
has dismayed a good many people: they too will be glad when the
polling stations close.
# 216
<47 TEXT B3>
ACROSS BARRIERS
   The third assembly of the World Council of Churches in Delhi
has added substance to the aspiration of its title. The entry of the
Russian Orthodox Church and its sisters in Bulgaria, Poland, and
Rumania has had two stimulating effects. Some east European churches
had been members already, and one major meeting was held in Hungary in
1956, but only now is the Christian witness in communist countries
strongly represented. Although the Roman Catholics are no more than
observers, the charge of pan-protestantism loses its validity. The
other Orthodox churches and the Old Catholics in the council are no
longer a few among the many that come from the world of the
Reformation. At the same time the evangelical complexion of the
council grows stronger through the integration with the International
Missionary Council and the admission of growing communions in South
America and newly independent churches in Africa. There are now twice
as many churches from these continents and from Asia as there were at
the first assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. The approach to universality
is gratifying. It has its complications.
   Many of the churches which came together at Amsterdam thirteen
years ago had long cooperated in the two movements- Faith and Order
and Life and Work- whose confluence formed the council. Cooperation
since then has steadily grown. The entry this year of so many
churches unaccustomed to these ecumenical encounters may hold up the
movement towards closer cooperation for a time. There will have to be
wider geographical representation on the central committee and other
continuing bodies and this may be at the cost of some efficiency.
Unanimity will come less easily. The Anglican and main Protestant
communions readily agree on many questions, such as birth control and
the population explosion, which the presence in strength of the
Orthodox churches makes more contentious. On the other hand, there
has been a striking agreement on the delicate matter of defining the
actual theological basis of the council itself.
   Such a body cannot address itself successfully to many of the
immediate temporal issues. It should seek and share guidance not on
what is to be done in such and such a special field but on the
criteria by which the Christian should be guided. The declaration on
racialism could reasonably be unequivocal, although it has cost the
allegiance of the Dutch churches in South Africa. But discussion on
current points of east-west conflict could not go much farther than,
for example, the truism that policies of menace and mutual disarmament
cannot be followed together. What the council has done- and it is an
achievement- is to make religious contact across the greatest
political barrier in what is not yet a unitary world. In the words of
one Russian delegate, older churches like his own have personally
discovered younger churches for the first time.
   The theme of facing together the broader tasks that can be
tackled only together ran through speech after speech. It is worth
recalling the prophetic words in 1938 of DR. J. H. OLDHAM,
elected honorary president at Delhi:-
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Study must be undertaken by the churches in common, for the new
forces are world forces; they will sooner or later affect the life of
every church, and it is therefore essential that on this point the
churches should learn from each other and share with each other
whatever light God has given them in their attempt to face new and
unprecedented situations.
<END QUOTE>
   The shifting weight from western to eastern communities
emphasizes the challenge to the receptivity of individual churches.
The effect of the assembly will depend on the willingness of parishes
and congregations to respond to the call to fresh service, and to
assimilate into their daily witness the common thought of the member
churches.
   One of the duties of the assembly is to set the standards for
continuing common study and action. Since the last assembly help for
refugees of every faith has been extended to cover more of the world
and different needs. It is now perhaps the best known ecumenical
activity. Here again, however, the new and enlarged council speaks
with different voices and stresses. In the Russian Orthodox Church
the council has incorporated a community with a distinctive tradition
of Christian witness, emphasizing devotion and not social work. In
abstaining from voting on the resolution which extended the definition
of religious liberty to political opinions the Russians in Delhi
followed a tradition far older than 1917. Their position is close to
the statement at Evanston in 1954 by PROFESSOR HROMADKA, of
Prague, who is an evangelical:-
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The Church marches through our secular world avoiding and
rejecting identification with any human absolute and rejecting also
any efforts to look for an absolute evil in any secular institution or
in any man. We must not apply human, civil, or political categories
of freedom to the church.
<END QUOTE>
   Some problems of such a world meeting remain unresolved. A
thousand delegates are too many for corporate thinking, but corporate
thinking there must be if all member churches are to have an effective
voice in deciding future lines of cooperation. The aspiration of
visible as opposed to merely "spiritual" unity was endorsed at
Delhi; but it is doubtful if it was greatly advanced- or, indeed,
could be so at so comprehensive an assembly.
A Man of Peace
   Although he is no longer a titular chief ALBERT LUTHULI is
in the truest sense of the word a leader of his people in South
Africa. His arrival with his wife in Britain on a flying visit before
he goes on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo will give British
people a chance that they gladly take of expressing their admiration
for his courage, sincerity, and restraint. It is ironical that he
should reach Europe only a few days before the Republic of South
Africa will be celebrating the annual holiday which in origin
commemorates the victory of the Voortrekkers over the Zulu Impis at
Blood River.
   MR. LUTHULI, who belongs to that proud and warlike people,
is one of those Africans who have buried the hatchet. He has always
shown himself ready- and no one who knows him can doubt his
sincerity- to lead the Zulus and others down the paths of peace.
Coexistence with their white neighbours on terms of mutual
self-respect has been his ideal. A forward looking Government would
have understood the significance of this powerful encouragement to
moderation and would have taken MR. LUTHULI into its counsels.
Unfortunately it is looking backwards that has prevailed. Those who
put MR. LUTHULI into prison and then placed indefensible
restrictions on his rights as a man have never forgotten Blood River.
They live in a perpetual state of mental laager. They can see
MR. LUTHULI only over the sights of their rifles.
   Even the permission given to leave the native land which is half
a gaol for him is grudging and qualified. The MINISTER of the
INTERIOR emphasized, when his passport was granted, that in the
opinion of the South African Government MR. LUTHULI did not
measure up to the international standard laid down for the award of
the Nobel Peace Prize. The South African Government is the last
quarter to which any reasonable man would refer on such an issue. The
decision of the Swedish judges has rightly been applauded in all
countries that believe in freedom and scorn racial injustice. MR.
LUTHULI cannot speak freely to us. But he must draw encouragement
from the reception that he will receive here and elsewhere on his
journey. "Who will deny", he has said sadly, "that thirty years
of my life have been spent in knocking in vain at a closed and barred
door?" Alas, no one can deny it. But that is all the more reason
for saluting a veteran fighter for peace.
Hire-Purchase
   With the first and fundamental clause of MR. W. T.
WILLIAMS'S Hire-Purchase Bill general agreement can be expected. An
increasingly important weakness of the existing legislation (the 1938
Act as amended in 1954) is that, apart from livestock, it governs only
agreements involving goods worth +3 or less. As the Conservative
Political Centre report on consumer protection recently pointed out,
both inflation and affluence have made it reasonable to raise the
limits for all agreements to +1,- the level already established
for livestock. MR. WILLIAMS sets out to achieve this. The
existing limits have long been out of date, especially since the
growth of car hire-purchase, and most citizens' advice bureaux could
probably produce cases illustrating the difficulties and abuses which
have arisen as a result.
   The efforts of MR. WILLIAMS to make the terms of agreements
even clearer to the customer are also to be commended. The
notification he envisages must be given at least two days before the
agreement is signed. To this there will be some opposition. The Bill
is short and modest in scope, and it is doubtful whether the other
Private Members' Bills in the offing will fill all the gaps. This
fact may give the Government an extra excuse for counselling patience
until the next report from the Molony committee. Comprehensive
legislation is obviously preferable. They should not, however,
disdain this opportunity of obtaining a useful sample of parliamentary
opinion by at least allowing these Bills a fair run.
By Degrees
   Centigrade v. Fahrenheit. The fight is on. The challenger
has behind it not only the authority of the SECRETARY of STATE
for AIR but also the backing of the DIRECTOR GENERAL of the
Meteorological Office. The press and the broadcasting authorities are
asked to help. To begin with, both temperatures will be put in the
ring together. SIR GRAHAM SUTTON, however, made no bones about it
yesterday. The purpose is to give fahrenheit the knock out. The
backers of centigrade would have got off to a better start if they had
taken more pains to explain the advantages to the general public of
the change. It is true that SIR GRAHAM said there is at the
moment "an awful mess up" in the measurement of temperatures.
This, however, seems a matter of the convenience of specialists. The
ordinary British man and woman is conscious of no difficulty. Rather
than fifty million people having to be put out for the sake of 5,
is there any reason why the centigrade countries should not change to
fahrenheit? Can it be shown that the one scale is demonstrably better
than the other?
   The centigraders may be in for a stiffer fight than they think.
They may have to call up the reinforcement of the Common Market.
Even then it might be easier to persuade the British public to go
over to decimal coinage- in certain circumstances the time would come
when this would suit their convenience- rather than to change their
system of recording temperatures. In any case, fahrenheit need not
lose heart. Once before, and that not so long ago, the authorities
ganged up to alter the habits of the people. That effort was to
enforce the adoption of the twenty-four hour clock. Then, also, the
B.B.C. were roped in. The only result was that the
well-meaning corporation became very unpopular. So much so that the
new system, which was inaugurated in April, 1934, was thrown out in
August of the same year. It is generally a sign that Governments are
balked in the big things when they cannot leave the little, familiar
ways of life alone.
Summons to the Unknown
   One of the little trials that a man must learn to bear when he
admits the telephone to his home is that, when he hurries to its side
to answer a call, it will sometimes stop ringing before he gets there.
He is dividing the dahlias at the bottom of the garden, or hanging a
critical bit of wallpaper in the spare bedroom, or delicately
adjusting the car in the garage, or listening absorbed to a concert on
the wireless when the persisting summons penetrates to his dream
world.
# 22
<48 TEXT B4>
OPINION
SPEAK UP FOR OUR FRIENDS!
   A BAFFLED and bewildered little country stands at the
centre of an international storm. Belgium is accused- without a
scrap of evidence- of being implicated in the murder of Patrice
Lumumba.
   Her leaders are insulted, her embassies are attacked in a score
of countries.
   In Ghana, President Nkrumah, who has done more than most to stir
up trouble in the Congo, orders every Belgian citizen to quit his
country.
Boldly and clearly
   HOUNDING Belgium has become an international pastime. Why?
Because those who said the Congolese could govern themselves will not
admit they were wrong. So Belgium, bowed down by internal troubles,
mourning a terrible air crash, is made their scapegoat.
   Who will speak up for Belgium? Who else but Britain. We have
fought beside Belgium in two world wars. We are allies still.
   Britain should champion Belgium. Not with the careful, hooded
language of diplomacy, but boldly and fearlessly.
   It is time to show the world that this country does not desert
her friends.
THE FULL TABLE
   HAPPY, happy families! Never before have Britain's larders
been so well stocked. Supplies of meat and dairy produce were
substantially higher last year than in 1959.
   Lucky, lucky housewives! To have such a splendid variety of
goods to choose from.
   Not so long ago older folk were reminding young wives, harassed
by shortages, of the good old days of abundance. Now it is mother who
picks up recipes from her daughter.
   The dinner table is the best answer to the grumblers in Britain
today!
GO AHEAD
   "THIS is colour day," proclaimed the American television
network, N.B.C. And hour after hour it poured out its programmes
in bright colours.
   In America colour TV is five years old. There are already
6, sets in use.
   What about Britain? The B.B.C. is ready to launch a colour
TV service, but the commercial TV contractors want to delay
it for 1 years.
   The Government should settle this argument with two words to the
B.B.C.:-
   Go ahead!
MAN OF SYMPATHY
   ONE man beyond all others is saddened by the deaths of two
elderly sisters who killed themselves because they had to leave their
cottage.
   Mr. John Crabb, clerk to Newmarket urban council, says: "I
shall always feel this as a personal failure."
   There is no reason whatsoever why he should reproach himself.
The sisters had to quit as their home was falling down. And Mr.
Crabb did his best for them, even driving them to a new house.
   John Crabb has the qualities of sympathy and understanding. Too
often lacking in officialdom.
LION RAMPANT
   MR. HENRY NEWTON of Acton does not want his daughter to
marry a Scotsman. He says that the Scots are foreigners who have no
business to be in England.
   The first ruler of the United Kingdom was a Scot. The Lord
Chancellor is a Scot. The Prime Minister is a Scot- and so were four
of his predecessors this century.
   Let Mr. Newton beware. By protesting against Scotland he may
be guilty of rebellion!
THE EMPIRE IS PUT ON TRIAL
   ARCHBISHOP MAKARIOS puts the Commonwealth on trial.
   His ex-Eoka Government decides that Cyprus will join it for five
years.
   During this period Britain will be expected to subsidise and
defend the Cypriots. They will enjoy all the trading benefits of
Imperial Preference.
   It is a safe bet that at the end of five years Makarios and
company will sign on again. It is equally certain that the British
Government will welcome them.
   How splendid it would be if, just for once, the Government were
to voice the real feelings of the British people.
   And tell Makarios they are not prepared to accept him on such
terms.
OPTIMISTS WIN
   GOOD cheer for the week-end. Ford Motors are to put 13,
men back on a five-day week. One more demonstration of the industry's
recovery.
   As springtime approaches, orders pick up. And the car men get
ready for another bustling season.
   The pessimists said the motor industry was on its knees. The
optimists said "Nonsense."
   As usual, the optimists have been proved right.
OUT AND ABOUT
   EARL RUSSELL and his friends have hit on an original way of
spending this afternoon. They intend to sit outside the Ministry of
Defence.
   It is their protest against the H-bomb.
   They ought to have a pleasant time. The weather forecast is
good; except for them, Whitehall should be deserted. And they will
have a fine view of St. James's Park, with its placid lake,
pelicans, rare ducks, and other wild life.
   Why not follow Lord Russell's lead today? Head for the parks to
enjoy the sun. Not in a foolish cause, but in a glorious one.
   Good health!
THE TOILERS
   THIS group of men, says a report, work on average between
55 and 6 hours a week. They also put in an extra two or three
evenings. And they never go on strike.
   Who are they? The trade union officials of Britain. Men who
earn only a fraction of what their talents and responsibilities could
bring in the open labour market.
   The unions are fortunate indeed to find dedicated leaders at
cut-rate prices. But it is time the members decided to pay up and be
good employers.
WRONG TARGET
   THE Labour Party says that the Tory Government is
destroying the social services.
   Under the Labour Government 18.1 per cent of the national income
was spent on social services. The present figure is 19.5 per cent.
   There are many worthwhile targets for the Opposition. What a
pity to aim at the wrong one!
HOW MANY SERFS?
   MRS. MARCIA POWER, whose husband made her clean his
uniform, wins a divorce. The judge says she had to act almost as a
serf.
   Up and down the country husbands will be saying they would never
behave like that.
   But do they ever ponder how their gardening tools are
mysteriously returned to the shed; their books tidied; and often, even
their shoes cleaned?
   How wonderful if they showed their appreciation this morning with
a surprise box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers!
THIS IS THE PRICE OF HASTE
   HOW the Government must repent its haste and folly in
Rhodesia!
   Eighteen months ago this territory was peaceful, orderly, and
thriving. Africans within the Federal Government were getting
valuable experience in administration. Then Mr. Iain Macleod became
Colonial Secretary.
   Suddenly everything changed. Timetables were scrapped. The
ill-conceived Monckton Commission was rushed out to Rhodesia.
   Overnight, minor African politicians were inflated into
international figures. And as the British Government stepped up the
pace of change, so the Africans stepped up their demands.
No choice
   TODAY, in London, that rash and thoughtless policy has caused
a crisis- a crisis that never should have happened.
   No wonder there is doubt and fearful heart-searching.
   If the Government now reverses its plan to give the Africans
control in Northern Rhodesia it may indeed face difficulties from
African politicians greedy for power.
   But if it fails to modify that plan Rhodesia may well be plunged
into chaos, like the Congo.
   For Mr. Macmillan and his ministers there is no choice. They
must safeguard Rhodesia against chaos. And try to repair the damage
they have done.
PROSPERITY LEAGUE
   WHO can grow the fastest? That is the exciting competition
going on among Britain's major industries.
   Top of the table, at the moment, is the chemical industry. Then
comes engineering, followed by iron and steel.
   Even the staid and timid Treasury is cheered by the tremendous
upsurge in investment. It reports that new factory building this year
is likely to be 4 per cent up on 196.
   Britain's business men are right to back their faith with cash.
For expansion today means still greater prosperity tomorrow.
THEIR FREEDOM
   BERTRAND RUSSELL, the 88-year-old standard bearer of the
Ban-the-Bomb crusade, has a devoted following. Thousands march with
him- and sit with him too.
   It is said by some that he is a saint; by others that he is a
prophet.
   He is, in fact, a philosopher with a highly developed sense of
publicity who has been spectacularly wrong on the great issues of our
time.
How long?
   BEFORE the war he urged the British people to welcome
Hitler's troops as tourists. After the war he favoured a preventive
war against Russia. Now he wants Britain to demolish her defences.
   Throughout the years Lord Russell and his supporters have been
able to pursue their eccentric campaigns in freedom.
   They should ask themselves this question: How long would that
freedom last if their policies were adopted?
GOOD WILL MAN
   AN experiment in courtesy is launched by the Electricity
Board.
   The board is laying a cable along a seven-mile route in Surrey.
A warden, Mr. Jack Finlay, has been appointed to smooth out
difficulties for householders when trenches are dug outside their
front gates.
   Splendid. By showing concern for the people the board will earn
their good will.
   Happy patrolling, Mr. Finlay!
THE FACTS BACK WELENSKY
   GOOD for Sir Roy Welensky! The tough, resolute Premier of
the Rhodesian Federation shakes the life out of his critics.
   He calls them "jelly-boned." He promises to preserve
federation against African fanatics and woolly minded individuals in
the West.
   Some may ask: Is Welensky justified in being so harsh to those
who disagree with him?
   The facts answer that.
Congo shambles
   CONTRAST his firm, successful rule in Rhodesia with what has
happened in the Congo.
   There Welensky's opponents have carried their theories into
practice. There a UNO army of Africans, bossed by an Indian, has
been in charge for months.
   And what has it made of the Congo? A bloodstained shambles.
   No wonder Welensky has lost all patience with his misguided
tormentors.
   They have earned his strictures. And his contempt.
THE THRIFTY ONES
   SOME people are for ever complaining that teenagers earn
too much and spend it all when they get it. Now a survey of the Post
Office Savings Bank shows how wrong that idea is.
   The biggest group of depositors in the bank is made up of boys
and girls aged 15 to 19.
   Certainly teenagers earn more than ever before. Certainly they
spend more.
   But how splendid that in the most prosperous days in this
country's history the old-fashioned virtue of thrift should still have
a powerful appeal for young people.
UNDERSTOOD!
   THE Danes are annoyed with British farmers for fighting
against Danish competition.
   They say that our farmers do not seem to understand the meaning
of free trade. There is no doubt what the Danes understand by free
trade.
   It is that they should be free to sell as much as they like here,
while buying more and more from our rivals. Germany has now
supplanted Britain as Denmark's principal supplier.
   The farmers of Britain understand free trade. That is why they
fight it.
CURTAIN UP
   THE Palace cinema at Buckley, near Chester, will be
reopened next week by Barry Flanagan and Eric Platt, both aged 19.
   Eric says: "We believe in the cinema. And we know what people
want."
   The combination of enthusiasm and shrewd anticipation of public
taste has launched many great enterprises.
   Barry and Eric have enthusiasm. They are backed by a resurgent
film industry. It could be curtain up on two success stories. Of the
old Palace. And Barry and Eric.
FOLLOW OXFORD!
   DONS at Cambridge want the study of agriculture to become
an honours degree course.
   Farming is Britain's most vital industry. It is increasingly
dependent on new techniques- and on the universities to provide men
of knowledge and skill.
   The older universities are often accused of being interested only
in dead subjects.
   Now Cambridge has the opportunity to show it is just as
interested in the living. Particularly as its rival, Oxford, has had
a similar course in farming for 15 years!
HERE ARE THE NEW PIONEERS
   JOHN GLENN, Virgil Grissom, Alan Shepard. One of these
three men has a date with destiny- the first journey into Space.
   At the beginning of this wonderful century many people believed
that there were no more worlds to conquer.
# 29
<49 TEXT B5>
A STRANGE PEOPLE
   AT this time of the year Americans from Kansas, Seattle,
Scranton, Fresno, and another ten thousand pin-points (you try telling
a native of Kansas that his home-town is a pin-point!) all over the
United States, arrive in our islands.
   The British Travel Association, which does excellent work in
taking care of all foreigners who want to have a good time here and
study what is pompously called "The British Way of Life," have a
hard time on their hands.
   From American sources I have just heard of two examples of The
British Host at Work.
   One: A citizen of the U.S. was last week walking down
Oxford-street when he was seized by a total stranger who said somewhat
incoherently: "You're an American, eh?"
   He pleaded guilty.
'I Hate You'
   "I'm an Englishman- see? And I hate you Yanks- see?"
   Our transatlantic friend mildly replied: "That's just too
bad.'
   Pause while the visitor correctly adjudicates that his accoster
is well loaded- or drunk.
   The assailant then resumes: "But if there's anything I can do
for you, anywhere you want to go, or you feel that somebody is trying
to put it across you, just you let me know and I'll be right here.
Nobody's going to shove 2ole Uncle Sam around!"
   He then took out a piece of paper, wrote his address on it and
added: "Anybody mucking the Yanks about had better call on me first.
I won't stand for it."
   Exit a puzzled American.
   
   The other incident occurred in the boat-train from Cherbourg to
Paris.
   Two Americans on a visit to Europe- it was at least their
twentieth trip- fell into conversation with a shy, diffident
Englishman who they had seen on the Queen Mary.
   They renewed mild pleasantries and, after some international
chit-chat, they told him that they were going to end their
explorations of the Old World by touring England.
   They had in mind a kind of reviving postscript to the
eccentricities of the Continent to be concluded in the sage,
philosophical calm of the Anglo-Saxon world.
   The Englishman in the train said: "Mind if I give you just one
tiny point of advice?
   "All our chaps will be absolutely delighted to see you BUT IF
YOU ARE IN A PUB FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T RAISE YOUR VOICE!"
   
   The travellers from the New World who had been in Britain many
times before, were slightly stunned.
   Afterwards they said: "We thought we knew it all, but you
Britishers never run out of unturned stones."
   
   To the British Travel Association, doing their excellent
darndest, I offer these sad complexities.
The Ant Society
   IN the 183's the Luddites took sledge-hammers to their looms
and many a good trade unionist since then has, in the hope of
improving the lot of his fellow workers, taken the theoretical Luddite
hammer again.
   Hence the hostility to automation and the stop-watch
manufacturing methods that have led to restrictive practices.
   Now a new threat to those who toil and spin has been developed by
a firm specialising in electronics in Los Angeles.
   They have developed a new system whereby completely untrained
workers can be taught their trade by means of tape recordings and
television.
   What happens is that the unskilled worker is processed, by
high-speed listening to recorded instructions on how to do the job
coupled with explanatory TV pictures, into becoming a highly
skilled, obedient craftsman in no time at all.
   Not only can the raw human mind be technically equipped very
quickly to do one set of skilled manufacturing processes in one trade
but, by being given another of the new audio-TV training
techniques, he can be switched to a different industry if he just
gives in and listens and looks.
   From being an assembler in an aircraft factory to becoming a
paint sprayer in a ceramic factory, he can be qualified for a
completely new job in less time than it takes to say "Tolpuddle
Martyrs!"
A STRAIGHT THEODOLITE
   "CRICKET," says the Oxford Dictionary, is "an open air game
played with ball, bats and wickets between two sides consisting of
eleven players each."
   Not so, dear Oxford Dictionary.
   You are out of date.
   Cricket in 1961 is played with a theodolite, six surveyors, a
ball, bats and wickets between two sides.
   Shades of the village stalwarts of Hambledon who are now the
patron saints of the game!
   What would THEY have thought of these civil engineers
creeping about the pitch with their optical instruments?
   The village green is the real home of cricket.
   A couple of bumps on a pitch have no terrors for a good batsman
with a stout heart, a firm grip on the willow and a hefty contempt for
batting averages and all the statistical blight that makes a mighty
six these days as rare as frostbite in summer.
   They'll be clapping the man who plays a straight theodolite next.
The Eichmann Mind
   EICHMANN continues to reveal the extraordinary watertight
divisions of the German mind.
   Not content with arguing that he was only an efficient cog in the
machine, he now claims that his part of the endless massacre that led
to the death of six million Jews was "decent, feasible and
workable."
   He feels satisfaction "from the fact that my personality had
been tested and weighed and not found wanting."
   He feels like Pontius Pilate who washed his hands before the
multitude saying: "I am innocent of the blood of this just
person."
   Like Dr. Globke, whom I interviewed the other day, Eichmann
said: "I drew a certain solace from the fact that I did what I could
despite my low rank."
   
   Eichmann is on dangerous ground when he pleads that he was only a
small unit on the base of the triangle that led to Hitler, Himmler,
Hess and Goering at the apex.
   In examination he betrayed an expert and intimate knowledge of
every link in the chain of command that led to the top. He understood
the whole apparatus with an exact and meticulous comprehension that
could only have come from a man who used the system- and used it with
power and authority.
   The appalling thing about the Germans is that they can kid
themselves and feel a sense of righteousness when their hands are red
with blood.
   They really believed that the Treaty of Versailles was an
iniquitous injustice. When they burst into Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Holland, Belgium and France they really believed Hitler when he
screamed at them that they were being "encircled."
   They really believed in the moral superiority of "The New
Order" which Himmler on October 4, 1943, expressed thus: "Whether
nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me
only in so far as we need them as slaves to our Kultur; otherwise
it is of no interest to me."
Dispatched...
   This concept of slavery included Britain.
   General Brauchitsch signed a directive ordering that after the
successful invasion of our islands all the "able-bodied male
population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five will, unless
the local situation calls for an exceptional ruling, be interned and
dispatched to the Continent."
   The Baltic States were to have been our destination.
   In no other conquered country, not even Poland, had the Germans
begun with such a drastic step.
   There is no doubt that the compatriots of Eichmann would have
been as good as their evil word.
Officious Efficiency
   THE Inland Revenue people have a thankless task.
   But they do not make themselves less disliked by their attitude
to their customers- who incidentally pay their salaries.
   Their demands are invariably couched in hectoring, out-of-date
language, but in spite of all their bluster, they let many a big fish
through the net while they are bullying the minnows.
   I have just heard a good example of their officious efficiency.
   A young chap I know got his first job last week. He is paid
monthly in arrears and will not get a bean for the next twenty-one
days.
   But the blood suckers have already been after him, demanding
particulars in the usual minatory language including a blackmailing
line which says: "If you do not do this, you may have to pay more
tax than you need."
   Truly are the tax gatherers an unbeloved people.
May His Tribe Increase
   MY favourite piece of rhymed writing, when I was young and in
the catapult-and-conker stage of life, was a piece of sentimental
verse by Leigh Hunt.
   It was called "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel."
   I don't know why I was so impressed with this poem but, on
reflection, it might be that I took a guilty interest in the devilment
business.
   I may well have felt that I was hell-bound under a strict
Presbyterian upbringing and a possible reprieve might come through the
sugary sentiments of "Abou Ben Adhem."
   What happened in the jingly-jungly jingle was this:
   "Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
   Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace
   And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
   Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
   An Angel writing in a book of gold."
More- or Less?
   To cut a long story short the Angel got on well with Abou and
wrote his name at the top of the book of gold.
   However, I was only intrigued by the blessing ~"May his tribe
increase!"
   I didn't realise, in my world of swarming, suburban kids in
which I was reared, that more of us might be considered a good thing.
   But they were- and still are.
   In Burma the Government is urging the population to multiply
because, says the Minister of National Planning: "If present trends
continue and there is no increase, the Burmese will disappear one
day."
   Not far away, across the Bay of Bengal, India's Government is
urging the population to have themselves sterilised and paying them to
have the operation.
   But neither of these pluses and minuses affects the main picture.
   The Earth is crammed with teeming, multiplying humanity.
   The blessing ~"May his tribe increase" in 1961 sounds like
a curse. In our own country there are nearly 53 million of us. We
are more thickly populated than teeming, bursting Japan.
   Only one country in the world has more people per square yard
than we have- Holland.
   In 185 there were 1, million people in the world. In 19
the figure had swollen to- 1,5 million. Half a century later, us
chicks had increased by another 1, million to 2,5 million.
   By 1975 we cannot, on present figures, be less than 3,8
million, and by the year 6Anno Domini 2 (bar nuclear accidents)
we will be about 6,3 million in all.
   There's going to be an awful lot of us around. Unless...
   Un-nuclear less...
Did They Know?
   I HAVE cast doubt on the repeated claims of the Germans that
they did not know of the appalling deeds that were inflicted on
millions of human beings for the glory and honour of the Third German
Reich.
   Yesterday I received a letter from an ex-SS man now living
in England. He asks me not to publish his name and address "as it
might well cost me my job."
   He writes: "Your statement that the German people knew what
happened to the Jews is wrong. From 1942-1944 I served as a volunteer
in the German SS. During that time I served in various SS
divisions and never heard the slightest rumour that Jews were
murdered.
   "On the contrary we believed just as sincerely as the allies
that we were fighting for a just cause and humanity.
   "We often fought against odds of twenty to one and got through.
You don't do that unless you have a deep conviction that your cause
is right.
   "Our officers always told us never to degenerate to the level of
our opponents. Even when our patrol found two of our comrades
murdered (shot in the neck) by Russian troops who had captured them
the day before, we were told by our patrol leader: 'No reprisals.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 22
<5 TEXT B6>
West German Build-up
Tories up to old tricks
says BOB LEESON
   SOME 17 years ago, in the early summer of 1934, the German
ambassador in London was dictating a secret report to his chief von
Papen, in Berlin.
   "Britain is uncomfortable in her role of champion of German
rearmament, in opposition, to France."
   Later that year he warned that Britain knew Germany was breaking
the agreement to stop building bombers, and added: "Without
Britain's tolerance German rearmament in the air would be
jeopardised."
   When Hoesch's reports, along with other nazi documents, were
captured and published after the war the pattern of British Government
connivance became clear.
   At nazi Germany's request, Britain was providing the cloak for
Germany to build an air force bigger than that of France.
   Yesterday West German Defence Minister, Herr Strauss, started
talks with the British Defence Minister, Mr. Watkinson.
   Their talks are another stage in the cloak operation, 1961
variety, by which the West German militarists are advancing their
rearmament.
Strauss' aim
   Herr Strauss told the Daily Mail last October that his policy
was to make his country the "strongest militarily in Europe and the
United States' principal Nato ally."
   His job is to build up the military apparatus which will back
West Germany's economic domination of Western Europe through the
Common Market.
   He continued this week the argument with Mr. Watkinson which he
had in public at a Nato council meeting last year over the question:
do we fight a 3-day war or a 9-day war?
   A 9-day war, the West German view, provides the pretext for huge
German armed forces (within Nato of course) and for those to have
bases all over Western Europe.
   In the past year West Germany has secured agreements for
"facilities" in France, Holland and Belgium.
   After much bargaining the British Government has agreed to give
similar "facilities" to German troops in Britain.
   The process has been too slow for Herr Strauss and last month he
attacked Britain for being an obstacle for West Germany's plans for a
"unified supply apparatus" in Nato. (A supply apparatus which
would link together the various West German "facilities.")
   By the end of the year there will be 11 German divisions in Nato
compared with four divisions of British troops.
   Alongside these divisions a force of over 6 Starfighters
provided by the Americans is growing up. These "fighters" are in
fact fighter bombers which could launch an atomic attack on Eastern
Europe.
   By 1963 the Germans plan to have nine missile battalions, with
288 missiles and 36 firing ramps, including weapons like Matador
(range 95 miles), also provided by the Americans.
   Last month West Germany was reported to be halfway toward this
target. Her position as "America's principal Nato ally" grows
stronger and stronger.
   Now this target which Herr Strauss and his fellows have their
eyes on is control of the warheads to these weapons. General
Heusinger, the man who caused a great disturbance last autumn with his
demand of nuclear weapons for his army, now heads Nato's military
planning committee.
   All this has been achieved through Nato under American
leadership. But a big role has been played not only by the British
Government but by Right-Wing Labour in this country.
   They have helped build up Nato and rearm Western Germany, in
pursuit of the old familiar anti-Soviet policy which brought disaster
in 1939.
No bases!
   Now the argument is being used that Nato must be maintained and
Britain must stay in it to keep the Germans in control.
   Nato, far from being a means of controlling the German
militarists, is, in fact, the cover for building up their power.
   What must Britain do?
   Today, again, she has a key role. Let her tell men like Strauss
that he shall have no bases or "facilities," no help in his quest
for atomic arms.
   A policy which breaks with military alliances like Nato and seeks
friendship with the Soviet Union can prevent another betrayal like
that of the '3s.
GAITSKELLISM IS BANKRUPT
<EDITORIAL>
HARRY SMITH
National president of the Association of Engineering and
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, writing in his personal capacity:
   I WAS pleased to read J. R. Campbell's article, for,
as president of a union which fought for and still stands on the
policy decisions established at the Scarborough Labour Party
Conference I am appalled at the character of the current attack
against those decisions.
   For many years my union had to present its views to the two major
conferences of the movement and take a licking. For us, unity meant
accepting unpalatable majority decisions as binding on the movement
and having a go next time.
   Alongside many others, we conducted our fight by putting down
unambiguous alternatives to official policy and seeking to win
majorities for them.
Obstruction
   When Scarborough carried our point of view we were naturally
delighted, more so because the alternatives had been put clearly to
the movement, which had then chosen a vigorous anti-Nato, anti-Tory,
anti-bomb and anti-German rearmament policy.
   Hopes rose as we saw a perspective of sharp struggle based on
consistent lines of difference with the Tories.
   Many members understood that the bread-and-butter struggles of
the union would become easier in the context of a movement advancing
to attack the Tories on the whole front of their policy.
   For we have always felt, even if we have then by our practice
ignored it, the inconsistency between support for the war alliance,
with resulting colossal spending on armaments, and our basic effort to
improve living standards.
   Instead, we saw the Gaitskellites using the position of
organisational dominance established during their years of control of
policy to offend every principle of democratic practice and unity.
   They obstructed every effort to fight for the Scarborough
decisions, while scratching around frantically to overturn them next
time.
Confusion
   Confusion of the original issue by misrepresentation of the
decisions, the introduction of a pseudo third way and the call for
party unity- in effect, a demand that the movement unite with the
Gaitskellites on their policy and no other seems to have done the
trick of moving a number of unions temporarily away from Scarborough
decisions.
   It would become easy to become cynical and to despair. And yet,
wherever the issues were put clearly, sections of the movement
reaffirmed their original stand.
   Only where the issues were posed so as to cause doubt and
confusion were positions lost.
   It is my view that this immediate confusion hides the fact that
the Peace movement is still advancing and that clarification of the
issues can bring a majority to secure the Scarborough decisions.
   Powerful units have stood firm. In unions where the central
issues were confused, clear policy details- as on bases- were
decisively carried.
Peace policy
   This, and the numbers of active workers who are beginning to
understand how and why the trick was done, provides a strong,
immediate basis for a campaign against weak and doubtful positions,
and for a consistent peace policy.
   All recent events show how correct the Scarborough decisions
were.
   The Kennedy Administration's sharpened policies, the speeded-up
drive to improve West Germany's armament, the new attempt to rush
Britain into the European Common Market, and the kite-flying on Spain
present a whole new proof that to abandon Scarborough is to expose
Britain and her working class to sharp new dangers- that Gaitskellism
is bankrupt.
   Ordinary working people will never rally to defend a policy
founded on political chicanery or elect a Labour Government to carry
through Tory policy- Gaitskell's stupid hope.
   The tragedy is that enormous inroads could already have been made
into Tory strength by a fighting policy, based on Scarborough.
ABE MOFFAT
Scottish Miners' leader:
   THE desire for unity in the Labour and trade union movement
following the discussions that have taken place during the past two
years on defence is something that should be recognised by all
concerned.
   At the same time that unity cannot be established on a false
basis, or by creating further confusion within the movement.
   Unity will never be established on the basis of leaders being a
law unto themselves and opposing conference decisions when it suits
their own convenience.
   Unity can never be established by any formula uniting those who
oppose German troops being trained on British soil and Polaris, and
those who are for this policy- which is the same as that of the Tory
Government.
   It is impossible for Labour's new Defence statement to unite the
movement as the Labour leaders are not only in favour of American
bases, but are in favour of German bases and troops being trained on
British soil.
   The new Defence statement, while accepting that Britain cannot
remain an independent nuclear Power, now supports the policy of
depending on American nuclear weapons and the H-bomb, placing Britain
in an even more dangerous position.
   The statement of Padley and Crossman is no different in principle
to the new defence statement. They accept American nuclear bases, and
also the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy until some future
date.
   They deceive the people by their talk of political and collective
control of Nato. The Pentagon has made it perfectly clear who
controls the American H-bomb, and who will actually give the
instructions to press the button for nuclear warfare.
   There is only one way to develop unity and at the same time
defend Britain.
   This was shown at the Scottish Trades Union Congress,
representing 8, organised trade unionists, when it decided by
overwhelming votes, to reaffirm the Scarborough decisions on
unilateral disarmament, and to oppose Polaris and military bases being
installed on the Holy Loch, or any other part of Britain.
Tory menace
   Such a policy would unite the whole movement and lay the basis
for the defeat of the present Tory Government, which has become a real
menace to the British people both in home and foreign policy.
   It is quite evident that the movement will go on record against
the Polaris base and facilities for German bases and military
training.
   This should strengthen the campaign to end the manufacture and
use of nuclear weapons in Britain.
   Britain then could play a leading and independent role for an
international agreement to ban all nuclear strategy and weapons of
mass destruction, and lay the basis for real peace and progress.
Ballyhoo Won't Solve Youth Training
says JOHN MOSS
   WHEN all the ballyhoo about Commonwealth Training Week subsides
it is doubtful whether more than a handful of new apprenticeships will
result.
   This week of window dressing will not prevent most of the hopeful
15-year-olds leaving school in six weeks time from ending up in blind
alley jobs.
   It needs more than 1, church parades and open days at techs,
more than descents into Brighton's sewers or balloon ascents over
Wolverhampton for Britain's technical training to catch up with the
space age.
   The heli-hopping Duke of Edinburgh, opening a few technical
college extensions, will not keep us abreast of the scientific
revolution.
   Out of the 55, young people aged 15-17 starting work in 196
42, (73 per cent) went into unskilled work. The percentage is
expected to swell to 8 next year.
Low wages
   The Duke, possibly speaking from experience, stated: "Most
unskilled jobs are reasonably well-paid and many look attractive."
   But last year's average wage for boys under 21 was +5 4s and
for girls +4 13s. If a minority got as much as the Press says they
do, then those below average must have received a pittance.
   Apprentice wages are below average: a 19-year-old engineering
apprentice may get as little as +5 8s 1d.
   But the Duke is wrong when he implies that young people prefer
unskilled jobs. Countless numbers who want training are denied it.
   One area electricity board in 1958 offered six craft
apprenticeships and received 45 applications, of whom 1 were
considered suitable by the board.
   There were only 17 vacancies for the 58 boys who passed the
Admiralty exams for Rosyth dockyard last year.
   A small number of recently widely publicised apprenticeships
demanded seven passes in G.C.E.
# 23
<51 TEXT B7>
Getting Ready for the Budget
1. Tax Reforms for the 196s
By DAVID HOWELL
<EDITORIAL>
   THERE are two basic points which seem to be a necessary
preface to any sensible discussion of taxation reform.
   The first is that, whether we like it or not, with the increasing
demands of a prosperous society, the revenue required by central and
local government in the coming years is highly unlikely to get any
smaller.
   The assumption of this article is, therefore, that most of the
"natural" increase in the revenue in 1961, due to increased wages,
salaries, consumption and profits, will be needed by the Chancellor.
If he does have +1m. or so to return to the taxpayer then
indication is given as to where his priorities should lie.
   The second point to be made is that tax reform is a very
different thing from putting forward a radical scheme for altering the
whole tax structure.
   Raising the revenue is already a major administrative miracle.
The only proposals for change which can be labelled practical are
those which involve the minimum administrative complications when set
beside the existing structure.
The Objectives
   THIS said, it is nevertheless worthwhile trying to define
some of the long-run objectives towards which tax reformers should
aim. For although progress may be slow, it is no less important to
have a clear idea about the direction in which all tax changes should
go- something noticeably lacking in recent years.
   The objectives might be listed like this:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   1- that the system should be efficient.
   2- that it should be fair as between one taxpayer and
another.
   3- that it should encourage personal saving and the wider
spread of ownership of assets and property.
   4- that it should contain the minimum disincentive to, and
where possible should actively encourage, risk-taking, enterprise,
exports and investment in efficient production methods.
<END INDENTATION>
   It is the last of these four objectives about which we have heard
most in the past year. With a disappointing export performance and a
slow rate of economic expansion many people have been turning to the
taxation system as the source of the trouble, citing individual cases.
Yet strangely enough it is here that there is least evidence that the
present system offends.
   Nevertheless, the grumbles and complaints are too frequent to be
ignored. It is, therefore, with direct taxes on income (income tax
and surtax) and capital (death duties and stamp duty) that we will
begin.
   When talking of our highly progressive system of income tax
we often forget that below +2, the taxpayer is only charged at
progressive rates over a band of +36. Otherwise he (or she) is
either paying no tax at all or the full standard rate. A sensible
first step, therefore, would be to make the ascent to the standard
rate more gentle and less forbidding to the millions who are now
attempting it.
   Further up the scale, where progression starts again with
surtax, one of the most painful transition periods for the
taxpayer is when he has to start writing a surtax cheque instead of
having tax taken off by PAYE.
   There is no obstacle in principle or in administration against
the abolition of the concept of surtax altogether and the continuation
of the income tax scale to the top.
   Even with this change the PAYE deductions at the top end
would still be at a near-confiscatory rate. The real objection to
taking away more than, say, 15s in every pound a man earns, is not
so much that it is unfair or discouraging to the nation's decision
makers, but that the imposition is grossly inefficient.
   Businessmen threatened with these high rates merely spend more
and more time with their accountants seeing how their incomes can be
kept out of this range. The temptations increase to draw benefits in
kind, and sometimes in unnecessary business expenses, rather than
taxable income.
   The cost to the Exchequer of placing a ceiling of 15s in the +
on direct personal taxation would be about +2m. This should be
done.
   Two other important aspects of income taxation worry people. The
first is the tax status of married women. Where the husband and
wife's combined incomes come to less than +2,1 (where surtax for a
married couple without children starts), they have a slight advantage
over single persons. But above this level they are severely
penalised.
   When shortage of labour is one of the main checks on our scope
for increasing output rapidly, the case for making separate
assessments seems particularly strong. The cost to the Exchequer of
separate assessments for surtax (or, as we have redefined it, income
tax above +2,1) on earned income alone, but not on investment
income, would be only +4m. This would still be an encouraging
start.
Capital Gains
   THE second source of concern is the widely-held suspicion
that a number of professional dealers in property and shares pay no
taxes since their "income" is mostly in the form of untaxed capital
gains. It is from this suspicion that the main support for a
capital gains tax comes.
   The trouble with a capital gains tax is that it hits so many
other things as well, including small savings and the smooth working
of the capital market, besides being of low and uncertain yield. It
is generally recognised as a second best to much more radical schemes
for transferring the main burden of taxation from income to
expenditure.
   But the alternative suggestion that the Inland Revenue should
apply its power to levy tax more vigorously against those who earn
"regular" capital gains raises almost insuperable problems of legal
definition.
   Thus a capital gains tax, for all its obvious deficiencies, is
not without its advocates in all parties. There is no need to regard
it for ever as an unmentionable heresy, nor as a general panacea. It
can be discussed on purely empirical grounds.
   This raises the question of capital taxes on the individual. One
of the weaknesses of Conservative government has been its reluctance
to use the tax system as an instrument of policy as its Labour
predecessors did freely. On the contrary, Conservatives have been
content to accept a system which works directly against their declared
objective of more widespread property ownership.
   Estate Duty is a good example. The main victims of Estate
Duty (which yields about +185m.) are not ageing millionaires, who
can easily make provision to avoid paying it, but middle-aged owners
of small family firms, whose death often means the liquidation of the
firm to pay death duties, in spite of the 45 per cent. rebate
allowed on the industrial assets of a business, assessed at market
value. The tax should long since have been replaced by a Legacy
Duty- duty paid on the inheritance received rather than what is left.
   This would actively encourage the spread of property and would
allow small firms to pass into wider family ownership without forcing
them to close down. It is hard to estimate how much loss to the
Revenue the changeover, keeping the same rates, would involve, but a
figure of +3m. has been quoted.
More Incentives
   FURTHER incentives to small savers are also long overdue.
Stamp Duty on share transactions is prohibitively high for the
newcomer with less than +5 to invest and exemptions could be made
for sums under this.
   If the Chancellor really wanted to get more people into the
saving and investing habit he could, without difficulty, go further
and give relief on the first slice of an individual's income from his
investments. For the coming year the cost of these two concessions
should be adjusted to about +5m.
   This still leaves an important area of direct taxation uncovered
company taxation. At present net company profits are taxed at the
standard income tax rate plus a 12 1/2 per cent. profits tax. The
smoothing out of income tax rates, without any special concept of a
"standard rate" or surtax levels, as I have suggested, would mean
that companies would have to be taxed on a separate schedule.
   The obvious candidate to replace the present complicated two-part
system (which includes investment allowance reliefs) would be the
straight corporation tax. This could have the added advantage of
flexibility (it could be varied independently from personal taxes) and
speed, since it could be assessed on a current year basis.
   It does raise certain difficulties with regard to double taxation
of dividends. But these have been successfully overcome abroad.
   In these ways the more painful, inefficient and discouraging
aspects of our taxation system could be modified, at a cost of little
more than the amount which, on the gloomiest view, the Chancellor may
have to spare- just over +1m.
   But little has yet been said about the way in which we might
start shifting some of the burden of tax from income and earning (what
we put into the pool) on to spending (what we take out of it), and
about the main existing indirect tax, purchase tax.
   It seems to me that discussion of changes in this field can be
most usefully combined with a look at local government finance.
Getting Ready for the Budget- =2
Why Not a Local Sales Tax?
DAVID HOWELL
   WHEN the idea of more taxes on spending is canvassed, it is
sometimes overlooked that we already have a kind of sales tax on a
wide range of goods in the form of purchase tax. The estimated yield
from purchase tax in 196-61 is +535m. In addition, the estimated
revenue from customs and excise duty on tobacco, beer and spirits is
+1,229m.
   The other taxes on spending are the oil tax and tariff charges,
which together have an estimated yield of +58m. Thus any
suggestions for a further impost on spending in the form of a sales
tax have to be made with these important taxes firmly in mind.
   Purchase tax, at four rates varying from five to 5 per cent.,
spreads its net so wide that it is almost simpler to list some of the
items not affected. Food and sweets, fuel and light are not taxed;
nor are books, magazines, children's clothes, some kitchen equipment,
sheets and towels.
   No services bear any kind of tax. On the other hand, a wide
range of consumer durables is affected; so are most household goods
and appliances; and so, too, are cosmetics, radios, records,
jewellery, toys, cameras, carpets, wallpaper, most clothes, hats,
gloves and furniture.
   Thus if goods alone are considered, few items are free of a
spending tax of some kind, and those that are include a number of
goods which it is rightly considered undesirable to tax. For these
reasons it is usually argued that the first move towards a sales tax
should be to modify the purchase-tax system into a uniform percentage
rate tax and that this should be extended, if administratively
possible and right in principle to tax.
High and Wide
   Some calculations were done for Lord Amory when he was
Chancellor on this basis and the conclusion was reached that a uniform
sales tax over the widest possible range of goods would have to be
levied at 2 per cent. to yield the same revenue as purchase tax.
   "The widest possible range" chosen could, in fact, have been
wider. Some consumer services, and clothing, furniture and luxury
food items, taxed in other countries, were excluded. Had they not
been a figure of about 17 per cent. might have been reached.
   But this is still impracticably high. Moreover, this would
replace purchase tax alone. If we wished to reduce income tax as
well, the level of a sales tax would have to be well above 2 per
cent.
   The real trouble with this kind of approach, which inevitably
points to a very high rate of tax, is its assumption from the start
that the proposed sales tax has to be a major revenue-raiser for the
central government. Yet in those countries where a sales tax has
worked most successfully, it has been employed as an additional source
of revenue for the local or provincial government.
# 28
<52 TEXT B8>
NOW WHO'S TIPPED FOR No. 1?
by WALTER TERRY
   WITH one mighty spurt, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd has dashed from his
rut and is now in the race for real power within the Conservative
Party.
   In so intensive a contest the most difficult task of all is to
judge one's timing properly. Mr. Lloyd has done this superbly with
his Budget.
   Once he was a non-starter. Today he is running well along the
track towards No. 1 Downing Street.
   But wait a minute- Selwyn Lloyd, the little Liverpool lawyer, as
he was contemptuously described a few years back, as Prime Minister?
Laughable, they used to say. The man could hardly make a decent
speech, fluffing and floundering over a dreary brief.
Dominant
   BUT Mr. Lloyd as Prime Minister is ridiculous no more. The
very thought, I am sure, has struck Mr. R. A. Butler, Home
Secretary and apparently the heir to Downing Street.
   For Mr. Lloyd, old nerves gone and seemingly dominant for the
first time in his political career, has made a tremendous impact on
the Tories of Westminster with his Budget.
   Maybe they don't like some of its detail, specially the payroll
tax. But the key significance is that for the first time in ten years
of power a Tory leader has produced an alternative programme to
Butlerism.
   For years many Conservatives, disgruntled but not quite clear
what they wanted, have been searching for something to match the
liberal, radical-type Toryism that Mr. Butler has inspired.
Unafraid
   DRAMATICALLY, Mr. Lloyd has emerged- a Chancellor willing
to grapple with the economy, unafraid of it. A politician of
endurance (as proved over Suez), able also to produce new ideas that
can excite.
   Mr. Lloyd's timing has been miraculously fortunate. His Budget
has come immediately after a week in which Mr. Butler fared badly.
   Mr. Butler, a humanitarian who dislikes corporal punishment,
was openly flouted by 69 Tories in the biggest Conservative revolt
since the war.
   Next day another 15 disobeyed his advice over the Wedgwood Benn
affair. Result at the weekend: Mr. Butler's stock suffered a
remarkable drop. Then into the limelight stepped Selwyn.
   It is not only Mr. Butler, the deserving candidate for Downing
Street, who is in trouble. So are many other prominent contenders for
the Premiership in the radical sector of the party.
   Mr. Iain Macleod, supremely able but facing frightful
dilemmas as Colonial Secretary, is set back by the revolt, inspired by
Lord Salisbury, against his Africa policies.
   Mr. Reginald Maudling, President of the Board of Trade, is
disappointed. He would like to have been Chancellor. Now he is being
tempted by Beeching-sized offers to leave politics and go into
business.
   Mr. Edward Heath, Lord Privy Seal and Deputy Foreign
Secretary, has not succeeded so far in turning his shadowy role into
substance.
   And Viscount Hailsham, a radical Tory even if he would
dislike being labelled a Left-winger, is down in the dumps of the
whimsically named Ministry for Science.
   Cast a glance along the Right Wing: it is there that success lies
at the moment.
   Lord Home is wielding immense power at the Foreign Office.
Duncan Sandys works quietly as Secretary of State at the
Commonwealth Office; and Mr Henry Brooke, the Minister of
Housing and Local Government is almost ready to take up the promotion
that is his due.
   Over them all is Mr. Macmillan, silent about his own
future. In about 18 months or so he will have to make it clear to the
Conservative Party whether he intends to fight for another term of
office at the next election or make way for a successor.
Adored
   THE Prime Minister has never given the slightest indication
who he considers should follow him in office.
   It has always been presumed to be Mr. Butler. In everything
but title he is Deputy Premier. He holds the reins of power over
party and domestic policy.
   But Mr. Butler's everlasting disadvantage has been the
undercurrent within the party against him. After Suez it rose to the
surface to rob him of the Premiership.
   It still lies waiting (though Mr. Butler has been an able
fellow at winning friends over the years) for a chance to cheat him
again.
   Now Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, sponsoring a Budget that is strictly
Right Wing, adored by Tory constituency parties, and an intimate of
the Prime Minister, is on the scene with just as much power and
authority as Mr. Butler ever had.
Clever
   WHEN you think about it, Mr. Lloyd owes it all to Mr.
Macmillan. As Foreign Secretary he could have been sacked at any
time. Hardly anyone would have wept. Uphill, against current
thinking in the party, he was promoted Chancellor by the Prime
Minister.
   Maybe a scheme is coming to fruition. Can it be that the Prime
Minister has been grooming Selwyn all along for the highest office of
all?
   There are plenty of Tories now who are ready to believe it. The
Prime Minister is not only very clever. He has an uncanny habit of
thinking years ahead of his colleagues.
INTIMATELY REVEALED... FRANCE'S MAN OF THE CENTURY... AND THE HOUR
Yes, his sight is failing but not his vision...
by MAURICE EDELMAN M P
   HAS de Gaulle lost his grip? Is the old chieftain who has
won so many battles and crushed so many revolts now to be eaten by the
young warriors of the tribe?
   I have known de Gaulle for 17 years. I first met him when he
was the young, defiant leader of the Free French, in Algiers on the
eve of his putsch against General Giraud.
   Since that day I have been fascinated by the paradoxical
personality of France's greatest leader.
   Has he the strength left now in 1961 to pull it off again? I
believe he has.
   His power lies in his curious contradictions. He is, for
instance, a professional soldier. And yet, once again, he is called
on to resist the French Army.
   He is a devout Roman Catholic. And yet he is drawing on support
from the anti-clerical left.
   He is often accused of being a dictator. And yet he is today
fighting a battle against militant dictatorship.
HIS INTEGRITY
   THE greater part of the professional Army is ranged against
him. But there is no doubt that the concentrated strength of the
French people is behind him, because of a respect for his integrity
which no French soldier or civilian has commanded in this century.
   Physically, he is a sick man. His sight is failing him; he
suffers from a cataract of both eyes. That is the principal reason
why he never speaks with notes; he couldn't read them if he had them.
   He memorises all his speeches, and when he was in England in 1959
I congratulated him on his memory. He told me that it had always been
good ever since he studied philosophy at the Jesuit College in Paris,
before going to St. Cyr, the French Sandhurst.
   Spectacles could do something for his eyesight, but he won't wear
them because of a pardonable vanity which makes him feel that
spectacles are unsuitable for a man fulfilling the role of
soldier-father of the French people.
   As the family man, the father who each Sunday visits the grave of
his daughter Anne in the medieval church of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises,
he is a figure which the ordinary Frenchman and Frenchwoman
understand.
   That is why even the Communists, who number millions in France,
although officially opposing him during the last referendum which
endorsed his Algerian solution, are in very many cases his secret
backers.
   For the first time since 1945 the Communist, Socialist, and
Catholic trade unions have rallied in agreement. They will provide
the active leadership and civilian resistance to the Algiers mutiny
which the inert mass of the French middle classes- the attentistes
or fence sitters- are unlikely to offer and which de Gaulle is
unlikely to expect them to offer.
   Like most supremely powerful men he believes in his "destiny."
HIS NATURE
   HE sees himself marked out as the saviour of France. And in
the course of his often dangerous and adventurous life he has said
many times that he possesses the "baraka," an Arab word which
means the divine blessing which protects its bearer from evil.
   But this Joan of Arc mentality does not mean that he is lost in
the clouds. It is balanced by an icy, calculating nature, a quality
he learned from his father who was a teacher of philosophy at Lille.
   He has always been predictable, in the sense that once he has
made his position clear all his actions flow logically from that
position. It is certain that he would never yield to the blackmail of
the insubordinate generals.
HIS POLICY
   IT is this strange mixture of mysticism and rational logic
which makes what is perhaps his most powerful contradiction.
   As a mystic (a quality inherited from his mother) he regards
himself as France's predestined deliverer.
   As a rationalist (inherited from his father) he anticipated the
Algiers revolt by rallying the French people behind him, and making
the issue of his Algerian policy a straight one between the
professional soldiers with their vested interest in war and the French
people with their vested interest in peace.
   The last word may well be with the Army- not the clique of
Salan, but the army of conscript soldiers, whose hearts must be with
their families on the mainland of France.
This Clore touch at the Post Office
by JOHN HALL
<EDITORIAL>
   I MIGHT have been listening to Mr. Clore or Mr. Cotton.
   "In cities and towns all over the country, grubby Victorian
buildings sitting on magnificent central sites," the man at the
other side of the desk was saying. "Sites worth millions, asking for
redevelopment, begging for the old buildings to be razed and replaced
with new money-spinners."
   But it wasn't either of the Mr. Cs speaking- or any other
property tycoon.
   It was Mr. Reginald Bevins, the Postmaster-General, and he was
talking about- our post offices, the old ones, the shabby relics of
another age, and the plans he has to give them the Clore-Cotton
treatment.
   "I've had a firm of specialists make a pilot survey and it is
most encouraging. In site after site all over the country there's a
lot of money waiting for us to collect, money we can put to good use
improving our services."
   Property tycoonery in the G.P.O.- what's happening?
   Just this: After years of subservience the G.P.O. has been
liberated from the clutches of the Treasury. It is as free as makes
no matter to "go it alone" as a strictly business concern, and that
is Mr. Bevins' aim.
   From here on we can call it the G.P.O., Ltd., and fall in
with the unofficial title the G.P.O. staff have given Mr.
Bevins.
   To them this 52-year-old ex-elementary schoolboy from Liverpool
is no longer the P.M.G. He is The Chairman. And with his
Guardsman's silhouette and his iron-grey hair, and his quiet, incisive
speech he looks the part too- executive director model.
   I went to see The Chairman to ask him about the new G.P.O.
He told me: "Although we are a State monopoly our aim is to be as
competitive as if we had rivals breathing down our necks."
   He means it. Almost before the Treasury ties had been severed he
sent down the line a directive which comes pretty close to the
customer-is-always-right precept.
Changing
   THE odd telephone operator who snaps at us; the occasional
clerk behind the counter in the Post Office who glares when we fumble
or are not quite sure what we want: The Chairman is after them.
   From June 1, in all except the biggest post offices, there will
be no segregation at the counters: no segregation in the sense that
whether we want stamps, postal orders, or both, we will be able to
march up to any station on the counter and get them from the same
assistant.
   I asked about television- colour television.
# 23
<53 TEXT B9>
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Need to disperse immigrants
   Sir,- While I fully endorse your attitude to the Commonwealth
Immigrants Bill, and am repelled by that section of its supporters who
detergently echo the racialist slogan, ~"Keep Britain White,"
nevertheless I urge that the particular problem of immigrants from any
source crowding into congested areas in London, Birmingham, and
elsewhere must not be evaded.
   This does not at present affect my own constituency of Leyton,
but there are other areas where immigrants can only find lodging under
deplorable circumstances or by acquiring houses that could have been
occupied by those who have been waiting for reasonable accommodation
for many weary years.
   Hospitality is an excellent virtue, but not when the guests have
to sleep in rows in the cellar! No wonder some returning immigrants
have spoken bitterly of the wretched conditions under which they have
been compelled to live, even if they forget that is the plight also of
white brethren.
   Surely, in the interest alike of our indigenous inhabitants and
of immigrants who have made and can make a valuable contribution to
our economic needs, it is imperative to enforce dispersal of newcomers
to less congested areas and substantially to expand house-building.
If this is not done reprehensible racial prejudice will, alas, be
encouraged and mischievously exploited.- Yours etc.,
   R. W. Sorensen.
   House of Commons.
Polarisation of the Labour Party
   Sir,- Nothing could illustrate the polarisation of the Labour
Party more aptly than the behaviour of Mrs Sylvia Brooks, who claims
to be a member of the Hornsey Labour Party and bitterly attacks a
speech I made as a guest speaker in Hornsey the other day. She
attributes to me the words ~"The worst country under socialism is
better than the best country under capitalism," and then claims that
the Labour Party will only flourish when it gets rid of people like
myself who "consider freedom relatively unimportant."
   Fortunately the part of my speech to which she refers was
reported in the "Hornsey Journal" which quotes me correctly as
saying: "The last ten years have proved that the most backward
totalitarian form of socialism is superior to the decadent type of
capitalism we have in the Western world. The only alternative to
communism is democratic socialism with planning and freedom combined.
The issue is whether we can get the people to see this in time."
   Does Mrs Brooks think it really helps the Labour Party that she
should seek to smear me by deliberate and malicious
misrepresentation?- Yours truly,
   R. H. S. Crossman.
   House of Commons.
Anomalies of the wage pause policy
   Sir,- Is not the Government's failure to convince the nation
of the necessity of the wage pause very largely due to its failure to
present a policy with conviction, clarity, and imagination?
   What, for example, is the "plain man" expected to make of the
Prime Minister's recent forecast of a +2 minimum wage for the lowest
paid workers in ten years' time; the undertaking by Lord Robens
shortly afterwards that coal prices would not rise for five years
(broken this very morning); and the Prime Minister's repeated warnings
that the Common Market will demand real competitive pricing of our
products- and all this in the context of a pay "pause"?
   Moreover, the plain man cannot understand how the country's
future can possibly depend upon a pause in the pay claims of the few.
If, as is asserted, the pause is so vital to the country's economy,
why not invite us all to share it? Indeed, why does not the
Government begin with a voluntary 1 per cent cut in the tax-free pay
of MPs, as did the Churchillian Government in the early days of
the war?
   The Government, too, must make up its mind as to whether we need
a stable economy or a fluctuating one, whether the cost of living is
to continue to rise (the promise of a +2 minimum) or whether it
should be stabilised, as it so easily could be.
   Finally, the crux of this matter is surely not wages, but
spending power. The higher income groups and those whose incomes are
derived from sources other than wages are deliberately put outside
this pause; yet it is common knowledge that these groups, as groups,
spend lavishly. For the present Government to ignore this aspect of
the situation is to create its own opposition on a far wider than
party scale, and can only lead to a defeat of its own half-hearted
appeals.- Yours etc.,
   S. J. Streek.
   Holmbridge Vicarage, near Huddersfield.
   
   Sir,- How silly can we get? If the Treasury official really
believes that "money is in the Bank of England" just as jackets and
raincoats are in the Post Office stores, waiting for the end of the
pay pause, he ought to take some lessons in elementary economics.
   Yours etc.,
   Leonard Cohen.
   112 Wythenshawe Road,
   Manchester 23.
BEA services in Scotland
   Sir,- In the "Guardian" of November 24 Lord Douglas is
quoted as saying of the Toothill Committee's report on BEA
services in Scotland that ~"For sheer ingratitude, this report is
hard to beat." He is further reported as saying that the Scottish
service is subsidised by the profitable BEA Continental service,
and that the best place for this section of the Toothill Report is the
waste-paper basket.
   I suspect that the waste-paper basket is Lord Douglas's filing
cabinet for many good ideas which might be presented to BEA. But
is it not the duty of a common carrier system which operates on a
monopoly basis to provide adequate service to all parts of the
country? Or are they only obliged to offer service where profitable
to them? Is it not the nature of the business to offset the losses of
one line with the profits of another? And if Lord Douglas is so
distressed about the loss incurred by the Scottish service, why has
BEA been so reluctant to allow any other airlines an opportunity
to provide service?
   The attitude of BEA towards internal service is reflected in
their London booking office. Vast gleaming counters await the
prospective Continental traveller. The internal passengers need a
native guide and the Gods on their side to find the booking counter
allotted to them. For Lord Douglas's information, Scotland extends
beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow. There is Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, and
the islands. During the summer holiday season or New Year holiday a
passenger can get from London to Edinburgh with only a little
difficulty. But farther North? One has to book at least six weeks in
advance. Put on extra flights? There's another idea for the
waste-paper basket.
   Yours faithfully,
   Mark Murray Threipland.
   Dale House, Halkirk, Caithness.
Deceived by Hitler?
   Sir,- Mr R. H. S. Crossman proclaims, in his article in
Monday's issue of the "Guardian": "The white-washing of
Chamberlain is completed by the claim that he was never deceived by
Hitler and never believed in the possibility of a general peace
settlement with him."
   On Tuesday, March 23, 1942, the Joint Consultation Board of
Standard Telephone and Cables held its fourth ordinary meeting.
According to the minutes of that meeting, the visitor was
Air-Commodore H. Leedham, who, in the course of his talk, said that
Chamberlain, on his return from Munich, requested that 2 RDF
stations be established around the coast before the next April.
   It would seem, therefore, that Chamberlain did not trust Hitler;
if he did he would have been most unlikely to request the
establishment of those stations.- Yours faithfully,
   Paul D. C. Hudson.
   Exeter.
A Radical alliance
   Sir,- May I, as an active Liberal in my own constituency,
sympathise most warmly with Mr R. A. Buchanan's plea for a
Liberal-Labour election arrangement. In spite of post-Moss Side,
post-Oswestry, and cosy Liberal optimism it will be some years yet
before the Liberal Party can form a Government, while it is obvious
that the unique event of a Labour majority in the Commons is unlikely
to be repeated.
   But what we need is not a Lib.-Lab. pact but a new party; not
coalition but coalescence. Is it too much to hope that the Radicals,
now sprinkled in all three parties, may one day be united and that the
Liberal Party may find itself the anchor of a new radical alliance?-
Yours sincerely,
   J. Mackay Cousins, Political Secretary Brentford and Chiswick
Young Liberals.
   33 Mayfield Avenue, Chiswick, London
   W 4.
Letters to the Editor
The bill for drugs
   Sir,- If Mr. Corina wishes to make two mutually exclusive
propositions he will be well advised not to publish them in the same
journal in the same month. On November 9 he states: "Since price
restraint became operative the industry has won success in export
markets." This must mean that he believes that the advent of price
restraint in 1957 (the Voluntary Price Regulation Scheme) resulted in
substantially increased drug exports after 1957. But in his letter
twelve days later he states: "In the period 1957-59 the volume of
exports fell by 1.2 per cent." At least one of the propositions
must be incorrect.
   Mr. Corina says that the Hinchliffe Report "showed quite
clearly" that between 1949-5 and 1959-6 the total cost of the
Health Service rose by 8 per cent. I am unable to find this
reference in the report- which is hardly surprising as it was
published in 1959 and its latest reference to costs is in the
financial year 1957-58. What the Hinchliffe Report does say on page
27, paragraph 63, is: "These figures do not support the general
belief that the cost of the pharmaceutical service is increasing at a
much faster rate than that of other branches of the National Health
Service or that it is absorbing an increasing share in the total cost
of the Service."
   If the rise in the drug bill is "phenomenal" the rise in the
total Health Service bill must also be phenomenal, as both have gone
up at much the same rate. However, in his recent book, "Health
through Choice," Dr. D. S. Lees, Senior Lecturer in Economics
at the University College of North Staffordshire states: "Between
1949-5 and 1959-6... health expenditure fell as a proportion of
social service expenditure from 28 per cent to 23 per cent, and as a
proportion of gross national product from 4 per cent to 3.9 per cent.
Far from being extravagant, expenditure on NHS has been less
than consumers would probably have chosen to spend in a free
market." It therefore comes as no shock to read Dr. Lees's
conclusion on the drug bill: "It would seem that much of the furore
over drug costs has been misplaced."- Yours faithfully,
   Ronald C. Clark, Director
   Smith Kline and French
   Laboratories, Ltd.
   Welwyn Garden City.
Diplomacy and trade
   Sir,- During extensive travelling in many parts of the world
seeking export trade, I have often criticised the lack of facilities
accorded to business men by some British embassies and our official
commercial representatives in foreign capitals.
   For a change I would like to pay tribute to our embassies in
Spain and Portugal for providing examples of just what can be done to
foster British trade. I held receptions for leading figures in the
motor industries in Spain and Portugal, and in both Madrid and Lisbon
my efforts to promote new trade were actively supported by the British
Ambassadors, who not only saw to it that my visits were widely known
but personally came to the receptions and introduced me to useful
contacts.
   In Spain, in particular, where 3 people attended a reception,
there was official British representation at all levels, and I was
immensely encouraged by the splendid effort made, particularly by our
own British information service. Indeed the joint effort between
embassy personnel and first-rate Spanish agents demonstrated to me for
the first time in my long experience just what 1 per cent
co-ordination can achieve. Surely what can be accomplished in Spain
can be done by our embassies all over the world.- Yours faithfully,
   Baron Rolf Beck, Chairman
   Slip Group of Companies.
# 24
<54 TEXT B1>
Letters to the Editor
Directors' Rewards
   Sir,- Mr. Aucott (August 21) implies that all expenses
incurred by directors on behalf of their companies should be disclosed
to shareholders.
   The law on this subject is perfectly equitable: if the expenses
in question are disallowed by the Inspector of Taxes- in other words,
they were not "wholly exclusively and necessarily" incurred- then
quite properly they are shown in the accounts under "Directors'
Emoluments." Where, however, such expenses were "wholly
exclusively and necessarily" incurred they were plainly not
remuneration in the hands of the directors and cannot therefore be
shown as such in the accounts.
   Mr. Aucott is not, I hope, suggesting that the standards of
honesty in British companies today are such as to require that every
penny spent by a director in performing his duties should be declared
to the shareholders.
   J. F. STADDON,
   Secretary,
   Institute of Directors.
   1, Belgrave Square, S.W.1.
Exports on a Plateau
   Sir,- I feel that the letter from Mr. E. J. Bunbury,
August 22, cannot go unanswered. To begin with, Mr. Bunbury assumes
that the Chancellor's measures are sensible and correct and are likely
to achieve the objects desired.
   It has been repeatedly pointed out that the Chancellor's measures
to restrict sales in the home market in order to increase exports are
quite mistaken and are having the opposite result. There is already
ample statistical evidence available to prove this is the case.
   It is not correct to say that none of the Chancellor's critics
have put forward a practical alternative. Perhaps you would allow me
to state the alternative which a considerable number of people believe
infinitely preferable to the present patchwork and uneffective
measures.
   The Chancellor must take steps to curtail inessential exports.
It is perfectly ridiculous in the present serious situation to allow
people to fritter away hard-earned foreign exchange on the purchase of
rubbish and things we could perfectly well do without. The most
effective way to achieve this would be to revive the control of
availability of foreign exchange. Indeed, the Chancellor is already
doing this, but unfortunately, because he will not face up to the true
issues involved, he is tackling it at the wrong end. He is cutting
off availability of foreign exchange to people who would use it to
create an overseas investment which would ultimately yield a return
instead of cutting it off to people who would merely waste it in
buying a lot of rubbish.
   N. F. T. SAUNDERS,
   Managing Director,
   Kelvinator.
   New Chester Road,
   Bromborough,
   Cheshire.
Butter Dumping
   Sir,- I was interested to read the article by your Commercial
Editor on butter (August 21). I ought not to have to express my
ignorance to such a degree, but I find it very difficult to understand
how it is possible for another country to invoke anti-dumping
legislation inside the U.K. Surely the three sections primarily
concerned are the citizens of this country in their dual capacity of
taxpayers and consumers, together with our own farmers?
   The point I really wish to make, though with great sympathy for
both Denmark and New Zealand, is that anti-dumping legislation is
primarily designed to protect a country's home industry, and it would
be setting a most undesirable precedent if rival exporting countries
and companies are permitted to apply for discriminatory action in
their mutual overseas markets. Should we join the Common Market, it
is appreciated that dumping will be prohibited between members, but
this is quite a different problem from that now raised by Denmark and
New Zealand.
   M. C. BENTALL.
   East Falinge, Bent Meadows,
   Rochdale.
Potato Acreage
   Sir,- Mr. Merricks writes (August 21) as a Special Member of
the Potato Marketing Board, and in that capacity he is well aware of
the reasons why it is necessary to have quota restrictions on the
planning of potatoes. To have violent fluctuations in the acreage,
and consequently in prices, serves the interest neither of producers
nor consumers, as was well shown in the years before the Board was set
up.
   Of course it is not possible for the Board, by its quota
prescriptions, to plan for an exact acreage. There are too many
factors which affect farmers' own intentions for any quota laid down
by a Board, or by any other body, to do more than influence the
position. But the Board would surely be failing to carry out its
responsibilities if it did not exercise the powers conferred on it by
the Potato Marketing Scheme to assist growers to plan their production
from year to year at a level normally adequate to meet the consumers'
needs at reasonable prices.
   Mr. Merricks is also aware that +1m. a year from the
increased contributions would go to meet the Board's share of the
proposed market support fund and would attract twice that sum from the
Government. It would therefore get back to the producer in the form
of higher prices for his crop in surplus years and should thus
encourage greater stability in acreage and prices as between one year
and another. It is difficult to see how amendments to the Scheme
which produced this result could be described as "harmful."
   J. E. PICCAVER,
   Chairman,
   Basic Acreage Committee,
   Potato Marketing Board.
   Norfolk House Farm,
   Gedney Marsh, Spalding.
Building Bricks
   Sir,- In reply to the article in THE FINANCIAL TIMES of
August 3 re building bricks, the Scottish brick works have about
4m. composition bricks in stock, made without the help of foreign
labour, and could produce more if need be.
   There is a freight opening for British Railways, 12m. tons, if
the price were right.
   Composition bricks are imported from Belgium and distributed to
various parts of England cheaper than the freight charge from Scotland
to the south.
   G. R. NICOLL.
   35, Glenview Avenue,
   Banknock, by Bonnybridge.
Letters to the Editor
The Airlines
   Sir,- With reference to your leading article of August 23, the
causes of airline troubles are surely simple to diagnose. In the long
haul category the operating cost of the U.S. big jets of just
under 2 cents per seat mile is no improvement on existing types. It
is not, therefore, possible to lower fares appreciably and so widen
the market with these aircraft.
   Basically the same trouble also applies to regional operations
with the additional difficulty that the sectors are so short that the
aircraft cannot get down anywhere near to the best point on the
range-cost graph. These airlines have ordered aircraft which only get
down to the best position at 1, miles and in many cases the
airlines do not have a single European sector approaching this. At
3-4 miles it is off the graph at the bottom end resulting in costs
of 3, 4 and 5 cents a seat mile. If the turbine engine and propeller
had been configured differently, cost of 1.5 cents would have been
realised, perhaps 1.2 with prospects of 1 cent on the horizon.
   So airlines have only themselves to blame if air does not secure
a bigger part of the apparently static common carrier market due in
turn to the growth of private carriers. Airlines must surely get back
to the principles of careful husbandry, and demand economic
progression in the new vehicles they order.
   R. G. WORCESTER.
   66, Sloane Street, S.W1.
Economies in Drugs
   Sir,- In the outpatient departments of many hospitals, the
habit survives of prescribing small quantities of drugs, bandages,
etc., which have to be collected at the hospital dispensary.
Frequently, the charge for these prescriptions is considerably higher
than the cost at which they can be bought at the chemists. In
addition, patients have often to wait a long time, up to two hours,
for the dispenser to prepare the prescription.
   Issuing such small prescriptions, which of course were originally
free, in the hospital might have made sense when outpatients were
presumably paupers to whom a saving of a few pence was material, and
to whom time was of little value. To-day, the N.H.S., the
over-worked dispenser and last but not least the patient, who may lose
wages while waiting, would be better off if the latter were simply
instructed to obtain small quantities of simple supplies at the
chemists. It is, of course, not suggested that this method should be
applied to complicated special prescriptions on which the effort of
the hospital dispensary freed from petty orders could be concentrated.
   HANS A. BLUM.
   7, Holders Hill Avenue,
   N.W.4.
Cost of H.P.
   Sir,- I presume that Mr. G. H. Woolveridge's letter
(August 23) is written in his official capacity, and it is for this
reason that I do not think it should be allowed to pass without
comment.
   Firstly, what does it cost a motor trader to assist in filling up
an H.P. form and posting it? Bearing in mind the profit he is
making on the sale of the car I would have thought that he would be
delighted to do the work for nothing, especially as he would be unable
to sell the car if the finance was not forthcoming. Secondly, the 1
per cent. he receives is excessive.
   Thirdly, if business is on recourse, in what way does the finance
house share the risk?
   Fourthly, in my opinion H.P. charges have gone up by 1 1/2
per cent. flat even though commission has gone down.
   Fifthly, can Mr. Woolveridge publish the rebate scales used by
F.H.A. members and state that they adhere to them? I doubt it.
At least one F.H.A. member charges many +s extra for early
settlement where no new business arises, and it is simply not true to
say that finance houses would lose money if they gave a bigger rebate
in such cases.
   Sixthly, his penultimate paragraph suggests that banks when
offering personal loans have no paper work, no collecting and
recording of monthly instalments and do not have to make provision for
bad debts or make enquiries about the integrity and standing of their
customers.
   J. E. FOSTER.
   26, Boyle Avenue,
   Stanmore.
Polythene Bags
   Sir,- The rapid increase in the use of thin polythene film has
added another "home hazard" against which precautions should be
taken, in order to avoid accidents as a result of misuse of the
material. This applies particularly to children, in that they can
become suffocated if polythene bags are placed over their heads.
   This Association through its Polythene Product Committee has
collaborated with the Ministry of Health and the Royal Society for the
Prevention of Accidents, in order to determine methods of publicising
both the dangers and the recommended preventive measures.
   Polythene film has certain characteristics which make it an
excellent packaging material for a wide variety of applications. In
many forms, such as small bags, there is no need for any particular
precautions, but with larger bags and sheets, and in particular where
film is used as a cover for mattresses and pillows, the material
should not be left on the articles when they are in use. It is
realised that such bags, and also those used for the packaging of a
large number of garments, are useful in the home. If, therefore,
these bags are retained, in order to use them from time to time for
storage purposes, they should be kept out of the reach of children.
If, however, they are not required for storage purposes, it is the
recommendation of the film manufacturers, and the above mentioned
bodies, that they should be disposed of immediately out of the way of
children.
   A. R. THOM,
   Chairman,
   Packaging Films Manufacturers' Association.
   P.O. Box 121,
   31, Glossop Road,
   Sheffield 1.
Exports of Capital
   Sir,- It is evident that the succour provided by the
I.M.F. merely cancels some of our short-term liabilities to
foreign countries, transfers them to the I.M.F., but
correspondingly reduces the possibility of gold losses from British
reserves. Let us have no illusions about this "Monte de
Pieta," and hope that the cold storage period will be long enough.
For the future, it is important that any move on the part of British
industry to establish factories in hard currency countries as a result
of the impetus set in motion by entry into the Common Market should
not constitute a further drain on reserves.
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THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH
   Sir,- We are much indebted to The Times for publishing
yesterday, in full, the broadcast of the President of the United
States to his people- and to the world- an account of his recent
visit to Europe.
   This address, and the President's Inaugural Speech, has brought a
voice and an authority to the councils of the Free World- and outside
it- that speaks in frank, clear, and unambiguous terms, enabling
those who hear and read to appreciate the dangers and the immense
issues involved. His language, more than that of any other, reminds
me of the great utterances of Sir Winston Churchill during- and
immediately after- the war.
   Your obedient servant,
   HENRY MORRIS-JONES.
   Bryn Dyfnog, Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, North Wales, June 9.
REPEATED INTERFERENCE
   Sir,- Mr. Kelf-Cohen, in his letter to you published on June
6, criticizes the emergency resolution passed by the Transport
Salaried Staffs' Association's annual conference in regard to the
interference of the Government in the running of the undertakings of
the British Transport Commission. That resolution pointed out that
the present attitude of the Government precluded the possibility of an
integrated and coordinated transport system, which conference believed
to be essential to the economy of the country. In abandoning the
policy of integration, the Government had made it impossible for the
commission to pay its way.
   In speaking to the resolution I quoted from the leading article
in The Times in connexion with the Government's proposals, which
article stated that: ~"Disintegration is being carried too far. In
many respects there will be less integration than there was in the
193s." The article added: "The plan will put the railways in the
position of splendid isolation, except for pipelines, which is
commercially unrealistic. The railway boards should be put in a
reasonable position to provide interlinked and complementary
transport."
   In spite of this "commercially unrealistic" position, Mr.
Kelf-Cohen alleges that each member of my association receives +4 per
week in subsidy from the taxpayer, and apparently he has arrived at
this figure by dividing the total B.T.C. deficit by the number of
employees, and then debiting the whole of the deficit (including the
sums paid for interest and other commodities) against the employees.
The payment of proper remuneration is generally regarded as the
first charge on an industry: Mr. Kelf-Cohen appears to regard it
as the last charge.
   Mr. Kelf-Cohen asks if the members of the association are now
prepared to give up +4 per week, but does he know what he is really
asking? A junior clerk of 16 receives +23 6per annum: does
Mr. Kelf-Cohen expect him to work for him for +22 6per annum,
or a young man to return from the forces at the age of 2 and work for
him for +162 6per annum (+37-+28)?
   It should be remembered that until the implementation of the
Guillebaud Report, under which railway rates of pay were based on the
principle of "comparability" with those of comparable employees in
other employments, railwaymen had worked for considerably debased
rates of pay, and it was they who had been providing the subsidy
necessary for the running of the railways which are necessary to the
economy of the country.
   Yours faithfully,
   W. J. P. WEBBER, General Secretary,
   Transport Salaried Staffs' Association of Great Britain and
Ireland. Walkden House, 1 Melton Street, N.W.1.
OPENING PAIRS
   Sir,- In 197 at Westminster, Charterhouse made a first wicket
stand of just over 4. M. H. C. Doll, 294 not out, and R. L.
L. Bradell about 14 not out. There were only six or eight extras.
   Yours truly,
   R. R. TRALL.
   Ridgeway House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.
MATHEMATICS
   Sir,- Several of your correspondents on this subject have put
forward the view that, over the passing years, there has been a
gradual increase in difficulty in university honours courses in
mathematics, and that their content is now less suitable for intending
schoolteachers than formerly. I believe these views to be incorrect.
   It is true that there have been considerable changes over the
years in the character of the mathematics taught in British
universities, but this is to be expected of any living subject. The
main change has been a move away from the mathematical "jugglery"
referred to by one of your correspondents to a more logical study of
mathematical structures and ideas. The type of honours examination
question at present set is in fact easier, in that it demands less in
the way of memory and manipulative technique than the type of question
common 5 years ago. One would like to claim also that present-day
examination questions demand more in the way of understanding, but
this high ideal is not always attained.
   Because of the use of special terminologies, the newer
mathematical subjects may be meaningless to teachers in the schools
(or even to some university mathematicians), but this does not
necessarily make them harder for the student. The present-day student
tackles with ease questions on abstract algebra or topology, for
example, but finds difficulty with questions on older disciplines such
as elliptic functions and spherical harmonies. None of these
subjects, old or new, has any direct application in the school
curriculum. Nevertheless, many of the newer subjects are likely to be
of more use to the intending school teacher than the older ones; this
is especially true of abstract algebra and set theory, which should
help to clarify his understanding of elementary mathematical and
logical processes and in this way should improve his skill as a
teacher.
   In conclusion, although I believe that university courses have
benefited, and that students' lives have been made easier, by the
reduction in the demands on manipulative "jugglery", the pendulum
should not be allowed to swing too far in the opposite direction.
There are certain basic mathematical techniques and methods which
should not be omitted from university courses, but which should form
part of the equipment of every mathematician.
   Yours faithfully,
   R. A. RANKIN.
   Department of Mathematics, The University, Glasgow.
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
NOT AT EXPENSE OF COMMONWEALTH
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES
   Sir,- We, the undersigned, while fully realizing the need for
the closest possible cooperation with all European countries, would
deplore any step that prevented closer economic cooperation with the
Commonwealth.
   We therefore hope that the Government will refrain from either
signing the Rome Treaty or associating themselves with the Common
Market until arrangements have been made to ensure that the
Commonwealth does not suffer thereby.
   Yours, &c.,
   JOHN DUGDALE, ROBIN TURTON, ARTHUR CREECH JONES, ROBERT
GRIMSTON, E. SHINWELL, JOHN BARLOW, H. A. MARQUAND, BEVERLEY
BAXTER, ARTHUR HENDERSON, RONALD RUSSELL, DOUGLAS JAY, PATRICK WALL,
BARBARA CASTLE, JOHN HOLLINGWORTH, JOHN MENDELSON, PETER WALKER.
   House of Commons.
STATEMENT ON KENYA
   Sir,- Lord Salisbury in his letter to you does not very
clearly define either whether he knows what the Secretary of State for
the Colonies actually meant when he said of Kenya: ~"I am sure that
the right thing to do is to study the position and to take
constitutional advance at the pace that is appropriate to the economic
circumstances of the country", nor does Lord Salisbury say what he
himself thinks Mr. Macleod should have meant by these words.
   Having just paid a visit to Kenya and having met and talked with
a cross-section of opinion there it is my firm conviction that the
economic and political stability of Kenya can best be safeguarded by
(1) releasing Mr. Kenyatta as soon as possible in the hope that this
will strengthen the Government now in office and lead to a settling of
present African unrest and (2) going forward to independence phased
towards the end of 1962 or the beginning of 1963. With this, I am
quite satisfied, White opinion in the great majority agrees.
   To give independence overnight too quickly would be a disservice
to Kenya in general and to the future stability of the African
administration in particular.
   On the other hand to wait too long cannot serve the economic or
political well-being of the country. It cannot help the White
population in Kenya and they accept this; and it will not enable the
African political leaders to control their followers.
   Mr. Macleod has a difficult decision to make on timing. In the
interests of Kenya political leaders in Kenya, both British and
African, and political representatives in both Houses of Parliament at
Westminster should not read into his words more than there is. The
words seemed to me to express an open mind for future negotiations.
If all parties in Kenya can have such a mind then all will be well
and there will be a great future for the country in which European and
African will play a part.
   Yours sincerely,
   K. LEWIS.
   House of Commons, June 8.
   
   Sir,- Lord Salisbury, in his letter on June 8, wisely draws our
attention to the statement by the Secretary of State for the Colonies
on constitutional advance in Kenya. He finds satisfaction in the
apparent willingness of Mr. Macleod to tie constitutional advance to
the economic circumstances in Kenya.
   The statement was no doubt not intended as a comprehensive
pronouncement on the conditions in which constitutional advance might
take place. Having said that, it must be made clear to every
interested person that the economic situation cannot, and must not, be
used as a brake on constitutional progress. The deteriorating
economic situation, serious as it is, is the result of political and
constitutional uncertainty, among other factors. The economic
condition of Kenya cannot finally recover until further constitutional
advance takes place; that is, until a responsible government with an
African Prime Minister and an African majority in the Council of
Ministers, with popular support, is in effective leadership of the
country.
   We shall fail seriously again if we do not take note of the fact
that the majority of people in the country want political advancement
first and economic progress second. There are great issues to be
settled before full independence can come, and here "the needs of all
the races" must be faithfully considered. But his Excellency the
Governor was surely right in his speech at the opening of the present
session of the Legislative Council, when he clearly hinted that with
the encouraging formation of a Government under the Lancaster House
constitution, further steps in constitutional development are now
possible and probable.
   Yours truly,
   R. ELLIOTT KENDALL, Head of the Methodist Church in Kenya.
   1, Ravine Road, Boscombe, Hampshire.
HOSPITAL DISPENSING
   Sir,- In providing information for your Special Correspondent
for his article on the shortage of hospital pharmacists in today's
edition of The Times I discussed many aspects of the problem.
   I am disturbed to find that some remarks of mine are liable to be
misinterpreted and could be taken to refer in a derogatory fashion to
the ability of retail pharmacists to interpret correctly the
prescriptions written by hospital doctors. This was never my
intention and such an interpretation is possible because my remarks
were of necessity condensed.
   What I intended to imply was that doctors often prefer not to be
used solely in a consultative capacity in recommending treatment for
patients to their general practitioners because they prefer to
prescribe such treatment themselves, to know that it has been supplied
and then to follow up their patients by seeing them again. This
situation can be realized by the use of E.C.1(H.P.) forms
written by hospital doctors and dispensed by retail pharmacists. It
falls down, however, when the patients fail to take their
prescriptions to the chemists and this does sometimes happen.
   Yours faithfully,
   G. BRYAN, Chief Pharmacist.
   The Middlesex Hospital, W.1, June 5.
SPAIN
   Sir,- May I, as one of the younger generation to whom Sir
Thomas Moore on June 7 addressed a lesson in Spanish history, be
permitted to comment on some of the points he raised?
   Sir Thomas's history is clearly partial. He claims that in
1938-39 Spain was in convulsion and that Franco created order from
this chaos. But how did the chaos arise?
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Overtones of Crisis
   WHATEVER magician's wand of economic recovery the CHANCELLOR
may flourish in the next few days, it is impossible not to feel that
the Government has come rather ill out of the preliminary skirmishes.
   July is a traditional month for economic crises, and the
beginning of the period of seasonal weakness for sterling. In 1955,
1957 and 1961 it has also been the month in which the Government has
chosen to create a national sense of economic anxiety. In fact, this
time the recognition of the crisis comes surprisingly late, for
Britain's trading position deteriorated sharply last year, and is now
getting slightly better rather than worse.
   The Government's propaganda may indeed have over-reached itself.
Undoubtedly the CHANCELLOR'S speeches, and the PRIME MINISTER'S blunt
warnings to the 1922 Committee, were intended to prepare the nation
and the Conservative Party for strong measures to put the economy
right. These warnings, however, have run too far ahead of action.
After so long a period of uncertainty we are left with a sense more
of emergency than of urgency.
   Nor has this helped the national confidence. There is a growing
feeling that the economic crisis is only a symptom of a profounder
failure to find Britain's proper international position in the
post-war world. The delay in working out the new economic policies,
and in deciding on our European policy, has left an impression that
the Government does not itself know what to do.
   Certainly there has been a lack of that sort of leadership which
inspires national unity. Current bickering about the surtax
concessions in the Budget evades the point. The Government is not to
be blamed for wanting a more dynamic economy with higher incentives,
but it has failed to explain to the nation any consistent and
practical policy to achieve expansion, and it has therefore failed to
carry the nation along with it.
   The economic measures which are going to be introduced will need
to be tough, and must be judged primarily by their effectiveness; but
it is also very important that they should be fair. The mixture of
slow economic growth with financial "get rich quick" in recent
years has been wholly bad in its social effects. The sacrifices that
are now to be called for must be carried by the whole country and not
by any one section of it.
   The general public, and the trade unions, will be the more
willing to accept the need for restraint, for earning first and buying
later, if they can see a clear objective which sacrifices will help to
achieve, and if those sacrifices fall as heavily on the private sector
as on the workers.
Liking Yuri
   THE wave of goodwill that has accompanied Major Yuri Gagarin
has been remarkable, not least for its apparent detachment from
conventional Anglo-Soviet attitudes. After all, he arrived here hard
on the heels of Mr. Khrushchev's declaration that Russia must spend
substantially more on arms because the West was doing so, and of an
impressive and well-publicised display of Soviet air-power. These
were not ideal heralds.
   Nor is his undoubted success entirely accountable in terms of his
personal charm, great though that is, nor of the presence of the
Russian Trade Fair.
   What in fact Major Gagarin seems to have done is to have shown us
how much we want to like the Russians, in a spirit of genuine
neighbourliness.
   This, and the fact that British visitors to Russia usually find a
reciprocal warmth of welcome there, is surely a portent worth noting
by the political leaders on both sides.
'Giant' of the Left
   MR. FRANK COUSINS'S success in maintaining the support of
his Transport and General Workers' Union for the lost-cause campaign
of unilateralism is a personal triumph, though it is fortunately
unlikely to affect Mr. Gaitskell's new firm control of his party.
   But the Brighton conference at which he won a 3 to 1 victory is
important for other reasons. The extent of the personality cult which
has sprung up around Mr. Cousins astonished many observers. The
nadir came after the disarmament vote, when his principal opponent
unblushingly declared: "I feel like a dwarf in the shadow of a great
man."
   The big stick of the T.G.W.U., with its 1,25,
well-disciplined members, is now held firmly in the Left hand of Mr.
Cousins. In the days of his distinguished predecessors, Ernest Bevin
and Arthur Deakin, the union was always inclined to the Right. It
seems that T.G.W.U. politics depend upon the personal views of
the man who heads its permanent machine. The majority trot
comfortably in the wake of the reigning "giant."
   It is a disturbing view of democracy.
South Bank Puzzles
   THE non-party enterprise of the London County Council in
stimulating at least the possibility of action over the National
Theatre is wholly commendable. But it is clear from the latest
proposals that the problems involved have not been adequately thought
out; when the Council meets on Tuesday to consider the report of its
General Purposes Committee it will be faced with the raw material for
many hours' debate.
   The suggestion that Sadler's Wells opera should join the National
Theatre on the South Bank entirely changes the whole picture. In a
statement to THE SUNDAY TIMES yesterday, reported elsewhere, Sir Isaac
Hayward said that it may be necessary to think of three auditoriums.
There is no question of "may": such an extension will be quite
essential if the National Theatre is not to be reduced to a travesty
of what it should be.
   In any case the whole building will have to be redesigned.
Perhaps this is no bad thing, for the existing plans are already
twelve years old. If the new proposals are accepted, the design of
the new building should be put up to open competition- and a building
might emerge at last of which Britain could be proud.
   The Council might also think it wise to ask the Chancellor for a
clarification of his statement that his subsidy would be limited to
+4,: a statement that seems to take no account of the fact that
the new building cannot in any case be ready for at least three years,
nor allows for possible changes in the value of money.
1,th Refugee
   BRITAIN received last week her 1,th refugee under the
scheme initiated by World Refugee Year in June, 1959. Of all the
refugees resettled since the first humanitarian impulse of the Year,
we have taken in almost one-third; more than any country in the world.
Most have come from the "hard core" of physically or socially
handicapped families rejected by almost every other State.
   Public response did not drop after the end of the Year, and
places have already been found for the 1 or so refugees who are
still to come before the limit set by the Government is reached. But
what then? There are still 8, unsettled refugees in Europe.
   Britain can be proud of the new impetus she has helped to give to
this essential task, but where many have shown charity, there have
also been apathy and intolerance. No doubt some refugee families have
shown ingratitude; have spurned the houses provided for them, or even
returned to their camps. But we cannot deny responsibility for the
mental as well as the physical condition of those left rootless for
sixteen years by a warring world. Until the last refugee is resettled
our obligations must remain.
Tell the Patient
   MOST doctors will agree with the Minister of Health that
"the patient and all concerned with him have the right to be treated
as intelligent persons." Most will say that they do tell the
patient all he should know about his condition. But, of course, they
will invariably add, when pressed, that there are others who are not
so forthcoming, so frank or thoughtful.
   What Mr. Powell calls, in modern jargon, the failure of
communication is a fact of the medical service, particularly in
hospitals, that is not the fault of any small minority. It has
persisted into these frank-speaking days as a result of a professional
attitude, fostered and inculcated from one generation to the other as
a kind of mystique- or as a safeguard against being proved wrong.
   It is usually justified on the grounds that "a little
knowledge" can be harmful. But, as the Minister says "the failure
to speak two sentences can cause deep antagonism." Training in
communication should perhaps be included in the medical student's
curriculum.
A Call to Unity
   THE British are a realistic people who do not always choose
to face reality. At present they are trying to avoid facing not one
but a number of crises with an almost desperate complacency. For a
few days, a nine-day wonder, it seemed that the economic crisis was
really penetrating the national consciousness. But by the end of last
week people were waiting for Tuesday with all their usual tepid
equanimity; even the Stock Exchange was edging upwards.
   Yet at least the economic crisis made some impact. That was more
than could be said of the impending decision on the Common Market, and
certainly more than of the crisis of Berlin. The decision to be made
on joining Europe is possibly the most important Britain has had to
make since the war; yet no one could claim that the public debate has
been on a high level. So great is the apathy that the Government
could probably go in or stay out without vitally offending either its
own followers or the country.
   The national awareness on Berlin is even more unawakened. This
is the gravest of the three crises, one on which the issue of peace or
war could turn. The British Government has from the beginning sought
a negotiated settlement, but has always accepted the basic decision
that the people of West Berlin cannot be abandoned. Yet the national
attitude seems almost to be that Berlin is not to be allowed to
interfere with the summer holidays.
   This complacency is a poor basis for policy; and a poor
substitute for that sense of moral purpose for which the PRIME
MINISTER and the CHANCELLOR have appealed.
   The economy, Berlin, the Common Market- here are three issues
whose gravity has during the past few days led to regretful sighings
over the impracticability of a National Government. The British
system has never taken kindly to government by Coalition, which is
certainly not the answer now; but almost as disturbing as the national
complacency is the apparent lack of any real sense of national unity.
Party Views Not Far Apart
   YET even in the economic field, where the division is widest,
and where the Labour Party can most reasonably expect to reap
political credit, the judgment and sentiment of the party leaders are
not all that far apart. Mr. GAITSKELL'S speech last Tuesday was a
constructive and sensible contribution to the economic debate. On
Europe it seems almost certain that Mr. GAITSKELL would find himself
moving along the present line of policy if he were Prime Minister.
(He would be foolish to risk splitting his party in Opposition;
Governments have to make unpleasant choices, Oppositions can avoid
them.) On Berlin again the responsible Labour Party view and the
Conservative view are so close as to be indistinguishable.
   There is therefore a genuine basis for unity, and many people in
the country would like that unity to be made apparent, for a
bi-partisan policy would undoubtedly strengthen British influence for
peace- an influence more necessary now than it has been for years.
At present the obstacles to a bi-partisan policy, at any rate over
Berlin, are partly personal- Mr. MACMILLAN and Mr. GAITSKELL have
never fought side by side as Lord ATTLEE and Sir WINSTON CHURCHILL did
in wartime. These differences need to be reconsidered.
   Yet the greater weakness is perhaps the failure to waken the
British people. When great issues are shirked, little differences are
given more than their proper weight. The call to national unity and
the call for national leadership perhaps come in the end to much the
same thing.
# 217
<57 TEXT B13>
Keep off the brink!
   WHAT exactly are the Americans up to? Have they actually
calculated all the consequences of what they are doing with their
tanks and planes in Berlin?
   If so, what is the point of it all? Will these American moves
really strike the world as a sign of strength- or as a gesture of
weakness and frustration?
   It is true that there is cause for frustration. With their
nuclear tests the Russians are behaving like lunatic children.
   But that is no reason for the West to try being even more lunatic
and childish.
   It is no reason for a policy of daring brinkmanship.
   A single shell fired accidentally in Berlin by some unthinking
youth from Texas or the Ukraine could now destroy humanity quite as
inevitably as any 5-megaton bomb.
   The British Government's urgent task is to stop the border
generals being bold and brave at mankind's expense.
Call it off!
   CAN the Government possibly persist in its plans for the
royal tour of Ghana after the bomb explosions which have shaken Accra?
   For weeks journalists and M.P.s have brought reports from
Ghana about possible violence during the Queen's visit.
   But our Ministers have explained smugly that the facts provided
by their own experts show no cause for concern.
   Well, what do they say now?
   Are bombs not facts? Is an explosion on the very spot where the
Queen is due to stand this week not a cause for concern?
   Did the Government's experts not warn that such things might
happen?
   If they did, it is a terrible reflection on the Cabinet, which
concealed the warnings. If they did not, it is a sad reflection on
their experts.
   Our Royal Family has always been ready to take risks for a good
purpose. But for what purpose are risks to be taken in Ghana?
   Merely to bolster up a petty, tottering dictator.
   It would be little short of criminal if any life were risked in
such a cause.
The brave servant
   THERE can be nothing but the highest admiration for the
Queen's conduct in Ghana.
   She knew the risk she was running in going there. She was aware
of the bombs and violence in that country recently.
   She was aware too that during her ceremonial drive with Nkrumah
it would have been easy for an assassin's bullet to have struck the
wrong target.
   And yet she has insisted on keeping her promise to the ordinary
people of Ghana. She has gone ahead with her tour.
   Nothing could have been easier for her than to cancel this
venture. She merely had to tell her misgivings, in confidence, to the
Prime Minister. No one would have been surprised if the visit had
been cancelled. Everyone would have understood.
   The Queen has shown many times before that she is a dedicated
and sincere servant of her people throughout the world. Now she has
displayed, as well, the highest form of courage in grave physical
danger.
Wipe off his smile
   IN Essen tomorrow Herr Alfried Krupp will be celebrating
the 15th anniversary of the foundation of his mighty industrial
empire.
   Who can blame him if he mixes homage to his ancestors with a
little sardonic amusement at the expense of the Allied Governments?
   For if he had obeyed their instructions the Krupp empire would
have been broken up long ago. There would have been nothing to
celebrate.
   But Krupp, the convicted war criminal, the employer of slave
labour, has succeeded year after year in getting an extension of his
"promise" to sell out his companies.
   By one cunning dodge after another he has kept this one-time
power centre of German militarism intact.
   It is a scandalous story.
   How much longer is our Government going to be content with just a
mild squawk of protest when Krupp asks for yet another year's
reprieve?
Answer this today
   COMMONWEALTH Governments are at last to see in full a
speech which Mr. Edward Heath made more than a month ago.
   And why are they going to see it?
   Not because it was on a question which vitally affects their
whole future- although it does.
   Not because they are members of an association the first and most
precious principle of which is mutual trust.
   Not because most of them, like the members of the United Kingdom
Cabinet, are loyal Ministers of the same Queen.
   The only reason they are going to be allowed to see it is
because some obscure official somewhere in Europe has already leaked
the whole thing to another foreign Government.
   But there is something even more shameful.
   For in Brussels a Common Market spokesman indicates that the only
reason Commonwealth Governments were ever excluded from seeing whole
copies of the speech was because the British Government requested
it.
   Can this really be true?
   The nation demands an immediate answer from Mr. Harold
Macmillan.
Lesson for a critic
   THE final curtain comes down on the tragic farce of O'Brien
in Africa.
   Look at it again act by act.
   Five months ago Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien came bouncing into the
Congo as a United Nations chief.
   By UNO standards his qualifications were excellent.
   He was known as an enemy of colonialism.
   He had even coined a phrase for the colonialists whom he scorned
most. He called us "the Brits."
   He was typical of all those who believe that the representatives
of UNO must inevitably be more enlightened, decent, and
efficient.
   Well, how has he done in Africa himself?
   With his UNO team he has been responsible for more
bloodshed, intolerance and racial hatred than almost any other man in
recent African history.
   As he looks at the mess he has left behind he must wonder how
"the Brits" so often managed to succeed in the kind of situation
where he has so dismally failed.
Repeal it
   WATCH the workings of the deplorable Homicide Act of 1957.
   Last week Edwin David Sims was found guilty of the horrible
killing of two Gravesend teenagers.
   But under the new law this was not murder- because of his
"diminished responsibility".
   His crime- which everyone would unhesitatingly call murder-
will go down in the records as manslaughter.
   It will help the experts to claim that the rise in the
murder-rate since the Homicide Act is not really serious.
   And that is not all.
   By the time this psychopath is in his early forties he will
probably be a free man. Free to roam the countryside once again.
   Is it not a scandal that a law which allows this to happen should
remain on the Statute-book?
Losers
   WHO would lose most if Britain decided not to join the
Common Market and so brought our trade with Europe largely to a
standstill?
   The answer is: not the British.
   If you want evidence of that look at the wrangle now going on in
Brussels over the Common Market tariffs.
   The French say they must sell more wine in Germany. But the
Germans retort that wine must not flow only in one direction. If
Germany is to buy more, then France must take more from Germany.
   The fact is, of course, that there is only one country in Europe
in which the French wine industry- on which the rural economy of
France depends- can sell in sufficient quantities. And that is
Britain.
   What is true of wine is equally true of one industry after
another. If our leaders only had the courage we could trade with
Europe on our own terms.
   For the "Six" have a much greater need of our market than we
have of theirs.
Purpose
   FASHION is turning against the Christmas card. It is
argued that there is no purpose in posting a flood of cards often to
people you hardly know.
   Yes, but not all the cards in that flood are without purpose.
   To the old and the lonely a card is a wonderful reminder that
they are not forgotten.
   And to the relation or neighbour you have quarrelled with it is
the most tactful peace offering of all.
Finger on the trigger
   WHOSE finger is on the trigger?
   Off to the United Nations forces in the Congo goes a load of
1,lb. bombs sent with the compliments of the British taxpayer.
   They go, the Government piously points out, on special terms
only.
   On each bomb there is virtually a label saying: "Not to be used
except against 'pirate' planes and air-strips."
   But can that really keep the Government's conscience clean?
   Does it have any control over the Indian airmen who are going to
drop the bombs? Is there the slightest evidence that they either know
or care about our terms?
   For all we know the men in charge of these operations may be just
as deluded and hysterical as their former chief, Conor O'Brien.
   For all we know these British bombs may soon be crashing down on
hospitals and British missionaries.
   No wonder the Tory rebels are in uproar. The only surprise is
that there should be a single Tory M.P. who is prepared to
support a decision which is both weak and wicked.
Prigs
   THE nuclear disarmament rioters who have been causing so
much annoyance say that this is the only way in which they can stir
the nation's conscience.
   Could anything be more priggish than that?
   Do they seriously suppose that the rest of us are indifferent to
the risk of a nuclear war?
   The truth is that their fellow-countrymen have not got less
conscience. Just more sense.
   For suppose that these exhibitionists had got their way last
year. Suppose that both East and West had given up their nuclear
stocks.
   Is it not certain that we would already be in the midst of the
most terrible conventional war in history over Berlin?
Thrift
   THE Treasury is right to save money by clamping down on
embassy parties for the Queen's official birthday.
   But the saving is only +1, a year. Why stop there?
   There is, for example, the +18,, in cash aid that we are
giving to Tanganyika.
   There is the Congo which, through our backing for UNO, is
costing us around +4,, a year.
   There is Mr. Nehru, who wants to squeeze about +7,, out
of us over the next two years.
   And, of course, there is the Army on the Rhine. It is costing us
at least +7,, this year. And next year the bill may be near
+1,,.
   These fantastic sums are being squandered by vainglorious men
anxious for Britain to play a leading world role.
   But they should remember this: true authority comes from
strength, not from pouring money down the drain.
Wrong
   DO you remember the debtors prisons in the novels of
Charles Dickens?
   Probably you associate them with the workhouse and with child
labour in the mines.
   All the more amazing, then, that a century later our prisons
should still be crowded with debtors.
   The cells should be reserved for criminals alone.
   As for debtors, there will be fewer of them when business men
understand that, if you lend to someone whose credit is not good, then
you must be prepared to lose.
Death for no reason
   AS the week-end began two British journalists were sending
this despatch while UNO bombers roared over Katanga:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "A moment ago, in the foyer of the Leopold =2 Hotel, where we
are writing, they carried in a four-year-old girl. She was dead.
   "In the moments it has taken to type this they have brought in
yet another child's body. The face is gone, the body shredded by
shell splinters.
   "If you have seen broken dolls, you have some idea of the
picture."
<END INDENTATION>
   Read those words again and ask yourself: Why were these little
children killed? What was their crime?
   Was it because- as with Nazi Germany- their country was making
war on the world?
   No. All it wanted was to be left alone.
   Was it because their country was employing white officers?
   No. Every other African State has whites in top positions. Even
the Indian airmen who killed them were white-trained.
# 26
<58 TEXT B14>
'A tax on invalids! It is shameful that such a levy should be
collected by a Ministry of Health... worse still there is a tax on
childhood'
Let's give the Welfare State a shot in the arm
By KENNETH BARRETT
<EDITORIAL>
   INCREASED National Health charges. A further conjuring trick
with National Insurance contributions. The Minister of Health's
announcement the other day of changes to take place in April was a
signpost on the road of retreat from the first vision of nationwide
personal security.
   There have been other signs of this retreat over the years. To
many of us it has long been evident that the Welfare State was in
danger of destruction from within.
   First of all, the administrators have muddled one of the main
issues.
   They have been determined to uphold a meaningless fiction. They
have insisted that part of the National Insurance stamp should go
towards the cost of the National Health Service.
   This has deepened the widest-spread fallacy in the community-
the mistaken idea that the man who buys his National Insurance stamp
pays for the National Health Service. He doesn't, of course.
   The total cost of the National Health Service in this financial
year will be about +867,,. Of that vast sum, +663,,
comes from general taxation, not from National Insurance stamps.
Confused
   Small wonder that the man-in-the-street is confused.
   Because the existence of the stamp as a source of supplementary
revenue to the National Health Service is a temptation to the
administrator in search of the appearance of economy.
   It gives him a chance to make the Health Service look as if it
costs less.
   Today the employed man pays 9s 11d. a week towards the whole
bill of social security in his weekly stamp. Of that, 1s 1 1/2d.
is earmarked for the health service.
   In April he will, as a basis, pay 9s 9d. a week and the same
amount of 1s. 1 1/2d. will go to the health service.
   At the same time, from April, he will have to pay, if his wages
are high enough an additional contribution to the State's massively
confusing graduated pension scheme, unless his employer "contracts
out."
   If he is earning +15 a week, he will be paying, in all
probability, 5s. 1d. a week towards the graduated scheme.
   The Minister of Health's proposals will alter the position again
in July.
   His total basic contribution will be 1s. 7d.
   Of this a larger proportion, 2s. 8 1/2d. this time, will be
earmarked for the health service.
   With the highest contribution to the graduated scheme, his
stamp will cost him 15s. 8d.
   Don't think for one moment that it's going to stop there.
   Higher pensions will be sought. The health service will cost
more. The contributions, total and fraction, will all go up again.
   The mere cost of the complex administrative tasks involved in
recording contributions is vast in proportion to the amount of tax
that is collected.
   Yet the tempting fiction of the stamp will always be there.
Enemy
   But the health service has another inside enemy.
   It is, of course, on the face of things, reasonable to charge
people a little when they get some special extra benefit.
   Why shouldn't the ordinary citizen, in an age of high wages,
pay some proportion of the cost of dentures or of spectacles?
   That's the question. Why shouldn't the special beneficiaries
pay a little extra out of their own pockets?
   It's an insidious argument. It seems so reasonable. But once
you start agreeing that the proposal is reasonable, you can reach the
extreme lengths of unreason.
   For example, a well-paid patient, whose firm still continues his
wages, who draws sickness benefit on top, may have surgical and
hospital treatment costing many hundreds of pounds. And if he needs
spectacles, when in hospital, he gets them free.
   And yet a widow, whose pension, for which her husband paid, is
wiped out because she works for a living wage, will now have to pay
12s. 6d. for each lens in her spectacles, and 17s. 8d. for the
frames. This is what the Minister proposes.
   The truth is that you can't make sense out of small private
charges under a vastly expensive public scheme.
   You can only alter the shape of the national bill.
   But, at least, it ought to be a Minister's duty to refrain from
doing positive harm just to collect a token tribute to the total
tally.
   And social harm, I fear, is what two of the proposed changes are
going to achieve.
   For example, from March 1, each item on a National Health Service
prescription is to cost 2s.
Children
   I leave out of account, for the moment, the estimate which I
have been given- that nearly one-third of such items cost less
than 2s.
   I am thinking of the marginally poor, who happen to be in
constant ill-health. There are countless thousands of them.
   The retired folk, getting on in years, with their retirement
pensions and +3 or so a week from their old firms.
   The man who, in protracted illness, receives half-pay from his
firm. The Army officer's widow. I could go on indefinitely.
   They may need half a dozen prescribed items a week, easily.
Twelve shillings a week. A tax on invalids.
   It is shameful that such a levy should be collected by a
Minister of Health.
   Worse still. There is the tax on childhood. Pregnancy, like
death, is democratic.
   The last war forced the state to protect the health of children
through the Maternity Clinic.
   With the help of the National Health Service it has become a
possession beyond price.
   All mothers go there. The solicitor's wife, the schoolmaster's
wife, the clerk's wife, the plumber's wife, and the wife of the chap
who is doing a stretch in gaol.
   Never has the health of children been better. Never has
infantile mortality been so low.
   And one of the reasons was that it cost nothing, or very little,
to take advantage of everything the clinic had to offer.
   From June 1, instead of paying 5d. for the bottle of orange
juice and getting a free supply of vitamin tablets and cod liver oil,
there are to be higher charges.
   The orange juice will be 1s. 6d., the cod liver oil 1s.,
and the tablets 6d. a packet.
   These sums might have been deliberately fixed to keep the poorest
sort of mother away. And it will be the child that suffers in health.
   By these particularly petty tactics, the Minister will save
+1,5, out of the +8,, and more that we have to pay.
   I have been very close to the crises, the challenge, the hopes,
needs, and anomalies of the Welfare State. And I think the time has
come to take a close look at what is going wrong.
SLASH THIS HEALTH SERVICE RED TAPE
<EDITORIAL>
   YOU will have noticed the fierce House of Commons rumpus over
the proposed Health Service changes and charges. I gave my views in
detail about these last Sunday. It seems from the size and shape of
my mail that most of you agree with me.
   Over the debate in the House the other day brooded the shadow of
the late Nye Bevan. He was the architect of the Health Service.
   The Act of 1946 defines his vision. It gives the Health
Minister the duty of establishing "a comprehensive Health Service to
secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people...
and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness."
   To the creators of the service there was no hesitation about one
further principle. It was to be free.
   How far have these great objectives been achieved?
   There are no longer two standards of medical treatment, one for
those who can afford it and another for those who can't.
DOCTOR'S MERCY
   No longer does a deduction from the wages of the lower-paid
worker simply cover him during sickness, leaving his wife and children
to the mercy of the family purse or the doctor's kindness.
   No longer is there a patchwork of clubs and voluntary
associations seeking to ensure some kind of medical treatment for
those who were not "on the panel."
   Of course, there were ominous rumblings at the start. The best
people, it was passionately argued, would still prefer to pay their
own doctors.
   The best doctors, it was alleged, would stay resentfully out of
the National Service, refusing to become the minions of a Minister.
   All these were myths created by prejudice. Within three months
of the appointed day under the Act, 39,, were on Health Service
lists.
   It is officially estimated today that 97 per cent of Britain's
inhabitants are using the Health Service.
   Only 6 doctors engage wholly in private practice.
   This is indeed a success story. But it is my task to look
critically and constructively at the flaws and the failures.
   There is, in my mind, no doubt about the first mistake. The
nationalised industry of medicine presents a stupendous administrative
challenge.
   It is now so complicated that the prime purpose of it all, the
prevention of ill-health, the welfare and re-assurance of the sick,
can disappear in the difficulties of departmentalism.
   Today, Regional Hospital Boards plan hospital and consultant
services. Management committees administer hospitals at local level.
Executive councils are responsible for the general practitioner, the
dentist, the supply of drugs.
   The local health authority looks after maternity services, child
welfare, the visiting midwife, the health visitor, the home help and
the ambulances.
MINISTER'S JUNGLE
   Somewhere up at the top of this jungle the Minister of Health
is supposed to keep an eye on it all.
   No wonder he can't see the wood for the trees.
   The hospital service, the general medical service, the local
authority, each tends to work in isolation.
   The family doctor is not encouraged to study his patient in
hospital.
   Often there is no follow-up system from the hospital to the home,
or, if there is one, it doesn't work.
   Each service washes its hands of responsibility when it passes a
patient to another branch of the system of National Health.
   These divisions can rise to ludicrous levels. An ambulance will
take a patient to a hospital which can't admit him but, quoting the
correct rules, will refuse to drive him to a hospital which can treat
and cure him.
   The costs of each section of the Health Service are scrutinised
as though they were isolated problems. Of course, they are all
interdependent.
   Busier and better general practitioners in one area can reduce
the financial burden on the local hospital.
   More money spent on local authority dental services when the
children are at school keeps down the bill of the general dental
service when they are grown up.
   A rise in prescription costs may mean a shorter period of
sickness.
   To take one illustration. Hospitals are given a certain amount
of money to spend in any one financial year.
   They can't save any of it up and spend a little more in the
following year.
   During the last month or two, therefore, of the arbitrary annual
accountancy, there is a mad rush to spend anything left in the kitty.
   A National Health Service is bound to be expensive. It deserves
to be so if it works.
   We still spend less than 4 per cent of the national income on
keeping people well and treating them when sick. I don't call that
unreasonable.
   The cost of prescriptions is a topical problem. Here is an
ever-rising and very significant part of the bill. Let's look at it.
It has more than doubled since the service started.
   Last year 214,, National Health Service prescriptions were
made up. Goodness knows how many unidentifiable pills linger in
bathroom cabinets and how many bottles of cough linctus were emptied
down the sink after the first distasteful dose.
   Five prescriptions a head last year, for everyone in the United
Kingdom at nearly 7s. a go!
   The bill still goes up. Not primarily because doctors prescribe
more, but because drugs cost more.
# 25
<59 TEXT B15>
Two sides to the closing door
By COLIN LEGUM, Our Commonwealth Correspondent
<EDITORIAL>
   THE Government is going to have a hard job defending its
intention to change Britain's traditional "open door" policy for
Commonwealth citizens- a policy that goes back to 168, when Lord
Chief Justice Ellesmere declared that James =1 was "one entire king
over all his subjects in whichsoever of his dominions they were
born."
   Of Britain's right to change this policy there can be no
question: she is the only Commonwealth member who has not so far acted
under the 1918 Imperial Conference decision giving each member
"complete control of the composition of its population by means of
restrictions on immigration." The question is not, therefore, about
her right to make this change, but whether it is wise.
   Nobody tries to deny that the problem of immigration into Britain
is primarily a problem of colour: the need for control was never
raised so long as immigrants were largely European, as, until
recently, they were. A nauseous campaign waged by a group of Tory
M.P.'s has been directed almost exclusively against coloured
immigration; and it is unfortunate that the Home Secretary waited to
make his formal announcement until the end of an unpleasant (though by
no means one-sided) debate at the Conservative Party Conference at
Brighton. Hence the need to disentangle the facts from the racial
prejudices which have obscured them.
Voluntary control
   What are the facts? Until 1953 immigration from the
Commonwealth was negligible; and the permanent coloured population was
less than 5,. The largest intake was from the West Indies,
running at about 2, a year. The one exception were the Irish: the
citizens of the Republic were treated for purposes of migration as if
they were Commonwealth citizens. Between 1945 and 1959 Irish
immigrants (353,) exceeded immigrants (333,) from all other
Commonwealth countries.
   The great wave of West Indians started in 1954 with 1,
immigrants; by 196 the figure had risen to more than 54,; and the
estimated figure for this year is likely to reach 7,. This great
increase is due to fear of immigration controls. There are now about
2, West Indians (mainly Jamaicans) in Britain.
   There is, however, another factor which weighed perhaps more
heavily with the Government's decision to introduce some form of
control. In the past the Governments of both India and Pakistan
voluntarily agreed to maintain strict control over emigration to
Britain. This system worked well until last year. The net inward
movement of Indians never exceeded 6,6; in 1959 it was down to
2,9. In the first eight months of this year, however, it reached
13,5.
   For Pakistan, the highest figure was 5,2 in 1957, which dropped
to 2,5 in 196. But in the first eight months of this year it rose
sharply to 13,16. Clearly, the control systems operated by India and
Pakistan have broken down.
   It is difficult to find exact figures of non-coloured immigrants
because many people from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South
Africa are in fact emigrants returning home. But, with the exception
of the Irish, they are a negligible proportion of the total figure.
Non-Commonwealth immigrants (mainly Europeans on restricted work
permits) rose from about 45,8 in 1959 to just over 53, last year.
Public services
   What conclusions can be drawn from these figures? There is
first the overall picture of an expanding working population, with
immigration accelerating, emigration decelerating (23, in 1957,
about 13, in 196), and very little unemployment. Immigrants
starting new jobs totalled 177,5 in 1959, and 236, in 196.
   Immigration has therefore been meeting a real need; without it
British industry could not have expanded as fast as it has done. As
Mr. Butler stressed last week, London transport and hospitals would
have been in poor shape but for the immigrants, especially the West
Indians. The same is true of many public services, particularly in
the Midlands and Liverpool.
   But there are clearly other factors which must be considered. As
things stand, there is no evidence that immigration will slow down of
its own volition. The reality of the world to-day is of unequal
economic development, with the richer countries growing richer and the
poorer being forced to export their unemployed. Within the
Commonwealth all other countries control immigration. The West Indian
islands even discriminate against one another. The older Dominions
(especially Australia) discriminate against non-whites. The United
States and Latin America have also recently tightened up their
immigration controls. This is no reason for Britain to behave
likewise, but it does raise the problem of what will happen if Britain
remains the only uncontrolled area into which the spill-over can go.
   Is it right to assume that the volume of this spill-over should
be allowed to find its own level without any attempt at planning?
Will immigration slow down once the British employment market begins
to reach saturation point? Or shall we suddenly wake up to find that
failure of plan has produced a large surplus of unskilled and
semi-skilled labour, largely among the coloured communities? What
would result from such a lack of foresight?
Real problems
   If undiminished West Indian immigration is now to be matched by
a rising tide of East Indian immigration (after the breakdown of the
voluntary system of controls), can we believe that racial and social
tensions will not be increased? And who would benefit from this?
   Even though the real problems have become obscured by the
deplorable arguments of racists, it remains true that they are real
problems, and can be dealt with most effectively by rational
discussion.
   Mr. Butler has firmly rejected the idea of any controls based
on discrimination. He has made the reasonable suggestion that people
with criminal records should not be allowed free entry, and that
immigrants with bad criminal records in this country might be
deported. He has also suggested that it might be desirable to relate
immigration to employment opportunities here.
   There can be no real objection to these proposals, in principle.
What should concern us is how this policy is to be administered, and
whether in fact it can be administered without racial discrimination.
Since the majority of immigrants to-day are coloured, it will be
difficult to avoid the suspicion of discrimination.
   It is vital therefore that, before any form of control is
introduced, Britain should consult all her partners in the
Commonwealth, and possibly her future allies in the Common Market as
well. For it is not only a question of deciding how best to arrange
for immigration to continue into Britain; it is equally important to
explore the possibility of greater migration within the Commonwealth
itself. Trinidad, Australia and Canada might all be expected to make
a greater contribution than they have done in the past.
   Finally, there is the central question whether Britain will not
somehow be altering the whole nature of her relationship with the rest
of the Commonwealth if she abandons her "open door" policy. We
should not pretend that Britain has somehow been behaving in a way
worthy of special praise. Our own economy has benefited enormously
from immigration.
   Nor must we think of ourselves as being uniquely generous.
France has always maintained an "open door" policy for members of
her Community- a policy much more difficult to maintain during the
Algerian troubles than anything we have so far had to face. Holland,
too, has kept open house for her associated territories.
   Also we must remember that even if the coloured immigrants in
this country should reach 5, in the next year or two, they would
comprise only 1 per cent. of our total population. To shirk from
the implications of trying to integrate this tiny minority of coloured
peoples into British society is to show little confidence in our own
ability to practise what we always preach.
Danger-spots
   But the problem of absorbing immigrants harmoniously into
British society is as important to the immigrants as to the British.
One of the important conclusions reached by Mr. James Wickenden in
his valuable study on "Colour in Britain" is that a danger appears
to lie "where a concentration of immigrants has formed too quickly
for an area's capacity to absorb them. Where this occurs there has
been violence and the danger of violence and hostility will always be
present. As a short term measure it is therefore surely desirable to
keep the number of immigrants to a level which can be absorbed."
   The "open door" policy is of value only so long as genuine
hospitality and security can be offered to the newcomers. It is with
this aspect that we should be mainly concerned.
RUSSIA TO-DAY
by Edward Crankshaw
WHY MR. K IS OUT OF DATE
<EDITORIAL>
   In twenty years Russia may well achieve the prosperity promised
in the new party programme, but the Russian people are not likely to
be satisfied with material progress alone.
   WHAT Mr. Khrushchev was talking about in the Kremlin last
Wednesday was 1984. He was looking twenty years ahead. But the
picture he painted- a picture which, he said, many people would
dismiss as Utopian- was not in the least Orwellian; and for this we
should be thankful. It was not Utopian either. It was, rather, a
picture of Metroland in 1961, extended to cover the vastness of the
Soviet Union. That Mr. Khrushchev should be able to think of it in
the same breath as Utopia is itself a sign that he is hopelessly
behind the times, not only in relation to the world as a whole but,
more interestingly, in relation to his own people.
   He was introducing the new Party Programme to the Twenty-second
Party Congress, convened to approve his development plans for the next
two decades. Twenty years is a long time: Mr. Khrushchev will be
eighty-seven if he lives to see his Utopia come true. And if there is
one certain thing about this programme, it is that long before the
material promises are realised the whole concept will have become
irrelevant, overtaken by events; or, to use Mr. Khrushchev's own
favourite expression, life itself will have shown up the startling
insufficiencies of his present thinking.
Air of triumph
   This is not to say that there will not be great material
advances, or that these are not necessary. Indeed, they are highly
necessary if the Soviet Union is ever to stand comparison with the
advanced nations of the West. For the West is also moving, and a
great deal will happen in the next twenty years.
   Whether because Mr. Khrushchev is ignorant of the social
revolution in, for example, Britain, or whether because he thinks we
shall stand still, or collapse, Mr. Khrushchev seems incapable of
visualising any forward movement outside the Soviet Union. He says,
for example, with an air of triumph, that within the next two decades
every family in the Soviet Union will have a comfortable apartment to
itself: is it inconceivable that this may also happen here?
Apparently unaware that British agricultural labourers get holidays
with pay, pensions, and benefits under the health services, he
announces that paid holidays will "gradually be extended" to farm
workers, who are also, some time in the next two decades, to receive
old-age pensions and sickness and temporary disability grants.
   With regard to education, he said that "about 4 per cent. of
the country's workers and over 23 per cent. of its farm workers"
now have a secondary or higher education: by 1981 all children are to
receive a complete secondary education. During the same period the
goal of free medical treatment and hospitalisation for all, as well as
free rents, will be reached.
   All this, with a reduction of working hours, is designed to bring
about in the next twenty years "a living standard higher than that of
any capitalist country." For the first time in history, Mr.
Khrushchev said, insufficiency would be fully and finally eliminated:
no capitalist country, he asserted, could set itself this task. But
he adduced no evidence to support either of these statements.
Productivity only
   It is one thing to congratulate Mr. Khrushchev on breaking
down the Stalinist paralysis (somebody had to do it) and setting the
Soviet Union on the road to material prosperity after the negative
horrors of the cruel years.
# 239
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Letters to the Editor
Defier of Lenin
   SIR- Prof. Seton-Watson used my father's name in his
article on Persia last Sunday, meaning a man who would pave the way
for the Communists. When the uninstructed speak like that, one takes
it from whence it comes, but from Prof Seton-Watson...
   In 1917 the Bolsheviks were not yet known to be totalitarians and
a great proportion of Russian Socialists were not prepared to fight
them with the gloves off, but Kerensky was. He was "promoted" to
the premiership because he did not regard the Bolsheviks as "old
comrades" and could overcome the hesitations of Socialist leaders
when it came to stern measures against them.
   During the summer of 1917 he dispersed a Communist rebellion with
a whiff of grapeshot now described by such "progressive" historians
as A. J. P. Taylor as a "massacre."
   It was a blundering general, with the active encouragement of the
English and the French, who destroyed Russian democracy by attempting
a right-wing 6putsch, which was suppressed without a shot but
left the masses confused and distrustful of Kerensky.
   This turn of events enabled Lenin to mount a counter-attack which
the vast majority of Socialists- tantamount to a majority of the
nation- resisted only with talk. Kerensky collected a large enough
army to defeat them, but the troops fell for the siren song of
"peaceful co-existence" and that was that.
   The darlings of democracy today are the men who, long after the
Communists have shown their true colours, have handed country after
country to them: Benes surrendering Czechoslovakia, Roosevelt giving
them half of Europe, Truman and Attlee abandoning China to its "mild
agrarian reformers."
   Might I suggest that "Moscow" knows that Kerensky has been one
of its most unhesitating and determined enemies for 44 years, and what
it is really looking for in Persia is not Kerensky (nor
Mikhailovich, nor Chiang) but a nice Western-style statesman with
half-a-round-table-full of crypto-Communist advisers?
   Southport, GLEB KERENSKY.
   /// Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister of Russia between the
fall of the Tsars and the rise of the Bolsheviks, is now 8. He lives
in California, where he is engaged in research and lecturing in
Russian history at Stanford University.
   
   Sir- My article, "Russia's Southern Doorstep," had to be
condensed for reasons of space, and in the process a slight but
important change occurred. It reads: "In so far as the United
States has hitherto been the protector of the re?2gime, the people
tend to be emotionally anti-Western...."
   What I had written was: "...the opposition tend to be
emotionally anti-Western."
   What proportion of the people belongs to "the opposition" is a
matter of opinion. There can be no doubt that there are millions of
Persians who are devoted to the Shah, and have no hostility to the
West.
   HUGH SETON-WATSON.
   London, S.W. 19.
Religion at Redbrick
Points from readers' letters
   I WAS most distressed at the impression of Christianity in
this University, which was given by "Inquirer's" article,
"Redbrick Wilderness."
   Apathy is prevalent throughout the University, not merely among
Christians. Indeed it is a most interesting sign that so many
non-Christians look to Christians for a lead. In societies and on
Hall committees Christians take a leading part.
   "Inquirer" gives 25 as the number of those attending a place
of worship some time during the term. A more realistic figure would
be 5, of which at least 3 attend with some degree of regularity.-
(Miss) Hilary M. Gray, Ex-Sec., Joint Christian Committee.
Southampton University.
   
   One look at the University newspaper would show how largely the
discussion of religion and politics figures in the student's life
here.
   We personally were attracted by the friendly, unbiased atmosphere
of the Anglican Society, where free, intelligent discussion is a
normal practice. Jazz Club is popular because it is the only weekly
social occasion which gives one the opportunity of meeting one's
fellow students 6en masse.
   Among our acquaintances at the corporate communion mentioned by
"Inquirer," very few were not present at Jazz Club the previous
evening. Jazz does not exclude religion.- Elizabeth A. Bunn;
Judith M. Steel; Jennifer Summers, Southampton.
   
   It is true that many students have little or no religious
ideals and standards.
   But as members of the Southampton Catholic Society, we can assure
you of the existence of a very strong body of regular church-goers who
also take an active part in many other branches of University life.-
Patricia Friend; Winifred Colfer, Southampton.
   
   What an odd University Southampton must be!
   When I went to the University sermon in the University church
here, St. George's, Bloomsbury, on April 3, advertised as at 8.
p.m., I found the church packed, and had to wriggle my round
<SIC> to an obscure seat at the side.
   If you want to be certain of a seat at the London University
sermon, you have to go to Evensong first.
   The sermon was about Pascal, no doubt an interesting modern
person: but nobody knew that beforehand.- Margaret Deanesly,
London, N.W.1.
Rotten potatoes
   Sir- It seems to me that Mr. Rennie, Chairman of the Potato
Marketing Board, stands condemned out of his own mouth.
   His first letter stated that no significant quantity of
potatoes sold to the board had been left to rot in clamps and that in
general they had removed such stocks before deterioration
prevented their use. Having spent public money on these potatoes was
it not his inspectors' duty to ensure that they were sold before they
deteriorated?
   It was also widely reported in the Press that 2 1/2d. per lb
was the producers' price and 5d. a lb the retail price. Mr.
Rennie did not query the figure until you published it.
   But the most surprising of all his statements must be that "the
question of compensation for deterioration does not arise as the
potatoes remain the property of the farmer until loading instructions
are given."
   In that case why were farmers not allowed by the Board to load
potatoes when asked for them by merchants? Farmers who sought
permission to cancel their contracts and sell to merchants were
refused by the Board.
   How can the Board buy potatoes under contract and not own them?
   YOUR AGRICULTURAL CORRESPONDENT.
   London, E.C.4.
Exotic Chelsea
   Sir- Would it not be possible slightly to change the date of
the Chelsea Flower Show so that it was not dominated year after year
by the azaleas and the rhododendrons? They are not a typically
British feature, and I cannot help feeling that the organisers of this
show, by waiting two or three weeks, would achieve effects more
popular and more subtle.
   Some of your readers may have ideas, but I would suggest the
first week in July.
   Eastbourne. HELEN SPICER.
Irish Partition
   Sir- Perhaps your comments on Northern Ireland last Sunday
could be put in a wider context.
   Surely people nowadays are aware of the benefits (particularly
economic) of integration, association, and federation.
   Cyprus- where differences between the two communities are surely
as strong as any in Ireland- has shown that it is possible to unite
an island and to safeguard the interests of a large minority.
   In Ireland it seems that Catholics are now tolerated north of the
border in such positions as shop stewards in the shipbuilding
industry; perhaps religious passions are cooling a little at last.
Certainly it might be argued that the political and economic division
of Ireland perpetuates traditional animosities which are now largely
irrelevant.
   Perhaps a more integrated Ireland would be feasible within the
wider framework of the Commonwealth or the Common Market.
   London, S.W.1. J. F. TAYLOR.
Taking it Back
   Sir- Jean Robertson's admirable article on guarantees prompts
me to ask for your readers' experiences.
   The Consumers' Advisory Council is at present consulting various
manufacturers with a view to agreeing model guarantee terms, fair to
both manufacturer and shopper. We are also preparing a comparison
between different car manufacturers' guarantees.
   It would help over both these projects if your readers would tell
us if they have ever suffered injury or damage from a defect in goods
they have bought, and been unable to claim compensation from the
manufacturer owing to "exclusion clauses" in the guarantee. If
they could send us also a copy of the guarantee itself, so much the
better.
   D. R. VICKERS,
   Sec., Consumers' Advisory Council.
   Orchard House, Orchard St., W.1.
153 m.p.h. at 77
   Sir- I read with interest Courtenay Edwards's comments in
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH about whether it is wise or not for a
middle-aged man to buy a fast sports car.
   I agree with him that it depends on the individual. The thing
one has to remember is that the faster one goes the greater is the
need for concentration.
   At the age of 77 I myself am still driving fast sports cars. I
run a 3 S.L. Mercedes in which I have done 153 m.p.h. and
also a 135 m.p.h. Aston Martin. I claim that in spite of my age
it is certainly not necessary for me to give up these exciting cars.
   But then I used to be a racing driver and I have been driving
these cars all my life. This is the main point really.
   HOWE.
   Chairman,
   RAC Competitions Committee.
   London, W.1.
Self-Criticism
   Sir- You may print what you like in your entertaining Sunday
paper, but please don't print inaccurate statements about films.
   On page 28 last Sunday you reported that the film "Rosen Fu"r
Den Staatsanwalt" (the correct title of which is, incidentally,
"Roses for the Prosecutor") is of East German origin.
   The film was made in Western Germany, although it is true that
the director, Wolfgang Staudte, has worked for the East German
DEFA, and therefore, in some eyes, may be politically
suspect.
   "Roses for the Prosecutor" is merely one of many new West
German productions, which, like "The Girl Rosemarie," take a tilt
at their Establishment- a very healthy sign in German films in view
of their 1933-1945 productions.
   PETER SEWARD.
   London, S.W.4.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
When MPs Go Abroad
   SIR- The article by your political correspondent, Mr.
Ian Waller, drawing attention to the concern over MPs' sponsored
trips abroad, raises an issue that has been avoided for years.
   The plain fact is that it is extremely difficult for MPs to
accept invitations from foreign Governments, or from public relations
organisations working for them, without being compromised.
   In any case, you tend to become inhibited or you have to be very
thick-skinned to the point of rudeness. And if you end up taking the
opposing view to the one you are supposed to have taken, it cannot
help but leave bad blood.
   As someone who has travelled fairly extensively in recent years,
since I became a Member of Parliament, I have reluctantly come to the
conclusion, after experience, that it is usually better not to go on
sponsored trips rather than face invidious difficulties.
   Thus I have declined a number of invitations from foreign
Governments and have only gone when I have been able to "work my
passage," usually with my pen. But I am very fortunate in being a
professional journalist.
   The existing parliamentary bodies arranging trips abroad, like
the Inter-Parliamentary Union, do not always meet the need.
   What, then, is the answer? I believe that the best solution
probably is to make available to every MP an overall foreign
travel allowance which he has to use (if he wants it) within the
lifetime of a single Parliament, either in one or two major journeys
or in a series of short ones.
   Only in this way can we hope to enable the House of Commons to
have independent, first-hand impressions of many problems affecting
this country and on which our Parliament has on occasion to make major
decisions.
   DESMOND DONNELLY.
   House of Commons.
   
   Sir- Of course there are rogues in Parliament, but no more than
one would find in commerce, the Church, or even the Press. Without
being pious about it I know of no MPs who would allow their
parliamentary activities to be influenced by a 1-day trip to East
Germany, Central Africa, or anywhere else.
# 29
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Russia's new plans
   In the light of post-war history, which reached its tragic
climax with the Russian betrayal of the attempts at Geneva to reach
agreement on atomic disarmament, there must be some excuse for the
coldness of the reception which has so far been accorded to the latest
Soviet proposals for settling the status of West Berlin before Russia
signs a peace treaty with East Germany. According to a Foreign
Ministry spokesman in Paris, there have been no official
communications or conversations between the Soviet leaders and the
Western ambassadors, with the exception of Dr. Kroll, the West
German Ambassador. Nevertheless, the proposals which were made public
yesterday do seem to serve as a basis upon which to resume
discussions: and they make an important concession.
   This is the willingness of Mr. Kruschev to waive his earlier
demands for a peace treaty before Christmas, and the reasons for it
are worth considering. It is reasonable to assume that part of the
answer lies within the difficulties which the Soviet Union are
experiencing inside the Communist bloc. Another cause is probably the
spirited reaction of the so-called uncommitted nations to the gigantic
exercise in atomic explosions carried out by the Russians. Mr.
Kruschev and his friends have succeeded in shocking a large part of
the world that might have been more friendly towards them by their
callous indifference to the consequences of these explosions that have
threatened the health of the whole world, not least the Russian people
themselves. Another important factor is the way in which the West
have stood firm, refusing to panic in the face of this show of atomic
might.
   It appears that Mr. Kruschev has had to concede that
negotiation is the only way he can attain his ends short of war, on
which he is obviously not prepared to embark. He has toned down his
demands by placing the emphasis on the need for the four Powers to
reach agreement on a new status for West Berlin which guarantees the
freedom of its inhabitants and the freedom of its communications with
the West. The conclusion of a peace treaty becomes an also-ran. But
it is there, and, despite what obligations the NATO powers
may feel towards West Germany, a time will come when a divided
Germany, and, indeed, a divided Berlin, must be recognised by the
West. There is only one alternative, and that, again, is war. Or
perhaps there may be a third way out of the difficulty, a way which
has been suggested in several countries. Berlin could be an
independent city and used as a home for the United Nations. It is
true that, whatever happens, the Germans look like being left with a
divided country, in itself a dangerous situation, but, as has been
said many times before, it is the Germans themselves who are at the
root of all these problems and they must be satisfied with whatever
terms their conquerors feel are necessary to maintain the peace of the
world.
Spiritual values
   WHEN Mr. Butler opened a new social sciences building at
Nottingham University yesterday he discussed a problem which is
important to us all and one that has exercised his consideration for
many years, particularly since he became Home Secretary. His concern
was with the problem of juvenile delinquency and the need for ways of
combating this social evil. He said that he was going to hold a
conference in London to launch a campaign aimed at increasing the
moral and spiritual content of school life. He submitted that in our
society there was evidence that education was failing to keep up with
the increasing tempo of materialism.
   It is, of course, this aspect of the matter that is disturbing
the Home Secretary. One of the great tragedies of modern times is
that our busy schools are kept at full stretch educating the young in
the practical things which they will need to make their way through a
highly complicated world. But this is not enough, as Mr. Butler
knows, and moral and spiritual values must be restated clearly and
taught as an essential part of living. Religion is a difficult
subject at school where a balance has to be kept between the various
denominations, but time should always be found for communal devotion
that is acceptable to all. It is a lamentable fact that many of our
children today feel embarrassed and uncomfortable at the idea of
worshipping God.
The new look
   IT was a heavy, distasteful task that fell to Mr. Frank
Foulkes yesterday. For Mr. Foulkes is, of course, the president of
the Electrical Trades Union, and it was in that Union, and it was in
that capacity that he announced the results of the elections for the
membership of the union's general executive, in which the Communists
have suffered an overwhelming defeat. Naturally Mr. Foulkes, who is
himself a Communist, put as good a face on it as was possible in the
circumstances, but it did not amount to much. After all, there is no
gainsaying the facts, which are that the Communists, instead of having
a majority of eight to three, as was the case after the previous
elections, are now reduced to a minority of two to nine. "I would
only say," remarked the president, "that it is a matter for the
members. I have always said that our members are always right until
they have been proved wrong, even when they have taken unofficial
actions against an employer."
   And this, certainly, is in accordance with the Communist creed,
but now the members, that is, the rank-and-file members, have cut
right across it. They have taken the democratic path, as a result of
which it is very possible- but no more than possible at the moment-
that the ETU may be readmitted to membership of the Trades
Union Congress. Here, however, much, if not indeed all, may depend on
the attitude of Mr. Foulkes. For while, he said yesterday, he
thought it probable that the Labour Party would agree to the
reaffiliation of the union, he did not know whether, in the event of
his not resigning the presidency, the TUC itself would agree.
But, he added, "if affiliation to Congress depends on my
resignation, we will not be affiliated, I can assure you." This
was, of course, a reference to the directive by the TUC
General Council before the actual expulsion of the union, asking
that Mr. Foulkes should resign his office and submit himself again
to the members for re-election.
   There can be no doubt, however, that readmission is what the
members, or at least the vast majority of members, of the ETU
want. But apart from whether or not this actually comes about, a
heavy blow has been struck against Communist influence, one that
should, and could, have been struck long ago. For the executive of a
British trade union can always be called upon to give an account of
its stewardship to those who elected it. If what is tantamount to
dictatorship- and dictatorship is the mainspring of the Communist
creed- is suffered to continue in a union it can only be put down to
apathy on the part of the ordinary members. Apathy in others is the
main ally of the Communists. It is what has enabled them to rule the
roost for so long in the councils of the ETU. But now there
is to be a change at the top, one which it is to be hoped will be
reflected in policy and performance.
Barrier to peace
   PRESIDENT DE GAULLE'S recent optimistic statement on the
prospects of the Algerian problem makes somewhat curious reading in
the light of the latest developments as reported from Oran. For
yesterday it was announced that ex-General Raoul Salan has ordered a
progressive recruitment of the whole of the European male population
in Algeria for the illegal OAS army, of which he is the leader.
Salan, it will be recalled, was in France sentenced to death in his
absence for treasonable acts against the State. He is determined,
come what may, that Algeria shall remain French, and that despite
whatever the native population may say or do in the matter. Salan, in
short, is one of de Gaulle's bitterest opponents.
   He has, too, certain advantages, although these will not
necessarily prove decisive. For one thing, he is the man actually on
the spot, even though he may weave his plots from an "underground"
headquarters. And indeed he has little if any option here, for to
come out into the open would obviously carry with it very serious
risks for himself; he might be captured and taken under guard to
Paris, in which case it would undoubtedly go hard with him. There is
still that sentence of death hanging over him. But President de
Gaulle, too, has advantages on his side. He has, presumably, the main
weight of native opinion behind him, not to mention the considerable
resources of the French Government itself. Nevertheless, the omens
are not at all good. All the indications are that there is a long way
to go before the Algerian problem is finally resolved.
Grants to students
   WHATEVER blemishes there may be in the new Education Bill,
the second reading of which was moved by Sir David Eccles in the House
of Commons yesterday, it is fair to say that so far as its fundamental
principles are concerned it should prove acceptable to the vast
majority of the public. In the matter of grants to students attending
first-degree courses at universities, there are, as things stand at
present, certain inequalities that cry out for correction, and it is
one of the main purposes of the Bill to bring this about. As the
Minister said, the measures proposed are not likely to satisfy
everybody in all respects, but the desirability of automatic awards
and uniformity of treatment is generally accepted. The grants system,
remarked Sir David, had grown over the years to a most complicated
animal.
   Not that it is expected that the Bill will result in any really
significant increase in the number of awards students <SIC> at
universities. But once a student has been accepted for a first-degree
course, and has the necessary qualifications, then the award would be
his (or hers) by right. And so far as local education authorities are
concerned, the Bill would impose upon them the duty of making these
awards, and would empower the Minister to prescribe financial and
other conditions, with which they would be obliged to conform.
Moreover, it is intended that future Governments should be committed
to ensure that public funds available for such purposes keep pace with
the increase in the number of university students. In future, a
student would know for certain, no matter where he lived, precisely
how he could qualify for an award, and how the amount of that award
would be determined. As for the means test, that would be retained,
though in a relaxed form.
   But the Bill has another purpose, one concerning school-leaving
dates for children aged fifteen. The intention here is to reduce
these dates in the school year from three to two, that is, at Easter
and the end of the summer term. This would seem to be, in effect, a
compromise between what would be the ideal method from the point of
view of school organisation on the one hand and the requirements of
industry on the other. For so far as the organisation of the schools
is concerned, the best, most convenient plan would undoubtedly be to
have only one leaving date in the year, but then that would obviously
pose certain special difficulties for industry. It would mean, as Sir
David pointed out, that practically a whole age group would be looking
for jobs at one and the same time. In such circumstances it would
find it hard, and perhaps, indeed, impossible, to absorb within a
reasonable time all the young people who had thus been thrown, at one
swoop, so to speak, on to the labour market.
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A FAMILY AFFAIR
   THE flood of facts and opinions lately released from the
conference season may at times seem indigestible to the layman.
Perhaps this is particularly true at this time of year when many
conferences have been dealing with education in its various forms.
Yet there are few subjects more vital to the future of the nation and
ourselves as individuals, and a great many of the discussions are at a
level which is readily understandable to the layman. The truth is
that every layman (and woman) owes it to himself and his children to
take a greater interest in education, for the basis of all education
is the family.
   This is a point which has been made many times before, but it
cannot be overemphasized. And it should be more widely appreciated
that the family influence for good is not necessarily related to a
high level in income. Miss M. G. Green, headmistress of
Kidbrooke School, London, and a member of the Crowther Committee, made
this clear when she addressed the North of England Education
Conference in Newcastle the other day. The best parents are not those
with high incomes or from the professional classes, she said. They
are those who are prepared to put themselves out and make sacrifices
to see that their children have advantages which they themselves
lacked. Indeed it has always been so.
   And for those who believe that the family is a waning influence
because of declining moral standards, the distraction of television,
or some such modern menace, real or imagined, there was heartening
re-assurance from a speaker in Glasgow. Mr John A. Mack,
Stevenson Lecturer in Citizenship at the University of Glasgow,
speaking on the eve of a three-day meeting held by the Science
Masters' Association of Great Britain, told his audience that although
family ties were weakening, the family was the toughest, most
flexible, most adaptable, most ineradicable institution in the history
of human society. Such intensive studies of family life as had been
made indicated that this ancient and formidable institution was
standing up well to the strains of modern life.
   Yet the family unit, virtually indestructible as it may be, is
often capable of improvement as an instrument of education. The means
of improvement are available to all. Only the will is sometimes
lacking. True comprehensive education can be achieved only when
parents, teachers, and children, work as a team- with the senior
members occasionally exercising the veto of authority.
MERGER MOVES
   THE bargain struck with shipbuilding workers to help improve
the competitive power of the industry in return for an immediate wage
increase is by no means one-sided. Reorganization of the yards may
have an important part to play. One of the most experienced
shipbuilders on the North-East Coast, Sir William Gray, chairman of
the West Hartlepool shipbuilding, repairing and engineering company
which bears the family name, said recently that more integration of
shipyards would achieve economies and lead to better planning. His
view was that larger units, operating more closely together, could
undertake research aimed at producing ships which are technically more
advanced.
   There are two schools of thought about the advantages of
consortiums- one believes that they lead inevitably to cheaper ships
and engines: the other, that they can become administratively top
heavy and out of touch with what is happening in shops and ships. The
experience on Wearside of grouping of shipyards is that efficiency
improves without the loss of the family ties which have established
the river's reputation for good ships and good relationships at yard
level.
   Exploratory talks are now about to begin into the possibility of
a closer link between William Doxford and Sons and the Sunderland
Shipbuilding Group (which includes the North Sands and Deptford
Shipyards). A statement issued by the two companies uses the phrase
"increased co-operation," thereby inferring quite accurately that
the two concerns already work together. A check of the ships launched
by Laing's and Thompson's shows that in recent years a high proportion
have been fitted with Doxford machinery. And there could be no
clearer indication of the Sunderland Shipbuilding Group's faith in the
Doxford product than its decision to equip the 2,-ton
Deptford-built tanker Montana with the first Doxford "P" engine.
   The talks are confined at this stage to a full and frank exchange
of views and any speculation is premature. Nevertheless the companies
have announced their intention to the London Stock Exchange. It may
be some months before a further statement is made but one has been
promised when "the position is clarified." Meanwhile the second
ship to be fitted with a "P" engine will be launched next week on
the Wear- and the builders are Thompson's.
RELAXING A BAN
   WEAR shipbuilders, experiencing difficulty in engaging
skilled platers, welcome the decision of the district committee of the
Boilermakers' Society to allow a limited number of boys to train as
platers. So, too, will all others with an interest in Sunderland's
basic industry. It is more than two years since the Society imposed
its embargo on the entry of apprentices into the yards because of
unemployment among its adult members.
   Although the number of boilermakers who are out of work has been
reduced steadily during the past year, the Society does not consider
that the time is opportune to relax the ban so far as welders,
riveters, burners and heaters are concerned. The shipbuilders,
however, put forward an irrefutable case for resuming apprenticeships
in the plating trade and here the Wear District Committee of the
Society has given ground, although the intake will still be strictly
limited.
   The Society has stated that it is watching closely unemployment
among its members so that the ban can be raised as soon as possible.
The Wear Shipbuilders' Association considers that full recruiting of
apprentices should be resumed immediately if the best interests of the
industry, the union and the boys are to be served. If the level of
shipyard unemployment continues to fall on Wearside, the Society will
find itself hard pressed to justify its action in depriving upwards of
one hundred boys a year of the opportunity to train in the town's
chief industry.
STRIKING APPEAL
   THE 58, people who saw Sunderland defeat Arsenal at Roker
Park last Saturday included probably a preponderance of trade
unionists. Yet very few of this majority could have regarded the game
as a combined operation between fellow trade unionists. There were
occasional delicate demarcation disputes, it is true, but for the most
part mass partisanship recognized no boundaries, and certainly did not
easily concede equal rights to the white-shirt workers.
   All that, however, may soon be forgotten if the threatened
footballers' strike kicks-off on January 21, one week before
Sunderland are due to visit Liverpool on urgent business. The
T.U.C. and the Ministry of Labour have already become
involved, and now an emergency resolution is being sent to the North
East Federation of Trades Councils from the Jarrow and Hebburn branch
urging moral and financial support designed to keep crowds away from
any game which might be arranged, other than by the players
themselves. (Hitherto the problem has been to get the crowds in.)
   In the name of working solidarity the good trade unionist is
asked to change his leisure habits in support of players who may cease
to play, and, for good measure, to give up his chance of an overnight
fortune by boycotting football pools, too. There is a danger that
even the white ball will be declared black. Whatever the rights or
wrongs of the dispute, the impartial spectator- if one can still be
found- will surely agree that rarely has trade union loyalty faced a
more baffling test.
COLD WAR FRONT
   THE announcement by the Medical Research Council that
experiments at the Common Cold Research Unit at Salisbury are having
to be postponed because of a shortage of volunteers is not to be
sneezed at. Apparently people who are quite prepared to take a 5-5
chance of catching cold during the summer shrink from the risk in the
winter months, notwithstanding the promise of a free pint of beer each
day and 3s pocket money. In view of the importance of the
experiments and their potential value to suffering humanity this
seasonal lack of "guinea pigs" is, of course, regrettable, but is
the explanation quite so simple? Could not the shortage be due to the
grip the common cold takes at this time of the year of places and
people far removed from Salisbury?
   Wearsiders, for example, may reasonably reflect that there is not
much point in making a sacrificial journey to Wiltshire if the object
of the pilgrimage overtakes one at Newbottle, Shiney Row, Pity Me or
Cold Hesledon. Come to think of it, any of these places- and others
whose names contain less cold comfort- might well claim to have
Common Cold Research Units of their own at this season. The problem
is that a common remedy is uncommonly difficult to find. In fact, the
only discovery to which most of us would subscribe is that established
long ago by an American sufferer. A cold is both positive and
negative: sometimes the Eyes have it and sometimes the Nose.
HOME AND SAFETY
   FEW men would covet a constantly nagging wife, though many
may have difficulty in escaping occasional one-sided exercises in the
ungentle art of feminine raillery. Yet it seems that in certain
circumstances a nagging wife can be an asset. According to Coal Board
officials who made 196 a special "safety" year for Yorkshire
miners sharp tongues at home may have helped to reduce the number of
deaths and serious injuries.
   At the start of the year 12, miners each received a letter
from the divisional chairman urging them to be more safety conscious.
It was sent by post to the men's homes so that wives could also read
it- and perhaps nag their menfolk into taking extra care. Now
provisional accident figures for the year suggest that wifely
strictures were by no means ineffective since rates for both deaths
and injuries were reduced.
   Seriously, however, it is doubtful whether miners' wives ever
need prompting in their concern for their men's safety in the pits.
An efficient pit is a safe pit, is the slogan in the Durham Division,
and the fact that the accident rate in this coalfield is lower than
the national average is at once a measure of progress and an incentive
to further improvement. It may also fairly reflect the good influence
of naturally anxious wives.
ENTER THE UNKNOWN
   UNLIKE his two predecessors in the American Presidency, Mr
John F. Kennedy will take office this week at a moment when the
world is, technically, at peace. President Truman took over during
World War =2. President Eisenhower assumed office during the Korean
War, a conflict which to the Americans ranked close in importance to
the world war itself. The surest way of winning a war is the
relatively simple one of building up physical strength, which both
Truman and Eisenhower achieved. Mr Kennedy, however, takes office
at a time when problems are more subtle and the answers are harder to
find. In wealth and physical resources America is still the world's
strongest nation, but she no longer holds the position of world
dominance which was hers when President Eisenhower took office. Over
the past decade Russia and Western Europe have recovered from the
devastation they suffered in the war. China is developing towards the
status to which her vast population entitles her. New nations emerge
in Africa and Asia which are less willing than were the West European
countries to regard American economic aid as part of a pattern of
political and military co-operation.
   Thus the United States for the first time in her history finds
herself playing a major role on the world stage without being the sole
centre of attraction. Other stars have joined the cast. That the
growth of the other stars has been largely a result of wise American
statesmanship in the past does not make the present situation any
easier.
# 213
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Last years at school
   LORD Amory is to head the Central Advisory Council for
Education during its consideration of the 13 to 16 age group in our
schools and further education institutes. It is within this age group
that outlooks are formed and decisions are taken that lead to
lamentable waste of young people who could make a valuable
contribution to our national life and who do not, for the most part,
make the best of their own lives.
   Lord Amory's long-standing interest in youth- particularly in
the young teenagers now to be considered- will be of great value to
the Council as will his personal experience in medium-sized industry
in which large numbers of youngsters must find their first jobs.
   One of the most important considerations for the Council will be
the use made of the last year in school and the use to be made of the
additional year when the leaving age is raised to 16. It took far too
long for the secondary modern schools to adapt themselves to the new
situation when the leaving age was raised to 15, and the Council will
no doubt feel that much more positive planning must be done soon to
prepare for a further year.
   They will have a lot of useful evidence from the experience of
the schools in dealing with the 14- to 15-year-olds. The pattern has
been very uneven over the country, but at least the evidence is likely
to be highly informative.
   Reduced to its simplest form, the problem is whether the last
year in school (for those children who will not go on to a grammar or
senior technical school) should be used to broaden the youngsters'
minds or for elementary vocational training to equip them for jobs.
Apart from the broad arguments about desirability one way or another
there are often local complications when particular kinds of industry
need regular intakes of school-leavers in particular localities.
   Any teacher will agree that it is impossible to pursue both lines
effectively during a single year. Some formal subject teaching must
go on in either case. The time left over can be fully occupied either
in lectures, discussions and demonstrations aimed at broadening the
understanding or in practical group work taking in pre-apprenticeship
training, but it will not accommodate both.
   It might be that when the leaving age is raised to 16 the last
two years should be marked by a departure from strict subject
teaching. Vocational training and appreciation courses could then be
developed in one two-year curriculum with some hope of success in both
directions.
   While the Advisory Council will be concerned mainly with children
of average ability, they are charged also with considering those who
fall below the average. It seems a pity that the terms of reference
should cover both and it is to be hoped that the Council's report will
treat them separately for special provisions may have to apply in the
second case.
S. Rhodesia agreement
   PERHAPS one does not have to look very far for an explanation
of the unexpected agreement on the constitutional future of Southern
Rhodesia. It illustrates the fact that an ounce of example is worth a
ton of exhortation.
   The example that has confronted Southern Rhodesia is the Congo,
and reports from Salisbury show that Africans and Europeans alike have
been severely shaken by the realisation of what can happen when
political extremism leads to a break-down in the rule of law.
   Africans in Southern Rhodesia do not want to lose what they have
gained in the past, little though it may be. The European community
certainly does not want to see everything they have created come
crashing down about them.
   Neither side can go forward alone. The fact that African and
European leaders have now decided to go forward together, even a
limited distance, is the most encouraging event in Central Africa
since federation of the three territories there took shape.
   It is still too early to see what the effect will be upon
Northern Rhodesia, where the European community is much smaller, but
there are grounds for hope, even though the present constitutional
conference in London may achieve little.
   Hitherto, it has been the Europeans in Northern Rhodesia who have
favoured federation and the Africans who have mainly opposed it (on
the ground that it would mean permanent subjugation to the powerful
European community in Southern Rhodesia).
   Now, with signs of a more liberal outlook in the south, and with
the prospect of an advance in the Africans' position there, a
softening of the attitude of the Africans in Northern Rhodesia is
possible. This, in turn, should ease or remove some of the worst
fears of the Europeans among them.
   Thus- and this in the long run is the really important gain-
there is once again some hope that the Central African Federation can
remain in existence instead of being torn apart either by the Southern
Rhodesian Government's determination to go its own way or by African
suspicions.
   Federation is essential if this area of Africa is to develop the
economic means to sustain political advance. Racial and political
divisions still threaten it, but today there is new hope where only a
week ago there was little but despondency and suspicion.
PICCADILLY CIRCUS
   AT first glance Sir William Holford's design for the new
Piccadilly Circus is extremely disappointing. Indeed, it is more than
that. It is alarming. Many people will ask, ~"Is this really what
is to become of Piccadilly Circus," and will shrink from the
thought.
   Architectural models are liable to be misleading because they are
viewed from an above-the-rooftops position. In practice no one will
ever stop to contemplate the Circus from such a level- from this
angle it would be a fleeting view with swiftly-changing vistas seen
from a helicopter.
   Looked at from above, the model of the Holford scheme leaves an
impression of congestion, jumble, confusion and meanness. To imagine
a pedestrian's view from somewhere near the foot of Eros does not
contradict such impressions but reinforces them.
   Congestion because the surface area of the Circus seems to have
been substantially reduced from what it is today. Jumble because no
discernible formal relationship between the surrounding buildings and
pedestrian platforms is apparent, and confusion for the same reason,
made worse by the compression of traffic into narrow canyons and
tunnels between and under the buildings and pedestrian decks.
Meanness because of the impression of a meagre square shut in by
immense buildings on all sides- and meanness because plainly one of
the main thoughts has been to make the maximum use of the available
area for new building.
   The publicity with which the scheme has been launched has made
much of the "gaiety" of the new Circus. But gaiety is an expansive
mood, and the effect of the model is restrictive and oppressive.
   There is something to be said for the intimacy of college
quadrangle, and the enclosed treatment adopted in the Holford design
might be attractive from an Oxford standpoint for this reason- but
not when an area about as big as a largish quadrangle is flanked with
buildings 1 to 15 storeys high.
   When the Government intervened to stop the building of the Jack
Cotton monster on the Monico site it seemed that, after all,
Piccadilly Circus might be redeveloped in a way which would take up
the opportunities of its situation. The Holford proposal fails on
almost every score to do this.
   A much better solution exists in the scheme drawn up by the
London County Council's architects. It may not be perfect, but at
least it has some of the qualities of spaciousness, harmony and style
that one looks for in a modern city centre. There would be
considerable advantages in going back to this design, even if it
means, as it does, going back to the beginning in this controversy.
A newspaper and its readers
   THE success of the Oxford Mail, which publishes its 1,th
number today, has been due to the support of its readers, who, we
hope, will share our pleasure in reaching a round number large enough
to warrant a minor celebration. They do us the compliment of buying
the paper, which suggests a measure of success in providing them with
what they want.
   Not that a paper's relations with its readers can ever be quite
as simple as that, or if they are, the paper is probably on the wrong
track. The hunt after circulation at any price has brought disaster
to some papers, and has done the profession of journalism a good deal
of damage in recent years, and it is not a policy to be pursued by
papers in a monopoly position.
   Like most provincial evening papers, the Oxford Mail has a
monopoly as a daily in the field of local news (though we welcome the
stimulus of some competition from the London evening papers). This
imposes obligations. A paper in such a position should do more than
merely please its readers.
   It has to try to cover the whole field of news in its area
accurately and without bias. Points of view which the paper may not
share must be reported. Minority interests must be given their claim
on space.
   This is not necessarily a recipe for maximum popularity. But
popularity by itself is not a good test of the performance of a paper.
   A paper must be prepared to be unpopular when necessary-
especially a local one which is sometimes exposed to pressures at
close quarters to soft pedal or even suppress when its job is to be
open and provocative.
   So far as the official editorial opinion of the paper is
concerned, it can be argued that a monopoly paper should not take a
strong line of its own. We have never taken that view. We recall an
editor who once proclaimed, ~"I have nailed my colours to the
fence" as a wit rather than as a paragon. And in any event it has
been the policy of the Oxford Mail and Times Ltd., to encourage
differences of view in the evening and weekly papers which are under
separate editorship.
   When boiled down to essentials the functions of a newspaper are
remarkably simple- though not easy to achieve. They are in essence
to get the facts and get them right, and to provide a fair balance of
argument about matters of controversy.
   There is no need for a paper to be stuffy in observing such
principles. It is an exciting world we live in, and Oxford shares in
most of the things our world gets up to. If the Oxford Mail succeeds
in reporting what goes on, and in shedding useful illumination upon
it, it will, we believe, be recognised by our readers as a job worth
doing.
The Congo after Lumumba
   WHAT next in the Congo? As the situation deteriorates it
becomes clear that the United Nations representation there cannot
remain as it is. To be present but ineffective is worse in some
respects than not to be there at all. It does nothing for the Congo,
it does nothing for the authority of the UN, and it is unfair to
the troops and administrators involved who have to face increasing
risks without being able to achieve anything.
   Govern or get out, the classic phrase of politics, is a choice
that the United Nations must now face realistically. Indeed unless it
is faced there is a danger that the UN representation itself will
disintegrate as individual countries decide to withdraw their men.
   But UN cannot govern in the Congo without a new decision on
policy and that decision cannot be taken unless the countries of the
Security Council agree upon it. That means in practice that Russia
and the United States must find some common ground on which to
approach the Congo question.
   This is where the slightly improved atmosphere between Moscow and
Washington might prove to be of value. There is no reason to suppose
that the Russians will act from any other motive than self interest,
but it is just conceivable that if they can be convinced that the
United States has no desire to exploit the Congo chaos they will
themselves recognise the need to end it.
# 246
<64 TEXT B2>
HOW RED IS AFRICA?
By JOHN BAKER-WHITE
   JUST how red is Africa? To what extent has the Soviet
propaganda machine succeeded in influencing the upsurge of African
nationalism? Has Moscow yet got a firm foothold, political or
economic, in the great African continent? And were the disorders in
the Congo and Rhodesia the work of Red Agents?
   The answers to these questions press not only on politicians,
strategists and intelligence experts, but on all of us. For the
future pattern of rule in the states of Africa must inevitably shape
the pattern of the world.
   In probing for the answers to these questions I shall start by
listing the states where Communism has little or no influence. One of
them is the Kingdom of Morocco, another Tunisia, a third Libya.
Students red trained
   It is true that a few students from these countries are
studying the techniques of revolution in Moscow and Prague, and a
handful of trade union leaders are in Communist training schools, but
the governments are anti-Communist and the people disinterested
<SIC> in Red doctrines.
   In the Sudan the Communist Party is illegal, the political
intelligence system alert, and to date efforts by the World Federation
of Trade Unions to capture the unions have failed.
   It may surprise some people to know that Communism, at the
moment, has no hold in Ghana. President Nkrumah is building a
Socialist state, aided by a small number of hand-picked young
Socialist intellectuals, but he has no illusions about Communist
methods. He studied them closely when, as a young man, he lived in
London. When Ghana got its independence Moscow thought the new state
was a "sitting bird" and the Soviet economic experts arrived with
attractive offers for the cocoa crop.
"Communists our rivals"
   They discovered that the President is prepared to do business
with the Soviet bloc- but only on his own terms.
   Anxious to become head of a federation of African states,
including the Congo, he seeks to harness the forces of nationalism.
Communism he regards not so much as an ally but as a competitor.
   In Guinea the picture is very different. Just over a year ago I
warned that the Soviet Union was planning to establish in this new
state a fresh bridgehead into Africa. Now she has got it.
   A dedicated Marxist and graduate of Prague University, President
Sekou Toure is what the cynical planners in the Kremlin call "in the
net." He is bound to the Soviet bloc by loans and trade agreements.
He has accepted technicians in large numbers from Russia, East
Germany and Poland. The Czechs are reshaping and equipping Guinea's
army and police. Chinese technicians have taken charge of the rice
growing plan.
Red-made
   In Conakry, the capital, shops are full of Czech matches,
cigarettes and watches, Chinese rice, East German typewriters and
Russian textiles. Czech cement is building the new docks, German
machinery equipping the new factories. A Conakry-Prague air service
is opening up, a Communist-controlled school for African trade union
leaders is open already.
   Since the beginning of the year five international Communist
organisations have held conferences at Conakry. One of them was the
Afro-Asian Solidarity Council, based in Cairo, and, for the past three
years, Moscow's main propaganda weapon in Africa. I predict that
within the next six months the Council will move permanently to
Conakry, for Guinea- not Cairo- is now the most important Red
bridgehead in Africa.
   The violent revolt against Belgium, the tribal conflicts and
other disorders in the Congo were neither Moscow-planned nor directed.
There is evidence that the Russians were just as surprised as anyone
else at the suddenness and violence of them, but it is, of course, a
situation ideal for exploitation.
Communist army head
   At least two of Mr. Lumumba's entourage have had some
training in Moscow, and the officer in charge of the Guinea contingent
of the U N forces in the Congo is a fully indoctrined Communist.
   Three Czech "advisers" accompanied the contingent, and now a
thirty-strong Soviet "technical mission" has arrived in
Leopoldville. It may be pure coincidence that they are all tall,
well-built men in their middle-thirties, but they look uncommonly like
Red Army officers in plain clothes.
   Communism had little or nothing to do with the riots in South
Africa or the more recent disorders in Rhodesia. In fact, former
leaders of the Communist Party in the Union have left the country.
Some are now in the Rhodesian copper belt and at least one of them is
in London.
   In contrast, Moscow has embarked upon a special operation in
Ruanda-Urundi, which borders on the Belgian Congo. This state of some
21, square miles and a population of 4,63, has been a United
Nations trust territory under the administration of Belgium, but a few
days ago she announced that she was giving up the trusteeship.
   In the early part of August a Soviet agent named Nikolay Khokhlov
arrived in the capital Usumbura, and made contact with the
vice-president of the United Movement Party, Paul Kabandrouka.
Through Khokhlov he sent a message to Moscow. "Let the U S S
R know that Ruanda-Urundi demands independence, demands it
urgently and without delay."
   I smell trouble here. The conditions exist for it and trouble
would suit Moscow's purpose admirably. It joins the frontiers not
only of the Congo but also of Tanganyika and Uganda, a British
trusteeship and protectorate moving towards self-government.
Ruanda-Urundi is a place to watch.
Secret police ruthless
   Colonel Nasser and the United Arab Republic have economic ties
with the Soviet bloc and the Soviet mission has underground contact
with the leaders of the rebel National Liberation Front at their
headquarters in the Street of the Blue Mosque in Cairo. On the other
hand, the secret police has been known to deal ruthlessly with
Communist agitators.
   While he was living in London the Communists made a number of
approaches to Dr. Hastings Banda, the Nyasaland nationalist leader,
but there is evidence that, like President Nkrumah, he has few
illusions about how Moscow uses African nationalism to achieve its own
purposes. Among the states in the French Community that the Soviet
propagandists are paying particular attention to are Madagascar and
the Cameroun, facts to which the French are alive.
   While Moscow continues to step up the radio barrage on the ears
of African listeners, the most significant developments in the
propaganda offensive in the coming months will come from Peking.
China radio propaganda
   The China-Africa Friendship Association has been formed,
6inter alia, "to support the joint struggle of the African
peoples in opposing imperialism and colonialism." Radio Peking's
output to Africa is now 55 hours a week, and includes special
broadcasts in Cantonese to overseas Chinese in South Africa,
Madagascar and Mauritius.
   A recent check on a book-store on <SIC> Conakry showed that
there were 14 Chinese publications on sale, compared with three
Russian and one Czech. One of the latest Peking publications is a
training manual for African trade unionists.
   The 23-man Chinese delegation which attended the Solidarity
Council meeting in Conakry was the largest of all, and the official
propaganda agency, the New China News Agency, has opened up offices in
Rabat, Accra and Conakry.
   Africa has been described as a seething cauldron. Both Moscow
and Peking can be expected to take every opportunity of adding fuel to
the fire under it.
BY ELECTIONS- a new warning to Tories
by RADAR
   CONSERVATIVE Party fortunes are far from their peak at the
present time. And so are those of Harold Macmillan.
   They have slumped as a result of the build-up of a variety of
what the Prime Minister probably prefers to view as little local
difficulties.
   Voters, as the recent by-election results showed, are in
increasing numbers losing their faith in the magic of the Tory
administration.
   This is not to say that the discontented are running to the
Socialists as their saviours.
   There is no new spectacular devotion for Jo Grimond's struggling
Liberal Party, though the Liberal leaders have good reason to be
satisfied with the overall results.
   As is usual at by-elections, the disgruntled and disillusioned
are staying away from the polling stations, not committing themselves
for the time being.
   Meanwhile, millions more people who voted for the Conservatives
in October, 1959, and who have not recently had the chance to vote for
a parliamentary candidate, are talking among themselves.
   
   It is nothing unusual these days to pop into the saloon bar of a
public house and hear the Government coming under fire from those with
the accent of the reasonably well-off.
   There is a widespread belief that the ruling Tories are becoming
more reactionary, trying to please their Right Wing more than their
Left or centre supporters.
   No single act by the Government has done more to foster this
impression than the increase in the Health Service charges.
   On the other hand, everyone but the Right-wing Conservatives
applauded the Prime Minister's "wind of change" attitude towards
dealing with the problem of Africa and the coloured people.
   
   In the event, the wind has dropped to no more than a gentle
breeze. It has been damped down by those who would like to see hardly
any movement at all.
   Harold Macmillan himself has had a difficult time. So far as
general affairs have been concerned he has deliberately attempted to
lie low, let his colleagues build up their own images.
   Last year he put everything he had into trying to bring about a
successful Summit meeting between the leaders of the U.S.A.,
Russia, France and the United Kingdom.
   It was not his fault that the attempt failed. But it was
heartbreaking, none the less.
   As leader of the Commonwealth's principal nation he could not
have found it pleasant to preside over the dramatic branding of Dr.
Verwoerd's apartheid doctrines.
   It is doubtful whether the man who happened to be Britain's Prime
Minister at the time when South Africa decided to end her 5-year
association with this country will be proclaimed a national hero on
that particular score.
   The fact is, Harold Macmillan has lost a lot of ground in the
popularity stakes, needs a new major personal success to restore his
own fortunes, and those of the Party.
   There is still one glittering prize to be grasped. The man who
captures it will go down in history as one of the greatest of mortals.
   What the great masses of ordinary people in the world desire most
of all is the certain prospect of peace for as long ahead as possible.
   
   No one can blame Harold Macmillan for trying to reach the elusive
goal. And few would be so uncharitable as to say that he would like
to do it just for his own sake.
   The Prime Minister realises that he has as good a chance of
bringing about the hoped-for miracle as any man alive. His unique
position as leader of the British Commonwealth of Nations gives him a
better chance than most.
   Once more, he believes, he must try to be the intermediary
between the two great opposing Communist and non-Communist world
blocs. If nothing else, the Americans have to be convinced that the
Government of Red China must be given full recognition, admitted to
the United Nations, and treated as what it is- one of the leading
governments in the world.
Half the world's crooks are never caught
reveals JOHN REED
   DURING this week in the cities of Rome, Paris, and New York,
it is safe to predict that a total of at least 7 people will be
murdered.
   In addition, there will be at least two major bank robberies,
several hundred cases of rape, and thousands of burglaries and frauds.
   In New York alone a serious offence is committed every two
minutes.
   THESE ARE SHOCKING FIGURES, BUT EVEN MORE SHOCKING IS THE FACT
THAT AT LEAST HALF THE PEOPLE BEHIND THESE CRIMES WILL GO UNDETECTED.
   Experts who attended a recent conference on crime in London
admitted that all over the world crime is not only increasing, but in
many cases the criminal is becoming more elusive.
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THOMAS DENHAM, Evening News Diplomatic Correspondent, continues
his series on HUNGARY TODAY, five years after the uprising
Catching up with the Western Joneses
   HUNGARY is not only a Communist country, but in a sense a
new country, trying for the first time to exploit its resources and
"catch up with the West." Everywhere there are new factories, new
housing estates, new farm buildings.
   Clothes and many window displays may sometimes remind you of the
post-war years of "utility" in Britain. Much is obviously being
sacrificed for the future, but people have money to spend on what is
available, particularly on entertainment and food, both of which are
cheap.
   On the bright days which follow one another in summer the
pavements of Budapest's main streets are thronged. At the week-end
the many fine swimming pools, fed by hot-springs, are so packed it is
hardly possible to see the water, and the resorts down the Danube and
on Lake Balaton are full of couples and families enjoying themselves,
which they can do for a very modest outlay.
   The night clubs are full, and whether you eat in a restaurant or
a private home you soon discover the Hungarians are traditionally the
biggest eaters in Europe, and take a pride in it- to the distress of
their doctors.
Lively people
   They are enthusiastic cinema-goers- Hungary must be one of the
few European countries where cinema attendances have steadily
increased in recent years. Television is comparatively new and
limited, and with about 15, sets in the country has hardly yet
made an impact.
   The standard, of course, is very different from the hard,
expensive glitter of West Germany. But it is equally far removed from
the dismal greyness of East Berlin.
   The Hungarians are a lively people, with a sense of humour very
much like ours. If they have their troubles and sorrows, in the
towns, at any rate, they seem to carry them lightly. Earlier in the
year, I was told, the riddle was being asked: "What is it that is 3
yards long and eats potatoes?" The answer "A meat queue." More
recently it was what is 3 yards long and eats meat, with the answer
"a potato queue."
   I saw nothing to suggest an overall shortage of food- on the
contrary. The official explanation of the meat queues was that they
were only for pork. There was plenty of beef and other meat, but
conservative housewives preferred to queue for their favourite pork.
Pork shortage
   The shortage of pork could have been satisfied by cutting
exports, but the authorities preferred to disappoint customers at home
to losing customers abroad by not meeting export orders.
   Comparisons of standards of living are difficult to make because
of traditional differences in the way of life and pursuit of
happiness, differences in our social system and the wide range of
incomes. For instance, rents in Hungary are extremely low, running
from 15s. to +2 a month.
   Public transport is so cheap that its cost could virtually be
ignored, and, indeed, it must literally be so by many in Budapest, for
the trams are usually so packed that it would be impossible to collect
the fares even if the customers were anxious to pay.
   A really cheap midday meal is widely available by law, and the
quantity and quality and service is much above what one would expect
in Britain, although this probably has much more to do with tradition
and a feeling that food is more important than the social revolution.
   Deductions for pensions and trade union funds may amount to 4 per
cent., but income tax is not something that has to be worried about.
"Norm" of work
   These are facts that have to be borne in mind when comparing
wages, which, at a realistic rate of exchange, average less than +25
a month, with a range of, say +14 a month for an office cleaner to
+5 plus a month for a coal miner.
   As is usual in a "socialist" country, wages depend on
achieving a "norm" of work. The underground coal miner's
"plus," for instance, is in the form of an annual bonus based on
"loyalty," i.e., years of service and good timekeeping.
   At a pit I went down, the list of bonuses paid to every miner was
pinned up. The largest amounted to two months' wages- over +1-
and they ranged down to two weeks' wages.
   This makes the miners comparatively wealthy and I was interested
to learn they spend their "surplus" money on much the same things
as here, if they can get them- furniture, television, refrigerators
and cars.
   The Mayor of Komlo, which has 1, miners, told me he knew
several who had refurnished their homes twice in seven years (the
whole city is less than 1 years old), and that there was over +3
million in the local savings bank. But the standard of good
attendance is stiff- one day's "unnecessary" absenteeism loses
half the annual bonus, two days and the lot is lost.
Holiday rewards
   Among the rewards of good work and conformity with enthusiasm
are holidays at excellent resorts so cheap that the wage-earner can
make a "profit" on his stay. My guide in one town told me she had
been awarded a fortnight's holiday on the Black Sea for her good work.
   These holiday homes are owned by the trade unions, which spend 73
per cent. of their annual income of +6 million plus on social
welfare, culture and sports. But, except through these "official"
channels, the possibilities for holidays away from home must be
limited.
   Although more Hungarians travelled to western countries last year
than ever before, holidays abroad in non-Communist countries are
limited because currency is not made available.
   There are many things in the new Hungary it is easy to like and
perhaps from which we could learn. There is, for instance, the
appetite for education, including self-education, and for "culture"
and the facilities provided for satisfying it.
   There is the lack of class-consciousness, at least in the towns,
where you will find obvious manual workers sitting with
smartly-dressed men and women in restaurants and night clubs.
   There is self-criticism and a great desire to do better.
Dull papers
   A high official in one ministry surprised me by his blunt
criticism of Hungarian papers as "deadly dull." He said he would
like to see some as bright as the British ones, although, of course,
their contents would be different.
   They can laugh at their own weaknesses, like the belief that it
is impossible to eat in a restaurant without gipsy music, although the
gipsies have disappeared long since.
   What I found depressing was the insistence that all the many good
things in the country were due only to "socialism" and the Party
and would not otherwise exist, together with fantastic ignorance of
the western world or refusal to believe what did not suit the theory.
   To give a couple of instances that stuck in my mind. A woman
journalist insisted that unemployment was our major difficulty in
Britain. She simply smiled disbelievingly at the statement that, in
fact, there were more situations vacant than people looking for jobs.
   A charming and highly-intelligent medical director said: "But,
of course, our system of medicine is different as our doctors aim to
keep people well, while it pays western doctors to keep them sick."
Hardly able to believe my ears, I asked him if he really believed
that.
   The answer was: "It must be so, otherwise how could they make a
profit in a capitalist country?"
Rigidity of mind
   One can be full of admiration for the things being done- the
new factories, the housing estates, the new towns, the large-scale
agriculture.
   What is almost frightening is the rigidity of mind which seems to
make it impossible to accept that many of these things are also being
done, and perhaps even more so and better, in "capitalist"
countries; an apparent assumption that everything from free libraries
to large-scale farming and co-operatives to health services are new
and unique in "socialist" countries.
   Of course, these closed minds are not all on one side of the Iron
Curtain. I read not long ago in an English paper a description of
Budapest in the early evening suggesting it was a dark and depressing
city.
   I can testify that, seen from the surrounding heights, it is a
fairy-land of lights, that many shops are open and the windows of the
others lit up. There, as in other Hungarian cities, it is possible
and very cheap to dance until 4 a.m. if you are so minded.
From our Diplomatic Correspondent
THOMAS DENHAM
   BRITISH and American tanks stand ready for action with their
guns pointed at East Berlin, where Russian tanks have been seen for
the first time since the 1953 uprising.
   Since last Sunday, when East Berlin sector guards stopped
U.S. soldiers and officials and refused to let them pass when
they would not show their identity papers, the situation has built up
into the tensest in the history of post-war Berlin.
   The foray of U.S. soldiers into East Berlin to secure the
release of the Deputy Chief of the U.S. mission was the first
occasion American soldiers had entered the Soviet sector since the
city was divided.
   What is it all about?
   Superficially, it might seem that the dispute is about how
members of the U.S. mission should establish their identity when
they cross the sector border.
   In fact, the dispute has arisen out of a bold attempt by the East
German Government to get recognition for itself by the West, and the
determination of the West to continue to demonstrate that East Berlin
is not the capital of a sovereign nation, but part of Berlin which is
under four-power occupation.
Was clearly shown
   If East Berlin were part of a sovereign nation, no foreign
troops and, indeed no foreigners would be allowed to enter it without
permission of its Government.
   Every time Western soldiers or members of the military government
enter East Berlin they demonstrate it is not part of another nation.
   This situation has existed and worked well- since the defeat of
the Berlin blockade.
   What the East Germans are trying to establish was clearly shown
during one of the hold-ups when one of their radio reporters, doing a
running commentary, told his listeners: "Now the Americans are
negotiating with our officials."
   This was, of course, untrue, the "negotiation" was a flat
demand for a Soviet officer to be brought to whom they would talk and
with whom they would, no doubt, establish their identity.
   What is at stake, in fact, is whether the West recognises Herr
Ulbricht or Mr Kruschev as responsible for East Berlin.
   The West has no intention of recognising Herr Ulbricht, as it has
made very clear to the Russians in public and private conversations.
   The full story behind this dangerous confrontation shows there
have been miscalculations on both sides.
Were too cautious
   Herr Ulbricht, the toughest and most adventurous of the
Communist leaders, long believed that the Russians were too cautious
about Berlin and that, given a free hand, he could get away with a
bit-by-bit encroachment on Western rights which would result in West
Berlin falling into his hands.
   He had been pressing to be allowed to build his "wall" and
close all but a handful of crossings for a long time before he
persuaded the Russians that any danger of a Western counter-action
could be discounted. In the event he proved right. There was no
Western counter-action.
   This was not because the West was taken by surprise. Its
intelligence had learned it was coming. But it wrongly believed the
wall would be directed only at controlling Germans and that plenty of
crossings would be made available through negotiations, if necessary,
with the Russians.
   When the error of this view became apparent, there was
determination to resist, by force if necessary, the next attempt to
take another slice from the West Berlin sausage.
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COMMENTARY FROM City and County
by THE GOSSIPER
   LOCAL booksellers are anticipating a heavy demand for
copies of the new version of the Holy Bible.
   Published today, this mid-2th century edition of the World's
Best Seller is already certain of living up to its long reputation. A
representative of one of Lincoln's leading firms of booksellers told
me yesterday: "We have had such a demand for the new Bible that we
have today put in an order for additional supplies. Many of the
advance orders, of course, have come from clergymen, but we have had
more from lay people". But he added this warning "We, in the
trade, feel that many people think that this is a new version of the
whole Bible. It is, of course, only the New Testament: it will be
many years before the Old Testament, and the Apocrypha are
available."
HIS BRIEF APPEARANCE
   THE man who holds the record for length of service as
Lincoln's Member of Parliament- since the city's representation was
reduced from two to one 8 years ago- made his briefest ever public
appearance, on B.B.C. television.
   Sir Walter Liddall, elected M P for Lincoln in 1931,
became a member of the Palace of Westminster Home Guard when it was
formed in 194. And we saw him, for a fleeting two or three seconds,
on parade, in the latest episode in the film series "The Valiant
Years", based on Sir Winston Churchill's war memoirs. It was a hot
summer's day when the film was shot, in the palace yard, and Sir
Walter, nearest the camera, was on parade in shirt sleeves.
   Many Lincoln people recognised him. And many also noticed the
awful bloomer the producers of the film made in showing a 1914-18
war poster to aid recruiting in 194!
NEW RECORD COMING?
   Sir Walter Liddall was elected Member of Parliament for Lincoln
on October 27, 1931 and served continuously until July 26, 1945-
although some might argue that he ceased to be M.P. three weeks
earlier! The General Election of 1945 took place on July 5 but,
because of the large number of Services votes from distant lands that
had to come in, the count was delayed until the 26th of the month.
Sir Walter- he had been knighted in the dissolution honours- lost
his seat, after a period of service of 13 years and eight months. The
present Member, Mr. Geoffrey de Freitas will pass that record if
this parliament runs its normal course.
   The last General Election was in October 1959 and it is
likely that the next will be in the early part of 1964. Mr. de
Freitas became M.P. for Lincoln in February 195 and his term
will have extended to 13 years and eight months by October 1963.
"HONEST- BUT UNREASONING"
   To return to Sir Walter Liddall: it was in July 1944 that he
set up his Parliamentary record by beating the term of office of Mr.
Charles Roberts, who was Liberal M.P. for Lincoln from 196 to
1918. But the all-time record is one of 2 years, held by Colonel
Charles Sibthorp, an early Victorian Member, and one of a number of
gentlemen of that family who at one time or another represented
Lincoln in the Commons. Charles was first elected in 1826 but was
unseated in 1832. However, he was re-elected in January 1835 and
retained the seat- it was one of two, in those days of course- until
his death in December 1855.
   That was the Colonel Sibthorp who achieved notoriety for his
outspokenness in debate, and of whom "The Times" said "His name
has long been a household word, as the very embodiment of honest, but
unreasoning Tory prejudice."
   Frequently, Colonel Sibthorp had to be called to order by The
Speaker for his unparliamentary language, but he did on one occasion
save the country +2, a year- which was a lot of money in those
days! When it was announced that Queen Victoria was to marry Prince
Albert, Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, proposed that the nation
should settle on His Royal Highness an allowance of +5, a year.
Colonel Sibthorp's violent opposition won the day and the allocation
was reduced to +3,.
W.E.A'S JUBILEE
   THE "golden jubilee" meeting of Lincoln W.E.A. branch
forged a new and interesting link in its history.
   The branch has survived two world wars, and battled its way
successfully through the Great Depression. Now it has gone full
circle for, after the austerities of the first war, the grim
despondency of the Depression, and the rationed utilities of the
second war it has met to consider "The Affluent Society."
   But, possibly even more interesting than this, was the fact
that the speaker was Mrs. Mary Stocks, well-known as a member of the
B.B.C. Brains Trust and radio programme "Any Questions?"
   Though she had paid only brief "passing through" visits to
the city in the past, Lincoln is not entirely unknown to Mrs.
Stocks, for she is the sister-in-law of Miss Helen Stocks who was the
first resident tutor of the branch. Miss Stocks, who took a history
tripos at Lady Margaret College, Oxford, (she did not obtain a degree,
because at that time women could not take degrees) was also a member
of the Oxford Tutorial Classes Committee. Her appointment as resident
tutor for the Lincoln branch followed a visit to the city in
connection with the branch's formation, by Mr. E. S.
Cartwright, secretary of the committee.
   She remained in Lincoln from 1911 until 1919 when she moved owing
to the illness of her father, one time Archdeacon of Leicester, and
later Canon of Peterborough, and settled in Kettering. During the
meeting Mrs. Stocks told me "I always used to hear a lot about
Lincoln. My sister-in-law grew very fond of the city, and never lost
her affection for it."
COMMENTARY FROM City and County
by THE GOSSIPER
   MY story of the man who had been stopped on Burton-road by an
elderly woman who asked him for her bus fare to enable her to collect
her pension has revealed that this was far from being a solitary
experience.
   Telephone calls from a man at Sobraon Barracks and from a woman
living in Broadway, and a letter from a resident of
Yarborough-crescent, indicate that this begging has been going on on
what seems to be quite a large scale. The caller from the barracks
said the woman asked him the time and when he replied, she said:
"You don't happen to have a few coppers for a bus fare, do you?"
He added that he had known her stop at least seven people in one day,
and collect a few coppers from each.
   The woman who telephoned from Broadway told me she was
"touched" as she was leaving the Cathedral. They happened to be
passing through the doorway at the same moment and the woman told my
correspondent she was very tired, her feet hurt, she had no money and
could not go to the Post Office to collect her pension. "I asked her
where she lived and she countered by asking me where I lived. It was
obvious to me, then, that she was simply begging."
   There is a slight variation in the tale as told by a reader
living on Yarborough-crescent. The woman asked for her bus fare to
St. John's Hospital. "I gave her sixpence, she told me it was not
enough, so I gave her another sixpence."
"GOOD LUCK" LETTERS
   ACCORDING to a letter I have received, I have been due for a
stroke of good luck today, but so far- and the day is far advanced,
as I write- Dame Fortune has failed to smile on me to any unusual
extent.
   The letter, I was told, was "a prayer" which originated in
The Netherlands. "You are to have good luck four days after
receiving this; it is not a joke," it said, and went on, "It must
leave your hands before 97 hours after receiving it. Just send this
letter and 2 others to some people you wish to have some good luck.
Write it all out 2 times!" It would take me nearly 97 hours to do
it, unless I did carbon copies, and they might not "work."
   This letter is about as nonsensical as other chain letters
which appear periodically; the only difference is that there is no
money involved here. Just the arduous labour of writing out a
ridiculous letter 2 times. I am afraid it left my hands before the
97 hours were up- cast into the waste paper basket.
BUS TICKET "SEVENS"
   EQUALLY silly is a story I have just heard about a craze for
collecting bus tickets, the serial number of which ends with the
figure "7."
   A colleague who travels regularly on Lincoln Corporation buses
tells me he has been asked by someone, acting as spokesman for a third
party, to save any tickets he receives from the conductor, the number
of which ends in "7." When, naturally, he asked why, he was told
that they were saved and then handed in at the Corporation Transport
Department when, in some way which was not specified by his informant,
some worthy cause benefited.
   Mention of this to the Corporation Transport General Manager,
Mr. Herbert Jones, produced the expected comment, "Never heard of
such nonsense." So please don't start unloading bundles of old bus
tickets at his office!
NOT VENUS, HE SAYS!
   MY reference to the fire which, in February, 1922, destroyed
some business premises in Silver-street, Lincoln, has reminded one
reader of something- and provided me with an illustration of what
long memories some people have for trivialities!
   I had had occasion, some considerable time ago, to mention that
fire, in connection with something else, and having turned up the
files in the office library, I had quoted a quite picturesque
description which had been given to the Echo at the time by a lady
living in James-street, near the Cathedral. In the course of this,
she had said the planet Venus could be seen shining through the glow
in the sky from the flames.
   Now an anonymous reader writes to tell me she couldn't have
seen Venus that night because it wasn't shining!
   He has, it seems, looked through some astronomical records and
informs me that the sun set at about 5.34 on the day of the fire and
Venus very shortly afterwards, at about 5.5! The fire was discovered
at about half past seven- by someone rejoicing in the name of "Cocky
Yates" according to my anonymous correspondent- so it could not
have been Venus that Miss Bicknell saw from her house in James-street.
Any other astronomically minded reader who would like to venture what
bright star it could have been that, for almost 4 years now, we've
been thinking was Venus? We really ought to get this thing straight!
COMMENTARY FROM City and County
by THE GOSSIPER
   WHAT is the objection to utilising the old burial ground in
Beaumont-fee, Lincoln, as a car park?
   It is untidy and, apart from what grass there is being trimmed
now and then, it is not particularly well looked after. Gravestones
are broken and almost wholly indecipherable. Only a few years ago,
the old burial ground in Saltergate was turned into a "garden of
rest"- for the living, not the dead- and the gravestones were
taken up, some of them being used for the footpaths. And going
further back, the south side of St. Benedict-square was widened by
taking a slice from the old burial ground.
   The plot in Beaumont-fee, only a few yards from the city
centre, would provide an ideal parking place for quite a number of
cars which today are partly blocking the roads by being parked at the
kerbside.
A WOMAN'S MEMORIES
   A LETTER from an 83-years-old lady living near Sleaford
indicates that Lincoln Corporation had been more reticent than I
thought in releasing news about the typhoid epidemic which killed more
than 12 people in 195.
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LETTERS to the EDITOR
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
   MICHAEL McCARTHY and Frank Platt in their open letter to
Labour Party members refer to Socialism and the new defence policy
without at any time defining Socialism, except in vague platitudes and
general sentiments with which no-one would disagree. And they don't
write a word on defence, which only in the slightest degree differs
from the Tory Government's present policy.
   For example, the Tory Party and Mr. Gaitskell insist that the
main plank in our defence policy must be that we stay as junior
partners to the Americans, who have consistently opposed any
disarmament, despite the Russian's <SIC> offer to accept any
Western proposals on control, provided we agree to disarm.
   This has led to the position of Mr. Gaitskell and his
supporters, which I presume includes Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Platt,
who say give up the British H-bomb and rely on the American H-bomb,
and provide the Americans with bases from which nuclear weapons can be
used.
   This conflicts completely with the official policy of the Labour
Party, which flows from the obvious assumption that there can be no
defence against H-bombs, particularly for our small island, and that
therefore a defence policy for British people must be designed to
bring about a reduction of world tension and an atmosphere conducive
to negotiations for effective world disarmament, which cannot be
achieved if we accede continually to the demands for military bases
from the main opponents of disarmament, the Americans and the Germans.
   Your correspondents suggest that the doctrinaires are in a
minority in the party, and refer to local M.P.s, who support the
official policy, but rather peculiarly do not mention the Oldham
Labour Party or Mr. Leslie Hale, who are both on record in support
of the Labour Party Conference decisions.
   Why is this? Could it be that our two friends hesitate to
suggest that Mr. Hales would be a party to any policy which is not
designed to maintain both peace and British independence?
   Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Platt also suggest that the Campaign for
Democratic Socialism came into being because moderates have lacked an
organised voice. Must we presume that they haven't noticed that 95
per cent of the Press support the Moderates?
   What policy differences have our Democratic Socialists with the
Tories and Liberals? None! Just vague platitudes!
   They say that "the benefits of the affluent society should be
used to assist the less fortunate, and that stress should be given to
public as against private interests." What, precisely, have they in
mind? Increases in taxation of the rich, to increase old-age
pensions? What would that other Democratic Socialist, Woodrow Wyatt,
MP (who a few days ago advocated relief for surtax payers) say
about such class legislation? How can you guarantee that industry
will operate in the public interest while it is privately owned?
   Our two Democratic Socialists "regard the public ownership of
industries or services as a useful technique to be justified on its
merits." No Liberal or Tory would disagree with such a vague
platitude. Socialists advocate public ownership as the only means of
ensuring that we haven't two classes in society, one that produces the
wealth of the nation but does not receive the fruits of their labour,
and the other class who own industry, but do not play any part
directly or indirectly in the production or distribution of the
nation's wealth.
   Our Democratic Socialists make a clarion call to all members of
the Labour Party to make themselves heard. For what purpose? To
influence the policy of the Party?
   How can this be done when our Democratic Socialists deny the
right of members of the Party to determine policy, when they insist
"that no-one has the power to dictate to the Parliamentary Labour
Party." Which must mean that the Parliamentary Labour Party has the
right to dictate policy to Labour Party members.
   Clearly our two Democratic Socialists are suggesting that the
Labour Party should give up its heritage as a democratic party of the
people and adopt not only the essentials of Tory and Liberal policy,
plus a few harmless platitudes, but also Tory organisational
principles, who do not make any pretence of allowing Tory rank and
file members any part in deciding policy.
   R. SEDDON.
P O EARLY CLOSING
   IS it not time that the ancient custom of sub-post offices
closing on Tuesday afternoons was abolished and replaced by closing on
Saturday afternoons?
   We find the present arrangement under which parcels and air mails
have to be sent specially to Oldham General Post Office on Tuesdays
very inconvenient, and there must be many firms in Oldham who are
inconvenienced in the same way.
   Business firms must be among the largest users of the Post
Office, and their requirements on Saturdays are usually small.
   J. BAGGS,
   Managing Director,
   John Baggs Electric Ltd.
O H G S PLACES
   I WONDER if the Town Council are prepared to state why the
places to the Hulme Grammar Schools have been so drastically reduced.
I suppose the excuse is economy; if so, why not a similar reduction
in the Manchester places, as with fare and dinner grants the cost for
each child must be greater than any other.
   Why pick out one school from four to reduce? Why not a fairer
scheme of a few places from each?
   I shall be interested to see their reasons if they will give
them.
   RATEPAYER.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW HOUSING BILL
   MR. FRANK PLATT'S recent patronising offering in your
columns on the subject of the Government's new Housing Bill, was a
pathetic attempt to divert your readers' attention from the main
contention of my recent letter- namely, that the number of local
authorities who have managed to resist pressure from Socialist
councillors against the introduction of a differential rent scheme is
still alarmingly small. Surely Mr. Platt's ingenuity extends a
little further than such phrases as ~"There is much to be said both
for and against differential rents" and "Local Conservatives who
cannot take time off from screaming emotional slogans about wealthy
council house tenants," when attempting to defend the complete lack
of any test of a tenant's means before allocating ratepayers' money to
the relief of rent.
   Or does Mr. Platt realise already that there can be no defence
against such indiscriminate and amoral use of public money? Certainly
his compatriots in the Labour Party would do well to grasp the fact
that the onus is now very definitely on local authorities to consider
all sections of the community of ratepayers when formulating their
rent policies, instead of merely where political advantage may be
gained or lost.
   Mr. Platt seems terribly confused in his analysis of the new
Housing Bill, though he is certainly right in the <SIC> drawing
attention to the apparent inconsistency of redistributing the
additional +3 million by which the housing subsidies' bill rises
every year, i.e. to cover new building, and failing to
redistribute the existing +61 million.
   One suspects that the Government was wary of the immense
administrative difficulties involved in tinkering with subsidies which
local authorities, after all, have already taken into account when
arriving at a rent for existing property, i.e. +22 1s. for
slum clearance, +1 for one-bedroomed houses suitable for old people,
and +32 for overspill building.
   The annual increment of +3 million will now be distributed in
the form of a general grant of +24, or +8 for all new houses,
instead of a grant for specific purposes as previously, and this
apparently Mr. Platt has not fully understood. Seen in this
context, his assertion that "this +3 million is entirely taken up by
slum clearance, etc.," is somewhat inaccurate.
   The net results of this redistribution of housing subsidies will
be, first, that the existing arrangements which unduly favour the
larger towns with a relatively high number of pre-war houses compared
with rural authorities who have done most <SIC> their building in
the post-war years, will be severely modified. Thus the anomalous
position whereby rents of council houses are higher in rural areas
than in the big towns, though the incomes of tenants are almost
certainly lower, will be swept away.
   Secondly, those authorities which are unable to pass the
financial needs test proposed in the Bill (i.e., where rent
income calculated on the basis of twice the 1956 gross value of all
the particular local authority's houses exceeds annual expenditure and
receive <SIC> the lower subsidy) will be induced to utilise all
possible rent resources to balance their housing revenue accounts.
   It is surely justifiable for the Bill to assume that a local
authority is adopting a reasonable rents policy, and collecting in
rents an income which is equal to twice the 1956 gross rateable value
of their property, while pursuing an adequate scheme of rent rebate
for the benefit of their more needy tenants, financed by a
rate-subsidy which would be smaller than hitherto.
   Finally, I cannot agree with Mr. Platt's contention that the
yard-stick proposed will lead to unnecessary Exchequer spending. Even
allowing for the unlikely contingency of building costs continuing to
rise at a precipitous rate, and local authorities suddenly finding
that their rent income falls short of housing expenditure to the
extent of their qualifying for the higher Exchequer subsidy, there is
provision in the Bill for a yearly review of the situation to take
account of the effect of further building by each authority. Mr.
Platt significantly fails to suggest any alternative to the 1956 gross
rateable value test, however arbitrary this figure admittedly is.
   All candidates in impending municipal elections would do well to
prepare themselves for such questions as, ~"Is the rate subsidy we
are paying being used for the purposes for which it is intended?,"
and ~"Is the Exchequer subsidy distributed to those who need it, or
alternatively, is it merely utilised to bring about a general
reduction in rents, regardless of the income of tenants?" For these
are the type of questions to which every ratepayer might justifiably
expect a favourable answer.
   Councillor KEITH W. TAYLOR.
A WORD FOR WATERLOO
   AS a former head girl prefect of Waterloo School I think
someone should put a stop to all this idle gossip about the pupils.
At any school you will find the odd one or two bad ones who spoil it
for the rest, and in this case all the pupils are getting blamed for
things unruly children have done.
   This cannot always be blamed only on staff but on the slackness
of the parents, too. Teachers have heard so much gossip about
Waterloo that they are frightened away.
   I cannot blame the fourth-formers for wanting to spend the last
month of their school life at their own school. Nothing can be gained
by this protest because they cannot help it if teachers will not stay
at Waterloo, but my point is that all Waterloo pupils are getting
blamed.
   No wonder there are fights at their new schools if people are
looking down on them because they had to leave Waterloo.
   All this gossip is due to one or two disobedient children which
you will find at any school. You're not telling me that all schools
are perfect except Waterloo, because I know better than that.
   EX-PREFECT.
WHY STAY?
   WHEN "Elector" and "Southerner" have finished pulling
us to pieces, I would like to ask them what's keeping them here. If
they so heartily disapprove of filthy Oldham, why don't they go back
down south, where children always have a handkerchief and go to school
well scrubbed with the soap that we have never heard of.
   Who do they think they are kidding?
   DOROTHY MOSS.
   
   I FEEL I must answer "Southerner's" statement that
"Oldham must be the filthiest town in Britain." I was born in
London, so I am also a Southerner, although I have lived in Oldham for
more than 3 years.
   Has "Southerner" ever arrived in the early hours at one of the
London stations? I doubt if he would be able to walk out of the
station without falling over bottles and litter.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Subways Preferred to Baths
   Sir,- Your correspondent S. Armitage quotes a figure of
nearly 5, people drowned in and around Britain in 196. I know
nothing of the accuracy of these figures, although Saturday's
"Echo" mentions a figure of 4, every year.
   The point I wish to make is that all these casualties did not
occur among the non-swimming members of our population. In fact, I
venture to suggest it is probable that the greater proportion of these
unfortunate people could swim and in fact might not have been drowned
had they been non-swimmers.
   It is so often the swimmer that ventures out, gets into
difficulties and is rescued, if there is time. Non-swimmers are
content to paddle, sun-bathe and splash about generally at the seaside
and very rarely I think enter rivers.
   I do not believe that a sufficiency of baths throughout Britain
would make the slightest difference to the numbers that flock to our
rivers and coasts during the summer months. It would be an excellent
thing if everyone could swim it is true, but not everyone has either
the desire or inclination to do so. Then again so many people much
prefer the sea or river to the baths.
   Having learned to swim in the sea, I am one of the latter, much
preferring the fresh sea breeze to the heavy chlorinated odour of the
municipal swimming bath.
   If the Council wish to spend our money and gain the thanks of
everyone, by benefiting everyone as they should, then let them set
about providing the town with the much-needed safe road crossings we
so urgently require: these could be subways and so would allow a
smooth flow of traffic on our main thoroughfares.
   One in the Prom. would be sufficient to solve that immediate
problem, and I would suggest two for the High-street.
   This would be of real benefit to motorist and pedestrian, and not
least for the elderly.
   It is astonishing that we should have one subway already at
Pittville Park- how much more useful it would be under the
High-street! But no doubt it has saved some child's life being where
it is.
   In the interim period let us have pedestrian crossings with
automatic light signals giving "cross now" instruction.
   D. C. WRIDE.
   Prestbury-road,
   Cheltenham.
Spurs and the "Double"
   Sir,- With only a few weeks of the present soccer season left
chief interest in sporting circles is, can Tottenham Hotspurs,
undoubtedly the best team in Great Britain today, pull off the League
and Cup "Double," last performed in 1897 by those famous Cup
fighters Aston Villa, and eight years previously in 1889 by Preston
North End?
   With regard to the League title the 'Spurs appear to be in an
almost unassailable position; in fact it will be the surprise of the
century, if they fail to finish on top.
   The only possible danger comes from Sheffield Wednesday.
   Regarding the Cup, there must be great excitement going on at
Roker Park where next Saturday Tottenham and Sunderland will fight it
out in the semi-final. 'Spurs have an extremely tough task here.
   In conclusion, it is interesting to note that Sheffield Utd.
and Sunderland, both Second Division, also have possible "Double"
chances.
   BERT WILLIAMS,
   5, Albany-road,
   Tivoli,
   Cheltenham.
Chain Letter Hoax
   Sir,- It has been brought to my attention yet again that there
are numerous chain letters in circulation in Cheltenham purporting to
have the support of the National Savings Movement and a well-known
national bank.
   I would like to inform your readers, through your columns, that
these chain letters are illegal and are, in fact, a complete hoax.
They do not have the backing of either the National Savings Movement
or the national bank which is purported to be trustee for the funds.
   I suggest that the best way of breaking the chain is simply to
destroy the letter when it is received.
   J. C. NICHOLLS,
   Hon. Secretary,
   Local National Savings Committee,
   Manager, Trustee Savings Bank.
Tribute to the Late J. W. O. Pope
   Sir,- As a writer of tributes to departed good people of this
town, I think our Press has paid a great and moving tribute to this
"tireless citizen."
   All I can say is that Norwich lost a great man of Socialist
principles in the name of Keir-Hardie; Glasgow in the name of Jimmy
Maxton; and now Cheltenham has lost a good man with these same
principles.
   F. G. SHORT
   (late Secretary I.L. Party),
   27, Bath-parade,
   Cheltenham.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
People Want What Is Reasonable
   Sir,- As a member of the "spoon-fed generation" who
regularly reads your letters, I have often been tempted to write in
reply to some of the ridiculous complaints that are voiced in your
columns. After reading "Free Trader's" latest example, I could
refrain no longer.
   If one follows his argument that only swimmers should pay for a
new swimming bath, surely only readers should pay for a library, only
walkers for a park, and only music-lovers for a Town Hall.
   What the swimmers are asking for is not a free service, as they
are quite prepared to meet its annual cost by paying a reasonable
entrance fee, but somewhere where they have good facilities for
enjoying themselves and for teaching their children to swim (as,
despite "Free Trader's" statement that "only swimmers and
learners" drown, children have been known to fall in the water).
   Even if he is wealthy enough not to require any public forms of
entertainment or amusement, surely he cannot begrudge them to people
less fortunate than himself.
   Surely we have only a little while to wait before he suggests
that old people should save enough to retire on without needing
pensions, and Mrs. O'Gorman decides it would be better to do away
with the Council altogether and let her run Cheltenham.
   SPOON-FED.
Deterring Rates
   Sir,- The statement that 5, deaths (since amended to 4,)
in and around Britain in 196 were due to drowning rather fails as an
argument for a new super swimming bath when it is estimated that more
than half of these people could already swim.
   No one wanting to learn to swim in Cheltenham is prevented. I
hear that there are ten swimming baths in the town, the two
municipally-owned ones losing money in the running.
   Other towns seem to manage to build baths reasonably, e.g.
Worcester +3,, Norwich +13,. Why does Cheltenham need
+23,, when there is no hope of running it, except at heavy loss?
   With the heavy expenditure on new rating, plus a new street
costing +1,,, the cost of the Pump Room, new Municipal Offices,
and so on, the eventual rates are likely to deter people from coming
to live in the town, as they would probably be influenced more by
excessively high rates than by the fact that there was a luxury
swimming bath for use in winter.
   Alderman Lipson observed that the Council is apt to recommend new
projects without counting the cost. We are entitled to doubt the
assertion that it is not practicable to cover and heat the Sandford
Bath. Has this really been investigated by impartial experts?
   RATEPAYER.
Fox's Instinct
   Sir,- I can tell Mrs. Shill why the fox "flees the
hounds" when it does not "fear the kill". The answer lies in
instinct.
   A fox is cunning, whether hunting or being hunted, but when
pushed out into the open, being a wild animal it naturally seeks
refuge in flight. A fox is only afraid when death seems imminent.
   The English foxhound has made, and still is making, its mark in
all five continents, while beagling becomes increasingly popular,
especially in the U.S.A.
   NATURE-LOVER.
Mondays for Shop Workers
   Sir,- It is all very well for "Canuck" to suggest that
there is no need for closing days at all for shops.
   Apart from the inconvenience of haphazard half-days, has he
considered the extra staff required to work this system and maintain
efficient service, the small trader being the worst affected?
   Saturday afternoon or all day Wednesday closing has been
suggested. This is not the complete answer.
   Saturdays for industrial workers and civil servants. Why not
Mondays for shop-workers?
   FLATFEET.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Land-workers Want Fair Deal
   Sir,- Landworkers' wages and conditions should be better,
especially the minimum wage, which should be in the +1 1s.
region. Quite a lot of the workers get about the minimum wage, which
is +8 9s. a week, with no overtime allowed. This does not leave
much to live on after insurance, tax, rent and so on have been paid.
There are no canteen facilities, no free or helped-by-cash transport,
and the landworker is out in all winds and weathers.
   Why should the landworker be the Cinderella of jobs? Conditions
for factory workers and other trades have greatly improved, so why not
for the landworker?
   Let us see the landworkers' minimum wage and that of all low paid
workers more in the region of +1 1s., bringing them more in line
with industrial wages.
   Why should not +1 1s. go tax-free and have 1s.
prescriptions, and the same for widows and pensioners?
   I have heard it said by younger men who have left the land that
if the landworker's wage was +1 1s. a week they would return to
the land. So let us see them get a fair and square deal. They
deserve it.
   LANDWORKER'S WIFE.
   Glos.
Montpellier Caryatides
   Sir,- I have lived practically all my life in Cheltenham, but
not until recently did I discover that the Caryatides of
Montpellier-walk- the "Armless Walk"- were not all cast in the
same mould!
   Most, indeed, are identical, but several have a marked essential
difference from the rest; I wonder if other readers are aware of the
nature of this discrepancy?
   I may add that my attention was drawn to the above by a friend
who hoped to make an easy shilling by offering to bet on it; he was
quite right.
   COEUR DE LION.
Devotion to Patients
   Sir,- My wife was recently admitted to St. Paul's Hospital,
for an operation of a serious nature, which was carried out with
confidence and extreme skill, to a successful conclusion, and ultimate
discharge.
   In the painstaking care, attention, and devotion to their
patients, the sisters and nurses were truly wonderful, and did much to
relieve any fears and also assist in every way possible to speed
complete recovery.
   During visits to my wife, I was able to note the human and
personal relationship between nurses and patient; and this, developing
into a close understanding, materially assists the ailing and sick
along the road to recovery.
   It is a pity these kindly people, with their quiet, unassuming
understanding and professional experience, are not more appreciated,
for without these qualities we are indeed lost.
   May the surgeons ever be directed by divine skill in their
operations, and the sisters and nurses retain their refreshing charm
and efficiency under the continual strain and shortage of these
splendid people.
   C. N. BROOKS,
   76 MILTON-ROAD,
   ST. MARK'S.
"Policy of Masterly Inactivity"
   Sir,- Might I respectfully suggest to the Town Council that,
irrespective of the outcome of the public inquiry now proceeding on
the Development Plan, unless they can come up with some scheme to
relieve the appalling traffic congestion, they should adopt a policy
of masterly inactivity. In other words, they should carry on as they
have been doing for the last 1 years until some bright spark among
them (we hope) can think up something useful.
   Otherwise there can be no possible excuse for further spending of
ratepayers' hard-earned money.
   J. A. WHITAKER.
   Alveston House,
   St. Annes-road,
   Cheltenham.
N.H. Festival Record Likely
   Sir,- As the National Hunt Festival meeting approaches, it is
only natural that the sporting public hope that there will be no
change in the unusual mild weather.
   It is hoped that any late sudden snap will stay away sufficiently
long enough for the three-day popular Festival.
   If the spring-like weather continues a new record is likely to be
set up for attendances.
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Commentary
Insoluble housing problem
   THE trouble with long standing problems is that most people
get used to them. The housing problem has been with us as a serious
social difficulty for 16 years- since the close of World War =2. In
the immediate post war years it led to a public outcry. The political
parties vied with each other in their claims as to how many houses
could be built under their own programmes.
   In a way the problem was simpler then. The need was gigantic.
The task was solely to see how speedily it could be met with the
materials and labour available.
   In 1961 the public sympathy is still with those who need housing,
but attention is often focussed more on the young home-seekers, the
newly-married couples wishing to set up a home, but faced with
mortgages.
   There is a tendency for some of us to overlook the still urgent
need for adequate housing for established families.
Chislehurst-Sidcup Council have a housing list of more than 1,3.
With the exception of the North Cray Place Estate, they have built
all the major estates they can. There is little land left in the
urban district, with its Green Belt setting, for either Council or
private developer.
   In what straits those 1,3 live only the Council's Housing
Committee and its officers know. Their work is confidential, as it
should be. What we do know is that the newcomers on the list outstrip
the Council's ability to provide accommodation. At least, that is
what is happening at the present time. We also know that even in this
pleasant district, some families are still living in overcrowded
conditions.
   The view has been expressed in Council that the housing problem
will be with us for many years to come. The word "always" has been
used. If that is to be the case, then we need some shrewd thinking on
what to do about it. What hope is there for the 1,3 and the
hundreds more who will no doubt go to the Council offices in the years
to come?
   The Council are urged to concentrate on slum clearance- there
are a few slums in Chislehurst-Sidcup- and at the same time they are
reminded to provide dwellings specially suitable for the elderly. How
can they fulfil all their commitments?
   The decision to sell the houses at North Cray to tenants on
special terms has its merits. It is generally recognised to be good
for people to own their own houses. By this means the Council should
encourage people who would never have envisaged buying their own homes
to take on that responsibility. At the same time, it will check the
trend for the Council to become the landlords of an ever-increasing
number of tenants.
   But it can have only a minor effect on this resurgent housing
problem as a whole. Must that remain with us as a social cancer until
the day that the talk of a move of population away from the London
octopus turns into action, forced on us by sheer desperate necessity?
Commentary
Is our education worth the price?
   LAST week marked the end of the school year. It means
relaxation after a long period of intense activity, which, for many
children, has indicated prospects for the future. Some have said
farewell to schools that have guided and encouraged them, and next
month they will be going on to one of the forms of secondary education
now bestowed. Others have left school to make their way in a highly
competitive technical and scientific world.
   How well they fare will depend on how much they have assimilated
in the years before and after the 11-plus- that mystic phrase that
has brought quite unnecessary worry to parents and children. As one
head master said recently, there is no such thing as failing the
11-plus. It merely provides a means of deciding the best form of
education for each child, and from what we have seen it certainly
works in the vast majority of cases.
   During the last two or three weeks of the summer term Kentish
Times reporters visited school open days and spoke to head teachers
and members of their staffs. They have visited classrooms and have
seen how modern trends in education are helping to prepare the
children for the years ahead. They have been impressed by light, airy
schools, equipped with the most modern aids. The facilities are
provided, and it is up to the children to make the best use of them.
They have only themselves to blame if they do not.
   Those about to start work will continue to learn and they will be
given every assistance to pursue their studies, not only by the
education authorities, but also by the firms who will employ them.
   Vast sums are spent on education every year; in fact the Kent
bill accounts for the majority of county spending. It has risen over
the years and will continue to rise. The poor ratepayer has to pay,
and it is therefore right that he should ask, "Is it worth it?"
Indeed is it? The future of the country is with the children at
present being taught in our schools. We must see they have every
chance of playing their part.
   There are black sheep in every fold, but the great majority
fulfil our hopes. The price is high, but so is the objective.
Consider all aspects of the question before giving a verdict. That
done, there can be only one answer- it is worth it!
Commentary
Thefts from cars
   DURING this year so far there appears to have been a marked
decline in the incidence of crime from last autumn's peak, which led
Sidcup and District Chamber of Commerce to appeal for more police
protection and to seek information as to how best their trader members
could protect their property.
   The traders and public at large can, in the main, thank the
Sidcup police for that improvement. They have shown a remarkable
vigilance and alertness in past months. But there is one form of
petty theft which has not abated but appears rather to be on the
increase- the theft of property from cars.
   Every week there are instances of car spares and accessories, and
quite frequently transistor radio sets, being stolen from parked cars,
according to police reports. In most cases the thefts occur in the
unattended public car parks in the urban district, easy and rich
hunting grounds for the prowling car thief at night.
   The high incidence of these thefts has caused the Sidcup police
to issue yet another warning to the public this week. It is simply to
ask car owners to make sure their cars are properly locked before they
are left, with no property of value left visibly enticing on the back
seat. A locked door is at least a deterrent- a thief will move on to
easier prey.
Bank holiday tragedy
   IN the last year or so road safety officials have acclaimed
Chislehurst-Sidcup as an area free of accidents during the Bank
Holiday weekends. Technically, the record has not really been broken.
The only major accident of the week-end occurred a few yards outside
the urban district boundaries, but the victim was a Chislehurst boy,
and the horror of it touches us all.
   The cause of that disaster may be revealed at the adjourned
inquest. It took place on a part of the A2 that has a dual
carriageway- which the people of Sidcup are still hoping will be
extended into this urban district- so the need for a road improvement
of that nature cannot be argued in this case.
   What is alarming is not only that this sort of accident can still
happen with dual carriageways, but that there could so easily have
been other fatal accidents within the urban district over the
week-end. A number of brushes between traffic was reported to the
police, several of them causing minor injury.
   The people concerned were lucky. The truth of the matter is that
unless there is marked improvement in driving standards on our
over-congested roads other drivers may find themselves less lucky in
the days ahead.
Commentary
Vandalism
   LESS than a year ago we drew attention in this column to the
price being paid by the ratepayers of Chislehurst-Sidcup for the acts
of vandalism committed by small gangs of hooligans. It is lamentable
that we should so soon have to record our disgust and dismay at the
amount of damage still being caused to public and private property,
not only in this district, but also in neighbouring areas.
   Wanton damage caused to a pavilion at Mottingham has cost
Chislehurst-Sidcup and Orpington Divisional Education Committee more
than +4. We record this week that a cricket pitch at Penhill was
badly damaged on Friday night by hooligans, who uprooted the stakes
protecting the square and ripped the turf. Time, money and energy has
thus been wasted because of the anti-social behaviour of a group of
irresponsible youths. Quite often Scout huts are the targets of those
bent on wrecking.
   Unoccupied buildings have been damaged and fittings have been
removed from parked cars. Farmers at North Cray have for a long time
been the victims of vandals and considerable damage has been caused to
buildings, equipment and crops.
   Those responsible obviously have too much time on their hands,
but we cannot accept as valid the excuse now put forward that "there
is nothing to do." There are many outlets for those who wish to
lead constructive lives- and the majority do. Many young people
belong to organisations which provide interesting pastimes and
hobbies; and many engage in pursuits that will bring them benefits in
the future.
   We do not pretend that everything in the garden is rosy. There
is always room for more and improved facilities for young people to
make the best use of their leisure time. It is often said that more
is being done for youth to-day than at any other time. That may be
true, but we must deal with the situation as it exists to-day.
   There is the problem of this minority of young people who seem
unable to fit themselves into the modern scheme of things. We must
help them, but we must also take a firm line. Their actions may be
the result of frustration, but there can be no more frustrated people
than those who have suffered at their hands. Hooliganism in any shape
or form must be stamped out, and the public can help by reporting
anything suspicious to the police.
Commentary
Forty years of achievement
   IT is now 4 years since four ex-Service organisations
amalgamated to form the British Legion to call with one voice for
justice for the men and women who had served their country and, being
demobilised, were in distress and need. In those 4 years the Legion
has achieved much and deserves the salute and congratulations of the
rest of the country.
   Financed by the money collected on Poppy Day, the Legion's only
general appeal to the public, it has given immediate and long term aid
to hundreds of thousands of ex-Service men and women, their families
and dependents. It maintains four convalescent and four country
homes, the latter giving permanent homes to 23 elderly or permanently
incapacitated ex-Service men.
   It provides employment for war disabled in its factories and
industries and, through the Disabled Men's Industries, to home-bound
disabled. It also provides work and homes for tubercular ex-Service
men at Preston Hall, near Maidstone, where the Legion pioneered the
treatment, training and rehabilitation of these men.
   The Legion has contributed largely to the solution of an urgent
post World War =2 problem with its house purchase scheme. In 13
years it has helped 19, families to buy their own homes.
   Through the 5, services committees throughout the country
temporary and immediate relief is given; aid in sickness and in
finding jobs; old and lonely people visited and holidays arranged for
severely disabled.
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LEFT, RIGHT & CENTRE
Split over Africa- Welcome news- Non-racialism
   The deep split in the Conservative Party over Africa gives me no
joy. Much too much is at stake for that.
   Make no mistake about it, the divisions are very serious and
the revolt against the Government is grave. Lord Salisbury is a power
in the Conservative Party and he has used intemperate language- much
more vigorous than at the time of his resignation over Munich.
   Ninety Conservatives, despite all sorts of pressure, have kept
their names to a motion on the Order Paper in the House of Commons
that is critical of Mr. Macleod, the Colonial Secretary.
   Lord Hailsham would never have counter-attacked Lord Salisbury
with such bitterness, unless this was a split that worries the
Government. To accuse the most respected Tory of them all of hitting
below the belt is going very far.
DO NOT YIELD
   Labour will defend the Government against these high-born and
influential rebels.
   This does not mean that we wholly agree with the Government's
policy nor with the way they have handled things. The Prime Minister
in particular has given the impression to the Europeans in Rhodesia
that he has hoodwinked and deceived them.
   But it is essential that the Government should stand firm. If
they yield an inch, Britain may well have an Algeria on its hands.
   That's why we will not exploit this deep split, but back the
Government against the rebellion in its ranks.
GAG
   The Government has decided to curtail and guillotine debate on
the Health Service charges.
   A Government must of course in proper circumstances use the means
necessary to get its business through. But are the present
circumstances proper?
   If a Government introduces highly controversial legislation, it
must expect to lose parliamentary time. Especially when it has no
parliamentary mandate.
   The Bill is a short one. It is also a tax-measure that ought to
be fully discussed.
   The Government has used the guillotine out of fear. It did not
like the publicity that Labour's vigorous opposition drew to the
health charges.
   But, never fear, we will find plenty of ways of making our
bitter opposition effective.
   Patrick Gordon Walker
   
   ITEMS of news from the motor industry give the impression
that trade is improving and that the employment position is better
than it was a few weeks ago.
   This kind of news will be welcome not only in the car-building
towns here in the Midlands but also in the places where so many of the
component parts are manufactured.
   The Minister of Labour is reported to be taking a new initiative
to improve industrial relations, for example, by bringing together
both sides of the motor industry.
   It is to be hoped that both management and workers will be able
to put forward constructive ideas which will help to push further into
the background the dreaded threat of unemployment.
HOUSING PROGRESS
   There are some interesting items from other directions as well
as industry, particularly one about housing. By the end of this year
one person in every four will be living in a post-war house.
   Also, nearly a million people have been re-housed from slums
since the Government's drive started in 1956. Housing for old people
is being increased and now accounts for nearly a third of all local
government building.
   In the educational sphere, there is good progress. Never before
has there been such a big programme of school building. At the same
time training college places are being doubled to get the extra
teachers needed to do away with the evil of oversize classes.
   A good example of the advance in education is that there are now
twice as many university students as in 1938, and it is anticipated
that by 197 the number will have more than trebled.
   Another angle of education, not always so well known, is that
there are at present over 4, overseas students in the United
Kingdom, many of them from Commonwealth countries recently granted
independence.
   Charles Dickens
   
   "WHAT we want is a society where the individual matters, and
not the colour of his skin or the shape of his nose."
   So wrote Mr. Julius Nyerere, the Chief Minister of
Tanganyika, in last Sunday's Observer, and he echoes a basic Liberal
belief. Like Mr. Nyerere, Liberals want a non-racial Commonwealth
and a non-racial Britain.
   By the time you read this, we will know whether South Africa is
or is not to remain in the Commonwealth. Liberals support those
Commonwealth statesmen who have demanded her expulsion.
   There can be no room for Dr. Verwoerd's Fascist police-state in
the Commonwealth. If South Africa is allowed to remain, Britain's
prestige in Africa and Asia will dwindle as it did after the Suez
escapade.
   Further, Dr. Verwoerd will be regarded in South Africa as
having won a great victory. This is surely something we want to
prevent.
IMMIGRATION
   Some four-hundred years ago, Europeans- including Englishmen-
carried off many of the people of West Africa into slavery, to work
the plantations of the West Indies. Now, the descendants of those
slaves have multiplied, and those tiny islands are bursting at the
seams.
   Jamaica has 2 per cent. unemployment, and it is not surprising
that many of her people are coming to Britain. The welfare of these
people is our responsibility.
   I suggest the following comprehensive plan to deal with the
so-called "immigration problem"- to a large extent simply a
housing problem.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1.) It should be illegal to enforce a colour-bar in Britain in
public places.
   (2.) The Government should attempt to persuade Canada and
Australia to open their doors to West Indian immigrants- and thus
relieve the pressure on living space in Britain and in the West
Indies.
   (3.) There should be a medical check on all immigrants; criminals
should not be admitted; and all immigrants should obtain a reasonable
place to live in before landing. The help of voluntary associations,
such as the British-Caribbean Association, should be enlisted to find
accommodation for immigrants.
   (4.) Could not Smethwick Council follow the example of Willesden
by establishing an International Friendship Council to fight
racialism?-
<END INDENTATION>
   Michael Watts
LEFT, RIGHT & CENTRE
Withdrawing the Whip- Local issues- Liberal advance
   THE Parliamentary Labour Party took the grave step last week
of withdrawing the Whip from five of its members.
   What does "withdrawing the Whip" mean? It is not, as is
often thought, expulsion from the party. Those five members remain
members of the Labour Party and of course, Members of Parliament.
   But they are no longer recognised as belonging to the
Parliamentary Labour Party: they do not come to its meetings, nor are
they informed of its decisions.
   When the Whip is withdrawn, this fact is reported to the
national executive committee. This is in order that the local parties
of the members concerned can be officially informed.
WHY?
   The fundamental reason for this action was that these five
members deliberately defied a decision taken and three times
reaffirmed by the Parliamentary Labour Party as a whole.
   There is much liberty in the Parliamentary Labour Party- much
more than in the ordinary Labour group on a council.
   Members can ask what questions they like, speak as they wish
and they can always abstain from voting.
   This should be liberty enough for the most tender conscience.
   The line is only drawn at voting against a clear decision of the
Party meeting.
   Without this rule, there would be no discipline at all; the
Party would be a mob. Every Labour group recognises this.
   MPs who cannot accept this degree of discipline are really
independent MPs. Withdrawal of the Whip makes them this in form
as well as in fact.
AGAINST ESTIMATES
   The five cannot justly claim that they were voting in accord
with conference decisions. This was done by the whole party when it
voted solidly against the Defence white paper.
   The five voted against the defence estimates. It has long been
clear party policy that this should not be done. It would be open to
public misunderstanding.
   The five did not vote against the Tories. What they voted
against was the whole Army and the whole Air Force. No conference
decision ever justified such action.
   The Labour Party is fundamentally more united than before. It
is not the withdrawal of the Whip that causes new disunity: but the
deliberate defiance by five members of decisions by the party.
   Patrick Gordon Walker
   
   AMONG those who like talking politics, and who have been
mainly concerned with African problems these last few weeks, interest
will soon be turning to local issues as the time draws near for the
election of councillors at the several levels of local government.
   This year there will be county council, urban district, rural
district and parish council elections as well as those for the county
boroughs- like Smethwick- and the non-county municipal boroughs.
   Interest should also be increased this year as the ordinary
elections will be followed by the elections by councillors of their
aldermen.
   The Prime Minister, speaking at a recent rally in London, said on
the subject of local government: "We put first and foremost the idea
of a working partnership between central and local government in which
each side does its proper part".
CO-OPERATION
   To carry out properly and effectively many of the aims of the
Government depends upon such a real working arrangement at national
and local levels.
   The development of the social services is a good example of the
need for close co-operation; whilst the Government can bring forward
legislation at Parliamentary level, the work of ensuring that such
services are put into operation depends to a great extent on the local
authority.
   To strengthen local government and equip it better to fulfil its
growing responsibilities, the Government introduced the general grant,
with no strings attached.
   This improvement in the way of dealing with financial grants has
freed local councils from much detailed control from Whitehall.
   Consequently, the councils have more responsibility and should
have a greater incentive to spend wisely the money they receive from
the local people in the form of rates, and from the taxpayers in the
form of Government grants.
   The general grant takes account of the cost of local services and
has been substantially increased each year since its introduction. It
will be +25 million higher in 1961-62 than this year in England and
Wales.
   Charles Dickens
   
   LIBERALS made another spectacular advance in last week's
by-elections.
   In all four contests the Liberal vote rose, while both Tory and
Socialist votes slumped badly. If we compare the figures in these
by-elections with those of the last three-cornered fights, we find
that the total Liberal vote was up by 13,61. The total Conservative
vote was down by 15,633, and the total Labour vote was down by 22,972.
   The swing to the Liberals was seven per cent. in Colchester,
nine per cent. at Cambridgeshire, 1 per cent. at High Peak, and
over 2 per cent. at Worcester.
ACHIEVEMENT
   The Liberal achievement is all the more remarkable when one
remembers the disadvantages under which the Liberal candidates worked.
They were backed only by voluntary subscriptions, and could not, like
the Tory and Labour parties, draw on subsidies from big business or
the big trade unions.
   Moreover, these Liberal candidates had no mass circulation
newspapers to support them. In the by-election period the mass
circulation papers enforced a censorship on all Liberal views and
speeches. When Jo Grimond spoke to a rally of over 2, Liberals in
London, only The Guardian reported the meeting.
   After the death of the News Chronicle all the anti-Liberal
papers suffered from an epidemic of fair-mindedness in an effort to
win new readers. The Daily Herald announced itself to be "fair and
free" and even The Daily Express printed an article by Jo Grimond.
   Those days are now over. The Tory papers have returned to their
usual practice of reporting only Tory views, and the Labour papers
print only Labour views.
   It is left to independent papers like The Guardian and local
papers like the Telephone to preserve the freedom of the Press.
# 213
<71 TEXT B27>
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE 'OPEN' ROAD
   SIR,- Could not Nuclear Disarmers consult with the police to
arrange 'sit-downs' at teatime on Sundays during Autumn? No doubt
legislation could fix a suitable scale of fines to help finance
National Defence and provision could be made for the passage of
ambulances, etc.- 'BOTHWAYS.'
CAR RALLIES
   SIR,- In your last issue there was a letter in praise of
courteous and considerate local drivers. Indeed, ever-increasing
noise is one of the problems of our time and it seems to me that quite
unnecessary uproar is created by those drivers from afar who take part
in car rallies during the night. There was one through Fishpond
during the early hours of Sunday, 1th September, with a check point a
few yards from my home. All the cars stopped there and then roared up
over the hill opposite (Coney Castle) in low gear. The noise was
shattering and I could even smell the exhaust fumes. This went on for
more than two hours, but those who manned the check point arrived with
a flourish well in advance. I have ascertained that it was a Reading
car club, so a good many people on the route must have had their
night's rest destroyed. It all seems so unnecessary. Rally promoters
favour this route. We get several each year and no doubt other places
get their share.- SHEILA REDMOND (Mrs.), Peters Gore,
Fishpond, Charmouth.
PADDLE STEAMERS
   SIR,- In this age of rapid change in the forms of public
transport, it is heartening to read from time to time of small but
determined groups of historically-minded citizens who are striving to
preserve representative specimens of older types of vehicle, such as
veteran motor-cars, early buses and trams, notable examples of the
railway engine, and so on, in order that the solid achievements of the
past may not be entirely forgotten. Two years ago the Paddle Steamer
Preservation Society was formed to preserve in running order an
example of that once so familiar, but now rapidly disappearing feature
of our seaside towns, the faithful old paddle-steamer. A meeting of
the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society will be held at the Lansdowne
Hotel, the Lansdowne, Bournemouth, at 6 p.m., on 3th September,
to form a Wessex branch and all supporters of paddle steamers will be
most welcome. Although the society has been active on the South Coast
since its formation, the Central Committee feel that a local branch
would serve more closely the interests of the members.- J. D.
BONSALL, Provisional Secretary, Wessex Branch, P.S.P.S.,
Loughrigg, 31, Cowper Road, Moordown, Bournemouth.
SQUIRRELS
   SIR,- In your columns a Wiltshire farmer complained because
he had seen people at Southbourne feeding squirrels. Last week 'A
Resident of Mere' was moaning because a squirrel had dared to eat
nuts from a tree in her garden. Both correspondents called the
squirrels pests. I wonder. I suppose Man, with his H-bombs, isn't.
Did the Wiltshire farmer expect the money used for purchasing nuts
for squirrels to be handed instead to a fund for distressed farmers?
Did the Wiltshire resident from Mere expect the squirrel to go off
nuts, its natural food, and try eggs and bacon instead? Again I
wonder. I have already asked in these columns how many of the grey
squirrels' sins are real and how many are purely imaginary.
Apparently nobody knows the answer. Don't be in a hurry to point out
damaged trees in Grovely woods and scream 'Look! Grey squirrels did
that.' The lordly pheasant can do more damage to a tree on a long
winter's night than a dozen squirrels can in six months.- ORLANDO
GLYN, Heneford Cottage, Chetnole, Sherborne, Dorset.
   
   SIR,- I have read with much interest Mrs. Moule's letter
about squirrels in the Sherborne area. I have many times in the past
seen squirrels in the woods across the railway, but they have always
been grey. This summer, however, there has been a red squirrel
frequenting the Slopes, and I have seen him several times in the trees
by the New Road. Once I surprised him in the litter basket, but he
was not at all disconcerted. He jumped up, perched on the lip of the
basket, and we regarded one another on more or less equal terms for
some time at a distance of about two feet. On occasions, however,
when I had my camera with me he must have been investigating Mrs.
Moule's garden.- H. MARTYN CUNDY, The Beeches, Sherborne.
HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS
   SIR,- As a recently-retired member of H.M. Overseas
Civil Service, my wife and I have recently settled in Dorset. I feel
that our experience may be helpful to the many people who are
settling, on retirement, from other parts of Britain as well as from
overseas, in the Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset area. Shortly after
our arrival we were told of the lecture course, run under the auspices
of the Workers' Educational Association and the Joint Committee for
Adult Education for Dorset. We found to our great pleasure that the
lectures were conducted in a very friendly and almost informal
atmosphere, and we have, in fact, made a number of very good friends.
As these interesting and instructive lecture courses are about to
start all over the country in the next two weeks, I would urge those
newcomers to the area to find out the nearest course and to enrol.
They will find immense interest in the lectures and will also make
friends with people who have the same interests and outlook as
themselves. These evening courses are held in all the main centres,
and in a great many of the smaller towns and villages. I do hope that
our happy experience may be of some help to reduce the inevitable
loneliness which follows on a move to a new area.- P. H.
HAMILTON BAYLY, Masanki Cottage, 25, Tanyard Lane, Shaftesbury,
Dorset.
TEACHERS' SALARIES
   SIR,- There seems to be some commotion- ballyhoo is the
modern word- about 'Teachers and their pay.' It is not desired
that teachers should be pledged to poverty. Nor are they expected to
do their work so whole-heartedly as to look for only a meagre material
reward. But the fault of this affluent age is covetousness, and I
hope that teachers are not unmindful that at the heart of the
Christian religion is a cross which means the letter I with a line
through it, and this means sinking self for the common cause. It
would appear that teachers today are not really badly paid: far better
than I was as a parish priest. Only in my last year was it possible
to make both ends meet on the income of the benefice, and this did not
allow for a three months' holiday. But the clergy did not rebel by
going on strike.
   To talk of a clerical Trades Union as was recently done by a more
or less junior cleric, seemed offensively mercenary minded. As one
who has spent many hours teaching in elementary schools I am jealous
for the honour of teachers, and Church day school teachers, in
particular. Let them not be afraid to endure hardness, if such
exists, and show a good example. Education as a profession, like
other professions, has fluctuated and there was a time when teachers
were shockingly underpaid. But it cannot fairly be said that this is
the case now. The Fisher Act of 1918 decisively raised their status
and pay, and this has gone on, for the Fisher Act was not a standstill
reform. In 1944 came the Butler Act. Let teachers continue to show
diligent devotion to their work, and they will retain public respect.
A dutiful teacher puts his back into his work and is apt to be hard
and unbending. The diligent teacher puts his heart into his work
because he loves it, and this is how I like to think of teachers today
doing their work. In the course of more than 5 years' experience I
could give not a few signal instances of the same.- W. H.
WILLIAMS, Barton St, David, Somerset.
   
   SIR,- I note with annoyance the sentence in a letter in your
last issue, 'Increasingly, arts graduates are being taken on as
teachers without having any training.' Most people realize that a
graduate has, 6ipso facto, had the best training that a
teacher can have. Graduates who intend to get on in the State system
have, in their own interests, to conform and take the additional
one-year course that is provided for them. It is to this course that
your correspondent refers, presumably; but in the minds of those
graduates I know who have taken it, there is little doubt that for
teaching purposes this type of additional 'training' is a complete
waste of time. If a prospective teacher wants to know something about
e.g. child psychology or the history of education, good luck to
him. He can read a couple of books on each in the three months he has
between going down from university in June and taking up his first
post in September. But it seems fatuous that a teacher who is keen to
start should be forced to spend a whole year on such unhelpful
matters. The assumption that teaching is a job which requires
post-graduate training in the university is one which should be
combated at every turn. The key to good teaching lies in knowledge of
one's subject, experience, and certain personal qualities which this
'training' does nothing to develop. Most, if not all, the one-year
courses- it is the only useful thing about them- provide an
opportunity for practice teaching: why should the new graduate not
spend the whole year articled to good teachers in the schools?-
R. G. PENMAN, Silversmiths, Sherborne.
CIVIL DEFENCE
   SIR,- You describe Civil Defence as a means of mitigating
the frightful effects of a nuclear disaster, while at the same time
you speak of the actions of the 'Nuclear Disarmers' as an
'embarrassment.' What a cosy thought! Perhaps your readers may
have forgotten these statements: (1) A very few megaton bombs would
obliterate the major population centres of this country; (2) The
whole country would be subject to 'fall-out' radiation of high
intensity; (3) Radiation sickness is a most unpleasant way of dying;
(4) The long-term effects of radiation are extensive and unavoidable;
(5) As a result of the current Russian tests it is estimated that
next spring the radiation level will be at least 1 times that of
natural background radiation, if no further bombs are exploded. May I
commend to your readers a short article on the effects of the
1-megaton bomb, which appears in the current 'New Scientist.'
Civil Defence has its purpose. It creates a sense of security, and,
after all, the worst might never happen. But in my view we should be
better employed in embarrassing the Government in this matter. Given
four minutes' warning from Fylingdales, which of your readers would be
prepared to press the button which would send 1 million innocent
people to their deaths? What is our trouble? Either we have lost all
moral sense, or we have developed a technique of double-think worthy
of 1984, or we just don't understand the issues.- F. HODGSON,
Brendon, Common Mead Lane, Gillingham, Dorset.
'IT'S YOUR MONEY'
   SIR,- To reply point by point to Mrs. Dungworth's letter
would take too much space, so I offer some comments which may be
helpful. Some newspapers print quite lengthy reports of proceedings
in Parliament and documents issued by the Stationery Office give
further details. So far as local councils are concerned a ratepayer
can inspect a record of the proceedings on demand. Many people prefer
to ignore the facilities available and then grumble that they were not
told. Professor Parkinson and others ignore one rather important
factor in the present situation. During and after the war much work
on capital projects (roads, hospitals, houses, sewers, etc.) had to
be severely curtailed with the consequence that there is much leeway
to be made up now.
# 26
<END>
<72 TEXT C1>
Television
LIFE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE
SKILFUL PICTURE
   The BBC's dramatised documentary on Florence
Nightingale last night cleverly managed to suggest the person behind
the legend.
   While never minimising the immensity of her work, it lifted the
saintly halo which usually surrounds her name to reveal a warm,
dedicated person who accomplished most by perseverance and hard work.
   Most stories of Miss Nightingale begin and end with her work in
the Crimea. This one started from that point and devoted itself to
her lifelong campaign to improve nursing in this country. The
documentary managed to show the obstacles and her devotion.
   Moira Fraser's Miss Nightingale was a mixture of the dramatic and
the sincere. Demure one moment, hard and decisive the next, she
caught the dual sides of a complex character. The production by Bill
Duncalf compressed a long and sometimes rambling story into a
concentrated comprehensive survey of a life work.
   P. J. K.
FINE SINGING IN HENZE OPERA
GLYNDEBOURNE "CONTEMPORARY"
From MARTIN COOPER
GLYNDEBOURNE, Thursday.
   HANS WERNER HENZE'S "Elegy for Young Lovers" is the
first unambiguously "contemporary" work to be admitted to the
Glyndebourne canon.
   By no means a masterpiece, it is in many respects a
representative modern work and the composer is a highly skilled
manipulator of contemporary idioms, with a strong sense of words and
situation.
   The libretto, by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is largely
a satire on the petty court surrounding an ageing poet, whose deeply
egocentric character leads him to sacrifice everything to his need of
inspiration.
   Henze obtains his musical characterisation by means of individual
instrumental timbres and "personal" intervals, and the result is
often less delineation of character than caricature. This is also the
chief, or at least the most successfully executed trait of the
libretto, which contains an odd blend of highly poetic phraseology and
schoolboy humour.
MELODY LACKING
   The composer has a happy gift for musical dialogue as well as
for the grotesque, but he is less successful in extended 6arioso
passages. The more serious scenes of the opera were in fact often
uninteresting owing to the absence of any memorable melodic invention,
but an exception was the Poet's moment of self-revelation in Act =2,
which was excellently sung by Carlos Alexander.
   The lovers, whose chief scene was cut at the last moment, had
comparatively little to sing, but Elisabeth So"derstro"m gave an
exquisitely touching performance and Andre?2 Turp's ringing voice
contrasted well with the character-singing demanded of most of the
cast.
   This was in every case excellent. Dorothy Dorow's visionary old
madwoman had considerable musical pathos, and Kerstin Meyer struck
exactly the right note of hysterical devotion as the Poet's spinster
secretary.
TOO ENTHUSIASTICALLY
   Thomas Hemsley's performance as the Poet's private doctor was
dramatically shrewd and musically well conceived.
   The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under John Pritchard handled
Henze's chamber music style rather too enthusiastically at first, so
that the singer's words were largely obscured, and the composer's very
free use of the percussion made this a difficulty throughout.
   Gu"nther Rennert's imaginative production cleverly conveyed the
crazy, precarious atmosphere of the Alpine inn inhabited by the Poet's
court, and his lighting of the later scenes suggested the ultimate
isolation in which the Poet finds himself.
A FASTIDIOUS COMPOSER
'JOURNAL' DEBUT AT CHELTENHAM
From DONALD MITCHELL
CHELTENHAM, Thursday.
   IT was not long ago that Richard Rodney Bennett composed a
"Calendar" for chamber ensemble. Now he has written a "Journal"
for orchestra which was given its first performance in the Town Hall,
Cheltenham, to-night by the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Norman Del Mar.
   This new work, cast in five short sections, confirms that Mr.
Bennett is one of the most musical of our younger composers.
   He writes, one might say, extremely musical music, of which the
sound is fastidiously calculated and yet agreeably spontaneous and
imaginative.
   He does not in this "Journal" write one note too many. One
wonders, rather, whether he has not written too few. Or, to state
one's doubt more plainly, one wonders whether the invention in this
new work is not a little wanting in substance.
SLENDER IDEAS
   Brief ideas are welcome indeed if they compress a sizeable
thought. It struck me that Mr. Bennett's ideas in this piece were
not so much succinct as slender.
   Perhaps it was for this reason that the work seemed somewhat pale
in character, a criticism that certainly cannot be made of Berg's very
rarely heard Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6 each bar of which, even
the most derivative, is impregnated with the composer's personality.
   The cruel acoustics of the hall played havoc with textures which
are unusually hectic and congested, but Mr. Del Mar's heroic labours
conveyed a clear impression of the succession of catastrophes which
seems to be the work's natural mode of expression.
   There is undeniably something grand about the way Berg throws so
many broken eggs into one basket. But one is not entirely convinced
that a relaxation of tension might not have secured a more balanced
and varied work of art.
ANGLO-CHINESE PICARESQUE
By ROLLA ROUSE
The Chinese Bigamy of Mr. David Winterlea: a Manchu-Edwardian
Fantasy. Translated from the Chinese by Henry McAleavy. (Allen &
Unwin. 21s.)
   THE basis of "The Chinese Bigamy of Mr. David
Winterlea," explains Henry McAleavy, was found among the
single-sheet "mosquito-newspapers," full of "an assortment of
anecdotes, topical items, and serial stories," started in about 187
by Wang T'ao, assistant to the famous sinologue Dr. Legge.
   Mr. McAleavy's version of this "Manchu-Edwardian fantasy"
is, however, so free that to anybody who knows China and the Chinese
nothing of a Chinese flavour remains. What the various characters say
and do often seems utterly alien to China.
   For example, we are shown a Chinese host placing his principal
guest from the Foreign Office in the lowest seat at dinner, accusing
him of being homosexual, and generally behaving as no educated Chinese
ever could behave. Again, the Chinese, whether drunk or sober, never
kiss in public, and least of all would a Chinese monk meeting an
Englishman for the first time kiss him.
   The period covered by the tale runs from about 185 to 1913: and
all the characters have one thing in common, their coarse behaviour
and abnormal appetites. While there is a story meandering through the
book, the main object of many chapters is to record some improbable
and unpleasant anecdote.
Amahs into Ladies
   The hero, if such Mr. David Winterlea can be called, tries to
turn two Cantonese sisters from amahs into ladies and teach them
English: and they on their side plan to marry him jointly and finally
to reside, not in unfashionable Kowloon, but in snobbish Hongkong,
where he "would have a position to keep up."
   The main incidents occur on a country estate near London, owned
by the Chinese Legation and used by the staff, Chinese and foreign, to
amuse themselves, mainly at night.
BYRON'S VEXED REPUTE
By MARGARET LANE
The Late Lord Byron. By Doris Langley Moore. (Murray. 2gns.)
   NEVER has a greater coil been made about any man than about
Byron. He sowed passions, jealousies, loyalties, scandals,
animosities and treacheries as effortlessly as some far worthier
characters scatter boredom.
   The tumult is by no means over, and this being a biographical age
and Byron a magnificent documenter of his own life, he has reached the
stage (I cannot remember any other great literary figure doing so)
when a monumental work can be written on the dramas that seethed and
simmered after his death, taking off from the point at which the
reader is accustomed to close a poet's biography.
   Is it really worth while- one is bound to ask the question
sooner or later- to devote years of research and over 5 closely
printed pages to disentangling the labyrinthine quarrels, blackmails,
machinations and correspondences which raged for so many years over
Byron's grave? The answer is, on one condition, that it is; the
condition being that one should have an appetite for detail and for
knowing as much as possible about one of the most dynamic geniuses who
ever lived.
Leisured Mischief-Makers
   The evil that Byron did certainly lived after him, and was even
outmatched by the mischief perpetrated by almost every person who had
been close to him. In turning over the bones Doris Langley Moore has
brought to light a great deal of discreditable behaviour and a vision
of mischief-making propensities of the leisured classes in the early
19th century which leaves one a little breathless.
   No previous Byron biographer, I fancy (and they have been many)
has had access at the same time to so many important manuscript
sources. The late Lady Wentworth, Byron's great-granddaughter, opened
the whole of the Lovelace Papers to Mrs. Moore in 1957; she was able
to continue her work on them for more than a year after Lady
Wentworth's death.
   These papers, the contents of several trunks, are the accumulated
letters and personal documents left by Lady Byron, who never recovered
from the shock of her brief marriage with the poet, and dedicated the
rest of her life (she was 23 when they parted) to self-justification
and resentment.
   Would that Byron's Memoirs had also survived! How the ghost of
the first John Murray must moan in his Albemarle Street vaults to
think how self-righteously, urged and abetted by Byron's lifelong
friend, John Cam Hobhouse, he burned them there in the fireplace,
condemning the work unread, as Tom Moore said, "and without opening
it, as if it were a pest bag!"
   Byron's marriage, the reasons (real enough though embroidered
later) for Lady Byron's leaving him, the scandal of his love affair
with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, the question of the paternity of
Medora Leigh her daughter, the long inquisitorial persecution of
Augusta by Lady Byron (who seems to have been as neurotic as the most
ghoulish novelist could wish), the patient ferreting for evidence to
add homosexuality to incest as an extra nail in his coffin, the
unspeakable treacheries of Lady Caroline Lamb, the scarcely less
heinous treacheries of Augusta- it is the Lovelace Papers, surely,
that deserve to be called a "pest bag", not Byron's consumed
Memoirs, which at least would have possessed the merit of being well
and entertainingly written.
   Equally important have been the Hobhouse Journals, a vast mass of
material partly in the British Museum, partly in the possession of the
Hobhouse family in Somerset. Hobhouse, later Lord Broughton, was
Byron's intimate (if a little stuffy and unimaginative) friend from
their Cambridge days, who had travelled widely with him, been
fascinated by him to a point that looks like love, had fanned the
enthusiasm which had sent Byron finally to Greece, and suffered years
of loyal exasperation as Byron's executor.
Sturdy Friends
   Byron as a man is seen at his best in relation to such sturdy
male friends. He brought out the worst in women, as they certainly
brought it out in him. There is scarcely a woman in his life besides
Teresa Guiccioli, last and most reasonable love, who does not affect
the modern reader with nausea.
   The Countess Guiccioli was by birth a Gamba; her brother Pietro
accompanied Byron to Greece, shared the misery and ruinous
frustrations of the campaign, and was with him when he died. The
Gamba Papers in Ravenna have shed some valuable light on this last
phase, wholesomely contradicting the lies of that strangely theatrical
blackguard, Edward Trelawney, who played a highly discreditable part
in the Greek campaign himself, and wished, as did many others, to make
capital out of his association with Byron.
A Modern Voice
   Few people come out of this detailed 6post-mortem with much
credit. Hobhouse certainly, though one respects him more than one
likes him, Byron himself, who, whenever his voice is heard above the
banshee wail (Augusta, Caroline Lamb, Lady Byron keeping in chorus)
surprises one by his tone of humanity, of common sense, of candour: a
startlingly modern voice. Lady Byron most dislikeable, Augusta a
shifty fool and not altogether a nice one, Lady Caroline Lamb a bitch
goddess in an age which (thanks to plentiful domestic service and
gracious living) was notably rich both in goddesses and bitches.
# 227
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Masterpiece of horror
<EDITORIAL>
   AFTER ten days of intermittent, near fatal ennui, the
eleventh Berlin International Film Festival was suddenly jolted back
to life by two extraordinary films, Bernhard Wicki's "Das Wunder
des Malachias" ("The Miracle of Father Malachias") and
Michaelangelo Antonioni's "La Notte."
   The number of German film directors who have made first rate
works in the last 25 years can be counted on the fingers of one hand:
Frank Wysbar ("Fa"hrmann Maria"), Helmut Ka"utner ("Die
Grosse Freiheit No. 7"), Herbert Selpin ("Titanic"), Wolfgang
Staudte ("Rotation"), and Georg Klaren ("Wozzeck"). It would
now seem that Wicki's name must be added to this list, for his new
film may well be a landmark in the revitalisation of the German
cinema.
   Wicki is not only a director. He began his career as an actor,
had his first important film ro?5le in Ka"utner's "Die letzt
Bru"cke," and he also appears in the new Antonioni film. In 195
he began to take photographs not only in Germany but also in Africa
and America. An exhibition of these works which is now on view in a
Berlin gallery is most impressive. As Friedrich Du"rrenmatt, the
Swiss playwright and author, wrote: "Wicki's blacks and greys are
not only the colours of the lost and the forgotten, but they are also
the technical means of abstraction. Every unnecessary detail, all
superfluous local colouring must be eliminated. He does not want the
accuracy of a police photograph, but rather he wants to show the
eternal in every instant."
   The chilling horror of "Malachias" is due as much to Wicki the
photographer as to Wicki the director. His earlier film, "Die
Bru"cke," was equally terrifying, but here the director moves out
of the world of reality into an icy supernatural vacuum where the sun
never shines. Following Bruce Marshall's original novel with
considerable fidelity, the film tells the story of a little monk who
prays that a disreputable night club near his church be removed. One
night his prayer is answered and the offending establishment is
suddenly transplanted to an island in the North Sea.
   But Father Malachias's troubles have only begun. Instead of
having the desired effect, the miracle becomes exploited by a group of
shrewd newspapermen. Soon a carnival springs up on the sight of the
missing building. The Church rebukes the poor monk for his miracle,
and as a crowning indignity the night club is given a gala society
reopening on the island. Father Malachias goes to the island, prays,
and in a second miracle the night club is replaced in its original
setting.
   A summary of the story can give almost no indication of the scope
of Wicki's artistry. He tells his story best in the faces of his
crowds, recording every wrinkle and drop of sweat with brutal honesty,
building up to a tremendous climax in the island orgy. Here, the
guests arrive in ghost-like yachts, the wildly flapping white sails
slashed by the glaring beacon of a lighthouse. When the final miracle
does occur, it is accepted as a marvellous joke; no one has learned
anything. Wicki suddenly returns to the city for a final epilogue.
In complete silence he shows the faces of people walking in the
streets, smug, content, satisfied, and thoroughly frightening.
   Wicki has succeeded in his second film in recording his personal
apocalypse of the last days of a sick society. It is most unfair to
call "Malachias" a cut-rate "Dolce Vita," for it is far more
intimate and deeply felt. In 1944 Herbert Selpin tried a similar feat
in "Titanic" by paralleling the last days of the Third Reich with
the sinking of the great ocean liner, and paid for his audacity with
his life. To judge from the press, Wicki is to pay by being
journalistically crucified in his own country. Certainly there are
things wrong with the film, but the print arrived from the cutting
room only a few hours before its showing and could not be considered
in finished state. One can only hope that British audiences will have
a chance to judge this powerful creation for themselves in the near
future; "Die Bru"cke" is still waiting two years after its
German premie?3re.
   "La Notte" will be shortly shown in London and for that
reason deserves shorter mention here. Those who feared that Antonioni
could never follow "L'Avventura" with another masterpiece can
rest easy; he has done the near impossible and turned out what
certainly must be one of the greatest studies of the renewal of love
that the screen has ever seen. Less obviously complex than his last
film, "La Notte" will undoubtedly have more popular appeal, but
this is in no way a reflection on its seriousness. His method of
painting with the camera has never been more exciting, exchanging the
rocks of Sicily for the skyscrapers of Milan. But his society is the
same, now even clearer, but touched with a melancholy compassion which
is a strong sign of the maturity of his ultimate artistic vision.
   Strangely enough, the Berlin audience received the film with
extreme coolness, much preferring Jean-Luc Godard's disappointing
"Une Femme est une Femme," a ninety-one minute hymn to
"Vogue," "Cahiers du Cinema," and the worst aspects of the
American cinema. From a brilliantly funny start, the work fizzles out
into a series of repetitious sight-gags and personal jokes
incomprehensible to the uninitiated (including four plugs for Charles
Aznavour). Certainly one had the right to expect better. The other
French entry, Michel Drach's "Ame?2lie, ou de Temps d'Aimer,"
was late nineteenth-century French opera at its most beautiful, subtly
romantic with a twilight melancholy which lifted an involved story to
real heights.
   As a refuge from the welter of mediocre features, the
retrospective shows are always of great interest, particularly the
programmes devoted to the works of Richard Oswald. This director is
at last being re-evaluated and given his proper place in the history
of the German film. Most charming was his tongue-in-cheek
"Unheimliche Geschichten" (192), five ghost stories with a
light touch, and there was much to admire in "Dreyfus" (193) and
the virtually unknown but extremely important "1914" (1931), which
tries to show that it took more than just Germany to start the First
World War.
   Prizes being what they are, Berlin is unusually generous in
giving everyone something, and silver bears are awarded in every
direction. Both the Antonioni and Wicki films took high honours, and
the audience at the awards was particularly enthusiastic when one Miss
Anna Kerima was selected as best actress for her work in the Godard
film. Gifted with an interesting face, although little acting
ability, she would seem to be well worth watching in the months to
come.
NEW FILMS
by Isabel Quigly
   FOR once a cinema's advertisement does not exaggerate. The
Academy advertises Jean-Luc Godard's A bout de Souffle?2
(translated as Breathless, X certificate) as "the most eagerly
awaited new film of the 6nouvelle vague," and although "new"
is hardly accurate (the film is two years old and one of those that
gave the new wave its original impetus and excitement), certainly the
film that "Sight and Sound" called "the group's intellectual
manifesto" is one that anyone with an interest in what the cinema is
up to has been waiting to see. Few films have been so widely
discussed before their public showing; and, as it turns out, few can
ever have seemed such obvious prototypes, or have embodied so many
attitudes and techniques that have since been imitated, exaggerated,
caricatured, and (therefore) weakened, even made absurd.
   It is disappointing though perhaps inevitable that the young
directors of the new wave made their best films at the beginning, and
in most cases, far from going from strength to strength, have since
either repeated themselves or deteriorated or (generally) both; for
their great limitation is the lack, once they have made their original
point and asserted their independence of what went before them, of
anything much to say, and the fact that the world they deal with,
though at first it may look excitingly emancipated, is in fact as
restricted as that of drawing-room comedy. Its centre of gravity is
Paris, its inhabitants young people- students, spivs, petty crooks,
layabouts of every kind- all with a uniform sort (and style) of
sexual promiscuity and social aimlessness.
   
   HERE in London in 1961, we are seeing "A bout de
Souffle?2" too late, of course, to feel its original impact, or
even its originality very forcefully: but even a short time ago it
must have seemed excitingly new, even revolutionary, one of the films
that, sick of the old guard's deadness, stageyness, and sheer lack of
film sense, started what was then an anti-cliche?2 movement, a new
way of looking at the world. But there is a gloomy truth in the old
saws about revolutionaries turning into conservatives overnight: it is
not that they are bribed or bludgeoned by the establishment, but that
they turn into an establishment of their own. In no time at all their
very revolutionary qualities are copied, and appear quite dismally
hackneyed: what was once fresh and surprising becomes tricksy and
affected, and by now, in the case of the new wave, the movement is so
barnacled with its own cliche?2s that it is hard to remember the
high- inordinately high- hopes it began with.
   Certainly "A bout de Souffle?2" (which is almost a group
achievement: Godard directed, but Truffaut- "Les 4 coups,"
"Shoot the pianist"- wrote the script and Chabrol- "The
cousins," "Les bonnes femmes"- was technical supervisor) is
extremely exciting, especially if you can forget what has come since.
It has now the familiar ingredients- a nihilistic attitude to
everything, wry, built-in jokes, a murderer-thief hero- but it has,
too, a startling freshness of style, a really surprising and
illuminating way of looking at objects, faces, people as they talk and
feel, conversations as they perform (or don't manage to perform) their
function of bringing people closer. It has a great look of speed and
technical fun about it, of enormous cinematic enjoyment, and above all
of cinematic sense. Much of it has that air of improvisation, as of
off-the-cuff living, that once seemed so new and so attractive. The
story (not that the story, in the sense of plot, matters much; but in
the sense of situation and movement it matters a lot) is that of a man
on the run (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who spends a few days with an
American girl (Jean Seberg) who is bearing his child (though paternity
is always a rather dubious business among the new wave): an affair
that remains spiritually unconsummated as they move on to the final
betrayal.
   
   BELMONDO reappears at the Paris Pullman in Moderato
Cantabile (curiously translated into Seven Days... Seven Nights
... A certificate), Peter Brook's film made in France and shown last
autumn at the London Film Festival. In spite of magnificent
performances from him and from Jeanne Moreau, this has been fairly
well trounced by the critics wherever it has appeared. Leisurely,
even slow, rhythmically repetitive, the mysteriously simple story
takes place on the banks of the Garonne, which becomes an
unforgettable image. This is a very individual film, mannered,
subtle, literary, made by a man who is not necessarily a film-maker,
without the exclusively, ferociously cinematic eye of, say, Godard or
Truffaut; but, to me at least, strangely satisfying and memorable.
   And for those who complain that Hollywood has grown too
sophisticated to turn out anything really amusingly bad these days,
anything like the old riproaring nonsenses in which Joan Crawford or
Lana Turner broke their hearts in black velvet and mink, there is
Parrish (director: Delmer Daves, A certificate: Warner), a
concoction as absurd as you could hope for, and a parody of every
family saga and regional-folksy film from giant downwards. With a
large blond youth of quite dazzling dumbness called Troy Donahue; and
Claudette Colbert, still charming amid the nonsense, and Karl Malden
not knowing how to take it, all rolling eyeballs like a villain from
East Lynne.
# 26
<74 TEXT C3>
Film Virtues in A Taste of Honey
Mr. Richardson's Skilful Direction
   The film version of Miss Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of
Honey opens at the Leicester Square Theatre tomorrow. It has been
produced and directed by Mr. Tony Richardson, who is also
part-author with Miss Delaney of the script, and the great advantages
to be derived from this unity of conception and control are everywhere
apparent.
   This is not a filmed play. It has been conceived throughout in
terms of the cinema, and again and again it is the visual qualities of
the story, and the marriage of the central characters to their
background, which bring the film so vividly to life.
   In Fanny, which also has its premiere tomorrow, the director,
Mr. Joshua Logan, attempted but failed to create the atmosphere of a
city. In A Taste of Honey Mr. Richardson has taken a town in
the industrial North of England and has made it live. The shabby
streets and wet pavements, the school play-grounds, the public
monuments and the rubbish strewn canals- even the worn head-stones in
the churchyard, "sacred to the memory of"- are seen as an integral
part of the story. The background is always alive and always
changing; but the visual image is in keeping with the spoken word. We
accept implicitly that these characters have grown naturally and
inevitably from out of these surroundings.
   Against this industrial setting Mr. Richardson has told Miss
Delaney's story. Its faults are still apparent. The plot is still
shapeless and inconclusive- indeed it is little more than an anecdote
of city life, with a beginning but no end- and the characters often
seem to lack consistency. But there is heart in the telling, and an
intense realism in the situation.
   A young girl lives in a single dingy room with her slatternly,
promiscuous mother. In such surroundings she learns sex is something
sordid, and when she experiences it for the first time herself it is
incoherently, clumsily, but half shyly and half inquisitively. As is
the case in Fanny her first lover is a sailor who leaves her to
bear his child and sails away. In Fanny the pregnant girl is
befriended by an old man. Here it is a young homosexual, estranged
from women but yet moved by a strong maternal instinct to the unborn
child as much as to the expectant mother, who acts as a protector and
comforter to her in her hour of need. He shares her room and gives
her his forlorn gift of companionship and sympathy- "you need
someone to love you while you are looking for someone to love".
   Miss Dora Bryan plays the mother as a flamboyant, down-to-earth
sensualist who lacks perception but is not altogether without heart.
Mr. Murray Melvin is the homosexual, his long lugubrious face
reflecting a hidden and unexpressed compassion.
   Miss Rita Tushingham is the girl. It is always difficult when
assessing a moving and eloquent performance by a young and immature
screen actress to judge the extent to which her acting has been
inspired by skilled and sensitive direction. Mr. Richardson has
left his stamp so clearly on the rest of this film that some credit
must be given to him; but here is undeniably a performance of
surprising range and deep emotion, reflected in the face of an
ordinary schoolgirl that is seemingly without make-up but is
illuminated by a wonderful pair of eyes.
   It is Mr. Richardson's great gift that he can show a face in
close-up and reveal the thoughts of the mind without a word being
spoken. This he does repeatedly in this film, especially with Miss
Tushingham.
CONCERTOS ENLIVEN PROGRAMME
   Apart from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture,
last night's Prom was entirely devoted to twentieth-century music,
with two piano concertos by Alan Rawsthorne and Prokofiev (each
composer's No. 1 in the medium) to enliven both halves of the
programme.
   The two works are true bravura concertos lying within the grasp
only of players of virtuoso technique; they are alike, too, in placing
far more emphasis on crisply sparkling extravert brilliance than on
inwardness of feeling though admittedly Rawsthorne briefly becomes
more searching in his beautiful central chaconne. The soloist, Miss
Moura Lympany, could not have been better chosen, for she has the
clear-cut agility and vivacity of musicianship necessary for this kind
of music, and temperamentally does not suffer from any temptation to
delve more deeply into the notes than they warrant.
   On their own, the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra and Sir Malcolm
Sargent went to the rescue of "Pohjola's Daughter", one of
Sibelius's offspring now very much on the shelf. This is vividly
scored but essentially naive programme music, perhaps more likely to
appeal on home ground where the Kalevala is as real as the Bible.
   Sir Malcolm Sargent and the orchestra made every point with
graphic clarity, and almost the same was true of Vaughan Williams's
sixth symphony, which stood as the centrepiece of the programme. The
exception was the finale of the symphony, which was played just a
shade too fast and not quite insubstantially enough to convey the
full, hollow horror of its implications- the globe's vast desolation
after the extinction of all human life.
Miss Dodie Smith Provides for Kitchen Sink
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
LIVERPOOL, SEPT. 12.
   In her latest play, launched here last night, Miss Dodie Smith,
accepting the challenge of the times, has made room for a kitchen
sink. Its presence does nothing to sour these new arrivals among the
author's brood of brain children. Or should one call them heart
children? All their hearts are in the right place, and they run true
and sweet to family form.
   There is even an older and more formidable challenge than the
sink itself to test their fundamental niceness, for this basement
kitchen of an old house in a London square is also the dining room of
a boarding establishment run by an amiable and fluttery spinster. All
her guests, whatever their age, lend a hand with the washing up (which
is frequent) with almost as much enjoyment as if at last some
miraculous detergent were being advertised in the live theatre.
   No one is cantankerous, there are no petty jealousies or mutual
animosities. Who but Miss Dodie Smith would have thought boarding
house comedy could be written without them?
   This boarding house has a pronounced list to stageward. It
accommodates young members of the profession and also a middle-aged
actor manque?2 who has been out of touch with the world for 2 years
and is at first suspected of having been serving a prison sentence.
   Actually he has been caring for his invalid but equally
histrionic wife who has died and left him free to fulfil, with her
blessing, his long thwarted ambition. When he has been gently
de-hammed for the modern stage by a young actress who is his
fellow-lodger he does land a contract. In the meanwhile we watch him
perform marvels of cooking and, generally at the same time, listen to
him delivering the most purple and familiar patches of Shakespeare.
   There are a pair of pathetic fuddy-duddies who have parted with
their house because they have had "a good offer" for it, and a
hypochondriacal old bachelor who proposes to the gentle proprietress,
but is not accepted until she has made the surprising confession that
she, unlike her once suspected guest, has really been to prison.
   This is Miss Smith's highest flight of imagination; the offence
was the absentminded theft of a library book for which in her youth
the otherwise innocent Miss Edie got 14 days without the option. The
inclusion of a titled "char" on the establishment is perhaps the
most deliberately modern touch.
   Miss Jennifer Stirling plays Miss Edie with great skill and charm
and Mr. Willard Stoker effectively coordinates a good cast.
Rare Acting in Betti Play
A Quietly Effective Production
Oxford Playhouse: Irene
<LIST>
Directed by BRYAN STONEHOUSE
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
OXFORD, Sept. 12
   Irene is not perhaps one of Betti's masterpieces, but it is a
splendidly efficient play, constructed with sure instinct for
theatrical effect which never seemed to let this dramatist down.
   The background is that rough, raw, savage land of southern Italy
which Betti explored in a number of plays. Here it is combined with
another theme dear to his heart, the workings of justice. A nice,
simple sergeant of the Carabinieri arrives in a strange village at
night to investigate some irregularities concerning the town clerk.
By chance he lights first of all upon the clerk's house, stays there
for the night and becomes disturbingly involved with the clerk, his
faded, pretentious wife and, particularly, his beautiful crippled
daughter, Irene.
   The next morning he hears the evidence against his erstwhile
host, and learns of the bitter enmity in which the mayor and the rest
hold him. Where does the truth lie? How far can the sergeant, caught
between his feelings for Irene and her family on the one hand and the
evidence and the veiled blackmail of the mayor on the other reach a
fair and unbiased decision?
   Especially when he learns that the girl, whom he believed pure
and innocent, is in fact the local prostitute. Despite this she still
retains a strange innocence, somewhere between that of the idiot and
that of the saint, which sets up violent and contradictory emotions in
those who visit her as well as in the sergeant: they want her to go
and yet they want her to stay; he does not know until almost too late
whether he loves her or loathes her.
   Arguably, the dramatist has committed a technical error in
allowing Irene to speak for herself; we would be altogether clearer in
our minds about her if she remained a flawed but beautiful enigma,
seen but not heard. However, Miss Pinkie Johnstone makes her few
brief scenes effective, and Mr. Dinsdale Landen, in the longest and
most exacting role, that of the sergeant, gives a performance of rare
intelligence and restrained power. Mr. Bryan Stonehouse's
production is quietly effective, giving full value to the formal
elements of Betti's writing without over-emphasizing them.
A MORALITY PLAY ON AMBITION
   Last night's play in the "Play of the Week" series on
independent television, Then We Fall, by Mr. Paul Ferris, was a
morality on the not unfamiliar theme of the destructive power of
unbridled ambition. It went, perhaps, some distance beyond most
treatments of its subject by attempting to generate a melodramatic
inevitability which left its central character and the world around
him in complete, unredeemable desolation.
   We could, perhaps, say whether or not the attempt succeeded if we
had a little more faith in the way in which Mr. Ferris manipulated
his characters. Mervyn Morris abandons his job as a pilot in a Welsh
seaport, finds a position with the local paper, treads underfoot
everyone, especially his wife, with whom he deals: his wife leaves him
for the paper's shy, gentle editor. At which he prevails upon his
father-in-law, a miserly, fanatical Welsh nationalist, to murder the
editor for him. No suspicions are aroused but no problems are solved
for he loses his job because, at the moment of the murder, he is
standing in front of television cameras and, with his nerves on edge,
talking tactlessly.
   Mr. William Lucas (Morris) is always insensitively pushing,
Miss Sheila Allen his wife, always palely appealing, Mr. James
Maxwell, the editor, always comically abashed by the events, and Mr.
Aubrey Richards, the father-in-law, always comically grotesque; they
were not asked to modulate from their set moods but played with proper
efficiency and, in the case of Mr. Richards, with lavish and
suitably gaudy colour. Only Mr. Lucas's actions, therefore, arose
explicably from appreciable motives. The rest, one feels, were driven
to effective action by the author in spite of the ineffectuality with
which he had endowed them. One hopes that he is not asking us to
believe that, because of their odd accents, they act oddly like the
queer foreigners of tradition.
# 28
<75 TEXT C4>
FRANKLY, IT'S NOT FOR FRANKIE...
   NEXT month that friendly, effervescent performer Frankie
Vaughan will burst on to the London Palladium stage in a new show.
   To paraphrase his well-known ditty: "He'll have the
limelight, they'll give him the girls- and leave the rest to him."
   I have a hunch that he will feel more at home in the old,
star-studded West End than he will ever feel in Hollywood.
   His American bosses, 2th-Century Fox, have recently given
Frankie the full, razzamataz, red-carpet treatment.
   But they haven't done a thing for his film career that Anna
Neagle and Herbert Wilcox were not doing better here, before the
platinum-plated Hollywood carrot was dangled before his nose.
   In his first Hollywood picture, "Let's Make Love," he was
swamped by the know-how of Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand. Against
this couple Frankie, in a cardboard role, didn't stand a chance.
   Now comes "The Right Approach" (Rialto, "A"), and it's
a glum business.
   He plays an aspiring actor- a selfish, arrogant, brash,
ambitious, unscrupulous heel- who would tread on anybody's neck to
get a break in the Hollywood ratrace.
Cynical
   He double-crosses the five pals with whom he lives, cheats a
waitress (Juliet Prowse) and cynically uses a magazine editress
(Martha Hyer) to get ahead.
   Frankie Vaughan is too nice a chap to ring quite true as a
smooth-tongued, ill-mannered Yank.
   His best moments are when he swings breezily into the title
song. But 6, miles seems a heck of a way to go for a new hit song.
   He might be well advised to think hard and long before his next
jump into the Hollywood arena.
   VERDICT: Vaughan should have by-passed this approach.
   
   RONALD Lewis has just left for his first taste of the
Hollywood treatment, thanks to a sound performance in "Taste of
Fear" (Warner Theatre, "X").
   He has earned his break.
   The film is a well-made variation on that sinister yarn in
which half the cast try to persuade the heroine that she is out of her
mind.
   Despite flagrant cheating the eerie atmosphere is built up
neatly.
   Susan Strasberg is the crippled damsel in distress.
   Stepmother Ann Todd and doctor Christopher Lee are also
effectively around.
   They provide some chilly red herrings in this "Find-the-body"
thriller.
   VERDICT: Don't believe all you see and hear!
   
   NOT for the first time the homely mug of Sidney James has
pumped life into a slim, strained comedy.
   He does his rescue act in "Double Bunk" (Leicester-square
Theatre, "A").
Strength
   Navigator Sid is a tower of strength when newly-weds Ian
Carmichael and Janette Scott let loose their ancient houseboat on a
honeymoon trip down the river.
   The film starts off brightly enough but, half-way through, the
plot (as well as the boat) springs a near-disastrous leak.
   Familiar members of Britain's repertory team of comedy
character-actors jump through equally familiar hoops to mild laughter.
   VERDICT: The "bunk" needed doubling.
DONALD 'TAKES' THE EVENING
LAST NIGHT'S T V
by CLIFFORD DAVIS
   DONALD HOUSTON had a big success on A T V's "Drama
'61" last night as a smooth, scheming jewel thief in a play by
Jacques Gillies, "The Takers."
   A polished production by Quentin Lawrence, here, held together
by Mr. Houston's accomplished performance as the master mind behind
a gang of crooks.
   This plot to rob a French millionaire of +3, worth of
jewellery struck me as ingenious. The play had style, moved at a
quick pace and everyone did well.
   But it was Mr. Houston's evening.
   Earlier, on the Palladium show I found Stanley Holloway's act too
long and not particularly entertaining.
   It was also a mistake to re-book Gene Detroy and his performing
chimpanzees so soon after their previous appearance.
   Their offering last night differed little from their earlier act
on this show a week or so ago. But the Mudlarks, with Jeff Mudd out
of the Army and back with sister Mary and brother Fred, were in
bright, zestful form.
   Why only two numbers, though? It was not enough.
A Rix mix
by RICHARD SEAR
   "A FAIR COP," the B B C Whitehall farce last night,
looked like a rabbit warren in a field of corn.
   I can't recall a production where so many comics bolted in and
out of holes so often.
   The jokes were a reshuffle of the same old lot- this time Brian
Rix lost his skirt instead of his trousers.
   The action moved at tremendous speed, backed by some wonderful
timing by the cast.
   I especially liked the tea-cup scene where six of the cast
changed cups with the dexterity of Chinese jugglers.
   Carole Shelley as the newly-wed and Larry Noble as Smiler Perkins
were the most laughable.
   They alone used a sharp edge to their humour and cut through the
gormless standing corn around them. Perhaps it was accidental- I
hope not.
   If ever a bag of humour needed a thorough shaking up the
Whitehall farce is it when it comes to television.
IT'S AN OLD 2PIANNA PIN-UP
ON THE RECORD
by Patrick Doncaster
   HOW do you get on records? Well, you've got to have
something different.
   Sing slightly flat. All the good singers sing in tune.
   Twang a guitar slightly off key. Everybody's fed up with the
right way- so the best-seller charts say. Play an OLD 2pianna
instead of a new one.
   You got to get it into your head, son... people don't like
things as they should be- not on record, anyway.
   Thus, musician David Lisbon's chances of being a starred disc
solo pianist were greatly enhanced when he dug out A PACKET OF
DRAWING-PINS.
   "Why not," thought ex-soldier Mr. Lisbon, who is
twenty-three, and lives in Dagenham, Essex, "press a thumb-tack into
the nose of the hammers that strike the piano strings?"
   He did, on his piano at home. There weren't enough tacks and he
got only the middle hammers done.
   Then he tried it out for sound.
   Um-chink... um-chink... it went. Slightly flat and jangly in
part. DELIGHTFUL!
   He put the sound on tape. The tape went to the Philips
company.
   Within two days Mr. Lisbon had a record contract. And they
hauled his thumb-tacked joanna the thirteen miles to London for his
first session.
   Now along comes his solo disc, featuring two of his own
compositions, "Deerstalker" and "Almost Grown Up."
   VERDICT: Mr. Lisbon has it taped. And tacked.
   And he says: "Just as well I had only one box of tacks- it
might have been so different...."
   More news from the ivory-thumping dept.... Russ Conway,
who has tinkled his way to fame on an old 2pianna, comes in with
another of his own works: "Parade of the Poppets" (Columbia).
   But not one of his nimble-fingered best.
CUTE
   GERMANY'S Russ Conway is a pianist who calls himself CRAZY
OTTO. But nothing crazy about his pianistics.
   He pounds merrily away at a piece called "Piccadilly"
(Polydor). I find it cute.
   American pianist Floyd Cramer, who played for Elvis on "It's
Now or Never," looks like having a success on his own with "On the
Rebound" (RCA).
   
   NEW boy on the vocal front is Rolly Daniels, who comes
5, miles from India to seek disc fame.
   Comedian Hal Monty saw him in Bombay, became his manager. And
such is Hal's faith that he brings him to Europe.
   Now Rolly gets his big break- a record, the modern Aladdin's
lamp of show business. Become a success with a disc and hey presto!
You're a star....
   Rolly sings with assuredness "Bella Bella Marie"
(Parlophone), a lively song that changes tempo mid-way.
   I don't think he will storm the charts with this one, but it's a
good start.
   
   CHRIS CHARLES, 39, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees, is an
accountant. He is also a director of a couple of garages.
   And he finds time as well to be a lyric writer.
OBLIGED
   He writes with Tolchard Evans, composer of "Lady of
Spain" and other big hits.
   Tolch, as he is known in Tin Pan Alley, likes songs with a month
in the title. He wrote "My September Love," the big David
Whitfield hit of 1956.
   "Let's have another song with a month in it," said Tolch.
Mr. Charles obliged with "April Serenade."
   This week it appears, a tuneful melody sung impeccably by Robert
Earl (Philips).
TELEPAGE by JACK BELL
A PRODUCER VANISHES
   PRODUCER Russell Turner, 33, provides his last programme for
the B B C tonight with Robert Harbin's "Mystery and Magic"
(7.3).
   After six years with the Corporation, during which he started
"Juke Box Jury" and directed "Six-Five Special," Turner is
aiming to go into free-lance T V, film and stage production work.
   "I feel I've done all I can at the B B C," he told me.
"We mutually agreed to part."
   Escapologist Dill-Russell is a guest in Harbin's show tonight.
   Boxing fans can see an eight-round feather-weight contest
between Chris Elliot and Harry Carroll from Leicester (B B C,
8.25).
'NATIONAL' AIRS
   A SONGS-OF-BRITAIN medley is sung by David Hughes in his
"Make Mine Music" (B B C, 9.3 p.m.).
   The numbers include "Scotland the Brave," "Men of Harlech,"
"McNamara's Band," "Greensleeves" and "English Rose."
   Fay Compton stars in "No Hiding Place" (I T V, 9.35
p.m.). She plays the possessive mother of a man whose hobby
revolves round a doll's house.
   
   THREE people will be hypnotised in tonight's "Lifeline"
(B B C, 1.15).
   They will be asked to comment on the design of everyday
articles such as a chair and a motor-car.
WHAT?
   The idea is to see what happens when parts of the mind not
normally available without hypnosis are used.
   I T V have postponed Malcolm Muggeridge's "Appointment
with playwright Arnold Wesker."
   Instead, Muggeridge's appointment will be with Sir Roy Welensky
the Premier of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1.3
p.m.).
   Say Granada T V, the producers: "We decided to make the
switch because of the topicality of African affairs. The Wesker
interview will be seen at a later date."
LAST NIGHT'S TV
The soldier who was scared
by RICHARD SEAR
   ACTOR Tom Courtenay was an outstanding success last night in
I T V's "Private Potter," his first big T V part.
   The play was a brilliantly-written essay on soldiering which
stated that a fighting man could only be regarded as a machine.
   Potter screamed during an action, and was arrested. He claimed
he had seen a vision of God- only the padre and his C O believed
him.
   Courtenay played the part with a gawky, Northern defiance. The
cameras played continuously on his craggy face, and obstinate, baffled
eyes. They stripped him of his ugly battle-dress, to leave him for
what he was- Potter, a frightened boy who had a vision.
   It was a splendid interpretation of the part.
   The rest of the cast were well chosen, with James Maxwell
making a fine job of the sympathetic C O.
IMPOSSIBLE?- NO!
   Paul Daneman gave another first-class performance last night as
a wartime naval officer in the B B C's "The Little Key."
   The play was no more than a figment of the imagination which
asked the viewer to believe in a beautiful ghost. It would have been
an impossible piece of television but for clever production by Michael
Hayes.
   He captured the atmosphere of fog and mystery to great effect.
'NOT FAIR' say VIEWERS
LAST NIGHT'S T V
by RICHARD SEAR
   MORE than 1 viewers complained to the B B C last night
that an American film, "Britain- Blood, Sweat, and Tears... Plus
Twenty Years," was anti-British.
   The film replaced "What's My Line?" and "Be My Guest"
programmes because of an electricians' strike.
   It showed Britain today through the eyes of an American T V
reporter, Eric Sevareid, and British personalities. Among them-
Professor Dennis Brogan, Shelagh Delaney, and Alan Sillitoe.
   The film covered a wide aspect of the British scene, ranging from
pubs, the Eton wall game, to the European Common Market.
   Shelagh Delaney and Alan Sillitoe attacked education.
   It was left to reporter Sevareid to make the strongest
criticisms. He said that in the race of the modern nations, Britain
was slipping behind....
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Fine Classical Chorus
Imparting Ritual Significance
   Scala Theatre: The Choephori.
   Though Mr. Dimitrios Rondiris's ideas about the use of
material from folksong and folkdance in accommodating a classical
chorus to the modern stage had some chances of expression in his
production of the Sophocles Electra last week, the real test comes
with the Aeschylian equivalent, The Choephori, and its tailpiece,
The Eumenides, which make up the second programme of the Greek
Tragedy Theatre's season.
   For the role of the chorus here is much more important and
active, particularly in The Eumenides, than it ever is in
Sophocles, and the ritual element in the drama, always a stumbling
block for modern audiences, is much closer to the surface. In the
first play the chorus are embodiments of right judgment in the
abstract, applying the tests of religion to the situations before them
and urging the characters to the proper actions even when these, mere
individual human beings, may be torn by doubt.
   In the second they become the Furies, the embodiments of one
aspect of the divine vengeance, which pursues the slayer of his own
kind, even if that slaughter was divinely ordained, and finally the
impersonal prophets of universal reconciliation.
   Mr. Rondiris's handling of the chorus here is masterly
throughout: in The Choephori they still perform the function of
sympathetic decor, as in Electra, but if anything with more
subtlety and control, and when their measured speech passes over into
song the tones are, remotely but unmistakably, those taught by the
Orthodox liturgy- the readiest way of imparting ritual significance
to their words for a modern audience.
   In The Eumenides they are different again; as the Furies
pursuing Orestes they take a direct part in the action, and are thus
required to project emotions of their own instead of merely reflecting
the emotions of the central characters. Savage and weirdly masked,
they swirl in a turbulent mass about the stage, eschewing until the
very end the regular, balanced compositions of the earlier play.
   The human beings involved in the intricate working out of divine
justice are relatively less important than in later Greek tragedy, but
they are strongly played by actors with whom we are already familiar
from Electra. The protagonist in both plays is Orestes, and Mr.
D. Veakis has more chance than he had in the Sophocles to win us
over to his rather exaggerated style of acting, though he still does
not quite succeed.
   The Electra and Clytemnestra of this earlier production have
changed places this time (presumably so that Miss Aspassia
Papathanassiou could appear in both plays, as Clytemnestra and her
ghost). Miss Thalia Kalliga's Electra is as impressive as her
Clytemnestra, but inevitably Miss Papathanassiou with her incandescent
pallor and the vibrant intensity of her stage presence seizes our
attention every moment she is on the scene and it is a measure of her
power over the whole production that when the curtain finally descends
it is not the harmony of the close, but Clytemnestra's ghost crying in
the night for vengeance, which remains most potently in our minds.
FINE EXHIBITION OF SPORTING PRINTS
AGE OF THE COLOURED AQUATINT
   The exhibition of English and French engravings of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at Messrs. Agnew's Galleries,
43, Old Bond Street, until July 8, is a pleasant reminder mainly of
the age of the coloured aquatint though it includes also examples of
the delicate French line-engravings after Moreau le Jeune from Le
Monument de Costume.
   It represents in impressions of excellent quality such famous
prints as Debucourt's "La Promenade Publique" of 1792, the view
of Westminster Hall and Abbey engraved by D. Havell after J.
Glendall, and the now rare coaching subjects of James Pollard of which
"The Royal Mails preparing to start for the West of England, 1831"
(from the "Swan with Two Necks", Cheapside) is a notable example.
Joseph Farington gains from translation into aquatint in the plates
from Boydell's "History of the River Thames" and some interesting
views of early nineteenth century Greece include an aquatint of the
Parthenon (Dodwell-Bennett) as it must have appeared shortly after
Lord Elgin had removed the "Marbles". The sporting prints by
Herring and Alken are good examples of an always popular genre.
PICTORIAL CONFECTIONS
   Closely alike in style, the pictures of Dietz Edzard and
Suzanne Eisendieck may be suitably described as "confections" and
the sugared quality the word implies pervades the current exhibition
of their work at the Adams Gallery, 24, Davis Street, W.1,
giving to views of Venice and Normandy a charm curiously remote from
reality. The idyllic combination of figure and landscape in which
these artists have specialized needs a sweet tooth of appreciation.
The exhibition continues until June 3.
Moral Earnestness in Ballet
   The social and aesthetic climate of Soviet ballet is so
different from our own that in considering Russian ballet today we
start at a considerable disadvantage. The sense of moral earnestness,
the view that art should be a guide and mentor for the people, which
is the substructure of Soviet choreography, can produce effects which
will strike us as naive or old-fashioned; yet this would not perhaps
be so important were it not for the fact that the use made of dance
movement and of performers must necessarily reflect this same feeling.
   The choreographic manner- where the hero's leaps are an
affirmation of faith, and the heroine, held aloft, is woman-kind as a
triumphant inspiration and reward for the hero's endeavours- has an
initial excitement which too often declines into dramatic cliche?2,
to the detriment of our western enjoyment of the dancing as a stage
spectacle.
   These are the very faults of The Stone Flower with which the
Leningrad State Kirov Ballet opened their season at Covent Garden last
night. The plot tells of a stone-cutter, Danila, loving a young girl,
Katerina, and dissatisfied with his art. His longing to create a
perfect stone flower takes him to a magical cavern, presided over by
the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. There he learns the secrets of
his craft, and there Katerina comes at last to fetch him away from the
Mistress of the Mountain, who reluctantly lets him go.
   It is, baldly, an uneven work, but even in our limited experience
of Soviet ballet, an interesting one, and an unusual departure from
anything we have seen previously from Russia. Gone is the realist
de?2cor; instead, a back drop rises to reveal the various changes for
scenes which are otherwise played on a bare stage and with simple
black wings.
   The choreography is the first major creation of the young Yuri
Grigorovich, and it demonstrates a talent not as yet up to the demands
of a large work. For Danila and Katerina he uses a free-flowering
classicism, while for the Mistress of the Mountain he has devised a
quasi-acrobatic style, sinuous, angular, and very brilliant. He is
most successful in adapting folk-dancing for the chorus of peasants
and gipsies, and he shows a remarkable gift for movement for a large
corps, dazzling, intricate, and with a muscular brio that is
enormously effective. But against this we have to set scenes for the
6corps de ballet of jewels that seem fidgety and sterile exercises
in academic movement, lacking any originality.
   The three principals are admirable: as Danila, Mr. Yuri
Soloviev gives a tremendous performance; he has a prodigious technique
in leaps and turns, he is a fine partner, and conveys that sense of
dramatic conviction that can disarm our criticism of a character that
is not fully explored in the ballet. As Katerina and the Mistress of
the Mountain Miss Alla Sizova and Miss Alla Osipenko are well
contrasted, with Miss Sizova's warm lyrical style matched against the
force and e?2clat of Miss Osipenko.
   The company are seen best in the character dances; as peasants
and gypsies in a fair scene that inevitably recalls Petrushka they
show just how much dramatic variety can be obtained from a superb
corps. In the "classical" sequences we can only appreciate the
difference that still exists between Leningrad and Moscow dancers;
here is a style that seems nearer our own, more reserved and less
emotionally extreme than the Bolshoi.
   The Prokofiev score, magnificently handled by Mr. Niazi, is
adequate as ballet music, but a first hearing does not reveal it as of
the standard of Romeo and Juliet, or even as appealing as
Cinderella.
WIDE COLOUR ON HARPSICHORD
MISS SILVIA KIND'S RECITAL
   In spite of the harpsichord's popularity, true harpsichordists
these days are very rare. Miss Silvia Kind, who played a varied and
consistently interesting programme at Wigmore Hall last night, can
hardly be considered one just yet.
   An attack of nerves in Bach's Italian Concerto caused her to take
the outer movements at perilously fast tempi with scarcely a thought
for any detailed phrasing of their melodic lines; if at the start of a
recital this could be forgiven, her reliance on colour effects to
underline the structure of the music- which unfortunately persisted
throughout much of the remainder of it- most certainly could not.
The expressive powers of a harpsichord are by no means directly
proportionate to the number of registrations it possesses.
   In some seventeenth-century programme pieces by John Bull,
Bernardo Pasquini and Alessandro Poglietti the employment of a wide
variety of colour 6per se seemed appropriate enough; in
Mozart, however (the Duport variations K.573), such superficial
treatment chopped up the music altogether too much.
   But the performance of Bach's D major Toccata BWV 912, with
which Miss Kind ended her recital, combined some splendidly bold and
free declamatory playing with keen perception of the work's continuity
and nobility of outline. It suggested, in fact, that Miss Kind is a
very much better harpsichordist than this recital as a whole revealed.
UNEQUAL SUPPORT FOR THREE AUTHORS
   Webber-Douglas School: Triple Bill
   Thirteen second-year students appeared in last night's
performance, and one's judgment of them might have been fairer, if the
running order of the programme had been reversed. As it was, their
failure to make the first two items work as play, was irritating, and
caused one to undervalue even those pieces of acting which obviously
had merit, such as those of Miss Jocelyn Carney in Act =1 of The
Chalk Garden and of all three players in A Phoenix Too Frequent,
Miss Amanda Reeves, Miss Sonia Hughes, and Mr. Aart van Bergen.
   The cast of the third piece, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,
did not reach a noticeably higher standard than that of Mr.
Christopher Fry's play, yet the former, consisting of Mr. Gerald
Curtis (Shakespeare), Miss Gabrielle Griffin (Queen Elizabeth =1),
Miss Hazel Prance and Mr. Gilbert Sutherland, seemed to have no
trouble in persuading us to take Shaw's 5-year-old plea for a
National Theatre in excellent part.
   The movement at the beginning when the Tudor Beefeater made the
same damning criticism of Shakespeare's play that people were still
making of Shaw's plays in 191 was such a delight that we were
prepared from then onwards to be satisfied with everything. But to
accept so much help from Shaw and themselves to give so little help to
their other two authors, Miss Enid Bagnold and Mr. Fry, looked like
weakness in this student company.
Zurich Sees Two Contrasting Versions of Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
   Two stage versions of Raskolnikoff have been presented here
in Zurich during the June Festival. Leopold Ahlsen's play was brought
to the Schauspielhaus in the production of the Berlin
Schlosspark-theater and Heinrich Sutermeister's opera is in the
season's repertory of the Stadtheater. Seen here on consecutive days
these two adaptations of Dostoevsky's novel seem as different from
each other- and in many ways from the book itself- as current
opinions on crime and punishment are sometimes at variance.
   Mr. Ahlsen's play might well have been given the alternative
title of "Crime and Detection", and derives much of its dramatic
impetus from being a good thriller. But it goes deeper than that,
too. It is a fascinating psychological study and draws some attention
to the political, metaphysical, religious, and moral aspects of the
subject under discussion, namely, the taking of human life.
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the thursday critics
KENNETH ALLSOP
THE NEW BOOKS
BEHAN BESTOWS AN ACCOLADE ON DELANEY
She's the flower in a cultural desert, he says
   IT is mid-morning on a Dublin Sunday. The streets are
tranquilly sunny and still, for the town is at Mass. Most of it. In
the front room of a house in Anglesey-road is a congregation who never
actually got to church, but who are gathered with devotion around
Brendan Behan and a brandy bottle.
   Where the 2bhoys are. In the hallway are the empties; through
the door hearts are full, hopes are high. There are still a few amber
inches in the bottle.
   Present are some hard-core Friends of Brendan. They listen with
many an obliging guffaw to the brandy owner's solo swish on his
anecdotal roller-coaster, with occasional stops for an old I.R.A.
air or a Connemara tear-jerker.
Pluckily
   ALSO present is a London journalist who arrived two hours
earlier by appointment to talk to the author of Borstal Boy and
The Hostage about his new work, if any, and who is now being
pluckily convivial to fight off the frustration.
   The telephone has rung a couple of times, calls from other chums
sniffing the wind and offering to drop by for a chat.
   At last Brendan- to the journalist's relief- turns his
attention to the writing scene. He proceeds to place himself in the
literary hierarchy.
   "I consider myself," he says, "a cut above Evelyn Waugh
socially, a cut above Nancy Mitford artistically, a cut above Frank
Haxell conversationally.
   "But," he continues, "the greatest is Shelagh Delaney. Just
because A Taste of Honey was set in Salford they put on her the
limiting label of working-class writer. That's as bloody silly as
calling a Rolls-Royce a type of transport. She's the flower in a
cultural desert.
   "Now, me- I'm a journalist, I write to entertain rather than
educate. And I don't write at all unless I'm exceedingly 2skint.
   "But I'll say this. I'd like to live in America and do some
writing there. It's a very free place to write in, and there's the
advantage that no one knows what you're writing about anyway.
   "Not that I did much when I was over this past two times, not
with that great little Irish bar on Seventh Avenue, The Pigsty, always
open. I was there, in even faster orbit, when that third astronaut
went up- what's his name? I'm the only man on earth who doesn't know
what his name is. Don't tell me. I want to preserve that
distinction.
   "I already know about Shepard and that Salvation Army chap
Gagarin- the two biggest bores since Cardinal Newman. That's enough
of all that hooey."
Gravely
   HE plunges on into reminiscences of his trips. There is
much to recall.
   Among other incidents he was banned from New York's St.
Patrick's Day parade as a "disorderly person."
   He was in a fight after telling a Canadian, during a chat about
space-flight: "Ireland will put a shillelagh into orbit, Israel will
put a matzo ball into orbit, and Lichtenstein will put a postage stamp
into orbit before you Canadians put up a mouse."
   And he suffered an alcoholic seizure and was gravely ill in
hospital with a diabetic and heart condition.
   His return to Dublin was heralded by the announcement that he was
"off the gargle- a retired alcoholic." Since then he has been
heard of often in the newspapers- three times up before the beaks for
drunk and disorderly conduct.
Partially
   LESS has been heard of Brendan's work. It is now five
years since his first play, The Quare Fellow, was produced, three
years since Borstal Boy was published and The Hostage was put
on.
   What has happened to the play, Richard's Cork Leg, begun 18
months ago and due for presentation at the Theatre Royal, Stratford,
last spring? It was never finished.
   What happened to the new book partially tape-recorded by his
publishers in March of last year? Still a skeleton.
   Yet I have before me now a 12,-word manuscript of a book
planned to be called Confessions of an Irish Rebel which was
delivered to his agents in June.
Zestfully
   IT begins: "There was a party to celebrate Deirdre's
return from her abortion in Bristol." It is ribald, funny,
brilliantly observant of character, and authentic as a glass of
draught porter.
   But will we see its end? The last scene of this fragment is in a
pub where the author throws a +1 note on to the bar and orders a
round for the pals, one of whom cries: "Now aren't you the great
sport, though, Brendan Behan!"
   It is apparently praise that is still so important to him that he
lets his talent drown- for not very deep under the histrionics of
having a zest for life must be a great fear of living.
BOOKS IN BRIEF
   STEPHEN MORRIS, by Nevil Shute (Heinemann, 16s.). This
first attempt at novel writing- two unpublished stories from the
'2s- is the last work we shall see of the late Nevil Shute. It will
interest devotees, but, despite the accurate flying-lore and natural
story-telling skill, it is a creaky piece of apprenticeship.
   L. S. LOWRY (Studio books, 21s.). The Painters of
Today series issues this attractive collection of the work of perhaps
the most fascinating artist in Britain today- the Lancastrian who
does those vivid crowded dream pictures of the industrial scene.
There is a warm and illuminating monograph by Mervyn Levy.
   PULL MY DAISY (Evergreen Books, 1s. 6d.). Jack
Kerouac's ad-libbed text for the beat film made in a Bowery flat by
Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, with stills of the strolling players,
including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. It reads like a demented
kind of litany- the American free-livers doing what comes naturally,
and with the beat between their teeth.
EVE PERRICK
THE NEW FILMS
La Lollo and the hockey girl bully-off
   I AM happy to report that I saw something this week I have
never before witnessed, either in pictures or outside- a budgerigar
playing a drunk scene, and playing it with perfect timing and
technique.
   It gives one loud, clear hiccup and falls flat on its back.
   This brilliant budge, I may add, gets no credit in the cast list
of Come September (Odeon, Leicester-square), which suggests that
it is either using a stand-in for the stunt stuff or needs a more
pushful personal manager.
   The performance of our talented feathered friend is not the only
good thing (although the one original touch) in the film, which is
better-than-average glossy comedy, Hollywood-styled, European set.
   Most of it has been shot in and around the sun-terrace of the
Hotel Splendido (renamed the Dolce Vista for the picture) in
Portofino- and if there's a better view to be had from a more
comfortable vantage point anywhere, I'd like to see it.
NIGHTIES
   It also parades Gina Lollobrigida in a selection of
neglige?2e-and-nightie ensembles not too well designed for sleeping
in, and Rock Hudson at the wheel of a shining silver Rolls-Royce.
   Mr. Hudson is an American millionaire who spends each September
in his Italian villa and the company of Signorina Lollobrigida.
   In the holiday seasonal months before and after this annual idyll
his major-domo (Walter Slezak at his most nauseating) turns the
palazzo into a luxury hotel.
   Inevitably there comes the time when Mr. Hudson suddenly breaks
with tradition and arrives there in July, when, just as inevitably,
the place is full of American teenagers on an escorted tour.
   Result: Mr. Hudson and lady love Lollo find themselves playing
chaperon (Brenda de Banzie, the official one, has broken a leg) to
the girls, who have just been joined by a Jeep-load of boys.
   It's hereabouts that the budge takes to the bottle, but I don't
think it was through boredom.
   The film is funny enough in places and has a line or two of
painful home truths thrown in.
GOODIES
   "I don't want to talk like an adult," screams Gina, walking
out on the man who has so far failed to make an honest woman of her.
"That's how I got into all this trouble."
   "He's got to be 35," says Bobby Darin, the chief spokesman of
the jeans-and-Jeep brigadiers as they're scheming to get rid of old
man, solid Rock. "How many hills can he take?"
   Of course Mr. Hudson can take one more hill than the
youngsters. So all ends as you know it will, with the middle-aged
romancers respectably wed and Master Darin going steady with the
delectable Sandra Dee (to whom, I believe, he is married in real
life).
   Miss Dee, incidentally, who keeps turning up as the typical
teenager in all the "good girl" parts (Tuesday Weld gets the "bad
girl" ones), is becoming quite an accomplished actress.
STUDIES
   THE Marriage-Go-Round (Carlton) is also a comedy of
manners, but fun-films toting an X certificate have to keep a sharp
look-out that the jokes about sex (what else would they joke about
with an X?) are of the witty, verbal variety and not the visual
slapstick.
   This has only one gag- that of the entry of a gladiator (female,
7ft. high, 'stacked' and Scandinavian) into the cosy but
unbelievably elegant household of a pair of married college
professors.
   The girl is a knock-out (see picture of Julie Newmar for
confirmation). She also has quite a mission in mind.
   She, "younger, prettier, stronger, and more intelligent" than
the wife (as she soon tells her), wants to have the perfect baby. And
she has chosen the husband (James Mason), who is an academic friend of
her Nobel prize-winning father to be Big Daddy.
   This sort of situation calls for some subtle, slightly sardonic
handling. It doesn't get it.
   But The Marriage-Go-Round is not entirely a waste of time. I
learned from it that in the Institutes of Advanced Studies attached to
some American universities the subject Social Psychology used to be
called Home-making and is now known as Domestic Relations.
   Susan Hayward plays the wife sharply and sweetly. Mason is
always good for a glower. And Miss Newmar is a stunner in every sense
of the word.
   According to the script she was once captain of the junior hockey
team at her school. So help me so was I.
ESSAYS
   IL GRIDO (The Cry)- Paris Pullman- is an earlier essay
in atmospheric meandering by the L'Avventura man, Michelangelo
Antonioni.
   In it Steve Cochran, deserted by Alida Valli, roams the Pontine
Marshes, alternately enjoying the hospitality of three lonely,
sex-starved women, before returning home.
   Whereupon he climbs to the top of the tower in the sugar-beet
refinery, suffers an unexplained attack of vertigo and falls to his
death.
   Maybe this is a masterpiece, too. I just wouldn't know.
the thursday critics
KENNETH ALLSOP
Did the electric chair fully avenge this baby's murder?
Now new doubts are raised about the most notorious kidnapping of
the century
   ON a March evening in 1932 in the New Jersey family
household the nursemaid tiptoed into the baby's room to see that
2-month-old Charles Jun. was sleeping.
   Bending over the cot, she suddenly realised that there was no
sound of breathing. She thrust out her hand- and felt emptiness.
NATIONAL AGONY
   A FEW minutes later the father gripping a loaded rifle, told
his wife: "Anne, they have stolen our baby."
   It was not only their baby- it was America's. The grief of the
young parents became a national agony that erupted into hysteria when
nine weeks later the child of Charles Lindbergh, hero aviator and
golden boy, was found murdered. Kidnap, by George Waller (out
today, Hamish Hamilton 3s.), is a painstaking, meticulous account
of the most notorious and publicised crime of the 3's.
   The plain, sober manner of its style all the more tellingly
points up not only the horror of the case itself, which floundered on
to the electrocution four years later of a German-born Bronx carpenter
named Bruno Richard Hauptmann, but to the raree-show emotionalism and
sensation-hunger of that era.
# 23
<78 TEXT C7>
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC AT THE TATE
<ILLUSTRATION>
Vigour and Decay
By David Sylvester
An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec,
organised by the Arts Council, opened at the Tate Gallery on Friday.
   LAUTREC'S liking for whores and dancers and singers and
acrobats as subjects was, of course, a perfectly commonplace taste
among artists of his time. What is singular about his use of them is
that no other artist, of his time or any other, has painted them so
directly, intimately and pertinently.
   He doesn't, on the one hand, use them as symbols, pegs for a
moral or aesthetic attitude, as the young Picasso does (to take one
example among many); and on the other hand, he doesn't use them only
for the way they look, like Degas, whose dancers are more or less
interchangeable with his laundrywomen- the same breed with a
different set of gestures. He is concerned with them as they are and
also for what they are.
The artist and his obsessions
   This can't be explained away by his extreme personal
involvement with them. Artists don't necessarily bring the deepest
obsessions of their life into their art- not in a direct way. A poet
who is drunk doesn't necessarily write Odes to Bacchus. A painter who
loves whores doesn't have to paint whores in order to express in art
what it is in himself that makes him love them. He may be able to
express this better by painting duchesses or cats or velvet-curtained
rooms.
   In painting whores and entertainers, Lautrec was choosing to
paint those whose body is their fortune. His own body was his
misfortune. He must have felt this all the more poignantly for not
having been a cripple from birth, but from an age, fourteen, by which
he had acquired some relish in using his body, in riding and shooting.
   He must have suffered not only from knowing what a monster he was
to look at, but also from the uselessness to himself of his distorted
body. This perhaps is what gave him a fascination with bodies that
were agile, bodies that could do what was asked of them, and bodies
that others wanted to use.
   At the same time, he needed to reassure himself about his own
deformity with his consciousness that these bodies also would in time
become, as his had, useless and hideous and unwanted, and that they
would become so through the very exploitation of their desirability.
   Lautrec's vision of his women is, I think, the outcome of some
such ambivalence as this: on the one hand, celebration of their easy
animal vigour and grace; on the other, celebration of the knowledge
that they too would fall into decrepitude. For it is not a present
state of decay that Lautrec presents as a rule, but only an intimation
of decay.
Partaking of vitality
   He isn't at all Swiftian about women: he doesn't, getting
close, rejoice in recoiling from their enlarged pores. He paints them
as desirable- not glamourised, but desirable as women are in the
flesh. His women are excitingly depraved, but they aren't sick, they
are anything but sick; they convey a terrific sense of well-being.
And they are drawn with a longing to share in that well-being, as if
the painter, by transmitting to canvas the tautness and flexibility
and plasticity of their limbs, were by this somehow partaking of their
vitality.
   He is no moralist, then; he doesn't use art as a means of
revenge. He is no Expressionist, inflicting (like those Central
European artists who have borrowed from his style and iconography)
upon the appearance of his whores an idea of their inner corruption,
making their bodies reflect the supposed state of their souls. He
paints them in all their ambiguity. He paints the presence of their
beautiful vitality, the promise of their decay, the process of
transition between them.
   The artist he resembles most closely in spirit is, I think,
Watteau. Watteau, dangerously delicate in health, paints a world of
pleasure in which the threat of death is as surely present as in those
medieval images in which skeletons dance among the ladies of the
court. Lautrec, misshapen and useless, paints the agile and usable
bodies of women who are well aware that they are on the way to being
used-up. The transience of youth is the common theme, and Lautrec as
much as Watteau is a truly tragic artist in that he communicates not
only the certainty of loss but the sense of how much there is to lose.
   The Arts Council show of paintings and drawings at the Tate is
not a major exhibition. It consists of a selection of works from the
Toulouse-Lautrec Museum at Albi, France, plus a score of things from
other collections in France and England. The Albi contribution,
helped by Mr. Jeffress's portrait of Emile Bernard, makes the
representation of the early work as strong as could be wished: it
shows how his art was based on a wonderfully sure grasp of form in the
round. There are a number of notable drawings and sketches. But of
his finest paintings there are no more than a handful.
AT THE GALLERIES
Brave New Age of Bronze
By NEVILE WALLIS
   RODIN'S ghost will not be laid. It is that old master's
energy and rugged form, rather than his aspirations, which have
influenced two of the three conspicuous sculptors this week: Ralph
Brown (Leicester Galleries) and the American Jack Zajac (Roland,
Browse's).
   Ralph Brown began as a social realist sculptor infusing
tenderness into a gawky mother fondling a child, an infant bowling a
hoop. His responsiveness to the earthy human being, often in turning
or more lively movement, is well seen in the swing of an adolescent
girl and in some fine figure drawings. But recently his sculptural
conceptions, carried out in ciment fondu for bronze, have
become more complex. His search now is for a metaphor for the human
figure. Preserving the human attributes in out-thrust scrawny limbs
and references to the ribbed torso, his images also resemble the
growth of trees. Thus his forms have become bunched, with knobbly
casing and clefts hard to read anatomically, and with lean stumpy
extremities.
   
   THIS WORKS well in the more fluid forms of his swimmers where
the whole emphasis is on their gliding motion or contortions. It
doesn't work, I think, in the arbitrary protrusions of the trunks of
his humanistic standing figures. Henry Moore's stylisation is
entirely consistent when one recognises that the twist of a worn
ridged pebble has suggested the bony structure of a figure as
timeless. Brown's distortions, on the other hand, seem superimposed
on the anatomical structure of his statue of a man with a child on his
shoulders, whose first impression of brute strength yields to a sense
of uncertain architecture and even pretentiousness. The search for a
synthesis, a metaphor for tough masculinity, continues. Brown is
happiest here in recent reliefs as sensitive as the shapes of his
swimmers surfacing.
   Whereas Brown gropes ambitiously and often clumsily, Jack Zajac
seems perfectly assured. This young sculptor from Ohio has worked in
Rome, and the exuberant baroque of his prancing hybrid figures is as
clearly Italianate as his rugged porters are Rodinesque. Italy has
moulded the elegance of his bronze forms, elegantly mannered even when
the theme is as violent as a sacrificial goat trapped by a stake. The
volumes and agitated silhouettes in this Easter Goat series are always
expressive. The drama of imminent death reaches its climax in the
cruciform design of the beast with rearing neck and spreadeagled legs
against the long goad. One admires the inventive interplay of hard,
tusky forms and vulnerable belly without being in the least moved by
the torture. Aplomb is a cooling quality.
   
   MORE mature than either, with a certainty of architectonic
design still denied to Brown, F. E. McWilliam held me longest
with his recent bronzes sparely arranged at Waddington's galleries. I
was quite unsympathetic to his earlier surrealist figures, dismembered
and reassembled, their capriciousness masking for me the
reflectiveness of his mind. From these carvings he moved on to metal
totem figures, two of these aloof, highly wrought effigies standing
here as a reminder of them. His more recent shield-like emblems or
icons yield their dark spell without the demonstrativeness of
Paolozzi's encrusted objects.
   They are deliberately frontal in aspect. Their intricately
textured and symbolic relief sometimes appears positive on the front,
negative on the back surface. The mood is equivocal, more capricious
in small variations of cult objects, contemplative in his large
bronzes. McWilliam may be unconscious of the distinction, for his
appeal is to different levels of consciousness. A trinity of figures
communes in the hollow of a great saucer. A beacon seen on the shore
becomes transfigured into an ominous signal-cum-lookout post. A
Corinthian helmet inspires an exploration of hollow form, with the
inscrutable menace of the visor still preserved. His personality is
impressed on every delphic image.
   How it is that Celtic mystery and individual beauty can coalesce
in a flaky, metal shield on prongs is hard to say in simple terms. It
is simplest to say that McWilliam's restless fancy has found
fulfilment in his most satisfying sculptures to date.
The Supremacy of Personality
THE CHARACTERS OF LOVE. By John Bayley. (Constable. 21s.)
By PHILIP TOYNBEE
   THE ambiguous title reveals, by the end of this book, a
depth of meaning. "Love," writes Mr. Bayley, "is the
potentiality of men and women which keeps them most interested in each
other." And later, writing of his reasons for choosing "Troilus
and Criseyde," "Othello" and "The Golden Bowl" to illustrate
his thesis, he has this to say:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Their achievement becomes more impressive and their status more
clear if we realise how decisive in all of them is the idea of a
conflict of sympathies, the kind of conflict which can only be set up
by an opposition of characters of the old kind.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In a sense the theme of love is secondary to Mr. Bayley's main
purpose, which is to vindicate his faith in "the supremacy of
personality in the greatest literature."
   It is a theme, of course, which is extremely familiar. Countless
old Dickensian hacks have been bemoaning Pickwick and Micawber ever
since novelists and critics first began their resolute march in a
different direction. But the point about Mr. Bayley's book, which
makes it, I believe, a critical work of the first importance, is that
he is a man of great intelligence and deep reading who is very well
aware of all the arguments which have been used against his position.
He is, in the literal sense, a reactionary; and he is reacting with
passion and intellect against some of the principal assumptions of
modern criticism and modern fictional practice.
   
   IT IS impossible to summarise the long chapters in which
Mr. Bayley has investigated the chosen illustrations of his theme.
I shall allow him, where possible, to speak for himself. Of
Chaucer's poem and its origins he has this to say:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   All these <qualities in Boccaccio> Chaucer modifies in some way,
throwing round them a haze of the atypical and the individual.
Whereas everything in Boccaccio is hard, elegant and general, in
Chaucer it is muted, peculiar, full of objects that are unexpected and
yet oddly characteristic.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   "Othello," for Mr. Bayley, "has a subtle and singular
function, unique among Shakespeare's plays, and in its peculiar blend
of effect reminds us ... of the novel." And against the many
hostile critics of the play he suggests that they have adopted the
false premise of supposing "that the great play should be impersonal,
that the quirks and undercurrents of individual psychology should be
swallowed up in a grand tragic generality."
   As for "The Golden Bowl," among many other personalising
qualities which he finds in it, Mr. Bayley praises the novel
because:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Not only are the details of personal appearance and of town and
country landscape selected with a vividness and subtlety unmatched in
the James canon, but the physical nature of life is recorded with
unique emphasis.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 212
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BOOK REVIEWS
Raglan's Sorry Role in the Crimea
THE DESTRUCTION OF LORD RAGLAN: A Tragedy of the Crimean War. By
Christopher Hibbert. (Longmans. 3s.)
By RAYMOND MORTIMER
   THERE never was a Crimean War: the whole story must be the
invention of some satirist frantic with hatred for warfare and
aristocracy. So at least I felt more strongly than ever when reading
the book under review. Not that Mr. Hibbert denounces our
Government for feebly drifting into so unnecessary a war: his account
of its origins is restricted to three colourless pages, for he writes
as a military historian concerned only with the conduct of the
campaign. The picture that emerges is often, however, too horrid to
seem credible.
   To vindicate Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief, is his
purpose- as it was Kinglake's; but Kinglake was animated also with
hatred of Napoleon =3, with whose mistress he had been in love; and
Mr. Hibbert is not biased by frustrated desire. His book seems to
me far the most trustworthy account yet written of the Crimean
campaign. It is based upon vast research into unpublished material,
including not only the Raglan papers but hundreds of letters from
obscure fighting men. He quotes also from Russian books that have not
been translated.
Cowardly Government
   THE battles are described in great detail and illustrated
with the usual plans- rectangles showing troop-positions among
vermiculated hills. Readers who share my distrust of such tactical
exegesis must not skip the superb account of Inkerman with its
hand-to-hand tussles in the fog. Unfortunately the author throws
little light upon the military departments at home, which with their
archaic incompetence and divided responsibilities were chiefly to
blame for the suffering of the troops. Otherwise he has been
admirably thorough; and the writing is lucid, correct and lively.
   Our exceptionally pacific Government declared war only because it
had not the courage to resist the jingoism of the public and the
newspapers. The pretext was an invasion of what is now Rumania by
Russian troops, who were quickly expelled by the Turks with no help
from us. However, having sent an army as far as Turkey, we felt
something or other must be done with it, and the Crimean port of
Sebastopol seemed easy to capture. After over a year of fighting
captured it was, but with no lasting advantage to us or our allies.
The jaunt cost the lives of over half a million men.
   Experienced Generals from our Indian Army were available, but
they did not belong to the nobility: and so the commands were given to
men who had seen active service, if at all, not less than thirty-nine
years previously. Two of them suffered from feeble eyesight; one
refused to wear spectacles. An officer could bring unlimited luggage,
his wife, his French cook, and a yacht to live in; there were not even
tents for the men, and what little equipment they were given was for
the most part shoddy, boots that fell to pieces, swords so soft that
they would bend instead of cutting.
Rotting Cargoes
   THOUGH we boasted far the largest navy and mercantile
marine in the world, these could not bring enough supplies for our
expeditionary force; and cargoes moreover were allowed to rot
unloaded. The two admirals were at odds with one another. The
commissioners in charge of supplies, when asked for a few nails,
refused to issue less than a ton. Half-starved and unprotected
against the Russian winter, our troops died in their thousands: lack
of fodder killed the horses and mules; there was no other transport.
The C.O. of the Grenadiers would not allow a mere line regiment
to fight on the flank of his beautiful Guardsmen, who were therefore
compelled to retreat in disorder.
   Officers like Lord Cardigan and Lord George Paget found the war
so disagreeable that they returned to England in a huff. Of course
no such escape was possible for the men, who at first fought with
staggering courage. Gradually those who survived grew bitter; the
reinforcements were for the most part raw recruits; morale collapsed.
In the final action at Sebastopol our troops refused the order to
advance; and the fortress was taken by the French, who throughout the
campaign had been better equipped, better fed and better led.
   Worn out by his labours, insulted in Parliament and by the Press,
no longer supported by his Queen, Raglan had died three months
previously. A wiser man would not have accepted the command at the
age of sixty-five after forty years of sitting at a desk. He did
accept it, not from conceit but from a sense of duty. No one could
have been more courageous, more hard-working, more fair-minded, more
amiable. He behaved to the French with exemplary and invaluable
patience. But then he proved equally patient with the military
departments at home that were murdering his troops. He could not bear
to say an unkind word to anyone.
Creature of Habit
   WE cannot refuse him our pity. He worked himself to death
at a Herculean task for which he was fitted by neither character nor
experience. We must remember at the same time that he had been for
the previous twenty-eight years Secretary at the Horse Guards
apparently without attempting any reform in the administration of the
Army. He was described by Palmerston as "a creature of habit"; and
in the Crimea he found himself a victim of the grotesque system he had
helped to maintain. The conservative who dislikes changes even when
they are improvements may, like Raglan, be a good man. He cannot be a
good Commander-in-Chief.
IRON DUKE ON PAPER
WELLINGTON AT WAR. Letters selected and edited by Anthony
Brett-James. (Macmillan. 42s.)
By SIR ARTHUR BRYANT
   NOT even Dr. Johnson could hit a verbal nail on the head
more effectively than the Duke of Wellington. He once said that there
was nothing in life like a clear definition, and during his years of
command he was incessantly engaged in defining things clearly. It was
one of the qualities that made him so great a commander; as with
Field-Marshal Montgomery it was almost impossible to mistake his
meaning, however unpalatable. As the human capacity for getting the
wrong end of the stick, especially in the fog and confusion of war, is
almost infinite, this quality is an essential part of the military
art.
   If good writing be the art of conveying meaning with the greatest
possible force in the fewest possible words- and I can think of no
better definition- Wellington was a very good writer. His military
correspondence, like his recorded conversation, is delightful reading.
   
   "IT is not very agreeable to anybody," he reminded a
complaining Portuguese magnate, "to have strangers quartered in his
house; nor is it very agreeable to us strangers, who have good houses
in our own country, to be obliged to seek for quarters here. We are
not here for our pleasure; the situation of your country renders it
necessary." Could anything be neater?
   Or anything more true than this? "Half the business of the
world, particularly that of our country, is done by accommodation and
by the parties understanding each other."
   Or this, quoted by Mr. Brett-James in his admirable
introduction- "I do not know how Mr. . . . has discovered that my
channels of intelligence are of doubtful fidelity. I should find it
very difficult to point out what channels of intelligence I have: but
probably Mr. . . . knows."
   
   MR. BRETT-JAMES has done modern readers- who turn to the
great classics of our past too little- a service by producing a new
selection from Wellington's letters. Most of them are taken from
twelve volumes and two and a half million words of Colonel Gurwood's
"Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington" and from the fifteen volumes
of the Duke's "Supplementary Dispatches."
   I will not say that no better selection could have been made;
Mr. Brett-James's book does not compare, for instance, with the much
fuller selection made by Colonel Gurwood himself and published in
early Victorian days in a single volume of nearly a thousand pages.
In deference to the reading tastes of our day Mr. Brett-James's
compass is far smaller.
   The truth is that at least a dozen selections of equal size,
equally good and equally representative, could have been made from the
same source. What matters is that the editor has given us the essence
of Wellington's genius- his clarity, his good sense, his powers of
observation, his understanding of human nature, his dry irony, his
wonderful balance and foresight. It is like offering the reader a
small parcel of a superb cellar; it is all there for his buying if he
wants more.
   I cannot help adding one sample of Wellington's style. He had
been approached about the return to England of a major whose fiance?2e
was pining in his absence.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "I cannot say that I have ever known of a young lady dying of
love. They contrive, in some manner, to live and look tolerably well,
notwithstanding their despair and the continued absence of their
lover; and some even have been known to recover so far as to be
inclined to take another lover, if the absence of the first has lasted
too long. I don't suppose that your 6prote?2ge?2e can ever
recover so far, but I do hope that she will survive the continued
necessary absence of the Major, and enjoy with him here-after many
happy days."
<END INDENTATION>
ADVICE FOR A LADY IN LOVE
TO A YOUNG ACTRESS: The Letters of Bernard Shaw to Molly
Tompkins. (Constable. 63s.)
By HESKETH PEARSON
   FOR sheer entertainment and humorous common sense the
letters and criticisms of Bernard Shaw are unrivalled. Much of their
scintillation and gaiety is due to his emotional detachment from life,
and his peculiar genius derives from the fact that, being removed from
the complicated agitations of ordinary human beings, he could observe
with cool clarity the actions resulting from their temperamental
disturbances.
   This oddity in his nature appears again and again in his letters
to women, who fell in love with him and had to be coaxed out of their
enraptured condition. One of them, a young actress named Molly
Tompkins, arrived in England from America with her husband and small
son, for the sole purpose of meeting the prophet Shaw, who sent her
well over a hundred letters and post-cards between 1921 and his death.
   
   "IS it not delightful, to be in love?" he wrote to her;
"it has happened to me twice. It does not last, because it does not
belong to this earth; and when you clasp the idol it turns out to be a
rag doll like yourself; for the immortal part must elude you if
you grab at it." But while he was content with dreams of fair
women, they were looking for something more corporeal, which he could
only supply by giving them excellent advice on how to order their
lives.
   
   IN this handsome volume many of his letters to Molly
Tompkins are reproduced in photostat. With a few alterations carbon
copies could have been sent to any of his adoring female
correspondents without surprising them. They contain advice on such
matters as the disadvantage of an actress using make-up off the stage
and the advantage of using it when interviewing managers, on the
correct pronunciation of words, on how to behave as a mother and the
proper way to bring up a son, on the process of buying white oxen in
Italy, on the necessity in England of putting "Esq." not
"Mr." on envelopes addressed to men, on how to catch a bat, and
on the expediency of keeping a parrot instead of a dog: "Parrots are
amusing, and never die. You wish they did."
   Frequently in these letters his intuition or observation is
crystallised in a phrase, e.g., ~"Learning to live is like
learning to skate: you begin by making a ridiculous spectacle of
yourself," and ~"The fear of God may be the beginning of wisdom,
but the fear of Man is the beginning of murder," and ~"It is
useless to try to help people whom God does not mean to be helped."
# 225
<8 TEXT C9>
FICTION
Keeping The Beasts In Their Place
By NIGEL DENNIS
ANGUS WILSON, The Old Men at the Zoo. Secker & Warburg, 18s.
   "OUR island, it would appear, is too small to allow even
for the controlled return of the wolf, the bear and the boar."
   So says the Times- or rather, Angus Wilson makes the Times say
so in his new novel, which is set in London in 197. There is no
reason to doubt that his sober, careful verdict on the danger of
"open" Zoos catches exactly the tone of the Times of 197; but we
are left worrying about Mr. Wilson himself. He has written the
future "editorial." He has written the present novel. Are they at
odds with one another?
   The matter is mentioned because the puzzle of Mr. Wilson's new
novel is to know clearly what he is saying and where he is standing.
This was never a problem in Mr. Wilson's early days. His first
books of short stories were as clear as only crystals of poison can
be, and the horrors he held up to our inspection were almost too
recognisable to be faced.
   But, since then, Mr. Wilson has widened both his medium and his
heart. He writes big novels now and expresses his griefs and pains
quite openly; he still has plenty of poison, but he doles it out with
a more distressed hand- in brief, he is no longer a pure satirist.
   One may mourn the change, but one has no right to condemn it. An
author should be allowed to change as he pleases: the only test is the
quality of the result.
   The Old Men at the Zoo has much to commend it. It has been
written with great feeling and it has some very enjoyable characters
in it. It is also a very just book, in that the most absurd
characters are allowed their virtues and dignities. Even when it is
cross, angry and spiteful, it is still a kindly book.
   The difficulty is to know exactly how to find one's way about in
it. The title suggests that it is about the English masses (who are
"the Zoo") and those who govern them (who are "the old men").
If this is correct, then much of Mr. Wilson's symbolism becomes
easy to follow. We see clearly that if the Zoo is to be decently
conducted, those who govern it must do so unselfishly, intelligently
and civilisedly.
   
   They must also realise that animals are tricky, even dangerous,
beasts, and must not feel sentimental about tarantulas and lynxes.
   The chiefs of Mr. Wilson's Zoo lack most of these
qualifications. Some of them are idealists- in the sense that they
are more obsessed with theories and dreams about animals than they are
with actual, living animals. Others of them love only those aspects
of the animal that suit their professional interests- an extreme (and
witty) example is the Zoo pathologist, who loves animals most when
they are dead, dissection being his forte.
   These persons, let us say, are the department chiefs and top
bureaucrats of our society- and under them are the "keepers" and
"assistant-keepers" who carry out their orders. But above them all
are the Secretary and the Director- men of nearly equal power who
frame Zoo policy and fight over what this policy should be; these two
we may call Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
   The clash of policy in Mr. Wilson's novel is over the Zoo of
the future. The Director hates Regent's Park: he believes that
animals must be given "limited liberty" and allowed to roam in
Whipsnadian reserves. The Secretary thinks this is nonsense.
Animals, he insists, are best off in the cosy, though somewhat
cramped, cages designed for them by the great Victorian, Decimus
Burton.
   All this is most prettily done. Mr. Wilson's descriptions of
animals are first-rate- particularly as he is most honest about them,
never pretending for a moment that some of them are extremely ugly.
And the problems these animals present are perfectly genuine ones:
should "the wolf, the bear and the boar" be allowed considerable
liberty, or is the Times right in concluding that they are too
dangerous to enjoy such privileges?
   This problem becomes acutely personal to every reader when a
liberated wolf eats the Director's daughter. Thousands of innocent
animals have to pay for the wolf's indiscretion by being shut up in
Regent's Park again. Is this fair?
   Mr. Wilson does not say whether it is fair or not. And by the
end of the book we realise that the puzzles and hypotheses which he
presents are honest expressions of his own uncertainty. His intention
is not to provide closed answers, but to proffer dozens of open
questions.
   
   This is unusual and stimulating in theory, but tending to
confusion in practice. Mr. Wilson's novel, one feels, would have
been remarkably good if he had stuck strictly to the Zoo. Instead, he
has filled out his canvas of the future with a war in which England is
invaded and crushed by combined European armies (Russia and America
agree not to intervene). He has put in saboteurs, and spies, and
politicians, and resistance movements- and by the time he has done he
has put in more matter than he can handle and made an artistic clutter
of his humane worries.
   His novel is still a good one- but the careful, precise pen of
the former short-story writer could have made his parable shorter,
clearer and far more brilliant.
People On The Move
By ANTHONY QUINTON
ALASDAIR CLAYRE, The Window, Cape, 16s.
IVY COMPTON-BURNETT, The Mighty and their Fall, Gollancz,
16s.
HOWARD SPRING, I Met a Lady, Collins, 21s.
"H. D.", Bid Me to Live, Grove Press, 25s.
   FOR topicality, Alasdair Clayre's first novel The Window
would stand out emphatically enough at any time beside this week's
other books; in the present condition of the world it is almost too
much.
   The central figures are a decent, devout, inarticulate organist
in a poor district of Portsmouth, his frigid, respectable wife and
their sons, Peter, a trumpet-playing factory worker, and Matthew, a
pretty batman whose ambition is to be a butler.
   Also involved are the step-children of the vicarage: James, an
elaborately cerebral philosopher, and Anna, a bemused, sensitive
pianist. The organist, Matthew and James get caught up, in different
ways and with fatal consequences for one of them, in the Easter March
of an idealistic organisation.
   
   The narrative is developed with great skill and efficiency, the
point of view shifting from one of the main characters to another. In
its course Mr. Clayre conducts his readers on a convincingly
authoritative tour of a wide variety of pre-eminently contemporary
scenes: an assembly-line, an officers' mess, a jazz club, a left-wing
coffee-bar, a deb dance, as well as the March itself.
   It is an impressively copious image of our society, but its
realism has the thinness of a cross-section. The Sands family are not
very plausible as a group; even the accelerated social mobility of our
time could hardly accommodate a son like Peter in such a family.
   James is an Englishman's idea of a young Frenchman, and Matthew
seems to have been transferred from one of Simon Raven's amazing
regiments. There is a fairly sharp line between these and the
characters Mr. Clayre likes, the organist and Anna for example, who
are honoured with a less rigid and political treatment. But this is
an able and intelligent book whose limitations reflect the magnitude
of its ambitions.
   The Mighty and their Fall is absolutely standard Ivy
Compton-Burnett, another elegant construction in moral geometry,
another variation on her insulated domestic theme with its normal
elements of dubious paternity, hidden wills, a despised governess,
gnomic servants and Hobbesian toddlers.
   Experts could no doubt identify most of the characters and
situations with those of earlier books and even the less initiated can
see that this one involves no striking new departures. Miss
Compton-Burnett's curious instrument grates on some ears, but for
those who can stand it there is more to be got from it than the
incidental felicities to be discovered by brief dippings. Her books
should be read at a sitting if possible, since the plot and characters
are only revealed by the cumulative effect of the dialogue.
   The centre of this novel is the struggle between a widowed father
and his eldest daughter who both resort to deceit, she to prevent his
second marriage, he to prevent her inheriting his brother's money. He
has a more impersonal justification in his concern for the continuing
welfare of the estate but it gives his response to exposure a more
blatant and so more discreditable quality.
   Miss Compton-Burnett's vertiginous economies both of technique
and material have a charm of their own and there is a fascination in
what she manages to do with what is left; but they also reflect, as
much as Racine's, a judgment of importance, of what really matters in
the relations of human beings.
   
   Howard Spring's I Met a Lady is, predictably and honourably,
a thoroughly good read- the whole quarter of a million words of it.
A rambling, loose-jointed affair, it seems to be the result of
throwing a few human types together at random to see what would come
out.
   The hero escapes from Manchester and cotton with an inheritance
that allows him to indulge his pronounced negative capability as a
writer of little essays. After a good deal of dithering he marries a
nice rich actress and what with her connections and the family of a
tycoon who unaccountably becomes his friend he has plenty to look in
upon and make harmlessly facetious remarks about. It is a
pleasant-spirited, old-fashioned book and pretends to do no more than
tell an only mildly engrossing story.
   "H. D."'s Bid Me to Live, a small, handsomely-produced
volume, is described as "a madrigal of war-time love and death in the
London of 1917." It recounts in short, hectic and often verbless
sentences the inner life of Julia Ashton, a sensitive American married
to Rafe, who spends his leaves in the bed of the girl upstairs. Julia
wrongly thinks that Frederick, a red-bearded author of "scandalous,
volcanic novels" married to an ample German aristocrat, is in love
with her.
   The 6clef of this 6roman is ready to hand, and it bears
the imprint not, as the blurb says, of major literature, but of a
major 6litte?2rateur. In its undisciplined artiness it is of a
piece with the odd, vanished world it obliquely describes.
IN BRIEF
By FELICIA LAMB
By The Danube
   Family Jewels BY PETRU DUMITRIU, Collins, 21s. First
part of mighty trilogy about peasants revolting against landed gentry
in late 19th- and early 2th-century Rumania. Formidable amassing of
detail gives interesting picture of Bucharest and Danube plain life.
All gentry characters unpleasant, all peasant ones unattractive, but
the whole enjoyable once difficult beginning surmounted.
   A Man on the Roof BY KATHLEEN SULLY, Peter Davies, 15s.
Two sprightly elderly ladies try to escape ghost of husband of one of
them and recapture youth and freedom in their flight. Charming
fantasy told with perfect light touch. Delightful surprise ending.
   The Silent Speaker BY NOEL STREATFEILD, <SIC> Collins,
16s. Neatly-constructed whydunit. Members of unexpected suicide's
last carefree dinner party all dig into her apparently blameless past.
Skilful maintenance of suspense right up to not-too-unlikely
solution. Modern rich Londoners well observed.
   Every Night and All BY WILLIAM MILLER, Blond, 16s. Young
Glaswegian on the run from his native slums finds London can mean
luxury- at an unpleasant price. Convincing Glasgow beginning tails
off into forced, happy, socialistic ending, excusable from 27-year-old
author. Bad characters good, good characters bad.
   Children in Love BY MOIRA VERSCHOYLE, Hodder, 15s.
Glamorous worldly-wise 17-year-old disrupts backwoods Anglo-Irish
family and turns perfect boy-and-girl friendship into unhappy
adolescent triangle. Tragic ending to a golden summer in well-evoked
Irish Far West. Perfect companion to a box of chocolates.
   The Slap BY MARION FRIEDMANN, Longmans, 15s. Grim
exploration situation in small South African country town.
# 21
<81 TEXT C1>
THE WORLD OF MUSIC
A Drastic Way with Verdi
By DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR
   THE score of "Falstaff" seems to have ripened against a
warm orchard wall. It is all juice and goodness, firm flesh and sweet
tang: at once earthy and heavenly, mellow and zestful, old and young.
This is one of music's miracles; and the miracle was achieved by
Boito's cunning and Verdi's genius upon the basis of an effective but
prosaic Shakespearean farce.
   Franco Zeffirelli's new production, unveiled at Covent Garden
last Wednesday, was eagerly awaited after his romantic "Lucia" and
his wonderfully brilliant "Cav" and "Pag" at the same house-
not to mention his more controversial "Romeo and Juliet" at the Old
Vic. His "Falstaff," though likely to prove a hit, is again
controversial. Visually, it is inventive and often lovely.
Dramatically, it is a hotchpotch: imaginative, eccentric, frequently
crude.
   
   THE worst comes near the beginning. If you can accept the
short opening scene between Falstaff and his followers, the evening
has no further terrors for you. The style here is that of the Crazy
Gang, though without their sublime impudence; for if Messrs.
Naughton and Gold had played Pistol and Bardolph, they would at least
have stormed the Royal Box and tried on a tiara. Michael Langdon and
Robert Bowman could only rampage and roister around the stage, though
"only" is a poor word, for they achieved a good deal. For
instance, Geraint Evans's admirable delivery of the Honour tirade was
effectively diminished when to each one of Falstaff's rhetorical
questions Bardolph, from beneath a table or halfway up the stairs,
insisted on nodding a tireless and zany affirmative.
   Thence to Ford's garden, a sort of inn courtyard: striking.
Enter two letter-carrying Wives (Mariella Angioletti and Josephine
Veasey), a Dutch-doll Nannetta (Mirella Freni) and... but who is this,
sweeping in, last and grandest, like a beruffed Lady Bracknell, with
parasol at the slope and lorgnettes at the ready? Can it be our old
friend Mrs. Quickly, servant to Dr. Caius and Eastcheap hostess?
Of course, she runs the entire show; the only surprise is that she
didn't get a letter too. If so wild a misinterpretation can be
tolerated, she is capitally sung and played by the exuberant Regina
Resnik.
   That Mrs. Ford hardly got a look in was to some extent the
fault of Signora Angioletti, who on the first night continually
allowed her phrases to vanish in mid-utterance as though the current
had been cut off. The explanation can hardly be a failure of voice,
for a few bars later all was well again; I fear it must have been Art.
   
   IN the second act things began to improve, although Mrs.
Quickly's famous deep curtseys on the word "Reverenza!" were
turned into nonsense by having to be executed on a staircase. Best of
all was the great scene between Ford and Falstaff, where no misplaced
ingenuity was allowed to impair our pleasure in the excellent singing
of John Shaw and Mr. Evans and in the brilliant and zestful playing
of the orchestra under Signor Giulini. The orchestra was throughout
in splendid form; particularly at the quiet end of Act =3, Scene 1,
where the empty stage and darkening sky, the calling of the distant
voices, the magical chain of descending harmonies and the slowly
closing curtains were combined by producer and conductor into an
exquisite theatrical unity.
   The tapestried interior of Ford's house made a delightful
spectacle, and the final scene opened in a vein of high romance, with
pale shafts of moonlight striking across the forest glade; but on the
arrival of the fairies Herne's Oak split asunder and soared aloft,
never to be seen again. We found ourselves back in the inn
courtyard- but a courtyard transformed into such a dream-pageant as
might have been conjured up by a Chagall given unlimited funds to
stage a party for Mr. Bestegui or Mr. Onassis.
   Somewhere in the course of all this- the clowning and the
prettiness, the slapstick and whimsy and phantasmagoria- Verdi's
simplicity and honesty have fallen by the wayside. But the
compensations are great, especially on the musical side- and I fear
it is the kind of showy production that makes such a phrase seem
natural. Great pleasure is given by Luigi Alva and Signora Freni as
the young lovers. Signor Giulini excels in the purely lyrical music,
and the details are always handled with loving care; where breadth and
robustness are demanded he is sometimes less happy. Mr. Evans
continues to ripen and improve his distinguished Falstaff, but we
cannot expect to see this impersonation at its best until it figures
within a less confusing framework.
   
   THE Welsh National Opera Company began an enterprising week
of opera at Sadler's Wells with two much earlier Verdi operas: the
"Nabucco" of 1842 and "La Battaglia di Legnano" of 1849.
Both were accompanied by the Bournemouth Orchestra and conducted by
Charles Groves with no very marked feeling for the appropriate style.
"Nabucco" was in all essentials the production that has been seen
in London twice before, but it is now distinguished by a new Abigail
(Elizabeth Vaughan) who tackled her very difficult music with
remarkable aplomb and accuracy, if she can enrich her timbre she might
go far. Both operas are full of stirring choral scenes, sung
vigorously but with a faulty sense of legato by the Welsh choir.
   Drastic treatment was again meted out to Verdi in "La
Battaglia di Legnano," which lost all connection with what the
Press statement called "a rather dated incident in the 12th
century" and was lugged forward into modern times by John Moody, to
become an episode of the Italian Resistance during the German
occupation. Modern diction and ways of thought were, however, not
consistently adopted. In one of Verdi's furious cabalettas (husband
discovering wife's supposed infidelity) ~"Trema! trema! coppia
esecrata!" became ~"Damn you! damn you! pair of dirty liars!";
but when the wife popped a compromising letter into her "bosom"
(standard post-box for operatic missives), it instantly "stung her
like a serpent."
   Notwithstanding such quaint distractions, the power and the
beauty of Verdi's invention in the last two acts could be perceived.
The best singing came from Heather Harper.
   The Welsh Opera continues to deserve our gratitude, but could
learn much in the way of vocal style from a surprisingly vocal
performance of Rossini's "Otello" by the Philopera Circle at St.
Pancras on Friday, about which I hope to add a word or two next week.
WELSH NIGHT
   Between them, Cardiff and St. Pancras ensure that not a
note written by Verdi remains unheard in London. Meanwhile, thanks to
the Welsh National Opera Company for bringing, if only for a single
May night, another Rimsky-Korsakov opera to Sadler's Wells, a theatre
which knew "Snow Maiden" and "Tsar Saltan" in pre-war days.
   "May Night," a folksy precursor of the more sophisticated
orientalisms of "Sadko" and "The Golden Cockerel," proved a
happy choice, with the pleasing voices of John Wakefield (Levko), Iona
Jones (Anna) and Heather Harper (Queen of the Roussalki) well-suited
to its melodic grace. The male topers, too, Harold Blackburn, Laurie
Payne and Stephen Manton, entered into the spirit of the piece, but
not Phyllis Ash Child's completely un-shrewish Sister-in-law.
   Sally Hulke's sets and John Moody's production, like the chorus,
provided more acceptable contributions than the Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra, whose neat rhythmic response to Charles Makerras's
conducting was too often wide of the mark in pitch.
   Boito's "Mefistofele" remains the Company's most imaginative
production. Triumphing ingeniously over space, it depicts Heaven and
a Witches' Sabbath as successfully as Faust's study. Raimund Herinex
has, again, the right voice and manner for the Prince of Evil, but
rejuvenation brings Tano Ferendino's Faust no increased vocal
confidence. Under Warwick Braithwaite the orchestra recovered pitch,
while sagging intonation crossed the footlights, weighing heavier on
the angelic chorus of the Prologue than their golden wings.
   F. A.
BALLET
By RICHARD BUCKLE
What Every Guru Knows
   ON Wednesday night, when my pampered colleagues were borne in
their capacious palanquins either to- Zeffirelli's (Verdi's
<Shakespeare's>)- "Falstaff" or to see those onychophorous
ootocoids at the Fortune, this Cinderella among critics made his way
alone and on foot to watch Indian dancing at La Scala in Charlotte
Street.
   
   NOW, though I would not go as far as to agree with the
programme that the technique of Kamala, the eldest of the three
sisters performing, "is in the 5enveable position of being above
controversy," she has learnt some of Bharata Natya and she gets by.
Radha and Vasanti are graceful, too. It is how their brother Mr.
Kumar got on stage that beats me- unless, of course, he is really
Peter Sellers. From his performance, I guessed that, watching his kid
sisters perfecting themselves in their art, he suddenly couldn't bear
not to be in on it too, and finally forbade them to appear without
him. There can be no doubt that, like Romeo Coates, he believes
utterly in his mission. "Dance inspires him ceaselessly to strive
higher and higher towards the shining pinnacle of perfection that is
the goal of every Artiste."
   Kathak, with its swift spins, is what bedizened boys used to
dance before Mogul Emperors. Mr. Kumar rashly did it stripped to
the waist, his long hair arranged in an untidy bird's-nest. He never
got up much speed, and made few turns. What he did do was to fix us
with a basilisk stare, make odd pointing gestures and keep improvising
for about twenty minutes. A polite attempt to drive him offstage with
a burst of applause only spurred him to go on and on.
   Eventually his attention wandered from his work, and his eye hit
on a ground mike near the footlights. He had a bright idea. He
stopped dancing, pulled the mike upstage and, indicating his anklets
of bells, told us "Now I will make you hear one bell- just one
bell, not four hundred." Starting with the full carillon (if
someone had not turned off the mike we should have been deafened) he
went into a shuddering Antonio-type diminuendo. Even so I heard not
one bell, but at least six. Then he started dancing again.
   
   THE able drummer, the flautist who was "a worthy disciple
to the great living Flute Wizard Sri T. R. Mahalingam, 'Mali to
his innumerable fans'," and the nice lady singer who let it be
known that she was "married to Mr. Narian who was a dancing partner
to the Veteran Dancer Mr. Ramgopal" seemed embarrassed. And I
exchanged looks with a neighbour who happened to be a one-year-old
(yes) Indian boy in a white fur coat.
RECORDS
Hands and Feet
By FELIX APRAHAMIAN
   RECORDING companies no longer neglect the King of
Instruments, and the recent spate of organ records reflects the
younger and more discriminating organ fanciers' demands for
authenticity of timbre and interpretation.
   The fascination as well as the bugbear of the organ is that no
two are alike in specification or sound, so that discs of organ music
played on the very instrument for which it was conceived deserve an
especial welcome. Some, of course, remain curiosities rather than
performances: Widor was an octogenarian when he recorded his toccata,
the organist's warhorse, at Saint-Sulpice. Now, his pupil and
successor, Marcel Dupre?2, himself in his seventies and a pioneer of
organ records, has re-recorded it there in a coupling with Widor's
fifth and "Gothic" symphonies which shows how well his master
"scored" for his beloved Cavaille?2-Coll instrument.
(Westminster- mono only.)
   
   MERCURY issue five discs of Dupre?2 at Saint-Sulpice, of
which two are of particular interest, Vol. 2 consisting entirely of
his own music, and Vol. 5 which also includes "Les bergers,"
by his one-time pupil Olivier Messaien. Noisy surfaces, but the right
kind of noise behind them.
   Another Dupre?2 pupil, the Belgian Flor Peeters, has recorded
some pre-Bach organ music from North Germany and the Netherlands on
the Schnitger rebuild <SIC> at St. Michael's, Zwolle. Clearer
music and a clearer sound. A splendid record. (HMV- mono.)
# 21
<82 TEXT C11>
THAT NOVEL BY THE TUTOR IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY RAISES AN INTRIGUING
QUESTION
Why has this face appeared among the best-sellers?
The BOOK PAGE- by ROBERT PITMAN
<ILLUSTRATION>
   PERHAPS you recognise that heavy and somewhat sullen face on
the left. If you are fond of being in the fashion you certainly ought
to.
   For weeks now those thick-lidded and decidedly untwinkling eyes
have stared out at the readers of a succession of heavy literary
magazines and review pages. For weeks the owner of the face has had
her name at the top of the list of best-selling novelists.
   She is Miss Iris Murdoch, tutor in moral philosophy at St.
Anne's College, Oxford; wife of Mr. John Bayley, a fellow don; and
author of A SEVERED HEAD, which was published in June amid a loud
cooing of intellectual approval.
   Miss Murdoch is the author of several books. Yet suddenly, with
her fifth novel, she has been sifted out by the priests of culture for
their own honours list. Her name has acquired an almost visible halo.
   For those who wish to impress, it can now be plopped confidently
into a conversation like French seasoning upon a salad.
   Soon those who cannot quite afford Scandinavian cutlery or
furniture from Heals will have the latest Iris Murdoch in their
sitting-rooms instead.
   And soon, no doubt, an interviewer from the B.B.C. programme
"Monitor" will be leading TV cameras around Miss Murdoch's
house at Steeple Aston outside Oxford with the awed, hushed tread
appropriate to a cathedral.
DEGENERATE
   Yet, despite all this attention, no one has mentioned the
really outstanding characteristic of Miss Murdoch's new novel.
   It is not its style, which is often pretentious and sometimes a
little lame.
   It is not its characters, which are unbelievable, nor its
background, which is inaccurate and unreal.
   It is the fact that this story from the Oxford Moral Philosophy
Department is, by the standards of most people, utterly degenerate.
   That is an epithet I rarely use on this page. Even when it is
justified the best criticism is usually silence. There are too many
booksellers, not all by any means in the back streets, who gloat over
condemnation of their wares with the relish with which some film
distributors greet an "X" certificate.
   Yet A Severed Head has already been given its "X" by the
mandarin reviewers. Their coy or leering references to its plot have
kept it selling well for weeks on end. I do not feel it out of place
to offer a corrective.
PLEASED
   A Severed Head is the story of a wine merchant named Martin
Lynch-Gibbon. We meet him first of all watching his mistress, Georgie
Hands, while ("with a tense demure consciousness" of his gaze)
she draws on the peacock-blue stockings which Lynch-Gibbon has given
her.
   Lynch-Gibbon is pleased with life. His wife Antonia, though a
few years older than he is, is beautiful, intellectually stimulating-
and knows nothing about Georgie. Then, piece by piece, Lynch-Gibbon's
complacency is shattered.
   Antonia falls in love with her American psychiatrist and goes to
live with him. The psychiatrist's ugly but mysterious half-sister,
Honor Klein, also upsets Lynch-Gibbon by finding out about Georgie and
telling Antonia.
   A penitent Lynch-Gibbon is severely rebuked by his wife and her
psychiatrist lover for deceiving them over Georgie. Then Lynch-Gibbon
has a fight with Honor Klein in a cellar ("she came against me with
both hands pushing and clawing, and endeavoured to drive her knee into
my stomach.").
   After this encounter, Lynch-Gibbon decides that he is
fascinated with the rather repellent Miss Klein. He goes to her house
in Cambridge, gets in through an open door, and finds her in bed with
her psychiatrist half-brother.
   Before the book ends Georgie gives herself first to
Lynch-Gibbon's brother, Alexander, and then to the psychiatrist.
Antonia leaves the psychiatrist for her brother-in-law Alexander.
And Lynch-Gibbon is left with the incestuous, slightly-moustached
Miss Klein.
   I should also mention that in addition to all these humourless
couplings Lynch-Gibbon suffers from a homosexual liking for the
psychiatrist too.
   Such is the novel which Mr. Cyril Connolly greeted as "a
heaven-sent gift" and which led Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones to exclaim
~"She triumphs," and Mr. Kenneth Allsop, the "Tonight"
interviewer, to give as his judgment: "She has the rare universal
eye of the great novelist."
   Which, I believe you will decide, is all my rare universal eye
and Betty Martin.
SO WRONG
   True, the praise has not been unrelieved. Mr. Connolly
himself pointed out that Miss Murdoch, having chosen a wine merchant
as a hero, goes wrong over almost every detail concerning wine.
   Mr. Philip Toynbee, with some justice, wrote: "Though she
does not wish us to admire any of the characters, except Honor, she
does demand of us a credulity, a sympathy, and a concern which I have
found quite impossible to give."
   Mr. Peter Forster likened Miss Murdoch's dialogue to Ethel
M. Dell. Yet the striking thing is that none of these critics
challenged Miss Murdoch's novel on moral grounds.
   I would not ask them to denounce it as pornography. A Severed
Head is not pornography.
   It is so stuffed with turgid and often meaningless symbolism that
only an extreme masochist could drive himself to read it for the
kicks. Nor is it propagandist as Lolita was. It does not enthuse
over incest or homosexuality.
   It does not enthuse. It does worse- it merely yawns.
   It enshrines the bored and disgusted-by-nothing attitude of that
shallow but influential clique which dominates the literary weeklies
and the B.B.C. Brains Trust and which tries to make normal,
human, shockable people feel like country cousins or like the "pi"
little boys who dare to remain mute while the rest of the dormitory is
giggling over dirty stories.
   The critics who praised Lolita defended the author's moral
notions. But there was no such defence of Miss Murdoch- the critics
were so sophisticated that they saw nothing which needed defending.
   The Observer wrote: "She is serious, Leftish, and
high-minded, with a sharp brain tempered by good sense: an English
university seems just the right background for her." But is
"high" the most apt word for Miss Murdoch's mind?
   For this is not her only puzzling novel. In her often
brilliantly funny second book, Flight from the Enchanter, Rosa, a
sensible upper-middle-class young lady, befriends two Poles whom she
meets in a factory. She teaches them English in their sordid room in
Pimlico while their aged mother, lying on a mattress on the floor,
looks on.
   Occasionally the brothers dance round the mother or prod her with
their feet. One cries: 3"You old rubbish! You old sack! We
soon kill you, we put you under floorboards, you not stink there worse
than here!"
WATCHING
   One day Rosa goes to meet the brothers and finds only one of
them, Stefan, waiting for her. He takes her to the room where he
says: 3"We make love now, Rosa. It is time."
   "Your mother!" exclaims Rosa, noticing the old lady's
watching eyes.
   3"She not see, not hear," is the reply.
   The next day Rosa finds only the other brother, Jan, waiting. In
the room at Pimlico, Rosa asks: "You know about Stefan?"
   Jan replies sternly: 3"Of course. And now is me."
   Of this incident one critic has written:-
   "This whole episode is a brutal commentary on the equivocal
nature of pity: the revulsion of feeling which an unequal relationship
inspires."
   It may be, of course, that the stud-farm entanglements of Miss
Murdoch's latest book are also a brutal commentary on something's
equivocal nature.
   Unfortunately, if they are, even Miss Murdoch's most
distinguished admirers seem unable to discover exactly what that
something is.
   Miss Murdoch's publishers claim that A Severed Head "is as
exciting as Treasure Island."
   In the ultra-sophisticated society in which comparisons like
that can be made and in which people like Miss Murdoch are not just
the rebels but the teachers, it is little wonder that the young
are occasionally more interested in yellow golliwogs than in the works
of old squares like R. L. Stevenson.
DISTURBING- THIS NOVEL ABOUT A TOP TORY
   NOW for another disturbing novel. It is THE MINISTER
(Hamish Hamilton, 16s.) by Maurice Edelman, the suave,
culture-loving and luxuriantly good-looking M.P. who represents
the car-workers of Coventry North. Mr. Edelman has himself made an
intense study of British political novels.
   To literary societies he has lectured in languorous tones about
John Galt, who wrote The Borough (subject: political jobbery) in
1832, and about A. E. W. Mason, best-known for The Four
Feathers but also the author of The Turnstile (based on Mason's
own brief career as Liberal M.P. for Coventry).
   Now, in The Minister I believe that Edelman has produced a
novel which itself deserves a very high place indeed in the roll of
political fiction.
   It is certainly the novel which I have enjoyed most in 1961.
A reservation
   It tells how Melville, a Tory Minister, achieves the aim of
every Tory Minister. He becomes Tory Prime Minister. But his public
triumph is hollow since he has simultaneously discovered that his
plain but well-loved wife has also allowed herself to be well loved by
his own brother and perhaps by other friends as well.
   Set against this theme is the story of how Melville, having said:
"I want the African to be my brother," adds in an indiscreet
whisper, "but not my brother-in-law."
   The pretty lady at whom the indiscretion is directed is the
mistress of an Opposition Leader. Duly circulated and printed in the
Press, it stirs riots in Africa and almost wrecks Melville's career.
   Why do I call the novel disturbing? It is not because of
Edelman's approach to morals which- unlike Miss Murdoch's- is both
adult and real.
   No, the disturbing thing about The Minister is that far from
being artificial, it too often rings frighteningly true.
No malice
   For it portrays a Tory leadership whose aim, above all, is to
be free from any supposedly naive, old-fashioned notions about
patriotism or Empire or national greatness. A leadership which thinks
it oh-so-civilised and cultured to be just a little weary and cynical
about everything.
   Socialist Edelman does not present this portrait with political
malice. Indeed, it is clear that, despite his Coventry connections
the Melville attitude is his attitude too.
   But I must draw attention to one fairy-tale element in this
otherwise true-to-life novel. In avoiding any appearance of party
prejudice, Edelman goes so far as to put epigrams- yes, actual
epigrams- into the mouths of everyday Tory back-benchers.
FROM A NEW BOOK, AN INTRIGUING ACCOUNT OF LIFE IN THE LAND OF
MISTS
The sad, macabre tale of the bride they called Miss Fuegia Basket
THE BOOK PAGE
by ROBERT PITMAN
   JUST north of the seas that surge and shriek round Cape Horn,
the land mass which we call America tails away in a region of mist,
sleet, and death. The people who live there, scratching a bare living
from the rocks or wading into the ice-cold surf to collect limpets,
are still among the most wretched on earth.
   Not long ago their life was even more desolate. In Britain today
it is fashionable to discuss the problem of old age. During the last
century it was reported that the people north of Cape Horn had solved
the problem of what to do with the old folk.
   In times of famine they ate them.
   It is not surprising, therefore, that out of that sleet and
mist comes one of the saddest and most macabre little stories that I
have ever read.
   I take it from THE WONDERS OF LIFE ON EARTH by the Editors of
Life and Lincoln Barnett (Prentice-Hall, 7s.). You would
be wrong to shudder at the price. For a family with a budding
biologist in its midst the book is more than worth it.
   In wonderful photographs and paintings it parades the bizarre
quirks of evolution- such as the dawn-flying silk moth, with its
absurdly long wing-filaments which rustle while it flies.
   The filaments act like the tin-foil dropped by bombers to deceive
radar.
# 21
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A UNIQUE TONE OF VOICE
The Complete Poems of Cavafy.
Translated by Rae Dalven. 234pp. Hogarth Press. 25s.
   Any new translation of Cavafy is to be welcomed, especially
when it claims to be "complete"- and no doubt it is complete in
the sense that it covers all those poems which have so far been
published in Greek. The previous collection in English, translated by
Professor Mavrogordato, has long been difficult to acquire. Thus this
new work fulfils an important need.
   Some of Cavafy's most celebrated and most characteristic poems
were written as early as 1911 and he wrote poems in every subsequent
year until his death in 1933. To English readers he was first
introduced by E. M. Forster, who, in his Pharos and Pharillon,
published in 1923, wrote a witty and affectionate description of the
poet in which occur the significant words "...a Greek gentleman in a
straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the
universe". And one is inclined to say that the "slight angle"
implies more than eccentricity (and Cavafy was certainly eccentric);
it reminds one, too, of the leve clinamen of Lucretius- the
slight deviation from the regular which is at the root of all
creation.
   For one of the first things which strikes one about Cavafy is
that he is unique. This is a point well made by Mr. Auden in his
introduction when he writes: "I have read translations of Cavafy
made by many different hands, but every one of them was immediately
recognizable as a poem by Cavafy; nobody else could possibly have
written it." This does not mean, of course, that all translations
of Cavafy are equally good; but it does mean that it is almost
impossible to translate him in a way that is positively misleading.
The authentic voice is certain to come through.
   The present translation by Miss Rae Dalven is no exception to the
rule. Sometimes one may deplore a certain insensitivity to rhythm,
and sometimes one may wish that Miss Dalven had been more ambitious-
had attempted, for instance, to reproduce the rhyme which Cavafy uses
in many of his poems. But on the whole the work is careful and exact.
What Mr. Auden calls Cavafy's "unique tone of voice" is
everywhere recognizable. It is not so gracefully represented as in
the translations of Professor Mavrogordato, but in quantity this
volume has the advantage over the earlier one.
   It is unfortunately doubtful whether the reader will be greatly
helped by Mr. Auden's introduction. Early on in this Mr. Auden
comes to the odd conclusion that "if the importance of Cavafy's
poetry is his unique tone of voice, there is nothing for a critic to
say, for criticism can only make comparisons". This, certainly,
does not prevent Mr. Auden from going on himself for seven closely
printed pages, which contain few "comparisons". But the pages are
not very illuminating. Much more sensitive and thorough studies are
to be found in Sir Maurice Bowra's The Creative Experiment and in
Mr. Sherrard's The Marble Threshing Floor. These writers are
aware that one function of criticism is to explain and they avoid such
nearly meaningless statements as, "Cavafy has three principal
concerns: love, art, and politics in the original Greek sense". Is
it the politics of Homer, of Pericles, of Aristotle? Nothing could be
more remote from Cavafy than any of these. What is in fact the case
is that he was concerned with a view of a Greek's place in history, a
view which was peculiarly his own and which has been found by his
contemporaries and successors in the Greek tradition peculiarly true
and enlightening. It is a view taken from "a slight angle to the
universe", but is none the less accurate for that.
   Nearly the whole of Cavafy's life was spent in Alexandria. This,
as can be seen when one knows Cavafy, was a fitting background. It
was the city founded by Alexander the Great, the city where he was
buried, the city above all symbolical of the diffusion of Greek
language and culture from the Indus to the far west. Of other Greek
cities only Athens and Constantinople have equally powerful
associations, and the worlds of Alexandria and Constantinople are, of
course, utterly different from the world of fifth-century Athens. It
was out of the world of the Greek dispersal that Cavafy created his
personal mythology- a world both of triumph and disaster, a world of
courage, of humour and of irony. Cavafy was the first modern Greek
poet who contrived to be patriotic without being romantic, and his
method was to stand at "a slight angle" to what is assumed to be
the universe of history. His favourite subjects are from Antioch,
Alexandria, Byzantium, or from Greek states already subjugated to
Rome. These are themes which we, in our normal classical education,
are encouraged to regard as "decadent"; and indeed so strong is
prejudice that one will still find people who will apply the adjective
"decadent" to Cavafy's poetry. It is therefore refreshing to find
such a critic as Sir Maurice Bowra, who writes: "...respect for human
courage and character is perhaps Cavafy's most characteristic note".
   The same gentle understanding and forceful irony are to be found
in the poems that deal with love (always homosexual love). Here again
Mr. Auden does not help our understanding when he writes: "The
erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived
affairs." These are sometimes part of the theme, but from such
things emerges a splendour of which Mr. Auden seems unaware. Has he
not read "Myres" or "The Mirror in the Hall"?
   However, Cavafy can speak, and has spoken, for himself. He has
been the greatest influence from the past on contemporary Greek poetry
and has already influenced poets in many other languages. His
complete sincerity, his angular stance, his tenderness that is
combined with the accuracy of a surgeon, his awareness of the past in
the present and of the present in the past, his meticulousness, his
grandeur- these are some of the qualities which no reader can fail to
observe and which, singly and together, make him one of the greatest
writers of our times.
REBELS WITH A PEN
BRUCE INGHAM GRANGER: Political Satire in the American
Revolution, 1763-1783. 314pp. Cornell University Press. London:
Oxford University Press. 4s.
   The American Revolution produced some first-class writing of the
solemn and more dignified types. Burke on one side of the Atlantic,
Jefferson on the other, rose to the height of the great argument. But
judging from the samples quoted in this learned and interesting book,
there were no comic equivalents of Jefferson or even of Thomas Paine
at work in North America during these twenty years. Dr. Granger
has gleaned most thoroughly and has classified various types of
political satire in a sensible fashion. But with the possible
exception of Franklin, none of the writers he exhumes is of great
interest today or deserves anything but historical respect. Even
Hopkinson, even Trumbull are dim figures and M'Fingal is a
burlesque much more completely forgotten than Hudibras. From the
point of view of American literary history, one of the chief types of
interest in this book is the evidence it furnishes of the close
imitation of English models, of Butler, Swift, Addison, and the
contemporary Charles Churchill.
   The versifiers do not display a high degree of technical
competence. They are, however, bold in the use of rhyme to a degree
that would astonish Mr. Ogden Nash. Thus, one poetaster rhymes
"mouse" with "1sous", treating "1sous" as a singular noun.
Even the comparatively competent Trumbull writes:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Behold that martial Macaroni,
   Compound of Phoebus and Bellona.
<END QUOTE>
   The prose writing seems vastly superior. Arbuthnot's History
of John Bull was imitated with some success, and Franklin managed
adroitly the humorous atrocity story suggesting that the ministerial
troops should castrate the American males. It is possible, however,
that the editors of the great new edition of Franklin's works will not
accept all the identifications made here.
   The themes reflect the controversies of the age. The Quebec Act
with its threat of popery provoked a great deal of irrelevant
indignation. The Royalists were inclined to sneer at the low social
origins and vulgar ambitions of the rebel leaders, and Franklin's
reputed irreligion laid him open to attack. The rebel propagandists
became increasingly hostile to the king and scornful to the royal
representatives, civil and military. The alleged amorous propensities
of these representatives of the Crown were duly noted. Their morals
as well as their good faith were impugned. Hessians, Irish, Welsh
were assailed as well as the universally unpopular Scots.
   This is a useful and a mildly entertaining book, although its
author does not show that mastery of the political background
displayed by Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., in his recent
investigation of revolutionary propaganda. It is probably useless to
protest against the failure to give the Howe brothers their proper
titles. And the complicated history of George Sackville may excuse
the fact that he appears as Lord Germain, a title he never held.
IN DEFENCE OF LAWRENCE
F. J. TEMPLE: D. H. Lawrence. 237pp. Paris:
Seghers. 12 N.F.
   It is not difficult to imagine how Lawrence's habitual and often
very outspoken frankness together with his almost incredible
confidence in his own insights aroused the resentment of many of those
whom he knew. (It is true that in his preface to M. Temple's
biography Mr. Richard Aldington claims that he personally bore no
grudge at all for the home truths he was asked to swallow. He reminds
his French readers of Rimbaud's obscene parting rites in the home of
an acquaintance and explains that Lawrence's own ungrateful mocking of
those who had helped him was only to be expected in a great artist.)
Someone as courageous as Lawrence in following the promptings of his
own intuition is bound to inspire the jealousy or the envy of those
who are more timorous and conventional and it is probably for this
reason that so few of his critics, whether or not they have known him
personally, have been capable of a truly disinterested assessment of
his character and genius.
   M. Temple's short study of the life and works is on the whole
eulogistic and he defends Lawrence vigorously against some of the
charges that have been brought against him in the past: that he was a
precursor of Nazism, that he sentimentalized the noble Mexican savage,
that he suffered from the neuroses described in Murry's Son of Woman
and that he earned money to which he was not entitled by publishing
Maurice Magnus's Memoirs. It is only occasionally that he gives
the impression of not wanting to sound too impressed, as, for example,
when he mentions in passing the numerous (unspecified)
pue?2rilite?2s in Lawrence's daily life and in many of his
books. M. Temple makes good use of the available biographical
information. He also quotes lengthily and well from Lawrence's
letters. If one is forced to conclude that he seriously misrepresents
both the life and the work of Lawrence it is not therefore because he
is swayed by any deep prejudice or because of any particular
inaccuracy (his worst inaccuracy is to describe Ursula in The
Rainbow as Tom Brangwen's daughter).
   The principal defect of this book is that it is written in a
style which will convey to the reader little or nothing of the
resemblances between Lawrence's inner life and his own:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   M. Temple writes in cliche?2s and in doing so not only
distorts the essential biographical facts but attributes cliche?2s of
thought and expression to Lawrence.
DEFIANT GESTURES
ALFRED MARNAU: Ra"uber-Requiem. 123pp. Salzburg: Otto
Mu"ller. DM. 1.9.
   Alfred Marnau, who was born in Bratislava in 1918 and has lived
in England since before the war, shares with Rilke and Kafka the
distinction of having origins which seem to escape national
boundaries. Like them he also makes of German his own language, which
seems hammered out, a medium suggesting sheets of gold leaf.
# 24
<84 TEXT C13>
SEARCHER FOR ATLANTIS
   "I LOOKED down on the blackness where trees filled the
quarry and the valley bottoms, and it seemed that the world, my own
home-world, was strange again."
   Much of Lawrence is suggested by that one sentence from his
earliest novel, The White Peacock. His own home-world dominates
the novels up to Women in Love, is the setting of many of the
tales, and is the world to which he returns in Lady Chatterley.
It is described with a faithfulness that makes Lawrence impressive
simply as the recorder of a social scene, but his art, even in the
autobiographical Sons and Lovers, is such as to render the
familiar original and mysterious. This power to make the known world
"strange again" is part of his inheritance from the great
Romantics.
   The excessive amount of attention at present being given to his
treatment of the sexual relationship (bringing us perilously close to
what Lawrence himself despised as "sex in the head") must not be
allowed to obscure the more fundamental truth that he was the latest,
and the most compelling, writer in the English Romantic tradition.
Coleridge's definition of the secondary imagination, with its stress
on the transmutation of experience by an essentially creative process
into something of visionary freshness, can be taken as an exact
description of Lawrence's art; and the most illuminating parallel to
the symbolic passages of The Rainbow and Women in Love, in
which this visionary quality is most apparent, are the moments of
revelation in such poems as Resolution and Independence and The
Prelude.
   This, if not precisely the theme of the collection of essays
and reminiscences about D. H. Lawrence edited by Professor Moore,
is the underlying truth which they most serve to impress upon the mind
of the reader. It is consciously there in Mr. Herbert
Lindenberger's "Lawrence and the Romantic Tradition" and probably
because of this his essay is the one which seems most consistently and
most satisfyingly relevant to the actual effects created by Lawrence's
poems and novels. But the frequency with which the contributors to
Mr. Moore's Miscellany resort to discussion of symbol and myth
in Lawrence's work also draws its justification from the almost
Wordsworthian preoccupation with "unknown modes of being" and
"Fallings from us, vanishings" that give Lawrence his distinctively
Romantic quality. Mr. Angelo P. Bertocci, for example, picks his
way very carefully through the mass of overlapping symbolism in
Women in Love to demonstrate how Lawrence's imagination expands
the details of his story in ever widening arcs of significance, and he
borrows from Mr. R. A. Foakes the term "image of impression"
to describe the mode of this symbolism, so linking it with the poetry
of Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Mr. Jascha Kessler, in
"The Myth of The Plumed Serpent", interprets Kate's progress
towards acceptance of Ramon's Quetzalcoatl cult in terms of the
primitive ritual pattern of "separation- initiation- return", and
two other contributors see in Lawrence's use of birds in various parts
of his work a conscious remoulding of primitive ritual.
   Such comment is legitimate, but it needs the check of a more
inclusive, and at the same time more strictly literary, response.
Myths as such draw their power from psychological sources and depend
upon the existence of a socio-religious culture to which no modern
writer has real access (though he may imagine that he has). His use
of myth, whether he wishes it to be so or not, can therefore be only
part of a larger artistic purpose. The Plumed Serpent is an
excellent case in point. Mr. Kessler claims that his analysis of
this novel makes "all the politics and religious demagoguery" seem
irrelevant compared with "the drama of the hidden primal mythic
adventure it subserves". Criticism has been misguided and has
underestimated the book because it has "seized upon the superficial
content of the novel and confused it with the story it is really
telling". But it was precisely because the "primal mythic
adventure" could not form the total substance of a novel that
Lawrence was driven to invent the paraphernalia of a political and
religious movement led by Ramon which Mr. Kessler rightly regards as
superficial. It is impossible to "rescue" the myth from the novel.
One is left with something which the modern reader inevitably finds
too thin, too remote, too reminiscent of the world of fairytale; it
will not stand on its own. Yet neither will it stand on the
matchboard stage that Lawrence has contrived for it. Without the
reality of a fully created novelistic world the myth is itself
superficial and unconvincing.
   In placing Lawrence within the Romantic tradition Mr.
Lindenberger does not make this mistake. He begins his essay by
making the important distinction between what he calls the "novel of
social relations"- which is, in effect, the novel as it has usually
displayed itself in English literature, from Jane Austen to Miss Iris
Murdoch- and the "symbolist novel" or "romance". Lawrence, of
course, belongs to the latter class, and from here Mr Lindenberger
goes on to a discussion of Lawrence's Romanticism, the importance of
which has already been stressed. But, he then argues, it could be
said that:
<BEGIN QUOTATION>
   Lawrence in his best work was able to fuse the two traditions,
and it may well be that his contribution to the history of the novel
will be seen in his success in instilling the dominant strain of
English fiction with the essentially poetic materials of the romantic
tradition.
<END QUOTATION>
   This argument is just and in the correct sequence; it puts the
emphasis in the right place. The glimpses of "unknown modes of
being" are the most arresting and the most memorable things in
Lawrence's novels, but he is aware that when a novel is given over
entirely to the Romantic experience it ceases to be a novel. Nor is
it true to say that the traditional material serves as a foil to set
off the episodes in which Lawrence is more deeply engaged. The finest
of his "symbolist novels", The Rainbow and Women in Love,
are also his most substantial achievements in realism. As social
history they are already unrivalled, and their characters (in spite of
the now famous letter to Edward Garnett in which Lawrence states that
~"You mustn't look in my novel for the old stable ego of the
character") are characters in the good old-fashioned sense of the
word. Above all, his power to render environment in language that not
merely describes but re-creates it (Mr. Mark Schorer writes of this
in his contribution to the Miscellany, "Lawrence and the Spirit
of Place") embeds the Romantic experience in a solid world of
sensuous particularity. In these novels there is no question of an
inner meaning being the true purpose to which the surface of the novel
is irrelevant. They are coherent wholes. The unknown penetrates and
fuses with the known to form an indivisible artistic unity.
   Lawrence the novelist is perhaps now beginning to get his due.
The same cannot yet be said for Lawrence the poet. Miss Dallas
Kenmare has written a small study of D. H. Lawrence, which is in
fact a study of the poetry, but one weakness of that book is its
unwillingness to recognize the tough, pawky, realistic side of
Lawrence expressed in "Pansies" and "Nettles". Even Mr.
Alvarez, whose essay in The Shaping Spirit (here reprinted by
Professor Moore) is undoubtedly the best thing yet written on
Lawrence's poetry, seems reluctant to give the blunt, sardonic quality
its full value. He comments excellently on "Red Geranium and Godly
Mignonette": ~"There is neither a jot of pretentiousness in the
poem, nor of vulgarity, though the opportunity for both certainly
offered", yet he seems to want to dignify it- oddly enough, by
suggesting that it is a poem of wit which, like Donne's, is "a
manifestation of intelligence". This is a minor aberration,
however. The most important aspect of Lawrence's realism, his
"complete truth to feeling", is thoroughly grasped by Mr.
Alvarez, and the essential effect of balance- the balance of the
sharply aware, never half-asleep, whole man- created by Lawrence's
flexibly colloquial language is something which this essay argues so
persuasively as to leave the greatness of Lawrence's poetic
achievement beyond doubt.
   What Lawrence owed to his working-class background has received
some attention in recent years, but not enough. The facts are there
in Professor Moore's own biography of Lawrence, The Intelligent
Heart. Their full significance has yet to be appreciated. Two
items in the Miscellany have some bearing on this-
unintentionally supporting one another. The first is a letter from
Katherine Mansfield to S. S. Koteliansky describing a row between
Lawrence and Frieda at Zennor in 1916. Katherine Mansfield is shocked
and bewildered: "It seems to me so degraded- so horrible to see
I can't stand it." (Actually, it reads like a particularly violent
farce. Lawrence beats Frieda and chases her round the kitchen table,
but the next day gives her breakfast in bed and trims her hat.)
   The second is a reprinting from Culture and Society of Mr.
Raymond Williams's essay on "The Social Thinking of D. H.
Lawrence". Mr. Williams's cool remark that comment on
working-class life "tends to emphasize the noisier factors"
inevitably throws one back to the Katherine Mansfield letter. Frieda,
of course, was a German aristocrat, and by 1916 Lawrence had come a
good way from Eastwood, but is it not possible that their middle-class
friends were witnessing in these open rows the continuance of a
different tradition? At any rate, Mr. Williams is certainly right
in his comment that in working-class life (of Lawrence's childhood, if
not of our day) "the suffering and the giving of comfort, the common
want and the common remedy, the open row and the open making-up, are
all part of a continuous life which, in good and bad, makes for a
whole attachment", and the relevance of this to Lawrence's own
treatment of personal relations hardly needs comment.
   No one, however, is as good, or as prolific, a commentator on
Lawrence as Lawrence himself, and such an immense amount of this
commentary is stored away in Phoenix that its reappearance now
after many years of being out of print is a happening of some
importance. Phoenix is itself a miscellany, unplanned, yet
unified as no other miscellany could be, by the personality of
Lawrence himself. Some of the things it contains are of rare quality,
some interesting for what they add to our understanding of Lawrence's
"philosophy", some are comparatively trivial pieces; but what
matters even more than their individual merits is the cumulative
effect which they achieve when brought together in this way. The sum
even of the novels and poems is greater than the parts, but the
existence of a collective meaning, subtly influenced by the presence
of the author (which is always felt in Lawrence's work), can be more
easily perceived in the sum of Phoenix.
   The parts can be exasperating. Lawrence's hectoring manner in
Democracy grates on the reader, and there are times when his
bullying repetitions become insufferable. The incantatory style of
The Reality of Peace is nauseating, and though it is a relief to
turn to the bluff no-nonsense of Education of the People, this
sounds after a while like wilful crudeness. Yet overriding these
defects is the sense that here is an essentially fine and original
intelligence- an energy that drives towards real understanding, as
against the neat and clever formulations that are so often passed off
for understanding. One's irritation evaporates.
   There is much talk in Phoenix of the "blood-consciousness"
through which Lawrence sought salvation from the debilitating effects
of twentieth-century self-consciousness. Sometimes in his hatred of
its evils he seems to want to sweep away the whole of modern science
and technology. The "Autobiographical Fragment" strongly suggests
the influence of William Morris's News from Nowhere. But when he
is saying more precisely what he means Lawrence makes it clear that
the labour-saving machine is a public benefactor: "Now there is a
railing against the machine, as if it were an evil thing.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 214
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New Books (continued)
PROGRESS IN SCIENCE
SCIENCE SURVEY =2. Edited by A. W. HASLETT and JOHN
ST. JOHN. Vista Books. 3s.
   A year ago the first volume in this series successfully
established the pattern which is here continued. The editors ask some
2 to 3 working scientists to report on the progress made in selected
and limited fields which are their particular concern. They appear
grouped together, three or four at a time, under more general heads,
with some useful cross references and a good index; each short chapter
contains suggestions for further reading.
   Very little knowledge of the subject under discussion is
presupposed, though in spite of its clarity this could not be a
"popular" work for people innocent of all scientific training. It
seems aimed in particular at the sixth-former beginning to specialize,
who ought to be given every chance to read such first-hand accounts of
the advances made in subjects whose dead past is already all too
familiar from the text-books. In his Foreword Professor Le Gros Clark
puts it explicitly:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Today, when the demand for more and more recruits in the
different branches of science has become so insistent, it is of the
highest importance that the interest of potential scientists should be
early aroused by having accounts of current trends in scientific
research presented in a readily intelligible style.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
FUTURE EFFECT
   Surveys such as these at regular intervals may well have a real
effect on the future through their power to draw the attention of
young scientists to interesting fields of activity.
   Only a brief account of the contents is possible here. Two
articles on astronomy deal in turn with stellar evolution and the
determination of stellar distances. Curiously the only contribution
to pure physics is a description of recent tests of the particular and
general theories of relativity. Then come articles about the possible
ways in which mountain ranges were built up, and magnetic methods of
testing the theory of continental drift. These are particularly
stimulating because little can be taken for granted in sciences at so
complex and unsettled a stage.
DEEP WATER
   After the earth come the oceans, with observations of the sea
floor and of currents. A study of plant life in the sea makes the
transition to connected articles on the chemistry of plants, and
accounts of work on the transmission of nerve impulses and the
physiology of muscular activity. A section on psychology, "brain and
mind", treats of the improvement with practice of the ability of
animals to learn, the measurement of human mental qualities, their
localization in areas of the brain, and the effect of the newer drugs
on behaviour. This is a particularly controversial area in which
scientists easily stray beyond their competence, and there are one or
two remarks, such as "whereas the taking of alcohol has always been
regarded as a social and moral question, the giving of drugs,
irrespective of their consequences, must always primarily be a medical
responsibility", which certainly demand further discussion.
   We return to solid scientific ground with the assessment of noise
annoyance, the strength of materials, metal fatigue, and materials for
use at high temperatures. Altogether this is a useful piece of work,
which has increased our debt to the British Association.
THE REAL FRANCE
VILLAGE EN VAUCLUSE. By L. WYLIE and A.
BE?2GUE?2. Harrap. 18s.
   This is a shorter version, in French, by M. Armand Be?2gue?2,
of a much longer American sociological study compiled by Mr.
Laurence Wylie of Harvard University, using the "field" techniques
of sociology, anthropology and psychology, applied during Mr.
Wylie's year's stay in 195 with his wife and two sons in a village
which he calls Peyrane.
DEEP STUDY
   He presents not a dull statistical treatise nor a light
surface-skimming digest, but an examination in depth including
e.g. the basic principles of French education and comparative
family budgets. Nor does he neglect the individual and his
psychological reactions- the village grocer's tirade against la
famille nombreuse coming to her shop for credit and the returned
deportee's judgment on the Maquis are but two examples of vivid
reportage. There are two maps, an adequate vocabulary and intelligent
questions in French at the end of each chapter. The author's many
excellent photographs make an integral and illuminating contribution
to this attempt to give students "a valid picture of contemporary
French life and to show how a group of French people live from day to
day".
   This is a fascinating book, from the evocative drawing on its
title-page to its valuable final chapter, "Peyrane en 1959",
written after further visits, recording the changes brought by
tractors, television and main drainage and providing a useful
corrective to so many nostalgic pictures of a "quaint"
old-fashioned France. It merits inclusion in any modern-languages
library and could be a stimulating basis for a non-literary sixth-form
course or a good adult class.
OXFORD PAPERBACKS
   Martin Cooper's French Music, a study covering the period
from the death of Berlioz to the death of Faure?2, has now been
issued as an Oxford Paperback (Oxford University Press, 7s. 6d.).
Ernest Barker's Principles of Social and Political Theory (price
7s. 6d.) and C. K. Allen's Law in the Making (price
1s. 6d.) are among other additions to the series.
REVIEWS IN BRIEF
CALDERO?2N: LA VIDA ES SUEN?4O. Edited by A. E.
SLOMAN. Manchester University Press. 8s. 6d.
   This edition, with Introduction and Notes by Professor A. E.
Sloman, fulfils the need for a new, modern text of the play. It is
based on the text in the 1636 edition of La Primera Parte de
Comedias and takes into account the two Parte texts of 164,
the Vera Tassis edition of 1685 and the Zaragoza version of 1636. It
thus makes use of, as no previous edition has done, all the known
texts of the play. Professor Sloman has brought spelling up to date,
except where this would involve changes in pronunciation, accentuation
and capitalization.
   In the Introduction he has covered every aspect of the play under
the headings of Date, Sources, Structure and Theme, Language and
Metres, Staging and Texts. Although the scholarly thoroughness with
which every point is treated would satisfy the more advanced and
ardent student, the clear and concise manner in which the material is
presented makes it interesting and easily digestible for the general
or less ambitious reader. In particular, the subject of Structure and
Theme is discussed very fully, with frequent references to the play
itself, and including brief comments on all the characters.
Throughout, he indicates Caldero?2n's subtlety as a dramatist. A
list of books is provided for further reading on the subject under the
headings of "Caldero?2n in general" and "Recent criticism of La
Vida es Suen?4o".
   The Notes, as Professor Sloman himself remarks, are concerned in
part with the most interesting of the variant readings he has
considered, and also contain comments on classical allusions, passages
which present difficulty in comprehension, and differences between
Caldero?2n's vocabulary and syntax and those of present-day Spanish.
For further assistance, a short index of annotated words and names is
included.
   In addition to these considerations the high quality of paper and
printing, and the low cost (contributed to by a rather flimsy cover)
make the book admirably suited to school use. It is certain to
commend itself quickly to the notice of the examining boards.
SNORKEL DIVER. First Steps in Underwater Swimming. By R. B.
MATKIN and G. F. BROOKES. Macdonald. 12s. 6d.
   This is a book with plenty of enthusiasm for a sport that has
gained rapidly in popularity. Few people would attempt to take up
underwater swimming without an experienced companion to guide them and
they would be ill-advised to try but here they will learn most of the
pleasures the sport has in store; how to practise in a swimming bath;
and how to remain completely safe.
   Many people must have been excited by the thrills and perils of
M. Cousteau's Silent World or been urged to explore the shallow
fringes by Miss Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us only to be left
the feeling that this was beyond them. If they swim at all some of
the pleasures could be had without the dangers. For although snorkel
diving is not to be confused with using an aqualung it is proper
introduction to it and it is within everybody's means. Anyone who
swims can learn to use the simple equipment to get more fun out of his
bathing. Even a comparative beginner can try underwater photography.
   The book is small and unpretentious but not dull and it could
encourage many young readers to take the plunge.
PRACTICAL INORGANIC AND ORGANIC PROBLEMS. By M. BROWN.
Longmans. 4s. 9d.
   It is true, as the author says, that practical chemistry in
schools consists largely of volumetric and qualitative analysis, at
the examination stage. It is also true that this does little more
than provide training in manipulation, coupled with some knowledge of
reactions. The theme here is to give a number of problems which can
be solved by carrying out prescribed reactions, followed by
application of the principles involved.
   Some university boards and scholarship awarding bodies have used
this approach for a long time and the author has been able to use many
of the problems which have been set for their examinations. To
complete the range of work he has added problems which he has himself
devised. In the organic section he has included a number of reaction
schemes in which the student is required to carry out tests on the
original, intermediate and final products, which serve to enlighten
the deductive processes.
   The function of the book is highly commendable. Most teachers,
however, faced with the difficulty of raising the largest number of
examination candidates to O and A level in the short time available,
will shrink from embarking on a scheme which, however educative,
demands a level of intellectual ability which only a smaller number of
candidates will achieve.
   The university boards could support the author's initiative by
requiring that all candidates tackle a question of this type.
THE WEAVER'S BOOK. By HARRIET TIDBALL. Macmillan, New York.
38s. 6d.
   In spite of the description on the dust jacket this is not really
a book for the absolute beginner. It is, however, an excellent
text-book for the serious weaver who wishes to attain a high standard
of craftsmanship and who is willing to spend the time necessary to
explore the many possibilities of design in this ancient craft.
   In addition to chapters on the loom, yarns and preparations for
weaving, much of the book is devoted to drafting and a thorough
description of the various possible weaves. The 19 drafts
illustrated are methodically grouped and to them are added some
excellent photographs of the finished weaves. Miss Tidball's book is
the result of much practical experience and contains much sound
advice, not only for the beginner but also for the more practical
weaver.
The London Theatre
YOUNG WRITERS ON THE MOVE
From a Correspondent
   Although Mr. Edward Albee's first play had its first
performance here, at the Arts Theatre, he is better known as a
dramatist on the continent and in New York. On the evidence of The
Death of Bessie Smith and The American Dream, the double bill at
the Royal Court, this is a state of affairs that will soon be put
right. In passing one must say how good it is to see the short play
beginning to have a look in again. During the past two or three years
we have often seen plays by the most promising of playwrights spoiled
by the absurd necessity of inflating a natural three-quarters of an
hour into a full theatrical evening.
   The Death of Bessie Smith tells a simple and terrible story
in a laconic, highly charged manner. On a hot afternoon, in a
crumbling house near Memphis, Tennessee, a nurse is getting ready to
go to work; her old father, dreaming of past splendours, is infuriated
by the blues wailing out of his daughter's gramophone.
# 27
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NEXT WEEK'S ENTERTAINMENT IN THE CITY
CARNE'S STUDY OF YOUTH'S AIMLESSNESS
   THE youth whose symptom is a strange restlessness and a
desire to take the best from life without putting anything into it-
the Beatnik- is depicted in "Les Tricheurs" (Youthful Sinners),
the film coming to the Rex next week, directed by the brilliant
Frenchman, Marcel Carne.
   The setting is St. Germain-des-Pres and the Latin Quarter of
Paris, but it could be anywhere where semi-students and semi-idle
youth forgathers, with negative emotions, drowning doubts in jazz and
drink, betting stupidly and cheating with life, love and truth.
ACTING AWARDS
   Marcel Carne does not condemn them; he believes that their way
of life is caused through lack of parental interest, and hopes, that
through this film, some of these adults will wake up to their
responsibilities.
   "Les Tricheurs" was the most successful film to be shown in
France last year. It was awarded the Grand Prix du Cinema Francais,
and its two stars, Pascale Petit and Jacques Charrier, were given the
best actress and actor award of the year for their performances.
Mummers In Play Debut
   To follow their successful production of "All My Sons" by
Arthur Miller, shortly to be presented again for the Arts Theatre,
C.U. Mummers will give the first Cambridge presentation of "The
Dream of Peter Mann" by Bernard Kops at the A.D.C. Theatre next
week.
   Kops is well known for his "Hamlet of Stepney Green," whose
production at the Arts two years ago caused such widespread interest.
"The Dream of Peter Mann," whose only previous production was at
last year's Edinburgh Festival, sees Kops striking a balance between
the urgency of his ideas and his talent for vital, colourful
entertainment.
   It is to run at the A.D.C. from Tuesday to Saturday of next
week at 8.15, with a 2.3 matinee on Saturday.
GUINNESS AND MILLS CONFLICT
   BASED on the best selling novel by James Kennaway, the
controversial "Tunes of Glory," comes to the Regal Cinema next week
to give cinema-goers the opportunity of seeing two of Britain's most
brilliant actors.
   For playing the leading parts of two C.O.'s of a Highland
Regiment are Alec Guinness and John Mills, the one having won the
affection of his men by leading them through the war, and the other a
hard, efficient newcomer who is heartily disliked by the majority of
the soldiers.
   The relationship between the two men and their influence on the
regiment forms the basis of the plot, while the affairs of the
soldiers in their off-time, provides an opportunity to introduce some
glamour into this tough and tragic film.
   Supporting roles are played by Dennis Price, John Fraser, Kay
Walsh and Susannah Yorke. The film is produced by Colin Leslie and
directed by Ronald Neaman.
CHRISTIE PLAY ON FILM
   Following the West End stage success of "The Spider's Web,"
Agatha Christie's thriller has now been made into a film starring Jack
Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Glynis Johns and John Justin.
   It is to be shown at the Central Cinema next week.
   The action covers one day in the lives of the occupants of a
pleasant country house who find they have a body on their hands
shortly before the arrival of an important foreign diplomat.
GUEST ARTIST
   At all costs this must be covered up so that the important
conference with the V.I.P. can take place, and it is in this
endeavour that the plot develops, drawing into it a number of
mysterious suspects.
   Introducing 13 years old Wendy Turner to the screen as the
daughter of the household, the film also enables David Nixon to make a
guest appearance.
New Group's Arts Visit
   "The Glass Menagerie," thought by some American critics to
be Tennessee Williams' greatest play, it is undoubtedly his most
heart-felt, has not yet been performed professionally in Cambridge.
At the Arts Theatre next week, it will be presented by the Group of
Three, a new company recently created by Charles Vance, who will
direct the play with the same cast- Imogen Moynihan, Ben Hawthorne,
Joan Shore and himself- that has won critical acclaim elsewhere.
   Charles Vance comes from a theatrical family especially
well-known in Northern Ireland. Of the other members of the Group of
Three, Imogen Moynihan has experience in management as well as being
an actress of talent and Joan Shore has been delighting audiences at
Ipswich, Northampton, Cromer and other theatres in East Anglia. Ben
Hawthorne, a young New Zealand actor of great promise, has the
important role of the son in "The Glass Menagerie," and completes a
cast that is an unusually well-balanced team.
Backstage 'Slums'
   Substantial improvements have taken place over a wide range of
theatres since 1946, but there are still far too many theatrical slums
which could be vastly improved at small cost, declares the quarterly
"Equity Letter."
   It calls on all members of the British Actors' Equity Association
to write asking their M.P.s to urge the Government not to omit
theatres from the proposed legislation concerning amenities in shops
and offices.
Two Artists Who Live In Mills
WHERE PAINTS & MUSIC GO TOGETHER...
   MUSIC and painting live side by side complimenting
<SIC> each other at Pampisford Mill, the home of the
Campbell-Taylors.
   While her 24 years old daughter practises at her grand piano,
Mrs. Campbell-Taylor is often painting at the other end of their
ground floor studio. "I can paint better with music as my
companion," she said.
   The mill has been converted attractively. The river swirls a few
yards from the front door and provides just the setting of this
artistic family.
   Mrs. Campbell-Taylor does not like to trade on her husband's
name- he is a Royal Academician- so she uses her maiden name of
Brenda Moore. Specialising in portraits she resumed her profession
five years ago having seen her daughter launched in her own career as
a pianist and teacher.
Won Scholarships
   Her art training started when, at the age of 14, she was sent
for a trial term to the Oxford School of Art. Later she went to the
Brighton School and was awarded a local scholarship. When she was 2
years old she won a leaving scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools.
   One of the first visiting members of the Royal Academy to
instruct her was Mr. Campbell-Taylor who was to become her husband
five years later.
   Rather than branch into commercial art on leaving the Academy,
she became an apprentice to a picture frame maker, and still makes
mounts for her water colours and drawings.
   Although her painting career was interrupted, she helped her
husband and continued to accumulate painting knowledge.
   "You never lose the ability to paint once you have absorbed the
first principles in art- practise <SIC> is not as essential in
painting as it is for instrument playing," she says.
Child Portraits
   On the difference between the professional and the amateur
artist, Mrs. Campbell-Taylor said: "It could not be defined by
income or pay packet.
   "The professional is never satisfied with an easy answer and
believes that nothing is so worth-while as the problem that arouses
all the receptivity, excitement and competence he is capable of
experiencing which tuition has accelerated.
   "For the amateur it is an emotional outlet which can also have
its own monetary value in these days."
   In the studio she has some delightful portraits and drawings of
children, so I asked if she particularly enjoyed this type of work.
   Mrs. Campbell-Taylor replied that while having no preference
for the age of her subject, she did find painting children
particularly interesting and often a challenge. She usually stays
with the family and makes studies of the child when asleep before
attempting the painting. "You really have to get an idea of the
personality and form before you start.
   "It is as exciting and difficult for a child to sit as it is for
the painter to paint.
<END QUOTE>
Clay Modelling
   "The fun of portrait painting," she added, "is in trying to
assess and understand the temperament of the people you are
painting."
   As an artist she has learned a considerable amount from clay
modelling, which she has exhibited as well as paintings- including
one of the anointing of the Queen Mother, then Queen, at the
coronation of George =6- at the Royal Academy.
   And recently Mrs. Campbell-Taylor had two drawings at the Royal
Society of Portrait Painters' Exhibition.
...AND A STUDIO THAT WILL BE LIT BY GLASS DOME
   I MET another artist who will soon be living in a mill- this
time a windmill at Hemingford Grey.
   Mrs. Jeanette Jackson, a London abstract painter who is
currently exhibiting her work in Cambridge, hopes the conversion of
the windmill will be completed by the early autumn.
   The windmill has been admired by Mrs. Jackson since childhood
and many times, like Jimmy Edwards, she has attempted to buy it, at
last being successful.
   It will have a glass dome to let in the light, and the four
floors will give plenty of studio room.
Frame Problem
   The family- she has a son at Trinity and one daughter- will
spend their week-ends at Hemingford Grey, Mrs. Jackson working as an
art teacher in a London school during the week.
   The day I met her she had a problem on her hands. One of her
paintings, 8 ft. by 5 ft. was sent unframed to the Women's
International Art Club's exhibition.
   It came back that morning with a frame, and would not go through
the front or back door.
   Mrs. Jackson is an extraordinary <SIC> prolific painter.
In one year she paints more than 2 pictures, though not all these
survive her critical scrutiny.
Other Interests
   She is 'passionately fond of cooking.' Having lived in
Germany for several years she always cooks their national dishes for
her friends unless they are foreigners- then she always cooks roast
beef and apple pie.
   Her other interest is collecting Victoriana. When she first
started this 25 years ago she bought a Victorian chair for 7s 6d.,
which she is sure will now fetch somewhere in the region of +3.
A SOLDIER WHO TURNED TO POTTERY AT AGE OF 52
Work Of Reychan Exhibited At Heffer Gallery
   THE Heffer Gallery have just opened an exhibition of the
works of Stanislas Reychan, the Polish soldier who began training as a
potter at the age of 52.
   His remarkable success must be due to some extent to heredity-
he is of the fifth generation in a family of potters- but heredity
cannot explain everything.
   Almost everyone must have seen his pieces of pottery sculpture at
some time or another. The shiny little black bulls, with curly
foreheads lowered; the rather pear-shaped Adam and Eve figures sitting
happily under a snake-entwined tree in a pottery Eden- pieces like
these must be familiar to thousands.
   Reychan has exhibited in the Open Air Exhibitions in London, and
for the past six years at the Royal Academy.
   His work has been welcomed as an important modern flowering of
the tradition which produced the exquisite pieces of Bow and Chelsea,
and the curiosities of Staffordshire.
   Reychan's knights in armour, his medieval heroes, classical
personalities, are undeniably works of art of a very vital and
individual kind.
   Their appeal, being modern, is direct and uncomplicated. In
spite of the humour that has gone into a good many of them, they are
not without dignity.
   Two companion pieces, Lion and Unicorn, are rather attractive;
Hercules (taming a lion), Silenus (his arm thrown blissfully over a
barrel), a centaur, executed in unglazed red earthenware, turning to
shoot an arrow back over his shoulder- these are just a few that
catch the eye, among many.
   Their prices, considered against the prices of more conventional
pottery, are certainly not excessive.
   P.O.
Selwyn Mitre Players Good Choice
   SHAKESPEARE'S "Two Gentlemen of Verona," this year's
production by the Selwyn Mitre Players, has emerged as a choice
well-suited to the available talent, and in general commendable for
its boldness, fluency and straight forward interpretation.
   Performed in the College Hall against a dark backcloth, with no
scenery other than an odd chair or table to relieve the bareness of
the stage, it naturally depended entirely upon the acting for its
success.
# 229
<87 TEXT C16>
The Post review of next week's shows
ANOTHER FROM 'SALAD DAYS' STABLE
   THE team behind the longest running musical in the world
("Salad Days") have come up with another musical which goes to the
West End the week after it has finished at the NOTTINGHAM THEATRE
ROYAL. The latest from the pens and pianos of Julian Slade and
Dorothy Reynolds is "Wildest Dreams," due to open at the Vaudeville
on August 3.
   "Wildest Dreams" is set in Nelderham, a country town in
which a girl called Carol, just out of school, meets Mark, a young
reporter sent to write up in satirical terms the town's reactions to
his newspaper's questionnaire. As in "Salad Days," the young
couple have personality and purpose. Carol, though monosyllabic,
rebellious and scruffy in the manner of some of the modern young, has
a strong vision of her character and a determination to preserve it in
the teeth of her aunt's interference. And Mark believes he has it in
him to convert a whole country town.
   Anna Dawson plays the girl. Now 24, she got her first theatrical
chance in a previous Slade-Reynolds musical, "Free as Air," and,
apart from pantomime and repertory experience, has been in
"Marigold" at the Savoy. John Baddeley, who partners her as Mark,
was also in "Free as Air," as well as "Follow That Girl." Aged
27, he is an actor whose experience has varied from repertory at
Birmingham, Sheffield, the Bristol Old Vic and Guildford to a tour in
"The Lilac Domino."
   With Julian Slade at the piano, Miss Reynolds plays the
domineering aunt, who meets a composer who tries to sing his own songs
(Angus Mackay- in private life Miss Reynold's husband). The musical
numbers are by Basil Pattison, and decor by Brian Currah, who recently
designed for "The Caretaker."
   PLAYHOUSE: Third week of "Second Post," a revue of 28
items by various authors, produced by Val May before he leaves for
Bristol Old Vic. Targets range from the familiar skits on "Beat the
Clock" and "The Archers" to the offbeat, with a cast of thirteen
topped by Rhoda Lewis and Arthur Blake.
City Cinemas
   Following the same formula of a tearaway technique compounded
of slapstick and 6double entendre, the sequel to "Dentist in
the Chair" is "Dentist on the Job" at the ABC and
METROPOLE cinemas. In this, the manager of a firm putting out a
new toothpaste (Eric Barker) gets a couple of dentists to endorse it.
It seems a good opportunity for the Dean of King Alfred's Dental
College (likewise Eric Barker) to unload a brace of recently graduated
deadheads, Bob Monkhouse and Ronnie Stevens.
   With dental mechanic Kenneth Connor, just out of gaol, they dream
up schemes to promote the new paste. In the process they meet Shirley
Eaton- in a bubble bath on to which they turn a wind machine.
   Their biggest achievement, however, is when they hear that the
Americans are launching a satellite which will broadcast a tape
recording of goodwill for seven years. Now if a tape extolling the
virtues of their toothpaste could be substituted...?
   Some hardworking man at the Disney studios has counted the spots
on the Dalmatians in "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" at the
ODEON. Each dog wears 32 to 72 spots, depending on which side is
exposed to the viewer- which accounts for 6,469,952 dancing spots.
Which is only right and proper in a 4,,-dollar production
involving 8 miles of drawings, 1, colours and 8 tons of paint.
   The most sophisticated to date of Disney's 53 features, "One
Hundred and One Dalmatians," brings together a human bachelor who
owns a Dalmatian called Pongo and a shapely girl who owns one called
Perdita. It is love at first sight, marriage at first opportunity,
and soon fifteen beautiful puppies are born (to the Dalmatians, that
is). But enter a villainess, Cruella De Vil, rich, cunning and with a
passion for coats made of Dalmatian hides. She dognaps the pups and
puts them with 11 others in a haunted old English manor house.
Scotland Yard is baffled, but the dogs of London get on to the scent.
   With "Gunlight at Sandoval," Tech. Texas Ranger Tom
Tryon avenges death of friend killed trying to prevent bank hold-up.
Dan Duryea.
   It was inevitable that Peter Ustinov should join the exclusive
four-star club by writing, producing, directing and starring in one
film. In "Romanoff and Juliet," at the GAUMONT, he is
literally a four-star general, not to mention also being President and
UN representative of the tiny country of Concordia, so small that
even UN colleagues can't locate it on the map. But the President
wants to keep it that way, knowing that when it is discovered it will
be either swamped with aid or blown OFF the map. Love and
laughter, he feels, engender more happiness than politics or
philanthropy.
   At a meeting of the United Nations he causes pandemonium by
abstaining on an important vote involving an amendment to an amendment
to an amendment, and on his return to Concordia becomes the target for
the Russian ambassador, Romanoff, and the American ambassador,
Moulsworth, both of whom insist on giving his country aid. Keeping a
wary eye on each other, they woo Concordia- while their respective
offspring (John Gavin and Sandra Dee) are breaking down international
barriers with a spot of wooing themselves. Technicolor.
   With "A Date with Death," Gerald Mohr tracks policeman's
killer.
   In the roaring expansion of the West a century ago, no town is
more terrorised than "Warlock" (ELITE) where the people have
been reduced to a handful of cowardly citizens as one sheriff after
another is murdered or run out of town in the monthly beat-up the
place receives from a bunch of cowboys from the San Pablo ranch. The
brawlers, drinkers and killers include Richard Widmark, who has grown
to hate these descents on the defenceless town since he took part in
the massacre of harmless Mexicans. In desperation of ever getting a
new sheriff who can protect them by law, the townsfolk hire Henry
Fonda who will be able to use his fast gunplay and be above the law.
Accompanied by crippled gambler Anthony Quinn, the new Marshal
arrives and makes his mark. Sickened by all the lawless killing,
Widmark throws in his lot with him. Dorothy Malone. CinemaScope,
Tech.
   With "Between Heaven and Hell," CinemaScope, Terry Moore
feels that the feudal attitude husband Robert Wagner has towards the
sharecroppers on his land will one day cause trouble. And when he is
called into the army, it does.
   MECHANICS: "There Was a Crooked Man." Ex army
explosives expert Norman Wisdom is persuaded to join gang of
safecrackers by the argument that if there weren't any criminals, all
the clergymen, police and probation officers would be out of work.
After a few successes, the gang disguise themselves as American army
officers and work a gigantic swindle by blowing up an entire town.
Susannah York. Alfred Marks.
   With "Trapeze," crippled and embittered by a fall, circus
star Burt Lancaster refuses to teach American acrobat Tony Curtis the
dangerous triple somersault. Whirling round in the circus tent, they
solve an emotional triangle involving Gina Lollobrigida.
   In Japan, apparently, they play something called "The Cola
Game," described at the SCALA. A circle of boys and girls
place a Coca-Cola bottle on its side and spin it. When it stops, the
couple to whom it points must make love in front of the others which
explains why Coca-Cola sells very well in Japan. A pretty young co-ed
named Junko gets into the game and thus meets a youngster with whom
she has an affair. Discovering herself pregnant she has an abortion,
but her lover couldn't care less and goes off on a ski-ing trip with
the girl in the next apartment. Junko moves out of his flat and goes
to live with a young architect whom she respects greatly and who feels
sorry for her. In this way, it says here, "she experiences the true
meaning of love and happiness." X-certificate.
   Phillipe Lemarre has been the scapegoat of some doubtful pals in
"Les Clandestines" at the MOULIN ROUGE. Sent to gaol for
two years, he has quixotically, refused to clear himself by betraying
his colleagues, and, when he gets out, finds his grandfather has been
driven to suicide by a bunch of crooks. Now there is a thriving
call-girl racket operating from the old man's apartment which they
have taken over. With the help of blonde mannequin Nicole Courcel,
the released prisoner pieces the story together.
   With "The Parasites," Jeanne Moreau is a streetgirl
forever searching for real love in Montmartre. When her protector is
betrayed to the police she gets entangled with other shadowy creatures
of the underworld. Both films X-certificate.
The Post review of next week's shows
JESSIE AND RALPH TWINKLE AGAIN
   TWO veterans of the twenties and thirties- one remembered for
her vivacity in musicals, and the other for his assinities <SIC>
in a series of world famous farces- visit Nottingham next week as a
team. Jessie Matthews and Ralph Lynn come to the THEATRE ROYAL in
a farce called "Port in a Storm" by Rex Howard Arundel.
   The ex "Cochran young lady" and the monocled "ass" of so
many pieces of Ben Travers at the Aldwych are cast respectively as a
crime novelist and her old flame. She hides him at home when he is on
the run from his virago of a wife until she discovers that she is also
harbouring a stolen diamond necklace. The writer has a house staff of
ex-convicts to keep her in touch with the way of the underworld, and
the farce's ingredients include a long-lost son, a runaway secretary
and a lock-picking butler. The play is on its pre-London tour.
   Jessie Matthews made her first appearance on the stage in 1917
when she was ten years old, and took to revue five years later. She
made her first hit while still in her teens, understudying Gertrude
Lawrence in America, and when she came back to London she twinkled for
many years as C. B. Cochran's brightest discoveries <SIC> in
shows that ranged from "This Year of Grace" and "One Damn Thing
After Another" to the famous "Evergreen" which, as well as being
made into a film, ran for two years. Miss Matthews last came to the
Nottingham Theatre Royal in 1955 when she and her daughter Katie
played in Coward's "Private Lives."
NEARLY 8
   Now a lively 79, Ralph Lynn has been going strong on the stage
since 19 (when he appeared in "King of Terrors" at Wigan), and
about 1925 was up to his debonair tricks at the old repertory theatre
in Hyson Green, Nottingham, when the Grand was a going concern. He,
Tom Walls and Robertson Hare made the name of the Aldwych synonymous
with farce through such classics of foolery as "Cuckoo in the
Nest," "Thark" and "Rookery Nook."
   Mr. Lynn and his bald sparring partner appeared at the Theatre
Royal in 1952 in the premiere of a later Ben Travers farce, "Wild
Horses." They were together again two years later in Peter Jones's
"The Party Spirit." Mr. ("Oh, calamity!") Hare can be seen
again in Nottingham, by the way, on October 16, when he plays in the
tour of "The Bride Come <SIC> Back" with Jack Hulbert and
Cicely Courtneidge.
   PLAYHOUSE: Fourth and positively final week of the revue
"Second Post" twenty-eight items of song, sketch and dance by
various authors. Two of them have just been sold for the new West End
revue "The Lord Chamberlain Regrets"- "Lady of the Camellias,"
in which Rhoda Lewis sings 6a la Dietrich, and "Cries of Old
London" involving three decrepit bellringers and a stomach-heaving
"sick" joke.
City Cinemas
   A ten-year-old opus by Alfred Hitchcock is re-issued at the
ABC and METROPOLE- his "Strangers on a Train." A long
train journey often prompts complete strangers to strike up a casual
conversation. They will talk about the weather, politics or crime.
But it's rare for two people to talk about murder on a personal
level.
# 213
<88 TEXT C17>
FILM PAGE
by F. Leslie Winters
Hollywood decides that 1961 won't be a Super Colossal year
   HAVING looked back on 196 last week, it is now time to think
of 1961 and the films it will bring.
   As far as Hollywood activities go, my correspondent there says
that, after preliminary box-office results of "The Alamo" and
"Spartacus," there is a big drop in super-colossal productions and
emphasis trends to intimate little pictures with Sex as the big motif.
This follows the invasion of European films in America.
   Here I have selected 25 coming British films which look promising
of their types.
   A picture which must strictly be regarded as American yet which
has a British star and director is "Lawrence of Arabia," with Peter
O'Toole and made by David "River Kwai" Lean. Our own Michael
Anderson has also made the drama-thriller "The Naked Edge" with
American Gary Cooper and British/ U.S. Deborah Kerr. Peter
Finch, for whom 196 was triumphant, will be seen in a political drama
"No Love for Johnnie," while Peter Sellers stars and directs a big
business drama "Mr. Topaze."
SOPHISTICATED
   Richard Todd will be seen in a sophisticated comedy and a war
drama- "Don't Bother to Knock" and "The Long and the Short and
the Tall."
   Another star who is also directing is Nigel Patrick and his film
is "Johnny Nobody," with Aldo Ray and Yvonne Mitchell as well.
We also have such extremes as "Carry On Regardless," with a
cast you could pretty well guess, and "Macbeth," with Maurice
Evans and Judith Anderson.
   Stanley Baker will be on the wrong side of the law for a change
in "The Criminal," and so will Michael Craig in "Payroll."
Crime will also be the theme of "Frightened City," with John
Gregson and Herbert Lom- a vice 6expose.
   Horror plus science fiction are scheduled with "The Children
of Light" (uncast) and the film of the TV success
"Quatermass and the Pit," which would be unthinkable without
Andre Morell. "The Phantom of the Opera" (once Lon Chaney's
triumph) will also be remade over here- the third edition, I think.
   Back to comedies- Leslie Phillips, James Robertson Justice and
Eric Sykes combine with "Very Important Person"; Jimmy Edwards
will give us "Nearly a Nasty Accident"; Ian Carmichael and
Janette Scott co-star in "Double Bunk," and Terry-Thomas will
be with Janette for "His and Hers."
HEART-THROB
   There is much prophecy that the new heart-throb of the year
will be Warren Beatty, over here to star with Vivien Leigh in a sordid
drama called "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone." Warren is
engaged to Joan Collins. Another American here is Susan Strasberg, to
co-star with Ronald Lewis and Ann Todd in a thriller, "Taste of
Fear."
   British George Sanders stays on to co-star with Peter Cushing
in "Time of the Fire." To end with another contrast, we shall
have Max Bygraves in a serious film about slum school life, "Spare
the Rod," and Virginia McKenna returning to the screen for a tense
drama set in Sweden- "Two Living, One Dead," in which she will
co-star with husband Bill Travers.
This is D-Day- in four different versions
   NO one seems to know if we are going to have two major films
about D-Day or not. Certainly Howarth's book "Dawn of D-Day" has
been purchased for filming. But Darryl Zanuck is first with details
about his "Longest Day," by Cornelius Ryan. He will start
production on June 6 on the original Omaha beach, Normandy, on
sequences to cost as much as an average minor epic.
   The story is in four parts, each with its own director, telling
the same story from the British, American, French and German points of
view. I would like Monty's view of Zanuck's statement: "The theme
will be the stupidity of war. The Allies made every conceivable
physical mistake but, fortunately for us, the Germans made more.
Unbelievable blunders on both sides took place." How the Americans
love to debunk!
   
   A PITY this country hasn't anything comparable with the
Hollywood Motion Picture Museum. A big new building is now planned to
house nearly two million pounds worth of equipment dating to the
pioneer days. It will be built opposite the Hollywood Bowl (famous
arena and scene of spectacles, music and pageantry) and the American
film industry is to lay out +35, on exhibits and +18, on
equipping sound stages for demonstrations of film production.
VERSATILE JOE
by JOHN GORDON
   JOE BROWN, former white-haired comedian of the ITV
beat show "Wham," has really hit a gusher. Just before starting
out on a tour of one-nighters- in West Bromwich this week- he
recorded two numbers, "Shine" and "The Switch" (Pye 7N15322).
On the top half he chants away happily; the backer is purely
instrumental.
   This splendid disc proves Joe's versatility, which is going to
make him a top star this year- you'll see.
   
   Bill Bramwell's "Candid Camera Theme" (Decca F1139) is a most
unusual combination of guitar, piccolo and gimmick vocal. The other
half, "Frederika," brings a more orthodox musical combination into
the picture with this slow, almost haunting, bluesy piece. Two good
sides.
FILM PAGE
by F. Leslie Winters
The man with a bent halo
BUT THE LIFE, LOVES AND MUSIC OF FRANZ LISZT ADD UP TO A CINEMATIC
TREAT
   THEY say (and I don't quite know who "they" are) that
audiences won't accept so eagerly these days the sort of films which
were tremendously successful about 15 to 2 years ago.
   I have heard film executives express doubts whether a "Seventh
Veil" type of theme would capture people's fancy today in the
extraordinary way it once did.
   Many of you will have a warm regard for that immensely popular
"Song to Remember," in which Cornel Wilde played Chopin- made in
wartime and which captured people's hearts as well as ears.
SHUNNED?
   Can this sort of success be repeated in these times? Or does a
mixture of costume, classical music and courtly manner seem likely to
be shunned by audiences said to be horror and crime addicts?
   I should be sorry to think so, for "Song Without End," which
tells some of the story of Franz Liszt, is a film worth going to for
its music, its decor, its acting, and its elegance.
   Those classical composers of the great musical era are
certainties for the script-writers. Their private lives, mainly, were
as wildly romantic and as full of drama as any novelist's inventions.
   Even so, there is usually a tendency to soften the outlines,
polish up the bent haloes, and omit a few facts.
   On the whole, "Song Without End" is fairly accurate. It is
marred by a few American accents and expressions, and is reticent
about Liszt's long affair with a Russian princess. Despite the detail
into which this part of the film goes, it doesn't even whisper the
fact that they lived together for many years in a strange atmosphere
of passion, piety and regret.
   But jarring moments are remarkably few in the two hours and ten
minutes it takes to cover Liszt's career from the age of 26 until he
went into a monastery.
   The film's inference at the end is that the composer has found
peace and will never emerge again. In fact, he merely took a minor
order and toured Europe as a white-haired and pretty gay old man.
   The picture also merely includes two women in his life (from the
many who caught his eye)- French Countess Marie, with whom he ran off
to Chamonix and whom he deserts to start another concert tour,
simultaneously with one roving eye on Russian Princess Carolyne
Sayn-Wittgenstein. She has a jealous husband and the protection of
the Czar- formidable adversaries.
FRUSTRATION
   The personal side of the story shows the frustration and
bitterness of the discarded mistress, a beautiful piece of acting from
France's Genevieve Page, and the passion-battling-religion of the
entranced princess, played with the face of Ava Gardner and the
coolness of a real princess by Capucine, lovely model with no acting
experience before this.
   The musical side ranges from Chopin to Wagner, Beethoven to Bach,
Handel, Mendelssohn, Verdi, and Schumann. All this played by Jorge
Bolet, but magnificently co-ordinated with the hands of Dirk Bogarde,
who makes of Liszt an irresponsible but rather lovable puppy-dog
rather than a dare-devil, philandering genius.
   I do so hope that the pattern of entertainment has not changed so
much that a worthy film of this type fails. Perhaps we shall be
surprised and Birmingham's Odeon will be packed this week. It
deserves to be.
An experiment in the shadows
   IT is strange that a Hollywood actor should get the idea for
a film in a New York students' loft on January 14, 1957, and a few
months later, with money borrowed and money donated after a TV
interview, make this film in the streets of that city and then fail to
find anyone in the United States who would show it. That is why John
Cassavetes came to England to find someone who would take a risk on
something new.
   It was the directors of newly-constructed British Lion, who have
got faith in fresh faces, talent, ideas and letting people try them
out, who saw "Shadows" one evening and immediately offered
Cassavetes the money for world distribution rights. I feel sure they
won't regret it, from the prestige or financial angles.
   This film, now at the Futurist, Birmingham, was made with a
16mm camera in 42 days and nights in New York marquees, in disguised
dust-bins, from trucks, in subway entrances and restaurant windows.
   For six weeks the actors, all unknown to the general public,
lived together and discussed the story outline.
   Each fully understood the situations planned and the nature of
the characters (which bear the same names as the actors), and when the
camera started they just talked- without a script, as the words came
in their minds or were provoked by others.
   The result, if not completely satisfying (some scenes do appear a
little contrived and tentatively scripted), is remarkable.
   There is a coloured girl who pretends to sophistication but is
horrified at her seduction; her trumpet-playing brother who finally
stops his aimless existence after a slum beat-up; the clash and inner
concern of the colour problem. No one is very good or very bad.
   It may not be a film for everyone, but it is an experiment that
almost comes off and is, undoubtedly, of importance in the technique
of film-making.
TV TOPICS
by ROBBIE ASHLEY
Secrets of the 'Candid Camera'
   SO often have I heard suggestions that "Candid Camera" is
"rigged" that I decided to find out just how they go about
eavesdropping on the public.
   An ABC spokesman was quite adamant in refuting the charge of
"rigging" of sequences and employing actors in the role of Mr.
and Mrs. Public.
   The only professionals employed on the show are Jonathan Routh
(its originator) and sometimes Bill Bramwell (the musical director).
Obviously they are required to "set up" the victim.
HIDDEN
   Cameras, in soundproof cabinets, are hidden behind curtains, in
cupboards with the rear door left ajar; and for street scenes the
camera often shoots through the windows of a plain van parked nearby.
   Tiny radio microphones are dotted all over the place- Routh
often wears a lapel microphone which only a person in the know could
detect. An aerial runs down the trouser leg from the radio
microphone, and the speech is picked up by a receiving aerial in the
next room, under the counter, or just around the corner- wherever the
scene is set.
SEQUENCES
   Several sequences are shot in one day. For instance, in a
hardware shop Routh asked a woman to fill in a form to obtain a
licence to buy saucepan patches. Later, still in the same shop, he
began selling left-handed teacups to a gullible public.
   Thousands of feet of film are shot every week, and a tremendous
amount is wasted. Sometimes a stunt does not come off; sometimes
Routh is recognised; and often nothing at all happens.
# 28
<END>
<89 TEXT D1>
   With so many problems to solve, it would be a great help to
select some one problem which might be the key to all the others, and
begin there. If there is any such key-problem, then it is undoubtedly
the problem of the unity of the Gospel. There are three views of the
Fourth Gospel which have been held.
   Some critics, not many, argue that the Gospel is the product of
one mind and one hand. For them the problems of the Fourth Gospel
exist only in the mind of its detractors. The difficulties which are
felt by modern critics are due to the book being read and examined as
it was never meant to be. There is some truth in this contention, and
one must always remember that no book of the New Testament was written
with the special interests of a modern critic in mind. Many of the
questions which the searching scrutiny of the textual critic raises
were of no interest to the author of the Gospel. However, this kind
of immaculate conception of John is difficult to maintain in the face
of the contrasts with the other Gospels and of the striking unanimity
of scholars who have detected dislocations in the text. That the
Gospel is homogeneous is the orthodox view of the Roman Church.
Loisy, who could not accept this view, was excommunicated in 197
after a Biblical commission had answered three questions on the Fourth
Gospel, and the Pope made their three answers articles of faith. The
first article affirmed the authorship of the apostle John. The second
said that the problems which arise from the comparisons with the
Synoptics can be reasonably solved by paying due regard to the time
and plan and to the different public for which, or against which, the
author wrote. The third article excluded any allegorical
interpretation of the Gospel.
   There is a whole group of theories which attempt to explain the
problems of the Fourth Gospel by explanations based on assumed textual
dislocations. The present state of the Gospel is the result of an
accident-prone history. The original was written on a roll, or codex,
which fell into disorder or was accidentally damaged. An editor, who
was not the author, made what he could of the chaos by placing the
fragments, or sheets, or pages, in order. Most of those who expound a
theory of textual dislocation take it for granted that the Gospel was
written entirely by one author before the disturbance took place but a
few leave it open to suppose that the original book had been revised
even before the upheaval.
   The ingenuity of the theories is impressive and is the best
argument against them. If the history of the Gospel has been as
fortuitous as they suppose, rational criticism is impossible. The
critic hopes to discover order, sequence and purpose. The textual
dislocators recount tales of disorder, of transposition, and of the
wayward impulse of the editor, who at one moment compels admiration
for his spiritual insight and at the next is rolling dice.
   Fortunately, the introduction of chance into these schemes makes
it possible to test them statistically. The result confirms the
impression that ingenuity is their only virtue. One must not pass
over the derangement theories without acknowledgment of the truth
which they contain. The exponent of such a theory has seen some
regularities in the structure of the Gospel. The regularities are not
simple nor are they continuous. The critic then assumes that the
underlying order was based on the sheets, or pages, on which the
original was written, and that the disorder was due to some
rearrangements of those sheets or pages. To dismiss the
textual-derangement theories out of hand is to discard some acute
observation because it is incomplete and has been wrongly developed.
   The third type of theory would account for the difficulties of
the Fourth Gospel in terms of its having been, at one time, a shorter
book than it now is. In the enlargement of this little Gospel some
movements of the text took place.
   The Commentator has long been a leading exponent of such a view.
In his commentary on John, he sets out in detail the case for
enlargement. A theory of this kind offers considerable advantages.
It can explain the early substratum undoubtedly present in the
Gospel, and yet also account for passages which are not easily
reconciled with early and accurate knowledge of the background of
Jesus's life and work. It can offer a reason for the textual changes
which is neither chance nor accident- two terms which too often cover
the absence of any reason.
   The one real weakness of the Commentator's case is that, in
common with all his colleagues, he has not, until now, been able to
exhibit exactly how this enlargement was effected nor has he been able
to explain the textual movements by showing that such changes are part
of a simple and coherent plan. To understand how this is possible it
is necessary to examine the text of the Gospel.
Chapter 3
The Text of the Fourth Gospel
   THE Fourth Gospel was almost certainly written in Greek. A
modern text of the Gospel represents the work of generations of
scholars who have compared the many manuscripts of John and worked out
the version which is most likely to have been the original wording.
It is not possible to establish any one text with absolute precision.
The most convenient one for the authors has been the text of A.
Souter. In this version of the text the Fourth Gospel is printed as
just over 1, different nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech
occurring 15,695 times in their different grammatical forms. There
are other texts which could have been used, and (as shown in Table
=1) it is not a matter of the greatest importance which text is used.
<TABLE>
   At first sight the difference between Souter and the other texts
is rather large. But the British text includes the paragraph
=7.53-=8.11, the Woman taken in Adultery, and this accounts for 178
words out of 279, which is the difference between the 15,695 words of
Souter's text and the 15,416 of Nestle's. The omission or inclusion
of this paragraph is a matter of editorial decision rather than
scribal emendation, and it must be included in the Gospel and studied,
even if the result of the study were to decide that the paragraph
should then be excluded. Thus the difference between Souter's text
and Nestle's is 11 words. If the true content of the text of the
Gospel is taken as the average of the two figures, then the difference
is 11 words in 15,555, a figure on which the textual critics may be
congratulated. One can assume that Souter's version of the Fourth
Gospel represents 99 per cent of the original text. Of the remainder
not much is of consequence, for the variant readings often concern
verbal tenses, or word order, or the insertion or omission of
qualifying clauses, not many of which affect the content or meaning of
the text to any great extent.
   Souter's text is not identical with the original of John. The
Gospel would have been written by hand in individual letters; block
capitals are the nearest equivalent today. There would be no spaces
between words such as we are accustomed to see and punctuation would
be kept to a minimum. The comma, the full stop, the colon, and the
interrogation mark are all modern additions to the text. The chapter
and verse divisions of both Old and New Testaments date from the
Reformation. The chapters were marked by Stephen Langton, an
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the verses by the Parisian printer
Stephanus, who produced the 1546 printed edition of the New Testament
in Greek.
   The only punctuation which the originals might have had is
paragraphos markings. The end of a section of the text was
indicated by a little bar drawn under the first two or three letters
of the line at which the section finished. The bar was the commonest
marking, but others were also used. Dots sometimes served in place of
the bar, and there are cases where spacing is used as it is now used
to mark a paragraph ending.
   Frequently paragraphos markings were omitted. C. H.
Roberts is of the opinion that in the original of the Fourth Gospel
some markings would be used, although which, it is impossible to say.
Professor E. G. Turner is inclined to take the view that the
original of the Gospel would be unmarked.
   The original of the Gospel, whether written on a roll or codex,
whether paragraphed or not, would be laid out in columns. This is the
invariable practice of ancient manuscripts. A common size of column
would hold about one third of a page of Souter's print. The writing
instrument was a stylus, a wedge-shaped pen cut from a reed. The ink
was a mixture of carbon black in water with gum Arabic as a solvent.
The "paper" would be papyrus or parchment, and the form of the
book a roll or codex.
   If, twenty years ago, one had asked a scholar what form the
original of the Gospel would have taken, he would have answered,
without hesitation, that the book would have been a papyrus roll. The
reason why he would have been so confident is, simply, that the great
majority of surviving classical manuscripts are on papyrus rolls. To
make a book of this kind, sheets of papyrus were glued edge to edge
until a single sheet, often twenty to twenty-five feet wide, had been
made. The edge of this sheet was attached to a wooden dowel and the
sheet wound round this central pin. The roll made a simple and
serviceable book. It was robust- the number which have survived the
centuries is ample evidence of this- and it was easily stored. It
had two disadvantages. It was generally a single-sided form of book,
and it was not an easy form of book in which to find a reference.
This last objection might have had some weight in ecclesiastical
circles. In his Natural History, =13.=11-=12, the elder Pliny
tells of the use of papyrus in roll-making. As Pliny was killed in
the eruption of Vesuvius which overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii in
A.D. 79, his information is contemporaneous with the New
Testament.
   The other form of book was the codex. In this the sheets were
bound together down one edge much as they are in modern books.
Normally the sheets were bound in groups, called quires, and the
quires were stitched together to make a book. A common size of
papyrus codex page is ten inches by eight inches, the size of quarto
paper today, and one hundred sheets make a large book. There are
great variations in the codex form; some have single-sheet quires, but
most have multi-sheet quires. Some codices were made up of double
sheets folded and stitched through the fold. The difference between
the codex and the roll is always clear. Compared to the roll the
codex was more economical; it was generally written on both sides; and
it was a much easier book in which to find a textual reference.
Against these advantages the codex was fragile and might be bulky.
   It is sometimes possible to tell whether or not a particular text
was written on a roll or a codex. Rolls were prepared for writing,
but any papyrus left unused at the end could be cut off. If the text
was longer than the roll, a sheet could easily be glued on. The verso
of the roll was blank, and one cannot think of an author, Mark for
example, sending out his Gospel lacking the ending, while one whole
side of his roll was unused.
   The codex form was not so accommodating. Even in the case of the
single-sheet quire, an extra sheet glued on might have to be gummed on
over the binding, or the whole codex rebound.
# 28
<9 TEXT D2>
=1
WORSHIP AND PRAISE
Architecture
   THE history of Congregational worship and of its habits of
praise is a complex study for which many more pages would be required
than we have here at our disposal. A simple but serviceable way of
presenting its development is to invite the reader to consider three
images: that of a seventeenth-century meeting-house, that of a
nineteenth-century urban church, and that of a church built during the
middle decades of the twentieth century. Consider, for example, the
meeting-house at Old Meeting, Norwich, or Swanland, East Yorkshire, or
Tadley, Hants; or any of those whose appearance is preserved only in
faded prints in the vestries of more modern churches; then consider
Union Church, Brighton, or Elgin Place, Glasgow, or Westminster
Chapel, London, or Richmond Hill, Bournemouth; then thirdly, consider
the new churches at Banstead, Surrey, Pilgrim Church at Plymouth, or
(on a larger scale) Southernhay, Exeter, or Eltham, Kent, or
Leatherhead, Surrey.
   Whatever particular churches the reader holds in his imagination,
the conclusion he will surely draw is that Congregational worship can
be expressed in the progression through three phases- Family,
Audience and Community. In any given place the emphasis may be on any
one of these phases: in any given building you may well find a blend
of two or all of them, or a kind of halted transition from one to
another. But very broadly it can be said that the period from the
beginning to 175 is the 'family' period: that from 175 to 19,
the 'audience' period; and that from 19 to the present, the
'community' period. To paraphrase these categories: Congregational
worship comformable <SIC> with the Savoy Declaration and the
principles of classic Congregationalism is family prayers: that
comformable <SIC> with the Evangelical Revival and the new
conurbations of industrial society is oratory: and that comformable
<SIC> with modern socialism (I use the word somewhat liberally) is
community.
   Your meeting-house has the aspect of a dwelling-house, and its
architecture is domestic in the Georgian style: it has large square
windows which are later diversified by that very characteristic design
of a rectangle surmounted by a semi-circle which the later
meeting-house made into its own kind of ecclesiastical architecture.
Within, the pulpit and table are usually in the centre of the longer
side of the rectangle, and nobody sits far from the minister. Within
and without the emphasis is on utility and not on ceremony. The pews
are fairly closely packed, and the best use is made of a fairly
restricted space. A gallery quite often is added to make use of space
vertically as well as horizontally. The technique of speech
appropriate to such a building does not demand a high pitch of voice;
reasonably careful enunciation and a moderate voice are all that are
needed, and the very long discourses which were beloved of classic
Dissenters could be delivered, and presumably listened to, in
tolerable comfort.
   The contrast between this kind of building and the older of those
buildings which are now mostly in use by Congregationalists is
enormous. Very often, as the faded vestry prints testify, a meeting
house was demolished in the nineteenth century to make way for a
larger church. Now it is always assumed that this larger church was
built in order to accommodate a larger congregation, or to minister to
a rapidly growing district. That is only a part of the truth, because
it must be noted that the larger church was never built in imitation
of the style of the earlier one. In your new church you placed the
pulpit centrally, but at the end of the church; the congregation now
faced down the rectangle's longer dimension, and from an appreciable
number of its members the preacher was remote. Were practical
necessities the only consideration, a larger meeting-house of the same
proportions would have met the need. It was never in fact constructed
so.
   What mattered to the nineteenth-century Congregationalists was
that they must needs express the spirit of success and enterprise
which the Evangelical Revival, the Missionary movement, and the
possibilities of reaching much larger numbers of people locally had
kindled in them. Therefore their buildings were not only larger but
more eloquent: towers or spires suggested aspiration and domination
over surrounding buildings; gothic arches in doors and windows
suggested their conviction that a meeting house must 'look like a
church'. And that tradition of large-scale evangelistic preaching
which was already well established by 185 (which was the first year
of a peak-decade in Congregational church building) made the idea of
meeting-house intimacy give way in the minds of the designers to that
of weighty and rhetorical preaching, with a certain amount of
attendant ceremony. Nineteenth-century Congregational churches are in
themselves ceremonious buildings. The space is still used with
puritan thrift, and large congregations can be packed into the pews.
It is still assumed that the proper postures for a congregation at
worship are either standing or sitting; room need not be left to
accommodate the kneeling posture for prayer. But from outside the
church 'looks like a church', and from within, with its large
pulpit or even rostrum in the centre, and its Table dwarfed by the
enlarged building and by the enlarged pulpit, it proclaims the primacy
of the preached Word. The fact that about the middle of the
nineteenth century the fashion for large church organs in Britain was
just beginning (the Great Exhibition of 1851 had a good deal to do
with that) brought about the familiar and somewhat aesthetically
distressing adornment that is now almost inseparable from buildings of
this kind- the pattern of organ-pipes behind the pulpit and directly
in the focus of the congregation's visual attention. It has to be
said that while this was, to the eye, most offensive, the organ
builder usually found that in a Dissenting church his instrument had
far better 'speaking space', and was consequently heard to better
advantage, than when it was tucked into a transept in some ancient
parish church.
   The modern Congregational church differs as widely from that of
185 as does the middle-period one from the meeting house. The
reasons are quite simple. In modern times the social activities of
the church take a more significant share in the church's and
minister's time than they formerly did, and must therefore be allotted
a more significant share of the church's space. In your 185 church
you not infrequently find- especially in the North of England- a
dramatic contrast between the sumptuous appointments of the building
itself (and not infrequently, of the minister's vestry), and the
inhuman barrack-like living conditions in the 'church rooms'.
These are sometimes actually placed underneath the church building:
if not there, they are huddled behind or alongside in an apologetic
heap. By contrast, your full-scale church 'plant' of today makes
the Sanctuary only the centre-piece of a systematic group of
buildings. In consequence of this- and not only because funds are
too scarce to permit pretentious architecture- your modern
Congregational church is much more modest in its outward deportment
than was that of your great-grandfather. But along with it are many
buildings whose social significance is unmistakable. Too seldom is it
possible to erect a complete system of buildings: but in such cases it
is always urged on the architect that provision must be made for
social activities, youth clubs, departmental children's worship,
week-night meetings, and so forth: and when nothing better can be
achieved, the new church becomes a dual-purpose building,
accommodating the ancillary activities under the same roof, or in
extreme cases in the same room, as the public worship.
   One thing, however, all modern 'sanctuaries' have in common.
There is not, as there was in the Victorian church, any attempt to
provide seating for a large crowd of worshippers. Not only is the
building fairly small: its floor-space is not used up to anything like
the same extent. The restful effect of bare space, especially at the
front of the church, has now been recognized and admitted. Chairs,
symbols of congregational adaptability, have replaced in many places
the solid and immovable pews, which are equally symbols of the local
rootedness of classic and late-puritan Congregationalism. A central
aisle often enhances the impression of spaciousness, and the new
ceremonious regard for the Communion Table, brought by the
contemporary sacramental revival, has usually caused the removal of
the pulpit to the side of the church. The 'long' rather than the
'square' shape is still usually preferred, and there is plenty of
evidence still of that half-sentimental aping of the Establishment
which caused so much confusion in the architecture of the larger
churches of the period 19-3. It is too much to say that now a new
sense of beauty has overtaken our congregations: but the positive gain
is in a modesty and simplicity of demeanour which deny directly the
chief vice of Victorianism, which was not so much ugliness as
pretentiousness.
   There are, of course, many existing examples of churches which
hardly fall tidily within any of these three categories. Carrs Lane,
Birmingham, for example, though of massive size and accommodation,
retains a fairly 'square' ground plan and an austere un-spired
exterior. St James's, Newcastle, another famous 'down-town'
church, combines a fairly square plan with an unusual sense of dignity
and ceremony imparted by the use of fairly massive pillars and an
imaginative dispersal of the pews radially from the central focus of
the pulpit. The oval experiment at Wellingborough, though over-large,
was clearly an attempt to reproduce on a large scale something of the
openness of the meeting house. Bromley, Kent, of course, with its
seven-sided plan, is the most impressive of all modern attempts to
recapture the 'meeting house' shape and integrate it with
progressive church-thinking; for there the pulpit stands on a large
platform in the middle of one of the 'long sides'- which is itself
composed of three planes set at wide angles to one another, while the
congregation is arranged to move out from the pulpit towards each of
the other four sides, again arranged at very wide angles.
   Redland Park, Bristol, though opened only in 1957, has a fairly
traditional appearance, being large, long, centre-aisled and
side-pulpited but with no features especially eloquent of new trends.
The Church of the Peace of God, Oxted (1936), built to a cross-shaped
pattern, could hardly be less like a meeting-house, and is very
ceremonious in its demeanour: and its 'community' buildings, such
as they are (pleasant but small) suggest that the energetic community
life of a new area is hardly looked for. Indeed, there is usually a
difference between the new church built in a new housing estate and
the new church built to replace an old one on or near the old site:
this is understandable and proper, though imagination has sometimes
failed at crucial points either, as at Stowmarket, by interrupting the
domestic architecture of a pleasant village street by a somewhat
over-eloquent modern elevation, or, as in some extension-experiments,
by the inadequate provision of ancillary halls and rooms or the
ill-considered siting of the whole plant.
   But the pattern is in general clear enough: and it is but one
aspect of a pattern of development that can be seen in the habits of
worship of the various ages of Congregationalism.
Worship
   In its classic days there was enough of the Anabaptist and
enough of the Quaker in most Congregationalists to ensure that any
kind of fixed liturgy would be entirely unwelcome. When 'family
prayers' was the prevailing 6ethos, worship-books of any kind
were unnecessary, and would have been thought an intrusion. The
piping-hot devotion of the Brownists needed no such things; nor did
the crisis-outlook of the persecuted Independents. This is quite
apart from the conviction that worship-books were in general a popish
device, and that the Book of Common Prayer was the cause of all their
sorrows.
   In the eighteenth century, although Dissent settled down to
establish itself and soon became well able to look after its own
interests, there was little inclination to revise these convictions.
# 28
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3. gain
   The word is used nine times in the book and belongs to the
world of commerce, meaning surplus or credit balance. Life, says
Qoheleth, pays no dividends.
4. all the toil at which he toils
   The word for toil is also used of sorrow and vexation. The
emphasis here is not on the physical labour but on the frustrating
nature of it when the end purpose is not known. This is the problem
of communication in the modern industrial world.
3. under the sun
   The phrase is used some twenty-nine times in this book but not
elsewhere in the Old Testament. It is parallel to 'under heaven'
(cf. Ex. 17.14; Deut. 9.14) and 'upon the earth' (cf.
Gen. 8.17). It means simply 'alive'.
5. hastens to the place where it rises
   Qoheleth notes that the progress of the sun is an illusion.
The end of the hastening is to be back where it started. The
original for HASTENS means to gasp or pant, and is used of
childbirth pangs (Isa. 42.14) and the Psalmist's longing for the
commandments of the Law (Ps. 119.131). The figure of the sun as a
participant in a race is familiar, and even before the Exile a passage
in =2 Kings 23.11 suggests a knowledge of it. The thought fits
Qoheleth's position precisely. The finishing line is continually
found to be but the prelude to the starting post- the sun gets
nowhere!
6. The wind blows... the wind returns
   This verse contains the same Hebrew word four times and is
translated BLOWS, GOES ROUND, GOES ROUND AND ROUND, RETURNS ON ITS
CIRCUITS. The sheer monotony of repetition is conveyed more
strongly in the use of the same root and expresses admirably the
futility that haunts Qoheleth.
7. the sea is not full
   This represents work and activity that cannot hope to be
completed since the sea will never be too full!
8. the place where the streams flow
   The references is <SIC> to 'the underworld, which was
thought to be the source both of the fresh-water springs and of the
salt-water oceans'.
9. the eye is not satisfied... nor the ear filled
   There is no lack of sensations for these organs to be occupied
with but there is no significance in what they experience. The word
for SATISFIED is used of hunger and appetite. There is food
enough but the hunger never grows less.
1. there is nothing new under the sun
   The complaint is deeper than a demand for novelty. It is the
lack of an advance in natural phenomena that appals. The verse may be
compared with Pss. 8 and 14 to bring out the gulf between viewing
the physical world as a soulless process and viewing it sacramentally.
11. there is no remembrance
   The full force of this verse is only to be seen when the
significance of the act of remembering in the Hebrew mind is
recognized. The act means more than the recalling of past events.
The very personality of a man continues into the present through his
being remembered. There is an element of present reality in
remembering- the past is re-presented. To say there is no
remembrance would mean spiritual annihilation. Hence the frequency of
the biblical injunction to look at the past and remember. (Cf.
Ex. 13.3; 2.8; Deut. 5.15; Isa. 51.1-3; also =1 Cor. 11.25.)
THE SEARCH FOR THE SUPREME GOOD
1.12-2.26
   Under the pseudonym of Solomon, Qoheleth outlines a number of
quests or even experiments he has made in the search for an ultimate
purpose, a supreme good in human life; but all have led him to the
same moral impasse.
THE QUEST FOR WISDOM
1.12-18
12. I the preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem
   The author clearly intends to be taken as Solomon. The use of
this literary device was really a means of expressing Qoheleth's
conviction that neither wealth nor wisdom provided the clue to the
final meaning of life. He uses here Solomon's reputation for
precisely these two features, his renowned wisdom and his ostentatious
flaunting of wealth. His attitude is not that of an admirer, but
rather he pillories these characteristics, and indirectly Solomon
himself.
13. I applied my mind
   Lit. 'my heart'. The Hebrew word le?1b, frequently
translated 'heart', is more concerned with thought and the will
than with the emotions in Hebrew thinking.
search out in wisdom
   The original for SEARCH OUT is used as a technical term for
consulting the priest or the prophet and is what is meant by
'enquiring of the Lord'. The root is da?1rash and the term
Midrash- commentary on Scripture- comes from it. With BY WISDOM
compare Job 28.12, where the quest for wisdom is considered beyond
man's capacity. See the Introduction, pp. 274 f., for the need to
distinguish between human wisdom and the Divine Wisdom. There are two
levels of discussion, and the wisdom derived from the practical
experience of daily living offers no key to the great ultimate
mysteries of the Divine Wisdom.
14. a striving after wind
   This is a favourite phrase of the writer and it is used some
seven times in this book. The literal meaning is 'a feeding on the
wind'. The word is used of shepherds feeding their flocks. The
thought is that for all the satisfaction obtained all his quests for
meaning are like trying to make a meal on food that is no more
substantial than the wind! Some scholars derive the word from a root
meaning 'to desire'. Then the phrase would mean 'to desire the
unsubstantial or illusory'. The same note of bitterness is apparent
in either case. All human activity, as far as its final significance
is concerned, is like feeding on the wind or desiring the shadowy
insubstantial air.
15. What is crooked
   The root meaning of CROOKED is 'to twist or pervert'.
This is a key for human sin. We find our colloquial term
'twister' near the mark. We note the preoccupation of Wisdom in
its profounder aspect with the problem of sin and suffering.
16. I said to myself
   Lit. 'I, personally, spoke with my heart.'
all who were over Jerusalem before me
   This completely gives away the case for Solomonic authorship-
there is only one candidate for this, David.
wisdom and knowledge
   These two terms are frequently found in close association.
'In the Old Testament,' says Vriezen, 'knowledge is living in a
close relationship with something or somebody, such a relationship as
to cause what may be called communion.' That a man has knowledge of
God would mean that he had knowledge of God's revelation of himself.
17. to know wisdom... to know madness and folly
   We note again the use of TO KNOW denoting experience within
a relationship that is immediate, rather than second-hand 'knowing
about' from another source. Wisdom and folly are moral rather than
intellectual categories and are equivalent to good and evil. We must
applaud Qoheleth on the thoroughness of his research when he includes
MADNESS AND FOLLY. The verse has also been translated 'to know
that wisdom and knowledge are madness and folly'. The word
translated MADNESS means 'mad revelry and wickedness'.
THE QUEST FOR PLEASURE AND MATERIAL SATISFACTION
2.1-11
1. I will make a test of pleasure
   AV, 1I will prove thee with mirth. The connotation of
pleasure is wider than that of mirth and is to be preferred. The
Hebrew word is used of the ordinary pleasures of life, including
goodness and joy and the rejoicing associated with religious
festivals. The word for 'TEST' is used of God testing Abraham
(Gen. 22.1) and frequently of such trials.
enjoy yourself
   Lit. 'look upon good'. This phrase contains the
characteristic Hebrew idiom which uses 'to see' meaning 'to
experience, to participate in'. It is used of experiences of life
and death, happiness and sorrow (cf. Job 9.25; Ps. 16.1; Isa.
44.16; Luke 2.26; John 3.36; 8.51). The force of the phrase is not so
much ~'Enjoy all that is good' as ~'Share in the experience of all
that is good' and then give a verdict upon it. The verb is parallel
to TEST and must be taken in this sense of trying and
experimenting. The typical Hebrew view of life is not a denial of
pleasure but the reverse. We need to remember the particular quest
that Qoheleth had in mind. He is seeking for an ultimate goal to the
merriment and happiness that life does contain in some of its separate
experiences.
2. It is mad
   The Hebrew participle means 'acting like madmen'. Cf. =1
Sam. 21.14; Jer. 25.16; 46.9; 5.38; 51.7.
3. To cheer my body with wine
   Lit. 'to draw my flesh with wine'. The phrase is
difficult. The word translated CHEER can mean 'to draw or
drag', which in later Hebrew has a meaning of 'to attract' in a
figurative sense, that is, to stimulate and so to refresh.
my mind still guiding me with wisdom
   AV, 'acquainting my heart with wisdom'. The word for
GUIDING comes from a root that is used to describe the herding of
sheep or the conducting of prisoners. Qoheleth is still keeping his
mind on his job. He is not blindly setting out on debauchery or
dissolution as an escapist activity.
to lay hold on folly
   The word used is a strong one, meaning 'to seize', and it
indicates the urgency of Qoheleth's quest. Here is no armchair
doctrinaire dilettante.
4. I made great works
   Lit. 'I made great my works'. This is a reference to the
large-scale building operations which Solomon included in the
construction of his palaces and the palace of Pharaoh's daughter
(cf. =1 Kings 7.1 ff.; 9.15 ff.; =2 Chron. 8.4-6). Close to
the building projects would be the VINEYARDS (=1 Kings 4.25; S.
of Sol. 8.11).
5. parks
   The word is a Persian loan-word, pairi-deaza, from which
our word paradise is derived. Qoheleth has a second paradise at his
disposal but he is no happier than Adam was! The word is used in the
singular in Neh. 2.8 and S. of Sol. 4.13.
6. pools from which to water
   A natural transition from gardens and orchards to the vital
question of water supply. The pools are probably natural springs
enlarged to become reservoirs or cisterns in the rock. King Mesha of
Moab boasts of their construction in lines 9, 23-25 of the Moabite
Stone, which read:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   And I built Baal-meon and made in it the reservoir... and I made
both the reservoirs for water inside the town. And there was no
cistern inside the town at Qrchh, so I said to all the people, 'Make
yourselves each one a cistern in his house.'
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   Cf. also Neh. 2.14; 3.15; Isa. 1.3; 58.11; S. of Sol.
7.4; =2 Sam. 4.12.
7. I bought male and female slaves
   The acquisition of slaves would be the necessary presupposition
of the scale of his building operations. Behind these practices is
the mas or forced labour system which Solomon takes from Egyptian
practices (cf. the use of such labour by the Egyptians in Ex.
1.11-14).
8. any who had been before me in Jerusalem
   Again the mask slips. This rules out Solomonic authorship.
See Introduction, pp. 257 f.
9. my wisdom remained with me
   Lit. 'stood to <or for> me'. Qoheleth retains his
objectivity. This reinforces v. 3. His experiencing of folly as
well as wisdom still leaves him able to tell the difference.
1. my eyes desired
   Lit. 'asked'. We may compare =1 John 2.16 for the
'lust' (desire) of the eyes, and also =1 Kings 2.6; Ps. 145.15;
Prov. 27.2 for the eyes as the seat of desire. There is no
necessary suggestion of evil desire. The previous verse suggests that
his wisdom safeguards him from this temptation.
this was my reward
   This is a favourite word with Qoheleth (cf. 2.21; 3.22; 5.18
ff.; 9.6, 9; 11.2). It carries the idea of reward or profit.
Qoheleth is suggesting that there is a gain from human experience.
He has found a good, but the next verse indicates that it is a
relative one and the supreme good is still to be sought.
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As it is written: "The Earth 1shalt 1thou make an Altar for
God. And if 1thou 1wilt make an Altar of stone, 1thou 1shalt not
build it of hewn stone, for if 1thou lift up 1thy sword upon it,
1thou 1hast polluted it."
The Shamir
   And they shall seek the Shamir, to make an Altar.
   According to the legend, Solomon had asked the Prince of the
Demons, "Ashmodeus" to bring him the Shamir and Ashmodeus told him
that the Shamir had not been placed under his charge, as there is no
Shamir in Gehenna (Hell). An eagle brought the Shamir to Solomon from
Eden, the Paradise, the only place where the Shamir could be found.
   The Talmud describes that the Shamir lives in a sanctuary, and
only some rare birds know the existence of it.
   These birds are, the Cherubim and the Seraphim.
   We are also told that the Shamir is the stylus used by Moses, and
this stylus is described as a very precious diamond-stone and very
adamant.
   The word Shamir was used as a personal name (Git. 68a). The
Hebrew word "SHAMIR" means guarded or preserved.
   Therefore, the real man, who regards himself as insignificant, as
the prayer says: ~"What am I? ~A worm", he is the Shamir and such a
man fulfils the Shmah, loves the Lord God with all his heart, and with
all his soul and with all his might and studies the word of God. This
man is the worm, the creature that cuts and polishes Altar-Stones.
Such a man is the Shamir that guards himself against all the
irrelevant pleasures. Such a Shamir possesses the real acid to mould
our character, to melt our heart of stone. This Shamir helps us
earthly creatures to build an Altar for God to come nearer to God.
The action of the Shamir writes books and their books are readable.
This Shamir is indeed a rare diamond that incises the hardest rock,
the hardest facts. And these creatures existed from the beginning.
It is "the stone, which the builders refused, but it is to become
the head-stone of the corner". (Ps. 118, 22.) And the stone
shall tell! "For the stone shall cry out of the wall", like
Baalam's ass, "and the purlin of timber shall creak in answer" "if
the roof of our security is crushing our soul" (see Hab. 2,
1-11). And it is through the Shamir: "That the earth shall be
filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord, as the waters
cover the sea." (Hab. 2, 14.)
   The Shamir's daily life writes the Decalogue, which is written on
two plates, the hard facts of life, and all facts are "one". We
have all come across human Shamirs and they leave a deep impression on
our feelings and senses. They make us the Altar for God to emit the
Light which can be read in every language. The Shamir is the
"seventh" and most important creature, that was created on the eve
of the Sabbath, to bring the Sabbath, real peace to the whole world.
Then the whole earth will be His Altar.
The Second Lesson of the Shmah Deut. 11, 13-21
   "And it shall come to pass, if 1ye shall 1hearken diligently
unto my commandments, which I command you this day, to love the Lord
your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your
soul." This may seem very good, but there is something deficient.
To love the Lord your God with all your might is lacking (Deut. 6.
5.). It is this lack of vision that may make us fail. And without
visionary power the people will perish. But Nature will at first not
interfere. "That I will give you the rain of your land in its due
season, the first rain and the latter rain," but the consequence
will be "that 1thou 1mayest gather in 1thy corn, and 1thy wine,
and 1thine oil." Under such conditions without putting your mind
together we cannot solve the further summons of destiny, to solve the
economic problems. Hence says Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai (Tanis 6a)
"if Israel does not fulfil the wish of the Lord, failing to serve the
Lord God with all their visionary power, the work will have to be done
by each individual". They will not work in union. If physical
power, spiritual power and visionary power is not united, man will
remain in his heart selfish and think only of one's <SIC> personal
advantage to gratify selfish aims, then each man will gather-in for
himself only, instead of all to help to gather your corn, your wine
and your oil. Freedom from want cannot be fulfilled nor freedom from
fear, fear of starvation in the midst of plenty. Help will not be
easily forthcoming for the people in need. They will think of the
animals first (which is of course our duty). Of course the individual
will eat and be full but: ~"Take heed to yourself, that your heart be
not deceived, and 1ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship
them", the yourself is thy greatest enemy, the self-seeking self.
And you serve Mammon and God. And you cannot serve two masters, and
you worship self-interest, isolating yourself, under such conditions
the goods are your gods. "And then the Lord's wrath be kindled
against you, and he shut up the heavens, that there is no rain, and
that the land yield not her fruit and lest 1ye perish quickly from
off the good land which the Lord 1giveth you." For without the
vision to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your might the problem of life cannot be
solved.
   "Therefore shall 1ye lay up these my words in your heart and in
your soul." The text adds and in your soul, searching your soul.
And the sequence in the text is different than in the first part of
the Shmah, we have first "and to bind them for a sign upon your hand,
that they may be as frontlets between your eyes." First to bind
them to have the vision and then "And 1ye shall teach them to your
children." And as we have gone through the mill, we need not teach
them to the children any more diligently and the children will grasp
now what will befall them without visionary power.
   And we will nail the Divine Law on the door posts of the house
and upon the gates.
The Reward
   "That your days may be multiplied and the days of your
children in the land, which the Lord swear unto your father to give
them, as days of HEAVEN ON EARTH"
   That means the Kingdom of Messianic Righteousness (Talmud
Sanh. 99A).
   
   The Messusah, which is nailed on the doorposts contains those two
lessons.
   The third lesson of the Shmah (Numbers 15, 37-41) is called
"the going-out of the land of Egypt". It starts with the story
of the fringes the "tsitsits".
   This lesson used to be read only in the morning. And the Talmud
tells a story, which is also in the Hagadah that Rabbi Eleasar ben
Assarja said, ~"I am nearly seventy and I had not succeeded that
people should read 'the going out of Egypt' the passage Numbers 15,
37-41, by night", because the fringes (tsitsits) are only used in
the day; till Ben Zoma came and explained the verse (Deut. 16, 3)
"that 1thou 1mayest remember the day when 1thou 1camest forth out
of the land of Egypt all the days of 1thy life." Ben Zoma said:
"The days of 1thy life means in the day-time; all the days of 1thy
life means even at night-time." (Berochoth.) And the Rabbis
thought it important that when we read the Shmah "to be willing to
hear," we should remember the Great Deliverance: Passover and its
connection with the fringes (the tsitsits).
The Tsitsits and the Hagadah
   And the tsitsits had a message sealed inside the knots just as
there is a message sealed in the four emblems which are used on
Passover, to depict the "time of our freedom". And they are (1)
Matzo; (2) Bitter Herbs; (3) Salt-water and Charauses (a kind of fruit
mixture in likeness of the appearance of mortar); and (4) an attitude
to lean back.
   (1) Matzos is deficient bread, (LECHEM ANJO in Hebrew),
so are we deficient without spiritual knowledge, and to cure our
mental incapacity we should be willing to learn. Education is always
the most important task. Education gives: Freedom of Speech.
   (2) Bitter Herbs symbolises the bitterness that is hurled
against us. We eat it. We accept it, to show we have self-control
and that God dwells within us. Self-control gives us: Freedom to
worship God.
   (3) Salt Water and Charauses: the salt-water at the
Seder-Table represents the Covenant of the Torah (MELACH BRITH
ELOHECHO in Hebrew, Salt is the covenant of 1thy God, Levit. 2,
13.) Salt preserves and we should have this salt in ourselves and
have peace with one-another. And the sweet Mortar (the CHARAUSES
in Hebrew) that binds all the "hard-facts" together and explains
them, represents the Oral Tradition. We dip into both, at the Seder.
And we want to understand more of the Torah and the Oral Tradition,
our inheritance. Living the life of the Torah ("dipping-in") makes
us meek: "But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight
themselves in the abundance of Peace" (Psalm 37, 11). That gives us
freedom from want.
   (4) We lean back on the Seder-night, that symbolises we are
unafraid, for we are Israel, the Overcomer, the Suffering Servant,
"who will leaven the whole lump", chosen from all the nations, and
we realise that all mankind are God's Children. That gives us freedom
from fear.
   These four emblems are the substance of the Passover and these
four symbols are also the four ways of interpreting the Torah.
   (1) Matzo represents Peshat; (2) Moraur represents Remez; (3)
Dipping-in represents Derush; (4) Leaning-back represents Saud. (This
is the PARDUS.) Matzo represents the literal meaning of Pesach
which is called: The Feast of Matzos. The Bitter-Herbs represent the
spiritual principle and this gives us "a wink" (Remez) how to live
and accept all the bitterness that is hurled against us. The
Salt-water and the sweet Mortar in which we dip-in represents the
richness of the Law and that we should immerse into it. Leaning back
carries the concealed message.
   And we start the Seder showing the Matzos, that they represent
the "Bread of Poverty" which our fore-fathers were eating in
Mitzrajim, to show they were willing to learn; and we invite anybody
who wishes to partake in our discussions, saying:
   "Anybody who is hungry, let him come and eat,
   Anybody who is thirsty, let him come and drink."
   And we want all to eat and drink His Great Philosophy of the four
ways of Israel's redemption.
   Hence "four questions", which are really interrogations to
examine into the principles of the four redemptions are asked at the
Seder-evening about these "four symbols" (the MANISHTANO).
And the person who asks these questions is seeking the opinion of
the one who is conducting the Seder.
   And we answer, that the Lord our God gave us "four freedoms"
without which Society cannot make progress.
   And we drink "four cups" to thank the Lord our God for the
"four freedoms" which are Divine.
   There are four ways of redemption:
   (1) I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt.
   (2) I will rid you of their bondage.
   (3) I will redeem you.
   (4) I will take you to me for a people.
   (1) I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt:
How was it that Israel was brought out from under the burdens of
Egypt? Because, they kept the Passover and they were eating Matzos in
Egypt and the "Feast of Matzos" was known even to Abraham and Lot.
(Gen. Rashi 19, 3.)
# 23
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Hooker, arguing that human reason and common sense were to have
their place alongside the Bible and Church authority, poured
sanctified oil on troubled waters. There were plenty of
cross-currents in those waters and clergy who would solemnly have
proclaimed their loyalty to that Prayer Book found as many ways of
interpreting that loyalty as they do to-day. Many such men would find
they could conscientiously remain in this comprehensive Church. But
for some of them the path must end in schism.
   By that time, however, the Anglican Prayer Book, suppressed
though it would be, would have become indigenous. And would have been
the primer of saints- Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, Jeremy
Taylor, Margaret Godolphin, and so many others.
   The new century opened with James =1 ascending the throne. He
was quite prepared to be tolerant towards Rome though the Gunpowder
Plot spoiled that. The Puritans had high hopes, for James had grown
up in Presbyterian Scotland, but those hopes were dashed. True, a new
Prayer Book was issued in 164 but the Puritans derived little comfort
from it. They objected to the word Absolution. So the phrase 'or
the remission of sins' was added. But Absolution remained. They
objected to the word Confirmation. So the phrase 'or the laying on
of hands upon children baptized and able to render an account of their
faith according to the Catechism following' were added. But
Confirmation remained. Other changes in the Book were equally minor
except for the new section on the Sacraments added to the Catechism.
This indicated how ephemeral in the Church had been the mood which
produced the Black Rubric, for it says that 'the Body and Blood of
Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful
in the Lord's Supper.'
   It could hardly be more definite.
   It was at this time, too, that King James made himself immortal
by becoming associated with a Bible translation- the Authorized
Version (which was never actually authorized!). In that year
Shakespeare had just turned forty and had written Hamlet two years
before. Bacon was at work and Milton was just learning to read.
   James was followed by Charles, in whose reign came the Scottish
Prayer Book in 1637. Significantly this made a deliberate return to
the Book of 1549 and became the foster mother of some of the most
important Prayer Books in the Anglican Communion.
   Forever associated with Charles is Archbishop Laud, now so much
nobler a figure than former historians led us to believe. Laud was
enthusiastically hated by Calvinists and Puritans, and the sentiment
was mutual. But Laud was no Romanizer. One of his first public acts
was a hard-hitting battle with the Jesuit, Fisher. But anyone who was
friendly with James and Charles, the Puritans argued, was necessarily
a menace. All Laud's statements in favour of a Church both Catholic
and Reformed, all the many evidences that Laud fully represented the
heart of the English Reformation in his beliefs, meant nothing to
those who had drunk deep at Calvinistic springs.
   Laud was called upon to do severe things. What else could an
archbishop do when he found that clergy had lost interest in their
jobs? Or when he found cock-fighting going on in church? Laud made a
positive approach. He set out to increase a sense of reverence. The
Prayer Book was to be respected and so was the office of a bishop.
Altars should be altars and not any broken down, transportable table
which was handy for the most improbable uses.
   Laud's motives were of the highest but his tact did not match
them. Once convinced he was right, he was willing to go to most
lengths to establish the fact. And so he became hated. And executed.
And in the same year, 1644, the Prayer Book was declared illegal-
partly on the ground that it had proved 'an offence to the Reformed
Churches abroad.'
   The Puritan leaders were plotting (though they did not use
colourful things like gunpowder in interesting places like the Houses
of Parliament). Both Church and State were their target. The
doctrine of the divine right of kings made the bull's eyes of these
targets almost indistinguishable. 'No bishop, no king,' said
James. And ~'No king, no bishop' was the obvious implication.
Charles went even further and asserted a king could do no wrong. In
1629 he dissolved Parliament and announced he would govern by royal
prerogative. There was no outlet for the expanding gases of criticism
and the explosion grew. For Scotland the introduction of the Prayer
Book had been the signal. In England the Puritans' day came in 164
and the Long Parliament began.
   English churches suffered yet another despoliation. And Evelyn
the diarist could record 'Another sad day! The church now in caves
and dens of the earth.' To secure such an end men like Will Dowsing
undertook to smash churches at 8s. 6d. a time. He was
disgusted in one place where he had only 3s. 4d. because
there were no more than 'ten superstitious pictures and a cross' to
be destroyed.
   Finally, in 1649, Charles was beheaded and a thrill of horror ran
though the country. A dead king and a ravaged Faith. It was these
very excesses which sounded the death knell of the Puritans as a
ruling force.
   But we cannot leave this chapter with a picture of unrelieved
gloom. These were also the days when Lancelot Andrewes was writing
his Preces Privatae as well as being a great bishop. The
days, too, of George Herbert, many of whose poems have become
much-loved hymns. It was now that John Cosin, one day to be a bishop,
was growing up and preparing to make a major liturgical contribution
as soon as opportunity offered. Contemporary with them was Jeremy
Taylor whose Holy Living and Holy Dying have helped so many to
achieve those titles. And it was the time when Nicholas Ferrar was
making his fascinating experiments in Christian community living at
Little Gidding.
   An interesting age!
CHAPTER NINE
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SIXTIES
   NO Christian can lightly condemn an age and a system of
belief which produced Richard Baxter and The Saints' Everlasting
Rest or John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress. It was the same
age, too, which gave birth to George Fox and the Society of Friends.
All Christendom has surely been enriched by Fox's striving for direct
access to God and his joy when he felt he had attained it and 'the
whole earth had a new smell.' Political history, too, must surely
have been poorer without the particular concept of equality which the
Quakers were to propagate.
   Even the brand image of the day, Cromwell, must remain memorable
for many things other than his warts. Dictator though he inevitably
became, Cromwell had no burning desire to prescribe religious
conformity. True, he would have no truck with bishops or a Prayer
Book. But he burned for the preaching of a pure Word, yearned for the
reform of morals, and 'gave England a nearer approach to religious
liberty than it had known.' 'I meddle not with any man's
conscience,' he said. But there were times when his actions implied
he assumed that Romans and Anglicans had no conscience and hence
needed his strong treatment. And Irishmen, were, of course, another
matter altogether.
   There was still so very far to go.
   English people, for example, did not think much of that degree of
liberty which forbade them to observe Christmas Day.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   England was merry England when
   Old Christmas brought his sports again,
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
said Sir Walter Scott. And men soon tired of those who 'hated
bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it
gave pleasure to the spectators,' as Macaulay expressed it. What's
more, people wanted God's blessing on their weddings. But only civil
marriages were allowed. The twenty years of the Commonwealth proved a
negative, inhibiting experience. The Puritans were obsessed with
their own theological gloom and snuffed any tiny candle of pleasure
which came within their reach. They went straight to the Old
Testament for a religion designed for doughty desert nomads.
   The Restoration of Church and King in 166 was as much for basic
human reasons as for ideological motives. It was not so much because
Richard Cromwell had a weak character as because that for which he
stood was, in the truest sense of the word, unnatural. Christianity
is for the fullness of man, not for his suppression. And that was why
the bells rang out and bonfires blazed as Charles came back.
   The temporary dalliance with Puritanism had shown that salvation,
as well as joy, lay elsewhere. How much greater the pity, then, that
Charles =2 could not prove more worthy on taking up the Crown. How
unfortunate that his name must remain associated in the popular mind
with Nell Gwynn, oranges and low comedy. And how sad that Charles
should have attempted the same sort of rigorous suppression as had
disfigured English history for so long. Bunyan and Bedford Gaol were
one example. And there were the Conventicle Act which forbade
meetings for worship where the Prayer Book was not used, the Licensing
Act which imposed a rigid Press censorship, the Five-Mile Act which
made Nonconformist ministers wanderers in the wilderness, and others
which made notorious the name of Clarendon and his code. Then there
was the Test Act which insisted that all civil or military officers
should take the oath of supremacy and allegiance and receive the Holy
Communion according to the Church of England rite.
   It was such legalistic ham-fistedness which was to make the life
of the Church of England such an artificial observance for so many in
the following century. And such a situation was imposed by the State,
not initiated by the Church.
   There is so much one could condemn about these sixties of three
centuries ago. But there is so much also which one welcomes, not
least the 1662 Prayer Book, born under such strange portents. We no
longer look starry-eyed and refer to 'this incomparable Book.'
Time has turned its wheel and prescribed revision as now overdue.
But we must revise only in the full awareness of what this Book has
meant. First of all, however, we look at its immediate background.
   Before Christmas 166 five editions of the 164 Book had been
printed. Fifteen years without a Prayer Book had certainly not made
people forget it or lose interest in it. But most people regarded
these reprints of the 164 Book as a stopgap. A revision was clearly
called for and the object of that revision was clearly expressed by
nine bishops who were still alive. The nearer the forms 'come to the
ancient liturgy of the Greek and Latin Churches, the less are they
liable to the objections of the common enemy.'
   On October 25, 166, Charles issued a statement calling a
conference of all interested parties. On August 15, 1661, at the
Savoy Hospital, that conference met. To it came twelve bishops
(including John Cosin of Durham, Robert Sanderson of Lincoln, and
Gilbert Sheldon of London) and twelve Puritan divines (including
Richard Baxter). The Bishop of London presided.
   As far as the bishops were concerned, it was obvious and natural
that the Church's Prayer Book should be restored. The onus of
argument was therefore placed on the Puritans who had plenty to say.
Practically all of them wanted, for example, the surplice, the sign
of the Cross in baptism, kneeling to receive the Holy Communion, the
season of Lent, and the use of a ring in marriage to be abolished.
They wanted prayer to be extemporary and unfettered. There were
actually Puritans who took this principle to such an extreme that they
described the Lord's Prayer as a Popish invention! The Puritans
wanted Sunday to become the 'Lord's Day' and Sabbatarian gloom to
prevail. It is easy to condemn all this but we must never forget
their very real zeal for righteousness.
   'Had the objectors concentrated on one or two points of real
doctrinal importance,' says Bishop Moorman, 'they might have made
some impression on their opponents, but their absorption in details of
little moment was their undoing.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 231
<94 TEXT D6>
   In the first place it is not a great deal of use telling even
children, as I have already suggested, not to be silly or to pull
themselves together. Far better to help them to face whatever it is
that is worrying them, to find the original cause and then deal with
it; show it up either for the sham it is- and many fears are based
upon completely irrational pre-conceived notions- or to show how we
may deal with it so as to remove the power to torment us that it seems
to possess.
   Even worse is to laugh. Tremendous damage may be done to a child
by laughing at what are very real fears. As adults, we know that
their fears are groundless, indeed to us they appear laughable, but to
a child they are very real. Not that I am suggesting that children
should be molly-coddled- they must be made to face their fears, to
see through them and come out on the other side as victors. To
ridicule them only pushes them farther into themselves, so that they
become unable to speak about it to anybody and the seeds of any amount
of trouble are sown, the harvest of which may still be being reaped at
forty or fifty. Far better to agree with a child that a particular
situation is frightening, and then to face it together until the child
can see how unnecessary its fears were.
   Because situations which may contain all the elements of fear can
arise suddenly, it is a good idea to condition a child to some extent
against it. To keep a child of twelve or thirteen under the
impression that nothing nasty ever happens is not merely dishonest, it
is unwise. As I shall suggest in a later chapter there are some
situations which occur less frequently than they did once, or at least
do not now arise until a later period of life, but this is no reason
for leaving a child in complete ignorance to the extent of even lying
to it when it asks questions. A little more honesty, even if one
refrains from going into too many details, would help many a child to
make a proper adjustment to life as it grows up.
   Let us look at Jesus. We do not, I think, see there a life
without fear. There are several instances where he seemed unable to
go on. In Gethsemane He prayed that the cup should pass from Him.
   Jesus shows us the way to face life. To see all the latent
frightening possibilities and yet by facing them and knowing God is
with us and that, with Him, there is nothing that can finally defeat
us. More than that, that God has something important to do with our
lives and that the nearer we get to Him, the stronger we become.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ...Today
   A wonderful thought
   In the dawn was given...
   And the thought
   Was this:
   That a secret plan
   Is hid in my hand;
   That my hand is big
   Big,
   Because of the plan
   That God,
   Who dwells in my hand,
   Knows this secret plan,
   Of the things He will do for the world
   Using my hand.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   Toyohiko Kagawa.
PRAYER
   Loving Saviour, who experienced all human emotion, and whose
sensitive nature knows better than we do, what it is to be really
afraid, help us to know that when we face life boldly, many of the
shadows are seen to be allies and not enemies and that, come what may,
we are never alone when we are with Thee.
   Amen.
CHAPTER FIVE
TIREDNESS
   MOST people would probably regard tiredness as a purely
physical thing. The cure for which is sleep. This is only partly
true. Many people wake up tired of a morning and no amount of rest
seems to make any difference. Sleep, to be effective, must be of that
child-like quality which comes from innocence. To others, the long
hours of the night bring only a disturbed tossing and turning which
causes them to wake feeling worse than when they went to bed.
   We may begin to understand this a little better when we realize
that tiredness itself is largely in the mind. Very few people, under
normal conditions, work themselves to a standstill. The mind tires
first and conveys the impression of tiredness to the body.
   This can be proved by noting the effect of a new stimulus on
somebody who feels thoroughly tired. Suppose a mother has news late
at night that her child is in danger. She will undertake a journey
which, an hour before, she would have declared impossible. Even more
simply, test your own reactions to different situations. There are
some which bring on an almost immediate feeling of tiredness- such as
when your wife mentions the washing-up- while others, if they refer
to something you like doing, bring a veritable surge of energy. Many
a girl who is 'too tired to help mum' will later jump up with no
apparent tiredness at all when her boy friend calls and go for a long
walk. Nor is she necessarily being deceitful. She really did feel
tired until the mind got the necessary injection of a fresh- and an
attractive- interest!
   Tiredness has, therefore, as much to do with our mental state as
with our physical exhaustion. A disturbed mind can bring the
healthiest body to a sense of fatigue. They wonder why they get no
rest at night, even if they do sleep. They drag themselves around and
can become a burden to their families and their friends.
   Any mental confusion can cause this and the best way is probably
to seek advice. As we are unable to cure our own bodies if the cause
of our pain is too deep seated, so we are unable to cure our own
minds, if the trouble is a complicated one involving careful and
patient treatment. One of the greatest steps forward that has been
made this century is the way in which illness of the mind is no longer
feared or shunned, and is in fact no differently regarded than
physical illness.
   There is, nevertheless, a great deal of tiredness which comes
from no major complication but results from an inability to deal with
life, especially under the diverse pattern which is the twentieth
century. In the days when most people were born, lived and died
within the boundaries of the village, it was not difficult for anybody
to live a day at a time. Even those who held a high and responsible
office lived in far greater simplicity than their successors. When
news from the Continent took days, from America weeks, from the Far
East, months, even a Prime Minister could go to sleep in blissful
ignorance of what might be happening at the other end of England,
whereas today, everybody, let alone the Prime Minister, knows of
happenings the other side of the world, within minutes of their taking
place.
   In other ways, too, life for the ordinary individual has become
so complex that it taxes the mind. Two hundred years ago, men lived
and worked in one place, their lives were of one piece. Now a man may
live twenty, thirty even sixty miles from his work. The only
connexion is the pipeline of the railway on which they travel day by
day. In many cases, their homes know little of their place of work
and their associates at the office or works wonder what they are
possibly like in the surroundings of their homes. It is easy,
desperately easy, to lead a 'double' life without ever deliberately
planning to do so or in fact being conscious of what is going on. It
is easier to live life in compartments but over the years it builds
up, and to do so inevitably builds up tensions which need to be
handled correctly.
   Can we then frame some 'rules' which may enable us to live
life as fully as possible, without having our energy sapped by
unnecessary weariness.
   (a) Order makes for a decrease in tiredness. We have a
saying 'My head will never save my feet'. Time after time we
forget something and have to go back upstairs or down to the shops.
If we ever stopped to consider how much energy- and time- we lose
this way in the course of a day we would be staggered. Some of it is
inevitable, and we do not want to become too pernickety.
Nevertheless, we could all probably be a little more orderly for we
so frequently just muddle through.
   The housewife would find life far less tiring if she made a list,
followed a routine of work rather than getting from one thing to the
next. The business man would find that he reached the end of the day
with far less strain if he was a little more systematic. To drift
aimlessly along is more wearying than anything else. If we would only
sit down and write out all the necessary jobs waiting to be done and
then work quietly through them, we would find life considerably less
exhausting- and in the end we would do more.
   There may be some who will argue that routine destroys the soul.
It is so easy, they say, to get into a rut. Save us from the school
curriculum and even worse the school system whereby for meals
everybody knows beforehand exactly what, on any given day of the week,
they are going to have. If- such a critic may say- you are calling
us to adventure, do not strangle us before we start by putting us into
a strait-jacket called 'order'.
   I am more than conscious of this. How anybody can go through the
same routine day in and day out for forty years I find difficult to
understand. A lot of it is inevitable so that industry and commerce
may be kept going- though if ever it becomes possible to work out a
system of 'staggered' hours it may do an immense amount of good
over and above relieving the pressure on over-crowded trains. As it
is, with so much of our life already in a predetermined groove, I
would hardly like to add further to the dullness which it engenders.
   But I am not arguing for this. I know how much of a drag it can
be and I was interested some little while ago to hear of a school who
tried a six-day timetable. They only worked, of course, a five-day
week so that in the first week Monday to Friday were days one to five
of the timetable, the following Monday was day six and Tuesday started
day one again and so on. By this means they avoided each week being
the same with a pupil knowing exactly what the subject would be on
Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.. It was a little complicated to work,
of course, and there had to be a big notice in the entrance saying
which day of the timetable it was- but it added immensely to the
interest and kept everybody on their toes.
   To have order does not mean getting into a dull routine. I have
great sympathy with the young wife who does not always want to do the
washing on a Monday. I would not want to either, but if she wants to
get through the day without becoming exhausted, she will be well
advised to sit down quietly and make a list of everything she has got
to do, note the order in which they can most conveniently be done (or
must be done because of other predetermined factors- you must, for
example, do your shopping on the morning of the early closing day).
She will, in fact, be surprised at what peace of mind ensues.
   (b) Concentrate on one thing at a time. A list or a plan
enables us to put all our energies into the particular matter on hand.
# 21
<95 TEXT D7>
=2
   We turn now to the consideration of an Aggadic passage; the
final portion of tractate Makkoth. The opinion of R. Hananiah
b. Gamaliel is quoted in the Mishnah. This teacher holds that
one who has incurred the penalty of kareth- the excision of the
soul- obtains a remission from this punishment if he is flogged. In
the opening passage of the Gemara it is stated in the name of R.
Johanan that R. Hananiah b. Gamaliel's colleagues disagree with
him and that in their view a flogging does not bring remission of the
penalty of kareth. This is discussed and then (and we take up
our analysis at this stage) R. Adda is quoted as saying in the name
of Rabh that the halakhah, the law, is in accordance with R.
Hananiah b. Gamaliel.
   Rabh Joseph (d. 333) objects that the term, used by Rabh,
halakhah, is not appropriate here for 'who has gone up to Heaven
and returned to tell us that this is so?' (i.e. the term
halakhah can only be used about some practical issue where a
decision must be reached. But the question whether or not a man is
guilty of kareth is a matter for God and there is no point in
recording the actual ruling- halakhah- for this is known only
to God). To this his disciple Abaye (c. 28-338/39) replies that
the term is applicable even here (i.e. it is permissible for
human teachers to state that this is how God will act). As proof of
this Abaye quotes the saying of R. Joshua b. Levi (early 3rd
Cent.) who said that three things were done by a human court here
below and the Heavenly Court agreed with their decisions. Here, too,
the objection can be raised: 'Who has gone up to Heaven and returned
to tell us that this is so?' But R. Joshua b. Levi presumably
argues that we arrive at this information by interpreting certain
verses, and, consequently, we, too, are justified in interpreting the
relevant verses to yield that R. Hananiah b. Gamaliel is correct
and that God will act, as it were, in the manner stated by him.
   We have here an original saying of Rabh. To this Rabh Joseph
raises an objection and Abaye replies by referring his master to the
saying of R. Joshua b. Levi. It is probable that all this is a
verbatim report of the actual words used by Rabh Joseph and Abaye and
that there has been no re-working of the material by the Redactors.
The only difficulty here is that if Rabh Joseph is prepared to
disagree with Rabh there is no reason why he should not disagree with
R. Joshua b. Levi. But the meaning of Abaye's reply is probably
that Rabh's opinion is no isolated case but a normal method of
interpretation and for this the example of R. Joshua b. Levi is
quoted.
   The Gemara now proceeds to examine the saying of R. Joshua
b. Levi itself. This is introduced by the formula, gupha,
'the main saying' (i.e. we have referred to this saying in
the course of the previous discussion, here we deal with the saying
itself). The three enactments of a human court in which the Heavenly
Court concurred are given (no doubt by R. Joshua b. Levi himself)
as: the reading of the Book of Esther on the festival of Purim; that
people should greet each other with the divine Name; and that the
tithe normally given to the Levites should be brought to the Temple.
For each of these, proof texts are quoted. For the reading of the
Book of Esther the verse is quoted: 'They established it and the
Jews took it upon them'. This is said to mean: 'They (the
Heavenly Court) established above that which the Jews took upon them
(the reading of the Book of Esther) down here below.' The proof
text for greeting by the divine Name is then quoted. This is the
verse: 'And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the
reapers, "The Lord be with you".' A further proof text is then
quoted, with the formula generally used for a second proof text, 'and
it says'. This is the verse: 'The Lord bless 1thee, 1thou
mighty man of valour.' The question is then asked: 'What need is
there for "and it is said"?' (i.e. why are two verses
needed, why does not the first one suffice?). To this the reply is
given that from the verse dealing with Boaz there is no proof of
divine approval, only that Boaz used this form of greeting. But in
the second verse it is the angel who uses this form of greeting and
hence there is evidence of divine approval. Finally, the proof text
for the bringing of the tithe to the Temple is quoted. This is the
verse: 'Bring 1ye the whole tithe unto the store house that there
may be food in My house, and try Me herewith, 1saith the Lord of
Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of Heaven and pour you out a
blessing, until there shall be more than sufficiency.' The Gemara
then asks: 'What is the meaning of "more than sufficiency"
(Heb. beli dai?' Rami bar Rabh replies: 'Until your
lips are worn out in saying: "Sufficient".'
   The scheme of the sugya is as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) The saying of R. Joshua b. Levi.
   (2) First proof text and explanation.
   (3) Second proof text.
   (a) Boaz
   (b) Angel
   Question: Why is (b) required?
   Answer: Because Boaz may not have had divine approval.
   (4) Third proof text.
   Question: What is the meaning of beli dai?
   Answer: By Rami bar Rabh.
<END INDENTATION>
   The first matter to which attention should be drawn is that the
proof texts are not necessarily the work of R. Joshua b. Levi
himself. In fact, the probability is that they are a later
explanation of his saying, as we shall see. This would account for
Abaye, in the previous passage, observing that 'we expound the
verses' not 'he expounds'. And this would imply that the
proof texts were known by Abaye. Our suggestion is substantiated by
the fact that the comment on the first proof text: ~'They established
above that which the Jews took upon them down here below' is quoted
by Samuel in tractate Megillah to prove that the Book of Esther
was composed under the inspiration of the divine spirit and Samuel
does not quote it in the name of R. Joshua b. Levi. Even more
significant is the fact that the proof texts from Boaz and the angel
are quoted, in support of this very thesis that greeting should be
given by the divine Name, in an anonymous Mishnah. In addition,
the same reason for the second text is given by the Gemara in a
comment to the Mishnah. (Actually, the Mishnah quotes two
further proof texts and the Gemara explains why these, too, are
necessary, but a careful examination of that passage makes it clear
that these are not quoted here because they are not necessary to prove
the point made by R. Joshua b. Levi.) Finally, we note that the
comment of Rami bar Rabh is quoted elsewhere.
   From the above it follows that here, once again, we have a good
illustration of how a sugya has been fashioned from material
already in the hands of the Redactors. The sugya is built around
the saying of R. Joshua b. Levi. The proof text for the reading
of the Book of Esther is quoted with the comment given by Samuel.
(This is probably to be understood as a well-known comment on the
verse; quoted by Samuel in support of his thesis and quoted by the
Gemara in support of R. Joshua b. Levi's thesis!) The proof
text of greeting by the divine Name is taken from the Mishnah.
There is no reference to the Mishnah here because the Mishnah
deals with the actual practice of greeting by the divine Name and
the Gemara here quotes the texts to support the thesis of R.
Joshua b. Levi. The question and answer with regard to the need for
the text of the angel are quoted here in the same words in which they
are quoted in the discussion on the Mishnah. This can either mean
that both sugyas are quoting a well-known question and answer or
that our sugya is quoting from the longer sugya which deals
with all four texts quoted in the Mishnah. Or it is possible that
our sugya contains the original question and answer and this is
quoted in the other sugya. (This can be supported by the use of
the expression: ~'Boaz did it of his own accord but there was no
approval of his action in Heaven' in both sugyoth. Such an
expression appears to have been framed in response to the particular
point at issue here, whether the Heavenly Court concurred in the
decision of the human court.) The proof text of bringing the tithe to
the Temple is then quoted and the interpretation of the latter part of
the verse by Rami bar Rabh is added, not because this is at all
relevant to the discussion but because it was a familiar
interpretation which had become so well known that it was invariably
quoted whenever the verse itself was quoted, almost as if it were a
part of the verse.
   The Gemara continues with a saying of the Palestinian
teacher, R. Eleazar (3rd Cent.): 'The Holy Spirit manifested
itself in three places: the court of Shem, the court of Samuel of
Ramah, and the court of Solomon.' The place of this saying here is
obvious, it follows naturally on the saying of R. Joshua b. Levi
which deals with a similar theme. This is not, of course, to say that
originally the saying of R. Eleazar was in any way connected with
that of R. Joshua b. Levi, only that the two are placed into
juxtaposition by the Gemara. A proof text is then quoted for each
of the three cases mentioned by R. Eleazar. Judah said 'it is from
me', admitting that Tamar was with child from him. But how could he
have known this, perhaps she had consorted with some other man? But
the meaning of the verse is that a heavenly voice said: ~'It is from
Me'- in the words of the Gemara, the voice stated, 'these
secret matters have proceeded from Me'. This proves, according to
the Gemara, that the Holy Spirit manifested itself in the court of
Shem which flourished in the days of Judah. Of Samuel it is said that
when he asked the people to bear witness that he had not taken
anything of theirs the people said that they were witnesses. But the
verse reads: ~'And he said: ~"Witness"' instead of 'and they
said'. The Gemara interprets this to mean that it was a
heavenly voice which proclaimed: 'Witness.' Finally, the famous
case of the two harlots is quoted. How did Solomon know which was the
true mother, perhaps she was acting craftily? But it was a heavenly
voice which said: 'She is his mother.'
   Raba objects that there is no proof from the texts quoted. For
Judah may have known that Tamar was with child from him because he
counted the days and months from the time he had been with her and
found them to coincide with the time of her pregnancy and we do not
presume that which we do not see (i.e. we do not assume that
another man may have consorted with her at the same time). With
regard to Samuel the singular form may have been used because the
whole people of Israel are referred to in the singular, as they are in
another verse. As for Solomon he knew that she was the mother because
she loved the child sufficiently to give him up rather than see him
killed. But, says Raba, there is no real proof from the verses and
R. Eleazar's saying is based on a tradition.
# 216
<96 TEXT D8>
   It follows that the application of the one passage to the
healing miracles is likely to be as arbitrary and unprecedented as the
application of the other to the 'messianic secret'. In fact the
application of Isa. 53.4 to healing miracles is not really
appropriate. It only becomes possible if the verbs have the meaning
'take away', which is certainly not the meaning of the Hebrew they
translate, and contrary to the intention of the original context. It
does not mean that Jesus cured diseases, but that he bore them
himself. We have previously decided that the proper Christian
understanding of this verse is the atoning efficacy of the Passion.
But because it is a literal translation of the Hebrew, it is
necessary to see a real reference to the diseases of the people who
came to Jesus, when the verse is selected for a particular purpose in
isolation from the whole context. As such, it may have been used to
relate Christ's healing miracles to his total work of redemption. It
thus widens the scope of the great Passion prophecy from the strict
Passion apologetic to the whole of our Lord's ministry. The healings
are as much a part of his messianic work as the Passion itself. It
was prophesied that the Lord's Servant would bear our diseases, and
Jesus both removed men's diseases by his miracles and himself suffered
their pains on the cross. These were not the acts of a wonder-worker,
but should have been recognized as the proper work of the Christ, even
if he was only Messias incognitus.
   When Matthew incorporates this quotation in its present
context, he loses sight of the connection with the cross. All that he
is interested in is the fact that the work of healing can receive
warrant from Scripture. The purpose is pictorial rather than
apologetic. The details of the life of Jesus are already present in
the revelation given to the prophets. But Matthew scarcely realizes
that his use of the verse accords ill with its real meaning.
Our Lord's Use of Parables
   The effect of the two quotations which we have so far studied
in this section is to prove that when Jesus did acts of healing he was
acting as the Messiah. This raises the question whether people can be
held culpable for failing to recognize this. This aspect of the
matter appears in a further pair of texts which are concerned with our
Lord's use of parables. The analysis will show that the early Church
not unnaturally adopted the position that failure to see the messianic
character of his work was really caused by the people's own blindness.
There was a fundamental refusal to understand and to believe.
   We begin by observing how Matthew precisely repeats with regard
to the parables the procedure he had used for healings and exorcisms.
He takes two virtually equivalent Marcan summaries, abbreviates them
to make one point each, and adds what he thinks to be the appropriate
testimony in each case. The matter is further complicated, however,
by the fact that the earlier passage about parables already contains
the quotation material (i.e. Isa. 6.9f.) in the Marcan
original; and this is a quotation which has wide ramifications
throughout the New Testament.
   The first summary is Mark 4.1-12. It is a short paragraph on
the reason for parables, largely based on Isa. 6.9f., which Mark
has inserted here to 'mark time' between the parable of the sower
and its interpretation. Matthew does not add a new quotation, but on
the other hand abbreviates the Marcan version still further, when he
rewrites this in Matt. 13.1-16. His improvements consist in
(a) the insertion of the proverbial saying about ~'1Whosoever
1hath, to him shall be given', etc., from Mark 4.25; and (b)
the addition of a Q saying about the blessedness of the disciples,
which has a closely similar vocabulary to that of the Isaiah allusion.
These improvements have the sole motive of enhancing the superiority
of the disciples, who have the secret knowledge which others fail to
perceive. The inserted verse properly denotes a warning against
taking spiritual privilege for granted. It retains this in its Marcan
context (Mark 4.21-5, otherwise omitted by Matthew), and even more
clearly in its Q version at the end of the parable of the talents
(Matt. 25.29 = Luke 19.26). But here it actually increases the
sense of privilege, which directly contradicts our Lord's intention!
The added Q saying on the blessedness of the disciples is really
concerned with the blessedness of the present generation, when the
kingdom of God is breaking in, by contrast with the unfulfilled hopes
of previous generations. But Matthew has made it underline the good
fortune of the disciples as a privileged 6e?2lite.
   The second summary is Mark's conclusion to the chapter (Mark
4.33f.). In Matt. 13.34 Matthew takes over the first of these two
verses, which says that Jesus gave all his teaching in the form of
parables. But he suppresses the other, which tells how Jesus
afterwards interpreted them to the disciples privately. Instead he
inserts from his own stock the formula-quotation of Ps. 78.2: 'I
will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the
foundation <of the world>.' These changes thus cut out any further
mention of the privilege of the disciples, which had been specifically
developed in the former summary, and place the emphasis solely on the
intentional obscurity of Jesus' public teaching. We shall see that in
both cases Matthew's interpretation of the material is the end of a
process which reflects changing conditions in the Church. As the
second is much the simpler one of the two, it will be best to consider
it first.
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   The keyword for Matthew is 15wen parabolai?21s. As the
whole of the first line is identical with the Septuagint, it probably
represents the final stage of the adaptation of the text. This is to
make it specifically applicable to the use of parables. For earlier
stages we have to look at the second line, which is an independent
rendering of the Hebrew text. This was not necessarily concerned with
parables at all. The most notable feature of it is the translation
15kekrumme?2na (=things kept hidden) for
<HEBREW QUOTATION>
(=riddles). This directly contradicts what is said in Ps. 78.3f.,
that these things have been handed down from the fathers, and 'we
will not hide them' from succeeding generations. Thus this version
disregards the context, presumably intentionally.
   Nevertheless there is evidence that this psalm was used by at any
rate one circle in the Church with closer attention to its meaning.
In John 6.31 our Lord's opponents quote v. 24: 'He gave them
bread out of heaven to eat.' The objection is that Jesus' claim to
be the Messiah is invalidated by his failure to repeat the miracle of
the manna. It is evident that the feeding of the multitude is held by
John to be a proper repetition of this miracle. But the teaching
shows that the miracle is fulfilled more truly at a much deeper level.
This implies an interpretation of the whole psalm in terms of our
Lord's redeeming work. The psalm is a poetical narrative of the acts
of God in redemption. The elaborate opening verses, speaking darkly
of a mystery from the foundation of the world, are intended to show
that such acts are always true of God. The whole thing is thus an
expression of faith, that he who acted in this way can do so again.
In the same way, those who try to figure out eschatological
programmes can expect the same acts to be repeated. This was perhaps
too naively imagined by some. But if the Jews objected that Jesus had
failed to perform the repetition of acts of redemption expected in the
eschatological programme, the Church could reply that he had indeed
fulfilled it, though in a mystery. This is an apologetic motive for
the feeding miracles. And it also shows how Jesus was truly acting as
the Messiah in the time before his Crucifixion.
   We have now arrived at an intelligible reason for
15kekrumme?2na as a rendering of
<HEBREW QUOTATION>.
These 'riddles' are the righteous acts of God in redemption, as
the psalm itself implies. The works of Jesus- primarily his atoning
death, but also, at this stage in the apologetic, the rest of the
ministry- are the final expression of these acts of redemption. But
if it be objected that his works bore little relation to the way in
which this was expected, then it invited the apologist to place the
emphasis on the hiddenness of God's ways. To say that Jesus'
works were genuinely messianic, but took the form of
<HEBREW QUOTATION>,
so that they could only be perceived as such by the elect, solves the
whole problem.
   Such is the application of Ps. 78 considered as a whole. The
selection of v. 2 as a pesher quotation narrows the application
to the teaching of Jesus. It is the full and final revelation
(cf. Heb. 1.2a). In the first line
<HEBREW QUOTATION>
has a roughly equivalent meaning to
<HEBREW QUOTATION>
in the second. To apply it to the parabolic method is a further
refinement, effected with the aid of the Septuagint rendering.
Finally Matthew inserts the resultant text into his parables chapter
for its 'pictorial' value, just as he used Isa. 53.4 at 8.17.
   These stages of development reflect the Church's changing
outlook. To begin with, the Resurrection is held to be the revelation
of the mystery of redemption, the open demonstration of God's saving
activity to which all previous sacred history has been leading. This
idea is commonly met with in the Pauline Epistles, e.g. =1
Cor. 2.7, where it characteristically refers principally to the
cross. Secondly the teaching of Jesus is held to be an essential part
of the revelation, though its true significance was known only to the
'elect'. Thus the construction put upon the teaching in the light
of the Resurrection faith is read back as if that was its recognized
meaning all along. This is exactly parallel to the attitude adopted
to the healing miracles. It was a natural position to take, once the
Teacher himself had withdrawn. It is similar to the position of the
Qumran Covenanters, who preserved a tradition of biblical exegesis,
derived from their founder, which they regarded as a secret revealed
to the 6e?2lite. The third and final stage is the claim that
this method was a deliberate policy on the part of Jesus, to prevent
the mystery from being revealed to any but the few who are chosen. It
is probable that this idea of a policy of concealment on the part of
our Lord corresponds with an actual impression given by his anxiety to
prevent his own radical reinterpretation of the kingdom of God from
being confused with popular expectations. The special Marcan nuance
in connection with this is the impression that even the inner group of
disciples were themselves equally mystified by the parabolic method
(Mark 8.17). A concomitant of the final stage is the sect-type
doctrine of the Church. The Church is a privileged 6e?2lite,
having access to knowledge denied to those outside its ranks.
Isaiah 6.9f.
   We now turn to the earlier paragraph on parables, and look
first at the material as it stands in Mark 4.1-13. It is clear that
we have here an original saying built on Isa. 6.9f., sandwiched
between Marcan editorial matter which considerably alters the sense of
it. The nucleus consists of vv. 11f., which is a perfect
expression of the doctrine of the 6e?2lite. The mystery of the
kingdom is given to the disciples, but to outsiders all things are
'in parables'. The purpose is to sift the people, for (it is
assumed) the elect perceive the mystery, but the rejected are blind to
it. If 15wen parabolai?21s represents
<HEBREW QUOTATION>
(collective), as it actually does in the Septuagint of Ps. 78.2,
then the original saying was probably more general in intention, and
it is Mark who has narrowed it down to parables in the technical
sense.
# 211
<97 TEXT D9>
Faith cannot stand unless it has nothing to stand on. Every moment
is strain and crisis. That may be natural to the reformer in a
decadent atmosphere (if Danish religion was decadent), but it has the
true Jansenist touch, as defined by Sainte-Beuve in the famous phrase,
'It forgot God the father.' After all, the world created by God
was pronounced good by Him. It is corrected but not superseded by the
religion of Redemption- the Kingdom of the Son.
   No doubt there are fierce and dangerous factors working under the
surface of our souls, but we need not (indeed we cannot) be always
living under the surface.
   We get a clear result of his system when he speaks of children.
As their life has no strain they cannot be real Christians and
Kierkegaard has to deal (rather shame-facedly) with the Gospel texts
on the subject (Unscientific Postscript, p. 524).
Kant and the Utilitarians
   Most people would agree that Immanuel Kant was a great thinker
and also that he was hard to understand.
   There are many ways of being hard to understand. One is due to
style. Not knowing German, I can hardly assess this. It would seem
that he can be quite lucid when he wants, and can strike out effective
phrases like ~'Perceptions without conceptions are blind, and
conceptions without perceptions are empty,' or ~'So act that your
action may be a general law.' On the other hand, he is one of the
philosophers whose work has been subjected to Higher Criticism, and
the division into earlier and later strata recalls the Q and M and L
of New Testament sources. This is partly owing to the fact that he
was thinking, while he was writing, and did not always trouble to turn
and revise page 1 in the light of what he had said on page 2. But
we must also take into account a feature of his mind that may be
called Dualism. He tells us himself that his method of thinking was
to take a point of view and work it out to its logical conclusion and
then to do the same with the opposite point of view. They sometimes
lie down side by side, like the lion and the lamb, but not to live in
peace together.
   Two famous examples present themselves in the Critique of Pure
Reason, where he is analysing the fact of knowledge. First of all,
the case of the Senses and the Understanding. They seem to have no
common root. The first is passive, the second active. The first
deals with the outward and the second with the inner world. It is
said that they are inseparable but it is not clear why (for example)
my sensation of colour and my thought of Substance should combine into
the amalgam we call 'seeing a thing'. We may say (without going
into technicalities) that Kant took his account of the Senses from
Hume, and his account of the Understanding from Leibniz, and it can
hardly be said that he reconciled them.
   It is the same with the distinction between Phenomena (things as
they appear to us) and Things in themselves (as they really are). We
are told there is a deep gulf between the two. Phenomena fall within
my experience. Things in themselves are unknowable, but in that case
how do I know of their existence? And what of the knowing Self which,
in his view, seems to belong to both worlds? We must keep this
dualism in mind when we come to consider what Kant says about the
relation of Goodness and Happiness.
   Most people know Heine's brilliant jest about the contrast
between two Critiques- that of Pure Reason, in which he deals with
thought, and that of the Practical Reason, in which he deals with
action. In the first he had shown himself a revolutionary. 'The
inhabitants of Koenigsburg set their watches by him when they saw this
mild, inoffensive man take his regular walk.' Had they known, they
would have been more frightened of him than of Robespierre.
Robespierre only killed a king. Kant killed a God- the God of the
Deists (that is, the God whose existence can be proved by reason).
Then he describes Kant looking up from his triumphant dialectic and
his eye lights upon his faithful servant, Lampe. He must be left with
something to live by. So in the second Critique Kant reinstates God,
Freedom and Immortality as the object, not of proof, but of belief.
   Put less picturesquely, this means that the Critique of Pure
Reason hedges in knowledge so strictly that it can deal with things
only as they appear to us in sense experience. But when we take up
the second Critique which deals with Morality, we find that the moral
Good is permanent and unchanging in which we have to believe to make
sense of duty. As Kant says with a regal gesture, 'I abolish
knowledge to make room for belief.'
   So we have got back to the existence of God, but the God of the
moral law. Moral Duty (he argues) is distinguished from other
purposive action by its absolute obligation- what Kant calls the
Categorical Imperative. All other imperatives are conditional. 'If
you want to be a musician, you must practice <SIC> so many hours a
day'. But Conscience does not say, 'If you want to be good, you
must abstain from committing murder.' It says, '1Thou 1shalt do
no murder.' The moral command is unconditional. It is not based on
desire which is selfish. Duty is not concerned with consequence:
Happiness is concerned with nothing else.
   Here we have a sharp dualism. The soul of man is free only when
it accepts the moral law as good in itself and does not get entangled
with selfish desires. He does not go quite so far as to say that if I
take pleasure in a good action it makes that action bad, but he does
say that its goodness has no connection with my feelings. Kant finds
it rather difficult to answer the question: have I any motive at all
when I obey the moral law? I do not desire anything for myself or for
others. I am not concerned with any consequence that may follow. I
may say that I 'respect' it but I show that respect simply by
obeying a law which, because it is always binding on all, must have
God for its Giver.
   So far Kant has not got much beyond the Stoic position. But
after all, he had been brought up under Christian influences, and he
goes a step further. To do my duty is to will the Supreme Good. I
cannot will what is impossible and therefore there must be a God who
is able and willing to bring about the Supreme Good- which includes
Happiness. A. E. Taylor has said that what distinguishes
Religion from Morality is that the former says, 'What ought to be,
exists.' Kant makes a move in that direction.
   There is another point at which he swerves from the strict Stoic
creed. He accepts a belief in Immortality not so much as a system of
rewards and penalties as the possibility of endless moral progress.
His rather curious argument runs as follows: 'What the Law commands
must be possible.' 'I must; therefore I can.' 'This proves
human freedom. But the Law commands that I shall be absolutely good.
Now goodness is a process of becoming which never ends, and therefore
needs an endless period'- in which not to attain its goal!
   But will this process go on after death as it does here on earth,
where the just are never perfectly happy and where evils are
constantly clouding and obstructing the Good Will, which Kant calls
'the brightest jewel of the Soul'? I suppose he might have
answered, Yes, survival after death and unending improvement need not
mean perfect happiness there any more than here. But after seventeen
centuries of Christian teaching about Heaven it was difficult to
contemplate so bleak a prospect. So now he introduces a new moral
intuition. 'That Goodness and Happiness ought to go together, and
the existence of God proves that they shall.'
   So he seems to have overcome the dualism of Happiness and Duty
but at a cost. He has been violently attacked for reviving at this
point the very desire for rewards, which he had banished so haughtily
from his Ethics. Professor Webb defends him against this charge by
saying that the desire is not selfish but a matter of justice- that
all good men should be rewarded (whether it includes myself or not).
This may or may not be a sufficient answer, but it hardly meets the
problem 'Does Kant regard Happiness as a good thing or not?' The
answer would seem to be that it is a bad thing before death and a good
thing after. This is not perhaps as absurd as it sounds and might be
worked into a theory that life here is a probation, in which we prove
ourselves worthy or unworthy of happiness in the next.
   But in this life is it not lawful to seek the happiness of
others? On stern Kantian grounds, no. Our only desire for others
should be that they observe the moral law. Thus, the evil of cruelty
consists in its effect on the disposition of the doer and not in the
sufferings of the victim. It is surely the height of pedantry to deny
that at least one of the consequences which result from breaking the
law of human kindness is the increase of human unhappiness.
   The Utilitarians defended Pleasure against Kant. I do not
propose to say more than a word about Jeremy Bentham. As a reformer
of Law and political institutions he was effective, largely because
they demand an appeal to the kind of external obedience which can be
regulated by external rewards and punishments. But, when he tries to
open the secrets of the human heart, he appears as the pedant, which
for all his good nature he really was. He seems to have accepted the
syllogism:
   I only do what I desire.
   I only desire what gives me the greater pleasure.
   Therefore, whatever I do, I do because it gives me the greater
pleasure.
   It is natural to ask- if everyone does what gives him the
greatest pleasure and cannot do anything else, what is wrong and why
is the moralist needed to tell us what we ought to do? What is the
greatest pleasure? On what scale is it measured? Am I the best judge
of it? And so on. But apart from all that, one is surprised at the
poverty of his psychology. Bentham would have done well to consider
the Romantic movement which he so much despised.
   We only do what we want! Struggles of martyrs, doubts of lovers,
fight against temptation, changing moods of the voluptuary, earnest
struggling after the true end of life- was all this world of feeling
completely closed to him? As though ~'What do I want?' were not
the question of questions!
   That world was not wholly closed to John Stuart Mill. Brought up
in the straitest sect of the Benthamites, he literally collapsed after
a diet of 'push-pin as good as poetry' and 'forty-three motives
for obeying the law'. He recovered into a brighter world of poetry
and music. But he still called himself a Utilitarian.
   This was not merely loyalty to his upbringing. It was the result
of his abiding dislike for any system which relied upon pure
intuition. Wherever he sensed it, there was the enemy. It relied
upon an obscure feeling, which was not accountable to reason. For
Mill, life must be made up of clear-cut ends, and of means leading
straight to them. The kind of Good preached by Kant and Coleridge
seemed to him vague and undefined. But everyone knew what Pleasure
was. Here was a goal with no mystical nonsense about it.
# 23
<98 TEXT D1>
   There are, of course, those who regard the Church as Christ's
body, not metaphorically, but metaphysically and ontologically, and
see it as an extension of the Incarnation, and would not think any
description of the Church complete in which the phrase "body of
Christ" did not occur; and no doubt the sentence under consideration
was framed thus, with biblical language used in this oddly unbiblical
way, in order to leave it open to such persons to expound what is
said, not of evangelism, whereby Christ calls men out of the world to
Himself, but of the Church as supernaturalizing society, or as linking
men to Christ through its sacraments, or else of Christ as in some
sense continuing His work of redemption by endlessly offering Himself
to God in organic union with His members. But all these are minority
views in the Church of England, of dubious biblical credentials, and
scarcely a century old; they can hardly be said to be rooted in
Anglican tradition, and they are certainly not countenanced in any
official formulary of the Church of England. As such, they have
surely no right thus to deflect the wording of the Catechism from the
biblical norm of usage.
   (=2) The section (14-17) introduced by the question: ~"What
orders of ministries are there in the Church?" ought to be dropped.
In the first place, the question presumably refers to the Church
universal on earth, but it is answered by a description of bishops,
priests, and deacons, and their work in the Church of England. This
is odd: is the Church of England, then, to be identified with the
Church universal? And furthermore: it is <SIC> essential for the
catechumen to be instructed in the precise functions of bishops,
priests, and deacons in the Church of England set-up before he be
admitted to the Lord's Table? Such instruction could only be held
essential if this organizational structure were itself essential to
the being of the Church, as such, so that where this threefold
ministry could not be recognized the Church must be judged
non-existent, and the conclusion drawn that there are no valid or
efficacious Eucharists there. Knowledge about the threefold ministry
would then be "saving knowledge" in the strict sense, for valid
sacraments are generally necessary to salvation; but is this the
historic Anglican view? Can it be proved by Scripture, which
"1containeth all things necessary to salvation"? The answer is no
in both cases. It is true that a vocal minority in the Church of
England today holds this opinion in some form, but it does not seem
right to give space in the Revised Catechism to a matter whose
presence there could only be justified if this minority view were
accepted as being Scriptural and normatively Anglican.
   This section leaves the impression that the ministry is the
Church for all practical purposes, and this impression is strengthened
when, at a later stage, we read that "the Church's ministry in
marriage is to bless the man and the woman in their wedding, so
that they may together receive the grace of God..." (53). Certainly
not! This is Roman doctrine, not the doctrine of the Church of
England. The Church is the fellowship of the faithful, not just the
minister; and the Church's ministry in marriage is to pray for
and with the marrying couple- a ministry of which the officiant's
pronouncement of blessing is only one small part. Here, too, a change
of wording is imperative; unless, indeed, question 53 be deleted
altogether, which we ourselves would favour (see below).
   (=3) Baptism is defined (38) as "the sacrament in which,
through the action of the Holy Spirit, we are christened or made
Christ's". This definition is not very satisfactory. In the first
place, it has no clear meaning (which fact alone makes it unfit to
stand in a catechism). In the second place, it most naturally implies
that there is a peculiar grace received in baptism ex opere
operato. But it is not historic Anglican teaching (think of the
Gorham judgment), nor, we think, is it unanimous present-day Anglican
opinion, that the grace exhibited in baptism is always received in the
rite itself, and never before or after. In the answer to question 42,
however, we are told that ~"Confirmation is the ministry by which,
through prayer with the laying on of hands by the bishop, the Holy
Spirit is received to complete what he began in baptism...";
which form of words (based, it seems, on the audacious assertion in
the Scottish Prayer Book that ~"Confirmation is an apostolic and
sacramental rite by which the Holy Spirit is given to complete our
baptism") seems to force us to interpret answer 38 of some sort of
baptismal regeneration. Yet it is a very odd sort of regeneration,
for it is only a partial initiation into Christ and His Church,
needing the further grace given in Confirmation (also ex opere
operato?) to perfect it. Such a concept has breath-taking
implications. It implies that every baptized Christian throughout the
universal Church whose ecclesiastical system does not make available
to him episcopal confirmation misses some grace, forfeits some
blessing, foregoes some degree of union with Christ. On this view, as
Professor G. W. H. Lampe has pointed out, "Christian Baptism
would be reduced to the level of the baptism of John, a preparatory
cleansing in expectation of a future baptism with Holy Spirit;
Confirmation would become, not merely a sacrament in the fullest sense
(which the Anglican Articles deny), but the great sacrament without
whose reception no man could call himself a Christian..." (The
Seal of the Spirit, 1951, p. =13). Lampe calls these
"monstrous conclusions". We agree. Are they historic Anglican
teaching? Can they be proved by Scripture? Again, the answer in both
cases is no. We know, certainly, that this view (the "Mason-Dix
line") has been argued at various times during the past hundred
years by a small band of very able men, that it has a certain
following today, and that it has actually been embodied in the
proposed new Confirmation rite. But most Anglicans, we think, still
hold to the historic view expressed in the structure of the 1662
Confirmation service- namely, that Confirmation is simply a domestic
institution whereby the Anglican community, acting through the bishop
as its appointed representative, welcomes into adult fellowship, on
the basis of a personal profession of faith, those who in baptism were
originally received, normally as infants, with the status of sponsored
members. The congregation prays that the Spirit may strengthen the
confirmees for the new responsibilities which their increased status
in the Church brings. But this is not in the least to imply that in
the sight of God the blessings of the Spirit which their baptism
signified- "union with Christ in his death and resurrection, the
forgiveness of sins, and a new birth into God's family, the Church"
(4)- are necessarily incomplete till Confirmation has taken place.
Here again, then, we must protest against the intrusion into the new
Catechism, which the whole Church, it is hoped, will use, of a
minority opinion which most Anglican clergy in their teaching of
Confirmation candidates would wish to ignore, or indeed repudiate.
   (=4) At this point, however, we would make a more radical
criticism. The passages dealing with the five "other Ministries of
Grace" ("confirmation, holy order, holy matrimony, the ministry of
absolution, and the ministry of healing") ought, we suggest, to be
dropped entirely. For the assumption behind the phrase "other
Ministries of Grace" evidently is that in each of these five cases
(though, one would gather, in no other case) the activity of the
officiant confers some special gift of God which would not otherwise
be received. We saw earlier how clearly this comes out in the
tell-tale wording of the statement about matrimony; and the assumption
appears again when absolution is defined as the ministry whereby
penitents who have made "free confession" of their sins in the
minister's presence "receive through him (6sic) the forgiveness
of God". (This, of course, as it stands, is simply not historic
Anglican teaching, but a well-known party line. To express the
Anglican view of absolution, as witnessed to by the Prayer Book, the
last words would have to read: "receive through him assurance of
the forgiveness of God"- rather a different thing.)
   But the assumption that these five types of ministerial action
each convey a special grace ex opere operato is without
warrant in Anglican theology- not to mention the Bible! We might,
perhaps, be told that no such assumption is implied, and all that
"ministries of grace" means in this context is that God blesses His
faithful people through each of these ministerial functions. This is
an undoubted truth; but if nothing more than this is intended, we
should at once have to ask why, in that case, only these five receive
mention? Why is healing specified when the visitation of the sick is
not? Why is absolution spoken of while the preaching of the Word is
left out? Whichever way we look at it, neither the Articles, nor the
Prayer Book, nor the Bible, can justify the selection of just these
five activities, and no more, as the Church's "other ministries of
grace". The selection is inherently arbitrary and untheological.
This idea behind it is presumably that the catechism ought to mention
one ministerial action in the Church of England to correspond with
each of Rome's seven sacraments; but there is no obvious reason why it
should. The habit of mind which takes its cue from Rome and aims to
keep step with Rome wherever possible is found in the Church of
England, but it is not authentically Anglican. We ask again: can it
be held that the knowledge of these five "ministries of grace" is
in any way essential to salvation? Can the things that are said, in
particular, about Confirmation, and matrimony, and absolution, be
proved from Scripture? Can any warrant or sanction for them be found
in existing Anglican formularies, or in the main stream of the
Anglican theological tradition? If not (and we think that the answer
to all three questions is no), then they can have no rightful place in
a Catechism for the Church of England.
   So much for the new material. But to complete our survey we
should also note what has been omitted of the old material. Here are
the more important deletions.
   (=1) The reference to the world, the flesh, and the devil in
the first baptismal vow has been replaced by a weak general reference
to "wrong" and "evil" (We gather, however, that the devil, at
least, is soon to be restored to his rightful place as an object of
specific renunciation.)
   (=2) The assertion of original sin ("being by nature born in
sin, and the children of wrath") has been dropped entirely. This is
disturbing, for the new Catechism now says nothing positive at all
about man's lost condition by nature. It is true that the biblical
doctrine of original sin (under its ecclesiastical name of
Augustinianism) is having a raw deal in Anglican liturgical circles
these days; but it is there in the Bible, and it ought to appear in an
unexpurgated form in the Catechism. For the Catechism exists to teach
the Gospel of God's grace, and you cannot understand grace till you
have first understood sin.
   (=3) The sanction of the second commandment has also gone, so
that the new Catechism now contains no mention of God's penal wrath
against sin.
   (=4) The description of the Church as God's "elect people"-
the covenant community- has gone. The thought of the covenant
relationship seems to be completely absent from the wording of the
Revised Catechism.
   (=5) The conception of a sacrament as a visible word of God,
summoning its recipients to "Faith, whereby they 1stedfastly believe
the promises of God made to them in that sacrament", has vanished
too.
   (=6) So has the demand that those who come to the Lord's Supper
should first examine themselves.
# 29
<99 TEXT D11>
BIBLE STUDY- ZECHARIAH
F. B. HOLE
(Chapters 7: 1-11: 17)
   IN the first verse of chapter 7, we find another date
given; almost two years later than that of the visions just recorded,
and the prophecies of Haggai. These fresh prophecies were occasioned
by the arrival of certain men with questions as to the observance of
fasts, and we notice that we pass from the record of visions to a
series of plain declarations of God's message. We now find repeated
not, ~"I lifted up 1mine eyes," but rather, ~"The word of the
Lord came."
   The question raised by these men concerned a fast in the fifth
month, which had been observed for many years. From Jeremiah 52: 12,
we learn that it was in that month the Babylonian army had burned
Solomon's magnificent temple, and wrecked Jerusalem. Now once more
the house of the Lord was being built, if not entirely finished, so
was it suitable that they should still observe the fast? A very
natural question!
   The answer of God through Zechariah linked with this fast another
in the seventh month, which apparently was in memory of the murder of
Gedaliah and others, and the flight of the remnant, left in the land,
into Egypt, as recorded in 2 Kings 25: 25, 26. These tragedies were
commemorated with fasting and tears, during the seventy years
captivity. As far as we can discern, no direct answer was given to
the question they raised: instead another question was raised with
them. Did they have Jehovah before their minds in their observances
or only themselves? And when the fast was over, did they return to
their eating and drinking just enjoying themselves? Did they really
fast, enquired the Lord, "unto Me, even to Me?"
   Here is deeply important instruction for ourselves. We may put
it thus: In our observances and service a right motive is everything.
We may diligently observe the Lord's Supper on the first day of the
week, diligently preach the Gospel, or minister to the saints; but are
we doing it with God Himself, revealed in Christ, before us, or are we
just pursuing an agreeable ritual and maintaining our own reputations
in it all? A searching question, which the writer had better ask
himself as well as the readers ask themselves.
   If the people had kept the Lord before them and observed His
words through the former prophets, things would have been far
otherwise. And what was His word now through Zechariah, but just what
it had been through them. Take Isaiah's first chapter as an example.
He accused the people of moral corruption, whilst maintaining
ceremonial exactitude. In verses 11-14, of our chapter the men who
enquired are reminded of this, and are plainly challenged as to the
present attitude of themselves and the people of their day, as we see
in verses 8-1. The moral evils that had wrecked the nation were
still working amongst the people that had returned to the land. A
remnant may return but the inveterate tendency to develop the old
evils remains. Let us never forget that.
   But having exposed the sinful state of the people, another word
from the Lord came in which the purposes of His mercy were revealed,
as we see in chapter 8. In this remarkable chapter there are things
specially addressed to the remnant then back in the land- verses
9-17, for instance- yet the main drift of it goes far beyond anything
that was realized in their history, between the rebuilding as
permitted by Cyrus, and the destruction under the Romans; so it looks
on to the end of the age and the second coming of Christ.
   In that age Jerusalem will indeed have Jehovah dwelling in her
midst and be called "a city of truth." Once indeed He who was the
"truth" as well as the "way," and the "life," was in her
midst, only to be rejected and crucified, while Pilate, who sanctioned
that act of rejection, asked satirically, "What is truth?" No,
Jerusalem has never yet been worthy of that designation; but she will
be in a coming age. And then human life will be greatly prolonged,
and young life be abundant and free. Our modern streets with
fast-moving motor traffic are hardly a playground for children.
   Verses 6-8, also look on to the time of the end. What had come
to pass in the return of the remnant was indeed wonderful in their
eyes, but what is here predicted would be more wonderful still, when
God would gather from the west as well as the east, to dwell as His
people, so that He would be their God "in truth and righteousness."
In Christ truth and righteousness have indeed been revealed and
established, but never yet has God dwelt in Jerusalem on that basis.
The day is coming when He will do so.
   In verses 9-16, there is a special appeal to the remnant of the
people then in the land. They are reminded of the words spoken to
them earlier, when the foundation of the temple was laid, and how the
adversity that had marked their doings had been turned into a time of
prosperity. God was now bestowing much favour and prosperity upon
them, but they are reminded that He called for suitable behaviour on
their part. Truth, honesty and righteous judgment was what was
expected of them. Again the stress is on the moral qualities that are
according to God, and not on ceremonial observances.
   A further word from the Lord is now given, and in verse 19 four
fasts are mentioned. Besides the two mentioned in the previous
chapter we now have the one in the fourth month, for in that month
famine prevailed and Jerusalem was broken up, according to Jeremiah
52: 6, and it was in the tenth month that the city was surrounded by
Nebuchadnezzar's army, as verse 4 of that same chapter records. It is
now revealed that the day would come when these four fasts would be
turned into feasts of rejoicing. Therefore they were to love truth
and peace. These predictions of future blessing were to have a
present effect upon the people.
   And all that we know of future blessing should have a present
effect or good upon ourselves. It is worthy of note that truth
precedes peace, as cause and effect. Error produces strife just as
certainly as truth produces peace. In the remaining verse of our
chapter we find predictions of the happy state of things that will
prevail when truth at last prevails in Jerusalem, and peace fills the
scene. In that coming day the house of the Lord will indeed be,
"1an house of prayer for all people" (Isa. 56: 7). There will
be many who desire to seek the Lord in prayer, and they will recognize
where God is to be found in that day. All through the centuries the
name, "Jew," has had a measure of reproach attaching to it. It
will not be so then, for they will recognize that at last God is with
His ancient people. It is obvious that this prediction has never yet
been fulfilled, and looks on to a future day.
   The word of the Lord that opens chapter 9 is spoken of as a
"burden," since it starts with solemn words of judgment on peoples
that surrounded the land of Israel. Some of these judgments took
place soon after the predictions were uttered; that upon Tyre, for
instance, and upon the cities of the Philistines. Darby's New
Translation tells us that an alternate rendering to "bastard," is
one "of a foreign race." But even so there will apparently be a
remainder, or a remnant, who will be for God and belong to Him.
Moreover, however powerful oppressors may appear to be, God will
encamp about His house in protecting mercy. And how will this be
brought to pass?
   Verses 9 and 1 answer this question, for in these two verses the
two advents of the Lord Jesus are brought before us. The coming of
the King will settle everything, but we can imagine how the reader of
Zechariah's day might pause at this ninth verse in amazement, feeling
that in the presence of powerful outside foes, and the inward
defection so plainly manifested amongst the Jews, some great and
majestic and powerful Deliverer was needful, and the King is announced
as lowly in His person and in His approach. True, He is to have
salvation, but this was not the kind of King that was popularly
expected.
   The spirit of God, who inspired this prophecy knew very well that
there was a deeper question to be settled before there could be the
intervention in power that was so ardently desired. First must come
the bearing of the full penalty of human sin, and hence the Divinely
reached settlement of that dreadful matter, and, that accomplished,
there could be emancipation from sin's power. This had been set forth
typically in Exodus 12 and 14. First the blood of the lambs in Egypt,
and then deliverance by the overthrow of Egypt. The latter is more
spectacular, but the former a far deeper thing.
   In the Gospels we see how the more spectacular filled the minds
of the disciples. Even when they acted and played their part in the
fulfilment of verse 9, they did not realize they were doing it. This
we are plainly told in John 12: 16. Only when Jesus was glorified and
the Holy Spirit was given did they realize the true significance of
what they had done. Again, in Acts 1: 6, we see how the coming of the
kingdom in power filled their thoughts before the Spirit was given.
The coming of the King in lowly grace was but little understood or
anticipated by the great majority.
   But the Messiah will come in power and have dominion over all the
earth, as verse 1 declares. The way His widespread kingship is
stated here agrees exactly with the inspired statement through David
centuries before, written in Psalm 72: 8. When David forsaw <SIC>
this by the Spirit, every desire of his heart was satisfied, and he
had nothing left to pray for, as the last verse of the psalm tells us.
What our prophet tells us is that the days of warfare will be over-
chariot and battle bow cut off, and peace imposed upon the nations.
   Verse 11 appears to be a word specially addressed to the sons of
Israel, for Ephraim is addressed in verse 13, as well as Judah. They
have all been like prisoners, entrapped in a waterless pit, waiting
and hoping for deliverance. When Messiah comes in power deliverance
will reach them, but only through "the blood of 1thy covenant."
Here we see an allusion to that new covenant of grace, predicted in
Jeremiah 31: 31, illuminated for us by the words of the Lord Jesus at
the institution of His Supper, when He spoke of, "My blood of the new
testament" (Matt. 26: 28). On that basis only will the
deliverance and the blessing be brought in and firmly established.
   When Zechariah wrote these things, Greece, mentioned in verse 13,
was hardly a power to be reckoned with, though not long after, under
Alexander the Great, it was destined to overthrow the Persian power.
We may see therefore in the closing verses of this chapter
predictions which had a partial fulfilment not long after the prophecy
was given, though in their fulness they look on to the end
of the age.
   The same thing may be said of the predictions that fill chapter
1, though it opens with solemn words concerning the evils that still
were practiced <SIC> among the people. The "rain" of blessing
would descend from God, and not proceed from the "idols," or
"teraphim," little images by which men sought to probe into future
events. All that came from this source was but vanity, and the
"shepherds" of the people, who dealt with such things would have
the anger of God against them, for God was going to take up the house
of Judah and use them in the execution of judgment in some directions.
# 238
<1 TEXT D12>
Had the passing away of one generation in death been normal, could
it at the same time have been listed with "Vanity of Vanities"?
When Adam by his disobedience let sin into the world and death by
sin, man made in the image of God became "subject to vanity"
(Rom. 8:2), not willingly certainly, and in hope most blessedly,
but subject to vanity nevertheless. The doom pronounced in Genesis
3:19 ~"Dust 1thou 1art and unto dust 1shalt 1thou return" is
seen by Ecclesiastes as something that reduced man to the level of the
beast of the field. He comments "as the one 1dieth, so 1dieth the
other" (3:19). If the coming of death has necessitated the
successive passing and coming of the generations of men, then the
question arises, what would have been the state of things had Adam
remained unfallen?
   Now we readily admit that from one point of view, this argument
based upon what might have happened but which did not, is often
futile, and we are well advised to face things as they are. If,
however, we approach such a question with a chastened spirit,
admitting all the time that what we say may nevertheless be very wide
of the mark, some light upon the vexed state of affairs that now
obtain may repay our modest inquiry.
   It is categorically stated that God made man upright, but that
men have sought out many inventions (Eccles. 7:29), so that we can
go behind the record of the fall in Eden with this fact in mind. The
unfallen Adam was commanded by His Creator to "be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth" (Gen. 1:28), yet it is very
evident that, if time went on and the population of the earth
continued to increase, nations and rulers would soon be facing a most
serious problem of feeding and supporting these teeming millions.
Only by the sad fact now that "one generation" passes, can the
earth continue to support "the generations" that come. It appears
therefore that had man not fallen and death not intervened, the
succeeding generations that would have made up the number of the elect
seed would have appeared without break, and that the earth would have
provided abundant accommodation for them all. There would then have
not been necessary the thousands of years which the ages span, and
none of the "tares" would have challenged the true seed and
occupied so much of their territory.
   It is safe to say, however, that no inheritance set aside for
those predestinated by Divine grace, ever has written across it "With
VACANT possession." In every case a usurper has to be
dispossessed before the true heirs can take possession; see
Deuteronomy two for this in type. The multiplication of man after the
fall, was not made up entirely by the true seed; Satan sowed his
tares, and those tares outnumbered the true seed so disproportionately
that by the time that Noah was grown to manhood "all flesh" with
the exception of one family of eight souls (1 Pet. 3:2) had so
corrupted his way upon the earth, that they were completely destroyed
from the earth (Gen. 6:13), "everything that is in the earth shall
die" was the verdict (Gen. 6:17) and ~"Noah only remained alive,
and they that were with him in the Ark" (Gen. 7:23).
   Again, upon emerging on to dry land, Noah is commanded, as was
Adam before him, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth" (Gen. 9:1). This increase in number however was not
limited to the true seed, for we read the Midianites and the
Amalekites came "as grasshoppers for multitude" (Judges 6:5,7:12)
whereas Israel were greatly impoverished. The "multitude" of the
Canaanites (Judges 4:7); of the Syrians (1 Kings 2:13); of the
Ethiopians (2 Chron. 14:11); of the children of Moab and of Ammon (2
Chron. 2:2); of the Assyrians (2 Chron. 32:7); of Babylon (Isa
13:4); of the nations (Isa. 29:7); of Egypt, of Elam, of Meshech and
Tubal and of Gog; and finally the multitudes in the valley of decision
(Joel 3:14), indicate something of the menace to the true seed in the
earth that the multiplying of these nations must have been. The
picture before the mind is a field of wheat, smothered by the growth
of charlock and poppy. The passages which speak of Israel being a
multitude are well known, two passages, namely Genesis 28:3 and 48:4
need to be corrected in the A.V. for the word there translated
"multitude" is the Hebrew word gahal meaning "a called out
assembly", or as Stephen says "the church in the wilderness"
(Acts 7:38), and has no connexion with the question of number.
   While the promise was made to Abraham that his seed should be
like the stars, the dust and the sand that cannot be numbered, we know
that the Lord had said of them ~"1Ye were the fewest of all
people" (Deut 7:7) although from being "three score and ten
persons" they had become by the time Moses wrote "as the stars of
heaven for multitude" (Deut. 1:22). At the time of the end of
the Millennium the evil seed are so numerous that they are likened in
number to "the sand of the sea", and went up on "the breadth of
the earth" (Rev. 2:8,9). At last, however, the nations of the
earth will become so decimated by war, famine and self destruction
that Zechariah speaks of "every one THAT IS LEFT of all the
nations which come against Jerusalem" (Zech 14:16)! It is thus that
Israel, as the vehicle of the true seed on earth, come into their own,
for then ~"Israel shall blossom, and bud, and fill the face of the
world with fruit" (Isa. 27:6); it is then that they "enlarge the
place of their tent" and their seed "shall inherit the Gentiles"
(Isa. 54:3) even as their fathers in small yet typical measure
"inherited" the land held by the Amorite (Deut. 2:31).
   Coming back from this survey to the time of Adam, and supposing,
for the sake of argument, that Adam did not fall, that neither sin nor
death were factors in the purpose, and that consequently redemption by
the shedding of blood would be unknown and unnecessary, let us think
further along this line. Hebrews 2:14 makes it clear that the Saviour
took part in flesh and blood in order that He might be the
Kinsman-Redeemer of all the seed, but John 1:14 reveals that He was
made flesh so that of His fulness we all might receive, and that as
the Word made flesh revealed to man the Father (John 1:18). Is it
something that is impossible of belief that, had there been no sin,
even then God would still have been manifest in the flesh? Was the
Virgin Birth that took place about 4, years after the creation of
man, but the postponement of a most glorious and miraculous event,
that had it not been for sin, would have taken place in the garden of
Eden before any other children were born? Was it this that lies
behind the mystery of the Temptation and the Fall, with its close
connexion with the two seeds, the immediate reference to childbirth,
and the birth of Cain who turned out to be "of the wicked one"? We
ask these questions, we may entertain our theories, but questions and
theories they must remain.
   Had the coming in of death not made the successive generations
follow the death of those that preceded them, the full tale of those
chosen either before or since the overthrow of the world would have
been early reached, and the translation from Adam to Christ effected
and the different spheres of predestinated glory entered. As it is,
the evil seed jostle the true heirs for room and many times overrun
them and keep them down both in number and in possessions. The very
character of this age turns the true heirs into pilgrims and strangers
yet it still stands written ~"The meek shall inherit the earth" and
that not only in the Sermon on the Mount, but in Psalm thirty-seven
where the believer is told to fret not because of evil doers ... for
yet a little while and the wicked shall not be (Ps. 37:9,1). As a
consequence of what actually occurred in Genesis three, Christ, the
true Seed, is revealed as the Kinsman-Redeemer, and resurrection now
becomes the gate to glory. Doubtless all has been overruled by Divine
love. The rugged pathway that we have been called upon to walk, the
attacks and the snares of the evil one, all contribute to that
essential experience which arising out of patience, ultimately leads
to a hope that 1maketh not ashamed (Rom. 5:4,5).
   The scripture speaks more than once of a "Book of Life", Paul
speaks of it saying, ~"My fellow labourers, whose names are in the
book of life" (Phil. 4:3), showing that those called during his
prison ministry have their names therein. In Revelation 3:5 the
Divine promise strengthens the overcomer in his fight by assuring him
that ~"I will not blot out his name out of the book of life" and
the reader may find his mind turning to Revelation 22:19 where we read
in the A.V. ~"God shall take away his part out of the book of
life" whereas the R.V. reads "from the tree of life" with
the critical texts. Those "whose names are not written in the book
of life" will worship the Beast (Rev. 13:8), even as Revelation
17:8 reveals. At the Great White Throne the Book of Life is brought
forward, and to keep close to the wording of the inspired original we
read "And if any one was not found written in the book of life,
he was cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 1:15). The
prominence given to the Book of Life in the Revelation may be because
the emergence of the true seed is imminent. It refers particularly to
the overcomer. See Millennial Studies in Vol. =39. The true
seed whose names are in that book will never apostatize; the false
seed whose names were never in that book will follow their own course.
Some of the true seed will miss the glory of the Millennial kingdom
and other spheres of blessing, and will not emerge until the Great
White Throne is set up, but even there, it is revealed that some will
be found written, and pass on into life that is life indeed.
   A prayerful reading of Psalm 139 would be extremely helpful at
this point, of which the following is a quotation:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "My substance was not 1hid from 1thee, when I was made in
secret, and curiously 1wrought in the lower parts of the earth.
   "1Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being 1unperfect; and
in 1thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were
fashioned when as yet there was none of them" (Ps. 139:15,16).
<END INDENTATION>
   The conflict between the two seeds arose out of the disobedience
of Man in relation to the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3). When
writing to the believers at Rome, the Apostle Paul said concerning
some that ~"By good words and fair speeches they deceived the heart
of the simple" (Rom. 16:18). He then went on to speak of their
"obedience" saying that he would have them wise unto that which is
good and simple concerning evil. Now this word "simple"
15akeraios occurs in the proverb "Wise as serpents, and harmless
as doves" (Matt. 1:16), where it is evident that the simplicity
inculcated by the Apostle is in marked contrast to the subtlety of the
serpent. These words occur just before the concluding section which
deals with the revelation of the mystery which had been kept in
silence (Rom. 16:25-27). This mystery we have shown elsewhere
refers to the relationship that exists between Adam, his fall and his
seed. It is therefore no surprise to us to find in Romans 16:2
immediately following these words that remind us of the Fall, a most
definite reference to Genesis three.
# 22
<11 TEXT D13>
CHRIST CHURCH
COVENTRY
a further article by the Vicar, The Rev. Robin H. Blandford
   ROUGHLY FOUR YEARS AGO I had the privilege of writing for
Church and People the story of how our church, which had been
destroyed in the war, was rebuilt on a new site here in Coventry,
where it was more needed.
   I have been asked to say something about the subsequent life and
work of the church since then. This is a temptation to any Vicar, but
the devil sees to it that we are kept humble, even when full of joy
because of the work of God in our midst.
   I outlined in my previous article our Lay Workers Scheme. The
parish was divided up into groups of fifty houses. Every Lay Worker
had the oversight of and responsibility for one such group of fifty
houses.
   There are two thousand houses in our parish, so that meant forty
Lay Workers were needed. These were forthcoming from the congregation
that had survived the destruction of the church and had worshipped for
fourteen years in a small mission church lent us by the Cathedral.
They were all keen Christian men and women but they consented to take
a fourteen-week course after which they were commissioned by the
Bishop.
   We covered the new parish, calling on every house, distributing a
free magazine and asking particulars of every household for a card
index system. Later another visit at every house yielded a crop of
orders for the magazine resulting in an overall monthly figure now of
one thousand two hundred and fifty copies in a parish of two thousand
houses (I have a wonderful magazine Editor!).
   These Lay Workers are like the veins in a human body, they bring
life to every part of the parish where they gain access and their
regular monthly visit keeps them and the Vicar in touch with all sorts
of cases, and with every need as it crops up.
   What of the work of the Church? I think it is only fair to
ourselves to say here that, as our parish was formed by areas taken
out of two other parishes, most of those people who were likely to
attend a place of worship were already doing so, and unless some
reason existed for their changing we had only the sub-soil to work on.
There was also a live Baptist Church within the parish.
   Beginning with the Sunday congregations we worshipped for two
years in the new Church Hall while the new Church was being built.
The hall, seating about 1 (when set out as a church with choir
stalls), was generally nearly full, but I rather dreaded the day when
that number had to sit in the church, the body of which holds three
hundred and thirty. That day came after two years and now, after
worshipping in it for a further two years, we have a morning
congregation of about one hundred and fifty including the "children's
church" which leaves during the service, and an evening congregation
of about two hundred. This evening congregation contains a high
percentage of young people and is a very cheering sight. There is
hymn-singing for young people after the service to which forty or
fifty stay. This is carefully planned with some special item every
Sunday and organized by two young Day School teachers in turn.
   Sunday School and Bible Classes number about three hundred.
Every available space in the hall and all ten classrooms are filled
and now two primary classes have to use the church as well. A Girls'
Bible Class numbers about fifty and divides into four groups. The
Boys' Bible Class is not much less and divides into two groups.
Mid-Week Activities
   Weekday organizations form an important part of the work of
every church and we try to meet the needs of every age group and stage
of Christian development. For women we have a devotional meeting on
Wednesday afternoons and a women's guild on alternate Thursday
evenings, and the Young Wives' Fellowship on alternate Sunday
afternoons.
   Men are not numerous yet in our recently formed C.E.M.S.
branch but we do have an entirely Christian programme and at the
moment are studying the =39 Articles. A mixed Bible Study and
Discussion Group meets every Tuesday in the vicarage and other men
attend this. Our uniformed organization for children is Campaigners,
which proves very effective and efficient, numbers in all clans
exceeding a hundred. It is greatly to the credit of the Chiefs that
the elder boys and girls go on into the Craftsmen Clans in good
numbers. Many keen Christians have emerged from this organization.
Teenagers of both sexes are also provided for by a Young People's
Fellowship with an attendance of about forty in term time and fifty or
more in the vacations. From the very first we have based this on the
principle "Christ first and no apologies". The result has been
many conversions and a deep Christian work. <SIC> The admirably
run local Youth for Christ has been a great blessing in this too.
   For recreation they have games (badminton, table tennis,
skittles, etc.) on all available Saturdays. These are for members
only except that visitors may be invited for three occasions. If
after that they do not join the Young People's Fellowship I should
have to tell them that it is a condition of coming. In two years I
may have had to do so once.
   A not overlarge but very much alive Prayer Meeting is held every
Friday.
   In the four years we have been here we have had the great joy of
seeing two of our young men reach the Ministry, both of them
outstanding men. A further two are in training now and three more
have applied for interviews with C.A.C.T.M. or already
attended. At least one other is reaching that point.
   At a recent service in a nearby church we had the further joy of
having three of our congregation admitted into the order of Lay
Readers at the same service. These, too, are men of exceptional
calibre. This brings our available Lay Readers up to five.
   Not all these young men have been the product of our own church
but some have come from outside at various stages in their Christian
growth and have made this their spiritual home. We thank God for this
great gift.
   It is also something for which we can praise God that a
congregation of strongly evangelical tradition, plus one from the area
where we now are, have merged together well with scarcely a note of
discord.
   We are indeed privileged to have such wonderful buildings. A
modern church, the surprise and admiration of all who see it, a
beautiful hall (hardly the word to describe many church halls!) with
ten classrooms alongside, adjustable to four by moving screens, a
caretaker's house and vicarage, all in one short road. We can
thankfully say they are the best in the Diocese, if not very much
further afield, and a great help in the administration of the work
that they house. Dowdy buildings do not glorify God nor attract
people to come.
   Is all this expensive to run and keep up? Yes, it is. We
compute that we have got to have a monthly income of +17. We are
like a man on a bicycle; we have to keep moving or we cannot keep
going: a challenge and incentive to maintain a spiritual church life.
From the Warden of Mabledon
   Glancing over the past year, one is impressed by the wide range
of Christian interests represented by those coming to stay for longer
or shorter periods. There have been houseparties for the training and
building-up of young Christians in the service of Christ: missionary
societies have brought their home staffs or council members for
fellowship in prayer and for the discussion of mutual problems and
opportunities: parishes have allowed themselves to be bereft of clergy
and some of the Sunday congregation in order that a quiet parish
weekend might be spent away from the usual routine. One such group
recently brought whole families- father, mother, and children.
TWO MISSION FIELDS
<EDITORIAL>
   "A HOUSE-GOING PARSON makes a church-going people"- so
I learned at college, and I believed it was a C.P-A.S.
slogan. I was convinced it was true, and travelling home from
Central Africa eight years ago to work in a Liverpool parish I
resolved that house visiting would have priority. I was also
convinced people were hungry for the Word of God- "Preach the
Gospel and you will fill the church". By the Grace of God and His
good Hand upon me, for seven and a half years I have acted on these
convictions only to find that neither seems to apply in this part of
the mission field. Nevertheless visiting and the Scripture message
will always be my priorities, but let ordinands and young clergy be
saved from false optimism! Whilst not regretting acting on a false
assumption, I wonder why there is such a small response in this part
of Liverpool to the same Gospel which brought Africans flocking to our
Mission churches and preaching places, not only to hear but to
receive? Some say it is because Africa was pre-Christian, whereas
Liverpool is post-Christian. "All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God"- it was generally unnecessary to persuade Africans of
this truth, they were only too conscious of their need. In twenty-two
years I never heard one claim to be as good as, or better than, his
neighbours. I hesitate to say my parishioners are not conscious
of sin, but generally they are satisfied to be better than their
neighbours (or to think they are!) They are not conscious of a
need for the Saviour, and never flock to church. I would readily
agree that our African brethren had not such counter-attractions as
the week-end caravan, the car, amusements, T.V., and Sunday work
at double pay, but to them the village dances, beer orgies, and
cultivation (by which they lived) were just as important.
   Some contrasts might enable us to draw a conclusion.
Revealing Contrasts
   Our African village teachers were primarily evangelists and
through their ministry "Enquirers" into the Christian faith were
enrolled and instructed. Those determined to go forward for Baptism
were admitted to the "Catechumenate". A minimum of two years was
considered necessary for regular instruction and testing before
candidates were accepted into a Baptism Class. The pastor had to be
satisfied (as far as he was able) that each was a born-again
Christian. Whether the Baptism took place in the river, or in the
Church, it truly symbolized the sinner being buried with Christ, and
raised with Him to newness of life. Every Baptized person knew indeed
that the washing of water was the outward sign of the cleansing from
sin within. It is sad to recollect that probably less than ten per
cent of the original Enquirers were Baptized- but the general leakage
from the Church was before Baptism. When I came to St. Bede's
it was a shock to find the normal request for Baptism was "Mum says
will you do the baby next Sunday". My insistence on personal
interviews with the parents and their presence at the Baptism
frequently meant they just went elsewhere to have their babies
"done". I was equally shocked to find the congregation objecting
to Baptisms during Morning Prayer. It has been a long hard struggle
to make this the norm, and for parents and godparents to realize it is
such an important event, and that very particular preparation is
needed. Now, the whole congregation will say together in sincerity
~"We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's
flock...", and usually parents are appreciative of our methods.
They are visited at least twice before the Baptism and monthly for as
long as possible. Even so it does not bring them to Church- we still
have a long way to go to reach our African Church standard.
# 22
<12 TEXT D14>
A DEFENCE OF THE TRUE FAITH
BY BROTHER ROBERTS
   MR. Barnett reproduces the argument of personal identity
amid atomic change. This is sufficiently answered on page 34 of
Twelve Lectures. A remark or two, however, is called for here.
He bases the argument on a fallacy to begin with. He says that
during the change of a man's substance from waste and nutrition,
"his personality undergoes no corresponding change." This is
not true. A man of forty feels himself a very different person from
what he was at ten. An entire change in the nature of his
consciousness takes place in the interval. It is a matter of
universal experience, that as years roll by, the ideas change, the
tastes change, the character changes, the voice changes, the personal
physique changes- everything changes; and the nature of these changes
depends upon circumstances. Why? Because the new material introduced
into the system in the process of nutrition, is directed into new
shapes and forms, according to the activities by which its absorption
is guided and determined. If a man goes to sea, his muscles and vital
organs, and the bony framework are in continual occupation, and the
nutritive elements are consequently more largely made use of, in
building up the mechanical parts of his being, than if he stayed at
home. Send him to college, and you will see a different result.
Activity of brain is brought into play, to the neglect of the bodily
functions; and the consequence is, the brain monopolises the nutritive
supply, and is developed to the detriment of the merely physical
powers, the result of which is, that the man is more feeble as a whole
than his sea-faring brother, and has his mind very differently
constituted from what it would have been had he been brought up at the
plough. Mr. Barnett's assumption, therefore, that the personality
undergoes no change with the progress of material substitution, is
wrong. It undergoes many changes, but of course he feels himself the
same individual, because the impressions originally constituting his
individuality are perpetuated, though modified. But let a "stroke"
affect the brain throughout, and obliterate original impressions (of
which there have been cases), the person's individuality vanishes. He
forgets who he was, and what he knew, and begins the formation of a
new individuality by means of new impressions, should his power to
receive new impressions not have been destroyed by the calamity. A
case of this sort is within the writer's experience, where there was a
complete lapse of memory, necessitating the re-formation of
acquaintance with friends, places, habits and everything. After a
while, the second education as quickly disappeared as the first, and
the old memories returned. On Mr. Barnett's theory, this was
inexplicable. On the theory that the brain "thinks by virtue of its
organization," it is susceptible of explanation.
   Mr. Barnett denies the transmissibility of qualities. He feels
himself compelled to do this, to save his argument on continuous
identity; but in yielding to theoretical exigency, he convicts himself
of either ignorance or recklessness. The very argument he relies upon
disproves his denial. He says the body "changes throughout several
times in a man's life, and at seventy does not contain a single
particle of the matter which composed it at seven." Now, in view
of this, how does Mr. Barnett deal with the fact that a person of
dark complexion, eating the same food as a person of light
complexion, will be dark complexioned till death? Take the colour
of the eye and the colour of the hair; how does he account for the
permanence of these organic qualities, except that the original
quality is taken up by the succeeding atoms of nutrition? Mr.
Barnett's answer is "they assume similar qualities of their own."
Do they pick up nothing from their predecessors? If they do not, how
is it that the same flour and mutton eaten at the same table will turn
to four different conditions as regards colour and organic quality, in
four different persons? Is it not the existing organism that
determines the use and quality of the new material introduced? and how
could this be, except on the principle of transmission of quality?
Mr. Barnett's answer to this, finally surrenders the whole case
against himself. He says "they enter into the same relation to the
laws of life as those which the old have quitted." Precisely, and
this applied to the brain, explains continuous identity amid atomic
change. Whatever impressions or qualities result from the original
organization of the brain, are inherited by the new material, taken up
by them, transmitted to successors and so on 6ad infinitum.
But destroy the brain altogether, and you destroy the process as
much as you destroy the sight of the eye and the hearing of the ear.
   Mr. Barnett can "detect nothing but unintelligible nonsense"
in the proposition that "mind is the product of the living brain, and
personal identity the sum of its impressions." His objection to it
is that if mind be the product of the brain, it would be subject like
the brain to the law of atomic change. And so it is, as Mr. Barnett
will discover, if he reflects but a moment. Is it not a fact, that
unless we renew our knowledge, the lapse of time will weaken and in
the end destroy it? Is there no such thing as "getting out of
use," and forgetting what one has learnt? The very power of
education lies in the fact that Mr. Barnett denies, viz., that the
mind is "subject to the law of atomic change," and depends for the
form of its development upon the forces brought to bear in its
guidance.
   Mr. Barnett struggles in vain against the proposition that if
the mind be immaterial, its functions ought to be unaffected by the
condition of the body. He suggests that it is associated with the
material elements of his being on the common basis of life, which
unites and affinitises all parts. Animal and vegetable substances are
amalgamated on this basis, and why not a third, argues Mr. Barnett-
the immaterial and immortal? The answer is, nothing is impossible;
but if this is the principle on which the mind is developed in the
body, obviously the inversion of the principle must be fatal to it.
If life gives, death must take away. When "the principle of life"
is withdrawn, the "animal and vegetable" elements of man's being
are destroyed, and any third element depending upon "the principle of
life" for its basis, must perish also. Mr. Barnett's argument
recoils upon himself. To evade the recoil, he dogmatises on "the
principle of life." He says life is not the result of
organisation, but a principle that operates through organisation.
Upon this, we have to ask if the life of a dog is not in the same
category? Mr. Barnett cannot exclude it. A dog is as much God's
handiwork as a man. It depends upon the same laws of respiration and
deglutition as those which govern human existence. The Bible says men
and beasts are identical in the mode of life and death (Eccles =3.
19-2). What then would Mr. Barnett do with his definition as
applied to a dog? "Life is not the result of organization:
organization is the medium through which life is manifested." Has
the dog an immortal principle of life that was antecedent to its
organization, and which only manifests itself through its doggish
body? If so, whose principle of life was it before the dog came? Was
it the dog's? If Mr. Barnett will admit that the primitive
life-power in all cases is God's, we might agree with him; but in
admitting this, he must abandon the idea that human lives are separate
entities or "souls," which may be disembodied and live as conscious
beings still. All human life, and all beast and all insect life, are
but inspirations from the eternal universal fountain of life, of which
the God revealed to Israel is the focal centre and controller. But
Mr. Barnett's Platonism, deeply tinctured with the spirit of Greek
mythology, teaching the existence of so many separate independent
immortal intelligences, prevents him from seeing this. He insists
upon three separable compounds as constituting the unity of a human
being. If he would define them, the argument might be made more
serviceable. "Body, soul and spirit" are his words, quoting from
Paul. We submit to Mr. Barnett that these words describe aspects of
human existence only while a man is alive. This is shown by the
fact that they were addressed to and spoken of living men, and that
the three aspects expressed are only presented in life. Is there a
"body" when man is dissolved in the grave? Is there a "soul" to
that body when all soul is evaporated? Is there a spirit to it when
it no longer exists to be animated by a spirit? It would be curious
to know what Mr. Barnett understands by "soul" as distinct from
"spirit" and 6vice versa. From a common-sense point of
view the matter is plain. A man in life presents three aspects
cognisant to the understanding. There is (1) the body, which is the
basis of (2) the life, which develops (3) the spirit, or mind. A dead
man is a body simply; an idiot is a body with soul or life; a living
man with full possession of mental faculties presents the combination
of "body, soul, and spirit." When death comes, it destroys this
combination. The body returns to the dust, the life returns to God,
and the spirit disappears. The resurrection will put all three
together again on the glorious basis of incorruptibility.
MR. BARNETT'S REVIEW OF SCRIPTURE ARGUMENTS ON MORTALITY.
   MR. Barnett next attempts to follow the scriptural
argument. He begins by observing that "it is a waste of words to
argue against the received doctrine of man's immortality, as if that
doctrine implied that man is not mortal." He illustrates his
meaning by saying that the dead are dead in some respects and alive in
others. If Mr. Barnett would define his terms, it would be easier
to follow him. What does he mean by "death?" Has it no inverse
reference to "life?" Do we not derive our idea of death from
acquaintance with life. Life is a positive phenomenon, and (in
relation to us) has a beginning; and the word "death" has become
current to express the cessation of that phenomenon, with which,
unfortunately, we are familiar. It is true the word is used with
reference to a variety of things, but this only arises from the fact
that there is a variety of life. Vegetable life gives rise to its use
when a plant dies. Metaphorical life, as the prosperity of an
institution, occasions its use, when prosperity departs and the
institution dies. To whatever thing it applies, it expresses the
opposite of the life pertaining to it, or that may be conceived as
pertaining to it. On this obvious and universal principle, the death
of a human being must have inverse reference to the life of a human
being. It cannot be said that a human being is dead, unless his life
as a human being has ceased. It is vain, therefore, for Mr. Barnett
to get away from the inconsistency of a man being dead and alive at
the same time. If a human being continues to live after death, he is
not dead. It would not suit the theory to say that the body is dead,
because according to the theory the body is never alive, but only
inhabited by the real invisible man, on whose withdrawal the body
crumbles.
   Mr. Barnett contends for the "elasticity" of the terms
"life" and "death." Unfortunately, he does not define what he
means. The only elasticity about them is that already indicated,
viz., their applications to different kinds of life and death. On
this principle, the Scriptures quoted by Mr. Barnett are perfectly
intelligible without involving that violation of first principles on
the subject which he wishes to found upon them.
# 226
<13 TEXT D15>
<BEGIN GOTHIC>
Grace, Mercy and Peace
<END GOTHIC>
"Grace, mercy and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our
Lord." =1 Timothy 1.2.
   GREETINGS expressed in "words which the Holy Ghost
1teacheth" come to the reverent reader today with the same warmth
and unction as when Timothy held in his hands the precious parchment
upon which the message was first written. Under the gracious tuition
of the Eternal Spirit, the writer framed his prayerful desire for the
reader's spiritual good. Wisdom far greater than that of the most
devoted Apostle ordained that the encouragement first enjoyed by
Timothy should subsequently be shared by the people of God of every
race and in every age.
   Grace is the fountain from which every blessing springs. It is
the free, unmerited favour of God bestowed upon the guilty sinner. It
is manifested in the perfect provision made for the expiation of the
sinner's guilt by the atoning blood of the Redeemer, the LORD'S
Anointed.
   Mercy is extended to relieve the guilty of the miserable
consequences of their guilt before God. "According to His mercy He
saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy
Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our
Saviour." By nature afar off, alienated and separated from God,
spiritually destitute and dead in trespasses and sins, the redeemed
soul is "a debtor to mercy alone", born of the Spirit, called from
nature's darkness into God's marvellous light, translated into the
Kingdom of His dear Son, and in everything enriched by Him.
   Peace with God could be secured for the guilty only by "God, who
1hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ". No man ever made
his own peace with God. The divinely appointed Mediator Himself
declares that, ~"No man 1cometh unto the Father but by ME."
He is the Prince of Peace. He speaks peace to His people. "He is
our Peace."
   Grace is the source, Mercy is the stream, and Peace is the
experience of the blessing of the Lord, which maketh rich. While we
borrow the Apostolic greeting, we also express the earnest desire and
prayer of members and friends of the Trinitarian Bible Society that
the Scriptures distributed during the year may be the means of
revealing to those who read them- "Grace, mercy and peace, from God
our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord."
<BEGIN GOTHIC>
The Authorised Version Still Supreme
<END GOTHIC>
   THE cover of this Quarterly Record is designed as a small
tribute to the Authorised Version, which has now reached its 35th
anniversary and remains peerless among the English translations of the
Bible. The design draws attention to several important aspects of
this enduring and excellent work, including Hampton Court Palace, its
birthplace, and Dr. Reynolds, the Puritan minister, who first
suggested that a new translation should be undertaken.
   With God's gracious blessing, the translator in his study, the
printer with his press and the preacher in the pulpit have all helped
to make the Word of God available to English speaking people
throughout the world. Incomparable in its faithfulness, majestic in
its language, and inexhaustible in its spiritual fruitfulness, this
time honoured version continues to reveal to millions the matchless
grace of Him Whose Name is the WORD OF GOD, and Who is crowned
with glory and honour.
COMMEMORATION EDITIONS
   The Society is publishing two commemoration editions of the
Authorised Version and these should be available in January. An
appropriate device representing the open book surmounted by a crown
and the dates 1611-1961 will be blocked in gold on the front cover.
The editions will be supplied in excellently designed paper jackets,
including the following brief tribute:-
   "In presenting this Commemoration Edition the Society pays
tribute to the excellence of this Version which is an inestimable part
of our Protestant heritage, has been the means of spiritual enrichment
to millions of readers for 35 years and remains peerless among the
English translations of the Bible."
   The commemoration editions will be in Royal Brevier type (6
3/4?8 x 4 3/4?8) at 8s. 6d. and Royal Ruby type (5 1/2?8 x 3
3/4?8) at 6s. each. Copies may be ordered by post and particulars
of reduced prices for Sunday School and congregational orders will be
sent on request.
<BEGIN GOTHIC>
Make the Paper Speak
<END GOTHIC>
   THIS caption, which appears on the letter-head of one of our
correspondents in South India, simply and clearly defines the chief
object of the T.B.S. in sending out the Scriptures. The
following paragraphs from recent letters of application and thanks
will indicate that "the paper speaks" in places where the ministry
of the spoken word is not always possible.
IN HOSPITAL IN SOUTH INDIA
   "I am indeed very grateful to you for the lovely copies of the
Holy Bible, New Testaments and Gospels posted to me in October, 196.
   "I wanted to go to some far off places as Jamshedpur, Calcutta
and Rewa and preach the gospel in September, but on the way I had a
sudden illness and had to get admitted to the Government Hospital in
Cuttack. Though my stay was long and painful, the treatment was
successful. Three Christian surgeons were working in the ward where I
stayed, and a big medical college is attached to this hospital. Many
Hindu surgeons and medical students and some of the officers who were
in the hospital as patients each received a copy of the Holy Bible or
New Testament.
   "An engineer who received a copy of the Holy Bible, said with a
happy smile, 'Just this morning I requested a Christian friend of
mine to give me a copy of the Holy Bible to read. He did not have a
copy. God gave it through you.' Another medical student came and
said, 'Sir, I want a copy of the New Testament.' I asked,
'Brother, how do you know I have the copies?' He said he had seen
his friends reading in the medical hostel and he was also 'tempted'
to get a copy from me and read it. I gave him a Holy Bible. He used
to come every day and talk to me for a few minutes.
   "A Hindu patient awaiting an operation received a small booklet
and his remark was, 'this will keep me'. I could not give every
medical student a copy of the Holy Bible for there are many students.
I had to contact them, explain a little and then present the
Scriptures. My bane was a boon and I learnt to carry my cross
cheerfully.
   "May the Master of the Vineyard bless the seed sown for His
glory, and may souls be saved and added to the fold. May the Lord
bless you abundantly as you supply the seeds to farmers in India
working in His Vineyard and supply all your need for his glory.
   "Please pray for me, as I am anxious to work in unreached areas.
My health is weak and resources poor but the Lord used me in 8
provinces of India and about 2 towns and villages during the past 16
years, in my life of faith. I can do all things through Him who
strengthens me.
   "The Lord bless thee and keep thee."
THE CORINTH OF INDIA
   "We thank you for helping us with Bibles and portions. All
the packets reached us in good condition. Really this supply was a
very great help in our work here in India. From November 1st to 16th
we distributed literature in an important Hindu city where many
thousands of people gather for pilgrimage. The name of that city is
Madura and it is known as the Corinth of India. Every street in that
city is filled with idols. The Lord blessed us richly. We could
distribute several thousands of Scripture Leaflets and Gospels and
quite a few Bibles. We are praying that there may be fruit unto
eternal life. Also last month the Lord enabled us to go into some of
the villages where the gospel has not been preached so far. Many
attended and heard the Word of God, and received the Scriptures.
Prayer is requested for all these efforts so that in due time souls
may be brought to the Lord Jesus Christ.
   "Often we remembered the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society
in prayer, and certainly we shall continue to do so.
   "Your earnest prayers are solicited for the humble work we do
for the Lord in India."
PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY
   "The idea of distributing the Scriptures to a considerable
extent occurred to me early in January. We started the distribution
and we found that there were people who were interested, and in a
short time we had a band of thirty young men. After their work in the
various factories and Government Offices at Bangalore they help me
with the distribution work. Our numbers have since doubled.
   "Christ has wrought a finished, full and perfect salvation for
me by his death and resurrection, but most of the people are ignorant
of it. One of the best ways to get the Gospel message into the minds
and hearts of sinners is through religious literature. This is a work
<SIC> every Christian can do. Its importance cannot be
over-estimated. One need not be an evangelist or a minister or a
missionary in order to be able to engage in this work. One can do it
right where he is. Only a small percentage of Christians can be
full-time pastors, evangelists or teachers, but every believer can be
a faithful distributor of the Gospel.
   "India's door may soon be closed to foreign missionaries. The
desperate need is to sow millions of Gospel Tracts on India's soil,
now, so that they will in months and years ahead bear a spiritual
harvest. Our hearts must burn for the need of an abundant supply of
the Scriptures. God's seal is on the world-wide distribution of His
printed Word. Hundreds and thousands have found God through the
silent ministry of the printed Gospel.
   "Everywhere people are hungry for the Living and True Bread.
   "The printed page can go anywhere. It knows no fear. It never
tires, and never dies. It can travel at little expense. It can run
up and down like an angel of God, blessing all, giving to all, asking
no gift in return. It can talk to one as to the multitude; and to the
multitude as well as one. It requires no public room to tell its
story in, but can speak in the kitchen or the shop, the parlour or the
study, in the railway carriage or in the bus, on the broad highway or
on the footpath through the fields. It is not hindered by scoffs,
jeers, or taunts. Though it will not always answer questions, it will
tell its story twice, or thrice or four times over, if one wishes. It
is in short the teacher of all classes and the benefactor of all
lands.
   "I chanced to come across a few of your Scripture Portions. May
I kindly request you to send me quite a number and to keep my name in
your mailing list and send me packets whenever you can?
   "We also request you to remember us and our work in your
prayers."
<BEGIN GOTHIC>
News from Nepal
<END GOTHIC>
   A RECENT report gives the encouraging news that all copies of
the first and second editions of the Nepali Gospel have been sold and
that the third edition recently printed by the T.B.S. is being
rapidly distributed. More than 7,75 copies had been sold up to
September and most of these had been taken into Nepal. The Rev.
R. T. Cunningham warmly acknowledges the help given by the
Society and trusts that many of the Lord's people will join in prayer
for God's blessing upon these copies of His Word, that they may be
fruitfully used to His Glory.
   Regular consignments of these Gospels have been sent from London
and have safely reached their destination.
   The following article in our series entitled "The Force of
Truth" is based on a letter from Mrs. R. T. Cunningham,
printed in the October issue of the magazine of the Independent Board
for Presbyterian Missions.
# 22
<14 TEXT D16>
'Well, tell me, what is the Pope's business?'
Religion and politics
   It's no good talking as though religion and politics were two
separate things, like sport and music. If the captain of the Arsenal
starts telling Sir Malcolm Sargent how to conduct an orchestra he'll
be told to mind his own business. Sir Malcolm Sargent will be told
the same thing if he tries to tell the captain of the Arsenal how to
score goals. Sport has nothing to do with music. So everyone knows
where he is.
   What about religion and politics? They are not in two watertight
compartments. Think of the number of laws that have just as much to
do with a man's soul as with his body. If the Government tells you to
send your children to a school where they'll be taught there's no
God- is that religion or politics? If the Government tells you to
kill off your mother because she is suffering from an incurable
disease- is that religion or politics? If the State decides that it
is legal for your wife to run off with another man and leave your
children without a mother- is that religion or politics?
   Do you see the point? There are so many things which are the
business of the Church and of the State. If they don't agree on what
is right there is bound to be conflict.
Keep religion out
   There are some things the Government does where religion simply
need not enter in. The Church has no views on drains, gas-works or
brick-laying. On the other hand the State has no views on vestments,
hymns and prayers. So you won't find the Church fighting the State
over the right size of drain pipes and you won't find the State
fighting the Church over the right tune for hymns.
   That's fine. But there are more important things in life than
drain pipes and hymns. It's all very well to say that if the Church
sticks to religion there's no reason why it should ever fall out with
a political party. The point is, what is religion? Another point is,
what are politics?
   Politics means the way to rule a country. But a country is made
up of people. And people are both body and soul. It seems pretty
obvious that it is the job of a Government to look after the needs of
the people. It should see that there's work for the unemployed, food
for the hungry, houses for families, education for the children,
hospitals for the sick.
   It seems to be obvious. But really it isn't obvious at all. The
Government, after all, is really the servant of the people.
The heart of the matter
   That brings us to the heart of the matter. There is something
very simple which nearly everyone in modern times has forgotten. This
is it. The most important thing in the world is the family. We are
always talking about the Church and State. But there wouldn't be any
need either for Church or for State if there were no families. So
priests and politicians before they start to talk about their rights
must remember that the most important rights in the world are the
rights of families.
   So what seems obvious isn't so obvious after all. It's not for
the Government to decide how it's going to house people and educate
children. It's for families to decide what kind of houses they want
and what kind of education is best for their children. This is what
the modern State usually forgets. The Catholic Church always
remembers. Hence all the quarrels between the Church and State.
   Here's a true story of a man we'll call John Williamson, because
that's not his name.
   John was a Civil Servant of the old school. He had worked hard
and passed examinations. He was anxious to get on. Now Civil
Servants, as the name suggests, are supposed to be servants of the
public. They are supposed to do what they are told. It doesn't
matter to them which party is in power. They have to get on with the
job without playing politics. John had a wife and four children. He
knew if he wanted to rise to be head of his department the less he had
to say the better would be his chances. So he never wrote to the
papers. He never went to political meetings. He kept himself to
himself.
   His friends used to try to persuade him to join their parties.
But John always had his answer.
   'It's all very well for you fellows,' he used to say, 'you
can have any politics you like. You won't lose your jobs for speaking
out of turn. It's different with me. When I say the wrong thing, if
I don't lose my job at least they'll pass me by when I'm looking for
promotion. My motto is- Civil Servants should be seen and not
heard.'
Leave politics alone
   So John's rule of life was to leave politics alone. But
politics simply wouldn't leave John alone. Every couple of weeks
there would be some new law passed to make life more difficult. More
and more permits required. More and more forms to be filled in. But
he didn't let this get him down. He naturally felt a bit annoyed when
he couldn't build a chicken-house in his back garden without having to
write a dozen letters. But he wasn't going to break his heart over
a few chickens.
   But, of course, when he had a few friends round for a drink he
used to have his grouse. After all, he was thoroughly English. In
his view politicians were making life far too difficult. In fact, he
went so far as to say that if he weren't a Civil Servant he'd go into
politics and tell them a thing or two.
   But one day he changed his mind. He had put up with it when they
were telling him what to do about house repairs, petrol and chickens.
But now they started messing about with his children.
   'This', said John, 'is the end. I don't mind them telling me
how to feed my chickens. But they are not going to tell me how to
bring up my children.'
   When you come right down to it, John began to think, politicians
are trying to take the place of parents. He didn't mind when they
interfered with parents who wouldn't do their job. Every Christmas he
sent a subscription to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. Some men and women didn't deserve to have children.
What was getting him down in a big way was being told what to do
about his own children. And who was telling him anyway? Civil
Servants like himself. As often as not they were not even married.
Education
   What brought things to a head? It happened this way. Although
John wasn't a Catholic, his wife and children were. Marie, his eldest
girl, won a scholarship. So, of course, he put her name down for the
Convent of the Sacred Heart. It's true that the convent was in the
next town, three miles away. But Marie was a big, strong girl.
Half-an-hour's journey wouldn't do her any harm.
   But what happened? He had a letter from the Local Education
Authority telling him that Marie could not go to the Convent School.
She would have to go to the Municipal High School. He wrote back,
thinking there had been some mistake. He pointed out that although he
wasn't a Catholic he'd promised to bring the children up Catholics.
So, of course, his girl must go to the convent. Back came the reply
by return of post. High School or nothing. If he didn't send her on
the first day of term they would prosecute.
   That's why John started meddling in politics. Here's a simple
question for anyone to answer: Who was doing the meddling? Was John
meddling in Government affairs or was the Government meddling in his
family affairs? If you can answer that question- and it's not a very
hard one- you will be able to answer the question- Why does the
Church meddle in politics?
   The important word is meddle. Let's finish the story about John
and then you'll see why.
The priest meddles
   John could get no satisfaction from the Local Education
Authority so he went to see the Catholic priest.
   'You know I'm not a Catholic, Father,' he said, 'but an
Englishman's word is his bond. I gave my promise that my children
would be brought up Catholics. I've done all I can. If I kick up too
much fuss, it's not going to do me any good at the office. What are
you going to do about it?'
   You can guess what the priest did about it. He did plenty. He
argued with the Education Officer at the Town Hall and lost. Then he
organized a big protest meeting and invited the Town Councillors. The
whole case was argued fairly and above board. Even the Councillors
who had no particular use for the Catholic religion were impressed.
The way they looked at it after they had heard all the speeches was
that you can't kick people around like that. If this kid had won a
scholarship, the parents had a right to say where she should have her
education.
   So Marie is at the Sacred Heart Convent. She's there because the
priest meddled in politics.
What is the Church up to?
   Now if you can see the sense of that, you can see the sense of
a lot of things the Catholic Church is doing in the world to-day.
It's not a question of one child going to a Catholic school. It's a
question of millions of working men being able to worship God in their
own way. It's a question of Governments in many parts of the world
kicking around their citizens, forcing them to join parties they don't
agree with, making them do what they are told- or else. . . .
   At this moment, throughout the world, there are hundreds of
thousands of people ruined because politicians have told them what
they have got to think and say and do.
   Most people who complain when the Church makes political
pronouncements imagine that religion is something to be kept within
the four walls of a church. But religion doesn't only tell a man how
to pray. It does something more vital than that. It tells a man how
to live. Jesus Christ was the Founder of the Church. They called Him
a political priest. They put Him to death because they said He was
meddling in politics.
   They took Him before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate. 'We
have found this man perverting our nation', they said, 'and
forbidding to give tribute to Caesar'.
   Christ, of course, did no such thing. What had He told them?
   'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the
things that are God's.'
   That's what He had said. What He fell out with His enemies about
was which are the things of God and which are the things of Caesar.
Of course, every time a priest fights the State he will be told not
to talk politics. That's what he expects. If that's what happened to
Christ Himself, the priest is not surprised it should also happen to
him.
The law of God
   One of the duties of religion is to teach men to keep the law
of God. The law of God has a great deal to say about things which
have nothing to do with worship. 1Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt
not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. There are three examples
of religious matters which have nothing to do with praying. If it is
the job of the Church to see that the law of God is kept then it must
be the duty of the Church to protest when this law is broken.
# 24
<15 TEXT D17>
Changing Opinions in South Africa
   IT can hardly be questioned that the most significant recent
development in the Church of the Province of South Africa has been its
participation in the Conference and Consultation arranged by the World
Council of Churches in Johannesburg between December 7 and December
14. This Conference has been deliberately called a "consultation"
because it was that as much as a conference in the generally accepted
use of that term.
   There is no need to report at this stage what must be the
common knowledge of Church people the world over- that vast
differences of interpretation of the racial ramifications of the
Gospel divide the Dutch Reformed Churches from practically all the
other recognised Churches, and certainly the Anglicans.
   Earlier in 196 the Archbishop of Cape Town openly challenged the
Dutch Reformed Church regarding the possibility of Anglicans and the
Dutch Reformed Church remaining co-members of the World Council of
Churches, so strongly did His Grace feel about their interpretation of
"apartheid."
   However, negotiations proceeded, and early in the past year 196
Dr. Bilheimer, Associate Secretary General of the World Council of
Churches flew from Geneva to prepare the way for a Conference to be
held towards the end of 196 in South Africa.
   The preparations having been made, the Conference nearly met its
death with the deportation of Bishop Reeves. In fact, speaking at a
great United Service in Durban during his official visitation to the
Diocese of Natal on the very day on which news of the deportation was
announced, the Archbishop stated that it would be impossible for the
Conference to be held within the Union of South Africa unless Bishop
Reeves were able to be present.
   No permission to return was granted by the Government to Bishop
Reeves but by a gracious making of concessions it still became
possible for the Conference to meet upon South African soil: had this
not been possible, it is questionable whether the main objective of
the Conference could have been reached- namely the burning question
of relations between the World Council of Churches member Churches
within South Africa.
   Twentieth-century miracles still happen: the Conference duly met
in Johannesburg: 8 members of the eight member churches in South
Africa plus about 1 officials of the World Council of Churches met in
solemn and intensive conclave for a whole week, sessions lasting daily
from early morning until late at night. The Church of the Province
delegation included His Grace the Archbishop of Cape Town, The Bishop
of Natal, The Archdeacon of Cape Town, Professor Brookes, Dr. Alan
Paton, Professor Z. K. Matthews, Miss Mary Wilson.
Sharp Differences
   Sharp differences of opinion are said to have marked the three
branches of the Dutch Reformed Church which consists of two large
bodies, The Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerke of the Cape and of the
Transvaal, both more moderately "liberal" than the third and very
much smaller branch representing the intransigent viewpoint of Prime
Minister Verwoerd and other Ministers of State, the Nederduitsch
Hervormde Kerke of Africa.
   An eighty per cent. agreement was necessary before any
resolution of the Conference could be passed. The following are some
of the outstanding Consultation decisions-
   1. The right to own land and to participate in the Government of
the country is "part of the dignity of adult man."
   2. There are no Scriptural grounds for the prohibition of mixed
marriages.
   3. There can be no objection in principle to the direct
representation of Coloureds in Parliament.
   4. The migrant labour system has "disintegrating effects" on
African life.
   5. The wages of the vast majority of non-whites are far too low.
   6. The "same measures of justice" claimed for other racial
groups should apply to Asians.
   7. There is "not sufficient consultation and communication"
between the various racial groups.
   The real inner significance of each of these decisions can
probably only be fully appreciated by those who are closely acquainted
with the inner life of South Africa.
   Further points were that "all unjust discrimination" was
rejected: there was a call for the "revision of job reservation and
for greater security of tenure for non-whites in housing."
Non-whites should be allowed freedom of worship in urban areas. All
racial groups have an equal right to contribute to and share in the
life of the country.
   The following "Joint Statement" was issued by the two large
branches of the Dutch Reformed Church, namely the Gereformeerde
Kerke of the Cape and of the Transvaal-
   "A policy of differentiation can be defended from the Christian
viewpoint that it provides the only realistic solution to the problems
of race relations and is, therefore, in the best interests of the
various population groups. We do not consider the resolutions adopted
by the Consultation as in principle incompatible with the above
statement."
   The small, extremist branch of the Dutch Reformed Church, the
Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerke of Africa issued this separate
statement-
   "We wish to state quite clearly that it is our conviction that
separate development is the only just solution of our racial problem.
We, therefore, reject integration in any form, as a solution of the
problem. The agreement that has been reached contains such
far-reaching declarations that we cannot subscribe to it. We cannot,
therefore, identify ourselves with it. We, further, wish to place on
record our gratefulness to the Government for all the positive steps
it has taken to solve the problems and to promote the welfare of the
different groups."
Movement of Thought
   For those readers outside South Africa who are sensitive to the
widely variant approaches to her complicated problems, it will be
appreciated that the statement issued by the two large branches of the
Dutch Reformed Church marks a considerable move ahead of the
intransigent position of the extremist branch. While there is a great
distance still to be travelled before complete agreement as to the
policy of race relationships as viewed by Christians can be reached,
those who know the deep traditions holding the minds of men in South
Africa will realise that movement of thought is taking place at
encouraging speed, though, of course, this is by no means fast enough.
   The following general statement issued by the Conference throws
light on the situation:-
   "The present situation in South Africa is a result of a long
historical development and all groups bear responsibility for it. The
South African scene is "radically affected by the decline of the
power of the West, and by the desire for self-determination among the
people of the African Continent."
   "The spiritual unity among all men who are in Christ must find
visible expression in acts of common worship and witness and in
fellowship and consultation on matters of common concern."
   The revival of heathen tribal customs is the result of a deep
sense of frustration and a loss of faith in Western civilisation.
   "It is widely recognised that the wages received by the vast
majority of non-white people oblige them to exist well below the
generally accepted minimum. Concerted action is required. Job
reservation must give way to more equitable systems, and there must be
the opportunity to live in conformity with human dignity."
Much Achieved
   This recent Conference then, has achieved much, although it
leaves much still to be solved.
   Rome was not built in a day: nor can strongholds of tradition
reinforced with stubborn religious conviction, often biassed and
prejudiced, be broken down in a moment. Only those who know from
inside experience can fully appreciate how much, how very much, the
fact that the Conference has been held, the fact that the delegates
came together for a week, the fact that untold pitfalls have been
avoided and difficulties ironed out, already means in South Africa.
   Those who participated in the discussions say that they were
deeply conscious that "much prayer was made of the whole Church"
for this Conference which, history may well prove, marked a new phase
of respect and co-operation between those who name the Name of Christ
in this land.
   Tragic reading though it makes, it was almost a miracle that the
Conference took place, and one for which all Christians must be
grateful.
   It is only fair to add that the resolutions adopted by the
Conference do not become operative within the Nederduitsch
Gereformeerde Kerke of the Cape and of the Transvaal until their
respective Synods accept, amend or reject them. But it can be
reasonably hoped that responsible leaders of those two powerful
branches of the Dutch Reformed Church will bring increasing pressure
to bear on the Government for apartheid to be given a strong moral
basis.
"Delayed Action"
   Every Churchman who wishes to be informed as to the up to the
moment spirit of things within the Dutch Reformed Church in South
Africa should make himself a possessor of a copy of the book Delayed
Action, which is An Ecumenical Witness From The Afrikaans Speaking
Church to which the contributors are eleven leading clergy of the
Dutch Reformed Church, Professor B. B. Keel, Professor Dr.
A. S. Geyser, Professor Dr. Ben Marais, Professor Dr. A.
van Selms, Professor Hugo du Plessis, Ds. M. Redelinghuys, Dr.
G. C. Oosthuizen, Dr. J. A. van Wyk, Ds. C.
Stutterheim, Ds. C. Hattingh, Dr. G. J. Swan. I have named
each of these eleven Dutch Reformed Church leaders deliberately to
make it quite clear that every one of them is fully a member of the
Afrikaans section of the white population of South Africa. Here are
the chapter titles, which are also significant:
   "The Bell has already Tolled"; "The First Gospel and the Unity
of the Church as Witness to Christ"; "The Church in the
Contemporary World"; "The Communion of the Saints and the Colour
Problem"; "The New Era and Christian calling regarding the Bantu in
South Africa"; "Developing an Indigenous Church in South Africa";
"Communication and Human Values"; "The Church and Racial
Ideology"; "Christianity and Nationalism" <SIC> "The
Prophetic Calling of the Church towards the State."
   The significance of this composite work is that it expresses
forcibly the fact that at long last, after "Delayed Action" in
fact, the former strongholds of spiritual and practical "apartheid"
are being permeated with a new realisation that the Walls of Jericho
do weaken under the continued blast of the trumpets of truth.
   E. H. WADE
"The Argument is about Power"
Valerie Pitt writes on Christian choice in politics
   ANEURIN BEVAN said, ~"The argument is about Power," and
any serious- and honest- politician will agree. The matter of
politics is the control and management of power, and power is not an
abstraction. It is wealth and weapons, the brute force of sheer
numbers, and the weight of law. It is above all the command of human
loyalties.
   There are many theories about the balance of these forces in the
perfect society, and many reasons for believing that X's party, class
or nation may be trusted with them where Y's cannot. But the day to
day business of politics, at U.N.O. or the parish council
meeting, is the struggle with or for the power released by events, or
by the convictions and abilities of human beings.
   In old and settled societies like our own the realities of the
struggle are obscured because it is not normally expressed in
violence. Our deepest instinct is to reject the brute force of the
Congo riots, or those of St. Pancras as a-political... since for us
politics is politikos, civilis, that which belongs to the
citizen as a citizen, and is, therefore, constitutional, and
responsible. And indeed the marriage of power and responsibility is
the first, the one essential achievement of any civilisation.
Machiavelli
   But Machiavelli, a much less respectable author than Aristotle,
taught us that politics is also policy, the use of power for a
purpose, the manipulation of men and events in the service of a cause,
a ruler, or a nation. The absence of violence does not mean that the
power game is played out, only that it is more skilfully, and more
quietly conducted.
# 22
<END>
<16 TEXT E1>
Introduction
   What a world of graceful accomplishment lies in a piece of
finely worked hand-made lace!
   The very word lace has a charming derivation, stemming through
the Old French las, coming from the Latin laqueus, a snare,
allied to lacere, to entice.
   Certainly all who make a study of lace-craft become enmeshed in a
highly coloured history- a pattern of proud queens and pious
ecclesiastics, of statesmen, burghers and poor, under-privileged
people. All the human passions are drawn in its threads, from
saintliness to downright sinfulness, for it shows the smuggler running
'laces for a lady' and the highwayman meeting death upon the
gallows 'in a fine show of hand-made lace'.
   As to the origins of lace-making in this country, they are
difficult to trace, but we know that it existed in the thirteenth
century by virtue of an old rule for English nuns, cautioning them
against devoting too much time to lace-making to the detriment of the
poor! The earliest laces that survive today are, in fact, almost
invariably those made by nuns for use on Church linen and vestments.
   It wasn't long, however, before less pious hands took up the
lovely craft of lace-making. Lace became the servant of vanity and
lent its rich decoration to robes and dresses and one thinks
particularly of the extravagant Elizabethan ruffs and Carolean
collars.
   Under Cromwell lace was dismissed as ungodly- at least for the
middle and lower classes. But the Puritan beauties managed to salve
their consciences and at the same time indulge their love for
beautiful lace by representing subjects from the Scriptures in their
designs- 'religious petticoats', scoffed the satirists of the day.
   We know from the diaries of Samuel Pepys that he was a great man
for lace- paying as much as +3 for a lace collar. But this didn't
mean he was prepared to do as much for his lady, for he records
testily: 'My wife and I fell out about my not being willing to have
her gown laced.'
   We read, with sympathy, an advertisement in the reign of Charles
=2 stating: 'Lost: a lawn 1handkercher with a broad hem laced
round with fine Point lace about four fingers broad' and among the
effects left by Nell Gwyn is an unpaid bill for 'scarlet satin shoes
with silver lace'.
   The records of these tender trifles are very touching but then
lace does place upon everything a delicate sentiment. Lucky indeed
are the families that possess a heritage of lace. A lace bridal veil
handed down from mother to daughters, a lace-trimmed Christening
<SIC> robe that each generation wears in turn- these are proud
possessions, linked to the exquisite lace-making of the past.
   But lace-making is by no means a lost art. It suffered a decline
and fell into lamentably low standards in the fussy over-furnishing of
the Victorian age but it would take more than a temporary lapse in
good taste to destroy this lovely, viable craft.
   It has, in fact, readily adapted itself to modern tastes and the
illustrations in the following pages will show how completely it is in
sympathy with contemporary surroundings.
   It will be seen how, with bold design and rich colour, knitting,
crochet and tatting in fine and medium-weight cottons can give
striking individuality to many things in the home. Chairbacks,
cushions, tablecloths, to mention only three- how satisfying it is to
avoid the ready-made in these and by one's own handiwork produce
something that reflects true creative talent.
   The more delicate patterns and finer threads may be reserved to
bring a light and lovely touch to personal possessions- a lace border
to a handkerchief, fine-lace insertion on a petticoat or blouse, a
tatted edge to a collar; these add a charming, feminine distinction
that nothing else can give.
   Although we assess lace-making as one of the feminine skills, a
number of the well-loved traditional patterns that we follow today
were, in fact, the brain-children of inventive men. For in the old
order of things, men designed and worked lace as well as women and
special schools were set up to teach lace-making not only to young
girls, but to little boys as well.
   Whole families made their livelihood by lace-making and
consequently a folklore of song, festival and courtship grew up around
the lace industry. Those who are interested in its history will enjoy
reading about the charming coquetteries the lace-makers practised.
That their work required smooth white hands and delicate fingers gave
them a refinement apart from the rest of the community.
   In presenting this book of lace-craft today, we remember with
deep gratitude all who gave their skills to lace design and lace
making. Not only do we remember them for their great accomplishments
in a hard-working lifetime but we are grateful that they handed on
their knowledge to others. For the whole structure of the craft is
founded on inherited skills.
   We who love lace-craft hope that you will enjoy the work that
this book offers in such variety- but at the same time, may we make a
plea that you will also guide other hands to pick up the threads?
   Only with the knowledge handed down by mother to daughter, by
teacher to pupil, can this fascinating and deeply satisfying craft
continue to give its rewards to younger generations.
CROCHET STITCHES
   The art of crochet is very old indeed, but from the details
available it has never been possible to give any accurate information
as to its history. It would appear to have been associated with
France, as its name is in fact the French word for hook, and a small
hook is used in the making of crochet lace. During the sixteenth
century a considerable amount of crochet was produced in the convents
of Europe. Without doubt it was the nuns who carried the craft to
Ireland. There it was developed into quite an elaborate and
distinctive form with rosettes, leaves and lace fillings.
   During the time of Victoria this gentle craft was greatly abused.
One can remember with horror the pictures of the overcrowded and
over-embellished drawing-rooms complete with heavy crochet
antimacassars, mantelpiece covers with a fringing of clumsy bobbles
and numerous other crocheted pieces.
   It was some years after the Victorian period that designers
realised the potentialities of the craft, and crochet was revived with
designs suitable for contemporary trends. Crochet today has a variety
of uses, and has even stepped into the field of high fashion. In some
of the elegant boutiques of Paris hand-crocheted blouses, gossamer
fine in texture, are sold at a very high price.
   With a little time and concentration the woman at home can
produce fashion articles as elegant as those of Paris- a blouse,
delicate gloves or a fine edging for collar, cuffs or a handkerchief.
   In the home, crochet lace can be used to make tablecloths,
traycloths and runners, and edgings from heavy to fine can fulfil a
variety of functions.
   The art of crochet is not difficult and it is reasonably quick to
work. In the following pages simple diagrams and instructions are
given to enable the beginner to master all the essential crochet
stitches. From these a selection of designs are included which show
the use of the individual stitches. Finally, notes and designs are
included on all the various styles of crochet, motifs, edgings,
doilies, filet crochet, church laces, pineapple pattern and Irish
crochet.
CROCHET ABBREVIATIONS
   _ch- chain; ss- slip stitch; dc- double crochet; hlf
tr- half treble; tr- treble; dbl tr- double treble; trip
tr- triple treble; quad tr- quadruple treble; quint tr-
quintuple treble; rnd- round; blk- block; sp- space;
st(s)- stitch(es).
   / (Asterisk): Repeat the instructions following the
asterisk as many more times as specified, in addition to the original.
   Sometimes in the directions you will see the following phrases:
1. Repeat from / across. 2. Repeat from / all round. 3. Repeat
from /3 (or any number) times more.
   In Nos. 1 and 2 follow the directions from the first to the
last / (asterisk) completely across row or all round. In No. 3
follow the directions from the first / (asterisk) as many times as
specified.
   Repeat instructions in parentheses as many times as specified.
For example, '(5 ch, 1 dc in next dc) 5 times' means to make
all in parentheses 5 times in all.
INSERTING CROCHET INTO LINEN
   First launder crochet and then pin to the required shape,
ensuring that all lines of the crochet are accurate. Place crochet in
correct position on linen and secure with pins. Run a line of basting
stitches on the linen following the outline of the crochet edges which
are to be attached to the linen. Remove crochet.
   Two methods can be used to join the crochet to the linen:
(a) Button Stitch round the outline of basting stitches, the
knotted part of the button stitch lying on the outside edge. Oversew
crochet to button stitch. (b) Turn under a small hem, with fold
lying on line of basting stitches. Work a row of dc all round this
hem, with 3 dc at each corner. Oversew crochet to the dc.
COATS MERCER-CROCHET
   A household word, Coats Mercer-Crochet possesses qualities
which are of the utmost importance to the worker. It washes
beautifully, never loses its colour nor becomes 'stringy', is very
elastic and preserves the beauty of the design. It is easy to work
with, soft, glossy and of uniform thickness- it is the ideal crochet
thread.
   Obtainable in the following shades:
<LIST>
HOW TO TURN YOUR WORK
   In crochet a certain number of chain stitches are added at the
end of each row to bring work in position for the next row. Then the
work is turned so that the reverse side is facing the worker. The
number of turning chains depends upon the stitch with which you intend
to begin the next row.
   _Double crochet (dc)- 1 ch to turn; half treble (hlf
tr)- 2 ch to turn; treble (tr)- 3 ch to turn; double treble
(dbl tr)- 4 ch to turn; triple treble (trip tr)- 5 ch to
turn; quadruple treble (qua tr)- 6 ch to turn; quintuple treble
(quint tr)- 7 ch to turn.
CROCHET THREADS
   Remember that texture plays an important part in the beauty of
crochet. The finer mercerised threads are more effective for the
delicate designs used for tablecloths, doilies, edgings and
accessories, while the heavier threads are used for bedspreads,
chairbacks, luncheon mats, etc.
CROCHET HOOKS
   Crochet hooks are made of steel, composition or bone. Steel
crochet hooks range in size from number 3/, the largest, to number 8,
the smallest. Each size of hook is made for use with a certain size
of thread. To ensure the correct results, it is important that you
use the size of hook specified in the directions.
   These are the correct numbers to use with Mercer-Crochet:
<TABLE>
PRACTICE PIECES
   Directions are given for a small practice piece for each stitch
that you learn. When you have become proficient in these stitches,
attractive articles can be made from the directions included in this
book.
Step 1- Make a Loop
   1. Grasp thread near end between thumb and forefinger.
   2. Make a loop by lapping long thread over short thread.
   3. Hold loop in place between thumb and forefinger (Fig.
1).
Step 2
   1. Take hold of broad bar of hook as you would a pencil. Bring
middle finger forward to rest near tip of hook.
   2. Insert hook through loop and under long thread. Catch long
end of thread (Fig. 2). Draw loop through.
   3. Do not remove hook from thread.
Step 3
   Pull short end and ball thread in opposite directions to bring
loop close around the end of the hook, but not too tight (Fig.
3).
Step 4
   Loop thread round little finger, across palm and behind
forefinger (Fig. 4).
Step 5
   1. Grasp hook and loop between thumb and forefinger.
   2. Gently pull ball thread so that it lies around the fingers
firmly but not tightly (Fig. 5).
# 23
<17 TEXT E2>
MAKING TAPERED LEGS
   A great deal of modern furniture has tapered legs, and in
reproduction period pieces they are frequently used. The simpler
varieties are extremely easy to work, the four sides being simply
planed to give the required taper. In the more elaborate varieties,
however, a toe is worked in the solid, and this certainly complicates
the operation. It is not difficult, but calls for accurate
workmanship. Perhaps the awkward feature is that the plane can only
be used to a limited extent because the projecting toe prevents its
being taken right through
   
   WHEN A LEG has a simple taper the procedure of making it is
straightforward. The wood is first planed parallel to the largest
section, and pencil lines marking the beginning of the taper squared
round on to all four sides. At the bottom end the extent of the taper
is gauged in, again on all four sides. It is a help, too, if the
marks are nicked in to the extent of about 1/8 in. (no more) on two
opposite faces, though this is not essential. Fig. 2(A) shows the
idea. Two opposite faces are now planed to the gauge lines, a panel
or trying plane being used for legs of any length. For short ones a
smoothing plane can be used.
   The gauge can now be used to nick in the tapers on the newly
planed surfaces, and these treated as before. It is unnecessary to
mark the taper with the straight-edge as one relies upon the truth of
the plane sole to make the tapered surfaces straight. A glance at the
gauge marks at the bottom end reveals when the required amount has
been removed, and if care is taken to stop the plane short of the
squared pencil line at the top, the work will be accurate. The
straight-edge can be used to test the straightness of the sides.
Incidentally, it is better to complete any mortising that may be
needed at the top before the tapering is begun.
   Some plain tapered legs have the taper on the two inner faces
only, the outer surfaces being vertical as at (B), Fig. 1.
Leg with toe
   To make a leg such as that at (D), Fig. 1, the square is
first marked out as at (A), Fig. 3. Note that squared lines marking
the top member of the toe are needed as well as the upper extent of
the taper, and in this case it is necessary to mark in the line of the
taper with pencil and straight-edge as at (B), Fig. 3. A saw cut is
made at the upper toe line exactly down to the taper line, no farther.
It is a help in guiding the saw if the line is squared round with the
chisel, and a sloping groove chiselled on the waste side.
   With a keen, wide chisel the wood is now eased away above the toe
as at (B). A mallet used to the chisel is a great help providing care
is taken not to cut in too deeply. Finish off with hand pressure
only, and make the final cut so that the notch is in alignment with
the line of the taper.
   The rest of the taper can now be largely worked with the
smoothing plane. It is necessary to work largely across the grain,
holding the plane askew as otherwise it will not clear the toe.
Fig. 4 shows the smoothing plane in use on the leg. To finish off
it is often a help to use a wide flat file taken along the taper in
the direction of the grain. The bullnose plane is also invaluable.
This is followed by the scraper, and finally by glasspaper wrapped
around a flat block used as at (C).
   The remaining two sides follow. It is necessary to draw in
pencil lines on the newly tapered surfaces, but the method of cutting
is exactly the same, (D), Fig. 3.
The toe
   For convenience in handling it is convenient to work the hollow
moulding before planing the taper of the toe. Mark in with pencil the
depth of the hollow, using the pencil and finger as a gauge, and cut a
chamfer with a keen chisel on all four sides as at (D). Cut inwards
with the chisel from each side so that the far corner does not
splinter. The cut is taken down to the two pencil lines.
   To work the hollow a rat-tail file can be used in its entirety as
at (E), or the bulk of the waste can be removed with a small gouge,
and the file used to finish off. In any case glasspaper wrapped
around a shaped rubber is used to smooth the hollow finally. To
complete the toe the smoothing plane can be used to form the taper.
Finish the two opposite sides first, and follow with the two
remaining faces.
Machined legs
   It will be realised that those who have a machine planer can
work a plain tapered leg in its entirety on it, and also a fairly
close approximation of the leg with toe. For instance, the design at
(F), Fig. 1, is formed entirely on the planer. The process is shown
in Figs. 5 and 7.
   The rear table is set level with the tips of the cutters as in
normal planing, but the front one is lowered by an amount equal to the
full depth of the taper. Two stops are fixed to the fence to limit
the travel of the leg. The square of wood is held level with the near
stop and is lowered on to the revolving cutters. The wood is pushed
forward until it reaches the back stop. Note the use of the pusher
stick as in Fig. 7. Each side is dealt with in the same way.
   When the taper has to begin at the extreme top of the leg, either
the leg must be cut about 1/4 in. long, or the taper must be started
about a similar amount below the top and finished afterwards by hand.
The reason for this is that when the square is lowered on to the
revolving cutters at the start of the cut it must rest on the lip of
the back table as in Fig. 6. Unless it does so it will be grabbed
by the cutters and chewed down to the extent of the full depth. Apart
from spoiling the leg it may easily cause an accident and may stall
the machine.
WHAT DOES IT COST TO START WOODWORK?
   ONLY THOSE WHO have done woodwork for any length of time can
realise the fascination it has. Many a man has started to make
something in wood, possibly out of economic necessity, and has then
continued to do woodwork from the sheer joy of doing it. Something
begun in compulsion has become a thing of lasting satisfaction.
   But why woodwork in particular? Well, there are many reasons.
Wood is in good and common supply; it lends itself to making
innumerable useful household items- furniture, fitments, garden
items, toys, etc.; it enables results to be obtained fairly quickly;
it is less expensive than most other materials; it is a pleasant
material to work with; and, although it does create a certain amount
of mess, it is all clean and easily cleared away.
   Of course a certain amount of equipment is necessary, and this
brings us straightway to the question of what it costs to start
woodwork. Most households have a few basic tools- probably a hammer,
pincers, screwdriver, etc., but one does not get far with these. We
have, therefore, considered the matter partly from what is essential
or desirable to start woodwork, but taking into account the long-term
likelihood of (a) better class work being done, and (b) the
possibility of power being used to supplement hand tools.
   This last point is certainly important because almost everyone
has come to recognise that machines are not only an economic
necessity, but that a great deal of drudgery can be avoided by the
installation of a power tool. As an elementary example, surely no one
can pretend to enjoy ripping out parts from hardwood. Most men would
unhesitatingly use a machine if it were available.
Choice of Tools
   Coming now to the actual tools and their cost, we begin with
what we have called a bare minimum kit. Probably most men have
some of the tools already. It will enable a man to make simple,
straight-forward things, and in any case may be regarded as a good
beginning to which other tools can be added as the need arises. The
nature of the work will probably dictate the additions to be made, but
as a guide we have given a fuller kit which increases the range of
things that can be made enormously. As a still further development,
we follow with a good basic kit, which includes the fuller kit
(which in its turn, of course, includes the bare minimum kit). With
this the vast majority of jobs can be done, though for advanced
cabinet work the necessity for certain special tools will become
obvious. Lastly, we suggest certain power tools and machines, the
choice of which will depend partly upon the space available in the
workshop, the amount one is prepared to pay, and the type of work a
man normally does.
   First, however, a word of advice generally. Do not buy so-called
cheap tools or machines. They never are cheap in the long run. They
may be inaccurate, the steel may be soft (or possibly too hard) so
that the edge either crumbles or is brittle, or they may not be robust
enough for the work they have to do. Most tools have to lead an
intensive life, and faults in design or quality soon become apparent.
It is far better to pay the fair price for a tool of good quality,
and not handicap yourself from the start. To put it in a slightly
different way, do not allow yourself to blame the tools when the job
does not turn out quite right!
   If this advice is true of hand tools, it is still more true of
machines. The whole nature of a machine is that, properly set-up and
used, it will do accurate work. If it fails to do this it is worse
than useless, and may be dangerous. This is not meant to imply that
only the best precision machines are of any use. Some of the less
expensive types intended for home use are reliable, especially taking
into account the limited use to which they are put. It is to be
admitted, however, that a few drill attachments have been put on the
market which are unsound in design and poor in quality, and should be
avoided.
   A point that may occur to the reader is that the possible later
purchase of a machine may render some of his hand tools redundant.
This may be the case in one or two instances, but for the greater
part it does not apply. For instance, rebating can be done on the
circular saw, but it leaves a sawn finish, and to make the surface
smooth it is necessary to follow with the rebate plane. The latter is
thus still needed, although the bulk of the work is done on the saw.
TOOL CABINET
   Many men with only limited accommodation have to do their
woodwork on the kitchen table. Providing this is sound, some
perfectly good work can be done on it, but the usual problems are
those of the vice, the bench stop, and storage place for tools. The
combined bench top and tool cupboard shown here has been specially
designed and made for WOODWORKER readers who have this difficulty.
When folded up flat as in Fig. 2 it can be stored away in a
cupboard or outhouse, but when opened out on the table there is a
roomy bench top of 4 ft. by 17 in., and good accommodation for the
tools.
# 29
<18 TEXT E3>
More Power To Your Elbow
<EDITORIAL>
   TIME saved is money saved, they say; and when holes have to
be bored an electric drill will certainly save one heck of a lot of
time. But there is much more to it than just that, for in the past
few years these compact power tools have been developed to a stage
where they can tackle almost any job you care to name. Grinding,
paint mixing, precision turning or polishing floors- it's a fair bet
that there's a drill accessory designed for the purpose.
   Nowhere is a power drill more useful than in the garage, where it
can form the basis of a comprehensive workshop and so provide near
professional facilities for maintenance and repair work. But however
ingenious an attachment may be, it can only be as good as its power
unit. So, before whaling in to your bank account, have a good look
around, comparing specifications and prices and ensuring that the
drill you fancy will drive the attachments in which you may be
interested.
   All the popular makes of drill, produced to exacting standards,
offer a high degree of reliability and an efficient after-sales
service. On what, then, does choice depend? Well, on weight, for one
thing; or on style. One maker discovered that eye-appeal increased
his sales and so you might fall for a charming pastel shade! Then,
too, there are practical features to be considered, such as an
automatic cut-out, or double insulation which does away with the need
for earthing.
   The price? Anything from about +7 upwards for the drill
itself- and, unless you hold yourself in check, up to ten times that
amount for accessories! But many of the manufacturers have taken the
sting out of the cash side by operating their own hire-purchase
schemes.
   A buyers' guide to drills suitable for the do-it-yourself
enthusiast is appended, and somewhere in that list is a power tool to
meet your needs. But when buying, check that the operating voltage
(marked on a plate on the drill body) is suited to your mains supply.
It is also a good idea to spin the chuck by hand, to ensure that the
spindle is free-running and has survived the trip from factory to
dealer without damage.
   You will want to try it out as soon as you arrive home, but curb
your impatience for a while. Check, first, that the plug is properly
connected. If the green-covered cable runs to the earth pin, red to
the pin marked "L" and black to the pin marked "N," then
everything is as it should be.
   Once you have bought your drill, then it is only common sense to
look after it properly, and simple maintenance will keep it in good
order almost indefinitely.
   Say the power-drill makers, 75 per cent of major breakdowns can
be traced to neglect of the carbon-brush gear. So it pays to carry
out regular inspection of the brushes, replacing them, in the grade
and size recommended by the maker, when they have worn to a third of
their original length. As with motor-cycle dynamo brushes, care
should be taken to see that they bed down properly on the commutator,
with the spring pressure sufficient to keep the brushes in close
contact.
   Ventilation holes in the drill body must be kept free from dust,
screws should be checked for tightness regularly, and- an obvious
point, maybe- cable leads must be inspected from time to time for
signs of fraying or of faulty connections.
   Go steady on greasing and work strictly to the instruction book,
for too much grease can bring a train of trouble. It could cause the
motor to overheat. Overgreasing the rear bearing could foul the
commutator. And if there is too much in the gear box a stream of
surplus might be blown into your face!
   If your garage is damp, play safe and keep the drill in the house
when not in use, for damp is one of the worst enemies of an electric
motor. And when storing the drill, coil the cable neatly without
kinks or sharp bends.
   When removing the chuck or setting up the tool for a specific
job, always follow the maker's recommendation. Never push a
screwdriver or other tool into the body of the drill in order to jam
the shaft. You can't see what damage you may be causing, nor will it
show until the current is switched on. And should the drill give
trouble send it back to the manufacturer's service depot, for
do-it-yourself repairs are ticklish unless you are a skilled
electrician.
   Factories place great emphasis on accident prevention, and it is
equally important that safety habits should be developed in the home
workshop. Wear overalls, for a start, so that there is no loose
clothing to be caught up in moving parts (ties and shirt-sleeves, for
example, are particularly vulnerable). And it is as well to wear
goggles- your motor-cycle goggles will serve admirably- when pieces
of metal are likely to be flying about. Petrol, or any other
inflammable liquid, should be removed from the working area, for a
spark from a grinding or sanding wheel can start a fire.
   A good tip is to disconnect the tool when setting up an
accessory, or making any other change. Also, if your drill has a
locking button incorporated in the switch, it must be released.
Incidentally, if the drill cable is plugged into a switched socket,
in case of emergency the simplest thing is to flick off the switch; if
something has gone wrong with the drill you won't want to fumble
around trying to release the locking button!
   Finally, never, never pull a drill around by its power lead. It
is so easy to pull a connection loose- and you won't find out about
it until you pick up the drill and try to switch on.
   Having bought your drill, how do you set about using it? And
which of those alluring attachments are most useful for the
motor-cyclist's workshop? Well, we'll go into the practical side of
things next week.
<ILLUSTRATIONS>
NOT SUCH A BORING JOB...!
<EDITORIAL>
   FROM the display of attachments in a hardware shop window,
you might well conclude that there is no longer such a tool as an
electric drill, pure and simple; instead, it has become a miniature
machine-shop powerhouse. But for all that, the primary function of a
power drill is- well, to drill; and with its aid anyone can bore
holes quickly and easily. But there are holes and holes, and to make
a proper job of things, while at the same time prolonging the life of
the drill bit, it is worth while taking a little trouble.
   So, for a start, we can ignore those cheap (and usually foreign)
sets of twist drills on the chain-store tool counters. Almost
certainly they are of carbon steel- good enough for a hand brace,
maybe, but you would be lucky to use them more than once in a power
tool. No, what you need are high-speed-steel drills, more expensive
in first cost but cheaper in the long run; these can tackle most
jobbing work, but you will want yet another type of drill if there is
glass, concrete or masonry to be drilled.
   A good high-speed drill will have the letters HS and the
diameter stamped on the shank. But should there be no marking and you
are in doubt, there is a simple way of identifying the material.
Touch the drill shank lightly against a grinding wheel and note the
colour of the sparks. If red, then it is high-speed steel; if yellow,
carbon steel.
   Now for the actual operation- and that should always begin by
using a centre-punch to mark the job at the precise spot to be
drilled. That acts as a guide for the drill point and stops it
wandering from the required position.
   A comfortable working stance is essential, both to lessen
physical strain and to achieve accuracy. That's where a bench
drilling assembly scores heavily, a simple pillar fixture which
converts the power tool into a bench drill. Fixed to such a stand,
the drill can be brought to the job with great precision, while
pressure is increased easily by using the spring-loaded lever provided
with the assembly. In addition, the stand baseplate offers a firm and
smooth working surface. In some of the drill accessories available
the bench stand also forms part of a lathe assembly, but Black and
Decker market a self-contained bench conversion at +4.
   When using a bench stand, it is advisable to interpose a block of
wood between the baseplate and the job, so that when the drill point
breaks through it enters the wood and not the plate.
   But whether the power drill is hand-held or used in a bench
assembly, let your eyes and ears act as trouble detectors. Listen to
the drill's high-pitched whine, which will drop a tone or two as it
bites into the job; but should the note turn to a low growl too much
pressure is being applied- so ease up a little, to obviate
overloading and, possibly, burning out the motor.
   Watch the swarf as it spins away from the drill flutes. With
mild steel and other softish metals splinters and dust are a sign that
more pressure is required, so increase it until good, fat shavings are
twirling out from the job. They may be coming from one flute only,
and if so the drill has been incorrectly ground.
   The drill point and cutting edges have also a tale to tell. If
the point has blunted, then the pressure has been too great. If the
outer corners of the cutting edges are wearing, or turning blue, the
drill speed is too high. Regrinding and setting a drill is really a
job for an expert and beginners are advised to take them to a light
engineering shop for the proper treatment.
   Speed is an important factor in the life of a twist drill. The
average domestic power tool operates at around 2,75 r.p.m.,
which although right for powering many of the attachments is a little
too fast for drilling some materials. Used at the right speed, drills
will have a longer life and not require frequent regrinding. The
basic rule is this: the harder the material and the larger the drill
diameter, the slower should the speed be.
   Though the simpler tools have no inbuilt method of changing
speed, attachments are available which can step-up or reduce drilling
speed to bring it into line with your needs. One, from Bridges at +2
4s 1d, gives a four-to-one speed reduction at the turn of a knob.
Another, by Black and Decker at +3 7s 6d, will not only double
or halve the standard speed at will, but will also carry the drive at
right angles for reaching awkward spots.
   As an instance, when a 1/4in drill is used on cast iron,
spindle speed should be about 75 r.p.m., and on brass, 3,1
r.p.m. Makers of twist drills often issue tables of suitable
speeds for various materials; Intal (Watery Street, Sheffield, 3) will
supply a handy little booklet on the subject on request. Where a
drill speed may be quoted in peripheral feet per minute, don't be
alarmed. A simple formula
<FORMULA> will give you spindle r.p.m.
   Drill longevity and lubrication go together. Some materials-
wood, cast iron, brass and Bakelite among them- are drilled "dry,"
but for most purposes a good all-round lubricant is soluble oil. One
tip is to keep a supply in a polythene bottle with a small hole in the
cap, and squirt it on to the drill as the job proceeds.
   In unskilled hands drills are easily broken. So for the
inexperienced, stub drills- shorter than average and less likely to
bend or break- are a good buy (but be sure that they are long enough
for the job you want to do). Jamming is a common cause of drill
breakage, and that is most often the case when a drill is breaking
through at the far side of the work.
# 219
<19 TEXT E4>
Instructions for making CHILD'S HIGH CHAIR
   HERE is a project that will be welcomed by the family man
or father-to-be. Unlike many commercial articles, this chair is
solidly built and capable of withstanding the heavy handling of the
most destructive youngster. Almost any available timber can be used
but Parana pine is recommended, being cheap, easy to work, and taking
a good finish.
   Start by making the two side frames from 1 in. by 1 1/4 in.
planed timber as shown in Fig. 1. Although the timber will have
already been machine planed, remember to go over each piece with a
smoothing plane, otherwise the marks left by the cutters will show up
after painting. The dimensions given enable the feeding tray to slide
over a 3 in. table, but the height can be altered if required. All
the joints are simple halving joints glued and pinned, which should
nevertheless be cut with care to ensure a neat appearance.
   The side frames are joined by four cross pieces each 1 1/4 in.
by 1/2 in. by 14 in. which fit into the recesses (C), cut to fit
them. See Fig. 2. These are then glued and pinned into place. A
similar piece of 1 in. by 1 1/4 in. by 14 in. timber is fixed
across the end of the feeding tray as seen in Fig. 3 which also
shows how a piece of hardboard is covered with plastic material for
easy cleaning and then fixed underneath the frame with panel pins to
complete the feeding tray. Cut this piece of hardboard so that it
fits up against the front legs of the chair.
   The seat rests across the upper two cross pieces and is made of
1/2 in. plywood glued and panel pinned in position, measurements
being taken directly from the work.
   Fig. 4 shows the framework for the back which is made from 1
1/4 in. by 1/2 in. timber. The amount of the backward tilt and
also the height is left to personal choice and the width is best taken
directly from the work to ensure a good fit. Fix the piece A to the
sides first with glue and panel pins and then fit the frame together
with the piece B temporarily in place on the chair frame. Decide on
the required angle of slope, keeping B flat on the chair seat, and
mark off the exact position of B on the side pieces. These can then
be cut at the correct angle and B is glued and nailed in place. A
piece of hardboard is then cut and pinned to the frame and its edges
planed off flush. Finally attach the back firmly to the sides with
screws driven from the inside.
    The footrest is a piece of timber 14 in. long and about 1/2
in. by 4 in. attached to the front legs with a pair of angle irons
as shown in Fig. 5. When determining the position of the footrest,
do not place too near the seat to allow for the growth of baby's legs.
   To complete the job, screw two fittings to the inside of the
chair arms about 2 1/2 in. from the back to hold the baby's safety
harness. These can be made by shaping and soldering two pieces of
stout wire as shown in Fig. 6. Make sure that these are well
secured as they will have to withstand considerable pulling as the
child becomes older.
Finishing touches
   Punch in all nail and panel pin heads and fill the holes with
plastic wood. Then thoroughly glasspaper the whole framework and
round off any sharp edges (such as the edge of the seat, feeding tray,
etc). Fill the grain with a woodfiller in the usual way and paint
the frame in a suitable pastel shade, using a contrasting colour for
the seat and the back which can be decorated with a suitable nursery
transfer. Avoid using lead-based paint as this could prove poisonous
if junior decides to bite the chair. Finally, it is as well to cover
the footrest with rubber or any such protective material that might be
available as otherwise the paint would soon be scratched off.
(J.H.P.)
BUILD AN 8FT. PRAM DINGHY
By F. Cordner
   BUILDING your own boat is a most satisfying and worthwhile
project. Here are the plans of a very seaworthy little rowing dinghy
many of which I have built and sold. It is especially designed for
simplicity in construction, cheapness and lightness of weight, and
measures approximately 8 ft. by 4 ft. She weighs only 6 lb.
but can carry three people and an outboard motor with a comfortable
margin of freeboard.
   I have built many of these little craft in this country and
particularly in Canada for use by commercial salmon fishermen in
Victoria B.C. Over there the cost is about $17.. The last
one I made here cost about +6 s. d. Prices of course depend on
local availability of materials and, there are many ways in which
costs can be saved. For instance, in Canada we use galvanised nails
in place of screws. We just bend them over and clamp firmly by using
a hammer on each side. Over here I've always used brass screws, which
are more expensive.
   The first job is to make your moulds. In Fig. 1 it quotes 3/4
in. five-ply, but to save money any scrap may be used, and if this
is nailed and glued together strongly, it may be marked and cut to
shape later.
   If you do not have a wooden floor on which to anchor the moulds,
make a frame of rough lumber as shown in Fig. 2. The main idea is
to have the moulds standing as rigid as possible, for it is on these
you will be building and shaping your little craft, upside-down.
   For cheapness I recommend using Douglas Fir Plywood from British
Columbia. This is hot pressed and resin bonded to ensure a
permanently water proof glue line. Be sure to see that the edge bears
the mark, P.M.B.C. Exterior. This may be bought at any good
timber merchants. The transoms can be made of any sound five-ply wood
of the same make, or oak or mahogany. For the last one I made, I used
the two flaps from an old mahogany table which I bought at a sale for
one shilling. I have also included a sketch of paddles I make for
rowing this dinghy (Fig. 3). They are very simple, cheap and easy
to make.
   As will be seen from the plan there is only a single gunwale on
the outside. I find that the type of rowlock we use in Canada is
difficult to obtain here and expensive. I overcome this in another
way as shown in Fig. 4. By putting in the extra gunwale on the
inside, it improves the appearance and strengthens the boat and makes
it possible to fit blocks for the rowlocks.
   Note that all contacting surfaces must be glued together with
waterproof resin glue (I use Casco) as well as being screwed together.
   Build the pram upside-down. Since it has no transverse frames,
moulds are required at stations 2 and 6, to serve in conjunction with
the two transoms to maintain the shape of the sides and bottom until
they are fastened together into a strong rigid unit.
   Cut the moulds and the transoms to shape as in the detailed
drawings. If you have a wooden floor you can use 'A' frames
fastened to the floor if not, use a strong horizontal frame that will
sit firmly on the ground or concrete floor. I use a heavy old base as
in Fig. 2.
   The edges of the transoms should be bevelled to correspond to the
sides and bottom of the boat. Don't forget to cut out on each side of
each mould to allow for the chines to rest in these notches, as they
are not fastened to the moulds, which will only be used whilst the
hull is under construction.
   The chine is the long stringer on each side which is joined to
both transoms and lies in the grooves cut in the moulds. Each chine
is made of oak, ash, spruce or any long grained flexible wood. I
prefer spruce when available.
   As will be seen in the plan, the transoms have a frame 1 in. by
1 in. on each side. The chines are morticed into this and butt up
against the transom. Start at the bow and spring them both at the
same time over the slots cut in the moulds and into the notches cut
for this purpose in the stern or after transom framing. Glue, screw
and make fast.
   The skeleton of the boat will now take shape, and this is the
time to check before making fast to see that nothing is distorted.
Ensure that the outside measurements from transom to transom are
equal on each side and that the transoms are parallel horizontally.
Next bevel the chines with a plane so that the bottom will fit
snugly.
   Cut out the bottom and sides accurately from the plan
measurements but leave sufficient margin for planing after fixing to
the boat. Use your two lengths of 8 ft. by 4 ft. ply for this
purpose, the sides from one, and the bottom from the other. If care
is taken not to waste the ply, plenty of material is left over for the
thwarts.
   Having trimmed up the chines, we are now ready to plank the
sides. Start again at the bows, clamping into position with a 'D'
clamp. Bend round the frame to the stern and clamp there. If you
have a third clamp use it in the centre as well. After generously
covering with glue, screw the sides to the transom framing and the
chine. Use 5/8 by No. 4 gauge screws (brass) or nail with inch and
a quarter galvanized nails, if you are doing it that way. Use flat
head screws about 4 in. apart and do not counter-sink in the 1/4
in. ply. Make a very small hole for the screw to allow for a good
grip. Remember to glue before screwing.
   Clean up with the plane ready for the bottom, which is cut in one
piece. It should overlap just a trifle; this can be cleaned up later.
As you are screwing and gluing this piece to the chines it is
necessary to be careful not to miss the chine with the screws. I
prefer spacing screws 3 in. apart for the bottom, both for screwing
to the chines and the bottom shaped transom facing. Again, don't
forget to glue.
   Now put on the keel and the rubbing strakes and you are ready to
lift the boat off the moulds. You won't want them again for this
boat, so shift them right out of the way. Place the boat right side
up on two boxes or trestles of convenient height for working.
   Fix on the gunwales and insert the thwarts (seats) taking care to
reinforce the sides of the dinghy at the seats with vertical members
as shown in the plans. Make the four blocks for the rowlocks and mark
their positions before riveting on the gunwales so that you do not put
a rivet where you will have to cut out the inside (gunwale) one to fit
the block. I rivet my gunwales together through the side of the hull
with copper nails and roves. It greatly improves the appearance and
the strength.
   Paint with good marine primer, undercoat and at least one coat of
finishing paint.
USE FABRICS TO MAKE PICTURES
By Anne Bradford
   WHEN an assortment of differently coloured materials are
cut into a variety of shapes they can be combined by either making
fabric pictures or designs. While these may ultimately be made into a
picture for framing and hanging on a wall, they may also be arranged
into a design, and the resulting panel utilized for decorating a
useful article.
# 28
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News of the new furniture
   A wind of change has blown through the cobwebs in the
drawing-offices of Britain's furniture makers, and affected them as
deeply as it has our politicos. An optimist might even persuade
himself that there are signs of the birth of a new and fine 'English
Modern style'.
   Our shame in the past has been that the talent that undoubtedly
existed was not used. In despair, some of our younger people, fresh
from the best design schools in the world, drifted off to Scandinavian
and other countries where they felt their ideas and ideals were more
appreciated, or worse, drifted into other work where their years of
training and experience were lost for ever.
   In the post-war years, furniture of all sorts- beautiful and
trashy- has been pouring into this country from abroad. Britain has
become almost the world's clearing-house. When we were in Denmark
recently, two furniture-makers told us that Britain took two-thirds of
all the furniture they exported. When this furniture was good, it
was so much better than anything we have been producing, that it made
an immediate mark and proved a vast economic success. Now there are
very real signs that our own manufacturers have taken note of the
profits and, rather like the United States car manufacturers with
their 'compact' cars, are hitting back at these foreign influences.
Our home market now has the extra cash and extra influences from
magazines and the daily press to make them more discriminating.
Manufacturers who, a few years ago, were happy to produce one model
that then sold successfully for years, are now willingly employing
designers wishful to introduce new ideas.
   The new design policy is being vigorously adopted by some
manufacturers, only half believingly by others, and then for only part
of their range. But the signs are good.
   The Council of Industrial Design, of course, must get much of the
credit for this awakening of public interest in design, for they show
things by native manufacturers only. This credit must also be shared
with a few brave manufacturers who have been making very soundly
designed furniture (and with their own money) for years. Now, at
last, more and more manufacturers are recognizing there is not only a
certain cachet in the little black-and-white Design Centre label, but
that would-be buyers do look for this signal. Every day, for six days
a week, over three thousand people visit the Design Centre in the
Haymarket, to see what Britain can make; which goes to prove what
critics have said over and over again- if people demand the best,
eventually they will get it.
   What's new? Exciting and unusual materials and combinations of
materials are the keynote of the 1961 furniture collections.
   Robin Day has designed for Hille something we have long awaited
and only been able to get from French sources, a truly super-elegant
dinner-wagon or tea-trolley, happily marrying blackened steel,
mahogany and stainless steel, with trays in white plastic. This piece
is a rich and rare combination of visual and tactile delights.
   Aidron Duckworth, another of our top-line designers, shows new
metallic possibilities in his new designs for the Holborn Metal Works.
This is mainly contract work, and the new and luxurious Londoner
Hotel has ordered his armchair, HCI, for its guests. We hope
they can evolve a less asceptic-sounding <SIC> title for their
chair before long.
   Nigel Walters, Head of the Furniture Design School of the Central
School of Arts and Crafts, has also produced a dining-chair of great
simplicity and beauty for the 'Braemar' range, by Wrighton.
   Four young students of the Central School, with the blessing of
their tutor, have formed themselves into a group called 'Design
Associates'. Their grounding in design has been sound. Now they
hope to offer us a comprehensive industrial, furniture and interior
design service. They claim that traditional or derivative influences
will be avoided in their work, and insist that design in this country
should be far more adventurous than it is at present. Fighting words.
We shall see. Certainly we side with them wholeheartedly against the
wholesale lifting of design that has been such a source of
embarrassment for years. But we suggest that they should not wholly
discount our design heritage, for there is much there for those who
are bright enough to learn- as the Danes have shown with their
borrowings from our own eighteenth-century tradition.
   We show some of the work of our design schools on page 73.
   'Danad Design' is the name of another group of artists,
designers and architects who have banded together to brave the apathy
of some stores' buyers- the omni-present barrier between the
enlightened manufacturer and the public. These rebels have a firm
belief in the possibilities of decorative plastic laminates in
furniture design. The originality of the graphic designs they
incorporate is likely to make its main appeal to a sophisticated and
thus restricted market. We shall see. The techniques they use are
much the same as those used by Fornasetti and Philip Pound, but the
designs are supremely original and a good deal bolder.
   Interest has been shown in 'Danad' furniture by the stores in
which one expects to see exciting and experimental work. Examples
should be in the stores this month.
SHOPPING
   Figgio flameware from Norway was our choice when we paid a
visit to R Pochin at 32 Granby St, Leicester. Designed for use on
either gas or electric stoves, these dishes can be transferred
straight from the oven to the table. They come in gay colours on a
white ground and there are many shapes and sizes to choose from. The
small dish with a handle in our photograph costs 9s 3d; the
casserole with lid is 35s 6d and the oblong dish 22s 7d. This
is an excellent hardware store where you can buy anything from the
most mundane of kitchen gadgets to a luxury bathroom fitting.
Fireplaces are a speciality and you will find an endless selection in
stone, tile or slate.
   White painted finish and an interesting shape attracted us to
this Swedish 'Arka' chair imported by Finmar and on display at
Harris's of Granby Corner, Leicester. You can also buy it in
beechwood, and both models come with or without a fitted cushion. The
price is +8 5s for the chair, and the cushion is extra. We
pictured it ideally in a child's room because it is fairly low
(approx 12 in high from seat to floor). If you have any
furnishing problems, some at least of the answers will be found at
this furnishing store which stocks much top bracket furniture, fabrics
and carpets.
   Stainless steel from Sweden and the English Lake District:
this is what we found at Pearce's, jewellers of 7 Market Pl,
Leicester. The coffee-jug, designed by Gense of Sweden, costs +8
3s 6d and the three-legged dish, hand-beaten by the Keswick School
of Art, is 59s 6d.
   Lanterns outside the front door, we are told, are fast
increasing in popularity. This we confirmed whilst visiting Jack
English at his shop in London Rd, Leicester. He told us that people
seem to think nothing of spending +6 to light the way to their
doorsteps, but will hesitate at spending the same amount for indoor
lighting. The favourite shape is undoubtedly a variation on the old
wrought iron pattern. It is guaranteed to be rust- and weather-proof
and sells at +6 5s.
   Bohemian crystal chandeliers, magnificent and resplendent, to
grace alike the baronial hall or 'semi-det', are hung in a superb
exhibition at Morgan Squires in Market St, Leicester. Crown
Theresian chandeliers are known throughout the world- Maria Theresia,
Empress of Austria and the mother of Marie Antoinette, decorated her
palace with their like and this is how the name originated. They are
made in Czechoslovakia and distributed in this country by Homeshades
of Baker St, London W 1, and prices range from as little as +6
for a small baguette to +6 for a 48-light chandelier, 6 feet high.
Against this glittering background, Morgan Squires have put pieces
from the 'Limelight' range of crystal, one of which we chose. This
crystal is also produced in Czechoslovakia and comes in various shapes
and sizes. The one illustrated is in amber and green and costs 7s.
   Quality and craftsmanship are the pace-setters that have kept
The Dryad Handicrafts and Cane Furnishing Company of 42 Nicholas St,
Leicester, leading their field. Every handicraft, at home or school,
is catered for, both in the supply of materials and books and
leaflets, published by their own press. On glancing through their
catalogue we noticed such items as willow work, marbling and musical
pipe-making. If you want to try your hand at the spinning wheel, you
can buy one here for +13 18s 6d together with the various
bobbins, spindles and carders that go with it. Natural fleece from
the Cheviots and South Downs, with sufficient of the natural grease
retained to make it particularly suitable for hand-spinning, can also
be bought at 11s 9d a pound. One of the latest designs to come
from their on-the-spot workrooms, is this mobile wine trolley complete
with glass top and ball-bearing casters. The price is +9 13s 9d.
AROUND THE HOUSE
Fruit-peeling knife
   Another addition to the 'Prestige' 'Sky-Line' range of
kitchen knives is a superbly sharp, hollow-ground knife for paring and
slicing fruits. In fact, this small blade is three useful knives in
one, for the tip is serrated and in the wide part of the blade is a
sharpened gouger which will cut out a narrow sliver of peel to use in
drinks or for decorating special dishes- or, indeed, dishes which can
be made special by the addition of some decoration. 6s 11d from
all good stores.
Bath radiator
   In an age of small houses and flats and miniscule bathrooms, if
you have central heating and are sensitive to even the slightest chill
in the one room where clothes don't protect you, the problem often
arises- where to put the radiator and how to get a maximum of
heating, using a minimum of space. The Hurseal 'Ripplerad' can now
be fitted flush against the side of the bath itself, giving a fine
sweep of radiator. We can't help feeling, too, that this is going to
be a wonderful way to take that shocking chill off the porcelain
enamel.
   The cost of 'Ripplerad' to fit an average bath would be about
+5 exclusive of fitting charges. Enquiries to Hurseal, 219 Regent
St, W 1, or your nearest builders' merchant.
A draught-free existence
   March winds- the cause of those fearful cold draughts that
quickly lower the temperature in even the most efficiently heated
room- are firmly kept out with the new 'Seel-a-door' flexible
plastic strip, that you can easily fix to the lower edge of the
offending door yourself. The strip has a felt backing for double
insulation and to protect carpets.
   Fixing is simple. Trim the 39-in strip to size with a pair of
strong scissors, and then carefully peel off the protective paper
backing which covers a strong adhesive. Press into place. 6s 6d
from good department stores and ironmongers. Sealdraught Ltd also
make a narrow self-adhesive plastic foam strip to seal windows and the
sides of doors.
Swedish salad servers
   Boots's, once known only as dispensing chemists, have been
branching out recently into other fields- books, records, jewellery
and many other things can be bought at the larger branches, all of the
high quality we have learned to expect from Boots's pharmaceutical
departments. This handsome pair of salad servers from Sweden is
typical of the good buying at Boots's branches now, and costs only
5s 11d the pair.
Modular, do-it-yourself garages
   In architectural circles there's an old adage: a doctor can
bury his patients, but an architect can only advise them to grow ivy.
Many of the garages to be had might well prompt a philanthropist of
the anti-ugly school to spend a lifetime and a fortune distributing
free, evergreen climbing plants.
# 24
<111 TEXT E6>
   This could hardly happen without the herring having some
orientation with the sea bottom. It means that the crowding is caused
during the daytime, and that the herring must continue to migrate
over the ground as well as in midwater and during the swim (the
swim at East Anglia is always from the north).
   Thus we can see that herring movements, although primarily
instinctive perhaps, and certainly helped and hindered by water flow,
are also closely related to the sea-bed geography. Geography, too,
names the great fisheries that depend on them: the Fladen Ground
(where again most big shots are taken on the edges), the Gut, a
deep-water channel to the Dogger where the herring spawn along the
northern edge; a good contour map will almost define the migrations of
these summer herring.
   The effect of bottom congestion due to the light pressure is
inevitably mixed with that of the suitability of ground for spawning.
Both result in crowding, so there is no need to try to separate
them- thank Heaven!
   A good picture of this is seen on the 15 miles of spawning
grounds from the Viking in the north down to the Klondykes and the
Reef along the western edge of the Norwegian Deep. In this 2-fathom
trench the herring do not touch the bottom. Their descent stops at
the end of the light pressure. But they migrate easterly to the
Norwegian side, or westerly, until in the shallower water the mile
wide layers disappear from the echo-sounders. Bottom crowding comes
when they cannot reach their optimum depth; and this coincides with
the suitable gravelly soil of these many roughs where the
spring-spawning herring are always found.
   The joint evidence of echo-sounders and fishing gear leads to an
overall though somewhat dim picture. The details are harder still to
see.
   Drift Effects. At East Anglia, for instance, shoals that
gather at the Knoll or other banks are most of them going to travel a
hundred miles farther south before they spawn. Some will spawn at the
Hinder banks, which are half-way; and it may be that in their
southerly march the herring will spawn wherever the suitable gravelly
bottom soil coincides with their final ripeness. So the arrival of
any particular shoal fish at a certain spawning ground may be
accidental. Yet there will always be some that find it if enough are
travelling, just as the robin who gets back exactly may be only one
among thousands who do not.
   But this southerly migration is not accidental. Being
contranatant or against the drift, it probably has a survival value in
ensuring that the fry after hatching are drifted back into the normal
home of the adults, by the water flow through the English Channel into
the North Sea.
   Drift in another form probably explains how these migrating
herring are biased to east or west by the different winds. Strong
westerlies are well known to bring good longshore fishings. <SIC>
The surface water that is blown offshore must be replaced by an
underflow bringing with it the herring to the Norfolk and Suffolk
beaches. Easterly winds, on the other hand, mean no herring along the
shore, as recent years have shown.
   A succession of winds is needed for this effect of course- one
breeze will not do it, though a very hard westerly will often start
off the "local" herring; but quite apart from this wind effect
there is an easterly drift special to this rump of coastline, caused
by the meeting of water from north and south. Herring fishermen call
this "the outset". It is strongest at spring tides, when without
wind you will "set" out- or drift to the eastward, the length of
half a fleet of nets- almost a mile on every tide at the Smith's
Knoll.
   Without an explanation of how it works, it may well be that this
outset, akin to the mouth of a great salmon river, has been the
biggest factor through the ages in the constancy of this great herring
fishery.
   The East Anglian behaviour (see p. 82) has always differed from
that of the summer fisheries. There is the "swim" at slack waters,
even in daylight sometimes; and the high swimming, when fish are
caught only in the top few yards of netting. These and other
fascinating behaviour mysteries are peculiar to this fishery, which
unfortunately seems to be dying out; but a full discussion of them is
beyond the present scope.
=2. REACTION TO FISHING GEAR
   The Bow-wave Theory. This assumes that all fishing gear,
when moving, sends before it a kind of scaring effect, probably
through waves or vibrations in the water or along the ground.
Underwater films suggest that the footrope of a trawl does this.
Films have also shown plaice moving before a seine net in just the
same way after being gathered inwards by the ropes. (Just how the
seine ropes do this is not yet proved; it may be by actual contact, or
by sight reaction to the disturbed sand; or even in the case of flat
fish, by vibrations through or along the bottom.) But given such a
bow wave of disturbance, it is obvious that without something to
overcome its effect, very few fish would be caught.
   Let us consider first what would appear to be the simplest case-
that of flat fish on the bottom. The evidence suggest <SIC> that
the fish are aware of the moving footrope before it reaches them.
They move away before it, swimming at the same speed for an unknown
period of time, until they become (1) tired, or (2) more used to the
disturbance. Then they stop swimming and are caught. In the
seine-net film this usually seemed to happen just after the fish had
risen above the footrope, and presumably out of its field of
disturbance, or bow wave. This suggests that the wave might be
transmitted by the sea-bed, though the footrope in this case was
actually just off the bottom and was indeed passing over some fish.
   It is natural to assume that flat fish being in actual contact
with the bottom would react and be aware of the approach of anything
like a footrope. And only the continuous progress of the net ensures
that the fish are captured. Recent research on the swimming speeds of
fish shows that they soon get tired, hence the success of the trawl.
   The lifting reaction is interesting since it seems in a way to be
the last resource. The flat fish does not want to rise. Its instinct
is to hide on the bottom. When disturbed, most flat fish will swim
rapidly away for a short distance and then ground again, turning to
face the disturbance and flirting up the sand or mud as they do so.
Before a trawl they have not time for this; and the flight becomes a
steady swim ahead of the wave until lifting is the only thing left to
do.
   This behaviour will probably be corroborated by future films. If
so, it will be a remarkable vindication of the basic trawl design, for
the earliest beam trawls had what we call cover- that is the headline
running ahead of the ground rope.
   Actually the seine net has little or no cover. And in this film
the rise of the fish was small, a matter of a foot or two. With round
fish like haddock, which would hardly find safety on the bottom, this
cover would seem to be even more essential; but more films are needed
to prove this.
   Cover in the fast-moving trawl is considered essential to catch
round fish whose reaction to disturbance would be upwards. In seine
nets it might be less important. The fish before the net have been
gathered more slowly: the reaction of bottom feeding haddocks while
being chevied inwards by the slowly closing arms of rope would be to
swim away from the disturbance and then downwards again to resume
feeding. If they swam upwards for any distance they would get above
the disturbance and escape.
   It may well be that the efficiency of seineing <SIC> on
haddocks depends a lot on what the fish happen to be doing. When
working the Cleaver Bank years ago we used to get good hauls, 12 to 15
baskets at opening and close of day, and nothing, except a basket or
two of whiting, during the high day. This might be explained by a
change in behaviour of the fish; or even indirectly of the feed
animals on the bottom.
   The point is, however, that once round fish are persuaded into
the path of the seine net they would probably be less disturbed than
they would be by the faster-moving trawl. Whether or not they would
be moving slowly before the seine net like the flats, we do not know.
But the fact that they are caught proves that they do not lift above
the headline.
   It may be that some of them do, though. And this would explain
why the Vinge trawls are now being found more efficient than seine
nets when used with seine ropes.
   On this subject of cover, my father could remember 4 baskets of
haddock in beam trawl hauls at Smith's Knoll. This suggests that
cover might be more important than speed. But we should realise that
a smack with a strong wind and tide could move a trawl fast over the
ground.
   If we take note of the action and results of seineing <SIC>
gear, it becomes fairly obvious that the creeping ropes can have very
little bow-wave effect. If they moved fast enough to produce a
continuous swim the fish would eventually lift and be lost; but the
slow heaving taught us by the Danes, like the dogs careful driving of
the sheep, drives the flat fish without scaring them. As it seems to
be the rule to heave fast, as well as to tow, for round fish we may
expect the cameras to show a different reaction on the part of these:
being rather more active than flats one would expect them to avoid a
slow-moving trawl more easily.
   The more we think about trawling and seineing <SIC> the more
we realise how different they are. The seine net can be likened to a
dustpan, with brushes- the ropes- sweeping things into its path, and
if the fish are swept too vigorously they will rise, like the dust,
and be lost. The trawl, however, is more like the dustpan without a
brush and has to move a bit faster.
   We can assume that the bow wave will become greater as the speed
of the gear increases. In the case of herring trawling great emphasis
is placed on the need for fast towing. The Germans, who are the
recognised experts at this, have been using bigger and bigger ships
towing at over 4 knots. Their main difficulty seems to be to get
netting that will stand the weight of the great catches.
   But if there is anything in the Bow Wave theory there must be
something more than just speed to consider. Herring are more lively
than the white fish, which we have seen react to the bow wave of trawl
footropes. And the herring can probably swim faster, for short
periods anyway, than the trawl moves. If the herring react to the
disturbance ahead of the trawl like other fish, then increased speed
alone is not the answer. You cannot catch a bow wave.
   I remember "seeing" the bow wave of herring from a trawl on
the Fladen Ground over twenty years ago.
   Herring Trawling. One calm summer day in 1937 we lay waiting
to shoot our drift nets. That morning the drifters had hauled good
shots and gone to market, leaving us alone on the ground. Yet our
systematic echo-sounding over the area had yielded no fish traces. At
about midday an Aberdeen trawler came towing along, and passed us some
hundred yards off. I pictured her trawl trundling over the bottom;
and I thought of the herring we could not find though knowing they
were present.
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PRAYING MANTIS
By B. G. FURNER
A TRIAL IN KENT AS A FORM OF BIOLOGICAL PEST CONTROL
   WE have not yet reached the stage in Britain when 5 planes
are engaged in spreading 1,5 tons of DDT and fuel oil over
3 million acres or when 2 million acres are sprayed with dieldrin.
An eye-witness described one sprayed area as literally rank with the
stench of small game and birds dead from insecticide poisoning.
   Wholesale chemical spraying, upsetting as it does the balance of
nature by killing both pests and predators, is viewed with concern by
a number of American State Research Stations. Not content with
issuing bulletins on the dangers of the misuse of chemicals in
agriculture, some stations are carrying out useful research on pest
control by biological means. Both native and imported predatory
insects and insect pathogens are used in field trial tests.
   The biological control of pests in the garden is not new to the
American gardener. Ladybirds figure in press advertisements, their
sale being by the gallon. Praying mantis (Mantis religiosa),
both native and "immigrant" varieties, are used by gardeners in all
parts of the United States. Advertisements offer eggs of European,
Chinese or native forms of mantis.
   From the day it hatches in the spring until it dies in the late
autumn, the praying mantis satisfies its voracity by eating other
insects. Nine blowflies may be consumed at one sitting and the fully
adult, 2 1/2-in.-long insect, is able to keep a firm hold on one
grasshopper while eating another. According to Dr. Max Beier in
"Fangheuschrecken" (Die Neue Brehm Bu"ckerei, 1952), the
praying mantis is trecking northwards. The northward journey of the
mediterranean mantis brought the insect to Frankfurt on Main by the
middle of the 18th century. From Frankfurt this useful insect has
spread eastwards to Brno in Czechoslovakia and westwards as far as
Fontainebleau. In North America the northward drive has brought the
mantis to Ontario.
   There is, therefore, the possibility that within 1 years the
praying mantis may be a part of the Kentish fauna. With this in mind,
I started my trials with praying mantis in Kent last spring. The 196
summer was not suitable for the start of a trial with mantis, but I
did not know that when I tied the egg-cases to my peach trees in early
May. The young mantis started to hatch in batches until mid-June.
Swathed in a tight membrane, from which all the baby mantis do not
escape, the 1/2-in.-long insects look rather like a cross between
an Egyptian mummy and a space pilot.
   After extricating itself from the membrane, the young mantis has
to dry itself. It is at this stage that the helpless insect is in
great danger- especially from ants. I found that neither sticky
bands nor tanglefoot deterred Kentish ants. To study the mantis more
closely, I transferred some from the peach trees to a Kilner jar.
   According to Dr. Max Beier and to American writers, young
mantis feed on plant lice, but I found that my young mantis could not
be tempted by aphis from elder, peach and fat hen. I was able to keep
my mantis alive in the jar by introducing a daily supply of fruit
flies. By July 12, the growing mantis showed a decided preference for
house-flies and blow-flies, but their appetite increased until the few
flies I was able to catch were quite insufficient, so I had to release
the mantis in the garden. I see from my records that the mantis in
the jar at no time showed any interest at all in young grasshoppers,
moths or caterpillars- all of which are claimed to be a part of the
mantis' diet by American writers. Perhaps the mantis has to be at the
adult stage before it will tackle these insects. After the first
moult, the mantis were somewhat lighter in colour- a change from
emerald green to leaf green.
   I need not remind readers of the cool, very wet weather of late
July, August and September, 196. The weather conditions led me to
feel quite certain that no praying mantis could possibly live through
them. But on September 18, to my very great surprise, I came across a
praying mantis on a blackberry leaf. The colour had changed again-
to that of the adult, a yellowish-brown. However, the mantis had not
yet reached its full size, being only 1 1/4 in. in length and still
wingless. The mantis was photographed and then released. Now the
finding of one mantis is, in my opinion, a very hopeful sign. It is
estimated that out of every 1, eggs laid, only six mantis survive
until the autumn. I feel certain that if one of my mantis survived
others also survived among the mass of grape-vines, blackberries and
other fruits and vegetables on my 1/8 acre. But if the one mantis I
found in the autumn were the only survivor, the survival ratio was
high, at around 1 : 1.
   My gravest error was in the choice of the species of praying
mantis with which I started off my trials. The egg-cases, which my
good friend, Mr. J. O. Moncrieff, export manager of the
well-known American seed firm, W. Atlee Burpee and Co., kindly
sent me were of the Arizona species, Stagmomantis limbata,
Hahn, accustomed to dry summer temperatures reaching 12@F. in
the shade.
   It is at present too early to report on my continued trials with
this useful predator. A British zoologist and entomologist suggested
that I try Spanish mantis this season. My colleague in Madrid, Dr.
D. Fernando Quintana, had great difficulty in obtaining an egg-case,
but one was finally secured through the kindness of Sr. D. Antonio
Beni?2tez Morera of Cadiz. The first batch of around 5 mantis
hatched from this egg-case on June 2.
   Meanwhile Mr. Moncrieff had sent me an egg-case of the Chinese
mantis. The first mantis had hatched from the very large egg-case on
June 6. Both the Chinese and Spanish mantis, in the young stage at
any rate, are light brown in colour.
   Because of the cool, wet weather, I had great difficulty in
breeding fruit flies and, after many of the mantis of both types had
died in my Kilner jars, I poured living mantis over vines and
peachtrees. A Gardeners Chronicle reader living in Grantham,
Lincs, kindly offered to cooperate with me in studying praying
mantis as a pest control in the cold greenhouse. Of the dozen Spanish
mantis sent him by post on June 22, only two or three survived the
journey; one thrived and the latest report I have is that this mantis
is still alive.
   Since June I have not seen a mantis in my garden and I would
dearly like to know how J. Henri Fabre persuaded local children at
Se?2rignan to find his specimens. Local boys here in Kent, possibly
distracted by my crop of grapes and blackberries, show no interest in
searching for praying mantis to earn 5s. for each mantis found-
dead or alive.
A CHOICE OF POTS
By JOHN T. WARREN, N.D.H.
   DESPITE the steady influx of substitutes since the end of
the war, clay pots are still in greatest demand. It is mostly in the
smaller sizes that the substitutes have made headway, and although
numerous small clay pots are used each year, they are fewer than they
were 1 years ago. In the larger sizes there is still no real
substitute for clay that can be obtained at a comparable price, except
the bituminized paper pots which are used on commercial nurseries for
growing tomatoes and chrysanthemums.
   The main disadvantage of the clay pot is its brittle nature; even
with reasonably careful handling, the annual losses are often around
1 per cent., and where the handling and storage facilities are not
too good, these losses will be even greater. This does not
necessarily apply to the larger sizes, as they are not quite so
fragile as the smaller ones and are not normally thrown about in quite
the same way. The storage problem puts clay pots at a definite
disadvantage. They are fairly heavy and difficult things to
accommodate and they must have some protection from severe weather,
which can be quite a headache in a small garden. While admitting that
broken pots have on occasions provided artists with delightful
studies, there is no doubt that a pile of badly stacked, half-broken
pots is an unlovely sight from any point of view. Every garden boy
will agree that having to wash clay pots is a definite factor in
favour of their abolition; in fact one young man was so wholehearted
about this a few years ago that he made the headlines for having
smashed a large number to relieve his feelings. On the
small-to-medium establishment, it is a disagreeable chore which nobody
tackles with any enthusiasm, whereas on larger establishments the pots
can be sterilized or washed by machine. It is not easy to make an
economic comparison between clay pots and the various substitutes; the
former may last indefinitely with luck, while the latter are often
expendable used only once.
   Clay pots are efficient and congenial containers in which to grow
plants. In their proper setting they are not unattractive and, in
spite of their shortcomings, most gardeners have a nostalgic affection
for them. Present-day pots are better finished, do not get dirty so
readily and are easier to wash. The deep rims make for neater and
safer stacking, though they are still expensive and still get broken.
On the other hand, there is really no replacement for the larger
sizes, so they have the decided advantage of being the only suitable
container available in quantity for fairly large plants.
   Soil blocks are probably the oldest alternative to clay pots for
plant raising. These are compressed blocks of compost, made in a
specially devised press to simulate roughly the shape and size of a
pot. Usually cylindrical or hexagonal in shape, they are made of the
same compost as would have been used in a pot, the only difference
being that it is used in a slightly moister condition. Seed is sown,
or seedlings are pricked out into them in the normal way, the only
real difference being that more of the watering is done through a rose
to avoid breaking the blocks with a spout of water. First-class
plants of tomatoes, cucumbers, marrows, melons, cauliflowers, celery
and onions, may all be raised in soil blocks; so can such flowering
plants as dahlias, chrysanthemums, salvias, sweet peas, lupins and
numerous others. One big advantage of soil blocks is an obvious one:
the cost of a pot of any description is saved completely.
Manufacturing the block and planting it is very little more trouble
than normal potting, and a superior plant, which transplants more
easily, is produced. The obvious limitation is that soil blocks can
only be used for propagating; there can be no progression to a larger
block when the plant or seedling is ready to be moved; it must be
planted out or potted. Many amateur gardeners might improve their
results by buying a small hand-operated soil block maker and use the
money saved on buying small pots to improve their composts.
   The various types of small paper pots are very useful for
short-term operations, but are inclined to collapse if the plants are
in them too long. They are quite useful for plants that are
despatched to market or direct to customers, their cheapness making
them attractive to the nurseryman; there is also considerable saving
in carriage costs because of their lightness.
   There are many types of plastic pots available; some expensive,
some quite cheap; some good and others not so good. A wide range of
plants grow quite well in plastic pots and usually need less water
than those in clay pots. They are slightly more difficult to manage,
however, until a little experience has been gained with them. Plastic
pots are usually more expensive than clay ones, but they are almost
indestructible and will last a long time with normal care.
# 221
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WHEN GREENHOUSE PLANTS GO TO REST
S. Clapham
   DURING the winter the summer-flowering greenhouse perennials
are of course at rest, but this does not mean that they need no
attention at all. Many of them, in fact, can come to grief more
readily at this time than in the summer, and with all of them a
certain amount of care is necessary if they are to be not only alive
in spring but in the best possible condition for re-starting into
growth.
   Perhaps the ones which are most liable to be neglected are those
which die down completely, such as gloxinias, achimenes and tuberous
begonias. Those are often left in their pots and laid on their sides
beneath the staging where they are very much "out of sight, out of
mind," and where any damage caused by slugs, wood-lice or mice is
thus not readily noticed. It pays, therefore, to give these plants an
occasional examination, and if any traces of these pests are seen, to
put down some traps or bait straight away.
   With these quite dormant plants the temperature should be
watched, too, for with gloxinias and achimenes particularly this
should go no lower than 5@, and if it does the plants should be put
somewhere warmer immediately. Begonia tubers, on the other hand, do
not mind a slightly lower temperature than this, and with these the
main danger is excessive dryness, which leads to shrivelling. If this
occurs an occasional damping-over of the tubers will soon put matters
right, but this should not be overdone and if there is any drip from
the staging it is usually best to keep all these stored plants covered
with, say, a piece of corrugated iron or asbestos sheeting.
Keep Hydrangea Buds Plump
   The hydrangea is another plant which is usually stored in an
out-of-the-way place, and here again excessive dryness can cause
trouble if the plants are neglected. It is a mistake to think that
hydrangeas need no water at all during the winter months- those
growing outside are kept moist enough!- and as long as they are kept
cool enough to prevent premature growth it is quite safe to give them
just sufficient to keep the green bud at the tip of each stem nice and
plump. These buds, by the way, should contain the dormant
flower-shoot for next year, and if they become affected by mildew,
which can easily happen if the roots are kept too dry, the plants will
obviously not flower as they should, if indeed they flower at all.
And as an additional safeguard against mildew it is advisable to dust
the buds with flowers of sulphur.
   With pot-grown fuchsias almost complete dryness during the
resting season does not seem to matter, but this season is normally a
comparatively short one, and in a heated house it should be safe
enough to start watering immediately after Christmas. Even in a cold
house a little watering at this time will do no harm as fuchsias are
very nearly hardy, and this can, of course, be increased as the
weather warms up.
   Heliotropes, however, are a very different matter, and unless the
greenhouse can be kept well above freezing point it is almost
impossible to keep them through the winter. In a reasonably warm
house, though, they should not be difficult to keep if they are placed
in the warmest position possible and kept moist, or on the dry side if
anything. Rooted cuttings of heliotropes are usually much easier to
keep than old plants, but here again water should be given very
sparingly and the plants placed where they will get light and warmth.
Protect from Cold Weather
   Zonal pelargoniums, fortunately, are much less touchy, and even
in a cold house they will often survive if kept very dry and given a
little extra protection in really cold weather- a few sheets of
newspaper laid over them will often save the roots if not the tops.
In a heated house, however, more water is advisable, as if the plants
are kept too dry, they tend to become so hard that the stems are slow
to "break" in spring. But too much water at this time will produce
soft, long growths that are no use for anything, and the best method
is to give the plants just enough to enable them to hold their own
without making too much growth. Afterwards they should romp away in
spring.
THIS WEEK IN YOUR GARDEN
By Percy Thrower, M.D.H.
FLOWERS
   WE are now at the beginning of the planting season for
trees, shrubs and roses. I like to get as much as possible of this
planting done in November while the temperature of the soil is still
fairly high, for this gives the roots a reasonable chance to get
themselves established before bad weather sets in.
   No doubt many readers with new gardens will be considering the
planting of hedges. Privet is usually the first shrub that comes to
mind but I would not recommend it despite the fact that it is quick in
growth, hardy and, in most districts, evergreen. Personally I would
prefer beech which retains its beautiful golden-brown leaves in the
winter or, in country districts, the hawthorn makes a fine hedge. But
Cupressus lawsoniana and Thuja plicata make fine hedges,
particularly where a screen of fair size is required. For small
dividing hedges within the garden flowering shrubs such as escallonia,
forsythia, cotoneaster or strong growing floribunda roses can be
delightful.
   The preparation for the planting of trees, shrubs and roses
should always be thorough because these are permanent plants which
cannot be disturbed once they are in. The site should be deeply dug
with manure, garden compost or peat being worked into the soil. At
the same time some bone meal can be sprinkled through the soil as it
will assist in the formation of a good root system.
   If some of the herbaceous plants are to be lifted, divided and
replanted, this work must either be done very soon or left over until
February or March. It is not, in general, wise to move herbaceous
plants in the middle of the winter.
   Some shrubs are a little tender and need a certain amount of
protection in exposed areas. This is true of some veronicas and also
of the larger flowered escallonias. In northern and eastern districts
the large flowered hydrangeas are also safer with some protection. I
do not recommend covering such tender shrubs completely with polythene
but polythene can be wrapped around them, the top being left open.
Better, however, in my view is protection with dry bracken or
sacking, either of which can be held in place with canes and string.
   Very good lawns can be made quickly from turf provided the turf
itself is reasonably clean and free of weeds. This is a good time of
year at which to lay turf.
VEGETABLES
   No doubt there will be many readers with new gardens who just
now are thinking of making a vegetable garden for the first time. The
first essential is to fork out all perennial weeds, i.e. weeds
such as docks, dandelions, creeping buttercups, couch grass and
bindweed which persist from year to year.
   All ground should then be dug at least to the full depth of a
spade and left rough during the winter so that frost, wind and rain
may break it up. Most vegetables like a firm soil and if digging is
left until the spring, it is often difficult to get the soil firm
enough for the best results. New land turned over now should be in
ideal condition for vegetables for next year.
   It is particularly important to dig heavy land in autumn because
there is nothing better than frost and wind to break down the lumps of
clay. Just leave the clods as they are turned over, making no attempt
to break them up, and then scatter basic slag over the surface at 4 to
6 oz. per sq. yd. or give a similar dressing of hydrated lime.
   Clear away the yellow leaves from around the lower parts of
brussels sprout plants and put these on the compost heap. Take care
not to damage any healthy leaves as these are feeding the plants still
and helping the sprouts to form.
   It is not too late to make a further sowing of lettuce in a
frame. Seedlings from earlier sowings should be examined from time to
time and any decaying leaves removed.
FRUIT
   For fruit also this is the ideal planting season and work can
continue at any time when the soil is in reasonable condition until
the end of March. Nevertheless I think autumn planting has much to
commend it because the trees, bushes or canes get a longer period in
which to establish themselves before commencing to grow in spring.
   Fruit trees should always be purchased from a really reliable
source because many of them need to be on the right kind of root stock
and some are very liable to become infected with virus disease unless
they are properly inspected.
   In most gardens there is some wall or fence on which a fruit tree
can be trained and a very pleasant and profitable method this is of
making good use of such a position. For a north wall I recommend a
Morello cherry, for an east wall a plum or greengage and for a south
or west-facing wall, a peach, nectarine or apricot.
Work in the Greenhouse
   At the moment the greenhouse is getting very congested with
chrysanthemums, cinerarias, primulas, cyclamen, solanums, echeverias
and on the shelves schizanthus, calceolarias and cuttings of the
various bedding plants. It becomes quite a problem to know how to
keep everything in good condition and it is more important than ever
to use the ventilators as much as possible whenever outdoor conditions
are favourable. What is essential is to maintain a free circulation
of air around the plants and to keep the atmosphere reasonably dry.
   Schizanthus and calceolarias need very careful watering at this
time of the year. In particular avoid splashing water unnecessarily
over the leaves and still more do not allow it to collect at the base
of the leaves. As the plants fill their pots with roots move them on
to larger sizes.
   I have a stock of coleus cuttings, four in each 3 1/2in. pot
and all nicely rooted. These I shall now put on a shelf near the
glass and leave them there for the winter. From these stock cuttings
I shall take further cuttings in spring as I find that the
spring-struck cuttings make finer plants than those rooted in autumn.
   Take a look at begonia tubers in store and, if any show the
slightest signs of decay, dust them with flowers of sulphur.
   Bulbs in pots, boxes and bowls which have been kept in a cool
dark place or have been plunged in sand or ashes for at least eight
weeks, can now be brought out and put in a frame, but no artificial
heat should be used yet.
   As fuchsias begin to drop their leaves the supply of water to
them should be reduced until eventually they are kept almost dry
during the winter.
Reliable Battery Operated Garden Tools
Written and illustrated by A. D. Johnson
   WHEN the battery lawnmower was first introduced three years
ago, and I expressed my enthusiasm for it, my friends nodded their
heads sagely and expressed grave doubts about the prospect of having
to renew the battery frequently at a cost of ten pounds odd. But I am
still optimistic, for, after three seasons' use my own battery is
still holding its charge as well as it did when new. It has had no
special attention, but I do adhere rigidly to three maxims- to charge
it immediately after use every time; to keep it topped up with
distilled water; and not to let it become frozen in the winter.
   Those enthusiasts for quiet effortless electric mowing who have
already bought mains-operated machines may feel a little sad at having
to live with their cable, so I was delighted to hear that Webbs are
now willing to undertake conversion of mains machines to battery
operation.
# 242
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STAMPS OF LEBANON'S DOG RIVER
by WILFRID T. F. CASTLE
   3"TAXI! You go Jerusalem? Taxi here, sir!" "Amman?
Yes?" "Taxi Damascus, yes please?" "Taxi Baalbeck. You wanna
go Baalbeck?" "Taxi!" "Taxi!"
   The philatelic traveller landing at Beyrouth or trying to make
his way to the General Post Office to buy some Lebanese stamps, soon
concludes that he has never seen so many ultra-modern luxury cars in
his life or so many drivers willing to take him where he doesn't
happen to be going.
   One persistent taxi follows him through the street, crawling by
the sidewalk, its optimistic driver repeating at intervals 3"Taxi?
You like to go Dog River?" It is the last bid of a Dutch
Auction!
   Why on earth should anyone want to go to the Dog River?
Especially a stamp collector on his way to buy some Lebanese stamps!
   Yet if the stamp collector knows even a few words of Arabic the
invitation to go the twelve kilometres along the northern coastal road
to the Dog River will ring a bell. Dog River- Nahr el-Kelb!
Why, that's one of the best known stamp scenes in the Eastern
Mediterranean!
   A picture flashes to mind: a graceful old three-arched bridge, a
river flowing through a rocky valley to the sea. How many Lebanese
stamps have pictured this typical view? "Oh, very well then, take me
to the Dog River, please..."
   "Jump in, sir!"
   So off we go with the sea on the left and the tumbled mass of
Mount Lebanon with its hundreds of valleys and villages on the right-
off to see a well-known stamp scene with a fascinating story- a scene
straight out of the current Gibbons Part =3 but a story that goes
back some two thousand years B.C.
   First of all, a look at the design illustrated in the catalogue.
The first stamp to show the Nahr el-Kelb and its bridge was the
p.5 postage due label of 1925, as the scene was not chosen for the
first set of definitive pictorials issued in that year. S.G.D.11
was a photogravure job by Vaugirard of Paris on yellow tinted paper
and in common with all the early pictorials printed by Vaugirard was
designed by J. de la Nezie?2re.
   The first definitive postage stamp with this view was the 4
piastre value of the 193 pictorial series (S.G.171) which
Gibbons illustrate as "Type 16." The designer and printer are the
same, and in common with nearly all Lebanese stamps the caption below
the frame gives designer, printer and subject. This is another
photogravure- or as this printer calls it "heliogravure"- job.
   During the Second World War, however, the Lebanon, then a
Republic somewhat unwillingly under French Mandate, was cut off from
communication with the Vaugirard printers in Paris and a serious start
was made in printing "do-it-yourself" offset lithographed stamps in
Beyrouth. (As early as 193 six Silk Congress commemoratives had been
typographed locally.) Under war conditions the last stamp to arrive
from Paris was a solitary 5 piastre value printed in recess, and this
was in the Nahr el-Kelb design- Gibbons called it "Type 16" as
the design is similar to the photogravure stamp but the format is
larger and it is in a rather bold style of recess painting. The
colour is green-blue.
   Alone of all the 193 pictorials the Nahr el-Kelb was
perpetuated in this way, and had history turned out differently others
of the series might have followed with new values and colours and in
recess engraving. But France fell and the French mandatory
authorities in the Lebanon found themselves out in the cold. British
and Free French forces entered the Lebanon and there was fighting and
confusion until the signing of the Convention of Acre on July 14th,
1941.
   There was by then no possibility of any more recess printed
stamps coming from France. Indeed the French Mandate itself was
doomed. With British backing and local enthusiasm the Lebanese
Republic became an independent sovereign state on November 27th, 1941.
   As a stamp subject the Nahr el-Kelb survived the great
political change.
   First came wartime stop-gap overprints. Among them the recess
printed 5 piastre value received overprints altering the duty to 2 or
3 piastres (S.G.261 and 262). Miniature cedar trees are used to
block out the original value.
   It was not until 1947 that the Nahr el-Kelb scene again
appeared on stamps. In that year four airmail stamps in offset
lithography were printed in Beyrouth to commemorate the evacuation of
all foreign forces from the Republic (S.G.334-337). The centre
of this design- Gibbons "Type 48"- shows the familiar bridge and
river and on the right hand side of the design appears one of the
inscribed rock tablets that are the unique feature of this scene.
Presumably this tablet in Arabic commemorates the same event as does
the stamp, and dates from 1947.
   The attractive bridge which forms the central feature in all
these stamp designs was built in its present form by the Emir Bechir
Chehab during the years 1828-29. So says an inscription on a stone
tablet on the bridge itself. Another inscription chiselled in the
rock at the south end of the bridge states that a bridge was built
here by Sultan Selim =1, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror of Lebanon,
Syria, Palestine and Egypt who added these lands to his Empire in
1516-17.
   But it is known that a Circassian Sultan of Egypt and Syria
called Bargoug or Berkuk, who ruled from Cairo during the years
1382-99, built a bridge here on the eve of the terrible Mongol
invasions. Probably Saracens, Crusaders, Byzantines and Romans built
or repaired bridges at this spot.
   Modern road and railway bridges take the lines of communication
of to-day between Beyrouth and the north past the place where the
mountain comes right down to the sea shore and the Dog River or Nahr
el-Kelb has to be crossed.
   There is little width for the road, especially between the
headland of Ras el-Kelb (which terminates the southern bank of the
river) and the sea. In olden times the road was a narrow track
clinging to the rocky face of the headland before descending to the
earliest of the bridges that have carried it across the river. Later
a Roman road took a more favourable route at a lower level.
Constructed by order of the Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antonius about
A.D. 173 it was reconstructed in Byzantine times.
   All through history people have been passing this spot and the
rock face by the roadside offered the opportunity for conquerors down
the ages to engrave records of their passage. They have inscribed
panels up to ten feet in height in Arabic, English, French, Greek,
Latin, Cuneiform, Assyrian and Hieroglyphic Egyptian witnessing to the
deeds of such diverse heroes as Rameses =2, Esarhaddon,
Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon =3, General Allenby and United Kingdom,
Australian, New Zealand and Indian troops. Our stamps show but one
page of the world's most gigantic visitors' book!
   Before looking at the rest of the Dog River stamps we must now
answer the question of why this river is so called.
Egyptian God
   The most up-to-date explanation is that the river was once
connected with the Egyptian cult of the god Anubis, represented as a
jackal or wolf, sometimes as a human figure with a jackal's or dog's
head. Popularly he was looked upon as the Dog God who showed the way
to the land of the dead and is supposed to have come to Lebanon with
the cult of Isis and Osiris. In this cult Isis, searching for her
dead lover, was guided by the dog Anubis, who became her guide and
companion.
   Be that as it may, at some early period an enormous statue of a
dog or similar animal was erected on the headland of Ras el-Kelb
(Dog Head) above the road and it is believed that this statue was
vocal. The wind made it howl or bark. The sound was so strong that
legend insists that the animal "awoke the echoes of far-distant
Cyprus with his bark." It must have been a strange experience on a
stormy night to hear the sound coming over the water, even if the
range was less than 125 miles!
   The Greeks called the river LYKOS POTAMUS and the Romans
LYCUS FLUMEN- both alike meaning "Wolf River." Thus the
Egyptian dog- or was he a jackal?- became a wolf, and the wolf an
Arab dog.
   Before exploring upstream to look at some other stamp scenes we
must examine the later stamps showing the old bridge. These lack the
elaborate arabesque frames of earlier types; the bridge is more
prominent and fills the scene, and despite the Druze, the Circassian
and the Turk whose names are associated with its construction, the
caption is "Pont Arabe sur Nahr el-Kelb." Perhaps this is to
honour the men who probably did the actual work of building!
   The issue of 195 has five stamps designated by Gibbons as "Type
66," designed by P. Koroleff and printed in offset lithography by
the Imprimerir <SIC> Catholique at Beyrouth
(S.G.411-415). At first glance these stamps appear to be in
photogravure and they certainly reproduce the characteristics of an
original photograph, not a line drawing.
   The offset lithographed issue of 1951 (S.G.433-437)
consists, on the other hand, of stamps designed by Mr. Koroleff as
line drawings- Gibbons "Type 74." At least two very distinct
shades should be looked for: the 12p.5 value comes in both bright
and dull turquoise and the 5 piastre in both light and dark green.
   In 1957 the same design reappeared in new colours and with the
inscription "Re?2publique Libanaise" replaced by simply
"Liban." These stamps formed a short set of three values
(S.G.561-563).
   We have lingered long enough by the bridge. Away we go, now
upstream where "the bright little river dashes along through a glen
which opens the very heart of the mountain" to see the Jeita
Grottos, subject of the five vertical pictorials of the March 1955
definitives. (Two full sets of definitive pictorials every year could
easily kill all philatelic interest in Lebanon!) These are
S.G.514-518.
   Three huge caves take the name of Jeita Grottos from the nearby
village of Jeita, variously spelt Gita or Ghita. Out of the first
cave rushes a large part of the river; the second penetrates under the
mountain and then descends into an abyss with parallel and branching
passages, one of which gives access to the lowest cave. The third and
largest cavern has a gallery or corridor and again we meet the river
as it descends, crossing the cave and disappearing at the north-west
corner with a thundering roar.
   Above the caves the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb are formed of
shattered cliffs of grey limestone nearly 2, feet high. Various
tributaries come in, a waterfall roars over a rocky ledge, and then we
reach a point where the river is spanned by a gigantic natural bridge,
one of the geological wonders of the world.
Natural Bridge
   The natural bridge is the Jisr el-Hajr or Jisr Hajar
(Stone Bridge) and as it is a little to the south of the last village
on a road which leads up from Djounie on the coast, the village of
Fareiya or Faraya, it is described on the two stamps which depict it
as "Pont Naturel, Faraya." These are the two lowest values of
the Red Cross airmail stamps of 1947 (S.G.338-339). The stamps
hardly convey a true impression of this massive bridge, but though
handicapped by being in offset lithography the set as a whole is among
the more highly priced of Lebanese stamps, the thematic appeal being
two-fold.
   The Jisr Hajar of Faraya is an elliptical arch of hard stone,
slightly oblique but with regular abutments.
   Above the bridge the southern arm of the stream can be followed
to its source at the Neba el-Lebn or Milk Fountain. Another arm
to the north-east rises at the Neba el-Asul or Honey Fountain.
   Hereabouts the country is wild and bare.
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WINDMILLS
Collectors' pieces... for the keen amateur
By JEFFERY W. WHITELAW
   WINDMILLS, quaint and picturesque survivals from the past,
have always been of great interest to the photographer.
Unfortunately, however, in this modern age very few of these
reminders of man's early attempts at mechanization on a fairly large
scale are still working and in too many cases they have been allowed
to fall into disrepair- often with nothing but a brick stump
remaining. On the other hand, and to the benefit of the country-lover
and photographers alike, enlightened authorities, the Ministry of
Works, the National Trust and even private individuals have made great
efforts to preserve some of these mills before it is too late. Most
of the windmills which appear to be complete are more than likely to
have been restored and it is these which make magnificent photographs.
A windmill in good repair with its bare sweeps against a suitable sky
can make a most attractive subject- it may even produce an exhibition
picture- and I have been adding to my collection for some years now.
   It will be useful at this point to give a brief history of the
windmill for those who may be new to this subject. The three basic
types of windmill are the Post Mill, the Tower Mill and the
Smock Mill, and these can be described without the variations in
design which are to be found in different parts of the country- some
of these variations will be seen from the accompanying photographs.
   The oldest and most primitive type is the post mill which became
known by this name because, in order that the mill should obtain the
maximum power from the wind, the whole body was pivoted on a centre
post supported by heavy timber beams in the form of a tripod. A long
beam projected from the back of the mill and the miller had to push on
this to bring the sweeps round to face the wind. A good example of an
early post mill is to be seen at Bourn, in Cambridgeshire, and as the
records can be traced back to 1636 it is now the oldest surviving
windmill in the country, with the Cambridge Preservation Society
making sure that it stays in good repair. Although the sweeps and
tailbeam are modern replacements, the remainder is the original
structure and of great interest. A key can be obtained at the
farmhouse and there is complete freedom to go all over the mill with
the possibility of photographs from every angle, both inside and out.
   It began to be realized that it was a great waste of labour and
effort to have to turn the whole mill whenever the wind changed and by
the end of the 17th century, tower mills were being built. These were
solid buildings either of brick or clunch to house the machinery with
revolving caps to which the sails were attached. The earliest caps
had still to be turned by hand, but what has become known as the
"fantail" was invented in the 18th century, thus removing the need
for the miller to be constantly on the alert for a change in the wind.
Into the Eye of the Wind
   The fantail consists of what is more or less a small windmill
set at right-angles to the main sails, and when these are facing
squarely into the wind the fantail does not move. As soon as the wind
changes, it causes the fantail to start revolving and, working through
a series of gears, the cap turns, so bringing the sails back into the
"eye of the wind." A number of post mills had the fantail added
later and this undoubtedly saved many from demolition after the
labour-saving tower mills were invented; a particularly fine example
recently restored by the Ministry of Works can be seen at Saxtead
Green, near Framlingham in Suffolk.
   The third type of mill is in reality only a variant of the tower
mill and known as the smock mill because of its fancied resemblance to
an old farmer wearing a smock. The smock mill has a tapering
timber-framed tower (usually octagonal) often on a brick base, and the
frames are covered with boards.
   When considering windmills from the photographic viewpoint, it
will soon become apparent that they are not the easiest of subjects,
and that if something more than "just another record" is to be made
of each mill as it is discovered, then quite a little thought must be
devoted to the problems which may arise. To obtain a really
first-class result I consider it is essential to have a bright sunny
day with blue sky and good strong cumulus clouds- windmills usually
look their best against this cotton-wool type of sky.
Take it Now!
   Unfortunately, these ideal conditions rarely occur at just the
right time, and here I will give a word of advice, which would not be
necessary with most other types of subjects. By all means plan to
come back another day for another attempt if the weather should not be
all that you hoped for, but do take a picture whatever the
weather- when you come again it is possible that fire or a storm may
have destroyed the mill overnight. Recently in the National Press
there was a sad picture of the wreckage of the smock mill on Outwood
Common, near Redhill, after it had collapsed one night at the end of
196, to prove that this is a very real hazard. It is quite likely
that the mill will still be standing or even have been restored on
another visit, but if not, then the picture taken on a dull day will
not have been wasted because it was the last one taken before the mill
met its end.
   Given ideal weather conditions one must decide what is the most
favourable viewpoint- whether to take the mill straight on to the
sails or from the side, whether just to take the mill on its own in a
vertical format or to include it as part of the landscape as a
horizontal. All these minor problems must be worked out as each mill
is photographed. A side view is usually more pleasing, but it may be
that a frontal view will be more effective in certain circumstances-
sometimes the surroundings are very uninteresting, especially if the
mill is hemmed in by farm buildings, and because of this a frontal
view gives the best picture. Take a good walk all around the mill if
this is possible: you should be able to make several exposures from
different directions and some quite dramatic effects may be obtained.
If, of course, the farm buildings are in harmony with the mill, then
a very pleasant landscape may result with the mill as the central
feature, and, in fact, the inclusion of the mill may add just what is
needed to an otherwise uninteresting view.
   Although I have expressed a preference for bright sunny days,
quite a different type of picture may, of course, be obtained when
photographing windmills in the early morning or silhouetted against a
sunset in the evening. Contre-jour shots will also be possible,
in many cases to good effect. You may be fortunate in having all the
sunshine you want but with not a cloud in sight: the careful use of
the correct filter will then be necessary to create the right
atmosphere in the final picture- perhaps a little shading-in will be
required in enlarging.
   I hope that I have been able to convince you that photographing
windmills is both rewarding and fascinating, and as I have pointed out
already, opportunities for doing so are becoming less and less
frequent. Start now on a similar collection and not only will it be
of value for record purposes but your skill as a photographer will be
tested to the full in obtaining really first-class results.
   One final word- no special equipment is needed for taking
windmill pictures. All the accompanying illustrations were taken on
one or other of my two Ensign 32 folding cameras, both being fitted
with the superb Ross Xpres lens- cameras which are now obsolete but
which can, however, be bought second-hand for about +1 or +12 these
days.
Experiment more with figure possibilities
By RICARDO
   "WHY don't you tell your beginners how lucky they are?-
to have cameras which do all their drawing for them." This was from
a figure artist friend of mine who sees these prints now and then. He
went on to say that, being able to shoot off a dozen or so negatives
by way of practising composition, the photographer today had never had
it so good. By way of comparison, he thinks nothing of roughing out
anything up to a dozen sketches before settling down to the real
thing- a magazine illustration. When I asked him for some tips on
figure work to pass on to my readers, his bland reply was to the
effect that good figure form was good composition and that only by
sticking at it, year in and year out, could one arrive! I should like
to add that helpful criticism all the way along plus the environment
of an enthusiastic society makes it much more of a pleasure.
ON THE BEACH: Mrs. H. Saphier
   I SHOULD imagine that this subject matter looked quite
exciting in colour, with the large stones (colourful greys)
compensating for their prominence by their hues. But in monochrome
these stones dominate far too much and detract from the figure design
and particularly from the motif- stone-throwing. The fundamental
design of the two distant figures repeating the foreground figures is
pleasing, and the low viewpoint was an excellent choice. However, the
two dark big stones in the foreground, badly out of focus, tend to
merge uncomfortably into the dark main figure and so cause a
mirror-splitting of the design down the centre. Because these two
central figures are looking strongly to the right the design also
looks too heavy on the right. A sloping horizon does not help either.
   The second sketch concentrates on the nearer two figures only and
a better figure form is given to the stone-thrower. Although these
youngsters are now placed well over to the left, the design is well
balanced, mainly because of the implied interest in the right, and the
absence of unsightly rocks.
HERE'S HOPING: E. Abrey
   FOR a study of concentration and good timing to get the penny
so well placed for balance, this is good work. The simple tone of the
girl's clothes is pleasing, and the selective focussing is ideal,
throwing the distant trees into an essential diffusion, while the
overhead lighting helps to dramatize and so to emphasize the girl's
sharp concentration. One weakness is the superfluous amount of
foreground, all the more noticeable because of the out-of-focus
numbering, not good in this respect. Another fault concerns the
arrangement of the girl's left arm, which contributes nothing to the
atmosphere, while it could be quite useful. The figures in the rear,
although out of focus, are also mildly disturbing.
   The next sketch suggests possible modifications. The left arm
could be making one of many gestures suggesting excitement, and to
link up with it the girl's mouth could well be expressing "Oooh!"
A more distant viewpoint could have sharpened up the foreground
figures slightly at the same stop, and to further reduce this useful
area without resorting to trimming, the cross shadow of, say, an
onlooker would have broken it up as shown. This shadow would also
help to repeat and to balance the dark trees in the diagonally
opposite corner.
   Is this all too suggestive of play-acting- so possibly losing
that air of reality which is the strong feature of this print? It all
depends, but a little sensible directing now and then can make a big
difference in the appeal of such an idea.
LET ME TRY IT: L. Sharratt
   THE timely shooting of this very boyish trick has secured a
most appealing and amusing atmosphere.
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'Sucu' hit amazes Nina and Frederik
   NINA and Frederik are happily divided! Or at least, that's
the expression which Nina used, when she spoke to me on the phone from
her Birmingham hotel. And if anyone should jump to the conclusion
that this is another marriage on the rocks, let me hasten to correct
them- there isn't a more happily married couple in the whole of show
business.
   No, they are merely happily divided on a matter of personal
opinion. For Nina told me that she actually prefers cabaret work, as
opposed to appearing in large variety theatres- Frederik, on the
other hand, settles for the theatres in preference to the night clubs.
   "So we agree to differ, bearing in mind that we each have our
fair share," chuckled Nina.
   Nina told me that both she and Frederik were thoroughly enjoying
their first full-scale tour of Britain, and that they had been
pleasantly surprised by audience reaction throughout this country and
in Eire.
   "We hadn't previously seen very much of Britain, but now that
we're able to get around to some extent, I can tell you that it has
certainly come up to expectations.
   "And Ireland was a special revelation. I hadn't been to
Dublin before, though Frederik spent a few hours there last year,"
she said.
   Contrary to general belief, most of Nina and Frederik's work on
the Continent is confined to theatres rather than cabaret. And it
frequently happens that they adapt their act to each venue.
   But this hasn't proved necessary in Britain. "We have several
numbers which we regard as cabaret specialities," said Nina. "Yet
they appear to be so well-known here, that we're able to do them on
stage."
   Having recently returned from Ireland when I spoke to her, Nina
hadn't realised that their recording of "Sucu-Sucu" had climbed
into the hit parade.
   "It's quite amusing how this came about," she explained.
"The song was originally sent to us by a music publisher, and at the
time it had a Spanish lyric. But we liked the melody so much that
Frederik translated it into English and French- we've also recorded
it in French."
   Then one day during their cabaret season at the Savoy Hotel,
they were relaxing for a few minutes in their dressing-room, watching
TV.
   And at the end of the 'Top Secret' adventure yarn which they
had switched on, they suddenly heard the strains of 'Sucu-Sucu"-
complete with Frederik's lyric.
   "We were amazed at the time," Nina continued. "But when we
discovered how popular the series is, we were not surprised when
Laurie Johnson's recording came into the best-sellers. Actually, in
view of this, I'm rather surprised to learn that our version has
become a hit."
   I asked Nina about their subsequent plans, after the current
British tour finishes early in December, and she told me that
initially they will return to the Continent- with the principal
object of searching for new material.
   "And we're hoping to come back to Britain in the spring, with a
collection of new songs," she said.
   DEREK JOHNSON.
MEET THE COMPOSER
Bunny Lewis scrubbed floors before fame came
   A DISTINGUISHED war career counts for very little when
hostilities cease and you don civilian clothes to start looking for a
job. Take the case of composer-agent-promoter Bunny Lewis, for
example.
   During the last war, he served with the famous Black Watch
regiment and Special Air Services, won a Military Cross and was
mentioned in dispatches. His first post-war job?... Scrubbing
floors!
   "It was the only thing I could find. My war career meant
nothing, and I had a terrible time finding work. Finally, I turned to
scrubbing floors to make ends meet. But eventually things got better
and I ended up in the music business," Bunny told me this week.
   Bunny made his first contact with the music business in 1947,
when he was employed as a publicist for impresarios <SIC> Tom
Arnold and Prince Littler at dance halls. A little later, he worked
for the BBC, writing scripts for the "Picture Page" TV
series and then moved on to become professional manager at Francis,
Day and Hunter, the music publishers.
   After a spell with Decca, he launched his own agency in 1955-
and that's when the Bunny Lewis success story really began. The
agency grew to be a powerful concern, and Bunny now handles the
affairs of such stars as Craig Douglas, the Mudlarks, Garry Mills, the
Avons, Al Saxon, Lorrae Desmond, orchestra leader Harry Robinson,
newcomer Doug Sheldon, and top disc jockeys like David Jacobs, Jack
Jackson, Don Moss, Alan Freeman and David Gell.
   He personally records most of his artists' discs, promotes
concert and variety dates and, as a result of appearances on the panel
of BBC-TV's "Juke Box Jury," is also something of a
TV personality himself.
   In addition, it's important to note that Bunny is also one of
Britain's finest and most successful lyricists.
   Remember David Whitfield's million-selling transatlantic hit
"Cara Mia"? Bunny wrote the lyrics. He also wrote the words, too,
for "Girl Of My Best Friend," a big hit in Britain for Elvis
Presley and a best seller in the States for promising newcomer Ral
Donner.
   He also penned the lyrics for such memorable hits as Cliff
Richard's "Voice In The Wilderness" and "Livin' Lovin' Doll,"
Garry Mills' "Top Teen Baby," Frankie Vaughan's "Milord" (which
had special English words), David Whitfield's "Rich Man, Poor Man,"
Max Bygraves' "Little Train," Craig Douglas' "Riddle Of Love"
and the Mudlarks' "The Love Game."
   Vera Lynn has enjoyed success with many of Bunny's songs, among
them "Forget Me Not," "The Homecoming Waltz," "The Love Of My
Life," "The Windsor Waltz" and "Try Again," which was waxed in
the States by Dean Martin. Orchestra leader Mantovani had a big
seller with his instrumental "Luxembourg Polka," which also hit the
highspots in the U.S.
   Apart from "Riddle Of Love," Craig Douglas has waxed such
Lewis songs as "The Girl Next Door," "My First Love Affair,"
"My Hour Of Love" and his latest release "No Greater Love,"
written in collaboration with Michael Carr. Dickie Valentine did well
with Bunny's "Lazy Gondolier," while Al Saxon just missed the
charts with his "Blue Eyed Boy," which is covered on two new
Stateside discs this week.
   Bunny also contributed songs to the Cliff Richard Film
"Expresso Bongo" and for the savage, underworld movie "The
Frightened City."
   He worked with Norrie Paramour to produce two songs, "I
Laughed At Love" and "The Marvellous Lie" (which has been waxed
by Helen Shapiro).
   More songs by London-born Bunny- who is married to French singer
Janique Joelle, formerly a principal star with the famous "Folies
Bergere" and has a six-year-old daughter, Fabienne- will be heard
in such future films as "A Change Of Heart" (which stars Janette
Scott), "The Painted Smile" (in which Craig Douglas appears), and
the much-publicised "It's Trad, Dad."
   KEITH GOODWIN
DEREK JOHNSON predicts
SINATRA WILL PUT HIMSELF IN THE BACKGROUND MUCH MORE
   IT seems generally agreed that Frank Sinatra's "Granada"
is one of the most satisfying records he has cut for some time. His
more recent releases on Capitol, both singles and albums, have all
generated a feeling of staleness and apathy, which now seems to have
been remedied with Frank's switch to his own label.
   There's little doubt that working for himself has caused
Sinatra to shed his cloak of indifference, and it could well be that
the revitalised Frank will aspire to even greater heights under these
new circumstances.
   But just how long can Frank remain as a top recording star,
having now long passed the stage of being a teenage idol? Will he
continue more or less indefinitely, as Bing appears to be doing? Or
what's more to the point, does he want to continue singing?
   It is increasingly apparent that he is devoting considerably more
time these days to filming activities, involving straight acting
roles. And earlier this year, he signed a 15-million dollar contract,
which will keep him busy either producing or starring in movies for
the next seven years. But as the "Reprise" label is his latest
investment, it's obvious that he will devote a great deal of interest
to this project- though not necessarily with the object of showcasing
himself as an artist.
   Speaking of his future plans recently, Sinatra said: "One
idea I have for the future is to develop more things that don't
involve me personally and my talent.
   "I'd like to be able to function more in other departments
than I have been able to do in the past. With this new film deal, I
want to try and find properties that don't concern me directly. Same
thing with my record company- I want to spend more time looking for
new talent, soloists, song writers, young guys."
   In one of the rare interviews which Sinatra granted a couple of
years back, he intimated that- after more than 2 years in the
business- he would still rather sing than do anything else. But no
doubt his 45 years are now catching up with him, particularly bearing
in mind the tremendous pace at which he lives, and he sees himself
today as a sort of patriarch of youth.
Absorbing
   I have just been reading one of the most absorbing show-biz
books to come my way for many months- a no-punches-pulled character
study of "Sinatra And His Rat Pack" by the American writer, Richard
Gehman.
   It's a paper-back, selling at 3s. 6d. and published by
Mayflower- and for a remarkably revealing close-up of this
controversial entertainer and his friends, I strongly commend it to
you.
   The term "Rat Pack" seems to have superseded "Clan" in the
description of Sinatra's followers and friends- and the book devotes
a full chapter to an analysis of each of them, including Humphrey
Bogart who was the original leader of the "Clan."
   So far as Frank is concerned there is a complete biography
contained within the book- and the basic facts are buried in such a
welter of anecdotes it never fails to hold one's attention. No detail
is overlooked- from an assessment of his income (reckoned to be a 2
1/2 million dollars last year) to a survey of his many love affairs-
real and rumoured- which have played such a predominant part in his
stormy career.
   Probably due to his rather squalid surroundings as a child,
Frank is one of the most extravagant spenders in the entertainment
world.
   One of his closest friends is quoted as saying: "Frank
doesn't spend money- he destroys it!" And examples galore are
given to substantiate this point.
   When he was appearing in Miami, he had his favourite Broadway
barber flown down to give him a haircut; when he broke a tooth, he had
a dentist flown thousands of miles to fix it; he has a cuff-link
collection which occupies two drawers; he owns more than 15 suits and
countless shirts- which he will need if the statement that he changes
his shirt six times a day is correct!
   Despite his spendthrift habits, Sinatra is also exceedingly
generous. "Nobody knows all the wonderful things Frank does," says
comedian Joey Bishop, who is a member of the "Rat Pack." But
Richard Gehman's book has unearthed some of the instances- how Frank
paid for Mildred Bailey's funeral, and has subsequently kept her
former husband Red Norvo in regular work; how he helped Bela Lugosi
when he was in hospital, although Frank had never met the actor; how
when Phil Silvers' partner fell ill just before their cabaret debut at
the Copacabana, Sinatra flew to New York to open with him, and how he
gave some of his best lines in a picture to an actor who, he thought,
needed them.
   And there's the fascinating story of the manner in which he aided
the widow of an acquaintance of his- Charles Morrison, owner of
Hollywood's Morcambe night club. Learning that Mrs. Morrison was in
financial trouble, Frank phoned to say that he was going to appear at
the club for a couple of nights without payment- and duly arrived
complete with a 21-piece band!
# 218
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NATIONAL BRASS BAND CLUB
   FIRST I must express my thanks for the Christmas cards,
calendars, diaries etc., sent to me by well-wishers throughout the
brass band movement. Those thoughts are greatly appreciated, and I
would like this to serve as my grateful acknowledgement, as it is
impossible for me to write to everyone individually. May you all have
a very happy, prosperous, and successful New Year in the cause of
Brass Banding.
   On Monday December 19, I was honoured to welcome the arrival in
this country of Mr. Herbert Hazelman of the American Bandmasters
Association, and leader of the Greensboro High School Band, North
Carolina. He came over on a fleeting visit to study British brass
bands and their methods.
   At the invitation of Harry Mortimer I took him along to the
B.B.C. studios where he spent several hours listening to
recordings of some of our top brass bands, and to say he was amazed at
the tone and execution is putting it mildly. He admitted that what he
heard was far in advance of anything they had in America. They have
no brass bands of our instrumentation in America. Nearly all their
bands, and they have a great many, are brass and wood-wind. Even
their brass instruments are entirely different to ours, and as he puts
it himself, being American, they have to have everything larger than
anybody else, thus, larger instruments with larger bores.
   Their musical education, however, is far in advance of anything
we have here. Music is a compulsory subject in schools and is paid
for through the taxpayer. There appears to be much we can learn from
each other.
   He attended an Executive Meeting of the Club in the evening,
which had been specially put back a week for his benefit, and was
delighted to make the acquaintance of the members at a well-attended
meeting, to whom he gave a most absorbing and interesting re?2sume?2
of the methods and activities of American bands, particularly school
bands. He hopes to bring his band over to this country in the near
future so that brass bandsmen may have the opportunity of hearing and
studying their style of playing.
   Dr. Denis Wright entertained him on the following day Tuesday
for a further session on brass bands. We hope to hear more of this
meeting between our two countries. We are indebted to Mr. Gurney
Doe, Secretary of the National Association of Brass Band Conductors,
who was instrumental in bringing to our notice the proposed visit of
Mr. Hazelman which enabled us to make direct contact with him as far
back as last September.
   Have you made your New Year's resolution yet? If you are not a
member of the National Brass Band Club, we hope that one of your
resolutions will be to join our ranks, and so help us in furthering
the welfare of brass bands, as well as deriving some benefits for
yourself. Remember that the Club is a member of the National Music
Council of Great Britain and is also affiliated to the Standing
Conference of Amateur Music.
   For particulars of membership write to our Membership Secretary,
Mr. H. Hoole, 9 Kingston House East, Princes Gate, London,
S.W.7.
   A. J. MOLINARI,
   Hon. General Secretary.
Our District Correspondents write- 
Northern
by SEMPER IDEM
   RECENTLY, I received an invitation to attend the Annual
Dinner of Cargo Fleet Band which, unfortunately, I was unable to
accept. I understand they had a grand evening. As a band they are in
good form and eager to improve on their splendid record.
   Crookhall Colliery Band, our area champions by their win at the
C.I.S.W.O. contest, have definitely proved themselves the
band of 196, for this district. After winning the D.H. area
contest for three successive years they struck a lean patch but have
stormed back to the top.
   Next to the champions I would choose Easington Colliery and
Wallsend Shipyard. Easington, runners up in the D.H. area
contest and C.I.S.W.O. and winners of the Durham League
Championships have an impressive record which was enhanced by winning
2nd place at Newcastle Corporation Contest for the 2nd successive
year.
   Wallsend Shipyard who were 3rd in the D.H. area won the May
Day Contest at the City Hall and also the Newcastle Corporation
Contest.
   Another band with a fine record in 196 is Cowpen and Crofton
Colliery. They have an impressive array of prizes and will be welcome
competitors in the championship section this year.
   I had the pleasure of attending South Shields S.A. on the
occasion of their Marshall Festival. Newcastle Temple Band and
Sunderland Citadel Songsters rendered some of Bandmaster Marshall's
finest pieces. Unfortunately, the acoustics of the very large hall
rather marred the performances but on the whole there was some good
playing and singing.
   The Temple Band were well served by horns and trombones and I was
very impressed with South Shields Central Band (J. Strike). Small,
but compact, they gave a nice rendering of the march, 5Neath the
Flag. Captain Dean Goffin was the chairman.
Yorkshire
by DALESWOMAN
   CONGRATULATIONS to our two Yorkshire bands launching the
B.B.C. competition "Northern Brass" on Friday, January 6.
They set a very high standard and I am sure felt rather like a band
who had drawn number one in any contest. It was a thrilling
experience to be part of the studio audience on this occasion. A
special word of congratulation for Yorkshire Imperial Metals Band,
(Mr. Harry Tomkins) and Mr. George Hespe their conductor. I am
sure everyone will agree that their programme was full of
"entertainment value".
   1961 is the 25th anniversary of the Yorkshire Imperial Metals
Band and I understand the occasion is to be celebrated on March 4 at
the Griffin Hotel, Leeds. As this is the day following the band's
appearance in the second round of the B.B.C. competition it would
be fitting if they could make it a double celebration.
   Mr. Fred Spencer, the solo euphoniumist of Brighouse and
Rastrick, has just completed twenty five years with the band.
Although still a very talented player, Mr. Spencer has decided to
relinquish his position in favour of the solo baritone. Mr. Robert
Davidson (junior) is to replace Mr. Spencer. The A.G.M. of
Brighouse & Rastrick Band has been fixed for January 22.
Scotland
by GLENSIDE
   THE last 'phone call I received in 196 brought the
distressing news of the passing of my dear old friend, Willie Macrae,
late treasurer of the S.A.B.A. and the Edinburgh Charities Band
Association, both of which he served for many years until his
retirement four or five years ago. He was taken suddenly ill and
passed away in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He was 6 years of age.
Willie was a prominent member of Gorebridge and Arniston Band. There
was a large attendance at the funeral, including the Hon. President
of the S.A.B.A. Our deep sympathy goes to Mrs. Macrae.
   I am informed that two members of Bowhill Colliery Band (horn and
brass players) have joined Barry, Ostlere & Shepherds Band.
   A fine programme of Scottish music was given on the radio by
Clydebank Burgh Band with Charles Telfer in command. This gave great
pleasure to listeners in this part of the country. Congratulations to
Tony Clucas, cornet soloist, on his brilliant rendering of Allison's
"Caledonia".
   I agree with our Editor when he asks for a deeper understanding
of Christmas. Do we ever give the idea a moment's thought? Goodwill
should always be predominant, but why only at Christmas? Many take
the sordid thought that Dicken's <SIC> "Christmas Carol"
typifies Scroogelike attitude, while others go out just for
merry-making and enjoyment, but to me the Holy Spirit of Christmas
should be foremost in the minds of our band members. I am no
kill-joy, but would love to see this period of the year treated with
more reverence.
   I have had no news of the Scottish Amateur Music Association
Course at Forfar during Christmas week. I understand that over 3
pupils attended and studied under Dr. Denis Wright. I believe most
of them hailed from Fifeshire. I have no doubt that under Dr.
Wright nothing but success could crown the effort.
   A golden opportunity is afforded all bands who will be competing
at the four Championship contests in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on
February 25, to replenish their repertoire of music. The
"Bandsman's" own stall will be there offering Selections, Marches
etc. and there will be special bargains on sale for that day. Miss
Bantin will be there in person ready to give her friendly advice to
all who care to take advantage of her visit to the Capitol.
   According to the rules of the British Contesting Council,
Scottish C.W.S. Band, having won the championship three times in
succession, will not be allowed to take part in the Usher Hall
Championship in February. This year there will be new Scottish
Champions who, along with S.C.W.S. will represent our Country at
the London Finals. It is hoped that the 2nd and 3rd prize winners
will accompany these two bands.
   I note that most of the Kenneill Colliery Band officials have
been replaced and there is a new secretary in place of Mrs.
Kirkwood. I am sorry she has been displaced as she proved herself to
be a model scribe. The new secretary is Mr. Dean, 62 Avon Place,
Bo'ness, West Lothian.
North Wales
by CELT
   BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA I CHWI I GYD (Happy New Year to you
all).
   Ifton Silver were out on Christmas Eve playing carols to a large
audience at the Miner's Institute, St. Martins, afterwards playing
for dancing. On Christmas Day they visited the Last Inn, Hengoed, and
made a collection for the band fund. Much credit for this effort goes
to the Secretary, Mr. Aubrey Pugh, who carried the bandsmen and
instruments in relays in his own van to save the band's fund. It is
due to his financial and untiring help that the band is continuing to
function as they are not supported by any industrial firm.
   Deiniolen and District (J. E. Williams) played carols in
their district during the week before Christmas.
   The Band of 6/7th Batt. R.W.F. (T.A.) conducted by
W.O.1 J. H. Hughes, accompanied the carols when the surpliced
choirs of Caernarvon joined them on the square on Christmas Eve. The
Rector of Caernarvon, Rev. Canon J. H. Williams, introduced the
hymns and carols. A collection was made for the Church of England
Blind Fund.
   Llanwrug and District (W. T. Davies) were engaged for a
concert at the Memorial Hall, Rhosgadfan on December 29. Guest
Soloists were Miss Menna Pritchard, soprano, and Miss Megan Thomas,
harp and Penillion.
   The band's soloists were Messrs. Derek Lloyd Jones, O. T.
Jones and Gwilym Roberts in a cornet trio, Mr. Robert Hughes,
euphonium solo, and the conductor played a tubular bell solo
accompanied by the band, which was conducted by deputy-conductor O.
T. Jones.
   The band have a series of concert engagements in the next few
weeks. Young Trevor Davies, who was seriously injured in January
196, is now home from hospital and back in his position with the
band.
   Mr. G. H. Griffiths, popular Secretary of Rhyl Silver, was
rushed to hospital on Friday before Christmas and is to remain lying
very quietly for at least a month. Before going into hospital Mr.
Griffiths has had a bad time during the last four or five years, and
during the last two has done nothing but visit hospitals for
consultations, etc. Mr. Griffiths is very cheerful and praises
the staff of the hospital. He would like to thank the several
bandsmen up and down the country who have sent good wishes, and
especially Mr. & Mrs. Middleton, and Peter, of Brighouse for their
kind wishes. Young Peter is a playing member of Brighouse and
Rastrick Band.
   We all wish you better health in 1961, Mr. Griffiths, and hope
you will soon be home again.
   If any bandsmen friends who <SIC> would like to write to
Mr. G. H. Griffiths- and I know he will appreciate your
letters- the address is: Men's Medical Ward, H. M. Stanley
Hospital, St. Asaph, Flints.
# 218
<118 TEXT E13>
STEPS TO SUCCESS
The Value of Medals
- an introduction
BY BOB MORE
   RECENT articles of "Steps to Success", have been for
beginners in the Four Standard English dances, and we have covered
sufficient to enable the non-dancer of a few months back to now dance
around in the average ballroom without feeling self-conscious and with
just enough figures to avoid the monotony of repetition.
   In the dancing school it is usually when this stage is reached
that the pupil is asked to move on to a different class of
instruction; either to an intermediate class, where an added variation
is taught at each session, or to a Bronze and Silver Medallist Class,
where time will be mainly spent in improving the style of dancing and
the execution of the figures already learnt.
   The choice you make is sometimes determined by temperament, but
is often determined by the type of dancing school you attend.
   The average person, attending for the first time, requires in
most instances to learn enough to attend a dance and get round the
floor, and probably regards it as rather a bind to have to attend a
dancing school in order to do it.
   Having enrolled, however, they usually make new friends very
quickly. The instructors, surprisingly, are human, helpful, good
humoured, and have the uncanny knack when partnering you to make you
feel like a good dancer. Before very long you are actually looking
forward to your next visit, and the dancing school is by now referred
to as "The Club" Your Club! Then, if you were observant, when
you attended a social or a party night at the school, where the
different standards were mixed together, you noticed that some dancers
appeared to stand out. Not necessarily because they knew that latest
variation with the hop, skip and jump, but because there was something
about the way they poised their bodies; the smooth, effortless way
they moved across the floor, particularly in the Slow Foxtrot; and
their steps appeared to fit the music just that little bit better than
other dancers on the floor.
   Well, they are usually "The Medallists".
   Maybe you feel the desire to be a good dancer, like the people
whose dancing you admire; maybe you just want to go on belonging to
"The Club", or maybe, having been shown some of the medals and
certificates other pupils have won, you feel it would be nice to have
some like them yourself, but whatever the reason, if you decide to
become a medallist, you can supplement your lessons in "Dance
News", because "Steps to Success" will, for the next series
concentrate on helping you to get that Bronze Medal.
   First of all, what is required to win this award? To dance a few
basic figures in Waltz, Slow Foxtrot, and Quickstep, with particular
emphasis on Footwork, Timing and Carriage of the body.
   One other thing: the examination fee. In the I.D.M.A. this
is 12s. 6d. In most other societies the fee is a similar amount.
   You may say: "Why is it necessary to pay a fee to win a Bronze
Medal?" Well, it should be obvious that the days of Fairy
Godmothers with magic wands are long since past, and the money has to
come from somewhere. The fee, which is a modest sum by present day
standards, provides the examiner's fee (and he or she is usually one
of the Dancing Profession's leading personalities); the office staff
to handle the organisational side of the examination; the rent of the
centre where the examination is conducted (although this may be
conducted at your teacher's school) and, of course, the Medal,
Certificate, Report on your dancing, and in some instances a Pin Badge
to wear in the lapel or as a tie pin.
   I think you will agree this represents good value for money.
STEPS TO SUCCESS
The Value of Medals
By Bob More
   PUPILS often ask, is it difficult to obtain a Bronze Medal,
and as the late Professor Joad was heard to say many times on the
Radio Brains Trust, "That depends on what you mean by difficult".
   I liken the Bronze Medal Test to the first examination of the
child learning English. The child, quite obviously, would not be
expected to produce a composition, but would be expected to know the
alphabet, where the full stops and commas are used, and be able to
write in a legible manner, something like, "The cat sat on the
mat".
   The actual requirements for a Bronze Medal Test are, that the
candidate dances three dances, Waltz, Foxtrot and Quickstep, with an
Amateur or Professional partner, paying particular attention to the
Footwork, Timing and Alignment of the figures.
   In short, it is rather a test in understanding of the basic
fundamentals of dancing, for without the correct foundation, nothing
very worthwhile will be produced later.
   The figures used in the Bronze Test should not be difficult to
elaborate. To use advanced figures, particularly if not danced well,
can often result in a candidate being marked badly, so the first
precept is, don't do too much. Better to remember the old maxim,
"Little and good".
   The next problem is 1) does the teacher give the pupils a
sequence of figures that progress completely round the room, or 2) a
series of groups of figures, or 3) just teach the required figures and
leave it to the pupil to amalgamate them as best they can.
   Different teachers and schools have varied ideas on this.
Margaret and I, particularly in the lower grade tests, always teach a
sequence. Argument against this, of course, is that the pupil's mind
may go blank if they are nervous, and fail to produce any dancing at
all, and it does sometimes happen. We think this is a lesser risk,
however, than having a pupil get to a corner and forget how to get
round it, when they haven't been given a sequence at all.
   Here in the pages of Dance News it is not entirely practicable to
give a sequence of figures, for obviously, that which suits one shaped
room, will not suit another. This we will endeavour to overcome by
giving sequences to fit a comparatively small hall, and if you have
the good fortune to be examined in a large hall. <SIC>
THE WALTZ
   Taking the Waltz first, a group of figures that really must be
included are, Natural Turn, Closed Change and Reverse Turn, danced
in that order, and referred to as "The Waltz basic amalgamation".
This, in turn, could be followed by two figures, long beloved of all
Bronze Medallists, The Whisk, followed by the Syncopated Chasse,
all of which have been described in recent "Steps to Success".
   These figures should cover the long side of the room, and we now
have to negotiate the first corner, but before doing this we will
emphasise some of the things you must concentrate on showing in your
dancing of the basic amalgamation.
   First and foremost requirement in the Bronze Medal Test, correct
footwork. For the Gentleman and Lady on their forward half of the
Natural and Reverse Turns, and for the Gentleman on the Closed Change,
this is 1) Heel; 2) Toe; 3) Toe.
   When we say the first step is taken on the heel, we mean the toe
of this foot should be clear of the floor almost as soon as the foot
moves forward, and, in fact, as the foot moves forward the distance
between the floor and the toes should be gradually increasing. This
we refer to as a "heel lead". A regular comment from examiners
on bronze medal test reports is, ~"Some heel leads missed",
which means, instead of the leading steps being taken as I have just
described, the foot is pushed across the floor with the feet flat, or,
worse still, with the toe in contact with the floor, and the heel
raised.
   As the foot moves forward and is placed on the heel, the back
heel should be allowed to rise easily, and naturally, then as the
weight transfers to the front foot, and you rise on to it, retain
light pressure (not weight) on the toe of the back foot as it moves to
the side for Step 2. This will give a controlled movement.
Similarly, as the foot closes on the third step, retain pressure (not
weight) on the toe of the moving foot as the close is made, then lower
heel of the supporting foot as the next step is taken.
STEPS TO SUCCESS
The Value Of Medals
By BOB MORE
   IN last week's lesson we spoke about the footwork on
forward movements in the Waltz basic amalgamation. This week we will
talk about movement and floor coverage on these figures; that is,
Natural Turn, Closed Change and Reverse Turn.
   Floor coverage is a topic on which many dancers have the wrong
ideas, for to achieve good floor coverage it is not essential to take
long steps. In fact, for a short person to overstride in an endeavour
to cover a lot of ground will tend to unbalance the couple and make
the movements unrhythmical.
   Of greater importance than length of stride is that the steps
should be taken in the correct direction, and to do this we must
turn the correct amount between the steps of a figure.
   The Natural Turn should commence facing diagonally to the wall
and end facing diagonally to the centre. The following Closed
Change will therefore commence facing diagonally to the centre and end
in the same direction. Following this, the Reverse Turn will
therefore commence facing diagonally to the centre and should end
facing diagonally to the wall.
   Inexperienced dancers often have difficulty in ending the
Natural Turn in the correct alignment; facing centre instead of
diagonally to centre, and on the Reverse Turn they will often end
facing wall instead of diagonally to wall. It is usually the man who
is at fault, and the fault is, failure to turn the hips sufficiently
between steps 5-6.
   The correct alignments for the last half of the Natural Turn
(Steps 4-6), is: <SIC>
   4) Backing down the room.
   5) Pointing diag to centre.
   6) Facing diag to centre.
   On step 5 the toe must turn out, and the foot turns more than
the body. On step 6 the body must continue turning, to face where the
feet point.
   The same applies on the 2nd half Reverse Turn, but here the
alignments are:
   4) Backing down the room.
   5) Pointing diag to wall.
   6) Facing diag to wall.
   Attention to these points of alignment will produce more
effective movement.
   Also of help in covering the floor is correct footwork, which we
stressed last week, and correct rise and fall.
   The normal rise and fall in the Waltz basic amalgamation is: Down
as the first step in the bar is taken; commence to rise at the end of
this step, as you take the second step, and then continue to rise as
the feet close on the third step.
   Remember, though, if you step back on the first beat of a bar
(Gentleman 4th step of Natural and Reverse Turns, Lady 1st step of
Natural and Reverse Turns) you commence to rise in the body only.
The heel of the foot remaining in contact with the floor, until
after the second step is positioned.
   Before leaving the basic Waltz figures, there is one more point
we must emphasise. A not infrequent comment Examiners find obliged to
make on examination reports is, "Some closes could be neater".
   The feet should be closed with the heels and toes level.
Inexperienced dancers often find this difficult, the Gentleman
tending to close the foot forward, the Lady backwards, instead of
together.
   This can usually be corrected by taking more care with the
position of the step preceding the close.
   The bronze medallist should think of the three foot movements in
these basic figures as: 1) Forward; 2) Side; 3) Close; or 1) Back; 2)
Side; 3) Close.
# 21
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Budgerigar Breeding in a Flat
Spare Room Converted to a Well-laid-out Birdroom
By H. HOUGH
   WHEN first I decided to take up Budgerigar breeding I was
in no particular hurry to start buying birds. The first thing I did
was to glean every scrap of information on the subject, from every
possible source.
   Bookshops, both new and second-hand, began to recognize me on
sight, the local librarian knew just what I was after, and quite a few
fanciers must have begun to dread my approach in my insatiable quest
for more and more facts to add to my growing store of knowledge.
   All the time I made notes on feeding problems, odd habits, minor
complaints and their treatment, all the do's and don'ts, etc., until
I began to feel that I was in a position where I should certainly be
able to cope with most of the difficulties which might reasonably fall
to my lot. Now was the time to exchange theory for practice, and I
began to consider how and where I was going to house my stock.
Useful Packing-cases
   Being a flat dweller an outside aviary, with or without
controlled flights, was out of the question, but I did possess a small
spare room, and this, I decided, should become my birdroom. From a
local warehouse I was lucky enough to obtain a number of excellent
packing-cases each measuring 3ft x 18in x 18in.
   After laying the lids on one side, I lined the top, back and
sides with hardboard, and drilled a 1 1/2in hole high up at one end
of each to furnish an entrance to the nest-boxes. To give a better
finish to the nest-box end of the cage, I screwed on some natural cork
bark, cutting an irregular hole to correspond with the nest-box
entrance hole.
Natural Knothole
   This was to represent the natural knothole through which wild
Budgies enter their nest, and I must say that this addition has proved
its worth in many ways. When I later introduced my birds to their new
quarters, it was amazing how quickly the pairs rounded and smoothed
off the holes to suit their own requirements.
   The bark also gave the birds something on which they could
satisfy their penchant for gnawing, without causing any material
damage to the structure of the cages themselves. It also, I should
add, formed an easy means of re-entry, when the chicks made their
first tentative exit from the nests.
   It is amazing how quickly and well a young chick can scuttle up a
piece of bark, and the constant fluttering of their wings during this
operation must certainly help to strengthen them in preparation for
early flight.
   The next job was to fit a 1 1/2in shelf at the back of the
cage, with a series of carefully spaced holes in which I could hook
the seed, grit and water vessels. A clock-spring clip was screwed
below the shelf to hold a piece of cuttlefish bone, and I made a
bottom tray from hardboard and beading.
   A narrow rail, under which the tray slid smoothly, also served as
the bottom fixing for the cage fronts, which I bought ready made. All
I had to do now was to attach the nest-boxes, which I fastened by
means of carefully measured nuts and bolts, taken right through the
end of the cage and the cork bark.
   The other essential was a good-sized flight cage, and this I made
from multiple plyboard to my own design. It stands at eye-level (on
two strong brackets) and is 4ft long, 2ft high and 14in wide.
The roof is covered with 1/2in mesh netting, and the upper 2in
of the front is composed of two sliding glass panels.
   This cage is capable of being divided into two halves, by means
of a sliding hardboard partition. I can recommend this type of cage,
as it is impossible for the birds to throw out any seed husks, and I
found that they very quickly get used to the idea of a glass front.
Working Table and Desk
   The cages were arranged on tables and shelves opposite the
flight cage, and right in front of the window I placed a table which
was to serve as both a working table and office desk. A fitted
cupboard in the room acts as repository for food and accessories so
that the whole place can be kept neat and tidy.
   All cages are cleaned out daily, and I do think that this is a
"must" when a number of birds are kept indoors, especially during
the breeding season, when the hens' droppings are loose and copious,
and, if neglected, will soon give grounds for complaint.
   Before obtaining my birds, I gave careful consideration to the
problems of diet, not only for adult birds but for the future chicks
which I hoped to raise. I started my food list with best Spanish
canary seed, to which I added 25 per cent of white millet. This was
to act as the basic diet, to which I would add natural greenfoods as
and when obtainable.
   Among these I carefully listed chickweed, seeding grasses,
lettuce, carrot, apple and groundsel. All these items which I still
offer when obtainable contain most of the essential vitamins, and
together with the basic seed and grit seem to satisfy all the
nutritional needs of the adult Budgerigar.
   For feeding mothers, I decided to add a mixture of soaked groats
and canary seed, with the addition of a little wheat germ, which I
found was easily obtainable in the form of a "wheat germ" baby
food. I have maintained this diet since with excellent results. The
only addition I have made is an occasional slice of orange, of which
my birds seem passionately fond.
Care and Study
   At last the time had arrived to purchase my first stock of
birds, and this involved a great deal of study and care. There could
be no slip up here, or all my preparations and hopes would have been
in vain.
   I wanted good birds in every way- in head, type, body shape,
spots and stance. And I knew full well that I had to stand or fall by
my own judgment. Well, I "paid my money and made my choice" and
time alone will tell what errors of judgment I have made. So far, I
am reasonably satisfied with the results.
   I have always been fascinated by "Red-eyes," so I suppose it
was only natural that my first birds consisted of two pairs of Lutinos
and a beautiful Albino cock. (At least I would have no worries about
spots.) The Lutinos were of good size and colour, while the Albino
had just a faint suffusion of blue on the breast.
Well-spotted Pairs
   In a strong light, his body and head have a definite pinkish
glow, which makes it a most attractive bird. From another source I
obtained a well-balanced pair of Grey Greens and a pair of Light
Greens, all of good type and well spotted.
   My next was a young, untried cock, sired by a Light Green cock
out of a Whitewing Cobalt hen. He has an ideal stance on the perch,
and, with his yellow face, white wings and peacock blue back and tail,
he certainly caught the eye. Visually he makes the grade.
   After some consideration I also bought his parents, with a view
to breeding back to stabilize the strain. A nicely matched pair of
Cobalts, and a pair of Greys, together with a well-coloured Violet
cock were my next buy, and, last of all, I purchased a large Greywing/
Normal White hen.
   How these birds were eventually paired, and the many snags that
arose during the first breeding session, will form the basis of my
next article. This, I hope, will prove that there is sometimes more
to be learned from a mistake than one at first realizes.
junior BIRD LEAGUE
Don't Be Disappointed- 
When Your Promising Winners are Beaten, says R. F. WARLOW
   MAY I retract from my promise to follow up on other
subjects to deal with a matter which I know to be of interest to
readers of this page? I am going to write about Border Canaries, but
part of the lesson may be applied to other varieties. The subject is
show birds and, in particular, those that have been amongst the
winners. Now some fanciers, both young and old, seem to think that
once a bird has beaten a number of other birds, providing that it
meets the same company again it should go on winning. Indeed, good
judges have been criticized, without just cause, when past form has
been upset. And it is true that the opinions of judges sometimes
differ, but it is not surprising that some exhibits which are very
close together in merit, sometimes change places as the show season
progresses.
Sound Judgment
   Many fanciers are not good judges of their own birds, although
they may show sound judgment when assessing the merits of those of
other people. That, after all, is a human trait which most of you
will understand. I know, because I have passed through the phase when
all the birds in my birdroom appeared to have all the virtues of great
winners. Apart from looking good in a stock cage, a show bird has to
pass an exacting test in which its virtues and its temperament are
well and truly tried. A bird which has all the necessary physical
attributes may fail, either because it has been proven that it cannot
be trained to show itself off properly, or may be because it does not
like shows.
   When I was a young enthusiast I liked nothing better than to
listen to more experienced fanciers talking, and I sometimes found it
good fun. Not only did I find that birds are admired when on show, I
also found out that they come in for some searching criticism. I was
always interested, and I still am today, to note how the opinions of
experienced fanciers differ when they are assessing the merits of a
bird.
   A really excellent bird usually meets with approval, but there
are a few who cannot be convinced even by the best. Maybe they lack
knowledge of what is required or perhaps they are just prejudiced,
and, of course, that is a fault that everyone has to guard against.
Let us look at the Standard of Excellence for the Border Canary which
is laid down by the specialist clubs. The standard says that the
position of the bird should be semi-erect, standing at an angle of 6
degrees, and that the bird should move in a gay and jaunty manner with
full poise of the head. Out of a total of 1 marks which are to be
allocated, 15 are awarded for these attributes, and it has to be
remembered that a bird has to earn each one of them when on the
judging bench. Suffice to say that many birds which have appeared
under me have earned very poor markings for carriage and position.
How About the Future?
   I wonder whether you have heard it said of a popular winner:
"It is good today, but I doubt whether it will win in five or six
weeks' time." An experienced fancier can often make such a
prophesy, simply because he has noticed something which is in the
course of going wrong. Returning to the standard again, it stipulates
that the plumage should be close, firm, fine in quality, presenting a
smooth, glossy, silken appearance free from frills and toughness. In
a single word, we refer to these virtues as quality. Early in the
show season quite a number of birds win which appear to have excellent
quality, but the discerning eye can already see that some of the
winners are already carrying too much feather. Birds continue to add
feathers for some time after they appear to have completed the moult,
and these additional feathers can change the appearance of what
appeared once as a good show bird.
# 217
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"TO FINISH THE SEASON"
By Ralph Greaves
   THOSE FAMILIAR WORDS will now have appeared on the
fixture-card, and the last entry made in the hunting diary for
196-61- a season which will go down in history not only as the most
open, but as the wettest "since the memory of man 1runneth not to
the contrary."
   Even before the season started, the land was saturated; and so it
remained throughout, with never a chance of drying out, until the
fantastically dry and sunny spell that set in at the beginning of
March. Fortunately this will obviate cuckoo corn for the farmer; but
as regards foxhunting, there have been days lately when one might as
well have expected hounds to be able to run in June, for all the scent
there has been.
   Strangely enough, despite all the wet, the earlier part of the
season was not as good scenting as might have been expected, scent
being literally washed away. But from December onwards there came
reports from every quarter of sport well above the ordinary, and with
the drains full of water, more foxes killed above ground. Stoppages
from snow and frost have been practically nil. But the season has
been marred in many countries by disastrous outbreaks of
foot-and-mouth, which are always more frequent in a mild season.
Signs of Wear
   Though always reluctant to leave off, Masters and hunt servants
may sometimes regard the finish of the season with mixed feelings,
especially when it peters out in a blaze of scentless sunshine.
Horses and hounds have had a hard time in going like porridge, and
exceptionally long days, and even in the bigger establishments there
are signs of wear-and-tear. Horses, though still sound, may be
running up a bit light, and there are probably quite a number of lame
hounds, due to cuts from wire or flints. On chalky downlands these
flints have become an increasing menace, the South and West Wilts
having been particular sufferers in this respect. The plough has
brought the flints to the surface, and they cut like razors, not only
into hounds' feet but horses' heels. Another source of trouble is
pig-netting, in which hounds are liable to get hung up and pull their
stifles.
   What with casualties, and bitches in hot kennel, a huntsman in a
small establishment of up to 25 couple may sometimes have difficulty
in drawing a sizeable pack for two days a week. But apart from these
domestic problems the question of the prolongation of the season
depends on agriculture. Foxhunting, after all, is a "trespass by
courtesy" and since the courtesy is on the part of the farmer, it is
the latter's interests that finally decide the matter.
   Those countries that have a bit of hill or downland are often
able to continue operations after the vale is closed. The Berkeley,
for instance, are usually invited to retire to the slopes of the
Cotswolds for a bit of spring hunting. Most moorland packs can also
remain in session, taking advantage of which, that inveterate
foxcatcher, Captain Ronnie Wallace, is accustomed to wind up his
season by taking the Heythrop hounds on a visit to Exmoor, while in
the Southdown country the killing of a brace or two of May foxes on
their open downlands is almost traditional, though in the vale hounds
have long ago shut up shop.
A Favourite Dodge
   One of the most insistent end-of-the-season problems is that of
lambing ewes. However carefully the Master may arrange his draw, it
is always at the back of his mind that hounds may run in their
direction, and will have to be stopped. One of the favourite dodges
in the repertoire of the hunted fox is to run through sheep foul.
And, in fact, with ewes and lambs all over the place, it is sometimes
difficult for the Master to make a day of it.
   Damage, too, is a word that weighs heavily on the hearts of
Master, Field Master and Secretary. It is fair to say that damage to
grassland- or at any rate permanent grass- in the earlier part of
the season, even when as wet as this one, is unlikely to be
particularly serious. It will all wash back with the next rain. But
no farmer wants to see his fields cut up in February or March,
especially if he has just rolled them. Even on old pasture with
plenty of bottom, the mark is there for the summer, and it will
certainly put paid to any leys- and ley farming has made the problem
more acute.
   Had the wet weather continued, there is no doubt that most Hunts
would have had to stop a good deal earlier than usual. Hounds would
no doubt have continued to run as though tied to their fox, and we
would have started worrying about the prospects for the
Point-to-Point. But what a mark we should have made! And the faster
we galloped, especially downhill, the worse it would have been. Even
now, after three weeks of sun, there is, as I write, only a top crust
on the clays, under which the land is like a glue pot. And the damage
then will be worse than ever. Nor would it take much rain to reduce
it once more to the porridge stage.
In Leicestershire
   Elsewhere, however, as in Leicester, for instance, the land
really has dried out, and the arable was mostly in tilth by the middle
of March. But only a few short weeks ago it was a different story.
Let's look back and remember....
   Hounds are scudding over the grass like a covey of grouse before
the wind. You've got away on terms and the old horse is pulling a
double handful; you give him his head and let him stride on. What
else would you do when hounds are running? It's either go on or go
home. The ground squelches under foot, but he can go through the dirt
all day- and what a feel he does give you! But by Gad, it is
deep! Horses in front are throwing up clods of turf in your face,
as they go in fetlock deep. Better take him up to the front and have
first cut at that fence before the others start bashing it. The old
horse heaves himself out of the mud and jumps it cleanly. On you go,
in the wake of the flying pack....
   Well, the hunt has only started, and you've only crossed the
first field. Go back the next day and walk round that farm after the
Hunt has been over it. What would you say if you were the farmer?
There is more owed to him than we foxhunters sometimes realise. That
is the thought with which to finish the season.
AN EASY-GOING SPRING
By Dr. E. A. R. Ennion
Equinoxial Tides...
Unexpected Finds...
Tree-Sparrows and Rock-Sparrows
   THE SHORE is settling down to its everyday ways again. We
had, three-parts of the way through March, a series of exceptionally
high spring tides, even for the equinox. Scudding seas and flying
sand, sheets of spray sweeping high over cliffs and across roads where
I never remember having to drive through spray before, were the order
of the day... Bedlam outside as well as in, with curtains flapping
and doors banging. The waders along the tideline hardly knew whether
they were on their heads or on their heels, what with the driven
spume, the blinding spray and both wind and water playing tricks and
taking them at unexpected speeds and angles.
Co-ordination of Muscle and Eye
   In the ordinary way a dunlin knows to a T how far a wave is
going to ripple up a beach, how long he can wait before turning and
running back before it to avoid, as it were, getting his knickers wet.
A redshank knows exactly when to check his speed to alight at the
right spot at the right moment to snatch a titbit sweeping out to sea
again on the undertow. Such instant co-ordination of muscle and eye
is commonplace for them; swift movements and decisions that, for us,
would require the skill of a juggler, the practised fingers of a
pianist. On it, indeed, depends their livelihood, for the prey they
catch is less than a split second slower off the mark. So gusty winds
and unexpected draughts, freakish ripples and drenching waves must be
darned annoying while they last. And they lasted, off and on, for
days.
   But now it's over. The waves, their fury spent, are plashing
lazily on the beach as if they couldn't get tough if they tried. The
wind has dwindled to a gentle breeze. There are no white horses,
though there is a thin white line wherever wave meets rock along the
island shores and, beyond them, a slow heave along the line of the
horizon which shows that, away out there, a fair swell must be
running, still.
   Like the deep breathing of an athlete resting after his
exertions, it takes time for normal rhythm and speed to supervene.
But in shallower waters near the shore there is only the gentlest
rise and fall. And there are little groups of waders resting,
preening, bathing, stretching wings and legs, and yawning- doing all
the jobs there's been no time to do in the last few days. The dunlin
and the oystercatchers seem especially content to laze and just enjoy
the sunshine and the calm after the storm. Turnstones, restless as
ever, keep wandering about. No sooner does one of them run into the
ripples of the burn that spreads across the beach, to bathe, than
others tear across the sand to join him, regardless of the fact that
most of them have bathed before, not once but ten times, within the
last half-hour. They can't need to- they are like those over-fussy
women who must be forever cleaning, cleaning, cleaning when there
isn't a speck of dirt about that a man can see.
   And redshanks, as ever at this time of year, too, are chasing
each other about. It's the spring in their blood. No cock redshank
worthy of his coral legs can bear to see another within twenty yards
of him without running to drive the other fellow off. I've known them
keep this rival-chasing up for hours at a stretch when the chasee
couldn't, or wouldn't, get away: no wonder, when you handle them,
redshanks are so surprisingly thin and scrawny.
Wagtails in the Trap
   What with one thing and another we have had little time or
opportunity since we returned home to do much trapping, even in the
garden: it is our leanest spring in this respect for ten busy years.
But the other day, while I was digging a trench for some cuttings, my
wife looked up and saw half a dozen pied wagtails fluttering in or
around the Heligoland trap. It was just before dusk and, all unknown
to us, this small party of them must have been using the willow bushes
beside it for their roost. We slipped down and caught three: a
beautiful silky-white and ebony cock and two hens, one adult and one a
de?2butante. At least two more were flitting around overhead. We
shall now know them if we meet them on the beach.
   The trap is kept out of action, in case a bird might find its way
in and get imprisoned, but it is possible to "set" it again
instantly, and now and then I cannot for the life of me resist
temptation. One such occasion happened a week or so ago when I
noticed that the bushes round its mouth were teeming with sparrows.
We have long since given up ringing them, i.e.,
house-sparrows. From well over 8 ringed, we had not had a single
recovery from beyond a mile radius! But there were starlings among
the sparrows (which provide many and often most interesting records)
and also, unless my eyes and ears were failing me, a good many
tree-sparrows.
# 26
<121 TEXT E16>
Design Discussion
In which the Editor extends some arguments contained in last
month's "Showdown" article
   THE idea was expressed in MOTOR SPORT last month that
enthusiasts who know about cars and drive them far and fast should
eschew "vintage" designs and, by purchasing modern models for their
daily motoring, set an example to the car-buying public of the
benefits of such technical items as i.r.s., elimination of the
propeller shaft, reduction of greasing points and so on.
   Leaving out cars with front-wheel-drive, in which independent
springing of the undriven back wheels is easy to achieve (or if for
some reason it is ignored, merely means that a light axle beam is
involved) and rear-engined cars in which i.r.s. is virtually
forced upon the designer, there are the following front-engined/
rear-drive cars the enlightened manufacturers of which provide
independent suspension of the back wheels, for maximum riding and
cornering efficiency on rough roads and the elimination of judder and
heelspin under acceleration which is a shortcoming to which rigid rear
axles are prone, particularly when unlocated and attached to the
chassis by leaf-springs:-
<LIST>
   Those, then, are the cars you should go for, unless you decide
that divorcing the engine from the driven wheels is ridiculous and
prefer a car with front-wheel-drive or rear-engine location.
Personally, based on satisfactory experience of the B.M.C.
ADO15 and ADO5 designs, I vote for the former. Citroe"n, the
World's most advanced car, has had driven front wheels for nearly 3
years and the DS in its latest, more powerful form is a very fine
motor car indeed; if ever it gets the air-cooled flat-six engine which
rumour says its designer always intended for it, it will combine in
one vehicle practically everything I find desirable. So enamoured
have I become by the safety factors inherent in a front-wheel-driven
car that I long for the day when Alec Issigonis will trigger off the
next B.M.C. offering of that species. He, like the Citroe"n
designer, has been obliged to use a conventional engine already in
production.
   You cannot tell me that the bulgy bonnet of the old
torsion-bar-sprung Morris Minor wasn't intended to protect a flat-four
engine, whereas Issigonis was prevailed upon to use an existing
side-valve lump of iron when the car went into production. And while
this talented designer has shown quite outstanding genius in placing
another production B.M.C. engine across the front of his Mini to
save space within the body envelope, I wonder whether, at all event in
his dreams, Issigonis hadn't visualised a flat-four, or even a
swash-plate power unit, for these brilliantly conceived (if less
conscientiously assembled) little cars? I suggest this in spite of
Issigonis' statement in the current issue of Road & Track that
designing new engines as well as new cars is too big an undertaking
for him to adopt it....
   It remains to be seen whether B.M.C. can achieve the same
success with larger versions of the ADO15 layout. Personally I
believe they will, should their future policy lie in that direction,
despite rumours that nothing larger has followed the Minis because
there is a limit to how much power can be used with f.w.d.
without an excursion into the realms of dangerous handling
characteristics, a theory that the Cooper-Minis go some way towards
refuting and to which I do not subscribe. I would like to see Alec
Issigonis, aided by rubber-man Alex Moulton, cock a snoot at Citroe"n
with, say, a big trans-engine f.w.d. car powered by a 3-litre
6-cylinder B.M.C. engine, but whether a longer engine could be
used across the car without seriously restricting the steering lock is
open to conjecture.
   Whether your choice is for front-drive, rear-engine or divorced
power unit and axle in a car with all-round independent suspension,
there is still great variety to be found in the technical approach of
1962. I was amused recently to read in Lord Montagu's entertaining
journal The Veteran and Vintage Magazine the statement that in
1898 "motor car design was in a state of flux: engines were placed in
front, amidships, and at the rear; some were horizontal, others
vertical, while at least one- the Clement-Panhard- was slightly
inclined." The position is not so very different over sixty years
later and inclination of the engine to secure a low bonnet line, as on
the Mercedes-Benz 3SL, B.M.W. 15, Chrysler Valiant, and
Peugeot 44, for example (or a compact boot in the case of the
rear-engined Simca 1) has extended to the underfloor engines of the
VW 15, and the Fiat 5 Giardiniera in which the engine has been
turned on its side, while the data on the opposite page show that
cylinder disposition has by no means reached standardisation.
Moreover, N.S.U. have their Wankel rotary engine as an extremely
compact power unit of the near-future, and Rover and others are
convinced that the gas-turbine will eventually have its day.
   One aspect of engine design not yet exploited by British
designers is that of smoothing out the 4-cylinder power unit and
improving its durability by providing it with five crankshaft
bearings, as adopted by Alpha Romeo, B.M.W., Chevy =2, Facellia,
Goggomobil, Simca and Volvo.
   Considerable attention is being paid to the reduction of chassis
greasing points. But while Rover is frequently named as a notable
pioneer in this field, the Triumph Herald is all too often ignored,
although it, too, can be very quickly serviced; but in reduction of
greasing nipples Fiat and N.S.U. on their smallest models do
rather better. Only the D.A.F. from Holland and the front-drive
Renault R4 from France appear to have eliminated greasing points
entirely, but in this country Vauxhall and Rootes have made very
considerable progress in reducing the periods between or the amount of
servicing necessary, while in America Oldsmobile, Ford, Mercury,
Lincoln, Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler have adopted pre-lubricated
chassis bearings that postpone replenishment until 3, miles have
been run, which, in conjunction with oil changes recommended after
6, miles and cooling systems intended to hold their water for some
two years, has taken most of the tedium out of the servicing routine.
So much interest attaches to this aspect of car ownership, especially
when service stations are frequently overcrowded and inefficient, and
when home-mechanics probably prefer to spend their hours in the garage
tuning, if not "souping," their engines to grovelling about under
their cars with the grease-gun, that I append a table showing how a
representative collection of cars requires to be greased, from which
the disinterested manufacturers who do nothing to relieve servicing
tasks stand out like sheep- black sheep, as black as the unfortunate
owners or mechanics who have to grease these cars! Incidentally, that
the propeller shaft is an anachronism is emphasised by the fact that
of only three grease nipples on the Hillman Super Minx and four on the
Singer Gazelle, one of the former and two on the latter are on the
propeller shaft, while Rover have successfully rid themselves of every
nipple save one, again- on the propeller shaft.- W. B.
VETERAN- EDWARDIAN- VINTAGE
A Section Devoted to Old-Car Matters
V.S.C.C. SILVERSTONE RACE MEETING (July 22nd)
   THIS, the second of these enjoyable fixtures this year, took
place in overcast but dry weather and attracted the usual delightfully
varied entry, although few "new" old cars appeared.
   The programme commenced with an Inter-Team Relay Race which was
contested between 14 one-make teams and a team of Edwardians. The
race was difficult to follow but in the end jubilation in the Amilcar
Six pit indicated that the Tozer, Harding, Lyne team of these fine
little supercharged cars had won from the two Frazer Nash teams. In
spite of modern Weber carburetters, Riseley's 1931 Aston Martin
retired. The Austin Seven team comprised Nippy, Ulster and Chummy,
and there had even been a complete team of three Gwynne Eights and I
noticed that between them they numbered a Wolseley gearbox, a stubby
right-hand gear-lever and a long central lever, sure sign that
standardisation is a word unknown in vintage circles!
   The first 5-lap Handicap was led on the last lap by Brogden's
2-seater 3-litre Bentley, Williamson's 2-seater 3-litre of this make
also passing Rowe's Ulster Austin that had been out in front for three
laps, and was close up on the second Bentley at the finish.
   Another 5-lap Handicap followed, which incorporated the Light Car
Handicap. The small fry were overtaken by Beavis' rather nondescript
1928 Riley Nine after three laps, and Blyth's Austin, with Boyd
Carpenter long-tail body, came in second, followed by Smith's Gwynne
Eight, leader of the light cars. Abrahams' racing Singer Junior went
well into fourth place. Elsworthy ran a 193 M-type M.G. Midget
in original body trim.
   We now drove to Becketts Corner, where Ronald Barker had arrived
in Sedgwick's open Speed Six Bentley, Sedgwick having driven up in the
first of the Continental Bentleys dating from 1951, while a Voisin was
circulating as temporary Course Car- variety which makes these
V.S.C.C. days so enjoyable.
   Faster stuff came out for yet another 5-lap Handicap, Bergel's
2.3 Bugatti going very nicely to a popular victory from Michelsen's
i.f.s. Frazer Nash "Patience," Edwards' big Lagonda third. In
spite of a tendency to mis-fire, Gahagan's scratch 2-litre E.R.A.
lapped at 72.75 m.p.h.
   A mixed bag from 198 to 1936 contested the fourth 5-lap Handicap
and it was splendid to see Clutton's great 12-litre Itala quite
undismayed by front-braked "moderns," so that it came home a
thunderous second behind Cook's little Ulster Austin, making fastest
lap, into the bargain, at 61.2 m.p.h. Third place was secured by
Marsh's Austin. Poor Liston-Young could get nowhere from scratch in
his Fiat Balilla and space helmet, and Zeuner, holding his Brescia
Bugatti's gear-lever in gear, was lapped by Cook. Kain drove a neat
Type 4 Bugatti.
   So to the race which is the purpose of this meeting, the 5-km.
Boulogne Trophy Scratch Race. This was a splendid event. Margulies
built up a growing lead in his 3-litre Maserati, Hull's 2-litre
E.R.A. second, ahead of the Hon. Peter Lindsay and Murray in
their 1 1/2-litre E.R.A.s.
   As the race settled down Murray's green E.R.A. fell back and
Margulies, Hull and Lindsay were out ahead of the E.R.A.s of
Waller and Brown. Then on lap nine the big Maserati retired, as did
Waller, so the order was Hull, Lindsay, Brown, Gahagan and Murray, all
in E.R.A.s, followed by Mudd's Maserati which, although
mis-firing, was keeping ahead of Husband's blown Talbot, about which
Goodhew's E.R.A.-Delage could do nothing at all. Cottam's
E.R.A. was pursuing this group, followed by McDonald's 4
1/2-litre Bentley that eventually took the Vintage Award.
   Lindsay was driving "Remus" with real fire and a lap later
passed Hull. Gahagan, too, was coming round fast in his 2-litre
E.R.A., with occasional glances at his off-side rear wheel, and
on lap 13 he was third, having passed Brown. Finally, as a fast,
eventful race ran its course Mudd got ahead of Murray, the s/ c.
Talbot continuing to hold off the E.R.A.-Delage- how
unpredictable vintage racing is! Margulies lapped fastest, at 8.62
m.p.h., before retiring.
<LIST>
   Unfortunately Philip Mann's 1922 Strasbourg Sunbeam had suffered
a serious fracture of the top of the cylinder block in practice and
spent the race on its trailer behind a Land Rover.
   The races now reverted to 5-lappers, Begley's Frazer Nash shaking
off Holford's Singer Nine and Harris' Austin to win the fifth, in
which Michael, sawing at the wheel of his lowered, ex-Goodhew 4
1/2-litre Lagonda, made fastest lap, at 68.1 m.p.h.
   Hull, as he often does in short races, won the Scratch event,
from Day, whose E.R.A. sounded off form, Waller third, Gahagan
fourth, after Lindsay started badly and fell back after a spin. Hull
lapped at 78.23 m.p.h.
   Bradley's well-known 4 1/2-litre Bentley won another of the
Handicaps from Morton's very fierce 3-carburetter 4 1/2-litre Bentley
and Morley's drastically lowered 4 1/2-litre Bentley with
straight-tooth back axle and castors instead of front wheels, the
classes going to Heap's Riley, Ashley's very rapid Frazer Nash and
Footitt's so very worthwhile A.C.-G.N.
# 28
<122 TEXT E17>
TELEFIGHT NEWS
by RON OLVER
Walker And Pollard TV Heroes
   BEING on TV didn't do the London amateurs much good
against South Poland, did it? The score was 3-1 in our favour when we
came on the air but then it became 3-4, only for heavyweight Billy
Walker to level it up. This was the only bout to end inside the
distance, and once again Billy revealed his potential as one of our
best heavyweight bets for the future. This was the first
representative match to be televised from London this season, and
contained all the usual controversies over decisions and refereeing.
   In the TV sessions there were two disputed verdicts, and
as far as it is possible to judge through this medium Johnny Caiger
was a trifle unlucky and Dennis Pollard, in spite of his terrific
performance, was beaten by a better man.
   With regard to the refereeing, the Polish official seemed to go
out of his way to stop the exchanges on the slightest pretext when the
action was getting exciting. It must have been most frustrating to
the boxers, and of course just as annoying to the spectators. Rules
are rules, but it is the interpretation that is important. A fussy
referee can ruin a bout.
   There were southpaws galore in the Polish team. We saw three on
TV and I understand there were at least two more. Their national
team is in the process of re-building and the accent is now on youth.
Best Boxer
   Even so, I thought that Pietrzykowski, veteran of the side, was
the best boxer on view in our 6-minute TV session. Yet he
wasn't included in this year's European Championships.
   Why not? Well, Polish coach Felix Stam, referring to the
omission of such stars as Pietrzykowski, Adamski, Drogosz and Pazdior
in Belgrade, declared-
   "They are too old. It is no use keeping them in the team just
for the chance of winning here. We are preparing for 1964 (the
Olympic Games), and it is no use starting to build up in 1963."
   That's common sense of course, but Pietrzykowski (why wasn't he
called "Smith") is still boxing well. He will be 32 in 1964, but
as Archie Moore would say "It's your ability, not your age, that
counts."
   Poland has had a fine run of successes during the past three
years. In the 1959 European Championships they had three Gold Medals
through the old firm of Drogosz, Adamski and Pietrzykowski. Also
Silver Medals through Dampe and Walasek, and a Bronze Medal through
Jedrzewski.
   In the Olympics of the following year lightweight Pazdior won a
Gold Medal; Adamski, Walasek and Pietrzykowski gained Silver Medals;
Bendig, Kasprzyk and Drogosz won Bronze Medals.
   So to this year's European Championships, when Poland omitted
some of their stars in favour of younger men.
   Yet they didn't do at all badly. Walasek won a Gold Medal,
Gutman was bantam finalist (he outpointed Johnny Head in a
featherweight bout last week) and three boxers reached the
semi-finals, Kasprzyk, Jozefowicz and Gugniewicz.
   We must remember that Iron Curtain countries have the advantage
of keeping their lads together as "amateurs" throughout their
careers. How can Britain think about building a team for 1964 when
the stars invariably turn professional.
   One only has to consider Britain's team in last year's Olympics.
Those who have since turned pro are flyweight Danny Lee,
featherweight Phil Lundgren, light-welter Bobby Kelsey, light-middle
Willie Fisher and cruiser Johnny Ould. And now comes the news that
Frankie Taylor is turning pro shortly.
   Heavyweight Dave Thomas and middle Roy Addison have retired,
leaving only Dick McTaggart and Jim Lloyd.
   So it looks like almost a complete new British team for the 1964
Games, whereas the Iron Curtain countries will be able to call upon
their established stars as usual.
   One of our best men at the moment is Billy Walker, but I'll bet
that Billy will be a professional long before then. And who can blame
him?
Will To Win
   One of those who looks like going places is cruiserweight
Dennis Pollard, who fought like a tiger against Pietrzykowski. Dennis
has the will to win, and that's exactly what we want in these
representative matches. He was not bothered by his opponent's
reputation- simply went into the attack, and kept attacking.
   No wonder the crowd rose to Pollard and on that form he would
assuredly have beaten anyone less experienced than the triple European
champion.
   We shall now look forward to the Great Britain v. America
match, part of which will be televised by the BBC next Thursday.
No doubt we shall have the opportunity of seeing Walker and Pollard
in action again then.
   Tomorrow's Grandstand bout features Sugar Ray Robinson against
Denny Moyer, which Robinson won on points. There is absolutely
nothing that the average fight fan does not know about Robinson, but
here are the statistical details in his chequered career.
   SUGAR RAY ROBINSON. Born Detroit May 3, 192.
   Turned pro in 194, gaining 4 straight wins before losing to
Jake LaMotta in 1943.
   Signed to meet Marty Servo for the World's welter crown on August
1, 1946, but the bout was twice postponed and eventually Servo
retired.
   Robinson was then matched with Tommy Bell, and won on points on
December 2, 1946.
   On February 14, 1951, Robinson kayoed Jake LaMotta to win the
world's middleweight crown, and gave up his welter title.
   Ray lost the middleweight championship to Randolph Turpin in
1951, regained it the same year.
   In 1952 he was kayoed by Joey Maxim in a world's cruiserweight
title bout, and announced his retirement from the ring in December of
that year.
   Came back in 1955 and won the world's middleweight title from
Carl Olson.
   Successfully defended it against Olson in 1956, lost it to Gene
Fullmer in 1957, regaining it in the same year.
   Lost to Carmen Basilio in 1957, regaining it from Basilio in
1958.
   Lost it to Paul Pender in 196, and was beaten again by Pender in
a return.
   Has had two shots at Gene Fullmer's NBA crown, in 196 (a
draw) and last March (lost on points).
   Only previous bouts this year- lost to Fullmer and outpointed
Wilf Greaves.
   OVERALL RECORD. Bouts 158, Won 145, Drawn 3, Lost 9, No
Decision 1.
   DENNY MOYER. Born Portland August 8, 1939. French-Irish
parentage.
   As an amateur won the American AAU welter title in 1957.
   Comes from a fighting family. Father Harry was a pro, brother
Phil turned pro on the same date as Denny August 17, 1957. Uncle
Tommy was a good amateur and is now a promoter in Portland, having
staged many of Denny's fights.
   Won 2 straight bouts, then was matched with Don Jordan for the
latter's world welter crown. Lost on points in his home-town. Bout
was promoted by his uncle.
   Has beaten many notable fighters, like former world's champions
Paddy DeMarco, Tony DeMarco, Virgil Akins, Johnny Saxton and Emile
Griffith. Has also defeated the present World's welter champ Benny
Paret.
   Is now a middleweight, and rated by Boxing News as the world's
No. 1. Robinson holds down the No. 4 spot.
   This year's record- outpointed Willie Morton, Charley Scott and
Dulio Nunez. Outpointed by Jorge Fernandez and Nunez.
   OVERALL RECORD. Bouts 35, Won 29, Lost 6.
   Don't forget to watch Sportsview next Wednesday for film
coverage of the John Caldwell-Alphonse Halimi world's bantam title
fight.
   And a running commentary on this contest will be given next
Tuesday evening in the Light Programme.
   Next live pro item will be the Maurice Cullen-Guy Gracia bout
from Newcastle on November 13.
   Next for Grandstand:
   Oct. 28 Sugar Ray Robinson v. Denny Moyer.
   Nov. 4 Teddy Wright v. Farid Salim.
   Nov. 11 Alejandro Lavorante v. Billy Hunter.
   Nov. 18 Carlos Ortiz v. Paolo Rosi.
   Sports Editor Laurie Higgins and Schools ABA Secretary Pat
Martin combine on October 3 for another of ITA's interesting
boxing instructional series in "Seeing Sport".
BROWN KEEPS TITLE
Champion Floors Somodio Twice To Take Unanimous Verdict
   JOE BROWN, 35-year-old American holder of the World's
lightweight crown, kept his title at Quezon City, Manila, last
Saturday, with an easy points verdict over 15 rounds against Filipino
Bert Somodio. Brown floored his man twice, for a no-count in the
fifth and for "nine" in the eleventh. It was a unanimous decision.
This was Brown's tenth successful title defence.
   A capacity crowd of around 3, in the Areneta Coliseum gave
their local favourite Somodio plenty of vocal support, but although he
started well and put in a good finish there could be no doubt of
Brown's superiority.
   There was very little positive action in the first four rounds,
with Brown content to let his opponent force the pace. In the fourth,
particularly, Somodio scored with hard rights to the mid-section.
   Then the champ decided that he had learned enough about his man
to take the offensive, and opened up with a series of two-handed
attacks, culminating in a right to the jaw that put Somodio down on
one knee.
   The 27-year-old Filipino got up immediately but was obviously
shaken. Then in the seventh Brown again shook his man with a right
cross and opened up a cut on his opponent's left eye.
   Brown kept on top with clever boxing and ringcraft, and in the
eleventh caught Somodio with a right-left to the paw that put him down
again.
   This had its effect on the Filipino, who slowed considerably in
the next two or three rounds. Brown used his full repertoire of
punches, jabbing and uppercutting to good effect, and was well on top
now.
   Somodio went down slowly in a sort of delayed-action fall, taking
several backward steps before going to the canvas near the ropes. But
somehow he struggled up at "nine," although all the fight had been
taken out of him now.
   The Filipino tried hard to put in a storming finish, but his
attacks were nearly all neatly countered by the clever champion.
   Both men received a fine ovation from an enthusiastic crowd.
   Brown has held his crown since August 1956, when he outpointed
Wallace "Bud" Smith. But he still seem <SIC> reluctant to meet
Carlos Ortiz, one-time winner over Dave Charnley, and like the latter,
a leading contender for Joe's title.
Big Chance For Wemhoener
   NO shortage of work in Germany, writes GERRY MANN.
Tonight there are top shows at Munich and Hamburg. At the former
venue two near-veterans in Dieter Wemhoener and Helmut Bull battle it
out for the vacant German cruiser crown. At the latter Karl "The
Great" Mildenberger tackles American Wayne Bethea. Then on November
11 comes the Erich Schoeppner v. Hans Kalbfell clash for the
former's German heavyweight title, and in Frankfurt on November 24
Mildenberger is likely to top the bill.
   Wemhoener has always boxed in the shadow of his more famous
stablemate Gustav Scholz, and at the age of 31 must have been thinking
that his big chance had gone by. But the vacating of the cruiser
crown by Erich Schoeppner has left the door open for Wemhoener or his
3-year-old opponent Helmut Ball to annex the national title.
   Two years ago Wemhoener went to Milan and outpointed Italian
cruiser Giulio Rinaldi on his own doorstep. Rinaldi went on to fight
for the World's title.
   Why manager Fritz Gretzschel didn't cash in on this victory and
challenge Schoeppner right then must remain a mystery. Instead Dieter
went on his victorious way against Continental opposition, slipping
only twice- when he was kayoed by Lennart Risberg in Stockholm last
November and this year when he was held to a draw by Frenchman Diouf.
   Helmut Ball, with American experience, got a shot at Schoeppner
instead and was narrowly outpointed. He cannot match Wemhoener for
skill, but punches hard enough to put away any cruiser in Europe.
   This fight looks like being the survival of the fittest, but
we'll go along with Wemhoener on account of his superior skill.
   In the main support heavyweight Ulli Nitzschke tackles American
Frankie Daniels in a return (Daniels won last time on points) and
lightweight champion Conny Rudhof opposes Zykaris Taki.
# 212
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"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things
   Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
   Of cabbages- and Kings"
   NEXT year we shall see another America's Cup contest. This
time it will be Australia who will be making her first challenge.
There were strong rumours that the Americans would not build a new
defender and that they would rely upon Stephen's designed Columbia,
perhaps improved, and Easterner which has been much improved and
has had twelve hundred pounds taken out of her in the form of cabin
fittings and needless furniture. This has allowed about six hundred
pounds of lead to be added to her keel.
   Now I hear that Easterner's designer Ray Hunt has been
commissioned to design a new potential defender. She will be built at
Graves Yard in Marblehead, Mass., next door to Ted Hood's sail loft.
The combination is a good one and the new boat will be much fancied.
   My American informant remarks that the trials next summer will be
better than the actual races for the cup and this was true of the last
challenge. He ends up by saying:
   "Unless the Aussies have shaved the rules so closely that they
squeak I think we might win again."
   I hear that the Red Duster Syndicate has ordered a 12-metre to
Arthur Robb's design from Groves & Guttridge of Cowes. It will be a
new venture on the part of this firm to build a twelve. No
information has been published as to the result of the extensive tests
made for this syndicate in the Saunders Roe tank. They have been
going on for a long time and much money has been spent.
   From what I can discover the general conclusion, after much
experimenting in tanks, is that it is difficult to improve much upon
the performance of hulls.
   It is, I think, generally accepted that there is still a
considerable margin for a breakthrough in the motive power- sails.
As I said last month, no one would dream of using cotton sails for
racing to-day and there is still probably room for improvement upon
Terylene rather by processing it or by using some form of sheer
plastic.
   Perhaps one answer may be the Ratsey "Venturi" spinnaker. The
vents are claimed to direct a strong downward thrust of air just
forward of the sail giving the spinnaker increased lift and driving
power. The idea is based on experience with aeronautical parachutes
and will be shown by Ratsey and Lapthorn Inc. at the 1962 National
Motorboat Show in New York.
   The Australian challenger designed by Alan Payne is making good
progress at Lars Halvorsen and Sons' yard on the Parramatta River at
Ryde, Sydney. She is expected to be in commission in December and her
first job will be trials against Vim. The Australians have
realistically decided that unless she can beat Vim there is no use
sending her to the States.
   Allowing for a period of tuning they should know the ability of
their new unnamed 12 by February. She will probably leave Sydney
during May, 1962, as deck cargo and she has to be at the starting line
off Newport, Rhode Island, on September 15. Vim will return to
the States in the same way at about the same time. The challenger
will have a light alloy mast built from American components. Her
sails will be made in Sydney from imported synthetic sailcloth by
Peter Cole and Joe Pearce. The materials for them will probably also
come from America.
   Two eleven-man teams have been trained in Vim but they have
lacked the stimulus of competition and it occurs to me that it would
have been a nice gesture to have shipped Sceptre to Australia at
the close of her successful season.
   Sceptre's recent successes have led some people to make
adverse comments about her crew in the America's Cup races but it must
be remembered that in Evaine she only had a trial horse and not a
contender for the challenge while the Americans enjoyed the fiercest
competition in their trials to select their defender. Her arrival in
Sydney in the autumn, or shall we say Sydney's spring, would have put
new life into the training of the two crews.
   The Australian syndicate led by Sir Frank Packer are reputed to
be spending +25, on their Cup bid. Let us hope that Alan Payne,
the builders, sailmakers and crew can pull something out of the bag,
for in many ways the dice are inevitably loaded against them.
   
   DISPLACED by the rebuilding programme of the Royal Thames
Yacht Club, the International Yacht Racing Union Annual Conference
took place in the Naval and Military Club, colloquially known, on
account of the notices on its entrance, as the In and Out. The
conference opened on Monday, October 3, and ended on Friday, November
3, with the general assembly of the Union which takes place once every
three years and which is attended by representatives from all member
nations. In fact 27 delegates took their seats, some of whom
represented more than one country and these delegates were assisted by
their advisers. When one considers that the permanent committee and
all the sub-committees are similarly helped by advisers one gets some
idea of the formidable body of international yachtsmen who descend
upon London for this occasion.
   There are 41 member countries and I should say that this
international meeting is an outstanding example of how international
affairs can be conducted in harmony. Yachtsmen, it seems, even if
they do not agree, can disagree gracefully and I think that much of
the success of these annual meetings is due to the tactful and
impartial chairmanship of Peter Scott, the President, backed by Harry
Morgan (U.S.A.) and Jan Loeff (Netherlands) as Vice-Presidents, and
by the knowledge and experience of the Hon. President, King Olav =5
of Norway.
   Over the years I have watched the members of the permanent
committee and the sub-committees shaking down together in the
realization that each knows his job, and each may well have his
idiosyncrasies. While there is continual change and a few new faces
every year, they become absorbed into the main body of the Union and
known by their Christian names, and there are a few <SIC>, for
instance, who would dream of addressing the Count of Caria as anything
but Bernardo.
   As usual, delegates were entertained to dinner by the Royal
Yachting Association and a very pleasant affair it was, if a little
cramped in its temporary quarters. There was the usual cocktail party
at the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and Group Captain Haylock's theatre
party which includes the wives. It seems that the latter come over
mainly for the purpose of going to our theatres in the evenings and
indulging in the most glorious shopping spree imaginable by day,
sometimes admirably helped by their daughters.
   
   AT a recent meeting, the Planning Committee of the
Hampshire County Council approved, with certain safeguards, the
building of a conventional power station by the Central Electricity
Generating Board at Fawley between the Fawley Oil Refinery and
Calshot.
   The power station will be three times the size of that at
Marchwood, at the head of Southampton Water. It is thus fairly
certain that with its 6ft chimney it will be visible from all
parts of the Solent. Unlike an oil refinery one cannot grumble much
about the fumes, smell and industrial dirt, generally, for little
comes out of the chimney except possibly invisible gasses. <SIC>
Cooling water in vast quantities will be discharged into Southampton
Water but except for being warmed it will be unchanged.
   What we can and do object to, however carefully "landscaped"
and however beautifully designed this power station may be, is the
fact that we shall be able to see it from all parts of the Solent.
This may seem a slight objection but it is a valid one. It is
necessary to man, and an amenity, to be able to look at unspoilt
nature and this, to a large extent, he can still do on the Solent
although it is fortuitous and cannot be attributed to anything except
lack of development before 1945.
   We have sacrificed part of this precious amenity already for we
can see the flames and chimneys of Fawley over the trees of the New
Forest practically anywhere in the West Solent. They are, however,
not particularly obtrusive, but there will be no hiding a great,
gloomy power station. It will brood over the Solent.
   It is particularly important that when you have only one little
stretch of sheltered water that is a recreational area for literally
millions of people that it should not be brooded over by anything,
whatever it is. I will freely admit that the old Calshot air station
is no thing of beauty, it is a pity it ever happened, but the
buildings are not particularly large and as one proceeds west down the
Solent it is soon unnoticeable. Not so this great power station. We
shall probably be able to see it from beyond the Needles, certainly
the chimney will be visible for miles further down the Channel.
   People have argued that one does not matter: this is the
last: there is still a lot left: that we should get used to it. We
don't agree with any of these comforting thoughts. With the power
station established, greedy hands will be stretched out for something
more, and if we do not jealously guard every inch of the Solent we
shall have power stations, oil refineries, factories and industry
leapfrogging down the banks until, what shall we have left? An
industrial drain like the London river. Who wants to go sailing on
dirty water? Yes, the water will be dirty all right.
   These are some of the things which we should ponder over, but not
waste too much time thinking about. While I sympathize with the
Central Electricity Generating Board, for nobody wants either their
power stations or their pylons, yachtsmen of today have a duty to
those of future generations.
   
   FOR some time I have been drawing attention to the need for
the Royal Yachting Association to take under its wing marine motoring.
I now hear that Donald Campbell and Major John Abraham, Commodore of
the Royal Motor Yacht Club, have registered the British Power Boat
Association after considerable preparatory work. Since then
discussions have taken place between Major Abraham and members of the
General Purposes Committee of the Royal Yachting Association and there
is every hope that motor yachting and motorboat racing and even
waterski-ing will eventually be brought under the R.Y.A. umbrella.
   On November 13 Major Abraham called a meeting of interested
parties on the motor side, but certain of the motorboat racing
fraternity felt that they might be swallowed lock, stock and barrel by
a powerful and established R.Y.A. I can assure them that their
fears are groundless. They will be on the same footing as dinghy
racing or for that matter any other branch of the sport.
   A Steering Committee of the motorboat side has been formed to
undertake further discussions with the Royal Yachting Association and
let us hope that before the new season opens we shall see the sport of
motorboating in all its branches firmly ensconced in the Royal
Yachting Association organization, members, as it were, of the
Commonwealth of Yachting.
   
   WITHOUT doubt a situation has now been reached on the South
Coast where, unless something is done soon, yachting and yachtbuilding
will be severely restricted because there will be nowhere to keep the
yachts, and orders are, in many instances, either being cancelled or
conditional upon a mooring being available. In Dartmouth a Marina has
already been opened and, this, in a part of the world where the
congestion was nothing like that around the Solent.
   It seems to be going well and this may encourage others to push
on with their plans in a number of places such as Poole, Bournemouth,
Lymington, Hamble and Portsmouth on the Solent, two places on
Chichester Harbour and in Newhaven and Swanage.
# 215
<124 TEXT E19>
WINES to meet a stranger
   To choose wines or cordials for food ranging from Moussaka to
Mangoes and Artichokes to Uglies poses something of a problem. On the
other hand, the dishes built upon these unusual fruits and vegetables
have a common characteristic. The main course dishes are strongly
flavoured and the fruits have a pleasant astringency behind their
sweetness. This means that one should avoid choosing wines that are
very dry or of delicate flavour. Sparkling wines do not really fit
into this picture, but strong, virile wines do. A full-bodied wine
for the main course, and a sweet wine for the fruits would be a good
general rule.
   One would do well to consider the wines of Greece to match the
moussaka. The special one, of course, is Retsina, a white wine
matured in resinated casks. I came to love it from drinking it in the
war years, but the fact must be faced, it is an acquired taste. My
wife contends that it tastes of ping-pong balls. It might be a good
thing to have a bottle or two for the initiated, and stick to a white
dry Samos for the majority. The price of both is about 8s. 6d. to
9s. per bottle. They should be served cold but not over-chilled.
   A good red alternative comes from Hungary- Egri Bikaver- the
dark wine from Eger known as Bull's Blood. It costs about 1s.
6d. per bottle. If you want something really strong, with a high
alcoholic content, Yugoslavia produces Dinjac, but it is not a wine
for weak heads! It costs about 8s. 9d. per bottle.
   There are also Spanish and Portuguese wines that go well with
strongly flavoured foods. The robust Spanish Chablis, the Rioja
Burgundy, and the Portuguese Vila Real Tinto are examples, all costing
about 7s. 6d. per bottle. Russian wines are now on the market,
and the red Mukuzani No. 4 would fit this menu well. It costs about
the same as the Spanish wines.
   Now for the wines to go with the fruit dishes. For those who
like a really sweet wine there is what is often called the Sauterne of
the Perigord: Monbazillac, costing from 8s. to 1s. per bottle.
Visitors to Vienna will perhaps remember the ancient cellars at
Gumpoldskirchner- the home of the fine Rotgipfler Auslese. This
costs about 15s. 6d. per bottle. Or to return to Greece, there is
the famous Mavrodaphne- the Italians drink a lot of it, and you may
have met it in Vienna.
   An alternative is to leave the "straight" wines out of the
planning and go for some kind of a cup. Pride of Oporto is a pleasant
and simple one. To produce about thirty glasses take one bottle of
tawny port, half a gill of Orange Curac?6ao, one lemon, and a siphon
of soda. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into a bowl, adding the port
and Curac?6ao, then slicing the lemon into it. Let it stand for
about 2 minutes and then serve the glasses about two-thirds full of
the mixture, topping up with iced soda water.
   It is always a good thing to have a jug of non-alcoholic cup
about the place. A simple and pleasant one can be made by mixing
lemon and orange cordial in the ratio of two of lemon to one of
orange. Before adding water, a slice of lemon and orange and a lump
or two of ice, put in a couple of teaspoonfuls of "Ribena." The
colour combination is delightful and it enhances the flavour.
   Finally, there is the ape?2ritif, if one is needed. If you want
to give your friends something out of the ordinary, costing less than
2s. per bottle, there is Pineau Imperial des Charentes, from the
Cognac region. Alternatively, there is the more expensive- about
4s. per bottle- plum brandy from Yugoslavia and Hungary-
Slivovitz. Even quite a small glass makes a party go. And if there
is any left it is equally good as a liqueur. If by any chance you
have difficulty in finding the drinks I have mentioned, write to
Woman's Journal who will tell you where they may be bought.
   JOHN BAKER WHITE
Wines worth singing for
   THERE has never been a time when wines from so many different
countries were available in Britain. This means that there is a
tremendous field for experiment, and having a lot of fun without
spending too much. So, in choosing wines for the four suppers, I have
tried to be original and, except for the Supper Party wines,
inexpensive, despite recent increases in price.
   Supper Party. Here perhaps one can spread one's wings a
little and forget the family budget. As an ape?2ritif serve,
chilled, a wonderful wine that comes from the Jura- namely the 1949
Cha?5teau-Chalon. It is the rarest wine in France, and is matured
for seven years before bottling. A bottle will cost you about 35s.
but it will be a wonderful experience for your guests.
   With the food I think a Portuguese Mateus Rose?2, the pale pink
wine with natural sparkle, would be fun. It must, of course, be
chilled, and costs about 13s. to 14s. a flask. A very pleasant
alternative would be a Franconian Steinwein, also in flasks known as
Boxbeutels, and costing about 17s. 6d. It is a fairly safe bet
that one of the guests will want to take the empty flask home; they
make delightful lamp bases. If you feel that the Cha?5teau-Chalon is
beyond your pocket you could cut out the ape?2ritif and serve a glass
of light non-vintage port with the Boston Cream Pie; or perhaps even
better, an inexpensive dessert wine from Cyprus called Commandaria.
It has been made since the crusades.
   Family Sit-Down Supper. The mackerel is a splendid fish that
deserves good treatment, and I would be inclined to accentuate the
Italian accent of the main course, serving before dinner an Italian
ape?2ritif that has only just come on to the British market. Its
name is Riccadonna Bitter Vermouth, a blend of herbs with fortified
wines from Canelli. The bottle should be iced and a twist of lemon
put in each glass.
   We do not drink as much Italian white wine as we might in
Britain, so I would choose a Soave Di Verona, or if you have
difficulty in finding it, the sweeter Orvieto. Both should cost under
1s. per bottle. With the hot souffle?2 a glass of that fine but
neglected wine Marsala would go admirably. When I was young the Royal
Navy used to drink it before lunch instead of gin but nowadays most
people relegate it to the kitchen, which is a pity. I would choose a
medium-rich wine like Corona, costing about 12s. per bottle. If you
can find a Malaga, then try that.
   Supper Round The Fire. Quite a few people hold to the view
that it is a waste of wine to drink it with curry. I do not agree,
but obviously as curry is made from spices the wine must be
full-blooded to "live" with it. This meal has a big fruit content,
so one must look also for a fruity wine. Before supper a glass of
Madeira would go well, especially if it is a Verdelho or an Old Rich
Bual.
   And with the meal itself? I have mentioned the red wines of
Chile before, and I do so again, because I think the Santa Rita or
Cabernet would match this food. A good alternative would be one of
the Australian Burgundies, which are sound and dependable: after all
the Australians have been making wine for over a hundred years and
send vine specialists all over the world. None of these wines should
cost much over 8s. per bottle, but don't roast them in front of the
fire. Let them "breathe" for a few hours in the room, taking up
its temperature.
   After-Theatre Supper. It is a mistake to drink too heavy a
wine before going to bed, and anyway the composition of this meal
demands both lightness and flavour. A light, young Beaujolais would
go well, all the better if it was chilled. In this country we raise
our hands in horror at the thought of chilling red wine, but with some
it is both justifiable and desirable. A good alternative would be a
white Alsatian, such as the Sylvaner costing about 1s. or the drier
Riesling, which is a bit dearer. Another alternative would be a South
African medium dry white Paarl Amber, costing about 8s. The Cape
has been producing wine for a long, long time and this "hock" is
good value, and will not be heavy. If you want a "warmer" at the
end of the meal, what about a glass of Cherry Brandy?
   John Baker White
WINES with Star Attraction
   NOVEMBER is the first month of real Winter, liable to give us
a sharp nip as a reminder of what lies ahead. As it can produce
gales, icy winds, frozen roads, and fog we should choose our drinks on
the principle of "something to keep the cold out." As a Winter
surprise let me suggest an original cocktail. Into a champagne glass
put a lump of sugar, an eggspoonful of brandy, and on the sugar
literally one drop of angostura bitters. Fill up with an iced
sparkling white wine from Australia. Gramp's Barossa Dry Pearl,
costing about 15s. per bottle, or Rose Pearl, at the same price, do
the job jolly well. When you "top-up" there is no need to put in
any more sugar or brandy.
   Before I consider the other dishes I must come on to the Crown of
Lamb, for it is a splendid dish deserving a splendid wine. Recently
in our own house we gave it to an internationally famous restaurateur,
and served it with a 1949 Mouton Cadet. This is pretty hard to come
by so look for a 1955 Cha?5teau Beychevelle. This will cost about
17s. 6d. per bottle. If you prefer a Burgundy try a 1955 Charmes
Chambertin costing round about +1.
   The Roast Turkey, too, demands special attention, and as it has
walnut stuffing a richly flavoured wine would be my choice. The 1955
Louis Jadot Chevalier Montrachet "Les Demoiselles" is an excellent
White Burgundy, and worth all of the 3s. you may have to pay for
it. If this looks like putting your party budget out of gear,
Bouchard Pe?3re et Fils 1955 Puligny-Montracet is a fine wine,
costing a little over +1 per bottle. For the Caneton aux Cerises,
some experts might quarrel with my choice, a Cristal Dry Sparkling
White Burgundy, costing about 16s. 6d. per bottle. That great
judge of wines, the late Professor Saintsbury, always had high praise
for this wine. Should you be averse to sparkling wines I have washed
down many a plump duckling from the meadows of the Loire with a
Muscadet, costing about 12s., or a Puilly Blanc-Fume?2, costing
perhaps 16s. 6d. These wines would, in my opinion, go well with
the Poulet as well.
   Bacon with brandied peaches seems to demand one of the vintage
ciders rather than a wine. The one I know best is the Church Farm
cider from Smarden in Kent, costing 6s. 6d. per bottle. I have
also enjoyed Bulmers Strongbow, Old Vathouse, which is not so strong
and consequently cheaper. It is worth remembering that vintage
ciders- Merrydown from Horam is another of them- are stronger than
many wines.
   And a dessert wine to go with the sweets? If you want to have a
bit of fun, follow Commander Anthony Hogg's advice. Decant a bottle
of Barone Ricasoli's 1953 estate-bottled Vin Santo Brolio, and ask
your wine-conscious guests to tell you where it comes from. It will
cost you about 17s. a bottle.
   If the night is cold you may feel like giving your guests a hot
Punch. With me The Bishop remains a firm favourite. For 2 people
you need:
   2 lemons and cloves
   1 quart of Australian Gramp's Orlando Ruby dessert wine, costing
11s. 6d. per bottle
   1 pint boiling water
   mixed spices
   2 oz. lump sugar
# 222
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Oyster Forcemeat
   _12 oysters, cooked or
   1 small tin oysters
   1 oz. finely chopped suet
   2 eggs
   6 oz. breadcrumbs
   Salt and pepper
   2 tablesp. cream
   Mix the breadcrumbs with the suet, add the liquor from the
oysters, a good sprinkling of salt and pepper, the cream and the
oysters cut in small pieces. Mix well with the beaten eggs. Stir in
a double saucepan over boiling water for 5 mins. Leave until cold,
then use.
Chestnut Stuffing
   _2 lb. chestnuts
   1/2 pt. water
   2 oz. butter
   Salt and pepper
   Slit each chestnut and roast them for 2 mins. in a moderate
oven. Then allow to cool a little and remove outer husk and inner
skin, put in a saucepan and just cover with water and simmer till soft
and floury. Be careful that they do not boil dry and catch. Put
through a fine moulin or sieve, stir in butter and seasoning and stuff
breast of turkey.
Sausage Forcemeat
   _1 lb. pork sausages or
   1 lb. pork sausage meat
   2 tablesp. fine breadcrumbs
   1 tablesp. stock or gravy
   1 teasp. finely chopped fresh herbs or good pinch of dried ones
   1 finely chopped onion
   Remove the skin from the sausages. Mix thoroughly with the other
ingredients, moisten with the stock and use.
Celery Stuffing
   _1/2 lb. finely chopped celery
   4 oz. shredded suet
   1 tablesp. chopped parsley
   grated rind of 1/2 lemon
   1 finely chopped onion
   2 eggs
   1/2 lb. breadcrumbs
   2 oz. ham
   Good pinch of dried mixed herbs
   Salt and pepper
   Use white heart of celery. Mix all the dry ingredients together
and blend with the well-beaten eggs.
   
   Use any two or three.
   If you intend to serve a different bird or two smaller birds:
Duck:
Mixed Herb Forcemeat with 2 oz. finely chopped onion and 1
teasp. sage instead of mixed herbs.
Pheasant or Chicken:
Any one or two stuffings.
Goose:
As duck with the oyster or celery stuffing in addition.
   
   Having stuffed and sewn up turkey, place him on a large baking
tray. Put 2 rashers of bacon fat over the breast. Spread 1/4 lb.
softened margarine or cooking fat fairly thickly all over the rest of
him, and cover him with aluminium cooking foil, pressing it well over
him.
   On Christmas Day, allow 15 mins. to the pound, so that a
1-lb. bird will take 2 1/2 hrs. A 16-lb. bird will probably be
ready in about 3 1/2 hrs. rather than his full 4 hrs., and should
be tested with a skewer after this time. Preheat the oven to Elec.,
3@ F.; Gas, Mark 5; Solid Fuel, Moderate, and keep it at these
low temperatures until 3/4 hr. before the bird should be done,
basting every 3 mins., and using more fat if necessary. Then, 3/4
hr. before serving, turn the oven up to Elec., 45@ F.; Gas,
Mark 7; Solid Fuel, Hot- remove paper and bacon rashers, baste well
and allow the breast to brown to a rich mahogany. Some people prefer
to turn the bird right over and finish breast downwards to prevent
drying, but this is difficult with a large bird, and should not be
necessary if he is properly basted.
   Sausages and Bread Sauce may be served with the turkey.
Cranberry Sauce is also excellent.
   The traditional vegetables are brussels sprouts and celery and
roast potatoes, but with frozen vegetables a much greater choice is
open. If there is no room round the turkey for roast potatoes and not
enough space in the oven to cook them in a separate tray, well-creamed
potatoes with plenty of butter and milk are very good.
   Tinned or fresh stewed cranberries served in half lemon skins,
one for each person, are unusual and delicious.
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
Ingredients:
   _3/4 lb. shredded suet
   4 eggs
   1/2 lb. each prunes, stoned, mixed peel, cut in long strips,
small raisins, sultanas, currants, sifted flour, sugar and brown
crumbs
   1/4 lb. dates
   1 teasp. mixed spice
   1/2 nutmeg, grated
   1 teasp. salt
   1/4 pt. milk
   Juice of 1/2 lemon
   A large wineglassful brandy
   1/4 cherries
Shopping List:
   _1 lb. suet
   4 eggs
   1 lb. prunes (large)
   1/2 lb. peel
   1/2 lb. raisins
   1 lb. sultanas
   1 lb. currants
   Dates
   1/4 lb. cherries
   Spice
   Nutmeg
   Lemon
   Brandy
   This is a very old and special recipe. The quantities given make
one large and two small puddings.
   Mix the dry ingredients, stir in eggs, beaten to a froth, and the
milk lemon juice and brandy mixed. Stand for 12 hrs. in a cool
place, then turn into buttered basins. Boil for 6 hrs. On
Christmas Day, boil for 2 hrs. before serving.
   Cover the basins with buttered greaseproof paper and then tie
each one with a cloth. Stand in a fish kettle or bath or separately
in large saucepans, so that the water comes half-way up each bowl.
Renew water by adding more boiling water from time to time.
MINCEMEAT
   All mincemeat, if it is to be made at home, should be prepared
at least a fortnight before Christmas, and to make it in November is
better still. Mincemeat keeps almost indefinitely and some people
prefer it when it has been kept from the year before. If you have
some from last year, you may find that it has become a little dry and
crumbly-looking. In this case turn it into a bowl and mix it with a
little brandy, which will restore the consistency and improve the
flavour. Failing brandy, use cooking sherry or lemon juice.
Mincemeat
Ingredients:
   _1 lb. raisins
   1/4 lb. sultanas
   1/2 lb. marmalade
   1/2 lb. suet
   1/2 lemon
   1/2 teasp. mixed spice
   1 gill brandy
   1/2 lb. currants
   1/4 lb. candied peel
   1/2 lb. demerara sugar
   1 lb. good cooking apples
   1/4 teasp. nutmeg
   Good pinch of ground ginger
Shopping List:
   _1 lb. raisins
   1/2 lb. currants
   1/2 lb. peel
   1/2 lb. sultanas
   1/2 lb. suet
   1/2 lb. marmalade (thick)
   1/2 lb. demerara sugar
   Ground ginger
   Nutmeg
   Mixed spice
   1 lb. apples
   Lemon
   Stalk currants, and wash all the dried fruit. Grate the rind of
lemon. Peel, core and slice apples, put all through mincer. When
minced, stir well, add lemon juice and brandy, stir again, fill into
jars and tie down so that they are airtight. Keep in a dry, cool
place.
Mincemeat- Without Brandy
Ingredients:
   _6 oz. suet
   1/2 lb. currants
   4 oz. castor sugar
   Juice and peel of 1/2 lemon
   2 oz. blanched almonds
   6 oz. raisins
   1 lb. cooking apples
   1/2 teasp. each salt, mixed spice
Shopping List:
   _1/2 lb. suet
   1/2 lb. currants
   1/2 lb. castor sugar
   Lemon
   2 oz. blanched almonds
   1/2 lb. raisins
   1 lb. cooking apples
   Salt
   Mixed spice
   Peel, core and cut up apples, and stone the raisins. Grate
lemon. Mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly, then add the others.
When well mixed, put into jars, cover and store in a dry, cool place.
CHRISTMAS CAKE
Ingredients:
   _8 oz. self-raising flour
   6 oz. butter
   6 oz. soft brown sugar
   3 eggs
   3 tablesp. milk
   3 dessertsp. rum, sherry, whisky or brandy
   2 oz. Jordan almonds
   6 oz. raisins
   6 oz. currants
   4 oz. sultanas
   2 oz. glace?2 cherries
   2 oz. mixed peel
   1 teasp. mixed spice
   3/4 teasp. ground ginger
   3/4 Teasp. <SIC> cinnamon
   1/2 teasp. salt
Shopping List:
   _3 eggs
   Rum, brandy, sherry or whisky
   1/2 lb. raisins
   1/2 lb. currants
   1/2 lb. sultanas
   1/4 lb. cherries
   1/4 lb. peel
   Spice
   Ginger
   Cinnamon
   Quantities are for a 7-9-in. cake tin. Prepare tin by lining
with greased greaseproof paper. Blanch and chop the almonds, prepare
fruit, chop peel, and cut cherries in half. Sieve all the dry
ingredients together. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream and beat
in the eggs. Mix dry ingredients with the fruit and stir in,
moistening with milk and rum or sherry. Turn into prepared tin and
hollow out the centre slightly. Place on the second runner from the
bottom of the oven. Bake at Elec., 325@ F.; Gas, Mark 4-5; Solid
Fuel, Cool, for 2 1/2 hrs. Leave in the tin until cold.
   This cake would last four or five people two or three days.
Christmas Cake
Ingredients:
   _1 lb. fresh butter
   1 lb. flour
   1/2 oz. mixed spice
   1 lb. candied peel (substitute raisins if peel not liked)
   1 lb. sultanas
   1 eggs
   1 lb. moist sugar
   1 lb. currants
   1/2 lb. almonds
   1/2 lb. cherries
Shopping List:
   _1 eggs
   1 lb. butter
   1 lb. sultanas
   1 lb. currants
   1/2 lb. almonds
   1/2 lb. cherries
   1 lb. brown sugar
   1 lb. peel
   Beat the butter to a cream and stir into it the yolks of the 1
eggs well beaten with the sugar, then add the spice and the almonds
chopped very fine. Stir in the flour, add the currants washed and
dried, the sultanas, the candied peel cut into pieces or the raisins
chopped up. As each ingredient is added, the mixture must be beaten.
Then butter a paper, place it round a tin, put in the cake, and bake
it for 3 hrs. at Elec., 3@ F.; Gas, Mark 4-5; Solid Fuel,
Cool.
   This is a very much larger cake and is very rich. It keeps very
well and may be baked in a very large tin, 1 or 12 in., or two
smaller ones.
ICING THE CHRISTMAS CAKE
Shopping List: for all icings:
   _1/2 lb. ground almonds
   2 lb. icing sugar
   2 lemons
   4 eggs
Almond Icing
Ingredients: (Quantity for 8-9-in. cake.)
   _1/2 lb. ground almonds
   1/2 lb. icing sugar
   1 egg
   1 teasp. lemon juice
   1 dessertsp. water
   Sieve almonds and sugar together into a mixing bowl. Stir in the
beaten egg and lemon juice and water. Dust pastry-board with icing
sugar and knead the almond paste on it till it is smooth and
coagulated.
   Roll out about 1/4-in. thick. Brush the cake over with warm
apricot jam. Fit almond paste over and press gently on to cake, being
careful not to break. Cut any surplus from bottom edge of cake.
   The other method is to cut a circle the size of the top of the
cake. Roll out remainder to length of circumference of cake (measure
with string) and trim to a strip the depth of the cake. Then brush
sides of cake with jam and lay on the strip and roll so that the strip
adheres. Brush top with jam and apply circle. Gently press cut edges
together.
   The Almond icing may be put on the cake as soon as it is really
cold- allow 24 hrs. after baking. It should then be stored in an
airtight tin in a dry, cool place, to be iced and decorated later.
   Some people dislike almond icing and it can be replaced by a
layer of glace?2 icing.
Glace?2 Icing
Ingredients:
   _1/2 lb. icing sugar
   1 tablesp. water
   1 teasp. lemon juice
   A soft icing to be put direct on the cake instead of Almond Paste
if preferred.
   Sieve the icing sugar into a saucepan in which you have already
put the water and lemon juice. Stir it over a low heat, holding it
off the fire, until the sugar is melted and the temperature is just
above blood heat. Pour it over the cake and allow it to run down the
sides, smoothing it with a hot knife.
Royal Icing
Ingredients:
   _1 lb. icing sugar
   1 dessertsp. Lemon juice
   2 egg whites
   This is the icing to use for the final coating and for the
decorations.
   Sieve the icing sugar, making sure that it is quite free from
lumps and lying slightly fluffed in the bowl. Stir in the lemon
juice. Whip the whites of eggs to a medium stiffness, not until they
will stand in peaks. Stir in gently, and then beat with a wooden
spoon till you have a perfectly smooth, very white cream. If there is
any delay before using, cover the bowl with a damp tea towel tightly
stretched across the top to prevent air entering and hardening the
icing. If icing seems too thin, more sugar may be beaten in.
# 29
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TRAVEL
A HOLIDAY ON ANCIENT RHODES
By GORDON COOPER
   Rhodes, as far as I am concerned, is the perfect holiday
island: it has wonderful beaches and scenery, lush vegetation, a
number of archaeological and historic remains and good hotels. It is
full of that usually rather overvaunted quality "character."
   Recently, I flew out by B.E.A. Comet 4B, now operating on a
direct London-Athens service via Geneva. This route over the Alps,
Florence, Brindisi, the Adriatic, Corfu and the Gulf of Corinth is
rich in its rewards, and the service was, as usual, impeccable on this
swift, smooth airliner. The tourist return fare is +1 16s.
(day), +84 12s. (night), and the five-hour day flight links up at
Athens with an Olympic Airways' schedule, taking just over an hour to
Rhodes (through fare from London, +94 1s. to +18). An
alternative route is by sea from Piraeus, taking twenty-two hours.
   The approach to Rhodes by day is perfect. It is, according to
legend, the island which rose in beauty from the foam, promised to
Apollo by Zeus after he had divided the world amongst the gods, and
overlooked the sun lord. Apollo named the island "Bride of the
Sun." Certainly the sun has blessed it. The seven springs, which
feed Rhodes from the central mountains, have made it a garden of
olive, lemon and orange groves, mulberry, oleander, pine and the slim
pure cypress. Hibiscus and wistaria glow against white walls; the
grassland is carpeted with wild flowers of every description and
poppies drip blood red where Rhodians once met by ancient temple or
market place.
   
   After the original settlers came the Phoenicians, followed at
varying intervals and amongst others by the Dorians, the Romans, the
Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Turks, and the Italians. Rhodes,
capital of the Dodecanese, was finally reunited with Greece fourteen
years ago, but the marks of 3,5 years of passing civilisations
remain to enchant the visitor.
   The city of Rhodes itself is a gem. Huge medieval ramparts rise
from the edge of one of her two harbours to enclose the old town,
including the Castello, the magnificent palace of the Grand Masters of
the Knights of St. John- later the Knights of Malta- who ruled the
island for 216 years. Here, for the first time, Son et
Lumie?3re performances are being held this year. The Street of
the Knights, rising steeply up to the Castello, is a medieval painting
brought to life. Nearby, the Museum of Rhodes is housed in a lovely
fifteenth-century building. You should walk round the ramparts of the
old city, too, with superb views at each turn, and allow time to
wander in the old commercial quarter, with its oriental influence, its
minarets and clutter of wares, and the buzz of activity which
increases proportionately as the day ends.
   Outside the ramparts the spacious modern city, largely in
Venetian-Gothic style, owes much to Italian occupation. Above Rhodes,
with glorious views in every direction, you should visit the
Acropolis, with remains of the Temple of Apollo and the stadium and
the completely restored theatre at its feet.
   Though Rhodes was founded in 48 B.C., three other cities
had been thriving already 1, years, reaching their peak from 66
B.C. Of these, Lindos, about 35 miles south of Rhodes, was the
most important, with a population of some 1,. To-day, it is a
stark white village of 75 inhabitants, clustered at the southern end
of a beautiful bay and overlooked by the medieval fortress built by
the Knights of St. John, in turn enclosing the remains of the Doric
temple of Athena Lindia, on the Acropolis. This is reached on foot or
by donkey, and from the top there are breath-taking views over this
dramatic coastline, including the tiny natural harbour where St.
Paul is said to have landed. The village itself is fascinating to
explore and has an early Byzantine church, its interior lavishly
covered with later frescoes.
   On the opposite coast, about 2 miles south-west of Rhodes, the
reconstructed ruins of Kamiros have one of the most perfect situations
of any archaeological remains I know. Here, on a steep hillside,
amongst pines and clumps of wild rose, you can walk up the "main
street" of ancient Kamiros between the low ruins of shops and villas
to the high plateau topped by six columns, all that remain of the
ancient Stoa. Behind you, the coastal hills plunge to the incredibly
blue sea, backed by the Turkish mountains.
   
   Of the third ancient city, Ialyssos, about 1 miles south-west of
Rhodes, little that is visible remains. But its former Acropolis,
8-ft. Mount Philerimos, whose summit is reached by an Alpine-like
series of hairpin bends, is topped by the restored medieval church
built, partially over Byzantine remains, by the Knights of St. John.
Before the church entrance are the ruins of the Temple of Athena.
Once again the views on all sides, framed between cypress trees, are
lovely beyond description.
   Then there is the Valley of the Butterflies, about 15 miles south
of Rhodes, so-called because of the clouds of butterflies which
populate its wild scenery during the summer. Organised excursions are
arranged to all these centres, or if you prefer to wander alone, you
can hire a car, motor scooter or use local bus services. A weekly
steamer service will also take you over to Turkey, returning the same
day.
   Rhodes itself offers a good and growing selection of hotel
accommodation- including the Hotel des Roses (Luxury), the Belvedere
(1st class B), both with private beaches, and the Pindos (2nd class).
A new 1st-class hotel, the Hibiscus, with private beach, opens this
summer. Most interesting of the hotel developments, however, is the
Miramare-Beach hotel, recently taken over by Swiss management. About
three miles out of town, it is a private paradise situated on the
curve of a broad bay, looking out to the Turkish coast, 18 miles away.
Accommodation is in self-contained bungalow units with private toilet
and shower or bath, each with its own sun terrace from some of which
you can step straight down on to the extensive private beach. Full
pension rates range from +3 a day, including the hotel's many
facilities, such as swimming-pool, miniature golf, dancing, tennis and
transport into town.
   The perfect time to visit the island is in spring or autumn.
Summer can be very hot, and intermittent rainy spells usually occur
any time between November and late February.
SABENA CARAVELLES TO GREECE
   Early in April, Sabena Belgian World Airlines brought their
Caravelle =6's into service on the Brussels-Athens run, via Vienna or
Frankfurt. This links with the company's Caravelle schedules
London-Brussels and onwards from Athens to various points in the
Middle East. As usual, I found the Caravelle extremely comfortable
and the flight virtually noiseless. The triangular windows offer a
particularly fine view. Good hotels in Athens are the Grande Bretagne
(6de luxe), on the main square, the Ambassadeurs (A), and the
Alice (B). The King George =2 (6de luxe), next door to the
Grande Bretagne, should also be mentioned for its fine art gallery- a
private collection covering Greek art of the nineteenth century and
including some delightful works.
TRAVEL
MINORCA
By GORDON COOPER
   Minorca, second largest of the Balearic Islands, is also their
Cinderella. While this "White and Blue Island"- so called because
of the remarkable blue of the Mediterranean sea and sky broken by the
brilliant white of the houses- may not offer much in the way of
organised entertainments, it has considerable appeal for those
prepared to make their own discoveries. Not least, it still retains
an unspoilt atmosphere.
   The island is not difficult to reach, for there are air links
between it and Barcelona and Palma, while there are thrice weekly
sailings during the summer months between Barcelona and Port Mahon, as
well as sea communications with Palma and Ibiza. It is even possible
to make a long day-excursion to Minorca from Palma, travelling both
ways by the night steamer. In Mahon there is the first-class Hotel
Mahon, and there is simple hotel accommodation available at Alcaufer
Creek (Hotel Xuroy), Fornells (Fonda Burdo) and near Ciudadela (Hotel
Bahia). Internal communications are by bus and taxi. There is a
Tourist Information Office in Mahon, and Horizon Holidays (17, Hanover
Street, W.1) offer inclusive travel arrangements.
   As every schoolboy knows, Minorca was a British possession during
most of the eighteenth century, for it was vital to our naval
operations in the Mediterranean. It was the scene, too, of that
scandalous episode in our history: the events which led to the
shooting of Admiral Byng. You can still visit the Golden Farm, close
to Mahon, which was the temporary home of Nelson and Lady Hamilton in
1798.
   Our occupation, however, is not marked as in some other lands by
a passion for cricket, but in reminders of our habits, such as the
sash windows to be seen in many houses and the names given to various
articles in constant use which indicate a survival of the English
language. Among table accessories the following indicate their
origin: kitil (kettle); botil (bottle); mok (mug);
saydbord (sideboard); and tibord (tea-tray). Barracks are
still called beriks, a haversack is aversack, and a naval
guard is midzamen (midshipman). The inquiring visitor will
discover many more of these curious survivals in language.
   
   At Villa Carlos, known in the eighteenth century as Georgetown,
the architecture and planning all belong to Portsmouth, with even,
to-day, a George Street, a Stuart Street, and even a Victory Street.
One of the many forts we built at the entrance to the harbour
preserves the name of "Marlborough," while in the large square,
once used for ceremonial parades, I watched Spanish soldiers playing
football and called up "a vision of serried lines of Redcoats,
resplendent in their pipe-clayed accoutrements and thickly-powdered
pigtails, of Highlanders in their curious blend of barbaric and formal
uniforms, and of the tall Hessians in blue and gold braid" (Eric
Whelpton). Incidentally, on public holidays the girls dance a local
version of the Highland Fling and wear on these occasions a kind of
kilt with a tartan pattern.
   In addition to this historical appeal, there is also considerable
archaeological interest, for the island is dotted with the work of
prehistoric man, even though much of this record in stone is hard to
read. The most interesting are the megalithic monuments called
talayots; tower-like structures of unmortared blocks of stone
which bear a certain resemblance to the nuraghe of Sardinia, but
are not actually linked in any way. There are also the altar-like
taulas and the boat-shaped navetas, all offering appeal to
those with historical imagination. Why should these relics be unique
of their kind? They certainly provide a mystery for us to-day.
   
   Ciudadela, the only other town of size, is some 3 miles distant
from Mahon, and lies on the north-western portion of Minorca. Prior
to the British occupation, it was the capital of the island, and it
still retains some interesting buildings, including a number of
palaces. Generally rather sleepy, it comes to life on St. John's
Day (June 24), when there is a parade of mounted men in period dress,
jousting, and, most exciting of all, the horsemen urging their steeds
up staircases into the living-rooms of the people, who pelt them with
nuts and lighted fireworks.
   The hinterland of Minorca is flat, except for Monte Toro (1,15
ft.), a conical mountain on whose summit there is a pilgrimage
church. The view over the countryside is rewarding, for it shows the
number of mortarless stone walls which separate every patch of ground.
There are even walls around individual trees. The land, by the way,
is extremely stony, and high winds often prevail. But the most
striking impression one gets is the dazzling white of the houses, and
every building looks as though it had just been whitewashed, while the
interior of even the humblest home is spotlessly clean. (Were the
English of the nineteenth century non-litter-bugs?)
   
   The people on this Spanish island are most hospitable, and you
can still see occasionally in their homes family heirlooms of Georgian
furniture.
# 218
<127 TEXT E22>
the face of Hungary TODAY
STORY AND PICTURES BY H. PEARCE SALES
not much is known in Britain about this great little country which
burst into flames and into the news in 1956 and has since been
forgotten in the West
   SO-CALLED socialist realism which at least until lately has
created a dull conformity over most aspects of life in communist
countries has taken a resounding defeat in Hungary. The traveller
cannot but be encouraged immensely by this. The artistic temperament
of the people is bursting out of a somewhat shabby shell on all sides
as a result of 1956 and its uprising. Costly and tragic though it was
it was not in vain by a long way. A more liberal form of communism
emerged.
   The results of such comparative freedom of expression in the
use of colour and in sheer ingenuity in the use of all kinds of
materials are delightful and Sandor Patofi, Hungary's greatest poet,
who called his compatriots to launch an earlier revolution in his
famous Arise Hungary, would have written an even more passionate piece
about this silent revolution if he were alive today.
   Hungary will become the Italy of the eastern 6bloc if she
is not already assuming the mantle. The Bond Street area of Budapest,
Va?2cintca and Petofil Sa?2ndor, is crowded at most times of the day
with elegant women. This we take as a signpost. Although it is
foolish to make forecasts in this context we would not be surprised if
the Hungarian's natural bent for original artistic creation will not
in time permeate the thinking of all the eastern 6bloc in even
the details of everyday living.
   The priorities of industrial output are being reshuffled in
several countries there and time and talent will soon be given to mass
producing those fripperies that make life worthwhile for women and
women more interesting to men.
   Except that for most people clothing is mainly of second quality
and to them is expensive, and cars and refrigerators and the hallmarks
generally of a highly developed industrial society are not easily
obtainable, the ordinary people seem to have a considerable vested
interest in the present way of life in Hungary today.
   Necessities and pastimes are abundant and very cheap and
encourage support for the present regime, the Hungarians never having
tasted the riches of the western peoples and having almost always been
part of an oppressed and depressed nation. Just imagine experiencing
a change from fascism to communism almost overnight!
   It was not easy for anyone to believe at the time- about a year
ago- when the noted scholar A. J. P. Taylor returned from a
visit to Hungary, and wrote an encouraging report, that he was not
misled while there.
   This is what he wrote: 'the solid unmistakable fact is that
Hungarians are now pretty well off: I have never seen a greater
display of foodstuffs... there are clothes in every quality, from
multiple stores to elegant private shops- in the provinces too: the
days of hardship are over'. We can verify this.
   Now, at a later date, we can add much that will help the travel
adviser who wants intelligently and honestly to discuss this unusual
country with prospective tourists.
   Ask any man in the street in London what he knows about Hungary
today and he will mention the 1956 uprising and little else. To
save face he might mention what he will call the international scandal
of that year, that though a huge wave of sympathy went out to the
Hungarian people, they were crushed militarily and the West did
nothing- as if it could. He might even brighten up and say that he
had an idea that they breed fine horses and horsemen.
   Even in the history books of the West, Hungary is pictured as
an unhappy country. Riches and privilege ruled and a firmly
entrenched church was somehow entangled with those excesses while
three million beggars, a term often used to describe the population,
existed on what they could scrape from a not very good soil.
   Now a welfare state is firmly established and so far the people
seem able to express themselves fairly freely in their work and play
and are no longer considered mainly as units in an economic machine
which has to be pushed along vigorously to meet over ambitious
industrial targets though in the end what is produced and achieved is
for those same people.
   The danger of greater control being exercised is still there,
though we feel that this excitable people still very much Hungarian at
heart would revolt again without question and without considering the
consequences if pressure were again exerted. Some leading communists
confide that the system is now too liberal to achieve quickly enough
the kind of results that will impress the children and young people.
   Nevertheless the picture in the mind of western man seriously
needs to be corrected. The Hungarian people are no longer poor or
oppressed according to their standards.
   Hungary today judging by our own conscientious observations and
pointed enquiry is climbing above its circumstances.
   If as is likely Hungary becomes the 'Swiss' workshop of the
eastern 6bloc in the highly skilled uses of metal in the
communist version of a common market at least a settled and
increasingly prosperous period is likely to be written into a history
that has had far too many 'glorious' revolutions, occupations and
invasions.
   Budapest, the only city which the Danube actually crosses of
the eight countries it flows through, shows few marks of her previous
troubles, though only a quarter of her housing was standing after the
war, and she lost all six bridges and the row of well-known hotels on
the Danube.
   Even during the worst period of the Berlin crisis when the two
Mr. Ks were shouting across the world there was no tension at all
among the people though some strapping young men of the army were
sweating it out in exercises in the country.
   The people went off as usual at the week-end to the Buda hills
for hiking and picnics, or wandered around the museums in Pest, or
compromised for the parks or swimming pools of the mile long St.
Margaret Island in midstream between Buda and Pest- the city has 5
parks.
   They were however all anxious freely to discuss the situation and
were upset mainly because the socialist nations were not being
considered in the West the powerful and progressive forces that was
their due in the counsels of the nations. They were as fearful of the
situation as is mankind everywhere.
   The greatest charge on the material plane that western man
makes against socialist systems is that spreading wealth to the
ultimate extent and controlling everything tends as we intimated in
our introductory remarks to bring conformity and dullness.
   But one tends not to consider the spirit of some peoples to
overcome this or that personal gain is not the only incentive that
mankind responds to. And whatever virtues the Hungarians may lack it
is certainly not a shortage of spirit. Consider their history!
   After the first stages of socialisation, and when it becomes
normal and accepted and the party and Government feel 'safe',
individuality tends gradually to come out and bloom again throughout
human society and especially so in those countries where communism was
born of war and was not adopted initially by choice. But it may take
a long, long time.
   Hungary is a case in point and examples at random come to mind.
Her new architecture is attractive, imaginative and colourful and
invites comment. Whether flats or shops or restaurants, there is a
marked individuality.
   At an international football match in Budapest in the presence
of a visiting premier, Mr. Kadar, and a benchful of important party
members, there was no communist or patriotic paraphernalia. Even
recorded cha cha chas were played during the interval and an
advertisement trundled round on the back of a lorry for a local leg
show.
   Her new and refurbished hotels and restaurants are refreshingly
different in furnishings and approach, even the uniforms of the staff,
though conforming to that simplicity that is good taste.
   Her motor coaches are among the most attractive in the world with
unusual touches in colouring, shape and seating.
   Her stores and shops, the best of which incidentally are as
full of goods as anywhere in Europe, show promise of that elegance
with showmanship that is the hallmark of the western city, though many
of the small presumably private and struggling shops are pitifully
inadequate to the eyes of a Londoner.
   Her tourist literature is bright and original and always has
its quota of pretty girls, and her publications generally are of a
high order. She has many attractive daily papers and a host of
popular periodicals. Even her posters are quite unlike anything one
would expect in a communist country.
   And one would hardly dare suggest that her musical life conforms
to any except the Hungarian way. Gipsy music is still exhilarating
and sad in turn and beautifully played everywhere.
   Although Liszt can be quoted as being accepted internationally,
Bartok and Kodaly, who understandably are worshipped here, are only
just about being understood or appreciated anywhere else.
   And art is quite non-conformist enough for the average taste. A
modern painting in my bedroom at the Royal Hotel would in London have
been considered imaginative and certainly not photographic.
   The teenagers there could hardly be called conformists either.
   They are dressed as are their western counterparts. Some of the
girls sported silver sugar loaf or beehive hairdos and almost all seem
at some time to parade with many frilly petticoats to umbrella their
skirts or appear to have been poured into skin tight slacks and sloppy
jumpers. They are most attractive. The boys wear longish jackets and
tight trousers and are well scrubbed.
   But imagine our surprise when on an old brassy and romantic
excursion boat cruising down the Danube with a full capacity of family
life- from grandmothers to tiny tots- the many teenagers rocked and
rolled to the strains of the songs of Perry Como and Cliff Richard
played on the ship's relay system. We later learned that they
'loved' such western 'pop' singers, laughed at the cinema with
Terry Thomas and Jimmy Edwards, and shed a tear for Norman Wisdom.
   Though Budapest is a fine city with many attractions for the
traveller, and the Hungarian countryside with its great carpets of
maize is pleasant, the Danube bend part of the country being the most
beautiful she has to offer- a car ride for several hours on a summer
evening being a most agreeable pastime- and of course there is the
wonderful natural feature of the lake at Balaton, it is the people in
Hungary who impress one and who make the traveller feel it is good to
be here.
   Budapest, which as yet has few new or modernised hotels but
takes about 15, tourists a year, mainly from the USSR, has
much attractive night life. It is possible to stay around drinking,
talking and being entertained until 5 a.m. but seldom if ever
will the tourist become a victim of the malicious malpractices of
night life in the West. The Hungarians are very honest people and the
seamy side of humanity is seemingly kept at bay.
   In many ways it is not easy to be dishonest in a communist
country. Souvenirs for instance are nearly always a problem for the
traveller. Here in Hungary prices are fixed for everything. Whether
you go to the luxury hotel shop or the small place near the market
makes no difference. This is a very acceptable fact for tourists.
   The personality of the Hungarians somehow overawes the material
attractions of the place. No more is this evident than during one of
those hot summer evenings which seem to occur frequently in Budapest.
Young couples canoodling away in corners are to be seen everywhere,
and bring understanding smiles from passing strangers.
   Parts of the city with its great and rather gaunt wide streets
and squares are attractively lit, and aided by the shop windows seem
to draw the inhabitants from far and near.
# 231
<128 TEXT E23>
The art and mystery of quilting
By VIATOR
   QUILTING IS A TRADITIONAL ART IN MOST PARTS OF EUROPE and Asia.
In Siberia was found some years ago coloured quilted material bearing
a fine design of reindeer, and dating from the first century A.D.
In Britain the craft reached its peak in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries; and it has survived as a peasant art until today
in Wales and the North.
   The depression between the two wars resulted in a great revival
of quilting, due to efforts to find employment for women in the
distressed areas. This really began with the showing of some
beautiful Durham quilts at the Women's Institutes handicrafts
exhibition in London in 1927. The Rural Industries Bureau then set to
work to foster the craft by forming training centres: quilt wives were
found still working in four of the Welsh counties and were engaged to
train others. A depot was set up in London for the sale of the work,
in which Queen Mary took a great interest.
   The simplest kind of quilt such as can be seen in many a Welsh
home, consists of two layers of material, sometimes one of them of
patchwork, with a layer of unspun wool in between: the whole stitched
all over with criss-cross lines to keep the wool in place. During the
centuries skilled quilt wives have evolved the most intricate patterns
in this stitching, thus making the quilt a work of art. As a rule no
patterns are kept, each quilt is evolved afresh, so that no two are
ever exactly alike.
   They are made up of different combinations of simple units of
design, the heart, rose, feather, tulip, chain, fan, and so on. The
feather motif is peculiar to Durham; the chain is used both in the
North and in Wales, where you may hear that it was derived from the
ships' cables of the ancient Phoenicians. Also Welsh are the circles
and spirals, recalling the Celtic crosses, which in turn were partly
derived from the art of the ancient Britons. Leaf shapes are common
to both regions: a Glamorgan worker added to her repertoire two new
forms, based on a chestnut and a lupin leaf, which a neighbour
happened to bring in while she was at work. Some of the designs such
as the Tudor Rose are believed to date back to Tudor times, handed
down in the family since those days.
   The materials are fixed in a frame, which is laid flat upon
trestles for working. Often two friends will work at it together. A
few chief points are marked out with chalk before the stitching
begins, work usually starting at the centre, with that section fixed
in the frame. All that is needed besides needle and thread is a ruler
and a piece of chalk for drawing on the pattern. Sometimes a few
household possessions may be used to help with the drawing, a tumbler
for circles, or an oval dish- but nothing more. All the rest is done
by the eye and hand.
   The best filling is lamb's wool: in the country this can be got
ready combed and washed from the nearest of the little woollen
factories that still survive in parts of Wales. This makes the
warmest covering possible, and such quilts are easily washed when
necessary.
   A famous Quilt Wife was Mrs. Catrin Evans of Bow Street in
Cardiganshire. In her time, she made hundreds of quilts; her work
could be found all over the country and further afield, even in
America. As a girl she had been taught the craft in a month's
apprenticeship; after that, she was a finished artist.
   In those days, Welsh quilt wives might go to work at a farmhouse.
In her own words: "Many weeks before a farmer's daughter was to be
married, I would be called to a farm. The farmer's daughter would
require six and sometimes more quilts for her new home. Her mother
would provide all the material. I would take my wooden frame to the
farm and for weeks I would be making quilts for the bride.
   "I was paid a shilling a day and had my food and lodging. I
worked from seven in the morning till nine at night. Most times they
would be patchwork quilts, farmers' wives kept all the old clothes to
be cut up for quilts. I've been days and days doing nothing but
cutting out and matching pieces."
   All that was nearly a century ago. In recent years the workers
have been helped to adapt their old designs, formerly found only on
bedspreads, to such intricate shapes as dressing gowns, coats and
cardigans, as well as to rugs and cushions. The idea of quilted motor
rugs, with cushions to match, the colours harmonising with the colour
of the car, was one that appealed to many buyers in the days of the
revival after the first war.
IONA TREVOR JONES tells of
Making the most of Spring flowers
   MOST OF OUR SPRING FLOWERS ARE GROWN FROM BULBS OR corms, and
all such flowers prefer to be arranged with stems standing in shallow
water. So when considering the designing of spring flowers it is not
surprising to find that modern line or Japanese styles are popular
with floral artists. These arrangements generally call for shallow
dishes and trays, etc. Some cleverly executed modern designs can
completely transform a very ordinary earthenware meat dish or soup
plate into loveliness.
   Even the simplest design of catkin sprays and daffodils can look
most effective. During the early part of the year when flowers are
both difficult and expensive, economy is important, thus the design
chosen must aim at making the best possible use of each flower. The
uncluttered simplicity of clean-cut lines echoes the freshness of
spring itself, while the yellow "King Alfred" trumpets herald the
coming of summer sunshine.
   It is essential that all flowers and foliage appear to be growing
from one root or indeed from one bulb. Although not difficult to
achieve, many newcomers to floral art fail to give this point
sufficient importance. All stems should be placed so that they
radiate from the centre of the container or the pinholder, and not
placed soldier-fashion, all in a row. Tender, hollow stems such as
those of daffodils or narcissi sometimes split when placed on
pinholders, but if the base of these stems are <SIC> first tied
lightly with a little cotton or wool, it will prevent further trouble.
Thin stems such as those of freezias, violets, primroses, etc.,
that are too fragile or thin to stand on the pinholder can be grouped
and placed inside a natural hollow stem (like the cow-parsley stem for
instance). This is an excellent way also of giving length to very
short stems that are required high up in an arrangement. The hollow
stems should first be filled with water to make sure that no air
bubble gets in and so prevent the water from reaching the flower head.
   Crescent-shaped designs are often favoured for spring flowers and
for this purpose stems of such things as willow-catkins and green
broom can be persuaded to curve or bend by first soaking them in warm
water and then using firm pressure of warm hands. The natural curving
or bending action of the tulip stems on the other hand has always
presented a problem to the flower arranger. Stems of the early-forced
varieties are especially tender, owing to the unnatural atmosphere in
which many of them are grown. Many words of advice have been written
on this subject- a teaspoonful of sugar or starch added to the water,
we are told, helps to keep tulip stems straight. Florists use stub
wires twisted around the stems when a rigid stem is required for use
in wreath or bouquet.
   You may also have noticed that all bought tulips have rubber
bands tied around the stems; the more tender the stems the more rubber
bands are used. This is essential for quick handling by the florists
and also to ensure the minimum of damage during display. Some
varieties of tulips have stronger stems than others. Your seedsman
usually indicates this in his catalogue. Occasionally I arrange some
of the weaker-stemmed varieties so that they flow naturally and
gracefully from the container. They show to best effect when the
container is placed on a stand or pedestal.
   Few flowers offer a wider range of colour and shape than the
tulip. Two varieties which I favour are the graceful, pure white
lily-flowered "White Triumphator" and the exciting wierd-shaped,
<SIC> black Parrot.
   Last year in Paris it gave me great pleasure to use both
varieties together in the one arrangement. The subject I had chosen
to illustrate was "Jekyll and Hyde." An unusual one for a flower
arrangement. The idea came to me as I wandered in the garden one day
when the contrast in the colour and shape of these two flowers
impressed me very much. The required effect for the exhibition was
gained by grouping all the pure and angelic-like white flowers on the
one side, reaching upwards, while on the other side the black ones
were grouped, dark and almost sinister, to hang and creep down as if
in despair. The final touch was added to this dramatic
interpretation, by placing it to stand on a base of misty grey tulle,
representing the mysteries of the human mind.
   Another Spring flower, the iris, is sometimes called "The poor
man's orchid." It is not the colour or the texture of iris petals
that fascinate me, but the fine detail of their exquisite shape. I
love them all, the Dutch and English varieties, and later on the Flag
and Bearded types among which there are such exciting colour
combinations. My favourite, however, is a small green and black
variety sometimes called "The Widow Iris", undoubtedly because of
its subdued colouring. To the keen gardener it may appear dull and
uninteresting but one is not expected to foresee the dignity it
portrays when arranged with the right kind of flowers.
   Another iris which I would not care to be without is a species
called Foetidissima (Gladdon). Although its flowers are small
and rather insignificant, it is well worth growing for its brilliant
scarlet berries and bright green foliage. The latter persists almost
throughout the year. Iris were often favoured in old Dutch and
Flemish flower portraits and are even more frequently found in
Japanese pictures and designs. Illustrated here is the typical
"Florist's half-dozen" iris used in Japanese style. The
arrangement is in two separate parts and so is known as "The divided
kenzan" design, kenzan being the Japanese word for pinholder.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   The container in the photograph is a blue "Denby Ware" meat
dish, and the small pebbles in the water add considerably to the
decorative effect of the completed arrangement. Some leaves of the
purple decorative kale are conveniently used to tone in with the
general colour scheme, adding weight to the base of the design, and to
hide the pinholder from view. The purple and white variegated
varieties of kale are easily grown. The seeds can be planted in open
ground and later transplanted like other members of the cabbage
family. This method ensures that only the best coloured specimens are
given garden space. The leaves are at their best during the winter
months when all other foliage is scarce. They last for weeks in
water. To prevent the water fouling, a chlorophyl tablet should be
added.
   Farmers' wives need never worry about growing too much of this
kale because what is not needed for decorative purposes can always be
thrown over the garden fence for the cows.
   Many varieties of shrubs blossom during April and May. The
bushes are dressed overall in jewel colours. Brilliant pink camelias
<SIC> are about the earliest, closely followed by scarlet
rhododendrons, cerise azalea, creamy magnolias and best of all, the
garden lilacs. Alas, how often have we all hopefully filled jugs and
vases with the freshest, sweetest lilac only to find that after a day
or so the flowers have wilted sadly and the leaves seem fresh enough?
# 225
<129 TEXT E24>
IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
by E. L. Wright
   THIS summer many thousands of exposures in either black and
white or colour will be made by photographers of all kinds, and there
is no doubt that many will wish that they had made a better job of it.
So here you are shown how to obtain better results.
The Camera
   The make and type of camera you use is not so important as many
people try to make out. The expert will get splendid results from a
cheap box camera; others will get poor results from an expensive
model. The greater the amount paid for a camera, and the more gadgets
it has is no sure way of guaranteeing good results. But whatever
model you have, study it carefully and know thoroughly how to work it
and what its capabilities and limitations are. Once you are master of
your camera, you have gone a long way to good pictures.
Exposure
   More negatives are spoilt by wrong exposure, especially by
over-exposure, than by any other cause. Modern films are so fast that
one is apt to underestimate the amount of light reaching the film and
so cause very dense images. The tables published by the film makers
and included with the film are an excellent guide, but there is no
doubt that a light meter is worth its cost. Once set it takes all the
guess work from exposure, and will show a high percentage of well
graded negatives from which pleasing prints may be obtained.
   All photography depends on light reflected from the subject
burning an image on the film; the stronger the light the denser the
image. But a light meter measures only the average amount of light
reflected from the subject. Thus a certain amount of care has to be
exercised in its use.
   The common way of using one is to point it at the subject and
take a reading. But what happens if you take your best girl in a
white frock standing against a black background? Either she comes out
with a white sheet of a face and frock, void of all detail, and a
dense black background, or else the detail is present in her face and
clothing and the wall looks peculiar. This is because you cannot get
a good reading with such a contrasty subject.
   Now my way is to use the incident light method. Most light
meters are sold with a translucent mask which will fit over the light
aperture. Fit it every time you use the meter, and point the meter
towards the light source, making sure that it points slightly
downwards below the horizon, and not directly at the light. You will
then get much better readings and hence much better negatives. I
always use this method and rarely get wrongly exposed negatives or
transparencies.
   While on this subject of exposure, do not forget a lens hood.
This is one of the most valuable accessories it is possible to have,
and use it every time you make an exposure. If you have not got one,
then try to get one that is made for your particular camera for then
it is specially computed not to interfere with the working of the
lens.
Composition
   After exposure the most important part of photography lies in
the composition of the picture, but this is a topic that cannot
adequately be covered in the space allowed to me. You have all seen
the portrait with the tree or telegraph pole standing out of the
sitter's head, or the face screwed into a painful grimace because the
subject is staring into a powerful sun.
   Many books have been written about composition, but a short
answer is, does the picture look right in all its aspects- position
of subject; balance; colour or tonal range? Is there anything in the
picture which seems alien to the idea being illustrated? If there is,
then the composition is not right.
   If you are interested in portraits then try to make your sitter
take an interesting pose. Do avoid making the subject stare directly
at the lens; a three quarter view is more appealing, and, if possible,
do have the sitter doing something. Looking at a book; examining a
statue or the scenery, or gardening; anything that will take away that
camera conscious look. And at all costs keep the background plain,
for a distracting background spoils thousands of portraits each year.
   Then again, many photographs shown to me for criticism have been
spoilt by camera shake. Do learn to hold the camera still and not
jerk the button at the moment of exposure, especially you 35 mm.
people, for when your negatives or transparencies are enlarged the
slightest bit of camera shake will be magnified many fold.
   It is not possible to cover all aspects of photography in this
small space but it is hoped the foregoing will help you to better
photography this year.
EXPRESSION IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL
by S. C. Clarkson
The First Two Years
   THERE is, of course, no well-defined break at any normal
stage of progress in expression, though one can see the nai"ve work of
the infant and the competent feeling for words of the young Grammar
school pupil. Between these two stages the Primary school has to
formulate the ideas of personal composition, as well as giving the
elements of grammar, spelling and style- the tools for the job.
   By and large today, the Infant school is a separate entity.
Often the seven year old goes 'up to the big school', or to a
different part of the town altogether. All teachers agree that the
transfer should be as smooth as possible. The Junior school teacher
for the first two years should surely be aware of the Infant methods
and be in sympathy with those methods employed. What a set-back it is
in expression-work of any sort, if the child on transfer is overawed
or ill at ease in the new atmosphere! Most little ones have a
contribution to make and are eager to learn and be sociable. This
first eagerness should be guided and controlled but not damped or
thwarted, if vital work is to be nurtured in the children.
   The Primary teacher will find wide variation in both desire and
power of expression. Home backgrounds differ. Some have sympathetic
or indulgent parents. Some homes are mere dormitories, with only the
week-end allowing time for the parents to meet as a family. It
follows then that the teacher will have to divide the classes into
groups of roughly the same standard of progress and to allow for the
'advanced' child as also for the slower one.
   The 'Board of Education', as it was in 1933, made a true and
wise statement in its Suggestions Handbook. "Written composition,"
it said, "is generally begun too soon and practised too often." It
is only tradition and obsession that demands a weekly piece of writing
from each child in the class. If we look ahead a little to the work
of the majority of our leavers, we must admit that few will need (nor
will they wish perhaps) to have to write a formal letter. This is a
READING world. But how can we make it a SPEAKING world? Our
children must first have something to say before they can write it.
Almost every lesson should give chance for the children 'to say
their piece'. The one word answer should be discouraged and the
onus of response fairly shared. For some children will be needed a
stimulus, for a domineering few the gentle brake. Perhaps all may
find individual opportunity in the small and carefully planned
'Group' or 'Family'. A folio of large pictures or posters,
lively and colourful is collected and these are discussed and talked
about in turn. Occasionally during the term there is one child able
to weave an interesting oral tale with this 'broadsheet' as a
starting point. Incidentally useful illustrations have been gleaned
from the covers of magazines (Ronald Lampitt's aerial studies for the
former 'John Bull' are full of detail and good exercises in correct
observation). The information sheets of the National Savings Movement
I have found valuable, as indeed are most travel posters. In a word
here, one should say, never destroy any picture. Teachers cannot have
too many, future articles will show the use to which they may be
placed in expression work.
   Quite a few nervous children are diffident about facing a
critical audience of their own fellows. To overcome this I have in
the classroom a home-made 'television screen'. My third article
will explain the making of this apparatus. Behind this cover I have
found it more easy for some to make their announcements, conduct
'interviews', or retell and devise a 'commercial advertisement'.
   Some of the first attempts at 'composition' will be the
retelling of stories read or heard. Here is little scope for original
thought, and the severe discipline of the sequence of detail has to be
observed. The great stories of the Bible (not only the parables) have
inspired adult authors. The Old Testament is full of dramatic
action- the two spies Joshua and Caleb; the four leprous men who
discovered the forsaken camp at Samaria told in =2 Kings, chapter 7;
Paul's shipwreck in the Adriatic that fascinated Nelson before
Trafalgar; Naboth's vineyard, are all excellent material source
<SIC> for the young story-teller.
   So too are the merry jingles, nursery rhymes, limericks and
sing-song skipping snatches- these by their very beat or homely
humour are quickly memorised. They are worth collating into a
personal anthology. Progressive teachers will know of the similar
series titled 'Sally go round the Moon', and 'Bells across the
Meadow', which seem to me to be a fine collection for speaking,
learning, and enjoying.
   Anecdotes on this style may be gleaned for telling and retelling
by the children orally or on paper when sufficient skill is acquired.
("...Sir Isaac Newton completely forgot about eating when his mind
was on a problem. One day his landlady had to go out, but left him an
egg to boil for three minutes. She returned much later to find Sir
Isaac with the egg in his hand while his watch boiled merrily away in
the pan." Other fanciful tales could be made up on the same lines.
   Pets are a natural centre of interest to children. Quite young
people will say how they care for their animals or will 'open out'
if they are privileged to hold a pet that has been brought to school.
Small booklets in the shape of animals can be contrived and filled
with little stories and poems about animals. These can be individual
and most delightful where the children have been interested and
encouraged.
   My own charges are always asked to bring their cards to show (and
talk about) on their birthdays, whilst immediately after Christmas
each one in turn brings the favourite present, with where possible a
talking demonstration. We have seen 'Bayko' houses go up, steam
engines turn, dolls be dressed, roller skates donned, and embryo
conjurors explain their tricks!
   At all ages in the Primary school I set great store on the
keeping of personal diaries. In these small lined notebooks, in which
pencil may be used, one of the first tasks of the day is for an entry
if possible. Not all days are Red-Letter days, but a child will be
glad at some slight happenings and wish to record the fact of getting
all its sums or spellings correct; of playing or supporting at a
school match; of the class weekly service; broadcast lesson; or
visitor to the school.
   Half of the booklet issued for the personal diaries is used for
the compiling of a dictionary. Except for the rarely used letters x,
z, q, and y, a whole page is given to each of the remaining letters.
At the beginning of the year all children copy in on the right page
the days of the week, months and season, popular colours and the names
of schools around.
# 214
<13 TEXT E25>
GAS COOKERS
   This is the first of two related reports on cookers. The
second one, dealing with electric cookers, will be published shortly,
together with a comparison of the two types.
   Whatever features or trimmings a cooker may have, the main
requirements are few and simple. The oven and grill must cook
evenly- the oven, over a wide range of temperatures. On the hob,
food must be cooked fast or slowly, as required. The cooker must be
easy to use and easy to clean. The finish must be able to stand up to
hard wear.
BRANDS
   The 16 gas cookers chosen for testing are listed in Table =1.
They cost about +3 to +7, the most popular price range, and had
four boiling burners (except for the NEW WORLD 33 and PEERESS,
which had three), an oven and a grill. One, the LONDON, was
only available in the North Thames Gas Board area, where it has a very
wide sale. The NEW WORLD 173 RANGETTE, larger than most, was
included because it was in the same price range, had unusual features
and is widely sold.
   Table cookers and small models with only one or two boiling
burners were excluded; so were very large, expensive models and those
designed to be built in as part of a series of kitchen fitments.
   Full names are given in Table =1. Shortened forms are used in
the text.
DIMENSIONS
   If the cooker is to fit into an existing kitchen layout, then
the height- particularly of the hob- the distance the cooker stands
out from the wall (depth), and its width are important. These are
listed in Table =1.
OVENS
Useful cooking space
   There is considerable difference between the size of an oven
and the useful cooking space in it. This is because some space is
necessary round the food to allow the heat to circulate. The cooking
space has been calculated in cubic inches from the area of the baking
tray provided and the height from the lowest cooking level (the bottom
of the oven) to the lowest projection at the top- usually the top of
the door frame. This is the method of British Standard 125: 1955
(Domestic Appliances burning town gas) for calculating cooking space
(figures in Table =1). The whole oven can be used when necessary,
however- for a turkey, for instance. For the best results, no baking
tray larger than the one provided with the cooker should be used, as
it might make the cooking uneven.
Shelves
   Two shelves were provided with each cooker. A third,
reversible one was provided with the ENVOY. There were 13
possible cooking levels, including the oven base, for the ENVOY,
compared with only four for the LEISURE, and five to nine for
the others (see Table =1).
   All shelves were designed to slide out without tilting
appreciably and- to prevent the risk of accidentally pulling the
shelf right out- most had to be lifted in order to remove them.
   Those without this safeguard were the CANNON, EQUERRY,
ENVOY, LONDON, MONARCH and the NEW WORLD 33 and 42A.
   The LEISURE had an additional inner glass door- a possible
advantage, as cooking progress could be inspected without allowing
much heat to escape. The glass door became too hot to open without an
oven cloth.
Cleaning
   How easy the ovens are to clean depends as much on how they are
used as on their design. But the removable oven top and base of the
CAVALIER, the removable oven top of the NEW WORLD 44, and the
hinged oven top of the EQUERRY were definitely helpful.
   Oven cleaning can be tiresome. It may be useful to remember that
there will be less splashing when joints are cooked longer, at a lower
temperature; when the meat is covered with foil; when a container is
well filled; and that the oven floor can be protected from spilt juice
if a tray is put under pies or tarts.
   When the oven does get dirty, it should be wiped out while it is
still warm before the dirt has time to stick.
Thermostats
   All the ovens had thermostats. This meant that they heated up
to, and stayed at, a temperature that depended on the thermostat
setting. All were marked 1/4, 1/2, and 1 to 9.
   The RENOWN also had settings 1, 11, and 12, but its cookery
book gives no recipes for them.
   Eight cookers had extra 'low' settings- lower than the 1/4
settings- for dishwarming and for slow cooking. The British Standard
implies that all cookers should cook the same dish at the same
setting. For each cooker, the manufacturer's instructions indicate
the best shelf position for different types of food; this is important
as the oven is, intentionally, much hotter at the top than at the
bottom.
<TABLE>
   We recorded, as a matter of interest, the temperature (@F.) at
the top, middle and bottom of each oven, at settings 2, 6 and 9.
   It was not easy to set the oven to the same temperature each
time, because of play in the thermostat knob. It is worth getting
into the habit of always setting the thermostat from a higher figure.
Cooking performance
   CA carried out the cooking tests specified in the British
Standard.
   They show whether the right amount of heat reaches the top and
bottom of the food. Also, by the evenness of browning, they show how
even the heat is at different levels in the oven, when both baking
trays and circular cake tins are used, as these affect the circulation
of heat differently. The oven is tested at cool and hot settings, and
when it is filled with different size dishes, for a complete dinner.
Each dish has to be ready within a specified time.
   There is nothing adventurous about the recipes, but they provide
a good test for cookers.
   Details of the tests are given in Table =2
   Some ovens cooked better than others, but all were satisfactory.
The three best were the CAVALIER, ENVOY and PRINCE. The
LEISURE, MONARCH and CABARET, at the other end of the scale,
were fairly good. On the LEISURE, the food tended to overbrown on
the underside.
   The MONARCH oven cooked slowly; neither the rich fruit cake
nor most of the dinner was well cooked in the time allowed.
   The CABARET oven was cooler than most, particularly at higher
settings. Food cooked slowly and the top browned before the
underside. Gradings of the cooking performance of each oven are given
in Table =1.
HOBS
Cleaning
   The tops of cookers get very messy. Even the most careful cook
lets the milk boil over sometimes. So it is most important that the
top should be easy to clean. In our tests, the hobs were dirtied by
letting milk boil over on two burners of each cooker.
<TABLE>
All the milk was then cleaned from the cooker, and whatever parts
were necessary to do this were moved.
   Both time and difficulty in cleaning were taken into account when
assessing the results.
   The CANNON and NEW WORLD 42A came out best, then the
PEERESS, CABARET and NEWHOME.
   Worst to clean was the MONARCH. The milk burned on the hob
very readily and trickled down under the spillage tray. Cleaning was
both slow and difficult. The LEISURE and NEW WORLD 44 were
little better than the MONARCH.
   The NEW WORLD 33, 44 and RANGETTE had similar hobs,
completely different from all the other cookers. They consisted of
removable stainless steel rods (see photograph on p. 252).
   The rods became discoloured by heat from the burners and had to
be rubbed with abrasive to restore their original appearance. The
time to do this was not included in our cleaning assessment.
   We have been told that some people prefer this new design, but in
two series of tests carried out by CA, we found that they were more
difficult and slower to clean than most of the others.
Boiling speed
   The speed with which water could be heated was considered to be
particularly important.
   A pint could be boiled in a pan on at least one burner of all the
cookers in under 3 1/2 minutes. The quickest was about 2 3/4 minutes.
It was found that burners of the same make and gas rating took
slightly different times to do the same job. Because of this, and the
fairly small difference in time taken by the different models, we
consider it impossible to pick out any as being markedly faster than
others.
   Three pints could be boiled in 6 to 7 minutes.
Simmering
   All the boiling burners could be set low enough to keep one or
three pints of water simmering at 18@F. with the lid off, but not
with it on.
   When simmering food, you burn it if the heat is not evenly
distributed at the bottom of the pan. To find out which cookers
provided the most even heat, porridge was simmered at as near as
possible to 18@F. in a light, 7-inch diameter, aluminium pan
without a lid for 3 minutes. Only the size of burner producing the
most even heat was rated as this would be the best one for simmering.
   The MONARCH simmered most evenly, leaving a negligible
deposit on the bottom of the pan. Only one, the ENVOY, caused any
burning, and this was only slight.
Special burners
   The MONARCH and RENOWN each had a thermostatically
controlled boiling burner as well as three ordinary ones. They are
designed to raise food to, and keep it at, a constant temperature.
This is achieved by a device which adjusts the gas according to the
temperature of the pan base, against which it is spring-loaded.
   Different types and quantities of food, and different pans, need
different settings, mentioned in the manufacturers' cookery books.
   We found, however, that, when chips were put into a pan of hot
fat, there was a delay before the burner responded to the change in
temperature. The fat heated up again much more slowly than on an
ordinary burner with the tap turned full on until the fat was hot
again. The chips cooked on the two special burners were considered
very soggy compared with those cooked on ordinary burners.
   But, in general, the special burners are useful when you want to
leave the cooker unattended. When you have learnt the setting- for
the pan, the food and the quantities- you can do this, knowing that
nothing will boil over, or burn.
<ILLUSTRATION>
GRILL
Design
   A recent trend in cooker design has been to move the grills to
eye level. The advantage of a grill above the hob is that it is
easier to watch, as you don't have to bend, and allows the oven to be
higher. Only one of the models tested, the ENVOY, had the grill
in the old position, below the hob. One, the RANGETTE, had the
grill just above the hob, on which the grill pan rested (see
photograph on p. 252). All the others had the grill at eye level.
<TABLE>
   With all but one of the cookers the grid of the grill pan could
be at one of two possible distances from the heat. The exception was
the CANNON, which had four available positions.
   THE CANNON and NEW WORLD 44 grill pans had two handles
and were difficult to hold in one hand. This meant that the grill pan
had to be put down before toast could be turned, for example. Five
models- LEISURE, CANNON, RANGETTE, ENVOY, and MONARCH- had
grill compartments which could be closed when not in use, but only on
the ENVOY and MONARCH could they be closed with the grill pan
under.
   The grill compartments are also useful for putting dishes to warm
with heat from the oven or boiling burners. Other cookers had open
shelves under the grill which could be used for the same purpose.
There were no such facilities on the RENOWN whose grill pan was
suspended between runners.
   As with ovens, the size of a grill or grill pan grid was not the
same as its effective area (see below).
# 212
<131 TEXT E26>
Later, and rather surreptitiously, I was shown the bathroom- a new
addition, painted blue and adorned with a multitude of gold stars. I
did not see even then why only the 'gentlemen' should be allowed to
enjoy all the stars.
   When the question of morning tea and baths is settled there is
breakfast- in bed or downstairs? Most hostesses are glad to keep a
guest in bed until after breakfast; many guests are thankful to be
there, and the way the matter is broached varies. 'Will you have
your breakfast in bed?' is the sort of gambit which frequently
causes a shy guest to enter into a flutter of protest about being a
nuisance; if, however, you say: ~'Your breakfast will arrive at any
time you like,' as though the whole thing were automatic and
impersonal, it will probably help. Then, after you have ascertained
whether it is to be tea or coffee and made sure of any other details,
you can go to bed yourself, to sleep with an easy conscience.
   It is not everybody that likes to be given breakfast in bed; on
the other hand, because it is so many people's idea of bliss, I would
like to say something more about it. The bliss can be considerably
marred if the tray is overcrowded or ill-arranged so that in order to
pour out it becomes necessary to move things, to play a sort of game
of chess in bed. Surprisingly few people lay a breakfast-tray
logically and well. Many otherwise observant hostesses somehow
overlook the fact that misery can set in if the tray is so heavy that
you can hardly support it. They seem to forget how wretched the whole
thing can be if the coffee is too weak or the tea too strong or either
of them not hot enough, and that desperation can set in if any of the
following things have been forgotten: salt, pepper, mustard (when ham
or sausages are served), soft sugar (for grapefruit or stewed fruit)
or any of the requisite implements.
   If you are an inexperienced hostess, have a hopeless memory, are
in love and therefore a bit absent-minded or tend always to be sleepy
in the mornings, it is as well to make a list like the following; keep
it in the kitchen, check it and make sure that what ought to be hot is
really hot and that everything looks, and is, fresh:
   Tea, hot water; milk and sugar (or coffee, hot- but not boiled;
milk and sugar). Toast, butter, marmalade. Fruit juice (pleasantly
chilled), or grapefruit or stewed fruit and soft sugar. Main dish,
salt, pepper, mustard; knife and fork, additional knife. Spoon for
fruit, teaspoon, butter-knife (if the butter is not in pats), spoon
for marmalade, knife for fresh fruit (if required).
   I have said nothing about flowers on the breakfast-tray- a small
attention sometimes recommended. My feeling is that there is rarely
room to spare and one is worried about upsetting a vase, while a
flower out of water fidgets me personally. I prefer flowers in the
room and never miss them on the tray; but that's just a personal point
of view.
   Some other considerations affecting this particular form of bliss
are pillows and newspapers; an extra pillow or two, to prop one up,
and at least two, if not more, morning papers will never come amiss to
someone who is content to have breakfast in bed.
   The scope of downstairs breakfast- porridge, cereals, cold game,
ham and a wide selection of rolls, baps and different marmalades and
honey- is as wide as your purse can make it and I don't think I need
enlarge on it here.
   Many older people and quite a few of the young settle for coffee
or tea and toast and fruit juice. Although there are points to be
observed in the preparation of even so simple a repast it is hardly
worth the name of breakfast. A good old-fashioned breakfast- and
really good breakfast dishes are among the most pleasing forms of
food- is appreciated by the energetic, as a prelude to a day's
walking or climbing or fishing in the holidays, or as a good basis for
a day of hard work; even on Sunday it is something to sustain you for
perusal of the newspapers, though not the best aid to keeping awake
during a long sermon.
   I feel that I cannot let this chapter go without saying, briefly,
something about the reverse side of the coin- that is to say, being
a good guest.
   However much your friends love you, you can add to their
pleasure in having you to stay if you observe the small courtesies.
At the risk of sounding a bit arbitrary I am making a few
suggestions. If you are going to arrive at a later hour than was
intended, remember to telephone, and if you are going to be late for a
meal, suggest that it might be more convenient if you had this at home
or on the way before arrival. Don't smoke in the bathroom; don't jump
out of the bath, toes and body dripping and soaking the bath-mat, do a
bit of preliminary mopping up before you get out. Open the window
before you leave. Be quick on the uptake about the wishes of your
hostess. If she has little or no domestic aid, offer to help; if she
indicates that she does not at the moment need this, go off on your
own with a book or needle-work, so that she is not left with the
feeling that she ought to be entertaining you.
   Quite a few of you have asked about tipping, and in these days of
what might be called unconventional help problems about tips can
arise. A nice old-fashioned housemaid, labelled by cap and apron, is
easy enough; when you leave you will give her your little present as
you thank her for looking after you. It is the 'lady who obliges'
that can confound you; on that point, the simplest way is to quietly
consult your hostess. In the old days a young woman was not expected
to tip men servants; nowadays if a chauffeur meets you and takes you
to the station, you will want to show appreciation. The question of
'how much' is too difficult, depending as it does on the length of
your stay, your purse and the help and service you receive. My own
opinion is that the manner of giving is more important, and a young
thing who remembers to say thank you in a friendly way need not worry
if she cannot manage great largesse.
   If it should unfortunately happen that you do not really enjoy
your visit, are uncomfortable or do not like your fellow guests or the
food, keep all this darkly under your hat and don't regale your
friends and acquaintances with an unfavourable if amusing narrative of
your stay; to do this is to offend against one of the canons of decent
behaviour, however funny you may make the tale. Quite apart from the
bad manners of this you may be pretty sure that your hostess will come
to hear of it and then you will have been guilty of causing great
hurt.
   As one greatly prejudiced may I say a word about noise? Young
people of the present generation have conditioned themselves to what
is sometimes called background noise, and can carry on conversations,
read and play games against a radio programme- even against two from
different stations, without apparent inconvenience. Maybe it was the
early training which expected a complete cessation of noise of any
kind when music was being performed, that causes me and others like me
to find it quite impossible to talk or listen when there is
'background noise'. To be a little considerate about radios and
gramophones and noise generally is rated highly among good manners.
   I must tell you here something amusing that happened not long ago
at Winkfield. Charles Laughton came to spend part of a day with me.
After dinner he read to us one or two passages from A Midsummer
Night's Dream and he rendered some of the parts- that of Bottom in
particular- with bucolic overtones. My sitting-room is opposite two
dormitory cottages, where all was plainly to be heard. Later on when
he had gone, the night nurse, who goes the rounds about eleven
o'clock, heard a radio still on in a dormitory. She asked the girls
there to turn the radio off, saying that they were disturbing me as I
was tired and had gone to bed early- to which she got the
disconcerting reply: 'Don't be silly, Nurse, she's been having
dinner with Henry the Eighth.'
6
Afternoon Tea
   LIKE BREAKFAST, this almost calls for special pleading. One
hears it said that nobody ever eats at tea time now, except on railway
trains and then only to kill time. But my mind wanders to holidays in
Scotland or to Devonshire and leisurely teas. And then, when one
thinks of an autumn evening, how good seems the idea of hot buttered
toast or crumpets and comforting slices of cake; how welcome they can
be to those who have returned from a day's shooting, hunting, golf,
football- whatever strenuous pursuit you like. I don't think
afternoon tea has so far gone out of fashion that a good hostess can
afford not to give it some thought.
   As cooks we won't concern ourselves with the four-o'clock repast
of a cup of China tea and lemon, just possibly a wafer of thin bread
and butter and a mere dismissing glance at the cake. We will leave
this fashion aside and direct our attention to the question of
substantial teas for hungry and even exhausted people, because such
meals engage at least our culinary interest. We may not have many
opportunities to test our skill but when they do come along we shall
know what is expected of us.
   Tea, as a beverage, varies greatly in flavour according to the
water with which it is made. Unless you are lucky and have hit at
once on a blend that suits the neighbourhood in which you live, you
should consult a good tea merchant and get the matter satisfactorily
settled once and for all. This applies to both Indian and China teas.
If of the latter you like a 'smoky' blend, mention the fact when
you ask advice. I do not know how unorthodox it may be, but I like to
keep a piece of dried orange-peel in the caddy containing China tea;
purists may howl, but try it for yourself.
   Of course everyone knows about hot teapots and really boiling
water, about using freshly run water in the first place and not
letting it boil too long in the kettle, nevertheless these minutiae
are not always properly observed; perhaps the teapot gets heated with
hot water, but is not subsequently completely emptied, and a nice
little pool of tepid water receives the tea; the water in the kettle,
steaming away in a moment of pre-boiling enthusiasm, is poured over
the tea a second or two too early- so the tea is horrid. Believe me,
this is not a lot of fuss and nonsense; the reason you hear people say
'few people make really good tea' is because this 'nonsense' is
underrated.
   Cream is not always offered with tea, as once it was: it was
usually handed separately and added to the tea in the cup. When this
was the fashion the cups were often warmed with a little hot water to
prevent them from cracking, as they sometimes do when filled straight
with hot tea. The water was of course poured away into a tea basin.
Milk is a different affair; if you add milk to the tea in the cup you
can get a rather 'raw' taste difficult to describe; if you put it
into the cup first the scalding tea poured onto it gives a mellower
taste.
# 27
<132 TEXT E27>
The Renovation of Shiplake Lock in Oxfordshire
   THE original lock at Shiplake dates from 1787 and was a pound
lock. The present lock, which has now been extensively overhauled by
the Thames Conservancy, was built in 1874. The lock has an overall
length from gate to gate of 133ft 4in, a width between rubbing
strips of 18ft 3in, and an original depth over the head cill of
6ft 5in, and 5ft 6in at the tail- this latter depth now being
increased to 6ft 3in. The lock is situated about three miles from
Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.
   The cills of the original lock, which have now been replaced,
consisted of timber baulks spiked on a bed of heavy sleepers. This
lock is of interest in that the quoins or corner pieces are not shaped
to accommodate the heel post of the gate, but are square in section,
the heel posts being hung on pintles set in front of the quoins and
secured to them by iron collar straps at the top. A water seal is
made between the heel post and the wall by means of a mitre board. In
the renovated lock a strip of "Linatex" rubber has been
incorporated in the edge of the mitre board to improve the seal. In
common with many locks of early date, no hard floor was provided
between the mass concrete lock walls, although timber baulks of
substantial section were set in the earth floor to act as struts
between the bases of the walls.
   Renovation, which entailed closure of the river to traffic, took
place between October 31 last and February 6 this year. The need for
a major overhaul was brought about by the deterioration of a number of
factors. The first of these was the tilting of the headgate pintles
which were progressively moving out of true alignment as the timber
sleepers under the cill deteriorated. This caused jamming between the
pintle casting and the heelpost shoe casting, a situation which
required removal of these components on two occasions for machining.
This was, however, a palliative, the effect of which was lost with
continued settling of the pintles. Considerable leakage was also
taking place under the timber sleepers and through lift construction
joints in the cill wall, thus impairing the operation of the lock.
The timber cills were also worn on their surfaces, in addition to
being decayed, and had been recapped several times to ensure a tight
fit between them and the gates. Further causes of anxiety were the
decayed state of the old timber baulks bracing the toe of the lock
walls and the deterioration of the lock floor.
   The site preparations for lock repairs are normally governed by
absence of road access to the site and, with the river closed, it is
usually necessary to bring all materials and equipment including
sufficient barges for transportation of broken stone to the site
before the lock is sealed off. In this instance, road access was
available at a point some 1 yards from the lock, but separated from
it by a water meadow liable to recurrent flooding and by a 6ft wide
leat which formed the water course to a mill which existed near the
site in earlier times.
   The preparations thus commenced with the transport by barge and
erection of a 3 ton Butters luffing derrick, which commanded the body
of the lock with the exception of the gate recesses. This crane was
supplemented by a Priestman Wolf crane fitted with a 4ft boom for
service at these two points, this being augmented when necessary by a
3 1/2 ton Grafton steam crane mounted on one of the barges. The
concrete preparation plant consisted of a 15 ton Portasilo to which
cement was delivered in bulk by the C.M.C., this unit being set
up in conjunction with a Parker 14/1 mixer with weighbatcher and
scraper unit. The batching and stockpile yard was located above the
general flood level, on a levelled dump of Thames ballast by the road
side. The aggregate and sand used for the works were Kennett gravels,
derived from Hall & Co.'s pit at Theale.
   Type of conveyance of concrete from the batching plant to the
lock was determined by the existence of waterlogged ground and a
6ft wide leat, limited space on the lock side and the desirability
of crossing the lock itself. Transportation was thus by means of a
Road Machines Monorail system in which 12.5 cu.ft. skips are
driven by a 7 1/2 b.h.p. motor and hydraulic drive. The skips
are set in motion at the loading point and travel unattended until
stopped automatically wherever a special stopping device is fitted in
the rail. This was found to be particularly useful in that the rail
was taken over the lock and along one side. A further section of rail
was located on the other side of the lock and upon these rails was
mounted a travelling bridge which traversed the lock length. A riser
rail connected the main mono-rail system to a short length of curved
rail on the bridge. Concrete was discharged from the skips, through
openings in the floor of the carriage to a trunking system for the
various sections of the work.
   Of particular importance in the scheme was the provision required
to be made for a reliable drainage and pumping system. The work was
carried out during the wet season, when high head and tail water
conditions could be expected at the main cofferdams and when the
ground water level would be close to surface. Experience on work at
other locks had shown that the throttle settings of normal
self-priming centrifugal pumps required constant attention to reduce
the amount of time lost through the flooding of the workings. When
pumping from a sump with a 22ft vertical suction it was found that
with the setting too far advanced, or with a slackening of the inflow,
the sump would be emptied and the suction lost and, whilst the priming
was being regained, the water level would rapidly rise in the
workings. Similar delays had been experienced when sudden inflows
were encountered or when the pump speed fell for any reason. Such
pumps also required to be set immediately over the lock, thus reducing
the working space available. Past experience indicated that an inflow
of up to 9, gall/ hour, might be reasonably expected and to
allow for unforseen <SIC> contingencies, two Sykes 8in Univacs
were installed to deal with twice this capacity. The use of these
pumps enabled a horizontal as well as vertical suction to be used,
enabling the pumps to be located well clear of the working area,
whilst of greatest importance was the fact that the water level in the
sump remained constant at the level of the flange on the base of the
suction pipe. The pumps were arranged to deliver to the spillway of
the old mill which served as a useful collecting launder for the
gravel pumped out by the Univacs. The pumps were powered by Ruston &
Hornsby 4 VHR oil engines. Both pumps were used each morning for
rapid dewatering. Thereafter one was sufficient to deal with seepage
water. At a total head from all causes of about 3ft including a
vertical lift of 22ft the inflow was well within the pump's capacity
of about 9, gall/ hour at this duty and worked for much of the
time "on snore." Site lighting was provided by mains electricity
to enable the pumps to be started up some 2 hours before the shift
began, during which time the lock was emptied of some 21, gallons
of water which accumulated during the night. A pump was also run for
two hours after the shift had finished to enable the concrete to set.
   The operations started with the driving of the head and tail
cofferdams, Larssen No. 2 piles being used at the tail- where extra
strength was required to accommodate the greater water pressure
loading- pitched by the Priestman crane and driven by a No. 5
BSP steam hammer. Number IU Larssen piles were used for the
head dam. At this dam, the pitching and driving were effected by the
barge mounted Grafton steam crane. The bracing at the head dam
consisted of 12in x 12in struts, braced off the wing walls of the
dock. For the tail dam two 21in x 8 1/4in RSJ 4ft long
were used, strutted from sheet piling driven into either bank.
   Baulks of Douglas fir were then wedged into position at 15ft
centres along the length of the lock, this spacing being arranged to
coincide with the existing vertical rubbing strips of the lock. These
baulks were set in two tiers, the lower tier being emplaced by diver
whilst the lock was still full, each baulk being temporarily weighted
with a length of Larssen piling.
   With the dams completed, the wall struts in place and the Univac
pumps in position, the lock was pumped out, the suction line being
placed in the tail recess of the lock. When the water had been taken
down to within a few inches of the bottom, a 5ft dia, 6ft deep
sump was excavated just upstream of the tail gate recess. This took
place inside a box of trench sheeting, 5ft dia precast concrete
tube sections being used to form the sump to a depth of 4ft below
the formation level which allowed 1ft 6in below the invert of
drainpipes to accommodate gravel, etc.
   This box sheeting was then extended up the length of the lock in
the form of a 2ft wide trench in order to drain the head of the
lock, the trench being filled with hard core over drain. Excavation
of the floor of the lock followed up the completed hard core drain in
15ft sections, the trench sheeting being removed and a 2ft thick
mass concrete slab of 7.4:1 total aggregate cement ratio being
emplaced to within 3ft of each wall. On completion of the floor,
the remaining 3ft strip at the base of the walls was removed and any
over excavation under the walls filled with concrete and underpinned
2ft 6in back, the last stage being the emplacement of a 3 deg
batter to the walls.
   The drain was thus covered over. Its function during the works
was to drain both the head and tail dams, the Univac holding the water
level permanently at the level of the soffit. On completion all sumps
were concreted, sealing the underdrainage system.
   Whilst this work was in progress, other repairs were being
effected at the head and tail of the lock, where new cills and groins
were under construction. The new cills consist of 31.33 lb/ ft
steel channels of 12in x 4in section, set out on new 2ft thick
slabs, the channels being bolted down to their bases by Rawlbolts and
secured to the step concrete behind by welded attachments to the
channels.
   Repair of the lock walls consisted of cutting back the old face
to a depth of some 2 1/2in with chipping hammers and then refacing
with gunite to a depth of 2in over a B.R.C. reinforcing fabric.
   New tail gates were fabricated in the Reading workshops and
delivered by water. The new gates have three sluices to each gate,
whilst the original head gates, which carried four sluices to each
gate, were overhauled, these gates being only 7 to 8 years old. The
paddles controlling the sluices have been converted to hydraulic
operation, along with the gate movement.
   The hydraulic equipment for the control and operation of the two
pairs of lock gates was required to be capable of being operated
either under power by the lock keeper from local control pedestals
located near each pair of gates or manually from the same pedestals by
members of the general public, after the lock keeper's working hours.
   This requirement has been met by the provision of hydraulic power
equipment in the lock house, this equipment supplying a pressure
supply to the pedestals (which may, however, generate their own
pressure supply by means of a handwheel operated transmitter).
# 218
<133 TEXT E28>
THE OUTLOOK FOR RATING
By B. A. WILLIAMS, F.I.M.T.A., F.S.A.A.,
A.R.V.A.
   "If we want to retain a value of land and buildings as the
criterion by which local expenditure is apportioned amongst the local
inhabitants, why should we not forget rental values and use, instead,
capital values?" This is the highly interesting suggestion put
forward in this article, supported by arguments based on the
increasing difficulty and unreality of present methods and on
advantages claimed for the alternative proposal.
   
   IN 161 the churchwardens and overseers of every parish were
charged with the duty of setting the poor to work and of relieving
those unable to work. To provide the wherewithal for the performance
of this duty they were empowered to tax every inhabitant and occupier
of lands.
Rental Values
   It was not until 1836 that the basis of assessment was defined
by statute. The Parochial Assessments Act of that year stated that
all rates were to be based on the rent at which rateable hereditaments
might reasonably be expected to let from year to year. This basis has
continued to apply ever since, although some of the devices needed to
achieve the desired end have amply justified the classification of the
valuer's work as an art rather than as a science.
   Thus we have the "contractor's theory," the "profits
basis", and other tortuous methods which often appear to the
uninitiated merely to provide a pseudo-scientific way of justifying
valuations preconceived on more mundane bases.
   Nevertheless the number of cases in which assessments could not
be related reasonably directly to factual rental evidence has so far
not been so great as to render the whole system suspect, although
since the war it has been found necessary to resort to 1939 values in
order to maintain this position. Admittedly extensive rent control
has severely limited the number of "true" rents available to the
valuer, but the conception of the "hypothetical tenant" has enabled
the limitations to be overcome.
Immediate Problems
   The time has now arrived when 1939 values can have no possible
relevance to those of the 196s. If we are to have another
revaluation, the problem must be faced of determining up-to-date
values for dwellings as well as for non-residential properties.
Especially is this so because over 86 per cent. of the rateable
properties in England and Wales are dwellings.
   The extent of the problem is shown by the figures disclosed on
February 23, 1959, during the second reading of the Rating and
Valuation Bill which postponed the next revaluation until 1963:-
<TABLE>
   It was stated that, in order to undertake the work of revaluation
with confidence, the Inland Revenue Valuation Office needed
satisfactory rental evidence from a sample of 1 per cent. of the
total dwellings. That percentage, it was thought, might be achieved
in time for 1963. No doubt it will be in some areas and for some
types of property, but the view would seem to be rather too sanguine
so far as many areas are concerned- for example where there is a
large proportion of relatively modern houses.
   Whether this will prove to be the case is, however, only a matter
of short-term interest. The important question is whether there will
be sufficient rental evidence to enable any subsequent revaluations to
be carried out. What are the prospects of this?
Future Problems
   Since 1939 practically no new houses have been built for
letting except by public bodies and the continuing growth of the
building society movement, hampered though it has been by limited
available funds, indicates that owner-occupation is what most people
prefer (or are forced into). The February 1961 White Paper on
"Housing in England and Wales" (Cmd. 129) sums up the prospects
when it says:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "House purchase, stimulated by a higher average standard of
living than this country has ever before enjoyed, and assisted
financially by the House Purchase and Housing Act of 1959, is
spreading rapidly, and the urge for home-ownership shows no sign of
diminishing."
<END INDENTATION>
   The Government's latest intention is to encourage the provision
of more houses to let. The White Paper says:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "As an experiment the Government propose to make arrangements
under which money will be advanced to approved non-profit-making
housing associations which are prepared to build houses to let at
economic rents. They regard this as essentially a pump-priming
operation and hope that it will serve to show the way to the
investment of private capital once again in building houses to let."
<END INDENTATION>
   The first part of this idea will no doubt encourage
non-profit-making enterprises to produce some houses to let, but the
rents to be charged, as in the case of rents of local authority
houses, are unlikely to provide an appropriate basis for rating
assessments. If there is no profit motive on the part of the landlord
such rents cannot be expected to equal "the figure at which the
hypothetical landlord and tenant would... come to terms... as a result
of "the higgling of the market'." (Robinson Case, 1937.)
   As a "pump-priming" operation the potential of the
Government's proposals is more uncertain. No doubt the relaxation of
rent restrictions will to some extent encourage the building of houses
to let although, for many reasons, the old idea of investing one's
money in this sort of security is, and will probably remain,
unfashionable. The present trend is towards owner-occupied dwellings,
leaving only local authorities and non-profit-making associations to
provide for those unable or unwilling to buy their own houses.
   If the trend continues the time must come when the remnant of
privately let houses will be insufficient to provide a basis for
ascertaining standards of rents such as are needed to assess rateable
values which comply with the existing definition. It seems reasonable
to suppose that the stage will soon be reached at which only flats and
a minority of smaller houses will provide any acceptable rental
evidence. Even in the rents of these properties a "scarcity"
element must be expected.
   Whatever criticisms may be levelled against rating as the means
of local taxation no better alternative has so far found general
acceptance. If local government is to retain any semblance of
autonomy (and as a bulwark of democracy this must surely be necessary)
it must have its own independent source of locally based income.
Without exploring the wide realms of argument on this subject, it is
probably fair to say that the majority of informed people would agree
with Mrs. Hicks who, in her "Public Finance," said that ~"In
principle... a tax on land and buildings (which is by far the most
common of all local taxes) has much to commend it." Unless in the
future we are to rely on assessments of a purely arbitrary nature
(which will inevitably bring the system into even greater disrepute)
we must find some way out of the apparent impasse.
A Solution
   An abortive attempt was made to meet the difficulty in the
Local Government Act, 1948, when it was proposed to ascertain the
"rental values" of most post-1918 houses by taking 5 per cent. of
the hypothetical 1938 cost of construction, plus 5 per cent. of site
costs. This proposal courted almost certain failure for two
reasons:-
   (1) Its arbitrary nature;
   (2) the different treatment accorded to other classes of dwellings
and properties.
   But why must we strive to ascertain some illusory rental value
when, in the market, such rental value is rarely to be found? If we
want to retain a value of land and buildings as the criterion by which
local expenditure is apportioned amongst the local inhabitants, why
should we not forget rental values and use, instead, capital values?
These are obviously much more easily ascertainable because the sales
market is so much more active than the lettings market. Would it not
be a relatively simple matter (compared with the present dubious
antics) to arrive at the price at which a hereditament might
reasonably be expected to sell with vacant possession in the open
market if it were reasonably maintained and intended to be used for
its present purposes?
Not a Site Value Tax
   Such a proposal should not be confused with the rating of site
values, a subject which appears to have become entangled with other
considerations. The suggestion now made need have no party political
implications because it need not affect the incidence of local
taxation as between occupiers and owners. Unoccupied sites could be
exempt, partially exempt or wholly chargeable- these are questions
irrelevant to the main idea.
   The suggested capital values would be simpler to ascertain than
site values because the question of apportioning an aggregate value
between the site and the building would not arise. Further, we are
talking about the selling price, a factor understood by everybody, and
not some notional apportionment of it. The authors of both the
majority and the minority reports of the Committee of Inquiry into the
Rating of Site Values (1952) seem to have been obsessed by the idea of
annual rental value, for both reports speak of "the annual site
value" (i.e. the yearly rent which the site might be expected
to yield if let at the valuation date upon a perpetual tenure).
Not a Capital Levy
   Although assessments would be based on capital values, the rate
would not be a tax on capital because the liability would not be met
out of capital. Nor would it fall on, or be passed on to, the owner
of the capital if he were not also the occupier, any more than do
present rates. All that is suggested is that capital instead of
annual values should be used as the measure of each ratepayer's
contribution.
Advantages
   A minor advantage of such a basis of assessment would be a
psychological one- the rate in the pound payable, instead of being
the frightening figure of over 2s. in the +, would be reduced to a
few pence in the +.
   Another advantage would be that the "contractor's test," the
"profits basis" and the other hypotheses now forced on valuers
would cease to be needed.
   From a ratepayer's point of view, he would have some solid facts
more readily available to enable him to contest an assessment. He
could get a fair idea of the worth of his house by looking in the
estate agents' windows. Where can he possibly obtain any convincing
data about his rental value now?
   Although some shift in the burden between the occupiers of
different types of property may result, this would be no greater, and
conceiveably <SIC> it would be smaller, than that to be faced in
bringing rent-based values up to date. Ratepayers would certainly be
able to understand their assessments more clearly than those based on
mythical rents and, as a result, would be better able to appreciate
the soundness of those assessments.
   
   Some change must come. Hand-to-mouth methods of making the
present system rumble along cannot be perpetuated. The surprising
thing is that successive Governments have been content to manipulate
an impossible system for so long.
   It is seriously suggested that the method proposed might provide
the solution.
LONDON'S PURE WATER
   Bacterial analysis has shown that during the year 196 the
water for which the Metropolitan Water Board was responsible was
virtually free from escherichia coli, the chief indication of
faecal pollution.
   A report by the Water Examination Committee of the Board states
that 99.97 per cent. of the samples passing into the distribution
system during the year were free from this organism.
   These are the best results ever achieved by the Board. During
nine of the twelve months, moreover, the water supplied by the Board
was of 1 per cent. purity so far as this test was concerned.
ILLUMINATED SIGNS
MANUFACTURERS CRITICAL OF PLANNING AUTHORITIES' APPROACH
   AN attractively illustrated brochure entitled Pageant or
Penumbra? recently published by the Electrical Sign Manufacturers'
Association invites planning authorities to exercise more flexibility
of attitude towards the design and siting of illuminated signs when
dealing with planning applications, and states that the Association's
members are ready to respond whole-heartedly to a lead for greater
originality and a more venturesome spirit.
# 213
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Twenty-First Annual Sale
Gill's Growingly-Popular Event
   JOHN H. Gill & Sons (Leeming Bar), Ltd., Leeming Bar,
Northallerton, Yorks., recently celebrated their 21st annual sale of
second-hand machinery. To mark the event a dinner dance was held at
the Scotch Corner Hotel and upwards of 2 farmers, friends, and staff
were present.
   While it was a second-hand machinery sale that was celebrated,
the main feature in the ballroom was a new Massey-Ferguson tractor,
which shone quite brilliantly under the spotlight. We understand
that, while it excited much attention, it did not intrude in any way
on the dancing.
   Mr. John H. Gill, the founder of the firm, together with his
sons, Messrs. John Arthur, Robert William, and Frank (who are all in
the business), were, naturally, much in demand, as was Mr. John
Sterne, of York, the Massey-Ferguson area manager.
   The highest price obtained at the sale itself was +1, for a
combine, while a tractor sold for +4. We are informed that these
sales are proving growingly successful, there being four times as much
machinery at this last one compared with the first.
Standen Expansion
   SUCH is the demand for the sugar beet harvesting and other
machinery manufactured by F. A. Standen & Sons Ltd., Ely,
Cambs., that they are already having an extension built to their new
factory, and our illustration shows the progress that is being made in
this latest enterprise.
Wallace's Become Fordson Dealers
Directors at Signing Ceremony
   THE signing of a Fordson tractor main dealer agreement
between John Wallace & Sons (Ayr), Ltd., Ayr, and the tractor
division of the Ford Motor Co., Ltd., Dagenham, Essex, took place
recently. The sales operations manager of the tractor division, Mr.
M. MacDonald, was present- as our photograph shows- to greet two
directors of Messrs. Wallace, Mr. J. Thompson and Mr. D.
K. Henderson.
   This Scottish company has been actively engaged in the tractor
business since 1924, but its history goes back into the 18th century.
The trading area served is one of small, well-managed farms, largely
specialising in milk production and growing early potatoes. Both
directors believe in the closest personal contact with their
customers. A large proportion of their business is conducted weekly
at premises in Ayr's busy market.
Lively Interest in Irrigation
At Aberdeen Conference
   A ONE-DAY conference on irrigation, with the emphasis on
organic irrigation, held at Westertown, nr. Aberdeen, on May 11th,
drew an attendance of over 6 people. It was sponsored by Farrow &
Sons, Ltd., Spalding, Lincs., and organised by Barclay, Ross &
Hutchinson, Ltd., of Aberdeen.
   Undoubtedly, a factor contributing largely to the success of the
conference was that it was held on the farm of Mr. Maitland Mackie,
Jun., where a complete organic irrigation system is installed as
part of a large-scale slatted floor arrangement for dairy and beef
herds.
   The first of the speakers, Mr. Gordon Newman, manager of
Reading University farm, confined his comments mainly to water
irrigation. He emphasised the importance of trying to anticipate
"irrigation need," aired the view that in parts of Scotland
irrigation is not an economic proposition, and roundly declared that
"irrigation is no excuse for poor cultivations and inadequate
manuring."
   Mr. Trevor Garbett, general manager of Farrow & Sons, Ltd.,
put the case for organic irrigation and naturally pointed to the
"object lessons" to be learned from Mr. Mackie's installation.
He claimed that organic irrigation fitted in with slatted floors, and
went on to say that poultry houses, especially batteries, "presented
no problem." He added that "sheep stored on slats are treated the
same as cattle on slats."
   Another point advanced by Mr. Garbett was that his firm
recommended the use of a piston pump for organic irrigation, although
under certain circumstances a centrifugal pump might do the job.
Although with a piston pump, it was necessary to be fairly careful
about what went into the pit, a great deal more could go in with
"little chance of any harm to the system" than could be allowed
with a centrifugal pump.
   The economics of organic and water irrigation systems- always an
important matter- were presented by Mr. John Nix, of Cambridge
University School of Agriculture. He acknowledged that the basic
costs of organic irrigation could be "fairly high," but stressed
the economic benefits derived in the way of manurial value and labour
saving.
   Practical experience over the last two years with an organic
irrigation system in the West Country, i.e., at Ilminster,
Somerset, was given by Mr. David Hawthorne. He believed the system
to be worthwhile because it got rid of the slurry, avoided wheel
damage to the land, prevented river pollution, stopped the "awful
waste" of nutrients, and thus enabled the farm to keep up a good
level of production.
   The final word- an important one- came from Mr. David Soutar,
farm buildings adviser at the North of Scotland College. He urged
that farmers should adopt a more progressive and positive attitude
towards buildings in order to derive full advantage of the "many new
technical developments now being designed." But, Mr. Soutar
added, "economy in labour in farm buildings is far less likely to be
achieved through planning than by 1 per cent. mechanisation,
although the mass handling of stock and crop will continue to be
developed, and the same basic principles of automation as now
practised in industry will be adopted on the farm."
Lundell "65"
Latest "Double-Chop" Forage-Harvester
   IT is the snowballing interest in the mechanical feeding of
livestock in various ways, mostly of American genesis, that lies
behind the introduction of a new "double-chop" forage-harvester,
demonstrated publicly for the first time on May 15th. The Lundell
"65" off-set machine was originally shown by Lundell (Great
Britain), Ltd., Edenbridge, Kent, at the last Smithfield Show
(Dec., p. 117), and is really the John Deere "15A," which the
British company is manufacturing under licence.
   We saw it at work in a fine crop of Italian rye grass/ "H.1"
mixture, about 2ft. high, on Mr. A. S. Cray's Southdown Farm,
Medstead, nr. Alton, Hants. The two rows of 16 specially-designed
"grapefruit" flail knives on the "65" took the grass cleanly at
about 2in. above ground, the width of cut being 6in.
   From those knives the crop was whisked into a 12in. dia.
auger, housed above the flails, and eventually proffered to the
secondary cutting assembly- which is also the fan.
   There are usually six cutting knives on this assembly, as on the
present occasion, but three can be removed for coarser results. The
length of the material varied from fragments of 1/2in. up to 4in.,
and the average is said to be 2in. The power requirement is about
the same as for the well-known "Super 6" machine, and a Fordson
"Dexta" had no difficulty in second gear, although a larger tractor
would be needed for the fastest speeds of work.
   At +45, the price is +55 up on the conventional flail machine.
The shorter lengths of grass, however, allow easier handling by
forage blowers, silo unloaders, auger feeders, side-unloading trailers
and other associated equipment for the new techniques. But the
material also handles well with a fore-loader, it is said, and has
zero grazing possibilities as well.
   Haymaking and wilting can be provided for by bolting back a
hinged section in the top of the auger housing. Consequently the crop
flies straight over the auger and on to the field. Messrs. Lundell
say they are working on a maize attachment, but it will probably not
be ready until 1962.
   Co-operating in the demonstration were the local Lundell dealers,
Hyde Abbey Motor Works, Ltd., Winchester. (Reply Card No. E.
1132).
Massey-Ferguson Tractors with Foot-Pedal Direction Change
Torque Converter Models Join Industrial Range
   CHANGING direction from forward to reverse purely by using
the right foot is a feature of two of the tractors in the extended
industrial range of Massey-Ferguson, Ltd., Coventry. This is done
by combining "shuttle transmissions" with torque converters. There
are altogether four new tractors and some other modifications and
introductions.
   One of the innovations is a basic power unit, called the "23"
tractor, on which the now established "71" digger and an improved
"72" loader can be mounted. The "23" which succeeds the
"72" tractor, incorporates the Perkins "3-A-152" diesel engine,
with a maximum gross b.h.p. of 38.4, and the transmission and
back axle of the "65" tractor. A particular quality of the engine
is said to be good lugging power at low revs. per min.- a very
necessary requirement of the construction industry. Torque
characteristics are excellent and power steering is fitted as
standard. This latter provision cuts down operator fatigue
considerably.
   "Topping-up" is now much easier, for the regular points are
accessible when the bonnet cover is lifted. There is a rugged
11in.-dia. dual clutch and the clutch assembly is
self-ventilated. Transmission brakes of the disc variety operate
together or independently, with complete sealing against dirt and
water. Heavy cast wheels are employed instead of the previous steel
disc ones. In spite of these improvements the price remains at +88.
   When this basic unit is known as the "25," the change of name
indicates that it has both a torque converter and the "instant
reverse" foot-operated direction change system. The "instant
reversing" is actuated by an unusual accelerator, rather like a
three-pronged fork, the centre prong being shorter than those outside,
with a foot pedal at each extremity.
   Pressure on the right of the pedals, as they face the driver,
produces forward motion, while if the reverse direction is required,
the left pedal is depressed instead, at which the tractor instantly
goes into reverse. Operating either side-pedal rotates, by a linkage
device, a rocker valve, because of which oil from the control valve is
directed to the clutch units in a "shuttle transmission" unit
situated between the torque converter and a sliding mesh gear-box.
The pedals act first as a clutch and then as a throttle.
   The centre pedal does not rotate the rocker valve. As a result,
its only effect is to increase engine revolutions without vehicle
motion in any direction. On this tractor there are two levers, each
with two "in-gear" positions, providing 4 gears forward and
reverse.
   Another tractor incorporating the torque converter and this novel
transmission is the "65R," one of the two new industrial versions
of the "65," the other being the "65S." These have the
"4-A-23D" Perkins engine and 58.3 gross maximum b.h.p. While
the "65S" with its more normal transmission has 6 forward gears and
2 reverse, the "65R," like the "25," has 4 forward and reverse.
Prices of these two versions make interesting comparison: the
"65S" is +95 ex works, complete with dual brakes, horn and
mirror, while the "65R" is +1,15 with the same accessories.
   Operating a tractor with the "instant reverse" facility is
almost literally "child's play." On any job requiring much
stopping and starting- such as loading shale- it is a boon to have
both hands free for the steering wheel and hydraulic loader, and the
speed achieved by skilled operators is remarkable. The centre pedal
can "rev." the engine to increase the speed at which the bucket
lifts. Brakes are on the side of the left foot and there is, of
course, no clutch. "Instant reversing" has been in America for
about three years, many applications being in road rolling.
   Another alteration in the range is that the hydraulics in the
"72" loader are now of "Cessna" design and the break-away force
consequently increases from 1, to 14,lb. The American Cessna
company is reported to be about to start production in Scotland, where
it will assemble this hydraulic equipment. The side frames of the
"72" bucket have also been modified to enable it to fit on to the
"23." There is a new weight attachment, which we saw fitted on
the rear of the "65R"; it carries 15 iron weights of 122lb. each.
   A sub-soiling attachment, on which a cable-laying fixture can be
bolted, is now available for the "35S" and "35H" industrial
tractors, which are now painted yellow and grey.
# 26
<135 TEXT E3>
LADY GROCER ATTACKS APATHY IN THE GROUPS
Many shops still ugly and dirty
   Not keen on promotions
   They think group trading means a comfortable living for years
   MRS. ESTHER BEDDIS and her husband Roy are grocers on the
Fairfield housing estate, near Fareham, Hampshire. They are
enthusiastic members of Star Value Service.
   Mrs. Beddis is outspoken about group trading, but more
outspoken about some of the retailers who are in a group and merely
dabble with this form of trading.
   "For some time," she says, "I have been worried about the
future of many independent retailers who have joined voluntary groups
and, after a few months of membership, have been disappointed that
increased turnover has not come to them. They have become discouraged
with their lot and retailing in general and make no efforts to pull
themselves out of this rut.
   "This state exists because many independent grocers soon
forget the reasons they joined a group- and they forget their
obligations. They seem to think that the trade owes them something
because they have taken the first steps of joining a group; hanging an
illuminated sign in their window (very rarely illuminated after dark)
and spasmodically slap various bills on their windows announcing
special offers.
Pipe Dreams
   All this, they think, will double their turnover in a few
months so that they and their families can live in comfort in years to
come. Many with such pipe dreams have already gone further downhill
and, sometimes, out of business. The others have learned their lesson
in time and are now doing well."
   To cite their own case, Mrs. Beddis told The Grocer of
their experiences in this respect.
Nothing Startling
   They took a small grocery shop on the housing estate back in
1947. For many years they jogged along happily, without anything
startling happening to their trade.
   To put it in her own words: "We did not see any real change in
the grocery world as nothing ever happened to change our trading
progress."
   This idyllic state of affairs existed until March, 196- not
so long ago- when the couple began to notice that some of their
customers were no longer coming in, but were making the 3d. bus ride
into neighbouring Fareham and buying a week's groceries at the
recently opened supermarkets and large multiples there.
   Then the co-operative store- just two doors away from them-
started cutting prices and making many special offers.
   The Beddises' turnover dropped by +28 a week and kept sliding.
   Fortunately, they decided quickly to do something about it and
joined the buying group operated by William Avens and Co., the
Portsmouth wholesalers. The company immediately advised them to
change from counter service to self-selection. "The cost of
conversion," said Mrs. Beddis "was negligible. We used the
existing shelves and fixtures."
Up Went Turnover
   Through the medium of better pricing and easier service
turnover quickly rose by +5.
   In November, 196, they joined the Star Value Service group,
formed in the Portsmouth area under William Avens- by then a
Misselbrook and Weston subsidiary. Immediately, special offers were
started and they were given more assistance with ideas for efficient
merchandising and profitable promotions. Even so, although business
slowly increased and turnover steadily rose until it was around +5
by September this year, they still felt the need to enlarge the shop
to display and sell to better advantage.
   This posed special problems concerning future prosperity.
Would it be worth while expanding- as to ascertain what lay ahead in
relation to increased business was most difficult? They finally
decided to go ahead.
The Costly Item
   Doubling the selling space to 7 sq. ft. by adding a
new section of over 3 sq. ft. was not to be the greatest
expense. It was the new fixtures and fittings to fill this space that
would be costly. But Roy Beddis solved this problem by building all
the new sectional shelving, eight dump bins, and the large gondola
from materials he bought for a total of +5. The new
self-service refrigerator cost +2 and the alterations to the
building cost +1,. All in all, total cost was +125.
Up Curtain!
   After the painters had left, three of Avens' men put the
finishing touches to the new shop, but all this time business was as
usual with the alterations hidden by curtains. The curtains were
drawn back on September 21 and the response was immediate. The first
week's takings up to the present show an increase of +1 per week-
making well over +6 per week. When more money is available, Mr.
and Mrs. Beddis will extend the shop even further and take in the
present storeroom.
'We Must Take the Burden Out of Everyday Shopping'
   "As all retailers know," Mrs. Beddis goes on, "customers
don't come to look at a pretty shop. But a pretty shop does lend
itself to cleanliness and brightness. Not only is it these two things
that customers want, but they also want well-priced special offers and
we private retailers must take the burden out of everyday shopping and
make it as easy as we can for these shoppers in case we lose their
custom.
Direct Promotions
   "One facet of in-store trading often overlooked," she goes
on, "is special promotions. Our wholesaler often arranges these for
Star Value members and, in addition, the large manufacturers will
often assist with a direct promotion. The first week in October, we
ran the Brooke Bond Win-A-Toy Competition- ideal for children living
on the Fairfield Estate. Mr. Hawkins, the Brooke Bond rep., spent
the entire week in the shop, and with attractive display material and
toys attracting customers in, sales of tea trebled to over 15 lb.
in one week.
   "Isn't that an incentive to try nearly all the promotions that
are offered- whether they be soup, canned fruit, Christmas, or tea
promotions? We retailers must team with our wholesaler or the
manufacturer to grab the trade that is there. The tragic part is that
so many don't bother to consider promotions and sometimes even regard
special offers as a waste of time.
A Negligible Expense
   "Often group window signs are not lit at night even though
all-night illumination costs only pennies. A large number of shops
are still ugly, cluttered and dirty. Little wonder so many housewives
will gladly pay bus fares of as much as 3s. to save only 3s. on
their order and still not worry because they are dealing with clean,
bright shops. (The Beddis' store is pictured right.)
<ILLUSTRATION>
   "Perhaps I have been fortunate in having a father who was a
wholesale confectioner," Mrs. Beddis continued, "and having been
in the grocery business since I left school. But experience is not
enough these days, and many successful retailers with no grocery
experience are prospering for the simple reason they have grasped
every opportunity to draw customers into their shops and once those
customers have come, then they have been sold goods at attractive
prices from a clean, bright shop and by enterprising grocers who are
good salesmen.
<END QUOTE>
'The total market for baby foods can look forward to an expansion
of some 1 per cent. in the next 15 years from the expected
increases in the number of babies alone'
Baby Foods: Thriving Market
   THE market and prospects for baby foods have again come under
the scrutiny of the Economist Intelligence Unit, which is responsible
for so much contemporary research in many fields, not least those
associated with the grocery trade.
   In December, 1959, EIU in No. 22 of their publication
"Retail Business" examined the market, and in the latest issue-
No. 44, October- the research is brought up to date.
   The extracts which we are privileged to give below are but a
small part of the whole, which should be examined closely by all who
are concerned in the vital and growing market for baby foods.
   "Retail Business" may be had only from the Economist
Intelligence Unit, 5 Bury-street, London, SW1.
SIZE OF THE MARKET
Milk Products
   The major trend in this market says "Retail Business," is
the swing away from National Dried Milk towards proprietary products
and there is clearly scope for considerable further expansion in the
sales of branded dried milk. This trend was accelerated by an
increase in price of the National product in April, 1957.
   It is apparent from the substantial sales of proprietary dried
milk and the fact that uptake of welfare milk (liquid and dried) is
very close to 1 per cent. that many mothers are taking welfare
liquid milk and using it for the rest of the family while they feed
their babies on proprietary dried milk.
   Glaxo Laboratories' Ostermilk and Cow and Gate infant
milk food have been the main beneficiaries of the swing to branded
products. These two brands dominate the market for proprietary dried
milk of which they probably have some 45 per cent. each. The most
important remaining brands are Trufood (made, like Cow and Gate,
by a member of the Unigate Group) and SMA. The latter is a
filled milk product, formulated to resemble human milk. The formula
is owned by the Wyeth Research Laboratories, Philadelphia, and the
product, which has been on the UK market since 1956, is marketed
here by John Wyeth and Brothers.
   The remaining 25 per cent. or so of bottle-fed babies are
given either evaporated milk or boiled fresh milk... The total market
for evaporated milk is worth some +13 million a year and possibly
only one per cent. of this is used for infant feeding. However,
sales of evaporated milk for infant feeding are rising, and it is
impossible to ignore the fact that in North America this is the
accepted food for bottle-fed babies...
   A major marketing problem confronting the processors of
evaporated milk is that, as the market for their product as a general
purpose food is so much more important at present than sales for
infant feeding, they are wary of damaging the family image of their
product by promoting it too heavily as an infant food. As a result,
sales of evaporated milk as an infant food are likely to expand only
very gradually.
   The largest brands of evaporated milk are Carnation (General
Milk Products), Libby, Ideal (Nestle?2) and Regal (Unigate).
General Milk Products have pioneered the use of evaporated milk for
infant feeding in this country and they claim that Carnation milk
accounts for virtually all the sales in this market. Carnation
has been available in the UK since 1946, but the main marketing
effort dates only from 1954 with the removal of restrictions on sales.
WEANING CEREALS
   It is estimated that some 9.6 thousand tons of infant cereals
are consumed a year and the retail value of the market is +2.8
million... The scope for expansion in the future seems more limited:
it will come mainly from the continuing rise in the birth rate and
possibly also from persuading mothers to keep babies on these
specially fortified cereals longer in life.
   The leading brands in this market are Farley's Rusks (made by
Farley's Infant Food), with possibly one-third of the total
turnover, and Farex (made by Glaxo Laboratories) with between
one-third and one-quarter of the total sales. The next most important
brands, in order, are the range of cereals produced by Robinsons
(a member of the Colman group), including mixed cereal, rice, a
triple pack, groats and barley, and those produced by Scott's (a
member of the Cerebos group). Other brands include Cow and
Gate, Trufood and Ovaltine Chuckles.
   The products above represent three different approaches to the
infant cereal market, and in each sector of this market one brand is
dominant. Farley's have a very strong hold on the market for a
weaning cereal in rusk form, quick and convenient to use. Glaxo's
Farex dominates the market for a blended and fortified cereal,
designed primarily to provide a sound nutritional basis for the baby's
diet. Robinson's products, of which Baby Rise is one of the
most successful, provide variety in flavour and texture for the child.
# 25
<136 TEXT E31>
Sole Bonne Femme, Slimy Fish, and Ballet of Waiters!
   Which was the more important- sole bonne femme correctly
served in a restaurant or slimy fish on a hospital trolley? Is the
restaurant ballet of waiters really necessary? Surely a good case
could be made out for a simpler form of service, as was being
practised with success abroad?
   These pertinent questions and points of view were put forward by
Miss E. Hollings, principal of Manchester Domestic and Trades
College, when she welcomed about 1 delegates to the first one-day
conference in the north of England of the Catering Teachers'
Association, at Manchester.
   First rate catering schools and colleges encourage students of a
higher educational standard to consider the catering industry as a
worthwhile career, she said. But salaries paid in the catering
industry were appallingly low, having regard to the many skills
required. There were not sufficient of the right type of courses for
caterers. She thought the hotel and restaurant industry put too much
emphasis on the commercial aspects, such as foreign currency earning.
Civilised Man
   Civilisation of man was closely associated with his search for
food and was closely tied to agricultural science. It would not be
surprising to see changes in catering to match the modern mood.
   Mr. L. Ambery (Manchester Domestic and Trades College)
introduced a discussion on the teaching of general studies to catering
students. He said that in technical education he thought not enough
time was given to general subjects. Taking the country as a whole 8
per cent of 15 year olds were receiving education but only 28 per cent
of 19 year olds were receiving any form of education. It was
important this last figure should be increased. In the last five
years there had been a 7 per cent expansion in technical education.
   Present methods of induction of students were a nightmare. They
were given no real guidance and were often pushed into classes that
were not well suited to their purpose. There was need for closer
liaison between the technical schools and the secondary modern schools
and opportunity should be given for student interviews to ensure they
were embarking on the technical courses which would serve them best in
the future. There must also be a better staffing ratio- 16 students
to one teacher in a kitchen were too many, he considered.
   Preliminary courses should always include the practical approach
to the subject, otherwise the students would regard them as "just
another school" and soon lose interest.
   General subjects should always be related to the craft or
vocational subjects. In too many cases these were taught in an
atmosphere of splendid isolation. Too often twelve students were
required to establish an evening class and as a result unsuitable
candidates were accepted to make up the required number. Often only
three of the twelve students passed the examination, the reason for
the poor results being that the basic composition of the class was
wrong in the first place.
Science Subjects
   Miss A. Wordingham (in charge of applied science subjects at
Domestic and Trades College) discussed the teaching of science
subjects to catering students. So often, she said, students
questioned the value of science lessons. The best way of holding the
students' interest was to adopt the topic method. What was learned in
the laboratory must be integrated in the kitchen. It was important
that the science teacher should have taken a catering course just as
much as the catering teacher should have taken an applied science
course.
   The new syllabus for the City and Guilds 151 examination was
reviewed from the examiners' viewpoint by Miss G. Smith (chief
examiner).
   At question time several teachers suggested that City and Guilds
examiners should attend a meeting or lecture in order to establish
greater uniformity amongst examiners. In general discussion the
question of provision of food for practical cooking tuition was
raised. It was stated that more authorities were providing raw
materials free, but there were still too many areas where students had
to provide the food or where teachers had to collect money to pay for
it.
   The conference was informed that the Catering Teachers'
Association now has a membership of more than 3.
'Now is Time for Corporation to Pronounce Bold Plan for Town'
   "It is surely time that Southend Corporation pronounced a bold
plan for this town to be in the forefront of seaside resorts, and not
to quote what is becoming an old cliche- 'that people now take their
holidays abroad.'
   "We are quite fully aware that an ever-increasing number of
the population go abroad for their holidays, but we are even more
aware that an even greater proportion of the population take no
holidays at all, and they are the untapped source which we should
endeavour to attract."
   With these words, Mr. E. G. W. Scott concludes his general
secretary's report, to be presented at the annual general meeting of
Southend, Westcliff-on-Sea and District Hotel and Catering Association
on Monday next, October 3.
   The "fight," which had been going on for the last 12 years to
get Southend recognised as a seaside resort, was still proceeding, he
comments. Membership had remained steady during that time, and even
today they were able to accommodate a conference of 5-6 people in
first class establishments in the town.
   It now appeared that the Cliffs Pavilion would open in 1963 after
a long struggle- something members now viewed with mixed feelings, as
a large conference of over 1, delegates could not be accommodated
in hotels.
   From returns sent in by members, it was revealed that 63,351
visitors had stayed in the town from April to September, including an
ever-increasing number of old aged pensioners. Illuminations still
drew considerable numbers. Evidence was that period holiday visitors
did not include a very high proportion of young people, no doubt due
to a lack of entertainment, thinks Mr. Scott.
   "During this current season we have had instances of visitors
leaving their hotels earlier than the date to which they had booked,
simply because they had seen all the films, been to the concert party
and Palace Theatre, and there was nothing else to do."
   The Airport continued to produce an increasing number of
one-night bookings.
   Mr. Scott feels that the British Hotels and Restaurants
Association is now taking more interest in the affairs of the boarding
house and small private hotel than formerly, and he pays tribute to
the work of Miss D. E. Cockrell on the South Eastern divisional
committee and also for her publicity work.
   He thanks, too, Lt.-Col. E. G. Petter, their president for
the last three years, and reveals that the annual banquet on Tuesday,
February 27, may take the form of a Belgian evening.
Approval at Liverpool
   The first two stages of a three-tier plan by Mr. Charles
Clore to redevelop at a cost of +3 million a large area of the
centre of Liverpool facing the waterfront has been approved in
principle.
   The first two phases which may take between five and seven years
to complete will consist of traffic-free shopping precincts,
departmental stores, modern offices, and a multi-storey garage.
   The third phase, which originally included a luxury waterfront
hotel, will be considered when the sites have been acquired.
Northern H.C.I. Dinner Told of New Hotel Plan
   The chairman of the northern branch of the Hotel and Catering
Institute, Mr. John E. Dean, drew a statement from the Lord Mayor
of Newcastle on the city's proposed hotel, when he proposed the toast
of the guests at the branch's annual dinner-dance in the Royal Station
Hotel, Newcastle.
   Winding up a witty speech, Mr. Dean complimented the Lord Mayor
on the rapid development of the city. Its ever-changing skyline would
soon include a new hotel, he hoped.
   Replying, the Lord Mayor, Dr. Henry Russell, said it was quite
true the City Council had planned for a hotel. He did not think he
would be revealing any secrets in saying it was to be at the corner of
Eldon Place and Percy Street, a fine central site. It was hoped the
hotel would provide an entirely new focus for that whole area.
   The Lord Mayor then went on to praise the high standard being
attained by the caterers of Tyneside. He said the "Geordie" had
always been recognised as a craftsman in shipbuilding and engineering,
yet many people seemed to find it surprising that he was also a
craftsman in cookery.
Caterer's Initiative
   It was the caterers of Tyneside under Mr. Thomas Lonsdale
(past chairman of the branch) who took the initiative in the
establishment of a catering section in the Newcastle College of
Further Education.
   "I have had experience of the students' cooking there, and I
feel quite sure they will make a great contribution to the industry
when they graduate. It is a very worthwhile project."
   Mr. J. H. Innes, principal of the College of Further
Education, proposing the toast of the Institute, said it was a tragedy
that so many industries today still maintained some of the worst
aspects of the old apprenticeship system, and had lost so many of the
good aspects.
   The National Joint Apprenticeship Council had given careful
thought to the organisation of the craft apprenticeships. There was
no need for long apprenticeship provided it was carefully organised.
   He congratulated the catering industry on being alive to this
need. He wished more industries saw the necessity of careful
selection of the duties and functions of the apprentice.
   The colleges must work with industry to try to get the best for
the apprentice, to produce the best kind of craftsmanship.
   Mr. Innes said that in Newcastle the education authority was
doing all it could to provide better education, but the college
premises in Bath Lane were grossly inadequate. However, it was hoped
to move into a fine new college in St. Mary's Place in about three
years. That would give a great chance to develop many aspects of
college work, particularly catering management.
   Mr. J. J. Lanning, national secretary of the Institute,
replying to the toast, said few industries were growing at such a rate
as catering. Nevertheless, catering was an industry with some
deficiencies. The greatest was that some employers did not yet
realise the value of the training available in the technical colleges.
   Fortunately, the branch chairman and his committee were conscious
of the fact and were doing all they could to remedy it. If there was
to be development in the north-east, the hotel and catering industry
could not be neglected, but the Institute needed the support of both
the employers and the education authorities.
   Proposing the toast of the guests, Mr. Thomas Lonsdale, said
the catering industry today required brains, but pointed out that the
capacity to absorb technical knowledge differed from the hard realism
of routine catering, which demanded not only brains and skill, but
common sense and understanding of human nature as well as the highest
possible degree of courtesy. The last factor could not be
over-stressed in catering today.
   The recent tea-break strike highlighted the importance of the
industry, but as far as he could recall there had never been a strike
in the industry itself. "We are rather proud of our classless
profession," he added.
   Mr. A. Johnson, secretary of the Northern Advisory Council of
Further Education, responded.
Hotel College is U.N.O. in Miniature
   That the post-diploma course in hotel management now offered at
the hotel and catering section of Blackpool Technical College, is
highly thought of is shown by the fact that two students have
travelled thousands of miles to take advantage of it.
   Krishan Kuma Amla has a B.A. degree from the University of
Jamull and Kashmir, and C.Comm. degree, Commercial University of
New Delhi, has been assistant manager of the Hotel Broadway, New
Delhi, and been seconded by the hotel management for a year's training
at the Blackpool School.
   Within six days of receiving acceptance of his application, Mr.
Amla flew over to Blackpool and suddenly appeared at the school ready
to start the course.
# 28
<137 TEXT E32>
Leo C Wilson says
ALL-ROUNDERS HAVE NO MONOPOLY IN BAD JUDGING
   THERE is, perhaps, no need for me to join in the controversy
over the appointment of judges for championship shows since Raymond
Oppenheimer is doing very nicely on his own, thank you.
   But it is a subject on which I have expressed an opinion many
times over the years so I could hardly keep out of it.
   Personally I think that the Shows Regulation Committee holds the
view that because a championship show committee asks for a certain
judge that judge is 6ipso facto a suitable appointment whilst
reserving the right, of course, to refuse the appointment for any
reason of its own.
   That, to my mind is a basic and very grievous error. I could
understand this point of view better if the SRC were composed
entirely of people who did not know the workings of show committees,
but the present SRC includes people who have quite intimate
knowledge of the manner in which championship show judges are
appointed (and of the way this varies according to the promoting club)
so all one can think is that their voices are either not raised in
protest or go unheeded.
   
   MY main point of difference with Mr Oppenheimer is that
his present campaign is concerned with the appointment of unsuitable
non-specialist judges whereas I am just as much concerned with the
appointment of incapable specialist judges. I believe Mr.
Oppenheimer shares that concern, but feels that the issue he has
raised is sufficient at the moment to keep him fully occupied without
widening it. Personally I hold the view that if anything is going to
be done at all to revise the methods of selecting and approving judges
then it might as well be all embracing.
   I do not want to stand up as champion of the all-rounders merely
because I am, in fact, one of them, especially as I feel that the term
"all-rounder" is applied much too loosely and made applicable to
people who have just judged small shows and variety classes or best in
show at championship shows whereas it should, strictly, be only
applied to those judges who have demonstrated a working knowledge of
all breeds and are acceptable to exhibitors in at least the large
majority of breeds. Few of the people who are given the label of
all-rounders could pass that test.
   
   I FEEL obliged to support Mr Oppenheimer's contention
that some all-rounders have insufficient experience of this breed, for
good Bull Terriers, like good Alsatians and a number of other breeds
are but rarely met with in variety classes at small shows and even
when a breed class is scheduled the top dogs rarely go pot hunting.
   This being so, the opportunities for seeing the best of the breed
(and therefore getting one's eye in) are limited.
   I suppose I judge as many shows as most people but I must confess
that so far this year- apart from when I have judged at Ch shows-
I have not come across more than a dozen Bull Terriers (possibly only
half that number) and only one really top class specimen that I recall
and that was in the best in show ring at WELKS where I left the
best of breed Bull Terrier in the last few from which I made my final
selection.
   So far as this goes therefore I agree with Mr. Oppenheimer that
judges who are merely termed all-rounders because they have a limited
experience of judging varieties cannot be regarded as fully equipped
to award CCs in the breed.
   
   ALL I want to say is that all-rounders (or if one prefers
the term "non-specialists") have no monopoly of bad judging and it
is, as I have said many times before, one of the faults of our system
that a judge cannot be hauled over the coals and asked to explain his
or her reasons for placings which cause widespread amazement in the
same way that an official referee or umpire can be arraigned for
decisions alleged to be bad.
   I have myself seen at least one amazing display of judging by a
specialist judge in Mr. Oppenheimer's own breed where several very
ordinary dogs and one which was really in the pet category were placed
over the latest champion who had only just won his qualifying CC
under Mr. Oppenheimer himself and was not unfit or lame or anything
else apparent which accounted for his being ignored.
   
   THERE have been occasions when I have spoken to specialist
judges in connection with their CC winners and have been amazed at
their apparent lack of knowledge or perception.
   It is understandable that they should have some enthusiasm for
their CC winners, but not to the extent that they cannot see their
imperfections yet I have come across cases where specialists- in some
cases I must admit where they are fulfilling their first championship
show engagement- when they have gone into raptures over very ordinary
specimens with quite obvious faults and even when fundamental
anatomical faults were pointed out to them- such as faulty shoulders,
movement and so on- they have not only been unable or unwilling to
see the faults, but have even given me a sort of pitying look one
gives to a half-witted child because I even suggested that their idol
had feet of clay- so to speak.
   On the other hand I have heard specialist judges condemn exhibits
for faults which either they did not possess, were not provided for in
the Standard or for things which they obviously were not equipped to
judge.
   AS examples of this I recently heard the scathing comment
"slipped patella" used about the action of a dog which gave an
occasional hop when I am perfectly sure no veterinary surgeon would
have committed himself to that diagnosis without at least subjecting
the dog to examination. And I am extremely doubtful if the judge
making that remark would be able to recognise the condition by
examination. Especially as one of them added the revealing comment,
"I believe they've had that trouble in that kennel".
   Another specialist of some repute faulted a dog for missing
molars, although in fact she had not examined the dog and was only
going by hearsay.
   And even if the dog did have missing molars the breed Standard
makes no mention of that as a fault.
   I am not saying a dog should not be penalised for missing molars,
but how many judges even look at molars? And do they all know just
how many teeth of each category a dog should have?
BENCH AND FIELD
HOW THE MINOR BREEDS CAN HELP THEMSELVES
by F WARNER HILL
   THE problem of the non-certificated breeds at the
championship shows is always with us. The "big boys" are tacitly
expected to schedule a number of them with the almost certainty they
will lose money. The extent of the classification given to these
breeds again rests on the generosity of the promoters, but here the
breed clubs can play a considerable part. It is well known that
breeds of this type often pay better at regional open and limited
shows than they do at national events, but as breed clubs are
invariably based on national membership I do suggest they could
relieve those national shows who schedule them with guarantees, either
whole or partial according to their financial position. If guarantees
are impossible then could not there be more cash specials reserved for
shows of this type to encourage the members to enter? I am fully
aware of the complexities of the problem, for I am president of one of
the minor clubs concerned, and feel that when certificates are on
offer these are a prime attraction, and could be balanced at shows
without certificates with augmented prize money in the way of specials
from the club coffers.
   
   IT is of untold good to have a breed represented at
national fixtures, and in the smaller breeds the club members must of
necessity be prepared to give financial support whenever possible.
One does not see so often a group of breed patrons providing private
guarantees and so relieving the club finances as formerly, but I might
commend to those interested the words of Robert Burns, translated into
English. A lot of people offering a little extra support apiece can
accomplish a large result, and this is by far the most satisfactory
one. A patron with the best intent in the world wealthy enough to
hand over plenty of cash is always in these suspicious days running
the risk of being accused of "buying their way in". I know for a
fact one or two sensitive people have actually provided this cash
support in the form of anonymous donations with no conditions as to
how it should be used. I know one well-known club which opens a
subscription list to offset show expenses, and the contributors' names
are listed, but not the amount of their donations, just one way of
overcoming an embarrassment, and proving the "widow's mite" as
equally well thought of as the gold of the wealthy pharisee.
   
   IN glancing through the entry list at Birmingham (taken at
random as an example) I note that there are some strange anomalies.
For instance, Pointers without certificates in six classes average
3.3, while German Short-haired Pointers under the same judge with
certificates rate six in six classes whilst Weimaraners which he also
judges come up with a five average in four classes without CCs.
This is all the more creditable to Weimaraners in view of their
position in the schedule. Maybe they are not looked on as "bird
dogs", but still they might have been listed with them rather than
behind the Spaniel classification. Birmingham, in fact, does not seek
guarantees, but some of the bird dog breeds at least have flourishing
clubs and might well have supported to some extent. I hope I will not
be accused of taking invidious exceptions, but a new club such as the
Pointer Club seeking more certificates for the breed particularly in
the Midlands might well have supported quite a generous classification
of six, with something more attractive to their members than a couple
of rosettes.
   
   CLUMBERS without certificates have 2 entries and average
five, which is good when one considers that the overall average entry
for the Spaniel classes is 6.5 per class and Fields (without CCs)
though not so good at 3.25 per class are certainly better than last
year when only two entries were received- an average of only 1 per
class.
   It is also noteworthy that the general average at this show is
about 6.5 and the Gundog group as a whole must be classed as quite
satisfactory with an approximate average of 7.2
   
   AMONG all the difficulties of running a successful kennel,
one problem is of naming the inmates. The Wilson Wileys who live at
Little Wardrobes and adopted this place name as their prefix, have
been christening homebred stock with names associated with a lady's
wardrobe, such as Mink in all its varieties, Georgette, Hunting Pink,
Sari, Sable, etc, and finally have run out of kindred names.
Returning from their round-the-world tour and faced with the naming
of a couple of litters awaiting their arrival, Mrs Wilson Wiley, to
while away time (no pun intended) on the last leg of the journey,
started jotting down names of accessories such as jewellery. She
listed such names as Cut Diamond, Emerald, Opal, Garnet, etc, and
finally, running out of ideas, stuffed the paper in her make-up case.
Going through Customs she was specifically asked if she had any
jewellery bought abroad to declare and gave a conscience clear
~"No," but a suspicious Customs officer, insisting on examining the
contents of the case, came across this list of jewels, and it took a
lot of talking on the part of her solicitor husband to convince the
officer this was not a smuggler's list but merely a list of names for
some Boxer puppies.
# 26
<138 TEXT E33>
<ILLUSTRATION>
THE MANUFACTURE OF YOGHURT
Danish Dairy increases Output
   IN many European countries such as Switzerland, Holland,
Germany and Italy sales of yoghurt have recently undergone a
considerable increase, and are even greater as one comes as far south
as Turkey and the Balkans, where yoghurt originated. In the
Scandinavian countries they have not varied very much, with the
possible exception of Sweden, where there has been a market interest
in this special cultured milk product.
   From time to time in Denmark, there has been a move to increase
sales, especially when the international weekly and monthly journals
have emphasized the health-giving properties of yoghurt.
   The increase to date, however, has not given rise to much profit,
for a considerable turnover and investment in the product is necessary
before much return can be expected. When this has been achieved there
are grounds for rationalising the product and improving the quality.
   Some time ago an effort was made to sell more yoghurt in greater
Copenhagen, and the dairy firm Jaegersborg Alle?2s Mejeri
increased its sales so that production could be rationalised,
according to the latest methods.
   The dairy has now constructed a completely new yoghurt
department, equipped with new plant, the most important of which is a
large new automatically controlled yoghurt incubator (Fig. 1). The
incubator is 2 m. wide, 1 m. deep and 2 m. high and holds in all
2, quarter-litre yoghurt jars of the type shown in Fig. 2, which
stand in galvanized crates, 5 to each crate. It is well insulated
and finished in stainless steel plate, both inside and out.
   The conditions necessary for the manufacture of yoghurt of the
right quality include a very careful control of all time-temperature
combinations throughout the process. The incubator is therefore
equipped with a very precise and entirely automatic control, which
leaves nothing to chance from the moment the yoghurt jars enter the
cupboard till they are removed to the dispatch department. It is
easier to understand the function of the automatic control when it is
considered in connection with the manufacturing method employed by
Jaegersborg Alle?2s Mejeri, which must not be varied if one is to
obtain a uniform product from day to day. The product should have a
mild, acid and aromatic flavour.
Methods of Manufacture
   Stassinized milk is used for the manufacture of yoghurt. The
milk is stored overnight at 4@ C., because it has been found that
the ageing of the milk, which takes place during this storage period,
is important in the quality of the final product.
   The aged milk is then filled into a 5 l. jacketed stainless
steel container and heated to 7@ C. It is homogenised at this
temperature, using only a light pressure, and is then fed to a second
holding vessel, exactly similar to the first, where it is heated to
95@ C. in 3 min.
   Afterwards the milk is cooled to 5@ C., at which point 3 per
cent yoghurt culture is added. This is thoroughly stirred in, after
which the milk is filled in to the new 25 ml. jars, with a 55 mm.
opening designed so that the yoghurt can be eaten direct from the jar.
Filling is carried out by a Handy =2 apparatus which is fitted with
specially designed filling valves for the wide mouthed jars.
   The yoghurt culture, which consists of a mixture of streptoccus
thermophilus and thermobacterium bulgaricum, is particularly
sensitive to disinfectants and sodium hypochlorite is not used
therefore in the final rinse water during the washing of the jars.
Instead, the final temperature is raised so that the jars leave the
washer hot and dry in a relatively short time.
   After filling and capping, the temperature of the inoculated
yoghurt milk is reduced to 41-42@ C., and the jars are put into the
incubator, where this temperature is held constant for approximately 2
hr. Supplementary heat is provided by an electric heating element
enclosed in the partition wall between the two doors, which is
automatically controlled by means of contact thermometers. The
temperature is then reduced to 2@ C. during the next 2 hr.
Cooling takes place by means of chilled water and this is also
automatically controlled so that the temperature falls evenly. In
further period <SIC> of 2 hr. the temperature is reduced from
2@ C. to 4@ C., which is maintained until the yoghurt is
removed from the cupboard.
   Freezing is carried out by a refrigeration unit mounted above the
incubator. This is also equipped with automatic time and temperature
controls which are mounted in a separate control panel.
   The accuracy of control is demonstrated by the rate of acid
development which is almost constant from day to day. In the
manufacture of yoghurt it is also important to prevent the product
from wheying off at any stage, and it is essential that the ripening
is stopped at the correct degree of acidity, and the temperature
subsequently reduced quickly and evenly.
   Jaegersborg Alle?2s Mejeri have chosen to handle yoghurt in
the new standard jars because they believe that nothing appeals more
to both the eye and the appetite than hundreds of clear, uniformly
filled jars standing ready for dispatch. With its new equipment the
dairy can turn out 2, jars daily, but if the trade continues to
expand it will only be a question of time before new equipment is
added to that already installed.
   The manufacturers of the incubator, which is equipped with Faxholm
automatic controls, are P. Andersen's EFTF. of Copenhagen.
<ILLUSTRATION>
SUPERMARKET TRADE ASSOCIATION FORMED
Two Classes of Membership
   A trade association has been formed to service the rapidly
growing supermarket industry. The founder members are: Neville Cohen
of London Grocers Ltd., Sydney J. Ingram of Anthony Jackson's
Foodfare Ltd., Patrick Galvani of Premier Supermarkets Ltd., J.
Prideaux of John Gardner Ltd., T. Lennon of Lennons Supermarkets
Ltd., Lord Trenchard and Wilfred Proudfoot, M.P.
   The objectives of The Supermarket Association are:-
   (=1) To provide a full information service to members.
   (=2) To represent the industry on matters of legislation, staff
and public relations.
   (=3) To attract the right people into the industry and develop
training facilities for them.
   Two classes of membership are proposed: full membership for
companies engaged in operating supermarkets- the subscription will be
5 gns. a year plus one guinea per branch- and associate membership
for manufacturers and suppliers, who will receive the full services of
the Association but will have no voting powers. Subscription for
associates will be 1 gns. a year.
   It is hoped to extend personal membership to those engaged in the
industry when training facilities are available.
   Members of the industry believe that joint action is necessary to
ensure that the growing demand for pre-packed and graded produce can
be met. Only a united industry can deal adequately with marketing
board Government departments. Staff training, statistical and other
information, and the development of good relations with the buying
public are all recognised as immediate requirements that only a fully
representative trade organisation can provide.
   Mr. Don Parsons, Executive Director of the Supermarket
Institute of America, has been elected an honorary member.
   Mr. E. G. Sabatini, manager of Promotion Features Ltd.,
has been appointed Secretary to The Supermarket Association and their
offices are at 17/19 Stratford Place, London W.1 (Telephone:
Grosvenor 8561/4), where a full service is being provided by Promotion
Features Ltd.
MONTHLY DIGEST OF WORLD LITERATURE
by Ernest J. Mann, N.D.D.
Commonwealth Bureau of Dairy Science and Technology
Milk Drying
   CONSIDERABLE technical developments have been taking place in
the field of milk drying during recent years and there is no
indication as yet that the flow of new ideas and developments in this
field is coming to an end.
   An entirely new process developed on the Continent and suitable
for drying milk as well as a variety of other foods is the
B.I.R.S. process, the first detailed description of which has
recently been published (1). The main object of the process is to
remove water from the product to be dried in such a way as to have a
minimum effect on the flavour and nutritive value of the original
product. This is achieved essentially by drying at a temperature
below 3@ C. After pilot plant studies had shown that over 8
different foods, including milk, butter, cheese and yoghurt, could be
dried successfully by the process, a commercial plant was built in
Sienna, Italy, and is now in operation for the manufacture of tomato
powder. The plant consists of a 7-meter high, plastics-lined drying
tower, through which particles of the product to be dried fall in
counter current to slowly rising pre-dried air flowing at a rate of
.5 to 1 meter per second. Since the drying takes place very slowly
at a temperature below 3@ C., little of the aroma and flavour of
the original product is lost.
   The air is dried by passage through chambers containing moisture
absorbents and enters the chamber with a moisture content of 3 per
cent, leaving it at the top of the tower with a moisture content of
8-9 per cent. The air is also filtered before entering the drying
tower, containing not more than .5 mg. dust per cubic meter and
being free from bacterial contamination. The particle size can be
varied by regulating the distributor feeding the product into the
tower and drying can be extended from 5 sec. to considerably longer
periods. New plants which have been planned to have drying capacities
of 1, to 5, litres moisture removed per hour and it has been
calculated that only 1.2 to 1.8 kg. steam are required for the
evaporation of 1 kg. moisture by the B.I.R.S. process, compared
with 3. to 3.5 kg. required in continental spray-drying.
   The main object of a number of recent American patents appears to
be to achieve a powder of higher solubility and/or stability,
attention being directed especially to the drying of whole milk. One
such process (2) involves incorporating an inert gas of low solubility
into a concentrated, homogenised fat-containing milk in which the fat
particles do not exceed 215m, subjecting the concentrate to such
conditions of temperature and pressure as will prevent substantial
evolution of gas while causing the concentrate to foam or puff, and
finally drying the foamed concentrate to produce a dry cellular
product which is readily dispersible in cold water by hand stirring.
   Another, somewhat similar, process (3) involves converting
concentrated milk into a stable foam by incorporating a small amount
of a foam-stabilising agent (1-4 per cent by wt.) and a large volume
of air or inert gas. The milk foam produced is then exposed, in the
form of a thin layer, at normal pressures to a current of hot gases at
12@-22@ F. until it is dried. During drying, the foam retains
its expanded volume with the result that the final product is a
brittle, sponge-like porous mass consisting of a matrix of solid milk
particles interspersed with pockets of gas. It is readily crushed to
form a product of porous flakes which are highly soluble in water.
   On somewhat different lines is a process suitable for
spray-drying whole milk (4), which involves spraying concentrated milk
into a vacuum chamber and subjecting it to radiant microwave energy at
a temperature below 35@ C. in the upper section until a solids
content of 87 per cent has been reached, after which it is treated by
infra-red rays at a temperature below 6@ C. until the dried milk
particles attain a moisture content less than 5 per cent. The milk
particles may also be coated by spraying a hot lactose solution into
the lower part of the drying chamber. This imparts improved
solubility to the dried milk.
   Improved solubility is also claimed in a process emanating from
the Netherlands (5), in which spray dried skim- or whole milk is
heated to 7@ C. in a steam jacketed rotary mixer and .2-4 per
cent by weight of similarly heated liquified soya-lecithin is added,
causing the milk particles to become coated with the lecithin.
# 24
<139 TEXT E34>
Editorial Points
   Owing to the number of important competitions held recently we
regret we have been unable to include in this issue some interesting
technical articles, including the first of a new series. These will
be published next month.
APPRENTICESHIP RATIO
   IT has been said that hairdressers can employ more
apprentices- that is over the legal ratio- provided they pay rates
which are not less than those of any "other worker." But the very
fact of paying an apprentice more money does not permit master
hairdressers to employ apprentices above the ratio unless such other
wages are paid that the Order specifies.
   The rate which would have to be paid in these circumstances would
be those <SIC> of first-year operatives and not those of "other
worker." It is known that a number of hairdressers have employed
young people as apprentices at "other worker" rates believing this
was permissible. This is not so and while it may in certain cases
have been tolerated in the first year of apprenticeship, the payment
of "other worker" rates would certainly not be acceptable in the
second year.
   The intention of the authority concerned is to operate the Wages
Order as written. There need be no doubt about that. An increasingly
sharp official eye is being kept on the situation. The present ratio
compared with that of 1948 implies that three times the number of
young people are being apprenticed today. This is an answer to those
who say that the age-old custom of apprenticeship is dying.
   And these days, the employer has the advantage of getting the
apprentice supplementary training at National Technical Colleges and
these facilities are growing. It is just a matter of time before the
trainee schools will disappear altogether from the scene.
   Every intelligent hairdresser knows by now that he has an
obligation to provide proper training for apprentices because it is in
his own interests that there should be a pool of qualified assistants
from which to draw replacements and increase staff. It cannot be
there for him unless he undertakes to train his own quota of young
people in the right way.
   He also knows that the trainee river of supply is poor and
useless to him however much work he puts in to try and improve it. We
must face the fact that those young people who seek to enter the
6bona-fide Craft through trainee school instruction are trying to do
things the easy way. They are not willing, and probably do not
possess the ability, to undergo the discipline and teaching of the
three-year course. We are sorry for them. It is the bitter lesson
that they must learn. Hairdressing is not easily taught. There are
no short cuts. Maybe one or two young trainees do have a pronounced
flair for hairdressing and a higher standard of intelligence and
education than the majority of their kind, but that has nothing to do
with the rest.
   It is the duty of the hairdresser to teach, keep alive and make
progressive the various skills which are the basis of professional
hairdressing. He will know that however much he himself knows about
his job, there is always something more to learn. It should be a
matter of professional pride to understand the art of wig-making, for
example, however unnecessary it may appear to some. For we have not
seen the last of the wig in the world of fashion. We have never said
goodbye to it throughout our history, and that goes back a very long
way.
   There are newer skills and there will be even more. Modern hair
colouring, for instance, is comparatively new. Its techniques will
grow more complex, just as every other professional skill grows more
complex. We must not imagine anyway that simplification is a boon.
It often leads to the cheapening of a service in terms of quality.
It is a moot point if a simplified service can impose increased
charges. The professional service of the hairdresser must be always
something that the public cannot provide for itself.
   Do not let us be misled that because times may be affluent that
it is necessarily easier for us to earn a better living. There are
countries which we could mention where the standard of living is very
high and where more and more women are dressing their own hair. This
can only be because they do not think that the service their
hairdressers offer is worth the money.
   It can happen here, too. If we drop our professional service
standards by turning out mass produced work the public in the end will
judge us. We can charge what we like. The public will decide whether
or not it pays.
RAISING GENT'S PRICES
   WE are glad to see the gentleman's hairdresser putting up his
prices. They are, unfortunately, still not high enough. Here we have
indeed a high standard of skill, but the charges for it have been too
low for too long.
   Now property values are soaring and it is certainly becoming
extremely difficult for the small gent's salon to exist. More and
more of these will be driven away from busy streets into back streets,
and a large portion of these will inevitably cease to exist. Apart
from the difficulty of obtaining young people to enter the business,
the tide is running in favour of the larger units.
   But even these will have to obtain higher prices for their
service. They will get them. It is an indispensable service. And
there is scope in the business for other services and for new ideas.
Young men are already showing increasing smartness in their
appearance and dress. The dowdy man in a shabby suit will shortly
belong to the dreary past. Older generations may not always approve
of what the young generation does, but they cut no ice with the
youngsters. Their support of new styling has been a good thing for
the gentleman's hairdresser.
A FINE EXHIBITION
   OVER 21, people visited the Hairdressing Exhibition at
Alexandra Palace and there is every reason to think that the numbers
who attend the next show will be even greater. This implies that it
is possible to build up this Exhibition in its present form to numbers
fit to compare with the public exhibitions of the past.
   It is a fact that the hall at Alexandra Palace was larger than
the National Hall at Olympia and the standard of display was far
higher than anything we have done before. It is another fact that the
majority of our exhibitors had displays that would not be likely to
attract much attention from the public. But they are of interest to
hairdressers.
   A final fact is that much more could be done to popularise and
publicise the Exhibition to the hairdresser. There is always the
magnet of the great competitions, but there could be other ideas as
well to bring the hairdresser along.
   There is plenty of time to consider the next show. Maybe
Blackpool will get a closer look from the H.M.W.A. next year.
But here a whole great town offers attractions and it is,
furthermore, a holiday town, which the great Metropolis is definitely
not!
A FOOLISH ECONOMY
   THERE is an increasing tendency among master hairdressers to
assume that they need not insure themselves for employers' liability.
It is thought that if an employee suffers industrial injury that
<SIC> the matter is fully taken care of by National Health
Insurance.
   But if it is proved that an employer has been negligent, the
employee can sue him. We do, of course, take that risk if we don't
insure. We can attempt to justify this by arguing that as we have
never had a case of this kind why should we keep on paying premiums to
insurance companies?
   Accidents, however, usually take us by surprise. They are never
expected until they happen. Who would have thought that Miss Jones
would get a sudden attack of dermatitis through her hair colour work?
She had done it for so long. Of course it did happen that there was
a time when we hadn't renewed her rubber gloves or had a tube of
barrier cream available. How unfortunate! Certainly unfortunate for
us if Miss Jones decides to sue.
   Naturally, we do save money if we don't pay employers' liability
insurance premiums. We may save it for years. But how much does it
amount to? A few pounds? And how much can Miss Jones get out of us?
Your guess is as good as ours- maybe thousands.
   No, the risk of economising here is just not worth it. Let us
choose other ways of saving our pennies. We are a public service and
an important one. We are, therefore, up front to be shot at. A busy
salon season is coming. That fact alone increases our risks as
employers. We should do everything possible to limit them.
TO WAIT OR NOT TO WAIT
   THE Registration Movement celebrates a year of quiet and
steady progress with a small Dinner and Dance in London. This is a
serious minded body with one object: to pass a Bill through Parliament
to get hairdressers registered.
   When is it likely that such a Bill will go through? Many
hairdressers ask this. If it happened, of course, the rush to
register would be an avalanche! But surely that is the wrong way to
go about things. If the rush took place now and if the Hairdressers'
Registration Council could claim that every hairdresser wanted
Registration, we think that the Bill would get considerable support in
Parliament and that when it came to be presented the Government would
get it through.
   We have to be united in this cause and show determination to
achieve the object. If we take the view that we are not going to do
anything until it looks as if the Bill is going to succeed, then all
we are doing is to undermine or delay the cause. Full support is
necessary.
   Do we or do we not want Registration? If we don't want it, then
what do we do to safeguard the Craft? Let us take it for granted that
most of us want to safeguard it. But how else can we do it? It seems
that only Registration can do this job. And if we all agree about
that, why not act now and do something about it?
   The fee to a hairdresser is only ten shillings a year. It should
be twice that amount. How much money is spent in postage in trying to
get members to renew their membership? How much money is spent in
publicising the Movement? However much is spent on either account, if
more were available a better job could be done for the Movement.
THE PALETTE CLUB
by Joan Benton
Colour for VERY GREY AND WHITE HAIR
   THE colouring of very grey and white hair presents particular
features which differ from the colouring of naturally coloured hair or
hair containing only a small amount of grey. As hair loses its colour
pigment, alterations take place in its structure which change the
texture of the hair and often affect its resilience. These changes
vary from head to head, so that no hard and fast rules can be made
when applying colour, and the results will vary considerably,
according to the condition of the hair.
   The most common change of texture in greying hair is a hardening
of the hair shaft, which takes on almost a glass-like appearance and
can be very resistant to some forms of colour. This is most
noticeable when using temporary or semi-permanent colour. A temporary
colour can in extreme cases be thrown off, even as it is being
applied, so resistant is some white hair, and the partial penetration
of a semi-permanent colour which allows for a lasting power of some
weeks will not always be as effective on very grey hair when the
cuticle of the hair has hardened.
   Semi-permanent colouring is the most popular and generally used
form of colouring very grey and white hair, and the colour expert has
a wide variety of grey, blue-grey and pastel tones from which to
choose.
# 226
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LIMITED BUDGET ADVERTISING
<EDITORIAL>
   MORE MONEY than ever is now being spent on stimulating the
public to travel abroad- whether for business or pleasure. But what
about the smaller agent? Even the small agent with only limited
resources should advertise, provided the money is well directed into
the proper channels.
   Bearing in mind the fact that the smaller travel agent offers
special services to a particular cliente?3le, the problem is not as
difficult as it looks. This first article therefore, deals with the
press side; the second will deal with public relations, and the third
will deal with direct mail. And these aim to offer just a few
suggestions on how the smaller agent can 'sell himself'
successfully. There are of course many other forms of publicity which
will not be covered, such as outdoor posters (roadside hoardings, bus
sides, trains etc.) illuminated signs and so on.
Not most effective
   Naturally when one first thinks of press advertising, it
conjures up the thought of taking space in the national dailies or
Sunday papers; but it must be pointed out that, whilst this is an
ideal media, it does not mean it is necessarily the most effective
method of reaching your public. With your type of cliente?3le, and
the kind of money which you have available for advertising, the local
press is probably the ideal way of reaching your client. Whatever the
flavour or colour of your local paper, do remember that these are read
avidly for local information, etc. It has been proved by research
as well as by the response of local traders that spaces however large
or small certainly have the required pulling power!
<TABLE>
   In addition, of course, you will probably be able to afford to
take small spaces in the small circulation local magazines,
i.e. church magazines, local shopping guides etc., whose
readers are also susceptible to your kind of advertising. For this
purpose it is necessary to find out which papers and magazines
potential customers read- then use them.
   In most cases advertising rates are very economical indeed for
the amount of coverage which they offer. To give an example of costs,
the major counties of England have been selected and in the table on
page 41 these are listed together with the number of weekly papers in
each area, together with the overall average costs per single column
inch. As will be seen these are extremely economical.
When to advertise?
   This is a very important factor when thinking of advertising.
To reach the holiday market, it would be advisable to plan your
campaign, if you are selling inclusive tours or package holidays, so
that it appears in late December or during January. It is advisable
to keep in reserve a small amount for advertising during March/ April
to catch those people who do not decide where or what they are going
to do until later in the year, or possibly are wanting to see what the
Budget is going to do for them. It is at this time when the public
are thinking of planning their forthcoming annual holiday. It would
be extremely wasteful to spend money on promoting summer holidays in
the middle of June or July.
   If you are in a highly industrial area where there are a number
of top level executives who are unable to get away during the normal
periods, then it may be wise to promote a special campaign
'selling' the idea of getting away during late autumn, finding the
sun, or travelling to a winter skiing holiday. This campaign would be
best planned to commence around late August or the beginning of
September. The writer feels that repetitive small spaces are better
able to keep the company's name before the public, rather than putting
all your eggs in one basket by taking say a half-page, and thus
spending all your money in one large effort.
   It should be apparent from these remarks that very careful
thought and planning should be undertaken before carrying out any type
of advertising.
Quality is what counts
   As has already been stated, it is not always the size of space
which dominates but how the space which is bought, can be used to
the best advantage. If you can only afford 2 in. single columns in
your local newspaper, it is wise only to
<ILLUSTRATIONS>
promote the company name together with the facilities offered. An
example of style for this format is shown. Even in small spaces such
as this the 'brand image' is incorporated. It may, however, be
felt that at certain times during the year you are able to offer the
public in your area a special 'package' holiday to various resorts.
This will mean taking larger spaces to display this information. An
example of this type of display is also illustrated. Once again the
'brand image' of the company is followed through. As will be seen
the same name plate and border etc. are adhered to, thus continuing
the build-up of the company's image.
Creating a brand image
   To promote your company successfully it is wise to create a
brand image, and this can be done by standardising the style of the
company name either by creating a name block of the company name,
i.e. Poly Travel, or by adhering to a standard form of
setting the company name. This should be carried throughout on
letterheads, labels etc. This, together with a type of border display
which is repetitively used whenever advertising the facilities
offered, will in time become immediately recognisable as belonging to
your company. An example of how this can be achieved in different
sizes is shown on the layouts illustrated in this article.
THE BASIC QUALITIES OF PERSONAL SELLING by STUART THOMSON
Successful salesmanship largely depends on a positive attitude
   THROUGHOUT the British Isles the benefits and pleasures of
travel are being creatively sold or 'offered for sale'. There is a
considerable difference in these two functions and the difference will
be emphasised in this series of articles.
   Working from ill-equipped Dickensian offices or operating from
large, plush showrooms of global romance, are the men and women who
are, or should be, engaged in selling travel. Without any doubt some
of them have pledged themselves, by their mental attitudes, to a life
of frustration, inertia and discontent, whilst some of their
colleagues have destined themselves, because of quite contrasting
attitudes, to a life of fulfilment, happiness and success.
   As each year passes the sum total of sales promotional activity
within the travel industry grows more weighty and impressive. Apart
from the increased display advertisement space booked in newspapers
and magazines, additional use is being made of television and
commercial radio. Add to this such media as posters and direct mail
and it will be quickly appreciated that the consumer public is
increasingly well served with information.
   Whilst the ultimate intention of all this publicity is obviously
to sell travel, its immediate aim is to foster desire, create
awareness and stimulate the intention to act. Through a variety of
means, for a large number of varied reasons, it helps bring the public
to the market place of travel.
   However, nothing materialises, no positive action takes place, no
orders are negotiated, until the prospective purchaser is in contact
with a travel agency or a transport organisation.
People taking charge
   It is now that people become involved and it is people, with
their idiosyncratic ways, patterns of behaviour and thought processes,
who make or mar a sale. The human personality takes effect. Men and
women influence the result of a commercial transaction. Whilst it is
the object of publicity to promote a sale, the inescapable fact
remains that promotion is one thing and execution another. The key
factor in successful selling is the degree of enthusiasm and
competence of the sales staff. When they lack zest, belief and
knowledge, they will mutilate opportunities to make sales. When they
possess enthusiasm, belief and knowledge, they will create
opportunities as well as accept those which are presented to them.
   As far as the practises <SIC> and techniques of selling are
concerned there are no 'secrets', no hidden mysteries. Commerce
has existed for so many centuries that all known usages and practises
<SIC> are on record.
Learning techniques
   No one would deny that it is necessary for sales personnel to
learn and practise all acceptable techniques which are applicable to
the sale of their particular product or service. It is, though,
almost a waste of time painstakingly to learn the routines of selling
unless one approaches this stimulating, rewarding occupation with a
positive attitude of mind. Beliefs and attitudes play a role of
greater importance than techniques which can be learned without
difficulty.
   Some people are outstanding, or noticeably good, as salesmen.
Their success is not wrapped up in mysticism, gift of the gab,
unmitigated toil, family influence, or selfish desire for material
gain. It may be pitifully comforting for those who fail to attribute
the sales success of others to all sorts of weird, and sometimes quite
petty, reasons, but it is profitless expenditure of nervous energy.
   All good salesmen and women possess four attributes without which
they could not succeed.
   (1) They have a sincere and genuine interest in the product or
service which they market.
   (2) They consciously enjoy their work- they like selling.
   (3) Most important of all they believe in themselves, their
company, and their industry. They believe that what they are doing is
the right thing to be doing.
   (4) They think positively. They think of success, not of
failure. They cast out doubts and defeatism, knowing that dwelling on
negative corroding thoughts is destructive.
   There are, of course, numerous other assets which are required
for a successful career in selling. Obviously, for instance, one
cannot sell well without enthusiasm, but the man or woman who
possesses the four main characteristics just listed is, automatically,
enthusiastic.
   Early in this article I said that some people destine themselves
for success whilst others ensure for themselves a life of frustration.
Success in selling is as simple, or as complex, as the control
exercised by the attitude of mind to the work to be done.
Automatic polish
   The man who enjoys his work and approaches it creatively will
find that the techniques, the competency and the professional polish
will come to him automatically. He will learn and progress because he
wishes to do so, not because he is forced to do so.
   When a man does not like what he is doing, when he does not
believe in it, when he is perpetually day-dreaming and night-scheming
as to how to escape from his present mode of life, then he is doomed
to failure in his existing employment.
   To sell travel- or anything else- successfully, it is essential
to want and intend to succeed.
Unaware of resources
   The travel industry is not alone in utilising the services of
some sales people who are mediocre- that word is high praise for
them- and inefficient because they are unaware of their
potentialities as human beings, and unappreciative of the power they
possess to be of service to others.
   In certain of such instances it is unfair and unrealistic to
place the entire blame on the men and women concerned.
Importance of example
   An employer, the proprietor of a travel agency, has no right to
criticize members of his staff for lack of enthusiasm and absence of
application if he, personally, does not set an example. A large
number of average or poor performers could, and would, be much more
successful if only they were given a lead by their seniors and
assisted with patience, understanding and fellow feeling. All too
often this is not the case.
   Successful selling primarily depends on liking the product or
service, enjoying selling, believing sincerely in the benefits of
one's work and cultivating a successful attitude to life. Some people
understand this truth instinctively, whilst others need much guidance
in order to develop the potentialities that lie within them.
Modern sales office technique
<EDITORIAL>
   MOST DEPARTMENT and multiple stores of Western Europe and
North America spend considerably on staff training, and every sales
person passes through a theoretical course as well as a period of
practical apprenticeship.
# 234
<141 TEXT E36>
Better crops would enable more stock to be maintained and a
progressive cycle of improvement would result.
   The farm lies at an altitude of around 1, ft. and forms a
rather narrow strip from West to East- high at the West and falling
through about two-thirds of its length to a small burn which traverses
the farm. East of the burn the land again rises towards the boundary.
The soil generally is a medium loam, somewhat thin and rocky on the
hilly part near the west boundary and peaty in the hollow near the
burn. The soil is not inherently infertile, but on entry the farm was
in very poor heart.
   The initial rental was +7 6per annum with an agreement that
this would be raised to +1 when the existing byre was gutted and
made into a covered court. This was the only alteration made to the
steading.
   With the farm in such poor condition the first need was to
improve the grassland. Soil analyses showed all the land to be very
low in lime and the major nutrient elements. During the first two
winters, therefore, practically the whole farm was limed at the rate
of two tons of ground limestone per acre. Such grassland as had to be
temporarily retained was given a dressing of some 7 cwt. per acre of
potassic supers supplemented by an application of 1-2 cwt.
'Nitro-Chalk" in the Spring. The land which had been under green
crop was re-seeded direct and on all fields from which oats were being
taken the crop was undersown with Italian and Perennial Ryegrass, the
object being to supplement the grazing and provide something to plough
down and improve the organic matter content of the soil.
Cropping
   It should be realised that cropping in this area and at this
altitude is no easy matter. The winters are very severe, snow
frequently persisting into April, and late spring frosts are common.
This holds up spring work badly and retards sowing while heavy autumn
rains and early frosts or even snow storms make harvesting equally
difficult. The advent of the tractor in enabling more rapid
cultivations to be carried through as soon as weather conditions
permit has undoubtedly helped to overcome these hazards.
   Before it was taken over the cropping system on Clashnoir had
been irregular, but by 1949 it was being worked on a regular seven
course rotation common in the area. With a regular lea break of
around 17 acres the cropping was oats, oats, green crop, oats (sown
down) and hay, followed by two years' grazing. As the primary
intention was to base the economy of the farm on high production from
the grassland for both summer and winter, what would have been the
normal root break was reduced to three acres and the balance sown down
to a one year's special mixture for cutting as silage. Later, when
the fertility of the farm had been improved and the stocking
stabilised, some four acres of rape were regularly grown in addition
to the turnips, the former crop being used to finish off the lambs
before marketing. The special one year's mixture grown for silage was
the usual Perennial, Italian and red clover mixture recommended by the
College, while the grass seeds mixtures sown were also based on
College experience using combinations of early and late maturing
strains of ryegrass and cocksfoot to give continuity of growth for as
long a grazing season as possible. In the control of grazing, use was
made of the electric fence and surplus grass was cut for silage; about
one hundred tons of silage was made annually in an ordinary pit silo.
   Most of the oats grown in the early years were consumed by the
stock on the farm, but as the farm improved an increasing proportion
of the crop was generally sold, frequently for seed purposes. The
greater quantity of straw produced was also welcome as the stock
increased.
Manuring
   While high production from the grassland was the primary aim,
the land was not exploited and a balanced system of manuring was
practised. In addition to the initial liming a dressing of two tons
ground limestone per acre was applied to each field once in the
rotation. Depending on the condition of the fields, the oat crops
latterly received applications of 3-4 cwt. of a complete
concentrated fertiliser combine-drilled and the turnip crop 8-1
cwt. of a regular turnip manure in addition to dung. During the
earlier years when fertility was low the dressings were
correspondingly heavier. When available, basic slag was applied at 1
cwt. per acre to land which was sown down, after harvesting the
nurse crop. In the early stages there was a dearth of farmyard
manure, but after the first few years there was ample to give the
turnip land and the balance of the normal root break a regular and
adequate dressing. Again depending on the condition of the field, its
age and the purpose for which it was intended- whether for hay, to be
cut for silage or grazed- the grassland was regularly treated with
2-3 cwt. potassic supers supplemented with 1-1 1/2 cwt.
'Nitro-Chalk' or with 3-4 cwt. of a high nitrogen fertiliser.
Stocking
   At ingoing, the cattle stock consisted of twelve breeding cows
and calves and some 17 Blackface ewes were kept between Clashnoir and
Thain. The cattle stock was transferred to Deskie and in 1949, 21
pure bred Aberdeen-Angus in-calf heifers were purchased in the open
market at commercial prices. It was anticipated that with the
manuring undertaken the farm could carry this number, and it was
proposed to breed cross calves which would be suckled and sold off
their mothers in the autumn. Using a white Shorthorn bull this became
more or less the practice. As the fertility of the land improved, the
number of cattle carried was increased until latterly the herd
numbered around thirty. This number might have been increased
further, but accommodation for handling them during the winter was the
limiting factor. With good foundation breeding stock and using good
class bulls, the stock sold from Clashnoir soon became well known and
commanded very creditable prices in the local market, while several
were brought on by purchasers and gained awards at both the Edinburgh
Fat Stock Show and at Smithfield. Early calves were regularly sold at
the autumn sales, while the odd late calves were kept over their first
winter and sold as convenient the following spring or later as
six-quarter cattle.
   The herd became attested in 1952, but the normal hazards of
farming were encountered and the odd calf (and cow) were lost as on
any other farm. In 1954 when the stock was being further increased
some heifers were purchased in the open market. The following spring
ten of the cattle aborted. Fortunately, as a result of prompt
precautions being taken, there were no further losses the following
year.
   When the cattle stock was increased so markedly in 1949 a drastic
reduction was made in the sheep stock. The breeding flock was reduced
to 3 ewes and remained at this figure until, in the autumn of 1953,
it was felt that this could be increased. Forty ewes were kept and
twenty gimmers purchased. A stock of around sixty breeding sheep was
kept thereafter, being replaced one-third annually by the purchase of
a score of Blackface gimmers. The ewes were crossed with the Border
Leicester tup and the lambs and cast ewes sold at the autumn sales.
   For disease prevention the lambs were regularly treated with the
double vaccine for lamb dysentery and pulpy kidney within twenty-four
hours of birth. With a small stock on an enclosed area this was not a
difficult matter. The only other treatment regularly practised was
the dosing of the ewes with phenothiazine in the spring and both ewes
and lambs before the autumn sales.
   The only other livestock maintained was a flock of some 2
poultry kept on semi-intensive lines. No breeding was undertaken, the
stock being kept up by the purchase of 1 three-month-old pullets
each spring. Eggs were disposed of through the district packing
station and the culls and old hens sold to a local butcher.
   While this general picture of the way the farm was run will be of
interest to the practical farmer, it is the economic aspect which the
experiment was undertaken to test. This aspect is treated in detail
in the next section of this report, but in considering it three points
should be borne in mind. Firstly, it should be viewed as a whole and
not strictly in individual financial years because, when the
production of livestock and crops extends over more than a single
financial year, profits in any one year are at least partly derived
from the farming operations of previous seasons. Secondly, the
subsidies credited to the accounts were only those to which an
ordinary farm tenant would be entitled. Perhaps the most important
point of all is the fact that capital was available for expansion as
required. Improvements on similar farms would depend not only on the
urge to expand being present but also on credit facilities being
available and on farmers being willing to take advantage of these
facilities. Even so, as the later sections of this report show, the
extra capital required to finance the improvements of Clashnoir was by
no means excessive in relation to the increase in profits which
ensued.
3. PRODUCTION
   There was a fairly steady upward trend in the value of output
throughout the period of the experiment. In the Appendix, Table =4,
figures are given of net output per acre which rose from +1 8s. in
1949/5 to +19 2s. in 1954/55. After a temporary set-back in
1955/56 there was a further rise to +19 6s. in 1956/57. After the
breeding herds and laying flocks were established, about 195/51, the
pattern of output did not greatly change. The cattle enterprise
generally accounted for around one-third of the output, sheep and wool
for about one-sixth, crop sales for about a quarter and eggs for about
one-seventh.
   Rising prices, of course, played a considerable part in the
doubling of the value of output between the beginning and end of the
experiment. The increase in the physical volume of production was
less marked but was nevertheless quite significant, particularly for
sheep, wool and eggs, as is shown in Table 1.
<TABLE>
   Most of the cattle were sold as weaned calves in the autumn and
these realised very satisfactory prices which generally averaged over
+4 in the later years of the experiment, except for 1955/56
(Appendix, Table =5). This was a reflection of the high quality and
good reputation of the breeding cattle stock. A calving rate of about
95 per cent. was maintained over the nine years, with the exception
of the 1955 season when, following the outbreak of contagious
abortion, fewer than two-thirds of the cows calved successfully.
   The increased number of ewes carried on the farm from 1952
onwards, together with an improvement in the lambing rate from about
13 per cent. in the early years to about 145 per cent. latterly,
led to an increase of nearly 5 per cent. in numbers of lambs sold.
The prices realised for these lambs were generally rather above the
average market levels for Greyfaces (Appendix, Table =5).
   While the laying flock made a significant contribution to the
output of the farm, there was no attempt to make poultry more than a
subsidiary enterprise; many farms similar to Clashnoir in other
respects carried much larger poultry enterprises. Once the poultry
flock was established, egg sales averaged about 2, dozens annually
though with some variation from year to year. This represented an
annual yield, after allowing for some eggs used in the farmhouse, of
about 18 eggs per laying bird.
   Crop sales consisted almost entirely of oats and in most years a
large part of the crop was sold for seed at attractive prices
(Appendix, Table =6). With the improvement in fertility, increased
yields per acre made it possible to maintain and to some extent to
increase the surplus of oats for sale, even though consumption on the
farm also rose.
# 232
<142 TEXT E37>
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
by
ANTHONY LISLE
<EDITORIAL>
   TESTS were recently carried out at the National Institute for
Research in Dairying, Shinfield, to find the optimum level of
restricted feeding for the economic production of baconers.
   For the particular strains in the Shinfield pig unit and the type
of ration in use, it was found that a maximum of 6 1/2 lb. a head
daily gave the best results.
   But in an identical trial on another farm, using exactly the same
diet on pigs of different breeding, it was not possible to feed much
above 5 lb. a day without lowering the grading of the carcasses.
   This illustrates the great difficulty commercial bacon producers
are up against in feeding for economic growth and top grading. It
also shows why scientists can do little to help in this particular
field. What is sound practice on one farm can be economically
disastrous on the next. Producers will have to carry out their own
trials to discover the best way to feed their pigs in their particular
environment.
   It is not easy to carry out accurate trial work and keep detailed
records on a busy, practical farm where labour is already being used
at full stretch. But it is vitally important to know the most
economic way to feed baconers. Adopting an arbitrary level of feeding
restriction based on other people's experience will not help.
   If the pigs are fed less than they are capable of taking before
reaching a point of downgrading, they will take an unnecessarily long
time to reach bacon weight and throughput will be slowed down.
   If the daily ration is too large, the pigs will grow rapidly
enough, but their grading will be unsatisfactory.
   The margin between underfeeding and overfeeding is very narrow,
and it can only be discovered on a basis of trial and error from farm
to farm.
   
   CLOSELY related to this is the problem of deciding the best
stage of growth at which restricted feeding should be introduced.
   Here again, most producers tend to adopt a set age or weight
without first endeavouring to establish if it is the best time to make
a change.
   Changing from 6ad lib. to restricted feeding when the
pigs are 1 lb. liveweight may be, and probably is, too soon. If
they are allowed to feed to appetite until 14 lb. they will reach
bacon weight 1 to 12 days earlier.
   The advice of Dr. R. Braude, who runs the Shinfield pig unit,
is to feed young pigs 6ad lib. until they reach the level of
daily intake at which it is intended to restrict them, and then to
ration them at that level.
   His experience has been that it is important not to let the pigs
reach a daily feed intake above the restriction level and then drop
them down again. This leads to a growth setback.
   For some time it has been a universal practice among bacon
producers to use a two-ration feeding pattern. Sow-and-weaner meal is
used until a certain stage, when a cheaper, low-protein diet is
introduced.
   Once again the question arises: when should the change be made?
   Dr. Braude feels that the decisions should be based on the
appearance of the pigs and their known grading ability. If they tend
to put on fat it will pay to keep them on the richer diet up to 12 to
14 lb.
   But if they are lean and from a good grading strain, the cheaper
ration can be introduced between 1 and 12 lb. He emphasises,
however, that these figures are only guides: every producer must find
out for himself which is the best stage to make the change for his
pigs, type of ration, and environment.
   
   THERE is a growing school of thought today which wonders if
there is any advantage in making a feeding change at all. It is felt
that the continued feeding of sow-and-weaner meal through to slaughter
may improve grading, speed throughput and lower feed conversion to an
extent that will more than offset the extra cost of the ration.
   Even if this is not so, there are other advantages. The use of
only one ration in the piggery speeds the work of feeding and
simplifies milling and mixing.
   It also ensures against any possible growth check which might
occur if the change over to a finishing diet is made too early.
   Whether it is economic or not will be determined only on the
farm, but it is of interest to note the results of a comparative
experiment carried out by the Norfolk School of Agriculture:
<TABLE>
   These figures show a distinct grading improvement which, in view
of the fact that there was no increase of premium payments for length,
must be attributable to the feeding.
   In addition, baconers on the single ration reached their
slaughter weight five days earlier in summer and 1 days earlier in
winter than pigs on two-stage feeding.
   In terms of hard cash, this is calculated to bring in +2 to
+25 more profit from every hundred baconers sold, without taking into
consideration the streamlining of labour and the simplification of
mixing and storage.
   This illustrates how wrong it is to attach too much importance to
the price of a ration. It is the feeding value which counts. A
food costing +3 a ton may be dearer to buy than one at +28 a ton
but it can be cheaper to feed.
   If the diet is +2 a ton more expensive because it has a higher
nutrient value and its use improves the feed conversion rate of a
baconer from 3.5 to 3.2, the cost of feeding that baconer is reduced
by 3s. 1d.
   For this reason, trials carried out on the farm to determine the
best method for feeding bacon pigs should not be evaluated in terms of
feed conversion ratios, as they are in official progeny tests. The
best measure of efficiency is the food cost per pound of liveweight
gain related, of course, to the grading results obtained.
1,5 galls. a cow from a hungry soil
<EDITORIAL>
by PHILIP BOLAM
   SIMPLICITY is the hallmark of David Stevens' farming at
Lechlade, Gloucester. The whole business is geared to low-cost milk
production from over 1 Friesian cows, with maximum use of grass, on
26 acres of Thames gravel.
   Such a soil would have tempted many farmers to escape from the
cow's tail and the seven-day week- perhaps to adopt some intensive
arable cropping along with fat lamb production. But Mr. Stevens
feels there are advantages in being a specialist.
   Getting the most out of well-manured grassland, keeping up to
date with new techniques and managing a large dairy herd profitably is
a skilled occupation, especially with the profusion of new ideas from
the research stations and the farming press.
   The herd is milked in a six-stall six-unit Hosier bail, which in
summer is drawn round the grass fields and in winter stands on
concrete near the loose housing and the self-feed silage clamps. When
the bail is in the field an electric fence forms a collecting pen and
a simple "electric dog" speeds milking when concentrate feeding is
low.
   Many dairy farmers in this situation are content with moderate
yields, relying on low costs to provide a good margin of profit. But
Mr. Stevens' <SIC> had a true average of 1,5 gallons per cow
consuming 1.9 lb. cereal and concentrates for each gallon of milk
produced.
   Gross sales per man now stand at +5, a year. The labour
force consists of two cowmen on contract who also tend all the
replacement stock, and a tractor driver who acts as relief milker.
   Critics of the system suggest that the herd should be halved and
milked in two separate six-stall three-unit bails with one cowman
responsible for each. While partly agreeing with this, Mr. Stevens
argues that managerial decisions would increase with twice the milking
machinery and two sets of grazing to arrange, without much financial
advantage.
   He believes that if concentrates are cubed, the cows learn to eat
quickly- after all, they masticate food at leisure. Rolled barley is
used to balance grass or silage.
   Space was short in the bail, so in-churn milking was discarded in
favour of an overhead pipeline which carries the milk to churns at one
end. A quick and simple method of washing up is based on the
immersion cleaning technique developed by the NIRD, using a 3 per
cent caustic soda solution. No daily dismantling is necessary. The
caustic soda, stored in a twenty-gallon container in the bail loft,
flows by gravity into the milking system.
   The teat-cups are inverted in racks and each set is filled in
turn from the overhead milkline. Odd pipes and utensils are soaked in
a special container. The solution is sucked back into the storage
tank before the next milking, followed by a rinse with cold water.
The cost of converting to this system is low, and the only running
expense is 1s. worth of caustic soda and water softener each month.
   
   THE grazing and silage-making programme revolves round
Italian ryegrass, kale for autumn grazing and timothy-meadow
fescue-white clover leys, together with an acreage of permanent grass.
No grass is conserved as hay. Leys are ploughed for Italian
ryegrass, which in its second summer is heavily coated with farmyard
manure and ploughed for kale. The leys are reseeded direct the
following spring.
   This is a hungry soil and fertilisers cost +8 an acre. Only two
types are used- nitrogen and a concentrated compound. Recording the
treatment and output of each grass field was started last year, so the
present programme might well be modified when sufficient information
has been accumulated.
   There are few hedges or walls. Most fields are about 1 acres,
separated by one or two strands of barbed wire. These are now being
replaced by sprung fencing or the electrified lines of high tensile
wire with posts every 5 yards.
   Strip grazing with back fences is preferred to paddock grazing.
Cows are given two fresh feeds of grass a day, usually in two
different fields. The more grass they can be persuaded to eat, the
more milk they give. Any grass left uneaten is allowed to grow on and
cut for silage.
   Herd health is good with culling at 15 per cent. Milk fever and
hypo-magnesaemia are not common but foul-in-the-foot and arthritis can
be troublesome. A phosphorous deficiency was noticed recently and now
a high phosphorous supplement is added to the food.
   The covered yards built eight years ago and open self-feed silage
clamps cost about +5 a cow. The two clamps, just outside the
covered yard, each hold 375 tons and provide a total feeding face of
64 ft. Walls of railway sleepers assist filling, but when the
silage has settled the top sleepers are removed and the clamps covered
with thin polythene sheeting.
   The area of concrete between the loose housing and the silos has
been kept to the minimum, but slurry disposal was a problem, as
buildings and the surrounding land are on the same level.
   The muck from the silo face and concrete yard is collected by an
adapted buckrake and pushed over a concrete ramp by reversing the
tractor. It lies untouched till midsummer, by which time it is
sufficiently solid to be handled with a muck loader.
   Lying in a low rainfall area, spring reseeding and summer kale
sowings were always a risk. In 1959 irrigation was introduced and now
it is possible to cover 3 1/2 acres a day with 1 in. of rain-
although moving the pipes makes heavy demands on the labour force.
   Like many others, Mr. Stevens feels his farming must be geared
to meet sterner times. He may have some answers when he returns from
his visit to New Zealand.
FINE CROPS FROM SMALL FARMS
<EDITORIAL>
   THE three most powerful impressions I received on my recent
tour of the French countryside- in particular some of the recent
"agricultural trouble spots"- were 1. The absence of any farm
labourers, or farmers, for that matter, under 35 or so years of age;
2. The comparatively high standard of crop husbandry; and 3. The
comparatively small size of most farming units, herds and flocks.
# 235
<143 TEXT E38>
Farmers' Ordinary
By RALPH WHITLOCK
Is the N.F.U. minding its own business?
   MANY FARMERS MUST BE RESERVING JUDGMENT ON THE NEW SEEDS
COMPANY, N.F.U. Seeds Industries, Ltd. It is, says the
National Farmers' Union, a private company. One half of the 25,
+1 shares will be taken up by merchants and one half by the
N.F.U. Development Company. To the layman, however, it looks
uncommonly like the N.F.U. entering another business on the
familiar lines of "vertical integration" which is first cousin to
"take-over."
   The whole affair is puzzling. The aims of the new company are
described as being:
   To develop production and promote the use of the best quality
strains of British grown and bred herbage seeds, and to encourage the
most efficient grassland management.
   To assist British merchants and farmers by providing a consistent
range of mixtures for specified purposes chosen on the best technical
advice.
   To provide for farmers, through the N.F.U. brand, a
guarantee of authenticity and quality of the seeds used.
   To provide for improved buying, cleaning, processing, packing and
distribution facilities to consumers at home and abroad.
   To bring about, by means of an adequate stock carry-over policy,
greater price stability and constant supplies.
An industry on its toes
   ALL these are laudable objects, but is any one of them new?
If ever an industry was on its toes and eager to provide good
service, I would have said it was the seed industry. The
N.F.U. reports that "three firms have agreed to participate
as main processors and distributors of the branded seed." All are
firms of the highest repute. But what of the many others not taking
part? Are their present services so inadequate that it is necessary
for the N.F.U. to step in and improve matters?
   What triggered off the move was a report, published last year, on
the marketing of herbage seed. The N.F.U. was rightly
concerned with ensuring that British seeds had at least an equal share
in their home market with foreign seeds, and there is much, though not
everything, to be said for a standardised product. Not everyone,
though, would deplore "internecine competition" among seed firms.
Some of us still believe that competition is healthy and conducive to
efficiency.
   Perhaps the Union's new venture will prove its value. If there
has to be "vertical integration," it is probably better for farmers
that the N.F.U. should be in control. Yet I, for one, am a
little suspicious of this latest child.
Dairy shorthorn decline
   MR. G. N. GOULD, chairman of the Hampshire Cattle
Breeders' Society, Ltd., states that at the society's A.I.
centre, demand for Friesian services continues to increase at the
expense of the dairy shorthorn. Aberdeen-Angus are now suffering,
too, for farmers who once crossed them with Friesians for beef are now
breeding pure Friesians.
   Dairy shorthorns have also been making disappointing figures in
the sale rings. Recently, of two shorthorn herds dispersed at
Reading, one averaged +6 4s., and the other only +43 4s. 11d.
The highest price bid in both sales was 66 guineas. In the same week
a Guernsey dispersal sale averaged +91 3s. 9d. (this was for
Overbury Farms, at Beckford Court, Overbury, Gloucestershire), 43
animals commanding three-figure prices. At Nun House, Winsford,
Cheshire, Mr. T. Lea Sherwin's Stanthorne herd of Friesians
averaged +118 17s. 2d.
   This present unpopularity of the shorthorn is, I feel sure, a
passing phase which will be corrected. Consider the longevity of the
breed. Theale Maud 12th, a dairy shorthorn cow owned by Mr. Hugh
N. Haldin, of Court Lodge, Hinxhill, near Ashford, Kent, has
achieved a new breed record by producing a total of 21,196lb. of
milk (with a butterfat yield of 7,371lb.) in 12 lactations. At 16
years old she is still giving 35lb. of milk a day.
   Another thing I notice is that although entries for the Royal
Dairy Show in October are down by 35, the dairy shorthorn entry has
risen by two.
EQUIPMENT FOR THE FARM
By GEORGE JARRETT
Tele-Bins bring bulk transport and storage within reach of even
the small farmer's pocket
   BULK handling with its indisputable economies in time, cost
and labour is something which must be exercising the minds of many
people not only in farming and its ancillary industries, but also in
industry. The tonnage which is moved on our farms must be colossal.
In corn growing bulk handling is taking the place of sacks, while
with fertilisers and lime, too, the tendency is towards the
elimination of unnecessary handling.
   Here are the figures of some of the estimated losses which bulk
handling can save. It has been suggested that in the building trade
something like 3 per cent. of the sand purchased is lost in various
ways while in heaps on building sites. In farming something like 2
1/2 per cent. of fertilisers may be left in the corners and creases
of fertiliser bags after emptying. The same may apply to
feedingstuffs.
   The solution to some of the problems is reasonable in price.
Bulk handling so often makes one think of the latest bulk
transporters costing around +5,, but I am now going to describe a
movable container priced at about +118.
   Making its debut on the agricultural and industrial market is the
Amalgamated Limestone Corporation's Tele-Bin, made of light sheet
steel with frames made of Stewart and Lloyd's new rectangular hollow
section. The weight of the complete container is 5cwt. The bins
measure 6ft. x 4ft. x 6ft. high, and have a capacity of
9cub. ft.- enough for two tons of fertiliser or feedingstuff or
three tons of basic slag, lime, cement or any dry materials.
   More and more uses are being found for these portable bulk
containers on estates and large farms. Agricultural merchants, too,
are fast becoming enthusiasts. The railway is interested in the bins
for sugar-beet. Overseas, they are suitable for many goods from
coffee beans to any small root crop.
   The advantage of this system is that, having started with one
bin, one can buy more to enlarge one's activities. For instance, the
small farmer can buy but one in which to store feedingstuffs.
Transporting the bins is simple with a flat-bottomed lorry or one
with drop sides, either of which can be easily converted into a bulk
carrier, with three bins fitting on to a 14ft. lorry. To obtain the
maximum economy, one will need two sets of bins- one in transit and
the other on the farm being loaded and unloaded. This brings the
capital outlay up to about +69 for six bins, which is a tremendous
saving on specialised bulk transport vehicles.
   These bins taper downwards to the outlet and are set in a frame
having four telescopic legs on a 9in. diameter round base. The legs
are attached to a gatelike frame which closes inward when not in use;
for instance, when the bin is lying on the lorry bed. On the lorry's
arrival at its destination in farmyard or in field, these frames pull
outwards whilst the telescopic legs are adjusted to rest on the
ground. The width between the legs is 8ft., and the height can be
adjusted according to the height of the lorry by 18in. (so that an
ordinary box manure distributor can fit underneath the bins to be
loaded when fertiliser is being handled). For wider distributors a
shute can be supplied which can be clipped on to the guide rails of
the bin aperture.
   The bin covers are metal with a rubber ring inside, to keep out
moisture and wet, enabling the fully loaded bin to be left in the
open, protected against the weather and vermin. This protection from
vermin is most important, particularly with feedingstuffs, and by
itself can lead to big economies. The discharge aperture consists of
two large flat plates which slide in opposite directions (the handle
is flat), giving positive opening and closing. These plates can be
locked so that the contents cannot be touched except by removing the
entire unit. Each of the four legs contains a simple screw jack with
a thrust bearing which is operated telescopically inside of two tubes
by a ratchet spanner: this enables the driver of a transporting
vehicle to put off a fully loaded bin. Taking on the bin is a one-man
job, too.
   For use with fertilisers the bins can be painted with
anti-corrosive paint at extra cost. In any case, they can be painted
for the sake of protection or in order to look smarter.
   This A.L.C. Tele-Bin was introduced at the Bath and West
Show. I feel that it will bring the advantages of bulk handling to
many who have previously been deterred by the thought of having to
spend +4,, because one can literally start off with spending only
about +118 for one of these bins ex works.
   Already considerable interest has been shown by county councils,
which are eyeing the bins for road gritting; many small builders
should save money by buying the bins for holding sand, cement and
similar materials; farmers can use the bulk handling for fertilisers
and for strategically located feedingstuff stores over the farm; grain
from the combines can be shot straight into the bins, later to be
collected by the lorry and taken to dryer or mill. The bins can be
insured, too.
   The Amalgamated Limestone Corporation (Dept. B), Chipping
Sodbury, Gloucestershire, will give more information or will arrange
demonstrations.
Farmers' Ordinary
By RALPH WHITLOCK
What goes on at Pirbright
   WHENEVER an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease erupts to
spread despondency and send imprudent farmers running in panic to grab
insurance policies, one of the by-products is sure to be a rash of
letters to the Press demanding what Pirbright is up to. For at this
Surrey village a team of scientists devote their lives, in the
Research Institute for Animal Virus Diseases, to putting salt on the
tails of the elusive microbe troublemakers.
   So painfully slow is this tricky operation that the impatience of
the farmer, prejudiced by the fact that he has just lost the herd on
which he has spent 2 years, can be appreciated. Especially as
scientists, immersed in their world of embryo chicks and suckling mice
and being, in any case, by training ultra-cautious, are seldom very
good at publicity. Papers such as Purification of the Virus of
Foot-and-Mouth Disease by Fluorocarbon Treatment and its Dissociation
from Neutralising Antibody, one of the latest Pirbright
publications, do not assist public relations, valuable though they are
from other points of view.
The reasons for slaughtering
   ONCE every five years, however, the Institute issues a
report. Here is the latest, just out, a modest half-crown's worth in
which Mr. S. W. Cheveley, chairman of the governing body, and
his scientific henchmen tell us how they have been using their time
and our money since 1956.
   One thing we learn is that, far from shutting their eyes to the
existence of vaccines in extensive use in other parts of the world, as
is often alleged, Pirbright actually manufactures these vaccines. In
fact, two years ago the demand for them became so great that the staff
very nearly arrived at the point of stopping research work in order to
concentrate on manufacture. Fortunately the Wellcome Foundation
stepped in and took over this side of the work, leaving the scientists
to get on with their proper job.
   Why then are we without vaccines to stop the drain on our flocks
and herds? In the first place, although a major epidemic is a
spectacular disaster, the general casualties resulting from the
disease in Britain still amount to less than .5 per cent. This is
lower than would probably be achieved by a vaccination policy, and we
would be paying the penalty of allowing the disease to become endemic.
   The other reason for sticking to the slaughter policy is that
there are seven known strains of foot-and-mouth disease virus.
Without the drastic measure of slaughter we might find ourselves
invaded by one of the Asian or African viruses from which we are so
far mercifully free.
# 211
<END>
<144 TEXT F1>
   The "ladders of the mind" are the clues which we use to
track down items of knowledge which cannot be immediately remembered.
The "organisation" and the "shelves" will form important topics
in our later discussion. The work that goes on at the bench must also
be considered. For here the items which go into the store may be
taken to pieces and reassembled, and a sketch may be made of their
internal construction. Both the item and the sketch can then go into
the store. In the mind it is the stored items which constitute our
memory and it is the stored sketches which constitute our
understanding. Thus reading for understanding means taking
items of knowledge to pieces as we read them and seeing how the pieces
are connected.
   A book is arranged to start at the beginning of the first chapter
and to finish at the end of the last chapter. This seems natural
enough but in fact it is purely an arrangement to suit authors,
printers and booksellers. It does not at all correspond to the needs
of the reader's mind. For a piece of understood knowledge is not
a mere succession of ideas. It is a pattern of connected ideas. Some
of the ideas in a book, though connected, may occur on pages which are
widely separated. If books were designed to meet the needs of the
reader they would be printed on one side of the paper only and not
bound. They would be loose-leaf books. And the reader should have a
large table on which he could spread out the leaves and see the
connections of meaning. Of course there are many practical objections
to such a method of printing but we must ask how can the reader
overcome the handicaps which the present design of books imposes on
him?
   This leads us to consider the reader's job. My main object in
this book is to show the solitary student what his job is. For in
order to become an effective reader you have to learn how to learn, to
learn how to remember and to learn how to know. This is not a passive
process but a real job of work. For the serious student it can be a
very satisfying job and can take him a long way in navigating the seas
of knowledge.
   To each of these three processes, learning, remembering, and
knowing, there are four possible approaches. These are:
   (1) the philosopher's approach
   (2) the psychologist's approach
   (3) the teacher's approach
   (4) the learner's approach
   The solitary learner should aim at mastering all four approaches.
He must be his own philosopher, his own psychologist and his own
teacher.
   As a philosopher he will want to know the meanings of these
important words learning, remembering and knowing, or rather
to decide what meanings they are to have for him. For they have many
meanings. He needs to clarify them, to see their relations one to
another and also to his objective.
   As a psychologist he needs to observe himself at work (and others
too if possible) and to find out what sort of processes are going on
when he is coming to grips with new knowledge. It is a very variable
process and he needs to grasp the nature of the variables which
control his efficiency as a learner. He may discover that many of his
assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of learning are
unsound. He must become a critic of his own methods and an
experimenter in the discovery of better methods. He cannot expect the
professional psychologist to tell him what is best for him because
every individual is different. The psychologist can tell him what the
variables are but not how they combine in his particular case.
   As a teacher he is, of course, in an anomalous position. The
ordinary teacher is teaching what he knows. The self-teacher would
seem to be a contradiction. But the contradiction is more apparent
than real. It rests on the mistaken notion that the teacher has
something which he is passing on to the learner. This is only
superficially true. The learner is not a passive recipient. He
already has a certain store of knowledge and a certain vocabulary.
The job of the teacher is to set the learner's vocabulary to work on
the existing store so as to make it grow. He does not simply pack new
things into the store. The solitary learner has to find out how to do
this for himself, with the help of books. He uses his vocabulary to
ask questions and uses the books to find the answers.
   Thus learning how to learn means becoming your own philosopher,
your own psychologist and your own teacher. You will then be a
well-established learner and the world will be at your feet.
ONE
THE MIND
   Although the word "mind" has given rise to endless
controversy among philosophers and psychologists, many of whom would
like to abolish it from the dictionary, most of us obstinately go on
using it. It is short and familiar and its many meanings can be
otherwise expressed only by cumbersome and abstract terms which then
introduce new difficulties. But it is advisable, in any particular
context, to narrow down its meaning so as to avoid confusion.
   "Mind" has often been contrasted with "matter" in such a
way as to suggest that the two are somehow opposed and incompatible.
And then you get a knock on the head and all evidence of "mind"
vanishes, at any rate for some time. It seems very difficult to
detach the mind from the brain, and all the biological, surgical and
pharmacological evidence points to a very close connection. There is
a lot to be said for keeping the word "soul" to stand for what many
believe to be the imperishable essence of a man which is supposed to
persist apart from the body, and to reserve the more prosaic word
"mind" for the basis of all those experiences and phenomena which
are clearly associated with the brain.
   Can we now put forward any reasonably clear picture of this
"basis" of mental phenomena? The physicists have succeeded
remarkably well, with the atomic theory, in giving a clear and
detailed picture of the basis of such material phenomena as chemical
action, magnetism, the behaviour of gases and so on. Where has
psychology got to in its theories of "mind"? Are there any
ultimate units of mind akin to the atoms of matter?
   At one time it was thought that mind could indeed be analysed
into discrete bits. These bits were identified as elementary
sensations. These were thought to combine together to form compound
experiences by analogy with the way atoms of matter combine to form
molecular compounds. But this view led to too many difficulties and
was finally abandoned. Nevertheless the search for basic units of
mind has gone on and will doubtless continue, for it is the aim of
science to discover ultimate units. We must beware, however, of
supposing that there must be any close analogy between the units of
quite different sciences. For example the success of the atomic
theory in physics might lead us to suppose that the ultimate units of
geometry must be points. It would be more correct to regard
operations as the ultimate units of geometry.
   There have been many conflicting tendencies in psychology in its
search for ultimate units and here we can only indicate what seems to
be the most promising concept which is current today. It is known as
the schema. It is not an easy concept and if I try to make it
concrete it will be at the cost of over-simplification but even so it
may be better than a meaningless abstraction. The following
conversation between Hamlet and Polonius shows that Shakespeare had at
any rate an intuitive grasp of the notion:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
Hamlet: Do you see 1yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a
camel?
   Polonius: By the mass, and 1'tis like a camel, indeed.
   Hamlet: 1Methinks, it is like a weasel.
   Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
   Hamlet: Or like a whale?
   Polonius: Very like a whale.
<END QUOTE>
   Now the whale, the camel etc., were not in the sky. The clouds
are mere aggregates of water-drops. The whale, etc., were in the
minds of Hamlet and Polonius. But they could both see the cloud.
Thus an image of the cloud was also in their minds. Moreover they
knew it to be a cloud. Yet they could "see" animals in it. This
is the important fact about mental phenomena. The physical cloud in
the sky is just itself, made of water-drops. The mental cloud is a
multiplicity. To begin with it is a pattern of brain-processes, just
as physical as the water-drops. But it is experienced (=1) as a
cloud, (=2) as a whale, (=3) as a camel and so on. We cannot
dismiss these as "illusions" for it is just the occurrence of such
illusions that we seek to explain- besides why is it illusory to see
the thing as a whale but not illusory to see it as a cloud? And how
did Hamlet know it was "really" a cloud?
   For the moment we need not concern ourselves with these last
questions. What we have to grasp is that there are patterns of
brain-activity of different kinds. There are patterns which result
directly from processes such as seeing, hearing, etc., e.g.
that which is experienced as the shape of the cloud (but not yet
identified as such). And there are patterns which result in
interpretations such as "cloud", "whale", "camel", etc.
The image is fairly steady and durable. The interpretations can
shift very rapidly. These interpretations are called "schemas" (or
more pedantically "schemata").
   At one time "mind" used to be identified with
"consciousness". But "consciousness" simply refers to the
stream of changing experiences. It will simplify our explanations if
we regard consciousness as a property of mind rather than as mind
itself. If we define "mind" as the totality of schemas in a single
brain and regard "consciousness" as a certain transitory state
which any schema, or group of schemas, can assume, we can give a more
consistent account of our experiences and interpretations.
   Before going further we should try to face what is an almost
inevitable difficulty for anyone approaching the study of mind for the
first time. It is the tendency to get things the wrong way round. As
a psychologist I am constantly encountering this tendency in friends
and acquaintances. They think there is something inevitably
"queer" about psychology and this feeling of queerness usually
boils down to a quite mistaken belief that the psychologist first
looks into his own mind and then interprets other people's minds by
what he has found in his own. This is what I mean by "getting things
the wrong way round". He is far more likely to find out about how
his own mind works by looking at other people's. For although looking
inwards (or "introspecting" as it is called), is not entirely ruled
out, nowadays most psychologists would agree that it is one of the
most unreliable methods of getting any precise information. And so
they prefer objective methods. Since they cannot directly look into
the mental processes of another person they observe his visible
behaviour and then try to give theoretical interpretations of what
lies behind this behaviour. This is no more queer than the method of
the doctor who observes signs, and records symptoms, and diagnoses the
inner states responsible for them. He may never have had the disease
himself but he can nevertheless identify it. Similarly the
psychologist has to be prepared to observe and make inferences about
all kinds of processes in other people, whether or not they correspond
with anything in his own experience.
   We know very little about the patterns of brain-activity which
provide our schemas, nor do we need to know as far as psychology is
concerned- these patterns are the concern of the neuro-physiologists.
# 27
<145 TEXT F2>
The numerically largest group, consisting of male weekly wage-earners
up to chargehand level and in the works only, excluding the offices,
was therefore selected. A detailed age-structure was compiled from
personnel department records, revealing that there were (at that time)
seventeen men seventy years of age or older, thirty-three aged
sixty-four years, and sixty-five just fifty years of age. A small
panel was formed, not on a formally representative basis but rather of
energetic and concerned individuals, from various levels in the firm.
In due course the panel decided to seek further insight into the
problems faced by older workers, and approached those seventy years of
age or older. Interviews with about half these men quickly convinced
the panel that any approach at sixty-four- which had been considered
as a possible interim stage in the project- was unlikely to be
profitable, and a decision was taken to plan a scheme of preparation
for retirement suitable for men who had just reached the age of fifty.
   All this took much longer than most people had expected, and it
must be taken for granted by anyone wishing to plan and launch schemes
of this kind in large industrial undertakings that undue haste will
but court disaster. In June, 1958, after careful preliminary work
explaining the task of the panel to departmental managers, supervisors
and shop stewards, an individual invitation was sent to each of the
seventy-three men who reached the age of fifty years in 1958.
Following the interviews to which reference has already been made, a
meeting took place at which those attending were told more fully about
the proposed course and were given the general results of the
interviews in which they had taken part. Thirty-three of the
forty-four men interviewed attended this meeting, and twenty-nine
signed-on <SIC> for the first course.
   This was planned by the writer in co-operation with the panel and
in consultation with Mr. R. P. B. Davies, then West Midlands
District Secretary of the Workers Educational Association, and
naturally owes much to the American schemes described earlier. It
differs principally in being shorter (six sessions plus a short
weekend gathering to which wives are invited); in using the services
of experienced tutors in adult education as discussion group leaders;
and in having available at the relevant meeting expert
'consultants' for physical health, mental health and financial
planning.
   The Rubery, Owen scheme is now in its fourth year, and
opportunity has been taken to revise the course in the light of
experience. Topics for the six weekly meetings of one-and-a-half
hours (each held half in company time, half in the man's time) are now
as follows:
   1. Personal adjustment
   2. Health
   3. Work and leisure
   4. Living arrangements
   5. Financial planning
   6. Final discussion
   The weekend conference for the men and their wives, which takes
place at company expense in a country or resort hotel, includes an
address on 'The Woman's Point of View' and one on 'Making the Most
of Health'. Separate discussions are arranged for the wives in
addition to the plenary sessions.
   Of the men reaching fifty years of age since the scheme started,
125 (37.2 per cent) have taken part. No pressure of any kind is
brought to bear on those who decline the invitation. One result of
the first course was the formation by the men themselves of the
'Half-century Club', membership of which is open to any man in the
company fifty years of age or older (and their wives) whether he has
passed through the scheme or not. At the end of the second course, a
request was received from members of the salaried staff that they
should be included in the scheme, and this was gladly agreed to. The
third course produced a request by the men for an evening class in
home repairs and decorating, and this was arranged at a local Evening
Institute.
   The original scheme was planned to provide short refresher
courses at the ages of fifty-five and sixty: the first of these is due
in 1963. Meanwhile, each 'graduate' is encouraged to seek help and
advice in working out his ideas, either through the company's
personnel department or by an approach to members of the panel
responsible for the scheme. The latter do not regard themselves as
expert advisers, but are prepared to seek out the appropriate sources
of information or advice.
The Glasgow Day Release Scheme
   Towards the end of 1956, Mr. Daniel Grant, an Employee
Relations Officer of Rolls-Royce Ltd. and a member of the Workers'
Educational Association, submitted to the Lord Provost of Glasgow,
Dr. Andrew Hood, a copy of his report on an enquiry he had made into
the problems that beset older workers and the effects of retirement
upon them. The Lord Provost, having studied the report on 'The
Morale and Health of Retired Workers', and being satisfied that the
matters raised were of considerable importance to the citizens of
Glasgow and warranted further study, set an informal committee
representative of bodies particularly concerned with the welfare of
older people to examine the report and its implications and to
consider the advisability of arranging a Conference on Preparation for
and Occupational Activities on Retirement.
   The large attendance and atmosphere of this Conference, held in
October, 1957, reflected not only an increasing awareness of the
problems of men and women nearing or already in retirement but also a
strong desire on the part of all concerned for concerted action
towards preparing men and women for life in retirement and more
adequate provision of facilities for crafts, hobbies and leisure-time
interests for those who are retired. As a result, the Glasgow
Retirement Council came into being in April, 1958, with Dr. Andrew
Hood as chairman and Mr. Andrew Atkinson as secretary. The Council
has active committees on Education and Preparation for Retirement, and
on Occupational Centres. The former consists of representatives from
the Glasgow Corporation Further Education Department; the Workers'
Educational Association; the University Extra-Mural Education
Committee and departments of psychology, education and social science;
the trades unions; and the Regional Hospital Board, together with an
industrial medical officer and a Medical Officer of Health.
   In 1959 it was suggested by Mr. T. M. Banks, Assistant
Director of Education for Glasgow, that industrial firms might be
ready to let older employees attend day-release courses on preparation
for retirement, their wages paid for the time thus spent. An approach
was made to about twenty large firms and in October, 1959, the first
experimental day-release course for men was organised. Eleven
students from seven firms attended a course on six full Fridays and it
was made clear both to the men and their employers that the venture
was an experiment from which the organisers hoped to learn as much as
the participants. Alterations are continually being made in the light
of experience and the seventh course is still described as
'experimental'.
   These courses take place at Langside College in a house, separate
from the main building, which has a comfortable classroom and two good
upstairs lounges. Each course starts with an informal evening meeting
when the men, drawn from different firms, can get to know something of
one another and of the tutors before the opening session on the
morning of the first of the seven consecutive full-day Friday
meetings.
   Forenoon sessions are from 9.3 a.m. to 12.45 p.m. with
a coffee-break at 11 a.m.. Lunch is provided at a charge of
2s. 4d. Afternoon sessions last from 1.5 to 5 p.m., with an
afternoon tea-break of 15 minutes at 3 p.m. The programme is as
follows:
<TABLE>
   Tutors- most of them members of the Glasgow Retirement Council-
give their services voluntarily. Ninety-five men from twenty-one
firms have so far taken part; there is no doubt that the men enjoy the
courses and are most appreciative of them. They learn much,
factually, about the problems of retirement and provision for old age,
and, psychologically, in the sharing of their thoughts on retirement.
They express themselves as feeling better equipped to confront and
plan for their retirement and, if some are still pessimistic regarding
the future, it is with an 'informed pessimism'. They are unanimous
in their expressed concern that many others working beside them at the
same stage in their careers should be given opportunity to benefit
similarly from further courses which they strongly recommend should be
arranged by the Council.
   The Glasgow courses described above have been for men only. But
seven women of the staff and supervisory grade from six firms have
this year (1961) taken part in an experimental Day-Release Course for
Women arranged by the Council at Langside College of a duration and
along lines similar to the above. Morning sessions were unaltered but
afternoon subjects included 'Do-it-Yourself', Home-craft, Home
Cookery, and details of women's organisations, providing opportunities
for voluntary social service, in place of crafts, hobbies, art, drama
and music.
The City Literary Institute
   On the initiative of the Principal, Mr. H. A. Jones,
this well-known London County Council Institute has recently started
to offer day-release courses in preparation for retirement, following
an encouraging experiment with members of the Unilever Pensioners
Welfare Organisation. Several London firms have co-operated by
releasing men and women aged fifty-five and over, both staff and
hourly-paid workers.
DIFFERENT COURSES FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE
   When describing the Michigan, Chicago and recent British
approaches to the problem of preparing employed men and women for
their eventual retirement, some reference has in each case been made
to the social, educational or intellectual status of those for whom
each scheme is designed. Although it seems reasonable to assume that
the problems of retirement, and the ways in which these can largely be
solved in advance, will differ in terms of such variables, very little
is known on the matter.
   One useful attempt to remedy this important gap in our knowledge
was made by Burgess and his colleagues in Chicago. They sought
answers to three questions:
   1. Are there differences in adjustment to ageing and retirement
according to the occupational level of employees?
   2. If so, which occupational levels are the better or the poorer
prepared for successful adjustment to retirement and in what aspects?
   3. Does the evidence obtained support a rationale for adapting a
pre-retirement planning and preparation programme to the needs of
older employees of different occupational levels?
   Three hundred older employees of the Standard Oil Company of
Indiana provided answers to a 'Retirement Planning Inventory'
containing 1 items- statements with which the person responding is
asked to indicate his agreement or disagreement, designed by Burgess
and Mack. These items in fact comprise twelve groups, eight
consisting of ten items each, all dealing with retirement planning and
preparation, and a further two of ten items each, both dealing with
more general personal adjustment. In addition, there are four
'category scores' which combine the same 1 items in a different
way, providing more broadly-based areas for assessment. The 3
employees comprised twenty-four managers, eighty-four supervisory and
professional/ technical staff, and 184 manual workers of all grades.
   Burgess found that in general 'the higher the group's
occupational status, the greater is its (apparent) adjustment to (the
prospect of) ageing and retirement'. (It is probably desirable to
insert the words in parenthesis, having regard to the limitations of
the questionnaire method of enquiry.) The investigators go on to
suggest, from detailed analysis of the responses obtained, that 'the
problem for the manual worker does not centre on his conception of
old age, but rather on how he interprets its meaning for his own
future life'. This conclusion is based on differences between the
manual workers group and the other two groups in categories of
questions covering 'Later Maturity' and 'Retirement Attitudes',
and in the broadly-based area of 'Social Adjustment'.
   Burgess and his colleagues therefore advise retirement planning
programmes 'to divide into at least two separate units: one to treat
the needs of the non-manual upper-level occupational groups who, on
the whole, seem well-adjusted to old-age but require a medium through
which to reinterpret and assimilate their knowledge and attitudes; and
another for the manual lower-level occupational status who, although
conceiving of retirement in an appropriate manner, cannot find within
the boundaries of old age the promise of a meaningful and well-rounded
life'.
# 243
<146 TEXT F3>
   A simple enough question. But every one of the passengers who
heard it turned to see who asked it. The girl's voice was charming.
And so was the girl herself. But you often find that an attractive
voice and an attractive appearance go together. Their owner probably
takes pains with both!
   People generally are responsive to voices. One voice will give
you pleasure, and another will give you a headache. Listen to Mollie.
That girl could charm the bird from the bush. But Ethel's flat voice
has as much charm as a codfish!
   No wonder that employers advertising for a secretary often state:
Good speaking voice.
Listen And Learn
   Listen to voices and you will learn how to improve your own.
Variations in pitch and speed, changes in expression, a warm quality
in the voice itself, clear enunciation- those can help you to that
good speaking voice.
   And you will notice, too, that pleasant voices usually belong to
pleasant people. Is there a moral there for YOU?
   Incidentally, it's easy to forget a face. But a voice once
heard is never forgotten.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   A cynic has said that a good conversationalist is one who
talks to you about yourself. And there is enough truth in that to
set you thinking.
   Keep an ear open for snatches of talk you hear during the day.
WHAT I SAID and WHAT I DID are very popular subjects. But
they make poor conversation!
   Sometimes you do meet some one who says little himself.
But he seems willing to listen a lot. Be cautious- there's an old
adage which tells you to beware of the man who lets YOU do all the
talking!
So what!
   Just this. A good conversationalist talks neither too much
nor too little. He has the knack of putting things in an
interesting way. But more than that, he stimulates YOU to
contribute to the conversation too. And he can set a whole group
talking.
   No wonder such a talker is always welcome! Conversation is still
a popular form of entertainment. And one in which we all can share.
You can help yourself to play your part in good conversation, either
with strangers or in your own circle. And it will do wonders for
you!
<ILLUSTRATION>
   You think the man opposite would like to chat. And so would
you. All right! Seize your opportunity when he looks up from his
book. What will you say?
   As you have never seen him before, you can't very well open with,
~"My wife has toothache!"- or something of that sort.
   The usual opening, and you can't better it, is to remark on the
weather. And why not? The weather is of interest to everybody. And
he will understand you are just sticking to the rules.
   He will do the same. If he doesn't want to talk, a quick smile
and a brief, ~"Horrid!"- and he returns to his book. But if he
likes the look of you he will most likely toss the ball back to you by
saying lightly, ~"Yes- all the fault of the atom-bomb
scientists!"- or some such remark. And if you come back again
with, ~"Disturbing chaps- in more ways than one!" each of you will
think the other is talkable-to. And away you go.
   Good conversation can be wonderful fun. And a grand
shortener of journeys. Useful, too! One V.I.P. has said
that he learns more from conversation than from all the books he has
read.
   At least you learn something about human nature.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   We'll say you arrive- on your own- at a party, and the
hostess leaves you with a group of strangers. Two or three of them
give you a fleeting smile, but continue to listen to what seems to be
a dramatic story by one of the group. She is telling of her battle
with a play producer, but she hasn't yet reached the point where she
laid him out flat!
   Splendid! It gives you a breathing-space, and time to get your
bearings. You are sure to see something of interest to you, something
you can talk about. It may be a bit of antique furniture, a picture,
a tapestry, or even flowers.
   Well, there you are. You may- when the producer has been
humbled- get by by answering questions. But unless you are to appear
as a tongue-tied ninny, you simply must say something original.
   For instance, you notice an old writing-desk. So you say to
your neighbour, "Lovely desk! Do you think it's Chippendale?"
   You couldn't do better. Talk about furniture- especially
antiques- and most people will want to join in.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   Just a bit of chatter about some one else- but two completely
different styles of talking!
   One of the gossips talks with sledgehammer blows. She is so sure
about things. But the other feels her way more gently.
   That sledgehammer style- if the blows are short and sharp
enough- may suit at a political meeting. But conversation wilts
under it. Try, instead, a more inquiring style- Don't you think
that ...? will encourage the other one to give his views. Oh,
that's nonsense! will shut him up, or start an argument. And an
argument can be poor conversation. You find yourself more concerned
to prove the other fellow wrong than to encourage him to say what he
thinks.
And Don't Be A Know-all
   There are plenty of people- both sexes- who delight in
showing their knowledge. Maybe it's nice to know more than some one
else, but it's a mistake to show it- if you want good conversation.
   Let the other fellow tell YOU something- if he wishes to!
<ILLUSTRATION>
   At some time or other you will speak in public. Perhaps you
will join in the discussion at a committee meeting, take sides at the
debating society, open a local fe?5te, propose a toast- or even make
a political speech from the platform. No matter what the occasion is,
you will want to make a good job of it.
   Here is some advice.
   Be Sincere. If you mean what you say there is a ring in your
voice and a force in your speaking which you can get in no other way.
Believe in what you say- or say nothing.
   Be Natural. In other words, be yourself. Famous orators
have their own style. You have yours, and by sticking to it you will
make a better speech than by imitating some one else. But see to it
that your own style improves every time you make a speech.
   Those two bits of advice apply whether you speak to a crowd in
the Town Hall or to half a dozen in the committee room. Be sincere.
Be natural. People will at least listen to you with respect- and
maybe with enjoyment!
   And if you make a good speech you too will enjoy the thrill
of it.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   She was so beautifully dressed. And she looked just right for
the job- to open the bazaar.
   But, oh, dear! She unfolded a sheet of paper and proceeded to
read her speech- every word of it. Such careful enunciation! And
so terribly lifeless!
<ILLUSTRATION>
   But here's a speaker of another calibre- at a mass-protest
meeting. He, too, looks just right for the job!
   And he is. His words pour out with the flow and force of
Niagara. He has the crowd spellbound!
   Those two speakers are poles apart. Between them come many
other speaking-methods. Which one is yours? Perhaps you rely on
a few notes on a small bit of paper? That, at least, is better than
reading the whole thing.
   But the secret of a good speech lies in the contact between
speaker and audience. Stop to read from a paper, look down at your
notes!- at once you break the spell.
   Yes, it's 'off the cuff' for a really good speech. But that
does not mean you need not think about it beforehand. Some of the
best 'impromptu' speakers spend hours in preparation. So, by all
means plan your speech and rehearse it- see next page. Take your
notes with you- if you must! But if you can lose them and still
speak naturally and easily, why- Good For You! You are a
speaker!
<ILLUSTRATION>
   Embarrassed and tongue-tied! Poor fellow! But it need not
happen to you- if you plan your speech beforehand.
   You are going to make a speech, so presumably you've got
something to say. It may take you two minutes, it may take you twenty
minutes (a long time that!). But before you start have it clear in
your mind what that message is.
   In writing a letter, you arrange it in paragraphs. Do the same
with your speech. But don't write it down. Content yourself with
giving a name to each paragraph, and put those names in a list.
   Suppose, for instance, you finally have four names on your list.
Then you have four sections to your speech. Decide then what you
want to say in each- and the best way of saying it- and then
rehearse it over and over again. But don't memorize it word for
word. All you need do is to remember the four names- and the order
in which they come.
   Each time you rehearse you will probably put things in a
different way. All the better!- it will sound much more spontaneous
on the occasion itself. Remember your four names- have the list with
you if you like- and you simply can't be flummoxed!
   Of course, in any speech a good start and a good finish are
half the battle. So- see the next page!
<ILLUSTRATION>
   Yes, they are waiting for you. But there is no need to be
frightened. The audience will eat out of your hand- if they like
what you offer them.
   A good start will put them in a good humour.
   Ladies and gentlemen! I'm afraid I have not had much
experience of public speaking. But that's a terrible way to begin!
Why tell them you are a novice? It's their interest you want-
not their sympathy. And you want to get it from the word GO! Try
something like this:
   It is said that television keeps people at home. But you, at
any rate, have proved that wrong. And they say, too, that television
makes its appeal to those of lesser intelligence. May I suggest that
you have proved that right! Congratulations!
   And away you go into your speech.
   Take some thought, too, for your ending.
   Thank you for listening to me so patiently. A political
candidate often used that finish. No wonder he didn't get in!
Instead he might have ended this way: Well, those are my views.
It's up to you now to give me an opportunity of putting them into
practice. A stronger finish- and a stronger candidate!
   Note: It's a good plan to memorize your beginning and your
ending.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   One speaker predicts that unemployment will considerably
increase. But another puts it this way: Half the working-men in
the country will line up at the Labour Exchange.
   Six words only- line up at the Labour Exchange- but
enough to make vividly clear to you what he has in mind. He presents
you with a picture, and it flashes in your mind's eye. You see what
he is talking about.
   The Managing Director is retiring. The senior employee makes a
presentation and he gives the thing a seagoing setting. He calls the
Director captain, refers to him starting as cabin-boy, keeping
the ship off the rocks, etc.
   A sound idea. The metaphors give life to the speech.
   Simple words and homely phrases give the clearest pictures.
Let some one say: ~It's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!-
and at once you get his meaning. But: Using a great output of
energy for an exiguous purpose (it means the same thing!) gives you
no picture at all.
   So, in preparing your speech, search for the homely phrase and
the simple illustration. And then in giving your speech, you in
effect give your hearers a series of pictures.
# 24
<147 TEXT F4>
What looked ominously like a pair of legs was showing under the
seat in a second-class compartment. His fears were realized when some
porters helped him to lift out the body of a woman.
   Still puzzling as to what could have happened to his fiance?2e,
Edward Berry at first watched the growing group of excited railway
officials farther up the platform. When he learned what was causing
the commotion he became greatly alarmed, and after the body had been
taken to St Thomas's Hospital it was his grief-stricken duty
formally to identify Elizabeth Camp, aged thirty-three, the girl who
was to have been his bride.
   There was little doubt of how she had met her death, and even
less that it had been murder. She had been struck several times with
a blunt instrument, and her head was smashed in. There were signs of
a violent struggle, blood on the cushions and floor, and the remains
of her broken umbrella. But a pair of bone cuff-links found in the
compartment seemed to provide the only possible clue to the killer.
   The body was examined, and it was definitely established that no
sexual assault had taken place. It seemed probable that the motive
had been robbery, and this was further confirmed when a check was made
with the woman's relations in Hounslow. Miss Camp had been the
housekeeper at the Good Intent, a public-house in Walworth. Her day
off was Thursday, and before coming up to London in the evening she
had called on her two sisters, one of whom lived at Hammersmith and
the other at Hounslow, where she kept a shop.
   Elizabeth had left Hammersmith in the late afternoon, and arrived
at Hounslow around 5 P.M., where she had tea with her other
sister, and then went to catch the 7.42. Her sister saw her to the
station, helping her with some of her packages. This sister was able
to establish that she had carried a green purse and had bought a
railway ticket. But both purse and ticket, and the packages, were
gone when the body was found at Waterloo. Neither the sisters nor
Mr Berry thought it likely that she had been carrying much money.
   A porter at Hounslow supported the sister's statement that
Elizabeth Camp had been alone in her compartment when the train left,
but this did not help much, since it had made stops at nine stations
before Waterloo.
   The police began a systematic search of the line- no easy task,
but one in which patience and method paid off. At a spot on the
embankment between Putney and Wandsworth they found a bloodstained
pestle such as chemists use, with some hairs sticking to it. The
murder weapon, more than likely, and perhaps evidence enough to have
brought a killer to book in modern times. But in 1897, alas! there
was no fingerprint bureau, no experts to check and photograph any
'dabs' it might have yielded.
   It was a tough case to tackle, and Superintendent Robinson, of
the L.S.W.R. Police, and Chief Inspector Marshall, of
Scotland Yard, combined forces in the investigation. While accepting
the likelihood that Miss Camp had been attacked for the sake of
robbery, they did not overlook the possibility that this might have
disguised another motive, and a thorough check of her former men
friends and acquaintances began.
   They also had to cope with the usual flood of rumours, some well
meant, some mischievous, including one that a man had been seen
fleeing from Vauxhall station on the Thursday evening, with blood
actually dripping from his hands.
   The inquest was opened on February 17, but, beyond the jury
hearing a formal identification of the victim and inspecting at
Waterloo the carriage in which she had died, there was nothing on
which to proceed, and the inquest was adjourned. Day by day the
police followed up likely and even unlikely trails. It was learned
that Elizabeth Camp had been lending money to her relatives, and her
brother-in-law was asked for a detailed account of his movements on
the 11th.
   The dead woman had been engaged once before- to a barman named
Brown. This man agreed that his engagement had been broken off after
one particular tiff, but denied that he owed Miss Camp any money.
   All the while the police were casting about for a man who had
been seen leaving the train at Wandsworth. A passenger described this
individual as a man of about thirty, of medium height, with a dark
moustache, and wearing a frockcoat and a top-hat. The porter at the
station bore out this description, but the man was not traced.
Perhaps the news of their search got around, for a man did obligingly
present himself at Wandsworth police-station, claiming to have
committed the murder- but he was mentally defective, and, despite his
claim to infamy, had been nowhere near the 7.42 that evening.
   Even the bone cuff-links found beside the body, which had at
first been considered as belonging to the killer, proved yet another
red herring, for it was learned that they had been borrowed by
Elizabeth Camp from one of her sisters.
   A young man from Reading named Marshall had an uncomfortable time
in the presence of the coroner. This man was known to have left his
home on February 11, and to have been away for four days. Not in
itself a crime, but, added to the knowledge that he had gone shopping
in the town of Guildford for a false moustache, it left him with
something to explain. His story was that he had left home to try to
join the Army (presumably feeling that a moustache might enhance his
military bearing), and this was accepted.
   And so the inquest, which had dragged on, with adjournments,
until April 7, finally had to be content to return a verdict of
"wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." The most
vital clue of the Wedgwood pestle had been of no assistance. The
killer must have been very thankful that the science of dactyloscopy
was only in its beginnings.
   The next female fatality occurred eight years later, yet so
strange were the circumstances that it was a further seven years
before even a ghost of a solution emerged.
   There has always been something sinister in the idea of tunnels.
The building of them was one of the most dangerous jobs connected
with railway construction; and there were many people who believed
that to travel through tunnels would be an equally hazardous business.
   Some thought that the result would be all sorts of horrible
illnesses brought on by the confined atmosphere. "The shareholders
who travel by it will be so heartily sick, what with the foul air,
smoke and sulphur, that the mention of a railway will be worse than
Ipecacuanha," wrote an anti-railway industrialist when it was
proposed to build the Box Tunnel.
   The mere thought of subterranean travel gave others a feeling of
danger. A medical journal said, "the deafening peal of thunder, the
sudden immersion in gloom, and the clash of reverberated sounds in a
confined space combine to produce a momentary shudder, or idea of
destruction, a thrill of annihilation." It was also prophesied that
passengers would be robbed and assaulted in the darkness.
   For all that, as far as England is concerned, there have been
only two occasions on which a body has been found in a tunnel in
circumstances pointing to murder.
   The first was that of Mr Gold, in the famous Lefroy case, and
by an odd chance the second tragedy occurred on the same line,
although this time the victim was a woman.
   Though in the minds of most people there was no doubt that the
woman had been the victim of foul play, the verdict brought in was
that there was not sufficient evidence to show whether she had fallen
or been thrown from a train.
   The Merstham Tunnel, on the London-to-Brighton line, is
approximately one mile long, and some time before midnight on
September 24, 195, a Sunday, Sub-Inspector Peacock, of the London,
Brighton and South Coast Railway, who was in charge of a gang of men
engaged in relining the tunnel, was walking through when he stumbled
over something in the darkness.
   It was the battered and broken body of a woman. He sent word
straight away to near-by Merstham Station, and a stretcher party took
the body to the Feathers Hotel to await identification. Was it a case
of suicide, where some unhappy soul had walked deliberately into the
blackness and into the path of some train?
   This hardly seemed likely, since, when she was examined by a
local doctor, the woman, young, small, and rather plump, was found to
have her own silk scarf drawn almost tight enough to strangle her, and
the ends thrust in her mouth like a gag. Both her wrists bore the
marks of severe bruising, and there were other injuries on her body
which had occurred before her death was ensured by some train which
had roared through the tunnel.
   There were no letters or papers found on her to assist
identification, no money, and no railway ticket. By then reports were
being gathered about all traffic over this stretch of line, but no
information was forthcoming about any carriage with an open door, nor
any passenger reporting an incident which might relate.
   So the body of this small girl with the blue eyes and long brown
hair in a bun at the back of her head remained a mystery until later
the following day. During that time a description of the girl was
circulated, and a Mr Robert Money came forward to identify her as
his sister, Mary Money, aged twenty-two. The girl, who was described
as being "always bright and jolly," had been unmarried, and lived
at Lavender Hill, Clapham, on the premises of a dairyman, Bridger, for
whom she worked as a book-keeper.
   On the Sunday, the day of her death, she had gone out in the
evening at about seven o'clock, telling her room-mate, Emma Hone, that
she was going for a walk, but would not be gone for long. According
to Miss Hone, she had not been carrying a handbag, but she believed
she had had a small purse.
   Mary had certainly taken some money with her, for the police
traced her movements to a shop in Clapham, where she had bought some
chocolate. Miss Golding, who kept the sweet shop in the Station
Approach near Clapham Junction, knew Mary well, and knew she was fond
of sweets; and in the brief conversation they had had she recalled
that the girl had said she was going to Victoria- hardly the short
walk she had suggested to the friend who shared her room.
   At Clapham Junction a ticket-collector was able to identify a
photograph of the girl, and he said he had last seen her on platform
six waiting to board a train for the short run to Victoria. A
passenger at Victoria said he had seen a young lady "as near as
possible" like the photograph shown him, with a man "very close in
conversation and walking arm in arm."
   A guard reported that at East Croydon he had seen what was
accepted as the same couple sitting close together in a first-class
compartment of the train from London Bridge of which he was in charge.
The two could have joined this train by taking one from Victoria and
changing at East Croydon. He also believed that they had still been
together at South Croydon, and he remembered that when they reached
Redhill, after passing through Merstham Tunnel, a man who might have
been the companion of the girl had left the train.
   Medical evidence established that Mary Money had been dead for
about an hour before her body was discovered, and this matched
reasonably well with the timetable of the train in question.
   More important evidence came from a signalman at Purley Oaks, who
had seen, as the train passed his box, a couple struggling in a
first-class compartment; but he seemed to have been used to seeing
couples engaged in close embraces, for he had not attached any
importance to the scene at the time.
# 245
<148 TEXT F5>
   There was a division of political responsibility between the
Federal Government and the three territorial governments. The Federal
Assembly would consist of thirty-five members, of whom twenty-six
would represent the 2, Europeans. The 6 million Africans would
be represented by six Africans and three Europeans. Later amendments
of a highly intricate character increased the Federal membership to
fifty-nine, increased the membership elected almost wholly by the
white vote from twenty-six to forty-four and the African
representation from nine to fifteen, with the new members elected on
white-predominant mixed rolls. It did not take long before the
anti-federationists felt their fears were being clearly confirmed.
   As a concession to these doubts, it was stated that the active
principle behind the Federation's racial policies would be, not
6apartheid, but 'partnership'. This reassuring word was never
precisely defined, and has subsequently been treated by almost every
African with derision. At the same time the Constitution provided for
an 'African Affairs Board' which could appeal direct to the British
Government against any legislation it regarded as discriminatory.
(Twice it did so appeal, against the Constitution Amendment Act and
the 1958 Electoral Bill. Both appeals were immediately rejected.)
Africans continued to remember the remark of Sir Godfrey Huggins as
Premier of Southern Rhodesia in 1934: 'It is time for the people of
England to realize that the white man in Africa is not prepared and
never will be prepared to accept the African as an equal either
socially or politically.' They continued to remember that whatever
Huggins said about 'partnership' for English consumption, at home
he defined it as the sort of partnership that exists between a rider
and his horse.
   The Rhodesian system of 'partnership', while less crude and
blatant than South Africa's 6apartheid, meant colour
discrimination almost as pervasive and, it was sometimes held, less
honest. The white population, one-tenth of the whole, owned half the
land; the franchise was inexorably loaded against the African, Pass
Laws continued, the colour-bar, though legally modified in detail from
time to time, remained socially inflexible, the Native Affairs
Department governed almost every aspect of African life. What had
happened in South Africa after the Union of 1912 happened in Central
Africa after the Federation of 1953: instead of the tolerant elements
leavening and liberalizing the whole, the reverse took place, and so
far from white opinion mellowing, it hardened. Garfield Todd, the
moderately progressive Premier of Southern Rhodesia, was squeezed out
of office in 1958, and the subsequent elections returned the strongly
federationist Sir Edgar Whitehead. The Federal Government replaced
the powerfully pro-settler Sir Godfrey Huggins with the even tougher
and more determined ex-trade unionist, ex-boxer, ex-engine-driver Sir
Roy Welensky who, so far from modifying his determination that the
Africans must never dominate the Federation, continued to reaffirm it
with increasing vigour and confidence. Of Sir Roy's extreme rightism
it can only be said that his opponents of the Dominion Party, which
leans towards the 'South African solution', are even more extreme.
In all events, he had a mandate now to press the British Government
in 196 for complete independence for an almost exclusively
white-controlled Federation.
   Physically, it seemed to begin with, federation paid off:
business boomed, Salisbury- capital of both Southern Rhodesia and the
Federation- mushroomed into a significant city. All around, the
political storm-clouds grew. The settler community and their
spokesmen in London had argued that the African resistance to
federation had been based only on prejudice and ignorance, and would
disappear as they began to recognize the solid benefits that it
brought. Precisely the contrary came to pass. The Central Africans
were by now only too well aware of the yeasty upsurge of nationalist
movements all around them, while they remained groping in the stagnant
pool. With virtually no practical means of political self-expression,
nationalist movements grew inwards upon themselves. In each of the
territories the usual 'African National Congress' existed. In
Southern Rhodesia it had sunk into inactivity, but revived with the
emotions against federation. In Northern Rhodesia it was active but
divided; a movement against the Congress President, Harry Nkumbula,
charged him with softness and tolerance and in 1958 a breakaway group
was formed called the 'Zambia African Congress', led by the
ex-schoolmaster Kenneth Kaunda. Then, as the United National
Independence Party, Mr Kaunda's group promised independence by
October 196, which was rash.
   The potentialities for conflict existed in all three countries,
but it was in Nyasaland that the nationalist organization developed
its greatest energy. The Nyasaland Congress had been formed in 195;
the institution of Federation three years later provided it with its
6raison d'e?5tre, and in 1958 it received at last the genuine
leadership and stimulation it had awaited. Dr Hastings Banda, after
forty years away from his homeland, returned, bursting with vigour, to
be instantly elected President of Congress. Dr Banda had been a
doctor in north London most of the time, combining the practice of
medicine with political campaigning for African causes. For the three
years before his return he had been in Ghana. In the summer of 1958
he had a sensationally triumphant return. He brought with him a
Western education, an African sense of values, a keen sense of
political organization and a biting oratorical gift. Hastings Banda
had something Messianic for the people of Nyasaland.
   Seven months after Dr Banda's return the first trouble came.
Fifteen Africans were arrested in February 1959 for holding an
unauthorized meeting in the Northern Province of Nyasaland. The jail
in which they were held was attacked by a furious crowd, which
succeeded in rescuing them; a series of riots at once broke out over
the Province, and Federal soldiers were flown into Nyasaland from the
Rhodesias to put down the civil disorder. In the clash that followed
fifty Africans were killed.
   Trouble swiftly developed into crisis. In Nyasaland a thousand
Congressmen were arrested- including Dr Banda. The Governor, Sir
Robert Armitage, let it be known that the African Nationalists had
prepared a plot to assassinate the white population. In Southern
Rhodesia 5 more were detained; in Northern Rhodesia thirty-eight
'Zambia Congress' leaders were charged with forming a murderous
society to prevent Africans from voting in the coming elections. The
Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia declared a State of Emergency,
shortly afterwards pronounced the African National Congress illegal
and legislated for government powers to detain opponents, without
charge or trial, for up to five years. Even South Africa had up to
that time no legislation so drastic.
   At this point the whole issue forced itself into the British
consciousness, and became a matter of major political contention. It
grew even more acute when a four-man commission led by Mr Justice
Devlin, sent out to investigate the reasons for the upheaval, produced
a long report which shocked everyone- except, as it seemed later, the
government. The Devlin Commission reported a 'deep and bitter
division of opinion separating the Government from the people', and
that the African population of Nyasaland was almost solid in its
profound opposition to federation. While the State of Emergency was
justified, it added, 'there was no evidence of anything that could be
called a plot'. Dr Banda, said the commission, would not have
approved any such policy of murder. 'Unnecessary and illegal
force' had been used in dealing with the disturbances. In the most
alarming phrase of all, the report said that the territory of
Nyasaland since the declaration of the Emergency had become 'a police
state'.
   In the subsequent furious debate in Parliament the British
Government startled the Opposition by blandly accepting such parts in
the Devlin Report that appeared to endorse its policy, and rejecting
all parts that were critical. The Colonial Secretary, Mr Lennox
Boyd, allowed the storm to beat around him. The situation remained
unchanged; Dr Banda and his colleagues remained in prison. A
considerable section of British opinion, aware at last of the great
potentialities for danger in Central Africa, began to view the whole
Federation with deep uneasiness. Sir Roy Welensky continued to
prophecy with confidence that the 196 conference on the
constitutional future of the Federation would give him even greater
powers. The more clamant element among the Rhodesia settlers,
incensed at the growing hostility in Britain, began to talk loudly of
secession, of a Central African version of the Boston Tea-Party.
   The following year the Colonial Secretary, Mr Lennox Boyd,
finally retired from active politics to the board of his family
brewing concern, and was replaced by Iain Macleod. Almost at once a
sensible difference in the situation emerged. The new approach was
cautious but apparent. The Prime Minister led the way with a tour
round British Africa, culminating in the Union, where he startled the
Nationalist Government by referring to the 6apartheid policies in
fairly critical terms, and spoke of the 'wind of change' that was
rising throughout the African continent. It was not an impassioned
denunciation, but it was a great deal more than any British Government
spokesman had done before, and it markedly shifted the whole
relationship between the United Kingdom and the repressive
administrations in Africa.
   Therefore when the new Colonial Secretary himself travelled out
to Central and East Africa to investigate conditions there, his
mission was regarded with a watchful optimism by the African
politicians, and an undisguised hostility from the right-wing
settlers. The result was a temperate but unmistakable reorientation
of the British attitude towards the dependencies in Africa, a
realistic Conservative adjustment to the 'wind of change.'
   By the spring of 196, when Dr Banda was released, the
Nyasalanders' determination was absolute: to secede from the
Federation, come what may, and form their own independent nation under
wholly African control. In this spirit they attended the 196
conference in London, the outcome of which was surprisingly cordial.
An agreement was reached on a constitution which although it fell
short of Dr Banda's desire, did establish an African majority in the
Legislative Council and Ministerial rank on the Executive Council.
Taking their cue from Dr Banda, the Nyasalanders were unmoved by
the arguments that a poor, resourceless, landlocked country like
theirs made independence an unreality. Dr Banda has talked of the
possibility of another Federation, of African creation- of
associating his country with Tanganyika, or with Northern Rhodesia.
Ethnically and politically there could be much justification for
this, but two paradoxical difficulties arise: Tanganyika is too poor,
and Northern Rhodesia is too rich. Tanganyika's economic difficulties
are almost as great as Nyasaland's, while Northern Rhodesia's copper
interests are so great that its Europeans would go to serious lengths
to preserve the mines from an African administration. The Africans of
Northern Rhodesia have nevertheless been stimulated by Dr Banda's
success into a new political activity of their own. Divided as the
Northern Rhodesians are between Harry Nkumbula's government-tolerated
Congress and the more intensely nationalist Zambia group of Kenneth
Kaunda, they still have far greater strength than the Africans of
Southern Rhodesia. Unlike their colleagues of the south, they are
permitted- indeed encouraged- to form Trades Unions, and in spite of
continuous opposition from the white labour in the mines, their
industrial organization is probably the strongest in African Africa.
   The independence disasters in the Congo had their immediate and
obvious repercussions in the Rhodesias. The settler government of
Southern Rhodesia, torn between genuine apprehension of African
violence and the nervous satisfaction of having demonstrable reason
for tightening legislation, reacted abruptly. Sir Edgar Whitehead and
his Cabinet felt above all things the necessity to win the elections
that had been promised for the following spring, and to do this it
seemed necessary to prove to the white electorate its ability to clamp
down on upstart Africans and prevent any danger of a 'Rhodesian
Congo'.
   The opposition Dominion Party, predominantly white-supremacist,
was quick to exploit the new racial fears of the Europeans, stimulated
by the panic-stories from the European refugees from the Congo. The
Government's counter to this was to raise the threat of secession from
the Federation in an attempt to force the British Government into
relinquishing its reverse powers of veto- long-unused, but still the
Africans' only protection against complete settler rule.
# 219
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   The so-called human flea (Pulex irritans) is today more
of a nuisance than a menace, but was formerly the main carrier of
plague. In spite of its popular name it associates more naturally
with animals such as the fox and the badger, which live in large
burrows. According to the British Museum booklet, man 'evidently did
not suffer from Pulex irritans until he began to occupy a more
or less permanent home which must have been- and actually still is-
not altogether unlike a large hole'. Many architects of our
acquaintance would dissent from this last view, but the fact remains
that fleas can still be one of the main hazards of lying in bed.
Readers with chronic Oblomovitis may like a note of the booklet's
advice concerning the odd flea that may still be encountered in bed
even in the best-regulated home- or hole. This 'may with some skill
be caught with the fingers, after which the fingers with the flea
tightly gripped between them should be dipped under water and the
irritating insect is then easily killed'.
   The last animal at all likely to disturb the pleasures of lying
in bed is the bed-bug, Cimex lectularius, which some would
regard as the most unpleasant household pest existing in western
Europe at the present time. The original meaning of the word bug was
bogy, hobgoblin, or 'terror by night', and it is found in this
sense in the works of Shakespeare and many other Renaissance writers.
The British naturalist Thomas Moufet mentions it in his
Insectorum Sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (1634), and one
of the contributions to this early entomological compilation describes
how in 1583 two ladies of noble birth at Mortlake were much distressed
by the presence of the insects. John Southall, in his Treatise of
1Buggs, published in 173, says that the creatures had increased
greatly during the previous sixty years, especially in the City of
London.
   This is no place to go into the natural history of the bed-bug,
but it should perhaps be mentioned that, like the louse, it has been
given a picturesque collection of popular names. These include the
'mahogany flat' (from its colour), the 'Norfolk Howard', and
even the 'B flat'- the last, incidentally, being due to the flat
shape of the bug, and not to any special musical ability it has been
noticed to possess. Another graphic name is the 'red army',
strictly non-political in origin, but derived from the bug's tendency
to turn deep purple or dark red when gorged with human blood.
   But it is not only external causes that may destroy the pleasure
of lying in bed. Anyone who has attempted to relax when in a state of
nervous anxiety will be familiar with the condition commonly known as
'jittery legs'. Although fully extended in the horizontal position
the body feels tense and unrelaxed. A conscious effort of will is
needed to keep the legs still, and the keyed-up feeling which pervades
the whole body may even give rise to severe physical pain. Sometimes
the condition is so acute that the legs twitch and jerk quite
involuntarily. In such cases the patient may feel so uncomfortable
that he will send for a doctor, but an aspirin or some other mild
sedative usually suffices to relax the tension.
   Another disagreeable accompaniment of lying in bed may be the
condition known as pruritus, which expresses itself in a severe
itching sensation as soon as the warmth of the body has heated the
bedclothes. This is particularly prevalent among elderly people, but
can be alleviated by the application of ointments on a medical
prescription. Hay fever and other allergies may also be associated
with lying in bed, due either to feathers in the pillow or mattress or
(less commonly recognized as the cause) an accumulation of woolly dust
under the bed. The irritants associated with dust under beds may
sometimes be so powerful that the bed's occupant may seem to be
afflicted by a chronic cold. These and other effects of bedding on
health were recognized as long ago as the eighteen-eighties where it
was the custom to stuff pillows and mattresses with pine-shavings in
the belief that these would alleviate lung and bronchial conditions.
   In spite of the unpleasant consequences sometimes associated with
lying in bed, many people have not been deterred from going to bed
quite voluntarily for very long periods. One of the present writers
knows a healthy woman who retired to bed nearly ten years ago on the
death of her husband, and has never stirred out of it since. There is
also the case cited by Reynolds of the Frenchman, Raoul Duval, who
went to bed in Abbeville in 1928 and remained there for eighteen
years. The reason he gave was that he did not wish to 'see the
world, nor talk nor think about it', an ambition that was, however,
abruptly shattered in 194 when the town was heavily dive-bombed. As
Reynolds remarks, if Duval really did stay in bed throughout this
ordeal it shows quite exceptional conscientiousness and determination.
Another case of a prolonged voluntary stay in bed began in 1875 when
a Spanish doctor in Galicia, being tired of visiting reclining
patients, eventually decided to follow their example. He retired to
bed in his own house, where he remained for sixteen years, seeing only
those patients who were well enough to come to him.
   As both of these picturesque tales originated in newspaper
reports we would be ill-advised to take them too seriously, but we
shall conclude this chapter with two further aspects of lying in bed
for which there is sound historical evidence: the lit de justice
and the lit de parade. Throughout the centuries there have
been cases of people retiring to their beds for certain special
reasons, often as a result of some superstitious or ritualistic
belief. The couvade is one example, and the lit de justice
and lit de parade are others, although, of course, they are
used for quite different reasons.
   The lit de justice is the older of the two, and may be
defined as the custom of a king, dictator, high priest, or other
person of great authority issuing edicts and judgements to a formal
assembly of his subordinates from his bed. The bed is not
necessarily, nor even normally, the one he usually sleeps in, but
resembles rather a ceremonial couch, elaborate in design and
ornamentation, standing in some important place of assembly. (See
Plate 55.) It is sometimes stated that the lit de justice
dates from medieval times, but the institution is in fact much
older. Thus in one of the fragments of the Greek historian
Phylarchus, who flourished in the third century B.C. we may read
how Alexander the Great used to recline and transact business on a
golden bed in the middle of a gigantic tent, with his troops and
attendants to the number of two thousand or more drawn up in order
around him. Roman emperors and high officials also gave audience in
the same position, and there can be little doubt that a form of the
lit de justice was used by political leaders and tribal chiefs
in the Neolithic Age and even before.
   Henry Havard in the third volume of his Dictionnaire de
l'Ameublement et de la De?2coration (1887-9) gives numerous
examples of the lit de justice in later historical times.
From the Middle Ages onwards, especially in France, the bed and not
the throne was considered the proper place for the installation of
royalty at public functions. Thus in the fourteenth century when the
French king appeared in Parliament he would recline on a bed raised on
a dais. The dais was approached by seven steps, carpeted in blue
velvet embroidered with golden 6fleurs-de-lis. Around the dais
were his subordinates, each in a position appropriate to his rank.
Members of the royal house were seated, the chief nobles stood, the
lesser nobles knelt; there is no record of commoners having been in
attendance on such august occasions, but if they were they must
presumably have grovelled on the floor.
   At first the prerogative of the lit de justice was
restricted to royal personages, but the idea was obviously so
attractive, allowing as it did a combination of ease and authority,
that it began to be more widely adopted. In this new context, the
ceremonial bed, or lit de parade, became an accepted part of
social life in western Europe from early Renaissance times until the
French Revolution. Those whose social status permitted them to
receive visitors without the customary courtesy of standing up were
not slow to exploit the possibilities of horizontality in their social
contacts. It conferred a subtle but undeniable prestige, and
paradoxically suggested a superiority of stature which would often
have been far less apparent in the vertical position.
   Nobles and others whose status is dependent on hereditary
privilege rather than personal merit were among the first to adopt the
new technique, and were swiftly followed by the smaller fry who saw in
the lit de parade an easy and comfortable method of
establishing their social superiority. Women were early in the field,
and it became the practice for any woman who felt she could get away
with it to receive the consolation or congratulation of her friends in
bed on occasions which ranged from the death of a husband to the
marriage of a favourite niece. Duchesses and courtesans could insist
on the lit de parade as a right based on riches, social
position, or physical attraction; humbler personages enjoyed it only
when the production of a child conferred on them an unaccustomed
prestige. Ceremonial lyings-in after childbirth were nevertheless
attended by their own ritual. Guests were expected to bring the
mother gifts commensurate with her achievement, and dances and other
entertainments were arranged for her benefit.
   The lit de parade also provided women with an excuse to
indulge the extravagance so characteristic of their sex. It was an
opportunity to wear the richest and most seductive garments and to
deck the bedroom with expensive silk and satin hangings. Thus a
letter written in the early seventeenth century tells how the Countess
of Salisbury 'was brought to bed of a daughter and 1lyes in very
richly, for the hanging of her chamber... is valued at fourteen
thousand pounds'. Unchivalrously, the husbands who had to provide
such innocent indulgences eventually began to count the cost. In
fact, in some countries legislation was passed prohibiting any
excessive ostentation on the lit de parade. In Milan, for
example, women were not allowed to use counterpanes of embroidered
silk, or stitched with gold or silver thread, nor to wear silk
camisoles when receiving callers.
   Roger de Fe?2lice, in his French Furniture under Louis =15,
has some interesting observations on a variation of the lit de
parade practised by ladies of rank in the eighteenth century. He
writes:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'Long before the time of Madame Re?2camier the indolent belles
of the day were fond of receiving en de?2shabille?2,
reclining on their "turquoises" or "duchesses"; for
languishing beauty with weary attitudes already existed, side by side
with the more general type of sparkling and mutinous beauty: but what
seems strange at a period of so much licence, these ladies, far from
showing their bare feet, were expected to conceal them with a coverlet
of embroidered silk as a concession to decency."
<END INDENTATION>
   The final exploitation of the lit de parade by the
beautiful women of the past was for purposes of lying in state. There
are many records of this custom, but one example must suffice. It
concerns the death of the Duchess of Burgundy, wife of the Dauphin of
France in 1712 and is taken by Havard from the Journal de
Dangeau. On February 12th the body of Madame la Dauphine lay
all day on her bed at Versailles. Her face was uncovered and her
hands lay above the bedclothes. That evening in the presence of her
ladies in waiting ('une obligation de leur charge') a 6post
mortem was performed, but no cause was discovered for her death.
# 217
<15 TEXT F7>
   SOME years ago a contemporary philosopher told us that there
was nothing an Englishman would not do; nothing an American would not
say; nothing an Italian would not sing; no music to which the
Frenchman would not dance; nothing the German would not covet; and
nothing the Chinese would not eat. It is not our purpose to discuss
this dictum. Suffice to say that few of us stop to marvel at the
progress of civilisation which allows a dish borrowed straight from
the prehistoric. How many centuries ago, in some cave or hilly hide,
did our forebears home from the chase hold forth from a spear the
welcome gobbet of meat or fish burnt and roasted in the homely and
protecting flame. How many centuries later did the mercenary in the
Roman wars thus impale on pike or lance his evening meal. Later came
the thrifty peasant, later still the young Victorian buck adventuring
in Paris, and even later our attractive young ladies toying with these
primitive morsels in the gleam and glitter of our latter-day
restaurants. And, if certain dishes and modes of food have persisted
down the ages, the motive that preserved them has always been the
same. Apart from the need for nourishment, the instinct of
hospitality has always been strong in mankind. The sharing of a meal
in those earliest dangerous days was an admittance into an
acquaintanceship far more important than the casual meetings of the
present day; the desire to share something more intimate than mere
converse has always been there. The truth is that good food offers a
programme of entertainment almost unlimited in its variety and its
presentation affords an opportunity of showing a guest something of
ourselves.
AN AMAZING EPOCH OF GROSSNESS AND DELICACY
   It is a far enough cry from the primitive meal-times of a
simpler world to the banquets of later days, when the table groaned
under its load of complicated dishes, and for all the blossoming of
the arts around them the diners were little removed: it was still
fingers before forks- from their prototype, the hungry hunter. There
was always the spice of an orgy in those Roman feasts, for instance,
with all their peacocks and nightingales' tongues; unreasonable
surfeit, too, in the elaborate fashion of eating brought out of Italy
into France, we are told, by Catherine de Medici. The peasant in
those days, as ever, ate sparingly, but generously enough in his own
fashion, save at feast times, when he, too, let himself go; and it was
from his simpler food that the later renaissance of cooking was to
come. Epicures and gourmands, sated by the unending procession of
dishes from those mammoth kitchens of the 18th century- that amazing
epoch of grossness and delicacy- sought inspiration at last from the
dishes of the country, and, instead of gorging the eye with magnitude,
began to understand the value of intelligent selection and comparative
simplicity, though nowadays their simplified meals would seem quite
monstrous.
THE FLESHPOTS OF EGYPT FOR WHICH ISRAEL SIGHED
   Does one, however, know who first thought of boiling water and
food? The ancient Britons, I believe, used to make water hot by
dropping a red-hot poker into it, because their pots would not stand
fire; but Jacob must have had one that would, because Esau sold his
birthright to him for a mess of pottage- and then we hear of the
fleshpots of Egypt after which the Israelites sighed. Anyhow, Homer
does not seem to have known any way of cooking meat except by roasting
and boiling. When Achilles gave a royal feast the principal dish was
a grill, which he cooked himself, and he knew how to do it, too:-
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   When the languid flames at length subside,
   He throws a bed of glowing embers wide;
   Above the coals the smoking fragment turns,
   And sprinkles sacred salt from lifted urns.
<END QUOTE>
   When, however, the Greeks did learn the art of making fireproof
earthenware from the Egyptians, their cookery made rapid progress,
because they were men of taste and intellect.
RICHLY-DISTILLED PERFUMES AS AN AID TO DIGESTION
   A remarkable peculiarity in the banquets of the ancient world
was the fact that they did not confine the resources of the table to
the gratification of one sense alone. Having exhausted their
invention in the preparation of stimulants for the palate, they broke
fresh ground and called another sense to their aid. By delicate
application of odours and richly-distilled perfumes, these refined
voluptuaries aroused the fainting appetite and added a more exquisite
and ethereal enjoyment to the grosser pleasures of the board. The
gratification of the sense of smelling was a subject of no little
importance to the Romans. They considered flowers as forming a very
essential article in their festal preparations; and it is the opinion
of Bassius that at their desserts the number of flowers far exceeded
the number of fruits. When Nero supped in his Golden House, a mingled
shower of flowers and odorous essences fell upon him; and one of the
recreations of Heliogabalus was to smother his courtiers with flowers.
Nor was it entirely as an object of luxury that the ancients made use
of flowers; they were considered to possess sanative and medicinal
qualities. According to Pliny, and others, certain herbs and flowers
proved of sovereign power in preventing the approaches of ebriety, or,
as Bassius less clearly expresses it, in clarifying the functions of
the brain.
THE QUEER DINNERS OF STRANGE LANDS
   It is said that there is nothing new under the sun, but
regarding foodstuffs the traveller occasionally encounters a certain
measure of novelty. In China, for instance, dried rats are esteemed a
delicacy. The visitor is told that they restore the hair of the bald
and that a stewed black rat will ward off a fever. A number of
newly-born white mice served alive, dipped in treacle and swallowed
like a prairie oyster is considered a piece of resistance. <SIC>
Among the natives of Northern Australia lizards roasted on the point
of a spear are definitely a delicacy while Mediterranean peoples have
a high opinion of the octopus as an article of diet. So have the
Japanese and the Chinese. The Celestials, apart from eating it fresh,
squash it, press it and dry it, in which form, dusted over with flour,
you will find a stack of it in almost any provision shop. Bats are
eagerly eaten in Dahomey, some of the Polynesian islands, the Malay
Archipelago and elsewhere. Badger hams are a delicacy in China while
mole is eaten in many parts of Africa.
TASTE AND TEMPERAMENT IN CURIOSITIES OF DIET
   The old saying, ~"One man's meat is another man's poison",
therefore possesses a great deal of truth. Taste and temperament in
fact play a great part in life, and there are many instances of
eccentricity in diet and dishes, as in everything else in life.
Mankind has tried all kinds of food from roots to bird's nests, and
from snails to elephant's feet or walrus blubber. Though English folk
to-day enjoy shrimps and eat periwinkles with a pin, they shudder at
the Frenchman who relishes snails and frogs. The West Indian negro
refuses to look at stewed rabbit, but will eat palm worms fried in
oils and is fond of baked snakes. In Brazil and Siam the natives eat
ants. The entrails of animals are relished in Salonica; they are
eaten just as the Italian eats his macaroni. The heads of the lambs
are considered great delicacies and go first. When roasted, the
unbounded joy of the native cracking the skull and picking out the
tasty bits is nauseating in the extreme. Siberian peasants view with
disgust the idea of eating hare. But there are West Indian natives
who declare that no food in the world comes up to fricassee of rats
that have fattened themselves in the sugar-cane plantations. Each to
his taste, therefore, seems to be a reasonable policy to pursue. A
knowledge of the world's foods, in any case, ought to increase
international tolerance.
NATIONAL FOODS WHICH AFFECT THE TEMPERAMENT
   Foodlore reflects much more of national temperament than is
customarily imagined as well as entering human activities to a greater
extent than is usually assumed. We naturally cannot overlook that
Magyar cookery owes one of its most classic features to the Turkish
rule under which the Hungarians groaned for nearly 2 years. If that
country had not been for so long a battlefield red with the blood shed
to defend Christian civilisation, Hungary would have been deprived of
the condiment which provides many Magyar dishes with a vivid and
brilliant scarlet hue. The Austrian cuisine embraces the delectable
6Wiener Schnitzel as well as dishes and stews heightened with
aromatics where the paprika insinuates its perfidious fire, aerian
creams, ingenious pastries and a crescent-shaped breakfast roll
created by a pastry cook to celebrate the victory against the Turks in
1683. Spanish cookery is reminiscent of bull-fights, of Spanish
dancing and of Goja: it is vivid, highly coloured, sometimes Quixotic
and withal it has a sombre ardour, with streaks of poetry, meat
disguised under heavy and vehement sauces, pimentos and rancid butter.
The Czechoslovak kitchen, again, is so languorous, so passionate, and
possibly comparable alone to a gypsy melody. The paprika and caraway
perfume the meats with their antithesis. The opulent varieties of
Czechoslovak pastries recall in fact the rich heritage of rich
embroideries and costumes specifically national.
ART AND SCIENCE OF THE KITCHEN:
   The art and science of cookery, however, is essentially French,
and, irrespective of the fact that I have never run across anyone in
Gaul who has been a glutton, I can positively say that it has been
equally difficult to find one who has not been an epicure. The French
have an inborn appreciation of good food and the gusto which they
derive from gastronomy is intellectual and aesthetic as well as
physical. There is the same finesse about their feeding, the same
subtle delicacy of touch, the same unfailing sense of proportion as
exists among her writers, music composers and other exponents of
things that are typically French. The "pot-au-feu" is as much
a national institution in France as is tea drinking among ourselves
and it is prepared at least once a week in every bourgeois household.
Thackeray, of course, waxed enthusiastic about Bouillabaisse and
sang-
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is,
   A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
   A hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes
   That Greenwich never could outdo;
   Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
   Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace.
<END QUOTE>
GENIUS & FOOD- FOOD FOR THOUGHT
   A fascinating study also opens up in the dietary welcomed by
men of genius as well as the foods for which they have had an
aversion. Shelley, for example, had a great contempt for animal food,
believing that it impaired the intellectual faculties. Bunyan's
breakfast and supper consisted of a piece of coarse bread and a bowl
of milk. Dante Gabriel Rossetti had simple tastes in food. At one
dinner he is said to have been blind to the charms of turbot and to
have been much more interested in the dish in which it was served. He
turned it over on the table cloth to examine the marks on the back
without going through the formality of having his turbot removed
first. Wagner was a highly practical feeder. He ate very fast,
placing his food in his mouth and gulping it down as he talked.
Brigham Young would make a dinner on tripe which he washed down with
beer. A writer who had dinner with Dickens says the menu was
Whitstable oysters, a brown sole, a baked leg of mutton with oyster &
veal stuffing and a gin punch. The same man went to see Carlyle, and,
after mentioning that he had dined with Longfellow told the sage a
very funny story which made Carlyle absolutely laugh; but all the
Chelsea philosopher did in return was to ask if his guest would have a
cup of tea!
# 27
<151 TEXT F8>
THE YOUNG WOMAN LIVING ALONE
   All that has been said in the foregoing pages about what is
meant by a lady, is true for all women and young girls. But in these
days, so many young women leave the protection of the parental home
long before they acquire the status of a married woman, that a few
rules for their guidance are most necessary. Girls in jobs living in
bachelor digs, girl students in towns distant from their homes, girls
travelling the world alone, even, may seem and indeed be emancipated,
but they are not released from the ordinary rules of good behaviour.
Indeed, it may be wise for them to observe such rules even more
carefully, inasmuch as they are judged entirely on their own behaviour
and deportment, and not at all on their home backgrounds or the social
standing of their parents.
   It is not the function of this book to enter into questions of
morals but to provide a guide to behaviour that will not cause
eyebrows to be raised. However innocent her morals in actual fact,
the young woman whose behaviour departs widely from accepted
contemporary standards is likely to cause heads to shake, tongues to
wag, and some doors will close to her and some men feel that she could
not make them a suitable wife.
   The way she lives is the first problem. To live in a recognised
residential club such as the Y.W.C.A. or university hostel is
one acceptable solution; others are to board with a family, or to
share a flat with one or two other girls in similar circumstances.
   For slightly older, more experienced young women, a room in a
"family hotel", a converted house made over for boarders, or a flat
in a respectable block preferably near to friends of her family, or
relations, are other possibilities. However impeccable her own
behaviour, she should avoid living with, or near, people who clearly
have less regard for convention.
   In her social relationships with men, the woman living alone must
accept certain conventions. She should not lunch or dine alone with a
married man more than once or twice- unless their relationship is
openly a business one that demands it. She should never allow a man
guest to stay on after a party at her flat or room after other guests
have gone, or stay on herself at a man's party after the rest have
left. She should not entertain a man alone in her apartment, except
for the few brief minutes when he calls for her before an evening out
together; nor should she go alone to a man's bachelor flat or room.
In most hostels and boarding houses, convention rules that if a man
and woman are alone together, which may at times be perfectly
permissible and necessary, the door must be left open.
   The young woman living on her own will not accept an invitation
from a man to visit his country home, unless she knows that his mother
or other married relation will be there to act as hostess for him.
Preferably, the invitation should come from his mother.
   The young woman living alone must be especially discreet about
drinking only in strict moderation. Here again, however innocent her
actual life, if she is known not to behave with strict regard for
propriety in any one matter, all her other behaviour at once comes
under suspicion. For the same reason, she should never accept a
valuable present from a man who is not a relation.
   A problem common to all young women, not only those living on
their own, is that of whether, and when, to offer to "go Dutch" or
share expenses of an outing with a young man escort.
   This is quite an accepted custom in these days when young women
earn sizeable salaries, but a girl must display good manners in the
way she offers to do her share of the paying. It is easy to hurt a
man's feelings.
   With a new acquaintance, it is probably best to let the man
"make the running" and suggest outings for the first time or two;
the girl should show her appreciation by her obvious enjoyment and
animation during the outing and by her thanks at the end of it. Then
she can either take her turn as host, by saying she has been given
theatre tickets (or, more simply just, ~"I've got two theatre
tickets", without more explanation) and asking him to accompany her,
perhaps suggesting that to make it entirely "her" evening, he
allows her to take him for a meal beforehand; or alternatively she
can, when accepting his next invitation, say, "Yes, I'd love to
come, but let's go Dutch this time". The important thing is that
she must make it plain before the evening begins that some or all
of the financial responsibility for it will be hers. An argument over
the restaurant bill or at the cinema box office is humiliating and
undignified for a man, and her good manners must save him from being
put in such a situation.
   Similarly, since most men like to be seen to do the paying, it is
a tactful precaution if, at the start of the evening out, she gives
him the theatre tickets "to take care of" and, if they are going to
a restaurant for which she is paying, a small purse containing amply
enough for the evening, from which he can settle the bills, taxi
fares, etc. If they are sharing expenses, it is tactful still to
give him the purse, saying "Would you take my share out of that?"
This avoids any undignified "settling-up" of each item of the
evening.
Introductions, Acknowledgements and Leave Taking
   When to perform an introduction often puzzles the
inexperienced. A good rule is ~"If in doubt, do so" as it is
better to risk seeming a little fussy than to leave two people each
wondering who the other is and wishing you had introduced them.
   An introduction is a social matter; therefore one would not
introduce a friend to, say, one's doctor, since a visit to or from the
doctor is not a social occasion. Naturally if the doctor were also a
personal friend, or social acquaintance, the situation might be
different and an introduction quite in order.
   Similarly a chance meeting with a friend, while walking with
another friend in the street, is not a social occasion and
introductions are not called for; unless it seems likely that one is
going to stand and chat for a few minutes, or walk along all together,
when an introduction will obviously set everyone more at ease.
   The hostess at a small party will see that guests are introduced
to one another; at a large party it is in order for guests to effect
the introductions between people they know, or even to introduce
themselves informally to other guests.
   If one brings a friend to a party, who is not known to the
hostess, one must, of course, present one's friend to the hostess
immediately on arrival.
   In the business world, strangers should be introduced if it seems
likely they will have future dealings with one another. For instance,
if a regular business contact is waiting in the secretary's room for
an interview with her employer, and one of the firm's departmental
heads comes in, the secretary should introduce the outsider to the
departmental head, unless she knows that for any reason her chief
would not approve it.
   Guests are not introduced to servants or members of staff, but if
on a visit of any duration, the guest should be made aware of the
servant's name and function in some such form as ~"Aunt Elizabeth,
Jane will get you anything you want- just ring for her."
   The form an introduction takes has been very much simplified in
recent years, but the general rule of presenting the less important
person to the one it is desired to honour most, still remains. Men
are introduced to women, untitled people are introduced to titled
ones, young people to older ones, old friends to newcomers, the
unmarried girl to the married woman and so on. Because of the very
special honour accorded to Royalty and high-ranking clergy, everyone
is presented to them, regardless of title, age or sex.
   To perform an introduction, one says something like, ~"Mrs.
Smith" (or, if one knows her well, "Mary") "may I introduce Miss
Jones", and then, turning to Miss Jones, says simply, "Mrs.
Smith". That is all that is necessary, but if one wishes, one may
turn again to Mrs. Smith and add ~"Miss Jones has just returned
from a visit to New York", or some such bit of information which
will give Mrs. Smith (as the senior member of the pair) a chance to
start an interesting conversation.
   When introducing people in circumstances where Christian names
are likely to be used straight away (as with young people, or
introducing one's relations to old and intimate friends) it is still
important to give the surnames clearly on the first introduction;
otherwise circumstances can easily arise where people never know one
another's surnames and the degree of friendship already achieved makes
it impossible to ask.
   ACKNOWLEDGING AN INTRODUCTION. A lady must rise when being
introduced to an older woman or "social superior" or to a
clergyman. If the difference in their status is great she should
remain standing until the other person either has a seat, or goes
away.
   "How do you do" is the only possible verbal acknowledgement of
an introduction; it is purely formal, and not intended to be treated
as an enquiry after anyone's health.
   Handshaking on introduction is largely dying out in Britain
although it is still very much the correct thing on the Continent. In
Britain, the former rule was that the socially superior person should
be the first to extend a hand- and as few people of gentle instincts
like, nowadays, to claim social superiority, the usage is less often
followed. Exceptions are when a much younger person is introduced to
an older one, or where the distinction of rank is obvious; then the
senior person, if she wishes, will extend a hand.
   Although handshaking is less often practised, it is, of course,
very important to take instantly a proffered hand, in order to avoid
calling attention to any possible lack of savoir-faire in the other
person, and, quite simply, not to keep them waiting with hand
outstretched.
   There is no especial rule about shaking hands with or without
gloves. The only rules are, don't fumble with a glove, and don't
apologise for having one.
   LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION. There is a definite etiquette about
these. Letters should be handed unsealed to the person being
introduced, who will, on arrival at the new place, post or leave them
by hand on <SIC> the friend to whom they are addressed, together
with a visiting card or brief covering letter indicating where he or
she may be contacted. It is not etiquette to deliver a letter of
introduction in person to the one to whom it is addressed.
   The addressee should then promptly contact the newcomer with an
invitation to meet him or her.
   If you have given someone a letter of introduction to a friend or
business contact, it is etiquette to write a second letter, later,
thanking him or her for the kindness shown to the newly-introduced
person.
   THE UNWELCOME INTRODUCTION. While people performing
introductions will, of course, not do so unless reasonably sure that
it will be agreeable to both sides, still, the mere fact of having
been formally introduced does not compel one to continue an
uncongenial acquaintance, but to break it off too pointedly could be
construed as rudeness towards the friend performing the introduction.
The best course is to be civil but not forthcoming, though
occasionally, with a really determined pursuer, stronger means may
have to be adopted. The introduction, however, has committed one to
nothing and one need not feel badly about disrupting the acquaintance.
# 27
<152 TEXT F9>
Fads and Fancies
by W. J. Dore-Dennis
   THE gardens, flower and kitchen, had been much neglected.
The new owner, admitting that he knew practically nothing of
horticulture, gave my friend 2Ole 'Arry 6carte blanche, and I
was not surprised that the estate was quickly transformed. In the
first spring after Harry's appointment he looked me up. Did I want
any tomato plants? I did, and asked 'How many and how much?' His
reply was staggering: '2'Underds, an' 2fer 2nuffin''. It
appeared that he had treated the gardens with manure from the sewage
farm. The tomato plants were the result, but his employer, when
informed as to the origin of the vast crop, had turned 'fair
pernickety', ordering that all the plants were to be destroyed and
new ones procured from a local nursery. Harry and I did well with our
condemned plants, which gave a crop excellent both in quality and
quantity. Our surplus was gladly taken by the village greengrocer,
who in turn supplied Harry's pernickety employer and his family, the
nursery-bought plants having failed to come up to expectations.
Country Scales and Weights
by L. Sanders
   A CENTURY and more ago country people had to rely on
improvisation and the local craftsman for most of their essential
equipment, including means to weigh their produce. The Avery
Historical Museum has been collecting old weighing instruments from
all over the world for a number of years, during which it has acquired
many interesting examples made and used in our own countryside. Stone
weights are among the simpler of these. Some may be three or four
hundred years old, made from stones taken from field or hillside.
When farmers had to weigh produce for market and were unable to
obtain foundry-made iron weights locally, they sought stones of
suitable size, shape and weight and took them to the smith to be
fitted with iron lifting rings. Then, by a little chipping or the
addition of lead, they were adjusted to compare with a neighbour's
weights or with the manorial standards. Hard igneous rocks, such as
granite, made serviceable weights, reasonably impervious to moisture
and capable of withstanding hard wear and exposure.
   Occasionally stone weights of the larger denominations, such as
twenty-eight and fifty-six pounds, turn up. The large oval one marked
'59', illustrated on the previous page, would have been used to
weigh bales of wool, the extra three pounds being an agreed tare
allowance for straps or bindings. This and the twelve-pound weight
came from Jersey and were undoubtedly fashioned from large rounded
beach pebbles flattened to form a base. The square weight below is
from Shropshire and, though figured '56', weighs only forty-five
pounds. This is due not to any dishonesty on the part of the original
owner, but to the loss of its lead loading from the large cavity on
the under side.
   Cart weighbridges and platform-scales, an English invention of
the mid eighteenth century, were scarce even in towns and certainly
unknown to the farm worker until well into the second half of the
nineteenth century. The countryman mostly used beam-scales or hanging
steelyards made in the towns by small family concerns employing a few
craftsmen and apprentices. Some surviving examples are as crude as
those used by the ancient Egyptians four or five thousand years
earlier, but others show some appreciation of the fundamentals of the
science.
   Among the cruder examples are the wooden butter-scales shown
below; they are about three hundred years old. A central stand or
pillar, turned like a chair-leg on a primitive lathe, carries a wooden
beam pivoted on a round iron peg: two wooden bowls or platters are
suspended from the ends of the beam. Scales of this type were used in
farmhouses up to the end of the last century.
   Larger hanging wooden beam-scales were often part of the
equipment of the miller for weighing sacks of grain and flour. They
were sometimes as much as six feet long and strongly constructed with
metal fittings and rudimentary knife-edges, combining the skills of
carpenter and smith. They could be used to weigh several sacks at a
time on scale-plates suspended from the end knives by shackles and
chains. The wooden beam-scale opposite is a comparatively small one,
about two feet in length, and probably two hundred years old.
   In contrast, the professional scale-makers of the town
constructed their products entirely of metal. Steelyards, based on
the principle of the uneven-armed balance used by the Romans and still
known by their name, were in common use, for they permitted the
weighing of heavy loads without a large number of loose weights. As
they required greater precision in manufacture than the beam-scales,
few home-made examples survive. The seventeenth and
eighteenth-century farmhouse steelyards of English and Continental
origin in the Avery collection are small, as steelyards go, and many
have wooden arms with metal fittings, poise and knife-edges.
Graduation marks are provided by brass pegs driven into the wood at
regular intervals. Most of them have two fulcrum knives and duplicate
suspensions to take either light or heavy goods- a principle used by
the Romans.
   An example of a craftsman-made wooden steelyard can be seen in
the illustration of the fine Orkney pundler, which is one of the
prized exhibits in the collection. The oak beam is more than six feet
in length, and the stone poise weighs thirty-one pounds. Graduation
marks correspond to multiples of the Scottish pound. All the metal
fittings are of wrought iron, including the knives which are now well
rounded by wear. The instrument is believed to have been in use for
several hundred years, for the beam bears the weight-stamp of George
=3 obliterating a number of older marks.
   Also from Orkney is a wooden bismar or Danish steelyard, used by
sliding a cord fulcrum along the counterweighted lever to balance a
load. The principle was known to early Aryan tribesmen, who found its
simplicity convenient for their nomadic way of life. The example
illustrated above is three feet long and is thought to be of wych-elm.
For some two thousand years the bismar, dhari or Danish
steelyard, as it is variously called, has been widely used throughout
the Indian sub-continent and the eastern and northern countries of
Europe; but in England it was made illegal in the reign of Edward =3
in favour of the equal-armed beam and Roman-pattern steelyard.
New Books about the Country
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for
granted, nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider-
Bacon
<END QUOTE>
Escapists or Realists?
   WHEN anyone decides to stop earning a living in the town and
tries to earn it in the country, he is dubbed an escapist, as though
he were somehow avoiding the responsibilities of civilisation. But
when a young couple, a successful journalist married to an attractive
hotel publicity officer, leave the West End to brave all weathers in a
primitive cottage on the Cornish cliffs, working with their hands to
grow potatoes and flowers for a livelihood, they are surely realists
in the truest sense. For ten years the Tangyes have struggled against
frost and gales, blight and disease, to supply the fickle markets of
the industrial cities with early violets, daffodils, anemones and
potatoes. When they were nearly ruined fresh hope appeared in the
form of A GULL ON THE ROOF (Joseph, 18s), which they called
Hubert. Derek Tangye describes the whole endeavour, and his wife
Jean provides small sketches as illustrations. He writes well enough
to sustain interest through all the setbacks, encounters with local
characters, economics of market gardening and breezy comments from
city friends. It is also delightful to see the townsman's sentimental
feeling for animals and hatred of traps enduring even in the 'peasant
life'; Monty the cat is treated with as much understanding as if all
three had stayed in the Mortlake flat and never passed through Lamorna
to find Minack.
   Also a grower and journalist, Frederick Street has fought
hard to make a living out of rhododendrons and azaleas and now finds
his experience has been a FOOL'S MISTRESS (Parrish, 17s 6d).
His anger, first at his relatives who disappointed him over his
inheritance, a market garden near Woking, then at the difficulties of
trying to make fertile 12 acres of derelict land, and finally at the
battle between commuter and countryman in his subtopia with its
fun-farming and half-way-back-to-the-land movement, makes a
provocative autobiography. I enjoyed the table showing the
relationship between the type of farming a man does and his weekday
train to London, from the 8.45 chicken farmer to the 1.3 (three days
a week only) owner of a pedigree herd of Jerseys.
   A more light-hearted realism comes from R. M. Dashwood,
the PROVINCIAL DAUGHTER (Chatto, 16s) of the Provincial Lady,
E. M. Delafield. She lives in the country near Oxford, bringing
up three small boys with the occasional aid of a doctor husband and a
German help. Her diary is written in the style her mother made famous
and should have the same general appeal. But the last war drove many
women straight from the university to household drudgery with only a
sense of humour and a ready pen to see them through, so the theme is
not quite as fresh as it used to be, though an ability to laugh at
one's self and at domestic difficulties is always well worth sharing.
   Believing that 'we are all countrymen at heart', John Baker
also wants to share his rural experiences in the COTTAGE BY THE
SPRINGS (Phoenix, 1s 6d), His is a short book, chiefly
concerned with water, with the pond by the Wiltshire cottage he
converted, with springs, water-weeds, irises and lilies, and
eventually with piped water for the whole village.
   Edmund Cooper's MEN OF SWALEDALE (Dalesman, Clapham, via
Lancaster, 6s), another small volume, is a neat slice of social
history, mostly 19th-century, taken from contemporary diaries. The
old farming practices, the crops grown, sheep bred, fertilisers used,
bridges built, the amusements of singing, reading, dancing and playing
whist, the food and clothes are all mentioned, together with the
mining which went hand in hand with the farming, the accidents and
fights, and the names of those who emigrated to America when the
farming became less arable and the mines closed down. Even if you do
not know Crackpot Gill or Silkwood Bridge, you will enjoy following
briefly the activities of these families in Yorkshire or America.
   Equally easy to follow, though of very different material, is
Dennis Wheatley's SATURDAYS WITH BRICKS (Hutchinson, 18s). It
has nothing to do with international intrigue but is a mixture of
anecdotes about the 1914-18 war and sound advice about building brick
walls. The author himself is the link; he laid his first bricks
during hostilities and has gone on ever since, so that he can now
recommend all the essential tools and clothes, the necessary drink,
the way to lay foundations, mix mortar, choose scaffolding and finally
lay the actual bricks. Compared with this constructive work the war
was a chaotic nightmare to which he keeps harking back.
   The artist Edward Wakeford found the 1939-45 war a different
sort of nightmare, which he describes logically after his childhood
and student days. In A PRIZE FOR ART (Macmillan 25s) he relives
his boyhood in the Isle of Man, walking with his clergyman father,
watching the people in church, remembering clearly the things he saw
and the way he felt when the bishop visited the family, when a small
wild rabbit died or he went down the wrong stairs at the school
prize-giving. I felt impelled to read on and share his experiences.
   Finally, a peaceful book: PARSON'S EVENSONG, by 'Pilgrim'
(Skeffington, 15s). In it a retired Church of England clergyman,
who prefers to remain anonymous, ruminates over his past life and
work, the people, books and places he has known, those he still meets
and the faith that has sustained him. - Margaret Campbell
Isca to Thule
   'BARTHOLOMEW STREET was called Britayne for many
centuries, being the area occupied by the British during Saxon
times.'
# 218
<153 TEXT F1>
Labour Junks its Own Books
by Harry Short
   "BOOK reading," wrote Francis Williams, "used to be a
Socialist habit. To secure an educated Socialist democracy this is a
habit we should indulge in as we did years ago."
   Fifty years ago, when I was a youngster, Socialists said books we
must have, though we lack bread, but to-day times have changed. Very
few Labour voters read Socialist books or treasure a library of their
own, and many local Labour Parties have no literature secretaries.
Social secretaries and Bingo organisers, but no bookstalls.
   When the women's section of our local Labour Party held a jumble
sale recently, one of the stalls contained hundreds of second-hand
books. All were priced at 3d. each!
   After most of the mystery, love, romance and adventure books were
sold, it was decided to reduce the remainder to 2d. each, for if, as
often happens, any old clothes, books, pictures or nick-nacks were
left over, it would all be left behind for the caretaker of the school
to either burn or give to the dustman.
   None of the bazaar committee members were eager to store a lot of
old junk in their homes for the next jumble sale, so for his services
of burning the books, pictures, etc., the caretaker was liberally
rewarded.
   I looked at the pile of "remainders" and bought Roads to
Freedom (Bertrand Russell), Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith),
The Science of Wealth (J. A. Hobson), The Soul of Man under
Socialism (Oscar Wilde), Fabian Essays, Man and Superman
(Bernard Shaw), The Socialist Movement (J. R. Macdonald),
History of the Russian Revolution (Trotsky), New Worlds for Old
(H. G. Wells), Political Economy Selections (edited by
W. B. Robinson) and The Conditions of Britain (G. D. H.
Cole).
   On some of the books, on the fly-leaf I saw the name L. S.
Woodruff, who for many years was chairman of the Harrow East Labour
Party, and was an alderman at the time of his death.
   "Sid", as he was familiarly known by his colleagues, was one
of the most respected and devoted members of the Socialist minority
group of a strong Tory Council, and was known to be a well-read,
convinced Socialist of burning sincerity.
   In the first World War he was a pacifist and suffered
imprisonment for his Socialist beliefs. He had the combined gift of
keen humour with the virtue of being a good serious propagandist for
the Labour Party. Sid Woodruff started his pioneering work for Labour
when people were overworked, underfed, and lived in sordid slums. The
lives of the workers in those early days were in the main of narrow
dreariness and boisterous brutality, and Alderman Woodruff was one of
the educated minority who showed the way to a better life.
   To-day, with a higher standard of living, people imagine they
have reached the higher life. For most, their reading is the popular
newspapers and trashy periodicals.
   When the Nazis made huge bonfires of Socialist literature, I
thought of Emerson's lines, "Every lash inflicted is a tongue of
fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or
house enlightens the world." What would Emerson's thoughts be if he
knew that at a Labour Party jumble sale, great thoughts by great men
were ignored, while nasty rubbishy books with gaudy covers, dealing
with sordid sex and crime, were in great demand?
The Tiny Minority Only
   We are living in an age to-day when serious, disturbing and
admirably written books, packed with vivid details, and written with
deep feeling, are read only by a tiny minority.
   Books that helped to make the Socialist Movement grow to its
present strength, which showed how to make the world a far happier
place for people of all races to live in, are read by few.
   It was Milton who wrote: "A good book is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit." The Socialist Movement has produced
many men of vision, who in their courageous and fascinating plays,
novels, essays and poems, have shown us a nobler and better life.
They contain all our ambitions, our indignations and our illusions.
The Literature of Revolt is a heritage we should treasure, so I am
indeed happy, that the late Alderman Sid Woodruff's books are in my
bookcase, instead of being burnt by the school caretaker.
   <Do you make a habit of adding to your knowledge by reading
or by taking postal courses?- Ed.>
FOOTNOTE
   "NO. A man who volunteers to be an 'Aunt-Sally' at a
local garden fete and gets a clout on the ear with a ball is not
covered by the Industrial Injuries Act."- Answer to Grimsby
correspondent in the P.O.E.U. Journal.
Does T.V. Influence Elections?
by Arthur Woodburn, M.P.
   AFTER the last General Election we all speculated what
effect T.V. had on the result. Our general impression was that
the Labour programmes were the most effective and convincing. We all
have our own little gallup polls among our friends and acquaintances,
but as they are usually of our way of thinking and as we are inclined
to look for the answer we want, we can be misled. For example, since
the election there have been months of controversy about unilateral
disarmament. Both those for and against are fervently convinced they
speak for the great majority of the people.
   Television and the Political Image shows what was actually
happening to the minds of the people as they listened or looked in
during the election campaign.
   How did the broadcasts affect the elections? It was interesting
to see how the persistent propaganda against nationalisation was
accepted by even Labour supporters and the feeling that Labour was a
divided party was also prevalent. It is interesting to read about the
items electors mentioned as having, in their view, specially affected
the elections. Of the total, 32% thought "rash Labour promises-
cost of new pension scheme- bribery of electorate" had a bad
effect, 26% thought nationalisation hurt Labour and 1% thought
strikes, especially that at British Oxygen Works, were bad. (The
percentages among Labour supporters on these items were 22%, 3% and
7% respectively.)
A Common View
   A fairly common view was that ~"Labour tried to buy their way
in". Harold Macmillan cleverly put this across by adding "with
your money, of course". Keeping the cost of living down came top as
the subject of most immediate interest, treatment of old age was next
and a permanent peace settlement third. Unemployment came fourth and
the control of the H bomb was fifth, and so on down the list. It is
interesting that the subjects of interest have nearly the same
proportional interest among supporters of both parties- cost of
living two out of three and H bomb one out of three.
   The general view was that efficiency of the programmes and of the
detailed argument did not make a decisive impression. Most people
were looking for a government; and, therefore, the overall impression
of competence and a total policy that was acceptable and clear were
the largest factors. The Tory Party's goodwill rested on its claim to
tradition, its claim to represent the whole nation and its claim to
defence of individual rights.
   The Labour Party is accepted as standing for the welfare of the
people, but its working-class foundation makes it difficult to
reconcile this with its claim to act in the "national" interest.
Its disunity appeared a cause of its losing support. Nearly 7% of
the electors were reached by Party broadcasts. Each Party T.V.
programme reached about 2% of the entire adult population. About 5%
saw the T.V. news bulletins. The campaign showed no decisive
swing towards either of the main Parties.
   These are only some of the interesting factors which come from
the survey. There can be no certain conclusions; but it is clear that
not many people change sides during an election, though a little
change can mean much. Three people in every street changing over
could change the government.
   So delicate is the balance that it can be tipped by a slip of the
tongue or by some development that shakes the confidence of the timid
or uncertain. It is on this uncertain group that the choice of
government rests. It's a grave thought.
   This book is worth reading.
Ready Reckoning
   JAPANESE medicine is conventional, but the Chinese always
have their own approach to scientific problems and there is a
distinctive Chinese therapy which makes great use of herbal brews,
exercises and acupuncture needles. Similarly, the Chinese have their
own traditional methods of ready reckoning. In the West the shop or
restaurant cashier uses a register, or wrestles with a pencil and a
column of figures, but in the East one of the most familiar sounds is
the clicking of the abacus as some shop assistant's nimble fingers
flick the beads to and fro at lightning speed to produce the total of
your bill.
   Primitive, slow, old-fashioned? In a contest organised by
Singapore Trade, Mr. Bei Po-lu of Singapore was timed with a
stopwatch the other day as he used his two-dollar abacus to divide
2,644,35 by 1,77. His right hand flashed over the beads and he
produced the correct result- 2,455- in 1.3 seconds. A
Western-trained accountant then did the same sum on an expensive
electric calculating machine. It took nearly two seconds longer. -
Observer Foreign News Service, 21st February.
Key Point in the Mediterranean
by Frank Horrabin
   FRANCE established a protectorate over Tunisia in 1881,
three years after the Congress of Berlin, at which she had agreed to
the British seizure of Cyprus. Five years ago (in 1956) Tunisia
became independent- thus anticipating the freeing of Cyprus by a year
or two.
   The French, however, retained their hold on the naval base of
Bizerta, situated opposite the channel between Africa and Sicily, the
"Narrows" separating the Western from the Eastern Mediterranean
(see map). Their continued possession of this important strategic
point has been constantly questioned by Tunis, but it was a matter for
some surprise when Bourguiba, the Tunisian President, suddenly decided
a few weeks ago to attempt to take the port by force.
   Tunisia has given aid and shelter to the "rebel" Algerian
Government, and there has been much bitter fighting between the French
and the Algerian nationalists along the Tunisian frontier.
<MAP>
Factory Meetings at Lunch Hours
   FOR many years now the West of Scotland N.C.L.C. has
always managed to run a number of classes or discussion groups during
factory lunch hours. There is no doubt that such classes are possible
in all industrial areas to some extent, and N.C.L.C.
Organisers have been asked to take up the question where they have
not already done so.
   Will any Plebs reader who thinks he can get a class or
discussion group going in his factory during the lunch hour please
drop a line to the N.C.L.C., Tillicoultry? It will be passed
on to the Organiser concerned.
   It may be too that in your works, through the Works Committee, it
might be possible for the management to give apprentices a half-hour
off to learn something about the Trade Union Movement. The
N.C.L.C. would be glad to send a speaker to such a meeting,
and to approach the management with the assistance of the chief shop
steward.
History on Film Strip
   FILM-strip talks play an important role in many schools all
over the country, and they should play a much more important role in
the N.C.L.C. than they do, because people learn through their
eyes as well as through their ears. Besides, if one looks at the
papers that have the biggest working-class circulations it is they
which have the most pictures.
   One of the latest history film strips available is "George =3
and the Revolutionary Wars (176-1815)", published by Common Ground,
Ltd. A pamphlet of notes on the lecture is provided along with the
film strip, which contains 3 pictures. The film strip is broken up
into the following sections:- King and Parliament, Causes of the
American Revolution, The Course of the American Revolution, The
Younger Pitt in Peace and War, and the Slow Struggle towards Victory.
# 219
<154 TEXT F11>
VERSAILLES REVISITED
BY JAMES EDWARD HOLROYD
   In a small black pocket-diary in the Bodleian Library there are
various brief pencilled entries which record the owner's holiday in
Paris with a friend in the summer of 191: 'August 7 St. Denis.
August 9 Louvre buildings.' And then: 'August 1 Versailles.'
The diary is signed C. A. E. Moberly on the fly-leaf.
   That laconic entry represents the starting-point of the strange
experience of the two English women who saw, or thought they saw,
Marie Antoinette and members of her entourage in the grounds of the
Petit Trianon at Versailles on that far-off summer afternoon.
   The experience lasted only half an hour. The two women thought
so little of it at the time that they did not discuss it for a week;
did not write down any account of it for three months; did not publish
it to the world until ten years later.
   When the book appeared pseudonymously under the title of 'An
Adventure' fifty years ago in 1911, it aroused controversy which
continues today. Although the two women, whom we now know to have
been Miss Annie Moberly and Miss Eleanor Jourdain, were of high
academic standing, their accounts were not without confusion. Some of
their evidence is careless if not suspect; some of their research
contradictory. They have been accused of altering their stories; of
adding later touches which lifted their experience from the light of
common day into the rarified atmosphere of the late eighteenth
century.
   The two women were always somewhat hypersensitive to criticism,
and as if to refute any suggestion of collusion or conspiracy, Miss
Moberly deposited their letters and papers in the Bodleian. Neither
of the two is now alive, but the echoes of their adventure- which has
been described as 'the most famous ghost story in the world'-
still puzzle the inquirer. Were they victims of hallucination? Did
they only imagine the experiences they described? Could their
adventure be explained in natural terms? Or did they, in fact, find a
doorway into the past which enabled them to participate, however
briefly, in the sunset thoughts of the unhappy queen?
   There are few places in the world in which it is easier to
imagine ghosts than the vast palace of Versailles. The echoing halls
of the great cha?5teau, the labyrinthine walks of the main park with
their stone benches and frozen statuary, the haunted gardens of the
Petit Trianon- all are alike murmurous with the footfalls of history.
   Miss Moberly was the principal of St. Hugh's, Oxford, and Miss
Jourdain the joint head of a girls' school at Watford on that August
afternoon which was to establish their life-long link with Versailles.
Their respective ages were fifty-five and thirty-eight. Both were
daughters of Anglican clergy. Miss Moberly was, in fact, the seventh
child of a bishop of Salisbury who had previously been headmaster of
Winchester. She had acted as her father's secretary, and although
lacking formal academic qualifications was appointed to the headship
of the first women's college in Oxford, a post to which she brought
considerable gifts of administration and undoubted authority. In the
summer of 191 she was seeking a vice-principal for St. Hugh's, and
the sightseeing holiday, with Miss Jourdain's Paris flat as base, was
to be a mutual exploration of temperament and personality.
   Neither of the women claimed to know more of Versailles than
occasional casual reading had brought. 'We had very hazy ideas as to
where it was or what there was to be seen,' Miss Moberly wrote of
the Petit Trianon. 'Both of us thought it might prove to be a dull
expedition.' Miss Jourdain was familiar with French and gave
lessons on the history of the Revolution. Miss Moberly could read
French but was not good at the spoken word.
   Let us now follow them on their adventure at Versailles. In the
middle of the afternoon, after the usual tourists' round of the
palace, they decided to visit the Petit Trianon. They looked up the
general direction in Baedeker and walked down through the main grounds
until they reached the forecourt of the Grand Trianon. Instead of
walking along the Avenue des Deux Trianons, which would have brought
them immediately to the main entrance to the Petit Trianon, they went
along a lane through a gate on the right-hand side of the Grand
Trianon forecourt.
   After walking up the lane they made a sharp turn to the right
past some buildings. Miss Jourdain described them as farm buildings
and noted that implements, among them a plough, were lying around. In
retrospect they always felt that the point at which they passed the
buildings marked the beginning of their adventure- that from this
moment they trod enchanted ground. Only in retrospect, however: at
the time they were walking briskly and talking with animation about
England and their mutual acquaintances. Miss Moberly recorded that
although the weather had been very hot all the week, the sky was
somewhat overcast that afternoon and a lively wind was blowing across
the main park.
   Passing the buildings, they went along the middle path of three,
where they met two men and asked the way to the house. They were told
to go straight on. The two men were dressed in long greyish-green
coats and, according to Miss Moberly, wore small three-cornered hats.
The two visitors first spoke of them as gardeners, but later thought
they must have been officials of some kind. Miss Jourdain remembered
that when they spoke to the men she saw to the right a detached
cottage with stone steps and a woman and girl at the doorway. Miss
Moberly apparently did not notice either the cottage or the two
occupants.
   Unknown to each other, the two visitors now began to experience a
deepening sense of depression. Miss Jourdain noted that she began to
feel that they had lost their way and that something was wrong.
   After leaving the men, they continued along the path until it was
crossed by another at right-angles. In front of them, overshadowed by
trees, they saw a small building with roofed-in columns. In their
original notes they referred to this as the Temple de l'Amour,
judging it to be this from the map, but in the published account Miss
Moberly described it as 'a light garden kiosk, circular and like a
small bandstand.'
   A man wearing a cloak and a large slouch hat was sitting close to
the kiosk. As he turned to look at them, both saw that his expression
was evil and repulsive, and their growing sense of depression and
unease culminated in a feeling of alarm. Miss Moberly also recorded
that 'everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant;
even the trees behind the building seemed to have become flat and
lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry.' There were no effects of
light and shade and no wind stirred the trees. It was all intensely
still. She thought that nothing would induce her to go to the left-
presumably past the seated man.
   In the silence they were relieved to hear someone running towards
them. Miss Moberly 'connecting the sound with the gardeners,' saw
it was a handsome young man- 'distinctly a gentleman'- who also
wore a large sombrero and a dark cloak with one end flying out in his
prodigious hurry. He told them in French that it was not necessary to
go to the left and that they would find the house to the right. He
then disappeared and they heard his retreating footsteps, still
running.
   The two visitors then crossed a small rustic bridge over a tiny
ravine with a trickle of water on the right, followed a pathway under
trees, and skirted a narrow meadow of long grass, damp and with an
orchard look about it. This, although they did not realise it at the
time, was the English garden on the north side of the Petit Trianon.
The windows facing them were apparently shuttered.
   As they went up to the terrace bordering the north and west
fronts, Miss Moberly noticed a woman sitting below the north terrace
and holding a paper at arm's-length as if sketching. Afterwards she
was able to describe the dress with some particularity, and noted,
'I thought she was a tourist, but that her dress was old-fashioned
and rather unusual (though people were wearing fichu bodices that
summer).' Miss Moberly subsequently identified the woman from a
photograph as being Marie Antoinette. Later it emerged that Miss
Jourdain had not noticed anyone at this point, although they asserted
that there was no one else in sight.
   The two visitors then crossed over the west terrace fronting the
French garden and were moving towards an unshuttered window on the
French garden side when they heard a door bang and a young man
(afterwards described as 'the Chapel man') stepped on to the
terrace from what seemed to be a second house at right-angles. He
told them that the way in was by the entrance court and walked down
the French garden with them to an exit in the front drive.
   The visitors then went through the forecourt of the Petit Trianon
to the house, where they followed in the wake of a French
wedding-party walking arm in arm in a long procession round the rooms.
They were at the back of the party, too far away from the guide to
hear much of his story. But they noted that the feeling of depression
had passed and that they now felt quite lively.
   Then they drove back to tea at the Ho?5tel des Reservoirs in
Versailles, and they did not speak of any of the events of the
afternoon. Because of the wind, Miss Moberly had put on her coat
during the drive to the hotel, and as they later returned to Paris by
train she noted that 'the setting sun at last burst out from under
the clouds.'
   'Again and again the thought returned- was Marie Antoinette
much at Trianon, and did she see it for the last time long before the
fatal drive to Paris accompanied by the mob?'
   
   That, in plain terms, was the substance of the adventure; and a
commonplace experience it would have remained, but for the
extraordinary circumstances that followed. Although the two women
stayed on in Paris for a while, they asserted that they never alluded
to that afternoon until, a week afterwards, Miss Moberly was writing a
letter to her sister in England and suddenly asked Miss Jourdain if
she thought the Petit Trianon was haunted.
   Miss Jourdain promptly answered ~'Yes,' and then, for the
first time, they became aware that their feelings of depression and
anxiety had begun at the same point of their journey. Talking it
over, they realised for the first time the theatrical appearance of
the running man and the inappropriateness of his wrapped cloak on a
warm summer afternoon. Miss Jourdain also admitted having disliked
the thought of passing the seated man at the kiosk.
   On November 1, 191, three months after the experience, Miss
Jourdain was staying with Miss Moberly at Oxford and they returned to
the subject, only to discover that Miss Jourdain had not seen the
sketching woman. Thereupon they resolved to write down separate
accounts of the experience to discover how far they had seen the same
things. These first accounts, both dated November 191, are still in
existence and can be seen at the Bodleian. (For convenience they can
be referred to as M1 and J1.) During November and December they also
wrote two more detailed accounts (which will be referred to as M2 and
J2) to show to friends. These longer accounts were the versions that
appeared in their book published in 1911. The original documents of
M2 and J2 are no longer in existence, having been lost or destroyed
after being copied into a manuscript book in 196.
   It is important to note here that in the autumn of 191, before
either had written down a single word, Miss Moberly had told friends
about their 'ghost story.'
# 21
<155 TEXT F12>
What did you dream last night?
A SAUCER OF WEDDING RINGS IS PLACED BEFORE HER
   Twice in succession I dreamed of a wedding, one of which was
most distinct and realistic. In my dream, I was married in a small
room like a registry office, and a ring was taken from several in a
saucer and placed on the table. Then my boy friend came in with an
open-necked shirt on and hands in his pockets. He walked over to me
and wanted to know what I was waiting for. I picked up the ring,
placed it on my finger and said: "People will wonder why I haven't
got an engagement ring." With that we walked out together.- Miss
C. M., Derby.
   Explanation- You are dissatisfied with your present
relationship with your boy friend. You are anxious to get married to
him. Picking at random a ring offered to you out of a saucer
indicates you are in too much of a hurry to be married. Your boy
friend appears so unsuitably dressed because you are not sure whether
he is the right man for you. Your remark indicates you are uneasy
about the way things are at present, but walking out with him shows
you are prepared to put up with a lot of trouble just to be in his
company.
   Advice- You must discuss the whole situation with your boy
friend. If he does not intend to marry you, then a clean break would
be best.
HER DOOR IS BATTERED OPEN- AND IN WALK TWO BULLS
   In my dream, two bulls batter upon my door and I have to open
it and divide my only loaf of bread equally between them. If one gets
a larger piece than his companion, he becomes angry. Then they drink
from a horse-trough and go peacefully away, but I know they will
always return. My main thought is that I must be nice to them, and
not show any preference either way.- Miss C. T., Essex.
   Explanation- The two bulls in your dream are men who seek
your friendship. There are probably two men in your life, and you
can't make up your mind which one you would rather have.
   Advice- You tend to be slightly immature in your outlook on
life. Try to be more sincere and serious.
SHE CAN'T ESCAPE THAT VOICE
   I dreamed I could hear the Voice of Nagging Authority, which
blamed me for dressing a two-year-old boy on a very hot day in heavy
clothing instead of tussore silk. The Voice kept on urging and
nagging me to find the lighter dress. I am unmarried and in my
sixties.- Miss M. M., Bath.
   Explanation- The "Voice of Nagging Authority" quite
likely belongs to your mother. She abuses you for being unable to
handle a baby and therefore, in her opinion, you are unfit to marry.
   Advice- Concentrate on the present. Try to forget about your
mother's former domineering attitude towards you.
A Belt Filled With Diamonds
   I dreamed I was in a crowded room. In our midst was a woman
who has a reputation for going after men. My husband walked in
carrying a doll made of fur fabric, with a price tag of thirty-five
and six attached to it. He threw the doll into the lap of the woman,
saying that the gift would please her. I was furious.
   He tried to calm me, handing over a pink felt belt, with a pin
stuck in it. I threw it back.
   "Don't be angry," he said. "Your present is more valuable
than hers. Open it up. It's full of diamonds!"
   I picked up the belt, which fell to the floor, but hesitated to
open it. Before I came to any decision, I woke up.
   I have been happily married for twenty-one years and love my
husband very much.- Mrs. B. G. H., Jersey.
   Explanation- No matter how happily you are married and how much
you trust your husband, suspicion, tinged with jealousy, will occur,
especially if you love him very much. Your dream was caused by the
thought that another woman might be able to please your husband more
than you could. He walks into the room and gives her the doll and you
the belt.
   On the surface the doll looks the more valuable item, but your
husband tells you the belt is full of diamonds. The trouble is you
hesitate to open it, fearing that, after all, the diamonds may not be
there.
   Advice- Despite your happy marriage, you appear to have a
shred of distrust toward your husband. Search your memory, find the
reason for it, tell your husband about it and this slight shadow of
suspicion will cease to trouble you.
STRANGE ENCOUNTER WITH A TALKING SNAKE
   I am shortly to be married and we are going to live in a small
house in the country. Outside the house there is a water-hole.
   I dreamed my aunt and uncle came to visit us. As I was seeing
them to their car a great snake rose out of the hole and began to
chase us round the field. It caught Uncle and squashed him to death.
Next, it caught hold of my aunt, but I cried out, "Please, snake,
don't kill her. She is a good woman. Take me instead." "All
right," the snake replied. "I only kill wicked people. I will
guard your house for you on condition that you bake me an apple pie
every day."
   This I did and the snake and I became friendly, but a week later
he said: "The weather's getting chilly now, so I'm going home."
   There my dream ended.- Miss R., Bolton.
   Explanation- Your dream concerns your fiance. The snake is
a symbol of his manliness. He wants no interference with the pleasure
he enjoys in your company. The snake kills your uncle, because he is
another man, and lets your aunt go, because she is a woman, and so
couldn't become a rival. Now you offer yourself to the snake to save
your aunt, and the snake becomes your guardian (husband).
   Advice- Your dream clearly expresses you have certain doubts
about yourself or your fiance, and are afraid that with him you will
lead a rather lonely life, and in the end he will get tired of you and
leave you. Discuss the future fully with him, and then make the final
decision.
She Opened Door After Door
   I dreamed that I saw my friend driving an old car. She and the
three boy passengers were all wearing crash helmets. The car swerved
on to the footpath and crashed through the window of a shop. No one
was hurt. My girl friend was taken to a hotel in town and I went to
see her as I thought she may have been injured. I looked into every
room in the hotel but couldn't find her.- Miss W., Kilmarnock.
   Explanation- You envy your girl friend who embarks on
adventures with the necessary precautions- the crash helmets. This
explains her ability to get out of events in which other girls might
get hurt. You go to the hotel not to offer sympathy but to ask her
how she gets out of her predicaments. You can't find her and this
shows that you do not fully approve of her behaviour.
   Advice- Do not try to model yourself on your girl friend.
She may seem to be enjoying herself, but in the long run she will
regret her recklessness.
An Aeroplane Shoots Her
   I have had this dream twice recently. I am in a grocer's shop
and just as I come out I see an aeroplane hovering in the sky.
Suddenly it starts to fire at me and I am wounded in the left arm.
   I am eighteen. Could you please tell me the meaning of this?-
Mrs. W., Scotland.
   Explanation- Your dream indicates a fear that someone might get
you involved in some unexpected prank in which you would be the
sufferer.
   Advice- If there's anyone, friend or relative, who constantly
teases you and tries to make you inferior, trying to give you the
impression you are too young to be married, stop seeing that person.
If this is impossible where you live, change your abode. If the
teaser happens to be your husband, make a solid stand against him and
hold your status as a capable wife.
Wants Her Husband- But Can't Find Him
   I dreamed I was going with a young woman to see the remains of
her old home, which was now a tourist attraction. As we turned down a
lane, I knew we were going the wrong way.
   Two queer looking animals were chasing each other round a pool,
and I was afraid of them. I felt very unhappy and wanted to see my
husband, but I couldn't think of any excuse to get him down there to
see me. I knew that the woman, who turned into my sister-in-law,
wouldn't understand how I felt about everything. I was desperate,
because I knew I would have to stay for a holiday.- Mrs C.
T., Coventry.
   Explanation- The young woman is trying to lead you astray. You
follow her despite your knowledge you are doing the wrong thing. The
queer animals frighten you and you blame your sister-in-law for your
troubles. You would like to have your husband with you, but he is not
coming. Therefore, you'll have to spend a holiday with his sister,
whom you apparently dislike, or may even despise.
   Advice- You are frightened of the influence your
sister-in-law has over you, and also object to it. In your dream, you
tried to get your husband to help you in whatever problem you face in
connection with her. Do it in real life, too. Tell him how you feel
about his sister, and if there is a problem, try to solve it together.
"STOP THAT GIRL!" THEY SHOUTED
   I dreamed I was driving a bus along the main road at about
eighty miles an hour. Then, without warning, I suddenly turned down a
side street, causing an accident with another bus coming up behind me.
When I saw what had happened, I jumped out of my bus and ran for my
life down the street. I could hear a crowd of people chasing after me
shouting: "That's her! Stop that girl! She's just caused an
accident!"- Miss B. I., Bradford.
   Explanation- Driving a vehicle means you have an intense
desire to command your own life. Driving the bus at a high speed,
causing an accident and then trying to escape instead of facing the
consequences indicates you could be already involved in an adventure
which could have serious and damaging consequences- not only for
yourself, but other people as well.
   Advice- If my assumption is correct and you are trying to
embark on some sort of an adventure- it might be a love-affair- take
the dream's warning and don't. If the dream is merely an expression
of your state of mind, then try to make peace with the world.
ATTRACTIVE STRANGER GIVES HER FLOWERS
   The man I dream about passes my home every day, but we have
only said ~"Good-morning" to each other. I have two of a family,
and my husband is inclined to be very jealous.
   I dreamed my husband and I were at the front door as this man
passed by. When he saw us, he went across the road and picked some
flowers out of a garden. He gave my husband some tall, red flowers
and me a posy of pansies.- Mrs C. H. Somerset.
   Explanation- You are trying to make amends for your
husband's jealousy. That's why the stranger strikes up a friendship
with you and your husband, and gives flowers to both of you.
   Advice- Don't let your husband's jealousy get you down.
Whenever he has an attack of jealousy, face him squarely and don't
let him brow-beat you.
VISITS FAR-AWAY PLACES AS SHE SLEEPS
   I have dreamed I was in Austria, twice in Germany and once in
France.
# 213
<156 TEXT F13>
THE BRITISH WITNESS
<EDITORIAL>
   "TAKE the book in your right hand and repeat after me: I
swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
   You lay the testament on the ledge of the witness-box in front of
you. The prosecuting advocate rustles through his papers. Your mouth
feels a little dry. Why this sudden feeling of guilt? You have done
nothing wrong. You are doing your duty as a citizen.
   And what is at stake? This isn't a murder trial. If the
motorist is found guilty, he will only suffer a fine. Surely no one
can question your honest recollection. Or can they?
   To the left and slightly above you, the magistrate watches you,
reflectively. To your right and slightly below you, the defending
advocate is watching you with a marked intensity. The prosecutor
finds the page he wants and clears his throat. He, too, looks at you.
   The same question is in the minds of all of them. What sort of
witness are you going to make? They all know, or can guess, roughly
what you are going to say. The question is: how are you going to say
it?
   But, surely, you have only to tell the truth. You have sworn to
tell the truth. You are on your oath.
   Let us face one fact which every lawyer knows, though few will
admit it. From the point of view of your honesty, that oath is almost
irrelevant. If you have come to court to lie, you are going to lie
whether or not you have sworn on the little black book.
   But the oath has one very useful purpose. If you decide to lie,
and you are caught out, the fact that you have taken the oath enables
the police to charge you with perjury. And then you will pay dearly
for it.
False evidence
   This is unlikely, especially in a small case. When two honest
witnesses give diametrically opposite accounts of the same event, how
can anyone prove that the evidence you gave was deliberately false?
   The liar is the person the advocate dreads least. He is the
easiest to spot, the easiest to trap.
   One little slip, and you will have to start inventing lies on
your feet, to cover up that slip. And that will involve you in
another lie- and another- and another.
   If the advocate knows his job, you will suddenly wake up to find
the fifth or sixth lie directly contradicts the first or second. And
then you've had it.
   There are few instances of deliberate perjury- at least in minor
cases. Looking back over more than two thousand cases, I don't think
I ever came across more than a dozen liars- real liars, who gave a
deliberately false account of certain facts.
   But among the thousands I have cross-examined, I have heard many
patently wrong accounts of incidents given in all honesty. And in
only a few instances have I been able to convince the witness in the
box that his recollection must have been mistaken.
   The British witness is, with few exceptions, basically honest.
And yet in almost every case witnesses conflict completely.
   How can this be? Simply because everyone sees an incident from
his own point of view. His true recollection of any set of facts will
really consist of a series of isolated flashes of sight or sound. His
imagination will then set to work to connect up those flashes.
   This process is inevitable. The human mind simply will not
tolerate a series of unconnected incidents. It will arrange them to
fit in with a person's experience, his ideas, his prejudices.
   When his mind has done this work, all in an instant of time, the
result will be that person's absolutely honest recollection of the
incident.
   And it may be totally different from what actually happened.
   Considering this, it is sometimes terrifying to realize the
importance attached to the British witness. The fallibility of the
honest recollection is fearful! Give me skidmarks, fingerprints,
circumstantial evidence, every time!
   These things are all capable of explanation, of interpretation,
but they cannot give the same kind of totally false picture that can
be given in absolute honesty by a sincere and truthful witness.
Put to the test
   The responsibility of the advocate in court rests upon the
importance of every witness's honest recollection being fully tested.
When a man comes before a court charged with, say, driving
dangerously, what it really means is that "in the opinion of a number
of witnesses, whom you will see and hear, he was driving
dangerously."
   And all those who are called by the prosecution are already
committed to the opinion that he was, while those called by the
defence are already committed to the opposite opinion.
   If a witness can be persuaded by an advocate in cross-examination
that his honest, preconceived opinion must have been wrong, then that
witness's side of the case suffers a major blow.
   That is why the defending advocate is watching you at this moment
with such intensity. He is trying to read your mind, to understand
your prejudices, to assess your qualities of reason and of
reasonableness.
   The first part of your appearance in the box is simple. The
prosecuting advocate is on your side. He has your statement before
him. He knows what you are going to say. He only has to make sure
you say it all.
Steel yourself
   At the same time his object, if he is worth his salt, is to put
you at your ease in the box.
   Then the prosecutor sits down and the defence advocate rises to
cross-examine you. This is your moment of truth. You steel yourself,
mentally. You are ready to anticipate every question as an attack on
your honesty.
   But it is not. All that is likely to be questioned is your
accuracy. The opening questions will very probably be polite,
respectful, soothing. The advocate wants your co-operation. Time
enough for him to attack, if he fails in this.
   He wants you to relax, to rethink the incident with him, calmly,
logically- and from his client's standpoint.
   He will already have decided the point upon which he thinks you
are most easily open to persuasion.
   He is not seeking information- that is the last thing he wants.
He will never ask you a single question to which he is not pretty
sure in advance of your answer.
   I recall a matrimonial case of some ten years ago when I did not
follow this principle.
   I was appearing for the husband, an unhappy-looking wretch,
battered and bruised after the physical attack which had come as the
climax of years of bullying treatment from the huge, muscular female
who now glared at me from the witness-box.
   The visual contrast was too much for me.
   "Madam," I said, pointing out my cringing client, "are you
telling the court that this poor little physical wreck attacked you in
the way you have described?"
   She snorted. "He wasn't a physical wreck until after he
attacked me in the way I have described," she said.
   And my case never recovered.
It's Lawrence, Q.C.- this time for the PROSECUTION
BY GORDON THOMAS
   What makes a shy- even colourless- little man a great criminal
lawyer?
   
   THE slightly built Queen's Counsel rustles his
newly-laundered gown and settles his bobbed wig more firmly on his
brow.
   And in the hushed, expectant courtroom, everyone leans forward to
catch and savour his opening words.
   This will be the scene at Lewes Assizes as Frederick Geoffrey
Lawrence, Q.C., steps forward for the first time as Crown Counsel
in a murder case.
   In the dock, on trial for their lives, will be three youths,
accused of shooting down an unarmed guard in the Worthing Bank Raid.
   For a minute the gentle-looking barrister will peer owlishly
around him, taking in the jury, the defendants and spectators.
   Then, in his soft, level voice, he will reveal once more the
eloquent gift that has made him one of the ablest advocates in British
legal history.
   It is a gift that will face its sternest test during the Worthing
shooting case. For Lawrence is returning to the criminal bar after an
absence of two years.
   Since 1958, his position as vice-chairman of the Bar Council and
his work in the High Court- and elsewhere- have kept him busy. But
now he is returning to the most dramatic legal arena of all- the
murder court.
Controlled logic
   Shy and retiring, Lawrence is often dismissed as "not really
worth his reputation." But a number of unhappy people have found
this sneer to be untrue- usually they are driven off to prison.
   Not so long ago, Lawrence's name meant little to those who hadn't
seen it beside the entrance to his chambers in the Temple. Then one
day this little man- five feet five inches of controlled logic- rose
to his feet to defend Dr. John Bodkin Adams, accused at the Old
Bailey of poisoning one of his patients.
   It was one of the most sensational murder trials of the century.
   The defence had picked Lawrence, a "nobody" in criminal
matters, because he was a barrister with a great knowledge of forensic
medicine.
   For forty hours of relentless questioning, the gentle-voiced
advocate picked expert holes in the prosecution's case. Finally,
after a trial lasting seventeen days, he succeeded in getting the
Eastbourne doctor acquitted. For Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence, it was
a famous victory.
   In those seventeen days he had earned himself more fame than in
twenty years at the Bar.
   Lawrence learned his craft as counsel in divorce and
breach-of-promise cases.
   His grasp of statistics made him a "natural" for the arid work
of Ministerial inquiries and Parliamentary committees. It also
brought him in about +1, a year- a figure trebled since he
"arrived."
   Lawrence almost bloomed in the dusty atmosphere of the
law-courts, avoiding histrionics, surviving with a stubborn,
hard-working desire to get at the truth.
Nothing obvious
   The Adams case was typical. He put in four months of solid
pre-trial work- long hours of study, stretching into the small hours.
And the same kind of groundwork has gone into the Worthing case.
   But expect no obvious tricks from Lawrence at Lewes Assizes.
   He doesn't shout or thump law books as Marshall Hall did. He
doesn't need a gold pencil, like Birkett, to mesmerize a witness. He
lacks the pungent Irish humour of Edward Carson.
   Instead he has his own special tricks.
   He approaches a witness with his eyes blinking furiously. His
modulated voice puts them at ease. The shy type he gently prods with:
"Please, I am only trying to get at the truth. Try and help."
   The reluctant he "persuades" with logic. And the arrogant,
the liars, the "go-to-hell" brigade, soon find themselves in an
uncomfortable hell of their own making.
   All eyes will watch him as he opens the prosecution in the
Worthing case. Already his success has led the pundits at the Royal
Courts of Justice to predict that he will become a judge and earn a
knighthood.
   Every word and gesture he makes at Lewes Assizes will be weighed
and noted.
   And in the Cock Tavern, across the road from the Royal Courts,
barristers, solicitors and their clerks will be asking each other:
Will this be Lawrence's trial?
   But that is a question that only a jury can answer.
Concluding THE RED SPY RING IN BRITAIN by E. H. Cookridge
Watch for a woman with a STRING BAG- and an ORANGE...
- that was Moscow's secret message to Alexander Foote (above)
when he was a Russian spy in Switzerland...
   THE organisation of a Soviet 6avantpost abroad- a
network controlled by a resident director- is fundamentally the same
in all countries, but the emphasis on its tasks and "targets" is
naturally different.
   During the final stages of an agent's training, therefore, he is
put into one of four groups.
   Group One consists of agents for political intelligence and
subversion.
# 27
<157 TEXT F14>
THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL FORECASTS...
ONE OF THESE MARRIAGES WILL FAIL
But four happy couples say he's talking nonsense
by DIANA NORMAN
   PEOPLE disapprove of teenagers marrying. They shake their
heads and say: "They're too young."
   They point to official statistics which show that one out of four
girls who marry between 16 and 18 ends up in the divorce court. And
they say: "That proves it." But does it?
   To find out, I travelled all over the country, meeting couples
who married very young. None of them was newly married. Most had
been married for between two to six years.
   I am going to tell you the stories of four such couples. If the
Registrar General, who compiles national statistics of births, deaths
and marriages is right, one of them will be in the divorce court
within the next 2 years.
   All of them have encountered greater hardship than most couples
who wait until they are older before marrying. Almost all have had to
face the suspicion that they had to get married, although it was
untrue.
   They have come up against parental disapproval, and landladies
who wanted to see their marriage lines before offering them
accommodation. They have all had to raise children on small wages.
   Take, for instance, the case of the Annandales who were married
six and a half years ago, when Brian was 17, and Pam 16. Now they
have a nice home in Germany, where 23-year-old Brian, a regular in the
RAF, is stationed. They have a car and Pat has a fur coat.
   But less than four years ago they went hungry in order that their
baby, David, would have food.
   They told me about it recently when Brian was on leave and they
were staying with Pam's parents in Francis-road, Ashford, Kent.
   Brian was then a National Serviceman, getting just under +5 a
week.
   He found that, because he was under 21, the RAF would not
give him and Pam married quarters.
   Nor- again because he was a minor- would they grant him the
guinea a week extra normally given to married men in the RAF who
have to pay their own rent.
   "It was a very bad time," said Brian. "It could have caused
a split between us. But, luckily, it brought us closer together."
   He added: "We realise now that we took a terrific risk,
marrying so young. But when our parents pointed this out to us before
we married, we thought they were wrong."
   Brian and Pam went to the same junior school in Ashford. And
Brian smilingly recalled: "I couldn't stand the sight of her
then."
TAKE-OVER
   They met again when Brian was in the local cycle speedway team,
and Pam, at 15, was going out with his team captain.
   "Within a week I had accidentally crashed into the captain on
the track, broken his arm, taken over his position as captain and
taken his girl away from him," grinned Brian. "He was best man at
our wedding..."
   Neither Brian nor Pam can tell you the exact moment when they
decided to get married- "it was just an understanding between us."
   Proposals are rare among teenagers. Nearly all say: "We just
knew we were going to marry- that's all."
   Pam told me: "We came up against a terrific amount of
suspicion. Suspicion that we had had to get married. Even though
our baby arrived two years after our wedding, some people still think
that he was the reason for our early marriage."
   Brian agreed that the dice are loaded against teenage marriages.
   "We refused to borrow money from our parents during those
difficult times. We thought we'd save rent by buying a caravan on
HP.
   "But, because we were both under 21, the firm refused to sell to
us. In the end we had to buy it in Pam's father's name."
   Despite the travelling Brian has done since he joined the
RAF, Pam has managed to go with him almost everywhere. In fact,
she told me: "In the six years of our marriage, I've been away from
him only for about three months."
   Do they quarrel? "Of course," said Brian. "Like mad
sometimes..." But he added: "We never row in front of David.
   "We have a really happy marriage. The months I spent apart from
Pam were the most miserable of my life."
   Well, that's the Annandales. I'd risk a large bet that it
won't be their marriage which ends in failure.
SCARCE
   And so to the Bowketts... In the two years they've been
married, Keith Bowkett and his pretty, fair-haired wife, Violet-
they're both 18- haven't lived together at all.
   The housing shortage and scarcity of flats in their home town of
Pontardawe, near Swansea, South Wales, have forced Violet to go on
living with her parents, sister and three brothers at their home in
Holly-street- although she is now a married woman with a small baby.
Keith, whom she married on her 16th birthday, lives with his parents
a short distance away, just as he did when he was a schoolboy.
   They meet each other whenever Keith's job as a collier on shift
work will allow them to.
   They sit in one or other of their parents' homes watching
television. Or they hold hands in the pictures or go for walks.
   And at night they kiss each other goodbye and then go back to
their respective homes.
   "We thought we would be able to find a place, but we haven't,"
said Violet, bluntly.
   "Both our parents' houses are too small to let us have a bedroom
of our own. We're on the council's waiting list, but I've known
people around here who have waited nearly ten years to be given a
house.
   "Flats are scarce and expensive, and landlords don't want you if
you've got a baby."
   Keith and Violet, like Brian and Pam Annandale, and so many other
youngsters, met at school and began courting at 15. They insisted on
marrying as soon as Violet was legally old enough- 16. Violet's
parents were against the marriage. Her mother, 4-year-old Mrs.
Pearl Epps, said: "I didn't want Violet to marry so young, but when
youngsters make up their minds you can't stop them.
   "So I made up my mind to make the best of it and gave them a
nice wedding reception here at home.
<END QUOTE>
HEARTBREAK
   "Sometimes when I see Violet looking after her baby, Steven,
and remember it was only a short time ago that she was a baby herself,
it nearly breaks my heart.
   "She has no idea of the cost of things, because she's never had
a home of her own to run. But I must say she's making a good job of
bringing up Steven."
   People have told Violet that she deserves better, and that
because Keith hasn't provided her with a home, she has grounds for
divorce.
   But Violet just pushes back her long hair and hugs Steven even
closer. "Maybe Keith hasn't been quite as responsible as he
should," she told me.
   "But if I had my time over again, I'd marry him just the same-
although perhaps not quite so early.
   "He'll find a home for me one of these days." she added
resolutely. "And I'll stick by him."
   If love, loyalty and courage count for anything, it won't be
Violet's marriage that will break up.
   Perhaps Pat Cane, 17, and her 23-year-old husband, Tom, are a
bit luckier. At least they have a room to themselves, with a cot
in it for their seven-month-old daughter, Michel.
DIVIDED
   The room is in a council flat at Tulse Hill, in South London-
the home of Pat's parents.
   The other three bedrooms in the flat are divided among Pat's
parents and seven of her ten brothers and sisters. Quite a crowd, eh?
   "We've tried to find a place of our own." said Pat, who also
married on her 16th birthday.
   "In fact, recently we left here for a flat that Tom had found
for us. But the landlady was terribly bossy- they can be you know-
and kept hinting that we weren't married.
   "Eventually I showed her my marriage lines. But she said they
were probably forged.
   "So we moved back with Mum, who's been very kind, and we're now
trying to find somewhere else."
   Tom, a +12-a-week decorator, met Pat over two years ago.
   "I asked her to go to the pictures with me." said Tom. "The
film was Look Back in Anger, but WE haven't- not once.
   "When we decided to get married, Pat's parents didn't object at
all. Pat's mum was only 17 when she married, and has been happy ever
since.
   "But my mother was very opposed to the marriage. She even
refused to come to the wedding."
   Pat, taking up the story, said "I didn't like Tom being
'estranged' from his mother, so when Michel was born, I took the
baby round to show her, and tried to make things up between them. The
moment she saw Michel she 'came round'. Now we get on very
well."
   Pat's mother, 42-year-old Mrs. Lille Barnham, told me: "I
can't think why people are so down on teenage marriages, and try to
wreck them.
   "If girls are as sensible as Pat, who helped bring up her young
brothers and sisters, I can't see any objection to their marrying when
they like."
   Surely it won't be Tom and Pat Cane who break up.
   Then there are the Bandeys of Wandsworth, London.
   Alice Bandey, age 17, was expecting her first baby in six weeks
when I saw her.
   And she and her 17-year-old husband, Michael, whom she married
just over a year ago, were going to have to find another place to
live.
   Their present two-room flat they knew wouldn't be suitable when
the baby arrived, because a child might disturb the other tenants.
   They'd already had to leave one flat because the landlady learned
of the expected baby. Michael, who works in a banana-packing
warehouse, earns +7 1s. a week, from which, when I saw them, they
were paying +3 1s. a week rent.
   They had no honeymoon- couldn't afford it- and the last new
dress Alice had was for her wedding.
   Yet, despite their money and home-hunting problems, they are
happy.
   Alice, an orphan, met Michael at school. They started courting
at 14, and at 15 decided to get married as soon as they were of age.
   "I never thought of marrying anybody else," said Alice. "And
I don't think I've missed anything." Michael said: "I reckon I've
got the perfect wife. She's always here when I get home; always kind,
and cheerful- and a lovely cook."
   But he added: "Marriage certainly isn't a bed of roses-
especially at our age.
<END QUOTE>
 The Marriage Menders
by DIANA NORMAN
   SHEILA and Jim were living with Jim's parents- and none
too happily. There always seemed tension between Sheila and Jim's
mother. And one day it broke, in a blazing row.
   "She started shouting that I could leave as soon as I liked,"
Sheila confided afterwards. "I said right now wasn't soon enough for
me.
   "She said I never cleaned our room, which is a lie. And when
she started on about the baby always crying, I got really wild.
   "'Nobody's going to criticise my baby', I said, and started
slinging some of my things into a suitcase.
   "She said it was Jim's case and I wasn't taking that, and she
tried to pull it out of my hands. Jim came in. He pushed me and
shouted that it was his baby and I wasn't going to take her away. He
hit me across the face and I began to scream."
   Eventually Sheila left, taking her baby with her and went to live
with her own parents.
   And so another marriage might have fallen in ruins had Sheila not
had the sense to pour out her problems to the Citizens' Advice Bureau.
   She went there, hurt and angry, to ask about getting a legal
separation from Jim.
# 23
<158 TEXT F15>
The United Kingdom and the European Common Market
Background to negotiations
By ROY SHERWOOD
   WITH the exception only of matters of direct bearing on
peace or early war, no issue of the present moment is of as
far-reaching importance for Britain's, the Commonwealth's, and the
whole West's future as the question whether the United Kingdom will
join the European Common Market.
   It is not a question to be decided on nationalistic or political
party feelings, and no reasonably objective opinion, one way or the
other, is likely to be arrived at without going through the process
known to the writing world as beginning with Adam and Eve.
   What that means in this case is going back to the war years, when
the Governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland were in exile in
London and had every reason to be so concerned about the
precariousness of their post-war prospects that they organised a
careful experts' study of the subject.
   The outcome, based on the realisation that their chance of
economic recovery and their ability to make themselves heard in
international politics was desperately poor if taken singly, and
decidedly better if they could act in unison, was the agreement to
join their three countries in a union to be called Benelux- in which
we can now recognise the beginning of all endeavours to unify Western
Europe. And here we shall do well to note, as throwing a first
sidelight on the much bigger problems connected with the European
Common Market and the question whether the United Kingdom will be wise
in joining it, that today, 16 years after the first measures were
taken to establish Benelux, the complete union aimed at between
Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland has not yet been fully achieved.
   But in spite of early and subsequent difficulties and
complications, Benelux progress was sufficiently striking to activate
the ideas on European unity long held by many economists and a number
of politicians. Even Winston Churchill, arch-priest of British
Commonwealth greatness and independence, spoke as early as in 1946 of
the desirability of creating a kind of United States of Europe, of
which it seems however reasonable to suppose that he envisaged them as
an extension of the Commonwealth under British leadership; and in
France General de Gaulle, then still deeply distrustful of Germany,
also held views favourable to European unification. His, not
unnaturally, differed however from Churchill's in two important
points: the de Gaulle conception of that time was a Western European
community, largely defensive against the possibility of German
resurgence, and therefore without German participation, and not under
British but under French leadership.
   It can be seen from this that there were even at that time not
only two but actually three different attitudes to unification- that
of those who thought mainly in economics, of those who thought in
politics, and of those who thought almost exclusively in military
values.
   World events have forced the various proponents of these
attitudes to modify their ideas and aims in a number of particulars,
in addition to which there has occurred one vital change in the
situation: the Franco-German rapprochement, which has resulted in
Britain becoming an outsider to the extent of no longer being
indispensable in plans for Western European unification. While on
this subject, it is of paramount importance for the people of the
United Kingdom to realise that the dominant position held for
centuries by this country in world affairs, due to the ability to
throw its weight against whichever nation on the continent was growing
too powerful for our comfort, is a thing of the past. The traditional
balance of power policy is dead beyond hope of resurrection.
   In reviewing the various steps towards European unification it is
useful to make passing reference to the failure of the European
Defence Community (EDC). At first fervently advocated by the
French, who saw in it a means of making use of West Germany's
potential military strength under strict external supervision, it was
categorically rejected by them two years later, in 1952. The point is
of importance because it shows that unification must be on a wider
than a purely military basis. Nor can it be- and this is one of the
difficulties- solely economic; whether the contractants want it so or
not, it must also become political. And this is the second, mainly
psychological, point of difficulty in Britain's incorporation in
European unification.
   Turning to less abortive attempts towards European unity- which
were, incidentally, inspired by growing fear of Russia- the first was
the US-initiated Organisation for European Economic Co-operation
(OEEC). It came into existence as early as 1948 in
connection with the effort to make the best possible use of American
Marshal Aid; and it led, in its turn, to the creation of the European
Payments Union, the existence of which more than one Western European
country has to thank for successfully surviving periods of heavy
excess of external payments over from-abroad revenues without coming
to financial grief.
   Next, and for the first time bringing the six countries together
which now constitute the European Common Market, came the European
Coal and Steel Community, uniting the three Benelux nations, France
and Italy with West Germany. The underlying motive in this case was
the same which had prompted France's first enthusiasm for the
subsequently rejected European Defence Community: fear of German
resurgence, specifically of the high potential of the Ruhr area. With
it, something new entered upon the political scene. Control over the
organisation was not vested in an international body subject to any of
the participating countries' veto, but to a supra-national authority
entrusted with power to make and to enforce decisions.
   Even during the two years while France was keen on the concept of
the European Defence Community, Britain had disliked the implied
necessity of a measure of surrender of sovereignty. Although these
feelings were not openly expressed, there is little doubt that the
failure of this particular idea can be attributed in the main to
British unwillingness to accept French leadership (while France
advocated the creation of the community) and to French unwillingness
to go on with it when it became obvious that the community would come
into existence only if France accepted to play second fiddle.
   Coal and steel production being not directly military
matters, and France being moreover the biggest of the six contracting
parties, acceptance of a supra-national authority did not in this case
offend French susceptibilities. On the contrary, Paris was right in
seeing in the creation of the community the welcome gain of control
over German coal and steel production. As for Britain, she had
cold-shouldered the plan from the first days of its conception by M.
Jean Monnet. The cold-shouldering was done by a Labour Government,
but the Conservatives were all in favour of it and of a generally
welcoming attitude to European integration- as long as they were the
opposition party. Another dividing factor between this country and
its continental wartime allies and associates was atomic research.
   So, while the United Kingdom, having become an atomic power,
pursued its own version of European unification endeavour through the
Western European Union- a substitute for the rejected European
Defence Community created rather in haste under the threat of an
American "re-appraisal" of Washington policy with regard to the
wartime allies- and by means of the Maudling Committee, the six
nations of the Coal and Steel Community drew closer together. They
combined their atomic efforts in EURATOM and signed the Rome
Treaty, thereby laying down the principles of the European Common
Market.
   In self defence, Britain took the lead in creating EFTA,
the European Free Trade Association. This completed the split, and
whether looked at from the viewpoint of that time or of the present,
it can be seen to have been inevitable. None of the continental
countries had its freedom of action limited by the kind of obligations
imposed on Britain by the British Commonwealth, and the United Kingdom
could not disregard them.
   With 378 pages in the English text, the treaty governing the
Common Market is obviously too long for detailed study here. It is
divided into six chapters the last two of which, concerned with
organisational matters, protocol, etc., are of little interest to
this study. The first chapter states the aim of establishing
"harmonious development" and a common market, and of
"progressively approximating the economic policies of the member
states." Part =2 provides for a customs union, the abolition of
internal tariffs and quotas, a common agricultural policy, freedom of
movement for persons, services and capital, and a harmonised transport
system. The third chapter lays down common rules of competition,
deals with the co-ordination of economic policies, harmonised features
of social policy and the establishment of a European Investment Bank.
Chapter =4 associates former and present colonial territories of the
six parties with the Community. No further explanations are needed to
realise the closeness of the association and to gain a first
impression of the difficulty of fitting the United Kingdom into it.
   For the benefit of those who are not studious readers of
international developments it may be useful to begin by recalling the
names of the countries composing the EFTA. They are: the
United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Portugal and
Switzerland. And we may also note that from the first day onwards of
talk about Western European unification British thinking always went
along the lines of trying to create a great area of unrestricted
trading; but this conception did not include agriculture nor any of
the other "harmonisations" of internal policies aimed at by the
nations which finalised their decisions in the Rome Treaty.
   In spite of the fact that the British attitude has become
modified to some extent on the subject of agriculture, it is not
difficult to see that the difference between the two conceptions
remains very great. And if there were room here for a detailed
consideration of all that is implied in the provisions of parts =2
and =3 of the Rome Treaty, it would quickly become evident that the
difficulties of bringing the two conceptions together are even greater
than appears at first sight.
   Part =4 makes matters even worse. The United Kingdom, even if
it wanted to, has no power or authority to commit the countries of the
Commonwealth to anything; and the mere mention of internal
Commonwealth differences in wages and living standards, levels of
productivity, of educational and technological attainment, and of the
problems involved in the provisions of the second chapter of the Rome
Treaty is sufficient to show that those who declare British membership
of the European Common Market to be incompatible with continuance of
the British Commonwealth are not completely mad. Yet a solution must
somehow be found if Western Europe is not to be split into two
competitive camps, with every prospect of growing rivalry.
   After protracted endeavours to find one or another kind of basis
of negotiation, the present situation is that the Common Market and
the Free Trade Association- though neither of them as yet fully
operative- face one another as not too friendly strangers. Many
people even in Britain think that this is largely our own fault,
because we have never at any time been decisive or one-minded in our
attitude, vacillating between "come and tempt me" and "only on my
special terms."
   On the continental side, as was and is to be expected, France
attaches least, and Holland most, importance to bringing the Common
Market and the Free Trade Association together in one unit. With
productivity rising faster in the Common Market countries than in
Britain, and Britain's prospects for the future, moreover, adversely
influenced as the provisions of the Rome Treaty will become effective,
it has recently become necessary for the United Kingdom to take the
initiative towards unambiguous negotiation with the Six, the first
step in this direction being, as circumstances will have it, a plain
application for membership. This, let it be recalled, was made at
Brussels on August 1, and on the same day Denmark also applied.
# 211
<159 TEXT F16>
What would you do with Middlesex?
<EDITORIAL>
   THE term "Merger" in London Labour circles does not refer
to financial alliances or newspaper closures, it refers to the joining
of Middlesex with London in the London Labour Party back in 1951.
   Prior to 1951, the Middlesex constituency Labour Parties were
organised in the Southern Region of the Labour Party. The London
Labour Party concerned itself only with the Administrative County of
London.
   At a Special Conference of the London Labour Party held on
December 21, 195, it was agreed by a large majority that Middlesex,
if it so wished, should in future be associated with the London Labour
Party. With only two dissentients the Middlesex Parties supported the
proposed merger at a further Conference held on January 3, 1951.
   The Rules and Standing Orders of the Party were amended to meet
the new situation. Special provision was made to preserve certain
rights for Middlesex on purely Middlesex matters.
   At the Annual Conference, the delegates representing Middlesex
Parties held a special voting card and certain issues were discussed
and decided only by the Middlesex Parties. A Middlesex County
Committee was set up as a sub-committee of the Executive.
Teething troubles
   The merger brought its problems. No one would deny that. But
gradually the teething troubles abated and by 196, the Executive went
to Annual Conference with successful proposals to amend again the
Rules and Standing Orders which governed voting procedure.
   The special provisions which allowed for the Conference to be
split up (not split) into London and Middlesex sections, were swept
away. The Party in London and Middlesex had become pretty well
integrated.
   In 1958, arising from the Wilson Committee on Party Organisation,
a proposal was put forward by the National Executive Committee to set
up a Regional Council for the Beds, Bucks, Berks, Herts,
Middlesex and Oxfordshire area.
   Middlesex Parties would be severed from London and become part of
a new set-up.
   At the 44th London Labour Party Conference in 1958, a motion
tabled by the Enfield Labour Party was carried as follows:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "This Conference urges upon the National Executive Committee
that no useful purpose would be served by the severing of Middlesex
Parties from the London Labour Party."
<END INDENTATION>
   Now it is significant that this motion was tabled by a Party
which lies on the most northerly extremity of Middlesex and borders on
to Hertfordshire.
   The London Labour Party and the constituency Labour Parties in
Middlesex by a very large majority opposed the proposed separation of
Middlesex from London. The mutually beneficial effects of the merger
were by this time apparent.
   As a result of our opposition, the National Executive abandoned
its earlier idea and decided to leave Middlesex with the London Labour
Party but to set up a regional organising area covering the same area
as proposed for the Regional Council, which Council has not been
established.
   In consequence, Constituency Labour Parties in Middlesex now have
to look to Hemel Hempstead on Party organisation questions and to the
London Labour Party on other matters. The present situation has many
defects.
Deputation
   Organisation, policy and Party administration cannot easily be
separated. There is confusion in the Middlesex Parties as to who
should do what.
   Take the recent Middlesex County Council election. The policy on
which the election is fought is the responsibility of the London
Labour Party Executive, the production of posters, leaflets and that
kind of thing is undertaken by the Executive and the payment of grants
to Parties in need is another job for the London Labour Party.
   But where do you draw the line between producing the policy and
the propaganda points and selling them to the Party and the electors?
   Twelve months ago a deputation met the representative of the
National Executive and pressed for a review of the present Middlesex
set-up so that the inherent difficulties in the structure could be
overcome in readiness for the Middlesex election.
   Following a resolution carried at the Annual Conference in
February this year pressing for an Organiser for Middlesex, and
following a resolution of the Executive in May pressing for more
effective machinery in Middlesex, Bob Mellish, Joe Barrow, Mrs.
Forbes and I met the Chairman of the Organisation Sub-Committee of the
National Executive Committee and the National Agent for a very full
and frank discussion on the Party structure in Middlesex. We await
the outcome of that meeting.
Royal Commission
   The difficulties facing the National Executive are recognised.
There is not a lot of money available for the appointment of an
additional organiser whose responsibilities would be entirely
devoted to Middlesex affairs.
   The Report of the Royal Commission is out and we all await some
indication of the Government's policy on local government in Greater
London.
   The structure of the Party would inevitably bear some
relationship to the outline of local government in the area if
there should be changes. So, the National Executive is inhibited
from embarking on a long term solution to the Middlesex problem
pending the outcome of the Royal Commission Report.
   On the other hand we cannot postpone the Middlesex question
indefinitely. A General Election could well be with us before the
shape of local government in Greater London is settled. And we cannot
blandly assume that the L.C.C. and the Middlesex County Council
are doomed to disappear.
   The Northern Home Counties idea has not worked. The Middlesex
Parties feel no pull towards their comparatively rural neighbours.
The closer community of interest, the lines of communication, the
social and economic factors are all much more akin to London.
   The case for having Middlesex as a strong trade union and
industrial base for a new Regional Council was demolished when the
idea of a new Regional Council for the six Northern Home Counties was
abandoned.
   The justification for keeping Middlesex in the Little Six is
really to maintain some paper-equality of numbers of constituencies in
each Region or Organising area.
   What about alternatives? One solution would be to revert to the
pre-1959 position in which Middlesex would be re-integrated with
London.
   The difficulty here is that such a solution would not give
Middlesex a full-time field man working exclusively in Middlesex.
   Middlesex is a marginal County and needs County-wide
"marginal" treatment. Middlesex needs to nurture a Middlesex
consciousness and County pride. The political parties have a heavy
responsibility in this direction.
   Middlesex is a very important urban County. The National
Executive recognised this when it proposed to include Middlesex in the
new Region.
   Another solution, drastic and perhaps not immediately favoured
would be to sever Middlesex from the London Labour Party and set up a
Middlesex Labour Party along similar lines to the London Labour Party.
   There are, of course, obvious financial problems attaching to
this proposal but they would have to be resolved.
   Or, a Middlesex Federation of Labour Parties working within a
Regional Council covering the Northern Home Counties might be
considered as a possible solution.
   The London Labour Party Executive and its Middlesex County
Committee are much concerned about the whole thorny problem.
   We must all of us examine the question on the basis of ~"What is
likely to be best for the Party" and not on ~"How best can we have
what we hold."
   A Labour Middlesex County Council is just as desirable as a
Labour L.C.C. The recapture of Middlesex in 1964 will bring joy
to the many friends of Middlesex in London.
   But we must plan and devise the means of that victory now.
Midsummer of 1963 will be two years too late.
INSIDE COUNTY HALL with HAZEL ROSE
Are we such bores?
   IT may be pure coincidence, but in the last few weeks, a
number of people have asked me "whatever makes you interested in
Local Government?- it's so dull!"
   An image of drains, slums, endless Committees, innumerable
housing cases, bureaucratic control, is seemingly evoked in the mind
of the average citizen, when surveying the scene. A councillor is a
worthy "do-gooder." Somewhat limited, always elderly, and usually
a bore!
   To be acceptable to the general public as a politician, one must
be able to converse fluently and intelligently on Atom Bombs,
Apartheid, Algiers, the African problem, or the general prevailing
economic situation.
   Just to be acceptable- one should always refer to Hugh, Frank,
Michael or Herbert: and relate the latest anecdote reflecting a
particular facet of the personality of these better known gentlemen-
and one's own intimate connections with "the top people."
   Otherwise it might not easily be recognised that one's true
ambitions lie "across the river," and that Local Government is
merely a lay-by, on the road to Westminster.
   If it is suspected that this is not the case, then one is hastily
dismissed as a crank, and an oddity- and ignored from then onwards.
   Why? What is it that makes people look upon Local Government as
dull, unexciting, and unrewarding? And the people involved, as
failures in the "Grand National" Stakes- or just non-starters?
   An Englishman's home is his castle- to a Londoner it's more
likely to be an L.C.C. flat or perhaps the prospect of one. But
either way, where he lives, how he lives, what rent he pays, is surely
a matter of the utmost concern, not only to him, but to anyone with
the slightest civic conscience.
   Equality of opportunity is no longer a cliche?2 of the Left, but
a principle accepted by all thinking people- irrespective of party.
Schools, and all the attendant problems of education should be of the
greatest interest, not only to enable an individual to have the
advantages (often denied to his parents) to lead a fuller and more
satisfying life; but for the greater part he can play in building up
this country.
   If the health of the Community is neglected, physical and social
activities of young and old are not adequately catered for: however
improved our material standards of living may be, the telly, the
washing machine and the car, will not bring increased happiness to our
increased leisure.
   Nor will they eliminate the mounting frustration, boredom
loneliness and tension, felt by an increasing number of people.
   Perhaps it is the knowledge of this fundamental truth- that real
happiness and satisfaction is found in doing for others, that enables
councillors to labour on year in and year out, unpaid, unrecognised,
in what must appear to others to be a thankless and unrewarding task.
   Does this sound priggish, evangelistic, dull? Yes, to a mass of
people fed on a diet of sordid sex details, sensational divorces,
violence and crime. Yes, to those people caught up in the fiercely
competitive aggressions of our affluent society, where the goal is
more money, and the profit motive, ephemeral pleasures and cheap
thrills are the main reasons for living.
   Local Government is live, human and intensely satisfying work.
Those people successfully involved in it are equally live, human, and
fulfilled by their efforts.
   Their values are all right, Jack- what about yours?
A TRIBUTE TO HAROLD CLAY
   IT is with deep regret that we pay a last tribute to a great
friend and colleague who has passed on.
   Who was this man and what was his claim to our gratitude and
affection?
   Harold Ewart Clay devoted his life to the Labour Movement in its
widest sense.
Tramways
   From his earliest years he was an active trade unionist and
Labour Party worker.
   However, it was not until 192 that I first knew of him. He was
in Leeds and I in London.
   In that year his Union- the Tramwaymen's Union- amalgamated
with others to form the United Vehicle Workers' Union (U.V.W.),
and my Union, the London Carmen's Trade Union amalgamated with others
to form the National Union of Vehicle Workers (N.U.V.W.).
   He was an officer of the U.V.W., I was an officer of
N.U.V.W. and so our ways were set to meet.
Merger
   Both unions were trying to serve the interests of all forms of
road transport, and it was inevitable that fierce rivalry would lead
to conflict.
   Harold in his Union and I in mine, together with many of our
colleagues, believed that this conflict could only be solved- and the
best interests of the membership and the community at large be served
by a wider amalgamation.
# 236
<16 TEXT F17>
READY FOR LIFE
   THE mother's face was drawn with anxiety. "It's my little
girl, doctor," she said indicating the fair-haired child sitting by
her side. "I'm desperately worried about her. I think she's got
cancer."
   The doctor showed no emotion. "And what makes you think
that?" he asked.
   "Well," said the mother, "she's developed a lump in her
chest. It's getting bigger, too. That is how cancer starts, isn't
it?"
   "How old is the child?" asked the doctor.
   "Just nine years."
   The doctor completed his examination. He was smiling when he
spoke again.
   "It's certainly not cancer," he told the mother. "Your
daughter's growing up, that's all. The swelling is the beginning of
her figure."
   This incident, which took place in the Harley Street
consulting-room of one of our leading children's doctors, is no freak
case. Nor is it unusual in 1961 Britain.
   For the truth is that in the last few years a tremendous upheaval
has shaken our understanding of child development.
   Today, children are growing up- physically- far earlier than
their parents did. And as breast development is normally the first
sign of puberty in a girl, it is not unusual to find this starting as
young as nine or ten.
Some parents cannot accept this change in their children
   Earlier puberty is a subject that is proving of enormous
interest to the medical profession, but for some odd reason it is one
that seems to be passing by the most important people of all- apart
from the children- the parents.
   Today's parents cannot seem to accept that the girl who starts
menstruating at eleven is not super-advanced, that indeed they must be
prepared to expect this to begin round about this time.
   For these are the startling facts:
   Girls are developing earlier, at the rate of four to six months
earlier every ten years. This means that biologically they are now
growing up two to three years earlier than they did at the turn of the
century.
   Boys are advancing even faster. In fact, it is now getting quite
difficult to find choirboys old enough to behave in church who can
still sing treble.
   Children are simultaneously getting increasingly taller and
heavier as the years roll by.
   For example, on an average, a girl of eight in 1959 was as tall
and heavy as a girl of eight-and-a-half in 1949. And in ten years the
average height of a ten-year-old has increased by half an inch, the
average weight by three-and-a-half pounds.
   Nor does the advance show any signs of halting. In fact, it may
well be that by the time these children have their children, the
majority of girls will be maturing at ten.
   Doctors who are delving into the reasons why this revolution is
taking place have come up with some intriguing theories.
   Many say it is because today's child is much better fed than her
ancestors. School milk, they say, has quite a bit to do with it.
   Others believe the reason is climatic. It's known that
overheating delays the growth of laboratory rats, and it's been
suggested that children now grow considerably faster because their
parents do not overclothe them as they used to in the old days.
   Modern psychiatrists, however, have an even more interesting
theory.
   They say that it's the direct result of easier relations between
the sexes. There is more conversation about sex between boys and
girls and a far more natural acceptance of the once unmentionable
"facts of life."
   This theory is borne out by the fact that children in
co-educational schools often mature earlier than those who are
segregated.
   Getting it through to some parents that earlier puberty is now a
fact is proving quite a headache to doctors and teachers.
   Most teachers have very decided views on the subject. Like one
of our most go-ahead principals, Miss K. C. M. Gent, headmistress
of the four hundred strong girls' grammar school in Lichfield,
Staffordshire.
   "Girls start here at eleven, and by the end of the first year at
least fifty per cent of them have reached puberty, many having started
before they even arrive," she told me.
   "Because of this I have made it a rule to see each set of
parents individually before the child begins her first term," she
went on. "I tell them that I insist on every child knowing the facts
of life before she starts at my school.
   "If the parents find it difficult or embarrassing to talk to the
child I give them a booklet which the child can read.
   "Almost every mother I meet seems surprised that I insist on
this so early.
   "They can't seem to take in the fact that girls are maturing so
quickly. But once they realize the truth of it they're glad to
co-operate and teach their daughters."
Now more than ever children crave wise guidance
   Though we may think it a good idea that children should grow up
more quickly, let none of us imagine that earlier puberty doesn't
bring its own set of difficult problems.
   The toughest of these is this: that though physical development
has advanced so rapidly social development has stood still.
   A girl of eleven today- even if she does happen to wear a
thirty-four-inch bra- is still, to her mother and father, a child.
And that's the way society looks at her, too.
   So who can blame her if she gets all mixed up? She has not had
enough experience of life to cope with the new process. She has been
well protected in the junior school, and at home she has always been
regarded as "a kid."
   No wonder, then, that she doesn't know whether to play with toys
or go out with boys. No wonder she craves wise parental guidance and
friendship more now than ever before.
   Which brings us back to the mother. What exactly are the
problems likely to come up when she suddenly finds herself confronted
by a little woman of twelve?
   How can she cope with the child's emotional growing pains in the
kindest, most sensible way? How can she tell her daughter that,
physically, she is now a woman?
   I sought the answers from doctors and psychiatrists, teachers and
social workers.
CONTINUING READY FOR LIFE by ROSALIE SHANN
ADOLESCENCE is one of the most important times in a woman's life
   IT is a fact that girls are developing earlier at the rate
of four to six months every ten years. This means that biologically
they are now growing up two to three years earlier than they did at
the turn of the century. Boys are advancing even faster.
   And this creates a whole new set of problems for the parents.
   Everyone is agreed that as puberty advances so they must also
advance their attitude to the growing child.
   A girl may well be emotionally unready for puberty because that
emotional development is still way behind physical development. Her
emotions have given her no warning of imminent changes. But though
she may be unprepared her mother must not be.
   It is essential she tell the child the facts of life in time, not
just the usual item about where babies come from, but what puberty is,
what changes will take place, and why.
   What exactly is meant by "in time"? Well, it varies from
child to child, but generally speaking changes should be discussed as
soon as they begin in the child.
   The first sign is invariably the beginning of the development of
the bust. As soon as a mother notices this she should talk to the
girl, perhaps before if the opportunity has arisen, but never later
than this.
   A child, incidentally, is far more likely to accept the facts
naturally and easily and without embarrassment if she is used to
seeing her mother undressed.
   Then as soon as menstruation starts the mother should explain to
her daughter all over again what it is and why it happens.
Physical changes indicate the child's approaching maturity
   Doctors say it is important to explain to the child twice-
before menstruation happens and when it does- as she cannot fully
appreciate the facts the first time.
   Above all, a mother should appear pleased about her daughter's
physical changes because it indicates approaching maturity, and this
is something, the mother must imply, to be looked forward to, not
dreaded.
   If a mother views the onset of her daughter's adolescence with
misgiving, believing- because of what she's heard- that it's always
a troubled time for all concerned, then this fear will be communicated
to the child, and the inevitable obstacles will be anticipated and
probably enlarged.
   A fact mothers must also be prepared for is that different levels
of maturity exist side by side. This can be extremely tricky to
understand, both from the parents' and the child's point of view.
   There often is, for instance, a child who can partake in quite
adult activities, such as intellectual conversation, yet at the same
time spend hours reading her childish comics. Moods vary, too, and
with such speed that the poor parent is often at a loss to keep up.
   One minute the child is lost in desolation, quite sure she is a
failure in every way. The next, while the parent is still trying to
comfort her, she is brimming over with self-confidence and a brand new
bout of enthusiasm.
   By far the best, and most sensible, way for mothers to face this
time is to accept that the child is changing, and to welcome that
change.
   This, of course, is far easier said than done, for, whatever the
psychiatrists say, it cuts the heart when a dearly loved child, once
so docile and parent-attached, suddenly wants to strike out by
herself, choosing her own friends.
   But it is some compensation to realize that this desire for
independence is a good thing for the child.
   It shows she is anxious to stand on her own feet and make a place
for herself in the world later on.
   If her naturally healthy desire to grow up is frustrated she will
either lose her urge to be independent or she will rebel and go her
own way anyhow. And this last spells trouble in the home.
   A child psychiatrist was adamant on this point of independence.
   "So many mothers," he said, "make the mistake of expecting to
know everything about their daughters. The brutal truth is that a
girl will not grow up normally unless she has a secret life away from
her parents.
   "In fact, the daughter who tells her mother everything is very
suspect from the psychiatrist's point of view because she is not being
allowed to grow naturally into an adult."
   
   IT's enlightening, and a little shattering, to learn from the
psychiatrist that that state which mothers boast about, "we're more
like sisters than mother and daughter" is not one to be envied.
Indeed, this very closeness and dependence is considered detrimental
to normal development.
   "It's far more healthy for girls to giggle among themselves and
have 'best friends' from their own classmates," the psychiatrist
told me.
   "The mother just mustn't be that 'best friend' because it
suggests that the daughter is still clinging to her.
   "I know this is a bitter pill for mothers to swallow,
particularly those who are bringing up daughters alone without their
husbands. I often advise these women to get themselves an interesting
job. Just for the sake of the girl."
   Many young women who finally end up with nervous breakdowns or
other mental disorders do so just because they have never broken away
from their families.
   "You have no idea how many girls come here who have never been
shopping by themselves," another psychiatrist said. "A young
person should be allowed a lot more responsibility and freedom from
the age of ten or eleven onwards.
   "She should be able to choose some of her own clothes and
perhaps her own wallpaper. She must be able to spend her own pocket
money the way she wants, and keep a diary which no one will read.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 213
<161 TEXT F18>
Sign Here FOR HAPPINESS
JUDITH SIMONS meets a woman who shares our happiest and our
saddest moments
Life's greatest dramas- they're all in a day's work for Dorothy
Taylor Horrocks.
   BACK in World War One an excited young mother entered the
Registrar's Office at Ramsbottom in Lancashire.
   "I've had triplets," she announced proudly. "I'd like to
call them France, Belgium and Russia- after our Allies."
   The Deputy Registrar, pretty young Miss Dorothy Taylor
Horrocks, looked startled, but her voice stayed calm.
   "Does your husband like those names?"
   "I haven't asked him. He's serving in France."
   "Well, do write and see what he says before deciding," Miss
Horrocks advised gently. "When the boys grow up, those names might
be an embarrassment. But of course, if your husband approves, we'll
register the babies as you wish."
A lesson in tact
   A week later the mother came back.
   "I'm glad you made me tell my husband before naming the boys,"
she said gratefully. "We've decided to call them Frank, Charles and
Richard."
   Today, Dorothy Taylor Horrocks- now Registrar for Radcliffe,
Whitefield and Prestwich- still remembers that early exercise in
common sense and tact.
   "Though there are not many women registrars yet, I think we can
give men registrars a lead in some ways," she told me with a smile.
"Men may be more efficient and businesslike, but on the personal
side of Births, Deaths and Marriages women have a more sympathetic
approach."
   I could see Miss Horrocks' point. Neither her conventional,
impersonal office nor her plain black suit could deflect from the warm
personality of this woman who records the greatest dramas of our
lives.
   With Miss Horrocks, her job is not just a matter of making an
entry in an official book, issuing an official certificate. When a
woman who is newly widowed comes to register her husband's death, Miss
Horrocks can sense at once if she needs a friendly ear.
   "Don't worry," she will say with gentle patience. "I'm here
to help you. Now sit down and tell me about it..."
   With a girl registering an illegitimate birth, her manner is
similarly sympathetic.
   One such girl expressed the feelings of many: "When I walked in
here and saw the registrar was this kind lady I was so relieved."
   One reason, perhaps, why Miss Horrocks has this work at her
finger-tips is that she was born into the business! Her father, too,
was a registrar, and though she had originally hoped to be a nurse,
Miss Horrocks found herself following in his footsteps.
   "It's in registering births that our real test comes, especially
when the mother chooses an impossible name. Incidentally, it's always
the Mums who are fanciful!
Back to old names
   "If the father is in doubt about the name, or perhaps doesn't
even know the wife's choice if he is away, often I can influence the
balance of opinion. But if both parents approve I must comply with
their wishes.
   "One wife wanted to name her baby daughter Rowena- Ophelia-
Elvira- Cardetta- Osberga- after the ships on which her sailor
husband had served. In this case the husband was thrilled with the
names, so I could do no more!"
   Miss Horrocks smiled. "Lately I've registered very few strange
names. Even the fashion of calling babies after film stars isn't so
popular these days. We seem to be having a swing back to the
old-fashioned, tried and trusted names- especially Mark for boys and
Jane for girls."
   The next step on the path of life- marriage- is a routine job
for Miss Horrocks, but it occupies most of her time!
   Apart from ceremonies conducted in her office by the
Superintendent Registrar, each Saturday she's off on a round of Roman
Catholic and other non-Conformist churches where it is necessary for a
registrar to be present at a marriage ceremony.
   "I've spent more time waiting at the church than any other woman
in Lancashire," laughs Miss Horrocks. "When a bride is late I'm on
tenterhooks- wondering if I'll be in time for my next wedding.
   "But I don't really mind. It's the bride's great day.
   "I have never been married myself, but if I had, I know I'd have
been late, too!
   "I always enjoy watching a wedding. Today a great many of the
girls are wearing those pretty Princess Margaret style bridal
headdresses, and they wear more elaborate dresses than they used to
do. But the grooms are usually more nervous."
Only one hitch in years
   In her long career Miss Horrocks has known only one marriage
hitch- last summer, when ex-assistant-hangman Brian Allen and his
Spanish bride Angela Corillo went through a marriage ceremony at a
Roman Catholic church, but forgot to inform Miss Horrocks.
   "They were therefore not legally married!" Miss Horrocks told
me. "Still, it was all put right. They delayed their honeymoon and
came to me for a special licence."
   Miss Horrocks holds another record.
   One morning she attended a wedding, two and a half hours later
she was informed the bride had given birth to twins and that one of
the babies had died. So in the space of a day she had registered a
marriage, two births and a death- all in one family!
   And what of Miss Horrocks' own life?
   It is very much drama-free, she admits. She shares a house with
a retired headmistress, belongs to an exclusive women's club, doesn't
do much in the way of hobbies because she hasn't the time.
   "But after my daily panorama of the highlights in other people's
lives, I'm perfectly content with a quiet life of my own," she
smiled.
DID YOU KNOW the part a registrar plays in your life?
BIRTHS
   THE birth of a baby should be reported to the registrar within
forty-two days. There is a fee of 3s. 9d. for a certified copy
and 9d. for short birth certificate. <SIC>
   If you later regret your choice of Christian names and want to
change them or make an addition, this can be done at the Registrar's
Office within a year of first registering the birth. The birth
certificate will then be amended for a fee of 1s. 6d.
   A Christian name or names can be changed, through baptism, at any
time.
MARRIAGES
   For a marriage by certificate (the usual form of marriage) the
registrar requires twenty-one clear days' notice. The fee is 3s. if
the couple wishing to be married live in the same district, 6s. if
they live in different districts.
   The fee for marriage at three days' notice is +2 8s. This
covers the cost of a licence only.
   The licence for a church wedding without the waiting time for
banns to be called costs +2 15s. (Not under a registrar's
jurisdiction.)
   Contrary to popular belief, a special licence is not one which
enables a couple to marry quickly. This special licence is granted by
the appropriate Bishop only in exceptional circumstances (for example,
when a couple wish to marry in a district where they neither live nor
worship or in a place which is not licensed for marriage- a college
chapel, etc.). There is no set waiting period before a special
licence wedding takes place, and it costs +25.
DEATHS
   When a doctor has issued a certificate showing the cause of
death, this must be taken to the registrar, who will then issue an
official burial or cremation certificate. This is needed before
burial or cremation can take place and is issued free of charge. All
certificates for personal purposes must be paid. The fee charged is
according to the purpose for which the certificates are needed.
Most of us have lived through it- that moment when all hope of
happiness seems lost for ever
They said they'd NEVER LOVE AGAIN
   "NEVER! I'll never get over him. I know I'll never love
again." The girl threw herself, sobbing, on the bed. For hours-
or so it seemed- she lay there, the victim of a bleak all-enveloping
despair. For the moment, at any rate, she knew that this man, who had
so recently gone out of her life, would be in her heart for ever.
She would never get over him...
   This scene, which surely every woman has lived through herself,
goes on everywhere, all the time. The broken romance, the terrible
grief when you realise that the one you love has gone out of your life
for ever...
   But here is a heartening thing: to almost everyone who has ever
loved and lost, there comes, in time, another love, another day when
the heart sings through joy of loving...
   Time, it is true, heals even the most bruised hearts. Time, and
a second love. Those unlucky enough to be going through just this sad
phase in life right now, may look at some of the great loves of recent
years, loves that have come to nothing or have ended tragically and
yet whose partners have gone on to love again- and take heart!
   Look first at the most ill-fated romance of the century. That
of Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend.
   If ever there was a modern fairy-tale that went wrong, then
Margaret's and Peter's must surely be it.
After two long years
   THEY knew each other for thirteen years, first met when
Margaret was a boisterous schoolgirl and Peter the "new boy" at the
Palace.
   When it was discovered in Royal Circles that they were in love,
Peter was posted to Brussels as an air attache?2. They had to be
apart for two years, perhaps to test if their love was strong enough
to bear the separation.
   It was. In the autumn of 1955, Peter Townsend flew back home and
went straight to Clarence House to meet Margaret.
   In New York the papers headlined the news: Only a Matter of
Hours Now. But the hours spun out into days, the days into weeks.
Indeed it was eighteen days before Margaret finally decided.
   During that time they were constantly in each other's company.
Either at Clarence House or in the homes of their friends.
   Four private dinner parties were given for them in London. Twice
they spent the weekend as guests of close friends in the country.
   They walked hand in hand under the trees aglow with autumn
colours, and went over the problem endlessly, again and again and
again...
   It was no good, and they both knew it. Peter Townsend had been
the innocent party in a divorce case. And that was enough to make him
unsuitable by Royal standards.
Their first meeting
   ALONE in the Clarence House drawing-room on the day when
she made public the renunciation of her love, Margaret read through
once more the draft of a personal message, which in a hundred and
fourteen words, told the world of her decision: "I would like it to
be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Townsend..."
   Few of us will forget the heartbreaking pictures of Margaret that
were in the papers the following day. Bravely, she tried to show a
face of composure to the world in true Royal Family tradition. But no
camera could fail to record her grief.
   A little later came the story that Margaret and Peter had sworn
never to wed. The Group Captain was quoted as having said: "As we
cannot marry each other, then neither of us will ever marry anyone
else." But it was not to be. And a good thing, too. Nobody would
wish these two young people to go through life alone for the rest of
their days.
   Within five years from that fateful October evening, both of them
had married other people. Peter Townsend, a pretty French girl, who
looked so remarkably like the Princess; and Margaret the good-looking
photographer, Tony Armstrong-Jones.
   It had been three years though before she had found another love.
Three years, while she nursed her broken heart and looked sadly on
all the young men who asked to take her out.
   Then on the night of March 31, 1958, she went to a Hallowe'en
ball at London's Dorchester Hotel with Billy Wallace and other
friends.
# 215
<162 TEXT F19>
WHY INTOXICANTS?
Man's search for immortality... by Wesley M. Clark
   AS FAR BACK as primitive man, one discovers him directly
dependent on the whims and moods of nature. Her laws dared not be
flaunted by him. Her contrasts, the warm-breathing summer, with a
plentiful supply of everything needful, relentless winter, when
everything seemed dead without a shaft of sunlight for weeks at a
time- dire want. All the suffering awakened and sharpened in him his
perceptive faculties.
   Primitive man noted the mood between the lustrous sun in the
cerulean vault of the daytime, and the changing faces of the moon that
gleamed coldly during the fear-inspiring night. He wondered at the
mysterious stars that seemed at times to travel across the vision of
the black face of the night. Occasionally, these shimmering stars
plunged downward toward the earth at tremendous speed. Then there
were times when the sky would change from tranquillity to sudden
anger. Great ominous clouds galloped across the heavenly firmament,
writhing and with diabolical unpredictability, seemingly resembling
unleashed monsters, spitting fire, roaring angrily, and emptying
deluges of water to the earth. Why? Man asked himself. Who? What
does all this?
   When a member of man's family died, the body, which only an hour
before had been warm, talked and breathed, suddenly was inert and
cold. Its appearance had not changed outwardly, yet it was not the
same. There was no longer the rhythmic breathing. With the last
gasp, life departed. Breath, then, was life. But where had breath
gone?
   And he could smell the aroma of the flowers, the pungent
exhalations from the trees, the earth. The thought occurred to him,
all this is like my breath- my breath which vanishes when I die. And
when I die, where do I go?
   These phenomena which man experienced eventually evolved into a
conception of one or more spiritual beings of invisible forces or
powers within the many objects about him. It was the Breath that
separated from the live body and departed elsewhere, leaving behind
the inanimate, which gave first rise to the conception of spirits.
   Everywhere man was this conception existed. Among the Primal
Aryans, it was called Gust, Breath or Whiff. The Greeks
termed it Atman, breath, air; or, Pneuma, air. The Romans,
whether of ancient pagan days or modern Christian times, used the term
Spiritus for breath; while Geist, Ghost, Gast, or Gaest,
was the way the German and his Teutonic forebears summed it up. The
conception has been incorporated almost in its original form in the
Old Testament which states: "In creating man, God breathed into him
the Breath of life, the Spirit, the Soul."
   Primitive man's logic was naive. Upon developing the concept
of a world of spirits, he immediately entered upon the system of
spirit worship, which in its most elemental form, was a worship of the
dead. The dead continued to live as spirits; in the wind, the
flowers, the trees, the thunder, the volcano, an animal. But it did
not matter so much where they lived, as that man felt the spirits
needed food, both liquid and solid, just the same as when they still
dwelt in their mortal bodies. Therefore, man deduced it was his
duty- a sacred obligation for him to supply spirits with food, drink,
clothing, weapons, slaves- everything he was used to using while he
was alive. This was motivated through fear or love.
   In the Occident as in the Orient, in Africa, Australia or
America, wherever primitive man or primitive man's history may be
researched, the custom became firmly established. Nor has it
disappeared today. Among certain Christianised people, the ritual of
setting aside daily food and drink for the departed is strictly
adhered to; or dishes and beverage are taken on the anniversary of the
dead to their place of burial. The libation in honour of the deceased
is found as a part of the most modern customs, as when some drops are
poured out before a drink is taken: the toast.
   From this simplest-of-all worship of the dead, there gradually
grew a worship of spirits in general.
   This conviction of the superhuman and following it, the need of
appeasement either because of fear or love, found its visible
expression in offerings, sacrifices to the spirits or deities. And
what could be found more pleasing to them than food and drink? These
two items became an integral part of worship.
   Primitive man's first thought at the birth of his first
conception of the supernatural survival of his ancestors' spirits, to
whom he consecrated sacrifices, food, and drink, evolved without a
break for hundreds of centuries.
   With the Jews, until the Mosaic period, even until the
destruction of Jerusalem, when bloody sacrifices were ended; with the
Christians of the Roman Empire, until the reign of THEODOSIUS (392
A.D.), when bloody sacrifices were abolished, and only the
unbloody one- the offertorium at Mass- bread and wine has gone on
unchecked.
   The fact stands out, boldly and indisputable, that deeply rooted
in the human consciousness there grew a feeling of dependence upon a
power which was able to discern his fate for better or worse. That
feeling filled him with awe, dread, confidence and veneration.
   Along with, and as strong as the consciousness of his dependence
upon the spirits- deities- man was influenced by the reflection that
it was wise to propitiate; in fact to get into communication
indirectly, or directly if possible with those supernatural powers or
beings. This he attempted and succeeded in doing by the exercise of
the various forms of worship: libations, fastings, sacrifices,
prayers, singing or <SIC> hymns, dancing.
   Prayer, psychic abandonment and the many kinds of devotional
exercises induced in primitive man, accompanied, as it did in all his
descendants, the condition known as spiritual elevation and
exhaltation, followed by the more advanced stages of inspiration
and ecstasy. It was only in these later spiritual phases, that
the human mind was able to step across the threshold of material
thought into the sphere of the immaterial or supernatural world. In
these phases only, could man leave his objective consciousness
entirely behind him. There only, he was able to feel the Breath,
the Spirit of the god, to resemble in his whole being the
spiritual entity to <SIC> the god, to be filled with it. In that
condition, he was inspired.
   This fundamental idea immediately found its way into man's
speech, which henceforth became filled with words and idioms
expressing it. In theology one is cognisant of the inspired
prophets, the inspiration of the scriptures. There are in
ordinary speech the expressions: the inspired artist, orator,
writer, musician- and on a more profane level, there is the
inspiration of the fermented juice.
   Side by side with inspiration and its meaning, in fact identical
to it in many usages, came the word "enthusiasm." To the ancient
Greeks who passed it on to the contemporary world, the word meant:
"in God," "being in God," "united with God". (en- in,
theos- God). In common usage, however, enthusiasm has come to
mean, "the intense, rapturous feeling felt by individuals or masses,
especially as exhibited in ardent zeal or <SIC> a person,
principle, or cause."
   Back in the nebulosity of time, there developed in man a
religious inspiration and religious ecstasy produced in their
elemental form by mental and immaterial or psychic agents. Later,
however, it became necessary, because of some crisis or urgent need
that arose in the life of the individual or tribe, to propitiate one
of these deities, to induce quickly by physical means this same
intense feeling.
   Out of nature's vast store, it was a simple matter to select just
those things which would do this, and there is found use by man at
whatever stage of his history, of two classes of material, namely:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   1. Narcotics: i.e. narcotic roots, leaves, herbs, which were
either eaten, smoked or chewed; and incense.
   2. Intoxicants: i.e. natural juices or narcotic, or toxic
plants, or fruits unfermented and fermented- the prepared beverages.
<END INDENTATION>
   To this list was added, through man's own ingenuity, other means
of obtaining the same end: e.g. ceremonial dances, singing, and
incantations. While these methods should rightly be classed as
intermediaries between physical and mental stimulation, i.e. in
the realm of religious auto-suggestion, yet, used in conjunction with
one or more of the purely physical and mental agents, they came to
play, through its entirety from the most primitive to the most modern,
a tremendously important part in the process of worship. Ample
illustrations of this are to be seen in the twentieth century. For
example: The singing and music in churches, the clashing of the
tambourines of the Salvation Army as they put the devil on the run,
the incantations and frenzy attending them of the revival meetings.
   It would be impossible to express logical doubt as to whether
early man distinguished between narcotics and intoxicants. They both
produced the singular effect desired. But during the awakening of
human consciousness and the first presentiment of something beyond his
material being, the psychic intoxication differed from the physical
intoxication only in its means and not in principle. This
presentiment was coincident with the discovery of mysterious forces in
certain of the products of nature, and which possessed the power of
translating him into a condition of bliss, of enthusiasm, and ecstasy.
   Man has always followed complicated patterns of worship, each
with his own formula for putting him in contact with the world of his
deities. The various patterns of worship, upon analysis, prove to be
merely variations of the same original pattern: spirit worship and
worship of the dead. The means by which man entered into relationship
with the deities was always the same; and of these means, the
physical, and especially the spirituous and intoxicating beverages,
prepared by each people in its own way, has always been an integral
and chief part of every religious worship. Man, in whatever clime,
had some plant from which he obtained a product that caused a
pleasurable mental state, and which he elevated to the rank of god.
Intoxicating beverages and religious worship came up through the ages
blending with the human, essential elements of the material world in
which man lived, and the spiritual world toward which he strived.
   With the spread of education and attendant complexities of the
processes of logic, which events led to placing of more and more
reliance on the purely spiritual- psychic stimulation- there has
grown a tendency for man to look with disfavour upon the more physical
stimulants, i.e. intoxicants. Man has come by his natural taste
for, or his tendency towards stimulants and intoxicants by the Law
of Inheritance.
   Early man, on the high plateaus of central Asia east of the
Caspian Sea and northwest of Hindustan, were pastoral people- the
Aryans. From this mother race, two distinct branches originated.
One, the Indo-Europeans, gave rise to most of the European races.
The Kelts, who settled in Gaul and Britain, Ireland, Wales, Scotland;
the Germanic races, German, English, Scandinavian, Dutch, Flemish,
Icelandic; the Slavs, Russian, Polish, Slavonian, Bohemian; the
Greeks; the Latins, from whom stem the Italian, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Roumanian. The other branch remained in Asia and
became the Medes, Persians, and Hindoos.
   The mother tongue of the Indo-European languages is Sanskrit, and
in this language are written the four Vedas, the holy writings of the
Brahmans, the oldest literary works of these people, 6circa
1, years. The language of the Ancient Persia is the so-called
Zend, and the Zend-Avesta contains the sacred writings of this branch
of the Sanskrit tongue.
   The oldest Vedic Book (hymn Veda), the "Bible of the Hindoos",
states clearly about Soma. "Soma, the Creator and Father of the
gods; god Soma declares the birth of the gods; this god poured forth
the gods; King of gods and men, and he confers immortality on gods and
men."
   Soma a plant, and Soma, an intoxicating beverage, as
father of the gods, pre-existed before, and above all gods, king of
material and immaterial universe- immortality.
# 26
<163 TEXT F2>
Guarding Lakeland's Life and Beauty
   IN 1937, when the idea of Lakeland becoming a "National
Park" was an idea only, as was the Town and Country Planning Act,
there were increasing dangers in the Lake District, both to the beauty
of its landscape and to its traditional agriculture and local life.
Some of those dangers were ugly or badly sited buildings, commercial
afforestation and injurious road schemes.
   The National Trust was, of course, a landowner in Lakeland, but
the Trust had to make public appeals for subscriptions, a slow method
and one which could be repeated only at infrequent intervals.
   Sometimes private persons intervened by buying up at the last
moment farm lands which were threatened by possible building or by
other so called "development," but the number of such public
benefactors was necessarily limited.
   In these circumstances, in 1937, a Company named the Lake
District Farm Estates Limited was formed and registered under the
Industrial Provident Societies Acts, to organise the great amount of
good will towards the Lake District. This it did by making it
possible for lovers of the Lake District, who were not in a position
to purchase or to manage farms or to make gifts to the National Trust,
to lend money to the Company, at a low rate of interest, or even
interest free.
   The Company's powers covered the purchase, ownership and
management of land and buildings in Lakeland, with the aim of
maintaining them in their present agricultural character and
safeguarding both the beauty of the landscape and the traditional
livelihood of the dalesman.
   Lakeland was defined as lying inside a circle having a radius of
2 miles from the Langdale Pikes. In carrying out its objects one of
the rules of the Company imposes an obligation on the Company to give
covenants to the National Trust over any land purchased by the
Company.
   The first stipulation and restriction imposed on land covenanted
is as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   No act or thing shall be done or placed or permitted to remain
upon the restricted land which, in the opinion of the National Trust,
shall injure, prejudice, affect or destroy the natural aspect or
condition thereof or the adjoining parts of the dale.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   The other stipulations refer to the prohibition of new
buildings, mining or quarrying, felling of trees and the planting of
conifers, without the permission of the Trust.
   Another rule provides that if the Company decides to sell any of
its properties, it must first offer to sell the property to the
National Trust.
   
   THE farm which was the Company's first purchase, High
Wallabarrow, lies on the Cumberland bank of the Duddon, opposite to
the hamlet of Seathwaite in Dunnerdale, and adjoins the National Trust
property at Wallabarrow Crag.
   The farm and its fell land are within the area which the Forestry
Commission had declined to preserve from commercial afforestation and
it was to anticipate a purchase by the Forestry Commission that this
farm was acquired by the Company.
   The landscape is a fine example of the beauty characteristic of
the Duddon Valley, and the farm house, though in itself a small one,
is delightfully situated.
   In 194, in order to safeguard further this very vital part of
the Duddon Valley, the purchase was made of 23 acres of intakes, the
small house at Low Wallabarrow and of certain inside land. A
considerable gift towards the purchase was received from the Friends
of the Lake District.
   The next purchase by the Company was Skelwith Farm, which lies to
the south of Skelwith Bridge and on the right bank of the River
Brathay. This farm included an important part of the landscape seen
by those going up Langdale from Clappersgate and Ambleside.
   The fell land was immediately threatened by the Forestry
Commission, which had refused to exclude the Coniston- Hawkshead
Brathay district from the area in which they desired to carry out
commercial afforestation, and a good deal of the lower land offered
opportunity for speculative building. The purchase of this farm
therefore had a high protective value.
   
   SOON afterwards the Company purchased, in the north of
Lakeland, Rannerdale Farm on Crummock Water. This farm which lies on
the shores of the Lake was one of the few areas on these shores which
were not already protected by restrictive covenants.
   In 1941, the Company extended its interest into a new dale,
Ennerdale. Here the sheep farm known as Mireside gave a fine
opportunity of protecting the landscape. The farm had a frontage to
Ennerdale Lake. A few years later its ownership entitled the Company
to be heard when the question of raising Ennerdale Lake was considered
at a Public Enquiry.
   Certain fields adjoining Mireside were purchased at a later date,
and the farm now has quite an important share in controlling the
entrance to Ennerdale and in maintaining its seclusion against
exploitation by motor traffic, by reason of the fact that the road up
the dale is a private road.
   No further purchase was made until 1944, when two farms- Ghyll
and Buckbarrow- were purchased at the approach to Wastwater.
   With this purchase the Company now had interests in Duddon,
Buttermere, Ennerdale and Wasdale. A further farm in Wasdale,
Harrowhead Farm, which adjoins Ghyll and Buckbarrow, was purchased in
1949.
   
   LONGHOUSE Farm, Duddon, which has a commanding position in
Seathwaite in Dunnerdale, by controlling the land at the foot of Walna
Scar was purchased in 1948, and is a typical fell farm.
   Now was the time when the prices of farms rose prodigiously and
with its limited means the Company was unable to make new purchases
for the next few years.
   With the death of a tenant in 1954, however, the Company decided
that it must take the opportunity of acquiring cash to be available
for other purchases, and Rannerdale which, as previously mentioned,
had been placed upon protective covenants to the National Trust, was
sold.
   The next year Skelwith Fold was also sold to the tenant, subject
to protective covenants. When land has been placed under these
covenants by the Company, they continue in force and are not weakened
by any change of ownership.
   
   WITH the proceeds from the sale of these two farms, the
Company again had funds available to make new purchases. When, in
1955 a small farm, Ghyll Bank, at Boot in Eskdale, came on to the
market the Company decided to purchase.
   This farm lies half a mile north of Boot on the Burnmoor Track
with fell rights on the northern portion of Burnmoor and the west face
of Scafell, extending to the peak of Scafell.
   There was a great danger that it would cease to be a farming unit
and that the land would be taken over by adjoining farms and the
buildings become ruins, so the farm with its Herdwick sheep flock was
bought.
   
   A FARM in Patterdale and one in Borrowdale were acquired by
the Company in 1957, and, taking the Langdale Pikes as a central
point, the Company now owned farms to the north, south, east and west.
   The farm in Patterdale is Howe Green Farm, Hartsop, at the foot
of the north side of the Kirkstone Pass, and is as characteristic a
fell farm as any which the Company own. An interesting feature of
this place is an old corn drying kiln, which seems to be of a unique
type. A generous gift by the late Rev. H. H. Symonds made it
possible to repair this kiln.
   The farm purchased in Borrowdale is Yew Tree Farm, at Rosthwaite.
This farm has wide and important fell rights on the Langstrath side
of Borrowdale and is of great importance for the Company's objects.
   Since the Company was formed, Lakeland has become a National
Park, and the Town and Country Planning Act can prevent the happening
of some of the dangers that were envisaged when the Company was
formed. But by its selective purchases the Company continues to
fulfil its general objects by such management of the properties as
will safeguard not only the beauty of the landscape but also, and no
less important, the traditional livelihood of the dalesmen.
   To people concerned about the furtherance of these objects the
Company continues to provide a means where money may be used, and
where the donor asks only a low rate of interest, or none at all.
   
   THE first chairman of the Company, which has its offices at
Exchange Chambers, Kendal, was Mr. Francis C. Scott, and the
members of the original committee of management were Lord Howard of
Penrith, Lord Birkett, Lord Chorley, Mr. A. M. Carrs-Saunders,
Mr. W. Farrar, Col. J. F. Hopkinson, Mr. C. S.
Orwin, Col. A. T. Porritt, and the Rev. H. H. Symonds.
   The present Chairman is Lord Chorley, and the Vice-Chairman,
Col. J. F. Hopkinson.
LIFE IN LAKELAND
Peace and Friendship at Stone Bower
"To everyone here it is really home. They have no-where else to
go," says warden Fred Hellowell.
   WHEN the German blitzes began in 194, the Government had
many schemes for mothers and children. Elderly folk who were bombed
out of their homes had no such schemes to help them except in the
institutions of those days.
   So a group of conscientious objectors set about to provide
private accommodation for the old folk of the big cities whose homes
had been wrecked by German bombs. An old derelict house in
Burton-in-Lonsdale named Stone Bower was taken over.
   An appeal was made for help. Someone offered 4 old iron
bedsteads and furniture. Two of the members of the organising group
promised the first year's rent. Blankets were forthcoming from the
Canadian Red Cross.
   Starting with nothing, the group founded the Stone Bower
Fellowship which survives to this day in the village of Silverdale,
where 3 men and women live in peaceful security at an 18-bedroom
house standing in eight and a half acres of ground.
   Warden of the Fellowship from its inception, and a tireless
worker for the home to-day, is Mr. Fred Hellowell, and he told me of
the history and impact of the enterprise. To-day Mr. and Mrs.
Hellowell are joint wardens.
   The pacifist group which founded it were mainly from the
Morecambe and Lancashire area. The members felt that it provided them
with an opportunity for worth-while Christian activity.
   Stone Bower served the elderly folk until 1945, when many of the
conscientious objectors began to return to their own jobs. Yet 15 old
people remained at the home, and they had no homes to which they could
go.
   
   IN those days the National Assistance Act had not come into
force, and there were no homes for old people such as there are
to-day. The committee of Stone Bower disbanded, but three members
felt they ought to carry the Fellowship on as a permanent scheme.
They were Mr. Charles Wade, a Quaker who lived at Bentham; Mr.
Fred Hellowell and his brother John Hellowell.
   Even though the position looked so difficult they felt that they
should continue for the sake of the old people. In 1951 the house at
Silverdale became available. The Fellowship had no funds, but the
National Corporation for the Care of Old People, part of the Nuffield
Foundation gave +4,.
   Another +1, was forthcoming from the Lancashire County
Council. There was an appeal broadcast by the B.B.C.
Altogether +8,5 was raised, and the house was purchased.
   I toured the fine house at Silverdale, and in a sense I envied
the old folk their peace of mind and their security, two essentials to
a happy life for those who are old, without homes of their own and
with few relatives.
   The scheme has been run on a pocket money basis. For the last
six or seven years, the staff have received 3s. a week pocket money
and their keep. They were happy to do the job voluntarily. "We
felt, and still feel, that our little piece of practical Christian
service is to give our services in this way for people in need,"
said Mr. Hellowell.
   YET in recent weeks there has been such a difficult time
that it is being realised that more staff is needed.
# 22
<164 TEXT F21>
Mediatrics
Or the care of the Middle-aged
By H. F. Ellis
6. Relaxation in the Middle Years- Hobbies- The Secret of
Enjoyment
   THE belief that a man is as old as he feels is responsible
for a great many pulled muscles. A wiser principle to follow is that
a man, broadly speaking, is as old as he is. He may be older. He is
unlikely to be younger, and if he is, will do well not to show it
unless he cares nothing for the good opinion of his contemporaries.
   Far too much sentimental rubbish has been written about the
sadness of taking off cricket boots for the last time, putting away
tennis rackets and similar dramatic moments. The well-balanced man
will take his cricket boots off for the last time with at least as
much relief as he has experienced when taking them off on a hundred
previous occasions. He will waste no time in vain regrets as he
struggles with the laces, knowing very well that in all probability he
will change his mind next May and put the great heavy things on
again- and that, if he does not, it will be because he doesn't want
to. Every psychologist knows that nine out of ten men who consciously
do something for the last time have been secretly longing to do just
that for at least a couple of years. Only the mistaken idea that it
will be a wrench has held them back.
   Giving things up is, or should be, one of the great consolations
of middle age. The man of fifty-plus, waving goodbye from his
deck-chair with a resigned ~"Off you go and enjoy yourselves. ~I'm
too old for that kind of thing now," is a living proof of the
essential beneficence of the natural processes. There is a strong
sense of release. The annoyance of not being able to do something as
well as he used <SIC> can be terminated, the wise man of
forty-five suddenly realizes, by not doing it. The pity is that he
did not realize it at forty.
   This is not to say that middle age is to be a gradual recession
from activity of any kind. On the contrary it is a time for
constantly taking up new pastimes, new interests. What must be
dropped is those physical leisure-time exercises taken up in youth and
now inevitably being performed with diminishing success. A man, it
has been well said, whose enjoyment consists of constant reminders
that he is not as young as he was should take medical advice
immediately. New activities, of whatever kind, are free from this
fatal defect. There is no reason why a man of fifty, or even
fifty-five, should not take up cricket if he can find a team
sufficiently short of men. He is unlikely to overstrain himself by
trying to do what he never did in his twenties; nor can he be vexed by
loss of form at a game he never played before. Indeed he will
probably improve for a season or two, and may look forward to reaching
his peak at sixty.
   Doctors agree on the therapeutic value of nearly all new skills
acquired in late middle age. But it must be understood that exercise,
as such, has nothing to do with it. "Keeping fit" is a sign of
immaturity, as is any other spare-time occupation that demands
continuity of effort. The touchstone, for a man of mature years
considering what to take up next, must always be "Shall I be able to
drop it again without loss of self-respect?" Whether it is good or
bad for him, whether it produces anything useful, whether he will get
anywhere with it- these things are beside the point. In middle age
there are enough things that have to be done with some ulterior
motive; it is folly to take up voluntarily anything that may become a
taskmaster.
   Home carpentry, as we have seen in the first of this series of
papers, may begin to show itself as early as E.M. =1, though the
main rush of displacement activities is ordinarily delayed until the
second period of Middle Middle Age when tennis and dancing are finally
dispensed with. There is a sure instinct at work here, for carpentry
is of all things an occupation that lends itself to being laid down at
will, either temporarily or permanently. The object under
construction is rarely if ever worth completion for itself, nor is
some immediate justification for discontinuing the work (e.g. blunt
tenon-saw or shortage of 1 1/2?8 screws) hard to find. One has only
to compare the study of History, which so many men almost take up in
their fifties, to realize that it is worth while spending a little
care over the choice of new interests. It is not difficult, exactly,
to lay down the Conquest of Peru or Vol. =2 of the Cambridge
Mediaeval History once it has been taken up; but it is not easy to
feel altogether happy about never taking it up again. 'The trouble
is,' as a patient of mine who had had an extraordinary urge to learn
something about America once put it, "that when you have spent a lot
of money on two great volumes about the Civil War they glare at you
from the shelves for months afterwards. You might as well be
seventeen again, with both your parents at you for never sticking to
anything you start."
   We see, then, that the ideal hobbies and relaxations are those
that make no demands, stir up no distressful ambitions and, if they
have an end-product, have one that need never be reached. At the same
time they should not be over simplified. There should be an
assemblage of apparatus. One of the chief factors that age and
depress men in middle life, other than bachelors, is the constant
spending of money on other people. Often, practically all the money
expended by a man for his own gratification is provided by his firm
through an expense account, which is useful but dull. The wise choice
of a hobby will enable him from time to time to slip out and buy
something- a tool, a box of flies, an exposure meter, a thing for
looking at watermarks with- out of his own pocket and for himself
alone. This gives more pleasure than those who have never tried it
would readily believe.
   A further advantage in apparatus hobbies is that the laying out
process may take so long that there is no time actually to begin. The
preliminary arrangement, which is often more absorbing and always less
exhausting than the operation itself, may last till bedtime if it is
conscientiously done. One of the happiest and most well-adjusted
fishermen I know spends at least one hour sitting on the bank
selecting and tying on a fly, drying and re-greasing his line and so
on for every ten minutes his fly is actually on the water- and that
of course takes no account of the endless pre-preparatory work he does
at home in sorting, retying, gut testing, winding, unwinding and
practising knots. Painting with oils, for the same reason, is to be
preferred to water-colours owing to the multiplicity of tubes, the
turps and linseed oil, the scraping and mixing, the additional
precautions that must be taken against the possibility of a mess
should a start ever be made. To be busy but not anxious- that is the
thing. You have only to compare a woman cutting out material round
paper patterns with her husband making plans, with the aid of
innumerable maps and Cook's Continental Timetable, for next year's
holiday- each, in his and her different ways, indulging in a
spare-time relaxation- to realize the importance of choosing a hobby
where mistakes do not matter or, better, where the point at which a
mistake would matter is hardly ever reached.
   I am sometimes asked by patients of a serious turn of mind, who
would regard philately, say, as too frivolous for them, whether I
would advise them to take up writing as a leisure time occupation-
the writing, that is to say, of some worthwhile book, not of a novel
and still less of random articles for money. It is not unusual for a
man in L.M. =1 or thereabouts to feel this call to perpetuate
himself in print, his efforts to perpetuate himself in other ways
having reached University age and got too big for their boots, and I
do not discourage the urge. It is certainly a more wholesome activity
for late middle age than "social work," a host of
vice-presidencies, and the long debilitating struggle to become a
J.P. But here again there must be care to ensure that the
end-product does not become tiresomely assertive. As before, it is
the assemblage of the materials that counts- the note-taking, the
comparison of sources, the visits to the British Museum, the constant
putting of slips of paper into large volumes- and a subject must be
chosen that will defer the drudgery of actual writing till death. Or
even later. I recently came across a case (not professionally; this
was before the days of mediatrics) of a man, a solicitor with no
previous knowledge of the subject, who decided on his fiftieth
birthday to write a History of Man on a new plan. On his death at
eighty-four he bequeathed his notes, comparative charts and unreturned
library books to his son, then aged fifty-six, with the request that
he complete the task by knocking the book together. The son occupied
twenty-two years very pleasantly in reading through, revising and
annotating his father's notes, and it was a grandson, a very
well-rounded personality of forty-eight with no leisure-time problems,
from whom I heard the story.
   Here is wisdom indeed, when a man can cater not only for his own
middle-age and old age relaxations but for those of his descendants as
well. For we have to remember- and there is much comfort in the
thought- that the children who may be a grief and vexation to us now
will themselves one day be middle-aged, and will then stand in need of
all the comfort and advice that we, as old men, can give them.
   I hope in my next paper to suggest a few simple precautions by
which what I may call the pinpricks of middle age may be avoided
or at least ameliorated. It may seem strange, after the graver
problems with which we have already dealt, to concern ourselves with
ostensibly minor vexations, but as every mediatrist knows a
succession of pinpricks may be anything but a laughing matter. It
is by no means unheard of for a man of forty-five or over to have a
heart attack simply through lack of care in selecting his reading
matter.
Politic Worms
By JANE CLAPPERTON
   ACCORDING to the Worm Runners' Digest (and let's have no
giggling at the back there, please; this is a serious subject)
experiments are now, right this minute, going forward at Washington
University, St. Louis, that are enough to curl your hair. It seems
that Washington University has a Dr. Edward Ernhart on its staff,
and this Dr. Ernhart has made the fairly unattractive discovery that
by splitting a worm's head down the middle you get not only, as you
might expect, a maladjusted and potentially delinquent worm with a
grudge against society in general and Dr. Ernhart in particular but
a worm with two heads. (Dr. Ernhart doesn't actually say his
patients are maladjusted after treatment but it seems a fair bet.)
Furthermore this two-headed worm reacts more rapidly to electric
shock-light stimulus than do the obsolescent Mark =1 worms with only
one head. So there.
   The deeper implications of all this only begin to writhe to the
surface when we see that the Daily Telegraph, whence comes this
awesome bulletin, describes the Worm Runners' Digest as a
publication dealing with "studies started to find out if worms could
be taught anything."
# 25
<165 TEXT F22>
THRACIAN PAYS A DIVIDEND
By Captain C. F. "Trader" HORN
A salvage award may be the seaman's 'pools prize'- but often
it is no more than a fourth dividend...
   SALVAGE! The very word has a special ring for the sailor,
rather like the magic words "first dividend" have for the football
pools enthusiast ashore. The very nature of the sailor's calling very
often debars him from taking part in the pools, so any dreams he may
have of sudden opulence are usually centred around a share of a big
award for salvage at sea.
   Even so, any award he may get won't compare with the fabulous
pools' prizes, and he'll undoubtedly have to work extremely hard for
it, and possibly face great danger. Salvage awards are determined by
the Admiralty Courts, which take into account all the risks involved,
so even if our sailor chances upon an abandoned luxury liner, lying
placidly on a tranquil sea and just waiting to be towed in, it won't
bring him a first dividend!
   Marine salvage laws are complex, and one needs to be a Dutch
lawyer to understand them. Sufficient for the sailor to know the main
factors which govern the amount he is likely to get for his prize if,
in fact, anything at all!
   Masters of all ships have an express duty to render assistance to
persons in danger at sea, oddly enough including enemy subjects in
time of war. The rescue of ships, lives or cargo from danger is a
salvage service, and rewards for such services are paid according to
the risks run by the salvors, the value of the property they risk and,
of course, what is saved and from what danger.
   The few occasions when I've had a personal interest in a salvage
claim- even when all added together- haven't produced enough even to
buy a coffee stall.
   They all occurred during my service with the Trinity House, which
is not altogether surprising when one remembers that ships of the
Trinity House Service frequently put to sea on emergency calls, when
other ships are running for shelter, and it's usually under just those
conditions that help is called for.
   They ranged from drifting bales of raw silk to part cargo from
the much-publicized wreck of the Flying Enterprise, but the
biggest one, which initially seemed to spell shore-bound independence,
happened in the winter of 1955, just one year before I 'swallowed the
anchor'.
   As is nearly always the case with salvage work, it was one of
those nights when sailors envy farmers their jobs- as black as
Egypt's night, pouring with rain and blowing a gale from the
south-east.
   We'd had a really dirty passage south from Flamborough Head, and
had tucked ourselves close under the lee of Scroby Elbow in Yarmouth
Roads for the night. Scroby Elbow is a small, natural inlet on the
landward side of the Scroby Sands, which run parallel to the Norfolk
coast, and quite a big ship can creep in there with local knowledge-
it's the only bit of shelter for miles when the wind's south-easterly
in that area.
   I was quite tired and very relieved when I wrote ~"Finished with
engines" in the logbook, set anchor watches and went below to the
wardroom.
   We'd just about settled down to our evening meal when a
quartermaster appeared to report a ship on fire about three miles
north of us.
   In view of the weather conditions, we'd maintained a full head of
steam, so it wasn't long before we were under way and steaming towards
the other ship at our best speed. I was on the navigating bridge,
while the officers mustered the hands to make our boats ready with
blankets and medical stores, and prepared the fire-fighting equipment.
   I could tell from the bearing of the ship in distress that she
was probably ashore on the northern end of the sandbank, and the
flames the quartermaster had seen were actually distress signals which
are described in the regulations as "flames from a burning tar
barrel, oil barrel, etc.". Soon this was confirmed as she started
to fire distress rockets, and I saw the maroon from shore announcing
the launching of the Caister lifeboat.
   The lifeboat and the ship I was commanding, the T.H.V.
Warden, reached a spot abreast of the grounded ship at the same
time, and our motor launch was lowered to assist the lifeboat in the
rescue of the crew. This tricky manoeuvre was carried out by the
lifeboat's crew with an easy coolness, in spite of the foul weather
and, as a sailor, I was filled with admiration for the seamanlike way
in which it was done.
   When the stranded ship had been abandoned, we approached her as
near as possible, with a searchlight playing on the wreck. In its
powerful beam I could see that she was a steam trawler of some
two-hundred and fifty tons, the Thracian, registered in the port
of Grimsby, and I learned later that she was bound for Ostend.
   It was still flood tide (rising) although it had eased, and the
force of the wind was great enough to prevent her driving any farther
on to the bank. This was a good omen, for I hoped that at slack water
the gale force weight of the wind might shift her. We had to stay by
her in any case. As a derelict, she was a potential danger to
navigation and was, therefore, the responsibility of Trinity House.
Added to this, in their haste to leave her, the crew had left her
navigation lights burning, which could easily be misleading to other
shipping.
   My surmise was right, for an hour or so later her bow started to
lift to the big ground swell, showing that only her stern was still
aground. We weighed anchor and approached her still nearer, but with
great care, fixing our position constantly, and continuously sounding
the depth of water, for this was the moment if we were going to get
her off.
   Some of our ratings had already been placed on board Thracian
by Warden's motor boat, and had put out a fire, on her
engine-room skylight, which had been started by the flame distress
signals. They'd also drawn her stokehold fires, for if they'd been
left alight, with no feed water going into the boilers, they might
have blown up.
   In a ship drawing fifteen feet, when one is approaching a hidden
danger in a full gale and, with the tide setting on one side and the
wind pressing on the other, making leeway which cannot be accurately
calculated, it is not easy to appear calm as, in sing-song monotony,
the soundings are called to the bridge from the leadsman in the
chains.
   "By the mark, three."
   "And a quarter less, three."
   This was as near as we could go, with just eighteen inches of
water under our keel. Now my ship had to be held there, for we were
near enough to run a rope away and get it on board the trawler.
   In retrospect, it was an easy job, for there were no snags; but I
suspect that I got three more grey hairs during the operation.
   At long last we had the Thracian secured alongside our
starboard side, against huge coir fenders, our launch was hoisted
inboard and both ships were in deep water again.
   The weather had worsened, and to leave the comparative shelter of
Yarmouth Roads would have been madness. Yarmouth Haven is always a
tricky place to enter in a south-east wind, and even for an unimpeded
ship it would have been hazardous under the prevailing conditions. To
do so with another vessel in tow was impossible, so I took my tow back
to my sheltered anchorage to ride out the storm.
   When daylight came I surveyed my prize. She was no luxury liner.
She certainly looked her part of a derelict, and I learned later that
she had been sold for scrap, and a scratch crew were taking her on her
last voyage to the Belgian breakers' yard. Just my luck, I thought.
   For the next two days it blew really hard without the slightest
abatement. Thracian surged and ranged against our ship-side,
chewing away the fendering, and fraying and parting the mooring ropes
holding the two ships together. We dropped her astern, on the end of
a seven-inch manilla, for comfort, and she laid comfortably on the ebb
tide; but so great was the wind force, that on the flood she kept
driving up on us, so there was no respite for the watch on deck.
   Twice we got under way and ran down to the haven entrance, but
each time we poked our noses outside the friendly lee of the sands, it
was obvious that it was quite hopeless. The seas breaking high over
the south pier lighthouse, and the gyrating boil between the piers,
spelt disaster for anyone ill-advised enough to attempt to cross the
bar.
   I learned over the radio-telephone that charges for towage into
the port were based on the tonnage of the towing vessel, so I engaged
a local tug to do the job for twenty pounds.
   It was more than forty-eight hours after we had plucked the
trawler off the sandbank before conditions improved sufficiently to
allow us to hand her over to the harbour tug, and be berthed in
Yarmouth Haven.
   I deposited a claim for salvage with the Receiver of Wrecks, and
learned that I was now a ship owner, and responsible for all debts she
incurred, such as harbour dues, moorings, etc., until such time as
she was handed back to her rightful owner.
   For his part, he had to deposit a considerable sum of money
before he could sail her again, pending negotiations on our claim.
These were quite protracted, and it was many months before we agreed
a mutual settlement.
   It wasn't a first dividend- unless there were a lot of winners
that week!
THE LAWS OF SALVAGE
   AS salvage operations are often attended by considerable hard
work and great risk, the obligation to pay compensation is so
obviously based on the principles of justice that payment has been
allowed at all times by every civilized country.
   To qualify for salvage, it must be shown that (1) services were
rendered voluntarily, (2) there was the chance of destruction if the
service had been withheld, and (3) the services rendered were of
actual benefit.
   Towage, in most cases, gives no right to compensation payment as
distinct from towage fees, and a ship's crew is expected, in the
ordinary course of duty, to do all that may be necessary to save their
vessel.
   However, if unusual services are performed, or unforeseen perils
encountered, a claim is nearly always sustained.
   Salvage laws quote an example of circumstances in which there
would be an entitlement to reward. If a vessel, whose captain is
ignorant of the locality, during a heavy storm is driving towards a
dangerous shore, and a pilot, seeing her loss to be inevitable, puts
out to sea to assist, he would be entitled to salvage, because his
services could not reasonably be expected in return for ordinary
pilots' fees.
   In the absence of any prior agreement between the parties as to
the rate of salvage payable, the amount is assessed, as a rule, by
the Admiralty Court. And in the case of any such agreement having
been made, the Court would still set it aside if it considered the
amount exorbitant, and that it had been agreed to by the master of the
ship under moral compulsion.
   Salvage money is divided in certain proportions between the
owners, captain, other officers, and the crew of the salving
vessel.
GIRL DIVERS OF JAPAN
   EVER since the tenth century, Japanese girls have been
plunging into the waters around their country's coastline, in their
search for pearls, and for the seaweed used as fertilizer.
   Known as amas, these girls, wearing only shorts and goggles,
comb the sea bed for the prize, their sole equipment being a knife
with a foot-long blade, and a basket to carry their catch.
# 225
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The other barges were beached and grounded now, as the Navy had
ordered: Skipper Harold Miller's Royalty, Charlie Webb's Barbara
Jean, Harry Potter's Aidie, the Ena under Captain Alfred
Page. Tollesbury was the last of her line: she must survive
the carnage.
   Worse, Webb had seen with a prickle of horror the Doris,
sinking rapidly and abandoned, drifting on the remorseless tide
towards the Nieuport shore. His own brother-in-law, Captain Fred
Finbow, was the skipper.
   As in a mist, Webb saw one hope of salvation: the old Thames tug
Cervia, under Captain William Simmons, was moving in to take them
in tow. Now a fresh problem arose: no sooner was the tow-rope secured
to the Tollesbury than Simmons, anxious to put Dunkirk behind him,
went ahead fast.
   It was too much for the barge. With an unearthly splintering the
tug tore her bit-head- the stout wooden casing of the windlass-
clean out by the roots. Again Tollesbury was adrift on a sea
burnished red with the blood of men whose voyaging was over.
   
   The day was marked by such courage. At Bergues, key strong-point
of the western perimeter, the Loyal Regiment had stood fast for two
days, but as the line contracted, artillery pressure on the old walled
town stepped up. To man the stout seventeenth-century ramparts
Lieut.-Colonel John Sandie had only 26 officers and 451 men; for
the rest of the garrison were stragglers doing their best ... a
transport company of ex-London bus-drivers who'd indented for a
musketry instructor ... the Rev. Alfred Naylor, Deputy Chaplain
General, holding one gate of the town for three days with a mixed bag
of chaplains. Barred from active combat by their cloth, Naylor and
his cadre did sterling work questioning suspect fifth-columnists.
   And the civilians weighed in too. At Steene, west of the town,
General von Kleist's tanks were advancing steadily, but Mayor Jean
Duriez, an industrial alcohol manufacturer, turned the faucets of his
ten vast stills to send two million gallons of raw spirit gushing
across the already flooded land. As Duriez watched a chance artillery
shell, exploding like a thunderclap, transformed the waters to a
raging sea of flame- "like a gigantic Planter's Punch." In
fascinated dread Duriez saw two of von Kleist's tanks trapped by the
torrent, glowing white-hot as the holocaust engulfed them. The
advance from the west was stalled.
   But by Saturday midday the Loyals could no longer hold Bergues
itself. Already the troops dug in on the ancient ramparts sweltered
from the heat of burning buildings- the smoke so dense even dispatch
riders groped through the town on foot, mouths and noses bound with
damp cloths. By noon the exposed canal bank beyond the northern
ramparts had become the Loyals' last stockade- with men toppling like
ten-pins under devastating artillery fire. Now in Captain Henry
Joynson's company the troops were so tired the officers had to haul
them across the road like sacks of coal.
   Then by a miracle the wind changed- impelling a black choking
banner of smoke from the burning town into the heart of the German
lines. Even von Kleist's tanks could no longer advance: the few that
did try, foxed by the smoke, tilted disastrously into the canal. The
infantry advance held off- though not until 9 p.m. could the
Loyals withdraw, doubling between waves of mortar fire towards
Dunkirk. Many, by order of Major-General Harry Curtis, had left their
rifles propped in position. Bound with a contraption of string,
weights and slow-burning candles, they would keep firing at intervals,
creating the illusion of a tough task force still on the alert.
   Three miles to the east the East Lancashire Regiment had it as
bad; with all ammunition spent, their 1st Battalion fell back towards
Dunkirk, only a forty-strong force under Captain Harold
Ervine-Andrews, to cover the thousand-yard front as they withdrew. A
thick-set, heavily-built Irishman, Andrews was venerated by his men
for his genially informal manner, though senior officers were less
sure of him. On pre-war service in India and China his feats had
become an eccentric legend- walking fifty-six miles for a +5 bet,
shooting a black buck in the jungle, then carrying it home draped
round his shoulders.
   All that night Andrews and his men crouched under annihilating
shellfire until it seemed the end was near. Already they had been
blasted from their farmhouse quarters; now the Dutch barn to which
they'd retreated was in flames, too. As they doubled behind a hedge,
sparks and blazing straw eddying, they sighted the German infantry
moving in a spaced dangerous line through growing dusk.
   Andrews exhorted his men: "Look, there are 5 of them, maybe
thirty-six of us- let them get a bit closer and then here goes."
His whistle shrilling, Andrews leapt forward, weaving towards the
advancing hordes like a footballer moving in to tackle. As the
howling mob of East Lancs followed at his heels the Germans fell
back, seeking cover.
   Scrambling to the roof of a barn with a rifle, Andrews picked off
no less than seventeen Germans- then seizing a bren-gun, he lunged
forward again. Private John Taylor, in the thick of it, recalls:
"It was a right do- when the ammo ran low we kicked, choked, even
bit them." After fifteen blood-stained minutes the Germans fell
back in confusion. The line was held- but Andrews after sending his
wounded to the rear, was down to eight men now.
   Resolutely, at the head of his little band, he struck
across-country splashing for a quarter of a mile through the flooded
fields towards Dunkirk. He was to win the first Victoria Cross
awarded to any officer in World War Two.
   
   On the beaches, the savage fury of the attack had one result. By
=1 p.m.- six hours after the raid began- every man and woman
still left had one resolve: the only thing that mattered now was the
lives of others.
   Jog-trotting along the Eastern Mole, Colonel Sidney Harrison's
6th Lincolns had their own wounded slung like sacks over their
shoulders- but they stumbled on, negotiating yawning four-foot gaps
somehow, loading them on to ship after ship. In the shadow of the
Mole, Gunner Albert Collins saw an officer bent on a task to tax
Samson: a rope bound like a yoke round his forehead, he swam valiantly
for a Dutch schuit, towing a Carley float with six men aboard.
   Lance-Bombardier George Brockerton took risks as great as any
he'd taken as a Wall of Death trick cyclist: finding eighty-one men
trapped in a bombed cellar he worked for two hours to free them with
hammer and chisel, using French hand-grenades in lieu of gelignite.
Oblivious to the crash of bombs, he helped out every man, then, to
keep their peckers up, did some conjuring tricks.
   Private Walter Allington of the Lincolns was in his element too.
Already he'd spent one whole night trying to help a man crazed by a
head wound ... then, taking a vest and shirt, he'd plugged a terrible
hole in another man's shoulder. Now, despite the writhing pains in
his abdomen, he saw a bullet aimed at the diving Stukas had gone too
low. A long way off, a man had fallen, the bullet lodging in the
small of his back.
   Somehow, though other men were nearer, Allington was again first
to help- but the big gentle man had used his only field-dressing on
that Belgian cripple. Working doggedly on his own, he found an
abandoned ambulance, checked it was in running order, and loaded the
man aboard. Then, despite the swooping Stukas, he drove until the
Channel water was lapping over the bonnet. Standing on the roof of
the truck, he flagged a destroyer's whaler to ferry the man away.
   Everywhere men plumbed unsuspected depths in themselves.
Brigadier Evelyn Barker was at the water's edge when a shell dropped
close, shattering a soldier's arm so that it hung by a thread.
Without more ado Barker borrowed a knife from his Brigade Major and
honed it on a carborundum stone as coolly as a butcher. Lacking
narcotics, he first gave the man a nip of cherry brandy before taking
his arm off at the shoulder.
   Then improving a tourniquet with handkerchief and pencil, Barker
and his aide carried their patient along the beach on a mackintosh to
place him in a doctor's charge.
   Able Seaman Samuel Palmer, with twenty years' naval service,
didn't know a crankshaft from a camshaft but he took the motor yacht
Naiad Errant over with a crew of three- then after losing them
took her back with nine thankful Tommies, helping out the one engine
still operative with paddles fashioned from shattered doors. Stoker
David Banks from Sheerness did even better ... making seven trips as
skipper of the motor-boat Pauleter ... doing his trick at the
wheel ... manning the bren-gun when the Stukas dived ... rescuing 4
single-handed. Off the same beaches Commander Charles Lightoller,
former second officer of the Titanic, was packing them in aboard
his yacht Sundowner: his biggest kick was the stupefaction of
Ramsgate's naval authorities when they found his 6-footer had brought
back 13 men.
   The tiros were well to the fore. Captain "Paddy" Atley of the
East Yorks found the barge Ena grounded where Lemon Webb's
flotilla had lain, took her back with forty men, on the strength of
five sailing holidays in Norfolk. It took fourteen hours, including a
surprise return to Dunkirk, but they made it finally. Captain David
Strangeways of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment hit on another barge,
appropriately named the Iron Duke. Naked save for the skipper's
doormat, which he wore like a sarong, Strangeways brought back
twenty-six men, navigating with compass and school atlas.
   To the doctors, life-saving was a dedication, but it was an
uphill fight now. In Private William Horne's ambulance unit the only
medication to deal with searing phosphorous burns was a bottle of
acriflavine tablets diluted in water. At Rosendael, the dressings
were all but exhausted; Major Philip Newman, the surgeon, did one last
amputation by torchlight, then gave up. The ambulance unit at La
Panne had packed up, too, after a record 2, operations in one week,
but many doctors carried on as and how they could.
   Where equipment was lacking, they improvised. Captain William
MacDonald, in a dugout in the dunes, sterilised wounds with abandoned
petrol. Captain Joseph Reynolds, lacking the Thomas splints used for
compound fractures, secured fractured femurs with rifles. And scores
cut off from their units or families lent a ready hand ... slicing up
battledress trousers to make bandages ... ransacking abandoned homes
for sheets ... pretty Solange Bisiaux, a French doctor's wife,
wringing out blood-stained bandages in salt water ... other men
working eight to a relay to carry stretchers on board the ships.
   Round every ambulance and aid-post Sapper George Brooks noted the
same hushed aura: the "undercurrent of grief that moves like a wind
when a coffin is carried from a house."
   Injuries or no, some men were determined to make the journey
home. Lieutenant J. P. Walsh of the Loyals, knocked down by a
lorry near Bergues, still plodded the five miles to Dunkirk: later the
surgeons found his pelvis was fractured. Captain John Whitty of the
Royal West Kents, wounded in the stomach, slogged some of the fifty
miles from Fle?5tre, where his battalion was trapped, then, at last
gasp, hailed a passing motor-cyclist and rode pillion to the beaches.
Bundled into an ambulance and driven to the Mole, Whitty found the
wait tedious; he climbed out, exhorting other wounded to follow him,
and got them all passages on a home-bound boat.
   There was the same spirit on the ships. Aboard the trawler
Brock, a Surgeon-Lieutenant coped with grievous burn cases and a
shortage of tannic acid by filling a zinc bath with tea and immersing
his patients up to their necks. The destroyer Whitehall's doctor,
Surgeon-Lieutenant David Brown, went so swiftly to aid the wounded
aboard the minesweeper Jackeve that he left his instruments
behind. Nothing loth, he amputated with the engine-room's hacksaw,
sterilised with blazing chloroform, the ex-trawler's fish hatch
serving as operating table.
# 217
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Consuelo thought that the one from Queen Victoria should have been
handed to her on a silver platter. In due course she was lectured on
the various families whose pedigrees, titles and positions she would
have to learn by heart.
   They went for a trip in the Mediterranean, the voyage across the
Atlantic being made more depressing for her on account of the Duke's
seasickness and consequent melancholy. They saw the usual places in
Spain and then visited Monaco, where the sight of fair women and
well-groomed men pleased her. Her husband seemed to know many of
them, but replied evasively when asked who they were. She later
learnt that the women were of 'easy virtue', owing to which social
stigma she could not even claim acquaintance with certain of their
male companions who had once been her suitors. The importance of the
family into which she had married was impressed on her by the Duke,
who described her as 'a link in the chain', and she perceived that
her first duty was to perpetuate the house of Marlborough. After
seeing something of Italy and making an uncomfortable trip up the
Nile, they stayed at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, where her husband
behaved as her mother had done and chose her gowns.
   In London at last she was made acquainted with the Churchill
clan, some of whom seemed to believe that all Americans lived on
plantations with negro slaves, in daily dread of Red Indians with
scalping knives. She was introduced to an intimidating old lady, her
husband's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who had
made Lady Randolph Churchill's life so uncomfortable at Blenheim, and
who now, using an ear-trumpet, embarrassed Consuelo with an order and
a question: 'Your first duty is to have a child, and it must be a
son, because it would be intolerable to have that little upstart
Winston become Duke. Are you in the family way?' They proceeded to
the family stud at Blenheim, being received by the mayor and
corporation of Woodstock. Having delivered his speech of welcome, the
mayor said to her: 'Your Grace will no doubt be interested to know
that Woodstock had a mayor and a corporation before America was
discovered.' Meditating on this weighty pronouncement she got into
the carriage, which was dragged by the townsmen to the palace amid
tumultuous cheers and beneath triumphal arches.
   At Blenheim she discovered that she not only had to learn the
pedigrees of the nobility but the social grades of the servants. One
day she rang the bell and asked the butler to put a match to the fire.
'I will send the footman, your Grace.' 'Oh, don't bother! I'll
do it myself.' The domestic hierarchy resembled a modern trade
union.
   She dreaded the ceremonious dinners with her husband, who had a
habit of filling his plate with food, pushing it away with refined
gestures, doing the same to the feeding and drinking utensils, backing
his chair, crossing his legs, twirling a ring on his finger, and
remaining for perhaps fifteen minutes in a state of abstraction; after
which he would come to life, eat his food with much deliberation, and
complain that it was cold. When inured to this process, she filled in
the time by knitting. They seldom spoke. She thought him arrogant,
despising everything not British, and her pride was hurt. On the
other hand, 'that little upstart Winston' was one of the few
Churchills she liked. He was lively, enthusiastic and stimulating,
the very opposite of his cousin the Duke, but of course he had the
advantage of being half-American. She did her best to hit it off with
the rest of the family, though the Dowager Duchess was heard to say:
'Her Grace does not realise the importance of her position.' She
had much to do at Blenheim, entertaining social and political
big-wigs, visiting the poor, writing letters, supervising the running
of the house. As they had never found love, she and her husband had
none to lose; but the strain of maintaining the social and physical
relationship essential to her position as a breeding duchess was never
eased and steadily grew. In 19 she was temporarily released from
the Duke, who went to South Africa as Assistant Military Secretary to
Lord Roberts; but the following year he became Under-Secretary of
State for the Colonies, and she had to learn all about the leading
colonials who were entertained at Blenheim.
   Sometimes she received unexpected compliments. Having undergone
the ordeal of presentation at a Drawing-room, whereat the Prince and
Princess of Wales represented Queen Victoria, her mother-in-law Lady
Blandford, the practical joker, said that no one would take her for an
American. 'What would you think if I said you were not at all like
an Englishwoman?' asked Consuelo. 'Oh, that's quite different!'
'Different to you, but not to me.' Occasionally she was reproved
for behaviour unbecoming to a duchess. At a dinner in honour of the
Prince and Princess of Wales she wore a diamond crescent instead of
the usual tiara. The Prince stared at it and said: 'The Princess
has taken the trouble to wear a tiara. Why have you not done so?'
She found all these functions intolerably boring, and the racing at
Newmarket equally so. She had to accompany her husband to
Leicestershire for the hunting, which gave her no pleasure, and she
made the fatal error of letting her mind wander away from horses and
hounds and foxes into the realm of good deeds. Hearing, during one
hunting season, that there was much unemployment and hardship at
Woodstock, she sent money to provide work. The obliged recipients
wrote a letter of thanks to her husband, then exclusively occupied
with the solemn matter of fox-chasing. He was amazed to hear that the
roads on his estate had been repaired, displeased to receive
expressions of gratitude for what he had not done, and quickly
informed his wife that she was not entitled to act in that manner
without his approval.
   However he was good enough to approve the births of her two sons.
She was unconscious for a week after the birth of her first, but
recovered quickly on regaining consciousness. Following the arrival
of the second, she reflected that she had done her duty to the dukedom
and could now please herself. But life's realities were kept at bay
in the splendour of Blenheim, and she became more and more bored by
the necessity of walking 'on an endlessly spread red carpet'.
Moreover the conversation of the nobility made little appeal to her,
and when she met a number of Austrian aristocrats in Vienna she
thought it 'a pity that they could express their thoughts in so many
different languages when they had so few thoughts to express'.
   Queen Victoria died in January 191, and when Consuelo spent some
weeks in Paris that spring in the agreeable company of her father she
was depressed by having to wear black clothes. All she dared do was
to wear white gloves, thereby earning a lecture at Longchamps from the
Duchess of Devonshire, who had been a leader of the fast set a
generation before but was now a raddled old woman in a brown wig, her
wrinkles filled with paint, her mouth a red slash. How, she asked,
could Consuelo show so little respect to the memory of a great Queen
as to exhibit white gloves? As the shocked lady was an incorrigible
gossip, Consuelo's impropriety no doubt received much publicity; in
spite of which she was chosen to act as canopy-bearer to the new Queen
at the coronation of Edward =7, her fellow-bearers being the
Duchesses of Portland, Montrose and Sutherland. When Alexandra was
anointed by the old Archbishop of Canterbury they held the canopy over
her. The oil was placed on her forehead by his shaky hand and a
little trickled down her nose. She did not move a muscle but her eyes
expressed anguish.
   After eleven years of nervous stress, either waiting for the
Duke, who was invariably late for lunch, or being with him, which was
worse, Consuelo pined for relaxation, and they agreed to separate, the
arrangement giving them equal custody of the children. In those days
divorce was difficult and still scandalous, and since neither of them
wished to marry again a legal separation met the case. It was
estimated that about ten million of the Vanderbilt dollars had been
spent on Blenheim and their London house, and as she had produced his
heirs the Duke had no cause to complain. She went to live at
Sunderland House, built for her as a present from her father, and here
she gave musical parties. She also became absorbed in social work,
starting a home for women whose husbands were in prison and a
recreation centre for working girls. She sat on a national committee
which enquired into the decline of the birth-rate, and obtained a
donation of a hundred thousand guineas for the removal of Bedford
College, of which she was Hon. Treasurer, from Baker Street to
Regent's Park. Her mother, who had become Mrs Oliver Belmont since
her divorce, led the women's suffrage movement in the United States,
and when the 1914 war broke out Consuelo worked for the American
Women's War Relief Fund, collecting a lot of money by writing and
lecturing. To enable women to be represented by their own sex on
municipal councils, she founded a Women's Municipal Party, and when a
vacancy occurred on the London County Council she sat for North
Southwark. At the election of 1919 she stood as a Progressive for
that borough and topped the poll.
   When the 1914-18 war came to an end the moral standards were
loosened and she obtained a divorce from the Duke. In July '21 she
married Jacques Balsan at the Chapel Royal, Savoy, where divorced
persons were treated with indulgence. He had been an airman in the
war, and a balloonist before that, several times staying at Blenheim.
His nature appealed wholly to hers, and they were very happy
together. The Duke had now become a Roman Catholic, and as he wished
to marry another American, Gladys Deacon, he asked Consuelo to get
their own marriage annulled. Since Jacques Balsan was a Roman
Catholic and she wished to appease his family, she granted the Duke's
request. Her only way of doing so was to swear that she had been
married to him against her will. She was now on friendly terms with
her mother, who consented to make the declaration, testifying before
an English tribunal of Catholic priests, that 'when I issued an order
nobody discussed it. I therefore did not beg, but ordered her to
marry the Duke'. The annulment being granted, Consuelo married
Jacques in a Catholic church, and was affectionately received by his
family at Cha?5teauroux. They then settled down in Paris, and soon
she was busy helping to raise money for the construction of a hospital
for the middle classes, receiving the Legion of Honour in 1931. Three
years later her son succeeded his father as tenth Duke of Marlborough.
   Consuelo and Jacques built a house on the Riviera and took a
cha?5teau at St Georges-Motel, where her philanthropic work
continued. Like so many others, they had to bolt when the Germans
entered France in 194. With difficulty they escaped to Spain, and
thence to Portugal, where they got a plane across the Atlantic. And
so her story ends.
5
Wives of a Viceroy
Mary Leiter and Lord Curzon
Grace Duggan and Lord Curzon
   Other things being equal, which they never are, it is curious
to reflect that if Mrs Vanderbilt had aimed a little lower and
married Consuelo to a lesser title but more imposing figure, the story
of an eminent English statesman, George Nathaniel Curzon, would have
been vastly different. Like Marlborough, Curzon married for money,
but the union, unlike Marlborough's, became a marriage of hearts.
Being an intelligent man, Curzon would have been influenced by
Consuelo, who might have fallen in love with him but would never have
allowed her critical sense to remain dormant on that account.
# 23
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Although the offender made amends by marrying the girl, he never
managed to regain the favour of his General, who nominated a wealthy
Cuban landowner, Porcallo de Figueroa, in his place. It was an
unfortunate appointment. Porcallo de Figueroa's main interest in the
venture was to acquire slaves for his estates, and although he
enriched the expedition with ample supplies and equipment, he
unashamedly abandoned it the moment he realized how dearly the savages
of Florida would sell their freedom.
   The rank and file of the expedition were drawn from many parts of
the Emperor's wide domains, and even from lands beyond. A
particularly large and well-armed contingent came from Portugal, and
it is to one of these Portuguese adventurers, known as the Gentleman
of Elvas, that we owe the most circumstantial first-hand account of
the expedition. Amongst volunteers of other nationality we find
mention of a French priest from Paris, Biscayan carpenters, a Genoa
master-craftsman who could construct anything from a bridge to a
brigantine, a Spaniard reared in England, and even an unnamed
Englishman whose skill with the long-bow matched that of the Indians.
In addition to the fighting-men, there were a few women, numerous
native servants and negro slaves, more than two hundred horses, and a
pack of ferocious mastiffs trained to track down, guard, or tear
recalcitrant Indians to pieces. A herd of swine- possibly the
ancestors of the razor-backs of the south-west today- were taken
along to serve as a reserve of pork rations.
   De Soto opened operations by sending Captain Juan de An?4asco
to reconnoitre the coast of Florida for a harbour where the main
expedition could disembark. The Comptroller returned without
discovering anything suitable, and de Soto was obliged to make his
landfall somewhere in the capacious, many-armed Bahi?2a del
Espi?2ritu Santo, now known as Tampa Bay, which had been the starting
point for the ill-fated Narva?2ez expedition eleven years before.
The Spaniards were in jubilant mood. Juan de An?4asco had managed
to kidnap a couple of savages from whose outlandish speech and vague
signs they hopefully deduced the proximity of abundant gold. The
soldiers boasted that their General had once helped to win the hoarded
wealth of the Incas and would now surely lead them to still more
fabulous treasure. They saw before them a virgin land, lush and
sweet-scented in its spring freshness. The first to land returned
with armfuls of rich grass for the exhausted horses and clusters of
wild grapes for their comrades. Florida seemed a promised land
indeed.
   It was not until some days later that the first Indians were
encountered. Amongst them was a man, all but indistinguishable from
the natives, whom the Spaniards almost rode down. Luckily for himself
and his rescuers, he was spared just in time on account of the few
disjointed words of Castillian <SIC> which he called out. It was
Juan Ortiz, the sailor who had fallen into the hands of the Indians
eleven years before when serving with the Narva?2ez expedition, and who
had survived by turning native. The adhesion of this man to de Soto's
forces proved to be an event of major importance. Now, for the first
time, the Spaniards could count on a trustworthy interpreter familiar
with the language and mentality of the Florida Indians.
   Through Ortiz, de Soto was able to establish contact with
Mucozo, the chieftain who had befriended him. After bestowing gifts
of clothes, weapons, and a fine horse, de Soto came briskly to the
point and asked whether Mucozo had knowledge of any land where gold
and silver were to be found. The Indian replied simply that he knew
nothing of such things, as he had never ventured further than a dozen
leagues from his dwelling place; but some thirty leagues off, he
added, there lived a more powerful chief called Paracoxi in a land of
rich maize-fields. De Soto forthwith despatched a captain to seek
him out. But Paracoxi, though professing friendship, was distrustful
of the Spaniards and went into hiding. His messengers told the
Spaniards that they could find what they were seeking to the west, at
a place called Cale, 'where summer reigned for most of the year, and
men wore golden hats like helmets'. A number of Paracoxi's men, in
token of friendship and in hope of plunder, offered to accompany the
Spaniards.
   To Cale, then, de Soto decided to march. A garrison of one
hundred men was left behind as a base, and a small ship sent back to
convey Porcallo de Figueroa, already disillusioned with the prospects
of Florida as a slave reserve, to Cuba. The hardships of the campaign
now began in grim earnest. The trail which the Spaniards followed led
across a marsh, which the foot soldiers crossed by a makeshift bridge
and the horses with the help of a hawser. Food was short.
Water-cress and palmetto leaves were poor sustenance for men on the
march, and even the maize they had found at Cale was a mean substitute
for the gold they had looked for. Since few Indians had been
captured, the Spaniards had to attend to their own needs themselves,
pounding the maize laboriously in mortars of hollowed log with the
help of wooden pestles, and then sifting the flour through their
shirts of mail, or munching the parched grains whole when they lacked
the patience for this labour. But visions of ease and plenty beckoned
them on; in Apalache, the natives assured them, they would find
everything they desired.
   Before leaving Cale, the Spaniards suffered a loss which, though
trivial in itself, throws light on the scale of values prevailing
amongst the conquistadores and was deeply lamented throughout the
army. Bruto, the most redoubtable and sagacious of their mastiffs,
fell a victim to Indian arrows. The incident occurred when a force of
hostile braves suddenly appeared on the further bank of a river which
the Spaniards were preparing to cross. Before his masters could hold
him back, Bruto broke away from the page who held his leash and made
straight for the enemy. The stream was broad and swift, and the
animal's head presented an easy target for the Indian marksmen. He
succeeded in reaching the far side only to fall dead as he struggled
from the water, his head and shoulders pierced, so Garcilaso declares,
by more than fifty arrows. Thus did Bruto join the shades of Ponce
de Leo?2n's Becerillo and the latter's Leoncillo, who won for his
master Balboa more than two thousand pesos of gold as his share of
plunder, in the Valhalla of the Spaniards' war-dogs.
   As the army toiled across the water-logged wilderness towards
Apalache, the soldiers became aware that they were heading for regions
through which, like the men of Narva?2ez, they might be unable to
force a path. Some began to murmur that they should turn back while
there was yet time. But de Soto was inflexible, refusing to admit
that what others found impossible would be impossible for him.
Meanwhile, there were more immediate dangers to face. The natives
were professing friendship, but de Soto suspected treachery,
especially when they began to assemble powerful forces on the pretext
that they had come to honour the strangers by staging a ceremonial
parade. The Spaniards resolved to strike first, and fell upon them in
a stretch of open country bounded by two lakes. The Indians, taken by
surprise could offer little resistance. More than three hundred of
them were run down and lanced, a few managed to escape into the
forests, while the rest sought safety in the lakes. Grimly the
Spaniards posted themselves around the water and tried to shoot down
the fugitives with cross-bows and arquebus. Cold and exhaustion at
length forced the Indians to make for the shore under cover of
darkness, their heads camouflaged with the leaves of aquatic plants.
But the horsemen were waiting for them, and would charge into the
water, forcing the Indians to give themselves up or turn back. Juan
Ortiz called to them loudly in the Indian tongue, bidding them come
forth if they would save their lives. One after another, the braves
struggled from the water and gave themselves up, until only a dozen or
so, the strongest and most stubborn, remained in the water. Finally,
de Soto ordered his native auxiliaries to plunge in after them. The
last of the enemy were dragged out by the hair, more dead than alive,
put into chains, and divided up amongst their captors with the rest.
Garcilaso says that, as a result of this battle and the trapping of
the Indians in the lakes, more than nine hundred fell captive to the
Spaniards.
   But these warlike savages were not the stuff of which slaves
could be made, and they soon turned on their captors. One day, when
the Spaniards had just finished eating, the captive chieftain who had
been seated beside de Soto 'rose to his feet with all conceivable
savagery and ferocity and closed at once with the Adelantado. Seizing
him by the collar with his left hand, he gave him such a blow over the
eyes, mouth and nose with his right fist that he knocked down the
chair in which he was seated and stretched him out senseless on his
back as if he had been a child. Then, to finish off his victim, he
let himself fall upon him, whilst at the same time giving such a
tremendous roar that it could be heard a quarter of a league
around.' This roar was the signal for the other captives to set
upon their masters throughout the camp. 'As weapons, they made use
of the burning wood from the fire or other things found at hand; many
struck their masters in the face and burned them with pots of boiling
food, others struck them with plates, crocks, jars, and pitchers,
whilst others again used chairs, benches, and tables if they were to
be had, and if not, anything else that came to hand.' But the
revolt of the fettered savages- as desperate a piece of tragic
slapstick as can be found in the annals of the Conquista- could end
only in one way. Their bruised and resentful masters restored order
and sent the captives off to execution. Those who were not struck
down at once were bound to stakes and then shot to death by the
Indians whom the Spaniards had brought along with them from the
friendly tribe of Paracoxi.
   It was now the end of October, and the army pushed on through
swamps and lurking Indian ambushes towards Apalache. They were
approaching a fertile country, with numerous settlements and
plantations of maize and beans. Here Narva?2ez had quartered his
army and sought in vain for the rumoured hoards of gold. The coast
was only some ten leagues away, but the maze of creeks and marsh land
which fringed it thwarted the attempts of reconnaissance parties to
break through to the open sea. At length they reached a lagoon on the
shores of which were traces of an abandoned camp. Heaps of charcoal
ashes marked the spot where a forge had once been built, and the
ground was strewn with the skulls of horses. The Spaniards had
reached the Bahi?2a de los Caballos, where Narva?2ez had built his
brigantines and the cavalry had sacrificed their mounts. De Soto's
men scanned the trunks of the trees for any messages which their
predecessors might have left, but nothing was found. Further down the
shores of the lagoon, a search party came upon some disused canoes in
which they put out to take soundings. The water was just deep enough,
it seemed to them, to take larger vessels. With this report they
returned to the General who decided that the time was now ripe to
order the evacuation of the garrison which he had left behind at Tampa
Bay where his expedition had first landed.
   The difficult task of returning overland to Tampa Bay, through
regions where the Indians would be quick to take up arms against their
old enemies, was entrusted to the Comptroller, Juan de An?4asco, and
a picked band of horsemen.
# 226
<169 TEXT F26>
The Sea-Country of Mehalah
by J. WENTWORTH DAY
   'MEHALAH BAKER! I 2know'd she well, poor 2gal. We went
to dame's school together- three halfpence a week to learn reading,
writing and 'rithmetic. She lived across the creek on Ray Island,
with her old mother, who was forever drunk on gin. You could get a
masterful lot of gin then for 2tuppence. Poor Mehalah- she had a
sad life 2on't. 2'Course, the 2Raverand over at East wrote a book
about her. That was all the go that time o' day. Everybody was
2a-readin' o' it. The 2Raverand was a tall, thin man. Used to walk
about the marsh roads, singin' in the wind. He was a rare 2scholard,
a right 2larned man.'
   Thus spoke my revered, and now, alas, dead, friend, Mrs Jane
Pullen, landlady of that very old, sun-warmed inn, the Peldon Rose,
which crouches in its willows on the Essex shore, cocking a wary eye
across the water at the independent isle of Mersea.
   For fifty years she was landlady of this ancient inn, which the
Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, that master of Victorian melodrama,
immortalized in Mehalah, A Story of the Salt Marshes, first
published in 188. Today it is a collector's piece. It sent shudders
down the delicate spines of our grandmothers.
   Mrs Pullen was over eighty when she died, thirty years ago.
That helps to date Mehalah Baker, the pathetic girl of the Essex
marshes who lived in a small farmhouse built of wreckage timber and
roofed with red pantiles, on Ray Island. You may still trace the
foundations among wind-twisted thorn trees on that lonely little isle
of saltings and coarse grass, between the shifting tides of the twin
creeks, Ray Channel and Strood Channel, which cut off the bold, bright
men of Mersea from the duller chaps over in England.
   Baring-Gould's story of Mehalah is high-pitched, grim,
melodramatic, removed to the end of the 18th century for romantic
effect. Redeemed by exquisite word-pictures of the marshes and
true-life portraits of marshland characters, it has been reprinted
eighteen times.
   Briefly, the Mehalah Sharland of the melodrama is wooed by Elijah
Rebow, a marsh farmer, brutal, cunning, ferocious. He owns the Ray
and lives in Red Hall. Mehalah, vivid, raven-haired and gipsy-fierce,
hates him. Her heart is set on George De Witt, a young fisherman.
Rebow, in revenge, supplies her mother with secret kegs of smuggled
rum, steals their sheep, betrays De Witt to the press gang, and
finally sets fire to the Ray farmhouse and takes the now penniless
girl and her almost senile mother to live at Red Hall. In despair she
marries him, swearing never to consummate the marriage.
   On her wedding night, Mehalah hits Rebow with a bottle. It
contains vitriol and blinds him. Stunned by remorse, she swears to
look after him for the rest of her life. Her old admirer, George De
Witt, returns from the navy; but it is too late. He announces that he
will marry her rival, Phoebe Musset, and Mehalah realizes that Rebow
alone is constant. Later, in a passion the blind man knocks her
senseless, lifts her into his boat, rows out to sea and pulls out the
boat's plug. The pair, their marriage unconsummated, drown together.
   Despite this barn-storming quality, the book grips you. Those
who remember, as I do, the fanatical, biblical frenzy of marshland
religious beliefs and family feuds, glimpse flashes of truth. There
are still De Witts, Mussets, Petticans, Pudneys and others in the
marsh villages. And Rebow is a remembered name. The melodrama,
however, as told by Baring-Gould is, I believe, pure fantasy, apart
from the use of local place-names and surnames.
   Except for the seaward side of Mersea Island which is ruined by a
sprawl of suburban bungalows, utterly alien to the island tradition of
building, this fascinating half-land of sea-creeks and salt marshes is
much as Mehalah knew it. Salt tides still gurgle in crab-holes. The
ebb bares the shining mud-flats. Lonely creeks are opal in the dawn,
sword-blue in the sun, greyly silver under misty moons. Curlew
whistle haunting music. Redshank ring their million bells in the
courting days of spring. At night, bar-geese laugh their ghastly
laughter far out on the crawling tide- the ghosts, they say, of
drowned sailors, down in the green alleys of Fiddlers' Green, mocking
the living about to join them.
   In winter the brent geese come south over bitter seas from
Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya to winter on Dengie Flats, where the
sea-wall, houseless, manless, goes marching down the coast for a dozen
lonely miles. The tides ebb out for a mile or more. If you are lost
in a duck-punt in a winter fog, as I have been, sea and land melt into
grey, terrifying nothingness. You can only tell the direction of the
land when the tide has ebbed by the lie of seaweed and eel-grass on
the mud.
   A country of high skies and incredibly clear lights, of drifting
sea-fogs and sharp tides. An old, old land of beauty and mystery
haunted by Roman and Dane, East Saxon and Norman, and by all that
rough crew of smugglers and wreckers, wildfowlers and fishermen,
poachers and marsh-men whose immemorial kingdom it is.
   Landward, miles of rough grass marshes, cattle-dotted, seamed by
reedy 'fleets' where wild duck nest and reed-warblers chitter in
the reeds, melt into low uplands, bright with corn. Great farmhouses,
built when the Armada was a boding threat, stand within moats starred
by water-lilies, sentinelled by cloudy elms. They and their villages
bear names that echo Saxon and Roman, Dane and Norman. Most of them
lie at the head of lonely creeks. In the old days sprit-sailed barges
glided, red-sailed, above the land to village hithes with cattle and
corn, coals and wood, or stacked high with hay. The old green 'barge
roads', raised causeways of grass, still run from many a farmyard to
forgotten havens where weed-grown posts stand memorial to the rough
seaman who tied up there.
   There is such an old green road from the off-buildings at Decoy
Farm on Bohun's Hall at Tollesbury to Thurslet Creek, which maps show
as Thistly Creek, a name not used locally. Across the fields lie
Tolleshunt D'Arcy Hall and Bourchier's Hall; the first within a
perfect moat, the second with fragments of a homestead moat. Within a
gunshot of Bourchier's Hall stand the mournful remains of Guisnes
Court, built from the old stones of London Bridge.
   Those four house names preserve manorial memories. It was Baron
Bohun who, with Bigod, threw the threats of Edward =1 in his face
with the words: 'By God, Sir King, we will neither go nor hang.'
Tolleshunt D'Arcy derives from the D'Arcys who held half this wild
marsh country in feudal fee. Baldwin, Earl of Guisnes, held a
knight's fee of the Honour of Boulogne in Tollesbury in the reign of
King John, which passed later to Robert Bourchier, Lord Chancellor of
England and Earl of Essex. Robert, Lord Bourchier, kept his first
court at Bourchier's Hall in 1329.
   For the rest of these echoes of history, there lie, scattered
under wide marsh skies, manors and villages which sing on the tongue-
Salcott-cum-Virley, Bradwell-juxta-Mare, Tolleshunt Knights, Layer
Breton, Layer-de-la-Haye: all are Norman. Fingringhoe, Langenhoe and
Wivenhoe smell of the Viking. The gaunt grey priory of St. Osyth,
across the Colne to the east of Brightlingsea, is dedicated to a
forgotten Saxon saint.
   All this coast is vivid with history. A mile east of Bradwell,
at the end of the straight Roman road which leads through wheat and
barley to the sea, you will find remnants of the twelve-foot-thick
walls of the old Roman fort of Othona, built to guard the mouth of the
Blackwater in the reign of Diocletian or Constantine =1. It was
garrisoned by the Count of the Saxon Shore.
   There, in A.D. 653, Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, built
from the Roman ruins St. Peter's Chapel, the little cathedral which
stands, earth-floored, wind-beaten, on a slight rise at the end of the
sea-wall. It is fifty-five feet long and twenty-six feet wide, barely
large enough to hold a couple of dozen worshippers. Hundreds of
pilgrims visit it each year and camp in army huts on the near-by
marsh. Elizabethan seamen used it as a beacon tower whose flames
flickered at night far over the treacherous sea-flats. Georgian
smugglers stored their barrels in it. In the First World War, troops
used it as a look-out. Today, it is reconsecrated, a place of God.
   The only dead man to lie in state, during the last century or
more, within those lonely walls on the edge of the crawling sea was my
gallant old friend Walter Linnett, 'the last of the Essex fowlers',
who died only a year or two ago. He lived his long life in the
one-storeyed, three-roomed wooden coastguard cottage which crouches,
bowered in vines, on the seaward side of the sea-wall at the foot of
the old Roman fort. There he reared his family of six and fed them
with the spoils of punt-gun and peter-net, eel-spear and rabbit-snare.
His great punt-gun, ten feet long, two-and-a-half inches in bore,
three hundred pounds in weight, capable of firing two pounds of swan
shot, now stands in my hall. They say it has killed fifty thousand
wild geese and wild duck in the last hundred years.
   The wild geese are protected now; and in winter the marshes and
bitter mud-flats of Mehalah's country are haunted at dawn and dusk by
long wavering skeins of the great birds like windblown witches.
   The Romans built not only the fort of Othona: they had a pharos,
or lighthouse, on Mersea. They laid the foundations of the Strood,
the causeway which connects the island with the mainland. They went
to Mersea for oysters. They sent their sick there to recover. They
built a temple to Vesta on the site of West Mersea church. When I had
the shooting on Fingringhoe Wick at the mouth of the River Colne, a
lonely peninsula of sandy gravel and saltings, we found the complete
foundations of a Roman villa with a mass of oyster shells.
   Salcott-cum-Virley is still a village; across the creek is the
ghost of the vanished village of Virley. The Sun Inn, immortalized in
Mehalah, stands in the village street, as yet, thank God,
unmodernized. But Virley Church, where Mehalah was married to the
brutal Elijah Rebow by the Reverend Mr Rabbit, is a ruin, whilst the
near-by White Hart Inn, once a den of smugglers, was blotted out by a
bomb in the last war.
   The picture of that tragic wedding, as re-told by Herbert
Tompkins in his Marsh Country Rambles, is a pathetic commentary on
the rough marsh-life of the day. The "nots" in the Decalogue had
been erased by a village humourist; a wormeaten deal table did duty
for an altar; the curate's red cotton handkerchief was the only
altar-cloth. The floor of the chancel was eaten through by rats; the
bones beneath were exposed to view. The congregation consisted
chiefly of a few young folk, who snored sonorously, or cracked nuts,
or adorned the pews with rude sketches of ships. On the wedding-day a
motley crowd assembled to see the fun, and the tiny church was
crowded. In the west gallery boys dropped broken tobacco-pipes on the
heads of the persons below; a sweep, unwashed, pushed forward and took
a seat beside the altar; the Communion-rails were broken down and the
chancel filled with a noisy squabbling mob. Pen and ink were, with
difficulty, found; while the sight-seers exchanged uncomplimentary
sentences aloud in the presence of the Reverend Mr Rabbit. The
bridegroom was arrayed in a "blue coat with brass buttons and
knee-breeches"; old Mrs De Witt, a queer character, had thrown a
smart red coat over her silk dress; on her head was a "broad white
chip hat", tied with ribbons of sky blue; in her frizzled hair was a
bunch of forget-me-nots.
# 24
<17 TEXT F27>
The persons who suffered in the revolt of that year were for the
most part either churchmen (and the ballads, as the peasants, do
reveal an animus against the richer cleric), or individuals personally
associated with misgovernment or the abuse of office (the sheriff of
Nottingham's chief crime was clearly abuse of his official position).
The men who were attacked in 1381 were persons such as Sudbury and
Hales and Legge, whose names were linked with the imposition of the
Poll Tax; John of Gaunt, who was suspected of designs on the throne,
and his affinity: and the lawyers, from justices like Bealknap and
Cavendish down to the apprentices of the Temple- the men, that is,
who would have been individually responsible for resisting the
peasants' claims at law, when they attempted to establish their free
status by exemplifications out of Domesday, or were charged with
breaking the Statute of Labourers. In other words the brunt of the
attack in 1381 fell on those who were, either professionally or
personally, directly associated with political mismanagement or legal
oppression. It was the same at the time of Cade's Revolt, when lesser
gentry fought side by side with the peasant: their attack was on the
politicians and the corrupt Lancastrian officials, James Fiennes and
his affinity, and the sheriffs and under-sheriffs of counties.
Rumours of plans for the wholesale slaughter of the aristocracy in
1381, and of the clergy in 145, were clearly exaggerated. Men of the
period, both humble and gentle, accepted a stratified society: what
they resented was the abuse of official or social position, and this
is precisely the attitude which the ballads echo, with their detailed
catalogue of the crimes of men like the sheriff of Nottingham and the
Abbot of St. Mary's. One should not expect popular literature to
concentrate its attack on the manorial system or the inconvenience of
villein status, because the peasants themselves did not see their
grievances in economic or systematic terms: they saw them rather in
terms of the personal viciousness of individual lords. The men they
were after were Hobbe the Robber and the lawyers who had set
"1Trewthe under a lokke" and would not unfasten it for any
"1but he sing dedero".
   There are however other reasons, Mr. Holt declares, why the
ballads should not appeal to a peasant audience. For instance, the
crucial events centre round the county courts, where the sheriff and
the knights were the dominant figures; and there is no mention in them
of the justices of the peace, with whom the humble criminal would
surely have had more to do. The reason for this seems, however, to be
elementary: the justices of the peace could not declare outlawry,
which had to be proclaimed by the sheriff in the county court. That
peasants would be unconcerned about this would hardly seem a tenable
view in the light of Wat Tyler's demand at Smithfield in 1381 "that
sentence of outlawry be not pronounced henceforth in any process at
law". Again, Mr. Holt asserts that the methods and manner of
poaching in the ballads are aristocratic, and its object sport, not
food. What then of the outlaws' claim in the 1Gest of Robyn
Hode:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   1We lyve by our kynge"s dere,
   Other shyft have not wee.
<END QUOTE>
   Here surely food is the implied object of poaching. That the
ballads make no mention of the trapping of rabbits and other lesser
game is hardly germane, for the ballads are certainly intended to be
heroic and this is not a heroic topic. Peasant poaching was by no
means confined to humble quarry: another of Wat Tyler's demands in
1381 was that all warrens, parks and chases should be free, "so that
throughout the realm, in ... the woods and forests, poor as well as
rich might take wild beasts and hunt the hare in the field".
Moreover the manner of poaching in the ballads surely stamps it as
humble. The rich man hunted with dogs, as the example of Abbot Clowne
of Leicester, whose success in breeding hounds earned him the respect
of the highest in the realm, reminds us. The outlaws shot their deer
with the bow, which was not the weapon of the aristocrat. The great
schools of English archery were the village butts, and it was from
among the men who had learned their skill there that Edward =3
recruited his longbowmen. The military importance of the archer led
Edward to make archery contests compulsory on feast days, but it never
earned the archer social status. The poachers of Sherwood, whose
skill proved so useful at Halidon Hill in 1333, were not sporting
gentry, but men arrayed from among those humble people whom the
Statute of Winchester had commanded to keep "bows and arrows out of
the forest, and in the forest bows and bolts". Edward =1 had
clearly realised to what use men who had less than twenty marks in
goods and who lived in the forest would put their arrows, and
protected his venison accordingly.
   The arguments which are said to preclude the ballads from
appealing primarily to a peasant audience seem therefore to be weak
ones. What then of the positive arguments for their being composed
for gentle ears? Mr. Holt says that the knightly class is
consistently treated with favour in them. It is true that in the
1Gest Sir Richard 1atte Lee is on the side of light and that
Gamelyn was a knight's son. What, however, are we to make of the
county knights in the Tale of Gamelyn, who were ready to a man to
conspire with Gamelyn's villainous elder brother to cheat the boy of
his inheritance? What are we to say of Alan 1a'Dale, who but for
Robin Hood would have died broken-hearted because his love was chosen
"to be an old knight's delight?" And from what class were the
sheriffs and justices of the ballads chosen, if not from among the
knights? The fact is that the knights as a class are not treated
consistently in the ballads, which in my submission is what we should
expect. The commons had no animus against social rank as such: what
they resented was the lordship of unjust men and their corrupt
practices. Their political horizons were limited and local: their
grievances were specific. Their appeal in 1381 was to specified
rights of ancient standing, to charters of Cnut and Offa and to
Domesday Book: in 145 they drew up their complaints in a list,
setting them out one by one. And on both occasions they limited their
governmental demands to the removal of evil councillors and officials.
So in the outlaw stories the final resolution is the substitution of
just men for corrupt officials: the way to set the world to rights is
not to reform the system, but to kill the Sheriff of Nottingham and to
make Gamelyn Chief Justice of the Forest. Hero and villain are
differentiated in the manner which a medieval audience would have
understood, by distinction of personal character rather than social
class. The knights are not all good or all bad: Gamelyn, the Outlaw
King, is the hero, and his brother, the sheriff, is the villain, but
both are born of the same father and are of the same social standing.
   Neither the attitude expressed in the ballads towards persons of
high social status nor their attitude towards social problems seem
necessarily to associate them with the views of the knightly class.
Mr. Holt claims that their appeal to this section of the community
is also revealed by the background of the stories, which he describes
as that of "maintenance and misgovernment at their worst, of baronial
and border warfare", subjects of primary interest to the gentry and
to the northern gentry at that. I have failed to find a single
reference to border warfare in any of the genuinely early Robin Hood
ballads. This is the more surprising, since certain incidents
recounted of Robin Hood in the ballads are also told of border heroes.
The Outlaw Murray of Ettrick Forest warred on the "1Southrons" at
the head of a band clad in Lincoln green, and William Wallace,
according to Blind Harry, adopted the classical outlaw's disguise of a
potter to spy on his enemies. This disguise was used by Eustace the
Monk, the central figure of a thirteenth-century romance, and by Robin
Hood. Incidents in another French romance of the same period, that of
Fulk Fitzwarin, also resemble stories told of Robin Hood, as do some
of the incidents in the story of Hereward the Wake. Since a great
deal of the matter common to these stories (for instance the
chivalrous episodes, the fights with giants and dragons, and the
scenes of courtly love) are clearly intended for an aristocratic
audience, Mr. Holt argues that the Robin Hood ballads were meant for
the same ears. What seems to me significant, however, is that while
the romances share these common themes with the story of William
Wallace, which concerns knightly struggles in Scotland and on the
Border, courtly and chivalrous material are entirely lacking from the
story of Robin Hood. In other words, it looks as if the matter common
to these knightly tales and to the outlaw ballads is not in the latter
case derivative, but is the result of borrowing from the same source.
Moreover, the omission from the ballads of chivalrous material and of
references, for instance, to the border wars, surely suggests that
they were aimed not at the same audience as the longer romances, but
at a different one which was less interested in these subjects.
   That this was the case is confirmed both by the testimony of the
earliest references to Robin Hood in the chronicles, and by the
consistently favourable attitude of the outlaws of story towards the
poorer classes. The outlaws were not always poor men, but the poor
man did not demand that. He demanded kindness, good lordship to
engage his fidelity, and this is what the outlaw gave. It is the
theme of Robin Hood's famous advice:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   1But loke ye do no husbonde harm,
   That tilleth with his ploughe.
<END QUOTE>
   It is the theme, too, of his final epitaph in the 1Gest:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   1For he was a good outlawe,
   And dyde pore men moch god.
<END QUOTE>
   How the outlaw was rewarded is told in the Tale of Gamelyn:
the knights of the county might conspire to cheat him, but his
villeins were faithful even in the hour of extreme misfortune:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   1Tho were his bonde-men sory and nothing glad
   When Gamelyn her lord wolves heed was cryed and maad.
<END QUOTE>
   It was to protect them against the oppressions of their new
master that Gamelyn came to the Moot Hall, where he was arrested and
bound by the sheriff. Whether he is like Gamelyn a knight or like
Robin Hood a yeoman, the outlaw hero of the fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century stories is the friend of the poor: he is not
consistently the friend of the knight.
   The word "poor", as I have used it here, does require a gloss.
The poor men of the outlaw ballads are not, certainly,
thirteenth-century villeins, bound down by ancestral thraldom and
working three days a week on their lord's land. They are mostly
yeomen, bound to one another by the ties of "good yeomanry", proud,
independent and free. Because this independence of spirit is a
striking feature of the outlaw ballads, Mr. Holt has drawn a sharp
distinction between the yeoman and the peasant. He defines the word
yeoman as meaning a special kind of household servant, in rank only a
little inferior to the squire and quite possibly of gentle breeding.
I doubt very much whether the word can be limited to this meaning in
fourteenth- or fifteenth-century usage, and this is after all the
period in which the ballads as we know them were composed. I do not
see how such a meaning can be squared with the reference to "genz
de mestre et d'artifice appellez yomen" in the Parliament Roll of
1363, or with Barbour's description of yeomen who fight "1apon
fut"- a most unknightly situation.
# 223
<171 TEXT F28>
After a long struggle Wratislaw won his case with costs, and Arnold
had to accept the remaining Wratislaw and Gibb children even though
they knew no Latin. However, no general attempt was made to restore
the lost forms, and the local children who happened to attend in spite
of the headmaster's displeasure had to be coached specially.
   The Wratislaw case of 1839 was the last of the individual
protests. His social position was exceptional. As an acknowledged
member of a foreign nobility he was the social superior of everyone
locally in spite of his professional occupation. Without the English
tradition behind him he was able to question national and local
opinions on a rational basis, and this independence of mind made him
and his family Radicals in a predominantly Tory neighbourhood. The
probe into his own rights was no doubt as much a reflection of his own
position as a member of the first generation on foreign soil as a
consequence of his experience as a solicitor and his ability to assess
the legal position at first hand.
   After Wratislaw came the revolt of the traders. A few middle
class sons were always to be found at Rugby School, but the numbers
from Rugby itself were few. On the other hand acceptance of the sons
of gentry and local professional men- doctors, bankers and
solicitors- was a traditional practice, and, more important still,
the sons of such parents were accepted or at least grudgingly
tolerated by the boys. In the 183s and 184s these "accepted"
groups sent numbers varying from five to seventeen in each year, while
the total number of traders' sons was only eleven for the same entire
period of twenty years in spite of the large number of such children
available. The trader's son had a very tough time. At the least he
was ostracised and at the worst severely bullied, particularly in the
lower forms. There is overwhelming evidence of this both from outside
and inside the school, and enough of it was known locally to prevent
the middle classes generally from risking their children. On the
other hand there was no provision for middle class education in the
town before 184 apart from a special group at the lower class school,
and the main mass went elsewhere- a few walked to Barnwell and
Sheasby's School at Bilton, while others went as boarders to
neighbouring towns, Daventry, Hinckley, Husbands Bosworth, Atherstone.
This was expensive and even later, when a middle class day academy
was set up, the cost varied from +6 to +1 p.a. depending on the
number of extras. Over Rugby School the traders were in a dilemma for
they were dependent on it for trade while the headmasters actively
discouraged use of the school. The declaration of a shop out of
bounds could bring ruin and there was no lack of precedence for this.
The traders were torn in two directions. Economy and their rights as
townfolk and parents urged them to use the school, while economic
survival forbade it. Very few braved the consequences and sent sons,
although in one or two cases like the Sale and Edmunds families there
was a long tradition of usage. While the school prospered the traders
had the satisfaction of sharing in the prosperity even if denied their
birthright, yet, when adversity came under the headmastership of
Goulburn from 185 to 1857 they lost both ways:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ... the reason why the inhabitants do not avail themselves of the
privilege (of educating their sons at Rugby School) is their general
apathy, supineness and dread of losing the patronage of the masters,
who derive their income from the Charity.
<END QUOTE>
   Even so four traders took courage and submitted sons (1855), but
the next year the number was down to one, and reduced again the next
year. However, with a new headmaster, the situation changed
dramatically. Within months the prosperity of the town was restored
and for two successive years they sent sons to the school in
increasing numbers- five traders being involved in 1858 and twelve in
1859. But that was the end. Middle class initiative declined rapidly
never to be renewed, and this was in effect, the last defiance of
tradition by the local traders. The explanation of this episode is
linked with the background of the new headmaster, Frederick Temple.
He was knowledgable <SIC> in the social sense by his association
with the lower classes generally and the workhouse in particular
through his Principalship at Kneller Hall, a college designed to
produce teachers of children in the workhouses of the country. It was
reasonable to suppose that such a man's sympathies would be wide and
not geared specifically to the upper classes. This view was
strengthened by the fact that he had written only two years before a
paper on National Education, through which he had become one of the
champions of middle class education. His scheme had involved a
reassessment of the 74 grammar schools. While he felt that the great
Public Schools were justified in clinging on to the classics,
elsewhere it was a mistake. To the traders of Rugby his words must
have sounded almost prophetic:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   They <grammar schools> were intended for the education of the
whole community, but specially for that of the middle classes ... yet
the schools were assuredly not intended for the gentry alone, but
rather looked to poverty as a special qualification for admission.
The middle classes were thus marked out as the chief objects of the
goodwill of the founders.
<END QUOTE>
   Or again
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   These schools <grammar schools> were meant for the middle
classes: they were meant to teach Greek and Latin. One must be
sacrificed- either the persons or the things. Can there be a doubt
which ought to be sacrificed?
<END QUOTE>
   The whole trend of his writing emphasised the fact that his own
school, Rugby, was not fulfilling its real object. Temple was
embarrassed and could hardly object to the children of locals with the
vigour of his predecessors. No wonder that traders' children poured
in during 1858 and 1859. But the experiment was not successful. It
was soon clear that Temple did not really welcome his new clients any
more than the others had done. Any idea of mixing the social classes
appalled him. In a similar situation he was later to warn the middle
classes of Rugby most forcibly that they would ruin any middle class
school of their own if they allowed entry to lower class children.
Even so headmaster and school had a conscience, and we know that at
one time the assistant masters formed a committee of their own to
consider what could be done educationally for the town.
   So the second phase of local resistance faded. The arguments
continued and at least one pamphlet was published, but as far as
records indicate the locality was relatively quiet up to and during
the national clamour that led to the setting up of the Public Schools
Commission. Eventually, in 1864, when this Commission published its
findings it advised that any wishes of the Founder should be ignored
since the modern town bore no resemblance to the Elizabethan
counterpart and since Rugby School was in fact a long standing
specialised boarding school and could not be altered. Their
recommendation was obvious:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   That the local qualification should, in course of time, cease to
confer any advantage.
<END QUOTE>
   In one way the argument was sound enough. When Lawrence Sheriff,
the founder, made his will in 1567, Rugby was a mere village of 35
people; by 18 it was a town of almost 1,5. Had he been able to
penetrate two and a half centuries of time he would have recognised
nothing, for not only had the town grown but it had changed, and the
only link with the past was the name of one tavern- "The Hen and
Chickens". He would have found the people equally strange, not only
in name but in habits, dress and manners. Only if he had moved right
away from the people and their town would he have seen something
familiar in the lie of the land, the flow of the Avon, and his own
tiny hamlet of Brownsover. The town of 18, however, bore no
relation whatever to the Rugby of Lawrence Sheriff. But this was not
the whole story and it is a big step from showing the weakness of an
argument to assume that all claim is void and that a decision must be
made in favour of the existing situation where indeed the argument was
considerably weaker still.
   Within the town itself the Report produced a sensation. There
was real cause for complaint since the Commissioners had not asked for
the opinions of any of the townsfolk proper. From this point of view
the Report was very one-sided. The Commissioners had produced a very
bulky document in four volumes but they were hardly neutral observers.
Of the seven members, four were in titled aristocratic families, four
were at Eton or had close relatives there, one went to Westminster and
was a governor of Charterhouse, while another was an Old Rugbeian. As
for the man who cannot thus be classified, he was W. H. Thompson,
Regius Professor of Greek and future Master of Trinity, already deeply
concerned about the effects of reform on his own college at Cambridge.
   The Report produced a third and co-operative phase in the town's
fight for its rights. Previously objection had come either from a
single member of the community (Wratislaw) or from the trader group of
the middle classes spurred on by such men as E. Edmunds, T. W.
Tipler and J. Haswell. Hitherto the local gentry and professional
classes had held aloof for the school had accepted their sons readily
enough. But now the ban was to apply to everyone, gentry as much as
trader, while the town would no longer attract rich residents merely
for the sake of the education. In the matter of justice and in terms
of economics the town was threatened with starvation.
   Among the first to react was the headmaster, Temple, himself. He
suggested that +6 p.a. of the income from the charity be spent
in providing a separate school for the middle classes of the town.
Fifty local boys would be taught there free and seven boys a year
would pass from this school into Rugby School proper. This "lower"
school was to concentrate on a sound commercial education of English,
writing, mathematics, French, Latin, but no Greek. Unfortunately
Temple had chosen the wrong moment and everyone condemned the scheme
since the offered +6 did not begin to compare with the Sheriff
income of +5,, while a cash settlement of the kind suggested
appeared to some almost in the nature of a bribe for the surrender of
the town's rights.
   The Report of the Public Schools Commission was followed by the
Public Schools Bill. Under this free education at Rugby was to cease
although the Governing Body was to use part of the income for the
benefit of the town, perhaps in the form of a new school.
   This official proposal met with even more resistance than
Temple's original plan. All classes except the lower joined together.
A public meeting was called for 22nd March 1865 and a committee
formed of the Rector, the brother of the Lord of the Manor, other
gentry, a banker, professional men and traders, with solicitors acting
as secretaries and a backing of +652 to cover expenses. The campaign
was off to a fine start but when a petition of protest was opened for
the public to sign, only 2 in fact did so. In a population of 8,
this is a very small number and represents less than a third of the
gentry and middle class adults alone. The vast majority of the gentry
and most of the trading classes held aloof. The lower classes were,
as always, mere spectators. This small response was not entirely due
to apathy for many of the traders were frightened of Temple's
displeasure, and the gentry who had come to the town specially for the
education had the welfare of their sons at the school as their prime
and indeed only consideration.
# 233
<172 TEXT F29>
Ayrshire's Little Castle
BY VICTORIA GAUL
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   When the last leaf 2draps fae the 2auld aish tree,
   The Boyds o' Penkill 2maun cease 2tae be.
<END QUOTE>
   SO RUNS AN OLD RHYME WHICH CAME SADLY true when, in 1897,
there died Miss Alice Boyd, 15th Laird of Penkill and the last of the
Boyds.
   Her brother, Spencer Boyd, 14th Laird, last in the direct line,
and descendant of James Boyd, second son of John Boyd of Penkill and
Trochrig, had died in 1867. He left Penkill to his sister, with
instructions that, when she died, it was to go to the children of his
mother's second marriage to Mr. Henry Courtney. Thus, in 1897, a
grand-daughter of his mother's, Eleanor Margaret Courtney, became
owner of Penkill and assumed the name "Courtney-Boyd," which name
the present owner, her half-sister, Miss Evelyn May Courtney, also
assumed on succeeding to the estate in 1946.
   Penkill Castle sits, perched on a hill about three miles from
Girvan, so hidden by trees that it is almost invisible from the road.
It was built by Adam Boyd, grandson of Robert, Lord of Kilmarnock,
around 145, on land granted to him by Alexander =3 for assisting him
at the Battle of Largs.
   Penkill was a tall keep with corner turrets pierced with
loop-holes for defence. The living-room above the basement where the
cattle were housed was paved in red and yellow tiles, while, above
this, was the Lady's Bower. Deep glens made a natural moat and there
was a drawbridge and portcullis (found years later lying in a
blacksmith's yard).
   The castle fell into disrepair, and when, in 1628, Thomas Boyd
brought his young love, Marion Mure of Rowallan, to view his heritage,
they found it in a sorry state. Yet, we can imagine Marion, fired by
its ancient beauty, crying, "Thomas, we 2maun bide in Penkill.
We'll make it a 2bonnie 2hame."
   And together they did. With Marion's dowry, walls were repaired,
rooms added, and an outside stair built. Above its doorway was
inserted a plaque uniting the heraldry of both families. Oak chairs
(still to be seen today) were carved with their initials and the date,
1628.
   Though Penkill descended from father to son till 175, the house
was neglected, and when, in 1827, Spencer Boyd inherited Penkill it
had been a deserted ruin for nearly a hundred years. However, when he
came of age, his maternal English grandfather, William Losh, proud of
his grandson's Scottish heritage, provided the necessary money to
restore it, and, with his mother and sister, Spencer Boyd made it
their home.
   So, in the 18's rose the Penkill we know. Probably influenced
by the Victorian taste for heavy architecture, Spencer caused to be
built a great tower to enclose a handsome circular staircase. The
ruined staircase and doorway were swept away and passages and
ante-rooms joined the staircase to the rooms of the keep. Oak trees
on the estate were used in the renovations. His sister, Alice, a
woman of fine, artistic perception, had the deep windows of the keep,
with their stone seats, glazed with clear glass so that the views from
each appear like framed pictures.
   When their mother died, Alice Boyd, wishing to further her
interest in painting, went to Newcastle School of Art, where she met
one of the executive, William Bell Scott, painter and poet. Thus
began a close friendship with him and his wife. Later, the families
divided their time between Penkill and London, where Scott was
appointed decorative artist at South Kensington.
   During their stay in London, the families met many famous people,
Holman Hunt, Swinburne, Tennyson, William Morris and Dante and
Christina Rossetti.
   Spencer Boyd died in 1867, and was buried on a wild day of snow
in Old Dailly churchyard. After her brother's death, Alice Boyd
commissioned Scott to paint a mural on the circular staircase. He
chose to illustrate "The King's 2Quair," executing it with oil
pigments, the medium being wax dissolved in turpentine. Some of the
painting, which took four years to complete, was ruined by the lime of
the thick walls having not yet dried out, and Scott repainted part in
zinc. Though he wrote later in his autobiography, ~"Most probably the
pictures will now remain without change," part has again corroded,
but enough remains to show the brilliance of colour and design.
   In 1868, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in despair because of failing
eyesight, was invited to Penkill. Here he found tranquillity in its
worn battlements, and in the rolling meadows and deep glens.
Christina Rossetti came also to Penkill, and wrote some of her poems
in "Windy Room," a bedroom at the top of the keep. She described
Alice Boyd as "perhaps the prettiest, handsomest woman I ever met."
   Penkill is not a pretentious castle. It is a well-loved,
comfortable home ever open to those who love the countryside. With no
rich furnishings, it yet retains, with its priceless tapestries, a
harmony befitting its ancient grey stone.
   The deep windows in the low-roofed library, with its grey velvet
settee drawn up to the fire, look towards the west, the glowing
colours of orange, red, and blue, in the carpets, seeming to vie with
the hues of the sunset as it burns over Ailsa and Kintyre.
   Above is the square drawing-room, with rose carpet and wine
curtains contrasting with the deep blue panelled roof. The Flemish
tapestries on the walls make a fitting background for the gilt
furniture.
   The roof of the Laird's bedroom, in the 1628 part of the house,
was painted by Alice Boyd, whose work, with that of William Morris,
appears in some of the rooms. The dark oak furniture was carved by
Spencer Boyd.
   To the right of the tower which dominates Penkill is the long
addition which William Bell Scott designed in 1883 as a gallery for
his paintings and those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Now an attractive
dining-room, it is approached by a passage hung with William Morris
tapestries. It contains many fine paintings and drawings by Rossetti,
David Scott (whose fine portrait of his brother William is in the
National Gallery), and William Bell Scott. The latter's "Una and the
Lion" hangs here. This room, panelled in pitch pine, contains the
Chippendale chairs and gate-legged table belonging to the grandfather
Losh who helped to redeem Penkill.
MacDougall Chief and the Robber
BY SETON GORDON
   JOHN MACDOUGALL OF MACDOUGALL, CHIEF OF THE CLAN, LIVED IN the
early 18th century. He was usually known as Iain Ciar, which may be
translated in English as Dark-complexioned John. He was a leading
figure in the first Jacobite rising in 1715, and on the suppression of
that rising was an outlaw for a number of years. During his
wanderings in disguise, he crossed the sea to Ireland in order to
visit the Earl of Antrim, his kinsman. At the edge of a wide and dark
forest, he was advised by a woman he met to continue his journey
through open country, for she said that a noted robber lived in the
forest, and waylaid anyone who should pass that way. She told Iain
Ciar that, so great a menace was the robber, the Earl of Antrim had
offered a reward of +1 to anyone who should slay him and bring him
his head.
   The MacDougall chief, penniless and anxious to cross the sea to
France to be beyond the reach of his enemies, thought that this was an
opportunity not to be missed. He and his trusty companion,
Livingstone by name, therefore entered the forest, and as they
followed a faint and devious track through the dark undergrowth and
beneath old and gnarled trees, it was not long before they saw the
famous robber standing before them. He demanded from Iain Ciar his
money or his life. The Highland chief was without more than the
proverbial sixpence, but that was the last thing he wished the robber
to know. Telling the highwayman that he was prepared to part with
neither, he challenged him to mortal combat. Both men were expert
swordsmen and the fight was long and hard, but the victory was at last
gained by Iain Ciar, who carried the robber's head to the Earl of
Antrim, and received from him the +1 reward.
   The robber's whistle is one of the heirlooms at Dunollie Castle,
Oban, the ancestral seat of the Chiefs of MacDougall, where the family
still reside below the ancient stronghold on its rock looking out
towards the Isle of Mull. Beneath the ivy-grown castle is an old and
weather-beaten Scots fir. This tree is now upwards of 15 years old.
It was planted to commemorate Captain Alexander MacDougall of
MacDougall, of the 72nd regiment (later the Seaforth Highlanders),
eldest son of Patrick MacDougall, Chief of the Clan. Captain
Alexander was killed, at the age of 27, at Cuidad Rodrigo in Spain, in
1812. His miniature, by William Englehart, is preserved at Dunollie.
   The name of Captain MacDougall is well known to pipers of the
present day, for a celebrated composition in Ceo?3l Mo?2r, the Great
Music of the Highland bagpipe, was written in his honour by almost the
last of the hereditary MacDougall pipers to the chiefs, Ronald
MacDougall. The hereditary MacDougall pipers, while not so famous as
the MacCrimmons of Skye, were players and composers of distinction,
and the tune, "Lament for Captain MacDougall," is one of delicacy
and feeling. These pipers lived at Moleigh, near Oban, and their
portion of land was known as Croit nam Piobairean, the Piper's Croft.
Like the MacCrimmons, the MacDougalls had their College of Piping,
the last who presided at this college being Ronald Ba?3n MacDougall,
who was the grandfather of Ronald Mo?2r, the last hereditary piper to
the clan.
"THE DUKE"
BY HUBERT FENWICK
The Story of James, Duke of Albany and York, as Lord High
Commissioner at Holyroodhouse
   THE VISIT OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN TO the General Assembly
last October was unique in many ways. The occasion was, of course,
the Quatercentenary of the Scottish Reformation, but besides this Her
Majesty was the very first Sovereign Lady to honour the "Fathers and
Brethren" with her presence, a circumstance not lacking in
significance, especially when one recalls John Knox's well kent
fulminations against women in general and female rulers in particular.
The last reigning monarch to attend the Assembly was actually James
=6, before he became the King of "Great Brittany," and before the
appearance of his Authorised Version of the Bible; and he did so in
order to discipline the members, not to praise or encourage them. It
was he, too, who instituted the office of High Commissioner, so that
the Crown could keep a good eye on the proceedings; and ever since
Jacobean times the Sovereign has been represented at the Assembly by a
royally appointed representative.
   The office of Lord High Commissioner is now more ornamental than
functional, at least in the sense that the holder is no longer a
"spy" in the pay of the Crown, which itself has changed beyond all
recognition and is completely above politics or religious faction.
Curiously enough, however, the first purely Scottish Bill of the
present Parliament proposed an increase in the allowance made to the
Queen's representative to the General Assembly, and in doing so drew
unexpected attention to the altered meaning of that role, showing how
it too had lost its controversial flavour. Many Commissioners have
come from the ranks of the aristocracy and professional classes, some
have been personally associated with the work of the Kirk, while one,
James, Duke of Albany and York, brother of Charles =2, was a convert
to Roman Catholicism.
   Unlike the "Merry Monarch," the future James =7 and =2
stubbornly refused to subscribe to the "Test Act," which required
all holders of office under the Crown to declare themselves
Protestants. He found himself excluded from the Court, removed from
the Navy Office, and banished, first to Holland, and then, in 1679, to
Scotland, where the law was less rigorous.
# 22
<173 TEXT F3>
EL CID
The Facts behind the Legend
by Henry Austin
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The Canon in "Don Quixote": There is no doubt that there
was such a man as El Cid, but much doubt whether he achieved what is
attributed to him.
<END QUOTE>
   El Cid- the hero idealised in Spain's most famous mediaeval
epic poem, also by Corneille and Victor Hugo, and now in an American
spectacular film. What are the facts about this man who has inspired
such a powerful legend?
   Rodrigo de Vivar, named by the Moslem Spaniards, El Sayyid
Campeador, the lord and champion, was born about 143 and died at
the age of 56 in 199. The date and place of his birth are unknown.
His mother, of the Asturian nobility, and his father, a Castilian,
lived in Vivar, a little village which even today is primitive and
grim in appearance. The young Rodrigo found himself from the start in
the midst of the strains and tensions that Spain was then enduring.
This barren land, glacial in winter and torrid in summer, was on the
frontier between the rival Christian kingdoms of Castile and Navarre,
both sides allying themselves to one or other of the Moslem states of
Spain to gain a temporary advantage.
The Moslem Spaniards
   At this stage of Europe's history, regional not national power
was the chief motive in politics; in Spain, neither secular nor
religious unity was considered a goal worth fighting for. The small
Christian states in the north were divided; so were the Moslem states
of central and northern Spain. The Moslems of Spain, the so-called
Moors, were for the most part of Spanish blood. They had adopted the
language and ways of living, and some the faith of the Moslems. Many
of them had two names, Moslem and European, and had adopted such
customs as the harem and certain legal procedures. Arabic was the
written language of law and commerce for two centuries after the
Christian conquest of Toledo by Alphonso =6 in 185.
Peace and War
   Rodrigo de Vivar has been called by one historian "the most
colourful of the Mozarabs", the Spaniards who had adopted the Moslem
way of life (in Arabic, mustarib). He spent most of his life
among these people. Having received a good education at the Christian
court of Sancho =2, King of Castile, he became the Constable of the
little kingdom, a rank which included command of the army and of the
legal administration. His first taste of action had been in the
battle of Graus, at the age of twenty, between Sancho, in alliance
with the Moors of Saragossa, and Ramiro =1, King of Aragon. For the
next twelve years of his life, he led a peaceful existence as a
country gentleman, carefully looking after his property.
   During this time, he became involved in only one battle. Sancho
sent him to Seville to collect tribute from the king, Motamid. While
he was there Abdullah, King of Granada, attacked Seville but without
success.
   Apart from this one excitement, Rodrigo led a quiet life, in the
words of Louis Bertrand, in his History of Spain, "saddling his
horse only to go and raid his neighbour's cows and sheep."
Jimena
   To please Alphonso, Sancho's brother and rival, he agreed to
marry Jimena Diaz, daughter of the Count of Oviedo, and niece of
Alphonso =5, King of Leon. This marriage of convenience was designed
to strengthen an alliance between the Castilian and Leonese nobility.
Later Rodrigo helped Sancho in his struggle for power with his
brother, by suggesting a deceitful way of taking possession of Leon.
   A new period in Rodrigo's life began in his late thirties, in
181, when Alphonso =6, Sancho's younger brother and successor,
exiled him from his kingdom. He had, it was alleged, kept part of the
tribute he had collected from Motamid of Seville. For this he was
dismissed from the court and banished.
   At the head of three hundred free lances, he rode out of Vivar,
leaving Jimena and his children, to begin a life of mercenary combat,
living by what he could commandeer. In his subsequent conduct, made
up of both cruelty and kindness, "he was almost as much Moslem as
Christian" (Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs).
   He first offered his services to Berenguer, the Christian Count
of Barcelona. The count rejected him. He then travelled on to
Saragossa, where Moktadir, the Moslem king now ruled. This time his
offer was accepted. As Moktadir was in alliance with Alphonso of
Castile, Rodrigo was not making any dramatic or even unusual departure
from one way of life to another. Such hard and fast divisions of
humanity were to come later.
   At Saragossa, the old Roman town of Caesarea Augustus, Rodrigo
served his new master well. Fighting for him against the Christian
King of Navarre, he won from his Moslem soldiers the title of El Cid
Campeador. He extended the Moslem dominions at the expense of the
Christian states of Aragon and Barcelona, and led raids into his
former province of Castile. Moktadir, the King of Saragossa, was a
man of letters and the cultured head of a court of poets, philosophers
and tutors. Rodrigo made this court his home and the base for his
career of freebooting. Saragossa, the most Islamised city of Spain, a
town of minarets and mosques, fountains and entertainment, must have
been a fascinating place to live in. Rodrigo lived here for more than
ten years, until he established himself as sole ruler of Valencia in
194.
Valencia
   In the words of Louis Bertrand, "the great love of the Cid was
not Jimena; it was Valencia". In charge of an army of seven
thousand men, most of them Moslem, he besieged this Moslem city for
nine months and finally defeated it. All the conditions he had agreed
to before the surrender, he violated; the Cadi, his opposite
number, he burnt alive.
   Before the occupation of Valencia, Rodrigo had shown inexcusable
cruelty by throwing refugees from the city onto bivouac fires. He
chased the remainder back into the town, unleashing his camp dogs onto
them.
   Having established himself as sole ruler of Valencia and Murcia,
he summoned his wife and his daughters. He made the chief Mosque a
Cathedral and installed an archbishop. In general policy he followed
the course that he had adopted at the court of Moktamid, of peaceful
co-operation with both the Christians and the Moslems in his domain.
He proudly called himself "Emperor of the Two Religions", but he
withstood any prompting he may have received of giving himself the
official title of King.
The Berbers
   Rodrigo and his family only enjoyed four years of rule in
Valencia. In 199 his realm was attacked by the Berber warriors of
North Africa, attracted across the narrow Straits by the high standard
of living and the riches of Moslem Spain. At the battle of Cuenca he
was defeated and he died shortly afterwards of a fever. Valencia held
out for another three years, at the end of which, Jimena left the city
with her children, taking with her the bones of her dead husband, to
bury them in the monastery of San Pedro at Cardena, near Burgos.
The Legend
   The anonymous Poema del Cid, the finest and the oldest
extant Spanish literary work, appeared in the latter half of the
twelfth century. This poem, together with nearly two hundred ballads
written about him, most of which were written in the sixteenth
century, extol Rodrigo as a brave and chivalrous knight, and as the
inspirational hero of the Christian conquest of Spain. The Poema
has deeply influenced Spanish thought and the formation of the
national character.
   El Cid, in fact, lived comfortably in both the Christian and
Moslem courts of Spain. He fought the invading Berbers, it is true;
but then, so did the Moslem states of Spain also. Some writers have
tried to justify the claims made by the Poema and the ballads;
one of them, Louis Bertrand, in his History of Spain, can only
say: "It is impossible that this great Castilian should not have
conceived the future unification of Spain as an absolute necessity".
The known facts of Rodrigo's life show that he was more concerned
with truly peaceful co-existence between the two religions (with an
occasional raid as a diversion and an extension of diplomacy) than
with the concept of total victory for one side or the other.
PETER THE GREAT in London
by Francis Carr
   The strangest sight in London in 1698 was that of the giant
Tsar of Russia, striding out of his house in Norfolk Street, just off
the Strand, and entering one of the local taverns to quaff a pint of
ale. At six foot nine inches, he was certainly the tallest celebrity
in the western world.
   On January 1th, of that year, at the age of twenty-six, Peter
arrived in London. He had come from Amsterdam with an escort of three
British war-ships aboard "The Royal Transport", a fine new yacht
which King William was later to present to him. Stories of Peter's
'grand embassy' had already spread throughout every country on the
Continent. Never before had such a large body of Russians come so far
from their native land, and never before had western Europe seen a
Tsar.
   On his journey through Hanover Peter had met the beautiful
Electress of Brandenburg, Princess Sophia Charlotte, whose husband,
Frederick, was four years later to declare himself the first King of
Prussia. She and her mother Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, gave a
large banquet in Peter's honour; being unused to western manners, he
became embarrassed and almost speechless. He amused the company by
saying, in reply to questions about his favourite pastimes, "from my
youth up I have had a real passion for navigation and fireworks".
After the banquet he played to the court on his own drum.
   In Holland he lived incognito as a carpenter in the shipyards of
the East India Company at Amsterdam. This soon became an open secret,
but Peter insisted on keeping up the pretence, turning his back on
anyone calling him "Your Majesty". He lived and dressed as a
workman, lit his own fire and cooked his own meals. The Duke of
Marlborough came to the shipyards to look at him, and the foreman
pointed him out- hardly necessary on account of his great height- by
saying: "Peterbas (Master Peter), help those men carry the
planks". During the five months he stayed in Holland, he studied,
besides carpentry, navigation, astronomy, law-court procedure,
fortification, mathematics, printing, botany, copper-plate engraving,
surgery, dentistry, and the making of fire-engines and fireworks. He
impressed his instructors by his eagerness to learn and the speed with
which he grasped the essentials of each subject.
   He arranged for 345 Dutch sailors, several ship's captains and
doctors, and many other craftsmen to sail to Russia to teach their
various skills. Having been told (by an Englishman) that in England
he would find the cleverest shipbuilders in the world, he asked King
William, whom he met in Utrecht, for permission to come to this
country. This was gladly given, and the King, when he was back in
England, gave him his newest yacht, the "Royal Transport", a
handsome vessel mounting twenty brass cannon, and three men-of-war as
escort. Peter set sail from Amsterdam with a dozen of his friends,
having left behind the greater part of his embassy to continue their
apprenticeship in the Dutch shipyards and munition works. In charge
of the convoy was Vice-Admiral Mitchell, to whom Peter later said,
while watching a sham naval battle off Spithead, that he thought an
English admiral was a happier man than a Tsar.
In his shirtsleeves
   After three days at sea the Russians arrived at Greenwich,
where Peter left his yacht and boarded the royal barge, which took him
to the Strand. Here he was given a house in Norfolk Street. This
soon resembled a stable. Three days after his arrival, William called
on him and was taken up to his bedroom, where the Tsar met the King in
his shirtsleeves.
# 217
<174 TEXT F31>
TALKING ABOUT HEALTH
OUR FAMILY DOCTOR
SPRAINED ANKLE
   She was not quite thirty and was obviously having trouble
putting her left foot to the ground.
   Her husband had to help her into my consulting room. She told
me what had happened.
   "I was coming downstairs with an armful of things and I tripped
on the last step but one. The carpet's loose there and my heel got
caught. I fell with my foot underneath me."
   Obediently she slipped off her right shoe and stocking. I helped
her out of the slipper she was wearing on her left foot.
   "I took my stocking off to bathe my foot in cold water," she
said apologetically.
   I made her lie on the examination couch, and compared the two
ankles.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   There was nothing much to see except that the left one was
badly swollen.
<END INDENTATION>
   I persuaded her to try all the different movements of the
ankles and toes. Her right foot moved normally of course. Her left
foot would move a little in most directions but all her movements were
limited and painful. It hurt most when she tried to twist the foot
outwards.
   Clearly there was no damage to her foot or to her freely wiggling
toes. The damage and the worst pain was in the area just below the
left ankle bone on the outer side.
   I felt each ankle in turn carefully, and although the left one
hurt her it was fairly certain that no bones were broken.
   "You've been lucky," I told her.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "I don't think there's a fracture. Just a bad sprain with
bruising and swelling.
<END INDENTATION>
   "But we'd better have an X-ray to be quite sure about it."
   Armed with my note, her husband took her in their car to the
casualty department. They were back in just over an hour. There was
no fracture and all that had been needed was the simplest treatment.
   What they had done was to take a three-inch elastic adhesive
bandage and apply it carefully but firmly from below upwards, so that
it supported the torn outer ligament of her ankle.
   I encouraged her to try walking on it now that it was safely
strapped up. She was unsteady but she could manage a few steps.
"That's a lot more comfortable," she agreed. I instructed her to
walk on it a little each day, increasing the time daily, but being
careful for a week and not overdoing it.
   At the end of a fortnight I was able to take off the bandage.
For now the cure was complete. But to be on the safe side I advised
her to take it easy for another fortnight. She was very good about
it. And her husband has made sure that there are now no loose
stair-carpets, mats, or rugs anywhere in the household. Dr.
MERIDITH.
facts about eczema
JOAN WILLIAMS S.R.N., S.C.M. advises on the best ways to
relieve discomfort
   IN the ordinary way, a baby's skin and the skin of a young
child is perfect and quite flawless. But in some circumstances, a
rash may develop of one kind or another. And of these, eczema calls
for the greatest amount of skilful management and patience.
   Sufferers from eczema can be divided into three groups. Firstly,
babies who develop it at about four months of age, and in whom the
trouble clears up spontaneously by the second birthday; secondly,
babies in whom the rash persists after this point has been reached;
and thirdly, children who have no sign of eczema in babyhood, but who
develop it when they are around two or three years of age, or even
later.
   Of these three groups, the first is by far the most common.
   Eczema usually begins on the cheeks, which become first bright
red, then very shiny. Next the skin begins to crack. Then follows
the "weeping" stage. The rash tends to spread from the child's
cheeks to his head, neck, body and limbs.
   It's an uncomfortable condition because of the irritation, and
unless he is checked, the child will inevitably scratch. But this is
precisely what he mustn't do, because scratching can lead to bad
infection. And, quite apart from anything else, skin infections can
be passed on to other people, although eczema itself is never
contagious.
   How can this scratching and subsequent infection be prevented?
By making impossible direct contact between the baby's hands and the
affected skin. This entails completely covering the latter by means
of dry sterile gauze and bandages, and/or a washable cotton garment.
And, unless he is at an age when he can take them off, by putting his
hands in cotton mitts.
cure unknown
   There is no known way of curing eczema. If it's going to clear
up, as is usually the case, it will do so of its own accord, generally
when the child is between eighteen months and two years of age.
   If it doesn't go spontaneously by this time, it's likely to last
for several years, as is the case when the older child develops it.
Fortunately, in these circumstances, the eczema is generally the
"dry" type, and only slight, restricted to neck, elbows, and behind
the knees.
   But even though there is no specific treatment which will cure
eczema, there are ways by which discomfort can be greatly eased.
   First on the list of relief measures is a simple lotion, cream or
ointment, which is applied direct to the affected skin in order to
relieve the irritation. Usually, the doctor will prescribe calamine
for "weeping" eczema, and zinc cream or coal tar ointment for the
"dry" type.
sedative
   Almost certainly, he will prescribe a suitable sedative, too.
Probably, one which is also an anti-histamine (which means it is able
to offset to some extent at least, the irritating effect of the
chemical substance called histamine spilling out from body cells into
the tissues).
   Something else the doctor is likely to prescribe is a special
emulsifying ointment. This is used instead of ordinary soap. For the
latter may well increase the irritation and probably aggravate the
rash.
   Since wool is also irritating to the child with eczema, it's
advisable for his mother to make him removable linings or little
undergarments of butter muslin or cotton.
   But it's not necessary to put him on a special diet. Some
babies seem to improve when fed on a reliable brand of evaporated milk
or soya bean flour instead of fresh or dried milk. But then the
well-known child specialist with whom I discussed the subject of
eczema is convinced that these children would improve anyway, and that
it has nothing to do with the milk.
   One last word. Just as there is no specific cure for eczema, so
there is no one specific cause. Nevertheless, it is regarded as an
allergic reaction, although it's only in rare cases that a particular
substance can be detected to which the child is allergic.
   Some believe that eczema is caused by emotional factors, even in
the youngest baby. But while most experienced doctors will agree that
the condition is aggravated by tension, they do not agree that this is
the basic cause. Except, possibly, in the older child.
   Certainly in such a child, eczema is made worse by parental
tension, and by repeated attempts to find someone who will cure him.
   Fortunately, it's equally true that the condition begins to
improve once the family doctor can induce the parents to accept
philosophically the fact that their child has eczema, that there is no
specific cure, but that, in time, it's almost certain to disappear.
   This spontaneous disappearance of the rash is even more likely
when, in addition to carrying out the proper treatment, the parents
are able to provide tranquillity and happiness within the home itself,
and in their day-to-day dealings with their child.
TALKING ABOUT HEALTH
OUR FAMILY DOCTOR
CRAMP
   She was a tall, slim, athletic looking nineteen-year-old.
   "I'm going on holiday with friends next month," she said,
"and want to swim a lot. I'm apt to get cramp and wondered how to
prevent it?"
   "When do you get cramp?"
   "Mostly at night, but I'm worried about getting it while I'm
swimming. Usually it starts just as I'm going to sleep," she added.
"Always in my right leg. Here," touching her calf muscles. "But
if I get up and stamp around the bedroom it soon goes."
   "Does it happen any special night in the week?" I asked.
   She said slowly: "Well, I've noticed it on Tuesdays and
Thursdays."
   "What do you do on those days that you don't on others?"
   The answer was that she went to keep-fit sessions at a local
gymnasium.
   "Do you perspire a lot?"
   "We all do, but we drink lots of lemonade and that sort of
thing."
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   I explained to her that cramp is often caused by having lost
salt through sweating.
<END INDENTATION>
   "You get thirsty and drink a lot.
   "All the body fluids are salty, and the salt and water is
carefully balanced. Lose water and salt by sweating profusely and
they stay in balance. Replace only the water and the balance of salt
gets upset and that shows up very commonly as a muscular cramp later
on.
   "You must try what people do in hot countries. Drop a salt
tablet into the water or lemonade and you replace both salt and water.
Then you won't get cramp."
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   On holiday, I told her, she was more likely to get cramp if she
swam soon after a meal.
<END INDENTATION>
   "Wait at least an hour after eating, and never swim when you
are cold. Warm up your muscles by running about and doing a few
exercises before you go into the water.
   "If ever you do get cramp in the water, don't panic. Float on
your back and use your hands and arms to scull yourself back to the
beach.
   "Then pull the cramped leg right up to your chest and massage
the affected calf muscles. If you can get some heat into them- say
from a handkerchief soaked in a thermos of hot tea- so much the
better.
   "And if you should get cramp again in bed at night pull your leg
up to your chest. Then try to pull your toes up towards your chin.
That lengthens and stretches the contracted muscles and the cramp
will soon go."
   I learnt later that she had a really wonderful holiday with never
a hint of cramp. DR. MERIDITH.
hoping for a baby
Discussing delayed pregnancy, JOAN WILLIAMS S.R.N.,
S.C.M. emphasizes that, with rare exceptions, every young couple
may become parents
   IT is a known fact that within the framework of marriages
where there is a complete and natural sex relationship, pregnancy will
begin within a year for about eighty out of a hundred couples. And
with only a further ten per cent will it occur during the second year.
   Obviously then, a couple who have tried unsuccessfully for a
whole year to have a baby are justified in thinking that something may
be wrong. And they are equally justified in seeking medical advice.
Indeed, they would be wise to do so: particularly if the wife is in
her late twenties or older.
   They may well find that the delay has a very simple explanation
which is quickly revealed through a quiet talk with their doctor. For
often the root of the trouble is their lack of true understanding in
regard to marital relationship, and/or the fertile phase in the
menstrual cycle.
adjustment
   In this case, the putting into practice of necessary
adjustments will probably lead to the desired pregnancy within a few
months. Or maybe even sooner.
   And if the doctor cannot find any obvious cause for the delay in
conception? If he advises specialist investigation? There is still
no cause for despondency or apprehension. For true sterility is rare,
and there is every chance that the cause or causes of delay will be
found through tests- none of which is in the least alarming.
   (A brief description of what is likely to be involved is given in
my free newsheet <SIC> entitled "Routine Fertility Tests."
# 215
<175 TEXT F32>
IMPORTANT SERIES FOR MOTHERS-TO-BE
No. 6 The Long Wait Over
<EDITORIAL>
   DURING pregnancy, a baby lies curled up in his mother's
womb, surrounded by a bag of warm, protective fluid. The neck of the
womb (cervix) is tightly closed beneath him, and sealed with a plug of
jelly-like mucus, which prevents infection from getting to the womb.
   When he is ready to be born, three things must happen. The plug
of mucus must drop away, then the womb is no longer sealed.
   The cervix must stretch sufficiently to let the baby pass through
into the front passage, and the bag of membrane which holds the
protective fluid must give way, allowing the fluid to escape-
otherwise the baby would be held in the womb even after the cervix had
stretched completely.
   Usually, the first thing that the mother notices when labour
begins, is that the tightening and relaxing of her womb (which has
been going on for some time during pregnancy) has suddenly taken on a
rhythm.
   That is, the contractions are occurring regularly.
   When this happens, even though half an hour, or even longer,
may pass between contractions, she will know that her labour has
started.
   With or without regular contractions, she may have a "show."
This is just the plug of mucus which has left the cervix and passed
down the vagina. Usually it is streaked with a little blood.
   Although it's as well to notify hospital or midwife when labour
contractions are coming at fifteen minute intervals, or less, there's
no need, as a rule, to do anything about a show which is not
accompanied by either of the other two signs of labour.
   However, if the show contains more blood than would go on a
penny, then it's a wise precaution to seek advice. For this might
mean that labour is progressing more rapidly than is expected.
   Sometimes the first sign that labour has begun is the breaking of
the bag of waters, or "rupture of the membranes." There is a
sudden, uncontrolled gush of fluid, which comes from the womb, not
from the bladder.
   In point of fact, the waters can break at any time during labour.
Sometimes this doesn't happen until the baby is ready to be born.
But when they break right at the beginning, even though there have
been no regular contractions, and no show, it's a sign that Baby is
starting his journey, and the expectant mother should notify hospital
or midwife.
   
   The first stage of labour progresses steadily, but quite
slowly, as a rule. With first babies it may take anything up to
twenty-four hours or so. During this time, the regular, rhythmic
contractions of the womb gradually draw open, or stretch, the cervix.
As the cervix stretches, the baby sinks lower in the womb.
   Usually an expectant mother is quite happy to remain up and about
during the early first stage of labour- unless it's night time, of
course. It's when contractions are stronger, and more frequent, that
she prefers to lie down. Various preparations and examinations are
carried out during this stage of labour. Preparations such as shaving
away body hair, and giving an enema, to ensure cleanliness when the
baby is born. And examinations to discover how rapidly labour is
progressing, and to check the condition of both mother and baby.
   The commonest, and most frequent, of these examinations is a
regular pulse, temperature and blood pressure check, and gentle
examination of the mother's tummy to track Baby's downward progress.
Combined with careful listening to his heartbeats through a little
metal stethoscope.
   But, in addition to these regular examinations, it is quite usual
for an internal examination to be made some time during labour- or
maybe more than one.
   This is nothing to be alarmed about. If the doctor or midwife
decides that such an examination is needed it doesn't mean that there
is anything wrong.
   Simply that it's the most accurate way, at that point, of
checking how far labour has progressed, of estimating how much longer
it is likely to last, and of deciding how best to help the mother
relax, so that she can co-operate with the contractions that are
bringing her baby into the world.
   
   It's during the first stage of labour that the fruits of an
expectant mother's daily practice of relaxation and breath control can
really come into their own.
   For if she is able to relax, and "go with" each contraction,
she will not only be helping herself to experience the minimum of
discomfort, but she will also be helping the contraction to exert the
maximum stretching power on her cervix.
   This can result in a shorter labour, for it follows that the more
the cervix stretches with each contraction, the fewer contractions
will be needed for the end result.
   This does not mean, however, that an expectant mother carries the
responsibility for the duration or outcome of her labour. Simply that
she can help, as a rule.
   
   In addition to her efforts in this direction, she should
never hesitate to accept any drug or gas that may be offered to help
her. For such drugs in no way prevent her from having a natural
birth, and their use does not in any way mean either that something is
not quite right or that she is not managing splendidly. Far from
it.
   The purpose of these drugs is to back up the mother's work, to
help her relax not only between, but also during contractions, and to
diminish the sensation of those contractions when they become strong.
But to diminish the sensation without in any way undermining their
usefulness.
   As the first stage of labour draws towards its close, the
contractions become stronger and much closer together. Usually they
arrive at two to three minute intervals just before Baby is ready to
be born.
   It's at this stage that many a mother feels a bit panicky- feels
that she's being swept along on a tide that she can't control. She
wants to bear down, perhaps, but it's not quite time for her to do so.
She longs for her labour to be over, and for a very little while she
may be afraid.
   But it will help her if she will hold hard to the knowledge that
all this is quite natural, and that it simply means that it's almost
time for her to work really hard, and push her baby into the world.
   Deep breathing, and the use of the gas and air apparatus which is
usually offered, will help her over this last difficult phase of the
first stage of labour.
   And, in a very short while, the moment will come when the midwife
or doctor will say that the cervix is stretched completely, and that
now she can do what she's been waiting to do- work as hard as she
possibly can, with the contractions of her womb, to help her baby to
be born.
   For now, instead of relaxing both between and during
contractions, it's a case of relaxing between them to gather strength
for the next effort, and really working when it comes.
   With each contraction, she will be asked to take a really deep
breath, to hold it, and to bear down as hard as she can, and for as
long as she can. For with each contraction, Baby comes a little
nearer the outside world.
   Soon the head can be seen. A few more pushes, and it's half
born. And then the mother will be asked to stop pushing, and to
breathe quickly in and out- like a dog panting.
   This helps whoever is delivering the baby to hold the head gently
until the force of the contraction passes, and then to guide it gently
into the world between contractions, so reducing the possibility
of stitches being needed.
   Once Baby's head is delivered the rest of the body follows
quickly. The second stage of labour is over. Baby is born. Here at
last.
   A gasp, and a lusty yell. The cord is tied and cut, and Baby is
snugly wrapped in a warm blanket. And, for the first time, Mother can
hold him in her arms.
   It just remains for the afterbirth to come away. This only takes
a few minutes as a rule, and we call it the third stage of labour.
The new mother needn't give it a thought.
   
   She can lie back and enjoy her baby, until the midwife,
knowing that the afterbirth is ready to pop out, either asks her to
relax while her tummy is pressed gently, or else to take a deep breath
and to push down as she did when the baby arrived.
   One contraction, and the afterbirth comes away!
   Everything is over. A proud mother is made clean and
comfortable, and is given the best cup of tea she's ever tasted.
   A brand new baby is washed, weighed and dressed. Then when both
have rested from their efforts, they can lie back and receive the
congratulations and good wishes of relatives and friends. And how
well deserved they are!
OTHER MOTHERS' PROBLEMS
Answered by JOAN WILLIAMS, S.R.N., S.C.M.
<EDITORIAL>
Vitamin C
   My baby, Aileen, is ten weeks old, fully breast fed, and
thriving well. But there's just one difficulty- neither welfare
orange juice, rose hip syrup, nor blackcurrant juice, seems to suit
her. All three bring her out in a rash, even though I follow the
directions very carefully when giving them. Have you any suggestions,
please?
   POSSIBLY your baby may be sensitive to some substance
contained in all three of the vitamin C drinks you have given her. If
that is so, then your doctor is the person to guide you. But before
taking Aileen to him, try giving her fresh orange juice.
   Squeeze the juice from a cut orange, making quite sure that it
contains no pips or bits, and give Baby just one teaspoon of this in a
little cool, boiled water, with just a tiny bit of sugar- less than a
quarter teaspoon- to taste.
   If she tolerates this without trouble, then gradually work up the
amount until she is having a tablespoon of pure juice, in a couple of
ounces of boiled water, and a teaspoon of sugar. But don't
continue giving the juice if she shows the slightest sign of
sickness, loose motions, tummy discomfort or a rash.
   If any of these happen, take Baby to your doctor. He may think
it a good idea to try her on guava juice, as this is rich in vitamin
C, or the juice of fresh tomatoes. Or he may prescribe vitamin C
tablets.
Baby Book
   I believe that you have written a book to help expectant
mothers. Please could you give me details?
   MY little book "Baby and You," has recently been
completely revised, and brought up to date. It includes sections on
how a baby develops in the womb, how his mother can care for her
general health during the waiting months, how she can prepare herself
for the birth, plan his layette, and care for him after he is born.
   It also includes a section on the actual birth of the baby.
   The booklet costs one shilling and sixpence, post free, from this
address. An order form is on page 27.
Small Operation
   My doctor tells me that I have a polyp on the neck of my womb,
and I am waiting to go into hospital to have it removed. But I would
like to know what this entails, and what is meant by a polyp. I can't
help worrying.
   REMOVAL of a polyp is a very simple operation, and one that
certainly needn't alarm you. The polyp is a tiny little growth
attached to the neck of the womb.
   It has nothing at all to do with cancer, or indeed with any
other serious condition. But it does cause "nuisance" symptoms as
a rule- bleeding between periods, for example, or a vaginal
discharge- and therefore it's best removed.
   You'll probably be asked to go into hospital one or two days
before the operation is to be performed.
# 216
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THE "FRIEND" DOCTOR TALKS
Something Hot, Something Cold
   MORE than half my work consists of dealing with stomach
trouble. And I know that very nearly all of it could so easily be
avoided.
   Cultivate a good digestion and you'll not only feel better
physically. You'll live longer.
   Right away, let me say you don't need to be fussy about your
diet. Just take heed of a few simple rules.
   Here's a most important one for dinner-time.
   Whether it's winter or summer have something hot and something
cold.
   An all-cold lunch is bad for you. It stuns the stomach. Your
digestion is out of action for hours.
   An all-hot meal in winter is almost as bad. You need a cold
sweet to even up the inside temperature.
   
   DON'T shut your eyes to the fact that some of the tastiest
foods are pretty indigestible.
   I'm not going to be a spoilsport and tell you to cut them out.
But try not to overdo these things:-
   Hot buttered toast. The fat seals off the bread and the gastric
juice can't get to work. The toast will lie on your stomach three
times as long as plain bread. So try to make do with just one slice.
   There's no doubt that cheese is a grand food. But have you any
idea how much you should have at a time?
   It's a piece the size of a small matchbox. Any more and you've
only yourself to blame if you get indigestion.
   And the fancier the cheese the less you need.
   Pork is one of the hardest foods to digest. It's a five-hour job
for the stomach, so a little is enough.
   And here's an idea to help avoid any ill-effects.
   Next time you have pork make a point of having stewed fruit in
the meal. The fruit peps up the gastric juices and helps the
digestion enormously.
   
   THE most indigestible fruit is the pear that isn't quite
ripe. And warn your children not to go eating green, unripened
apples. They can make a youngster ill for days, and it's no
exaggeration to say the stomach may never fully recover.
   I've cured quite a few patients of the kind of indigestion that
gives you a blown-up feeling.
   It's nearly always caused by drinking with a meal, so try not to
wash your food down. And when you do have a glass of water don't
swallow it at one gulp.
   Finally, you can have a good, sound digestion if you'll only
remember to chew every mouthful of food twenty times.
It's Time To Check Your Weight
   THERE'S one thing I'd like everyone to do this week.
   Weigh yourself!
   This is the most important time of the year to check up.
   Don't worry if you're a bit underweight. That's natural.
   But if the scales show a pound or two extra, then take this
warning.
   If you've a tendency to fat, it's in the summer you put on weight
that's going to be there for good!
   What's more, it's important to know where the extra poundage has
gone.
   Round the waist line is worst of all.
   Stand erect and pull in the stomach.
   If you still bulge round the middle, then it's high time you did
something about it.
   
   FAT is not a solid thing. It tends to flow where the skin
is loose. So if you're out of condition and your stomach muscles are
flabby- that's where the fat goes.
   Stomach fat goes to two areas- around the bowel and below the
liver. And when this part of the system is hampered and clogged, the
breathing suffers.
   But here's the biggest danger. When there's no more room round
the middle, the fat can go straight to the heart.
   Women are the worst sufferers from breathlessness due to fat. If
a man becomes breathless he's pretty quick to see a doctor. But women
seem to take it for granted.
   Another area where fat can be dangerous is in the arteries.
   Anyone suffering from overweight risks the fat lingering in the
bloodstream.
   Because of this you should never ignore a pounding in the heart
or a throbbing of the head if you're overweight. If you do, you may
be risking coronary thrombosis.
   
   YOU may be surprised to learn that fat can be dangerous on
the hands and feet.
   This isn't common. But the moment a grown-up discovers she needs
a bigger size in shoes and gloves- see a doctor.
   Thick ankles are not always due to mere fat. Often varicose
veins are to blame.
   The safest place for fat is on the arms. It helps to keep the
muscles in shape.
   Fat round the neck is not so frightening as you might believe.
Whether the fat is at the back or under the chin, the excess won't do
any harm so long as there isn't too much of it.
   The first signs of a thick neck affecting health are headaches
and irritability. These indicate blood pressure.
   By far the luckiest folk are the ones with a thin layer of
overall fat. They can stand both cold and hot weather, because the
fat under the skin helps control the body temperature.
Little Signs I Don't Like To See
   I DIDN'T like the look of a patient who came to see me a
few evenings ago.
   He'd rushed to the surgery and was breathing heavily. But it
wasn't that which disturbed me. It was the time he took to recover.
   If you're under 25 you should get your breath back in one minute.
   Under 45 I'd say two minutes. Up to 65 the breathing should be
easier inside four minutes.
   What are the other little signs a doctor doesn't like to see?
   When a woman comes to me complaining of tiredness and
breathlessness, the shape of her ankles can tell me a lot.
   If her ankles have been steadily getting thicker I suspect
trouble with the heart.
   But when there's no breathlessness and no general fatigue then
the ankles have simply thickened with too much standing or walking.
   
   FOLK over 45 would do well to watch the veins at the side
of their necks.
   These veins stand out pretty far when you're bursting with anger
or physical exertion. But when the anger dies away or the exertion is
over these veins should subside.
   If they don't I've a suspicion the heart is congested and
overtaxed.
   The heart has another way to tell the world it's under strain.
The pulse beats at the side of the neck just where a man's collar is.
   Maybe you've noticed this yourself in a person full of suppressed
excitement- usually someone who takes a pride in self-control.
   Well, self-control isn't always good for health. The body's
normal reactions don't like being suppressed.
   Secret worry and suppressed emotion affect the heart, and in many
cases this shows in the pulse beat I mentioned.
   Occasionally I notice my patient has a quiver round the mouth or
lip.
   This indicates nervous strain. No matter how you try to control
yourself, the muscles round the mouth are first to give way.
   
   I ONCE warned a patient he was due for an attack of lumbago
unless he was careful.
   "But how can you tell?" he asked.
   "It's quite easy," I told him. "You're walking at a slight
forward angle. That tells me your back muscles are taxed and
uncomfortable. They're fighting the lumbago."
   Bloodlessness isn't so easy to detect as you might imagine. You
can look as fit as a fiddle and yet be bloodless.
   My test rarely fails. I look- not at the lips, which can be
deceptive- but at the ear lobes.
   I can learn a lot when the light is shining through the lobes
from behind. I don't like to see the lobes pale or dull pink. The
richer the colour the better.
When There's Nothing Better Than A Poultice
   YOU know that awful feeling you get about two o'clock in
the morning, when you have a pain that won't let you get to sleep.
   A patient of mine had a pain like that in her shoulder. It
gnawed and gnawed for hours.
   At last she got up in desperation. There was no fire and she was
out of aspirins.
   Do you know what she did? She opened the oven door, lit the gas,
and then sat in front of it.
   The heat certainly eased the pain. But if only she'd known she
could have been lying comfortably in bed getting the same relief.
   All she had to do was to make an old-fashioned poultice.
   
   A HOME-Made bread poultice can work wonders.
   Just cut one slice of bread about an inch thick. Roll it in
gauze muslin or thin cotton. Dip it into hot water then wring out.
   The secret is to do it gently. The poultice should never be
dripping wet. Then test it for heat on the back of the hand.
   Mould the poultice over the painful part and make sure it extends
three inches all round beyond the pain.
   Finally cover the lot with a piece of old flannel, cotton wool,
or a double thickness of lint.
   Why does a poultice do the trick so well?
   Well, it dilates the blood vessels. It draws blood to the
painful area. This in turn restores the damaged tissue and carries
away harmful poison.
   And there's nothing like a poultice to help you get to sleep.
   When you're in pain all the muscles round the area tighten up and
make the pain worse.
   But the poultice slackens off this muscle tension, and half your
battle for sleep is won.
   
   OF all ailments I think chest troubles get most relief from
a poultice.
   Bad bronchitis can be specially distressing. Yet a poultice can
ease the breathing and loosen the tightness in the chest.
   But, remember, children or anyone who is frail should not have
the poultice on the chest. The weight might restrict the breathing.
   So for these folk put the poultice across the shoulders, just
below the shoulder blades.
   The biggest poultice of all is needed for pleurisy. It should
start under the armpit and go down almost to the waist.
   Of course, the best poultice of all is the kaolin variety- if
it's fresh and moist.
   But you can take comfort in the fact that you need never be
stuck- so long as you have a slice of bread in the house.
Seven Golden Rules For The Winter
   NOW'S the time a lot of my patients ask me the same
question.
   "How is it, doctor, that you manage to keep so clear of colds
every winter?"
   They think I have some special medicine, but I don't. All I do
is follow these golden rules:-
   1. When the first frosts come start the day with porridge and
milk.
   The lime in the oatmeal and in the milk is good for the
circulation. It's specially good for anyone plagued with chilblains.
   But the porridge does more. That mass of warm oatmeal in your
stomach is central heating at its best. You won't feel the cold so
much on your way to work. You won't chill so easily standing for a
bus.
   2. Never go out on a winter's morning with an empty or cold
stomach. If you do, the blood has to rush inwards to warm up the
stomach. There's less blood for the outer areas, and that can mean a
chill.
   3. Always keep on the move.
   If you pop your finger quickly in and out of cold water you'll
hardly feel the cold. Keep the finger in for a longer time and it
will "freeze."
   In the same way you can walk along wet roads without becoming
chilled. But you're asking for trouble if you stand around for a
gossip.
   4. In cold weather a little exercise is the best defence against
rheumatism- particularly fibrositis.
   There's no need for special exercises. Simply stretch yourself.
Wiggle your hands and toes.
   The older you are the less strenuous the exercises should be.
But even if you're over seventy, do try to get your muscles moving.
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Their ideal was to keep close to the exact photographic truth but
to render it with a vigorous, personal handling of the paint, which
gave it a character not possessed by a photograph.
   At the end of the nineteenth century the leading portrait
painters in Britain included Sargent, John Lavery and the veteran
Watts, while in landscape Alfred East and D. Y. Cameron were
among the leaders. But a kind of work that was particularly typical
of this period was inspired, not by the French Impressionists, but by
a group who preceded them in France, called the Plein Air
(Open Air) School. These Plein Airists chose to paint their
pictures on the spot- not in the studio. They believed in working
direct from nature, out of doors.
   Those British painters who tried to follow these ideals found
themselves in difficulties with the British climate, for the climate
of France is much more suitable to long hours of painting out of
doors. However, they found a solution by moving to the mildness of
Cornwall, in the south-west, to live. There, in such places as
Penzance and Newlyn, colonies of painters settled. Stanhope Forbes
and Frank Bramley represented faithfully scenes from the lives of the
Cornish fishermen. Henry La Thangue and George Clausen also found, in
the everyday life of humble folk, their favourite subjects.
   We can see many pictures by British artists, as well as those of
the more recent foreign painters, at the Tate Gallery in London, which
was opened in 1897- an important event for art in Britain. This
gallery was the generous gift of Henry Tate, the sugar merchant, who
was made a baron by Queen Victoria just before he died, as a mark of
the gratitude of the nation. Queen Victoria herself died in 191, and
by that time the influence of the Impressionists was being felt
strongly in Britain. Painters like Lucien Pissarro, Wilson Steer,
Spencer Gore and Sickert were working in a fully Impressionist way,
and this kind of painting was at last becoming accepted by the British
public in spite of the constant prejudice against new things in art.
   So the pioneer work of Constable and Turner, having been nurtured
on foreign soil, echoed back to their native land after more than half
a century had passed. However, by that time a new war had been raging
in Paris for some time, where the Post-Impressionists were
attacking the ideas of the Impressionists, though once again it was
some time before this new conflict spread to Britain.
   The Impressionists, in their devotion to light, had tended to
become quite indifferent to the objects in their pictures. The
Post-Impressionists felt that this impartiality was itself a limiting
thing. They held that it was the painter's feelings about a scene
that should be expressed, not just the light that reflected from the
scene. With this in view they permitted themselves to exaggerate any
quality which they found exciting- they claimed the right to distort
the facts according to their own feelings.
   In doing so these painters finally abandoned all attempt to
compete with the camera. They turned their back on realism and threw
overboard all their time-honoured traditions.
   Many painters still continued to represent nature in the
traditional way, of course. Such painters are called academic,
because in general they keep to the ideals of the old academies,
which have tended to oppose any new movements in painting. We still
have many such academic painters today, and they will continue; but
gradually the British public is accepting the other kind- those who
feel that a painter's job is to abandon the task of representing
nature in a literal, realistic way and to explore beyond the region of
actual appearances.
   This breaking away from accepted standards in painting has
usually been brought about by small groups of young painters who have
shared the same ideals and given each other encouragement and help.
These groups, as they have arisen one after another, have been
regarded by most older painters as dangerous rebels and have been
outcasts, excluded from all established groups such as the Royal
Academy.
   However as time goes on they have managed to convert many of
their fellow-artists and finally the general public to their new
ideas, which have then lost their novelty and no longer appear so
shocking and outrageous, but are finally regarded as quite traditional
and old fashioned.
   These rebel painters by then will have grown old and their style
may have come to be regarded as sufficiently respectable for them to
be themselves elected to the Royal Academy and other societies which
once rejected them. They then tend, in their turn, to oppose the
newer groups whose ideas and methods are more modern still.
   Thus the old-established art societies, and particularly the
Royal Academy, have been constantly rejecting and thwarting new groups
of young rebels as they have come into being one after another. This
has tended to lessen the prestige of the Royal Academy in the eyes,
first of many painters, and eventually of the general public. It is
still important and has great influence, but that influence is less
than it once was. On the other hand various groups in turn, such as
the New English Art Club, the Camden Town Group and the London Group,
have organised exhibitions which have been more vigorous and exciting
than the Academy itself and have often attracted more attention.
   Recently there have been a number of painters who could have
become associates of the Royal Academy and finally academicians, but
have preferred to remain outside, for they wanted to be regarded as
advanced and unorthodox in their work and not to become associated
with any society which might be considered old fashioned and
hidebound.
   It is really rather surprising how well the Royal Academy has
managed to adjust itself to changing styles and ideals in art,
considering how it is organised. Painters, before they are elected as
associates or academicians have nearly always been exhibiting for some
years and are therefore no longer young men, so the A.R.A.'s and
R.A.'s are, on the whole, middle-aged or elderly. At that age
people tend to become somewhat set in their ways. What is remarkable
is not so much that the Royal Academy should have remained distinctly
academic, but that it should have shown so much tolerance as it has to
the younger men.
   Since the days of the Impressionists the world of art has grown
much smaller. Rapid communications have broken down the national
barriers that previously gave painters in Britain a certain amount of
isolation. Art has thus become much more international. Paris has
continued as the focus-point of change in art. Here the new ideas
have mostly originated, but they have spread much more quickly than in
previous periods. In the past fifty years or so we have seen a number
of 'isms', following each other in quick succession- Cubism,
Futurism, Fauvism, Surrealism and others. These movements have
mostly consisted in the exaggeration of some single factor in
painting- some factor that has been part of the stock-in-trade of
painters from the first- and enlarging this to become the whole. By
discarding all the other factors, or most of them, this then becomes
the sole interest of the painter.
   To take a single instance, Cubism consisted in the exaggeration
of the geometric characteristics of natural forms. There have always
been painters who enjoyed the squareness or roundness of things, and
have tended in consequence to exaggerate the squareness of an elbow or
a cliff edge and the roundness of a forehead or a hilltop at the
expense of other aspects of objects. The Cubists took this to the
limit, reducing every form to its simplest, geometric counterpart-
making human figures, trees, hills and everything else into
arrangements of cubes, spheres and cylinders. Of course, in order to
do this they had to deny themselves nearly every quality other than
geometric forms; but that is the nature of an 'ism' in art. Many
British painters have been influenced by Cubism, among them Wyndham
Lewis, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth and William Roberts.
   Another characteristic of painting in recent times is the
repeated turning back for inspiration to early or primitive artistic
traditions. This is not just the kind of home sickness for simpler
ways which we have seen already, among the Pre-Raphaelites for
instance. No doubt this feeling enters into it, but there is more to
it than that. It is part of a questing for new purpose and aim in
art.
   Of course there are still many painters who are content to
continue working in the academic way, developing new variations within
the tradition of more or less descriptive painting. But there is a
growing number who have become dissatisfied with this. They have come
to feel that realistic painting has run its course and that the whole
of that road has been thoroughly explored and no further progress is
possible. There is no feeling of adventure for them in this field, no
anticipation of new discovery, and without this a painter's work
becomes unbearable drudgery. Unless he feels that he can improve, he
must either give up or go back and start again on a new route.
   That is just what many painters have been doing in recent years.
They cannot beat the camera at its own work and they cannot improve
on the work of the great realistic painters before them, so they go
back along the route of painting of the past in the hope of finding
some side-track branching off, which will open up into a royal road to
new achievements and exciting discoveries. So the modern painters
have often taken the ancient Greeks or Mexicans, or perhaps the more
recent carvers of West Africa, or the Fiji Islands as their
inspiration, just as explorers in a strange land will employ local
guides.
   After all, there have been artists in the world for nearly fifty
thousand years, but painters have been working in the academic style
for only about the last six hundred years, and most of that time in
only one part of the world- western Europe. This academic painting
is a recent, very wonderful episode if we consider it against the
whole of art history. It is like one short act in a long performance;
and while painters in Europe have been perfecting their own tradition,
there were many other artistic traditions, both past and present,
about which they were very ignorant. All these alien styles were
available to help them when they felt the need to make a new
beginning.
   Some artists have found a new path in their work by abandoning
subject-matter entirely. They have taken this much further than
Whistler and the Impressionists did, and represent nothing in their
pictures, employing only purely abstract shapes. Ben Nicholson is the
best known of the British abstract painters.
   Many painters, in quite recent times, feel more and more out of
tune with modern society. They feel that the world today belongs to
science and machines and has no place for art- that everywhere a
falsely high value is placed on material things, and the mind and
spirit of man is being neglected. Some of them, especially certain
groups abroad, have expressed in their pictures the frustration and
dissatisfaction which they feel. At times such painters have gone far
beyond the satire of Hogarth and Rowlandson, and have held mankind up
to derision in their canvases, depicting humanity as distorted by
corruption and lunacy.
   As usual, these new movements have mostly been in existence for
some time on the Continent before they reached Britain; and when they
have been seen here it has often been only in a modified form. But a
great deal of the art of today in this country has been affected by
them.
   The recent tendency to turn away from realism in painting has
been made easier because photography has now relieved painters of much
of their previous task of recording facts and portraying people and
places.
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TRADITIONAL CUSTOMS
   Meistertrunk (Master Draught) and Shepherd's Dance,
Rothenburg-on-Tauber, Sundays in June, July and August. The
Meistertrunk is the best known and most popular of the Bavarian
history plays. And it takes place, of course, in perhaps the most
picturesque medieval town in Germany. "The Master Draught" is
based on chronicled events of the Thirty Years' War. When, in
October, 1631, the Imperial Field Marshal Tilly brought his troops to
the town, demanding its surrender, the citizens refused. However, at
last they had to give in, and the conqueror decided the burgomaster
and the councilmen should suffer the death penalty. Pleas from the
women and children softened Tilly's heart somewhat. But good wine did
more, for when he saw the magnificent state beaker he stated that if
the burgomaster or one of the council could empty it at one draught
all should live and the city be spared. Burgomaster Nush undertook
the task, and emptied the beaker at one draught, thus saving everyone.
   This historical beaker is still used when the epic story is
re-enacted to-day, although this scene is but one in a play in which
the actors wear period costumes. The entire town is the stage, with
the troop encampment outside the city walls, the children's plea with
Tilly on the market square, and all the rest.
   In the afternoon of some days of the history play, the historical
shepherds' dance is performed in the market square. It is danced in
honour of St. Wolfgang, patron-saint of shepherds, and commemorates
a member of the shepherds' guild who made a race from his pastures to
the city to bring warning of the approach of an enemy. The troop
encampment outside the city walls lasts until late, when camp fires
and torch-light add to the romantic scene. On certain evenings during
the summer, Hans Sachs plays are given in a local hall.
   Kinderzeche (Children's Feast), Dinkelsbu"hl, July. This
medieval town, not far from Rothenburg, also re-enacts an episode from
the Thirty Years' War. When a Swedish colonel came with his troops to
conquer the town, the burghers were split in their attitude. In
perplexity the city fathers tried vainly to find a solution. Ruin and
destruction seemed inevitable. It was then that a beautiful young
girl, named Lore, accompanied by a crowd of small children, offered to
go out to meet the Colonel and to beg pity for the town. But before
the plan could be realised the Swedish troops had entered the city,
ready to destroy it. At that moment, the song of children's voices
sounded from afar, and then Lore appeared with her young band.
Fearlessly she faced the conqueror, knelt and begged his mercy for
the town and its people. The colonel's heart softened, and
Dinkelsbu"hl was saved from destruction.
   The Kinderzeche festival is first of all a children's event. It
usually begins on the Saturday before the third Monday in July with
beer sampling on the "shooting meadows." The next morning the
boys' band marches through the city in historical costumes, playing
lustily. The festival play is performed in the ancient market hall.
During the play period, the entire town is one great festival ground.
There are processions, children's dances, concerts, guild and sword
dances, and many other entertainments.
   Hamelin is mainly familiar to us through the legend of the
Rattenfa"nger (Rat-catcher), related in Browning's poem. The
event is celebrated each Sunday in summer when the story is re-enacted
by a piper and boys, the latter disguised as mice. Unfortunately,
modern research tends to discredit the legend, claiming that what
really happened was a visit from a labour agent who attracted many
local young men away to Bohemia, with the promise of good wages.
   The Princely Wedding, Landshut, every two or three years
(usually on three Sundays in June and July). This is one of the most
colourful events in Europe. It is a re-enactment of a gorgeous
wedding which took place in 1745 when Ludwig the Rich married his son,
Duke George, to Hedwiga of the Royal House of Poland. In addition to
a festive procession, the houses of this medieval town are beautifully
decorated for the occasion, and nearly a thousand "burghers,"
dressed in the rich costumes of the Middle Ages, strut around and
bring those opulent days back to life for a short while. I say
"opulent," for it is officially recorded that at the feasting which
followed the actual wedding, 333 oxen, 275 fat pigs, 4 calves, and
12, geese were eaten.
   Tanzel-Festival, Kaufbeuren, July. This is another
outstanding costume festival held in a small town lying between
Augsburg and Fu"ssen. It celebrates an old custom dating back to
1497, and begins with the enactment of an historic scene, when the
burgomaster with his councillors receives King Conradin who, on
horseback and accompanied by his knights and bishops, appears at the
door of the town hall. The festival's climax, however, is the great
procession through the town, with heralds, flower-girls, drummers, the
King, the city council and their ladies, lansquenets in plus-fours,
followed by the guilds and their state carriages, among them weavers,
brewers, tanners and blacksmiths. Archers appear, flag-wavers,
medievally-clad soldiers and yellow mail coaches with postillions
industriously blowing their horns. There are many bands, while
perhaps the most beautiful features of the festival are the 8
children, dressed in historic costumes.
   Anno 1634, No"rdlingen, during summer months. This is the
most southerly of the three medieval towns lying on the "Romantic
Road," and it still retains its fortress wall with 18 towers. The
Daniel Tower of its fine St. George's Church still sees a unique
nightly ceremony, for at nine each night a watchman at its summit
cries to another on the ground that "All's well." The play
re-enacts various events in the Thirty Years' War. There are dances
in period costumes, concerts and other entertainments. The town's
populace form the cast for the play, and the streets offer a
fascinating picture, resembling indeed a medieval master's painting.
   Spearing the Dragon, Fu"rth-im-Wald. For 5 years this town
in the Bayerischer Wald has performed an exciting open-air play (every
second Sunday in August), called "Drachenstich" (spearing the
dragon). It is based, obviously, on some pagan legend. Performed in
the market square, the play has as its climax the killing of the
dragon (5 ft. long, 1 ft. high, and weighing over a ton) by a
knight on horseback who pierces the monster's head by thrusting his
spear into it through the throat. The hero must be careful, however,
not to miss a pig's bladder filled with ox blood, so the wounded
animal can spout blood. The dragon looks comically gruesome when it
spouts fire, rolls the eyes, shows its giant teeth, wiggles its large
blood-red tongue and twists its huge body. With the Drachenstich, of
course, go merrymaking and various festivities, including a grand
procession through the streets.
   Fu"rth-im-Wald is also the scene of a Leonhardi Ride- a
religious festival really, and it takes place on Easter Monday. Other
Leonhardi Rides in Bavaria are usually held on November 6th, the
saint's day.
   Trenck, the Pandur, Waldmu"nchen (July to August). This
open-air play performed after dark is notable for its excellent
artistic management and the highly realistic acting. Among the
players are many direct descendants of the characters they represent
in the play. The story is about the capture, sack and burning of the
town by a notorious leader of Hungarian Pandur bands in the year 1742.
The nightly troop encampment scenes, wild riding, and especially the
storming of the town with scaling ladders, torches and burning pitch,
are exciting and exceedingly well done.
   Ulmer Fischerstechen, Ulm, first Monday in August on the
Danube. According to old tradition, two boats approach with the
participants in old costumes, and try and joust each other into the
water with lances. The "sport" was already popular in the 16th
century when Kaiser Karl =5 and his son, later King Philip =2 of
Spain, allowed it in 1549. This Turnier auf dem Wasser
(tournament on the water) was played in the old Ulm days when it was
a free city and the game took place between youngsters of the
fishermen's guild. It is today performed as a pageant, and is also
popular in other countries.
   Potters' Festival, Passau, first Saturday in August. The
products of the potters of the Ilz section of this three-river city
have long been famous. Although their great boom period is no more,
the Ilz "Haferl Festival" (pottery festival) is still celebrated
with great enthusiasm. All the buildings in town and the moated
castle, Niederhaus, are specially illuminated, dance music is played
in the open, there are open-air performances, water games, boat
racing, and a pageant. The climax is a large scale illumination of
the town and Oberhaus fortress and the old section of Passau. There
is a splendid display of fireworks; and one seems wafted to a night in
Venice.
   Folk Festival, Nuremburg, usually in August. Founded in
1826, this festival is rather similar to the better-known Oktoberfest
of Munich. There are the great beer tents, representative shows,
entertainments and other attractions. On the Friday before the first
festival Sunday the chief burgomaster empties the first "mass"
(about one quart) in the course of a grand beer sampling ceremony.
Crowds pour into the city from the surrounding Bavarian towns and
villages, and there is a joyous atmosphere of wit and good humour-
two strong characteristics of the citizens.
   Teenagers' Festival, Worms, first week in September. This is
one of the most amusing festivals in Germany. Among the events are
the historical coachmen's dance, a hilarious fishermen's jousting
tournament on the Rhine, fought from small boats, a parade of
illuminated vessels, and a giant firework display. Huge wine and beer
tents, holding thousands of visitors, as well as numerous booths are
to be found in the fair grounds beside the river's bank.
   The Tura Michele, Augsburg. Since 1526, a group of
figures representing the archangel Michael with the Devil at his feet
has been in the understructure of the Perlach Tower of the city hall.
On St. Michael's Day, September 29th, the angel appears every hour
on the hour, and with each sound of the hour stabs the struggling
Devil. During the last war the historical figure was destroyed, but a
new one is now carrying on the old custom. Every year a fair is held
on this day and the so-called "Tura Michele" is visited by many
tourists.
   Driving the Cattle Home, Bavarian Alps. According to an
ancient custom the almabtrieb- driving the cattle home from the
mountains- is the occasion of a great autumn festival in the Bavarian
Alps. In a festive procession the cattle, wreathed and garlanded,
stamp down the hills, the dairy maid out front and the shepherd boy
following the herd. Particularly pretty is the driving-down of the
cows from the pastures above Lake Ko"nigssee near Berchtesgaden, where
the cattle are carried across the lake by boat.
   Traditional Costume Festivals, Southern Bavaria. The "Union
of Bavarian Costume Clubs" comprises some 65 clubs with a total of
7, members. Throughout the year, but especially during the summer
months, these clubs hold costume festivals.
   One of the outstanding examples is the Annual Pageant in
Munich in October. The most beautiful native costumes from all over
the country are on parade there, to the accompaniment of bands, also
in native garb. These costume days and festivals are real folk
events, complete with field mass, extended processions, honour dances,
and music band contests.
   Leonhardi-Ride, Bad To"lz. November 6th is the name-day of
St. Leonhard, patron saint of the horses. In Old Bavaria, the day
has been observed for centuries by the peasants' "Leonhardi Ride"
to church in which well-groomed, beautifully harnessed horses draw
richly decorated wagons. While many villages have clung to this
ancient custom, no Leonhardi Ride has become so famous as the one of
To"lz in the Isar river bend. The preparations take weeks, and from
distant farmsteads they come to Kalvarien (Calvary) Mountain at To"lz,
high above the Isar.
# 211
<179 TEXT F36>
Editing in Eskimo
by Francis Dickie
   FIFTY YEARS AGO, the Canadian Eskimo, scattered across half
a million square miles of the Arctic, from the Atlantic seaboard to
the Bering Sea on the Pacific, was a primitive race. Now, Canada's
Department of Northern Affairs is publishing the first magazine
entirely in the Canadian Eskimo tongue ever produced.
   Remembering that it is only fifty years since a syllabic written
version of the Canadian Eskimo language was created by missionaries,
the production now of an all-Eskimo magazine, in two separate
dialects, is truly an amazing step forward. For, it must be
remembered, fifty years ago the Canadian Eskimo was still a stone-age
people. The fact that the different tribes were so widely scattered
over such an enormous territory, and were constantly on the move in
pursuit of sea and land animals and fish, made the missionary's
teaching of the syllabics slower and more difficult.
   
   THIS FIRST MAGAZINE is, therefore, a triumph: until its
appearance, the use of syllabics was confined to letters, brief
messages, and the Bible. In future, across the vast reaches of the
Arctic, almost the entire population will for the first time be able
to read their language in a modern magazine.
   Canada's first Eskimo magazine editor is Mary Panegoosho, born at
Pond Inlet in 1939. The eldest of nine children, she had three
brothers and five sisters. Mary went to work as a nurse's assistant
at Hamilton, Ontario, Mountain Sanatorium at fifteen. She has been
with the Department of Northern Affairs for a year and three months.
   The magazine she edits is published in three editions:
'Inuktitut' in the eastern Arctic dialect and in syllabics,
'Inuktitun' in the western Arctic dialect in Roman characters,
and a third edition in English. Both, of course, mean 'The Eskimo
Way.'
   The first issue of the magazine was greeted with great enthusiasm
by the Eskimos. Reluctant as they always are to show even their best
work, such as carving, it was most gratifying that some contributions
were sent in for the second issue.
   The editorial team is made up of Eskimo members of the Eskimology
Section of the Northern Welfare Service. The total number of copies
printed in Eskimo is three thousand five hundred- one for each Eskimo
family. About two thousand are printed in the eastern Arctic dialect,
fifteen hundred in the western. These circulation figures are more or
less fixed and may only increase slowly as the Eskimo population
itself grows.
   The publication of the magazine is only one part of the many
functions of the Eskimology Section. The Section's primary concern is
assisting the welfare programme and providing consultative services,
translating letters from Eskimos, etc. In so far as the demands of
the main functions will allow, therefore, the magazine will be
published every four months or so.
   
   THE CANADIAN ESKIMO scarcely knew of any written language
until the Rev. Edmund J. Peck, D.D., an Anglican missionary,
adapted a system of syllabics to the Eskimo tongue. The syllabic
system, in which sounds are represented by little hooks and crooks
resembling shorthand, was first devised by the Rev. James Evans a
hundred years ago for use with the Cree Indians.
   The typewriter used is a Remington Rand, which looks like any
other typewriter except that it is fitted with syllabic Eskimo
letters. It was designed about ten years ago by the late Leo Manning,
an Eskimo linguist with this Department. Besides the usual keys for
shift and lock, back spacing, margin release, etc., it has forty-six
keys.
   The first number of the magazine includes an Eskimo's account of
the previous year's goodwill mission to Greenland, some Eskimo
folk-tales sent in by people from Igloolik, a story of a hunting
adventure by a man who was a sanatorium patient not long ago, and
numerous other articles. There is also a children's page. There are
excellent illustrations drawn by Eskimos, including the magazine's
editor, Miss Mary Panegoosho, who also designed the cover.
   
   THERE IS ONE SLIGHT DEFECT in the syllabic system so long
in use in Canada: that is that the Eskimos here are the only ones who
use it. This prevents them at present from sharing in reading the
literature of the same race from Greenland and Labrador because in
those lands this syllabic system is not used.
   A development in the present Eskimo written tongue is now being
considered, by means of which all Eskimo, including those in Greenland
and Labrador, who use a different system of writing, could read the
same literature.
   However, for the present, this first Canadian Eskimo magazine is
a wonderful accomplishment. To the continuing of it, the Department
of Northern Affairs is sparing no effort or expense. And, by
airplane, boat and dog-team, across a half million square miles, this
Quarterly reaches 3,5 non-paying subscribers, in a land of seven
months winter- the most widely scattered people in the world ever to
receive a modern magazine in their own tongue!
Eskimo Arts and Crafts
by Dawn MacLeod
   HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED how Eskimos pass the time during
their long Arctic winter night? As children we were told that the
women sewed skins together for clothing, the men made or repaired
dog-traces and fishing tackle, and the children ate, slept, and played
what games they could in the confined space inside their ice-hut or
igloo. But since I came to Canada I have discovered that the Eskimo
does not spend all his time in utilitarian pursuits.
   Among the Canadian Eskimos there are sculptors and artists with a
high degree of good taste and skill, who take delight in creating
things of beauty. Their small stone carvings, carefully wrapped in
soft skin for safe storage, are brought out and handed round when
friends visit them; their pictures adorn the walls of the home.
   The recently formed Department of Northern Affairs, which takes a
fatherly interest in the welfare of nine or ten thousand Eskimos
living on Canadian territory, has been organising exhibitions of their
work in most of the larger cities, and a scheme has been set up under
which supplies for sale to the public are being made available to
selected shops.
   A little carving in stone of a mother and child was accepted by
H.M. the Queen during her visit to the Dominion, and the man who
carved it, Munamee of Baffin Island, takes immense pride in the
knowledge that his work has gone to Buckingham Palace. The Eskimo
never duplicates his figures, but other examples of this artist's
skill are being snapped up by tourists and collectors.
   
   THE TRADITIONAL CRAFTS of Eskimos are stone carving by the
men and leather applique?2 work by the women, with the addition of
basketry in parts of the eastern Arctic where coarse grasses grow.
This is similar in technique to the coiled basket-work made popular
by the Navaho Indians.
   The carving of small figures and animals by the Eskimo men
probably developed from their formerly essential skill in whittling
down stone to make adzes, reamers and crude saws- the only tools they
had until white traders brought steel and other metals to the Arctic
regions.
   Leather applique?2 by the women originally had a purely
functional application, for the narrow bands of sealskin in
contrasting tones were used to strengthen garments at points of
greatest wear. Gradually these applique?2 clothes developed into
things of beauty, and the Eskimo wife could earn respect for herself
and her family by outstanding skill at the craft.
   Eskimo women, as well as men, have now found time to fashion
things solely for pleasure, and their art takes the form of
applique?2 skin pictures. Some of these are rich in invention and
full of action. The designs- mostly human figures, dog teams, and
wild creatures of the Arctic- are visualised and then cut out direct
from the skin without any preliminary drawing, and are usually in
dark-toned leather sewn to backgrounds of bleached caribou hide or
sealskin.
   Sometimes the shapes of tools in daily use about the home are
employed as motifs, and it is believed that such designs have some
magical significance; but the artists, who have every right to keep
their secrets inviolate if they choose, do not seem disposed to
explain the meaning of these conceptions. Possibly some of us would
be equally reluctant to tell an audience of Eskimos just why we throw
a pinch of spilled salt over our shoulder, or take care to avoid
walking under a ladder.
   
   THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS in the arts of the Eskimo have
come, oddly enough, by way of Japan. A Canadian artist who is
attached to the Department of Northern Affairs was sent to the Far
East to study the Japanese technique of colour-printing from wood
blocks, and he thought that this craft might well be adapted to the
Eskimo's natural material- that is, the fairly soft talcs, grey-green
waxy steatite or 'soap-stone,' and what is locally known as
'pipe-stone': the latter not to be confused with the
russet-coloured Missouri clay, catlinite, which was used by the Red
Indian for his sacred pipe of peace.
   When the artist returned to his base, at Cape Dorset on the south
coast of Baffin Island, he demonstrated the methods of the Japanese
wood-block printers, and immediately these were seized upon by
delighted Eskimo craftsmen and adapted to their own material and
ideas.
   Bold designs of birds and beasts were cut on stone blocks and
printed in two or three colours on the special rice-paper brought from
Japan. The traditional leather work of the women was also brought
into use for a method of printing: the skins were cut to form
stencils, and paint or ink was forced through the apertures on to a
sheet of paper.
   The usual Eskimo pigments, two colours only, consist of a rich
black made from the glutinous residue found at the bottom of seal-oil
lamps, and a brownish-red obtained from local deposits of iron rust.
Both pigments are reduced with seal oil to a suitable brushing
consistency. To give the print-makers a fuller palette, other paints
have now been imported, and the Eskimo artists are enjoying the use of
blue for the first time in their history. One famous craftsman and
hunter, Niviaksiak, made a dramatic stencilled design of a polar bear
and her cub emerging from a steely-blue hole in the ice.
Unfortunately this gifted artist was killed while on a seal-hunt soon
afterwards.
   
   THE ESKIMOS, like the crofter folk in the Hebridean
islands, are no longer content to live entirely upon the produce of
their land and sea. Hudson Bay posts carry stocks of manufactured
goods which the Eskimo families find highly desirable- such as
woollen duffle cloth for light summer clothing in place of the heavier
skin garments. But hitherto the only produce they have been able to
trade for goods has been the white fox pelt, and the catch fluctuates
to such an extent- from 4, skins in a good season to 2 in a bad
one- that the income from this source has always been precarious.
   The Government scheme to export and sell Eskimo carvings and
prints is therefore of some importance in the economy of the people.
At present it affects a comparatively small group in the Cape Dorset
area, but it will probably spread to other communities.
   As the Eskimo artists are self-critical, and their work is being
fostered with knowledge and sympathy, it is not in any danger of
becoming vulgarised by commercial exploitation. Their traditional
dislike of repetition has been linked to the newly introduced printing
techniques, for only ten or twelve impressions are taken from each set
of blocks or stencils before these are destroyed. As a result of this
wise limitation, the supply of Eskimo pictures will not flood the
market. Already demands are coming in from private collectors and
galleries all over the world, and it is known that UNICEF plans
to issue an Arctic design as a Christmas card next year.
   
   CARIBOU, MUSK-OX, polar bear, snow-goose, walrus and seal-
all the familiar life around them is studied and reproduced by the
Eskimo hunters with keenness of observation and economy of line.
# 223
<18 TEXT F37>
MAY SONGS OF BEDFORDSHIRE
BY F. B. HAMER
   The village blacksmith of Harrold, a well known character, gave
me the May carol he used to sing, with his parents and family, round
the village, including the numerous country houses of that
neighbourhood. The tune was the same as that published by Lucy
Broadwood in her Traditional Songs and Carols, and, except for
some transposition of verses and the addition of a wish for a joyful
May, it was the same song. Years later, after I had come across other
versions of the song, I discovered why. Mr. Crouch, the blacksmith,
as a child, had been in the party that gave the song to Sir Ernest
Clarke at Hinwick Hall in the first decade of the century, and it was
Sir Ernest who had sent it to Lucy Broadwood.
   It was the Church family of Biddenham who first brought home to
me the fact that there were other versions of this carol still known,
and sometimes still sung, in Bedfordshire. Mrs. E. Church gave
me the one she used to sing in Kimbolton and the villages on the
Bedfordshire border with Huntingdonshire. Her father-in-law, Walter
'Paddy' Church, told me that when he was a boy in Bromham (c.
188) the custom was for the young men to gather thorn branches the
night before May Day, and these they planted in front of the door of
all the unmarried women of the village. During May Day morning they
went round again, this time to collect their reward in the form of
money and sometimes beer or food. They sang on each of these
perambulations, using the same tune, but having two sets of words.
<SONG>
   I have since found that this was the custom at other places in
the county. At Keysoe the bushes were graded according to the degree
of eligibility of the lady, and the unwanted spinster had a briar bush
instead. At Wrestlingworth it appears to have been a male custom too,
and Northill, with its magnificent maypole and unique records of
sixteenth-century May games, boasted a more elaborate ceremony. They
had a set of 'Moggies' attending the May Bush cart on its journey.
The mayers or 'Moggies', usually about eight or ten young men,
carried tall, beribboned staves like tutti poles and had as leaders a
'lord' and 'lady', and included a shabbily dressed, black-faced
man and 'woman', carrying besoms- these last the 'Moggies' who
gave their name to the whole party. Elstow too had its 'moggies'
and its own song before these were submerged in the present-day
Whitelands-sponsored Ruskinade with its miniature pole and the full
Queen-of-the-May ceremony.
   The more usual custom is for children, usually girls only, to
take round a decorated garland made of a flower-decked hoop or double
hoop with a doll dressed in white suspended in the centre. Sometimes
a pram or chair, carrying a doll and decorated with flowers, takes the
place of the hoops. The song is usually shorter than the full Harrold
version and often contains only a verse or two about the branch or
garland of May and the que?5te verses. The Eaton Bray song is
an example.
<SONG>
   In the north of the county another tune appears, sometimes in the
same village as the more usual one. It is used by children with a
garland. Here are two versions of it.
<SONGS>
   I have not attempted a systematic survey of the county. The
examples I have came to me almost by chance, which accounts for the
fact that there are extensive gaps in the south. I count it a very
fortunate chance which brought me the very lovely song sung in
Buckworth (Hunts.) and the northern borders of Bedfordshire. Here
it is as given to me by Mrs. Johnstone who now lives in Bedford.
<SONG>
SOME ADDITIONAL MAY SONGS FROM THE EAST MIDLANDS
   THE FOREGOING are only a few of Mr. Hamer's extensive
collection of May Songs from Bedfordshire and the neighbouring
counties. He has, however, kindly consented to some further examples
from other collections being appended to his article.
   Mrs. Ruth Craufurd of Aldbury, near Tring, has recently
contributed to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library seven versions
from the south-west of Hertfordshire. Two of these, representing the
two distinct types which she has found in this restricted area, are
here reproduced.
<SONGS>
   The Aldbury melody is very close to that of the King's Langley,
Herts., May Day song 'The Moon shines bright' (L. E.
Broadwood, English County Songs, p. 18). The Marsworth song
may be compared with Mr. Hamer's North Bedfordshire versions.
   Mrs. Craufurd writes:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   One of the interesting comparisons between these two neighbouring
May songs is the complete difference in both airs and words. Although
Marsworth is barely five miles from Aldbury, villages were almost
isolated from each other in the days before cars and bicycles and had
only a market town in common, so that they lived in a little world of
their own.
<END QUOTE>
   Another point of interest is the money asked. Aldbury, a village
with a great house and a rich parsonage, asks for 'a little
silver', but Marsworth, a poor marshland village, only hopes for a
ha'penny. Marsworth also makes an interesting reference to the Tring
Chimney Sweeps who 'come 2a-dancing all May-day', which refers to
the Jack-in-the-Green, the May Garland in the far-off days of the
little climbing boys and in still further off days when the dancer in
it represented the spirit of vegetation visiting each house to bring
fertility in the coming year.
   Miss Beattie Burch, one of the Aldbury Mayers from whom I got the
song, told me: 'We used to get up at six in the morning on May Day
and make our garlands, and then go with them to the bigger houses and
farms before school'. If they resisted the temptation to play
truant from school on May Day they were rewarded the following
Saturday by a Festivity which consisted in 'a procession round the
pond, ending up at the Rectory or Stocks (the great house) where we
were each given a bun and a penny'. Their garlands were often 'a
little doll with a wreath of flowers in her hair, sitting in a child's
arm-chair decorated with ribbons and flowers and curtained all round
so that only those who gave us money could see the May Doll when we
pulled the curtains back for them'.
   These and other local versions of the May song are now sung
annually at the Aldbury Women's Institute May Festival held on
Whit-Saturday.
   
   The following examples from the Editor's collection represent,
firstly, the version generally current in the south of
Northamptonshire and the adjacent part of Buckinghamshire and,
secondly, the 'night song' from Gravely on the
Cambridgeshire-Huntingdonshire border.
<SONG>
   A very similar version of the May song used to be current in the
nearby villages, such as Deanshanger and Wicken (Northants.). The
May Garlanding by the children of Leckhampstead is not
school-sponsored and was kept up regularly on May 1 at least until
1954. The children told me that they did not go out in 1955 because
May 1 was a Sunday. There used to be three separate parties, each
with a garland, but there was then only one consisting of about five
girls from eight to eleven years of age. The substitution of ~'Good
evening' for the usual ~'Good morning' in verse 1 resulted from
the closing of the village school, since when the children go to
Buckingham and no longer have a holiday on May Day. Except on a
Saturday the garlanding has therefore to be postponed until after
school.
<SONG>
   At Gravely the custom was that a party of four or five men- one
with an accordion- went round the village about midnight on May Day
eve with branches of may cut from the hedges. At each house where
they sang the song they left a branch ('May Bush'), and money was
then thrown down from the bedroom windows; but people who were
disliked were left a briar- a briar indicated a liar, said Mrs.
Howlett- and those of bad moral character were left a branch of
elder, or hemlock and stinging nettle. Thus the full implication of
the first verse becomes apparent.
   It will be noticed that, in contrast to Mr. Hamer's Bromham
example, there was here no second visiting and that verses of the
night and day songs have been combined. Mrs. Howlett, however,
mentioned that her mother made very good May garlands with a doll hung
inside, so it would appear that the day-time May Garlanding was also
carried on at Gravely. The Gravely melody is related to the twice
noted Fowlmere, Cambs., version (L. E. Broadwood, J. Folk
Song Society, 192, 1, 18; R. Vaughan Williams, Eight
Traditional Carols, 1919, reprinted in The Oxford Book of Carols,
no. 47).
   Further references are given by M. Dean-Smith, A Guide to
English Folk Song Collections, 1954 ('May Day Carols', 'The Moon
shines bright', etc.).
   The main purpose of these additional notes is to indicate the
need for a detailed survey of the various May Song tunes and their
related customs. The most recent study of this kind seems to have
appeared as long ago as 194, and this was confined to a single county
(W. B. Gerish, 'The Mayers and their Song, or some account of
the First of May and its observance in Hertfordshire', printed by
S. Austin & Sons, Hertford).
   EDITOR.
THE INTERNATIONAL FOLK MUSIC COUNCIL
   THE FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE of the International Folk
Music Council was held in the Universite?2 Laval in Quebec from
August 28 to September 3, 1961.
   The Conference was organized by a special Canadian Committee
which included the University and the Canadian Folk Music Society.
The leading spirit in this enterprise was Dr. Marius Barbeau, the
President of the Society and the grand old man of French-Canadian and
Red Indian folk music, known throughout the world from the work done
when he was attached to the National Museum in Ottawa.
   This Conference attracted musicians, folk-lorists and dancers
from all over the world, with a particularly strong contingent from
the United States. It met in the mornings and afternoons and the
Members were entertained in various ways during the evenings with
concerts and performances. There was an opportunity for one excursion
to the Indian reservation in Lorette, where a programme of Huron and
Iroquois ceremonies was given under Dr. Barbeau's direction.
   The University of Laval is itself a strong centre of
French-Canadian folk-lore and the members of the Conference were
fortunate in having this opportunity to have the folk-lore section
with its archives explained to them by Professor Luc Lacourcie?3re
and his colleagues.
   Hospitality was generous throughout the period of the Conference,
culminating in a Canadian supper in the old part of the University in
the heart of the City of Quebec. The daily sessions were held in a
building in the new University some four or five miles out of the
city, where new buildings are springing up on an extensive campus
which only a short time ago was virgin forest. The Conference had all
the modern facilities at its disposal and as there was little else to
distract the attention the sessions were very well attended.
   From the musical point of view the contemporary work of Dr.
Charles Seeger and Mr. Alan Lomax, each making use of modern
technical equipment, posed the most challenging questions. Dr.
Seeger's Melograph, capable of analysing melodic structure in great
detail, opened a good many eyes to the fluidity of folk music and
revealed how incomplete was the conventional picture of folk music
depending on a few modes derived from the pentatonic scale. Alan
Lomax, using another type of scientific instrument, provided graphs of
vocal technique from which he deduced a number of factors each
affecting singing 'style' which he described as a
'self-perpetuating culture trait'. He argued that there were three
or four main styles which had coalesced in America shaping singing
habits and influencing the preservation of traditional pieces and the
choice of new material.
# 26
<181 TEXT F38>
THE POMERANIAN BREAM
   This fish is not, as its scientific name (Abramis
buggenhagii) implies, and as was once believed, a separate bream
species. It cannot even claim the distinction of being a bream
"variety" or "breed". It is simply a hybrid between the common
bream and the roach. It is occasioned by the similarities in habits
and spawning of both species. Both bream and roach spawn communally
at about the same time of year, and both seek similar weedy shallows.
Occasionally it happens that a shoal of one kind is spawning
simultaneously alongside a shoal of the other. Eggs deposited on the
fringes of each group where the two species would tend to intermingle
are obviously fertilised by milt from fishes of the other group. In
this way the hybrid "pomeranian bream", as it is popularly known,
is produced.
   The hybrid is itself infertile, but it is still a very common
fish in waters where roach and bream occur together in large numbers
and it is not merely confined to lakes and ponds but is commonly found
in rivers also. The fish is silvery in colour, with perhaps a bluish
tint. Not quite plump enough to be a bream, yet deep enough in the
belly to look like a really splendid grandfather roach, its typically
forked, bream-like tail should indicate its parentage, as also should
its obvious sliminess.
   But this fish often attains a weight of over two pounds and it is
probably more easily mistaken for a roach than anything else. Often
it is hailed by the excited angler as an exceptionally good specimen
roach, and entered for a club contest or prize.
   For similar reasons to those already given the bream also
hybridises with the rudd in waters where these two species are common.
The resulting progeny are easily mistaken for very fine rudd and,
less often, for stunted bream. It is perfectly natural that an angler
should prefer to believe he has taken a fine rudd rather than a poor
bream, and like the roach x bream hybrid, this fish is probably
responsible for innumerable false record or "specimen fish" claims.
Whilst this kind of wishful thinking is understandable, it is
nevertheless easily avoidable. Both hybrids may be quite definitely
identified as imposters by fin ray and scale counts.... Furthermore,
only one check is likely to be necessary. The anal fin ray count
is almost always decisive in distinguishing such hybrids from both
parents, and if only anglers would bother to undertake this, there
would be far fewer false record claims, and fewer disappointed anglers
as a result, for these imposters are always recognised by any club
steward of any experience who cares to undertake the count needed.
   Roach possess 9-12 branched rays in the anal fin. Bream possess
23-29, and rudd 1-13. The roach x bream hybrid has 15-19, which
establishes quite clearly that it can be neither roach nor bream! The
rudd x bream hybrid has 15-18 which again establishes that it cannot
be bream or rudd. Table 3 gives fuller details of the differences
between these fish and their parents, and should suffice to identify
any bream hybrid likely to be found.
   Records indicate that rarely the smaller silver bream hybridises
with roach and rudd. Such hybrids are most uncommon and unlikely to
be met. Both are small fishes seldom exceeding ten inches, and
therefore unlikely to be the cause of false record claims. Both may
be distinguished by the anal fin, and details of these unusual and
even rare hybrids may be found in Table 3.
   Strangely enough there are no records in Britain of hybridisation
between the two bream species. This seems curious when we consider
the close relationship between the silver and bronzed breams.
Possibly such hybrids occur, but have not been recognised. Owing to
the degree of overlapping which occurs in scale and fin ray counts
between the two species, it would be almost impossible to detect such
a hybrid by external means although examination of the pharyngeal
teeth and gill rakers would certainly identify this fish if it were
found.
THE BLEAK. Alburnus alburnus. (Linnaeus.)
Alburnus lucidus. (Day.)
DESCRIPTION
   The back is blue-green, or grey-green, and in bright sunshine
it appears predominantly green. The flanks are pale green with
iridescent tints, fading to a silvery white on the underside. The
iridescence of the scales gives the flanks a golden green colour in
sunny weather when the fish is ashore, and in duller weather the white
or silver aspects predominate.
<FIG.>
The belly is compressed to a ridge between the ventral fins and as
far as the anal fin; the anal fin is long, and grey. The other fins
are sometimes tinted with pink.
   The body is spindle-shaped and lightly compressed laterally. The
head is small, with the mouth superior, and strongly oblique. The
upper body surface is lightly curved and the abdomen more so. The
scales are very lightly attached to the body, coming off at any
careless handling. The ventral fins are set in front of the level of
the dorsal fin, and the pectoral fins are situated close to the gill
covers, about half-way between the lateral line and the abdomen.
   These cheerful sparkling little fish swim in the same category as
the bream by virtue of their long anal fin, but they rarely share the
same "swim", being utterly different in habit. They are common
fish in many rivers and the strolling observer can hardly fail to
notice them, especially as they prefer to live amongst the surface
layers of water. They are often to be seen within inches of the bank,
too, darting after floating crusts which are soon broken in smaller
pieces by the attentions of the shoal. Often the bleak are seen
leaping and scattering across the surface, alarming other fishes as
they flash silver when the pike or prowling perch leaps amongst them
in search of a meal. More often than not the bleak causes the dainty
rises and splashes which continually dimple the surface, yet despite
their timidity, bleak will swim nosing the feet of the small boy
paddling in the shallows provided he avoids undue noise and violent
movement. In almost any weather bleak are to be found close to the
surface, ever ready to amuse the passing walker, or sample the
angler's bait.
   Yet bleak are not much sought after by anglers because they are
small and take a bait too readily. In match fishing, however, they
are popular, putting a premium on speed and skill at striking the
swift tiny bites rather than on water-lore and angling craft. Many a
match champion owes his laurels to his ability to strike the swift
bites at a faster rate than his companions.
   Other anglers regard the bleak as a bait for pike or perch, but
most often when the pike are on feed; striking terror amongst the
shallows, the bleak, showing considerable discretion for so small a
fish, are nowhere to be found. Only the small boy, angling perhaps
with a string and stick amongst the brooks off the main stream, knows
where they have gone.
   Like the minnow, bleak are very important food fish for other
river creatures. These most useful members of the river community
provide meals for predatory fish and river birds. Not only the
regular river-haunting birds, but even the seagulls
<FIGURES>
seeking inland during bad weather know where to look for a feed. The
angler's wife, too, knows that a dish of bleak is not to be despised.
Well cooked they are tastier than sprats, which they somewhat
resemble in appearance.
   Bleak were once very much sought after for the iridescent
colouring of their scales. The artificial pearl industry thrived on
the colours of the otherwise insignificant bleak. Like so many other
creatures they were slaughtered in large numbers to satisfy the
vanities of the human female.
   In some waters such as the Thames bleak are so abundant as to be
considered a nuisance by various angling bodies. Efforts to check the
bleak population have been made from time to time by several such
groups. Possibly it is as well that these efforts have met with
little success. Although abundant, bleak are delicate fish, and so
long as they are capable of surviving in the Thames, so long does this
indicate a fair standard of purity in the water.
   Bleak are not found in Scotland, West Wales, Ireland or the Lake
District. Elsewhere in the British Isles they are very common. As
aquarium fishes they would probably be welcomed for their attractive
colours; unfortunately they are extremely difficult to keep alive
under artificial conditions, and indeed they seldom survive the
journey home in a bait can.
   Bleak are recorded as having hybridised naturally with chub and
roach. These hybrids are recognised by their long anal fins, and also
by a compressed ridge along the abdomen between the ventral fins and
the anal fin (Tate-Regan). They are not at all common, and are well
worth reporting when taken. Please send such fishes where they may be
properly examined. Only when a large number have been handled by
competent authorities will a full knowledge of them become available.
Details of what is at present known are given in Table 4.
<TABLE>
<FIG.>
THE ALLIS SHAD. Alosa alosa. (Linnaeus)
Clupea alosa. (Day.)
DESCRIPTION
   The back is blue-green, green-brown, or intermediate, with
golden flashes on the head, and tints of yellow. The flanks are of a
pale olive colour which shades to silver or bluish-white on the
underside. A single oval dark spot lies on the upper flank close to
the gill cover. In younger fish there may be several such spots, and
in older specimens these may disappear entirely. The scales are
iridescent and flash golden or yellow in sunlight.
   The body is strongly compressed laterally and the abdomen is
keeled, with the edges of the scales giving a serrated edge to the
keel. The lateral line is not visible externally.
   The mouth is large, slightly oblique, sometimes with fine
bristle-like teeth. The snout is blunt and the lower jaw projects
slightly giving the fish a pugnacious appearance. The eyes are quite
distinctive in being hooded at the front and trailing edges by a
semi-transparent membrane.
   To see this powerful fish leaping over the netsman's obstructions
you could hardly confuse it with the dull and lethargic bream
described earlier, despite the suggestion of similarity in body shape.
There is in fact no relationship and the shads are typical members of
the herring family and, like the herring, they are really marine in
habit, entering the province of the freshwater angler and observer
only when they migrate upstream to spawn in the river.
   Although the Allis shad is rapidly becoming less common in
Britain, it was once plentiful in innumerable large rivers and
estuaries such as the Thames which, like so many others, is now denied
to the incoming fish by industrial pollution.
   On the Wye and Severn, however, there are still flourishing
commercial shad fisheries, and nets take many thousands of the clean
fish each season. The "run" commences between March and June and
then the estuarial reaches are crowded by the professional netsmen.
The actual approach of the first shads is still mysteriously heralded
by the arrival of sandpipers which are in fact locally called "shad
birds".
   A primitive kind of shrimping net is used by many fishermen
<FIGURES>
and great skill is required to capture these swift leaping fish which
average about three pounds apiece. Fortunately for those who depend
upon the shads for a living, the fish follow similar routes year after
year, and experienced fishermen know just where to set their obstacles
to direct the oncoming fish towards their nets.
   Those which escape (and many thousands do) continue their journey
upstream undaunted until they arrive amongst the shallower
less-frequented streams where they spawn with considerable fuss and
splashing. The eggs are simply left unburied and the spent fish
commence their return journey. The newly hatched fish remain in fresh
water only until four or five inches long, and then they too enter the
sea where growth to maturity is rapid.
# 222
<182 TEXT F39>
DUMMY BOARD FIGURES
By MICHAEL CONWAY
   DUMMY boards shaped as life-size figures were decorative
and amusing accessories in the Georgian house and in the garden too.
Cut from wood and painted, they vividly, even startlingly, resembled
richly attired men and women, colourful birds and domestic animals.
Good-looking housemaids gave life to dreary passages (Plate 172A);
the entrance hall might shelter a shepherd and shepherdess, sometimes
with sheep; romping children might hide an empty fireplace (Plate
171D.)
   Dummy board figures appeared in England during the 166s as fire
screens: a silhouette of a man or woman might be cut from thick, heavy
wood and painted so that he appeared in a naturalistic attitude before
the fireplace. The artists were usually second-rate portrait
painters. The earliest record of such a painted figure is engraved in
the frontispiece to the 1Compleat Gamester (1674), where a dummy
board fashionably stands erect before the fire, feet wide apart, with
a drinking glass held in his hand, screening a company of card players
from the heat of the blaze.
   The Georgian dummy board figure was designed for ornament only
and was made from much thinner wood. A projecting ledge extending
from shoulder to shoulder at the back kept it 6 inches from the wall
and was attached to it by means of a pair of wrought-iron hooks and
staples. This position and the figure's feather edges caused a
life-like shadow to be thrown against the wall and secured a
three-dimensional effect. Careful placement was essential, for the
figure might be painted full face or three-quarter face- rarely in
profile. In an alcove, such as at a stair bend, the dummy board was
secured into an erect position by means of a pair of wooden supports
cut in the shape of shoes projecting four or five inches to the front,
and with heels projecting to the rear. Holes in existing examples
show them to have been screwed down from the heels.
   These colourful figures added interest to early Georgian homes,
and in the days of George =3 stocks of those painted by sign-board
artists were displayed by the innumerable Mayfair furnishing stores.
Regency dummy boards lacked the colourful elegance of earlier work,
but Victorians reverted to Georgian styles, in greater brilliance and
with some carving in relief.
GLOSSARY
   Animals and birds: rooms might be decorated with dummy board
figures of tabby cats. An early Victorian series of cats was covered
with black velvet instead of paint, and large amber beads were used
for eyes. Friendly dogs were popular for the parlour, and
fierce-looking animals for the entrance hall, apparently ready to fly
at any unauthorized intruder. Brightly painted parrots and macaws
perched high in the room appeared very realistic to the visitor below.
Deer, sheep and pigs might stand in well-selected outdoor positions.
   Artists: until the 176s professional portrait painters
decorated the majority of dummy board pictures. Their work is
recognized by life-like poses and vivacious expressions. Many
specimens appear to have been portraits. Then came a statute making
it illegal to suspend sign-boards over the highway, and the great
trade in sign-board painting was ended. Dummy board pictures were
thereupon painted by shop sign decorators who for the most part worked
in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane, London. The existence of identical dummy
board figures cut from a master template and painted with similar
figures illustrates the change to a style of work approaching mass
production.
   Boards: the wooden boards upon which images were painted were
at first in oak or pitch pine. In the eighteenth century beech,
pearwood and mahogany were alternatives. Those intended for outdoor
use were cut from 1-inch teak which neither warped nor shrank under
the stress of changing weather conditions. Outlines for dummy board
figures were cut from single boards measuring about 2 feet wide. From
the 177s thickness was halved. For comparison it may be noted that
late eighteenth-century tables (q.v.) measuring 3 to 4 feet
in height were between 1/4-inch and 3/8-inch in thickness. The planks
on most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dummy boards have shrunk a
little, revealing vertical tongue-and-groove joints.
   Canvas covered: because the built-up boards tended to open
with shrinkage of the wood some dummy boards were covered with
painter's canvas, the fabric glued to the feather-edged board. The
back might be covered with canvas also and painted brown.
   Elizabeth =1 costume: dummy boards painted in elaborate
Elizabethan attire were popular with early Georgians and again in the
mid-nineteenth century. The early series was almost invariably
painted by portraitists, possibly adapted from engravings as minor
accessories were correctly depicted. The face might be that of the
purchaser or a member of his family.
   Feather edges: the wide, sharply cut bevelling surrounding
the rear edge of the profile at an acute angle. This gave a clear and
life-like effect to the shadow thrown upon the wall.
   Fireboards: these date between the 175s and the 179s. They
measure 3 to 4 feet in height and enlivened hearth interiors during
summer months when the burnished steel portable grate, fender and
fire-irons were oiled and laid away until autumn. The chimney was
closed and the hearth recess cleaned of its soot and made colourful
with massive ornaments, such as lidded urns in porcelain, huge jars
displaying flowers and foliage, or terrestrial globes. Dummy board
representations of these might be used, particularly vases of flowers.
Alternatively the entire fireplace opening might be masked by a
fireboard painted with an urn overflowing with flowers. As yet
another alternative small figures might be used, such as matching
pairs of costumed boys and girls, the boys often riding stick
hobby-horses. A board of this kind might stand upon a plinth of
mahogany or gilded beech, plain or elaborately carved, but usually the
lower edge was set into a heavy block of oak about 5 inches thick
which might be carved or japanned in red.
   Fire screens: dummy board pictures were originally designed
for this purpose: stout, heavy articles measuring up to 6 feet in
height and cut from 1 1/2 inch oak or pitch pine, feather edged, set
in weighty blocks enabling them to stand upright without assistance.
The heat of the fire must have warped the woods, the table joints
opened, and the oil paint flaked away.
   Highlanders: kilted Scotsmen were produced in large numbers
to stand as trade signs outside the doors of tobacco and snuff shops.
   Lady at her toilet: this series appears to be the work of a
single Georgian artist. They wear early seventeenth-century dress,
including the period's enveloping white apron bordered with lace, and
hold hand mirror and brush to dress their waist-long hair. (Plate
171A.)
   Outdoor figures: life-size figures so painted and arranged
that visitors unexpectedly confronted with them were startled into
believing that they were living realities. Red-coated soldiers stood
on guard in mansion porches, on hotel stairs, in tea gardens and
pleasure grounds and at tavern doorways; sailors standing, or dancing
the horn pipe, were favourites in the gardens of waterside taverns.
Country innkeepers favoured dummies of jugs and glasses, or dishes of
onions, radishes, bread and cheese. Pedlars and women hawkers were
favourite outdoor figures early in the nineteenth century.
   Painting: the artists drew his outline upon a smooth-surfaced
board of seasoned wood. At first each was individually designed, but
from the 176s templates might be used. The table was then sawn to
shape and the edges sharply bevelled. Two or three washes of boiling
linseed oil were then applied, followed by a rubbing down with
distemper or powdered white lead mixed with parchment paste. The
colours were painted over this, the distemper soaking up excess oil
and thus increasing the brilliance of the paint. This radiance when
new was enhanced on fine work by burnishing, particularly of the gold
and reds. The final result was protected with varnish. Unless it can
be seen that this process was used, a board should be looked upon with
suspicion.
   Regency: by the nineteenth century dummy board figures had
become less showy, typical examples including women hawkers, ballad
singers, pedlars, organ grinders with monkeys and, later, knights in
armour. (Plate 172B.)
   Reproductions: these were made in the mid-Victorian period
and again in the 192s and 193s, the latter often costume portraits
copied from well-known paintings and standing with the aid of hinged
brackets as on an easel. These modern dummies have a so-called
'antique finish' to simulate age.
   Soldiers: these were depicted in the uniform worn by
Grenadiers of the Second Regiment of Foot during the reign of George
=1. An eighteenth-century engraving of the interior of the Old
Chelsea Bun House illustrates a pair of Grenadiers and an equestrian
dummy board, displayed on brackets above the doorway, each throwing a
shadow on the wall. Pairs consisting of a Grenadier and a housemaid
have been recorded. These soldiers are about 7 feet high with
mitre-shaped hats about 18 inches high. They are always found with
their feet 18 inches apart, then the attitude of attention: the
'heels together' position dates from the time of the Prussian
influence on the English army in the 175s. A variety of red-coated
soldiers of the late eighteenth century have been recorded, many of
them in the 'stand at ease' position.
   Tables: the contemporaneous name given to the boards
constructed from tongued-and-grooved units joined and prepared ready
for painting.
   Trade card: an example of the 176s is in the Banks
Collection, British Museum. This was issued by John Potts, the Black
Spread Eagle, King Street, Covent Garden, London, and illustrates a
dummy board figure of Elizabeth =1, describing such figures as
'Ornaments for Halls, Stair-cases and Chimney Boards. At lowest
prices'.
   Victorian: in addition to reproductions of Georgian types, a
series was made with the surface carved in relief and painted. These
were mounted on four-wheeled square pedestals 12 inches high.
   Women with brooms: this was a stock pattern. Many still
remain, identical in size, shape and pose, always wearing white or
baize aprons, but with varying faces and dress details. They are
shown holding soft brooms, the long bristles bound to a round stock
with three ornamental turned knops above. They represent ladies of
the house laudably domesticated rather than housemaids. Because of
their dress such dummy boards have been attributed to the 163s. A
more reasonable attribution is to the second half of the eighteenth
century, dress having been copied from early Stuart sources (Plate
171B.)
JELLY MOULDS
By JULIET SANFORD
   FOR centuries jellies have figured importantly among
English desserts, particularly upon festive occasions. At the feast
following George Neville's installation as Archbishop of York in 1466,
the huge dessert included '3, Parted <particoloured> dishes of
jelly and 4, Plain dishes of Jelly'. Each jelly was tabled
individually in an earthen jelly pot except on the high table where
silver was used.
   Immediately after the invention of flint-glass in 1676, readers
of The 1Accomplisht Cook, by Robert May, 1678, were directed to
'serve jelly run into little round glasses four or five to the
dish'. These were plain footless bowls with folded lips and were
sold at 1s 6d a dozen under the name of jelly mortars.
Georgian jellies were served in deep, cone-shaped glasses and eaten
with long small-bowled spoons. The mid-morning snack of jelly was
known as 'long spoon and jelly'. Early in the Georgian period
individual moulds were made in white salt-glazed stoneware.
   Large jelly moulds were unknown to Mrs. Hannah Glasse whose
Complete Confectioner, 1753, instructed her readers to pour jelly
'into what thing you please to shape it in and when cold turn it out.
If it sticks dip your basin in hot water'.
   Moulds to turn out jellies large enough to serve several
individual helpings appear to have been introduced by Josiah Wedgwood
in his celebrated queen's ware. In the nineteenth century these were
accompanied by moulds in Britannia metal, copper, Bristol stoneware,
and flint enamel ware.
GLOSSARY
   Bristol stoneware: jelly moulds were not made in brown
salt-glazed stoneware as its granulated 'orange peel' surface made
it impossible to turn out the jelly.
# 27
<183 TEXT F4>
THE WORLD OF SCIENCE.
ANIMALS' DEAF EARS.
By MAURICE BURTON, D.Sc.
   IT is some years ago since I first became interested in the
possible effect of modern noises on animals. I started with the
assumption that if animals had more sensitive ears than mine, or were
as allergic, as I am, to the sounds of traffic on the roads, there
should be a noticeable tendency for them to shun the borders of roads.
It soon became apparent that this was not so, and this conclusion is
reinforced by the abundance of hares on London Airport. There, people
put their hands over their ears as the jet-planes go out, but the
hares are to all appearances unmoved, which is contrary to what might
have been expected.
   During the course of my study of this problem several striking
points emerged. The first is that although the ears of animals are
often more acute than ours, and their powers of discrimination seem to
be higher, they also appear to be less bothered than we are by a
cacophony.
   There is constantly passing through the human brain a stream of
impulses we call thoughts. These are closely linked to everyday life,
are built upon experience, and our experiences are based largely on
sensations received through the senses, one of which is hearing.
These experiences are continually being added to because everything
that impinges on our senses is meaningful. For example, while writing
these last three sentences I have heard a number of sounds, each of
which has set up a train of thought in my mind. The church clock
striking the hour reminds me that I must hurry if this is to be ready
on time for the printer. It reminds me also, once again, that yet
another hour has gone on the inexorable road to eternity. These are
two ideas that could never enter an animal's head on hearing the sound
of a clock.
   Within the space of these few seconds, also, there has been the
sound of a telephone bell, of a distant motor-bicycle and of a dog
barking. Each has been a minor distraction. The telephone made me
wonder whether I need drop this task to answer the call and with it
came a tangle of thoughts that at 11.3 I must not fail to telephone
so-and-so, that the telephone is a nuisance but what could we do
without it, and others of like nature. The distant motor-cycle caused
me to give a momentary reflection on the calamity of road accidents.
The barking dog made me pause to find out if it was one of my own
dogs barking, and if so for what reason.
   By contrast with our continual alertness to noises and their
meaning it is possible at times so to lose oneself in preoccupation as
to be oblivious to outside sounds. Then, a sudden noise may recall us
with a mild or even a violent shock. So throughout our waking hours
we tend to alternate between an awareness of every small sound and the
danger of shock, mild or otherwise, through not having been aware of
them.
   Whatever views we may hold about how far the higher animals are
able to think or to reason, there can hardly be any doubt that they
are not affected by sounds in the same way as we are. They are not
distracted by trivial sounds and are unlikely to be off-guard as a
result of being lost in their thoughts. The best way to test this is
by direct observation. In this we can employ indicators such as the
way the ears are used as well as the animal's moments of alertness,
usually with a tensing of the muscles. It then soon becomes apparent
that an animal normally pays little attention to sounds that are not a
cause for alarm, an indication of a source of food or made by a member
of its own species.
   Where the air is free of sounds made by machinery it may be
filled with those made by birds, insects, rustling leaves and other
natural sounds. It can be alive with them, yet so far as we can tell
an animal ignores them all unless one or other of them has a special
significance. It will, however, immediately react to any alarm note
or a note of aggression. To put it another way round, it seems to be
able to shut its ears to noise in general yet remain on the alert for
particular sounds which by tradition or experience compel its
reaction. We also possess this faculty, although some have it more
than others, but it seems likely that animals can, and habitually do,
exploit it more than men, largely because their world of experience
makes fewer demands on their senses.
   Some animals have a pronounced ability to turn a deaf ear. This
is difficult to test in a wild animal because the mere presence of the
human observer, however well hidden, tends to threaten its security
and put it on the alert. Domesticated animals, whose security is
assured, often provide outstanding examples of it. Dogs and donkeys
can appear to be stone-deaf, ignoring all words of command or
entreaty, all persuasive or cajoling sounds, but responding instantly
to even a slight noise suggestive of something pleasurable. A dog may
lie as if in a trance, apparently unhearing, yet spring to action at
the slight metallic sound of its lead being taken from a hook or the
faintly whispered word "walk."
   There is a category of sounds, however, to which all the higher
animals at least react violently. These are the explosive sounds. A
car backfiring will send the city pigeons flying. One theory has it
that because they are descended from rock doves there is a survival
value in this innate reaction because it would have made them fly up
at the sound of a fall of cliff that might otherwise engulf them. The
theory has many weaknesses. One is that many kinds of birds will
react in the same way. In fact, it seems reasonable to say that the
explosive sound creates alarm among most animals with ears. There may
be exceptions, as among fishes or frogs, but it seems to be a rule
among birds and mammals. It probably created alarm among human beings
also before ever gunpowder or TNT were invented- the word
"explode," in fact, antedates their invention, and in modern but
pre-nuclear warfare the wear on the nerves from explosives was
probably more telling than the casualties inflicted by the exploding
missiles.
   It is not possible to deal in more than the broadest generalities
about animals' reactions to sounds because hearing varies widely from
one species to another, as does the structure of the ear. So far as
the explosive sound is concerned there are some animals that use it
themselves. A dog may use a particularly explosive bark to another
dog under certain circumstances, and the effect of this can be almost
as devastating as the bursting of a modern projectile on the human ear
or the report of a rifle on a flock of pigeons.
   It is necessary, to avoid confusing the issue, to ignore some of
the extreme examples of deleterious sounds, those that make telephone
operators faint or the jingling of a bunch of keys that sends a mouse
into something approaching hysterics. What is at least as interesting
is the way inventors seem to have chosen, probably intuitively, a
combination of explosive and aggressive sounds as warning signals to
be used on automobiles. Apart from the purely explosive sounds, those
that stir most animals to rapid action are the snarls, growls, barks
or long drawn-out roars of predators or rivals. A representative
series of sounds made by motor-horns would approximate fairly closely
to the aggressive or warning sounds made by wild beasts.
   One important factor in the toleration of noise is familiarity.
Our Victorian ancestors probably found the noises from horse traffic
insufferable at times and at an earlier age it may be that the cry of
the night-watchman was held to be a necessary but excruciating
nuisance. Each generation seems to be able to bear the noises it
grows up with and to abominate the additional noises that appear
later. Generations of hares succeed each other with far greater
rapidity than generations of humans, and the hares of London Airport
have probably by now accepted the noise of jet-planes as part of their
environment. They have, moreover, one great advantage over us, and
this is probably one of the reasons why mammals in general can put up
with the noise of traffic on the roads. Those that have movable ears
can not only turn them in the right direction to pick up slight or
distant sounds, they can also turn them away from disagreeable
sounds- and I have seen them do so.
THE WORLD OF SCIENCE.
COYPU AND PEST-CONTROL.
By MAURICE BURTON, D.Sc.
   THE coypu is one of the animals introduced into this
country whose residence here we are beginning to regret. It is a
large South American rodent, rat-like although its nearest relatives
are the porcupines, measuring over a yard long to the tip of the tail
and weighing up to 2 lb. Originally brought here about 193 to be
farmed for their fur, which is known as nutria, the coypu began to
escape and are now well established in the countryside, notably in
East Anglia and especially on the Norfolk Broads. At first it was
believed they did not constitute a nuisance but opinion has now turned
against them. Last week it was reported that the suggestion had been
put forward to use the coypu to combat another nuisance.
   The Kariba Lake, formed when the Kariba dam was completed, has
become infested with a water plant, one that grows at an alarming rate
and threatens to damage the special intakes at the dam. The menace
from the plant is serious enough to merit almost any suggestion aimed
at controlling it, and this one, put forward by Mr. George Atkinson
of Lowestoft, is brilliant in its simplicity. It is that some of the
coypu in East Anglia, estimated at a quarter of a million, should be
trapped and exported to Kariba Lake to feed on the menacing weed.
Were such a plan to be shown to be successful it would contain the
perfect form of biological control, using one nuisance to combat
another.
   Throughout the world animals and plants have been transported,
either accidentally or deliberately, from one continent to another.
In some the results have been beneficial, in a few they have been
harmless but in far too many they have been disastrous, so that to-day
one looks at any further plan to introduce animals into an alien
environment with caution if not deep suspicion. The first question
one needs to ask is whether the coypu would eat this particular weed
and in sufficient quantity to counterbalance its own remarkable powers
of multiplication.
   The most obvious comment to make is that there are remarkably few
animals, outside the insects, that feed exclusively on one item of
diet. The koala feeds on nothing but eucalyptus leaves and is always
quoted as a striking and exceptional example of an animal with a
restricted diet. Most animals like variety in their food, and this is
especially true of rodents. It is highly important, therefore to know
something of the diet of the coypu.
   There are, on my shelves, a score of authoritative works on
mammals, and it is noteworthy that although they all contain at least
one reference to the coypu most of them make no mention at all of its
diet. A few state that its food is green vegetation, or just
"vegetation," or say that it feeds on water plants. For our
present purpose none of these is satisfactory. Water plants range
from the wholly aquatic, like water lilies, and such plants are
usually soft, to waterside plants which are usually tough and fibrous.
# 23
<184 TEXT F41>
   Thus it is clear that the predominant organization,
particularly in the distribution of manufactured goods, is the
wholesale merchant who carries stocks. In some trades- e.g.,
hardware- he is known as a factor. Besides owning and warehousing
the goods, the wholesaler may process them in some way. This is
chiefly the case with agricultural products. A tea merchant blends
and packets tea; a seeds merchant cleans and sorts seeds obtained from
growers. Not all intermediaries (whether merchants or agents)
actually handle the merchandise in which they deal; they may merely
provide a link between a source of supply and the demand for it.
   The performance of the wholesale merchant's true functions (which
may include such services to retailers as communications, selection,
stockholding, credit facilities, and transportation) requires a heavy
capital outlay. Only by operating on a large scale can the large
overhead costs be absorbed in the turnover, so as to produce a
reasonable net profit. Consequently it is not surprising that the
195 Census showed that over four-fifths of the trade of merchants was
handled by wholesalers each with an annual turnover of over +1,.
   Though in discussing wholesalers we generally assume that the
function will be carried out by a single firm, this need not be so.
The task may be split up between two or even more intermediaries. In
some trades, particularly horticultural products and fish, a system of
primary and secondary wholesalers often exists. The former is
essentially a collecting organization, though he may also process,
grade, or pack before reselling in bulk to the secondary wholesaler,
who performs all the other services normally associated with
wholesaling.
   It is convenient to classify wholesale merchants, according to
the extent of the sales territory covered by the business. Thus many
of the larger firms are national wholesalers, distributing goods to
every part of the country. They carry large stocks, and often have
their own brands, and operate a comprehensive delivery service over a
wide area. A second class covers only specific parts or regions of
the country- perhaps Northern England or Scotland. The local
wholesaler confines his custom to a much smaller area- often a radius
of a few miles from his warehouse. The local and regional wholesalers
usually offer a more restricted service as compared with the national
wholesaler. Some wholesalers have a number of branches or stock-rooms
up and down the country.
General and Specialist Wholesalers
   Wholesalers may also be classified according to the range of
stock carried. Though generally they specialize in one group of
commodities, there is considerable variation in the extent of this
specialization.
   Perhaps the most important section of the wholesale trade, both
in terms of numbers of firms and turnover, is that of the general
wholesalers. They are analogous to department stores, as there are a
number of departments (frequently twenty to twenty-five) selling a
wide range of rather unrelated commodities, with an extensive choice
within each commodity group. Such firms may employ five hundred or
more 'inside staff' and up to one hundred travellers. Most general
wholesalers occupy large buildings in the central areas of cities, and
also normally have branches or stock-rooms strategically situated in
other large towns. The main attraction of the general wholesaler is,
of course, the ability to bring together for the convenience of the
retailer a wide range of merchandise under one roof.
   For a number of years the general house has tended to concentrate
attention on a related group of commodities. When this specialization
is carried a stage farther the wholesaler becomes a specialist house.
The term, in fact, may imply anything from a wholesaler carrying one
commodity group to one with several hundred, the emphasis being on the
similarity of commodities rather than on their number. The specialist
house is usually of moderate size- in the textile trade, for example,
having five or six departments. Millinery, piece-goods, lace, and
children's wear seem particularly suited for this treatment, and in
extreme cases specialists deal in only a few articles, particularly if
they become sole distributing agents. The development of the
specialist is partly the result of manufacturer pressure for more
concentrated selling, and partly through his ability to become an
authority on quality and value in his particular line of business.
Cash-and-carry Wholesalers
   This form eliminates a number of operations traditionally
associated with wholesaling in return for lower prices. There are no
credit facilities or delivery services available, and there is rarely
any outside selling. Such wholesalers are chiefly found in sections
of the food trade, household goods, toys, and 'market lines' (very
cheap merchandise for street markets)- wherever a commodity has a
high rate of stock-turn potential. Cash-and-carry wholesalers are
likely to increase in number.
Agents, Brokers, and Other Small Wholesalers
   There are many small firms, trading under various titles,
which, though they may acquire title to the goods they sell, either
never actually hold them or, if they do so, only transfer them without
further processing or servicing. In the building trade such a trader
is picturesquely described as a 'brass plate' merchant, and a
similar type of intermediary appears in the clothing trade, where he
sometimes acts as a speculator entering and leaving the trade
according to the market.
   The commission merchant, as he is sometimes called, operates
without stock (and frequently on credit), selling entirely from
manufacturers' samples and placing orders only sufficient to cover his
sales.
   On the other hand, the manufacturer's agent carries out functions
similar to those of the wholesaler's representative, but, unlike the
latter, he is self-employed, and is remunerated by a service fee, or,
more usually, by a percentage commission on all sales made. The agent
is usually given the sole rights in his particular area. Agents are
primarily used in selling to wholesalers or to central offices of
chains of shops. They enable a manufacturer to be permanently
represented in these areas by people familiar with business conditions
there, and they save him the expense of establishing branches.
Co-operative Wholesaling
   By far the largest units in the wholesale trade are the
Co-operative wholesalers. There are two main Societies, for England
and Scotland respectively, and they exist to serve the many retail
Co-operatives, which provide nearly all the capital and exercise
control. In return the local Societies receive dividends on their
purchases.
   The Co-operative Wholesale Society, with headquarters in
Manchester and four big branch depots, has been in existence for
nearly a century. The Scottish 'Wholesale' was formed shortly
after. These two Societies have established their own factories,
producing goods in 1957 worth just over +16 m., chiefly for
producing foodstuffs and household goods. The C.W.S. owns
ships, farms, and plantations, transacts considerable banking
business, and shares with its Scottish counterpart the control of the
Co-operative Insurance Society. The two Societies also own and
control the English and Scottish Joint C.W.S.., which
performs the special services of tea- and coffee-blending and cocoa
and chocolate production for them.
   In 1938 one-tenth of all Britain's imports of food reached
housewives by way of the C.W.S., and more than half of the
goods was purchased direct from the overseas markets by the buying
organization of the Society, which has depots in many countries.
   The C.W.S. is controlled by an elected Board of
Directors of twenty-eight, seven of whom retire annually. All are
full-time salaried officials. The Board meets weekly in Manchester,
London, or Newcastle. It is one of Britain's biggest businesses,
since over three-fifths of the goods sold by retail Societies are
obtained through the C.W.S., and its turnover in 1957
amounted to about +454 m.
Wholesaling and Integration
   One of the most important trends in distribution in the
twentieth century has been the increasing desire of manufacturers to
control the wholesaling functions themselves. This they have usually
achieved by establishing their own wholesale department and depots
where necessary, though occasionally they have acquired existing
wholesale organizations. Some wholesalers seeking to maintain their
traditional position have adopted the defensive policy of integrating
with certain manufacturers. Such vertical expansion has been made
chiefly to direct and maintain the supply of the most profitable lines
within the framework of the organization.
   On the other hand, the large retailer, particularly if he has
many outlets, may decide to engage in wholesaling; in fact, many of
the present large wholesale houses had their beginnings as retailers.
The wholesale warehouse is then often operated as an ancillary
concern (generally a subsidiary company), perhaps under a different
name. An existing wholesaler may be taken over. Some large groups,
such as Debenhams, and the Great Universal Stores, have several
wholesale subsidiaries. In a few trades, such as fruit and tobacco,
firms buy merchandise in bulk for their own shops and resell what they
do not need to smaller shops in the district. In such circumstances
they are primarily retailers, and a few use the terms 'wholesale'
or 'warehouse' as a customer-catching device.
   While wholesalers are generally prepared to make direct sales to
certain classes of final customer- e.g., schools and large
industrial firms- some have established a special department to sell
direct to the public on certain conditions, such as after a proper
introduction by a retailer. Other wholesalers have expanded forward
into retailing by the requisition of shops to meet the threats of a
changed pattern of distribution and perhaps to make a double profit on
each transaction. This policy has aroused considerable rancour, even
when the shop takes only part of its merchandise from the parent, and
has weakened wholesale-retail co-operation.
Location of Warehouses
   The distinctive premises of the wholesaler are, of course, the
warehouse, since normally large stocks must be carried. The premises
are generally utilized in a strictly practical manner, since the
wholesaler's appeal is to the businessman. A wholesale merchant's
business cannot be set up anywhere; his warehouse is of most service
to his customers if they can reach it easily and quickly.
Consequently it is usually established in a city which is the
commercial centre for the surrounding district. London is the biggest
centre of wholesale textile distribution, with Manchester not far
behind.
   In a large city it is usual to find those of one trade located in
a particular quarter or street, particularly if there is a market or
exchange near by. Thus in London, Mark Lane is the centre for corn
merchants, while in Manchester all the big textile houses are found in
the environs of Piccadilly. This concentration of trades of each
class is convenient both to customers and to manufacturers' salesmen.
Organization
   Though a few small businesses, particularly those specializing
in certain kinds of business- e.g., millinery, trimmings-
are run by single traders, and the partnership is still fairly
frequently met with, the most general form of proprietorship is that
of a limited company. This is mainly on account of the heavy capital
requirements of the trade. Wholesale directors are almost invariably
executive or working directors, with full responsibility for a
particular function.
   The scope of the wholesaling task is indicated by a few facts
about wholesale textile distribution. Large wholesalers carry an
average stock of +1,,; they dispatch approximately 2 parcels
a day to various parts of the country for their 1,-15, retail
accounts, and receive supplies from anything up to a thousand
suppliers from time to time. Moreover, the documentation and handling
of each customer's order may involve thirty-two separate operations,
many of which must be repeated in reverse if the goods do not comply
with the retailer's requirements.
   Whatever the merchandise carried, the organization broadly
resembles that of a big department store, each department forming a
separate unit under a departmental manager. Frequently there are four
main departments: buying, warehousing, selling, and administration.
There are usually separate buyers responsible for the requirements of
each section, but their activities are co-ordinated by the purchasing
department, which also deals with the paper-work. Warehousing is a
specialized job, and may include assembling, grading, breaking bulk,
and packing. The wholesaler provides a selling organization for the
manufacturer, and most of this selling is done by trained travellers.
But the wholesaler's showrooms may also be very important: the
retailer is offered a huge stock and variety of merchandise which no
other system could bring to him under one roof.
# 232
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D. ENGLAND
FOCUS ON ENGLISH FARE
   AT an old-established hotel in an East Coast resort there is
an unusual notice on the bottom of the menu card: 'Epicures agree
that English food well cooked is the best in the world. For this
reason, this hotel specializes in the finest English cooking, and
nothing canned or twice cooked is ever served.'
   An admirable and unexpected statement which is to be backed by a
twelve-month campaign to promote British Food, launched by the British
Farm Produce Council. It includes staging four large-scale
exhibitions at major urban centres throughout the United Kingdom,
twelve displays in stores in regional towns and joint ventures with
such organizations as the Townswomen's Guilds, the Gas Council,
Electricity Boards and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland
Development Boards. The first large-scale show is to be held in
London from 11-16 September.
   The Council's chairman, Mr. W. R. Trehane, commenting on
the campaign, said: 'British shoppers should certainly be well aware
of the quality food that comes from their own farmers and growers by
the end of the year.' And the farming community should be
especially pleased that its products are to get such a tremendous
boost just where it would be most effective- on the customer's
doorstep, he added. The British Farm Produce Council was launched in
the autumn of 196. Its basic aims are to tell the buying public more
about British food, how to choose and how to cook it, and to let
farmers and growers know that the shopper thinks about their products.
   The Council has plenty to go upon for the range of English foods
is amazingly wide. A restaurant in the West End offered its customers
a choice of no fewer than 5 recipes of Old English fare, and these
were selected from as many as fifteen hundred recipes. The first menu
included a milk soup from Sussex, a star gazy pie from Cornwall,
herrings, beef olives from Cheshire with dumplings and green peas, and
a Welbeck pudding from Nottinghamshire.
   These merely touch the fringe of the possibilities, as was
evident when a Folk Cookery exhibition was staged, for there were to
be seen eatables with the most delightful names. They included Yule
cakes eaten in Yorkshire between Christmas Day and New Year's Day;
Sedgmoor Easter cakes; 'Tyneside Yule Doos,' childish figures
supposed to represent the Infant Jesus, and made by Tyneside mothers
for their children on baking day; 'Checky pigs' from
Leicestershire; Lardy cakes and wafers for Mothering Sunday, from
Devizes; Devonshire applecake; Bakewell tart from Derbyshire;
Deddington pudding pies; Cornish 'black cake'; Burying cake, from
an old English recipe; Yorkshire oatcake, made in strips; Melton
Mowbray pork pie; gilt gingerbread from Bute; parkin from Yorkshire;
Grasmere gingerbread, which looks like shortbread; Congleton
gingerbread with rice-paper underneath; and Coventry 'God Cake',
which dates back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, given when a
godchild was christened or made its first communion. It is a pastry
cake after the style of a Banbury cake and in the shape of an
isosceles triangle. It is slashed across the middle and ornamented
with sugar.
   One of the most delightful exhibits ever put on was seen in the
Gothic Hall of Lacock Abbey, four miles from Chippenham. Local dishes
from all over the British Isles were displayed in rich profusion, and
some of the most interesting were seen in the making. Dainties still
made today, like Welsh bakestone loaf, Selkirk bannocks, and Dublin
barm brack, were shown in company with more strictly period exhibits
such as Queen Henrietta Maria's morning broth- for in Charles =1's
day they took chicken broth for breakfast- and salmagundi, a
favourite supper dish in the eighteenth century and obviously the
ancestor of 6hors d'oeuvre. Dishes similar to those displayed
must have been cooked and eaten centuries ago at Lacock Abbey.
   Some ancient kitchen implements belonging to the abbey were also
on show. A great pestle and mortar seen were said to have been there
since the time of Sir William Sharington, the first lay owner of
Lacock Abbey after the Dissolution. A venerable mould, in the form of
an elephant, was used to make a cake exhibited. Among loans from
elsewhere were a set of fine moulds for gingerbread from the Pump Room
at Bath. Gingerbread figures properly gilded, proved that the moulds
are as good today as ever they were. River crayfish, boiled as
scarlet as any lobster, came from the river in the grounds of Lacock
Abbey.
   The late Miss F. White, who founded the English Folk Cookery
Association prepared a unique gastronomic map. She used to go about
the country collecting information concerning food much as Cecil Sharp
used to go about in his work of research for folk-songs and dances,
and she plotted her discoveries on a Gastronomic Map. Looking over
this one noticed such names as Coventry Godcake mentioned above, and
Stuffed Chine at Clee in Lincolnshire; and found that Melton Mowbray
is as famous for curd cheese-cakes as for its pork pies. Stuffed
Chine, by the way, is a famous old dish at Clee for Trinity Sunday,
the custom being for a chine of bacon stuffed with herbs to form part
of the dinner. The curd cheese-cakes of Melton Mowbray are a great
dish for Whit-Sunday. It is said that there are enough of these cakes
made for the festival to pave the whole town.
   Every county is, rightly, jealous of its folk-cookery tradition,
and there is no doubt that the north of England is strong in this
respect. A list of inns, hotels, and restaurants where good local
dishes could be enjoyed mentioned for Yorkshire alone: Barnsley chops,
curd cheese-cakes, oven cakes, sly cakes, Doncaster butterscotch,
oatmeal fritters, bilberry pies, Yorkshire batter pudding, brandy
snap, spiced bread, Sheffield polony, potted shrimps, frumenty,
Wensleydale cheese, apple cheese-cakes, primrose vinegar, fish pie,
turf cakes, bakestone cakes, parkin, and gingerbread. References were
made to the Yorkshire practice of eating cheese with cake, and there
was a consensus of opinion that ham and eggs as served in the county
is a succulent dish.
   Scotland is too often neglected or overlooked, and so it is good
that a little book of Scottish recipes has been compiled 'primarily
for visitors to Scotland, "lost" Scots and others'. The recipes
range from soups, puddings and pies, cakes and shortbreads, to many
other intriguing items such as Parlies or Scottish Parliament Cake,
Athol Brose, Cranachan or Cream-Crowdie, and Tatties an' Herrin'. It
has been asked: what are the predominant characteristics of Scottish
cookery? The answer: simplicity, good sense and an instinct for
dietetic values, and what more could one ask?
   One of the most historic of country dishes is dumplings. One
recalls that celebrated farmhouse dinner described in Cranford,
which Miss Matty only half-enjoyed because the delicate young peas
would drop between the prongs of the old-fashioned two-pronged forks,
and gentility forbade her to imitate her host and shovel them up on
the blade of her knife. Mr. Holbrook, her old suitor, was right to
be unceremonious with his peas, and he was right also, in his blunt
way, about the use of dumplings to stay the appetite.
   'When I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father's
rule, ~"No broth, no ball: no ball, no beef," and always began
dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth
with the beef; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth,
we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came last
of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and
the ball.' Being a Cheshire man, Mr. Holbrook was probably
unacquainted with the Norfolk dumpling, which goes one step further in
the direction of economy by dispensing with the suet.
   This recalls that brave and manly eighteenth-century Norfolk
incumbent, the Rev. James Woodforde, whose diary has only one rival,
that of Pepys. On one occasion, after a good dinner and a bad night,
he noted: 'Mince 1pye rose 1oft.' If this is not literary
style- the expression of meaning with a minimum of words and a
maximum of effect- one would be interested to learn of a better
example.
   Woodforde's life was humdrum in some respects, but it had its
difficulties. Of these, along with the smooth, he made the best,
taking life as it came, without repining or vain hopes, and contriving
to get a good deal of satisfaction for himself and others out of it,
not least from his food. His meals were like himself, good and
honest, and one quotes this typical meal: 'st. Course: boiled
Tench, Pea Soup, a Couple of boiled Chicken and pigs Face, hashed
Calf's Head, Beans, and roasted Rump of Beef with New Potatoes etc.
2nd. Course: roasted Duck and green Peas, a very fine Leveret
roasted, Strawberry Cream, Jelly, Puddings etc. Dessert-
Strawberries, Cherries and last Year's nonpareils.' English cooking
at its best.
ANNE MORRIS
MUSHROOMS- WILD AND TAME
   'THE steak is excellent, but the mushrooms don't taste like
mushrooms!'
   This was the comment, heard during dinner in a restaurant, which
sent me off in search of Psalliota Campestris- the common white
field mushroom- and the reason why 'mushrooms don't taste like
mushrooms.'
   The first thing I discovered was that the common white field
mushroom is common no longer. In fact, it is in danger of
disappearing completely.
   Present-day farming methods are to blame- or so I was told by a
local farmer, who explained that all the mushrooms had disappeared
from his 'home' field since he had treated the grass with a
chemical fertilizer.
   A botanist at our local museum agreed with the farmer. He said,
however, that this was not the only reason why there were so few
mushrooms in our fields today. Mushrooms, it seems, like old
pastures, where the soil has lain undisturbed for decades. Such
pastures are becoming increasingly rare. The preference is for
'ley' farming in which grasslands are ploughed and re-seeded every
few years. This process breaks up a complex underground rooting
system, which takes many years to re-establish.
   Yet another contributory factor is the disappearance of the horse
from our farms. Indeed, if it were not for the numerous riding
schools and racing stables throughout the country, mushrooms would be
an ever greater luxury than they already are. For, even in these
enlightened days, mushroom growers have not found a perfect substitute
for stable manure on which to base their hot-beds.
   Even so, cultivated mushrooms are booming. Their popularity has
increased enormously during the last ten years or so. For instance,
in one small part of Nottinghamshire alone there are eight flourishing
mushroom farms, and, according to a grower I talked to, they have no
difficulty in disposing of their crops.
   From that, it would appear that mushroom-growing is an attractive
proposition. Alas, there are snags. The first is that it is
expensive. The cardboard baskets, for instance, in which the grower
packs his mushrooms for the wholesalers, cost him sixpence each! In
the 'off' season- the summer months- he may only receive two
shillings a pound which, when the costs of spawn, manure, etc.,
heat, labour, and depreciation of buildings, etc., are taken into
account, doesn't leave a very great margin of profit!
   Moreover mushrooms are a very risky crop. They may appear in
abundance- or they may not appear at all. Or they may become
diseased. If that should happen the entire crop is lost and the beds
must be rested for some months to clear the infection.
   'But why don't they taste like mushrooms?' I asked the grower.
He laughed. 'I suppose you mean, why don't they taste like field
mushrooms,' he said. 'And the answer to that is, they are a
different variety. You don't expect a Cox's Orange Pippin to taste
like a Grannie Smith, do you? It's the same with mushrooms. Even in
the wild varieties there are at least two well-marked kinds.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 24
<186 TEXT F43>
This could be followed by a year's course of training in a
Horticultural Institute where he will gain experience in fruit and
vegetable cultivation. When he leaves the Horticultural Institute he
should find employment in another Parks Department. Then two years in
a Botanic Garden, following this he should be capable of taking a
foreman's job which gives him experience in dealing with staff. (It
is most encouraging to learn that the National Joint Council of Local
Authorities' Services are contemplating a scheme for Training in
Foremanship for the public park service. I welcome this scheme for it
is badly needed.) When about 25 or 26 the young man would be eligible
for the course of training arranged by the institute of Park
Administration. After that he may have to do a spell of practical
work or as a technical assistant. <SIC> By the time he reaches 3
years of age he should be capable of taking over the Parks Department
of a small town or as a Deputy in a larger town. Then the Chief
Officer of the Parks Department of the future will be an administrator
with an all round knowledge of all activities under the control of the
Parks Committee.
   There is perhaps one disappointing feature in public park
administration, particularly in the London area and the South-west,
and that is there are still many Authorities where the Parks
Department is under the control of another Officer. Very often that
Officer has not the interest of the public gardens and parks at heart.
In such cases the man in charge of the Parks loses his enthusiasm and
the Local Authority never gets the best from the senior employee in
charge of the Parks Department simply because he cannot plan and plant
according to his taste. Gardeners are a peculiar race of people, they
like to do the job their own way and can be very frustrated when a
person with no horticultural training controls the business of the
public parks and gardens and has the last word with the Parks
Committee, whereas the Parks Committee should have the right to deal
direct with the appropriate officer of the Parks Department.
   
   The Third Conference Paper "Historic Houses and Estates as
Public Parks" by Mr. F. Hallowes, F.Inst.P.A.,
M.Inst.B.C.A., Director of Parks, Nottingham, follows.
HISTORIC HOUSES AND ESTATES AS PUBLIC PARKS
   PRIOR to the 1914-18 war the majority of historic houses and
estates in the United Kingdom were occupied by their owners, and in
numerous cases the landed people owned these properties in various
parts of the country, usually one in Scotland, and two or so in
England, in addition to their London residence. This pleasant state
of affairs had continued peacefully and uninterruptedly for many years
but the advent of the war saw great changes in the ownership, control,
and maintenance of these properties, largely due to heavy taxation,
cost of upkeep, and the dispersal of staff during the war years. In
many cases speculators bought up these historic houses and estates,
stripped the mansions of their treasures, took the lead from the roofs
and the timber from the estates, and sold the land for building plots
and the buildings for hotels, private schools, etc. This trend has
never been completely arrested and though many houses and estates are
still in private ownership many others have continued to be used for a
variety of purposes.
OWNERSHIP
   A broad estimate of ownership of some 478 houses in the United
Kingdom which are open to the public indicates that 56 per cent. are
still in private ownership, 26 per cent. under the control of the
National Trust, 1 per cent. owned and used by Local Authorities, 7
per cent. occupied by Government Departments, and 1 per cent. used
as schools. From time to time figures published of the numbers
admitted and the fees paid show that the public are anxious and
enthusiastic to visit these places and enjoy the beauty of the grounds
and study the history of their country's heritage. There is also the
important factor, a very important factor these days, of the tourist
industry. Many millions of pounds are attracted to this country by
tourists from various parts of the world who are interested in
studying the centuries old houses and gardens, particularly those
people from countries who have little history themselves.
   The percentage of houses and estates owned by local authorities
for the admission of the public to the house and grounds appears to be
a rather low figure and one would imagine that local authorities might
with profit and prestige to themselves regard with more enthusiasm the
acquisition of some of these magnificent places which from time to
time become available so that their history and very existence may be
preserved for the people. It is, I think, appropriate that local
authorities should be active and responsible in the preservation of
this country's heritage and it is regretted that opportunities appear
to have been missed as ownership of such estates has enormous prestige
value for a local authority.
POWERS TO ACQUIRE
   There may be some hesitancy in the minds of local authorities
in connection with their powers to acquire estates as public parks and
the economics involved. With reference to such powers, the Public
Health Act of 1875 appears to give the necessary powers to acquire
lands for public parks, etc., amended by Public Health Acts
Amendment Act 189 and 197. The National Trust Act of 197 deals
with arrangements with Local Authorities and there is also the
Physical Training and Recreation Act of 1937 dealing with the
acquisition of playing fields, which may not be absolutely the reason
for which an authority would wish to acquire property, unless the
lands were extensive and recreation facilities might be provided
without interfering with the character of the estate.
   Some years ago the Ministry of Works set up three Buildings
Councils to advise the Minister on the exercise of his powers in
making grants towards maintenance and repair of historic buildings.
The Minister also has powers to purchase, or to assist local Councils
and the National Trust to acquire, as the case may be. A quarter of a
million pounds was provided for preserving historic properties and a
like amount for purchasing. For the year 1959-6 the sum of +425,
was provided for preserving this type of building. The most recent
report of the Historic Buildings Council for England indicates that
+5, a year is now provided for the preservation of buildings of
historic interest and importance. It would appear, therefore, that a
local authority keen to acquire an estate and property in their area
would receive considerable support both by virtue of their own powers
and by the readiness of the Government to encourage such an
acquisition.
ECONOMICS
   With regards <SIC> to the economics involved, some local
authorities have purchased estates and have not only carried out a
very good business deal for themselves but also acquired a beauty spot
for their people. I find, however, it is rather surprising that ten
per cent. only of those estates that have become available during
the last forty years are used as public parks. It is of paramount
importance to the smaller but expanding town that its Council,
whenever the opportunity arises, acquires for itself an estate. It is
an investment of the highest value which will appreciate as the years
pass and will pay regular dividends not only in money but in the
health and happiness of its people and the enhanced prestige that such
a possession brings to any town or city.
   The question of capital outlay and maintenance may be a reason
why some smaller authorities have allowed opportunities, no doubt
reluctantly to go begging and have afterwards regretted their lack of
enterprise. A local authority or combination of authorities should
not hesitate too long if they contemplate acquiring an estate in their
area. They should make their decision quickly, as delay causes
deterioration of buildings and estate which ultimately lead <SIC>
to unnecessarily high costs in maintenance later. Having acquired the
estate, time should not be lost in laying down definite principles for
the best use of the buildings, the advantages and disadvantages of
various methods, car parking, catering, advertising and publicity,
liaison with public transport, freedom from unnecessary restrictions
for the public, provision and sale of publications, need for planting
and bedding schemes. Park administrators are, with their wide
experience, ideal people to undertake the management of historic
houses and estates. They clearly understand the needs of the public
and in addition to the multitude of administrative matters which need
expert attention they are sympathetic to the retention of the historic
characteristics of estates which should at all costs be preserved.
   One unfortunately sees historic features carelessly lost when
estates fall into unsympathetic hands. Buildings are "converted",
handsome trees removed, novelties introduced which to the thinking
person are gauche and repellant. Many will have, I am sure, visited
at various times historic estates hoping to enjoy their carefully
preserved glories only to find numerous and varied "catchpenny
attractions" which completely destroy the character and atmosphere
of the place and cause the visitor pain instead of pleasure. I have
always found Parks people conscious of the necessity to preserve the
character and atmosphere of any historic estate in their care and are
<SIC> capable of making the requisite provision for accommodating
large numbers of the public and at the same time retaining its charm
and grandeur.
NOTTINGHAM'S ESTATES
   Three historic places are controlled by the Parks Committee of
the City of Nottingham.
   Wollaton Hall, originally 774 acres, was acquired by the
Nottingham Corporation in 1925 for +2, (a fair sum at that
time!). Selective development by the Corporation and private builders
took place on the fringe of the estate and houses, schools, places of
worship, and licensed premises, were built and part of a most valuable
ring road was laid out. The buildings were designed in a style to
blend with the existing character of the environs of the district and
this area is now regarded as a fashionable residential suburb of the
City, and the ring road with its mature planting and grass verges has
proved to be a main traffic artery and has blended perfectly into the
natural beauty of the existing estate.
   The financial return from this development, defrayed the actual
cost of the purchase, and over 6 acres of beautiful park land, laid
out after the style of "Capability" Brown still remains for the
benefit of the public. It is estimated that over one million people
avail themselves of this Park each year. Development within the park
has not detracted from its original style- one can be excused such
necessary requirements of the modern age as car parks and refreshment
kiosks. A golf course covering 136 acres was laid out and although
still under municipal control and available to any member of the
public is leased to the Wollaton Park Golf Club for +1,5 6per
annum, plus rates, the Club maintaining the course and the Club
House. Two herds of deer abound <SIC> the park. A 35 acre lake
is fished by fee and brings in some +3. The building, Elizabethan
(158-85), is used as a natural history museum and attracts 2,
visitors a year. This is valuable for students from the neighbouring
University and the City schools. The park still retains its
collection of trees and the gardens are bedded out attractively. The
9 acre walled-in Kitchen Garden is now a most valuable nursery and
makes a great contribution to the plant requirements of the
Department.
   The Park has also housed over thirty major promotions, including
the Royal Show, the Bath and West and Southern Counties Show, and the
Royal Command Military Tattoo, all of these events being accommodated
(inclusive of car parks) without causing damage or disruption and
without completely closing the whole of the park. The fact that a
local authority can accommodate such functions as these not only
attracts first-class publicity to the authority but also has a
considerable economic and prestige value.
# 212
<187 TEXT F44>
FRANKIE VAUGHAN writes about "The people I meet"
Elvis, Sammy Davis, Billy Eckstine, Gogi Grant, Pat Boone, Vic
Damone
   EVERY time I visit America I seem to meet many interesting
people. My last was no exception. The most surprising, though, was
Elvis Presley- I almost literally bumped into him!
   I was leaving the restaurant at the 2th Century-Fox studios a
few days before I flew home from Hollywood. I noticed a football
flying over a wall between two lots.
   Not the sort of bloke to miss a chance, I went to trap it with my
foot. Another fellow was running after it, too, and we collided with
what, for me at any rate, was an almighty bump.
   Some others came over from their game and helped me to my feet.
One of them said: "You're Frankie Vaughan, aren't you?" "Yes, I
am," I replied, "and you must be Elvis."
   With some friends he had been playing a version of American
football during his lunch break. As we chatted a car went by, with
the driver shouting at Elvis, telling him off for being in the
roadway.
   You should have seen his eyes goggle when he realised who he had
been telling off!
   I found Elvis a very likeable young man. He seems to have lots
of energy and a great enthusiasm for life.
   Juliet Prowse, my co-star in "The Right Approach," the film
that had taken me to Hollywood, had worked with Elvis in "GI
Blues," as you know. She told me how nice he had been to her when
they were making that picture together.
   My last visit was very much a working trip. There wasn't much
time for fun. We made "The Right Approach" very quickly, and it
was hard work. I was on the go seven days a week.
   Even when there was no actual filming at weekends, I was busy
learning my lines, having costume fittings, rehearsing or meeting the
publicity people.
NO PLACE IN THE SUN
   I missed getting into the sun- there just wasn't the time.
   "The Right Approach" gives me my toughest part so far. I play
a real rat. When Gary Crosby is auditioning for a cabaret engagement
I have to show off in front of a girl and I mess up his routine.
   After interrupting his song I take it over completely halfway
through, much to his annoyance!
   Apart from this, I have three other songs which I filmed by
myself. But don't think the picture is a musical. It is a drama, but
the songs are fitted into it naturally without affecting the action.
   I made time to meet several old friends during my time in
Hollywood. Stella and I went to Billy Eckstine's opening at the
Crescendo, and had dinner with him afterwards.
   We also dined with Gogi Grant and her lawyer-husband. Wilfred
Hyde White, who was in "Let's Make Love" with me, was also back in
Hollywood- making a film with Danny Kaye- and we saw quite a lot of
him and his wife, Ethel, who is shortly expecting her second baby.
   Pat Boone was at the 2th Century-Fox studios making "Warm
Bodies." I have known him for some time and looked him up again.
He is a really nice person.
   So is Buddy Hackett, the comedian, who was in the same film.
Dana Andrews was also at the 2th Century-Fox studios making
"Madison Avenue."
   Before I began the film, I played my second season at the Dunes
Hotel, Las Vegas. While there I spent a lot of time with Sammy Davis.
   He was appearing there, at the Sands, but he managed to come in
to my late show- the third of the night. I frequently joined him at
his hotel later.
   He used to organise film shows in his suite. Often there were a
lot of friends there and they were always great fun. The shows lasted
about two hours, after which I had some breakfast and then went to
bed!
   It meant keeping crazy hours, as it was often past noon when I
got up again. But then, that's Las Vegas!
   Basil Tait, who is now my accompanist and musical director, was
making his first trip to Vegas, and I had to show him the sights. I
soon had him familiar with all the ropes.
   We went into the mountains taking private movies and went out
into the desert for some fishing from a lake.
   Vic Damone was another singer I met during my stay. Betty Grable
and her husband, bandleader Harry James, were both appearing in Vegas,
but at different venues- Betty at the Sahara and Harry at the
Flamingo.
A future in films for RUSS CONWAY Britain's Keyboard King
   RUSS CONWAY'S injured hand has given him time to think- and
the result may well be that a new field of entertainment will open up
for him in 1961.
   It was towards the end of November you may recall, that Russ had
to withdraw from the London Palladium revue "Stars In Your Eyes."
A fall in which he had suffered a severely bruised hand and wrist was
the cause.
   No one was more disappointed than Russ, even though it meant he
could have a holiday a little sooner than he anticipated. For about a
month he was out of action, but put that time to good use- for he has
now decided that he would like to make a name in films!
   At about the same time as Russ withdrew from the Palladium show,
he filmed his contribution to a British comedy film, "Weekend With
Lulu." This was his second exploit with the celluloid screen- he
previously appeared in "Climb Up The Wall."
   Now Russ is quite open about his hopes for the future- he has
taken such a liking to film work that he wants to branch out in this
side of show business, and he is already discussing a project to make
a movie during the summer.
   He admitted: "I suppose I have really got a bug about film
making. I enjoy it very much- particularly as the method and medium
are so different from television."
   
   Don't think, though, that the versatile Mr. Conway is going to
desert variety, TV and discs.
   A taped ATV series, with a scheduled start of <SIC>
January 5, has been keeping him busy for some time, as well as talks
and policy-making meetings for his future.
   He excited a lot of curiosity by announcing his intention of
taking a holiday in Australia this month, particularly when he
stressed that he was determined not to let it develop into a working
trip!
   The truth is, of course, that the Australians are great followers
of Russ, and Conway realised that overtures might be made to him to
make at least a token appearance on a big TV show.
   His plan, however, is to consider any offers that come his way
from Australian promoters and agents- but with a view to working
there some time in the future. The reason he is so serious about
making this a holiday-only trip? "This could be the last vacation I
shall have for several years," he explained.
   What can we expect from Russ in 1961? Well, on his return from
"down under" at the end of next month, he will begin to prepare for
his starring appearance in Coventry Theatre's colourful (not to
mention star-studded) "Spring Show," which opens on Easter Monday.
   As previously stated, a film could follow this, taking Russ into
the middle of the summer. What will happen after that, even Russ
doesn't know!
   One thing is certain. Many artists would be terrified of a
sudden month-long break in their career- it could spell disaster and
eventual ruin.
   But Russ Conway is the sort of person with whom that indefinable
creature Success, and her elusive companion Luck, always stay. Why,
his "Even More Party Pops" disc moved into the charts during his
absence from the public eye, and sold in a large enough quantity to
ensure that there will be thousands spinning his discs this Christmas.
   Perhaps the nicest thing said about Russ was by a hardened music
publisher as he paused to talk to a friend in Tin Pan Alley- London's
Denmark Street.
   "What a shame about Russ Conway leaving the Palladium show,"
he said. "Still, even if he's got a swollen hand there's no danger
of it spreading to his head!"
The Shadows' private lives
   WHAT do the Shadows do when they are away from the hustle and
bustle of theatres and showbusiness? What are their hobbies? To find
out the answers to these questions (incidentally, favourite queries
from fans), HIT PARADE asked each of the chart-topping group to
reveal a little of their private lives.
   Jet Harris, bass guitarist and leader of the group is a keen
racing driver. He has an ambition to race in the Monte Carlo rally,
though he is not set upon winning it. "I would enter just for the
thrill," he says.
   He has other part-time occupations, in addition to his race
driving. For instance, he is a keen archer and snooker player. He is
not often taken seriously when he says that he would like to emulate
William Tell's famous feat, but he is practising hard for an
achievement in this direction.
   In snooker, he has another aim- to play former world champion
Joe Davis!
   Of course, it's natural that Jet should have composing as an
additional hobby, for no matter how hard you try, it's no simple
matter to break away from showbusiness entirely.
   Writing, too, takes up his time. Once he wrote a book with poet
Royston Ellis- titled "Driftin'," it sold some 3, copies-
and no wonder, for it was about Cliff Richard!
   Bruce Welch, perhaps the best-known of the group in the composing
line, spends a great deal of time with his music. He has written two
of Cliff's hits- "Please Don't Tease" and "I Love You," and he
worked on many of the numbers for the "Me And My Shadows" LP.
   He hasn't always been successful in this direction, though, and
he has some stories to tell about his early days in showbusiness that
are hard to believe, compared with his present-day success.
   Does it surprise you to know that Bruce and Hank Marvin when they
first moved to London from Newcastle sometimes were on the verge of
starving? In fact, according to Bruce ~"At times we were so hungry
we stayed in bed to conserve our energy and to save ourselves the
frustration of seeing shops full of eatables that we just didn't have
the money to buy."
   Hank Marvin, who was voted into third place in the NEW MUSICAL
EXPRESS 196 Poll for the "Instrumental Personality Of The Year"
section, has similar interests to Jet, although he prefers Go-Kart
driving to rally driving.
   But he has one unusual hobby- he collects swords, guns and other
curios that interest him. Like the others he is a keen archer, but
really prefers plucking the guitar string to the bow-string.
   "I practise four hours a day whenever I am able," he says,
"but I find that the mad rush of showbusiness doesn't always allow
this. It is true to say that I practise as much as I can, though."
   Drummer Tony Meehan, youngest of the group, is a serious musical
student, and is responsible for most of the Shadows arranging, as well
as a little composition. He has yet to have a composition published.
   He loves reading and is a bookworm in the true sense of the word.
His reading matter encompasses Freud, historical novels and text
books on music.
   Now that the Shadows have formed their own publishing company-
Shadows Music- in association with Aberbach, it is probable that some
of Tony's compositions will be used.
   In addition to all the spare time interests they have outlined,
the boys like nothing better than to get together for talks covering
all sorts of subjects- ranging round religion, politics, Elvis
Presley and the charts!
# 25
<END>
<188 TEXT G1>
A Scottish knight- Sir John Mercer- was imprisoned in England.
His son, in revenge, was harrying English shipping as far away as
Cherbourg, and doing it to some purpose. John Philpot, one of that
new class of merchant financiers which the city of London was now
producing, fitted, equipped and manned a fleet from his own resources,
and captured the young Mercer in a brilliant Channel fight. It was
naturally a highly popular victory with the Londoners, but it brought
heavy censure from nobles who still believed that they had a monopoly
of leadership. But, at last, Gaunt sailed. Opposing him was the
French Admiral, Jean de Vienne- a great sailor and an able
strategist. Obedient to the policy of his King, de Vienne avoided
trouble at sea as cleverly as Du Guesclin avoided it on land. Gaunt
was compelled to give up his search for an elusive foe, and, afraid to
return home without something to show, he foolishly attempted to
besiege the well-protected fortress of St Malo. This involved the
dreary method of mining operations in which Gaunt, under the Black
Prince, had shown considerable skill at the siege of Limoges. When
all seemed to be going well, a sortie surprised the Earl of Arundel,
who at that moment had charge of the mine; the mine collapsed, and
with it Gaunt's hopes of fame and glory. Gaunt was compelled to
return to England a disappointed and now even despised failure. The
'ribald' Londoners, who cursed Gaunt as the murderer of Hawley,
were also expressing their disappointment at the non-arrival of booty,
and comparing the failure of a subsidized duke with the independent
success of a London citizen.
   These dreary years of ineffective fighting provide obvious morals
for those who are judges long after the event. It seems obvious that,
though the longbows of yeomen could pierce the plate and mail of
French knights, a brilliant battle was no substitute for a sound
policy, and that, if archers had no target, campaigns became mere
marauding route marches. It seems obvious that if an expedition to
Brittany was compelled to attack via Calais, then the primary
essential to the success of the French war was a navy in unquestioned
command of the Channel. It seems obvious that divided forces were
dissipating the advantages of a ring of bridge-heads which included
Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bordeaux and Bayonne, and that there was no
hope of final victory without a large-scale and concentrated invasion.
But none of these deductions were drawn at the time, because
large-scale war required money, and the citizens who had the money
were not yet sufficiently at one with nobles and King to think their
money well spent in financing a ruling class which despised them. The
Commons were glad enough to enjoy the fruits of victory, they were not
so eager to advance the needs of dynastic or baronial wars or even to
provide the means for economic war, largely because it was not yet
established that those who supplied means should also have control of
ends.
   In this cruel process which was hammering out nations on the
anvils of war, there was a constant stirring of those in authority to
find some simple way out of the complicated financial 6impasse
which always resulted, and in the story of the experiments and
expedients to which the Exchequer resorted is the story of the prelude
to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. In appreciating this story, modern
conceptions of governmental duties must be set aside. A modern
government needs taxation not merely for defence and offence but for a
very wide range of social services. A mediaeval oligarchy needed
taxation in order to supplement the private wealth of the monarchy
(the royal income from the revenues of crown lands, the fees of
feudalism and the fines of justice) and to provide enough cash to meet
royal expenses, and especially the expenses of waging war. Social
service as a function of government was quite alien to mediaeval
thought- its substitute was the mutual self-help of communities,
whether those communities were monasteries, manors, townships, or
wards and guilds of a city. A mediaeval tax was therefore in essence
a forced payment whose return was the uncertain bounty of booty and
the vague advantages of military glory; it was therefore always
granted grudgingly and coupled with the vain hope that, in the words
of Parliament after Parliament, the King might 'live of his own
resources and carry on his war'. When 'his' war did not bring
victory and booty, a new group of Lords might oust the unsuccessful
leaders, and the Commons, who usually supplied the hard cash, might be
bold enough to demand the production of accounts, and even at times
the impeachment of the unsuccessful. But the Commons were not the
people, and even a full Parliament was not yet a true mirror of the
nation. The people- Langland's 'folk' and Gaunt's 'knaves'-
were villeins still tied to the feudal obligations of work or villeins
who had bought their release, free labourers who worked for the
highest bidders, free yeomen who had prospered enough to become
successful farmers, the artisans, craftsmen, journeymen and small
tradesmen of the towns, and the retainers and men-at-arms in the pay
of landed Lords. None of these classes, except the yeomen, paid or
expected to pay direct taxes.
   During the fourteenth century, the traditional methods of
financing the Exchequer had become stabilized. When the King and his
Council required additional funds, they were usually granted an export
tax on the wool trade, collected by means of that 'staple' system
which ensured that prices, quality and tax could be efficiently
supervised and controlled, together with a subsidy or tax on all
movable property. There were two other sources of public revenue-
first, the Church, which wisely followed the lead of the Commons and
in its own Convocations granted equivalent contributions, and second,
the foreign merchants, with whom the King's officials had formerly
made private bargains at 'colloquies of merchants', and whose
payments were now authorized by parliamentary sanction at a rate
roughly fifty per cent in excess of the rate for native merchants. In
addition to these revenues, the King had the financial benefits of his
position at the head of the feudal system, as its chief landowner and
the recipient of the fines of royal justice.
   It was, therefore, a complicated and not very satisfactory
financial system in which the borders between private and public purse
were as ill-defined as the borders between private and national war,
and in which the comparatively simple obligations of the feudal
pyramid were becoming hopelessly involved with the complex bonds of
trade and industry. Furthermore, it had ceased to provide sufficient
revenue for the needs of continental war. It was a problem which had
been worrying the servants of the royal household for some time-
including those political clergy whom Wyclif had denounced- and, in
the last year of Edward =3's reign, they had devised an experiment to
overcome their difficulties. They had invented the poll-tax. Every
adult- defined as over fourteen years of age- except the beggar, was
to pay a groat (4d.) to the royal Exchequer. From the point of view
of its inventors, it was a simple method of bringing the whole nation
within the obligation of contributing to the glory and stability of
the realm as a whole- or, as later centuries put it, 'broadening the
basis of taxation'. Its obvious injustice was that it assessed all
men equally- the poor paid exactly the same as the rich; but, as
hitherto the poor had never paid anything, and as the rich still
supplied the traditional revenues as well, there was a case for a tax
which took a little from everybody. On the other hand, there was the
more relevant objection that not everybody had consented to the tax-
the poor were not represented in Parliament. In the event, the first
poll-tax of 1377 (also called the 'tallage of groats') while
naturally rousing much resentment, produced but meagre returns- there
was as yet no trained bureaucracy to make tax collecting either fair
or productive.
   Two years later, the inventors of the first poll-tax tried again.
In a Great Council held in February 1379, the Lords had adopted the
significant course of raising loans by compulsion on a large scale
from many of the landowners, monasteries and towns- so desperate were
the financial needs of the Exchequer. It was a drastic method of
which much more was to be heard in later years, and it was followed by
presenting the Parliament called to Westminster at Easter with the
necessity of repaying the loans. The anger of the Commons was only
appeased by the voluntary production of accounts which proved the
desperate need for funds, and as a result the second poll-tax was
agreed. 'Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur' was an
accepted legal maxim, but it was not yet carried to its logical
conclusion- the people were still to be taxed by the Commons. But
this time there was a very interesting attempt to apply a sliding
scale to the payments demanded. The definition of an adult was
altered to read 'over sixteen', and, where the poorest were to pay
a groat, the Duke of Lancaster and the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York were to pay ten marks, and between these two extremes a graduated
scale of payments was fixed for the different classes of laymen and
clerics. Again the resentment was widespread and the results
disappointing- a tax estimated to yield +5, in fact raised only
+27,.
   In the following year, 138, the last and most notorious third
poll-tax was agreed by a Parliament which met at Northampton. There
were dark reasons for a meeting so far away from the capital in a town
with poor communications and not over supplied with hostelries and
lodgings. London was again in turmoil; but this time over a question
of trade rivalry. A rich merchant from Genoa had been murdered, and
John de Kyrkby, a Londoner, was one of those charged with the crime.
It is clear from the chronicles that this was a sordid quarrel
between monopolists and interlopers. The city merchants were jealous
of foreign merchants who could tempt court and baronage with rarer
luxuries than those within the scope of English traders, and whose
prices could not be controlled in the interests of the city rings.
The chronicler Walsingham remarks that the Genoese's chief crime was
that he proposed to sell pepper at a mere 4d. the pound! At the
same time, the news of the war was disheartening- a Breton expedition
led by the Earl of Buckingham was not going well, and an expedition of
Gaunt to Scotland was as unpopular as Gaunt himself. At Northampton,
the Commons might be more amenable- they could be faced with the
realities of the financial situation, and urged to provide the means
for a solution. A sum of +16, was demanded- a staggering figure
to mediaeval eyes. It was determined that +1, was a fairer
target, and the Parliament agreed to find two-thirds of this sum
providing the clergy supplied the remainder. The method of assessment
to which the Commons agreed was that of the first poll-tax. The
manifest injustice of this method had been to a certain degree
corrected by the sliding scale of the second poll-tax, but this lesson
was ignored, and the injustice trebled in weight by a flat-rate tax at
treble the rate- every adult had to pay three groats, but this time
an adult was re-defined as anyone over fifteen. Trebling the rate was
arrived at by a simple arithmetic which argued that, as the first
poll-tax had supplied +22,, a tax of three times the rate would
produce +66,. The only concession made in view of the objections
to the first two poll-taxes was the suggestion that the rich should
help the poor- but this was only a pious hope because no machinery
was provided for carrying it into effect, and a subordinate clause
went far to nullify what small effects it had- no man and wife
together were to pay more than twenty shillings, a restriction which
applied to the generous rich as well as to the mean.
# 248
<189 TEXT G2>
They had long been preserved at Burley-on-the-Hill, the seat of the
Earl of Winchelsea, one of whose ancestors married a niece of Harvey.
It has, however, since been shown that they were much more likely to
have been the property of Sir John Finch, who was once a Professor of
Anatomy at Pisa, and seems to have had for an anatomical pupil one
Marchetti, who made 'tables of veins, nerves, and arteries, five
times more exact than are described in any author'.
   John Evelyn in his Diary also refers to some tables which Sir
Charles Scarburgh had seen and was anxious that Evelyn should present
to the College. He only agreed to lend them for a short time for
Scarburgh's use in his lectures, and ultimately presented them to the
Royal Society. Evelyn had purchased these tables at Padua in 1646 and
had had them transported to England. They were then 'the first of
that kind ever 1seene in our Country, & for 1ought I know in the
World, though afterwards there were others'. The fact that
Scarburgh succeeded Harvey as Lumleian Lecturer in 1656 and refers to
these tables as 'unique' makes it unlikely that Harvey had used
anything of the kind; otherwise his friend Scarburgh would surely have
seen them and would not then have regarded Evelyn's as unique.
   From 1616 to 1628 there were no objections at the College of
Physicians to Harvey's new ideas except on the part of Dr James
Primrose (whose date of decease is given by Munk as 1659, and who
accepted Galen as authoritative, one of his arguments being that in
the olden days patients were healed without the knowledge of the
circulation, and that therefore this doctrine, even if true, would be
useless. Lint, 1926). Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, while on 3
February 1618 Harvey was appointed Physician to King James =1, and on
7 May of that year was described in Pharmacopoeia Londinensis,
on the Committee dealing with which he had been serving, as
'Medicus Regius juratus'; in February 162 he served with Sir
Theodore de Mayerne (1573-1654/5) and William Clement on a Committee
to watch the surgeons, and in March 1625 he and his brother, John,
were admitted Members of Gray's Inn. In that month he attended King
James =1 in the latter's last illness which, in the accusation of the
Duke of Buckingham by the House of Commons in the following year, was
said to have been connected with a plaster and a posset, administered
in 'transcendent presumption' by the Duke. On Harvey's evidence,
however, there was nothing harmful in the posset, though he did not
advise the plaster because he did not know its ingredients. He was in
this year elected Censor of the College for the second time.
   In the following year he was offered an official residence in the
precincts of Bart's, where many notable people lived, but refused it
and received instead an increase in annual salary from +25 to +33
6s. 8d. In 1627 he served on a Committee, appointed by
the College of Physicians at the request of the Privy Council, to
report on some alum works in St Botolph's, Aldgate, which the
Committee condemned as a nuisance. In November Harvey became an Elect
of the College 6vice Gwynne, deceased, after Mayerne had refused
because he was too constantly employed at Court.
   The former's De motu locali animalium, 1627, written in
his own hand, had formed ff. 69-118 of the British Museum Manuscript
Sloane 486, and appears to be a previously unpublished notebook in
which he jotted down his thoughts with a view, eventually, to
publishing a book on animal movement. It was added to at intervals
without being finally drafted, and it is this incomplete synopsis
which was in 1959 published by the Cambridge University Press after it
had been edited, translated and introduced by Dr Gweneth
Whitteridge, Archivist to St Bartholomew's Hospital, for the Royal
College of Physicians. It appears that Harvey planned a treatise on
the movement of muscles even while he was preparing De motu cordis
et sanguinis. De motu locali animalium is the work mentioned in
Chapter =17 of the former's essay of 1628, and it shows, even if it
contains no new experimental observations, that Harvey's understanding
of muscle and of muscular contraction was sounder than that of his
predecessors and even of some of his successors.
   In 1628, the year in which he turned fifty, he was elected
Treasurer of the College of Physicians and also published his first
book, entitled, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et
sanguinis. It seems reasonable to suggest that William Fitzer,
the English publisher of the book in Frankfurt, had been suggested by
Harvey's friend, Robert Fludd, or Robertus de Fluctibus (1574-1637),
second son of Queen Elizabeth's one-time Treasurer of War, and the
MS. which he received has been described as 'the most important
medical work ever written', for it contained Harvey's 'new concept
of the heart's movement and function and of the blood's passage round
the body'; this he had confirmed in the presence of the President
(Dr Argent) and Fellows of the College of Physicians for more than
nine years past by numerous ocular demonstrations, and had freed from
the objections of learned and skilful anatomists. In so doing he had
surely shown the world 'the truth that is more beautiful than the
evening and the morning stars', and had raised himself effectively
from the ground and placed his head among the stars, as he had planned
to do in his days at Padua.
   It is fitting before reading the 'libellus aureus' to cast
one's mind back over the efforts of the great men of the past in
physiology, and to realize what a supreme act of courage it must have
been on the fifty-year-old Harvey's part to challenge concepts
established over so many generations. One can understand how much his
colleagues at the College must have helped by their agreement with the
ocular demonstrations of those things for the reasonable acceptance of
which he once again so strongly pressed. 'Over many years a
countless succession of distinguished and learned men had followed and
illumined a particular line of thought, and this book of mine', he
said, 'was the only one to oppose tradition and to assert that the
blood travelled along a previously unrecognized circular pathway of
its own.' So he was very much afraid of a charge of
over-presumptuousness had he let his book, in other respects completed
some years earlier, either be published at home or go overseas for
printing unless he had first put his thesis before the Fellows and
confirmed it by visual demonstration, replied to their doubts and
objections, and received the President's vote in favour. He concluded
his words to the President and Fellows with a splendid passage worthy
of an Elizabethan, which by birth he was: 'It was, however, dear
Colleagues,' he said 'no intention of mine, in listings and
upturnings of anatomical authors and writers, to make display by this
book of my memory, studies, much reading, and a large printed tome.
In the first place, because I propose to learn and to teach anatomy
not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of
Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature. Secondly, because I
consider it neither fair nor worth the effort to defraud a predecessor
of the honour due to him, or to provoke a contemporary. Nor do I
think it honourable to attack or fight those who excelled in Anatomy
and were my own teachers. Further, I would not willingly charge with
falsehood any searcher after truth, or besmirch any man with a stigma
of error. But without ceasing I follow truth only, and devote all my
effort and time to being able to contribute something pleasing to good
men and appropriate to learned ones, and of service to literature.'
   In an introduction to his short book of seventy-two pages, Harvey
shows the relative weakness of previous accounts of the movement and
function of the heart and arteries, for by reading what his
predecessors have written and by noting the general trend of opinion
handed on by them a man can confirm their correct statements and
'through anatomical dissection, manifold experiments, and persistent
careful observation emend their wrong ones.' At the end of his
introduction he wrote that 'from these and very many other arguments
it is clear that the statements made hitherto by earlier writers about
the movement and function of the heart and arteries appear incongruous
or obscure or impossible when submitted to specially careful
consideration. It will therefore be very useful to look a little more
deeply into the matter, to contemplate the movements of the arteries
and of the heart not only in man, but also in all other animals with
hearts; moreover, by frequent experiments on animals and much use of
our own eyes, to discern and investigate the truth.'
   In Chapter One he gives his strong reasons for writing, beginning
by saying how difficult he found it to discover through the use of his
own eyes in living animals the function and offices of the heart's
movement so that he all but thought with Fracastorius, that it had
been understood by God alone. At length he propounded his new view on
the matter, and found it acceptable to some, to others less so. He
published so that, if something accrued to the republic of letters
through his work in this field, it might perhaps be acknowledged that
he had done rightly; also, that others might see that he had not lived
idly; or at least that others, given such lead and relying on more
productive talents, might find an opportunity to carry out the task
more accurately and to investigate more skilfully.
   In Chapter Two he gauged the nature of the heart's movements from
the dissection of living animals, showing how these movements
alternate with rests and are seen best in cold animals or in flagging
warmer ones. At the time of its movement the heart becomes generally
constricted, its walls thicken, its ventricles decrease in volume and
it expels its content of blood, appearing paler in so doing in animals
such as serpents, frogs, and the like.
   At one and the same time, therefore, occur the beat of the apex,
the thickening of the heart walls, and the forcible expulsion of their
contained blood by the contraction of the ventricles.
   Going on in Chapter Three to the movement of the arteries,
likewise gauged from the dissections of living animals, Harvey noted
that contraction of the heart and the apex beat occur in systole,
simultaneously with dilatation of the arteries and of the artery-like
vein, and expulsion of the ventricular content. Arterial pulsation
disappears with cessation of ventricular contraction. During cutting
or puncture of the ventricles, there is often forcible expulsion of
blood from the wound.
   Arterial diastole is thus synchronous with cardiac systole but,
when movement of blood through arteries is hindered by compression,
infarction or interception, the more distal arteries pulsate less
because their pulse is nothing other than the impulse of the blood
entering them.
   Chapter Four dealt with the nature of the movement of the
ventricles and of the auricles, gauged from dissection of living
animals. <In four-chambered hearts> there are four movements which
are distinct in respect of place but not of time, the two auricles
moving synchronously and then likewise the two ventricles. With
everything more sluggish as the heart lies a-dying, and in fishes and
in relatively cold-blooded animals, the auricular and ventricular
movements become separated by an interval of inactivity so that the
heart appears to respond ever more slowly to the pulsating auricles,
and the order of cessation of beating is left ventricle, left auricle,
right ventricle, and finally (as Galen noticed) right auricle. 'And
while the heart is slowly dying, one can sometimes see it- so to
speak- rouse itself and, in reply to two or three auricular beats,
produce a single ventricular one slowly and reluctantly and with an
effort.'
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Yet in spite of the fact that his ideas did his business no good
George would never conceal them. He was a socialist and believed in
the right of the working class to control their own destiny, and said
so.
   Being a craftsman and a skilled man, George won many prizes, and
though some people would have nothing to do with him, others would,
and the comrades helped in many ways.
   When eventually the ovens were fixed at the new shop, the
tremendously hard work was if anything intensified. George used to
mix 1 stone of bread in 12 hours, and Kate served in the shop, which
was open from 8 o'clock in the morning to 12 o'clock at night. At
that time pastries and buns were sold at 32 pieces for one shilling.
   On returning from school young George found many chores awaiting
him.
   George, however, would find time to speak at meetings, no matter
what his commitments, to act as chairman, to speak at street corners.
In this Kate helped him a great deal, often taking the bread out of
the oven after he had gone out. Also his bakery was still a meeting
place where current problems were discussed, and working men argued
and clarified their ideas, thrashed out the issues of the day, where
they listened to George and his exposition of Marxist theory.
   From its inception the British Socialist Party had carried out
intensive propaganda, not confining its activities to the City and the
East End but reaching out to the suburbs and outlying districts, the
main speakers being George H. Fletcher, Alf Barton, and A. E.
Chandler.
   They conducted classes in economics, put up candidates for
elections, and held a number of meetings in support of the miner's
strike of 1912 for a minimum wage. (In this strike, as reported in
the Sheffield Guardian in March of that year, 1,, men were
out a fortnight, disciplined and solid, when only 2 per cent of them
stood to gain anything from the strike and the other 8 per cent made
sacrifices for their fellow men; this remarkable strike raised the
question of a living wage and showed the worth of the common man.)
Propaganda efforts of a week's duration took place, demonstrations,
social events and field days.
   In order to raise money for their manifold activities the
Sheffield British Socialist Party began the manufacture of razors,
knives, etc. There was the Revolutionist at 3s. 6d., the
Clarion at 2s. 6d., or just a common Proletarian at 1s.
6d., a Red Flag pocket knife being the same price. They were
made by local comrades who were 'little masters', and on the boxes
was a suitable inscription: 'Sharp enough to cut the throat of the
most hard-hearted Capitalist!'
   Other methods of raising money were tried such as the Male Voice
Choir, which Charlie Grant worked particularly hard to bring into
being.
   'Can you sing?' he asked Arthur Parkin. Arthur couldn't, but
he joined the Choir. Most of the members were unemployed at the time,
they had never sung a note in their lives, and hardly one of them had
a decent suit to wear. Uncompromising material, perhaps, but Charlie
Grant persevered and began by teaching them tonic sol fa. They paid
1s. 6d. a night for a room and rehearsed twice a week. Soon they
were good enough to sing at meetings.
   One of the helpful by-products was that they were able to obtain
some respectable clothing, with which they wore a white tie and Red
Flag badge, thus presenting a much better appearance.
   Later, on many a sunny Sunday evening, when George went to speak
at Malin Bridge, they would be there to begin the meeting. They sang
to get a crowd and save the speaker's voice. Many fine speeches were
delivered by George, who had become so well known and popular that if
he were announced to speak the week before, the crowd would be there
at the appointed time and place, ready and waiting. Collections of
3s. or so would be taken.
   As they became known the Choir went to working-men's clubs, to
Conisborough on cheap trips to sing to the miners, and sang for other
organisations such as the Bakers' Union, for whom they went on
Saturday evenings to the Corner Pin Hotel, to rally the members.
   The B.S.P. also rented pleasant rooms on West Street,
where a successful Sunday school was held. One of the students was
young George, and another the dark-haired little granddaughter of
Charlie Grant.
   George often spoke at the Sunday school. He christened the
babies. Also, when called upon to do so, he would officiate at
funerals.
   Religion was one of his pet subjects, for being well acquainted
with the Bible, which he had read in prison where it was the only book
they were allowed, he could debate on religion with anyone. Although
his ideas were diametrically opposed to those of parsons he got on
wonderfully well with them, particularly those who, like the Rev.
Conrad Noel, the eloquent leader of the Church Socialist League,
genuinely advocated socialism. With such men, who had the courage of
their convictions and their Christianity, common ground could be
found.
   There was no abatement in political work. The British Socialist
Party endeavoured to get more socialist members sent to the Council,
and to Parliament, being determined and obdurate in their attitude
that their candidate must go forward in the elections. In the
Sheffield Trades and Labour Council meeting on October 16, 1912,
George had said, 'Mr. Barton would go to the poll. Just as the
Labour Party had fought the Liberals, they were going to fight the
Labour Party.'
   This new party, the British Socialist Party, was not prepared to
accept the role of junior helper in the Labour movement, or of only
providing propaganda in order to increase the volume of socialist
thought in the city, but sought to create in the Labour movement a
more militant attitude capable of achieving socialism for the working
people. In its ranks were men steeled in the struggle, who for many
years had worked without stint to the best of their ability and
knowledge for the working people. Not all members, though, understood
the same thing by socialism or fully accepted Marxism. Hyndman, the
leader, had for some time been propagating a reactionary policy and
veering away from the rank and file. Alf Barton, who in 1911 was
presented with a book on the life of Marx, and a gold purse in
recognition of his work for the movement, was later known to say that
it was not necessary to understand Marxism in order to understand
socialism, though at this time he was a keen member of the
B.S.P.. George, however, never deviated from his belief that
it was the economic basis of society which needed to be changed, for
the conditions of the people were appalling, there being only slight
alleviations.
   In 198 5s. a week had been granted to the old people at 7.
The Lloyd George Insurance Act, based upon the principle of
Bismarck's legislation many years earlier, which principle was to make
the working people pay for their own benefits, had come into
operation, and eased but slightly the situation of some of the most
needy of the population. But now stagnation seemed to have set in.
Wages were pitifully low, particularly the wages of women. It was
reported in the Sheffield Guardian of November 1912, that women
employed in the holloware trade had had to strike for a wage of 2d.
an hour, whilst the wages of many other girls did not even reach this
pittance. In the printing trade the wage of a skilled woman worker
was only 1s. a week.
   Endeavours were also made by the Amalgamated Union of Bakers and
Confectioners to improve the bad conditions of the bakers. Their
proposals were sent to the master bakers for signature but only eight
out of twenty-five conceded the terms of the men. Jack Hawksworth,
Secretary of the Bakers' Union, attended the Sheffield Trades and
Labour Council to appeal for support for the men, and a resolution was
passed to boycott the non-recognised shop in November 1912.
   In this year the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council also passed
a resolution in favour of a general strike should war be declared, and
the Sheffield Guardian of September 27, 1912, went further and
declared itself in favour of passive resistance to all taxation. So a
reading was taken of the direction the wind was blowing, presaging a
world disaster, yet it was lost sight of in the immediate smaller
issues of the day. The Liberals claimed to be working for peace but
the drift towards war went on without hindrance. It was a readymade
solution to their problems of poverty and unemployment. Interest,
however, remained; and George continued his leading role. He acted as
chairman at a B.S.P. meeting in the Sheffield Corn Exchange
in January 1913, when a large audience expected Ben Tillett to be
there, but as George explained, he was unable to come on account of
illness. Jack Jones of London and Charles Lapworth, who three years
before had stood for Brightside, delivered speeches, and party songs
were sung by the Clarion Vocal Union.
   Rather halting and reluctant steps were taken to bring about
agreement between the British Socialist Party and the Sheffield Trades
and Labour Council on the question of elections and affiliation.
These, however, did not have any immediate result, and the friction
which existed between these bodies was not resolved that year, to the
detriment of the labour movement.
   Although the Sheffield B.S.P. had declared, as stated by
Mr. Chandler at a meeting the year before, that there were to be no
leaders in their movement, yet the need for correct and definite
leadership began to be urgently felt, as George was to point out in
conference later on.
   In March, 1913, at a special meeting of the British Socialist
Party, they decided to adopt Comrade William Gee as Parliamentary
candidate, and the following resolution was carried unanimously:
   'That this branch of the British Socialist Party adopt Mr.
Wm. Gee of Northampton as prospective Socialist Candidate for the
Brightside Parliamentary Division and pledges itself to use every
legitimate effort to secure his successful return.'
   Events, however, were to decree otherwise.
   At the B.S.P. Conference of that year the cleavage of
opinion became more evident. Hyndman's support of a strong navy
caused much hostility and he had to undertake to express such opinions
only in his private capacity, and not as a member of the Party. It
was also resolved that only Socialist candidates should be recognised,
and a resolution against an increase in armaments was carried.
   In the matter of the municipal elections 1913 was a more
successful year for the labour movement, and at a meeting of the
Sheffield Trades and Labour Council in November, Mr. Rowlinson
referred with satisfaction to their success and stated there was no
reason why they should not have a big fighting force in the City
Council before long. But the City Council was again using repressive
measures to attack the labour movement of the city. They proposed to
prohibit public meetings at the traditional site of the Queen's
Monument, and this aroused the anger and indignation of the whole
labour movement, of all shades of opinion, throughout the city. On
February 17 a special conference was called which included
representatives of the Sheffield Independent Labour Party, British
Socialist Party, the Daily Herald League, the National Union of
Women's Suffrage Society, the Woman's Social and Political Union, and
the Trades Council. A decision was taken to organise a mass
demonstration of protest.
   Subsequently, on Sunday, March 8, 1914, an orderly and
substantial procession with the banners of the British Socialist
Party, the Independent Labour Party and the trades unions flying made
its way from the Wicker to the Queen's Monument. Collectors went
alongside with petitions. Gathered at the Monument was a crowd of
4, people, many of whom had come long distances.
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He very kindly accepted, adding in his letter that he would have a
friend staying with him on that day, and would like to bring him over
for the drive from Kennington. So at 3 p.m. the car drove up to
the Hall, and out of it stepped our Bishop with the Archbishop of
Canterbury! Dr. Davidson said he would go for a walk over the
fields while we attended to our business. To my amusement, when we
met at tea at the rectory after the Dedication, the Archbishop said he
had been stopped by a farmer in a field. He seemed rather indignant,
but we took the episode without a smile till afterwards.
   The Hall proved most useful, especially in winter when the
distance to the church deterred many from coming to Sunday Evensong.
We managed to furnish a table with cross and candles, and the people
appreciated the Church Hall for worship as well as for more secular
purposes.
   In 191 Dr. Talbot was translated to Winchester, and Dr.
Hubert Burge became Bishop of Southwark. Meanwhile I had been asked
to do a bit of Diocesan work in connection with Higher Religious
Education, and to become the Southwark Secretary of the Church Reading
Union. This meant organizing lectures and courses of religious
instruction through the Diocese, and I also found myself a member of
the Diocesan Conference, where I remember introducing myself as the
incumbent of the highest church in the Diocese. There was a somewhat
shocked atmosphere in some quarters, until I explained that my church
was 8 feet high above the sea level!
   The work was growing pretty heavy, and we managed to get a
stipendiary layman who could help among the children and young people.
It was while I was at Tatsfield that I first visited Oberammergau in
Bavaria to witness the Passion Play. The place and its people were to
play an important part in my life. For five years in succession till
war broke out in 1914, I spent my summer holidays there and became
very intimate with the people and the environs. Every year between
the Passion Plays, an interval of ten years, another play would be
performed at the small theatre in the village, when new talent would
be discovered and trained. After the First World War, 1914, I did not
visit Germany for ten years, by which time in 1924 I was in a
different parish in Surrey.
   Towards the end of my five and a half years' incumbency I was
asked if I would start a village choral society and conduct it. This
opened up a new interest, and we plunged into it.
   First of all simple part-songs: I found only one member who had
any idea of reading music. This was the village doctor who was an old
school friend at Clifton. He could sustain the tenor part quite well
and lead the others. As for basses and altos the conductor had to
teach by singing the parts with them. It was very amusing, and by the
end of a few months an enthusiastic choir of men and women could
render simple part-singing tolerably well.
   Then we went to work on Coleridge Taylor's 'Hiawatha's Wedding
Feast.' Enthusiasm grew, and in a few more months we gave a concert
at which the accompanist was the village schoolmaster, and the tenor
solo 'Onaway awake' was sung by the Rector. Friends from
Limpsfield, in addition to the villagers, came up, and we were all
happy.
=5
ST. MARK'S, WOODCOTE, 1913-1922
   IN 1913 Dr. Burge, Bishop of Southwark, asked me to go as
Vicar of St. Mark's, Woodcote, Purley, a new church built by the
well-known architect Mr. George Fellowes Prynne, who was to become a
very intimate friend, and I was later on joint executor of his estate
with his solicitor cousin. As Bishop Talbot had told me that I ought
not to spend many years in Tatsfield, we held great family
consultations. My eldest brother was then living in Limpsfield with
his family, and found a very suitable house nearby where my mother
settled, and eventually died in 1926 at the age of 92. Dr. Burge
was not able to be present at the Institution and Induction Service in
St. Mark's. This was taken by the Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich,
Dr. John Leake, who lived at Blackheath, and was a close friend of
ours.
   But what a change from the dear little old church at Tatsfield to
the great modern church of St. Mark's at Purley. One felt at
Tatsfield that, small as the church was, it had its own atmosphere,
and for centuries had been a House of Prayer. I could not but feel
the chilliness of the new church, beautiful as it was and is. When we
had found a group of people who gladly co-operated, we made the little
side chapel a place of daily prayer. I suggested to the congregation
that it needed warming up by constant prayer and worship, and we found
many to help. Gifts of candlesticks and stained-glass lancet
windows- finally a new altar- helped to furnish the chapel as a
little sanctuary for prayer and quiet. In time we received similar
gifts for the High Altar, and large East and West windows. It was
very interesting to have the privilege of filling such a beautiful
building with suitable fittings; I made a rule that all gifts should
be submitted for approval to the architect, himself a fine artist. It
is quite possible to put beautiful things into a beautiful church and
yet spoil the building with ornaments unsuitable to the environs.
   We also had a little Mission Hall leading off the Brighton Road,
in a street full of small houses. This was called Ellen Avenue when I
first went there, but was soon changed into the better-sounding name
of Lansdowne Road. There were lots of children there, and we had a
flourishing Sunday School and an evening service. I soon saw that the
parish needed more help both at the church and Mission district. The
Church Army Captain had done very good work in the Lansdowne Road
district, but I needed more help in the church for the full rota of
services on Sundays and weekdays. Most fortunately I was able to
engage the Rev. E. U. Evitt in 1913 soon after I had come, and
he organized the Mission district and got to know, and be known by,
many of the people of the parish.
   A great blow disturbed all our efforts in the following year,
1914, when war broke out. Very soon Chaplains for the Forces were
urgently needed, and I felt clearly that one of us must volunteer.
The Bishop, Dr. Burge, did not wish me to go then, as I had barely
been in the parish for a year. Mr. Evitt, however, was much less
committed than his Vicar, and he was accepted at once and was very
soon in France where he did splendid work until his health broke down
and he had a bad attack of enteric fever. Meanwhile in Purley there
was much activity and much co-operation especially with the other
Christian communities. At a large public meeting we launched the
project known as the 'Coulsdon and Purley Patriotic Fund' in whose
counsels and committees I found myself deeply involved. At first, the
main work was to help wives and relations of the soldiers to get their
'Separation' allowances, but soon, alas!, as casualties began and
increased in the winter of 1914 and 1915 the matter of War Pensions
became very urgent, and I was asked to be Chairman of the Committee in
Coulsdon and Purley. Indeed, for the next seventeen years, during my
time at Purley, and from 1922 at Surbiton, I was continuously Chairman
of the local War Pensions Committee. This task involved a very great
deal of detailed work for the Committee. We had a splendid body of
local residents, and a series of excellent Honorary Secretaries. Our
Committee met once a week in the evenings, and included professional
men from every walk of life. Very soon we managed to get a hut in
Purley where soldiers were very welcome and the ladies organized a
canteen. Life was in those years more than busy. We now had a
vicarage next to the church, and I was most fortunate in having for
eight years a most able and devoted housekeeper whom I had known well
in Limpsfield where she had a house next to the church. On hearing
that I was to leave Tatsfield and come to Purley she offered to come
and look after me. She was a real treasure, of yeoman stock and
clever in all domestic things, a widow who knew how to look after the
'boy,' who was the only other occupant of the house when Mr.
Evitt had gone. I have now long lost sight of the 'boy,' but he
was lucky to be trained in domestic duties by Mrs. Everett.
   And that brings me to say something about the children. While
the war dragged on and casualties increased, spreading sorrow into
many homes, there was a great solace and joy in the work among the
children. We gathered together a splendid Sunday afternoon service at
the church, each child being given a number which, as they came into
church, they could just whisper to the superintendent who filled in
the register at her own home. Each child had a picture given them and
the lesson was largely based on this. It was on a stamp which could
be stuck in their book, and there was quite a clamour for back stamps
if a child had to miss the Sunday Church from any cause which the
Vicar considered justifiable! It was quite amusing to see how much
the children enjoyed the service, and I heard of parents or faithful
nurses threaten any naughty child with the penalty of not being
allowed to come to the Children's Church on Sunday afternoon. I hope
the threat kept them good in the week, but anyway they were a most
delightful lot, and it is a great joy to meet them now fifty years
afterwards when so many are parents or even grandparents, and one of
the present churchwardens and several officials of the church still
remember those days.
   Speaking of churchwardens and children leads me at once to
chronicle a most intimate and lasting friendship begun in 1913 in
Purley and continuing till old age to-day. When I went to St.
Mark's, the first contact I made was with the Vicar's Warden, Mr.
F. W. Charlton and his family, the youngest of whose three sons
was just coming into the world in this year of 1913. From then till
now the acquaintance ripened into a very deep friendship which I have
taken with me through all the many vicissitudes of a long ministry.
Mr. and Mrs. Charlton have been from the first difficult years of
war, when most lives were upset and some tempers were easily frayed,
the most loyal and devoted friends. Their homes- for since those
years they have lived on in Purley- have always been havens of rest,
and the welcome has never failed. Their three boys, now successful
men, were in our Children's Church from the outset, and when we don't
see one another we do not forget.
   In those early years 1914-18, life was very full both in the
parish and in the wider war activities. The Bishop, knowing that I
spent my holidays in Bavaria, asked me if I would do something for two
wards at the Royal Herbert Hospital, full of war prisoners. I was
very glad to help in this way, and visited them frequently,
establishing at once a friendly contact with the Bavarian wounded who
were delighted to find someone who knew their native villages. I
could at once notice the great antagonism between the Bavarians and
the Prussians who openly scorned these more simple country folk.
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   For me, at any rate, this was all slightly ludicrous, almost
shame-making, but one had to take it as part of modern life. The
effect of make-believe was, if anything, heightened by the arrival in
the room of the German uniforms. Surely this must be fancy dress.
There was continuing unreality in the few verbal exchanges and the
multiple signatures of many documents and then suddenly, came a
heart-stirring display of such moral courage as one rarely meets. All
done, German General Alfred Jodl, some time Hitler's Chief of Staff
and now, with Admiral Friedeburg, co-signatory to his country's
defeat, leant across the table to General Bedell Smith, our Chief of
Staff, and in command of this little operation, asking in English for
permission to say a few words. Instinctively, somehow, permission was
given, whereupon General Jodl delivered in German a last-minute appeal
to the conquerors to acknowledge the sufferings of the German people
and to treat them with "gna"digheit". It was of the very essence
of the German dilemma that this man, this fine soldier, who had
allowed himself to become the instrument of his country's destroyer,
should find himself capable, at this climax of his and his country's
disaster, of pleading with cogent eloquence on behalf of his
countrymen. I was able next day to confirm the impression of him as a
soldier of the highest efficiency when giving him our Supreme
Commander's orders as to the disposal of the forces remaining in being
under German command.
   Within hours of this final act of surrender Admiral Friedeburg
had killed himself. We killed General Jodl later by hanging him in
Nuremberg Gaol.
   There seemed to me to be an appropriateness in making the final
act of this, my second Great War, here at Rheims with its scars still
unhealed from thirty years before when the city had stood on the edge
of the four-year battle zone of that first great struggle. The lovely
cathedral still showed its wounds and it was still possible easily to
trace the lines of the old No-Man's Land of 1914 to 1918. This time,
mercifully, there had been little destruction but warlike atmosphere
was not entirely lacking since, through the town, ran one of the "Red
Ball Highways", those one-way highspeed supply routes along which by
day and night thundered the endless convoys of giant American supply
trucks carrying supplies from Normandy to the battle-fields. It was
seemingly not only humans that derived comfort from the roar of
engines, for it seemed to have positively intoxicating effect upon the
nightingales that appear to exist in Rheims in great profusion. It
was of our disjointed times that one should be kept from sleep by the
deafening chorus of a positive nuisance of nightingales. As a
counter-irritant almost I used to listen of nights to light music
broadcast from Deutchlandsender-Berlin in equally unbroken stream save
when the girl announcer would break in with air raid warning of "many
enemy aircraft in flight toward Germany." Until a night of no more
music when one realized, almost with regret, that the Russians must
have overrun the transmitter.
   Not entirely to my regret, I was not of the party who flew to
Berlin there to re-enact the ceremony of surrender for the benefit of
Russian propaganda. From the garbled accounts given by the
participants on their return and restoration to normality it had
seemingly developed into an oriental orgy of monumental proportions.
Instead I organized for myself a personal celebration of victory and,
on the invitation of American General Maxwell Taylor, brilliant
commander of that crack 11st U.S. Airborne Division, I visited
Berchtesgaden. There I lodged in the Hotel suite that had until
recently been permanently reserved for the notorious Heinrich Himmler,
and was shown the local sights. Foremost among these, of course,
Adolf Hitler's famed "Eagle's Nest", that stupendous piece of
engineering leading up to the Alpine boudoir where so much mischief
had been hatched for all the world. In the madness of the whole
concept one could sense evil. One could imagine the follies of
grandeur that must have assailed the disordered mind as it rode the
storm up on those heights, surrounded by the tempests on which it must
have seemed that the Valkyries rode to greet the Wagnerian hero gazing
out over that wonderful vista of mountain, lake and plain.
   Then down below was hidden away the vast Goring collection of art
treasures, the loot of all Europe. Herein was another testimony to
mental aberration. Was it perhaps that, deep down in the man's vast
depravity, there was a craving after beauty that had somehow gone
adrift and, nurtured on obscenity, put out freakish growth. I wonder
if he appreciated his ill-gotten possessions in the short time he had
them.
   So on to Germany to confirm the great victory, this time without
equivocation- no mere armistice, no hanging back at the Rhine, no
haggling, not at any rate with our late enemies. Easy enough said but
to find a suitable location brought us up against considerable
difficulty. Thanks to the devastation wrought by our Air Force,
choices were few, it being necessary to find a place not only with
reasonable accommodation intact but whence good communications
radiated. The lot fell on Frankfurt on the Main where the great
I.G. Farben Industrie Head Office, surely one of the world's
most advanced functional buildings, was found to be reasonably intact.
Efficient fire-watching had kept within reasonable limits the several
fires that had obviously been started on the roofs by incendiary
bombing. Bazooka battles in the basement had failed to undermine the
fabric. The various temporary lodgers who must have streamed in and
out of the place had caused damage principally only to the vast
numbers of safes and strong rooms which had been burst open and
ransacked. Providence gave the solution of the biggest problem which
was that presented by the destruction of a large acreage of window
glass. By some freak of chance there was found to be surviving in the
devastated railway yard nearby a trainload of sheet glass, enough to
make a reasonable replacement job. Blocks of modern flats housed the
junior staff in some luxury while the seniors suffered no pain in the
palaces of the I.G. Farben Directors up in the charming villages
of the Taunus Mountains only a few miles out of town- Konigstein,
Falkenstein and Kronberg with its imposing Victorian castle, its
sculptured likeness of Queen Victoria herself on the church tower.
Here at last we had found for ourselves an ideal lay-out, high
efficiency in the offices, great comfort in our billets- so,
inevitably one might say, there came the end of S.H.A.E.F.
   The German surrender having disposed of the military problem,
it was no longer possible to ignore the inevitable consequences
thereof that demanded for their solution efforts that might be of a
different nature, but were none the less strenuous. So long as the
battles lasted they naturally took priority over all other activities
and thoughts and one tried to salve the conscience with the hope that,
victory won on the battlefield, the rest would be "all right on the
night". But, recovered from the excitements and tensions of those
few dramatic hours of "unconditional surrender", the partial
capitulations on the two flanks to Field-Marshals Alexander and
Montgomery and then the overall climax at Rheims with its repeat
performance in Berlin, one became immediately and horrifyingly aware
of the terrifying inadequacy of our preparations for what was now to
come.
   So long ago as in the early C.O.S.S.A.C. planning days I
had earnestly sought for some definition of the ultimate object of the
whole great enterprise; whether, for instance, Germany was to be
destroyed, dismembered or reorganized. I had asked, in fact, for the
definition of some positive object to pursue. Here we were at the end
of the campaign still with no answer to my question. And, for the
majority, thought on the subject had been inhibited by the narcotic
effect of the terrific slogan "unconditional surrender" than which
nothing could be more negative. We had received the enemy's
unconditional surrender. So what?
   To make it all doubly difficult, the end of battle had released
the unifying pressures that had bound the alliance so comparatively
intimately, and there became at once evident a pronounced tendency in
the other direction, a tendency to fly apart.
   So that we were in the worst possible shape to deal with the
immediate task of trying to co-operate with the Russians who suffered
from no such disadvantages as did we.
   History suffered dismal repetition. Back in 1918 the end had
also come with unexpected speed and had found the western alliance
infirm of purpose and lacking precision of aim. At the very heart of
the confusion the resolute but unbroken Germany, grievously wounded
but far from destruction, was able to lay the firm foundations for
military revival. So now in 1945 the Russians were quick to take
advantage of the all too evident disunity among those from whose
efforts they had, since 1941 only, been glad to benefit.
   As a British officer of S.H.A.E.F., serving an American
Chief, I was well placed to watch the distressing drift apart, the
growing impatience on American part with British bombast and bland
assumption of superiority in so many fields. While on the British
side there appeared all the evidence of a growing inferiority complex,
jealousy of lavish American resources of all kinds and reluctance to
acknowledge the scale of American achievement.
   The speed of events once the Rhine was crossed found both British
and Americans equally unprepared for what followed. We had
overestimated the degree of resistance to be put up by the Nazi party
and by the German people. We had given too much credence to German
propaganda, which had built up in our minds a picture of widespread
fanaticism that might well entail prolonged operations of a type that
would call for most careful handling. We foresaw a withdrawal by the
Nazi e?2lite with the cream of their surviving S.S. troops into
a well-chosen mountain fortress in the Tyrol, heavily fortified and
provisioned, that would necessitate difficult siege operations for its
reduction. Meanwhile we should have met the Russians head-on, in
mid-Germany, which might lead to anything. Even at this late stage
there was no working arrangement as to the details of this encounter.
It was bound to happen one day and from our side every conceivable
effort had been made to arrive at agreement on a procedure for the
avoidance of unfortunate accident in the heat of battle. Less than no
response from the Russian side led one to fear that the event might
well have the outcome that the Nazis evidently hoped might lead to
disaster. Then there had been much talk of the setting up among the
German population of a general system of "francs-tireurs", to
be named "Werewolves". Arms were to be distributed widespread
among the civilian population, whose burning patriotism would inspire
them to wage a clandestine war of murder, sabotage and terror against
the hated conquerors.
   As it turned out we were wrong on all accounts. Altogether we
had overestimated the hold of the Nazi party over the German people.
The Nazi fortress concept turned out to be nothing more than a
fantasy. Thanks to the good sense of the front line soldiers, the
meeting of East and West was marked by the use of no weapon more
lethal than vodka. And the effect on the German people of the first
ten years of the promised thousand of Nazi rule, so far from creating
a spirit of warlike frenzy, had produced universally a dull bewildered
apathy.
   So far had our thinking led us in this matter of the
"Werewolves" that we had contemplated the necessity of very special
precautions to guard the lives of our airmen. Particular hatred, we
felt, was bound to be aimed at the representatives of those who had,
over the years, spread such ghastly havoc, destruction and death over
Germany, causing such wholesale slaughter among men, women and
children, old and young alike.
# 221
<193 TEXT G6>
   In mid-April Anglesey moved his family and entourage from Rome
to Naples, there to await the arrival of his yacht from England. The
beauty of the place quite exceeded his expectations.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'I am enchanted', he told Arthur Paget. 'Probably the
Element <the water> has not a little to do with it, but I admire
Vesuvius, which smokes and spits a little to please us, and altogether
the 6locale is certainly charming. I am now looking out in
earnest for the Pearl.... At present I am not in force. The fact
is Italian weather is a humbug and March is (barring Fogs) as bad
at Rome as in London. I fancy this place more. The Scene at least is
superb, and if it be too cold to go out, one may at least sit and
enjoy it behind the windows a?3 l'abri du vent, and with the
benefit of Sun, whereas at Home every house is constructed and placed
so as to have as little as possible of that very agreeable
companion.'
<END INDENTATION>
   By the end of the month he still delighted in Naples. He told
Cloncurry that he enjoyed it as much as his health permitted him to
enjoy anything. 'The Pearl', he wrote, 'is arrived, which is
a great resource. Vesuvius seems to be tired; he is going out
fast.... What a gay, lively people, and what a busy town. At Rome,
every other man was a priest: here the priest is 1superceded by the
soldier- a favourable change in my eye, particularly as the troops
are very fine.'
   When the sailing season was past, he sent Pearl back to
England, and returned to Rome for the winter. In late November, he
was 'suffering as usual', but hoped, he told Arthur, 'to find this
place agree with me better than Naples. The journey has been against
me, as there has been much rain and damp, but the temperature is high
& I have not yet thought of a fire.... By the by,' he added, 'what
good cooks the Neapolitans are. I have a very good one, but alas!
"1tis all lost upon Maud!" The utmost extent of my eating is a
little macaroni, 1spinage & compote de pommes, with which,
however, I quite keep up my condition, 1altho' I sleep little & wake
constantly & in pain. A pleasant life truly!... It so happens that I
have an Italian who is perhaps the best Valet de Chambre that
ever was. But he has not one word of English.'
   While he was writing this letter he heard of the fall of the
Whigs, and the temporary assumption of the government by the Duke of
Wellington. 'What a frightful event!' he wrote. 'I tremble!
What infatuation! Personally I am indifferent, but I really tremble
for my country! I may be mistaken, 1tho' I cannot but fear that the
exasperation of the People will be so great at the return of
Ultratoryism, that the Commons House upon a dissolution, which must be
had, will be a mass of Radicalism, & then God knows what may
happen.... God grant, however, that I may be a false prophet & that
all may go well. Sir R. Peel was here, I understand, but an express
took him off yesterday.'
   
   While he was in Naples there had opened a new chapter in the
history of Anglesey's unceasing search for an effective alleviation of
his painful malady. None of the numerous conventional remedies to
which he had been subjected ever since the symptoms had first shown
themselves seventeen years before had had the slightest effect. Nor
is this to be wondered at, for even today, in the 196s, no cure has
been found for the 6tic douloureux. As early as 183, when
Anglesey believed himself to be on the point of death, the new German
curative method known as homoeopathy had been brought to his notice.
In April of that year his first wife's brother-in-law, the
diplomatist Lord Ponsonby, had written to advise Anglesey to give the
system a trial, adding that it was being cultivated with extraordinary
success in France and Italy, and that he himself was being treated
under a doctor who had studied under its founder, the aged Dr.
Samuel Hahnemann. This remarkable man of medicine, whom Sir Francis
Burdett described to Anglesey a year or two later as 'more like a God
upon earth than a human being', had an increasing number of
disciples among unorthodox medical men in the cities of Europe. One
of these was the Neapolitan, Dr Giuseppe Mauro, whom Anglesey
consulted in May 1834. Mauro's first action was to write to his
revered master at Ko"then, near Leipzig, asking for advice. In doing
so he described his distinguished patient and his symptoms. He told
Hahnemann that he found Anglesey a strong, energetic man with a gentle
and charming character, even-tempered and sedate, not easily
irritated, patient and persevering, 'but he appears to despair of
ever being cured.' Only the right side of his face was affected,
the pain extending from the corner of the mouth and the chin, up to
the eye socket and as far back as behind the ear. During an attack
the outer skin would become so sensitive that on being touched it felt
as if something red-hot were singeing it, and the acts of speaking and
swallowing became difficult in the extreme. North and east winds and
sudden changes in the weather generally provoked severe bouts of pain.
These were always accompanied by an irregularity of the pulse and
acute constipation. During a bad attack Anglesey would writhe in
silent agony, burying his head in his hands, the torment coming in
spasms every three or four minutes, over a longer or shorter period.
Hahnemann's reply to Mauro was to send off some medicines (which took
three months to reach Naples) and to write personally to Anglesey
stressing the need for continual outdoor exercise above all else.
   In September, Sir James Murray was replaced as Anglesey's
personal physician by Dr Dunsford, an English disciple of
Hahnemann's. He at once took over the correspondence with Hahnemann,
but soon came to the conclusion that as soon as it was possible to
cross the Alps, Anglesey and his party should take up residence for a
period in Ko"then. Consequently, at the end of April 1835, Anglesey,
accompanied only by his son Clarence, Dr Dunsford and two servants,
arrived within hailing distance of the great Hahnemann himself. The
reason for taking Clarence, who was now a young man of twenty-three,
was that he too was in need of medical assistance. His complaints
were venereal, and Hahnemann refused to prescribe for him without a
personal examination. What success Hahnemann had in Clarence's case
is not known, but after a month's treatment at Ko"then, Anglesey
seemed to be well on the way to a cure. This happy but impermanent
state of affairs was brought about by a very careful application of
the homoeopathic system. At that date the doctrine that 'likes
should be treated by likes', which is its essence, was completely
revolutionary. The fact that homoeopathy utterly rejected the weapons
commonly used against disease, such as bleeding, mercurialism and
purgatives, ensured that 'every Apothecary', as Lord Ponsonby put
it, 'must be its determined foe.' But Hahnemann had had
extraordinary successes in curing diseases which had quite baffled the
conventional remedies, and in Anglesey's case, by experimenting with
selected medicines and meticulously noting their effects, he managed
to reduce the frequency and violence of the attacks very considerably
over a period of several months. This partial success may well have
been due less to the drugs than to the cessation of the debilitating
remedies hitherto employed. For instance, Hahnemann told Dunsford
that it was 'never necessary or useful to lessen the amount of blood
because it always means a lessening of energy and those forces whose
reactions are all the more beneficial the more they are kept
intact.' This 6diktat, and others like it, though universally
accepted today, sounded like treason in the ears of the orthodox
practitioners of the 183s, but their application was clearly the
chief basis of Hahnemann's success. Anglesey was so impressed by what
seemed a miraculous cure, that he gave Dunsford permission to publish
an account of it. In this were detailed the various medicines tried
and their effects; Anglesey was pictured as having 'recovered the
stoutness, the vigour and the activity of a young man. For several
months he has not felt the coming on of the tic, and he has such
confidence in homoeopathy that no relapse can lessen it.' Though
this last statement was an exaggeration, Anglesey was certainly
grateful to Hahnemann for giving him the longest periods of freedom
from pain he had ever had. It was said that he looked ten years
younger and wherever he went praised the miracles which homoeopathy
had wrought in him. By June 1835, when he had returned to England and
re-established himself at Beaudesert, he felt that his sojourn abroad
had well served its purpose: what he called the 'wretched nerves'
of his face were at last quiescent, and he knew once again the
blessing of uninterrupted sleep.
   
   Later in the year, the idea of some sort of public employment was
again in the air. Lady Cowper, for instance, told Princess Lieven on
September 25th that Anglesey was very much annoyed at not obtaining
the Admiralty in place of Lord Auckland, who had gone to govern India.
If there was any truth in this, Lord Melbourne's letter of the
following day, offering Anglesey the Government of Gibraltar, may have
been a sop. 'It is', he wrote, 'one of the best military
situations which the Crown has to bestow- the salary has been
settled... at five thousand pounds yearly, it being understood that
the Governor is not hereafter to be absent from his post. It has
struck me that 1altho' very improbable it is not quite impossible
that you might be willing to accept of this appointment.' The reply
was not bereft of asperity:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'Beaudesert, Sept. 27, 1835
   'Dear Melbourne,
   'I have received your letter of yesterday.
   'I am not prepared to spend the remainder of my life at
Gibraltar, & moreover (if even residence were not the condition),
having no taste for a sinecure, I have only to thank you for the offer
& to decline it.
   'I remain, dear Melbourne, faithfully yours,
   'ANGLESEY'
<END INDENTATION>
   Soon after his return from Europe, Clarence Paget had become
seriously ill with a supposed abscess on the lungs. After months of
suffering, his life was almost despaired of when as a last resort it
was suggested that the patient should be taken to consult Hahnemann
once again. It was no longer necessary to go further than Paris, for
by this time the great man had been driven from his native Germany by
the antipathy of his orthodox brethren. The main difficulty was how
to make the expedition from England without killing the patient before
he completed it. The problem was overcome in an interesting manner.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'Fortunately,' wrote Clarence in after years, 'the King...
remembered there was a luxurious old bed travelling-carriage in the
royal coach-houses, which had carried his brother, George =4., and he
kindly placed it at the disposal of my father. Into it I was put,
more dead than alive, and we got across to Calais, and from thence by
easy stages to Paris... Dr Hahnemann was immediately summoned- a
little wizened old man of seventy <he was, in fact, over eighty>, not
more than five feet high, with a splendid head, and bent double- with
him his wife, a remarkably intelligent French woman, who was very
plain, and much younger than the doctor. He gave one the idea of a
necromancer. He wrote down every symptom, examined me all over, asked
ever so many questions which I had scarcely strength to answer, and
took up his gold-headed cane to depart. My father hung upon every
word, but could get nothing from him.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 23
<194 TEXT G7>
   When he saw Trelawny's printed letter, Lord Sidney wrote to
Douglas Kinnaird saying that it was incorrect throughout. He had no
sooner heard from Count Gamba and Fletcher that Byron would have
wished his body to return to England than that course was
'immediately carried into effect'- not in spite of himself and Sir
Frederick Stoven, but with their perfect concurrence, while ~'General
Adam was at Corfu the whole time and never interfered in the slightest
degree about the matter'.
   His only reference to Trelawny by name in the course of several
communications to Hobhouse and Kinnaird about Byron's affairs is
satirical: 'I have not the 1honor of any acquaintance with Mr
Trelawny who seems to have had charge of the Mule when Count Gamba
accompanied the remains of our deceased friend to Zante....'
   If Trelawny failed even to meet Lord Sidney and the British
Government's other representatives in the islands, while they warmly
welcomed Gamba to their counsels, it would go far to explain his
attempts to exalt himself at the young Italian's expense.
   In his popular and acutely unreliable book on Byron and Shelley,
Trelawny implies that not only Gamba but Fletcher and Tita and the
steward, Lega Zambelli, failed to perform the most elementary duties
towards the dead. He pretends to have found everything in uttermost
disorder- 'tokens that the Pilgrim had most treasured, scattered on
the floor,- as rubbish of no marketable value, and trampled on'.
This was to give colour to his pretext for copying Byron's last
letter to his sister, which was that its chance of reaching its
destination had seemed slight. The collection of Pietro Gamba's
letters deposited among the Murray manuscripts show that the greatest
care was observed in gathering together all the possessions of a man
whose importance was fully recognized by everyone about him. 'I have
had put under Government seal his belongings, which will be opened by
Prince Alexander Mavrocordato in my presence and that of certain
Englishmen who are here. I have taken an exact inventory of them.'
Thus on April 21st, several days before Trelawny appeared, Gamba
wrote to Lord Sidney Osborne, and his inventory has been preserved.
The papers were reopened in the presence of leading Missolonghi
officials in order to make sure that no recent will was amongst them.
It may have been then that Trelawny contrived to do his copying.
   Considering that Pietro was not above twenty-three years of age
when he undertook a load of heavy responsibilities, his conduct
reveals him as one of the most intelligent as well as the most
sympathetic of Byron's 6entourage in Greece.
   With his good looks- for he 'carried the passport of a very
handsome person'- his good manners and his perfect lack of
pretension, he even succeeded in disarming Hobhouse's possessiveness
and making him forget how deeply he had disapproved, less than two
years ago in Italy, of the immoral way the Countess Guiccioli's family
accepted Byron as her lover.
   Augusta Leigh too was favourably impressed, and wrote to Lady
Byron after she had received a visit from him:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   I have today seen Count Gamba- which was very distressing for
many reasons but quite unavoidable- he is a pleasing, fine looking
young man & spoke with great feeling.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   The unfortunate Augusta was in one of her worst states of
confusion. She had loved Byron, but she had betrayed him, betrayed
him not twice, as he had betrayed her, but again and again over a long
span of time, fawning on his implacable wife, purveying to her in
secret the unguarded letters he never suspected any eye but her own
would see, feeding the stealthy fires of her animosity: and having
betrayed him, she had grown to fear and almost to hate him. She had
dreaded his outpourings of affection for her in poetry that he thought
would clear her and that only compromised her, and the headstrong
folly that tempted him to write on ever more daring themes, teaching
the world to guess what repentance and unrepentance preyed upon his
thoughts. She had dreaded still more that he might return to England,
overshadowing her again with spiritual and social peril.
   But this kind of return was what she could never have foreseen...
that he should come back not voluble but silent, not beautiful but
defaced, not in obloquy but with his praises ringing! She could
remember now his exciting laughter, his almost filial love for her,
her almost maternal love for him. Above all she could remember the
anguish of their parting, and how he had been 'convulsed, absolutely
convulsed with grief'. So love revived, and in its most sentimental
form. While he lived she had lost touch in her perpetual alarms with
what was best in him; dead his memory became sacred to her.
   She felt almost as strongly as Hobhouse about biographies. Quite
apart from the divagations of her 'poor brother'- so she
constantly referred to him- there were a hundred reasons why it would
be objectionable to have the family history exposed. Whatever
latitude she allowed in the warmth of her kindly nature to others- or
to herself- she believed implicitly in the moral code she had learned
from her good grandmother, the Countess of Holderness, living in a
well-ordered Derbyshire manor. She had no desire to see in print that
her mother, who was to have been a duchess, had been involved in a
scandalous and ruinous divorce, that her father, 'Mad Jack Byron',
was a profligate and a bankrupt who had squandered every penny two
successive wives had brought him and left the second on the verge of
destitution, and that he had died a drunkard and perhaps a suicide,
hiding in France to escape his creditors.
   It was no more pleasant for the Hon. Augusta Leigh to share
this kind of story with the world than it would be for most
2th-century ladies moving in court circles and having children to be
settled advantageously in life. She had lived down the rumours which
had made the year of the Byron separation a nightmare to her, and she
had also succeeded, though with an increasing sense of effort, in
persuading her little world to avert its eyes from her husband, 'that
drone', as Byron called him, whose career of devotion to the turf
was reputed to have a certain shadiness. She had earned the right to
be left in peace.
   Byron's fame was, of course, very wonderful, but it carried with
it too many reminders of his terrible indiscretions- the writing of
Don Juan, which she had never ceased to deplore, his shocking
blasphemies like the Vision of Judgement, his making friends with
the atheist known to her as 'that infamous Mr. Shelley', and his
mixing with really low and horrid people such as the subversive
journalist Leigh Hunt, whom one would never conceivably meet in decent
society.
   She was most emphatically opposed to the production of sheer
indelicacies, and that was the light in which she saw the proposed
book by Dallas. Letters between a mother and a son- a son so
outspoken and a mother so far from suitable to be paraded before the
public! And brought out by that seedy poor relation, Dallas! Could
anything be in worse taste? The ill-mannered man had not even had the
common courtesy to write to her about it, but had sent her a verbal
message through a niece of his simply informing her that it was his
intention to bring out the book. It was a good thing she had Mr
Hobhouse to depend on.
   There had been a time when she had shared Annabella's detestation
of Mr Hobhouse- had agreed with her that he was a bad influence,
one of the 'Piccadilly crew' who encouraged Byron to drink and
behave outrageously. She was far too diplomatic to have let him
suspect the scornful terms in which she was referring to him in her
daily letters to Annabella when the marriage was breaking up; and this
was fortunate because he had turned out to be a powerful friend to
her.
   No one had done more to silence the whisperings which connected
her, so untruly and unfairly, with the Separation. He was not, after
all, the godless debauchee he had once seemed but a serious-minded
person who felt exactly as she did about Byron's poetical defiances,
and who had the same passionate desire to protect his memory. He was
generous too, and although his expenses as a Member of Parliament were
heavy and he depended on an allowance from his father, he had
renounced for her sake Byron's legacy of a thousand pounds. Hanson,
the solicitor, was naturally remunerated for his services, but all
Mr Hobhouse's duties as executor were performed without reward. And
now there was more trouble brewing with those unbearable Dallases.
   Dallas senior was detained in Paris by severe illness, but Dallas
junior was full of fight and applying for the injunction to be lifted.
He had gone to Byron's cousin, now 7th lord, and had got him to
compose an affidavit to the effect that, whereas he had formerly been
reluctant to approve the publication unless it had first been examined
by the relatives and friends of his predecessor, he had now read the
book and was content for it to be issued without that precaution.
   There were few things in Augusta's whole life, full of calamities
though it was, that hurt her more than this contemptuous slight from
George Anson Byron, whom she had loved with an unswerving loyalty, and
had looked on as her intimate friend. Moreover, he was without the
right to make such pronouncements: he had inherited nothing from her
brother but his title, whereas she was not only of nearer
consanguinity but the chosen recipient of his property.
   These, if she had only known it, were precisely the reasons why
her cousin took pleasure in the opportunity of annoying her. Lady
Byron did not like Augusta to have intimate friends, and in every
instance where the occasion was granted her, she managed to find some
excuse for bestowing, in whole or in part, those confidences which
never failed to leave her audience agape with wonder at her
magnanimity and Augusta's wickedness.
   George Anson Byron had seen enough of the poet's atrocious
conduct as a husband to be aware that Augusta, so far from being
responsible for the collapse of the marriage, had been Lady Byron's
greatest support and comfort at the time; but it had been deemed
necessary all the same to enlighten him as to the suspicions in the
background, and he had repeated them to his newly married wife. Their
friendship for Augusta became rather hollow, and the news that Byron
had left her practically all his money caused it to crumble to
oblivion.
   Though Lady Byron knew perfectly well that Byron, as early as the
year of their wedding, 1815, had made a will in Augusta's favour, she
had evidently not passed on that information; and it came as an
appalling surprise to Captain Byron that he had been left without the
fortune that would keep up the title. Why he should have cherished
expectations it is difficult to see, considering that a nearer
relative was poor and in debt, and that he had been on bad terms with
Byron since the Separation, in which he had whole-heartedly and with
courage allied himself with the opposite side; but that he suffered a
shock his letters poignantly show, and the disappointment must have
been all the worse because the will was not produced until nearly
seven weeks after he had learned of his succession.
   'Respecting the will', he wrote to Byron's widow a few days
after hearing its contents, 'the very thought of it is painful to me.
What Mary has said about it is too true.'
   What Mary, the new Lady Byron, had said about it was written on
the first half sheet of the same paper:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   My dearest Annabella,
   The more we consider the most prominent subject in your letter,
the more we are convinced of the truth of that dreadful history
connected with it.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 22
<195 TEXT G8>
   All friends in the India Office emphasised Ritchie's humanity,
'the revelation that anyone in his position could spare time and
thought for the younger members of the office', 'his continual
kindness, generosity and public spirit', together with 'social
pre-eminence as one of the very few witty Englishmen'; while the
Indian Press dwelt on 'the load of personal additional
responsibility, due to the Secretary of State's illness' (in March
1911 he had a fainting fit and was ordered two months' rest) 'and to
his leadership of the House of Lords, which broke down the Permanent
Under Secretary'; and observed too that Ritchie was 'more human,
genial and considerate than his reticent and aloof predecessor, Lord
Kilbracken'.
   There is a true story, connected with another branch of the
Service, regarding an official, who, having represented his country
abroad for some ten years in an obscure post in a distant country,
came home on leave and, summoning all his courage in the hope of
getting a transfer, telephoned to the head of his Department and said:
~'This is H.M. Representative in-', to which the head of the
Department replied: ~'Christ!' and hung up the receiver. In this
delicate art of handling subordinates, Ritchie adopted a different
method. A high-spirited young Indian Political Officer, Terence
Keyes, brother of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, V.C., and uncle of
Colonel Geoffrey Keyes, V.C., came home on furlough from the
North-East frontier and expounded to Ritchie some local objections to
the frontier policy of the Government. A few days later Ritchie was
infuriated to find the same objections, obviously communicated by
Keyes in his nai"ve inexperience, and lapped up with delight by the
Treasury, in a letter supporting some financial objections of their
own. At a subsequent reception at the India Office Ritchie pitched
into the Treasury officials present for what he called 'their Chinese
methods', and then into Keyes, whom he nevertheless invited to a
talk at the Office, later repeating the invitation several times in
writing, until Keyes eventually came, and Ritchie was able to explain
that, though it did not matter to him personally, he realised the
feelings of young officials home from India about 'old buffers'
like himself, and had been afraid he had put a young fellow on a wrong
path. Keyes left the office, not only reconciled to his drubbing, but
convinced that Ritchie was the only Englishman never resident in India
who understood the East, and was the best Government official in his
experience.
   An account may also be given of Ritchie's opinions of high
officials, for few of whom he cherished unbounded regard. For
Kilbracken indeed he had great admiration, but considered that he was
timid when it came to the crux.
   Of Kitchener he used to say with humorous exaggeration: 'One
can do nothing with him. One must shoot him.' He added: 'There
are two or three people like that in our office. One can do nothing
with them. One must shoot them.' But he would have spared Lord
Morley, for Lady Minto recalled how, when her husband was Viceroy,
Ritchie once said to her, with a twinkle in his eyes, ~'There will
always be a few people who will know that it's Lord Minto who keeps
Lord Morley in order'- he was found 'very cranky and not
level-headed' by Lord Hardinge, the next Viceroy.
   Of Lloyd George, on the day after his Mansion House speech of 21
July 1911, in which he gravely warned Germany that England would be no
mere spectator in the development of the Agadir affair, Ritchie said,
with amused contempt: 'He is so happy- he has at last been allowed
to talk about something important.'
   Since his Eton days he had known Lord Curzon, who had always been
one of his admirers. To a colleague Curzon wrote far back in 1892:
'Ritchie's knowledge and experience are unrivalled in the Office.
His great ability and judgment enable him to take a large share of
responsibility, and in all Parliamentary points (questions, debates,
etc.) he is a better adviser than anyone here.' In 199, on
Ritchie's appointment to the head of the Office, Curzon wrote:
'Hurrah. So at last you have climbed to the dizzy but inevitable
spot. It is good for you, but better for the India Office, and best
of all for India itself.' And he assured Lady Ritchie, after her
husband's death, that his good relations with Ritchie were never
affected by his difficulties with the India Office when Viceroy of
India, and a few days later, in order to defend before the House of
Lords the purchase of large amounts of sterling for the Government of
India through Messrs Samuel Montagu and Company instead of through
the Bank of England, he pointed out that the financial experts had
been fortunate enough to obtain, through the whole transaction, the
advice and concurrence 'of a gentleman of whom they all so deeply
deplored the loss- he meant his friend Sir Richmond Ritchie, the late
Permanent Under Secretary at the India Office.'
   On his appointment as Viceroy Curzon had offered to Ritchie the
post of his Political Secretary, but Ritchie had declined, not
reciprocating Curzon's admiration. Before leaving for India, Curzon
came to Ritchie's room at the India Office, 'very affectionate and
cordial', as the latter wrote at the time, 'but in bad spirits and
rather doubtful about his health. We had a solemn farewell.
Existence officially will certainly be nicer with him safe in the far
distance.' Years later, on 14 July 1911, the Pop Centenary Dinner
was held at Eton. Curzon went, but Ritchie was too busy. A week
later, passing down the High Street at Eton, he paused to look at a
photograph of the Dinner, at which Curzon could be seen at the end of
the top table delivering a speech. 'He looks very well there', was
Ritchie's sole comment. 'Not too close.'
   As Government documents covering the last fifty years are not
public, no full account can be given of Ritchie's actual achievements
at the India Office, but the Dictionary of National Biography
observed that, although the part which he played in the momentous
changes in Indian administration was confidential, 'it is believed
that he was responsible for the strict adherence to recorded
precedents which was an unexpected feature of Lord Morley's policy in
all questions relating to internal affairs of native states. He was
also closely connected with the negotiations with Tibet which followed
the armed mission of Sir Francis Younghusband to Lhasa in 193-4, and
with those which resulted in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 197.'
The old India Office files contain the draft and counterdraft of this
Convention in his own handwriting, from which still emanates the aroma
of the tobacco which he had smoked over fifty years ago, poring day
and night over these papers.
   This Anglo-Russian Convention regulated the relations of Great
Britain and Russia in Persia, removed the menace of Russian military
operations against India, and initiated the Entente with Russia which,
together with the British Entente with France, enabled Great Britain
to face the German danger in 1914. It was one of the landmarks and
turning points in British diplomatic history at the beginning of the
present century. In spite of very great difficulties due to the
prevalent Russian anti-British feeling, and to sharp and violent
political conflicts in Russian ruling circles, as well as to the
weakness of the Russian Government itself, the negotiations for this
Convention were carried out during 196 and 197 with the greatest
skill and success in Russia by Sir Arthur Nicolson (then British
Ambassador in St Petersburg, later Lord Carnock) and in London by
Sir Edward Grey (then Foreign Minister) and Sir Charles Hardinge (then
Permanent Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, afterwards
Lord Hardinge of Penshurst) on behalf of the Foreign Office, and on
behalf of the India Office by Lord Morley (then Secretary of State for
India) and Ritchie (although then only head of the Political and
Secret Department of the India Office). The Government of India,
which did not altogether approve, was left 'entirely out of
account', and only the Prime Minister and Lord Ripon were kept
informed, according to Sir Charles Hardinge's letter to Sir Arthur
Nicolson of 1 July 197. This astonishing secrecy 6vis-a?3-vis
the Government of India was due, according to a later letter of
Valentine Chirol dated October 197, to Lord Morley's 'fears' of
Lord Kitchener (then Commander-in-Chief India) and the 'weakness and
inefficiency' of Lord Minto (then Viceroy), whose ideas, as Lord
Morley complained, 'involved a complete subversion of the policy of
H.M.G.' If one may accept Lord Hardinge's estimate of Lord
Morley, mentioned above, it would seem hard to overestimate the role
played by Ritchie, and one may wonder whether it was adequately
rewarded by the award to him of a K.C.B. in the summer of
197, the G.C.B. being at the same time awarded to Nicolson
in St Petersburg.
   Later, after Ritchie's death, Hardinge, then Viceroy, wrote to
Crewe: 'I was very much shocked to get your telegram today
announcing the death of Ritchie. He was a man in whose judgment I
have learned to have great confidence. During the five years that I
was in the Foreign Office he and I worked together in very close
conjunction, and he made things go very smoothly between the India
Office and the Foreign Office. I always looked upon him as one of my
best friends and as a most loyal coadjutor. If he and I had not been
on such good terms together, I think there might have been more
difficulties in connection with the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian
agreement.'
   Reference may also be allowed to Pope-Hennessy's recent biography
of Lord Crewe, from which it emerges that from 195 to 191, when Lord
Minto was Viceroy and Lord Morley Secretary of State for India, even
if 'very cranky and not level-headed', 'the power of the Secretary
of State in London increased gradually but imperceptibly, so that by
the end of Minto's rule the Secretary of State for India had more
control over Indian affairs than had ever been the case before', and
that after 191 the Viceroy was Lord Hardinge who 'lacked Lord
Minto's enterprise, and was in every way a more conventional and less
imaginative man', while the Secretary of State was Lord Crewe, much
absent from the India Office on account of ill health and other duties
in the House of Lords. Ritchie was permanent head of the India Office
during most of this time, and it is not surprising that Sir Mackenzie
Chalmers (see page 19) considered that it was only through Ritchie's
great ability and devotion that the Government of India was enabled to
pull through the serious difficulties of those years; that Sir Henry
Dobbs (see page 19) wrote that Ritchie had very great influence on
affairs in India and saved the Government from many mistakes; that Sir
J. R. Dunlop Smith (see page 2) considered Ritchie's death a
blow to India not easy to measure; and that Lord Crewe himself (see
page 17) admitted that Ritchie could in no way be replaced.
   Nevertheless, anybody able to wade through the enormous mass of
correspondence between the India Office and the Foreign Office, or
between the former and the Government of India during the vital busy
years covering the Anglo-Russian Convention, the Minto-Morley reforms
and the Delhi Durbar, will be struck by the relatively small quantity
of letters or memoranda from Ritchie. That was typical of how he
worked. As he himself had once written to a young authoress: 'One
never accomplishes anything outright, but as a result of one's
exertions, things end by happening to a certain extent as one would
wish.' At the India Office he worked through successive
Secretaries of State and Viceroys, and they knew his value. To Lord
George Hamilton Ritchie, then forty, was 'his right hand man', to
Lord Morley he was 'the ablest man in the Civil Service', and Lord
Crewe leaving for the Delhi Durbar in 1911 recommended the
Parliamentary Under Secretary Montagu, who remained behind, in
everything 'to consult Ritchie'.
# 226
<196 TEXT G9>
   There was no change in my working life except, as the years
went on, for better positions and more money. But there was a great
change in my social life, as complete as that from school to the
nursery garden. Cut off from my old acquaintances, and Slough's mad
round of spurious gaiety, I groomed myself for the country life. To
do this, I threw in my lot (about +12) with my sister's, who had
always been so horsey that she might have been a Sellars and Yeatman
original. With the help of Bertie Barnwell, an old acquaintance of my
mother's from Pytchley, we bought a hunter, saddle and bridle for
+25.
   With a slit in the back of my coat and a straw between my teeth,
standing with my feet in the fifth position, smelling faintly of
ammonia, I could soon talk horse until the cows came home. I could
talk of the Italian forward seat, the uselessness of hunter classes at
horse shows, the vagaries of scent, and I could quote Surtees,
Beckford, and the Badminton Library books on hunting and driving, and
the Horse and Hound, as if the opinions I expressed were my own.
My best line was whether it were better to ride to hunt or hunt to
ride. I was for the former, on account of the fact that I was never a
brilliant horseman.
   I read Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man in full, and after that
there was no holding me- not with snaffle, gag, pelham, curb, bridoon
or universal (all done from memory, nothing up my sleeve). I hunted
on Saturdays in the winter and went to horse shows in the summer. I
stopped earths, built fences, dug badgers, schooled ponies, drove
traps, and became the complete 'unspeakable in pursuit of the
uneatable'. I lost touch with my old friends and their narrow
outlook, making new ones with a narrower. The local Hunt was the
Staff College Drag, which hunted fox on two days a week and ran a drag
line for another two. What with this and preparing for their annual
pantomime, it is surprising that we were as well prepared for war in
1939 as we were. But this military atmosphere, and the example of
some of my old friends in Slough, persuaded me to apply for a
commission in the Territorial Army, and I was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant
in the 5th Battalion, the Queen's Royal Regiment, in 1936, one of the
8 officers to have his commission signed by King Edward =8.
   This was all part of the act. I was beginning to put on the
agony of the squire, the yeoman farmer, the old A. G. Street
romantic stuff. I found out that my family had lived in Chobham (the
parent village to West End) for over 35 years and that we had been
honoured in the district, at some time in the dim past, by having a
local common (Street's Heath) named after us. Students of Surtees
will now readily understand that a latent cynicism made me decide then
that if ever I should write enough to need a pseudonym, it would be
'Stephen Dumpling'.
   The act was good, but it lacked the necessary backing. I soon
realized that in spite of my attention to my uncle and aunt I had no
hope of joining them at the Nursery during my uncle's lifetime. My
only possible expectation was that it would be left to me after his
death, with some provision for my aunt. As they were then aged
respectively seventy-four and sixty-eight, it seemed as if I might not
have to wait so very long, at that. Not that I didn't work hard:
almost every evening I would call on my uncle at the Nursery, after I
had bathed and changed, to have a chat with him. I took them both to
church. Regularly, Sunday in and Sunday out, I went to church at
eleven o'clock, to Matins, the service of respectability. Nothing so
common as Evensong (the service for the servants after a day's work on
the day of rest) or anything so extravagant and Romish as a regular
attendance at the eight o'clock Communion Service. Going to church
continued to be a habit, one that included a walk round the Nursery
with my uncle- and the constant hope that he would drop a hint about
my future prospects.
   My uncle had been People's Churchwarden for so long that no one
could remember anyone else. When he gave up, I followed him. It was
Trollope, Jane Austen, Angela Thirkell, the lot. But I was, in fact,
only a correspondence clerk on a nursery. Because of my family
connections (everyone assumed that one day I should go into the
business) I could only obtain promotion if it were impossible to find
anyone else to do the job. I might leave at any moment and take my
knowledge and ability to my uncle. So, at twenty-two, I settled down
to wait, as a Dead End Kid, having learnt all that it seemed necessary
to learn to step into my uncle's shoes and a ready-made business.
   Quite apart from this thwarting situation, growing rhododendrons
and azaleas seemed, in 1939, to be a futile occupation. Munich and
its aftermath made gardening a trap more than an escape, to a young
man of twenty-two. Even hunting was beginning to pall, and in March
1939 I attended what I thought would be the last meet of the Staff
College Draghounds. My energies were now directed to the Territorial
Army and my reading matter became Field Service Regulations 1927,
Volume =2, and 'Cassandra' of the Daily Mirror.
   William Connor, who began that column in 1935, is my favourite
journalist. My secret ambition was to write a similar column but with
a right-wing slant. Before the war I seldom agreed with what Connor
wrote, but I was lost in admiration for the way it was written. And
once, about this time, he was so very wrong. He wrote a bitter,
brilliant piece tearing to bits, with every tooth and claw in his
magnificent vocabulary, the comment of some woman in America that, to
people doing a routine job, war could be a welcome relief. She was
right. He was wrong. For it was a relief to me. And if I had still
been hoeing, it would have been more so.
   In peace-time I was a single young man waiting for a dead man's
shoes: in war I should be a keen young officer with a flying start in
training and seniority. But I never heard a shot fired in anger,
which accounts for a lot- particularly for my mental attitude today.
I was in the war, but out of it. My experience is no more than that
of the Angry Young Men.
   In 1941 I was dangerously ill with pneumonia in Leeds Castle
Hospital, near Maidstone. Andrew Smith, a subaltern with me in the
same company before the war, was stationed in the town and looked
after my mother when she came to visit me as the result of a dramatic
telegram. Let me be quite fair; it was Harold Fennell who made all
the arrangements for her journey, even providing her with a hired
car- not easy in those days. It would probably be unkind, I think,
to suggest that his motives were no better than mine when I was so
regular in my attendance at church together with my uncle and aunt.
   After coming to see me, and learning that I was not reacting to
drugs, Mother was sitting in her room at the hotel, feeling sad and
close to tears. Andrew came to cheer her up.
   'Don't worry, Mrs Street. You'll see. John will get better,
they'll send him home, he'll meet some nice girl, get married, while I
may well be killed.'
   For some ten days I was very ill, out under morphia most of the
time. I was well nursed- it makes all the difference in the world
when they fill in your next-of-kin as 'Mother' and not 'Wife'.
But the drugs were not having the right effect. Once more, I do not
expect you to believe what follows. I do not even defend what I am
about to tell you. I am quite prepared to listen to rational
explanations, to be told that it is coincidence, self-persuasion, a
triumph of the human will. But what happened to me during that long
illness must be told, plainly and simply.
   On the second Sunday that I was in hospital, during my morning
period of consciousness, just after I had been washed, the hospital
Chaplain came to my bed and asked if I would like to make my
Communion. I said I would. The screens were brought round. The
Chaplain administered the Sacrament. He prayed for my recovery and,
as far as I was able, so did I.
   Almost at once, I began to get better. And all the argument in
dialectic materialism or progressive humanism or applied psychology
will not convince me that I was not cured by a near-miracle.
   I had just gone through a bad patch of selfishness and disbelief.
And I was still a stout Protestant, with no great faith in the
mystery of the Eucharist. In fact, only a few days before I was taken
ill, I had been deliberately offensive to Father Stevenson, the Roman
Catholic priest attached to my Company mess. I had tried to provoke
him about the Anglo-Catholic church in the town where we were
stationed. Now that it is too late I regret my pride and bad manners
and my narrow sectarian insolence. But Father Stevenson had more
influence on me than he will ever know- coupled with my personal
miracle at Maidstone.
   Daily, hourly, I grew stronger. As soon as I was fit to be
moved, I was transferred to a room on <SIC> my own, and my eating
utensils all had a piece of elastoplast stuck to them. The nurses
would only answer my questions with tactful evasions. 'It's rather
noisy for you in the ward.' 'It's easier for us to attend to
you.' 'There is a larger night staff up here.' But none of them
convinced me.
   So it was no great shock when the senior physician told me that I
had a spot on my lung, the result of the pneumonia, and that I was to
be transferred to the British Legion Sanatorium at Preston Hall. Yet
it was still bad enough. The Army was now my life: I had even been
accused of out-soldiering the soldiers. I had enjoyed every minute,
from wet hours in a slit trench to foot-stamping on a barrack square.
The thought that I might have to leave the Army in 1941, with the war
only half fought, was unbearable.
   In bed all day, on complete rest, I only caught an occasional
glimpse of hollow-cheeked men who lived all the year in open huts in
the grounds- men who knew only too well that phosgene smelt of musty
hay, and mustard gas of garlic. For three months I lay on my back
with nothing to do but look forward to the morning injections, and
pray that I would not be discharged from the Army. Then I began to
think. Not just vaguely reminiscing, or idly speculating, but serious
constructive thinking about all sorts of problems. A cousin sent me
The Weekend Book, and I read poetry for pleasure for the first
time. And it made me think again. Then I began to write
spasmodically- odd descriptions of things I had seen, little
experiences, brief character sketches of people I had known. It was
an important time for me, those three months in bed, more important
than I have made it seem. It showed me that I had, within my own
mind, a source of pleasure that had been stamped on in the past by
rugger boots or riding boots or 'Boots, brown, Officer's pattern'.
# 22
<197 TEXT G1>
27
   A GERMAN PRISONER OF WAR CAMP CAME TO THE VILLAGE. QUIET,
gaunt young men, they gave no trouble. They tamed and made pets of
grey squirrels and field mice and kept the camp in a beautiful state
of order. Garden patches surrounded by whitened stones sprung up
where there had been nothing but rubble and old tins. If all
fraternising had not been strictly forbidden, the village maidens
would gladly have obliged.
   Some of the men were allowed to take outside work in the
afternoons, which was how I got Willi. He came as part-time gardener
in place of Ron, transferred to another Home Guard.
   When I first saw Willi I thought him a middle-aged man. He was
gaunt and angular and already going grey. I was surprised to discover
he was only twenty-three. What it had taken Ron a whole day to do,
Willi achieved in an hour, leaving everything ship-shape and in order
it was good to see. He was embarrassingly humble and self-effacing,
bitterly ashamed of what he could do nothing about. There were many
children coming about the place and he would stop for a moment and
lean on his spade and watch them. Especially a small blonde girl.
One day he told me she was just the age of his own small daughter.
   "I also have a son, but him I have not seen."
   As we got to know Willi better, he told me he had been taken away
from his farm, shortly after he left school, turned into a soldier and
packed off.
   "I worked with agriculture and knew little about politics. I
was not very clever. I did not know very well what it was all about.
Only that I who wished to be a farmer, must be a hero. In the
country we hear <SIC> talk of Hitler and this and that. It did
not seem to have anything to do with us." It had been so much my
own position at the start of it all that I understood well enough.
   A General in full rig came down one day to lunch with me. He
came across Willi in the garden. Willi went very white, half
expecting, I think, a sword would be drawn and he would be cut down on
the spot. The General took out a cigarette case and offered him one.
   "It is not like that with us," Willi said afterwards, and he
shook his head, sad and bewildered.
   He worked for me for two years. I gave him tea on his afternoons
at the cottage, with boiled eggs and coffee, things he had not seen
for years. He asked if he might take the used coffee grounds back to
his friends. He never did anything without first asking permission,
always a little shamefaced, as if fearing he presumed. Before he left
he made a doll for the little girl he called Blondie, and came shyly
to ask might he be permitted to give it to her. There was nothing
arrogant or bumptious about him, and nothing servile. Only
excessively humble and any kindness or consideration that came his way
obviously caused him immense surprise.
   Willi went back to Germany when peace came. His home was now in
the Russian zone.
   "Here in my own country," he wrote me, "I am less free
than I was as a prisoner of war in England."
   His ambition was somehow to save enough to get his family and
himself out, and at one time it had seemed within his grasp. Then a
change in the currency laws reduced his savings to nothing.
   I have not heard from Willi for some time. The last news I had
of him was from someone who had got out and gone to America and wrote
me from there saying Willi had asked him to inform me he had not
forgotten us but life was not easy, and please when I wrote him would
I be very careful what I said, because letters to foreign countries
and from foreign countries were carefully watched.
   "No one" wrote the man in America "can realise what
these poor people must go through and suffer. The houses are broken
and there is not wood or nails to mend them, and now since these new
laws, much of his saving money is also gone."
   I did not get my usual Christmas card last year. The box of
clothes I sent for his children was not acknowledged.
28
   TO VISIT AMERICA JUST AFTER THE WAR WAS LIKE WAKING FROM A
bad dream to find oneself suddenly in Aladdin's Cave, with all the
jewels edible. We were mostly undernourished, in England, grown
accustomed to empty shops and dreary plaster mock-ups of trifles and
iced cakes, and of a sudden here was the real thing. Fruit piled
man-high in the supermarkets. Ice creams we had forgotten about.
Great steaks that looked like a dinner for eight, were a portion for
one.
   I remember I had to buy a good bit of soda mint to tide me over.
   The toys made even greater impact. We hadn't seen a toy for
years. At Saks Fifth Avenue there was a whole window devoted to Teddy
Bears- pink and blue and the conventional buff. Teddy bears with
lovable coloured velvet and chamois leather soles to their feet-
leading a domestic life in Teddy-sized houses.
   My scanty dollars did not run to buying any of them, but looking
was free.
   People were so kind. I felt like a shipwrecked mariner who had
been rescued by a luxury liner. Strangers pressed boxes of chocolates
on me. The Lift Man in one of the big shipping companies, previously
known to me, gave me a large supply of candy bars, saying "Sister,
you sure look peaked." I saw Oklahoma with its original cast,
before it had been watered and slowed down as someone appears to think
American plays have to be for English audiences (but they are wrong).
That was a little interlude worth facing the rigours of the journey
out and back for- and they were many. I went out on a Liberty ship.
There was a rumour going about that they frequently came apart in the
middle. The weather was so bad the tin biscuits were never out of the
portholes. Four women, one of them desperately seasick all the way
(not me), were closeted together in a small cabin for eight days. But
there was any amount of drink on board- to us amazingly cheap- and
the other three stood me cocktails, and even champagne, to encourage
me to recite poetry, or tell them stories. Over all that trip hangs a
golden alcoholic haze.
   I came back in "luxury" on the Queen Mary. She was still
a trooper and there were not enough chairs for everyone to sit down in
the lounge at the same time, so they never had a chance to cool off.
Four of us shared a cabin for sixteen- hence the luxury. One was a
woman I could not place. She tried to smuggle in a fifth- a dog-
but the numbers were against her, and him we packed off to the
butcher- traditional cherisher of hounds aboard ship. She wore
slacks and a jumper, and went to bed by simply undoing one button when
the whole caboodle fell off on the floor. Usually half seas over, she
had glasses of whisky standing around at vantage points, to which she
put her lips when so disposed. These we emptied out of the window or
down the loo when we got a chance. Nightly she staggered in, undid
the vital button and went to bed smoking a cigarette. Presently it
fell from her nerveless fingers on to the bunk beneath which was piled
high with life jackets marked HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE.
   Why more Atlantic Liners did not, and still do not, go up in
flames, I often wonder, what with lit cigarette ends blowing about the
decks- lit cigarettes thrown away to windward taking a short cut into
the handy portholes. However, we got our wayward belle, in the face
of fearful odds, safely ashore. She was discouraged because we would
not allow her gentlemen friends in to visit her in the cabin.
   England looked drab and shabby, the autumn colours faded and
wishy-washy after the Connecticut Fall. I returned to troubles
galore, but so pepped up with square meals I felt I could face
anything.
   My Mother-in-law was getting old. She had seen plenty of trouble
and finally succumbed to the buffetting of fate and retired to bed for
good. This was a very sensible idea, except for the fact she had no
one to look after her save Redman the Gardener. That same patient
soul who had been bombarded with Shakespeare in the asparagus beds.
He had been wielding trays and goodness knows what else until I
arrived. Accustomed to Eastern servants in her young days, my
Mother-in-law had never been able to accustom herself to the
I-don't-mind-if-I-do attitude of domestic workers at home. They in
their turn would have none of her autocratic ways. So she was all
alone.
   "I knew you would fix something when you got back, dear," she
said, with touching confidence. The situation was complicated by
Redman himself collapsing.
   I finally got her rooms and attendance in a large country house
nearby, where from her windows she would see much the same scenery as
from her own home. Old ladies are crotchety and hard to please. She
kept me busy one way and another, and it seemed strange that I- the
only one who had ever stood up to her- was the one she turned to now.
No other member of the family was available or mobile, or within
reach. Or they had young children of their own, or they had married a
wife and could not come. Old age can be frightening in these days
when the young people have all been brought up to please themselves
only. Forgetting that for them also a time will come...
   There was no snow that year until March. Ron, newly demobbed
from the Home Guarding, gladly laying his rifle aside, built me a
fruit cage for the raspberries and gooseberries. It looked like an
elephant keddah.
   Mrs. X, the carpenter's wife, died. There were two Mrs.
X's in the village. Rumour at first reported the wrong one, at which
Mr. X, the carpenter, was deeply incensed.
   "It's my wife 2wot's died. Surely I ought to know," he said,
standing in his yard full of statuary which for some reason he
collected. (Warriors in strange uniforms, angels off tombs, elves and
toads.)
   "It was ever such a surprise," said Mr. X in an injured
voice, as though resentful of the fact she had not given him proper
warning. He said he hoped I'd come and take a look at her when he got
her all proper and laid out. I could not face it, but passed the
invitation on to my Home Help, in whose day disaster was ever a bright
flag.
   Although it was common knowledge that Mr. X had never paid much
attention to Mrs. X while she was mobile, he was immensely proud of
her now she was dead. His arrangement of screens, and flowers and
pieces of rich embroidery purchased at sales (perhaps against this
very day) was, said my Home Help, tearfully, a real treat. The
funeral was not to be for a whole week.
   "He does not want to part with her," she said, wallowing, and
shedding a further tear.
   "Maybe he'll stuff her and keep her," I said, trying to
introduce a lighter note. This conjured up a life-like picture of
Mrs. X neatly stuffed (for everything Mr. X does is meticulous),
wearing her dolman and toque, propped up in his yard amongst the rest
of the statuary. I wrote to June in America saying, "Don't have
me stuffed, pettie, when I die. Unless you think I could be useful
standing in the hall holding a tray for cards- like bears in Scots
Baronial homes."
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Did his audience know anything of land hunger? They ached for
allotments and smallholdings. Did they know of the effects of land
monopoly on the life of a village? A Tysoe man would never take a job
that meant living in a closed village. No! He'd go to Birmingham,
rather, or cross the ocean. Did they know how wealth from over-large
estates gets misused? They'd heard of great estates being enclosed in
the past by removing villages (there was an old example not so far
away): of Compton House being emptied and the old place in danger of
being pulled down to pay for bribes and oceans of beer at an election.
Did not the old folk know of starvation and crime here in the old
days? Those had not been due to lack of corn in England. In a
certain chapter of Irish Realities they would read the proof that
deaths in the so-called potato famine in Ireland were not due to lack
of food in the country. The food was there- the deaths were due to
the impassable gulfs between classes and to a 'governing class'
which did not know how to govern and was not in a position to find
out; and yet would not let the people learn to manage their own
affairs. In Ireland the gulfs were deeper than they had ever been
here- conqueror ruling conquered still.
   Now there was the Home Rule Bill to let the Irish improve their
own country, take their own problems in hand. There were to be
safeguards and compensation. Those were right enough: over-sudden and
over-drastic changes meant trouble and loss always.
   Joseph held up the book again. It had been printed seventeen
years before, yet conditions were still the same. Why? What stood in
the way? Who stood in the way of Tysoe's small desires for
betterment? Who whittled down the Allotments Bills? Who threw out
bills to give farmers security of tenure? And all the bills ever
drawn up to allow a village to have a real village school? Who
prevented villages two years ago from gaining a reasonable court of
appeal from decisions of Feoffees of Town Lands and the like? The
House of Lords! And the House of Lords would throw out the Home Rule
Bill.
   Let Tysoe men never forget it: what worked for well-being in
Tysoe would work in other communities. What went seriously wrong here
would go wrong there. You can't, he said, turn the Home Rule Bill
into an Act: but it was the duty of all village wiseacres to vote for
it.
CHAPTER =1
LAND HUNGER:
THE PROMISED LAND
   THE main subject of this chapter was too plain a tale, too
little lightened by any humour or success ever to be told as a whole
in a family circle. But though I never heard the story in full I
gathered its outline; its events affected the childish lives of myself
and my brothers and sisters. They helped, for one thing, to form our
economic background. They must also have had a certain influence on
my father's outlook- not too large an effect on a mind so naturally
large, but they must have sharpened its political edge. Locally, the
events had their publicity. By 1896 my father was writing occasional
notes for the Warwick Advertiser and counted its editor among his
very friendly acquaintances. Mr Lloyd Evans was a Radical and a
warm-hearted spectator of village struggles. So it came about, I
infer, that Tysoe affairs were well ventilated in the county paper.
   In the election just passed, of 1885, Gladstone had been returned
to power but, as everybody foresaw, his Home Rule Bill was thrown out
by the House of Lords. As a consequence, there was another election
in 1886 and this time a Conservative majority was returned to the
Commons- but the Tysoe labourers had the satisfaction of knowing that
their spirited member, the Radical Mr Cobb, still represented the
Rugby Division.
   The Liberal programme had included the promise of an Allotments
Act and now there was no chance of it. True, the new government
hastened to promise an Act with the same title but it would not have
the same nature. It would permit and even encourage ten-pole
allotments, which the Vicar already permitted, and would do Tysoe no
good.
   Two years earlier Joseph had thought the Labourers' Allotment
Committee a waste of effort; it would be better, he had thought, to
wait in the hope of new legislation which would enjoin upon local
charities and perhaps upon vestries the duty of providing allotments
when they were demanded. He had known also that the needs of weekly
wage-earners were not the only ones. Thatchers, hauliers, carpenters
were all trying, and of course failing, to get an acre or two,
sometimes to grow wheat and animal feed, in some cases to pasture a
horse, or for a cow and pigs. The times were discouraging and yet at
Southam, not so many miles away, an Allotments Association had been
successful in getting a good acreage. It was a larger and luckier
village, the folk more varied. A doctor had grasped that starvation
made for ill-health and allotments for good food, and had given help
and support. Whatever the handicaps, Tysoe men must try again. So at
Christmas 1886 a new start was made. Eighty-six signatures were
obtained to a statement of the need for small parcels of land and a
public meeting was held early in the next year, fifty men present.
The Tysoe Allotments and Smallholdings Association was formed and
soon had seventy-five members, an extraordinary number, representing a
high proportion of the village, but perhaps some were young men living
with their parents.
   One may suppose my father's part in all this to have been a large
one, possibly indispensable. It was the constant calls of members of
the Association interrupting the kneading of her bread or causing her
to drop the scissors at a crucial point in cutting out her children's
clothes that made my patient mother agree that we needed more space.
But Joseph was far from being the only effective member: the
inclusion of tradesmen brought in a greater vigour and resilience and
more 'know-how'. Then also, the Lower Townsmen joined, and in a
tough fractious spirit. They were sometimes a roughish party, liking
to stand apart a little from the other Towns. But now they had a
story of frustration all their own, and brought power to the common
effort.
   Joseph became the first Secretary of the Association and held the
office for many years- until all its main objects had been attained
and its affairs reduced to routine. In these early days he urged his
Committee to get influential support from outside the village; it
might be possible to shame obstructors as they had been shamed in the
matter of wages, fifteen years before. Get the local papers to regard
their claim as news, get a well-known president, he urged. But to
please the old Labourers' Association their President was adopted.
Mr Daniel Fessey was a notable Tysonian- the only one I ever heard
of who made a fortune. He was a member of a poor unfortunate family,
one of whose members had been charged with manslaughter after the last
crude boxing match. I remember him well; he decorated our early
childhood. He had been the inventor of curious gadgets, for example a
new stirrup which was adopted by cavalry regiments. With his small
fortune he was undergoing a change into a dapper and mannered
exquisite, reminding one of Shakespeare's Frenchmen. By the time I
knew him his clothes were of the finest; his speech fantastically
precise and his manner to man, woman and child elaborate- but as full
of friendliness as of formality. Just as he was never ashamed of
those disreputable ancestors so he sympathised with the poor and stood
by their small movements.
   The Committee thought it best to await the publication of the
Government's Allotments Bill before moving far, so they drew up
regulations for their non-existent holdings, visited the Southam
Association and corresponded with the agent of the Compton estate,
stating their needs and asking for a first refusal of land. When the
Bill became law Tysoe's would-be cultivators gave it a sardonic
attention. Under the Act, if no land were available after elaborate
inquiries and other processes, the Sanitary Authority was given power
to propose a special Act of Parliament to compel some owner or owners
to sell land. What a strange body to choose! It neither could nor
would use such powers, said the Tysoe Association. They were right:
in all England only one of these Acts was ever proposed.
   Meanwhile there was the Queen's jubilee. Why should men grudged
by a government a scrap of land to dig celebrate the long reign of its
head? Majuba and Khartoum and the new imperialism were sharpening the
atmosphere. Many sensing future trouble looked back thankfully over
fifty years of comparative peace. Fifty years on the throne, and a
woman!- the Queen could be acclaimed. So the village was at one in a
mild rejoicing. In May the village made ready- a committee was
chosen to plan celebrations. The Managers of the School hung up a
huge picture of the old Queen with her grey hair, her solemn face and
wide blue Garter Ribbon; and on each side of her, smaller pictures of
the neatly bearded Prince of Wales and of Princess Alexandra with a
wall of tight yellow curls along her brow; another of the Queen was
hung in the Reading Room, a full-length portrait with a profile of her
face and of stout, gathered skirts sloping far back behind her, and
yet another in the Peacock, flanked by Disraeli and Gladstone.
   The great day was the twentieth of June. After the service in
the church, an oak tree was planted on the green by the Vicar's wife,
who was that rare thing, a woman of intellectual interests. Her
speech stressed the hope for village unity. Two hundred and thirty
years earlier had died, she said, a venerable Vicar of the Parish.
After forty-nine years of service he had gone- said an entry in the
Parish Register for 1654- 'to enter on his eternal Jubilee'. In
the seventeenth century England had known fifty years of doctrinal
quarrels and civil war; clergymen had been turned from their cures,
and churches irreverently used. But while in other parishes there had
been bitter discord, John Stevenage and another Stevenage, his nephew,
had quietly continued their duties in the old peaceful way. Let all
take example by John Stevenage. Let all pray for peace- peace for
the nation and within the nation, peace in Tysoe. Then the Vicar
pointed to the trees, young and old, that had been planted on the
green, witnessing to other occasions when the village had been at
one- the William and Mary elm, celebrating the coming of that man of
peace, the Prince of Orange; the tree of constitutional liberty (the
'Franchise Tree'); and now this sapling, the tree of loyalty.
   It was always the same; all Tysonians felt that the village ought
to be at one. Those who opposed the Vicar were mischief-makers,
disturbers of the peace; on the other hand he and his missus brought
from inferior parishes notions that no self-respecting folk could put
up with. The different patterns of community at the back of minds,
the needs, the passions, the fantasies- these though doubtless
understood in part were never made plain in the discussions.
   The Jubilee interval was over. In October the Vicar invited the
holders of the ten-pole allotments to a tea-party and made a speech to
them on their duties. Allotments, he said, might be rightly
cultivated by them, under certain conditions. They must have the
necessary leisure to till them; they must apply manure; the produce
must be consumed at home (which meant they were not free to sell it).
A sixteenth of an acre was the right extent. Possibly if a man had
no garden at all, it might not be wrong to have two sixteenths.
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<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
The Captain, however, forbade it.' I honestly do think that a
captain of one of H.M. ships seldom finds himself criticized in
an official document requiring his signature. Brock, as usual,
ignored the impertinence- for the moment.
   On the other hand I find a cutting from a Naval and Military
Record of December 14th pasted into my diary which reads: 'Sir-
In your issue of the 3th ult. there was a letter signed "Naval
Officer" complaining that our main fleets spend too much time at sea
and that on this account there is a grave discontent among the
personnel. As an officer of more than a couple of years' standing I
have discovered none of these terrible grievances. In fact I am
perfectly satisfied with my lot, and do not find my ship in the least
stuffy, nor do I mind putting to sea in her. These views are shared
by everyone I have spoken to. Does "Naval Officer" want our fleets
to lie alongside the home ports, Gibraltar or Malta, for nine months
in the year? It is not every naval officer who is afraid of battle
exercises, or manning and arming ship, or of sea trips between nice
places. If "Naval Officer" chooses to present one side of the case
to the British public, surely the views of the majority may have a
hearing also. N. O.' Of course no one penetrated my anonymous
signature. Brock would have been puzzled at such a letter coming from
me!
   It was about now that I took action against Their Lordships
themselves in the matter of the yearly Examination in French of Junior
Officers Afloat. My diary simply records: 'French exam. Had hoped
to do well but they asked what were the pronouns which correspond to
the adjectives "ce, cette, ces, son, nos, leurs." Got
furious with the question and wrote down "Ce, ces and cette
are not adjectives; son, nos and leurs are pronouns."
So don't expect much Kudos.' Their Lordships' reply was in the
shape of a +5 silver stop watch by S. Smith & Son, 9 The Strand,
London, inscribed: "Admiralty Prize Junior Officers Afloat, 195,
French, Midn. O. M. Frewen, R.N.", an unusually gracious
admission of defeat probably due to a printer's error. The watch,
admittedly not worn continuously, fell into disrepair just fifty-two
years later, and it seemed to me natural to go to the address printed
on its face to ask the makers to overhaul it. By 1957 London traffic
had become something of a nightmare to rural drivers so that my wife
parked our little Morris car in the taxicab sanctuary of Charing Cross
'just for a moment' while I walked west to No. 9- and found it
not, not on the south side anyway, where stand the other low odd
numbers. After much research, and in an indignation equal to that of
Midn. Frewen at his French exam, I crossed the road and demanded of
a shop-owner opposite where were S. Smith & Son? 'Never been in
the Strand,' he answered. 'Well, here's their address on the face
of my watch,' I retorted. 'Well, I can only say that I've been
here twenty-five years and they've never been here in my time'
closed the discussion, but not the enquiry: he kindly produced a
London Telephone Directory which directed us to 179 Great Portland
Street, W.=1, with more and worse traffic jams, including a
succession of 'No Entry' streets negatively barring our car's
access to the Promised Land. We eventually walked there and my
watch- 'her speed she 1reneweth again'. The taxi drivers at
Charing Cross had also shown the courtesy one has come to expect of
them.
   I had loved the idea of coming to sea, to cruise and see the
world, but my diary entry in December 195 reads: 'Have now done 9
days- in Malta.' Ninety Days' Detention was a stereotyped
punishment for major offences by lower deck ratings. And we had
another six weeks to come before again sailing the seas.
8
Feminine Influence on Senior Officers
   CHRISTMAS DAY, 195, was my first one in a ship, 193 and
194 having been spent on leave. I think my diary entry may be of
interest for a typical account. It reads: 'Turned out 7.3. After
breakfast read Last Days of Pompeii till Divisions. Skipper had
everybody aft and told them in a good short speech that the C.-in-C.
would have gone rounds had the ship not been in dockyard hands. Then
Church. After Church I had meant to take Holy Communion but, being
ordered up there by the Commander, I got very angry and refused to go.
Then went round the Mess Decks, taking various savoury meats from
various nicely decorated messes, notably the Chief Stokers'. The
Skipper and Warrant Officers then came into the gunroom. After lunch
got into de Burgh's knickers, my blue jacket, brother Hugh's
stockings, and brown boots. Went ashore with Ritchie and de Burgh;
went up to Admiralty House and found Gibbs, who promptly offered me
the loan of his riding-boots. Wore them. Went back to Calcara Steps
and mounted. My G. a most spirited one. He kept galloping away
from the rest the whole way to St. Paul's Bay, where we had tea,
twenty-four of us; the C.-in-C., his wife, nine officers and
thirteen snotties. (Hervey left his G. behind and turned up in a
carrotze.) Started back about 4.3. Had a splendid series of gallops
and got back to Porta Reale about 5.3. Went to Admiralty House to
return my boots and Gibbs made me eat unheard-of chunks of ripping
cake. Then came on board. Had no dinner. Couldn't after Gibbs'
cake. Feeling rather sore but very bucked up with the afternoon's
work, though not exactly with things in general. Dominant fed-upness
of the day was that fool Commander stopping me going to Second
Service. He might have known that any self-respecting Englishman
would, in the first place, go; and in the second place refuse to be
ordered about on such subjects. And he thought he was doing right
too, I suppose. All hands stood off after Divisions.'
   I was indeed so indignant over being ordered to Holy Communion
that I actually entered it in my official Journal for the Naval
Instructor's and Captain's signatures. Holy Joe sent for me and said
that if I did not erase it he would have to draw the Captain's
attention to it, so this I did. Whether as a Chaplain he considered
the incident reflected on the Commander, or whether as my Naval
Instructor he considered that it reflected on me for disobedience of
orders, I never knew. My Journal also says of my ride, 'No
casualties, although I was nearly thrown onto a donkey-cart and was
repeatedly not under control. Mr. Hervey came in a carrotze, being
unable to persuade his pony to keep up with the rest.' (Tactfully
put.) 'A very enjoyable afternoon, but it made me very stiff for two
or three days after.'
   My Journal for December 31st states aggressively: 'Nothing of
note happened until 11.55 p.m. when I was turned out rather
forcibly and after witnessing Mr. Bennett strike "16 bells",
drank punch in the wardroom. Owing, however, to the Captain's not
caring for noise and singing we turned in again about 12.3. Thus
ended the year 195.' To be fair to poor Osmond de B. Brock, who
didn't attend the traditional ceremony of striking 16 bells, my diary
records that we 'went and struck about 32 bells', i.e. no
ceremony but just a cacophony on the ship's bell, and in the wardroom
the demure noise and singing is described 'sang 2Auld Lang Syne'.
Then Chichester as junior snottie attempted 'Clementine' and I
helped him through it. 'However, at the third verse the Skipper got
agribulgent, so we desisted and went and kicked up hell and the
sleepers in the chest flat. At last slept and lay in till 7.3. Then
worried Hardy by singing in the bathroom.'
   The Captain responded to the aggression in my Journal, which he
inspected and initialled on Tuesday, by sending for me on Thursday to
tell me the sketch I had put in was not good enough 'for such a good
Journal as mine and would I improve it before going ashore'. In
fact, stopped my leave. I submitted my improvements the following
Tuesday 'and the old devil isn't satisfied yet! but let me have my
leave back'. I was also in trouble now with Gathorne-Hardy, who
ordered me to report myself, dressed, to him every morning, for not
being out of the chest-flat by 7.45. I turned out next morning at
5.3 to attend the daily 'Hands fall in', dressed and woke the
distinguished senior lieutenant and made my report by 6.15, which was
not well received.
   News now came through that Mamma and sister Clare were going to
arrive on the 18th. I searched Valletta for rooms and, with a good
deal of trouble, finally managed to secure them in the Royal Hotel in
Strada Mercanti, not the best quarter of the city but the best I could
do. But Sir George Warrender, Bart., Captain of H.M.S.
Carnarvon, had also been on the lookout and found them grander
ones at the Lord Nelson, in Floriana. And with their arrival the
scallywag snottie was thrown back to his first few days at sea and
became the popular midshipman of the Bulwark, to be received by
admirals, captains (except him of the Bulwark), wardroom officers,
and even by the Rifle Brigade, then stationed at Pieta, whose major,
Tom Hollond, had been the Duke of Connaught's A.D.C. at Clare's
coming-out season in Dublin in 193, when the Duke was
Commander-in-Chief.
   My diary for the 18th records: 'Turned out 7.3 and dressed in
plain clothes. During breakfast got a signal from C.-in-C.
<cruising in H.M.S. Surprise, the C.-in-C.'s yacht in those
gracious days> asking when my people were coming. Told him, and then
went ashore. At 9.2 the General Chanzy arrived, and chartering a
nice dghaisa, I followed them up harbour. Bennett turned up with a
signal from the Admiral saying his barge and carriage were at Ma's
disposal. Found the carriage awaiting us at the Custom House and
drove to the Lord Nelson, and I had my second breakfast. Then Lula
(Tom Hollond's most charming wife) and Sir George looked in on us. At
4.3 we three went to Lula's and wandered round the garden till
Acheson turned up, when Clare and he wandered round together and Ma
and I kept out of the way. After tea Ma and Clare returned to their
hotel and I to the ship. Made an evolution of dressing, hurling the
innards of my sea-chest far and wide, and ended up with a flying leap
across the Schoolplace table in the middle of dinner to provide myself
with a gold stud. Then repaired to Sir George's and we had a good
dinner- in fact I ate too much. We then went on to the Opera, using
No. 13 box (Charlie B.'s). The opera was Rigoletto. All the
e?2lite were there. Gibbs turned up with a message from the
C.-in-C. and I introduced him. Clare went into ecstasies over him
and Ma thought him so nice and good looking. Gather I am not a
screaming success, especially with Mother. They stripped me of my
white waistcoat to send it to the wash, and lectured me on the need of
sucking up to my superiors, with the usual result. Then returned on
board 12.35 and turned in.'
   Next morning, a Friday, 'asked the Commander for leave till
Feb. 5th. He said he would see the Captain about it, but did not
expect I would get it. Then seizing my fast-waning courage in both
hands and a tooth, asked could I go ashore now. He said if Parsoon
agreed, I could. Parsoon disagreed, so I did. Found Ma in her
chemise and Clare in her bed.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
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He was very proud to think that he had conceived the original
idea of a League of Nations; but as a matter of fact this reality
which he had produced was, in the opinion of Mr. Wells, something
much more practical and far reaching. It was not organised talk but
assembled knowledge. The International Institute of Agriculture,
sustained by subsidies from fifty-two governments and administered by a
permanent committee representing these governments, existed to compile
records, based on telegraphic reports from the Boards of Agriculture
of different countries, of the agricultural prospects throughout the
world. The intention was to provide such information about production
that the distribution could be adjusted to the probable demand.
   
   In addition, the Institute had developed departments dealing with
meteorology and with the prevention of diseases in plants. David
Lubin was quite clear that as his "fabric of economic intelligence"
was built up, it would become evident that there must be a revision of
the conditions of international transport. The transport of the whole
terrestrial globe, he reckoned, could, if there was a centralised
control, be as well regulated as his mail order department.
   
   This conception, in spite of its failure, aroused the curiosity
of Mr. Wells and appealed strongly to his imagination. The ultimate
intention was to obtain control of the food supply of the world and of
its distribution. Eventually in the interests of civilisation, the
activities of this Institute might have been extended to the control
of other things beside food stuffs. Just as the Hague Tribunal may be
thought of as the first faint sketch of an International Court of
Justice, so this International Institute of Agriculture might turn out
to have been a foreshadowing of the germ from which might spring not
only universal economic peace but an economic World State.
   The Great War submerged this internationalism. In August 1914,
there was "a dismally sentimental little dinner," when the French,
German, Austrian and Belgian members of the Committee drank together
to the Peace of the Future. Then, talking of their immediate duty,
they dispersed "in a state of solemn perplexity" to serve each his
own belligerent country. What was left of the Institute, staffed by
women and by the mutilated and unfit, devoted itself to the problems
of the allied food supply. President Wilson ignored the Institute.
During the influenza epidemic of 1918 its founder died. In January
1919, the funeral of David Lubin passed disregarded through the
streets of Rome hung with bunting to welcome President Wilson.
   David Lubin's International Institute was established at Rome, as
we have said. Very naturally, the reader may wonder why this city was
selected. The fact is that the King of Italy met Mr. Lubin more
than half-way. "That is why," said Mr. Wells, "in a not very
widely-known book of mine which represented a World State emerging out
of Armageddon, I made the first World Conference meet at Brissago in
Italian Switzerland under the presidency of the King of Italy."
Thus Mr. Wells was able to utilise one of his earlier
Anticipations, of "an intelligent monarch who might waive all the
ill-bred pretensions that sit so heavily on a gentlemanly king" and
come into the movement. On a similar occasion, Mr. Wells hinted at
an English monarch, a most admirable gentleman, who submitted to the
traditional trappings of royalty but who preferred to be incognito so
that he might pass as "plain Mr. Jones."
   In spite of Mr. Wells's antipathy to monarchs, royalty does not
fare so badly in The World Set Free. Not only is the King of
Italy made to preside over the World State but another ruler is
favourably depicted. We mean, of course, the democratic Egbert,
sovereign of the most venerable kingdom in Europe. "He was a rebel
and had always been a rebel against the magnificence of his position.
In theory his manners were purely democratic. It was from sheer
habit and inadvertently that he was permitting his companion to carry
both bottles of beer." As a matter of fact, the king had never
carried anything in his life; and he had never noticed it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE WAR
H. G. WELLS was no Jingo. On the contrary, he considered
himself "an extreme Pacifist." In his opinion, "of all monstrous,
irrational activities, war is the most obviously insane." On no
conceivable ground is there any sense in modern war. It effects
nothing except the waste of much energy, the destruction of huge
quantities of material, the slaughter and mangling of many men.
Modern warfare changes nothing but the colour of maps, the design of
postage stamps, and the relationships of a few accidentally
conspicuous individuals.
   There was not a man alive who could have told you of any real,
permanent benefit that would be obtained from war between England and
Germany. There was certainly nothing which counter-balanced the
obvious waste that must result, whether England shattered Germany or
whether she was overwhelmed.
   On the other hand, Mr. Wells had no reason to be surprised when
war broke out in 1914; for, as far back as 191, he had
"anticipated" that before Germany could "unify to the East" she
must fight the Russians, while "to unify towards the West" she must
fight the French and perhaps the English, for France was not likely to
have to fight alone; very probably she would have the support of the
British Empire.
   "Writing in the midst of the turmoil of war," Mr. J. D.
Beresford was vividly aware that his mind had been prepared for what
had come by the romances of H. G. Wells. In The War in the
Air, particularly, "with just such exaggerations as are necessary
in fiction," which described what had now happened. No doubt we
would learn our lesson from experience but it might have been learned
from the fiction of H. G. Wells without paying such a fearful
price.
   Mr. Wells considered himself to be very nearly an average man.
If he was at all abnormal, he supposed that it was "only by reason
of a certain mental rapidity." Be this as it may, the outbreak of
hostilities evoked much the same response in Mr. Wells as in many
other Englishmen. He was against the man who first took up arms. He
carried his pacifism beyond that ambiguous little group of British and
foreign sentimentalists in the Labour Leader who pretended "so
amusingly" to be Socialists and who later in 1916 would have made
peace with Germany at once, thus giving her a breathing space in which
to recover sufficiently to commit a fresh outrage. Mr. Wells did
not understand these people: he did not want to stop merely this war:
he wanted "to nail down war in its coffin."
   As early as August 7th we find him writing about The War that
will End War. To him it was a war of Ideas. (He called chapter
eleven 'The War of the Mind.') All the realities of this war were,
in his opinion, things of the mind. The real task was to get better
sense into the heads of those Germans- and of people generally. We
must end the idea of war. Our business was to kill ideas: the
really important thing was propaganda.
   Every sword that was drawn against Germany, was in his opinion,
"a sword drawn for Peace." Consequently Mr. Wells was heart and
soul behind the Allies. With his one lung and damaged kidney he was
not likely to go on active service. Even with the advent of
conscription, there was no chance for him. It is worth noting, by the
way, that Mr. Wells had always maintained that compulsory military
service followed almost as a corollary from the principles of
Socialism. He had always commended the advice of his friend, William
James, who used to urge that the youth of a nation might well be saved
from effeminacy by compulsory national service in places like mines
and sewers and the deep sea fisheries. If one ought to have
conscription for labour in Peace, why not conscription for war?
   H. G. Wells, ahead as usual, was busy in July 1916 with the
problem of Reconstruction. His Elements of Reconstruction, with
an introduction by Viscount Milner, appeared in The Times during
July and August. The first chapter stated that the book was the work
of "two friends" and in the introduction Lord Milner referred to
the "authors" but as a matter of fact the whole series was written
by H. G. Wells.
   In August, 1916, Wells was persuaded to make a tour of the
Western Fronts. One of the peculiarities of this "queer" war was
this "tour." After suppressing information for some months, during
which even the war correspondent was almost eliminated, both sides
discovered that opinion was playing a larger part than had been
expected. As a result, Wells one day found Mr Habokoff the editor
of The Retch, and Count Alexy Tolstoy, that writer of delicate
short stories, and Mr. Chukovsky the subtle critic, calling upon him
after braving the wintry seas to visit the British Fleet. M. Joseph
Reinach soon followed, upon the same errand.
   Then our turn came; and Mr. Arnold Bennett was soon wading in
the trenches of Flanders while Mr. Noyes became "discreetly
indiscreet" about what he had seen among the submarines and Mr.
Hugh Walpole was with Mr. Stephen Graham "in the dark forest of
Russia." When H. G. Wells, in August 1916, arrived in Italy,
he found it "warm and gay" with memories of Hilaire Belloc, Lord
Northcliffe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Colonel Repington.
   Some writers, Mr. Wells assured us, made their tour with very
great diffidence. He himself did not want to go at all. In fact, as
early as 1915 it had been suggested that he should go but he "evaded
the suggestion." "I travel badly," he tells us, "and I speak
French and Italian atrociously. I am an extreme pacifist and I hate
soldiering."
   His reluctance to be a spectator at the Front was largely due to
a "fear of being swamped by the spectacular side." He knew that
the chances of being hit by a projectile were infinitesimal but he was
afraid of being hit by some vivid impression: he feared that he might
see some horribly wounded man or some decaying corpse that would so
scar his memory that he would be reduced to "a mere useless gibbering
stop-the-war-at-any-price pacifist." It appears that many years
before he had unexpectedly, one tranquil evening, come upon a drowned
body which so disturbed his mind that it was "darkened for some weeks
by a fear and distrust of life."
   On the other hand, it seemed as if no man could claim to have
done his duty as a rational creature unless he had formed some idea of
what was going on "out there." It seemed necessary moreover to
obtain some conception of what this upheaval was going to produce. In
addition, it seemed as if one ought to have not only an idea of what
was going on but also some notion of how one wanted it to go.
   To make a long story short, Mr. Wells went. One of the first
things he did in Italy was to meet the King- the first sovereign he
had ever met. He found the King of Italy in a drawing room very much
like that in which he had met General Joffre a few days before. As he
was handing his hat to the second of two servants standing by, a
"pleasantly smiling man," appearing at the study door, began to
talk in excellent English about Mr. Wells's journey. As they went
into the study it gradually became evident that this was the monarch
himself.
   "Addicted as I am," said Mr. Wells, "to the particularly
sumptuous study furniture of the cinema, I found the appearance of
this royal study very simple and refreshing." The modern ruler
shows a disposition to intimate at the outset that he cannot help it.
# 24
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There are those on the one hand who say, 'absolutely not. People
would panic and start pulling the communication cord. They might even
surge up the corridors and try to get on the engine themselves,
whereupon the whole vehicle would be brought into greater peril than
ever. Leave the men on the engine alone. With a large hatful of luck
they might get us somewhere without a smash-up. And if not, well,
that just goes to show that journeying through the world is a
hazardous business and it is a mistake to look for too much
security.' The people who take this view exist everywhere- in
Communist countries no less than in others. It was one of the reasons
why Stalin got left on the engine a long time after he was visibly
unfit to run the train. Others, and they, too, exist in millions
everywhere, are all for spreading the dire news among the passengers
as speedily as possible. They think these unfortunates have the right
at least to know what is going on up there at the head of the train.
Some of them think that just spreading that news, and pointing with
derision at the way the driver is acting, is all that they can
usefully do. They are satirical and unconstructive. They admit they
probably could not operate the engine any better themselves, while
claiming as credit to themselves that at least they are not even
pretending to. Some others are firm in the belief that once the
passengers know what is happening they will somehow find ways and
means to avert the threatened catastrophe- perhaps, somewhere in the
second class coaches, there are some real engineers. These call
themselves democrats, but as they have never yet got full control of
the footplate, nobody knows what their large claims amount to.
   What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not,
unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power
or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly.
It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a
picture of themselves as so very, very deep-thinking, sagacious,
honest and well-intentioned. You cannot satirize a man who says
'I'm in it for the money, and that's all about it.' You even feel
no inclination to do so. In the 193s it was easier, or perhaps
simply more stimulating, to satirize the leaders of the British
Government than to go to work on Hitler or Mussolini. For these
latter, at least in the eyes of other peoples than their own, were
creatures who roared out in public their bestial thoughts and
intentions. Hitler in particular, because he had the enthusiastic
support and spiritual concurrence of the vast majority of Germans, had
no need of that hypocrisy which Wilde described as the tribute vice
pays to virtue. He said he was going to persecute and murder the
Jews, and no sooner was it said than it was done. He proclaimed his
delinquent's contempt for civilization, and, to ensure that nobody
misunderstood him, organized such fe?5tes and galas as the 'burning
of the books.' He lied certainly- lied continuously. But his
lying was of a special kind- it did not, and could not by him have
been expected to, deceive anyone who did not secretly wish to be
deceived. In this he resembled the great confidence tricksters.
   The confidence tricksters, it seems, consider it axiomatic that
no wholly honest man can be regarded as a likely victim of the
confidence trick. It is not the mere fools that the confidence men
successfully delude. It is, in their pregnant phrase, the 'larceny
in the blood' of the victim which results in his victimization. And
that was how Hitler operated- exploiting and using as his leverage
the 'larceny in the blood' of innumerable politicians in every
country who wanted to believe that here was a man who really had found
a way of making diamonds out of plastics; a way, that is to say, of
making a quick profit out of an illicit sale of the Western soul. You
cannot satirize a confidence trickster- the best you can do is expose
him, send for the police. But when you find a respectable citizen-
the victim- who, beneath his air of solid good sense and goodwill is
secretly hoping to turn a dishonest political profit by getting a
flashy-looking collection of goods labelled 'peace' or
'security' or 'the end of Bolshevism' for some minimal
down-payment in the way of a betrayal of the Jews, or the sacrifice of
a couple of small nations, then you have a subject which invites and
excites the attention of the satirist.
   The satirist, as I have remarked, is certainly among those who
cannot bear that the passengers should be left for a moment longer in
ignorance of the incompetence of malignancy of the engine driver. He
is also likely to feel that having done that much his particular
function has been accomplished, and he is not apt to pay much heed to
those who keep asking him for his 'solution'. He will reply that
while he may, in some other capacity- as, say, a voter or a
magistrate or Trade Union secretary- feel able and bound to propose
and work towards 'solutions', as a satirist that is not his job.
   Myself, I hold this to be a self-evident truth. And having,
during the early 195s, had some particular opportunities of watching
at close range the way the wheels of neo-Elizabethan Britain went
round, together with the very great advantage of viewing the whole box
of tricks in the perspective of Ireland, I was more than happy to find
myself suddenly and, for me, startlingly in close collaboration with a
man whom, for many years, I had learned to regard as an incarnation of
the Devil.
9
   I THINK it was a few months after the wind-up of Seven Days
that I got a letter in Youghal which surprised me not a little, for
it was an invitation to write an article for Punch. Not only
that, but it was signed by my friend Anthony Powell who, it
astonishingly appeared, had become Punch's literary editor. A
pleasure of living in Ireland is that you can, so to speak, turn
England on or off as desired, and at that time, having been a little
soured of London by the Seven Days episode, I had turned it off
altogether and become absorbed in whatever I was doing at the time. I
had thus had no knowledge of the volcanic disturbance which started to
shake Bouverie Street with the appointment of Malcolm Muggeridge as
editor of that publication. Furthermore, had I heard this bit of news
it would certainly not have occurred to me that it boded me any
particular good. True, I had no intention of writing for Punch,
but if I had, the appointment of Mr Muggeridge would have seemed
to me to rule out any possibility of successfully so doing. For
although we had never actually met I had hated him for years. Those
were, of course, principally my Communist years when Malcolm
Muggeridge had great prominence in our Rogues' Gallery of men who, for
example, had gone to Moscow to bless and stayed to curse; of hardened,
obstinate and vicious enemies of Truth and Progress; of particularly
able, and, therefore, particularly detestable and dangerous
journalistic and literary swordsmen in ranks of wickedness and
reaction. Nor was conflict with Muggeridge in those days restricted
to the battle of the typewriters. For he was often deadly active in
the affairs of the National Union of Journalists- his activity always
directed towards frustrating or defeating some vital activity of our
own.
   At that time the National Union of Journalists was as a running
sore to the anti-Communists of the T.U.C. For the London
Branch, being by far the largest in the Union, was at most times able
to play a preponderant part in framing the policies of the Union as a
whole, and the London Branch, in its turn, was for long periods at a
time, dominated by the Communists for the sufficient reasons, first,
that the Communists were united in pursuit of various objectives
whereas the anti-communists were in general united only in their
anti-communism, and secondly, that the Communists were the only people
who held it as a holy though often irksome duty to attend the Branch
meetings. (These were usually held on Saturday afternoons at the St
Bride's Institute, in one of the lanes just south of Fleet Street.
There are not many drearier meeting halls in that part of London,
which is saying a good deal, and in any case Fleet Street on any
Saturday afternoon is one of the dreariest places anywhere. Add to
this that I personally detest meetings and speeches, and all the
business of resolutions and points of order. Naturally, I am entirely
aware that all this is of the absolutely indispensable essence of
democracy, and that when you attend such meetings you are seeing and
taking part in the true life and work of democracy. All the same, I
wished profoundly that it were possible for me personally not to have
to do that thing.) More than once it had happened to me that my
reason for asking to be excused attendance at St Bride's on a given
Saturday afternoon had been accepted as valid by the Communist Party
leaders, and then, just as I was rejoicing over such a release, the
word would come that Malcolm Muggeridge was going to attend that
particular meeting, was going to launch some major attack; in
consequence all 'leave' was cancelled, no excuses for
non-attendance were any longer to be deemed valid. On such Saturdays
I looked upon that man with more than ordinary political hostility. I
humanly loathed him. In a paradoxical manner he represented all those
disciplines of Communism and democracy which I had always found
excessively irksome. He embodied for the moment everything that could
make life vexatious, particularly on a Saturday afternoon in the
desert parts of London.
   Knowing nothing of his appointment to the editorship, I was still
bewildered by the presence in the literary chair of Anthony Powell who
I had known since Oxford and whose novels, with their exquisite
sinuosities and profound risibility had enchanted me for years. What,
I had to ask myself, in God's name was he doing in that gale?3re?
And what, admitting that he personally was aboard the sluggish old
hulk, on earth made him suppose that my presence would be welcome?
Just making the matter more mysterious was a note in his letter- he
was asking for an article about Ireland- saying that he would like
the piece to be 'somewhat astringent'. If he were simply trying to
do me a good turn by arranging for me to get a small piece of money
out of Punch, surely, knowing my general line of literary brew, he
would instead have put in some cautionary note urging me to draw it
mild?
   I certainly needed the small piece of money, so I wrote the
piece, signing it discreetly 'J.H.'- initials of James
Helvick, under which name I then principally wrote. Within an hour or
so of the earliest time the piece could have reached Bouverie Street
from Youghal, I had a telegram from Anthony Powell offering hearty
congratulations upon it, but asking had I any objection to signing
'in full'. I wired back to say he could certainly sign it James
Helvick. To this the response was equally prompt, and its contents
made me ask myself whether Tony had gone actually off his head. For
it emphatically urged me to sign 'Claud Cockburn'. Resignedly, I
telegraphed back that it was all right with me if he insisted. But to
myself I thought that this bit of 6be?5tise must inevitably mark
the end of my connection with Punch- surely it ought to have been
obvious to Tony that nobody in authority there was going to have a
person with my sort of reputation writing articles- 'astringent'
at that- in their paper?
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Although he had a good knowledge of English, and a great admiration
for the British and their political tradition, his diffidence and his
conservative temperament made it virtually impossible for him to adapt
himself to the very different life of the British capital.
Anglo-Jewry, as indifferent in those days to Jewish learning as to
Jewish nationalism, was for him no better than a whited sepulchre, and
English Zionism, still dominated by Herzlian conceptions, had no
attraction. The "foreign" Jews of London, though not so
denationalised as the assimilated Anglo-Jews who despised and
patronised them, were scarcely less remote from him in the cultural
sense. He took life too seriously to have much time for its lighter
side, and his personal contacts were determined by his serious
interests, which were for practical purposes limited to the Jewish
national movement in the widest connotation of that term. It resulted
that throughout his London period he remained outside the Jewish
community, and made practically no new friends, with the exception of
a handful of young English Jews, who had been influenced by his
writings and broadly shared his outlook. There were in England a few
Russian Jews whom he had known while still in Russia- among them
Chaim Weizmann, who was a Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of
Manchester- and the society of those of them who lived in the
metropolis, and of old friends from elsewhere who visited London from
time to time, saved him from complete isolation. But he remained a
stranger in a strange land.
   He had come to London with hopes of being able at long last to
retire from the field of Zionist controversy and from committee work,
and to devote his spare time to study in the Library of the British
Museum, and to writing a book on Jewish nationalism or the ethics of
Judaism, two subjects on which he was eminently qualified to make an
original contribution to Hebrew and Jewish literature. These hopes
were disappointed. He found the hubbub of the City of London, and the
strain of the daily underground journeys to and from it, nerve-racking
and exhausting, and sustained intellectual work after office hours was
seldom possible. He got so far as to map out the plan of a projected
work on Jewish nationalism, but no further. In the six years
preceding the summer of 1914, when the first world war broke out, he
wrote in all about a dozen pieces for publication, and these, together
with a few of earlier date, were included in the fourth and last
volume of At the Crossroads, which appeared in 1913; but he never
wrote a book.
   The dozen pieces included two of his best-known essays, called in
their English translations Judaism and the Gospels and Summa
Summarum. The first of these, written in 191, in the form of an
extended review of Claude Montefiore's Synoptic Gospels, is of
permanent value because of the original view which it propounds as to
the fundamental nature of the difference between the religious and
ethical standpoints of Judaism and Christianity. The well-worn
antithesis between Judaism as the religion of Justice and Christianity
as the religion of Love does not, in Ahad Ha-Am's opinion , go to the
root of the matter. "What essentially distinguishes Judaism from
other religions is its absolute determination to make the religious
and moral consciousness independent of any definite human form, and to
attach it without any mediating term to an abstract, incorporeal
ideal." Hence the Christian idea of a divine-human being, who
mediates between God and man, is one which Judaism can never accept;
and on the ethical side, Judaism rejects the Christian ideal of
altruistic self-sacrifice, and holds to the principle of abstract and
impersonal justice, according to which "the self" and "the
other" must be regarded with complete impartiality, and a man is
forbidden to satisfy his own selfish desires at the expense of his
neighbour, but is not called upon to place his neighbour's life or
interests before his own.
   The other essay, written in 1912, gives his impressions of
Zionist progress after a visit to the tenth Zionist congress and to
Palestine in the preceding year. It was written for once in a mood of
comparative optimism, which enabled its sceptical author to discern
encouraging signs both of new thinking in the Zionist camp, and of the
emergence of a new Hebrew type of life in Palestine. The grandiose
ideas which Zionism still professed officially seemed to him as remote
from reality as ever, but he was happy to see Palestine beginning to
develop into that "national spiritual centre" which the Jewish
people needed above all things.
   Outside the literary field, he was, during the years immediately
preceding the war, an active member of the Board of Governors of the
Technical High School which it was proposed to establish at Haifa,
with money provided partly out of a charitable fund set up under
Kalman Wissotzky's will, and partly by the German-Jewish philanthropic
organisation known as Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden. Ahad
Ha-Am was appointed to the Board by the Wissotzky trustees, and along
with Shmarya Levin and Yehiel Tchlenov, two of his old friends who
were prominent in the Zionist Organisation, represented the Zionist
point of view against the assimilationists of the Hilfsverein,
who held the whip hand because only they would have been able, if
the need arose, to finance the scheme out of their own resources. He
attached very great importance to the project both from the point of
view of the material progress of the yishuv and from that of the
prestige of Jewish Palestine in the Middle East, and he patiently
acted as a moderating influence in the inevitable clashes of opinion
on the Board; but in spite of his efforts the uneasy partnership broke
up in 1913, when the erection of the school buildings was in progress.
   The immediate cause of the rupture was the insistence of the
Hilfsverein on making German the language of instruction for all
but Jewish subjects. The nationalist members of the Board, including
Ahad Ha-Am, resigned on that issue; and, in sympathy with their point
of view, the teachers of the already existing Hilfsverein schools
in Palestine declared a boycott of all its educational institutions.
The outcome of this action was the establishment by the Zionist
Organisation of its own Hebrew school system, which marked a
turning-point in the history of the yishuv. Ahad Ha-Am objected
in principle to the boycott weapon- it seemed to him not to differ
essentially from the herem, or excommunication, which was a
dreaded weapon in the hands of religious bigotry- and he also had
grave doubts about the ability of the Zionist Organisation to find the
money for the upkeep of an efficient Hebrew school system; but the
activists had their way, and on this occasion the results did not
justify his fears. As for the Technical School project, the
Hilfsverein's intention to implement it alone was frustrated by
the outbreak of war in the following year; and after the war, when
Palestine was placed under a British Mandate as the destined national
home of the Jewish people, the present Haifa Technion was established
under Zionist auspices.
The War Years
   The outbreak of the first world war in 1914 put an end to Ahad
Ha-Am's literary career. He disdained to write for publication under
war conditions, in which censorship precluded the absolutely
unfettered expression of opinion; and the Hebrew-reading public waited
in vain for some indication of his views on the attitude to be adopted
by the Jewish people towards the war, or his expectations of what the
future might bring. Nor was it possible for him to find in wartime
the peace of mind which might have enabled him to retire into an ivory
tower and devote himself to philosophy or scholarship. The world war
meant for him a relapse into barbarism, which shook the foundations of
his implicit belief in the progress of humanity; and without that
belief he was like a lost soul. The massacre of the Jews in his
beloved Ukraine, and the uncertainty as to what might be the fate of
the yishuv, intensified his unhappiness; and his 6malaise
adversely affected his physical health.
   Paradoxically, it was during this period of acute distress that
he made for the first time a direct contribution to the shaping of the
policy of the Zionist Organisation. Thanks to his intimacy with Dr.
Weizmann, he was kept informed from the outset of the steps which were
taken during the war to win the sympathy of the British Government and
British public opinion for Zionism. He was throughout in close touch
with those who conducted the negotiations which ultimately led to the
issue of the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November, 1917, and was a
member of the small informal Political Committee which was set up to
advise Weizmann and Sokolow when those negotiations reached the
decisive stage. His great moral influence was consistently exercised
in the interests of realism and moderation in the formulation of
Zionist demands, both during the war and later, when the Zionist case
for the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 came to be prepared.
Taking, as always, the long view, he regarded the unequivocal
recognition by the civilised world of Jewish national rights in
Palestine as of greater value than the immediate establishment of a
Jewish state, for which in his opinion neither Palestine nor the
Jewish people was as yet prepared. The Balfour Declaration, designed
to create conditions in which the political future of Palestine would
be determined primarily by the amount of effort and sacrifice that
world Jewry was prepared to put into the task of developing the
country, was in line with his gradualist approach, and seemed to him
to go as far as could be reasonably expected at that time in the
recognition of Jewish national rights. He realised, however, as not
all Zionists did in those days, that there was an important difference
between "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people", which was what the British Government undertook to
support, and "the re-establishment of Palestine as the national home
of the Jewish people", which was the formula suggested on the
Zionist side. He looked forward to an era of steady expansion of the
yishuv under British tutelage, and of the progressive
revitalisation of diaspora Jewry through the influence of the
"national spiritual centre", which for him was of greater moment
than any spectacular achievement in the political or economic sphere.
His last years
   The end of the war, in 1918, found him a broken man,
psychologically even more than physically. He was still able to carry
on his duties as manager of the Wissotzky business in London for a
time, but he had no strength left for study or writing. A breakdown
of his health towards the end of 1919 necessitated months of
sanatorium treatment, and left him suffering from some deep-seated
nervous trouble, which defied precise diagnosis.
   He now had only one desire, to spend his last years in Palestine,
where he hoped, and was encouraged by his medical adviser to hope,
that he might recover his health sufficiently to be able to make some
contribution to the life of the yishuv. It had always been his
wish to settle in Palestine, but his passionate love of independence
had stood in the way of his seizing any of the opportunities of doing
so which had presented themselves at one time or another. Now, at the
age of 63, he felt that he had earned the right to retire on a pension
which would enable him to live in reasonable comfort in the land of
his dreams. For unknown reasons, over a year elapsed before the
necessary arrangements could be made; and it was not till the end of
1921 that he was able to leave London for Palestine, accompanied by
his wife and their son and daughter-in-law.
   He preferred to live in Tel-Aviv, which was a creation of the new
spirit of Jewish nationalism, rather than in the Holy City of
Jerusalem, to which the aura of medievalism still clung; and the
Tel-Aviv Municipality built him a house next to the Gymnasia
Herzlia, the first all-Hebrew secondary school of modern times.
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   A second effort to romanticize Devon did no better. Fletcher,
with memories of Elizabethan England, spoke of local talent. Sidney
whinnied scornfully.
   'Here it is. Us. We three. We're the only local talent within
fifty miles.'
   And Fletcher, who had wanted masochistically to claim
Philistinism for America, clicked his tongue.
   It took us a long time to discover anything about his private
life. Not till he announced one day gloomily, ~'I 2endoor
domesticity,' did we even know that he was married.
=4
   My acquaintance with Basil Blackwell, my first publisher,
developed quickly into a friendship which, though we have not often
met since I left Oxford, has lasted and is based on real regard.
Presently, with an appetite sharpened by the American anthology, I
suggested to him that it would be a good idea for me to make an
anthology picked from the many poets he had published. He fell for
this idea, and the result was Eighty Poems, beautifully produced
at the Shakespeare Head Press. The book drew attention to the work
which he had done, and a most interesting bunch of poets were
represented. Turning the pages now, I find that quite a number of
poems still stand up with individuality and power, poems which I
should pick again today. There was Wilfred Childe's Recognition
and The Gothic Rose, which I put in another collection many
years later, and still admire; a happy conceit of Gerald Crowe, Ad
Sanctum Geraldum Pro Nautis Ejus: a short lyric, Still-Heart,
and two longer poems by that little-known poet Frank Pearce Sturm, a
friend of Yeats's. Their inclusion provoked an interesting
correspondence, and Sturm sent me a little ivory Chinese figure which
I have today. Roy Campbell contributed a delightful monkey poem,
Bongwi's Theology. The three Sitwells, Dorothy Sayers, Edgell
Rickword, Katharine Tynan, and Fredegond Shove were represented; Susan
Miles offered one of her village poems; Morley Roberts appeared in an
unfamiliar light; my Oxford poet friends all figured, and there was a
short lyric by Vincent Morris. In all, fifty-seven poets were
represented.
   But the book's main importance for me was two friendships which
it brought. Among the poets published by Blackwell was Clifford Bax.
I was deeply impressed by his Traveller's Tale, and wrote to tell
him so. The result was an invitation to a meal, and at what was then
De Maria's restaurant at the foot of Church Street, Kensington, began
yet another friendship of the kind that absence or catastrophe has no
power to disturb. Clifford's charm and breadth of worldly and
other-worldly wisdom delighted and enthralled me. Still very much the
country bumpkin, for all my Oxford overlay, I admired the grace and
assurance which wealth, travel, and experience had given him. His
voice and smile emphasized the gentleness of his nature, and his
Buddhist faith confirmed it; yet there were delightful contradictions.
On the cricket field, for instance, Clifford flung the mantle of
contemplation aside and emerged as a man of unpredictable and decisive
action. The only thing that was safe to predict about an innings of
his was that the figure six would appear on the score sheet; how often
depended only upon how long he remained at the wicket. Sometimes he
was bearded, sometimes clean shaven, but this was his only variation.
I never saw him ruffled, much less out of temper, and while he had a
healthy appetite for gossip and was under no illusions about the
characters of the people he met, I cannot imagine him unkind in word
or deed.
   Clifford was deeply interested in philosophy and religion, and
had an open mind with regard to supernatural phenomena. He and his
brother Arnold, to whom he presently introduced me, had been very
strongly drawn into the Irish Revival in the first years of the
century. Arnold wrote under the name of Dermot O'Byrne, and both
brothers were friends of A. E.; this friendship must have helped
to acclimatize Clifford's mind to aspects of experience towards which
he was by nature prone, but over which the social side of his life
might otherwise have drawn a glittering curtain.
   It was characteristic of Clifford's generosity of spirit that he
never made me feel uncultivated. I felt so naturally, and blurted out
my feeling more than once, but he discounted it, showing me with a
very pleasant realism that, if I were as bad as I felt, this, that,
and the other person would not be able to endure my company. In sum,
he was one of the people who helped me with my growing pains, and I
shall always be grateful.
   Another was Humbert Wolfe. I had met him for the first time when
he came to speak to a College society, where he was received with
especial honour as a Wadham man. He also was represented in the
Blackwell anthology, and this brought about a less impersonal meeting.
Commenting on its ineptitude as a setting for him, I gave him dinner
at the Philistines' Club, where his long drooping lock, loose bow, and
weary voice roused some astonishment. We were a party of four, and
with the utmost courtesy he set himself to please us. He presently
teased me because, when asked my opinion of certain people, I praised
their kindness.
   'You seem to set particular store by this quality, Strong. Who
has kicked you? How did you acquire this abject attitude?'
   I protested that it was not abject, and he conceded that instead
it might be the romantic faith of a provincial. He himself was
inclined to suspect kindness as a self-interested wish to please. He
was, as I was later to discover, extraordinarily kind, but hated
either to acknowledge or have it acknowledged. At any rate, he kept
to the end his accusation of romantic faith against me. Many years
later, he had to introduce Richard Church and me as successive
speakers at a dinner. Of Richard, he said, ~'Here now is Richard
Church, who has kept all his illusions'; and, when my turn came,
~'Here is Leonard Strong, who has no illusions, but many
delusions.'
   Richard Church I met through the American anthology. He was at
this time a civil servant, much junior to Humbert, who used to mock
him affectionately when they ran into each other in Whitehall. Under
a shy and slightly myopic exterior Richard hid a needle-like
observation and a lightning wit. At his sharpest, he rivalled
Humbert, and that is saying a lot. His temperament has always been
warm and generous, and, particularly in these early days, it would
lead him into enthusiasms which sometimes brought him to the verge of
absurdity, where he was saved by his sharp wit. All his friends
pulled his leg about these enthusiasms, and Richard, sensitive to the
affection which prompted them, would beam and blush; but the glint in
the eyes behind the glasses would be steely sharp, as he mischievously
looked for a chance to hit back. Never strong physically, he was in
these days working far too hard, with the office all day, and his own
writing, and a great deal of reviewing. He and I got on well together
from the start, but I do not think either suspected how much we were
to be together in the future, and how often we would turn one to the
other for comfort and advice.
=5
   My hunger for music, ignorant though I was, led me into several
friendships I must otherwise have missed. The sturdy John Ellis had
taken himself off, and gone to work on the railways at a job which he
kept until he died, of a congenital heart complaint, while still in
his early forties. He helped me more than I can say, and in many
ways. Above everything I owe him the return to comparative sanity and
balance after the disturbances caused by those soire?2es with
Schiller and Co. All my life I have been lucky in meeting the right
person at the time of need; and in no instance was this truer than
with John Ellis. Apart from this enormous service, he laid the
foundations of my musical education, both by his example and by his
comments on the gramophone records I would nai"vely play him:
unerringly selecting what was good, however unpromising its setting-
the anonymous violin in a trio on an eighteenpenny record, the
little-known baritone singing a song by a composer I had never heard
of- and screaming in falsetto derision at performances by artists far
better known, or merely vulgar.
   Ellis's work was too sporadic to win the title of composer,
though he set a number of poems to music, and sometimes invited me to
write new words in place of the verses he had used. This I found I
could do with little trouble, having sung enough to have a sense of
word values and the possible duration of the various vowels.
   The next musician whom I got to know well was a much younger man
whom I have already mentioned, Sidney Lewis. He had a long, equine
head and a jerky manner which was the product of an urgent inner life
and of energies too great for his thin asthenic frame. Sidney lived
in a blaze of activity, mental and psychic. His dream life had
sometimes a tragic intensity. I would not say that he had second
sight as Romer Wilson had, but rather that some of his perceptions
were dissociated in such a way as to give him uncomfortable, angular
glimpses of eternity; glimpses which sometimes comforted but more
often threw him into an agitation of all his powers.
   Like many gifted people who have grown up in places where there
is hardly anyone for them to rub their wits against, Sidney was a
strange mixture of fantasy and practical horse sense. His shrewdness
was alarming. He could drive a perception like a steel nail into the
most imposing fac?6ade or the most complex situation. He had a great
power of enjoyment, and would go into convulsions of laughter so
violent that they could embarrass those who were with him in public
places. He had beyond a doubt a touch of genius, but of the kind
which is not destined to blossom in this world.
=6
   Sidney had a number of older friends who had immediately
discerned his quality and treated him as if he were of their own age.
One of these was a Hindu who had come to Oxford to study Western
philosophy. He was of short, stocky, powerful build, with fiercely
curling black hair and eyes which immediately apprehended the
essential things around him. His name was Basanta Kumar Mallik.
   The force of his mind and personality had made him many friends
at Oxford, and it is possible that I should have met him through
Robert Graves, or a Balliol man of great ability named Harries, if I
had not been introduced to him by Sidney. Sidney however was the
link, and this was important, since it was through Sidney's elder
sister Winifred that I later resumed the friendship interrupted by
Mallik's return to India and a gap of thirty years.
   Mallik's philosophy was at this stage impenetrable to me, but I
could appreciate some of its practical conclusions. He was a very
lively companion, and among other things a superb maker of curries, a
gift which much endeared him to me. I liked his curries all the
better because they were not too hot: he explained that the very hot
kind were more for the taste of retired colonels and Indian civil
servants than for the Indian connoisseur. Few things pleased him more
than to be turned loose by a hostess with instructions to make curry
for her and her guests, but the joys of the meal would often be
followed by a rueful inventory of the larder, for Mallik would put in
everything he could lay hands on, including items which ninety-nine
English people out of a hundred would have thought immune.
# 23
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   The Varsity Regatta was always held at sea in boats which were
borrowed for the occasion, and quite unfamiliar to all the
competitors. The authorities had not yet been persuaded to award a
Half-Blue for sailing as is done now. Another member of that early
team- and a subsequent Captain- was Francis Usborne, now Secretary
of the Royal Yachting Association.
   Stewart was always the principal spur. I was invited by his
parents to stay on the Broads in their beautiful converted wherry
Sundog; she moved from regatta to regatta with a string of racing
dinghies and one-designs towing astern, all superbly kept in trim by
Cubitt Nudd, one of the best 'paid hands' in all Norfolk. For
these holidays I was usually Stewart's crew, but when his new
fourteen-foot dinghy Clover was built for him by Morgan Giles in
beautifully selected teak, I wondered if I would be considered good
enough to crew him in important races. Much later, when I had crewed
in less expertly handled dinghies and finally graduated to my very own
fourteen-footer, I wondered if I would be good enough to beat Stewart?
Without this friendly rivalry over the years I should never have been
selected to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games (with Stewart
as my spare man) in 1936; I should never have won a Bronze Medal
there- and likely enough I should never have become (quite
accidentally as it transpired) the President of the International
Yacht Racing Union.
   Most of the races at Ely were sailed in deadly earnest, and it
was a good training ground, for in so narrow a river inches counted
and fine judgement could be cultivated. A well-rounded buoy passed
less than a foot away down the boat's side as a matter of standard
practice. A boat's length was to be gained when 'going about' by
shooting up along the bank before filling away on a new tack.
   On occasion the sailing was more light-hearted. There was an
afternoon when an unofficial prize had been offered for the helmsman
who, sailing single-handed, contrived to capsize his boat first after
the starting gun had been fired. The Commodore had not been informed
of this plan; he walked up the bank with his megaphone, shouting
"Let the sheet go, you stupid boy, you'll have the boat over in a
moment if you're not careful." But his warning was of no avail and
a few seconds later I won the prize.
CHAPTER 15 Of Pinkfeet and Punts and Blue Geese
   DURING our Christmas holiday on the Solway we had heard
rumours that very large numbers of geese assembled at the head of the
great estuary upon their first arrival from the Arctic in late
September. Between the River Esk and the River Eden is a vast merse
covered only by high spring tides and for a few years this was used as
an assembly point for what must have been at times something like
thirty per cent of the world's Pinkfooted Geese. Nowadays no such
concentrations of geese are to be found on Rockliffe Marsh as we saw
there in the autumns of 1929 and 193. Great numbers of Pinkfeet
still come to the Solway, but not in any concentration until well into
October, and their headquarters is now ten miles further to the
westward around the Lochar mouth and the sanctuary provided for them
on the Kinmount Estate near Annan.
   On 2th September, 1929, I set out from London alone in the
family's Austin Seven and arrived at Sark Bridge Farm, Gretna, eleven
hours later. Next morning I found that many thousands of geese had
already arrived at Rockliffe. All that day more were coming in. This
was the first time I had ever seen geese arriving on migration. There
were little bunches coming in high over the Metal Bridge, heading the
westerly wind and planing down on to the marsh- some in threes and
fours, some in groups of a dozen or twenty. The little parties were
scattered about the sky almost wherever you looked. It is a pattern I
have seen many times since, but never more impressively than on that
first day. I know now that the geese were coming from Greenland and
Iceland, but in those days Spitzbergen was thought to be the breeding
ground of most of the British Pinkfeet. But wherever they came from,
it was far away in Arctic or Sub-Arctic lands, and it added
immeasurably to the mysterious appeal of these wonderful birds.
   Rockliffe Marsh was private shooting, but by crossing the Esk in
a boat it was possible to intercept the geese at the marsh edge, or
from 'lying-pits' out on the sand. In the week that I was there I
shot twelve geese and was vastly pleased with my success. More
recently I believe Manorial Rights extending to the river channels of
the Eden and Esk have been substantiated, but in 1929 this had not
been clarified and the sand was widely, if erroneously, held to be
free shooting.
   Digging in on the sand is not now regarded as a wise procedure,
for if it is extensively practised on a goose roost it seems
eventually to drive the geese away. This may have been one of the
contributary causes of the abandonment by the grey geese of Wells and
Holkham, though I do not think it influenced their change of habits on
the Solway. But in that first autumn on the Solway digging lying pits
on the sand seemed only to be a practical if difficult method of goose
shooting, and a number of my geese were bagged while shooting from
their scanty cover.
   For my last two days in Scotland I moved westward to Wigtown Bay
in order to go punting with Major Hulse- the Expert as we called him.
I joined him at Creetown and we spent the two days afloat in pursuit
of wigeon, which confirmed my earlier conclusion that punting was the
best that wildfowling had to offer. Our bag was meagre and the
occasion was chiefly memorable for my meeting with Adam Birrell and
for a stirring return journey in the punt in a gale of wind. I had
met Adam very briefly at the end of my previous day's punting with
Major Hulse, but now for the first time I recognised this was no
ordinary fisherman-wildfowler. He was a first-class naturalist, with
an astonishingly wide (self-administered) education. He was
delightful company whether on a fowling expedition or bird-watching or
fishing, and we remained in fairly regular communication thereafter
for a quarter of a century.
   After the two days' punting I set off from Creetown in the Austin
Seven at a quarter to eight in the morning and arrived in London at a
quarter to eight in the evening, having stopped for half an hour in
Carlisle and three-quarters of an hour at Boroughbridge where I had
lunch. It is an interesting commentary on the Great North Road and
motoring conditions in 1929 that I was able to make the 38-mile
journey in a seven-horsepower car at an average speed of just over 35
miles per hour. It is also perhaps worth recording that my ten days
in Scotland had cost me almost exactly +1.
   On the flood-waters of the Bedford Levels we had Penelope and
Grey Goose, but we still had no sea-going double punt for the
Wash, and this must clearly be remedied. Mr. Mathie, a boat-builder
in Cambridge, was commissioned to build one, based mainly on the
design and specifications of the Expert's punt. She was to be
twenty-four foot long, four-foot beam, with a twelve-foot cockpit, and
she was to be called Kazarka- the Russian name for the
Red-breasted Goose.
   Kazarka was launched just below Magdalene Bridge in Cambridge
on 11th December, 1929. On the following day I set out with a
companion, David Lewis, to sail her to the coast. There was a
south-westerly wind which was very strong at times and we made good
progress until just before Ely, when there was a stretch which came
closer to the eye of the wind and the lee boards could not really cope
with it. But a passing sugar beet tug took us in tow as far as the
Ely beet factory. Thereafter we sailed without difficulty to Brandon
Creek which was to be our staging point for the day. There is a
fascination in the bareness of the Fenland river banks. Trees are few
and far between, and the river runs artificially straight or nearly so
for many a mile, broken only by an occasional bridge. From the punt
we had no view into the distance, for the high green banks rose
steeply on either side to the skyline at most fifty yards away. The
flat fenland fields, mostly below the level of the river, were hidden
from us; and yet I remember that the passage, the testing of our boat
on her maiden voyage, the anticipation of her arrival on the fowling
grounds of the Wash, the pleasure of spinning along under the small
sail, all added up to a sheer delight which I can clearly recall
today- just thirty years later. Christopher Dalgety came to meet us
at Brandon Creek, and we took David Lewis to Ely to catch a train
(which he missed) and then went on to the Globe Hotel at King's Lynn
which was our coastal headquarters.
   Re-reading my shooting diaries in 1959 in the course of writing
this book I came upon the entry for the following morning, Friday,
13th December, 1929, which is of more interest than I realised at the
time. There was a moderate west-south-westerly breeze blowing as we
walked out along the old drove at Terrington (past a pole evidently
set up on the salting long ago as a landmark and known inevitably as
the North Pole) and out to the edge of the salting. "I was in
position at 6.4," says my diary, "'streak of dawn' having been
at 6.1. As it got light geese began honking all round. A lot of
mallards had been sitting at the edge of the mud as I came up and now
a lot more came over. I could have had several shots but the geese
were all round. At last I saw about eight geese coming straight
towards me. They sagged away on the wind and passed rather wide. I
had a shot but without success. The sound of the shot put up a big
lot of about 2 which had been sitting farther to the east. These
pitched again about 2-3 yards away. I looked at them and thought
that one on the left of the flock looked different. With the glass I
could see at once that it was a white goose. His head, neck and
breast were pure white and his back was dark brown, darker than the
surrounding Pinkfeet. From the fact that he was a head taller than
the rest (and longer in the leg) and also that his bill was very large
and thick, I felt no doubt that he was an albino Greylag. In general
size he was much larger than the Pinkfeet and was much more on the
alert. He had his head up the whole time- once when only three other
geese in the whole 2 had their heads up. After the flock had walked
towards me a little, they sat for a while, and then I think they must
have scented me, for away they went, crossing my creek further down
and joining some more geese on the mud to the west."
   Well, there it is! There is the first record of the Blue Goose
for Europe. The description is perfect. We even know that he was the
rather less common form in which the white of the head extends on to
the breast and belly. I may have exaggerated the size a little, and I
gave him (and his fellow Pinkfeet) a sense of smell which I do not now
believe could have accounted for their departure.
# 216
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Wesley often dined with him, sometimes with his other colleagues.
The Rector's brother, Sir Justinian, was an occasional guest whom
Wesley met at dinner on Christmas Day, 1732. Three days later, all
the fellows in residence had dinner and supper with the Rector and his
brother and played cards. A year later when Wesley's father was
staying in Oxford over Christmas, Isham invited John Wesley to read
prayers and later entertained them both. Both Isham and his brother
were among the subscribers to the projected work on Job, as were also
some of the fellows and former undergraduates. At times the Rector
was justifiably concerned at Wesley's indiscreet religious zeal, but
realized his merits, and on 28th June, 1734, made a donation to the
work of the Castle, a gesture by which Wesley was obviously touched.
   Wesley had been recalled to act as tutor to the undergraduates,
and it was as a teacher and preceptor that he had returned into
residence in November, 1729. He was already well-read in the classics
and in divinity. These, together with logic, were the principal
subjects in which he had to guide his pupils. Like all his
contemporaries, he regarded Aldrich's textbook on logic,
Compendium Artis Logicae, with profound reverence; he
supplemented his teaching on logic and classics by reading Sanderson
and Langbaine. Long after he had left Oxford the imprint of the
syllogistic reasoning which he had learned and taught remained. 'For
several years', he wrote much later, 'I was Moderator in the
disputations which were held six times a week at Lincoln College in
Oxford. I could not help acquiring hereby some degree of expertness
in arguing; and especially in discerning and pointing out well-covered
and plausible fallacies.' He fulfilled his duty as Moderator by
lecturing or presiding over disputations in the College Hall at ten or
eleven on week-day mornings.
   At first he seems not to have had a private pupil, though he
certainly gave his brother, Charles, and their mutual friend, William
Morgan, what could be called tutorials. With them he read Milton's
poetry, Lucas' popular devotional work, Norris' sermons, lives of
Bonnel and de Renty and the warning tract known as the Second
Spira. The character of these books suggests that this reading may
have been part of that prescribed for the recently formed Holy Club.
In June, 173, he noted proudly that he had his 'first pupil', in
all probability Joseph Green, the Bible clerk whom he had introduced
to the Rector on 1th June and whom he took to be matriculated two
days later. Green's father lived at Shipton, where Wesley often took
the service for his friend, the former Lincoln undergraduate, Joseph
Goodwin. It was probably through Wesley's efforts that Green came to
Lincoln. He was soon calling on Wesley, who lived in rooms just above
him in College, at ten every morning, presumably for tuition.
   On 4th June, 173, the Rector had allocated eleven men to Wesley,
John Westley, Jonathan Black, from Harringworth in Northamptonshire,
Thomas Waldegrave, a Lincolnshire boy from Londonthorpe, two
northerners, Thomas Hylton from Monkwearmouth and Robert Davison from
Durham, John Bartholomew from Dorchester, Dorset, John Sympson, almost
a neighbour, from Gainsborough, Edward Browne, a merchant's son from
St. Asaph, Richard Bainbridge from Leeds, and George Podmore from
Edgmond in Shropshire. None of these ever achieved great distinction,
but Bainbridge was later a fellow of Lincoln, while Thomas Waldegrave
was subsequently elected a fellow of Magdalen and was Edward Gibbon's
first tutor. It is one of the minor ironies of history that in going
through the plays of Terence with the precocious young man Waldegrave
was probably reproducing the notes which he had once learned from John
Wesley; but Gibbon thought the tutorials so unrewarding that he
resolved to absent himself from them. There were few days when Wesley
did not give up some hours, usually either at ten in the mornings or
two or five in the afternoons, to his pupils; even on Sundays and holy
days he noted in his diaries that he had seen his pupils, presumably
to give them religious instruction.
   It is not very clear what the College tutor in the eighteenth
century was expected to teach outside the lectures in Hall where he
presided over disputations or commented on the Greek Testament.
Fortunately John Wesley has himself left a list of the books which he
read with his pupils. In 173 he instructed them in Virgil's Aeneid,
Terence's plays, Horace's poems, Juvenal's Satires, Phaedrus, and
Anacreon. In English they studied Richard Lucas' Enquiry after
Happiness, Norris' Sermons, Stephen's Letters and half of
John Ellis' Defence of the Thirty-nine Articles. Next year he
read Gentleman Instructed and Charles Wheatley's The Church of
England Man's Companion with one pupil. With another he perused
Atterbury's sermons and Edward Welchman's Articuli =39 Ecclesiae
Anglicanae. With another he ended Cicero's De Natura Deorum
and read his Tusculan Disputations. With another he studied
Aldrich's Logic, but to so little effect that when they had
finished it they began all over again. Finally a fifth pupil read the
plays of Terence as well as Aldrich with him. He had evidently
acquired something of a reputation as a tutor in logic as three young
graduates of the College, William Smith, George Bulman, and Frederick
Williams were given tuition in the ubiquitous Aldrich.
   He took his pupils' intellectual problems seriously, correcting
declamations for Edward Browne on 22nd September, 173, and for Joseph
Leech on the afternoon of 28th February, 1733, and teaching Thomas
Greives an hour later that same day; earlier he had spent some time
thinking out syllogisms for an exercise in logic. On 26th June, 1732,
he wrote out a logical problem for Smith. In the winter of 1733 he
noted wearily that his pupils would not learn Hebrew and on the last
day of the year he was angry because they had failed to turn up.
   His relationship with these young men was much more than that of
teacher and pupil. Hitherto his contacts at Lincoln had been with men
of comparatively senior status like William Cleaver, Matthew Horbery,
the son of a former vicar of Haxey, and a future fellow of Magdalen
and his neighbour, Robert Pindar, who matriculated as long ago as
1726. Now he was concerned with supervising younger men who had just
entered the College, and he certainly set out to take an interest in
them far beyond the obligations of a tutorial nature. He sat with
young Joseph Green at the Bear. In August, 1732, after calling on
Benjamin Holloway, son of the rector of Middleton Stoney, who was to
enter the college in the following November, he accompanied Richard
Bainbridge on an expedition to Cottisford and Rousham. He said later
that he made no attempt to persuade his pupils to become members of
the Holy Club, but he had too strong a personality to keep his
religious views in the background. His diary shows that he regularly
invited his pupils to breakfast and prayers, and those who showed any
interest in the activities of the Holy Club were subsequently brought
under close supervision and spiritual discipline. His first book, A
Collection of Forms of Prayers for Every Day in the Week, with
preface and questions for self-examination, was written for his pupils
and published in 1733.
   It is possible that the Rector was increasingly and explicably
unwilling to entrust Wesley with the care of pupils because of his
close identification with the Holy Club. In August, 1733, Wesley told
his mother that he had as many pupils as he required. 'If I have no
more pupils after these are gone from me, I shall then be glad of a
curacy near you; if I have, I shall take it as a signal that I am to
remain here.' There were in fact only a small number of new entries
at Lincoln every year. Wesley seems to have been only on intimate
terms with his earlier pupils and either because of lack of time or
because the Rector was anxious about the recruitment of impressionable
young men his later pupils were few. This view is supported by
Richard Morgan's unfriendly picture of Wesley in a letter to his
father. Indeed, he wanted to be transferred to the other tutor of the
College, 'reckoned one of the best tutors in the University', and
of whom Lord Lichfield had so high an opinion that he thought to send
his eldest son to Lincoln. 'He has', he wrote, 'what few are in
college (except one Gentleman Commoner and two servitors who are Mr.
Wesley's pupils) under his tuition.' If Morgan was correct, then at
the beginning of 1734 Wesley had, presumably in addition to Morgan,
only three other pupils, probably Westley Hall (who was a gentleman
commoner), Matthew Robinson, and either Joseph Green or Joseph Leech,
all of whom were servitors. We should, however, be careful about
accepting Morgan's statement without qualification, and other evidence
would suggest that Wesley was at least being consulted on tutorial
matters by other members of the College.
   His residence at Lincoln may have attracted a number of
undergraduates to the College. John Sympson, who was admitted as a
servitor in 1728, lived in Gainsborough; so did George and Thomas
Hutton, whose father was a local lawyer. Joseph Green, from Shipton,
probably entered the College as a Bible clerk partly through Wesley's
support. He certainly played a part in the admission of two of his
other prote?2ge?2s, Westley Hall and John Whitelamb. Westley Hall
was admitted as a gentleman commoner on 22nd January, 1731, and John
Whitelamb was admitted as a servitor on 1th April, 1731, and, much to
Wesley's satisfaction, was later given a scholarship. Hall, who came
from Salisbury, was related through his mother to John Westley, who
was already an undergraduate at Lincoln. His mother, who was a
daughter of a vicar of Imber, near Warminster, had married a clothier,
Francis Hall; his brother, Robert, later Lord Mayor of London, and
knighted in 1744, was the father of the Lincoln undergraduate; 'My
first cousin, John Westley being there ... John Wesley my tutor', as
Hall later commented. John Whitelamb, 'poor starveling Johnny',
was the son of humble parents (his father Robert, however, is described
in the matriculation book as Robert, gentleman of the parish of
Hatfield), who lived at Wroot, the dreary village where Wesley acted
as curate; and he had been employed by the elder Wesley as his
amanuensis. He was an intelligent young man, who entered the College
at the unusually late age of twenty-two; Wesley had great hopes of
Whitelamb, but as in the case of Westley Hall, they were steadily to
evaporate. Of the twelve young men who entered the College in 1731,
the one who was eventually to repay Wesley's tutorship most was in his
first year practically unknown to him; James Hervey, the son of the
curate of Collingtree.
   Although Wesley was as far as possible rationing time to serve
the more serious pursuits of life, he neither withdrew from social
life nor ceased to take part in the normal recreations of Oxford.
Twice, on 1th March and 19th May, 173, he went dancing. Genuinely
fond as he was of music, he seized such opportunities as Oxford then
presented, once attending a concert with Charles and William Morgan;
and in the summer he himself studied the gavotte from Otho,
'Non e si vago e bello'. He occasionally went on the river;
on 28th September, 173, he gathered walnuts. Walking was his normal
exercise, with Charles and Morgan, to Binsey, round the Meadows, or in
Merton garden, once with Wilder and Dr. Grove.
   He was now the proud possessor of a horse. This was in effect a
first necessity if he was to take services at the villages in the
neighbourhood of Oxford.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   'Yesterday', he told his mother on 28th February, 173, 'I
had the offer of another curacy to continue a quarter or half a year,
which I accepted with all my heart.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 26
<26 TEXT G19>
   'All officers,' growled George from behind a cow, who had no
love of the War Ag., and proceeded to tell me a story far removed
from this present (as most of his stories were) of how in India, where
he had been a private in 1916, the cow was brought to the
householder's door each morning, and while it was milked consumed the
contents of the dustbin.
   Actually this wartime farming of ours on Road Farm was a mixture
of ancient and modern. I had a modern rib-roller; but there was also
one made out of a trunk of a crab-apple tree, one hundred and fifty
years old, I should think, I found lying at the back of the
cart-lodge. And we used that one too, on some tender young beet.
   It was also a mixed, cosmopolitan, ideological farming. Land
girls, Germans, Italians, succeeded one another in our fields as the
war went on. I had also a young Quaker, a pacifist who contradicted
everything I said, but he meant well.
   And George Goforth plodded on, who had once had all this farm to
himself, knowledgeable in the handling of tackle, stoical; getting on
best, characteristically, with the least fortunate; the prisoners, the
enemy, lost to their own kindred, far from their own homes.
   There was a shortage of implements at first on account of the
war. Scenes come to mind. There was the day when we missed being
able to borrow a neighbour's swath-turner by one minute. It had just
been lent to somebody else. It was a day on which hay demanded to be
turned. So the tractor which had returned without it was switched
off.
   Larks sang: we could hear them suddenly, when the tractor
stopped, as we bared our arms for hard work. Six acres of swaths to
be turned before dewfall, and at four o'clock milking would deplete
our team. But it was the longest day. Bumblebees disturbed from the
swaths by our rakes zigzagged into the air before us. I glanced at
the roses in the hedge, at the buds that were more red than pink.
Someone was saying, 'There's one thing, every round gets shorter as
we move towards the middle.'
   Round and round that field we walked all day. I came to know
that hay intimately, every ingredient of it; clover, rye-grass,
cocksfoot, and the occasional pallid corpse of a plant of chicory. I
was soon in that state belonging to my former unmechanized farming, of
mental stupefaction induced by repetitive manual movements. The
jumping teeth of my rake had a life of their own to my eyes, as they
snatched at the swath again and again, rolling it over like a small
wave, and the hay whispered like surf.
   There was still plenty of the physical exhaustion of that former
farming, owing to the exigencies of the time. I walked behind a pair
of horses again, ploughing, before I got delivery of a tractor. But
the plough here in East Suffolk was an iron plough, having wheels. It
was known as the 'improved two-horse plough', which reminded me of
the name of my old-type of kitchen range at Creams: the 'New
Leader'. I doubt if I enjoyed any part of my wartime farming so
much as ploughing the stubble with Kitty and Boxer, days whose peace
was only broken by the sudden roar of an express train going by in the
cutting beside the field, which startled me, not the horses; they had
been used to trains since they were foaled here. I, too, got to know
the trains: I told the time by them.
   I also had contract ploughing done for me by the War Ag. A
young man came with a crawler tractor and multiple-furrow plough. He
told me that his father was a small farmer, and that on Saturday
afternoons, having been ploughing with his crawler tractor all the
week, he took a pair of horses and ploughed for his father on his
small-holding. He enjoyed that: it was his recreation, he said.
   The field which I ploughed so carefully with the horses, I
drilled with wheat by tractor. It was one of the first jobs my new
tractor did. And it was a horrible day. Fine when we started,
drizzle when we had done about two acres, downpour for the rest. The
tractor floundered, the drill kept gumming up with mud: it took one
man all his time to keep the spouts clear. We ended soaked to the
skin, in a field that was churned to a morass. And the wheat- oh
those beautiful straight drill-rows of our 1922 Cherry Tree Farm! How
unlike them when the corn showed were those of this first field I
drilled of my new farm. But it turned out to be the best crop of
wheat I ever grew.
   I remembered then an old country saying I had heard about wheat:
'sow in the slop, and reap a good crop'.
   There was also sugar beet, a crop which I had not grown before.
A gang of prisoners of war came to hoe them. They hoed up weeds
industriously all morning. At midday a pelting shower soaked the
ground: the thirty men moved off across the field to their dinner, and
as they went, every foot, treading on a hoed-up weed, planted it again
in the receiving earth.
   
   And the cows. There was the blind cow whose name was Christmas,
because she was born on Christmas Day. She was not discovered to be
blind until one day heaps of manure were placed at intervals for
spreading on a pasture that the herd crossed, and Christmas tripped
over them. Ever since then Christmas preferred to walk beside the
hedge, making a detour from gate to gate. How did she know that she
was walking beside the hedge? Was it that a hedge has a peculiar
quality of scent? Or was there a sixth sense which told her that
something was there beside her? She walked holding her head up and a
little sideways, in a listening attitude. In former days it might
have been thought that Christmas, being born in an august hour, had
met with a blinding light. But the vet said, ~'Probably a
phosphorous deficiency,' and one had to accept that.
   On the journey home to milking, along the green lane to the
farmstead, Christmas walked last. The other cows were purposeful;
knowing dairy cake awaited them. Let nothing get in their way: they
trotted. But Christmas dawdled in the lane, last, alone, safe from
hustling, and enjoyed a feast of her choice. All was safe here; there
were no ditches to fall into, but close on either side tall hedges
grew with shoots of many flavours. There were tips of bramble and
brier whose thorns were still tender: a wild rose was licked off its
stem by that muscular tongue, which encompassed in the same sweep a
dozen crab-apple leaves. There was hogweed, ground-ash, sallow. She
dragged at a spray of hawthorn, which embushed her head while she tore
at it.
   Had there been time enough, there could have been nothing
pleasanter than to watch Christmas browsing, while one bore gently on
her rump in the act of coaxing her forward. But the milking waited.
Yet this pushing and this calling her by name seemed only to sweeten
her dalliance. She knew that she had nothing to fear from the human
presence, by these unhurtful urgings. Some movement forward was
required of her, and in time she would comply. In the meantime it was
like conversation to her, while she enjoyed her banquet of leaves in
the grassy lane.
   She could not have known that there was any such phenomenon as
light in the world. Therefore, of course, there was no such thing to
her as darkness, only hours of a warmth beating down, and then hours
of stillness and a cool moisture. The hoot of the owl and the voice
of the blackbird perhaps indicated to her what was 'night' and what
was 'day'. Her chief privation was that she could not follow a
patch of shade as it moved with the sun. To her it was an arbitrary
and elusive area of coolness.
   Christmas spent the night in a loose box by herself. She used to
walk straight to it from the milking shed, and waited before it, to be
steered into it. Once inside, she stood chewing the cud and gazing
(you would think) over the low wall like any other cow. Approached
from one side, she would turn her head and face you. If you put out
your hand she would put up her head to meet it, scenting its approach.
   Sometimes she went into the meadow pond to drink, and having
drunk forgot that she had not turned round, and walked on into deeper
water. When it was up to her flank she realized that something was
wrong, and turned herself about. The other cows did not molest her
unless she was in a confined space with them. This situation she
learned to avoid.
   Christmas was a lady of pedigree and a good milker. Her calvings
she managed for herself, although, of course, she had never seen her
calves. On the first occasion there was anxiety and sitting up at
night for her. But she calved by herself after all, in an interval
between the vigils. There she stood, her calf lying in the straw
behind her. She turned to it, lifted her front feet and placed them
accurately between its outstretched legs, and lowered her head and
licked it dry all over. In her world of darkness she never injured
any of her calves: she seemed to have an unerring instinct where to
tread.
   
   Year by year the ploughing and the sowing and the hoeing. The
two Italian prisoners lived in an opera act of their own, grand or
comic according to their mood of the day. And the Quaker, who fancied
he had an ear for music, hoed at the farthest possible distance from
the Italians in the field, because he couldn't stand their
caterwauling, he said. And George Goforth (whose children were also
growing up) resolutely maintaining of every new machine I bought that
it would not work, and proceeding to work it, even as Bill Mould many
years back used to do. The type does not change much.
   And the harvesting, and the Italians building waggon-loads of
sheaves, movable stages for their perpetual recitative. And the
difficult regulations about land girls not to be set to work beside
Italians, when all hands were needed round the threshing machine. The
threshing machine beat out the rhythm of the autumn day. Straw bales
in a long spasmodic caterpillar were pushed from the baler up a
slanted ladder and built like blocks of masonry. Similarly there had
been hay bales. Similarly now there were for us school trunks. Three
times a year I loaded school trunks on to the car and took them to the
station, and three times a year loaded them on the car and brought
them home from the station. Essentially bales of hay are trunks, in
shape and weight, packed trunks. In one small field I counted one
hundred and ninety-six bales. At six o'clock I said to Marjorie,
'I've loaded and unloaded more school trunks this afternoon than in
ten years of school terms, school trunks without handles.' Bales
are obstinate things, ungrippable, liable suddenly to slip one string
and then the thing turns into an enormous dissolving accordion in your
arms....
   There was the thatching of the new corn stacks, and the Quaker
showing up suddenly as a better thatcher than George, and not letting
the fact be overlooked. Master's tactful handling needed there, in
between bouts of getting up steam in the dairy boiler.
   There was the pleasant solitary task in September of taking a
second cut for hay. The days grew shorter, but given fine weather,
another crop could still be gathered.
# 26
<27 TEXT G2>
It was in 1862, as King of the Belgians, that he made a confession
to the Archduke John:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The Prince of Prussia has also written to tell me that you regret
I have tied myself to Belgium. I too sometimes regret that my part in
the East was taken from me. I fancy that I could have done much good
there, and though I know the disadvantages of the situation, it very
often gives me a kind of nostalgia. How strange my fate has been
since we were together in Brighton with the Regent! If I had taken
command of things in England in 183, many things would have happened
differently, and what was bound to happen would have been more wisely
controlled.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In his old age, for personal and political reasons, Leopold
declared that only Greek interests had inspired his refusal of Greece;
and this was understandable, for when he 'corrected' Gervinus, the
throne of Greece was again on the market and he was considering it for
a Coburg nephew. Besides, since William =4 had lived to 1837, it was
a little ridiculous to admit that in 183 they had quarrelled over his
corpse.
   
   On May 21st, 183, Leopold declined the throne of Greece.
'Leopold', snapped Mme de Lieven, 'has played us a pretty
trick. It is a bad business... Who is going to take what Leopold has
refused?' Leopold's hesitations and problems and his final
rejection had created considerable ill-feeling; and Count Matuszewicz,
writing to Stockmar, declared that ~'Prince Leopold has shown so many
6arrie?3re-pense?2es, so much bad faith, so much irresolution,
that I rejoice not to see him entrusted with the government of a
country in which he would have betrayed the confidence of the three
Courts... There is no difficulty which does not alarm him, no
obstacle which does not stop him, no gesture which does not prove that
he would have brought to Greece disgust, pusillanimity, and the
perpetual regret of having abandoned his so-called chances of the
eminent position of Regent of England. It is this Regency that he
will never obtain, above all now that he has crowned his shame like
this... Such a sovereign would have done damage to royalty.' And
this scorn and anger were echoed by the correspondent, quoted in the
Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, who wrote to the Archbishop of Cologne:
'What does Your Eminence say to the behaviour of Prince Leopold? It
is quite in the character of the Marquis Peu-a?3-Peu, as King George
=4 christened him; instead of conquering difficulties, instead of
completing the work he had undertaken, he withdraws like a coward, and
calculates the possible chances which the approaching death of King
George =4 may throw in his way. A man of this weak character is
totally unfit to play a bold part in life.'
13
THE COBURG COALITION
   BY May 183 it was sadly evident that George =4 was dying.
His private excesses had largely damaged his reputation among his
contemporaries, but after all, his excesses had been those of
virility, and his virtues, though less blatant, were very many. He
was the most civilized monarch that England had known since Charles
=2: perhaps, indeed, since Elizabeth. He had accepted the dedication
of Emma, he had patronized Hoppner and Lawrence, he had added
widely to the royal collections. He had inspired Nash to create the
classical splendour of Regent's Park. He had conjured up the
Coleridgean fantasies of Brighton; he had made (with his architect,
Wyattville) the alterations to Windsor that had turned it into the
epitome of castles; and he had built his own Nonesuch, Carlton House.
He had been the arbiter of fashion and of taste; and in all he did he
had been a superlative figure, larger than life. He was a born king,
and the Marquis Peu-a?3-Peu would be a king by training and ambition,
not by nature.
   In May 183 the jackals were impatient for the bulky, pathetic
recluse to die at Windsor; and Mme de Lieven, of course, was among
the foremost. 'The most delicate question', so she wrote in eager
anticipation, 'will be raised by the death of the King. It will be
necessary to make provision for a regency in the case of the Princess
Victoria's minority. The Duke of Cumberland is caballing for it, and
Prince Leopold desires it. Most probably it will be assigned to the
Duchess of Kent, the Princess's mother, in which case it will be
Leopold who will rule.' And, since the Russian Ambassador's wife
was always sharp about Leopold, she continued briskly: 'He has given
us every reason for dissatisfaction and complaint on account of his
conduct in the matter of Greece, and the English Government would be
glad to follow our lead and to oppose the Prince's pretensions. This
is a line, however, which prudence warns us not to take. He will be
powerful some day, and indeed he is so already by the number of his
supporters.' Mr Creevey likewise shot a barb which touched the
truth: 'I suppose Mrs Kent thinks her daughter's reign is coming
on apace, and that her brother may be of use to her as 6versus
Cumberland...' George =4 was still clinging to life, William =4
(almost mad with excitement) was still waiting in the wings, but the
preparations continued gaily for the next reign but one. 'Lord
Durham', added Creevey, 'is now Prime Minister to the Duchess of
Kent and Queen Victoria, and they are getting up all their
arrangements together in the Isle of Wight for a new reign.'
   At last, on June 26th, 183, the reign of George =4 came to an
end, and there began the reign of the simple, genial Grand Admiral-
the most remarkable contrast to his brother that could be imagined.
England changed her allegiance overnight from a splendid sovereign to
an excited, bourgeois little king who could not get over the fact of
his accession. The gold-and-lacquer days of the Brighton Pavilion
were ended. 'There are', wrote Croly, the historian, 'few more
regular or temperate men in their habits than the present King. He
rises early, sometimes at six... At dinner he restricts himself
generally to one dish of plain boiled or roasted meat, drinking only
sherry, and that in moderation- never exceeding a pint.' 'A
quaint King indeed!' was Mme de Lieven's acid contribution. 'A
bon enfant- with a weak head!'
   William =4 was sixty-four, he suffered from chronic asthma, and
it was quite possible that he might die before May 24th, 1837; if he
did, if Queen Victoria (the title sounded well)- if Queen Victoria
came to the throne before her eighteenth birthday, there would have to
be a regency. There was only one move to be made now on the
chess-board, and Leopold of Coburg would be Prince Regent of the
United Kingdom: Regent, that is, in everything but name. The
accession to the regency now became quite as important as Victoria's
accession to the throne, and the candidates canvassed for it almost as
if they were canvassing in a general election. 'Prince Leopold and
his sister, the Duchess of Kent, are getting popularity in the
provinces,' snapped Dorothea de Lieven in September. 'He is much
interested in the Regency question, and had a long talk with me about
it. Naturally, he wants it to be given to his sister, but the
Ministry wish it to pass to the Queen... After the King's death, the
Queen, so far as England is concerned, is only a foreigner. As for
the Duke of Cumberland,' finished Dorothea, 'he has no illusions
and puts forward no claim, clearly seeing that it would be useless.'
   And for once Dorothea de Lieven did not exaggerate. The Duke of
Cumberland knew quite well that he was by far the most unpopular royal
brother. The others might be more or less eccentric, but he was
credited with murder, incest and homosexuality. Cartoons (and they
were rough and ribald) did not spare him: Cumberland was the villain
of the age. Besides, if his niece became Queen of England, he would
receive a crown of his own, for she could not succeed to the Kingdom
of Hanover.
   So Queen Adelaide patiently continued her carpet-work at Windsor,
and the Sailor King, understandably disconcerted to find his death
discussed before his coronation, continued to rule the country and
propose the Duke of Wellington for the Regency. Mrs Kent ('the
Swiss Governess', George =4 had called her), buxom and domineering,
with the little Leiningen regency behind her, was 'courted and sought
after as much as if she were already Regent', and Prince Leopold,
noted Mme de Lieven, 'takes a gloomy view of all that is going on.
All the royal princes are opposed to the Duke of Wellington. The
King is alone in his determination to support him.'
   The combination of the King and the victor of Waterloo was
enough, however, to alarm the most spirited opponents; and the Coburgs
needed to keep up a constant campaign. 'Prince Leopold and his
sister', wrote the usual observer, late in September, 'are
exploring the provinces in pursuit of popularity. The prince assumes
the air of a presumptive heir. The regency question will in all
probability be decided in favour of the Duchess of Kent...' And
since Dorothea never took her piercing eyes off the Coburg coalition,
she reported again on October 25th: 'The Duchess of Kent and her
brother hold themselves very high, as if the throne is to be theirs
tomorrow- and this is most unpleasant to the King. Leopold does not
show himself, but works silently underground.'
   The Regency Act of 183 settled, finally, that if the Queen were
to have a child and the King died before its majority, she should act
as its guardian and as regent; but that if she were childless and
Victoria ascended the throne at her uncle's death, the Duchess of Kent
should be her daughter's guardian and act as regent during her
minority. Most fortunately, at this moment Fate took a hand with the
chess game. In September 183 revolution broke out in Brussels.
14
LEOPOLD OF THE BELGIANS
   ON July 29th, revolution had burst out in Paris, Charles
=1 had fled, and Louis-Philippe, the ex-Duc d'Orle?2ans, the exile
of Twickenham, had accepted the crown 'from the hands of the
people'. Events in France had had immediate repercussions on
Belgium: the repercussions which Leopold, and indeed every student of
history, had expected.
   In 1792 the victory of Jemappes had put Belgium into French
hands; and French ideas had been imposed with effect. Division into
departments, centralization of government, the introduction of the
Code Napole?2on, the freedom of the Scheldt, had done much to
help the development of Belgium; and freedom of worship and civic
equality replaced the old principle of the nobles' supremacy. It was
not surprising that a considerable French party formed in Belgium; and
its influence only weakened when the Continental blockade began to
weigh heavily on the country. In 1815, when the Congress of Vienna
united the Belgians with the Dutch (whom they detested), the memory of
France grew strong again; and when William =1 of Holland attempted to
amalgamate his two peoples, Belgium thought only of separating from
Holland and rejoining France.
   The effect of the French Revolution in July 183 was therefore
immediate; the July days in Paris were followed by the August days in
Brussels. On August 24th, at the Brussels Opera House, Auber's
Masaniello was being performed. It dealt with the Neapolitan
rising against Spain; it was a work of revolution. And when the tenor
began to sing his famous aria, 'Des armes, des flambeaux!'
the audience swept out, drunk with the message, into the summer night.
Brussels was pillaged, and the Belgian Revolution had begun.
   The spontaneous movement spread across the Belgian provinces, and
it took King William some time to organize forces to crush the
rebellion. Late in September, the Belgian National Congress voted the
separation of Belgium from Holland, and in October it declared Belgium
to be an independent state.
# 212
<28 TEXT G21>
At any rate I found it quite difficult to shake my feelings free
from beliefs which my reason had rejected.
   Fortunately for me my mother was unusually liberal-minded. I do
not recall her ever attempting to implant any kind of rigid doctrine
or fearful religious truth into her children's minds. Her aim was
that we should not have peculiar views and that we should grow up
mildly orthodox, so that at a later age we could discard as much or as
little of conventional religion as might suit us.
   I suspect that my father had been a sceptic and certainly my
maternal grandfather was a convinced one.
   Agnosticism, as Huxley called it, was becoming respectable, and I
welcomed that mental attitude of being free to think for myself.
   It is not very surprising that presently I earned the family
nickname of the 'the youngest infallible', for I knew all the
answers though not, as yet, many of the questions. These came my way
later in life.
   Perhaps because of my secret ambitions I was curious to see what
eminent people looked like. At Clifton College, I had often seen the
immortal W. G. Grace watching his son at the wicket, and I, like
other boys, had stared at the vast bearded celebrity, sometimes even
having the privilege of seeing him play on the Close and smiting the
ball for six. A heavenly spectacle!
   At University College, the discoverer of argon, Sir William
Ramsay, looked disappointingly ordinary. We were often given tickets
to soire?2es of the Royal Geographical Society where we could feast
our eyes on great men and hear them talk; Sir William Crookes
lecturing on those magical tubes of his which produced X-rays, Stanley
on his African explorations, Nansen and his ship the Fram, George
Nathaniel Curzon who had just explored the Pamirs, and others famous
then but now forgotten.
   It seemed to me that these celebrities were much like ordinary
folk to look at; why shouldn't I become one too?
   During the first half of 1896 my mother was visiting her sisters
in New Zealand and I became a boarder in a relative's family in
Hampstead. It was very uncongenial and I was desperately unhappy
there, living in mental solitude without friends of any kind.
   On my mother's return in the summer of that year a much brighter
prospect opened. She took a house in Cambridge and there I made a
fresh start as a non-collegiate student, with a view ultimately of
obtaining my medical degree.
CHAPTER =2
Cambridge
   The Medical Student at Cambridge took the Natural Science
Tripos (in Anatomy and Physiology) as the first stage of his training
but in those three years my chief interests lay in other directions.
I worked hard at studying dramatic technique and in seeing plays
whenever I could. In addition there were theological and
philosophical works to be read and then problems to be discussed with
anyone who would listen.
   At eighteen it is easy to settle the affairs of this world and to
arrange those of the next to one's own satisfaction; but among
undergraduates there are so often some whose minds are fixed in error,
evidently afflicted by the sin of invincible ignorance, from which one
is oneself happily free.
   In those years at Cambridge I was reaching the stage in
self-education where questions become more exciting than answers.
   Sermons by eminent divines, preaching on Sundays in Great St.
Mary's, provided me with abundant specimens of theological conundrums;
and it was instructive too, in view of a possible political career, to
hear examples of oratory.
   I found Father Maturin the most remarkable and Bishop Gore the
most profound. I also heard Bishop Temple (the great, not the less),
Archdeacon Farrar (of Eric or Little by Little), Mandel Creighton,
Scott Holland, and others who figured largely in the ecclesiastical
world of the nineties.
   Yet in spite of them:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~There was a Door to which I found no Key:
   There was a veil past which I could not see.
<END QUOTE>
   Among undergraduates my greatest friend was a theological
student with whom I argued interminably many a long evening; we had
nothing whatever in common and we remained intimate friends for fifty
years.
   I had reached the age when sexual questions pester the
imagination and supply undergraduates with an absorbing topic for
discussion.
   Nature demands information.
   How to obtain it?
   One heard vaguely that 'they order this matter better in
France', but aesthetic principles coupled with an element of
Puritanical shyness in my case, forbade practical experiments, and
happily an alternative source of knowledge was available, namely the
kind of literature which was commonly condemned as 'improper',
'pornographic' or 'obscene'.
   I am amazed to recall how mild were the books which, in the
nineties, served to provoke a young man's furtive blush; the
Decameron, Contes Drolatiques and Zola's novels, in atrocious
translations; Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey and the like which I
suppose would today make schoolgirls yawn. Doubtless there are modern
equivalents which serve youth equally well as psychological sedatives,
satisfying for the time being those unruly impulses which might
otherwise interfere with scholarship.
   I must not forget to remind myself that among other subjects at
Cambridge I studied Anatomy and Physiology as a preliminary stage to
medicine and as an exercise in viewing the naked truth without
flinching. For the English mind this is curiously distasteful.
   It was the custom among us students to attend Addenbrooke's
Hospital to watch operations, as a hardening process. I found this
had the drawback that as soon as an operation had started I fainted;
the power of suggestion- or the dislike of the naked truth- was such
that eventually I even began to faint as I entered the hospital gates.
Clearly I should have to abandon all hopes of becoming a doctor. Or
was there a cure?
   Making one more attempt, which I vowed should be the last, I went
early to the torture chamber, sat in the front row from which escape
was impossible, and spent the morning fainting and coming round over
and over again.
   That effectively cured me; it also taught a useful lesson,
applicable to many things in life.
   As a non-collegiate student I found myself meeting a range of
other undergraduates much more varied than at most of the colleges.
There were men of all ages, creeds and races. I recall a room full
of us, fourteen in number and no two of the same nation, all jabbering
English. We happened to mention how some English families boast of
Norman blood. Then a Greek claimed for his family a much longer
descent and then among those from the East the 'bidding' rose by
thousands, until an Icelander capped all by claiming direct lineal
descent from Odin.
   Evidently Norman blood is mere 6vin ordinaire.
   I seized the opportunity afforded by Cambridge of starting to
collect books; I still have my eighteenth-century editions of Swift,
Pope, Hudibras and the Spectator which I bought in 1897 off
Mr. David's famous stall in the Market Place.
   Whilst at Cambridge I was taught by my mother to appreciate
Gothic architecture, a subject she had much studied, and during the
vac we visited the glories of Normandy. From her too I began to learn
something about pictures, especially those of the Old Italian Masters.
Names like Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi and Botticelli came to have
a friendly significance, filling a gap in my raw sceptical mind. I
was beginning to realize that it doesn't matter much whether a legend
is true so long as it is beautiful.
   At the end of my time at the University I had learnt that a
properly trained aesthetic sensibility was a more reliable guide in
life than any system of theological dogmas, though I would admit that
this might not apply to all people. For me, however, aesthetics
seemed to be a more civilized mode of guidance than theology.
   In order to develop aesthetic tastes it would be necessary to
familiarize oneself with as many forms of art as possible, but how in
the world could one do all this if one had to waste so much time
learning to become a doctor?
   How much easier it would be to belong to some Puritanical sect
that stifles all expressions of beauty, hates arts and is the sole
possessor of the key which unlocks the Heavenly Gates! How simple
just to worship ugliness and call it God!
   But as it was, Science and Art were making rival demands on my
time and thoughts; and it seemed that while Art added to the joy of
life, Science added only to its comforts.
   I suppose it is common enough to look back later in life and to
say what was the most valuable of the gifts one gets from three years
at the University. In my case certainly, it was a keener appreciation
of the beauty of things, ranging from the pictures of van Eyck which
I heard Professor Waldstein expound in lectures in the Fitzwilliam
Museum, to the shape of the buildings of the Colleges. Make your way
along the Backs on a May morning to the Wilderness, penetrate passages
and archways, cross bridges and gaze again and again at the Great
Court of Trinity: this, believe me, is what education means, real
education, for through appreciating the beauty of things you come in
time to appreciate the beauty of ideas.
CHAPTER =3
Bart's
   After Cambridge, I entered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
London, at the beginning of 19. My mother and I lived in the
suburbs and we were so fortunate as to have as a neighbour the late
J. W. Allen, lecturer (later Professor) in History at Bedford
College for Women.
   He supplied me with what I most required at that phase of
development; he became a guide to my reading and an admirable critic
of my attempts to write plays; and he had enormous enthusiasm for good
literature.
   I recall his lending me, one evening, the poems of D. G.
Rossetti.
   I sat up all night until I had read the volume from cover to
cover. I have not read any of it since!
   I received that night an exhilarating shock to my sensibilities
in appreciating the strange beauty words can present when arranged in
particular patterns.
   If, with a taste for literature one happened to have grown up
about the beginning of this century, one almost certainly would be
conscious of that quality called 'style'. For then books were
admired chiefly for their 'style' and writers laboured in pursuit
of 6le mot juste.
   As you read those slender greenish volumes of the Pseudonym
Library, pausing to discover the peculiar merits of Some Emotions
and a Moral, you felt that however obscure the meaning, the style
was superb.
   There was, too, The Yellow Book, a veritable storehouse of
literary style and if one were in doubt what the word implied, there
was Walter Pater's essay on Style to settle the matter.
   It was in fact a kind of literary 'class distinction', a
superior quality which only the select were capable of appreciating.
It was not the matter presented by the author so much as the manner
that counted.
   The reader learnt to be sensitive to the shape of a sentence, to
the use of 'master words' round which an author like Stevenson
would build significant paragraphs; and to admire those splashes of
colour that were almost purple.
   How gratifying to one's self-esteem to patronize an art so
exclusive! But alas!- already in those Edwardian years the hoofs of
democracy were trampling over the flower beds. A more plebeian mode
was in demand and authors proclaimed their views in loud, level tones.
   About that time I experienced another shock at an exhibition of
Romney's portraits, many of Lady Hamilton. No one, I thought, could
ever have really looked as beautiful as that; it must be a trick. I
sat, watching that magical creature casting a spell over me,
extraordinarily exhilarating; but later came the shock of realizing
that this kind of knock-out blow might happen to me in real life some
day.
# 222
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We had learnt about them in our daily scripture lessons. We found
Europe a very accommodating continent, with the easily recognized Italy
"boot", and a pink Russia taking up most of the space, where we
were only required to point out St. Petersburg and perhaps Moscow.
Like the Grecian urn and beauty, that was all we knew or needed to
know about Russia. When it came to nearer home, then prejudice and
patriotism had their stubborn way with us. All very well for England
to spread her patchwork quilt of counties before us. We viewed her
with unsympathetic eyes. But unroll the map of Scotland, and here was
Geography itself. What could a whole wilderness of maps display that
could beat this land of ours? Look to the West, and there was pink
Argyll, all broken up by long strips of blue sea, and lovely islands
with romantic Highland names. Over the sea to Skye with Prince
Charlie, and to Iona, where the long-ago saint built a shrine and
raised a cross. Back to the East, and there was Edinburgh.
   And here were we, actually in a house in a street in Edinburgh!
Gleefully we pointed out the Firth of Forth, in which we had all
bathed and paddled at one or other of the little villages on its
coast. North Berwick, with the Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle, and
over in Fife, Aberdour, its woods lovely in Maytime with the blue of
wild hyacinths, and Largo, where Robinson Crusoe was born, Elie, with
Macduff's cave and the rubies on Ruby Beach, and grey St. Andrews,
with the links, the ruins, and the castle, and the echoes of the
long-ago lullaby:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Hush 1thee, hush 1thee, do not fret 1thee,
   The Black Douglas will not get 1thee.
<END QUOTE>
   We chattered, we pointed out, and compared notes on beaches and
sand-castles and spades and shells, and jelly fish, and Miss Gray
joined in and told us stories of Macduff, and Macbeth, and the Black
Douglas. I had been to the Trossachs, and had seen Ben Lomond,
"Ellen's isle" and the "Silver Strand", so when the poetry
lesson was from The Lady of the Lake the pictures in my mind
flashed into unforgettable words. Lessons? These things were at the
heart of us, and Miss Gray was there with us. That's the sort of
person she was.
   The same with History. History was for Miss Gray, and easily for
us, a pageant of heroes and splendour, of pity and even tears.
Scotland was of course our first love. Her history blazoned before
our eyes the bravery of Wallace, Bruce and his indomitable spider,
Bannockburn, Mary Queen of Scots and best of all, Bonnie Prince
Charlie, with tartans waving and banners flying....
   Little Arthur's England brought us good King Alfred and
Harold after a page or two of blue-painted Britons with Druids and
mistletoe- and so on to the lion-hearted Richard and his brave
Crusaders, and the sad tale, with a pathetic picture, of the little
princes in the Tower. And, of course, that hero of heroes for all
little girls, the glorious and adorable Sir Walter Raleigh, cloak and
all. We learnt the names of the wives of Henry =8, we loved Charles
=1 and hated Cromwell, and after being a little bored by Queen Anne
and the Georges, we ended up comfortably with our own Queen Victoria,
and she, in our childish loyalties, was and would be ever the one and
only heroine of the National Anthem.
   Little Arthur's England- I have it still. I remember how I
would open it and read the first words: "You know, my dear little
Arthur" and then turn to the last page and read the last words: "I
hope it will help you to understand bigger and better histories bye
and bye." I don't know if it was "Little Arthur", but most
certainly it was little Miss Gray who helped me to that understanding,
awaking in me, sublimely unconscious, interest and energy for tackling
these "bigger and better histories" in later years.
   One of our lessons was to read aloud.
   I do not know what children read in school these days, but the
people who compiled our reading books must have been as deeply
concerned about what we read as about how we read it- for our
books were made up of extracts from great writers, interspersed with
poetry from the great poets. I remember being charmed and amused by
the Sir Roger de Coverley papers from the Spectator, while
the translation of Pliny's letters to Tacitus describing the eruption
of Vesuvius, and the lava pouring down on Pompeii and Herculaneum,
must have made so deep an impression that it was still clear at the
back of my mind when, many years later, I saw the smoke of Vesuvius
above the Bay of Naples, and stood among the ruins of the cities.
   Of all the valuable things we learnt in those early days in "the
little Schoolroom" nothing, I think, was more valuable than the
poetry, which we not only got by heart, but, stirred by Miss Gray's
enthusiasms, also took to heart, laying the foundations of a love of
poetry which has ever remained with me. Can I ever forget the
stimulating joy of standing up and reciting:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them,
   Volleyed and thundered.
<END QUOTE>
   and all the time seeing in my mind's eye that brave Brigade,
galloping, galloping into immortal glory? "Theirs not to reason
why!" Neither was it mine- the splendour and the tragedy were all
in all.
   And "The Schooner Hesperus!" with the ache in my heart for the
skipper's little daughter lying on that forsaken beach,
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The salt sea frozen on her breast,
   The salt tears in her eye.
<END QUOTE>
   And the appeal of the incorruptible Casabianca, standing alone
amid the flames, preferring death to disobedience! Oh, the pity of
it! I felt it, Miss Gray felt it, we all felt it.
   I think we regarded the "Queen of the May" rather in the light
of a distinguished stranger, for no Queens of May ever reigned in
Scotland, but we liked her, and sympathised with her eager desire to
be up and doing- the lilt of her lines was easy to learn, and she
lilted so many touching and interesting things that we could only
rejoice when she, having "thought to pass away before" went on
living and lilting for quite a page or two longer. Then for
rollicking fun, could anything beat "John Gilpin and his Spouse",
and that gay picnic at the "The Bell" at Edmonton, and the
screaming from the balcony when the wigless John went flashing by on
his run-away steed?
   And surely there was no resisting the charm of the dashing
"Young Lochinvar" and his fair Ellen? "One touch to her hand, and
one word in her ear" (and couldn't one just see the glint in his
eye!) and in a trice they're off and away, all the wedding guests
coming helter-skelter behind them! Then ho! for the "racing and
chasing on Cannobie Lee!" How we all laughed! How Miss Gray
laughed! In gentler strain, could anything be sweeter than that dear
little brook telling its own story and how it came "from haunts of
coot and hern", chatter-chattering its way to "join the brimming
river"? I knew quite a lot of chattering brooks myself. And I
think that even we, young as we were, felt the strain of music linked
with infinity in the haunting refrain:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   For men may come and men may go.
   But I go on for ever.
<END QUOTE>
   Many another poem could I speak of which sang itself into my
heart and memory. But for me, best of all, the ever delightful
blacksmith in his smithy "under a spreading chestnut tree".
   Best for me, because I actually knew a blacksmith, just like
Longfellow's, minus the chestnut tree, who lived on Tweedside in a
jewel of a tiny village called Clovenfords, where I was taken every
spring. My father and my brothers put up at the Inn, where Hogg the
Ettrick Shepherd, and Sir Walter Scott, had put up before them- but
Louis and I and Ann lived in the village blacksmith's cottage, with
the smithy next door, and through the wall we could hear the bellows
blowing and the horses stamping. My blacksmith too, had "large and
sinewy hands"- "swiney" as one of my own children misread it-
and often did I stand and watch him shoeing a horse, and was allowed
to put my small hands on the bellows and help blow the fire. So it is
of my Clovenfords blacksmith, dark-eyed and black-bearded, in his
smithy among the hills, that Longfellow brings back the memory.
   At ten o'clock Miss de Dreux rang the big brass bell in the
hall. She did this every hour until two o'clock, when the day-girls
went home. At the sound of the bell, doors would open and release
girls talking and laughing; feet ran to and fro, as we all changed
rooms for different classes. Each hour, silence changed to noise, and
noise again to silence. A memory stays with me, of arriving late one
morning to find all doors closed against me, like the gates of doom.
The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner seemed an echo of
my anxiously beating heart. I could hear the voice of Mr. Robertson
in the salle a?3 manger, and perhaps the German tones of
Madame Kunz in the grande salle with the Senior German class.
Upstairs and down I heard the muffled sound of pianos, hesitating
scales, or stumbling sonatas, and the guttural German voices of Miss
Wehle and Miss Javrova the music teachers- all very awe-inspiring for
an anxious culprit.
   In the grande salle, from ten to eleven o'clock, Mr.
Robertson taught writing and arithmetic. Seated at one of the long
desks, I had my first thrill with real ink and a quill pen. Oh, the
spluttering of that pen! And the messiness of the thin pink
papier buvard that soaked up the blots! And the pages of
alphabetical moral maxims we scratched and blotted in out copy-books!
   For our sums we used slates, and slate-pencils, which would often
give out a horrible screech as our small hands slipped on a line or
figure, and this would be echoed by a screech of agony from everybody
in the room. We did a great deal of rubbing out with the torchon,
helped by a lick from a finger.
   Mr. Robertson had a long red beard and whiskers which tickled
my neck as he bent over me correcting my sums....
   We had out first French lessons from Miss de Dreux. Hall's
First French Course, all masculines and feminines, troublesome
conjugations, and exercises to write at home. Before very long we
were reading Un Philosophe sous les Toits- I cannot remember
the author, but I know I had a sort of affection for that old
philosopher and his meditations under his roofs.
   It was dear Miss Bogen who gave us our first German lessons, only
vocabulary, no books. She was a sweet, kind creature and we all loved
her. Later on, when Madame Kunz took us over, German became
important, with Weisse's Grammar, Schiller, Goethe's "Faust" and
Heine's poetry. But even in these early days we were growing daily
more familiar with speech both in French and German.
   Then of course, there was music. There were two piano
mistresses, both German, both very plain, both admirable teachers,
though severe, both trained at Leipzig Conservatoire, which in those
days was considered the last word for training "in all kinds of
1musick". Miss Javrova, who taught us little ones, had a very long
nose. Though she was strict, she was kind and appreciative of effort.
I was a nervously conscientious child, and took my practising
seriously. "You must play this ten times over", Miss Javrova would
say, pointing with relentless fingers to a jumble of crotchets and
quavers.
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Again there was a long pause. 'We're mates,' he said at last;
that was all, yet I felt there was something more to it.
   I sent for the sergeant of the platoon both men were in and asked
him to try to find out discreetly what lay behind this. It did not
take him long. Rifleman A had a secret; he was illiterate, or very
nearly so. Rifleman B was teaching him to read and write in private.
It had cost A a great effort to confess his secret to his mate and he
could not face confiding in somebody else; they wanted to complete the
tuition. I took B off the draft and eventually sent them on another
one together.
   A disproportionate amount of my time seemed to be taken up with
delinquency, military or civil. Apart from the daily 'crime sheet'
there were occasional courts martial, appearances in the police courts
of neighbouring towns as 'prisoner's friend', and even, on one
occasion, which I shall describe in another connection, a journey to
London to give 'evidence of character' in a case against a
rifleman.
   The first time I appeared at a court martial I took infinite
pains with my case for the defence. I interviewed the prisoner- a
deserter- in the guardroom several times, sorted out the obvious lies
from the more plausible parts of his story and, discovering that the
essence of desertion lies in the intention not to return, built up an
elaborate argument to show that the man had intended to come back, or
at least that he could not be proved to have intended otherwise. This
last became difficult when it emerged belatedly, via the civilian
police, that he had flogged- that is, sold- every stitch of his
military clothing and every piece of his equipment.
   My case got off to a bad start. The President of the Court asked
me if I was making a plea in mitigation and seemed rather impatient
when I said no, I had a complete defence to offer. The Court fidgeted
and seemed bored; the Judge Advocate looked, to me at least, half
amused and half contemptuous. A sense of injustice spurred me on, and
there is no doubt that it spurred me too far and too long.
   The sentence was 112 days' detention. Leaving the court I met
an officer of another company who had been very helpful to me; he had
once been the commandant of a military prison. He put his hand on my
shoulder and said something to the effect that that was quite a speech
I had made. It was nice of him to say so, I replied unhappily, but it
hadn't had much effect, had it? Oh yes, he said. A considerable
effect. 'How?' I asked, irritably. 'Well,' he said
thoughtfully, 'I've seen a lot of those cases, you know, and I would
say that without your speech he would probably have got fifty-six
days.'
   If I defended that prisoner too much there was one I defended too
little, indeed not at all. He was a camp hospital orderly, summoned
to a police court about six miles away. I was particularly busy on
the morning of the case and sent a message to the hospital that the
rifleman should report to the Company Office and I would drive him
into town. My idea was that he could tell me the facts on the way.
But a message came back that the rifleman had already left. I
realised I had cut everything rather fine and left at once. But by
the time I reached the court my man was already in the dock and there
was no chance of consulting him. I was in time to hear the charge,
which was that he had taken a motor bicycle without the owner's
permission and ridden it without a licence; also that he had stolen a
blanket and a groundsheet. He pleaded not guilty.
   The Chief Constable took him through the story to the point where
it was established that he had, in fact, taken the articles. Why?
asked the Chief Constable. And why did he plead not guilty?
   The rifleman was a regular soldier with a row of service
chevrons. He stood like a ramrod in the dock, head slightly raised,
looking ahead and upward over the Bench, and he spoke as if delivering
a well-rehearsed recitation. 'Well, sir,' he said, 'it was like
this, sir. There was a dance at the camp that night, sir. I wanted
to take a girl home, sir.'
   The Chief Constable asked patiently what that had to do with the
charge. Why had he taken the articles in question? 'Well, sir. It
was like this, sir. There was a dance at the camp that night, sir. I
wanted to take a girl home, sir.'
   All right, said the Chief Constable. He wanted to take the girl
home; that was why he took the bicycle, believing the owner would have
lent it if asked. But why did he take a blanket and a groundsheet?
'Well, sir. It was like this, sir...'
   The whole routine came out again, not an inflection varied. The
Chief Constable interrupted. 'Why,' he asked wearily, 'did you
take a blanket and a groundsheet?'
   Suddenly the soldier relaxed his rigid posture, looked down at
the Chief Constable, and in a totally different voice full of
challenging contempt for his interrogator's obtuseness, he said,
'2y'wouldn't like me to tell you, 2wouldya?'
   All I did in that case was pay the five-pound fine which was
quickly imposed and arrange for it to be deducted from his pay.
   When I wasn't being an ineffective lay lawyer I was often an
employment agent. The company's roll included a number of men who
were drawing specialist rates of pay but for whom we had no job in
their specialised line. When a specialist was wanted anywhere the
application came to me. One day the Adjutant telephoned that a cook
was required urgently at a Stately Home some miles away which had been
requisitioned as a high level military headquarters. I consulted the
Sergeant-Major; we went over our lists of cooks and chose one. He was
sent for and seemed a very presentable man. I gave instructions for
him to be driven, with his kit, to his new and cosy-sounding job.
   That evening, passing a bunch of soldiers in a camp road way, I
thought I saw the cook, then decided I must be mistaken. But the
thought persisted and I sent for the Sergeant-Major. Oh, no, he said,
I must be mistaken. He had personally seen the cook off in a truck
with all his kit. I told him to enquire. Half an hour later he
reported back. I was right. Our cook was home again. The
Sergeant-Major asked him what had happened. 'I don't know,' the
man said, looking genuinely puzzled. 'I'd only just got there and I
was in the kitchen and a sergeant came down and said the General
wanted tea. He had company up in the drawing room. Wanted it right
away. Well, when I took the pail up...'
   Nobody had ticked him off. He had simply and immediately been
ordered back to where he came from. He probably established a record
for short tenure as a General's cook, but I should like to have been
present at the moment in the drawing room when tea was served.
   It was ironic that while I was trying to deal with the problems
of the 'employed' men I had also to cope with a less constant but
trying problem of unemployed men. The main body of the company was
fully engaged in a training programme but there were at times quite
large numbers of men who had completed their training and were waiting
to be drafted overseas.
   No soldier is more difficult to handle than the idle soldier, and
none is quicker to realise when duties or training are designed more
to prevent boredom or to keep him out of mischief than to further his
proficiency. The draftee is restless, impatient, and apt to see no
reason why he shouldn't be on embarkation leave until it is time for
him to go abroad. When, as sometimes happened, a man had had
embarkation leave twice and was still hanging about a camp in England,
his morale was unpredictable, even from day to day.
   One sternly devised further training programmes and tried to
stress their importance, but the scepticism was palpable. It was
better to be unorthodox- so long as higher authority didn't find
out- and intersperse their days with what were frankly games. When
influenza struck down several platoon commanders I was reduced to
putting bodies of these men under one NCO and offering a packet
of cigarettes to the first man to reach the top of a nearby hill-
stressing, of course, the need for maintaining a high pitch of
physical fitness- or sending them out in pairs in 'initiative
tests', which amused them, gave them some freedom, and at least got
them out from under my feet.
   All the trained men had qualified in D and M (driving and
maintenance) and when I was given two buses for use in the company's
defensive ro?5le in the event of invasion I packed off whole groups
to practise bus driving. I discovered that men who had driven even
heavy vehicles for years took some time to get the knack of handling a
bus and, though their military careers were unlikely to call for such
a skill, this again kept them busy on something a little off the
beaten track of routine.
   Nearly all the men were Londoners, and home was only a couple of
hours hitch-hiking away; so absenteeism became rife. It was coolly
calculated. They knew that if they had a few days at home and were
put in the guardroom when they returned they would be released if the
draft movement order came through, so what had they to lose?
   When Christmas came we had a mass of unauthorised departures. A
pale-faced corporal reported one night that his entire barrack room
was deserted. He had found a packet of cigarettes on his pillow with
a message attached- 'Happy Christmas, Corp'- and signed by all
the missing men. The temptation to take no action, knowing they would
all be back as soon as the holiday was over, was great, but one could
not take that easy way. I had the local police of each man's home
district informed, and a sufficient number of them spent their
Christmas in civilian cells to serve as a warning to others.
   The various invasion alarms were almost a relief in that they
called for action which at least approximated to war, though nothing
in fact happened. The company's task was to guard the perimeter of an
airfield a few miles away. When the alarm stand-by was received our
curious caravan set off- two buses, a couple of jeeps, and two
dispatch riders.
   We were assigned our ro?5le only when the first of these alarms
was received, so we arrived at the airfield in the dark. Two World
War =1 soldiers, now ground defence officers in the RAF,
greeted us. My first question was as to the extent of the
perimeter. It was nine miles. My training told me that you should
never spread men thinly, so I split my force into two small mobile
units (each with a bus) and proposed to hold them in a central
position while pickets covered the perimeter. But the RAF men
would have none of this and it was made clear to me that once on their
premises I came under their orders. So I had the ridiculous task of
spreading my men- about 12 of them- along a nine-mile line. The
RAF men supervised my placing of them and apparently approved.
When dawn came I found that most of them had a field of fire which
could have caused them only to shoot up the anti-aircraft gunners on
the rising ground around us.
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   By and large, the Citroen was a remarkably good car. Like most
French machines, it always did what you expected it to do, and you
never felt insecure driving it, no matter what the circumstances might
be. Both the steering and the change mechanism were rather heavy, but
one got used to this. There were times, too, when I longed for a
fourth gear, particularly in hilly Devonshire country, I remember,
when I was often caught between ratios and felt quite helpless.
   Characteristic of its country of origin, you always knew that
there were only four cylinders working for you under the bonnet, and I
should have liked to try the Big 6, which must be a very pleasant
handful of a motor car. The cornering and the road-holding on the
Citroen were astonishingly good, as anyone knows who has driven one,
and the manner in which it remained glued to the ground going round
corners, no matter what the road surface might be, was most endearing.
But best of all was the Citroen's gluttony for work. It seemed to
relish being driven hard, and flat-out driving all day appeared to
leave it refreshed and longing for more.
   Sometimes that pleasant Citroen used to be subject to a minor
vibration period when cornering fast on lock. This was only a slight
nuisance, and was caused by the Carden shaft overrunning the engine at
certain times and not at others, creating a non-constant velocity. I
mention this only because the same thing, in a much more extreme form,
cropped up at Lagondas when we were testing the prototype 2 1/2-litre
Lagonda at Staines immediately after World War =2.
   For a long time we could not understand why, when travelling
slowly in top with practically no throttle, the engine appeared to
miss. This was all the more curious because when carrying only one
passenger under identical circumstances we had no trouble with the
engine at all.
   I don't know how long we all wasted on this annoying snag before
the answer suddenly occurred to us. Of course, we at last reasoned,
with the extra weight at the rear, the angle was altered between the
bevel-box and the wheels and we might be subjecting the Carden shaft
to a non-constant velocity. At last our reasoning was right, the
vibration occasioned giving an almost identical impression to that
caused by a missing engine.
   At that time I believe there was only one foreign firm making
constant velocity joints, and as it was quite impossible to get
supplies, we 'faked-up' this vibration period, quite successfully,
too. I don't know whether Alec Issigonis and his team met this same
trouble with the prototype Mini-Minor, but I was interested to see,
when the specification of this car was published, that the design
included a constant velocity joint. It would be interesting to know
if any other design teams have met the same trouble, and have been as
mystified as we were with the Lagonda.
   I think now that I ought really to have driven more cheap
'bread-and-butter' cars during my active years as a designer, and
indeed it was not even my choice that I drove one model almost daily
for several years. It came about in this way.
   After I had been 'bought' by Rolls-Royce and told to hand over
to Jack Barclay my own 8-litre car, I found myself in the unusual
position of being without personal transport. This was the first time
since about 191, when cars were still comparatively rare anyway, that
I had not had one. It was a curious feeling. I had to use buses and
Tubes, and I didn't like this much, so I took to walking instead,
which was probably better for me, but rather slow. At that time I
could barely have afforded the down payment on the cheapest on the
market, and though I hope I didn't tell anyone my dilemma, Billy
Rootes must have divined the reason behind my curious and
uncharacteristic new habit of tramping from point to point about
London.
   Billy Rootes (now Lord Rootes, of course) had been an active and
successful agent for Bentleys, and I knew him quite well by then; well
enough, anyway, for him to be able to ask me, without so much as a
blush, whether I wouldn't mind doing him a favour. 'I'd be very
grateful if you'd try this car,' he told me on the telephone one
day. 'I want your honest opinion on it.'
   The car in question was one of the new Hillman Minxes, and for
that particular week-end, and for almost every weekend for months
afterwards, a Minx or one of their larger cars used to be made
available to me. This was not only a great convenience, but I could
quite honestly tell him that I thought the Minx was a very nice little
car.
   I have never forgotten this kindly and thoughtful gesture of
Rootes at a time when things were not going so well for me. He has
not only deserved all the success he has had, but has reached his
present distinguished position by honesty and integrity as well as
kindness. I should doubt if he has any enemies.
   Some months later I was able to purchase a Minx for myself, on
the specially favourable terms Rootes offered me, and from then until
the beginning of the war I was never without one, although they were
really my wife's cars.
   I must say, though, that I was rather doubtful about going to the
South of France in a Hillman Minx after always doing the journey
previously in somewhat swifter and more robust machines. However, I
was lucky to have a car at all, and set out with my wife, a
considerable weight of luggage and some nervousness. But I was soon
surprised at how game and robust the Minx was, and how effortlessly
one could drive 35 miles in a day in it. It was hardly a grand
tourer, but the only trouble we had was with tyres, suffering five
punctures by the time we reached Le Mans, where I purchased some more
suitable ones.
   A Standard 8 scarcely seemed a suitable machine for the long trek
to the sun, either; but, like the Minx, it surprised me by its
willingness and ability to slog along all day at a reasonable average.
I had one of these for a short time after the war, and did many
thousands of miles in it. The road-holding was hardly brilliant, and
of course it was never intended to suffer the liberties I took with it
on one hurried return from the South of France, but it was quite a
good little car.
   The only car I drive regularly now is the nice little Morris
Minor, of which more later.
2
Motor Bicycles and Brooklands
   THE four-wheeled vehicle with its internal combustion engine
that we call the motor car has given me much pleasure, as well as pain
and disappointment. But I am not sure now whether I do not resent the
manner in which it has intruded, filling far too much of my life and
leaving me with insufficient time to explore so many other fields in
which I am interested, like meteorology and wireless telegraphy.
   Perhaps I regret now a little that I made the motor industry my
profession, if only because for so long the machines filled my life to
the exclusion of almost everything else. I sometimes wonder if I
should not have stuck to those fine, powerful and friendly things-
locomotives.
   The locomotive started it all for me, and if the railways had
provided me with a living to the standards I considered necessary, I
should probably have stuck with them. But it was a sad parting, and I
always missed them through the years of aero-engine and car designing.
It was, in fact, while I was working on locomotives at Doncaster that
I became a motor-bicycling enthusiast; and I certainly got more pure
fun out of the motor bicycle than I ever got from any of my cars,
although I willingly accept that sport on two wheels is essentially
for the young, and for me it was only a sport, with no commercial
purpose behind it.
   I look back now with great affection on those days of
motor-bicycle competition in Edwardian times, before I was afflicted
by the car 'bug'. All the events run by the Auto Cycle Union and
Motor Cycling Club possessed an excellent spirit of friendly,
co-operative, uncommercialized competitiveness. I do not remember a
single hill-climb, sprint, trial or Brooklands race in which this
spirit was not present. It was not unusual to see competitors helping
one another by the roadside, or making last-moment adjustments to one
another's machines just before a race.
   I discovered very sharply just how tough competition work was
when, without any previous experience, I entered my 3-h.p.
Quadrant for the London-Edinburgh Trial. This Quadrant, with its
surface carburettor, was rather like an unreliable and uncomfortable
present-day motorized bicycle to drive. Any healthy young man today
would gladly take his motorized bicycle from London to Edinburgh; that
would be no great achievement, if quite hard work pedalling up some of
the steeper hills. But we had to do this journey to a tight schedule
on roads that in places seemed not to have been touched since they
broke up after the Roman occupation. It took a day and night to
accomplish, and the only food was at the control points; but I was
always too late at these to have time to eat and did the trip on
apples and chocolate as I went along. To my astonishment, I got a
gold medal, too!
   I did a lot of these endurance trials after this, enjoying both
the spirit behind them and the sense of independent competitiveness
out on the open road that they inspired. I did them mostly on Rexs
and Indians; London to Exeter, London to Land's End and back several
times, London to Plymouth and back; and each was a really testing
challenge to your endurance and your aptitude, for, of course,
breakdowns were frequent.
   Some of the hill-climbs, too, were really devastating, and the
competition very close, with a fifth of a second often separating the
three or four fastest times. Events I remember particularly were
those run at Kop Hill near Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire and at
Sharpenhoe near Luton, and of course those great runs up Snaefell in
the Isle of Man after the Tourist Trophy races. As these became more
popular their importance became recognized by the factories, and works
teams began to appear.
   Naturally these works teams soon dominated the hill-climbs, and I
had great sport as an independent trying to beat them. With
experience I began to get the hang of tuning my 5-h.p. Indian,
lightening the pistons and putting up the compression and generally
fiddling, until I began to put up faster times than the works riders,
which gave me more pleasure than anything. In fairness I should add
that I got every sort of help from the factory, who were quite happy
so long as an Indian won!
   Motor-bicycle racing at Brooklands was a tame business after the
T.T. and hill-climbs. Brooklands races were usually short
sprints or one-hour events, with the results depending less on the
riders than the machines. There was not much finesse involved in
racing on Brooklands, except perhaps in avoiding the worst bits of
surface. I have never believed that Edge's run on the Napier soon
after it was opened was responsible for the poor surface from which
Brooklands suffered. This was always worse towards the top of the
bankings, and I don't think that the builders ever succeeded in
satisfactorily blending this top section. Even in the earliest days
they always seemed to be mending parts of the tracks, and this was not
always as well done as it could have been, with the consequence that
it never got over this roughness.
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I know I felt I had to put into few words everything that I had
been brought up to believe in throughout my life. This seemed an
impossible and almost a ridiculous task. I wrote very little and very
quickly. 'I am a lifelong vegetarian'- 'I believe in the
biblical injunction "1thou 1shalt not kill"'- 'I believe man
is a rational being'- I said I was willing to do any sort of work
in the Red Cross or St. John Ambulance Brigade, but that I was not
willing to serve in the Army, even in the R.A.M.C., where I
should be under military discipline.
   I shall not describe my feelings as a few weeks later I appeared
before the Northampton Tribunal in the Town Hall, except to say that I
was very shy and quite inexperienced in words. My father went with
me. I sat on a chair in a gangway opposite The Tribunal members with
a large number of the public on either side. The proceedings were
brief and simple: I was questioned on what I had written in my
application form and about the work I was doing; my father supported
my views; and the member of The Tribunal who asked me about my pay
appeared satisfied that it was 1/6d. a day. There was no hectoring
and no bullying.
   I was given exemption conditional upon my continuing my work. I
asked no more. I was not asking for a logical world.
   But there was the world without as well as the world within. For
the first time in my life I was living in the country where I could
see the beauty of the trees in winter and the slow coming of spring.
I had seen spring before but never the changes day by day in the
countryside: I was moved by the awakening of the elms, the budding of
the oaks, and the tracery of the beeches; and I found a communion with
Nature greater than that with man, and I saw that man could not
disturb Nature's harmony or even separate himself entirely from that
harmony.
   On my half-days I explored the countryside on foot or on my
bicycle; I visited Castor and Wansford in England; I saw Oundle and
the great church at Fotheringhay, and the quiet stone of Stamford
beside the magnificence of Burghley. I thought of John Clare as I
cycled through Helpstone, and from the narrow Fen roads I had distant
views of Ely in the setting sun. I saw my native countryside as I had
never seen it before.
   But if the work of Nature suggested harmony, I saw little harmony
in the world of man at war. But I lived in the companionship and
friendliness of common soldiers in the little hospital community. I
ate with them, I talked with them and I took them out in their chairs.
They were Regulars, Reservists, Territorials and Kitchener's Men. I
learnt the names and badges of the regiments, I heard the different
accents, I heard of rivalries and quarrels.
   I saw the wounded men arrive, recover, and get their ticket: they
told me what John Bull said, as if Bottomley were a Biblical
prophet; I was in a literary world of Elinor Glyn, Marie Corelli and
Victoria Cross; I learnt to distinguish Roman Catholics by the
forthrightness and foulness of their language; and I learnt something
of the simplicity and the credulity of the common soldier.
   I lived in a world of Army slang- of char, burgoo and pawnee, of
mush and rooti, and of pozzywallahs and squarepushing; and I also met
a rich Anglo-Saxon world of words and experiences that had no meaning
for me.
   As I wrote letters for some of the illiterate ones, or read
letters which they had received, I felt lost in the simple world of
sex in which they lived. I remember my blushes when a young soldier
asked me to read a letter to him; it was from a servant girl,
addressed from 'the Precincts, Peterborough' and started quite
simply 'I wish I was in bed with you'. I was shown the little
cottage across the fields where a local prostitute lived, heard of her
technique for keeping her husband away and I knew her likely customers
among the troops. I was introduced to what I had never really
believed existed when the tough-looking Irish Reservist with the
smashed elbow, the doorkeeper of a Dublin Hotel, showed me his
notebook with the list of prostitutes' names and addresses for his
hotel guests.
   The Easter Rebellion in Ireland brought a tense atmosphere, the
Irish soldiers became centres of interest with small groups in excited
conversation or argument and there was quarrelling among the
washers-up over their extra beer. A few sat alone in their suffering.
   I heard of life at the Front from men who had been in the
Expeditionary Force. An old Regular Soldier sat talking to me one
day. His experiences of war had not shocked him or embittered him,
but they had made him see something else in human nature, something
that he had not realized existed before. He had invented a word to
describe some of the things he had seen: it was brutalitarianism.
   As I lived with the wounded men I found a friendship and a
kindness that I had never met before and a sympathy that bridged our
differing attitudes to war.
   There is the picture of the Long Gallery as I saw it the first
evening in the soft lighting of the oil-lamps and the little lamps on
the lockers, with the blue uniforms, the Steinway Grand and the
paintings.
   Then there is another picture in the morning light when the wards
are tidied for the doctor's round, the nurses are busy, the men are in
bed or standing by their lockers, and the talk is of lead-swinging and
of tickets. The regular visits by Dr. Walker and the inspections by
Colonel Openshaw or Medical Red Hats from London or Cambridge, or by
Harvey Reeves and his staff from Northampton, all mean extra care in
sweeping floors and polishing boilers.
   Some of the surgeons never speak to the men but look at the
tortured flesh as though it were a bone dug up from the London Clay.
One morning a red-hatted gentleman calls for a pair of scissors as he
examines the front of a soldier's thigh, and without explanation
plunges the scissors into the wound, making a great gash in the flesh,
and the soldier shrieks and bounds into the air.
   I cannot separate the men from their wounds and suffering. The
faces of the men, the wounds they bore, the beds they slept in and
even names still come back to me.
   There was the garrulous Bracey with the red face, monotonous
voice, and stiff knee covered with wounds, who sat on the bed and told
his story: he said that every anaesthetic took six months off a man's
life; he had already had sixteen, so that meant he had lost eight
years- and there were still more operations to come; yet that was
better than being like Cain or Thompson who had each had a leg off, or
better still than the little Canadian whom I often carried about in my
arms because he had lost both his legs.
   But it was Max the tall Irish Guardsman with his thin waxen face
and black hair who distressed me more than any of the others, as he
stooped and coughed as he walked about. He had a huge wound in his
chest which the sisters washed out with long tubes and hissing fluid,
and then he coughed and spat as he tried to get his breath. When
things were bad he sat alone in a corner of the sitting-room, looking
beaten and exhausted, a shadow of what he had been. He was like a
Saint from El Greco. Sometimes Max played billiards with the other
men, or had a short walk with his friend Mason or with one of the
nurses, or a quarrel would flare up and his Irish voice would be heard
shouting and swearing round the billiard table. When the news of the
Irish Rebellion came he sat silent and alone.
   In the end of the Long Gallery was the pale-faced man- was it
the one called Manchester?- who limped about with something called
phlebitis, a word that carried a threat of disaster. In the second
bed by the window was the Gordon Highlander with the gaping cavity in
his calf. One summer evening after an operation, something happened,
the bed was soaked in blood and the wounded man lay there still and
white, whilst the sisters got tourniquets and dressings and I ran to
the other side of the golf course for Matron as the sun was setting.
   By the coke-boiler was the old man who looked so cadaverous and
infinitely weary, and sometimes shuffled about the ward racked with
pain in his stomach. When Sister Dean said, ~'It's easy to see
what's wrong with him,' I was too distressed to confess my
ignorance. I was in the theatre a little later when Dr. Alec
operated but could do nothing. He found what Sister Dean had
expected.
   There was the severe-looking man who went about with the heavy
plaster round his neck, looking a little sinister as he stiffly turned
his body to talk. The machine-gun bullet had entered his neck,
smashed up his spine and had come out through his open mouth. It
could hardly be believed. He carried an aura of fear and curiosity
because we all wondered what would have happened had his mouth been
shut.
   Matron seems to enjoy herself as the men parade for their
medicines each day on the landing by the Long Gallery, and for a
moment the tired-looking Madonna even smiles, but I often wonder if
the medicines do any good as I think of my mother's words to the
maidservant, and I was still not quite certain that it had been the
outside drain that was meant.
   The wounded men come in and we learn to know them. Then a day
comes when the doctor or the inspecting surgeon gives them their
discharge and they go off to other hospitals or to their Depots. The
procession goes on and on... Black Watch, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Horse
Artillery, Irish Guards, Bedfordshires, Northamptonshires,
K.O.Y.L.I., Manchesters, Lancashires, Gordon Highlanders....
It goes on and on.... The faces, the wounds, the badges.
   As spring was turning into summer, an incident occurred which
momentarily brought the inner and outer world together. One Saturday
night there was a noisy crowd of men round the billiard table, pockets
bulging with flasks after a visit to Peterborough, and there were
oaths and swearing and cries of 'pot the red'. I was leaving the
Pillared Hall with the trolley when Mac lurched up to me, cue in hand,
and shouted, 'It's buggers like you who should be in the
trenches'. There were cries of 'shut up' to Mac as he staggered
back to the table. All was quiet when I returned.
   On Sunday morning when I came down there was a letter for me on
the desk in the orderlies' room addressed in very childish writing.
It was a note from Mac asking forgiveness for what he had said the
night before. Would I please understand that he had been drunk and
had not meant it? My eyes filled with tears and the beauty of the
trees outside disappeared as I read the uneducated little note from
the Irish Guardsman.
   That afternoon Mac and I walked slowly by the lake together,
stopping from time to time because of his coughing.
   Soon afterwards Mac went to the Depot at Northampton, and whilst
there went to tea with my mother. Afterwards he sent her a photograph
of a group at the Fe?5te on June 1st, with Mrs. Fitzwilliam,
Thompson auctioning a bunch of flowers, an unknown figure in a
billycock hat, and Mr. Fitzwilliam looking on benevolently.
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   At last coming to terms with life, the rawness of the jungle I
mastered reduced the bible to a reassuring proportion in the
perspective of my destructive activity; and I was now fit for the
cathedral of the stable's calm- the light splitting through the
cracks in the door, the silence, and then the faint scratching that
might be a mouse, a rat, or leaves idly swinging, or else imagination.
   After a time I heard the positive sound of my sister approaching,
and then she stood in the doorway, looking for me in the shadows, not
seeing me but knowing I was there, complaining to the darkness that I
might have waited for her. But I was too busily engaged on the
process of rehabilitation to want her company, and she was a woman-
suspect as such, and further suspect owing to her happy association
with holy writ that linked her with my father. It was not till the
middle of the week that I began to welcome her, caring for her until
Saturday night. Then, with the sound of the first church bell on
Sunday morning, all women were suspect again; and as the hour in the
box-pew remorselessly approached- the hour of avoiding looking at
Milly, at the same time trying to reconcile her with my visual world-
I knew it would only lead to the hour of afternoon when the sunlight
froze on the tops of the trees, immobilized as I by the bible.
   
   Sometimes, instead of to the stable, I went upstairs to my
mother's room. As I opened the door I was aware of causing an
interruption, for my mother had the faculty of gazing beyond people
into space inhabited by other and more exciting ones than those who
were actually in the room. These people, whom I knew by the names
under drawings and verses in her autograph books- people my mother
had met in the heaven of foreign hotels- dwelt with her in her
loneliness still, so that the continued pleasure of their company was
denied her by my entry; or rather, I felt that if I had not banished
them, both they and I had lost something of our corporeality by being
in the room together. Yet the sense of a romantic past my mother
perpetuated in the face of the church peering in through the window,
brought back colour which (although it was divorced from any
discernible form) was more tangible than the bible I had escaped from.
   My father was disappointed with me, I reasoned, on purely
technical grounds when he saw my failure to understand his teachings
as a lack of spirituality; whereas my mother found, not so much myself
as my lack of years, a source of chagrin. For the two years which
separated me from my elder brother were an insupportable barrier that
gave him greater access to her mind. And I believed my brother
somehow knew the members of the ski-ing party- the women in their
large hats and veils, the men posed against mountains as immovable as
their moustaches- that, in their 6passe-partout mount, broke
the faded roses on the wall. As I approached my mother I wished the
two dividing years could evaporate, and perhaps this afternoon I would
get to know the far-off friends who hovered towards her, and whom I
was ready to meet half-way. But although her recognition of me was
moderately welcoming, she was still looking beyond me, and whom-ever
she was considering appeared more like the gap between me and my
brother than a real personage.
   What a ghastly thing was the length of a life, starting at random
and never catching up with another life that also started at random.
No life ever drew nearer another life, and the gaps between lives
remained the same, inflicting, as far as I could see, endless
childhood on me. There was no escape from age, and as my mother
opened a book to show me the pictures in it, I decided to abandon the
struggle to grow up.
   The book was always the same book. It was called Alpine
Flowers and Gardens. My mother so treasured it she would not let me
look at it on my own, turning the pages over for me, protected by
tissue paper. The plates depicted flowers, yet the artist had painted
mountains, rocks, and glaciers behind some of them, and in one picture
had even added a chamois in the middle distance. Although it was
interesting to reach the chamois, I found the introduction of this
animal rather 6outre?2, for after all, the book, as it said on
the cover, was on alpine flowers and gardens, which should have surely
satisfied the artist. When we had passed the chamois, I wanted to
tell my mother something of my defeat over the Day of Atonement or the
parable of the mustard seed, but she did not pay attention as her
whole mind was now focused on the Edelweiss, Gentian, or Christ's
Thorn we had come to. So I too concentrated in forgetting my troubles
in the flowers.
   Or, as a substitute for Alpine Flowers and Gardens, my mother
would open a portfolio of water-colours and become lost in her former
life- the full measure of a past that their contours described for
her especially. Here again I felt the presence of a veil separating
me from them in the same way as from the photograph of the ski-ing
party. The silver water of a lake caught in the shifting light of an
anonymous morning, a chalet perched on a slope smothered in flowers,
were fully credible- but the fact that my mother had actually stood
by the lake, had actually climbed up to the chalet, made them entirely
hers. And the countries her paintings translated into personal
property were more remote than those in the atlas- described once and
for all, and equally for everyone.
   On the whole I preferred looking at Alpine Flowers and Gardens
which mollified the remains of the afternoon for me, if not with the
theatrical intensity of decapitating the cow-parsley that guarded the
entrance to the stable. And although we sought different rendezvous-
my mother hankering for the past, and I the future- there was a
voiceless understanding, and also something conspiratorial in our
activity. For my father treated my mother's horticultural interests
with gruff contempt, and thus, as she slowly continued to turn the
pages, the book seemed to speak for her, and to gainsay my father and
his bible.
   Yet the two books, although they suggested a clear-cut issue
between my parents, in reality furthered my bewilderment. For why, I
asked myself, since my father scoffed at my mother's interest in
flowers, did he encourage mine in insects and birds. I was sure he
had little concern for natural history himself, yet he made a special
journey to Douglas to buy me books on the subject, and encouraged me
to enter my observations in a notebook. I could only conclude he was
so mystified I displayed any enthusiasm whatever that he welcomed
natural history as a possible path to the salvation he desired for me.
   
   The grass in the top field was brittle and brown, silvered by a
soft wind that went through it like a comb and made it nod and sway
with the very essence of summer. It was summer at last, an endless
summer of drifting pollen and gleams and flashes in lazy trees that
surrounded the field and cast their jangled shadows, drowsy and
unnumbered across it. A cloud stood in the sky, and there was no
reason for it; so it gently left it. The field spoke and murmured in
its sleep, and the sharp cries of birds were reminders of things to do
and things which could be just as well left undone, for the sense of
time had stopped.
   My sister and I had given up looking for the corn-crakes whose
tantalizing cries, sounding so near and so far, were deceptive as the
grass itself and the tremors that turned it to a sea where the fins of
fishes darted, hither and thither, confusing the whereabouts of the
birds. So we sat on the wall at the top of the field, surveying this
sea that hid their calls till they became but a part that accompanied
the general noise of summer. The corn-crake was fabulous and its
voice had ceased to issue from the throat of a particular bird,
exactly and tersely described in the book of birds, with its name in
Roman letters followed by its Latin name in italics. Yet, the next
morning the voice was still in the field and surely to-day we would
see the corn-crakes. But we never did, and day after day the birds
hid from view, and their voices tantalized.
   Then on a Monday when the 'get ready gong' had been forgotten
and (because it was Monday) my father sat in double gloom, the
corn-crakes- as though at the lifting of a magic wand- appeared in
the garden itself. The male, barred with brown and buff (correct as
in the book), stood on a stump at the top of the daffodil bank, now
sear and yellow with summer. The female and a family of chicks pecked
in the grass below him, and, as we watched in silence at the window,
there was something foreordained in the unexpectedness of their
presence.
   The unfortunate meal was over, the plates had been cleared away;
and we became happy partners in a terrific conspiracy of silence, with
the figure of the boy Samuel doing his best to suppress the ticking of
the clock in the shadow at the back of the room. My father and mother
stood at one side of the open window, and the rest of us at the other,
grouped around my grandmother who was needlessly holding her finger to
her lips. For our silence was natural, and we shared the easy
attachment that united the corn-crake family. The naturalness had
turned us into a picture opposite a picture, and our separate
characteristics had ceased to exist, harmonized in a shared interest.
   It seemed to me rather like waiting for the Bishop, but now there
was no sense of anxiety, and no sense of searching for spirituality-
for the corn-crakes were beyond criticism. How long would this
sublime moment last? How long could the birds be undisturbed in their
task of arresting time? To-day was to-day, and yesterday was
yesterday. Yesterday had ordained to-day. I was with my father,
walking to Mrs. Kissack who lived in the farm beyond the fun-fair.
She had broken her leg, and when we got to the farm my father went up
the steps and I stayed in the road. Gorse flared like the headlights
of cars on the hills. A lark was singing high up, out of sight.
There was cow-dung on the road, goose-dung in the yard. (A flock of
geese was a gaggle of geese.) Two dogs with their tongues out were
lying in the shade of a wall where nettles sprang from the dust. A
man in a brown waistcoat was working in a brown field. Then he
stopped working and the lark stopped singing, the world stilled to one
piece- as now. Then he spat on his hands and took up his scythe
again, all of them busy again- the man working, the lark singing, the
dogs panting. On the way back my father had said something about the
harvest festival, but I couldn't remember what....
   The male bird lifted his beak from his chest and cocked his head
in the air. Wind was ruffling the grass, and the corn-crakes (as I
knew they would have to) sensed danger, and then scuttled into the
field with the clumsy chicks tumbling over themselves as they followed
as best they could.
   It was swiftly over. The garden, broken up into formal shapes
and levels, was ordinary again; and the church spire, coming to life
as it jutted through the trees, frowned at the triviality of our
preoccupation.
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7
   What actually developed was so much in the interests of all the
three that we may be pretty certain that it was contrived, rather than
that it developed naturally out of the situation. Catherine having
been cast out, Georgina reigned in her stead undisputed queen of the
home, the children, and all official social affairs, as though indeed
she were the official wife, while Ellen held any emotional sway over
Charles himself, in the background. So the reputations of all three
were safeguarded, and the convenience of all three met to a nicety.
   Georgina was quite clever enough to appreciate the difficulties
of Charles, herself and Ellen, and to solve them in the way this
clever arrangement smoothed them out for all parties. Forster, too,
that prudent man of the world and of business, while deploring the
situation that had arisen, might discreetly advise on the same lines.
For the continued success of Dickens as a household saint writing
virtuous books, divorce and re-marriage was out of the question;
besides, Georgina would not connive at her own deposition, while Ellen
might well recoil from becoming stepmother to girls of her own age and
a gang of young boys.
   On this question Georgina and Forster may well have thought
alike. She drummed it into the children, as did Dickens, that "their
father's name was their best asset",- which was true enough. It
was virtually their only asset, and hers too. The welfare of the
children- and her own- was dependent upon that good name. And to
write his best both Forster and Georgina knew that Dickens needed a
quiet mind; freedom from care and worry; an efficiently-functioning
household; emotional and aesthetic satisfactions and companionships-
all that poor Catherine, in her miserable inadequacy, had failed in
providing.
   When the storm broke, Georgina seems to have felt no qualms over
assisting actively in the sacrifice of her sister's happiness, or in
consolidating her own usurpation of her sister's husband, home and
children. In justice to her and in mitigation of her conduct, it
should be said that according to Dickens' emphatic testimony, for many
years she had striven to keep husband and wife together, in face of
Mrs. Dickens' expressed desires to leave her husband. But a wife's
expressed intention to desert her husband when jealous or annoyed is
common form, and is seldom taken too seriously, being regarded by most
husbands as meaning Mrs. Micawber's frequent declaration: "I never
will desert Mr. Micawber."
   There is no reason to disbelieve Dickens' story of Georgina as a
mediator in the past; there may have been cogent reasons for her doing
her best to prevent a rupture in previous years. The failure of her
goodwill for her sister may have been a plant of gradual growth. For
a long time she may have believed, as Dickens did, that the fight (as
he unhappily called it) could only go on to the end of one or other of
the contestants, being released by death from the marital torments of
an irksome yoke. It may be that she needed time to consolidate her
own position both with Dickens and in the household generally, that
until her own place was established as supreme and unassailable she
did not want poor Kate to leave. It may <SIC> that once that was
secured she was willing, and even eager to see her go.
   The cuckoo in the nest once firmly settled, and she having
ejected the mother-bird, one by one the baby-birds must be pushed out,
too. That is precisely what happened.
8
   It is true that the eldest boy Charley was of an age to be
flying off and building a nest of his own. Both he and his father
agreed that he should go to the new nest of his mother to take care of
her. But there is less excuse for hustling out the second boy,
Walter, who at the age of sixteen, became a cadet in India, in the
service of the East India Company. His health could not stand the
climate, and he soon died in Calcutta.
   The third son, Frank, after failing in attempts to be a doctor, a
farmer, a business-man, a lawyer and a journalist, left the country
for the Bengal police. The fourth, Alfred, was sent off to Australia.
The fifth boy, Sydney, left for the Navy and died after entering upon
unsatisfactory courses which Georgina said would bring him to certain
misery in this world, quite apart from what might be expected to
happen to him hereafter- on which question his affectionate aunt did
not commit herself. The sixth son, Henry, resisted all attempts to
dislodge him, and managed to maintain his position in the nest by
winning scholarships at Cambridge and keeping a steady inclination to
seek call to the Bar. But the youngest boy Edward, known to the
family as "Plorn," was also exiled in Australia like Alfred, though
there was especial weeping and gnashing of teeth over his emigration.
   Except for Henry, the boys did little good.
   Dickens had openly regretted the births of his later children,
saying- as we have seen- that they were compliments from their
mother that he could well have dispensed with, and even humorously
suggesting a special service of intercession at St. Paul's Cathedral
that he might be considered as having done enough towards the increase
of his country's population. His allusions to his wife's later
pregnancies were only too often in questionable, not to say, downright
bad, taste.
   Fond as he was of very young children, the boys, as they became
older, were in his eyes decided encumbrances, and we can be pretty
certain that Georgina thought so too. Their cost and charges, he
declared, made his hair stand on end. Exile of one after another soon
relieved the pressure; and at last Gad's Hill was no longer "pervaded
by boys, every boy having an unaccountable and awful power of
producing himself in every part of the house at every moment,
apparently in fourteen pairs of creaking boots", according to the
distracted author. This, too, in spite of the most stringent home
discipline which the father personally enforced.
   Father and Aunty Georgy having proved equal to the boys, the two
girls Mamie and Katey were less difficult. Mamie was more tractable
than her mother had been both to her father and her aunt; she cleaved
to them and deserted her mother from the first. Kate, as we have
seen, had more than a touch of her father's independence of spirit,
and had a concealed distrust of her virtuous aunt. She felt for her
mother and visited her in her affliction, though she was too much awed
by her father to protest or fight. But uncomfortable under the new
6re?2gime, she left home as soon as she could, though it
involved making a loveless marriage with a young consumptive
bridegroom, her first husband Charles Alston Collins, the brother of
Wilkie.
   So triumphed the cuckoo in the nest. Her nest at last!
   Thereafter, for Georgina Hogarth, undisputed mistress of the
Dickens 6me?2nage, life was tranquil at Gad's Hill. Mamie
relieved her of much domestic duty, and there was a staff of servants
to do what was required. Social invitations to Dickens now almost
always included Georgina- Dickens saw to that- and she went about
with him a good deal, and since Mamie was fond of parties, she too,
was sometimes included. As to social invitations from Dickens, who
remained as social and convivial as ever, these were, of course
pre-eminently Georgina's administrative affair. In such matters, she
acquitted herself to perfection always.
   As time went on, the scandal about her gradually died down. The
decorum of the Gad's Hill household over the years played a great part
in killing it. But that it was not forgotten is shown by the fact
that although Queen Victoria received both Dickens and Mamie at Court,
there was never any Court invitation for Georgina.
9
   When Dickens, ageing beyond his years, worn by incessant toils,
anxieties and the financial burdens of helping relatives and friends,
and in declining health, rushed about the country and even went to
America again to give "readings" from his books to large and wildly
enraptured audiences to the vast enrichment of his banking-account,
Georgina stayed at home and received vivid letters recounting his
adventures and triumphs. Catherine gone, and most of her children
also, she was able to live quietly and comfortably while keeping a
steadying influence upon the great man who was everything to her in
life.
   As the years rolled by, her influence over her brother-in-law
strengthened still more, as indeed one might expect, knowing the force
of habit. His welfare was her sole and constant preoccupation; no
wife or mother could have been more solicitous. When he was absent
from home, every fluctuation in his health was faithfully recounted to
her, and Georgina and the children were ever upon his pen as once Kate
and the children had been. And his "pair of petticoats" for public
inspection, though there might be another petticoat in the emotional
background, were now Georgina and Mamie- and what could be more
outwardly respectable?
   It was they who went to the great farewell dinner held in London
when, in 1867, he was invited to visit America for the second time.
His visit was a tremendous success, and it was they who welcomed him
back to Gad's Hill upon his return.
   Georgina was not in the company of Dickens when he met with his
first railway accident at Staplehurst, as were Ellen Ternan and her
mother. But when Dickens was reading in Ireland he had taken Georgina
and Mamie on the excursion with him. When the return train from
Belfast met with an accident, they were all three in it, and flung
themselves on the floor of their carriage to avoid injury. It was a
horrid experience, and must have reminded Georgina of adventure in
Italy long, long ago.
   Then as Dickens' health worsened owing to his long-continued
exertions and the strain of giving public readings, and it became
clear that he might be on the verge of a stroke, his doctors insisted
on his giving up these exhausting public appearances. Realising his
position, as his health obliged him to do, he made his will.
   In this remarkable document, his high opinion of, and his care
for, Georgina are clearly revealed. He left his "grateful
blessings" and more money to her than to anyone else, namely +8,
free of legacy duty, as well as most of his personal jewellery,
household trinkets, and private papers. She was made an executrix,
her partner in carrying out the will being the indispensable Forster.
His wife Catherine was left only the interest on +8, and could
not touch the principal, whereas Georgina's legacy was an absolute
one; and instead of grateful blessings, there was implied reproach for
the wife. As to Ellen Ternan, who as Dickens' supposed mistress might
perhaps have been expected to have done better for herself than
Georgina, she, though named first in the will, was left merely
+1,.
   In addition, Georgina was the subject of a whole-hearted
panegyric in the will as "the best and truest friend man ever
had"- which contrast <SIC> sharply with silence about Ellen
(which however upon any theory is understandable) and cold complaint
as to the past expensiveness of his wife Catherine and their children.
Further, he left Georgina to the care of his children in
pontificatory words as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "I solemnly enjoin my dear children always to remember how much
they owe to the said Georgina Hogarth, and never to be wanting in a
grateful and affectionate attachment to her, for they know well that
she has been, through all the stages of their growth and progress
their ever useful, self-denying and devoted friend."
<END INDENTATION>
   Tribute could hardly be more emphatic. But if the debt to
Georgina was so obvious, it would seem desirable to spare Georgina's
blushes over her superiority to her sister, the children's mother.
However, one or two of the children such as Mamie and Harry certainly
heeded their father's injunction, but after his death there came a
time when even Mamie failed in devotion to her "Aunt Georgy".
# 241
<215 TEXT G28>
Opera, symphony, all sorts of instrumental and vocal music but not
chamber music. His reading was considerable in classical and English
and French literature. He knew Dickens by heart, but ranked "Vanity
Fair" of Thackeray the greatest English novel of his period. He was
sceptical of contemporary writing as he was of the latest composition.
I guessed that in politics he was a conservative- with freedom to be
against the Government whatever its colour or party. He loved good
food and good wine, and his cigars, but not to excess. No alcohol had
power over his quick balanced mind. I was taken aback when he
reflected one day on his career: "Do you know, I sometimes wonder if
I haven't wasted myself to some degree by giving myself almost wholly
to music. For music does not ever encourage abstract thinking or
pungency of comment or dialectical agility. Perhaps I was really born
for the legal profession."
   I pointed out that in music he was an absolutist, that he had no
patience with music which carried extra-musical significances, and
that also he had no patience with conductors, or any other performer,
who found an argument, a dialectic or the faintest hint of a
metaphysic in music. He didn't seek beyond the notes and the forms of
music for some inner meaning. Often he gave me the impression that he
was not so much the "possessed" artist in music as the connoisseur,
collecting composers as he collected his furniture and plate. He
fondled music, handled it carefully and dotingly- unless it was of
the sort that protested too much, assaulted fastidiousness of taste
and sensitivity. "Mahler? Wagner? Bruckner?" he would say,
cross-examining me. "They are not civilised. Mahler exposes his
self-pity; Wagner, though a tremendous genius, gorged music, like a
German who overeats. And Bruckner was a hobbledehoy who had no style
at all. All three of them knew nothing about poise or modesty. Even
Beethoven thumped the tub; the Ninth symphony was composed by a kind
of Mr. Gladstone of music."
   All that doesn't imply that he was at all short of masculinity,
red corpuscles. He could ride roughshod over his dislikes, people or
compositions. Given the impulse from the right source, his musical
energy- (his physical energy too!)- concentrated into artistic and
proportionate shapes. His interpretation of the "Requiem Mass" of
Berlioz has seldom been equalled for emotional intensity and
sure-minded control of the outlines. His temperament and intelligence
responded more readily to Latin than to German stimulations, aesthetic
or other. Sometimes he gave his conscience a holiday. At Liverpool
an inordinately heavy programme was goading the orchestra to open
rebellion, especially as Sir Thomas prolonged the interval. The
concert was taking place on the eve of the world's greatest
steeplechase. When Sir Thomas returned to the platform he immediately
sensed the temper of his players- and the next work to tackle was the
"great C major" symphony of Schubert. Sir Thomas extended his
arms, the baton militant. "Now, gentlemen," he said, "now for the
Grand National." The performance was magnificent. One gust of his
humour dispersed all animosities.
   
   He was not, as I say, liked or admired by everybody while he was
the spruce disdainful Mr. Thomas Beecham. He was suspected of
Dandyism and, in fact, he was the last of the Dandies. He kept
audiences waiting at his concerts. In Manchester, during one of his
opera seasons there, he kept the audience waiting half an hour for a
performance of Isidore de Lara's "Nai"l." In those years his
manners at a symphony concert did not appeal to the taste of the
Establishment of British music. The music critic of the "Manchester
Guardian"- Samuel Langford- took him to task on account of his
acrobatic gestures as he conducted. At one concert his baton flew
from his hand and nearly impaled the first trombone. Moreover, he was
suspected of "amateurism"- long before Toscanini actually called
him an "amateur." A complex character!- Falstaff, Puck and
Malvolio all mixed up, each likely to overwhelm the others. Witty,
then waggish; supercilious, then genial, kindly, and sometimes cruel;
an artist in affectation yet somehow always himself. Lancashire in
his bones, yet a man of the world. Rachmaninoff told a friend that he
was unhappy about a forthcoming concert. "The conductor-
so-and-so- he has no temperament. It is always so in England. Too
many the English 3gentlemens." "But," his friend pointed out
"last year you said your concert with Sir Thomas Beecham was one of
the best and happiest of your life." "Ah," rejoined
Rachmaninoff, "but Sir Thomas is not one of your English
3gentlemens."
   In the prime of his life and career, Sir Thomas was as closely
associated with Manchester as with London or anywhere else. During
the 1914-1918 war he kept the city's music alive by the sparkle,
vivacity, and sway of his personality. His concerts with the Halle?2
Orchestra and his opera productions in Quay Street elevated the city
far above provincial levels. Until he dominated the scene
Manchester's music was mainly of German extraction, as we have noted
already and will probably note again. Richter had not served
Manchester in a backward-looking way. He conducted all the symphonic
poems of Richard Strauss in one season at a time when- 6mirabile
dictu!- Strauss was considered as "modern," iconoclast and
unmusical as any later Scho"nberg, Webern, or Boulez. Stanford went
so far as to compose a musical satire of Strauss- "An Ode to
Discord." Ernest Newman abjured us to listen to Strauss
"horizontally" while the battle-section of "Ein Heldenleben"
was played. It is nowadays generally forgotten that Strauss came to
renown or notoriety in this country exclusively on the strength of his
symphonic poems. Outside London "Der Rosenkavalier,"
"Salome" and "Elektra" were little known here.
   But Richter's enterprise ended with the "progressive German
composers." It is true that he was the first conductor to put Elgar
on the musical map, the reason being, I fancy, that in Elgar he heard
here and there the echo of his own native musical language. To a
deputation of Manchester's youthful 6avant garde, demanding
some representation at the Halle?2 Concerts of modern French music,
Richter replied, "3Zthere iss no mod'n F-french Musik."
   Beecham brought pagan allurements to the Halle?2,
non-"classical"- Scene =4 of Act =2 of Delius's "A Village
Romeo and Juliet," Stravinsky's "Firebird" suite, Borodin's
"Polovtsian Dances," all in the same programme. Between the two
wars he naturally modulated to a conversation indicative of the fact
that he was now old enough to put behind him childish things. But
never would he desert Delius. On the "classical" side he
discovered Haydn for English ears. He even proposed introducing to
Manchester Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps"; but the
orchestral parts went astray. The Halle?2 Concerts Committee asked
for a substitute piece at short notice. Beecham suggested a Beethoven
symphony. No; already the season's programme had included enough
Beethoven. They asked Sir Thomas to conduct Mendelssohn's
"Italian" symphony. "Impossible," replied Sir Thomas, "quite
impossible, with only two rehearsals." "But," argued the
committee, "you were content with two rehearsals for 'Le
Sacre.'" "Quite so," said Sir Thomas blandly, "I could play
'Le Sacre' well enough after two rehearsals. For the
'Italian' symphony five at least is absolutely necessary."
   
   His creation of the London Philharmonic Orchestra absorbed him
and his time in the 193s; consequently his appearances in Manchester
became intermittent. After the resignation of Sir Hamilton Harty in
1933 as the permanent conductor of the Halle?2 Concerts, the
orchestra declined in its ensemble. Another permanent conductor was
needed, but the Halle?2 Society were reluctant to appoint one for
fear of losing Sir Thomas's presence altogether. And Sir Thomas
scared the society by attacking the B.B.C., forecasting that
broadcasting would keep people away from concerts. As critic of the
"Manchester Guardian," in Manchester in the 193s, I pointed out
week by week the falling away of the orchestra in unity of style. But
my friendship with Sir Thomas, resumed soon after our argument about
his "cuts" in "Der Rosenkavalier," was now apparently
unclouded. I was vastly surprised and amused to learn from Michael
Kennedy's history of the Halle?2 Concerts that in 1937 Sir Thomas
wrote to the society stating "that he refused to conduct any concert
to which Mr. Neville Cardus was invited." 6Et tu, Sir
Thomas! And all the time I imagined my notices were generously kind
about him. Never did he refer to this letter to the Halle?2 Society,
demanding my excommunication, at any of my subsequent meetings with
him, not even during our day by day, night by night expressions of
brotherly love in Australia.
   It was round about 1931 that he told me he was about to form a
new orchestra in London. "But where," I asked, "where do you hope
to find the players?- the B.B.C. Orchestra has taken the
best." "Maybe," he admitted "the B.B.C. has indeed
attracted the best known instrumentalists of Great Britain. But
you'll see!" In 1932 the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played for
the first time at the Queen's Hall. The performance of the
"Carnaval Romain" overture of Berlioz was staggeringly
brilliant. A highly finished performance of Mozart's "Prague"
symphony almost jerked me from my seat when Sir Thomas brought in the
D major principal theme, after the introduction, at the same adagio
tempo, instead of allegro. My notice next day called for some
explanation of this curious treatment or maladjustment. In his flat
in Hallam Street, and while he was still in bed, working on a score,
he took away my breath (not for the first or the last time) by
assuring me that his tempo for the main theme after the introduction
was authentic. "You are probably acquainted only with the published
score... but I have seen the original manuscript written by Mozart's
own hand..." All the same, the next time he conducted the
"Prague" symphony the theme in question was allegro all right and
unmistakably. He was in a word, capable de tout!
   Apart from some piano lessons in boyhood he was self-taught.
He states the contrary in his biography, "A Mingled Chime," where
he writes, "In public accounts of my career has frequently appeared
the assertion that I am almost entirely self-taught and, beginning as
a rank amateur, have attained a professional status with some
difficulty after a long and painful novitiate. Nothing could be more
remote from the truth. It is possible that at the age of twenty I
might have failed to answer some of the questions in an examination
paper set for boys of sixteen in a musical academy; but probably I
should fail with equal success to-day; and I venture to say that a
tolerable number of my most gifted colleagues would do no better. On
the other hand, owing to my travels abroad and wider associations with
musicians here and there, my miscellaneous fund of information was
much more extensive than that of others of my age." For Sir Thomas,
this is positively nai"ve. There was music of sorts in his St.
Helens home; his father practised music "as a hobby." Sir Thomas
substantially educated himself, as Elgar did, and Ernest Newman and
Delius, perhaps the most cultured and influential figures in our
music's history since Purcell.
   He came down from Oxford after only a year or so there because,
as he explained to me, "there was no musical life broad and humane
enough. As for the rest of my studies at Oxford, they were not
attractively conducted. And I could discover no mind or intelligence
among my fellow undergraduates which didn't indicate permanent
adolescence. In those days, even to-day in fact, the average
University-educated Englishman is a case of arrested development,
emotionally, aesthetically and sexually."
   His own capacity for deep feeling was not often or obviously
hinted at in his studied deportment away from the concert platform or
desk at the opera. He gave unmistakable proof of it in my company
only once, during one of the last evenings I spent with him alone a
few months after Lady Betty's sudden death.
# 211
<216 TEXT G29>
<=1>
   Helen Keller was born in 188 in Alabama. Until she was
nineteen months old she enjoyed a perfectly normal infancy. At the
age of six months she amused people by greeting them with ~"How
2d'ye", and delighted her proud parents by shouting ~"TEA, TEA,
TEA". Her face wore smiles for everyone. In her cot she wriggled
and squirmed and chuckled when anyone spoke to her, and the sight of
birds, flowers, butterflies, or the sun glinting through overhanging
trees in the summertime, sent her into shrieks of happiness. She
loved bright objects and pleasant sounds, including that of her own
voice. She began to walk at the age of twelve months when she
unexpectedly slipped down from her mother's lap after she had been
lifted out of the morning tub, and ran to catch patterns of sunlight
dancing on the bathroom floor. She ran until she lost her balance,
staggered and fell; but, to her delight, she tumbled right into the
focus of the sunbeam.
   At the age of nineteen months, this adorable, fascinating child
had a mysterious illness, which they called acute congestion of the
stomach and brain, which left her blind, deaf and dumb. Without a
moment's warning, her bright world was blotted out and she was plunged
into a darkness as black and silent as the grave.
   Only by a great and painful effort of the imagination can we
begin to understand the next five years in Helen's life. Although she
says little about it, that terrible period will never be erased from
her memory. She remembers the dry, hot painfulness of her eyes when
she first lost her sight, the agony and bewilderment of waking and
being unable to see, of tossing, half-asleep, in pain and fretfulness;
the tenderness of her mother's hand trying to soothe her, but the
utter desolation of being unable to hear her mother's voice or see her
face, and the terrible frustration of being unable to make her wants
known. The reader should pause and try to enter into the plight of a
child of nineteen months suddenly plunged into such a perplexing and
frightening situation.
   During the next five years Helen tried times without number to
establish some sort of contact with the outside world but all in vain.
It was like being thrust into the dark, silent, innermost dungeon of
a prison with no hope of visitors and no possibility of escape. She
tried to free herself from the impenetrable silence and darkness which
held her captive, but to no effect. Her deep frustration often threw
her into tempests of passion which, during those five years recurred
more and more frequently, until they were convulsing her daily,
sometimes hourly, driving her at times almost beside herself. And
often after such tempests, she would feel her way around the garden to
hide her hot face in the flowers she could not see, or creep into her
mother's loving arms and sleep from sheer emotional and physical
exhaustion.
   One day when she was six years and nine months old, Helen vaguely
felt that something unusual was afoot in her home, as though some
special visitor was expected. During recent weeks her moods had been
nearly all anger and bitterness. The wordless cry of her soul for
human communication, which she could make no one understand, reduced
her to a feeling of utter misery and helplessness. Of course she did
not understand her own condition, or her fundamental frustrations; she
felt only her maddening inability to communicate with her parents,
while they, on their side, were broken-hearted that they could find no
way of talking to their child, no way of getting a single word into
Helen's mind or heart.
   But this day, as Helen stood on the steps at the front entrance
to their home, she felt the touch of a new hand, and a stranger
embraced her.
   It was Anne Sullivan.
   The tremendous debt which Helen and blind people the world round
owe to Anne Sullivan is beyond computation. For it was Anne who
rescued Helen from her world of darkness and misery, and enabled her
to bring deliverance to countless fellow sufferers.
   Anne was born in poverty, and her eyes were infected from birth.
Her mother died when Anne was eight years old, leaving three children
who were placed in the workhouse. It was here that Anne spent the
next four years of her life, being allowed no social contacts save
that of fellow paupers. One of them told her that blindness entitled
her to go to a special school, but no one was interested in the
education of a blind pauper child until Anne literally threw herself
at the feet of the chairman of the visiting committee and pleaded "I
want to go to school." The plea was heard. At fourteen she was
sent to the Perkins Institution for Blind Children in Boston. While
there she had two surgical operations which partially restored her
sight. She remained in the Perkins Institution for six years, and was
still there when the Director received a letter from Helen's parents
describing Helen's condition, and asking if he could supply a teacher
for her. Anne, twenty years of age, was sent.
   Anne arrived at Helen's home with eyes red through overmuch
crying on the journey. She did not want the job of teaching a girl
who was blind, deaf and dumb. But she had no other job, and she was
without money; economic necessity compelled her to accept this
unwanted post.
   But if Anne was despondent on arrival, she very soon forgot
herself in her new work. From the moment she embraced Helen on the
front porch, she devoted all the energy of her mind and body to the
service of her stricken charge. In complete self-effacement, sweeping
all self-pity aside, she gave herself to Helen, working tirelessly to
open lines of communications between the imprisoned child and the
world of people and nature about her.
<=2>
   It was the day after Anne Sullivan's arrival that Helen learned
the finger language for the word "doll". Anne spelt it into her
hand very slowly and deliberately, and got Helen to imitate. Helen
did not know then that "doll" was the name of the gift Anne had
brought her the day before from the blind children in the Perkins
Institution; she thought she was learning some finger game, and played
it repeatedly until she could do it correctly. Then she felt her way
downstairs to show her mother the game. Other simple words were
taught her in the same manner during the following days- such words
as pin, hat, cup, sit, stand, walk- but as yet she had no idea what
they meant; no inkling that the finger work which spelt "pin" was
the name of the object, or that fingering which meant sit or stand had
any reference to those actions. The power of associating word with
object or action had not yet awakened in her.
   A whole month passed in this way before Helen began to associate
the letters spelt into her hand with objects. The association came at
the end of a lesson in which Anne had tried to make Helen understand
that the word mug meant the object which she held, and water meant
that which the mug contained. But Helen simply could not understand,
and as Anne persisted, she grew annoyed and gave expression to her
annoyance by dashing her mug to the floor, smashing it to pieces. She
felt the broken fragments with her feet, and experienced a measure of
relief in doing so. The lesson was adjourned and they went out into
the sunshine. As they passed the well-house someone was drawing
water, and Anne placed Helen's hand into the stream pouring from the
spout of the pump, and spelt into her other hand the word water,
water, water. Anne continued to do this, at first slowly and then
rapidly, until it suddenly dawned on Helen's mind that water meant the
cool something flowing over her hand.
   "That living word awakened my soul," said Helen many years
after, "gave it light, hope, joy, set it free." She now knew that
things had names, and she wanted to learn them all at once. "As we
returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver
with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange new
sight that had come to me." She learned many new words that same
day, including mother, father, sister, teacher. She felt that she was
at last in contact with the outside world.
   She went to bed that night but was too happy to sleep.
   During the following summer Anne took Helen on exploration walks,
discovering plants, flowers, and trees; Helen handling them, learning
their names, inhaling their scent, feeling them against her hand and
her face. Sitting in a field on the warm grass Anne described through
their sign language the countless things which Helen could not see.
   With the new freedom of that summer Helen took to tree climbing,
and loved it. But one day Anne left her sitting aloft in the branches
of a cherry tree, while she returned to the house to fetch lunch.
While Anne was away the weather suddenly changed, breaking into a
violent thunderstorm. Helen tells how she felt the warmth go out of
the atmosphere, by which she knew clouds had come over the sun, how
she smelt the strange earth odour that precedes thunderstorms. She
was alone and she felt afraid. A sense of absolute isolation gripped
her. She felt cut off from friends; severed from the firm earth. Her
terror increased until she was in a state bordering on hysteria.
   "There was a moment of sinister stillness, and then a
multitudinous stirring of the leaves," she says. "A shiver ran
through the tree, and the wind sent forth a blast that would have
knocked me off had I not clung to the branch with might and main. The
tree swayed and strained. The small twigs snapped and fell about me
in showers. A wild impulse to jump seized me, but terror held me
fast. I crouched down in the fork of the tree. The branches lashed
about me. I felt the intermittent jarring that came now and then, as
if something heavy had fallen and the shock had travelled up till it
reached the limb which I sat on. It worked my suspense up to the
highest point, and just as I was thinking the tree and I should fall
together, my teacher seized my hand and helped me down. I clung to
her, trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more".
   For some time after this the thought of climbing a tree alarmed
her, and she did not fully overcome her fear until the next spring.
Then as she was sitting alone one morning in the summer house, she
became aware of a beautiful fragrance filling the air. She recognised
it as the scent of the mimosa tree. She knew where that mimosa tree
stood- at the end of the garden near the fence at the turn of the
path, and she felt her way to it. She found it, "all quivering in
the warm sunshine, its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long
grass ...
   "I made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk,
and for one minute stood irresolute; then, putting my foot in the
broad space between the forked branches, I pulled myself up into the
tree.... I had a delicious sense that I was doing something unusual
and wonderful, so I kept on climbing higher and higher, until I
reached a little seat which somebody had built there so long ago that
it had grown part of the tree itself.
   "I sat there for a long time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy
cloud. After that I spent many happy hours in my tree of paradise,
thinking fair thoughts and dreaming bright dreams."
# 26
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   On the day of the funeral I had to be awoken at seven a.m.
in order to arrive punctually at the church. Several streets in the
vicinity had been closed by police. They feared a repetition of the
extravagant scenes that had occurred when Valentino's embalmed body
was laid out in full evening dress for the public to visit. Thousands
had thronged Broadway. Children had been separated from their
parents, scores of people bruised and trampled. Several police
charges were made. Plate-glass windows were shattered by the pressure
of the crowd. Finally the mortuary doors had to be closed.
   Fortunately on the morning of the funeral everything was quiet. I
arrived safely at The Little Church Around the Corner.
   Ben Lyon was in charge of the ushers. We had little to do as the
church filled so quickly.
   At the last minute Pola Negri arrived dressed from head to toe in
black. She was followed by two florists carrying an enormous blanket
of white violets. In purple violets was inscribed the message:
'With love from Pola.'
   This tribute was placed upon the coffin, almost hiding it from
view. The coffin in question was a prodigious, ornate affair of
bronze. Outweighing its occupant by some 5 lb., it had cost
$1,. The spectators were upset by the outsize wreath. On all
sides audible whispers of protest broke out: 'We can't see the
casket.'
   The service was beautiful. Augmented by the chorus of the
Metropolitan Opera Company, the choir was led by the singing of
Benjamino Gigli, then at the height of his power.
   Sobs could be heard over the entire church as the eight bearers
carried the casket from the altar. As they made their way down the
aisle, a young girl sprang from her seat, throwing herself in front of
them.
   When they were almost at the door, the interruption was
repeated- this time by a little man, prostrating himself with a cry
of ~'I loved him more than anybody.'
   A pathetic, jarring tribute to Valentino's extraordinary
universal popularity.
   As an usher I was unable to sit with my wife. As I was slowly
making my way out of the church Mr Frank Campbell, owner of the
famous Campbell's Funeral Parlour which had handled all the
arrangements, sent a message asking me to meet him.
   'Your wife has expressed a desire to see the Gold Room where
Valentino lay in state. Would you care to accompany us?'
   By that time having had my fill of flowers, crowds, mourning, and
music, I replied rather tersely that that was the last thing I wanted
to do.
   'If Madam wants me for anything important, I shall be lying in
state myself- at the Racquet Club.'
   I had just finished my third martini when I was summoned to the
telephone by Mr Campbell.
   'There has been a most unfortunate accident... regrettable piece
of carelessness on the part of my staff- '
   'What happened?' I interrupted, anxiously.
   'On throwing open the doors of the Gold Room for your wife,
which automatically turned on the lights, we came upon the naked
embalmed body of a man lying on the floor. He was awaiting the
assistant's return from lunch.'
   Not altogether surprisingly, my wife had fainted.
   Mr Campbell wanted to know what I was going to do about the
matter? I explained that I was hardly in a position to do anything at
all.
   'My wife, you say, is in the Gold Room. I am here at the
Racquet Club.'
   Several miles separated us.
   'Are you still there, Campbell? Tell her that when she is well
enough to join me, she'll find me patiently waiting for her at the
bar.'
   Though this was not exactly the last we saw of each other, it was
a definite prelude to our parting, when Constance decided to go alone
to the coast while I returned to Scotland.
12
THE EMBASSY CLUB VENTURE
Our divorce. Embassy Club syndicate. Luigi, Ralph, Peto. Back
to America. The Tucker car. Queen Mary's Dolls' House. My father's
retirement.
   THE episode of our marriage was ending, as it were, by mutual
agreement, but the statutory requirements of British divorce in that
period demanded adultery. The evidence I set about supplying. This
proved more difficult than anticipated. However, my friend Wilfred
Egerton assured me it was really no problem at all, despite the lack
of a prospective co-respondent.
   'I've just the girl for the job,' he said, 'charming and
attractive.'
   The following Saturday afternoon I hired a Daimler with
chauffeur, despatching them to the lady's address. From there they
were to call for me at the club and we would set off for our
transitory liaison. The car was on time. Nimbly I nipped down the
steps of White's, only to stop dead in my tracks at a glimpse of the
lady. No! With her it would be quite impossible!
   Taking a deep breath and summoning my politest manner, I opened
the car door, explaining that I was unavoidably detained. Would she
mind returning in about a quarter of an hour?
   Dashing back into the Club, I searched out Rod Wanamaker, who
fortunately was there at the time. Explaining that Wilfred had landed
me with a woman of whom I could not stand even the sight, I begged Rod
to come as well.
   'I can't bear it alone!'
   He responded to my cry for help. The pair of us spent the night
in our sitting-room playing backgammon while the lady languished alone
next door. For the purpose of evidence I put in a pyjamaed appearance
at breakfast, when the waiter took due notice. Leaving an adequate
sum on the sitting-room mantelpiece plus a railway ticket for her
return to London, Rod and I caught the next train back to town.
   Wilfred told me of the lady's subsequent comments over the
telephone. She asked why she had been sent on the trip at all.
   'I don't think your friend Mackintosh knows a woman when he sees
one. Him and his boy-friend, they ought to be locked up!'
   That being as it were that, it is not necessary here for me to
say anything further, except that the divorce went through and my
marriage to Constance ended without rancour upon either side. Indeed,
we have remained very good friends. She is still very much alive and
married to Walter Giblin, living in New York.
   Probably I was too much of an individualist to make a success as
a star's husband. Whatever the reasons, which after all concerned
only ourselves, it was a romantic experience I shall never regret...
Being once more footloose and fancy free in London, I began to search
round for a fresh interest. This was to be the Embassy Club.
   There will never again be a club like it. It was a Bond Street
annexe to Ascot's Royal Enclosure, as famous in its day as the '21'
club in New York, 'Le Jardin de Ma Soeur' in Paris, and the
Everglade's in Palm Beach.
   In one way or another the Embassy featured in all my old friend
Michael Arlen's earlier novels. When his famous The Green Hat
appeared, at one single lunchtime at the Embassy there were no less
than five ladies in Chapeaux Verts, doubtless anxious to be
believed the inspiration of 'Iris Fenwick'. Quite as successful as
the book was the play of the same title which opened on September 2nd,
1925, starring Tallulah Bankhead.
   Though the Embassy was open for lunch it was usually described as
a night-club. Unlike its forerunners it was eminently respectable.
Of course there were ladies whose reputations may have disturbed
certain matrons, but the said ladies had an elegance which added
lustre to the establishment.
   How did I come to be connected with the Embassy Club?
   One Bob Hornby suggested Wilfred Egerton, myself, and some others
taking over the 4 Club in Bond Street. It was being run by Arthur
Kelly, Charles Chaplin's London agent, who was finding the two
assignments over-much for one man.
   Accordingly we formed a syndicate to buy the place, decorating it
in conservative style. Admission price was low; so was the annual
subscription. Success became instantaneous.
   We renamed it the Embassy to suggest luxury. A great asset was
that one went from the street straight into the restaurant with its
dance floor, surrounded by comfortable banquette tables. The bar
downstairs was always crowded.
   The real success of the place was due to the 6mai?5tre
d'hotel, Luigi Naintre. He had long been in charge of Romano's
and the Criterion. He came as managing director, our largest
shareholder. He was far more than just a restaurant manager; he was
an ambassador, a man of astonishing ability and tact.
   Another notable feature was the music provided by Ambrose, who
was at the height of his fame.
   From the prestige angle the Club was helped by the frequent
visits of the Prince of Wales and his brothers, the Dukes of York and
Kent. It was, I think, the first night-club to be frequented by
Royalty.
   We had a subsidiary company called the Embassy Wine and Spirit
Company, supplying both the club and the public. Luigi's aptitude may
best be illustrated by the following anecdote. I was dining in the
club when Lord Sefton and his son, Hugh, came in and sat at the
opposite end of the room. Luigi talked to them while taking their
order for dinner.
   When he came back to my table he said: 'You will be glad to
hear that I have just sold +1, worth of champagne to His
Lordship.'
   How indefatigable Luigi was! He would leave for home at two in
the morning, rise again at five, in order to go to market and choose
everything himself. Twelve-thirty would find him back at the club,
suave, debonair, ready for the busy lunchtime session.
   Embassy shareholders made a hundred per cent annual profit over a
period of some five years. We only sold out when compelled to do so
by Luigi's death. This was an occasion of great sorrow for us. His
was an impressive funeral at St Anne's, Soho. Thousands from every
sphere of life attended, and five Daimlers were required to carry the
flowers from the church to the cemetery.
   Our club chef had a particular reputation for the way in which he
cooked Gefu"lter fish- a Jewish dish, mixture of chopped
whiting, herring, halibut, cod, and mackerel, mixed with egg and
breadcrumbs. So much did one American, Jefferson Cohn, appreciate
this dish that when he was over in Paris he would have Gefu"lter
fish flown over to him every Saturday!
   Before finishing with the Embassy Club let me say a few words
about one of our most eccentric members, Ralph Peto. He came in one
morning before lunch with a polo boot on one foot and a slipper on the
other. Had he been unable to make up his sartorial mind or merely
forgotten to put on the second boot?
   He talked to a horse-coper in the club bar. Ralph Peto owed the
man +5 already and was abusively demanding an additional +5.
His language was not merely explosive, it was obscene. Wilfred
Egerton rebuked him mildly:
   'Please, Ralph, don't talk like that. I can't bear dirt.'
   Ralph bowed and apologized, only to come out with an appallingly
personal comment that so scared its recipient, a young lady, that she
left her cocktail untouched.
   It is recorded also that in some outburst of domestic tension
Ralph burned all his mother-in-law's clothes in the middle of
Manchester Square garden. Another time when an invitation to dinner
with the Princess Polignac at her palace in Venice was not
forthcoming, he jumped into a gondola. While the gondolier was
delivering Ralph's letter of indignation, Ralph went to the Princess's
kitchen, dismembered the stove with a coal-hammer and threw the dinner
into the Grand Canal.
   
   The Embassy Club was by no means my sole adventure in property
dealings. Always they have fascinated me. I longed, for instance, to
buy the Ritz Hotel.
# 28
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   Travellers from abroad and incoming mail set gossip
circulating. The stories gained in effect from the surrounding
secrecy. Correspondents wrote home to ask why the lurid reports were
not being officially denied and disposed of.
   It was not long before all Mayfair was gossiping. In every club
there was an indignant member spluttering against the indignity done
to the Crown. It was an outrage. And who was this Mrs. Simpson,
anyhow?
   On their way back to England the King and she paused in Vienna
for some pleasant hours of dancing. The reporters were still
following. The headline told the tale- 'Edward rumbas with
Wally'.
   In Paris Mrs. Simpson saw for the first time a few examples of
what folks were reading about her back home in the States. She was
aghast. She telephoned 'her alarm' to London. The King was
comforting- he had been through all this publicity himself before; it
would wear itself out. He pointed reassuringly to the silence of the
British press.
   Nevertheless as he sat down to dinner with his mother at
Buckingham Palace, he wondered how much Queen Mary was aware of what
America was saying. She gave no indication that anything out of the
ordinary had reached her. In tones of polite enquiry she asked about
his holiday.
   'Didn't you find it terribly warm in the Adriatic,' she
innocently enquired.
   She was, of course, fully informed and highly indignant about the
publicity her son's association was causing. But her reserve remained
unbroken and another occasion for a confidential talk between mother
and son went by, the opportunity lost.
   The King had missed the Twelfth and the grouse, but he
sufficiently conformed with custom to spend the last two weeks of
September in the Highlands. His house-party was not formed of members
such as had been gathered about them by Queen Victoria or King George
=5. Statesmen were conspicuously absent- Mrs. Simpson
conspicuously present.
   Her arrival was the occasion for growing feeling against the King
in circumstances in which he was not at fault. It chanced that the
day she reached Aberdeen station was also the occasion for the opening
of Aberdeen's Royal Infirmary. While the King was driving across from
Balmoral to meet her, his brother, the Duke of York was performing the
opening ceremony at the hospital. Earlier in the year the King had
decided that because of court mourning he could not perform the
ceremony in person and had asked his brother to deputize. These facts
were not known to the Aberdonians and there was an outcry that His
Majesty should have neglected the hospital so that he might be free to
meet his guest. It was a baseless charge, but it was spread around
and gained wide acceptance before the truth caught up with rumour and
scotched it. By that time harm had been done to King Edward's
reputation amongst his Scottish subjects.
   There were happy days amongst the heather and in the evenings the
King in his kilt played the laird in his castle. Mrs. Simpson was
fascinated, enjoying every moment. But the King's brothers in their
Scottish retreats nearby felt themselves neglected, shut out of his
confidence. Bertie (Duke of York) in particular, considered himself
'to have lost a friend (in his father) and to be rapidly losing one
in his brother'.
   As September ran out the royal guests departed, leaving Balmoral
to the grouse and the deer. The King turned south to face the future
and its complications. He came back to a London that was agog with
gossip and concern over the wretched reports from the United States.
   By that date it was Mrs. Simpson all the way in every American
paper, headlines, story and pictures. 'Palace Car at Wally's
Disposal', 'King Chooses Clothes To Match With Wallis'- there
was no aspect of life untouched. Imaginations made good when facts
ran out. One paper scurrilously described how Edward was neglecting a
bereaved mother to dance attendance on Wally. Another told how
Premier Baldwin sent for the Monarch to lecture him on his carryings
on.
   British residents were sorely tried by the daily barrage of the
news-hounds. It was disconcerting enough to learn that their
Sovereign was in love with an American lady already twice married.
The accompanying scurrilities made the plain fact odious. In Canada
there was dismay at what was reported across the border. In their
concern writers discharged their indignation in letters home to King,
Prime Minister or Archbishop- indeed to any person with influence on
affairs- Ministers of the Crown, Bishops, M.P.s, parsons,
editors. The inevitable effect was to raise opinion against the
author of these mischiefs. How could he expose himself, his Crown and
his Country to ridicule and contempt? Of course the worst of the
reports were exaggerations and inventions, but, they were a scandal
arising from the same source. The captain was letting down the side.
   There can be no exaggerating the effect produced. Long enough
before the crisis broke the king's position had been undermined
amongst the pillars of the establishment.
   Much of the scandal had flowed from the Nahlin cruise and
once again one thinks of the prudent man who would have foregone the
hours of pleasure afloat to promote his prospects in the future.
Instead, a prolonged stay in the Highlands, at home amongst the
family and 'his 2ain folk', might have helped him towards
realizing his hopes. He could have used the time to entertain and
captivate members of his Cabinet. He related afterwards, almost with
self-approbation, that he had of design omitted to invite the
succession of Ministers, Bishops, Admirals and Generals who had filled
the Balmoral guest list since Queen Victoria's time. But a prudent
king would have seen the benefit to himself in bringing the softening
influence of hospitality to bear upon those forming the pillars of his
throne.
   Meanwhile, Mrs. Simpson prepared herself for the hearing of her
suit for divorce. By a device common enough at the time by those
seeking to avoid the publicity of a London hearing, it was arranged
for the petition to be filed for the Suffolk Assizes. To this end the
petitioner had to acquire a residential qualification, and so Mrs.
Simpson moved into a house she had taken by the sea at Felixstowe. So
effective had been the silence of the British press that the townsfolk
remained completely unaware of the presence of a notability in their
midst, who across the Atlantic was hailed as the most talked-of woman
in the world. Felixstowe had scarcely heard of Mrs. Simpson and
certainly did not recognize her when she passed down the street of a
morning to buy her paper. When she walked by the sea she 'might as
well have been in Tasmania' for all the notice that was taken. A
little while was to pass and she would be looking with envy on those
tranquil days of her obscurity.
   At last the date was fixed for the court hearing- October 27.
It acted as a goad on the various interested persons. After weeks of
inaction something, at last, must needs be done.
9
MR. BALDWIN CALLS
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   YORK: Vex not yourselves, nor strive with your breath,
   For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.
<END QUOTE>
   THE King's Matter- how convenient the phrase- now
occupied the attention of the pillars of the establishment. Hitherto
it had been the King's emotional complication and his own concern.
With divorce impending there were graver implications.
   The Archbishop of Canterbury contemplated the possibilities and
was dismayed. Divorce spelled the possibility of marriage, and the
wife of a king became a queen. Would he, the Primate of all England,
be faced with the ultimate harrowing possibility of officiating at the
coronation of a sovereign married to a woman with two previous
husbands? Thus to participate would mean a surrender of the Church's
principles on one of the cardinal points of its teaching. It was
unthinkable, but it seemed it might come to pass. What was his duty
as Primate? He concluded that for the present the wiser course was to
take no action. But would not the Government intervene?
   Ministers of the Crown began to look with distaste at the
contents of their postbags. Every delivery added to the letters from
correspondents anxious about the King's reputation. There was the
generally expressed opinion that something ought to be done, something
of course by the Government. The plaguy divorce suit would add a new
urgency to the letters and the need for action.
   Queen Mary viewed the possibilities with her sharp, clear vision
unclouded by the concern and anger she felt. She had given no
expression to her feelings when she met her son- there was always the
chance his affections might cool. But divorce- she grew indignant at
the thought of what might be contemplated. That a woman with two
husbands alive should become the wife and consort of her son the King,
was out of the question. Action was essential before the divorce case
came up for hearing and she urged that the Government should take it.
Characteristically she placed what she considered to be her
obligations to the British Monarchy before her affection for her son.
   So Mr. Baldwin took the front of the stage, which he was to
share with the King, others, in the background, till the play was
done, for, as His Majesty phrased it, they were to settle the matter
alone.
   It is the King who serves as ceremonial figure-head for his
country. It falls to his Prime Minister to speak on behalf of
England. Not long afterwards another man was to speak for England in
another mood in the voice of Winston Churchill giving the lion's roar,
voicing the might and power of the British Commonwealth. Stanley
Baldwin in his wistful musings pictured another England- a country of
hill and valley and meadowlands, the rolling Cotswolds- and the
silver serpentining Severn, of the perfection of England seen from the
Malvern heights looking towards the Marches of Wales, an England of
quiet country-folk, pipe-smoking farmers, decent townspeople and
factories where old men could sit about on barrows. These quiet
scenes showed him the England that he loved, but for all his wistful
brooding Stanley Baldwin, by some curious twist of character, was as
shrewd a politician as ever reached Ten Downing Street.
   He drew his strength, perhaps, from his understanding of the
English folk of his brooding, not only the yeomen and the squires, but
also those sent to Westminster to represent their fellows. It was his
boast that his worst enemy would not say of him that ~'I did not know
what the reaction of the English people would be to any course of
action'. No man was more sensitive than he to the changing moods of
the House of Commons. Of late he had gone astray over the carve-up of
Abyssinia and his health was failing, indeed, he had continued in
office only to see the new King established, for he shared the doubts
of those who questioned whether Edward would rise above the handicaps
of his character and his upbringing.
   For the weeks, whilst the House was up, Baldwin had complied with
his doctor's orders, for absolute rest. He returned to Number Ten to
face the problem of the King's future. Mrs. Simpson, divorce,
marriage- the sequence seemed to point to one inevitable conclusion
and a decree granted in October, he noted would become absolute about
the date of the Coronation in May.
   Queen Mary was pressing for intervention- but what was a Prime
Minister empowered to do? A king could regulate the marriage of his
children but the Statute Book makes no provision for regulating the
marriage of a king. No one had ever thought of defining the
eligibility of women to be queen. Nor was there precedent to fall
back on, for no Premier had ever faced this problem before.
   He shared Queen Mary's repugnance, but as to thinking the King's
marriage out of the question- there he disagreed. All his
information pointed to the contrary conclusion.
# 215
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   No better way of doing this can be found than through the
medium of his autobiography,  The Course of My Life, written
during the last months of his life when he had reached the age of
sixty-one and was able to survey, with the peculiar clarity that
sometimes comes with age, his early years, the gradual development of
his own powers and the varied influences that came to him through the
many friends into whose orbits he was attracted.
   The warmth of his nature and his lively interest in his fellow
human beings is apparent in all his descriptions of the men and women
that he met- whether in the charmed circles of the literary world of
Vienna in the 'eighties, or in the near-Utopian cultural climate of
Weimar, where he worked in the Goethe Institute, or in the rough and
tumble of journalistic life in Berlin, where he edited the Magazin
fu"r Literatur. He did not find agreement in opinion a necessary
condition for friendship: "I loved the many-sidedness of life", he
said.
   The book was never finished, for his illness and death intervened
while he was in the course of writing it. But it carries his story to
the early years of this century and gives a comprehensive picture of
all that led up to his life-work.
   Rudolf Steiner was born at the little village of Kraljevec in
Southern Austria on the border between Hungary and Croatia. His
parents both belonged to the Lower Austrian forest region, north of
the Danube, and in the small town of Geras his father had passed his
childhood and youth in close association with the seminary of the
Premonstratensian Order, where he was instructed by the monks. Later
he became a gamekeeper to Count Hoyos on his estate at Horn but on his
marriage changed this occupation and took the job of telegraphist on
the Southern Austrian Railway. He remained a countryman at heart and
the new work was uncongenial but he was soon promoted to be
Station-master of Pottschach in Lower Austria. At this little railway
station, with the magnificent scenery of the Styrian Alps before him,
Rudolf Steiner spent the formative years from two to eight. He was
much absorbed, as any other small boy would be, in the daily business
of the railway. His father taught him his letters and his own
insatiable curiosity about the world and its ways taught him many
other things, such as the complete process of milling which he learnt
from constant visits to the local mill. But there were many problems
that exercised his active mind. "I was filled with questions", he
says, "and I had to carry these questions about with me unanswered.
It was thus that I reached my eighth year".
   During this year the family moved to Neudorff in Hungary, and
here they remained until Rudolf Steiner was seventeen. The Alps were
now visible only in the distance but near at hand were mountains
easier to climb and great forests where the peasants gathered wood.
With his parents, his sister and his brother, Rudolf walked and
climbed, bringing back wild fruits for supper. But he preferred to
walk alone, and to talk to the peasants that he met. With them, he
took part every year in the vintage and with their children he went to
the village school.
   It was through the assistant master at this school that the first
great event of his life took place- an event that, he believed,
influenced the whole course of his development and of his future work;
it was the discovery, in his teacher's room, of a text book on
geometry. He was allowed to borrow it and through it he felt the
deepest satisfaction he had yet known, for by this science he found
justification for his own assumption that the reality of the unseen
world is as certain a fact as the reality of the physical world. It
seemed to him to be a form of knowledge which man appeared to have
produced but which had a significance quite independent of man. He
had found unaided something that gave confirmation of the "unseen"
world, a world of which he had been aware even before his eighth year
and in which he longed to live. Had not the seen received light from
the unseen he would, he said, have been forced to feel the physical
world as if it were a kind of darkness around him.
   Another outstanding event that took place in his tenth year, and
that was to bear fruit in later life, was his introduction, through
the local priest, to the system of Copernicus. Astronomy became as
absorbing a study to him as the mechanism of the railway had once
been. He had now formed an attachment to the priest and also to the
Church, where he was a server and a chorister. He entered into his
duties with sensitive participation, and found in the sonorous beauty
of the Latin liturgy "a vital happiness". It was to him a means of
mediation between his two worlds. But it was not a soporific, for
through the music and in contemplation of the ritual he saw the riddle
of existence rising before him in "powerful and suggestive
fashion". He makes the rather sad little comment that in the matter
of this early religious experience he was "a stranger in his father's
house", for his father had temporarily shed his piety and become a
"free-thinker".
   Rudolf Steiner's home could offer him no cultural background.
His father, a warm-hearted, quick-tempered, gregarious man felt no
need for books and loved nothing better than a political argument with
the local worthies under the lime trees on a summer evening, with the
mother, a good Hausfrau, sitting beside him with her knitting and the
children playing around. Rudolf Steiner was indebted to the local
doctor for his introduction to German literature. Pacing up and down
beside the station, the tall, enthusiastic doctor opened up a new
world to the eager little boy. For the first time he heard of Goethe,
with whose conception of nature his own future was to be so closely
linked, and of Schiller, from whose letters a few sentences were to
wake the train of thought that led him to the perception that man has
the possibility of changing his state of consciousness.
   The doctor's literary influence happily continued when the boy
was sent to the Realschule in Wiener-Neustadt, a secondary school
where prominence was given to science and modern languages. This
school was chosen because the father had determined that his promising
son should become a civil engineer. The boy himself was indifferent
as to what school he attended provided he could get some satisfactory
answers to the vital questions he bore within him on "life and the
world and the soul". Rudolf Steiner devotes a chapter of his book
to this period of his school-days and it is evident that his powers of
thought were far in advance of those of the average boy, and that the
scientific method of approach to the problems of existence- an
approach which later he came to regard as essential for modern man-
was his by natural proclivity.
   When he was barely eleven he read a paper published by his
head-master on "Attraction Considered as an Effect of Motion".
Though he understood but little of it, for it began with higher
mathematics, he derived sufficient meaning from certain passages to
build a bridge between it and what he had learnt from the priest of
Neudorff on the creation of the world. He then saved his pocket money
until he could buy a book by the same author on The General Motion
of Matter as the Fundamental Cause of All the Phenomena of Nature.
The study of these two works, combined with his studies in
mathematics and physics, took him through his third and fourth year
and finally brought him to the conclusion that he must go to nature in
order to win a standing place in the spiritual world. This spiritual
world he consciously perceived lying before him. Further, he said to
himself: "One can take the right attitude towards the experience of
the spiritual world by one's own soul only when the process of
thinking has reached such a form that it can attain to the reality of
being which is in natural phenomena".
   He then discovered Kant. He had never heard of him but saw the
Critique of Pure Reason in a shop window and could not rest until
he had bought it, for he longed to know what the human reason could
achieve in gaining genuine insight into what he called "the being of
things". "How does one pass", he asked himself, "from simple
clear-cut perceptions to concepts in regard to natural phenomena?"
Sometimes he would read one page of the Critique twenty times
over in order to arrive at a definite decision as to the relation
sustained by human thought to the creative work of nature. But he
made no advance through Kant. The study was by no means valueless,
however, for he was already subjecting himself to that severe
discipline in thinking that was sustained throughout his life and
which he demanded of his pupils. He wished so to construct thought
within himself that every thought could be objectively surveyed,
without any identification with feeling. Thus he was no mystic.
   From his earlier emotional reaction to the beauty of the liturgy
he now tried to establish within himself a harmony between objective
thinking and the dogma and symbolism of religion. This attempt, he
said, in no way diminished his reverence and devotion. His relation
to the teachings of religion was determined, he states, "by the fact
that to me the spiritual world counted among the objects of human
perception. The very reason why these teachings penetrated so deeply
into my mind was that in them I realized how the human spirit can find
its way consciously into the supersensible". It was a natural
result to arrive at the question: "to what extent is it possible to
prove that in human thinking real spirit is the agent?" And,
furthermore, to debate from this basis the possible scope of human
thinking. With these problems uppermost in his mind Rudolf Steiner
entered the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, and at once proceeded to
buy a large number of books on philosophy. He had now decided to
become a teacher, and had already done a certain amount of coaching.
He enrolled for mathematics, natural history and chemistry, and was
fortunate in having as his lecturer in physics Edmond Reitlinger, the
author of Freie Blicke. He could not accept the prevailing
mechanical theory of heat nor the wave theory of light, and through
them was driven to a study of theories of cognition. The Darwinian
theory of evolution seemed to him fruitful in so far as the higher
organisms derive from the lower, but to reconcile this idea with what
he knew of the spiritual world was immeasurably difficult, for he
conceived of the "inner man" as dipping down from the spiritual
world and uniting with the organism in order to perceive and to act in
the physical world.
   He had now come to realize, through his own struggles to win
concepts in natural science, that the activity of the human ego must
be the sole starting point for arriving at true knowledge. Previously
he had worked from the opposite premise, first observing the phenomena
of nature in order to derive from them a concept of the ego. Now he
saw that he must penetrate nature's process of "becoming" from the
activity of the ego. He was now about nineteen, an age when the sense
of the ego begins to assert itself more fully, and from this time
onwards he was gradually to expand his understanding of the spiritual
and the eternal nature of man's ego and its relation to the evolution
of his consciousness.
# 21
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It came as a gift, generously and unexpectedly. The sun slanting
across the valley lent a liquid softness to the depths below us. We
might have been looking into an unruffled lake, 2, feet of clear
water. A mile distant, where the valley dropped away, the Esera made
an elbow turn to the south, thus giving the valley-head its secrecy.
As so rarely happens in nature, we looked on a work of art. The very
perfection was strange; such things do not normally come about. We
felt for the first time that unreality, that sense of a landscape
under spell, which travellers have repeatedly noted in these Pyrenees.
   An alpine valley would have been groomed and put to use,
beautiful in a different way: pastures subdivided into toy-like
rectangles and rhomboids, tousled mops of hay drying on ash poles,
ruminating cattle, brown chalets. Here there seemed no sign of life
or husbandry, until our muleteer indicated, among the boulders on the
opposing mountain-side, the hut to which Don Miguel had secured the
key, and drew our attention to a curious brown blotch on the pastures
below. "Mares," he said.
   We descended knee-deep through feathery grasses. They parted
easily and we walked, scattering myriads of grass seeds, as through
green foam. There were Turk's head lilies and patches of iris,
islands of brilliant blue set capriciously in the green sea. Quail,
unusual at such altitude, flushed at our feet but their straight
brusque flight, as always, lacked determination and they collapsed
into the grass fifty yards away. We were silent. One talks in a hut
or by a fire in the open, but not much when walking or climbing: one
is either too preoccupied, or too happy. Going down to the Val
d'Esera we were happy.
   Approaching the valley bottom we remarked that the hundreds of
horses pasturing there did not stray. The brown blotch they made
extended no more than a quarter-mile, as though they were confined
within this area by a mysterious social tie. They varied from cream
to black and these colours were seen against sward, the curve of each
back outlined against the green. They were not mere quadrupeds, for
they had the presence of the animals that obsessed Piero di Cosimo.
Though sharing with the valley the permanence of art- and here again
was strangeness- they seemed to wheel in continual movement about an
invisible centre. This was the more surprising for when one looked
closely, narrowing vision to ten square yards, one detected only a
shaken mane, a lifted hoof, an occasional arbitrary turn. Our route
brought us to the fringes of the herd and, as we threaded our way
among them, I was glad that they disregarded us. They had grown
larger, as landowners do on their own estates, and we seemed to reach
only their withers. They were the aborigines of the valley, the
proper owners, and intruding on their gathering we were lucky not to
be challenged in an unknown language. We trod delicately among the
cropping beasts, who so generously ignored us. They had, we found, a
herdsman; that he, in his rags and with domed mud-hovel, could perform
some useful office for these noble creatures seemed improbable. Here
at the headwaters of the Esera to be human was a disadvantage. Less
confident than his herd, the man jumped to his feet and held a great
staff like a barrier towards us. We spoke from a distance and he was
still watching uncertainly (though of the herd not a head was lifted)
as we moved from the soft nap of the valley to the boulder-strewn
slopes of the Aneto. In half an hour we had reached the hut.
   There is pleasure in an untenanted hut; in disposing one's gear
methodically; in finding employment for hook, table, and bench,
perhaps long unused; in starting a fire and creating warmth. The
process offers the satisfaction of moving into a new house, but is
accomplished in an hour. It is a satisfaction rarely to be enjoyed in
the Spanish Pyrenees. We little realised that we slept that night in
comfort such as existed nowhere else in Aragon at 7, feet. In an
area which knew little of climbing history, of guides, guide-books, or
huts, the Aneto and the Rencluse Hut were exceptional. As the highest
point of the Pyrenees, the Aneto had been attempted in the eighteenth
century. It had been climbed in 1842 and, though lying well in
Spanish territory, had for decades been a popular ascent. The logical
approach was from Luchon; the frontier was crossed, and the Esera
gained, by a dramatic notch in the watershed, the Port de Benasque, a
passage between rock walls at some 8, feet. Before the first hut
was built, people made their bivouac and lit their fires in a
cave-like shelter, 'la Rencluse.' Later a cabin was built nearby,
where the amiable and rugged Madame Sayo, whose reputation has long
outlived her, ministered to mountaineers. Time passed. With the
Civil War the frontier was closed and those who found their way into
the region did not come to climb. When the authorities regained
control of the area, after 1945, the Rencluse was in ashes. It had
been rebuilt by Jose?2 Abadias, whom we were later to meet, patriarch
and innkeeper at Benasque, six hours down the Esera valley. Thus we
slept under a roof.
   We woke to storm and wind, but even these can be acceptable in a
quiet hut, if days are not too precious. There is a frayed rope-end
to re-bind and crumpled flowers to identify. Beside the stove we
pored over maps; we talked of other mountains and augured hopefully
from other storms on other occasions; we dozed over our books; we
slept. Intermittently we questioned the barometer and from the window
looked at the struggle above, watched the battle sway as the peaks
threw off the assaulting cloud or went down fighting, blotted out.
When it cleared towards evening, our spirits lifted like the vapour.
We stepped out buoyantly to find the air deliciously clear, rinsed by
the departed rain and wind. Jumping like children from boulder to
boulder, we raced along the mountainside. Above us the peaks, hidden
all day, had returned firm and confident to their stations. The
valley glistened, no longer obscured by veils of driving rain. The
mares in their formal circle were grazing unconcerned as ever, and the
herdsman was fishing on the bank of the stream. Beside him an
enormous white Pyrenean sheep-dog sat on its haunches.
   That evening we would not have been elsewhere at any price.
Though the weather was perhaps a little too warm, the stars were out.
Tomorrow we should climb the Aneto. In itself the climb was nothing,
un nada as someone had airily remarked in the cafe?2 at Le?2s.
But here in Aragon there were no reassuring tracks, no guide-books or
maps as the modern climber knows them. Imagination was free to play
on our 11,-foot mountain. We were back in the nineteenth century
and this constituted the very point of our expedition. Having set the
alarm clock for three-thirty, we should have crawled early into our
sleeping bags, but already the morning was with us in anticipation,
making sleep difficult. We poured more wine and sat talking at the
trestle table, while the stove purred. Naturally we talked of the
Aneto, the inelegant but convincing massif that couched above us in
the dark. Draped with glaciers it stretched three miles from the Pic
d'Alba to the Pic des Tempe?5tes, and its backbone dropped nowhere
below 1, feet. The crux of the climb was the Pont de Mahomet,
the airy granite ridge that led to the summit. Presumably the name
was derived from the rope known to Muslim theology which stretches
over hell and which the righteous alone can cross to attain Paradise.
The name is no stranger than that of the adjoining Maldetta, the
Accursed Mountain. 'Accursed' they say because Christ wandering in
this wilderness, and meeting with fierce herdsmen and fiercer dogs,
turned the latter to stone. Christ, Mahomet, such are the names that
shepherds here have long invoked.
   To talk of the Aneto was also to talk of the two friends to whom,
in a sense, the massif and much of the Pyrenees rightfully belong. We
envisaged them, clad in Norfolk jackets, perhaps wearing the
new-fangled balaclava helmets, on the skyline or straddling the Pont
de Mahomet. By the wheezing stove in the Rencluse it was a duty to
remember them, for no mountain chain has been so lovingly pioneered as
were the central Pyrenees by Packe and Russell. They discovered most
of the region nearly a century ago. Having no maps, with no guide but
observation and a compass, year after year they navigated like sailors
among the unknown reefs and glaciers. Their first ascents are
numberless; it was their country. Perhaps for this reason, their
expeditions were not assaults. They did not conquer peaks to possess
and leave them, as do mountain philanderers. Their climbs were not a
battle and a parting: they cherished their mountains and returned.
Packe climbed the Aneto six times; Russell, who made at least five
ascents, once spent a night on the summit and at dawn noted the snow
blood-red where the first sun struck, but deep blue in the shadows.
   Though friends, they were different, representing two approaches
to the mountains on which mountaineering has much depended, the
scientific and the romantic. Charles Packe was geologist, botanist,
cartographer, and scholar (climbing with Horace in his pocket). He
was also the squire of Stretton Hall, the Leicestershire gentleman who
found the Pyrenees more exciting than the hunting field. Much of this
was concealed by a brusque manner, for though a modest man he was not
an easy one. He began his systematic exploration of the chain in
1859. When a companion was killed on the Pic de Sauvegarde in the
same year, while no doubt perturbed, he was clearly not deflected.
Noting Jurassic limestone, greensand, names of rare flowers,
barometric pressures and making in the uncharted country expedition on
expedition, he accumulated knowledge. It found expression in his
first guide-book to the central Pyrenees and the first map of the
Maladetta area. At this remove the methodical explorer allows a
single welcome glimpse of the eccentric squire: on solitary
expeditions he roped with Ossou"e and Azor, his great Pyrenean
sheep-dogs. Thus a hundred years ago, but surely in misplaced
confidence, he crossed a frozen tarn, and perhaps negotiated the
icefields of the Aneto.
   'Mon ami Packe,' the phrase recurs throughout the writings
of Count Henri Patrick Marie Russell-Killough. The latter's was an
affectionate and generous character. Born in France, and heir to a
papal title, Russell was an Irish catholic. These facts were less
important to him than the works of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and
Byron, and the mountains which he always saw in some part through
their eyes. His life was a late but heroic expression of the romantic
era. From that era both his literary style- for he had weird but
considerable talent as a writer- and his attitudes derived much of
their bravura. Charm, passion, eccentricity, created his legend;
there have been many less well founded. As a young man he wrote
verse, played the fiddle, and would dance all night ("effre?2ne?2
valseur" they said) before starting on a thirty-mile walk at dawn.
His romantic daemon sent him briefly and disastrously to sea, and led
him in his early twenties happily across Siberia, to Australia, to New
Zealand (where he was lost for three days in the Alps alone and
without food), to the Americas, and even to within sight of Everest.
On his return in 1863, at the age of twenty-nine, he first climbed
the Aneto and met Packe. The rest of his life was, quite simply,
devoted to the Pyrenees.
   The range brought him something like European fame. He made at
least sixteen first ascents, and it is in character that many of them
should have been solitary.
# 213
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=3
Technique and Culture: Three Cambridge Portraits
S. GORLEY PUTT
=1
   IN the opening paragraphs of his already famous Rede Lecture for
1959, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge
University Press), Sir Charles Snow discloses some of the personal
accidents that led him to move, at an impressionable age, between
those two cultures the separation of which forms the main theme of his
essay. 'By training,' he says, 'I was a scientist: by vocation I
was a writer.' He continues: 'There have been plenty of days when
I have spent the working hours with scientists and then gone off at
night with some literary colleagues.' It so happened that while
Snow was thus employed I was an undergraduate at his college
(Christ's), spending my own working hours in and around the English
Tripos and some of my happiest evenings in Snow's rooms. I may even
have been, though his junior in years and status, one of these
'literary colleagues' to whom he refers.
   I notice that I have dropped at once into the old habit of
calling my friend 'Snow' rather than 'Charles'. His old friends
call him Snow: only his new friends call him Charles. I wonder why?
I think it must be because he seemed to us in those days to be less a
man than a conglomeration of qualities. We went to him for
judgements, and watched our own opinions first drawn out and then
appraised. 'I think you are probably right', he may nowadays
say with immense and even hearty graciousness; but when he delivered a
Cambridge judgment he would say, firmly and quietly, 'There is no
doubt'. This serene abstraction caused us, personally devoted as we
were, to think of him nevertheless as a little other than human.
(However fond one might have been of Dr. Johnson, one would not
have called him 'Sam'.) But now that C. P. Snow has impinged
on the public scene at many points- now that he is at once novelist,
knight, critic, administrator, business man, lecturer, husband,
father, seer- he has embodied his manifold abstractions and has
become a baptized human being called 'Charles'. A pity. To those of
us who first knew him at Christ's, the word sounds strangely formal.
   For many undergraduates of my own generation, Snow figured as the
great emancipator. Emancipator from what, it is difficult to say.
From shyness, I think. His work was mainly, in those days, in
molecules; his talk, without the slightest trace of donnish
moderation, sprayed over life, love, politics, Proust... All his
friends were Snows, all his geese were Swanns. Let a member of the
circle open his mouth in song, and he would be a Caruso; let another
string a short story together, and we were bidden to see in him
another Proust. It was all, at times, like a Verdurin party. And
although most of the Snow circle have indeed come to occupy places of
considerable eminence, some of them still show traces of his early
boisterousness- as when one 6habitue?2 splendidly announced, in
the midst of wartime privations: 'My landlady has four thousands
hens.' (The landlady's name was Rothschild.) Others have merely
retained an undergraduate tendency to refer to public personages by
their Christian names- as though in reaction to their habit of
calling their private friend by his surname. Yet all these minor
quirks are far less important than the fact that their young talents
had been encouraged to flower, at exactly the appropriate time, in the
sun of Snow's approval.
   The very carelessness of Snow's approach was salutary to us, in
those days. It mattered less, to our personal growth, that Snow spoke
rudely of The Book of Kells, than that he should have scattered
his own books and papers all over the floor, should talk away into the
night while playing like a kitten with a ping-pong ball, or even that
he should show an Olympian ineptitude for the simple business of
keeping his coal fire alight. There was nothing prim about him or
about his friends, and it was important for a somewhat priggish
undergraduate to learn, at that stage of his development, that
neatness is not a major virtue.
   It is not difficult for his friends to detect in the present-day
Sir Charles, the Rede Lecturer, those same qualities which in C.
P. Snow the scientific research-worker might seem to have indicated
a fixed temperamental opposition to the very kind of prestige he now
enjoys. For 'moral vanity' has always been, and still is, his
favourite Aunt Sally at which to shy coconuts. He has never pretended
that self-interest was a higher manifestation of moral philosophy, nor
has he ever held it a virtue to 'do a man down', as he says, 'in
his own best interests'. Even his enjoyment of fame, to those who
know him well, remains one of his modest and disarming
characteristics.
   Snow was much given to headstrong gnomic pronouncements such as:
'In many Irish houses, several kinds of bread are eaten.' Torn
from their context, they were even more impressive than the set-piece
Johnsonian broadsides- as, of Oxford Group house-parties, the
comment: 'It seems to me a pity that frankness about one's private
life has come to mean the public confession of things that never
happened.' Now, this kind of thing invites parody; but it has
preserved among older fiends a certain cosmic cosiness. Yet if,
because of his broad generalizations and his imperviousness to tinsel
compliments, we used to think him unworldly, we were at once
overestimating and underestimating him. For he has shown- and it is
why the Rede Lecture has such an authoritative ring- a fine grasp of
the realities of power. It is one reason, too, why in his novels the
pictures of closed societies, clubs or departments are so horribly
accurate. In his Cambridge days, he used to display a corresponding
indifference to the outward appearance of power. In recent years, to
be sure, like many others who have specialized in the study of the
power behind the throne, Snow has come to feel that it might be rather
fun to sit upon it too. Thus, while engaged upon the cycle of novels
on which he pedals towards the G.O.M.-ship of English fiction,
Snow has had the energy to sponsor a complementary critical movement.
And as that sensible steam-roller of sensible criticism got under
way, it may have seemed to some people in the literary world that Snow
was intolerant. That is not quite true. There are, it is true, two
things he cannot tolerate: one is pretentiousness and the other is
intolerance. He can still lodge a humble protest as well as deliver a
critical ukase, and the phrase ~'It's a bit much!' is ever on his
lips. I have heard him say, ruefully, 'I shall never be as good as
Dostoievski'. His similes were even less self-indulgent during the
war when he lived for a time in Pimlico attended by a troglodyte
couple named Moon: he would amble, in his Teddy-bear totter, to the
head of the basement stairs and call out, always with modest
incredulity, ~'Oh, Mr. Moo-oon; oh, Mr. Moo-oon!' and return
with woeful countenance to face his guests: 'I feel more and more
like a nigger minstrel.'
=2
   The relevance of these rather impudent personal asides will
appear, I trust, when one or two of my friend's recent dicta are
examined against the background of my own knowledge of and admiration
for his personality. It would have been pointless- and, indeed,
uncivil- to make use of that knowledge without passing on to my
audience at least a thumb-nail caricature of the man.
   You might suppose, when I introduce my second Cambridge figure of
the 193's, Dr. F. R. Leavis, that my aim is to add to the list
of examples in the Rede Lecture of mutual incomprehensibility between
modern arts and modern science. Far from it. My aim is to suggest
that the kinds of attitude to life represented by these very different
teachers may be complementary, mutually comprehensible, and together
have an influence making for both breadth and depth of thought and
sensibility. As an undergraduate, I myself was such a prig that I had
to learn to respect both Snow and Leavis before I could learn from
them both how to set decent bounds to my own unfashionable tendency to
respect. If Leavis needed to teach me a healthy disrespect for a good
number of poems in the Oxford Book of English Verse before he
could demonstrate just why the other poems in it were worth
reading, so Snow's impetuous scoffing at certain political and
literary windbags would be clearing a space in my mind for Tolstoi.
   From the few tales I have been telling out of school it should be
evident that an evening of talk in Snow's room at Christ's College
provided a very healthy complement to the English Tripos. There we
were able to learn, without being told in so many words, that it can
be dangerous to become too exclusively sensitive to purely verbal
discriminations. A literary sensibility can be accepted as an
important faculty in life, but it is safe to admit this only in
accordance with one's readiness to agree that it is not the only
equipment for life- or, for that matter, for literature. At the same
time I was learning at Cambridge, most notably from Dr. Leavis, how
much a particular kind of trained sensibility can enrich the quality
of one's response.
   It is certainly necessary to pick words very carefully here,
for it would be impertinent (and incorrect) to suggest that Leavis
and Snow were not each at home in the other's territory. But the
young undergraduate who sees too much of one type of mentor and
nothing whatever of the other may easily become too impatient a
disciple to keep steady a sense of balance such as the master himself
has learned to hold. 'What is the use of a wide outlook if the
quality of vision is poor?' 'What on earth are you going to do
with all your sensibility?' The masters themselves are safe
enough. Leavis knew precisely why discrimination was important, and
we, his pupils, respected him because we saw, so to say, that in the
veins of his sensibility flowed blood, not ink. Snow's mental
generosity was equally apparent, but we could accept it as the
application to wide issues of a personality of quality- it was not
just splashy enthusiasm.
   The masters, then, are safe. What of their pupils? It is all
very well to scoff at H. G. Wells because much of his writing
betrays a perky mediocrity, if you yourself have a vision of life not
indeed identical with his but somewhat comparable in scope. It is all
very well to swallow H. G. Wells more or less whole in tribute to
his breadth of outlook, if you yourself can detect shoddy thinking and
shoddy expression. But with no such correctives, the submission of
undergraduate minds exclusively to one or other of these enthusiasms
can provide unlovely results. Which is the sadder sight: a puny
intellect dismissing Edmund Spenser on the grounds that he isn't John
Donne (a thing Leavis himself would never do), or another puny
intellect confidently predicting the next move of the Kremlin- a
thing Snow himself would never do?
   After the war, Snow left Cambridge and the academic life. He has
been expressing himself in many powerful ways- via the review
columns, via his own steady output of novels, via his literary
partnership with his wife Pamela Hansford Johnson, via the Civil
Service Commission and the English Electric Company, via television
and a dozen other channels. Yet, oddly enough, although Snow has
expressed decided views and has presumably collected his own share of
literary antagonists, it is nevertheless the more retired figure of
Dr. Leavis that has drawn the arrows of outraged opposition. This
is largely because he has acquired a quite undeserved label as a
detractor.
# 26
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(N) CHARLES GREGORY FAIRFAX, 9TH AND LAST VISCOUNT FAIRFAX OF
EMLY. (?-1772)
   The last Lord Fairfax was almost certainly educated at
Lambspring. His life was full of domestic anxieties and tragedies.
As a young man, before 1719, he had been living in poverty abroad,
vainly trying to get employment. The period from 172 to 1722, of
succession to the estate, was marred by the sudden death of his first
wife and his father's troubles. 1722 to 1736 was perhaps the happiest
part of his life. His second marriage, to all appearances, originally
a 6mariage de convenance, turned out well and happily. He
desperately wanted male heirs and now he had three sons and three
daughters living. The family's fortunes seemed assured and he took to
rebuilding Gilling Castle. But all this collapsed like a house of
cards between 1736 and 1741. Two smallpox epidemics carried off his
sons, his wife also died and financial troubles returned in a far more
menacing form. From 1742 to 176 he was occupied in trying to save
the estates and to marry off his two surviving daughters- one of whom
died in 1753. The last twelve years of his life were financially more
easy, but he was now burdened with the care of his neurasthenic
daughter Anne, his sole heiress, with his own poor health, and with
the certainty that the family would come to an end and the estate and
his daughter become, at his death, the prey of a host of impecunious
and quarrelsome poor relations.
   Up to the later 175's he lived most of the year in London. At
first he moved restlessly from lodging-house to lodging-house. Then
he settled as a paying guest in the houses of his Bredall and Pigott
relations. Finally, when his sister Alethea Pigott had left London
for Brussels he leased a house in Kensington from 'Gerard Anne
Edwards Esq.' To furnish the house, furniture was shipped from
Gilling by Hull. Gilling servants were sent down in a batch by
coach- including even a boy, who was put to school in London at
Fairfax's expense. In the spring and summer the family went north to
Gilling. Occasionally they took the waters at Harrogate or
Knaresborough. But Fairfax, perhaps because of its unpleasant early
associations for him, avoided Bath. When his ailing wife and daughter
Elizabeth went there in 174, they went alone.
   The Fairfaxes had frequented York for centuries. In the middle
ages and the sixteenth century they had a regular town house-
probably on the Ouse Bridge. In the seventeenth century the Denton
family had a large town house in Micklegate, but the Gilling family
had sold all its York property and relied on lodgings or leased
houses. In the 175's Fairfax leased a house in Petergate. After
176 he devoted himself to the care of Anne, built her a fine new
house in Castlegate and ceased to winter in London.
   He was always a townee. The traditional way of life of the
Yorkshire Catholic gentry was defended strongly by Francis Cholmeley
in 1722 and maintained even more strongly by Stephen Tempest of
Broughton in his printed letter to his son of 172. For them a
landowner must strike a happy mean between a country and a town life,
with the balance inclining heavily towards the former. He must avoid
becoming a mere rustic, a farmer of his own lands. There is every
reason why he should have a home farm, but otherwise he should live by
rents. On the other hand he should not haunt London and its expenses.
A house in York for the winter season and an occasional visit to town
are quite enough. But this sober idea can never have satisfied the
wealthier Catholic gentry. There were always Catholic rustics, like
Edward Haggerston of Ellingham, with his vilely spelt and illiterate
letters and his constant preoccupation with farm and hunt topics. But
even they had often been educated abroad. Education at Douai,
Dieulouard, Lambspring or St. Omer in itself might rarely implant
intellectual ambitions. But the wealthier Catholics had always
rounded off school with a Grand Tour, and now 'finishing schools'
were appearing- at St. Edmund's, Paris, and in the academies in
France and Northern Italy. There young men acquired liberal tastes in
art and architecture, natural philosophy and mechanics, literature and
politics. They returned to England with little desire to immerse
themselves totally in estate management. There were degrees of
absorption in the polite arts. Thus Cuthbert Constable seems to have
lived at home. But he was passionately interested in the rebuilding
of his house and especially in the problems of mechanics involved, for
instance, in laying on a piped water supply. Then there was Sir
Marmaduke Constable of Everingham, who became so absorbed in the life
of polite society abroad that a visit abroad for his health's sake was
prolonged into half a lifetime's voluntary exile abroad in France and
Italy. Yet, by post, he still controlled in minute detail his estate
and kept abreast of local gossip fortnightly. Then a further extreme
was Sir Edward Gascoigne of Parlington who lived for years in a house
alongside the convent at Cambray with his wife and family, devoting
himself to reading- physics, chemistry, mechanics, philosophy,
political theory- leaving the oversight of the Parlington and Saxton
estates to his agent and Lord Irwin.
   Lord Fairfax was of this generation and type- with some
differences. The lists of books he bought, though moderately long,
reveal little of the intense intellectual curiosity of Sir Edward
Gascoigne, his brother-in-law. Fairfax was interested in current
affairs, politics and history, though it is likely that the five huge
volumes of Chambers' Encyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences which his
chaplain, Fr. Anselm Bolton later brought away from Gilling had
belonged to his patron. Fairfax could write and read French easily
and bought a small number of current French works of literature,
mostly memoirs, but including Rousseau. He never showed any desire to
revisit the Continent. It is likely that his second wife visited
Paris once, but, if she did so, he did not accompany her. Nor did he
go to France with his daughter Anne in 1768.
   He was passionately interested in building, in interior
decoration, furniture and landscape gardening. But there is no
evidence that he was the master-mind in the design of his building
projects. Again, he was not entirely without interest in estate and
agricultural matters. He took Edward Pigott to a village feast and
spoke to the farmers of grain prices. He dined with Sterne to discuss
turnpike matters. He was a patron of Hambleton and York races. But
the family papers of his time seem to be empty of references to
hunting and shooting and agricultural improvement. The latter meant
to him merely the raising of rents.
   In London Fairfax moved mainly in Catholic circles. His closest
friends were a Catholic merchant, Thomas Mannock, Mr. Metcalfe, a
Catholic surgeon in Bromley Street, and the Bellasis family. He rode
out to Whitton to visit the Pigotts and dined with the Petres, and
Stapyltons, Dormers, Barnewells and Dillons, Lady Westmoreland, Sir
Edward Smythe, the Hornyholds. His non-Catholic acquaintances in town
do not seem to have been very numerous. All were relations of
Yorkshire neighbours. The accounts of Lady Fairfax's visit to Bath
show that she also moved in Catholic circles- Mr. Errington, Doctor
Bostock, Doctor Jerningham, Mr. Odonory, Lord Molyneux, Bishop York,
the Misses Langdale, Mrs. Pitt (a Bellasis, the Earl of Chatham's
Catholic aunt). Her protestant friends were few- the Mildmays and
Mrs. Worsley.
   Life in York brought them into contact with all Yorkshire society
at race meetings, town houses and the Assembly Rooms (to the building
of which Fairfax was a generous subscriber). The Fairfaxes of Denton
had sold up in England by the 175's and departed to Virginia, but
Fairfax family solidarity still meant something. American Fairfaxes
still visited Lord Fairfax in York and the Fairfaxes of Steeton (now
of Newton Kyme) occasionally wrote or left cards. From York or
Gilling the family made rounds of visits. The more extensive rounds
covered the Vavasours at Hazelwood, Lord Irwin at Temple Newsam, the
Lawsons at Brough. Immediately round Gilling there was a thick
concentration of Catholic neighbours and relations, the Bellasises at
Newbrough, the Widdringtons at Nunnington, the Cholmeleys at Brandsby,
and, to the early 175's, the Crathornes of Ness. Around them lay
Protestant neighbours, the Duncombes at Helmsley, Mrs. Thompson at
Oswaldkirk Hall, the Carlisles at Castle Howard, where one dined on
occasion. Visitors to Gilling were much less frequent than in the two
previous centuries and came usually for several weeks at a time- Lady
Fairfax's Weld cousins from Lulworth, Sir Edward Gascoigne and his
family from France, the Langdales from Houghton, Thomas Clifton of
Lytham come to court Miss Fairfax, shoals of poor nephews and nieces,
and the Catholic family lawyer from London, Mr. Wilmot, who faced
the coaches up the North Road with such trepidation that he much
preferred not to come unless the business were very urgent.
   Lord Fairfax took a keen outsider's interest in politics. He
took five or six newspapers, bought the current Debates of the Commons
and all the latest political squibs and pamphlets. A typical bill
from Ward & Chandler, newsagents, for 1743 runs-
<LIST>
   During the Seven Years War Fairfax bought large cloth-backed maps
of all the principal theatres of war. His own political views can
only be guessed. In 1745 the family had a strong Jacobite reputation
in the county. In September 1745 Fairfax was bound in +1 to appear
before the North Riding Justices at Hovingham to take the oath of
allegiance. He appeared and refused the oath. On September 15th the
Archbishop of York, Herring, wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord
Hardwicke-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'Lord Falconbridge dined with me yesterday... He offered a sort
of security for the honour and innocence of his relation and
neighbour, Lord Fairfax of Gilling and intimated to lodge a deposition
with me. I told him that was a matter of some nicety but whatever I
saw in favour of Lord Fairfax, notwithstanding my good opinion of him,
must rest upon his authority.'
<END INDENTATION>
   In the last week of September rumours suddenly spread in York
that Fairfax was about to rise in arms. The Rector of Gilling,
Nicholas Gouge wrote to Lord Irwin, the Lord Lieutenant, on October
1st-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'Yesterday Lord Fairfax sent down his coachman (who is a
Protestant) to me with compliments, and to acquaint me that one of our
Town (his Lordship's tenant too, a most bigotted Papist) had given out
that there was a private room within Gilling Castle where 4 men might
be 1conceal'd and nobody 1cou'd find them out and his Lordship
1desir'd the person might be brought before me and 1punish'd as the
Law directs: and further his Lordship 1desir'd that I would send the
Constable... to search his castle whether there was any such room or
not... (the searchers went there and) saw the place at the end of the
Ale Cellar... not two yards square... The Lord's Coachman assured me
that of late there had been no company excepting Mr. Cholmondly and
his wife.'
<END INDENTATION>
   The Rector concluded that the alarmist had spread the tale to
gain credit for himself. He confined himself to telling 'the two
best Protestants' in the man's family that the matter had been
reported to the authorities, and he himself published a refutation of
the rumour in the York papers.
   But another search party had been to Gilling, from York.
Archbishop Herring wrote to Irwin on October 2nd-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'I believe Mr. Frankland and myself took the thing too high,
but the recorder was frightened and the fright caught the city. Lord
Fairfax found out the reason of the alarm, and, I am assured, was
pleased with the opportunity of justifying himself. He treated Mr.
Dunbar (who went with the search warrant) at dinner and drank King
George's health.'
<END INDENTATION>
   To Hardwicke Herring wrote that he was now convinced that Fairfax
was the King's friend.
# 21
<223 TEXT G36>
The reader is now in possession of all the facts needed to
determine what has happened to the aliens, and I hope not to be
pointing out the obvious if I explain that the clue is in the apparent
speeding-up of their television broadcasts. They don't speed them up,
which means, for instance, that when they walk around their space-ship
they can change direction in something of the order of
one-ten-thousandth of a second while moving at 3, miles an hour.
No humanoid frame could stand that, unless its mass were very tiny.
The aliens, then, are on the airfield all right, but their space-ship
is sinking into a muddy heelprint or whatever. Apart from the effects
of awe and amazement produced by the description of the pulpy monsters
and so on, what we have here is a strong puzzle interest that is
widespread in science fiction as a minor aspect and not uncommonly
central, as in this case. I have already mentioned the biological
puzzle- problems of determining an alien life-cycle and the like- as
an important sub-category; another involves the question of finding
the weak point in some apparently invulnerable monster or hostile
alien or badly behaved human artifact of the robot sort. The
solutions to these may be progressively revealed rather than shown as
deduceable, but they need not be, and ~"Pictures Don't Lie" is not
an isolated example of the approach that offers what are valid clues,
even if they are only seen as such in retrospect. Although interests
of this kind can hardly be classed among the most lofty, it seems
legitimate to call them as literary as any other. Certainly science
fiction appears to be on the point of taking over some of the
functions of the traditional detective story, currently I believe in
grave disrepair, though with a large audience, in England at any rate,
nurturing itself on reprints and the more problem-posing kind of
thriller. I cannot believe that the Anglican parson and the Oxford
classics don, those alleged archetypes of the Agatha Christie fan,
would bring themselves to look through the files of Astounding
Science Fiction in search of a story like Isaac Asimov's "Little
Lost Robot," but they would be the losers by their reluctance, for
the science-fiction deduction problem, while to some tastes inferior
to the detective story in its weaker connections with the world we
know, is superior to that tiny motive-means-opportunity system in its
range of both problems set and kinds of answer proposed.
   To take the commercial aspect: some partial merger between the
publics of the two modes does seem eventually possible, as Anthony
Boucher, the most level-headed of science-fiction commentators,
foresaw some years ago. I have already mentioned the tendency of the
more full-time writers to have a foot in both camps: Boucher himself
doubles as the whodunit reviewer of the New York Times, and
although I cannot personally confirm his assertion that
science-fiction elements have recently become perceptible in some
detective stories, the opposite process is clearly under way. A
recent story by Poul Anderson, "The Martian Crown Jewels," gives us
a brilliantly clever and inventive synthesis of the two media, with a
Martian detective called Syaloch who affects a tirstokr cap, a
locked-space-ship problem, and a completely fair presentation of clues
ingeniously disguised as technological patter. Even the most hardened
Baker Street Irregular would be captivated by the story- if he ever
learnt of its existence. Elsewhere, science fiction has been combined
with what we are accustomed to distinguish as thriller or mystery
ingredients rather than specifically deductive ones. All of these
make some appearance in Chad Oliver's novel Shadows in the Sun.
The problem here is why a small town in Texas consists entirely of
recently arrived inhabitants and why these are all too average to be
believable. This is soon explained- the hero boards a flying saucer
on page 27- but the first three chapters are stuffed with 'tec tricks
of presentation and style, from verbless sentences and sinister
single-sentence paragraphs ~("He was afraid to go out" or ~"He
had to know") to the image of the hero, who is an anthropologist
but tough- the ordinary science-fiction hero needs no such apology
for his learning. This chap
<BEGIN QUOTE>
was a big man, standing a shade under six feet and pushing two hundred
pounds. His brown eyes were shrewd and steady. He was dressed in the
local uniform- khaki shirt and trousers, capped with a warped,
wide-brimmed hat at one end and cowboy boots at the other. His
Ph.D. didn't show, and he didn't look like the kind of a man who
had often been frightened,
<END QUOTE>
and as you might expect he soon takes up with Cynthia, who although
fresh off the flying saucer makes good Martinis and is cool and slim
and sets the hero's stomach feeling tight. These are recognisable as
importations into science fiction, which avoids that particular kind
of cheap-jack stuff and indeed deserves a small round of applause for
not trying to expand its audience by concessions to salacity. A less
inane (and more recent) example of attempted hybridisation is Richard
Matheson's A Stir of Echoes, described on the wrapper simply as
"a novel of menace" but in fact fusing science-fiction and 'tec
elements with some show of wholeheartedness to produce a murder
mystery with telepathic clues. The ability of a literary mode to
expand into others is often taken as a sign of vitality, and it is
true that between them fantasy and science fiction have gobbled up
most of what was left of the horror story without much injury, but I
cannot feel that the injection of these thriller ingredients is likely
to lead to much beyond blurring and dilution. It is not by capturing
more territory that science fiction will improve itself, but by
consolidating what it already has.
   Such internal reconstruction would do well to start with an
attempt to bring sexual matters into better focus. Going easy on the
puritanism would be a commendable resolve, and so would a decision to
drop sex altogether where it is not essential rather than to decorate
a planetary survey or alien invasion with a perfunctory love interest
presented in terms borrowed from the tough school or the novelette.
What will certainly not do is any notion of turning out a
science-fiction love story. In the as yet unlikely event of this
being well done, the science fiction part would be blotted out,
reduced to irritating background noise- a dozen Venusian swamp-lilies
being delivered to the heroine's apartment, and so forth. A recent
effort, perhaps harmless in intention but unspeakable in execution,
has been made to introduce a women's angle into the field, whereby we
are introduced to a gallant little lady pretending to hate her man so
that he can push off to Mars without pining for her, and an equally
gallant little wife and mother uncomplainingly keeping up the
production of tasty and nourishing meals while the hydrogen missiles
are landing in the back garden. We can hope for more imaginative
treatments than that, but the role of sex in science fiction as a
whole seems bound to remain secondary. In the idea type of story it
can have almost no place; in the social utopia, it exceeds its warrant
if it is much more than illustrative or diversifying, although one
would not want to be decisive at what is still an early stage of the
medium's development. To view with aplomb the prospect of continuing
limitation of sex interest in science fiction is not the same thing as
to accept a damaging poverty in it, for we are dealing with a genre,
not a literature, and it is unnecessary to chide the Aeneid, for
instance, on the grounds of its taciturnity about daily life in
Augustan Rome. But I quite agree that almost nothing in contemporary
science fiction is more calculated to affront the tiro, nor to raise
more serious doubts of the medium's ability to come of age, than the
horrid lyricism or posturing off-handedness which seem to be the
regular procedures for handling these questions.
   Similar doubts attend consideration of another, and I suppose,
related, weakness in the medium as at present conducted: lack of
humour and, far more than this, bad attempted humour. There is
undoubtedly a kind of priggish pomposity which can afflict even the
better writers, enough at times to subvert the moral tendency of what
they are saying, and I connect this with the parochial circuit of
mutual congratulation, leading in some cases to delusions of grandeur,
in which most of them are involved; this is a consequence, I feel, of
the history and general circumstances of science fiction itself. As
regards simple absence of humour, I like to think I'm as fond of a
good laugh as the next man, but I can stand doing without for long
periods when reading, having been trained in the Oxford English
school, and many of the best science-fiction stories, "The Xi
Effect," for example, distil a kind of horror hard to conceive of as
harmonising plausibly with anything comic. Some editors in the field,
however, seem to have picked up from their reading the notion that
humour is a sign of maturity, and compete with one another to fill
their pages with stories whose very titles are enough to chill the
blood: "The Cerebrative Psittacoid," for instance, or "The Gnurrs
Come from the Voodvork Out." There is even a whole mass of writing
consecrated to the defeats inflicted on learned but hidebound
scientists by a generic Midwestern 2Paw and 2Maw of great natural
wisdom (alleged) and hideous whimsicality (actual). The British are
not guiltless here either: a story called "When Grandfather Flew to
the Moon" married the concepts of space travel with traditional-
that is, false and folksy- Welsh humour, introducing characters
called Llewellyn Time Machine and Auntie Spaceship-Repairs Jones.
This outstanding case of unwanted originality won a prize in the
London Observer's science-fiction contest, which seems to have
been judged by non-addicts; it has been reprinted, with squeals of
editorial delight, in a leading American anthology.
   However, the picture as a whole is not as grave as this. Humour
as a main interest will sometimes work in this medium, provided that
the comic notion is a valid science-fiction notion as well. One such
example is William Tenn's satire on mediocrity, "Null-P"; others
are to be found in the work of Sheckley, Pohl, and Fredric Brown.
Beside his contributions to the comic-inferno division in stories
like "A Ticket to Tranai," Sheckley has devised a sub-form of his
own, the comic problem. In "The Lifeboat Mutiny," two men strive
to outwit the mechanical intelligence which controls the boat; it was
programmed to meet the needs of an extinct, warlike, reptilian race
and is of a verbose, officious disposition. Finally the men sham dead
and the lifeboat ejects them into the sea, having read the alien
burial service over them. The comedy here arises from the
characterisation of the non-human protagonist as it lectures the men
on their patriotic duty, offers them food that looks like clay but
smells like machine oil, and when they refuse it, threatens them with
brain surgery. The solution to the problem, however, does not
approach the theorematical neatness and cogency of that propounded in
"One Man's Poison." Here, two other but similar men are starving
to death in a vast, isolated alien warehouse filled with various
outlandish goods, including food, poisonous substances, and a thing
called the Super Custom Transport, complete with fuel. The food turns
out to be poison and so does the poison, whereupon the men settle down
to dine off the Super Custom Transport, which proves to be an animal,
and its fuel, which is water. Better than almost any other, this
example of the science fiction of pure idea acts as a test case, in
that those learned in the medium will at once salute its ingenuity and
elegance, while those whose study is but little will complain of not
being illuminated, of being offered an unworthy escape from the
universe of man and fact, of being presented with a pseudo-question
instead of a question.
# 233
<224 TEXT G37>
   Conversely, there were other poets who from the very outset
hated and denounced the war, and yet got out of it something which was
both less and more than hatred. However fiercely they might condemn
it, it exerted a sinister hold over them. A striking case of this is
the Russian Futurist, Viktor Khlebnikov, who fought as a private
soldier on the eastern front from early in the war until the
dissolution of the Russian armies. A leading figure in the
6avant-garde of poetry, he experimented with words and images
in the hope of making his poetry tougher and harsher, and war provided
him with many opportunities for effects which suited his peculiar
tastes. It appealed to him by its elemental disorder, its reduction
of life to its lowest terms, its chaotic brutality which made him
believe that the earth had returned to the sway of savage, primeval
gods. His packed, forceful lines and his bold improvisations in
vocabulary reflected his isolation from other men and his
imperviousness to the common claims of humanity. His revolutionary
ardour was perfectly sincere and set him in principle against the war,
but in practice he displayed his feelings largely in his love of
rasping shocks and grim surprises. His imagination was set to work by
such themes as a dead man lying in a pond, soldiers caught in battle
as in a mouse-trap, the merciless torment of rain and snow and wind,
the flame and smoke of bombardments, the burning of villages and the
wreck of forests. In these he feels at home, because he sees in them
a reversion to a distant, disordered past for which his anarchic
temperament craves. He creates his own mythology for the battlefield
and likes to see in its routine survivals from pagan rites. So in
'11Trizna' ('Death-feast'), he presents in the cremation of
dead soldiers an ancient death-feast, in which modern military drill
is part of the ceremony. As soldiers stand in silence and watch the
pyre set alight, the smoke which rises from it recalls the flow of
great rivers, the Don and the Irtish, and symbolizes the overpowering
domination of nature when artificial restraints are removed. In
Khlebnikov's love of horrors there is a streak of perversity, but it
is none the less in character in a man who looked forward to the
collapse of his world. For him also war transforms what he sees, and
gives to it a fierce enchantment.
   From his knowledge of war as it really is the poet may start
again towards a wider vision of it and try to see it in a fuller
perspective without reverting to the old abstractions and falsities.
It is impossible to present its illimitable chaos, but what counts is
the poet's selection from it of what really strikes or stirs him.
This is what Georg Trakl, who died on the eastern front in December
1914, does in 'Im Osten' ('On the Eastern Front'). He
applies to the whole shapeless panorama of battle his gift for images
which form a centre for a host of associations and must be taken at
their full value as each appears:
<POEM>
   Here the individual elements are taken from fact and give a true
picture of war, but they gain a special significance because they also
point to something beyond themselves, of which they are both examples
and symbols. Trakl shows that the soldier-poet is fully capable of
seeing beyond his immediate situation with an insight denied to those
who have no experience of actual battle.
   Though Trakl looks upon war from the anguished solitude of a
prophet, he draws no conclusions and makes no forecasts. Yet it was
not impossible for a fighting man to let his vision pierce beyond the
actual carnage and to divine with an apocalyptic clairvoyance its
meaning in the scheme of things. This was what Isaac Rosenberg did.
In the British army he had little in common with his fellow poets.
They were officers; he was a private soldier. They cherished a trust
in a privileged and happy England which had only to survive the war
and return to its old ways; he, brought up in poverty and frustration
and conscious of his alien origin, shared none of their romantic
dreams. For him the war was indeed a cosmic event, which he believed
to be needed to purge the injustices of society and to bring back
sanity to men. As such he welcomed it when it came, and as such he
continued to believe in it when others had lost their nerve on finding
that their vaulting hopes were false. He was convinced that the war
was an inevitable part of an historical process, in which England,
driven by a desire for self-destruction, by an 'incestuous worm'
eating into its vitals, was passing to the doom of Babylon and Rome.
He had something in common with the Russian revolutionaries, but he
differed from Mayakovsky in believing that the war was necessary to
attain what he desired, and from Khlebnikov in taking no pleasure,
however grim or perverse, in it. He did not deceive himself about its
actual cost, and hardly any poet has written with so unshrinking a
candour about the actual appearance of battle. As a human being
Rosenberg was racked by the agony and the waste which he saw, but he
steeled himself to endure it, because he believed that only through
such an ordeal could the injustices and falsities of his world be
discredited and destroyed. In his view England was paying a price for
her cruelties, and, though the price was indeed heavy, it must none
the less be paid. For this cause Rosenberg was ready to sacrifice
himself, and he fulfilled his pledge when he was killed in April 1918.
He spoke very much from his own point of view, but what he said is an
enlightening corrective both to those who saw nothing in the carnage
and to those who saw nothing beyond it.
   A second matter on which there is a wide divergence between the
non-combatant and the combatant views of war is in their treatment of
death. Those who are not in constant contact with it cannot but be
deeply affected by it, and not only express their grief freely but see
in death much more than its immediate presence. Death in battle has
long had its own glory, and it is understandable that Rupert Brook,
who died before he had seen any fighting except at Antwerp, should
proclaim:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   But this was not how the average soldier treated it. So far as
the prospect of his own death was concerned, he usually observed a
private fatalism, which made speculation superfluous, and in the
deaths of others, however deeply he might feel a personal loss, he
knew that it was useless to lament or do anything but hide his
feelings in a situation where death came all the time and hardly
called for special remark. This of course did not deceive anyone, and
was not intended to do so; it was the dignity of silence in the face
of something on which there was nothing to say. The soldier has to
adjust his mind to death. He does so by treating it as nothing
unusual, and in his topsy-turvy world he is not wrong. This note of
superficial detachment is what Guillaume Apollinaire catches in
'Exercice':
<POEM>
   With solicitous understatement Apollinaire tells of the deaths of
four men behind the lines as if it were nothing unusual, and so indeed
it was. But behind this quiet exterior there is a real compassion at
the impartial cruelty of death which suddenly breaks into the
soldiers' routine and destroys them, when in their talk about the past
they pay no attention to the future, which suddenly falls upon them.
Apollinaire's art speaks for a whole order of human beings of whom he
is the representative, and presents these casual deaths in the spirit
in which any soldier would, in his inarticulate way, feel about them.
   The paradox of death in war is that despite its presence life
must go on without interruption and that even the most gruesome relics
must not be allowed to break into the living soldier's hold upon
himself, which is at all times precarious but none the less the centre
of his sanity and his ability to act. The contrast between what he
feels or does and the surroundings in which he does it is one of war's
most violent discords, and in it we can see how the human spirit
adapts itself to the most horrifying circumstances simply because it
must exert itself and endure. Something of this kind is in the mind
of the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti in 'Veglia' ('Watch'):
<POEM>
   In the struggle to maintain his individuality Ungaretti has to
resist any invasion of it by distress at the dead body. He is fully
aware of it, and his words are not in the least lacking in humanity.
He marks the horror of death in the snarl on the dead man's face and
is painfully conscious of the way in which the dead hands push towards
him, but he struggles against the horror, exerts a complete command
over himself- and writes love-letters. It is his escape from the
hideous unreality of war into the reality of his affections, and it
gains greatly in seriousness from the chilling circumstances in which
it all takes place.
   A third matter on which the fighting soldier has his own ideas is
the enemy. At home enemies may be denounced as inhuman barbarians,
ready to destroy the hearths and shrines of lands more civilized than
their own. Therefore patriots, safely ensconced in the rear,
fulminate against them, but the average soldier soon sees that in this
there is little truth. Living in his own isolated world of the
trenches, he feels that the enemy are closer to him than many of his
own countrymen, and especially than the invisible commanders who from
a remote security order multitudes to a senseless death. On no point
is there a sharper contrast between home and front, and in England we
may mark the extremes, on one side by Kipling's
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~It was not part of their blood.
   ~It came to them very late
   With long arrears to make good,
   When the English began to hate,
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   and on the other side by Siegfried Sassoon's
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~O German mother dreaming by the fire,
   While you are knitting socks to send your son
   His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In Germany no less pungent a contrast can be found between one
end of the scale with Littauer's 'Hymn of Hate' and another with
ordinary soldiers, who felt, almost despite themselves, the curious
brotherhood into which battle draws its antagonists. So in
'Bru"der' ('Brothers'), Heinrich Lersch comes close to what
many men felt as he tells of a dead man hanging on the barbed wire in
front of his trench. He feels that this man is his brother, and at
night he thinks that he hears him crying. He crawls out to bring him
in and bury him, and then he sees that he is a stranger. He draws his
conclusion:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Es irrten meine Augen. Mein Herz, du irrst dich nicht: Es hat
ein jeder Toter des Bruders Angesicht.
   2'Twas my eyes were mistaken. You, heart, were not misled;
There's the look of a brother on every man that's dead.)
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In France we find similar contrasts. At one extreme we may put
Claudel's 'Derrie?3re eux', which in righteous anger denounces
the Germans for shedding innocent blood and foretells their defeat and
punishment by the implacable justice which they have aroused against
them. It has its own proud fury when Claudel elaborates how in the
end the Germans will be undone by the very forces which they have
themselves set in action:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~Retranche-toi, peuple assie?2ge?2! e?2tends tes impassables
re?2seaux de fil
   de fer!
   ~Fossoyeurs de vos propres battaillons, sans rela?5che faites
votre fosse
   dans la terre!
<END QUOTE>
but it moves in too exalted and too personal an atmosphere to speak
for the common soldier.
# 227
<225 TEXT G38>
He may chance to cut a poor figure in the eyes of posterity, for a
work which was mere commercial trash to the conoscenti of one
generation might possibly become a classic to those of another. If,
on the other hand, he is guided by a contempt for the readers of such
books, then he is making a crude and unacknowledged use of my system.
It would be safer to admit what he was doing and do it better; make
sure that his contempt had in it no admixture of merely social
snobbery or intellectual priggery. My proposed system works in the
open. If we cannot observe the reading habits of those who buy the
Westerns, or don't think it worth while to try, we say nothing about
the books. If we can, there is usually not much difficulty in
assigning those habits either to the unliterary or the literary class.
If we find that a book is usually read in one way, still more if we
never find that it is read in the other, we have a 6prima facie
case for thinking it bad. If on the other hand we found even one
reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the
lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and
reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were
changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however
it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to
put it beyond the pale.
   How risky the current method can be, I have some reason to know.
Science-fiction is a literary province I used to visit fairly often;
if I now visit it seldom, that is not because my taste has improved
but because the province has changed, being now covered with new
building estates, in a style I don't care for. But in the good old
days I noticed that whenever critics said anything about it, they
betrayed great ignorance. They talked as if it were a homogeneous
genre. But it is not, in the literary sense, a genre at all. There
is nothing common to all who write it except the use of a particular
'machine'. Some of the writers are of the family of Jules Verne
and are primarily interested in technology. Some use the machine
simply for literary fantasy and produce what is essentially
Ma"rchen or myth. A great many use it for satire; nearly all the
most pungent American criticism of the American way of life takes this
form, and would at once be denounced as un-American if it ventured
into any other. And finally, there is the great mass of hacks who
merely 'cashed in' on the boom in science-fiction and used remote
planets or even galaxies as the backcloth for spy-stories or
love-stories which might as well or better have been located in
Whitechapel or the Bronx. And as the stories differ in kind, so of
course do their readers. You can, if you wish, class all
science-fiction together; but it is about as perceptive as classing
the works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W. W. Jacobs together as
'the sea-story' and then criticising that.
   But it is when we come to the second distinction, that made
among the sheep or within the pale, that my system would differ most
sharply from the established one. For the established system, the
difference between distinctions within the pale and that primary
distinction which draws the pale itself, can only be one of degree.
Milton is bad and Patience Strong is worse; Dickens (most of him) is
bad and Edgar Wallace is worse. My taste is bad because I like Scott
and Stevenson; the taste of those who like E. R. Burroughs is
worse. But the system I propose would draw a distinction not of
degree but of kind between readings. All the words- 'taste',
'liking', 'enjoyment'- bear different meanings as applied to
the unliterary and to me. There is no evidence that anyone has ever
reacted to Edgar Wallace as I react to Stevenson. In that way, the
judgement that someone is unliterary is like the judgement ~'This man
is not in love', whereas the judgement that my taste is bad is more
like ~'This man is in love, but with a frightful woman'. And just
as the mere fact that a man of sense and breeding loves a woman we
dislike properly and inevitably makes us consider her again and look
for, and sometimes find, something in her we had not noticed before,
so, in my system, the very fact that people, or even any one person,
can well and truly read, and love for a lifetime, a book we had
thought bad, will raise the suspicion that it cannot really be as bad
as we thought. Sometimes, to be sure, our friend's mistress remains
in our eyes so plain, stupid and disagreeable that we can attribute
his love only to the irrational and mysterious behaviour of hormones;
similarly, the book he likes may continue to seem so bad that we have
to attribute his liking to some early association or other
psychological accident. But we must, and should, remain uncertain.
Always, there may be something in it that we can't see. The 6prima
facie probability that anything which has ever been truly read and
obstinately loved by any reader has some virtue in it is overwhelming.
To condemn such a book is therefore, on my system, a very serious
matter. Our condemnation is never quite final. The question could
always without absurdity be re-opened.
   And here, I suggest, the proposed system is the more realistic.
For, whatever we say, we are all aware in a cool hour that the
distinctions within the pale are far more precarious than the location
of the pale itself, and that nothing whatever is gained by disguising
the fact. When whistling to keep our spirits up, we may say that we
are as certain of Tennyson's inferiority to Wordsworth as of Edgar
Wallace's to Balzac. When heated with controversy you may say that my
taste in liking Milton is merely a milder instance of the same sort of
badness we attribute to the taste that likes the comics. We can say
these things but no sane man quite fully believes them. The
distinctions we draw between better and worse within the pale are not
at all like that between 'trash' and 'real' literature. They
all depend on precarious and reversible judgements. The proposed
system frankly acknowledges this. It admits from the outset that
there can be no question of totally and finally 'debunking' or
'exposing' any author who has for some time been well inside the
pale. We start from the assumption that whatever has been found good
by those who really and truly read probably is good. All probability
is against those who attack. And all they can hope to do is to
persuade people that it is less good than they think; freely
confessing that even this assessment may presently be set aside.
   Thus one result of my system would be to silence the type of
critic for whom all the great names in English literature- except for
the half dozen protected by the momentary critical
'establishment'- are as so many lamp-posts for a dog. And this I
consider a good thing. These dethronements are a great waste of
energy. Their acrimony produces heat at the expense of light. They
do not improve anyone's capacity for good reading. The real way of
mending a man's taste is not to denigrate his present favourites but
to teach him how to enjoy something better.
   Such are the advantages I think we might hope <SIC> from
basing our criticism of books on our criticism of reading. But we
have so far pictured the system working ideally and ignored the snags.
In practice we shall have to be content with something less.
   The most obvious objection to judging books by the way they are
read is the fact that the same book may be read in different ways. We
all know that certain passages in good fiction and good poetry are
used by some readers, chiefly schoolboys, as pornography; and now that
Lawrence is coming out in paperbacks, the pictures on their covers and
the company they keep on the station bookstalls show very clearly what
sort of sales, and therefore what sort of reading, the booksellers
anticipate. We must, therefore, say that what damns a book is not the
existence of bad readings but the absence of good ones. Ideally, we
should like to define a good book as one which 'permits, invites, or
compels' good reading. But we shall have to make do with 'permits
and invites'. There may indeed be books which compel a good reading
in the sense that no one who reads in the wrong way would be likely to
get through more than a few of their pages. If you took up Samson
Agonistes, Rasselas, or Urn Burial to pass the time, or for
excitement, or as an aid to egoistic castle-building you would soon
put it down. But books which thus resist bad reading are not
necessarily better than books which do not. It is, logically, an
accident that some beauties can, and others cannot, be abused. As for
'invites', invitation admits of degrees. 'Permits' is therefore
our sheet-anchor. The ideally bad book is the one of which a good
reading is impossible. The words in which it exists will not bear
close attention, and what they communicate offers you nothing unless
you are prepared either for mere thrills or for flattering daydreams.
But 'invitation' comes into our conception of a good book. It is
not enough that attentive and obedient reading should be barely
possible if we try hard enough. The author must not leave us to do
all the work. He must show, and pretty quickly, that his writing
deserves, because it rewards, alert and disciplined reading.
   It will also be objected that to take our stand upon readings
rather than books is to turn from the known to the unknowable. The
books, after all, are obtainable and we can inspect them for
ourselves; what can we really know about other people's ways of
reading? But this objection is not so formidable as it sounds.
   The judgement of readings, as I have already said, is twofold.
First, we put some readers outside the pale as unliterary; then we
distinguish better and worse tastes within the pale. When we are
doing the first, the readers themselves will give us no conscious
assistance. They do not talk about reading and would be inarticulate
if they tried to. But in their case external observation is perfectly
easy. Where reading plays a very small part in the total life and
every book is tossed aside like an old newspaper the moment it has
been used, unliterary reading can be diagnosed with certainty. Where
there is passionate and constant love of a book and rereading, then,
however bad we think the book and however immature or uneducated we
think the reader, it cannot. (By rereading I mean, of course,
rereading for choice. A lonely child in a house where there are few
books or a ship's officer on a long voyage may be driven to reread
anything faute de mieux.)
   When we are making the second distinction- approving or
censuring the tastes of those who are obviously literary- the test by
external observation fails us. But to compensate for that, we are now
dealing with articulate people. They will talk, and even write, about
their favourite books. They will sometimes explicitly tell us, and
more often unintentionally reveal, the sort of pleasure they take in
them and the sort of reading it implies. We can thus often judge, not
with certainty but with great probability, who has received Lawrence
on his literary merits and who is primarily attracted by the imago
of Rebel or Poor Boy Makes Good; who loves Dante as a poet and who
loves him as a Thomist; who seeks in an author the enlargement of his
mental being and who seeks only the enlargement of his self-esteem.
# 243
<226 TEXT G39>
   They were married on March 4th, 188, at St. Matthias,
Dublin, and the bride wore a simple travelling dress of grey. It was
in every way more suitable, considering the bridegroom's age, and the
fact that she was still in mourning for her brother. But she
regretted it afterwards. 'The conventional dress of a widow has been
mine, but never the dress of a bride.'
   His letter to Layard from Paris, a few days later, gives the
picture of a happy, teasing relationship between them. 'I am hardly
recovered as yet from the surprise which my marriage has caused me.
My wife, who was quite a student, is now plunged among chiffons
and modistes, and I am bound to admit that she bears the
infliction with a resignation which is rather alarming and ominous,
excusing her new-fangled interest in dress on the grounds of pleasing
me.' Evidently Cinderella got her finery after all.
   Her welcome from the Layards was as warm as his had always been,
and for Enid Layard, her ideal of a hostess and great lady, she felt a
hero-worship which developed into the closest intimacy she ever had
with another woman. To Lady Layard's literary antecedents I will
return.
   They were only just in time to see Sir Henry in his ambassadorial
glory, for his diplomatic career was coming to an abrupt end. A
confidential despatch, in which he gave his frank opinion of the
Sultan's incompetence and personal cowardice, was published by the
Foreign Office, whether through carelessness or treachery is not
known. Queen Victoria, a strong supporter of monarchical
trade-unionism, was scarcely less furious than the Sultan, and Sir
Henry was not only recalled, but lost his hope of a peerage, in which
matter, one is told, Sir William had been acting as intermediary.
However, the Layards were childless and comfortably off, and had some
years previously bought themselves a beautiful palazzo on the Grand
Canal in Venice, so that retirement was no great hardship to them.
The Gregorys would visit them there every spring.
   To neither friend did retirement mean inactivity. They continued
their work for the National Gallery and their personal
picture-collecting, and Sir William continued to gratify what he calls
his insatiable appetite for travelling. Three times during his
marriage he returned as a visitor to his beloved Ceylon, on the second
occasion taking Augusta with him, and giving her a winter in India
first. Other winters were spent in Egypt; spring in Spain or Italy,
and then on to the Layards. He had, of course, no intention of
burying himself at Coole; it was a country house for a few weeks of
shooting in the late summer and early autumn. Nor did he take any
notice of Dublin, a place of provincial dowdiness to a man of the
world like himself, except to give a picture or two to its National
Gallery- nothing in comparison with what he did for London's. The
tall house in St. George's Place, London, was the nearest thing he
had to a settled home.
   For the Cinderella of Roxborough, it was liberation indeed. It
was fulfilment not only as a woman, but as an intelligence. Now at
last she had someone to talk to; in fact she had the best company in
London to talk to, in the Jane Austen sense of 'the company of
clever, well-informed people who have plenty of conversation.' It
was frequently the best company in the social sense too; Sir William
numbered at least two duchesses among his intimates. 'Freed by my
own happy marriage from many family traditions'- so she describes
her escape from the Persse conservatism and prejudice. Sir William
may not appear much of a revolutionary from our standpoint, but from
theirs he was almost as much a rebel and traitor to his class as she
was to seem to the next Ascendancy generation. Moreover, he was a
great gentleman, with a nation-wide reputation and the grand manner,
and if he chose to be a rebel, nobody dared say him nay.
   In May of 1881, their son William Robert was born in London, to
be the pride of his father's old age, and to his mother the dearest
thing on earth.
3
   As far as the Galway remove went, only seven miles separated her
from Roxborough, but from the first, she says, 'there seemed to be a
strangeness and romance about Coole.' And it is not surprising, for
the two houses and their demesnes were different worlds. Roxborough
was open and windy, bustling and busy, a working estate; Coole was a
pleasure-house, a Sleeping Beauty palace in a thick forest. For by
his plantations the East India chairman, homesick perhaps for Asia,
had created an artificial jungle, quite against the grain of that
limestone country. His descendants had inherited his passion for
tree-planting. Sir William had turned the nut-wood north of the house
into a pinetum, putting, as he cheerfully admits, a great deal of
money into the nurserymen's pockets, since many of the rare species of
conifer introduced would not take to the limestone, and died. But
enough remained to create a handsome sub-Alpine gloom.
   The drive was two miles long, and the last mile was first an
arching avenue of ilex, then a twisting forest track. The house
itself disappointed many (including, years later, Robert Gregory's
artist bride) by its architectural poverty. It was an oblong white
Georgian building with a plain little porch, the counterpart of
hundreds in Ireland. The principal living-rooms, library and
drawing-room, looked the other way, west towards the lake, through
undistinguished but serviceable bays. All the house's distinction lay
within.
   Four cultivated generations had filled it with books, pictures,
statuary, records and mementoes of wide travel, all bearing the
imprint of personal taste and personal achievement. It was the house
of people who had never been afraid to use their brains.
   As at Roxborough, there were rats; indeed, till Robert Gregory
married, and his wife persuaded him to pull down the creeper which
covered the outer walls, there were rats to a positively embarrassing
degree. A visitor of the creeper epoch recalls a rat in her bedroom
while she was undressing, a rat inside the mattress when she got into
bed, and unmistakeable signs that a rat had been before her when she
got down to breakfast next morning; after which she walked the three
miles into Gort, and sent herself a telegram, summoning herself home.
   Ten minutes' walk along the edge of the paddock at the back of
the house brought one out- with a sense of relief if one were of a
claustrophobic tendency- on to the edge of a long meandering lake,
made even longer in winter by floods, since its waters, like those of
the Roxborough river, only reached the sea by an underground channel,
which was liable to get blocked. And round the lake lay more vast
woods; somewhere in their depths was a perched boulder which when
struck emitted musical notes, and could be caused to ring like a chime
of church bells. It was all very eerie, and not surprisingly, was a
favourite haunt of the Sidhe, those strange Beings, in appearance just
like ordinary people until They vanished or filled your pockets with
derisory gold, whom it is inadequate and misleading to describe by our
English word of Fairies. To the difficulty of finding your way about
the woods was added Their propensity for leading you astray, and
unwary visitors could be lost for hours, or even a whole night. In
later years Their most notable victim was to be Bernard Shaw.
   Even in County Galway, the seven miles' removal meant a more
intellectual society. Sir William's chief friend in the district was
Count de Basterot, a French traveller and litte?2rateur who had
inherited an estate on the Burren coast from the Irish side of his
family, self-exiled to France in the time of James =2. The Count
came to Duras for the summer and autumn, much as the Gregorys came to
Coole. While the next-door neighbour, at Tullira Castle, was an
old-maidish young man named Edward Martyn, heir and hope of one of the
rare Catholic landed families. He had literary ambitions which Sir
William had encouraged, and was in all directions talented, musically
and artistically too. Unfortunately, he was mother-dominated to an
extent which made it impossible for him to manage his life or get the
full value from his talents. To please his mother, he had Gothicised
his house at a cost of +2,, though besought by Sir William not
to. He would do anything to please her but marry, and he lived like a
hermit in one of the towers, nourishing a hatred for the rest of
womankind. His position as a wealthy and cultivated Catholic later
gave him great importance in the Irish Renascence; he became a link
between the different sides of the movement; people got to know each
other through him, thereafter leaving him behind.
   Three years after Lady Gregory's marriage, Dr (later Monsignor)
Jerome Fahy was appointed Vicar-General of Gort, the market town
nearest to Coole, and this brought into their circle another
intelligent man whom as Augusta Persse she would never have been
allowed to know. Sir William, it has been noted, was a friend to the
Roman Catholic religion, though perhaps not for what Catholics would
consider the right reasons. He had always been on good terms with the
Bishop and clergy of the Kilmacduagh diocese, and their support had
materially assisted his election as member for Galway. And the new
Vicar-General was no ordinary parish priest, but a historian and a man
of exceptionally enquiring mind.
   On the lonely moorland of Kilmacduagh, about three miles
south-west of Gort, he found one of the most considerable groups of
ancient ecclesiastical ruins in Ireland: an abbey church, a monastery,
a cathedral, and a well-preserved Round Tower leaning two feet from
the perpendicular. The history of these monuments had been nearly
forgotten, but he made it his business to 'disinter the buried
treasure', as he puts it in the preface to his History and
Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, published in 1893. He is
writing, of course, from the standpoint of his faith, but much of what
he 'disinterred' was folklore, and he was collecting it in the
field, a decade before Lady Gregory and Yeats.
   Nor did he limit himself to legends of St Colman, but as we
have seen, brought his story up to date with accounts of the reigning
Ascendancy families; dealing out censure vigorously, but giving credit
to those who had discharged their responsibilities fairly,
particularly to the Gregorys and the Verekers, the two families who
had made Gort such a well-liking <SIC> and prosperous little town.
4
   The winter spent by the Gregorys in Egypt was an important one
for Augusta, for it was then that, as she puts it, she 'made her
education in politics'. The leaders of the English colony in Cairo
were the Sussex poet and landowner Wilfred Scawen Blunt, and his wife
Lady Anne, granddaughter of Byron. Blunt was a great taker-up of
causes. He was already disquieted by British administration in India,
and a few years later, in the Land League troubles, he was to claim
the honour of being the first Englishman to go to gaol for Ireland's
sake. He served a sentence in Galway Gaol for inciting Lord
Clanricarde's tenants to resist eviction, and while this was no doubt
awkward for Sir William Gregory, who was a friend of Lord
Clanricarde's, it gave him in Lady Gregory's eyes the status of a
hero.
   All her life she was fascinated by stories of prisons and
prisoners, as indeed anyone with 'rebelly' leanings well may be.
From Blunt she learnt what it felt like to be inside the grim gaol at
which she had so often stared in awe when her elders came to Galway,
and which was to form the background to her two most famous short
plays.
# 23
<227 TEXT G4>
MALAY LITERATURE
By SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT
   FOR more than a 1, years Malaya's little courts and ports
were under the influence of Hindu and Buddhist India, which in fact
had created them. First Pallavas from the Coromandel coast imported a
mixture of the religions of Brahma, Shiva and Visnu and Buddhism; and
Sanskrit inscriptions of the 4th century of the Xtian era show that in
Kedah, Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism flourished side by side. From
the 6th to the 13th centuries, Northern Malaya was part of a Buddhist
empire, Sri Vijaya, that ruled the Malacca straits from Kedah and the
Sunda straits from Palembang in south Sumatra. And though the
conversion to Islam 6 years ago destroyed the Hindu alphabets and
any palm-leaf literature, there remain four times as many Sanskrit
loanwords even in Malay village verse as there are Arabic. The
Indians were too few in the land to introduce Prakrit or any Dravidian
tongue as the language of conversation, but the court Brahmins brought
religion and learning and furnished the primitive Malay with his first
abstract terms, terms still used by the Muslim Malay to denote
religion, fasting, heaven, sin, life, language, time, name, prince,
property, thing, a fine, work and so on. It is this background that
gave the Malay stories from the Jataka tales, Bidpai's fables and the
Katha Sarit Sagara or Ocean of story, carried down the centuries
per ora virum, until they were written down and published in
modern times. Most of these stories are known throughout South East
Asia and there is Buddhist influence in folktales. But the two chief
literary relics of the Hindu period are Malay versions of the Ramayana
and Mahabharata. The former, the Hikayat Sri Rama, is derived from
the oral tradition of the Javanese shadow-play and contains details
from the east, west and south-west of India. Some of the episodes are
not found in India before the 12th century. The Malay version in the
Perso-Arabic script would appear to date from the first half of the
15th century, when children in the streets of Malacca knew the story,
and Islamic romance had not yet ousted the Hindu epics. The Malay
versions of sections of the Mahabharata are derived from Javanese
versions of the 14th century and again may probably have been
translated in 15th century Malacca with its large Javanese quarter.
   By 1634 Malays were instructed by a famous theologian writer in
Malay that the Ramayana might be condemned to the rubbish heap
provided the name of Allah did not occur in the manuscript. In the
Bodleian manuscript which goes back to the 16th century or earlier, it
is Nabi Adam who gives Ravana his kingdoms and Allah taala has
been substituted for the Hindu Trinity (dewata mulia raya).
   One other strong pre-Muslim element in Malay literature was a
cycle of some forty tales enacted in the shadow-plays of Java, Bali,
Malaya, Siam and Cambodia, whose hero is a Javanese prince Sri Panji
and heroine Chandra Kirana, Moon-beam. Some are preserved in Kelantan
thanks to the shadow-plays. One Kelantan tale is typical. The god
Indra sentences a heavenly nymph guilty of an illicit love affair to
become a mortal and be murdered by a Javanese queen before she can
return to heaven. She descends and becomes incarnate in the wife of a
Javanese headman. A prince hunting sees her and weds her, though he
is betrothed to a princess. His mother mad with rage stabs the girl
in her sleep, whereupon she returns a nymph in heaven. As always
there is horse-play by the prince's followers who are deified
ancestors turned by Hinduism into clowns. The Panji cycle influences
the "Malay Annals" and inspired the only original Malay romance
before modern times, the story of Hang Tuah or the Lucky Captain whose
exploits are a mixture of myth and history found in Indian and
Javanese literature of this type and include an apochryphal trip to
Istanbul.
   Virginia Woolf's analysis of Sidney's Arcadia fits exactly not
only the Panji tales but a number of Malay romances that are a jumble
of Hindu folklore and mythology, Panji episodes, allusions to the
heroes of the Shahnameh, incidents from the Alexander legend,
references to Baghdad, Medinah, Egypt and Byzantium and even
expositions of Sufi mysticism. "Sidney" writes Virginia Woolf,
"had no notion when he set out where he was going. Telling stories,
he thought, was enough- one could follow another interminably. But
where there is no end in view, there is no sense of direction to draw
us on. Nor, since it is part of his scheme to keep his characters
simply bad and simply good without distinction, can he gain variety
from the complexity of character. To supply change and movement he
must have recourse to mystification. These changes of dress, these
disguises of princes as peasants, of men as women, serve instead of
psychological subtilty to relieve the stagnancy of people collected
together with nothing to talk about. But when the charm of that
childish device falls flat there is no breath to fill the sails. Who
is talking and to whom and about what, we no longer feel sure."
Some of the Malay romances, which apart from any Javanese additions,
all come from India, appear to have been translated in the 15th
century, others in the 16th and 17th. One, the Indraputra was
condemned to the rubbish heap in 1634 along with the Ramayana. The
two last romances of this type were translated early in the 19th
century. The modern Malay views them with the eye of Virginia Woolf
and today they are of interest only to the folklorist and the
linguist.
   The first missionaries of Islam had to provide romances to take
the place of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the popular Panji tales.
So the pseudo-Callisthenes story of Alexander the Great as a warrior
missionary of the faith of Abraham, the precursor of Mohamed, was
presented to the Malays in a translation almost with the advent of
Islam. There is a Megat Iskandar in 14th century Pasai and soon after
14 the first Muslim ruler of Malacca changed his Hindu title of
Parameswara for Sultan Iskandar Shah. Several Malay manuscripts name
as the author of the Arabic version Al-Suri, who cites as his
authority Abdullah ibn Al-Mustafa translator of the Pahlavi version
of the Kalila wa Dimna. From its early date and the fact that it is
a compilation from Persian as well as Arabic sources, the Malay
Hikayat Iskandar may be derived from a Perso-Arabic source in India.
It seems probable that Malacca's first ruler, who died in 1424 knew
the Hikayat. The 15th century author of the "Malay Annals" borrows
anecdotes from it and also mentions the Hikayat Amir Hamza and Hikayat
Hanafiah, the former a direct translation from the Persian and the
latter having Shi'ah colouring and quoting a Persian verse. Another
Malay work of Persian origin is the story of Joseph and Zulaikha,
namely Potiphar's wife. An excellent Malay work is the Hikayat Bayan
Budiman, or story of the Wise Parrot, a cycle of tales in a frame
story, where every night the parrot dissuades his mistress from going
to meet a lover by diverting her with tales. Ultimately this cycle of
stories comes from the Sanskrit but the Malay version claims to be
from the Persian Tutinameh. Three times in the text the work is
ascribed to one Kadli Hassan and twice a date, A.D. 1371 is
given. Its excellent style suggests that it was done into Malay in
15th century Malacca and the "Malay Annals" tell us how the
daughter of a Malaccan Laksamana, or Admiral was named Sabariah
"Patience" almost certainly after a celebrated character in the
story of the Wise Parrot.
   Another cycle of tales, called the Story of Bakhtiar was also
translated from the Persian. The original Persian work was written in
A.D. 123 and later done into Arabic. From the Persian recension
are derived two Malay versions of the Hikayat Bakhtiar and from the
Arabic comes the Malay Hikayat Ghulam.
   The fact that Malays could borrow so much from the Persian and
yet remain orthodox Sunnites of the school of Shafi'i is explained
from the Turkish and Mongol rulers of Persia between 1 and 15
being also Sunnites. And during that period the Persian influence on
Malay literature must have come not only from India but from Persians
themselves. In 1336 Ibn Batuta records the presence of several
Persians all Shafi'ites at the Pasai court. A tomb in that little
Sumatran state bears an inscription from Sa'di and half a century
later there were theologians living in Pasai who had come from
Transoxana and Khorassan.
   The Malay version of the 1, Questions, the fullest version
extant of the book from which Europe got to know the Arab account of
Islam, is derived from two old Persian recensions and contains many
references to places round the Caspian sea. It has no Shi'ah
colouring.
   When Persians became Shi'ahs, Sayids from Mecca and the Hadramant
gradually took their place in the Malay world, and we get a large
number of theological works translated from orthodox Arabic originals.
But Persian influence lingered. And there are four stories about the
Prophet with a Shi'ah tinge, namely the tale of the Nur Muhammad or
mystical light of the Prophet, the Splitting of the Moon, the
Prophet's shaving and his death. One manuscript of 1688 calls the
first an abridgement of a Persian Rauzat al-ahbab or Paradise of
Lovers.
   After the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511 the
mastery of the Malay world passed to Acheh, which was frequented by
missionaries from Mecca, Yemen, Egypt and Syria whose names we know
and who found pupils eager to study Islamic mysticism. Works of pure
literature fell more and more out of fashion as Arab influence
supplanted Persian. But still Persian influence lingered. The
earliest Malay version of the Panchatantra or Bidpai's fables was
known to the Dutch historian Valentyn in 1726 and from its poor Malay
and Sumatran style it must have been translated at Acheh. It came
through some Indian original from the 12th century Persian recension
of Nasr Allah as amended in the 15th century by the author of the
Anwar-i Suhaili or Lights of Canopus.
   There is an ethical treatise "The Crown of Kings" compiled at
Bokhara and done into Malay in 163 and therefore almost certainly at
Acheh. The verses in this miscellany are all in the form of Persian
prosody. Among Persian works cited in it are the Siyar ul Muluk
compiled by the famous Vizier Nizam ul Muluk, a verse out of the
Secrets of Attar, the romances of Mahmud and Ayaz and Shirin, and
Yusuf and Zulaikha. The introduction acknowledges indebtedness to the
author of the Anwar i Suhaili.
   With the coming of Arabs from the Hadramant and with Malays
studying in Mecca and later in Cairo, Indo-Persian belles-lettres gave
way to theology, even the Arabian Nights not being translated until
the 19th century and then from the English. But Malay theology is too
vast a subject to handle here.
   The example of Thucydides, Gibbon and Macaulay before us, we may
risk the contempt of so many of its modern practitioners and count
history a branch of literature. Certainly it is the most original and
best prosework of the Malays. And just as artistry has kept alive the
work of the three great historians I have mentioned when countless
others are forgotten or consulted only by specialists, so artistry
puts the Malay 15th century "Annals" above all other Malay
histories.
   It was not the earliest Malay history. The earliest is a History
of the Rulers of Pasai (a small extinct Sumatran state) written after
there had been time for Arabic loan-words to be adopted into the Malay
language and containing one Arabic loan-word not met elsewhere in
Malay asfa 'reef, gold reef.' Islam reached northern Sumatra
late in the 13th century and Pasai's first Muslim ruler died in 1297.
# 23
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Introduction
Anthony Powell
   IN introducing Jocelyn Brooke's investigation of Proust and
Joyce, I shall not pick out the plums of the essay by naming the many
points which I enjoyed in it. These can be read in their proper
place. There are, however, aspects of Brooke's approach to which
attention should be drawn. In the first place, he is (like myself) a
warm admirer of both great writers. His criticism is that of love,
not hate. This makes it far more valuable. In the second place, he
writes in a manner that is completely informal. The views are
expressed just as if we were talking with him over the dinner table.
To write literary criticism in this way is not as easy as it looks.
To discuss writers in this easy, conversational style, dealing with
important topics at one moment, trivial at another, is a delightful
gift, and often gets to the core of a book in a way that more formal
articles never manage to attain.
   I agree with almost everything Jocelyn Brooke says, except that I
think I should myself place a wider gulf between the two writers,
Proust seeming to me to possess greatly superior powers. The
essential gift of a novelist is that he should be interested in
people. Proust comes through this test with flying colours; Joyce
gets held up with his own special preoccupations. If Joyce does not
know about anything- and vast areas of human experience are
completely alien to him- he usually sneers at it. We may tire of
Proust's determination that in the end every character he writes about
should be homosexual or of his obsession with jealousy. In spite of
these King Charles's heads, one continues to feel that everything and
everybody fascinated him- perhaps at times too much.
   Gissing used to ask ~'Has he starved?' when a novelist was
named, implying starvation to be a 6sine qua non of effective
writing. Joyce did, of course, starve; Proust did not, except when
the waiters at the Ritz were inattentive. Indeed, Proust is a good
example to prove the futility of Gissing's question. I myself should
prefer to ask: 'Does he put over what he sets out to say?' Here,
both Proust and Joyce must be admitted to be successful. How is this
done? Brooke maintains- and I cannot disagree- that Proust was a
'bad' novelist when it came to narrative, that Joyce had a dull
mind. In both cases Brooke's arguments and instances are undeniable.
At the same time no one can exactly say how certain things are 'put
over' in a novel. There exists the mystery of art. If the works of
Joyce and Proust were pruned of their obvious faults, would they
remain of equal stature?
   Brooke observes that both writers were regarded thirty years ago
as immensely daring in their treatment of sex, as well as in their
innovations of style. There can be no doubt at all that their fame
owes something to this sexual emancipation of language. Indeed, one
might paraphrase Nietzsche by saying that a good novel in those days
justified some obscenity, but that good obscenity often justified a
very bad novel in the eyes of the highbrows. It is interesting to
consider how a novelist like Galsworthy would now be regarded, had
some sudden illness or accident produced a psychological change in
him, resulting in his treatment of subjects then regarded as
forbidden. Supposing in The Forsyte Saga instead of Irene leaving
Soames for Bosiney, Soames had left Irene on account of that same
young architect? What would have been the verdict of those who now
deplore, and no doubt rightly deplore, Galsworthy's lack of psychology
and his cardboard characters? Would he have been hailed as a novelist
who saw beneath the surface of things? It is an interesting question.
   However, there we enter a world of vast speculation. I shall say
no more than to recommend Jocelyn Brooke's trial of Proust and Joyce
on the serious charge of chronic literary imperfection.
PROUST and JOYCE
The case for the Prosecution
=1. Combray and Rathmines
   PROUST and Joyce: their names, even today, tend to be
bracketed together, and thirty-odd years ago the conjunction was
commoner still, chiefly I suppose because- for the generation which
grew up in the twenties- they were without question the dominant
literary figures of that period. To a later age, however, the
association may seem surprising, for surely no two writers could, on
the face of it, have been more dissimilar, either as artists or as
human beings. If Ulysses has little in common with A la
Recherche du Temps Perdu, still less has the lower middle-class
Dubliner, brought up in poverty and squalor, with the rich French
6rentier, the 6prote?2ge?2 of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
So wholly disparate do they seem, indeed, that it comes as something
of a shock to remember that, on at least one occasion, the two men did
actually meet in the flesh, though the encounter seems to have been
anything but a success.
   Yet for all their dissimilarity, Proust and Joyce have a good
deal more in common than one might suppose, and the tendency to
bracket their names together is less unjustified than appears at first
sight. Both, in the first place, were revolutionary writers, in the
sense that their work revealed new aspects of the human mind and of
man in relation to society. Both, too, were technical innovators,
though in the case of Proust his innovations were mainly in the sphere
of narrative and construction (for all his stylistic complexity, he
remained basically faithful to the traditions of French prose),
whereas Joyce, after a series of incredibly ingenious and daring
experiments, was compelled at last to invent a brand-new language of
his own.
   Both Proust and Joyce, moreover, attempted to portray in their
works the totality of human experience: to write, in fact, a kind of
Come?2die Humaine; though Ulysses, I suppose, is the
Human Comedy seen through the wrong end of a telescope- or, as Aldous
Huxley's typewriter once brilliantly expressed it, the "Human
5Vomedy". In both, however, this ambition was partially frustrated
by a shared egocentricity, a neurotic self-absorption hitherto
unparalleled among great writers. For Joyce as much as for Proust, it
was the "I", the moi, with which he was ultimately concerned:
both were autobiographers for whom the objective world about them was
largely subordinated to their own specialized and highly subjective
mental attitudes. For both of them this intense self-absorption was
to result, finally, in a kind of partial insanity, aggravated in the
one case by chronic asthma, in the other by near-blindness and
alcoholism. With Proust, this insanity took the form of a maniacal
obsession with sexual jealousy; with Joyce (the purer artist of the
two), his reason foundered in a morass of over-elaborated verbal
techniques and private jokes.
   Both, finally, were obsessed to an inordinate degree with the
past. With Proust, le temps perdu is the eponymous hero of
his novel; and as a human being, though remaining intellectually
alert, he virtually lost contact- save on a relatively superficial
level- with the outside world after the age of thirty-three. In
Joyce's case the retreat from present reality was earlier and even
more uncompromising: after the 16th of June, 194 (when he was
twenty-two), his whole attention as an artist became concentrated,
exclusively and obsessively, upon the world of Dublin in the nineties
and the early nineteen-hundreds, with special reference to the naive
and limited preoccupations of his own boyhood and adolescence.
   It would hardly, in fact, be going too far to say that the
similarities between Proust and Joyce, considered as psychological
types, outweigh their differences. Yet I think that the habitual
bracketing of their names had, a generation ago- and perhaps has
still- a more cogent and less respectable explanation: namely, that
both writers had acquired a reputation for obscenity and
"immorality."
   To young people today this must seem scarcely credible, but it is
easy to forget how profoundly the climate of moral opinion has changed
during the last thirty years. In the case of Proust the charge of
"obscenity" must seem particularly surprising, for La
Recherche is seldom obscene in the crude sense of the term; yet
the fact remains that Proust was the first important novelist to deal
extensively and in detail with the then forbidden subject of
homosexuality, and in 1922, even in France, the publication of
Sodome et Gomorrhe was attended by something of a scandal. (In
England, Scott Moncrieffs' translation was delayed until 1929, when it
appeared in a limited edition, issued not by Chatto and Windus, who
had published the earlier volumes, but by the more courageous American
firm of Alfred Knopf.)
   Joyce is another matter: it can scarcely be denied that
Ulysses- judged even by the far laxer standards of today- is
defiantly and in every possible sense obscene. Personally, if I were
Home Secretary, I would impose no restrictions whatsoever in such
matters, but if rules are going to be imposed at all, then Ulysses
must surely top the list in any Index Expurgatorius, and the
fact that it is now obtainable in this country (and has been for a
quarter of a century) makes nonsense of the existing regulations.
That its obscenity is aesthetically justified may be perfectly true,
though I think this a doubtful point; but obscene it undoubtedly is,
within the meaning of any act which attempts to define so equivocal a
term. On the other hand, Joyce is the least pornographic of writers:
nobody, I should imagine, has ever been thrown into transports of
sexual excitement by the "obscene" passages in Ulysses, though
one can never, of course, be sure, for almost any book, however
harmless by intention, is capable of provoking an erotic thrill in
somebody. (I know people who find Bulldog Drummond far more
exciting in this respect than Lady Chatterley's Lover; and did not
Lawrence himself profess to find Jane Eyre revoltingly
"pornographic"?)
   If Joyce, in revising Ulysses, could have been persuaded to
omit the more flagrant obscenities (most of which, after all, are
incidental to the book, and do not form an integral part of it), we
should have been left with an experimental novel of great interest,
which would doubtless have created a considerable stir in
6avant-garde circles at the time. But would Joyce's reputation,
in such circumstances, have survived his lifetime- and survived (one
might add) the publication of Finnegans Wake? Would Ulysses
and Finnegan have provided- as in fact is the case- a
perpetual and profitable stamping-ground for the writers of Ph.D.
theses? It is possible; but I, myself, rather doubt it.
   Similarly, if Proust's treatment of sex had been as orthodox as
that of, say, Galsworthy, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu would
still remain a great novel; for that matter, when one compares Swann
and the Jeunes Filles- in which the theme of homosexuality
remains latent- with the shoddiness of the later volumes, one is
inclined to wonder whether it might not, in fact, have been even
greater. True, it is hard to imagine A la Recherche without
Charlus; yet it is at least arguable that, if Proust had made Charlus
a womanizer, and Albertine a perfectly normal heterosexual girl, the
novel would have been, 6qua novel, neither better nor worse than
it is. But would it, one wonders, have created quite so much stir as,
in effect, it did?
   Once again, I have my doubts. Both writers- no doubt lacking
this adventitious appeal- would have enjoyed a certain re?2clame
in literary circles, but neither, I feel, would have attained to the
celebrity which each, in fact, achieved during his lifetime, and which
survives to this day.
   The twenties were a period of sexual emancipation, Havelock Ellis
and Freud had not done their work for nothing, and it went without
saying that enlightened persons should fly, from the highest motives,
to the defence of any serious writer who treated the subject of sex
with greater freedom than his predecessors.
# 27
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They are not disparaged because they contain little that is unusual
in harmony or design, for Handel's best work is fully evident when the
general style of a movement looks conventional to the score-reading
eye. The few movements in Op. 3 which strike us as uniquely
Handelian are not those in the grand manner but the best dances. We
are glad to have Op. 3 for the charming movements rather than those
which the first audiences probably found impressive. Particularly
attractive are the sarabande which forms the middle movement of No.
1 (the only movement with flute), the gavotte and variations (not so
labelled) at the end of No. 2, and the minuets of No. 4.
   The manuscripts of these works are lost, but not that of a fine C
major concerto called by Arnold '6Concertante'. It bears the date
25th January 1736 and was known as 'The Concerto in Alexander's
Feast' after the first occasion when London heard it. It was the
first item in Walsh's fourth collection of Select Harmony, which
is thought to have been issued in 1741. The ripieno includes two
oboes but the concertino is the Corellian string trio. Walsh also
published two other Handel concertos which need not detain us here.
The student can find them all, as well as those of Op. 3, in a
handy volume of Lea Pocket Scores (New York).
   Before doing homage to the most wonderful of all 6concerti
grossi we may take as a point of departure Chrysander's remark that
the Op. 3 concertos show 'a bewildering variety of form'. If
'design' and 'form' are regarded as synonymous, then any work
that is not epigonic should bewilder us, and Handel's Op. 6 should
serve a feast of bewilderment. Because words will no more describe
the form than the expression of music, for the form is the music,
we measure the parts of a musical design instead of learning a piece
by heart in order to judge its form. One artist does not excel
another because he has used a more complex design, but because his
form is more organic, which means that the ideas and their growth are
of the right quality and quantity for the expression. When equally
sensitive and intelligent judges of music have different opinions
concerning the quality of ideas and the forms into which they grow,
their argument often settles upon design- how many themes are used,
how many are germs for motivic growth, where and how contrast is made,
where and how it is avoided, whether the themes are curved or angular,
rightly or wrongly lacking in colour- and behind the description is
the implication that one design is superior to another, a fugue with
stretto superior or inferior to one that is as effective through
well-timed entries between non-derived episodes. Thus too often we
think of form as a relation of A to B, of a movement being fine if C,
instead of D, follows B at a certain point; sometimes this
pseudo-explanation may in fact support truth, but we grasp the symbols
of the truth instead of the truth itself.
   Beethoven had neither the education nor the natural ability to
use words explicitly. On his deathbed, having no further need to
regret his limitation or to cure it, he pointed to the Arnold volumes
of Handel which had just arrived and said 'There is the truth'.
On a previous occasion Beethoven had said of Handel: 'He was the
greatest composer who ever lived. I would uncover my head, and kneel
before his tomb.' Among Beethoven's eccentricities we cannot number
that of seeking to impress company by aesthetic and musical
judgements. Men with the greatest insight into music use one life in
its pursuit and lack another in which to command words in a way that
effectively communicates their musical judgement. Beethoven's words
are often incoherent, but when we grasp their purport we find them
true. 'Ah, my dear Ries, he was the master of us all in this
art'- Beethoven was speaking of Mozart and the art of the piano
concerto. He did not flatter. Mozart was and still is the master in
that particular art. Beethoven did not say that Handel was the
greatest Ku"nstler but the greatest Komponist that had
lived, and he would have been right if the only existing proofs of the
fact were the Op. 6 concertos.
   In each of these superb works the four, five or six movements
seem like facets of one personality; so we have twelve essays of an
integrity comparable with that of the best classical symphonies.
These concertos embrace most of the musical expression that belonged
to the concert room of their time and much that belonged to the
theatre, and they exclude only the morbid, bizarre, extremely tragic,
directly programmatic and religious- in short what was then reserved
to illustrate words or drama and to dignify worship. This
marvellously comprehensive expression would not make us willing to
doff and kneel with Beethoven unless it were conveyed in sublime
examples of almost perfect form, none bewildering unless we try to
explain it by the vocabulary of what should be called design. 'The
opening movement is a French overture fertilized in its slow
introduction by the Handelian sarabande-like sacred aria, and in its
fugato movement by the Italian sonata-allegro.' This tells no
intelligent musician anything about Handel's success or failure to
achieve form, yet a sympathetic listener who does not know the design
of a French overture may perceive Handel's achievement. The empty
grandiosity of certain items in Joshua or Judas Maccabeus
fulfils designs which, according to text books called 'Applied
Forms' and 'Applied Strict Counterpoint', ensure safety for any
composer who can invent or borrow ideas to suit the designs. The
opposite of 'applied' is 'organic', and because they are all
organic the Twelve 6Concerti Grossi are one of the greatest feats
of musical composition.
   It has been well said that some of Handel's best movements defy
analysis because they are improvisatory- a word which can be
pejorative. We are not intended to listen more than once to an
improvisation. It satisfies us if we are pleased with the music as it
passes, and if it is congruous. Improvisation, however, is the first
stage in written composition, and if mechanical reproduction of an
improvisation forces us to listen a second and a third time we are
like the composer who scrutinizes his first draft and decides what
should be pruned and what extended. Sometimes we are dissatisfied not
with the unchecked fancy of the improviser but with our recognition of
pre-fabrications, 'applied forms', modulations and developments
introduced exactly as in other extemporizations. To extemporize from
a preconceived design or upon ideas given by an auditor is splendid
exercise, but at best only portions of the exercise can be significant
artistic expression- in short, form. When, however, a whole written
piece seems to have grown by impulse, and when both the ideas and
their growth are of superb quality, we can hardly praise it more
highly than to say that it sounds spontaneous throughout, and still
sounds so when we hear it for the hundredth time.
   Comparatively late in his career Handel impressed shrewd judges
by his organ extemporizations, and though it is unthinkable that the
ideas and developments had the breadth of those in his published work,
Handel had more ability and experience than most musicians to
extemporize whole sections which, at one hearing, seemed organic
within a well-proportioned whole. How often in composing the Twelve
6Concerti Grossi he proceeded by deliberation and how often the
music welled forth without his conscious control we shall never know,
and that is one tribute to their greatness. They are said to have
been written in a few weeks of 1739, yet they contain no sign of
careless or hasty work. The borrowing of one opening from Cleopatra's
Piangero?3 la sorte mia and another from Semele's Myself I
shall adore does not negate the last assertion. Most of the
movements are an exception to the general criticism that few of the
greatest works of music are well composed throughout.
Conscientiousness cannot make them so; otherwise the form of Brahms's
long movements would be as wonderful as those of Handel's or
Beethoven's. Fortunately we do not measure greatness entirely by
achievement of form, but we rank the imperfect fulfilment of a noble
ambition above the perfect management of trivialities and musical
platitudes. Not a single movement in Handel's Op. 6 is pedestrian;
no concerto fails to suggest verve and joy in the process of
composition.
   Even if the Op. 6 concertos lacked their distinguishing breadth
of conception and their splendid musical ideas they would still differ
from Corelli's for two main reasons: (a) some of them are dramatic in
the strict sense of the term- they are the work of a theatre
composer; (b) a great number of them come from the German-French
suite. It has been admitted that Geminiani, who was almost entirely
Corellian, occasionally achieved Handel's breadth of musical thought;
but he did this only when composing contrapuntally or by the Corellian
continuation technique without motive development. Handel achieves a
huge breadth of musical thought when composing almost mechanistically
in the least weighty of styles. (Ex. 83.)
   This quotation illustrates a second point, as would almost any
extract of similar length from Op. 6. Into the light figuration of
the violins erupts a contrasting idea by the bass instruments. It may
have been introduced to give a touch of humour or purely for the sake
of the interruption- to prevent the development from being too simple
and mechanical; yet it is surely not accidental that, when the whole
flight reaches its conclusion in four bars of plain ripieno harmony,
the paragraph is clinched by the solid rhythm of this interruption.
Whether Handel planned it as he began the movement or whether it
occurred to him as when <SIC> improvising, this way of integrating
the movement was exactly right in this place, and sensible people may
call it a symphonic way.
   The last phrase seems discourteous, but it seems justified while
critics spoil enthusiasm by asking us to value old music if its
methods anticipate later ones. Thus we are told that some passages by
Bach are almost atonal, and that they prefigure Scho"nberg.
Misinterpreted by ears and minds which inherit the work of both
composers, passages by Bach wherein 'horizontal' thinking
temporarily dominates the 'vertical' thinking of continuo harmony
remind us of atonal polyphony. We are delighted by the unusual
ascendance and stimulus of discord, the pleasure of which would have
been lost to Bach (and would seem incongruous to us) unless it brought
with it the pleasure of restored tonal bearings and ultimate concord.
The mere fact that we call it discord shows that there is little in
common between Bach and Scho"nberg except recourse to the devices of
counterpoint. Similarly we should be careful not to pretend that
Handel's movements are Beethovenian because they are often dramatic,
often include passages of motivic development and often show energy
and urgency that is rarely found before Beethoven.
   'Handel points to Beethoven' is a meaningless comment. Tubal
Cain points to Sibelius. It is also accidental that Beethoven the
man, beneath the eccentricities which may have been caused by
misfortune, had some of the known characteristics of Handel, and that
like Handel he was in no way a wild or revolutionary artist. His
music and Handel's changed gradually from early acceptance of
inherited designs and styles. Without alteration they could not serve
their expanding ideas, and when we set their first forms beside their
last we observe a much larger change than between the first and last
work of most revolutionary composers. The important parallel between
Handel and Beethoven lies in their recognition of comparable, not
similar means of maintaining movements on a large scale, especially
when their materials suggested energy and urgency. These qualities in
Beethoven would
<ILLUSTRATION>
not have their peculiar effect if Beethoven had not been primarily a
musical architect with an innate sense of symmetry and poise.
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AT WORK IN OPERA: 1
The Producer
DENNIS ARUNDELL
   It is quite a common belief among non-technical enthusiasts
that a theatrical producer is solely concerned with the movements of
the actors (together with some share in the lighting, when a
'lighting expert' is not employed). This may have been true to
some extent of the 18th-century stage-manager and is still often
partly true of the director for films or television, who has with him
a producer (which in this field denotes a managerial, not an artistic
functionary) to supervise, check and organize the heads of the various
departments and all the artists who contribute to the whole. But it
is certainly not true of the play-producer, who is probably even more
closely consulted on other matters by his organizing management than
his film or television counterpart; nor is it true of the
opera-producer. Indeed opera managements (to judge from those
countries where I have worked or of which I have had close
information) seem more inclined than ordinary theatre managements to
choose conductor, producer, designer, and so on, and then, having
given them the responsibility and authority, not to interfere or
supervise themselves.
   I do not say that managerial interference is always to be
welcomed. (After all, 'interference' is a misleading word:
'practical interest' is a different matter.) But it is remarkable
that notable theatrical re?2gimes have all been inspired by the
personality and personal supervision of a manager (think of C. B.
Cochran and musical shows, Diaghilev and ballet, Mahler and opera,
Hugh Beaumont of H. M. Tennent Ltd in the present London
theatre). None of these managers- with the exception of Mahler-
took any active part in a production, but they were always at hand to
check on every detail and to solve any problems that might arise from
the various conflicting elements that had to be united to achieve a
satisfying artistic result.
   In opera there are more conflicting elements than in any other
form of theatre entertainment- orchestral performance, vocal
performance (ranging from naturalistic speech-song to what are
practically concert performances of non-dramatic arias), straight
acting, 'melodrama' (in the technical sense) with atmospheric
music, ballet (at least in the sense of movement to, or in harmony
with, music) and mime, quite apart from scene-design, scene-building,
scene-shifting, costume-designing and costume-making, lighting,
furniture and properties. This means that all responsible should be
experts- the conductor, the orchestral players, the singers, the
designers, the painters, the scene-builders, the wardrobe-master, the
electrician, the property-master- and all should be ready with their
expert advice to contribute to the whole. Now most experts are
willing collaborators, but the danger with all experts is that they
are often not content to give of their best but insist on valuing
their own contribution higher than that of other experts: think of the
brilliant designer Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson's not unreasonable
attack on his conceit. That is where the Mahler or Diaghilev is
invaluable. Cochran, who checked every bit of material used in his
shows (like Bernard Delfont now), was always there to appeal to, and
was always watching from the background ready to step tactfully in to
prevent trouble. He used to say: 'Have whatever rows you like
inside the theatre over the job, so long as you can go and have a
drink together afterwards.' (Nowadays, alas, the tendency is for
any professional criticism to be taken as a personal affront.)
   Now that entertainment has become an industry, and opera
managements (probably quite rightly) tend to concentrate on
organization rather than personal contact, the job of welding together
the various elements has become the duty of the producer. Of course
he is still responsible for the movements on the stage (which includes
arranging that the conductor can catch the eye of the singer at
necessary moments and that awkward positions are avoided for singers
during tricky vocal passages), but he also has to see that excellent
scene-designs are practical both for the stage and for the action,
that the lighting gives prominence to a character without either
falsifying the general effect or dazzling the singer's eyes
unnecessarily, and that striking touches of production do not distract
from a leading character or action. Moreover, he is responsible for
checking the construction and painting of the scenery and the choice
of materials, and the cutting and making of the costumes.
   The opera producer is called in by the management at an early
stage of planning. He is consulted on the choice of the designer and
choreographer and on the casting of at any rate the minor roles.
Usually a management confronts him with an already decided casting of
the main roles (though I have known a producer refuse a commission
because of the employment of what he thought an unsuitable principal
singer). About changes of cast, when a production has once been taken
into the repertory, he is not consulted. In the budgeting of an opera
the producer has no say: he may be asked whether he would permit some
alteration in his planned staging for economy's sake, but I have
myself never known of a case where a producer's ideas have been flatly
turned down for financial reasons.
   When practical work has begun, a producer has above all to be
able to give all the collaborating experts their heads when desirable,
and to check them gently but firmly- that is, tactfully- when
necessary. It is rather like driving a team of fine, high-mettled
horses: it is they who do the work, but, unless they are a team used
to working together, they may have to be guided. How often does an
excellent conductor wish to take a passage of music at an
'effective' pace that is unsuitable in the circumstances? The
co-operative conductor, like Beecham, will always listen and be
prepared to modify, as he did when he paced his study to get the right
tempo for the Guard's march in The Bohemian Girl- after I had
objected (as producer) that, at his original pace, the quaver was too
quick and the crotchet too slow for human steps without being comic.
(Beecham also let me have an extra stage rehearsal in place of a
scheduled orchestral rehearsal on the grounds that it does not matter
how good the music is if the stage is wrong.) But I have known a good
conductor insist on what was arguably a 'correctly' fast pace when
the singer was incapable of singing at that pace.
   How often, again, does a designer create a beautiful set that is
unpractical? One distinguished architect's stage setting was a flat
picture background with extended frames for the sides which from
anywhere but centre auditorium merely looked flatly dull on one side
and non-existent on the other. One excellent artist objected to a
window in a room although Cherubino had to jump out of it, and another
designed brilliant perspective scenery which gained a round of
applause at curtain-rise but meant that the performers had to duck
under a steeply angled lintel to come through a door. I have known a
clever designer in another medium hope to use a film method of
lighting on a stage, and I have seen another so ingenious with moving
scenery that its repetition became a bore, especially as each new
result was similar. I learned in Milan that on one occasion
fashionable modern artists without stage experience designed sets that
could not be changed with ease.
   A historical example of non-co-operation can be seen by comparing
the scene when Tosca places the candles by the dead Scarpia in the
original vocal score and in the usual vocal score. In the original
she does not get and place the candles until the long orchestral
passage ends on a soft, religious, tender note: the later and more
usual version makes her speak her comment on the dead power of Scarpia
in the sinister middle of the passage. Surely this means that in the
original production she had too far to go for the candles in the short
time allotted her, so Puccini transferred the line to the middle of
the music, thereby giving her longer time to fetch the candles. The
original version, however (which I am sure is more in key with
Puccini's intention with regard to Tosca's truly religious character),
is perfectly possible if the designer gives a reasonable position for
the candles, sufficiently near where the body is to lie. This I have
proved in my current Sadler's Wells production.
   Again in Tosca there arises the problem of where Tosca is to
stand when the firing squad is assembling to shoot Cavaradossi. She
has to comment on him standing there, and later, when the soldiers
march away, has to tell him not to move yet- neither of which remarks
should be so obtrusive that the soldiers might notice them, but both
of which should be clearly heard by the audience. The first time I
produced Tosca I had her stand on a platform above and beyond the
soldiers- ludicrous on second thoughts, but accepted by myself and
others too tolerant of bad operatic tradition. But now at Sadler's
Wells I place her right down stage in one corner by the footlights,
apparently out of earshot of the soldiers but easily audible to the
audience. Yet she is sufficiently unobtrusive because she is more in
shadow than the soldiers and Cavaradossi, who should be- and cannot
help being- the focus of attention. This was only possible by
careful preliminary consultation with Paul Mayo, the designer, both as
regards structure and proposed lighting.
   Ideally an opera producer should know stage technique, music both
vocal and orchestral, lighting, style of period, and the design and
making of costume and scenery, and should be able to weld all together
so that the whole is good without any detail being over-obtrusive.
Apart from the experts he has to deal with, he also- I am afraid-
has often to coax inexperienced artists to give better than their
best. Many soloists are nowadays chosen because of their superb (or
more often young and promising) voices, irrespective of their
experience of appearing in public or even walking a stage. One fine
vocalist I was asked to produce as Carmen, though she had only sung as
a solo recitalist on the concert platform, proved my dubious opinion
of her possibilities when, in the rehearsal of the Card Scene, she
declared herself unable to get her note while Frasquita and Mercedes
were singing.
   Another brilliant young new singer engaged by one opera house,
when asked by a friend if she was having any stage coaching before her
first appearance on any stage, replied: 'There is no need: I am
singing.' (In every other profession and trade, apprenticeship is
either essential or regarded as the soundest step towards success.
Only opera-singers seem more and more able to dispense with it and to
rely on their God-given natural voice which is, after all, but part of
the equipment necessary for fine opera performances.) Nor must we
forget the great singer who insists on being centre-stage or who
shouts a top note even in spite of the composer's wishes, or who
'always crosses left on this line' as one guest-artist
Mephistopheles insisted to me until I told him that he would get his
teeth kicked in by the dancers on that spot.
   But while it is the opera-producer's job to co-ordinate the work
of other experts (whether willing collaborators or superior
dictators), many producers also tend to be obtrusive themselves and to
show how clever they are with this bit of business or background
movement that is distracting. Although I try to avoid this, I have
unintentionally been guilty of this myself. Other producers are
careless about style of period (I recently saw Almaviva in the first
act of Il Barbiere di Siviglia with neither cloak nor hat),
and some from the straight theatre seem to have insufficient knowledge
of musical problems. One insisted on a singer lying full-length on
the ground while singing a top note- though with the singer's
approval it can be tried effectively, as I tried it once, only to
discard it.
# 229
<231 TEXT G44>
Corneille's alexandrines, in point of fact, may be found to follow
the original text surprisingly closely, and Le Festin de Pierre
contrived to hold the stage successfully in competition with all but
the most popular of Molie?3re's plays until 173 or thereabouts. It
reached the climax of its career in the year 1727, with the not
inconsiderable total of 11 performances; soon after this triumph,
however, the average number of performances per year dropped sharply
from about 7 to about 3, and after 178 it disappeared almost
completely from the repertoire. It was not until 1813 that the 'lost
scenes' of the 'Amsterdam edition' were rediscovered and
published by the grammarian, M.-J. Simonnin; not until 1841 that
the original Dom Juan was restored to the stage at the
Ode?2on; and even then, not until some six years later that the
Corneille version was finally ousted from the Come?2die
Franc?6aise.
   The date 1841, therefore, is usually taken to mark the critical
turning-point in the fortunes of Molie?3re's play. It would be
inaccurate, however, to think of this renewal of interest as an
unheralded and quasi-accidental effect, produced entirely by the
rediscovery of the missing portions of the original text. The very
fact that some 28 years were fated to elapse between the
'discovery' and the first performance of the restored original
suggests that the process of rehabilitation involved a slow and
gradual development. If the history of the play throughout the latter
part of the eighteenth century is monotonously uneventful, the same is
by no means true of the first half of the nineteenth century. The
restoration of Dom Juan was preceded by a revival of interest
in Le Festin de Pierre, and both plays, in fact, benefited
significantly from the fascination which their common hero was
destined to exercise upon the romantic imagination. In this
connection, the influence of Byron's Don Juan throughout the
eighteen-twenties is obviously of capital importance; but even before
this period- in fact, as early as 185- we can trace the beginnings
of a new attitude, and a new receptiveness on the part of both critics
and public. Indeed, the year 185 probably deserves rather more
attention than most historians of the play have been prepared to grant
it, since not only does it mark the first really striking revival
which had been enjoyed on the stage by the Corneille version since
173, but the first serious renewal of interest in the original text,
and at the same time, the first sign of indirect influence on the
fortunes of Molie?3re's masterpiece through the creation of a later
work on the same theme: in this instance, Mozart's Don Giovanni.
   If Molie?3re's heroic seducer was unfortunate in the manner of
his reception by the Parisian audience, his operatic counterpart was
scarcely less so; and the trials and tribulations of Don
Giovanni at the Grand Ope?2ra furnish an admirable
illustration of the obdurate tenacity of French musical conventions,
which, in the post-revolutionary period, were certainly as rigid as
those of the Come?2die Franc?6aise, and even more fettering to
would-be dramatists of the new generation. In this brief study,
however, what interests us is not the direct significance of these
musical conventions in themselves, but their indirect influence upon
the fate of Molie?3re's Dom Juan.
   The musical public of Paris in 18 was unable to digest German
opera in any form; any opera written in Germany had of necessity to be
'arranged' in the French, or, slightly later, in the Italian
tradition, if it was to succeed at all; and it was in fact the
eventual discovery that both Le Nozze di Figaro and Don
Giovanni, despite their having been written by a German composer,
were fundamentally Italian operas, and so might be thankfully
handed over to the 6opera buffa, that finally established
Mozart's operatic reputation in France. The one traceable attempt to
produce a Mozart opera (Die Entfu"hrung) in the German
tradition was so disastrous and lamentable a failure that not an echo
of it remains throughout the century. Die Entfu"hrung was
produced at the The?2a?5tre de la Cite?2 by a visiting German
company, the Mozart-Theater, on 25 brumaire An =1. It was
repeated on 27 and 28 brumaire, and never given again. The fiasco
was anything but unexpected: 'Les bouffons allemands se sont
arrange?2s, sans doute, pour n'avoir que des Allemands pour
auditeurs', remarked one critic, knowing perfectly well (as indeed
did all his 6confre?3res) that what mattered in opera was, of
course, the words, the de?2cor and the ballets- anything, in fact,
but the music:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Nos Franc?6ais ne sont pas assez fous de musique pour aller
chercher, aux de?2pens de tous les autres agre?2mens, un degre?2 de
plus de fermete?2 et de pre?2cision dans l'exe?2cution de ces
sifflemens allemands...
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   A rigorous treatment at the hands of qualified French adaptors
was, therefore, the first essential: action, dialogue, vocal and
orchestral parts- everything had to be 'arranged' to meet the
conventional requirements. The first Mozartian opera to be subjected
to this curious treatment was Le Nozze, which appeared,
'arranged' by Notaris, at the Acade?2mie de Musique on 2
March 1793, and ran dispiritedly for five performances. Notaris,
obviously, had not 'arranged' enough, and too much Mozart had,
reprehensibly, been allowed to subsist; consequently, the next effort
set about remedying the fault. On 2 August 181, Die
Zauberflo"te appeared at the The?2a?5tre de la Re?2publique
et des Arts in an unrecognizable version entitled Les
Myste?3res d'Isis, music by Lachnith, libretto by 'le citoyen
Morel, ci-devant Chedeville', and achieved a considerable success.
In 185, this version was transferred to the Acade?2mie
Impe?2riale de Musique, where it was revived again in 1812, 1816,
1823 and 1826. To the honour of French music, it should perhaps be
added that, within a few years, these two 'fripons musicaux',
Lachnith ('le rapetisseur des grands hommes') and Morel
('ouvrier en marqueterie') had become synonymous with all that
was most reactionary and abysmal in the French musical tradition.
Les Myste?3res d'Isis, in fact, achieved its popularity by
discarding the original music almost entirely, and by incorporating
into the score- amongst other things- a substantial portion of a
Haydn symphony:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   On a change?2 le sentiment de la musique de la Flu?5te
enchante?2e, on en a ralenti les mouvemens pour approprier les airs
au style se?2rieux. Les paroles sont pitoyables... l'arrangeur a
coupe?2, taille?2, sabre?2 les plus beaux morceaux de cet ope?2ra,
qu'il trouvait sans doute trop long. Comment, avec tant de richesses,
n'a-t-on fait qu'une mise?2rable compilation?
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   Such was the situation when, on 17 September 185, the
Acade?2mie Impe?2riale de Musique decided to experiment with
Don Giovanni. Obviously, the Grand Ope?2ra could no more
accept that masterpiece as written by Mozart and Da Ponte than the
The?2a?5tre Franc?6ais could countenance Dom Juan
without the 'adoucissements' introduced by Corneille. In this
instance, the task of making the necessary arrangements was entrusted
to one Christian Kalkbrenner, chorus-master at the Grand Ope?2ra.
The outcome of his labours, together with those of his collaborators
on the libretto, Mons. Thuring, 'ge?2ne?2ral de brigade',
and Mons. D. Baillot, 'sous-bibliothe?3caire de la
Bibliothe?3que Impe?2riale de Versailles', was a Drame
Lyrique en Trois Actes, which once again not merely altered
Mozart's music completely beyond recognition, but somehow made room
within the score for several arias of M. Kalkbrenner's own ingenious
composition, together with the usual lengthy passages of incidental
music to accommodate those full-scale interludes of ballet and mime
which the Parisian operatic audiences demanded as their right. Gardel
provided some excellent choreography; but the real 6pie?3ce de
re?2sistance was the de?2cor, with Mount Vesuvius in full
eruption at the back of the stage, and streams of lava pouring down
towards the auditorium. The few reputable music-critics who knew and
respected their Mozart protested as loudly as they knew how, but all
to no avail; and for many years, Kalkbrenner's Don Juan was
linked with Lachnith's Myste?3res d'Isis, and remained a
by-word, a glaring symbol of the depths to which French operatic taste
could descend. 'Les airs de basse-taille sont donne?2s aux
femmes, change?2s de ton, raccourcis, allonge?2s, d'un air on fait
un trio; enfin ce n'est plus que le simulacre de la musique de
Mozart...' wrote Fe?2tis some two years later, and as late as
1823, Castil-Blaze could still recall the incident with the acutest
indignation.
   However, the reputable music-critics were not asked their
opinion. Public taste in music was guided exclusively by men of
letters, and, during the whole Napoleonic era, the major dramatic
critics were wont to look upon opera as their exclusive prerogative.
Above all, it was Julien-Louis Geoffroy, the feared and influential
oracle of the Journal des De?2bats, who could make or mar a
composer's reputation with a single article, although- as he
thankfully admitted- music was an art which he understood no more
than morris-dancing.
   The story of the resplendent 6premie?3re, the gradual
disintegration and eventual catastrophic 6de?2ba?5cle of this
first French production of Don Giovanni can be followed in
detail through the reviews in the contemporary press. What appears
evident from the various comments which have survived is that
Kalkbrenner's manipulations of the score had put all the critics
except Geoffroy in a quandary. Geoffroy's position was simple and
unassailable. He was suspicious of Mozart's reputation (he despised
Germans, anyway) and heartily disliked whatever music of his he
happened to have heard. 'Cet Allemand', he pronounced, 'n'a
rien fait dans le genre de l'ope?2ra-comique' which could ever
rival Gre?2try, while his so-called 'serious' operas were pitiful
compared with 'les excellentes compositions de Gluck et de
Piccini'. To honour his professional obligations, however, he
attended the 6premie?3re of Don Giovanni. He found the
overture detestable ('pourquoi coudre une symphonie a?3 un
ope?2ra?'), compared the music of Act =2 bitterly and
unfavourably with Duni's Peintre amoureux de son Mode?3le and
with Paisiello's Re?3 Teodoro, elevated Kalkbrenner's
intercalated aria, 'O Nuit, sois favorable...' above
anything written by the original composer, protested loudly that, even
though the words were in French, the music was so insistent and
ill-disciplined that he could not hear them, and concluded dolefully:
'Il y a trop de musique dans Don Juan; c'est un festin ou?3
l'extre?5me abondance rassasie promptement... Les Allemands ont
ga?5te?2 notre Molie?3re'.
   Less committed critics, however, were faced with two unpleasant
alternatives. Here was undoubtedly a bad opera; yet this opera was
supposedly by Mozart, and Mozart enjoyed 'une re?2putation
colossale' among the musical e?2lite. Either, therefore, they
had to condemn it, and thus denounce themselves musically as ignorant
philistines; or else obey the fashion and applaud what they knew
instinctively to be poor material, without having the necessary
knowledge (in the early stages, at any rate) to trace the evil to its
source- not Mozart at all, but Kalkbrenner. Thus, when it became
apparent, after two or three performances, that Gardel and the
lava-streams were not going to be enough, unaided, to keep this
extravagant (and expensive) venture afloat for long, there was
ill-disguised relief all round. 'Succe?3s incomplet',
announced the Journal de Paris, while Geoffroy moralised
contentedly: 'Si cet essai pouvait nous gue?2rir de notre
admiration exclusive pour les e?2trangers, il auroit produit un effet
tre?3s-heureux'. Quarrels and dissensions ensued among the cast,
most of whom hurriedly and shamefacedly handed over their parts to
understudies on various pretexts, and on November 1th, Don
Giovanni was quietly removed from the repertoire, and Les
Myste?3res d'Isis substituted. There was, admittedly, an attempt
to bring it back for an occasional Sunday performance shortly before
Christmas, but by March 186, little remained of this ambitious and
unfortunate venture save a certain amount of smoke in the upper
regions of the stage: 'Ve?2suve va beaucoup mieux, il ne donne
pas tant de fume?2e; il n'y a que les acteurs qui vont de plus en
plus mal'.
   'Les Allemands ont ga?5te?2 notre Molie?3re'. This is
the key-note of criticism in relation to Don Giovanni. On the
other hand, to say so was one thing, but to prove it was a rather more
hazardous business. In fact, it could only be done by putting on
simultaneously a production of Le Festin de Pierre, and by
letting the audience make its own comparison.
# 222
<232 TEXT G45>
Art by Slabs
Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Hay-Making. Introduced by Jaromir Sip.
(Spring Books, 21s.)
Artists' Prints in Colour. Introduced by Hans Platte. (Barrie
and Rockliff, 6 gns.)
Indian Art in America. By Frederick J. Dockstader. (Studio
Books, 8 gns.)
The American Muse. By Henri Dorra. (Thames and Hudson, 3 gns.)
The Visual Experience. By Bates Lowry. (Prentice-Hall, 3 gns.)
Picasso's Picassos. By David Douglas Duncan. (Macmillan, 7
gns.)
   IS IT quite so odd that nearly the best of this particular
pride of art books- or shiny slabs of art- is the cheapest, the
least shiny, the least pretentious, on the worst paper? I do not see
that a publisher could better the directness of the book on Brueghel's
Hay-Making. A great objective painting is reproduced in colour:
then on a large scale two dozen sections of the painting are also
reproduced (in colour), and fitted to a brief account of Brueghel
addressed not to anxious culture-vultures all wanting their cut from
the fashionable but still queer wonders of art, but to adult
appreciators who already accept art as one accepts philosophy or
macaroni.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The example of Italy taught Brueghel to be sparing in expression,
to be concise and limit himself to essentials, due proportions and
things true to nature. He reduced human figures and everything else
to basic geometrical forms and made them serve his intentions. Every
close-up of scenes from Brueghel's Hay-Making adds to our
conviction that the basis of his use of abstraction was profound
understanding of nature, of the surface of the earth, its vegetation,
the animal world, men, and finally even of the objects fashioned by
human hands.
<END INDENTATION>
<END QUOTE>
   Good. The enlarged details or close-ups left this reviewer more
astonished than ever and more delighted than ever by the quantity of
world absorbed by Brueghel, and the quality of absorption and then
of its ordering and rendering.
   Artists' Prints in Colour, from Germany, introduced and
edited by Dr. Hans Platte of the Kunsthalle at Hamburg, is classy to
a degree. Again it is not a packaged slab, but a well-designed,
well-printed, well-introduced selection of sixty colour prints by
sixty artists, all made since the war. The first is by Matisse.
Others are by Moore, Jean Bazaine, Gustave Singier, Lynn Chadwick,
Nicolas de Stae"l. The introduction is in part a sophisticated
comment on the abstract art of this century, from Kandinsky until now,
one of the best I have read. 'The important thing is to be quite
clear that the work of art can never come into being without some
connection with the environment... The question of the visible object
then loses its significance, since our world does not find its
fulfilment in the realm of the visible.' In part the introduction
comments on the shift in prints from black and white to colour, from
the graphic towards painting, and the way in which this shift is
related to our epoch's appetite for colour (including colour printing
by machine).
   These two books and the next ones show some unhappy differences
between publishers' Europe and publishers' America- at any rate in
the popularisation of the arts. Indian Art in America slides at
once into the class of the shiny art slab. This may seem unfair: it
does inform, it does have a grown-up purpose, it does illustrate many
superb objects (seventy colour plates), such as the painted shield
covers of the Crow Indians. But it begins to buttonhole and brainwash
with prefabricated superlatives. Its standards are shaky (thin
Rackham-like confections by modern Indian watercolourists,
self-condemned in the splendid traditional company around them, are
just as highly praised). Also it is an atrocious piece of colour-book
composing, text against plate, or plate against text.
   Art books often recall that distinction Berenson made (to a late
director of the Victoria and Albert Museum), that museum officials
were either pimps or eunuchs. The eunuch art-book often, at any rate,
retains the dignity of art: it leaves the peruser to judge on the
evidence. The pimping art-book has art to sell, insinuatingly, and
for a purpose, like The American Muse, which has in fact a
tradition to sell, and one which doesn't exist, in painting (how could
it ever have formed in a "new" country?). This brainwasher and
blinder depends on serving up the same tiresome primitives, the same
tiresome bits of sub-European 6kitsch by the Peales, the
Bierstadts, the Coles, the Washington Allstons, suitably followed in
this century by the celluloid rubbish of Marin, O'Keefe, Dove and many
others down (I should say myself with a firm defiance- though the
substance has changed from celluloid) to Jackson Pollock. Those who
are curious about the stuff and the attitude (which Americans would do
better to forget) will find a chilling eyeful in this American Muse,
allied to literary excerpts- Cotton Mather to Gertrude Stein- all
transferred from an exhibition in that rather brown or liquorice
public gallery, the Corcoran in Washington. It is another ugly piece
of ungraceful typography and book-making.
   The German editor of the elegant book on colour prints remarked
that in the end (I should say at the beginning as well) the spectator
has to stand entirely alone in front of the picture. But not if Dr.
Bates Lowry gets him. If he does, the spectator will stand or sag in
front of the picture with The Visual Experience: An Introduction to
Art pressing down on his mind as if that mind were a particularly
soft and soggy galantine. This is another conditioner: Come and
learn about Art, Mr., Mrs. or Miss Home-Study. I will teach you
to reconcile Kurt Schwitters and Cotman, Sassetta and our Pollock, in
234 plates and 26 pages of long abstract words about recession and
planes and unity. 'In judging the quality of a work of art'-
attention, please- 'on the basis of the type of experience that it
offers us, we leave the relatively objective area of judgment that we
have defined as artistic ability and enter the more subjective area in
which we evaluate the significance of the artist's intuition.' At
which the statue- as in Daumier's cartoon- prodigiously yawns, and
then adds a raspberry as well.
   An American wrap of this same nature entirely surrounds the
largest slipperiest slab of Picasso's Picassos. Without its
rhetoric or gloss, here you have a colour album of those paintings by
Picasso, from 1895 to 196, which he keeps for himself. They have
been photographed by an American author-journalist-photographer, who
talks of 'the Maestro,' and treats Picasso in his text like a
super-goose who lays golden eggs, starting off his gossip-text by
saying (and if this doesn't justify him, what does?) that 'no painter
of this century's Midas-touched art world has seen more of his colours
and canvas change to gold.' A colour-photo as frontispiece depicts
the Maestro attitudinising in a Spanish cloak and a Scottish tweed
hat, by candlelight, and makes him look like a new Watts, OM,
or like God taking the part of Gladstone in a charade.
   However, this frontispiece can be torn out, and with ingenuity
all of the journalistic slobbering over the paintings and personality
which journalists used to ridicule, can be cut away with a pair of
scissors- when there will be left for enjoyment in the normal
unpompous calm of the arts, 22 plates, various and bizarre, in which
Picasso's liberated shapes and excitingly applied and inventively
combined colours play some of their very sunniest compositions.
   GEOFFREY GRIGSON
Interlacery
China. By William Watson. (Thames and Hudson, 3s.)
The Seljuks. By Tamara Talbot Rice. (Thames and Hudson 3s.)
The Vikings. By Holger Arbman. (Thames and Hudson, 3s.)
   A VERY mixed batch, one would think, this latest trio from
the admirable 'Ancient Peoples and Places' series edited by Dr.
Glyn Daniel. A glance through the plates- around seventy per
volume- discloses odd family resemblances. Cousin to the Chinese
dragon seems the Viking sea-serpent. Half-Chinese, again, look the
Uighur faces staring from Seljuk reliefs. And everywhere lurk animals
in company with lengths of geometrical interlacery which might well
have crawled down from the Steppes. To run through the books in their
chronological sequence is to get a sharper perspective.
   Mr. Watson, in his detailed archaeological survey of China
Before the Han Dynasty, follows the progress of sinanthropus
through the stone-age centuries to the sudden flowering of an
unsurpassed bronze age under the Shang and the Chou. Whence came this
finesse in casting alloys, and iron, too, long before iron was forged
or wrought by the same people? What connection is there between the
spiral-painted urns of Kansu and the similar pieces from Turkestan and
the Caucasus? Archaeology cannot yet answer a number of outstanding
conundrums in this field. But it offers no support for older theories
that the early Chinese derived their ideas from as far west as the
Near East, or that they were essentially pacific and thereafter
static. As their weapons and vessels attest, they were addicted to
bloodthirsty sacrificial rites and were constantly armed to the teeth.
When they cribbed a socketed axe from Tomsk or a spearhead from
Minusinsk, they improved it. Of the Tartar bow they made a spring-gun
with a bronze trigger, to fire blunt-nosed bolts. But their exchanges
with the North-West, 'the region of horse-raising and fraternisation
of Chinese and nomad,' must often have been fruitful.
   Among the nomads who harried the Shang were the Turkish-speaking
tribes whose later descendants, the Ghuzz, by the eighth century
AD controlled all Central Asia. Through Transoxiana their Seljuk
branch advanced from Samarkand and Bokhara upon Syria, Iraq and
Persia. In her history of The Seljuks of Asia Minor, Mrs.
Tamara Talbot Rice considers the achievements of the Islamised group
which settled in Rum, the Byzantine Anatolia. Again our old views
need reorienting. 'That the Seljuks brought nothing but chaos and
destruction to Asia Minor is not borne out by the facts.' Indeed,
under the Sultanate, claims Mrs. Rice, 'the Seljuks set out to
provide their country with a sound economy and elaborate social
services.' In this 'veritable welfare state' the arts
flourished. Her plates show the splendours of Seljukid architecture.
She also devotes several pages to Rumi and Sufism; but the reader
will search her index in vain for the name of the great Persian
Jelal-al-Din, which appears here disguised in contemporary Turkish
orthography as 'the Mawla Celaleddin.'
   In an earlier volume in this series, Mrs. Rice, who is Russian
by birth, took as subject the Scythians. Despite chronological
difficulties, it is they who have been suggested as the link between
the arts of Central Asia and the Steppes, and so ultimately with
certain traits in the Scandinavian and Celtic cultures. In his
geographical history of the Vikings, Professor Arbman shows how the
Rus, or the Swedes of Muscovy, traded in Black Sea ports and sent
caravans into Baghdad. The more familiar ventures of the Vikings in
Britain and Ireland, as well as their more controversial incursions
into the New World, are here made vivid. The introduction by Mr.
Alan Binns, who translated the Swedish original, is invaluable. Once
more we are urged to modify our traditional view of these pirates,
whose prowess as artists, whatever one thinks of the sagas, remains
far from negligible. The interlacery of the Jellinge pattern can have
no direct connection with interlacery remote from it by thousands of
years, thousands of miles. Horse-raisers think in terms of plaits and
straps as seafarers dream of ropes, hawsers and knots. These restless
rangers of the abstract wastes revivified the people they raided and
once settled, brought a new twist to the old strands of culture, craft
and art.
   HUGH GORDON PORTEUS
   
   Alan R. Taylor's Prelude to Israel, now published in this
country by Darton, Longman and Todd at 18s., was reviewed in the
Spectator in its original American edition on June 24, 196.
Records
Values of the Studio
By DAVID CAIRNS
   IT is right that recording companies should attempt to make
their recordings of opera as dramatic as possible, and natural that
promoters should vaunt the realism that is achieved.
# 27
<233 TEXT G46>
GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY
By The Rev. BROCARD SEWELL, O.Carm.
   GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY, once a leading figure on the London
stage and in the fashionable society of her time, is today hardly
known except to students of theatrical history. Her life was on the
whole unfortunate, and her end sad; yet she was a fascinating
personality and a fine actress, while her life-story is highly
romantic. It is not easy to see why her memory should have faded,
especially as she wrote a most readable autobiography which went
quickly through several editions.
   Recently, however, she has found a sympathetic biographer in Mr
Cyril Hughes Hartmann, whose delightful book Enchanting Bellamy
(Heinemann, 1956) puts her story within the reach of all and sorts
out a good many of the puzzles which face the reader of her own
narrative, now a very rare book, An Apology for the Life of George
Anne Bellamy, late of Covent Garden Theatre, Written by Herself
(London, 1785).
   She was a sincere Catholic, notwithstanding the chronic disorder
of her matrimonial affairs, for which she was not altogether
responsible. For the Catholic reader part of the interest and
fascination of her Apology lies in the glimpses that she gives us
of Catholic life and personalities in eighteenth-century London. Mr
Hartmann, himself not a Catholic, and writing for the general reader,
has included in his own narrative only a selection of the episodes of
Catholic interest. Since Miss Bellamy's Apology is now so
difficult a book to obtain it seems worth while to attempt a short
survey of her life that will do justice to her adherence to the faith
in which she was brought up.
   George Anne Bellamy was born at Finglas, near Dublin, on 23 April
1728. The name which her mother wished to give her, Georgiane, was,
through some blunder, entered in the baptismal register as George
Anne. Her mother, a Mrs Bellamy, was a Quakeress from near
Maidstone who had taken to the stage and entered on a liaison with
James O'Hara, Baron Kilmaine and second Lord Tyrawley (169-1773),
Field Marshal and diplomat, Ambassador in Portugal and later in
Russia.
   Lord Tyrawley was considered 'singularly licentious even for the
courts of Russia and Portugal'; he acquired three wives and fourteen
children during his Portuguese embassy alone. But he was a very able
man, possessed of considerable charm and some claim to polite
cultivation: qualities which George Anne would seem to have inherited
from him.
   Lord Tyrawley was not a Catholic; but for some reason he had
George Anne brought up in the old religion, and she was sent to school
with the Ursulines at Boulogne. Her time there passed happily, and in
her Apology she always speaks with affection of the nuns.
   Her mother was acquainted with many of the leading actors and
actresses of the day. When George Anne was eleven or twelve years old
she and her mother were invited to attend some amateur theatricals
held in a barn at Mrs Woffington's Thames-side residence at
Teddington. This was in 1744, and the performance was got up in
honour of Margaret Woffington's daughter Mary, aged sixteen, also just
home from her convent-school on the continent. The play was Ambrose
Phillips' The Distressed Mother. Garrick himself played Orestes,
with Mary (Polly) Woffington as Hermione and George Anne Bellamy as
Andromache. 'Though I was inferior in beauty to my fair rival,'
she tells us, 'and without the advantages of dress, yet the laurel
was bestowed upon me.'
   She was seen at once to have unusual talent, and Garrick
encouraged her to take up a career on the stage. She was to have a
number of misunderstandings and disagreements with Garrick, who was
not always an easy man to deal with; but she admits in her memoirs
that her break with Garrick in 1753, largely out of pique on her
part, was the mistake of her life.
   Some time in the year 1744, after the amateur theatricals at
Teddington, George Anne was taken on by John Rich, the patentee and
manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and made her de?2but as Monimia in
Otway's tragedy The Orphan. The leading man, James Quin, objected
to the introduction of this inexperienced child-actor in a principal
part, and Rich had a good deal of trouble with him and the rest of the
company as a result. Her appearance on the first night was very
nearly a fiasco, until, as she tells us, in the fourth act
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   to the astonishment of the audience, the surprise of the
performers, and the exultation of the manager, I felt myself suddenly
inspired. I blazed out at once with meridian splendour... Mr Quin
was so fascinated at this unexpected intervention that he waited
behind the scenes till the conclusion of the act; when lifting me up
from the ground in a transport he exclaimed aloud, '1Thou 1art a
divine creature, and the true spirit is in 1thee.'
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   At this time George Anne had two suitors: Lord Byron, 'a
nobleman who had little to boast of but a title and an agreeable
face', and a Mr Montgomery (who subsequently became, through a
change of name, Sir George Metham). There seems to have been a
half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt by Lord Byron to abduct her, as
a result of which she became seriously unwell. When she had recovered
she went down to Essex to stay with some relatives; but the visit did
not pass off too happily. On her way back to London she stopped for
dinner at an inn in the town of Ingatestone:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   During dinner <the landlady> informed me that Lord Petre had a
noble house and estate adjoining to that town; adding that his
Lordship's family was one of the worthiest in the world, although
they were Roman Catholics. I could not help smiling at this
reservation; which she observing, begged my pardon; saying, 'I fear,
Madam, you are one.' As I spoke, the starting tear glistened in my
eye, at the recollection of my remissness in the duties of the
religion I professed. I however smothered the upbraidings of my mind,
and enquired who lived at the farmhouse which was so pleasantly
situated at some distance from the town. She informed me that it
belonged to a rich farmer, but they were 1Papishes. I then
desired she would instruct me in the distinction between Roman
Catholics and 1Papishes, as she termed them. 'Lord, miss,'
answered she, 'sure you know the difference between a Hind and a
Lord?'
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In 1745 Bellamy rather unwisely deserted Rich and Quin and
accepted an offer from Tom Sheridan to play at the Smock Alley Theatre
in Dublin. Arrived in the Irish capital she went at once to call on
Miss O'Hara, Lord Tyrawley's unmarried sister, who welcomed her warmly
and introduced her into Dublin's fashionable society. In Dublin she
played Cleopatra in Dryden's All for Love, against Barry's Antony
and Sheridan's Ventidius, appearing also in Rowe's The Fair Penitent
and in The 1Provok'd Husband by Vanbrugh and Cibber, in which
Lord and Lady Townley were played by Garrick and George Anne. She
also had a great success as Portia in The Merchant of Venice.
While in Dublin she befriended a Mrs Gunning and her family, who
were involved in the deepest distress and were about to be turned out
of their house. Two of the children were later the celebrated
eighteenth-century beauties, the Gunning sisters, who became
respectively Countess of Coventry and Duchess of Hamilton.
   From even before their arrival in Ireland George Anne's mother
had been trying to induce her to marry an Irish linen-draper called
Crump, a worthy but slightly ridiculous man with little to commend him
to her except his money. Her mother's insistence on this match, at
the urging of Lord Tyrawley who wanted to get his daughter off his
hands, seems to have been singularly stupid, and she was certainly a
good deal to blame for all the unhappiness that was to follow from
George Anne's refusal to consider so unattractive a suitor. Although
a Quaker, her mother was far too flighty and worldly to make the kind
of friend and adviser her brilliant daughter needed; and Lord Tyrawley
was an equally unsatisfactory parent. He certainly treated his
illegitimate children kindly, and even generously. They were admitted
to his own family circle as though by right, which says much for the
patience and large-heartedness of Lady Tyrawley, who was a thoroughly
good-natured soul. But his care for them was fitful and spasmodic,
largely because of his frequent absences abroad; and he was
ill-equipped to give them anything in the way of moral or religious
guidance. To the misfortune of her birth and her lack of a proper
home must be attributed in large part the misfortunes of George Anne's
life.
   Back in London George Anne became the principal tragic actress in
Quin's company, appearing as Belvidera in Otway's Venice
1Preserv'd, Statira in Lee's The Rival Queens, and other parts.
In comedy she was less successful: Mrs Ward had given way to her in
tragedy, but Peg Woffington was not to be supplanted as principal
interpreter of comedy. Still, George Anne made creditable appearances
as Harriet in Etherege's The Man of Mode: or Sir Fopling Flutter,
Lady Froth in Congreve's The Double-Dealer, and as Lady Fanciful
in Vanbrugh's The 1Provok'd Wife.
   In 1749 George Metham was renewing his attentions to Miss
Bellamy. In the Lent of that year they were both attending the
Wednesday and Friday evening devotions at the Bavarian Embassy chapel,
one of the few places of worship available to the Catholics of London
since diplomatic privilege secured for it immunity from the penal laws
then in force. Originally attached to the Portuguese Embassy the
chapel, adjacent to Golden Square, is said to have been built soon
after the Restoration of 166. Subsequently rebuilt and enlarged at
different periods it is now the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption
and St Gregory, Warwick Street, W.1.
   When the Portuguese Ambassador removed to South Street, Mayfair,
in 1736, the Bavarian Embassy took over the house and chapel in Golden
Square. Mrs Bellamy (most actresses in the eighteenth century, once
over a certain age, were usually known as Mrs whether married or
not) became closely acquainted with the Bavarian Ambassador, Count
Franz von Haslang, a nobleman of fine character who was to prove one
of her most faithful friends in all the distresses of her life. In
178 the chapel was wrecked in the Gordon Riots. It is usually
assumed that the chapel was totally destroyed, but Bellamy's evidence
seems to show that this was not so. It appears more likely that the
furniture and appointments were destroyed and the fabric badly
damaged, but that the chapel was still able to be used for occasional
services, such as that held for the Count's funeral in 1783, until it
was rebuilt about the year 1787. If this is so, and there seems to be
no real reason for doubting it, then surely Warwick Street church can
claim the longest continuity of worship of any Catholic church in
England, apart from certain chapels belonging to noble houses or to
religious communities? Such, at any rate, is Mr Hartmann's opinion.
   Among the clergy at Warwick Street when Mrs Bellamy knew it was
the Reverend John Darcy, who was there from 1748 to 1758 and who
appears to have been her confessor and spiritual director, as well as
her trusted friend. She mentions also the well-known Dr James
Archer, who had begun life as potboy at the Ship Tavern, near the
Sardinian chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and whose sermons went
through several editions and were appreciated by Catholics and
Protestants alike. She also knew well the celebrated Franciscan
Arthur O'Leary, founder of the mission of St Patrick's, Soho Square.
   To return to the year 1749: before long George Anne Bellamy
considered herself as virtually engaged to George Metham; but
unfortunately Lord Tyrawley intervened and expressed great displeasure
at her rejection of Mr Crump, whom he was still insistent on her
marrying.
# 212
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THE CASE FOR ART EDUCATION
by H. S. BROUDY
   IT irks the art teacher to have art regarded as a luxury item
on the school's bill of fare. For one thing no one likes to think of
his life's work as easily dispensable, and experience has shown that
when school money is scarce art is among the first activities to be
dispensed with. Nevertheless, fine and highly cherished objects are
regarded as luxuries, and one may question whether the attempt to
convince the public that art and music are as useful as arithmetic and
science would be wise strategy even if the claim could be justified.
   The claim has dubious validity. That artistic activity produces
important results is true. Individual enjoyment is one such result
and social control or discipline is another. But the sort of art that
does this for most people most of the time is not the kind that has to
be studied in school. The popular arts via the mass media furnish
massive doses of enjoyment to the masses of people and likewise shape
their feelings with respect to what in our culture is to be cherished,
admired, loved and hated.
   We learn how to feel about love, death, success, war and peace in
the movies, popular fiction, the top 2 tunes in the jukebox, the
advertising layouts in our magazines and newspapers. These arts
present in perceptual form images or models that objectify and exhibit
the current fashion in what is desirable and repulsive.
   The popular arts of a people, whether they set out to do so or
not, celebrate the values of that people. When these values are put
into song and story they evoke feelings that become stylised and serve
to educate the young and the old alike. Advertisers use art media to
make the public yearn for their products; governments can, if they put
their minds to it shape the feelings of their people with respect to
leaders and their policies.
   But to reiterate, this use of art demands no formal training on
the part of the young. Living in the group they will be controlled by
the arts forms of that group. The teaching of art in the schools
makes sense only if there is an art to which ordinary daily experience
does not give the pupil access; if access to it will give him
something not to be found in ordinary transactions with popular art,
and if this requires formal training.
   Is there an art to which ordinary routines of life do not give
the pupil adequate access? In one sense the answer is no, because
anyone, if he tries hard enough, can visit museums and libraries;
listen to concerts and recordings. We are justly proud of the
accessibility of all types of art objects and the techniques of the
mass media deserve much of the credit for it.
   In another sense, however, certain realms of art are effectively
closed off from many people. When considerable facility or
acquaintance with the methods of making or viewing an art object are
required for appreciation, ignorance is as effective a bar as a wall.
Poor readers cannot do much with Proust's novels and a lack of
familiarity with Greek mythology makes for a frustrating experience
with Milton's Paradise Lost.
   That is one reason for the irritation of the untutored viewer
6vis a vis abstract painting. He looks for what is not there
and he does not know what to do with what is there. This irritation
is sometimes relieved by suggesting that the painting be viewed as a
piece of wall paper or floor covering. Hard as this is on the soul of
the artist, it does, however, halt the viewer's frantic search for
familiar themes and objects.
   Serious art, by and large, does make demands that popular art
does not: sensitive discrimination, awareness of form, some
familiarity with technique, and, above all, an active and concentrated
attention. In so far as this is the case, serious art is not easily
accessible to the untutored.
   Because facility with serious art requires skill and knowledge
not acquired incidentally, it makes sense for the school to offer a
programme of art education. But because such training entails effort
that the child may be reluctant to exert, to require it of everyone
calls for a promise to the child and to society. To the child must be
promised enjoyment and satisfaction above and beyond those afforded by
the popular arts; to society must be promised a strengthening of the
people's commitment to its ideals and aspirations, and what may be
even more important, a constant examination and evaluation of them.
   There are two lines of argument that we can follow to justify
these promises. One is that in the experience of the race, epoch
after epoch has produced men who testify to the power and value of
serious art. Why one cannot predict that some of our children and
perhaps all of them will experience the same sort of reaction after
similar training is hard to understand, yet so convinced are educators
that aesthetic experience is no more than a capricious and individual
matter of taste that they find this sort of evidence unconvincing.
   The other line of argument consists in putting forward a theory
that tries to show how art in general and serious art in particular
functions in man's attempt to achieve the good life.
   From the days of Plato to our own times many have tried to
interpret what art does. For Plato himself, art by embodying harmony
and order in delightfully sensuous forms induced harmony and order
into the individual soul. So potent did he believe art to be that he
insisted on having the stories and poems taught to the young censored.
He was afraid lest certain types of music make boys effeminate. Nor
did he believe that stories depicting gods and heroes in immoral
escapades would do much for character education.
   Susanne K. Langer speaks of art as shaping our inner life. Art
introduces order into the chaotic realm of our emotions by holding up
before us images of shaped feelings.
   Freud and Sir Herbert Read, among others, see art as stemming
from man's struggle with his submerged animal impulses to love and
destruction. Art on this view somehow plumbs the nether region of the
unconscious and performs for us the rite of ennobling our unconscious
transactions with our primordial lusts. The artist, so to speak, is
our substitute for neurosis.
   Gyorgy Kepes notes that we respond to the images of the artist
because their forms and harmonies touch us at various levels of our
being: sensational, rational, and emotional.
   As the industrial revolution swept into high gear William Morris
warned that the rhythmic joy of work had been destroyed. Repeatedly
we have been told that everyday life in our times no longer provides
us with the models of wholeness and harmony that were once vouchsafed
to the peasant in his natural setting. Art is more and more relied
upon to restore the wholeness of human experience.
   Summing it up, the theoretical justification for education in
serious art lies in the claim that it trains the feeling side of life
just as other studies train the intellectual side and still others
perfect bodily skills, and that it does so in a way that goes beyond
the educative effects of popular art.
   Two problems seem to emerge if we take this line of persuasion
with school boards and parents. First, whether even with respect to
serious art the school need do more than provide an environment in
which the child's natural expressive impulses are allowed to manifest
themselves in paint, clay, etc., with a maximum of freedom and a
minimum of technical requirements. If this is the case, then it need
not require much more than time in the programme, a wide variety of
materials, and an encouraging teacher. The upsurge of Sunday painting
indicates that perhaps not even this much is a prerequisite for adult
artistic activity.
   Casting doubt on this approach is the well-nigh universal
testimony of artists and connoisseurs in all fields that their
achievements do not come naturally. On the contrary, they complain
with almost tedious uniformity about the hard work their artistic
endeavours entail. Serious art on the producing or the appreciating
side is not for the lazy, nor presumably for the untrained. If,
however, there is nothing systematic to teach, no special way of
teaching it, and no effort required in learning it, the fuss about the
art programme is much ado about nothing.
   The second point is that a programme of art education which
proposes to train pupils for the appreciation of serious art is not
innocuous; it can be dangerous.
   Serious art presents us with models of feeling that are neither
so familiar nor so safe as those presented by the popular arts.
Popular art gives aesthetic form to the values that most of the
people are enjoying or would like to enjoy in a manner approved by the
social order. Just as there are standard ways of feeling about love,
war, marriage, death, home, etc. In the popular song, picture,
photograph, movie, and story the average man recognises his everyday
problems and the standard solutions.
   Serious art, on the other hand, tries to disclose modes of
feelings that in our ordinary life we rarely experience, and would
probably prefer not to experience at all. Most of us do not want to
engage in heroic episodes of love, war, or politics, but in every
epoch a few works of art depict mankind in such heroic and convincing
roles that we see in them our species at its best. These works become
certified as "great" works of art, but not always by their
contemporary publics.
   Contemporary art, when serious, criticises the values of its
culture. Sometimes this criticism is in the form of a protest; at
others, it simply experiments freely with emotions and their
expression in unusual forms.
   Serious art, whether in its classical or contemporaneous form,
whether freely experimental or definitely idealistic, confronts the
child with models of experience and feeling that are not typical of
the life going on around him. The images it offers the child are not
mirrors of life but projections of what life might feel like. All
of these images are distortions. Some are interesting and important;
some border on the insane, and a few disclose visions of feeling that
haul mankind up another rung on the ladder of civilisation.
   All of which means that when the school takes serious art
seriously it cannot expose the immature pupil to anything and
everything, and this in turn presupposes a high order of aesthetic
sophistication and competence on the part of all teachers who have a
part in the programme.
   So conceived and defended a case can be made out for art
education as an integral part of general education. That school
boards and other appropriating agencies will be convinced is not so
certain. They represent the tension between the conventional and the
experimental that is never absent from a changing society. The
artistic experience is intermittent and celebrative; it gives meaning
and glow to life but it neither creates life nor sustains it. The
school must pay attention to all aspects of living- economic,
intellectual, moral, and social- and if it must make a choice between
preserving and sustaining life, on one hand, and making it glow, on
the other, there is no question as to what it will have to choose.
But we no longer face such a hard choice. If we did, we would not be
discussing art education at all.
FROM MYTH TO FAIRY-TALE AND FOLK LORE
by J. M. GRANT
<ILLUSTRATION>
   As far as it is possible for me to do so I have acknowledged my
indebtedness to particular authors for particular information. Where
I may inadvertently have omitted to do so I hope that the authors
concerned will accept my general acknowledgment of the interest I have
sustained in their writings and for the help I have gained from them
in the fascinating study of mythology, fairy tale, and folk-lore.
# 227
<235 TEXT G48>
MYFANWY PIPER
on art
   "Henri Rousseau's art was born and formed on Sundays. Free
from work he could, with a cheerful heart, compose images while
listening to the songs of the Faubourg." The little book by the
Frenchman Roch Grey from which these simple words are taken was
published in the early twenties: my copy was published and, I suspect,
translated in Rome. Written in a mixture of intellectual
sententiousness and poetic sentimentalism peculiar to some French
writing about art, it is more often than not reduced to fantasy by the
literal translation- "product of the tendencies of nature working
outside every heritage on the part of some paradisical superfluity
treating of universal harmony, Henri lived a life without malice."
And yet, its earnest appreciation of his spirit, mingled with the
absurdity of its phrases, especially those used to describe a visit to
the deceased painter's studio, is an inextricable part of my knowledge
of the Douanier. Even today I cannot believe that "ugly, silent dogs
played in the middle of the street..." is not the title of one of
his pictures: and when, describing the climax of his hostile reception
in the Rue Perrel, M. Grey says, "another person was visibly
preparing to take part in the fray; striped like a mattress he
cried..." I visualize in the dusty summer street another version of
The Footballers. It is obviously a book to be enjoyed at
intervals. It came out this time because I had heard casually that
there was to be an exhibition of Rousseau's pictures in Paris, at the
Gallerie Charpentier in March and because I had recently seen the two
fine ones in the Hay Whitney collection. One of them, The Happy
Quartet, looks back in an odd way to Blake, not so much because of a
nai"ve belief in felicity as because Rousseau obviously derived
inspiration for the poses and for the cherubic child from looking, as
Blake did, at engravings of old masters.
   Thinking about Rousseau leads one to ask why nai"ve painting has
such a hold upon our imagination today. In the painting of a
sophisticated artist there is always a discrepancy, a margin of
unattainable perfection, of rapture, between the intention and the
result. Although it is true to say that the greater the artist the
smaller that discrepancy- indeed, it often seems non-existent to the
spectator- it is also true that the greater the painter, the greater,
inevitably, the discrepancy, because of the soaring quality of his
vision. But no one today knows what kind of vision, or belief, or
intention even, lies in that region beyond the bounds of execution.
When artists painted for the church, or when they painted man the
perfectible being, the nature of the paradise they had lost, but could
through grace regain, was imaginable; at least its spiritual values
were known. Now they are not. For the true nai"ve painter, on the
other hand, there is no margin between his intention and his result:
he paints to the exact limit of his vision. It is exactly in his
humble capacity to be satisfied with this that his nai"vete?2 or lack
of sophistication lies. It is exactly in this that his appeal lies.
   Rousseau once wrote to the mayor of his home town Laval, offering
to sell La Bohe?2mienne Endormie. He sent a description of
the picture: "A wandering negress, playing her mandolin, with her
jar beside her (a vase containing water), sleeps deeply, worn out by
fatigue. A lion wanders by, detects her and does not devour her.
There's an effect of moonlight, very poetic. The scene takes place
in a completely arid desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental
fashion." The simple exactitude of his words matches the clarity
and finality of the picture. The confidence and satisfaction of the
painter shines out, as it does in these words from a biographical note
that he wrote upon himself: "He perfected himself more and more in
the original manner which he has adopted and he is in the process of
becoming one of the best realist painters." This absence of anxiety
in a person who is simple enough for it not to be a fault is a source
of repose and strength. Picasso, Braque, Max Jacob, Appollinaire and
many others in his lifetime were entertained by his absurdities, took
advantage of his susceptibility to hoaxes, loved his good temper and
dogged persistence in his work- and accepted his paintings as manna.
The blessing of an unassailable, because unquestioned, calm.
MYFANWY PIPER
on art
   Things that are over are not always done with too, according to
timetable. Pictures and personalities that ought to be tidied away
after their airing occupy one's mind with images and questions and
memories. Toulouse-Lautrec is a particular sticker. Partly because
he can never finally be pinned down. Confronted with the variety and
the vitality of the subjects, the daring and the ingenuity of the
colour, the boldness and the total take-it-or-leave-it quality of the
compositions for the first time 6en masse at the Museum at
Albi some years ago, I felt as if he was an artist I had never seen
before. Reading Henri Perruchot's thorough and imaginative biography
(out last year) I feel, in spite of the picture books and the Moulin
Rouge film and the legends and the lithographs, that here is a man
that I have never known before. And then the memory of Albi, rosy but
fierce, dominating a countryside that can have changed very little
since medieval times and of that extraordinary collection of pictures
by a son of one of its most medieval minded families, took on a
marvellous new sharpness. It was good to be able to see many of the
works again at the Tate Gallery last month.
   The most persistent question raised by M. Perruchot's book is
how far the artist Lautrec was the product of his crippled state.
There is only one record of a meeting between him and that other
classic example of the invalid whose disability turned him into an
artist, Marcel Proust. Someone at a restaurant described how
Lautrec's father, Count Alphonse, had watched an unknown woman
admiring a ring in a shop window, had marched into the shop, bought it
for 5, francs (+8 today) and handed it to her with a flourish.
"And they accuse me of extravagance," said Lautrec. A young man,
who was Proust, said that such gestures were not stupid, they even had
a certain usefulness for they asserted caste. Whereupon Lautrec
muttered something about middle-class stupidity, which was always
prepared to "admire an absurd gesture or a sunset." Proust and
Lautrec belonged to different worlds and it was precisely the
difference in their worlds that made Proust what he was. He was the
woman outside the window, able by the intensity of his desire and his
curiosity to possess the ring. To Count Alphonse it was a jewel worth
5, francs, to Proust it was the history of the Crusades, the Jockey
Club, eccentricity of the nobility, himself watching it, even
Lautrec's cutting comment, all epitomized in one little glittering
symbol. And something he could not possess except by being outside
it. For him the practice of observing and writing was not a
substitute for life and truth, it was the only life and truth he could
know. If he had not been ill he would have had to invent illness so
as to keep himself outside the window.
   Not so Toulouse-Lautrec: he was a man of action, a French
aristocrat with a taste, developed in his family to the extent of
mania, for hunting, shooting, riding, falconry, racing. He loved it,
and had he been strong he would have embraced that life naturally and
violently. He would have drawn, as the rest of his family did, for
relaxation. The Counts of Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa had another
characteristic: absolute unselfconscious belief in themselves and,
therefore, a complete detachment. The energy that in so many people
is used up in doubt and insecurity was free in them to do exactly what
they wanted, how they wanted. This energy, coupled with an inherited
talent, the accident of Lautrec's deformity and weakness left him free
to use for art. But that does not explain why he was moved to tears
by a word of praise from De?2gas.
MYFANWY PIPER
on art
THE ARTIST IN ROME
   INTELLECTUAL clarity and the pure, forward-looking passions
aroused by it are always being betrayed by memory. Nowhere does this
show itself more clearly than in art. And nowhere more than in Italy
were artists more vociferous in their fierce desire to cut themselves
off from the past, to get rid of it: not merely to tease it with
incongruities like the moustache on the Mona Lisa, but to destroy it
and to reject it and so to free themselves from the insinuations of
memory and of association. Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto was more
than an anarchist lark, it was a serious bid by the artists for
freedom, a serious proposal to blow up the sun-warmed golden prison of
walls and towers that threatened to be a barrier between them and
living, and to escape forever its benign warders: painted angels,
prophets, heroes, philosophers and Holy ones. This pious act of
rejection, though like a bloodless sacrifice it destroyed nothing,
did, by magic and belief set them free to participate in all the
modern movements of Europe, and later of America. The most consistent
centre of this freedom has always been Milan where a group of artists
has continued expanding and experimenting, looking to an imagined
future, which, faster and faster has become a material present,
leaving less and less than one foot on the ground, soaring into space,
moving or static, enveloping or enveloped, carved up, pierced,
martyred in four dimensions like modern art everywhere.
   Rome has no such violent centre of activity. As a capital city
it offers what capital cities do: a temporary collection of Picassos,
the Henry Moore show that is travelling Europe, an exhibition of
French 18th and 19th century landscapes, luring one with its poster of
Corot's urn and view from the Pincio to abandon once and for all our
fragmentary age and to dwell in that arch of pellucid golden light
where a column is not a symbol of destruction, but of eternity. Then,
in the small commercial galleries, a desultory collection, out of the
tourist season, of Roman and other Italian artists fighting their
battle against what is expected of them or giving themselves up to an
illusory affair with some faded beauty-spot, and coming out of it
rather worse than such ill-advised lovers elsewhere.
   What is instructive is to see the three aspects of modern art-
realist, abstract, and that curious cabalistic art of symbolism and
fantasy mixed that has no tidy name- in a new setting and a new
light. Certain things become very clear. The realism of Guttuso and
his followers, who have found their way out of the past by a different
route from the inheritors of futurism, bears much more directly on the
collective habits, needs and passions of the Italian people than the
idea of realistic painting produced by artists in other countries
ever could. In England, for instance, the dustpan, the baby or the
workman portrayed have a tendency to get confused with The Solitary
Reaper or The Idiot Boy: they are isolated for notice, a poetic
conception. But to watch those black Sunday suits converging into a
tight passionate black shadow on the warm cobbled square while the
high vertical lines of the buildings slice down into them, to see a
bar shaken by its frenzied customers or an old woman on the steps of a
church, taking upon herself, in her overwhelming exhaustion, the
motherhood of the whole working world, is to realise how Italy is
possessed by those swarming people and to see what it is that an
artist of Guttuso's convictions must express.
   Then there is a collection of "abstract-concrete" work: the
fashionable all black canvas: or a Fontana slit into slithers of
darkness like a medieval castle.
# 223
<236 TEXT G49>
Discoveries
The Other Side of the Curtain
<EDITORIAL>
   THE train pulled into the platform at Leningrad at 22.31.
The Autumn leaves on the Finnish landscape on the journey from
Helsinki had been a memorable sight. Now, here in the dark of a
Russian night, the cold nip of approaching winter smacked the face.
   On the platform, waiting for me, were three men. I immediately
recognised the tough face with the friendly smile. It was Vladimir
Vengherov, one of the Lenfilm directors, whose acquaintance I had
first made as we splashed together in the Adriatic during the Venice
festival a few months previously.
   With him was a slight, fair-haired man (looking, I thought,
typically North Country). He was introduced to me as Alexei Gorin, a
scriptwriter for scientific films, the local representative of the
Soviet Film-Makers' Association- my hosts together with the editorial
board of Cinema Arts magazine- and a man with a surprising
knowledge of England as a result of a short visit during an
international congress of technical and scientific film-makers in
London a couple of years ago.
   The third was a slender, dark haired youngster in an American-cut
pin stripe suit. He introduced himself as Vadim, Vadim Sazonov,
languages student at the Moscow University, who was to be my
interpreter during the next two weeks.
   We drove in a comfortable, American-style taxi to the Europe
hotel and there, in an office-cum-bedroom (nothing could have been
more suitably arranged for my purpose) we sat far into the early hours
discussing what I wanted to see and who I wanted to meet in Leningrad.
Morning Cinemas
   I said I wanted to see many Soviet films under typical cinema
conditions. And I was a little shaken to be told I could start next
morning (or rather, that morning) at nine, when the cinemas opened
for the benefit of workers on night shift.
   So that morning, Vadim, Gorin and myself set out on foot to
discover a typical Soviet cinema. I would have found it difficult to
find any cinema. All of them looked from the outside like a
Manchester Methodist church; but on closer inspection one could see a
small poster in a solo display frame announcing the programme details
and the times of performance. And a few cinemas added to the display
with one or two stills; but this was an exception.
   The first cinema was typically Soviet... but the programme was
Great Expectations (a back-handed compliment to British Cinema
because during our trek we found three other theatres showing the same
"great British picture". I couldn't help thinking it was not all
that great.) By the time we had found the cinema showing a new Soviet
film, Man's Blood is Thicker than Water, the programme had already
begun; and in a nearby cinema the programme would not start until
eleven.
   There was one alternative. Sightseeing. We walked down the main
shopping street (not unlike a South London high street on a Monday
morning), and plunged into a metro station which took my breath away
with its chandeliered opulence; like some grand palace in
pre-revolution France it was the last thing one would expect to find
in post-revolution Russia. The platform was clean enough for a
picnic. Gorin said such luxury had a beneficial effect on the working
man on his way to, and from, the factory. If a Billingsgate porter
found this at Monument, he'd probably get on his knees and pray!
   The sun burst through the blue-grey clouds above the river and
splashed on the golden spire of the Peter-Paul fortress, the most
ancient symbol of this most ancient of Russian cities. For a moment
it was a reminder of former glories of St. Petersburg. Then past a
naval training school, using the very ship from which a gun was fired
to signal the start of the Revolution, past the Committee headquarters
seen in so many Eisenstein and other 'classics' (Potemkin,
Strike, October) and then into a taxi for the Institute of Arts.
   At the Institute I was received by the secretary, Nina Volman and
by the head of the film branch, Nicholas Yemov. With them were a
number of students and a distinguished critic, Dr. Dobin, who is
shortly to publish a book on the poetry and prose of Cinema.
Promote Study
   Mr. Yemov explained that the Institute has only been
functioning for two years. Its aims are to promote the serious study
of Cinema in and around the Leningrad area and it does not duplicate
the work of the larger Institute and archives in Moscow. At present
the Institute is completing a book dealing with the work of the
younger school of Soviet directors. Such men as Kozintsev, who made
the wonderful version of Don Quixote and who is now planning to
film Hamlet in colour and wide screen at the Lenfilm studios early
in 1961.
   I was interested to learn what British films have most impressed
the members of the Institute. They are familiar with Richard =3,
Oliver Twist, The Horse's Mouth, Woman in a Dressing Gown, Geordie,
Genevieve, Room at the Top... and, of course, Great Expectations.
   We debated the advantages and disadvantages of filming famous
classics and works originally intended for the theatre. The Russians,
I found, have an obsession for this, even though they have found that
when they film a novel it reduces rather than promotes the sale of the
book, which, I explained, is opposite to our experiences in the West.
And they seemed to accept my point that it is more important for the
Cinema that artists should concentrate on original work than
transpositions, no matter how well they are engineered.
   I was anxious to find out what the Russians themselves regard as
the most significant trends in Soviet film-making of recent years.
Dr. Dobin summarised their views like this:
   "We agree with you when you say that films like Ballad of a
Soldier, Destiny of a Man and Don Quixote have been important
new styles in Soviet film-making. We are living now through an
interesting period in the history of our Cinema. The whole pattern of
film-making is being changed. You see, the men who made the classics
of Soviet Cinema are no longer living- Eisenstein, Pudovkin,
Dovzhenko. Their tradition is carried on by directors like Kozintsev,
Romm and Heifetz.
   "But it is the young men who are profoundly changing all our old
ideas. The pattern began to emerge when Chukhrai made The Forty
First, and it was consolidated in his more recent film, Ballad of
a Soldier. Although he has made only two films, he almost shows
himself more talented than the old gang. It is a very significant
fact.
   "Sergei Bondarchuk, although he is not a young man is young
among the ranks of directors, and his first film, Destiny of a Man,
was recognised as an important contribution to Cinema in every
country where it was shown. Another film of significance has been
Serezha, made by Danelya and Talankin (which won a major award at
the Karlovy Vary festival).
   "These films usher a new trend. Our film producers are creating
a new style that appeals to their audience without having to resort to
the ingredients of Western 'box-office', such as strip-tease. They
are searching for something good in the soul of Soviet man.
   "The new film-makers portray what they see without trying to
improve people or embellish reality. This is important to realise.
The main concern of these film-makers is to show the truth of life,
even if it means showing the darker sides of life. Some time ago- in
the 'forties and 'fifties- there was a period of Soviet film-making
when the films were like posters, divorced from people and from
reality.
<END QUOTE>
Falls Among Thieves
   "Western audiences may find of particular interest a film by
Heifetz, The Case of Roumantsyev. It is the story of an honest
young man who, in all innocence falls among thieves. He is arrested
by the Police and prosecuted for his part in crimes that he did not
commit. All the circumstantial evidence is against him. The
prosecutor is not concerned with him as an individual and is himself
quite convinced of his guilt. But in the end a friend is able to
prove the man's innocence to the satisfaction of the court officials.
   "Many of our films now focus attention on the problems of
individuals. Ballad of a Soldier was a simple story of a pure
young boy and a pretty girl falling in love. It was something with
which audiences liked to identify themselves. Another film about
soldiers was called simply, Soldiers. It is the work of Ivanov
and, instead of concentrating on the battle, the political
consequences, it is a study of the every day life, the detail of how a
soldier lives; and the duty, the responsibility, forms the background.
   "So you see, our young directors are coming closer and closer to
the realities of life."
   The members of the Institute then took me to their small
projection theatre to see a musical film made in Leningrad in 1941 by
Alexander Ivanovski, Anton Ivanovich is Angry, which stars a
distinguished Soviet actor (who lives in the city), Pavel Kadochnikov.
It proved to be a Hollywood-style story, but instead of pop music the
conflict between an old professor who doted over his opera-singing
daughter and a young impressario <SIC> was based on a natural
conflict between the highbrows and the lowbrows in classical music.
Characterisation was ingenious enough, but I couldn't help feeling
the director was ill served by his scenarist.
   Back at the Europe hotel we dined on caviar and baked sturgeon
(and if you think the Russians wallow in luxury you're wrong, it's as
common in Leningrad as fish and chips). And during our conversation I
began to realise that Vadim had a rather lop-sided view of British
history. I realised some of the snags inherent in communication with
the East during an interval at the concert that evening by the
Leningrad symphony (Haydn, Barber and Shostakovitch performed as well
as you would hear anywhere in the world, perhaps better). I asked
Vadim if he regretted the fact that he was not allowed to travel to
countries in the West when and as he wanted to do so: and he reminded
me of Nina, the little Russian visitor to London who found herself at
Bow Street. "No," he said, "it is not that we are not allowed to
visit the West, it is that we are protected from this kind of thing
being done to us."
   The next day, on time, an Intourist car left us at a building
reminiscent of the Albert Hall. This was the Velika cinema. We were
to see a children's matinee of The Green Coach, a production of
the Odessa studios, directed by Gennardy Gabay. There were hundreds
of children, mostly boys in their grey military-style school hats,
clambering to buy ice cream beneath a white statue of a large man with
a dove in his left hand and a slogan behind: 'The World Wants
Peace.'
   As we waited for the film to begin a stout lady with a jovial
face, who I understood to be the manageress, said the building was no
longer to be a cinema but would shortly become a theatre. I asked if
this was because television was causing fewer people to go to the
cinema and she replied no, it was because in Leningrad they had
already fulfilled their cinema attendance target so there was no need
for the building any longer to function as a cinema. I wanted to ask
for a fuller explanation of this cryptic statement, but we were
suddenly plunged into darkness and the film began.
Boy Sherlock
   It was an adventure yarn about the Revolution, with Red
Russians fighting White Russians, and gangs of criminals (also
Russians) in between. A small boy plays Sherlock Holmes. The gangs
of horse-stealers and illicit vodka distillers are brought to justice
and the Red Russians make life better for everyone.
# 25
<237 TEXT G5>
The Scores of "La Fille Mal Garde?2e"
=2- HEROLD'S SCORE
JOHN LANCHBERY and IVOR GUEST
   THE score for the 1828 revival of La Fille mal
Garde?2e at the Paris Ope?2ra was described on the playbills
for the first performance (see Fig. 1) as being "newly arranged by
M. Herold". Presumably, when the question arose of producing this
long-popular ballet at the Ope?2ra, the original music, which still
accompanied performances of it at the Porte-Saint-Martin and other
theatres, was considered too light. The chorus-master, Ferdinand
Herold (1791-1833), who had already composed the music for three
ballets, was accordingly given the task of refurbishing the score.
Since the ballet was no doubt too well-known for the original music
to be discarded altogether, several of the best numbers were retained,
but Herold wrote a considerable amount of new music and inserted
several numbers borrowed from familiar sources.
   Borrowings of this kind were common in ballet composition at this
time. The ballet composer regarded his task as part of his day's work
rather than as a serious artistic creation, and this practice greatly
lightened his burden. It was also considered that the interpolation
of a melody which the public would associate with the line of a song
appropriate to the action it accompanied was an aid to understanding
the situation.
   Our knowledge of Herold's music for La Fille mal Garde?2e
is based on the full score preserved in the Library of the Paris
Ope?2ra, which was used by John Lanchbery as the principal source in
arranging the music played today for the Royal Ballet. This score is
too clean to be the score used by the conductor, and it was probably
the fair-copy prepared by one of the Ope?2ra's copyists from
Herold's original draft and perhaps used as the master for copying the
orchestral parts. It bears the inscription: La Fille mal
Garde?2e / Ballet en 2 actes / de Dauberval / mis en scene par Mr
Aumer, musique / nouvellement arrange?2e par Mr Herold /
represente?2 sur le the?2a?5tre de l'acade?2mie / Royale de
musique le lundi 8 de?2cembre / 1828. Why the score bears this
date, which is that of the seventh performance, instead of the date of
the first performance, November 17th, 1828 is a mystery. Did Herold
only have part of his score completed by November 17th, the complete
revised score not being ready until December 8th?
   As is to be expected, the score is written for a typical
orchestra of the period. The music is mostly scored for two flutes,
the second usually playing piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two
bassoons, two pairs of horns, and strings. For the number "Pas de
Mr Albert" in Act =1 (No. 17), however, the orchestra is
augmented by harp, trumpets, trombones, drums and percussion
(triangle, bass drum and cymbals), while the Finales to Act =2
(Nos. 36 and 36a) and an occasional number here and there have parts
written for trumpets, trombones and drums. Further, there are various
places in the score where trombones and/or drums have been added in
another hand in a stave at the bottom of the page.
   Judging from the orchestration, which is markedly inferior to
that of Herold's operas, his score of La Fille mal Garde?2e
was hurriedly composed, and this perhaps lends support to the
conjecture made earlier that it may not have been quite finished in
time for the first performance. In it the strings play throughout,
resting for only ten out of the thousands of bars in this hour and a
half of music. Many of the numbers display great economy of effort by
doubling some instruments with others, a common practice of that
period. This method of scoring, of course, made it possible to
orchestrate a number in a fraction of the time that would be needed in
ballet-composing today, although it is still very much in use in the
field of commercial arrangement.
   An example of this is to be found on page 381 of the full score
(see Fig. 2). Reading from the top, the first two staves are the
horns; then follow two staves for the oboes, which double the violins;
the next two staves are the bassoons, which double the cellos; then
come the first and second violins, the violas which also double the
cellos, the cellos, and finally the double basses which again double
the cellos. Thus, in eleven separate staves, there are only five
different voices.
   Herold made no attempt to produce a modernized version of the
score in the way that Hertel was to do in 1864. He retained a
considerable amount of folky music in the Bordeaux score, to which he
added numbers of his own composition with an essentially French
melodic content, and several borrowings which one must allow are
excellently suited for their purpose. In fact, from the point of view
of orchestration, the borrowed numbers, in which the orchestration has
been left unchanged, are among the most effective parts of the score.
Herold fulfilled his task in a much more self-effacing and effective
way than Hertel. Herold's numbers are generally longer and more
developed than the equivalent numbers of the Bordeaux score, but his
score has less continuity than the original, in which one number
occasionally runs into the next without pause. Herold gave the music
greater characterization, wisely retaining note for note one or two of
the more pointed numbers in the Bordeaux score: an outstanding example
of this is the spinning number in Act =2, retained by Herold, but
discarded by Hertel in favour of a much less suitable number of his
own composition. This greater characterization which Herold injected
into the score was marked by a much more heightened dramatic content
in the music. In Herold's score there is a stronger predilection for
6/8 than in the Bordeaux score, where the preference is for fast 2/4.
   As was the case with the Bordeaux version, there is a frustrating
lack of "landmarks" in the Herold score. Our only aids in fitting
the music to the scenario are the division of the score into the two
acts and a few written indications: "lever du rideau" in Act
=1, Scene =1; "Pas des Moissonneurs", "Pas de Mr
Albert", "Apre?3s le divertissement" and "Orage" as
titles to four numbers in Act =1, Scene =2; and "Finale" as the
only title indication in the whole of Act =2. Again, as with the
Bordeaux score, it is much easier to wed the music to the action in
Act =2 than either scene of Act =1, the second scene of which is
particularly difficult because of two weaknesses inherent in the score
as a whole: a lack of any kind of thematic continuity, and the absence
of obvious mime scenes.
   It would have been difficult to write an overture which better
set the scene than the number which Herold borrowed (No. 1). This
was the overture from Giovanni Paolo Martini's comic opera Le
Droit du Seigneur, in which it serves to describe a French
countryside scene at dawn. This was the very atmosphere needed for
the opening of La Fille mal Garde?2e, and Herold therefore
inserted it down to the last note of scoring, with its bird calls
imitated on the woodwind, and the slow legato melody played by the
first violins against a monotonous Alberti type of accompaniment from
the second violins.
   The curtain having risen during No. 1, there follows (No. 2)
another borrowing for Lise's entrance: the opening chorus from
Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia ("6Piano,
pianissimo") chosen no doubt to illustrate an entrance on tip-toe
so that Lise's mother will not be awakened. The orchestration has not
been touched, and no attempt has been made to supply the chorus parts
of the original, which are of no musical content any way. At one
point, however, where sufficient music has been supplied for the
purpose, there is an abrupt termination, followed by a three-bar link
of the most primitive kind to give some kind of continuity.
   Nos. 3 and 4 have their equivalent in Bordeaux No. 3. The
former is a very long 6allegretto number in 6/8, intended
undoubtedly to accompany Colas's entrance with the harvesters. So far
the music has been growing progressively louder: No. 2 brought in
two trumpets, and No. 4- a short, loud, dramatic and fast-moving
number, presumably for Simone's entrance- introduces three trombones,
and is scored throughout with every instrument playing except drums,
and marked 6fortissimo.
   No. 5, to which Colas discovers Lise's ribbon, is identical
with Bordeaux No. 4, but transposed down a tone to make it fit.
   For No. 6, which closely approximates Bordeaux No. 5, Herold
has composed a new tune which follows the original to the extent of
having not only the same time signature but even the same note values.
By present-day standards, this is rather feeble music for the scene
which it probably accompanies, Simone telling Colas to be off.
   Herold also wrote a new number (No. 7) for the entrance of the
villagers, with the same time signature and speed as Bordeaux No. 6.
After a marking "plus vite", there is a sudden silent bar,
followed by four soft chords and a loud chord played in a slow tempo,
serving as a link to No. 8, which is exactly the same as Bordeaux
No. 7 with a few bars of tasteful coda added at the end. This
latter number is scored for strings alone, trumpets and trombones
having been silent since No. 4.
   Not surprisingly, No. 9, the "playing at horses" number,
used most probably for the lovers' meeting, is precisely the same as
Bordeaux No. 8, even to the extent of reproducing a bowing
indication- a great rarity in the Herold score. At the end of this
number there is a pencilled sign
<ILLUSTRATION>
which is still used today by some continental conductors to indicate
the imminent entrance of drums.
   Drums do indeed appear in the first bar of No. 1, a jolly 6/8
tune which in its context must be a continuation of the love scene.
It is of considerable length, and its lilt suggests a flirtation with
coy and playful exchanges. Its counterpart in the Bordeaux score was
cut considerably. At the end, however, there is no distant echo of
the melody heralding the approach of the village girls, as in the
original, but instead, the following number (No. 11), which follows
straight on without a break, opens with a sudden 6sforzando
chord. This is a surprisingly effective piece of orchestration: a
chord of the diminished seventh with three trombones high up and close
together and two oboes and two clarinets in their low reedy register,
while all the strings play 6tremolo. This number, written for
Colas's flight, begins in a bustling manner and then eases off in a
relaxation of the tension.
   No. 12, a folky number in 6/8 written in simple
four-part harmony, with flutes strengthening the tune, accompanies the
entrance of the village girls who urge Lise to accompany them to the
harvest. Simone then appears to prevent Lise's departure to No. 13,
in which her anger is depicted by a striking piece of dramatic scoring
for strings only, in which much play is made of unison, fast-moving
phrases in the minor, syncopation, quick scales, crushed notes, and a
strong dotted rhythm.
   The final number of the first scene, No. 14, introduces Thomas
and his half-witted son Alain, whom Simone plans to marry to her
daughter. A loud, majestic, march-like theme is undoubtedly the
accompaniment for the entrance of father and son. Then follows an
effective passage of soft 6staccato minor chords on strings and
clarinets only, which is probably the theme for the stumbling Alain.
A return to the major, with a joyous, animated 6/8 theme, and with
Alain's theme repeated, ends the scene with the proposed marriage
arranged and the departure of everyone to the harvest.
   The absence of a clear break in the score at this point is
undoubtedly explained by the next number (No. 15) being intended to
accompany a changement a?3 vue to the harvest scene.
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Nor are there any linguistic barriers to this pastime; the same
bird is called perdix in French, and one writer stated that it
was thus called because it regularly perdit- 'loses' its
brood. Even the great are not exempt; Swift is said to have analysed
apothecary as from 'a pot he carries.' But who shall blame
them overmuch when we discover that a verb such as atone, with its
noun atonement- so obviously Latinate in appearance- is in fact
a compound of at and one.
   Children are particularly and naturally prone to this kind of
etymologising. Continually coming across strange words, they strive
to make sense of them in terms of the vocabulary they already possess.
There was the child who thought that Wilhelmina was so called because
she was mean. A little boy, whose room overlooked a cemetery, was
overheard imitating part of the service with his teddy-bear- 'in the
name of the Father, the Son, and in the hole 'e goes.' There was a
little girl, wise perhaps beyond her years, who interpreted the wedded
state as 'wholly a matter o' money.' It is a sobering thought
that, although different in degree, some of the etymologies which even
our great dictionaries give may be popular etymologies; for when
information about early forms and meanings of words is scarce, we
cannot always be sure that our etymologies are valid. We still do not
know the origin of the word curmudgeon. An early nineteenth
century dictionary-maker's surmise that it is from French coeur
me?2chant, 'wicked heart,' is rightly suspect.
   For the most part, this pastime has no permanent effect on the
language, but occasionally, so strong is the desire to make familiar
that which is strange, that a word is changed- either in whole or in
part- in accordance with the fancied etymology, and the changed form
is henceforth accepted. It is a change of this kind which is often
specifically intended by the use of the term 'folk etymology.' A
good example is a plant, proverbial for its bitter taste, namely
wormwood. Its Latin name is artemesia absinthium, hence
the name absinthe, borrowed from French, for a liqueur distilled
from wine and wormwood. Few of us would immediately connect this
Latin word with another, also taken by us from French, namely
vermouth, the aperitif consisting of white wine flavoured with
wormwood and other aromatic herbs. Both wormwood and vermouth
are from the same root, a Germanic word. The French borrowed
theirs, with but little adaptation, from the Old High German word
wermuth, a close relative of which became Old English wermod.
During the Middle Ages the latter was altered, the first part to
worm and the second to wood. It matters little to the
unlettered that neither worms nor wood appear to have anything to do
with the plant. The main object, assimilation to that which is
familiar, has been achieved.
   Popular etymology shows, in fact, the operation of a widespread
and powerful linguistic process, analogy. We learn, recollect, and
become adept at using language by analogy, that is by recalling
likenesses of meaning, grammatical context, form or sound. We know
that cool, coolness, and even cold, are related to each other.
It is not surprising, therefore, that our ancestors, knowing that
oecern (modern acorn) referred to the fruit of the ac
'oaktree,' should assume a connection between the two and believe
that -cern should be changed to -corn. In fact, the word
oecern is related to oecer 'a field' (modern acre,
which has, however, become specialised in meaning), and originally
referred to the produce of the fields in general. It is not the
observation of likenesses which is at fault in popular etymology, it
is the fact that conclusions about the relationships of words, drawn
from comparisons, happen to be erroneous.
   It is not, however, necessary for a whole word to be transformed
in order to satisfy the popular etymologist. The amateurs, the
unsophisticated, have been less exacting in this respect than learned
dilettantes. It is often sufficient for the former that one part of a
strange word should be given a comfortingly familiar form, e.g.
-room in mushroom, from French mousseron, or -fish in
crayfish, from French crevice (like vermouth, a borrowing
from Old High German, from crebig, related to our crab). It
is not even necessary that the altered word should be obviously
meaningful in English, provided that it fits a familiar pattern; for
example, admiral- by analogy with the many Latin loanwords in
English beginning with ad- has been altered from Arabic amiral
(via French), which in turn is from amir, 'prince, lord,'
more familiar to us in the form Emir. Similarly an ending has
been transformed in syllable, from French syllabe (ultimately
from Greek), by analogy with the many Latin loanwords ending in
-able.
   At this point it may be asked what dictates that one word
should be altered and another passed over? It is not enough to say
'unfamiliarity' and leave it at that; familiarity and unfamiliarity
are relative terms. Many of the constituent elements of our
vocabulary are terms which we use every day. They are intimately
bound up with ordinary existence; we accept them automatically,
without enquiry. We rarely ask ourselves why a house is so called-
or a boy or a tree or a bird. As our education and experience grow we
accept other words, most of which we fit into a linguistic pattern
which we accept as belonging to our language. We go even further and
come to regard the patterns which our own language has assumed as
somehow normal, and consequently view words entering from a foreign
language with grave suspicion. The importance of folk etymology in
the development of the language stems largely from the influence it
exercises on foreign words when they are first introduced.
   It is not surprising that a great many of these changes appear to
have taken place between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, a
period which saw the assimilation of the spate of French loanwords,
the floodtide of Latin loanwords and the beginning of a flow of words
from the more exotic languages of the world, either directly into
English or via other European countries, which had trading and
colonial interests in many parts of the world. English has no
monopoly of folk or popular etymology, but the phenomenon appears to
have been particularly widespread in our language. Our insularity may
account for it in part, but there is another possible explanation.
Our ancestors, like the Germans to-day, had a predilection for
compound words; although many of these disappeared in the course of
time, the expectation that the elements of a polysyllabic word could
and should be capable of resolution into meaningful elements may have
survived.
   Men of learning have also made free with words, particularly
those of Latin origin. Abominable was from Latin abominabilis,
'deserving imprecation,' which was a compound of ab and
omen and referred to the deprecation of an unfavourable omen.
From the time of Wycliffe up to the seventeenth century, however, it
was spelt 1abhominable, as if from ab homine, 'away from
man,' i.e. 'inhuman.' Modern scholarship has caused
restitution to be made here, but not in the case of arbour, a word
which goes back through Old French to Latin herbarium, 'a green
retreat.' In Middle English it was spelt herber, with the h
probably already lost in pronunciation in French. By a regular
sound change in Middle English, -er came to be pronounced -ar.
The way was now open for an erroneous association of the word with
Latin arbor, 'a tree.' The spelling was first affected, but
latterly the meaning also. It is now a shady retreat with climbing
plants on a framework of wood- the two ideas have been amalgamated.
   The mass of the people, unlettered and knowing no language but
their own, were also busy in their way, wrestling with the outlandish
forms of foreign words, quite oblivious of the fact that the meanings
of most foreign words could not possibly be made to yield satisfactory
sense on the basis of English roots. But it was generally sufficient
that a word be given English dress, even if this was not appropriate.
An apposite example is the word farthingale, denoting the
framework of hoops used for extending women's skirts. Here is a word
which has been subjected twice to the alterations of popular
etymologists, both in French and in English. The kernel of the word
is Latin viridis, 'green,' which is to be found in Spanish
verdugo, a young, pliable green twig; a framework of such twigs
was called a verdugado. Borrowed by the French, it became
verdugale. It was suggested that it was a safeguard of virtue,
as it was impossible to approach the lady except at arm's length. The
French form would become fartugale in Middle English as a result
of the change of -er to -ar referred to above. But no-one
knows what ingenious associations led to the first element being
transformed to farthing. Many words are thus changed so as to
convey a meaning which, however inappropriate, sounds familiarly upon
the ear. Jerked beef, flesh dried in the sun, is a corruption of
Peruvian charqui; compound, meaning 'enclosure,' is from
Malayan kampung; Charterhouse from French Chartreuse, a
Carthusian monastery; kichshaws from French quelques
choses; battledore, a beetle used for beating washing, is probably
from Spanish batidor, 'a beater.' Ember days have nothing
to do with the ashes of repentance; the word is from Old English
ymbren, a compound word formed from ymb, 'about, around,'
and ryne, 'a recurring period.' In a fifteenth century homily
folk etymology can already be seen at work on this word.
   Standard English is far from having a monopoly of this linguistic
phenomenon, which is to be found also in the dialects. A Hampshire
farmer had fowls of different breeds, including Dorkings; he
discriminated ingeniously between the 'dark 2'uns' and the 'white
2'uns.' The bird name fieldfare may go back to an Old English
form feldfare, deduced from an early twelfth century form
feldware; but the first element may originally have been
fealu, denoting the yellowish colour of its back, an element
changed in early Middle English to felde. But in Cumberland,
folk etymology certainly seems to have taken place in its dialect
name, 2fell-faw, which is interpreted as 'mountain gypsy.'
More than irony is involved in the colloquial description of a place
which many of us have, a glory-hole. The first element of the
word is probably related to Scottish 2glaury, 'muddy, untidy.'
In Scotland and Northern England a three-legged stool was sometimes
known as a 2creepie, a corruption of French tripied, 'three
feet.' This interchange between the sound groups <5tr> and <5kr>
is not uncommon; cf. English crane, Danish trane, and
English huckleberry and hurtleberry.
   Hackberry is a corruption of 2hag-/ 2heg- berry,
i.e. hedge berry, a Northern name for the bird-cherry,
prunus radus. An ingenious rationalisation of 2hegberry
emanated from Cumberland children who explained, 'we 2caw them
2hegberries because they 2heg (i.e. set on edge) our teeth.'
There is the Lancashire corruption 2barley-men (also 2birley-
and 2burley-) from byrlawmen, the petty officers of the
manorial courts in medieval times; a byrlaw, cognate with our
bye-law, was made by a local court. Terms for marbles such as
2all-plaister, 2yallow-plaister, 2alablaster and 2alley
blaster are corruptions of alabaster. An interesting
expression for a lean-faced person is 2chittyfaced, a corruption
of Old French Chichevache (literally 'starving cow'), a
medieval monster fabled to devour only patient wives; being therefore
in a chronic state of starvation, it was made a by-word for leanness.
It is referred to in the closing stanzas of Chaucer's Clerk's Tale
of patient Griselda. It appears later to have been confused with
2chit, 2chitty, 'a young child,' a dialect form of kitty,
and to have taken on the meaning 'baby-faced.' Popular
etymology, therefore, can result in change of meaning as well as in
change of form, as was also the case with arbour. A delightful
adaptation of a Latin word occurs in the Lancashire
2goose-on-ten-toes, a goose claimed by husbandmen on the 16th
Sunday after Trinity, when the collect ended: 'ac bonis operibus
jugiter praestet esse intentos.'
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In many areas, particularly in India and Burma, the basic problems
to be solved before development can begin is that <SIC> of land
reform, involving the break-up of feudal ownership and the
establishment of co-operatives. Only by these means can there be any
hope of getting communities on the move.
   We can do no better than turn back to India again to illustrate
these points. It is perhaps natural that I should gather together the
threads of the discussion by talking of this massive nation of over
4 million people. Its size and geographical position set it at the
centre of world politics. By the allegiance of its rulers to
socialism it provides a test case for Conservative principles. Above
all, it provides a perfect cross-section of all the stages of
development and their accompanying problems upon which we have touched
in this essay. Some areas and sectors are already far advanced and
are overripe for private domestic and foreign investment. Other
areas, mostly agricultural, remain in virtual stagnation, still
awaiting the application of knowledge and resources, and the reforms
and organisation which we have described. Across the whole economy
there is a lack of roads, drainage, education and health services, and
in the towns, even of telephones. The Indian planners have been
criticised for the rigidity of their plans and the emphasis which has
been given to Government investment in urban and already
industrialised sectors. They have been blamed for neglect of the
rural sector and for the resulting permanent food shortages and
inflation of food prices which this imbalance between agriculture and
industry creates. Whatever the truth in these accusations, as
Conservatives we would like to see the Indian Government pursue three
lines of development policy with far greater vigour than at present.
First, encroachment into the private sector should be replaced by
withdrawal and more overt encouragement to private domestic and
overseas enterprise. Secondly, the application of finance and
supervision to smallholders' agriculture, preceded where necessary by
land reforms, should be tackled with greater dynamism, and, thirdly,
these two policies should be combined with greater diligence in
carrying out the basic services and providing the facilities (which
will certainly require considerable Government expenditure) which we
regard as being rightly within the sphere of government. That we can
hope to see such policies pursued in India is doubtful. But it is
possible that we can have, over a period of time, some marginal
influence on the pattern of progress. To withhold aid is not the way
to exert this influence. On the contrary, more aid, better
administered, offers the best hope of success.
   Aid is essentially a part of foreign policy. But it should be
seen as a contracting and not a permanent element of foreign policy,
for its aim should be to return predominantly to the sphere of private
initiative both the processes of economic development which it is
trying to assist and the processes of capital investment for which it
stands as a partial substitute. This must be the general objective.
To deny it makes the dispensation of all aid purposeless and
wasteful.
   While development gathers momentum we shall have to condone a
variety of deviations from the principles which we support and would
see established. But if, amidst the many changes and expedients, we
can both provide aid and bring to bear some influence in line with our
general aim, then we stand a good chance of seeing thriving economies
growing up in the underdeveloped world, based on free enterprise and a
fine sense of friendship and unity with the already industrialised
countries. If not, then we run the risk of divorcing the poor half of
the world from the rich and of creating opportunities for all the
subversion, disruption and tyranny which that state of affairs can
bring.
JAMES LEMKIN
Commonwealth approaches
9
Conservatism in a post-imperial age
   In the second half of the twentieth century, amidst revolution
and turmoil, the British Commonwealth survives. Its continued
existence is of itself proof positive to Conservatives that the
institution works. But is there too much complacency about this? Is
interracial partnership, which is the hub of Commonwealth development,
possible today? The evidence of Africa in 196 is that numbers matter
more than the quality of things. But the needs of Africa in 197 show
that European, Asian and African must cooperate to sustain an
expanding economy, based on a representative system of government.
   That the needs of 197 are desirable political ends will be
denied by few British politicians. The hub of the argument- and this
affects the Commonwealth, and not merely British Africa- is that
Conservative principle will result in methods being applied that would
differ substantially from those of the Liberals who would maximise
freedom at the expense of order, and greatly from those of the Labour
Party which would prefer rapid, perhaps revolutionary, social change
to organic growth.
   Conservatives, however, do not in their approach to the
Commonwealth, start with a clean plate. Their record is very much of
the species of the curate's egg. Some economic neglect, some
administrative tyranny has been shameful. But in other places, the
broad progress under a Conservative government has been startling, not
merely to indigenous Commonwealth peoples fed on the idea of Tory
bogeymen, but to Conservatives who found a good deal of practical
sense planted amongst those who have cooperated with them in Asia and
Africa. Conservatives today are cast in a liberalising mantle,
however much some of them may wish the garment to be thrown off.
   In their approach to the Commonwealth, Conservatives bring three
political principles to bear. First they see the Commonwealth as a
whole. This needs a good deal of Tory self-reconciliation as the
reciprocity of material interests of Commonwealth countries declines.
Secondly, they accept that effective power which has passed cannot be
successfully recalled. This leads Tories sometimes to credit non-, or
not wholly, self-governing European communities with greater authority
than in fact such groups have. Thirdly, Conservatives accept the
value of an objective law free from administrative meddling- the rule
of Law. Now given these three working Conservative approaches a keen
supporter of the Government may well meet himself coming the other
way. He believes in the Statute of Westminster as a symbol of equal
power. But he also knows that racial discrimination will destroy the
unity of the Commonwealth. The translation of one nation abroad, as
has been spoken of by Mr Iain Macleod, is meaningless unless a stand
is made on racial discrimination (in whichever direction it operates).
   The Conservative speaks up for impartial law but what of Hola?
And because he starts from this standpoint few speeches made in the
House of Commons during the previous Secretaryship of the Colonies
were in fact more effective than Mr Enoch Powell on Hola to an
unvigilant House of Commons at half past one in the morning. To stand
for the rule of law enables the colonial regime in its closing days to
help purge itself of its paternalist past. But when a newly
independent regime rejects the common law and substitutes rule by
executive, do some Conservatives wonder whether these political
principles are the playthings of academics rather than the medicine of
good government?
   Conservatives in government are of course being carried forward
by the 6e?2lan of the nationalism of others and this overshadows
their concern for order which at best means a balanced advance,
putting emphasis on economic as well as political development. But to
define balance is to defy politics. Sometimes bread is more important
than votes, sometimes both are necessary. In some territories votes
can be given, but bread cannot be provided. The Conservative properly
brings an undogmatic approach to these problems. In being pragmatic
about his priorities he will rightly emphasise on the one hand, for
example, the political advance of Somalia, while arguing on the other
that a more complex set of constitutional checks and balances is
required in Northern Rhodesia. The jibe of Mr Mboya in attacking
the Lancaster House Conference that what Somalia required were
settlers was double-edged. Settlers might have retarded Somalia's
political progress, but they would have given it a much better
standard of living.
   No Conservative in looking at the Commonwealth will underestimate
Britain's interests in preserving the Commonwealth as an institution.
To say this is not to suggest that Commonwealth relations are merely
an extension of foreign policy. Britain must analyse her interests
hard before she can determine in what way her contribution to the
Commonwealth may be effective and acceptable. The Commonwealth today
is largely a new institution. Sharpeville, the passing of
responsibility to the new coloured territories, the tremendous drive
to give economic aid to under-developed countries, the willingness of
Great Britain to prefer Commonwealth under-developed countries to
foreign under-developed countries as a priority for aid, and the need
of new Commonwealth countries for administrative and technical
assistance- all these have shifted the balance of subjects for
discussion amongst Commonwealth Prime Ministers from defence of the
free world and from inter-Commonwealth trade- as were the principal
subjects before the Second World War- to this new gamut of subjects
bound up as they are with a new psychological relationship between
Britain and the new members of the Commonwealth.
   Now Britain's interests in the Commonwealth are four-fold.
First, in a world of large units, Britain is striving to maintain an
existing large institution, being enlarged as each year goes by,
without committing it strategically to Russia or America. Britain has
a double role to play in this respect. Some of the members of the
Commonwealth- Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand- are
bound up in defence pacts with the United States, which are devised as
a protection against the Sino-Soviet block. Britain nevertheless can
maintain, through the Commonwealth, peculiarly friendly relations with
countries that would not wish to be aligned in such a struggle.
Britain's second interest is to harness the power, both the political
power and the administrative skill, that lies in the Commonwealth to
the task of healing divisions in parts of the world- first, of
course, putting the house of the Commonwealth in order, and secondly
in assisting to maintain peace in countries adjacent to Commonwealth
countries. Thirdly, Britain's interest, although it may in truth be
said now to be a declining interest relative to Europe, is to expand
the trade of the sterling Commonwealth. It is a declining interest
because it must be recognised that the purchasing power of the
under-developed countries in the Commonwealth will rise slowly
compared with that of Europe. These areas, which are areas of primary
producing, will not show the most dramatic changes in consumption
during the next decade or so. For the dramatic expansion of its
trade, Britain will do better out of trade of manufactured made-up
goods with Europe and with some of the big countries of South East
Asia before it will see any great improvement in its trade with the
Commonwealth sterling area. But Britain's last interest is to assist
the countries of the Commonwealth to modernise rapidly by speeding
technical progress through an acceptable educational system.
   These are not selfish aims, although they will rebound to the
benefit of the people of Britain in two ways. First, we shall have
friends in the world, at a time when negotiations of international
problems are resolved by larger and larger groups of nations. Friends
are necessary for the safe conduct of our affairs abroad. Secondly,
through the medium of the English language, through the influence of
our teachers and administrators, Britain's word can still be of value
in some parts of the world.
   It would be arrogant to think only of Britain's role in the
Commonwealth. For some time the idea of the mother country has been
dwindling as the coloured races came to power in the new territories,
and the idea of London as being the centre of activities has shifted
from the American continent to Asia, and now, for the time being, to
Africa.
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He has undoubtedly helped to fortify its already substantial
reputation for fairness and efficiency.
   The position can, however, best be assessed by my readers for
themselves through my giving them some instances of the Danish
Ombudsman's activities in the sphere of his individual grievance work.
   In its summer issue of 1959 the journal "Public Law" published
an article by Miss I. M. Pedersen, a Danish civil servant, in
which a detailed analysis of this aspect of the Ombudsman's work is
attempted. The picture which this article gives is so clear and
convincing that I am inserting it as an Appendix. I shall confine
myself here to describing one or two outstanding cases.
   One of these was a complaint addressed to the Ombudsman by a
bookseller, who held that he had been penalized by publicity given by
the police to a charge brought against him for defrauding his
creditors. On investigation, it proved that his wife from whom he was
separated had been summoned to give evidence against him and that she
had been sent copies of the summons, which revealed the nature of the
alleged offence, to relations who thereupon stopped giving him
financial assistance. <SIC> The Ombudsman recommended that in
future summonses to witnesses should not show the nature of the
offence about to be tried and this recommendation has been embodied in
law. <SIC>
   In the course of another inquiry the Ombudsman revealed that the
Danish Ministry of Agriculture had been acting 6ultra vires in
a certain matter for some twenty years. His activities have likewise
embraced such varying subjects as the right of certified mental
patients to have their consent asked before a leucotomy <SIC> is
performed on them and a complaint against the Copenhagen police for
alleged aggressive action over a car licensing offence. Equally,
various other matters, such as the calculation of damages in cases of
disablement, have been found to be beyond his practical competence.
   There is no doubt that much of the success of the institution of
Ombudsman has derived from the skill and high reputation of Professor
Hurwitz, Denmark's first Ombudsman. In a country where academic
qualifications are highly valued, his distinction as a professor of
criminal science has stood him in good stead. In Britain, where high
academic appointments are not normally regarded as proof of
administrative or judicial wisdom, and where even the existence of
criminal science is a matter of dispute, Professor Hurwitz' success
might have been less outstanding. Here we should look to a judge or a
retired and senior Treasury official, or to Parliament, to provide
such services if they are required. What matters is that Denmark
appears to have found a way of satisfying what is 6prima facie
a legitimate public demand for protection against administrative
abuse without either paralysing administration or diminishing the
dignity and independence of the judicature. This, to say the least,
is a constitutional example worthy of scrutiny in the context of other
political and social circumstances which, however, include the
tendency towards ever-increasing administration noted by the advocates
of the Ombudsman in post-war Denmark.
   Already, however, words have been used in this exposition which
demand much closer analysis. The respective spheres of justice and
administration, the precise difference between judicial and executive
acts, the relationship of the legislature to these other two branches
of government, and in particular the implications of the doctrine of
Parliamentary sovereignty cherished in Britain, are all matters which
must be examined more thoroughly before the relevance of the Danish
institution of the Ombudsman for this country's affairs can begin to
be judged.
CHAPTER TWO
LEGALITY OR JUSTICE
   IT IS OFTEN said that in England at the beginning of the
seventeenth century there were three competitors to sovereignty, King,
Parliament and the judges. After a while, the judges withdrew from
the contest and King and Parliament were left to fight it out between
themselves. The withdrawal of the judges was a crucial event, for it
imparted to the British system of government what has ever since
remained, at any rate in form, its dominant characteristic, the
institution of Parliamentary sovereignty. The doctrine that
Parliament is legally entitled to do whatever it chooses, that it is
the final authority before which all others must bow, now has general
acceptance here. It is not so elsewhere. Other countries, in
particular the United States of America, have sought to guarantee
liberty by laying down a fundamental law and entrusting its
guardianship to a Supreme Court. They have sought still further to
guarantee this system of law by a strict separation and balance of
powers between the executive and the legislature. In Britain, on the
other hand, it has been assumed that the welfare of society demands
the unquestioning and habitual acceptance of the supremacy of
Parliament, a Parliament which cannot limit its own competence and
cannot bind its successors.
   No doubt it was in the seventeenth century that the decisive
steps in this direction were taken, but it would be a mistake to read
into the constitutional debates of those days the modern conception of
Parliamentary sovereignty which grew out of them. The truth is that
all three participants in the constitutional conflicts of Stuart times
in some degree accepted the notion of fundamental law and were largely
ignorant of the notion of sovereignty as it was later formulated.
King, judges and Parliament, in debating such matters as who had the
right to impose taxes, all appealed to an ill-defined system of
customs and principles which they assumed to constitute the immemorial
law of the land. The notion that Government existed to safeguard and
interpret this law was common to all of them.
   There was indeed no clear distinction between legislation and
adjudication. Officially, Parliament, though it is normally regarded
as the legislator today, is still designated as a "High Court".
Its procedure still bears many of the marks of its origin as a place
where private grievances are aired and remedied. The very word
"enact" strictly means "interpret", and the notion of law making
as a creative process is something very novel indeed.
   Down to the nineteenth century, the idea of the House of Commons
as an institution existing mainly for the defence and adjustment of
private rights was dominant. The great part of the business of the
eighteenth-century House of Commons concerned private and indeed
intimate affairs. If a man wanted to enclose a piece of common land
he could do so only by virtue of a private Act of Parliament; if a man
wanted a divorce he could get it only by means of such an Act.
   The procedure for Private Bills still had an important place in
the business of Parliament down to the beginning of this century.
Much of what is now done by administrative act used to be
accomplished in this way. For instance, compulsory acquisition of
land for such purposes as the building of railways in the last century
was brought about by private Acts of Parliament. A Bill would be
prepared by a Member and, when it came up for Parliamentary
consideration, interested parties would send their lawyers to the Bar
of the House to plead their cause. No branch of the Bar was more
profitable or a quicker highroad to success until quite recent times
than this Parliamentary work. The most characteristic defence of the
complicated and irrational franchise on which the Commons was elected
before 1832 was that, for all its irregularities, it produced an
assembly well fitted to discharge the essential business of Parliament
as it was then conceived, the guaranteeing of private rights. It was
an assembly, the argument ran, where a man might plead his grievance
in the knowledge that it would be listened to by representatives of
every considerable interest in the land, and in the hope that the
conclusion which would emerge would represent something like the
national view of commonsense in the matter.
   From 1832 onwards, however, this character has been radically
changed. The procedure for Private Bills is virtually extinct, though
there are some instances of its use, as in the recent case of the Esso
Petroleum Bill, when a private company sought powers of compulsory
purchase. It may now be safely said, with certain qualifications
regarding Question Time and Adjournment Debates, that the primary
business of the Commons has ceased to be the rectification of private
grievances and has become the enactment of public legislation. Large
and highly disciplined Parties emerged with organised followings in
the country, so that it is only on a minority of issues that the House
of Commons can formulate an independent view. Indeed, the best
contemporary exponents of the constitution, like Sir Ivor Jennings,
have no hesitation in holding that the real business of Parliament is
to sustain government in office. Public interest has largely shifted
away from Westminster to the Party conferences and the private
conclaves of Parliamentary Parties, each of which is supported by a
highly developed bureaucracy. It is at these places, after all, that
things really happen, that general plans of future legislation are
formulated, subsequently to be embodied in election programmes. A
victorious Party at an election tends to assume, often with little
justification, that it has been authorised to carry out in detail the
measures listed in its programme, measures conceived by Party
bureaucrats, born at Party conferences and designed less to reflect
the will of Members of Parliament or even that of the country at large
than to appease the Party zealots.
   These changes in the functioning of Parliament have of course
been accompanied by similar changes in constitutional theory. The
constitution is no longer conceived as a system of private rights and
legislation is now regarded as a dynamic, not an interpretative,
process. The legislator's task is conceived as being that of
formulating general laws for the good of society rather than that of
adjusting private interests. Inevitably, of course, highly organised
interests within society have a great and, some would say, a growing
influence on law, but, even in the case of the trade unions with their
substantial representation in the Commons, it is an influence which is
commonly exercised outside Parliament. The delicate balances between
different religious denominations embodied in the Butler Education
Act, for instance, were the result of prolonged diplomacy exercised by
the Minister before the Bill was prepared. Almost all Acts of
Parliament today are preceded by negotiations of this kind, but the
theory of the legislative process takes no account of these pressures.
The doctrine is that a Parliament representing the general will
formulates general rules for society at large. The generality of the
rules is indeed inevitable as a result of the complexity of the
matters with which contemporary legislation deals and the numbers of
those affected by it, but it is also increasingly assumed to be a
necessary consequence of the rule of law. If the legislator addresses
himself with particularity to the interests of this or that man or
group his perception of the social good, it is believed, will perforce
be corrupted. Obviously, however, nothing could be further removed
from the tradition of Parliamentary government which had been handed
down to our early Victorian ancestors than the principle of the
necessary generality of the process of lawmaking.
   Now, in whatever way government may be theoretically conceived,
it is in practice a matter of the adjustment of a multiplicity of
private interests. If the function of an Act of Parliament is to
establish general principles and rules, the details must be filled in
by someone, and it is to the civil service that the task of filling in
these gaps has fallen in modern times. Over the last half-century
Parliament has perforce delegated to Ministers and to subordinate
organs of the executive the task of devising the measures needed to
achieve the objects of its legislation, and the measures thus devised,
although they have lacked the direct consent of Parliament, have been
endowed with all the force of statutes. Some of these decrees have
themselves been very general in character, and the machinery for
reviewing them in Parliament has often been highly inadequate.
# 22
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   The market for this type of piece, bubbling with Mediterranean
6joie de vivre, and redolent of bougainvillaea and 6pizza,
remains pretty constant. In many countries, even the daily papers
devote columns to this kind of thing, and still come back for more.
The Germans in particular will take an indefinite wordage about the
land where the lemon blooms.
   German correspondents can survey their public on St. Peter's
Square every Easter. They stand in pouring rain amid the puddles,
dressed in thin cambric blouses and astonishingly short shorts.
Between their chattering teeth they emit little cries of
Wunderscho"n! and Fantastisch! as they empty the water out
of their camera shutters.
   The journalistic dog-days from May to September are a cruel
problem for the professionisti, who are expected to offer their
employers something more substantial than the latest old-world customs
thought up by the Italian National Tourist Board. Not for them the
fragrant piece about wine running from fountains at some village
festa.
   But certain hardy perennials have been evolved to meet this
recurring crisis, though it is regarded as bad form to use most of
them before July. Safest, perhaps, is the one that comes in from Pisa
about 3th June each year: LEANING TOWER TOTTERING! JAPANESE EXPERT
INJECTS PLASTIC INTO FOUNDATIONS.
   This story, in its numerous variants, is usually good for at
least ten lines on an inside page. It can be followed with another
ten lines the following day, about the 6de?2menti issued by the
Mayor of Pisa.
   A little later, Venice comes in with a similarly useful item:
PALACES SINK INTO GRAND CANAL: BRIDGE OF SIGHS SUBSIDING. Even if
it should be decided to let this standby lie fallow for a season,
there is always a handy substitute about a strike of gondoliers. Bits
about gondoliers are always printed.
   There has been some jealousy about these stories in recent years,
and Florence has retorted strongly with the White Ant Peril. This has
the advantage that it can be applied to almost any well-known
building: TERMITES UNDERMINE PITTI PALACE is perhaps the favourite
version.
   Floods in the Po Valley and eruptions of Etna and Vesuvius are
usually well received, but snowfalls in the Alps are the safest
weather-stories any date after 15th May. They can be telephoned or
cabled with special confidence if they involve blocking of well-known
passes, particularly the St. Bernard. In the latter case, mention
should also be made of the Hospice and its dogs. It is customary to
state that all the latter are about to be destroyed, because (a) they
have gone raving mad and attacked travellers in distress, or (b) are
so enfeebled by inbreeding that they can hardly stand up.
   Should snow occur anywhere within a hundred miles of Rome, it can
be reported that packs of famished wolves have been driven down from
the Abruzzi and have decimated flocks of sheep within sight of the
Colosseum. But this item is rarely printed much before Christmas.
   However, an inspired variant of the Bitter Weather story recently
almost reached the heights of the Love-mad Major. It ran in several
papers simultaneously.
   A postman named Giancarlo Peppino Dante Tagliabue had been
delivering letters for thirty years in a rural district near Aquila,
it seemed, and was proud of never having missed a day. Heavy
snowfalls had covered the rugged district with a deep, thick mantle,
interspersed with occasional drifts. Giancarlo strapped on his skis
nevertheless, and set off on his round.
   At seven-thirty in the morning he was seen by a shepherd, gamely
negotiating a particularly tricky section of the mountain road to San
Doloroso. At about ten o'clock, linesmen working on a power cable
four kilometres from Monte Callifugo thought they heard howls and a
deep-throated baying. At four, when it was already growing dark, a
patrol of carabinieri found Tagliabue's official cap halfway down
a snow-covered hillside. On the road above, half-buried in drifts,
were scattered twenty or thirty letters, five copies of the
Corriere dell' Aquila and an official receipt-book for
registered mail. Of Giancarlo nothing was left....
   Several papers ran banner headlines: DEVOTED POSTMAN EATEN BY
WOLVES. A left-wing organ recalled that only the previous year
Tagliabue had received a scroll from the Postal Workers' Union. Two
agencies circulated smudgy photographs of his unattractive wife and
seven children. The Voce di Trastevere opened a nation-wide
subscription fund. It was not until several weeks later that
Tagliabue was detained by the Foggia police for simulating an offence.
   He had been sweating up that snow-covered hillside, he explained,
reflecting that he would not be pensioned for another fifteen years.
He thought of his nagging wife and appalling brats, and it was just
too much for him. He threw down his letters and his hat into the snow
and took the first train to Foggia. He had been living there ever
since with a waitress from a local trattoria. The only wolf he
had ever seen, he said, was in a travelling zoo.
   
   However, I should not like to convey the impression that no
authentic news is transmitted from Italy. Many Rome reports are based
on the most solid facts- as witness the affair of the twenty-six
Yemeni concubines.
   The Alban Hills south-east of Rome have been celebrated since
pre-classical days for the beauty of their countryside, and the
picturesque town of Frascati has been successively the headquarters of
Etruscan kings, Saracen pirates, Renaissance princes and German
field-marshals. But it is rare for buildings there to fly large red
flags emblazoned with scimitars and five-pointed stars.
   When a rash of these exotic banners broke out in Frascati one
recent June, residents at first suspected another foreign occupation.
They were quickly reassured; the flags were in honour of sixty-five
year-old Imam Ahmed, King of the Yemen and self-proclaimed Suzerain of
Aden, who had arrived to undergo treatment at a local clinic.
   The Royal Yemeni Embassy had originally rented merely an entire
hotel for the monarch and his suite, but at the last moment it was
learnt that the Imam himself would have to remain in the clinic for
medical attention. The second floor of the hospital was therefore
cleared of other patients, and additional flags were hung from the
windows. The arrival of the royal caravan from Ciampino Airport
created a certain stir. Some twenty Cadillacs disgorging nearly a
hundred persons gave the impression that a successful fancy-dress
party must be in progress.
   After the Imam himself had been helped to his apartments, a
succession of wizened brown tribesmen, about five feet tall and clad
in bizarre mauve and orange suitings, emerged from the vehicles.
Lastly thirty-seven muffled figures, swathed in veils and wrappings
and attended by men with scimitars and muskets, scuttled from the
hindmost cars and vanished into the hotel. The two principal members
of the suite were brothers of the Imam. Two young sons of the Ruler
and numerous nephews made up the male section of the family party.
   The female side was more extensive. It was headed by three of
the Imam's wives, twenty-six representative concubines, and eight
women slaves. In addition, there were the Imam's aides-de-camp,
senior officers of his personal escort, an adequate bodyguard armed
with scimitars, daggers and an assortment of firearms, a number of
eunuchs and male slaves, and four European doctors who practised at
the Yemeni court. Three of these were described as Italians, and the
fourth as Franco-Rumanian.
   There was marked reluctance on the part of the ruler's attendants
to establish contact with the outside world, possibly because they
were anxious to retain the use of their extremities. Apart from
syphilis, the most noteworthy form of indisposition in the Yemen is
lack of hands or feet, of which it is customary to deprive those who
fall under official displeasure.
   The complaints from which the Imam himself was suffering were
difficult to establish, despite a guarded statement that he was a
martyr to arthritis. Apart from his own physicians and the staff of
the clinic, the Ruler was visited by a continual stream of eminent
Rome specialists, including Professor Gozzano, Dean of the Faculty of
Neurology and Psychiatry, and Professor Bietti, a distinguished eye
consultant.
   The Imam's section of the clinic was heavily curtained, and those
who caught a glimpse of the corridor beyond could report only the
presence of two sentries armed to the teeth and carrying drawn swords,
a number of parcels wrapped in newspaper, and a heavy odour of mutton
fat.
   On the night of his arrival, the Imam had slept on the floor of
his room on a pile of fifty pillows. At the clinic, a procession of
porters removed all beds from the royal apartments, and mattresses
were distributed on the floors.
   The wives, concubines and slaves quickly introduced a shift
system to enable them to satisfy the Imam's every want. Some of them,
possibly the ruler's favourites, seemed to put in a good deal of
overtime.
   At the hotel, the management was wringing its hands; its catering
system had been gravely disorganized, and the rows of white-jacketed
waiters were forbidden to approach either the harem ladies or the
eight female slaves. The three wives and five senior concubines took
their meals in their rooms, but the other twenty-one, heavily
disguised with hoods and yashmaks, ate in a corner of the restaurant,
which had also been hung with curtains for the purpose. The barefoot
slave-girls shuffled back and forth with the dishes.
   By this time, the Italian Press was sitting up and taking notice.
Relatively little interest attached to the health of the Imam, but
photographers from the illustrated weeklies were wild about the
concubines. Every tree in Frascati seemed to contain an active little
man from Catania or Palermo, armed with an eighteen-inch telescopic
lens.
   Meanwhile, there was near-mutiny in the respective kitchens of
the hotel and the clinic, where local experts had been hovering
lovingly over Fettucine Tuscolo, Saltimbocca alla Romana, and
Cassata alla Siciliana. True, these delicacies were duly
consumed by the distinguished guests, or at any rate they were not
returned to the kitchens. But there was a distinct suggestion that
the ruler's court was being underfed.
   The little men in mauve and orange suits, tailored no doubt in
the emporia of Steamer Point, flitted in and out with
newspaper-packets of strange vegetables, larger parcels stained with
blood and apparently containing lumps of goat, and earthenware
cooking-pots. Other ingredients were carried through the austere hall
of the clinic in large baskets, and at the end of a corridor two Negro
slaves were found constructing a spit over a bonfire of dry twigs.
   It was, I believe, at about this stage that some of the
photographers fell foul of the bodyguard, while insinuating themselves
into favourable positions for a series of exclusive shots of harem
life. The photographers apparently came off worst in the encounters,
and retired complaining of blows with the flats of swords and damage
to their cameras. They left at once for police headquarters, to bring
charges of assault.
   Meanwhile, odd rumours were coming in from the Imam's capital at
Taiz. No sooner had the ailing monarch departed for Italy, it was
learnt, than would-be modernizers had begun to loosen the bonds of
theocratic absolutism. The name of Crown Prince Mohammed al-Badr was
bandied about, though it was far from clear whether he was an active
modernizer or not.
   The word 'reform' in the Yemen is more or less equated with
'revolution'. Messengers were moving unobtrusively over the
jet-black mountain ranges, bearing confidential tidings from sheikhdom
to sheikhdom. According to exultant enemies of the ruler, he was
unlikely ever to set foot in his kingdom again.
   They had, however, reckoned insufficiently with the therapeutic
qualities of a stay in Frascati. One day, after a short but bracing
trip to the seaside west of Rome, the ruler pronounced himself
fighting fit.
   Leaving behind trusted agents to contest the naturally
considerable bills and fight any possible lawsuits, the Imam drove to
Rome airport. Embarking his wives, slaves, viziers, eunuchs,
aides-de-camp and concubines in a couple of airliners, he descended
like a thunderbolt on Arabia Felix.
# 22
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He might receive another lecture at midnight, a third one at 2
a.m. and even a fourth later. If, in class, a man objected to
some statement he considered serious enough to justify this action,
the entire class was made to stand until he abandoned his objection.
Next day he had to apologize both to the class and to the instructor,
and for four or five days afterwards to repeat his self-criticism.
The class, ordered to criticize him, obeyed: then he had to criticize
his classmates. This was one of the principal methods of deliberately
causing chaos in a group's relations.
   Dr Edgar H. Schein's article 'The Chinese Indoctrination
Process for Prisoners of War' gives a generalized picture of what
happened to the average soldier from capture to repatriation. Cruelty
deliberately imposed on civilians was on the whole far less severe in
the case of soldiers. In camp, prisoners were segregated by race,
nationality and rank. No formal organization was permitted: some
squad-leaders were appointed without consideration of rank, a method
of 'getting at' the individual. Young or inept prisoners were put
in charge of the squads, to remind everyone that former bases of
organization had been destroyed. All friendships, emotional bonds and
group activities were persistently undermined: all forms of religious
expression prohibited. Chaplains or others who tried to organize or
conduct religious services were ruthlessly persecuted. There is no
evidence that the Chinese used drugs or hypnotic methods, or offered
sexual objects to elicit information, confessions or collaboration.
Some cases of severe physical torture were reported, but their
incidence is difficult to estimate. Schein's conclusion is judicious:
   'those who are attempting to understand "brainwashing" must
look at the facts objectively, and not be carried away by hysteria
when another country with a different ideology and with different
ultimate ends succeeds in eliciting from a small group of Americans
behaviour that is not consonant with the democratic ideology.'
   In November 1956, the American Group for the Advancement of
Psychiatry met 'to clarify the differences between Orwell's fantastic
account and the real processes actually used in authentic cases'.
Dr Lifton said: 'Brain-washing for our purpose no longer means
anything specific, particularly in view of the manner in which it has
been used in this country.' Among all the people he interviewed in
Korea and Hong Kong no one who had been through the experience ever
used the term, unless he had first heard it from a Western source.
But the process of szuhsiang-kai-tsao, translated as
'ideological remoulding', 'ideological reform' or 'thought
reform', is very much a reality.
   There were three stages of 'thought reform':
   (1) The 'Great Togetherness'. The individual soldier was
helped to identify himself with a group. To his astonishment the
newcomer was often welcomed warmly, with proffered handshakes and
cigarettes. The aim was to give the impression of a climate of
6esprit de corps and optimism. To 'mobilize' his thought,
lectures, followed by discussions, were given.
   (Since the lectures lasted from two to six hours, a non-Chinese
university teacher, accustomed to a fifty minutes' limit, may wonder
how much the average listener absorbed. Sheer fatigue might increase
suggestibility.) There was, in the Chinese manner, much repetition.
Only about 5 per cent of the American army captives had received any
college education, one aim of which is the formation and examination
of concepts. At this stage, the prisoner was led to suppose that
coercive manipulations of his thinking were morally uplifting and
mentally harmonizing experiences.
   (2) The Closing-in of the Milieu (particularly the mental
milieu). In (1) the prisoner's intellectual processes have been
worked upon; now comes the turn of the emotions. The object of study
is now the learner, not the Communist doctrine. He is made
increasingly aware that his chief activities must be criticism- of
others and of himself- and 'confessions':
   'Not only his ideas, but his underlying motivations, are
carefully scrutinized. Failure to achieve the "correct"
"materialistic" viewpoint, "proletarian standpoint" and
"dialectical methodology" is pointed out, and the causes for this
deficiency carefully analysed.'
   In time, students are infected by the compulsion to confess,
'vie to outdo each other in the frankness, completeness and luridness
of their individual confessions'.
   An advisory 6cadre helps the emotionally-disturbed student,
by talking over his 'thought problems'. The diagnosis of bodily
troubles is apt to be 'reform-oriented' and 'psychosomatically
sophisticated'; 'You will feel better when you have solved your
problems and completed your reform.' And most students would need
relief from inner tension and conflict.
   (3) 'Submission and Rebirth'. Group discussion produces a
thought-summary or final confession. It is to be a life-history,
including a detailed analysis of the personal effects of thought
reform, and of the confessor's class origin. Nearly always the father
is denounced, both as a symbol of the exploiting classes and as an
individual.
   With the fair-mindedness of a good psychiatrist, Lifton comments
that in our own milieu-manipulations we should do well to retain a
certain degree of humility and to keep in mind the dangers of imposing
our own values and prejudices too forcibly.
   In Britain and America, assertions are still made that the
psychiatrist's aim is the patient's social adjustment; even sometimes
that non-adjusters can be shown up, by tests, to be neurotic, or
worse. A report by the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund (News Chronicle,
June 25, 1958) arraigns 'the public lassitude that has accepted
without question an educational system dedicated mainly to turning out
good little conformist Americans who, as Stringfellow Barr puts it,
even when they have graduated from college (famous institutions) are
unfamiliar with the ideas that are the stock-in-trade of Western
culture'. The report warns of 'the dangers of an age of
conformity' and calls for the development of more creative
individuals.
   We have seen that an important aim of working on the prisoner's
mind is to stir up guilt and shame, which help him to prepare a formal
confession. Guilt-anxiety, says Lifton, consists of feelings of evil
and sinfulness with expectation of punishment: of shame-anxiety,
feelings of humiliation and failure to live up to the standards of
one's peers or of one's internalized ego-ideal, with the expectation
of abandonment.
   He suggests that we too might profitably examine some of our own
concepts of guilt and shame. Examples come readily to mind.
Diminution in the extent of clothing worn by both sexes in sports
reduces the shame which fifty years ago would have been 'normal'.
Since Hiroshima and the Nuremberg trials, 'war-guilt', which about
1922 weighed down many Germans too young to have fought in World War
=1, has now become the subject of cynical jokes.
   In this connection Lifton discusses the relation between language
theory and behaviour. Terms used in 'thought reform' are morally
charged- either very good or very bad- and take on a mystic quality.
   To psychologists attracted by the concept of 'patterns of
culture' the above account of thought reform is impressive because
it shows that in all social orders its elements are present in varying
degrees.
   At the conference, Professor Edgar H. Schein spoke on
'Patterns of Reactions to Severe Chronic Stress in American Army
Prisoners of War of the Chinese'. He selected observations throwing
light on collaboration with the enemy. Typical experiences of an
American army prisoner of war were:
   'The first phase, lasting one to six months, was capture, an
exhausting march to North Korea, and severe privation in inadequately
equipped temporary camps. The second was imprisonment for two or more
years in a permanent camp. Here, instead of the physical pressures in
the first phase, chronic "persuasion" was applied to make the
soldiers collaborate and to exchange existing group loyalties for new
ones.
   'The men reacted with the feeling that for these experiences of
capture they had been inadequately prepared, both physically and
mentally. They were not clearly aware of the kind of enemy up against
them or, indeed, what they were fighting for. Expecting death,
torture or non-patriation, they were taken completely by surprise and
felt that inadequate leadership of the UN command was to blame.
Understandably, therefore, a prisoner was inclined to listen without
much scepticism to the Communist "explanation" that, since the
UN was an aggressor, having entered the war illegally, all
UN military personnel were in fact criminals and could be
summarily shot. The Chinese, however, considered the prisoner to be a
student, capable of learning the "truth". Yet if he did not
co-operate he could just be reverted to war-criminal status and shot.
So a chronic cycle of fear-relief-new-fear was set in motion.
   'The one-two week marches caused increasing apathy, facilitating
systematical destruction of the prisoner's formal and informal
group-structure. Knowing that his own ranks contained spies and
actual or potential informers, a man might eventually feel that he
could trust nobody.'
   Dr Schein considers that very few actual conversions to
Communism occurred, but that success in producing collaboration was
greater. Some collaborators perhaps believed- subsequent affirmation
of this belief may have been rationalization- that they were
infiltrating the Chinese ranks and obtaining information which, if
they were released, would be useful to the US Army.
   It is interesting and valuable to compare with the above accounts
of army prisoners-of-war, a report by Professor Louis West on
prisoners from the US Air Force. These were even less prepared
for captivity, and their literal descent from the heavens into enemy
hands must have given unusual possibilities of shock and astonishment.
Often they were injured before capture. The Chinese considered these
as a distinct group, to be handled in ways differing from those
regarded as suitable for soldiers; e.g. after February 21, 1952,
responsibility for germ warfare was placed on airmen.
   It is important to note that of the Air Force 'returnees', 53
per cent had received some college education, compared with 5 per cent
of army captives. As with the latter, the techniques employed
produced 'debility, despondency and dread'. But many airmen tried
to incorporate in their 'confessions' implausible material: details
of weapons, speeds, altitudes, etc, which the interrogator, whose
ignorance of technicalities they had estimated, would not detect but
which, to any informed person, would appear palpably false.
   Many people are inclined to speak of all 'public relations' as
ballyhoo or propaganda, perhaps overlooking the early meaning of the
latter word; even the significance, in England, of the second initial
in 'S.P.G.'. They are invited to consider the facts that when
a prisoner's 'confession', or even his letter home, contained
'Commies', it was 'suggested' that 'Chinese People's
Volunteers' should be substituted, and the only address to which any
prisoner's relatives could send letters was 'c/o the Chinese
People's Committee for World Peace'.
   Dr Lawrence E. Hinkle, in this symposium, suggests on the
basis of extensive study that these conclusions can be accepted:
'The methods of the Russian and satellite State-Police are derived
from age-old police methods, many of which were known to the Czarist
Okhrana, and to its sister organizations in other countries.
Communist techniques, when their background is studied, remain police
methods. They are not dependent on drugs, hypnotism, or any other
special procedure designed by scientists. No scientist took part in
their design, nor do scientists participate in their operation. The
goal of the KGB- the present designation for the Russian State
police- is a satisfactory protocol on which a so-called "trial"
may be based. The Chinese have an additional goal; the production of
long-lasting changes in the prisoner's basic attitudes and
behaviour.'
   How could a prisoner-of-war resist such pressures? Hinkle offers
the following hints. Since an important factor of indoctrination is
the pupil's belief that his captor's control is omnipotent, he should
try to maintain a secret private sense of psychological superiority.
Inside his group, he should develop communication methods excluding
the captors and demonstrating their fallibility, e.g. by using
code words which appear complimentary- only to the guards; by
teaching them Western games- with absurd twists of the rules and
methods of play, and by inventing petty annoyances to guards forbidden
to inflict physical punishment. (It seems fair comment that for
complete success this assumes high intelligence in the prisoner and
obliging dimness in the guard.)
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   While he was expounding on this subject he explains how the
first idea of the Celestial Bed came into his mind. When he was in
Philadelphia he 'speedily insulated a common bedstead and filled it
with copious streams of electrical fire conveyed by metal rods
enclosed in glass tubes through the partition, from the adjacent room
where the great globes were wrought... I recommended the trial of
this, then whimsical bed, to several of my medical, philosophical and
gay friends...' Later he states that after he had put them at ease
by means of a few drinks he went so far as to ask them for their
opinion of the bed. Delightedly he states that 'they talked not as
other men might have done of the critical moment- no, they talked
comparatively of the critical hour.'
   Graham's audience obviously wanted information on aphrodisiacs.
He was dead against the popular Spanish Fly preparations.
Cantharides poisoning obviously occurred in the 18th as well as in
the 2th century. Graham's advice on the subject was to the point if
rather crude. Modern psychiatrists, including Dr Kinsey, talk of
voyeurism. This term merely means that sexual stimulation can occur
quite frequently as a result of visual stimulation. Graham recounts
the tale of how a hairdresser, who found himself impotent was suddenly
filled with sexual desire while he was dressing a particularly lovely
woman's hair. Imprudently, he downed tools and ran home to make his
wife happy. Such was the power of voyeurism in this case. Another
Graham anecdote on this subject is about an old debauched woman who
still desired masculine attention but who could not arouse a lover's
interest. Her cure, he says, was to take a lovely young woman to bed
with her. If her lover's ardour flagged the presence of his
mistress's companion was sufficient to restore the 6status quo.
This is about as far as Graham goes with regard to obscenity. A
great many of his contemporaries would have left him standing.
   For the most part the lectures were good sound stuff. For
instance, he was keen on washing the body frequently. This was not a
particularly popular habit in the 18th century. Graham states, rather
poetically, that it is necessary to 'tune body and mind for the most
cordial and perfect enjoyment of prolific love.' To do this he said
it was necessary that the lovers should possess 'the sweetest,
freshest, and most personal cleanliness from the top of the head, to
the end of the most distant toe- at all times and under every
circumstance.' Graham was also very much against double beds. He
stated that there was 'nothing more unnatural, nothing more indecent,
than man and wife continually pigging together in one and the same
bed... and to sleep and snore and steam and do everything else
indelicate together 365 times every year!' Sleeping in double beds
was, according to Graham, a state of 'matrimonial whoredom.'
   He was also a great advocate of fresh air, which must have been
pretty startling at the time. Sea voyages, an active and useful life,
taking exercise daily in free open air, were all recommended as
adjuncts to good health. His attitude towards alcohol was dogmatic.
Particularly he refers to 'that poisonous composition of sloes,
tartar, logwood, watery cider and brandy which is called port wine.'
Graham realised, nearly two hundred years ago, that alcohol
diminished physical, and more important to his audience, perhaps,
sexual performance.
   Some of Graham's ideas seemed to sow the seeds of Victorianism as
far as sex was concerned. Masturbation and fornication he abhorred.
'I must speak plainly, gentlemen, every act of self-pollution, every
repetition of natural venery, with even the loveliest of the sex, to
which appalled and exhausted nature is whipped and spurred by lust...
is an earthquake, a blast, a deadly paralytic stroke to all the
faculties of both soul and body. Blasting beauty, chilling,
contracting and enfeebling the body, mind and the memory!' And yet
in other ways he was right up-to-date. Writing on the encouragement
of matrimony he advocated that the first step would be to 'suppress
all public prostitution,' as it 'destroys the vigour of the genital
parts, necessity tempting them to too frequent acts of venery.'
Some 18 years later, an Act of Parliament finally drove the majority
of prostitutes off the streets of Britain.
   Another of Graham's ideas for encouraging matrimony was to 'give
certain rewards to the lower and middling class of people, and tax
those proportionate to their circumstances who did not marry.' He
also advised that parents should 'receive a small premium on the
birth of every child.' He thus foresaw modern income tax laws and
the National Insurance and the Social Security system operating in
this country. He advocated the control of certain hereditary diseases
by practical eugenics. 'Persons of certain descriptions, whose
constitutions are infected with inherent diseases, ought not to
marry... they ought to be tied back to old women... that are past
child-bearing.' Public opinion in this country has never really
supported ideas along these lines, but 28 States in America have laws
that permit or direct sterilisation for various causes. Since these
laws have been enforced, over 27, people have been sterilised in
the United States.
   The year 1783 was the turning point in Graham's career. Until
that time everything he touched had gone right. But now it was
obvious that the Pall Mall establishment was losing money. Graham
attempted to increase his profits by lowering prices, always a
dangerous practice, especially for a Quack. Eventually creditors
pressed and the Temple was closed, its treasures, electrical machines
and even the Celestial Bed being sold up to pay bad debts. Graham
returned to his native land and was soon in trouble with the
magistrates of Edinburgh for giving a lecture 'deemed improper for
public discussions.' Apparently Scottish public opinion was not as
broadminded as its English counterpart for Graham repeatedly fell foul
of the law and was even imprisoned in the Tollbooth for 'his late
injurious publications in this City.'
   During the years 1784 and 1785, Graham may have had some ideas of
becoming a regular physician for he attended lectures in Chemistry,
Anatomy, the practice and theory of Medicine and Materia Medica at
Edinburgh University. He never qualified, however. A little later he
showed signs that his former eccentricities were leading him along a
path that was to end in insanity. In 1788 he was sent off from
Whitehaven to Edinburgh, 'in the custody of two constables as this
unfortunate man had, for some days past, discovered such marks of
insanity as made it advisable to remove him.'
   Graham had for some years been devoting more of his time to an
obsessional type of religious activity. His pamphlets and tracts at
this time demonstrate characteristics suggestive of schizophrenia, and
it has been put forward that Graham became a drug addict. In view of
the strong ideas that he held with reference to drugs, and there is
good evidence in his writing that he practised what he preached to his
dying day, this would seem to be unlikely. Whatever the precise
diagnosis, it is evident that Graham suffered from some form of mental
derangement which steadily and progressively dominated him. And yet
he had relatively lucid intervals.
   During his more sensible periods James was up to all his old
tricks again. Before he had left London, after the Temple of Health
closed, he introduced a new craze in an exhibition in Panton Street,
Haymarket. Henry Angelo's description of this is worth while quoting
in full. 'I was present at one of his evening lectures on the
benefits arising from earth-bathing (as Graham called it), and in
addition to a crowded audience of men, many ladies were there to
listen to his delicate lectures. In the centre of the room was a pile
of earth in the middle of which was a pit where a stool was placed: we
waited for some time when much impatience was manifested, and after
repeated calls of ~"Doctor, Doctor!" he actually made his
appearance "en chemise." After making his bow he seated
himself on the stool. Then two men with shovels began to place the
mould in the cavity: as it approached to the pit of his stomach he
kept lifting up his shirt and at last took it entirely off, the earth
being up to his chin and the doctor being left in puris
naturalibus. He then began his lecture, expatiating on the
excellent qualities of the earth bath, how invigorating it was, etc.
Quite enough to call up the chaste blushes of the modest ladies.
Whether it was the men felt for the chastity of the female audience,
or that they had had quite enough of this imposing information, which
lasted above an hour, either the hearers got tired or some wished to
make themselves merry at the Doctor's expense and there was a cry of
~"Doctor, a song!" The Doctor nodded assent and after a few
preparatory Hems, he sang or rather repeated,
   The fair married dames who so often deplore,
   That a lover once lost is a lover no more.'
   He gave various similar exhibitions about the country until 179.
During the last few years of his life there is ample evidence that
Graham's mind was obsessed with religious mania and that he was
becoming, eventually, a victim of his own tomfoolery. In his last
pamphlet he signed an affidavit dated 3rd April, 1793, 'that from the
last day of December, 1792 to the 15th day of January, 1793 he neither
ate, drank, nor took anything but cold water, sustaining life by
wearing cut up turves against his naked body, and rubbing his limbs
with his own nervous ethereal balsam.' The latter was one of his
famous quack medicines originally dispensed at the Temple of Health.
This was a feeble attempt to get back into the public eye. His
health failed rapidly and he died at his house opposite the Archer's
Hall in Edinburgh on 26th June, 1794 from a sudden haemorrhage.
   Getting such a flamboyant character as Graham into perspective is
not easy. That he was an out and out Quack is of course fairly
established. But he had qualities that distinguished him from the
majority of his brethren.
   First of all he had great personal courage. There is the
evidence that he went as far afield as America to make his fortune in
times when travel was a hazardous adventure. He also had the courage
to gamble everything he had on what must have been a hunch when he
established his Temples of Health. Graham also had a first-class
brain. He could judge people and handle them adroitly. In London
anyway his judgement seldom failed him. Scottish public opinion,
incredibly enough he misjudged badly. Probably he had become too
anglicised by 1783 to be sound in his assessment of the minds of his
countrymen. Originality and foresight were well developed in Graham's
personality and his ideas and teaching on hygienic and social problems
were years ahead of his Age.
   The opinion of orthodox medical practitioners on Quacks is always
interesting. Apparently Graham, although dubbed a charlatan by most
of the doctors, was much sought after for cures by members of the
profession itself. One example is the case of Dr Glen. This
Edinburgh character was a man not noted for his generosity. One of
his few actions of public spirit was to present a bell for the local
orphanage. (His fame was said thus to be sounded throughout the
City.) Dr Glen was rather at a loss to know what to give Dr
Graham in the way of a professional fee after he had cured him of an
eye complaint. Some members of the Edinburgh Faculty suggested asking
the 'good doctor' to dine at a fashionable tavern and presenting
him with a purse containing 3 guineas. Dr Glen was privately
assured that Graham would decline the gift. To his chagrin Graham at
once accepted it 'with a very low bow and graciously thanked him
kindly.'
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THE REVEREND D. SHERWIN BAILEY, Ph.D.
Public Morality and the Criminal Law
   WHEN THE WOLFENDEN (Homosexual Offences and Prostitution)
Report appeared in 1957, interest was focussed mainly upon its
proposals for revision of the law, and especially that relating to
certain forms of criminal homosexualism. In subsequent discussion,
Parliamentary debate, and legislation (the Street Offences Act, 1958),
legal reform of one kind or another has continued to be the dominant
issue. Recently, however, attention has been directed to a question
of greater ultimate importance, namely, the juridical principle stated
in Chapter =2 of the Report, and emphasized from time to time in the
chapters which followed. Some of the implications of this principle
are considered in a valuable essay contributed to the Church of
England Moral Welfare Council's current series of pamphlets, a review
of which affords an occasion to survey the course of the discussion to
date.
   Expressed in the simplest terms, the "Wolfenden principle"
asserts that for legal purposes crime cannot be equated with sin-
that moral and legal wrongdoing are not necessarily one and the same,
and that consequently there is a realm of private morality in which
the operative sanctions are ethical, and the determinant of right
behaviour is personal responsibility and not fear of criminal
penalties- a realm, therefore, into which it is not the law's
business to intrude. It was inevitable that such a principle should
arouse criticism. It has been objected that the implied distinction
between crime and sin is superficial, that private morality cannot be
isolated from public, that the delimitation of a realm of private
morality exempt from the sanctions of the criminal law deprives the
law of its preceptive function and its power of moral restraint- and
so on. Such criticism showed the need for a thorough examination of
the principle itself, and of the relation which it implied between law
and morality. Is there any connection between sin and crime; and
should the criminal law attempt to define or enforce morality, and
punish immorality? These were some of the questions which Sir Patrick
(now Lord Justice) Devlin set out to consider in his Maccabaean
Lecture delivered in March 1959.
   Lord Devlin recognized that the criminal law cannot now justify
itself simply by reference to a moral law; since the State leaves
religion to the private judgement and does not enforce any particular,
or indeed any, belief, it has forfeited its right to enforce a
morality founded on religious doctrine. What then must provide the
basis for the criminal law? In order to answer this question, three
others must be asked: Has society the right to pass moral judgements?
If it has, may it enforce its judgements by law? And if so, may the
law be invoked in all cases, or may exceptions be made- and on what
grounds? Lord Devlin replies on the following lines:
   Society has a right to pass moral judgements because the very
notion of society implies a community of ideas and, therefore, a
common morality founded upon general agreement as to what is good and
what is evil; and the individual must submit to the bondage of this
common morality as part of the price which he must pay for the society
which he needs. It follows that society has the right also to
legislate against anything that constitutes a breach of the common
morality and, therefore, a threat to the common good. To this right
no theoretical limit can be set; the attempt of the Wolfenden
Committee to set such a limit by introducing the qualifying idea of
exploitation of human weakness as a special circumstance warranting
the intervention of the law, is vitiated by the simple fact that all
wrong-doing involves exploitation of some kind. None the less,
flexibility is necessary in practice. Morality embraces both public
and private interests, and they must be reconciled in such a way as to
permit the maximum individual freedom consistent with the integrity of
society; but the limit of toleration is reached when a "real feeling
of reprobation" is aroused. Society's standard of moral judgement
is that of the "reasonable man"- "the man on the Clapham
omnibus," and when anything excites him to emotions of
"intolerance, indignation, and disgust," it is an indication of the
presence of immorality demanding the intervention of the law. It is
true, of course, that the limits of tolerance shift; but the law
reacts slowly to such changes, and the tendency is to avoid any
alterations or concessions which might convey an impression of
weakened moral judgement.
   Thus the right of the law to enforce morality is explained and
defended. Finally, the claim is advanced that there is a definite and
proper relation between crime and sin. Morality is necessary to
society, but it must be taught (which is the office of religion) as
well as enforced (which is the office of law); religion, therefore
(which in a Western context means the Christian religion) is the
ultimate basis of the public morality expressed in the standards of
conduct approved by the "reasonable man," even though the law
cannot enforce that morality on doctrinal grounds, but only on grounds
of general acceptance by society.
   Lord Devlin's argument, in effect, amounts to a repudiation of
the liberal principal <SIC> that the only justification for
coercion of the individual by the community is to prevent harm to
others- for this is the principle implicit in the postulation by the
Wolfenden Committee of a realm of private morality into which it is
not the law's business to intrude. In a broadcast criticism of The
Enforcement of Morals, the Professor of Jurisprudence in the
University of Oxford observes that the novel feature of Lord Devlin's
lecture is his view of the nature of morality- that while earlier
opponents of the liberal view have rejected it on the ground that
morality is in fact self-evident, being based on divine commands or
the rational conclusions of human reason, he founds it rather upon
something primarily subjective: the feeling of the "man on the
Clapham omnibus." The latter is the type of that legal fiction, the
"reasonable man"- and "reasonable," as Lord Devlin points out,
does not mean "rational." The attitude of this "reasonable man"
may be nothing but a bundle of emotional prejudices; but if the
majority in a society shares his feelings, a common morality is
established, and according to Lord Devlin's theory, may be enforced by
law.
   Professor Hart subjects this view to a searching scrutiny. Its
fatal weakness, of course, lies in the fact that if a general attitude
of intolerance, indignation, and disgust may in some instances be
well-founded, in others it may equally be due to prejudice,
superstition, ignorance, or misunderstanding. It would be disastrous
if the law had no firmer basis than the emotions of the majority- if
dispassionate reason, knowledge, and common-sense were not also
allowed a voice in its determination. Yet this is precisely what has
happened in the realm of private morality which is concerned with
sexual relation. <SIC> Homosexual practices between men in
private are deemed to be criminal (but not lesbianism, fornication, or
adultery) simply because such practices arouse in the "reasonable
man" feelings of reprobation so strong as to demand expression in
repressive statutes. It is not difficult to explain why the emotions
of the "reasonable man" are excited by the thought of homosexualism
and not by the thought of fornication or adultery; but to explain such
emotions does not make them right or rational. Lord Devlin's
conception of public morality could be invoked to defend our
persecution of witches in the past, or the various forms of racial
discrimination with which we are only too familiar to-day.
   Before legal effect is given to the judgements of a public
morality based on feeling, it is necessary to ask whether behaviour
which is emotionally offensive to the majority (or which the majority
can be induced to regard as emotionally offensive) is harmful, either
in itself or in its repercussion upon the general moral code. In
Professor Hart's view, Lord Devlin does not satisfactorily consider
and answer this question. He recognizes that a morality based upon
the consensus of a majority, even if that consensus is one mainly of
feeling, is essentially a democratic notion, and that democracy means
the running of risks which are inseparable from majority rule. But he
insists that loyalty to democratic principles does not require us to
maximize these risks, "yet this is what we shall do if we mount the
man in the street on top of the Clapham omnibus and tell him that if
only he feels sick enough about what other people do in private to
demand its suppression by law, no theoretical criticism can be made of
his demand". And in this connection it is well to remember the
adventitious and irrelevant means by which such sickness can be
induced- the propaganda and pressures of many dubious kinds which can
build up artificial emotions of reprobation to the point where they
have to find expression, and may do so through the law.
   On the other hand, it is good and necessary that society should
be able to give authoritative expression to its genuine and
well-founded moral judgements. This is most appropriately done, in
Lord Devlin's view, by means of legal sanctions- a method which
Professor Hart clearly repudiates, though he suggests no alternative;
in fact, this is a matter with which he is not directly concerned.
For consideration of such an alternative, we must turn to the essay
by Mr. Quentin Edwards to which reference has already been made.
   More precisely than the other two authors he distinguishes
between moral codes and criminal codes, and between sin, crime, and
immorality. As to the first division, moral codes are mainly
hortative and must be flexible enough to bring under condemnation even
those offences, the culpability of which can only be measured
subjectively; while criminal codes are almost entirely prohibitive,
and must be rigid enough to define offences so exactly as to reduce to
a minimum the degree of discretion vested in the magistracy. As to
the second: sin is commonly defined as the contravention of God's will
by thought, word, deed, or the omission to do what is enjoined, and
must not be confused with crime (behaviour which is declared to be
punishable by the law) or with immorality (behaviour which is below,
or contrary to, the standards of current public morality); nor must
crime and immorality be treated as necessarily synonymous, for not all
declensions from public moral standards are regarded as meriting
criminal penalties.
   From these distinctions it is apparent that there is a group of
wrongs or offences which are sinful or immoral (or both) but not
criminal, and are also public in the sense that they may involve
others than the agent, and are capable of disturbing the harmony of
society. Into this intermediate category come offences such as
slander, and also acts of venereal wrongdoing. Although they are not
criminal, they are for all that unlawful, either in the strict sense
of lacking the express approval or protection of the law, or in the
broad sense that they are contrary to the accepted standards of good
morals or the implications of the common law. This conception of the
"unlawful," as Mr. Edwards admits, is necessarily somewhat
imprecise, especially in the sexual realm, where "the law's sexual
morality is the highest common moral factor of the mass of the
people"- a definition which does not seem to differ greatly in
substance from Lord Devlin's idea of public morality, and is open to
the criticisms made by Professor Hart. None the less it has practical
value because, among other things, it would enable the law to register
and declare in the least objectionable way the current moral
judgements of society.
   At present, such judgements can only be expressed through the
sanctions of the criminal law; whether or not they are so expressed
depends, as we have seen, upon the emotional attitude of the community
to the behaviour upon which its verdict is being passed.
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Further he has been given a spacious environment in which to
develop these intellectual powers, and the atmosphere of discovery and
inquiry with which he has been surrounded has been intended to
stimulate his curiosity and capacity for independent judgement.
   Given then, these two types of institution- the broadly general
non-vocational university and the specialist vocational college- as
the existing pattern of higher education, how do we see it in the
future? If the experience of the Robbins Committee resembles that of
the Crowther Committee, it is pretty certain to find- at least, I
shall be surprised if it does not find- that there is far greater
scope and far greater need for higher education than we are at present
providing in this country. If, as I suspect, there are many missing
it for one reason or another who ought in their own, and in the public
interest, to be having full-time education after the age of 18; and if
we are determined, as we ought to be, that they shall have a more
adequate opportunity, we could add the extra numbers to the
universities and to the specialist colleges in a proportion similar to
that already existing between them. By another choice, we could alter
the existing balance and send a disproportionate number of the
increase into either the universities or into the specialist colleges.
Thirdly, we could invent new types of institution and find a suitable
method of determining how the total of young people qualified for
higher education should distribute themselves in the most appropriate
way between the different types of institution.
   I am inclined to suspect that any attempt to determine 6a
priori the proper proportions of young people who should go to
different types of institution would be of very doubtful value. It is,
of course, true that the number of places- especially science
places- in a university or a college is, in the short run, fixed by
physical conditions. But it is also true that, in the long run, the
numerical relationship between the young people in different kinds of
institution will be determined by the choices of the young people
themselves and by what their parents and their school-masters think
they will get out of one kind of place rather than another.
Prediction about how these choices will be made is, at best, a mere
guess. We do not know how much the attraction of students towards
universities is the result of their monopoly of the degree-giving
power. Suppose, for example, that other types of institution than
universities were given permission to award degrees, how would this
affect the candidates' choices? It is impossible to say and only
experience could decide.
   The moral, which it seems to me we ought to draw from these
considerations, is that we should make as clear to ourselves as
possible what the ro?5le of the different types of institution is:
what each offers: what does each conceive its task to be; if we do
this, then the choice of the young and the advice of their parents and
their schools, will be as well-informed as it can be, and those who
seek to take the university road, or the other possible roads, will be
self-chosen on the best information that is open to them.
   My subject is the universities; and so I come to the question of
what the university does or should do for the young. I want to spend
a little time in seeking some answers to this question.
   Of course, first of all, the university prepares them for their
job in life- but not, as I have already said, by giving them a
know-how which is restricted to any particular type of occupation. It
does not nowadays prepare them only for the learned professions as it
tended to do as recently as even fifty years ago. The function of the
university is to bring the young people entrusted to it to the height
of their intellectual powers by setting them to do a very exacting
academic task. I emphasize the word 'academic' because the
practice of our universities has been based upon the assumption that
young men destined for one of a great variety of tasks in life- in
public life, in the schools, in law or in the Church, in the public
services, in industry and commerce- will be better prepared if for
three or four formative and very important years of their lives they
undertake at the university courses of study in common with those who
are going to be scholars. There can be no doubt that this tradition
has left its mark indelibly upon the social, political, educational
and industrial fabric of this country. It has given the universities
public responsibility and prevented them from being what are called
'ivory towers'. Thus, the effect upon them has been profound;
they, in their turn, have deeply affected, through those whom they
have taught, the course of public life and of our affairs in general.
The Member of Parliament who has read his history at the university
in friendly rivalry with the future historian, inevitably reflects in
his parliamentary behaviour the academic experience through which he
has passed. The fact that Mr. Gladstone could have been a professor
was profoundly important both for the university which missed his
services and for the party and public life which gained them.
   The second thing which the university does is to give to its
students a special experience in which they gain an abiding insight
into a university's perspective. Judged by the standards of ordinary
daily life, university life is, in some senses, an odd one and
university people seem, perhaps, to the layman outside, rather odd
people. I need not try to explain at length why this should be so; I
will just say this: on the one hand, normal daily life is largely
concerned with the problems of the present or those of the quite near
future, with the hopes and anxieties of day-to-day existence; on the
other hand, the universities live in a world with a quite different
time-scale, and the problems which exercise the academic mind belong
to that world. For instance, they are interested in the past- not
only of yesterday but of fifty, a hundred, even millions of years ago.
They are interested, too, in the future, but they are as likely to be
interested in the problems of many centuries ahead as in those of only
fifty years from now. They are interested less in the day-to-day
behaviour of men or things than in the laws that govern that behaviour
or explain it. They are concerned less with the appearance of things
than with the underlying nature of which that appearance is a
reflection. I have perhaps said enough to indicate why the practical
workaday man thinks that university people, are, as he would put it,
'out of this world'. Of course, they are. Rightly regarded, the
academic is indispensable to civilization only so long as he remains
academic in the sense I have described. For his part, he is entirely
right to be indifferent to the charge of belonging to a world of his
own, in which the practical man of affairs would be ill-at-ease.
   One hopes, therefore, for the young man or woman who is to spend
three or four years at the university that they will take something of
this spirit out into the world with them. Some, indeed, will be
captured by the spirit of the place and will be at home with academic
values and wish to spend their lives cultivating them. Among these
will be found the professors and university teachers of the next
generation. Others will fall under its influence only for a time and
will then return to the world outside; but not, one hopes, to be ever
quite the same again. For we, in the universities, hope that they
will see the problems of here-and-now- whether they are the problems
of personal conduct, of public affairs, of art and literature, of
science and its applications- illuminated by the studies of their
university years. In other words, what the student needs from the
university is not just a little (or even just a great deal) more
competence in the subjects he has studied at school; not just to have
a few rough edges knocked off his mind; not just to learn more
elaborate intellectual skills; not what, in the modern idiom, is
called 'know-how'. He is going to be a member for three or four
years of a society which has its own characteristic way of life. From
it, he can learn much that will enrich both his personal life and the
service which he can give to his own day and generation. Of course,
the student must leave the university a master of the field he has
chosen for his own, whether it be chemistry or history, Oriental
languages, or engineering science; but in helping him to find that
mastery the university must also help him to catch a glimpse and to
acquire a taste for the 'other worldliness' of which I have spoken.
   The third thing the university does for its young people is to
give them their education and the experience of which I have talked,
in a special kind of environment. It is, of course, a protected and,
in some ways, an artifical kind of environment. But it is not, for
that reason, without great power to impress itself upon their minds
and to retain its impression upon them for the rest of their lives.
The society to which I myself belonged in my own College at Oxford
was, as I well recall, of this latter sort. From the day of our entry
we were taught by the ethos of the place, rather than by any formal
instruction, to feel that its strength lay in the diversity of
experience which its members brought to the common stock. When we
were joined by a new kind of undergraduate of a different nationality,
race or colour from a part of the world which had never supplied a
member before we felt that it was a stronger and better place. The
first time that an extra-mural scholar arrived, fresh from his job as
a 'bus driver in Bristol, we were prone to believe that the College
had, in some way, been strengthened. When a German Rhodes scholar
first returned to the College after the First World War we felt that
it was a better place. We were taught in other words, that the ideal
society was one in which every single member made his own unique
contribution to the diversity of gifts which we disposed of in common.
And, by implication, we learnt that uniformity and the repetition of
identical experiences were a weakness and something to be avoided. We
were, of course, free to accept or reject this philosophy which
underlay our common life; but looking back on it I feel that the young
men of the '3s, the successors of my generation, were, in fact,
prepared in the most positive possible way to know their mind when the
challenge of the dictatorships fell across Europe. For this part of
our education there was no formal, overt teaching. What we learned
cut across the boundaries of social groups, of religions, of
nationality and of race; it was a lesson equally on offer to arts men
and scientists; it was among the most effective teaching that I have
ever known.
   Another thing that a university should try to do for its
undergraduates is to help them to become their own masters. As my
experience of universities has widened, I have become more than ever
convinced of the importance of this function.
   The university years, though primarily for the training of the
intellect, have never been thought to be without their importance in
the training of character. Indeed, in some quarters it has been made
a subject of reproach that our universities have laid too great an
emphasis on the training of character.
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(It is curious to recall that it is not very long since the main
complaint of the critics of the Monarchy was that it exercised too
much hidden authority: this was certainly the complaint made, until
recently, of George =5's behaviour during the constitutional crisis
of 1931.) The fact is that the evidence available to us makes it
clear that the Sovereign still exercises considerable power, even if
this power commonly takes the form only of personal influence, is an
expression only of the constitutional right to be consulted, to
advise, and to warn.
   There are several examples of the exercise of this personal
influence in Sir Harold Nicolson's Life of King George =5, and
the little evidence available to us about the use of his position of
influence by King George =6 suggests that tradition and habit- to
say nothing of hereditary streaks of character- combine strongly to
ensure that the right to advise and to warn is not something which
either the Sovereign or his Ministers take lightly. If anything, the
present reign is likely to see a steady increase in the influence of
the Sovereign. Mr. Muggeridge bashfully claims that he has no
knowledge of the present members of the Royal Family. But I am sure
that he does know that the present Queen is reputed to be a very
strong-willed young woman, able and ready to make her views known and
heeded, that she has, at worst, a strong streak of Hanoverian
pig-headedness, and, at best, an unusual strength of character and
clarity of purpose. This is of no little importance: even Lytton
Strachey was, in the end, no match for the character of Queen
Victoria, and this may well be the reason why Mr. Muggeridge chooses
to ignore the known character of her great-great-granddaughter.
   Of no less importance is the fact that the present Queen is
likely to reign for a very long time: longer, perhaps, even than Queen
Victoria. The length of Queen Victoria's reign, her accumulated
experience, her growing personal ascendancy over Ministers who
naturally stood in awe of so formidable an historical figure, her
ascendancy even over the heads of foreign powers, even when they were
not her own children or grandchildren: all these were an important
reason for the exceptional influence which she came to exercise.
There seems every possibility that the present Queen will
increasingly come to occupy something of the same position. However
much the facts of power may change, the influence of an experienced
and knowing old woman, who had been at the head of her State for fifty
years while heads of the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. or
even the Chinese Republic had come and gone, could not count for
nothing- even in the world which Mr. Muggeridge sometimes fearfully
imagines will exist in 22.
   How do we expect this exceptional position of influence, which
confers real personal power, to be used? Much, and the answer, again,
is best given in personal terms, as George =5 interpreted his duties
and, so far as we know, George =6 also. George =5 had a strict and
unerring understanding of the important conventions of the
constitution: this proved to be of untold value during the crisis of
January, 1924, when he resisted the most powerful pressures which were
put on him to keep the Labour Party out of office. To his instinctive
behaviour on that occasion we can, in part, attribute the development
of the Labour Party within the Parliamentary system instead of outside
it, at a time when Left-wing movements throughout Europe became
e?2migre?2 groups within their own countries.
   Holding the ring- for this is what such conduct is- is not
confined to strict constitutional questions. In Sir Harold Nicolson's
biography, there are many examples of George =5's anxiety that the
dominant party or even interest should not, so far as it was within
his power to influence decisions, ride roughshod over the rights of
any of his people. Twice during the General Strike, for example, he
spontaneously and effectively intervened to prevent the more extreme
elements in the Conservative Government from unjustly or cruelly
treating the strikers. Interventions of this kind cannot be ignored,
and neither can their importance. It is no small thing, in an age of
strong party government, to have excesses of party spirit rebuked by
one to whom Ministers are constitutionally bound to listen; and that
they do listen is apparent from all that we know of the Labour
Governments of 1945-51, and the little that we know of the history of
the Conservative Governments which have held office since then.
   It is apt to make people uncomfortable to-day to talk of duty,
especially of duty in high places. But no one can read the
biographies of George =5 and George =6, which are not sycophantic,
without realising that it was a simple, almost nai"ve, conception of
their duty to their subjects, all their subjects, for it affected even
George =5's attitude to the Indian question, which inspired most of
their actions, and certainly their actions at all critical moments. I
state this as a cold fact, which no one who is not blinded by
preconception can fail to recognise in the available evidence. It is
equally apparent, from the available evidence that the very simplicity
of this conception of duty has normally had, and cannot fail normally
to have, a softening and civilising influence on those engaged in the
embittering struggle for power. There are ideas and conceptions, as
Professor Butterfield has reminded us, which are none the less real
merely because it is only thinking which has made them so.
   
   MARC BLOCH'S ACCOUNT of the collapse of France in 194 is,
for the comparisons it affords, not irrelevant to the point I am
trying to make. He there accuses the rulers and seducers of the
French people before 194 of showing "complete ignorance of the high
nobility which lies unexpressed in the hearts of a people which, like
ours, has behind it a long history of political action." It is not
a sentimental, but a precise point which he makes: it is the length of
a people's political tradition to which he draws our attention, and
the failure of the inherent nobility of the French political tradition
to find worthy expression before and during 194. A similar nobility,
inherent in the British political tradition, did find expression in
194. It is a foolhardy man, surely, who believes that the contrast
had nothing to do with the expression of the tradition through, not
only the Monarchy as an institution, but also the personal characters
and examples set by George =5 and George =6.
   The ingraining of this tradition in the British Royal Family-
and I cannot see how it could more surely be accomplished than by the
passing on of a tradition within a family- seems to me of real value
to the country. It is for this reason that most of the sentimental
talk about the education of a modern Sovereign is so alarmingly
irrelevant. Day by day, week by week, year by year, the Queen is
invited, by her self-appointed advisers, to send her eldest child to a
State school, to "bring him up like other children": advice which
may be relevant to the education of a citizen, but not to the
education of a constitutional Sovereign. There seems to be little
doubt that the inculcation of the habits of mind and behaviour of a
constitutional Sovereign has been successfully achieved in the cases
of George =5, George =6, and the present Queen. I see no reason why
we should be prepared to barter the prospect of a first-class
Sovereign for the certainty of yet another second-class citizen. It
seems a mean exchange.
   
   IT IS CURIOUS that Mr. Muggeridge, who is rightly anxious
that people should adapt themselves to the realities of their changed
positions, does not understand the role of the Monarchy in helping to
make the uncomfortable facts of life acceptable. It is easy to laugh
at the sight of the Labour Ministers of 1924, attired, a little
ridiculously, in Court dress. But, except to a few irreconcilables of
the Left, the pomp and the display were a small price to pay for the
visible evidence that the Sovereign, the known repository of the
nation's political experience, had accepted the Labour Party as his
advisers, and had accepted them in the same manner and with the same
marks of respect, given and received, as the representatives of either
of the two established, middle-class, parties.
   Nor do I understand how Mr. Muggeridge, and those who argue
like him, can deny the value of the Monarchy in making even more
difficult changes, not only popularly acceptable, but acceptable even
to those most likely not to be reconciled to them. The transference
of power in British territories since 1945 has been made considerably
easier by the presence and actions, even by the courtesy, of the two
reigning monarchs. Again, one may smile at the speed with which Mr.
Nehru or even Archbishop Makarios is transformed from being one of Her
Majesty's guests-in-prison into one of Her Majesty's guests at
Buckingham Palace. But he seems to me someone ill-qualified to
observe or comment on public affairs who denies the importance of such
things. Those pictures of "The Queen and her Ministers," which are
reproduced on the back page of The Times at every Commonwealth
conference, are worth contemplating. One may, like Mr. Muggeridge,
sometimes wryly observe that the number of Prime Ministers seems to
increase in direct proportion as the number of territories directly
subject to Her Majesty declines. But in the end, one must, if one is
not jaundiced, admit that they are a notable tribute to the capacity
of the British for accepting inevitable change. The acceptance of
reality in Algeria might have been considerably easier for the
colons and the Army, if there had been the symbol of an accepted
Sovereign to emphasise the continuity which exists in all established
societies in spite of actual change. It becomes less necessary to cry
Algerie Franc?6aise, or something like it, when the fiction
of the headship of the Commonwealth makes visible the abiding
connections which unite one society to another.
   
   THE SYMBOLIC MEANING of the Monarchy is the most important
and at the same time the most difficult and confusing of all its many
aspects. What does the Monarchy mean to those who cherish it? This
question must be answered with more than a little care for other
people's needs and feelings. It may well be that the Monarchy is less
necessary to the articulate than the inarticulate, to Mr. Muggeridge
than Mrs. Mop. But I am not so sure of this. As I have said, Mr.
Muggeridge seems to me to betray just as foolish an obsession with the
Monarchy as the most bedazzled reader of Woman and Woman's Own.
The value of the Monarchy to me, personally, seems to me to be of
much the same order as its value to those less inclined to examine
their own attitudes and their own motives. "We smile at the Court
Circular; but remember how many people read the Court Circular!"
says Bagehot in one of his more offensively, intellectually arrogant
sentences. "Its use is not in what it says, but in those to whom it
speaks." I do not deny that the Monarchy speaks directly and
intelligibly to me.
   If we are to believe Mr. Muggeridge, the Monarchy symbolises
obsequiousness; sycophancy; snobbishness; class-consciousness; social
mountaineering; dreamland; earthly pretensions; and circuses. It is
obvious that all of these are commingled in the popular conception of
the Monarchy, but I find this neither surprising nor, in itself,
alarming. Obsequiousness, sycophancy, snobbishness, and the like,
seem to me, unhappily, to be inevitable components of all human
societies- I am not sure they are not their lubrication; an oily
mixture, I agree- and I object to them only when they corrupt or
seriously interfere with the legitimate exercise of real power.
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Social Philosophy in Britain and America
By DOROTHY EMMET
   I should like to start this talk by asking what is meant by
"Social Philosophy"? An unkind critic looking at the programmes of
the Social Philosophy Section might suggest it seems to mean any topic
of interest bearing on contemporary society; while in a recent talk to
this Section the term was used to mean something like a coherent body
of thought about society related to a definite social programme. I am
prepared to defend the eclectic character of the Section's programme
against an exclusively monolithic view of what social philosophy must
be; though I think that these various topics of social interest need
to be treated not just descriptively, but in ways which produce
criticism and reflection of a reasonably general kind if we are to
call them a form of social philosophy.
   The view that we need a social philosophy related to a social
purpose was developed by contrasting our "6malaise" and lack of
direction in this country with the conviction and sense of direction
seen in Communist countries. But I am not at all sure that the answer
is that we should produce something else of the same kind in
democratic terms. My difficulty about the notion of "social
purpose" is that if we think of this in the singular and
particularize, it would mean that the whole national effort would have
to be directed to a gigantic programme. This may be possible in
wartime, and it may be possible when a collective economy is being
built up as in the Communist countries, but does it not suggest a
great deal more regimenting and pressure than we believe right in
democratic countries? On the other hand, if we do not use the term to
mean a single specific programme, the notion of social purpose turns
into something we put vaguely in phrases such as "achieving social
justice", or "persons in community", or, even more vaguely,
"living the good life". I do not want to say that these notions
are just vacuous, but I do not think they can be cashed in terms of a
single programme, nor that we are all likely to agree on the phrase we
should use, nor that we should all be thinking about it most of the
time. If we are asked what the policy of this country should be
directed towards, we could say, e.g., to the maintenance of world
peace; to working towards a multi-racial Commonwealth; to educational
expansion at various levels; to maintaining the social services; and
presumably to maintaining the level of production to pay for all this.
In this way, we may hope to maintain a tolerable way of living
together, so that people can pursue a number of purposes they
themselves think worth while in their own work and private lives. But
does this add up to a "social philosophy" in the comprehensive
sense geared to a single Social Purpose? And if not, is this a sign
that we are growing up, or is it due to the difficulty of seeing
general ideas relevant to this pragmatic stage of our development?
   I turn now to America, where I think the notion of social
philosophy is more congenial, perhaps because the Americans may be a
more ideological nation than we are. Edward Shils and Daniel Bell
both write about the "End of Ideology", but not very convincingly.
What they really mean is the end of the appeal of communist ideas to
the intellectuals.
   I believe that we can still see pervasive influences of certain
kinds of ideology in American thinking. First of all there is the
liberal individualism of the Founding Fathers. I found it genuinely
moving to stand inside the Lincoln Monument in Washington and read the
passages from the Gettysburg address on the wall, "Fourscore and
seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal". Of course one can be cynical about it, and
instance discrimination against all sorts of people. But nevertheless
it is there to disturb consciences, and it is an ideology which found
its way into the Constitution, and so can give a backing of legitimacy
to people struggling against certain kinds of discrimination, for
instance in the struggle over integration in the Southern States. I
was interested to find recently, in teaching an undergraduate course
in political theory in an American university, how much Locke seemed
to them to talk obvious sense. I doubt whether this would be true of
our students here. But these American undergraduates talked easily
about natural rights, and produced Lockean notions of checks and
balances and aversion to strong government as self-evidently sensible.
I think this political ideology produces a real problem for thinking
realistically about their contemporary political philosophy. For it
does not deal adequately with the very great power of the President,
especially in foreign relations, and with all the trends making for
strong government at the centre. In spite of the official political
philosophy of "checks and balances" we also hear demands for "a
strong lead" from the President, and this demand is all the more
apparent when the Administration is not giving it, as was thought to
be the case with the recent Eisenhower Administration. So there seems
to be a need to re-think the official political philosophy in terms of
the realities of power and the demands for strong government.
   A second dominant ideology is the Dewey philosophy of
experimental problem-solving. This assumed a union of intelligence
and goodwill, so that democratic social ends could be taken for
granted and attention concentrated on means of achieving them. This
was an explicit pragmatic democratic philosophy of an older
generation, but now it is taking the form of a positivist political
science which holds that ends cannot be rationally discussed, while
scientific ingenuity can be devoted to working out efficient means of
getting whatever it is that you happen to want. This is the
ideological background of a good deal of their political sociology.
The muck-raking investigations of an older generation have been
replaced by studies of the dynamics of pressure groups. There are
also writings about politics as "a science of power", taking for
granted that people want power and trying to show how they
"manipulate" beliefs and symbols in order to get it. C. Wright
Mills writes best sellers partly in this vein, but also with a note of
passionate idealism running through them. I find it difficult to see
just how the idealism and the tough power politics note are brought
together in his thinking. Reinhold Niebuhr continues his well-known
attack on complacencies over problems of power, and on the
simplifications both of cynicism and idealism. He seems to me to be
gaining in stature all the time and to have become a political analyst
of practical importance.
   Turning from political to social criticism, there is the
extensive literature on "pressures to conformity", of which Whyte's
Organization Man and Reisman's Lonely Crowd are the best-known
examples. These illustrate how quickly a trend of criticism can catch
on. People, at any rate those represented by the more intellectual
weeklies and by conversation in Eastern cities, are getting highly
sophisticated about this notion of conformity, and they crack jokes
about "peer groups". But I do not think that we know the answer to
the problem underneath this literature, namely, the distinction
between the kinds of pressures that are necessary and right if people
are to learn to live together and get trained to do things well, and
the kinds of pressures which make people conventional and afraid of
adventuring. The notion that one can live without need for any kind
of conformity is shown up even by the Beats, who set out to be
non-conformist, and then find themselves becoming a fashion, pursued
by social success, and even get opportunities to read their poetry at
$3 a time. And of course they also establish their own particular
conventions of unconventionality.
   These seem to me to be some of the trends in what one might call
social philosophy in a rather vague sense in contemporary America.
How does the new Kennedy Administration look against this background?
It may well catch a national mood which is prepared for tough-minded
energy along with idealism. I heard Professor J. K. Galbraith
address a campaign meeting of students of Columbia University, in
which he said that the important distinction of outlook as he saw it
nowadays was not so much between liberals and conservatives as between
"the complacent and the concerned". People who call themselves
liberals or conservatives could be found on both sides. He then gave
a masterly satire of the last Administration as examples of the
"complacent", and he looked forward to Kennedy and those associated
with him as people who would be "concerned" in the sense of deeply
and compassionately aware that there are problems, international,
social and domestic, which need to be met. Perhaps this does not add
up to a social philosophy. But I could not help being impressed in
America by the energy and interest in social ideas. The appeal of a
person like Galbraith himself is symptomatic. A book like his The
Affluent Society, for all the criticisms that economists and others
can make of it, is perhaps more influential than anything of the kind
which is being written here.
   Do we want intelligently-written books on particular social
trends, rather than a monolithic social philosophy? If we like to
call recognizing the need for intelligence and goodwill in achieving
tolerable ways of living together a social philosophy, well and good.
But this needs to go beyond generalities to particular studies of
particular social trends, presented in a readable form. The energy,
concern and intelligence to do this kind of thing are more in evidence
in America than over here. This does not mean that these fires are
not burning over here, but they are damped down. The test whether
damped fires are really alight is to see whether they can burn up when
poked. But I doubt whether we want them to be burning out in a
continual conflagration of propaganda for social ideologies.
Peaks of Medical History
By LORD COHEN OF BIRKENHEAD
   The history of medicine runs parallel to the history of Man.
It takes its roots in pre-history when man, coping with hostile
forces, felt a primal sympathy for his fellow man and sought to
relieve his suffering. Since then the practice of medicine has
reflected the philosophy of its time though earlier ideas have often
tended to persist despite their scientific disproof. Though we tend
to associate great discoveries in medicine with one man, as I indeed
shall often do in this lecture, we must not accept blindly Carlyle's
dictum that "history is biography" but recognise that many have
added bricks to the building before it presents <SIC> as a
completed edifice.
   The earliest records of medicine date back over 6, years.
They stem from the valley of the Nile where may yet be seen the royal
tomb of Zoser designed by a physician of his reign, Imhotep, who was
later deified and associated with the famous temple of Edfu.
Contemporaneously, or possibly a little later, there developed a
great Sumerian civilisation but our records of this are incomplete.
Yet there are recorded, in the famous code Hammurabi (1948-195
B.C.), Babylonian laws relating to medical practice.
   It is however from the Egyptian papyri, especially of Edwin Smith
and Ebers found at Thebes and dating from about the sixteenth century
B.C. that we find the first records of the practice of medicine.
These papyri show that the Egyptians shared with the most primitive
medical folklore the concept of animism viz. that disease is
caused by the evil influence of enemy, demon, god or even animal and
that this evil spirit might be warded off by amulets, propitiated by
sacrifice, and expelled by incantations.
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Oxford and Cambridge have the best teaching system in the world-
in some colleges. Oxford and Cambridge are so incompetent in teaching
that in spite of intense competition for entry nearly half the
students leave with =3rd class degrees and worse. The standard of an
Oxford =3rd only an Oxford examiner like myself could credit: there
are some colleges which seem to specialize in producing them.
   Or to take the matter which most affects the schools. Oxford and
Cambridge by their competitive system of entry set standards to the
schools which distinguish English education from all other systems
except the French: only in France and England is it necessary for
success to be in hard competitive training from the age of 8 or 9 and
to be a mature and polished intellectual at 16. 'Treat them mean and
keep them keen.' Or (as a Bishop wrote in 1889) 'the English do
everything by way of racing'. The results for the successful are
almost miraculous. 'The war horse 1saith among the trumpets Ha, ha;
and he 1smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and
the shouting.' It is really very pleasant indeed to be an examinee
if you are a good one, and it is just as pleasant to coach good
examinees. But how much harm is done to bad examinees? How far have
A level, S level, now the new U level (or whatever it is to be called)
been affected by Oxbridge scholarship examinations, and by the need to
give the rest something to do while the competitors are groomed? So
often in the provinces one has to face the problem of rescuing a boy,
basically very able, who did well at O level, quite well at A level
after two years in the sixth, went back for a third year as a
potential competitor, and in fact did worse. There could be all sorts
of reasons for this: the effect is that he arrives in a university
stale and defeated, and it is often impossible ever to recover the boy
as he existed at 15.
   There is another contrast. In England it is only Oxford and
Cambridge which set standards of prestige for universities. Men come
and go easily between Cabinets, Embassies, Chairmanships of Boards and
the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The Colleges are 'inside';
their lawns, their mahogany, their herbaceous borders (not- alas-
any longer their buildings) are the real thing. We envy, but aspire;
the existence of these things in Oxbridge is the sole basis of our
dream that they might exist in Manchester, Coventry, or Colchester.
The English intellectual till the 19th century lived in Grub Street
or in Nonconformist rigour; from this Oxbridge rescued him in the days
of its great reforms. No wonder his dream is to be commensalis
and socius in a great foundation, a freeholder in the
inheritance of scholarship. His wife may not of course agree; the
cold collations of North Oxford on the evenings of College feasts have
their place in the folklore. There are in Oxbridge as many 'outs'
as 'ins'; the democracy of the Fellows is a little like the
democracy of the Athenians, among their womenfolk, their metics, and
their slaves. The Whigs still rule; democratic principles, a practice
of oligarchy and conservatism. Who would not choose to be a Whig?
   One ought not to propose remedies except for admitted evils; and
I find it hard to say that the popularity of Oxford and Cambridge is
an evil. It is not exactly an evil, it is just a 'thing', an
element in the extremely odd flavour of English society. Clearly
English society is changing: ducunt volentem fata, nolentem
trahunt- things are moving, we had better move gracefully, rather
than perforce. A few points about the future (very few) are clear in
the clouded statistical ball. The proportion of Oxbridge students in
the whole system (apart from London, about one in two in 1938/9, one
in three in 1956) is dropping sharply. This drop is marked even in
the traditional Arts subjects; but in these (so far as one can make
out from the U.G.C. statistics, which one would call amateurish
but that they conceal some things which it is convenient to conceal)
the 1958/9 figures for Arts graduates were Oxbridge 2,74, London
1,377, the rest 3,436. In other subjects the relative decline is
precipitate; in ten years' time the Oxbridge mathematicians,
scientists, and engineers (though doubtless of high quality) will not
be much more significant numerically than the Oxbridge medical schools
are now. To put the same facts in another way; the more boys and
girls reach university entrance standard the smaller the proportion of
them who can enter Oxbridge. This is ineluctable; Oxbridge could
expand proportionately only at the cost of self-destruction.
   This is the situation to which we must adjust ourselves. The
mechanics of a clearing house are probably essential to tide us over
the transition. But the transition can only be achieved by a
modification of the 'image', the simplified picture which governs
action. We need image builders who will take the Oxbridge myth and
weave it into a pattern with other English myths. There are plenty of
myths to hand; the myth of London, the great city, the myth of the
North, which by its hardness made the modern world, the myths of the
Cathedral towns, the leftish myths of Sandy Lindsay and John Fulton,
Keele and Brighton. Of course, if we were I.C.I. or the steel
industry we could have our myths built for us by a good firm of public
relations men, at so much per cubic foot of cloudcapped tower. We are
not thus endowed; can we get on with the job ourselves?
   Two points about this, in conclusion. First, we have to face a
quick transition in a matter where the natural pace of change is slow.
It is not easy for universities to explain directly to young people
in schools what they have to offer (though of course we should try).
The natural mentors are parents and teachers, on the whole those
between 45 and 55, who learnt what they know about post-school
education in a world very different from that of the 197's and
198's, which is quite close to our students. Parents perhaps fall
into three sections; those who were glad to finish formal education at
14 or earlier, those who obtained a professional qualification 'the
hard way' under the traditional English system, and those who
remember their own University- and for most this would be Oxford,
Cambridge or a London Medical School. The teachers in public schools
and grammar schools will have a strong bias to Arts and pure science,
a bias towards Oxbridge, which diminishes as one goes down the long
ladder of social status, which is not necessarily a ladder of ability
or even of success.
   It is to these 'customers', the advisors of students, the
creators of ambition, that we have to sell a new picture of the
system, as it will be, a system in which Oxbridge will have a special
but not predominant place.
   My last point is that to me, as a professor in a civic
university, interested in the growth and government of cities, with a
young family growing up in a city, the civic situation seems a
peculiarly advantageous one. There is of course a place for York,
Canterbury and the rest: but the English picture of a university
system can only be changed quickly by the universities with which the
English live. Leeds University, Manchester University, Liverpool
University and others are part of the re-building of cities; new
cities and new universities are being created together, and must in
the process learn to live together. There has never been any doubt
about this in Scotland; there is some cause for uneasiness about the
state of Scottish universities, but not on the grounds discussed here.
Scottish people know about the Scottish universities; they are
familiar things, they fit easily into Scottish society, as English
universities do not. A large responsibility rests on the civic
universities for creating this ease of relationship which has existed
in England hitherto only for the charmed circle of hereditary Oxbridge
men.
=2b. A PYRAMID OF PRESTIGE
A. H. HALSEY
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Birmingham
   SIR CHARLES MORRIS is a splendid utopian. He believes that
universities exist primarily for educational purposes and are attended
by students for primarily educational motives. He finds weaknesses in
Oxford and Cambridge as educational organizations and deduces the
possibility of a relatively increasing future popularity for what he
calls 'the modern universities'. My own more melancholy assessment
of the prospect for Redbrick is based on a view of universities more
as antechambers to the economy than as centres of higher learning.
The key to popularity lies in the Appointments Board, not in the
tutor's study. My fear is that the outcome of expansion in the
sixties and seventies will be an academic hierarchy more securely
supported by scholastic selection, more firmly maintained by
occupational connections and more clearly recognized by public and
participants than ever before. In an English context the evolution of
education as a meritocratic selection and training ground for the
ranks of the expanding army of professional, scientific and technical
manpower seems peculiarly likely to result in a graded system of
schools and colleges which reflects the power and prestige pyramid of
the wider society.
   This is not necessarily to deny Sir Charles' thesis that the
Redbrick universities stand for a pedagogical philosophy which derives
teaching from scholarship and which is fundamentally different from
the Balliol faith that scholarship will accompany well-organized
undergraduate teaching. Many will agree that the excellence of the
tutorial system is not proven. The English have a penchant for living
on untested myths which they call the lessons of experience. We
simply do not know what are the best methods of educating different
kinds of student for different branches of learning. It may be that
the short weekly duet of essay and criticism is inappropriate as well
as uneconomical in modern circumstances: perhaps it is more conducive
to producing the amateur gentleman than the professional scholar. It
may be that the irritated American description of public school and
Oxford graduates as 'not the chosen people but the frozen people',
is at bottom a criticism of the 'finishing school' theory of higher
learning. It may even be that as a distinguishing mark of Oxford and
Cambridge, the tutorial system is no longer valid. Enquiry might show
that the student of physics at Manchester or Cambridge is more similar
in his education, style of life and outlook than either is to a man
reading classics on the same Cambridge staircase. It may very well be
too that a B.Com. undergraduate in Birmingham is better taught
tutorially than a Cambridge college scholar who is sent out to an
ageing, impoverished tutor clinging to a squalid gentility by
supervising economics for 3 hours a week.
   The point is, however, that all this has nothing to do with the
popularity of Oxford and Cambridge. In the minds of schoolmasters,
parents and sixth-formers, the image of Liverpool and Leicester by
comparison with that of New College or Newnham is such that ancient
and modern do not begin to compete. Sir Charles is right to use the
complimentary label 'modern' to describe Redbrick. He knows that
the old provincial universities have been nationalized- that, for
example, whereas in 198 the proportion of his students at Leeds who
were drawn from within thirty miles was 78 per cent, it was, by 1955,
reduced to 4 per cent. But the distinction between ancient and
modern applies for most Englishmen only to hymn books. Places of
higher learning other than Oxford and Cambridge are 'provincial'-
a word conveying, in England as in France, the sense of inferiority,
outsideness and rejection of those who belong to but are not accepted
by the metropolitan culture. 'She may not get in to Oxford or
Cambridge.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
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A TOUR OF RUSSIAN FARMS
Sir Geoffrey Haworth
   MANY years ago I had heard that the Russians were breeding a
very large cow which was giving a great deal of milk and also being
used for beef. A Swedish friend led me to believe that this cow might
be found at Karavayevo, some 2 miles north-east of Moscow. This
farm turned out to be outside the scope of Intourist, but largely
through the good offices of SCR we were able to arrange a
visit last June.
   Kostroma, the nearest town, can only be reached by rail, and the
only train leaves Moscow at the rather inconvenient hour of 1.2
a.m. As soon as we arrived any doubts about our welcome were
quickly dispelled. We were met by a large delegation, and after my
wife had been presented with three bouquets we proceeded to our hotel.
Here we were given an enormous breakfast (we had already unwisely had
one on the train), and after many toasts we set out for the farm.
   After examining some more-than-life-size busts of farm workers
who had distinguished themselves (several of whom were in our party),
we went to see some of the Kostroma cows. I can say at once that they
fully came up to our expectations. We asked if one or two could come
out of the cowshed to be photographed, and later we found ourselves
seated behind a table covered with a red velvet cloth while a full
parade of bulls and cows was led past us by white-coated attendants of
both sexes.
   About 5 years ago some Swiss cows were imported into the
district and crossed with the native Yaroslav. In 192 some of the
best hybrids were brought to Karavayevo. A process of selection for
milking and butter-fat qualities was continued for 2 years, and
finally in 1944 the Kostroma breed was officially recognised and
registered.
   In 1951 the herd average was 14,93lb. and in 1953 over 16
cows gave 14,2lb. or over. The highest individual yield comes
from a cow called Grosa. In her fifth lactation she gave 36,34lb.
of milk at 3.7 per cent butter fat (1,343lb. fat). Another
outstanding record came from Poslushnitza 2nd- 35,776lb. at 3.92
per cent (1,42lb. fat). Although both herd and individual yields
have now been surpassed by Friesian cows in this country, it would be
hard to find so many cows of uniform excellence anywhere else. Their
weight is from 1,2 to 1,6 pounds and they have good beef
qualities.
   We were accompanied round the farm by a very charming man called
Steiman. Now in his 7s, he was responsible for selecting much of the
foundation stock for the herd. He also started the 'cold house'
method of calf rearing, which is still in use. Calves are taken from
their dams at birth and kept in an unheated house where the
temperature from December to March is usually below freezing point.
It is claimed that at these temperatures bacteria are rendered
harmless and that hardy, healthy calves are produced. Scours and
pneumonia are unknown. In the summer young calves are housed in large
airy kennels in the fields, where they are fed on milk, hay and
concentrates.
   After a look at the older young stock, which live outside with an
open shelter all the year round, we were taken to the office building
and given another gigantic meal, accompanied by vodka, cognac and
wine. Farm hospitality on a colossal scale became quite an important
item in our lives on the whole tour. (We were assured that such meals
were not the everyday farm practice!) It was essential to know that
the vast spread of cold meats, salads, fish, eggs and cheese on the
table was but an appetiser, and that soup, perhaps two hot dishes and
sweet were to follow.
   It was also wise to decide on vodka or cognac at the beginning of
the meal and to stick to one for the innumerable toasts that were
drunk throughout. We usually started with '11Mir i druzhba'
(Peace and friendship) and later, for variety, passed on to such
things as 'Better silage' or 'Higher butter fat'. Nearly always
at one point in the proceedings came the question: 'And now tell us
what you think of our farm.' There followed complete silence, with
all eyes and ears on me. I was able to give sincere praise for many
things we saw, and luckily the criticisms I made were usually met with
nodding of heads and murmurs of ~'Yes, we know.'
   Perhaps I should say here that, in addition to Karavayevo, we
visited state and collective farms in Krasnodar, Piatigorsk and the
Sigulda district of Latvia. The first thing that strikes one is the
large scale of everything- acreages from 7,854 at Karavayevo, which
is mainly a stock farm, to 4, at Krasnodar, which is mainly
arable. At the latter the growing of wheat, barley, maize and sugar
beet is highly mechanised. Gone are the days when Cossacks galloped
across the grassy steppe on superb horses. Instead, we drove in jeeps
round fields of 49 acres bordered with shelter belts of fruit trees.
The average yield of wheat is 29cwt. per acre.
   All the farms we visited sold cream and butter and fed the skim
to pigs. Their aim, therefore, was to breed and feed for high butter
fat. Every farm aimed at being self-contained: they had their own
machine stations, vets, zootechnicians (we should perhaps say
livestock specialists), crop specialists and accountants; and often
their own schools, hospitals, savings banks and cinemas. A very
important development is the building of research stations on the
farms instead of in neighbouring towns. We saw blocks of flats for
farm workers and many more under construction, but we also went into
two-roomed wooden houses of a very primitive nature, where cooking in
summer was done in a home-made mud stove in the garden.
   Both collective and state farm directors seem agreed that the
pattern of the future is for even larger-scale organisation, with the
housing of workers in large villages or even towns. Already some
collective farms have abandoned the annual shareout in favour of a
guaranteed monthly cash wage. State farms emphasise that their
well-being depends on the year's results. The state will keep them
going however badly they do, but on their annual results depends the
amount of money they may spend on amenities such as 'Palaces of
Culture', cinemas, sending workers free to the Black Sea resorts,
and so on. Thus each type of farm tries to adopt the better points of
the others' systems, and already there is a growing similarity between
them.
   It is not easy to make comparisons between the farming systems of
Russia and this country. We both have the same sort of technical
problems to deal with and I did not find any new solutions on the
farms we visited. Moreover, their use of manpower per beast or per
acre is very high. What is impressive is the enthusiasm and
thoroughness with which they carry out their systems: grooming of
cows, attention to their feet, feeding of calves, detailed keeping of
farm records. But I should like to end by saying that what impressed
us most was the warmth of our welcome.
   As far as we could learn, we were, in every case, the first
English people to visit the farm. The director, with half a dozen
experts, was always willing to give up a whole day to show us round
and entertain us. Each member of the staff had a formidable array of
facts and figures at his or her finger-tips. I am afraid my inability
to produce similar figures for this country or even for my own farm
must have created a bad impression.
   I do wish there could be more exchange visits between the farmers
of our two countries. We are far too ignorant of each other's lives.
Surveys and Reviews
RECENT BOOKS ON TOLSTOY IN ENGLISH
J. S. Spink
   IT MUST be admitted that none of the books on Tolstoy, in
English, which have appeared in the last decade is worthy of his
greatness. Most of them belong to a literary 6genre which is
peculiarly Anglo-Saxon, namely the intimate life-story told for its
own sake, and cannot but tend, by their very nature, to belittle the
object of their attentions, in essence the same as those lavished by
the Sunday press on its victims. Biography becomes trivial when its
sole object is to introduce us, like prying tourists, into the
intimacy of the great. One could call such intimate life-stories
'stately homes literature'. Their authors do not seek, as did
Sainte-Beuve, the master of biographical criticism, to present a
full-length psychological portrait of a man. They do not study the
genesis and development of works of art. They are not critical
studies at all. Nor is there anything of the epic, the tragedy or the
comedy in their technique; they resemble the popular novel.
   Lady Cynthia Asquith's Married to Tolstoy (Hutchinson, 196)
is very U in tone, and sometimes the U language is that used in
the women's magazines: 'Fortunately the Czar, who was giving another
audience, was unable to receive Sonya for a quarter of an hour, so it
may be hoped that before she was summoned she had time to readjust her
stay-laces and recover her breath' (p. 149). However, the book,
which is drawn from the obvious sources, is not pretentious and can be
accepted on its own terms. It begins with the words ~'Marriage to a
genius can seldom be easy' and may be read with a certain amount of
pleasure on that level. M. Hofmann and A. Pierre's By Deeds of
Truth: the Life of Leo Tolstoy (Hanison, 1959) is similar. It is a
translation of a book published in French in 1934 and its reissue in
English (printed in the USA, bound in London) was doubtless
motivated commercially by the 5th anniversary of Tolstoy's death,
though it must be noted that the story of Tolstoy's love affairs,
courtship and marriage has been told every few years in books
published in English, with apparently no other aim that the retailing
of private lives to the public. Tikhon Polner's Tolstoy and his
Wife (Jonathan Cape, 1946), first published in French in 1928,
belongs to this category. One of the strangest items in the
collection is the preface to the English translation of Tolstoy's
daughter's My Father (Harpers, New York, 1953). The Russian
original was published by a semi-official US agency in 1953. It
is a rehash of The Tragedy of Tolstoy (1933), written in Moscow
but published in the States, after its author's arrival there. The
preface to the English translation of My Father is written in a
recriminatory style evidently intended to do its bit in the cold war:
'I could not spare all the time I wanted and had to work mainly
during my so-called free days.' This tone is absent from Alexandra
Tolstoy's own Russian preface, which betrays, on the contrary, a real
modesty, a disposition of mind which, alas, does not save her from the
expression of class sentiments none the less repellent for being
nai"ve: 'Though sometimes the house-servants were severely flogged
in the stables, many of them became part of the family to the extent
of forgetting they were serfs.' This serves as background painting,
the only kind of historical perspective attempted by writers of
intimate biographies, and dating, as a literary technique, from the
time of Walter Scott's historical novels.
   There is a similar avoidance of historical perspective in
Professor E. J. Simmons's Leo Tolstoy (1946), reprinted as a
Vintage paper-back (New York, 196), and this book, for all its wealth
of factual information, is therefore merely another version of 'the
Tolstoy story'.
   There is this to be said for T. Redpath's short study entitled
Tolstoy (Bowes and Bowes, 196): that its author does not seek to
reduce Tolstoy's doctrines to the level of 'views', to be explained
away by psychological biography.
# 27
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Where this is not possible one has to rely heavily on a stock of
past experience plus inferences based thereon, and if there is any
carelessness in the marshalling and handling of such material it
inevitably shows up in the judgment made about what one is doing.
Once again we find ourselves discussing the situation in terms of
contemplative or speculative knowledge, and it appears that so-called
practical knowledge is so successfully hidden behind contemplative
knowledge that it cannot even poke its head out to claim its own
separate existence.
   Of course there remains the capacity itself- the 'know-how'-
and, as I have already suggested, one may call this practical
knowledge if one likes, but it would be extremely misleading to call
this a case of knowledge without observation. This is most definitely
not a case where I know without observation what others can only know
by observation (or by being informed); having the knack of doing
something does not put me in a position to make, without observation,
true statements which others can only make with observation. Simply
knowing how to write ~'I am a fool' on the blackboard, for
instance, cannot ever put me in a position to say that I am writing
~'I am a fool' on the blackboard (6pace Miss Anscombe,
Intention, pp. 81-2). If the line of argument pursued hitherto
is correct then it is clear that when I do state that I am writing
something on the blackboard my statement will stand or fall with the
relevant observational evidence.
=3
   So far I have been much concerned to rebut the strong suggestion
that what might be described as the carrying out of an intention could
be known without observation, but now I want to return to a weaker
suggestion which was shelved at an earlier stage. This is the
suggestion that what we know without observation are our intentions.
One might perhaps concede that neither the driver in my example, nor
the man writing on the blackboard in Miss Anscombe's, could know
without observation that their respective intentions were actually
being carried out, but one might also claim that in both cases the
persons concerned would know what they intended to do and would
know this without observation and quite independently of what actually
happened. It might be held that to know that we intend a certain
action is one thing but to know that we have carried it out quite
another.
   Miss Anscombe is loth to let intention and action drift apart in
her discussion, and it is certainly true that traditional discussions
have given the concepts a false independence. It indeed needs to be
emphasized that actions in the primary sense of the word are
necessarily intentional. Making a telephone call, for instance, would
not be an action under that description unless the performance were
intentional, and this means that there is no such act as telephoning
which can be conceptually isolated from the intention of telephoning.
There are of course some descriptions under which something we do can
be unintentional, but their use is derivative. For example, there
would be no such thing as unintentional offence unless we had the
concept of intended offence in the first place. We should also be
wary of the traditional tendency to regard intentions as causal
starting points of action, or as being themselves mysterious mental
actions. Action and intention are certainly not distinct in this
sense and it is well to bear in mind the fact that the conceptual
inter-relation between them is intimate, but I think we can, without
betraying that fact, consider as an independent question whether, and
how, we know our own intentions. Even though descriptions of actions
are normally such that the actions under those descriptions must be
intentional, those same descriptions can also be used to refer to
performances which are not actions except in a secondary sense. This
use of such descriptions is more or less the same as the use we make
of them when we humanize natural phenomena in our language. There is
no reason why we should not describe the performance of a clever
monkey in the appropriate circumstances as 'telephoning' even
though we do not regard the performance as constituting an intentional
action. This would be 'telephoning' in a secondary sense of the
word- 'telephoning' in inverted commas if we like; we should then
be using the word to refer to what was merely the performatory
skeleton as it were of the fully-fledged action. Now it seems to me
that intention is clearly distinguishable from mere performance of
this kind, and that there can be cases of the one which are not cases
of the other. Furthermore it seems to me that we can only speak of an
intentional action under a description like 'telephoning' for
instance in a case where we have both intention and
performance. The bulk of my discussion so far could be regarded as
an attempt to stress the importance of performance in action, but now
I want to consider intention. I have argued that knowledge of
performance, and hence of action, involves observation and inference;
now I want to consider if observation and inference are necessary for
us to know that we intend something.
   Consider the difference between saying ~'I don't know' in
answer to the question, ~'Do you, on an average, take longer steps
left foot forward than right foot forward?', and the same answer
given to the question ~'Do you intend to come on this cruise next
month?' There is a correct 'yes' or 'no' answer to the first
question whether you know that answer or not, but it is otherwise in
the second case. In the first case the fact is there waiting to be
discovered as it were, but there is no intention of which one is
ignorant in the second case. There would be something very odd about
saying, ~'Perhaps I do indeed intend... but I don't know if I
do', or saying ~'He certainly intends, but doesn't know it.' It
seems that if you do intend, then you must know that you intend,
or if you definitely do not intend then you must know that you
don't. This may seem to carry the implication that the knowledge in
question is acquired without observation. The fact, if it be a fact,
that I take longer steps left foot forward would not have any bearing
on the care with which I might investigate the matter; I might make my
measurements carelessly and get the wrong answer. But where I intend
something it seems to be guaranteed that I could not get a wrong
answer, so it seems as though we must know our own intentions
independently of observation. Where a fact, about the length of our
strides for example, is only known by observation, others may know the
fact before we do and may be in a position to correct our knowledge
claims, but this does not seem to be the case with regard to the fact
of intention. The point appears to come out very clearly in those
cases where we make a decision. Here, it seems, I know as soon as I
decide on an action that I intend to carry it out, but others could
only know this by asking me or watching my subsequent behaviour very
carefully; our sources of information seem clearly different and the
difference would seem to be that theirs is derived from my report, or
from observation, whereas mine is not. So we have on our hands a very
puzzling statement of fact indeed- a statement which one person (the
one who intends) can know to be true without observation but which
another (others generally) can only know by observation or from my
report.
   At this point one may begin to doubt if to state one's intention
is to state a fact of any kind, and there certainly are cases where
expressions of intention should be regarded as performatives rather
than statements of fact. Suppose the organiser of a cruise asks me if
I intend to come and explains that he must know now since there are
others who would like my place if I don't go. To answer ~"Yes" in
such a situation would be to give my word- to undertake to be one of
the party. But if I am sincere in my undertaking then it will also be
a fact that I intend to go unless, or until, I give up the
intention. Suppose another member of the party hears of a sudden
change in my circumstances and asks me "Is it true that you still
intend to come?" Then in giving an affirmative answer I should be
reassuring him on a question of fact. The interesting point now is
that I seem to know what I intend without asking anyone or conducting
an observational research, whereas my friend can never be as sure
about it as I am without asking me. To dismiss the matter at this
stage with the peremptory conclusion that this is the sort of concept
intention is would simply be to abandon our philosophical post, so I
must sketch in, albeit very briefly, an account in terms of which
there is some hope of seeing how the concept of knowledge, applies in
cases of intention.
   Intention, I would suggest to begin with, is a term which is
applicable when a certain roughly specifiable complex of conditions
hold. The concept of intention is in some ways like that of being in
debt, for instance. One is not describing a person as doing anything
when one says that he intends, or that he owes, something; we say
these things when a number of conditions hold, none of which are
themselves described in the respective statements. I owe you if I
have bought (on my own behalf) something from you not having paid, or
finished paying for it, and if the debt has not been otherwise
abrogated. The conditions under which one may be said to intend
something are not as simple as this, and no doubt the concepts of
owing and intending are very different in many other respects. Both
are similar in that to know that one is in debt is to know that such
conditions as I have just mentioned hold, while to know that one
intends something is also to know that certain specifiable conditions
hold in the case of the intending person.
   There are two main conditions that must hold if we are to ascribe
intention to a person. In the first place he must want something. I
am using the word 'want' here in a very wide sense, the breadth of
which is indicated by the following selection of instances: ~'I want
cake,- to get on,- to win,- to be fair,- to be straightforward,-
to be honourable,- to do my duty,- to lead a good life,- to do
God's will,- to get my revenge,- to hurt so-and-so', to give but a
sample. Controlled desires, wishes, or hopes are not enough, neither
is the type of want that is relevant here to be defined in terms of
what brings satisfaction. It must be a want such that if a person
does want something in the required sense he will, provided one
further condition be fulfilled, try to get it. The further, second
condition is that he should believe that there is a way of getting
what he wants and should have some opinions about what to do in order
to succeed. Thus, there are two types of explanatory answers that one
may give to the question: Do you intend? One may, on the one hand,
say something like ~'I want to, but I doubt if I can', in which
case it is clear that the first of our conditions holds whereas there
is uncertainty about the second. On the other hand, one sometimes
says 'I could go, but I don't really want to.' Here one is sure
of the means but lacks the want.
# 27
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The gathering C. P. Snowstorm
by John Wren-Lewis
<EDITORIAL>
   THE FOLLOWING STORY is popular in educational circles: In a
university when a lecturer enters and says ~'Good morning' no-one
looks up from his newspaper. In a College of Advanced Technology when
a lecturer enters and says ~'Good morning', everyone writes it
down.
   A few years ago I heard this story told to illustrate the
difference within a university between the undergraduates reading
humanities and those reading science. There has been a subtle shift
in the frontier of educational snobbery. Science, as such, was once
considered the preserve of dull, unsophisticated people; but the
scientists staged a successful protest against this. Men like Dr
Bronowski and Sir Charles Snow showed they could perfectly well
compete with the literary men on their own ground.
   One Oxford scientist, the late Sir Francis Simon, went so far as
to say that if a scientist was as ignorant of history as most
humanities men today are of science, he would have to believe that
Napoleon preceded Julius Caesar. Since then we have heard little
about uncultured scientists in the Universities. It is admitted that
the search for scientific truth may be a genuine aspect of culture,
and the current fashion is to praise scientists for their
broadmindedness rather than call them illiterate. Today it is the
technologist who is the object of humorous deprecation.
   This shows that we have not really begun to solve the problem of
'the two cultures'.
   For the technologist, the applied scientist whose aim is to find
'know how' for making things or working things, is actually more in
tune with the spirit of science as we use the term today than the
'dedicated seeker after truth' who works on 'pure research'. I
do not mean there is anything wrong with pure research: I mean science
works because it has abandoned the classical idea that seeking truth
means grasping theoretical principles 'underlying' experience.
   The point was very well made a few years ago in the BBC
Reith Lectures by the American scientist Robert Oppenheimer. A
scientist who discovers some new physical effect, he said, is often
far more concerned with how he can use it to measure other things than
he is with understanding the effect itself. In other words, modern
science finds 'truth', not in theories as such, but in the act of
testing theories against experience. This is the essence of the
experimental method.
   The common idea of science is still that it uses experiment to
prove theories, but this has been shown long ago by the philosophers
to be a logical impossibility. There is always the chance that some
result may turn up tomorrow which disproves the same theory-
and modern science is built on the acceptance of this fact. The
whole reason why modern science is inherently progressive, where
classical natural philosophy was not, is that the scientific
revolution abandoned treating theory as 'truth' and regarded it
merely as a tentative formula for doing things- with the
implication (utterly alien from classical culture) that it is by
handling the world that we live and know. This is of immense
importance for the whole problem of scientific education.
   Educators continually bewail the fact that science students have
to absorb so much that they have no time left over to gain any insight
at all into other subjects. It is often suggested that industry is
demanding the creation of a race of technical robots, who have to know
so much in a specialised field that they are forced to drop learning
anything else from sixteen or earlier. This is a gross libel on
technology, however: the real reason for the overcrowding of science
curricula lies elsewhere.
   The narrow man, the man who knows little outside his own field of
science and nothing at all outside science itself, is virtually
useless in industry- not just because he finds it hard to communicate
with or manage other people (which is important enough) but also
because he is a bad technologist.
   To give an example from my own recent experience: a recent
British invention in the field of scientific instruments was made
because a scientist interested in crystallography was also a
yachtsman, and saw an analogy which no one had seen before between the
crystal-measuring instrument and the sailor's sextant. Again, a
technique for identifying chemicals was neglected for decades until a
chemist who was also a lawyer got down to presenting it to the
chemical world as if he were presenting a brief.
   This sort of thing is happening all the time in applied sciences,
and on the negative side, inventions are held up time and again
because scientists are not sufficiently 'men of the world'-
silicones and penicillin are examples. The scientists whom industry
needs are not people ground down into a narrow specialism: they are
people trained in certain basic methods, who apart from this have as
broad an outlook and as much flexibility of mind as possible.
   The main reason why scientists are not being trained like
this, in my view, is that the British educational system is still
geared to the classical idea of truth. It has been said, rather
unkindly, that a teacher of classics is like the curator of a
provincial museum- his only job is to rearrange the exhibits. No
doubt this is a libel, but the classical outlook in education
certainly assumes that learning means the mastery of an intellectual
system.
   In other words, because our educational system is still dominated
by the classical outlook, for all its acceptance of the sciences, it
is not adapted to the teaching of inherently progressive subjects.
Hence curricula inevitably become overcrowded. Our error is not in
training scientists who are unaware of the classical outlook: it is in
training them in all sorts of assumptions which are still
unconsciously derived from it.
   What we need, to produce scientists who are also human, is
something far more fundamental than a Departmental Committee on
Syllabus Revision on which schoolmasters and industrialists as well as
university dons are represented (although that would be a practical
first step which is already long overdue). We need a radical
revolution in our whole outlook.
   We need to recognise that what happened to our civilisation in
the scientific revolution was something which has implications far
beyond the realm of technics. Scientists themselves often do not
understand this, because their training has so often been dominated by
'classical' assumptions. Hence when they try to make bridges
across the gulf between the two cultures by starting from their
side by writing histories of scientific thought, they often lose
their readers in masses of anecdotes without giving any real feel of
science at all.
   It is a common characteristic of historians of science, for
example, that they never treat Galileo's ecclesiastical detractors as
anything more than frightened obscurantists whereas in truth it was
perfectly reasonable to refuse to look through his telescope if you
assumed- as mankind has almost universally done until the
scientific revolution- that experience is probably unreliable.
Galileo was actually making a choice of interest with very practical
consequences, as Brecht's play brought out, and our whole civilisation
is the heir to that choice.
   Understanding science means understanding that choice-
understanding that once it has been decided to manipulate the world
instead of just contemplating it, your basic concepts are bound to be
'matter' and 'energy', since your concern is with 'stuff' and
'pushing stuff about'- yet there is no ultimate distinction
between the two, so that matter and energy must prove ultimately
interconvertible. At the same time there will be two primary
practical results of science- the discovery of how materials produce
their effects on us and how energy can be stored and controlled.
   An approach to understanding science along these lines would put
applied science in its proper perspective and it might even go some
way towards providing a simplified basis for teaching science to
scientists themselves. But the most important point to be grasped is
that the revolution in interest which Galileo made is one which can
and should spread to the whole of culture, and until it does our
civilisation will remain schizoid.
   Defenders of classical culture are apt to argue that science and
technology, which are concerned with means, ought properly always to
be subordinate to the arts, the humanities and religion, which are
concerned with ends. But this misses the most vital thing about the
issue between the two cultures. So long as the artistic and
humanitarian aspects of our culture are dominated by the classical
outlook, with its radical distrust of experience, they are bound to
seem static and powerless in comparison with science and technology,
which derive their authority from reference to experience, or
enhancement of it.
   So it is useless trying to humanise scientific education merely
by grafting on a few 'arts' or 'humanities' to school or
university science curricula, for the atmospheres of 'the two
cultures' are even less easily mixed than oil and water. We need a
revolution in outlook in the arts and humanities themselves. This is
the real point, I believe, that people like Snow are getting at when
they ask for scientists to have more part in Government.
   This is not only a matter of the Government being able to
appreciate technical issues: it is much more fundamentally a matter of
attitude of mind. Those who have absorbed the atmosphere of
scientific culture find those outside it alarming because they appear
to be willing to attach more validity to their fundamental myths than
to evidence. What the new men want- and will have, sooner or later-
is a public system which bases authority always on declared evidence
that the good of persons is demonstrably being served.
The World and the Church
by Phyllis Graham
Learning to be a parent
   CONSIDERING the publicity given to the problem of juvenile
delinquency, it is astonishing that so little has been done to remedy
its chief cause- the bad home. One would have thought that common
sense, let alone Christianity, would have shown it was impossible to
teach a mother to care properly for her children by removing them from
her and sending her to prison; but this is still the most usual way of
dealing with women accused of persistent neglect.
   Even on economic grounds this method of treatment stands
condemned. The average cost of keeping a mother in prison is +7 a
week, and of a child in a Local Authority Home +7 1s.
Contrast this with the fees of +4 for the mother and +2 1s
for each child charged at St Mary's Mothercraft Training Centre,
Dundee. Thus a family of a mother and four children will cost the
country +37 a week when separated, and only +14 if kept together at
St Mary's.
   But there is more to it than this. Efforts have been made by the
Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to
secure training in mothercraft in Greenock Prison. This may sound
excellent in theory but to those who have intimate experience of the
type of mother usually brought before the court on a charge of child
neglect it is mockery. A survey of cases admitted to English training
homes showed that 27 per cent were feeble-minded or worse. These
mothers cannot be taught in a vacuum. Only by the most patient
showing from hour to hour how to meet the needs of their own children
can they be expected to learn anything.
   Sheriff Christie of Dundee wrote in 1957:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'It is, I think, the universal experience that mothers who
neglect their children do so, in the main, not through wickedness but
through incapacity and inefficiency. The foundation of St Mary's
opened a new chapter in dealing with these unfortunate families; it
has brought new hope to many for whom adversity has been too much and
it has taken the whole problem out of the province of the criminal law
where no satisfactory solution was possible.'
<END INDENTATION>
# 22
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Social services
   Progress in the social services in recent years is reflected in
the demand for increased expenditure; advance in this field will be
even more marked than under the Second Plan. It is hoped that
compulsory primary education will cover all children in the 6 to 11
group.
   The number of registered doctors is expected to grow from 84,
at the end of the Second Plan to 13, at the end of the Third;
hospital beds will increase from 16, to 19,; hospitals and
dispensaries from 12,6 to 14,6; primary health centres from 2,8
to 5,; and family planning clinics from 1,8 to 2,.
   The Third Plan envisages a substantial expansion in the programme
of building houses for the low-income groups and industrial workers,
slum clearance and acquisition of land for building purposes. There
is also an extensive programme of local development works to enable
rural areas to provide themselves with certain minimum amenities,
such as an adequate supply of drinking water, roads linking each
village to the nearest main road or railway station and the
provision of a village school building which could serve as a
community centre and library.
Financing the plan
   The Third Plan envisages a total investment of Rs.1,2
crores, of which Rs.6,2 crores will be in the public sector and
Rs.4, crores in the private sector. Including the current outlay
of Rs.1,5 crores, the total outlay in the public sector will thus
be of the tune of Rs.7,25 crores. The State is basically concerned
with covering basic capital investments and also current expenditure,
such as salaries, subsidies, etc. Yet, the private sector still
contributes about 9 per cent of India's total national income.
   The Third Plan looks for an increase of about 51 per cent in
total investments, of about 7 per cent and 58 per cent respectively
in public investment and current expenditure and about 29 per cent in
private investment. The following table gives some indication of
percentage allocation of investments:
<TABLE>
External resources
   It is in the field of external resources that the greatest
difficulty arises in estimating the budget of the Third Plan.
Considering foreign trade trends, the Draft Outline estimated that
the total export earnings over the Third Plan period would be
Rs.3,45 crores- an average of Rs.69 crores per year, as
compared to Rs.576 crores in 1958-59 and Rs.645 crores in 1959-6.
The balance left for financing imports would be Rs.3,7 crores.
As against this, imports of raw materials, intermediate products,
food-grains, capital goods etc. would amount to Rs.3,57 crores.
Thus, there would be a deficit of Rs.5 crores, which is about
equal to the repayments on loans falling due in the plan period. The
gap in India's external resources would, therefore, be particularly
large in the initial years of the Plan because of heavy repayments
falling due in these years. This gap is expected to narrow in
subsequent years as output from large-scale projects now in hand
become available. In addition machinery, equipment and other capital
goods to be imported as the foreign exchange component of the Third
Plan will be in the order of Rs.1,9 crores. Further essential
imports of components and semi-manufactures will amount to about
Rs.2 crores. The total requirements of external assistance for
the Third Plan would thus amount to Rs.2,6 crores.
Foreign aid
   The following foreign assistance was already promised or
under-written before the launching of the Third Plan:
<TABLE>
   Ever since the Draft Outline was published, the Indian Government
had been conducting negotiations with the "Aid to India Consortium"
(World Bank, U.S.A., U.K., Canada, France, Japan and
West Germany) for assistance; an agreement was announced in Washington
at the beginning of June, 1961, by which the Consortium undertook to
furnish a maximum of Rs.1,6 crores to cover the first two years of
the Third Plan, that is almost half of the total foreign exchange
requirements for the Plan.
   With her national income and indigenous resources still in the
under-developed stage, India's foreign exchange difficulties and
consequent dependence on foreign aid are bound to continue for some
time. However, given timely assistance, she faces the future with
confidence. As the Draft Outline of the Third Plan declared:
   "The balance of payments difficulties the country is facing are
not a temporary or fortuitous phenomenon. They are part and parcel of
the process of development. For a period, the excess import
requirements have to be met from external assistance. But it is
important to aim at a progressive reduction in the imbalance, so as to
eliminate it within a foreseeable period. Reliance on special foreign
aid programmes has to be steadily reduced and after a period of years
dispensed with".
THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF PLANNING
   In the last analysis, planning is not an end in itself: it is a
means to an end. A brief review has already been made of the progress
expected under the Third Plan in education, which is the first
essential of any social progress. Another important aspect of social
advance is improvement in housing and sanitation, especially in the
rural areas.
   The Third Plan provides for an outlay of Rs.25 crores for
social welfare. A prominent role is played by the Central and State
Social Welfare Boards. The Central Board itself has assisted more
than 4,5 voluntary social welfare organizations during the last
seven years.
   Some of the priorities recommended under the Third Plan include:
(1) Intensified measures for the prevention and treatment of juvenile
delinquency; (=2) Moral and social hygiene programmes under the
Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act; (=3) Aftercare Services; (=4)
Prevention of beggary and vagrancy; (=5) Prison welfare services and
(=6) Welfare of physically and mentally handicapped persons.
   Prohibition forms an important item on the programme of the State
Governments; several of them took intensive measures during the Second
Plan to restrict drinking in public places and to extend "dry"
areas; these measures may be further intensified under the Third Plan.
   The rehabilitation of refugees from West Pakistan has now been
more or less completed. However, rehabilitation of refugees from East
Pakistan still remains to be accomplished. The Third Plan provides
for programmes for this purpose; including the provision of housing,
development of industries, education, training and other schemes.
Work continues on the Dandakaranya Area Project, which is intended to
rehabilitate displaced persons from East Pakistan and the local tribal
population.
The Community Development Movement
   No account of the social and economic achievement of planning
in India would be complete without a mention of the Community
Development Movement and the National Extension Service.
   Starting in 1948-49 as a project for the development of a group
('block') of villages in the Nilokheri area of the Punjab,
primarily for the resettlement of refugees from West Pakistan, the
Community Development Movement was firmly entrenched in the rural life
by the end of 1951. On 22nd October (Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday),
1952, the Movement was officially launched as a national undertaking
in 55 selected projects, each covering 3 villages- about 5 square
miles and a population of about 2,. By the beginning of 1959,
the programme covered 2,548 blocks, that is, 339,518 villages (out of
a total of 558, villages in India), with a population of 173
million, that is nearly two-thirds of the rural population of India.
As has already been mentioned, by October, 1963, the whole of the
country will be covered by Community Projects.
   Under the First Plan, there was a provision of Rs.52.4 crores
for expenditure on Community Projects; the amount allocated under the
Second Plan was Rs.2 crores and under the Third Plan Rs.4
crores.
   The Community Development Programme is defined as a "programme
of aided self-help, to be planned and implemented by the villagers
themselves, the state offering technical guidance and financial
assistance". Its primary objective is to develop self-reliance in
the individual and initiative in the village community.
   Agriculture naturally receives highest priority in the Community
Development programme, as it is still the mainstay of 7 per cent of
the rural population. Among other notable activities undertaken in
the programme are the provision of means of communications,
improvement in health and sanitation, better housing, mass education,
especially the adult literacy campaign, women's and children's welfare
and the development of cottage and small-scale industries.
   However, an even more important aspect of this unique movement is
the speeding up of the process of democratic decentralization; in
1959 the Government decided to delegate, by progressive stages,
responsibility for using power and resources for planning and
execution of development projects to the people's elected
representatives. Village self-rule has thus become the accepted
principle of democracy in India.
   A U.N. Technical Mission which visited India recently has
declared that it is "the most significant experiment in economic
development and social improvement in Asia at the present time".
ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROSPECTS
   India is still not self-sufficient in several respects such as
food or the production of heavy machinery. Poverty, unemployment and
illiteracy have yet to be mastered completely; and the common man
cannot, in general, feel relaxed under the umbrella of the welfare
state.
   Nevertheless what is surprising is not that planning has achieved
so little in its first ten years, but that it has achieved so much in
so short a time in a country which inherited problems created by
centuries of foreign rule.
   Before the war, India was almost completely dependent on foreign
countries for the most elementary articles of consumption- from
needles to locomotives, and from tooth paste to heavy chemicals.
Today, the Indian people have attained virtual self-sufficiency in
most articles of daily consumption.
   A start has been made with health schemes and sickness insurance
in different occupations; for instance, every civil servant is
entitled to state-aided medical care; the Railways have their own
medical scheme, so have the Banks and large undertakings in the
private sector.
   It must always be realized that 8 per cent of the Indian people
still live in villages and 7 per cent of the Indian population still
depend on agriculture and rural industries for their living. By 1965,
the proportion of the population dependent on agriculture will go down
to 6 per cent and urbanization will increase accordingly; so that, in
the long run, a balance ought to be established between the agrarian
and industrial labour force.
   In the meantime, the peasant derives many benefits from the
management of the economy- he is to a certain degree cushioned
against the natural calamities which made life so difficult in the
past. Above all, he is being given the means of improving his social
and economic lot. The peasant can get credit from the local
co-operative society and most important of all, if he needs assistance
for the purchase or training for the use of implements, seeds,
fertilizers, etc., the Community Development organization can be
relied upon to help him. Above all, he has become increasingly
conscious that his future depends not on his moneylender or landlord
or even the administrative officer, but on himself and a democratic
system which extends from his village to New Delhi.
BRITAIN'S ROLE
   Of course, the centuries of British rule have been blamed for
many of the shortcomings of the Indian economy in this day and age.
No doubt, much of this criticism is well founded. Nevertheless it
should always be remembered that the British created the framework
within which the development of a democratic India has become
possible. The legacy of the Indian Civil Service forms much of the
foundation of the relative efficiency of the Indian machinery of
government without which no plans could be implemented. The respect
for law and the existence of an independent judiciary are safeguards
which make certain that in India centralized planning and political
liberty go hand in hand.
   Today British money continues to play an important part in the
Indian economy. There has been a relative decrease in the proportion
of private British investment; this was partly because investors from
other countries, especially the U.S.A. and Western Germany are
coming into the Indian field on an increasing scale. The net flow
of capital from the U.S.A. amounted to Rs.22 crores in 1959,
that is three-fifths of the total net inflow of Rs.38 crores during
that year.
# 226
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Prague 1961
WILLIAM W. SIMPSON
<EDITORIAL>
   PRAGUE IS STILL one of the loveliest cities of Europe, and
one of the few still unspoiled by the ravages of modern warfare. But
it is also- or so it seemed to me- a very sad city; a city whose
scars are those of a "cold" rather than a "hot" war. I was very
much aware of this as I stood, a few weeks ago, in the "Ring," the
Market Place of the Old City.
   The temptation to find "sermons in stones" was almost
irresistible. There, in the centre of the "Ring," stands a
magnificent statue of Jan Hus, the Bohemian reformer and martyr who,
in 146, went to the stake rather than renounce what the Council of
Constance had judged to be his heresies. On his left is the Tyn
Church, austerely Gothic, and a symbol of the Hussite reform movement
of which it was the spiritual centre in the fifteenth century. On the
other side of the "Ring," stands one of the many Baroque Churches,
which in Prague bear witness to the Catholic revival of the
seventeenth century.
   But that is not all. Linking the "Ring" with the south bank
of the Ultava river is a splendid modern thoroughfare cut towards the
end of the nineteenth century through the heart of what was formerly
the Prague Ghetto. And at the far end, high on the north bank of the
river, stands a colossal figure of Joseph Stalin, forever looking down
towards the Market Place where the figure of Jan Hus forever turns its
back towards this twentieth-century exponent of an ideology which
denies the very foundations of Judaism and of Christianity, Protestant
and Catholic alike!
   Not much of the Ghetto remains. Most of its buildings were
pulled down a generation ago by town planners. It remained for the
Nazis to destroy its inhabitants. On the walls of one of its five
surviving Synagogues, the Pinhas, the visitor may read the names of
7, men, women and children whose end was part of Hitler's attempt
to implement the "final solution of the Jewish problem." Of a
community which in 1933 numbered some 357, there remain today only
18,, and of these many are almost completely assimilated. A few
only of an older generation strive to keep alive the traditions of the
fathers. They have become virtually the custodians of a museum;
paradoxically, one of the finest Jewish museums in the world.
   For here, in Prague, the Nazis collected together ritual objects
of all kinds from Jewish homes and Synagogues throughout Central and
Eastern Europe. "The monthly war-time return-sheets" wrote Hana
Volavkova in a article on the State Jewish Museum published in a
volume of Prague Jewish Studies, "show how the stores grew, and the
museum spaces filled up: 2, Torah curtains, 4, Torah mantles,
6, Silver Crowns, Shields and pointers, 4, archivalia from
provincial towns. The bare figures will show the numeric growth of
the collections, these foundation stones for the later systematic
work, whose initial stages were quite modest." Already by the end
of 1954 the inventory contained 12, numbers.
   But I had come to Prague, not merely to visit the representatives
of the Jewish community, by whom I was most warmly received, but to
attend, as an observer in a purely private and unofficial capacity,
the First All-Christian Peace Assembly. The outcome of three years of
preparatory work in which the initiative had been taken by the
Protestant and Orthodox Churches of Eastern and South-eastern Europe,
this Assembly brought together more than 6 Christians from all parts
of the world and from almost every section of the Christian family,
save one: the Roman Catholic.
Threat of self-extermination
   "The Assembly is being held," to quote one of the
preliminary papers, at a time when "mankind is being threatened with
self-extermination, since war in the atomic age no longer presents a
responsible and sensible possibility for solving international
problems." Its main purpose was to consider "what is the
particular contribution of Christians in this situation, and on what
is this contribution founded? How are we both to hear and to
communicate God's word in this situation?"
   These were, and are, very pertinent questions- far beyond the
scope of so large a gathering to answer in so short a time. For the
6 members of the Assembly spent only five days together: two in
plenary session, two in group discussion, and a fifth in greeting and
taking leave of each other. When to the limitations imposed by this
manifest shortage of time are added the problems arising from
diversities of language and the need at times for a double and even a
triple process of interpretation, it will be readily appreciated that
the Assembly was more in the nature of a demonstration than a
conference from which it would be reasonable to expect definitive
results.
   But a demonstration of what? Certainly not of any claim to a
superficial unity based on the ignoring or minimising of important,
and at times fundamental differences between members of the various
Churches and traditions represented in the Assembly. There was no
intention, declared Professor Hromadka, Dean of the Comenius
Theological Faculty in Prague, in his opening address to the
Conference, "to level the organisational differences, the diversity
and riches of the heritage and legacy possessed by the individual
Churches and their members... On the contrary, it is here, among us,
that our multiformity assumes a deeper meaning... We cannot labour
for a new atmosphere in the world, in international relations, unless
we form here among ourselves an internal partnership of trust and
willingness to learn from one another."
Criticism of Vatican
   The principle was clear- and unexceptionable. Its
application, however, was far from easy. It very soon became evident,
for example, that those coming from countries on the other side of
"the Curtain" were determined that whatever else the Assembly might
say or do, it should condemn "colonialism" and "the Roman Catholic
Church." Already foreshadowed by Professor Hromadka in his opening
address, this was strongly reinforced by Archbishop Nikodem, the
leader of the Russian Orthodox delegation, who in his opening address
declared that "the Roman curia, hypnotised by the prospect of the
absolute power of the Papacy, has by its wordly <SIC> interest and
connections become rooted in an old mode of life, has irreally
<SIC> (6sic! the quotation is from the translation
distributed at the Conference) tied itself up with imperialist designs
and is still vulgar and often hostile to the moral and social demands
of the masses who are fighting for the ideals of freedom, equality and
brotherhood."
   Not surprisingly, this kind of scathing and one-sided attack
produced a strong resistance on the part of many of the "Western"
representatives: a resistance which there is reason to believe was not
altogether without effect, for although the "Message" of the
Assembly contained certain critical references to the Vatican they
were set in a context of declared intention "to pray that God may
hold us and our Roman Catholic brethren firmly in His love and may
guide us all to the recognition of His will and to the obedience to
His command of love and peace."
   For the rest, however, there was a wide area of shared concern
and substantial agreement on such issues as the banning of nuclear
tests, the abolition of nuclear weapons, the dangers of the "cold
war," and the need "to fix our eyes on the co-existence and
constructive co-operation of nations and groups of nations which are
living in different economic, political and cultural systems and
traditions." "Mutual condemnation," declared the Assembly,
"should give place to a friendly co-operation."
Personal contacts
   But the value of such an Assembly lies not merely in its formal
pronouncements, important though the Message of this Assembly was in
indicating a wider range of agreement on a larger number of issues
than many might have thought possible, but rather in the personal
meeting between people from so many and such widely differing
situations. Those meetings took place in discussion groups, where, in
spite of the tendency of representatives of certain Churches to read
prepared statements, the beginnings of a real dialogue were
noticeable. They took place also over meal tables, in the coaches
which transported members to and from the Conference Hall, and in many
other informal ways. There was a great deal of ignorance to be
dispelled: I vividly remember a meal-time conversation with the Pastor
of an Eastern European Church who told what a great surprise it had
been to him to discover that Churches in one of the Western European
countries had any interest or played any active part in relation to
the social problems of the community. There were suspicions also to
be overcome: the mutual suspicion that each was motivated by political
rather than religious considerations.
   If there are Christians in the West who assume all too readily
that their fellow Christians in the East have "sold the pass" in
coming to terms with "communism," there are many in the East who
suspect that their brethren in the West are knowingly or unknowingly
largely under the control of "imperialist capitalism." It would be
foolish to pretend that these suspicions are altogether without
foundation on either side. Under whatever political or economic
system they are living at the present time, Christians both East and
West of "the Curtain" face the same basic problem of deciding how
far they can, in conscience, travel with the State.
   This, of course, is no new problem. Nor is it a specifically
Christian one. It is as old as the Maccabean resistance to Antiochus
Epiphanes- and older. Moreover, in the world of today it is a
problem confronting Jews no less than Christians. And if the
difficulties at present seem greater in the East, where the apostles
of the Marxist-Leninist form of dialectical materialism openly attack
what they regard as religious or superstitious survivals, the
situation is hardly less serious in the West where more practical
forms of materialism are in danger of undermining the very foundations
of the Judeo-Christian way of life.
   It is, I believe, the fact that Christians (and Jews) on both
sides of "the Curtain" face similar if not identical problems that
gives special importance to this "First All-Christian Peace
Assembly," and to all that went to its making and that will, it is
hoped, flow from it. That there are dangers and difficulties to be
encountered is inevitable. But I came away from Prague deeply
convinced of the value of the experience and firmly persuaded that
Christians in the West must take this Eastern initiative much more
seriously, and at the same time prepare themselves more effectively
both to take advantage of the opportunities it affords and to guard
against any dangers to which it might give rise.
"Better than being at school!"
An account of a recent educational project and its results
   IN HIS BOOK "Race, Prejudice and Education," Dr. Cyril
Bibby throws some doubt on the popular view that young children are
free from prejudice, and adds that "this attractive picture of
childhood innocence scarcely corresponds with the facts. From the
very earliest days infants are imbibing the implicit assumptions of
the society in which they live." It is just because of this
liability on the part of young people to pick up the prejudices of
their environment that the Council of Christians and Jews has always
regarded the broadening of their minds and sympathies through contacts
with different religious, racial and cultural groups as an essential
part of its educational programme.
   Here is a description of a most valuable piece of work on these
lines carried out by the Leeds Branch of the Council as part of their
programme and some of the reactions to which it gave rise. On
Wednesday, July 12th, forty boys and girls from a local Primary
school, accompanied by two teachers, were shown over a Synagogue by
one of the Branch's secretaries. He gave them half-an-hour's talk on
the Synagogue, its symbols and ceremonial, and there followed a period
for questions and answers.
# 214
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DEMON OF THE CONCRETE
A NOTE ON MAX WEBER AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY BY NORMAN BIRBAUM
   MAX WEBER, born in 1864 and died in 192, is generally
regarded as the greatest of modern sociologists. This received
opinion is piously affirmed, even by those whose command of the
original texts and their sources in intellectual and social history is
limited. But Weber's work has exerted little influence on the social
sciences in this country. (The situation in the USA is
different.) Piety, apparently, has served as a substitute for
comprehension. There is little point in re-animating those
hobgobblins <SIC> so familiar to all right-thinking left-wing social
scientists: the lamentable (if recent) isolation of the British from
Continental thought, the philistine complacency of those for whom
complex ideas constitute the moral equivalent of greasy cooking, the
nervous patrol mounted on academic boundaries by minds of pop-gun
calibre. The reasons for the deficiency are far more profound. They
affect men of honesty, talent, and vision no less than that minority
of pedants whose chief activity is the celebration of their own
short-sightedness as a new form of omniscience.
   Max Weber's life work may be understood as a desperate encounter
with Marxism, a system of values and explanation from which Weber
dissented- and which he treated with the utmost seriousness and
respect. In opposition to the Marxist theory of ideology, Weber
insisted on the independent role of ideas in history. Contradicting
the Marxist notion of social classes, he held that status groupings
were often more important. Challenging the Marxist view of the state,
he developed an original conception of bureaucracy. He studied the
inter-relationship of society and religion in the Protestant west,
India, China, and Ancient Judaism; and brought a vast historical
perspective to the analysis of the crisis of capitalist society.
Master of a thousand historical particulars, he used his immense
learning to seek generalisation. Endowed with a profound capacity for
abstraction, he never used abstraction to annihilate the uniqueness of
any specific historical situation. He moved with bewildering rapidity
from methodological prescription, through the analysis of the language
of the social sciences, into specific empirical studies, towards
sociological generalisation, and- finally- transcended this to
construct a philosophy of history. Upon his death, a contemporary
said: "With Max Weber, our sciences reached their highest peak- and
promptly fell from it." Weber attempted, indeed, a synthesis of the
abstract and the concrete by juxtaposing the one and the other.
Trapped within the antitheses of a science resolutely positivistic,
he sought to break out by showing the evaluative bias intrinsic to any
approach to fact, and by insisting upon the inadequacy of any
metaphysics when it confronted the irreducible data of history: power,
conflict and anguish.
   It is now, perhaps, somewhat clearer why Weber is so difficult of
assimilation to British social thought. His life work is not alone
the product of genius, but of genius in a particular historical
crisis: he united methodological scruple, and spiritual self-awareness
with a pessimistic conviction of the political impotence of social
science. The dilemmas of a self-consciously "academic" science, of
political liberalism, of modern Protestantism afflicted him in their
German form. His work gave them a more universal expression. Nothing
like this coalescence of crises has occurred here- yet. We still
await an end to "empiricism". It can come only when (as happened
to Weber and his contemporaries) the usual categories of analysis
dissolve because the institutions to which they refer disintegrate.
But we may understand Weber's work as a supreme instance of an
intellectual effort to master a reality that seemed to defy practical
human alteration.
   The understanding of Max Weber is not easy for someone raised in
the English-speaking countries. His style is tortuous, and some of
his most important works were until recently not available in
translation. The secondary literature in English has tended to
emphasize his methodological writings, and has at times treated these
out of context. With the publication of Reinhard Bendix's admirable
book on Weber's general sociology, however, we do have a reliable and
ample guide to the full scope of his thought. Professor Bendix has
grasped what is essential in Weber's work, the internal reasons for
its alternation between abstraction and concrete description. Given
the depth, complexity, and sheer scope of Weber's writings, Professor
Bendix can only be congratulated upon a remarkable feat of compression
and synthesis. He has brought to the surface, further, much that is
latent in the texts and he is everywhere, faithful to them. We might
have hoped for a more systematic account of the relationship between
the work and its political setting, but not everything can be done in
one book. (Meanwhile, a young German scholar, Wolfgang Mommsen of
Tuebingen, has given us just such an account in his Max Weber und
die Deutsche Politik 189-192; a translation is much to be
desired.)
Theory vs. Research
   The appearance of the Bendix volume, however, gives rise to
some melancholy reflections on the present state of British sociology.
I don't refer to the plight of the subject in terms of university
politics, to its difficulties of recruitment and expansion. I do
refer to the curious intellectual atmosphere many of its practitioners
breathe, to their penchant for universalising minor differences of
emphasis and to their equally prominent aptitude for ignoring major
ones. Theory has been opposed to research, comparative and historical
studies have been set against investigations of contemporary British
social structure, pure science has been invoked against the applied
sort. No formulation is too crude, no argument too tiresome, when
these embattled knights arm themselves with cliches for their (paper)
Armageddon. It would appear, to the mere outsider interested in
knowledge of society, to be pointless- but an insider can tell him
that it has a point, namely, it is all prophylactic- it prevents a
rigorous and sustained criticism of the protagonists' assumptions.
The contending approaches I've just cited (I could add some more,
extending to scholastic disputes about which techniques ought to be
applied in- entirely hypothetical- investigations) of course contend
mainly in the minds of the disputants. What makes so many of these
debates so sterile is that the participants either cannot or will not
see that they occupy vantage points of a very restricted sort; they
seem to think that, like so many intellectual collossues, <SIC>
they straddle the globe. The more one looks at this, the more one
feels that the thing which British sociologists need is to consider
the implications of Weber's work for their own.
One Historical Actuality
   They might begin by noting that Weber was fascinated by what we
may term the demon of the concrete. In every event, he saw the point
at which many historical possibilities were transformed into one
historical actuality- which in turn led to new possibilities. Every
event, further, was susceptible of interpretation in a variety of
theoretical contexts. The interpretation chosen by the sociologists,
then, depends upon his prior assumptions as much as upon the unique
properties of the event. But only those unique properties were
capable of altering theoretical assumptions, by suggesting new ones.
Put in this way, Weber's procedure sounds too much like the crude
scientism advocated by many who see in the social sciences only a
substitute for the (alleged) straight-forwardness of the natural
sciences: hypothesis, deduction, induction, new hypothesis and so on
6ad infinitum. That is not what Weber meant.
   In the first place, he held that interpretation depended upon
understanding- a seizure of the essentially human components of
evaluation and motivation in social action. (In this sense, Weber at
times came close to the Marxist analysis of practise. <SIC>)
More importantly, perhaps, Weber held that the manifold meaning
attached to the event by the social scientist could alter his
definition of the concrete event itself. Weber saw sociology and the
social sciences in general as dialectically related to reality- even
if he did not use the term, and even if the substance of his own
sociology represented a challenge to historical materialism. And, in
the last resort, Weber's efforts were directed to mastering concrete
reality in all its fullness- a fullness which was demonic because of
the human situation itself.
Exhausting Reality
   The placid and complacent way in which the ordinary British
social investigator supposes that what he sees exhausts reality, is a
striking commentary on his own deficiencies of imagination. The
deficiency is no less painful because it happens to be common amongst
a group of sociologists whose own social ideals are, on the whole,
admirable. The new book by Young and Wilmott, written not for
purposes of market research, but with a genuinely ameliorative bias,
is a case in point. The book is, to begin with, curiously
non-critical. It takes at face value, or very nearly so, the
statements of the informants. By doing so (by capitulating to one
face of the concrete, in other words) it tacitly conveys the
impression, not alone that the subjects interviewed lack depth- but
that their reactions, such as they are, exhaust the range of human
possibilities in this society. This may be so- but then it ought to
be stated as a judgement about this society, positive or negative.
There is, further, an irreducible sentimentalism about the book- as
if the authors suffered from guilt at possessing different values,
different experiences, different horizons from both their middle-class
and working-class subjects. Yet that difference of perspective
between authors and subjects is of course the pre-condition of their
work, the point of departure for such social criticism as the book
contains. In refusing to deal, explicitly, with the problem of their
own perspectives the authors do lose their chance to criticise that of
their subjects. For instance, they equate middle-class
"friendliness" in the suburb to "friendliness" amongst the
working-class, whereas their own data make it clear that we have to
deal with two radically distinct psychological phenomena. As for their
conclusion, that an informant's banalities about home and fireside
represented no dangerous dissatisfaction with the social structure, it
is difficult to see in it anything but an effort to give a restricted
view of one aspect of contemporary Britain some long-term
significance. Not having worried explicitly about the significance of
their findings, they do seem to accept highly conventional notions
about it. (When writing casually about the many householders who,
partly as a refuge from the monotony of their own work, did a good
deal of artisan work about the home they missed a serious opening for
probing deeply into some of the hidden relationships and deprivations
that affect us.)
   For saying something like this some years ago about Family and
Kinship in East London, I was relegated to outer darkness as a
critic of the Institute of Community Studies. I hope these remarks
will not be taken as evidence of rejection of their enterprise, nor
indeed of any lack of sympathy for a group of colleagues who are doing
useful and challenging work. It does suggest that, like Max Weber,
they might begin to use their heads.
notebook
THE NEW FRONTIER
by Stuart Hall
   THERE IS now considerable discontent brewing about education.
It arises from many different quarters- among teachers and
administrators (Cf. the recent controversy in The Observer
between Mr. Amis and his colleagues and Dr. Petersen), academic
authorities (Cf. the reports of several recent conferences), parents
(Cf. the recent PEP pamphlet, Parents' Views On Education,
3s. 6d.) and students (see Oxford Opinions below). Only the
Labour Party remains sweetly oblivious.
   The common thread which link <SIC> these different aspects is
the continuing existence of a two-tiered, two-class structure. Luck,
sweat, scholarships and grants may all provide ladders or
switch-points, by means of which young men and women may, at some
point in their education, shift from one stream to another. But these
ameliorative measures cannot disguise the central fact that, in
secondary as in further education, there is a "high-road" and a
"back-door"; and the standards which apply or the resources which
are set aside differ, depending upon which stream you are in, as
sharply as they do in, say, our provision in old age.
# 26
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Kenya's Frustrated Election
   THE Lancaster House Conference on Kenya, held in January and
February 196, opened the way to an African Government. Although
there was no provision for a Chief Minister in the new Constitution,
it did concede an effective African majority in the Legislative
Council by the establishment of the first open seats on a wide common
roll franchise: there were to be thirty-three of them, against twenty
seats reserved for the minorities, Europeans, Asians, and Arabs.
Besides this, Africans would form for the first time the largest
unofficial group in the Council of Ministers. Rumour had it then in
Nairobi that Africans were being granted independence; from then on
Uhuru (Swahili: freedom) became the slogan of African politics.
Later, 1 March 1961, the day subsequently fixed for the announcement
of the poll in the forthcoming elections, was regarded by many as the
day on which this would come. In consequence, the twelve months
following the Lancaster House Conference was a period of excitement
mounting into the election campaign of early 1961 and culminating in
the elections which took place between 2 and 27 February. For the
European settler community, on the other hand, Lancaster House was the
final shattering of the dream of the 'white colony' to which they
had been encouraged to come from the beginning of the century by
successive British Governments and Governors of Kenya. To them the
Conference was a betrayal of hopes, as also of their constructive work
in Kenya. Thus one settler cast thirty pieces of silver before the
European leader Michael Blundell on his return from the Conference,
though this provoked Africans to cry: 'Mr Blundell, we will vote
for you, if necessary.'
   Could Africans now exploit their success? For this, as many saw,
unity was essential. In May 196 the Kenya African National Union
(KANU) was established, proclaiming by its title both descent from
the proscribed Kenya African Union which Kenyatta had led, and also
comparison with the Tanganyika African National Union; it set out to
be the monolithic structure seen as essential in the fight for
independence, from India to Ghana. Curiously, in Kenya, where there
was the struggle not only against colonial rule but also against
settler domination, this unity soon dissolved.
   There were three main reasons for this. The new party was soon
regarded as the construction of two tribes, the Kikuyu and the Luo,
the largest and most densely populated of the agricultural tribes.
Cain's actions aroused the fears of Abel: the tribes of pastoralist
tradition drew together to defend themselves, forming first the Masai
United Front and the Kalenjin Political Alliance. Then these two
bodies came together with associations of some of the smaller
agricultural tribes to form the Kenya African Democratic Union
(KADU). The third word of its title indicated a rejection of the
monolithic structure of the nationalist party and an assertion that
this would be a party considering and accommodating diverse interests.
Inherent in the party's formation was, too, a dislike of many of its
leaders for Tom Mboya, the Kenya African leader best known- apart
from Kenyatta- in Britain and America. However, the financial
support he had raised there for scholarships to send students to
America and for his trade union activities had roused fears and
jealousies among other leaders. These found expression at the end of
the Lancaster House Conference: Ngala and Muliro, later the two
leading figures in KADU, expressed in a press conference their
disapproval of the way in which Mboya had been accepted by the British
press and television as the leader of the African delegation when he
was only its secretary. After the return to Kenya, a deliberate
attempt was made by some of the African leaders to shut Mboya
completely out of the formation of new parties.
   Whilst this African political activity went on, the minorities
were considering their position. Sir Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck
resigned as Speaker of the Legislative Council to defend, as he said,
the interests of those whom he had encouraged over the years to settle
in Kenya in reliance on the promises of successive British
Governments. He formed the 'Kenya Coalition', a 'movement', as
he called it, to appeal first to the Europeans but then to the
'minorities' generally. Unfortunately for this, Sir Ferdinand, the
leader of European opinion in the 'thirties and 'forties, was regarded
by the Asians as an old opponent. He and the Coalition made no appeal
to them or to the smaller African tribes, who preferred to form their
own Union, KADU, and to work in the new framework of African
politics.
   They were ready to contest the new open seats, in the formation
of which they had certainly been favoured. The new constituencies
were drawn up by a Kenya Government Working Party composed of the
Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General. Although the pastoralists
formed only 1 per cent of the population, six of the thirty-three
seats were allotted to their areas, and fifteen to the 6 per cent of
the population represented by 'KANU-tribes' (Kikuyu, Embu,
Meru, Luo, Kamba, and Kisii). The disproportion is most starkly seen
in the allocation of two seats to the Masai and four to the Kikuyu,
with populations respectively of 6,288 and 1,26,341 (1948 census,
the latest available); was this the traditional administrator's
favouring of the noble Masai and another punishment of the rebellious
Kikuyu? If the latter, it may be observed that the Luo, with 757,43
(1948), received only three seats, one more than the Masai. Yet when
the Working Party Report was debated in the Legislative Council the
African elected members made little comment. Indeed the Chief
Secretary, in introducing the Report, placed them on the defensive by
saying that if more seats were claimed in any one area they would have
to be taken away from another. Tribal jealousies prevented any
effective reply.
   As 196 went on, the events of the Congo increased profoundly the
fears among the minorities of Kenya for their future under an
independent African Government. The flight of capital, at the rate of
+1 million a month since the Lancaster House Conference, continued so
steadily that in September KANU leaders- the president, Gichuru,
and secretary, Mboya- sought to reassure foreign investors by
moderate statements in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Even there
they remained firm on one point: Kenyatta, regarded by Kenya Africans
as the father of their nationalism, must be released. To Europeans,
Government officials and settlers alike, Kenyatta was, as the Governor
described him, 'a leader to darkness and death'. Here there was no
basis for a meeting between the Governor and KANU, a situation which
became worse in the pressures of the election campaign. The original
moderation of KANU's election manifesto, particularly with regard to
land, was overthrown under the pressure of a more extreme nationalist
opinion. Gichuru was reported as saying to a KANU meeting in
November: 'After Uhuru Europeans and Asians will kneel to
us.' Moderation may be possible for Kenya leaders in Britain but
not in Kenya; this was now no less true of Africans than it had been
of Europeans in the past.
   Effective leadership in KANU was passing to the more extreme
Oginga Odinga, the Luo who, since 1958, had taken the lead in the
acceptance of Kenyatta and in the demand for his release. Odinga
became even less popular with the administration when in
August-September 196 he went off on a visit behind the Iron Curtain,
returning with favourable impressions of Chinese methods. Whether he
had become a Communist rather than a Luo tribal nationalist is
debatable, but certainly he had much money which made him a formidable
figure in the coming election campaign, though he told the Legislative
Council he had received this from friends in Britain. His return
imported the politics of the cold war into KANU, for Odinga and
Mboya were soon being attacked as stooges of, respectively,
Sino-Soviet and American imperialism. It was not long before the
leaders' quarrels reached down to infect and divide the branches of
KANU across the country. The party resembled in no respect the
monolithic organization it had set out to be.
   These quarrels, the apparent link of Odinga with Communism, and
the naturally outspoken remarks of an election campaign served in no
way to allay European fears. Indeed they made more difficult the task
of Michael Blundell's New Kenya Party, which sought to persuade the
Europeans that it was possible to work with Africans, that there was a
future for them in co-operation in an independent Kenya. The party
had originated in the Legislative Council in 1959 as the New Kenya
Group, with a multi-racial membership. Now, faced with the need to
appeal to their own communities, the Group's Asian and African members
had refused to stand under such a multi-racial banner. The Europeans
of the Group found themselves left alone to appeal to their own
electorate under the name of the New Kenya Party. At Lancaster House
the Europeans had insisted that they would not have the system of
common roll elections adopted in Tanganyika, but that candidates
should first show some basis of support in their own community by a
primary election. The Working Party fixed 25 per cent of the votes as
the qualifying figure to be obtained before proceeding to the common
roll. The Europeans clearly showed what they thought of the
possibilities of racial co-operation: three of the N.K.P.'s
candidates failed to obtain the necessary 25 per cent, whilst their
leader only scraped through with 26.7 per cent. Blundell's image had
been successfully projected by the Coalition as that of 'A man of
many voices... a politician', whom it was not possible to trust. On
the announcement of the primary results Sir Ferdinand
Cavendish-Bentinck could justifiably claim an outstanding triumph, but
this was only the first stage of the election. The principle of
Kenya's new Constitution established at Lancaster House was the common
roll, so it would be the mass African vote that would prove decisive.
Would Sir Ferdinand's be a Pyrrhic victory?
   Any doubts appeared to be set at rest when leaders of both KANU
and KADU refused to meet him when he invited them for discussions
saying they should respect European wishes to build confidence.
Instead, his approaches were rejected with contumely,
Cavendish-Bentinck being called for his pains 'a European
tribalist'. Then began the most interesting stage of the election
as the two European leaders, Blundell and Cavendish-Bentinck, competed
for African votes. Both the African parties proclaimed support for
Blundell, and KANU's president, Gichuru, spoke on his behalf. Yet
the division in KANU became evident here too. Odinga announced that
KANU's Governing Council had not been consulted and that he would
support Cavendish-Bentinck, saying: 'At least with Sir Ferdinand
Cavendish-Bentinck we know where we stand. Mr Blundell gets his
support from the Colonial Office... Better the enemy you know than
the one you do not.' In the end the intervention of Odinga's
supporters had little effect; Blundell was returned with overwhelming
African support. Back went with him into the Legislative Council, on
the support of the African vote, all his surviving candidates from the
primary stage, except one who appears to have been so discouraged by
only narrowly scraping by (with 28.1 per cent) that he had ceased to
campaign. The European feeling against Blundell was such that he
almost went into hiding for some days after the election, not daring
to visit leading European clubs; in one of them a leading supporter
was then assaulted, as he himself had been during the campaign.
   In the open seats there were few real surprises. The pattern of
Kenya African politics was that of 'one-party tribes'. Since
individual tribes were committed to either KANU or KADU, all that
remained of any real interest was whether the official party
candidates or the 'party-independents' would win. As these latter
were allowed by their respective parties to join their parliamentary
groups after the election, the relationship of party to seats which
had been forecast was almost exactly fulfilled: 19 KANU, 11 KADU,
and 3 Independents.
# 211
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THE NEW DIVINITY
Sir Julian Huxley
<EDITORIAL>
   'WHY ARE these strange souls born everywhere today, with
hearts that Christianity cannot satisfy?', asked W. B. Yeats.
It is certainly a fact that Christianity does not, and I would add
cannot, satisfy an increasing number of people throughout the West;
and it does not and cannot do so because it is a particular brand of
religion which is no longer related or relevant to the facts of
existence as revealed by the march of events and the growth of
knowledge.
   But first of all we must ask what we mean by a religion. A
religion is an organ of man in society which helps him to cope with
the problems of nature and his destiny- his place and role in the
universe. It always involves the sense of sacredness or mystery and
of participation in a continuing enterprise; it is always concerned
with the problem of good and evil and with what transcends the
individual self and the immediate and present facts of every day. It
always has some framework of beliefs, some code of ethics, and some
system of expression- what are usually called a theology, a morality,
and a ritual. When we look closely we find that the beliefs largely
determine both the nature of the moral code and the form of the
ritual.
   The theological framework on which Christianity is supported
includes as its centre the basic belief of all theistic religions-
belief in the supernatural and in the existence of a god or gods,
supernatural beings endowed with properties of knowing, feeling and
willing akin to those of a human personality. In Christian theology,
God is a being who created the world and man at a definite date in the
past (until recently specified as 44 B.C.) and in essentially
the same form they have today; a ruler capable of producing miracles
and of influencing natural events, including events in human minds,
and conversely of being influenced by man's prayers and responding to
them.
   Christianity believes in a last judgment by God at a definite but
unspecified future date. It believes in an eternal life after death in
a supernatural realm, and makes salvation through belief its central
aim. It believes in the fall of man and original sin, that its code
of morals has been commanded by God, and that all mankind is descended
from a single couple. It asserts a partial polytheism in the doctrine
of the Trinity, and gives full rein to what the students of
comparative religion call polydaimonism by its belief in angels,
saints and the Virgin, and their power to grant human prayers.
Officially it still believes in hell and in the Devil and other evil
supernatural beings, though these beliefs are rapidly fading.
   It is based on a belief in divine revelation and in the
historical reality of supernatural events such as the incarnation and
resurrection of Jesus as the son of the first person of the Trinity.
It claims or assumes that all other religions are false and that only
Christianity (or only one brand of Christianity) is true. It assumes
that the earth occupies a central position in the divine scheme of
things and that, though God is believed to be omnipotent, omniscient
and omnibenevolent, he has a special concern with man's salvation.
   This system of beliefs is quite unacceptable in the world of
today. It is contradicted, as a whole and in detail, by our extended
knowledge of the cosmos, of the solar system, of our own planet, of
our own species, and of our individual selves.
   Christianity is dogmatic, dualistic and essentially geocentric.
It is based on a vision of reality which sees the universe as static,
short-lived, small, and ruled by a supernatural personal being. The
vision we now possess, thanks to the patient and imaginative labours
of thousands of physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists,
anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and humanists, is
incommensurable with it. In the light of this new vision, our picture
of reality becomes unitary, temporally and spatially of almost
inconceivable vastness, dynamic, and constantly transforming itself
through the operation of its own inherent properties. It is also
scientific, in the sense of being based on established knowledge, and
accordingly non-dogmatic, basically self-correcting, and itself
evolving. Its keynote, the central concept to which all its details
are related, is evolution.
   Let me try to outline this new vision as briefly as possible. On
the basis of our present understanding, all reality is in a perfectly
valid sense one universal process of evolution. The single process
occurs in three phases- first, the inorganic or cosmic, operating by
physical and to a limited extent chemical interaction, and leading to
the production of such organizations of matter as nebulae, stars, and
solar systems; in our galaxy this phase has been going on for at least
six billion years. In the rare places where matter has become
self-reproducing, the inorganic has been succeeded by the organic or
biological phase; this operates primarily by the ordering agency we
call natural selection, and leads to the production of increasingly
varied and increasingly higher organizations of matter, such as
flowers, insects, cuttlefish, and vertebrates, and to the emergence of
mind and increasingly higher organizations of awareness. On our
planet this has been operating for rather under three billion years.
   Finally, in what must be the extremely rare places (we only know
for certain of one) where, to put it epigrammatically, mind has become
self-reproducing through man's capacity to transmit experience and its
products cumulatively, we have the human or psychosocial phase. This
operates by the self-perpetuating but self-varying and (within limits)
self-correcting process of cumulative learning and cumulative
transmission, and leads to the evolution of increasingly varied and
increasingly higher psychosocial products, such as religions,
scientific concepts, labour-saving machinery, legal systems, and works
of art.
   Our pre-human ancestors arrived at the threshold of the critical
step to this phase around a million years ago; but they became fully
human, and psychosocial evolution began to work really effectively,
only within the last few tens of millennia. During that short span of
evolutionary time, man has not changed genetically in any significant
way, and his evolution has been predominantly cultural, manifested in
the evolution of his social systems, his ideas, and his technological
and artistic creations.
   The new vision enlarges our future as much as our past. Advance
in biological evolution took place through a succession of so-called
dominant types- in the last four hundred million years from jawless,
limbless vertebrates to fish, then through amphibians to reptiles,
from reptiles to mammals, and finally to man. Each new dominant type
is in some important way biologically more efficient than the last, so
that when it breaks through to evolutionary success it multiplies and
spreads at the expense of its predecessors.
   Man is the latest dominant type to arise in the evolution of this
earth. There is no possibility of his dominant position in evolution
being challenged by any existing type of creature, whether rat or ape
or insect. All that could happen to man (if he does not blow himself
up with nuclear bombs or convert himself into a cancer of his planet
by over-multiplication) is that he could transform himself as a whole
species into something new. He has nearly three billion years of
evolution behind him, from his first pre-cellular beginnings: barring
accidents, he has at least as much time before him to pursue his
evolutionary course.
   Yeats implied, or indeed affirmed, that if the Christian God were
rejected, a Savage God would take his place. This certainly could
happen, but it need not happen, and we can be pretty sure that in the
long run it will not happen.
   The new framework of ideas on which any new dominant religion
will be based is at once evolutionary and humanist. For evolutionary
humanism, gods are creations of man, not 6vice versa. Gods begin
as hypotheses serving to account for certain phenomena of outer nature
and inner experience: they develop into more unified theories, which
purport to explain the phenomena and make them comprehensible; and
they end up by being hypostasized as supernatural personal beings
capable of influencing the phenomena. As theology develops, the range
of phenomena accounted for by the god-hypothesis is extended to cover
the entire universe, and the gods become merged in God.
   However, with the development of human science and learning, this
universal or absolute God becomes removed further and further back
from phenomena and any control of them. As interpreted by the more
desperately 'liberal' brands of Christianity today, he appears to
the humanist as little more than the smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat,
but one which is irreversibly disappearing.
   But though I believe that gods and God in any meaningful
non-Pickwickian sense are destined to disappear, the stuff of divinity
out of which they have grown and developed remains and will provide
much of the raw material from which any new religions will be
fashioned. This religious raw material consists in those aspects of
nature and elements in experience which are usually described as
divine. The term divine did not originally imply the existence of
gods: on the contrary, gods were constructed to interpret man's
experiences of this quality in phenomena.
   Some events and some phenomena of outer nature transcend ordinary
explanation and ordinary experience. They inspire awe and seem
mysterious, explicable only in terms of something beyond or above
ordinary nature- 'super-natural' power, a 'super-human' element
at work in the universe.
   Such magical, mysterious, awe-inspiring, divinity-suggesting
facts have included wholly outer phenomena like volcanic eruptions,
thunder, and hurricanes; biological phenomena such as sex and
reproduction, birth, disease and death; and also phenomena of man's
inner life such as intoxication, possession, speaking with tongues,
inspiration, insanity, and mystic vision.
   With the growth of knowledge most of these phenomena have ceased
to be mysterious so far as rational or scientific inexplicability is
concerned. But there remains the fundamental mystery of existence,
and in particular the existence of mind. Our knowledge of physics and
chemistry, physiology and neurology does not account for the basic
fact of subjective experience, though it helps us to understand its
workings. The stark fact of mind sticks in the throat of pure
rationalism and reductionist materialism.
   However, it remains true that many phenomena are charged with a
magic quality of transcendent and even compulsive power, and introduce
us to a realm beyond ordinary experience. Such events and such
experiences merit a special designation. For want of a better, I use
the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truly
supernatural but transnatural- it grows out of ordinary nature,
but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration,
that which compels his worship: and during history it evolves like
everything else.
   Much of every religion is aimed at the discovery and safeguarding
of divinity, and seeks contact and communion with what is regarded as
divine. A humanist-based religion must re-define divinity, strip the
divine of the theistic qualities which man has anthropomorphically
projected into it, search for its habitations in every aspect of
existence, elicit it, and establish fruitful contact with its
manifestations. Divinity is the chief raw material out of which gods
have been fashioned. Today we must melt down the gods and refashion
the material into new and effective agencies, enabling man to exist
freely and fully on the spiritual level as well as on the material
level.
   The character of all religions depends primarily on the pattern
of its supporting framework of ideas, its theology in an extended
sense; and this in its turn depends on the extent and organization of
human knowledge at the time. I feel sure that the world will see the
birth of a new religion based on what I have called evolutionary
humanism. Just how it will develop and flower no one knows- but some
of its underlying beliefs are beginning to emerge, and in any case it
is clear that a humanism of this sort can provide powerful religious,
moral and practical motivation for life.
# 211
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Free Fiction?- Why Not Free Films?
<EDITORIAL>
   ARE books out of date? Is reading an old-fashioned hobby,
like archery; or a Tory vice, like golf? Some of our great national
newspapers seem to think so: but the figures are against them. My
favourite Sundays record that on a previous day 6, people
attended the Football League matches in England and Wales. On a fine
Saturday in January (with Cup Ties) I made it 8,. But on every
working day in the week 1 million, or more, citizens borrow books from
a public library. The total figure- for the year, for the United
Kingdom- is about 4 million- 7 1/2 million every week.
   Bar "radio," the book may still be the most popular pleasure:
and the public library, though a tiny buyer, is much the biggest
book-provider in terms of readership. In its inception- and for a
long time later- it was a great institution. Today, I fear, it is
merely a large institution. It has, like one of those frogs, puffed
itself out in the wrong places, and has assumed a shape which is both
unnatural and inefficient. It is now under fire from three points:
(1) its customers, the readers; (2) its servants, the librarians; and
(3) its suppliers, the book-producers, authors and publishers.
   The complaint of its customers- and of conscientious head
librarians- is that the public library does not buy enough books.
The sum expended on the purchase of books is about one quarter of the
libraries' total expenditure. In 1959 the Roberts committee laid
down, as a rough "test of efficiency," an expenditure of at least
2s. per head of the population served. (The Library Association
wanted to make it 3s.) Some of the best libraries are well ahead of
the 2s. mark: but in 196, out of 559 public libraries in the United
Kingdom only 137 hit the two-shillings target. The total shortage, I
reckon, was about +6,. The librarians complain that they have
to squeeze, almost by prayer, any addition to their "book fund" out
of the reluctant councillors.
   The complaint of its staff is that the public library does not
pay librarians enough. Far back in 1927 the Kenyon committee
recommended that "the trained librarian should be paid not less than
the trained teacher, and the one profession should not be less
attractive than the other." The Roberts committee, in 1959, said:
"There was a short period between 1946 and 1955 when this parity was
in sight, but recent improvements in teachers' salaries have put them
ahead again." (And now, I see, the teachers are asking for more.)
The chief librarian of St Pancras (a go-ahead library) writes in
his 1958-59 report about "the difficulty of recruiting, and more
particularly of retaining, suitable junior staff... We have lost
several junior assistants to the teaching profession in recent
years." I do not know exactly what the librarians want, but there
are 14, of them; and a rise of the order of +1 all round would
mean +1,4, a year.
   The complaint of authors and publishers is that the public
library is not paying the book-producers enough. I shall not argue
the authors' and publishers' case here: but we believe that our
demands are just, and are sure that, in one way or another, they will,
in the end, prevail. They will cost between +1 million and
+1,5, a year- a very modest addition to "the paltry five
million now spent upon books" (Mr W. Hanley Snape, lecturer in
librarianship at Liverpool).
   
   NOW, if a public institution, created by Parliament, is
failing to satisfy its customers, its servants, and its suppliers: and
if its paymasters are not sufficiently interested to pay for
efficiency, Parliament should sit up and take notice. Failing real
reform, the public library, of which so many are traditionally proud,
will remain in fact an inefficient, unjust and, here and there,
discreditable institution, precariously existing on the reluctant
doles of local authorities and the abused good will of librarians and
book-producers.
   Reform, in fact, is, rather feebly, on the wing. The Roberts
committee recommended this and that; the Minister of Education has
talked about a Bill; and now he has appointed two working parties to
study some "technical implications of the Roberts report." But
that report was vague about the librarians and did not mention the
book-producers at all.
   All this, then, is merely fiddling. The statesman, at this
point, should see the public library as a whole and consider the three
demands I have set out together. They all mean money- perhaps +4
million a year in all. But who is going to provide the money? The
Government won't- I have heard the Minister say so. (Why literature
should not rank with the fine arts for some assistance I do not know-
but there it is.) At the moment the only possible source is the
rates. Well, +4 million may be a mere flea-bite on the vast body of
the ratepayer, who suffers about +5 million a year already. But
there are new flea-bites everywhere (the police, for example), and
every flea-bite hurts. Moreover, there are millions of ratepayers who
do not use the public library at all, never borrow a book.
   If the ratepayer wants to have a properly conducted public
library, he must accept the responsibility. But he can easily be
relieved. There is an enormous untapped source of income, other than
the rates, which only Parliament can make available. Section 11 of
the Public Libraries Act 1892 said that "no charge shall be made (1)
for admission to a public library or (2) in the case of a lending
library, for the use thereof by the inhabitants..."
   I would not interfere with (1)- with free admissions. What is
done and enjoyed on the premises- the proper functions of a library-
should remain perfectly free. But the vast modern book distribution-
the 4 million loans 6per annum- never imagined by the founders,
or Parliament- should now be made revenue-producing. I- and my
committee of authors and publishers- would give each local authority
the option of "charging the borrower." High-minded authorities
could stick to the rates, if they liked; all could excuse old age
pensioners, or whom they wished.
   The average borrower takes out 3 books a year- but in the
Metropolitan boroughs the average is 4 (St Pancras 45, and Finsbury
55). Twopence a book (on 4 million "lending issues") would
gross, in theory, +3,3, a year. Threepence a book (some of the
little tobacconist-libraries charge 4d.) would yield +5 million.
Deduct 1 per cent for possible diminution of readers, etc., and we
have +4,5,- +1,5, each for (a) purchase of books and
general library purposes; (b) increase of staff and salaries; (c) the
book-producers.
   Pennies-in-the-slot would be one way to collect. But I should
prefer a charge of 5s. (or 7s. 6d.) on the "ticket" issued to
the registered reader at the beginning of the year. After paying this
modest entrance fee he would be as free as he was before- and could
borrow 3, 5, 6 books a year without putting his hand in his pocket
again. Five shillings, I believe, is the average weekly investment in
the pools.
   Well, why not? Because, at present, the scotfree library is a
sacred cow to which most Members of Parliament, without much thought,
bow down. But it is out of date and illogical. It was designed, a
hundred years ago, for the education of "labourer and artisan." It
has become a free book-shop for all and sundry. At St Pancras 66
per cent of the issues are fiction; at Shoreditch 68 per cent; at
Stepney 69 per cent; at Stoke Newington 7 per cent; at Hackney 76 per
cent. Well, some "fiction" can educate, especially mine: but so
can some films. Why not free films?
   The sacred cow has been betrayed already. The Roberts report
recommends that charges should be permitted for "admission to
meetings and other functions," for "retention" of books, and for
"notifications." The Holborn library in 1958-59 charged
"reservation fees" of 4d. to 22,31 readers. The Westminster
library netted +8,991 from "library receipts" (fines, catalogues,
etc.). You have to pay for municipal concerts and plays. Why
should borrowed novels- or any other books- be free?
   Anyone who objects "on principle" to charging the borrower
must stop complaining about a charge on the rates. For, one way or
another, these reforms must come; and there is no good reason why
authors and librarians should be butchered to make a public library.
Here, at least, is a practical, constructive line of thought; and no
minister, librarian or councillor has offered any other.
LATIN AMERICAN FUTURE
REVOLUTION OF RISING EXPECTATIONS
   BUFFON, two centuries ago, put forward the theory of the
"immaturity" of the New World. This theory he based on the absence
there of the greater mammals and on the fact that, as he believed
himself to have ascertained, animals transplanted from Europe or
common to both sides of the Atlantic "without exception" showed in
America a falling-off from European standards. Whatever its
scientific validity, Buffon's theory coincides closely enough with the
view of Latin American human affairs generally held in this country
and in the United States. Anglo-Saxons do not doubt that the twenty
Latin American republics are immature; and they are ever ready to
detect fallings-off from the best European political and economic
standards.
   It may be that this attitude owes less to Buffon than to
persistent underestimation, not to say misrepresentation, of the
American empires of Spain and Portugal. Yet, after all, the English
may find it worth while to remember that Columbus set out on his first
voyage when they were barely through with the Wars of the Roses.
Corte?2s was busy subduing the Aztecs a year before the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. Considerable churches, with services fully supported
by choir and organ, were to be found in Spanish America (and they
stand today) many years before the sailing of the Mayflower, for
before the end of the 16th century there were 2, Spaniards (to
say nothing of the many Portuguese) established in the New World.
   Yet, much more than the chance that the Spaniards arrived first,
the fact that they had come with different motives and a different
concept of settlement was to have results that are still working
themselves out in the Latin America of today. Spain, if not Portugal
in Brazil, certainly did not conquer and occupy America from
California to Cape Horn in a fit of absence of mind. Once the
Spaniards had digested the fact of Columbus's original miscalculation,
they set about the subjugation and occupation of their new territories
with care and method. In contrast with the later Anglo-Saxon settlers
farther north, the 6conquistadores were animated both by a desire
for wealth and a zeal for the propagation of their faith; and their
empire-building was on something of the pattern set by the Romans.
Each expedition usually set out only after it had been officially
sanctioned. Each new colony was founded with due deliberation and
ceremony, and was eventually incorporated in a system of kingdoms, all
of equal status in their relation to the Spanish crown.
   It followed that Spain should seek to govern America as Spain
itself was governed. Yet, being bereft equally of any religious or
intellectual tolerance, of the spirit of compromise, and of any
conception of government as the art of teaching men to govern
themselves, Spain was not in a position to transplant these qualities
to the New World. In the economic sphere no less than in the
political, the Spaniards regarded their American lands as part of
Spain itself. They utilised and spread through Europe the precious
metals and other products of the Americas, just as if these derived
from Castile or Andalusia. Similarly, they insisted that their
American possessions, no less than the Spanish home provinces, should
supply their needs from or through Spanish sources. Here, in these
parallel political and economic attitudes, lay the reasons why Spain
strove to preserve the frontiers of Spanish America inviolate from
foreign penetration as if they were Spain's own.
# 225
<258 TEXT G71>
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
ARNOLD TOYNBEE
   'To dwell together in unity' has not been coming easy to the
human race. We may agree that this is 'good and pleasant' for
'brethren', but few human communities, so far, have been prepared
to take all other human beings to their bosoms as their brothers.
They have usually found some excuse for treating the majority of
their fellow-men as 'lesser breeds without the law'. If one stigma
wears off, we invent another. When our neighbour ceases to be an
infidel, we still stigmatise him as a foreigner, and, if he ceases to
be a foreigner, we still ostracise him as a Negro or an albino. This
widespread passion for being a 'chosen people' evidently has deep
psychological roots. We human beings have gone on indulging in it at
the price of bringing endless disasters on ourselves. We have gone on
till we have now been overtaken by the Atomic Age.
   In this age the price of disunity is evidently going to be
prohibitive. This has been recognized quickly and widely, so today we
have a stronger motive than we have ever had before for trying to get
rid of our self-inflicted divisions. Our choice now lies between
co-existence and non-existence. The removal of the main present
hindrances to co-existence has therefore become the most urgent item
on mankind's agenda. Three outstanding present hindrances are
ideologies, nationalism, and race-feeling. We have to get rid of them
all, and we have not left ourselves much time for that. This raises a
practical question of priorities. Which of these three evils is going
to be the most difficult to eradicate? Whichever it is, we ought to
concentrate our efforts on combating this one first.
   One answer to this question about priorities was implied in the
foundation of the Institute of Race Relations. This answer was made
explicit in a paper addressed to Chatham House in 195 by one of the
moving spirits in the launching of the Institute, Mr. Harry Hodson.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   'There are two problems in world politics today which transcend
all others,' Mr. Hodson said in this context. 'They are the
struggle between Communism and Liberal Democracy and the problem of
race relations. Of the two, I am prepared to argue that the problem
of race relations is the more important, since, for one thing, it
would remain with us in its full complexity even if Communism were to
settle down to peaceful neighbourliness with Democracy in a world
partitioned between them.'
<END INDENTATION>
   Mr. Hodson is surely right in holding that ideological
differences can be overcome more easily than racial differences can.
An ideology can be put into cold storage. The more awkward and
obnoxious of its tenets can be reduced to dead letters. More than
that, there is the possibility of conversion from one ideology to
another. In the past, this process of conversion has sometimes gone
with a run. Racial differences, too, can be overcome by conversion,
but the process in this field is a physical, not an intellectual, one.
The other name for it is intermarriage.
   Happily for mankind's prospects, intermarriage between
geographically intermingled populations of different physique has been
normal hitherto, whereas racial segregation has been exceptional. In
our present-day world, the normal way of overcoming race-differences
is exemplified in two large and important constituents of the human
race: the Muslim community and the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking
Roman Catholic community. In Mexico and Brazil today, most people
have at least three different racial strains in their physique: the
European, the pre-Columbian American, and the African; but domestic
injustices and dissensions in these and other Latin American countries
do not, on the whole, run on racial lines. Latin Americans are not
race-conscious, and Muslims are not either. Visit, for instance, the
American University of Beirut and watch the students on the campus
there. You will observe a great variety of race, but no tendency
towards antipathy or segregation on account of this.
   In fact, race-feeling seems to be an exceptional failing. In the
present-day world it is virtually confined to three minorities: the
Teutonic-speaking peoples, the high-caste Hindus, and the Jews. In
the Atomic Age the prejudice for which these three minorities stand
has no future. 'The wave of the future'- supposing that the human
race is going to allow itself a future- is the comparative freedom
from race-prejudice that is exhibited by the Latin Americans and the
Muslims.
   The third of mankind's present three apples of discord is one
that is not mentioned by Mr. Hodson in the passage that I have
quoted from a paper of his. It is nationalism; and perhaps the only
good thing that nationalism has to be said for it is that, as some
offset to the havoc that it works, it does at least cut across the
alternative division of mankind into conflicting races. Nationalism
in its present-day form originated among the West European peoples.
Unhappily it has now infected most of the rest of the world, but it
is still rampant in its birth-place, and this has had at least one
fortunate result. It has saved the majority of the human race from
falling under the lasting domination of the minority that has an
unusually small amount of pigment in its skin. If this bleached
minority had chosen to gang up together, it might have been able to
dominate the majority for quite a long time, on the strength of the
temporary lead that it has gained in technological progress. But the
bleached race has halved or quartered its potential strength by
expending this on domestic national rivalries, and this makes it
unlikely that the present division of the world between two
ideological camps will ever be matched by a world-wide racial division
between the bleached and the tanned.
   Try to imagine a race-war between Russia and America lined up
together on one side and India and Pakistan lined up together on the
other. This imaginary alignment of forces seems most unlikely ever to
become actual. It is true that one can imagine Russia and America
getting together against China. They did get together against Japan
during the Second World War, and China is likely to become more
formidable than Japan ever has been or ever could be. If China were
to acquire the bomb, it seems safe to prophesy that Russia and America
would become allies again within the next five years. In that
situation, a series of half-a-dozen leading articles in the press of
either country could effectively change the climate of their
ideological relations with each other. But, if this did happen, it
would be just another instance of the familiar working of the age-old
balance of power. The coincidence of a power-politics line-up with a
race-difference would be accidental. And, as a matter of fact, the
two opposing alliances would not pan out neatly on racial lines.
Russia's present East European satellites would be in China's camp,
while the South-East Asian peoples would be in Russia's and America's.
   It looks, then, as if the evil of racialism can be localised,
thanks to the counteracting effects of the evil of nationalism.
Probably we need not fear that there will be a world-war raged on
racial lines. Yet, even if we succeed in localising the evil of
race-feeling, it will still be so much tinder ready to flare into
flame at the touch of the first spark. And, besides being dangerous,
race-feeling is odious in itself. It is therefore not enough just to
localise it. We have also to try to eradicate it wherever we find it.
This will be easier in some continents than in others.
   The segregation of Jews from Gentiles will, it may be hoped, be
broken down rather rapidly by intermarriage all over the world except,
perhaps, in Israel. We may look forward to seeing the Jewish diaspora
transform itself from a closed racial community into an open religious
community. If this were to happen, Judaism would at last have
achieved its manifest destiny of becoming one of the world-wide
religions. Again, we may hope to see the end of the segregation of
citizens of different colours in the United States and of citizens of
different castes in India. In both India and the United States the
segregationists seem now to be fighting a losing battle. The harder
of the two battles is, of course, the one in India, since here the
institution of caste has the momentum of three thousand years of
history behind it. But in India, as in the United States, it looks
now as if the victory of integration were in sight. If and when
racialism has been overcome in these two sub-continents, it will have
been more or less confined to Palestine and to those parts of Africa
where, as in Palestine, there is an immigrant minority from Europe.
   Here we touch the hard core of the race problem. Racial
minorities that have been dominant have to reconcile themselves to
accepting equality with the majority of their fellow-citizens. And
emancipated racial majorities that have recently been denied their
human rights have to reconcile themselves, on their side, to accepting
equality with their former overlords without abusing the power of
numbers under a democratic re?2gime. These requirements call for
almost superhuman self-restraint and magnanimity on both sides, and
that will be hard to achieve if the physical segregation of the two
races continues.
   The position of being a precariously dominant minority seems to
be almost too difficult for human nature to cope with. This is
illustrated by the present temper of the French colons in
Algeria. In North America the French have had a better record than
the English and the Dutch in their dealings with the pre-Columbian
natives of the continent. Yet in Africa today they are behaving no
better than their English and Dutch opposite numbers. If the
situation in Africa is to be saved, the geographically intermingled
races there will have to follow the example of Latin America and the
Islamic World. In those two regions, intermarriage has brought with
it a happy solution of racial problems. 'Bella gerant alii, tu,
felix Austria, nube.' This famous line can be made to point a
moral for the present-day European colonist in Africa by making a
small change of words at the end. 'Tu felix nube colone.' For
the European colonist in Africa, intermarriage offers a happy way out,
and perhaps the only happy way that can be found for him. If he
replies that he cannot bear the prospect, it can be answered that he
is being asked to do no more than has been done already, long ago, by
his fellow-European colonist in Latin America. He can also be asked
to face the alternative. 'Intermarry or get out' is probably the
ultimate choice that destiny is offering to the European minorities in
Africa in our day.
COMMENT ON CORFIELD
F. B. WELBOURN
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   'We have no proof it was Sammy', Robin pointed out.
   'We have no proof of anything. In fact truth itself seems to be
an exotic.'
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   - Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika.
=1: IMPARTIALITY
   Mr. Corfield has a distinguished record in the Sudan
Political Service; and from September 1954 until 1956 he was a member
of the Secretariat of the War Council of the Council of Ministers in
Kenya- the body which, more than any other, was concerned with
direction of the offensive against Mau Mau. It is as well to ask from
the start whether, in a situation which aroused- and still arouses-
such high emotions on both sides, it was wise to appoint, for the
purposes of 'an historical survey', one who was so intimately
involved in the opposite camp. He criticises government and Europeans
in general; but he manages to imply that, if they made mistakes,
'Kenyatta and his associates' were deliberately bad. At certain
points his documentary sources are demonstrably wrong, not only in
detail but in interpretation, and the reader who spots these faults is
bound to ask how many others he has not spotted.
# 21
<259 TEXT G72>
THE WHITE PAPER X-RAYED
The Future of Technical Education
   "These will represent one of the biggest reforms in technical
education that we have ever made". Thus Sir David Eccles speaking
in the House on November 7th, 196. Unless you belonged to the
cynical who thought that reforms in technical education could not have
been very great and so could easily be surpassed you were doubtless
looking forward to some radical advance. If so a reading of the White
Paper "Better Opportunities in Technical Education" (Cmnd. 1254)
and "Technical Education in Scotland: The Pattern for the Future"
(Cmnd. 1245) will come as a severe disappointment.
   As there is considerable common ground references below will be
in general to Cmnd. 1254; where there are differences in the
Scottish proposals they are dealt with later.
   "Better Opportunities in Technical Education" is a serious but
modest set of proposals to reorganise and rationalise the existing
system of technical courses. Three reasons, all valid, are presented
for the proposals; the present system has not kept pace with changes
taking place in industry and particularly with the need for
technicians; there is often a gap between school and further
education; there is too much "wastage" on existing courses,
i.e. too many students are failing to pass the examinations at
the end of the courses.
   The White Paper stresses the need for continuing general
education after leaving school, a need which is widely recognised.
Boys and girls "should be encouraged" to stay on until they are 16
to complete a five year secondary course but it is suggested that it
would be more suitable in some cases to spend the fifth year in a
technical college. At whatever age a student leaves school "he
should go direct into a technical college course" and not on to an
evening course alone. This proposal is long overdue. But having
argued its validity the White Paper goes on to point out that those
who cannot get day release must not be deprived of the opportunity of
taking evening courses. So we are back where we were.
Day Release for Operatives
   The proposals cover three grades; operatives, craftsmen and
technicians. Operatives are the greatest proportion of young people
at work. Only 34 per cent. of boys and 7 per cent. of girls
leaving school enter apprenticeships or learnerships in skilled
operations and they are the overwhelming majority of those receiving
day release at present. And yet there is need for technical training
for those in semi-skilled jobs and there are many who, in the words of
the White Paper, "would be better fitted for industrial life if they
were able to take suitable courses of a more general character,"
for, as the Industrial Training Council pointed out recently, with
increasing mobility of labour, work-people "will require a mental
flexibility which can only be developed by further education after the
end of full-time schooling." But when we arrive at the proposals
for action we read that "the government are sure that local education
authorities and technical colleges will co-operate with both sides of
industry in meeting the need for suitable courses for all levels of
operatives on a rapidly increasing scale." Judging by the numbers
on such courses at present and the rate of development very few people
outside the Government will be sure that there will be provision on a
rapidly increasing scale without compulsory day release.
Craftsmen and Technicians Needed
   Craft courses are being continuously modified and new ones
developed: the White Paper rightly points out the need for the
broadening of these courses. Some of the City and Guilds of London
Institute courses have already taken steps in this direction but the
major problem is that of time. The White Paper accepts the proposal
of the Crowther Committee that the length of course should be extended
from the 22 hours now common (28 where a student attends one evening
a week) to 33 hours, the length of the "County College year" laid
down in the Education Act 1944. A similar suggestion is made for
courses for technicians.
   Since the White Paper on Technical Education in 1956 there have
been growing complaints of the shortage of technicians. Various
estimates of need have been made and it is generally held that about
six technicians are needed to each technologist, although it varies
from industry to industry. At present there are only two courses
designed specifically for technicians- for electrical and
telecommunication technicians. Most are trained in craft courses
which end at technician level or take a special course after a craft
course (e.g. in building and printing) or take a National
Certificate Course. The White Paper recognises the need for more
courses designed for technicians. The Crowther Committee recommended
that the technician's part-time courses should be replaced by sandwich
courses and the White Paper says the government would welcome
widespread experiments of this nature.
   The National Certificate Courses at Ordinary and Higher levels
have provided the training for many technicians and an avenue to full
professional status for many students. It is in these courses that
the high rate of failures has attracted most attention. The White
Paper proposes that the Ordinary National Certificate course, at
present a three year course, should become a two year course i.e.
the length required now of students who are exempt from the first year
because they have the appropriate passes at Ordinary level in the
General Certificate of Education. Entry will be confined to those who
have four appropriate passes at O level in G.C.E. or who have
completed a new general course which is to be started and who show a
good prospect of obtaining an Ordinary National Certificate. Those who
show exceptional academic promise after completing a three year craft
course will also be admitted.
   The new general courses (which do not apply in Scotland) are
intended to cater for school leavers of 15 and 16 who show promise of
being able to become technicians. They will last one or two years and
will be based on part-time day release or block release. They are
intended to provide an opportunity to decide whether a student is
better fitted for a technician's course or an O.N.C. The
examinations will be externally administered but devised and
controlled by teachers. Their success again will of course depend on
the willingness of employers to grant day release.
   The crying need in National Certificate courses is for more time.
It is suggested that 24 hours is necessary to cover the technical
subjects (including maths and science) and that 9 hours should be
devoted to general subjects (including English and P.T.) If the
lengthening of courses is not to lengthen the college year and worsen
the conditions of teachers it means extending day release to at least
1 1/2 days. But this is most unlikely to happen on a voluntary basis.
It will also demand a big increase in staff. This problem has
received scant attention from the Ministry. It is unlikely that
sufficient teachers will be found for even these limited proposals
unless there is a substantial improvement in salaries and conditions
of service.
Scottish Proposals
   The Scottish White Paper runs along similar lines but there are
some modifications arising from the differences in the educational set
up. Although the number of students getting day release has risen in
Scotland from 28,118 in 1955-56 to 35,69 in 1959-6 the White Paper
says that it falls far short of requirements. Day release for those
under 18 is almost stationary and in any case covers only 1 per
cent. of those in insured employment.
   At the technologist level the Government look forward to an
increase in the range of Associateships and other advanced courses in
the central institutions and have asked them to review their entry
requirements with a view to decreasing wastage. A minimum period of
2, hours in the 3 year course for the Higher National Diploma will
be prescribed to enable a broadening of the courses. For the Ordinary
National Diploma, a full-time two year course, the entry requirement
will be four passes at the Ordinary grade of the Scottish Certificate
of Education. For the Ordinary National Certificate definite entrance
requirements will be made: normally 3 passes at the ordinary grade in
appropriate subjects, but there is a possibility of entry for those
who have completed the intermediate stage of a City and Guilds course.
There will be no general course of the kind envisaged for England and
Wales, but those who have not got the necessary requirements will have
an opportunity to get them in part-time day or evening classes in
further education centres. It is also proposed to set up a Working
Party to consider means of improving the links between schools and
further education, especially for junior secondary pupils. Education
authorities will be encouraged to provide full-time courses for
first-year apprentices.
What it All Amounts to
   The sting is, as often, in the tail. In Para 64 of Cmnd.
1254 cost is touched on and it is pointed out that no figures of
additional cost can be given. If the total number of students is not
affected it will be only the cost of staffing for the extra time in
courses and this "relatively to the total expenditure on technical
education should be small." The cost will be greater if "as the
Government hope" the White Paper leads to an increase in the number
of students.
   The brave words of a revolution affecting half a million students
boil down to a rationalisation of courses covering existing numbers of
students. In themselves they will not increase the number of students
at all. This is the answer of the Minister of Education to the
Crowther proposals to raise the school leaving age to 16 and to
introduce compulsory part-time day release from 15-18. What is in the
White Paper is useful: what is left out is vital. The chairman of the
British Association for Commercial and Industrial Education is quoted
in The Observer (8.1.61) as saying: "This White Paper is merely
an administrative caper. By rationalisation it produces better value
for money, but it avoids the peril of a new idea and the cost of major
reform. Nothing can be achieved without compulsory day release."
That accurately sums up the value and the deficiency of the two White
Papers.
POLISHING UP FURNITURE
   Furniture wears its rue with a difference. For one thing,
unlike the motor industry, it has not had an opportunity for six years
to prove its productive potential. For another, its whole manpower is
less than the vehicle sector gains or loses as the economic cycle
turns. It is, in organisation, nearer to the pre-automated era than
most of the other consumer durable industries, though it has also
among its producing units the most up-to-date exemplars of flow
production, allied with styling, in the United Kingdom today. It
always will have the two crafts- one the craftsman using tools and
the other the craftsman using mass production and flow methods. But
there is a steady falling out of smaller manufacturers; a thousand
have gone out of business in the last ten years. Less than 2, now
remain. Ten years ago firms with an annual turnover of +1/2 m.
each accounted for only a quarter of the output. Now the proportion
is two-fifths.
   This development has had two effects. It has increased the
productivity of the workers in the highly mechanised units, indeed set
up two standards of productivity. The medium sized firms are squeezed
between the two methods. And it has increased the status and
bargaining power of the larger units.
   For furniture has suffered from the twin facts that (=1) the
distribution firms acquired greater power as against the manufacturers
by mergers and expansion and channelled sales into H.P.; they
could knock smaller shops because they could get higher discounts and
afford to carry stocks; (=2) it has been the victim of the large
timber supply units. The rising surplus that was made from higher
productivity was either passed on to the retailer or snatched by the
material suppliers.
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How to Transfer Authority
SIR IVOR JENNINGS discusses problems of newly formed nations
   NEARLY twenty years ago, when D. S. Senanayake asked me
to prepare a Draft Constitution for consideration by the Ceylonese
Ministers, I asked him what sort of Constitution he wanted. He
replied that he was not very concerned with the details, because what
he wanted was a transfer of power from British to Ceylonese Ministers.
I have heard that sort of remark several times since. As Dr.
Hastings Banda said not long ago, it is a question of power.
   I think this attitude is short-sighted. First, nobody can
transfer power, except in a purely legal sense. What is transferred
is legal authority, and legal authority does not necessarily confer
power. If you have legal authority to knock a man down, you still
have to knock him down; and he may prefer to knock you down.
Similarly, if a group of nationalists have legal authority to govern,
it does not follow that they have the power or capacity to govern.
   We have a classic example in the Congo. The Belgian King and
Parliament transferred legal authority to the President and Parliament
of the Congo; but within a few weeks there was such anarchy that the
United Nations had to step in. The machinery of government is
complicated and sensitive because it is composed of people, and
because it requires the collaboration of people. A host of public
servants, civil and military, have to obey orders; even then,
government will not be efficient unless the people as a whole accept
leadership loyally and enthusiastically.
   That is why the transfer of legal authority from British to Asian
or African hands has been done as slowly and as cautiously as
political conditions make possible. Long before the example of the
Congo, we learned in India in 1947 that it is possible to move too
quickly; and in India there was no question of the public services
breaking down because of the failure to obey orders. It was due to
the fact that ordinary people felt a sense of insecurity under the new
Government. In Africa the danger is even greater. Few African
leaders have the vast political experience which Nehru and Jinnah had
in 1947. India had been integrated under British rule for nearly 2
years, whereas in Africa political entities are still very young.
India had a much larger educated class than Africa has. The Indian
public services were by 1947 almost wholly composed of Indians.
   Nationalists are nearly always impatient, and they often think
that the British Government is being deliberately slow and evasive.
But what the Colonial Office really tries to do is to glide so gently
from colonial rule to independence that the machinery of government
will go on ticking over as if no fundamental change had taken place.
Some of the Nigerian leaders came to London in 1953 with the slogan
'independence in 1956'. The British Government refused to fix a
date. There was a gradual transfer of authority, first in the
Regions, then in the Federation; and Nigeria became independent,
without fuss or bother, on October 1, 196.
   My second criticism of Mr. Senanayake's formula about powers is
even more important. He overlooked the fact that Ceylon had to be
governed not only in the first few years after independence but for
all time; and this raises several questions.
   There was no doubt that, for at least as long as anybody could
foresee, Ceylon would have a revenue sufficient to maintain an
efficient government. That revenue came from the export of tea,
rubber, and coconuts, and there was no reason to suppose that these
industries would disappear. Its economy would have to be diversified
as its population grew, and capital would be needed to maintain the
income from the three plantation crops. Even so, it began with the
advantage of flourishing industries. There are places in Africa of
which this cannot be said. I doubt if anybody would have suggested
independence for Sierra Leone if diamonds had not been discovered,
because diamonds and iron ore make up 7 per cent. of its exports.
I suppose that Northern Rhodesia could keep going so long as its
mining industry was efficiently run. But nobody has yet discovered
sufficient natural resources in Nyasaland to enable it to stand on its
own feet. There are resources, but they cannot in present conditions
be exploited, because they are too far from their markets. I know
that some politicians think that they can get subsidies from
elsewhere. But subsidies which are given out of pure generosity are
rare: they are normally given to secure political advantages; and
whether the motive is generous or political there is always a risk of
their being withdrawn.
   What is more, the economic problem raises the political problem.
To exploit natural resources, even with well-established industries
like the tea plantations of Ceylon, a constant supply of new capital
is required. In fact, the coconut industry in Ceylon is going
downhill because the trees are growing old and not enough are being
replaced with young trees. If there is the slightest fear of
political instability the owners, whether local or otherwise, will go
on taking as much out of the industry as they can and putting into it
as little as they can. In short, political instability leads to
economic instability. We have seen that in South Africa, which has
ample natural resources. After Sharpeville, in 196, investors
thought that there was a risk of political instability, with the
result that there was a large-scale selling of gold shares in London.
They were bought in South Africa, but this involved a large flow of
capital out of South Africa which will have serious effects on the
economy of the country.
   Nevertheless, the economic problem is part only of the political
problem. There is the danger of the fragmentation of parties, so that
no party may be able to govern. There is the danger of intrigue or
corruption among the politicians. Above all, there is the danger that
sectional differences may become acute and that politicians will
deliberately play on them in order to win votes. These difficulties
can be foreseen and they ought to be guarded against. My main
criticism of Mr. Senanayake's remark is that the constitutional
provisions which foresee and guard against these difficulties are
fundamentally important. Actually, I did not take his remark too
seriously; it seemed to put responsibility on me for suggesting what
the difficulties might be and how they might be met. For the next
three months we spent a good deal of time on those problems and
eventually produced a Draft Constitution which was approved, with some
modifications, by the Ceylonese Ministers and the British Government.
It has not been a complete success; and if I knew then as much about
the problems of Ceylon as I do now some of the provisions would have
been different. That is a common experience; but a good deal of
knowledge has been accumulated over the past twenty years. What I am
sure about is that all the problems which can reasonably be foreseen
ought to be solved- in so far as they ever can be solved- before the
transfer of authority takes place. In other words, a detailed and
permanent Constitution ought to be carefully worked out beforehand.
   Each territory has its own problems, but experience does suggest
some generalizations. So far, the most successful of the
comparatively new members of the Commonwealth has been India. It had
several advantages which most other countries do not possess: but one
of them ought to be specially mentioned. The Indian National Congress
was a large and well-organized party even in 1947. It was not just an
assembly of politicians hoping for jobs. It had its roots deep in the
villages. Its strength has carried India through since 1947. It may
break up within the next decade; but there is a reasonable chance that
it will have put democratic government on a firm footing for all time.
It has had an experienced and broad-minded leader in Mr. Nehru. He
has been able to keep down sectional loyalties while at the same time
recognizing cultural differences. He has not sought to integrate the
different communities: in the conditions of India that would be
impossible. He has not even tried to produce a partnership, which is
the word generally used in Africa. He has sought, with considerable
success, to enable every person, without distinction of race, caste,
or creed, to take as large a part in the process of government as his
abilities and his interests allowed. I will not say that the
government of India has been a model; but certainly it is the best
example so far provided. It is the example to be followed in Africa,
and in fact it gives us something of a recipe.
   First, we must have a Constitution which gives full protection to
the various interests in the country, however diverse they may be, so
as to ensure that they can play a full part in the life of the
country. Secondly, we must have broad-minded and patriotic leaders
who remember that, though they are mortal, the nation is immortal.
They have to establish such precedents and to create such conditions
that their work can go on long after they are dead. Indeed, they have
to remember that their successors may have entirely different views on
many of the problems that arise. In constitutional terms they have to
ask themselves whether the machinery of government will work just as
well when their political opponents are in office as it does now,
while they are in office. Thirdly, we must have a good educational
system which gives the young men and women a sense of mission, so that
they will spurn the pettinesses of political rivalry and keep in view
the larger patriotism.
   It can be done, but it needs goodwill and hard work. Nationalist
politics, like every other kind of politics, works itself into
slogans, whose repetition pleases those who use them, but which
gradually become empty of meaning. Mr. Senanayake's formula
'transfer of power' had become a slogan, though in fact he did work
hard to get a united people behind him on a scheme which was a
reasonable compromise of competing interests. The transfer of
authority in 1948 was smooth and peaceful and the Constitution worked
well until he died in 1952 and for a few years afterwards.-
General Overseas Service
Patterns of Government in the New Africa
Is a Party System Possible in Africa?
SIR IVOR JENNINGS considers some constitutional problems
   EVERY country in the Commonwealth has adopted, at least at
the beginning, the principle of responsible government with adult
franchise. Provided that the transition from British rule has been
well prepared there is a good chance of stable government for the
first eight or ten years. Experience not only in Asia but also, in
the early years, in Canada and Australia, has shown that there may be
difficulties. Politicians find it easy to agree when the main object
is self-government or independence. They find it less easy when
independence has been attained.
   The disagreement may be about policies and it may be about
personalities; often it is about both. There are plenty of
disagreements in United Kingdom governments; but the United Kingdom
system differs from that in a newly independent country because the
strength of the government rests on the support of a huge party
organization. It is virtually impossible to break away and form a new
party unless there is a major split right down through the party, and
that can happen only over an issue of fundamental importance. On any
smaller issue, a dissenting Minister has either to acquiesce and carry
on as Minister, or step outside the Cabinet and remain in the party as
a candid but friendly critic of the administration.
   In a newly independent country this sort of party organization in
depth, bound together by ancient loyalties, can hardly exist.
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MILITARY POWER IN POLITICS
   THE man who chooses in these days to speak on this subject need
take no special pains to time his remarks so that they are topical;
the matter is one which current affairs bring almost continuously to
our notice. In particular, two of the most prominent political
problems of our time invite us to consider this subject. First, there
is the problem of defence policy and that of foreign policy from which
it is inseparable. One does not have to be a pacifist or a
unilateralist to feel some anxiety concerning the fateful decisions
which have to be taken by our governments. And one question is
persistent: in Washington, in Moscow, in London and above all perhaps
in N.A.T.O. H.Q., how great is the impact of military
advice in the formulation of policy? In the bleakest moments of
gloom, many people are fearful, convinced that political leaders are
swayed by the formidable demands of belligerent generals for newer,
bigger, more deadly weapons, and that they are swayed because the
scientific and technological advances in weapons have made it
impossible for lay politicians to resist or even begin to argue
against such demands. Caught in a pincer movement between their own
fears and the incomprehensible and therefore unanswerable claims of
the military technologists, the political leaders send defence budgets
soaring. We know that we pay a terrible price here and now, but we
are left wondering if this will save us from a far more terrible price
later. The second problem is that of the spread of military regimes
of one kind or another- the astonishing succession of military
take-over bids which we have witnessed in recent times. This is not
simply undue military influence in the policy discussions of civil
governments but the complete replacement of political leaders by
military men in the very seats of supreme power.
   Although these two problems seem perfectly and entirely modern, I
want to suggest that we should try to see them as two facets of the
one fundamental problem of civil-military relations, and further that
we should recognise this problem as not wholly new. 'True political
sagacity', as Burke remarked, 'manifests itself in distinguishing
that complaint which only characterizes the general infirmity of human
nature from those which are symptoms of the particular distemperature
of our own air and season'. In this matter of military power in
politics there are large elements of both kinds. It may be useful to
approach the two problems indirectly- through a consideration of the
problem.
   The growing frequency and apparent success of the military
6coup d'e?2tat may no longer surprise us and we may have
grown accustomed to asking only- where is it this time? which
service? what rank of officer? and have they taken over the radio
station? The Times greeted recent Vietnam events in a tone of
weary disapproval: 'Once again a paratroop officer has struck before
dawn and set off the familiar sequence of a South East Asian 6coup
d'e?2tat.' If there is what the same paper has called a
'British obsession about soldiers in politics', then many parts of
the world have been giving us plenty to be obsessed about. In the
same week that saw the S. Vietnam 6coup there occurred the
purge of colonels in Turkey and the amazingly provocative and
subversive statements by at least two retired Generals of the French
Army dissociating themselves from the supposed policy of President de
Gaulle. Before that but still within the autumn season Col. Mobuto
in the Congo emerged, not in charge of affairs but at least in
possession of a central area of that country's strange and unhappy
political stage. Before that again, last summer, the established
government of Turkey found itself under arrest and its own army
leaders sitting in the place of supreme control. In the space of
little more than eight years soldiers have taken political power in as
many countries: Neguib and then Nasser in Egypt, Kassim in Iraq, Ayub
in Pakistan, Abboud in Sudan, de Gaulle in France and the gentlemanly
interlude of General Ne Win in Burma- cases from Asia, Africa,
Europe. Political epidemiologists may still be justified in regarding
S. America and the Middle East as peculiarly vulnerable areas-
especially if Sudan, Pakistan, Algeria and (some would add) Spain are
counted as extensions of the Middle East- but evidently no region has
a monopoly of this trend. The men on horseback have been riding hard
and people of liberal outlook do feel some concern. This is so even
when certain acts of military regimes- such as a ruthless drive
against black-marketeers- secure our approval. But how is this
general feature of modern politics to be explained? How far is one
justified in referring to it as the spread of a disease? Is there a
case for concern, or is concern indeed no more than a sign of
unreasonable obsession?
   Before glancing at what historical experience may have to tell
us, one or two general considerations may be suggested. What is the
character of the military profession? It must of course be admitted
at once that not all societies have been marked by the existence of
any such separate profession. In simple societies, there is not a
great deal of specialization or division of labour. Today's warrior
is tomorrow's cultivator and the time for wars is when the harvest has
been got in. Anthropologists tell us that this is the case with many
tribal societies. It was the case with most of the fairly developed
feudal polities of Medieval Europe. Even the leaders of armed forces
in battle are in such societies men who assume this role only as one
among many. Military leadership is not clearly distinguished from
social and political leadership. However, in most large and developed
states- and even in some of the relatively small states of the
ancient world- the forms of power, civil and military, do come to be
separate.
   When this happens the type (or types) of military man emerges.
His features were described already by the first of all political
philosophers. Compared with other men, said Plato, the military man
is 'more self-willed and rather less well-read', 'ready to listen
but quite incapable of expressing himself'; 'he will be harsh to
his slaves... polite to his equals and will obey his superiors
readily'; 'he will be ambitious to hold office himself'. And in
a military regime there will be, thought Plato, great respect for
authority but 'a fear of admitting intelligent people to office', a
preference for 'simple and hearty types who prefer war to peace'.
   The sketch may be a caricature but the image of the military man
has changed remarkably little in over 2, years. De Tocqueville
writing a mere 12 years ago understood well the political importance
of this question. 'Whatever taste democratic nations may have for
peace they must hold themselves in readiness to repel aggression, or,
in other words they must have an army... Their armies always exercise
a powerful influence... It is therefore of singular importance to
inquire what are the natural propensities of the men of whom these
armies are composed'. He distinguished types of military men and
contrasted the professional military man of a democracy with that of
an aristocracy. In an aristocracy- and the description is true of
most of Europe in the eighteenth century- the social top layer
becomes the military top layer, the ranks of the army reflect the
ranks of society. On the whole men accept their places. The officer
in particular has little ambition because military rank is but an
appendage to his social status. Moreover, the military profession is
held in high esteem. All this alters when egalitarian and democratic
ideas come with social change. The best part of the nation shuns the
military profession because it is no longer honoured, and it is not
honoured because the best part of the nation has ceased to follow it.
Increasingly isolated from civil society the professional army
'eventually forms a small nation by itself, where the mind is less
enlarged and habits are more rude than in the nation at large'. The
officers do not get military rank from social status but rather owe
what social status they may have to their military rank. Ambition and
competition for promotion thus become intense and out of all
proportion to the peacetime opportunities. The army is ready to be
restless, dissatisfied. And against whom will it vent its anger if
not on the politicians?
   Is this one more unfair caricature? The memoirs and biographies
of military men perhaps suggest that there is at least enough truth in
the picture to enable us to understand why civil-military relations-
which necessarily arise whenever the roles are distinct- have seldom
been easy. The military profession finds it has to operate in close
proximity to and as an instrument of last resort for civil authority;
yet the training and disposition of its leaders make them as far
removed as possible in spirit and mood from the politician or
statesman. A military operation is conducted on the basis of orders
expressed in simple and direct language; political operations are
usually effected through understandings which are ill-defined in
nature. These differences belong to the character of the jobs and are
underlined through training and experience. The political man has to
move tentatively towards a goal which cannot from its very nature be
defined with precision in advance. Means and ends are hopelessly
mixed. It is not simply a matter of choosing means x to a given
goal y; it is also that the goal is the outcome of pursuing a
given means. The politician's work is to secure social co-operation
through compromise: where this will take him he cannot fully know
except by starting and feeling his way through the variety of
interests and opinions. Only in the most general terms has he an
objective already defined. And excessive precision will only make
movement difficult. The soldier works differently. He must be given
his objective in the clearest possible fashion; he will then state his
requirements and dispose his forces in such a way as to gain the
object. In military arrangements flexibility is a necessary evil and
ambiguity may easily cost lives; in politics flexibility is the first
rule and ambiguity an essential instrument.
   Put thus shortly, such considerations may nevertheless make us
willing to regard military incursions into politics as 6prima
facie matters for concern and the use of the medical term disease
as 6prima facie fitting. The skills and ways of thought
required for the transaction of polity business are so different from
those needed for military operations that any transfer of one to the
other is normally to be regarded as inappropriate, unhealthy for the
body politic. (It is necessary to stress 'normally' because it
must be conceded that in some situations military rule may be
advantageous. But these are situations of bodies politic already in
bad shape.)
   Yet, however inappropriate and unhealthy may be the entry of
military men into politics, a little reflection may well prompt us to
ask not why it happens when it does but why it does not happen more
often. They are after all in control of the awful weapons of last
resort; why are they not regularly tempted to use them to achieve
supreme power in the state? To say that they usually recognize that
this is a job they cannot do or that the people usually would not
stand for it is not enough- for how in turn are such attitudes
brought about? Briefly, the answer is two-fold: political vigilance
and military professionalism. It is the imperfectly professional army
and the careless statesmen or power vacuum which constitute the
ingredients of military intervention.
   But the successful containment of military power within its
proper sphere has never been achieved without difficulty. Even the
fortunate British should know this. Consider how much of our
constitutional history has turned on the issue of the standing army.
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Thoughts on the 5-Megaton Bomb
BERTRAND RUSSELL
   All friends of peace have been profoundly shocked and
discouraged by the Soviet government's resumption of tests culminating
in the explosion of the 5-megaton bomb. Mr Krushchev maintains
that all this is done with a view to preserving peace. This, of
course, is nonsense. But it is much to be feared that the West will
react by very similar nonsense. On 22 October, four members of the
Committee of 1, of whom I was one, delivered a statement signed by
the Rev. Michael Scott and myself at the Soviet embassy protesting
against the explosion of the most powerful nuclear weapon yet tested.
Somewhat to my surprise, I received a long answer to this statement
from Mr Krushchev, very similar to the letter from him to certain
Labour MPs which was published on 31 October.
   The statement to me contains the usual mixture of the truth and
falsehood which we have learnt to expect from statesmen of either
side. Its criticisms of the West are, to a considerable extent,
justified. Its defence of the Soviet government is almost entirely
unjustified.
   Mr Krushchev deplores, I think rightly, the West's tardiness in
agreeing to negotiations about Berlin. He omits to mention that the
Russian proposals for solving the Berlin question would involve so
great a gain to the Russian side that the West could not be expected
to agree. He omits, also, to emphasise that, from the first, the
Russian proposals have been backed by military threats. He points
out, I think truly, that in a nuclear war Britain would suffer more
than either America or Russia, but he is wrong in thinking that this
sort of argument promotes pacifism in Britain. He says: 'We are
carrying out experimental blasts and improving our weapons so that
mankind may never experience the horrors of nuclear war.' Exactly
the same sort of thing is being said in America.
   It is scarcely possible to believe that such sentiments are
sincere on either side. Each side proceeds on the assumption that
itself loves peace, but the other side consists of warmongers. Each
side proceeds on the assumption that itself possesses infinite
courage, but that the other side consists of poltroons who can be
frightened by bluster. Each side's bluster, in fact, produces bluster
on the other side, and brings war nearer. If Mr Krushchev really
believes that the explosion of his 5-megaton bomb is going to cause a
love of peace in the West, he must possess a far smaller knowledge of
human nature than it is easy to suppose credible. All those of us in
the West who are working to prevent a nuclear war are reduced almost
to despair by the recent atrocious actions of the Soviet government,
while, on the contrary, those in the West who desire a nuclear war are
encouraged by every crime and folly of which the Soviet government is
guilty.
   Mr Krushchev says: 'The source of international tension and
the arms race is the policy of the western powers.' This is only
half the truth. If the matters in dispute between East and West are
to be settled without war, they must be settled by negotiation, and in
the present temper of both sides negotiation cannot be successful if
conducted by the threat of war. When Mr Krushchev professes that he
wishes to avoid 'the horrors of nuclear war', he is only half
sincere. There is something else that he wishes much more, namely the
avoidance of the tiniest concession on the part of the Soviet
government. There is some reason to fear that a correlative feeling
exists in the West. It cannot, therefore, be said honestly by either
side that it considers nuclear war the worst possible disaster.
   The last paragraph of Mr Krushchev's letter advocates general
and complete disarmament. The United States Information Service has
issued a pamphlet called Freedom from War with a foreword by
President Kennedy. The proposals contained in this pamphlet are
admirable. So are Mr Krushchev's proposals for general and complete
disarmament. Since both sides advocate the same thing, it might be
thought that it would be brought about, but no one supposes that it
will be, because no one supposes that either side sincerely desires
it. Certainly the explosion of 5-megaton bombs is not the way to
bring it about.
   There is a simple test which I should suggest to the statesmen of
both East and West: 'When you feel inclined to make a pronouncement,
ask yourself whether it differs in any way from a pronouncement by the
other side. You are in the habit of saying that the pronouncements of
the other side tend to promote war and, if they seem not to, that is
only because they are insincere and hypocritical. If your
pronouncements and theirs are indistinguishable, can you wonder that
they do not find yours convincing?'
   If war is to be avoided, both sides will have to cease from
finding fault with each other, even when the fault-finding is
justified, and will have to abandon the language of threats. We shall
not be driven to mend our ways by Soviet threats. Nor will Russia be
driven to mend her ways by threats from our side. Threat and
counter-threat is not the way to peace. At one time Mr Krushchev
seemed to be aware of this. He has forgotten it, and all friends of
Man must be saddened by his decision to march along the road of folly.
   But I have been speaking of what we in the West regard as Mr
Krushchev's mistakes. We are much less aware of the mistakes made on
our own side, though it would be easy to make a formidable list
weighing in the total not much less than 5 megatons. The United
States Air Force Association recently published a statement of its
policy which is the most terrifying document I have ever read. It
leads up to a noble peroration: 'Soviet aims are both evil and
implacable. The people <i.e. the American people> are willing to
work towards, and fight for if necessary, the elimination of Communism
from the world scene. Let the issue be joined.' This gives the
tone of the whole ferocious document, which amounts to a sentence of
death on the human race. It presents the aims of the enormous
economic power of the armament industry and the warlike ardour of
generals and admirals- the aims, in short, of the armament lobby, one
of the most powerful of the lobbies that largely determine the actions
of Congress.
   The greatest danger that we must face now, in this time of very
imminent disaster, is that we should give in to these warmongers of
the West as the Russians have shown by their recent actions they have
succumbed to the warmongers of the East. We must continue to oppose
both, to remember that both are guilty of leading us to our present
dangerous pass, that both now seem to have the bit in their teeth. We
must continue to urge the West- since we can influence only the
West- to insist upon negotiation with determination to arrive at a
peaceful issue, to refuse to answer provocative acts with provocative
acts, to refuse, in fact, to go to war.
Assumptions of American Defence
KINGSLEY MARTIN
   In this article I want to assess, as far as I can, after talks
in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, the
assumptions that lie behind American defence policy. On the surface
at least, the present regime differs from its predecessor in not
thinking about 'containing Communism' or 'rolling back' or
'fighting a crusade', but in tough, realistic terms about the power
struggle between the Soviet Union and the US. Whether this makes
much real difference in policy I am not sure. It may be no more than
a change in presentation. But it means that ideology comes into
conversation only as an element of defence. The argument is no longer
about a world divided into angels and devils, with 'unmoral'
neutrals dithering on the edge of hell.
   Another difference is that in the Kennedy era the generals do not
talk about policy in public. There is still to be a fight about this
which may be important before long, but for the moment military chiefs
protest only in private. The very impressive Secretary of Defence,
Mr McNamara, has everything very firmly under control, and the
Pentagon concentrates on making military sense of the troika of
France, Germany and Britain which the US is now attempting to
drive in harness.
   The first assumption was stated in precise military terms the
other day by Mr Gilpatric, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, whose
speech, the press was informed, was 'cleared at the highest level',
i.e. vetted by the President. The US is stated to be much
superior today to the USSR in both nuclear power and the means of
delivery. In Mr Gilpatric's words, Americans 'have a second strike
capability as extensive as what the Soviets can deliver by striking
first. Therefore we are confident that the Soviets will not provoke a
major nuclear conflict.'
   The second assumption is that a private enterprise shelter policy
supported by the administration can so limit the number of civilian
deaths in a nuclear war that America would be able to rebuild a
civilised and democratic society after it.
   The third assumption is that by building up conventional forces,
America can minimise the danger that a nuclear war might begin by
accident or misunderstanding or from Soviet failure to realise
America's determination to use her nuclear weapons.
   The fourth assumption is that West Germany must at all cost be
kept as a permanent ally. It is essential to have her agreement about
the Berlin settlement, her alliance in a war and her participation in
that integrated organisation of the West, which is thought the best
hope for western civilisation whether there is a war or not.
   Let me consider these assumptions in order. Mr Gilpatric
states that America will be able to maintain progressively larger arms
expenditure until Russia is 'eventually forced to participate with us
in a step-by-step programme to guarantee the peace which so many
nations earnestly desire'. The present defence budget has reached
the colossal figure of $47, million. Gilpatric did not mention
the possibility that one of the motives for Russia's inexcusable and
horrifying series of tests is that she intends to continue poisoning
the atmosphere until America is forced to accept Russia's programme
for 'complete and general disarmament'. Whether his estimate of
Russia's inferior striking power is correct, I cannot of course say;
one hopes that it is better based than the appreciation that led to
the Cuban invasion. According to American intelligence reports the
number of Soviet intercontinental missiles is not large. The
Russians, we are told, mainly rely on those of intermediate range, so
that America's huge and elaborate system of bomber planes, plus her
growing fleet of Polaris submarines, would bring Russia down before
she could destroy America's nuclear bases. It is a matter of doubt
whether this alleged inferiority of striking power or the conflicts
within the Communist world, so vividly displayed in the Moscow
Communist conference, is responsible for Krushchev's postponement of a
date for making a treaty with East Germany.
   Shelter policy is a matter of acute controversy here. The
administration does not suggest that shelters can prevent huge
casualties from blast and fire, though it flatly contradicts the
estimate of some experts who hold that the inevitable fires following
a nuclear explosion would destroy all life above and below ground for
many times the distance of the blast. As to the inevitable struggle
to crowd the shelters if missiles fall, the only solution appears to
be that everyone should have a shelter- which is clearly impossible
even if the government stops the supply of bogus shelters, now
commercially advertised, and insists on the production of cheap and
adequate shelters against nuclear rain.
# 2
<263 TEXT G76>
THE LOOKER-ON
   THE new American President takes office during January, so
the awkward interval during which United States policy tends to mark
time for want of leadership is already nearly over. It can sometimes
be a very awkward interval indeed, especially when the change of
President also means a change of the ruling party. When a Democratic
President last succeeded a Republican in 1933, it was during the same
interim period that Hitler came to power in Germany and the Japanese
delegation withdrew from the League of Nations. In those days, to
make matters worse, the interim was nearly five months- a relic of
the early times of the Republic when a newly elected President had to
be given time to ride on horseback to his farm and put his affairs in
order, before riding back to Washington.
   The inevitable pause in policy-making is no doubt one of the
reasons why a change of President is so often said to mark the end of
an era, or the beginning of a new one. Coincidence also sometimes
contributes to the same idea. Just as Roosevelt's assumption of
office coincided, within a few weeks, with the triumph of Nazism in
Germany and the disruption of the League of Nations by Japan, so
Eisenhower's election eight years ago was very closely succeeded by
the death of Stalin and the signature of an armistice in Korea. The
portents facing the new President are still not clear, but such as
they are, it is in the United States' own policy rather than in the
rest of the world that the changes are likely to come, if at all.
   Senator Kennedy has not been a man for dramatic or extreme
commitments. The same was true of Vice-President Nixon, and Kennedy
was even called 'a Democratic Nixon.' This non-committal attitude
in his past career had been held against him during the election
campaign, but it will certainly be an asset now that he has become
President; for the Democratic Party even more than the Republican is a
coalition of many diverse and even conflicting interests, some of
which would have to be sacrificed by any President. Apart from the
contention that American prestige has suffered abroad in the last few
years, the President-elect has refrained from attacking the policies
of his predecessor, so that the implication is that the change, if
any, in foreign policy will consist rather of a freshness of approach
than a revision of objectives.
   Senator Kennedy's statements about nuclear disarmament during the
campaign are a case in point. He insisted that the Western Powers
must not despair of reaching an agreement with the Soviet Government
on the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons, but must make one
more determined attempt to break through the obstacles, though without
abandoning the 'position of strength' which has been built up. It
is almost inconceivable that any new President could have taken any
other line. On the other hand, Kennedy went a good deal further in
his undertakings about what is probably, for Americans, the most
difficult and controversial of all matters of foreign policy, the
relation with Communist China. While insisting that there should be
no change affecting Formosa, he was explicitly in favour of a
withdrawal of the Nationalist Chinese forces from the offshore
islands, Quemoy and Matsu. It will be an extraordinarily painful step
to negotiate. It seems likely also to be a step leading in the
direction of recognising the Communist Chinese Government and trying
to give its representative a seat at the United Nations, though
perhaps without depriving Chiang Kai-shek's representative of a seat
on behalf of Formosa.
   Probably only a newly elected Democratic President could take so
far-reaching a step, and it would be better to take it sooner rather
than later (like President Roosevelt's decision to recognise the
Soviet Government in 1933). If so, then the new presidency might
indeed mark the beginning of a new era, for it is certain that a
comprehensive settlement of great-power relations and general
disarmament will only be possible, if at all, when the Chinese
Communists are included within the circle of settlement, by whatever
means that is achieved. It is interesting to see how the new
President's thoughts have shifted on this subject. In January 1949 he
spoke of 'the disaster that has befallen China and the United
States,' and urged the government to 'assume the responsibility of
preventing the onrushing tide of Communism from engulfing all of
Asia.' Within the last year, he has spoken privately of indicating
'our willingness to talk with them <the Red Chinese> when they desire
to do so, and to set forth conditions of recognition which seem
responsible to a watching world.'
   Both quotations are taken from the recent biographical work by an
American professor, James MacGregor Burns, which was published in the
U.S.A. in anticipation of Mr Kennedy's election. The author
has worked with the new President, along with many other intellectuals
of the same generation, and he respects and admires him, but safely
'this side idolatry.' The book is largely intended to dispel
common illusions about the new President- for instance, that he is
unduly influenced by his father, who was one of the least successful
American Ambassadors ever sent to this country, or by the Roman
Catholic Church. Professor Burns makes the point that Kennedy's
education was almost entirely secular and that he was never made to
feel a second-class citizen in his boyhood, as can apparently still
happen to American Catholics, especially those of Irish descent. But
he does not hide the fact that the new President has in the past been
sometimes ambiguous or evasive on matters in which religion could
affect his judgment, such as civil rights or the condemnation of
Senator McCarthy. Clearly he has still to reach his full stature; but
lesser men have made great Presidents before.
   One of the first problems confronting the new President in the
field of foreign affairs will be that of the United States' future
relation with Cuba. Whatever steps he may take, whether in the
direction of reconciliation or of intensified hostility, will have a
far-reaching significance beyond their immediate context, because
Fidel Castro has by this time become a kind of symbol of independence
and social change in Latin America, much as President Nasser became a
few years ago in the Middle East. The parallel is reinforced by a
further coincidence: one of the most important international interests
guarded, or threatened, by the rising dictator's territory is a canal.
And one of the chief purposes of the American base at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba is to cover the approaches to the Panama Canal, just as one of
the chief purposes of the British base in the Suez Canal Zone until
1954 was to guard our Middle Eastern artery.
   The American people are now learning the hard way how difficult
it is to act in accordance with cool and rational principles when a
supposedly vital national interest is threatened by a dictator with a
highly charged weight of public emotion driving him forward. The
experience is all the more alarming for the Americans because the
threat is so near home. Hitherto the American hemisphere, though
liable to constant revolutions, has been immune from ideological
movements showing close affinities with Communism. The only similar
threats in recent years have been those of Dr Jagan's government in
British Guiana in 1953 and President Arbenz's government in Guatemala
in 1954; and both were fairly easily disposed of, nor did (nor perhaps
could) the Soviet Government lift a finger to succour them. With
Fidel Castro in Cuba it could conceivably be different.
   Unfortunately the Cuban situation was allowed to become a
contentious issue in the U.S. presidential election. Senator
Kennedy accused Vice-President Nixon of having 'presided over the
communisation of Cuba.' He pledged himself to strengthen and
support the democratic anti-Castro forces inside and outside Cuba.
Those outside Cuba include, of course, substantial numbers of vocal
would-be counter-revolutionaries on American soil, alleged to be
organising forces to invade Cuba from Florida. Senator Kennedy no
doubt meant only moral support, but as American citizens have already
been caught and executed in Cuba for rebellious activities, and as a
contingent of U.S. marines was recently added temporarily to the
strength of the garrison at Guantanamo Bay, his words could easily be
misinterpreted and misused.
   Vice-President Nixon, on the other hand, spoke of Cuba as having
been put 'in quarantine' by the measures of economic blockade taken
against Castro's government after they had seized most of the American
assets in the country. The principal reprisal taken by the
U.S.A. was to cut the importation of Cuban sugar on the technical
ground of Cuban discrimination against American goods. Given that
over sixty per cent of cultivated land in the island is devoted to
sugar, that the U.S.A. is by far the largest importer of Cuban
sugar, and that two-thirds of all Cuba's exports go to the
U.S.A., the severity of the reprisal is obvious. The presumption
that it is politically motivated was corroborated by Vice-President
Nixon's further statement during the campaign, comparing the action
taken against Cuba with the process which unseated Arbenz in Guatemala
in 1954. But the Latin Americans will not have forgotten that that
process included an armed invasion from Nicaragua, with U.S.
blessing if without U.S. troops.
   In the ugly situation that has developed, it was inevitable that
Castro should have looked to the Soviet bloc for support. Patriotic
Americans would argue that the order of events was the other way
round: the 'quarantine' was imposed because he had already showed
Communist tendencies. In any case, it does not seem that Castro
received much practical comfort from the U.S.S.R. or China.
Crude oil came in Russian tankers to supply the Cuban refineries, but
apparently only in token quantities. Soviet technicians came to
replace American and British, but not in great numbers. And although
Mr Khrushchev ostentatiously wooed and embraced Castro at the
U.N. General Assembly, and ebulliently promised to supply rockets
for the protection of Cuba against American aggression, he later
explained that: "I want that declaration to be, in effect,
symbolic."
   No doubt neither of the great powers is willing to let Cuba
become a 6casus belli. But the present tension can hardly
just go on indefinitely. The basic questions for the new American
administration are two: need the quarrel with Cuba ever have happened,
and, can it be put into reverse? The first question can be broken
down into two further questions: do Cuban and American interests
necessarily conflict, and is Castro really a Communist? To the first
the answer is clearly, No. With Cuba normally receiving
three-quarters of its imports from the U.S.A. and sending
two-thirds of its exports to the U.S.A., their interests are
reciprocal. That Castro is really a Communist can also be denied in
the sense of an obedient satellite of Moscow. Many well-informed
Americans welcomed his rising against President Batista, and consider
that he only turned towards Moscow when he was rebuffed during his
visit to the U.S.A. in 1959, perhaps chiefly because the American
companies with investments in Cuba disliked his proposals for land
reform.
   It may already be impossible for American policy to take a new
direction in dealing with Cuba, but the advent of a new administration
certainly provides a new opportunity. Senator Kennedy campaigned in
support of a sympathetic policy towards under-developed countries. He
now has the chance to recognise (if he can eat his own words) that
charity begins at home, or at least on one's own doorstep. The only
alternatives seem to be the use of force (even if not American forces)
or a state of chaos in Cuba from which an even worse dictatorship
might emerge.
   When General de Gaulle came back to power two and a half years
ago, there was a general wave of optimism about his chances of
bringing the tragic problem of Algeria to a settlement. Algeria was
in the forefront of every Frenchman's mind at that time, because it
was a crisis in Algiers that brought about the appeal to de Gaulle to
return.
# 227
<264 TEXT G77>
The Uses of Pornography
   Pornography- if for the moment we stick to the etymological
implication of writing- is an aspect of literacy. To the best of my
knowledge, there is no record of a society which has used literacy for
profane and imaginative purposes and which has not produced books
dealing with sexual topics; of these books some have been considered
unsuitable for general reading, their circulation has been more or
less clandestine, and where laws have been concerned with private
morals, have been interdicted by the law. As far as I know, there is
no surviving pornography from Mesopotamia, Pharaonic Egypt or Crete;
but there is so little written matter surviving from these
civilizations which is not concerned with religion, law or business
transactions that no argument can be based on these omissions.
Further, we know nothing about the literatures of the high
pre-Columbian civilizations of Central and South America; Peru had a
copious industry of pots decorated with realistic portrayals of
perverse and complex sexual activities. But all the literate
societies of Europe and Asia from the time of the ancient Greeks have
had pornography as one aspect of their literature. In very many cases
the texts have not survived; but references to them occur in more
seemly authors, usually in a context of reprobation.
   Since pornography is an aspect of literacy, it is confined to the
higher civilizations; it is not a human universal, found in societies
of every stage of development, as is obscenity. All recorded
societies, however simple their technology and unelaborated their
social organization, have rules of seemliness; certain actions must
only be performed, certain words only be uttered, in defined contexts;
if the actions be performed, or the words uttered, in unsuitable
contexts or before unsuitable audiences, then the rules of seemliness
have been broken, and these infractions are obscenities. In the
etymological meaning of the word actions have been performed, or words
spoken, on the stage which should only have been performed or spoken
off the stage (that is in a suitable context); and this metaphor is
valid for all definitions of obscenity in all societies, if any
situation where two or three are gathered together in one place is
considered to have some of the components of a theatrical scene.
   Obscenity is a human universal, and I do not think that one can
imagine a society without rules of seemliness and obscenity.
Furthermore the responses to obscenity witnessed or recounted seem to
vary very little from society to society. When witnessed, there is
shocked silence and embarrassment on the part of the audience,
confusion and shame on the part of the perpetrator, either openly
manifested by such physical responses as blushing or giggling, or
masked by bluster and defiance. When however obscenities are
recounted in a suitable group, typically a one-sex group more or less
of an age, the topic is enthralling and the climax of an anecdote is
greeted with a peculiar, and easily recognizable, type of laughter.
In different societies, laughter has a varying number of forms and
functions; and until one knows quite a lot about a society one cannot
interpret the significance that laughter has within it. But laughter
at obscene jokes has (it would appear) the same sound the world over.
You may know nothing at all about a society; but you cannot fail to
recognize this specific type of hilarity.
   Obscenity impinges on pornography because in many societies
(including of course our own) some aspects or actions of sexuality are
regarded as obscene. This is however not universal; societies with
phallic or fertility cults may place sexuality very literally on the
stage, as part of a sacred mime. Nor do I know of any society in
which obscenity is exclusively sexual. Defecation, by one or both
sexes, is frequently treated as obscene; at least in the Trobriands
(according to Malinowski) the public eating of solid food is an
obscenity. Other societies surround death, either natural or violent
or both, with the aura and circumspection of obscenity; and in many
societies the use of personal names, either in public or before
specified kinfolk, has all the horror of an obscene utterance.
   In societies with elevated ideas of the sacred, obscenity and
blasphemy shade off into one another. The misuse of sacred words, the
abuse of sacred figures, have all the overtones and responses
customary to obscenity, except that blasphemy is much more rarely a
subject for hilarity. In swearing and abuse both the obscene and the
blasphemous vocabularies are frequently combined as forms of
aggression against God and man; this is typically horrifying to the
believer, amusing to the sceptic.
   These digressions have seemed necessary because, despite the
title of the Obscene Publications Bill, the connections between
obscenity and pornography are both tenuous and intermittent. In Latin
literature such writers as Juvenal and Martial used the complete
obscene vocabulary without apparently being considered pornographic;
we do not know what vocabulary Elephantis and her colleagues employed,
but for her contemporaries it was the subject matter, not the
language, which made her books reprehensible. Conversely, to the best
of my recollection, The Memoirs of Fanny Hill (one of the few
masterpieces of English pornography) does not use a single obscene
term. When obscene words are used in pornography, it is customarily
due to the poverty of the writer's vocabulary; occasionally, as in
some of the Victorian works, it is to enhance the law-breaking,
blasphemous aspects of the actions or conversations described. But
pornography is in no way dependent on obscene language; and, as it is
customarily defined, it does not deal with more than a small portion
of the subjects and situations considered obscene by the society at
the time it was written.
=2
   Pornography is defined by its subject matter and its attitude
thereto. The subject matter is sexual activity of any overt kind,
which is depicted as inherently desirable and exciting. In its
original meaning- writings of or about prostitutes- pornography
consisted either in manuals of sexual technique (The Ananga-Ranga,
I Ragionamenti of Aretino) or in the extolling of the charms and
skills of identified prostitutes (The Ladies' Directory and its
very numerous predecessors); but in its most usual form it is a
fiction, in prose or verse, narrative or dialogue, mainly or entirely
concerned with the sexual activities of the imagined characters. As
far as my knowledge goes, Asian pornography, from Arabia to China and
Japan, has sexual interludes embedded in narratives of which they only
form a small section. The Chinese, and those who were influenced by
Chinese culture and ideas, apparently considered all fiction
reprehensible, frivolous, and subject to censorship. A writer
engaging in a work of fiction was already going beyond the bounds of
seemliness; once this step was taken, there were, it would seem, no
conventions limiting the situations which could be depicted; and as a
consequence you have a masterpiece like Chin P'ing Mei (The
Golden Lotus) with numerous sections which, in 1939, Colonel Egerton
had to veil in the decent obscurity of dog-latin, and which, by
themselves, would certainly be considered pornographic in any literate
society. They however become valid as literature because they serve
to illumine the characters who are also described in a great number of
other situations.
   With very few exceptions European pornography does not have any
characters. The drama and novel are respected literary forms in which
characters can be portrayed in nearly all situations except the
overtly sexual; all that was left for pornography was genital
activity. And even that has become more and more circumscribed. The
manuals of sexual technique, as far as heterosexual coitus is
concerned, have been taken away from the pornographers by high-minded
writers of books on marriage guidance; the existence of sexual
perversions, whose naming fifty years ago would have made a book
suspect, is now common currency, thanks to the diffusion of various
diluted versions of psycho-analysis; pornography is left with little
but the description of the activities of various sets of genitals. As
such it apparently commands a steady sale.
   The graphic equivalent of pornographic writing- the depiction of
single figures ready for sexual activity or of pairs or groups of
figures engaged in sexual activity- has likewise been an aspect of
the painting, drawing or sculpture of every society in which these
arts have been developed for aesthetic pleasure; in Hinduism they have
on occasion been incorporated into sacred architecture. When
mechanical means of reproducing works of art have been developed-
woodcuts, engravings, etchings, pottery moulds- they have reproduced
these works as well as the more conventional. Such pornographic art
ranges all the way from masterpieces produced by the greatest artists
of the period (for example, many Japanese woodcuts) to the most
summary and feeble daubs. Except for the medium, they do not seem to
be different in intention or effect to the literature; and I shall not
further refer to them separately in this essay.
   During the last century mechanical means of reproducing pictures
and sounds- photographs, films, gramophone records and the like-
have also been put to pornographic ends, '5feelthy' pictures,
'blue' films and so on. Some of those few I have had occasion to
see have struck me as unintentionally fairly comic; but their
intention is serious enough. They are not able to achieve the
idealization- perfect beauty, health, vigour- which is so general a
feature of pornographic art and literature. Otherwise, they do not
seem to me different in intention or effect from pornography in other
media; and I have not heard of any which have non-pornographic merits.
These too, it would appear, command a ready sale, probably today from
a bigger public than the literature.
   The greatest amount of pornography in all media is produced by
hacks with no pretension to aesthetic skill or competence. Some
however has been produced by writers and painters of repute; and it is
likely that, in such cases, the greater amount has been destroyed
either immediately or after very limited circulation among friends.
Some however has survived. There have also been a few European
artists and painters whose main talent or output has been
pornographic: Giulio Romano, Fuseli, Rowlandson among painters,
Andre?2a de Nerciat, John Cleland, Pierre Louys among writers. When
pornography is produced by writers or artists of talent it is usually
dubbed 'erotica'; but I see no value in maintaining that
distinction when the aesthetic qualities are not the major
consideration.
   I know of no study of the reasons which impel writers or artists
to produce pornographic works; it is obviously an extremely difficult
6genre, and the technical problems of maintaining interest or
variety with such an extremely limited subject matter may have been an
attraction for some. In the mid-nineteenth and earlier twentieth
century realistic and lyrical writers almost certainly felt thwarted
by the strict conventions (to a great extent imposed by Mudie's
lending library in Britain) limiting the subjects and situations with
which they were allowed to treat; and the production of pornography
may have been a sign of private revolt. Some of the nineteenth
century English works are ascribed to the most austere Victorian
characters, though with what justice I would not be prepared to say.
It is possible also that willing creators of pornography get much the
same satisfaction out of their activity as do willing consumers of it.
=3
   The object of pornography is hallucination. The reader is meant
to identify either with the narrator (the 'I' character) or with
the general situation to a sufficient extent to produce at least the
physical concomitants of sexual excitement; if the work is successful,
it should produce orgasm. The reader should have the emotional and
physical sensations, at least in a diminished form, that he would have
were he taking part in the activities described.
   The literature of hallucination is a vast one, perhaps
particularly in English, and deals with a considerable number of
emotions and situations besides the sexual. Perhaps the nearest
analogy is the literature of fear, the ghost story, the horror story,
the thriller.
# 27
<END><265 TEXT H1>
   Questions about marriage and children were again included, as
they had been at the 1911 and 1951 Censuses. The former had asked for
marriage details for all married women, the latter for all married
women under the age of 5. The 1961 Census questions related to all
women who were or had been married, and so repeated the enquiry made
fifteen years earlier by the 1946 Family Census conducted on behalf of
the Royal Commission on Population. The questions about children were
the same as in 1951, except that they extended to all women who were
or had been married. It was not regarded as practicable within the
limits of the census to include particulars about the date of birth of
each child, as had been done in the specialised enquiry for the Royal
Commission. The innovation at the 1961 Census, though the Family
Census had previously included the question, was the date of
termination of the first or only marriage. This enables statistical
use to be made of their experience as regards duration of marriage and
number of children in the case of women whose first or only marriage
was terminated by widowhood or divorce after the end of their child
bearing life. This is particularly important in estimating the trends
in the size and pattern of families for successive generations over as
long a period as possible, as the proportion of widows predominates in
the higher age groups.
   In Wales and Monmouthshire the question on the ability to speak
Welsh was included as previously. The question was first asked in
1891, and was given its present form in 1931.
   Each census since the first in 181 has included questions about
housing and households. In 1961 the scope of the question was wider
than before, because of the great use of the data to the Ministry of
Housing and Local Government and to local authorities. As before, the
record made during the enumeration lists all buildings, residential
premises and temporary places of abode, and all households occupying
them, as the basis of the enumeration is the household schedule. The
number of structurally separate dwellings (that is, houses or flats or
other quarters built or adapted for separate occupation and forming a
private and structurally separate unit) was obtained as previously,
together with the number of households with sole occupation or sharing
such dwellings, and the number of living rooms occupied by each
household. In 1961 the enumerators were asked to note whether the
building was wholly or partly residential, and whether it contained
one or more dwellings.
   In 1951 questions had been included to throw light on housing
conditions. In 1961 the questions about piped water supply, water
closet and fixed bath were repeated as before, with the addition of a
new question about hot water supply; the 1951 questions about cooking
stove or range and kitchen sink were restricted to households sharing
dwellings.
   A new question asked about housing tenure, whether the
accommodation occupied by each household was held by them as
owner-occupiers; occupied in connection with employment or as part of
business premises; rented from a Council (or New Town Corporation) or
a private landlord (if so, whether furnished or unfurnished); or
occupied on some other terms.
   The analysis of private households by size and various
characteristics of their members has become increasingly important.
Previously, while visitors were left out of this analysis it was not
considered sufficiently important to attempt the task of bringing in
the members away from home on Census night, which would be very
laborious in the absence of information given at their place of usual
residence. But the need for a more accurate distribution of
households by size as usually constituted had become more important by
1961, and accordingly a new question was introduced, for private
households only, asking for particulars of persons usually living in
the household who were absent on Census night. The information
collected under this head will not affect the main count of population
numbers, but will be used solely in the analysis of households by size
and other characteristics.
   Sample.- At an early stage of the census preparations
consideration was given to possibilities of reducing the amount of
clerical work before the census results could be mechanically
processed, and the various topics for inclusion were examined to see
whether full analysis was required, as previously, or whether sample
analysis would serve their main purpose. It appeared that a 1 per
cent sample analysis would give adequate results for many subjects,
notably the analysis of the working population. The sampling fraction
chosen, 1 per cent, was selected partly on grounds of convenience but
mostly on an assessment of the likely reliability of figures in the
projected tabulations, and of the margins that might be tolerated.
The use of sampling in this field reduces the total numbers of staff
required in the Census Office as well as speeding up the production of
the census results.
   The sampling method was introduced at the enumeration stage and
the effect of this was to reduce the number of questions for nine
tenths of the people. Nine out of ten private householders received a
form with fewer questions than previously this century. The tenth
received a form not much larger in content than the 1951
questionnaire. In other establishments, (hotels, hospitals, ships,
etc.,) the extra questions were asked of every tenth person. The
sample was so arranged as to be fully representative over the country
as a whole, and everyone had the same possibility of being included.
   The questions chosen for sample treatment were those relating to
occupation, employment, place of work, status in employment education,
scientific and technological qualifications change of usual residence
or duration of stay at present usual residence, and persons usually
resident in private households who were absent on Census night.
   Order-in-Council.- In accordance with the procedure set out
in the Census Act, 192, a draft Order-in-Council, prescribing the
date of the census the persons by whom and with respect to whom the
returns were to be made, and the substance of the questions to be
asked, was laid before Parliament on the 6th April, 196. The draft
Order was explained fully in the House of Commons and was accepted
without opposition; at the same time the House approved the inclusion
of questions about the first or only marriage where this had
terminated, about housing tenure, education, scientific and
technological qualifications change of usual residence in past year or
duration of stay at present usual residence. These questions required
the affirmative procedure because they are not already specifically
authorised by the Census Act, 192. There was a general debate about
the draft Order in the House of Lords on the 1st June, 196, following
which the inclusion of these questions was agreed to. The Census
Order, 196, (S.I. 196 No. 162,) was made on 23rd June, 196.
The second schedule containing the substance of the questions is
given in Appendix C.
   Regulations.- The detailed machinery for the taking of the
census and the precise forms of return to be used in all cases were
prescribed in the Census Regulations, 196, (S.I. 196 No.
1175,) which were signed by the Minister of Health on the 11th July,
196, and laid before Parliament on 18th July. There was no
discussion of them in either House.
   Local Organization.- (a) Census Officers. As at
every previous census since 1841, the local arrangements for the
enumeration were based on the area covered by the local registrar of
births and deaths, with some modifications of area so that generally
the census districts were limited to a maximum of 1 enumeration
districts (that is, approximately 75, population). Thus, there
were 1,315 census districts for the 1,184 registration sub-districts.
   In the main the registrars acted as Census Officers; the 1,315
Census Officers comprised 1,93 registrars of births and deaths, 137
other registration officers and 85 others appointed as required.
   Superintendent registrars were appointed to act as Census
Advisory Officers in 115 cases, mainly in the larger centres of
population, to deal with enquiries about the census from any quarter,
and to recruit and instruct in their general duties a sufficient
number of enumerators for the area.
   The local duties comprised the checking of the boundaries and
contents of enumeration districts set out in the draft plans prepared
by the central Census Office, the selection, appointment and
instruction of enumerators, control of the enumeration and dealing
with enquiries or difficulties from the public.
   (b) Enumerators. The persons appointed to deliver and
collect the forms are traditionally called 'enumerators'. They
also compile an enumeration record of their district, with the
provisional count of numbers and a list of all buildings, residential
premises and households. The completeness of the census count depends
very largely upon the assiduity with which the enumerator searches for
all residential premises and any temporary dwellings, caravans, boats,
etc., where anyone may spend Census night, and in the confidence
which he can inspire in the ordinary householder that the census is
necessary and the answers kept secret. There is far more in the job
than mere issue and collection of forms.
   The identification of buildings by type, of structurally separate
dwellings and private households is a complex process dependent upon
detailed instructions. The census schedules themselves have to be
fully understood so that advice can be given to people in difficulty.
But above all the work requires tact and courtesy, so that the
returns may be secured from the public without friction or offence.
   Instructions for the recruitment of enumerators were sent out in
early January. The power of appointment was delegated to the local
Census Officers, as it was not practicable to exercise central
control. Guidance was given, and advice or assistance was available
in the event of difficulty. To widen the field of recruitment as far
as possible, a general press notice was issued, which was very well
covered by the local press and notifications were sent to Government
Departments, to local authorities and local education authorities.
   Arrangements were made for close co-operation with the managers
of local Employment Exchanges of the Ministry of Labour, and, in
particular, that Census Advisory Officers and Census Officers should
ascertain whether the managers had suitable people to put forward for
possible appointment from persons registered with, or applying to,
them for employment. As it was essential to select persons who would
be willing and available to carry out the duties some weeks ahead, in
the main selection was confined to persons able to undertake spare
time duties, or housewives and retired persons.
   Some 69, enumerators were appointed in England and Wales. As
previously many were local government officers and civil servants.
   Applications for appointment were received in great numbers in
nearly all urban areas, but in some rural areas there was difficulty
in making up the numbers required. Instructions were given that as
far as practicable no enumerator should be assigned to a district in
which he was known by the residents, as people might be reluctant that
the confidential information on a census schedule should be made
available to an enumerator personally known to them. But this was not
always possible, particularly in rural areas. All enumerators signed
an undertaking that they understood the nature of their duties and
their obligation to keep secret the information collected, and that
they were aware of the heavy penalties for any breach of confidence.
   (c) The Enumeration. The basis of the enumeration was,
as previously, that forms should be completed for every private
household, and for every hospital, hotel or other similar
establishment under arrangements made by the persons in charge. The
normal private household is the family type with husband, wife and
children, but persons living alone or a group of two or more persons
living together also constituted households for the census. Where
accommodation is sub-let and the occupants live on their own, they
would be counted as a household, but persons living with a household
who usually have at least one meal a day provided by that household
while in residence are treated as belonging to that household.
# 222
<266 TEXT H2>
MINISTRY OF HEALTH
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH FOR SCOTLAND
DRUG ADDICTION
Report of the Interdepartmental Committee
INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON DRUG ADDICTION
REPORT
   To The Rt. Hon. J. Enoch Powell, M.B.E.,
M.P., Minister of Health.
   The Rt. Hon. John Maclay, C.M.G., M.P.,
Secretary of State for Scotland.
Appointment
   1. We were appointed on 3rd June, 1958, with the following
terms of reference:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "to review, in the light of more recent developments, the advice
given by the Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction
in 1926; to consider whether any revised advice should also cover
other drugs liable to produce addiction or to be habit-forming; to
consider whether there is a medical need to provide special, including
institutional, treatment outside the resources already available, for
persons addicted to drugs; and to make recommendations, including
proposals for any administrative measures that may seem expedient, to
the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland".
<END INDENTATION>
Procedure
   2. We have held eleven meetings. We decided as a first step to
seek information from a number of organisations and persons having an
interest in the questions before us and at a later stage we arranged
for publication of a press notice inviting anybody interested to
submit representations. We compiled a list of the points which we
thought were of importance, but we made it clear that the replies need
not be confined to these particular items. As a general rule we did
not ask for oral evidence, though we found it an advantage in certain
instances. Appendix =1 gives a list of the bodies and persons
consulted. The Department of Health for Scotland, the Home Office and
the Ministry of Health submitted evidence to us; officers of these
Departments attended our meetings and have given us valuable
assistance.
Interim Report
   3. On 23rd November, 1959, we submitted an Interim Report.
This dealt with two questions which arose from our terms of reference
and which had been brought specially to our notice. First, we were
asked to examine the risks attending the abuse of carbromal and
bromvaletone and preparations containing these substances. The
Poisons Board had already considered this problem but, in the absence
of sufficient evidence that these compounds were widely abused, had
not recommended them for control as "poisons" under the Pharmacy
and Poisons Act, 1933.
   4. On examination of the evidence it became clear to us that
carbromal and bromvaletone were examples of a number of drugs on sale
to the public which were not appropriate for restriction to supply on
prescription under the Dangerous Drugs Act, 1951, or the Therapeutic
Substances Act, 1956, and had not so far been recommended for control
as poisons.
   5. We recommended that, in general, any drug or pharmaceutical
preparation which has an action on the central nervous system and is
liable to produce physical or psychological deterioration should be
confined to supply on prescription and that an independent expert body
should be responsible for advising which substances should be so
controlled.
   6. As an interim and urgent measure, the Secretary of State for
the Home Department, on the recommendation of the Poisons Board, has
made Rules under which certain substances having an action on the
central nervous system are included in a new list of substances which
may be sold by retail only on the prescription of a duly qualified
medical practitioner, registered dentist, registered veterinary
surgeon or registered veterinary practitioner.
   7. We are glad to note the action that has been taken and we hope
that arrangements will be made to ensure that, as other preparations
affecting the central nervous system become available, they too will
be brought to the notice of the Poisons Board, or such other advisory
body as may in due course be appointed for the purpose, to consider
whether there are sufficient grounds for restricting any of them also
to supply on prescription.
   8. The second part of our Interim Report was devoted to
anaesthetists who become addicted to the gases and vapours which they
use in the course of their professional duties. We ascertained that
the incidence of this irregularity was very small indeed. However,
over a period of eleven years, patients' lives had been endangered in
two known instances.
   9. We were assured by our expert witnesses on this subject that,
with the apparatus at present to hand, the preliminary sniffing of the
gases immediately before administering them to a patient was a
recognised and necessary precaution. We accepted this.
   1. In view of the heavy and direct responsibility carried by
every anaesthetist we were convinced that anyone addicted to the
inhalation of gases and vapours should never be entrusted with their
administration. Intervention in the first instance, we thought,
should be by the anaesthetist's professional colleagues. The ethical
questions arising have been discussed between Ministers and
representatives of the medical profession and we are glad to see that
a memorandum embodying the agreed arrangements was sent to hospital
authorities in England and Wales on 27th May, 196, and that one was
sent to hospital authorities in Scotland on 18th August, 196.
Report of the Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin
Addiction (the "Rolleston Committee") 1926
   11. The main tasks of the Rolleston Committee, whose advice we
were invited to review, were to advise on:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) the circumstances, if any, in which the supply of morphine and
heroin, and preparations containing these substances, to persons
addicted to those drugs might be regarded as medically advisable;
   (b) the precautions which medical practitioners administering or
prescribing morphine or heroin should adopt to avoid abuse and any
administrative measures that seemed expedient to secure observance of
those precautions.
<END INDENTATION>
   12. Through the system of records and inspection then in
operation cases were brought to the notice of the Home Office at that
time in which exceptionally large quantities of morphine and heroin
had been supplied to particular practitioners or prescribed for
individual cases. On further enquiry it was ascertained that
sometimes the doctor had ordered these drugs simply to satisfy the
craving of the addict; in some instances there was a doubt whether the
supply was for 6bona fide medical treatment; in other cases
the drugs had been prescribed in large quantities either to persons
previously unknown to the practitioner or to a patient receiving
supplies elsewhere; occasionally, large supplies had been used by
practitioners for self-administration.
   13. It appeared then that in some circumstances dangerous drugs
were being supplied in contravention of the intention of Parliament
that a doctor should be authorised to supply drugs only so far as was
necessary for the practice of his profession. Before deciding on
measures to secure proper observance of the law, it was felt necessary
to have some authoritative medical advice on various aspects of the
treatment of addiction, the use of dangerous drugs in medical
treatment, and the action which might be taken where a doctor appeared
to have misused his authority to possess and supply them.
   14. The Rolleston Committee's recommendations in 1926 on the
supply of morphine and heroin to addicts to these drugs and on the use
of drugs in treatment are discussed later in this Report. They have,
up to now, been included in the Memorandum on the Dangerous Drugs Act
and Regulations which is prepared by the Home Office for the
information of doctors and dentists.
   15. As a result of the Rolleston Committee's proposals for
administrative measures, amendments were made to the Dangerous Drugs
Regulations in 1926 to the following effect:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) Provision was made for the constitution of a tribunal to
which the Secretary of State could refer cases in which, in his
opinion, there was reason to think that a duly qualified practitioner
might be supplying, administering or prescribing drugs either for
himself or other persons otherwise than as required for purposes of
medical treatment.
   (=2) The Secretary of State was empowered, on the
recommendation of a tribunal, to withdraw a doctor's authority to
possess and supply dangerous drugs and to direct that such a doctor,
or a doctor convicted of an offence under the Act, should not issue
prescriptions for dangerous drugs.
   (=3) It was made clear that prescriptions should only be given
by a duly qualified medical practitioner when required for purposes of
medical treatment.
   (=4) It was made an offence for a person who was receiving
treatment from one doctor to obtain a supply of dangerous drugs from a
second doctor without disclosing that he was being supplied by the
first doctor.
   (=5) All doctors, dentists and veterinary surgeons were
required to keep appropriate records of all dangerous drugs obtained.
<END INDENTATION>
   With the exception of provisions relating to tribunals, which we
discuss later, all these amendments remain in the current regulations.
The changed situation
   16. In the thirty-four years since the Rolleston Committee
reported there have been developments in two directions which are of
interest to our own Committee. On the one hand pharmaceutical
research has produced a number of new analgesic drugs, many of which
are capable of producing addiction. Some of these have been derived
from opium and others have been produced synthetically. It is
possible that many more addiction-producing drugs will be produced. A
potent analgesic which is not addiction-producing has so far not been
forthcoming. We have had to direct our attention to the question
whether these drugs should be used with the same precautions and
subjected to the same control as the morphine and heroin considered by
the Rolleston Committee.
   17. The second development has been in the methods of treatment
of drug addiction. The withdrawal from addicts of the drug to which
they are addicted has been the subject of experiment in several
countries and particularly in the United States of America. These
experiments have included the substitution of newer addiction-producing
drugs and their subsequent gradual withdrawal, and also the
use of other new drugs, such as tranquillizers, for the alleviation of
the withdrawal symptoms. It has therefore been necessary to consider
whether there are still circumstances in which the continued
administration of dangerous drugs, even under the conditions strictly
defined by the Rolleston Committee, can be justified.
   18. We therefore had to consider:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) whether any new advice could be brought effectively to the
notice of doctors and dentists;
   (=2) whether the principles underlying the advice could be
emphasised clearly to avoid misinterpretation;
   (=3) whether any action was necessary to prevent the
unjustifiable prescribing of dangerous drugs by some doctors;
   (=4) whether there was any way of preventing the unjustified use
of dangerous drugs by any doctor for himself or for members of his
family;
   (=5) the suggestion made in certain international organizations
that Governments might set up special institutions for the treatment,
care and rehabilitation of addicts on a compulsory basis.
<END INDENTATION>
   19. In addition there has been an increase in the use by doctors
and by the general public of drugs liable to cause habituation.
Because they do not give rise to ill-effects substantially the same
as, or analogous to, those produced by morphine or cocaine they are
not within the scope of international agreements. We have considered
this development.
Definitions adopted
   2. From the outset we felt it necessary to have a clear and
consistent idea of the phenomena confronting us. We therefore adopted
the following definitions, realising that they are somewhat arbitrary
and may need to be revised in the light of increasing knowledge.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Drug Addiction is a state of periodic or chronic intoxication
produced by the repeated consumption of a drug (natural or synthetic);
its characteristics include:
   (1) an overpowering desire or need (compulsion) to continue taking
the drug and to obtain it by any means,
   (2) a tendency to increase the dose, though some patients may
remain indefinitely on a stationary dose,
   (3) a psychological and physical dependence on the effects of the
drug,
   (4) the appearance of a characteristic abstinence syndrome in a
subject from whom the drug is withdrawn,
   (5) an effect detrimental to the individual and to society.
   Drug Habituation (habit) is a condition resulting from the
repeated consumption of a drug.
# 24
<267 TEXT H3>
This arrangement has proved helpful, particularly when the teacher
of the class takes both sections.
   It is still all too common to find that two or more teachers have
to share the instruction of the same class. While the staffing
position may occasionally make this inevitable, it is rarely a
satisfactory measure and should be avoided wherever possible,
especially with first-year classes.
   Modern language specialists have as part of their training to
spend a considerable period in the country whose language they are
principally engaged in teaching. It is encouraging to note that a
commendable number of teachers continue to go abroad regularly in
order to further their own knowledge of the language and to maintain
contacts with the country. More teachers than formerly now complete
the requirements of residence abroad for a second or even a third
language; the recent reduction in the period of residence required of
honours graduates for recognition in a second language is undoubtedly
making this easier to accomplish.
   Foreign assistants (French, German, Swiss, Austrian, Spanish, and
Italian) are being employed in increasing numbers throughout the
country. This session there are in all 126 such assistants. Through
their own personal knowledge and experience these young assistants can
do much to bring to life the study of their home country and they can
give the pupils valuable practice in understanding and speaking the
foreign language. They are usually students, not trained teachers,
and consequently their work is most effective when they receive
adequate help and guidance from the regular teachers.
   A few exchanges have also been arranged between Scottish and
foreign practising teachers and have, on the whole, been very
successful.
Accommodation and Equipment
   Accommodation, although still restricted in some schools, has
mainly been adequate and with the building of new schools and the
modernization of others there has recently been a marked improvement
in teaching conditions throughout the country. The majority of
teachers now have a room of their own, in which they can- and
frequently do- develop an appropriate background as an aid to their
instruction by the use of wall pictures, posters, maps, models,
reference books, and the like. The number and variety of wall-maps
provided is, however, disappointing. The importance for the
development of good oral work of allocating to modern language
teachers rooms which are relatively free from outside noise and
disturbance has not always been sufficiently appreciated.
   Both the quality and the supply of text-books have improved
greatly of late. In particular, there has been a welcome increase in
the provision of supplementary reading material. The co-operation of
educational publishers in meeting the demand for more modern and more
attractive books is much appreciated. Library facilities in modern
languages vary greatly from school to school. In some schools only a
few dictionaries and reference books are available, while in others
there is an ample supply of suitable books. Particularly in some of
the new schools, a stock of attractive books likely to appeal to the
younger pupils has been built up in addition to the more usual works
for the older pupils. The use of dictionaries with simple definitions
in the foreign language seems to be growing and is to be recommended.
A number of schools now spend part of their library allocation on
subscriptions to worthwhile foreign magazines and have found that
these prove both useful and popular.
   Most secondary schools possess various teaching aids such as
wireless sets, record-players, tape-recorders, and film or film-strip
projectors. Many modern language teachers make occasional use of
these aids, but only a few use them systematically as an integral part
of their work.
Courses in Modern Languages
   Syllabuses for Certificate courses are at present being
re-organised because of the forthcoming introduction of the new
Ordinary grade of the Scottish Certificate of Education. Until now,
in far too many schools, there has been little differentiation between
the language courses planned for the ablest sections and those
followed by the other sections. Where a difference has been made, it
has often been no more than that the lowest sections in any given year
have been allowed to proceed at a rather slower speed but with no
modification of the content of the course or of the methods used. It
seems unlikely that schools will meantime make fundamental changes in
the modern language syllabuses designed for their ablest pupils, but
already more courses are being planned specifically to meet the needs
of those pupils who, at least in the first instance, are unlikely to
pursue the study of a language to the highest level. This
diversification of syllabuses is welcome. It can be carried out all
the more easily now that few schools set a common examination for all
the classes in each year and there is in consequence no longer any
necessity for all groups to attempt to cover exactly the same work in
the same time. If more suitable courses are developed, it is to be
hoped that many of those pupils who at present are discouraged by
their inability to keep abreast of the work set may find it possible
to continue their language study with profit.
   In some junior secondary schools and departments the syllabus has
been essentially the same as if the pupils were to become candidates
for the Scottish Leaving Certificate examination and it has proved
much too difficult for the pupils concerned. In a number of others,
however, there has been an encouraging effort to develop
non-examination courses which would be more in keeping with the needs
and interests of the pupils. Much has been done to awaken interest in
the foreign country. The approach to the language itself has been
lively, good use being made of activity methods and of whatever
ancillary aids were available. The main emphasis has been placed on
learning to understand the spoken and written language and to speak it
simply but naturally. The results in classes following such courses
suggest that further experiment along these and similar lines would
prove rewarding. It is possible that some of the pupils in these
classes may continue at school and sit the Ordinary grade of the
Scottish Certificate of Education. The type of course they have been
following should form a sound basis for Ordinary grade studies
provided the pupils have the necessary linguistic ability to proceed
to the examination.
The Work of the Schools
   If one considers as a whole the work done in modern languages
in Scottish schools during the last few years, there is no doubt that
the most significant advance has been in the field of understanding by
ear and speaking the foreign language. This does not mean that there
is no room for further improvement, but certainly much has already
been accomplished. The progress in this aspect of language learning
is most noticeable in the ready understanding and willing response of
pupils in the early years of both junior and senior secondary schools
and again in the fluency and confidence with which some of the pupils
from the highest classes express themselves when they go abroad and in
their general ability to profit from these visits. On the other hand,
the most disappointing part of the course in a considerable number of
schools is the period preceding the Scottish Leaving Certificate
examination. This is probably due to two factors. In the first
place, many pupils have initially been pushed on too rapidly, with the
result that much of the basic work has not been adequately
consolidated and the weaknesses become more evident as the course
proceeds. In the second place, many teachers are not convinced that
the methods they have been using in the early years can lead to good
examination results, and they therefore discard them in favour of more
traditional methods. In consequence of this abrupt change, much of
the valuable work done in the first two years is lost and the results
obtained are generally far from commensurate with the effort expended
by both teachers and pupils. This is fortunately not true of all
schools. Where there has been adequate consolidation and development
of the work has been uninterrupted throughout the course, the pupils
have shown that the examination is well within their reach and have in
addition usually developed a genuine interest in both the language and
the country.
   In order to give a more detailed appraisal of the work done in
modern language courses, it is convenient to consider separately the
different facets of language study. Nevertheless it must be
emphasized that, if language teaching is to be successful, there can
be no question of dividing up the work into rigid compartments. It is
essential that all activities should be closely integrated so that the
language always remains a living entity.
   As has already been indicated, there have been significant
advances in the oral and aural aspects of language teaching in
the early years of the course. The initial training in pronunciation
is usually carefully given and practised. Syllabification and the
typical intonation of the foreign language, however, are rarely taught
with equal thoroughness, so that what is said often sounds less
convincing than it otherwise would. Instruction in many schools is,
in the early stages, based on the regular use of the spoken language
in class and on oral practice of common vocabulary and speech
patterns. By the end of the second year, pupils in these schools show
a pleasing ability to understand the spoken language and some
confidence in speaking it within the limits of their naturally
restricted vocabulary. These results are all the more praiseworthy
because it is in these early years that the teachers frequently have
to contend with very large numbers of pupils in each class.
   In the later years the pupils continue to develop their
understanding of the spoken language and seem to find this one of the
most enjoyable parts of their language work. Sometimes too much time
is spent on aural comprehension as a separate activity, but more and
more teachers are discarding this practice since they have realized
that, if they regularly use the spoken language in class and
occasionally read aloud a short passage from the reading book or some
other text, they do not require to devote much time to formal tests of
aural comprehension. Practice in listening to new voices is given in
a considerable number of schools by the use of broadcast lessons and
with the help of the foreign assistant. These lessons are most
effective if they are not isolated from the rest of the work but are
followed up in later lessons, and used, for example, as a basis for
conversation, vocabulary work, or free composition.
   The initial oral training is too rarely continued and developed
in the later stages and many pupils do not progress beyond the
standard of speech they had reached by the end of the second year.
Many teachers feel that they cannot afford the time necessary for the
development of oral work, but in most cases it is not additional time
which is required so much as more systematic and purposeful training
in the correct use of more difficult speech forms. For example, the
time which is so often spent on cursory and frequently inaccurate oral
reading of long passages could be better applied to developing the
pupils' command of the spoken language and to bringing into regular
use some of the new structures and vocabulary that occur in the
various texts studied. Such oral practice serves to promote oral
fluency and accuracy and at the same time it paves the way for a
corresponding development of written work. Not only is bright,
vigorous oral teaching beneficial in widening the knowledge of the
language, but it also has a most stimulating effect on the pupils'
morale and willingness to learn.
   One other aspect of oral work- the memorization and speaking of
prose and verse- tends to be considered by many teachers as quite
extraneous to the normal class work. Some teachers, however, are
making good use in the earlier years of the learning by heart of
short, carefully chosen passages from the course-book or the reader or
of short dramatic scenes as a means of consolidating new points of
grammar, of increasing vocabulary, and of encouraging correctness and
fluency of speech.
# 246
<268 TEXT H4>
Nevertheless, average net family income was appreciably higher in
families with several children than in those with only one, many of
which were incomplete families of younger parents with lower earnings,
and of course with lower tax reliefs and no family allowances. The
rise in net family incomes between 1954 and 1959 was greatest for
childless couples, especially older couples (probably because of the
increase in retirement pensions), and somewhat greater in small than
in large families.
Expenditure and Consumption
   69. Table 24 gives indices of domestic food expenditure per
head and quantities purchased by older and younger couples and
families with different numbers of children, with 1954 as the base
year. The quantity index was calculated by dividing the expenditure
index by a price index of the "Fisher Ideal" type, constructed for
each group separately. The quantity index is thus confined to food
purchases and takes no account of changes in free supplies. Compared
with 1958, the expenditure index for 1959 showed increases of 4 to 6
per cent for couples without children and those with one child, and
much smaller changes for couples with several children. The quantity
index, which has risen only slowly since 1956, was almost unchanged in
1959 for couples with two or more children, but rose by 3 per cent in
the older two-adult households and by 1-2 per cent for younger
childless couples and couples with one child.
<TABLE>
   7. Table 27 gives the total domestic food expenditure and
value of consumption per person per week in 1959 in households of
different composition. Percentage standard errors of these estimates
are given in Table 1 of Appendix A. All types of household spent
more than in the previous year except families with three children,
whose expenditure had risen sharply in 1958. The increases ranged
from 2s. 7d. per person per week in the residual group of
households with adolescents but no children and 1s. 8d. in older
two-adult households to 4d. in the families with two and with four
or more children. The value of free food was greatest (1s. 2d. to
1s. 4d. per person per week) in the five types of household
containing no children, and varied between 9d. and 11d. in
households with children, except in the largest families for which the
average was only 5d., as in 1958. In families with three children,
the slight fall in expenditure was made good by an increase in the
value of free food. The value of consumption per person per week in
1959 ranged from 41s. 7d. for younger childless couples to 19s.
5d. in families with four or more children; in 1958 the range was
from 4s. 3d. to 19s. 1d.
   71. Table 27 includes an index comparing the "price of
energy" for the various types of household with that for all
households in the sample. As in 1958, younger couples paid some 12
1/2 per cent more per calorie than the national average, and families
with four or more children 19 per cent less. The only substantial
change was in families with three children, for whom the index
declined from 91 to 88. Table 27 also shows the corresponding values
of an index which compares the prices paid by different types of
household for the commodities constituting the average household diet
in 1959. For all foods the range was from 3.6 per cent above the
national average in younger two-adult households to 4.8 per cent below
in families with four or more children, compared with +3.6 to -5.4 per
cent in 1958 and +2.8 to -2.6 per cent in 1957. As with the price of
energy index, the only noteworthy change was for households with three
children, in which the index fell by 1.8 to 97.5 per cent of the
average for all households in the sample. The price ranges for milk,
cheese, sugar, bread and flour were very narrow. For most other foods
younger childless couples paid the highest average prices and large
families the lowest, the price gradients being steepest for carcase
meat (+7 to -7 per cent), "other" fish (+8 to -11), "other"
vegetables (+9 to -9) and beverages other than tea (+12 to -16).
   72. Details of expenditure and consumption per head are given
in Tables 28 and 29. Most groups obtained slightly less liquid milk
than in 1958, the greatest decrease (from 5.24 to 5.8 pints per head
per week) occurring in younger two-adult households. Table 25
summarizes the changes in consumption of liquid milk (including
welfare and school milk) between 1954 and 1959 by this group and by
classified households containing children or adolescents. Consumption
by younger childless couples declined throughout this period, but that
of the smaller families was maintained except for the slight fall in
1959. In the largest families, particularly those containing four or
more children, there was a tendency for consumption to increase
between 1955 and 1957, and thereafter to decline. Graduated scales of
family allowances were introduced in October 1956, and the welfare
milk subsidy was reduced in April 1957. Despite appreciably higher
average prices for natural cheese in 1959 than in the previous year,
consumption fell only slightly in most groups; the decrease was
greatest (from 3.68 oz. to 3.2 oz. per head per week) for younger
childless couples, who transferred much of their demand to cheaper
varieties.
<TABLE>
   73. All groups, except families containing three or more
children, increased their expenditure on meat, but total consumption
was much the same as in 1958, although there was some replacement of
beef (which continued to be in short supply) by mutton and lamb. All
groups spent more on fish, and most increased their consumption,
particularly of canned fish. Eggs were cheaper than in the previous
year and consumption increased in nearly all groups despite fewer free
supplies.
   74. All types of household substituted margarine for butter
in 1959 because of higher butter prices, but all except the largest
families continued to buy more butter than margarine. Total
consumption of butter and margarine declined only in households
containing children. The displacement of margarine by butter in 1958,
when butter was exceptionally cheap, appears to have had some lasting
effect; the average price of butter in 1959 was higher than in 1957,
yet butter purchases in 1959, although smaller than in 1958, were
greater than in 1957 except in families with four or more children or
with adolescents but no children.
   75. The smaller families and the residual groups of
households containing children reduced their consumption of sugar and
of preserves, but in all other types of household a decline in
purchases of the one was accompanied by an increase in consumption of
the other.
   76. Most groups spent slightly less on potatoes than in the
previous year, but consumption was maintained except in families with
more than one child and in the unclassified households with children
or adolescents. All groups except families with four or more children
or with adolescents but no children consumed more fresh green
vegetables, especially in the first half of the year, although most
reduced their consumption of other vegetables. Purchases of
quick-frozen peas and beans generally increased, but extremely wide
group differences persisted, the averages ranging from .1 oz. per
head per week in families with four or more children to .9 oz. per
head in younger two-adult households; average consumption by older
couples and other wholly-adult households was .5 oz. per head per
week. The two latter groups consumed much smaller quantities per head
of canned vegetables and canned and bottled tomatoes than any other
group, and much smaller quantities of canned and bottled fruit than
younger childless couples; in households containing children,
consumption of canned fruit fell off sharply with increasing family
size, but there was no regular gradation in purchases of canned
vegetables and canned tomatoes. All types of household benefited from
the improved supplies and lower prices of fresh fruit compared with
1958, but the increase in consumption was least in families containing
children.
   77. Total bread consumption was virtually unchanged, although
most types of household bought less white bread and more rolls and
speciality breads than in 1958. Most groups increased their purchases
of puddings, cakes and biscuits, but obtained less flour.
   78. Regression estimates of the expenditure on different
commodities attributable to the adult couple and each additional child
in a selected group of households consisting of childless couples
(both under 55) and couples with different numbers of children were
given for 1952-56 in Table 39 of the Annual Report for 1956. The
younger childless couples are broadly comparable in age and family
income with the family households, so that differences in food
expenditure may be associated with the presence of children. The
analysis has been repeated for 1957, 1958 and 1959, but the results
will not be given 6in extenso. Household food expenditure in
1959 averaged 8s. 9d. for younger couples and 92s. 1d.,
12s. d., 111s. 9d., and 126s. 3d. for two-adult
households containing respectively one, two, three and four or more
(average 4.64) children under 15. From a straight regression line
fitted to these averages, the basic element in household food
expenditure associated with the adult couple is estimated at 81s.
11d. and the average increment for each additional child as 9s.
11d. Table 26 gives similar regression estimates for previous
years. The effects of price rises are roughly eliminated by
expressing the average expenditure associated with a child as a
percentage of that associated with an adult couple. The relative
expenditure per child declined from 1952 to 1956, but rose in 1957
when the subsidy on welfare and national dried milk was reduced; since
1957 it has again declined. Most of the average expenditure
associated with a child was on cereal foods, potatoes and milk; for
fresh green vegetables, fruit, cheese, fish and carcase meat, the
incremental expenditure was slight.
<TABLE>
Energy Value and Nutrient Content
   79. Table 3 shows the energy value and nutrient content of the
diets of households of different composition. The averages showed
little change compared with those for the previous year, except for
generally increased intakes of vitamins C and D. Since physiological
requirements vary widely with age, sex and level of activity,
comparisons between families of different composition are only
apposite when considered in relation to needs.
   8. Estimates of the adequacy of the diets, assessed by
comparison with allowances based on the recommendations of the British
Medical Association, are also shown in Table 3. In comparison with
the previous year, changes were small except for higher estimates for
vitamin C. In families with four or more children the levels of
adequacy for all nutrients other than vitamin C decreased slightly.
For this fairly small group, comparisons between different years
cannot be made so precisely as in groups with a defined number of
children. In 1959 the households in this group contained slightly
more children (average 4.64) than in the previous year (average 4.53).
Their total food expenditure increased less than that in other
groups, and they purchased more of certain foods such as fish,
poultry, eggs, canned vegetables, fresh fruit, chocolate biscuits and
breakfast cereals which, in general, are more expensive sources of
nutrients than those foods of which they purchased less, namely dried
milk, potatoes, carcase meat, sugar, bread, flour and oatmeal and oat
products.
   81. In all these estimates of adequacy, the conventional
allowance of 1 per cent has been made for wastage of edible food.
The limitations of the use of arbitrary wastage factors, regardless
of family size or circumstances, were pointed out, and the effect of
the use of graduated wastage factors examined in the Annual Report for
1956. As in previous years, the percentages in Table 3 for all
nutrients decreased with increasing family size. The lowest estimates
were for protein and calcium in families with four or more children
(82 and 81 per cent respectively). During the ten years from 195 to
1959 there were downward trends in the percentages for protein and
calcium for all types of family and for all households, the steepest
(from 94 to 82 per cent for protein and, from 92 to 81 per cent for
calcium) occurring for the families with four or more children;
another considerable fall was from 91 to 83 per cent for protein in
families with adolescents and children.
# 253
<269 TEXT H5>
The war damage may, however, be made good by works which include
alterations and additions. It is a feature of the system that no cost
of works payment is made until the work has been carried out, although
instalments can be paid by arrangement in large projects as the work
proceeds. The intention behind the legislation was to insure that the
money should be used for reinstatement wherever it was possible and
economic to do so and should be paid no sooner and no later than was
necessary for this purpose.
   4. If the war damage is not made good a value payment under
Section 13 of the 1943 Act (conveniently known as a "converted value
payment") may be paid. This payment is equal to the amount of the
difference between the March 1939 values of the property before damage
and after damage, taking account in the value after damage of the
value of any repairs for which the Commission have already made cost
of works payments. This basic value payment is increased (in current
jargon, "escalated") by forty-five or sixty per cent. and
interest at two and a half per cent. 6per annum from the date of
damage is added to the value payment as escalated. This escalation
was authorised by the War Damage (Increase of Value Payments) Order
1947 (S.R.&O., No. 39). In their exercise of the discretion
given by the Order to the Commission to pay up to sixty per cent.,
the Commission pay the higher percentage where the owner is prevented
by planning considerations from making good the damage or where he
redevelops the site in a form which cannot be accepted as making good
with alterations and additions and so cannot be the subject of a cost
of works payment.
   5. Other forms of war damage payment made by the Commission are
highway payments, clearance payments (for clearing remains of
structures from "total loss" sites) and church payments. Although
differing in certain important ways from the ordinary cost of works
payments, the sums paid under these heads have the common feature that
they are all payments in respect of works which have been carried out.
   6. The Commission received notifications that war damage had been
sustained in respect of over three and a half million properties.
They have paid over four million claims for the cost of making good
war damage (in many cases more than one claim is necessary because
reinstatement is not wholly carried out in one operation). The total
so far for cost of works and the analogous payments is a little over
+1, million and the total for value payments (of which there were
about 18,) is a little over +25 million. As against this about
+2 million was collected by the Inland Revenue Department in the
period 1941-46 in the form of statutory "contributions" under the
War Damage Act from property owners. The total amount paid out by the
Commission in each of the last five years is as follows:
<TABLE>
The largest amount paid out in any one year was +22 million in the
year to 31st March, 1948.
Outstanding liability to make payments
   7. Under the present system it must be left to owners of
properties for which cost of works payments are appropriate to carry
out the repairs or rebuilding when they wish to do so and make their
claims thereafter. It has not been possible to make any accurate or
exhaustive record of the extent of the work which still remains to be
done at any particular date. There is a vast volume of files far too
large for examination by a normal sized staff and in any case owners
were not at the time of notifying damage required (indeed, would not
have been able) to give details of the repairs that would ultimately
be necessary. There is at present no power to compel owners to carry
out the work; nor would the Commission's records enable them to
identify the properties still in need of repair or rebuilding even if
they had the power to hasten the work. The actual direction and
execution of the work are matters for the owner and his advisers and
contractors. The Commission's statutory duty is to reimburse the cost
incurred, so far as reasonable, and they are not a party to any of the
contracts for the repair of war damage. It is considered probable
that the cost of carrying out all the outstanding repairs would not
exceed +4 million but this is a rough estimate for which no exact
basis exists. The actual figure might be well above this or much
less. There are, however, good reasons for believing that there are
about 9 properties (including churches, town halls, factories,
etc.) in which the cost of the outstanding works may be expected to
exceed +5, (a few claims may exceed this amount by a very large
sum) and that the total for those properties alone may amount to some
+15 million.
   8. The reasons given by owners for their failure or inability to
carry out reinstatement are various. Uncertainty about development
plans and the intentions of local authorities with regard to
acquisition is a major cause; and in some large organisations,
particularly among local authorities, there has been a degree of
hesitancy about the general reinstatement policy that has delayed
considerably the making good of war damage. Some owners say they have
no money for the ordinary maintenance work which would have to be
carried out along with the war damage repairs. Where properties are
held on lease with a relatively short term unexpired the repairs have
in some cases been deferred because the lessee did not wish to carry
out the works. Illness, old age or a general reluctance to having
workmen on the premises has prevented a minority of householders from
completing repairs. Whatever the reasons for delay in claiming, the
Government are anxious to ensure that all who have an entitlement
should be given every reasonable opportunity to secure it, and, if
there is to be a closing down, they are determined that no one shall
be able to complain of any lack of notice. Indeed, one of the prime
purposes of this White Paper is to draw the attention of all
interested persons, whether private owners, church authorities, local
government officers or company officials responsible for the
management of property, and of professional advisors in general to the
need for making immediate arrangements for negotiation with the War
Damage Commission about the extent of the damage, with a view to
putting the outstanding war damage repairs in hand as soon as possible
or, where the repairs are not to be carried out, claiming a converted
value payment.
   9. In addition to the payments system for land and buildings
described above the War Damage Act, 1943, provided in Part =2 for two
insurance schemes administered by the Board of Trade:-
   (a) A business chattels scheme to cover plant and machinery; and
   (b) A private chattels scheme to cover household and commercial
chattels.
   Payments were on an insured value basis and were not related to
replacement costs. Under (a) about +77 million was collected in
premiums and +93 million has been paid out in claims; under (b)
about +16 million was collected in premiums and +116 million has
been paid out in claims. Every householder was entitled to a certain
amount of free cover (for example up to +35 for a married man with
two children) and it is estimated that if the effect of this is
allowed for the claim payments would be more in line with the premiums
collected. In addition to the actual amounts paid on losses accrued
interest at two and a half per cent. paid to claimants on the
amounts due under both schemes has accounted for about +21 million to
date. The date for final payments under the private chattels scheme
was fixed at 14th July, 1947, and under the business chattels scheme
at 1st October, 1953, but a certain number of claims remain unpaid
(for example because the claimant could not be traced) and are thought
to amount to about +1,12, plus accrued interest at two and a half
per cent.
Government Proposal to make a Final Settlement
   1. The justification for the winding-up of the system at this
date and the abolition of the War Damage Commission is self-evident.
It becomes increasingly difficult, year by year, to distinguish
between genuine war damage and ordinary dilapidation through lack of
maintenance. It probably comes as a surprise to many people to know
that the War Damage Commission is still in existence, that payments
are still being made and, even to those who are aware that the system
lingers on, to know what the possible total of outstanding liability
is. The Government's view is that after the passage of sixteen years
since the end of the war it would be fair to require owners to begin
the outstanding repairs at once and if for any reason they are unable
to do so to give them the same payment (a converted value payment,
that is) as has already been given to the many owners who applied for
such a payment and satisfied the Commission that for one reason or
another they were unable or unwilling to make good the war damage.
The Act of 1943 long ago substantially achieved its original
objective of getting owners to reinstate their damaged properties
expeditiously and without the risk of the inflation which the issue on
a grand scale of cash payments for the properties which were not total
losses would have caused. The time has now come to get the remaining
work done quickly or to give owners a payment to encourage them
instead to make a different and perhaps better use of their property.
The Main Provisions of a Closure Operation
   11. It is considered essential that the winding up should be
done in two stages with two statutory time limits:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) A registration date for giving notice of an intended claim
for payment and of outstanding war damage, after which date no notice
of claim in respect of any additional works will be admitted. This
provision is designed to stimulate owners to take action, to put a
barrier to the flow of claims which might otherwise trickle on almost
indefinitely, and to inform the Commission of the approximate total
liability which remains to be met. (2) A closing date for executing
any "registered" war repairs which owners are willing and able to
carry out at once, for the negotiation and payment of the resulting
claims and for the negotiation and payment of converted value payments
where there is no intention or prospect of the work being carried out
during the post-registration statutory period.
<END INDENTATION>
   In short, the most practical and fair method is to eliminate all
future claims after due notice by providing for registration,
including registration of work already in hand, and then allow a
further limited period for the orderly disposal of the registered
works in consultation with the Commission.
   12. Except so far as modifications are necessitated by the
closure, the existing principles and structure of the War Damage Act,
1943, will be preserved. The comparative absence of criticism during
the past 2 years testifies to the aptness of the original provisions
and to the good quality of the administration. The advantages of
continuity, when it does not conflict with the main purpose, cannot be
over-estimated. Administration on well established and
uncontroversial lines for the benefit of owners and professional men
who have come to expect and accept certain procedures will undoubtedly
help to effect a smooth running-down of the machine, a running-down
which has in fact been in progress for some time, but which must now
be given the promise of finality.
   13. The following paragraphs contain a brief account of the
measures proposed to effect a winding-up of the system by means of an
amendment of the War Damage Act, 1943. These measures were
foreshadowed in the statement by its Financial Secretary to the
Treasury quoted at the beginning of this paper.
# 221
<27 TEXT H6>
DANGEROUS OCCURRENCES
   To provide fuller information about certain types of dangerous
occurrence, Section 65 of the Factories Act, 1937, requires
notification of certain specified occurrences to H.M. District
Inspectors of Factories, whether or not they result in injury.
Appendix =2 gives figures of dangerous occurrences reported in
196; the types of occurrence which have to be reported are set out in
the heading to the Appendix.
   The total number of dangerous occurrences reported during the
year was 1,49, an increase of 111 over the total for 1959. However,
the number of notifiable accidents associated with occurrences fell
from 252 (31 of them fatal) in 1959 to 245 (22 fatal) in 196.
   The main increase in the numbers of occurrences reported occurred
in the category of those due to the collapse or failure of a crane,
derrick, winch or hoist, where there was an increase of almost
one-third from 335 to 438. This increase was common to factories,
docks, and building operations.
INDUSTRIAL HEALTH
   An analysis of cases of industrial disease or poisoning
notifiable under Section 66 of the Factories Act, 1937, or under
Section 3 of the Lead Paint (Protection Against Poisoning Act), 1926,
together with comparable figures for earlier years, is given in
Appendix =21. The total number of cases notified during the year was
569, compared with 532 in 1959; the number of deaths remains unchanged
at 1. Cases of chrome ulceration increased from 192 to 298, but
reportable cases of epitheliomatous ulceration decreased from 226
(nine of them fatal) in 1959 to 173 (six fatal) in 196. The total of
19 cases of this disease due to mineral oil is the smallest number in
that category for the last 1 years.
   Appendix =22 records the number of accidents involving gassing
in 196, together with the figures for previous years. Both the total
number of accidents (222) and the number of deaths (2) were greater
than in the previous two years.
   Those of the above accidents which involve special circumstances
or matters of particular medical interest are discussed in greater
detail in the Industrial Health Report for 196.
   Appendix =23 records the numbers of statutory examinations
carried out by Appointed Factory Doctors under the Factories Acts
special regulations, and the numbers and circumstances of voluntary
medical examinations. Appendices =24 and =25 set out the number of
statutory examinations of young persons for certificates of fitness
carried out by Appointed Factory Doctors, together with the causes of
rejection. These examinations numbered 5,984 in 196, an increase
of 21,962 on the previous year. There were 283,96 examinations of
male young persons (an increase of 19,76) and 217,78 examinations of
female young persons (an increase of 2,256). For all causes,
rejections among male young persons numbered 468, and among female
young persons 1,8, an increase of 19 and a decrease of 89
respectively over the previous year's figures.
CHAPTER =2
Review of the Year
   This record of some of the more prominent features of the
year's activities and developments in the field of safety, health and
welfare is presented in four sections. The first records some of the
more important industrial developments affecting the safety, health
and welfare of factory workers which come <SIC> to the notice of
H.M. Inspectorate of Factories during 196. This is followed by
a brief reference to the activities of international, industrial and
voluntary organisations in this field. A section on fire refers to
the arrangements made to implement the new provisions of the Factories
Act, 1959. The chapter concludes with a summary of relevant
legislation passed during the year.
=1. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENTS
A. ELECTRICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Electricity Supply- General Developments
   The demand for electricity continues to double every 1 years.
Such a rate of growth demands the addition of large quantities of new
plant annually and, in order to save expense and space, a great
increase in the size of individual units: generating sets of up to 55
MW and transmission systems to operate at 5 KV are now being
designed.
   The speed of technical progress leaves designers with less
opportunity to modify designs on the basis of working experience; the
more exacting planning requirements are being met by the increased use
of computers and other aids. Automatic torque angle control has been
introduced on the new large generators, whose safe operation at the
extreme limit of stability would be beyond the capacity of the human
operator. Difficult problems of protection under fault conditions
have also to be tackled by Area and Distribution engineers as a result
of the heavy concentration of power at sub-stations.
Problems Involved in the Operation of Steam Turbo-Generators
   In order to provide continuity of electricity supply from large
turbo-generators running in parallel, designers and operating
engineers must understand both the balance between steam utilisation
and electrical output and the influence of the connected electrical
system upon the running speed and operational stability of the
generator.
   On several occasions this balance has been seriously disturbed,
e.g., by the failure of the turbine governor gear immediately to
reduce steam supply to compensate for a sudden loss in electrical
load. Consequently speed has risen rapidly beyond the designed
maximum, even with a centrifugal governor operating the steam through
an oil hydraulic system and backed by an emergency governor.
Centrifugal forces are capable of causing the turbine to disintegrate
with serious damage to buildings and even loss of life.
   Research and development have been undertaken to reduce these
hazards, which can be expected to become more serious as
turbo-generators increase in power. Modern turbines are provided with
anticipatory gear to detect and to correct instantly any violent rise
in speed as with means of testing and checking the freedom of movement
of the governor mechanism without taking the machine off load. In the
unit system, where boiler, turbine and ancillary plant are integrated,
controls are located in a single operations room under the supervision
of a co-ordinated team. Instruments, controls and alarms are so
grouped that quick reference can be made to both steam and electrical
conditions. Wherever possible the principles of
"failure-to-safety" or "back-up protection" have been
incorporated in the design.
Developments in Electronic Engineering
   Some of the more outstanding recent advances have been in the
field of semi-conductor engineering. The advantages of
semi-conductors are absence of moving parts, an indefinitely long life
without maintenance and extreme versatility of function- including
measurement, amplification, instrumentation, control, rectification,
inversion and switching. Generally these devices tend to promote
safety by their innate characteristics and reliability; they also
enable many new safety devices to be designed; electromagnetic relays
with mercury-wetted contacts are now available with a life-expectancy
of hundreds of millions of contact operations and at the same time the
robustness and reliability of electronic valves have been greatly
improved.
   Progress in "miniaturisation", also partly dependent upon
semi-conductor techniques, can be expected to contribute to industrial
safety in due course and eventually to make possible the construction
of self-adjusting- monitoring- correcting and maintaining mechanisms
of unprecedented reliability.
The Use of Electricity on Constructional Sites
   In 196 approximately one-eighth of all electrical accidents,
including one-third of the fatalities, occurred on building and
constructional engineering sites covered by the Factories Acts. The
largest group of these was caused by portable electrical apparatus and
its associated flexible cables and accessories, the next largest group
was caused by other types of wiring. Interesting developments are
taking place on some of these sites with a view to reducing the risk
of electrical accident, e.g.:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) In the construction of multi-storey buildings, rising
mains at 415/24-V are installed in the form of cable so situated as
to be protected against casual damage and 24-V single-phase
supplies are tapped successively on to the various floors. This is
economical and ensures that not more than one phase is available on
any one floor during the work. Local voltage reduction by
single-phase transformers on each floor is then installed for the
period of the job.
   (=2) An alternative arrangement is to follow up the building
work from floor to floor with a supply of carcase wiring sufficient
for the operations, thus reducing to a minimum the amount of flexible
and temporary wiring. Voltage reduction is then used on each floor.
   (=3) With transportable machines which are too large for single
phase-motor drives, the practice of using three-phase motors with
voltage reduction is growing. A transformer with a secondary output
at 11-V, three-phase with earthed neutral point gives a voltage to
earth of approximately 64-V, a value likely to be safe in all but
the most exceptional circumstances.
   (=4) A common system of festoon wiring found in use in lighting
the work required the piercing of cable by sharp contacts at points
where it was necessary to instal <SIC> lampholders. The risks of
shock from leakage and pierced insulation made this wiring unsuitable
for construction work. It is a most welcome development that makers
are now producing an improved form with the lampholders moulded to the
cable at such intervals as the purchaser may require.
<END INDENTATION>
Prevention of Accidents at Overhead Electric Lines
   The problem of accidents from contact with overhead lines
remains serious; 17 such accidents have occurred in factories since
1954, of which 44 have been fatal. While there has been some
improvement in accidents from contact by cranes or similar machines
the number caused by direct contact with lines- 2, including six
fatal ones in 196- has reached a level that gives cause for concern.
   Attempts are being made to develop equipment to fix on the crane
which might reduce the risk of shock from contact with the line. The
equipment takes two forms- an insulating guard on the jib of the
crane, intended to prevent direct contact with the line, and
electronic equipment with a sensitive probe mounted slightly forward
of the head of the jib and with electronic assembly and warning
apparatus in the driver's cab. Improved designs of both forms are
being tried out at present.
   There is, however, a danger that workers will rely too much on
fixed devices because they fail to recognise their limitations. It is
therefore safer both in principle and practice to keep the worker
away from overhead lines wherever possible, e.g., by
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) re-routing the line,
   (=2) putting the supply underground,
   (=3) making the line dead (after consultation with the supply
authority),
   (=4) providing barriers at a safe distance to prevent vehicles
from approaching the line, or height gauges or "goal posts" at
points where vehicles must pass below the line,
   (=5) providing look-out men or banksmen.
<END INDENTATION>
   It is also important to remember that on lines carrying the
higher voltages flashover from the line may take place without actual
contact.
B. ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENTS
Leather Industry- Leather Rolls
   A new type of machine has recently been developed for the
automatic rolling of sole leather bends. The sheet of leather is
placed on a sliding feed tray outside the danger zone and is then
pushed forward between two platens, the upper one carrying a set of
small rollers. The lower platen, which supports the leather, is
raised hydraulically to bring it into contact with the rollers on the
upper platen, which is then caused to make several horizontal
oscillations so that the leather is rolled and pressed at the same
time. The danger zone between the platens is fenced by a guard which
is interlocked with the hydraulic valve and the press is also
sequentially operated: the closing of the shutter starts the machine,
the rest of the cycle following automatically.
Brickmaking Machinery- New Sanding Method
   A new method of applying sand to the faces of green bricks has
recently been developed. In the case of wire-cut bricks the column of
clay from the pug-mill is carried by a short length of belt conveyor
to the sanding plant. This consists basically of a vibrating hopper
from which the sand is distributed to all four faces by a system of
slots, scrapers and worms. The conveyor is broken at this point to
enable the sand to be applied to the under surface of the column,
which passes on through two pairs of vibrating rollers which embed the
sand firmly in the surfaces and is finally cut into bricks at the wire
cutting table.
# 232
<271 TEXT H7>
Of over 7,, square feet of factory space built by the
development corporations, about 2 per cent represents extensions
built after the firms had become established.
   It is the policy of the corporations to charge full rack-rents or
ground rents for their factories or industrial sites; and rents vary
considerably according to the demand for factory accommodation. The
average gross return on established industrial estates ranges from 7
to 9 per cent of the capital expenditure on land, site works and
buildings.
   Manufacturing industry affords employment to large numbers of
non-manual as well as manual workers. An analysis made by Crawley
Development Corporation in 1958, after collating replies from
fifty-eight manufacturing firms employing over nine thousand staff,
showed that 5 per cent of the staff were classed as managerial and
administrative, 11 per cent as technical or employed in research and
19 per cent as clerical. There is no reason to suppose that this
pattern is peculiar to Crawley.
   The development corporations have aimed at a varied pattern of
industry, offering a reasonable choice of employer as well as choice
of occupation for men, women and school-leavers, with due regard to
the industries already established in their towns. Inevitably
engineering, including the motor vehicle and aircraft industries,
predominates in all the London new towns since these are among the
industries which have expanded most during the last ten years in the
country generally. Of those at present employed in manufacturing
industry in the eight London new towns about 4 per cent are employed
in engineering and electrical goods manufacture- the proportion
employed in both these groups combined varies from about 3 per cent
in Welwyn to 85 per cent in Stevenage and 9 per cent in Hatfield.
These figures are much higher than the national averages, and may be
thought to indicate a lack of balance in some of the towns. On the
other hand these groups offer fairly varied opportunities of skilled
employment and are highly diversified as regards products, markets and
methods of manufacture. Consumer goods industries such as the
manufacture of food and drink, tobacco, clothing and footwear are
under-represented in the new towns generally though not in Basildon
and Welwyn.
   The following table indicates the size of the firms, some of them
occupying more than one factory, introduced or sponsored by
development corporations in the new towns:
<TABLE>
   The overall average for the factories sponsored by development
corporations is about 17 employees per firm, and the average for each
of the London new towns is roughly the same except at Hatfield, where
it is much lower, and Stevenage, where it is much higher. The
position at Stevenage is accounted for by the presence of one firm
with 3,7 employees and two others with over 1, employees. About
32 per cent of all the workers employed in factories sponsored by the
development corporations are employed by the eleven largest firms and
about 23 per cent by the next group of firms employing between five
hundred and one thousand workers.
   In factories sponsored by the London new town development
corporations the proportion of female employees, expressed as a
percentage of all employees, varies from 23 per cent in Welwyn Garden
City and 24 per cent in Hemel Hempstead to 35 per cent in Basildon and
55 per cent in Hatfield with an average of about 3 per cent- rather
less than in the country as a whole. The figures for Corby and
Peterlee (where the prime need so far has been to provide employment
for women and girls) are 82 per cent and 74 per cent respectively.
Shops
   Shopping provision in the new towns has generally been based on
an estimated need of about eight shops for every thousand people, this
being considered sufficient to allow for shoppers coming into the town
from surrounding areas. Distribution over the town as a whole varies,
the smaller towns tending to rely mainly on the town centres with a
few "pantry" shops in the neighbourhoods and the larger ones
providing neighbourhood centres of up to thirty or more shops at the
heart of the residential areas, as well as small sub-centres in
outlying districts.
   Some development corporations have sought to attract private
investors by leasing part of the shopping area to companies
experienced in commercial development who have undertaken the building
and letting of the shops. But corporations have generally found it
more satisfactory to build themselves, leasing the shops direct to
traders, with breaks in the lease to enable rents to be increased in
scale with the rising prosperity of the town. This control over
lettings also secures a balanced distribution of the type of shop, to
meet the convenience of shoppers, and a reasonable degree of economic
security for the individual shopkeeper.
   Timing has proved an important factor in the success of the
shops. Too many at the start may not provide a living for the
traders, but too few may result in failure to attract custom and the
habit of dependence on mobile shops, essential in the early stages,
may be slow to break if carried on too long. The establishment of
open markets in the town centres has helped to bring custom to the
shops and the initial fears of some of the shopkeepers that their
trade would suffer have proved unfounded. Shopping on two levels has
been introduced in a number of towns and has added to the interest of
the town centre. All types of trader have been encouraged, from the
large departmental store to the small shoe-mender, with banks
specially sited on corners or in separate courts to avoid breaking
into the shopping frontage.
   As in the case of factories and industrial sites, the
corporations' policy has been to charge full commercial rents for
their shops and shopping sites. The cost of town centre development
has been very high in some cases with large paved areas and pleasant
amenities and decorative features. The gross return on capital
expenditure on town and neighbourhood shopping centres ranges from 6
to 13 per cent. It is to their successful industrial and commercial
development that the corporations must look to recoup the high costs
of main sewerage and drainage, main roads and other special
development expenditure.
Service industry
   In the early stages of a new town most of the working
population are employed in manufacturing or basic industry. In the
London new towns it is estimated that between 6 per cent and 7 per
cent are so employed; in the provincial new towns the figure is
somewhat higher. Employment in services of one kind or another may be
expected to increase as the towns approach maturity: indeed, in the
country generally the proportion of people so employed is growing
steadily. These services develop at their own pace in response to
local demand, however, and little can be done to stimulate them.
Office employment
   In practice it has not proved possible as yet to attract "head
offices and administrative and research establishments including
sections of government departments and other public offices" on the
scale needed "to establish the character of the town from the outset
as one of diverse and balanced social composition" as recommended by
the Reith Committee. Except at Hemel Hempstead, large office
organisations have until quite recently shown little interest in the
new towns, probably because of the difficulty in the early years in
recruiting suitable staff, especially junior staff, locally. There is
evidence of greater interest today, with nearly half a million square
feet of office space under construction- almost as much as the total
area so far completed. This interest is likely to grow as employers
become aware of the advantages of setting up offices in towns with a
young and growing population and excellent schools and technical
colleges. Towards the end of the year the Minister wrote personally
to some two hundred chairmen of companies with large offices in
central London, drawing their attention to the opportunities offered
by the new towns.
   The development corporations have provided office accommodation
(in addition to that included in factory premises) in the form of
buildings specially designed to meet the needs of particular
organisations, and have also erected some buildings as a speculative
venture. Despite some misgivings, these have readily let on
satisfactory terms, including in many cases a break clause in the
lease allowing for a future increase in rent to reflect rising values
in the town. More modest premises are provided on the upper floors
over shops in some of the town centres for the small type of office
organisation.
Government departments
   Government departments with branches established or about to be
established in the new towns include Her Majesty's Stationery Office
at Basildon, the Meteorological Office at Bracknell, the Admiralty
(who have a research laboratory at Harlow), the General Post Office
and the Ministry of Transport at Hemel Hempstead and the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research at Stevenage. Local offices of the
Ministry of Labour, Ministry of National Insurance and Inland Revenue
are of course established or proposed in all the towns.
Youth employment
   Because of the abnormal age structure of the new town
populations the number of children reaching school-leaving age,
expressed as a percentage of the total population, has been and still
is below the national average. But whereas the national annual
average will settle down at something like 1.4 per cent after the
"bulge" has passed, in the new towns the percentage will generally
go on rising (in some towns into the middle seventies) reaching levels
of perhaps 2.3 per cent in some towns before it begins to decline.
During this period, when large numbers of school-leavers will be
looking for jobs, there will be relatively few retirements. For the
most part therefore local employment can be provided only by the
expansion of existing industry and the introduction of new factories,
laboratories and offices, and the expected but not easily stimulated
development of the service industries. Schemes for training young
people in industry and commerce will be particularly important in the
new towns.
Housing requirements of industry
   As the Reith Committee foresaw, "perfect synchronisation of
the movement of employing firms with the movement of employed people
is not practicable". For short periods over the years some of the
London new town corporations have been able to offer a house or a flat
at once to anyone eligible for one, but in the main house building has
lagged behind the demand. At the present time in most of the towns
the waiting period has tended to grow, partly because the buoyancy of
industry generates increasing demands, partly because in recent years
the pressure on the building industry, the shortage of bricks and
other materials, and the shortage of skilled labour, especially in the
finishing trades, has made it difficult for corporations to achieve
their full programme.
   It is believed that about 6 per cent of the employees of London
firms transferring their business to the new towns moved with them and
were thus eligible to rent a corporation house. Additional workers
are recruited through the industrial selection scheme by arrangement
with the Ministry of Labour. This scheme is designed to ensure that
vacancies in the London new towns which cannot be filled locally are
filled as far as possible from people on London housing lists, who
thus become entitled to rent a house in the new town. Londoners not
in housing need, but whose departure from London may be assumed to
release accommodation there, are recruited for jobs which cannot be
filled through the industrial selection scheme, and only as a last
resort are people from outside London allotted new town houses. As a
result, almost 8 per cent of the houses let by the development
corporations in the London new towns have gone to Londoners, about
half of whom are known to have been on local authority housing lists.
   Tables C, D and E of Appendix =16 give details of factories,
shops and offices completed and under construction at the end of the
year.
# 23
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   Apart from those in (e) above, acceptance of post-release
assistance by a prisoner in these groups is entirely voluntary; he may
not be recalled to prison or have any other sanction applied to him
for subsequent refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Council,
and no period of supervision can be laid down. We understand that the
addition of detention centre inmates to the above list is being
considered.
From the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies
   19. Any discharged prisoner may apply (without being required
to observe any statutory or other conditions) for post-release
assistance from the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies. In practice
most of those they help are persons who are not under the care of the
After Care Council. These are societies approved by the Secretary of
State under section 18(4) of the Prisons (Scotland) Act, 1952, and
formed, in the words of the Act, "for the purpose of finding
employment for discharged prisoners and enabling them by loans and
grants of money to live by honest labour". There are eight such
societies in Scotland, all but one of which carry out their after-care
functions through part-time agents. They receive from the state
grants equal to half their approved expenditure; for the rest of their
income they depend on voluntary contributions and interest from
investments. The societies have formed a national organisation, the
Scottish Association of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, which
acts as a co-ordinating body concerned primarily with policy and
national appeals. We shall discuss the place of these societies in a
modern scheme of after-care in our second report.
EXISTING PATTERN OF SELECTION FOR AFTER-CARE
   2. The aim of after-care is no doubt to protect society by
helping the offender to re-establish himself so that he does not fall
into crime again. It is, however, difficult to trace any guiding
principle in the existing pattern of selection as described in
paragraphs 17-18 above by which after-care is applied compulsorily, or
made available on a voluntary basis to certain categories of prisoner.
The arrangements would rather appear to have grown up piecemeal. The
periods for which prisoners receive after-care also do not appear to
be very effectively related to its objects. In general, the view
appears to have been taken that a person released on licence before
the end of his sentence should not be subject to supervision beyond
the date on which the sentence expires. This has the odd result that
the more remission a prisoner loses by misconduct, the shorter his
period on licence. That is to say, in cases where rehabilitation
might be expected to be particularly difficult the time available for
after-care is cut down. Apart from such special cases, it seems to us
that if the period of after-care is based arithmetically on the period
of sentence it is unlikely to bear much relation to the prisoner's
individual needs, to the time required for after-care to be effective,
or to the need of ensuring, in the public interest, that there may be
adequate opportunity given to the welfare staff to do what they can to
get the man to stand again on his own two feet. It will be very
seldom that permanent good can be done in this field under six months,
and for assistance to be withdrawn from a discharged person after,
perhaps, a matter of weeks, must all too often mean a sorry waste of
effort.
   21. We are therefore satisfied that a statutory period of
after-care must normally be one entirely independent of the particular
prisoner's period of remission as determined by his length of sentence
and his conduct in prison- good conduct while in custody does not
necessarily remove the need for supervision after release. It must in
our view be fixed solely with the effectiveness of after-care in view.
COMPULSORY OR VOLUNTARY AFTER-CARE
   22. There is, of course, an element of contradiction in the
idea of "compulsory after-care". No man can really be helped
against his will and a prisoner who resented the conditions attached
to after-care could effectively enough go through the motions of
co-operation without deriving any benefit. There is no doubt that
where after-care is at least voluntarily accepted, the chances of
success are significantly enhanced. We cannot be satisfied, however,
that the type of prisoner most in need of after-care would always
willingly ask for it. He might be motivated by misplaced pride, by
reluctance to appear to be currying favour "with the authorities",
or by a genuine inability to realise his own plight. Even of those
who might while in prison opt for voluntary after-care, a considerable
number, we have been assured, would on release find any kind of
supervision conditions irksome and would cease to co-operate. This
would involve great wastage of time and effort on the part of the
already burdened after-care personnel. We therefore conclude that any
effective system of after-care must depend on a statutory obligation
on the prisoner or inmate to accept help, the value of which, we feel
satisfied, will be fully explained to him by the staff of the prison
or institution before his release.
   23. Nevertheless, we do not consider that the work of the After
Care Council should be confined to assisting those who are statutorily
placed under its supervision. Ideally, all discharged prisoners and
inmates might be required to accept the Council's supervision and
help. This is manifestly impossible at the present time, and
compulsory after-care must therefore be put on some kind of selective
basis. But we feel that, over and above the after-care of persons in
the selected categories, there is scope for the Council to assist
other discharged prisoners who are in special need of help and are
willing to accept the discipline that any form of after-care must
involve. We recognise that there is some danger of the resources of
the after-care service being strained by an excessive volume of
"voluntary" work, and that some method of selection to control it
might become necessary. Nevertheless we recommend that the After Care
Council should be given explicit power and accept supervision although
they are not in the statutory categories which we propose later in
this report.
SELECTION FOR AFTER-CARE
   24. Since compulsory after-care for every person released from
custody is not feasible, or indeed necessary, some scheme of selection
must operate. Some recommendations on this subject have already been
made in the Advisory Council's reports on Custodial Sentences for
Young Offenders (published in July, 196) and on Short Sentences of
Imprisonment (published in May, 196). We refer to the effect of our
own proposals on these recommendations in the summary of
recommendations in paragraph 53 below.
(a) METHOD OF SELECTION
   25. We have considered a number of possible methods of
selection, but in the end we have concluded that at present the one
that is most satisfactory is the application of compulsory after-care
to categories of inmates and prisoners clearly specified in statute.
We refer below to the other possibilities we have discussed:
(=1) Selection by the Court
   It is arguable, on the view that compulsory after-care, where
it is appropriate, is part of the sentence imposed, that the court
should select the offenders who would be likely to benefit from
after-care, and include an appropriate period in the sentence. But we
doubt whether the court, except perhaps where the sentence was a very
short one, could actually assess at the time of imposing it what would
be the offender's needs when the time came for him to leave prison.
The court might, possibly, impose after-care by categories, but this
would only be doing what could more effectively be done by Act of
Parliament. Selection by the courts of individual cases would, we
fear, result in much resentment on the part of those chosen for it;
few would appreciate the court's reason for choosing them rather than
others, and some would regard the period of after-care as an addition
to the sentence. They would thus be in a bad frame of mind to start
the training which now begins on admission to prison. Successful
prison training must be a favourable factor for resettlement after
release, but if the prisoner started it with a feeling of resentment
his co-operation would be more difficult to secure. It seems to us
better that after-care should be attached by the law to certain
custodial sentences rather than that it should have an appearance- in
the minds of some offenders- of being an additional element that
courts may add to the normal sentence at their discretion.
(=2) Selection by prison staff, or by a prison board, or by the
Secretary of State
   The Governor of a prison and his senior staff, including the
prison welfare officer, could theoretically choose deserving cases for
after-care, or make recommendations to a board consisting of members
of the visiting committee. As, however, the basis of selection would
be in the main the prisoner's conduct and progress while in prison
there might be a tendency to choose the man who simply avoided getting
into trouble. It would, we think, be likely to create discontent
among the body of prisoners to have the prison staff, or any board
acting on their advice, choose certain men as apparently better, or
worse, post-release risks than others. This would certainly be
discouraging to the prisoner who might have welcomed after-care and
who was not chosen, but conversely, would encourage the prisoner who
did not want supervision to behave in such a way as not to be selected
or recommended. In the end, the Governor and his staff would be
inclined to avoid the invidiousness of selection by recommending
almost every prisoner, or none.
   Placing the ultimate decision for selection on the Secretary of
State might appear to remove the onus from the prison staff or prison
board. The Secretary of State, however, would have to rely on reports
from the prison and welfare staffs, and sooner or later this would be
known to the prisoners. All the undesirable consequences of selection
would still remain.
(=3) Opting by prisoners, with earlier release
   The suggestion that a prisoner who voluntarily accepted
after-care might thereby qualify for earlier release, through,
possibly, a higher rate of remission, is at first sight not
unattractive. We have been assured, however, that every prisoner
would be only too willing to make a show of accepting after-care if
earlier release were the consequence. The proposal would inevitably
involve some kind of selection, with the attendant evils, and we do
not think the prison staff, or any other staff, should have in their
hands what would amount to a wide power to confer earlier release.
There would, moreover, be some risk that those who opted would be
regarded by the others as seeking the favour of the prison staff, and
some might opt in the expectation of more considerate treatment, for
example, by getting the better kind of jobs in prison. Opting for
after-care with any kind of reward attached must in our opinion be
ruled out at the present time.
   26. Any of these methods of selection involves consequences which
we think are unacceptable. Other strong objections to these methods
are the prisoner's uncertainty whether he will be selected and the
difficulty of deciding the best time for selection. It is clearly
undesirable that the prisoner should have to serve perhaps the better
part of his sentence not knowing whether he will get after-care help
on release, or that the welfare staff should not know in good time the
prisoners they will be required to help. If conduct in prison were a
deciding consideration selection would tend to be left to a time near
the date of release. If a prisoner is going to get after-care he
should know it as soon as he starts his sentence.
   27. We therefore conclude that the only method of avoiding the
difficulties of individual selection and of ensuring that a prisoner
is at no time in any doubt where he stands in relation to after-care
is to specify, in statute, the categories of prisoners to whom
after-care is to be applied.
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<273 TEXT H9>
We have already been pleased to be able to place our records at the
disposal of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology in a study of some
aspects of preventive detention.
   38. On a more favourable note we quote the experience of one of
the major combined area probation committees, whose annual report
states that 83 per cent of its prison after-care cases completed their
supervision satisfactorily compared with 72 per cent ex-borstal and 47
per cent ex-approved school cases. The ex-prisoners were the largest
group out of a total of 185 persons from all three sources.
   39. It is never easy to forecast how any man will respond to
after-care so that we were dubious of the prospects for W..., a man
of 39 with a criminal history stretching back 25 years. On his
eleventh appearance before the court he had received a sentence of 8
years' preventive detention. In prison he was described as an unhappy
creature who had started life badly- an unreliable and untrustworthy
man who had steadily deteriorated over the years until he possessed
neither the inclination nor determination to mend his ways. W...
was placed in the care of one of our Associates whom he met regularly
for the next eighteen months. During this time W... became aware of
his own problems and limitations, but in the Associate's skilled care
he was also made aware of his own potential. To his amazement he
remained in the same job throughout his supervision and proved to
himself that there was no need for him to return to crime. He has, in
fact, retained a friendly contact with our Associate although his
statutory period of supervision has long since ended.
   4. Our case histories are not all so successful. J... was
also released from a sentence of eight years' preventive detention.
In this instance business man <SIC> in the North of England
offered to find work and lodgings for him. In addition to his fare
and subsistence on leaving the prison he received immediate aid from
the National Assistance Board until he received his first week's
wages, and working clothes through our Associate. His new employer
found him a furnished flat and being connected with a local football
club provided him with a season ticket. Within a week J... was
before a Court again, having stolen from the flat and pawned the
articles following on a week-end drinking bout. He is now back in
prison after which we shall try again.
   41. Life imprisonment.- The Division is also responsible
for the supervision of men sentenced to life imprisonment and
subsequently released by the Secretary of State on conditional
licence. The number under statutory supervision at the year end was
2, with an additional two persons under voluntary supervision. While
some of these men will always need the help of the Association's staff
and Associates to order their lives, others have now reached a state
of maturity which has enabled them to integrate themselves happily and
successfully with the community.
   42. Home leave.- In 196 the number of prisoners granted
home leave for employment and re-acclimatisation purposes and who
would be the Division's responsibility on discharge, reached a record
total of 579 against 489 the previous year. Home leave involves a
preliminary enquiry being made at each home (often incurring more than
one visit) and at least once <SIC> interview with each prisoner
whilst on leave. The increasing N.A.D.P.A.S. Prison Welfare
Officer complement is providing an accumulating load of home enquiries
of many kinds relating to health, marital and property problems.
   Unpredicted home enquiries bear particularly heavily on a small
welfare staff covering the whole of the Metropolitan area since they
cannot be planned beforehand yet must be carried out quickly if they
are to be effective. Few of these homes are on the telephone, many of
the wives or parents are working and a long journey by public
transport is wasted if our caller can obtain no reply.
   43. Discharged under Section 29 of the Prison Act, 1952.-
The exercise of this police function, which we have regularly
deplored in recent years, has continued throughout the year with the
prospect that this will be the last occasion to report. 3,497 men
were discharged during 196 with the obligation to report their
addresses. Of the 3,387 discharged during 1959, the position at the
end of 196 was that 1,11 (32.5 per cent) had been reconvicted and
526 (15.5 per cent) required to report directly to the police.
   44. Accommodation.- Whilst the problem of finding work has
only been serious in pockets of unemployment, that of finding suitable
accommodation continues difficult. In fact, the more alternative
occupations there are available, the fewer the women who take in
lodgers. After-care is sometimes criticised for not having rooms
ready for an ex-prisoner, but experience has shown that such a plan
almost automatically publicises a client's previous occupation. The
alternative of putting a man into hostel accommodation for one night
while providing him with sufficient funds to find his own lodging is
ultimately a more effective arrangement.
   45. In this connection we appreciate the work of such
organisations as Norman House and Langley House, both now firmly
established in their role of providing a special form of residential
support and friendships for homeless ex-prisoners. The close and
mutually advantageous relations which have been established between
them and the official bodies augur well for the future development of
such ventures which we understand are being planned in the Provinces.
   46. The year has been marked by increasing co-operation between
the Division and the National Assistance Board and of more sympathetic
understanding of the difficulties of the ex-prisoners at all levels.
Groups of National Assistance Board Officers have been addressed on
these problems and resulting from a mutual review of procedure,
discharged prisoners have since 1st August, 196, been accepted
directly at the Board's office before registering for unemployment
with the Ministry of Labour. This has proved particularly beneficial
to the homeless man in immediate need of finding lodgings.
   47. Relationships with our colleagues in the Prison Service, the
National Association of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, the
National Assistance Board and the Ministry of Labour continue close
and productive. These bodies are selected for mention solely because
their functions are so closely integrated with our own. The
achievement of close personal contact with our Probation Service
Associates was cemented by an invitation to the Director to address
the Annual Conference of the National Association of Probation
Officers. Particular effort has been made during the year to invite
the co-operation of the National Council of Social Service, the
National Citizens Advice Bureau and the Women's Voluntary Service in
our work. To all who have shown their practical sympathy and
understanding of our task, we offer our grateful thanks.
Chapter Five
TREATMENT OF BOYS
   1. General.- In order to implement the proposals in the
Criminal Justice Bill, 196, relating to the treatment of young
offenders a considerable extension of the system of borstals and
detention centres will be needed.
   2. Three secure borstals are to be provided at Swinfen,
Staffs., Wellingborough, Northants., and additional open borstals
at Finnamore Wood Camp, Bucks. (now partially occupied) and
Shaftesbury, Dorset. The open borstal at Huntercombe is being adapted
for use as a medium security borstal, and the adaption of Aylesbury
prison as an establishment for young offenders has made further
progress.
   3. Three senior detention centres were opened in the early months
of 1961 at New Hall Camp, Yorks., Medomsley, County Durham and
Aylesbury, Bucks. It is hoped to have four more centres ready by
early 1962 at Erlestoke, Wilts., Aldington, Kent, East Clandon,
Surrey and Haslar, Hants, and a further centre at Kirklevington,
Yorks, during 1963. The semi-secure borstal at Buckley, Lancs.
will become a detention centre in the autumn of 1961.
   4. Population.- Committals to borstal increased from 3,62
in 1959 to 3,476 in 196, and the daily average population in borstals
from 4,34 to 4,115.
   5. Reception centres were under constant pressure; one centre
dealt with 2,28 cases, more than double the number handled three
years ago. The modified form of allocation procedure reported last
year and some staff additions enabled the centres to meet the demands
of the training borstals, and for one of them to increase the
psychological and psychiatric coverage.
   6. The quality of borstal receptions during the year has been
assessed in three ways: (a) in terms of the nature of the offences
leading to the borstal sentence; (b) in terms of educational and
intellectual criteria; (c) in terms of Mannheim-Wilkins prediction
groups. No new trend was observed in the type of offence, the great
majority of which continued to be those of breaking and entering and
stealing. Offences against the person, including sexual offences,
remained at about 12 1/2 per cent of the total offences. The
distribution of intelligence and educational attainment also remained
virtually unchanged, but there was a further deterioration in terms of
the Mannheim-Wilkins prediction ratings which seems likely to have an
adverse effect on training results. No less than 66.4 per cent of
last year's receptions fell into the C and D categories, those with
the poorest prospects of success. This compares with 56.5 per cent in
1957 and 25.5 per cent in 1946 (when the original research was
undertaken) whilst the present proportion of 9.9 per cent in the A and
B categories (with the best proportion of success) compares with 1.2
per cent in 1957 and 32.7 per cent in 1946. This deterioration in the
quality of the training material suggests that the success rate is
likely to be under 4 per cent.
   7. The number of young offenders sentenced to imprisonment
increased from 2,498 in 1959 to 3,99 in 196, and the number of
committals to detention centres (which was limited by the capacity of
the centres) showed a slight drop from 1,356 to 1,295.
Borstal Training
   8. General.- This was the last full year in which
Northallerton functioned as a preliminary training borstal. At the
beginning of 1961 it became a full training borstal, when it was
decided to discontinue the policy of sending boys, who might later be
suitable for "open" training, to Northallerton for some months
before making a decision as to their final training borstal. Some
borstals felt that they were getting boys from Northallerton too late
in their training, and that the period in which a lad settled in and
became known by the new staff, tended to extend his training beyond
the time he would have spent had he been originally allocated to his
final borstal. This appeared unfair to the boy and sometimes affected
his whole outlook. When the Northallerton staff were asked to
concentrate their preliminary training into a shorter period so that
it was not necessary to wait until a lad had attained senior training
grade before sending him away, they were not so certain of their
findings and tended to send more boys to closed conditions as a safety
precaution. However, this difficulty might have been overcome had it
not been necessary to use the training places at Northallerton for
boys who needed the restriction imposed by this kind of borstal. The
experiment has been one of great interest and may be repeated when
conditions are more favourable; Northallerton has done valuable and
effective work, transferring some 34 lads to open conditions after
having settled them down to borstal and dissipated the urge to run
away that causes an upset in the training of so many in the first
months.
   9. Training.- The average length of training was 16.1
months. This ranged from 9.2 to 36 months. The average time at
Reading was 27.7 months for those boys ultimately released from there.
The full picture of the training programme given in previous reports
has not greatly altered, but the concentrated effort required to
prepare a lad for release in the shorter training period introduced
during the past two years has increased the intensity of the work.
One governor reports that at his borstal almost twice as many boys
have been dealt with as in earlier years.
# 219
<274 TEXT H1>
The directors of the research associations have their own personal
contacts with the appropriate laboratories in the Commonwealth
countries.
   Apart from defence considerations, it is in the interest of our
national economy that we should strive to increase our home production
of food in terms of our livestock population and yield of crops per
acre.
   Superimposed on all these considerations is the fact that with
the improving economic status of the population there is an increasing
emphasis on the intrinsic acceptability of food and particularly on
its presentation in the retail shops.
   From the above brief introduction it follows that the pattern of
food research should embrace the following broad fields:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) Methods of increasing production.
   (2) Preservation (transport, storage and distribution).
   (3) Processing.
   (4) Acceptability or intrinsic quality, including freedom from
abnormal flavour or taint.
   (5) Nutrition and hygiene.
   (6) The possible toxicological effects of substances added to
food during growth, transport and processing.
   (7) Presentation.
<END INDENTATION>
   Each of these is a vast field of research and investigation.
THE OVERALL PATTERN
   It is difficult to say where food research begins; it involves
all the scientific disciplines- physics, chemistry, mathematics,
engineering, each ultimately wedded to one or more of the different
divisions of biology. Apart from supplying graduate staff, therefore,
the universities must in the long run set the level of food research;
they must also supply much of the fundamental knowledge required for
advances in the science and technology of food. Certain of the
universities with departments of agriculture and horticulture are of
course carrying out continuous research directly on food, and this
applies also to many biochemical departments.
   The concern of the Government is clear enough since an adequate
supply of inexpensive food of satisfactory nutritional quality is
essential for our survival and for our national prosperity. Thus
there are some 23 research institutes or units wholly financed by the
Agricultural Research Council, and the Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food has its own Food Science and Atomic Energy
Division.
   The Agricultural Research Council is also concerned with the
research programmes of 22 other institutes which are financed wholly
or in part by the Council or, in the case of eight institutes in
Scotland, by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. Special
grants are also made to universities and other organisations for
research on subjects of interest to the Council. The total annual
cost of all this research by the Council now exceeds +5 million.
   In the past the interest of the A.R.C. has been in animals
and crops- their production and nutrition and the reduction of
disease; one exception is the work of the Hannah Dairy Research
Institute over the past 25 years on the keeping quality of dried milk.
More recently, however, the Council, in accepting responsibility for
the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, the Ditton
Laboratory, and the Pest Infestation Laboratory, Slough, has moved
outside the "farm gate" and has thus extended its interest in food
to include storage and preservation. To quote from its last Annual
Report: "The importance has been previously stressed of considering
the production, handling, storage, packaging and processing of food as
links in one continuous chain of operations, the final objective of
which is to provide the nation with food of the highest quality at the
lowest economic price. The Council has therefore always in mind the
need to integrate research on production with that on the intermediate
steps involved in the passage of food from the farm to the dinner
table. This is equally true whether the production is on our own
farms or those overseas. To this end the Council is keeping in touch
with research on production throughout the Commonwealth and, where
possible, in other countries from which our food comes. The
establishment of the Overseas Research Council, of which the Council's
Secretary is an 6ex officio member, will, it is hoped, help to
strengthen the links already existing between the overseas producer
and those responsible for handling and processing imported foodstuffs
in this country."
   To help the Council in its wider responsibility the Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretary of State for
Scotland have recently set up a Food Research Advisory Committee to
advise on those food problems requiring investigation or research and
on their order of priority.
   Finally, to complete the picture of food research institutes,
mention must be made of the Torry Research Station of D.S.I.R.
and its associated Humber Laboratory in Hull. Whereas these two
laboratories are concerned with the very practical problems of
handling, storage and distribution of fish, their fundamental
research- for example in bacteriology and that on fish oils and
antioxidants- is of great interest and value to all food research
laboratories.
   On the nutritional side the Medical Research Council, with its
many research units working directly on nutrition or in related
fields, advises the Government through the Ministry of Health, and the
Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry has his own Standing Committee
to discuss problems of food and health.
   Among more than 5 industrial associations sponsored by the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research are four working
wholly on food problems. Research carried out by these four bodies,
whose work will be mentioned later, naturally has a strong bias
generally, but not completely, towards the problems involved in the
processing of food and its acceptability by the consumer.
   There is in addition the research and, particularly, development
carried out wholly by industry. The results of this are to be seen,
for example, in the margarine and soft drinks industries, in the
development of containers for canned foods, in the relatively new
development of packaged frozen foods, and in the sizeable export trade
mainly in processed foods (more than +16 million annually) from a
country so largely dependent on imported basal foods. Another notable
example of research financed wholly by industry is that of the Brewing
Industry Research Foundation at Nutfield, Surrey, now an established
national institute. The pharmaceutical and chemical industries should
also be mentioned in connection with the large-scale production of
vitamins, the production of pure substances to counter the various
forms of deterioration, and the introduction of many substances which
act as aids to processing.
   The foregoing is an over-simplification of the pattern of
Government, Government-aided and industrial food research in this
country; it is uneven and thin in places, but evidently it does deal
with food from the farm or field to the table as well as nutritional
quality. The research structure has of course developed piecemeal and
the type and scope of the work of any individual institute is rarely
exclusive. On the whole, judging by the amount of money spent on
research, it would appear that the emphasis is on production- perhaps
understandable in a country that has to import so much of its food.
   Nevertheless some might argue that since the purpose of food is
to keep man fit and healthy the greatest emphasis should be on its
nutritional quality. Furthermore nutritional research has hitherto
been confined almost exclusively to the food requirements of children
and adolescents. But we have now moved into a phase when the
nutrition of the adult calls for more research, particularly in view
of the growing belief that the type of food man eats may be a factor
in his susceptibility to certain diseases. Except in a state of
emergency, however, people will continue to eat what they like and not
what is necessarily best for them. It might also be claimed that as a
complement to research on production there should be sustained
research on the synthesis of protein, fat and carbohydrate to insure
against a food shortage from any cause; by its nature this research is
more a challenge to the scientific workers in the universities.
THE FOOD RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS
   There are four research associations concerned wholly with
food:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   The British Baking Industries Research Association.
   The Research Association of British Flour-Millers.
   The British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association.
   The Fruit and Vegetable Canning and Quick Freezing Research
Association, often referred to as the Campden Research Station.
<END INDENTATION>
   The primary interest of each of these associations is to improve
and standardize the manufacturing or processing methods and the
quality of the final products of the particular industry it serves.
In contrast with most of the research units associated with the
Agricultural Research Council, the emphasis is on the factors
outside the farm gate. At the same time the quality of the final
product must be influenced by the quality of the raw material of the
industry, and the methods of processing may influence its nutritional
quality. In the overall food research pattern, therefore, the work of
the research associations (coupled with that of the food industries)
is complementary to that of the Agricultural and Medical Research
Councils and the universities. This seems logical but when one looks
at the relatively small expenditure of the food research associations,
compared for example with the +5 million vote of the Agricultural
Research Council, it is paradoxical. For 196 the incomes were:
<LIST>
Of this total +27 84 was provided by industry and the remainder by
D.S.I.R.
   It must be remembered, however, that a research association, by
its nature and organisation, should be an extremely objective,
efficient and economic research unit. For the most part it has no
need to search for its problems, and the solution to a particular
problem can usually be tested out at once in a member's plant without
the expense of a pilot plant, etc. Furthermore it has behind it the
stimulating urge and interest of its members, just as it can call on
their experience and judgment to help it decide how far it is
profitable to pursue a particular line of enquiry.
   It might be said that these conditions are similar to those of
the private laboratory of an individual food manufacturer. They are,
but the important difference is that the research association serves a
whole industry and this, coupled with the fact that it has close links
with D.S.I.R. and other Government departments, encourages it to
work along independent and pioneer lines in both its research and
applied work. Its members realize that this must be so if the
association is to be their scientific liaison with the Government
departments concerned with their particular industry. The work of the
Food Standards Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food affords a notable example: this Committee when considering a
particular foodstuff usually invites the director of the appropriate
research association to attend its meetings and, in some cases, to act
as assessor to the Committee.
   Although a research association serves a whole industry it is
significant that often the work of the association has encouraged
individual firms to start up or extend their own laboratories. In
this way the research associations have brought a much greater
scientific outlook and interest into the industry as a whole than
their budgets and work would indicate.
   Co-operative Research. Apart from collaboration between
themselves it is traditional and in fact essential for the food
research associations to collaborate whenever possible with other
laboratories that specialize in some particular aspect of food science
and technology. This is usually of mutual advantage since the
research association has its own specialized knowledge and equipment
to offer. Thus a notable example is the joint work with the
M.A.F.F. in connection with food defence plans.
   Similarly there is continuous contact and collaboration with the
Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, and the Pest Infestation
Laboratory, Slough (both A.R.C.), the Ministry's Food Science and
Atomic Energy and Infestation Control Divisions, and the Laboratory of
the Government Chemist. A particularly intimate case is that of the
British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association, which has
seconded staff to the Low Temperature Research Station to work on the
irradiation of foods as a possible method of preservation. Again, the
associations can call on the resources of the Commonwealth Mycological
Institute, which maintains a collection of fungi many of which are of
interest in research into certain food problems.
# 22
<275 TEXT H11>
   1. Coming back to the broad design, the Government entirely
agree with the Commission that Greater London has a recognisable civic
unity and shape, largely because it has grown outwards from a single
centre. But its local government structure, inherited from the days
when London was much smaller, in no way reflects that unity. The
major services are administered by six county councils and three
county borough councils, and three systems of local government exist
side by side. They are: single-tier government in the county
boroughs, two-tier government of the normal pattern outside the
present administrative county of London, and a unique two-tier system
within the administrative county, in which most of the important local
government functions vest in the county council.
   11. London has clearly outgrown the system of local government
devised to meet the vastly different physical and social conditions of
the last century. This great town now faces immense problems of
congestion, of traffic, of land shortages, and of major redevelopment.
All of its citizens are "Londoners", not only those who live
within the City and the 28 metropolitan boroughs. Greater London is
their city and all are involved in what happens to it.
   12. The Royal Commission were convinced that, unless some method
could be found within the framework of local government to tackle the
pressing problems of Greater London, the central Government would
increasingly supersede the local authorities. They thought that that
would be disastrous for local government, and they were right. That
is the answer to those who say that a system of local government which
recognises Greater London as a unit for some purposes is not local
government at all. In the Government's opinion it is the only way to
enable Greater London to enjoy an adequate measure of responsible
self-government.
   13. There is now an opportunity to carry out effective
reorganisation which will bring London government into harmony with
the physical features of the metropolis, and will fit it to face the
new problems presented by changing social conditions and the
ubiquitous motor vehicle. The Government are convinced that if this
opportunity is not now grasped, local government will wither in the
capital city where, in the past, it has been strongest.
   14. The Government have been impressed by the wide recognition
among the local authorities concerned of the need for some change.
True, many would adopt a different and less radical solution than
that proposed by the Commission. But about the same number, while
having reservation on some points of detail, accept the Commission's
broad plan.
   15. The feature which attracted the greatest support was the
conception of the borough as the primary unit of local government.
The Government are sure that this is the right principle. It is a
serious defect in the present organisation that many of the boroughs,
and especially the metropolitan boroughs, have no real responsibility
for the running of the local and personal services. The system
proposed by the Commission would place personal, preventive and
environmental health services, welfare and children's services, and
housing, in the hands of one authority, local enough in character to
enable local knowledge of the area and of its living and working
conditions to be brought to bear. This would not only greatly enlarge
the scope of the borough councillor, but would also make for more
effective administration of these closely linked social services. The
Government regard this as a key feature of the Commission's plan, and
one well designed to attract into local government more men and women
of real ability, by making sure that there are worthwhile jobs for
them to do. If any re-organisation of local government does not
secure this it will fail of its purpose.
   16. The principal alternative plan is one, sponsored chiefly by
the county councils of Essex, Kent, London, Middlesex and Surrey, for
an indirectly elected joint board for an area a good deal wider than
that reviewed by the Commission, and the retention of the existing
county and county borough councils. The board would have
responsibilities in town planning for drawing up a master plan to
which the local planning authorities would be required to conform,
covering such regional questions as the main road framework, target
populations, the level and main disposition of employment: for laying
down the main considerations for dealing with traffic: for planning
and co-ordinating refuse disposal: and for planning and co-ordinating
programmes for over-spill. The powers of this joint board would be
mainly advisory in character, and meanwhile somewhat greater powers
would be conferred on or delegated to the boroughs.
   17. The Government believe that a plan on these lines would not
begin to meet the needs of the situation. For a start it ignores- or
denies- one of the fundamental assumptions on which the Royal
Commission's Report was based. This is that the built-up areas
outside the County of London are, now, more properly a part of Greater
London than of the Home Counties to which historically they belong.
But that apart, this plan would surely confuse responsibilities. The
authority which has to deal with the planning, traffic and road
problems of Greater London must exercise a real responsibility, and
must be able to secure that its plans are effectively carried out. A
largely advisory body, with powers mainly of co-ordination and
supervision, would be likely to achieve very little. The overall
authority must be an executive body if it is to be effective, although
no doubt it would be right that it should in some matters act through
the agency of the borough councils. The Government also believe that
this authority, for full effectiveness and bearing in mind the powers
and responsibilities which it will carry, ought to be directly
elected. A joint board as envisaged would entail a third tier of
responsibility, and this would only further confuse the already
confused local government pattern in the area. County councils would
be sandwiched between the joint board and their boroughs and
districts, while the latter could not be given the responsibilities
which, in the Government's view, they ought to have.
   18. The Government recognise that the abolition of the present
county pattern in the London area will present formidable problems of
organisation. Their concern is to get the best administrative
structure for local government. When that is settled they will give
consideration to such related matters as the arrangements for the
administration of justice, for the lieutenancies and for sheriffs. In
general they wish to emphasise that they propose to make only changes
which are needed to achieve their main purpose and matters
consequential to it. These proposals should not affect any existing
cultural, social, sporting or other associations or loyalties which
may be based on the traditional counties. They are, however,
convinced that London needs a form of local government organisation to
match its present physical shape and state. They are convinced, too,
that this organisation must be one which recognises the unity and
cohesion of the area, and which would combine ability to handle those
issues that demand a comprehensive view of the whole area with the
capacity to grapple effectively with the many and complex local
problems. The Government believe that, provided these conditions are
met, the new structure will provide fuller opportunities for really
worthwhile local government service.
The Boroughs
   19. The Royal Commission suggested that the boroughs should
fall within the population range 1, to 25,, and provisionally
proposed a pattern comprising 52 new boroughs (including the City).
The Local Government Act, 1958, provides that, in so far as the
constitution of a new county borough outside the metropolitan area is
affected by considerations of population, the Minister should presume
that a population of 1, is sufficient to support the discharge of
the function of a county borough council. This does not mean,
however, that larger units would not be better if they could be set up
without loss of convenience. Larger units would mean more work for
each authority in all the personal services, and so make
specialisation in staff and institutions more efficient and
economical. In addition, larger units would be stronger in resources
and so better able to secure the major redevelopments which many
boroughs now need. They would be better able to maintain and improve
the standard of their services and to undertake their development as
circumstances may require. Moreover the very nature of London-
continuously built-up at high densities, with a comprehensive system
of transport and a population which in many of its daily activities
pays little regard to local boundaries- distinguishes it from the
typical county borough. Hitherto, London has suffered in its local
administration from too great a proliferation of not very strong
authorities. The aim now should be to create units which, while
retaining their local character, are well equipped to provide a fully
adequate standard of local services. In a closely-knit area such as
London, the Government believe that this object can best be assured by
aiming at a larger minimum population and rather fewer boroughs than
suggested by the Commission. They consider that this will make not
only for higher standards, but also for greater economy in
administration.
   2. The Government's general conclusion about the size of the
boroughs is that it would be desirable to aim at a minimum population
of around 2, wherever possible. Some boroughs might be
substantially larger than this. They propose shortly to circulate, as
a basis for consultation with the local authorities, an illustration
of how larger boroughs might work out.
   21. The Government agree that the term "metropolitan borough"
should now be abandoned; they propose the title of "London
Borough". The Commission suggested that the constitution of the
borough councils should follow that of municipal boroughs outside
London, and the Government agree with this view.
   22. The Government agree with the Royal Commission in thinking
that the boundaries and status of the City of London should remain
unchanged, and that it should receive the additional powers given to
boroughs in the London area.
The Greater London Council
   23. The Government agree that the Greater London Council should
be directly elected. They propose to adopt the Commission's plan that
its members should serve for three years and retire together.
   24. The Commission proposed that election should be based on
Parliamentary constituencies. On the present structure this would
give a membership of about 11. Many authorities have criticised this
proposal, and argue that representation would better be based more
directly on the boroughs. This is a matter which will require further
examination in the light of the pattern of boroughs which emerges, and
the Government reserve their decision on it.
   25. The Government agree generally with the principles applied by
the Commission in deciding which areas they should recommend for
inclusion in the Greater London administrative area. When
consultation takes place with the local authorities about the borough
pattern, there will be opportunity for any peripheral authority to
make known its views about its inclusion in or exclusion from the
London area. The districts left out of the London area will be
brought within the ambit of the Local Government Commission, who will
then of course be able to consider, among other things, Watford's
claims for county borough status.
Functions
   26. The following paragraphs set out the Government's broad
proposals with regard to the administration of particular functions;
many matters of detail will naturally require further consideration.
Personal Health and Welfare Services and Children's Services
   27. There was no doubt in the Commission's mind that these
services, with the exception of the ambulance service, should all be
organised on as local a basis as possible; they recommend that they
should become a borough responsibility. The Government agree with
this conclusion. They concur also in the belief that positive
advantages will follow from the concentration of responsibility for
these services, and other associated ones such as housing and
environmental health, in the hands of the same authorities.
Housing
   28. The Government accept the Royal Commission's main
conclusion that housing is essentially a borough service.
# 27
<276 TEXT H12>
For example, in one of the factories studied, which packed domestic
goods, output per man hour increased by 75 per cent and earnings by 4
per cent, and the wages cost per unit was reduced by 2 per cent, in a
period of two years following the introduction of the financial
incentive scheme.
   Although the Birmingham study suggests that financial incentives
are effective in influencing the behaviour of workers, it also shows
that the effects may vary a great deal from factory to factory. Where
high output is already being achieved, the introduction of a financial
incentive may make little or no difference. In other circumstances,
however, the effect may be quite marked. In yet others, there may be
influences at work which prevent a scheme from having the intended
effect. It is always difficult to anticipate precisely what the
effect will be, or to make any useful statement about the relationship
between the financial incentive on the one hand, and effort or output
on the other, which would apply in all circumstances. But it is
obviously useful to know what influences are likely to affect the
success of financial incentive schemes, and to be aware of some of the
practical difficulties which may arise. The evidence from intensive
studies of workshop behaviour by social scientists in Britain and
U.S.A. will now be discussed briefly.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL GROUP
   Observation of behaviour in workshops often reveals that levels
of output and earnings under financial incentive schemes are
controlled by groups of workers. This is possible because, by their
very design, such schemes leave the worker some freedom to regulate
the relationship between effort and reward, hence providing scope for
manipulation. The extent of this, and the desire to manipulate, will
vary from workshop to workshop, according to the degree of
machine-pacing of work, and the effectiveness of other managerial
controls. It will also depend on whether workers want to set their
own standards of output and earnings. If they do, and if their
standards are lower than those considered as reasonable by managers,
such behaviour is usually called 'restriction of output'.
Behaviour of this kind and the judgements which are made about it,
reveal that the ideas of managers and workers will often differ about
a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
   The existence of such discrepant ideas has long been recognized.
F. W. Taylor, a pioneer of scientific management, used the
colourful term 'systematic soldiering' to describe control over
output by the working group, when the group's standards were lower
than management hoped for or expected. He believed that this could be
overcome by the scientific setting of standards, by more efficient
methods of working and managerial control, and by the offer of cash
incentives to workers, specially selected as suitable to perform
certain tasks defined by management. In Taylor's scheme, which has
been widely adopted in various forms, the onus is upon management to
develop more effective techniques of control over the production
process. Often investigators, including Taylor himself, have argued
that to change attitudes is equally important, if not more so. P.
E. Vernon argued, for example, that the 'economic fallacy' of
restriction of output- i.e., that it is in the workers' best
interests- could be overcome if workers were better educated, and
allowed a greater share in management.
   Later researches suggest that these investigators over-stressed
economic rationalism as a motive in worker behaviour. Social
scientists have pointed out that the behaviour of an individual is
largely controlled by the rules and customs of society as a whole and
of the groups within it to which he belongs. He is rewarded when he
conforms to the rules, and punished when he deviates from them. A
very powerful social sanction, for example, is 'sending to
Coventry' which cuts the deviant off from social communication
with other members of his group. In a society like our own, which is
highly differentiated along lines of occupation and social class, and
which is built up of a multitude of interlinked groupings and
specialized activities, it is not surprising that differing standards
emerge, which are preserved and maintained in the processes of group
life.
   All this was illustrated in the well-known Hawthorne experiments
carried out in the U.S.A. The investigators, who watched the
behaviour of the workers in the Bank Wiring Room concluded that the
workers kept output at a steady level below the limit set by normal
fatigue, not because they were, as individuals, pursuing well-defined
economic interests but because they feared that to behave otherwise
would promote external pressure to break up the group. The workers
explained their behaviour, it is true, by reference to their fear of
rate-cutting, or working themselves out of a job, and so on. But
these explanations seemed to the investigators to be rationalizations
of behaviour which had itself arisen from deep-rooted psychological
and social needs. There is much evidence which supports the view that
workers may be willing to forgo greater cash rewards to maintain
pleasant social relationships and other satisfactions, such as control
over the working environment. If this is so the attempt to tighten
management control over the behaviour of individual workers- by the
techniques which Taylor, amongst others, advocated- may well be felt
as a threat to the working group, and may generate sufficient
resistance to nullify the intended effects of the techniques
themselves.
   For a time after the classic Hawthorne studies, some observers of
behaviour in workshops were so concerned to stress the importance of
social satisfaction that they tended to ignore the continuing
influence of economic needs on the behaviour of workers. Recently
some writers have suggested that a worker may gain both social and
economic satisfaction, because controls over output and earnings
maintained by the group may also be intended to serve economic
objectives, and may consciously be designed to do so.
   A recent Manchester University study, supporting this kind of
conclusion, was carried out in an engineering workshop, where a group
of workers manipulated a complicated incentive scheme by an unofficial
procedure which they described as 'cross-booking'. The
incentive scheme was designed to reward individual workers according
to the proportion of time saved on 'allowed times' based on
time-study data. The workers found that some of these times were
'loose', that is, much time could be saved and bonus earned,
with relatively little effort. Other times were 'tight',
requiring much effort to effect substantial saving and bonus. This
group had devised a procedure which balanced the effects of tight and
loose allowed times. A proportion of the time saved on loose jobs was
not declared by the men when they filled in their time sheets. The
men claimed that this procedure had two effects: the existence of
loose times was concealed from the management, and the time which they
had saved but had not declared, could be 'banked' and then
'booked' on to tight jobs to make them pay. The workers
claimed that this procedure enabled them to stabilize effort and
earnings and, at the same time, to protect themselves, by concealing
the loose rates, from rate-cutting by management. To book straight,
they argued, would have also led to wide fluctuations in their
earnings since the proportions of tight and loose rates which would be
allocated to them in any week could not be accurately predicted.
   To check the workers' claim that cross-booking stabilized
earnings, an investigation was made of the wages records. Comparisons
of the earnings of persons who cross-booked with those of the few
deviants who booked straight seemed to support the claim, as the graph
shows (see p. 14).
   These and other similar studies suggest that the manipulation of
incentive schemes by groups of workers is an attempt to put into
effect their ideas of a fair day's work. If the ideas of managers and
workers differ about what a worker ought to produce in a day, it is to
be expected that both parties will try to express these ideas in
behaviour: management by procedures of administrative control, and
workers by individual or by group action.
   The question as to why ideas about a fair day's work should
differ will be discussed in a later section. But the realization that
ideas do differ and that financial incentive schemes offer scope
to groups of workers for expression of their ideas has led to the
emergence of other methods of wage payment which will encourage
workers to aim for standards which managers regard as appropriate.
<GRAPH>
GROUP BONUS AND OTHER SCHEMES
   It might appear that the use of group bonus schemes in place of
individual incentive schemes would provide an answer to the problem of
the influence of social groups on output. Such schemes seem to offer
no threat to group solidarity and social satisfaction. They may even
enhance them. Yet, at the same time, the group may behave as an
individual is supposed to do- i.e. to increase output and earn
as much as possible. There is little in reason or experience,
however, which lends support to this view. It is true that some
processes lend themselves easily to systems of group payment as, for
example, in the steel industry where many processes are operated by
crews of men. But there is nothing in such schemes to ensure that
output levels will meet management expectations if the crews decide
otherwise. The scope for control still exists. Group bonus schemes
may or may not encourage a sense of common purpose, depending on other
circumstances.
   Group bonus schemes pose their own special problems. If workers
perform different tasks, difficulties may arise over dividing the
group earnings in accordance with the different contributions of
individuals. Even where workers perform similar tasks, individual
differences in skill and application may make any simple division of
earnings seem unfair, and may adversely affect relationships within
the group. Instances have been reported where workers have asked
managers to replace group by individual incentives, for this very
reason.
   In recent years the idea has been gaining ground that the kinds
of financial incentive scheme discussed above are an inefficient means
of managerial control. Since they leave workers free to make
individual or collective decisions about the relationships between
effort and reward, they weaken managerial control over the productive
process, and affect the capacity of the management accurately to set
standards and to plan programmes of work. Attention has therefore
been turned to the development of systems of payment which offer a
regular weekly sum to individuals in return for a consistent level of
measured performance. In such schemes payment is not related directly
to pieces produced or to time saved. They take the form of a contract
in which the individual undertakes to maintain a certain pace of work
in return for a weekly wage. One effect of this is that management is
better able to predict and plan. Another is that the onus is placed
on managers and supervisors to see that workers have enough work to do
to fulfil their obligations under the contract. Some schemes provide
that if a worker shows himself capable of reaching and maintaining a
higher pace of work, he can be given a higher weekly wage. So there
is still an incentive to increase output.
   Schemes such as this, like individual and group piece-work or
bonus schemes, raise practical problems of setting rates or measuring
standards of performance, i.e. the translation of ideas of a
proper day's work into terms of physical output or effort. It will be
argued here that procedures for setting rates, however refined, do not
by themselves solve any of the problems raised by the existence of
differing notions of a proper day's work. But it is necessary in any
discussion of financial incentive schemes to describe and evaluate
these procedures.
THE PROBLEM OF RATE SETTING
   Before the stop-watch was widely introduced for timing
industrial work, piece-work schemes were usually based on times
estimated by supervisors, who relied on personal judgement based on
past experience. This method, sometimes referred to as
'guesstimating', is still employed.
# 27
<277 TEXT H13>
   (2) The provisions of the said Acts with respect to lands and
feu duties or ground annuals so far as such provisions are applicable
shall extend and apply to any such grant and to any such servitude
right or privilege as aforesaid.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   15.- (1) The County Council may-
   (a) retain and hold and use for such time as they think fit any
land or interest in land vested in them as part of the harbour
undertaking;
   (b) sell feu lease excamb or otherwise dispose of any such land or
interest no longer required for the purpose of the harbour undertaking
in such manner and for such consideration and on such terms and
conditions as they think fit (whether in consideration of the
execution of works or of the payment of a gross sum or of an annual
feu duty or rent or of payment in any other form);
   (c) sell excamb or dispose of any feu duties created or rents
reserved on the sale feu lease excambion or other disposition of any
such land or interest;
   (d) make do and execute any deed act or thing proper for
effectuating any such sale feu lease excambion or other disposition;
   (e) on any such excambion pay or receive money for equality of
exchange:
<END INDENTATION>
   Provided that the County Council shall not without the consent of
the Secretary of State sell feu lease excamb or otherwise dispose of
any such land or interest therein except at the best price or upon the
best terms which can be obtained for such land or interest but a
purchaser feuar or lessee shall not be concerned to enquire whether
the consent of the Secretary of State is necessary or has been
obtained.
   (2) Nothing in this section shall release the County Council or
any persons purchasing or acquiring any land or interest in land from
them under this section from any feu duties ground annuals rents
obligations restrictions reservations terms or conditions made payable
by or contained in any conveyance lease or other deed or instrument by
which the land or interest has been conveyed feued or leased to or
otherwise acquired by the County Council or any persons from or
through whom the County Council have derived title to such land or
interest.
PART =4
LIMITS
   16.- (1) The limits within which the County Council shall have
authority and within which the powers of the harbour master may be
exercised with respect to the harbour undertaking shall comprise the
lands forming part of the harbour undertaking and the following area
below high-water mark that is to say an area lying within a limit
commencing at a point on the foreshore at high-water mark on the west
shore of Symbister Bay one hundred and forty feet from the root of the
proposed breakwater (Work No. 2) on true bearing two hundred and
eighty degrees thence proceeding in a straight line across Symbister
Bay or the sea and foreshore of the same on true bearing fifty-four
degrees for a distance of one thousand three hundred and thirty feet
or thereby to a point on the foreshore at high-water mark on the east
shore of Symbister Bay thence proceeding in a southerly direction
along high-water mark on the east shore of Symbister Bay passing the
tidal basin on the east side of the bay and thence generally
south-westward again along high-water mark on the south shore of
Symbister Bay to the root of the south pier of the existing small boat
harbour thence following the line of the piers and quays forming the
existing small boat harbour and the proposed new harbour works to the
root of the proposed breakwater and thence along high-water mark on
the west shore of Symbister Bay to the point of commencement which
limits are in this Order termed "the harbour limits".
   (2) The limits within which the powers of the County Council to
levy rates with respect to the harbour undertaking may be exercised
shall comprise the harbour limits and such limits shall be construed
as being included in the parish of Nesting Lunnasting Whalsay and
Skerries and wholly within the county for all purposes.
   (3) A map or plan showing the harbour limits of which four copies
have been signed by Colin Neil Fraser Q.C. Counsel to the
Secretary of State under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland)
Act 1936 shall within one month after the commencement of the Order be
deposited as follows that is to say two copies at the office of the
Minister one copy with the sheriff clerk of the county at his office
and one copy at the office of the county clerk of the county.
   (4) In case of any discrepancy between the limits delineated in
the said map or plan and the limits described in subsection (1) of
this section the said map or plan shall be deemed to be correct and
shall prevail.
PART =5
WORKS AND POWERS
   17. Subject to the provisions of this Order and also subject to
such alterations (if any) in the plans and sections deposited with
reference to this Order as the Minister may require before completion
of the works the County Council may on the lands belonging to them or
acquired under this Order and in the lines and according to the levels
and within the limits of deviation shown on the deposited plans and
sections make and maintain the works.
   18. The works authorised by this Order will be situated in the
parish of Nesting Lunnasting Whalsay and Skerries and county of
Zetland and on the foreshore and bed of the sea adjacent thereto and
are-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Work No. 1 The construction of an access roadway thirty feet
wide commencing at a point one hundred and twenty feet or thereabouts
north-west of the root of the existing pier and extending in a
northerly direction for a distance of one hundred and twenty feet or
thereabouts from the point of commencement;
   Work No. 2 A reclamation of the foreshore the construction of a
quay and the infilling levelling and surfacing of the deck thereof as
a solid structure commencing at a point on the foreshore approximately
two hundred feet north-west of the root of the existing pier and
extending seawards in a north-easterly direction for a distance of one
hundred and sixty feet or thereabouts thence in a north-westerly
direction for a distance of two hundred and fifty feet or thereabouts
thence in a south-westerly direction for a distance of two hundred and
ten feet or thereabouts and thence in a south-easterly direction for a
distance of two hundred and forty feet or thereabouts and comprising
an area of five thousand seven hundred and thirty-one square yards;
   Work No. 3 The construction of a breakwater as a solid structure
commencing at a point on the foreshore four hundred and ninety feet or
thereabouts north-west of the root of the existing pier and extending
in a north-easterly direction for a distance of four hundred and ten
feet or thereabouts from the point of commencement;
   Work No. 4 The construction of a pier as an open work structure
with a wave screen along the seaward face commencing at the
termination of Work No. 3 and extending in an easterly direction for
a distance of two hundred feet or thereabouts from the point of
commencement.
<END INDENTATION>
   19. Subject to the provisions of this Order in constructing the
works the County Council may deviate laterally from the lines thereof
as shown on the deposited plans to any extent not exceeding the limits
of deviation marked thereon and may deviate vertically from the levels
of the works shown on the deposited sections to any extent not
exceeding five feet upwards and to any extent downwards:
   Provided that deviation either lateral or vertical below
high-water mark shall not be made without the consent in writing of
the Minister.
   2. Subject to the provisions of this Order the County Council
may from time to time erect construct and maintain whether temporarily
or permanently all such necessary works and conveniences as may be
requisite or expedient for the purposes of or in connection with the
construction maintenance and use of the works.
   21.- (1) Subject to the provisions of this Order the County
Council may within the harbour limits rebuild maintain repair renew
widen alter improve restore reconstruct and extend the harbour
undertaking and may from time to time erect construct and maintain
whether temporarily or permanently all necessary ancillary works
apparatus and conveniences and may also from time to time lay down and
maintain rails tramways and turntables.
   (2) A line of rails or tramway constructed under the powers of
this Order shall not be used for the public conveyance of passengers
unless it has been certified by the Minister to be fit for that
purpose.
   (3) Any electric light and power or other apparatus constructed
and maintained under this Order shall be so constructed used and
maintained as to prevent any interference with any telegraphic line
(as defined by the Telegraph Act 1878) belonging to or used by the
Postmaster-General or with telegraphic communication by means of any
such line.
   22. Any person who wilfully obstructs any person acting under the
authority of the County Council in setting out the lines of the works
or who pulls up or removes any poles or stakes driven into the ground
for the purpose of such setting out shall be guilty of an offence and
shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding ten
pounds and shall in addition be liable to repay to the County Council
any expenses incurred by them in making good such damage.
   23.- (1) If the works are not substantially commenced within two
years from the commencement of this Order or such extended time as the
Secretary of State may in the circumstances by order direct the said
powers shall cease.
   (2) If the execution of the works after having been substantially
commenced is virtually suspended for twelve consecutive months the
said powers shall cease except as to so much of the works as is then
completed unless the Secretary of State by order directs that the said
powers continue and remain in force but subject to the foregoing
provision as to completion the said powers shall cease in any event
within five years from the commencement of this Order.
   (3) A certificate of the Secretary of State to the effect that
the works have not been substantially commenced or that they have been
virtually suspended for twelve consecutive months shall for the
purposes of this section be conclusive evidence of the facts stated in
such certificate.
   24.- (1) The County Council shall not under the powers of this
Order construct renew extend or alter any works on in under or over
tidal waters or tidal lands below high-water mark except in accordance
with plans and sections approved by the Minister and subject to such
restrictions and regulations as the Minister may prescribe before such
work is begun.
   (2) If any such work is commenced or completed contrary to the
provisions of this section the Minister may abate and remove the same
and restore the site thereof to its former condition at the cost of
the County Council and the amount of such cost shall be a debt due
from the County Council to the Crown and shall be recoverable
accordingly.
   25. If at any time the Minister deems it expedient to order a
survey and examination of any work constructed by the County Council
under the powers of this Order on in under or over tidal waters or
tidal lands below high-water mark or of the site upon which it is
proposed to construct any such work the County Council shall defray
the expense of the survey and examination and the amount thereof shall
be a debt due from the County Council to the Crown and shall be
recoverable accordingly.
   26.- (1) Where any work constructed by the County Council under
the powers of this Order wholly or partially on in under or over tidal
waters or tidal lands below high-water mark is abandoned or suffered
to fall into decay the Minister may by notice in writing either
require the County Council at their own expense to repair and restore
such part of such work as is situated below high-water mark or any
portion thereof or require them to abate or remove the same and
restore the site thereof to its former condition to such an extent and
within such limits as the Minister may think proper.
# 296
<278 TEXT H14>
AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE
GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK RELATING TO TRADE AND COMMERCE
   The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark;
   Desiring to make provision for continuing in force with certain
modifications, primarily caused by the decision of the United Kingdom
to apply as from 1st October, 1956, a tariff of 1 per cent. 6ad
valorem on imports of bacon from foreign countries, the Commercial
Agreement of 24th April, 1933;
   Have agreed as follows:-
ARTICLE 1
   The Commercial Agreement of 24th April, 1933, (hereinafter
referred to as "the Commercial Agreement") as modified by the
present Agreement shall continue in force during the currency of the
present Agreement.
ARTICLE 2
   The Commercial Agreement is amended as follows:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) In the Second Schedule the item "Bacon... Free" is deleted
and the following substituted therefor:-
   "Bacon... 1% 6ad valorem, provided that the Government
of the United Kingdom shall suspend such duty during any period in
which imports into the United Kingdom of bacon from Denmark are
subject to quantitative restrictions."
   (b) In paragraph (2) of Article 4 the words "For bacon and hams,
the Danish allocation shall not be less than 62 per cent. of the
total permitted imports from foreign countries" are deleted and the
following substituted therefor:-
   "There shall be allocated to Denmark not less than the following
percentage shares of the total foreign quotas for bacon and for hams,
respectively permitted to be imported into the United Kingdom:-
   For bacon ... 68.95 per cent.
   For hams ... .4 per cent."
<END INDENTATION>
ARTICLE 3 
   The following shall cease to have effect as from the date of
entry into force of the present Agreement:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) The Supplementary Commercial Agreement of 21st December,
1938, in so far as it has not already by virtue of the Commercial
Agreement of 13th August, 1949, ceased to have effect.
   (b) The Commercial Agreement of 13th August, 1949, and the Notes
exchanged on the same date.
<END INDENTATION>
ARTICLE 4
   At any time at which both Governments are contracting parties
to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade the provisions of
Article 1, Article 2 (except in so far as they relate to bacon) and
sub-paragraph 2 of Article 7 of the Commercial Agreement shall be
inoperative. The provisions of sub-paragraph 2 of Article 9 of the
Commercial Agreement shall also be inoperative at any time at which
both Governments are contracting parties to the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade and the Government of Denmark is applying the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in respect of Greenland.
ARTICLE 5
   Nothing in the Commercial Agreement as modified by the present
Agreement shall-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) require either Government to do anything contrary to any
obligations to which it may be subject under the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade;
   (b) prevent either Government from restricting quantities or value
of imports into its territory to such an extent as may be necessary to
safeguard its external financial position and balance of payments.
<END INDENTATION>
ARTICLE 6
   For the purposes of the Commercial Agreement as modified by the
present Agreement-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) the term "foreign country" means in relation to the United
Kingdom any country other than those referred to in Annex A to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade;
   (b) the term "total foreign quota" means the total amount of
the commodity in question comprised in the specific allocations of
permitted imports which are distributed on a percentage basis among
specified foreign countries and does not include imports which may be
permitted within the limits fixed for "insignificant" suppliers;
   (c) any reference to regulation of imports into the United Kingdom
relates to regulation of the quantities of imports only;
   (d) the expression "from Denmark" in relation to agricultural
products means "produced or manufactured in Denmark";
   (e) any reference to imports of fish into the United Kingdom from
Denmark includes a reference to fish landed in the United Kingdom
direct from the sea by Danish vessels;
   (f) the term "United Kingdom" means Great Britain and Northern
Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
<END INDENTATION>
ARTICLE 7
   The present Agreement shall be ratified and the instruments of
ratification shall be exchanged at London as soon as possible. It
shall come into force immediately on the exchange of the instruments
of ratification and it may be terminated by either Government upon the
expiration of six months' notice given to the other Government,
provided that it shall in any event not terminate before 31st March,
1961.
   
   In witness whereof the undersigned, being duly authorised
thereto, have signed the present Agreement.
   Done in duplicate at London, this eighteenth day of November, one
thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven, in the English and Danish
languages, both texts being equally authoritative.
   SELWYN LLOYD.
   STEENSEN-LETH.
EXCHANGES OF NOTES
No. 1 (a)
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the Danish
Ambassador at London
   Your Excellency,
   In the course of the negotiations between the Government of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the
Government of Denmark, which resulted in the signature to-day of a
Trade Agreement, you indicated that you would be grateful for an
assurance from the Government of the United Kingdom that the agreement
concerning arrangements respecting the expiration of the long-term
agreement for the purchase of bacon, as set out in the Agreed Minute
and Exchange of Letters of the 27th of February, 1956, is still valid.
   I have the honour to inform Your Excellency that it is the
understanding of the Government of the United Kingdom that nothing in
the Agreement concluded to-day involves any amendment or limitation of
the rights of either party under the said Agreed Minute and Exchanges
of Letters.
   You also asked for confirmation that, notwithstanding Article 3
(b) of the Agreement concluded to-day, the termination of the
Protocols, Agreements and Exchanges of Notes referred to in Article 4
of the Commercial Agreement of the 13th of August, 1949, will still
have effect. I have to inform you that this is the understanding of
the Government of the United Kingdom.
   I have, &c.
   SELWYN LLOYD.
No. 1 (b)
The Danish Ambassador at London to the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs
   Sir,
   I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your Note ND 115/12 of
the 18th of November confirming that it is the understanding of the
Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
that nothing in the Trade Agreement concluded to-day involves any
amendment or limitation of the rights of either party under the Agreed
Minute and Exchanges of Letters of the 27th of February, 1956,
concerning arrangements respecting the expiration of the long-term
agreement for the purchase of bacon.
PART =1
POWERS OF COURTS IN RESPECT OF YOUNG OFFENDERS
Borstal Training and Imprisonment
   1.- (1) The minimum age at conviction which qualifies for a
sentence of borstal training under section twenty of the Criminal
Justice Act, 1948, shall be fifteen instead of sixteen years.
   (2) The power of a court to pass a sentence of borstal training
under the said section twenty in the case of a person convicted as
therein mentioned shall be exercisable in any case where the court is
of opinion, having regard to the circumstances of the offence and
after taking into account the offender's character and previous
conduct, that it is expedient that he should be detained for training
for not less than six months:
   Provided that such a sentence shall not be passed on a person who
is under seventeen years of age on the day of his conviction unless
the court is of opinion that no other method of dealing with him is
appropriate.
   (3) Before passing a sentence of borstal training in the case of
an offender of any age, the court shall consider any report made in
respect of him by or on behalf of the Prison Commissioners, and
section thirty-seven of this Act shall apply accordingly.
   (4) The foregoing provisions of this section shall apply in
relation to committal for a sentence of borstal training under section
twenty-eight of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, as they apply to
the passing of such a sentence under section twenty of the Criminal
Justice Act, 1948.
   (5) Subsections (7) and (8) of section twenty of the Criminal
Justice Act, 1948, and subsections (2) and (3) of section twenty-eight
of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, shall cease to have effect.
   2.- (1) In subsection (2) of section fifty-three of the
Children and Young Persons Act, 1933 (which provides for the passing
of a sentence of detention for a specified period in the case of
children or young persons convicted on indictment of certain grave
crimes therein mentioned) for the words from "an attempt to murder"
to "grievous bodily harm" there shall be substituted the words
"any offence punishable in the case of an adult with imprisonment for
fourteen years or more, not being an offence the sentence for which is
fixed by law".
   (2) In subsection (1) of section seventeen of the Criminal
Justice Act, 1948 (which precludes a court of assize or quarter
sessions from imposing imprisonment on a person under fifteen years of
age) for the words "fifteen years" there shall be substituted the
words "seventeen years".
   3.- (1) Without prejudice to any other enactment prohibiting
or restricting the imposition of imprisonment on persons of any age, a
sentence of imprisonment shall not be passed by any court on a person
within the limits of age which qualify for a sentence of borstal
training except-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) for a term not exceeding six months; or
   (b) (where the court has power to pass such a sentence) for a term
of not less than three years.
<END INDENTATION>
   (2) Subsection (1) of this section shall not apply in the case of
a person who is serving a sentence of imprisonment at the time when
the court passes sentence; and for the purpose of this subsection a
person sentenced to imprisonment who has been recalled or returned to
prison after being released subject to supervision or on licence, and
has not been released again or discharged, shall be treated as serving
the sentence.
   (3) In relation to a person who has served a previous sentence of
imprisonment for a term of not less than six months, or a previous
sentence of borstal training, subsection (1) of this section shall
have effect as if for the reference to three years there were
substituted a reference to eighteen months; and for the purpose of
this subsection a person sentenced to borstal training shall be
treated as having served the sentence if he has been released subject
to supervision, whether or not he has subsequently been recalled or
returned to a borstal institution.
   (4) The foregoing provisions of this section, so far as they
affect the passing of consecutive sentences by magistrates' courts,
shall have effect notwithstanding anything in section one hundred and
eight of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952 (which authorised such
courts in specified circumstances to impose consecutive sentences of
imprisonment totalling more than six months).
   (5) Her Majesty may by Order in Council direct that paragraph (a)
of subsection (1) of this section shall be repealed, either generally
or so far as it relates to persons, or male or female persons, of any
age described in the Order:
   Provided that-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) an Order in Council shall not be made under this subsection
unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that sufficient
accommodation is available in detention centres for the numbers of
offenders for whom such accommodation is likely to be required in
consequence of the Order;
   (b) no recommendation shall be made to Her Majesty in Council to
make an Order under this subsection unless a draft of the Order has
been laid before Parliament and has been approved by resolution of
each House of Parliament.
<END INDENTATION>
Detention Centre and Remand Home
   4.- (1) In any case where a court has power, or would have
power but for the statutory restrictions upon the imprisonment of
young offenders, to pass sentence of imprisonment on an offender under
twenty-one but not less than fourteen years of age, the court may,
subject to the provisions of this section, order him to be detained in
a detention centre.
# 247
<279 TEXT H15>
   I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman means by "large
part of the country." For all I know, over a geographical area what
he says may be true. For example, let us consider the area in which
the hon. Member for Exeter plays such a large part. If the
Government knock down one cottage in the middle of Dartmoor, they may
be removing all the slums over a wide area. But if the Minister
means, by "large part", areas where people are living in great
concentrations of population, then the answer is that the areas that
are not keeping up with the slum clearance programme represent the
majority of unfit houses in the country.
   The figures which the right hon. Gentleman quoted in the White
Paper, relating to 5 local authorities who were behindhand in their
programmes, included authorities in some of our great industrial
areas. If, when he talks about the problem being solved over a large
part of the country, he is merely noting that in Torquay, for
instance, 41 out of 42 houses were demolished in five years, I give
him his figures, but we know that in the great industrial areas the
situation is completely different.
   The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to make the point that he
is not solely responsible for slum clearance, and that it is a
question of partnership between him and the local authorities. When
things go well, we do not hear much about the contributions made by
local authorities, but we are likely to hear about them when things go
badly. What are the reasons for the slow completion of the slum
clearance programmes? He gave first priority to the shortage of
technical staff, but I would like to point out one reason for that
shortage.
   Up to 1957, local authorities had been encouraged to build up the
technical staffs in their housing departments, under the drive of the
early years, but then they were suddenly faced with a drastic cut in
their programmes, imposed by the Government, and they had to turn away
their technical staffs, who found work elsewhere. That was not the
fault of local authorities. Once an establishment has been arrived at
for carrying out a certain programme it is very difficult to maintain
it if Government interference causes frequent fluctuations in that
programme.
   One of the alarming things that the Minister said was in reply to
a Question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr.
Mapp). He said that he hoped to see the recruitment of technical
staff improved by the engagement of staffs from other local
authorities as they completed their slum clearance programmes. That
was a rather nasty shock for local authorities who were hoping that
when they had completed their slum clearance programmes they would be
able to go on with their other necessary programmes- perhaps to
increase their programmes for houses for the old people, for the sick
and the disabled, and also to expand their programme of houses for
general needs. By his Answer the right hon. Gentleman was saying
that when local authorities completed their slum clearance programme
he was going to cut down their programmes for other forms of house
building to force the transference of technical staffs to those areas
which had still to complete their slum clearance programmes.
   Another difficulty has been the rise in the cost of land, about
which the House has had a good deal to say. There are two aspects of
this problem. There is the special problem of areas in which there is
an excessive demand for land, about which I do not want to say much at
the moment. But even in areas where there is no reason to suppose
that the demand for land is abnormal the price has risen enormously.
My constituency of Widnes is in an industrial part of Lancashire,
which is not developing very rapidly. Nevertheless, although only
five or six years ago +5 an acre was considered a fairly stiff
price to pay, in the last few compulsory purchase orders it has made
that local authority has been paying over +7, an acre. That is
some measure of the obstacles which face a local authority which is
trying to carry out its slum clearance programme.
   The question of the interest rate affects both the cost of land
and the increased cost of building. Local authorities are caught both
ways. They are caught in relation to their normal costs, because any
increase in the rate of interest means an immediate increase in rents.
They are also caught by the excessive cost of all the auxiliary
services which have to be added to the actual building cost. In this
connection, the Government issued some interesting figures, which I
propose to use rather than my own, because we must presume that the
Government figures are fairly accurate. If a rate of interest of 3
3/4 per cent.- which is about equivalent to the Public Works Loan
Board rate in 195- is compared not with the present rate of 6 1/8
per cent., but 5 3/4 per cent., the difference in respect of the
loan charges on a house costing +1,5 is about +32 5s. a year.
That may not seem a great deal of money, but it is enough to knock
out even a +24 subsidy. In other words, over the last ten years the
Government have really not been paying any subsidy at all. They have
been increasing costs by raising the rate of interest on loans while
increasing the subsidies by a figure not nearly enough to meet the
extra costs caused thereby.
   We can, therefore, say that the present unhappy position in slum
clearance is largely due to the obstacles placed in the way of local
authorities either directly or indirectly, by Government policy. I do
not know what the current estimates will be, but in last year's
estimates the amount of money paid out in subsidy for expensive sites
rose very drastically. Was that due to the fact that more expensive
land was being used, or that the Government were having to pay
expensive site subsidies on ordinary land in areas where no such
subsidy would have had to be paid before? I suspect that the second
alternative was the cause of the increased estimates.
   I now turn to the question of overspill, in respect of which it
is very difficult to discover what has been happening. It is one of
the engaging peculiarities of the situation that the Scottish Housing
Return gives figures relating to the rehousing of people from
overspill areas while the right hon. Gentleman as far as I know, is
careful never to give any such figures. I do not know what has been
happening. All I know is that some years ago the Permanent Secretary
reckoned that about 2 million people were required to move from the
great towns, and that that meant the building of over 5, houses.
If that information is married with the estimate of a former Minister
of Housing and Local Government- the present Secretary of State for
Commonwealth Relations- that 2, houses were needed annually for
overspill, we see that that envisages a programme lasting for about
twenty-five years, which is a fairly long-term project. It is much
more than even the development of a single new town. The last figures
I have seen, which related to 1958, showed that under 1, houses
were being provided to accommodate overspill. I do not know what has
happened since, but I suspect that, if anything, things have got
worse.
   Let us now consider the right hon. Gentleman's attitude towards
the new towns, which form a very important part of the whole problem.
For many years it has been very difficult to get the right hon.
Gentleman to "come clean" on the question whether or not he
intended to build any new towns. For a long time he was rather
evasive about it. In a debate in July, 196, he said:
   "I do not rule out the idea of other new towns... It is easy
for the Leader of the Opposition to suggest the idea of more and more
new towns as a complete solution, but he never addressed himself, in
his speech, to where these new towns should go."- <OFFICIAL
REPORT, 18th July, 196; Vol. 627, c. 56-7.>
   If one read that statement in the context of the New Towns Act,
it was reasonable to assume- and I think that most people assumed-
that the Government were not intending to provide any new towns,
either because they could not find sites, or because they did not want
to. When the New Towns Bill was being considered, the Government were
implored again and again to provide compensation for redundancy, or to
give a glimmer of hope to the people employed in the new town
corporations that they would get employment in other new towns. All
that the right hon. Gentleman would say was that when the new towns
were completed there would be openings for them in the general
administration of the new towns. But at no time was he prepared to
give any hope that other new towns would be provided.
   The right hon. Gentleman would not pay compensation for the
people who were made redundant. The demoralising effect on the staff
of the new towns was deplorable. Naturally, the people who were faced
with the possibility of their jobs coming to an end, the best people,
the younger people, the people who had most hope in getting out of the
new towns back into either other aspects of public service or into
private enterprise, took every opportunity to get out because they
knew that, sooner or later, their jobs would come to an end and as far
as they could see there was no hope of any alternative form of
employment.
   What has happened now? In 1951, a preliminary plan was prepared
for Lancashire, to include Parbold as a new town. In the final plan
that was submitted in 1956, Skelmersdale, which was approximately the
same, was designated by the Lancashire County Council as a new town
area. That was cut out of the 1956 plan. As late as July, 196, the
right hon. Gentleman was still saying that he could not find sites
for the new towns, yet within a matter of six months he was telling us
in the House that he had decided to approve Skelmersdale as a new
town. Could anything be more crazy?
   Could anything be more crazy than to demoralise the staff, to
break up the morale of the corporations, to do all one can to create
the impression that the new towns are a dying industry, and then, when
one has successfully done that, to resurrect a new town which was
suggested originally in 1951 and suddenly decide to approve it? I
have seen some of this. Widnes is a reception area for Liverpool. We
have been vitally concerned about whether new towns would be built. I
am sure that everybody concerned with the problem was under the
impression that the Ministry had decided not to build a new town in
Lancashire. Now I am delighted that we are to have one. If there is
to be a new town, could there be a more crazy and incompetent way of
setting about getting a successful new town than the method adopted by
the Government?
   What is required from the right hon. Gentleman is more than a
few new towns dotted about here and there. What is required is a
determined effort to relocate not only people, but industry, away from
London and the South. The Co-operative Permanent Building Society
sends out an interesting bulletin about the price of houses on which
it has lent money. It points out that the outstanding feature of the
property market during 196 was the marked rise in the price of houses
in the London area and in the Home Counties.
# 24
<28 TEXT H16>
   Behind Clause 1 there is the conception of fairness and justice
between child and child. Our Amendment merely carries this conception
of justice further. We want it to obtain between non-graduates and
non-graduates under different local authorities, and between the
students who come under Clause 1 and those under Clause 2.
   This underlines what my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East
(Mrs. White) has said about grants. The Minister has said nothing
about the incomes scale on which grants under this Clause are to be
assessed. Surely in the grants made to students once the local
authority has said they ought to pursue their further education, there
can be no defensible variations between one local authority and
another. We used to hear talk about major and minor awards, and I
thought we had wiped out that foolish stratification. This Clause if
unamended permits the widest variation even in the amount of grants.
I think that this is the most important point which has so far
emerged in this debate, and I regret that the Parliamentary Secretary
has said nothing about it.
   I have often had to fight a battle for a student who has been
refused a grant by a local education authority and in the best cases
both the local authority and myself have gone to the Minister. We
have received advice and information from the Ministry and that has
meant usually that either the local authority has accepted ministerial
advice if the authority had been wrong or I have accepted it if I was
wrong. The Ministry is in a position to know more than even the best
local education authority. That is the pattern we are now seeking to
establish in legislation. Under the "permissive" powers, however,
in the worst cases when the Ministry was right and the M.P. was
right the local authority could still dig its heels in and say that
whatever the Ministry said it was not going to give a grant.
   The Minister said there are practical difficulties about
implementing an Amendment, and suggested it was not possible to
include all the courses into the regulations. Nobody would wish to
write in the course of two or three lectures only to which he referred
and behind which he sheltered. What we envisage in Clause 2 is the
same pattern as in Clause 1 where we write into the regulations every
criterion, everything that is possible to apply nationally. Most of
the courses that we are talking about there is no difficulty in
defining and no difficulty in putting in the regulations.
   On top of that, Clause 1 (4) says:
   "Without prejudice to the duty imposed by subsection (1) of this
Section, a local education authority shall have power to bestow an
award on any person in respect of his attendance..."
   In this Clause, too, we would write in such a provision, and
leave with the authority the right and privilege of being more
generous than the regulations. What we are asking the Minister to do
is to set out in regulations the many courses we know about which have
national status and those which we might describe as having a kind of
local national status. If the student is of the right calibre to
pursue a course, which the Ministry enacts is a worthwhile full-time
course, he shall receive the same justice from Britain whatever
authority he happens to have been born under.
11.15 a.m.
   The Parliamentary Secretary said that there was nothing to worry
about, that the Government had looked into the position and that there
were no complaints. Whether the Minister is aware of it or not, the
whole case for the Bill is that there has been a sort of ground swell
of complaints which, over the years, have become more and more
insistent. There has not been justice between student and student.
Whatever is true about the university students with whom Clause 1
deals is true about the variety of other students with whom Clause 2
deals. What the hon. Gentleman is asking us to do is to leave
everybody, except first degree students, in exactly the position they
were in before the Bill. I share the passionate view on this that my
hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East showed in her speech at our
last meeting, and I hope that it will be possible for the Committee,
even now, to persuade the Parliamentary Secretary to change his mind.
   Mrs. Eirene White: I cannot understand how the
Parliamentary Secretary can suppose that in his answer today he dealt
with the matter which we have raised. We are here dealing with the
whole corpus of students other than those going to universities, but
all we have had from the Parliamentary Secretary has been a few
perfunctory remarks at the beginning of our deliberations this
morning.
   That means that one has to go back to the beginning and spell out
for the Committee what it is that we are really discussing. We cannot
leave the situation like this. I want to quote a paragraph from the
Ministry Circular 5/61 which is the present practice and which is now
being embodied in statutory form in the Bill. Paragraph 9 says:
   "Applications for awards for university diploma or certificate
courses."
   This gives a very important group of people
   "Non-graduates taking full-time university diploma or
certificate courses lasting for three years or more should receive
awards in accordance with paragraph 8 (a) above."
   That is, roughly in the same way as those in Clause 1.
   "Awards for other diploma or certificate courses should be
considered on their merits."
   That is all that is said in the circular about non-university and
non-teacher training college students. We are now speaking of people
who are taking courses other than university degree or comparable to
degree courses. This is a very important group which the circular
mentions merely by saying that their cases should be considered on
their merits. There is no guidance or direction from the Minister.
   In addition to this group of people who go to universities and
who take, for example, a social science diploma, which is normally a
two-year and not a three-year course, or the Diploma of Public
Administration at Oxford, which is also a two-year and not a
three-year course, there are tens and possibly hundreds of thousands
of students taking full-time courses at technical colleges. All those
are being dismissed by the Minister.
   If hon. Members have any doubts about this, I refer them to the
present practice. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton,
Itchen (Dr. King) said he thought that minor awards had been
abolished. I am sorry to say that this is not so. Certain local
authorities have abolished minor awards for full-time education, but
not all. London County Council reached the very proper conclusion
that minor awards were not suitable for full-time students.
   The National Union of Students has investigated this matter. As
all hon. Members are aware, it issues a very useful book on grants
to students which it brings up to date every year and which it sends
to all education authorities, including those in the Channel Islands,
and the total number of which is 149. The Union gets replies from
nearly, but not quite, all of them. Of those who replied to the
question of what awards were given to full-time students over the age
of 18 attending technical college courses not of degree or equivalent
status- in other words the people with whom Clause 2 deals- the
Union got the following replies: 67 authorities give minor awards of
varying value and assessment; 11 give major awards; 13 give major
awards dependent on qualifications; 1 base their awards on costs; 11
consider each case on its merits. Certain authorities- I will not
shame them by naming them- give no awards at all. Others give
assistance only with travel costs. One authority offers what it calls
a home scholarship for the final year of the student's attendance at
the local college.
   It is perfectly plain from that that the practice of authorities
in dealing with students taking full-time courses at universities for
less than three years, or at technical colleges or at other
institutions of comparable standard where the student is 18 or more at
the time- and let us deal only with that group for the moment-
varies very widely. I will not now deal with the little difficulty,
which the Parliamentary Secretary mentioned, about the person who goes
for only a few lectures, or who takes up something which is obviously
a hobby. I am now dealing with those taking full-time courses for a
considerable period- say, a minimum of one academic year. Many would
be taking courses for two years and those at technical colleges
perhaps for much longer. Those are full-time students pursuing
serious studies.
   The practice among authorities obviously varies, not only on the
question of the parental means scale, with which I dealt fairly
emphatically last week and which the Parliamentary Secretary did not
even mention, not only in the way they assess parental incomes, but in
the amounts which they give.
   I have with me information which has been collected by the
National Union of Students and I will quote a few of the replies which
it received last year. This concerns grants current in the academic
year 1961-62 for full-time students over the age of 18 and attending
full-time at technical colleges, taking courses which are not for a
degree or of comparable status. These figures may be subject to some
parental means test, but we are not arguing about that at the moment.
The maximum grant which an authority awards to students who qualify
for full grant is +18, plus travel, in Kent; +8 in Devon; +125 in
West Ham; +115, plus travel in West Hartlepools; +163 in
Warwickshire; there is no day grant in Pembrokeshire if the student is
living at home, but there is for those taking a residential course;
the figure is +12 in Cardiff. In all of those cases tuition fees
are paid by the authority, but that practice is not universal. My own
authority of Flint, I am sorry to say, does not pay tuition fees. One
has to apply, but one is lucky if one gets tuition fees paid.
   Those taking full-time courses at technical colleges and living
away from home- and this happens in many parts of the country where
children from rural areas have to go into residence- again have
fantastic discrepancies in the amounts which their authorities are
prepared to award to them. For the same group of authorities the
residential maxima are: +26 in Kent; between +114 and +18 in
Devon; +185 in West Ham; +175 plus travel in West Hartlepools; +218
in Warwickshire; +183 in Pembrokeshire; +21 in Cardiff.
   What possible justice is there in having all those full-time
students at technical colleges treated like that? What possible
defence is there for treating university students under Clause 1 as
they are treated and technical college students under Clause 2 in
another way? We may have something to say about discretion being
given for part-time students, or for those taking what might be called
hobby courses in further education establishments, but there is no
conceivable ground on which the Minister can argue that he can do for
university students what he is proposing to do while refusing to do it
for full-time technical college students, or university students
taking a course of less than three years' duration.
   The Parliamentary Secretary has only one excuse and it is that he
is afraid to pay the cost. As he well knows we have had a letter from
local authorities saying that by Clause 1 they are being made
virtually the Minister's agents and that their discretion is being so
much diminished that in effect they will simply administer a national
service and the total expenditure in those circumstances ought to be a
national charge and not paid out of the rates.
# 25
<281 TEXT H17>
They had great hopes, and as the years have gone by they have had a
certain feeling of disappointment. I shall touch upon some of the
reasons for that disappointment and enquire what we should do to make
improvement in the general conduct of this branch of our affairs.
   The noble Lord, Lord Strang, has done splendid work- and I
gladly add my tribute to those paid by others- as Chairman for so
long of the National Parks Commission; and he has had a hard row to
hoe. He has done that in those intervals allowed to him while
composing his important work, recently published, which I confess I
have not yet read, but fully intend to read, laying out the historical
permanence of British foreign policy over a long period. In addition
to all that scholarly use of his leisure he has found time for the
daily handling of the problems of our national parks, and I am sure
that we are all grateful to him. As has been said by my noble friend
beside me, the noble Lord, Lord Strang, has had some splendid
colleagues. My noble friend Lord Lawson, whose political life was
much intertwined with mine, asks me to say that he is very sorry he
cannot be here to-day to listen to, and take part in, our debate. The
reason is his wife's ill-health, and I am sure the sympathy of all of
us will go out to both of them.
   My noble friend Lord Lawson acted as Deputy Chairman of the
National Parks Commission in the early years, and I remember that some
of us thought it a good tactical move to have an ex-Secretary of State
for War in that important position; because we felt it might be
possible for him to chase away generals from certain areas of which I
am thinking, in County Durham and Teesdale where, it seemed to us-
and this was apprehended elsewhere- that they had requisitioned
rather more land for use as artillery ranges than was reasonably
justifiable. Indeed, there were rumours at that time, in that area on
the Pennine Way, that there might be a clash between the troops and
the embattled contingents of ramblers from Durham and Yorkshire. But
all that was avoided, and I believe that the diplomatic gifts as well
as the military experience of my noble friend Lord Lawson contributed
both to the maintenance of order and good will and to the opening of
the Pennine Way throughout its length, which was something we were
then very keen should be done.
   May I say a word or two now on some of the points which arise out
of the work of the National Parks Commission? To some extent I shall
be touching on points already made by previous speakers; but the first
and primary point is, of course, finance. The National Parks
Commission have been left practically destitute by the Treasury under
successive Governments, and I agree very much with what was said in
some detail by the noble Earl who preceded me. We thought (and I am
one of those who were thinking, talking and planning how all this
should be organised) that the National Parks Commission were a
sufficiently important body, endowed with sufficiently important
powers, to deserve to receive a direct annual grant from the Treasury,
to be administered by the Chairman of the Commission and his
colleagues in accordance with the requirements of the Act; and it was
very disappointing to find that the Hobhouse Committee, to which the
noble Earl referred in detail, fully agreed about not naming any
special figure. The figure need not be a large one but a direct
annual grant from the Treasury would help a great deal.
   I am quite sure that, so long as such a grant is lacking, the
framework at the foundation will not be right. Therefore I hope that
before long the present Minister of Housing and Local Government who,
as we have heard, will be receiving many recommendations, will settle
this point, in particular, so that the noble Lord, Lord Strang, and
his successors will have something to distribute, at their discretion
and, as the noble Earl suggested, between different national park
areas. I think this a very important though essentially a simple
matter. I once threw out a hint which has occasionally troubled the
waters since. In my Budget speech of 1946, when I was Chancellor of
the Exchequer (though we had no national parks at that time, for it
was more than three years before the Act was passed), I spoke well of
national parks, as I have done on other occasions. I threw out a hint
(my idea would have required further legislation, which in the result
was not forthcoming) that some financial assistance might be given
from the National Land Fund, which was set up in that year, to
national parks. I had in mind a certain once-for-all contribution of
a capital nature that might probably be made. But all that, I regret
to say, came to nothing. Although enthusiasts of national parks in
another place, and perhaps here too, have from time to time returned
to that charge, I regret to say that neither from that source nor from
any other so far have national parks been reasonably financed. This
is so simple a point that I hope very much that this defect may soon
be remedied.
   I wish now to say a word about the long-distance routes. When I
was younger I used to be what is now called a keen "hiker". I like
walking considerable distances in beautiful country and in agreeable
company, and I was very keen on this concept of the long-distance
routes. They began, as your Lordships know, with the Pennine Way,
which happened to run right through the constituency I then had the
honour to represent, and also through a very beautiful area full of
wild fell country and many lovely waterfalls and other natural
beauties. It is a matter of regret- and those are the actual words
of the Commission themselves, and I think a very moderate form of
words- that those routes are not yet completely open.
   After the approval, if I remember the figure rightly, of some
seven proposed long-distance routes (it was six or seven, or something
of that order), which meant a great deal of hard work for the
Commission and in surveying on the spot, even now, more than ten years
after this work began, none of these long-distance routes is yet
completely open to walkers or to horsemen in these beautiful areas. I
understand that the reason for this very slow advance is simple: it is
that there are no effective powers vested in the Commission for
compulsory purchase, where necessary, of rights of way or rights of
access at given points along these routes where access and rights of
way do not now exist.
   I understand that there is a lot of detail that could be talked
about here- I am not going to talk about it- concerning the relative
powers of different local authorities and whether the Commission
should have such powers vested in them, or whether they should be
distributed among various local authorities. On that matter I do not
express an opinion. I merely say that the remedy should be very
simple, and it can be covered, I think, by the general formula used
just now: there should be effective powers of compulsory purchase
operated under the authority of the Commission in all cases where we
still have not cleared the road, whether along the Pennine Way or
Offa's Dyke or any of these long-distance routes. I am sure that
there are great numbers of the younger and healthier and fitter
citizens of this country who would appreciate very much the
opportunity of extending their journeys by foot or on horseback-
because these routes are for riders on horseback, too- along the
bridle paths and quiet ways and well away from roads heavily crowded
with motor and other vehicles. I hope that here, too, early action
can be taken to amend the law in this regard and give the Commission
power to carry out what was always regarded as a central and essential
part of their mandate.
   It is sometimes said- indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Strang,
himself said it in a speech which was quite properly publicised in the
Report of the Commission- that there is perhaps a certain conflict in
the Act setting up the Commission: two conflicting aims. It is often
said that the duty of the Commission is, on the one hand, to preserve
and enhance natural beauty, and on the other, to provide and improve
facilities for public enjoyment of the parks. I do not myself believe
that there is any serious or deep conflict there. I think we can
achieve both aims by an application of reasonable give and take and,
where necessary, consultation. I will touch upon that point again in
a moment.
   I will say, first, a word (this point has been mentioned before)
about the first aim: the preservation and enhancement of natural
beauty. I am glad to hear it said- and I have no reason to doubt the
truth of what is said- that there is here no real conflict between
the Forestry Commission, of which I have been for many years a strong
supporter, and others. I think that the Forestry Commission have done
a grand job which was never done until they were set up, but I will
not develop that point now, although on another occasion I may be
tempted to. But there has, I think, occasionally been a little
potential ill-will between the Forestry Commission and those
associated with the open air societies and the national parks. There
has been a certain emotion in the background about cone-bearing trees;
and I will return to that in a moment.
   I am very glad to hear, however, that, in terms of practical
politics now (my noble friend said so and I think that the noble Earl
also repeated it), consultation proceeds agreeably between the various
interests concerned: the park authorities, whether the central Parks
Commission or the planning authorities for particular parks, with the
Forestry Commission and also with timber growers and the Landowners'
Association. There are three or four bodies concerned. I am
delighted to hear that these bodies are getting on well together and
can settle agreeably any disputes that arise with regard to the
general problem of the preservation and enhancement of natural beauty,
with particular reference to all this debatable afforestation.
   I will say a word or two, but not more, about afforestation. I
am a great devotee of afforestation, and I often recall the great
saying of Robert Louis Stevenson, that trees are the most civil
society. In many moods and in many places that great thought is borne
in upon me. I personally have had great pleasure through my life in
passing very happy hours and days among beautiful woodlands and trees,
both in this country and overseas. But Robert Louis Stevenson did not
discriminate. He said, "trees" and he made no qualification or
classification. Trees, he said, are the most civil society. He did
not say, ~"Trees other than whatever it may be you are suspicious of
when you see it growing"; he did not say, ~"All trees other than
conifers."
   I am always recalling that when I was a little boy I learnt that
to plant a tree and, still more, to care for it when you have planted
it, was a good deed which would leave your heritage better than when
you found it. I learnt that then and I have believed it ever since,
and I think it is still true. We in this country have, as is well
known, a smaller percentage of our national area under trees of any
kind than has any other country in Europe- barely 6 per cent., if I
remember the figure aright- and I am very anxious, as a matter of
national policy and national interest, to see the afforestation of
this country carried further, with appropriate regard being had to
soils and other matters, to what will grow and what will not, and so
on.
# 251
<282 TEXT H18>
   13. The Appellants, immediately after the determination of the
appeal, declared to us their dissatisfaction therewith as being
erroneous in point of law and in due course required us to state a
Case for the opinion of the High Court pursuant to the Finance Act,
1937, Fifth schedule, Part =2, Paragraph 4, and the Income Tax Act,
1952, Section 64, which Case we have stated and do sign accordingly.
   14. The question of law for the opinion of the High Court is
whether the sum of +4,72 referred to in paragraph 2 hereof was an
amount applied for the benefit of Mr. Hawke within the meaning of
Section 36(1)(c) of the Finance Act, 1947.
   R. W. Quayle
   N. F. Rowe
   Commissioners for the Special Purposes of the Income Tax Acts.
   Turnstile House,
   94-99, High Holborn,
   London, W.C.1.
   5th October, 1959.
   
   The case came before Cross, J., in the Chancery Division on
13th July, 196, when judgment was given in favour of the Crown, with
costs.
   Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas, Q.C., and Mr. Alan Orr appeared as
Counsel for the Crown, and Mr. P. J. Brennan for the Company.
   
   Cross, J.- This case concerns the Profits Tax liability
of the respondent Company, H. Dunning & Co. (1946), Ltd., for
two chargeable accounting periods, 1st March, 1955, to 31st October,
1955, and 1st November, 1955, to 29th February, 1956.
   The question arises in this way. The Company was incorporated in
1946, and carries on the business of light engineering. It is
director-controlled, within the meaning of the Profits Tax
legislation. A Mr. Hawke has been a director of the Company since
its incorporation, though he is not a whole-time service director, and
he has been at all material times a member of the Company holding one
+1 share out of the 1, issued shares. In 1951 Mr. Hawke
invented a special type of "cable gland" for engineering purposes
and obtained patent protection for this invention some time in 1952.
On 31st December, 1954, he entered into an agreement with the Company
whereby he granted to the Company a licence for a period of years to
manufacture and to sell the patented article, and the Company
covenanted during the continuance of the licence to pay him a
commission of +7 1s. per cent. of the selling price of each
patented article. There was provision for the termination of the
agreement before the expiry of the period, and it was in fact
terminated in September, 1955. It is found in the Case that that was
a perfectly genuine commercial agreement under which the Company got
full consideration for the payments which they had to make to Mr.
Hawke. The total of the payments which were made under the agreement
for the period from 1st March, 1955, to its termination in September,
1955, was +4,72, and the whole question at issue is whether or not
these payments were "distributions" by the Company within the
meaning of Section 36 of the Finance Act, 1947. If they were
distributions, then, on the assumption which hitherto has been made
that they would not be deductible for the purpose of ascertaining the
gross relevant distribution for the purpose of Section 35, the amount
of Profits Tax payable by the Company for the accounting periods in
question would be larger than it would be if the payments were not
distributions.
   Section 36(1) is in these terms:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "Subject to the provisions of the next succeeding subsection,
wherever- (a) any amount is distributed directly or indirectly by way
of dividend or cash bonus to any person; or (b) assets are distributed
in kind to any person; or (c) where the trade or business is carried
on by a body corporate the directors whereof have a controlling
interest therein,"
<END INDENTATION>
   - which is the case here-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "an amount is applied, whether by way of remuneration, loans or
otherwise, for the benefit of any person, there shall be deemed for
the purposes of the last preceding section to be a distribution to
that person of that amount or, as the case may be, of an amount equal
to the value of those assets:"
<END INDENTATION>
   - then there is a proviso-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "Provided that no sum applied in repaying a loan or in reducing
the share capital of the person carrying on the trade or business
shall be treated as a distribution."
<END INDENTATION>
   That proviso certainly seems to suggest that, if it were not
there, a sum applied by the Company in repaying a loan would be a
distribution. I do not think I need read Sub-section (2), but
Sub-section (3) contains special provisions in regard to loans, to
this effect:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "Where- (a) a loan has been treated as part of the gross
relevant distributions to proprietors for a chargeable accounting
period; and (b) as a result, the amount of tax payable for that period
has been increased,"
<END INDENTATION>
   then, if the loan is repaid, the gross relevant distributions to
the proprietors are to be treated as reduced by the amount
corresponding to the increase caused by treating the loan as a
distribution.
   The question which I have to decide is, of course, whether these
payments were amounts applied by the Company for the benefit of Mr.
Hawke "by way of remuneration, loans or otherwise". They were
certainly not "remuneration" or "loans"; but do they come under
the head of "or otherwise"? They were, as I have said, payments
made under a commercial agreement for full consideration given by
Mr. Hawke to the Company in the form of a grant to the Company of a
licence to exploit his patent. If the words had been simply "an
amount is applied for the benefit of any person", I should have
thought it very doubtful whether this Sub-section would have covered
payments, whether of capital or income, under an ordinary commercial
agreement. According to the ordinary use of the English language, a
payment for which you have given full consideration is not an amount
applied for your benefit by the payer. But, of course, the words are
not simply "an amount is applied for the benefit of any person";
there are the additional words "whether by way of remuneration, loans
or otherwise". In Commissioners of Inland Revenue v.
Chappie, Ltd., 34 T.C. 59, the Court of Appeal had to
consider the case of loans made by a company to one of its members, an
associated company, on what were found to be ordinary commercial
terms, and the Court, affirming the decision of Danckwerts, J., held
that such a loan was a distribution within the meaning of this
Section.
   It has been argued by Mr. Brennan in this case that the
decision turned simply on the special provisions made in regard to
loans. The Section, of course, refers to loans expressly, and there
is in Sub-section (3) a provision for adjusting the matter if and when
the loan is repaid. In the case of loans, therefore, it is
particularly difficult to avoid the conclusion that they count as
distributions even if they are made on commercial terms; but I do not
regard the decision in the Chappie case as throwing no light on
the construction of the rest of this Sub-section. The members of the
Court of Appeal, as I read their judgments, definitely rejected the
idea that there had to be an element of bounty in a payment in order
to bring it into the scope of the Section. It is true that they were
dealing with loans, but they were construing the Section as a whole.
The Section expressly refers to remuneration as well as loans.
Remuneration does not normally contain any element of bounty, yet the
Sub-section says that all payments by way of remuneration are to be
treated as distributions. It is, therefore, very difficult to say
that what falls under the heading "or otherwise" as opposed to what
falls under the heading "remuneration" or "loans" must contain
an element of bounty. Then it is said: "If you read the Sub-section
as widely as that, any payment made by a company, whether it be an
income or a capital payment, and whether there is consideration for it
or not, will be a distribution. If the company buys a motor-car from
a member for a proper price, even that will be a distribution."
Well, it appears to me that the members of the Court of Appeal in the
Chappie case were aware that that might be the result of their
decision. That is shown by what was said by Mr. Tucker and Jenkins,
L.J., at the end of the case (at page 527 of this report). But,
of course, it is true to say that the decision itself related only to
loans.
   The Section was considered again a little later by Harman, J.,
in Commissioners of Inland Revenue v. Lactagol, Ltd., 35
T.C. 23. There the company had made a lump-sum payment to a
director-member, Mr. Adams, in consideration of a covenant that
after his term of service with the company ceased he would not compete
with the company. So for a lump-sum payment the company got the
benefit of a capital asset in the form of Mr. Adams's covenant.
Harman, J., was impressed, as anybody must be, with the absurdity
of treating such a payment- a capital payment for a capital asset
under a genuine commercial transaction- as being an amount applied
for the benefit of the payee. He was not prepared to accept the view
that in the Chappie case the Court of Appeal had decided that all
payments were distributions. He thought that a line must be drawn
somewhere, and influenced, I think, by the fact that this Act taxes
profits, he drew the line at payments of capital for capital assets.
Whether it is really logical to draw any line or to draw it there it
is not for me to say. If I were faced with a similar case to that
which was before Harman, J., I should, of course, follow his
decision. But the case before me is not one of a payment of capital
for a capital asset, but of recurring payments of income. I do not
therefore think that decision of Harman, J., covers this case, and I
feel myself at liberty to reach the conclusion at which, but for his
decision, I would have arrived without hesitation in view of the
decision of the Court of Appeal in the Chappie case. I should
have said that the Commissioners decided this case in favour of the
taxpayer on the ground that the Chappie case dealt only with
loans, and that this case was covered by the Lactagol case.
   For the reasons I have tried to give, I think that their decision
was wrong, and therefore I shall allow the appeal.
   Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas.- Your Lordship will, then, allow
the appeal with costs?
   Cross, J.- Yes.
   Mr. P. J. Brennan.- Would your Lordship hear me on
that point about costs?
   Cross, J.- Yes.
   Mr. Brennan.- My Lord, the Lactagol case was decided
some years ago, and this matter has been left in a state of grave
uncertainty; and my clients went before the Commissioners on the basis
of the Lactagol case. They succeeded before the Commissioners,
and I submit that it might be a proper case where your Lordship might
make an Order whereby each side would bear its own costs.
   Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas.- My Lord, it is the same sort of
difficulty that arises in any case where there has been a decision
upon which one side relies.
   Cross, J.- I think I must allow the Crown to have their
costs in this case. I quite understand that the Commissioners were in
a difficulty in view of the two authorities, but I have taken a
different view of Harman, J.'s decision to that taken by them, and I
think the ordinary result must follow.
   Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas.- And would your Lordship make a
declaration?
   Cross, J.- Yes. There is no question of figures, is
there?
# 22
<283 TEXT H19>
THE INDUSTRIAL COURT
(2846) ENGINEERING INDUSTRY
Aluminium Wire and Cable Company Limited- Clerical Workers-
Claim for application thereto of wages increases of a specified
Agreement
Parties:- 
   Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union
   and
   Aluminium Wire and Cable Company Limited
Terms of Reference:- 
"Proposed by the Trade Union
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   That the wage increases agreed between the Engineering and
Allied Employers' Federation and the Clerical and Administrative
Workers' Union on 6th January, 1961, shall be applied to members of
the Union employed by Aluminium Wire and Cable Company Limited,
Swansea, with effect from 9th January, 1961.
Proposed by the Employer
   Whether the wage increases agreed between the Engineering and
Allied Employers' Federation and the Clerical and Administrative
Workers' union on 6th January, 1961, should be applied to members of
the Union employed by Aluminium Wire and Cable Company limited,
Swansea, with effect from 9th January, 1961."
<END INDENTATION>
   1. The matter was referred to the Industrial Court for settlement
in accordance with the provisions of the Industrial Courts Act, 1919.
   The Parties were heard in Cardiff on the 9th May, 1961.
   2. By an Agreement reached between the Clerical and
Administrative Workers' Union (hereinafter referred to as "the
Union"), and the Engineering Employers' Federation on the 6th
January, 1961, increases which the Federation were prepared to
recommend to be paid by member firms to their clerical workers with
salaries up to and including +775 6per annum in the case of males
and +58 in the case of females, as from the 9th January, 1961, were
determined. The said increases are set out in the Appendix hereto.
The Agreement also contained the following clause:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "The recommendation is made subject to the understanding that
firms may take into account any general increase already given to
clerical workers, whether as a result of the National Wages Agreement
reached with the Manual Workers' Union on 21st December, 196, or in
anticipation of the settlement of this claim."
<END INDENTATION>
   The dispute concerns 83 clerical workers employed by the
Aluminium Wire and Cable Company Limited (hereinafter referred as
"the Company") and the Union claim that the above increases should
be applied to them with effect from the 9th January, 1961. The matter
was first raised on the 2th January, 1961, when the Union having
received a report that the Company had not implemented the terms of
the Agreement, wrote to them. The Union subsequently sought the
assistance of the Industrial Relations Officer (Wales), under whose
Chairmanship a meeting took place on the 2nd March, 1961. The Company
then stated that they were exempt from the terms of the Agreement by
reason of a notice issued to each of their clerical workers in their
pay packet on the 5th December, 196, when certain increases in pay
became effective. The matter was thereupon referred to the Court for
decision.
   3. On behalf of the Union it was stated that they had when
necessary met the Company regarding matters affecting wages and
conditions of clerical workers, and whilst the Company were not in
membership of the Engineering Employers' Federation, there was an
understanding that they should follow the Engineering Industry. In
that understanding the Union had negotiated with them arrangements for
a shorter working week, the salary limits under which clerical workers
received payment for overtime and the rota under which Saturday
mornings were worked.
   It was submitted that the terms under which a company could claim
exemption from implementing the Agreement of the 6th January, 1961,
were clearly understood between the Engineering Employers' Federation
and the Union; that the term "general increase" was understood
between them and that increases in salaries consequent on a review of
salaries undertaken by the Company which took effect from the 3rd
October, 196, did not constitute a "general increase". The fact
that a number of the clerical workers concerned had not received any
increase at all and the lack of pattern in the increases awarded by
the Company were indicative of a merit assessment on the Company's
valuation of each employee.
   It was contended that the increases paid on the 5th December,
196 could not have been paid as a result of the manual workers'
settlement, which was agreed more than a fortnight after the increases
had been paid, or that the review, which the Company stated had taken
several months to complete, could have been in anticipation of the
settlement of a class for clerical workers which the Union had not yet
presented to the Company. The Court's attention was drawn to the fact
that on the 3rd October, 196 (the retrospective date to which the
Company's increase became effective) the Union had not presented their
case to the Engineering Employers' Federation. Furthermore, the
National Wages Agreement with the Manual Workers' Union was not
reached until the 21st December, 196.
   It was submitted that the clerical workers employed by the
Company should receive the increases set out in the Appendix. The
Union maintained that previous differences referred to the Industrial
Disputes Tribunal under the Industrial Disputes Order, 1951, which
resulted in Awards Nos. 248, 813 and 84 in favour of the Union,
endorsed that view.
   4. On behalf of the Company it was stated that whilst they were
not members of the Engineering and Allied Employers' South Wales
Association, it had been their practice to have regard to
recommendations of the Engineering Employers' Federation when
reviewing salaries towards the end of each year. Thus the Company had
given increases to their clerical workers with effect from the 1st
January, 1959, comparable with increases recommended by the Federation
in October, 1958. They had also given increases with effect from the
1st January, 196, and a reduction of working hours as from the 2nd
May, 196, even though the federation had not recommended any salary
increases at that time.
   During the latter half of 196, it was stated, the Company
decided on a major review of salaries of their staff in the course of
which they became aware of a claim submitted by the Union to the
Federation in respect of their clerical workers. Accordingly, when
such employees were advised in December, 196, of increases granted
(which were made retrospective to the beginning of October, 196), the
Company entered a caveat to cover possible increases which might
subsequently be recommended by the Federation, notice of which was
contained in the letter addressed to each employee at the time. Early
in January, 1961, when the Company received details of the increases
recommended by the Federation, comparison with the increases already
granted to their clerical workers revealed some differences and any
deficiencies were made good as from the 2nd January, 1961, although the
Federation's recommendations did not take effect until a week later.
   The Company had not specifically agreed and had not given any
undertaking to the Union to follow the Engineering Industry.
   It was submitted that increases in salaries granted to all staff
when salaries were reviewed were a "general increase". The review
of salaries was described as a major review as the level of salaries
being paid to senior staff having university degrees or other special
qualifications was being specially examined, and it was spread over a
long period and completed only after it became known that the Union
were negotiating with the Federation in respect of clerical workers.
It was also submitted that all the clerical workers concerned had
received increases no less than those recommended in the National
Agreement of the 6th January, 1961, between the Engineering Employers'
Federation and the Union.
   In the Company's views the Awards of the Industrial Disputes
Tribunal referred to by the Union were made in different circumstances
and could not be taken as precedents.
   In conclusion the Company submitted that they observed the spirit
of all Agreements between the Engineering Employers' Federation and
the Union, and in support of this gave details of the conditions of
employment of their staff.
   5. The Court, having given careful consideration to the evidence
and submissions of the Parties, Award that, with effect from the 2th
January, 1961, the Company shall apply to the clerical workers
concerned the wage increases agreed between the Engineering Employers'
Federation and the Union on the 6th January, 1961.
   H. LLOYD-WILLIAMS, Chairman.
   W. LEWIS CLARKE.
   G. B. THORNEYCROFT.
<NEW TEXT>
I have submitted precedents over two centuries. We believe those
precedents to be valid. May we ask whether you would be good enough
further to consider your Ruling and indicate on what occasions and
under what circumstances it shall apply and whether you will consider
the precedents and previous Rulings before a new ruling is
established?
   Mr. Speaker: I have said that I will look at what the
right hon. Gentleman put to me and, of course, I will. But I do not
propose to say anything else about it, unless I find that my Ruling
was wrong.
   Mr. Gordon Walker: In the interests of ourselves and our
successors, who might be misled, may I suggest that you later give us
the reasons which led you to think that these proceedings were not
invalidated? Our successors and ourselves might otherwise be misled
about what does or does not constitute a House in other circumstances.
If your Ruling were given just like that, and without reasons, it
might be held to go much further than you intend. I fully understand
and appreciate your desire not to give reasons in general, but on this
occasion you might consider it worth your while to do so.
   Mr. Speaker: If it be thought that there might be any
dubiety- that is the word- about the matter, I will say that my
Ruling applies to nothing at all except to circumstances where the
Mace is not in the right place and when there is a suspension under
Standing Order No. 24.
   Sir H. Butcher: You have been good enough, Mr. Speaker,
to say that on behalf of the House you will conduct a certain amount
of research into our precedents. If, as a by-product of such
research, it is found that in recent years the habit of discussing
certain Rulings with the Chair has increased, may I ask you not to
hesitate to say so, so that we may conform to the more orderly methods
of our predecessors?
   Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Member. Since I
came into the service of the House I have been trying gradually to get
round to that position and I have had much help from the House.
   Mr. Denis Howell: On a point of order. Would you also
take into account, Mr. Speaker, the new procedure of the Patronage
Secretary intervening in our affairs-
   Mr. Speaker: In no circumstances can the hon. Member
have a right to address me about that now.
   Mr. Donnelly: On a point of order. May I venture to
suggest that when the Minister of Works investigates the microphones,
he considers not only new microphones but the possibility of reverting
to the pre-war practice of not having microphones, which might help
the proceedings of the House generally?
   Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Member. I am sure
that all the technical aspects will be considered, including, I hope,
some examination of the microphones which we had before and which
seemed to be satisfactory.
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN (RETURN FROM WEST AFRICA)
   The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): I beg to move,
   That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, assuring Her
Majesty of the loyal and affectionate welcome of this House to Her
Majesty, on the occasion of Her return from Her tour of West Africa
with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh.
   I am sure that this Motion will commend itself to the House. A
month ago, on the eve of Her Majesty's departure for West Africa, the
House joined me in sending her our warmest good wishes for the success
of her tour and a safe return.
   Now the Queen is safely back with us, I venture to say that of
the many journeys which she and His Royal Highness have so tirelessly
undertaken, none has been crowned with greater success than this.
# 216
<284 TEXT H2>
   This means that a man now reaching 65 years of age can earn a
flat-rate pension of +3 18s. 6d. a week- or up to +6 4s. a
week if he is married- if he works until he is 7 and an insured
woman can earn a similar pension if she works until she is 65.
   The above are the increases for contributions paid after 2nd
August, 1959.
   For every 25 contributions paid for weeks up to 2nd August 1959,
increases are at the rate of 1s. 6d. (1s. for the wife). On
widowhood any 1s. increases earned for the wife after 16th July,
1951, are paid at the 1s. 6d. rate.
   On top of these increases of flat-rate pension you may also get
extra graduated pension if you do not retire at age 65 (6 for a
woman). This can arise in two ways.
   Firstly, if you are 65 (6 for a woman) you work for an employer
and are paid more than +9 in any week you will (unless you are
contracted out) pay graduated contributions. These will count in the
ordinary way for graduated pension.
   Secondly, the graduated part of the pension which you would have
drawn had you retired at age 65 (6 for a woman) will be treated as if
it were a graduated contribution paid by you and your employer. This
means that half of it will count as an extra contribution by you
towards further units of graduated pension.
   Examples showing how the increases work for people now
approaching pension age with various earnings are shown on page 31.
47 The earnings rule
   Because the pension is for people who have retired, it is
reduced if the pensioner earns more than a certain amount while he is
under 7 (65 for a woman). The rule is that the pension is reduced by
6d. for every complete shilling of net earnings between +3 1s.
and +4 1s. a week, and by 1s. for every complete shilling over
+4 1s. A wife's pension is similarly reduced if she earns over
+3 1s. a week.
   A pensioner under 7 (65 for a woman) who earns +3 11s. or
more in a week must declare the amount earned to the local Pensions
and National Insurance Office without delay.
48 How and when to claim Retirement Pension
   Shortly before you reach pension age, whether or not you intend
to retire, you should apply for your right to a pension to be decided.
The local Pensions and National Insurance Office usually sends an
application form to each insured person. But if you have not got one
three months before you reach age 65 (6 for a woman) you should
enquire at your local office.
   Before you can be awarded a pension you must give notice in
writing of the date of your retirement. You can do this up to 4
months in advance. If a man and wife both wish to claim a pension,
each must give notice even if the wife is doing no work besides her
own domestic duties. If your claim, or your notice of retirement, is
late, you may lose benefit.
49 Cancelling retirement
   If you have once retired and decide to return to work you can,
instead of having your pension reduced for earnings, cancel your
retirement and qualify for a bigger pension, as described in paragraph
46, when you finally retire or reach the age of 7 (65 for a woman).
To do this you and your wife will both have to give up your pension
for the time being and you will have to pay full national insurance
contributions while you are working.
WIDOW'S BENEFITS
   For the first 13 weeks of widowhood there is a benefit called
widow's allowance. After that, payment of widow's benefit depends on
individual circumstances such as family responsibilities and age.
5 Widow's Allowance
   The standard rate of the allowance is 8s. a week for the
first 13 weeks of widowhood, with increases of 25s. a week for the
eldest dependent child and 17s. a week for each other dependent
child.
   The allowance can be paid to a woman widowed over 6 years of age
only if her husband was not receiving a retirement pension. The
general position of widows over 6 is explained in paragraph 57.
51 Widowed Mother's Allowance
   A widow left with a dependent child (see paragraph 22) will
usually get a widowed mother's allowance when she has finished drawing
her widow's allowance. The standard weekly rate of widowed mother's
allowance is 82s. 6d. for the widow and her eldest child, with
increases of 17s. a week for each other dependent child. The
allowance will last as long as the widow has a dependent child in her
family. The allowance is provided to help the widowed mother who,
because of her children, cannot readily support herself by working.
If she does work her allowance is, therefore, reduced by 6d. for
every complete shilling of net earnings between +5 and +6 a week and
by 1s. for every complete shilling over +6, but it cannot be
reduced by more than the widow's personal part of the allowance-
usually 57s. 6d. a week- however much she earns. A widowed
mother earning +5 1s. or more in any week must declare her earnings
to the local Pensions and National Insurance Office without delay.
52 Widowed Mother's Personal Allowance
   A widow whose son or daughter has left school and does not
qualify as a dependent child (see paragraph 22) but is still under the
age of 18 and living with her, can get a widowed mother's personal
allowance, usually 57s. 6d. a week, when her widow's allowance or
widowed mother's allowance ends. This allowance is subject to the
same earnings rule as the full widowed mother's allowance.
53 Widow's Pension
   The standard weekly rate of widow's pension is 57s. 6d. and
a widow may get it in either of the following ways:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) when widow's allowance ends, if she was over 5 years of age
when her husband died and had been married for 3 years or more;
   (b) when widowed mother's allowance ends, if she is then over 5
years of age (4 if her husband died before 4th February, 1957) and 3
years have passed since the date of her marriage.
<END INDENTATION>
   The pension is provided to help the older widow who cannot
readily support herself by taking up full-time employment. If she is
able to work, her widow's pension is, therefore, reduced by 6d. for
every complete shilling of net earnings between +3 1s. and +4
1s. a week and by 1s. for every complete shilling over +4 1s.
A widow earning +3 11s. or more in any week is required to notify
the local Pensions and National Insurance Office without delay.
   There are special rules which enable a widow who does not qualify
for the widow's pension or qualifies only for the 1s. pension (see
paragraph 55) to get unemployment or sickness benefit if she is unable
to find work or is unable to work because of illness when the widow's
allowance or widowed mother's allowance ends.
54 What are the contribution conditions?
   Only the husband's contributions count for widow's benefit; the
contribution conditions cannot be fulfilled on the widow's own
insurance record.
   There are two contribution conditions:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   First- the husband must normally have paid at least 156
contributions of any Class since he last became insured.
   Second- for benefit to be paid at the standard rate the
husband must have paid or have been credited with a yearly average of
5 contributions. If this average is below 5, but not less than 13,
benefit is paid at a reduced rate.
<END INDENTATION>
55 Widow's 1s. Pension
   Certain widows have had preserved for them rights equivalent to
those which they might have expected under the Acts in force before
July 1948- the "1s. pension". The widows in question are those
whose marriage was before 5th July, 1948, and whose husbands were
insured under the old scheme immediately before that date.
57 How and when to claim Widow's Benefit
   A person registering a death can get a special death
certificate from the Registrar of Deaths. On the back of the
certificate the widow can let her local Pensions and National
Insurance Office know that she wishes to claim benefit. A form on
which to claim will then be sent to her. The form can also be
obtained from any local Pensions and National Insurance Office.
   If a claim is delayed more than three months after the husband's
death the widow may lose some benefit.
   Widow's benefit stops if the widow remarries.
57 Widows over 6
   Retirement pension is usually paid instead of widow's pension
to widows who are over 6 when widowed. Other widows qualify for a
retirement pension on their own insurance when they retire at or after
reaching age 6; there are special rules to make it easier for them to
qualify. But a widow entitled to widow's allowance, because her
husband was not receiving a retirement pension, or to a widowed
mother's allowance when over 6 will be paid that allowance if, as is
usually the case, it is more favourable to her than the flat-rate
retirement pension.
   The widow of a man who has paid graduated contributions will get
a graduated addition to her flat-rate retirement pension equal to
one-half the graduated part of the pension which her husband had
earned or was drawing when he died. This will be on top of any
graduated pension which she herself has earned (see paragraph 45).
   If she becomes a widow when under 6, she will receive any
graduated pension to which she is entitled when she qualifies for her
retirement pension.
   A widow may also be entitled to an increase of retirement pension
because of deferred retirement (see paragraph 46).
CHILD'S SPECIAL ALLOWANCE
58 What is a Child's Special Allowance?
   This allowance is available to a woman whose marriage has been
dissolved or annulled, and is paid on the death of her former husband
if she has a child to whose support he was contributing at least 5s.
a week in cash or its equivalent. The allowance cannot be paid if the
woman has remarried.
   The amount of the allowance depends on the amount the former
husband was paying towards the child's support at his death subject to
a maximum of 25s. for the first child and 17s. for each other
child in addition to Family Allowances.
   The contribution conditions are the same as for widow's benefit
(see paragraph 54), except that the allowance is not reduced where the
former husband's yearly average of paid or credited contributions is
below 5 although the allowance cannot be paid if the average is below
13.
   The allowance should be claimed within three months of the former
husband's death, otherwise some benefit may be lost. A claim form can
be obtained through any local Pensions and National Insurance Office.
GUARDIAN'S ALLOWANCE
59 For orphan children
   A guardian's allowance is a payment of 32s. 6d. a week to
the person who takes into his family an orphan child both of whose
parents are dead. Special rules apply to the children of divorced
parents, to adopted children, to illegitimate children and to children
one of whose parents is missing at the time the other dies.
   One of the orphan's parents must have been insured, but there is
no requirement that any particular number of contributions should have
been paid.
   The allowance should be claimed not later than 3 months after the
child joins the family; otherwise the guardian may lose some benefit.
A claim form can be obtained from the local Pensions and National
Insurance Office.
   A child for whom a guardian's allowance is being paid cannot
count for the purpose of Family Allowances.
DEATH GRANT
6 What is a Death Grant?
   A death grant is a sum paid on the death of an insured person
or of the wife, husband or child of an insured person.
# 26
<285 TEXT H21>
Thirty-six per cent. of our imports come from the Commonwealth;
but I think I am correct in saying that over 2 per cent. of
metropolitan France's imports come from territories having a special
relationship with her. Be that as it may, the trade is of very great
importance to the Commonwealth countries concerned. For example,
among the dependent or newly independent countries, Mauritius sends 82
per cent. of her exports to the United Kingdom; Sierra Leone 7 per
cent.; and Nigeria 51 per cent. Of the older Commonwealth
countries, New Zealand is also heavily dependent on the United Kingdom
market, sending 56 per cent. of her exports to us. The proportions
of their exports which Australia, India and Ceylon send to the United
Kingdom are of the order of 3 per cent.
   32. On the assumption that there is general recognition of the
need to devise satisfactory arrangements to protect vital interests of
Commonwealth countries, and with this background in mind, I think it
would be helpful to suggest in more detail how the problem might be
split up into its different components, and how each of these might be
treated.
   33. I would like to begin with the less developed members of the
Commonwealth and those territories which are still dependent. May I
start by trying to describe briefly the nature and needs of these
countries and territories? Of the Dependent Territories some are
moving towards independence and at least one, Tanganyika, will be an
independent member of the Commonwealth by the time our negotiations
are completed. For others we cannot foresee, at any rate for some
time to come, a constitutional position more advanced than that of
internal self-government. Of the less developed countries which are
already independent members of the Commonwealth, three- Ghana,
Nigeria and Sierra Leone- are in Africa; four- India, Pakistan,
Ceylon and Malaya- are in Asia; and one, Cyprus, is in Europe. Apart
from Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, all these
countries and territories have tropical or sub-tropical climates.
They nearly all produce tropical products and raw materials many of
which are also produced by the countries and territories at present
associated with the Community under Part =4 of the Treaty of Rome.
Many of them are seeking to establish secondary industries in order
to diversify their economies and reduce their very great dependence
upon imports. India, Pakistan and Hong Kong are also exporters of
certain manufactured goods; and some others, such as Malta and the
West Indies, hope to follow their example, though on a much smaller
scale.
   34. All these countries and territories attach importance to the
preferences and duty-free entry which they enjoy in the United Kingdom
market. There are a few other special arrangements, which are vital
to certain of them. For some territories it is also of importance-
in some cases of great importance- to be able to compete in the
markets of the rest of Europe on equal terms with other exporters of
similar products. They would certainly not understand if, as a result
of becoming a Member of the Community, the United Kingdom were obliged
to discriminate against them in favour of other non-European
countries. Another feature of many of these countries and territories
is that their need to encourage industrial development and their
unavoidable reliance on indirect taxation for revenue makes it
necessary for them to put tariffs on imports of manufactured goods.
   35. In considering the problems which our entry into the Common
Market would create for these countries and territories we have
studied with great interest the arrangements laid down in Part =4 of
the Treaty of Rome and in the related Convention for the Association
with the E.E.C. of certain Overseas Countries and Territories
with whom members of that Community previously had special relations.
Some Commonwealth countries have expressed the opinion that the
present arrangements for Association are not appropriate for
independent states. But this view may not apply to the new
arrangements when it is known what they will be. In any case we
should like to see the less developed members of the Commonwealth, and
our Dependent Territories, given the opportunity, if they so wish, to
enter into Association with the Community on the same terms as those
which will in future be available to the present Associated Overseas
Countries and Territories. This is something we shall need to
discuss, and we know that you are already at work on a review of the
present arrangements for Association. Some Commonwealth countries may
feel that some other arrangements might suit them better. We would
not wish to prejudge any solutions they may decide to propose.
   36. Association may, therefore, be a solution for the problems of
many Commonwealth countries and territories. But for others it may
not be possible. One way of dealing with the problems of those who
are not associated would be to arrange for them to maintain unimpaired
their rights of access to the United Kingdom market, in the same way
as was done for Morocco's trade with France, or for Surinam's trade
with Benelux, under the relevant Protocol to the Rome Treaty. But we
recognise that this solution would not be applicable in all cases.
Another method of proceeding would be to consider the problems on a
commodity-by-commodity basis. Perhaps it would be helpful if I were
to say something, at this point, about the main groups of
commodities- tropical products, materials, manufactures and temperate
foodstuffs.
   37. Difficulties will arise over tropical products if one or
more of the less-developed countries or territories of the
Commonwealth do not enter into an appropriate form of Association with
the Community. There does not appear to be any complete solution of
such difficulties. But we see two alternative lines of approach. The
first, which would be appropriate when not only equality of
opportunity but also some measure of protection is essential, would be
to grant free entry into the United Kingdom market alone for the
Commonwealth country or territory which is not associated, and then to
fix the common tariff of the enlarged Community at a level which would
safeguard the interests both of that country and of the countries and
territories associated with the Community. The second line of
approach would be to fix a zero, or a very low, level for the common
tariff. For a few important commodities we believe that it would be
possible to do this without significant damage to the interests of the
countries and territories associated with the Community. For example,
tea is a commodity of great importance to India and Ceylon, and so is
cocoa to Ghana. A zero common tariff would go a considerable way to
meet the trade problems of those countries if they were not solved by
Association.
   38. Materials should not in general give rise to
difficulties, as the common tariff on most of them is zero. There
are, however, a few on which it is substantial. Five of them-
aluminium, wood pulp, newsprint, lead and zinc- are of great
importance to certain Commonwealth countries: on these five materials
we would wish to seek a zero tariff.
   39. Manufactures are, with a very few exceptions, imported
duty-free into the United Kingdom both from the developed countries in
the Commonwealth- Canada, Australia and New Zealand- and from the
less developed Asian countries. Exporting industries in all these
countries have been assisted in their development by free entry and
the preferential position they have enjoyed in the United Kingdom.
They would be seriously affected, not only by loss of preferences in
our market, but also if their position were transformed into one in
which the whole of their export trade was affected by reverse
preferences in favour of the major industrial countries in Europe.
Nevertheless we recognise that indefinite and unlimited continuation
of free entry over the whole of this field may not be regarded as
compatible with the development of the common market and we are
willing to discuss ways of reconciling these two conflicting
considerations. I believe that the problem is of manageable
proportions. The trade in question is important to the Commonwealth
countries concerned but it is not large in total in comparison with
European trade.
   4. The problem arises in a special form for manufactures from
the less-developed countries, the so-called low cost manufactures. It
occurs most acutely in relation to Asian Commonwealth countries and
the Colony of Hong Kong. There is increasing international
recognition that developed countries have a duty to facilitate
international trade in this field as much as they can. But what the
nature of the solution should be in the context of our joining the
E.E.C., must depend on how far it can be dealt with under
arrangements for a Part =4 Association. You will probably agree that
it would not be in the general interest that the United Kingdom should
erect fresh tariff barriers to cut back such trade.
   41. A major concern of the more fully developed members of the
Commonwealth is their trade with us in temperate foodstuffs.
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, in particular, have vital
interests in this field for which special arrangements must be made.
   42. I should like to give you some figures to demonstrate how
essential to these countries exports of temperate foodstuffs are. New
Zealand's total exports in 1959 were valued at +29 million. Of
these +17 million worth, or about 6 per cent., were temperate
foodstuffs. +13 million worth, out of the total +17 million, came
to the United Kingdom. The bulk of these exports to us consisted of
mutton, lamb, butter and cheese. Over 9 per cent. of total exports
of these commodities came to the United Kingdom. If in the future New
Zealand cannot, by one means or another, be assured of comparable
outlets for them, her whole economy will be shattered. New Zealand's
problem is particularly acute because of her dependence on a
relatively limited range of exports. But other Commonwealth commodity
problems are the same in kind if not in degree. For example
Australia, even though she exports a much more varied range of
products, relies on temperate foodstuffs for 35 per cent. of her
exports. The temperate foodstuffs she sends abroad are valued at
+25 million: of these +1 million worth come to the United
Kingdom. I hope that these figures will help to illustrate the
problem. But figures alone cannot tell the whole story. We must bear
in mind the effect of what we do both on particular localities and on
individual producers in Commonwealth countries.
   43. To many Commonwealth countries the United Kingdom has both
moral and contractual obligations, on the basis of which they have
planned the development of their economies. I will mention only the
Commonwealth Sugar Agreement with which you are all familiar since it
is recognised in the International Sugar Agreement. It provides an
assured basis for sugar production which is particularly important in
the case of our Dependent Territories.
   44. The problem therefore is to reconcile our obligations to the
Commonwealth with the common agricultural policy as it evolves. We
believe that solutions can be found which will prove satisfactory.
The Commission's proposals emphasise that trade policy in
agricultural products should take into account, not only internal
agricultural considerations, but also the need to maintain trade with
third countries. This is a liberal approach and one with which we
fully agree.
   45. I therefore hope that we can reach agreement in principle
that full regard should be paid to the interests of the Commonwealth
producers concerned, and that they should be given in the future the
opportunity of outlets for their produce comparable to those they now
enjoy.
   46. The precise form of the special arrangements needed to
protect vital interests of Commonwealth countries in this field will
need careful consideration. To a large extent it must depend on the
way in which the common agricultural policy is developed. We want to
work jointly with you in examining these problems and their relation
to the common agricultural policy.
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CHAPTER 3
The Home in its Setting
   159 As a consequence of the social and economic changes
referred to in the opening chapter problems are making themselves felt
in relating homes to their setting because practice has not caught up
with the changes that have taken place. Car ownership and traffic
dangers have made the old pattern of housing estates out of date. The
streets may have been a safe place for children when the baker and the
milkman came by horse and cart and everyone walked to work. With one
family in three owning a car now, and with delivery and public
transport and service vehicles often all using the residential street,
new arrangements are required. Similarly, the garden, once highly
important as a means of growing vegetables and fruit to supplement the
diet of the large families of people who, by today's standards, were
poorly paid and insecure, no longer serves that purpose. Again the
pressure on land and the need to rebuild in city centres is compelling
the building of a larger proportion of flats, which increases the need
to provide somewhere for children to play.
   16 We have been to a number of estates where new forms of layout
attempt to meet present day needs, and we wish there were more of
them. In the years to come it is essential that there should be, for
housing can become obsolete in its layout just as surely as in its
internal design and facilities; and most of the present work is
obsolete from this point of view when it is built. Layout is not
within our terms of reference, but we have been obliged to formulate
views upon it in our consideration of the provision which should be
made for cars, and the play space which should be provided in relation
to blocks of flats.
   161 In addition to these two subjects, on which we were given to
understand that advice on standards would be welcome, and on the
access requirements of terrace houses, which markedly influence their
internal arrangement, we propose to comment on two others- gardens
and the general appearance of domestic building.
=1 External Appearance
   162 After inspecting so many developments in all parts of the
country, we feel bound to record our concern that there should be such
a vast gap between the best housing schemes in the country and many of
the others. Control of development by town planning cannot by itself
produce good layout and appearance- the onus to achieve this lies
with the developer himself, whether he is a private individual or a
local authority. It cannot be achieved without using qualified
professional people, architects and landscape architects, to design
not only the individual house and house group but, every bit as
important, the layout as a whole, and the landscaping. With the
numerous examples in the local authority field and the best examples
in the private sector there is no longer any reason why our town and
countryside should continue to be spoilt by unimaginative buildings.
Good layout and landscaping, together with the use of good and well
chosen external materials and colours throughout an estate, go
nine-tenths of the way towards creating beauty instead of ugliness,
and it is in these broad and not necessarily costly ways, rather than
in the laboured detailing of the individual dwelling, that housing
development can be made pleasing and attractive to the eye.
   163 This is applicable to local authorities and private
enterprise alike, but it may be that those private developers who
remain wedded to old plans grown dusty with the years, who are content
with amateur layout, and who provide no landscaping but the good
subsoil of the site, often do so because they fear conservatism on the
part of the buyer and the building society. Whether or not some
building societies are conservative, buyers are much less so; and it
is a fact worth recording that many builders have been surprised to
find that houses catering for the present way of life and conformable
with the modern eye for good design displace from their order books
older and more conventional plans which they had previously been
offering. We therefore urge those developers who do not already do so
to turn increasingly to qualified people for the difficult and
indispensable work of designing the buildings, the layout and the
landscaping. For design now sells, and, if other considerations do
not appeal, that alone should provide the incentive.
   164 It is essential that the landscaping should be designed for
ease of maintenance as well as that funds should be provided for the
maintenance both of the dwellings themselves and the spaces between
them, including the landscaping. By ensuring that newly created
property and its environment is properly looked after, its fresh
appearance actually improves with the years as the lawns, trees and
shrubs grow to maturity.
   165 With notable exceptions, most private development displays no
co-ordination of painting and planting, and lags far behind that of
many local authorities, who as landlords can maintain the whole of the
estate. It must be admitted that many other European countries reach
a far higher standard in their private estate layout than do we, very
largely through the use of housing associations, which take full
responsibility for both the initial landscaping and its maintenance.
There are already in this country established ways of keeping owner
occupied property in good and tasteful repair and the landscaping in
good condition, by the use of restrictive covenants governing
repainting and the maintenance of the landscaping. Non-profit-making
companies, run by the occupiers, can see that the work is carried out,
and these are proving successful.
Television aerials
   166 The forest of roof top aerials brought into being by the
growth of television and VHF radio stirs many people to strong
condemnation, and we for our part share these feelings. Since
television was introduced the increase in the power of the stations
and the improved sensitivity of receivers have made outdoor aerials
less necessary in many locations. Indoor or roof space aerials do not
invariably give satisfactory performance even in strong signal areas,
and there is therefore no easy or universal answer to this problem.
But investigations, notably those of the Rowntree Trust at Earswick
(York), where on a large estate it was found that almost all the
houses could be satisfactorily served by indoor television aerials,
have shown that people often think of buying expensive outdoor aerials
when they need not do so.
   167 Some local authorities building blocks of flats, and some New
Town Corporations, are providing master aerial installations which
amplify the signal received at one aerial installation and distribute
it by wire to a number of dwellings. In many circumstances this is a
necessary and sensible thing to do. In private enterprise housing
there may be less scope for the use of master installations, except in
blocks of flats, since there may not be an organisation to deal with
its common ownership and maintenance, but in many areas there are
relay companies which provide an aerial service on a commercial basis
both to local authorities and to private premises. A broadcast relay
station licence is required if a master aerial system, including a
system provided by a local authority, serves two or more sets of
premises, e.g. houses or blocks of flats, and applications for
such licences should be made to the Post Office. Where it is not
possible to provide a master aerial installation, and where a loft or
indoor aerial is really inadequate, local authorities may consider
standardising upon a suitable aerial, or requiring that tenants'
aerials should be sited where they cannot be seen from the street or
against the skyline, as has been done by a number of local
authorities. In locations where an outside aerial is necessary a
standardised aerial for each dwelling on an estate may perhaps be a
practical possibility, and we commend it to the attention of
developers.
   168 This is a continuing problem, for if new frequency bands
should be brought into use for additional or colour programmes another
crop of aerials can be expected, and although at the much higher
frequencies likely to be concerned the rods of the aerials will be
only about one foot long, outdoor aerials erected clear of buildings
are likely to be necessary even quite near to powerful transmitters.
It is therefore important for the appearance of estates that local
authorities and other large property owners should bear in mind that,
in conjunction with the local Post Office engineers, it is often
possible to do a great deal to mitigate the nuisance; and they should
take every opportunity to do so.
=2 Gardens
   169 The post war improvements in the standard of living mean
that few families now rely on the garden to keep them properly fed.
It is now used for outdoor living, for children's play and the baby's
sleep; and it is cultivated either for the pleasure of gardening or
only because it has to be kept tidy. With the tendency for densities
to increase at the same time as space has to be provided for more cars
to be kept, it will be a temptation to squeeze garden sizes to a point
where they will no longer cater for these things. The evidence we
received suggests that any call for large gardens is declining as
other interests, such as the car, come to take up more of people's
leisure time. Where gardens are small, as they may well be when
houses are built at densities which in the past have usually called
for a proportion of flats, it will be important to plan for children's
play space nearby.
   17 In all gardens arrangements are required which will ensure a
reasonable degree of privacy for sitting out and having meals outside.
Present day gardens are often sadly lacking in this amenity.
=3 Terrace Houses- Access
   171 Probably most of the terrace houses built since 1945 have
been laid out in such a way that there is no garden gate giving direct
access to the rear of the house, and various means have been adopted
to provide for access from the front to the back- a tunnel between
pairs of houses; a through store; a store leading through a utility
room; or a store leading through the kitchen. Because of the need to
provide pedestrian segregation and car storage, much future terrace
housing will probably have access to both sides of the house, so
meeting most of the requirements. The most important, to be met by
house and layout taken together, are that there should be access,
without entering hall, kitchen or any living room, for bicycles from
road or public path to store; for garden tools from store to place of
use; and for garden materials from place of delivery to place of use.
There is also a requirement which we think should not be contravened
in any circumstances- the refuse collector should be able to reach
the dust-bin store, and the coalman the fuel store, without entering
any part of the house; this must of course be planned having due
regard to the convenience of the householder. Maintenance men also
have to be able to get ladders to both sides of the house.
=4 Play Space
   172 "While the child's attendance at school is compulsory
between the ages of five and fifteen, enjoyment of facilities for
following his out-of-school interests is, and must remain, within the
child's or parents' choice. It should be of as much concern to the
general public that he has the necessary facilities for these
leisure-time activities as that there is a school for him to
attend".
   173 We agree with this point of view, and also with the statement
in the report of the Flats Sub-Committee published as "Living in
Flats" in 1952 that "the provision of one or more playgrounds must
be the first call on available space around flats, because it is on
children that the inevitable restrictions of flat life press most
hardly."
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For example, the London Board have almost completed the
rationalisation of their stores in which sixty old premises have been
vacated, twenty-one new ones built and twenty-three completely
reorganised. The Eastern Board after completing the centralisation of
meter maintenance have achieved a 4 per cent. increase in output
compared with 1948-49, with substantial savings in costs.
   237. In addition, clerical methods and accounting techniques are
under continual review in all the Boards. Electronic calculators and
high speed tabulators have steadily replaced older types of equipment
and are now commonplace in the industry. The introduction of
computers is proceeding where justifiable and the Council and Boards
are in close touch with manufacturers about computer developments of
special significance for electricity supply application.
CHAPTER 6
EMPLOYEES
Staffing of the Electricity Council
   238. At 31st March, 1961, the staff of the Electricity Council
numbered 514, of whom 346 were located at the Council's headquarters
in London and 168 were outstationed. Since March, 1958, when the
total employed was 542, the Council have made slight reductions each
year bringing about a total decrease of 5 per cent. in their staff
up to the end of March, 1961.
   239. At the end of another successful year for the industry, the
Electricity Council are glad once again to record their appreciation
of the efficient manner in which their staff have conducted the
Council's business.
Personnel of the Industry
   24. At 31st March, 1961, there were 193,174 persons employed
in the electricity supply industry; 514 by the Electricity Council,
55,198 by the Central Electricity Generating Board, and 137,462 by the
Area Boards. The combined total exceeded the corresponding figure at
the end of the previous year by 2.4 per cent.
   241. This overall increase should be viewed against the expanding
business of the industry. Thus, whilst Area Boards sold 12.4 per
cent. more units during the year their total manpower at the end of
the year had increased by less than 1.8 per cent., and although the
number of units sent out by the Generating Board increased by 1.9 per
cent. the number of persons they employed rose by only 4.1 per
cent. The reduction from 44 to 42 hours in the normal working week
of the industry's manual employees towards the end of the preceding
year can also be assumed to have influenced the increase in numbers in
those grades during the year under report.
   242. Classified details of the numbers employed by the Council
and by each Electricity Board, with corresponding figures for 31st
March, 196, are shown in Appendix =1. The classification relates
to the main branches of the national negotiating machinery and the
following table summarises the detailed figures given in the Appendix.
<TABLE>
Terms and Conditions of Employment
   243. The arrangements for settling terms and conditions of
employment of persons employed by the Electricity Council and the
Boards have been fully described in previous reports. During the year
the negotiating machinery dealt with a wide range of matters arising
in the normal course of day-to-day relations between employees and
management. The major issues on wage rates and salary scales are
reported briefly in the following paragraphs.
National Joint Industrial Council for Manual Workers
   244. The Electricity Council Annual Report for 1959-6 referred
to a claim for a substantial increase in wage rates submitted by the
Trade Unions in January, 196, and indicated that negotiations were
still in progress.
   245. In April, 196, the Electricity Boards' Members rejected the
claim but offered to examine with the Trade Unions, after 3th June,
196, the whole question of wages and to apply any resulting wage
increase from 31st August, 196. This offer was rejected by the Trade
Unions who, in May, 196, referred the claim to arbitration.
   246. The arbitration tribunal, meeting in July, were unable to
agree and by the Chairman's decision found against the claim but
recommended that the parties should re-examine the whole question of
wages at an early date. Acting on this recommendation the National
Joint Industrial Council concluded an agreement on 12th August whereby
the structure of the wages schedule was re-cast. The existing
structure of just over one hundred named grades on thirty-three wage
rates was replaced by eight groups with eight group rates and five
lead rates for certain grades based on the capacity rating of plant on
which they are employed. There was a general wage increase of 3d.
per hour with greater increases for some grades, including craftsmen,
and increases were made to chargehands' enhancements and foremen's
salaries.
Technical Engineering Staff
   247. The main feature of the National Joint Board's activities
during the year was the introduction, with effect from 1st July, 196,
of common salary scales applicable to all National Joint Board
Technical Engineering staff, in place of the four existing salary
schedules. Technical engineering staff in drawing offices were at the
same time brought within the classification provisions of the
Agreement, from which they had previously been excluded. The common
scales were not designed to provide salary increases but to introduce
a more equitable pattern of salary relationships between the various
sections of the technical engineering staff, and to allow more
flexibility in their application to varying forms of organisation.
   248. Subsequently, the National Joint Board salary scales were
further reviewed, having regard to salaries paid elsewhere within the
industry and by outside industry in general, and increases ranging
from +75 to +215 (+4 to +5 for technical trainees) 6per
annum were agreed with effect from 1st July, 196.
Administrative and Clerical Grades
   249. The Electricity Council's Annual Report for 1959-6
referred to the recommendation of an arbitration tribunal that a claim
for increases in salary scales should be considered on the basis of
evidence drawn from a wide range of employment in comparable work.
After examining information obtained from other bodies on salaries
and conditions of service, the National Joint Council were unable to
agree on the assessment of salaries and asked the tribunal to
determine appropriate increases. Increases awarded by the tribunal,
from 1st December, 1959, ranged from +2 to +5 6per annum to
the general clerical staff and from +75 to +215 6per annum to
the higher grades.
Managerial and Higher Executive Grades
   25. The basis of the salary agreement was extended to cater
for operational growth in the various organisations and, following
salary and wages awards to other employees, increases ranging from
+225 to +4 were made in the salary scales as from 1st July, 196.
Joint Consultation
   251. Joint discussion of the business and policies of the
industry leading to full collaboration between management and
employees is an important factor in making electricity supply an
efficient service, and one of the objects of the joint consultative
machinery in the electricity supply industry is to facilitate such
discussion. A brief account of activities in this field during the
year is given in the following paragraphs.
National Joint Advisory Council
   252. In the National Council representatives of employees join
with senior representatives of the Electricity Council and Boards and
leading Trade Union officers. The Chairman and other Members of the
Electricity Council and Boards present reports on the progress and
plans of the industry; these reports are fully discussed and points
arising are often referred to one of the National Council's standing
committees for more detailed study.
   253. During the year the National Council discussed all aspects
of the industry's work, special emphasis being on education and
training. Fifteen recommendations were made to Boards; the subjects
included safety rules (radiological) for use at nuclear stations;
amendments and additions to other safety rules; safety training during
pre-commissioning courses at new power stations; methods of helping to
solve the problem of employing the impending "bulge" in school
leavers; improved liaison between the industry and educational
organisations; and wider selection methods under the scheme for the
interchange of personnel with overseas countries.
   254. The National Council issued an annual report on their work
as well as other publications designed to encourage the work of the
District Councils and Local Committees. One of the National Council's
new ventures, the production of a film dealing with the basic
principles of joint consultation, has been well received at employees'
meetings throughout the industry and has been widely shown outside the
industry.
District Joint Advisory Councils
   255. The membership of each of the 12 District Councils
includes representatives of employees as well as of the Boards and
Trade Unions. The District Councils do much to stimulate the
development of joint consultation in their areas. During the year
they made many notable recommendations to the Boards affecting the
interests of employees and the efficiency of the industry. These
included recommendations on consumer relations, training in modern
power station practice for employees in older stations; the
rehabilitation of disabled employees; and the problems of
communicating instructions, information and ideas. Four District
Councils organised evening lectures for employees on human relations
in industry and seven arranged district training courses for new
members of the Local Committees. Ten District Councils received and
discussed regular progress reports from Electricity Boards.
Local Advisory Committees
   256. There were 468 Local Advisory Committees in power
stations, distribution districts and other places of work in the
industry. They continued to pay particular attention to education,
training, safety and the encouragement of efficiency- this last
subject receiving more attention than any other during the year.
Their recommendations to local managements concerned such subjects as
the effectiveness of particular tools and equipment, sales development
in smokeless zones, accident prevention and local training schemes and
courses. They also continued to engage in many activities for
spreading information among employees in their localities. An
important development in this field, which has done much to improve
two-way communication between management and employees, has been the
holding of regular informal meetings of small groups of employees who
normally work together. Other activities have included the
organisation of general meetings of employees, safety weeks, power
station open days, exhibitions of award-winning suggestions, arts and
crafts exhibitions, and lunch-time and evening lectures.
Suggestion Scheme
   257. From the time when the employees' suggestion scheme
started (in most districts by 1951-52) up to 31st March, 1961,
consideration has been given to 2,99 suggestions and 7,824 awards
have been made by the Electricity Boards on the recommendations of
District Councils. In 196-61 the National Council considered 152
suggestions which had been referred to them as having possible
national application; in rather more than half of these they
circulated details to the Electricity Boards, in all cases
recommending additional awards.
Superannuation
   258. Careful consideration was given by the Electricity Council
and the Electricity Boards to the impact on the industry's
superannuation schemes of the National Insurance Act, 1959, and its
provisions for contracting out of the State graduated pension scheme.
Having obtained the views of the Trade Unions, and after joint
consultation with the employees through the Advisory machinery, the
Electricity Council and Boards decided upon a common policy of
contracting out all their employees whose basic rate of pay exceeds
+9 per week and who are members of Superannuation Schemes in the
industry recognised by the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance
for the purposes of the National Insurance Act, 1959.
   259. The Registrar of Non-Participating Employments issued the
necessary certificate to be effective from 3rd April, 1961, the
commencing date for the State graduated pension scheme. The National
Insurance (Modification of Electricity Superannuation Schemes)
Regulations, 1961, applicable to all the industry's schemes whose
members are contracted out of the State scheme, came into force on the
same day.
   26. The second valuation of the Staff Superannuation Scheme
showed an overall surplus of almost +2 million, which the Council,
with the agreement of the Electricity Boards, decided to retain in the
Fund. The Actuaries' Report on the first valuation of the Manual
Workers' Superannuation Scheme was received just before the close of
the year.
Safety, Health and Welfare
Safety
   261. The Safety Branch of the Electricity Council advise the
various sections of the industry on safety matters and promote and
encourage the use of methods for reducing accidents and dangerous
occurrences and their effect on the operations of the Boards.
# 221
<288 TEXT H24>
THE CIVIL DEFENCE LONG SERVICE MEDAL
ROYAL WARRANT
ELIZABETH R.
   ELIZABETH THE SECOND, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of our other Realms and
Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to
all to whom these Presents shall come.
   Greeting!
   WHEREAS WE are desirous of honouring those who have rendered
long and faithful service as Members of the Civil Defence Corps, of
the Auxiliary Fire Service, of the Industrial Civil Defence
Organisation, of the Warning and Monitoring Organisation and of the
National Hospital Service Reserve in Great Britain and of the
corresponding services and organisations in Northern Ireland and the
Isle of Man, We do by these Presents for Us, our Heirs and Successors
institute and create a new Medal and We do hereby direct that it shall
be governed by the following rules and ordinances:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Firstly: Style.- The Medal shall be designated and styled
"The Civil Defence Long Service Medal".
   Secondly: Description.- The Award shall be in cupro-nickel
in the form of an oval Medal bearing on the obverse the Crowned Effigy
of the Sovereign and on the reverse an appropriate design.
   Thirdly: Ribbon.- The Medal shall be worn on the left side
attached by a suspending bar to a ribbon one and a quarter inches in
width, which shall be, in colour, dark blue, with, superimposed
thereon, three narrow vertical stripes of yellow, red and green
respectively, the yellow stripe being worn farthest from the left
shoulder.
   Fourthly: Eligibility.- Those eligible shall be persons who
are or were within three years before the date of this Our Warrant,
members of one of the services or organisations set out in Appendix
=1 to this Our Warrant, hereinafter referred to as the Civil Defence
Services, and have rendered the qualifying service required by this
Our Warrant.
   Fifthly: Qualifying Service.- The qualifying service
requisite for the Medal shall be fifteen years efficient service in
one or more of the Civil Defence Services subsequent to the date of
the establishment of the service or organisation in question as set
out in Appendix =1 to this Our Warrant:
   Provided that service rendered in the United Kingdom or the Isle
of Man in one or more of the former organisations set out in Appendix
=2 to this Our Warrant, before the dates set out therein, shall also
be treated as qualifying service:
   Provided also that no account shall be taken of any service which,
in the case of the person concerned, has been reckoned as qualifying
service for the Fire Brigade Long Service and Good Conduct Medal or
for the Women's Voluntary Service Medal or Clasp.
   Sixthly: Long Service Clasp.- An additional Clasp which
shall be attached to the ribbon and shall bear upon it the words
"Long Service" may be awarded for each additional twelve years
satisfactory service subsequent to that for which the Medal was
awarded and for each Clasp awarded a small silver rose emblem shall be
added to the ribbon when worn alone. The reckoning of such service
shall be governed by the rules relative to the reckoning of qualifying
service for the Medal itself as set out in the Fifth Clause of this
Our Warrant.
   Seventhly: Delegated powers.- Delegated powers to make
awards under this Our Warrant shall be vested in Our appropriate
Ministers namely Our Secretary of State for the Home Department, Our
Secretary of State for Scotland, Our Minister of Health, and Our
Minister of Home Affairs for Northern Ireland as the case may be.
   Eighthly: Submission of names.- The names of persons
eligible for the Medal shall be submitted to the appropriate Minister
in accordance with arrangements made by him or her in respect of the
Civil Defence Service concerned, and no award shall be made unless the
submission is accompanied by a certificate that-
   (a) the person has been, throughout the qualifying period, a
member of the Civil Defence Services, or of one or more of the former
organisations set out in Appendix =2 to this Our Warrant;
   (b) the person has either (=1) completed the appropriate
standard training and rendered to the satisfaction of the authority or
authorities concerned such service as has been properly required of
him or her in the Civil Defence Services, or (=2), in the case of a
member of the National Hospital Service Reserve, or, in Northern
Ireland, of the Hospital Service Reserve, whose training or duties, or
both, are such that they may coincide with qualifications required for
the Service Medal of the Order of St. John or the Voluntary Medical
Service Medal, that the member has completed to the satisfaction of
the authority or authorities concerned not less than 12 duties
annually disregarding duties which have been, are being or will be
reckoned for the purpose of either of those two awards; and
   (c) the person is in every way deserving of the Medal.
   Ninthly: Registration.- The names of all those to whom the
Medal or the Clasp is awarded shall be recorded in the Home Office,
the Ministry of Health, the Scottish Home Department, the Department
of Health for Scotland, the Ministry of Home Affairs for Northern
Ireland or Government Office, Isle of Man, as the case may be.
   Tenthly: Order of wear.- In the official list showing the
order in which Orders, Decorations and Medals should be worn the Civil
Defence Long Service Medal shall be placed immediately after the Royal
Observer Corps Medal.
   Eleventhly: Miniatures.- Reproductions of the Medal, known
as miniature Medals, which may be worn on certain occasions by those
to whom the Medal is awarded, shall be approximately half the size of
the Civil Defence Long Service Medal, and a sealed pattern of the
miniature Medal shall be kept in the Central Chancery of Our Orders of
Knighthood.
   Twelfthly: Cancellation and Restoration.- It shall be
competent for the appropriate Minister to cancel and annul the
conferment of the Civil Defence Long Service Medal or Long Service
Clasp on any person, and also to restore the Medal or Clasp which has
been so forfeited.
   Lastly: Annulment.- We reserve to Ourself, Our Heirs and
Successors, full power of annulling, altering, abrogating, augmenting,
interpreting or dispensing with these rules and ordinances, or any
part thereof, by a notification under Our Sign Manual.
<END INDENTATION>
   Given at Our Court at St. James's this nineteenth day of
January, One thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, in the ninth year of
Our Reign.
   By Her Majesty's Command,
   Harold Macmillan.
   
   To the Right Hon. SELWYN LLOYD, C.B.E., T.D., Q.C.,
M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer
CONTROL OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
   The Select Committee on Estimates published a Report in 1958 on
Treasury Control of Expenditure. They recommended that a small
independent Committee, which should have access to Cabinet papers, be
appointed to report upon the theory and practice of Treasury control
of expenditure. The Treasury's observations on the Report recorded
the conclusion of the Government that they could not accept the
Committee's recommendation in favour of an outside committee, but that
they had decided to set in hand a review of the principles and
practice which govern the control by the executive of public
expenditure. It was also stated that this would be an internal
enquiry under the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
that on some aspects of it the Government proposed to seek advice from
persons with appropriate knowledge and experience who were not members
of the Government or in the Government service.
   2. In accordance with these decisions your predecessor announced
in the summer of 1959 that I had been appointed by him to take general
charge of this work aided by a Group consisting of persons from
outside the Government service and senior officials drawn from
Departments including the Treasury. Later it was announced that Sir
Sam Brown, Sir Jeremy Raisman and Mr. J. E. Wall had been
appointed to the Group.
   3. The announcement of the enquiry made it clear that our
proceedings and recommendations to Ministers would be confidential.
We could not have carried out the survey which we have been able to
make on any other basis. As our enquiry developed we submitted to
your predecessor and to you a series of confidential reports. It was
always our intention to consolidate these at the end, and we have
prepared the attached Report in order to do so in a form in which, if
you saw fit, it could be published.
   4. In tendering advice which the Government may wish to publish
we are not unmindful of the position of our Civil Service colleagues
and therefore, notwithstanding their full participation in the work of
the Group, we consider it more appropriate that our Report should be
submitted in the names of the members from outside the Government
service, who take responsibility for it. Consequently what is said in
it is in the names of Sir Sam Brown, Sir Jeremy Raisman, Mr. J.
E. Wall and myself. It does not follow from this procedure however
that those civil servants who have taken part in the work of the
enquiry in any way dissent from the views expressed or the
recommendations made, either in general or in particular.
   On behalf of the Group,
   PLOWDEN
   Chairman.
   9th June, 1961.
REPORT ON THE CONTROL OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
   1. At our first meeting in October, 1959, we decided to
concentrate in full committee on the central problem of public
expenditure, which is the determination of policy and the distribution
of resources, while studying in smaller groups particular aspects of
expenditure control or areas of expenditure. For these studies we
co-opted the Permanent Secretaries of the Departments with whose
expenditure we were concerned or who had special experience of the
general problems under review. In some cases we sought specialist
advice from outside the Civil Service. We decided, however, not to
take evidence from outside bodies: our review was primarily concerned
with the inner working of the Treasury and the Departments, and was
necessarily confidential in character, and we decided that the Group
itself (except on certain specialist matters) provided a sufficient
body of outside opinion to bring to bear on this task.
   2. A comprehensive review of the principles and practice of the
control of public expenditure would take many years. There are large
tracts of the territory which we have hardly touched. The method
which we adopted, however, which was in effect a continuous
consultation with the Permanent Secretaries and other officials of the
major Departments over a period of nearly two years, has, we believe,
given us a sufficient insight into the matter. We are confident that
our conclusions would not be changed by more prolonged examination.
   3. In our judgment, the crucial questions are not those of
detail: the precise nature of the organisation and chains of command
within and between Departments, important though these are. The real
problems are wider: what the machine of government is trying to do,
what its attitudes are, what it regards as important, and its approach
to its work on all matters involving public expenditure. These are
not always clear cut, and they do not lend themselves readily to
specific recommendations; but we are confident that here is the kernel
of the matter. The whole of this Report is designed to suggest what
might be the most fruitful lines of development in the future.
   4. Before we proceed to the substance of the Report, we may
perhaps usefully comment on what we have seen of the work of the Civil
Service in the course of this enquiry. Those of us who are outside
the Civil Service have considerable experience of it, here and
overseas, but this has been a favourable opportunity to see it and
study it in action. There have been changes, both in scope and
character, in the activities of Government in the last two decades,
which have produced strains in traditional structures and practices.
We have been impressed by the way the Service has adapted itself to
deal with these changes.
# 26
<289 TEXT H25>
Barnardo's Overseas
   Times do not change in Great Britain only but in the rest of
the world too, and out of this pattern of restless progress come calls
for help with Child Care problems, both for actual care and for help
and guidance in how this can best be given. We thus learn that the
name of Barnardo comes to the mind, when child care is planned in many
parts of the world remote from our own land, and we are honoured by
receiving these calls for help.
   In 1954 we decided to consider undertaking work in Kenya and in
1956 Mr. T. F. Tucker, then Deputy General Superintendent, made
a personal investigation. As a result, two of our experienced
superintendents, Rev. and Mrs. A. St. J. Lemon, have spent
two years guiding and assisting the work of the local Child Welfare
Society which was striving nobly to meet a great need but lacking our
knowledge and experience. During 196, assured of the good-will of
the Government and their Officials and with generous help over a site,
plans have been made to build a Home for thirty children of any race
who may be in need. This should be in use before the end of 1961.
   With Sir Donald MacGillivray as our President and a
representative committee of which Mr. B. S. Eastwood is
Chairman and Mr. L. Njonjo Vice Chairman, we are assured of strong
local support and in addition can look to the help of Mr. M. Adlam
as Hon. Treasurer and the Hon. Humphrey Slade as our Honorary
Legal Adviser.
   Sir Arthur Smith reported enthusiastically on the Inaugural
Meeting which he attended in Nairobi, on 29th November, 196, when Sir
Godfrey Rhodes was in the Chair supported by the Hon. J. N.
Muimi, M.L.C., the Minister of Health.
   We rejoice at this opening of a new chapter in our history and
have little doubt that others will watch with interest this experiment
in adapting the Barnardo standards and methods of Child Care to the
needs of a community whose conditions of life are very different from
our own. Another small piece of help which may be mentioned is that
which is being given to the Sanyu Babies Home in Uganda, in order that
this work, started by Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society,
for babies abandoned in the Mission Hospital, may be further
developed.
   Mention should also be made of an appeal from Hong Kong to assist
in the placing of abandoned babies, approved as suitable, by the
International Social Service, with married couples in this country,
who have offered to take such children into their homes. In Hong Kong
destitute children in as dire need as any Dr. Barnardo found a
hundred years ago on our London streets are a common sight, but it is
clear that the support and guidance of an Adoption Society such as our
own is essential if such placements are to be made happily, and the
interests of these abandoned children safeguarded, in all
eventualities. We have gladly responded to this call and who can tell
to what new enterprises these initial experiments may lead by the time
we reach our Centenary in 1966?
Changes in Australia too
   The wind of change has been blowing in the Australian branch of
our family too, and much has happened there during the last year,
which will be of interest to our readers. Some of our large units,
such as the Picton Farm School and parts of Normanhurst, have been
sold and new Homes more suitable as family group Homes purchased, and
in addition, a Boarding Out Officer has been appointed in order to
further this type of care in our Australian work. We have
unfortunately experienced some difficulty in finding a sufficient
number of children free to emigrate from this country, partly because
of the ties which so many now retain with at least some members of
their own family. Although this must be disappointing to our New
South Wales Committee who have given so much thought and effort to the
changes already mentioned, they hope also to open a new chapter in
offering admission to local Australian children who may be in need.
Barnardo Publications on Child Care
   Opening new branches is not however the only way in which we
feel able to help with child care problems in the world at large, and
we always welcome at Stepney the numerous visitors from abroad who
want to profit by the experience of our senior officers and also see
some of our Branch Homes or Special Schools for themselves.
   But there is much help that could be disseminated more widely by
means of booklets on various technical aspects of our work, and the
preparation of two of these has begun this year. One is on the method
of helping cases of enuresis or bed wetting and the other out-lines
<SIC> a scheme of help for spastic children (those suffering from
cerebral palsy) from early infancy. Further subjects will be dealt
with in due course, and should prove a valuable means of passing on to
others the experience we have gained ourselves through the years since
Dr. Barnardo himself first opened the door nearly 1 years ago.
Homes for Special Needs
   The work of our Special Homes, linked with boarding schools for
the backward or physically handicapped has continued steadily and
there have been small waiting lists for any vacancies that might
occur. The Ministry of Education, convinced that the need for these
schools has been largely met, placed limits on the maximum numbers for
each school, which reduced the places available by about twenty-five.
As far as we are concerned, the chief effect of the more adequate
national provision for the physically handicapped has been a tendency
to limit applicants for admission to a special type of problem. This
is the child with a severe handicap, whatever its actual nature, and
of relatively retarded intelligence, whose home cannot cope with the
problem involved. Such cases exact a heavy toll of patience and toil
from our staff, and we never cease to admire the devoted service so
many of them give to this cause. The work makes its own appeal
however, and we have not experienced undue difficulty in keeping these
Homes staffed.
   A special group of these children is the severe 'Spastics'
whose educability can only be decided by an actual period of trial.
The County Education Officers have shown themselves more than ready
to sponsor such a trial but often search desperately for any boarding
school willing to provide the opportunity. Here we have felt was a
need which should appeal to an organisation such as ours, and we have
arranged an extra class in each of our five schools, where such a
trial can be given.
   Allied to this work has been our centre near Derby at which we
have sheltered and helped up to 25 mentally disordered children who
have either been ascertained as such subsequent to admission, or who
were admitted for a short period to give their parents a much needed
rest.
   Mention has already been made of the working party considering
the needs of children suffering from mental disorder. This has now
reported and its recommendations have been accepted by the Council.
Although they can only be implemented in due course it is hoped to
extend the work we are now doing at our Home near Derby, and thus
increase the scope of our work to help in this urgent national
problem.
   There remain one or two specific problems such as deafness,
blindness or severe speech defects for which we do not ourselves
provide the special treatment and education required, but even here,
we can and do help by arranging admission and then planning the help
required with the aid of those who have the facilities. With this
provision in mind, we might rightly add to our original motto 'No
destitute child ever refused admission', a modern variation 'No
child in need refused the help he or she requires'. We are
certainly doing our best to make this a reality.
Our Approved Schools
   A glance at the page 'Our Work in Brief' which concludes
this Report, may surprise some by its reference to two approved
schools, and it will be noted that this is not a charge on our
charitable funds. It is however a piece of work of which Barnardo
supporters should rightly be very proud, and the record of these two
schools in their work for children in need is not surpassed by that of
any of our other branches.
   It is perhaps not sufficiently realised by the public generally
that the Home Office is glad to entrust the running of these schools
to a number of Christian Organisations, realising that the Christian
faith and way of life can supply the stabilising power these boys so
greatly need. It will of course be realised that the boys admitted
have been sent to us by the Children's Courts and have no other
connection with our own Barnardo family.
   In most cases the boys lack the right kind of home support and
care and at times may have no suitable home to which they can return
when their school training is deemed to be completed. This fact makes
it most appropriate that a Christian Child Care organisation should be
responsible for their future and can, when necessary, offer the
hospitality of a Home or Hostel to meet the need.
Going Out into the World
   For every boy and girl who has been living in the Barnardo
family the day comes when they must start in their first post and in
many cases have their first experience of lodgings.
   It will be realised how much help they may need in the first one
or two years, and our well organised and staffed After Care
departments for boys and girls are planned to provide this help.
What Happens
   You may wonder what happens to our boys and girls, and the
answer can best be found in the pages of the old boys and girls
Magazine the Guild Messenger. This is published four times a year
and each issue has at least twelve pages of "News from ALL
Quarters", weddings, etc., and correspondence from all parts of
the world. It is a wonderful story of how these young people, who
seemed at one time to have lost all that matters most, have won their
way back to find their own niche in a difficult world. This magazine,
with all its personal news, is only for members of the old Boys and
Girls Guild, but if any of our keen supporters could steal a glimpse
at its pages, their hearts would be warmed within them.
   It tells also of annual re-unions and dinners held in various
parts of the country and of the activities in the well established
club at Stepney, where old boys and girls, within reach, foregather on
Friday evenings or for special social occasions.
   Finally, mention may be made of a letter which is sent out at
Christmastime to every old boy and girl whose address is known,
however many years ago they may have left our care. Some six thousand
of these are sent and the numerous replies received indicate how much
they are appreciated.
What is the Secret of Success
   We of course have our "black sheep" and some do not succeed
as well as others in overcoming their initial handicaps, but we feel
confident that our records reveal a high level of success in preparing
our boys and girls for life and all its demands upon them. When
viewed against the background of low standards of morality, honesty
and behaviour which many of our National leaders deplore as a feature
of our times, we might well be challenged to say what is the secret of
character building which turns out so many of our children as worthy
citizens.
   The answer may best be given by saying that we would not dare
to take the responsibility of sending these our children out into the
world without the foundation of a strong Christian faith.
# 226
<29 TEXT H26>
   A demonstration of historic books of medicine and science was
held as one of the Children's Christmas Lectures in the College and
evoked much interest and many questions from the girls and boys
present at it.
   Through the generosity of the Council the Librarian attended the
=17 International Congress of the History of Medicine at Athens and
Cos, and afterwards contributed an account of this stimulating
occasion to the Annals. The College was represented at the first
British Congress of Medical History organised by the Society of
Apothecaries, and an exhibition largely of books from the Library was
arranged in the College for the occasion.
   A stock of copies of Sir Zachary Cope's History of the College
and of the Catalogue of the Portraits is available for sale from
the Library, and the demand has been continuous.
   Material for "Lives" of all Fellows who have died is regularly
collected and it is hoped to edit the memoirs covering January 1952 to
December 196 for publication very shortly. Plarr's Lives of the
Fellows 1843-193 is out of print, but the volume of Lives of
Fellows 193-1951 is on sale from the Library, price 42s.
   Illustrated accounts of the College buildings and possessions
have been published by Mr. Peter McLennan in Impulse, June 1961,
and by Mr. Arthur Oswald in Country Life, 2th July and 17th
August 1961.
Manuscripts
   The Dowager Lady Rigby has generously presented an autograph
manuscript of Sir Frederic Treves in which he began to record his
reminiscences of unusual cases or distinguished patients. It records
his treatment of Sir John Millais the painter and Sir Henry Irving the
actor, with a long account of his attendance on King Edward =7. The
Millais case has been published in the Annals.
   An annotated transcript has been published in Medical History
of the manuscript which was found in the copy of Geminus' Anatomy
(1553), purchased in 1959. This is the account kept by a country
surgeon in 169 in the North Riding of Yorkshire, recording the
ailments, treatment, and payments of his patients.
   An autograph letter from John Hunter to William Eden, 1st Lord
Auckland, has been bought; it is particularly interesting for the
light it throws on Hunter's familiar friendship with this
distinguished statesman. Another interesting purchase is a small
note-book in which Thomas Howitt (F.R.C.S. 1853) kept record of
his attendance on the lectures of Charles Bell and others in London
and of Guillaume Dupuytren in Paris in the eighteen-thirties.
   Through the good offices of Sir James Paterson Ross, Bt., the
records of Sir Thomas Dunhill's thyroid patients have been presented
to the College; they have been arranged and indexed by Sir Thomas's
personal secretary, Miss Mary Macdonald.
   Other gifts of manuscripts, autographs, and photocopies of
documents are gratefully acknowledged from Sir Zachary Cope, Dr.
D. W. Dawson, Mr. D. M. Hall, Prof. Milroy Paul, Sir
Harry Platt, Bt., Prof. K. F. Russell, Miss D. Tremain, and
the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Meetings and other Activities
   By permission of the President, meetings were held in the
Library by the Medical Section of the Library Association and by the
Society for the Bibliography of Natural History. The librarians of
the eight principal medical libraries in London held their annual
meeting in the Librarian's office and discussed the ways and means of
their co-operation. This informal co-operative organisation was
inaugurated in 1938 under the encouragement of Sir Gordon
Gordon-Taylor, when he was chairman of the College's library
committee.
   Several foreign surgeons, scholars, and librarians have visited
the Library, and the Librarian was particularly honoured by a visit
from Dr. F. Bradford Rogers, Director of the U.S. National
Library of Medicine, when he was passing through London.
   The Honorary Librarian was awarded the first Honorary Fellowship
of the new Faculty of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy of the
Society of Apothecaries.
   The Librarian has been elected a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries and an Honorary Fellow of the Hunterian Society. He has
continued to serve as chairman of the Library Committee of the Royal
College of Nursing, and has been appointed to the Council of the World
List of Scientific Periodicals. He attended by invitation a meeting
called by the Royal Society of Medicine to discuss the part which
various national and medical libraries might be able to play in
providing a more complete service of medical literature on a national
scale.
   The Assistant Librarian has served on the Council of the Library
Association, and is Honorary Secretary of its Medical Section.
   The Librarian spoke to the postgraduate students on the use and
facilities of the Library at the beginning of each of the courses of
lectures. By direction of the Council, he was privileged to address
the Annual Meeting of Fellows and Members on the work of the Library
in connexion with the teaching and research departments.
EXHIBITIONS
   In addition to the permanent exhibitions of Hunteriana, medals,
drawings, etc., temporary exhibits have been shown for special
occasions in the Exhibition Halls. The Library has had the
co-operation of the historical departments of the Museum in the
mounting of these, and particular thanks are due to Miss Jessie
Dobson, the Anatomy Curator, for her help and advice. An exhibition
of Listeriana was set up at the time of the Lister Lecture, and the
bicentenary of the birth of Matthew Baillie in 1761 has been
commemorated by an exhibit of books and documents from the
Hunter-Baillie collection, illustrating his career. Professor H.
J. Seddon kindly lent several drawings and other memorabilia of the
early years of modern orthopaedic surgery for exhibition on the
occasion of his Robert Jones lecture, to augment the valuable exhibits
permanently shown by the British Orthopaedic Association.
   The College lent four early anaesthesia books to the University
Library at Nancy for exhibition at the national anaesthesia conference
of France. A collection of portrait engravings of famous medical men
was lent to the Art Gallery at Auckland for the B.M.A. meeting in
New Zealand.
PORTRAITS AND WORKS OF ART
   Four important paintings have been added to the gallery of
portraits of surgeons: Sir Harry Platt, Bt., generously presented
the portrait of himself in his presidential robes painted by Sir
William Hutchison, P.R.S.A.; Mr. James Gunn, R.A.,
presented his sketch for the portrait of the late Sir Gordon
Gordon-Taylor, painted a few months before Sir Gordon's death; Miss
E. M. Berkeley has given a portrait of Thomas Copeland,
F.R.S., F.R.C.S., Member of Council 1827-1854, painted by
Thomas Stewardson, a pupil of Romney and Opie and a frequent Academy
exhibitor; Professor Charles Wells has painted and generously
presented a portrait of the late Sir Archibald McIndoe. Several of
the older portraits have been restored or revarnished.
   Sir Cecil Wakeley, Bt., has presented a bronze head of himself
by E. Pentland and a pencil-portrait by J. H. Dowd; he has also
generously given his collection of miniatures of famous medical men
from Harvey to Lord Moynihan, which he commissioned from Mr. P.
Buckman; two drawings by Henry Tonks, F.R.C.S., Slade Professor
of Fine Art, of the late Sir Harold Gillies have been presented by
Lady Gillies and another by Sir William Kelsey Fry.
   A coloured drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, a caricature of "The
Persevering Surgeon", has been bought.
   Gifts of medals, engravings, bookplates and other illustrations
are gratefully acknowledged from Miss Mary Calvert, Surgeon-Captain
J. L. S. Coulter, R.N., Sir Zachary Cope, Mr. A. Dickson
Wright, Mr. Alexander Innes, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Sir Victor Negus,
Prof. K. F. Russell, Mr. P. K. Sartory, and the
executors of the late Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor.
   The restoration of a further volume of the collection of
Hunterian drawings has been completed at the British Museum. A
selection from the collection of Pharmacy Jars was lent to The Times
Book Shop in connexion with their Royal Society Tercentenary
Exhibition. Two coloured engravings of the College in the early
nineteenth century were presented to the Royal Australasian College of
Surgeons by the President when he visited Melbourne.
Faculty of Dental Surgery
Members of the Board 196-1961
<LIST>
Report
   During the year 196-1961 the work of the Board and its
Committees has continued to grow, while the Department of Dental
Science has pursued its researches with vigour and enthusiasm.
   At a Meeting of the Board on 18th November, 196, the following
resolution of appreciation was passed for the services rendered to the
Department since its inception by Sir Wilfred Fish:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "That the Faculty of Dental Surgery desires to record its deep
sense of gratitude to Sir Wilfred Fish, lately Honorary Director of
the Department of Dental Science, for the outstanding services he has
rendered to dental science in establishing the Department and guiding
it over the past five years. Sir Wilfred Fish's inspiring leadership
and wise administration have established the Department on so sure a
basis that it is in every respect well equipped to advance its work
with energy and confidence."
<END INDENTATION>
   The Board was very pleased to receive from the President on his
return from an extensive tour overseas a message of goodwill to the
Faculty from Sir John Walsh, Dean of the Otago Dental School, New
Zealand.
   In the field of postgraduate education the Board has been greatly
encouraged by the enthusiastic response to the courses of lectures and
scientific meetings arranged by the Faculty. It was particularly
pleasing to find that over three hundred and fifty dentists attended
the Scientific Meeting in June and the Board feels sure that this
scientific meeting has now become an established annual event which
the profession has welcomed eagerly.
=1. Elections to the Board
   As a result of a postal ballot on 16th June 1961, to fill five
vacancies on the Board following the retirement in rotation of four
Fellows and the resignation of one Fellow, the following were
re-elected or elected to the Board:-
<LIST>
   At the election of one Licentiate in Dental Surgery to the Board
on 15th July 196, Mr. W. Beric Southwell, T.D., was elected.
=2. Thirteenth Annual Meeting
   The Thirteenth Annual Meeting was held on Friday, 15th July
196, and was attended by forty-eight Fellows and Licentiates in
Dental Surgery. The Charles Tomes Lecture was delivered on the same
day by Mr. Terence Ward on "Surgery of the Mandibular Joint", and
was followed by the Anniversary Dinner.
=3. Election of Dean and Vice-Dean
   The Board of Faculty re-elected Professor Martin A. Rushton,
C.B.E., to the office of Dean and elected Mr. G. H.
Leatherman to the office of Vice-Dean for the year.
=4. Fellowship in Dental Surgery by Examination
   During the past year 151 Candidates presented themselves for
the Primary Examination for the Fellowship in Dental Surgery and 52
were successful.
   7 Candidates presented themselves for the Final Examination for
the Fellowship in Dental Surgery, of whom the following 26 were
successful:-
<LIST>
=5. Licence in Dental Surgery
   During the past year 347 candidates were examined by the
Surgical Section, 321 of whom were approved, and 352 were examined by
the Dental Section, 23 of whom were approved, making a total of 23
candidates who were awarded the Licence in Dental Surgery.
=6. Diploma in Orthodontics
   During the past year 33 candidates entered for the examination
for the Diploma in Orthodontics, of whom 21 were successful.
=7. Examinerships
   The Council, acting on the recommendation of the Board of
Faculty, has re-elected for the year August 1961-July 1962 those
examiners who were eligible and sought re-election. In addition, the
following new examiners have been elected by Council:-
<LIST>
=8. Primary F.D.S. Examination
   The Board has drawn up a guide to the Primary F.D.S.
Examination on the lines of that now printed in the F.R.C.S.
Regulations. This guide makes clear the general scope of the
examinations in Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology and Bacteriology.
   It has been agreed to exchange visitors with the Royal College of
Surgeons of Edinburgh, with a view to considering the desirability of
introducing reciprocity as between the Primary F.D.S.
Examinations of the two Colleges.
=9. Postgraduate Education
   The third Scientific Meeting organised by the Faculty was held
at the College on Saturday, 3rd June 1961, when the subject was
"Temporo-mandibular Joint Problems and their Treatment".
# 22
<291 TEXT H27>
In any expansion of industry or national prosperity...
THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY MUST BE IN THE FOREFRONT
Lord Chandos Chairman of Associated Electrical Industries
   The Sixty-first Annual General Meeting of Associated Electrical
Industries Limited was held on April 2 at Grosvenor House, Park
Lane, London, W.1. The Rt. Hon. Viscount Chandos (the
Chairman) presided and said:
   I have, first a sad and heavy task to perform. Two of our
Directors, Lord Weeks and Mr. Comar Wilson, have died since the date
of the last Annual General Meeting. Their colleagues on the Board
have suffered the loss of two friends. Their experience and knowledge
in the wide field of business will be greatly missed, and we record
our deep gratitude for their services to the Board over a long period.
   Lord Head resigned from the Board on his appointment as High
Commissioner in Nigeria. Our regrets at losing his services are, in a
measure, offset by the knowledge that the post which he now fills is
one of the most important in the Commonwealth.
Top Management Strengthened
   I want next to tell you of certain appointments consequent upon
the reorganisation of the Company into a single trading entity. We
have strengthened the top management at Head Office. Sir Cecil
Dannatt was appointed Vice-Chairman in April last year, and I take
this opportunity on your behalf of congratulating him upon the
Knighthood which Her Majesty has conferred upon him. He took up his
duties last May and his support and knowledge have already proved of
the highest value.
   Later in the year, Mr. C. R. Wheeler was also appointed a
Vice-Chairman. We would like publicly to thank Guest, Keen and
Nettlefolds Ltd. for having agreed to his release. Mr. Wheeler
will take up some executive duties next year. We have gained a
notable accession of strength by his appointment.
   Sir Joseph Latham joined the Board in August, and since that date
he has become Director of Finance. His wide experience of both
finance and accountancy is proving of outstanding benefit to the
Company.
   Mr. H. West, who has served the Company with distinction for
42 years, succeeded Dr. Dannatt as Group Managing Director at
Manchester in April last, and was elected to the Board at the end of
the year.
   Mr. R. I. Basset, who for many years has been a Director
of AEI Woolwich, also joined the Board.
   You will be asked to confirm these appointments later.
   Mr. E. R. Mason has been appointed the sole Managing
Director of AEI Export, and Mr. W. A. Ankerson Assistant
Managing Director of the Woolwich Group. Mr. D. T. L. Rettie
has been appointed the Managing Director of our subsidiary dealing
with domestic appliances overseas- A.E.I. Gala.
Retirements
   I cannot refer to all those who retired last year, although
they are much in our minds, but I would like to mention two by name.
First, Mr. E. V. Small, who for a great many years has been
concerned with our export business, and who has been notably ingenious
and successful. There are a number of contracts still current which
he negotiated, and we have retained him as a consultant upon these and
more general matters. Secondly, Mr. F. Tankard, the Comptroller
at Manchester, who has left us on reaching retiring age. We thank him
for his past services, and wish him well for the future. To all who
have retired, we wish happiness and long life.
Research Leaders Honoured
   Finally, we congratulate all those who have featured in the
year's Honours lists, and particularly Dr. T. E. Allibone and
Mr. L. J. Davies. The former is the head of our fundamental
Research Laboratory at Aldermaston, and the latter the Head of
Research at Rugby.
196 TRADING PROFIT AFTER TAX VIRTUALLY UNCHANGED
   I will deal with the figures very briefly. The trading profit,
after tax, was virtually unchanged at +4,722, compared with
+4,747, last year. Although the depreciation charged has risen by
+378,, this was more than offset by a reduction in our tax
liabilities. The adventitious profits, which will form part of our
revenue as we change our investment, are considerably lower than last
year. Together with amounts set aside for taxation now no longer
required these profits are at just above +1m. compared with just
under +2 1/2m. The total retention in the business, or, to use the
American term, the cash flow, is for this reason slightly less than
last year, at +7,843, compared with +8,127,.
   The increase of +1m. in working capital consisted partly of
bigger stocks of finished goods but mainly of work in progress on
large contracts. The financing of exports is a heavy burden and we
welcome any help that H.M. Government can give us. At the end of
the year the Group's bank overdrafts totalled over +9m.: however,
+5 1/2m. related to the financing of the Berkeley contract and is
largely self-liquidating. The Board have no proposals for the issue
of additional capital.
   The payment of total Ordinary dividends of 3/- per share, will
require about +14, more than last year because of the issue of
additional Ordinary shares to A. Reyrolle and Co. Ltd. in
exchange for our participation in C. A. Parsons and Co. Ltd.
There was some loss of revenue involved in the exchange of these
shares for shares in C. A. Parsons and Co. Ltd. in 196,
which of course will be largely recouped in 1961.
   The total Stockholders' capital employed in the business is
+138,96,, the equity capital is +133,12,, against the
nominal figure of +42,828,. The 3/- Ordinary dividend represents
a return on the equity capital of slightly under 5%.
TURNOVER UP- RECORD ORDER BOOK
   The order book is a record. Compared with last year the orders
received increased from +182m. to +233m. Our turnover increased
from +28m. to +215m., and orders in hand have increased from
+173m. to +181m.
   Sometimes an increase in the orders in hand is regarded as a
wholly favourable feature, but this is only true to a limited extent.
If the growth in the order book is not matched by parallel growth in
engineering and manufacturing capacity it would adversely affect our
delivery dates. At the figure of +181m. orders would appear
appropriate and satisfactory in relation to your business and its
annual turnover.
   I would also remind you that the order book in lamps and
lighting, domestic appliances and television and radio is, from the
nature of the business, only an insignificant percentage of the
turnover.
New Telephone Cable Subsidiary
   Although the deal was not completed until January 1st, as part
of the rationalisation in the cable industry, we increased our
shareholding in Southern United Telephone Cable Co. Ltd. by
purchasing from British Insulated Callender's Cables Ltd. the major
proportion of their holding. We now own 74 1/2% of the Company. Its
name has been changed to Telephone Cables Ltd. and it is now a
subsidiary. The balance of the shares are held by our old associates
in this venture, Enfield Cables Ltd., and it is a matter of
satisfaction to all of us to have them as partners.
   The general condition of the electrical industry has made it
desirable, and will continue to make it desirable in certain fields,
particularly that of research, to engage in co-operative enterprises
in order to conserve technical man power and reduce the heavy expense
entailed.
   196 is regarded by your Directors as a disappointing year
because the increased profits for which we had budgeted were not
realised.
Cables, Telephones, Lamps and Nuclear Power
   I told you last year that during 1959 we had four parts of our
business which were causing us anxiety. I recapitulate them: they
were cables, telephones, lamps and lighting and nuclear power
stations. You would wish me to report on them.
   First, we were engaged in rationalising the cable part of our
business at a time when demand for cables was particularly buoyant,
and when prices were particularly low. During 196, the average
prices of cables in the two main categories, mains cables, and
thermo-plastic and rubber-covered cables, were still about 17% below
what they were in April 1959, and since 1959 we have had to absorb
both an increase in wages, and the extra cost involved by a shorter
working week. It proved to be a difficult and complicated task to
bring about this rationalisation and the savings consequent upon it,
and we were unable to do so quite as quickly as we had expected. It
is now practically complete and profits should be made in 1961. These
facts should make a considerable difference to the revenue of the
Company in the present year.
   Secondly, telecommunications. Although Governments are unused to
thanks, the reorganisation of the Post Office as a trading department,
which now does not have to return its surplus at the end of each year
to the Treasury, will be widely applauded. Its new status enables the
Post Office to plan ahead, and we in our turn, as manufacturers, can
similarly plan on a more stable foundation, and so bring employment
and production into line with the needs of the Post Office. The
Telecommunications Division, in 196, traded at a marginal loss, but
the outlook for 1961 is more favourable, and although the equipment
which we supply is rigorously costed by the Post Office, we expect a
moderate return on the capital employed.
   Thirdly, lamps and lighting. For three or four years, and in
face of falling prices, we have made strenuous efforts to rationalise
our production and to reduce our costs. I am glad to say that this
long and intricate task is now practically completed. In 196 we
increased our share of the market, and traded at a better though still
inadequate profit. Some further improvement should be made in 1961.
   Fourthly, nuclear power. The Berkeley Station is due to come
into commission this year. I can tell you no more on the outcome of
the contract than to repeat what I said last year, which is that the
sum set aside is what prudent people would allow against
contingencies. I am not in a position to release any of the
ear-marked reserve to revenue or to our General Reserves, nor on the
other hand do I think it necessary to increase the reserve at this
moment.
   You will remember that last year the interests of A.E.I.
John Thompson Nuclear Energy Company Ltd. were amalgamated with
those of the Nuclear Power Plant Company into a new partnership called
The Nuclear Power Group. This merger has enabled large savings to be
made in technical staff and in costs, and the operations now appear to
be adjusted to the likely volume of orders. In July 196 the new
Group received the order for the Dungeness Station, the largest
projected station at that time. The risks involved in tendering for
the second station are far less than those involved in the first, when
we were breaking new ground, as the earlier problems can now be
accurately assessed. It should be remembered that competition is
still extremely keen, but we expect to make a modest profit upon the
station.
   The nuclear generation of power is going to be a permanent
feature of the national economy, and both as a source of revenue, and
as a protection of our conventional business, the reasons which
impelled us to enter this field still seem unassailable. I cannot but
express my disappointment that the engineering and scientific effort
at Berkeley may be rewarded with a loss. On the other hand, if you
regard the money which we may lose as a development expense and not as
a contractual loss, large though it may be, it brings the whole
subject into closer perspective.
   Such were the four parts of your business which gave us anxiety
at the close of 1959. I believe that they are all now in a much
better posture.
DOMESTIC APPLIANCES, RADIO AND TELEVISION COMPONENTS HIT BY HIRE
PURCHASE RESTRICTIONS
   Before I deal with the future, there are two other matters
concerning 196 to which I must refer.
# 212
<292 TEXT H28>
Dorothy Perkins LIMITED
A DIFFICULT YEAR
MR. ALAN FARMER ON THE EFFECTS OF A PAYROLL TAX
   The Annual General Meeting of Dorothy Perkins Limited will be
held on August 2nd in London.
   The following are extracts from the Statement by the Chairman,
MR. ALAN FARMER, as circulated to Shareholders:-
   The year ended 3th April, 1961, has proved difficult. We
occupied the Warehouse portion of the new premises at Bracknell early
in the year but the completion of the offices has been delayed by some
three months so that we have been forced to function with the
administration in the West End and with the distribution centre thirty
miles away. Apart from the administrative difficulties, the delay in
the completion has added to our costs. We have had to continue to
bring our new staff into London from Bracknell to train at Newman
Street whilst maintaining a normal complement in the London Offices.
   Both the London staff, who have stayed with us until such time as
the move is completed, and the new staff who have joined us have been
most patient and co-operative in extremely trying circumstances, and
our thanks are due to them and to all our staff, whether they be in
the offices, the warehouse or the branches, for the helpful and
understanding way in which they have worked with us during this
difficult time.
THE YEAR'S OPERATIONS
   The group profits for the year ended 3th April, 1961,
amounted, before taxation, to +463,512 compared with +482,23 for
196. The 196 accounts covered 53 weeks' trading so that the group
profit for 1961 before taxation of +463,512 is comparable with the
+461,848 estimated as earned in the 52 trading weeks in 196.
   Although our turnover during the year has shown an increase, a
large part of which was due to the opening of new branches, it has not
enabled us to take the increased expenses in our stride as hitherto.
   Our subsidiary companies have had a rather disappointing year
necessitating, in the case of the retail company, a number of changes
which we hope will provide a more satisfactory result in the future.
   It will be recalled that +45, was set aside in previous years
towards the costs arising in connection with Bracknell. Completion
having been delayed, we are carrying forward the sum of +18,54.
   The increase in the rate of profits tax in the 196 Budget has
had full effect in the accounts to 3th April, 1961, and we are faced
with a further increase from April, 1961. The latest increase does
not seriously affect the charge in this year's accounts but will do so
in the April, 1962, accounts.
   The Directors have decided to recommend a Final Dividend upon the
Ordinary and "B" Ordinary shares of 15% (9d per share) less Tax
making a total of 2% (1/- per share) less Tax paid for 196 on the
capital prior to the one for two scrip issue made in July, 196.
   The heavy outlay in the temporary financing by the Company of the
new building at Bracknell is reflected in the liquid situation in the
balance sheet, the total expenditure to date being +343,43.
SUPPLIERS
   We again extend our thanks to our Suppliers for their friendly
co-operation during the year. We would like them to know that they
are always welcome to show their ranges as indeed are those
manufacturers with whom we have not yet had the pleasure of doing
business.
DEVELOPMENT AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
   At 3th April, 1961, we were trading in 166 shops having opened
19 during the year. With the heavy initial expenses involved in the
opening of each new unit some time elapses before the full earning
potential is realised. Immediate benefit has not been realised this
year from the opening of these shops but we are confident that in due
course they will be making their fair contribution to profits.
   I have always stressed the inadvisability of endeavouring to
forecast the trends of turnover or of profits bearing in mind the
uncertainties of the fashion trade. At the time of going to press, in
view of the few weeks trading and the variation in the date of the
Whitsuntide Holidays, it is not possible to determine any very
definite trend of trading at the present time. We are taking every
step to ensure that we command our full share of the available market
and we expect considerable benefit to accrue from the re-organisation
of our distribution system following the move to Bracknell.
   A new payroll tax, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer
proposes, could involve this Company in a substantial expense over
which it had no control. If the maximum amount of 4/- per week per
employee was imposed the cost in a full year could amount to +2,.
We exercise the greatest possible economy in our staffing by the use
of a part-time staff, and at present this tax appears to take no
account of the difference between full time and part-time. This
proposed tax seems to me to be very inequitable inasmuch as it imposes
completely unfair burdens on those businesses who by their very nature
must employ a relatively high number of staff to provide identical
profits compared with other forms of business enterprise.
   In my last review I said that with the additional expenses
arising from the move to Bracknell and the ever increasing operating
costs, our progress, so far as the earnings of the business are
concerned, might well slow down for a period of time. It is important
that I should repeat these remarks. We do not minimise the problems
which have to be faced but we have a young and energetic staff and now
that the move is almost completed and we have the facilities
available, we are determined to go ahead with the expansion necessary
to absorb these extra expenses and to provide additional profits for
the continued growth of the Company.
W. E. NORTON (HOLDINGS) LTD.
CONTINUED EXPANSION
   The annual general meeting of W. E. Norton (Machine Tools)
Ltd., was held on July 1 in London, MR. W. E. NORTON
(the chairman) presiding.
   The following is his circulated statement:
   The results achieved by the Company for the period ended 31st
March, 1961 reflect the continued progressive growth of the profits of
the companies which are now its subsidiaries.
   The Group net profits (before taxation and Directors'
remuneration) for the full year to 31st March 1961 show an increase of
67% over the adjusted comparable profits for the preceding year.
   The final dividend of 7 1/2% for the period ended 31st March 1961
compares with the forecast of 6 1/4% made when the Stock Exchange
quotation was obtained on 23rd September, 196.
   As already announced, the Directors forecast an interim dividend
of 7 1/2% payable before 31st December 1961, in respect of the current
year ending 31st March, 1962.
   The increased profits have come from a corresponding growth in
purchases and sales. Continuous efforts are made to enlarge our share
of the available business in new and secondhand Machine Tools, at home
and abroad. The sales value of stock held on 31st March, 1961 in this
country and overseas was more than three times the value of stock held
on the corresponding date in 196. Our current sales and earnings are
well in advance of the results achieved during the same period last
year.
   Provided no unforeseen changes occur in the trading pattern,
either at home or abroad, I am confident that the Company will
continue to make good progress. Machine Tools are a pre-requisite for
the majority of the goods and services in demand by countries
developing basic, primary and secondary industries, just as much as
they are an essential to ensure a continuation of the rising standard
of living proclaimed by Western Governments to be one of their main
concerns.
   The industries which we supply are widely diversified and their
needs require many years of specialised study and experience. To
continue our expansion, we are conscious of the need to train suitable
personnel to absorb the particular knowledge required for the
efficient conduct of our business. We are fortunate, therefore, in
having already a nucleus of most able young executives. Their loyalty
and hard work have greatly contributed to the success of the Company.
   The report was adopted.
ASSAM FRONTIER TEA
   The 73rd annual general meeting of The Assam Frontier Tea
Company Limited will be held on August 2 in London.
   The following is an extract from the circulated statement of the
chairman, SIR CHARLES MILES, O.B.E.:
   The profit for the year ended 31st December, 196, amounts to
+498,726, and after charging Depreciation of +74,, there is a
balance of +424,726, which compares with +32,624 for the year 1959.
   Contrary to the experience of some Assam producers, your Company
was not affected by the drought, and, with an increasing yield from
the young tea areas, the crop was the highest so far secured in the
Company's history, the yield from our Assam estates rising from 1,1
lbs. to 1,24 lbs. per acre. Sales proceeds increased by over
+23, but against this there was a rise of approximately +1,
in upkeep expenditure, largely due to the extra crop harvested.
   We recommend the payment of a final dividend of 7 per cent. on
the Preferred Stock, making 1 per cent. for the year, and a
dividend of 25 per cent. on the Ordinary Stock.
   With regard to the current year, our crop to the middle of June
is 1,279,92 lbs., a decrease of 224,4 lbs. when compared with
the same period last year. During the latter part of May and early in
June the weather was unusually cold and wet, and growth was checked at
a time when the quality teas of the year are made. Reports on our
early manufacture, however, are satisfactory.
LEWIS & PEAT, LIMITED
YEAR OF CONSOLIDATION
   The 41st annual general meeting of Lewis & Peat, Limited will
be held on August 2 in London.
   The following is an extract from the circulated statement of the
chairman, MR. HERBERT BOYDEN:
   I would like to mention that, after the period of expansion of
the group, your Board has in the last year concentrated mainly on the
consolidation of the group's activities.
   As forecast, the trading profit of the group before charging
taxation, amounting to +231,279, shows a slight increase over the
figure of +214,396 for the previous year. After deducting taxation
of +114,22, and adjusting for the interests of outside shareholders
in subsidiary companies and pre-acquisition profits of subsidiaries,
there remains a balance of +13,654. The total distribution to
equity shareholders for the year is +36,444, and is covered more than
two and a half times by earnings.
   Commodity Interests: In addition to the diversification of
the group's activities which has taken place in recent years, we have
retained an interest in our traditional commodity business. Rubber,
edible oils, oilseeds, oilcake, and spices as well as cocoa are still
being dealt with through our subsidiary or associated companies. We
have also retained our interest, through a subsidiary, in the natural
fibre business where we have had a most successful year under
comparatively difficult conditions.
   Far East: Lewis & Peat (Singapore) Ltd. have maintained
their position in the Far Eastern market and have further strengthened
their business by acquiring W. H. Day & Co. Ltd. in May,
196.
   We have further widened our sphere of activities in the Far East
by acquiring an investment in the leading sharebroking firm in Malaya
and present indications are that this will prove a useful source of
income to the group.
   West Africa: Our activities in this area have continued to
grow. Our export business particularly continues to expand
satisfactorily and I am of the opinion that there is a good market in
these territories as their economies continue to develop.
   We have recently taken steps to participate in two industrial
enterprises in Nigeria, which we believe will make a satisfactory
contribution to the group results in course of time.
# 25
<293 TEXT H29>
   There are spacious grounds at the University and at the Halls.
Provision is made in the University grounds for the playing of
football, hockey, cricket, tennis and squash rackets, and elsewhere
for badminton, rowing and swimming. There is a first-class running
track. Facilities for recreational physical activities are provided
in the gymnasium.
GENERAL INFORMATION
ADMISSION OF STUDENTS
   Applicants for admission to a degree course in the University
must be at least 17 years of age on 1 October in the year of their
admission, and must, before the beginning of the session in which they
wish to enter the University, be eligible to matriculate.
   The Ordinance and Regulations governing Matriculation and
entrance to a particular Faculty are published on pages 14 and 145.
   Forms of Application for admission may be obtained from the
Registrar. Candidates may be required to attend at the University for
interview.
   Occasional and part-time students may be admitted to attend
lectures with the permission of the Head of the Department concerned
without satisfying the normal conditions for entry.
ADMISSION OF OVERSEAS STUDENTS
   Applications from overseas students must be accompanied by a
statement from the appropriate Government Office or from the person or
body which will be responsible for the applicant's maintenance,
certifying that he will receive adequate financial support for the
duration of his course. Applications will not be considered without
such an assurance.
SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS
   Applications of candidates from overseas will be considered
only if they are submitted to the University either by the Students'
Branch of the Colonial Office (2 Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith
Street, London, S.W.1) or by the appropriate official
representative of their countries in London.
   Applications from candidates wishing to attend occasional
lectures for a period not exceeding one session may be submitted
direct to the University.
REGISTRATION
   The University session opens in the first or second week of
October each year. Students are required to register on the first
three days of each session.
   All freshmen entering upon a degree course must at the time of
registration or within seven days present evidence of their
eligibility to matriculate to the Assistant Registrar (Academic).
DISCIPLINE
   The University Regulations are published on page 132.
ENTRY FOR EXAMINATIONS
   All students must obtain the consent of the Dean of the Faculty
concerned before entering for examinations, and must take the
examinations at the time approved by the Dean. No student may
postpone or withdraw registration or entry for any examination without
the consent of the Dean.
   Students whose progress is considered by the Senate to be
unsatisfactory may be required to withdraw from the University.
Failure in an examination may be regarded as evidence of
unsatisfactory progress.
   See also University Regulations, Section 3, page 133.
RESIDENCE
   The University is in principle residential, in the sense that
all full-time students for whom there is room are required to live in
Halls of Residence.
   In view of the growth in numbers the accommodation in the Halls
is, however, now insufficient to house all the students not living at
home. Approximately half of the places in Hall are reserved for
first-year students and a majority of the remaining places are
allocated to second-year students. Forms of Application for Residence
will be sent to all candidates to whom an offer of a place in the
University is made.
   Students (other than those living at home) who are not offered
accommodation in Hall must live in lodgings approved by the
University. The allocation of first-year students to Halls is made by
the Wardens and students who are required to reside in approved
lodgings will be put in touch with the Warden of Lodgings.
   Students must take up residence in Hall or lodgings on the first
day of each Term.
   A limited number of students in their second or third years who
have previously been in lodgings are admitted to Hall. Applications
should be made to the Warden.
UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICE
   A comprehensive health service for students is provided under
the direction of the University Medical Officer.
   All students are required to undergo a medical examination during
the first session and at such times afterwards as the Medical Officer
may advise. Students are also strongly advised to make use of the
facilities available annually at the University for chest X-ray
examination.
   All students, except those living locally and therefore
registered with a local doctor, should re-register under the National
Health Service arrangements with the University Medical Officer or
with a local medical practitioner. Students in Hall should consult
their Warden before re-registration. For purposes of re-registration
students must bring with them to Hull their National Health
Medical Card. (See also University Regulations, Section 5, page 134.)
   Sick students, where illness is likely to last more than 24
hours, are admitted from Hall, and, when desirable, from lodgings to
the Sick Bay, where they will be in the care of the Medical Officer
and the Sister of the Sick Bay.
<LIST>
   Students living in Hall or lodgings will pay a fee towards the
cost of the service of +1 1s. per session; students living at home
will pay 1s. 6d. per session.
REFECTORIES
   Facilities are provided in the Students' Union Building, for
morning coffee, luncheon, tea and evening meals. There is a separate
Staff Refectory for the use of the academic staff.
UNIVERSITY REGULATIONS
GENERAL
   The University expects its students to conduct themselves at
all times in an orderly manner creditable to the good name of the
University. Regulations for the maintenance of good order and
discipline are promulgated from time to time. It is the duty of all
students to take notice of the Regulations and to know and observe
them. Students on admission must sign a declaration that they will
observe the Ordinances of the University and will conform to all such
regulations as may from time to time be made for the maintenance of
order in the University. Students must also make themselves
conversant with the academic regulations in the University Calendar.
   Regulations relating to Halls of Residence, Lodgings and the
University Library, have the same force as University Regulations and
any breach of them may be dealt with as a breach of University
discipline.
UNIVERSITY TERMS
   1. The official dates of University terms as published in the
Calendar apply to all students. Students (other than new students
at the opening of a session and research students) are required to
arrive in Hull on the first day of term and, except with the special
permission of the Dean of their Faculty, may not go down until the
last day. The first and last days of term as published are regarded
as travelling days on which no lectures or classes will be held. The
residence of research students will be governed by the requirements of
their Head of Department or Supervisor.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) Permission to go down before the end of Term (6Exeat):
An 6exeat will be granted only in special circumstances.
Students must apply to the Dean personally, having first obtained an
6exeat form from the Dean's office.
   (b) Temporary Absence during Term (6Absit): Leave of
absence may be granted during University terms subject to departmental
and other academic requirements and to the Halls of Residence and
lodgings regulations. Leave for three successive nights will
ordinarily be granted only if it includes a Saturday and Sunday.
   The power of granting temporary leave of absence during terms has
been delegated by the Deans to Heads of Departments; students seeking
such leave should first obtain an 6absit form from the Dean's
office.
   (A copy of the full supplementary regulations relating to
6exeats and 6absits may be obtained from the Registrar's
Office.)
<END INDENTATION>
REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT OF FEES
   2. Students must register for classes and examinations and
pay any fee prescribed and any other University dues on the dates and
at the times laid down in Official Notices.
CLASSES AND EXAMINATIONS
   3. Students must follow throughout the terms the courses for
which they are registered and attend such classes and such
examinations as are required by the University or by the Heads of the
Departments concerned. No student may change his course without the
permission of the Heads of the Departments concerned and of the Dean
of the Faculty.
   No student may enter for a University examination or an
examination conducted by some other examining body without the consent
of the Dean of his Faculty. In the case of external examination such
consent is normally given only if the examination is for a
professional qualification closely related to the student's course.
Consent for entry to examinations is normally given when the Dean or
his deputy signs the student's registration form at the beginning of
session. Students must enter on their registration form particulars
of any external examinations which they propose to take during the
session. University examinations of any kind will in all cases take
priority over any other examinations which a student wishes to take.
   Students absent from classes must report such absence within the
first two days to the Warden in the case of students residing in Hall
and to the University Registry in the case of all other students. In
the case of illness students in lodgings must also report such absence
to the Warden of Lodgings.
GOWNS
   4. All full-time students reading for a degree or diploma
must wear approved academic dress at examinations, on ceremonial
occasions, at official interviews with University Officers and members
of the academic staff, and also at lectures unless Senate on the
recommendation of a Board of Faculty shall for special reasons
determine otherwise. Gowns will not be worn in laboratories.
HEALTH
   5. Students, other than those living at home, are required to
bring their National Health Service Medical Cards to Hull and to
register under the National Health Service either with the
University Medical Officer (Dr. R. Raines), or with a local
medical practitioner. Students must inform the Registrar, in the
manner prescribed from time to time, of the name of the doctor in Hull
or district with whom they have registered.
   All students are required to present themselves for a medical
examination during their first year, and at such times afterwards as
the University Medical Officer may advise. They are strongly advised
to make use of the facilities provided annually at the University for
chest X-ray examination.
   Students absent from classes owing to illness must report such
absence within the first two days to the Warden in the case of
students residing in Hall, Warden of Lodgings in the case of students
in lodgings, and to the University Registry in the case of all other
students.
VEHICLES
   6. Students are permitted to bring vehicles into the
University grounds and park them there on the following conditions.
This permission may be expressly withdrawn by the Registrar at any
time.
   (a) Registration. Students regularly parking cars,
motor-cycles or any other mechanically propelled vehicles within the
University grounds must register such vehicles at the Registrar's
Office before the expiration of one week from the beginning of each
session. Any newly acquired vehicle must be registered immediately.
   (b) Parking. Detailed regulations may be promulgated from
time to time specifying 6inter alia the times during which and
the entrances by which, cars, motor-cycles and other mechanically
propelled vehicles may be brought into and taken out of the University
grounds, and the places in which such vehicles may be parked.
   Similar regulations may be made for pedal cycles. No cycle may
be parked, even temporarily, near any building except as authorised by
the regulations. Cycles parked in unauthorised places may be moved
and may be impounded until any fine which may be imposed has been
paid.
   (c) Vehicles other than cycles not equipped with means of
mechanical propulsion, must not be left over-night in the University
grounds without the permission of the Registrar.
   (d) No vehicle may be left in the University grounds during
vacations and the University authorities shall have power to deal with
any vehicle so left by causing it to be removed in the name and at the
cost of the student responsible, and by having it put in any private
or public place which the University may find convenient.
# 225
<294 TEXT H3>
FAMILY GUIDE TO AUTUMN FOOTWEAR
Exciting Colours
New Toe Styles
   A PARTIAL retreat from the sharply-pointed Italian toe is
indicated in the autumn footwear presentations. Taking a look
recently at the collection from CWS factories I noted a number of
interesting models with the newer square toe.
   Another new style feature is the wine-glass or flared heel, which
was shown teamed up with pointed, squared, and chisel toes.
   Colour is highly important in choosing autumn footwear. The
autumn range of shades is almost bewildering, and there are some
exciting new-comers, such as conker calf and charcoal, rocco and
Russian violet.
   Quite a lot of attention has been paid by the designers to
comfort as well as style in this collection exclusively created for
Britain's Co-operative stores. I noted the "bagged" toplines and
tailored ankle fittings, exemplified in a black calf shoe from Norwich
which is also available in tan calf and mushroom.
   The comfort element is particularly marked in the Elizabeth shoe
family, expressly designed for those of us whose feet are no longer
youthful, but who nevertheless like to be fashionably shod. None of
us could ask for a smarter number, for instance, than a black softie
calf shoe with a cushioned heel sock, arch support, and elasticised
forepart. It is offered also in charcoal.
   
   For younger feet the famous Countrysider range brings in the
casual. Gristle soles and chisel toes are features here, as in an
attractive model in dark green and maize. These new Countrysiders,
with their up-to-the-minute fashion features- including the
kidney-shaped toepiece- are likely to retain their popularity with
our teenagers.
   Fashion these days is as apparent in male footwear as in women's,
and this collection offered both square and chisel toe in its
stylings- and here again colour is an essential fashion feature.
   Interesting to see our men breaking away from those traditional
browns and blacks into more interesting shades- as in one of the new
Ardingtons shown in the rich dark brown which is going to be one of
the autumn's most popular footwear shades for men.
   
   As in the autumn clothes collections I have seen, the young
folk's styles tend to be junior editions of their elders'. For the
girls, toe styles run to both the medium pointed and the chisel, and
the maids' casuals incorporate the kitten heel, bagged tops, and
chisel toes.
   Similarly, the boys' shoes reveal the new toe shape in varying
degrees, and one of the Leeds numbers shown me had a vamp decorated in
Terylene braid. More modish still was a pointed-toe model with a
highly masculine-looking buckle, and resin soled; and a rubber-soled
casual in the latest styling, unlined, with elastic side insertions
and smooth saddle running across the forepart.
   - D.L.R.
BED-TIME LUXURY
   EIDERDOWNS are slippery objects, as restless nights are only
too apt to prove. To keep you from being left in the cold by these
unaccommodating articles the CWS Pelaw Quilt Factory have
introduced a new item into their range.
   In the past they have featured a large number of quilts with
matching bedspreads. Now they are offering you the two in one, in the
form of a quilt with matching valance attached. This is gusseted to
ensure a snug fit over the pillows and the whole has the appearance of
an eiderdown covering a bedspread.
   For sheer luxurious warmth in the middle of winter nothing could
compare with another newcomer to the range, a continental style quilt.
Filled with pure down, it is made in down-proof super cambric
stitched into four panels.
   There is no danger of this slipping off the bed for it folds
cosily around you as you turn.
   The price of about 14 guineas may appear high, but this quilt is
designed to last a lifetime. You can choose from a colour range of
rose, gold, green, blue, and beige, all piped with white.
   During the past two years washable quilts in man-made fibres have
come to the fore. The Pelaw range includes printed nylons, Terylenes
and Tricels, all with Tricel or Terylene fillings. These with their
flower-scattered designs would add glamour to any bedroom.
   A dainty rose pattern is used for a printed Tricel quilt with
frilled edge and plain Tricel back. This delightful model can be
bought in rose, gold, blue, and lilac, and costs about +5 7s. 6d.
   
   ANOTHER pretty quilt with printed Terylene front and plain
nylon frill and back sells for about +6 12s. The colours available
are rose, blue, gold, and cerise.
   The traditionally styled quilts are still highly popular, and are
harder wearing than those made from man-made fibres. An attractive
model in embroidered crepe with ruched centre and scalloped edge is
made in dark rose, light rose, gold, green, blue, oyster, wine, and
lavender. It has a feather filling and down-proof back and the price
is about +7 1s. 6d.
   A reversible quilt in rose, beige, green, blue, wine, or black,
is extremely reasonably priced at +3 16s. 6d. This
feather-filled model is in down-proof cambric.
   All prices given are for double-bed size.
   Grandmothers-to-be should make a note to look at the pretty range
of pram sets in nylon with Terylene fillings. These have delicate
designs on the covers and plain matching pillow-cases. The prices
range from about +1 14s. 6d. to +2, and the colours are pink,
sky, ivory, and lemon.
SHIRTS are his business
says ROBERT PEMBERTON
   ARE you still wearing a shirt with separate collars and a
closed front, Mr. Grundy? If you are you can count yourself as
rather a "square," as young Ron would put it in his jargon.
   In other words you are a little old-fashioned, because 9 out of
every 1 males are wearing the collar-attached tunic shirt. The
non-iron and drip-dry are also highly favoured nowadays. Where
ironing is necessary the busy housewife finds it much easier to make a
good job of pressing the open-front type of shirt.
   I was told this during an interesting chat I had with Mr. R.
Hunt, who manages the CWS Shirt, Pyjama, and Overall Group of
five factories at Broughton, Pelaw, Cardiff, Sheffield, and Reading.
   "Men are not as colour-conscious as women," Mr. Hunt told
me, "and they are inclined to be more conservative as they grow
older. There is always a big demand for white, checks are called for
quite a lot, especially by the younger men, and there is an indication
of a return to stripes. Pastel shades have lost some of their
popularity."
   
   UNTIL I toured the Broughton factory I never realised how
much research and planning goes into the making of a top-class shirt
such as those made at the CWS's Broughton, Pelaw, and Cardiff
factories.
   So many synthetic materials, such as nylons, Terylene, Acrilan,
and rayon, are used in the manufacture of shirts that extra care has
to be taken to ensure that the inter-linings and the sewing cotton
shrink in the same ratio as the main fabric.
   "In my long experience in the trade there have never been as
many technical and scientific problems as there are today," said
Mr. Hunt. "In the production of drip-dry shirts the collar
inter-linings are treated with a water repellant, and new types of
inter-linings have had to be introduced for the shirts manufactured
from man-made fibres."
   Everything is done methodically and thoroughly to get the best
results. For instance, as many as 5 prototypes of the collar of the
well-known Lestar shirt were produced, washed, and tested for wear
until the near-perfect collar was discovered.
   And there is no resting on their laurels. While the Lestar shirt
has been an outstanding success for some time, modifications are made
when necessary to improve it and keep it right on top.
   No other manufacturer makes such a wide variety of shirts as the
CWS. Society shirts are made to please all types of wearer, from
the artisan to the executive, and for all occasions.
   It doesn't matter either whether you are a giant or a dwarf, your
Co-operative society can fit you out with a CWS shirt. The
Broughton was recently called upon for a shirt with a 22 1/2 in.
collar and a 66 in. chest measurement.
   
   ALL the latest machines and gadgets for doing the job
speedily and efficiently can be found at the factories, and it is
obvious, after seeing them at work in the bright and modern Broughton
factory, that there are no more skilful operatives than the girls and
men who make the popular Society shirts under their various brand
names.
   In making two million garments a year 4, miles of cloth are
used- 7 per cent of it from CWS mills. The factories require
146, miles of sewing cotton, 13 million buttons, 12 million pins, 1
1/2 million transparent bags, and 5, boxes.
Not too old at 4
   OLD people are younger today! You have only to look around
to realise that they have moved with the times just as much as the
younger generation.
   Most middle-aged folk can well remember the days when their
mothers and grandmothers dressed in sober hues, usually black. Life
stopped at 5 and old age began. Old ladies walked with sticks and
often wore veils. If they wore anything colourful it was confined to
a touch of white round the collar.
   What a change since then! Grannies dress as brightly as their
daughters these days, and a jolly good thing, too. Mothers look just
as charming as their offspring and often nearly as young. Statistics,
too, show that people are living longer. A brighter outlook on life
plus, of course, many far-reaching advances in medicine, is partly
responsible.
   But as older people keep younger so does the need for finding
suitable occupations for them increase. There is nothing more
frustrating than to feel unwanted. In this modern world with its full
employment and, indeed, its clamour for more and more people to fill a
wide variety of jobs, the older person has much to offer the
community.
   
   Although the advertisement columns of the papers sometimes admit
this with their invitation "age immaterial" there is still in some
quarters a reluctance to recognise that "too old at forty" is a
very out-dated tag for these times. While people are fit and well the
world has much use for them.
   That is why this month's HOME MAGAZINE includes an important
article on the work of the Over Forty-Fives Association which, in the
words of one of its officials, regards a man of 45 as "a mere
chicken" and has found work for people as old as 8.
   It is an unfortunate aspect of the otherwise excellent pension
arrangements which many firms offer today that they frequently do not
allow for employment of older people. With everyone now enjoying a
State pension when they reach the necessary age, it should not be
impossible to find a solution to the problem of individual schemes.
   
   Not only have older people much to offer, they find many benefits
themselves in continuing to work, providing their health is good
enough. The contact with younger people, the feeling that they are
playing a part in the world around them, the interest their work can
hold for them- all are valuable aids to a complete and happy life.
Those who are in a position to engage staff might well think of these
factors when they next fill a position.
   Meanwhile HOME MAGAZINE offers you this month its usual rich
variety, including Mary Langham's recipes to keep you well ahead in
your Christmas preparations.
   The Editor
HOUSEWIVES' CLUB
   SHOP SLEUTH brings you bargains for your Christmas shopping
list. All items are available through your local Co-operative
Society. For further details write to Housewives' Club, HOME
MAGAZINE, 1 Balloon St., Manchester 4, enclosing a stamped
addressed envelope.
   READY-PACKED in a Christmas stocking is a tool kit
containing a 6 oz. hammer, a plastic handled screwdriver, trimming
knife and three blades, bradawl, card of fuse wire, and one packet
each of assorted screws and panel pins.
# 21
<END>
<295 TEXT J1>
   Unfortunately the accuracy with which an impurity dependent
physical or chemical property of sodium can be measured decreases with
decreasing impurity concentration. To get over this difficulty Alcock
has suggested that instead of measuring directly the concentration of
oxygen in the flowing sodium its thermodynamic potential should be
measured by a suitable galvanic cell incorporated in the circuit. The
principal advantages of this should be continuous monitoring of the
sodium and an accuracy of monitoring which, if the sodium-oxygen
system obeys Henry's law, should increase with decreasing
concentration of the impurity.
2. Theoretical
(a) The Cell
   The use of solid electrolytes in galvanic cells has been
described in detail by Kiukkola and Wagner. In a reversible cell
consisting of two metal-metal oxide electrodes and a solid oxide
electrolyte through which current is transported solely by :=:
ions, the change in free energy 15DG accompanying the passage of one
mole of oxygen is given by:-
   2EF
   where E is the voltage developed across the cell and F is the
Faraday. If the electrodes are sodium saturated with its own oxide
and unsaturated sodium the change of free energy accompanying the
transfer of one mole of :=: from the saturated to the unsaturated
metal will be given by:-
<FORMULA>
   where
<FORMULA>,
<FORMULA> are the activities of oxygen in saturated sodium
(concentration c;;) and in the unsaturated sodium (concentration c
 c;;), T the absolute temperature and R the gas-constant.
   If the activity of oxygen dissolved in sodium is proportional to
its concentration as is required by Henry's law then the free energy
change per mole :=: ion may be written
<FORMULA>
   Thus
<FORMULA>
   The solubility of oxygen as Na;2; in sodium has been
determined and is given by the relationship
<FORMULA>
   Substitution of equation (3) in equation (2) with appropriate
values for the various constants gives
<FORMULA>
   Values of this function between 4@ and 8@C at 1@
intervals and for oxygen concentrations between .1 and 1
p.p.m. are presented in Fig. 1.
   At the present time maximum sodium coolant temperatures are
around 5@C and oxygen concentrations are usually intended to be
maintained in the range 1-1 p.p.m. According to the above this
cell under these conditions should give voltages ranging from 224-147
mv.
(b) The effect of small changes of oxygen concentration and
temperature on the cell E.M.F.
   The E.M.F. of such a cell placed in a sodium circuit will
be affected by fluctuations in oxygen content and temperature.
   These may be estimated from equation (4) or the following derived
equations:-
<FORMULA>
<FORMULA>
   Equation (5) indicates that any voltage fluctuation arising from
a sudden small concentration change will be controlled principally by
the original concentration. Thus changes from .1 to 1 p.p.m.
1-1 p.p.m. 1-1 p.p.m. would result in the same change in
voltage (?1776 mv.). For relevant reactor conditions (5@C,
C = 1-1 p.p.m.) the finite change of voltage 15DE
accompanying finite concentration changes 15DC is plotted in Fig.
3. The latter as might be expected vary considerably. A rise of
oxygen concentration from 1-2 p.p.m. is accompanied by a voltage
drop of ?1723 mv. while, a rise from 9-1 p.p.m. would
produce a change of only ?173 mv.
   Changes in voltage accompanying fluctuations of coolant
temperature according to equation (6) vary only slightly with
concentration and are proportional to the temperature change. Values
at various oxygen concentrations of
<FORMULA> together with apparent changes in oxygen level for
temperature fluctuations of ?14 1@C at 5@C are presented in
Table =1.
<TABLE>
   The above figures show that a ?14 1@C temperature
fluctuation at oxygen levels in the range 1-1 p.p.m. would
indicate an apparent change of ?1712% in oxygen concentration.
   Providing a cell of the above type works satisfactorily the above
arguments suggest that it will be sufficiently accurate as an oxygen
monitor in a hot trapped sodium coolant circuit.
(c) Contamination of the sodium circuit by oxygen from the cell
   Experiments with solid oxide electrolyte galvanic cells have
indicated that it is difficult to obtain reproducible voltages using
normal potentiometric methods at temperatures below 75@C. The
author has obtained reproducible results with such cells at 4@C
and above by using vibrating reed voltmeters that draw current from
the cell only as a result of leakage through insulation resistance of
<FORMULA>. Thus if voltmeters of this type were used with the
Na/ Na;2; cell it is possible to estimate the contamination of
the circuit sodium from oxygen continuously diffusing through the
electrolyte. If it is assumed that in practise <SIC> the maximum
voltage developed by the cell at 5@C will be around 3 mv.
(see Fig. 1) then in the case of the instrument with the lower
resistance the current will be:- 3 x 1:-14: coulombs/ sec.
   The charge on :=: ion ?183.2 x 1:-19: coulombs.
   Thus the number of :=: ions travelling through the
electrolyte per second ?181:5:.
   The mass of oxygen per year at this rate would be approximately 8
x 1:-1: g./ year which is a quite insignificant quantity.
(d) The use of the cell as a corrosion meter
   With the cell electrodes consisting of sodium with oxygen at
different activities a voltage will be developed that is a function of
the difference in the oxygen potential at the two electrodes. Unless
it is known at what oxygen potential a given material in the sodium
coolant circuit will start to oxidise the cell can only be used as has
been suggested above, as an oxygen concentration monitor. However, if
a material oxidizes in sodium at a given oxygen potential the
reference electrode could be held at that potential and oxidizing or
reducing conditions in the coolant circuit for that material would be
indicated by a negative or positive potential at the reference
electrode. Thus for the specific case of niobium in a sodium circuit
a corrosion indicator could be a reference electrode of sodium
saturated and equilibrated with niobium separated from the coolant by
a solid anionic electrolyte. A negative voltage from the reference
electrode would mean oxidizing conditions for niobium and positive
voltage, non-oxidizing conditions.
3. Practical
   The practical application of the above idea will involve
considerable experimentation before it can be realised. The first
requirement is for an anionic electrolyte, which can be fabricated
into suitable shapes impervious to gases and liquid sodium and which
is neither corroded by sodium nor by sodium monoxide. Possible
materials are zirconia stabilised with lime and thoria doped with rare
earth oxides.
   If such a material can be made with these properties a possible
way in which the cell may be incorporated in a sodium circuit is
depicted in Fig. 4.
   The electrolyte A is made in the form of a thin walled closed off
round end tube or probe fitting vertically into the sodium coolant
circuit B. The +ve electrode consisting of a small quantity of
sodium saturated with sodium monoxide C is situated at the bottom of
the tube. The potential acquired by this pool of sodium is
transmitted to the voltmeter V by a nickel conductor D, nickel being
resistant to corrosive attack by oxide saturated sodium at 5@C.
The -ve electrode which is the coolant stream, is joined to the
voltmeter by an earthed nickel conductor attached to the bottom of a
well E in the coolant stream. Provided the temperatures at C and E
are the same, thermoelectric contributions to the voltage should be
zero.
   The probe extends out of the sodium stream through a close
fitting thin walled T-Junction F and passes into the open via a
water-cooled O ring seal G. The open end of the probe is sealed with
a vacuum coupling H which also positions the +ve nickel conductor
with respect to the sodium by circlips on either side of the seal I.
Evaporation of sodium from the pool C is minimised by a close fitting
cylindrical block of electrolyte J attached to the +ve nickel
conductor by nickel circlips. Fixing and positioning of the probe
relative to the coolant stream is effected by tie-bars of insulating
material K joining the vacuum coupling H to the water cooled flange G.
The probe can be evacuated and filled with inert gas via the tube L
which must of course be electrically isolated after this has been
carried out.
4. Discussion
   It is not suggested that the above proposal will be successful
but rather that it is worth a trial in the event of the inadequacy of
some simpler method of monitoring the oxygen in a sodium circuit. The
principal difficulty encountered by the author, in determining partial
molal free energies by solid electrolyte cells of very stable oxides
such as UO;2;, MnO etc. was vapour phase transfer of oxygen
by carbonaceous impurities in the blanket gas. This resulted in the
oxidation of the -ve electrode and reduction of the +ve electrode
which of course led to a loss in E.M.F. from the cell. In the
above design the two electrodes are completely separated from one
another so that this major source of trouble should not be present.
However, the stability of the system may be adversely affected by the
thermal gradient up the probe and this can only be tested by
experiment.
   Whether such an apparatus can be incorporated in a reactor
circuit in a manner that will satisfy safety requirements will need
further study. On the face of it however, there seems to be no reason
why the cell should not be double-contained to prevent loss of sodium
in the event of the ceramic tube being fractured. Such containment
however, will be complicated by the necessity of providing suitable
insulating seals through its walls.
5. Conclusions
   If other monitoring methods for oxygen in sodium in the
concentration range 1-1 p.p.m. are found to be inadequate then
this galvanic cell may be worth investigating. However, it will
require development of a suitable electrolyte and even then it will
only be useful if the activity of the dissolved oxygen varies
sufficiently with changes in its concentration.
A. OUTLINE OF METHOD
   To a measured portion of the sample, niobium and zirconium
carriers are added together with hydrofluoric acid to ensure complete
isotopic interchange. Rare earth elements are co-precipitated with
lanthanum as fluorides. Niobium is precipitated with ammonia,
partially separating it from zirconium. The niobium precipitate is
dissolved in a mixture of oxalic and nitric acids, and niobic acid
precipitated by boiling and adding potassium bromate. The niobic acid
is dissolved in acid ammonium fluoride and the cycle from the ammonia
precipitation repeated. The niobic acid is washed, ignited to niobium
pentoxide, which is mounted on a tared counting tray and weighed.
   The 15g-activity is measured through a lead/ aluminium
sandwich using standard gamma scintillation equipment, which has been
calibrated with known amounts of niobium-95.
B. REAGENTS REQUIRED
   All reagents are Analytical Reagent Quality where available.
1. Standard niobium carrier solution (
<FORMULA>)
   Fuse 2 g of pure niobium pentoxide with 72 g of potassium
carbonate in a platinum dish. Cool and dissolve the solidified melt
in about 4 ml of hot water. Transfer the solution and any
undissolved solid to a glass beaker, stir thoroughly and add 16M
nitric acid until the solution is strongly acid to litmus. Stand the
beaker on a hot plate and keep the solution warm for 3 minutes to
coagulate the precipitate. Transfer to four 2 ml polythene
bottles, centrifuge, decant and discard each supernate. Wash each
portion of the precipitate three times by stirring with 1 ml of 2%
ammonium nitrate. Use a glass rod for stirring. Centrifuge and
discard the supernates after each wash. Dissolve each portion of the
precipitate in 25 ml of 3% ammonium fluoride and 15 ml of 16M
nitric acid. Combine the solutions from each of the 2 ml
polythene bottles, and dilute to 2 litres with distilled water in a
polythene bottle. Standardize as follows:-
   Pipette 1 ml of the solution into a 4 ml polythene beaker
and add 1 ml of a saturated solution of ammonium chloride. Heat
the solution nearly to boiling, by placing the polythene beaker in a
glass beaker of water, heated on a hot plate, and add to the solution
1 g of tannic acid dissolved in hot water.
# 216
<296 TEXT J2>
The removal of the library and catalogues to the Bodleian destroys
the incentive to study and add to the collection because of the
absence of readily accessible reference works. Divorced from the
specimens the catalogues become neglected, and ultimately the
specimens are thrown away because the catalogues are not to hand. So
are lost all Dr. Plot's figured specimens and the great collection
of Edward Lhwyd, his assistant.
   It is very interesting to see the composition of a
seventeenth-century palaeontologist's reference library. Plot, in
addition to Biblical quotations and Philosophical Transaction
references, alludes to no less than fifty-two works. Amongst these
the elder Pliny's writings are prominent. His classification of
fossils is essentially that of Gesner erected 111 years before. When
I say that the four main groups in this classification are stones
relating to heavenly bodies; those relating to the inferior heavens;
those relating to the atmosphere; and those relating to the Watery
Kingdoms, you will gather that it does not rest on any sound
scientific footing. Dr. Plot himself has no tremendous regard for
this method; but he says it is better than classifying the things
alphabetically. I beg leave to doubt this.
   Then there comes out of Yorkshire the learned Dr. Martin Lister
with an opinion on fossils, which, emanating as it does from the
foremost conchologist of the day, can hardly be ignored. Lister has
figured recent and fossil shells, side by side, not, as might be
imagined, to show their essential similarity but as an illustration of
the plagiarism of Nature. Lister's theory might well be christened
(acknowledging our indebtedness to Siegfried Sassoon) the
pseudomorphic hieroglyphic hypothesis, since whilst denying the former
vitality of fossils he suggests that different types of self-generated
shell-like stones might characterize different rocks. It might
therefore be said that his lapse in regarding fossils as sports of
nature is here offset by his penetration as to their possible use. It
would certainly be possible to use a tool of which the true nature was
unknown, if, empirically, it had been found to serve a useful purpose.
But to credit Lister with the first formulation of the basic
principle of stratigraphy, as has been claimed, would be to bestow
credit falsely. I think Lister had in mind merely the characterizing
of different types of rocks by distinctive fossils. Today this
would be called recognizing the facies of the rocks and Lister's
"ingenious proposal", as it was entitled, to make a map showing the
surface distribution of strata was a proposal for a mineral, not a
true geological map. Such a map would, for instance, colour all
limestone outcrops under the same shade. Although of value in mining
and quarrying operations it is academically barren. It can make no
contribution to working out earth-history. The primary division of
strata in the hierarchy of their classification is according to age
not lithology. To elevate the latter is to produce a barren
classification.
   Edward Lhwyd, assistant and later successor to Dr. Plot as
curator of the Ashmolean Museum, had a more intimate acquaintance with
fossils than any man in England and possibly in the world. This
study, together with his scholarly researches into the Welsh and other
Gaelic languages, formed his life's work. Whenever he could afford
it, he travelled widely to collect fossils and examine Welsh, Irish,
Cornish and Breton manuscripts. He wrote the first illustrated
textbook on fossils. His familiarity with them showed him that their
resemblance to living things was no mere coincidence, but the
inference that fossiliferous beds were elevated sea-floors was too
much for him. He adopted the "stray seed" hypothesis, but in a
spirit of candour he wrote to John Ray, "I am not so fond of this
Hypothesis, as not to be sensible myself, that it lies open to a great
many objections". Still it was the best compromise he could come
to.
   A poor museum curator with a salary of +4 6per annum plus
what he could get from selling fossils at a time when there was no
great demand for them, was in no position to tilt at the thirty-nine
articles. In rejecting the Flood hypothesis, he says, in effect, that
he demurs first because it is not in accord with the Sacred Scriptures
and, secondly, because it does not accord with the facts. We may note
the order of the objections.
   The doubts entertained by Leonardo da Vinci about the Flood
theory were explained away by John Woodward. In 1695, he published a
much-admired Essay on the natural history of the earth. This was
intended to repair imagined omissions in the Mosaic narrative in
general and the account of Noah's Flood in particular. In the Essay,
Woodward promises to "give myself up to be guided wholly by Matter of
Fact; intending to steer that Course which is thus agreed of all hands
to be the best and surest: and not to offer anything but what 1hath
due warrant from Observations; and those both carefully made and
faithfully related". Never can a promise made so fervently have
been so lamentably forgotten in the course of a few pages. Woodward
imagined that the Flood had transformed the globe into a porridge-like
mass and that the strata and the organic remains had subsided to
stratify in layers according to their specific gravity. Fantastic as
the theory is, it becomes more so when we learn that it was acceptable
to Diluvialists in England and abroad for many years.
   With regard to the Deluge, let me say that it is its world-wide
occurrence which makes physical difficulties. An extensive, though
local, inundation can easily be explained, but where did the water
issue from and to where did it retreat to if there was enough to cover
the whole surface? I like Woodward's approach to this problem. "For
my part," he says, "my Subject does not necessarily oblige me to
look after this Water; or to point forth the place 1whereunto 1'tis
now retreated. For when, from the Sea-shells and other Remains of the
Deluge, I shall have given you undeniable Evidence that it did
actually cover all parts of the Earth; it must needs follow that there
was then Water enough to do it, where it may be now hid, or whether it
be still in being or not." One is tempted to say, "When you come
to an insurmountable obstacle look it squarely in the face and pass
on", were it not that the argument is sound, granted the premises.
   As might have been expected, the hint of the marvellous and the
untrammelled speculation emanating from "fossil stones" could not
fail to attract the attention of that delightful character, John
Aubrey. We turn to his Natural History of Wiltshire confidently
expecting some delicious things. Now there is a great deal of truth
in the notion that the geological environment is the primary factor in
determining the character of a country; not only topographically but
historically. If the course of history is channelled by economics,
then surely natural resources lie at the foundation of a country's
development. And as men are the products of their times, the national
character contains at least an element imposed upon it by the
inanimate environment. Aubrey recognizes this on a very fine scale
indeed. I quote: "according to the several sorts of earth in England
(and so all the world over) the 1Indigenae are respectively witty or
dull, good or bad. In North Wiltshire ... a dirty clayey country the
1Indigenae 1speake drawling; they are 1phlegmatique, skins pale and
livid, slow and dull, heavy of spirit ... melancholy, contemplative
and malicious; by consequence whereof come more law 1suites out of
North Wilts, at least double to the southern parts" which, bye the
bye, are composed of Chalk.
   As to Aubrey's notions on fossils we simply record that he was
much plagued with notions about earthquakes and their possible
consequences on the earth's rotation; and if he recognized that
fossils give "clear evidence that the earth 1hath been all covered
over by water" and when he "1often-times wishes for a 1mappe of
England coloured according to the colours of the earths with marks of
the 1fossiles and minerals", we conclude that he read his
Philosophical Transactions and was acquainted with Hooke and Lister.
   As an example of the type of ingenuity provoked by a chance
stimulus, we have the Theory of the Earth due to Whiston. In the
latter years of the seventeenth century comets were "in the air",
as it were. The comet which led Newton to predict their parabolic
orbits was visible between December 168 and March 1681. Halley's
even more famous comet with a much less eccentric elliptical orbit,
having a period of 75 to 76 years, was visible in 1682.
   Whiston conjectures that Newton's comet was the same as that
recorded in 44 B.C., A.D. 531 and A.D. 116 which suggested a
period of 575 years or so. He notes that, of two postulated dates for
Noah's flood, namely, 2349 B.C. and 2926 B.C., the discrepancy
of 577 years is near enough to the assumed period of Newton's comet;
so that what ever <SIC> date for the Flood be accepted, the
interval between it and 1681 was an integral multiple (7 or 8) of the
postulated period of revolution of Newton's comet. Note, however,
that this period was not calculated from the observed visible portion
of the comet's orbit, but inferred from certain coincidental dates.
Nevertheless, having convinced himself that a comet stood above the
earth at the time of the Deluge he invoked one to explain the other.
The earth passed through the watery vapours of the comet's tail, and
the "floodgates of heaven" were opened whilst its gravitational
attraction fractured the earth's crust whence emerged the "waters of
the deep". The rest of Whiston's theory is according to Woodward
with wholesale extinction of life and its stratification according to
specific gravity in a porridgey mass which ultimately hardened into
the stratified crust. The whole theory is ludicrous; but if the rules
of the game are first to invoke only recorded catastrophes and,
secondly, to pay due regard to contemporary scientific fashions, then,
surely, Whiston's attempt is a gem of its kind. Molyneux's suggestion
that the extinction of the Irish Elk was due to plague is perhaps a
similar piece of opportunism. It is the type of explanation involved
in explaining wet summers by atom-bomb explosions.
   Amidst this welter of conflicting opinion the truth was there
waiting to be disseminated. Robert Hooke in England and Nicholas
Steno in Italy had published opinions which, had they been combined,
would have opened up the subject 15 years before it was destined to
flower.
   But these were writing in advance of their times and were
consequently ignored. Thus Hooke in 1688 in a Discourse on
Earthquakes not only knew fossils for what they were but said that
"it would not be impossible to raise a chronology out of them".
The occurrence of fossil Turtles in the London Clay of the Isle of
Sheppey led him to conclude that England had formerly enjoyed a warmer
climate than today. This was the first suggestion for an
investigation into palaeoclimatology, a subject which is not
completely established today, although inferences made from fossil
faunas lie at the heart of its present development.
   Nineteen years before Hooke's Discourse, the implications of
stratification had been announced to an indifferent scientific world
by Steno. As founder of the science of crystallography, Steno would
hardly confuse crystals with true fossils. It is a pity that their
chronological possibilities were not added to his insight into
stratification. But both Hooke and Steno threw out their geological
ideas incidentally to their main pursuits; and their contemporaries to
whom Geology was their main interest were unable to appreciate their
foresight. For instance, their record of fossils at either a
particular height above sea-level or depth below the surface in mines
and quarries shows their ignorance of the subject of stratification.
Except in the rare horizontally bedded rocks these data have no
significance chronologically.
# 28
<297 TEXT J3>
   Dr. Smithson, I think it was, mentioned the evidence to be
obtained through the examination of stones. Their orientation will
give a sense of the direction of movement and often a good deal can be
learned from the kind of stone. I would make a plea here that I have
heard Dr. Smithson make so often. A stone, if it is to be examined
at all, deserves it only after it has been scrubbed clean in the
laboratory, and indeed after the macro-examination efforts might
profitably be extended to microscopic examination of a thin
section.
   As to the examination of stones in a soil profile, I would
repeat my own rather stale and weary warning. Stones in a soil
profile are those things that have failed to weather to form a soil.
Do not ignore them but at least pay them less attention than the fine
fractions.
   Let us suppose that we have succeeded in making a full assessment
of a parent material. We are still left with many other factors which
will ultimately influence the processes of profile formation.
   There are (a) the topography of the site which influences
drainage, surface run-off and the chances of erosion, (think of this
in relation to the mass of debris left after the retreat of the ice
sheet), (b) the climate within the developing profile- a
composite of temperature, rainfall, evaporation and transpiration and
drainage. (a) and (b) indirectly influence (c) the kind of
vegetation which can in turn check the processes of decay and
leaching in some cases and in others hasten them. Sets of slides were
then shown to illustrate the effect of:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
(1) Altitude
   Parent Material: Silurian shale drift.
   (a) At 1,2?7 above sea level producing peat, peaty gley
and gley podzolic and slightly podzolic profiles.
   (b) At 25?7 above sea level. Brown forest soil of good base
status.
(2) Rainfall
   Common parent material sandy textured drift of mainly
Carboniferous Limestone.
<END INDENTATION>
   Co. Roscommon, Ireland. 45?8-5?8 mean annual rainfall ?23
podzol.
   Co. Meath 3?8 mean annual rainfall, high base status, Brown
Forest Soil.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
(3) Vegetation
   Site Knightwood Inclosure, New Forest, Hampshire.
   Parent Material Barton Sand.
   Planted 186 Oak ?23 low base status, Brown Forest Soil.
   Scots Pine ?23 Deep humus podzol.
SOIL DEVELOPMENT ON DRIFT DEPOSITS OF THE WELSH BORDERLAND
by D. MACKNEY
   Since little pedological investigation has been directed to
drift deposits of the Welsh Borderland, outside certain areas in
Shropshire and Cheshire, this discussion of soil development is
centred on the Cheshire-Shropshire Plain.
   For the most part this plain is below 3 ft., abutting to the
west against the eastern uplands of Wales and in the south fringing
the pre-Cambrian and Palaeozoic rocks of the south Shropshire uplands.
This gently undulating, sometimes flat surface masks an extremely
complex series of glacial deposits which are often very thick, so that
only a few isolated ridges of Trias sandstone obtrude.
   The glacial events which have led to the formation of the Midland
plain are controversial in detail, but some conclusions are
universally accepted. The deposits which form the plain have been
derived from the Palaeozoic rocks of Wales and the north, as well as
from the underlying Triassic rocks. However it is probable that a
good deal of the surface layers of drift have been affected by sorting
and grading, which is presumed to have taken place during the
withdrawal of the ice front, when melting released vast amounts of
water. The evidence for this lies in the occurrence of glacial sands
and gravels, as well as glacial clays, which are sometimes laminated.
   Throughout the region there are isolated basin sites which are
thought to be remnants of old glacial lakes where water was trapped
through the haphazard deposition of glacial debris. Many of these
have since been filled by peat which presumably developed in Atlantic
and Sub-Atlantic times.
BROWN EARTHS IN BRITAIN
   For many years in Britain the brown earth group has been
divided into high and low base status soils; the sub-division has been
arbitrarily made, and in some cases a pH of 6.5 in the B horizon has
been accepted as a line of division. Since soils within the brown
earth group, apart from limed soils and those marginal in affinity to
calcareous soils, rarely have a pH of 6.5 in the B horizon the
system is not perfect. When examining agricultural soils great
confusion can result, for soils which are of low base status under
semi-natural conditions can be induced to maintain the chemistry of
high base status soils by liming and fertilizing. In parts of western
Europe and eastern United States of America, where pedologists are
concerned with soils in similar environments to Britain, two main
sub-divisions of soils similar to our brown earths are recognised
(=1) acid soils with textural B horizons, i.e., with B horizons
at least partly formed by illuviated clay, (in western Europe Sol
brun lessive?2 and Sol lessive?2; in U.S.A.
Grey-brown podzolic soil): (=2) strongly acid soils without
textural B horizons, (Sol brun acide, western Europe and
U.S.A.). Obviously many more characteristics are required to
define these sub-divisions, but these will be considered later.
   In Britain, on soil maps of our country we have used both
grey-brown podzolic soil and sol brun acide as descriptive
terms for particular areas. However, since in the west Midlands,
soils with textural B horizons are less well developed than typical
grey-brown podzolic soils, advantage has been taken of the units used
in western Europe. Here well developed soils with moder humus and
textural B horizons are called sol lessive?2 and less well
developed soils with mull humus, sol brun lessive?2; thus,
the latter unit, can be properly used to describe soils in the
Midlands.
<FORMULA>
SOIL DEVELOPMENT
   It is possible to extract two important groups from the variety
of soils which occur on the drift deposits of the Cheshire-Shropshire
plain, and these can be used to illustrate the type of soil formation
characteristic of the region. The two groups of soils exemplify
relationships within an extremely complex region.
   (=1) Sols bruns acides and podzolised soils associated
with glacial sands and gravels.
   (=2) Sols bruns lessive?2s and surface-water gley
soils associated with glacial clays.
(=1) Sols bruns acides and podzolised soils
   The glacial sands are highly siliceous, base poor parent
materials, generally with less than 1 per cent. clay, and most
frequently with less than 5 per cent. clay. The acid soils which
have developed support a semi-natural cover of heath, or of deciduous
wood-land consisting of oak and birch with some rowan and holly, and a
bracken or heathy type of ground flora. Under deciduous forest the
humus form is moder, with F and H layers of approximately equal
thickness, and under heath the humus form is frequently difficult to
assess due to periodic burning. Beneath these humus layers several
types of profile may be found, but frequently the solum is freely
drained, and shows little sign of development, being uniformly brown
in colour apart from a slight colour (B) horizon- this typifies the
sol brun acide. In detail it is a strongly desaturated soil
throughout, with single grain or weak crumb structures, or in more
loamy materials very weak fine sub-angular blocky structures. There
is no texture profile; estimates for free iron do not indicate any
iron B horizon, and clay ratios do not show any significant
differentiation of silica and sesquioxide.
   The sol brun acide is frequently associated in the
landscape with soils showing signs of podzolisation, i.e., with
soils having iron and/or humus B horizons, and these may be found in
different stages of development. The course of soil development
appears to be sol brun acide ?23 podzolised sol brun
acide ?23 humus-iron podzol ?23 humus podzol (Fig. 25).
   A series of profiles examined at Delamere, north Cheshire, on
glacial sands illustrates part of the development sequence (Fig.
26). Extensive areas in Delamere were planted with oak early in the
19th century, and more or less cleared in the early years of the first
World War. Replanting consisted mainly of pine, though some open,
degenerate, dry oak-birch woodland remains.
   The landscape unit drawn diagrammatically (Fig. 26) is common
on the Cheshire-Shropshire plain, and illustrates the gentle rolling
relief, with a peat-filled basin.
   The podzolised sol brun acide has the following
characteristics:
   1. Thin moder, sharply separated from the mineral soil.
   2. Some superficial bleaching immediately below the organic
layer.
   3. An A;e; horizon of approximately 9 ins. of dark yellowish
brown (1YR3/4) sand in which there are numerous bleached sand grains.
   4. A B;s; horizon of 3/4 ins. indicated by the yellowish red
(5YR5/6) colour.
   Hydrogen peroxide treatment of samples from the mineral horizons
showed, when the organic matter was removed, that there is a well
developed grey A;e; horizon which gradually merges into the B;s;
horizon.
   The humus-iron podzol is considered to be a more mature profile
for the A;e; horizon is grey having lost most of its organic
matter, and this is represented in a thin black horizon (B;h;)
overlying a strongly developed B;s; horizon (Figs. 25 and 26).
   An ashy coloured residue is left after hydrogen peroxide
treatment of the humus B horizon and this qualitatively suggests that
it is low in inorganic iron; however, chemical evidence from similar
profiles indicates that a considerable amount of iron may be combined
with organic matter in this layer, and this will be taken into
solution by the hydrogen peroxide treatment.
   In the lowest position of the catena is the humus podzol (Figs.
25 and 26). It has the following characteristics:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) The humus form is transitional between mor and moder,
though there is a marked pine needle litter.
   (=2) Strongly bleached, deep A;e; horizon, though it is
traversed by a complex series of flow bands of colloidal organic
matter.
   (=3) A thick (6 ins.) cemented black B;h; horizon.
   (=4) There is no orange-brown B;s; horizon; the sub-soil
consists of bleached sand, though here it is apparently affected by
gleying.
<END INDENTATION>
   After hydrogen peroxide treatment of the horizons all are left
completely bleached, confirming therefore, that there is no zone of
iron accumulation within the profile.
   What are the factors which have operated in the differentiation
of these soils?
   Since climate has had an overall influence, and all the profiles
are developed on glacial sands and gravels, it may be assumed that
differentiation is chiefly due to site and/or vegetation, or to
vegetation as it is affected by man. It is widely believed that
podzolisation in lowland Britain is the result of the dominant role
which heath (Calluna) assumes in the vegetation cover of
deforested or abandoned land. From this accepted doctrine, however,
there is a real tendency to believe that all podzols are formed under
heath; to see a podzol is to point to the role of heath, on the site
now, or in the past.
   Work in western Europe in the last decade, and some confirmatory
investigations in Britain, show podzolisation as a progressive
development, starting under deciduous woodland and probably reaching
maturity at the humus-iron podzol stage under Calluna, though in
some cases heath may not be an essential part of the vegetation cycle.
   The occurrence of podzolised sols bruns acides and
podzols in close proximity at Delamere and elsewhere, is difficult to
explain in terms of past vegetation without a pollen analysis of the
profiles concerned. There are so many possibilities in the thousands
of years in which vegetation has influenced soil development.
   In the case of the humus podzols which are found in general
adjoining peat or certainly in the lowest position in the catena, it
can be convincingly argued that development has been influenced by
ground-water. The presence of ground-water has prevented the
precipitation of the illuviated iron oxides, or due perhaps to a
change in regional or local water levels, formed iron B horizons have
been disrupted by waterlogging and gleying; in either case the
leaching of humus is not confined by the filtering effect of an iron B
horizon and consequently a more deeply leached profile results.
# 22
<298 TEXT J4>
Using a solution of lead-21 in equilibrium with its daughters,
supplied by the Radiochemical Centre, Amersham, a source was prepared
and counted through a series of aluminium absorbers of increasing
weight. The curve of observed activity plotted against absorber
thickness is shown in Figure 2. An aluminium absorber weighing 27
mg/ cm:2: was used in the following experimental work although
this was thicker than necessary and reduced the efficiency of the
Geiger counter from about 15% to 11%.
   Reference standards were prepared by precipitating lead chromate
from a hot dilute acetic acid solution containing a known quantity of
lead-21 in equilibrium with its daughters. The calibrated solution
of lead-21 (about 1:-2: 15mc/ ml) was supplied by the
Radiochemical Centre, Amersham. Lead chromate is accompanied by only
about 75-85% of the bismuth-21 and therefore time must be allowed for
radio-equilibrium to be restored. The presence of 75% of the activity
of bismuth-21 is equivalent to ingrowth over two half-lives (ten
days). Therefore after a further forty days, the bismuth daughter
will be within .1% of its final equilibrium value. If reference
sources are required for use sooner than forty or fifty days after
preparation, the lead-21 together with added lead carrier must be
separated from the bismuth-21 daughter by ion exchange (see
Analytical Method, steps 4, 5) before precipitating lead chromate.
Knowing the time of separation and the activity of the lead-21
solution, the ingrowth of the bismuth-21 can be calculated.
   The absolute activity of the reference standards can be
calculated from the known activity of the lead-21 solution and the
chemical yield, but this calculation is unnecessary provided the same
lead carrier solution is used to prepare the reference standards and
for the analyses. Only the weights of the recovered lead chromate
precipitates need be known because the concentration of the lead
carrier solution cancels out of the algebraic equations.
   An effort was made to detect the presence of any radioactive
impurities in the tracer by separating the lead-21 and the
bismuth-21 by anion exchange. The 15b-counting of the lead-21
fraction began within a few minutes of completing the separation. The
ingrowth of bismuth-21 was followed for ten days and showed no
abnormalities. Any impurity in the lead fraction must have been well
below one percent. Some separated lead-21 was used to make reference
standards and as a tracer in recovery experiments. There was no
significant difference between these results and those obtained using
the original lead-21 solution supplied by the Radiochemical Centre
which we concluded was radiochemically pure.
2.2 The Recovery of lead-21 tracer from solution.
   Rosenquist (4) showed that minute quantities of lead can be
isolated from large volumes of solution by coprecipitating the lead
with a strontium sulphate. Lead and strontium form mixed crystals so
that the more insoluble lead sulphate is almost completely recovered
even if precipitation of the strontium sulphate is incomplete. Using
ten milligrams of lead carrier and six hundred milligrams of strontium
per liter, more than 95% of added lead tracer was recovered in each
experiment. Gravimetric recoveries were less in the presence of
ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid (1 ppm), Teepol (.2 ml
commercial Teepol per liter) and Calgon (25 and 5 ppm), but
always exceeded 7%. Radiochemical recovery of the tracer corrected
for gravimetric recovery of the carrier averaged 97.5 ?14 .5% in all
cases where these additives were present. Excessive quantities of
chloride also reduce the gravimetric recovery of lead. Up to .1
N. chloride ion (96% recovery) the effect is negligible but
becomes increasingly important thereafter: .3 N Cl:-: (85%
recovery), .5 N Cl:-: (79% recovery), 1. N.
Cl:-: (56% recovery). No more than ten milligrams of lead was
used in order to ensure good separation on the ion exchange column and
to make it possible to keep the lead in solution in small volumes of
dilute hydrochloric acid. Absorption of the beta particles is also
kept to a minimum but the accuracy and precision of weighing the
precipitated sources suffers. All precipitates were weighed on a
semi-micro balance which had been calibrated with a set of
certificated weights from the National Physical Laboratory.
   Complete chemical exchange between the radio-lead and the added
lead carrier is necessary if the analytical results are to be correct.
In the preliminary experiments, the tracer was added to a liter of
effluent and immediately coprecipitated with strontium sulphate from
hot solution. Chemical exchange was complete under these conditions;
but when the tracer was added to alkaline effluent and allowed to
stand for several days before the addition of lead carrier, the
recovery of lead-21 was as much as five per cent low when corrected
for gravimetric recovery of the carrier. Complete exchange was
obtained by acidifying the effluent with five milliliters of
concentrated nitric acid and boiling for more than half an hour before
completing the coprecipitation. Boiling the effluent with more than 5
ml. of acid resulted in gravimetric recoveries which were too low to
be tolerated. To ensure complete chemical exchange, one hour at, or
very near, the boiling point is recommended in the analytical method.
   The presence and growth of algae in the alkaline effluent does
not prevent the recovery of radio-lead under the prescribed conditions
although some radioactivity remains on the algae until the metathesis
has been completed by heating the mixed sulphates with three separate
portions of dilute (1.25 normal) sodium carbonate solution. The
strength of the carbonate solution was chosen after experiments with
lead tracer alone which indicated that less lead was lost than at
other concentrations. The mixed carbonates are dissolved in 2N
hydrochloric acid and fed to a column of anion exchange resin. The
algae, if any was present in the effluent, is simply filtered out on
top of the resin bed.
2.3. Separation of lead and bismuth by anion exchange.
   The anion exchange resin (Amberlite IRA-4, 6-1 mesh,
chloride form) is prepared by drying the commercial product and
grinding it to pass the correct sieves. A small manual coffee grinder
is useful as the resin cannot be ground with a mortar and pestle. The
sieved resin is washed repeatedly with distilled water to remove fines
and then with hydrochloric acid to convert the resin completely to the
chloride form. The 6-1 mesh resin is again washed with water to
remove the acid and finally dried in air. The drying may be speeded
up by heating in a low temperature (4@-6@ C.) oven until damp
dry. The final drying should be at room temperature with the resin
protected against dust by a covering of filter paper.
   For each aliquot to be analysed, about 3.5 grams of air-dried
resin is weighed out and slurried into a glass tube with 2N
hydrochloric acid. The glass tube is 11 cm. long and 1 cm. in
internal diameter. One end of the tube is drawn down to a fine tip
and a B14 conical glass socket is fitted to the other end as shown in
Figure 1. The reservoir is a 5 ml cylindrical separating funnel
with a capillary tap modified by the addition of a B14 cone to fit the
glass column.
   The exact volume of the eluting agents must be found by
experiment for each batch of resin using radioactive tracer (lead-21,
bismuth-21). A typical elution curve is shown in Figure 3. Once
these volumes have been established, the weight of resin used is also
fixed. All available evidence indicates that the fractions containing
lead and bismuth are free of cross contamination apart from the
natural ingrowth of the daughters arising from the decay of lead.
Polonium-21 remains on the column and does not interfere. Strontium
does not form a chloro-complex and therefore passes through in the
feed solution and the first wash. The resin is used for a single
separation and then thrown away.
   In the first stage of the analysis, only the fraction containing
lead-21 is collected. The lead is precipitated as the chromate,
washed, slurried onto an aluminium counting tray, dried under an
infra-red lamp, weighed, and set aside for five days while the
bismuth-21 grows in. At the end of five days, bismuth-21 will have
reached one-half of its equilibrium value and can be counted through
an aluminium absorber sufficiently thick to stop the beta particles
from lead-21 and the alpha particles from polonium-21. Earlier beta
counting is permissible but the sensitivity of the method is reduced
(See Fig. 4).
   The presence of other lead nuclides may be demonstrated by
observing the ingrowth of the bismuth activity and comparing the shape
of the normalised curve with the curve in Fig. 4. using an arbitrary
scale of activity proportional to the existing ordinate. During the
first few hours the curve will be distorted if activity other than
bismuth-21 is present. These bismuth nuclides may include:
<LIST>
together with their lead parents. All but lead-212 will decay
completely within six hours. The decay of lead-212 will distort the
observed activity for four and a half days if it is present.
Thereafter the normalised curve should follow Fig. 4 exactly.
   If it is essential to confirm that the beta activity is indeed
due to bismuth-21, or if much higher decontamination factors are
required, the lead chromate is washed quantitatively with 2N
hydrochloric acid into a centrifuge tube and dissolved in the
presence of bismuth carrier. The solution is kept near the boiling
point for fifteen minutes to assist chemical exchange. Chromate,
which would interfere with the ion exchange separation, is reduced by
adding a few drops of hydrogen peroxide. The ion exchange separation
is repeated and the bismuth is eluted with 1N sulphuric acid.
The bismuth fraction is diluted and phosphoric acid is added. The
phosphate precipitation is repeated to remove contamination by
sulphate or occluded sulphuric acid. If there is sufficient beta
activity, the radiochemical purity of the Bi-21 may be checked by
observing the decay curve.
   The removal of lead chromate from the aluminium counting tray
together with the bismuth-21 prior to the second ion exchange
separation has been checked by counting the trays. Not more than .2%
of the bismuth-21 remains on the tray after the acid wash. This loss
is acceptably small for an analytical step when no correction for
carrier recovery is possible.
   The completeness of the chemical exchange between the bismuth-21
and the added carrier was also tested. Two samples of precipitated
lead chromate (lead-21, bismuth-21) were counted and dissolved in
nitric acid in silica basins. The contents were evaporated to dryness
with bismuth carrier and then taken up in 2 N hydrochloric acid
and the ion exchange separation completed. The bismuth was recovered
from the eluate as the phosphate. Results did not differ from those
obtained by the more convenient method of heating the dissolved
chromates in 2 N hydrochloric acid for fifteen minutes. The
more rigorous method of securing chemical exchange was unnecessary.
2.4 Decontamination from other nuclides.
   Lead-21 when present in effluent is likely to be found only at
very low concentrations. With a permitted maximum concentration of
1:-12: curies/ ml it is one of the three most stringently
controlled 15b-emitting nuclides at the present time. Therefore
it is essential that the radiochemical procedure for the assay of
lead-21 shall provide for a high degree of decontamination from major
fission products and other nuclides which are likely to be present in
amounts greatly exceeding lead-21 so that these shall not be
mistakenly reported as lead-21.
   Table =1 shows the decontamination factors obtained
experimentally for ten radionuclides, accompanied in two instances by
radioactive daughters. The decontamination factor falls below
1:4: only for Ruthenium-16 and zirconium-95 with their daughters
in the first stage, i.e. the lead chromate source containing the
bismuth-21 daughter. When the second stage (the bismuth phosphate
source) is completed, the decontamination factors are exceptionally
high.
<TABLE>
3. Results and Discussion.
   A known quantity (approx. 1 x 1:-2: 15mc) of lead-21
was added to 1-litre aliquots of different batches of typical
low-activity effluent. The aliquots were allowed to stand for about
seven days (except where noted to the contrary) before lead carrier
was added and the analytical procedure begun.
# 28
<299 TEXT J5>
When we have a scalar effective mass m;e; we may express
15t in the form
<FORMULA>
   The index s in the equation 15t = AE:-s: is therefore
1/2. For a non-degenerate semiconductor with s = 1/2 we have from
?13 1.6 equation (83),
<FORMULA>
   since 15G2 = 1 and 15G 5/2 = 315p:1/2:/4. Thus
we have
<FORMULA>
   The mobility 15m;e; when we have only lattice
scattering by the acoustical modes of vibration is therefore given by
<FORMULA>
   This gives the well known T:-3/2: law for the variation of
mobility in pure semiconductors at high temperatures; it is
unfortunately not very well obeyed for most semiconductors since both
anisotropy and other scattering mechanisms tend to modify the mobility
to an appreciable extent. We defer the calculation of the constant
a to ?13 13.4.4.
1.1 Low-mobility semiconductors
   Although the theory of electrical conductivity which we have
given seems to be applicable to metals and to normal semiconductors
having a high electron and hole mobility, we may readily show that it
cannot be applied without serious modification to materials for which
the mobility is low. There are many such materials which appear to
have mobilities of about 1 cm:2:/ V sec. For such materials
the relaxation time 15t would have a value of about 6 x
1:-16: sec if we have m;e; = m and a smaller value
still if m;e;  m. Now because of collisions the value of
the energy cannot be precisely stated for a time much greater than
15t so that, if 15dE is the uncertainty in energy, we
must have (cf. ?13 1.4, equation (67))
<FORMULA>
   Thus if 15t = 6 x 1;-16: sec, 15dE ?17 1 eV.
The allocation of energy levels in a band therefore becomes
meaningless, particularly if the energy spread of the carriers, as in
a non-degenerate semiconductor, is only of the order of kT. For
a semiconductor like Ge, on the other hand, 15dE ?17 1:-3:
eV so that the energy may be fairly closely specified.
   For low-mobility semiconductors the band theory of conduction
must be abandoned and we must regard conduction by electrons as a form
of field-assisted tunnelling between adjacent atoms of the crystal.
This process has been discussed extensively by A. F. Joffe?2
and has been applied by him to the study of liquid and amorphous
semiconductors. The limitations of the band theory, particularly as
applied to narrow bands with high effective mass have also been
recently discussed by H. Fro"hlich and G. L. Sewell. The
theory of conduction by 'jumping' from site to site has also been
used by N. F. Mott to discuss conduction by impurities in
semiconductors at low temperatures, the so-called impurity band
conduction. The full details of the theory of this type of conduction
have not yet been worked out to anything like the same extent as for
conduction in materials having a high electron or hole mobility.
11
The Effective-mass Approximation
11.1 The quasi-classical approximation
   WE have shown in Chapter 8 that, to a high degree of
approximation, an electron moving in a perfect crystalline lattice in
an external field of force F may be regarded as a particle moving
classically in the field, the particle having a tensorial effective
mass; the equations of motion were derived in ?13 8.8. These may be
expressed in terms of the wave vector k or crystal momentum P
by means of the vector equation
<FORMULA>
   This equation may be transformed into an acceleration equation,
giving the rate of change of the 'averaged' velocity
<FORMULA>, in the form
<FORMULA>
   where 1/M;e; represents the effective-mass tensor whose
Cartesian components 1/m;rs; are given by
<FORMULA>
   When the energy E may be expressed in the quadratic form
<FORMULA>
   where the quantities A;rs; are constants, and A;rs; =
A;sr; and the components of the effective-mass tensor are
constants. The various simplifications of equation (2) which may be
made when some of the quantities A;rs; are zero or equal have
been discussed in ?13 8.8; in particular, when
<FORMULA> so that the effective mass is a scalar m;e;, the
equation of motion reduces to the simple classical form
<FORMULA>
   We shall refer to this, and the more general form (2), as the
quasi-classical approximation. It should be clearly appreciated that
these equations are in no sense based on classical mechanics- their
derivation depends essentially on the quantum theory of electron waves
in crystals as shown in ?13 8.8 The term quasi-classical is used to
indicate that their form is classical. Once they have been derived,
however, they may be used to describe the motions of the conduction
electrons in the crystal by treating the electrons as classical
particles. In the derivation of equation (1) we pointed out that
there were certain restrictions under which it could be applied. In
particular, the force F must be 'slowly varying', i.e. it
must change very slightly between neighbouring cells in the crystal.
   We have applied equations of this form to discuss the motion of
electrons under external electric and magnetic fields and have found
that this description leads to results in excellent agreement with
experiment when the fields are not too strong. We have also used the
idea of effective mass in ?13 9.3.6 to discuss the motion of an
electron in the Coulomb field of an impurity atom in a semiconductor.
Here, however, we have a rather paradoxical state of affairs in that,
while we regarded the electron as a particle of mass m;e;,
we used wave mechanics to derive the energy levels of the
impurity centre, quoting the well-known result for a hydrogen atom.
Indeed we may readily see that the quasi-classical approximation only
holds provided the wavelength 15l;e; of the quasi particle
is short compared with the distance over which the field varies
appreciably; this is the well-known criterion for the application of
classical mechanics to the motion of a particle in a field of force.
   For the motion of a free particle of mass m in a field of
force given by a potential function V(r) the classical equation
of motion
<FORMULA>
   is replaced by Schro"dinger's equation
<FORMULA>
   or more generally by the equation
<FORMULA>
   where H<p, r> is the classical Hamiltonian expressed in
terms of the momentum p. Equations (7) or (8) determine the
stationary-state wave function 15ps associated with the energy
E. Because of the similarity of equations (5) and (6) it would
seem not unreasonable to replace equation (5), when we are dealing
with an 'external' field of force in a crystal to which classical
mechanics cannot be applied, by an equation of the form
<FORMULA>
   where V(r) is the potential which determines the force.
This is effectively what we have done in discussing the energy levels
of an impurity centre in a semiconductor in ?13 9.3.6. We shall
devote most of the present Chapter to proving that such an equation
can indeed be used to describe the motion. Some thought will have to
be given to the interpretation of the wave function 15ps. It is
clearly not the same as the wave functions used to describe the motion
of the electron in the perfect crystal; as we shall see, it is not the
whole wave function but may be interpreted as a slowly varying
amplitude.
   The extension of equation (9) to the case when the effective mass
is tensorial may be expected to follow in the same way as equation (8)
is an extension of equation (7), the Hamiltonian H being the sum
of the energy of the electron in the crystal as a function of the
crystal momentum P (which we should expect to replace the momentum
p of a free particle) and the potential energy V(r) being
derived from the external force. We might reasonably therefore
expect the equation which determines the motion of an electron in a
crystal under an external force to be
<FORMULA>
   where E;p;(P) is the energy of an electron in the perfect
crystal given as a function of the crystal momentum P. In terms
the <SIC> wave vector k, equation (1) may be written in the
form
<FORMULA>
   where E;k;(k) is the energy of electrons in the perfect
crystal as a function of the wave vector k. For slowly varying
fields it is well known that equations such as (7) and (8) give the
same results as classical mechanics; similarly, equations (9) and (1)
will give the same results as the quasi-classical approximation when
this is applicable. Equations (1) and (1a) clearly reduce to
equation (9) when we have a scalar effective mass m;e;; they
represent a higher degree of approximation than equation (2). So far,
we have only given plausible arguments for their form; we shall now
proceed to derive them using the quantum theory of the motion of
electrons in a crystal.
11.2 Quantum theory of the effective-mass approximation
   The wave equation describing the motion of electrons in a
crystal in a perturbing field of force may be derived in a number of
ways. An elegant derivation, which also shows up well the physical
principles involved, originally given by G. Wannier, has been
developed by J. C. Slater, and we shall first of all follow this
method of derivation. In order to use Wannier's method we shall have
to introduce some wave functions which he used and which are generally
known as Wannier functions; they are built up from the Bloch wave
functions which we have already used in our discussion of the motion
of electrons in a perfect lattice. These functions are particularly
well suited to this kind of problem, whereas for many other problems
the Bloch functions are to be preferred. As we shall see, the Wannier
functions are localised, whereas, the Bloch functions are spread
throughout the whole crystal; the latter are therefore appropriate for
the discussion of problems in which we do not require to specify the
position of an electron closely, while the former are useful when
discussing problems associated with a definite point in the crystal
such as an isolated impurity centre. It was indeed in order to obtain
a localised wave function that the Wannier functions were first
introduced.
   We know that the Bloch functions b;k;(r) defined by
<FORMULA>
   are solutions of the wave equation for the perfect crystal and
hence that a wave function representing a solution of the wave
equation may be expanded as a series of such functions. If we
restrict the values of k to the first Brillouin zone there will be
N such allowed values corresponding to each energy band, where N
is the number of unit cells in the crystal. In order to obtain an
exact expansion of the wave function we should require to use Bloch
functions b;kn;(r) corresponding to all bands. However,
when we have a substantial gap between the bands it appears that we
may obtain, under certain conditions, a good approximation by using
Bloch functions only from the band in which we are interested, and
these we shall denote by b;k;(r). We then have for the
expansion of the wave function 15ps
<FORMULA>
11.2.1 The Wannier functions
   The expansion given in equation (12) is not very easily
interpreted physically if a number of coefficients A;n;(k)
are required to give an accurate description of the wave function
representing the motion of an electron in the perturbing field of
force. To overcome this difficulty Wannier (loc. cit.)
introduced a new set of wave functions, derived from the Bloch wave
functions, which have the property of being localised. Consider the
wave function
<FORMULA>
   where the constants 15a;n; are at our disposal, the sum
being taken over the N allowed values of k. In the first unit
cell of the crystal we may choose the constants 15a;n; to
make all the functions b;n;(k) add. We shall assume that
the Bloch functions are normalised for a volume V containing N
unit cells, and we have already seen that they are orthogonal, so
that we have
<FORMULA>
   In the definition of the Bloch functions there is an arbitrary
phase term and we use the constants 15a;n; which may be
written in the form exp (i15b;n;) to take out this phase
term. Indeed we may assume that the Bloch functions are so defined
that they add to give the maximum contribution in the first unit
cell so that we may take
<FORMULA> for all values of n.
# 233
<3 TEXT J6>
All stages of Calanus, for example, seem to migrate on some
occasions while any stage may not on others. Such data cannot yet be
rationalized. Where information is less extensive, however, it is
possible to find some regularity in the observations. Thus in
Euphausia superba from the Antarctic, the metanauplii remain
in deep water, the later larval stages migrate diurnally, and the
adolescents stay permanently at the surface. The migrating stages all
come from 1-25 meters, and the time of their arrival at the surface
is directly related to their swimming capacity: 3rd (oldest)
calyptopis from 18-22 hr; 2nd, from 22-2 hr; and 1st,
from 2-6 hr. Similar ontogenetic differences are apparent in
Bosmina coregoni whose adults remain at the surface while the
young migrate to and from a depth of 5 meters. Such permanent
occurrence at the surface could of course be considered the extreme of
a variable day depth. The effect of day depths upon the surfacing of
various animals has been reviewed elsewhere.
   c. Anomalies. In spite of the variability of migrational
behavior, some kinds of anomalies may be recognized. Vertical
movement occurs in some forms apparently in the reverse manner to that
commonly met. Such reversed migrations are known for Acartia
clausi, A. longiremis, Nyctiphanes couchii, Evadne sp.,
Oithona nana, Daphnia lumholzi, Stages =4, =5, and adult of
Calanus finmarchicus, Diaptomus banforanus, and Cyclops
bicuspidatus. An echo-producing layer, which the authors think
probably consists of euphausiids, has also been described as, in part,
regularly moving in a reverse manner. Most of these records are well
substantiated and involve whole populations rather than aberrant
individuals. But normal movements have been reported also for the
same species in the case of five of these examples and for other
species in the same genera for the remaining Evadne, Daphnia,
and Diaptomus.
   Many forms sometimes migrate and on other occasions do not, but
a few appear to remain permanently at one level. Considering the
widespread incidence of migration in the groups concerned, these may
be considered as anomalous. The most clearly substantiated case is
that of the copepod Anomalocera patersoni, which remains
permanently at the surface. Among other copepods Rhincalanus
gigas, Calanoides acutus, Microcalanus pygmaeus, Oithona frigida,
and Centropages typicus are all reported as showing no
migration. The predaceous cladoceran Bythotrephes longimanus
also remains at one level, about 1 meters down.
   In view of its well-known normal migration, the occurrence of
Calanus finmarchicus in the summer at the surface in bright
sunlight may justly be considered anomalous. This phenomenon has
nevertheless been recorded many times, and such surface Calanus
may be present in enormous numbers, breaking the surface into small
circular ripples like raindrops. Observed underwater, two zones of
differing behavior were recognized: an upper one about 3 cm in
depth, in which the Calanus swam up and down repeatedly,
frequently bumping on the undersurface of the water, and a lower one
of indeterminate depth in which animals swam directly up or down. It
seems likely that a continuous interchange was taking place between
the population at the surface and that in deeper water.
   A second group whose normal vertical migration is sufficiently
well known to make daytime occurrence at the surface rank as anomalous
is the Euphausiacea. There are numerous records of euphausiids
swimming at the surface in bright sunshine, with particular mention of
their shoaling behavior under these circumstances.
   2. Mechanisms. The majority of vertical migrations
undoubtedly result from active swimming although passive movement
through the water has been suggested on various grounds. For example,
transport in vertical currents resulting from temperature differences
has been proposed; differences in water viscosity after temperature
changes have also been suggested as a cause of movement, and passive
movement could possibly result from changes in the specific gravity of
the animals as a result of feeding. Any or all of these mechanisms
might apply under particular circumstances, but the evidence in favor
of active swimming is overwhelming. Indeed, deep-living Calanus
may even keep its level during the arctic night by active migration
against such vertical water movements as do occur. The rapidity of
some vertical movements has led to the supposition that the animals
must have had passive assistance, but measurements of swimming speeds
prove that even the most extensive and rapid vertical movement is
within the capabilities of the animals performing it (Table 2).
   Evidence has been presented for a supposed randomness in the
movement of plankton animals. If valid, this implies that migrations
involve kineses rather than taxes (Chapter 1). However, the data
cited in support of this idea comprise without exception observations
made in the laboratory. A kinesis resulting in an upward movement by
Daphnia has also been demonstrated in the laboratory at
particularly low light intensities, but otherwise swimming in these
experiments was directional in relation to the light source. Such
observations as have been made in the sea indicate that the
predominant movement of copepods is directional. Although a random
movement may occur close to the surface, this results from the
restriction imposed by the boundary itself. The speeds of ascent
calculated for some forms in the sea make it further improbable that
the mechanism of ascent is a kinesis; a directional taxis would seem
more probable. Downward movement may in some forms start as a passive
sinking, especially when it occurs before dawn; but this must almost
certainly be replaced by the headfirst downward swimming observed in
the field.
<TABLE>
   3. Initiating, controlling, and orienting factors. The
primary dependence of diurnal migrations upon changes in light
intensity is beyond doubt. Yet in spite of a great amount of work,
the detailed causal relationship remains one of confused complexity.
Loeb first suggested the importance of light as the governing factor
but combined its influence with that of gravity. Later authors, in
particular Rose, have proposed that light alone can provide an
adequate mechanism if the animals have, and select by exploration, a
zone of optimum light intensity. This view has been enlarged with a
suggestion that both phototaxes and geotaxes may play a part in
keeping animals near their optimum.
   Experimental work largely performed on Calanus, however, has
failed to make clear the relative importance of light and gravity in
this context. A plankton population held in glass tubes at a
particular depth in the sea resolves itself into two components, one
swimming up and the other down. The proportion swimming up increases
with increasing depth. Experiments using light reflected up against
gravity showed that here the reaction to light predominates. Yet
other experiments in the dark showed that the population still
segregated into one group swimming up and another swimming down.
Hardy and Bainbridge have been able to remove the confusing
experimental factor of a limited vertical range with their plankton
wheel. Their tentative conclusion is that upward migration is
generally a positive movement toward a source of low light
intensities. Little upward movement can be obtained by blacking out
during the day, except with Daphnia. Their results leave little
doubt that downward migration is not sinking as the result of an
inhibition of movement but is a strong, rapid, and direct downward
swimming away from light. The complete absence of light does not
generally result in a downward sinking but rather in station-keeping
maintained by a characteristic hop-and-sink behavior comprising
alternate phases of upward swimming and downward sinking. In
Daphnia, migratory behavior results from the interaction of both
phototactic and geotactic responses. Furthermore, the direction of
phototactic movement is dependent upon the postural angle of the
antenna and not the orientation of the body. A reversible
photochemical system has been proposed to account for the photic
responses, and this requires a minimal rate of change in light
intensity to induce response; but the rates of change in the sea may
be too low for this.
   An important experimental advance has been made by Harris and
Wolfe, who studied the behavior of Daphnia magna in a tank
filled with India ink suspension and illuminated by an overhead light
of variable intensity. This technique has allowed for the first time
sufficient change in intensity over limited distances for dependent
behavioral changes to be seen in the laboratory. Despite a compressed
time scale these authors have obtained an extraordinarily close
simulation of migratory behavior in nature. A complete cycle of
vertical migration can be demonstrated in a vessel 3 cm high. As
well as strong naturally-characteristic individual variations, this
includes a midnight sinking and a dawn rise. At high light
intensities the animals keep station at their optimum by a vertical
hop-and-sink behavior and this confirms earlier observations on
station-keeping in Balanus nauplii. At low light intensities
this is replaced by a kinetic response independent of the light
direction. The dawn rise is a manifestation of this. In complete
darkness all movement is inhibited and a sinking results. Harris and
Wolfe stress the importance of a sensory adaptation in the
photoreceptor system when interpreting their results and suggest that
animals in the sea could follow prolonged slight changes without being
affected by rapid large changes.
   In imposing directionality upon the movement of vertically
migrating animals, gravity must be second only to light.
Preoccupation with the idea of kinetic movement and an overemphasis
of the incidence of midnight sinking have led some authors to dismiss
gravity as of no consequence. Yet it must in fact be of the utmost
importance in many cases. Parker first proposed "geotropism" as
one of the factors in vertical migration, and his ideas have since
been enlarged by many authors. The continued ascent of crustaceans in
total darkness, which seems substantiated in a good many instances,
and the experimental evidence showing Calanus keeping station in
the dark and Daphnia ascending, strongly imply an orientation
dependent upon gravity.
   Pressure has been suggested as having some influence upon
migration, especially of Calanus. But experiments expressly
designed to test this have not revealed any change in the behavior of
this species under pressures up to the equivalent of 2 meters depth.
Striking results were obtained, however, with zoea and megalopa
stages of Portunus and Carcinus. A high proportion of these
swam up for periods of up to 3 hr when subjected to pressures
equivalent to 5, 1, 15, and 2 meters depth. These findings have
since been confirmed in studies of Acartia and Centropages,
the megalopas of Carcinus maenas and Galathea as well
as adults of the copepod Caligus rapax, still without any
success in eliciting a response from Calanus. There is as yet no
morphological evidence for a pressure-sensitive organ in any of these
forms, and the mechanism of perception is quite uncertain. The
unequivocal demonstration of a sensitivity to pressure in some of the
deep-migrating copepods or decapods would be a valuable contribution
to the whole problem of vertical migration. But at the moment, light
must remain the chief factor by which most forms may gauge depth.
   There is evidence that phytoplankton may have some effect on the
vertical migration of crustacean zooplankton. Hardy first laid real
emphasis on this possibility. Observations on the inverse
distribution of plants and animals in the sea suggested that many
forms must be prevented from coming up or must come up for only a
short time in the presence of high concentrations of phytoplankton.
There is some evidence possibly supporting this idea although this
relates only to horizontal movement; on this basis the concept of
external metabolites as affecting animal-plant relationships in the
sea has been developed by Lucas. But later laboratory experiments
indicate that greater numbers of Calanus swim up in the presence
of a variety of pure and mixed phytoplankton cultures than in
unenriched water, only one culture, of Chlorella, depressing the
number swimming up.
   The mechanism underlying this increase in upward migration has
not been investigated, but probably reduction in light intensity by
the plant cells is not the intermediate factor. In other instances
this might however be effective: for example, blue-green algae in Lake
Windermere may reduce the light intensity at 4.3 meters by more than
5%. This must surely affect the responses of animals.
# 26
<31 TEXT J7>
This resulted in units of much lighter weight than could be
obtained with tubular constructions. The growth of the aircraft
industry brought even greater emphasis to the need for lightweight
compact heat exchangers.
   During the 193's, the secondary surface plate-and-corrugation
construction became established for aero-engine radiators, using
dip-soldered copper. The air and engine-coolant passages were
separated by flat plates. The air passages were packed with
corrugated foil bonded to the primary plates to provide the necessary
surface area for heat transfer. The narrower coolant passages were
also packed with foil, chiefly to provide sufficient support for the
flat plates to withstand the coolant pressure loadings.
   The introduction of the aluminium alloy dip-brazing process in
the early 194's was quickly taken up for aircraft heat exchangers and
led to substantial weight reductions as compared with copper
construction. This development coincided with the introduction of
pressurized aircraft cabins and the demand for air-to-air cabin
coolers. Although in this case the heat transfer coefficients on the
two sides of the heat exchanger were of comparable magnitude, the use
of secondary surface was still attractive, since the greater part of
the surface area could be made up of fins only .6 in. (.15
mm.) thick. Furthermore, developments in the detail form of the
fins made possible a reduction in the total surface area required as
compared with the use of smooth continuous passages for the same
thermal duty and pressure losses.
   The properties of compact form, low weight, and design
flexibility thus developed found ready application on a much larger
scale with the introduction of tonnage scale air separation plants.
2.1 Methods of Construction
   The basic method of construction is both simple and extremely
flexible. Figure 3 illustrates the arrangement of a single passage.
This can be extended in length and width up to the limit of
manufacturing equipment available. The corrugation is machine-formed,
thus ensuring a high standard of uniformity in height and fin pitch.
A number of such passages may be combined to give either a cross or a
countercurrent flow formation, as shown in Figures 4 and 5. The size
and type of corrugation may be varied for each stream to suit the
operating requirements and to provide a reasonable layout with minimum
block volume and weight. Typical corrugations are shown in Figure 6.
The flow patterns may be further developed to provide multi-pass or
multi-stream arrangements by the inclusion of suitable internal seals
and distributors and the fitting of external header tanks, as
indicated in Figures 7-1. With the simple cross-flow layout in
Figure 7, the corrugations extend throughout the full length of each
set of passages, and no internal distributors are required. This
construction is appropriate when the temperature range in each stream
does not exceed about one-half of the difference between the warm and
cold inlet stream temperatures or, more generally, when the effective
mean temperature difference in cross-flow is not significantly below
the logarithmic mean temperature difference for countercurrent flow.
On low temperature plants, this construction is sometimes useful for
liquefiers, where the temperature changes little on the condensing
side, and where a large throughput of low pressure gas as the warming
stream calls for a large cross-section and short passage length.
   For higher duties, with temperature ranges in both streams up to
8 per cent or 9 per cent of the inlet temperature difference it is
sometimes advantageous to use a multi-pass cross-countercurrent
arrangement as shown in Figure 8.
<ILLUSTRATION>
Stream A flows straight through, while stream B is guided by means of
internal seals and external tanks to make the required number of
passes. The unit may thus be considered as comprising several
cross-flow sections, assembled in counter-formation, such that the
effective mean temperature difference approaches much more closely to
countercurrent than to cross-flow conditions. This type of
construction is used for gas-gas and gas-liquid applications.
<ILLUSTRATION>
   When very high thermal efficiencies of, say, 95-98 per cent are
required, a pure countercurrent formation is invariably adopted.
Typical layouts are shown in Figures 9 and 1. The choice of
headering is governed by several considerations, such as the operating
pressures, the number of separate streams involved, and whether or not
reversing duty is included. Figure 9 shows an arrangement suitable
for two-stream steady duty, in which stream A is at comparatively low
pressure. A more general solution is shown in Figure 1. This is
used if streams A and B are reversed periodically, the geometry of
these streams being symmetrical to maintain constant flow
characteristics. Additional steady streams may be included as C, D,
or E to suit requirements. This type of arrangement is also used when
dealing with high pressure streams in all channels.
<ILLUSTRATION>
In all countercurrent flow units, suitable distributors must be
provided in the end regions, such that the flow of each stream is
spread uniformly across the whole width of each layer throughout the
length of the main zone. This problem is of great importance not only
to the proper performance of the heat exchanger but also on
manufacturing and mechanical strength considerations. Further details
are given in later sections of this review.
   The possibility of varying the geometry and type of corrugation
in different layers has already been mentioned. For industrial
applications, the height of corrugation normally lies in the range
.15-.47 in. (3.8-12 mm approx.), the thickness varies from
.8 to .15 in. (.2 to .38 mm. approx.), and the fin
pitching varies from 1 to 15 or 18 fins per inch (3.9 to 5.9 or 7.1
fins per centimetre) depending upon the type of corrugation.
<ILLUSTRATION>
The resulting total surface areas lie from about 3 to 45 square
feet per cubic foot of block volume (1, to 1,5 square metres per
cubic metre). The free cross-sectional area ratios lie between .7
and .8. Both the surface area and the free cross-sectional area
must be suitably divided between the various streams. For instance,
in a two-stream gas-gas heat exchanger, each stream may have a surface
area of about 2 square feet per cubic foot of total block volume,
with a free cross-section ratio of about .4, while in a gas-liquid
heat exchanger, the gas stream would have a surface area of about 3
square feet per cubic foot of total block volume, with a free
cross-section ratio of about .6. In general, the taller corrugations
are used for gas streams, while those at .15 in. to .25 in. high
are used for liquid streams and in condenser-reboilers. The use of
plain continuous corrugations is chiefly limited to condenser-reboiler
use, or to cases where the free passage of contaminating solids is
desired. For most other applications, a reduction in the total
surface area and block volume required can be achieved by the use of
more complex types of corrugation such as the herringbone and
multi-entry patterns shown in Figure 6. These are discussed in more
detail in later sections.
   The manufacture of the heat exchangers involves several distinct
stages, beginning with the assembly and dip-brazing of individual
blocks, i.e. tube plates, corrugations, and edge-seals only.
Each block is thoroughly cleaned after brazing and subjected to
preliminary leak tests before the fitting of header tanks by argon-arc
welding. The block is then tested hydraulically to its full design
test pressure on each stream separately. In the case of multiple
assemblies, each block may also be submitted to flow tests on each
stream prior to selective assembly to ensure uniformly balanced flow
distribution throughout the whole assembly. Figure 11 shows a typical
two-stream countercurrent block during manufacture, with header tanks
fitted to one stream only. On completion, this type of block would be
suitable for either steady or reversing operation. With existing
brazing equipment, individual blocks are made up to 9 ft (2.75 m)
long with an overall cross-section of 17 in. x 21 in. (.43 m x
.53 m) to give a total block volume of about 22 ft:3: (.62
m:3:). By means of appropriate manifolding, a number of such
blocks may be assembled together either in series or in parallel, or a
combination of both, according to requirements. Two blocks are shown
as a series arrangement in Figure 12 and sixteen blocks in parallel in
Figure 13. A more complex arrangement is shown in Figure 14. This
assembly contains three separate heat exchangers through which one
stream is common on the low pressure side, while two of the high
pressure streams are in parallel and the third high pressure stream in
series. This complete assembly is welded up to form a single unit
with flanged main connections and vents only. For multiple arrays it
is generally preferred to assemble together a number of blocks and to
weld up all the interconnecting pipework and manifolding, so as to
limit the number of flanged joints on the plant. If aluminium
pipework is used the flanged joints may be eliminated completely and
the heat exchangers attached to the main pipework by site-welding.
For very large assemblies, it may be necessary to split the design
into several separate sub-assemblies suitable for transport and
installation, and to connect these together at the erection stage
either by site-welding or by flanged joints.
2.2. Mechanical Design
   Mechanical design aspects must always be considered from the
outset, since these may well influence the general layout and internal
construction and so affect the basis for performance assessment. For
the operating pressures and conditions required, two major factors are
the internal pressure loading on the corrugations and associated
brazed joints, and those on the header tanks, together with any
external pipework loadings. For low-to-medium steady operating
pressures in the range -1 lb/ in:2: (gauge) (1-8 kg/
cm:2: (abs)), the mechanical design does not generally present
any serious problems. For higher pressures and for reversing duty the
mechanical design requirements become of increasing importance,
particularly in relation to the size and arrangement of header tanks.
The internal plate and corrugation construction is adequate for
static test pressures at room temperature of 6-1, lb/
in:2: (gauge) (42-7 kg/ cm:2: (abs)), depending upon
the type and thickness of corrugation. For low temperature
applications the corresponding rated maximum operating pressures would
be 25-45 lb/ in:2: (gauge) for steady conditions, or 125-225
lb/ in:2: (gauge) for reversing applications. For such
pressures, however, it is necessary to limit the span of the header
tanks in order to avoid excessive peripheral loadings in the plane of
attachment to the block. This means either that the block
cross-section must be kept small, or that small tanks, such as those
shown in Figure 1, must be fitted. The latter alternative is
particularly suitable for reversing applications and for large scale
steady operation. Internal distributors are necessary to spread the
flow across the whole width of each passage, and these must be
adequate to withstand the internal pressure loadings.
   When considering the installation of a heat exchanger assembly
for low temperature service, due consideration must be given to
thermal contractions both in normal service and under any abnormal
circumstances which might arise. The method of mounting and the
external pipework must be sufficiently flexible to allow for such
movements without imposing excessive loads on to the assembly. This
precaution is, of course, common to all low temperature installations.
In normal operation relative movements within the assembly should not
generally provide any serious problem since the balancing of flows
which is so important on performance considerations ensures that the
temperature patterns, and hence the contraction effects, are also
uniform across any section of the assembly.
   Nevertheless, an adequate measure of flexibility is maintained
between parallel assemblies to allow for any residual unbalance
effects and for temporary effects which might arise during transient
or abnormal operating conditions.
2.3 Performance
   Performance design calculations for any type of heat exchanger
depend upon the process requirements, i.e. flow rates,
temperatures, and pressures of each stream, and upon the relevant heat
transfer and friction factors for the type and arrangement of surface
considered. The latter must generally be determined experimentally in
the first instance. The broad subjects of heat transfer and heat
exchanger design are well covered by McAdams and Jakob, while Kays and
London give the results of extensive researches and experiments
particularly related to compact forms of heat exchanger including
various types of secondary surface construction.
# 238
<32 TEXT J8>
   The erratic behaviour of thin metal films is well known and is
the subject of an extensive literature, but as shown by the foregoing,
a better understanding of film properties is beginning. Summarizing
the Introduction, it can be stated that the anomalous electrical
properties of films are principally due to their structural
imperfections and to the thermodynamic instability produced when metal
vapour is abruptly condensed to the solid phase. The changes of
resistivity and temperature coefficient of resistance, which occur
upon heating or ageing a film, arise from the re-ordering of the
structure, the relief of high internal stresses and the further
oxidation or gas absorption of the film. These changes are parallel
to those occurring in fine resistance wires upon annealing after
cold-working. However, the gas absorption and higher degree of
lattice imperfection in vacuum-deposited films cause much greater
variation of properties. There is an increasing amount of evidence
that high stability resistance films can be obtained by correct
annealing treatment and suitable protection. It is the purpose of
this paper to describe a method of making reasonably stable resistance
elements by the vacuum deposition of nickel-chromium alloy on glass
and to discuss their properties in terms of the processing conditions.
2. Practical requirements
Substrate
   The surface of the supporting substrate should be smooth and
uniform, and both chemically and mechanically stable at temperatures
up to about 35@ C in atmosphere and vacuum. Any variation of
surface smoothness gives a corresponding variation of film resistance
value, because the film is thin enough to be greatly affected by the
state of the surface. For example, a film of resistance as low as 1
15O/ square on a polished glass surface may be discontinuous when
deposited under identical conditions on a finely ground glass surface.
   It is a characteristic of a film deposited from the vapour that
the grains tend to grow on surface prominences, which trap the atoms
first arriving there and act as centres for nucleation. Films as
thick as 1 A?15 may be discontinuous when deposited on a coarse
surface because large grains are formed which do not touch, and the
thickness must be increased before conductivity is observed. Such
films tend to be unstable because their conductivity depends upon
contacts between large grains.
   The most suitable substrate materials are found amongst glasses
and ceramics. Good results have already been obtained using glasses
of high silica content such as Pyrex or Vycor. These are two of the
few glasses unaffected by water vapour. Many other glasses, including
some borosilicates, devitrify in contact with water, and their
surfaces become powdery because small crystals of metal silicates are
formed. Soda-lime glasses are not used because their surfaces are
also chemically unstable. During flame polishing, when the glass is
bombarded by thermally produced gas ions or ionic bombardment in a
glow discharge, free sodium ions are active at the surface of the
glass. They combine with water vapour from the gas atmosphere to form
sodium hydroxide and deliquescent sodium silicate by reaction with
silica in the glass. Some further reaction with the deposited film
must be expected.
   Ceramics possessing good chemical and mechanical properties are
available; however, their surface smoothness is often variable because
of the sintering process used in their manufacture. Glazing is not
always a satisfactory solution to this problem because standard glazes
are often based upon some of the unsuitable glasses already described.
Very careful examination of surface smoothness is needed when
choosing a ceramic material for the support of vacuum-deposited films.
   The temperature coefficient of linear expansion of metals is
usually an order higher than that of glass or ceramics, and this
factor partly contributes to the high internal stresses which have
been observed in thin films. However, once the films have been
annealed, the effect of the expansion of the base on the resistance of
the film is very small, compared with the average temperature
coefficient of resistance of films, and is insignificant when compared
with that of bulk metals.
The resistance alloy
   In the early stages of deposition of a metal film, aggregates
of metal atoms (nuclei) are formed on the substrate. The number of
nuclei is dependent upon the physical and chemical properties of the
metal and substrate, and upon the rate of deposition. As the nuclei
increase in size they grow together, eventually to form a continuous
film. The second stage of growth is marked by the onset of electrical
conductivity, and the rate of change of resistance with film thickness
is very high. Unfortunately, the most useful resistance values
coincide with this unstable region of thickness for many metallic
conductors.
   The most successful high-resistance films have been made by
depositing chromium and alloys of chromium with nickel, silicon,
titanium, etc. For example, nickel-chromium alloys have a high bulk
resistivity (8-13 15mO cm) and therefore films of this alloy are
much thicker than films of the pure metals for the same resistance
value. Films of resistance 4 15O/ square are at least 8 A?15
thick, more or less continuous and are outside the very unstable
region of thickness. Nickel-chromium alloys also have a low
temperature coefficient of resistance in bulk, and are very resistant
to chemical attack because of the compact protective oxide layer which
forms in contact with an oxidizing atmosphere. The formation of
double oxides having a spinel structure has been shown on
nickel-chromium alloys under examination by electron diffraction, and
this reason has been given to account for their high chemical
stability.
Evaporation conditions
   The lowest values of temperature coefficient of resistance and
the best stability are achieved in films deposited under conditions
favouring oxidation. During deposition the substrate is heated to
relieve the internal stress in the film, but this treatment can also
increase the rate of oxidation. The residual gas atmosphere in the
chamber of a kinetic vacuum system is highly oxidizing due to the high
proportion of water vapour at the normal working pressure (1:-4:
mm Hg). Assuming that the partial pressure of water vapour is
only 1:-5: mm Hg, then it is calculated approximately that 5 x
1:15: molecules cm:-2: s:-1: strike the substrate surface.
If the rate of deposition of chromium metal is about 3 A?15
s:-1:, then ten water vapour molecules strike the surface for every
chromium incident atom. Thus there is sufficient oxygen (in the form
of water vapour) available at the source for the film to be highly
oxidized at normal rates of deposition. Oxidation also occurs after
the chromium atoms have left the vapour source, giving rise to the
familiar gettering effect. The fall in pressure can readily be
observed on the vacuum gauge.
   Thus the first few atomic layers deposited during the gettering
period are highly oxidized, and when the chamber has been 'cleaned
up' the deposit is more metallic. After evaporation ceases, the
deposited film remains open to oxidation. Thus the deposited film is
inhomogeneous and approximates to a sandwich layer of oxide/ metal/
oxide, in which the two outer layers are more highly oxidized than the
inner layer.
   The exact state of oxidation of the deposited film is unknown and
a further effect of oxidation can be observed upon baking in air. The
final resistance change upon annealing may then be positive or
negative, because the decrease attributed by Vand to lattice
transformation may be greater or less than the increase due to further
oxidation.
Heat treatment and protection
   Heat treatment carried out during or after deposition serves
three purposes:
   (=1) high internal stresses in the film are relieved;
   (=2) some defects in the crystal lattice are removed, thus
improving the heat-stability;
   (=3) a protective oxide layer is completed, making the film less
subject to external atmospheric attack.
   In practice, it has been found advisable to heat the substrate in
vacuum before deposition to a temperature of at least 3@ C. A
further heating period in air for 3 min at 3@ C completes the
annealing of the film.
   The electrical properties of resistance tapes and wires are
stabilized by annealing and by cyclic baking in air or hydrogen. This
treatment reduces the strains and dislocations set up during the
drawing of the wire. Thus the treatment required by a
vacuum-deposited film is similar. Baking during and after deposition
re-orders the crystal lattice, and improves the resistance stability
with time, also forming a compact oxide surface layer. Several fast
baking cycles carried out in air hasten the changes of resistance up
to 3@ C, which become smaller with each successive cycle.
3. Experimental work
Evaporation technique
   The preparation of nickel-chromium resistance films was carried
out in a vacuum deposition plant having a 12 in. diameter chamber
equipped with pumps capable of reducing the residual gas pressure in
the vacuum chamber below 1:-4: mm Hg in 5 minutes. Provision
was made for two h.t. lead-through electrodes (for cleaning by
positive ion bombardment), three electrodes for the evaporation source
and several smaller electrodes for connecting the radiant heater,
thermocouple, and resistance monitor.
   The evaporation source was heated by electron bombardment (Fig.
1). This source consisted of a stainless steel supporting block
(forming the anode) on which was mounted a 1/4 in. diameter special
ceramic hearth 1/4 in. high. Nickel-chromium wire (22 s.w.g.)
was fed through a stainless steel guide tube to the centre of the
hearth. The feed mechanism was mounted at the side of the hearth, and
allowed the wire to be fed either continuously or to be intermittently
operated by a handwheel outside the vacuum chamber. The
nickel-chromium wire was bombarded by electrons emitted from a small
hot filament of .2 in. diameter tungsten wire (forming the
cathode), supported 1/8 in. above the top of the hearth.
<ILLUSTRATION>
The cathode heater supply was obtained from a 8 v, 1 A
transformer with secondary winding insulated from earth and primary
for 15 kv. The anode and cathode were connected across a suitable
h.t. supply, having a maximum power of 1.5 kw at 3 kv; the
anode was held at earth potential and the cathode at negative 3 kv.
The top of the hearth was hollowed to enable the wire to melt and
form a bead from which evaporation could take place.
Substrates and workholders
   Special jigs were made to hold flat specimen plates of Pyrex,
soda glass and ceramic. During each evaporation, the resistance of
one plate was monitored by connecting the end terminals to an external
circuit for resistance measurement. A simple ohmmeter was used for
monitoring the resistance value during evaporation. The accuracy of
the measurements was only of the order ?14 2%, but the results were
used only to indicate the approximate value of the resistance during
evaporation. A bridge method of measurement was used to determine
accurately the resistances of the slides, and is described more fully
later.
   The workholder consisted of a simple jig constructed so that only
1/8 in. at each end of the slides was masked by the clamp, and these
were placed next to the monitor plate. The workholder was supported 4
in. above the evaporation source by means of a tripod. A radiant
heater, dissipating 75 w at 11 v, was mounted above the
workholder to raise the temperature of the substrate to 3@ C
before evaporation. The temperature of the substrate was measured by
means of a chromel-alumel thermocouple placed inside the vacuum
chamber with its junction resting on the top face of the workholder.
The thermocouple was connected to an external meter calibrated to
read degrees Centigrade, covering a temperature range from  to 5 in
divisions of 1 degrees.
   A special chamber assembly was constructed for deposition of
films on cylindrical formers and, for monitoring their resistance, a
static flat glass slide was used. By experiment a simple relationship
between the resistance of the static plate and the resistance of the
cylindrical formers was obtained, thus enabling the evaporation to be
roughly monitored.
Contacts
   The method of making contact to the deposited film influenced
both the accuracy with which the film could be measured and the
ultimate stability.
# 21
<33 TEXT J9>

Rutherford in Manchester
by J. E. GEAKE
Manchester College of Science and Technology
   It is now 5 years since Rutherford, working in Manchester,
conceived the idea that the atom had a small concentrated nucleus, and
from this idea sprang the whole of our present-day knowledge of atomic
structure and our exploitation of its consequences. This great
landmark in physics was celebrated by holding the Rutherford
International Jubilee Conference early in September. It was
appropriate that the Conference should be held at Manchester
University because, although Rutherford did valuable work at Cambridge
and at McGill, it was his Manchester period which produced the most
important results, and the discoveries with which his name is mainly
associated. It was also appropriate that there were two parts to the
Conference- a commemorative session in which some of the surviving
members of Rutherford's Manchester team took us back by their
reminiscences to those great days of the past, and also a full-scale
conference setting out the present state of our knowledge of the
nucleus. To keep up with a rapidly-changing subject such as this, one
must not spend too long looking backwards.
   Of those closely associated with Rutherford in Manchester,
Marsden, Darwin, Chadwick, Andrade and Niels Bohr were all present,
and it was greatly regretted that William Kay, Rutherford's laboratory
steward and personal assistant, to whom he acknowledged a great debt,
did not live to be present at these celebrations; he died in
Manchester only a few months ago.
   The main commemorative session of the conference consisted of the
reminiscences of Sir E. Marsden, Sir Charles Darwin and Professor
Andrade, and this was followed by a ceremony at which honorary degrees
were bestowed. During the week, delegates saw something of the local
Derbyshire scenery, visited Jodrell Bank and A.E.I. at
Trafford Park, were received by the Lord Mayor at a lavish reception
in Manchester's impressive Victorian Gothic Town Hall, and rounded off
the week at a special concert given by Sir John Barbirolli and the
Halle?2 Orchestra- the source of another of Manchester's claims to
renown.
   Concurrently with the Conference an exhibition of things
associated with Rutherford was held- photographs, letters, models
and, most interesting of all, some of his actual apparatus, including
the piece said to have been his 'pet'- the superb piece of
glass-blowing by Baumbach which made possible the spectral
identification of 15a-particles as helium. The letters on view
gave some interesting glimpses into the organization and economics
behind the scene. There was Schuster's letter offering to hand his
chair over to Rutherford (then at McGill), Rutherford's answer making
careful enquiries about the financial arrangements for research, and
Schuster's detailed reply saying how he spent his annual grant for
teaching and research (all +45 of it!) and by how much it was safe
to overspend without getting into trouble. Rutherford was satisfied,
and came in 197, and thus began the work in 'Tom Tiddler's field',
which was how Rutherford referred to one of the most celebrated
research groups in the history of physics. Rutherford owed a
considerable debt to Schuster for handing over to him a well organized
and relatively well equipped laboratory and teaching department.
While the glory of discovering the nucleus falls to Rutherford, it
was entirely owing to Schuster that the work was done in Manchester.
   As early as 196 Rutherford, then at McGill, had realized, from
the observation that an 15a-particle beam was spread out slightly
by passing through a mica sheet, that there must be surprisingly large
electric fields within atoms, but it was not until 1911 that the idea
of the nucleus was finally conceived. A trivial defect in an
15a-beam tube, which was cured empirically by inserting brass
washers to confine the beam, suggested that 15a-particles were
reflected by metals. Rutherford suggested to Marsden, a second-year
student (in those days undergraduates were given small research
projects as part of their training), that he should follow this up.
After some initial difficulties, because the available
15a-particle sources were too weak, Marsden eventually obtained a
stronger source and did the experiment which is seen in retrospect to
be one of the most profitable ever carried out. He directed a beam of
15a-particles at metal foils, and observed the range of angles at
which they came off. The result was staggering; although most of the
particles were only deflected slightly, a few were turned through
large angles, and a very few came almost back along their tracks. As
Rutherford said later, it was as if one fired 15 in. shells at
tissue paper, and found that occasionally they bounced back! Marsden
told Rutherford what he had observed, Rutherford questioned him about
the experiment to convince himself that it was all right, and that was
all for several weeks, until a Sunday evening in the Autumn of 1911.
Rutherford had invited several of his research workers to supper in
his house at Withington, as he often did, and while they were chatting
after supper Rutherford suddenly came out with his first ideas about
the atomic nucleus; before they went home he asked one of them,
Darwin, to check his hasty derivation of the scattering law to be
expected when 15a-particles were deflected by point nuclei. They
even discussed, on that first evening, the idea that, if the nucleus
were not quite a point, departures from the law at close approach
could yield information about nuclear structure. Although Rutherford
did not live to see powerful enough scattering experiments performed,
this is now the basis of modern methods of investigating the structure
of nuclei and nucleons.
   In the months that followed Geiger and Marsden carried out more
sophisticated scattering experiments than the one which had revealed
the effect, and actually measured the angular distribution of the
scattered 15a-particles. The results confirmed Rutherford's
scattering law and therefore the validity of the assumptions he had
made in deriving it, and led in 1913 to a group of three papers which
laid the foundations of nuclear physics.
   The commemorative session of the conference produced
reminiscences about several of Rutherford's group in Manchester; of
Moseley whom Sir Charles Darwin (who worked with him) described as the
hardest-working person he had ever known, and who was an expert in
finding a meal in Manchester at 3 a.m.; of Niels Bohr who was a
very comforting theoretician with great skill in bridging the gap
between startlingly new theoretical concepts and classical ideas; of
Robinson, a keen music-hall addict- and indeed of the music-hall
origin of the correct intonation to Rutherford's nickname of
'Papa'.
   While these reminiscences of the physics of 5 years ago were
appropriate and entertaining, it was right that most of the time at
the conference should be concerned with the physics of the present.
There were nearly 2 contributed papers, and for those who want a
detailed picture of the present state of nuclear physics these papers
will shortly be published as a 75-page volume. The conference
sessions, however, consisted of the presentation of invited papers,
each intended to summarize a different aspect of the subject.
   Thirty years ago Rutherford said, "It is my personal conviction
that if we knew more about the nucleus, we should find it much simpler
than we suppose. I am always a believer in simplicity being a simple
fellow myself." The subject at present seems a long way from this
simplicity; parts of the conference seemed to be in a foreign
language, and at one point there were so many rival theories that they
were referred to by reference numbers. Perhaps we need another
Rutherford.
   The main topics reviewed included nuclear forces, nuclear
structure, and the interactions with outside particles from which most
of the evidence for nuclear properties is obtained. There was also a
paper on the limitations and possibilities of the instruments for
nuclear investigation, and another, rather off the main line, on
cosmological dating by nuclear methods.
   It has long been understood that the attractive forces between
nucleons (the neutrons and protons which comprise nuclei) were somehow
concerned with the interchange of a particle (the 15p-meson or
pion) between them. There has also been evidence that sometimes two
pions are in transit between the interacting nucleons at the same
time, and the possibility of this occurrence modifies the force to be
expected; although the theory of this process is still an unsolved
problem, models describing the resulting behaviour have been proposed.
What has only recently been confirmed- in fact it was announced at
this conference- is that occasionally three pions at a time are
involved. These three pions may actually be joined together
transiently as a compound particle during the interchange process;
indeed, theoreticians have been invoking a compound particle of this
type for some time. There now seems to be evidence for its existence.
   A nuclear model which has been surprisingly long-lived and
successful is the shell model, which was first proposed 25 years ago.
This assumes nucleons to occupy energy levels, obey quantum-number
selection rules, and group themselves into closed shells in a manner
analogous to the electrons outside the nucleus. This theory was given
a new lease of life by adding the concept of nucleon spin, which
undergoes coupling with the nucleon 'orbital' motion. The presence
of any nucleons in addition to the numbers which comprise closed
shells will tend to distort the otherwise spherical shape, but these
distortions were ignored in the approximate treatment of the problem.
If there are only a few nucleons more (or less) than complete shells
the mean distortion is indeed small, but the theory has been extended
to include vibrations about this mean shape. With larger numbers of
extra nucleons, mid-way between the numbers comprising complete
shells, the nucleus is much more distorted, and rotational modes
become important. With these larger numbers of extra nucleons it is
no longer practicable to treat them singly and only their collective
behaviour is considered.
   The way nucleons are arranged in a nucleus, and especially in the
surface regions of heavy nuclei, is another topic of current interest.
Some workers consider that nucleons tend to be found singly or in
pairs in the nuclear surface, while others believe that there is more
than a random chance of their being found in groups of four, although
the grouping may be of a very transitory nature, the particles perhaps
remaining associated for 1:-22: of a second or so. Indeed, it is
known that if a single particle, say a neutron, hits a nucleus it may
result in the ejection of an 15a-particle (an assembly of 2
protons and 2 neutrons). However there was a vigorous argument at one
session of the conference as to whether this 15a-particle existed
in the nuclear surface and was knocked out by the neutron, or whether
the incident neutron simply collected three more particles and itself
became part of the resulting 15a-particle. The evidence seems to
be in favour of the former idea- that the four particles were already
associated before ejection.
   Soon after Rutherford came to Manchester he and Geiger, using
Geiger's new 15a-particle counting techniques, were able to make
the first measurements of the half-lives of radioactive elements.
Nearly 2 years later, when Aston measured the relative abundances of
the isotopes in lead (the end-points of radioactive decay series) from
a lead-uranium ore, Rutherford realized that this, combined with his
half-life measurements, could yield estimates both of the age of the
earth (i.e. the time since solidification) and of the time since
the actual formation of the heavy elements. Rutherford's results
increased the estimated time-scale for the Earth's development by a
factor of more than 1 over the currently accepted estimates due to
Kelvin, and this advance produced the newspaper headline 'Doomsday
Postponed'. Apart from Rutherford's assumption that the amount of
:235:U initially formed was at the most equal to that of :238:U,
modern cosmochronologists would agree with him. It is now believed
that :235:U was produced initially in greater abundance than
:238:U, and this, plus minor changes in the accepted values of
other constants, pushes the estimated time since the formation of the
heavy elements (loosely called the age of the galaxy) up from
Rutherford's estimate of 3.4 x 1:9: years to about 2 x 1:9:
years.
# 234
<34 TEXT J1>
   Statistically the three-parameter 1, mb forecasts for
these 2 cases are much better than the two-parameter forecasts and
are about the same as the C.F.O. forecasts. The 1,-5 mb
thicknesses and the 5 mb heights are much better forecast by the
three-parameter model than by either C.F.O. or the two-parameter
model. The thermal winds are also forecast better with the
three-parameter model than with the two-parameter model. There is
little to choose between the C.F.O. and three-parameter model
forecasts of the 5-2 mb thicknesses and thermal winds, but the
C.F.O. 2 mb forecast is rather better than that produced by
the three parameter-model.
   The forecasts of the 2 mb contours and 5-2 mb thickness
produced by extrapolation from the two-parameter model were, not
unexpectedly, worse than those produced by the other two methods. It
should be noted that C.F.O. do not produce forecast charts of the
5-2 mb thickness, and that the values attributed to them have
been obtained by subtracting their 5 mb forecasts from their 2
mb forecasts.
<TABLE>
b) Examples of forecasts
   The numerical forecasts using the three-parameter model based
on data for  GMT 26 February 1959 and 5 May 1959 are shown in
Figs. 1-8. These two situations were chosen because the former
forecast produced a large r.m.s. error at 5 and 2 mb and
was not one of the better forecasts, whereas the latter was typical of
one of the good forecasts.
   A depression centred ESE of Newfoundland at  GMT 26
February 1959 (Fig. 1 (a)) moved rapidly NE and deepened 12
mb in the following 24 hr (Fig. 1 (b)). The axis of the
<FIGURES>
high-pressure ridge in mid-Atlantic also moved rapidly NE and
was lying from Iceland to the northern North Sea at  GMT 26
February 1959. The smaller depression originally west of Ireland
filled and its associated trough was orientated N-S over Eastern
Norway. The numerical forecast dealt quite well with the main
depression although the movement and deepening were not quite
sufficient. The trough associated with the warm front and the
preceding ridge were over-intensified and were not moved sufficiently
north-eastwards. The weak trough over Norway was quite adequately
forecast. Pressure was forecast to be about 8 mb too high in and to
the west of the Bay of Biscay, the result of spurious
anticyclogenesis.
   An inspection of the 1,-5 mb thickness charts indicates
that the numerical forecast distorted the thermal pattern in the
region of the depression much more than actually occurred, and this
was one of the worse thickness forecasts of the series. This is a
typical error of this model since the geostrophic wind used for
advection of the thickness lines is much greater than the actual wind
in regions of cyclonic curvature, and the advection is overdone.
<FIGURES>
   Fig. 2 shows that the rapid movement of the 5 mb trough
from east of Newfoundland to mid-Atlantic with the formation of a
closed circulation was quite well forecast, although the trough was
moved too rapidly in the south. Pressure was forecast to be too high
between 1@ and 2@W, a result of spurious anticyclogenesis.
   Fig. 3 indicates that the 2 mb forecast gave much too high
pressure in mid-Atlantic. The movement of the western Atlantic trough
was quite reasonably forecast in middle latitudes but was moved too
rapidly in the south. This rapid movement in the south was almost
certainly associated with the strong gradients produced by the
spurious anticyclogenesis.
   The vertical motion charts are shown in Fig. 4 and are quite
consistent with the forecast positions of the synoptic features. The
pattern for the 6-2 mb layer is similar to that for the
1,-6 mb layer, but the magnitudes of the vertical velocities
measured in mb hr:-1: are less in the 6-2 mb layer than
in the bottom layer. If the vertical velocities had been computed in
cm sec:-1: the magnitudes in the two layers would have been
more similar.
   The numerical forecast based on the  GMT data for 5 May
1959 was one of the better numerical forecasts. An anticyclone moved
eastwards from mid-Atlantic to the British Isles, and two shallow
depressions in the vicinity of Newfoundland amalgamated and moved into
the entrance to the Denmark Straits. These features were quite well
forecast (see Fig. 5), although the central pressure of the
depression was not quite right. The eastward movement of the Atlantic
thermal ridge was forecast to be a little less than actually occurred,
and a cold trough forecast about 5@N 2@W did not materialize.
   Fig. 6 indicates that the movement and development of the
troughs and ridges at 5 mb were forecast very well. The 2 mb
forecast (Fig. 7) was also successful, especially near Portugal and
in the vicinity of the British Isles. However, the forecast position
of the 2 mb trough near Greenland was not correct. The vertical
motion patterns in Fig. 8 are consistent with the synoptic features
forecast in Figs. 5 to 7.
7. CONCLUSIONS
   The forecasts based on the three-parameter model are
significantly better than those based on the Sawyer-Bushby
two-parameter model for the 2 situations investigated. The extra
degree of freedom allowed in the new model does not give rise to such
vigorous over-development as in the two-parameter model, and although
spurious anticyclogenesis still occurs it is not usually so intense as
previously. Knighting and Hinds (196) showed that the incorporation
of a stream function into the two-parameter model gave a significant
improvement in the results, and it is quite likely that the
introduction of a stream function into the present model would produce
a further improvement.
   The three-parameter forecasts of the 5 mb contours and the
1,-5 mb thicknesses are statistically better than those
produced by C.F.O., but there is little to choose between the
corresponding forecasts for the 1, mb contours and the 5-2
mb thicknesses. At 2 mb the C.F.O. forecasts are slightly
better than the three-parameter model, probably because no allowance
is made in the numerical forecasts for the presence of a portion of
the stratosphere below 2 mb. The accuracy of the 2 mb
numerical forecasts seemed worse on days of a low tropopause over a
significant part of the area than on days when the tropopause was
nearer 2 mb.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
   The authors wish to thank the Director-General of the
Meteorological Office for permission to publish this paper.
<LIST>
A graphical method of objective forecasting derived by statistical
techniques
By M. H. FREEMAN
Meteorological Office, Dunstable
Manuscript received 18 January 1961)
SUMMARY
   The objective forecasting technique described consists of a
composite diagram from which the forecast value of the predictand can
be read directly, given the values of the predictors. Each section of
the diagram combines a new predictor with an estimate of the
predictand obtained from the previous sections. The isopleths in the
diagrams are obtained by fitting a curved surface (involving powers
and cross-product terms of up to the fifth order) to the basic data by
a 'least squares' procedure. Only terms which are significant at
the 5 per cent level are retained in the regression formulae so
produced. At each stage the predictor to be selected is that which
contributes most to the combination so far chosen.
   The method was used to forecast visibility (as one of 32 code
figures) at London Airport three and six hours ahead. When it was
tested on two winters' independent data, correlation coefficients of
.89 and .83 were obtained for the 3-hr and 6-hr forecasts,
respectively. During the same period the figures for the normal
subjective forecasts made at London Airport were .87 and .74.
1. INTRODUCTION
   An objective method of forecasting may be described as one
which calls for no judgment on the part of the forecaster. Given the
same initial data any person using the method will produce the same
forecast. Numerous objective techniques have been described by
workers in the U.S.A., but objective forecasting has received
much less attention in Great Britain. Swinbank (1949), Craddock and
Pritchard (1951), and Saunders (1952) all produced methods of
forecasting fog which were partly objective, but some of the
predictors used had to be forecast subjectively.
   Most objective techniques depend on the production of either
formulae or diagrams, and both methods have been subject to various
weaknesses which the system to be described attempts to overcome.
Many of the earlier systems produced forecasts in terms of only a few
categories, e.g., fog, fog in patches, or no fog; for aviation
forecasting a forecast of visibility in yards or miles is required.
Formulae may be deduced from physical principles, but more often they
are devised by statistical processes to produce regression equations.
These have almost always contained only linear terms whereas more
complicated relations may be required. In the graphical methods the
lines on the diagrams often had to be drawn subjectively and it was
not easy to tell whether the best lines had been drawn or not. In
many systems the choice of predictors to be used had to be made
subjectively. Rigorous statistical methods were used in developing
the present method, the computations being made on a Ferranti Mercury
Computer at Meteorological Office, Dunstable.
   The problem chosen for investigation during the development of
the objective forecasting technique was the important one of
forecasting visibility at London Airport. The system which was
devised consists of a composite diagram such as that illustrated at
Fig. 1. The pecked line on the diagram indicates its method of use.
The top left-hand section is entered with the appropriate value of
the first predictor and successive turns are made at the appropriate
isopleths of each of the other predictors, the forecast being read
from the scale on exit.
<FIGURE>
2. VISIBILITY PREDICTION DIAGRAMS FOR LONDON AIRPORT
   The particular problem specified was to forecast visibility at
London Airport for 9 and 12 GMT using 6 GMT data
and for 18 and 21 GMT using 15 GMT data (i.e.,
a 3-hr and a 6-hr forecast morning and evening). The winter
period, November to January, was selected and forecasts were to be
given to the nearest 1 yards up to 1, yd and at 2-yd
intervals up to 2, yd. This requirement and the desirability of
having an approximately logarithmic scale of visibility led to the use
of the visibility code shown in Table 1.
<TABLE>
   The selection of the parameters to be tried as predictors was one
of the most important parts of the investigation. Anything which
physical principles suggested might be relevant was included, and the
advice of experienced forecasters at London Airport was sought. Most
of the parameters tested are listed in Table 2. Many were extracted
directly from the London Airport registers but some had to be
specially computed. The geostrophic winds over London Airport were
measured from surface charts at the Central Forecasting Office,
Dunstable. The wind shear was defined as the ratio of the surface
wind speed to the geostrophic wind speed. Computed pressure gradient
was a complicated parameter obtained from pressures and pressure
tendencies at four neighbouring stations. The lapse rates were
obtained as the difference between the surface temperature at London
and the temperature 5 mb (or 25 mb) above the surface at Crawley
(or Larkhill for the early years). The hydrolapses were similarly
defined using dewpoints instead of temperatures. Data for the eleven
winters November 1946 to January 1957 (1,12 days in all), were
recorded on specially printed Paramount edge-punched cards and were
used in the development of the objective forecasting technique. Data
for the three following winters were used to obtain an independent
check on the efficacy of the system.
   To assist in selecting the more promising predictors each
parameter x was correlated in turn with the visibility to be
forecast z. A polynomial of the form z = a + bx +
cx:2: +... was fitted to the data by the method of 'least
squares,' successively higher order polynomials being tried until
further terms gave no further reduction in the r.m.s. error
(SE). The correlation coefficient r was calculated from the
formula r:2: = 1 - (SE/ SD):2: where SD was
the standard deviation of the visibility to be forecast.
# 218
<35 TEXT J11>
   Generally the highest Jurassic rocks are only exposed near the
eastern end of the Vale, as the Aptian and Albian transgress westwards
on to older Jurassic strata. Thus at Dinton, basal Wealden is
preserved beneath the local Aptian, but by Tisbury Gault rests on
Portland Beds, on Kimmeridge Clay around Shaftesbury and East Knoyle
and by Penselwood Hill, five miles west of Mere, Albian rests on
Oxford Clay.
(b) Brief History of Previous Work
   The great variety of formations exposed within the Vale of
Wardour has attracted geologists since early in the nineteenth century
and there are many descriptions by many writers.
   Lady Bennett provided Sowerby (1818) with some of the earliest
ammonites described from the Portland Beds of Chicksgrove (south)
quarry, and also referred to the Tisbury Star Coral (Isastraea
oblonga). The first comprehensive account was that of Fitton
(1836). He noted the sandy nature of the Chilmark building stones,
found Purbeck dirt beds and discovered a cycad trunk near Tisbury. He
observed the Hastings Sands (Wealden) above the Purbeck Beds near
Dinton and separated a sandy bed below the Gault which was later
assigned to the Lower Greensand. Fitton also realised that the
Wardour fold was asymmetric, with steeper northern dips, and included
a section diagram with his account. In 1856 there appeared the first
one-inch Geological Survey maps of the area which had been surveyed by
Bristow.
   In 1877 Blake & Hudleston gave the first comprehensive account of
the Corallian outcrop in north Dorset and were able to link up the
north Dorset succession with that of the type locality at Weymouth.
They described the apparent northward thinning of the Upper
Corallian. They also noted the increasing number of rolled corals in
the upper beds in the same direction, and commented on the
false-bedded Todber Freestones. Three years later this was followed
by a study of the Portland Beds within the Vale of Wardour. In this
paper they established, among other facts, that the Upper Freestone
Building Stones fifteen feet thick in the Chilmark Ravine are reduced
to a two-foot band, crammed with Camptochlamys lamellosus at
Chicksgrove and Oakley, within only one and a half miles. The nature
of the junction with the overlying Purbeck has been much discussed
since then, and is still not settled. In 1881 W. H. Hudleston
led the first Geologists' Association excursion to the Vale of Wardour
and in the same year the Reverend W. R. Andrews (1881), then
resident at Teffont, published the first account of the presence of
the Middle Purbeck marine Cinder Bed in the Vale of Wardour. In 1894
this was followed up by a comprehensive description of the whole
Purbeck sequence (Andrews & Jukes-Browne, 1894), based on the Dorset
ostracod divisions, but this was disregarded by Woodward (1895) when
writing his Survey Memoir.
   By 19 the Geological Survey completed the six-inch mapping for
the New Series one-inch map, Sheet 298, which includes that portion of
the Vale of Wardour east of Tisbury. In the accompanying memoir
(Reid, 193) he firmly established the presence of both Wealden and
Lower Greensand between the Gault and Jurassic beds. He also records
seeing the Tisbury Star Coral Isastraea oblonga, already
recorded by earlier writers, but in position of growth. This was
observed in what must have been a temporary section, where a lane
forks off the road from Tisbury to Fonthill, three-quarters of a mile
north-west of Tisbury Square. On the other hand, Reid adhered to
Woodward's interpretation of the Purbeck succession and discounted the
unconformable Wealden boundary suggested by Andrews & Jukes-Browne.
The latter writer (Jukes-Browne, 193) added further material on the
Purbeck-Wealden boundary and it appears that Reid's mapping followed
Woodward's Purbeck divisions, and needs some revision to fit in with
the palaeontological divisions now used. In the same year (193) as
the memoir appeared, there was a second Geologists' Association
excursion to the Vale of Wardour (Blackmore & Andrews, 193), and by
194 Jukes-Browne had completed his survey of the Cretaceous rocks
(19-4), which includes descriptions of sections west of the area
dealt with in the sheet memoir, some of which do not appear to have
received any attention since. Jukes-Browne included a quarter-inch
map, in his Cretaceous Rocks, Part =1 (19), showing the Mere
Fault, but no detailed mapping had been done.
   In the fifty years since 194 there have been only a few further
references to this interesting area. In 1933 Dr. Arkell gave an
admirable summary of the Jurassic rocks; he followed up the earlier
observations on the dissimilarities between the Chilmark-Tisbury
building stones and the Dorset counterparts, and attempted to
disentangle the confused ammonite nomenclature of the Portland Beds.
He placed, tentatively, but almost certainly rightly, the main
Tisbury and Lower Chilmark building stones in the upper part of the
Portland Sands of the Dorset coast, only retaining the oolitic upper
Chilmark building stones within the Dorset Portland Stone. This will
entail the remapping of the Wardour Portlandian to fit into the new
classification. (See also Arkell, 1935, for correlation table.)
(House, 1958.) In 1938 F. H. Edmunds added a contribution to
the physiographical evolution of this area which accompanied the
fourth Geologists' Association's Field Meeting to the area. The next
year, J. F. Kirkaldy (1939) refers to the thin Lower Greensand
below the Gault that crops out round the Vale, and also south of
Shaftesbury, but he was unable to determine the zonal position of
either outcrop.
   Outside the Vale of Wardour proper, the Warminster Greensand beds
at the base of the Chalk Marl have received attention from
Jukes-Browne in 1896, 19-4 and 191, and from Scanes, jointly with
Jukes-Browne, in 191, and with Pope-Bartlett in 1916 when, in the
latter year, both authors led the third Geologists' Association
excursion. All the earlier Warminster Greensand accounts have been
fully summarised by Edmunds (1938) for the fourth Field Meeting in the
area of the Geologists' Association in 1937. It now seems clear that
the fossils from the Warminster Greensand are Cenomanian in age and
the majority did not come from Warminster itself but from Maiden
Bradley and Mere. Nevertheless, the Warminster name has been adopted
for these beds, whereas today the best available section is at Dead
Maid Quarry, Mere. Also included in Edmunds' account (1938) is the
first contribution on the Mere Fault which was the present author's
starting point for detailed mapping. Edmunds estimated the Mere Fault
to have a northerly downthrow of about 6 feet near Charnage Quarry.
He shows the fault to be reversed, passing just to the south of Mere,
and downthrowing Lower and Middle Chalk against Kimmeridge Clay.
   Wooldridge & Linton (1955) have given the whole area prominent
attention in their comprehensive survey of the Structure, Surface
and Drainage of South-East England. They regard the three east-west
lines of downland ridges comprising (a) The Great Ridge-Mere White
Sheet Hill ridge, and (b) The Barford Down-Berwick St. John White
Sheet Hill ridge, and (c) the Melbury Beacon, Win Green-Coombe Bissett
Down ridge as type examples of the remnants of the Mid-late Tertiary
Peneplains. Also they regard the Wardour drainage as now adjusted to
structure through two cycles of erosion and that the bulk of this area
lay outside the furthest advances of the Pliocene Sea.
   At Whitsun in 1954 this writer led the fifth Geologists'
Association Field Meeting over the Vale of Wardour and the Mere Fault
country from Shaftesbury. The Field Meeting report (Mottram 6et
al., 1957) included some of the more interesting localities
visited from which the palaeontological records were obtained by
various people, as well as brief references to the Mere Fault at West
Knoyle, Charnage, Mere, Wolverton and Penselwood Hill, visited by the
Association during the excursion.
(c) Tectonic Summary of the Wardour Anticline
   The tectonics of the Wardour fold have not been described in
detail previously, but much is self-evident from the New Series
one-inch map, Sheet 298, which shows the Vale of Wardour as far west
as Tisbury and Ridge. The Wardour Anticline has an amplitude of about
12 feet so that around Tisbury the Cenomanian base must have risen
to about 1 feet above present O.D. The fold has steeper
northerly dips than those on the southern limb, which are everywhere
from 3-5@ south (see Fig. 3, Section 1). The northerly dips
gradually steepen westwards and west of the Fonthills a 1-15@
NNW. dip can be seen in planus Zone chalk on the roadside
from Tisbury to Hindon. The accompanying map to this paper (Fig. 3)
shows how the northern limb continues to steepen westwards past East
Knoyle to where the Mere Fault begins at West Knoyle. North-west of
East Knoyle, around Windmill Hill, the Green and Upton, there is quite
clearly a local roll displayed by the Upper Greensand outcrops. These
double back eastwards from Windmill Hill to Milton before resuming
their north-west trend along Haddon Hill. Also the Gault base rises
above the 6-foot contour west of Upton, so in this small and
interesting upland area north-west of Clouds House there is a
periclinal fold, pitching east, riding on the main northern limb of
the Wardour fold (see Fig. 3, Section 2)
   In general the Jurassic rocks are nearly conformable to the
overlying Cretaceous, but these are local variations in addition to
the steady westward Cretaceous overstep. The Jurassic rocks within
the Vale of Wardour are affected by a series of gentle rolls, trending
north-west to south-east, which disappear under the transgressive
Lower Greensand and Gault without affecting them. The Portland Beds,
exposed in the Chilmark Ravine, are brought up by a shallow anticline
and this is flanked to the south-west by a shallow syncline which
brings the Wealden down to river level again near Sutton Mandeville.
The next undoubted flexure affects the Portland Beds south-east of
Knoyle Corner, but is only partly preserved beneath the transgressive
Gault above, and appears on the map (Fig. 2).
   Around Tisbury itself the numerous Portlandian quarries show a
variety of dips. Some apparently can be ascribed to false bedding.
This was seen in 194 and 1941 in the temporary opening of a shallow
quarry between road and railway 5 yards north-east of Hazeldon Farm
(936381). False bedding was also seen in 1949 in a new track section
south of Court Street. However, in other pits, the dips appear to
point towards the valleys. Some of these exposures show considerable
gulling, like those that can be seen in Tisbury West Quarry on the
Newtown Road, and still being worked. This gulling recalls the
cambered structures described in the Midland Ironstone field and in
the Oxford region by Hollingworth, Taylor & Kellaway (1944) and Arkell
(1947a) respectively.
<FIGURE>
   It appears from notes on Reid's 19 six-inch maps in the
Geological Survey Library, that much, presumably Lower, Greensand
debris still remains on the Purbeck outcrop around Lady Down and on
the Portland outcrop north-west of Tisbury. This writer was able to
map two definite outliers of Lower Greensand on Lady Down and around
Vicarage Barn, as shown on Fig. 1.
   The Lower Greensand, forming these two outliers, is thin, as the
silage pit, four feet deep, reached the base of ferruginous sands,
which also contained occasional small quartz pebbles. Lumps of a very
dark and hard ferruginous sandstone, recalling a tropical laterite,
can also be found with ironstained Purbeck slabs in the surrounding
arable fields. This thin veneer-like Lower Greensand outcrop
north-east of Tisbury suggests that the present Wardour Jurassic
surface round Tisbury may be, in part, an exhumed pre-Lower Greensand
erosion surface. This is supported by finding further quartz pebbles
and chert debris in arable fields on the Portland outcrop north-east
of the cross-roads (at 924293) on the Tisbury to Newtown road. This
is south of where Reid mapped the Lower Greensand being overstepped
westwards by Gault near the 'Beckford Arms'. It is possible
therefore that the existing post-Jurassic material on the Portland
Beds is the ultimate remains of the combined residue of Lower
Greensand and basal Gault hereabouts. Across the Nadder Valley over
the ground north-east of Wardour Castle the Portland dip slope
disappears under rounded swells of Lower Greensand and Gault above,
before the land rises up towards the Upper Greensand escarpment
behind.
# 229
<36 TEXT J12>
These results are perhaps rather unexpected in view of the obvious
difference in shape between these two structures. Measurements showed
that the surface/ volume ratio of the connectives was about 3.5 times
greater than that of the relatively massive terminal abdominal
ganglion.
<FIGURES>
<TABLES>
   The point of contrast between the effluxes from the terminal
ganglion and from the whole nerve cord used in the previous
investigation was the apparent absence, in the case of the isolated
ganglion, of a final slow phase of sodium loss in a region of low
radioactivity. In the previous study (Treherne, 1961b) this phase
was tentatively identified with the breakdown of the normal sodium
extrusion mechanism in the isolated nerve cord when separated from its
tracheal supply. Thus according to this hypothesis it could be
postulated that in the present experiments the isolation of the
ganglion resulted in a less serious interference with the normal
metabolism so that the breakdown of sodium extrusion did not occur
until later at a very low level of activity beyond the limits of this
technique.
   The present results have shown that, as in the whole abdominal
nerve cord (Treherne, 1961b), the rate of loss of sodium was
apparently an active process which was slowed down by the presence of
2:4-dinitrophenol at relatively low concentration. Similarly the
extrusion of sodium in the terminal ganglion was reduced in the
potassium-free solution, demonstrating a linkage of potassium influx
with sodium efflux.
   The rate of efflux of sodium ions from the terminal abdominal
ganglion was not significantly affected by the removal of about 5% of
the connective tissue and cellular sheath. On the basis of these
results it must be concluded, therefore, that the rate-limiting
process in the efflux of sodium measured by this technique was not the
transfer of ions across the cellular perineurium. In addition it
follows from this that the diffusion of sodium ions through the
connective tissue sheath must also have occurred relatively rapidly, a
result which had been previously predicted (Treherne, 1961a;
Wigglesworth, 196). The rate-limiting process measured in these
experiments must, therefore, be associated with some components of the
central nervous system lying at a deeper level than the perineurium.
Perhaps the most obvious possibility is that the efflux of
:24:Na measured in these experiments was, in fact, the result of
the transfer of sodium ions across the cell membranes of the
underlying tissues. In this case the similarity of the t;.5;
between the connectives and the terminal ganglion becomes explicable,
for under these circumstances the efflux might be expected to be
independent of the surface/ volume ratio of the whole organ.
   The results described above do not, of course, give any definite
information about the nature of the processes involved in the passage
of ions across the perineurium. However, the fact that the presence
of dinitrophenol and potassium-free solution appeared to have slightly
less effect on sodium efflux in the desheathed preparations might
suggest that this layer of cells perhaps plays more than a passive
role in the ionic regulation of the central nervous system of this
insect.
   The addition of poison to, or the omission of potassium ions
from, the external solution has been shown to produce a fairly rapid
slowing down of sodium extrusion from the abdominal nerve cord. The
fact that the rate-limiting process is not, apparently, the
penetration of the superficial perilemma implies that these changes in
the chemical composition of the bathing solution are quickly
transmitted to the deeper layers of the central nervous system. This
conclusion is perhaps rather unexpected in view of the appreciable
delay in the breakdown of normal electrical activity obtained when the
insect nervous system was exposed to solutions of high potassium
concentration (Hoyle, 1953; Twarog & Roeder, 1956).
   In some previously published accounts on the entry of :42:K
and :24:Na into the intact abdominal nerve cord of Periplaneta
(Treherne, 1961a, c) an attempt was made to calculate the fluxes
of these ions between the haemolymph and the central nervous system.
These ionic movements were calculated with the conventional equations
used to describe fluxes in cells and tissues. This procedure involved
the assumption that the rate-limiting process was the transfer across
the superficial boundary and that the movements within the underlying
layers occurred rapidly so that the labelled ions were effectively
well mixed. The present results have shown that these assumptions
represented an oversimplification and consequently the calculated
values have little significance. It is hoped that in a future
investigation the fluxes taking place between the central nervous
system and the haemolymph can be calculated for this more complex
system.
SUMMARY
   1. The rate of loss of :24:Na from the terminal abdominal
ganglion of Periplaneta americana L. has been studied by
measuring the decline in radioactivity associated with an isolated
preparation maintained in flowing physiological solution.
   2. The rate of sodium efflux was substantially reduced in the
presence of .2 mM./ l. dinitrophenol and in potassium-free
solution.
   3. The extrusion of :24:Na was not significantly affected by
the removal of the fibrous and cellular sheath surrounding the
ganglion. The rate-limiting process in the efflux of sodium measured
in the experiments was not, therefore, the transfer of ions across the
nerve sheath, but an extrusion from tissues lying at a deeper level in
the central nervous system.
THE KINETICS OF SODIUM TRANSFER IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OF
THE COCKROACH, PERIPLANETA AMERICANA L.
BY J. E. TREHERNE
A.R.C. Unit of Insect Physiology, Department of Zoology,
University of Cambridge
(Received 15 June 1961)
INTRODUCTION
   Some previous investigations have shown that the exchanges of
sodium and potassium ions between the haemolymph and the cockroach
central nervous system occurred relatively rapidly (Treherne,
1961a) and appeared to be effected by a mechanism involving an
active extrusion of sodium ions (Treherne, 1961b). More recently
it has also been shown that the measured efflux of sodium ions was not
significantly affected by the removal of substantial portions of the
cellular and fibrous nerve sheath (Treherne, 1961c). It was
concluded from this that the rate-limiting factor measured in these
experiments was not the transfer of ions across the perilemma but the
extrusion of sodium from the underlying tissues of the central nervous
system. Thus any rate-limiting movements of ions across the perilemma
occurred too rapidly to be measured by the techniques used in the
previous investigations. In the present experiments, therefore, an
attempt has been made to measure the rapid component of :24:Na
exchange by determining the rate of loss of radioactivity obtained on
washing isolated nerve cords and single connectives and ganglia for
relatively short periods in successive volumes of physiological
solution.
METHODS
   The experiments described in this paper were carried out using
the abdominal nerve cords of adult male Periplaneta americana
L. In these experiments the nerve cords were made radioactive by
soaking them for varying periods in a solution containing :24:Na
(.1-.5 mc./ ml.). With short loading periods (2 sec.-5.
min.) the isolated ligatured nerve cords were soaked in the
oxygenated physiological solution; for longer loading periods (5-2
min.) the nerve cords of decapitated individuals were perfused with
the radioactive solution as described in a previous paper (Treherne,
1961c). The ligatures were tied with threads pulled from 15
denier nylon stockings. The composition of the radioactive solution
used was that given by Treherne (1961a). On removal from the
radioactive solution the ligatured nerve cords were carefully blotted
and then washed for varying periods in successive .2 ml. amounts of
inactive solution of the same composition. The amount of :24:Na
remaining in the nerve cord at varying times was determined from the
measured radioactivity of the washings. The radioactivity
measurements were made with a Mullard MX 123 G.M. tube linked
to a 1 c. Panax scaler.
   Some preliminary measurements were made to estimate the extent of
any 'inulin space' in the central nervous system. This was done by
soaking ligatured isolated nerve cords for 1 hr. in a 3.% solution
of :14:C-labelled inulin (3. mc./ g.) made up in physiological
solution. The nerve cords were then washed for 25 sec. and the
:14:C-inulin was extracted by soaking them for 24 hr. in the
physiological solution. The washing time of 25 sec. used was found
to be the minimum period necessary to remove 97% of the radioactivity
from the surface of a nerve cord exposed to :14:C-inulin for 1
sec. These values are thus likely to be minimum estimates of the
'inulin space' of this organ for some radioactivity must have
leaked from within the nerve cord during the washing procedure. In a
limited number of cases the rate of loss of :14:C-labelled inulin
was determined by washing the ligatured isolated nerve cords in
successive volumes of the physiological solution as for the
:24:Na efflux experiments.
<DIAGRAM>
RESULTS
   The results illustrated in Fig. 1 show the decline in
radioactivity of some isolated abdominal nerve cords, previously
soaked in the solution containing :24:Na, when maintained in an
inactive solution of the same composition. In all cases
semi-logarithmic plots of the results for varying loading times
appeared to follow a complex course initially, eventually assuming an
exponential form after a period of between 16-2 sec.
   It was found possible to separate a fast component from the
curves for the loss of :24:Na from the nerve cords by subtraction
from the initial values lying above the line extrapolated to zero
time. The separation of an efflux curve into fast and slow components
with data plotted semi-logarithmically with respect to time is shown
in Fig. 2. The fast component illustrated in Fig. 2 was complex
initially, but assumed after a few seconds a simple exponential form
with a half-time (t;.5;) of approximately 33. sec. The
half-time for the slow component was, in this case, 26 sec.
<DIAGRAM>
   The escape of :24:Na from the isolated abdominal nerve cords
was also measured in the presence of .5 mM./ l.
2:4-dinitrophenol. The poison was added to the physiological solution
during the initial loading period with the :24:Na and was present
at the same concentration in the inactive solution during the
subsequent efflux experiments. Previous results (Treherne, 1961
b) have shown that there was a slight delay period of a few
minutes before the poison affected the rate of extrusion of sodium
from the nerve cords. In the present experiments, therefore, the
nerve cords which were loaded with :24:Na for only short periods
(less than 5 min.) were pretreated with .5 mM./ l.
dinitrophenol to maintain a constant exposure to the poison of 5
min. before the efflux experiments were commenced. Fig. 3 shows
the escape of :24:Na from a poisoned preparation loaded with
:24:Na for 1 min. In this experiment the fast component was
not abolished by the presence of the poison, in fact t;.5; in
this case was 33. sec., which was the same as that for the normal
preparation illustrated in Fig. 2. In this particular experiment
the slow component for :24:Na efflux was, however, much reduced
as compared with the normal preparation. The effects of .5 mM./
l. 2:4-dinitrophenol on the escape of :24:Na from the isolated
nerve cords are summarized in Table 1. The results clearly indicate
that the presence of the poison affected the slow phase of sodium loss
but not the initial fast component.
   The total activity of the :24:Na in the slowly exchanging
fraction was estimated by extrapolation of the slow component to zero
time. Fig. 4 illustrates the estimated
<DIAGRAM>
<TABLE>
radioactivity of the slowly escaping fraction at varying times after
exposure to the solution containing :24:Na. These data would
appear to show that the poison had little effect on the rate of
accumulation of the radioactive ions in the slowly exchanging
fraction. The results are, however, too few to judge the equilibrium
level of radioactivity as between the normal and poisoned
preparations.
<TABLE>
   The escape of :24:Na from isolated ligatured fragments of
the central nervous system was studied in some experiments. The loss
of radio-sodium from the terminal abdominal ganglion and from the
connective between the fourth and fifth abdominal ganglia was found to
occur as a two-stage process as for the whole abdominal nerve cord.
# 28
<37 TEXT J13>
A control serum known to contain a weak anti-D antibody is included
in each batch of tests; only if this gives a macroscopic positive with
the D positive and a clear negative with the D negative cells should
the rest of the test be read.
   Comment. This is a very sensitive and useful technique which
is unlikely to fail to detect any Rh antibodies. It is recommended
that it should always be used as a routine antibody detection method.
Occasionally sera are encountered which give pan-agglutination with
trypsinised red cells. The antibody responsible for the
pan-agglutination can usually be quite easily removed by incubating
the serum with an equal volume of the patient's own trypsinised red
cells. The absorbed serum can then be re-examined for the presence of
specific antibodies with the standard trypsinised cells.
No. 16. Lo"w's papain technique for antibody detection
   Equal volumes of the serum to be tested, papain and a 2 per
cent suspension of red cells are placed in a precipitin tube, taking
care to adhere strictly to the order: (a) serum, (b) papain,
(c) red cells. It is also important that the serum/ papain
mixture should not be allowed to stand on the bench for more than
about 5 minutes before the red cells are added. It has been noted
that the best results are obtained if the red cells are allowed to
sink through the fluid during the incubation period. Therefore the
contents of the tubes should not be mixed up at the initial stage.
The test is read after precisely one hour's incubation, controls of
known D positive and D negative cells with a weak incomplete anti-D
being included with each batch of tests.
   Comment. This is a good and efficient technique and is
excellent for the detection of Rh antibodies. In fact anti-D
antibodies may be detectable when they are not apparent by any other
technique, even the Indirect Coombs. It does, however, give positives
when certain other antibodies are present so that care must be taken
in the establishment of the specificity of any antibody detected by
this method.
Titration of Rh Antibodies
   Technique No. 17. Saline. Serial dilutions of the serum are
made in saline as in technique No. 6 (or if desired techniques
Nos. 7 or 8) and incubated at 37@C for 2 hours with standard
D-positive red cells (2 per cent suspension) in saline. The tests are
read taking the usual precautions against breaking down the
agglutinates. The results are recorded as for ABO titres. (See
Plates 6 and 7.)
   Technique No. 18. Albumin. The serial dilutions of the
serum are made in AB serum and the standard cells are suspended in 3
per cent bovine albumin. In all other respects the method is
identical with technique No. 17.
   Technique No. 19. Albumin Addition. Serial dilutions are
made in AB serum. After 1 1/2 hours' incubation an equal volume of
bovine albumin is added without disturbing the cells. After a further
3 minutes' incubation the tests are read in the usual manner.
   Technique No. 2. Indirect Coombs Technique. Serial
dilutions of the serum are made in saline using double unit volumes
(.6 ml.) in the cell-suspension tubes. Four volumes of a 5 per
cent suspension packed washed D-positive red cells are added to each
tube. From this point the procedure is exactly as in technique No.
14(a).
   Technique No. 21. Trypsin. The serial dilutions of serum
are made in AB serum and warmed to 37@C before the addition to each
tube of an equal volume of trypsinised D-positive red cells. The
tests are incubated for 1 hour and read by tapping the tubes and
examining the contents macroscopically and if necessary
microscopically for agglutination.
   Technique No. 22. Papain. The serial dilutions are made as
for technique No. 18, after which one volume of Lo"w's papain is
added to each tube. This is followed immediately by an equal volume
of a 2 per cent suspension in saline of D positive red cells. The
tubes are incubated for exactly one hour and then read, first tapping
the tube twice gently before examining the contents macroscopically
and if negative, microscopically.
Interpretation of Results
   Sera are usually tested by at least two techniques. In the
testing of Rh negative women antenatally, for instance, it is
recommended that the saline (technique 12) albumin (technique 13) and
trypsin (technique 15) or papain (technique 16) techniques are used in
parallel. Any reaction obtained, however weak, indicates that further
tests are necessary to confirm the presence of an antibody and to
establish its identity. If the serum of a D negative individual
agglutinates the D positive but not the D negative control cells,
there is a high probability that the serum contains anti-D, but the
specificity should be confirmed by testing against several more
examples of D-positive and D-negative red cells. If a pattern of
reaction is obtained other than that expected for anti-D, the serum
requires a more detailed investigation (Table 14); this is usually
undertaken by a specialist serological laboratory. Moreover it must
be realised that a serum behaving like anti-D in the above tests may
in fact be a mixture of Rh antibodies. Rather less than half the
Rh antibodies found in Rh negative persons are mixtures of anti-D
and anti-C, a much smaller number are anti-D plus anti-E and a very
few are mixtures of all three antibodies. A knowledge of whether or
not a particular anti-D is mixed with anti-C or anti-E is usually
unimportant clinically, but if the serum is required for Rh typing
purposes its exact content must be known. It is dangerous to use for
typing purposes a serum containing anti-C or anti-E in addition to the
anti-D, for by this means certain individuals who are in fact D
negative may be falsely classed as D positive. R?7r (Cde.cde) cells
which contain C without D will show the presence of anti-C in an
anti-C plus anti-D mixture while R?8r (cdE.cde) which contain E
without D cells will detect anti-E in an anti-E plus anti-D mixture.
Therefore, while the testing of a suspected anti-D against about 3 D
positive and 2 D negative red cell samples followed by titration is
adequate for normal purposes, a far more detailed investigation of the
serum must be made (probably by a specialist laboratory) if it is
required for Rh typing.
<TABLE>
   It is, of course, possible as in example 4 (Table 14) that the
antibody belongs to one of the other blood group systems such as Kell,
Duffy, Kidd, Lutheran, etc. For a description of these another
textbook, such as An Introduction to Blood Group Serology, must be
consulted. Antibodies related to these systems can only be identified
by a laboratory possessing a panel of red cells extensively
"genotyped" to cover them.
<BIBLIOGRAPHY>
CHAPTER 8
THE CHOICE OF BLOOD FOR TRANSFUSION AND DIRECT MATCHING METHODS
   BLOOD transfusion has developed so rapidly in the last twenty
years that it comes as something of a shock to realise that its
history goes back into the remote past. In ancient thinking the words
"blood" and "life" were almost interchangeable and many
endeavours were made to transfer the healthy life blood of a young man
to the aged and infirm. In most cases this was done by the recipient
drinking the blood; the results were of course, rather disappointing!
   As early as the sixteenth century it was realised that the
transference should be from blood vessel to blood vessel, but it is
not known whether such an exchange was in fact performed. Harvey's
discovery of the circulation of the blood in the early seventeenth
century gave a new impetus to the interest in transfusion and Lower
actually kept alive dogs, which had been exsanguinated, with blood
from other dogs, transferred by connecting the carotid artery of the
one to the jugular vein of the other by means of quills. The success
of this venture led to attempts to transfuse Man. Animals (sheep and
lambs) were used as donors, but the experiments were discontinued when
the fourth recipient died. It is interesting to note that this
patient had three transfusions in all, the first symptomless, the
second showing typical symptoms of a haemolytic transfusion reaction
and the third resulting in the patient's death.
   During the latter half of the nineteenth century experiments
started again, sometimes using animal blood, sometimes human, but the
results were so often serious or even fatal that transfusion was
abandoned. Then in 191 Landsteiner discovered the ABO blood
group system and realised immediately the importance of his discovery.
It was not until some fifteen years later, however, that it was
universally accepted that blood grouping and direct compatibility
tests were a necessary prelude to transfusion. It was then realised
that if the recipient had agglutinins active at 37@C in his serum
and the transfused blood had the corresponding agglutinogen, the blood
would be destroyed 6in vivo and a haemolytic transfusion
reaction would result.
   The possibility of the destruction of the recipient's red cells
by transfused antibody was not considered to be a real danger because
of the dilution factor. For this reason, up to about 194, group O
blood was considered safe for transfusion to all groups and was called
Universal Donor Blood. Nowadays it is realised that transfusion with
homologous blood, i.e. blood of the same type as the
recipient, is to be preferred, not only because the transfusion of
antibodies may be dangerous, but also because the number of potential
donors is doubled; an important point when the demand for blood is
steadily increasing. The titre of anti-A and anti-B antibodies in
most donor blood is not dangerous so that in emergency, one pint of
group O can be given with little risk, but in massive transfusions of
group O blood to patients of other groups the quantity of antibody
transfused becomes considerable and may even result in the destruction
of almost all the recipient's own red cells. In particular, it has
been shown that exchange transfusion of infants suffering from
haemolytic disease should be performed with blood of the infant's own
ABO group.
   The discovery of the ABO blood groups was, however, merely
the beginning. Today many blood group systems are known, by means of
which some hundreds of types of blood can be differentiated. Should
they all be taken into consideration in choosing blood for
transfusion? It is obvious that they cannot be and except in special
cases only two systems are in fact considered, ABO and Rh.
   When blood is transfused there are many dangers present, of which
two are directly concerned with the antigen content of the transfused
blood, the first being that of sensitisation, the second that of
incompatibility.
   In the first case the recipient does not possess the antigen
found in the transfused blood nor the corresponding antibody, but the
transfusion acts as a sensitising dose so that antibodies are produced
in response to the transfusion or to a subsequent stimulus by the same
antigen. Blood for transfusion cannot be chosen so as to exclude
every possibility of sensitisation but fortunately most of the blood
group systems are not strongly antigenic in Man and can usually be
disregarded. The main exception is the Rh system, and here the
problems of sensitisation must be faced. In the ABO system (where
antibodies occur naturally) and in other systems whenever atypical
antibodies active at 37@C have been formed the problem is not that
of sensitisation but of incompatibility.
   A consideration of the two systems, ABO and Rh, gives an
idea of the factors involved and how best to arrive at the objective,
the safe transfusion of blood.
   The ABO blood group system is still the most dangerous. This
is because the antibodies are naturally occurring and over 95 per cent
of all recipients will have anti-A and/or anti-B in their serum. On
the other hand ABO blood grouping is a straightforward procedure
and the simplest of direct matching techniques will detect any
incompatibility. Most of the mistakes which occur are clerical rather
than technical.
# 25
<38 TEXT J14>
=3
RESULTS
Classification of the Population
   EVERY person living in the village who was over the age of
five years had been asked to supply a specimen of urine, and to answer
a questionnaire (Table 2). The very young children were not tested
because apart from any practical difficulties, the florid
manifestations of diabetes at this age seem to make it unnecessary,
though in any subsequent survey we should like to include this age
group. 2,71 males and 2,34 females were tested which makes an 81%
response of the population over the age of five years. Details of
thirty-three previously diagnosed cases of diabetes were collected
from the general practitioners' and clinic records, one of these was a
boy under the age of five so that the total examined is therefore
4,15+1. As far as can be determined the 19% of non-cooperators were
not different in age or other environmental factor from the rest, and
in calculating rates, it has been assumed that they are a random
sample of the whole population. However, in testing the significance
of possible aetiological factors, further consideration has been given
to this and any affect <SIC> of selection has been excluded as
rigorously as possible. The normal portion of the population, in whom
no glycosuria was found at the time of examination has been used as a
control group. Only those discovered to have glycosuria were asked to
undergo a glucose tolerance test as the known diabetics had been
previously verified and were already under treatment.
   It is found that the blood sugar curves we obtained show a
gradual rise in continuous sequence from the normal to the diabetic,
and three arbitrary divisions have been made, and, because a true
glucose method of blood sugar estimation was used, the levels
considered important are 16 mgm% at 1 hour, 14 mgm% at 1 1/2
hours, and 12 mgm% at 2 hours (Conn 1958). These levels were taken
to divide the intermediate and lower blood sugar curves, and it is of
interest that this level separates the cases of transient or
intermittent from those of constant glycosuria. As there is no
universal agreement about the actual lower levels of blood sugar in
diabetes the appearance of the whole curve was noted, and particular
attention was paid where it had not returned to the fasting level at
two hours. Thus our grouping of the examined population is classified
as follows:-
   A. The unaffected population or control group of 3,916 persons.
   B. Known diabetics, 33.
   C. Glycosurics, 167.
   The glycosurics in turn are subdivided according to their blood
sugar curves (Diagrams 1 and 2).
   a. Latent diabetics, with high type of curve, 25.
   b. Intermediate. In 42 cases the blood sugar levels rose to, or
only just above 16 mgm% at 1 hour, 14 mgm% at 1 1/2 hours, 12
mgm% at 2 hours.
   c. Transient or intermittent glycosurics with low or normal blood
sugar levels, 75.
   d. A group of 25 glycosurics on whom no test was performed.
   It is estimated that the total percentage of known diabetics in
Ibstock is between 1.3% and 1.4%. If we can take Ibstock to be a
random sample of the general population of Britain, the 95% confidence
limits for the average incidence in Britain are 1.% and 1.6%, but, in
fact, it is possible that it is not exactly comparable and the limits
should be wider. It is interesting to note that this range includes
the results found in other similarly conducted surveys of whole
population groups (Table 4).
Discussion of the Abnormal Groups
The Known Diabetics (Diagram 4a)
   The thirty-three previously diagnosed diabetics form a somewhat
artificial group owing to the duration of their disease and its
treatment, and because they knew they were diabetic when they answered
the questions. Wherever this could bias a result in testing the
significance of any factor, this group has been excluded. On the
other hand, the others did not know the result of the tests at the
time of answering the questionnaire, and this makes these results of
particular statistical interest. In considering the known cases
diagnosed and under treatment at the time of the survey, twenty-nine
were already on the general practitioners' lists, but during the year,
they found three more men and the boy under five years old, all of
whom had indisputable symptoms and signs, thus a total of nine males
and twenty-four females are put to their credit. These cases have all
been examined at the diabetic clinic of the Leicester Royal Infirmary
although they were not all traced until the end of the survey. We
think it is most improbable that any previously diagnosed diabetic is
now unrecorded so that the percentage figure for known cases, when
estimated on the whole population of 5,46, = .61%.
   In diagram 3 an attempt has been made to indicate the extent of
the assumed diabetic problem in this small community before any search
had been made for the latent cases. It shows the distribution of the
known diabetics according to their age and year of diagnosis.
Superimposed are the diabetics known to have died in Ibstock since
194, which has been taken as a base line because it was the year in
which the living case of longest duration was diagnosed. It will be
noticed that there are now no diabetics living in Ibstock who were
diagnosed after the first two cases for another four years. Some may
have left the village; there are three deaths recorded during this
time, but the possibility is that, as these were war years and food
rationing was in force, the elderly, mild and obese diabetics might
have been sufficiently controlled by increased activity and less food
to have remained latent and symptom free, and even free of glycosuria.
Since 1951 the average number of new diabetics diagnosed has been
four 6per annum and these have all presented with symptoms.
The Latent Diabetics (Diagram 4b)
   Out of the newly discovered glycosurics, 25 persons- 11 men and
14 women- show the frankly diabetic type of glucose tolerance curve
(Diagrams 1 and 2). Estimated on the examined population of 4,15,
this gives the percentage for latent diabetes in Ibstock as .67%. No
history of thirst, polyuria nor loss in weight was given and these
people were unsuspected by themselves or their doctors. No physical
examination of the complete group has been achieved owing to the
reluctance on the part of the individuals to attend the diabetic
clinic for the purpose, but the general practitioners have marked
their record cards with coloured indicators so as to keep them under
their particular scrutiny. They have also allowed the health visitor
for diabetics in the County of Leicestershire to call and give any
necessary dietetic instruction and to institute a regular follow up
service of urine testing and weighing. This group of latent diabetics
were all over forty years of age, most were considerably over weight;
none have yet required regular insulin treatment.
Intermediate Group of possible Pre-diabetics (Diagram
4c)
   Abnormal glucose tolerance curves were obtained in forty-two of
the glycosurics examined, and although not reaching the characteristic
levels used for diagnosing diabetes, they correspond to the criteria
put forward by Conn (1958). The lower limits of the group were
defined by the blood sugar levels of 16, 14, 12 mgm% at 1, 1 1/2,
and 2 hours respectively, and with the exception of three cases this
level separated the constant from the transient glycosurics. The
upper levels naturally merge into the lower diabetic curves. It will
be shown later in the analysis of certain factors that this seems to
be an important group of probable pre-diabetics. The younger people
show this change as well as the older and there was a considerable
excess of young men, 3m : 12f. Although it was a practical
impossibility to perform cortisone glucose tolerance tests (Conn
1958), (Fajans and Conn 1959), in this group of people at the time of
the survey, it is an investigation which might be of great value, as
it would also be to perform serial glucose tolerance tests at for
example, one or two year intervals. The general practitioners have
again tagged the medical record cards of these people with a different
coloured indicator so that at any attendance at the surgery the
possibility of diabetes is remembered and any significant data noted.
It should be of interest to see if this amount of clinical
supervision will alter the natural effect of time and have a
preventive action.
Transient or Intermittent Glycosuria (Diagram 5a)
   In the group of glycosurics with normal glucose tolerance tests,
the age range was 5 to 81 (Table 3). There were 48 males and 27
females. There were only three cases of constant glycosuria which
satisfy the stricter definition of renal glycosuria, i.e., the
constant passage of glucose in the urine at normal or sub-normal blood
sugar levels. Transient glycosuria with normoglycaemia may indicate
transient lowering of renal threshold as is commonly found in
pregnancy, and it may be that as with pregnancy there is an increased
liability to the development of diabetes. It seems wise to keep an
open mind and to follow up these cases with urine and possibly blood
sugar estimations at a later date to measure the true significance of
this finding. It should also be recalled that the faintest change in
colour of the Clinistix was taken as positive.
Glycosurics on whom no Glucose Tolerance Tests were performed
(Diagram 5b)
   Twenty-five glycosurics, for one reason or another, were not
subjected to blood sugar examination. It is probable that three were
diabetic; one of whom, a woman, died of coronary artery occlusion
before the test could be arranged.
   Case 25 f. Her husband was found to be diabetic in the survey
and a clinical impression suggested that this was a case of conjugal
diabetes.
   Case 182 f. Short and stout, utterly refused further tests.
   Case 1568 f. Minimal glycosuria, pregnant and left Ibstock.
   Case 281 f. Recently discharged from mental hospital.
   Case 3112 f. Glycosuria found during an attack of influenza.
On re-testing she was sugar free.
   Case 3352 f. On re-testing no glycosuria was found.
   Case 3458 f. Urine only faintly positive. Her doctor reported
that she was "a hermit type" and unlikely to co-operate.
   Case 3429 f. Aged 82 and too old and feeble to be troubled.
   Case 118 m. Paranoid schizophrenic, difficult and dangerous.
   Case 133 m. Aged 81. Too old and frail. A second specimen of
urine was negative.
   Case 188 m. Refused to lose time from work.
   Case 1286 m. Improvident and careless; wife is a severe
diabetic.
   Case 1666 m. Mother diabetic, but he did not wish to be off
work for the morning.
   Case 1672 m. He and three sons gave a history of investigation
for "renal glycosuria" 25 years ago.
   It is probable that the remaining men were not prepared to give
up time from work to come for the test.
Changes since the Survey
   Since the field work finished, two diabetics have returned to
live again in Ibstock where they were originally diagnosed, both in
1951. A boy who was 2 1/2 years old at onset had been staying at a
residential home for diabetic children in the south of England as his
home environment was not good. The other is a woman who was diagnosed
at the age of 51. Her mother was diabetic and she is short and stout
and does not require insulin.
   Three new diabetics were diagnosed by their doctors in 1959, two
of whom had been tested in the survey. A man of 25 developed diabetes
in the acute form and requires insulin. A woman of 54 who was
negative in the survey but now requires to be dieted strictly. The
third, an obese woman, had previously refused to be tested or she
might well have come under treatment sooner. These changes have been
mentioned to show the continuity of the pattern of the condition we
are examining but have not, of course, been taken into account in the
statistical sections as they would introduce bias.
# 22
<39 TEXT J15>
SECTION 2
X RAYS: HALF-VALUE THICKNESS RANGE 1.-4.mm of Cu
(2-4 kV)
CLOSED-ENDED APPLICATORS
Compiled by
R. G. Wood, M.Sc., F.Inst.P., A.M.I.E.E., and W. H.
Sutherland, B.Sc.
The Royal Infirmary, Cardiff
and M. Cohen, Ph.D., A.R.C.S., A.Inst.P., The London
Hospital, London, E.1
   The tables published in the corresponding section in Supplement
No. 5 were compiled by Clarkson from measurements made by a number
of hospital physicists in Great Britain. In common with other tables
derived from a number of sources, they suffered from the disadvantage
that several of the conditions (e.g. thickness of applicator
end-plate) to which the data referred were not closely defined.
Furthermore, if smoothing of survey data is based on values
calculated by an empirical formula to fit the figures available, some
inconsistency will inevitably remain since no formulae have been found
which ensure smoothness in each of the three ways in which depth-dose
data can be plotted (see below). It was therefore decided to replace
the survey data with tables derived from a single centre, thus
bringing this section into line with the two other sections of this
Supplement concerned with low and medium energy radiation. The new
tables have, however, been compared with data made available from a
number of other centres, and with the tables for diaphragm-limited
fields in Section 3.
SOURCE OF DATA
   The present tables are based on water-phantom measurements made
in Cardiff by Wood and Sutherland using an ionization chamber of
external diameter 3 mm so arranged that its centre could approach to
1.5 mm from the applicator end-plate with no intervening tank wall.
As an independent check an experimental comparison of this technique
with that of The London Hospital (Oliver and Kemp, 1949) was carried
out in 1955 in conjunction with Cohen. Measurements were made on the
same X-ray set using alternately a Kemp ionization current comparator
with a chamber of external diameter 6 mm (Kemp, 1945; Kemp and
Banfield, 1957), and the apparatus of Wood and Sutherland. This
comparison showed that when allowance was made for small differences
near the surface, no significant disagreement existed between the
results obtained by the two techniques.
   The final measurements of percentage depth dose from which the
tables were derived were made on a Westinghouse Quadrocondex machine
under the following conditions:
<TABLE>
The measurements were made with a series of square "Fulfield"
applicators of 5 cm F.S.D., the ends being closed with flat
Perspex of thickness 1/8 inch (approximately 3 mm). Strictly, the
data refer only to these applicators, but for clinical purposes the
tables may be used for any applicator of similar design provided the
thickness of the end-plate is the same and it is made of similar
material. The effect on the data of using applicators of different
design or end-plate thickness will be considered further in a separate
publication. No measurements were made for zero area, but this
information is provided in Section 3.
SMOOTHING AND EXTRAPOLATION OF DATA
   Smoothing of the experimental data, for square fields, was
carried out graphically by plotting (=1) individual depth-dose
curves on log/ linear paper, (=2) percentage depth dose 6versus
square root of area on linear paper for individual depths, and
(=3) percentage depth dose 6versus half-value thickness on
linear paper for individual depths. Values for depths from 16 to 2
cm were obtained by extrapolation. This is justified since the
logarithmic plots of depth dose are straight lines from 1 cm
downwards.
   The whole table for 2.5 mm of Cu H.V.T. was obtained by
interpolation, while that for 4. mm of Cu H.V.T. was obtained
by extrapolation. For the latter purpose guidance was provided by
some additional experimental data from the Royal Victoria Infirmary,
Newcastle upon Tyne, but owing to the uncertainties of extrapolation
this table must be regarded as somewhat less reliable than the others.
DATA FOR RECTANGULAR FIELDS
   Johns and his colleagues have used the data for square fields
to calculate tables for a series of rectangular areas, using
Clarkson's (1941) method, with the help of the digital computer of the
University of Toronto. Depth doses for the primary radiation were
assumed to be the same as those given in Section 3. The computed
values of percentage depth dose were smoothed graphically, by methods
(=1) and (=3) above, prior to tabulation.
   Some of the rectangular fields included in these tables are
different from those given in Section 3, since it is intended that the
data in this section shall correspond to the applicators most commonly
used in Great Britain. Data for circular fields and for other
rectangles may readily be computed by the equivalent field method (see
Appendix A).
COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS TABLES (SUPPLEMENT No. 5)
   In this context deviations of the new tables from the old are
expressed as percentages of the local dose.
   (=1) In the range 1.5-3. mm of Cu H.V.T., for areas of
1 cm:2: and above, the new tables agree with the old to within
3 per cent on average, with occasional divergencies up to 6 per cent.
On the whole the new values are lower than the old, except when both
area and depth are large.
   (=2) In the range 1.5-3. mm of Cu H.V.T., for areas
less than 1 cm:2:, the new values are significantly lower than
the old, confirming the findings of Cohen (1955). The average
differences amount to 5 to 7 per cent, but at some depths reach 1 to
12 per cent.
   (=3) At 1. mm of Cu H.V.T. the new values are lower
than the old for all areas, the average difference being 4 to 5 per
cent.
COMPARISON WITH DATA FROM OTHER CENTRES
   In addition to the data from Cardiff covering the range of
qualities from 1. to 3. mm of Cu H.V.T. presented in the
tables, recent measurements at some qualities have been made at the
Royal Infirmary (Bradford), Western General Hospital (Edinburgh),
Lambeth Hospital (London), Christie Hospital (Manchester) and War
Memorial Hospital (Scunthorpe). These measurements have been
intercompared, revealing close agreement between the various centres,
provided allowance is made for differences occurring in the first 2 or
3 cm by matching at some arbitrary depth, say 5 cm. These
differences are partly real, arising from the use of applicators of
different design, but mainly only apparent, arising from variations in
the methods of assessing the surface dose. In view of the very small
diameter of the chamber used and its close approach to the surface it
is thought that the values tabulated represent a very close
approximation to the variation in dose near the surface.
COMPARISON WITH DATA IN SECTION 3
   The depth-dose data in this range of qualities measured by
Johns and his colleagues in Saskatchewan are presented in Section 3.
The Canadian measurements were made with open applicators of special
design (see Introduction to Section 3) and differ from the British
data in that there is no scatter component from the walls or end of
the applicator. The two sets of data have been compared after
applying the method of transformation suggested by Johns, Fedoruk,
Kornelsen, Epp and Darby (1952), making use of data for the range of
depths  to 1 cm kindly supplied privately by Miss Fedoruk.
Agreement is obtained within experimental error provided an
appropriate equivalent water thickness, which allows approximately for
the effects of both the end-plate and the applicator walls, is used in
place of the nominal thickness of the applicator end-plate. The
equivalent water thickness (for Fulfield applicators, 1/8 inch flat
Perspex end-plates) is independent of area, but varies with
H.V.T. as follows:
<TABLE>
   Since the equivalent water thickness of the end-plate alone is
approximately 3.8 mm, it is seen that the allowance which must be
made for the scatter contribution from the applicator walls is
substantial. Thus the simple correction factors for the end-plate
only, measured by Johns, Hunt and Fedoruk (1954), are insufficient for
applicators of the type considered in this section.
SURFACE BACK-SCATTER FACTORS
   These are taken from the survey values published by Greening
(1954), which were based on measurements made at 11 centres with seven
different types of X-ray generator.
SECTION 4
GAMMA RAYS: CAESIUM 137 TELETHERAPY UNITS
Reviewed by
J. E. Burns, M.Sc., A.Inst.P., Westminster Hospital,
London, S.W.1
<TABLE>
SOURCES OF DATA
   At the time the work on this section had been completed, there
were to the knowledge of the reviewer, seven caesium units which were
in clinical use, four in England and three in North America. Data
were obtained from six of these centres: Addenbrooke's Hospital
(Cambridge), Royal Marsden Hospital (London), Royal South Hants
Hospital (Southampton), Westminster Hospital (London), Ontario Cancer
Institute (Canada), and Alice Lloyd Radiation Therapy Centre
(Michigan, U.S.A.).
ENERGY OF RADIATION
   The caesium source at Michigan was manufactured at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory; all the other sources were manufactured by the
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. It is well known that one of
the main difficulties in the preparation of caesium 137 is to obtain
freedom from contamination by other radioactive materials. Thus
sources may differ in their degree of contamination, and the effective
quality of their radiation may be different. It is of importance,
therefore, to know whether the data given here, being mainly from
British sources, applies also to sources manufactured elsewhere, in
particular to American sources. Comparing the data received from the
caesium unit at Michigan, it appears that it probably does apply.
   The half-value thicknesses from the five British sources were
reasonably consistent, varying from 5.3 mm to 5.7 mm (mean 5.4
mm) in lead, from 1.6 mm to 11. mm (mean 1.8 mm) in copper,
and from 7.8 to 8. cm (mean 7.9 cm) in water. Comparing the
American source, the percentage depth doses differ from the average
(see later) by no more than ?141 1/2 per cent of the local dose, the
half-value thickness in lead is in good agreement, 5.35 mm, but the
half-value thicknesses in copper and water are rather higher, 11.25
mm and 8.35 cm respectively.
   Using the calculated attenuation coefficients of White Grodstein
(1957), the average half-value thicknesses of the British sources have
been used to calculate the effective photon energy of the radiation.
These are as follows:
<TABLE>
and can be compared with the accepted value of .66 MeV for caesium
137 15g rays.
BACK-SCATTER FACTORS
   Data were received from four centres, and a smoothed average of
values was taken. Individual values of back-scatter factors differed
from the average by not more than 1 per cent.
   In estimating the dose-rate at the maximum level from the
dose-rate in air, it should be remembered that variations of air dose
with area are at least as great as (and are additional to) the
variation of back-scatter with area. The values will of course depend
very much on the collimator system of the unit. For the only unit for
which information is available, the dose-rate in air at the normal
working S.S.D. increases by 15 per cent from a 4 x 4 cm field
to a 16 x 16 cm field; as the back-scatter factor varies by 4 1/2
per cent over the same range, the skin dose will vary by a total of 2
per cent.
PERCENTAGE DEPTH DOSES
   Owing to the fact that caesium sources are usually several
centimetres long it is necessary to define the term source-skin
distance (S.S.D.) for these units. The definition of
S.S.D. adopted for this section is the distance of the skin from
the front of the source container. Four of the six centres had
already chosen this definition for their own units. The other two
centres were using different definitions but when their values for
S.S.D. were converted to the more common definition their
percentage depth doses showed improved agreement with those from the
first four centres. On the basis of the general definition, the
S.S.D.s at which measurements were taken were as follows:
<TABLE>
   For the purpose of comparison, all percentage depth doses were
converted to 4 cm S.S.D. using the method described by Johns,
Bruce and Reid (1958) and Burns (1958) (see Appendix B); 4 cm was
chosen as being midway between the extremes, so as to minimise any
errors that the method of conversion may introduce.
# 22
<31 TEXT J16>
   Asphyxia as the most important cause for death in drowning was
still widely accepted until World War =2, when research in the United
States was initiated to see what could be done to save the lives of
pilots who had been forced to land in the sea. Swann (1951) was
chosen to conduct a large series of investigations and it is mainly
due to his work and those who have followed that the modern view of
drowning has emerged. He was able to show important differences in
the mechanism of drowning in fresh and salt water, using dogs. In
fresh water drowning large amounts of water entered the lungs and were
absorbed with great rapidity into the circulation, giving rise within
a very few minutes to rapidly fatal heart failure in ventricular
fibrillation, this the result of the grossly diluted blood entering
the heart muscle. The gross and rapid dilution of the blood in
freshwater drowning was clearly demonstrated by Swann and at only 3
minutes after submersion the blood was found to be diluted with an
equal volume of inhaled water; it is therefore not surprising that
death occurs rapidly in these circumstances.
   In sea water drowning Swann showed that water was rapidly
withdrawn from the blood into the lungs by the inhaled sea water,
concentrating the blood and giving rise to a more gradual heart
failure without the ventricular fibrillation that occurred in fresh
water drowning. The gross and rapid concentration of the blood in sea
water drowning was well demonstrated in that after only 3 minutes'
submersion the blood had lost some 4% of its water. In addition,
large amounts of the salts in sea water passed in the reverse
direction into the blood to cause further disorganization of the blood
chemicals; it is again not surprising that death occurs rapidly in
these circumstances.
   Swann also showed the <SIC> resuscitation was usually
successful with drowned dogs when heart failure had not occurred: once
heart failure and falling blood pressure had occurred survival was
most unlikely, even though irregular heart beats and respirations
might occur for some minutes afterwards. He was also able to show
that this lethal heart failure often occurred as early as 2 minutes
after complete submersion, particularly in fresh water, explaining the
higher mortality in this type of drowning.
THE MODERN VIEW
   The experiments on animals suggest that the mechanism of
drowning in humans would depend on whether it occurs in fresh or salt
water. In fresh water drowning in humans we would expect a rapid
death within a very few minutes, partly due to asphyxia, but mainly
due to sudden heart failure brought about by the explosive absorption
of large amounts of water into the circulation. In salt water
drowning in humans we would also expect a rapid death, partly due to
asphyxia and partly due to rapid concentration of the blood. In
drowning in other waters the mechanism would probably depend on
whether the saline concentration in the water was greater or less than
in the body. It should, however, be emphasized that death often
occurs within 6 minutes and almost invariably with <SIC> 1
minutes of becoming totally immersed, and that many of the cases
removed from the water whilst still alive are doomed to die within a
few minutes from the devastating changes which have already taken
place, no matter whether the water was fresh or salt. This knowledge
explains the very high mortality rate in drowning.
   There are, however, a small number of cases which are rescued
from water before large amounts of water have apparently been inhaled,
due to very rapid rescue, shock, reflex inhibition of the heart or
persistent spasm of the air passages, preventing or restricting
inhalation of water. It is in these cases that artificial respiration
would offer the greatest chance of recovery. These are presumably
cases in which there has not been time for the gross disturbance of
body fluid which has such grave effects in most cases of drowning.
But in the vast majority of cases, drowning is not a simple asphyxia
due to obstruction of the air passages and lungs by water but is a
complicated process in which violent disturbances of the body fluids
and chemicals make the situation so much worse for the individual
concerned. This is the modern view of drowning and, although much is
still not understood, it is now worth considering other important
aspects, particularly the signs and symptoms, prognosis, resuscitation
and prevention of drowning, as well as forensic problems relevant to
dead bodies removed from water.
SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS
   Drowning is rarely witnessed but the ordinary course of events
is apparently as follows. The swimmer remains on the surface until he
is exhausted and then the course in swimmers and non-swimmers is
similar. The drowning person sinks and rises a number of times in the
water and inhales a little water into the air passages, but this is
prevented from entering his lungs by coughing and glottic spasm.
(Rarely he may die at this stage from shock, reflex inhibition of the
heart, from pre-existing heart disease or from almost pure asphyxia
due to unrelenting glottic spasm). He continues to rise and sink in
the water, shouts for help, coughs and chokes, but does not inhale
much water into his lungs. With increasing asphyxia due to glottic
spasm he loses consciousness and cough reflex, sinks and inhales large
amounts of water. It is in this stage that the lethal exchanges of
water occur. Oxygen reserves become severely depleted within 6
minutes and within 1 minutes heart and respiration almost invariably
cease. Death occurs, the body sinks and remains submerged until
putrefaction and gas formation bring it to the surface some days
later.
   The symptoms of drowning vary from one case to another, from
sensations of tranquillity to utmost distress. The following two
cases are quoted by Polson (1955). In the first case (originally
reported by Cullen, 1894) the sensations of a woman rescued from
drowning at sea are particularly interesting. Self-preservation was
dominant in her mind at first and there was great distress as she saw
others swimming away from her. She experienced only acute suffering
as described in her own words: "I sank and gasped involuntarily,
then all other senses were overpowered by the agonizing scorching pain
which followed the rush of salt water into my lungs. From that moment
I was conscious only of that burning suffocation and the intense
desire that others might know what had become of me. Except for that
one thought my brain was dulled". She complained of roaring in her
ears and redness before her eyes. She was unconscious when rescued by
her husband within 3 minutes of the time she first became submerged.
But the experience of Admiral Beaufort, also quoted by Polson (1955),
who was partially drowned when a boy and rescued within 2 minutes,
were those of painless tranquillity and thoughts of his previous life.
In another case, a boy of 15 years was accidentally submerged in the
River Derwent (News Chronicle, August, 196) for an uncertain
period. He was rescued and recovered following artificial
respiration. Of his experiences he stated: "I was sure I was dead,
I just remember sinking. Whilst under the water I had a terrible
dream that I was going on a train to Heaven. I never expected to wake
up again." It is, however, unlikely in any of these three cases who
lived to tell the tale that substantial amounts of water had been
inhaled.
PROGNOSIS AND RESUSCITATION
   The prospect of survival following drowning must, of course,
depend on many factors- the fitness of the subject, the duration of
immersion and the amount of water inhaled being most important. The
person with heart disease may die from sudden shock the moment he
falls into cold water and it is not unusual for such subjects to be
found dead in their own warm domestic baths, there being no question
of drowning. In fit persons the prognosis depends on the length of
asphyxia and the amount of water inhaled. In general, those who have
been submerged a short time stand a better chance of survival in that
oxygen reserves may not have been completely exhausted and spasm or
shock may have prevented or restricted the inhalation of water into
the lungs. But when large amounts of water have been inhaled it is
most unlikely that recovery will occur, although the heart may
continue to beat ineffectually for several minutes after rescue. It
should be stressed again that the time required to inhale these lethal
amounts of fluid is very short indeed, especially in fresh water
drowning where explosive absorption of water from the lungs into the
circulation may cause fatal ventricular fibrillation in as little as 2
minutes after commencing to breathe water. The course of events in
sea water drowning is almost as rapid and thus the time available for
rescue and resuscitation is pitifully short in those who have passed
beyond the phase of glottic spasm into the second phase in which
substantial amounts of water are inhaled.
   The prospect of recovery for those who have probably inhaled only
a little water is better but there is here no time for delay in
attempting resuscitation for irrecoverable changes can occur in a few
moments. There is no time to examine the victim, no time to loosen
clothing or clear the airway- these matters must be left until
artificial respiration by any recommended method has been commenced.
In theory artificial respiration should be continued in all cases
until regular spontaneous breathing has occurred or death is certain.
The question asked most often is: "How long should artificial
respiration be continued in the absence of signs of recovery?"
Answers vary greatly but most would agree that 15 minutes' artificial
respiration should be given before an examination is made and this
process repeated for at least 1 hour before attempts are finally
abandoned (Donald, 1955).
   It is occasionally stated that successful resuscitation may take
place when the drowned individual has been submerged for prolonged
periods. Bates in 1938, reporting six cases of recovery from alleged
drowning with submersion up to 35 minutes, stressed the need for
artificial respiration to be continued until the body had cooled
substantially or the early signs of 6rigor mortis were present.
Present knowledge of the mechanism of drowning throws grave doubt on
the accuracy of such prolonged periods of submersion with subsequent
survival. Taylor (1956) regards recorded cases of recovery after
submersion for more than 7 or 8 minutes as wholly unreliable unless
this has been intermittent or incomplete as might occur in the air
pockets of upturned boats. It is theoretically possible that
submersion in extremely cold water might on rare occasions chill the
body so rapidly that vital organs are protected from the effects of
lack of oxygen (as is now practised surgically), allowing survival
after periods of submersion which would ordinarily be lethal (Donald,
1955). The possibility that life had been preserved by some rare
chance would indicate the need for at least some attempt at
resuscitation in all bodies freshly recovered from water, as is the
current practice.
   When recovery occurs following drowning it is usually ultimately
complete, without evidence of significant residual damage to the lungs
(Rushton, 196), heart or brain, though a period of observation and
treatment will be required for some days to guard against
complications. The individual who has survived fresh water drowning
may show evidence of severe destruction of red blood cells due to
excessive absorption of water, with resulting temporary kidney damage
and staining of the urine by red blood pigment, as in Rath's case
(1954) quoted by Bowden (1957). There may be cardiac failure due to
alteration in the blood volume brought about by the absorption or
withdrawal of fluid from the circulation and gross congestion and
oedema of the lungs may occur within a few hours and cause death when
recovery was expected. Pneumonia may also occur early due to the
inhalation of substantial quantities of dirty and infected water.
# 21
<311 TEXT J17>
Haemophilia Complicated by an Acquired Circulating Anti-Coagulant:
A Report of Three Cases
MICHAEL HALL
The Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford
   A CIRCULATING anticoagulant may arise in patients with
haemophilia and Christmas disease or may appear sporadically in normal
people (Lewis, Ferguson and Arends, 1956; Verstraete and
Vandenbroucke, 1956; Hougie, 1955; Nilsson, Skanse and Eydell, 1958).
The anticoagulant has been studied by various workers, who suggest
that it prevents the reaction between antihaemophilic globulin
(AHG) and Christmas factor by destroying AHG (Hougie and
Fearnley, 1954; Bersagel and Hougie 1956: Biggs and Bidwell, 1959).
The presence of an anticoagulant may, therefore, account for the
failure of some patients to respond to treatment with
AHG-containing material. Recognition of the presence of an
anticoagulant, even in very small amounts, is therefore important and
a method for its detection and assay has recently been described
(Biggs and Bidwell, 1959). Since the management of these patients may
be difficult three cases are described.
   The laboratory methods used for the haematological investigations
were those of Biggs and Macfarlane (1957), with the exception of the
inhibitor assay which was by the method of Biggs and Bidwell (1959).
The human AHG was prepared and supplied by the Lister
Institute of Sterile Products.
CASE REPORTS
CASE 1
   This patient (R. I. No. 847), aged 23 years was admitted
on May 23rd, 1958. He had a family history of haemophilia, one
younger brother being affected. He was first recognized as
haemophilic at the age of 2 years when he bled profusely following
circumcision. Since then he had been admitted to hospital on many
occasions with various bleeding episodes, mainly haemarthroses and
haematomata. As a result of the former, he had been admitted to the
Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in September 1956, with a flexion
contracture of the right hip, but this had responded well to
treatment. On the present occasion he was admitted to the Nuffield
Orthopaedic Centre for a similar reason, but within a day or two of
admission developed severe right-sided abdominal pain which was
associated with tenderness, pyrexia and vomiting. Since the diagnosis
of acute appendicitis was raised, he was transferred to the Radcliffe
Infirmary.
   On examination he looked pale and ill, and his right knee and hip
were flexed. There were guarding and tenderness in the right iliac
fossa and right groin, with tenderness high on the right posterior
rectal wall. There was anaesthesia in the distribution of the right
femoral nerve. Blood pressure was 115/7. The haemoglobin was 11.4
g. per 1 ml.
   A diagnosis of a right-sided retroperitoneal haematoma was made
and he was treated with analgesics, transfusions of fresh plasma and
blood. In spite of this, bleeding continued and the haemoglobin
dropped to 7.7 g. per 1 ml. His general condition was weaker
and he appeared jaundiced.
   The lack of response to the transfusion treatment was unusual and
some routine laboratory tests, in which a sample of the patient's
blood had been used as a control, suggested that an inhibitor of
AHG was present. He was then treated with 22 plasma
equivalents of human AHG intravenously. This produced a
characteristic and severe reaction, but failed to halt the bleeding
process and he developed a haematoma of the upper chest wall and right
side of the neck. The following day he complained of dysphagia and
difficulty in breathing, and a chest X-ray showed evidence of
mediastinal extension of this haematoma. Haematological investigation
had by this time shown the presence of an inhibitor, the level being
33-5 units per ml. (1 unit of inhibitor is the amount which will
destroy 75 per cent of added AHG in 1 hour (Biggs and Bidwell,
1959)). With this level of inhibitor no amount of
AHG-containing material, either animal or human, was likely to
be effective in halting the bleeding process. The only possible way
of reducing the level of the inhibitor seemed to be by exchange
transfusion. Therefore, an exchange transfusion equivalent to twice
the blood volume was performed. The inhibitor level fell to 5.9 units
per ml. and the clotting time to 23-3 minutes. To take advantage
of the improved circumstances, two doses of animal AHG,
equivalent to 32 ml. and 33 ml. of fresh plasma were given.
The effect was to reduce the clotting time to 6 3/4 minutes and the
inhibitor level to 5. units per ml., and a trace of AHG was
measurable. The following day two further doses of animal AHG,
equivalent to 3 ml. and 8 ml. of fresh plasma, were given.
The clotting time was reduced from 6 minutes to 15 minutes and the
inhibitor level to 3.9 units. No plasma AHG level was,
however, obtained.
   There was a marked improvement in general condition following the
exchange transfusion, and the jaundice and haematomata disappeared.
Dysphagia disappeared after about 24 hours. Pain in the abdomen and
groin lessened and he gradually became able to straighten his leg. A
mild pyrexia developed after the exchange transfusion and there were
signs of pneumonia in the right side of the chest. He was treated
with tetracycline, 5 mg. 6-hourly, and improved. Hydrocortisone
at a daily dose of 2 mg. was given in the hope of preventing
further formation of anticoagulant. He was able to get up and sit in
a chair. The only troublesome complication was persistent bleeding
from the 'cut down' site through which the cannula had been
inserted. This necessitated the transfusion of 2 pints of blood, but
was eventually stopped by repeated packing of the wound with Calgitex
ribbon gauze soaked in Russell's viper venom. The cannula was left
6in situ for several days following the exchange in case of
emergency, but was finally removed on June 12th, when nearly all
bleeding had stopped. Further intermittent oozing continued for 1
days after this and another seven pints of blood were transfused.
   On the night of June 14th his temperature rose abruptly and in
the next 72 hours reached 14@ F. No obvious cause was discernible
for this, though he had a tender haematoma on the upper outer aspect
of the left forearm which had resulted from a venepuncture. Blood
cultures remained sterile: a swab taken from the 'cut down' site in
the right arm grew a penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
but this wound did not appear infected. The pyrexia was, therefore,
ascribed to the blood transfusions and absorption of blood. However,
the administration of hydrocortisone was discontinued, and penicillin
was given at a dose of 125 mg. t.d.s. and sulphamethoxypyridazine
at .5 g. daily. The swinging pyrexia continued, the haematoma
increased, brawny oedema developed, and there was oedema of the hand;
by June 28th the haematoma was obviously infected and was pointing
over the lateral condyle of the humerus. 1 ml. of bloodstained
pus was aspirated and the abcess was therefore incised. Staph.
aureus resistant to penicillin, aureomycin and tetracycline was
cultured from the pus. Management was now directed to the treatment
of the staphylococcal infection, and of the bleeding diathesis. As
can be seen from Fig. 1, various antibiotics were given in full
dosage
<FIGURE>
and between July 13th and 26th the administration of chloramphenicol,
5 mg. 6-hourly, and intravenous Furadantin, 3 ml. per litre of
normal saline b.d., appeared to have controlled the infection. But
relapse ensued on July 27th and a blood culture grew Staph.
aureus resistant to penicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin, but
still sensitive to Furadantin and chloramphenicol. A similar organism
was also grown from the pus from the left elbow. The patient was now
desperately ill. Intravenous penicillin was given at a dose of 12
million units per 1 ml. of normal saline 6-hourly with Benemid,
.5 g. 6-hourly by mouth. Penicillin blood levels as high as 32
units per ml. were obtained; there was no dramatic fall in
temperature but the general condition and appetite improved. By
August 18th he was so much better that the administration of all
antibiotics was discontinued. The haematoma of the left forearm
produced two sloughing discharging areas, one posteriorly and one
anteriorly, both of which had superabundant granulations protruding
from them. These shrank considerably and eventually healed (Fig 2).
   During this period continual blood loss occurred from the incised
abscess and from the anterior slough. Treatment was difficult because
there were few veins into which needles or metal cannulae could be
inserted. To allow time for veins to recanalize, polyethylene
cannulae had to be inserted through larger veins into the femoral,
subclavian and the superior caval veins. The patient bled profusely
from these 'cut down' sites and it was not possible to control
bleeding by pressure, Stypven or Calgitex gauze while the cannulae
were still 6in situ. These procedures, though necessary, only
aggravated the transfusion problem and a large volume of blood had to
be transfused (Fig. 1).
   By this time the patient was debilitated, but felt much better,
and was able to take a 3 calorie diet. His pyrexia settled after 4
weeks, when a haematoma of the anterior abdominal wall developed and
he complained of vomiting and of pain in the left groin. The
haemoglobin fell and a further blood transfusion was given. In the
middle of September melaena began and became more frequent and more
fluid. Further deterioration ensued. A large haematoma appeared in
the left groin and thigh and became grossly infected. By October 8th
large fluid stools containing almost pure blood were passed. In spite
of further blood transfusions he died in coma on October 9th. During
admission he received 27 pints of blood.
Necropsy report (R.I.P.M. No. 771/58. Dr. W. C. D.
Richards)
   At 6post-mortem examination a large infected cystic haematoma
was found in the retroperitoneal tissues on the right side of the
abdomen. This involved the psoas, quadratus lumborum and iliacus
muscles. A similar haematoma on the left side had ruptured into the
colon. The haematomata contained turbid brown fluid and masses of
brown altered blood. On the left side the iliac haematoma
communicated with a large infected haematoma of the thigh. Both
ureters were surrounded by the fibrous tissue forming the anterior
wall of the abdominal haematomata, the pelves of the kidneys being
slightly dilated. The liver (32 g.) and spleen (85 g.) were
both enlarged. Microscopically the liver, spleen and iliac lymph
nodes showed siderosis and there was amyloidosis of the spleen and
liver. The liver was fatty. Masses of Gram-positive cocci were
present in the blood clot filling the haematomata. Inflammatory
granulation tissue lined the inner surface of the haematomata.
CASE 2
   This patient (R. I. No. 425), aged 43 years, was
admitted on May 5th, 1958, for weight reduction prior to extensive
dental extractions. His haemophilia had been recognized for many
years and numerous haemorrhagic episodes of variable severity and
duration had occurred, many necessitating hospital admission. A
bruising tendency had been noticed 14 days after birth and he had
suffered prolonged haemorrhage after biting his tongue at the age of 2
years. There was a family history of obesity, but not of haemophilia.
   On examination he was obese, weighing 16 st. 9 1/2 lb. There
was evidence of old haemarthroses involving both knees, both elbows,
the right ankle and left shoulder. There was severe dental caries of
both upper and lower teeth and it was decided that root remnants would
have to be extracted. An 8 Calorie diet was begun and Dexedrine
spansules mg. 15 mane, Saluric, .5 g. b.d. and potassium
chloride, 1 g. twice daily were prescribed. His weight dropped to
15 st. 6 lb. At first, a few superficial bruises were the only
haemorrhagic manifestations. Active physiotherapy to the knee was
given with considerable improvement. After about 6 weeks several deep
painful haematomata developed at various sites.
   On July 17th 1 roots and carious teeth were extracted from the
upper jaw under general anaesthesia. His subsequent progress is
summarized in Fig 3. Before operation a polyethylene cannula was
inserted into a forearm vein to a distance of 33 inches so that the
tip should lie in a major vessel. (Venography later showed that the
tip of the catheter was in the right ventricle; the catheter was,
therefore, withdrawn until the tip lay in the superior vena cava.)
# 216
<312 TEXT J18>
Statisticians and electrical engineers are familiar with an
analogous uncertainty between time and frequency in the analysis of
time-series, and this obviously suggests the query: can a frequency
15n be associated with an energy E? Physicists appeal to the
relation E = h15n, where h is Planck's constant, but quite
apart from the qualms expressed by Schro"dinger (1958) about this
relation, it is at least arguable that the frequency 15n is as
fundamental in it as the energy E. I can therefore sympathize
with (though I am sceptical of) the proposals by Bohm and de Broglie
for a return to the interpretation of 15ps in terms of real
(deterministic) waves; I do not think these proposals will be rebutted
until the statistical approach has been put on a more rational basis.
Interesting attempts have been made by various writers, but none of
these attempts so far has, to my knowledge, been wholly successful or
very useful technically.
   For example, Lande?2 keeps to a particle formulation, whereas it
is the particle, and its associated energy E, which seem to be
becoming the nebulous concepts. Let me refer again to time-series
theory, which tells us that the quantization of a frequency 15n
arises automatically for circularly-defined series- for, if you will
allow me to call it this, periodic 'time' (more precisely in a
physical context, for the angle variables which appear in the dynamics
of bound systems). A probabilistic approach via random fields
thus has the more promising start of including naturally two of the
features of quantum phenomena which were once regarded as most
paradoxical and empirical- the Uncertainty Principle and
quantization. This switch to fields is of course not new; the real
professionals in this subject have been immersed in fields for quite a
while. However, I am not sure that what probabilists and what
physicists mean here by fields are quite synonymous, and in any
case it is the old probabilistic interpretation in terms of particles
that we lay public still get fobbed off with. It would seem to me
useful at this stage to make quite clear to us where, if anywhere, the
particle aspect is unequivocal- certainly discreteness and
discontinuity are not very relevant.
   Here I must leave this fascinating problem of probability in
quantum mechanics, as I would like to turn to its function in the
theory of information.
(3) The concept of information
   Information theory as technically defined nowadays refers to a
theory first developed in detail in connection with electrical
communication theory by C. Shannon and others, but recognized from
the beginning as having wider implications as a conceptual tool. From
its origin it was probably most familiar at first to electrical
engineers, but its more general and its essentially statistical
content made it a natural adjunct to the parts of probability theory
hitherto studied by the statistician. This is recognized, for
example, in an advertisement for a mathematical statistician from
which I quote:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Applicants should possess a degree in statistics or mathematics,
and should if possible be able to show evidence of an interest in some
specialized aspect of the subject such as, for example, decision
theory, information theory or stochastic processes.
<END QUOTE>
   It has not, I think, been recognized sufficiently in some of the
recent conferences on information theory, to which mathematical
statisticians 6per se have not always been invited.
   The close connection of the information concept with probability
is emphasized by its technical definition in relation to an
6ensemble or population, and indeed, it may usefully be defined
(cf. Good (195), Barnard (1951)) as - log p (a simple and
direct measure of uncertainty which is reduced when the event with
probability p has occurred), although the more orthodox definition
is the 'average information' - 15Sp log p, averaged
over the various possibilities or states that may occur. It is also
possible to extend this definition to partial or relative information,
in relation to a change of 6ensembles or distributions from one
to another. With this extended definition of - log p/p?7,
where p?7 relates to the new 6ensemble, the information can be
positive or negative, and as the logarithm of a probability ratio will
look familiar to statisticians, although it should be stressed that
the probabilities refer to fully specified distributions, and the
likelihood ratio of the statistician (made use of so extensively by
Neyman and E. S. Pearson) only enters if the probabilities p
and p?7 are interpreted as dependent on different hypotheses
H and H?7. For example, if p?7 is near p, differing
only in regard to a single unknown parameter 15th, then
<FORMULA>
   where I(15th) is R. A. Fisher's information function,
under conditions for which this function exists.
   Formally, the concept of information in Shannon's sense can be
employed more directly for inferring the value of 15th. To take the
simplest case shorn of inessentials, if we make use Bayes's theorem to
infer the value of a parameter 15th;r; which can take one
of only k discrete values, then our prior probability distribution
about 15th;r; will be modified by our data to a posterior
probability distribution. If we measure the uncertainty in each such
distribution by - 15Sp log p, we could in general expect
the uncertainty to be reduced, but we can easily think of an example
where the data would contradict our 6a priori notions and make
us less certain than before. This seems to me to stress the
subjective or personal element in prior probabilities used in this
way, and my own view is that the only way to eliminate this element
would be deliberately to employ a convention that prior
distributions are to be maximized with respect to uncertainty. In the
present example this would imply assuming a uniform prior distribution
for 15th;r;, and ensure that information was always gained
from a sample of data; it is somewhat reminiscent of arguments used by
Jeffreys in recent years for standardizing prior distributions, but I
think it important to realize that such conventions weaken any claim
that these methods are the only rational ones possible.
   Whether or not the information concept in this sense finds any
permanent place in statistical inference, there is no doubts <SIC>
of its potential value in two very important scientific fields,
biology and physics. This claim in respect to biology is exemplified
by the Symposium on Information Theory in Biology held in Tennessee in
1956; and while we must be careful not to confuse the general function
of new concepts in stimulating further research with the particular
one of making a particular branch or aspect of a science more precise
and unified, the use of the information concept in discussing
capacities of nerve fibres transmitting messages to the brain, or
coding genetic information for realization in the developed organism,
should be sufficient demonstration of its quantitative value. As
another illustration of the trend to more explicit and precise uses of
the information concept in biology, we may consider the familiar
saying that life has evolved to a high degree of organization, that in
contrast to the ultimate degradation of dead matter, living organisms
function by reducing uncertainty, that the significant feature of
their relation with their environment is not their absorption of
energy (vital of course as this is), but their absorption of negative
entropy. An attempt to measure the rate of accumulation of genetic
information in evolution due to natural selection has recently been
made by Kimura (1961), who points out that a statement by R. A.
Fisher that 'natural selection is a mechanism for generating an
exceedingly high degree of improbability' indicates how the increase
in genetic information may be quantitatively measured. While his
estimate is still to be regarded as provisional in character, it is
interesting that Kimura arrives at an amount, accumulated in the last
5 million years up to man, of the order of 1:8: 'bits',
compared with something of the order of 1:1: bits estimated as
available in the diploid human chromosome set. He suggests that part
of the difference, in so far as it is real, should be put down to some
redundancy in the genetic coding mechanism.
   With regard to physics, I have already mentioned 'negative
entropy' as a synonym for information, and this is in fact the link.
Again we have the danger of imprecise analysis, and the occurrence of
a similar probabilistic formula for information and physical entropy
does not by itself justify any identification of these concepts.
Nevertheless, physical entropy is a statistical measure of
disorganization or uncertainty, and information in this context a
reduction of uncertainty, so that the possibility of the link is
evident enough. To my mind one of the most convincing demonstrations
for the need of this link lies in the resolution of the paradox of
Maxwell's demon, who circumvented the Second Law of Thermodynamics and
the inevitable increase in entropy by letting only fast molecules move
from one gas chamber to another through a trap-door.
   It has been pointed out by Rosenfeld (1955) that Clausius in 1879
went some way to explaining the paradox by realizing that the demon
was hardly human in being able to discern individual atomic processes,
but logically the paradox remains unless we grant that such
discernment, while in principle feasible, at the same time creates
further uncertainty or entropy at least equal (on the average) to the
information gained. That this is so emerges from a detailed
discussion of the problem by various writers such as Szilard, Gabor,
and Brillouin (as described in Brillouin's book).
(4) The ro?5le of time
   I might have noted in my remarks on quantum theory that,
whether or not time is sometimes cyclic, it appears in that theory in
a geometrical ro?5le, reminiscent of time in special relativity, and
not in any way synonymous with our idea of time as implying evolution
and irreversible change. It is usually suggested that this latter
ro?5le must be related to the increase of physical entropy, but when
we remember that entropy is defined statistically in terms of
uncertainty we realize not only that evolutionary time itself then
becomes statistical, but that there are a host of further points to be
sorted out.
   Let me try to list these:
   (a) In the early days of statistical mechanics, at the end of
the last century, Maxwell's paradox was not the only one raised. Two
others were Loschmidt's reversibility paradox, in which the
reversibility of microscopic processes appeared to contradict the
Second Law, and Zermelo's recurrence paradox, in which the cyclical
behaviour of finite dynamic systems again contravened the Second Law.
It should be emphasized that, while these paradoxes were formulated
in terms of deterministic dynamics, they were not immediately
dissipated by the advent either of quantum theory or of the idea of
statistical processes. For I have just reminded you that time in
quantum mechanics is geometrical and reversible; and stationary
statistical processes based on microscopic reversible processes are
themselves still reversible and recurrent.
   The explanations of the paradoxes are based, in the first place,
on the difference between absolute and conditional probabilities, and
in the second, on the theory of recurrence times. The apparent
irreversibility of a system is due to its being started from an
initial state a long way removed from the more typical states in
equilibrium and the apparent non-recurrence of such a state to the
inordinately long recurrence time needed before such a state will
return.
   (b) So far so good- but this conclusion applies to a system
of reasonable size. We conclude that microscopic phenomena have no
intrinsic time-direction, at least if this can only be defined in
relation to internal entropy increase (cf. Bartlett, 1956). This is
consistent with theoretical formulations in recent years of sub-atomic
phenomena involving time-reversals.
   (c) We have also to notice that while the entropy of our
given system will increase with external or given time, this relation
is not reciprocal, for, if we first choose our time, a rare state in
our stationary process will just as likely be being approached as
being departed from.
# 25
<313 TEXT J19>
The proportions between the mean and these z values are .4732
and .2734 respectively. The proportion between z;1; and
z;2; is therefore .4732 - .2734 = .1998. This is the same
as the proportion between z;1; = - 1.93 and z;2; = -
.75, since the curve is symmetrical.
   4.16 As well as occurring in the equation of the normal and
other curves, the mean and variance parameters have another valuable
property. This is the fact that they are additive. If we have two
populations, with means 15m;1; and 15m;2;, and we add
the variate values of these populations in pairs, we find that the
mean of the sum (15m;1+2;) is the sum of the means
(15m;1; + 15m;2;) or
<FORMULA>
   The mean difference between pairs of population values is the
difference of the means of the separate populations, i.e.
<FORMULA>
   These simple properties are not, in general, possessed by
medians, modes, or other position parameters.
   4.17 A similar property exists for variances, but in this
case we must take account of the correlation between the two sets of
data which are to be added or subtracted. The extent of correlation
is expressed by the correlation coefficient 15r (Greek letter 6rho,
pronounced "roe"). This coefficient is positive when high values
of one variate are paired with high values of the other, and similarly
for low values; it is negative when high values of one variate are
paired with low values of the other, and it is zero when there is no
systematic linear relationship between the variates. The coefficient
15r can take all fractional values between + 1. and - 1. (for
further discussion of 15r see Chapter 9, particularly 9.4). We
may now state that the variance of a sum (15s:2:;1+2;) is
<FORMULA>
   A similar property holds for the variance of the differences
between two correlated populations given as
<FORMULA>
   If it happens that our two populations are uncorrelated (15r =
), then the last terms in equations 4.1 and 4.11 vanish (i.e.
215rs;1;15s;2; = ) and the sum or difference of the
variates has a variance equal to the sum of the separate variances,
or,
<FORMULA>
   These additive properties are not in general possessed by the
other measures of dispersion that have been discussed.
   4.18 The data already used in Table 4.A are written out in
full in Table 4.C, which illustrates how the above five formulae work.
Here, the individual values of X;1; and X;2; are put opposite
one another so that 15r = 3/4. The values of X;3; and X;4; are
put together so that 15r = . The actual means and variances of the
sums and differences of X;1; with X;2; and X;3; with X;4;,
may be compared with the results of using the above formulae.
<FORMULA>
   These results agree with those calculated in Table 4.C. The
reader should notice that in this table,
<FORMULA>.
   4.19 Measuring Scales and Parameters. All the parameters we
have discussed may be justifiably used with measurements on a ratio or
interval scale. Nominal scales, by definition, do not justify the
calculation of any position or dispersion parameters, since in such
scales there is no dimension or singleness of direction involved. In
nominal scales, events are numbered to show they are the same or
different from other events, i.e. the numbers reflect
qualitative, not quantitative characteristics in the data. An ordinal
scale does reflect quantitative features of the material measured,
i.e. a dimension or singleness of direction, but it does so
by inconstant units of unknown size. The numbers which constitute an
ordinal scale may vary by fixed and known amounts (such as in
ranking), but this in no way implies that the objects measured by
these numbers also change by fixed amounts. The lack
<TABLE>
of isomorphism between number intervals and object intervals in
ordinal scales of all types, makes the addition and subtraction of
ordinal measurements illegitimate. Addition and subtraction of
numbers signifies an imaginary movement over certain intervals. If
these numerical intervals do not correspond to object intervals,
addition or subtraction of the numbers may lead to false conclusions
about the objects they are supposed to represent. Since addition and
subtraction of ordinal measurements are not legitimate, the
calculation of means is not justified, and the use of medians, which
do not require the addition of X values, is more permissible.
   4.2 An illustration of the type of error which means of
ordinal scales may engender, will clarify the above discussion and
bring to light some further relevant
<TABLE>
considerations. Imagine a set of objects A, B, C,... which differ
from one another by equal amounts of some variable. Let the "true"
interval scale, measuring these objects, be represented by the italic
numbers 1, 2, 3,... If all knowledge of the interval sizes is
denied us, we may construct a standard ordinal scale, which may be
represented by normal numbers, 1, 2, 3,... The relation between the
"true" and the ordinal numbers might be-
<TABLE>
   Relative to the interval scale, this ordinal scale is stretched
at B, F, H, I, J, M, and N, and compressed between O and P. If we
measure the objects ACK and CDE on our ordinal scale, the means of
these two groups of objects are each equal to 3, i.e. the
mean object is D for both sets. Yet the positions of the two sets of
objects are different when measured on the "true" interval scale,
which yields means of 5 and 4 respectively, i.e.
objects E and D. The point being made here is not that the
numerical values of the means differ from one scale to another, but
that the two scales yield different conclusions about the similarity
between the two groups of three objects. The mean Centigrade
temperature of a set of objects will be numerically different from the
mean Fahrenheit temperature, yet both means will refer to the same
object, because these scales are interval scales. The ordinal scale
means of objects DEO and AGP are 5 and 6, while the interval scale
means agree at the value 8. This illustrates the error converse
to that already given, the ordinal scale producing a difference where
none exists.
   4.21 Means and Medians. The medians of the ordinal
measurements of the first two groups given above are 2(ACK) and
3(CDE). This observation shows that means and medians do not
necessarily agree in the conclusions they yield. The interval scale
means show that CDE sits to the left of ACK, ordinal scale means make
both groups equal in position, and now, ordinal scale medians place
CDE to the right of ACK. Which of these conclusions is correct?
The truth is that the first and last are both correct, though they
disagree! This apparent paradox is resolved when we note that means
refer to the interval properties of objects and medians to their
ordinal properties. If only order is known, medians will yield
conclusions which are correct so far as order is concerned. If
intervals are known, these supersede simple order, and means will
yield conclusions which are correct relative to this improved
knowledge. Note that the medians of both the interval and ordinal
measurements of ACK and CDE agree in selecting objects C and D. We
may say that a mean is a strong parameter which requires known
intervals and if applied to a weak scale (ordinal) may yield false
conclusions. A median is a weak parameter and if applied to a
strong scale (interval or ratio) will yield a result comparable to
that obtainable from any weak equivalent of this scale. Finally, we
should note that the numerical size of a difference between means of
interval or ratio scale data is an indication of the extent to
which the data differ in position, but the numerical size of a
difference between medians of any data is not an indication of the
extent of difference.
   4.22 Variances and Semi-interquartile Ranges. The argument
against ordinal scale means can be extended to the use of variances on
ordinal scale data. Is there any dispersion parameter which may be
legitimately used on ordinal measurements? The obvious candidate for
this role is the semi-interquartile range, but although this is a
parameter concerned chiefly with order, it is unsatisfactory. The
semi-interquartile ranges of two sets of ordinal results might show
them to be similar (or different) in dispersion, but the use of some
other order parameter (e.g. half the distance between the top
tenth and the bottom tenth of the data) might show them to be
different (or similar), and we have no reason for choosing one kind of
order parameter rather than another. We shall not pursue this
argument further, except to say that dispersion is almost synonymous
with distance and the distance between objects is something about
which ordinal scales tell us very little. To seek a dispersion
parameter for ordinal scale data is to ask from the scale more than it
is able to tell us.
   4.23 A Mechanical Analogy. We may imagine a variate X to be
represented by a horizontal uniform rod of
<DIAGRAM>
negligible mass which is marked off in the units of X. Each
individual in the population can be represented by a small weight. We
can now attach these weights to the uniform rod at the points which
represent their variate value. The resulting assembly will resemble a
histogram turned upside down. An illustration is given in Fig. 4.A.
In this illustration, each individual f is represented by a
weight hung from its value of X. If we try to find that point on the
rod which will balance the whole assembly, we discover it as 15m. In
other words, the mean of a distribution is its centre of gravity.
When the apparatus is hung from its centre of gravity, we may give
one end of it a little push. This will set it spinning or rotating
about the point of suspension. The amount of spinning it does depends
on how spread out the weights are along the rod. If the weights are
clustered closely around the centre of gravity, it will be highly
stable and swing very little. If they are spread out along the length
of the rod, it will be unstable and swing a great deal. The stability
of the apparatus is given by 15s:2:. In other words, the
variance of a distribution is its moment of inertia.
   4.24 Short Cuts in Calculating. We have already learned that
frequency distributions provide easier arithmetic than a set of
disorganised measurements (4.5). There are techniques which make
calculation still less laborious, and these may well be discussed
here. In calculating the mean of a set of data, we must add all the
values of the variate and divide the total so obtained by N. When the
variate values are large numbers (such as age in months ranging from
12 to 145 months), addition is laborious and, consequently, liable to
error. A short cut which reduces the size of the values to be added
is to accept a central value arbitrarily (A) before we begin the
calculation and write all variate values (X) as deviations (x?7)
from this. The mean of the data can then be found from
<FORMULA>
   This formula derives from the fact that the sum of the deviations
of a set of numbers from their mean (15Sx) is zero (4.8).
It follows that if 15Sfx?7 =  then A = 15m, and we have
chosen the mean as our central value by accident. If 15Sfx?7
is positive, then the A chosen must have been smaller than 15m. If
15Sfx?7 is negative, then the A chosen was larger than 15m.
   4.25 The major difficulty encountered in calculating the
variance or standard deviation of data, is that if 15m is, say,
74.98, then all deviations from this value must involve two places of
decimals. Squaring numbers containing two places of decimals is a
tedious matter. This difficulty can be circumvented by using the
deviations from A mentioned above. The formula for the variance then
becomes-
<FORMULA>
   and the standard deviation is
<FORMULA>
   The reason we subtract the correction term
<FORMULA> is that the sum of squares of deviations from a mean, is
smaller than squares about any other point.
# 228
<314 TEXT J2>
Peierls (7) has gone into details, but his treatment, he
admits, is non-rigorous. As Dolph (8) points out, the promised
justification of this has never appeared. Schwartz (9), in a very
important and powerful paper, treats the Sturm-Liouville case (and
also certain singular cases), but only as a special case of a long and
complicated function-theoretic argument. Keldysh (1) has also
given a linear-operator approach to the problem.
   Altogether, there does seem a case for a direct justification of
Peierls's work that does not depend on function-theoretic arguments,
and this is particularly so when it appears that, without any great
complication, it is possible at the same time to make a contribution
to the singular case in which the range of x remains finite but
q(x) becomes discontinuous at one or other or both of the
end-points. This contribution does not seem to be covered by the
existing function-theoretic arguments.
   The problem we shall consider is the following. We take the
equation
<FORMULA>
   where q(r) may be complex but is continuous except at r
= , and where
<FORMULA> exists. We suppose that l is a positive integer or
zero. The reader will readily verify that the analysis is not
restricted to those values of l, but this is the case of practical
importance. (The equation is the well-known equation that arises when
a three-dimensional equation with spherical symmetry is solved by the
method of separation of variables.)
   The boundary conditions we impose are (1.3), for some b  ,
together with the requirement that y(x) be
L:2:(,b). This, as the analysis shows, is sufficient to
define an eigenvalue problem, except in the case l = , when we
have to impose a further condition of the type (1.2) at a = .
Despite this, the case l =  is similar enough to the case l
 , so that we can safely restrict ourselves to l  . The
case l = , with q(r) continuous, is just the
Sturm-Liouville case, which therefore comes out as a particular case
of the argument.
   We shall examine the eigenfunctions associated with this
eigenvalue problem. As usual, an eigenfunction is a non-trivial
solution of the equation (1.4) which satisfies the boundary
conditions. In the self-adjoint case, the set of eigenfunctions would
be complete, i.e. any reasonable function could be expanded in a
series of them. In the non-self-adjoint case, we shall see that in
general this no longer holds, but that the set of eigenfunctions can
be made complete by adding to it certain other functions which, though
not eigenfunctions, are related to them. (Their precise form will be
found in ?135.) I shall refer to these additional functions as
adjoint functions.
   The problem can be extended to the case in which r = b is
also a discontinuity of q(r), of the same type as at r =
. It will not be necessary to discuss in detail this extension, but
it will be clear that the same general conclusions hold on the
completeness of the set of eigenfunctions and adjoint functions.
   I have limited myself to proving completeness, but, at least in
certain cases, much more can be proved. For example, in the
Sturm-Liouville case, a very straightforward adaptation of (1)
<Ch. =1> shows that not only is the set of eigenfunctions and
adjoint functions complete, but also that, if f(r) is any
function of L(,b), then the eigenfunction expansion of
f(r) (an expansion which, of course, includes adjoint
functions) converges under Fourier conditions to f(r). This
analysis does not seem to extend to the singular cases considered in
this paper.
   2. If
<FORMULA>, then (1.4) has solutions
<FORMULA>, of which
<FORMULA> is L:2:(,b). If we then write (1.4) in the
form
<FORMULA>
   we see that it is formally equivalent to the integral equation
<FORMULA>.
   Our first objective is to prove that, for
<FORMULA>, and all
<FORMULA> sufficiently large, the solution of (1.4) that is
L:2:(,b) is, apart from a multiplicative constant,
<FORMULA>,
   where o(1) denotes a term small where
<FORMULA> is large, uniformly for r in <,b>, and where
<FORMULA>. We do this by investigating (2.1).
   Let
<FORMULA>.
   Then
<FORMULA>
   for all r, 15l, where A denotes various positive
constants. Let
<FORMULA>.
   Then, if
<FORMULA>, (2.1) gives
<FORMULA>
   since
<FORMULA> exists, the o(1) term denoting a quantity which
tends to zero as
<FORMULA>. Also, if
<FORMULA>,
<FORMULA>
   where
<FORMULA>.
   But, for
<FORMULA>, we have
<FORMULA>. For, for all z,
<FORMULA>,
   so that
<FORMULA>.
   The required estimate for G(r,t,15l) follows from this
by using the asymptotic expressions for
<FORMULA>.
   Substituting this estimate in (2.2), we obtain
<FORMULA>
   The first of the two integrals in the last line is
<FORMULA> since
<FORMULA> in the range of integration and
<FORMULA>.
   The second integral is
<FORMULA>, by a similar type of argument. (The second integral
will not, of course, appear if
<FORMULA>.)
   It thus follows from (2.1 b) and (2.4) that, for
<FORMULA>, if
<FORMULA> is large enough, i.e. that
<FORMULA>. If we substitute this result back in the integral in
(2.1) and re-estimate this integral on the same lines as has just been
done, we emerge with (2.1 a).
   Thus any solution of (2.1) satisfies (2.1 a). That there is one
(and just one) solution of (2.1) can be proved by the usual iteration
process, of which the work above is effectively the first step. Then
(2.1) can be differentiated back to show that the solution is a
solution of (1.4).
   We have thus found a solution of (1.4) that is
L:2:(,b). If we denote this solution by
15f(r,15l), then any other solution apart from a constant
multiple of 15f(r,15l) is given by a constant multiple of
<FORMULA>,
   and knowing now the behaviour of 15f(r,15l) near r
= , we can readily verify that 15ps(r,15l) is not
L:2:(,b). The L:2:(,b) solution is therefore
(apart from a multiplicative constant) unique.
   We remark finally that, since
<FORMULA> is an integral function of 15l, the process of solving
(2.1) by iteration shows that
<FORMULA> is also an integral function of 15l.
   3. We now consider the solution 15ch(r,15l) which
satisfies (1.4) and the boundary conditions
<FORMULA>.
   As in (1) <Ch. =1> 15ch(r,15l) is an integral
function of 15l.
   The Wronskian of 15f, ch is independent of r and so may
be written as 15o(l), and
<FORMULA> will be an integral function of 15l.
   Further, the vanishing of 15o(l) is a necessary and
sufficient condition for 15f, ch to be multiples the one of the
other, i.e. for 15l to be an eigenvalue.
   For large values of
<FORMULA>,
<FORMULA>
   (The asymptotic behaviour of 15f?7(r,15l) is
obtained by differentiating (2.1) with respect to r and proceeding
as before.) Hence, for large values of
<FORMULA>, the zeros of 15o(l) must be near the zeros of
<FORMULA>, which are, of course, independent of q(r).
Further, for large
<FORMULA>, the zeros of 15o(l) are simple. This is best seen
by writing
<FORMULA>
   where C is a circle with centre 15l, and by using the
asymptotic expression (3.1) for 15o(l) to give an asymptotic
expression for 15o?7(l). It is then clear that values of 15l
near the zeros of
<FORMULA> do not satisfy 15o?7(l) = .
   We now construct the function 15F(r,15l), where
<FORMULA>,
   and f(t) is any function which is L:2:(,b).
This is a meromorphic function of 15l, having poles at the zeros of
15o(l). It will be our object in the next section to show that,
if f(t) is such that all the residues of
15F(r,15l) at its poles vanish, then f(t) = 
almost everywhere.
   4. If all the residues vanish, 15F(r,15l) becomes
an integral function of 15l. Let us suppose that we can prove (as we
shall do) that we can find a sequence of circles
<FORMULA>, with
<FORMULA>, such that 15F(r,15l) is bounded on the
circles, with the bound possibly dependent on r, but independent
of n. Then, by Liouville's theorem, 15F(r,15l) is a
constant, independent of 15l.
   Suppose then that 15F(r,15l) = g(r). It
follows by differentiation that
<FORMULA>,
   with the result holding at least almost everywhere. By varying
15l, we have g(r) = , and hence f(r) =  almost
everywhere.
   It remains to prove the boundedness of 15F(r,15l), with
r fixed, but
<FORMULA>, on the circles
<FORMULA>. Since we are concerned only with results 'almost
everywhere', we may exclude r = . The differential equation is
thus non-singular in the interval <r,b>, and we can appeal to
(1) <equation (1.7.8)> to get an asymptotic form of
15ch(r,15l) for sufficiently large
<FORMULA>. In fact, we have
<FORMULA>,
   where A denotes various positive constants independent of
15l. From ?132 we have, again for fixed r and sufficiently
large
<FORMULA>,
<FORMULA>
   Finally, if we choose the sequence
<FORMULA> to be such that
<FORMULA>,
   we see that
<FORMULA>
   on each of the circles
<FORMULA>, and so, on those circles, for n sufficiently large,
we have from (3.1) that
<FORMULA>
   If we now substitute (4.1), (4.2), (4.3) in the definition of
15F(r,15l), and use Schwarz's inequality to estimate the
integrals, we see readily that, on the circles
<FORMULA>, 15F(r,15l) is bounded with bound
independent of n.
   5. From this, we can deduce the completeness of the
eigenfunctions and adjoint functions. Before we do this, however, we
must examine the nature of these eigenfunctions and adjoint functions.
In the real self-adjoint case, it is well known that the zeros of
15o(l) are real and simple, and, if 15l;n; is such a
zero, 15ch(r,15l;n;) is a multiple of
15f(r,15l;n;), so that we may write
<FORMULA>. Then, near 15l = 15l;n;, the singular part
of 15F(r,15l) is
<FORMULA>.
   Hence the residue at 15l = 15l;n; is
<FORMULA>,
   and this vanishes for all r if and only if the Fourier
coefficient of f(t) with respect to the eigenfunction
15f(t,15l;n;) vanishes.
   The argument remains valid even in the non-self-adjoint case
provided that 15l;n; is a simple zero of 15o(l).
However, there is no longer any guarantee that the eigenvalues of
15o(l) will be simple, and counterexamples are easily provided.
   Suppose now that 15l;n; is a zero of order p of
15o(l). Then, at 15l = 15l;n;, 15F(r,15l)
has a residue of the form
<FORMULA>
   where the A;s;(15l;n;) are constants depending
on the derivatives of 15o(l) at 15l = 15l;n; and whose
precise value will not concern us.
   Now 15o(l) can be written in the form
<FORMULA>,
   and we know that 15o(l;n;) = 15o?7(l;n;) =
. Hence
<FORMULA>,
   and interchange of the order of differentiation gives that
<FORMULA>
   is independent of r.
   If we repeat this process with higher differentiations with
respect to 15l, we obtain finally that
<FORMULA>
   is independent of r for s = , 1,..., p-1. This
implies that, for these values of s,
<FORMULA>
   so that (5.1) can be expressed as a linear combination of the
p functions
<FORMULA>, the coefficients being homogeneous linear combinations
of the p expressions
<FORMULA>,
   or, what is the same thing, homogeneous linear combinations of the
p expressions
<FORMULA>.
   For the residue to vanish it is therefore sufficient that all the
Fourier coefficients of f(t) with respect to the p
functions
<FORMULA> should vanish. Hence, if all the Fourier coefficients
of f(t) vanish at all zeros of 15o(l), then all the
residues of 15F(r,15l) vanish, and so, as already proved,
f(t) =  almost everywhere. This shows, by application of a
standard theorem, that the system of eigenfunctions and adjoint
functions, where the adjoint functions are
<FORMULA>,
   is complete.
   The question does arise whether the adjoint functions are indeed
necessary for completeness, or whether on the contrary they themselves
can be expressed as linear combinations of the eigenfunctions, and so
be eliminated from the expansion of an arbitrary function. It is a
standard theorem in the theory of orthogonal functions that all the
eigenfunctions and adjoint functions are necessary if they form an
orthonormal set, and we shall prove that they are substantially
orthonormal in ?13 6. What we shall actually prove (and it is clear
that this will be sufficient) is
   (=1) that all the eigenfunctions and adjoint functions
associated with an eigenvalue 15l;n; are orthogonal to all
the eigenfunctions and adjoint functions associated with an eigenvalue
15l;m;, where
<FORMULA>;
   (=2) that the eigenfunctions and adjoint functions associated
with an eigenvalue 15l;n; of multiplicity p can be
expressed by a non-singular transformation as linear combinations of
p orthonormal functions.
   It should be remarked that the number of multiple eigenvalues is
at most finite, and so the number of adjoint functions is at most
finite.
# 22
<315 TEXT J21>
A PERMUTATION REPRESENTATION OF THE GROUP OF THE BITANGENTS
W. L. Edge
   1. The group 15G of the bitangents has been studied in two
recent papers (<3> and <4>). It was represented in <4> as a subgroup
of index 2 of the group of symmetries of a regular polytope in
Euclidean space of dimension 6, in <3> as the group of automorphisms
of a non-singular quadric Q in the finite projective space <6>
over F- the Galois Field GF(2). The culmination of <4> is
the compilation, for the first time, of the complete table of
characters of 15G, and Frame uses this table to suggest possible
degrees for permutation representations. Such representations, of
degrees 28, 36, 63, 135, 288 are patent once the geometry of Q is
known; but Frame, having observed that there is a combination of the
characters that satisfies the several conditions known to be
necessary, had proposed also 12 as a possible degree. As there is no
guarantee that the set of necessary conditions is sufficient, and as
no representation of 15G of degree 12 seems yet to have appeared in
the literature, a description is here submitted of one that is
incorporated with the geometry of Q.
   Q consists, as explained in <3>, of 63 points m; 315 lines
g (all three points on a g being m) lie on Q, while
through each g pass three planes d lying wholly on Q (in
that all seven points in d are m, and all seven lines in d
are g). These three d form the complete intersection of Q
with E, the polar <4> of g.
   There are, and it is intended to construct them, 12 figures
F; each F includes all 63 m together with 63 d, one
d being associated with each m- having m for its focus
as one may say. Those g in d that pass through its focus
may be called rays; all three d containing a ray belong to
F, their foci being those three m that constitute the ray, so
that, there being three rays in each of 63 d, there are 63 rays in
F. The plane of any two intersecting rays is on Q, and the
third line therein through the intersection is a ray too. None of the
72 d extraneous to F includes a ray; of those d that pass
through a g which is not a ray only one belongs to F, the
other two being extraneous to F.
   Although such a figure as F may not have been previously
described it has been encountered, so to say, by implication, being
obtainable when Q is regarded as a section of a ruled quadric S
in <7>; one has then only to take, on S, those points that are
autoconjugate (i.e. incident with their corresponding solids)
in a certain triality. That such points make up a prime section of
S is known (see 5.2.2 in <5>), and that there are 63 of them
accords with putting 15k = 15l = 2 in 8.2.4 of <5>; 8.2.6 then says
that, of 63 m, 32 lie outside the tangent prime T;; to Q
at a given point m;; while 8.2.5 says that there are 63
rays, or "fixed lines" in Tits' phraseology.
   2. Let 15d, 15d?7 be any two of the 135 planes on Q that
are skew to one another; they span a <5> C and, being skew, belong
to opposite systems on K, the Klein section of Q by C.
   Through any line g of 15d passes another plane of K
which, belonging to the opposite system to 15d, is in the same
system as 15d?7 and so meets 15d?7 at a point m?7; moreover,
the points m?7 so arising from g in 15d concurrent at m
lie on g?7, the line of intersection of 15d?7 with the
tangent space <15dg?7> of K at m. The plane, other
than 15d?7, on K that contains g?7 is <mg?7>. So
there is set up a correlation between 15d and 15d?7; each point of
either is correlative to a line of the other.
   If m in 15d and m?7 in 15d?7 each lie on the line
correlative to the other their join is on K. There are 21 such
joins; through each point m of 15d there pass three, lying in the
plane joining m to its correlative g?7, and likewise there
pass three coplanar joins through each point m?7 of 15d?7.
Since K consists of 35 m there are 21, which may be labelled
temporarily as points 15m, that lie neither in 15d nor in 15d?7;
through each 15m passes one transversal to 15d and 15d?7; these
21 lines, one through each 15m, are the joins mm?7 of points
each on the line correlative to the other.
   Through each point on K pass nine lines lying on K; if
m is in 15d three of them lie in 15d while another three join
m to the points on its correlative g?7; there remain three
others, so that 21 g on K meet 15d in points and are skew to
15d?7. Another 21 meet 15d?7 in points and are skew to 15d.
There are also among the 15g on K seven in 15d, seven in
15d?7, 21 transversal to 15d and 15d?7; there remain 28, which
may be labelled g/, skew to both 15d and 15d?7. These 28
g/ may be identified as follows. Take any g in 15d; the
solid that joins it to any g?7 through its correlative m?7
in 15d meets K in two planes through mm?7, m being that
point on g to which g?7 is correlative. But there are four
lines g?7 in 15d?7 that do not contain m?7; then the solid
<gg?7> meets K in a hyperboloid whereon the regulus that
includes g and g?7 is completed by g/. As there are
seven g in 15d, and four g?7 in 15d?7 not containing the
correlative m, the 28 g/ are accounted for.
   There being three 15m on each g/, but only 21 15m in all,
one expects there to be four g/ through each 15m; this is so.
For let the transversal from 15m to 15d, 15d?7 meet 15d in m,
15d?7 in m?7; through m, and in 15d, are lines
g;1;, g;2; other than the correlative g to m?7;
through m?7, and in 15d?7, are lines g;1;?7,
g;2;?7 other than the correlative g?7 to m; each
solid
<FORMULA>
   meets K in a hyperboloid whereon a regulus is completed by a
g/ through 15m.
   3. Take, now, one of these g/: the transversals from its
three 15m to 15d, 15d?7 form a regulus whose complement includes
g in 15d and g?7 in 15d?7, neither g nor g?7
being correlative to any point on the other. The correlative m
in 15d of g?7 is conjugate to every point of g and, by the
defining property of the correlation, to every point of g?7; so,
likewise, is the correlative m?7 in 15d?7 of g. Hence the
polar plane j;; (<3>, ?136) of <gg?7> with respect to
Q contains both m and m?7; there is one remaining point
m/ of Q in j;;, and it lies outside C- for to
suppose that it belonged to C would put the whole of j;;
in C, whereas the kernel of Q, which is in j;;, is
outside C. Now there are 63-25 = 28 points m/ on Q that
are not on K; thus each m/ is linked to a g/, and
m/g/ is a plane d on Q.
   There are three planes on Q through any line thereon; if
this line is a transversal m15mm?7 from one of the 21 15m to
15d and 15d?7 two of these planes are on K, while the third
contains a quadrangle
m;1;/m;2;/m;3;/m;4;/ with its
diagonal points at m, 15m, m?7. The tangent prime to Q at
any vertex of this quadrangle contains m15mm?7 and meets
15d, 15d?7 in lines belonging to a regulus completed by g/
through 15m. Thus four concurrent g/ are linked with coplanar
m/ whose plane, containing the transversal to 15d and 15d?7
from the point of concurrence, lies on Q but not on K.
   4. Choose now, from among the 315 g on Q, the 21
transversals of 15d, 15d?7 and those, three through each m/,
that join m/ to those 15m on the g/ that is linked with
it. Each such join contains two m/, the g/ that are linked
therewith both passing through 15m; hence, under this second heading,
the number of g selected is
<FORMULA>. So 63 g are chosen: call them rays. Through each
m on Q pass three rays, and they are coplanar. If m is
m/ this is manifest from the prescription of choice, as it is too
if m is in 15d or 15d?7. If m is 15m the rays are, say,
<FORMULA> and lie in that d through m15mm?7 that is
not on K. So 63 d are chosen from among the 135 on Q;
each contains three concurrent rays. Call the m wherein the rays
concur the focus of d.
   Through any g there pass three d; if g is a ray
these d are those having the m on the ray for foci. The
points of d other than its focus m are foci of those other d
which belong to F and contain m; if d, d?7 in F are
such that the focus of d?7 is in d then the focus of d is
in d?7. Whenever two rays meet the third line through their
intersection and lying in their plane is a ray too. It is these 63
d, with the 63 rays and foci, that constitute the figure F.
   Each d in F contains, as well as three concurrent rays,
a quadrilateral of g that are not rays; thus, by four in each of
63 d, the 315-63 = 252 g that are not rays are accounted for.
Through each such g pass two planes on Q in addition to d,
but they are extraneous to F. The 135-63 = 72 extraneous planes
may be labelled 15d; the planes above denominated by 15d and 15d?7
are in this category. No g in 15d is a ray and only one of the
planes on Q that pass through it belongs to F whereas, were
g a ray, all three would do so.
   5. Label the m in any of the 72 15d by
<FORMULA>
   they lie on g that can be taken as
<FORMULA>
   Through each such g there is a single d belonging to
F; label the foci of these d, none of which can lie in 15d,
respectively
<FORMULA>
   Then those d whose foci are in 15d join its points to the
respective triads
<FORMULA>
   Thus the join of every pair of points =1?7 is on Q and,
there being no solid on Q, the points =1?7 lie in a plane
15d?7 whose lines consist of the triads =2?7.
   Each of the 72 15d has, it is now clear, a twin 15d?7 coupled
with it by F. The correlation between 15d and 15d?7 is shown
by =1 and =2?7 or, alternatively, by =1?7 and =2. Those d
that pass one through each line of 15d?7 have for their foci the
points of 15d correlative to these lines; if d passes, say,
through 1?7 3?7 5?7 its focus is the point 5 common to
those d whose foci are 1?7, 3?7, 5?7.
   Since, by the construction in ?134, 15d and 15d?7 determine
F uniquely there are x/36 figures F where x is the
number of pairs of skew planes on Q. To calculate x note, in
the first place (using d now to signify a plane on Q whether
it be in F or extraneous thereto), that each d is met in lines
by 14 others, two passing through each g in d. Note next, to
ascertain how many d meet a given d;; in points only, that
the 15 d through a point m of d;; project, from m,
the figure of 15 g in <4> passing three by three through 15
points (<2>, ?13?1313-15).
# 229
<316 TEXT J22>
This is a very much over-simplified example, but it may serve to
emphasise the point that common criteria of adaptation often
contradict each other.
   
   A common antecedent to symptoms of stress in the individual is
violent change in the environment and, in the particular instance of
stress conditions and behaviour that I will be discussing, overt and
drastic changes are not far to seek. Africa is in a stage of
turbulent transition. The last hundred years have brought great
changes in the life of its tribes and of its tribesmen. As I have
mentioned, a fertile source of human stress is the clash between the
demands of the individual and those of his society. This conflict
must be the more severe when the two aspects are not geared together,
functionally, as they tend to be in any rigid pre-literate tribal
system where the conformity of the individual to a very stable pattern
of expected behaviour is ensured by the traditional methods of child
rearing.
   Tonight I will be considering some aspects of life in Zululand
and change has been as violent here as elsewhere on the continent.
The modern Zulu is neither purely traditional African nor purely
Western in his attitudes, aspirations and behaviour. He is a
displaced person and his society is a displaced society. In effect,
there are few readily identifiable social norms for any specific
action and I think that it is this fact that makes the investigation
of stress disorder in Zululand so difficult and yet so potentially
illuminating. The situation is an excellent example of Durkheim's
anomy, social disorganization at all levels- 'norms' are hard
or impossible to find and the psychologist cannot, for long, hold many
preconceptions. As, to most of you, the background will be unfamiliar
I must spend a little time in giving a very short account of the
social situation then (say 185) and now.
   In the nineteenth century the Zulu people were the pastoralist
and agriculturist conquerors of a very large area of Southern Africa.
There was more than enough land for their needs. The men were
warriors whose chief domestic duty was the tending of the cattle- an
occupation strictly taboo to women. The women did the hard work on
the lands. The state was a pyramidal patriarchy with the Zulu king,
the secular and religious 'father of his people', at the apex. The
men remained at their homesteads except when they were required for
military service, and all legal and ritual authority was vested in the
males of the nation. Most marriages were polygynous and based upon a
system of bride-price, and the Zulu woman was at the bottom of the
social pyramid. While the behaviour of all members of the society was
strictly circumscribed by law and custom, this was especially true of
the young married woman, living under the strict tutelage of her
husband's mother. She even had to modify the very speech that she
used in order to avoid any words containing the root sound of the name
of her father in law. The extended family was always present, which
helped greatly in the rearing of children; children that were of vital
importance to the nation for not only did they ensure continuity of
the clan and the adequate care of the parents when they died and
became ancestral spirits, but they were also economically profitable,
a girl child fetching, on marriage, some ten head of cattle (highly
prized on both economic and religious grounds) from the prospective
bridegroom. Fertility in women was thus an attribute of paramount
importance. In any marriage without issue the woman was, almost
invariably, regarded as the sterile partner.
   In only two ways could women ever assert power in any public
fashion. On one day in the year they were allowed to dress as men,
tend the cattle, drink beer in a masculine fashion, sing obscene songs
and beat any man found outside the huts. Also any woman, if possessed
by the spirits of the dead ancestors, could become a diviner- usually
called in lay description 'a witch-doctor'. During the period of
her emergence into this ro?5le the possessed person (ninety per cent
of diviners were and are women) became very ill, showing gross
symptoms of mental disturbance,- in our society the label
'psychotic' would probably be applied- and then often recovered to
take up her profitable and public duties as a diviner of the causes of
harm in the society such as illness or the results of bewitchment. To
the people, a kind of Harley Street consultant.
   So much for a very brief summary of the position as it was. What
of the analogous situation today?
   There is no longer a Zulu King, the temporal and spiritual head
of his people. Tribal authority has been taken over, in all really
effective aspects, by the white man. The tribal lands have been
drastically restricted in area. In order to make ends meet some
eighty per cent of all men of working age (between sixteen and fifty)
have to be away from home for some ten months in each year, working
hundreds of miles away in the mines and factories of the white man.
The Zulu extended family has, usually, been broken up, and the
traditions and regulations of the tribe are becoming a dead letter.
Many Zulu have become Christians, abandoning, at any rate nominally,
the worship of the ancestors. Polygyny is rare, and becoming rarer.
Poverty and malnutrition are rife; infant mortality is some 35 per
1 live births. Both tuberculosis and venereal disease have become
common disorders- the latter exacerbated by the promiscuity
engendered by the migrant labour system. What of the Zulu woman in
all this?
   She will still work in the fields though they cannot produce
enough food for herself and her children. She will have to tend the
cattle, an unthinkable action in the indigenous situation. She is
still subject to the control of her mother in law. She is less likely
to be pregnant and to bear a live child; conception is more improbable
with her husband away for a large part of the year and here too
venereal disease rates are of relevance. On average, she will have
had two or three years of Western education. Even if she has been to
school for a much longer time she may not be allowed to work in the
distant towns. The transvestite ceremony of the one day in the year
has fallen into desuetude, but the Zulu woman can still become a
diviner and there are as many of these- probably more- than there
ever were.
   Here, then, we have a classic picture of general social stress as
it has usually been conceived. It is obvious that the Zulu woman
could be affected at many levels of her functioning by the
pressures inherent in the general situation, and many theorists would
argue that some new forms of pathological behaviour were to be
expected or, at least, that one would expect an increase in the
rates of known types of mental disorder in the population. Has
either of these possibilities come to pass? This is an extremely
difficult question to answer but, possibly rashly, I am inclined to
say 'yes'.
   About 1897 the crying began- umHayizo or isiPoliyane-
it goes under different names. But none of these names, as far as I
can ascertain, had appeared in the language before this date. There
is no mention of this very specific behaviour in the written records
of travellers, missionaries or lexicographers, though other aberrant
forms of behaviour such as spirit possession had been named and
described from 182 onwards. The people themselves date the symptoms
from 1897, 'after all our cattle had died in the greatest rinderpest
epidemic'. But why should simple 'crying' be regarded as
pathological? It is, in fact, anything but simple and ordinary. A
Zulu woman may suddenly begin to cry out 'Hayi! Hayi! Hayi!'
or 'Zza! Zza! Zza!'  or to make guttural grunting
screams. She may keep this up for hours, days, even weeks on end,
ceasing only during sleep. By our standards this looks, and sounds,
most peculiar and most earlier observers unhesitatingly adjudged it
pathological. Various ethnologists, doctors and missionaries stated
that the crying was directly caused by: epilepsy; alcoholism and the
breakdown of the old social order; abnormal sexual habits; forbidden
or unfulfilled sexual wishes; 'gain by illness'; the use of love
charms by men; even 'Hamletism'. Once a 'reason' for the
behaviour had been stated no further investigation was, generally,
felt to be necessary but there are implications of a stress situation
in most of the hypotheses advanced. Observers tended to assume that
the crying was a discrete reaction- a single and separate bit of
behaviour in its own right.
   At any rate, using interviews, questionnaires and a projective
test (asking my subjects to tell stories about pictures which were
illustrative, I hoped, of the 'stress points' of the culture) I
spent some years trying to find out about this very clear cut kind of
behaviour. I hope that some of my findings may serve to illustrate
various levels of adaptation, the possible utility of some apparently
'maladaptive' symptoms, and to demonstrate that this pattern of
behaviour is anything but discrete and that it has a logic of its own
as an integral part of the personality of the screamer.
   Firstly it emerged that while some ten per cent of men reported
that they had suffered occasional attacks, almost exactly half Zulu
women showed a history of the crying fits. This fact emerged on three
separate occasions from random samples totalling some thousand women.
This made the use of a quantitative criterion for normality (is it
more normal to scream than not to scream?) unprofitable, and I went on
to examine related phenomena to try to establish the nosology and
aetiology of the condition. Using as a control group those women who
had no history of such crying I found, on a statistical basis, that
the crying was not linked with 'hysteria' as I had thought likely,
but that it was highly significantly associated with a history of such
classical symptoms of anxiety as precordial pain, sweating hands and
feet, apparently 'causeless' fear etc. The screaming represented
an immediate reaction to fear. The subject felt overpowering terror,
the physical sensation of which was localised between the shoulder
blades, and cried out. This could be precipitated by many different
stimuli in the environment, a snake, a clap of thunder, a sharp word
or even, subjective and very common, 'a feeling of anger'. In
effect, what I was investigating was probably a sudden discharge of
anxiety in the form of an immediate, but prolonged, fear reaction.
   Here, too, the interesting finding appeared that the cryers were,
if anything, less prone to most symptoms of conversion hysteria than
were the controls. There seemed a possibility that this relative
immunity from hysterical blindnesses, paralyses etc. was connected
with the crying fits as this was a central difference between the two
groups; the categories of cryers and controls having been established
after all the questions had been asked, on the basis of whether the
reply to the question 'Have you ever had crying attacks?' was
positive or negative. But there was one exception to this freedom
from hysterical conversion. Women with a history of pseudocyesis,
common in the area, and itself a classical symptom of conversion
hysteria, were practically all to be found in the crying group. This
was of particular interest for two reasons. Firstly it was an
exception to the relative lack of proneness to conversion shown by the
screamers, and the reasons for this exception thus seemed worthy of
close investigation. Secondly, in terms of the literature, such
pseudo-pregnancy has often been regarded as the result of a strong but
unavailing wish for a child, especially when the woman is under strong
social pressure to produce a baby- the obstetrical history of some
Queens of England where an heir to the throne was required is a case
in point.
# 21
<317 TEXT J23>
   Piaget stresses that children cannot visualize the results of the
simplest actions until they have seen them performed, so that a child
cannot imagine the section of a cylinder as a circle, until he has cut
through, say, a cylinder of plasticine. As always for Piaget, thought
can only take the place of action on the basis of the data that action
itself provides.
   While experience and general cultural opportunities are of great
importance in helping the child to develop his concepts of space, it
must not be forgotten that genetic causes, and temperament, play
important roles too, especially the former. It has long been known
that ability to manipulate shapes in the mind is present by 1-12
years of age, independent of measured intelligence. Further, girls
possess this ability to a lesser degree than boys, and it is likely
that their inferiority in this respect is in part due to the differing
kinds of activities in which they engage. It was suggested, too, by
El Koussy in 1935, that the ability depended on the capacity of the
individual to obtain, and the facility to utilize, visual spatial
imagery. El Koussy's point of view has recently received a little
support from the work of Stewart and Macfarlane Smith (1959) using the
electroencephalograph. Piaget would certainly admit that imagery
supports spatial reasoning and geometrical thought, but is not in
itself sufficient.
<BIBLIOGRAPHY>
CHAPTER NINE
Concepts of Length and Measurement
   BEFORE children come to school they are likely to hear many
expressions used by adults and older children in relation to length
and measurement. For example, most children hear their mothers speak
of yards of material, or- less often- their fathers speak of feet of
timber, or of the distance to the station or nearby town. More
frequently, however, they hear of comparisons rather than the names of
actual lengths, such as ~'This is longer than that', or ~'That is
higher than this'. These expressions are associated with many
experiences ranging, maybe, from the length of nails to the height of
mountains. Likewise a child hears terms like 'near' and 'far'
in relation to nearby or distant towns. Again, from his play, or
through watching the activities of grown-ups, he learns that a piece
of string may be made shorter by cutting a piece off, or a stick made
shorter by breaking it. Likewise he learns that sticks and ropes may
be joined to other sticks and ropes and so made longer. Later we
shall say a great deal about the view of the Geneva school regarding
conceptual development in relation to length and measurement. It is
sufficient to say here that it is out of these pre-school and
out-of-school experiences, and out of infant school activities such as
take place in the 'free choice' period, that the child comes to
understand the quality of longness or length- that is, the extent
from beginning to end in the spatial field. During these experiences
the child moves from visual, auditory and kinaesthetic perceptions,
and actions to concepts.
   In activities involving counting a child may be asked to count
the number of steps he has to take to cross the classroom. Another
child will be found to take a different number of steps. Or, the
lengths of short objects may be measured by the foot- the distance
from heel to toe- or by the span from little finger to thumb when the
hand is stretched as far as possible. From a variety of similar
exercises the teacher can help her children to understand the need for
a fixed unit of length for measuring purposes. Of course, mankind has
had exactly this problem of establishing fixed units, and a little
history of measurement is an enjoyable and stimulating piece of work
for older junior pupils.
   By the upper end of the infant's school the faster learners will
be ready to be introduced to one of the agreed units of measurement,
viz the foot. Lengths of wood or hardboard, or plain foot rulers
without end pieces or sub-divisions- which can be purchased- are
given to the children, and they are instructed to measure various
lengths and record their answers in a notebook. In the early stages
they should be set to measure the lengths of lines drawn on the
blackboard or floor, or to measure the length of pieces of string,
paper, etc, all of which are cut to an exact number of feet in
length. Later, they can be set to measure the length of other objects
in the environment to the nearest foot, so that if an object is nearly
3 feet long it is recorded as a full 3 feet. It is good, too, to let
children estimate lengths before they measure, in the hope that it
will lead to estimation with increased accuracy.
   With experience and maturity the pupils naturally become
dissatisfied with a ruler that permits measurement to a foot only, for
there are so many bits and pieces left over. This is the moment to
introduce the inch, and a foot stick or foot ruler with inch marks on
it. At the same time have work cards available on which there are
lines drawn to an exact number of inches, or lengths of string and
paper similarly cut for the pupils to measure. The next step is the
measurement, to the nearest inch, of objects in the environment; the
children ought frequently to express their answer as, say, 1 foot 3
inches and as 15 inches, for this will help them to understand the
relationship between two units used in the measurement of length.
Soon they will be found to be ready for a wall scale by means of
which they can measure each other's height. This is an activity that
creates great interest, since personal dimensions and growth are of
great consequence to most children.
   Next we come to the yard and yard stick; a necessary unit when
measuring longer distances. It is helpful to have some rulers divided
into 3 feet with alternate sections, say, red and white, and a second
set divided into 36 inches, with alternate inches of different
colours. After comparing these with the whole foot, and with the
12-inch ruler previously used, the teacher should show that the yard
ruler or stick is comparable with the length of her stride. By means
of graded exercises similar in type to those described for feet, and
feet and inches, we hope to get the child to the stage where he can
measure a length as, for example 2 yards 1 foot 9 inches. The
ordinary foot ruler with end pieces, and fractions of an inch up to
1/1 or even 1/16 inch, can be introduced when pupils are ready for
it, but with the very slow learners simplified rulers may have to be
used throughout the junior school.
   So far, activities and experiences that presuppose that the
concepts of length and measurement are possible for children have been
dealt with. Have we, however, any clues as to the first beginnings of
these concepts? Are there any conditions which are necessary before
understanding of length can take place at all? The Geneva school led
by Piaget has carried out many interesting experiments in this field
to which we now turn.
THE VIEWS OF THE GENEVA SCHOOL ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTS
RELATING TO LENGTH AND MEASUREMENT
   Piaget, Inhelder, and Szeminska (196) have outlined the views
on the way in which the child comes to understand length and
measurement. In one of the experiments reported early in their book
they study his spontaneous measurement. The experimenter showed
the child a tower made of twelve blocks and a little over 2 feet 6
inches high- the tower being constructed on a table. The
experimenter told the child to make another tower 'the same as
mine' on another table about 6 feet away, the table top being some 3
feet lower than that of the first table. There was a large screen
between the model and the copy but the child was encouraged to 'go
and see' the model as often as he liked. He was also given strips
of paper, sticks, rulers, etc, and he was told to use them if his
spontaneous efforts ceased, but he was NOT told how to use them.
The following stages were observed:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) up to about 4 1/2 years of age there was visual
comparison only. The child judged the second tower to be the same
height as the first by stepping back and estimating height. This was
done regardless of the difference in heights of the table tops;
   (b) this lasted from 4 1/2-7 years of age roughly. At first
the child might lay a long rod across the tops of the towers to make
sure they were level. When he realized that the base of the towers
were not at the same height, he sometimes attempted to place his tower
on the same table as the model. Naturally, that was not permitted.
Later, the children began to look for a measuring instrument, and
some of them began using their own bodies for this purpose. For
example, the span of the hands might be used, or the arms, by placing
one hand on top of the model tower and the other at the base and
moving over from the model to the copy, meanwhile trying to keep the
hands the same distance apart. When they discovered that this
procedure was unreliable, some would place, say, their shoulder
against the top of the tower (a chair or stool might be used) and
would mark a spot on their leg opposite the base. They would then
move to the second tower to see if the heights were the same.
<END INDENTATION>
   The authors point out that in their view this use of the body is
an important step forward, for coming to regard the body as a common
measure must have its origin in visual perception when the child sees
the objects, and in motor acts as when he walks from the model to its
copy. These perceptions and motor acts give rise to images which in
turn confer a symbolic value first on the child's own body as a
measuring instrument, and later on a neutral object, e g a ruler.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (c) from 7 years of age onwards there was an increasing
tendency to use some symbolic object (e g a rod) to imitate size.
Very occasionally a child built a third tower by the first and
carried it over to the second: this was permitted. More frequently,
though, he used a rod that was exactly the same length as the
model tower was high.
<END INDENTATION>
   Next, the child came to use an intermediate term in an
operational way (i e in the mind), this, of course, being an
expression of the general logical principle that if A=B, and B=C, A=C.
Children were found to take a longer rod than necessary and mark off
the height of the model tower on it with a finger or by other means,
so as to maintain a constant length when transposing to the copy.
But, this transference is only one aspect of measurement; the other
aspect which must be understood is sub-division; for only when this,
too, has been grasped can a particular length of the measuring rod be
given a definite value, and repeated again and again (iteration). In
the final stage it was found that children could also use a rod
shorter than the tower, and it was applied as often as was necessary;
so that the height of the model tower was found by applying a shorter
rod a number of times up the side.
   For the authors, then, the concept of measurement depends upon
logical thinking. The child must first grasp that the whole is
composed of a number of parts added together. Second, he must
understand the principles of substitution and iteration, that is the
transport of the applied measure to another length, and its repeated
application to this other.
# 26
<318 TEXT J24>
   (7) Equilibrium in the Hydraulic Press. An all-glass 5
c.c. hypodermic syringe, the piston of which could be loaded with
different weights, was connected to a length of narrow glass tubing.
Alongside was an exact duplicate of the apparatus so the subject
could work with two liquids of different densities at the same time.
One liquid was tap water tinged very slightly red, and the other was
concentrated salt solution tinged very slightly blue.
   (8) Equilibrium in the Balance. The balance arm (and the
associated supporting framework) was made from Meccano strips. By
this means the distance of the weights from the fulcrum could be
quickly obtained. The weights were cut so that the weight plus
attached hook weighed 2, 5, 1 or 2 g.
   (9) Projection of Shadows.
   (1) Correlations. Each of forty postcards had the head of a
girl drawn on it. The shape of the face, hair style and colouring
differed for each girl, but the hair and eyes were coloured as
indicated in the book. Inhelder and Piaget give no stages earlier
than =3A, but the writer laid down criteria for =1, =2A and =2B
stages.
Subjects
   Our population consisted of 34 average and bright primary
school pupils; 14 average and bright preparatory school pupils (aged
8-11 years); 39 grammar school pupils; 5 secondary modern school
pupils; 5 comprehensive school pupils; 1 training college students;
3 able adults whose ages ranged from 25 to 32 years of age; thus
making 2 subjects in all. In the comprehensive and secondary modern
schools approximately equal numbers were drawn from the top and bottom
streams of each year group.
General technique
   Each subject was examined, individually, on four experiments,
with everyone taking the experiment involving the combinations of
colourless chemical liquids (no. 5). After the subject had been
introduced to the materials, and after some general discussions and
sometimes free experimentation, he was asked to perform certain
standard tasks and asked certain standard questions. The subject's
actions were noted and his replies recorded verbatim. Details of the
exact procedure used in each experiment may be obtained from the
writer. It must be stressed, however, that the experimenter was quite
free to vary the procedure by asking supplementary questions, or by
prompting, or by experimenting slightly differently, if he thought it
would be helpful. In brief our procedure was semi-structured and this
is the best that one can do if the clinical approach is to be combined
with some degree of standardization of procedure. The subjects were
asked 'to think aloud' as much as possible.
   Usually Inhelder and Piaget give details of three stages of
thinking; stages =2 and =3 usually being subdivided further into
'A' and 'B' stages. After examining our protocols it was
thought better to subdivide the Inhelder and Piaget stages still
further, and we usually used nine stages, viz:
   =1; =1-=2A; =2A; =2A-=2B; =2B; =2B-=3A; =3A; =3A-=3B;
=3B.
   In this way we were, in our opinion, able to classify our
protocols within the framework provided by the authors. Each protocol
was studied by the writer and by the experimenter independently, and
given a rating on the scale of stages. The results were compared and
after discussion a final rating was given to each protocol. The
assessment of some of the protocols was not an easy matter, and we
cannot be sure that the more difficult ones were always rated
correctly, although the ratings of these are not likely to be more
than one stage out in the nine-stage scale that was usually used. In
the experiment involving invisible magnetization the authors give a
stage =3 only, not stages =3A and =3B, and we have kept to this.
=3. RESULTS
   A number of tables are now given showing how the different
groups performed on the various experiments. All our results are
included.
   It is important to know to what extent the level of thinking of
our subjects remained the same throughout the four experiments that
each one undertook. To determine this we used Kendall's coefficient
of concordance W, which specifies the degree
<TABLES>
of association between a number of sets of rankings. First, the rank
of each subject was calculated, separately for each of the four
experiments. W was then calculated from formula 9.16 given by
Siegel (1956), p. 234; this allows for tied observations.
Furthermore, if the total number of cases concerned is N, and N
 7, we may find the probability of any value as large as an
observed W, by calculating 15xe:2: = k(N-1)W, with
d.f. = N-1, where k is the number of sets of rankings
(Siegel, 1956, p. 236, formula 9.18). Accordingly 15xe:2: was
calculated for each W and the probability associated with so large
a value of 15xe:2: was found by referring to Siegel (1956), Table
C, p. 249. Table 11 shows the values of W, and the probability
of finding an associated 15xe:2: as large, P;15xe:2:;,
for the differing groups of experiments and subjects.
   Even if there is a substantial degree of association between the
level of thinking
<TABLES>
displayed by our subjects on each of the four experiments, it is
necessary to determine if the experiments (coupled with the manner in
which the protocols were assigned to stages by Inhelder and Piaget)
were in fact drawn from the same population of experiments. For
example, it could be that a particular experiment was rather easier or
more difficult for one reason or another. Accordingly the
Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks was used, as this
test will decide if a number of different
<TABLES>
samples are drawn from the same population. The test assumes only
that the variables studied have an underlying continuous distribution,
and that ordinal measurement is possible for each variable. These
conditions are fulfilled in the case of our data. First, the total
number of subjects at each stage on each of the four tests was
calculated, and the rank of each subject found from the single series
that resulted. Thus H, the statistic used in the Kruskal-Wallis
test, was calculated from formula 8.3 given by Siegel (1956), page
192, as this allows for tied observations. Since in our case there
were four samples, and the number of subjects in each sample is
greater than five, H is distributed approximately as 15xe:2:
with d.f. = k-1, where k is the number of samples. Once
again the probability of finding a 15xe:2: as large as H was
found by referring to Siegel, Table C, page 249. Hence Table 11 shows
also the probability of finding a 15xe:2: as large as H,
P;H;, for the differing groups of experiments and subjects.
<TABLE>
   The results of the remaining ten training college students were
not analysed in this manner on account of the smallness and
homogeneity of the sample. The four experiments which they undertook
were: Chemical Combinations, Pendulum, Invisible Magnetization, and
Equilibrium in the Balance.
   Reference to the values of P;H; in Table 11 shows that the
experiments in the first, second and fifth groups may be regarded as
random samples drawn from the same population of experiments. In the
third and fourth groups, however, P;H;  .1 indicating that
one or more experiments in each group cannot be so regarded.
Experience gained in examining the subjects indicated that the
Projection of Shadows, and Correlations experiments found in the third
and fourth groups, respectively, were likely to be responsible for
this. Consequently the remaining three experiments in each of these
groups were subjected to the Kruskal-Wallis test; and for each of the
two groups of three experiments the value of H so obtained was
such that P;H;  .5.
=4. DISCUSSION
   The following discussion deals principally with the educational
implications of the study, and in order to be succinct the findings
are grouped under a number of points.
   (1) The main stages in the development of logical thinking
proposed by Inhelder and Piaget have been confirmed. It seems that
the authors are correct in suggesting that it is only rarely that
average to bright junior school children reach the stage of formal
thinking. The ablest of the secondary modern and comprehensive school
pupils certainly attain the stage of formal thought, but not all the
older grammar school pupils always do so. There is a suggestion that
ill-digested snippets of knowledge, mental set, and expectancy, are
affecting thinking more in the students than among the school pupils.
The student with the poorest performance was aged 19 years, and on
the four experiments her replies were classified at the =2A, =2B,
=2B and =2B-=3A stages. She had obtained a pass in Art at
G.C.E. 'A' level. However, the least able of the
secondary modern and comprehensive school pupils certainly remain at a
low level of logical thought even at 15 years of age, and many of
these do not seem to pass beyond the =2A-=2B stage of thinking.
This is a finding the authors do not mention, and it leads one to
suspect that the school population in Geneva which they examined
consisted of able children.
   (2) By getting each subject to undergo four experiments and
analysing the results by means of a non-parametric statistical
technique, it has been possible to show that there is a considerable
agreement between the levels of thinking that the subjects display in
the four experiments. Moreover, the value of the coefficient of
concordance W declines as the population becomes more homogeneous
with respect to mental age. Naturally there is no exact
correspondence since the experiments and 'intelligence' tests do
not measure exactly the same thinking skills. Among the preparatory
and grammar school pupils, W = .89, and among the primary and
grammar school pupils W = .81 (Table 11). In these groups the
Mental Ages of the pupils ranged from 8 years to well above 15 years
(the M.A. usually accepted for average adults), whereas in the
primary school group alone, for which W = .52, the mental ages
would range from 8 to 13 or 15 years. The authors give no evidence on
this issue, but one would certainly expect some such stability of
thinking skills if their general theory is correct. Again the
Kruskal-Wallis test gave reasonable grounds for assuming that eight of
the ten experiments may be regarded as samples drawn from the same
population of experiments. The Correlations experiment is too easy
for secondary, but not for primary pupils, compared with the other
eight experiments; while the Projection of Shadows test placed too
many subjects at stage =2B.
   (3) The majority of our protocols show much the same kind of
reasoning as those of Inhelder and Piaget, and support many of their
statements. For example, the authors maintain that, at the level of
formal thought, the child comes to the Projection of Shadows
experiment assuming proportionality from the start. Below is a copy
of part of the protocol of a boy aged 13 years 3 months.
   'What happens to the shadow as you move the ring up and down the
scale?' 'Nearer the wall smaller, further away bigger.'
'Use two rings of different size, and move them until their
shadows are exactly the same size, that is, they cover each other
exactly.' Places the 5cm. diameter ring at 2 cm. from light,
and 1 cm. diameter ring at 4 cm. 'Why do the rings have to go
in these positions?' 'Well 1 is twice 5, and 4 is twice 2.'
After placing three rings of different diameter correctly in
position he is asked to place four rings of different diameters in
position so that their shadows coincide. He places 5 cm. ring at 1
cm. from light, 1 cm. ring at 2 cm., 15 cm. ring at 3
cm., and 2 cm. ring at 4 cm. from light. 'Tell me exactly
what you have done about the position of the rings.' 'Well 5 is
1 cm. from torch, 1 is twice as big so it goes at 2 cm., 15 is
half as big again so it goes at 3, and 2 is twice 1 so it goes here
at 4.'
# 27
<319 TEXT J25>
Unfortunately, Story does not break down her data for monocular
viewing according to whether T- and I-figures were on the same or
opposite sides as the eye used so that this prediction would only
apply to half the trials she reports. Nevertheless, there is no sign
of this trend in her results for monocular viewing. (=3) The
effects to be expected due to the different spatial positions of the
two eyes should be even more striking when the distance between shape
and eye is less than in Story's experiment, and when the I-figure is
shown to one eye and the T to the other: although these conditions
have often been used in experiments on FAE no effects of this
sort have been reported. (It might, however, be worth looking for
them in future experiments.) (=4) Finally, although Story suggests
that the different visual angles subtended by the figures at the
retinae might be the explanation of the effects obtained under
binocular viewing, she does not show in detail how these effects would
be predicted by the geometry of the situation, and it is difficult to
see how the effects found could in fact be produced in this way.
Nevertheless, the suggestion is an interesting one and could be
followed up by experiments in which the figures are placed closer to
the eye and conditions of alternating monocular viewing are employed.
   It is possible that the reason why the A-effect is obtained only
when both eyes are used is that binocular vision itself provides a cue
to the distance of the figures and thus to their relative apparent
sizes (v. below): thus, the fact that the effect only occurs
with binocular viewing does not necessarily conflict with the
hypothesis that under some conditions the FAE may be determined
by apparent size, and indeed can be interpreted within the framework
of this hypothesis.
Size of circles
   If smaller circles than those used by Sutherland are
employed, the A-effect does not occur (Day and Logan, 1961;
Terwilliger, 1961; McEwen 1959; Oyama, 1956): the usual result under
these conditions is that the T-circle looks smaller than C whether I
is nearer or further away. (It should be noted that Terwilliger did
not obtain this result: when the retinal size of T and I was the same,
he found no change in the apparent size of T.) This effect is also
found when T and I shapes are the same distance away as one another
(Day and Logan (1961), cf. also Ko"hler and Wallach (1944)). Day
and Logan make the interesting suggestion that this shrinkage may
resemble a time error effect though they do not discuss the details of
how this might occur. Unfortunately, from what is known about time
errors, one might expect the opposite effect with small circles. When
a series of stimuli are being judged, there is usually a point in the
middle of the series where (after practice) there is no constant
error: above this point, time errors tend to be negative, below it,
positive. We shall call this point the "adaptation point."
Subjects will have an adaptation point at the start of an experiment
and it will usually be shifted in the course of the experiment: now
when a small circle is shown as I-figure this should shift the
adaptation point downwards. If it shifts it downwards further for
that part of the visual field on which the I-figure is shown than for
other parts, we would expect the T-figure to be judged larger than
the C-figure: the T-figure is less far away from the adaptation point
at that part of the visual field than is the C-figure from the
adaptation point at its part of the visual field. Day and Logan
obtained exactly the opposite result to this.
   Thus, there is some difficulty in applying this type of
explanation, though the correspondence between the change in direction
of the FAE with different sized circles (found by Day and Logan)
and the change in direction of TE (found by Watson, 1957) is
very suggestive. Nevertheless, Day and Logan's work does make it
difficult to interpret the A-effect as due to differences in apparent
size because of their finding that when large circles are used and
both are far away, the T-circle appears larger than the C.
Outline and filled-in circles
   Day and Logan show that the A-effect occurs with outline
circles but not with filled-in circles: it is hard to see what
explanation could be offered for this at present.
Further discussion
   One very ingenious recent experiment has demonstrated in a most
convincing way that an FAE determined wholly by apparent size
does occur under certain conditions: Gregory (personal communication)
has shown that if the apparent size of a figure is made to shrink
continuously while the retinal size remains the same, when the
shrinkage in apparent size is stopped suddenly there is a dramatic
increase in the apparent size of the figure. This phenomenon is very
striking and is seen by all observers. Since this shows that a
FAE determined by continuous change in apparent size can occur,
the question arises of why it is so difficult to demonstrate the
effect with static figures. There are three possible answers to this.
   (1) It may be that just as with FAE due to retinal size,
the effect through apparent size only occurs if the difference between
the apparent sizes of the T- and I-figures is optimal (cf. the
distance paradox). If this is correct, we would only expect to obtain
a FAE due to apparent size under limited conditions. This
suggestion could be tested experimentally by keeping one circle a
constant size and distance and varying the size and distance of the
other keeping retinal size equal. We would expect an effect due to
apparent size to occur only within a limited range of size and
distance of the other figure. In Gregory's experiment, because the
apparent size of the inspection figure changes continuously, these
changes are bound to straddle the point which would be optimal for
producing the effect.
   (2) The conditions of the experiments performed with static
figures are such that there may be a temptation to judge in terms of
retinal size: it is known that when two shapes of different real size
are aligned side by side, subjects tend to make judgements in terms of
retinal size (Joynson and Kirk, 196). It would be interesting to
test for the occurrence of the A-effect, using for T- and C-figures
two shapes of the same physical size but different retinal sizes at
different distances away from the observer and not aligned opposite
one another. The T-circle could be kept the same retinal size as the
I, and the C-circle would be a different retinal size: subjects would
be asked to compare the real size of T- and C-figures. These
experimental conditions should tend to favour judgements in terms of
apparent physical size rather than apparent retinal size.
   (3) It may be that apparent size only influences FAE when
the apparent size has changed continuously, i.e. where there has
been an apparent movement effect: if established this would be an
important finding since it would reveal a difference in the mechanisms
underlying apparent movement and judgements of apparent size (v.
below). This could only be established by a thorough investigation
of the static A-effect along the lines set out in (1) and (2) above.
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
   The work of Hubel and Wiesel (1959) suggests a new theoretical
approach to FAE problems. In order to see the experiments
described above in perspective, it may be worth setting out briefly
what this approach is: it has suggested itself independently to a
number of workers in the field, and Papert is currently engaged on
testing some of its implications. It must be stressed that a new
approach is necessary since the sort of theory espoused by Ko"hler and
Wallach (1944) and by Osgood and Heyer (1952) is unable to account for
many of the phenomena of FAE. They both assume that inspection
of a contour results in any contour subsequently falling near the
second contour being seen as displaced away from it: the amount it is
displaced is said to depend upon the distance separating the two
contours on the retina, and there will be a point at which
displacement is maximal. Three instances of well attested phenomena
which this theory is unable to explain will be quoted. (1) In Figure
1, if the I-line is fixated, the T-line should appear as shown (P):
displacement should be small where I and T lie near together gradually
increasing to a maximum and then decreasing. In fact T is seen
occupying the position of line A. (2) Similarly
<FIGURE>
when a curved line is shown, and a straight line used as I-figure, the
straight line should appear like line P in Figure 1 (b) but in
fact appears like line A. (3) The theories are unable to account for
the after effect of seen motion. Both theories under discussion
assume that the FAE occurs before any analysis of the stimuli is
undertaken.
   Hubel and Wiesel have demonstrated by recording from single cells
that in the cat considerable analysis of the stimulus on the retina
occurs at or before the level of the striate cortex. In particular
they present evidence to show that in the striate cortex there are
cells whose response is determined by the orientation of lines on a
given part of the retina; i.e. the orientation of lines is coded
in separate fibres at this level of the cat visual system. If we
assume that there are cells with similar receptive fields in human
beings we have a very simple explanation of the effect shown in Figure
1 (a): inspection of a line in one orientation will result in
heavy firing of the cells maximally responsive to lines in this
orientation, and to some firing of cells maximally responsive to lines
in neighbouring orientations. If any adaptation occurs in these cells
as a result of prolonged firing, when a T-contour in a slightly
different orientation to the I line is exposed on the same part of the
retina, the cells fired maximally by it will be ones which are
normally maximally responsive to contours in orientations lying
further away from the orientation of the I-figure. It is reasonable
to suppose that the orientation in which a contour is seen will depend
upon the balance of firing in cells representing contour orientation:
the firing in any one cell will be determined partly by the contrast
of the contour with its background, etc., but such effects would be
balanced out if the ratio of firing in all cells sensitive to
orientation in a given region of the retina were computed. If there
are also cells sensitive to curvature of a line a similar mechanism
would explain the sort of finding depicted in Figure 1 (b). As
yet there is no physiological demonstration of the existence of such
cells.
   Hubel and Wiesel have, however, found cells which respond
differentially according to the direction in which a stimulus is moved
across the retina. If direction of movement is coded in single cells
in human beings, adaptation in these cells might clearly underly
<SIC> the after-effect of movement. Once again the direction in
which something is seen to move might depend upon the ratios of firing
in cells sensitive to movement in different directions, and after
prolonged movement in one direction a stationary image would produce
less firing in the cells which had just been stimulated than normally,
hence apparent movement in the opposite direction would be seen to
occur.
   This explanation of FAE is based on sound physiological
evidence and is so simple that it seems highly convincing. It does
not, however, explain mere displacements in apparent spatial position
occurring as a FAE: for this phenomenon, the Osgood and Heyer
type of explanation appears reasonably plausible. This explanation in
fact fits well with the explanation outlined above since Osgood and
Heyer argue that the position at which a contour is seen itself
depends upon ratios of firing in different cells.
# 222
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It is wondered if such a boy requires inspiration which might be
got by tactful film teaching in the classroom. Indeed it might be
questioned what he does learn at school. His untidy, dirty, badly
spelled and careless paper does not indicate much attainment.
   Further information about viewing tastes comes out in the last
two questions of the paper where the young people were asked in what
way they preferred cinema to television and 6vice versa. Again it
is not easy to tabulate these written answers but they do fall into a
fairly regular pattern. Unfortunately 26% do not answer the question.
23% merely say they do not prefer television to cinema without any
explanation and a small number 13% that they do not prefer cinema to
television. Most of the reasons of those who prefer the cinema have
already been discussed- the colour, the stars, the choice, the
company and so on. The television supporters have other reasons.
These are not all concerned with the content.
   23%, almost equally boys and girls, prefer to do their viewing in
the comfort of their own homes. 1% of the boys and 13% of the girls
prefer television because they do not have to wait in a queue and have
a cold journey home in a bus after the show. They do not get cold and
wet and "even if the TV programme is not so good you feel better
on a miserable night." 11% of the young people like TV because
it is cheaper, at least so far as they are concerned. They are
pleased to switch it off when they do not like the programme or change
to the other channel.
   2% prefer to do their viewing at home because the atmosphere is
not so smoky nor so stuffy. Others rising to 3% of the 18-year-old
boys prefer television as they do not require to "dress up to go and
see it." Five secondary 15-year-old girls say the same. A
17-year-old girl civil servant, however, comments that cinema "is not
so compelling as TV and being away from the home it does not make
you lazy." Another 17-year-old at secondary school says, "TV
makes you lazy- most people become too lazy to make the effort to go
to the cinema." Another 15-year-old says, "My parents know the
cinema is better but they can't be bothered going out and the TV
gives them something to look at." A small number of 15/16-year-old
boys who have recently started work say that TV is "all right
for Sunday when you can't get into the pictures." This attitude
only appears with a small percentage, about 1/5% of the boys and not
at all with the girls.
   Other reasons for preferring TV other than the content of
the programme are numerous. A 16-year-old secondary schoolgirl says,
"At a cinema you cannot do what you want, lie on the floor, get up
when you like, shout at the people you don't like but you can with
TV." This freedom in viewing is implied in a number of
answers. A 14-year-old girl puts it, ~"You get peace and quietness
to do what you like," and an 18-year-old boy gets satisfaction,
"You can blast at the stupid things seen and know you will not be
put out." A 15-year-old says, "There is peace and tranquility at
home- you can leave and study when inclined." Another 15-year-old
boy probably explains this when he says you can "turn it off or go
and do something else without feeling you have wasted money."
Television is blamed by a secondary schoolboy as "anti-social and
leads to unfriendliness." A girl of the same age also thinks
"TV is anti-social." This aspect is also mentioned by a
number of others who repeat the objections that have often been made
about radio controlling the home, when the family have to be quiet
when one member is listening.
   Perhaps the most unexpected reply in this section came from a
junior secondary boy of 15, "Our rented TV was removed by my
request six weeks before the exams in March." A considerable
number, although having TV in the home, "prefer watching TV
in a cafe or at my mate's house" or "in the girl's home- it is
cosier." A few older boys translate this into, "It's friendlier
seeing TV with a pint in the pub."
   Others find television useful as background to other activity. A
14-year-old boy confesses, "You can neck and kiss your girl in peace
when dad and mum go to the pictures." Another, aged 15, finds
"fireside comfort with a girl when family is out." At 17 a boy
claims, "It is warmer at home especially if you are in alone with
the girl." Another aged 14 with a dirty paper says, "I only watch
TV when my parents have gone out so I can get peace to watch
TV and my smoke. I really prefer cinema so that I can get out of
the house and get rid of my moaning family." Although they do not
come into the enquiry proper it is interesting that two 19-year-old
members of a boys' youth club prefer TV because "you can sit
back with a pie and a pint." One feels sympathy for the 15-year-old
girl who likes TV but goes to the cinema for "peace and quiet
compared with noise at home.- There are six children at home."
   Actual tastes in television viewing have already been discussed
in the section on favourite TV programmes. The western is
popular with both sexes and all ages. Sports play a large part in
boys' viewing. On the whole it is difficult to know who chooses the
programme to be viewed. Two secondary girls of 15 would rather go to
the cinema to see what they like. "You don't have to watch what your
parents want, e.g. boxing for 2 1/2 hours or some hopeless
advertising programme." "Because your young brother wants to see a
stupid quiz programme you have to look as well." Boys in different
schools say, "You don't have the family quarrelling about which
channel to go on." Two others say, "You don't have to watch what
younger children want or what parents want."
   A number of 14/15-year-olds seem to like the serials on
television but it is not clear whether they actually mean plays,
dramas or novels too long for one evening and therefore continued for
a number of weeks or whether they mean a series in which the same
characters appear each week. "I like to be kept in suspense with
serials," has to be balanced by, "I just long to know what Dixon
will solve next week." A considerable number of girls like
television dramatisation of novels.
   A few girls mention that TV occasionally gives opera and
ballet performances. "I would never get a chance of seeing great
ballet otherwise," says one 15-year-old secondary girl. Several, of
course, include ballet and opera among the types of film they would
like to see in the cinema. Some add to this "but of course the
public would not go." Television music comes in for considerable
praise and some of the musical settings are admired. "TV music
interludes and background music are more enjoyable than that heard in
the cinema." "Settings for B.B.C. celebrity recitals help
you to understand it better."
   The commonest favourable criticism of television is that it
provides so many programmes of an educational and instructional
nature. "I like to see how things are made," says a 15-year-old
boy. Several secondary schoolgirls comment that Panorama and such
programmes help them to "understand some of the things we hear about
at school." News programmes are popular. Indeed it seems that some
boys make the news broadcast a break in their homework. An
18-year-old shorthand typist likes newsreels. "I would show
newsreels. The decision banning the newsreel in the cinema is from my
point of view absolutely wrong. Many people depended on it." "It
is marvellous seeing and hearing from famous people what you wouldn't
know anything about if it wasn't for TV," says a 17-year-old
student. The immediacy which is usually claimed for TV does not
seem to be a point in its favour for young people except with sports
programmes.
   A girl civil servant of 17 likes TV for showing "older
films that we would like to see but were in circulation when we were
too young to appreciate them." The nature programmes of TV
like Look, Zoo Quest, Safari, etc., all have those who like them
and look forward to them. "What a pity the nature programmes cannot
be in colour. The commentator speaks of the beautiful reds and greens
but we just see black and white and grey." For this reason we find
a considerable number preferring the Disney series of nature films and
asking for more. Another section of the young people like the dancing
programmes. The White Heather Club receives more votes than The
Kilt is my Delight and the more formal country dance items.
Rock'n'roll <SIC> programmes have a good following of the younger
age groups and the various stars who have programmes receive votes.
Tony Hancock is the most popular and Terry-Thomas the least.
Magicians and illusionists seem to intrigue but some of the variety
acts are described as "corny." Plays are more popular with girls
than with boys.
=4. Summary and Conclusion
   The tastes of adolescents seem to be affected by their
intelligence and their school education. There would appear to be
great opportunity for teachers and others to inspire their young
charges in the junior secondary school and in further education
establishments to appreciate what they see at the cinema or on the
television screen. There seems also a need for such inspiration in
youth organisations of all types, not excluding those which have some
form of religious background. Although the need is not so evident in
the case of children attending senior secondary schools whose parents
appear to a greater extent to influence their choice of cinema and
television programme, nevertheless inspiration in the best types of
visual material is just as necessary as instruction in literary, art
and musical appreciation.
   The majority still look at films and television for
entertainment. They seek to enjoy themselves. Family pictures are
required, appealing to the higher instincts of the young people. Too
many existing films are condemned by the young people themselves for
their appeal to the baser nature of man and the makers and exhibitors
are criticised for handling them.
   It is clear that the enormous sums of money spent on advertising
films and their stars influence many young people in their choice of
picture, but it is encouraging that the young people are not much
influenced by the films or by the advertisements to lead a life other
than that which happens to be theirs.
   A problem exists for the censor in looking after the morals of
the adolescents. An "X" certificate assures a good house,
according to the young people. The majority look at the category of a
film before attending the cinema (Table =5). It is a matter for
serious examination how so many under-age are able to see "X"
films. Perhaps the regulations are not strict enough: perhaps they
are too difficult to implement. Perhaps too many cinemas in a city
are showing too many "X" films: perhaps the film makers are failing
to produce universally suitable films in the numbers required for the
existing houses.
   The cinema is still a popular place of entertainment for
adolescents. About the same number attend once per week as attended
thirty years ago, although fewer attend oftener (Table =4). The star
and the type of film are the principal attractions for attending the
cinema in 196 (Table =6). Information about the films is obtained
more from newspaper reports than from film magazines (Tables =7 and
=8) although nearly half the adolescents do not bother about either.
   Comedy films are most popular at all ages with crime and
detection <SIC> films in second place (Table =1).
# 21
<321 TEXT J27>
Small shops supply all the staple foods, and general stores offer a
variety of household goods. Cheap clothing and furniture stores
advertise goods on the instalment plan, and here also numerous shops
devoted to repairs and to the sale of second-hand articles are to be
found. This area has some of the oldest and lowest buildings in the
parish, and one cheap cinema. Its north-easterly tip abuts on the
market of San Ildefonso whose parish was once an annexe of San
Marti?2n, and it is full of busy taverns.
   4. Fuencarral: forms part of the municipal quarters of
Mun?4oz Torrero, San Luis, Jardines and Carmen. A predominant
business and commercial activity marks this area of banks, offices,
the central Telephone Exchange, and the type of shop which deals in
manufactured goods such as radios, typewriters, office-equipment and
shoes. Dozens of tailors squat over their sewing in the upper storeys
of old buildings and the side streets are studded with craftsmen's
workshops and the comfortable family type of restaurant, notable for
its kitchen rather than its prices.
   5. Luna- Desengan?4o: belongs in parts to the municipal
quarters of Estrella, Mun?4oz Torrero and San Luis. This is the
least definable area of all since its limits link up and merge with
all others. Most of its buildings are residential, but the four
churches it contains also make it the centre of ecclesiastical
influence.
   The population of Madrid has trebled in the last fifty years and
continues to grow in an increasing proportion; in 1958 it was
estimated at 1,887,. This rise owes much to migration from the
country districts, especially those of the south because of the fall
in real wages. Even in Madrid's own province the gain at the expense
of the country areas was nearly 2, in 1956. Within the city
itself, the birth rate has dropped by almost one-third over the same
fifty years and, as in all the primate cities, was below the average
of 23.43 per 1 inhabitants in 1953. Urbanization in Spain
generally is distinctly correlated with a fall in reproductive rates.
In San Marti?2n the parish church declares that it is in contact
with some 5, homes, but admits that the total population of the
parish fluctuates between 25, and 3,. As the average size
family is four or five, the overflow is taken up by approximately
fifty hotels and 15 pensiones (boarding houses). Density
figures of 847 (12 square metres per inhabitant) show that the housing
problem is acute, and San Marti?2n is, in fact, expanding upwards in
the form of higher buildings. In the narrow back streets one commonly
finds old houses whose bulging walls have been shored up by heavy
timbers, often stretching beyond the pavement on to the road surface.
When these finally topple the landlord is only too pleased, for the
rents of pre-Civil War tenants have been controlled and tenancy
secured. Although he must find alternative accommodation for his old
tenants it need not be in the same area; the loftier the new building,
the higher the new rents, so that the previous occupier often has to
move out of the parish. Thus, the demographic changes induced by the
double decline in births and deaths are linked to an increasingly
rapid change in the composition of the parish population. Money is
ruthlessly finding its own level in housing, and as the wave of wealth
sweeps from the Gran Vi?2a to trickle away into insignificance in the
poorer areas of Pez, so those who cannot enter the economic swim are
driven farther away from the centre of the city and their traditional
parish. Two of the highest buildings in Europe now tower over the
parish from the Gran Vi?2a area. These skyscrapers, full of offices,
flats and hotels, are also a home from home for Americans who
administer their military bases in Spain under the pact of 1952; they
supply much employment to the local parishioners. The new pattern
evolving, therefore, may roughly be explained in terms of a
correlation between the height of the building and the income group
and the degree of density of population in the parish. The two
opposing poles of this correlation are the Gran Vi?2a and Pez areas,
ten minutes' stroll apart.
   There are no detached or semi-detached houses in this built-up
parish; and no front or back gardens. Buildings form part of blocks
whose rear may overlook communal courts. These are either mere wells
criss-crossed with washing-lines from window to window, or more
spacious ones used for commercial purposes, such as scrap-iron storage
yards. A sense of neighbourhood is, therefore, enforced by the number
of families crammed together in one building whose ground-floor tenant
usually acts as porter and general informant.
   A certain privacy is ensured for households who have separate
access to common landings or to a staircase, but the entrance is
invariably overlooked by a porter's window. Yet this modicum of
privacy is being invaded by the increasing clamour for accommodation.
More and more 'apartments' are being created out of old reception
rooms or spare bedrooms. Humorists publish exaggerated cartoons in
which even a large wardrobe or piano have been sub-let to the
desperate homeless. Few families are owners of the houses they live
in, but many more have a long-term lease of the floor on which they
reside. Some of the ancient three-storeyed mansions, now converted
into flats, have separate entrances and staircases for the use of
owner and tenants.
   Four-storeyed buildings of grey stone, with attics jutting out of
red-tiled roofs, and railed balconies at the French windows of each
floor, are still the most common in the residential areas. Some of
the tenement-houses have roof-terraces, access to which is usually a
bone of contention. Only the more modern and higher buildings have
central heating and originally-planned bathrooms. On the hot summer
nights the side streets are full of the chairs and stools of family
groups until the cool breezes of early morning. For the privilege of
living in this parish a working-class father in the older houses may
pay as little as the equivalent of one United States dollar a month-
a controlled rent; but this is probably a sixteenth of his weekly
income. Rents which are uncontrolled may be as high as 2, pesetas
a month or more.
   The sanctity of the home throughout Spain has never encouraged
the casual Anglo-Saxon habit of 'dropping-in' for unexpected
visits. For a family of six, cramped in four rooms in Madrid, the
enforced proximity of the neighbours scarcely permits the degree of
self-imposed isolation which it would obviously prefer. Even if it
could get on the depressingly-long waiting lists of the State,
Syndicate or Church housing projects in the suburbs, a typical family
would be reluctant to move from the familiar parish area; meanwhile it
regards with a resigned surprise the restoration of ancient castles,
and derives a mocking pleasure from the splendidly unfinished
ministries and monuments begun by a display-minded regime.
   The feeling of belonging to the parish as an ecclesiastical unit
consists in being a feligre?2s- a parishioner inscribed in the
parish register. This entitles him to take advantage of the essential
sacraments of baptism, marriage and extreme unction, and of the
religious associations, charities and their services. Official status
as a vecino in the district is acquired by a minimum of six
month's residence for all Spaniards of 21 or more, or for those of 18
or above who are legally living apart from their parents and are
inscribed in the electoral census as heads of households. The
municipal Padro?2n is the civil register of those liable to pay
taxes within the Centro district. All those listed therein are
required to carry an identity card with photograph and, if qualified
for social insurance benefits, to acquire on marrying a Family Book
from the so-called Ministry of Grace and Justice.
   The difference between membership of the ecclesiastical and civil
units cannot be considered wholly in terms of the voluntary and the
compulsory. Except for an insignificant percentage of Protestants,
there is religious conformity within the parish, and social and
religious obligations often dovetail; for religion is not yet merely a
personal affair, and the parish still exerts certain controls. These
will be discussed in the next chapter, where an examination of the
political structure of both Church and State will reveal the authority
and influence each wields.
   The aim of this chapter has been to paint the background and
landscape of the Madrid picture. The subsequent pattern that will
emerge will not be the comparatively regular one of the pueblo but,
rather, a jigsaw of interlocking social relationships which merge
their various forms and colours.
2
THE AUTHORITIES AND THE WORLD AROUND
   AN AUTHORITARIAN triad composed of mayor, police and priest,
similar to that found in the village, exists in the city but in a more
impersonal form, which only adds weight to its authority. It helps to
create awareness of community among all who share a common mode of
living in the district and parish, divisions which are themselves part
of a nationally imposed political structure. For not even the rural
parish is an autonomous, integrated whole wherein everything that
happens is functionally interdependent, and the urban parish is much
less so. San Marti?2n is at the heart of the nation's government;
and interaction between the superstructure of the capital as a whole
and the local parish unit becomes clear only when the institutionalism
of authority in general is examined.
   It is not my task here to go deeply into the historical causes of
the existing system, or to evaluate the political structure. A
distinction must, however, be drawn between that which is traditional
and enduring and that which is the result of current political
necessity.
   When, in the sixteenth century, the country quickly fell under a
bureaucratic absolutism pride was lost in the provincial fueros,
in municipal liberties, and in the rights of the Cortes of Castile.
Imperialism, Parry says, killed the best political thought in Spain.
Later, as an aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the pendulum of
government swung from reaction to counter-reaction. The political
instability and internal strife reflected by the ninety-eight changes
of Cabinet between 1834 and 1912- a period which saw revolutions,
regents, pretenders, new monarchs, the First Republic, military coups,
a Restoration, and the humiliating loss of the last of Spain's New
World possessions- made the populace apathetic and destroyed its
little faith in government. This is very quickly revealed in the
parish by the reluctance to discuss the past, except that during which
Spain was dominant in world affairs. Past experience has not
apparently deterred this people's search for heroic leaders rather
than for an abstract political ideal; the comparative success of two
dictatorships and the failure of the Second Republic in this century
might be adduced in support of this view if one were concerned with
political theory.
   Government in Spain continues to rest on the three institutions
of an hereditary monarchy (rejected by two short-lived republics), the
parliament of the old Castilian Cortes, and an extensive Civil
Service, with a permanent staff except for its highest officials.
Spain is at the moment a kingdom without a king. The Franco regime
has committed itself to the maintenance of the monarchy as an
institution by the 1947 Law of Succession and the Referendum of the
following year. Meanwhile the regime, in its own words, is 'a
representative, organic democracy in which the individual participates
in government through the natural representative organs of the family,
the city council and the syndicate'. Of these three organs one-
the family- has continued to participate through the parish in the
election of another- the city council of Madrid- since the
fourteenth century.
   Syndicalism can be considered as a twentieth-century edition of
the mediaeval gremios or trade guilds, which were themselves
linked to both the family and the parish by their religious activities
and the practice of spiritual sponsorship. It grew in the cities, not
in the country areas, and was closely associated with anarchism in the
past before the Falangists and Catholics made it 'respectable' in
its current form of national verticalism.
# 228
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In Pul Eliya these obligations are still imposed upon the holder of
any gamvasama plot whether or not he chooses to lay claim to the
title of Gamara?1la.
   As shown in Map E (p. 152) each of three ba?1ga has
one elapata, one elapat panguva, one gamvasama and
four ordinary pangu.
   According to Ievers the elapata, the elapat panguva
and the gamvasama should all belong to the Gamara?1la, but
this represents only an ideal initial situation. When detailed Pul
Eliya records begin in 1886 the pattern had already diverged widely
from this ideal. In that year, in each of the three ba?1ga, the
gamvasama, elapat panguva and elapata were in different
hands.
   Nevertheless the theoretical association of the elapata with
the elapat panguva provides yet another example of the
principle of 'fair shares'.
   Since the elapata constitutes the end of the field it
therefore carries with it the obligation to build and maintain the
whole of the end fence. This is about ten times more fencing than
attaches to any ordinary panguva strip. Because of this extra
fencing obligation the owner of an elapata is excused from the
duty of carrying out tank repair work. But the elapat panguva
has no such privilege. Thus the idea behind the doctrine that the
elapata and the elapat panguva should always be owned by
the same individual is simply to ensure that no one wholly escapes
from the unpleasant obligation of carrying out tank repair
ra?1jaka?1riya duty. This was felt to be particularly
important since in the event of a breach in the bund all villagers
must be equally responsible.
   In a comparable way, while the owner of an elapata and the
owner of a gamvasama must both pay for the building of watch
huts, the latter, as Gamara?1la, escapes the ra?1jaka?1riya
duty of night watchman. But, unlike the owner of the elapata,
the gamvasama owner must do his share of bund repair
ra?1jaka?1riya along with the other shareholders. In Pul Eliya
this carefully differentiated system of rights and obligations has
been rigorously maintained even though the status of the Gamara?1la
as a specialised class of individual is no longer formally recognised.
The rights and duties attach to the land itself, not to the
individuals who own it.
CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE IN PUL ELIYA
   So much then for the theory behind the tenure of land in Pul
Eliya Old Field. Now let us consider the actual state of affairs as
it existed in 1954.
   According to present-day Pul Eliya tradition the Old Field
originally contained 18 pangu, six for each ba?1ga, but at
some unspecified date in the past two extra pangu were added to
the Pahala ba?1ga by reducing the amount of land allocated to the
Pahala elapata.
   The circumstances which brought this change about are not now
remembered so I was fortunate that among the few nineteenth-century
documents relating to Pul Eliya which still survive there are two tax
returns which appear to confirm the tradition.
   The Village Vel Vida?1ne still submits annually to the revenue
administration a return purporting to show the exact amount of land
cultivated throughout the village and the precise ownership of each
plot. Today this return is compiled for the purpose of crop
statistics, but its form is just the same as that of the paddy tax
census of the 187-9 period. It is, therefore, easy to correlate
surviving tax census documents with the layout of the modern field.
   Table 4 has been drawn up from this documentary evidence to show
the relationship between the 1954 Old Field holdings (Upper Field) and
those of the years 1889, 189. This table is analysed in detail in
section B of the present chapter.
   The detailed analysis shows that the 1889 list is drawn up
according to a scheme of 18 pangu; the 189 list on the other
hand fits the present-day arrangement of 2 pangu. The story of
the 'two extra pangu' must therefore be correct and the
alteration must have occurred shortly before 189.
   Because of this satisfactory fit of documentary evidence with
oral tradition I feel confident that Map E (which 'fits' the
present-day arrangement of strips to an 'original' system of 18
pangu and three elapata) is justified and correct.
   'Originally' the field consisted of 3 ba?1ga; each
ba?1ga comprised a 4-fathom elapata and 6 pangu; each
panguva comprised 1 fathoms in the Upper Field and 1 fathoms in
the Lower Field. Such discrepancies as now exist result from the fact
that shortly before 189 two fathoms from panguva four of the
Pahala ba?1ga together with 22 fathoms from the Pahala elapata were
reclassified as forming 'two extra pangu'. Since that date
the Pahala ba?1ga has been deemed to consist of 8 pangu as
opposed to the 6 pangu in each of the other two ba?1ga.
The principal effect of this reclassification has been to alter the
type of ra?1jaka?1riya obligation falling on owners of these
plots of land. Details are given at pp. 27 f.
'BETHMA'
   The arrangement of the irrigation channels together with Vel
Vida?1ne's assumptions concerning water allocation for the different
parts of the field have the following implications:
   (1) The Upper Field consists of two equal parts- the north half
of the field and the south half of the field.
   (2) The Lower Field is half the area of the Upper Field.
   Thus the field as a whole is divided into three supposedly equal
areas, each of which contains the same number of strips of the same
width, owned in the same way. One-third of every holding falls into
each of the three main parts of the field. This symmetry has
important consequences.
   The North Central Province institution of bethma has
received frequent comment. This is an arrangement whereby the
shareholders in a field which is short of water may agree to cultivate
only a proportion of that field and then share out the proceeds among
themselves. The theoretical procedure, as recently described by
Farmer is as follows:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The village has an admirable system, known as bethma, under
which, if the whole extent of the paddy field cannot be cultivated for
lack of water, as many of the tracts as can be irrigated are divided,
regardless of their ownership, between the peasants in proportion to
their several holdings, and thus cultivated as a compact block with
minimum waste of water (Farmer, 1957, p. 558).
<END QUOTE>
   The earliest reference to bethma in this form is an
administration documents of the 1861-4 period.
   I have studied these entries with care, but they are
unfortunately ambiguous. It is evident that the Government Agent of
that date imagined that the system was supposed to work in the way
that Farmer has described, and he on several occasions records the
fact that he had ordered reluctant villagers to carry out bethma
division in this way. But it seems to me probable that this form of
bethma was the unintended invention of the British Government
Agent himself!
   At the present time different villages seem to work bethma
in different ways, and there is no way of ascertaining which, if
any, of these methods is the ancient traditional system. But what is
quite clear is that the Pul Eliya method is very much simpler than
that described by Farmer. Furthermore it is bethma which
provides the ultimate justification for fragmenting each individual
holding in the complicated way I have described. For Pul Eliya the
system is as follows.
   If the villagers are to cultivate rice in the Old Field during
the Yala (April/ September) season they will decide from the
start either to cultivate the whole of the field or two-thirds of the
field (that is, the whole of the Upper Field only) or just one-third
of the field (that is, the northern half of the Upper Field only). No
pooling of proceeds or reallocation of holdings is necessary since the
land is already divided up in such a way that each shareholder works
the whole or two-thirds or one-third of his total holding as the case
may be.
   In my limited experience this is the most common form of
bethma in all this area. The ideal scheme described by Ievers,
in which the total field is divided into two or more tracts
(pota), corresponds to the actual facts for all the villages in
the Pul Eliya area. It is invariably the case that every strip or
holding in the upper tract has a corresponding strip or holding in the
lower tract, though the precise manner in which this is effected is
not always the same. This fragmentation of individual holdings is
always directly associated with the local practices regarding
bethma. The relative size of the different tracts (pota) is
such that when the water is scarce cultivation of the upper tract
only, or of half the upper tract divided longitudinally, serves as a
bethma.
   Farmer's description, which is the orthodox one, implies that
individual Sinhalese farmers get on so well together that they can
readily agree to a reallocation of land in times of water scarcity. I
can only say that this does correspond to my experience!
CULTIVATION AREAS
   Before proceeding, we may note one further feature of the Tax
Lists (Table 4). For the years 1889 and 189 the areas of each
individual holding are given in seed quantities (P =
pa?12la; L = la?1ha: where 1 pa?12la = 1
la?1ha). But in the 1954 Plot List areas are given in acres.
The numerical totals at the bottom of the table are in each case
nearly the same; the 1889/9 Tax Lists show that the upper part of the
Old Field had a sowing area of about 48 pa?12la, the 1954
returns show the same field as having an area of just short of 48
acres. The latter figure exaggerates the facts by about 5 per cent.
The coincidence of numbers is no accident.
   The administration's requirement that the Vel Vida?1ne's crop
returns should show cultivation areas in acres rather than in seed
quantity dates from the early days of this century. The villagers,
however, still reckon land areas in terms of seed sown and have no
satisfactory method of converting one scale into the other. In making
out his annual returns the Vel Vida?1ne now works to a simple rule of
thumb.
   Sinakkara land and badu land has been surveyed by
government officials and hence the true acreage of such holdings is
known and is entered accordingly. For the Old Field on the other
hand, all that is really known is that it contains 2 pangu. Now
when the Old Field was originally surveyed in 19, the whole field
was shown to be just over 4 acres. It thus became established that
in Pul Eliya '1 panguva "equals" 2 acres' and this
tradition has stayed. Today when working out the allocation of labour
obligations for the purpose of ra?1jaka?1riya duty every 2
acres of sinakkara land and badu land counts as 1
panguva.
   In this way it was argued that at the beginning of 1954 there
were 52 pangu in Pul Eliya in all. Of these 2 were the Old
Field pangu and 32 were represented by 64 acres of sinakkara
and badu land. (Cf. 48 pangu (Table 5) plus plots 124,
151-2 (Table 6).)
   The quite erroneous acreages shown in the 1954 Plot List for the
plots in the Old Field were arrived at by reversing this argument.
Every 6 pangu in the upper tract of the Old Field are reckoned
as 12 acres. This leaves out of account both the elapata of the
Upper Field and the whole of the Lower Field. Consequently by the
time the Vel Vida?1ne has completed his returns so as to show an
acreage figure for each plot he has about 2 acres too many. Pul
Eliya village, like all other villages in the area, has been
submitting these bogus crop returns annually ever since the beginning
of the century, and the same type of error has persisted throughout.
   For Pul Eliya the return for 'area cultivated' has never been
less than 15 per cent in excess and has often been over 5 per cent in
excess.
# 227
<323 TEXT J29>
PARENTS' EXPECTATIONS OF THE JUNIOR SCHOOL
F. Musgrove
Purpose and Scope of the Survey
   In May and June 196 a survey was made of attitudes to and
expectations of the school among parents of children in the last two
years of two junior schools in a Midland City. Children of this age
(1 and 11 years) were chosen on the assumption that parental interest
and curiosity would be at their height, and views on education most
fully developed, in this period immediately preceding secondary
selection.
   One junior school (A) is situated on a large municipal housing
estate of subsidised houses; the children in the top two years
numbered 31. The school has a 'progressive' headmaster; teaching
and school organisation are informal and there is no excessive
concentration on the 'three R's'. The other junior school is
smaller and there were 14 children in the last two years. It serves
an expensive residential area of owner-occupied houses. It is a
Church of England school favoured by well-to-do Anglican parents of
the district. It is far more formal in its teaching and organisation,
and places more emphasis on the 'three R's', than school A.
   The two schools were chosen because of the marked social contrast
in the areas they serve.
   A random sample of one in four names was taken from the school
registers with a view to interviewing the parents of these children.
The homes of 26 children in school B were approached and interviews
were carried out in 22; the homes of 62 children in school A were
approached and interviews were carried out in 5.
   An important feature of the survey was the separate interviewing
of husbands and wives. On the estate (Area A) 42 couples were
interviewed, five wives whose husbands were either unavailable or
refused interview; and three husbands whose wives were either
unavailable or refused interview. Thus one or both parents of 5
children (22 boys and 28 girls) were interviewed- 47 mothers and 45
fathers, a total of 92 parents. In the middle-class district (Area B)
18 couples were interviewed and, in addition, four wives whose
husbands were not available. Thus one or both parents of 22 children
(14 boys and 8 girls) were interviewed: 18 fathers and 22 mothers, a
total of 4 parents. Altogether 132 parents in the two areas were
interviewed, representing 72 children (36 boys and 36 girls).
   The parents in Area A were predominantly working class: 47 of the
5 children came from homes where the head of household was in the
Registrar-General's Occupational Classes =3-=5. In Area B the
parents were predominantly white-collar, professional middle class: 19
of the 22 children were from households where the head was in
Occupational Classes =1 and =2. The following table gives the
percentage distribution of occupational classes in the two groups, in
the City (1951 Census Report) and in the country. The overlap between
the two groups within the city is very small.
<TABLE>
   Parents in Area A were on average younger than parents in Area B:
<TABLE>
   The average size of family was larger in Area A than in Area B:
3.2 and 2.5 children respectively.
   The author was assisted in the interviewing by 14 local teachers
who were known to him for their interest in problems of educational
sociology and who had, in a number of cases, previous interviewing
experience and training in field work. The team worked throughout
under the direction of the author who designed and directed the
project. Six families were randomly allocated to each member of the
team. Preliminary meetings were held to discuss the content of the
interviewing schedule, to clear up any possible ambiguities in the
wording and purpose of each item, and to standardize procedure at the
interviews and in the recording of interviewees' responses. All
members of the team were clear that they should record as fully as
possible all answers that were given and any additional information or
opinion that was volunteered: that although some questions might
simply be answered 'yes' or 'no' or 'don't know', any
elaboration, qualifying comment or reasons given should also be noted.
All interviewers were to emphasize to the parents that the interviews
were unofficial and that answers were not only entirely confidential
but anonymous. A copy of the schedule used in the interviews
(excluding 'classificatory questions' regarding age, number of
children, occupation, etc.) will be found in Appendix A.
   The interviews provided evidence of parents' expectations on
three scores: (a) relating to children's behaviour, (b) relating to
academic and scholastic training, and (c) relating to the curriculum.
Parents' Expectations of the School in the Sphere of Behaviour
Training
Emphasis on the Responsibility of School or Home
   Parents were asked whether they expected the school to guide
their child's behaviour as well as teach 'school subjects', and
those who answered 'Yes' were asked to state what kinds of
behaviour they expected the school to encourage. Interviewers were
asked to make a full recording of elaborations and qualifications to
answers to the first part of the question (5a) so that responses could
be classified and placed on a five-point scale ranging from strong
emphasis on the home's responsibility at one extreme to strong
emphasis on the school's at the other. The following are the five
groups into which all answers were sorted:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   1. Answers which gave the school an emphatic responsibility for
children's behaviour, e.g., ~'Certainly the school should teach
children how to behave- that's what school's for'; ~'Definitely
yes- it's the school's job to teach manners, etc.'
   2. Answers which emphasized the school's importance but also
mentioned the need for parental assistance, e.g., ~'The school
is responsible for behaviour to a great extent, but not entirely'
and ~'The school has a big responsibility, as well as the parents.'
   3. Answers which stressed the equal partnership between home and
school, e.g., ~'Fifty-fifty partnership'; ~'Home and school
should share the responsibility equally'; ~'Home and school
complementary' and ~'School's job in school hours, parents' job
otherwise'.
   4. Answers which emphasized the home's responsibility but also
mentioned the need for some support from the school, e.g.,
~'It's mainly the parents' responsibility but the school should
help' and, ~'To some extent- but this is mainly the responsibility
of the home and parents'.
   5. Answers which placed the responsibility for behaviour
emphatically on the parents (requiring of the school no more than that
it should not undermine parental influence), e.g. ~'It is
definitely the parents' job to guide behaviour'; ~'Definitely no:
the school can't do everything and should stick to its job, which is
teaching "subjects"'; and ~'Teachers should teach- behaviour is
the parents' responsibility'.
<END INDENTATION>
   The two areas were sharply distinguished in their answers: in
Area A, 27.7 per cent. gave answers which fell into categories 3, 4
or 5, whereas 57.5 per cent. in Area B did so:
<TABLE>
   There was no tendency for parents in either area who stressed the
home's responsibility for behaviour to have fewer children than the
average: in Area A, 2 parents stressed the home's responsibility as
against the school's and their average number of children was 3.1,
while the average for the area was 3.2; in Area B, 23 parents stressed
the home and their average number of children was 2.5, the same as for
all the families in the area.
   There was no tendency for working wives in either area to stress
the school's responsibility more than non-working wives. In Area A,
75 per cent. of the mothers were in full-time or part-time work, in
Area B, 14 per cent. were at work. Twenty-five per cent. of the
mothers in Area A who were not at work (4 out of 12) stressed the
home's responsibility (categories 3, 4 or 5), but so did 22.8 per
cent. (8 out of 35) of mothers who went out to work. In Area B, all
three working mothers stressed the responsibility of the home as
against the school, and 58 per cent. (11 out of 19) of the
non-working mothers.
   The difference in expectations between the two areas reflects
their different social class composition. When the same social levels
in the two areas are compared the differences disappear. In order to
obtain social groups large enough for comparison, Occupational Classes
=1 and =2 are combined to form the 'Middle Class' and
Occupational Classes =3, =4 and =5 to form the 'Working Class'.
In Area A, three out of five middle-class parents placed emphasis on
the home, in Area B, 22 out of 34. There was no significant
difference between the two areas within the middle class. On the
estate, 17 working-class parents emphasized the home and 7 emphasized
the school; in the contrasted area one working-class parent emphasized
the home, and five the school. There was no significant difference
between the two areas within the working class. On the other hand,
there was a highly significant difference between the two areas when
social class was not held constant. On the estate, 2 parents
emphasized the home and 72 the school, in Area B, 23 emphasized the
home and 17 the school.
   Although in working-class Area A a far higher proportion of
parents than in middle-class Area B emphasized the school's
responsibility for behaviour-training, a far higher proportion claimed
explicitly to direct or influence their children's behaviour in three
main directions: towards their teachers, towards their friends, and in
their choice of friends and associates:
<TABLE>
   Claims to give explicit direction and guidance on behaviour were
significantly greater in working-class Area A than in middle-class
Area B: in the former Area 188 claims (out of a possible 276) were
made on three criteria; in the latter only 53 (out of a possible 12).
The difference between the areas is significant at the .1 level.
   The reasons for this marked difference between the areas was
apparent in the answers given by the respondents: parents in the
middle-class area were sufficiently confident of their children's
behaviour that they felt no need to instruct them on their
relationship with teachers and friends, and they felt sufficient
confidence in the social composition of the school and the locality
that they saw no need to guide their children in the choice of
friends. This was clear from many of the answers given to questions
7a and 7c. The interviewees were not asked why they did or did
not advise their children about whom to play with or whom to avoid:
the question could be answered simply 'Yes' or 'No', yet
one-third of the parents who said that they did not tell their
children how to behave with other children volunteered the explanation
that this was 'unnecessary' and a similar proportion of those who
said they never told their children not to play with certain other
children elaborated their answer by saying there was no need to do so
in this school and/or district: ~'No: the children at this school are
nice children' and ~'No: it is unnecessary around here'. The
marked difference, then, between directing and non-directing parents
is a function of area and not of social class. The greater tendency
among parents of Area A to direct behaviour reflects their lack of
confidence in the social contacts available to their children.
Behaviour which the School should encourage
   The greater emphasis in working-class Area A on the school's
responsibility for behaviour-training does not necessarily reflect a
lack of concern for parental duties: the school is often given the job
of directing behaviour because, it is felt, only the school can do
this effectively. The reason often volunteered for assigning so much
responsibility to the school was that the children would 'take more
notice of teachers' than of parents.
   The anxiety over children's disobedience towards parents is
reflected in answers to the question: 'What kinds of behaviour do
you expect the school to encourage in your child?' Parents who
expected the school to guide behaviour were asked to particularize.
Out of the 77 parents in Area A who gave such particulars of the
attitudes, virtues, and qualities of personality which they wished the
school to develop, 7 per cent. showed a concern for various forms
of unruly or anti-social behaviour.
# 221
<324 TEXT J3>
The Vale has a population of about 13, people. Most of them
live in scattered farms, hamlets and villages. There are also two
small market towns in the area, each with about 1,5 inhabitants.
Most of my detailed enquiries have been carried out in one of these
towns and in three adjoining rural parishes, in one of which I live
with my family. A certain number of my informants live in other parts
of the area. In addition, a private census of the whole Vale
population, carried out in 196, has provided a good deal of basic
information about each individual inhabitant and the composition of
each household.
   Although a rural and predominantly agricultural area, no part of
the Vale is more than 12 miles from major industrial and urban
centres. Many of the people who live in the Vale work outside it and
travel to and fro each day to earn their livings in adjacent urban
areas. Most Vale people also have kin ties with people who live in
these areas and in other parts of South Wales with whom they maintain
effective social relations. A larger number of Vale people who do not
work in the urban areas nevertheless visit them fairly regularly to
see friends and relatives who live there or who are in hospital there,
to shop or go to the cinema, and for such recreational purposes as to
attend football matches and greyhound races. About 4 per cent of the
adult population of the Vale consists of people who were born outside
it and have lived in it for less than 15 years. The majority of such
comparative newcomers were born in other parts of South Wales, mostly
in places in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire which lie
within 25 miles of the borders of the Vale. Many of them have close
relatives still living at their places of birth or previous residence
with whom they maintain frequent and intimate contact.
   The most important sources of employment for those Vale people
who earn their livings within its borders are agriculture and
forestry, stone quarries and cement works, and the building industry.
A large number of men and women are employed in different capacities
by public bodies such as the County and Rural District Councils, the
Fire Service, and local electricity and water undertakings. There is
also a large Royal Air Force station in the Vale which provides
employment for a number of locally resident civilians. Further
sources of employment are public and private transport and
communication services, the distributive trades, and a number of small
industrial concerns in the two Vale market towns, among which are an
asbestos factory, a printing works and three firms of agricultural
engineers.
=2
   Most of the material concerning kinship in the Vale was
obtained by standard anthropological procedures: the collection of
genealogies, unstructured interviews with individual informants, and
participant observation. Certain data on particular aspects of
kinship behaviour were provided in the course of a study of the
attitudes to mental disorder of the relatives of psychiatric patients.
I have also had access to a wealth of documentary material, most of
it unpublished. After a time, however, I found myself able to make
increasing use of direct observation to supplement verbal information.
Participation in the life of the locality and growing familiarity
with the details of kinship connections made it possible to observe
social relations between kin taking place in a wide variety of
contexts and to compare behaviour between kin with behaviour between
non-kin in similar situations.
   In collecting material from informants I have tried as far as
possible to relate statements regarding kin ties to the individuals
concerned rather than to married couples, elementary families or
households. In the field situation this is not, of course, as easy as
it sounds. Data on kinship are often obtained from two or more
informants simultaneously. The discussions and arguments between them
which such inquiries tend to provoke often compensate for the
resultant difficulty in comparing knowledge of kin and quality of
relationship with them revealed by individual members of the same
domestic unit. This emphasis on the kinship universe of the
individual rather than the domestic unit arose from certain apparent
differences between men and women, between spouses, and between
parents and children in degree of recognition of extra-familial kin
ties and in their functions in various contexts.
   I have also attempted to collect material on the
interconnectedness of kin ties by interviewing and observing different
members of the kinship universe of individual informants. The
difficulties of doing so seem often to be directly related to the
degree to which an individual's kinship network is what Bott describes
as 'close-knit', in which there are many relationships, independent
of the individual concerned, among the component units of his kin
universe. In many 'families' there is generally at least one
person who is acknowledged by most other family members to be the
expert on genealogical connections. The existence of such recognized
experts is particularly common among 'families' long settled in the
area, other members of which tend to rely on them for details of
genealogical connections and to refer the investigator to them when
approached for kinship information.
   Firth refers to such experts as pivotal kin, 'relatives who act
as linking points in the kinship structure' and who 'hold more
threads of genealogical connections in their heads than anyone
else'. I prefer to differentiate between experts and pivotal kin,
and to reserve the latter term for those individuals who act as
connecting relatives, irrespective of whether they are also experts.
The significance of pivotal kin as connecting links is usually
greater if they are also experts, as is often the case. But many
pivotal kin are elderly men who, in general, know less about kinship
connections than their daughters or nieces; and it is often found that
individuals remain pivotal kin after their death. Not only do their
graves sometimes form the pivot round which kin ties tenuously
revolve, but the dead are often used by living informants as foci from
which genealogical connections stem. This is particularly the case
when the dead person lived to a great age or had high prestige for
some reason among his kindred or in the locality.
   Most pivotal kin who are also experts are elderly women who, from
their personal knowledge of dead kin of previous generations, maintain
links of information and social contact between their own and their
siblings' descendants and the descendants of their parents' and
grandparents' siblings. In theory, and often in practice, this means
that such women carry in their heads kinship knowledge of six
generations depth and extending laterally among consanguineal kin as
far as the grandchildren of second cousins. When economic and other
social factors reinforce relatively remote kinship connections, the
lateral extension among consanguineal kin may go further: the
grandchildren of pivotal kin may recognize as cousins of unspecified
degree the descendants of the pivotal kin's second or third cousins.
The same factors often lead to knowledge of, and contact with,
affines being very extensive.
   There are many individuals in the Vale who are able to identify
between 2 and 5 living and dead relatives, about the majority of
whom they can provide at least such information as sex, marital state,
place of residence and occupation. Most of these individuals are
people long settled in the area, by which I mean people who, in the
main, were born in the Vale and one or both of whose parents, and
often whose grandparents, were also born there. By contrast, there
are other individuals who show a very much more restricted range of
kin recognition of the order of about 5 relatives in all. Some of
these individuals have always lived in the area but most of them are
relatively recent immigrants, that is, adults who were born outside
the Vale, often in urban areas, and who have only moved into the
locality since 1945. In both instances, in spite of the great
differences in size of the average kinship universe, it is rare for
the depth of generations over which kin are recognized to exceed seven
or to be less than four. Again, while the number of kin with whom an
individual may have some kind of periodic contact tends to vary with
the size of the kinship universe, the number of kin with whom an
individual has frequent and intimate contact is usually little
different for those with large kinship networks from those with small.
   Degree of physical mobility is only one of a number of
interdependent social factors which act directly or indirectly to
influence the size of an individual's kinship universe. These factors
are also related to the amount of contact the individual has with his
extra-familial kin and to the differentiations he makes among them;
the most important are occupation, economic resources, ownership of
property and degree of social mobility. In some cases religious
affiliations and level of education also seem significant. The
decisions which an individual makes in choosing how far to observe or
disregard in any particular set of circumstances the sentiments,
obligations and expectations which are involved in the recognition of
extra-familial kin ties appear to be influenced by the interplay of
such factors as these. It is within the framework provided by them
that idiosyncratic preferences operate.
   The same factors also tend to affect the degree to which
marriages reinforce already existing ties of kinship and affinity and,
among certain sections of the population, the scarcely less
significant ties between kith, that is, between friends and neighbours
of approximately the same perceived social status. Indeed, kith may
be described as consisting of those who are an individual's potential
affines.
   The multiplicity of roles which every individual fills both
successively in his lifetime and simultaneously at any given time is a
sociological truism which needs no labouring. In any attempt to study
the functions of kinship in a highly complex society it is
nevertheless all too easy to lose sight of the importance for social
behaviour of role-relationships other than those based on kin ties.
Any analysis of a system of social relations necessarily involves the
overemphasis, for heuristic purposes, of lines of demarcation between
particular aspects of behaviour. In fact it is often very difficult
for the observer to disentangle the kinship network of an individual
from the wider social network of which it forms a part. This is most
clearly seen in the case of farmers and their families who, together
with those whose occupations are largely dependent on agriculture and
who come, in many cases, of local farming stock, form one of the
significant sections of Vale society. At the same time it is possible
to demonstrate the importance of the social factors mentioned earlier
in relation to the structure and functions of extra-familial kin ties.
   Among farmers the degree of physical mobility is relatively low.
Although most farmers in the Vale are tenants, holdings relatively
rarely become vacant other than through the death or retirement of the
tenant, when it is the traditional policy among landowners and their
agents to give preference among applicants for the new tenancy to the
sons of the previous tenant. The vast majority of farmers are the
sons and grandsons of farmers and most farmers' wives are the
daughters of farmers. Those children of farmers who are socially
mobile tend to maintain close links with their relatives who are still
farming. There is a high degree of interconnectedness in the kinship
and social networks of farmers; there is also considerable variation
between individual farmers in the recognition of extra-familial kin
ties, according to the age of the individuals concerned, the stage of
development in its life-cycle reached by the elementary family to
which they belong and the social context of contacts between them.
The result is that it is often almost impossible to know whether
social relations between individuals in particular instances should be
classified as taking place between kin or between non-kin.
# 22
<325 TEXT J31>
   The reticent users were asked simply, as described above,
to state the methods they had ever used and the stage in family
building when they started these practices. They were not asked for
further details in view of their original reluctance to admit to
practice.
   In this attempt to elicit contraceptive histories, attention was
directed towards minimising any embarrassment. The relevant questions
were put at the end of the questionnaire to allow time for the
interviewer to gain the informant's confidence and the list of
contraceptives included both medical and colloquial names for the
various contraceptive methods. The use of the card with its numbered
list prevented the informant from having to mention the methods by
name.
   In the event interviewers found little difficulty with these
birth control questions; reports from supervisors suggest that once an
informant had embarked on the questionnaire, he or she co-operated to
the end. Only 17 refused to say whether or not they had ever
practised any form of birth control, and a further 2 informants, who
were found to have taken some action to control conception, refused to
indicate the methods they had used; one commented: "I think it is a
very private matter and would rather not discuss it." This bears
out the American study experience: only 1 of the 2,713 wives who were
interviewed were unwilling to answer the questions about their
attempts to avoid conception; this was less than the refusal rate for
their questions about income and the usual refusal rate for income
questions in other sample surveys.
   Despite the apparent ease of the interview situation and the low
refusal rate on these birth control questions, possibilities for error
and reticence exist. As mentioned in Part =1 of this paper, nearly
half the informants were interviewed in the presence of relatives,
friends or children; although it seems that the presence of these
people did not seriously affect the response to questions on
contraceptive practice, they may occasionally have been an inhibiting
factor, even though informants were not required to mention methods by
name. Also, although the informants seemed to understand the terms on
the card showing the list of contraceptives, it is possible that
incorrect answers were given by a few who only knew a different
colloquial name for the method used. The following analysis shows
that a large majority of the informants only ever used one
contraceptive method or group of methods simultaneously; however, it
is possible that a few informants, weary at this stage in a long
interview, may not have taken the trouble to outline their whole
contraceptive history and only mentioned the method they considered
the most important. Lastly, the interviewers, though skilled and
experienced at questioning diverse people on a wide range of topics,
were not specifically trained as those engaged in the Lewis-Faning and
the American study had been for this almost clinical aspect of the
inquiry.
DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE BY MALE AND FEMALE INFORMANTS
   One or more of the above may account for the surprising finding
that, in every cohort and social class, birth control practice was
mentioned more often by men than by women. Some 74 per cent of the
male informants married since 193 reported practising contraception
in their first marriages against only 65.1 per cent of the female
informants.
   The questions had been designed (see p. 122) to obtain each
couple's contraceptive practice and not just the action taken by the
informants alone, and hence similar results were anticipated from male
and female informants. Perhaps this was a naive expectation, since
psycho-sexual factors, particularly in this culture may tend to
inhibit women on the subject and possibly in turn lead men in some
cases to overstate their practices. A complete understanding of this
differential sexual response is obviously impossible, but a clearer
examination of the method of questioning suggests some explanation and
makes possible an assessment of the significance of this finding on
the validity of the results on birth control methods.
   Questioning on family planning opened with an inquiry about
attitudes. Q.182a: "Many married couples do something to
limit the size of their families and to control when their children
come. How do you feel about this?" Replies showed that male
informants married since 193 fully approved of birth control more
frequently than female informants; in all 68.9 per cent of the men
against 63.9 per cent of the women, but the differences were
especially marked amongst those married in the 194s, where 72.2 per
cent of men approved against only 6.2 per cent of women.
   This questioning on personal attitudes was followed by the
enquiries about practice described above. Response to the first
question shows the main sex differential; 57.5 per cent of the male
informants married since 193 answered positively (in our terminology
declared themselves to be avowed users) as against 47.2 per cent
of the female informants; this differential operated in all cohorts
and classes, but, as with the attitude question, was more marked in
the 194-49 cohort (62.1 per cent of male informants to 46.1 per cent
of female informants) and particularly amongst the skilled manual and
other manual workers in this cohort. It was only when informants had
declared their use of contraception in this way that they were asked
the methods they had used and were shown the full list of appliance
and non-appliance methods. At this stage the same proportion of each
sex reported using only non-appliance methods including withdrawal,
but the female informants reported less use of appliance methods.
Closer examination revealed, as was to be expected, that as many
female informants as male informants had reported use of the cap;
hence the difference lay essentially in reports of the sheath.
   We had expected the difference to lie in reports of "male"
methods since it seems possible that some female informants who
disapproved of birth control might quite reasonably have denied
practice if their husbands were responsible for the methods used, and
particularly as the request for information on the couple's
methods was not specifically repeated in the wording of the question
on methods used (Q.188); but we thought this difference would show
up more in the proportion reporting withdrawal. However, in all
cohorts as many women as men married since 193 had, by this stage in
the questioning, reported the practice of withdrawal. But perhaps,
and Freedman and Whelpton mention this possibility, women responded to
the positive suggestion of "husband is careful, withdraws" and some
reported this method when in fact their "careful" husbands had used
the sheath.
   It will be remembered from p. 123 (Q.186) that all those
denying birth control practice were shown a numbered list of
non-appliance methods and asked to state, by number which, if any,
they had used. In some of the cohorts and classes where the sex
differential in the proportion of avowed users was most marked
some of the leeway was made up by a greater proportion of women
admitting to the use of these non-appliance methods (in our
terminology declaring themselves to be reticent users),
particularly in the 194-49 cohort where a further 21.1 per cent of the
female informants became reticent users as against only 16 per cent of
the male informants (the proportion for the "other manual" group
showed an excess of 1 per cent for women over men). It should be
remembered here that for these informants this was the first time they
had been shown a list of methods and also that this list only included
non-appliance methods. Interestingly, at this point, more women than
men mentioned use of withdrawal and significantly more in the
seriously affected 194-49 cohort, supporting the theory that some of
the sex differential on avowed use was due to the failure of women
to report practice when their husbands had taken the contraceptive
action. Also, since these informants were confined to non-appliance
methods, it is possible that some women reported withdrawal when in
fact their husbands had used the sheath.
   The combined answers of the avowed and reticent users
together give us the total extent of eventually admitted birth control
practice. This shows a steady differential in all cohorts including
the 194s, of approximately 1 per cent more admitted practice for
male informants than females; the difference lies, particularly in the
194-49 cohort in the proportion of male and female informants
reporting use of appliance methods.
   From the probably genuine sex differential in personal attitudes
to contraception, through the intensive, carefully worded but perhaps
too closely defined method of questioning, some female informants may
have failed to reveal their birth control practices, particularly
where their husbands were responsible for the contraceptive measures,
and others may have recorded "husband is careful", i.e.
withdrawal, when in fact he used the sheath.
   In assessing the significance of this, particularly in relation
to the analysis of patterns of contraceptive practice to follow, it
seems most relevant to examine the effect on the internal consistency
of the all user group, and more particularly the avowed user
group. Here we find that the differential response by male and
female informants has not seriously disturbed the balance of methods
reported by the two sexes. Amongst the all user group the
proportions reporting any appliance method and using only
non-appliance methods show an unbalance for the sexes only in the
194-49 cohort, and even these differences are barely significant at
the 5 per cent level. The pattern for the avowed users is even
better; in all cohorts and classes the frequency of methods reported
by male and female informants is similar.
   Since the analysis of birth control methods and contraceptive
histories is concerned essentially with the patterns of methods
reported by the users and particularly the avowed users, we have
felt it justified to continue the analysis of birth control methods
for all informants, male and female combined.
   The above poses obvious questions about the completeness of the
data to follow. Undoubtedly the results understate the actual extent
of practice and probably the use of some methods; nevertheless, this
is a first attempt to get at the birth control experiences of a
national sample and the findings appear to be consistent in their
trends, and at least point to changes over time in contraceptive
behaviour, even if they do not provide an absolutely complete history
of birth control experiences throughout the population.
USE OF DIFFERENT BIRTH CONTROL METHODS
   The informants who admitted to the practice of birth control,
whether at once or after probing, indicated the various contraceptive
methods they had used during their married lives. Many reported that
two or more methods had been used, either simultaneously or in
succession, so the number of reports of methods exceeds the total of
users. To show the extent to which the various methods are used and
their changing popularity over the period, Table 1 treats each method
separately and gives the proportion of users reporting each method.
It also contrasts the Marriage Survey with the American study.
<TABLE>
   Table =1 shows the overwhelming importance among Marriage Survey
users of the two male methods: the sheath is reported by almost half
these users and withdrawal by 44 per cent. The next most popular
method is "safe period" but it is only reported by 16 per cent of
the informants, followed by cap (11 per cent) and pessary and gels (1
per cent). Comparison of the three cohorts shows some changes. There
is a significant trend away from withdrawal and towards the cap; the
increase in the proportion of sheath users is not quite significant.
   The American data can be compared with the Marriage Survey totals
column. Although the sheath is the most popular method in both
countries, the frequency of other methods is significantly different.
Withdrawal, Britain's next most frequently adopted method, is used by
only 15 per cent of the American sample, and instead there is greater
reliance on the "female" methods: cap, safe period and douche.
   In Britain there are nearly twice as many reports of the use of
"male" methods as "female" (92.8 per cent to 48.2 per cent),
whereas in the U.S.A. the proportions are reversed.
# 215
<326 TEXT J32>
Hogben's paper is thus of some value as a counsel of scientific
caution, but adduces no fundamental objections to the theory.
   In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to clarify the
issues and gain some idea of the influence of genetic factors in one
aspect of language, the sound structure. This has been taken broadly,
and the sound-producing apparatus and its results, whether in the
individual, the group, or the population, the complement of sounds of
a language and of the languages of a population, and the changes in a
sound complement, have all been considered. Each of these should have
a genetic component. The development, structure and functioning of
the vocal apparatus are clearly determined in part by genes, and hence
the nature and the limits of the continuum of sound production
possible to this apparatus must be likewise. And following from this,
in the last analysis, any vocal sound produced by an individual,
whether in speech or not, and if in speech, whether significant or
not, will be of the nature that it is, in part at any rate, because of
the particular genetic composition of that individual. Similarly the
complement of sounds used by a group in the vocalisation of its
language and the total complement of sounds used by the various groups
of a population in the vocalisation of their languages will be of
their characteristic natures, in part, because of the particular
genetic composition of that group or population.
   And it would seem that genetic factors must play some part in
changes in a sound complement. This is not only in the sense that the
intermediate stages in any case of sound change must have some genetic
component, but also in the sense that the motivations which induce a
community of speakers to make the change derive from those speakers,
and hence axiomatically reflect, to some extent, their genetic
composition. The most important of these motivations has been taken
to be the tendency to economy of effort, a tendency which is known to
be operative in a wide range of human activities, and which itself
must be largely genetic in its determination- there is after all no
difficulty in imagining its evolution in a species under conditions of
natural selection. But even those changes which seem to be mainly the
result of cultural influences of one sort or another will have a
genetic component. The speakers of a dialect borrow, imitate, or
learn sounds from other dialects, partly, perhaps, as I have suggested
above (p. 25) in accordance with their own preferences, but mainly,
it is usually assumed, because of their impulses to conform with what
seems a desirable norm. Such impulses will in theory also have a
genetic component. They vary, as is common knowledge, from individual
to individual and they doubtless vary also, in terms of mean values,
from group to group.
   The result of this investigation has been to develop in more
detail the hypothesis of genetic influence in the sounds of language,
particularly with regard to the extent of its field of operation and
to the nature of the way in which this influence is exerted. For the
reasons given, it seems that the existence of a genetic component of
language as such is 6a priori to be accepted; the question
which remains then is whether the further hypothesis of the extent and
the nature of the genetic influence such as has been outlined in the
preceding pages is valid. The answer to this must primarily depend on
the success with which it is considered that this hypothesis may be
applied to and shed new light on the observed data of the subject, and
suggest further constructive work.
   There can be no doubt of its applicability to a considerable
amount of the material in linguistics and its ancillary disciplines.
It can be applied to the individual and to the particular rate,
method, and accuracy of his acquisition of his sound complement, to
the uniqueness of this, and to its aberration from the group mean. It
can be applied to the group, to the mean of the group rate and method
of acquisition, to the uniqueness of the group sound complement, and
to the relations between overlapping groups and their dialects.
Further, it can be applied to the population, to the uniqueness of
the total sound complement of a population, to the widespread
similarities in the sound complements of its various constituent
groups, and to the particular distributions of the sounds and sound
features of that total sound complement.
   It also provides a basic factor in the causation of phonetic
change, clarifying the nature and the role of the tendency to economy
of effort in this phenomenon, and offers an explanation of many of its
observed characteristics, including some, such as the parallel
developments in related languages spoken by related peoples, or the
long continued drifts in a sound complement, which have been
peculiarly resistant to explanation in the past.
   And it suggests a number of lines of investigation which should
be fruitful in the further development of the subject. Some of the
most obvious of these may now be considered briefly in turn.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SOUND FEATURES
   The most obvious and important linguistically is the
geographical distribution of sounds and sound features. The cases
discussed in this book have been discovered largely by trial and
error, and an adequate series of maps of the distributions of the main
types of articulations is a prime desideratum. Besides articulations
in the strict sense, it would seem likely that there may be much of
interest in the distribution of such features as type of syllabic
structure, liaison and juncture phenomena, the restrictions on
occurrence of specific sounds and sound types- practically all the
languages of Europe from Dutch to Russian, for example, permit no
voiced plosive in word final position- and so on. And further, among
less detailed phenomena, the establishment of the distribution of
languages with lexical tone would seem valuable in this connexion. At
the moment we have very little idea of the distributions of such
features, and the lines of research which they may suggest.
   The historical development of such distributions opens a new
field in that the appearance of a specific sound type in one language
need not be an event which is solely the result of conditions internal
to that language; it may be related to the occurrence of sounds of
similar type in other languages, of the same or different family, in
the same region. I have suggested in a previous article (Brosnahan,
1959), for instance, that the development of affricate articulations
in the Old High German consonant shift is part of a larger, but
geographically limited phenomenon, a remarkable development of
affricates over the last two thousand years and centred in the area
now occupied by the Western Slavonic languages, Hungarian and
Albanian. Our understanding of language and the deeper-lying factors
in its development is likely to be very greatly extended by
investigation along these lines.
   A further possibility is the comparison and mapping of acoustic
features or characteristics of representative samples of different
languages. With modern methods of recording, it is not difficult to
devise techniques to determine, say, the mean distribution of energy
over the range of frequencies used in speech. Such mean distributions
should vary from language to language with differences in their sound
complements, and with differences in the relative frequency of
occurrence of specific types of articulation. The mapping of such
distributions may also be informative in bringing to light unexpected
correspondences at the sound level among different languages.
THE MECHANISM OF HEARING
   This leads to another field of investigation. The discussion
of the vocal apparatus in this work has been confined to that of the
sound-producing mechanism. But it is not unreasonable to expect that
the capacities of the sound reception mechanism may also have exerted
some influence on the development of the sound aspect of language. It
is true there is little evidence that the auditory distinctiveness of
specific sounds has much effect on their selection in a sound
complement (p. 12 f. above) but other possibilities exist. The
capacity of the ear and its mean sensitivity to different ranges of
acoustic frequency are likely to vary from group to group and
population to population of the earth's surface in accordance with
differences in the genetic composition of the peoples involved, and it
is not impossible that the general or average "set" of a language
in the frequency scale shows some sort of correlation with this
capacity. A case that springs to mind in this connexion is that of
languages with lexical tone, and an investigation into audiograms of
speakers of these languages and comparison with those of speakers of
other types may be of interest.
   Some possible indications of a close connexion between vocal
language and the hearing mechanism have been found. The mechanical
resolving power of the cochlea with regard to frequency, measured as
the extent of the shift of the point of maximum response along the
cochlear partition for a given ratio of frequency change, is
practically independent of frequency in most animals. In the human
ear, however, this resolving power is relatively low up to about 3
cycles per second and then shows an abrupt increase, reaching a
relatively high value by 1, cycles per second (von Be?2ke?2sy
and Rosenblith, 1951). Since the range of frequencies most important
for intelligibility seems to be that above 1, cycles per second, it
is tempting to regard the human variation from the pattern in other
animals as the result, at least in part, of adaptation in the course
of evolution to these important frequencies of human vocal
communication. If language or its forerunners has exerted such
influence on the phylogenetic development of the hearing mechanism, it
is not unlikely that this mechanism has also exerted some influence on
the frequencies of language.
THE ACQUISITION OF SPEECH
   A field in which the influence of genetic factors is likely to
be more easily recognised is that of the acquisition of a sound
complement in the process of learning to speak. A real need is more
work of the nature of that done by Irwin and his associates covering
adequate numbers of children and carried out by investigators with
standardised techniques, to determine in detail the norms of this
acquisition in other communities and with other languages. Besides
their importance in demonstrating the influence of the heredity of the
group, such norms would be of considerable value in pediatrics and
child development generally as well as in speech therapy. They may be
expected to vary, not only on the grounds of genetic theory, but also
in accordance with our existing knowledge of child development: thus,
for example, the recent investigations by Geber and Dean (1957) have
indicated that the general development of young East African children
is some months ahead of that of European children of corresponding
ages.
   Another field here, which would seem to be very important, but
which as far as I know has hardly been touched, is the environment in
which the child acquires its sound complement. Though some
information is available as to the nature and frequency of the sounds
which the child produces, no attempt seems to have been made to
determine the nature and the frequency of the sounds which the child
hears at this period of its life. Difficult though such research may
be to plan and execute, it should not be neglected. It may well be
that some correlation will be found between the nature of the stimulus
from the environment and the nature of the child's development, and
this must be considered in assessing the role of the genetic component
in the process. Investigation of this topic may also be of value by
giving precision to the conception of the representative sample of the
sound complement, which, it was suggested above (p. 14), could be
taken as the actual norm of the group in the experience of the
individual.
# 29
<327 TEXT J33>
THE GRAMMATICAL INTERPRETATION OF RUSSIAN INFLECTED FORMS USING A
STEM DICTIONARY
by J. McDANIEL and S. WHELAN, National Physical
Laboratory, Teddington, England
INTRODUCTION
   THE NPL Russian-English automatic dictionary is organised
on a stem-paradigm basis wherein there is for most nouns and
adjectives a single entry for all their inflected forms and for most
verbs only one or two entries. This is in contrast to the full-form
type of dictionary organisation wherein each inflected form of every
word has a separate entry. The decision to organise our dictionary on
this basis was made so as to be able to accommodate it on the magnetic
tape store available to us on the ACE digital electronic
computer of our laboratory and, further, to minimise the look-up time
per word on the computer without complicating the look-up procedure
too much or investing too much programming effort in its compilation.
The word content of the dictionary initially is to be 15, words
from the Harvard University Automatic Dictionary. Our dictionary will
have an average of about 1.5 entries per word, whereas a full-form
dictionary would have about ten times that average.
   The operation of our stem-paradigm dictionary involves two extra
processing steps as compared with the full-form type dictionary.
Firstly, words referred to the dictionary are reduced to their stems
so that they may be matched against the corresponding dictionary stem
entries and, secondly, after matching of stems, that part of the
referred word split off to give the stem requires interpretation to
determine its grammatical significance for that stem. The first
process is known as affix-splitting and consists of matching the end
of a referred word against a list of recognised affixes having
grammatical significance. The process is fully described in a
companion paper to this. We shall refer to the results of these
papers where necessary. The second process, affix interpretation, is
the subject of this paper. The extra grammatical properties of the
referred word revealed by affix identification, in addition to those
identifiable in the stem of the word are as follows, for nouns,
adjectives and verbs:-
NOUNS:-
Number and case
ADJECTIVES:-
Number, case, gender, short or long form
VERBS:-
Person, number, tense, gender, mood, voice, and, for participles
only, case and short or long form.
   Of course, not all combinations of these properties can occur.
The majority of pronoun forms are treated like adjectives. The
remaining pronoun forms and all indeclinable words are referred to
full-form type dictionary entries, and do not participate in affix
identification, although they undergo the splitting process.
   Affix interpretation is necessary for all stem type entries as
its results form the basis of systems of syntactic analysis designed
to improve a word-for-stem type "translation" of Russian into
English. Rules of English inflection, insertion of prepositions and
auxiliaries, suppression of Russian equivalents and variations of word
order will all require the affix interpretation results.
2. PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRETATION
   THE splitting process consists in matching the endings of text
words against a list of affixes, and splitting off any matched
affixes, so that the interpretation problem may be stated as the
problem of giving a grammatical significance to each of these
recognised affixes when they are found. Now some of the affixes will
have varying significance depending on the stem from which they have
been split. For instance, one of the affixes in the list is -A, and
this can have five different interpretations:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   1. Genitive singular when split from some masculine noun stems.
   2. Genitive singular and nominative plural when split from some
other masculine noun stems and from neuter noun stems.
   3. Nominative singular when split from feminine noun stems.
   4. Feminine short form when split from adjective and participle
stems.
   5. Present Gerund when split from verb stems.
<END INDENTATION>
   So for these ambiguous affixes (they are mostly noun affixes) it
is necessary to check the stem type from which the affix has been
split before giving the grammatical significance.
   There is a further check, on the validity of a given split,
which can be conveniently made during interpretation. This is to
check that the matched dictionary stem includes the split-off affix in
the declension or conjugation intended to be associated with it in the
dictionary compilation stage. We call this check reconciliation of
stem and affix, and it is necessary because of the occurrence of stem
homographs and also because of the possibility of a text word whose
true stem is not entered in the dictionary being falsely split and the
resulting stem matching with a dictionary stem.
   We combine interpretation and reconciliation in one operation,
making use of a paradigm indicator associated with each stem, and one
or more role indicators associated with each affix. By speaking of
the paradigm of a stem, we mean that set of our recognised affixes,
all of which combine with that stem to form valid inflectional forms
of one Russian word. Thus each stem entry in the dictionary contains
a computer word, known as the paradigm indicator word (PIW),
which indicates by a binary pattern the paradigm of that stem.
There are three different formats for the PIW for noun,
adjective and verb stems. The verb format is used for two types of
verb stems, but in each case it represents a different set of endings.
This was only necessary in practice because one computer word ( the
ACE word is 48 binary digits (bits) long) is not long enough
to represent all the verbal affixes. We shall consider the noun
format of the PIW as a specific example.
   The word is divided into fields, one for each of the case and
number combinations of nouns. Accusative plural is excluded, as its
endings follow those of nominative plural or genitive plural depending
on the animation of the noun. In each field, a bit position is
associated with each affix that conveys the significance of that field
with a noun stem. The noun format is shown in Figure 1. (# is
our symbol for the null affix). In the accusative singular field,
only the feminine affixes are shown, the masculine and neuter affixes
being implicit from the nominative singular, and genitive singular
fields and the animation marker in bit position 43. We could have
repeated the masculine and neuter, nominative and genitive singular
endings in the accusative singular field, but this would have required
more bit positions than are available in an ACE word. So
simply by indicating the animation of a noun stem, we can restrict the
paradigm format to within one ACE word.
   The PIW for a particular noun stem is formed in general
by inserting a binary digit 1 in the bit position corresponding to the
appropriate affix in each field. For example, consider the stem entry
and PIW resulting from the Russian word whose nominative
singular is 11STOL (table). The stem entry will be 11STOL-
and the set of affixes which give all the inflected forms of
11STOL is #, 11A, U, E, OM, Y, OV, AM, AKH, AMI. The
PIW will thus have "ones" in positions 1, 11, 15, 19, 21,
26, 32, 37, 39 and 41.
<FIGURES>
The absence of a "one" in bit position 43 indicates the inanimate
nature of the stem and hence implicitly indicates the accusative
singular and accusative plural endings. A stem which takes
alternative affixes in a given field will have "ones" in the bit
positions of both affixes e.g. the stem 11VOLOS (hair) has
the alternative affixes 11Y and 11A in the nominative plural form.
Where a stem is not common to all inflected forms of a word, only
those fields to which that stem applies will have a "one" in them
e.g. the stem 11BRAT- (brother) applies to the singular
inflected forms only (1, 11, 15, 19, 21, 43) while the stem
11BRAT'- applies to the plural forms (29, 33, 36, 38, 4, 43).
   The formats for adjectives and verbs are shown in Figure 2
and in principle are similar to the noun format. They all have more
fields than the noun format, but have much less variety of affixes
within each field. The two verb formats have identical fields, but
mostly different affixes in those fields. They include fields for
participle affixes, but the affixes in these fields are only the
participle stem-building affixes. However, as participle adjectival
endings follow a perfectly regular pattern, they need not be
explicitly stated in the PIW.
   Nearly all nouns and adjectives will require only one stem and
PIW to represent all their inflected forms. Approximately
2/3 of Russian verbs will need only one stem, most of the rest
requiring two stems, and only the irregular verbs more than two.
   The PIW are compiled by the computer from data sheets
(dictionary entry forms) one of which is manually completed for each
word to be entered into the dictionary. There is a different data
sheet for each of several broad classes of noun declension, so as to
limit the linguistic decisions to be made in completing the sheets,
but all noun data sheets refer to the one standard format for the noun
PIW. There are similar data sheets for adjectives and the
two types of verbs, in these cases only one type of data sheet per
format, because of the lesser variety of inflection.
   With the provision of a PIW in each stem entry in the
dictionary, the problem of interpretation of an affix which has
occurred on a given stem as a text word, is resolved into spotlighting
the occurrences (if any) of that affix in the PIW for that
stem and noting the fields (grammatical properties) in which they
occur. This is most easily done by having, for that affix, a masking
pattern containing a "one" bit corresponding to each occurrence of
it in the PIW format. Then, by performing a "logical and"
operation between this mask and the PIW of the given stem,
the result will contain a "one" bit in each field where that affix
has significance for the given stem. Of course, if the result was
zero, this would mean that the affix and stem were incompatible
i.e. the stem did not combine with the affix in any meaningful
inflection. This situation may arise with stem homographs and with
words whose true stems are not yet compiled into the dictionary and
are falsely split. In the latter case the PIW would not
contain the falsely split affix.
   The masking pattern referred to above we call the role indicator
word (RIW) for the given affix. Some affixes have
significance with more than one of the PIW formats, and for
these there will need to be more than one RIW e.g. 11I
has significance for and appears in each of the four PIW
formats, so it will have four RIW. In order to be able to
match the appropriate RIW to a given PIW in an
interpretation, the format types are given a type number (digits 47
and 48) and the RIW which relate to these types are given the
corresponding type no. There are identical 11I and 11E verb
RIW for each of 1 verbal affixes 11(U, JU, I, J, ', JTE,
'TE, A, JA, ENN) and so we save some space in storing the
RIW by having only one verb RIW for each of these 1
and indicating its dual utility.
   Let us consider two examples of interpretation of noun forms
11AVTOMOBILI and 11NEDELI, which would be matched against
the dictionary stems 11AVTOMOBIL- and 11NEDEL- respectively,
with 11I as the affix to be interpreted in both cases. The
PIW for the noun stem 11AVTOMOBIL- and the noun type
RIW for 11I would be as shown in Figure 3. The
"logical-and" of these two computer words would give a "one" bit
in position 28 only i.e. in the nominative plural field. The
PIW for 11NEDEL- is also shown in Figure 3 and the
result of "anding" this word with the RIW for 11I would
be a "one" bit in positions 14 and 28 i.e. in the genitive
singular and nominative plural fields.
# 24
<328 TEXT J34>
By the former view the categories are common by definition and
6a priori, by the latter empirically and by reason of a more
or less similar semantic range 6a posteriori. But while many
modern linguists would subscribe to the latter view there remains
still a common core of syntactic terms, common by definition among
those making use of them, not from any content or semantic meaning,
but from the method of establishing them within each language. Terms
like Nucleus, Expansion, Cohesion, Endocentric, and Exocentric are
general (though not necessarily universal) categories, by reason of
the common operations by which sentences in a language are compared
and classed together as regards the formal inter-relations of their
components. These operations and the criteria employed need not be in
detail the same between any two linguists, but the overall operational
similarity in their use is obvious.
   "General syntax" thus allows two possible interpretations, and
different answers may be given to the question of generality on each
of the two.
   (4) What is the relationship between syntax and morphology? To
some extent the answer to this question is conditioned by one's answer
to question (1) above. If the morpheme, not the word, is the minimal
unit of syntax, the role of morphology, no longer concerned with
syntagmatic word structure, is correspondingly reduced; and there are
those who say that the distinction between these two traditional parts
of grammar is of little value today. But assuming that the
distinction is maintained one may ask which is to be analytically
prior: in which domain do we establish the majority of the principal
categories first? Are syntactic structures set up to explain the use
of the morphological form classes, or are form classes dependent on
their role in syntactic structures for their grammatical significance?
This question may be, and has been, answered either way irrespective
of the degree to which logic or "meaning" are admitted as criteria
in grammatical analysis; in traditional terms it involves the relative
priority of such class concepts as noun and verb as against such as
subject and predicate.
   (5) What is meant by "structural" syntax? "Structural" is
an epithet few linguists would deny of their work today, as it carries
connotations of up-to-dateness and scientific thinking, however varied
its applications may be. "Structural" is, in fact, consistent with
a number of otherwise divergent approaches to language. Trubetzkoy's
phonology as well as Pike's or Trager and Smith's phonemics is
structural; morphological analyses based on the "meanings
expressed" by the forms can be worked out structurally, and equally
the purely formal morphemic analysis of Harris is structural.
Semantics can, at least in part, be treated structurally on the lines
of the de Saussure-inspired "field theory", or on the statistical
models suggested by Wells and others, and Firth's theory of context of
situation, framed so as to cover the whole of the semantic analysis of
utterances as far as this can fall within general linguistics, is
essentially structural.
   Applied to general linguistics as a whole, "structural" has a
fairly definite comprehensive meaning, namely that the elements and
categories of linguistic statement and analysis are established and
explained by reference to their relations with one another within the
system or systems of the language concerned, rather than as units of
an aggregate each carrying its own independent formal constitution or
value. Applied to syntax, perhaps, the term adds less than to the
other levels of linguistic analysis. In a sense syntax has always
been structural, as it has concerned the relations of the parts of
sentences to each other, whether as exponents of the logical
constituents of propositions in the traditional view, or as the
expression of the psychological components of "Judgments", or, in
formal terms, as the elements of a number of patterns to which
sentences of a particular language can be shown to conform.
   These considerations are all pertinent to the reading of
Tesnie?3re's recently published extensive work on syntax. His
E?2le?2ments, in manuscript at the time of his death in 1954
and now published with an explanatory preface by J. Fourquet (pp.
3-7), arose from his dissatisfaction, especially from the teacher's
point of view, which is constantly kept to the fore, with traditional
grammar and its preoccupation with morphology as the basis of
grammatical instruction and the learning of languages. For
Tesnie?3re syntax is the centre of grammar and the proper foundation
for grammatical categories like word classes, morphology being the
study of some of the markers of such categories and of the syntactic
functions of words in the sentence (Chapters 15-6). In language
description syntax is the heart of the grammar, not something added at
the end to explain the uses of the morphologically different forms.
This emphasis on syntax, or sentence structure, in grammar, rather
than on word form, morpheme shapes, and paradigms, is to be welcomed,
and is in agreeable contrast to an excessive devotion to purely
morphological problems among some modern linguists as well as more
old-fashioned ones. Tesnie?3re shares with the more rigidly formal
American linguists a reaction against tradition, but as Fourquet
remarks he owes little to their work, and his theories are, more
perhaps than with most writers, his own. One may, however, ask
whether he has gone far enough in rejecting traditional ideas, and
whether despite his insistence on the autonomy of syntax (p. 42) he
has not, in fact, retained certain of them that look like convenient
6points d'appui for his theory but themselves lack a secure
basis in language itself.
   Tesnie?3re's syntactic theory is general in the first sense
mentioned above; language expresses thought (p. 12), and grammatical
categories are ide?2es ge?2ne?2rales and
classificateurs of the innumerable ide?2es
particulie?3res; they may vary from language to language and are
not identical with the cate?2gories de la pense?2e which are
said to be the same for all men (how do we know this?), but have close
links with them and often coincide, and always rele?3vent de la
se?2mantique (Chapter 24). An example of this kind of
grammatical approach is found in the way Tesnie?3re defines the
various types of subordinate clause (causal, final, conditional,
concessive, etc., Chapters 254-65) by their meanings, and then
exhibits examples of the "same" types differently realized in
different languages (e.g. Chapter 243, ?137; 259, ?1315; 262,
?1323). Though he elaborates his work mainly with reference to
written French, with a bias towards the language of literature, and
his illustrations are drawn largely from European languages (note that
all the American-Indian languages are lumped together typologically!,
p. 33), he regards the basic elements of his syntax as universal.
   Words as written are the units he works with, but he recognizes
the difficulties of word delimitation and the occasional inadequacies
of traditional orthographic divisions (Chapter 1). Where what he
considers to be the same sort of syntactic process (e.g. a
translation, see below) is carried out in one language by a
separate word and in another by an affix, he does not for that reason
analyse it differently (p. 361).
   Tesnie?3re's syntax is based on the noeud, and sentences
consist wholly of noeuds hierarchically arranged, the minimal
sentence being a single simple noeud. Sentences set out in such
a way as to reveal their "nodal" structuring are called
stemmata, and abstract stemmata (phrases virtuelles,
Chapter 33) represent sentence types with the lexical differences of
the component words ignored. Sentences in familiar languages are
usually based on a verbal noeud, but other noeuds (nominal,
adjectival, and adverbial) are possible as entire sentences,
especially in conversational discourse (p. 15). Stemmata
represent the sentence structure, and the "real sentence"
syntactically; speaking a language is transforming it into a linear
succession of words, and conversely understanding is recovering the
sentence structure from such a succession (Chapter 6). The following
examples illustrate, (a) and (b) a single noeud, and,
(c) a hierarchy of noeuds in a stemma (pp. 14-15):
<DIAGRAM>
   Subordination, the dependence of the governed on the governor,
represented by its occupying a lower line in the stemma, is
fundamental, since the noeud is defined as un re?2gissant
qui commande un ou plusieurs subordonne?2s (Chapters 2, 3),
though the concept does not appear to be fully defined. Adjectives
depend on nouns, and adverbs on verbs or adjectives, and tout
subordonne?2 suit le sort de son re?2gissant (p. 14), just as
in Bloomfieldian terms words are grouped into endocentric
constructions because they behave syntactically like their head
component. But Tesnie?3re also subordinates "subject" nouns to
verbs, as is seen in the examples cited above, where parle
governs Alfred as well as Bernard, and so on. We are not
told why; is it because in some languages (e.g. Latin) the verb
by itself can form a complete sentence (cantat, of which vir
cantat is an expansion)? In French chante is not a complete
sentence of the same type as Alfred chante, but il
chante is, and such a sentence, wherein il is a mot
vide and a mere indice, is regarded as a single semantic unit
(nucle?2us), though a noeud of head and subordinate
(Chapter 22, cp. stemma 33, p. 56). If this is the argument,
it is not made clear by Tesnie?3re.
   Words are divisible into the categories of "full"
(pleins) and "empty" (vides) on semantic grounds, full
words bearing a separate meaning, empty words only a grammatical use
(Chapter 28). This is familiar ground, and it is hard to see how the
distinction can be rigorously carried through; "having an independent
meaning" is probably equivalent to the fact that a gloss can be
given by a native speaker to the word in isolation, and this is likely
to be a matter of degree rather than of a binary division into two
classes. Tesnie?3re follows the full/ empty division with the more
formal division of mot constitutif and mot subsidiaire
(Chapter 29), the former being able to constitute the head of a
noeud, while the latter can only appear as a subordinate member
of one. The divisions full/ empty and constitutive/ subsidiary are
nearly though not quite coextensive in membership (p. 57).
   Although the full/ empty division is the less satisfactory of the
two, it is this that is used subsequently in word classification, and
within full words four classes (each of which can be the head of its
own noeud) are recognized and distinguished by their class
meanings (contenu cate?2gorique, Chapter 32):
<TABLE>
   Defined thus these classes are general, but not universal,
because, astonishingly, we read that the noun/ verb distinction is
predominantly European, and that the majority of other languages show
only nominal noeuds as the basis of their sentences, and
"conceive of process as a substance" (p. 61).
   Mots vides are either "junctives", joining
grammatically equivalent words and word groups together, or
"translatives", which convert the grammatical class of one word
into that of another or convert a sentence or word group into the
grammatical equivalent of a single word. Thus and and but
(traditionally coordinating conjunctions) are junctives;
prepositions are translatives converting nouns into adverbs ("first
degree translation", pp. 386-7), and the traditional relative
pronouns and subordinating conjunctions are translatives of the second
degree (conjunction + verbal noeud = adverb, relative pronoun +
verbal noeud = adjective). Translation (in Tesnie?3re's
sense), which may be marked by separate mots vides
(translatifs), by affixes or word form changes, or be unmarked, is
what gives languages their universal suppleness and utility (Chapter
153), and its importance in grammar is emphasized throughout the book.
In fact approximately the second half of it is devoted to the
theoretical exposition and copious exemplification of the various
types of translation, and includes double (and triple and
upwards) translations, as when, for example, a de-adjectival noun
or nominal expression is adverbialized (e.g. French (trancher)
dans le vif, pp. 474-5).
   The four classes of full words always preserve their class
meanings and their consequent grammatical status, and an apparent
atypical use (e.g. adverb with a noun head, un homme bien, un
vin extra, 15owi pa?2lai a?2nthropoi, Chapter 197) is
explained as a translation adjective to adverb without overt
mark; conversely, morphological form, if in apparent contrast to
syntactic function, has no effect on classification (in French
tout/ toute in sentences like elle est toute honteuse,
p. 184, is an adverb irrespective of its concordial variability of
gender form).
# 244
<329 TEXT J35>
The theory has a great sweep about it: language is no conglomerate
of single words, but a whole with meaningful division, a
super-6Gestalt: conceptual fields shape the raw material of
experience and divide it up without overlapping, like the pieces in a
completed jig-saw puzzle. The individual field, in its turn, is a
mosaic of related words or concepts, the individual word getting its
meaning only through distinguishing itself from its neighbours, and
the field again being divided up completely and without overlapping.
The concepts in a field, in short, form a structure of interdependent
elements. A word-form may change without there being any change in
the structure of the field, in Sprachinhalte; for instance, in
the Romance languages, the continuants of Lat. coxa replaced
those of Lat. femur, weakened by a homonymic clash, without
there being any change in the structure of the semantic field. Any
change in the limits of a concept, on the other hand, will involve a
modification of the value of the other concepts in the same field, and
of the words which express those concepts.
   Trier sought to illustrate the validity of his hypothesis from
his analysis of the intellectual vocabulary of Old and Middle High
German. The most-quoted example is that of a comparison of a
particular field in about A.D. 12 with the corresponding
one in about A.D. 13. At the beginning of the 13th
century, the structural 6ensemble of the Middle High German
'field' of knowledge was based, he maintains, on the co-existence
of three key terms- kunst, list and wi?5sheit (very
roughly 'art', 'artifice' and 'wisdom'); at the beginning of
the 14th century, the key-words were kunst, wizzen and
wi?5sheit. There had not, however, been a simple substitution
of wizzen for list which continued to be used in a somewhat
different sense: what had occurred was a re-organization of the
linguistic structure of the field, and above all of the Weltbild
or 'world-picture' which the latter reflected. In 12, the term
kunst was applied to courtly skills, and list to non-courtly
ones, to techniques and skills other than those of the knightly class.
Thus, courtly bearing towards adversaries was a kunst in a
knight; so was the art of writing poetry; so were the liberal arts of
rhetoric and music in so far as they contributed to the training of
the ideal knight; on the other hand, astronomy, botany, medicine and
all the crafts of the artisan were liste. The difference between
kunst and list was, however, not as clear-cut as that
suggests; whereas skill at arms was a kunst in a knight, it was
only a list in a man at arms: i.e., these branches of
knowledge were not appraised objectively, but socially. This gulf
between courtly and non-courtly at the level of material knowledge was
transcended at the spiritual level: the term wi?5sheit embraced
kunst and list, and much else besides, being applied to all
kinds of knowledge, divine as well as human. There was therefore a
close interlocking of concepts within a field of knowledge conceived
synthetically; kunst and list were co-determined in their
senses by the links which united them within the wider sphere of
personal and divine wisdom.
   The key-terms of the later field did not form a mystic trinity of
this type: there was merely a duality between kunst and
wizzen, wi?5sheit being on quite a different level from them.
Kunst was used to describe certain branches of knowledge, in
rather the same way as in modern German- in opposition to wizzen,
which was applied to knowledge in general and to technical skills
and abilities in particular, but without any social connotation. The
disappearance of the earlier duality between kunst and list
signified from the spiritual point of view the abandonment of an
ethico-social attitude towards the scientific and technical: it had
become possible to talk of what a man knew or could do, without a
'social' appraisal of him as well as of what he was doing.
Wi?5sheit was no longer used as a semi-alternative for either
of the other terms, nor as a synthetic term embracing them both.
Material knowledge (kunst and wizzen) had been removed from
the sphere of wi?5sheit, which, as spiritual and religious
wisdom, had moved to a different plane. The use of the terms showed a
drastic change in the conception of knowledge, which had been divided
up in a more analytical and abstract way. Whereas in 12 no truly
objective appraisal of knowledge was possible (it could not be
divorced from its social and/or religious connotations), in 13,
spiritual or theological knowledge was dissociated from worldly
skills, and the contrast between courtly and non-courtly attainments
had been eliminated. Trier saw this re-arrangement of the field as
reflecting the disintegration of the earlier 'catholic' conception
of knowledge.
   Trier's theories have been strongly criticized as well as
praised, in particular by Dornseiff and Scheidweiler in the 193's and
early 194's, and by W. Betz and Els Oksaar in the 195's; W. von
Wartburg and S. Ullmann, as I have already mentioned, have
criticized certain aspects of them, while remaining generally
favourable. It is inevitable that I repeat some of the arguments used
against Trier by other scholars, but I hope to make a few new points.
   Basically, Trier's field theory depends on the validity of
several hypotheses about the nature of language and of thinking and
the relationship between the two: firstly, that the whole vocabulary
is organized, as he believes, within closely-articulated fields
which fit into each other and delimit each other in the same way as
the words within the individual fields, without any overlapping; and
secondly, that the single word gets its meaning only through
distinguishing itself from its field neighbours. The latter follows
to some extent, but not, I think, completely, from the first
postulate. Both points are valid, if they are valid, for any language
at any period.
   Let us take the second point first because it can be dealt with
more briefly. Whatever the validity of the oppositional approach in
determining linguistic units such as phonemes and morphemes, it seems
doubtful whether word-meanings are based on oppositions between
words in the same conceptual field. This idea of the element only
deriving its meaning from the system as a whole has to be qualified so
much that it really ceases to have much point: e.g., I can know
the Russian for 'to walk (habitually)' without knowing the Russian
verbs for 'run', 'hop', 'skip', or 'jump' (habitually or
otherwise). W. Pfleiderer makes the point that a child's first
properly used word means something to it, but it does not know any
fields. It certainly seems that when learning a language one
fortunately does not have to learn the whole before knowing the parts.
If it be then argued that one cannot know the system properly
without knowing the whole, I should reply that it depends what one
means by both properly and by whole. Is the whole of the
English vocabulary that which is known to or used by that abstraction,
'the man in the street', or that which is 'deposited' in the
New English Dictionary, plus Eric Partridge's Dictionary of
Slang and a few other works of that type? Nobody knows all the
words in those works, i.e., knows the whole of the system in that
sense; is it then the vocabulary used by the 'man in the street',
whoever he may be (with his 2,5 words, or whatever it may be)? The
newspapers are full of complaints about the inability of
school-leavers (or students, or civil servants) to 'use English
properly'. At one level, this means that the members of these
groups do not express themselves as accurately or as elegantly as
their critics do, or think they do. At another level, as a statement
about English-speakers, it is rather like saying, 'only 2 per cent of
the population have normal teeth.'
   Take any obscurish word- since I have mentioned teeth, let it be
the term 'orthodontics'. As the name of a branch of dentistry, it
comes (I assume) into the same field as 'teeth', and if we assume
the validity of the hypothesis, the two help reciprocally to delimit
each other's meaning, they are part of the structure of the field-
but only for those who know the word, or for everybody? In either
case, only a tiny proportion of the English-speaking population of the
world is using the term 'teeth' with an appreciation of its full
value- which is absurd.
   Similar arguments can be brought against the main postulate-
that closely-integrated conceptual fields, expressed in linguistic
ones, cover the whole field of experience (and of the vocabulary)
without gaps and without overlapping. Is this generally true of the
way the vocabulary is organized in the consciousness of the
individual- let alone of a vast and heterogeneous group of
individuals? Basically, the theory is one about the way the mind
works- and as such, would be better tackled by psychologists than by
linguists. Things are not made any easier by the fact that Trier does
not make an absolutely clear division between his conceptual and his
lexical 'fields': he does not always separate them at all, but when
he does, he seems to indicate that conceptual divisions are expressed
in linguistic ones, and not, as has been somewhat more plausibly
maintained, that the structure of a language and the vocabulary
'transmitted' to a given individual to some extent determine his
modes of thought.
   What evidence is there to support the view that the vocabulary is
organized in the manner suggested by Trier? There are Trier's own
analyses which are open to a number of criticisms: as Scheidweiler
points out, Trier himself makes statements about the use of words
which seem to run counter to his own theories. For instance, on p.
15 of his 6magnum opus, he speaks of a completely
unarticulated field of 'the positive assessment of value'; he
tells us that the famous terms kunst and list are applied
interchangeably by the author of the Pilatus, and so on. There
is no uniformity in the usage of different authors: it is true that
Trier speaks of transition conditions under which the field becomes
fluid ('das Feld zuna"chst einmal in ein sta"ndiges Fliessen
gera"t'), but in that case, Scheidweiler comments, the whole
period investigated by Trier must have been one of transition. From
his own examination of the texts used by Trier, Scheidweiler finds it
impossible to support the former's conclusions about the values of the
terms kunst and list, while with regard to wi?5sheit
he points out that the term Weisheit is still used in Modern
German with the sense of 'knowledge' in such phrases as 'ich bin
mit meiner Weisheit zu Ende', 'er besass keine umfangreiche
Buchweisheit', 'woher hast du deine Weisheit?' and so on.
Trier would probably counter by saying that he was concerned with
conceptual fields and that his view could not be disproved by the
survival of lexical fossils. This would perhaps be a valid argument,
but the extent of the disagreement between Trier's findings and
Scheidweiler's goes far deeper, and seems to justify caution with
regard to Trier's findings. Trier himself, judging by his various
qualifications and his references to 'transition states' found the
evidence less clear-cut than he might have desired. In Scheidweiler's
opinion, usage in mediaeval German texts provided no support for any
theory that words or concepts were organized in 'fields' without
overlapping: even the same author used the same words with totally
different meanings, and so forth, in a way that we should find
intolerable (Scheidweiler quotes examples). One of his general
conclusions is that these early texts are an unsuitable testing-ground
for such a theory because of the lack of precision in the use of terms
in mediaeval times. It seems to me that that judgement damns the
theory for the wrong reason. Lack of precision in the use of
terminology cannot indefinitely be explained as the product of
'transition' from one world-view to another, one system to another:
the fact that lasting imprecision exists itself seems to disprove
Trier's hypothesis.
# 221
<33 TEXT J36>
Plato envisaged the need for an examination system not essentially
different from ours. Of his potential 'Guardians' he wrote:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   We must find out who are the best Guardians.... We shall have to
watch them from earliest childhood and set them tasks.... We must
also subject them to ordeals of toil and pain and watch for <their>
qualities. And we must observe them when exposed to the test... put
them to severer proof than gold tried in the furnace.... If we find
one bearing himself well in all these trials... such a one will be of
the greatest service to the commonwealth as well as to himself.
<END QUOTE>
   The purpose of Plato's tests was to be of service to the
commonwealth as well as, and more than, to the individual. He held
that social life depended on specialization of function and he
believed that each person was best fitted by congenital constitution
and education for a particular role. Education not only helped to
train a person for his particular function, it also revealed native
constitution: response to education predicted capacity for future
achievement. The educational system was inevitably also a selection
system, and Plato's tests were only more refined instruments of
screening than the educational process itself.
   This dual function of educational systems- to educate and to
assign people to roles- is a perennial source of difficulty. Both
functions are necessary, but it is not easy to carry them out
together, and the temptation is to welcome one and to reject the
other. Dr. Wiseman refers in his foreword to those who, rightly
valuing education, reject the necessity of selection, and take up the
position he condemns as 'therapeutic extremism'. Plato may be
accused of having gone to the other extreme, for it seems that having
selected his Guardians he has little interest (in the Republic) in
the education of the rest. The American public school system has
accepted the function of education and on the whole rejected that of
selection: selection is left to the college and the university, to the
M.A. and the Ph.D. stage rather than to anything resembling
the '11-plus' and the G.C.E. In England 11-plus selection has
been deplored because of its adverse effects on education in the
primary school. A distaste for the selection function may be
discerned also in the Crowther Report's desire, on behalf of secondary
schools, to make the G.C.E. a school-leaving and 'qualifying'
examination and to dissociate it from the selection of university
students. Distasteful though the function of selection may be,
however, it is one which the educational system cannot escape, for as
Plato pointed out educational achievement is not only the means to,
but an indispensable index of capacity for, service to the
commonwealth.
   The screening function has not been pressed upon educational
systems with equal insistence at all times and in all places. In so
far as social and vocational roles are predetermined by race, caste,
or family, the assessment of the abilities of the individual is of
less significance. The possibility of selection on the basis of
individual differences presupposes some degree of social mobility, and
it is arguable that it is at times and places where social mobility is
greatest that the interest in examinations and tests has been
strongest. Mr. Morris has noted that Imperial China, with its
dictum 'Employ the able and promote the worthy', developed a
highly complex system of examinations, whereas in the comparatively
closed society of medieval Europe the interest in examinations was
limited and sporadic. Bentham, intent on widening and improving
recruitment to the Civil Service, was characteristically interested in
examinations. The development of public examinations since the 185's
has been closely connected with the extension of elementary,
secondary, technical and university education and of access to the
crafts and professions. The more recent institution of the Diploma in
Technology and the work of the Associated Examination Board are
obviously related to the increasing esteem which technical skills and
abilities command. Plato in fourth century Greece noted (with
disapproval) the similar upward mobility of craftsmen and its
connection with an interest in qualifications- with philosophy if not
with the doctorate of it:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Philosophy... is dishonoured by unworthy interlopers... when any
poor creature who has proved his cleverness in some mechanical craft
sees here an opening for a portentous display of high-sounding words
and is glad to break out of the prison of his paltry trade and take
sanctuary in the shrine of philosophy. For as compared with other
occupations, philosophy, even in its present case, still enjoys a high
prestige.
<END QUOTE>
   Values in educational achievement change. Plato valued
philosophy and despised crafts that enslaved men; we value
technologists more than philosophers; but whatever kind of specialist
one has most use for one seeks to select and promote; and the greater
the freedom to rise the more one uses tests and examinations to refine
the screening function which the educational system performs. It is
because democratic ideals and economic needs at the present time put a
premium on the emergence of ability that we are specially interested
both in education and selection.
   As new kinds of 'service to the commonwealth' are demanded,
new kinds of education have to be established, or old kinds have to be
adapted; and examinations at once define and support them. It is
often said that examinations maintain standards in education; it
should not be overlooked that they sometimes help to create them. The
Diploma in Technology not merely preserves standards, it sets
objectives and stimulates the effort to achieve them. The reform of
university examinations in the nineteenth century did not preserve
standards, it helped to establish higher standards of education for
service to Church and State. Examinations defined standards which
supported the development of secondary education for girls in the same
century and that of the maintained grammar schools in the twentieth
century, and if they did not create sixth forms in these they at least
stimulated their growth. The examination of general studies is
helping to produce a situation in which such studies have a greater
chance of survival in the sixth form.
   It is the value systems of the commonwealth which likewise confer
on examinations their force as incentives to learning. Plato alone-
and he in theory only- removed the economic incentive to learning.
His Guardians were to be motivated in their arduous studies by
disinterested service to the commonwealth: 'They alone of all the
citizens are forbidden to touch and handle silver or gold.' It is
hardly to be supposed that the incentives he proposed would appeal
strongly to the candidate in 11-plus, G.C.E. or university
examinations: 'Whenever we find one who has come unscathed through
every test in childhood, youth, and manhood, we shall set him as a
Ruler to watch over the commonwealth; he will be honoured in life, and
after death receive the highest tribute of funeral rites and other
memorials.' It may be true that pupils do not always have clearly
in mind the long-term advantages of passing examinations, and that it
is rather the teacher or parent who is moved by them. Even so the
incentive which is felt by the pupil through them is derived
ultimately from the demands of the commonwealth for particular kinds
of developed ability: the examination merely focuses these demands.
The pupil's educational values are at least indirectly those of the
society in which he will find his role. It may be suspected that the
G.C.E. candidate, for example, has a shrewd idea of the relative
values of passes in English Language, Scripture Knowledge, Physics and
Art. The trends in the number of entries for G.C.E. examinations
to which Dr. Petch draws attention suggest a quick appreciation of
the social and economic evaluation of different studies.
   The most radical method of increasing social mobility so far
devised has been the use of intelligence tests. The education system
educates and selects, but as we have seen the two functions are not
easily reconciled. If selection can interfere with education, so can
education, or the lack of it, interfere with selection. It has long
been recognized that there are 'mute inglorious Miltons'- mute and
inglorious because uneducated and 6a fortiori unselected. In
twentieth-century England there may be few who have not had the
opportunity of education, but opportunities have varied; and as
parents, teachers and communities cannot be equalized opportunities
are long likely to vary. Yet democratic ideals and the economic need
to exploit the scarce commodity of talent alike impel us to seek out
ability even where it has not been fully developed by education. No
reputable psychologist has claimed that he can measure some pure
hypothetical 'intelligence' which has not been affected by
environment and education, but psychologists have been highly
successful in constructing tests which are less affected by
differences in educational opportunity than are most tests of
educational attainment. The psychologists' success has naturally been
looked upon with disfavour by those who could command educational
opportunity though not intellectual capacity. Their tests have also
been the object of abuse from those who believe that a person is made
by collective society and who cannot on ideological grounds accept
that the individual (or for that matter wheat) has any characteristics
which he does not owe to society. Neither group objects to selection
or to selection tests: each merely wishes to select persons who meet
his own specifications, which are not solely in terms of the qualities
of the individual. It is to be hoped that the uninformed and
doctrinaire attacks on the judicious use of intelligence tests will be
stoutly resisted. They are not a panacea, but they can be highly
competent instruments for use in the open society. It is significant
that, as Dr. Wiseman points out, such tests first became widely
acceptable in the American army in the First World War, when it was
acceptable that military rank and function should depend on individual
rather than social, economic or racial differences. Tests and
examinations are instruments which a free and open society has need
of.
   It must be admitted that selection on the basis of the abilities
of the individual has been criticized by not illiberal persons. There
are dangers in the selection of the able but badly educated. T.
S. Eliot has suggested in effect that an e?2lite may have
intelligence but lack culture. The emergence of angry young men may
be taken to support his argument. He probably underestimates,
however, the assimilative power of education. Men do not remain
young, or necessarily angry, and their children, faced with fewer
obstacles to selection, may be more open to the influences of culture.
The evidence in the Crowther Report shows that the first generation
of the more educated seeks still more education for its children, so
that culture as it were accumulates at compound interest. The
selected have also been depicted as a 'meritocracy'. One can
sympathize with the guilty feeling that it is in some ways distasteful
that some people should be endowed with greater gifts than others. It
might have been better if it were true that all men are equal- though
it would detract from the interest of, for example, the Olympic Games.
The facts being what they are, however, it is incumbent on the
objectors to 'meritocracy' to say what alternative they would
propose- aristocracy, plutocracy, caste, nepotism, party membership,
or what? Until a rational non-escapist alternative is offered, the
only way seems to be to make intelligence tests, examinations and
other instruments of selection as effective as possible for their
purposes, while minimizing as far as possible any harmful effects they
may have on the main function of the educational system, that of
education.
   There is no denying that the inevitable process of selection can
have deleterious effects on the more essential process of education.
At every stage of the educational process where selection becomes
prominent, the latter affects the former, usually in some respects to
its disadvantage. Dr. Wiseman has discussed in particular the
educational effects of 11-plus selection, where the problems have been
recognized and fully debated.
# 213
<331 TEXT J37>
   Nevertheless, during the sixteenth century several factors were
to be instrumental in establishing those secure foundations on which
the brilliant scientific achievements of the succeeding century could
be built. First among these factors was a more emphatic appeal for
acceptance of that philosophical outlook which has been so favourable
to progress in science, namely, recourse to observation and
experiment, and substitution of rationality for authority. In 1536
Peter Ramus (1515-1572) started the revolt against Aristotle's tyranny
with his M.A. thesis at Paris University that "all that
Aristotle has said is false". Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus
voiced the same sentiment in his Zodiacus vitae (Venice 1531) in
which he affirmed:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "1Whatever Aristotle saith, or any of them all, I passe not
for: since from the truth they many times doe fall."
<END INDENTATION>
   In 156 Barnaby Googe published his English translation of this
work which contained, amidst a mass of characteristic moralising,
references to the vacuum, light, the elements, heat, motion, etc.
His translation was widely read as a textbook in Elizabethan grammar
schools.
   The scientific attitude is also discernible in the writings of
Leonard and Thomas Digges. From passages in the Pantometria (1571) it
would appear that Leonard Digges, of University College, Cambridge,
was conversant with the principles of the telescope. In his
Dedicatory Epistle to the Stratioticus (1579) Thomas Digges, who also
studied at Cambridge, mentions
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "1having spent many of my yeares in reducing the Sciences
Mathematicall from Demonstrative Contemplations, to Experimentall
Actions ...."
<END INDENTATION>
   Dr. John Dee (1527-168), of St John's College, Cambridge,
likewise sings the praises of Scientia Experimentalis in his
Preface to an English translation of Euclid (157). In 155 Dee read
public lectures on Euclid's elements "mathematice?3, physice?3,
et Pythagorice?3" in the College of Rheims. His audience became
so large that many had to listen at the windows. Dee also wrote on
mechanics, perspective and on "burning mirrors."
   The brilliant achievements of Galileo, of Stevin, of Gilbert and
of others were the fruits of putting into practice of this "modern"
experimental scientific attitude. The creation of the science of
dynamics as we know it today is principally due to Galileo
(1564-1642), Professor of Mathematics at Pisa and Padua Universities.
He pointed out that all bodies fell at the same rate and that the
distance covered by falling bodies varied as the square of the time.
He showed that the path of a projectile was a parabola, and he
understood centrifugal force. He gave precise definitions of
momentum, velocity and kinetic energy. It was he who formulated the
principle of the parallelogram of forces, and he was familiar with
what later came to be known as Newton's first two laws of motion.
Besides discovering the isochronism of the pendulum, he showed that
the time of oscillation varied as the square root of its length.
   William Gilbert (154-163), "the father of the magnetic
philosophy," was the author of that great textbook of magnetism and
electricity, the "De Magnete," which was published in London in
16. His contempt for the methods of the schoolmen crops up
everywhere in this book. He is full of the importance of
experimentation, as for instance, when he warns that
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "men of acute intelligence, without actual knowledge of facts,
and in the absence of experiment, easily slip and err."
<END INDENTATION>
   Gilbert was the first to use the now familiar terms "electric
force", "electric attraction", magnetic "pole", etc.
   By the time of the sixteenth century considerable industrial and
commercial expansion was taking place, and this resulted in a greater
demand by the rising middle classes for a more utilitarian education
biased towards science and mathematics, for substitution of a more
realistic approach to life for the aloofness of the cloister. The
increasing tempo of the new economic world could no longer afford to
dispense with mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, navigation, etc.
   It was in order to cater for the needs of a society growing
increasingly more conscious of the vital part that science could play
in technology that Gresham's College was founded in London in 1596 for
gratuitous instruction in the seven liberal arts and sciences. The
celebrated physicist Robert Hooke was Professor of Geometry here for a
time. Lectures were given at the College- which, incidentally, was
the first home of the Royal Society- till 1768, when they were
delivered at the Royal Exchange until 1841, the year when the present
Gresham College was erected. It was for precisely the same reason
that during the second half of the century a new type of school, or
academy, came into existence to give a wider education, including
practical mathematics and physics, than that provided by the
conservative public and grammar schools whose sole preoccupation was
with the classics. Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583) proposed the
erection of such an Academy in London in 1572.
   By now the discovery of printing had come into its own and this
led to the writing, in the vernacular, of numerous popular compendia
of knowledge. The numerous editions through which many of these
compendia and encyclopaedia went indicates the thirst of the people of
those times for knowledge. The best known of these was probably the
"Pearl Philosophic" ("Margarita Philosophica") of Gregorius
Reisch, which was first printed in 153. The subjects of astronomy,
natural philosophy, chemistry, optics, etc., are treated in this
encyclopaedia which was illustrated and intended as a textbook for
young students.
   In his book on "Natural Magic" Giambatista Porta (c.
1541-1615) dealt with such topics as optical experiments, mirrors,
experiments on statics such as those of Nicholas of Cusa, and
pneumatic experiments similar to those of Hero. An English edition of
this book was published in London in 1658.
   The Reformation, too, had an influence on the progress of
science. The refusal to submit to a single spiritual authority
carried over to other fields and helped to emancipate physics from
Aristotle's "tyranny".
   In 1535 the students of St. John's College were permitted to
receive instruction from a lecturer in Natural Philosophy, who was to
receive two shillings a week, half that sum being paid by the College
and the other half by his audience.
   The Edwardian Code of July 1549 enjoined that disputations were
to be held regularly. The disputations in mathematics, dialectics and
in natural philosophy were to be held on Thursdays, Fridays and
Sundays. We are given some idea of the nature of these university
disputations from Izaak Walton's life of Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639).
He writes that Sir Henry:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "1about the nineteenth year of his age, he did proceed Master
of Arts, and at that time read in Latine three Lectures de Oculo:
wherein he having described the Form, the Motion, the curious
Compositione of the Eye and demonstrated, how of these very many,
every humour and nerve performs its distinct office .... After these
Observations he fell to dispute this Optique Question, Whether we see
by the Emission of the Beams from within, or Reception of the Species
from without."
<END INDENTATION>
   By the visitation of 1549 a Reader in Natural Philosophy was
provided for All Souls College, Oxford. In 1551 Michael Renninger (or
Rhanger, 153-169) was appointed to lecture on natural philosophy at
Magdalen College, Oxford.
   The sixteenth century is significant for the publication of
several educational treatises that paved the way for a new
presentation of studies not only in the university curricula but also
in that of the schools and which encouraged realism in education in
distinction to scholastic formalism. The writings of Ramus, Francis
Bacon, Sir Thomas Elyot, Rabelais, Vives and Melanchthon all catch a
glimpse of the future reserved to scientific education, to a study of
Nature by inductive speculation, to a study of things instead of the
worship of words.
   For the traditional quadrivium Ramus would substitute
mathematics, physics (including astronomy), metaphysics and ethics.
The textbook to be used in physics was his own treatise, "Studies in
Physics," which, in spite of his criticism of Aristotle, was based
on the latter's Physics, on Pliny's Natural History and on Virgil's
Georgics.
   In the De Tradendis Disciplinis (1531) Vives advocated the
study of physics, even in the schools. But the subject still needed
to be systematised and simplified before it lent itself to instruction
of the young.
<BIBLIOGRAPHY>
Chapter =3
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
   As a result of the genuine scientific curiosity of the true
natural philosopher, of the curiosity of the gentleman of leisure in
search of diversions, of the Puritans' looking at the phenomena of
God's creation, and of the monetary interests of the manufacturer, the
miner, the engineer, the alchemist, physics made great advances.
Experimentation increased from a mere trickle into what was soon to
become a flood; in fact, so much so that science was in danger of
being reduced "to a worship and idolisation of experiment as an end
in itself." The achievements of earlier physicists were crowned by
the brilliant work of Galileo and Torricelli in Italy, of Guericke in
Germany, of Huygens and Snell in Holland, of Mariotte and Descartes in
France, and of Boyle, Hooke, Halley and Newton in England. Their
advances marked the end of the era of doubt and confusion and
proclaimed the birth of "modern" physics.
   Newton's (1642-1727) "Principia" was published in 1687 in
Latin and in this he defined mass, force, momentum, acceleration,
etc., clearly for the first time, and worked out his laws of motion.
In 1668 Newton constructed the first reflecting telescope. Eight
years earlier he had begun his experiments on the incidence of white
light on a prism. Newton also investigated the colours of thin plates
and coloured rings, the bending of light and the coloured fringes at
narrow slits. His observations on double refraction in Iceland spar
laid the foundations for the theory of the polarisation of light. In
the controversy over the theory of light Newton threw his great
authority on the emission theory, with the result that the wave theory
of Hooke and Huygens was in abeyance for over a century.
   It was in 1658 that Robert Boyle (1627-91) invented his improved
air pump with which he performed his classic experiments on the
weight, pressure and elasticity of the air, and on the part played by
air in respiration and in acoustics. Boyle encouraged study of
experimental physics by writing (in 1663) "1Some considerations
touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy .... by
way of Invitation to the Study of it," and by writing (in 1664)
"Experiments and Considerations touching colours" in which he
deliberately gave a simple and popular outline of the subject in order
to encourage more readers, including the fair sex.
   Boyle's assistant, Robert Hooke, propounded his law- ut
tensio, sic vis- about 1658. In 1666 he measured the force of
gravity by the swinging of a pendulum. The fixing of the thermometric
zero at the freezing point of water is due to him. In 1666 he
demonstrated magnetic lines of force using iron filings and a small
movable magnetic needle. In his Micrographia (1665, p. 7) he
advocated increased study of the new experimental physics in the place
of "discourse and disputation," since:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   ~"1These being the dangers in the process of humane Reason, the
remedies of them all can only proceed from the real, the
mechanical, the experimental Philosophy."
<END INDENTATION>
   Remarkable advances were also made in applied science, e.g.
the invention of a steam engine by Edward Somerset (161-67), second
Marquis of Worcester, though the first practical steam engine was made
only in 1698 by Thomas Savery (165-1715).
   Scientific instruments were now available on a large scale for
the first time. Among these may be mentioned barometers,
thermometers, telescopes, microscopes, the 6camera obscura, lenses
and prisms. A new profession- that of mathematical and scientific
instrument maker- arose to supply the demands of the new experimental
sciences. James Moxon, who lived on Ludgate Hill, was one such;
another was John Yarwell, who sold his scientific apparatus at "The
Archimedes and Three Golden Prospects near the great North-Door in
St. Paul's Church-yard, London."
   The advances in science and in applied science were largely the
fruits of substituting observation and experiment for dogmatism and
for the a-priori methods of Aristotelian physics.
# 27
<332 TEXT J38>
First Investigation
   In the endeavour to sort out some of the intricacies of this
problem the Foundation carried out two small investigations. A number
of primary schools assisted in these studies and their help and
co-operation is gratefully acknowledged.
   The first investigation was carried out in a Junior school in
which the children were streamed by age- that is, they were grouped
in classes according to age in the contributing Infant school and the
Junior Headmaster accepted these groupings and maintained them
throughout his school. In order to obtain a measure of performance,
all the children in each of the four years of the Junior school were
given, in the Spring Term 1959, the Foundation's Sentence Reading Test
1. The median raw and standardised scores together with mean ages and
age ranges of the four year groups are given in Table =1.
<TABLE>
   Class 5 was an exception to the rule of 'streaming' by age
since it contained all the poor readers from the 2nd year group.
   The standardised scores (mean 1, S.D. 15) contain an age
allowance determined from the sample on which the test was
standardised. The median standardised score for each year group was
then used to determine what would be the expected median raw score for
each class within the year group. This expected median raw score was
then compared with the observed median raw score. If the classes had
been grouped by age only- that is, within each class there was a full
range of ability- then the observed and expected median raw scores
should be approximately the same. Similarly, of course, the median
observed standardised score for each class within a year group should
be approximately equal to that for the year group as a whole. The
results are given in Table =2. In order to complete the analysis the
children from Class 5 were distributed into Classes 3 and 4 according
to their age.
<TABLE>
   It will be seen from Table =2 that there was not a great deal of
discrepancy between expected and observed scores for Classes 1 and 2
in the first year group. The observed scores for Class 3, however,
are well below expectation, while those for Class 4 are well above.
The difficulty with Class 5 may have contributed to this discrepancy,
but the same phenomenon occurs with the three classes in the 3rd year
group and also with the two classes in the 4th year group.
   However, it will be seen that the age 'streaming' is by no
means exact- there is considerable overlap in the age ranges for each
class in a year group. This was due to the presence of a few children
only and therefore the results for the 3rd year group were
re-calculated and the analysis confined to those children falling
within a five month group in each class. The results are given in
Table =3.
<TABLE>
   It is still clear from the figures in Table =3 that Class 8 is
doing considerably better than their average age indicates and Class 6
not as well.
   A satisfactory explanation for these differences could not be
found in any differential treatment of the various classes within a
year group. That is to say, all classes within a year group in the
school were treated as 'parallel' and a careful balance of the
teaching strength was always maintained. Indeed the only plausible
explanation seemed to be one associated with the length of schooling.
Information was obtained on this variable for most of the children in
the 3rd year group and this showed that for the most part Class 6 had
received 13 terms previous schooling and Class 8, 15 terms.
   It must be made clear that this investigation was carried out in
only one school and a relatively small number of children were
concerned. However, the results showed that in a school where
children were 'streamed' by age, older children scored higher on
the average on a reading test than might have been expected according
to their age, while younger children did not perform as well.
Furthermore, the findings were in the direction expected from the
hypothesis that an extra term or two of schooling would result in
improved performance.
Second Investigation
   Following an article in an earlier issue of this Journal on the
Effects of Streaming a number of primary school head teachers
interested in this topic wrote to the Foundation expressing their
willingness to co-operate in any relevant research. Although the
problem of length of schooling was distinct from that of streaming,
these schools together with others, readily agreed to participate in a
further investigation which, it was hoped, would provide more definite
evidence. Six Junior schools in all were asked to administer Sentence
Reading Test 1 to all children in their four year groups, and to
obtain for each child a record of the number of completed terms
previous schooling up to the time of testing. A total of 1,64
children were tested and the relationship examined between reading
performance and the number of terms previous schooling.
   Before considering any effect due to the age of the children, it
was found that, within schools, there was a highly significant
regression effect of raw scores on the reading test, on the number of
terms previous schooling. Using this regression the expected mean
reading scores for given lengths of schooling may be calculated and
the results of this are given in Table =4.
<TABLE>
   Quite clearly reading test performance is affected by the length
of previous schooling. After the effects of the age of the children
has been eliminated, however, the regression of test score on length
of schooling becomes statistically non-significant (taking the usual
5% significance level). The predicted reading scores for different
number of terms schooling after the elimination of the age effect
are given in Table =5.
<TABLE>
   A comparison of Tables =4 and =5 shows that the change in score
that may be expected for an increase of one term's schooling has
decreased from approximately 1.46 to .5 points of score, when age is
eliminated. This second figure is no longer large enough to be
described statistically as significantly different from zero.
   The regression analysis was also carried out on the results for
each school separately. It was found that the regression of reading
score on length of schooling remained statistically significant, after
the elimination of age, in only one of the six schools. This was a
large three-stream school which, for the most part, 'streamed' by
age within each year group. The regression for this school was found
to be significant at the 5% level, while the results for the remaining
five schools agreed with those obtained on the total.
   These results indicate that while length of schooling is
obviously related to reading performance (r = .539) there is such a
close correspondence between length of schooling and age (r = .979)
that, to allow for age when considering test score also allows for
differences in length of schooling.
   This analysis seemed conclusive enough; there remained the
possibility, however, that any residual effect from the length of
schooling might only be apparent during the early years of the Junior
school and that by carrying out analyses over all four years the
effect was masked. These regression analyses were repeated,
therefore, covering the first two and the last two years of the Junior
school separately. Two schools were omitted from these calculations,
since their data were incomplete.
   The first repeat analysis was carried out on the first and second
years of the Junior school. Before the ages of the children were
considered, it was again found that, within schools, there was a
highly significant regression of raw reading score on the number of
terms previous schooling. However, when the effect of the ages of the
children was removed, it was found that no statistically significant
regression remained.
   This regression analysis was also carried out on the first two
years of each school separately, but the same result was found for
each. Thus it is clear that variations in length of schooling have no
residual effect on reading performance during the first two years of
the Junior school once the effects of differences in age are allowed
for.
   For the third and fourth years the regression of reading score on
the number of terms previous schooling was also highly significant
before age was considered. When the effects of age were eliminated,
again the regression was no longer statistically significant. The
repeat of the analysis for each school separately, however, gave
results for two of the schools which agreed with those for the totals,
but for the other two schools the number of terms previous schooling
still had a significant effect on reading scores, even after the
elimination of age.
   It will be recalled that most of the schools participating in the
investigations were interested in the problem of streaming and in fact
only one of the four schools in the last analyses was streamed by
ability. In this school there was no residual effect of length of
schooling. One other school practiced no streaming at all. It was a
large school and except for one 'fast' class in both the third and
fourth years, in all other classes the children were grouped at
random. This school also showed no residual effects of length of
schooling. In the other two schools, however, streaming, not by
ability but by age, was practiced <SIC> and in both these schools
the residual effect of length of previous schooling on reading
performance was significant after the elimination of age. It is
interesting to note that this result agrees with the first
investigation reported above, in which the school concerned also
streamed by age.
Discussion of Results
   The number of schools participating in this investigation was
fairly small and since the results seem to depend upon the type of
streaming practiced <SIC> in each school the findings must be
reviewed with caution. There appears to be evidence, however, to
suggest that under the usual circumstances pertaining in most schools,
if due allowance is made for the age of each child when tested, then
due compensation will also be given for any differences that might
exist in length of previous schooling. Where the practice of grouping
children into classes according to their age is adopted, the evidence
from both investigations reported here suggests that even after due
allowance is made for the age of the children, their reading
performance still varies according to the length of previous schooling
they have received, although this residual effect appears only to be
noticeable during the latter part of the Junior school.
   The explanation of these results is not easy to find. The fact
that this residual effect only appears in the latter part of the
Junior school makes the hypothesis that it is due purely to length of
previous schooling questionable. If the latter is to have an effect
on test scores after age has been considered, then it would surely be
more noticeable with younger children, that is, in the early years of
the Junior school. It will be observed, however, that under these
circumstances of 'streaming' by age, the older children in a year
group, who happen also to be those who have received a longer
schooling, perform better than is expected of children of their age,
while the younger children in the year group perform below the
expectation for their age. The possibility must be considered,
therefore, that the differential performance effect is not due to any
differences in length of schooling, but to the fact that the children
are 'streamed' by age. Some evidence has already been obtained
that one of the effects of streaming is to increase the 'spread' of
test performance. That is, under the circumstances of ability
streaming, more high scores and also more low scores are produced than
would be the case were the children not streamed.
   The suggestion here is that since older children of a year group
will be doing more advanced work than the younger one, simply by
reason of their age, an older stream will give the appearance of being
'better' than a younger stream.
# 227
<333 TEXT J39>
A new type of ratepayers' secondary school began to establish
itself in the nineties.
   Not only this, but in London the School Board, ever short of good
pupil-teachers, found itself at length in friendly competition with
the T.E.B. in the field of teacher training. There were
pupil teacher centres; and a 'college' in the Greystoke Place
building off Chancery Lane began to undertake this work in a manner
which the leader of the L.C.C. has in more recent times
publicly described as illegal. On the same occasion he referred in
quite different terms to the T.E.B. as taking 'a wide and
generous view of its duties' in its first plans for the London Day
Training College. In this field, as in the initiatory stages of
various other institutions destined to have a place in the life of
London University, the Webb influence may be seen. The two powerful
democratic agencies, the two Boards, were thus at various points in
rivalry with one another for the custom of the teen-agers; and in
several spheres the School Board was undercutting the institutions
supported by the Technical Education Board, of which Sidney Webb was
the driving force.
   The dominion of the London School Board was at length overthrown
as a result of a decision of the public auditor, strongly backed by
the courts of appeal, that the Board had grossly exceeded its
parliamentary powers in spending ratepayers' money on evening and
continuation work. In the uncomfortable atmosphere created by this
challenge, all school boards now found themselves in hazard. Their
friends had diminished in numbers, but they made up in the vigorous
expression of outraged feelings for their growing sense of inferiority
in face of onslaughts from Tory supporters of Church schools and in
face of the criticisms of the social engineers playing earnestly with
their one and two-tier models in the back rooms of the Fabian Society.
One embarrassing complication which tested the pliable diplomacy of
the Webbs arose out of the membership of the London School Board of
their reforming associate Graham Wallas, passionately disposed as he
was to defend it on the highest grounds of free-thinking principle.
This old friendship with a fellow Fabian was for a long while in
jeopardy. But Graham Wallas stood fast, whereas in this great
struggle most of the School Board supporters, with their only staunch
reserves in the rallying ground of the susceptible nonconformist
conscience, were frequently in disarray because never quite sure
whether they had all the hostile forces correctly identified. These
forces were numerous enough, and even now after sixty years it is hard
to find anyone whose sympathies can be enlisted for them against those
who emerged with the battle honours and the consequent good press.
   The London School Board had been a gallant success against many
odds from the beginning (in 1871), when Thomas Huxley drafted the
first curriculum reform. And he and his colleagues were succeeded by
a line of most able men and women of a quality which would bring
outstanding distinction to the London County Education Committee today
were they equipped with such talents. The School Board had undertaken
to civilize one of the most backward and barbarous and misgoverned
urban committees in Christendom; it had carried through what Dr.
Lowndes had aptly described as a silent social revolution. In the
course of their constitutional development the school boards taught
the country for the first time to use the machinery of a ratepayers'
democracy- a democracy of women as well as men- and moreover to use
it in defence of public principles wider than the restraint of petty
corruption. Their champions have been few. And all but the ugly name
of the schools they administered has passed into oblivion. How far
were the Webbs responsible for their demise?
   That an 6ad hoc education authority, with powers limited
(the Courts now declared) to little more than instruction in the three
Rs, must be an anachronism was becoming evident to all at the
close of the nineteenth century. And it was undoubtedly the
administrative triumph of the T.E.B. in so completely filling
a new set of gaps in education that made the County Councils the final
take-over claimants, as all-purpose authorities for the elementary and
secondary sectors.
   Still, it would be wrong to suppose that the L.C.C. and
the L.S.B had a war to the knife on their hands. Both were
dismayed to see the national colouring their rivalry had assumed. The
L.C.C. almost fell over backwards, repeatedly. It showed no
greed for the rich inheritance, with its awful responsibilities, so
different in their complexity from those offered by street markets and
outfall sewers. Whilst this rather ugly chapter in national politics
was unfolded, whilst the grinding of axes and the scuffles and squeaks
of burrowing intriguers in the higher ranges of administration could
often be heard above the sound of the Westminster traffic, the
dominant wish of the county councillors in Spring Gardens was that
somehow the face of the School Board should be saved.
   Matters first came to a head during the absence of Sidney and
Beatrice on an extensive tour abroad. Garnett was successful in
swiftly adopting a new Whitehall administrative provision which was
now used to make the T.E.B. the grant-distributing authority
for London of national Science and Art payments. This outraged the
School Board, for, as Garnett astutely observed, it made his
L.C.C. Board the effective authority for secondary classes.
'The ball which had been set rolling... did not stop', he wrote
later, 'until the Education Acts... had revolutionised...
administration... throughout the country'.
   William Garnett and Robert Morant (who drafted the Bill of 192
and was rapidly promoted to become first permanent secretary of the
new Board of Education) have shared the same friendly biographer; and
it has long been known that these two men were at the centre of the
network of political activity within which steps were taken to ensure
that the ball went on rolling. What is much less clear is how far
Sidney Webb was responsible for the direction taken by affairs in 191
and 192, and how closely he worked with Morant, with whom he and
Beatrice were of course later to quarrel over social insurance.
Beatrice's Diaries provide a certain amount of information and give
us light on her views. Sidney had little or nothing to do with the
incidents connected with the famous Cockerton judgment on the misuse
of the school-board fund. But it is certain both that the Fabian
tract =16, The Education Muddle and the Way Out (191) was
essentially the fruit of Sidney's thinking and that this tract and the
lobbying pressures brought to bear by Sidney greatly influenced the
drafting of the Education Bill. Tract =16 itself made the case
first for local control of education, next for a unified control,
and finally for the claims of the large all-purpose authority the form
and frame of which existed since 1888 in the county and county borough
councils. This important document (largely penned by Webb) in which a
theory of educational administration is set out and related with the
utmost assurance to the principle of the full development of every
child's faculties, is one of the few major texts on the subject which
is available for profitable scrutiny by the student of the period.
   There has been a conspiracy of modesty about Sidney's real claim
to be the father of the Bill of 192; and thus perhaps the ancestor of
so many of our subsequent achievements and woes. Avoiding one counsel
of the Fabian tract, that a few of the larger school boards might well
be saved for limited purposes because of their superior efficiency,
the Government came out for their abolition. In fact the argument for
Sidney's paternity for the measure of 192 is in places weak, and even
the word God-father would be unfortunate in the circumstances-
though, if the voluntary schools were protected by angels, Sidney for
reasons which do him credit was on their side. The idea of using the
Education Bill of 192 to aid denominational schools came to Sidney
Webb before it came to Robert Morant, as Mr. Brennan has pointed
out. Much of the real agony of creation in this tremendous piece of
reconstruction was of course experienced by Morant. Professor Eric
Eaglesham has now brought this out quite clearly. What can be said is
that, after a number of gestures, some friendly, some ambiguous,
towards the School Board in its hour of crisis, Sidney became
confirmed in the belief which he must for some time have privately
nourished that a monolithic education authority was appropriate for
all areas having County Councils, and that London's County Council,
which had been omitted from Balfour's measure as far too tricky a
proposition to handle with the rest, ought to go into the Bill, as the
sole governor of the schools within its area.
   In maintaining the latter view Sidney was part of an unsuccessful
minority, hard as he seems to have tried to make it a successful
majority; and it was thus necessary for the whole process of
wire-pulling and lobbying to be repeated when the problem of education
in London came before Parliament for separate consideration in the
following session. But perhaps it was from that preceding summer,
when the general Bill was fought through many embittered weeks, that
Sidney began to lose his assured touch in London county politics.
Democratic feeling no longer supported him. He got no help from the
Labour following of Ramsey MacDonald, always a little suspicious of
higher education and of the Webbs as promoters of the
self-regarding motives of London's middle classes. Sidney himself was
now distrustful of his old party the Progressives, and quite out of
sympathy with the angry radical dissenters who would gladly have upset
the education apple-cart to cheat the Anglicans and Romans of access
to the rates. Having lost the chairmanship of the Technical Education
Board, Sidney failed to get re-elected. It is reasonable to suppose
that at this point Beatrice's views, opposing what she called 'pure
materialism' as a national philosophy to be inculcated by school
masters, had begun vigorously to assert themselves. Certainly they
both wished to prevent the animosities and frictions hitherto
encouraged by the dual system from becoming more severe or from
wrecking the future of secondary education; and so she for religious
reasons and he because he believed in fairness and hated the bigotry
of secularists, and because he thought efficiency would be served by
having Roman Catholic and Anglican schools within the fold of public
education rather than outside it, favoured the maintenance of
voluntary schools out of local taxation.
   Yet the Webbs had their triumph, and incidentally Sidney lost
even more of his radical support, with the shaping of the London
Education Act of 193, with which the Unionist House of Commons
completed the task of reconstruction. This measure reached its
revised and final form only after the party leaders had terrified
nearly every vested interest in London by the threat to create a new
authority in the shape of a large 6ad hoc body of nominated
members on the pattern of the Metropolitan Water Board, at the same
time offering much power and influence in school provision to the
recently created metropolitan boroughs. The situation in the spring
of 193 has such a startling topicality in relation to the current
proposals of the Royal Commission on Greater London that it is
difficult to comment on one without expressing views on the other.
The Webbs in any case knew what they wanted, and, although the whole
thing was perhaps less of a one-man battle than is hinted at in
Beatrice's diaries, Sidney got his way for London; and this was a
county authority- an authority formally charged with responsibility
for all educational activity on the public vote within its boundaries,
save the University of course.
   There was not the least bit of ad hoccery here. It was a
triumph for the Webb principle, as currently promulgated at the
beginning of the century, of a consolidated all-purpose local
responsibility vested in the County; although it was decidedly against
the general trend followed in the management of London's water, road
transport, harbour facilities and so on, which all slipped out of the
control of municipal socialism.
# 254
<334 TEXT J4>
Perhaps because they operated a peripheral weapon, they thought
more in order to justify its being and expansion. But they, too, were
just as guilty as their superiors of over-estimating their weapon's
effectiveness and dreaming of its potential. On the other hand, the
same people were apt to divert power from their own programme by
boasting. The claims of airshipmen, it appears, helped create the
vast anti-Zeppelin forces which were maintained in England in the
First World War. It did not take a very astute man to realize that
what could be done to the enemy if we had the equipment might well be
done to us when he had it, particularly if invulnerability, which the
German airships possessed at first, was claimed for the delivery
system. Between them the enthusiasts and the reactionaries created a
vast feeling of insecurity, and faced with this the responsible
authorities generally erred towards the safe side.
   Any new weapon will have its small band of disciples. But if it
is to be used effectively, more personnel must be recruited.
Volunteers may be hard to come by owing to the lure of actual combat
and the uncertainty of the future with a new-fangled device. Thus the
expanded staff is apt to be short on experienced career men and long
on Hostilities Only or draftee recruits. This places the weapon at a
disadvantage in the battle of Whitehall where it may have difficulty
breaking the thin red tape, and in peacetime it will be out of favour,
but in a commanding position as far as wartime development is
concerned for it may well acquire decidedly more brains than the
normal unit. The undisciplined will be quite prepared to test
regulations and equipment and by empirical means come to new
conclusions in both technology and technique, as the Naval Air Service
did with not only air equipment, but also with armoured cars and
tanks. This is particularly important where an entirely new element
is being investigated. Airships presented many unknowns to be solved
and these ranged from metallurgical questions to matters of
aerodynamics.
   The new weapon also presents all decision-makers with the problem
of the evaluation of intelligence from both the enemy's and one's own
work. In this respect, too, there arises the question as to what is
the acceptable percentage of failure? In the case of airships, should
all the money have been put into one Mayfly? While the answer in
198-9 was probably yes, in 1924 it should have been no. In
almost any programme, the construction of but one prototype is bound
to lead to delay, confusion, and losses if there is a disaster. And
the likelihood of such is by no means eliminated by the present
advances in technology. Yet the combination of psychological and
politico-economic forces in Britain still persists in an approach
which may well be called into question where real economics are
concerned. It is highly unscientific to place too many innovations in
any one test vehicle, if for no other reason than it attenuates the
whole testing period. Ideally, merely one change at a time should be
tried until proven, and this was well demonstrated in R11.
Moreover, every new weapon needs at least three prototypes: one for
operational research, one for technical modifications, and one for
experimental use as a testbed for the next-generation ideas. Thus the
building of only one prototype provides policy-makers with the rather
appalling fact that they may have to accept a 1 per cent failure
rate, and yet still have to justify continuing expenditure on such
work in order not to be placed in a disadvantageous position in an
international race. The loss of R38, amongst other factors,
immediately suspended work on more advanced types as well as
discouraging commercial incentive.
   The obverse of this coin is the desire to standardize too soon,
for duplication there must be if a weapon is to be handled by average
troops and ordinary commanders. This was the difficulty of 1916 in
the British rigid airship programme: the designers were allowed to
seek after perfection to the detriment of operational uniformity,
while the Royal Flying Corps had allowed similarity to preclude
competitive progress.
   The ministerial head of a service department is always in a
difficult position in peacetime. In Britain, for instance, the
Treasury rules, so only a weapon with either the Prime Minister's or
the Chancellor of the Exchequer's approval or diffidence can get
sufficient funds. After a major conflict the Treasury is most apt to
insist on the payment of past debts and the consumption of available
equipment before authorizing any new expenditures. This it certainly
did in the years immediately after the Treaty of Versailles.
   Peace is a dastardly affair where new weapons are concerned.
There is an immediate erosion of personnel. Operations rapidly taper
off and even constructional work will be suspended while politics and
economics once more take the field to bid for the voters' favour. The
immediate hope is for some crisis, such as the suspicion that the
Germans might not accept the Treaty of 1919, or that the whole concern
can be turned over to commercial profit. But the latter can be
successful only if the entrepreneurs are allowed to obtain for a
reasonable sum what would otherwise be scrapped and have facilities
and official support to exploit it. Moreover, they must feel
financially secure and not suspect that the State aims to take over
once a service is established. The government may well face the
choice as it did in 1919 of scrapping the whole business or of
subsidizing a commercial operation. This creates a situation in which
the weapons advocates may be able to divide and conquer. However,
there are two difficulties- civilian acumen may be lacking, and the
whole may be too peripheral and too much of a gamble for either of the
other parties. As personnel and material deteriorate, immediate
action is essential and this must be topped with a prestigial success
which will create political pressure. This makes the odds high, and,
in the case of airships, it led to R34's trans-Atlantic flight and
to R11's death.
   How did all this affect the airship programme?
   Mayfly was initiated in a period of concern with Germany's
intentions and collapsed at the end of a severe political crisis in
Britain. Airship work was revived when another defence scare came
along; then cancelled when it was thought that the war would have
cleared the air by late 1915. The whole programme was revivified
during the wide-open war economy and collapsed in the peacetime
retrenchment. It then became caught up in the conflicting streams of
the save-the-Empire movement and the Labour Party's desire to run a
successful national transport system. The collapse of the economy and
the de?2nouement of R11 caused airships to be abandoned for
economic reasons, which were rapidly reinforced by technological
arguments in favour of the aeroplane.
Who Made Airship Policy?
   The original impetus appears to have come from the Germans
through the naval and military attache?2s to Fisher and the Prime
Minister. Asquith by his decision in July, 198 placed the First Sea
Lord in a position to implement plans already sketched out by Bacon
and other technically astute officers. Bacon guided the early design
stages of Mayfly until relieved by Sueter, and the first airship
programme then proceeded under its own steam and with the blessing of
the Committee of Imperial Defence until the disaster of September,
1911. Churchill as the new First Lord with A. K. Wilson as his
First Sea Lord then decided against any further work.
   The second programme came into being again because of the Germans
and through the joint agency of Sueter and Seely, Secretary for War,
who chaired the Committee of Imperial Defence sub-committee on
aeronautics. Thus in mid-1912 a further reappraisal, at least in
part, influenced by a change in heart at the Admiralty, came into
being with Asquith, as head of the Committee of Imperial Defence,
accepting in 1913 the need for another rigid airship. And once again
Churchill in early 1915 became the one who decided that the whole
thing should be abandoned and gave the order to cancel No. 9,
and presumably also earlier, No. 14 and No. 15.
And so it went on.
   After the war, the transfer of lighter-than-air from the
Admiralty to the Air Ministry again put Churchill into a policy-making
role in regard to airships over which he had exercised some influence
as Minister of Munitions from 1917 to 1919. As Secretary of State for
Air he had to reconcile his fondness for maintaining the Empire with
his desire for economy and political success. Airships fitted into
both patterns. At the same time, Churchill was also Secretary of War
and gave much of his time to the Army. The Under-Secretary of State
for Air, Seely, was pro-airships as he had been as the pre-war
Secretary for War, while Sir Frederick Sykes as Chief of the Air Staff
and then as Controller-General of Civil Aviation was also a supporter.
Sir Hugh Trenchard, who succeeded Sykes, appears to have favoured
airships in their place, and if prestige, the Estimates, and the
R.A.F. could allow for them. As Seely resigned and the other
Under-Secretaries were not much interested, as long as Churchill
remained the Air Minister, he and Trenchard made policy.
   But policy was also made at lower levels. In much the same class
as Rickover, Whittle, and Dornberger, Sueter guided constructional and
design concepts until he was posted. In the early years of the
R.A.F. the Director of Research and the Air Member for Supply
and Research had their says. Maitland as Superintendent of Airships
appears to have been left on the fringes as was Masterman after he
transferred from the Navy to the R.A.F. It must be recalled,
however, that the Director of Research on one occasion made policy
when he plumped for cutting R38's trials to but fifty hours with
subsequent unfortunate results.
   In the case of the Imperial Scheme, policy was made by a wide
variety of people. A. H. Ashbolt and Cmdr. Burney provided the
primary pressure. Trenchard was interested because he saw a way of
acquiring military strength for a relatively minor expenditure on the
Estimates while at the same time mollifying the Admiralty, then in the
process of being denied a naval air arm and the destruction of the
R.A.F. Sir Samuel Hoare was openly in favour and this was in
keeping with his character as a publicity-conscious Air Minister. But
in the case of the Conservative Burney Scheme there was one of those
rare instances of the monarch helping make policy by taking a personal
interest in a particular development. Into this picture then was
catapulted Lord Thomson, an obvious enthusiast, who told the Air Staff
to "screw up" the Conservative scheme. He and his Under-Secretary,
a Bradford alderman and pacifist named Leach, knew nothing about
airships and little about international commercial organizations. In
the realm of civil air intelligence their natural advisor was the
enthusiastic Sir Sefton Brancker, the Director of the Department of
Civil Aviation at the Air Ministry. But Brancker was not
exceptionally well-qualified to give advice on this subject.
Moreover, the Secretary and his Under-Secretary called largely upon
the serving members of the Air Council for their opinions, then made a
scheme and submitted it to the Cabinet without allowing those very
advisers time to consider it. Thus the latter were forced to the
unusual step of drawing up a memorandum for the Cabinet for their own
protection. Nor was the experienced Chief of the Air Staff adequately
consulted. The Cabinet then proceeded to accept a programme which had
not been approved by the Air Council.
   Yet in this case, while the Aeronautical Research Committee did
not have the access to the Cabinet that it had had in 199, it did
have considerable influence. It was the findings of the special
technical committee on the loss of R38 which heavily influenced
the Thomsonian decision to make this an experimental programme rather
than an operational one.
# 215
<335 TEXT J41>
   Some of the criticism of political expenditure has been
directed as much against the goods and services purchased as against
the amounts involved. Many leading members of the Labour Party
dislike, distrust, and sometimes fail to understand, the world of
public relations. In the words of Mr. Gaitskell, there are many in
the party who 'feel insulted and humiliated that their desires and
wants are being dictated to them regardless of how real they are, or
how genuine are the advertisers' claims. They feel the whole thing is
somehow false.' Alice Bacon, chairman of the NEC's publicity
and political education sub-committee, has denounced the Conservative
Party's public relations efforts for having 'introduced something
which is alien to our British democracy'. The Conservatives are
charged with selling political ideas as if they were detergents.
   Distaste and disgust are strong emotions, but negative ones. The
Labour Party has been singularly lacking in suggestions about what
might be done to prevent the Conservatives from 'subverting' or
'Americanizing' the British electorate by public relations
techniques. A small minority of Labour Party members would probably
support a drastic curtailment of advertising by government action, and
accept the implications of this for the press as well as for politics.
Regulation of advertising which did not control it virtually outright
would not seriously affect political expenditure. If a law could be
drafted to prevent politically relevant advertising, one could also be
drafted to prevent the expenditure in the first place. Parties, if
not all their associates, could be prohibited from purchasing
advertising space in newspapers and on the hoardings. If instead the
Conservatives put more money into colour comics like 'Form', the
level of debate would hardly have been raised. Much spending to which
objections are made- for instance, the Colin Hurry poll, Aims of
Industry press releases, the Economic League's factory gate speakers-
does not take the form of purchasing space; only +445, of the
+1,435, credited to business groups in the Nuffield study was
spent on buying advertising space.
   Efforts to control the content rather than the volume of
advertising are foredoomed to failure. It would be virtually
impossible to discriminate in a statute between political advertising
which does or does not lower the tone of debate. A promise to
increase pensions appears as altruism to some; to others it seems rank
bribery. An Advertising Council might be created along the lines of
the Press Council, to scrutinize advertising and censure offenders;
given the model suggested, little could be expected from such a body.
It would be as difficult for a quasi-judicial tribunal to pass upon
the content of political advertisements, rejecting those that were
'unsuitable', as for the Speaker of the House of Commons to do
similarly in parliamentary debates.
   It might not be particularly difficult to attack the advertiser's
practice of using market research methods to study the wants of the
electorate. A law could prohibit pollsters from asking questions on
political topics. But this would not affect the substantive problem,
which arises from the fear that some politicians frame or revise
policies simply to win more votes, without regard to the national
welfare.
=3
   All the proposed alterations discussed so far have been
restrictive ones, intended to remedy deficiencies in the
Representation of the People Act by reducing the amount of money spent
on electioneering in the long run. But the Act might also be altered
in such a way as to increase the scope for political expenditure. The
foregoing analysis indicates that restrictive amendments to the
present Act are not likely to remedy the alleged evils. The American
experience of fifty years of attempted regulation would confirm this
judgment. V. O. Key reports:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Legislation purports to require publicity of campaign finance, to
limit the amounts spent, to prohibit certain types of contributions to
campaigns, and to limit the size of contributions. In general, the
laws do not in fact limit expenditures, substantially affect the size
of contributions, or assure full publicity.
<END QUOTE>
If means could be found to level up the resources of Labour and the
Liberals, much of the bitterness might be removed from present
discussion of election laws, and the practical consequences of major
shortcomings of those laws would be greatly reduced.
   One remedy lies within the hands of the Labour and Liberal
parties- it is to collect higher dues from members, a far easier task
than greatly expanding present membership. In the words of Morgan
Phillips, ~'Labour Party income is still geared to a different and
far less expensive political era.' As long as five-sixths of the
party's members contribute three farthings a month (9d. a year)
to Transport House, Labour leaders can hardly plead that their
relative financial weakness is solely the fault of the Conservatives.
If dues for trade union affiliated members were raised to 1s. a
year, Transport House would have an additional +7, to spend
annually. If trade union members paid the party 2s. a year, as
Phillips has suggested, the income of Transport House would be
doubled. Since the Labour Party proclaims a desire to narrow income
differentials, it might consider the membership scheme of the German
Social Democratic Party; it is a sliding scale, with contributions
graded according to income. Nearly 6, German socialists gave the
party more than +1 apiece on average (+72,) in 1957; dues for
those in the highest income bracket were set at +5 a year. The
Liberal Party is appealing for mass-membership contributions. The
appeal leaflet, This is Your Party, estimates minimum annual needs
at +172,.
   Another method of increasing party revenue would be to have the
state make statutory contributions to the parties. At present the law
penalizes the candidates who secure less than one-eighth of the vote
at parliamentary elections. The law could equally give cash bonuses
to the candidates who save their deposits. Grants are made to
candidates in some foreign countries. The actual amount given might
be determined in one of several ways. It could be equal to the sum of
money spent in each constituency, or equal to the legally permitted
maxima. Alternatively, it might be a lump sum of +5 or +1,.
The grant could be paid after each election or annually. (A
guarantee of campaign expenses would not only save parties this sum,
but would also free them from the need to keep a sizeable cash reserve
against the possibility of having to fight two elections in quick
succession.) A grant paid on the basis of sums spent by candidates in
campaigning in 1959 would have brought the Conservatives +475,,
Labour +435,, and the Liberals approximately +9,. It would
be prudent to make such grants to candidates, in order to avoid the
difficulty of defining a party, and the possibility of placing the
Treasury in a position of having to arbitrate between two factions
both claiming one grant. The sums of money involved would be small by
Exchequer standards, but considerable in political terms; the poorest
party, the Liberals, would be aided most in proportion, the richest
one, relatively least. The Labour Party's dependence upon trade
unions for finance could thereby be appreciably reduced.
   Another way of remedying deficiencies, which would also lead to
greater expenditure, would be to abolish the present restrictions on
spending by candidates. The Economist suggested this in a
post-election editorial of 1 October 1959, as a means of preventing
the law from being brought into disrepute. Liberals, who depend more
upon personal appeal and constituency efforts than do others, might
gain most from such a step.
=4
   Most advocates of stricter accounting of political expenditure
assume that money buys votes; some charge that it buys votes in
sufficient quantities to win elections. This assertion is truest when
it is most platitudinous: a party cannot operate without money. To go
further, and say that a party such as the Liberals gains few votes
because it has little money is to mistake cause and effect. It would
be more nearly true to say that a party with relatively few voters,
such as the Liberals, has difficulty in raising money. As the rise of
the Labour Party shows, the necessary minimum is not great, nor is it
impossible to secure if the party has strong support in the
electorate.
   Many British discussions of political expenditure seem to assume
a simple input-output model of electioneering: X thousand pounds
will produce X or X/2 or X/4 or 2X or 4X votes.
Y inches of advertising space will produce Y/2 or 2Y
units of political influence. (How much of a reduction factor is
needed for the 1,, or so leaflets distributed by the Economic
League between elections has never been specified.) People
unaccustomed to dealing with large sums of money might think it
incredible that hundreds of thousands of pounds might be spent to no
real effect. Socialists are further handicapped in viewing the
problem if they believe that capitalists are not only wicked but also
devilishly clever.
   The determinants of voting behaviour and election results are so
infinitely complex that we can rarely separate out any single factor
and assign to it a specific amount of influence. Since the
introduction of the secret ballot, it has been impossible to establish
a straightforward cause and effect relationship between expenditure
and voting. We can only examine what we know about elections and
about how money is spent, then make judgments based upon selective
empirical data and logical analysis.
   Elections are determined by three interrelated factors- the
material and social environment, individual values, and party
activities. The influence of an individual party upon a given
election result is a limited one; therefore, the value of party
spending is likewise limited. There is a ceiling (and quite possibly
a diminishing margin of utility) for political expenditure. The
Gallup Poll's graph of the party standings in its monthly polls since
1945 suggests that the single most important influence upon voting
behaviour is the economic state of the nation. This is little
affected by the few hundred thousand pounds that the parties spend.
Long-term environmental changes, important in setting the limits
within which parties may manoeuvre, are also outside the control of
party treasurers. This explains why the richest party does not always
win elections in Britain or America. The successes of the Labour
Party at the polls, particularly in the 192's, are good evidence of
this. Money cannot purchase a large political following, although it
can purchase attention. Lloyd George's fund could underwrite
constituency expenses, but it could not ensure the delivery of safe
seats. In America the Democratic Party achieved five successive
victories from 1932 against wealthier opponents. Only the most
simple-minded materialist would reject Key's statement: 'Money is
not the sole currency of politics; Roosevelt held counters in the game
that outweighed money.'
   There is, of course, a distinction between buying votes and
buying political favours. Some Labour criticism of political spending
by business firms has fastened upon the allegation that these firms
are buying preferential treatment from Conservative governments, as
well as seeking to influence all voters to oppose nationalization. It
has similarly been charged that Labour's failure to press
nationalization of insurance was due to its financial links with the
Co-operatives, and that its industrial policy, or the absence thereof,
is dictated by the unions' power over Labour's purse. To note
financial links between interested groups and parties is not to prove
that government favours are for sale; it only shows that there are
some questions of public policy on which a party government cannot be
disinterested. Only if the Exchequer were made the sole source of
party funds, which no one suggests, could parties be made absolutely
independent financially of such pressure groups. Whether, as in the
case of the Labour Party, the economic interest creates the political
organization, or whether the party attracts the interests, is beside
the point.
   Much of the money that the parties raise is spent on party
headquarters and constituency organization; the value of both of these
is often overrated by those who are closest to them.
# 21
<336 TEXT J42>
<TABLE>
   Apart from South Africa, which does at least have the excuse
that its coal is exceptionally cheap, Britain and Soviet Russia now
have the dubious distinction of using the most fuel per unit of
national product of all countries in the world. If you have to run a
country on the basis of Marxist economics and the labour theory of
value, you must expect something like this. No doubt, according to
official Marxist doctrine, the more coal you use the more valuable the
products you turn out, because more labour is incorporated in them;
although even in Soviet Russia common sense sometimes breaks in. Our
policy, since the industries connected with fuel were nationalised,
has not been avowedly Marxist as in Soviet Russia, but has been,
perhaps unwittingly, based on many of the same ideas: fuel industries
are 'basic industries', fuel ought therefore to be cheap, and the
more that is consumed the better. This is the sort of muddled
thinking which has already cost the country enormous sums. Until the
advent of cheap oil in the last three years, the produce of the
nationalised coal, electricity and gas industries ought to have been
sold at much higher prices, on the one hand in order to bring some
revenue to the Treasury, and on the other hand to compel
industrialists and consumers to economise as they do in other
countries.
   Bernard Shaw was a great dramatist; but nobody now would suggest
that his views on economics should be taken seriously. Many years ago
he explained that the principal reason for nationalising the coal
mines was that, as things were then, mines produced coal at a great
variety of different costs, and that the primary duty of a national
administration would be to average them out. Bernard Shaw's ideas,
however, had great influence in the Labour Party, and one almost
suspects that some of them still linger on in the administration of
our nationalised industries. Otherwise it is hard to explain their
refusal to allow regional differences in prices, or their long
hesitation before closing down uneconomic pits.
   It is true that there have been some economies in fuel
consumption in Britain during recent years. But they have been slow
and reluctant compared with the movements in other countries. The
United States, up to the 192s, used fuel lavishly, mainly because it
was so cheap. But consumption per unit of national product is now
lower than ours, even though fuel is still comparatively cheap in the
United States.
   The detailed industry-by-industry comparison of trends in this
country and Germany, reproduced in Table =4, presents a really
alarming picture.
<TABLE>
   An industry by industry comparison of fuel consumed per unit of
product in U.K. and Canadian industry, shown in Table =5, is
also very revealing.
<TABLE>
   In order to effect most of these economies in fuel consumption,
costly investments are not required. We have some figures given in an
official document, and similar figures were estimated by the late
Professor Sir Francis Simon. A ton of coal per year for many years
into the future could be saved by investing no more than +7 in
economisers and other forms of heat recovery, +12 or +13 in new
kilns and furnaces and in mechanical stokers, +17 in replacing and
modifying boilers, or +25 in insulating buildings. With coal at
anything like its present price, every one of these investments is
extremely well worth while. Our fuel consumption has now begun to
fall, but it has a great deal further to go, judging by the experience
of other countries.
   The National Coal Board for many years was unable to meet all the
demands upon it, and had to import coal at high cost, which it then
re-sold at a much lower price. Nevertheless, the Board seemed to like
this situation, and in the programme of 'Investing in Coal' which
they published in 1956 they envisaged its indefinite continuance. The
consumption of fuel, expressed as coal equivalents, had reached 254
million tons in 1956. The figure subsequently fell, and rose only to
264 million tons in 196; but the National Coal Board expected it to
rise to 281 million tons by 196 and 335 million by 197.
   To show how steadfastly a Conservative Government supports the
administrators of nationalised industries we may quote a statement
made by Lord Mills, the Minister of Fuel and Power, as late as 1958,
in which, while admitting that consumption had fallen to 25 million
tons of coal equivalent for the current year, he still estimated that
it would rise again to 3 million by 1965. As coal became more
difficult to sell, the Government seems to have become more determined
to defend the coal industry, quietly blocking imports of cheap oil and
of liquefied natural gas (for which the transport technique has
recently been discovered).
   It seems all too clear that much of our 'investing in coal'
has been wasted; and we can now see some of the reasons why.
(d) Electricity
   Regarding electricity generation, which has taken a substantial
share of the country's capital during the last decade, we do not see
obvious signs of waste as we do in coal. At the same time, there has
not been any real reply to the case made by Dr. I. M. D. Little
in his book The Price of Fuel that electricity has been sold
unduly cheaply to household and commercial consumers, to encourage its
use for space heating, which could be more economically done by gas.
The supposed purpose of nationalisation was to bring about a rational
co-ordination between industries, but this certainly does not seem to
have been done in electricity and gas (any more than between road and
rail transport). The administrators of the nationalised electricity
undertaking seem to have got their ideas from old-fashioned electrical
engineers whose main purpose in life was to drive gas out of business.
The Government has even permitted the nationalised electricity and
gas industries to spend public funds, beyond the amounts reasonably
required to make useful new equipment and processes known to the
public, in advertising against each other.
   Dr. Little's criticisms particularly applied to the fact that
the scale of charges for household electricity gives consumers no
incentive to economise during the peak hours, when electricity is most
costly to the supplying authority, because expensive reserve capacity
has to be kept in being to meet peak loads. Experience in other
countries has shown that there are practicable devices for adjusting
meters in order to charge more for peak hour use. Our nationalised
electricity industry has stubbornly and irrationally refused to adopt
them.
   The building of nuclear power stations has been criticized:
though this form of investment is, I think, defensible on economic
grounds, up to the point where the base or minimum load on the
electricity system (probably at 4 a.m. on a summer morning),
constituting perhaps one-sixth of total capacity, is all supplied by
them. It does not serve much purpose to work out a series of
comparative costs of thermal and nuclear stations, under various
assumptions, in pence per unit. The right approach is by an analysis
of 'opportunity costs'. A nuclear station of 3, kw
capacity, expected to last for twenty years, costs +42 million, plus
+8.8 million for its initial fuel charge. Such a station obviates
the need for a thermal station of similar capacity- additional
capacity is going to be needed, even if not at the rate at which we
are building at present. The capital cost of the thermal station
would be +15 million, with a life of twenty-seven years; so we can
'credit' the nuclear station with saving 2/27 x 15 =+11.1 million
capital, and regard its net capital cost as +39.7 million. Running
costs other than fuel, which are virtually independent of output, will
be +.5 million per year for a nuclear and +.33 million for a
thermal station. If the nuclear station works at 8 per cent load
factor, which seems a reasonably cautious estimate, it will produce
2.1 billion kwh per year at a fuel cost of .149d./ kwh, as
against .42d./ kwh for a thermal station. After allowing for
running costs the net saving will be +2.23 million per year, or 5.6
per cent on the net capital cost of +39.7 million.
   This, however, still only represents costs as seen by the
electrical engineer. When we take the costs of the National Coal
Board into account also, we find a very much greater saving. As soon
as total output of coal began to go down, during the last few years,
the output of coal per manshift worked, which had been stationary for
a number of years, leaped upwards. This was brought about only to a
limited extent by closing pits: mainly, it appears, by the closing of
uneconomic seams within mines. The movement of the figures of output
per manshift appears to indicate that marginal coal may cost as much
as +4 per ton more than average coal. If we take this saving into
account, as we are fully entitled to do, we obtain an additional
return of 8 1/2 per cent (or less in proportion if the above figure
of +4 is too high) on our investment in nuclear power. By all means
invest in nuclear power- but close down more coal mines.
(e) Roads
   At a special conference called by the Institute of Civil
Engineers recently, a case was made for very large expenditure on both
rural and urban roads. The economic return on such investments, in
the form of faster-moving and less congested traffic, can be fairly
precisely calculated, and fully justifies them, probably even to the
extent of the +3, million which, it was suggested, should
ultimately be spent on our road system. But here again, this
expenditure should render redundant a considerable part of the railway
system, which should be dismantled. The expensive 'modernization
programme' for the railways was prepared on quite unjustified
assumptions about the amount of traffic which they could attract.
Demand for transport, measured in ton-miles, has been increasing more
slowly than national product, and its future rate of increase is
expected to be not much over 1 per cent per year. Road transport
already carries over three-quarters of the ton-mileage of all traffic
other than minerals and at its present rate of expansion will easily
provide for this increase, and go on cutting into what remains of the
railway traffic too.
   
   There can now be no doubt, and no denying, that hundreds of
million of pounds have, since the end of the war, been wasted on
misdirected 'investment' in the nationalised coal, electricity and
railway industries. Because of this waste we have not been able to
modernise the road system, cut taxes, or do the other desirable things
that could have been done. There has been plenty of
'investment', but how much effective growth? Net capital
investment from 1955 to 1959 inclusive was +8,949 million, which
means an addition to the capital stock of 19 per cent. But the
increase in the real net national product from 1955 to 1959-6 was
only 9 per cent. Have we been putting our money on the wrong horses?
=6. THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT 'LEAGUE'
   The final section of this booklet might be described, in a
certain sense, as an anticlimax. After Dr. Aukrust's careful
analysis of the Norwegian figures, and the extensive figures for other
countries quoted above, it is going to be very difficult for anyone
seriously to contend that increased investment is a sure way of
increasing the rate of economic growth.
   However, there are many people, in responsible positions, who do
not reason in this way. They reason in a simpler manner altogether.
The procedure is to construct what is sometimes called a 'League
Table', ranking countries according to the percentage of their gross
national product which they devote to investment; and then to set out
to show that their position in this table is related to their rate of
economic growth.
# 2
<337 TEXT J43>
Between those quarters transfer payments rose by an annual rate of
$1.9 billion, against which must be set an increase in personal
social insurance contributions of $.5 billion; Federal personal tax
payments fell by $3.4 billion, while state and local tax payments
rose by $.3 billion. The fall in Federal personal tax payments and
the rise in transfer payments were more than enough to offset the fall
in personal income before tax and transfer, disposable income rising
by $1. billion. Although the level of personal income before tax
and transfer in the second quarter of 1954 was the lowest reached in
the recession, disposable income was higher than the pre-recession
peak, as was consumption. Although small changes from quarter to
quarter as shown in the national income accounts must be treated with
caution because of the 'statistical discrepancy', there is every
reason to regard as correct the view held at the time in official
circles that disposable income and consumption expenditure for goods
as well as services was <SIC> being well maintained despite the
recession. As long as this was so the attempt to reduce inventories
would succeed and before long inventory liquidation would have to come
to a halt, with a consequent increase in total demand and production.
The danger was that the fall in incomes caused by the reductions in
output made in order to reduce inventories might lead to such a drop
in consumers' demand that the attempt to liquidate inventories would
fail, leading to another round of cuts in output. The cut in incomes
resulting from the fall in defence expenditure could intensify such a
spiral.
   But in the early months of 1954 there was no sign of such a
development. Retail sales of non-durable goods rose steadily, the
total in each month except March being above that for the
corresponding month in 1953, and in April equalled the previous high
point (July 1953). Sales of consumers' durable goods were below the
1953 levels throughout 1954, but in February and succeeding months
were well above the low point of December 1953 and January 1954. The
movements of disposable income and retail sales indicated that the
fall in production and in incomes derived from it was not causing a
deflationary spiral, so that it was likely that the combination of
reduced output and stable sales would run down inventories fairly
quickly. It was reasonable to reach this conclusion in March or April
1954.
   The above conclusion indicated that the consumption sector of the
economy would be able to get by with the tax reduction already
enacted, with the reduction in excise tax rates just to be on the safe
side. The Administration's approach was cautious; in March and April
1954 definite evidence that the trough of the recession had been
reached was not yet available and there were no grounds for believing
that recovery had begun; the risk of a deflationary spiral still
existed. The Administration decided to take the risk, which indeed
did not appear a large one, in order to avoid risking the inflation
that might develop once recovery was well under way if the tax
reduction could not be reversed quickly. While it was quite
legitimate to argue that the risk of inflation should have been
accepted and tax rates reduced, it cannot be justifiably asserted that
the issue was whether any attention at all should be paid to
consumption; talk about 'a massive transfusion of purchasing power'
implied that the consumption sector of the economy was in a much worse
state of ill-health than it really was.
   The main tax bill of 1954, that to enact a new Internal Revenue
Code, was a measure of revision and reform. Indeed, the slow,
deliberate progress that it had made since its inception in 1952
suggests that its coinciding with a recession was fortuitous, though
had there been inflation serious enough to make any tax reduction
undesirable it could presumably have been held over for a year or so.
The majority of the Ways and Means Committee stated in their report
on the bill:
   'This bill is a long overdue reform measure which is vitally
necessary regardless of momentary economic conditions and should not
be confused with other measures which may be, or might become,
appropriate in the light of a particular short run situation....'
   There was no reason why a tax reduction should not have been
added to the reforms if the economic situation rendered this
desirable. The most contentious provisions were the dividend credit
and the more liberal depreciation allowances. The latter provided
that the taxpayer might use the 'sum of years digits' method of
computing depreciation, or declining balance at double rate (i.e.
if the asset had a life for tax purposes of 1 years the annual
allowance would be 2 per cent of the value not yet written off). The
new formulae for computing depreciation allowances were to apply only
to depreciable assets acquired after the Act had come into force, and
thus were evidently intended as a device for encouraging investment
rather than as an improvement in the equity of the tax system. The
Administration proposed that the first $5 of personal income from
dividends should be exempt from tax in 1954 and the first $1 in
subsequent years, and that the taxpayer should be allowed to deduct
from his tax liability 5 per cent of his income from dividends in the
first year after the Act had come into force, 1 per cent in the
second year, and 15 per cent in the third and subsequent years. The
bill reported by the Ways and Means Committee (H.R.83) followed
the Administration's recommendations except that the credit of
dividends against tax liability was limited to 1 per cent. The
dividend credit had no relevance to the immediate economic situation;
it was supported on grounds of equity, as a means of providing relief
from the 'double taxation' of dividends.
   The minority report of the Ways and Means Committee denounced the
dividend credit as an indefensible discrimination in favour of
unearned income and as embodying the 'trickle down' approach to tax
reduction. The changes in the depreciation allowances were criticized
on the ground that the fuller use of capacity that would result from
an increase in consumption demand would be a more reliable inducement
to investment, for since much existing capacity was not being fully
used tax relief directed specifically to investment would not have
much effect.
   The proposal for an increase in the individual exemption from
income tax had almost unanimous support from the Democrats, including
Representative Rayburn, House Minority Leader, and Senator George, the
senior Democratic member of the Finance Committee, which made it
'official' Democratic policy if anything could. There were also
signs of Republican support.
   The Administration was sufficiently concerned for the President
to make a special broadcast on the subject on 15 March, two days
before the bill was due to be debated in the House of Representatives.
After stressing the need to encourage investors to buy 'lathes,
looms, and great generators' the President expressed hostility to
the proposed increase in the individual exemption on the ground that
it would exempt a large number of taxpayers from tax liability
altogether:
   'When the time comes to cut income taxes still more, let's cut
them. But I do not believe that the way to do it is to excuse
millions of taxpayers from paying any income tax at all... every real
American is proud to carry his share of any burden.... I simply do
not believe for one second that anyone privileged to live in this
country wants someone else to pay his fair and just share of the cost
of his Government'.
   The debate on the bill in the House on 17 and 18 March 1954 took
the form outlined above, with sundry Democratic assertions that since
their opponents had decided to <SIC> something as reckless as to
reduce taxation in face of a deficit, it might as well be a more
equitable tax reduction. The motion to recommit provided that the
dividend credit and the depreciation provisions should be deleted and
an increase in the individual exemption to $7 inserted. It was
rejected by 21 to 24, eight Republicans voting in favour and seven
Democrats against. Not all of those voting in favour of the motion
were voting in favour of a reduction of the income tax; if the motion
to recommit had been carried it would probably have been the end of
the bill for the Session unless the economic situation were to
deteriorate. Among those whose votes appeared to be influenced by
this consideration were the Democrats from Virginia and Representative
Cannon. There are signs that the President's efforts were effective
in whipping-in some of the Republican stragglers; one of these,
Representative Ayres, said that he had thus changed his mind.
   When the Senate Finance Committee opened hearings on the bill on
7 April 1954 Secretary Humphrey held firmly to the position that the
measures already taken, plus the stimulation that the depreciation
provisions of the bill would give, were adequate to deal with the
recession, and that a further tax reduction would be inflationary.
The representatives of NAM and the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce supported the Administration's position, but the Chamber's
representative recommended that personal income tax should be reduced
by 5 per cent of liability and that expenditures should be cut
sufficiently to make the tax reduction possible without further
unbalancing the budget. The trade unions gave vigorous support to the
increase in the individual exemption from income tax. Mr. Reuther
said that there was 'nothing wrong in the American economy that an
increase in the purchasing power in the hands of the American people
will not cure'. There was also the usual pleading for special
relief and grinding of axes; the General Counsel to the National
Institute of Diaper Services, Inc., asked that the cost of
'antiseptic diaper service' be made a tax deductible expense.
   After the end of the hearings the Finance Committee devoted five
weeks to its consideration of the bill, and proposed numerous
amendments, none of economic significance in their effect on the
revenue. Introducing the bill in the Senate of 28 June 1954 Senator
Millikin declared that the bill would go part of the way towards
restoring 'normal economic incentives', which was essential since
the stimulus given to the economy by abnormal military expenditure was
fast disappearing. He emphasized the by then apparent fact that the
decline had come to an end, arguing that as a result further tax
reduction was not necessary to bring about recovery.
   Senator George agreed that the recession had not got as bad as
had at one time seemed likely; he therefore proposed an amendment to
increase the individual exemption from $6 to $7, instead of to
$8 as he had suggested earlier. Although his proposal would
increase the deficit in the immediate future, he maintained that
~'There will be a greater deficit if we do not sustain the principles
of a sound and expanding economy' and that it was more important to
balance the 'home budget' than to balance the budget of the Federal
government. Douglas argued powerfully that the main economic problem
at the moment was not lack of productive capacity but lack of
effective consumer demand, and that no tax concessions to investment
would achieve results if there was no market for the output from the
increased capacity. The reasoning which underlay the bill was
therefore fallacious; it would add to private savings, but would do
nothing to add to investment, which was being held back by lack of
markets.
   Millikin moved an amendment to provide for a reduction of tax of
$2 in tax liability for each taxpayer, a slightly less costly
substitute for George's proposal; it was ill received by George and
his supporters and was rejected by 49 votes to 46, the vote being on
party lines except that Langer voted with the Democrats. George's
amendment to increase the individual exemption was rejected by 49 to
46, the margin of defeat being supplied by the four Democrats voting
against it, Byrd, Robertson, Johnson of Colorado, and Holland.
# 226
<338 TEXT J44>
As they introduced longer lags in the price variable, the
contribution of their demand coefficient steadily increased. From a
technical point of view, using the method of least squares estimation,
we find the principal factor at work to be that the introduction of a
lag in the price variable systematically reduces its coefficient,
while the other factors remain relatively stable. This effect is
increased in the formulation of (4.1) where a moving average of price
changes is taken. In all cases, the overall correlation remains
virtually unchanged. Empirically, we have been unable to determine a
unique lag between wage and price changes, and we have therefore had
to rest content with the lag of six months built into the model from
6a priori reasoning.
   We are disposed to conclude from our estimates that demand has
been an important factor at the bargaining table. At the level of
aggregation at which we are working, it is the general state of
the demand for labour that is relevant. It has been pointed out by
H. A. Turner that in 1952-53 recorded unemployment in the cotton
industry was as high as 3 per cent. of the industry's manpower,
whilst the 'unions not only presented to the employers a demand for a
general wage increase but persisted to the point of partial
success'. The point here is that the unions' hand was strengthened
by the existence of alternative employment. The kind of effect that
we are considering is that of the influence of general unemployment.
A 2, increase in the level of unemployment will doubtless have a
greater effect on the change in wage rates if it is spread over all
industries equally, rather than concentrated in one industry alone.
The situation in the cotton industry can then hardly be cited as
evidence against the influence of demand.
   The political variable, F;t;, represents the influence of
cost-inflation. It is sometimes argued that the trade union leader's
job is to obtain higher wages for his members, and it matters little
how he does this. He may rationalize his demand for higher money
wages in terms of the cost of living, the level of profits or
increases in productivity. In the absence of such factors he may push
for increases in money wages on principle, the strength of the push
depending in part on the extent to which the government of the day can
create an atmosphere of restraint. In the model, the coefficient of
F;t; indicates that in periods when the Conservative government
has been in power, unions have been pushing harder to the extent of
some three index points per year. This is a statistically firm
coefficient which may be taken as evidence of the increased importance
of autonomous trade union pressure over the second half of our sample
period.
   It is extremely difficult on the basis of the evidence, in the
form of our estimates, to maintain that over the whole sample period
changes in the wage rate index have been 'cost' rather than
'demand' induced. This result can be rationalized by arguing that
to some extent the strength of the 'cost-push' at the bargaining
table is governed by the demand for labour. The two complement each
other. Without the existence of 'excess demand' for labour, the
'cost-push' might not go very far; without the 'cost-push' in a
situation of 'excess demand', workers might be unable to exploit
their favourable position. To this extent, changes in wage rates are
dependent on both 'cost-push' and the level of 'excess demand'.
   Several writers have drawn attention to changes in the spread
between wage earnings and wage rates, as a criterion to distinguish
demand from cost inflation. The limited information estimate of
equation (4.2) attributes greater significance to hours worked than to
productivity, though both can be considered significant. The residual
terms in this computation were, however, highly autocorrelated. The
estimate from transformed data has no significant serial correlation
in the residuals but gives a different estimate for the relative
importance of productivity and hours worked in accounting for the
spread. The hours worked variable dominates the relation and, if
anything, our estimates in (4.2) are over-generous in attributing
fluctuations in the spread to fluctuations in productivity.
   Our results are not inconsistent with the hypothesis that the
spread is largely influenced by the level of demand. If this is
correct, fluctuations in the spread could be regarded as an indicator
of changes in the level of demand. Hours worked constitute a very
sensitive indicator of the level of demand, although absolute changes
in the hours worked index are small. In one sense hours worked
contribute to the spread in a purely accounting manner as do, other
things being equal, increases in output per man-hour for
piece-workers. We are unable, however, to separate out the relative
importance of these two influences. No doubt, overtime, bonus
payments, premium rates, and changes in the length of the
'official' working week, have all been important. On the demand
side, it is often argued that a high level of demand has led to
payments above the 'official' rates to bid labour away from some
firms into others. Our results are consistent with either hypothesis
alone or a combination of both.
   It is interesting to compare our results with those obtained by
the Swedish economists, Bent Hansen and Go"sta Rehn, in their study of
the Swedish labour market. They start from the assumption that wage
rates are fixed institutionally and that the influence of economic
forces is reflected in the spread between earnings and wage rates,
which they describe as the 'wage drift'. In our model we have put
forward the hypothesis that changes in wage rates are influenced by
changes in the cost of living, by the demand for labour, and by the
political climate.
   The procedure followed by Hansen and Rehn was to take a sample of
annual data, 1947-54, for eight main groupings within Swedish
manufacturing industry. Briefly, their findings suggested that the
main influence determining the 'wage drift' in Sweden over these
years has been 'excess demand'. They tested the further influence
of 'excess profits' and the hypothesis that increases in
productivity have contributed substantially to the 'wage drift'.
Neither was found to be significant.
   The relations estimated were between the rates of change of the
'wage drift', the level of 'excess profit', the level of
'excess demand' and the rate of change in productivity. It may be
pointed out that in our model productivity makes a significant
contribution to the explanation of the spread between earnings and
wage rates, when all variables are expressed as levels, but ceases to
be a significant factor in our least squares computation in which
variables are subjected to a first-difference transformation. It
would appear, therefore, that our findings are not inconsistent with
those of Hansen and Rehn. However, it must be re-emphasized that we
have included hours worked in our computation, which are an indicator
of the direct influence of demand on the spread, but also of other
influences, and that our earnings variable is of average weekly
earnings and not of hourly earnings. Hansen and Rehn, on the other
hand, construct an index of 'excess demand' for labour, in some
cases by taking the difference between unfilled vacancies and numbers
unemployed. Where numbers unemployed were not available for a
particular industry, vacancies alone were used.
   It is not clear that the growth of the spread between earnings
and wage rates in the UK over the period of our sample can be
plausibly explained in 'cost' terms. If it is argued that such a
gap is automatically opened by the rise in piece-workers' earnings
as productivity increases, or by changes in the amount of overtime
worked, such changes may themselves be traced back to the existence of
a high level of demand. Equation (4.3) illustrates the close relation
between hours worked and the level of industrial production, which
itself reflects the level of demand. Passing through this chain of
causation, it would be plausible to expect a high empirical
correlation between changes in the 'wage drift' and the level of
'excess demand' for goods and services. Under the assumptions
implicit in the model, this relationship merely constitutes a derived
relation rather than a basic structural equation. To estimate the
determination of the 'wage drift' in this form would involve
obscuring the underlying chain of relationship. It is sometimes held
that the changes in the 'wage drift' are not governed by the level
of 'excess demand', since this would imply some bidding up of
payments to workers over the 'official rates'. It is then
contended that just as manufacturers have not bid up prices directly
in response to 'excess demand', so they have not bid up wage
payments.
   The 'mark-up' equation (4.4) suggests that earnings have been
roughly twice as important at the margin as import prices in
determining the general level of consumer prices over the sample
period. The coefficient of the import price index represents the
influence of 'cost-push' to the UK economy. The level of
earnings, on the other hand, may represent both the influence of
'cost-push' and that of demand, for it is through earnings that
demand affects the general consumer price level in our system.
The Implications of the Model
   Our particular model of the inflationary process brings out
points that have been raised by different writers and attempts to
follow through some interrelated patterns of behaviour in the sphere
of wage and price determination. The model illustrates the influence
of both cost and demand elements. It is not unique, as judged by its
agreement with observed data, and it contains flaws; nevertheless it
appears to be reasonable, and the difficulties that it encounters are
inherent in the nature of our basic economic information.
   Our statistical analysis covers the post-war period as a whole.
As such, it gives a set of average relationships which do not rule
out dispersion. In the Korean war period, for example, the rise in
import prices would appear to have made a much greater contribution to
the rise in the general consumer price level than earnings, although,
on average over the period as a whole, earnings appear to have been
the more important factor.
   This fact limits the usefulness of the model in enabling us to
comment on the debate on the character of inflation over such a short
period as say 1956-57. Our results seem to show that for the period
of the sample as a whole it is not possible to assert categorically
that we have had either demand or cost inflation. The model
attributes significance to both cost and demand elements. Even
Professor Robbins, a firm protagonist of the importance of the
influence of demand over the period, is prepared to concede that for
the latter half of 1957 and the first half of 1958, the rise in final
prices may have been largely 'cost-induced', as an overshoot from
the period of 'excess demand'.
   Consider, however, the period 1956-57 when price and wage changes
were substantial and over which much controversy has raged. In 1955
and 1956 unemployment had fallen considerably from the relatively high
level of 1952. If we accept our equation (4.1) as a basic structural
relation, then we are virtually committed to accepting the view that
the level of 'excess demand' for labour had a significant effect on
wage rate changes in that period.
   It may however be argued that (4.1) places overmuch weight on the
influence of average unemployment. In the base year our average of
registered unemployment, in numbers, was around 35,. If the price
level were stationary for sufficiently long so that the influence of
that variable in (4.1) were to become zero, then average unemployment
in terms of numbers registered unemployed would have to reach only
5, before the four-quarter change in the wage rate index would
become negative (assuming
<FORMULA> ). Many would, however, find this conclusion
implausible. They would no doubt argue that (4.1) can hardly be
considered reversible. Wage rates go up but they do not come down.
# 28
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More moderate exponents may grant the sincerity of those who make
the claim, but suggest that notions of justice differ so widely that a
situation which seems to justify parity in the eyes of one man will
justify a differential in the eyes of another.
   The public services, however, are committed to a different view.
Since the Priestley Commission, the government and the civil service
trade unions have been in agreement that the wages and salaries of
civil servants should be settled by 'fair comparison with current
remuneration of outside staffs employed on broadly comparable work,
taking account of differences in other conditions of service', and
the Civil Service Pay Research Unit has been established to provide
the information on which these comparisons should be made. The
Pilkington Commission, the Guillebaud Committee and the Willink
Commission have since extended 'fair comparisons' of one sort or
another to the medical and dental professions, to the railwaymen, and
to the police.
   It is, of course, possible to argue that this use of 'fair
comparisons' in the public service is only market forces at one
remove. In a service financed out of taxation the normal processes of
the market are not available to determine wages. Consequently wages
in the public service should be settled by comparison with rates in
outside occupations where market forces apply. On this view the fair
wage means the market rate.
   This view probably lay behind the original formulation of the
Fair Wages Resolution of the House of Commons in 1891. Fair wages
were those 'generally accepted as current'. Trade unionists,
however, agitated for many years for a change which was finally
accepted in the revision of 199. Fair wages were then defined as
'those commonly recognized by employers and trade societies'. This
suggests that the fair wage is the wage settled by collective
agreement- the 'acceptable wage'.
   I do not think either of these definitions can be accepted as
satisfactory. The first difficulty is that every detailed study of
wages in Britain reveals startling variations and inconsistencies for
the payment for what is apparently the same job even within a single
town or district. Thus the market, or collective bargaining, or both,
lead to a whole range of rates, any one of which could be fair. If
there are grounds for arguing that the public servant should, on
grounds of justice, be paid the average of this range of rates, then
this average must be the fair wage not only for the civil servant, but
also for the workers in comparable outside occupations. Those of them
who are getting less than the average have, on grounds of equity, a
case for an increase to bring them up to that figure.
   A second difficulty is that we sometimes wish to say that a
market rate, or even a rate settled by collective bargaining, is
unfair. The wages paid to coal-miners and agricultural workers in
the 'thirties, for instance, would perhaps have been generally
regarded as unfair, but necessary because of the depressed markets for
coal exports and for agricultural products. The fact that the wages
of coal-miners were settled by collective agreement did not, I
suggest, make them appear fair in the eyes of the public. I would
also suggest that it is a common view in modern Britain that wages
paid in the manufacture of motor vehicles are unfairly high compared
with the wages of other workers, although they are settled by
collective bargaining. Many of those who hold this view, however,
might be reluctant to voice it in public.
   There are therefore grounds for supposing that there is some
other way of determining fairness in addition to the 'higgling of the
market', or the process of collective bargaining. The four
inquiries which I have mentioned seem to accept this supposition and
to suggest that the British public holds to certain common standards
whereby it can compare one job with another and decide whether the
remuneration is fair or not. The interim report of the Willink
Commission, for example, argues that the pay of the police should be
'based on conditions recognized by the police themselves and by the
public as fair and reasonable'. Treasury evidence to the Priestley
Commission argued that: '...if a civil servant can be seen to be
getting, as near as may be, what citizens of similar attainments are
getting for doing similar work in the country at large, that is a
situation which will surely be commended as fair by the civil servant
himself, by his outside analogue, and by the taxpayer who foots the
bill...' The main difference between the two reports is that the
Priestley Commission thought that fairness demanded the same rate of
pay as for the 'outside analogue', whereas the Willink Commission
recommended considerably higher rates for the police than for the
outside occupations with which they compared them.
   Thus both these reports hold not only that it is possible to say
that workers- or at least some grades of workers- are fairly paid,
but also that there would be general agreement from all sections of
society on what would constitute fair payment. No evidence is given
in support, although it would clearly be possible to devise empirical
tests to discover whether there are generally accepted standards of
fairness. The view is presented as self-evident, or at least as not
worth arguing.
   The questions I wish to pursue, therefore, are: can we accept the
methods of these four inquiries as satisfactory and dependable
procedures for establishing the 'just' wage; and, if we can, how
wide is the scope of their application?
   First, however, it is necessary to set out some information about
each of them.
   The job of the Civil Service Pay Research Unit is fact-finding.
It assists in establishing job comparability by describing 'the
similarity or difference in the duties of the grades with which
comparison is being made'; and it discovers 'the pay and conditions
of service that attach to jobs regarded as comparable'. Armed with
this information the two sides of the appropriate Whitley Council can
negotiate what wage or salary is required by 'fair comparison', or,
if they fail to agree, refer the decision to arbitration.
   The Guillebaud Committee's terms of reference were wider than
this. The Committee was instructed 'to conduct an investigation into
the relativity of pay' of railway workers with other workers, and to
'establish the degree of job comparability' as well as to discover
the rates of pay and other emoluments of the other workers. The
Committee was also empowered to offer 'general observations and
conclusions' along with 'the ascertained facts'.
   The terms of reference of the Pilkington Commission were wider
still. They were asked to consider how the remuneration of doctors
and dentists compared with that of other professions, and what, in the
light of this comparison, their remuneration should be.
   Finally the Willink Commission has been given no instructions to
make comparisons. They have been asked to consider: 'the broad
principles which should govern the remuneration of the constable,
having regard to the nature and extent of police duties and
responsibilities and the need to attract and retain an adequate number
of recruits with the proper qualifications', and their interim
report rejects the principle of 'fair comparison' as inapplicable
to the police service. But it goes on to argue that the pay of the
constable should be settled by means of a formula which yields almost
7 per cent more than the wage rates in certain selected skilled
occupations. This process must be based on a comparison of some kind.
   The criteria which justify the same remuneration are, however,
simpler than those which justify differences in remuneration, and also
logically prior to them; for how could comparisons which reveal
differences between jobs be used to justify differences in pay unless
comparisons which did not reveal those differences justified the same
pay? We start therefore with the principle of the rate for the job,
the principle that the same job should carry the same rate of pay.
The Willink Commission have, in fact, annexed this phrase to cover
another principle, which they call their 'third principle'. They
do not state what the principle is, but they say that 'it relies for
its operation very largely on a judgement of the constable's value to
the community'. But as I understand it, the phrase has always
described the old trade union principle that a fitter must not take
less than the fitter's rate, nor a compositor than the compositor's
rate, as it stands in the district in which he happens to be working.
I can see no reason for using it in this novel and imprecise sense.
   The difficulty is to know when two jobs are the same, or rather,
since two jobs are never exactly the same, to know which differences
can be regarded as negligible for the purpose of settling payment.
The ingenuity of man can create reasons for additional payments out
of everything and out of almost nothing- out of slight differences in
materials, in tools and machinery, or in the product; out of
differences in the heat, dirt or noise of working conditions; out of
responsibility for men, materials, machinery, or money; and so on.
Some reason can always be found for paying X more than Y, and
probably also for paying Y more than X.
   Before we write the problem off as insoluble, however, we must
remember that men have repeatedly cut their way through it over the
centuries, and do so constantly today. The fitter's rate, or the
compositor's rate, is only meaningful because there is agreement about
what is the proper work of a fitter and of a compositor, either by
rule or by custom. Every grading structure, in public and in private
employment, decides that certain differences in work warrant
differences in pay, and also that the great majority do not. The
process whereby the National Coal Board reduced something like six
thousand daywage job titles to 367 titles, and then grouped these
titles into thirteen different wage grades, is but one outstanding
example of a common process.
   Such examples show that, in the settlement of salaries and wages,
men are willing to neglect many differences between jobs, and also to
recognize others as important. They do not, of course, prove that
there would be general agreement on what should count and what should
not. We can, however, find some evidence on this point. We know, for
instance, that many thousands of problems about jobs and about
gradings are amicably settled each year. Strikes over demarcation
disputes or arbitration awards on grading questions only serve to
emphasize the wide area of undisputed territory behind them. It is
hardly possible that this could be so without widespread agreement on
which differences count and which do not. The experience of the
Guillebaud Committee was that 'our team of investigators, coming from
widely-varied backgrounds and with different industrial experience,
agreed closely among themselves, and their opinions corresponded, in
most instances, with those of our Secretaries and ourselves. There
were no disagreements which could not be settled by discussion'.
   Whether differences count or not is at least largely a matter of
social convention. Only empirical tests could discover whether there
are generally accepted conventions, but, until such tests are carried
out, I submit that these are grounds for supposing that there are some
conventions which are fairly widely accepted.
   The Priestley Commission included amongst their criteria of
fairness 'the educational or other qualifications required'. In
fact, the Civil Service Pay Research Unit seems to have concentrated
more on work than on qualifications. For the Pilkington and Willink
Commissions, on the other hand, qualifications seem to take first
place. The Pilkington Commission was instructed to consider 'the
proper current levels of remuneration' of doctors and dentists in
the light of a comparison with the remuneration of other professions.
The professions on which they based their inquiry were: accountants,
actuaries, barristers, solicitors, architects, surveyors, engineers
and university teachers, together with a category entitled 'graduates
in industry'.
# 26
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   Most of these studies are partial, dealing with particular
aspects of world trade. There is only one that I know of which tries
to use the statistical information to formulate a model of world
economic development and trade. This Professor Lewis did in 1952,
based on statistics for 187-195, in terms of six world variables:
world industrial production, world food production, world trade in
manufactures, world trade in primary products, the price of primary
products and the price of manufactures. The model, although
attractively simple, fails to fit developments since 195 partly
because it makes one important assumption not borne out by events-
the assumption that the ratio between world trade in primary products
(food and raw materials) and manufactures would remain unchanged. In
fact, one of the new features of the development of world trade since
195 has been the rapid relative growth of world trade in manufactures
and a corresponding relative fall in world trade in primary products.
This relative fall is particularly marked if oil is excluded.
   The causes of this change have aroused great controversy,
controversy which illustrates how difficult it is to interpret
significantly this mass of statistical information. There is on the
one side the argument, put forward strongly by the late Professor
Nurkse, that the relative decline in world trade in primary products
is mainly due to a fall in demand by industrial countries: a fall due
to agricultural protection, a change in the structure of industrial
production towards products using less raw materials and the
substitution of synthetics for natural products. Others, including
Professor Cairncross, who spoke on this theme here a few months ago,
have argued that one of the main factors inducing industrial countries
to use less primary products was a shortage of supply, and that this
shortage of supply was, to a substantial degree, the result of the
economic policy followed by many primary producing countries. The
analysis by GATT in successive reports on "International
Trade" since 1956 has tended to confirm this conclusion. GATT
classified the non-industrial primary producing countries into two
groups: (1) the semi-industrialised countries where industrialisation
has already made substantial progress (countries such as Argentina,
India and Australia), and (2) the remaining non-industrial countries;
and then showed that the bulk of the relative fall in trade came in
the first and not in the second group of countries. This seemed to
lead conclusively to the view that reduced supply had at least been a
very important contributory element in the relative reduction in world
trade in primary products.
   But since then Mr. A. Maizels of the National Institute has
attempted to show that the results obtained by the GATT analysis
are largely fortuitous and do not point to the conclusion which is
drawn from them by the authors of the GATT reports. Mr.
Maizels shows that if exports of primary products from
semi-industrialised countries are compared with world demand for the
same commodities (which he measures by world trade) over the period
1937-38 to 1955, then in most cases the semi-industrialised countries
have maintained their share of the world total. From this he
concludes that the relative fall in the trade of the
semi-industrialised countries is due mainly to its commodity
composition, and the fall in world demand for these commodities; thus
confirming the demand deficiency, rather than the supply deficiency,
view.
   There is, however, one weakness in Mr. Maizel's main
calculations. In the case of some commodities a substantial part of
the total of world trade is accounted for by the trade of the
semi-industrialised countries. It is hardly surprising that in these
cases exports from the semi-industrialised countries on average show
much the same movement in volume as world trade as a whole. Take wool
as an example. This appears as an important export for four
semi-industrialised countries- Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and
the Union of South Africa. But the exports of these four countries
between them account for the bulk of world export trade in wool. It
is hardly surprising therefore that the export volume of wool from
these countries, on average, approximates to the world total, some
above and some below. The nearness of the world total and the figures
for the four semi-industrialised countries cannot be taken in this
particular case to demonstrate the validity of the demand deficiency
view. The same point applies to coffee, which appears as an important
export of three semi-industrialised countries, Brazil, Colombia and
Mexico, which between them account for a substantial part of world
trade in coffee.
   Indeed, one inevitably gets into difficulty if one has to use, as
so often happens in analyses of world trade, the same figures as
representing both world supply and world demand; and when one begins
to look at the position of individual semi-industrialised countries,
Argentina for example, there seems strong evidence that there has been
a reduction in the supply of primary products for export, and a
substantial case for arguing that Argentinian economic and commercial
policy has been an important element in this reduction. I would
expect to find differences in the relative importance of changes in
demand and supply from country to country, and suspect that any
generalisation which attempts to settle this controversy in terms of
general figures for world trade is likely to be too sweeping in
ignoring the peculiar and divergent experience of individual
countries.
   The other major feature of the statistics of world trade that has
commanded great attention in recent years, is the rapid growth and
changing character of world trade in manufactures. In the 193's and
during the war most of those who attempted to look ahead to future
developments in world trade in manufactures were inclined to take
rather a gloomy view. The traditional trade, especially in cotton
textiles, was disappearing rapidly as domestic industries were being
built up in the newly-developing industrial countries. And the
opportunities for increased trade between the advanced industrial
countries seemed likely to become restricted rather than wider as the
character of their industrial development became more and more
similar. In fact, world trade in manufactures has increased more
rapidly than world industrial production compared with 1938, the rise
in European trade in manufactures being most remarkable and
unexpected. Now that we have a mass of regular statistical
information, on a standard international classification, about this
trade, we can examine its pattern and structure in great detail.
Familiarity with this statistical detail can no doubt give us a
comfortable feeling that we know what is going on in international
trade, which lines and markets are expanding or contracting. And we
can pay particular care, as the Board of Trade does each quarter in
the tables in the Board of Trade Journal, to look at the fortunes
of United Kingdom trade in this international competition. But I
doubt very much myself whether the accumulation of statistics of this
kind and the grubbing about among them for significant statistical
trends by itself gives us much understanding of what is going on and
the forces which are making for change. We need much more
understanding and analysis of the forces that are behind the
statistics. It may be, however, that the changes are the result of
such a complex interaction of forces and that our analytical tools are
so primitive that we cannot yet hope to acquire this deeper
understanding and will have to confine ourselves, for the time being
at least, to the search for statistical trends which we hope will
endure for some time.
   One of the main problems in understanding the significance of the
shifting pattern of the world trade in manufactures is to be able to
distinguish between changes in the fundamental forces in operation,
and the time period which it takes for trade to adjust itself to those
forces. Take, for example, one of the major changes in British
foreign trade over the last 5 years- the almost complete
disappearance of the United Kingdom as a net exporter of cotton
textiles. Looking back now it could be argued that the fundamental
forces which led to this change were already in operation in the years
immediately after the first world war- the acquisition by Japan,
India and other countries of the necessary technical and economic
experience to enable them to develop efficient cotton textile
industries of their own, and the consequential loss by Lancashire of
the special comparative advantage that she had had in this field of
manufacture for over a century. But although the fundamental forces
had already changed by 192, it took many years for the full
consequences to work themselves out. And because the process of
adjustment took so long and was so slow, it was a long time before the
change in the underlying situation was recognised. Throughout the
192's and 193's it was still a widely held view that, given the
appropriate re-organisation of the industry, Lancashire could regain
her pre-1914 world trading position. It is obviously not easy to
recognise powerful new economic forces affecting world trade when they
first emerge. It is easier to treat the structure and pattern of
world trade as relatively stable and unchanging until change makes
itself clearly evident in the statistics.
   I have discussed very briefly only one or two examples of the way
in which statistical information about world trade is used in an
attempt to understand the main forces making for change. But these I
think are quite typical and, unfortunately, do not lead to the clear
conclusion that this new approach is leading to great enlightenment.
   It is, I take it, hardly necessary for me to sum up my view that
we are still far from having, either in theory or in statistical
analysis, techniques which enable us to explain satisfactorily the
main features of international trade. Many of you will no doubt think
that I take too gloomy and sceptical a view. But in this field of
economics, as in many others, however complex our theoretical and
statistical models may be, I am impressed, perhaps over-impressed, by
their relative crudity and simplicity compared with the intricacy and
complexity of the real world.
A Simple Model of Employment, Money and Prices in a Growing
Economy
By A. W. PHILLIPS
1. INTRODUCTION
   The purpose of this article is to develop a simple aggregative
model which may be used to study both the problem of reducing
short-period fluctuations of an economy and the problem of attaining
longer-term objectives relating to employment, the price level and
growth. To do this the Keynesian model of employment, interest and
money is extended in a number of ways. The concept of "normal
capacity output" is introduced, with the hypothesis that normal
capacity output increases continuously as a result of investment in
improving productive resources. Actual output is then expressed as a
proportion of normal capacity output. The rate of change of the price
level is assumed to depend on the ratio of actual output to normal
capacity output and on the rate of change of productivity. The rate
of interest is assumed to depend on the quantity of money, actual
output and the price level. Investment demand is made a function of
the ratio of actual output to normal capacity output, the expected
rate of growth and the rate of interest.
   By defining some variables in the model to be either logarithms
or ratios of the usual economic variables, assuming continuously
distributed time lags in the behaviour relations and making certain
linear approximations, which should be satisfactory for moderate
fluctuations in output and employment, the model can be written as a
system of linear differential equations. The steady state solutions
give the paths of the variables in conditions of steady or
"equilibrium" growth and in particular show the long-run relations
between the rate of change of the quantity of money, the ratio of
actual to normal capacity output, the rate of change of the price
level and the rate of growth of normal capacity output. The transient
solutions, which show deviations from, or short-period fluctuations
about, the "growth equilibrium" paths, are used to investigate the
stability of the system and the effect of a stabilisation policy.
# 223
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188 may be quite a good watershed for other reasons. The Public
Health Act of 1875 had enabled local authorities to pass bye-laws
regulating the structure of walls and foundations of new buildings on
health grounds and not merely on grounds of stability and fire
prevention. In the late 187s the Local Government Board published a
series of model bye-laws for the guidance of local authorities in
these matters. A recent estimate suggests that almost a quarter of
the dwellings occupied today, some 3 2/3 million, were built before
188. To demolish them by 198 would require a rate of demolition of
nearly 2 thousand a year. Thereafter, assuming no shortening in the
average life, the need for demolition would fall to about 1 thousand
a year, since houses were being built at roughly this rate in the
twenty-five years before the First World War.
   There is, admittedly, no overriding reason for picking 1 years
as the natural term of life for a house, rather than, say, eighty
years; nor is there any special reason why the backlog should be
cleared in twenty years, rather than in ten or thirty. But, given the
likely increase in stock required in this period, it should be well
within the capacity of the house building industry to deal with a
replacement programme of this kind by 198. This aim is not, perhaps,
an ambitious one; even if it were achieved, the housing stock in
England and Wales might still be one of the oldest in western
countries, apart from France. To carry out the programme in, say, ten
years would mean forcing up the annual rate of house building to
something near 5 thousand a year, with a subsequent severe drop.
=3. POLICY
   The main housing need, therefore, between now and 198 is
likely to be for the replacement of old houses, not for additions to
stock. At the moment, the pattern of house building is the reverse.
Only about 6-7 thousand houses are being demolished each year; so,
of the 26-27 thousand houses being built in England and Wales, just
on 2 thousand are adding to the stock.
   This pattern can hardly continue for long; it certainly cannot go
on up to 198. The stock of houses is rising by some 2 thousand a
year; the number of households needing separate dwellings over the
next twenty years is likely to increase by an average of around 1
thousand a year. Vacancies are therefore likely to increase by some
1 thousand a year- this is only a little less than the total number
of unfurnished vacancies in 1951 (14 thousand).
   Clearly there is a limit to the proportion of houses which will
be allowed to remain vacant. Owners of vacant houses will reduce
prices or rents in order to sell or get tenants, and the falling price
of older houses must eventually depress the prices that are offered
for new houses. This will cut into building profits, and so slow down
new house building by private developers.
   How big the vacancy proportion has to be before this begins to
happen is difficult to say: American experience suggests that the
critical vacancy level might be about 5 per cent or a little more.
With the present pattern of house building this vacancy level could
be reached in about five years' time. Imperfections in the housing
market- the fact that the proportions of old houses and vacancies may
be high in the North while demand for additional new houses is heavier
in the South- might insulate new buildings for a while from the
depressing effects of high vacancies. But if the present pattern of
building continues, some time between now and 197 the critical level
of vacancies will certainly be reached. Taking the 'maximum'
estimate of household formation instead of the 'medium' one (page
22) and consequently assuming an increase of 125 thousand households a
year instead of 1 thousand, the present rate of additions to stock
would still bring about a 5 per cent vacancy rate within less than a
decade.
   The question therefore is whether resources will be channelled
from additions to replacement. But it is not easy for the private
developer to undertake the demolition and replacement of old houses.
He has to acquire groups of old dwellings, because of the high cost
of individual demolition and because old houses are often so densely
packed that perhaps three or four have to be demolished for every new
one built. The developer may therefore have to negotiate with a large
number of owners: ownership of old property is becoming even more
fragmented as landlords sell houses on which rent control has been
lifted. There is also the problem of rehousing the old tenants.
Finally, when the developer does build, the houses will be much more
expensive than houses built on virgin land because of the cost of
demolition. He may doubt whether clients wealthy enough to buy
relatively expensive houses will in fact be tempted back from the
suburbs to predominantly working class neighbourhoods.
   If, notwithstanding these difficulties, when old houses are
demolished, the new houses (whether built on the same site or
elsewhere) are built for those who can afford to buy them, the housing
subsidy bill would certainly be kept down. This policy would imply
that the blocks of old houses in the inner rings of cities, now
occupied by the relatively poor, should be rebuilt with houses for the
relatively wealthy. For it is at most the top third of households in
the income scale who are likely to be able to afford to buy a new
house out of income in the next twenty years- though rather more than
this would be able to pay the economic rent, if the cost of building
was amortised over 6 years (page 27 and table 4). Those who
previously lived in the centre would move to better but still old
houses in outer districts. There would be an ordered improvement in
standards for households in all income groups, each household moving
to a house a little better than the one it previously lived in.
Housing standards in general would be improved by a process of
percolation. But this policy would require a great deal of mobility,
and this is a further difficulty.
Obstacles to mobility
   Mobility is high when the household is growing but this rapidly
tails off as the parents reach middle age. By the time the children
are leaving home, the parents are attached to the district by jobs and
friends and often by the improvements made to the house and garden.
When- as usually happens- the husband dies first, the widow often
stays on her own. This is why a four-roomed dwelling- was, in 1951,
the most common size of dwelling for a one-person household.
   There are other obstacles to mobility. For the owner-occupier,
the fees for selling a +3, house and buying and surveying another
at the same price can easily amount to +16, excluding removal
expenses. Even on a +1, house fees may well come to +8 or so.
It is cheaper for those renting houses to move: here the main
obstacle in the next few years will be that tenants of rent-controlled
dwellings will be reluctant to leave them. Finally, the number of
people who can become owner-occupiers is limited: it is difficult to
get a mortgage on an old house, and only a small proportion of the
population can afford, out of income, to repay the mortgage on a new
one (page 27). The problem will grow as the supply of
privately-rented houses dwindles. Old houses are lived in mainly by
people who cannot afford to buy and who need to be able to rent;
unless, therefore, the replacements of the old houses are also built
to let, there is likely to be a serious shortage of rented
accommodation which will further hinder mobility.
Economic rent and home ownership
   On the other hand, if it is the tenants of the pre-188 houses
who are to be rehoused in the new houses, it is only the local
authorities who can undertake this operation; for this housing would
have to be subsidised substantially. The people who live in these old
houses cannot- either now or in 198- afford the economic rent of a
new house, particularly since the cost of demolition will make the new
houses more expensive than most.
   New houses are expensive to buy out of income, partly because,
although the life of a house is at least sixty years, the cost usually
has to be repaid to a building society over about twenty years. For a
+2,5 three-bedroomed house, this makes the total annual cost (at an
interest rate of 6 per cent) +284 (table 4). Spreading the cost over
sixty years brings down the annual sum required to +214; this figure
can be considered as the economic rent (including rates and
maintenance) of a typical local authority new house, since most local
authorities assume a sixty-year life. Virtually no private developers
are building ordinary houses for renting.
<TABLE>
Any who did, after forty years of rent control, would probably wish
to get their capital back in, say, ten to twenty years; and the
economic rent on this basis would be higher than the local authority
figures and indeed than the cost of buying.
   The most that a household can normally be expected to pay for
housing is probably about a quarter of its income, and most people pay
far less. The building societies seem to take 25 per cent as the
maximum. "A very common rule is that all regular outgoings on
account of house ownership shall not exceed 25 per cent of an
applicant's basic income (excluding overtime, bonuses and spare-time
earnings). Both sums are normally considered without taking account
of tax."
   Even taking this maximum figure of 25 per cent, two-thirds of
households still cannot afford to pay the economic rent of a new
house, and something like 9 per cent cannot afford to buy one out of
income (table 4 and chart 2). This is purchase out of income only:
rather more than 1 per cent of households have a significant amount
of capital- for instance, over a third of households now own, or are
in the process of paying for, a house of some kind. Consequently
rather more than 1 per cent can afford to buy a new house if they use
part of their capital.
   It would, of course, help to extend the range of possible
owner-occupation if mortgages could be given for a period nearer to
that of the life of a house. This would bring the proportion of
households who could buy nearer to the proportion who can afford to
rent. But, even so, it is clear that most of the people who are now
living in pre-188 houses would be unable to buy or pay the economic
rent for a new house; for they are, by and large, in the bottom half
of income-receivers and are unlikely to have any substantial assets.
   How is the position likely to change within the next twenty
years? Real incomes might nearly double in that time. But new house
prices are likely to continue to rise faster than other prices, since
productivity in house building increases more slowly than in most
other industries. For instance, comparing 196 with 1938, the cost of
a local authority house (excluding land) rose appreciably faster than
the average household income. Longer term comparisons are possible
for some other European countries: in those for which information is
available- the Netherlands, France and Ireland- house building costs
rose faster than wages from 1914 to 1956.
   On the other hand, there is considerable scope for productivity
rises. In a study of traditional houses completed in 1949-1951 the
labour costs of the least efficient firms were almost three times as
great as those of the most efficient ones. Some improvement may come
from the better-managed firms ousting some of the less efficient but
the fact that so old an industry is still composed of so many small
firms, varying so widely in efficiency, argues that the forces of
competition are not strong.
# 234
<342 TEXT J48>
   A notice to quit may name the exact day for the termination of
the tenancy, or it may be expressed generally; for example, by such
words as "at the expiration of the year of your tenancy, which will
expire next after the end of one half year from the service of this
notice" (Addis v. Burrows, <1948> 1 K.B. 444). But if
the notice is such as to leave doubt in the mind of the tenant as to
when the tenancy will come to an end, the notice is bad.
   Similar rules to those stated above apply in the case of weekly,
monthly and other periodic tenancies. The period of notice necessary
to determine such a tenancy is a period not less than the length of
the tenancy; thus in the case of a weekly tenancy at least one week's
notice is necessary, to expire at the end of a period of the tenancy.
A statutory exception to this rule exists in the case of premises let
as a dwelling; section 16 of the Rent Act, 1957, provides that no
notice to quit in respect of such premises shall be valid unless given
not less than four weeks before the date on which it is to take
effect.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stamping and Registration of Leases
1.- STAMPING
   The Stamp Act, 1891, which regulates the payment of stamp
duties on instruments, imposes duties upon leases and agreements for
leases. The relevant sections of the Act will be found in Appendix
=2 (6post at p. 85).
   An agreement for a lease is chargeable with the same duty as the
actual lease and must be stamped accordingly (section 75 (1) of the
Act). If a lease is subsequently executed which conforms with an
agreement for a lease which has been stamped, it is chargeable with
duty of sixpence only (section 75(2)), but the agreement must be
produced at the time of the stamping of the lease and the lease will
then be stamped with a duty paid denoting stamp under section 11.
   The amount of duty payable is set out in the First Schedule to
the Stamp Act, 1891 (the relevant parts of which will be found in
Appendix =2, 6post at p. 89), taken together with section
34(1) of the Finance Act, 1958 (see Appendix =2, 6post at
p. 169).
   Although an agreement for a lease must be stamped, a distinction
is drawn between an agreement for a lease and a mere proposal for a
lease; the latter does not require a stamp.
   As a general rule all stamps are required to be impressed
(section 2 of the Stamp Act, 1891), but section 78 provides that
in certain cases the stamp may be an adhesive stamp; but where an
adhesive stamp is used it must be cancelled by the person who first
executes the instrument. An adhesive stamp may be used in the
following instances:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) in the lease of a dwelling-house, or part of a
dwelling-house, for a term not exceeding a year at a rent not
exceeding forty pounds 6per annum;
   (b) in the lease of any furnished dwelling-house or apartments
for any indefinite term less than a year.
<END INDENTATION>
   The duplicate or counterpart of any such instrument may also be
stamped with an adhesive stamp.
   The First Schedule to the Act also provides for the payment of
stamp duty on duplicates and counterparts of leases. They are liable
to the same duty as the original lease if the duty on the original
lease does not exceed five shillings; in all other cases they must be
stamped with a five-shilling stamp.
   Section 15(2) of the Act requires leases to be stamped within
thirty days of execution, and if this is not done the lessee is liable
to a fine of ten pounds and a further penalty equivalent to the stamp
duty unless there is a reasonable excuse for the delay in stamping the
lease and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue mitigate or remit the
penalty. This penalty only applies in the case of leases executed
after the 16th May, 1888.
   The effect of failure to stamp a lease or other document is not
to invalidate the document; but the document is not admissible as
evidence unless and until it is properly stamped and any penalty is
paid.
2.- REGISTRATION
   In any area in which compulsory registration of title has been
introduced the provisions of section 123 of the Land Registration
Act, 1925, apply. By this section the title of a tenant on the
grant of a lease for a term of not less than forty years, or on the
assignment of a lease having not less than forty years to run, must be
registered at the Land Registry. The lessee or assignee must apply
for registration; and if he fails to do so, he will be deprived of a
legal estate. At the present time compulsory registration has been
introduced in the following areas:- London, Eastbourne, Hastings,
Middlesex, Croydon, Surrey, the City of Oxford, Oldham, Kent, the City
of Leicester, and the City of Canterbury.
   A tenant of land not situated in a compulsory registration area
may register his title at his own option at any time if he holds a
term of which more than twenty-one years remain unexpired; section 8
of the Land Registration Act, 1925. Registration of titles in
such areas is not, however, compulsory.
   Registration of titles in the three ridings of Yorkshire is
governed by the Yorkshire Registries Act, 1884. Registration
under this Act is not compulsory, and section 28 of the Act provides
that leases of property in Yorkshire may be registered unless the
lease is for a term not exceeding twenty-one years and is accompanied
by actual possession from the making of the lease. Failure to
register a registrable lease does not invalidate the lease; but
registration constitutes notice of it to all persons. Section 31 of
the Act establishes three deeds registries, which are situated at
Northallerton for the North Riding, at Beverley for the East Riding,
and at Wakefield for the West Riding. Section 125 of the Land
Registration Act, 1925, provides for the transfer to the Land
Registry of any of the business of the Yorkshire deeds registries in
the event of an order for compulsory registration under the Land
Registration Act, 1925, being made in respect of any part of
Yorkshire. At the present time no such order has been made.
APPENDIX ONE
Precedent of a Lease
   THIS LEASE made the... day of... BETWEEN <lessor> of
etc. (hereinafter called the landlord which expression where the
context so admits shall include the reversioner for the time being
immediately expectant on the term hereby created) of the one part and
<lessee> of etc. (hereinafter called the tenant which expression
where the context so admits shall include his successors in title) of
the other part
   WITNESSETH as follows:
   1. The landlord demises unto the tenant the premises described in
the first part of the schedule hereto (hereinafter called the demised
premises) with the exceptions and reservations specified in the second
part of the said schedule TO HOLD unto the tenant from the... day
of... for the term of... years
   YIELDING AND PAYING therefor the net yearly rent of +...
clear of all deductions except landlord's property tax and <other
agreed deductions> by equal quarterly instalments commencing on
the... day of... and thenceforward on the usual quarter days.
   2. The tenant covenants with the landlord as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) To pay the reserved rents on the days and in the manner
aforesaid.
   (2) To pay all existing and future rates taxes duties assessments
and outgoings payable by law in respect of the demised premises either
by the owner or the occupier thereof.
   (3) To keep the demised premises including the drains and sanitary
and water apparatus and all fixtures and additions thereto in
tenantable repair and condition throughout the term and to yield up
the same in such repair and condition at the determination of the
tenancy.
   (4) To keep the demised premises insured at all times against loss
or damage by fire in the joint names of the landlord and tenant in
some insurance office or with underwriters to be named by the landlord
in the sum of +... at least and to make all payments necessary for
the above purposes within seven days after the same shall respectively
become due and to produce to the landlord or his agent on demand the
several policies of such insurances and the receipt for each such
payment and to cause all moneys received by virtue of any such
insurance to be forthwith laid out in rebuilding and reinstating the
demised premises and to make up any deficiency out of his own moneys
PROVIDED ALWAYS that if the tenant shall at any time fail to keep
the demised premises insured as aforesaid the landlord may do all
things necessary to effect or maintain such insurance and any moneys
expended by him for that purpose shall be repayable by the tenant on
demand and may be recovered by action forthwith.
   (5) Not to use the demised premises otherwise than as a private
dwelling-house.
   (6) Not to assign or underlet or part with the possession of the
demised premises or any part thereof without the written consent of
the landlord.
   (7) To permit the landlord and his agent with or without workmen
to enter upon and view the condition of the demised premises at all
reasonable times during the said term and forthwith to execute all
repairs and works required to be done by written notice given by the
landlord.
<END INDENTATION>
   3. The landlord hereby covenants with the tenant as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) That the tenant paying the rent hereby reserved and performing
the several covenants herein on his part contained shall peaceably
hold and enjoy the demised premises during the said term without any
interruption by the landlord or any person rightfully claiming under
or in trust for him.
   (2) That the landlord will on the written request of the tenant
made... months before the expiration of the term hereby created and if
there shall not at the time of such request be any existing breach or
non-observance of any of the covenants on the part of the tenant
hereinbefore contained at the expense of the tenant grant to him a
lease of the demised premises for a further term of... years from the
expiration of the said term at the same rent and containing the like
covenants and provisos as are herein contained with the exception of
the present covenant for renewal the tenant on the execution of such
renewed lease to execute a counterpart thereof.
   (3) That if the tenant within... years from the commencement of
the term hereby created shall give to the landlord... months' notice
in writing that he desires to purchase the reversion in fee simple in
the demised premises the landlord upon the expiration of such notice
and on payment of the sum of +... and of all arrears of rent up to
the expiration of the notice and of interest on the said sum of +...
at the rate of +... per cent. 6per annum from the expiration of
the notice until payment thereof shall convey the demised premises to
the tenant in fee simple from incumbrances.
<END INDENTATION>
   4. PROVIDED ALWAYS and it is hereby agreed as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) If the rents hereby reserved or any part thereof shall be
unpaid for twenty-one days after becoming payable (whether formally
demanded or not) or if any covenant on the tenant's part herein
contained shall not be performed it shall be lawful for the landlord
at any time thereafter to re-enter upon the demised premises or any
part thereof in the name of the whole and thereupon this demise shall
absolutely determine but without prejudice to the right of action of
the landlord in respect of any breach of the tenant's covenants herein
contained.
   (2) If either party shall desire to determine the present demise
at the expiration of the first... years of the said term and shall
give to the other party... months' previous notice in writing of such
his desire then immediately on the expiration of such... years the
present demise and everything herein contained shall cease and be void
but without prejudice to the remedies of either party against the
other in respect of any antecedent claim or breach of covenant.
# 268
<343 TEXT J49>
In cases where there is no relevant statutory rule, and the rule
has to be drawn from cases, and not from a statute, the absence of an
unalterable verbal formulation of the rule reduces the importance of
the conventions of language, and makes it less natural to talk of
'interpretation', though sometimes the courts do behave just as
they do with a statute, when, for some reason or another, a common law
rule has achieved a settled formulation. But this is rather
exceptional. The consequence is that problems of applicability which
arise in the courts about Common Law rules cannot be solved by
interpretation- that is by a process of reasoning which attaches
particular importance to linguistic considerations- for there is no
text to interpret. Solved they have to be, however, but by other
types of reasoning. So it is that usually arguments as to whether an
earlier case should be followed or distinguished do not rest primarily
upon linguistic grounds; they rest rather upon the use of analogy, and
upon the discovery of factual similarity and difference between cases.
But just as difficulties of interpretation, which seem to be
difficulties about words, are really difficulties about the
applicability of rules to facts, so also are many difficulties
involved in the use of precedent. Thus even if there is a measure of
agreement about the ratio of an earlier case, an agreement, that
is, as to what rule can be extracted from it, there may still be
difficulty in the second task which confronts a court in using
precedents- the task of deciding whether the rule does or does not
fit the case before the court. Neither being bound by statute, nor
being bound by cases, absolves a court from this second task; indeed
it is only when a person or a court is to some degree or other bound
by a rule that the second task becomes necessary at all.
Distinguishing cases, which consists in giving reasons why a rule
in a case ought not to be followed or applied in a later case, is
often conceived to be an indication that courts are not 'really'
bound; in truth, earlier cases are distinguished, and have to be
distinguished, just because they are binding, so that they ought to be
followed unless a reason can be given for not following them; in much
the same way courts have to interpret statutes just because statutes
are binding.
   The comparison between parliamentary and judicial legislation
leads on to a second point. When we ask in what way Parliament
exercised its power to formulate a rule of the legal system, it is the
existence of a text which enables an answer to be given without
initial difficulty, except in rare and anomalous circumstances, and
the lack of such a text which lies at the root of many of the
difficulties when the same question is asked in relation to the
judicial power of legislation. There is a natural temptation to seek
for some technique for determining the ratio decidendi of a
case which will repair the initial absence of a formal text: some
formula such as 'read a Queen's Printer's copy', which works well
enough for Parliament. There is a temptation to feel that there ought
to be some formula, if only we could find it; after all the whole
doctrine of precedent depends upon the conception of the ratio
decidendi, and it seems somehow absurd to accept the doctrine of
precedent if we have to admit that we are not able to say what is the
ratio decidendi of a particular case. The difficulty may
perhaps be solved if it is realized that there are really two problems
involved in the use of cases. The first is the problem of defining
the ratio decidendi, that is to say defining what is meant
by 'the ratio of a case'. A satisfactory definition will
indicate what a lawyer is to look for in his case. The second is the
problem of determining the ratio decidendi. This is the
problem of how to look, and not the problem of what to look for. It
would indeed be odd if it was not possible to formulate a satisfactory
definition of the expression 'ratio decidendi of a
case'; indeed, failure here would indicate that it was high time to
abandon the conception. It is quite another matter to suppose that
there ought to be one technique or one set of rules, or one formula,
which will serve as a general solution for the problem of determining
what precisely is the ratio of a particular case. There may
indeed by as many ways of finding the ratio of a case as there
are ways of finding a lost cat; certainly the ratio of some cases
seems as elusive.
DEFINING THE RATIO DECIDENDI OF A CASE
   In defining the ratio decidendi of a case, then, we
must seek for a definition which will serve as an answer to the
question 'What am I to look for?' For purely legal purposes we
may take it for granted that we should look in cases for a rule or
rules of some kind or other. Furthermore the term ratio
decidendi is normally used to refer to some binding rule (or
rules) which is to be found in decided cases- some rule which a later
court (appropriately placed in the hierarchy) cannot generally
question. Bearing all this in mind, a possible defining technique is
to elucidate the judicial power to make binding rules, and to tell our
questioner to seek for a rule (or rules) made within the ambit of this
power- such a rule (or rules) will constitute the ratio of the
case. This method of definition will have an obvious advantage, for
it will be closely related to the purpose for which the conception of
the ratio decidendi has been developed. For the conception
only serves to point the distinction between the rule-making of judges
which is 6intra vires a power to make binding rules, and the
rule-making of judges which is 6ultra vires this power.
Furthermore the method suggested closely resembles the normal
defining technique adopted to isolate the product of other law-making
activities- for example, Acts of Parliament. And finally it leads to
a very orthodox and unstartling result, for it is not in the least a
novel technique.
   What then are the bounds upon the power of rule-making which is
vested in judges? The most important limitation is to be found in the
principle which denies them the power to make binding rules except
when those rules are relevant to the determination of actual
litigation before the court in which they are empowered to sit.
Historically this limitation dates from the seventeenth century, when
it became recognized that a court ought not to give official opinions
upon hypothetical problems- a convention which has become refined and
elaborated since then. As this convention came to be accepted an
obvious corollary develops; there must be some principle which has the
effect of reducing the importance of enunciations of the law which
have in fact been delivered by judges- either accidentally or
deliberately- upon hypothetical issues. Thus the conception of
6obiter dicta grows up; 6obiter dicta are in some
sense 6ultra vires enunciations of law. The distinction
between such 6dicta and the elusive ratio decidendi is in
essence a distinction between relevance and irrelevance, and much of
the difficulty in elucidating the conception of the ratio
decidendi arises from attempts to give a precise meaning to
relevance in this context. Without some criterion of relevance the
judicial power of rule-making seems to have no limit, and in a country
wedded to the conception of the rule of law there is naturally a
desire to state with precision where the limit lies.
   Limitations upon a rule-making power may be formal or
substantial; they may restrict the way in which rules are made, and
they may restrict what rules are made. The power vested in the judges
is subject to both kinds of limitation, but the concept of the
ratio decidendi seems to embody only a formal limitation.
This is that only a rule (or rules) acted upon in court can rank
as a binding rule. Once this primary condition is satisfied the rule
will so rank, unless one of the various exceptions to the doctrine
of precedent apply- for example the per incuriam rule. The
rule becomes binding, subject to exceptions. The fact that the rule
has been acted upon is the hallmark of relevance, and this may no
doubt be expressed in a variety of different ways; thus we talk of
'the rule applied', 'the reason for the decision', 'the grounds
upon which the decision rested', 'the basis of the decision', and
there is no particular advantage in adopting one of these formulations
rather than another, for they are but variations upon a single theme.
All state the primary formal limitation upon the judicial power, or,
to put it another way, all state the manner and form in which the
judicial power is exercised. They thus serve as definitions of the
source of law under discussion- the rationes decidendi of
cases- in much the same way as similar 'manner and form'
statements of the parliamentary power serve to define what a statute
is.
   But, however we define the ratio decidendi of a case,
we encounter difficulties in applying our definition which are much
greater than those which accompany parliamentary law-making. The
rule-making procedure of Parliament operates on a text- a definite
and settled verbal formulation of a rule or body of rules- and it is
to the rules so drafted that legal validity is attached. With case
law it is different; we do not require the courts to draft the rules
upon which they act. Even where a judge does take some peculiar care
to formulate a rule accurately and precisely, we do not usually treat
such a formulation in the same way as a section in a statute, for the
prerogative of judges is not to confer binding force upon a rule by
formulating it and submitting the formulated rule to some procedure,
but rather to decide cases by acting upon rules, without settling for
the future the verbal form of the rule on the basis of a single
application of it. The minimum required before a judge may be said to
act upon a legal rule is that
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   ~(a) He should have a rule in mind when he decides to act.
~This does not mean that he should have in mind a precise formulation
of a rule; a person may act upon a rule without thinking out a draft
of the rule.
   ~(b) He should decide that the rule is applicable- that is to
say he should decide that some fact or set of facts should be subsumed
under the rule, and this will involve a task of classification.
   ~(c) He should deliberately so conduct himself that his
conduct conforms to the conduct prescribed by the rule.
<END INDENTATION>
   In everyday life this acting upon a rule may be quite a casual
process; in the judicial process the convention is that the judge
should 'show his working', and this produces a reflective 'acting
upon a rule' not so often met with outside the law and other special
fields. And with this reflective 'acting upon rules' which is
characteristic of the judicial process goes the custom which the
courts have adopted of justifying the action taken by an opinion
delivered openly in court, which opinion provides the best possible
evidence of the rule upon which the court did act. It will be noted
that to say that a person acted upon a rule is not to assert anything
about the psychological motivation of his action. Recognition of this
has wide implications in legal theory. Furthermore, in general, a
person may act upon a rule notwithstanding the fact that he may
himself be the originator of the rule, as will sometimes be the case
in judicial decisions.
# 24
<344 TEXT J5>
TRUSTEE INVESTMENTS ACT, 1961
   THIS Act received the Royal Assent on August 3, 1961, and came
into force on the same day.
   Trustees can invest their trust funds only in investments
authorised either by the express terms of their trust instrument or by
statute. Before this new Act the investments authorised by statute
did not include any "equities" and were a limited range prescribed,
in England by the Trustee Act, 1925, and in Scotland by the Trusts
(Scotland) Act, 1921, with subsequent statutory extensions. Generally
speaking, the statutory Trustee List was restricted to stocks issued
by the British Government and by the governments of Commonwealth
countries and the colonies, stocks guaranteed by the British
Government, stocks and mortgages issued by British local authorities,
and mortgages of land in Great Britain. Most of the investments in
the List earn interest at a fixed rate and, with certain notable
exceptions, are eventually repayable at par.
   In recent years there have been serious disadvantages in the old
List. The immediately realisable market values of investments
eventually repayable at par have fluctuated widely, with the
variations in the prevailing rates of interest; and, in the case of
the "undated" stocks in the List, market values have declined very
seriously. Eventual repayment of invested capital at its nominal par
value takes no account of inflation and the decline in the value of
money, and represents, in real values, a capital loss. In the case of
a trust fund established twenty or more years ago, with investments
limited to the statutory List, the annual trust income may be
nominally the same today as when the trust began, although of course
the income will buy far less than when the trust began. A life tenant
depending for his income and standard of living on such a trust would
be much worse off today than twenty years ago; and the real value of
the trust capital may be disastrously less than when the trust began.
This sort of case history is, unhappily, not unusual.
   The statutory Trustee List has always had two objects: first, the
protection of trustees; secondly, the protection of the beneficiaries,
by ensuring both the preservation of trust capital and a steady yield
of income. The first object has always been successfully achieved.
Trustees who invested within the range permitted by the statutory
List were reasonably safe from legal attack by disgruntled
beneficiaries. But, for more than twenty years before the passing of
the new Act, the second object had not been achieved at all. The
statutory List (which was always somewhat out of date) provided no
"hedge" against inflation and no protection against the continuous
fall in the value of the +. Experience of investment within the
range provided by the statutory List offered a sad contrast with the
profitable experience of other people able to invest in equities.
   For years most lawyers have advised settlors and testators to
confer on their trustees much wider investment powers than those
permitted by the statutory List. In the House of Lords debate on the
Second Reading of the Trustee Investments Bill a peer who is a
solicitor of great experience said: "In the course of some forty
years of practice I have made it a point always to advise that
settlors and testators should leave the widest possible discretion to
their trustees; that the powers contained in the Trustee Act were far
too limited." Naturally enough, the demand for reform of the List
has grown and has commanded some powerful supporters. In 1952 the
Report of the (Nathan) Committee on the Law and Practice relating to
Charitable Trusts advocated reform. In 1955 a White Paper on
Government Policy on Charitable Trusts in England and Wales referred
to the Government's intention to propose a general reform of the
statutory List. Charities were already able to obtain from the court
a general extension of investment powers; and, particularly after a
decision in 1955 drew professional attention to this, a number of the
larger charities obtained wide powers of investment in the ordinary
and other shares of the larger companies. In 1958 the Variation of
Trusts Act permitted applications to the court for (6inter
alia) extended powers of investment; and applications under that
Act were soon very widely used for the purpose of obtaining power to
invest in equities. But applications to the court cost money, and the
power conferred by the 1958 Act was no substitute for general reform
of the statutory List. On May 13, 1959, a statement in the House of
Lords promised early legislation; and in December 1959 a White Paper
was published setting out the Government's proposals. These
proposals, with some minor changes, were embodied in the Bill
introduced into the House of Lords in November 196.
   The period of almost a year between the publication of the White
Paper and the introduction of the Bill was intended to provide time
for interested persons and bodies to consider, and make
representations about, the Government's proposals. This was a good
idea, and the time was not wasted; but the period might have been more
useful if the White Paper had included a draft of the intended Bill.
This Bill, when published, turned out to be quite complicated; and it
soon received anxious scrutiny from professional bodies, including the
Law Society, whose simplifying amendments were debated at length when
the House of Commons was considering the Bill in committee.
   The Act replaces the former statutory Trustee List. The new
List, set out in the First Schedule to the Act, is divided into three
parts. Parts =1 and =2 list the "narrower-range" investments.
Part =3 lists the "wider-range" investments.
   The narrower-range comprises mainly fixed-interest investments,
and includes the whole of the former statutory List with some changes
and additions. These additions include fixed-interest securities
issued in the U.K. by the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development; the debentures (not being convertible debentures) of
United Kingdom companies that comply with certain conditions; and
deposits in the ordinary and special investment departments of trustee
savings banks. Commonwealth government stocks are included in the
narrower-range without the governments concerned having to comply with
the conditions laid down in the Colonial Stock Acts.
   The difference between Part =1 and Part =2 of the
narrower-range is that trustees may invest in Part =1 without first
obtaining advice, whereas they may not make an investment in Part =2
of the narrower-range without obtaining and considering proper advice
as to the suitability of the investment. Part =1 is very simple. It
includes Defence Bonds, National Savings Certificates and Ulster
Savings Certificates; and deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank, in
the ordinary departments of a trustee savings bank and in savings
banks certified under section 9 (3) of the Finance Act, 1956.
Deposits with designated building societies are in Part =2 of the
narrower-range; and it is puzzling that trustees should not be allowed
to make such deposits without obtaining expert, written advice.
   The greatest interest, however, attaches to the new wider-range.
This includes the shares, stock and convertible debentures of United
Kingdom companies that comply with certain conditions; the shares of
designated building societies; and units of authorised unit trusts
(i.e., authorised by order of the Board of Trade under the
Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act, 1958, or by the Ministry of
Commerce under the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act (Northern
Ireland), 194). The "equities" (i.e., ordinary shares
and stock) and other securities of U.K. companies are included in
the wider-range only if the particular company has a total issued and
paid-up share capital of at least +1 million and has paid dividends
on all its issued shares in each of the five years preceding the year
in which the investment is made. As with Part =2 of the
narrower-range, investments must not be made in the wider-range unless
the trustees obtain and consider written expert advice about the
particular investments. Further, trustees are not to make or retain
investments in the wider-range unless their trust fund has been
divided into two parts.
   This once-for-all division of the trust fund is the most
important (and controversial) feature of the new statutory scheme for
permitting wider-range investments. The division must be into two
equal parts; but there is power for the Treasury, by statutory
instrument, to order that division shall be into unequal parts
(provided that such an order shall not authorise a division in which
the narrower-range part is less than one-quarter of the fund at the
time of division). The division, once made, is permanent.
Thereafter, funds belonging to the narrower-range part must be
invested in narrower-range investments, while funds belonging to the
wider-range part may be invested in wider-range or narrower-range
investments. It is not essential for the whole of the wider-range
part to be invested immediately in wider-range investments. The
discretion to invest in the wider-range is available only in
respect of the wider-range part. If property is transferred from one
part of the divided fund to the other, there must be a "compensating
transfer" in the opposite direction. Where any property accrues to
a trust fund that has been divided, and the accruing property is not
otherwise obviously attributable to some particular part of the fund,
the accruing property must be divided so that each part of the fund is
increased in value by the same amount. Where capital is taken out of
the trust fund (as, for example, in the exercise of the statutory
power of advancement), the trustees are not required to take it
equally from the two parts of the divided fund: the Act does not
fetter their discretion as to the choice of property to be taken out.
   The new statutory powers of investment are additional to any
special powers, e.g., those conferred expressly by the will
or settlement. Any property (not including statutory narrower-range
investments, but including statutory wider-range investments) which
trustees are authorised to hold pursuant to such special powers, must
be carried to a separate "special-range" part of the fund. The
effect may be that a single fund will be divided into three parts: the
special-range part, the wider-range part and the narrower-range part.
   Division of the fund into two parts and the subsequent
maintenance of that division will require very careful administration
and records; and even greater care will be needed where the division
is into three parts. Will ordinary private trustees be able to do the
necessary administration and keep satisfactory records? In the case
of the larger trust funds, where the expense of obtaining constant
professional assistance is not regarded as extravagant, the additional
work will present no problem. But, with a relatively small trust
fund, the trouble and expense may perhaps be too great, and the
trustees may therefore decide that they cannot operate the statutory
scheme for investment in the wider-range. The fear of undue
complexity in the administration of relatively small trust funds led
the Law Society to advocate a scheme permitting investment in the
wider-range without a once-for-all division of the fund; but the
advocacy was unsuccessful; the complexity remains; and time will show
to what extent, in practice, trustees of small trust funds take
advantage of the new power to invest in the wider-range.
   The other provisions of the Act do not call for extended comment.
Section 6 (1) is of interest in that it attempts a statutory
definition of a trustee's duty in choosing investments. He must have
regard-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   "(a) to the need for diversification of investments of the
trust in so far as is appropriate to the circumstances of the trust;
   (b) to the suitability to the trust of investments of the
description of investment proposed and of the investment proposed as
an investment of that description."
<END INDENTATION>
   The new powers apply to persons and bodies, not being trustees,
who have trustee investment powers. Section 9 (1) amends section 1
(3) of the Trustee Act, 1925 to remove a defect (disclosed in Re
Walker's Settlement) which has occasionally caused trouble where
trustees hold shares in a company that is the subject of a
"take-over" bid.
# 212
<345 TEXT J51>
   Granted, however, that events at A after E;1; and
before E;2; are in an empirically undetermined order with
respect to event E;B; at B, must we accept Robb's
contention that Einstein was mistaken in allowing A to assign a
theoretical epoch to E;B;? In other words, if we reject
the classical doctrine of time which stipulates that there must be
a unique event at A which is absolutely simultaneous with
E;B;, does it follow that Einstein ought not to have ascribed a
definite conventional system of time-relations (earlier than,
simultaneous with, and later than) between E;B; and all events
at A? The function of convention in the construction of theories
is descriptive simplicity, and it must be admitted that Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity is simpler than Robb's alternative. But
that is not all. As we have seen, Einstein's conventional rule by
which A assigns a theoretical epoch to E;B; is not a
'mere' convention in the sense of being wholly arbitrary. For,
although it is a convention in so far as it is freely chosen and not
imposed upon us, it can be isolated uniquely from other admissible
rules by means of the axioms stated above. With all due respect to
Robb, the essential question is not the conceptual legitimacy of
Einstein's convention but its practical scope, that is, the range of
physical contexts to which it can be most usefully applied.
4 The Correlation of Time-Perspectives
   So far we have considered only a single observer A. Unlike
Frank and Rothe, Whitehead and others who sought to deduce the
existence of a finite universal velocity from more primitive
postulates,
<FIGURE>
we have not found it necessary to consider the correlation of the
space and time coordinates assigned to a distant event by different
observers. Although this presented no special difficulty for the
classical Newtonian physicist who believed in an absolute world-wide
simultaneity and an absolute physical space governed by the laws of
Euclidean geometry, as soon as these assumptions were abandoned the
problem had to be re-examined. It is now generally recognized that
the most satisfactory method of solution is to consider first the
correlation of two observers' clocks by means of the same experiment
in light-signalling as we introduced above (pp. 186-7).
   There we considered the assignment by A of times to events
occurring at B. As we have seen, Einstein's solution was based on
his postulate that the velocity of light according to A is a
universal constant, independent of position and direction of
propagation. We must now consider the correlation of this theoretical
time assigned by A to an event at B with the empirical epoch
t?7 which would actually be recorded on a clock placed at B.
To make the problem precise we postulate that B is now an
observer 'similar' to A. In particular, this implies that B
carries a clock 'similar' to the one carried by A. For
example, if A carries a particular type of atomic or molecular
clock, we assume that B carries another clock of identical
construction. With the aid of this clock, B can partake in
A's light-signalling experiment, the signals being instantaneously
reflected back to either observer on arrival at the other, as
indicated in Figure 7.
   In the Special Theory of Relativity it is assumed that A and
B are associated with inertial frames of reference. Consequently,
they are either at relative rest or in uniform relative motion. The
Principle of Relativity on which the theory is based was formulated by
Poincare?2 in a lecture at Saint Louis, U.S.A. in September
194. According to his statement, "the laws of physical phenomena
must be the same for a 'fixed' observer as for an observer who has
a uniform motion of translation relative to him: so that we have not,
and cannot possibly have, any means of discerning whether we are, or
are not, carried along in such a motion". Shortly afterwards, and
independently, the principle was enunciated in a much more explicit
form by Einstein: "the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will
be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of
mechanics hold good". This principle presupposes that the observers
associated with such frames of reference employ similar measuring
instruments, for example clocks, and adopt the same metrical rules and
definitions. Therefore, if A assigns a universal value c to
the speed of light, then B must do the same.
   It is customary when considering the correlation of the clocks
and time-perspectives of A and B in Einstein's Special Theory
to concentrate on the case in which they are in uniform relative
motion. Instead, in view of its importance for establishing one of
the main results in the following chapter, I shall begin by
considering the case in which they are at relative rest. If A and
B have similarly graduated clocks, then, apart from the possible
adjustment of an additive constant depending on the choice of
zero-time on each clock, the principle of relativity can be reduced,
as far as kinematics is concerned, to the following:
   Axiom =1. Principle of kinematic symmetry: t;2; is
the same function of t?7 as t?7 is of t;1;.
   Hence, there must be functional relations of the form
<FORMULA>.
   Consequently, the function 15th, which we will call the signal
function correlating A and B, must be such that
<FORMULA>.
   But, since B is at a fixed distance from A and the
light-signals travel with constant speed, it follows that
(t;2;-t;1;) must be a constant. Hence, 15th must be
such that
<FORMULA>,
   for all values of t;1; and some constant a. If we drop
the suffix, an obvious solution of this functional equation is given
by
<FORMULA>.
   More generally, by operating on each side of (23) with 15th we
deduce that
<FORMULA>,
   whence it immediately follows that 15th(t) must be of the
form
<FORMULA>,
   where 15o(t) is of period 2a. To reduce this to the
particular form
<FORMULA>, we must consider other similar stationary observers.
Thus, if A, B, and C are collinear, with B lying between
A and C, and 15f is the signal function correlating B and
C, then A and C will be related by the signal function
15ps given by
<FORMULA>. Consequently, 15th and 15f must be commutative
functions. Since C is at a fixed distance from B, 15f must
satisfy a functional equation of the form
<FORMULA>,
   where b is some constant. It is then easily proved that
<FORMULA>,
   and so we deduce that A and C are at a fixed distance
apart equal to the sum of the respective distances of A and B
and of B and C. By operating on both sides of (24) with the
function 15th and appealing to the commutative property of 15th and
15f, we deduce that
<FORMULA>,
   whence it follows that
<FORMULA>,
   where 15o(t) is of period 2b. Hence, 15o(t)
must admit both 2a and 2b as periods. If A, B, and C
are any three members of a continuum of relatively stationary
observers, then 2a and 2b will, in general, be
incommensurable. Consequently, by a well-known theorem the only
continuous form for the function 15o(t) is a constant, and so
from equation (23) it follows that
<FORMULA>.
   With this solution for 15th(t), equations (21) give
<FORMULA>.
   By comparison with equation (19), we deduce that t?7 = t,
that is, the time recorded on B's clock when any event occurs at
B is the same as the time theoretically assigned to that event by
A on the basis of the uniform velocity of light. Therefore, all
relatively stationary observers assign the same time to any given
event, and this time agrees with that actually recorded on the clock
kept by the observer at the point where the event occurs. In this
conventional sense, there is world-wide simultaneity of events, and
therefore universal time, for all relatively stationary observers.
   The above analysis was based on the 'kinematic symmetry' of
relatively stationary observers with similarly graduated clocks who
assign the same constant value to the speed of light-signals passing
between them in free space. In his Special Theory of Relativity,
Einstein showed how the same principle of kinematic symmetry in
light-signalling experiments could be extended to observers in uniform
relative motion, although the consequences are not entirely the same
as for relatively stationary observers. In particular, there is no
longer world-wide simultaneity, and hence no universal common time,
for the aggregate of uniformly moving observers. Consequently,
although the theory is based on the hypothesis that the general laws
governing physical formulae are of the same form for an observer
associated with any inertial frame in uniform relative motion as for
an observer associated with any inertial frame at relative rest, there
are important differences regarding the epochs assigned to particular
events.
   To see this most simply, we again consider light-signalling from
A to B and from B to A, as in Figure 7, but this time
we stipulate that the two observers concerned move away from
coincidence with each other at a particular epoch with uniform
velocity in a radial direction. We also postulate that the two
similar clocks were synchronized to read time zero at the original
instant of coincidence. As before, we consider a signal emitted by
A at time t;1;, recorded on A's clock. We suppose that
this signal is instantaneously reflected on arrival at B at time
t?7, according to B's clock, returning to A at time
t;2;, according to A. From the principle of kinematic
symmetry it follows that, if
<FORMULA>, then
<FORMULA>. Therefore,
<FORMULA>.
   But
<FORMULA>,
   where r is the distance of B from A, according to A,
at the instant of reflection, and t is the epoch theoretically
assigned by A to this event. Since B is moving away radially
from coincidence with A at time zero, it follows that
<FORMULA>,
   where V is the relative speed of B. Hence,
<FORMULA>,
   where
<FORMULA>.
   Consequently, on comparing (25) and (26) we see that the function
15ps must be such that for all values of the variable t
<FORMULA>.
   By operating on each side of this equation with 15ps, we
deduce that
<FORMULA>,
   whence
<FORMULA>,
   the prime symbol denoting the derivative. The only solution of
equation (28) which is continuous as
<FORMULA> (positively) is 15ps?7(t)=k, where k is
a constant. Since t?7= when t;1;=, it follows that
15ps()=, and hence we must have 15ps(t)=kt. Comparison
with (27) yields k:2:=15a:2:. In order to obtain the
unique solution k=15a, and hence
<FORMULA>,
   where 15a is positive, we must invoke a further axiom:
   Axiom =11. The order of reception of light-signals by B,
according to B, corresponds to the order of emission of these signals
by A, according to A.
   We have seen that, according to A, there is at any point at
a given (theoretically assigned) epoch a unique value for the
speed of light in free space. It follows that the order, according to
A, of arrival of light-signals at B must be the same as the
order of their emission from A. For, if a signal emitted by A
at some epoch were to arrive at B, according to A, before an
earlier signal emitted from A, then, assuming continuity, there
would be some event occurring in between A and B at which the
second signal would overtake the first and pass it. At such an event
there would be, according to A, two values for the speed of light
in free space. Axiom =11 can therefore be regarded as asserting that
the theoretically assigned time-order of events at B, according to
A, agrees with the time-order of these events as actually
experienced by B. In this sense, we can speak of the time-order
of these events according to A being in the same sense as the
time-order of the same events according to B. By the principle of
relativity, A and B are interchangeable in Axiom =11.
   Since t;2;=15at?7, t?7=15at;1;, and
<FORMULA>, where t is the time theoretically assigned by A
to the arrival (and reflection) of the signal at B, it follows
that
<FORMULA>. Hence, we deduce that, although A and B agree
on the time-order of events at B, they will assign different
measures to the time-interval between any two instants at B.
# 214
<346 TEXT J52>
Then only at the stage of the build-up on a screen does the object
enter into the mind of a perceiver as perception. If we accept the
analogy of the television apparatus then here is mediation of the most
absolute sort. Is it possible to reconcile this mediation with the
sense of utter transparency which accompanies the act of 'seeing,'
upon which Professors A. J. Ayer and Gilbert Ryle, and Mr.
R. J. Hirst and Mr. M. Lean have placed such necessary
emphasis? Or in more general terms can we reconcile the body as
instrumentality with the world as immediacy?
   The problems which have so far proved so insoluble for
perception are even more central to the discussion of the ro?5le of
feeling in man's experience of himself and the world. For here
again in a theory of prehension there would seem to be yet another
scientific schema interposed between man and the world he directly
experiences through perception, and, it could be argued, with less
justification or profit. The questions come thick and fast. If there
is a universal but unconscious 'feeling' in what sense is it
'knowledge?' If it is not 'knowledge' to the organism, what is
its ro?5le? Does unconscious feeling rise in some symbolic form into
consciousness or as an emotional pressure like instinct? How is an
unconscious feeling to be reconciled with a conscious sensory
experience of the sort we describe as a 'feeling?' As for
example, ~'I feel good' or ~'I have a stomach-ache?'
   Though I can only do so as a layman, it is going to be necessary
to look at some of the scientific findings. But we can easily be
dazzled by science into imagining that we know more about our bodies
than we do know in direct experience. The body-schema science has
built up for us is apt to obscure the enigmatic experiential relation
a man has to his own body. Common sense suggests that we should look
at the body as given in private experience before we decide what it is
like in terms of public science.
=3: THE SELF'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE BODY
   On the threshold of every man's awareness is his intimate sense
of being, or being identified with, a body. He is this body. He
exists this body, as M. Jean-Paul Sartre would say. He cannot
conceive existence without it. If he stops to reflect on it, he is
conscious on the threshold of perception of its enjoyable warmth and
beyond its warmth, obscurely felt, its energy, its nature of seeming
to be coiled like a spring ready to do his bidding. It is difficult
to analyse this situation except in Cartesian terms, much as one would
like to avoid them, for man both is his body and conceives his body as
his instrument in the world. In a discussion of animal behaviour
Professor Michael Polanyi remarks that ~'There is a purposive tension
from which no fully awake animal is free. It consists in a readiness
to perceive and to act, or more generally speaking, to make sense of
its situation, both intellectually and practically.' Man's
existential encounter with himself could be described in these terms.
He knows himself as a 'purposive tension' seeking 'control of
itself and of its surroundings.' Dr. Erich Kahler speaks of man's
bodily consciousness in a more general but still illuminating way:
   'When I try to delve into my innermost feelings, my initial
feeling of self, I find that at the bottom there is not just a feeling
of sheer existence, or of sheer thinking, the Cartesian cogito.
There is, immediately and simultaneously, something more. There is
implicit in my feeling of existence a feeling of organic
existence, or organicity, of wholeness. Distorted, stunted as
it may be by the wear and tear of modern life the original form is
still traceable as it was present in the bud of youth: a ball of
radiating strength and capacity; all-sidedness, all-potentiality;
coherence, correspondence, co-operation of all my organs and
faculties. A young healthy human being feels the unity of body and
mind' (or rather, one might say, since this is already metaphysical,
he cannot conceive their disunity) 'the one present in the other,
and the mind governing the body in a still nai"ve, unconscious,
spontaneous manner; neither intellect nor brute force is autonomously
prevalent. Such elemental feeling of organic existence shines forth
in the beautiful, masterly, fully animated bodies of "primitive"
people ... in whom the whole body is face and has the playful,
controlled expression of a face.'
   Man's consciousness of his almost hidden organic energy is more
difficult to reach than the sense of warm bodily being, for when we
reflect on the body it becomes passive and relaxes, but for the most
important part of our waking lives we are 'keyed up' to activity,
without taking thought about it. When we are stretched in attention,
ready to act, as a runner waiting for the starter's pistol, we are in
the worst possible position for reflection. But the state of action,
or of being coiled for action, probably fills more of our waking lives
than the relaxed and reflective situation, even with such notably
recumbent figures as philosophers. In the active state, the
separation of the will from the bodily activity is so impossible to
conceive that we are barely conscious of using the will to perform
actions. The whole body becomes pervaded with will, is will.
This identity of body, self and will has important consequences for
the theory I am developing.
   What other modes of the body-self's generalized awareness are
there? I think we must add the sense of a locus of our
perceptions and ideas. We have a spatial presence, and we have an
inner space which this presence guards. We have the sensation of
thought going on inside us, as it were in the head, though grief and
heartache are genuinely elsewhere. The sense of location is not a
sharp one. 'In' us, we say, and less vaguely, 'in our heads,'
but never as 'in' an organ open to any perceptual inspection like a
hand or a finger-nail. Erich Kahler speaks of man not as a spot of
sheer being thrown into existence in the existentialist sense, nor as
a function of thinking, but as 'an inner space, a latent arena, an
area of self.' For him this self-identity also involves 'the
silent presence of a person's whole background and surroundings ...
the total potentiality of his experiences ever ready to be called into
function, in short the immeasurable avenues of his memory and of his
interiorized world.'
   The perceiving, thinking, worrying, planning processes of the
self are 'us' as much as the body is 'us.' And though they
cannot be apprehended like the body, they belong to it. As David Hume
pointed out, we cannot turn round and catch our minds or selves: the
mere act of trying to seize upon personal identity as if it were
another 'thing' we could handle, defeats us, for it is in the
nature of personal identity always to be doing and seizing and never
to be seized. Here lies the guarantee of its inalienability. Though
it was not part of David Hume's argument the fact that there is an
inviolable element in man and other organisms may be important for
more than knowledge. Whitehead emphasized that we see with the
eye. No purpose would have been served by creating the eye to see the
eye.
   The organs of sense function in the world, and in relation to the
self, in a transparent way. As far as the eye is concerned I mean
this literally. If one turns one's attention from what one sees
to that by which one sees, one is conscious of a pool or area of pure
transparency in the region of the eye-sockets, an emptiness into which
the world pours without hindrance. The eye itself is withdrawn from
the dimensions of sight into pure nothingness. Of the senses, only
touch brings presence to the body. This bodily absence, or to put
it in the teasing way the existentialists might adopt,
presence-in-absence, points to the need for a new metaphysic of the
body. That which is most near to us and necessary to us in existence
is almost without a philosophy except where its perceptual machinery
is concerned.
   The first bodily circumstance to be understood is how little
knowledge of the body is given to us in nature. To understand this
we have to escape from the all too common assumption that the
body-schema we learn from text-books is given to us as part of
natural equipment. Even a mirror is not given to man in nature,
except perhaps in a sheet of water, and we can conceive of a
prehistoric man going through the whole of his life without ever
seeing his body brightly mirrored before him. And how little even the
mirror would tell him! What we see, or see in a mirror, or infer from
the bodies of others, is the external sack, or skin, containing the
external organs and covering the muscles which shape the torso and the
limbs, but masking the internal organs completely, and helping to hold
them in position against a rigid skeleton, that grotesque caricature
of a living man which comes to light for the primitive only when a man
is some time dead. Detailed knowledge, especially about the interior,
we secure only from surgical and physiological research, just in the
same way as our knowledge of the functioning of our senses is the
product of research.
   In a pleasing and thoughtful essay on the aesthetics of the body,
Mr. John Brophy speaks of the skin as mental frontier seldom crossed
except by those whose studies compel it. Even they in their initial
training have to overcome a profound repugnance when called upon to
cross that human boundary. 'It seems to be the natural order that
the skin should conceal all the internal workings of the body, and,
when this convention is overthrown, whoever views the exposure feels a
violent protest in both mind and body. This protest is doubtless
closely associated with the realization of pain, which no merely
intellectual observation of anaesthetic affects <SIC> can
compensate. It is also heightened by sense impressions from the
opened-up body which differ noticeably from those given out by a body
enclosed in an intact skin: the internal organs are often exceedingly
brilliant in colour, and some of them emit odours and heat. Moreover,
even if the revelation is made by skilful surgery, the tissues are
likely to be continuously bathed in blood. When wounds or injuries
are inflicted the exposure will also be untidy, and the suffering of
the torn body, unmitigated by anaesthetics, will be expressed in
writhings, shouts or moans, unless shock brings about unconsciousness
or death. By all this the observer's senses are outraged.'
   Mr. John Brophy's comments are much to the point, yet not all
the story. The intense psychological shock which is the immediate
consequence of another's injured body has really to be explained on
more than aesthetic grounds. There are aesthetic grounds for
shock, but no one is shocked by animal carcases dripping blood in the
butcher's shop or by the mighty blows of his cleaver through the
quivering flesh of the joints exposed for sale. Indeed the young wife
who might faint at the sight of blood from a cut finger will become
expert in handling and judging (to say nothing of cooking) the flesh
of dead animals. Clearly the aesthetic protest is not the whole one
if such experiences can be even pleasurably borne.
   We have to relate shock over bodily injury to what has been said
of the transparency of the sense organs. Consciousness of them
would block consciousness through them. Intense consciousness of
the body interferes with the instrumentality of the body in the world.
Only when the young tennis player forgets his racket and forgets to
be proud of it can he really hit with it.
# 24
<347 TEXT J53>
This principle, which, it should be noted, requires no
'objective' demonstration, marks Schiller's advance to an
independent position in aesthetic theory. As he argues, whereas
important elements of the experience of beauty had been severally
declared and championed in recent time, the specific quality of beauty
had been fragmented and lost in the process. In its most obvious
aspect Schiller's problem is again one of mediation, now on the grand
scale, between the advocates of sensualist and intellectualist
aesthetics, between the type of Burke and the type of Baumgarten.
Schiller applauds in the former the rejection of conceptual form from
the fabric of beauty, and in the latter the reference of beauty, in
some sense, to the organization of the higher faculties. Schiller has
somehow to vindicate in exact theory his conviction that the beautiful
is objective, self-contained, 'selig in ihm selbst'- and that
it is also, paradoxically, a reflex of freedom in the percipient.
   Of these two essential attributes, it is the sense of
independence, of self-containedness, of 'objectivity' in the
beautiful which is of greater moment in Schiller's feeling, about
which he is evidently more excited. It is the aspect in which
Schiller brings to bear an aesthetic sensitivity in contrast with
Kant's ingenious aesthetics, and in which, therefore, his more
positive individual contribution lies. It is the empirical part of
the argument which Schiller is impatient to reach from the very
beginning of this correspondence. Yet, before he will allow himself
to communicate the essence of his own experience of beauty he insists
on examining the conditions which make that experience theoretically
possible. And, in this area, he vies with Kant in stressing the
subjective limits of experience.
   In the letter of the 18th of February Schiller endorses the major
principle of the theoretical philosophy: 'Die Natur steht unter
dem Verstandesgesetz.' In the later part of the correspondence
his main argument rests on assumptions which conflict with this
principle. To the degree, however, that Schiller emancipates nature
from reason, to the degree that he 'breaks through the Kantian
dogma', as Baumecker asserts with approval, he does so without
adequate systematic justification. The special kind of
'objectivity' upon which Schiller hopes to rest his theory is quite
capricious by the standards of exact thought from which the argument
sets out. The position is that, whereas this claim of
'objectivity' is of extreme interest as evidence of Schiller's
aesthetic consciousness and of his efforts to bring it to terms with
his theoretical reflections, he does not in fact substantiate the
claim in its more far-reaching implications. Besides, it is not in
this area that the main advance is made. So that, although this whole
series of letters is formally directed towards the establishment of an
'objective' principle of beauty, it is not any direct and brilliant
challenge to Kant on this issue which we have to applaud. The
valuable and the major part of the theory is subjective in essentials.
It has to do firstly, and more particularly, with the conditions in
the mind of the percipient which permit the transference of the idea
of freedom to the object 'in appearance', and secondly, and more
generally, with the whole concept of aesthetic form as an abstract
based upon forms of other orders, preparing a far more sensitive
redisposition of the theoretical, moral and aesthetic faculties.
These trends, and not the special claim of 'objectivity', belong
to the general evolution of Schiller's aesthetic philosophy, regarded
as a body of doctrine having final coherence and universal validity.
   If, on the other hand, the 'Kallias' Letters are examined as
evidence of the interplay of rational and irrational motives, and of
contrasting forms of vision and language, in Schiller, then a quite
different valuation of the 'objective' principle becomes
appropriate. For this principle, to which Schiller subordinates the
whole argument in a formal way, may then be seen as the extreme of the
tendency to rationalize elements which belong properly to the
aesthetic mode of vision. It covers and attempts to legitimate the
extrusion of the idea of the anima, of the 'Person', 'die
Natur- das Wesen des Dinges', from its proper location in
unreflective poetic conviction into the alien province of systematic
aesthetic philosophy. It appears as an irrational impulse to
authorize and to dignify the products of artistic intuition. Further,
it is precisely this, presumably unconscious, attempt at maximum
assimilation to each other of the disparate functions of aesthetic
imagination and aesthetic philosophy that perplexes criticism of the
'Kallias' Letters. The nai"ve perception of beautiful forms as
animated by a personal will, whose expression they are, is explained
by Schiller with subtlety and detachment in the earlier letters. Yet
in the later, 'empirical' part of the argument the perspective
changes, analogies become facts, aesthetic configurations become
'things', having their private essences. And this wholly
contrasting, aesthetically valid and systematically untenable vision
is adapted and assimilated to the abstract terminology of the strictly
logical framework. Conceptual myths are generated in the vacuum
between philosophical and poetic language.
   
   There is a grade of 'objectivity' in Kantian usage which may
be more closely defined as (the assumption of) a universal
subjective necessity in regard to any mental disposition or
content. Kant develops this sense of the term, for example, in the
final section of the 'Analytik des Scho"nen': 'Die
Notwendigkeit der allgemeinen Beistimmung, die in einem
Geschmacksurteile gedacht wird, ist eine subjektive Notwendigkeit, die
unter der Voraussetzung eines Gemeinsinnes als objektiv vorgestellt
wird.' But Schiller is from the outset dissatisfied with this
attenuated 'objectivity', which is the maximum that Kant will allow
to aesthetic experience. Schiller's ambition is to show that a
concept of beauty is deducible from 6a priori principles
directly, yet he must admit at an early stage that he is compelled to
turn partly to 'the testimony of experience':
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
In this initial usage 'objective' has more the sense of
'theoretically cogent'; it points beyond Kant's pronouncement:
~'Die Allgemeinheit des Wohlgefallens wird in einem
Geschmacksurteile nur als subjektive vorgestellt' , and challenges
Kant in the assertion: ~'Unter einem Prinzip des Geschmacks wu"rde
man einen Grundsatz verstehen, unter dessen Bedingung man den Begriff
eines Gegenstandes subsumieren, und alsdann durch einen Schluss
herausbringen ko"nnte, dass er scho"n sei. Das ist aber
schlechterdings unmo"glich.' Schiller does not meet directly
Kant's main argument for this view, which is, in essence, that the
aesthetic judgement rests on a subjective pleasure, which cannot
itself be the product of a deduction. Indeed, there is already
evidence that it is not in this teasing issue of the 'objective'
principle, in the sense developed above, that Schiller's vital concern
lies, but rather in the vindication of beauty as a function of the
human totality. Schiller is dissatisfied with Kant's manner of
excluding rational form entirely from the province of beauty. He
concedes the necessity of a sharp distinction between perfection,
logically apprehended, and the beautiful, but considers that Kant's
solution is misguided and impoverishes the idea of beauty:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
It is here that Schiller's more valid challenge lies, from the
beginning of his 'Auseinandersetzung mit Kant'. Here, that is,
in aesthetic theory proper. In ethical theory Schiller's defence of
natural feeling against Kantian rigorism is a closely related impulse.
   Significantly, as Schiller now approaches the vital core of his
idea, his mode of expression changes. He speaks, for the first time,
of that critical insight into the structural relations of the
theoretical and aesthetic faculties which is to affect his doctrine so
profoundly. Although distinct from it in kind, beauty is dependent on
a technical structure for its realization: 'Denn eben darin zeigt
sich die Scho"nheit in ihrem ho"chsten Glanze, wenn sie die logische
Natur ihres Objektes u"berwindet; und wie kann sie u"berwinden, wo
kein Widerstand ist?' At a critical point Schiller passes into
metaphor and personification, although at this stage he provides also
an equivalent statement in abstract terms: '- Die Vollkommenheit
ist die Form eines Stoffes, die Scho"nheit, hingegen, ist die Form
dieser Vollkommenheit: die sich also gegen die Scho"nheit wie der
Stoff zu der Form verha"lt.' The appearance of the personal
analogy may thus be thought of as a sort of rhetorical stress, but
there is already some resemblance to the later invasion of the
abstract area by notions of irrational origin. The idea of the
'conquest' of a 'resistance', for example, is not quite
commensurate with the abstract statement.
   There is a certain irony in the next letter to Ko"rner (8th
Feb.), for Schiller reproaches him for tendencies which he is
himself to exhibit, although more subtly:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
Or the passage may be read as a self-admonition, in the light of the
remark which follows: 'U"brigens rede ich hier mehr als Kantianer,
denn es ist am Ende mo"glich, dass auch meine Theorie von diesem
Vorwurfe nicht ganz frei bleibt.' For Schiller must sense that
there is a rather precarious distinction between Ko"rner's resort to
the concept of unity in the manifold and his own indirect but
undeniable import of concepts of reason, which similarly threatens
collision with the accepted Kantian pronouncement: 'Das Scho"ne
gefa"llt ohne Begriff.'
   By insisting on his 'objective' principle and at the same time
allowing himself only such departure from the Kantian philosophy as he
may hold compatible with the main dicta of that philosophy, Schiller
prescribes for himself a very difficult task, which could only be
accomplished, if at all, by the intricate verbal adjustments which in
fact he makes in the course of the exposition. For, firstly, as
emerges between the lines of his letter of the 8th of February, if the
attempt is made to 'establish objectively a concept of beauty and to
legitimate it completely 6a priori from the nature of
reason', then elaborate precautions will be needed so as not to
offend against that precept that 'the beautiful pleases without
concept'. Indeed, for this initial dilemma the only direct
resolution would seem to require psychological schemes not then
available. If, for example, the second limiting proposition were
modified to read: 'the beautiful pleases without the conscious
intrusion of concept', then Schiller's whole argument would be
facilitated in the direction which it takes in any case. The
besetting difficulty of the Kantian type of thinking, which Schiller
inherits, is the extensive use of analytical schemata which transform
mental faculties into virtual entities, which tend to appear as
segregated elements standing in an external relationship to each
other, and constrained, in the extreme case, into a misleading
geometrical symmetry. This tendency is reinforced by the personifying
drive in Schiller himself, and runs counter to that important
systematic idea which is emerging, that conceptual activity is somehow
implicit or submerged in aesthetic experience, without however
belonging to the fabric of that experience as it appears in
consciousness.
   Since Schiller feels strongly that (practical) reason and beauty
have some profound kinship, he is impelled to assert this by the most
authoritative means known to him, that is, by the deduction 6a
priori, by a demonstration that, in given circumstances, the
experience of beauty is a logically predictable consequence of our
psychic constitution. But he realizes by both systematic thought and
immediate experience that concepts are no part of the experience of
beauty:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
And so, apparently, a hiatus is opened, such that it must seem there
is no way of penetrating to the sense of beauty by the alien apparatus
of concepts.
   In what follows Schiller feels his way towards an aesthetic
psychology, whose advantage over Kant's doctrine is that it gives a
fuller account of the latitude of the aesthetic vision, which may
abstract from the forms of the practical and theoretical faculties,
and so derive its own proper symbolical forms. Kant's aesthetic
judgement is but one limitation of the general idea of judgement,
which in turn is assigned to an intermediate and subordinate position
between the faculties of reason. In Schiller the aesthetic judgement
becomes primary in both an emotional and formal sense. It is expanded
to include the 'forms' of the rational world, on its own terms. It
becomes the focus of totality, concord and freedom.
# 23
<348 TEXT J54>
As in the attempt to construe the difference between mere bodily
movements and actions in terms of acts of volition, so here in the
case of wanting when this is identified with some Humean cause of
doing, we are faced with a manifest contradiction. Construed as an
internal impression which is thought to function as a cause that
issues in some item of so-called overt behaviour (whether this be some
bodily movement or an action is of no matter for our present
purposes), the impression must be describable without reference to any
event or object distinct from it. It must be possible to characterize
that internal impression without invoking any reference to the
so-called object of the desire, no less than the action that consists
either in getting or in trying to get that object. But as a desire,
no account is intelligible that does not refer us to the thing
desired. The supposition, then, that desiring or wanting is a Humean
cause, some sort of internal tension or uneasiness, involves the
following contradiction: As Humean cause or internal impression, it
must be describable without reference to anything else- object
desired, the action of getting or the action of trying to get the
thing desired; but as desire this is impossible. Any description of
the desire involves a logically necessary connection with the thing
desired. No internal impression could possibly have this logical
property. Hence, a desire cannot possibly be an internal impression.
   This contradiction comes close to the surface in a number of
familiar accounts of wanting. Wanting is usually identified with some
internal mental event- a felt tension or uneasiness. But as internal
event, whether mental or physiological, there is no intrinsic feature
of that event that reveals its connection with anything else; yet as
desire the very characterization of the desire involves a reference to
the thing desired. Hence Hobbes' interesting remark about the
intimate relation between names applied to desires and the objects of
desire. Shall we then say with G. F. Stout that 'desire and
aversion, endeavour to and endeavour from, are modes of attention'?
Certainly if there is endeavour to x, there must be attention to x.
But if we think of a desire as an internal event that causes or
produces an endeavour to the thing in question, then it is
self-contradictory to say that the desire is both cause and the
attention involved in the endeavour which this cause produces, just as
much so as it is for Prichard to say in the case of so-called acts of
volition that such acts are causes and also involve the idea of that
which they produce. Alternatively, if the desire just is the
endeavour, it is difficult to see how there could be desire without
endeavour, i.e. without trying to get the thing desired. But
putting this aside, we shall have to say that this endeavour, mental
or physiological, involves the idea of that towards which the
endeavour is directed- endeavour being necessarily endeavour to
something, just as a desire is necessarily a desire for
something. And this implies that the endeavour cannot possibly be a
causal factor in the proceedings that issue in the getting of what is
desired, since if it were, it would be possible to describe it without
referring in any way to anything else in or out of the proceedings,
including the thing in question towards which the endeavour is
directed. Hobbes and his present-day followers who speak of the
endeavours of the body or of physiological drives are similarly
involved in contradiction. Physiological occurrences are blind; as
such they can be described without reference to anything else
including the thing wanted, or the objective of the endeavour. As
drives, endeavours or desires, no such logical divorce is possible.
   The whole modern picture from Hobbes on down, of wanting or
desiring as interior events that operate in some sort of causal
mechanism of the mind or body, is in fact a disastrous muddle. So far
I have been concerned with this logical feature of a desire, namely,
that a desire, whatever else it may be, is a desire for something.
But there are other important features of the concept of desiring or
wanting which this modern picture simply cannot accommodate and which
therefore spell disaster for this view of the matter.
   It will be remembered that I began this discussion by considering
the truism that because one wants or desires one does; in other words,
that we explain conduct by reference to, among other things, what
agents want or desire. But if desiring is some sort of interior event
that functions as a causal condition, no such explanation is possible.
Desiring, on this modern view, is some sort of causal factor, an
itch, twitch, internal impression, tension or physiological
occurrence; but as such, supposing that these are causal factors, it
can give rise only to other occurrences. An action, however, is no
mere matter of bodily happening. Grant then that wanting or desiring
explains the bodily movements that take place when a person does
anything, e.g. raises his arm in order to signal; as internal
occurrence what it explains, at best, is the bodily movement that
occurs when the person raises his arm, not the action he performs
which we describe as 'raising his arm' or, further, as
'signalling'. A gap then appears in the alleged explanation,
between bodily occurrence and action performed, and what is purported
to be an explanation of conduct turns out to be nothing of the kind.
But like many another gap that appears in philosophy (here readers
will be reminded of the familiar gap with which moral philosophers are
plagued between the 'is' and the 'ought', between matters of
fact and matters of morality, between description and evaluation),
this one is a product of our own confusion. Specifically, it is the
failure to recognize the logical relation between the concept of
wanting or desiring and that of action, including the logical
scaffolding that gives the latter term its import or use in our
language.
   Earlier I contended that by no logical alchemy is it possible to
make good the claim that an action is a bodily movement plus some
other concurrent factor. Suppose, for argument's sake, we take as
concurrent factor, wanting or desiring. Then the latter can be
understood independently of the concept of the action. If we explain
A in terms of B and C, our explanation, if it is to avoid circularity,
presupposes that C can be understood without invoking A. So if the
action of raising the arm can be understood as the bodily movement
incurred in raising the arm together with a desire, one can understand
the desire without invoking the idea of this action. This implies
that the desire cannot possibly be the desire to raise one's arm,
since it would be circular to define the action of raising one's arm
as a bodily movement together with the desire to raise one's arm. But
is it possible, in general, to define action as bodily movement or
happening plus desire? Only if we can understand what a desire is
without invoking the concept of an action. Is this possible? Only if
in our account of the action of raising one's arm, we do not invoke
any desire to do, e.g. the desire to notify others that one
is about to make a turn. Or, if we do this, only if we go on to
explain a desire to do in terms of a desire together with some feature
of the desire which does not involve a reference to doing at all- in
which case the desire to do would then be 'reduced' to some sort of
occurrence called 'a desire' having a feature that could be
described without reference to any doing at all. Now what sort of
thing called a 'desire' could this possibly be? Here is one
suggestion: the desire is a desire for something, e.g. the
food that one will get if such-and-such things take place. Let us
then see if it is possible to 'explain' the desire to do in
terms of a desire for something. In our example, this then is the
situation: One is hungry; food is around the corner, so one notifies
others that one is about to make a turn in order to get food; one
desires to notify others that one is about to make a turn and one
desires to do what is needed in order to get the food; but to say that
one desires to do these things can be explained or elucidated
simply and solely in terms of the presence of a certain occurrence
called the desire for food. On this suggestion, the notion of
desiring to do is elucidated in terms of the logically prior notion of
a desire for something.
   Here I shall not dwell further upon the now obvious and fatal
objection to the identification of the desire for something with some
internal occurrence, an objection that is decisive in refuting the
contention that an action consists of the dual occurrence of bodily
movement and internal event. What I want to examine now is the
contention that desires for something are somehow logically more
primitive or basic than desires to do, and hence that it is possible
to understand the notion of a desire without invoking the concept of
an action. There are two questions here: first, is it possible to
want or to have a desire for something without wanting to do, and
secondly, is it possible that one may have what one wants but not want
to do anything with it?
   Consider the first question. If I want food but do nothing to
get it, that surely is intelligible. I may be unable to get it when,
for example, I am tied and gagged. Or, I may do nothing to get it
because I am fasting- doctor's orders, you know. Or, I may want this
food before me but since it disagrees with me I do nothing to get it.
But can I want this food, but not want to do anything to get it?
This much is possible: the food is on display in a shop, I have no
money, and the only way I can get it is by stealing. Now I do not
want to steal- least of all do I want to get it by stealing- let it
be that I want to refrain from doing anything that is stealing. Does
it follow that I do not want to get the food? Certainly not, since if
this did follow it would be logically impossible for anyone to be
tempted. The man who is tempted wants to get something despite the
fact that by getting it he will be doing the wrong thing; his trouble
is that he finds some difficulty in refraining from getting what he
wants to get, not that he does not want to get what he wants. If he
did not want to get what he wants, it would be impossible for him to
be tempted. Nor is it necessary to hold that if a man wants to get
food, where getting it would be stealing, that he must be tempted to
steal. 'Temptation' is a strong term. The man who is tempted
feels the urge to do something to which he has an aversion and must
resist it; but a man may want to get something but remain steadfastly
in control of his desire and feel no temptation. Now one way of
establishing complete self-control is by losing the desire for the
thing in question- this in fact is how the man who wants to lose the
urge for smoking succeeds. But one may, as in the case of our example
of the man who wants food, continue to want it and yet remain free
from temptation. If, indeed, we are inclined to deny that if a man
wants the food, he must want to get it, this is because of the failure
to recognize that, in the particular circumstances, the person would
be doing not one thing- getting the food- but at least two things:
not only would he be getting the food, but in doing this he would also
be stealing.
# 25
<349 TEXT J55>
The solution to the dilemma lay in the successful application of
coke to the smelting of iron ore (coal had long been used in the
further working of the pig). In Belgium this was first done in 1823
at Seraing. Almost simultaneously another British invention of great
importance made its first appearance. This occurred in 1821 when
Michael Orban built the first Belgian puddling furnace at
Grivegne?2e. Puddled iron and steel were vital to the new
engineering industries. The new techniques spread rapidly. By the
middle thirties there were more than twenty coke-fired blast furnaces
in operation.
   Their success was made easier by the fact that the Belgian
coalfields, especially those of Hainaut, were already producing much
more than other Continental fields, and had a long history of economic
importance behind them. The outcrop areas had been in use for many
centuries. In the coal industry, like the iron, technological change
was rapid in the early years of the century. Perhaps the most
important single advance was the harnessing of the steam-engine to
raise coal from the pit bottom to the surface. This took place first
at Bois-du-Luc in Hainaut in 187: four years later Michel Orban
brought the system to Lie?3ge province when he installed the new
winding gear at his Plomterie colliery (in both areas steam drainage
of water from the mines, initially with Newcomen engines, had long
been a commonplace). The ventilation of pits was improved. Their
safety was enhanced by developments such as the introduction of the
Davy safety-lamp (again a result of Orban's initiative at Plomterie)
in 1817. Joseph Chaudron with his cuvelage en fer found a
better way of strengthening mining shafts with a revetment of iron.
The production of coal grew rapidly. By the decade 1831-4 it was
averaging 2,917, tons 6per annum; in the following decade the
annual output was 4,815, tons.
   A small group of able and determined men was rapidly transforming
the economy of the country- the Orbans, the Bauwens, the Hudsons, the
Lelie?3vres; but above all the Cockerill dynasty, whose history, as
an epitome of Belgian industrial growth during the first half of the
century is worth sketching.
   Continental industrial advance in the early decades of the
nineteenth century was largely a matter of absorbing the lessons
afforded by the British example. Frequently it was an Englishman who
taught the lesson. It is ironical that the Englishman whose family
was to do more than any other to give Belgium the lead for many
decades should have been found out of work in the country which was
ultimately to advance further and faster along the road to industrial
achievement than any other Continental state. William Cockerill, the
founder of the line, was discovered by a member of the Verviers firm
of Simonis et Biolley in Hamburg in 1798. Within two years he was
producing textile machinery. In 182 his two sons, James and John,
built their own textile machinery factory in Lie?3ge. It was
immensely successful, and a decade later in 1812 was producing
spinning and carding machines at a rate of several hundreds a year.
The Cockerill interests expanded rapidly. An important stage was
reached in 1817 when their Seraing iron-works was built: an old
episcopal palace was converted into a machine shop for the
construction of steam-engines. In 1823 James retired from the firm,
making over his share to his remarkable brother. This was a
significant year for John in another direction also since it was then
that he disproved the belief, general at the time, that Belgian coal
would not coke satisfactorily. He supervised the installation of the
first coke-fed blast furnace in Belgium at Seraing. This plant was
capable of a daily output as high as ten tons, or more than most
charcoal furnaces could manage in a week. By 1829 the Lie?3ge
district was producing over 7, tons of pig-iron a year, chiefly at
Seraing. In 1835 the first continental-built railway locomotive was
constructed there. Two years later Cockerill's enthusiasm for
technical excellence led him to introduce the hot-blast system into
his Seraing plant, at a time when Neilson's invention was less than a
decade old, and still little used in Britain outside Scotland. In
184 shortly before the death of John Cockerill, his Seraing works
alone employed 2, men and were reckoned the largest in Europe
(eight years later Krupp, the colossus of the future, employed only 7
men). This man, described by Schnabel as the first 'truly princely
businessman since the days of the Fugger', travelled constantly to
foster his interests, which extended over most of western Europe north
of the Alps. His range of interest, knowledge and energy were
invaluable to the Belgian metal, engineering and textile industries.
   The new developments of coalfield industry had revolutionized the
scale of production of certain industries and lowered unit costs of
production; but it is easily possible to exaggerate the degree to
which the country outside the coalfields had come under the sway of
the new coal age. Older methods of production were not entirely
replaced even in those industries which were most changed by the new
conditions. This was true, for example, even of the iron industry.
In 1838 sixty-six out of the eighty-nine blast furnaces in the
country were still charcoal fed. It was not until the middle fifties
that the Semois iron industry in the Belgian Ardennes, which was
entirely dependent on charcoal, fell into decline, although its annual
capacity, which never much exceeded 1, tons, had for many years
been far outdistanced by Seraing.
   The implications of the new age were to be seen in Belgium not
only in the positive achievements of the age- the great growth in
coalfield industry and the exciting possibilities of the new and
developing railways; but equally strikingly in a negative sense. In
the 184s the largest of the traditional industries of Belgium, the
linen industry of Flanders, was in crisis, a fatal one as it proved,
because the Flemish spinsters could not compete with the machine-made
thread of the English mills. Since there were estimated to be 28,
spinsters in the linen industry in 184 (often, of course, only partly
dependent on their spinning for a livelihood) the negative side was as
keenly felt and widely recognized as the positive side represented by
the work of the Cockerills and their rivals. There was a whip to goad
as well as a carrot to entice.
   The new pattern of industrial life which was spreading to the
Continent from England affected Belgium a little earlier than other
countries. Within the Austrasian field it was two Belgian areas,
Hainaut and Lie?3ge, which were first to use the two key advances of
the new age extensively. The coke-fired blast furnace and the
steam-engine were commonplaces there when they were still rare in Nord
and almost unknown in the Ruhr. It was natural, therefore, that
Belgian men and Belgian money should have taken the lead within the
field even in French and German areas. Capital, technical expertise
and entrepreneurs proved quite footloose within the field in its
formative years, seeking employment always where the expectation of
profit was greatest. Since it is important to the theme of the other
chapters of this first part of the book to show that in such matters
national boundaries were seldom of great consequence in the early
years, it is worthwhile considering the extent of Belgian
participation in the development of areas of the Austrasian field
outside Belgium before considering Nord, Aachen and the Ruhr
separately.
The Belgian Influence in the Nord
   Between Nord and Hainaut there had long been close ties. The
Mons portion of the Hainaut coalfield had been occupied by France
during the War of the Spanish Succession from 171 to 179, and during
this short time French capital gained a foothold in the coal industry
of the area which proved long lasting. The industry of Nord became
heavily dependent upon coal drawn from this source during the
eighteenth century, and remained so to a lesser and declining extent
into the nineteenth. It was recognition of the danger of this
dependence combined with the high duties on Belgian coal which
prompted a persistent search for a French source of coal in Nord
itself (when this search culminated in a great success at Anzin in
1734, the vicomte de Desandrouin, whose tenacity under disappointment
led to the discovery, imported 2 Belgian miners and their families
from Charleroi to help to bring the new pits into production). In
spite of the development of local production, Nord's dependence on
Belgian coal remained considerable, and was a source of weakness and
distress in troubled times. Towards the end of the century in the
Revolutionary Wars an Austrian threat to cut off supplies of coal to
Nord caused consternation among the local manufacturers. They feared
to see 'their commerce and manufactures completely destroyed by
competition and the interruption in the supply of Austrian coal'.
Nord was as dependent upon Belgium for pig-iron for her metal
industries as she was for coal, even before the obsolescence of
charcoal smelting. The pays de Lie?3ge supplied the great
bulk of the needs of the Maubeuge and Valenciennes areas, the two
chief groups of metal-using communes in the department. There
were only two blast furnaces in Nord at the time of the Revolution, at
Hayon and Fourmies: and it was said that these were preserved from
unsuccessful competition only by the tariff on Belgian iron.
   At the turn of the century, therefore, French dependence
physically upon Belgian materials was very marked in the heavy
industries; but Belgian men and money were of little importance, and
she had no clear-cut technological lead. The new century brought no
immediate change. Indeed the second period of French occupation of
Belgian soil served only to accentuate the existing pattern. In 1814
the completion of the Mons-Conde?2 canal increased the ease with
which Mons coal might be sent to Nord (ten years later the opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed the passage of Mons coal by a cheap
water route all the way to the Paris market). As the years passed,
however, Belgium did more than supply coal and raw pig for the iron
industry: Belgian firms took a leading part in the establishment of
modern works in Nord. In 1849 the largest metal works in Nord was the
Belgian S. A. Hauts-fourneaux, forges et laminoirs de
Hautmont, near Maubeuge. It had been built in 1842, and employed
more than 4 workers. It was only one of several Belgian metal firms
which became established in the Maubeuge area in the forties and
fifties to gain access to the French market, or even, as in the case
of Victor Dupont at Sous-le-Bois to avoid labour difficulties at home.
Maubeuge lay less than thirty miles up the valley of the Sambre from
Charleroi, one of the two largest centres of the Belgian iron
industry. Its metal industries were an extension across the national
frontier of the industries of Charleroi: its economic life was
orientated to Charleroi. The penetration of Belgian industry and
entrepreneurs is therefore very understandable. Belgian influence
extended further, however. There was at least one Belgian metal
venture in the Valenciennes metal region- the rolling mills at
Blanc-Misseron: and Belgian influence in Nord's most important
industry, textiles, was important. Belgian capital and personnel were
seldom directly concerned in the industry; but Belgian textile
machinery found a ready market in Nord. Once again Cockerill was the
great stimulus. Mahaim, after describing the early days of the
Cockerill plant in Lie?3ge, added, 'Then, with an astonishing
rapidity in view of the slowness of communications, the clothing
centres of northern France took part in the re-equipment. Once
Cockerill was established at Lie?3ge, his cliente?3le appeared in
France.'
   While Belgian influence in Nord was considerable, it was less
marked here than in the parts of the Austrasian field which lay to the
east. Although Belgian coal and coke was indispensable to Nord;
Belgian firms in the van in the metal industry; <SIC> and Belgian
technological leadership often apparent, even in textiles, French
capital and industry could show reason for a claim to near equality.
# 226
<35 TEXT J56>
   In Italy, too, the part played by some of the provocative
post-war striking, openly aimed at factory-expropriation, in bringing
adherents and factory- and landowner-subscriptions to the Fascists, is
often ignored so that the story only seems to begin with the otherwise
inexplicable lorry-forays against Red centres, already in 1921 rising
to anarchic heights. Of course, the Italian governing classes were to
pay dearly for the mingled cynicism and cowardice with which they
finally allowed the apparatus of State to pass into the hands of the
leaders and organizers of the huge bands of street-fighters at whose
illegalities they had winked so long. The whole world was, in fact,
destined to pay for, before long, there were to be growing
apprehensions among the "advanced" as to whether Mussolini's
success would not attract power-hungry imitators in every land. In
Germany, for example, the ambitions of Adolf Hitler were certainly
stimulated, and in that suffering country there had already been such
threatening displays from the frustrated Right as the Kapp 6putsch
of 192, the Erzberger murder of 1921, and the Rathenau murder of
1922. The attempted Nazi seizure of Bavaria, when it came in November
1923, enlisted Ludendorff's support. And it was not insignificant
that the Daily Mail should publish, in 1923, its own version of
Italian Fascismo's history and that the Labour Publishing Company
should issue a very different account. As September 1923 had seen a
Spanish Army 6coup sweep aside the politicians and institute,
without any obvious sign of public displeasure, the authoritarian
re?2gime of Primo de Rivera, the I.L.P.'s urge to issue
Matteotti's The Fascisti Exposed, during 1924, becomes more
explicable. Yet Matteotti's murder in June 1924, a worse and more
widely-resented scandal than any he exposed when alive, failed
ultimately to weaken the Fascist grip on Italy and may in the long run
have served to strengthen it. Certainly, a third Dictatorship
appeared when General Pangalos seized control in Greece during the
summer of 1925.
   All this, as it turned out, was not yet the primary danger to the
"advanced" and to their social democracy. Pangalos's dictatorship,
after all, was short lived, and Primo, in Spain, never built up and
doubtless despised, the Mussolini demagogy, complete with fighting
street-rowdies. In fact, despite some ominous undertones even in
Britain and France, not to mention Mussolini's increasing grip of
Italy, it might be assumed that democratic prospects were on the mend
between 1925 and the great "economic blizzard" which began towards
the end of 1929. It was when German unemployment began rising again
catastrophically in 193 that Hitler, whose denunciation of Jews,
Versailles, and traitors, sold to Moscow or the Entente, had
become part of the German political scene, scented his first chances
of establishing an altogether more formidable dictatorship than
Mussolini's. And the street-fighter apparatus which some German
capitalists, fearful of Communism and Moscow, helped him to perfect,
began to assume, in the S.A. and the S.S., forms destined to
leave the Italian models far behind. Already by the summer of 1932, a
possible Storm Troopers' transfer from the harrying of Communists and
Jews in the streets to operations on the Polish and Czech frontiers
was being taken seriously at the German War Department.
   By 1932, of course, English theorists of the Left had been
speculating for some time on how a British Dictatorship threat might
come to be used against them and, in point of fact, several times
during the 192s Winston Churchill had been cast for the part of the
British Mussolini. But there were mockers among them who claimed that
the British ruling classes would never have to meditate the risks of
calling in Fascism if the Labour Movement allowed itself to be run out
of power as tamely as had been the case in 1924 and 1931. These
mockers of "gradualism" were in favour of assuming in advance that
yet another "conspiracy" would be attempted against any third
Labour Government, even if possessed of a Majority, and that such a
Government was therefore entitled to arm itself with drastic emergency
Powers usable against all manner of "capitalist sabotage". It was
a most dangerous line of advocacy, almost certain to lead not merely
to Fascism but to bloodshed and the complete antagonization of still
important Radical forces, yet for a time it became the policy of the
Socialist League led by Stafford Cripps.
   There had been Radicals who had prophesied that Labour would
itself breed British Fascism's would-be leader, and they had been
able, as justification, to point to Mussolini's violent Socialist past
and to Hitler's description of what he stood for as National
Socialism. And, of course, it provided an additional reason for
Radicals to refuse absorption into the Labour movement to find its
most discontented wing, after 1931, forming Mosley's New Party or
entering Cripps's Socialist League or, finally, like John Strachey,
preaching a break-away into Leninite Communism. As Mosley might well
have become a "Man of Destiny" if Hitler's success against Britain
had been greater than it was, some remarks on his strange political
career between 1918 and 193 are justifiable. The heir to a baronetcy
and considerable wealth, he had, after some service in France, entered
the "Coupon Parliament" at the age of twenty-two and married Lord
Curzon's daughter in 192. But, before long, the urge to make a mark
had led him on to activities on the Irish Question which his
brother-Conservatives found unpardonable, and after four years as
Conservative M.P. for Harrow between 1918 and 1922, he had to
overcome party resistance to retain his seat in the Bonar Law
Parliament as an Independent Conservative. By the time of the first
Labour Ministry in 1924, he was lending Labour "Independent"
support for some time before he announced his conversion. Thereafter
he fought his way back into the House for Smethwick as a Socialist,
was admitted to the friendship and confidence of MacDonald and
accompanied him on a continental tour in the autumn of 1928. When he
entered MacDonald's second Government as Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster with a place on Mr. Thomas's Committee for combating
Unemployment, there were already those who predicted that he would
succeed to the party Leadership. Possibly his ultimate chances were
made no worse by the fact that he resigned in May 193 when, despite
growing unemployment, he found virtually all his suggestions,
summarized in the once-notorious "Mosley Memorandum", treated as
inadmissible.
   Mosley's long and pertinacious struggle during many ensuing
months to convert the Leadership or force its hand, with Back-Bench
aid, had some remarkable features- particularly during the Llandudno
Conference of October 193 and at the extraordinary meeting of the
Parliamentary Labour Party held on January 27, 1931. It was, to some
extent, because he came so near to dividing the Party dangerously
between "Mosleyites" and the rest that the Leadership succeeded in
defeating him and never more effectively than when urging, privately,
that Mosley was merely a rich young man whose ambition was
over-reaching itself. Mosley persisted, until March 1931, with the
effort to create an Action Group within the party but, under the frown
of official disapproval, its numbers sank from forty to twenty. When
the final break came, only six Members in all were available as the
foundation of a New Party and the six included Mosley himself and his
wife, Lady Cynthia. The election of October 1931, moreover, came in
circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to the New Party which polled
badly and lost all Parliamentary representation.
   Though a great deal is still fundamentally unexplained in the
story of the New Party's evolution towards an Anti-Semitic Fascism, it
is not impossible to find some guidance by checking the twenty-four
constituencies before whom New Party candidates placed themselves.
Stepney and Whitechapel were two of those constituencies destined,
before long, to supply a steady stream of Blackshirt recruits and to
become the nucleus of metropolitan Fascism, and both those areas had,
for a couple of generations, heard much complaint of Jewish
immigrants, Jewish employers, Jewish business methods, Jewish
landlords, and much else. It only needed reports of what the Nazis
were doing, especially after Hitler became Chancellor, for Blackshirt
contingents to become available not merely in the East End, but in
Islington, Hackney, Stoke Newington, and many other quarters of London
where there were prosperous Jewish businesses and yet much native
unemployment and distress. Of course, the very name Blackshirt, and
the uniform, is an indication that it was Mussolini, rather than
Hitler, who was being originally imitated. And though some of
Mosley's Action associates like Oliver Baldwin and John Strachey were
shocked into a complete break with him when they first discovered him
sanctioning, in his party's rooms and meeting-places, exercises in
physical force, there was a possible defence in the plea, that after
he had left the Labour Party, Mosley's own meetings were broken up by
dangerous mobs, and that in Birmingham and Glasgow police protection
had to be secured.
   It has, of course, been the fashion of Communists and Fascists to
demand complete freedom of speech and assembly for themselves until
they are prepared to destroy it and all the other democratic
"liberties" by force. And the Radical tradition of tolerance for
the extremest views is so strong in Britain that matters have normally
reached a dangerous stage before any widespread assent can be obtained
for "coercion". And if "Reds" were still, in 1934 and 1935,
being allowed to experiment unceasingly with organizing "Unemployed
Marches and Demonstrations" that might become something more, the
case for exceptional vigilance and severity against the Blackshirts
was correspondingly weaker. Yet by 1934 a British Fascist movement of
some potential strength was certainly being reared, already capable of
attracting support from those who feared "Red" plans and activities
and wanted Britain rescued, besides, from the depths, as they
considered it, of the ignoble pacifism to which Radicalism and
Socialism had brought the country. The most formidable patron the
Blackshirts acquired, for a time, was the great newspaper magnate,
Lord Rothermere, though he finally shrank, under the stimulus of an
enormous roar of "progressive" indignation, from the odium of
swallowing virulent Anti-Semitism with his Anti-Bolshevism. As
Rothermere put it himself:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   I refused to give more than ordinary publicity to Sir Oswald
Mosley's Blackshirt movement the moment I discovered it had an
anti-Jewish bias. I supported it at first with the idea of promoting
a right wing appanage of the Conservative Party, which should form a
counterblast to left wing activities. Mosley's correct procedure was
to develop a Youth movement inspired by anti-Bolshevist ideals,
instead of basing himself on Continental models which, obviously,
would not appeal to our British mentality or temperament.
<END QUOTE>
   Yet if he withdrew special patronage from Mosley's Blackshirts,
Rothermere had an obvious admiration for the services he considered
Hitler and Mussolini to have rendered their countries as well as a
readiness to lead a great Air-Rearmament Campaign which constituted
him <SIC> one of the hopes in Britain of those who wanted the
country to be at once too strong and too friendly for the Dictators to
dream of attacking. It was, perhaps, as well therefore for the
general cause of "progress" in Britain that all parties in
Parliament decided that they had had enough of provocative Fascist
tactics in the East End after some notorious affrays in October 1936
faced a dismayed nation with the prospect of a repetition in Britain
of full Nazi-style street hostilities. And Sir John Simon's Public
Order Bill, to ban the wearing of uniforms in connection with
political objects and the maintenance by private persons of
associations of military or quasi-military character, was, if
specially welcome to Radicals and Socialists, hardly opposed during
its rapid progress through Parliament in November and December 1936.
Fascism, however, if deprived of one of its most dangerous and
provocative means of display, remained a possible peril to
"progressives" till the Fascist Dictators were defeated and
destroyed.
   Yet for years the destruction that finally overtook the Fascist
Dictators seemed most unlikely and the chances to be the other way as
the notorious case of the Spanish "progressives" seemed to show
between 1936 and 1939.
# 217
<351 TEXT J57>
He yielded. On 25th January he issued two strongly worded Cabinet
Orders. The first reiterated the command that Bismarck was to be kept
informed of the course of military operations, and directed Moltke to
take such effective steps to do so that Bismarck would have no further
cause for complaint; while the second expressly ordered that in any
correspondence with members of the French Government or Delegation
which might have any political significance, and in the drafting of
any replies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was always to be
consulted. The royal decision was unequivocal and settled the matter.
   The reply which Moltke at first projected was virtually a letter
of resignation. The royal order, he said, was "ungna"dig",
un-Gracious. His communications with Trochu, he maintained, had been
strictly military. All he had withheld from Bismarck was information
and plans which would be of value to the Chancellor only if he as well
as Moltke were advising the King about operations; and rather than
have the war conducted by such a dual authority Moltke declared
himself ready "to leave the relevant operations and the
responsibility for them to the Federal Chancellor alone. I await",
he concluded grimly, "Your Imperial Majesty's most gracious decision
on the matter." The letter which he actually sent, however, was
considerably milder. In it he merely defended his conduct with
dignity, complained at Bismarck's repeated and unjustified
accusations, asked for a clear ruling about his relationship with the
Chancellor, and requested the Emperor's protection against any further
attacks. The Imperial secretaries drafted an anodyne reply, but it
was not sent. There was no need. On 28th January an armistice was
signed with the Government of National Defence. For the preservation
of peaceful relations within Royal Headquarters it had come not a
moment too soon.
   
   Bismarck's 6de?2marche of 18th January took effect almost
immediately. Two days later, on the evening of 2th January, Trochu
sent his request for an armistice to bury the dead after Buzenval.
The Kaiser at once referred the request, not to Moltke, but to
Bismarck; and Bismarck grimly refused it. The brusqueness of the
refusal, the failure to take advantage of what was generally sensed in
Versailles to be the beginning of the end, seems so out of keeping
with Bismarck's desire to renew peace negotiations that the
explanation must surely be sought in Bismarck's attitude to the
earlier exchanges between Moltke and Trochu. In this new overture he
may have seen another move in the negotiations which he believed the
soldiers to be conducting behind his back, and it is not surprising
that he should have taken advantage of his new established dominance
to end them. In any case he was convinced that after the failure of
the Buzenval sortie capitulation could not be long delayed, and then
the peace-proposals of the Imperial party could be seriously
considered. Cle?2ment Duvernois was expected at any moment. But
Duvernois did not come: the stubbornness of the emigre?2 group in
Brussels threw his whole time-table out of joint, and before he was
ready to talk to Bismarck Jules Favre had reached Versailles.
   Favre arrived at German Headquarters late in the evening of 23rd
January. His journey followed a day of stormy debate while the
Government in Paris discussed whether he should negotiate for an
armistice for the fortress of Paris only or for the whole of France.
The question was left open: he was instructed only to discover what
terms were available, without betraying the desperate state of the
city's supplies. Favre himself hoped to secure, as a minimum, that
there should be facilities given for the free election of a National
Assembly to decide the question of war or peace; that there should be
no entry of Prussian troops into Paris and no imprisonment in Germany
of the garrison, and that civil war should not be provoked by an
attempt to disarm the Garde Nationale. Failing these
conditions, he was prepared to threaten a renewal of the fighting and
ultimately a total surrender which would compel the Germans to accept
complete responsibility for the civil administration of Paris.
   Bismarck was able to bluff much more effectively than Favre. As
at Ferrie?3res, he was able to state truthfully that he was in
negotiation with the Empress, who alone represented lawful authority,
for the summoning of the only legal representative body in France, the
Corps Le?2gislatif. Favre's project of a freely elected Assembly
he declared to be no longer realisable: under the dictatorial
republicanism of Gambetta elections would not be free. He was
prepared however to talk in general terms about conditions for Paris.
He agreed that the garrison should not be sent as prisoners to
Germany, where their presence would only be an embarrassment; he
considered that although opinion in the Army and in Germany would
insist on a triumphal entry into the city, the scope of this might be
strictly limited; and while refusing to waive the disarmament of the
Garde Nationale, he suggested that the most politically
reliable battalions alone should be allowed to keep their arms. The
contrast between these terms and the draconian conditions demanded by
Moltke speaks for itself. By the end of the first evening's discussion
it was evident that the chances of agreement were good. Bismarck said
nothing to the curious bystanders as he left the room in which he had
been closeted alone with Favre, but he whistled a hunting call of
unmistakable meaning: the chase was over.
   Next day, 24th January, both negotiators came into the open.
Cle?2ment Duvernois had still not arrived, and Bismarck consented to
abandon his negotiations with the Empress if he could reach agreement
with the Government of National Defence. In return Favre agreed to
sign an armistice covering the whole of France, and to ensure that no
resistance by the Delegation would be allowed to stand in the way of
its implementation. Only the question of the armament of the
Garde Nationale remained unsettled, and on this Bismarck,
faced by Favre's convincing assurance that it would be physically
impossible to disarm them without a civil war, was eventually to
yield. For the rest, the Government in Paris with some reason
accepted Bismarck's terms as "inespe?2re?2es". Thanks to
the Chancellor's diplomatic moderation, the honour of the city and the
troops who had defended it would remain intact. On 25th January Favre
was therefore authorised to sign an armistice for three weeks, to
enable a National Assembly to meet at Bordeaux and finally resolve the
question of war or peace.
   So far Bismarck had carried on the negotiations single-handed.
Now the military had unavoidably to be called in to settle the
details of the armistice. It was unfortunate that this stage in the
negotiations coincided exactly with the crisis of the quarrel between
the civil and military authorities; and Bismarck rubbed salt into the
wounds of his defeated rivals by insisting that the agreement with the
French should take the form, not of a Capitulation, which would
signify surrender, but of a Convention, which indicated only a
negotiated settlement between equals. Moltke began attending
conferences on 26th January, the day after his rebuff by the Emperor.
The French negotiators noted, without fully appreciating the cause,
the unpleasant contrast between his grim, unsmiling dourness and the
easy affability of Bismarck, and Bismarck openly stigmatised Moltke's
attitude as mean, pettifogging and unrealistic. But the French had
trouble enough with their own military representatives. Trochu's oath
never to capitulate made it impossible for him to undertake the
responsibility of negotiating surrender, and Ducrot had never been
forgiven by the German Emperor for his apparent breach of parole after
Sedan. Favre therefore found to accompany him a certain General
Beaufort d'Hautpoul, who proved quite incapable of carrying on
negotiations. The French attributed his peculiar condition to
honourable mortification; the Germans, less charitably, said he was
drunk. He was succeeded after one embarrassing day by General de
Valdan, Vinoy's Chief of Staff, by whom, on 28th January, the
armistice was signed.
   The armistice was to take effect in Paris immediately- indeed on
Bismarck's suggestion the bombardment and counter-bombardment had
ceased two days earlier- and was to come into action elsewhere in
France in three days' time. It was to last until 19th February,
during which time full facilities would be given for an Assembly to be
freely elected and to meet at Bordeaux, where it would debate whether
the war should continue and on what terms peace should be made.
Meanwhile Paris was to pay a war-indemnity of two hundred million
francs. It was to yield up its perimeter forts and dismount the guns
from its walls, but the ground between the forts and the city would be
considered neutral, and no German troops would enter Paris. The
Germans would provide full facilities for the rapid re-provisioning of
the city. 12, men of the Paris garrison would retain their arms,
an essential minimum to preserve order, as Favre insisted. The rest
were to surrender their arms and remain in Paris until the end of the
armistice; when, if peace had not yet been made, they were to be taken
over by the Germans as prisoners-of-war.
   The terms for the rest of the country were less satisfactory to
the French. It was agreed that a military demarcation line should be
drawn, from which both armies should withdraw ten kilometres; but
Favre and his military advisers depended entirely on the Germans for
information about the position of the existing front line, and Moltke
was in no mood to interpret doubtful cases to his opponents'
advantage. The agreed line was to involve at several points the
withdrawal of French troops from positions which they had quite
securely held. Moreover about the operations still in progress in the
Jura both Favre and Bismarck were equally ill-informed. Favre knew
only that the fortress of Belfort was still intact and that Bourbaki's
relieving force still held the field. To enforce an armistice in this
area might be to spoil the chance of a military victory which would
considerably strengthen the French hand when it came to negotiating
the final peace. Moltke, though he had received little news from the
swiftly moving Manteuffel, was sufficiently confident of the outcome
to allow Favre to nurse his illusions; so by common agreement military
operations were allowed to continue in the department of Jura, Co?5te
d'Or, and Doubs. When Favre telegraphed the news of the armistice to
Gambetta on the evening of 28th January he made the astonishing and
notorious mistake of failing to inform him of this omission. How this
error contributed to the final agonies of the Army of the East we have
already seen.
   Moltke admitted the validity of the political considerations
which had led Bismarck to conclude the Convention with the Government
of National Defence, but he made no secret of his dissatisfaction with
the moderation of its terms. In this he spoke for the Army, but not
for the Army alone. His views were widely echoed throughout Germany.
On the French side it was the civilians, Gambetta and the politicians
of the Paris Clubs, who wished to prolong the war after all but a tiny
minority of their military advisers had urged the conclusion of peace.
The relaxing of the tension which was brought about by even a
temporary suspension of hostilities undermined the strength of the
extremists on both sides. The parties of guerre a?3 outrance
dwindled to impotent if vociferous cliques at Bordeaux and
Versailles, able to embarrass the peace-makers but not to thwart them.
That this was so in the French ranks was due to the openly expressed
determination of the French people, through their elected
representatives, to have peace at any cost. But Bismarck, in dealing
with his own military party, did not enjoy a comparable advantage.
Instead public opinion in Germany as overwhelmingly supported a peace
of extermination as did that in the Allied nations in 1918. If the
opposition to Bismarck at Versailles which had been at its height on
the eve of the armistice abated rapidly once the armistice was signed,
it was not because the military party was accepting defeat with a good
grace.
# 229
<352 TEXT J58>
Secondly, even if the bitter struggle for the hegemony of the
peninsula was punctuated by spells of mutual tolerance, these respites
did not last long. The years when the three rival cults were
celebrated on an equal footing at Toledo had no more permanent result
than had the fleeting Christian-Muslim rapprochement achieved in
Sicily under the rule of Frederick =2, Stupor Mundi, in the
same period. In the fifteenth century, at any rate, the average
Iberian Christian- like any other European- never referred to the
Muslim and the Jewish faiths without adding some injurious epithet.
Hatred and intolerance, not sympathy and understanding, for alien
creeds and races was the general rule. "Moors" (i.e.
Muslims), Jews, and Gentiles were alike regarded as being doomed to
hell fire in the next world. It inevitably followed that they were
not likely to be treated with much consideration by Christians in this
one.
   The intolerance was not, of course, only on one side. The
Christian crusade had its counterpart in the Muslim jihad, or
holy war against the unbeliever. The orthodox Muslim regarded with
horror all those who would "give associates to God"; and this was
just what the Christians did with their Trinity, their Virgin Mary,
and (to some extent) with their saints.
   Medieval Europe was a harsh and rugged school, and the softer
graces of civilization were not more widely cultivated in Portugal
than they were elsewhere. A turbulent and treacherous nobility and
gentry; an ignorant and lax clergy; doltish, if hard-working, peasants
and fishermen; and a town rabble of artisans and day-labourers, like
the Lisbon mob described by Ec?6a de Queiroz five centuries later,
"fanatical, filthy, and ferocious"- these constituted the social
classes from which the pioneer discoverers and colonizers were drawn.
Anyone who doubts this need only read the graphic pages of Ferna?4o
Lopes, "the best chronicler of any age or nation," as Robert
Southey described him.
   The first stage of the overseas expansion of Europe can be
regarded as beginning with the capture of Ceuta by the Portuguese in
1415 and culminating in the circumnavigation of the globe by the
Spanish ship Victoria in 1519-22. The Portuguese and Spaniards
had their precursors in the conquest of the Atlantic Ocean, but the
efforts of these adventurers had not changed the course of world
history. Vikings had voyaged to North America in the early Middle
Ages, but the last of their isolated settlements on Greenland had
succumbed to the rigours of the weather and the attacks of the Eskimo
before the end of the fifteenth century. Italian and Catalan galleys
from the Mediterranean
<ILLUSTRATION>
had boldly ventured into the Atlantic on voyages of discovery in the
late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; but what they sought
is uncertain, and what they found is equally obscure, though they may
well have sighted Madeira and some of the Azores. Why did the
Iberians succeed where their Mediterranean predecessors had failed?
and why did Portugal take the lead when the Biscayan seamen were as
good as any in Europe?
   Historians are still far from agreed on the precise answers to
these questions, but the main impulses behind what is known as the
"Age of Discovery" evidently came from a mixture of religious,
economic, strategic and political factors. These were by no means
always mixed in the same proportions; and motives inspired by Mammon
were often inextricably blended with things pertaining to Caesar and
to God. At the risk of oversimplification, it may, perhaps, be said
that the four main motives that inspired the Portuguese were, in
chronological but overlapping order, (=1) crusading zeal, (=2)
desire for Guinea gold, (=3) the quest for Prester John, and (=4)
the search for spices. An important contributory factor was that,
during the whole of the fifteenth century, Portugal was a united
kingdom which experienced only one brief episode of civil strife. The
consolidation of the power of the Portuguese Crown during this period
forms a marked contrast with the confused situation obtaining in the
rest of Europe. France was distracted by the closing stages of the
Hundred Years War- 1415 was the date of the battle of Agincourt as
well as of the capture of Ceuta- and by rivalry with Burgundy;
England by the struggle with France and the wars of the Roses; and
Spain and Italy by dynastic and other internal problems.
   The seizure of Ceuta in 1415 and, more important, its retention,
were probably inspired mainly by crusading ardour to deal a blow at
the Infidel, and by the desire of the half-English princes of Portugal
to be dubbed knights on the field of battle in a spectacular manner.
Economic and strategic motives may also have played a part, since
Ceuta was both a thriving commercial centre and a bridgehead for an
invasion across the straits of Gibraltar. It has been suggested that
the fertile corn-growing regions in the hinterland also formed an
attraction for the Portuguese, whose own country was even then
normally deficient in cereals. Ceuta was one of the terminal ports
for the Trans-Sahara gold-trade, though how far the Portuguese knew
this before their capture of the city is uncertain. But the
occupation of Ceuta undoubtedly enabled them to obtain some
information about the Negro lands of the Upper Niger and Senegal river
regions, where the gold came from. They soon began to see that they
might, perhaps, establish contact with those lands by sea, and so
divert the gold-trade from the "caravans of the Old Sahara" and the
Muslim middlemen of Barbary. They had the more incentive to do this
since Western Europe in general, and Portugal in particular, were
then suffering a serious shortage of precious metals. This was partly
due to the drain of silver and gold to the East, to pay for spices and
other Oriental exports, and partly to the insufficient production of
the Central European mines.
   The crusading impulse and search for gold were soon reinforced by
the quest for Prester John. This mythical potentate was vaguely
located in the "Indies"- an elastic and shifting term that often
embraced Ethiopia and East Africa, as well as what little was known of
Asia. The passage of time, romantic travellers' tales- of which
Marco Polo's supply the classic example- and wishful thinking, all
combined to build up the late medieval belief that Prester John was a
mighty, if probably schismatical Christian priest-king. His domains
were believed to lie somewhere in the rear of the Islamic powers that
occupied a wide belt of territory from Morocco to the Black Sea, thus
cutting off Christendom from direct contact with the peoples of Asia
and the isolated Coptic Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. From 142
onwards, occasional Abyssinian monks and envoys reached Europe, and at
least one of them got as far as Lisbon in 1452; but the Portuguese,
like most other people, still seem to have had only a hazy idea of
what or where his country was.
   The mixed motivation behind the Portuguese overseas expansion was
explicitly recognized in the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex
(January 8th, 1455), which categorically commended the crusading
inspiration of the Infante Dom Henrique and his desire to reach the
mysterious Christian potentate(s) of the Indies by circumnavigating
Africa. This Bull also recognized the commercial motive inherent in
Portuguese expansion by granting the King of Portugal and his
successors the monopoly of the trade with the inhabitants of the newly
discovered
<ILLUSTRATIONS>
regions, subject to the proviso that the sale of war material to the
enemies of the Faith was forbidden. Finally, it may be mentioned that
as the Portuguese pushed their exploratory voyages down the west coast
of Africa, they added the acquisition of Negro slaves to that of
Guinea gold, and the search for spices to the quest for Prester John.
The spices, however, only appear as a major motive after the death of
Prince Henry in 146, by which time the West African slave-trade was
an established fact.
   The Portuguese voyages of discovery and trade down the west coast
of Africa did not really get going until Cape Bojador (or, more
probably, Cape Juby, which was then apparently known by the former
name) was rounded in 1434, after many futile efforts. The voyages
then continued systematically, and a great spurt of progress was made
during the eight-year regency (144-48) of Dom Pedro, elder brother of
the better publicized Dom Henrique, belatedly and somewhat
inappropriately named "the Navigator." Prior to his assumption of
the Regency, Dom Pedro had been violently critical of the policy of
holding Ceuta, and had shown no particular interest in the voyages of
discovery patronized by his brother. But once in power, as so often
happens, Dom Pedro adopted wholeheartedly some of the policies that he
had previously criticized, or to which he had been indifferent. All
talk of abandoning Ceuta in exchange for the freedom of his youngest
brother, Dom Fernando (who had been held as a prisoner by the Moors
since a disastrous attack on Tangier in 1437), was dropped, and Dom
Pedro actively backed the voyages of discovery and the colonization of
the Atlantic islands. Nevertheless, Dom Henrique's share in these
twin enterprises was the more important in the long run. The voyages
themselves, and the colonization
<ILLUSTRATIONS>
of Madeira and the Azores, which began soon after their discovery- or
re-discovery- in 1419-27 were largely financed from the revenues of
the military Order of Christ, of which Dom Henrique was the
administrator and governor (but not the Grand Master as is often
stated) from 142 until his death forty years later. Some of the
leading Lisbon merchants also had a hand in financing and organizing
these voyages. From 147 to 1475 they were leased on the basis of a
monopoly contract to a certain Ferna?4o Gomes, under whose
administration a large stretch of the Guinea coast was opened up to
Portuguese enterprise and trade.
   It is still uncertain how much was directly due to government
initiative and to resources supplied by the Crown or by the Order of
Christ, and how much was due to private enterprise, or to both the
Crown and the merchant-adventurers acting in conjunction. But it can
be said without undue simplification that right from the beginning,
the planning, organization, and financing of these voyages owed a
great deal to intelligent government initiative and support, as
personified in the activities of Dom Henrique, Dom Pedro, and, above
all, of King Dom Joa?4o =2 in the final stages (1481-95). In other
words, as C. R. Beazley pointed out over sixty years ago, Prince
Henry's achievement was that he "altered the conditions of maritime
exploration by giving permanence, organization, and governmental
support to a movement which had up to this time proved disappointing
for lack of those very means."
   It was this steady government support that gave the Portuguese
the edge over their Spanish neighbours and rivals, who for long
contested the papal awards that granted a monopoly of the West African
coastal trade to the former. But save during the years 1475-148,
when the Spanish adventurers made determined but unsuccessful attempts
to secure the lion's share of
<ILLUSTRATIONS>
the Guinea trade for themselves, the Spaniards did not receive the
same consistent and energetic support from their rulers as did the
Portuguese from theirs. Moreover, for much of the fifteenth century,
Spain's cereal and financial problems were less acute than were those
of Portugal, and therefore the Spaniards had not the same economic
incentives to seek new lands to conquer or to exploit. Finally, the
existence of the Moorish kingdom of Granada on Andalusian soil, the
prior commitments of the Crown of Aragon in the Mediterranean, and the
need to strengthen the Crown of Castile against unruly vassals at
home, provided powerful distractions that were not present to the same
extent in Portugal.
   The actual voyages down the barren and featureless Saharan coast
presented no exceptional difficulties to experienced seamen, other
than the legendary but none the less real terrors of the unknown.
These latter included the common, though not universal, belief that
the torrid zone was too hot to support life, and that the Mar
Tenebroso, or "Sea of Darkness" south of Cape Nun, was too
shallow and too dangerous for navigation.
# 233
<353 TEXT J59>
   Lytton's telegram announcing his intentions reached the India
Office on 9 September: Cranbrook was not at this time in London: he
was at Braemore in the north of Scotland. He received his copy of the
telegram on the 12th. Meanwhile Horace Walpole, his private
secretary, a permanent civil servant, who was suspicious of Lytton's
policies, had read Lytton's telegram, noticed that it proposed to send
the mission off from Peshawar in less than a week, and decided that
the telegram ought to be answered. He, therefore, at the same time as
he sent Cranbrook his copy of the telegram, sent also a copy to
Beaconsfield at Hughenden and one to Salisbury at the Foreign Office.
The effect on both of them, and on Cranbrook when he read it, was
immediate. To all of them it seemed that the proposal to insist on
the expulsion of the Russian mission before the beginning of
Anglo-Afghan negotiations would be 'an affront which a great power
could not endure'. It would intensify Russian activity in
Afghanistan; it would bring the Russian government into direct
conflict with the government of India; it would endanger peace in
Europe and it must, therefore, before it was attempted, be considered
very fully by the Cabinet.
   The Cabinet, however, could not meet. Its members were scattered
over the country houses of England and Scotland. It was clear, from
Lytton's telegram, that he did not know of the diplomatic protest to
St. Petersburg and did not intend to wait for a Russian answer. The
impression made by the telegram, as Horace Walpole found when he
visited Salisbury on the morning of the 11th, was the thought that
~'Lord Lytton <was> going a little too fast and plunging us into an
Afghan war'. The effects of such a war would be felt not only in
Europe, but also in the constituencies. Less than a week later the
prime minister was noticing 'symptoms... by no means confined to one
party' of a 'strong and rising feeling respecting this Afghan
business'. 'So long', he told Salisbury, 'as the country
thought they had obtained "Peace with 1honor", the conduct of
H.M. Government was popular, but if the country finds there is no
peace, they will be apt also to conclude there is no honour'. And
his conclusion was not that Lytton should make the pace but that
Salisbury himself, in Cranbrook's absence, should make sure that
Lytton was properly informed of the views of a Government that would
need to act 'with decision and firmness'.
   It is, as we have seen, by no means clear that the decision to
send the diplomatic protest to Russia on 19 August had been
accompanied by a decision to delay Chamberlain's mission until a reply
had arrived from St. Petersburg. So long as it was imagined that
Lytton knew his limitations, Salisbury seems to have attached little
importance to the protest. But as soon as it seemed that Lytton might
be steering towards war, it comes forward from the back of Salisbury's
mind as an occasion, or excuse, for delaying Lytton's action in India:
and as a move in the parliamentary game which would, when the time
comes, show that the British government had done its best to avoid war
and accomplish by peaceful diplomacy what Afghan or Russian obstinacy
had made impossible. Beaconsfield, as soon as he saw the telegram of
8 September and had talked to Salisbury, wrote tartly to Cranbrook
regretting that Lytton seemed not to know of the protest. Salisbury,
on the 11th, after correspondence with Beaconsfield, telegraphed
Horace Walpole to ask Cranbrook urgently for authority to stop Lytton
sending the mission until the Russian reply had arrived. Cranbrook,
meanwhile, feeling the same way in Scotland, had sent a telegram to
Walpole forbidding the departure of the mission until further orders.
On the 14th, two days before Chamberlain was supposed to start, this
message was in Lytton's hands.
   When Lytton received the telegram, however, he was in no mood to
delay. The events he had set on foot in August could not now be
controlled. Chamberlain was already in Peshawar; Cavagnari had
committed himself in the Khyber: the native ambassador had left for
Kabul and the wide publicity Lytton had given to the mission through
his private press officer in India, made it difficult to give the
slightest sign of turning back. His information about the state of
opinion in England came mainly through Burne in the India Office.
Burne had been Lytton's private secretary in India until he returned
to England with a sick wife in the spring of 1878. When his wife died
and he returned to work at the India Office, he spent much time and
money providing Lytton with telegraphic reports of the state of
feeling in England and of conditions in the India Office. By the
middle of August he had spent, out of Lytton's pocket, +197 on
private telegrams. Burne was not altogether a reliable guide. From
his telegrams Lytton gathered, what was only half true, that there was
much support for him in Afghan matters. He learnt from Burne's
letters, also, what he thought he knew himself, that Cranbrook was too
much under Salisbury's thumb, was lazy, well-meaning, and 'timid'.
Nor did he believe, or imagine anyone else seriously to believe, that
the protest to St. Petersburg would achieve any result. Finally,
perhaps most important of all, he knew that Cranbrook was not in
London when the restraining telegrams were sent and he saw in them the
influence, not altogether friendly and certainly not at all sensible,
of Lord Salisbury. These things encouraged him to disobey.
   On the 13th, together with the telegram in which he was first
told about the protest to St. Petersburg, Lytton also received one
to say that Cranbrook would not send detailed approval and
modification of Chamberlain's instructions until the Russian reply
arrived in London. On the 17th, Lytton heard that an abstract of this
reply had been received from Plunkett, the 6charge?2 d'affaires
in St. Petersburg: he heard also that it was not satisfactory. But
he was given no authority to send the mission off and no authority had
arrived on the morning of the 21st. On the 16th he had, in accordance
with Cranbrook's telegram of the 13th, postponed Chamberlain's
departure from Peshawar for five days. On the 2th, he ordered
Chamberlain to move forward to Jamrud: on the 21st, these five days
having passed, he told him to enter Afghanistan.
   In sending Chamberlain forward in this way, Lytton did not wish
to provoke war. He had written a friendly, though overbearing, letter
to Sher Ali on the 14th asking again for his cooperation. He did not
suppose that Sher Ali would refuse to admit the mission; and he hoped
that Chamberlain would, within a week, be established in Kabul. His
purpose in forcing the pace was therefore not so much to commit the
cabinet to a policy of which it did not approve, as to achieve, by
rapid action on the spot, a success which he supposed the Cabinet to
desire but which, because it was hampered by all the stupidities of
'democratic' England, and wrestling in the clutches of 'that
deformed and abortive offspring of perennial political fornication,
the present British constitution', it could not easily authorize or
agree upon. At the same time, the publicity with which the mission
was sent to Jamrud, gave to its conduct an appearance of deliberate
finality which was no accident. Chamberlain had not wanted to go
forward to Jamrud to ask for entry into Afghanistan. He, a great
frontier officer with the great frontier officer's personal prestige,
did not want to risk a snubbing at the Afghan frontier which would
affect that prestige whatever might be done afterwards to avenge it.
He would have preferred to find out from Peshawar whether his mission
would be admitted; and, if it were refused, to take whatever action
might be necessary from there. But for Lytton this was not enough.
This was a spectacular moment. This was Sher Ali's last chance. A
great public affront, one of India's greatest frontier officers,
waiting on the Afghan border and turned away by the commander of an
outlying Afghan post- this, if Sher Ali were really hostile, must
certainly convince the Cabinet, and might even impress the Opposition.
Chamberlain was chosen because he was, of active Indian frontier
statesmen, the greatest pupil of Lord Lawrence. Lawrence, the
greatest name amongst Lytton's critics, had attacked Lytton's frontier
policy with mounting hostility ever since he arrived in India. If a
lawrentian of Chamberlain's importance were snubbed by the Afghans,
Lawrence would have an important weapon removed from his critical
armoury. So Lytton in India, like Beaconsfield and Salisbury in
London, continued his political posturings.
   Chamberlain moved from Peshawar to Jamrud on 2 September. On
the following morning he sent Cavagnari and Colonel Jenkins, the
commander of the mission's escort, together with a small section of
the escort, on to Ali Musjid to ask for admission to Afghanistan.
They were halted by Afghan troops a mile from the fort and forbidden
to come closer. Faiz Mohamed, the commander of the garrison (whom
Cavagnari knew well), asked Cavagnari to give him time to refer the
request to Kabul. Cavagnari refused. He said that unless Faiz
Mohamed specifically forbade the mission to advance, it would advance
on the following morning. Faiz Mohamed replied that he would attack
the mission if it attempted to pass Ali Musjid. Cavagnari and Jenkins
thereupon returned to Jamrud and reported their failure to
Chamberlain. Chamberlain reported the failure to Lytton: and Lytton,
from Simla, ordered Chamberlain to return to Peshawar. So ended, he
thought, the 'first round of the rubber'. He could now prepare to
coerce Sher Ali.
   With the repulse of the mission, Lytton's actions on the frontier
became clear and vigorous: Sher Ali had shown himself to be hostile:
of that in Lytton's mind there could be no doubt. He must be upset:
his treachery demanded his downfall. To that end all the forces of
the government of India must be turned. The problem, in this respect,
was a problem in political warfare, how may one best upset an
inconvenient neighbour? Also, how may one with the smallest
expenditure of energy establish a new re?2gime in Kabul? Lytton was
not a soldier; he was a diplomat who had spent the better part of his
professional life in comparatively junior positions in civilized
capitals. He had an almost vicious contempt for military
'bumpkins' when they could not understand that large political
objects may often best be accomplished by employing a small military
force. If he could arrange the deposition of Sher Ali without
fighting a battle, could see an anglophile emir settled on the throne
and could make a treaty with him, then it would be the merest
professional obstinacy, an aspect of the 'K.C.B. mania', to
collect a large force on the Indian frontier. Having manufactured the
situation, Lytton would manage with the smallest force possible.
After 23 September, therefore, he pushed forward his preparations,
stationed troops in the cantonments of Thal, Sukkur and Peshawar and
watched for the flight and departure of the emir. He prepared, in the
last week of September, to issue a proclamation calling on the Afghan
people to rise against the enemy of the Indian government: but was
restrained because the Cabinet regarded this as tantamount to a
declaration of war. He felt that he should send a force to the
assistance of the Khyber tribesmen who helped to escort Chamberlain's
mission. The Cabinet made it clear that he must not advance beyond
Ali Musjid because that too would seem to imply war. But he did not,
at any time during September or October, cease to hope that Sher Ali
might fall spontaneously by the mere expression of Lytton's disfavour.
From Kabul, however, there was no sign of weakness: the emir remained
firm and unpoisoned; and he replied unhelpfully and (it seemed to
Lytton's orientalists) insolently to Lytton's letter of 14 September.
# 212
<354 TEXT J6>
   The fact that he is not in possession of the details probably
explains why his confidence in technique is so unbounded. There is
even more of the mystic than of the intellectual in the young
Vale?2ry. No wonder that at this stage he more or less gives up the
writing of poetry. Literature is "l'art de se jouer de l'a?5me des
autres"; by his own definition, poetry is not now for him the
attempt to give expression to something in himself (however
deliberately or consciously); the poet gets to know his material
(language, poetry), the nature of the public (human psychology in
relation to art), and then, like da Vinci, having discovered the
"relations... entre des choses dont nous e?2chappe la loi de
continuite?2", he can, at will, produce whatever effects he
desires to produce in the reader. There is only one thing missing in
this ideal scheme: a desire on the part of the poet to produce any
effect at all. What would be the point? "Le ge?2nie est
facile." "Facil cosa e farsi universale." The young
Vale?2ry has more important things to do: he wants to follow up his
programme of knowledge and self-knowledge (among other things, to
fathom art and psychology, the complete knowledge of which is presumed
in the da Vinci and the Monsieur Teste created by him). The art of
poetry as defined by Vale?2ry is no longer of any interest from the
creative point of view. It demands a "certain sacrifice de
l'intellect", chiefly because he would, if he went on composing
poetry, be simply giving to any public for which he wrote what he
knows would affect it, playing a rather inferior game which, in
theory, he knows he could not lose. The implicit reasoning is
somewhat circular. If he were a da Vinci or a Monsieur Teste, he
would not trouble himself with poetic composition. So he abandons it.
But he is not yet, in fact, a da Vinci or a Monsieur Teste, so he
will devote all his time and energy to becoming a universal mind.
   Such, in outline, and with only a little simplification, is the
theory of the young Vale?2ry concerning inspiration and technique.
It is clear that he has not yet formulated clear distinctions between
'total inspiration' and the forms we have called 'intermittent',
'intuitive', 'exalted' and 'personal'; but he rejects them by
implication. 'Attributed inspiration' would presumably, it is
true, have been accepted by him. But the other five forms he would
have rejected: his theory allows them to be completely dispensed with.
   But is his theory convincing? Let us consider the first of the
two conceptions of creation implicit in the Technique
litte?2raire article, according to which the poet has something in
himself, impression, dream or thought, which he must communicate by
controlled technique. Whilst surely nearer the truth than the other,
the theory that works backwards, even this conception seems
mechanistic, too simple and unsatisfactory. Vale?2ry does not
examine how impression, dream or thought originate. There is no
mention of any possible dynamism behind them, no mention of the fact
that the initial impetus may be accompanied by emotion or excitement
which are commonly envisaged as attributes of inspiration. It may be
conceded that poetry is certainly the communication of something, and
that accordingly it is sound to claim that the poet is concerned with
an audience, so that the more knowledge he has of this audience and of
the nature of his art, the better. But it is surely not simply a
question, in poetic creation, of the poet's having something clearly
formed in his mind, even something so vague as a dream, and then
transferring it to a reader by the technique of language. The truth
surely is (and the mature Vale?2ry certainly subscribed to this view)
that the poet is concerned with clarifying and making enjoyably
articulate for himself and the reader something within him which does
not exist as poetry until the poem is composed. Given the nature of
language and poetic creation, the poet is, to a certain extent,
discovering what he has to say, or rather, what he can say, as he
composes the poem. The poem is a kind of compromise between what the
poet wanted to say initially (and this phrase 'what the poet wanted
to say' is perhaps too rational and explicit to describe what for
many poets is vague and more anticipation than exact intention at this
stage), what he finds to say, and all the new things to express which
occur to him as he actually composes the poem. All these aspects of
poetic creation will indeed be admirably brought out by the mature
Vale?2ry. Louis MacNeice writes of that "dialect of purification"
whereby a poem is produced,
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   a poem which is neither the experience nor the memory, nor an
abstract dance of words, but a new life composite of all three.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   In this respect, then, poetry can be considered as a kind of
knowledge, of self-knowledge particularly, only to be found during the
struggle to compose. Vale?2ry in his youth does not show much
awareness of these aspects of poetic creation and of this kind of
self-knowledge. He is obsessed with the notion of art as
communication, and therefore with the fact that, though the poet may
be able to make the reader react as he wishes by his all-conquering
technique, he is nevertheless, because he indulges in poetic
composition, a slave to the reader and to language:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   We are thus led on to the second theory of poetry revealed with
some uncertainty in the Technique litte?2raire article and
unequivocally expounded towards the end of the Introduction a?3 la
me?2thode de Le?2onard de Vinci, the theory according to which
the poet works backwards from the reader. This stands condemned on
two counts. Firstly, it is a partial view of poetic creation,
neglecting the personal contribution which the poet can, must, make
(i.e. 'personal inspiration'; and this is not to mention the
importance of 'intermittent', 'intuitive' and 'exalted
inspiration'). Vale?2ry is at least consistent: having defined the
work of art as "une machine destine?2e a?3 exciter et a?3
combiner les formations individuelles de ces esprits" (the public),
he rejects such an activity as beneath him, as time-wasting when he
has more important things to do. His initial definition of art is
faulty, incomplete. Secondly, it stands condemned by the very
inadequacy of its presentation. Not only is art ill defined, but no
details are given of the nature of human psychology on which the
success of the triumphant technique is supposed to depend. The fact
is that, at this stage of his career, he has no adequate theory of
language and no adequate conception of poetic creation such as he will
have in later years. Few would question the value of technique, but
how many would subscribe to the exaggerated thesis put forward by
Vale?2ry in his youth?
   
   Nothing is more significant than the detached humour with which
Vale?2ry, in 1919, in the Note et Digression which he wrote for
his Introduction a?3 la me?2thode de Le?2onard de Vinci,
looks back, not without sympathy despite the detachment, at the
ideas and difficulties which he had had in 1894, about the time of
composition of the Introduction. He excuses himself, so to
speak, but does not really explain enough for our purposes. We are
still left wondering why he should have had this absolute faith in the
powers of technique and why therefore he believed, if only for a short
time, that poetry can be composed without any trace of inspiration.
The influence of Poe and Mallarme?2, and the part it played in
Vale?2ry's abandonment of poetry and the development of his programme
of knowledge and self-knowledge, has been clearly indicated by
Vale?2ry himself and often discussed by his critics. Less attention
has been paid to an influence probably no less potent: that of
contemporary scientific thought.
   The last three decades of the nineteenth century were an age in
which, as the rift between philosophy and science widened, it was
becoming evident that there was more than one reality, depending on
the viewpoint of the observer. The scientist was cautious of claiming
to interpret or explain phenomena: on the one hand, there was reality
with its multiple facets, on the other, the man who sought to
understand this reality. His understanding was necessarily
subjective, but hope lay in his attempt to capture the manifold
aspects of this reality. In fact, reality as such had no meaning: it
is we who supply the meaning. The upshot of these tendencies of
enlightened positivism was that the scientist avoided any metaphysical
claims for his discoveries (similarly, Vale?2ry had rejected
philosophy, metaphysics, any form of 'absolute' in the normal
sense): he sought a limited goal, continuity, by establishing
relationships between phenomena.
   Henri Poincare?2 probably played a decisive ro?5le in causing
Vale?2ry to shift his attention "from 'objects in themselves' to
the 'relationships existing between objects', in which alone is any
meaning to be found." Thanks to his purely personal preoccupations
(his cult of consciousness, together with his reaction against love
and poetry, "les choses vagues" generally), thanks to the
influence of Mallarme?2's formalism, Vale?2ry was already by the
early 189s well along the road of 'relations' as opposed to
'objects in themselves'. Marked similarities of attitude can be
discovered between the views of Poincare?2 and Vale?2ry on
intellectual creation, both poetic and scientific. Vale?2ry writes
in 1919:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~Toutes choses se substituent,- ne serait-ce pas la
de?2finition des choses?
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   and, in 1944, looking back to his youth:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   The young Vale?2ry is interested in the "esprit universel",
da Vinci or Napoleon, whose supreme secret
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   est et ne peut e?5tre que dans les relations qu'ils
trouve?3rent, - qu'ils furent force?2s de trouver,- entre des
choses dont nous e?2chappe la loi de continuite?2.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   Vale?2ry is drawn by the rigour and the universality of
mathematics and of positivistic science generally towards the end of
the nineteenth century. His da Vinci of the Introduction, his
Monsieur Teste, are animated by a central belief in the continu;
his attitude before 19, and even long after that date, like that
of Poincare?2, rests on the postulate that we cannot yet explain all
the relations between all phenomena, but that we shall be able to do
so eventually. The da Vinci of the Introduction believes that
our inability to see everything minutely and clearly is due merely to
the infirmity of our senses; such was Clerk Maxwell's point of view,
as exemplified by his imaginary demon who could perform various
fantastic tasks beyond the powers of ordinary men. The function of
the universal mind is to transform discontinu into continu,
and there is a tacit assumption that if this process can be
continued, all the elements which do not fit in with what we already
know, all the discontinu, past, present or future, will be
transformed into continu. Maxwell's demon is essentially the
same monster as Vale?2ry's da Vinci- a projection to the infinite
of their positivistic belief in rapports and the possibility of
explaining the relationships between everything. Maxwell's demon and
Vale?2ry's da Vinci (or Teste) are what Poincare?2, Maxwell and
Vale?2ry wanted to be, hoped to be- the universal mind. This
Maxwell-Poincare?2-Vale?2ry relationship becomes all the more
understandable if we remember that Poincare?2, naturally, was well
acquainted with the work of Maxwell, and Vale?2ry acquainted with the
work of both Poincare?2 and Maxwell.
   So we see how Vale?2ry came to transfer his interests and hopes
from poetic creation to this positivistic ideal of universal
knowledge. With a youthful enthusiasm and impatience which he later
acknowledged in the Note et Digression of 1919, he fathoms, as
he thinks, "le proble?3me litte?2raire" in the way we have
seen, and more or less abandons poetic composition:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
Poe and Mallarme?2 had, in a sense, led him in the same direction as
Poincare?2. He is strong in his belief that there is
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
une sorte de contraste entre l'exercice de la litte?2rature et la
poursuite d'une certaine rigueur et d'une entie?3re since?2rite?2
de la pense?2e.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
# 212
<355 TEXT J61>
   This is also where we get the stage-villain's hiss of ~"Die he
or Justice must". God is much at his worst here, in his first
appearance; but he needs to be, to make the offer of the Son produce a
dramatic change. I do not know what to make of his expressing the
Calvinist doctrine that the elect are chosen by his will alone, which
Milton had appeared to reject (185); it has a peculiar impact here,
when God has not yet even secured the Fall of Adam and Eve. One might
argue that he was in no mood to make jokes; and besides, the effect
here is not a sardonic mockery of Satan, which can be felt in the
military joke readily enough, but a mysterious and deeply rooted sense
of glory. A simple explanation may be put forward; Milton felt that
this was such a tricky bit to put over his audience, because the
inherent contradictions were coming so very near the surface, that he
needed with a secret delight to call on the whole of his power. This
is almost what Shelley took to be his frame of mind; and it is hard to
accept, with the De Doctrina before us, without talking about
Milton's Unconsciousness. But we may be sure that there is a
mediating factor; if he had been challenged about the passage, he
would have said that he was following the Old Testament scrupulously,
and allowing God to mock his foes.
   This has often been said about the jokes of Milton's God, or at
least about the one which can't be ignored because it is explained as
a joke (=5. 72); and one can make a rough check from the Concordance
at the end of a Bible. The only important case is from Psalm =2;
here again we meet the ancient document in which the King of Zion is
adopted as the Son of God:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   1Why do the heathen rage ... ? The kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord,
and against his anointed. ... He that sitteth in the heavens shall
laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   This is echoed in Psalms =37. 13 and =59. 8, and perhaps in
Proverbs =1. 26, where Wisdom and not God mocks the worldly rather
than a powerful aggressor; but after trying to look under all the
relevant words I do not find that the Concordance ever ascribes the
sentiment to the Prophets. It was thus an ancient tradition but one
treated with reserve, as Milton would understand. Naturally his
intention in putting so much weight on it has been found especially
hard to grasp.
   The views of M. Morand about the divine characters have been
neglected and seem to me illuminating. In the same year as De
Comus A Satan he published a pamphlet in English, The Effects of
his Political Life on John Milton, concerned to show that a certain
worldly-mindedness entered Milton's later poetry as a result of his
rather sordid experience of government, politics, and propaganda.
What chiefly stands out in this lively work, I think, is an
accusation that Milton himself had smuggled into a later edition of
Eikon Basilike the prayer, derived from Sidney's Arcadia,
for which he then so resoundingly denounced King Charles in
Eikonoclastes; we are given a shocking picture of an English
expert getting the evidence of a Dutch researcher ignored by
gentlemanly bluff. Mr Robert Graves used the main story in Wife
to Mr Milton, but I had not realized that the evidence for it was
so strong; indeed, Mr Graves often seems too disgusted by Milton to
be convincing- disagreeable in many ways he may have been, but surely
not a physical coward. I don't feel that the action is too bad for
Milton; he would think the divine purpose behind the Civil War
justified propaganda tricks, and need not have thought this a
particularly bad one. The King was dead, and the purpose of the cheat
was merely to prevent the people from thinking him a martyr. He
hadn't written any of the book really, and Milton suspected that at
the time, so it was only a matter of answering one cheat with another.
Milton must in any case have been insincere in pretending to be
shocked at the use of a prayer by Sidney, given in the story as that
of a pagan, but so Christian in feeling as to be out of period (it
assumes that God may be sending us evil as a test or tonic for our
characters, which even if to be found in Aeschylus or Marcus Aurelius
is not standard for Arcadia). Milton might comfort himself with the
reflection that he wasn't even damaging the man's character in the
eyes of fit judges, only making use of a popular superstition- as
Shelley expected on another occasion. However, M. Morand finds that
this kind of activity brought about a Fallen condition, as one might
say, in the mind of the poet, and such is what De Comus A Satan
examines throughout the later poetry.
   There is an assumption here that to do Government propaganda can
only have a bad effect upon a poet's mind, and I feel able to speak on
the point as I was employed at such work myself in the Second World
War, indeed once had the honour of being named in rebuttal by
Fritzsche himself and called a curly-headed Jew. I wasn't in on any
of the splendid tricks, such as Milton is accused of, but the
cooked-up argufying I have experienced. To work at it forces you to
imagine all the time what the enemy will reply; you are trying to get
him into a corner. Such a training cannot narrow a man's
understanding of other people's opinions, though it may well narrow
his own opinions. I should say that Milton's experience of propaganda
is what makes his later poetry so very dramatic; that is, though he is
a furious partisan, he can always imagine with all its force exactly
what the reply of the opponent would be. As to his integrity, he was
such an inconvenient propagandist that the Government deserve credit
for having the nerve to appoint and retain him. He had already
published the Divorce Pamphlets before he got the job; well now, if
you are setting out to be severe and revolutionary on the basis of
literal acceptance of the Old Testament, the most embarrassing thing
you can be confronted with is detailed evidence about the sexual
habits of the patriarchs; it is the one point where the plain man
feels he can laugh. Milton always remained liable to defend his side
by an argument which would strike his employers as damaging; his style
of attack is savagely whole-hearted, but his depth of historical
knowledge and imaginative sympathy keep having unexpected effects. He
was not at all likely to feel that he had forfeited his independence
of mind by such work. M. Morand therefore strikes me as rather
innocent in assuming that he was corrupted by it, but I warmly agree
that it made his mind very political. Professor Wilson Knight has
also remarked that Milton wrote a political allegory under the
appearance of a religious poem, though he did not draw such drastic
consequences from the epigram.
   On the Morand view, God is simply a dynastic ruler like those
Milton had had to deal with; Cromwell had wanted his son to inherit,
no less than Charles. M. Morand does not seem to realize it, but
the effect is to make Milton's God much better. His intrigues and
lies to bolster his power are now comparatively unselfish, being only
meant to transfer it unimpaired to his Son, and above all he feels no
malignity towards his victims. His method of impressing the loyalist
angels will doom almost all mankind to misery, but he takes no
pleasure in that; it simply does not bother him. The hypocrisy which
the jovial old ruffian feels to be required of him in public has not
poisoned his own mind, as we realize when he permits himself his
leering jokes. This does, I should say, correspond to the impression
usually made by the poem on a person not brought up as a Christian,
such as my Chinese and Japanese students. The next step is to regard
the debate in Heaven, where the Son, but no angel, offers to die for
man, as a political trick rigged up to impress the surviving angels;
the Son is free to remark (=3. 245) that he knows the Father won't
let him stay dead, so that the incantationary repetition of the word
death comes to seem blatantly artificial. (We find in the De
Doctrina Chapter =12 that Milton includes "under the head of
death, in Scripture, all evils whatsoever"...). Nobody is surprised
at the absence of volunteers among the good angels, whereas Satan,
during the parallel scene in Hell (=2. 47), has to close the debate
hurriedly for fear a less competent rebel put himself forward.
Otherwise the two scenes are deliberately made alike, and the reason
is simply that both are political:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Ce qui frappe, c'est le parallelisme des moyens employe?2es,
conseils, discours. Me?5me souci de garder pour soi tout gloire.
<END QUOTE>
(p. 145)
<END INDENTATION>
   On reaching Paradise Regained, M. Morand is interested to
learn how the Son grew up. In Paradise Lost he often seems half
ashamed of the autocratic behaviour of his Father, because his role is
to induce the subject angels to endure it; but when he is alone on the
earth-visit which has been arranged for him we find he has merely the
cold calculating pride which we would expect from his training.
However, we already find this trait, decides M. Morand, at the
early public moment when he offers his Sacrifice; he is unable to
avoid presenting himself as solely interested in his own career (p.
169). As the Creation for which he was the instrument has already
happened, he might at least speak as if he could tell a man apart from
a cow, but he says that his Father's grace visits "all his
creatures" (=3. 23). Satan, on the parallel occasion, was at
least genuinely concerned to get the job done, whoever did it; and
M. Morand decides that the ringing repetition of ME in the speech
of sacrifice of the Son is a little too grotesque, however perfectly
in character. Milton
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   n'eu?5t pas pense?2 a?3 ce que peut contenir de ridicule ce
martellement du moi.
   De personnages extra-terrestres, le moins e?2loigne?2 de la
modestie est encore Satan.
<END QUOTE>
(p. 171)
<END INDENTATION>
   This is at least a splendid reply to the argument that pride is
the basic fault of all the characters who fall.
   The Morand line of argument can be taken an extra step, to argue
that the Son too is being cheated by the Father; and this excites a
suspicion that there is something inadequate about it. He says
nothing of the means of his death, and speaks as if he is going to
remain on earth till the Last Day:
<POEM>
   Our chief impression here, surely, is not that he is too little
interested in mankind but that he does not know what is going to
happen, except for a triumph at which he can rejoice. If the Jews had
not chosen to kill him, he would presumably have remained on earth
till the Last Day, making history less bad than the poem describes it
as being; and what they will choose can be foreknown by the Father
only. The Son expects to find no frown upon the face of God on
Judgement Day, the Dies Irae itself, so we can hardly doubt
that he expects things to turn out better than they do. His prophecy
appears to be a continuous narrative: "not long lie... rise
victorious... then... then", as if he will lead the blessed to
Heaven very soon after the Resurrection. Among human speakers
'lastly die' is a natural way to express pathos, though a
tautology; but a meaning which would make it a correct description of
the career of the Son is hard to invent.
# 232
<356 TEXT J62>
The wife, in this story, was dead and buried and yet her husband
found her 'in magno feminarum cetu de nocte' and snatched her
away and brought her back home to human life once more. Whether this
old Breton tale had already been contaminated with the classical
legend of Orpheus and Eurydice we cannot say, but the strange
oscillation between contrary concepts is characteristic of Orfeo
as well.
   The motive for abduction in fairy tales is usually love, as, for
example, in Guingamor, Lanval and Graelent; but Heurodis was
not snatched away for love; the fairy king had his own queen; besides,
to have introduced the love motive in this fashion would have cut
across the theme of marital love and loyalty upon which the tale of
Orpheus and Eurydice hinges. If the king of Fairy is not to be
entirely identified with the king of the Dead, what reason can be
offered for his behaviour?
   It is at this point, when Orfeo saw his wife lying under the
1ympe tre in the castle courtyard, that the interlacing of the
classical and Celtic stories appears at its most intricate.
   Heurodis was abducted in the '1?24e comessing of May'.
In a vague, imperceptible way, the fairy king, who was also the god
of an underworld, since Orfeo had to go '1In at a roche' to
reach him, seems here to have taken on some of the attributes of Dis,
who stole Proserpina away as she was gathering spring flowers in the
meadow; and Heurodis also seems to take the place of Proserpina, for
Eurydice was not abducted, but killed by the poisonous fangs of a
snake. In classical legend, Dis or Pluto was the king of the
underworld and the dead; but, according to Caesar, the Celts also had
a god of the underworld similar to Dis, from whom all the Gauls
claimed to be descended: ~'Galli se omnes ab Dite patre prognatos
praedicant', and in later fairy lore he or the classical Dis or
both became identified with the king of Fairy, if Chaucer is to be
believed: 'Pluto that is the 1kyng of 1fairye' (Merchant's
Tale, 983). Again, in the classical legend, the two attributes of
Dis fell together; he was not only the power of winter in seasonal
myth, he was also the god of Hades, the ruler in the kingdom of the
Dead. In Celtic legend also, there existed a seasonal myth similar to
that of Dis and Proserpina; it took the form of an abduction story,
closely resembling the abduction of Heurodis in some of the details to
which the classical versions offer no similarity. Traces of this myth
are to be found in Culhwch and Olwen and the Vita Gildae,
said to have been written by Caradoc of Llancarvon:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   (a) Creiddylad daughter of Lludd Silver-hand (the maiden of
most majesty that was ever in the Island of Britain and its three
adjacent islands). And for her Gwythyr son of Greidawl and Gwyn son
of Nudd fight for ever each May-calends till the day of doom...
   Creiddylad daughter of Lludd Silver-hand went with Gwythyr son of
Greidawl; and before he had slept with her there came Gwyn son of Nudd
and carried her off by force. Gwythyr son of Greidawl gathered a host
and he came to fight with Gwyn son of Nudd. And Gwyn prevailed...
Arthur heard tell of this and he came into the North and summoned to
him Gwyn son of Nudd and set free his noblemen from his prison and
peace was made between Gwyn son of Nudd and Gwythyr son of Greidawl.
This is the peace that was made: the maiden should remain in her
father's house unmolested by either side, and there should be battle
between Gwyn and Gwythyr each May-calends for ever and ever, from that
day till doomsday; and the one of them that should be victor on
doomsday, let him have the maiden.
<END QUOTE>
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   The details worth noting in relation to Orfeo are: the
abduction had reference to the May-calends or '1?24e comessing of
May' in (a) and there is an implication of seasonal cycle in
'per unius anni circulum' in (b); the husband was a king
and the stolen wife a queen in (b); the ravisher was also a king
in both (a) and (b), but whereas in Culhwch and Olwen he
was undoubtedly the king of the underworld, Gwyn ap Nudd, king of
Annwn, Melvas was made king of the 'summer region' or Somerset,
since it was to his castle in Glastonbury that he carried the queen.
Possibly the roles of Arthur and Melvas have been exchanged, for
Gwythyr ap Greidawl seems to be equated with the sun or summer, if
the elements in his name are any guide, Gwythyr, Victor and
Greid-, Old Irish ??22greid, to scorch. Melvas ought to be
the equivalent of Gwyn ap Nudd. However, as the version in the
Vita Gildae was obviously altered to boost Glastonbury abbey
and Gildas, these differences may be bits of local colour. Finally,
in both (a) and (b), an attempt was made to recapture the
woman with the help of armed knights, and in (b) Guinevere was
restored to her husband just as Heurodis was given back to Orfeo.
   Why Orfeo was a 'king' might now appear to be more reasonable;
and the fact that he was successful in bringing his wife safely out of
Fairyland becomes something more than a mere romantic and neo-fairy
ending to an old, tragic story. Yet, to understand Orfeo
completely, we must turn again to the classical tale of Orpheus and
Eurydice, for it is this alone which can explain why Heurodis was
abducted for no apparent reason. Eurydice, like the dead mother in
the Breton tale, Filii Mortue, was the beloved wife who died;
Heurodis, her nominal counterpart, was at the same time
semi-Proserpina, semi-Creiddylad-Guinevere, and was abducted; the
reason for her abduction is omitted because, as Eurydice, she should
have died, and, as Proserpina-Creiddylad-Guinevere, she should have
been stolen for love; either reason is incompatible with the theme of
Orfeo.
   When Orfeo arrived in the fairy underworld, he saw his queen,
not in the palace among the ladies with whom he had met her in the
forest, but in the outer courtyard, among a collection of sick, mad,
crippled and headless people, who were lying there exactly as they had
been on earth when they had been snatched away in their noontide
sleep. In the forest she had been 'alive'; she had recognized him
and had wept; yet, when he followed the fairy company and came to find
her in Fairyland, she is pictured as being in her first condition, not
as she was the day she was abducted, for then she was not asleep, but
as she was when the fairy king first appeared to her- asleep under
the 1ympe tre.
   The poet says that all the people who were lying there, and
that includes Heurodis, '1?24ou?26t dede and nare nou?26t'.
Even when full allowance has been made for the marvellous things
which could happen in Fairyland, it is difficult to believe that a
person without a head was not 'dead' in the first instance. And
are we to understand that these headless, armless, burnt and choked
people, to say nothing of the mothers in childbed, also 'arose' as
Heurodis evidently did, and took part in the dancing and hunting in
the forest? Analysis of this kind emphasizes the slight
inconsistencies in the narrative and serves to show up the seams in
the joining of the Celtic and classical tales. At the same time, we
can scour Georgics, =4 and Metamorphoses, =1 in vain for
any hint or detail which might help to throw light on this odd
picture. The bodiless phantoms that came in their thousands from the
depths of Erebus at the sound of Orpheus's lyre (Georgics, =4,
475-7) and the bloodless spirits who wept at the strain
(Metamorphoses, =1, 41) cannot honestly be considered as in any
way comparable to the folk '1liggeand wi?24in ?24e wal', for
Orfeo had not yet entered the king's palace nor had he touched the
strings of his harp nor did these people outside come in later on to
listen to him.
   If it be remembered that not only the legend of Orpheus, but the
whole of Virgil's work was widely known in the Middle Ages, a clue may
be found in another Virgilian description of the classical underworld,
the one in Aeneid, Bk. =6.
   Aeneas, when he prayed to be allowed to visit his father's shade
in Hades, made use of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to strengthen
his petition; if Orpheus could call up his wife's shade in Erebus,
could not he, Aeneas, also a descendant of the gods, make the same
journey? He was allowed to do so and when he reached the entrance to
Hades he is pictured as approaching it across the vestibulum or
forecourt, with the limen and fores, the main door, at the
far side; that is, Virgil has imagined the entrance to Hades in
contemporary terms, those of the Roman house, just as the poet of
Orfeo has visualized the entrance to the fairy underworld in terms
of a medieval castle:
<LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION>
   What Aeneas saw in the forecourt of Orcus was very similar to
that which Orfeo saw in the courtyard of the fairy king's castle; all
kinds of horrors had 'made their beds' there, but where Virgil has
enumerated abstractions and the customary grisly inhabitants of
Tartarus, the author of Orfeo has presented a picture of examples,
an oddly assorted gathering of people, most of whom would have been
found, in the Middle Ages, in Purgatory, because they had died
suddenly and unshriven- the burnt, the drowned, women who had died
mad in labour, soldiers killed in battle and those who, like Hamlet's
father, had been taken, 'grossly, full of bread' and had died
choking. None of them has a right to a home in Fairyland, at least,
not according to the ancient tradition concerning that place; all who
go there are either stolen or lured from earth on account of their
beauty or desirability. That Heurodis should be there is
intelligible, but the rest seem to belong to the Christian otherworld
of punishment, which, in the Middle Ages, owed many of its features to
the pagan conception of Tartarus; both were places in which the wicked
or the unassoiled found themselves after death and every traveller who
had the temerity to visit them, were he an Orpheus, an Aeneas or a
Knight Owen had his sight seared with visions of human agony. Orpheus
descended into Hades, Orfeo tunnelled into Fairyland; the two stories
which are so successfully merged in other parts of Orfeo are just
here a little divergent, or perhaps it is that the classical element
is for the moment uppermost and has, in its detail, been partly
overlaid with contemporary notions. In any case, the similarity
between the settings is very close.
   Another interesting point of comparison lies in the linking of
sleep with the idea of Death's kingdom. Virgil has used the word
sopor, which has an intensive force, implying a torpor akin to
the sleep of death, 'consanguineus Leti Sopor'. Sleep, in
classical legend, was associated with Hades. According to Hesiod
(Theogony, =1, 211 ff.), Erebus and Night were the children
of Chaos; and Night, the mother of Doom, Fate and Death, also gave
birth to Sleep and the tribe of Dreams and 'painful Woe'. Cicero
echoes this in his De Natura Deorum, 3, 17: 'Amor Dolus
Metus... Mors Tenebrae Miseria... Somnia quos omnes Erebo et Nocte
natos ferunt'. In Orfeo the same idea is present, for, in the
fairy otherworld, which is also an underworld, the miseries,
exemplified by the folk '1liggeand wi?24in ?24e wal', are
definitely related to sleep: '1ri?24t as ?24ai slepe her
vndertides'.
   Next, there is the tree, the great Elm of Dreams. No true
parallel to it has yet been found in classical legend.
# 25
<357 TEXT J63>
For Hardy, then, Correggio is the artist of yearning, as, indeed,
he himself tells us in A Pair of Blue Eyes in the passage
describing the appearance of Elfride Swancourt, where he extends his
method and sees his heroine through the eyes of three painters,
Raphael, Rubens, and Correggio, in turn:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in the
Madonna della Sedia, without its rapture: the warmth and spirit of
the type of woman's feature most common to the beauties- mortal and
immortal- of Rubens, without their insistent fleshiness. The
characteristic expression of the female faces of Correggio- that of
the yearning human thoughts that lie too deep for tears- was hers
sometimes, but seldom under ordinary conditions.
<END QUOTE>
   This is the most elaborate of all Hardy's experiments in what
might be called pictorial definition. It will be observed that in all
the examples that I have given he seizes upon some quality that is
peculiarly characteristic of the artist in question, so that the
reader at once receives an impression of a general facial type before
being invited to consider its particular manifestation. With quite
subsidiary characters, however, a mere impression is sufficient, and
no qualifications are added: thus the woman who opens the lodge gate
at Endelstow, in A Pair of Blue Eyes, is simply described as
having 'a double chin and thick neck, like the Queen Anne portrait by
Dahl'- and although the incident has no importance in the story
there is point in the choice of a painter who seems to have had no
qualms about stressing the plainness and stodginess of his sitters.
   Even the nationality of the artist alluded to contributes to our
impression of the character whom Hardy is presenting. If Cytherea
Graye could have been painted by Greuze, or Lucetta Templeman by
Titian, Liddy Smallbury, Bathsheba's servant in Far From the Madding
Crowd, suggests rather the healthy, well-scrubbed girls of Dutch
art:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   ~The beauty her features might have lacked in form was amply made
up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the
softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in
a Terburg or a Gerard Douw;
<END QUOTE>
   while Sue Bridehead, with her dark beauty, conjures up in Jude's
mind a recollection of 'the girls he had seen in engravings from
paintings of the Spanish School'.
   An effective use of this device of pictorial allusion to suggest
the attitude of a character at a particular moment is to be found in
the glimpse of Mr. Penny at work at his trade, in Under the
Greenwood Tree. Mr. Penny is a shoemaker, and his house looks out
on to the main road, 'Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen
working inside like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern
Moroni'. Although this is not a reference to an actual picture by
Moroni (and no painting of a shoemaker by Moroni exists), the effect
is still precise, for we know what such a picture by a
nineteenth-century Moroni would look like. Moroni, we know,
specialized in single portraits in which he emphasized his sitter's
trade or calling, as in the 'Portrait of a Tailor' in the National
Gallery, which was probably the picture by which Hardy knew him best;
and it was clearly Moroni's practice of putting a frame, as it were,
around a single figure, and of isolating him in the context of his
daily work, that Hardy found interesting.
   Many of the artists who fascinated Hardy were not particularly
fashionable in his own day; and names of some of them would have been
known to a mere handful of his readers. A curious example of his
tastes is provided by his two allusions, first in The Return of the
Native, and then in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, to Sallaert and
Van Alsloot, artists in whom only recently much interest has been
taken, and then mainly by specialists. Both worked in Brussels in the
early years of the seventeenth century, devoting themselves chiefly to
a class of processional scene crowded with tiny figures. Among the
best known of these are the two pictures by Van Alsloot in the
Victoria and Albert Museum representing the annual procession in
Brussels known as the Ommeganck, which was held under the patronage of
the church of Notre Dame de Sablon, a church founded by the Guild of
Crossbowmen. The object of the procession was to commemorate the
translation to this church, from Antwerp, of a miraculous image of the
Virgin, and it was preceded by the ceremony of the Shooting of the
Popinjay (a wooden representation of a parrot fixed to the top of a
steeple). Van Alsloot's pictures record the Ommeganck of 1615, when
the Infanta Isabella, the consort of the Archduke Albert, had
succeeded in shooting the popinjay at the first attempt. The
Ommeganck was an extremely colourful affair, dominated as it was by
the triumphal cars carrying elaborate enactments of 6tableaux of
such scenes as the Nativity and St. George's fight with the Dragon.
And dotted all over Van Alsloot's representations of it are the
quaint little figures that seem above all else to have caught Hardy's
fancy. Hardy first alludes to them in The Return of the Native:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   What was the great world to Mrs. Yeobright? A multitude whose
tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. Communities
were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the
throngs which cover the canvases of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others
of that school- vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and
processioning in definite directions, but whose features are
indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view.
<END QUOTE>
   In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, published thirteen years later,
it is a large herd of cows that brings these processional pictures
before Hardy's eyes:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The green lea was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by
Van Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. The ripe hue of the red and
dun 1kine absorbed the evening sunlight, which the white-coated
animals returned to the eye in rays almost as dazzling.
<END QUOTE>
   It may be added that this passage has a further interest, for it
suggests that Hardy was aware of the colour-theories of men like Rood
and Chevreul, which were to have some influence on Impressionism. We
may compare a similar but much earlier observation upon the nature of
colour in Far From the Madding Crowd (published in 1873): 'We
learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which
they reject, that give them the colours they are known by.'
   If Hardy could scarcely have assumed in the generality of his
readers any knowledge of Sallaert or Van Alsloot, he could presumably
have counted upon a much wider familiarity with the white horses which
almost invariably appear in the landscapes of Wouwermans, always a
popular artist in England, and which are alluded to in the scene in
The Woodlanders where Grace Melbury watches her husband,
Fitzpiers, who is being unfaithful to her, riding away on a white
horse named Darling to his assignation with Mrs. Charmond:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   He kept along the edge of this high, uninclosed country, and the
sky behind him being deep violet he could still see white Darling in
relief upon it- a mere speck now- a Wouwermans eccentricity reduced
to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually
disappeared.
<END QUOTE>
   Equally effective is the description, in the same novel, of a
freshly pressed tablecloth- 'reticulated with folds as in Flemish
Last Suppers'- or of the clear outlines of figures thrown into
relief by the light of a bonfire, in The Return of the Native:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the
skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments
and general contours to be drawn with Dureresque vigour and dash.
<END QUOTE>
   And, if poets and novelists have strained themselves to say
something original about the moon, only Hardy could have likened it,
as he does in Tess, to 'the outworn gold-leaf halo of some
worm-eaten Tuscan saint'.
   As Hardy develops as a writer it is interesting to observe the
growing maturation of this device of pictorial allusion, which in his
hands becomes a unique skill. In the later novels he is able to
employ it in ways that go far beyond a purely descriptive intention.
Towards the end of Tess, he wishes to suggest the psychological
change which has been brought about in Angel Clare by his wife's
confession, and he puts it thus:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had
known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical
man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood
before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in
the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the
leer of a study by Van Beers.
<END QUOTE>
   Although the Poe-like horrifics of Wiertz are still remembered
and have won a small place in the history of Romanticism, Van Beers,
who seems to have deliberately invited comparison with him, has now
been completely forgotten. In Hardy's day, however, he enjoyed
something of a 6succe?3s de scandale with periodic
exhibitions in Bond Street. One of these, held in November 1886, was
condemned by a critic writing in The Magazine of Art as appealing
'to a class of sensations which have but little to do with those
which art... should aim at evoking'. Even 'as a purveyor of
horrors' the artist was unsuccessful, for he entirely lacked 'the
vastness of conception, the measure of sincerity which gave to the
art- if we must so designate it- of a Wiertz, resulting, as it did,
from the real hallucinations of a diseased brain, a certain interest
and a 6raison d'e?5tre'.
   Towards the end of Tess, Clare returns at length from his
wanderings, and we are given a striking picture of the outward change
in him which has accompanied the inner:
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   You could see the skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost
behind the skeleton. He matched Crivelli's dead Christus. His
sunken eye-pits were of morbid hue, and the light in his eyes had
waned. The angular hollows and lines of his aged ancestors had
succeeded to their reign in his face twenty years before their time.
<END QUOTE>
   The painting to which Hardy refers is in the National Gallery.
Here Hardy's imagination is stimulated to enlarge upon the allusion
and to paint a word-picture of great power. Crivelli was one of his
favourite painters, and it is easy to see why the severity of
Crivelli's types- the farthest remove, as they are, from the pretty-
particularly appealed to him.
   As Hardy masters this technique he employs it more and more for
dramatic effect. Tess again provides a fine example, in that
melancholy scene at the end of the book when Angel Clare and 'Liza-Lu
walk slowly up to the summit of the West Hill above Wintoncester to
watch for the prison flag that will tell them that Tess's execution
has been carried out: 'They moved on hand in hand, and never spoke a
word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto's "Two
Apostles".' The picture to which Hardy here refers is a fragment
of a fresco purchased for the National Gallery in 1856. It comes from
a large decoration in the Carmine in Florence which was at that time
believed to be by Giotto but which has since been reattributed to
Spinello Aretino. The two heads originally formed part of a 'Burial
of St. John the Baptist'. Even more touching, perhaps, is the
long, beautiful description, earlier in the same novel, of the labours
of Tess and Marion in the fields, where again the image of two bowed
heads is evoked by a simple and telling pictorial allusion: 'The
pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads
would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of
the two Marys.'
# 22
<358 TEXT J64>
While the technical quality of the tapestry is high, the style is
rather coarse and there is an element of doubt as to its origin in the
imperial workshops.
   The second object which may refer to an imperial triumph is the
ivory casket now in the Cathedral Treasury at Troyes. On the sides
the casket is remarkable for hunting scenes of considerable power and
for phoenixes in the Chinese style (Fig. 125); on the lid two
mounted emperors placed symmetrically on either side of a town are
offered a city-crown by a woman emerging from the gate followed by
townsfolk (Fig. 126). It has been suggested that this last scene is
related to the Triumph of Basil =2 but, although undoubtedly
portraying a victorious emperor, judging from the other scenes on the
casket, it seems not to be connected with any particular event. A
date, however, in the eleventh century is possible.
   More textiles may be assigned to the reign of Basil =2. Several
fragments of silk woven in compound twill with representations of
large stylized lions at Berlin, Du"sseldorf, Krefeld and Cologne
(Fig. 127) bear inscriptions referring to the Emperors Constantine
=8 and Basil =2, the sovereigns who love Christ. Constantine =8,
younger brother of Basil =2, idle and pleasure-loving like his father
Romanus =2, ruled jointly with the Bulgaroctonos between 976 and
125. Earlier versions of this type of silk, however, were known at
one time. In the Cathedral at Auxerre under Bishop St. Gaudry
(918-933) were two fragments of a Lion silk bearing the inscription
'in the reign of Leo, the sovereign who loves Christ', which must
refer to the Emperor Leo =6 (886-912). At Siegburg another great
Lion silk, now destroyed, bore an inscription referring to Romanus =1
Lecapenus and his son Christopher, whose joint reign lasted from 921
to 923. A number of reduced, coarser versions of these Lion silks
have survived but without inscriptions and in this case it is tempting
to make a distinction between work done in the imperial factory and
work done in the city. The magnificent Elephant silk (Fig. 128),
introduced into the tomb of Charlemagne at Aachen by the Emperor Otto
=3 during the 'recognition' of the year 1, must also date from
the early part of the reign of Basil =2 and Constantine =8, although
the Greek inscription refers only to the fact that it was made 'under
Michael, kitonite and eidikos, and Peter, archon of the
Zeuxippos'. In addition, two Eagle silks may claim to have come
from the imperial workshops under these emperors. The Chasuble of
St. Albuin (975-16) in the Cathedral Treasury at Brixen is made up
from a silk compound twill woven with a pattern of large stylized
eagles in dark green on a rose-purple ground with large dark green
rosettes in the intervening spaces- eyes, beaks, claws, and the ring
in the beak are yellow (Fig. 129). The Shroud of St. Germain in
the Church of Saint-Euse?3be at Auxerre bears an identical pattern
but in colours of dark blue, dark blue-green, and yellow, and the
quality is finer than the Brixen silk. Unfortunately neither of these
superb silks bears an inscription.
   With the possible exception of the last two silks, which differ
considerably from Islamic Eagle silks that have survived, it may be
said that Byzantine silk production of this time was heavily indebted
to Persian and Abbasid models. The Elephant silk is clearly based on
a Buwaiyid model for its subject matter and particularly for the
stylized tree and its foliage behind the elephant, though the border
of the medallion contains more specifically Byzantine ornament. It
may be that the introduction of the inscriptions referring to the
emperors and used as part of the design is an adoption of Islamic
tiraz protocol. Later in the century, when a series of
particularly subtle silks, known for convenience as 'incised
twills' because the pattern in a silk of one colour appears to be
engraved, are known in several sequences, the problem of deciding
which were made in the Byzantine world and which were made under
Islam, or by Islamic craftsmen in the Byzantine Empire, becomes acute.
Some bear fine Kufic inscriptions with the name of an Amir of
Diyarbakr in northern Syria dating about 125, others bear polite
wishes in Kufic, some have no inscriptions at all, and there is one
remarkable silk, with the portrait of a Byzantine emperor, found in
the tomb of St. Ulrich of Augsburg (d. 955), which seems to be
without question of Greek manufacture. The textiles found in the tomb
of Pope Clement =2 (d. 147) at Bamberg, of which one is closely
related to a silk from the tomb of King Edward the Confessor (d.
166), present similar problems. There can be no doubt, however, that
the imperial Byzantine silks have a power and a dignity, a feeling for
design and texture, seldom rivalled in the history of textiles. There
is little wonder that Bishop Liutprand of Cremona was tempted on his
return from his unsatisfactory mission to the Emperor Nicephorus
Phocas to smuggle imperial silks through the Byzantine customs.
   The mosaic panel in the South Gallery of Agia Sophia at
Constantinople with the portraits of the Emperor Constantine =9
Monomachos and the Empress Zoe standing on either side of the seated
Christ presents certain problems (Fig. 13). It continues the
tradition of 6ex-voto mosaic panels representing the Augusti
bearing gifts familiar in San Vitale at Ravenna in the sixth century
and panels of a less exalted nature in the Church of St. Demetrius
at Salonika in the seventh century. But in this panel all three heads
and the inscriptions are substitutions. It is probable that the
original mosaic was executed between 128 and 134 and it represented
the Empress Zoe (128-15), daughter of Constantine =8, and her
first husband Romanus =3 Argyrus (128-134). There is no
documentary evidence, incidentally, that the Empress Zoe was
interested in patronizing large-scale works of art though she had a
fancy for expensive trinkets and chemical experiments, but Romanus =3
instigated repairs to Agia Sophia and to the Church of St. Mary at
Blachernae. His name would seem to fit the space allowed for the
inscription better than that of Michael his successor and, since he
was unpopular, it was more likely to be excised than that of Michael
=4 the Paphlagonian (134-141), who was well liked and the uncle of
Michael =5 Kalaphates (141-142). Zoe, who was not fitted by
temperament to govern, according to Michael Psellus, retained the
affection of the people in spite of her eccentricities. She had lived
in retirement during the later years of Michael =4's rule and had
been persuaded to adopt his nephew as Emperor. Michael =5, however,
induced the Senate to banish Zoe as a nun to the island of Prinkipo.
It was presumably at this time that the mosaic panel was defaced.
Michael =5's triumph was brief. The people were not prepared to see
a daughter born to the purple of the Macedonian house treated with
such contumely and they rioted. The Empress was brought back from
exile. She and her sister Theodora, who had long been a nun in the
convent of the Petrion by the Phanar, were reinstated in the purple.
Michael =5 was persuaded to leave the altar in the Church of St.
John of Studius where he had taken refuge, and was blinded in a street
of the city. The two sisters, who had little love for one another,
ruled for a few months as co-Empresses and coins were struck with
their images (Fig. 131) but later in the year of 142 Zoe at an
advanced age took another husband, Constantine Monomachos (142-155),
and Theodora was kept in the background of affairs. About this time
the imperial portraits were restored. It is still far from clear,
however, why it was necessary to restore the head of Christ.
   As opposed to the figures of Constantine and Justinian on the
tympanum of Basil =2 (Fig. 123), which are seen in depth and
modelled with some solidity, the bodies of the Augusti are little more
than lay figures of imperial power. In contrast with the Virgin in
the south vestibule the drapery of Christ has become considerably more
mannered with its cross-currents of folds and the face shows a marked
difference of approach, more sketchy and schematic. But in view of
the different styles current in Constantinople it would be rash to
press these contrasts too far. The figures of Constantine and
Justinian were probably copied from earlier imperial portraits, which
would give them the definition that the Macedonian Augusti lack. The
portrayal of the reigning Augusti behind a flat curtain of patterned
dress and regalia establishes a convention of official portraiture
which continued to the end. The heads in official portraiture, on the
other hand, are presented in terms which presuppose recognition.
While the restored heads in the Zoe panel have become considerably
more conceptualized than all three heads in the tympanum of Basil
=2- the accentuation of the cheek-bones by circular devices, the
broadening of the planes of the face- the Empress and her consort are
rendered as plausible historic statements.
   Constantine =9, brought back from exile in Mytilene to marry an
aged Empress preoccupied with religion and making scents, flaunted a
beautiful Caucasian mistress at public ceremonies, but for all his
love of entertainment, he was by no means unaware of the
responsibilities of his position. He built the church and convent of
St. George of the Manganes and founded the Nea Moni on Chios after
the miraculous discovery of an icon by shepherds on Mount Privation.
It is probable that mosaicists were sent from the capital to decorate
the church on Chios. Fragments of their work have survived including
a Virgin Orans in the apse, a few angels and saints, and fourteen
scenes ranging from the Annunciation to the Pentecost. But the
sombre, forceful style of these mosaics has unfortunately no
counterpart in the capital and contrasts strangely with the slightly
inconclusive images of imperial power in Agia Sophia. The style at
the Nea Moni does not resemble the work done at Osios Loukas in Phocis
about the middle of the eleventh century, which seems to be the work
of a provincial school, nor the uneven quality of the work done in
Agia Sophia at Kiev about 145 with the help of mosaicists sent from
Constantinople. The style, moreover, contrasts with that of the
mosaics executed in the narthex of the Church of the Dormition at
Nicaea, now destroyed, under the patronage of the patrician Nicephorus
after the earthquake of 165. This decoration consisted of a double
cross against a ground of stars within a roundel in the centre of the
vault surrounded by medallions containing the busts of Christ
Pantocrator, St. John the Baptist, St. Joachim and St. Anne; in
the lunette over the door there was a bust of the Virgin Orans; in the
four corners of the vault there were the four Evangelists. The
meaning of this iconographical programme is far from clear and the
absence of comparable programmes in the capital handicaps speculation.
Stylistically the forms are rather broad and heavy; the face of the
Virgin Orans in the lunette over the door seems to be a development of
the Virgin and Child over the door in the south vestibule of Agia
Sophia but the work, as far as one may judge from the the photographs,
seems coarser. In the portrayal of the Evangelists the bodies tend to
disintegrate under the pattern of folds; in St. Matthew, for
example, the relationship of the upper part of the body to the lower
is uneasy and the right thigh seems unwarrantably stressed- this
figure executed during the reign of Constantine =1 Dukas (159-167)
looks forward to late Comnene art; St. Luke, on the other hand,
depends almost directly from the works executed in the palace
scriptoria; in all four figures, the tendency of the drapery to create
its own pattern counter to the form it covers echoes one of the main
features of middle Byzantine style.
# 221
<359 TEXT J65>
RITUAL ART
by CECIL ROTH
   A CHARACTERISTIC recommendation of the Talmud justifies and
proves the antiquity of the ritual art of the Jewish synagogue and
home. Rabbis make this comment about the Biblical verse "This is my
God, and I will glorify <lit. 'adorn'> him" (Exodus, =15, 2):
"Adorn 1thyself before Him in the performance of the commandments.
Make before him a goodly succah, and goodly lulab, and a
goodly shophar, and goodly fringes for your garments, and a
goodly Sepher Torah... and bind it up with goodly
wrappings." Elsewhere, we learn of the adornments hung in the
succah, and of the gold fillets used to bind up the lulab,
and more than once of the wrappings for the sacred books. But there
is no evidence that at this time any of these appurtenances had any
uniformity or were expressly made for a specific purpose. With the
exception of a few eight-burnered clay lamps presumably intended for
use on the feast of Hanukkah, there is barely any evidence of
specifically-made Jewish ritual adornments, other than those of the
Temple, until the close of the first millenium.
   It must have been about this period that their manufacture began,
for not long after we read of such objects as commonplace. Thus in an
inventory of the property of the Palestinian Synagogue in Fostat
(Cairo), drawn up in 1186-87, we find scheduled "Two Torah-crowns
made out of silver, and three pairs of finials (rimmonim) made of
silver, and twenty-two Torah-covers made of silk, some of them
brocaded with gold," and so on. Presumably, domestic ritual objects
began to be made at much the same time. The name of Rabbi Meir of
Rothenburg, the great German Jewish ritual art as we know it now had
begun to <SIC> frequently in connection with our literary
evidences, and it may be assumed that by his day Jewish ritual art as
we know it now had begun to assume its form.
   Little or nothing of this date, however, has been preserved to
the present time, our evidence being indirect. The primary reason for
this was presumably the vicissitudes of Jewish life. Synagogues
everywhere were sacked, burned, and pillaged; communities were driven
into exile, expressly forbidden to take with them anything made of
precious material: synagogues could sell their sacred treasures in
order to ransom prisoners or succor refugees. As a result of all
these and similar recurrent crises, as well as normal wear and the
natural tendency (from the antiquary's point of view disastrous) to
replace the old by the new, Jewish ritual art of the medieval period
has disappeared almost entirely. Hardly more than a handful of
specimens anterior to the sixteenth century are now traceable. This
generalization, to be sure, may perhaps need qualification in due
course. If careful and expert inspection could be made of the
property of ancient and even modern synagogues, especially in the
East, with the same care as has been devoted to the study of ancient
manuscripts, it is not improbable that some memorable ritual objects
of great antiquity might even now be discovered.
   However that may be, the fact remains that the objects of Jewish
ritual art which are now extant are virtually all of the post-medieval
period. After a trickle of the sixteenth century, there is a great
mass of material of the seventeenth and eighteenth, some of it very
fine. Perhaps an unduly large proportion is German in origin,
reflecting the religious enthusiasm, economic well-being and good
taste of the new groupings in those countries, especially the
newly-arisen class of Court Jews. It may be remarked that here
domestic religious adornments figure in great abundance side by side
with those intended for the synagogue. The taste and charm of some of
the objects then manufactured in Poland and Eastern Europe belies the
general impression of the economic misery and unaesthetic outlook of
the Jewish communities in this area.
   On the whole, these objects reflect the tastes and fashions of
the countries and periods in which they were manufactured. To be
sure, in some cases the craftsmen were Jews. Gold and silver-smithery
was one of the characteristic Jewish occupations in most countries.
It is believed that from early times until the modern era, Jews in
the Eastern countries were responsible for the manufacture of most of
these objects. But in Western Europe, with the growing tendency to
exclude the Jews from handicrafts after the period of the Crusades,
this was different. Moreover, in remote communities where a Jewish
craftsman might not be available, it was necessary to have recourse to
the local silversmiths. However that may be, it is certain that much
Jewish ritual metal-work is of non-Jewish manufacture; in England,
Germany and Holland it often bears the mark of the Gentile
manufacturers, sometimes well-known masters of their craft- e.g.
the prolific Matthews Wolff (Augusburg, c. 17), Jeremiah Zobel
(Frankfurt am Main, c. 17), and John Ruslen, Frederick Kandler,
Hester Bateman and William Grundy (London, 18th century). We know of
at least two medieval contracts for the manufacture of silver
ornaments for the Torah, made between Gentile craftsmen and the
leaders of the local Jewish communities- one from Arles (1439), the
other from Avignon (1477). In the former instance, silversmith Robin
Tissard undertook that the commission was to be executed in a room
placed at his disposal in the house of one of the local Jews, and that
no work should be done on Sabbaths or Jewish holy days.
   On the other hand, besides the vast amount of anonymous work of
this type which falls into this category, a good deal was carried out
by ascertainable Jewish craftsmen of some reputation. We know, for
example, of the London silversmith Abraham d'Oliviera (d. 175),
who has been mentioned elsewhere in this work in connection with his
work as an artist-engraver, who designed and executed a good deal of
ritual silver in London in the first half of the eighteenth century;
and his younger contemporary Myer Myers (1723-94), first President of
the Silversmith's Guild of New York, who carried out some
distinguished work for synagogues (as well as churches) in America.
   Certain decorative features became very common in, and almost
characteristic of, the Jewish ritual art of the post-medieval period.
In St. Peter's in Rome there is a spirally fluted bronze column,
the colonna santa, late Classical in origin; it is legendary
said to have been brought from the Temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus
leaned against it while disputing with the rabbis. From the
Renaissance period, two twisted columns, apparently copied from the
colonna santa, and inevitably identified with Jakhin and Boaz
of Kings =7, 21, began to figure as a typical feature on the engraved
title-pages of Hebrew books (see fig. 175). It was from there that
this feature was copied on various objects of European Jewish ritual
art until the end of the eighteenth century.
   Other symbols which are commonly found include the lion,
representing the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Genesis =49, 9) which,
as we have seen, was one of the most common symbols found in Jewish
art from classical antiquity. This illustrated also the Rabbinic
dictum (Ethics of the Fathers, =5, 23) that a man should be bold as a
lion, light as an eagle and fleet as a deer to fulfill the will of his
Father in Heaven. The eagle and deer also figure, though less
commonly (fig. 138). The two Tablets of Stone bearing the Ten
Commandments, in the shape which had become conventional in the Middle
Ages (among the Christians perhaps earlier than among the Jews) is
found very frequently (fig. 139). Sometimes, too, we see other
ancient Temple furniture, such as the altar and table of shew-bread,
perpetuating the tradition already found in medieval manuscripts.
   A gift presented by a Cohen would often bear a representation
of the hands joined in the priestly benediction, of a Levite that
of the ewer and basin used by members of that tribe in laving the
priest's hands. In Italy (and later in the ex-Marrano communities)
other family badges and armorial bearings were not unusual. The whole
would be commonly surmounted by a crown, symbolizing the traditional
Crown of the Law: sometimes by a triple crown, in reference to the
Rabbinic dictum (Ethics of the Fathers, =4, 17) that there are three
crowns- that of the Torah, of Monarchy, and of Priesthood "and that
of a Good Name surpasses them all."
=2
   THE RITUAL art of the synagogue naturally centered on the
Scroll of the Pentateuch or Sepher Torah, used in the Biblical
readings, and wound upon two staves. It is impossible to determine
when the practice arose of covering this by an ornament of precious
metal. Probably, however, it was relatively late. The Talmud (Baba
Bathra 14a) speaks of the Pentateuch deposited by Moses in the
Tabernacle as being on silver rollers, but this legendary model does
not seem to have been imitated, and in representations in synagogue
interiors and on Holy Scrolls in various media (gold glasses, etc.)
in the classical period there is no trace of anything in the way of
ornament. The account of the sack of the Synagogue of Minorca in 438
speaks of the synagogical ornaments and silver, without giving any
further details. The same is true of the sacred appurtenances which
Pope Gregory the Great ordered to be restored to the Synagogue of
Palermo in 599.
   In Oriental communities, the Scroll of the Law was enclosed
entirely in a case (tik), which was placed upright on the reading
desk and opened out for reading the prescribed portion. This was the
general practice in Iraq and the neighboring countries as early as the
1th century, and has remained to our own day. These cases were
usually of wood, frequently with inscriptions applied in metal, but
were occasionally of silver, finely worked and engraved, and sometimes
of gold. In the former metal, a few fine examples are extant; none,
however, which are anterior to the seventeenth century (fig. 14).
Though the tik was commonly used only in Eastern communities,
cases were made for the scrolls sometimes also in Western countries,
especially for well-to-do householders, who wished to have portable
Torah-scrolls on their travels. An exquisite pair of such cases in
silver, with polygonal sections opening on hinges and spirally fluted
handles and finials, was executed in 1766-7 by a Gentile master
craftsman for "Dr." Samuel de Falk, the so-called Baal
Shem of London.
   The practice of placing crowns of precious metal on the
Sepher Torah- at least on such special occasions as the feast
of the Rejoicing of the Law- seems also to have been established in
Iraq as early as the tenth century (Shaare Semahot, p. 117).
The Fostat contract of 1186-7 lists among other objects "Two
Sepher-Crowns made out of silver." This form of ornament
was naturally suggested by the Rabbinic dictum cited above which
refers to the dignity of learning as "the Crown of the Law"- a
phrase inscribed innumerable times on such objects and others
connected with the synagogue ritual. These objects, which became
known generally as atarah, were at the outset especially
associated with Southern Europe. Aaron of Lunel tells in his
Sepher haManhig how in 123 he persuaded some community which
he visited, in Southern France or Spain, to make a silver crown
(atarah) for the Sepher Torah instead of decorating it
with miscellaneous female adornments. The contract already referred
to of March 12, 1439 between the Avignonese silversmith Robin Tissard
and the baylons of the Jewish community of Arles was for
manufacture, for a total sum of fifty florins, of an atarah for
the "scroll of the Jews," hexagonal in shape, superimposed on a
copper drum with which Tissard was to be provided. There were to be
six towers- one at each corner- the top crenellated like a fortress,
and the surface to be engraved in imitation of masonry. Chains and
columns decorated with lions' heads were also to be part of the
design.
# 21
<36 TEXT J66>
Referring to this very impressive example of expressionist
painting, Ensor himself stated that ~'Je me suis joyeusement
confine?2 dans le milieu solitaire ou?3 tro?5ne le masque, tout de
violence, de lumie?3re et d'e?2clat. Le masque me dit: fraicheur de
ton, expression suraigue", de?2cor somptueux, grands gestes
inattendus, mouvements de?2sordonne?2s.'
   Following the Belgian school, we come to the French Nabis with
fine examples of the 6intimiste work of Vuillard and, in
particular, of Bonnard whose Nu a?3 Contre-Jour, painted in
198, and lent by the Muse?2es Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique,
Bruxelles, is possessed of every single quality of drawing, painting
and composition that any, and every, artist seeks to achieve.
   This exhibition of 'Les Sources du =2e?3me Sie?3cle'
has been so well planned and displayed that one is continually
startled and excited by the contrasting schools and groups of artists
that confront one as one moves on from room to room. After the
reposed and subdued work of the Nabis we suddenly come face to face
with the agitated, violent chromatic paintings of the Fauves and the
cynical, cruel expressionism of Rouault whose large strident
water-colour on paper of M. et Mme. Poulot (collection of
M. Philippe Leclercq, Hem) reproduced here, is one of his greatest
works.
   Next come the German Expressionists and the paintings of Nolde
and of Munch, in particular, have been carefully selected to indicate
the important role that this School played in the formation of
2th-century art. L'Angoisse, by Munch (which is reproduced
here, and lent by the Collections Municipales des Beaux-Arts,
Oslo) is, to say the least, agonizing in its able form of expression.
   And then we come to the British section which is very revealing
(for the French public, anyway) in that the accent is much more on
arts and crafts than on painting and sculpture. The artist-architect
who stands out most prominently is Charles F. Annesley Voysey,
member of the Art Workers Guild and nominated, in 1936, Royal Designer
for industry. Principal among the number of exhibits lent to the
Museum of Modern Art by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an
enchanting tapestry, designed by Voysey and which was executed, in
1899, by Alexander Morton and Co; and a series of delightful
wall-paper designs by Arthur Heygate Macmurdo, who was a close friend
of William Morris and of Ruskin.
   From the elegant designs of these British artists we are shown
the fantastic French 'style metro' furniture of the turn of the
century. A complete dining-room suite has been transported from the
Muse?2e de l'E?2cole de Nancy and installed in a separate room
in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. This ensemble,
executed in 193, has to be seen to be believed. This likewise
applies to the ghastly style of the 'Lit Papillon', also lent
from the Museum in Nancy. But it was not only in France that the
craftsmen produced furniture and fittings of extraordinary and
extravagant design. During the reign of Queen Victoria, sensational
'works of art' were fabricated such as the startling dining-room
table centre-piece, executed by Alfred Gilbert and his assistants, to
commemorate the jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 1887, and which Her
Majesty the Queen has graciously lent to the present exhibition in
Paris.
   Again, by way of contrast, the exhibition continues with the work
of the Cubists and important painting-collages by Braque and Picasso.
Le?2ger, too, is exhibited to marked advantage with his cubist
composition, La Noce, painted in 191, and owned by the Museum
of Modern Art in Paris. Guillaume Apollinaire, speaking of this
canvas, said 'Les gens de la Noce se dissimulent l'un derrie?3re
l'autre. Encore un petit effort pour se de?2barrasser de la
perspective, du truc mise?2rable, de la perspective, de cette
quatrie?3me dimension a?3 rebours, la perspective, de ce moyen de
tout rapetisser ine?2vitablement.'
   And then we come to the grandfather of the Peintres de
Dimanche, Le Douanier Rousseau. His Charmeuse de Serpents
(from the Louvre) is surely one of the greatest, and most natural,
of primitive paintings.
   Der Blaue Reiter group of avant-garde artists is
admirably represented with important paintings by Kandinsky, among
which the dramatic and powerful composition entitled Avec l'Arc
Noir, painted in 1912, and lent by the widow of the artist; by
Jawlensky, whose Portait de Jeune Fille (from the Kunstmuseum,
Dusseldorf) is a superb example of his work; and by Franz Marc whose
well-known composition of Les Trois Chevaux Rouges (lent by
M. Paul Geier, Rome) typifies his search after the
'spiritualization of nature'.
   Nearby are hung a few small water-colours and drawings by Klee.
This is the only artist in this very important and instructive
exhibition whose work I find poorly represented. The originality, the
fascination of his very individual art certainly merited more than
this.
   Futurism, the short-lived beginning of the century revolutionary
movement, founded by Marinetti who spoke of 'a roaring motor-car,
which runs like a machine-gun and is more beautiful than the Winged
Victory of Samothrace...' is mainly represented by Boccioni with a
disturbing quasi-religious composition entitled Matie?3re (lent
by M. Gianni Mattioli, Milan).
   The origin of pure modern abstract painting is fully exemplified
in the work of Mondrian. In the present exhibition I was intrigued by
his L'Arbre Rouge (from the Gemeente Museum, La Haye) for I
always remember Mondrian telling me, in his own studio in Paris, that
he was more interested in painting a lamp-post than a tree!
   'Les sources du =2e?3me Sie?3cle' exhibition concludes
with some fine examples of the work of Modigliani, de Chirico, and
Chagall. Kokoschka, I am pleased to say, is very well represented
with several portraits and landscapes which reveal the true talent of
this artist who, I feel, is still not sufficiently known and
appreciated.
   There is much I would have liked to say about many other
interesting exhibitions now taking place in Paris. But I find I have
sacrificed my allotted space to this outstanding exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art. Thus I am obliged to leave reviews of the
exhibition of sculpture by Lilla Kunvari (at the Galeries Raymond
Duncan); of enamels, by Andre?2 Marchand (at the Galerie David &
Garnier); of painting by De Gallard (at the newly opened Galerie
Herve?2); and of the annual E?2cole de Paris show (at the Galerie
Charpentier) until the next issue.
   
   NEW ART GALLERIES continue to spring up in Paris all over the
place. Since six months ago, when I calculated that there were more
than two hundred and fifty of them, I reckon that the figure is now
not far off the three hundred mark. As this is one of the busiest
seasons of the year for exhibitions, I am receiving daily so many
invitations for private views that I have to decide which shows are
not worth seeing. The other day, one of the small Left Bank
galleries sent me an invitation for a new exhibition and stamped on
the envelope was ~'Les tableux sont le meilleur placement au
monde' ('paintings are the best investment in the world'),
which is proof enough of the very profitable business now being done
by the Paris dealers during the present boom.
   After reviewing the remarkable exhibition at the Museum of Modern
Art, of 'Sources du =2e?3me Sie?3cle', in last month's
Paris Commentary, there was not space enough left for me to refer to
Lilla Kunvari's sculpture, at the Galeries Raymond Duncan; and Michel
de Gallard's paintings at the new Herve?2 gallery. I have followed
the progress of this talented young artist's work since I called on
him, shortly after the war, in his tiny, drab 'studio' in the
squalid La Ruche building way over in the 15th arrondissement.
   De Gallard managed to escape from La Ruche a few years ago and he
now lives outside Paris where he leads a retired and happy life
painting realistic scenes of the countryside and of the peasants
working in the fields. His drawing has gained in strength and his
palette is becoming more varied while he seeks to bring more light
into his well balanced compositions. His impressive Cathedrale de
Sens, which was reproduced in last month's Studio, testified
to these qualities.
   Lilla Kunvari is an able Hungarian sculptor who was educated in
France and who studied art in the Paris academies. Her drawings have
the delicate force of Rodin while her small terra-cotta busts and
figures (like that of L'Orateur: see my last Paris Commentary)
recall the grotesque heads so cleverly caricatured and modelled by
Daumier. For all that, Lilla Kunvari's art has an appealing
individuality.
   One of the most thrilling exhibitions I have seen for a long time
at the very active Galerie de France is that of recent paintings by
Tamayo who is considered one of the greatest living Mexican artists
and whose work is well known and admired in America, but less known in
France, and even less in the U.K.
   Tamayo was born in Oaxaca, in 1899. He took to painting when
very young and, at sixteen years of age, studied at the Academie des
Beaux-Arts de San Carlos. He left the Academy three years later and
devoted himself to a study of the Impressionists and the Cubists. He
held his first one-man exhibition when twenty-two years old at a time
when he was attempting to combine in his compositions both the
pre-Columbian tradition and the modern expressionism that he had
learnt from his study of the School of Paris. In 1929, he was
nominated Professor at the E?2cole des Beaux-Arts in Mexico City.
Four years later he executed the first of a series of outsize mural
decorations for the E?2cole Nationale de Musique, Mexico City.
   In 1943, Tamayo moved to New York where he held his first one-man
show there at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. Since the war, he has
travelled widely throughout Europe and has exhibited at all the big
international shows while executing frescoes here and there. I saw
and spoke to him in Paris during his exhibition at the Galerie de
France and he told me he had to hasten back to Mexico City where he
had to start work on a gigantic mural for the Muse?2e de
l'Histoire which will measure about 1 metres by 15 metres! He
reckoned that this will take him at least a full year's hard work to
complete.
   Tamayo is, indeed, a prodigious worker. The twenty-five canvases
on view at the Galerie de France represented only a part of what he
had produced in 196. His particular form of expression is difficult
to describe on account of its striking originality; but what is
apparent is the strange and unusual combination of Mexican folklore
art and a quasi-abstract European form of painting, as can be judged
from his Homme au Mur, reproduced here.
   At the same time there exists a fantasy, especially in his
smaller canvases, which reminds one of the intriguing and charming
esprit of Paul Klee. A certain cubist expressionism is to be found in
his compositions wherein the arithmetical balance is based on the laws
of The Golden Section. And there is a haunting, evasive, subtle
quality about his colour orchestration of harmonies of pastel hues.
The texture, too, of his paintings is of a very individual and
striking quality. Tamayo himself told me of the secrets of this: he
mixes his paint with powdered marble.
   An exhibition which was not widely advertised but which was, in
my opinion, of equal importance and significance to that of Tamayo-
though quite different in aspect- was the show held at the re-opened
Galerie Jeanne Bucher, in the Rue de Seine, of recent paintings by
Vieira da Silva, whose work I have always greatly admired. I hope to
be able to write about her at some length in a forthcoming series of
articles in THE STUDIO on leading abstract, and near-abstract,
artists of the School of Paris, so I shall praise her work here in
short terms.
   Like those of Tamayo, Vieira da Silva's paintings are very
individual and original and this in itself is a rare enough quality
these days.
# 28
<361 TEXT J67>
A GROUP OF ENGLISH AND IMPORTED MEDIEVAL POTTERY FROM LESNES
ABBEY, KENT; AND THE TRADE IN EARLY HISPANO-MORESQUE POTTERY TO
ENGLAND
By G. C. DUNNING, F.S.A.
   THE group of medieval pottery described in this paper was found
at Lesnes Abbey in June 1959, when the smaller of two stone-lined pits
added against the west end of the Reredorter was cleared. The pit
measured 8 ft. by 5 ft. internally, and was about 1 ft. deep.
The greater part of the filling, about 7 ft. in depth, consisted of
chalk and stone rubble, fragments of sandy mortar, a few pieces of
worked stone, and broken roofing tiles. Below this filling was a
layer of dark soil, about 2 ft. in depth, at the bottom of the pit.
All the pottery was found in the layer of dark soil; there is thus no
doubt that it is contemporary, and was absolutely sealed by several
feet of building debris. I am indebted to the officers of the
Historic Buildings Section of the London County Council for these
details, and for permission to examine the pottery and prepare this
report for publication.
   The pottery belongs to six vessels, of which four are almost
complete and must have been thrown away whole. It is divided into the
following classes:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   1. Two green-glazed jugs of types frequently found in the City of
London, and probably made in east Surrey.
   2. An unglazed jug, probably made at Limpsfield, Surrey.
   3. A jug of polychrome ware decorated with birds and shields, and
part of a glazed pitcher. Both were made in western France in the
region of Saintes.
   4. A large cover of Hispano-Moresque lustreware, imported from
Malaga.
<END INDENTATION>
   The group is outstanding for several reasons. In a single find
pottery made in the locality is associated with imports from two
different countries on the Continent. The three English jugs are of
different types, and it is valuable to have them together in a group.
The polychrome jug is a type long recognized as imported to England,
and brought here by the wine trade of Gascony. The cover of Spanish
lustreware is new to British medieval archaeology, and increases the
range of imported pottery known to have reached England in the course
of sea-trade.
   The date of the group is closely determined by the polychrome
jug. Pottery of this class was made in western France and exported to
England during a very short period. The available evidence, cited
below (p. 5), points to the period c. 128-13 for the date
of the group of pottery from Lesnes Abbey.
1. GREEN-GLAZED JUGS (pl. 1a and figs. 1, 2)
   Fig. 1. Baluster jug, 16 1/4 in. high, made of light grey
sandy ware, mostly covered outside by a buff slip, and glazed streaky
light green on the neck and body to below the bulge. The profile
shows a continuous curve, the only demarcation between neck and body
being a ridge at two-thirds of the height. The handle is plain and
circular in section. The edge of the base is slightly moulded, and
the middle of the base sags slightly below the level of the edge.
   This is a typical example of the standard type of baluster jug
frequently found in the City of London. The slender form, absence of
decoration, and unstable base suggest that the type was not primarily
intended for use at the table, but rather for drawing water out of a
well. That pottery jugs were used for this purpose is shown by the
accumulation of over fifty jugs, many intact, in the filling of a
medieval well excavated by Mr. S. S. Frere between St.
George's Street and Burgate, Canterbury, in 1952.
   Fig. 2. Ovoid jug, 12 1/4 in. high, made of light grey sandy
ware with light reddish buff surface, covered by yellow slip. Mottled
green glaze covers the neck and body to below the bulge. The neck is
cylindrical, separated from the bulbous body by a ridge, and the base
is retracted above the foot-ring on which the jug stands steadily.
The rim has an outward slope, with a groove and moulding below, and
is pinched to form a small lip. At the middle of the neck is a broad
rounded cordon between a ridge and a narrow flat cordon. The handle
is plain and circular in section.
   The ovoid jug with retracted foot is also a type common in
London, and sometimes profusely decorated.
   The contemporaneity of these two jugs is confirmed by the finding
of fragments of both types in medieval buildings in Joyden's Wood,
near Bexley, where the occupation is limited to the period c.
128-132. The kilns where they were made have not yet been
located, but probably they were to the south of London, in east
Surrey. One site was at Earlswood, where potters' refuse and wasters
<SIC> have been known for a long time.
2. UNGLAZED JUG (fig. 3)
   Large part of neck, body, and base of a small jug, about 6.1
in. high, made of grey sandy ware with dark grey surface, unglazed.
The body is bulging, with wide sagging base. The upper part of the
body is marked by fine horizontal grooves and wheel-marks. The neck
contracts upwards, and the rim was everted. The lower part of the
handle is preserved separately; it is roughly circular in section, and
deeply stab-marked down the back.
   Unglazed jugs of grey ware, rather archaic in character, are
known from a number of sites in north-west Kent. The major site is
Eynsford Castle, where excavations by the Ministry of Works have
produced many jugs of this type in deposits of the end of the
thirteenth century. Other sites are at Joyden's Wood near Bexley, and
at Bexley. Pottery of this character was made in east Surrey, where
at least one kiln-site is known. Recently Mr. Brian Hope-Taylor
excavated a kiln and potter's workshop at Vicars Haw, Limpsfield,
which produced a mass of jugs, cooking-pots, and bowls with the
characteristics given above.
3. POTTERY FROM WESTERN FRANCE
Polychrome jug (pl. 1b and fig. 4)
   Several fragments of a nearly complete jug, skilfully restored at
the Institute of Archaeology, London. The jug, 1.3 in. high, is
made of thin whitish ware with a thin colourless glaze on the outside
surface. It is of slender pear-shape with retracted foot. The
decoration in free-style is of a bird and a shield on each side, and a
third shield beneath the spout. The figures are outlined in dark
brown; the birds are coloured green and the shields are orange-yellow,
with three bars instead of the more usual two. One bird and two
shields are nearly complete, but the rest of the decoration is
fragmentary.
   The bird and shield design is one of the leading patterns on
polychrome ware. Examples, more or less complete, are known in
England and Wales from London, Stonar, Felixstowe, Cardiff, and
Llantwit Major. The shape of the jug also occurs several times on
jugs from London, Ipswich, Writtle, Canterbury, Old Sarum, Glastonbury
Abbey, and Whichford Castle.
   Since the initial discussion and inventory of polychrome ware in
Archaeologia in 1933, a considerable number of new finds has been
made in Britain. The total number of sites now stands at twenty-five
in England, six in Wales, still one in Scotland, and Ireland (as
predicted in the original paper) can now show three sites. These
additions alone call for a re-evaluation of the material, but even
more significant is the new evidence in France. The kilns of an
intense medieval pottery industry have been discovered at La
Chappelle-des-Pots, a village to the east of Saintes in Charente
Maritime. The manufacture here of polychrome ware and the other types
of pottery also exported from France to England is now an established
fact. It is now possible, therefore, to discuss more fully the trade
in polychrome ware from its centre of production in France, and to
give a more balanced evaluation of its distribution in the British
Isles.
   For the present purpose it must suffice to summarize the evidence
for the date of polychrome ware. This is based on finds made at five
castles, either built by Edward =1, occupied by the English for a
limited period, or where the deposits are related to building periods
of the structure. The castles and the limiting dates are as follows:
<TABLE>
   The gist of this evidence is that at the longest range polychrome
ware dates between 127 and 1325. In fact the range can be narrowed
down to between 128 and 13, since most of the initial and terminal
dates overlap. Although pottery of other types made in the same part
of western France has been found in Britain in contexts both earlier
and later than the above dates, there is no evidence otherwise that
polychrome ware had a longer range in date. The evidence as a whole
suggests that polychrome ware was not only imported but indeed made
during a very short period, and that it was produced in the lifetime
of one or at most two generations of potters.
Glazed pitcher (fig. 5)
   The base and lower half of a pitcher is also identified as an
import from western France. It is made of thin, hard yellow ware with
fine red grit. The surface is smooth and yellow-buff, with patches of
green glaze above the bulge. The base is markedly raised at the
middle.
   The pot belongs to a group well represented at Saintes by
barrel-shaped and ovoid pitchers and jugs. These have a large
bridge-spout and a single strap-handle, as on the polychrome jugs, and
the base is usually hollowed underneath. On some of the jugs the
decoration consists of slip lines in brown or red forming a chevron or
trellis pattern limited to the upper part of the body, as was
evidently the case on the Lesnes Abbey pot. The ware of the pots at
Saintes is sometimes equal in quality to that of the polychromes, and
sometimes more gritty. It is probable, therefore, that these vessels,
of which fragments were found at the kiln-sites at La
Chappelle-des-Pots, were also made elsewhere in the vicinity of
Saintes. A pitcher decorated with a trellis in red slip, in the
Muse?2e Municipal at Saintes, has been used to complete the
drawing of the Lesnes Abbey pot.
4. SPANISH LUSTREWARE (pl. 11 and fig. 6)
   Two fragments of thick whitish ware, glazed and decorated on both
surfaces. The outside is mostly covered by zones of pale amber
lustre, comprising broad and narrow solid bands, sloping panels,
chevrons, and large scrolls. Between the lustre are two narrow bands
painted in cobalt-blue (hatched in the drawing). The smaller fragment
has two concentric mouldings on the outside above the inner blue band;
the inner moulding is more prominent than the outer. On the inside
surface the lustre is fainter, and shows the same range of motifs as
on the outside, also a narrow band of guilloche; no blue bands are
present on the inside.
   The pieces belong to the same vessel, a large cover or lid, 15
3/4 in. in diameter at the rim. At the inner edge of the upper
piece the profile turns sharply upwards for a knob for lifting, as
restored in the drawing.
   The Lesnes Abbey cover is identified as Hispano-Moresque ware
made at Malaga in Andalusia by comparison with numerous fragments, in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, found at Fostat near Cairo. The
origin of this lustre-painted pottery is demonstrated by a foot-ring
from Fostat, inscribed with the Arabic word Malaga. Such marks
are seldom found on this class of pottery, and may indicate that they
were limited to vessels destined for exportation. A close parallel
for the shape and decoration of the Lesnes Abbey cover is provided by
a large piece of a cover from Fostat (pl. =3a). This is also
decorated on both sides by bands of pale amber lustre, and near the
top are mouldings precisely like those on the Lesnes Abbey cover.
   The shape of these covers is given by a complete cover for a
pedestalled bowl, both painted with arabesque patterns in lustre and
in blue, also in the Victoria and Albert Museum (pl. =3b).
# 232
<362 TEXT J68>
All this, the great corpus of Russian song, remains almost
unknown- or known by its least fine and subtle examples. And not
only Russian song; Poland has produced at least two remarkable
song-writers, Moniuszko in the last century and Szymanowski in the
present one, of whom Szymanowski is known only in German translations
and Moniuszko not at all, for his songs have never been translated
into English and the wretched French selection is a hundred years old.
   Instrumental music, of course, penetrates the curtain with no
difficulty, with the result that we think of Russian and Polish music
as mainly instrumental. This is a false picture. It is less false, I
think, of Czech music. The Czechs (among whom I include the Moravians
and Slovaks and Ruthenians, beside the Czechs proper) are an intensely
musical people but, whether because they nearly lost their language as
a culture-language under the Habsburg monarchy (so that even Smetana
had to learn it as a foreigner) or from deficiencies in the language
itself (e.g. in vowel-sounds), for some reason their vocal
literature is less rich than their instrumental.
   The language-curtain obstructs much more than the free passage of
Slavonic vocal music. It obstructs our knowledge of a great deal of
music that would present no difficulty at all if we could only hear
it: the older instrumental music of the Czechs and Poles, and their
Latin church music. For- and here I come at last to the very heart
of my subject- the Czechs and Poles have always shared the culture of
Western Europe, including its music, whereas the Russians began to do
so only in the second half of the eighteenth century. Not only were
the Russians Christianised from Byzantium, either directly or through
Bulgarian missionaries, and left with a different alphabet, a
different liturgy and a different liturgical language, for two
centuries in the later Middle Ages they suffered under the 'Tatar
yoke' and the Princes of Moscow were mere tributaries to Mongol
khans. On the other hand, whatever the penetration of Central Europe
by the old Slavonic liturgy, whatever the nature of the conflict there
between Eastern and Western churches (and on this there are many
important points on which the experts still disagree), whatever the
political vicissitudes of the Western Slav states, they were never
detached in this way from the influences of Western Christendom; the
Roman alphabet conquered the Cyrillic and in the church Latin
conquered Old Slavonic. Polish and Czech chapter and monastery
libraries at Gniezno and Vys?1ebrod possess Gregorian missals from
the eleventh or early twelfth century, and although these no doubt
came from the West- the Gniezno missal has St. Gall-type neumes-
manuscripts of Polish and Czech origins were compiled before long.
The Prague Troparium of 1235 is only the earliest of a number of
Czech and Moravian musical codices of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries and the Poles claim the composition of a plainsong antiphon
which can hardly be later than the twelfth century: 'Magna vox,
laude sonora' in honour of St. Adalbert, who played such an
important part in the Christianisation (or Romanisation) of both Poles
and Czechs. And there is a significant parallelism in the appearance
of the earliest religious songs with Czech or Polish words; both the
Polish 'Bogurodzica' (Hymn to the Mother of God) and the Czech
'Hospodine, pomiluj ny' ('Lord have mercy on us', a
vernacular Kyrie) are more or less centos of plainsong motives.
Moreover the earliest preserved sources for both date from the same
period; the oldest known manuscript of the 'Bogurodzica' dates
from about 147, that of 'Hospodine, pomiluj' from just ten
years earlier, though the words are found without the music as early
as c. 138.
   I have no intention of inflicting on you a potted history of
Western Slavonic music, beginning with the Middle Ages. I wish, by
these facts, only to drive home two points: the essential oneness of
this musical culture with that of Europe generally- and the
differences. The Western Slavs shared in the common stock but often
drew from it elements which they put to their own special uses.
Standing on the outer edge of Western culture, they developed all the
fascinating peculiarities one expects to find in peripheral cultures.
One finds similar things in the music of Portugal and at some periods
of history in our own. Peripheral cultures naturally tend to be
'backward'; even in a country the size of England, provincial
architecture has often been half-a-century or more behind the style
fashionable in London; as we all know, even Germany was very late in
developing polyphony. But there are wonderful compensations in the
variety, in the range of dialects (as it were). Sometimes political
or other non-musical factors play a part; the Hussite wars of the
fifteenth century gave a tremendous stimulus to vernacular Czech song
just as the two centuries and more of Habsburg domination after the
Battle of the White Mountain overlaid and even seemed to extinguish
the peculiarly Czech elements in the music of Bohemia. But the Slavs
were quite capable of developing special musical characteristics
without the help of extra-musical circumstances. Even in the field of
notation, Czech neumes evolved with certain differences. In the
thirteenth century the Czechs were still using non-diastematic neumes;
in the fourteenth they progressed to the stave- and their neumes
began to assume peculiar rhomboid forms. But let me remind you again
how much more different things were in Russia, where liturgical
melody had developed- and developed quite a long way on its own
lines- from Byzantine chant but was stuck fast in a primitive
notation which is still unreadable up to the late fifteenth century,
although comparative study with Byzantine notation is now showing how
it may be deciphered. As for the five-line stave, it reached the
Ukraine only in the seventeenth century and Russia proper in the
eighteenth. Genuine polyphony was impossible though a very primitive
form of three-part polyphony- in the so-called 11troestrochnoe
style, noted in three rows of neumes- begins to appear about the
middle of the sixteenth century: the liturgical 6cantus firmus
in the middle part is supported at first in unison or octaves by
upper and lower voices which branch out from it and close in again to
the unison in the manner of the 11podgoloski of Russian
polyphonic folk-music. It is not until the mid-seventeenth century
that one begins to find four-part polyphony, with the 6cantus
firmus in the tenor and the added parts in note-against-note style
producing common chords in root position.
   At this period, when Russian liturgical polyphony was in its
earliest infancy and Russian secular music reached no higher level
than the songs and dance music of the 11skomorokhi (buffoons),
Poland and Bohemia were enjoying what modern Polish and Czech
historians claim as a 'golden age of polyphony'. It may at first
strike us as no more than a pale reflection of the golden age that was
being enjoyed at the same time by all Europe, but that is not the
whole truth. A great deal of this music deserves not only intensive
study but performance.
   Two difficulties confront the Western student of this music. One
I have already mentioned: the language curtain. It does not conceal
so much of the music itself, for a great deal of it is Latin church
music, but it makes it difficult for most of us to get at the
information about it, the existing stylistic research, and so on.
Czech and Polish musicology have fairly long traditions and very high
standards, as indeed has Soviet musicology, and the amount of study
devoted to the Western Slav polyphonists- to say nothing of the
instrumental composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
and early Czech and Polish romantic piano music- is enormous. It
exists in print, in books and monographs and learned periodicals, but
it might be in Etruscan or Cretan Linear B for all that most of us can
make of it and it would be well worth the while of some of the young
musicologists now studying Russian to make Polish or Czech their
second Slav language.
   The second difficulty is that of actual scores. It has at times
seemed as if Western Slav musicologists were more interested in
studying their old masters than in getting their texts published.
Josef Syrzyn?2ski made an excellent start in 1885 with his Polish
Monumenta but succeeded in bringing out only four volumes; the
later Polish series, Wydawnictwo dawnej muzyki polskiej,
edited by Chybin?2ski and begun in the 193s, has produced nearly
forty numbers but many of them are very slim, containing only a single
work or a selection of short pieces. (The editorial prefaces were
from the first provided with a French translation and the post-war
numbers are translated into English, French, German and Russian.) The
somewhat similar Czech series, Musica Antiqua Bohemica, has
been devoted almost entirely to instrumental music of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; it is only in the last few
years that the Czechs have begun to publish the work of their classic
polyphonists- with trilingual 6re?2sume?2s of the prefaces,
but not of the critical apparatus.
   A third difficulty is the paucity of surviving material. Poland
and the Czechoslovak lands have provided innumerable battlefields
during the last four centuries; the Thirty Years War and the two World
Wars were only the worst of a series, and the total destruction of
music, both manuscript and printed, must have been enormous.
(Incidentally, these countries began to print music quite early; a
Czech-printed Catholic Kanciona?2l appeared in 1529 and a Polish
music-publisher, L?11azarz Andrysowic, was active at Cracow from 1553
onward). One reads of a Polish master such as Wacl?11aw z
Szamotul- or Szamotulczyk, as he is often called- who was obviously
a very considerable figure in the middle of the sixteenth century; two
of his psalm-motets were published by Montanus and Neuber at Nuremberg
in 1554 and in 1564 in collections of works by the leading French and
Netherland masters, and what survives of his music justifies the high
esteem in which he was held. Yet one finds so little that does
survive: these two motets, another preserved only in organ tablature,
some songs with Polish words- a very small proportion of what he is
known to have written. His eight-part Mass for the wedding of King
Sigismund Augustus is lost; his Office settings are lost; of his
Lamentationes, printed at Cracow by Andrysowic, only the tenor
part has been preserved. Another, rather later composer Tomasz
Szadek- a member first of the king's private chapel and later of the
royal chapel of the Rorantists at Cracow, the two chief centres of the
Polish 'golden age'- survives in only two works, other than
fragments, and of those two Masses one lacks the Agnus.
   Technically these works are more or less in the 'late
Netherland' style. What distinguishes them and gives them special
interest is the infusion of Polish melodic elements, here a phrase
from a Polish devotional song, there a pseudo-plainsong found only in
Polish sources. Marcin Leopolita, composer and organist to the king
in the early 156s, composed a five-part Missa paschalis or
Missa de resurrectione, the earliest complete setting of the
Ordinary by a Polish composer that has come down to us, which is based
on four Easter songs current in Poland and Germany.
   The Polish 'golden age' was finally submerged by a flood of
Italian musicians brought in by Sigismund =3. There had of course
been foreign musicians at the Polish court before; Heinrich Finck was
a chorister in the royal chapel in his youth and returned there for
fourteen years, perhaps as director, from 1492 to 156. And there had
been Italian musical influence. But Sigismund =3 was a fanatic for
the Counter-Reformation and for everything Italian; he moved his court
from Cracow to Warsaw, enticed Marenzio to go there (but failed to
keep him), invited Giovanni Gabrieli (also in vain) and appointed a
whole series of Italians as directors of his chapel, including
Asprilio Pacelli, an ancestor of the late Pope (Pius =12), and
Giovanni Francesco Anerio.
# 222
<363 TEXT J69>
   On differentiation, each reverts to the other:
<FORMULA>
   and
<FORMULA>
   The hyperbolic tangent, tanh at, is sinh at/ cosh
at and, starting at zero, never exceeds unity, however large t
may become.
<DIAGRAM>
   The remaining three hyperbolic functions, sech, cosech and
coth, are the reciprocals of the above three ratios respectively.
Fig. 1.4 shows the whole family of curves.
   Tables of the hyperbolic functions are available, but are not so
readily available as those of the circular functions. A device by
which the more extensive circular function tables may be used in
conjunction with a subsidiary table (the Gudermannian) is described in
Appendix 2.
   The general case, where the time constants of the two exponential
terms are not the same, may be expressed as the product of another
exponential and a hyperbolic function. Thus:
<FORMULA>
   If a is positive, this expression will always diverge.
<DIAGRAM>
   If a is negative (with b positive), the final value will
always be zero, and this is the more usual in practice. Fig. 1.5(a)
shows the result of the sum of two negative exponentials, and Fig.
1.5(b) the difference. The second is seen to start at zero, reach a
maximum, and then decay. As Sallust remarked: ~Omnia orta occidunt
et aucta secuntur, or ~'Everything rises but to fall and increases
but to decay'. The time at which the maximum is reached is easily
found to be
<FORMULA>
   and there is a point of inflexion where
<FORMULA>
   This type of curve is encountered, for example, in radioactive
cases where a substance A decays into another substance B,
which, in turn decays into a stable end-product C. The curve
shows how the amount of the second substance varies with time.
Intuitive estimation of transients
   A demonstration will now be given of how the transient current
resulting from switching operations may be obtained in simple cases,
without resort to mathematics (or very little). The following
plausible assumptions are made:
   1. That an uncharged capacitor behaves as a short circuit at the
instant of applying a steady p.d.; and after a long time, when
fully charged, acts as a disconnexion or infinite impedance.
   2. That a pure (resistanceless) inductance behaves in the opposite
way; offering apparently infinite impedance at the instant of
application of the direct voltage, and short circuit after a long
time- that is, when the current is steady.
   3. That, in the interim period, the current changes according to a
simple exponential law; the time constant of which is either RC or
L/ R, where R, L or C may be simple or compound.
   4. That there can be no discontinuous jumps in either the voltage
across a capacitor or the current in an inductor.
   The magnetic space constant 15m;; (otherwise the
permeability of free space) has dimensions henry/ metre, and the
electric space constant, or permittivity of free space, 15e;;,
farad/ metre. The square root of the reciprocal of the product of
these two, therefore, has the dimensions of velocity and this is the
velocity of electro-magnetic waves, c, equal to 299792 km/
sec, according to the latest evidence. It follows that ?22(LC)
has dimensions of time, and ?22(L/ C) dimensions of resistance.
In fact, ?22(L/ C) is the well-known expression for the
characteristic impedance of a loss-free transmission line.
   From this it is seen that L/ R and CR both have
dimensions of time, and this time is the time constant. Any time
constants we may encounter in the study of transients must be in the
form of a certain inductance divided by a certain resistance, or a
capacitance multiplied by a resistance, or else the square root of the
product of an inductance and a capacitance. No other combinations are
possible.
   Let a simple series LR circuit be suddenly connected to a
constant voltage source V, at time t = . The initial current
will be zero and after the transient has subsided will be V/ R.
At first sight, this is not a decaying exponential; it decays
upwards, so to speak. It may be easier to consider the voltage across
the (pure) inductance L. The initial voltage across this part of
the circuit is equal to V, and the final value will be zero.
Using the assumptions made above, the voltage across L in the
transient period will be
<FORMULA>
   and, because there are only two circuit elements, T is
obviously equal to L/ R.
   The voltage V;R; across the resistive part of the
circuit when added to V;L; must always give V, hence
<FORMULA>
   and the current in R (and also L, of course) is
<FORMULA>
   the well-known result of a problem which is often given to
beginners as an exercise in solving differential equations of the
first order.
   By similar reasoning, the current through a CR series circuit
is found to be
<FORMULA>
   The voltage across the resistor is
<FORMULA> and that across the capacitor is, therefore,
<FORMULA>, and so the charge in the capacitor at time t is
<FORMULA>
   Theoretically, the current never does reach its final value;
the 'final value' may be said to be attained when it falls short of
the theoretical final value by an amount too small to be detected by
the measuring instrument in use, or, in decay, when it has reached the
r.m.s. value of the noise level.
   For practical purposes, and as a rough guide, the current will
have reached within one per cent of the final value in a time five
times the length of the time constant (see p. 2). This is roughly
seven times as long as the half-life of radioactivity. One cannot
help feeling that, subconsciously or not, people who think in terms of
half-life have the idea that all activity will have ceased in about
twice that time.
Three-element circuits
   It may well be argued at this point that the above type of
reasoning is all very well for simple two-element circuits, but would
fail if carried further. Let us consider, therefore, the circuit of
Fig. 1.6 in which the capacitor C has a leakage resistance
R;2;.
<DIAGRAM>
   The initial current on making the switch (t = ) is V/
R;1;, and the final current will be
<FORMULA>. This fixes the limits between which the current must
vary exponentially.
   The time constant of this exponential must be the product of a
capacitance and a resistance. The capacitance is obviously C, but
what are we to take as the resistance? The answer is, that resistance
which effectively appears across the terminals of C when the
switch is closed; this is clearly R;1; and R;2; in
parallel, the voltage source having no internal resistance. So
the time-constant is
<FORMULA>
   and we can now sketch the current/ time curve as in Fig. 1.7.
The exponential part is
<FORMULA>
   and to this must be added
<FORMULA>; after a little manipulation the current can be written
<FORMULA>
   The final capacitor voltage
<FORMULA> will be VR;2;/ (R;1;+R;2;), and its
variation with time is
<FORMULA>
   The case of two capacitors and one resistor is amenable to
similar treatment, though not quite so easily (see Fig. 1.8). Here
there is a little awkwardness due to the fact that the initial rush of
current is very high; theoretically infinite but lasting for zero time
(see under 'Delta Function' in the next chapter). We shall
side-step the current question and work, instead, in terms of voltage
or quantity of charge, neither of which becomes infinite.
   When the switch is made, the capacitors immediately charge up to
VC;2;/ (C;1;+C;2;) and VC;1;/
(C;1;+C;2;) volts respectively, and the quantity of
charge on the plates of each is VC;1;C;2;/
(C;1;+C;2;) coulombs.
   Because of the presence of the resistance, C;1; will
discharge exponentially, with T = R(C;1;+C;2;) while
C;2;, following its initial charge at time t = , will
acquire further charge until its p.d. reaches the source voltage,
V, and it holds C;2;V coulombs.
   Hence: charge in C;1;
<FORMULA>
   and charge in C;2;
<FORMULA>
   The current taken from the supply, which is the same as that in
C;2; may be found by differentiating
<FORMULA> with respect to time and is
<FORMULA>
   plus, of course, the initial pulse of current. See p. 43,
equation (2.8).
   Circuits comprising R, C and L are, in general, beyond
this simple intuitive treatment, though there are exceptions. One of
these is shown in Fig. 1.9 where a constant voltage source, V,
is applied to two elementary circuits, LR;1; and CR;2;
respectively.
<DIAGRAM>
   We shall suppose that the two time constants are the same; L/
R;1; = CR;2; or R;1;R;2; = L/ C. The
initial current i;; will be V/ R;2; and the final
current,
<FORMULA> will be V/ R;1;. Thus, during the transient
period, the current will be switched over from the capacitive side to
the inductive side at a rate governed by the common time constant.
   Alternatively, we can make use of results already obtained on
p. 9 and write down the supply current immediately as
<FORMULA>
   In the special case where R;1; = R;2; = R, the
term containing the exponential vanishes, so there is no transient and
the current taken from the supply is constant and equal to V/ R.
In other words, the network is distortionless and free from phase
shift for all frequencies; provided always that R = ?22(L/
C).
Analogies
   In the elementary teaching of electricity use is often made of
analogies with mechanical systems. Electricity seems to be more
difficult to understand than mechanics for most people, because the
mind can readily picture mechanical processes, but electrical
phenomena require the effort of abstract thought. As the
understanding develops, the debt can be repaid, often with much
interest, as problems in mechanical engineering are referred to their
electrical counterparts for solution; an example of this is in the
theory of vibrations, both free and forced.
   The analogue of electro-motive force, E, is force, F, or
mechano-motive force as it has been called: that which moves
mechanical systems or particles, the unit being the newton; though
it is only fair to say that this unit is making but slow progress into
mechanical circles. The magnetic circuit analogue, magneto-motive
force, is not so good since, although we speak of flux, there is
nothing which actually flows. In angular motion the equivalent is
torque, T;q;, measured in newton . metre or joule/ radian.
   Electric current has its analogue in velocity- linear, v, or
angular, 15o, and consequently quantity of charge, the time-integral
of current, corresponds to linear displacement x, or angular
displacement 15th.
   Mass (kilogram) or moment of inertia (kilogram . metre:2:) is
analogous to inductance. It is noteworthy that while there has never
been any confusion in the mind of the electrician between
electro-motive force and self-inductance, the tyro mechanician often
finds difficulty in distinguishing force and mass, and tortures
himself with 'big pounds' and 'little pounds' as well as
'slugs' and 'poundals'. The increased use of the newton might
soften these difficulties.
   Electrical
<FORMULA>
   Mechanical
<FORMULA>
   Rotational
<FORMULA>
   (I being the moment of inertia).
   Figure 1.1 shows how current and angular and linear velocity
increase with time in systems where the resistance or friction is
zero. If the force is removed after a certain time, t;1;, the
current will go on flowing with circuit energy
<FORMULA>, or the wheel will continue to rotate with angular
energy
<FORMULA>, or the particle will continue with constant velocity
(Newton's law), and kinetic energy
<FORMULA>.
   If resistance is present, the current (or velocity) does not
increase indefinitely but reaches a limit, as we have already seen (p.
9). The initial slope is the same as for the resistanceless case and
the final value is given by the resistance divided into the
electro-motive force, or the mechanical resistance divided into the
mechano-motive force and so on.
<DIAGRAM>
   Alternatively, the electrical resistance in ohms (or volt .
ampere:-1: or henry . second:-1:) is given by E/ I where I
is the final value of current: and similarly, mechanical resistance
is
<FORMULA>, where v;T; is the final or terminal velocity;
and rotational resistance is T;q;/ 15o;T;. It follows
that the unit of mechanical resistance is newton . metre:-1: .
second, or kilogram . second:-1:, and of rotational resistance is
newton . metre . second, or kilogram . metre:2: . second:-1:.
The terms mechanical ohm and rotational ohm are used by Olson, but
these seem rather far-fetched, particularly as they are referred to
c.g.s. and not practical units.
# 221
<364 TEXT J7>
2
General Properties of Ferrites
2.1 FERRITE STRUCTURE
   APART from ferromagnetic metals, a number of chemical
compounds (e.g. ferrites, garnets, plumbites and perovskites)
exhibit ferromagnetic properties. Of these compounds ferrites have to
date proved to be the most important from the standpoint of microwave
applications. As the majority of ferrites crystallise with a cubic
structure, similar to the mineral spinel, (magnesium aluminate
Mg:++:Al ;2;:+++:O;4;:--:), the term ferromagnetic
spinel is sometimes used to describe those ferrites which exhibit
magnetic properties.
   The general chemical formula of a ferrite is
(MFe;2;O;4;);n; where M represents a metallic cation. It
is found that a spinel crystal structure is only formed if the ionic
radius of the cation M is less than about 1 A?15. If it is
greater than 1 A?15 then the electrostatic Coulomb forces are
insufficient to ensure the stability of the crystal. For example
Ca:++: (ionic radius 1.6 A?15) does not form spinel crystals,
while Mn:++: (ionic radius .91 A?15) does. The cation M is
generally divalent, but other valencies are possible if the number of
anions is doubled, e.g. lithium ferrite
Li:+:Fe;5;:+++:O;8;:--:. The ions forming ferrites
of practical importance are Ni:++:, Mn:++:, Fe:++:,
Co:++:, Cu:++:, Zn:++:, Cd:++:, Li:+:, Mg:++:.
   The spinel unit cell (see Fig. 2.1) consists of a close packed
cubic array of 32 oxygen anions, between which there are 96 spaces or
interstices, 24 of which are filled with a cation, the remaining 72
being empty. The sites occupied by the cations are of two kinds known
as tetrahedral or A sites and octahedral or B sites. The A
sites of which eight are occupied, are surrounded by four oxygen
anions and the B sites of which sixteen are occupied, are
surrounded by six oxygen anions. When the chemical formula is
written, the ions in the B sites are often enclosed in brackets to
indicate their position, e.g. Fe(NiFe)O;4; for nickel
ferrite.
   It might seem at first sight that the most likely arrangement of
the cations would be with M:++: ions on the A sites and
Fe;2;:+++: ions on the B sites but in practice three types
of spinel can be distinguished.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) Normal spinels in which M:++: ions occupy the A
sites and Fe;2;:+++: the B sites.
   (2) Inverse spinels in which M:++: ions occupy the B
sites together with half the Fe:+++: ions, the other half being
on the A sites.
   (3) Random spinels in which both M:++: ions and Fe:+++:
ions occur on the A and B sites.
<END INDENTATION>
   The preference of certain ions for A or B sites is of
importance, as it is found that in general normal ferrite spinels are
paramagnetic while inverse spinels are ferromagnetic. Many ions show
no strong preference for a particular site, this being especially true
for those ions with a noble gas configuration such as Li:+:,
Mg:++:, Al:+++: and also those with a half-filled 3d
electron shell e.g. Fe:+++:Mn:++:. Where there is no
strong site preference the most stable cation distribution can be
calculated from a static model of charged spheres. Of the remaining
ions in ferrites which are of microwave interest Zn:++:, has a
preference for A sites while only Ni:+++: and Cr:+++:
have a strong preference for B sites.
   When two or more cations are present, the distribution of ions
with weak site preference may be affected by the presence of an ion
with a strong site preference.
   Most ferrite spinels can form solid solutions with each other in
any proportion. This arises since there is a greater probability of a
solid solution when two ferrite spinels are reacted together, than
there is of the formation of separate crystals of the two spinels. A
well-known example of a solid solution is nickel zinc ferrite,
Ni;1-a;Zn;a;Fe;2;O;4;, where a can take any
value between  and 1.
   Unless great care is taken in the manufacture, the final ferrite
formed is not exactly that corresponding to the proportions of raw
materials used. This is because most ferrites can take up oxides into
solution without forming a second phase and thus give rise to
non-stoichiometric ferrite. In particular the ability of most
ferrites to take up Fe;2;O;3; in solution is important. In
the preparation of ferrites the component oxides are reacted at high
temperatures. During this sintering process there is a tendency for
most ferrites to give off oxygen, as the equilibrium pressure in this
reaction is often greater than one atmosphere and increases rapidly
with temperature. This gives rise to an oxygen deficiency in the
final product and to the formation of ferrous ions. The presence of
ferrous ions in microwave ferrites is undesirable however, since it
causes increased dielectric and magnetic loss as is discussed in this
chapter and Chapter 4. For this reason, compounds are often made iron
deficient, great care being taken to avoid loss of oxygen during
sintering.
2.2. PREPARATION OF FERRITES
   Ferrites are prepared by a ceramic technique which involves
sintering the component oxides at temperatures between 1@ and
145@C. The stages in the preparation of ferrites are listed
below:-
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Raw materials
   ?16
   Decomposition to oxide
   ?16
   Milling
   ?16
   Presintering (partial reaction)
   ?16
   Remilling
   ?16
   Pressing and Extruding to shape
   ?16
   Final sintering
   ?16
   Grinding to shape
<END INDENTATION>
   A number of raw materials can be used in the manufacture of
ferrites; these include oxides, carbonates, oxylates and nitrates.
The last three compounds decompose to oxides on heat treatment, and
are thus prepared 6in situ at a temperature near to that at
which solid state reactions commence. This process should favour the
formation of good quality homogeneous materials. For example in the
case of MgMn ferrites it has been reported that the use of nitrates
gives rise to better microwave properties. An explanation is that the
high decomposition temperature of the nitrates and the presence of
nitrogen oxides help to prevent the formation of ferrous ions during
the sintering process.
   The raw materials are first milled, usually in a steel ball mill,
to give a homogeneous mixture of very fine particles. The process is
generally carried out with the raw materials in a slurry of methylated
spirit or any other liquid which is easily removed after milling. The
evaporation of the methylated spirit is carried out rapidly to avoid
any heavier particles separating out.
   The mixture of raw materials is then pre-fired at a temperature
some 2@C below its final firing temperature. This process causes
partial reaction of the constituents and helps to reduce shrinkage
during final sintering. The presintered powder is then remilled. Two
methods of moulding the powder into shape prior to the final sintering
are commonly employed; die pressing and extrusion. For die pressing a
small quantity of binder is added to the powder so that when the
sample has been pressed to shape, it can be handled relatively easily.
To avoid the possibility of contamination of the sintered ferrite,
distilled water has been used as a binder, although for certain shapes
(e.g. rods) organic wax emulsions have been found more
satisfactory. Gentle heating to remove the binder is necessary as
violent volatilisation could cause the sample to crack. A moulding
pressure of between 2 and 1 tons/ sq. in. ensures a uniform end
product without the risk of forming laminates in the pressed sample.
   For satisfactory extrusion a higher percentage of binder is
required than for moulding. A solution of wax in petroleum has been
used as a binder for extrusion and by careful choice of extrusion
orifice very dense samples may be produced. As high a density as 99%
has been achieved under special conditions. Extruded samples, in
general, however are not as dense or uniform as those produced by
die-pressing. The principal use of extrusion techniques has been for
the manufacture of long thin rods, a shape often required in microwave
applications. Rods as long as 12in. x .4 in. diameter have been
produced by this method.
   The properties of the final product depend critically on the
sintering process and the closest control of sintering time,
temperature and atmosphere is required. Generally, the sintering
process is carried out at a temperature between 1@ and 145@C
for between 4 hours and 24 hours, depending on the ferrite. Ferrites
containing lithium and cadmium are usually sintered at lower
temperatures due to the volatility of LiO and CdO;2; while
those containing nickel, cobalt and magnesium are sintered at the
highest temperatures. By sintering for a long time at high
temperatures, a uniform final product with a minimum of air pores can
be obtained. The near absence of pores is a requirement for certain
microwave ferrites. This is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.
As already mentioned, however, the oxygen equilibrium pressure
increases rapidly with increasing temperatures and this sets a limit
on the maximum sintering temperature that can be used without
reduction of ferric iron to ferrous iron.
   The porosity of a particular polycrystalline ferrite sample is
usually quoted with reference to its X-ray or single-crystal density.
The X-ray density is determined from measurements of the spinel
lattice constant and Table 2.1 gives values for a number of commonly
used ferrites, for which the lattice constants are known. The density
of typical polycrystalline pressed samples is between 8% and 95% of
X-ray density, though figures as high as 99% have been achieved.
   During sintering, shrinkage of the ferrite sample occurs. This
may be controlled by careful preparation and by ensuring a uniform
temperature over the sample, although the final shape may not have the
tolerances required in practice. Sintered ferrites, being ceramic in
nature, require special methods of shaping. Cutting can be carried
out by use of a thin diamond slitting wheel or by use of an ultrasonic
machine with a knife edge cutting head. An accurate finish can then
be obtained by surface grinding with a carborundum wheel.
   The growth of single crystals of ferrite was originally of
interest mainly to the physicist, as the crystals produced were too
small for use in microwave applications. However, the development of
non-linear devices employing small single-crystal samples has modified
this situation, although they are still extensively used for the study
of the fundamental properties of ferrites.
   Two principal methods have been used for the formation of single
crystals; the borax melt and the flame fusion process.
   In the borax melt process, the constituent oxides of the ferrite
are dissolved in a flux of molten borax by heating the mixture to
between 13@ and 14@C and maintaining this temperature for
several hours. The melt is then cooled at a few degrees per hour
until crystals start to form, or alternatively the flux is evaporated
at a constant rate. A disadvantage of the method is that the borax
vapour evolved is very corrosive and destroys most refractory
materials, which necessitates the use of special furnace equipment.
Crystals of linear dimensions of about 1 cm can be obtained by this
method.
   In the flame-fusion process constituent oxides are mixed in the
correct proportions and sprinkled into an oxy-hydrogen flame.
Crystals of reasonable length, e.g. 1-2 cm can then be grown
on a refractory rod held in the flame. It is, however, very difficult
to control the exact chemical composition of the crystal obtained by
the flame-fusion process.
2.3 MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF FERRITES
   The purpose of the following section is to provide an
elementary account of the magnetic properties of ferrites, together
with enough background material to enable the reader to place the
section in perspective. It is stressed that since the object is to
equip the microwave user of ferrites with a knowledge of their
magnetic properties, the finer details of the subject must be sought
in the bibliography provided.
   Consideration will first be given to the origin of magnetism in
electrons, atoms and ions, choosing as examples of the latter,
elements which occur in ferrites. The mechanisms of para-, ferro- and
ferri-magnetism will then be explained and reference made to the
temperature behaviour of the saturation magnetisation of certain
ferrites. In ferrites, one is principally concerned with the
phenomenon of ferrimagnetism which will be treated in greater detail.
# 22
<365 TEXT J71>
5.5. VARIATION OF MATERIAL STRENGTH
   Two alloys of widely different strengths from HE3-WP were
selected in order to study the effect of material properties on strut
behaviour. The alloys were NE6-M and HE15-WP, which have .1% proof
stresses of approximately 1 tons/ in:2: and 28 tons/ in:2:
respectively. The specimens were fabricated from 3 in. x 2 1/4
in. x .15 in. (76.2 x 57.15 x 3.81 mm) A.D.A. unequal
bulb angle section, and were of the same design as for the first
series of A.D.A. specimens shown in Fig. 13.
   As material failure might be expected to have the greatest
influence on strut behaviour in the lower slenderness ratios, these
specimens were made in a limited range of slenderness ratios only: 3
to 6 for the HE15-WP and 3-9 for the NE6-M.
   The overall picture of failure behaviour was similar to that for
the previous sets of specimens- torsion-flexure. Failure of the
higher strength material specimens was generally of an elastic
buckling nature, with torsional and flexural deflections starting near
the ultimate load and growing very rapidly to large magnitudes, when
no further increase in load could be sustained. On unloading, there
was almost complete recovery, showing that the buckling was largely
elastic. An exception was one of the L/ k = 4 specimens where
the torsional deflection was increased so much that local collapse
occurred in the lower third of the specimen.
   The lower strength specimens generally failed quite suddenly,
with very little deflection visible beforehand. Failure was of the
torsion-flexure form, with flexure more predominant than in the tests
previously described, coupled in all cases below L/ k = 5 with
local failure of the outstanding bulbed edge of the individual angle
member. There was scarcely any recovery on unloading, showing that
the distortion had given rise to large areas of plasticity. The forms
of specimens of the two materials after failure for slenderness ratios
3, 4 and 5 are shown in Fig. 33, where the large permanent set of
the NE6-M specimens can be clearly seen, and compared with the almost
complete recovery of the HE15-WP ones. The right-hand specimen of the
middle pair is the exceptional case of local collapse in the HE15-WP
series referred to above. Fig. 34 shows the L/ k = 9 specimen
in NE6-M after failure.
   The results of this series of tests are given in Table =16 and
Fig. 35 shows the strengths of the two series of specimens compared
with those for the HE3-WP. It will be noticed that the results for
NE6-M are presented in two parts:
<ILLUSTRATION>
<ILLUSTRATION>
this is because a second batch of material for these specimens had an
appreciably higher strength than the first.
5.6. DETERMINATION OF MATERIAL PROPERTIES
   Tension specimens were taken from each different batch of
section. In some cases machined round specimens of .282 in.
(7.16 mm) diameter were made from the corner of the section or
from the bulbed edge, in others standard flat specimens were made from
the longer leg of the section. Strains were measured with a 1 in.
(25.4 mm) gauge length Robertson optical extensometer on the
round specimens, and with a Gerard extensometer on the flat ones. To
make a satisfactory compression test, the length of the specimen
should not exceed about 2 1/2 times its diameter; therefore the length
of compression specimens taken from small structural sections must be
small. As the greatest diameter of specimen that could be obtained
from the
<DIAGRAM>
3 in. x 2 1/4 in. (76.2 x 57.15 mm) A.D.A. Section
was about 3/8 in. (9.5 mm) the length was limited to 1 in.
(25.4 mm). A jig was made in which the specimen was clamped and
both ends could be ground at one setting, so that they were finished
accurately flat and parallel. Strains were measured by a pair of
Martens extensometers having a gauge length of .6 in. (15.24
mm). The test was carried out in parallel platen apparatus to
ensure, as far as possible, that compression took place without
bending. The results are summarised in Table =17.
   It will be noticed that where test pieces were taken from both
the bulb and corner and from the flat part of the section, the
material in the flat part of the section had an appreciably lower
tensile proof strength.
   The Young's moduli are generally of the order of 5% higher in
compression than in tension. Observations of this nature have been
recorded before with aluminium alloy but no satisfactory explanation
seems to have been offered.
<TABLE>
6. Analysis of Results
   The analysis of the results falls naturally into three
categories: the comparison of values of failing stress predicted
analytically with those obtained experimentally: a similar comparison
of the results obtained from standard design methods; and a study of
the behaviour of double angle struts having different cross-sectional
profiles.
6.1. PREDICTION OF FAILURE
   The prediction of the elastic buckling load of members where
there is interaction between the flexural and torsional modes has been
fully dealt with by Timoshenko and many other authors.
   For members having one axis of symmetry, the critical load is
given by the smallest root of the equation:
<FORMULA>
   where p;1;, p;2;, p;3;, are respectively the
critical stresses for flexural buckling about the principal axis x-x
at right angles to the axis of symmetry, flexural buckling about the
axis of symmetry a-a, and torsional buckling. The value of r
is given by
<FORMULA>
   where a is the distance between the shear centre and the
centroid, and k;x; and k;a; are the respective principal
radii of gyration.
   The exact analysis of the buckling of built-up members such as
those considered here is extremely complex, but provided the
individual members are fastened together at a sufficient number of
points it is justifiable, as a first approximation, to treat the
members as being homogeneous.
   In the case of the struts used in this investigation the bending
stiffnesses about the two principal axes are approximately equal;
therefore, as the member is effectively fixed-ended for buckling about
the x-x axis, p;1; will always be greatly in excess of
the actual buckling stress, and may be disregarded. The stiffness for
bending about the axis of symmetry is taken as the reduced value
calculated in 4.1. The value of the torsional stiffness used in
calculating the torsional buckling load is obtained for the various
slenderness ratios by multiplying by the appropriate factor 15b from
Table =11. The warping stiffness of the angle sections themselves,
which is very low, has very little effect on the torsional buckling
load and is neglected in the calculation.
   Thus the torsional buckling stress
<FORMULA>,
   where GJ is the free-ended torsional stiffness of the
composite member, and I;p; is the polar second moment of area
of the cross-section about the shear centre.
   The values obtained for the buckling stresses are shown below in
Table =18.
   Fig. 36 shows these values graphically, curve (1), and those
for the HE3-WP struts (2).
   The immediate observation is that the experimental failing stress
curve lies well below the theoretical one, the discrepancy being most
marked in the lower slenderness ratios. The most obvious explanation
for this is the reduction of the effective stiffness due to inadequate
rigidity of the fastenings, discussed in 4.1. If the experimental
results were re-plotted on a basis of slenderness ratios calculated
from actual stiffness, then the curve would be moved to the right.
Some confirmation of this explanation is given
<TABLE>
by the results for the few tests with the knife-edge along the x-x
axis, in which the effects of the fastenings on flexural buckling
might be expected to be much smaller, which lie much nearer to the
theoretical curve.
   It is interesting to re-calculate the torsion-flexure buckling
stress values when the flexural buckling stress is derived from that
obtained by taking the measured bending stiffness, the torsional
stiffness remaining as before. These values are plotted in curve (3),
Fig. 36, which lies much closer to the experimental values of curve
(2) than does the original theoretical torsion-flexure curve.
<DIAGRAM>
   On the other hand, it might be argued that compression should
tend to reduce the effects of bolt clearances and that the discrepancy
between the experimental and theoretical values might be due to
plasticity of the material at the higher stresses. From the
compression stress-strain curve of the HE3-WP material used, values
of the tangent modulus may be deduced, and the Engesser plastic
flexural buckling curve can be constructed, curve (4), as a
continuation of the Euler curve for the elastic range. This curve
diverges rapidly from the Euler and elastic torsion-flexure curves as
the slenderness ratio diminishes. The limit of proportionality of the
HE3-WP was just below 8 tons/ in:2: (12.7 kg/ mm:2:),
and it might be expected that after the critical stress of this value,
which occurs at about L/ k = 7, the true torsion-flexure buckling
curve would begin to diverge from the elastic one. There is no direct
method of constructing the plastic torsion-flexure buckling curve.
However, by assuming that the critical load for the torsional mode
does not change, which is reasonable if the shear modulus remains
nearly constant, it is possible to devise a method of successive
approximation.
   Taking for the flexural buckling stress, p;2;, the value
obtained for flexural plastic buckling, a new value can be obtained
for the torsion-flexure buckling stress p. From the compression
stress-strain curve the value of the tangent modulus E;t; at
the stress p is obtained. Using this value of E;t; in the
Engesser equation, p = E;t;/ (L/ k):2:, the buckling
stress of a strut of the same slenderness ratio can be calculated.
This value will generally be found to differ from the value chosen
for p;2;. Another value is now chosen for p;2;, and the
process repeated until a value is obtained, for the plastic
torsion-flexure buckling stress, at which the value for the tangent
modulus corresponds to plastic flexural buckling at the chosen value
of p;2;. The values obtained by this method are shown in
Fig. 36, curve (5), where it will be seen that, except for
slenderness ratios below 4, the curve lies above the experimental
one- between those obtained from the elastic torsion-flexure equation
using modified flexural stiffness and the ordinary elastic
torsion-flexure equation. It may be concluded that both plasticity
and loss of expected stiffness contribute to the divergence of the
experimental from the predicted values.
   Confirmation of this is obtained by examination of the results
for HE15-WP and NE6-M materials; the elastic limit of HE15-WP is about
23 tons/ in:2: so that, as the critical stress for elastic
torsion-flexural buckling at L/ k = 3 is 23.1 tons/ in:2:,
it might be expected that plasticity would have scarcely any influence
on failure in the range of slenderness ratios used in the tests.
Fig. 37 shows that the experimental values are in reasonable
agreement with the values obtained from the elastic torsion-flexure
equation with modified flexural stiffness. The small discrepancy at
the lower slenderness ratios could be attributed to an over-estimation
of the torsional stiffness. The NE6-M alloy, with an elastic limit of
between 4 and 5 tons/ in:2:, gives the opposite picture in that
plasticity affects failure over the whole range of slenderness ratios
considered. The plastic torsion-flexure curve, in Fig. 37, lies
well below the elastic values
<DIAGRAM>
and a little above the experimental ones. This seems to indicate
that, although plasticity is the dominating factor affecting failure,
the reduced flexural stiffness contributes to the difference between
experimental and predicted values, and the best prediction might be
obtained from the plastic torsion-flexure approach using the reduced,
experimental flexural stiffnesses. The results of this calculation
for HE3-WP and NE6-M are shown in Fig. 38, where it will be
<DIAGRAM>
seen that good agreement is obtained except at the lowest slenderness
ratio where the stiffnesses have probably been over estimated.
6.2. DESIGN METHODS
   As the mode of failure at all slenderness ratios up to 15 was
torsion-flexure it is evident that direct design from the
Perry-Robertson strut curve is unsatisfactory. Forms of compression
instability, other than purely flexural, may be dealt with by the
Equivalent Slenderness Ratio (e.s.r.) method.
# 217
<366 TEXT J72>
SUMMARY
   The authors discuss the testing of explosives with special
reference to the ability of a test to indicate the presence of
significant differences in ignition probability and also to the
reliability of the test. It is suggested that tests requiring low
ignition rates, and particularly no-ignition tests, are, as a class,
poor discriminators.
   The ability to discriminate can be increased by increasing the
number of ignitions accepted as the pass level. It is suggested that
a test of 26 shots, in which 13 ignitions are permitted, represents a
good compromise, in view of the need to keep the number of shots
within reasonable limits.
1. INTRODUCTION
   About a hundred million shots a year are fired in British mines
and usually about 6 ignitions are reported each year. It is clear
that with a practical ignition rate of roughly 1:-7:, a test no
more severe than practical use required an impossibly high number of
shots to give a reliable answer; and therefore the test must be made
so much more severe (i.e. the ignition rate in the test must be
made so much higher) that an effective assessment of the safety of an
explosive may be made with a practicable number of shots.
   In rigorous terms this thesis demands that the ignition rate be
multiplied ten million times or so. The multiplying factor can be
made up by
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) Ensuring the presence of practical conditions which are
dangerous but rare, e.g. the presence of considerable volumes of
an explosive mixture of methane/ air, the absence of stemming in the
shothole, and so on.
   (=2) Modifying the test apparatus to increase the ignition rate,
e.g. firing the shot in a steel cannon instead of the rock or
coal in which it is fired in the mine.
<END INDENTATION>
   All of these devices are used in explosives testing; but apart
from some tentative results recorded in the literature (Cybulski,
1959; Schultze-Rhonhof and others, 1959) no firm estimate can be made
of the relative contributions they make to the multiplying factor.
However it is probably wise to assume that the contribution of the
second group is substantial rather than preponderant. This is
fortunate rather than the reverse because scientifically any process
that extrapolates a million times may be expected to require a lot of
proving.
   British approval tests have been such that an explosive is failed
if ignitions are obtained in any of the tests. This reliance on
no-ignition tests has been an almost uniform feature of explosive
testing throughout the world although the French system permits
ignitions in one of the tests, and recently the United States Bureau
of Mines has made a decided break with tradition in this regard
(United States Bureau of Mines, 1961).
   For the past three years a detailed study of the testing
procedure has been conducted at S.M.R.E.; particular attention
has been paid to the statistical problems raised by no-ignition tests.
It has been concluded that the no-ignition test, as applied to
explosives, gives too little information about the ignition
probability of the material tested, and that this weakness cannot be
removed by any practicable increase in the number of shots fired.
2. RELIABILITY AND DISCRIMINATION
   A good test should meet, 6inter alia, two requirements:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (=1) It should be reliable, i.e. a repeat test of the same
material should give the same result.
   (=2) It should have adequate discrimination, i.e. it
should indicate the presence of significant differences.
<END INDENTATION>
   No measurement is exactly reproducible, since all are subject to
random errors. In explosive testing random error appears as a
variation in the number of ignitions obtained in repeated tests on
identical material. However often a trial is repeated, one can never
say how many ignitions will take place; but, at the same time, the
more often a trial is repeated, the more exactly can the probability
of ignition by an individual shot be stated. Once this probability of
ignition by an individual shot is known it becomes possible to
calculate the probability of any particular number of ignitions in a
given number of shots. Alternatively, it is possible to calculate the
number of shots that must be fired to achieve a given probability of a
particular number of ignitions.
   In this situation, complete reliability of acceptance or
rejection is impossible; one may assign only the probability with
which material of specified characteristics shall be accepted or
rejected. This probability can, by firing enough shots, be made to
approach certainty as closely as is desired, although a situation is
rapidly reached where an enormous number of shots must be fired to
achieve a small improvement.
   It is also fundamental that the acceptance and rejection limits
cannot be equal although, again, by firing enough shots they may be
made to approach each other as closely as is desired. The difference
between the acceptance and rejection levels is analogous to
discrimination.
   Whatever values of ignition probability are chosen as the
rejection and acceptance limits and whatever level of probability be
chosen for the rejection or acceptance at those limits, material with
an ignition probability equal to the mean of the limits will be almost
as likely to fail as it is to pass. This again is fundamental to all
systems of assessment.
   It will be seen therefore that the concepts of reliability and
discrimination as applied to testing are complex ones: overall, a
system can be made reliable to a chosen extent at the limits of a
chosen range.
3. EXAMINATION OF THE NO-IGNITION TEST
   In the last section it was pointed out that the reliability of
rejection or acceptance is a matter of choice, and clearly opinions
will differ as to the desirable level. However, it appeared
reasonable to the present writers to require that the test should have
a .95 probability of rejecting an explosive having an ignition
probability at the chosen reject level. Correspondingly there should
be a .95 probability of accepting an explosive at the acceptance
level.
   Calculations were then made which permitted the plotting of Curve
1 in Fig. 1. In this figure the true probability of ignition with a
single shot is plotted against the number of shots of the explosive
that must be fired to give a .95 probability of one or more
ignitions. For example a "no-ignition" test of 28 shots will
reject, 19 times out of 2, an explosive with an ignition probability
of .1 (for the rest of this paper 19 times out of 2 will be called
"reliable" rejection or acceptance.) Curve 2 in Fig. 1 shows the
number of shots for which the probability of one or more ignitions is
.5, i.e. there is a probability of .95 of acceptance.
   From these curves it will be seen that although a 28-shot
sequence will reliably reject an explosive of ignition probability of
.1, it will not reliably accept explosives until the ignition
probability has fallen to .18; in other words, if a manufacturer
submits an explosive that has a slightly lower ignition probability
than .1, he has a moderate chance of getting it through the test but
if he submits another that is ten times better in this respect, he has
a fair chance of having it rejected. Summarizing, if the probability
is lower than .18 or higher than .1, the explosive will be
reliably passed or failed, but if it has an intermediate value, the
test will not give reliable results. The curves in Fig. 1 also show
that the rejection level and the number of shots in the test may be
varied over a wide range but without an appreciable change in the
value of approximately 5 for the ratio of the acceptance to the pass
level. It appears to be impossible to avoid poor discrimination with
no-ignition tests.
4. TESTS PERMITTING IGNITIONS
   In the last section it was found that poor discrimination
appeared to be a characteristic of no-ignition tests: the effect of
permitting one ignition is shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 shows the
characteristics for 2-ignition tests. It will be noted that the gap
between the rejection and the acceptance curves narrows, i.e. the
discrimination is improved when the number of permitted ignitions is
increased.
<TABLE>
   The calculations on which Fig. 2 and 3 are based have been
extended, and the results are summarized in Table 1. The accuracy of
discrimination steadily increases with the number of ignitions (m)
accepted as the pass level. Confining attention for the time being to
a reliable rejection level of p;r; equal to .1, Table 1 shows that
the ratio (p;r;/ p;a;) does not fall to the neighbourhood of 2
until the number (n) of shots fired is nearly 2 and the acceptable
number (m) of ignitions rises to 12.
<DIAGRAM>
   The table does not extend beyond the point where (p;r;/
p;a;) falls to the neighbourhood of two because this seemed a good
compromise, as far as explosives are concerned, between the
requirements of discrimination and the need to keep the number of
shots within practicable limits; in view of the variabilities inherent
in the conditions of use, perhaps it should not be taken too seriously
if the value of (p;r;/ p;a;) for a given explosive fluctuates in
the range of 2 to 1. The following example may illustrate the
operation of a test with a pass level of not more than 12 ignitions in
2 shots. This test has a reliable p;r; of .1 and a reliable
p;a; (acceptance level) of approx .5; for reliable acceptance
the manufacturers must work to an ignition probability per shot (p) of
.5. If the product deteriorates, and is then re-tested, there is a
probability of .95 that the deterioration will be detected when the
ignition probability has increased by a factor of 2..
   To a considerable extent the sensitivity of existing explosives
tests is adjustable at will, usually by adjusting the charge weight
but also by changes in the test apparatus. What are the consequences
of changing the sensitivity? Table 1 gives the appropriate figures
for rejection ignition probability of .5 and shows that equally good
discrimination can be obtained but with far fewer shots. Table 1
indicates that an economical and discriminating test at a rejection
level of p;r; = .5 is to fire 35 shots and permit 12 ignitions.
The calculations have since been extended by Mr. G. Fogg of
S.M.R.E. and it appears that at a rejection level of p;r; =
.673 a discrimination ratio of 2 is obtained with a round (n) of 26
shots and a permitted number (m) of 13 ignitions.
5. MATHEMATICAL BASIS
   The mathematical basis on which Figs 1, 2 and 3 and Table 1
were calculated is simple and well-known; see for example David,
F.N. (1949).
   The probability, P, of an explosive being accepted after a series
of tests is a calculable function of the probability of ignition in a
single test, p, and of the standards required in the series. For
example, if our standard requirement is  ignitions in n trials, we
have
<FORMULA>
   For sufficiently large p, P is small and the explosive is almost
certain to fail the test. It is useful to consider the probability of
ignition which will almost certainly cause a device to be failed. To
do this, it is necessary to fix a corresponding value for P; that is,
to give a numerical expression to the phrase "almost always
failed". If we define "reliable rejection" by requiring P  5%,
we will obtain it whenever p  p;r; such that
<FORMULA>
   Similarly, for sufficiently small p, P approaches 1 and the
explosive is almost certain to pass. So if we define "reliable
acceptance" by requiring P  95%, we will obtain it whenever p 
p;a; such that
<FORMULA>
   The range of possible p-values can thus be divided into three
parts:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Reliable rejection, P  5%, p;r;  p  1
   Results not consistent, 5%  P  95%, p;a;  p  p;r;
   Reliable acceptance, 95%  P,   p  p;a;
<END INDENTATION>
   If we put these ranges side by side for different values of n, we
obtain Fig. 1, in which two curves of p;r; against n (Curve 1)
and of p;a; against n (Curve 2) divide the area into three regions:
consistent failures, results not consistent and consistent passes.
# 242
<367 TEXT J73>
Details can be seen in the photograph, Fig. 4.
   During the early part of the tests the rotors were run at 1,8
r.p.m., at which speed the radial acceleration was approximately
2,35 g, resulting in very high forces at the hub. The blades were
provided with both flapping and drag hinges, the former being freely
mounted on ball races and the latter having adjustable cork friction
dampers. The blades were found to vary slightly in weight so
provision was made for final balancing by means of small adjustable
weights on screwed rods radiating from the hubs between the blades.
These can be seen in the photograph, Fig. 4.
   In order to avoid the possibility of resonance it was at first
thought advisable to run the rotors with drag hinges locked.
Eventually however fatigue cracks were noticed in the roots of two of
the blades and it was suspected that the lack of freedom in the drag
hinges was the possible cause. Later, after new blades had been
fitted, it was thought better to run with drag hinges free and so
reduce root stresses, experience having shown that the possibility of
resonance was small. As a further precaution, to eliminate fatigue
failure, the new blades of a modified design were run at a reduced top
speed of 12 r.p.m. This question of blade fatigue is more
fully discussed in the Appendix.
2.3 Equipment for measuring tracking of blades and flapping angle
   The front rotor carried a commutator with a single brass
segment contacting four carbon brushes mounted on a ring attached to
the front rotor spindle housing. Three of these brushes were
approximately 12@ apart and the fourth diametrically opposite to one
of the three. The brush contacts were used to trigger off a
stroboscope lamp illuminating the blades whilst rotating. The three
contacts at approximately 12@ spacings were set so that, with all
three in circuit together, they were successively out of phase by
about one chord length when the ends of the rotor blades were
observed. By this method it could be seen if the blades were tracking
correctly.
   The two diametrically opposed contacts were used to facilitate
the observation of flapping angles. Each contact had a switch in
circuit and the timing adjusted so that the stroboscope flashed when a
particular blade was parallel to the longitudinal body axis either in
a fore or aft direction. The height of the blade tips in each
position was measured by means of a travelling periscope projecting
vertically downwards into the tunnel. The difference in height of the
blade tips in these two positions gave a measure of flapping angle.
The periscope was of the type used on midget submarines. The
stroboscope lamp was mounted on gimbals and the direction of the
light, shining through a thick perspex window, could be adjusted by
the observer to illuminate the particular blade tip under observation.
It was estimated that the accuracy of the measurements was of the
order of one tenth of a degree. A photograph of the head of the
periscope is shown in Fig. 6 from which can be seen one of the two
vertical slides behind which is the measuring scale.
   As the periscope weighed about 6 lb it had to be
counterweighted and the wires carrying these weights, passing over
pulleys, can be seen in the photograph.
3. Safety Precautions
   Due to the high value of centrifugal force on the rotors and
the possibility of instability, resonance, or fatigue, it was thought
expedient to protect the personnel by reinforcing the tunnel inside
with sheet steel and outside with shutters. These shutters were of
sandwich construction comprised of blocks of paper between 1/4?8
thick plywood, totalling about two inches in thickness.
   To minimise the possibility of stopping the rotors before the
tunnel and thereby losing the stabilising effect of centrifugal force
on the blades, an interlock was incorporated in the electrical
circuits, with a time delay of about a quarter of a minute, to ensure
that the rotors attained a reasonable speed before starting the tunnel
and also that the tunnel speed had dropped sufficiently on shutting
down. As the electrical supplies to the tunnel and rotors were
separate there remained the danger arising from a failure of the
current to the rotors but as that was thought to be very improbable,
no attempt was made to cover that eventuality.
4. Method and Scope of Experiments
   The model was suspended from the main roof balance by two
struts spaced 22 1/2?8 apart. These struts carried at their ends a
spindle mounted on ball races, passing through and fixed to the
helicopter body 29 1/2?8 from the nose. This spindle being freely
mounted acted as a pitching axis. A further support was provided
towards the rear of the body, using a pair of V-wires attached to an
overhead split-beam balance, see Fig. 2. These wires were
adjustable by means of a windlass carried on the balance, so that the
attitude of the model could be varied.
   The earlier tests were made at 18 r.p.m. giving a tip
speed of about 4 ft/ sec. Later the speed was reduced to 12
r.p.m. and a tip speed of 267 ft/ sec. Lift, drag, and
pitching moments were measured at wind speeds of 4, 8, 12, 16 and
18 ft/ sec for the tests at a rotor speed of 18 r.p.m.
giving approximate values of tip-speed ratio, 15m, of .1, .2, .3,
.4 and .45. When the rotor speed was reduced to 12 r.p.m.
the wind speeds used were 25, 55, 8, 1 and 12 ft/ sec giving
values of 15m = .94, .26, .3, .374 and .449 respectively.
   Measurements were made for blade angles, 15th;;, of 4@, 8@
and 12@. The angles were set by a worm and wheel at the blade roots
using a surface table and scribing blocks to measure the difference in
heights at leading and trailing edges.
   Flapping angles were also measured by the method described in
para. 2.3.
   Although it would have been desirable to make measurements at
very low values of 15m, less than .1, difficulty was experienced due
to the flow induced by the rotors themselves, especially at the higher
body angles. For example, without the tunnel motor running, a vane
anemometer indicated a wind speed of about 15 ft/ sec at
15th;; = 8@ and 15th = 2@. As the flow was unreliable these
tests were abandoned.
   Table 1 gives a summary of all the tests on the various rotor
combinations together with references to the tables giving the
results.
5. Corrections
   The tunnel measurements were converted to the coefficients
C;T; and C;m; where C;T; is the coefficient of the force
normal to the longitudinal axis of the helicopter and C;m; is the
pitching moment coefficient about the axis shown in Fig. 3. A
further correction was made for the forces and moments on the body and
rig, etc., by making the appropriate measurements with rotors
removed and subtracting from the total. No account is therefore taken
of forces due to the interference between rotors and body.
   As the final results were to be presented for constant values of
tip speed ratio, 15m, and the wind speeds chosen did not give exact
values and also as 15m = V cos 15th/ OR, where 15th is the
body angle, the correction varied with attitude of the model and so
all the results had first to be plotted against 15m and then the
values for 15m = .1, .2, .3, .4 and .45 taken from the curves.
Corrections had also to be made to 15th due to tunnel interference
and therefore the values corrected for 15m had then to be plotted
against 15th and values read off at the chosen values of 15th
viz., @, 5@, 1@, 15@, 2@ and 25@. For convenience 15th
has been taken to be positive with the nose of the model downwards
which is opposite to the normal convention.
   For the 9?7 x 7?7 wind tunnel the correction to body angle
(15th) has been taken to be
<FORMULA>
   where A is the total rotor disc area C is the cross-sectional area
of the wind tunnel, C;L; is the overall lift coefficient based on
total disc area. The correction is such that the effective
inclination is less than the geometric inclination. It is felt that
the above correction is not entirely satisfactory as it is based on
fixed wing theory. It is hoped that at some future time a systematic
series of experiments will be made to establish the order of wind
tunnel corrections to be applied to helicopter model testing.
   The corrections to pitching moment due to flapping hinge offset
are included in para. 6.
6. Results
6.1 Effect of flapping hinge offset
   In addition to the corrections mentioned in para. 5 account
had also to be taken of the effect of flapping hinge offset which, due
to design difficulties, was of necessity rather large, about 6.275%.
   The effect of flapping hinge offset on the characteristics of a
rotor is dealt with in a report by Meyer and Falabella and the
analysis given in that report has been used to estimate the
theoretical values of rotor thrust and flapping angles and also the
effect on overall pitching moment.
6.2 Thrust coefficient
   Assuming uniform distribution of induced velocity and
neglecting blade tip losses the theoretical value of C;T; is given
by equation (38) of Ref. 3.
<FORMULA>
   As there is no cyclic pitch B;1; =  and the term involving
a;1; is small and may be neglected and therefore approximately
<FORMULA>
   For zero forward speed where 15m = 
<FORMULA>
   Also
<FORMULA>
   In order to determine "a" the slope of the lift curve of the
blade section C;T; was required for zero wind speed. As the tunnel
was of the return flow type it was difficult to obtain a true zero
wind speed due to the flow induced by the rotors. This was cut down
to a minimum by closing the tunnel with a screen, but even so there
was a circulation of air in the neighbourhood of the model,
particularly at the larger blade angles. It was assumed that at zero
tunnel speed the induced circulation at 15th;; = 4@ would be
very small and the measured value of C;T; = .142 was inserted in
the equations (2) and (3). This gave a value of a = 5. (per rad)
which was subsequently used in equation (1a). A curve of static
thrust coefficient using the above value of "a" is given in Fig.
7. The theoretical values of C;T; using equation (1a) for
15th;; = 4@, 8@ and 12@ are included in Figs. 9, 13 and 19.
It is of interest to note that the effect of flapping hinge offset on
C;T; is negligible, particularly at the lower values of 15m.
6.3 Division of thrust
   From a knowledge of the total thrust and the pitching moment
about a defined axis the contribution of thrust due to each rotor has
been calculated. It was assumed that the thrust of each rotor acted
at the disc centre and normal to the body axis and also that the rotor
drag force, parallel to the longitudinal axis, acted at the mean
height of the two rotors.
   The pitching moments as measured in the experiments included a
contribution due to the effect of the offset flapping hinges and
therefore before the thrust due to each rotor could be calculated the
pitching moments had to be corrected for offset.
   In the report by Meyer and Falabella an expression is given for
pitching moment due to hinge offset (M;y;). This expression is
<FORMULA>
   where
<FORMULA>
<FORMULA>.
   Values of a;;, b;1;, and a;1; are obtained by solving
three simultaneous equations; these solutions are given in equations
(27), (28) and (29) in the report. As there is no cyclic pitch,
i.e., B;1; =  in the case of the model, these solutions
become
<FORMULA>
   The value of 15l is given by the expression
<FORMULA>
   and
<FORMULA>
<FORMULA>.
   Using the wind tunnel values of C;T;, in equation (9) M;y;
has been calculated for various cases and it was found that the terms
involving a;; and b;1; were quite small compared with the
a;1; term.
# 23
<368 TEXT J74>
   Introduction. When considering the design of a jet-flapped
aircraft from a stability and control aspect, it is necessary to have
fairly accurate information concerning the downwash field behind the
jet-flapped wing, particularly in those regions where it is
practicable to locate the tailplane. The evaluation of the downwash
at the tailplane is dependent upon a knowledge of the strength and
position of the vorticity distributions which represent the wing and
the jet. In his treatment of the flow past a wing with a jet-flap, of
infinite span, Spence assumes that the incidence of the wing and the
deflection of the jet are small, and hence the usual assumptions of
thin aerofoil theory, in which the wing and jet are replaced by vortex
sheets in the direction of the free stream, apply. The results so
obtained for the vorticity distributions on the wing and jet are used
in Part =1 to give the downwash at any position relative to the plane
vortex sheet in the form
<FORMULA>,
   where 15e = downwash angle, 15t = jet deflection angle, and 15a
= wing incidence. However, in the calculation of the downwash induced
at a point (P) in the field, it is necessary to allow for its
location relative to the actual wing and jet. To the order of
accuracy consistent with the previous assumptions, this implies
calculating the downwash at a point whose ordinate relative to the
plane vortex sheets is equal to the distance of the tailplane from the
jet (as shown in Figs. 1a and 1b). The functions 15de/ dt and
15de/ da depend upon the jet momentum coefficient C;J;, and
on the relative position of the tailplane; charts for these functions,
and for the position of the jet, are given for various specific
C;J; values. The downwash has been evaluated for ranges of the
tailplane position, wing incidence, jet deflection and jet momentum
coefficient.
   For the unswept wing of finite span, with a full-span jet-flap,
considered in Part =2, Maskell has introduced the concept of an
effective wing and jet flap of infinite span, in order to obtain the
strength of the bound vorticity, elliptic spanwise loading being
assumed. This solution may be used to give the contribution to the
downwash from the bound vorticity, in a similar way to that described
in Part =1, but it does not account for the effect of the trailing
vortices arising from the pressure gradients along the wing and jet
spans. In the case of a wing without a jet-flap, it has been found
that the downwash is very sensitive to the relative distance between
the tailplane and the wake, and that the spanwise loading has more
effect on the downwash than the chordwise loading, and so the wing and
its wake are replaced by a lifting line and its trailing vortices, the
latter being displaced in order to keep the tailplane at the correct
height above the wake. The effect of the rolling-up of the wake has
also been investigated for a wing without a jet-flap, and it is shown
that rolling-up is not important for normal tailplane positions behind
wings of large aspect ratio. The distance e behind the wing at
which rolling-up may be assumed to be complete is given by e/ c =
k?7/ C;L; for a wing without a jet-flap, where k?7
depends upon the plan-form and spanwise loading of the wing. For
the jet-flapped wing, the C;L; will be greater than for the
normal wing, but k?7 may now be a function of C;J;, and
will probably increase with increasing C;J; (since the bound
vorticity on the jet will tend to resist rolling-up), so that e/ c
will not decrease so quickly with increasing C;L; and
C;J;, as might have been expected from first considerations.
Thus, in order to evaluate the contribution to the downwash behind a
jet-flapped wing from the trailing vorticity, it is assumed that the
majority of the load is carried on the wing, so that the trailing
vortices may be considered to arise from one chordwise position on the
wing with no rolling-up taking place. The displacement of the jet and
trailing vortices is accounted for by taking the position of the
tailplane relative to the wake, and a chart is given for the downwash
due to the trailing vorticity. Calculated values of the downwash are
in good agreement with the few experimental results available,
especially if the difference between the experimental and theoretical
lift coefficients is taken into account. Theoretical results for the
downwash on the centre-line are also given for a wing of aspect ratio
6., showing variation with tailplane position, wing incidence, and
jet parameters.
PART =1
   1. Vortex Representation of the Wing and Jet-Flap of Infinite
Span. The wing and jet-flap of infinite span may be represented in
two dimensions by vorticity distributed on the chordal plane of the
wing and the median line of the jet (assumed to be thin). The
downwash relations have been solved by Spence, using the assumptions
of thin-aerofoil theory, so that the aerofoil incidence and jet
deflection are considered to be small. The vorticity distributions
and the position of the jet are given in Fourier-series forms, with
coefficients as functions of the jet momentum coefficient C;J;.
   Let U;;f(x) be the vorticity distribution on
the aerofoil (at incidence 15a to the mainstream) and 15g(ch)
the vorticity distribution on the jet (emerging at deflection 15t to
the extended chord-line of the aerofoil), as shown in Fig. 1a. The
x axis is taken parallel to the main stream, and the z axis
vertically downwards, with the origin at the leading edge of the
aerofoil. The chord of the aerofoil is taken to be unity, so that x
and z are non-dimensional. Thus the vortex representation of
the flow which is in accordance with the assumptions of thin aerofoil
theory is as shown in Fig. 1b, with U;;f(x) located
on the x axis, between  and 1, and 15g(ch) also on the x
axis, between 1 and ?25.
   Then the expressions for f(x), 15g(ch) and
z;J;(x), the jet displacement, as obtained from Ref. 1,
are: For
<FORMULA>
<FORMULA>.
   For
<FORMULA>
<FORMULA>.
   2. The Downwash. The downwash induced by the vortex
distributions U;;f(x) and 15g(ch) at the point
(X, Z) is given by
<FORMULA>
   to the first order in 15a and 15t (see Fig. 1b).
   In order to apply the results calculated for the simplified
configuration (Fig. 1b) to the actual configuration (Fig. 1a),
where the jet is displaced a distance z;J;(X) below the x
axis, it is assumed that the downwash w(X, z) calculated for
the point P?7(X, z) in Fig. 1b is equal to the downwash at
the point P(X, z + z;J;) in Fig. 1a.
   A similar procedure is followed in Ref. 3, where the
displacement of the wake of a finite wing has to be considered.
   In general, the tailplane will be located a distance H above
the jet, as indicated in Fig. 1a, so that to evaluate the downwash
at the tailplane, i.e., at the point (X, z;J; - H) in
Fig. 1a, we must evaluate the downwash at the point (X, - H) in
Fig. 1b.
   The position of the tailplane is usually given as the distance
along and height above the extended chordline. If l is the
distance of the aerodynamic centre of the tailplane behind the wing
leading edge, measured along the extended wing chord-line, and h
the height above the chord-line, when the chord is of length c,
as shown in Fig. 1a, then the non-dimensional co-ordinates (X,
Z) at which the downwash is to be evaluated are given by
<FORMULA>,
   where z;J; may be obtained from Fig. 3 (or equation (4)).
   For the numerical evaluation of the two integrals in equation
(6), it is necessary to change the variables of integration, in the
first integral using equation (1) in order to avoid the infinite value
of f(x) at the leading and trailing edges, and in the second
integral using equation (3) to make the range of integration finite.
Thus, if we write
<FORMULA>,
   then the downwash at the tailplane is given by
<FORMULA>,
   where f;1;(x) sin 15th and f;2;(x) sin
15th remain finite as x and 15th tend to zero, and as
<FORMULA>,
<FORMULA>. Equation (1) may be rewritten in the form
<FORMULA>,
   where 15de/ dt and 15de/ da are functions of C;j;, X
and Z. These have been evaluated for C;j; = .5, 1.,
2. and 4., with
<FORMULA> and
<FORMULA>, the results being shown as charts in Figs. 4a to 4d.
   Thus the procedure for the evaluation of the downwash at a given
tailplane position, h/ c and l/ c, and given 15a, C;J;
and 15t, is to calculate the functions in the following order:
   (=1) X from equation (8a)
   (=2) z;J; from Fig. 3
   (=3) Z from equation (8b)
   (=4) 15de/ dt, 15de/ da from Figs. 4a to 4d
   (=5) 15e from equation (11).
   Interpolation will be necessary for C;J; values other than
.5, 1., 2. and 4., and it seems better to evaluate 15e for a
range of C;J;, and then to interpolate the final result, rather
than to interpolate for z;J;, 15de/ dt and 15de/ da
separately.
   For large X, the downwash is given by
<FORMULA>, (see Ref. 1)
   so that
<FORMULA> and
<FORMULA>.
   It may be noted that the value of C;L;/ (415pX)
for the downwash far behind the aerofoil is also obtained when the
aerofoil is without a jet-flap.
   3. Results. The results for the downwash behind an infinite
wing and jet-flap are shown in Figs. 7 to 11. It should be
remembered that the theory is only strictly valid for small 15a and
15t, so that the use of the method to obtain the downwash for the
larger values of 15a and 15t must wait to be justified or otherwise
until experimental data are available. However, the results should
indicate the trends in the variation of downwash with the various
parameters.
   In Figs. 7 and 8, the variation of the downwash with tailplane
position is shown for two values of jet deflection angle, 15t, and
two values of wing incidence, 15a, for C;J; = 2.. Fig. 7
shows that on the extended chord-line, h/ c = , the downwash
decreases quite sharply with increasing distance behind the wing, l/
c, but when h = 2c, the downwash is practically constant in
each case for
<FORMULA>. The results have been replotted in Fig. 8 to show
the downwash field (i.e., contours of equal downwash), in the
tailplane region. A comparison between the fields for the various
15t and 15a shows that the downwash is more sensitive to tailplane
position for the higher 15t and 15a values, as might be expected.
   The results for the variation of 15e with C;J;, 15t and
15a are given in Figs. 9 and 1 for a representative tailplane
position, l/ c = 3.5, h/ c = 1.5, and also for a position on
the extended chord-line, l/ c = 3.5, h/ c = . It will be
noticed in Fig. 9a that 15e does not increase linearly with 15t
for a given C;J; value (as might be implied by a glance at
equation (11)) due to the correction made to the downwash field for
the displacement of the jet relative to the tailplane position.
Fig. 9b indicates that 15de/ dC;J; decreases with
increasing C;J;. The variation of downwash with wing incidence
is more important for stability and control considerations and the
results are shown in Figs. 1a to 1d for 15t = 3 and 6 deg,
and for various C;J; values. Ranges of values of
<FORMULA> are also indicated on the diagrams, and are seen to be
the same for the two different 15t values over the same range of
C;J; for a given value of h/ c. Since
<FORMULA> increases with C;J;, it is not possible to assess
a maximum, but for C;J; = 4.,
<FORMULA> is well below 1. at the tailplane and on the extended
chord-line, being .2 and .35 respectively. It also appears that
15de/ da increases as 15a increases, but this is only noticeable
at the higher values of C;J;, and for C;J; = 4., 15a =
2 deg, 15de/ da is still less than .4 at the extended
chord-line position.
# 229
<369 TEXT J75>
Effect of Cross Draughts on the Exhaust Air Volume required for
Hot Knock-out
   The obstruction offered by the side of a mould does not shield
the depressed velocity zone above the mould from disturbance by the
horizontal motion of cross draughts. Consequently, cross draughts can
enhance the rate of diffusion of rising thermal currents and blow them
sideways into exhaust air streams at a point nearer to the grid, where
the exhaust air velocities are higher.
   It follows that the performance of down-draught systems can be
improved by the influence of cross draughts only if the thermal
currents are blown into exhaust air streams moving at higher
velocities than the cross draughts, so that the resultant direction of
all dust-bearing air streams is towards the grid.
   If the grid is unduly blocked on the down-wind side of the cross
draughts, the thermal currents will be blown into a zone of reduced
exhaust air velocities, and control of the dust-bearing air streams
can be impaired, particularly if the speed of the cross draughts is
high in relation to the exhaust air movement.
   The important conclusion is that the performance of correctly
designed and operated down-draught systems for the knock-out of hot
moulds is not unduly affected by cross draughts of the order usually
present in foundries. Obviously, high velocity cross draughts, such
as may be found when the knock-out is situated near large open doors,
will seriously impair their performance.
   Nevertheless, cross draughts are so variable and unreliable that
the assistance they may provide should not be considered when
designing a system.
Effect of Cross Draughts on the Exhaust Air Volume required for
Cold Knock-out
   The effect of the cross draughts is to increase the strength of
the exhaust air velocities on the windward side of the grid and to
reduce those on the down-wind side.
   Since cross draughts not only diminish the exhaust air velocities
on the down-wind side of the grid, but also blow the dust and fumes
into this zone, it follows that the exhaust air volume must be
increased by an amount that will counteract the fall in exhaust air
velocities.
   The main distinction between the effects of cross draughts of
normal velocity on thermal currents and cold air streams is that the
former are deflected into exhaust air streams of unchanged or even
higher velocities, while the latter are blown into weaker air streams,
and therefore additional exhaust air volume is required.
Relationship of Grid Size, Box Height and Exhaust Air Volume
   Examination of the results shown in Figs. 6.9 and 1 shows
that the minimum exhaust air volume does not increase in direct
proportion to the increase in the size of the grid. The proportional
increase in air volume is, however, never greater than the
corresponding increase in grid area.
   When considering these results it is important to remember that
engineering methods of air flow measurement are not precise, and
errors of 1 per cent. and even more, in some cases, may occur.
Nevertheless, by considering a large number of test results, it is
possible to distinguish two marked trends in the amount of exhaust air
volume required by the 6-ft. x 4-ft. grid in relation to the
4-ft. 6-in. x 3-ft. 6-in. grid.
(1) Increase in exhaust air volume.
   The exhaust air volume required by the 6-ft. x 4-ft. grid
with the 8-in. deep hot and cold moulds and the 16-in. deep cold
moulds tested in the absence of appreciable cross draughts exceeded
the volumes required by the 4-ft. 6-in. x 3-ft. 6-in. grid by
between 25 and 4 per cent.
(2) Constant exhaust air volume.
   The exhaust air volume required by the 6-ft. x 4-ft. grid,
with 16-in. deep hot and cold moulds tested in cross draughts of
75-1 f.p.m. was approximately equal to (and in some cases even
less than) the volumes required by the 4-ft. 6-in. x 3-ft.
6-in. grid.
   Insufficient experimental data are available to provide a
complete explanation of the conditions responsible for the similarity
of exhaust air volumes measured between the two grids with the
16-in. deep boxes in 75-1 f.p.m. cross draughts. The many
variable factors present during the tests produced complex air flow
conditions which do not facilitate comparison, but the resultant
effect of the following two factors emerges as a predominant
influence:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (a) The effect of cross draughts on the sideways entrainment
of dust-bearing air currents from the depressed velocity zone into
relatively higher exhaust air velocities near to the down-wind top
edge of the moulding box.
   (b) The effect of the grid area and, therefore, grid velocity
diminishes with increasing distance from the grid until the exhaust
air velocities are almost identical, regardless of the size of the
grid, as explained earlier.
<END INDENTATION>
   In practice, however, the number of possible variations in the
factors controlling the distance from the grid at which air velocities
become constant for a given exhaust air volume is so large that the
distance must be calculated afresh for each individual case. In
addition to the variation in the area of the vertical gaps at the
sides of the grids and in the horizontal unblocked grid area, the
pattern of grid blockage may be such that the zone above the grid is
divided into separate regions so far apart that the exhaust streams
found in them only lose their identity at a considerable height above
the top of the moulding box.
   The important conclusion is that the effectiveness of
down-draught systems of knock-out ventilation will not necessarily be
improved by changes in the size and design of knock-out grids-
regardless of exhaust air volume- if the depth of the box is too
great. Field observations indicate that for the conditions described
above, 11-in. or 12-in. is about the maximum permissible depth
when knocking out hot, and that the blockage due to the box and sand
should be less than 5 per cent. of the grid area.
Selection and Performance of Down-Draught Systems
   Importance of the down-draught system- The ease with which a
down-draught system of ventilation can be applied to a knock-out
without interfering with other foundry operations frequently commends
it to the planning engineer. The practical advantage of the absence
of ventilating equipment above floor level is that all four sides of
grids are available for the accommodation of foundry equipment, the
movement of operators, boxes and castings, and no limitations are
imposed upon the travel of cranes and hoists.
   The comfort of knock-out operators is greatly affected by radiant
heat. The quantity of heat energy radiated from a surface depends
upon its area, temperature, and radiation coefficient. Since no hood
and baffles are fitted and the net area of the hot grid bars is small,
the source of heat radiated to operators is effectively limited to the
hot casting and the mould. Consequently, a down-draught system can
give not only control of dust, but also less discomfort to the
operators when dealing with a large number of very hot castings.
   Limitations in the application of down-draught systems-
Down-draught systems can, as indicated by the experiments illustrated
in Figs. 6.1 and 1a, and do, as shown by Test 1 in Table 2.2,
provide effective protection from the dust and fumes produced by
relatively small castings in fairly shallow boxes. This system,
therefore, finds the greatest application in highly mechanized
foundries producing large quantities of light repetition castings.
   The down-draught system has, however, certain limitations and
various factors must be considered before installing such a system.
   Depth of boxes- Thermal currents cannot be reversed with
economical exhaust air if the distance between the grid and the top of
the boxes exceeds 12-in., unless special provision is made. Boxes
must always be knocked out at grid level and never turned over on
rails above the grid.
   Size of grid- The larger the grid, the greater the area of
boxes that can be knocked out and, consequently, the greater the
distance between the side and centre of the boxes. The size of grids
for hot moulds should not exceed 4-ft. 6-in. x 3-ft. 6-in., or
6-ft. x 4-ft. in special cases.
   Shape of grid- The ratio of the grid length to width should
be similar for both boxes and grid, so that exhaust air streams are
concentrated around the sides of the box.
   Height of grid above the floor- The floor restricts the
direction from which replacement air can approach a grid and acts as
an air baffle, so that exhaust air velocities are highest when the
grid is mounted level with the floor. Raised grids should not exceed
18-in. in height.
   Grid design- Green sand clogs between the bars of fixed
grids and restricts the flow of exhaust air. A knock-out point should
not be ventilated by a down-draught system unless sand is shaken
through a vibrating grid at about the same rate as it is spilt from
the box.
   Blockage of the grid- The blocked section of a grid should
not greatly exceed the area of the box if the vibrating grid is
efficient. The area of the box and spilt sand together should not
exceed 5 per cent. of the grid if the exhaust air volumes given in
Figs. 6.9, 1 and 1a are to be used as the design basis.
   Experiments have shown that if the blockage is increased from 5
to 75 per cent., the minimum exhaust air volumes required to control
dust and fumes are increased by amounts up to 5 per cent., or even
more in some cases.
   Air seals- It is essential for knock-out units to be
provided with effective air seals.
   The air seals at the sand transfer point between the hopper and
belt must remain effective regardless of the rate at which sand spills
from the hopper.
Extraction of Sand and Fines
   In the down-draught system, air is exhausted through the sand
falling into the hopper. Should this sand, or a large proportion of
it, be completely dry, a considerable amount of the fines will be
exhausted. With very high velocities the fines may be accompanied by
fairly coarse grains. In consequence, the composition of the sand
will be radically changed. The amount of material to be collected
will be large and there may be abrasion of the ducting.
   The extraction of sand and fines can be reduced by consideration
of the three following factors in design. Usually a combination of
all three is necessary:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   (1) The frequency of knocking-out in relation to the size of the
hopper, rate of sand removal, and location of air ducts should be
determined, so that the sand inside the hopper can never rise unduly
close to the air inlets.
   The external angle of the base of the hopper should not be less
than 6@.
   (2) The velocity of the exhaust air close to the falling sand
inside the hopper should be reduced by enlarged inlets.
   (3) The air ducts in the hopper should be located and arranged so
that sand does not fall directly into the exhaust inlet, and the
openings should be protected by shields.
<END INDENTATION>
   In addition, the sand-to-metal ratio and the time between pouring
and knock-out should be such that only part of the mould is completely
dry by the time the knock-out is reached (see Chapter 3). If this
condition cannot be fulfilled a down-draught system should not be
used.
Sludging of Sand in the Exhaust Air Ducts
   Steam is released from hot moist sand moulds as they
disintegrate and fall through the grid into the hopper. Should this
steam exceed the amount which can be retained by the exhaust air, it
will condense on the exhaust ducts. Sand and dust in the air stream
will deposit on the moist surfaces or on any water at the bottom of
the duct, forming a sludge which may eventually choke the duct to such
an extent that efficient ventilation becomes impossible.
   The amount of water that can be retained by the air depends on
the air volume and temperature. If the saturation level is exceeded,
the moisture condenses to form droplets which are sufficiently small
to remain in suspension as visible "steam," but are readily
deposited on objects with which they come into contact.
# 229
<37 TEXT J76>
The assumption takes account of the possibility that neither the
deflection nor the slope at the ends of the beam is zero. The
potential energy of the system is as follows:
<FORMULA>
   where b is the stiffness of the supports and K is a
constant which depends upon the datum of the potential energy.
Substituting for the 15D's by making use of equation (7.51) then
yields:
<FORMULA>
   and for the potential energy to be stationary:
<FORMULA>
   whence:
<FORMULA>
   being the deflection of x = , that is, at the load. Had an
exact solution of this problem been carried-out there would have been
seven simultaneous equations to solve in the seven unknown deflections
15D;1;, D;2;,..., D;7;.
   The loss of accuracy due to adopting an approximate procedure is
usually insignificant for purposes of engineering practice, i.e.
a few per cent. Thus the correct value of d;1; is 5.4 in. The
considerable saving in labour achieved is usually much more important
than a small loss of accuracy. In fact, it is possible in some
instances, that without recourse to an approximate solution by an
energy method, solution by manual activity would be too laborious to
be practicable.
CHAPTER 8
Some Uses of the Reciprocal Theorem
8:1. INTRODUCTION
   One of the simplest statements of the reciprocal theorem which
defines the reciprocal property of linear systems, specifies that the
deflection of a point i of an elastic structure in a given
direction due to the application of unit force in a given direction at
another point j is equal to the deflection of j when unit
force is applied at i. The deflection of j is measured in the
direction of the line of action of the unit force while the unit force
is applied at i in the line in which the deflection due to its
presence at j was measured. This is manifest when the flexibility
coefficients of linear structures are calculated, since then it is
found that a;ij; = a;ji; as shown in Chapter 2. It is also
manifest when the stiffness coefficients are calculated. Further
proof of the reciprocal theorem is hardly necessary.
   A simple statement of the theorem on these lines was made by J.
Clerk Maxwell in his well-known paper on the analysis of frameworks
(1864) but Clebsch had actually noted the reciprocal property of
stiffness coefficients in his book published some two years earlier.
Later Betti (1872) and Rayleigh (1873) made important general
contributions to the theorem independently, which led to its coming to
occupy an important place in the physics of linear systems. For the
purpose of structural analysis the reciprocal theorem provides useful
devices for the construction of influence lines for deflections and
forces in frameworks whose elasticity is linear.
8:2. INFLUENCE LINES FOR DEFLECTION BY THE RECIPROCAL THEOREM
   For the purpose of illustrating this use of the reciprocal
theorem it is sufficient to consider a simply supported beam with
linear elasticity. Thus, if the influence line for the deflection of
any point P of the beam shown in Fig. 8.1 is required (that is, the
curve whose ordinates represent the deflection of P as a concentrated
unit load traverses the beam), by the reciprocal theorem it is merely
necessary to consider the deflected shape of the beam due to unit load
at P. The reason for this is that the deflection at any other point Q
of the beam due to unit load at P is:
<FORMULA>
   where a;QP; is the relevant flexibility coefficient. Since
this is equal to the deflection of P due to unit load at Q, i.e.:
<FORMULA>
   it follows that the deformed shape of the beam caused by unit load
at P represents the variation of a;QP; = a;PQ; over the
length of the beam which is the influence line for the deflection of
P. By similar reasoning the influence line for the deflection of any
point of an elastic linear structure, in a given direction, is
represented by the deformed shape of the structure due to unit load
applied in the specified direction at the point in question.
   A convenient means of using this principle to practical advantage
is afforded by scale models. Such models need not be to scale in
<DIAGRAM>
every detail; for plane frameworks it is merely necessary that they
are made of material which obeys Hooke's Law of linear elasticity, to
a chosen layout scale. Then, for portal frameworks whose members
deform primarily in bending, it is sufficient for the ratios of the
second moments of area of the members to be the same as in the actual
framework. The shape of the required influence line to scale can be
obtained by applying a force to the model at the point in question, in
the specified direction. The scale factor for the ordinates of the
influence line so obtained can be found either by scaling the force
applied to the model or by calculating the deflection of the actual
framework at the point in question due to unit load applied there.
8:3. INFLUENCE LINES FOR FORCES BY THE RECIPROCAL THEOREM
   A cantilever with a rigid prop at its "free" end, as one of
the simplest statically-indeterminate systems, is suitable for
demonstrating this use of the reciprocal theorem. In order to obtain
the influence line for the force exerted by the prop, suppose first of
all that unit concentrated load acts at any point Q of the span, as
shown in Fig.
<DIAGRAMS>
8.2(a). If the prop is absent the deflection of the end of the
cantilever due to this load is:
<FORMULA>
   so that the force which the prop must exert in restoring zero
deflection at this point is:
<FORMULA>
   where the flexibility coefficients a;PQ; and a;PP;
refer to the cantilever. Therefore, by equations (8.3) and (8.4):
<FORMULA>
   Now the ratio a;PQ;/ a;PP; can be obtained by
considering an arbitrary small displacement 15D?7;P; of
the end of the unloaded cantilever due to an arbitrary force
R?7;P;, as shown in Fig. 8.2(b), since:
<FORMULA>
   while the resulting deflection of any other point Q is:
<FORMULA>
   so that:
<FORMULA>
   Therefore, by equation (8.5):
<FORMULA>
   The significance of this result is that the deflection curve of
the cantilever due to an arbitrary small displacement of P represents
to scale the influence line for the load on the prop at P. This is in
accordance with Mu"ller-Breslau's principle that the influence line
for the force in a member or upon a support of a linear
statically-indeterminate framework is represented to scale by the
change in shape of the framework due to a small displacement within
the member or at the support. For the purpose of using the principle
for the influence line for the bending moment at any point, the small
displacement introduced there must be of the angular kind. It can be
shown by virtual work that Mu"ller-Breslau's principle also applies to
statically-determinate systems which are not subject to gross
distortion under load.
   Mu"ller-Breslau's principle would be of very little practical
value without scale model techniques. The procedure prescribed by the
principle can be applied physically to a scale model for the purpose
of obtaining influence lines to scale and affords an effective method
of "model analysis" of frameworks. Such models must be made of
material with linear elasticity to a definite length scale. Thus, if
a model of the propped cantilever is made s times smaller than the
actual, a small displacement (15D;P;);m; at P
corresponds to a small displacement 15D;P; =
s(15D;P;);m; at P of the actual system.
Similarly, any other point of the model Q suffers a displacement
which may be multiplied by the scale factor s to obtain the
corresponding displacement of the point Q of the actual cantilever due
to the displacement of P of s(15D;P;);m;. Also
the deformed shape of the model represents the influence line for the
load on the prop of the actual system to scale. Therefore, with
reference to equations (8.8) and (8.9):
<FORMULA>
   so that:
<FORMULA>
   and the scale factor does not appear in the final result obtained
by the model in respect of influence lines for forces, because the
ratios of model displacements of the linear kind are identical to the
ratios of corresponding displacements of the actual structure.
   It is relatively easy to construct suitable models of frameworks
whose members deform primarily in bending, such as portals, because
then it is merely necessary for the ratios of the second moments of
area of the various members to be correct. The actual scale factor in
respect of second moment of area is immaterial and so models can be
cut from, say, sheet celluloid, which obeys Hooke's Law. Beggs
pioneered the use of this kind of model.
8:4. EXAMPLE OF MODEL ANALYSIS
   The steel portal framework shown in Fig. 8.3 has encastre?2
stanchion feet and the second moments of area of AB, BC, and CD are I,
2I and I, respectively. In order to obtain the influence lines for
the redundants, chosen to be the reactions R;1;, R;2;
and R;3; at the foot A, a scale model may be used.
<DIAGRAM>
The model must be made of material which has linear elasticity in
accordance with Hooke's Law (e.g., it can be cut from sheet
Xylonite celluloid), to a layout scale factor s and the ratios of
the second moments of area of the model members AB, BC and CD must be
1 : 2 : 1. The required influence lines are found by subjecting the
model, mounted to reproduce the encastre?2 conditions at A and D, to
small displacements horizontally (for the influence line for
R;1;), vertically (for R;2;) and rotationally (for
R;3;) at A, in turn, and recording the resulting changes in
shape of the model. It is important for each displacement to be
applied at A separately without movement in any other direction.
   Suppose the influence lines so obtained are as shown in Fig.
8.4 and that it is desired to determine the magnitudes of the
reactions at A caused by the loading shown in Fig. 8.3. Then using
subscripts m to denote that the displacements are obtained from
the model:
<FORMULA>
   which are independent of the scale of the model. For R;3;,
however, the scale of the model enters into the calculations and for
this reason it is desirable to refer the model displacements to the
corresponding values for the actual structure. Thus, if the foot A of
the actual framework were rotated through 15th radians the resulting
deflections
<DIAGRAMS>
would be s times those of the model when its foot A is rotated
through the same angle. Using the equivalent full-scale influence
line ordinates then to obtain R;3; gives:
<FORMULA>
   since 15th is
<FORMULA>.
   Again, for a uniformly distributed loading of intensity w
over, say, CD, the corresponding values of the reactions at A are:
<FORMULA>
   where distance x along CD refers to the model, so that if
15a;1;, 15a;2; and 15a;3; are the areas enclosed by the
relevant portions of the influence lines of the model, respectively:
<FORMULA>
   and for practical purposes it is sufficiently accurate to assume
that the influence lines are straight between measured ordinates.
<DIAGRAM>
   The influence line for the bending moment at a point within a
member can be obtained similarly by cutting the model at the point in
question and applying an angular displacement, as indicated in Fig.
8.5. The required bending moment due to particular loading is then
obtained from the influence line ordinates in a manner similar to that
used for finding R;3;.
   It is particularly important to measure the influence line
ordinates correctly, as, for example, in Fig. 8.4 with respect to
the line of F;Q2;. Accuracy can also be improved by using
positive and negative displacements, as shown in Figs. 1.2 and
1.21.
   Use of scale models for the analysis of frameworks is always
worth considering as an alternative to manual computation, especially
for frameworks of simple form whose members are of non-uniform section
for reasons of economy. Accuracy of model analysis tends to lie
between 5% and 1% in relation to values calculated exactly on the
basis of the same assumptions as those used in constructing the model.
# 2
<371 TEXT J77>
Two articles have appeared by Bichsel on electron microscopy; one
is concerned with an investigation of sub-grain structure in high
purity aluminium, while the other is general, describing the
application of oxide replica techniques and the examination of thin
foils. The illustrations in all these papers are impressive
scientifically and attractive aesthetically; it is only a matter of
time before they receive the attention of designers of wallpaper,
floor coverings and similar goods.
   Single crystals continue to attract the experimenter; McKinnon
has studied the work-hardening of a super-purity aluminium crystal,
and indicated that during stage =1, that is the period of slip on
(111) plane of maximum resolved shear stress, the rate of hardening is
determined by the amount and type of uniformly distributed secondary
slip. Greetham and Honeycombe have deformed single crystals of
aluminium-4.5% copper given various ageing treatments after solution
treatment. Under-aged crystals showed a marked yield point followed
by a period of low hardening, while over-aged crystals and those
treated at the optimum temperature, though showing no yield point,
strain-hardened rapidly. By X-ray and metallographic study, Richards
and Pugh have determined the sequences of behaviour of super-purity
aluminium during rolling and annealing. Structures after various
amounts of cold reduction are illustrated as photomicrographs and
X-ray transmission patterns.
   Blade, Clare and Lamb have used levitation melting to provide
ingots of zone-refined aluminium containing additions of various
elements, which were then rolled to sheet for determination of
recrystallisation temperatures. As little as .1 at. % of the
addition elements was sufficient to produce most of the retardation of
recrystallisation; silicon, copper and magnesium each caused an
increase of recrystallisation temperature of 5-1@ C., while for
iron, chromium and manganese a figure of c. 2@ C. is
quoted. At temperatures varying from 195-5@ C., Ormerod and
Tegart have subjected super-purity aluminium to torsion stresses, and
determined torque values which are converted to shear stress, while
specimen revolutions are converted to shear strain, the two being used
to draw true stress/ strain curves. Davies has performed
stress-rupture tests on the aluminium-1% nickel alloy favoured for
resistance to corrosion by high temperature water, and obtained 1,
hour values of .75 at 35@ C., 1.8 at 25@ C., and 4.2 at 1@
C., the units being kg/ sq. mm.; English eyes would have
preferred tons/ sq. in.
Corrosion and Protection
   No form of degeneration of metals is more insidious than
corrosion, and the volume of work published on the subject is a
measure of the seriousness with which it is viewed. Evans has
produced a monumental volume of great authority on the corrosion and
oxidation of metals in general, with an author index containing no
less than 3, names. A fat volume, but the scribbling has been very
well worth while, and as with Gibbon's work it will well outlive the
author. Another useful book is that written by Rogers, principally
for the education of naval constructors who are responsible for the
maintenance of ships of war; aluminium receives its due meed of
attention, with alarming illustrations of what happens when wrong
procedures are adopted, and details of correct design and practice.
   The power of the corrosive enemy must be recognised and assessed;
Great Britain has the unenviable reputation of being a particularly
aggressive place. Ambler has found that the distribution of chloride
in the British atmosphere has the same general relation to distance
from the sea as in West Africa, and that the corrosion of steel and
zinc bears no relation to salinity; encouragingly, he considers that
the corrosion of his aluminium specimens was so small as to give high
errors on cleaning. A new hazard has been added to corrosion testing.
At Llanrhystyd, Ambler's specimens were liable to be licked by cows
on the landward side; he states that this would not be expected to
give low results, but this surely depends on the corrosivity of cow
saliva as against the beneficial effects of regular cleaning.
   In continuing its work on the basic causes and mechanism of
corrosion, the National Bureau of Standards in the U.S.A. has
established that with large single crystals of high purity aluminium
exposed to an acid mixture, configuration of etch pits differed
according to crystallographic orientation, and the rates of attack
varied radically from those observed in an alkali mixture. Edeleanu
has studied the pitting mechanism, using 99.999% aluminium foil in
sodium chloride solution, and demonstrated that the rate of attack per
unit of active area inside a pit is a constant, and that changes in an
external polarising current change the rate of pitting only by
altering the active area. An electron micrograph of a pitting system
illustrates effectively the frequent changes in direction of the
attack. In a general summary of the causes of pitting and its
effects, Robinson makes the cardinal point that to avoid it one must
eliminate the chloride ion or inhibit it; it is not always possible to
adopt either of these admirable actions, so that pitting must
sometimes be lived with and allowed for in design and selection of
materials.
   Susceptibility to intercrystalline corrosion may be a less
serious matter than proneness to stress-corrosion; indeed, in the high
strength Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys, stress-corrosion failure can occur when
very little evidence of corrosive attack is to be detected. In
developing tests for the susceptibility of this type of alloy to
intercrystalline attack, Ketcham and Taylor do not mention
stress-corrosion, and while their tests are no doubt of value, tests
including stress application would be preferred. Silver is highly
cathodic to aluminium, and alloys containing large additions of silver
might be expected to be correspondingly low in corrosion resistance.
This has been shown to be the case by Stadelmeier and Whitener; in
their aluminium-silver alloy, Ag;2;Al was precipitated on the
grain boundaries, and in a refrigerator atmosphere samples were
completely pulverised in four weeks. A Committee of the National
Association of Corrosion Engineers has reported on its investigations
of techniques applicable to the examination of aluminium corrosion
products, including X-ray diffraction and fluorescence, thermal
analysis, electrographic methods, spectrographic analysis, microscopic
examination and quantitative and qualitative tests.
   Having purified water sufficiently for it to merit the
application high-purity, the user is anxious to keep it so, and
Knoedler and Gordon have assembled test data on many materials that
may be used for containers, pipes, etc., including steel sprayed
with aluminium, and the same combination coated with a polyvinyl top
coat. Commercially pure aluminium and aluminium-manganese alloy tanks
were also used, and the water showed .35 parts per million of
aluminium after 56 days' storage; a very low proportion. In comparing
metals for compatibility with 9% hydrogen peroxide, Bloom and his
co-workers award classification 1 only to pure aluminium, certain
aluminium alloys and zirconium. A rocket fuel rejoicing in the name
of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine has been successfully stored in
aluminium containers for three years without ill effect, as reported
by Raleigh and Derr. Many somewhat unusual chemicals are needed in
conjunction with rocket engines, and Geiger, Schuler and Mowers have
discussed material selection problems in the light of present
knowledge. Aluminium is compatible with hydrogen peroxide, nitrogen
tetroxide, liquid fluorine and inhibited red fuming nitric acid,
amongst other rocket chemicals.
   Aylmore, Gregg and Jepson have studied the oxides formed when
aluminium is heated in dry oxygen and interpreted their results as
showing crystallisation of an initially formed amorphous layer. Using
an A.C. bridge, Lorking measured the capacity and thus the
thickness of non-porous oxide films on aluminium; chloride ions in
solution increased the permeability of the film, and this was detected
by potential measurements. Since a general air of pessimism permeates
the account by Capp and Philibert about ship corrosion, their remarks
about trouble with aluminium are perhaps less unacceptable; however,
they seem to be ill-informed about developments since the war in such
matters as riveting and boundary bar joints, and the general avoidance
of bimetallic corrosion. The stupid things that are still done are
exemplified in an account by Brooks of a floodlight from a fishing
vessel, that had castings in an aluminium alloy containing 2 1/2%
copper, was bolted together with brass bolts, and employed an
absorbent fibre gasket. It seems hardly conceivable, but these things
still happen, even in the second half of the twentieth century. In
the aircraft industry, hazards are much more fully recognised; Heath
has shown how modern aircraft design is being modified to provide
access to all parts for inspection, to ensure that unobserved
corrosion cannot proceed to cause a catastrophe. This requirement in
design is, of course, most important in modern aircraft from which
long service lives are expected.
   Corrosion at welds has not proved a serious problem with
aluminium since the dangers of flux entrapment were eliminated by the
adoption of inert gas-shielded welding methods; however, trouble with
large gas-welded cooking pans in aluminium-2% magnesium alloy
described by Latimer was not due to flux residues. "Knife-edge"
attack along the sides of the welds was shown to be associated with
the coarse structure of the partially fused zone, and the presence of
continuous 15b-phase on the grain boundaries of the heat-affected
zones. This could be avoided by welding at a faster rate with less
heat input, e.g. by tungsten-arc welding. Oldfield and Twigg
investigating the staining of stainless steel tableware, tested blades
in contact with galvanised iron and with aluminium in Sheffield tap
water at 6@ and 1@ C. They concluded that aluminium containers
are reasonably safe for trays or baskets for washing stainless steel
cutlery, but galvanised iron can cause staining.
Aluminium-magnesium-silicon alloy (similar to H9-P) pipe, TIG
welded, and used for sour gas was inspected by Flournoy after being
buried for six years without protection in a soil of sandy loam and
broken caliche. Where failure had occurred, it was by pitting from
the outside, and chlorides were detected in the corrosion product.
This experience shows that aluminium is resistant to sour gas, and
may be installed bare underground if protection is afforded at local
spots of high corrosivity.
   If one keeps the anti-freeze in the cooling system of one's car
from year to year, one runs the risk of corrosion of the cast-iron
parts of the circuit, due to increase in acid content and reduction of
inhibitor content of the cooling liquid. This has been shown by
Collins and Higgins, who also state that the danger of corrosion of
other metals by the deteriorated anti-freeze is slight; only
occasionally has slight pitting been seen with aluminium, and no
corrosion necessitating replacement has resulted. Investigating the
special case of hypereutectic aluminium-silicon alloys under
conditions related to car engine cooling systems, Craig and Woods have
shown that such alloys, even when coupled to copper, are corroded to a
negligible extent if there are suitable inhibitors in the coolant; in
general, hypereutectic aluminium-silicon alloys are more corrosion
resistant than cast iron.
   Sundararajan and Char, continuing their studies of inhibition of
the corrosion of aluminium, have assessed the effects of acridine,
nicotinic acid, dextrin, thiourea and tannic acid in dilute
hydrochloric acid; all were efficient. In a second paper these
authors describe polarisation studies in acid and alkaline solutions,
with thiourea and dextrin as inhibitors, and conclude that cathodic
protection is possible in acid solutions in the potential range -.55
to -.8 V. In both these papers one meets again the curious
material previously described by Sundararajan and Char, namely 92%
pure aluminium, containing 3% Fe, 4% Mn, 1% Si; doubts about
decimal points return more strongly than ever. Using some impressive
mathematics, Bauer and Eddy have compared various possible anode
materials for the protection of water tanks. One interesting factor
affecting choice is whether or not the water freezes and breaks the
anode or suspension; if it does, aluminium is used, because of its
cheapness.
   Chemical conversion coatings have been summarised by Ayres,
considering them principally from the point of view of corrosion
resistance, which is conferred by low chemical activity and
solubility. Wells and Pinner have surveyed recent advances in
chemical and electrolytic polishing, on all relevant metals including
aluminium.
# 26
<372 TEXT J78>
This particular detecting element illustrates why the plant
engineer is slow to take up new ideas, for at first sight to introduce
microwave generating and detecting equipment into a power station
fills the plant engineer with horror. It is only when the equipment
can be made rugged and utterly reliable that he will consider using it
at all.
   Nowadays engineers tend to use detecting elements which give an
electrical output. The reason for this is that it is a matter of
extreme simplicity to amplify the signal to any degree which is
necessary. Moreover, it is very easy to transmit the signal from one
part of the plant to another without serious loss. Detectors having
an electrical output are therefore of growing importance at the
present time, although in many cases a mechanical output is still
quite satisfactory.
Pneumatic Devices
   It is surprising that so little use is made of pneumatic
devices for measurement and control of small distances. Work which
has been done in the British Scientific Instrument Research
Association has shown that pneumatic gauging is an almost ideal way of
deciding if a sliver of a semiconducting material is of the right
dimensions for manufacturing a transistor. Pneumatic bearings also
have a considerable application which has not been developed outside
gyroscopes: for example, a patent has recently been taken out covering
the use of a pneumatic bearing for a glass polishing head. Passing on
to optical detecting elements, which are now beginning to receive the
attention they deserve as a result of the application of electronic
devices to replace the human eye, these are coming more and more into
favour as on line instruments. The nondispersive infra-red
spectrometer is a good example, while the automatic saccharimeter
developed at the National Physical Laboratory has a good future, but
it is when one comes to consider the more sophisticated optical
electronic instruments that one finds the numerous advantages of
utilising the visible and near visible portions of the electromagnetic
spectrometer. The Hilger & Watts automatic spectrographs are now well
known and are in constant use in the iron and steel industries, while
optical methods are beginning to be used in the guidance systems of
many of our guided missiles. The importance of electrical detecting
elements has already been stressed. Of these, the piezo electric
effect is the best known and most used, apart from the obvious
conventional cases of the thermocouple and the resistance thermometer.
The piezo electric effect can be used to launch ultrasonic waves in a
liquid or in a slurry, and the resulting phenomena are only now being
investigated on an industrial basis. Nucleonic instruments tend to be
largely electronic devices. The detecting element itself generally
uses a nucleonic phenomenon, but the remainder of the apparatus is
electronic. The reason for this is that nucleonic detection usually
takes place in a very short space of time and, of course, the big
advantage of electronics is its speed of response.
   The preceding paragraph gives some general reflections on
detecting elements. A book could easily be written on this subject
without exhausting the possibilities.
   Mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic and electrical amplifiers are
all in use in automatic control systems, and these represent the
second class of component into which the system can be resolved.
Mechanical amplifiers are exemplified by levers, while hydraulic
amplifiers are exemplified by transference of a pressure or a flow
from a wide tube to a narrow one. Pneumatic amplifiers operate in
much the same way as hydraulic amplifiers, but offer greater diversity
in their application. It should be noted that in none of these cases
is there any real gain in the energy of the signal. For example, a
lever increases the movement which is available to the observer, but
it does so at the expense of the effort which is available at the end
of the lever. The same is true of the hydraulic and pneumatic
amplifiers which have been mentioned. Nevertheless, amplifiers have
been made which correspond exactly to the electronic amplifier: the
signal strength is actually increased at the expense of a reservoir of
gas or liquid. Electronic amplifiers are essentially devices which
transform part of the direct current available from the power supply
to signal current, which can then be used to perform an operation.
   The third element of a control system is the transmission itself.
At the present time the transmission is very often done hydraulically
or pneumatically, but electrical systems are gradually coming into
use, subject, of course, to the stringent conditions of intrinsic
safety. Where long runs are required, electrical transmission is
obviously to be preferred.
The Use of Computers
   The next item in the control system has gained considerable
notoriety and is sometimes thought by the uninitiated to be the
principal component. It is the data logger or computer. Computers
were originally manufactured in analogue form to solve certain complex
differential equations and, in the first instance, they were
mechanically operated. Thereafter, electronic computers came in,
operated digitally, and since then there has been competition between
the analogue computer and the digital computer. To a certain limited
extent the analogue computers are very useful for the examination of
plant characteristics, and such computers can be used to advantage
when a new plant is being set up which is to be automatically
controlled throughout. On the other hand, where extreme accuracy is
required the digital computer is the only one to use and electronic
digital computers are employed to advantage in performing difficult
calculations in optics, in stresses and strains in aircraft, and in a
multitude of other problems. So far as process control is concerned,
after the preliminary investigation has been carried out by means of
an analogue computer, the equipment to be used on the plant should be
as simple as possible and should comprise a detecting element, a data
logger and a controller, the third being connected, of course, by
transmission lines. The data logger is usually called upon to perform
one or two simple operations and, as such, it is not worth while using
a general purpose electronic digital computer to do the job. It is
therefore the writer's opinion that general purpose computers have no
long term significance so far as process or machine tool control is
concerned. Rather the data loggers and computers which will be used
in these circumstances will be small black boxes, designed to do
specific jobs. It will be seen that the problem of the computer is in
no way related to the problem of the detecting element. When we are
concerned with the right kind of detecting element to use for a
particular purpose, this takes us into the background of science to
examine all the various phenomena and decide on the right device. On
the other hand, so far as data loggers and computers are concerned it
is a matter of straightforward engineering, for the circuits and
devices to be used to perform the various specific tasks are all well
understood. There is only one case where this may not be completely
true, and that is where extreme speed is required in the computer, but
this occurs so seldom in process control or machine tool control that
it is hardly worth considering.
The Controller
   The last element in the automatic control system is the
controller itself. This has to be a mechanical device since it is
applied to the line and changes certain parameters therein.
Controllers nowadays are usually described as "three term",
meaning that they have a proportional control, a control which is
determined by the rate of change of the signal, and a control which is
determined by the integral of the signal. Three term controllers
require careful setting up, and to make the best use of them an
exhaustive analysis of the plant is necessary, but there is no doubt
that three term control is essential in most cases if the plant is to
operate at optimum efficiency.
   The necessity for the three term controller is to be found in the
mode of variation of any particular parameter. For example, if we are
concerned with temperature measurement and the temperature should
suddenly shoot up, then some degree of anticipation is given to the
controller by means of the rate of change of the signal. On the other
hand should the parameter vary slightly between fairly wide limits
over a long period of time, then it is very difficult to maintain it
at the desired value unless an integral of the signal is used in the
control system. No doubt more complex controllers could be
manufactured and may be used in the future, but in the meantime the
rate of change, the signal itself, and the integral of the signal give
sufficient control.
The Instrumentation of Reactors and Conventional Electrical Power
Units
   Whether coal or uranium is used as the fuel, the power unit
must always contain certain basic automatic controls. At the present
moment the output of any station is in the form of electricity, which
usually comes from a turbogenerator. Certain conventional
instrumental controls are necessary at this end, but with the
increasing use of reactors as power producing units, a completely new
set of problems has been posed to the industrial instrument
manufacturer. Apart from the measurement of such novel parameters as
the neutron flux in the reactor, the control of temperature has become
of major importance. An elegant solution to this problem is not yet
in sight, but reactors are able to operate using a very large number
of detecting elements which measure temperature. One of the
outstanding problems of reactor instrumentation is the measurement of
flux of intermediate energy neutrons. The British Scientific
Instrument Research Association began an investigation of this problem
some three years ago and the results so far achieved are promising.
As might have been expected, on the way towards the solution of the
set problem (the measurement of flux of intermediate energy neutrons)
many other problems have been brought to the notice of the Association
and have been solved. It is probable that the work at present in
progress on new types of phosphors will result in a new set of
instruments becoming available to the reactor engineer. If this is
so, the economics of reactor manufacture and operation will need to be
completely revised.
Power Units in Industry
   Almost every big factory in the country produces a large amount
of steam, which is then used for many purposes. These power units are
all very similar and one would expect that their instrumentation would
be well known and well defined. This is not the case, however. Apart
from the measurement and control of fuel, steam pressure, water, and
alkalinity or acidity, there are many other factors which must be
measured in an economic power plant. The air to fuel ratio, the
carbon monoxide content in the flue gases, and the smoke issuing from
the chimney must all be controlled, and almost every factory has its
individual system. There is certainly room here for a large amount of
standardisation and, among smaller firms, for education in the value
of adequate instrumentation.
Future Trends
   It is a difficult matter at this juncture to specify the future
trends of instrumentation among our basic industries, and so it may be
well to deal, first of all, with those matters which are well defined.
There is no doubt that large chemical plants could use to advantage
on line instruments to perform simple chemical analyses, but in many
cases progress is at a standstill because it is very difficult to
imagine a detecting element which can be successfully applied to a
plant. Another trend which has been mentioned above is towards the
small special purpose computer. The general purpose machine usually
contains much more than is necessary to perform its operation on the
plant, and it is only by cutting out these unnecessary devices that
the computer can be made an economic proposition. This trend is
fairly certain. The other trend which appears to be well established
is towards the detecting element having an electrical output.
# 214
<373 TEXT J79>
The ultimate concentration in the liquid oxygen will, therefore,
depend on the equilibrium constant for the impurity when present in
low concentration in liquid oxygen. Also, if the solubility is low,
precipitation may occur before the concentration in the exit gas
reaches the required value, and accumulation of the impurity as a
solid will occur.
   Table =3 shows the results of calculations for a number of trace
impurities in which, for different assumed concentrations in the inlet
air, the concentration in the liquid oxygen in the evaporator for
steady state operation has been determined for gaseous oxygen
production.
   It must be appreciated that the figures for the concentration
build up are dependent on the accuracy of the equilibrium data, which
are uncertain, but the table does give an indication of the order of
magnitude to be expected. It is important to note that where high
concentrations are theoretically possible in the plant evaporator the
time required to build them up may be considerable, thus easily
allowing steps to be taken to prevent such accumulations occurring.
   Before discussing the methods which are adopted in practice to
achieve this, we shall consider in a little more detail the effect of
impurities in the air intake.
Effect of trace impurities in the air feed
   There has been a considerable amount of work carried out in
recent years on the effect of trace impurities in the air feed. Not
all of it has been convincing, and certain aspects are still by no
means clear. It is impossible to do more than briefly review
available information and data here.
   In considering the relative significance of trace impurities,
particularly hydrocarbons, it should be borne in mind that small
concentrations of hydrocarbons dissolved in liquid oxygen do not
necessarily present a hazard. This depends on the susceptibility to
detonation of the hydrocarbon solution, and on the explosive limits.
Data are incomplete for such solutions, but generally if the
percentage by weight of the hydrocarbon in homogeneous solution is
less than 2%, detonation cannot be initiated. In practice, it is
obviously undesirable to operate near such a limit.
LIGHT HYDROCARBONS, CARBON MONOXIDE, AND HYDROGEN
   In general, the C;1; and C;2; hydrocarbons such as
methane, ethane, and ethylene, (but excluding acetylene) which have
relatively low boiling points, do not normally present any hazard if
present as traces in the air intake to a plant since they are
appreciably soluble in liquid oxygen, and their equilibrium constants
in admixture with this are relatively high. This means that they will
not tend to accumulate in, for example, the oxygen evaporator to any
dangerous concentration under likely operating conditions.
   Carbon monoxide and hydrogen in trace quantities present no
hazard since hydrogen is incondensible at the temperatures involved
and is removed with the atmospheric inert gases, helium and neon, at a
suitable vent-point in the plant. Carbon monoxide is similar to
nitrogen in properties and is, in fact, more volatile than oxygen. It
therefore presents no hazard in trace concentrations.
HIGHER HYDROCARBONS AND ACETYLENICS
   Hydrocarbon impurities under the rather arbitrary
classification of higher hydrocarbons and acetylenics can arise from
three possible sources.
   The first is physical carry-over of hydrocarbon oil from, for
example, an oil-lubricated expansion engine. This can accumulate as a
solid in an oxygen evaporator unless provision is made in the plant
design to prevent such an occurrence.
   The second source is from atmospheric contamination.
   The third is oxidation or thermal cracking of compressor
lubricating oils where a reciprocating compressor is used. By the use
of relatively low interstage pressure ratios (3/1 or less) and by the
use of lubricating oils of high stability, contamination from this
source can be reduced to very small proportions. The problem does not
arise with turbocompressors.
   The higher hydrocarbons and acetylenics have low vapour pressures
at liquid oxygen temperature and are, therefore relatively
non-volatile. When combined with a low solubility, as in the case of
acetylene, accumulation as a precipitated solid can occur. It is for
this reason that acetylene is one of the most dangerous of hydrocarbon
contaminants. Its solubility in liquid oxygen at its normal boiling
point is approximately 6 parts per million and its K-value
(defined as the ratio of the mol-fraction of hydrocarbon in the gas
phase to the mol-fraction in the liquid phase under equilibrium
conditions) is between 1/15 and 1/7, depending on the data used, for
oxygen evaporator conditions. Whilst solid acetylene itself is more
stable than usually realised, when mixed with liquid oxygen it is
detonated relatively easily. It has also been shown that when a solid
acetylene/ liquid oxygen mixture contains fine inert solid particles,
then the susceptibility of the mixture to detonation as measured by an
impact sensitivity test is high.
   It has also been stated by Karwat that an incrustation of solid
acetylene on oxygen evaporator tubes, which can be wetted by splashing
with liquid, represents a particularly dangerous condition.
   It should be appreciated that whilst the amount of acetylene
which can accumulate in a plant may not always in itself be sufficient
to cause a serious explosion, it can, however, act as a trigger or
detonator for the explosion of larger amounts of carbonaceous material
if these should be allowed to accumulate.
   It is interesting to note that recently it has been pointed out
by Karwat that propane may, under certain conditions, present a rather
greater hazard than has perhaps hitherto been recognised, mainly due
to the fact that although its solubility in liquid oxygen is
relatively high (6circa 5  parts per million of oxygen) its
equilibrium constant is very low. Even traces in the air feed can,
therefore, accumulate in the oxygen evaporator unless removed.
   The higher molecular weight hydrocarbons do not normally cause
appreciable difficulty because they are almost completely non-volatile
at low temperatures and are removed in the purification or heat
exchanger system.
NON-HYDROCARBON IMPURITIES
   The main non-hydrocarbon impurities which are likely to pass
through the heat exchanger system and initial purification on air
separation plants are nitrous oxide, ozone, and oxides of nitrogen, in
particular, nitric oxide. These impurities will also tend to
concentrate in the oxygen evaporator, in particular nitrous oxide
because of its low equilibrium constant. It has a low solubility
(6circa 1 v.p.m.) and there have been suggestions that
mixed crystals of nitrous oxide and acetylene may form from saturated
solutions arising in air separation plants which can be easily
detonated when the acetylene content of the mixed crystals is high
enough.
   Whilst fully conclusive evidence is not available, there are
indications that the presence of ozone or oxides of nitrogen, (or
both) in the presence of acetylene or other hydrocarbons may increase
the susceptibility to explosion. Further information is required to
elucidate fully the possible role of these contaminants.
SOLID PARTICLES
   A factor that is not always mentioned when discussing the
safety of air separation plants is the importance of strict
cleanliness during plant assembly to avoid the introduction anywhere
into the low temperature system of possible carbonaceous material,
i.e. carbonaceous dust, cloth fibres etc., since they
can constitute a hazard if they accumulate in sufficient quantity at a
particular point where a high oxygen concentration exists.
Safety measures
   We shall now briefly review the various methods which have been
or are used to control impurity build up in air separation plants. It
is important to stress that the degree of protection which is employed
may frequently be influenced by the amount of contamination of the
atmosphere in the vicinity of the plant.
PURIFICATION OF THE AIR ENTERING THE PLANT
   An obvious method, if practicable, is to eliminate impurities
in the air entering the air separation unit. One approach to this
problem is the use of catalytic purifiers after the air compressor in
which the heat of compression is used, partly at least, to raise the
air to a temperature at which the hydrocarbon impurities present can
be catalytically oxidised. For example, in an installation in America
a Hopcalite catalyst has been used. Whilst for heavily contaminated
atmospheres this initial purification may have advantages, it is
relatively costly and also will not completely remove all trace
impurities which will, therefore, nevertheless require treatment and
removal at a later stage. A further disadvantage is that if used with
a reciprocating compressor, oil contamination of the catalyst and loss
of activity can occur if it is used directly after one of the
compression stages.
   A different method of reducing the contamination in the air
intake, particularly in industrialised areas, is the use of
alternative suction lines, sometimes of considerable length, leading
outside the contaminated area. These may be changed over depending on
wind direction and the intensity of local contamination. This again
does not eliminate contamination but it can reduce it appreciably.
REMOVAL OF IMPURITIES IN THE HEAT EXCHANGER SYSTEM
   The removal of the less volatile trace constituents in the
air-feed can take place in the heat exchanger system to some extent
depending on their concentration, physical properties, the type of
heat exchanger system, and the air pressure. For example, in a plant
using regenerators in which the air is cooled at approximately 5
atm abs almost to its dew point (approximately -173@ C),
acetylene may be condensed in the regenerator packing and resublimed
in the nitrogen of the next cooling cycle if the concentration in the
inlet air exceeds approximately .6 v.p.m. This is a valuable
safeguard of such plants. In plants operating with higher pressures,
e.g. fluid-producing plants, the effect of the superimposed
air pressure in raising the vapour pressure of condensible impurities
reduces, or may eliminate the possible deposition of impurities in the
heat exchanger system.
REMOVAL AT LOW TEMPERATURES
   One of the simplest methods of reducing the build-up of
contaminants in the oxygen evaporator, which is the crucial part of
the plant, is to provide a continuous purge of liquid. This has been
practised since early days, but by itself is not an entirely
satisfactory operation since it is only palliative, can easily be
misapplied, or not operated, and also imposes an additional
refrigeration load due to liquid withdrawn and rejected.
   The next step was to use an additional small condenser built away
from the main plant condenser which was operated in series as far as
the oxygen flow was concerned. The basic elements are shown in Fig.
4. A small purge was led away from the additional condenser and
rejected. The net result is a relatively large purge from the main
plant condenser, and an appreciable accumulation of impurities in the
additional condenser. This, however, is small and suitably protected,
so that if, in fact, an explosion should occur, relatively little
damage is done. Whilst the above arrangement together with correct
condenser design has been largely used in the past, the tendency today
is undoubtedly towards the use of adsorption of the impurities from
one or more of the process streams. Silica gel is the adsorbent
commonly used.
   There are a number of places at which one can apply such a
clean-up system and they will be briefly mentioned. Fig. 5 shows a
hypothetical and simplified plant flow diagram in which the various
positions in which such adsorbers can be used is indicated. For
illustration, the plant cycle shown is a low pressure plant using
regenerators and producing gaseous oxygen.
   Adsorption from the gas phase at or near the saturation
temperature has attractions and silica gel adsorbers placed after the
regenerators on low pressure plants provide a very effective clean up.
The adsorbers are, however, large and relatively costly.
   The effect when a number of impurities are present on their
individual adsorptive capacities under dynamic conditions, must be
allowed for, i.e. the occurrence of sorption displacement has
to be considered. For example, Karwat showed that in solution in
liquid oxygen trace impurities reached their "break point" in a
silica gel adsorber in the order of ethane/ propane/ nitrous oxide +
ethylene/ carbon dioxide/ propylene and acetylene, whereas in gas
phase adsorbers the order of break through was ethane/ ethylene and
nitrous oxide/ propane, and then acetylene and propylene.
# 26
<374 TEXT J8>
Another generalization presented in Chapter =6 was the application
of the technique to large structural assemblies in which we provide
also for the so-called interaction or external redundancies. As far
as the practical side of the cut-out technique is concerned this was
discussed in connexion with windows, doors, wing-fuselage
interpenetrations, floors, partial removals of rings, etc. Now, we
may consider the cut-out process as a special case of the more general
modification technique and this was, in fact, usually our approach to
the presentation of the relevant theory. However, we did also mention
that there is an essential difference between the cut-out and
modification techniques in their practical application. This is
immediately evident if we have to apply these respective procedures to
a large number of elements which may be taken to form a sub-system.
Thus, when the flexibilities of the elements of the sub-system have
to be modified it is obvious that we have to include all stresses
specified in the elements to be altered in the matrix b;1h;
and other relevant matrices of the sub-systems. But this is not so
if we wish to eliminate the sub-system. Here we may achieve its
effective removal by detaching it along its boundary in the parent
regularized structure, leaving only a statically determinate
connexion. Hence, in this approach, we actually cut only the
redundant members of this connexion without having, at the same time,
to break it up internally if it is itself redundant. On the other
hand, it is perfectly legitimate to carry out, in addition, these
internal eliminations, but this extends inevitably the amount of work
involved and the order of magnitude of the matrix to be inverted. But
on no account can we cut beyond this stage for we would then create a
kinematic mechanism which means mathematically linearly dependent rows
in b;1h; and a consequent singularity of the process.
Thus, we see that in the case of the elimination of sub-systems there
is no unique number of cut-outs and, furthermore, no unique position
of these cut-outs. We may achieve a minimum of eliminations by
removing only the redundancies along the boundary and we may reach a
maximum of eliminations by cutting also the internal redundancies.
These subtle considerations are dealt with in great detail in Section
36 and illustrated on a wide range of examples showing the alternative
ways we can view and solve these problems. Prior to this we summarize
for the convenience of the reader in Section 35 the basic theory of
the modification and cut-out procedures as developed in a number of
sections of this book and take this opportunity to generalize slightly
the presentation. We hope that this joint account of theory and
solutions to specimen problems will contribute to a deepening of the
understanding of the cut-out technique and of its applications to
practical cases.
   The concluding section of this chapter generalizes the matrix
programme for the bending moments in the rings put forward in Section
12. The reader will remember that the method given there ignored any
discontinuity of the bending moments at the vertices. Now, this may
be a too rough approximation when large loads (e.g. at wing
fuselage attachments) are applied at the external vertices or other
points of the rings. The necessary simple theory is developed in
Section 37.
33. Techniques to Improve the Conditioning of the D Matrix
   First a word of apology to our mathematically more
knowledgeable readers. We are only too conscious that, in our
repeated references to the conditioning of the D matrix, we have
been guilty of imprecise language, not having really defined
mathematically what we mean by the conditioning of a set of linear
equations in the unknown redundancies. Indeed, our whole approach to
this matter was rather of applying the terminologies well- or
ill-conditioned as qualitative terms of praise or abuse to a system of
equations. Now, ill-conditioning can, in fact, be expressed by
various mathematical measures. Unfortunately, most of these precise
measures involve as long computations as the solution itself of the
simultaneous equations and are not, hence, very useful in practice for
giving advance warning. We refer the interested reader to the papers
of Todd, Turing, and Johannes von Neumann 6cum Goldstine. Even
the relatively simple rule that ill conditioning is present when the
value of the determinant
<FORMULA> is small (more precisely we should state that
<FORMULA> is small compared with the individual terms of expansion
of
<FORMULA> in the co-factors of the elements of any chosen row or
column) is not of much value in computational work. Nevertheless, in
structural problems it is usually possible to adopt a simple measure
sufficient for practical purposes. To fix ideas, consider a fuselage
with two bays where only one set of primary redundancies Y arises
at the intermediate frame station. Having introduced- for reasons
connected exclusively with the application of the digital computer-
the inversion technique of Eqs. (=4, 21, 44) for the direct
determination of the complete b;1l;, b;1q;
matrices, and hence also of b;1r;, we are necessarily
faced with self-equilibrating systems which are spread over the
complete cross-section or, at least, over the main (outer) periphery.
To express then with a high degree of accuracy (from the practical
computational point of view, which is the only one which interests us)
any arbitrary self-equilibrating stress system in terms of the
b;1l;, b;1q;, b;1r; distributions, it is
mandatory that the columns of these matrices- each of which
corresponds to a redundancy- be not even remotely linearly dependent.
This is evidently achieved when the flange loads, field forces and
ring bending moments due to Y exhibit an increasing waviness with
increasing order of redundancy. The search for such distributions
brought us, more or less inevitably, to the selection of the
trigonometrical matrix 15O;l; as a transformation matrix
A;l; defining the redundancies. As we know from Chapter =4
and a large number of other similar computations, it appears that for
the cross-sections commonly occurring in practice the flange loads and
field forces based on 15O;l; do indeed retain the full
waviness of 15O;l;, although naturally they are not any
longer orthogonal as in the uniform circular cylinder. If the rings
or frames were now rigid this characteristic waviness would ensure the
precise determination of the redundancies and we then say that the
associated equations are well conditioned. For the associated matrix
D;yy;- which in the present case where D;yyr; is
zero reduces to
<FORMULA>
   we observe that the diagonal terms d;ii; must be strongly
preponderant, the non-diagonal d;ij; being the smaller the
better the waviness of 15O;l; is retained. It is now
possible to give the conditioning some measure by the degree of
satisfaction of the condition
<FORMULA>
   which is the generalization of the simple requirement usually
quoted for 2 x 2 matrices. From the strictly mathematical point of
view the inequality (2) ought to be defined more rigorously to express
a sufficient condition theoretically acceptable; at the same time we
know that it is not a necessary prerequisite for good conditioning.
Nevertheless, for us engineers the relation (2) yields for structural
matrices a sufficient measure for satisfactory conditioning.
   We must interpolate here in our main argument and refer briefly
to the method of establishing systems of redundancies previously
advocated by us in Ref. (3). Contrary to what we put forward in
the present treatise, we suggested there that it is advantageous to
select systems of a distinctly local character. Clearly then
condition (2) still holds and is the better satisfied the less
overlapping there is between the self-equilibrating systems. For
reasons set out in the introduction and subsequently, we preferred
here the method of direct inversion for the determination of
b;1;.
   Considering next the more realistic case of fuselages with rings
of finite stiffness, we find that the matrix D;yyr; becomes
of paramount importance (this being at least so for the lower order
redundancies) and Eq. (1) must be written as
<FORMULA>
   We noted in Chapter =5 that the internal ring forces
b;1r; are much more prone to lose their full waviness when
the cross-section departs significantly from the circular shape. It
is inevitable, in such instances, that the off-diagonal terms
d;ijr; (elements of the matrix D;r;) may become of
similar order to d;iir; and/or d;jjr; so that the
measure of conditioning, Eq. (2), will consequently deteriorate and
yield, in extreme cases of severe loss of waviness, a positive value
only slightly above zero (of course, it can never become negative in
structural problems). Such unfavourable conditions may prevail only
in a few isolated spots of the D;yy; matrix and we observed
in Chapter =5, p. 195, that they do not seem, in our experience, to
affect appreciably the accuracy of the solution, as long as these
'Scho"nheitsfehler' are within
<FORMULA>
   On the other hand, as these unfavourable patches spread, the
solution of the equations in the redundancies becomes increasingly
inaccurate due to the limited number of digits available and the rapid
accumulation of errors. Naturally, all methods of inversion or direct
solution of equations are not equally sensitive to this danger in each
specific case. Although such pronounced ill-conditioning should not
often occur in practice, it remains a distinct even if remote
possibility. We are thinking here of double cell cross-sections with
doubly-connected rings of unfavourable shape- for which the
conditioning of the symmetrical higher modes deteriorates rapidly-
and the rather box-like cross-sections of fuselages specially designed
for bulky loads.
   Our unavoidably superficial account leaves many extremely
difficult questions unanswered; in particular, the precise or
statistical correlation between order and spread of bad patches, on
the one hand, and loss of the accuracy of the solution on the other
must unfortunately be ignored. An interesting practical point
concerns the acceptable degree of inaccuracy in a solution due to such
or other causes of errors. The practising engineer may often, and
rightly so, consider a solution as satisfactory, although to us
primarily interested in this instance to develop new methods, it may
appear unacceptable. We referred to this issue in the introduction to
this chapter when we discussed the application of the four-flange
systems as redundancies. Now, for the reasons stated there and here,
we must reject such a narrow utilitarian outlook and seek, in fact, a
system of redundancies even better than that based on 15O;l;,
if the conditioning of the latter should prove to us unsatisfactory.
However, quite apart from the purely technical reasons, which demand
such an extension of our original method, it is also perfectionism- a
close companion of any intense research activity- which induces us to
search for a more appropriate transformation matrix A;l;.
Before we proceed to the examination of this question, we must
first conclude the bird's eye view of our theme.
   The discussion of the previous paragraphs was concerned with the
so-called conditioning of the matrix D in the case of a single set
of the primary redundancies Y;a;. When the fuselage extends
over more than two bays, there arises at each intermediate frame
station i a set of redundancies Y;i;. It is evident that
our previous account is still applicable to the submatrices
D;ii; in the leading diagonal of D;yy;. We denote
the conditioning of these matrices as peripheral to differentiate from
another type presently to be mentioned. Now, when a satisfactory
conditioning of the leading diagonal submatrices has been achieved
this will also apply, in general, to each of the other submatrices (in
the secondary diagonals) of the five-band supermatrix D;yy;.
Only a very violent change of cross-section could, 6in
extremis, give rise to a significant ill-conditioning in these
submatrices. However, from the point of view of the overall
conditioning of the complete D;yy; matrix, another possible
source of ill-conditioning has to be looked for. Thus, if the
off-diagonal submatrices, say, D;i,i+1; (or
D;i,i+2;) arising from the coupling of the sets Y;i;
and Y;i+1; (or Y;i+2;) were proportional to
D;ii;, the proportionality factor being only slightly smaller
than unity, then it is evident from what we said previously in the
peripheral kind of conditioning, that a new kind of ill-conditioning,
conveniently denoted as a longitudinal one, could originate.
# 21
<END>
<375 TEXT K1>
'Are you sure you're quite fit? It's terrible weather.' He
turned round to face his colleague.
   For some esoteric reason Fairbanks always completed the buttoning
of his flies in the main area of the lavatory. 'Good morning,
Harold,' he said. 'I'm pretty chipper, thanks, considering.' He
was a tiny man, of fanatical neatness, his remaining hair snowy, and
cropped like a Prussian's. His white shirt cuffs were actually
starched: he protruded from them his surprisingly thick and hairy
wrists and began to wash. 'As a matter of fact a good hard frost
seems to clear the old tubes. Much better for me than the rain.'
   'Good,' said Colmore. 'Excellent.'
   Fairbanks hummed a few bars in a voice made resonant by the very
weakness of his chest. Colmore was ready to leave, but delayed his
departure, as one who dare not go to bed early for fear of missing
some wholly unanticipated but remotely possible event of absorbing
interest. He took up a clothes brush.
   'I'd like a little conference this morning,' said Fairbanks.
'Ten-thirty be all right?' He did not wait for a reply. 'Get
J.D., will you?'
   J.D. was Davis, the other Assistant Secretary.
'Conference' was Fairbanks's word for finding out what was going
on. 'Yes, Charles, certainly,' Colmore said. It was not the
Secretary's return to health that was disconcerting this morning- the
man had to retire at sixty- but his irreproachable fac?6ade.
Westminster and Lincoln- not, of course, absolutely full-fruit
standard, but serviceable enough. Colmore had more than once read his
entry in Who's Who: son of Canon Fairbanks, married to the
daughter of a knight, member of the Devonshire. Colmore thought of
his own parents, now safely dead: his mother's wen, his father's lack
of aspirates. With such a background one could never be really safe
however brilliant one was. There were a score of things that could
betray one's weakness, things that lay totally outside Fairbanks's
conception. Perhaps some outrageous relation would suddenly decide to
call on him at his office: his Uncle Howard, say, whose nose had
doubtless grown no less purple over the years. Or his accent, which
had carefully acquired a neutrality as unidentifiable as some
composite creature evolved by statisticians, could break down
unbeknown to himself, on the pronunciation of a common and tell-tale
word. Or, more subtly, his whole habit of mind and body, formed in
the uncultured, nagging, parsimonious, penurious household of his
childhood, might, at a crucial moment of his life, reveal him as
utterly unsuitable for further advancement- not necessarily or,
indeed, at all, by a word or gesture or family connection, but through
the image of himself that had willy-nilly and over an extended period
been fixed in the eyes of those who controlled his destiny.
   Fairbanks reached for a towel, a clean one and not the scarcely
crumpled one that Colmore himself had used and had left thriftily on
the ledge below the mirror rather than consign to the linen basket.
Of course, Colmore thought, as he put down the clothes brush and left
the lavatory, in one sense, in a very real sense, his own action,
which would have saved the two or three coppers on the Authority's
laundry bill, would have been the right, the virtuous one. He had
simply never properly learnt what came to Fairbanks quite naturally,
that the rules of conduct which must be enforced on the inferior mass
do not apply to the rulers themselves. It was not long ago that
Fairbanks had personally overhauled the system whereby the departments
of the Authority indented for stationery stores, making the ordering
the responsibility of a department's Senior Administration Officer
who, among many other things, was henceforth to issue new pencils only
on the surrender of an equivalent number of pencil stubs.
   When in 194 he had first entered the service of the Authority-
though in those remote days it had, of course, been merely the
Executive Committee- he had imagined that even its higher reaches
were, like his own level, simply a matter of work, of problems set and
overcome, of the advancement of the able and the stagnation of the
inefficient. But as he had progressed and the organization itself had
grown, he had begun to encounter all the unforeseen forces of birth,
influence and intrigue. He had occasionally- even in those days-
glimpsed the highest powers and their way of life: the building (and
this was 1941) of a massive series of oak lockers for the Committee's
hats and coats, following the theft of the Vice-Chairman's umbrella; a
meeting of the Committee itself with virgin blotting paper,
freshly-sharpened pencils, cut-glass carafes of water, and its members
displaying not their ability (which no doubt in some cases actually
existed) but the quality of their garments or knowledge of each
other's background, and even in the case of the ex-Trade Union members
a salience, a richness of feature that seemed at once designed for the
convenience of the newspaper cartoonist and the product, like the
splendour of a jungle animal, of some special advantage of nurture or
habitat, so that each moustache or bald head or pair of spectacles was
a unique and peculiarly finished specimen of its kind, possessing,
indeed, some curious aesthetic quality as though added by a great
painter.
   As he moved up in the hierarchy- or, rather, was buoyed along by
the great influx of personnel below him when the Authority became the
Authority and began to expand at an increasing rate with the end of
the war- the world of the rulers grew less strange: it occasionally
recognized his existence, his promotions became its concern, and he at
last saw the possibility of breaking into it. Though that was not
quite the phrase, for even if he could succeed Sir Charles he would,
as an executive, be eternally differentiated from the Governors.
Fairbanks managed the Governors beautifully, he knew more than they,
he was cleverer than most, discreetly used their Christian names- but
remained their servant. They had no office hours, however elastic;
their lives were spent in committee making decisions for others to
execute on the basis of data laboriously gathered for them; they moved
from board-room to board-room, encountering a succession of new
pencils, clean towels, institutional crystal and silver, protein-rich
lunches, immaculate agendas, able slaves. Lord Groves, for example,
though doubtless compelled by earlier habits of comparative poverty to
fried fish high teas, existed for the greater part of his life in
luxury, lolling in the back of an Authority Austin or in a
complimentary stall, strolling along the promenade at a Conference,
eating in a free pullman car on his way to open a new Authority
provincial office. And even Lord Groves, despite his proletarian
origins and political complexion, shared the fierce, jealous morality
of the rulers. If Colmore was apprehensive of Fairbanks's view of his
conduct, how much more had he to fear from the Governors, who at the
breath of a scandal would close their ranks and utterly disown him.
   In their company he had sometimes had to check an expression of
opinion, divining- as a child, ignorant of the moral standards of the
adult world, anticipates censure in the premonitory motion of a mouth
or eye- that what he was about to say would offend the collective
ethos. It would be utter folly, for example, for him to indicate that
he lacked religious belief; though, no doubt, several of the Governors
had never for years set foot in a place of worship, together they
presented a solidly spiritual front. Colmore remembered, too, how one
of their number had once commented to him on what to the speaker was
the Royal Family's excessive interest in horse racing; but the
institution of royalty could never be called into question, and from
the critic himself would certainly come one of the loudest of the
murmurs of ~'God bless her' after a proposal of the loyal toast.
For on this level, the great monoliths of the state which to the
population at large presented the simple issue of aye or no, were
capable of intimate criticism, albeit they were of unquestioned
acceptance- as the friends of a celebrated actress will, without in
the least denying her greatness or surpassing beauty, remark on a mole
or wrinkle which the general public has never been close enough to
see. Among the Governors there was often casual talk of 'Royals'
or 'Buck House': in the last analysis it was the honours and titles
bestowed by the state through the institution of royalty- like the
ease of mind which came through the allegiance to an official
religion- which these men most valued, for in their position they
were ambitious less for money than for the infinite gradations of
social and public distinction.
   How stupid and gross would seem to them Colmore's abortive
romance! Indeed, so it seemed at this moment to him. His desires,
his fumbling way of fulfilling them, put him at the same sort of
disadvantage as his voice, his school, his family- perhaps the one
stemmed in some way from the other. As he reached his room he was
seized with a sudden fright about Davis, who had come into the
Authority the normal way, via the Civil Service, and whose lack of the
ultimate ability lay hidden in a charming orthodoxy.
   It was not until Colmore had been at his desk for a half-hour
that his sense of power and control returned. His mastery of the
Authority's vital processes made him look forward with almost painful
pleasure to the meeting with Fairbanks and Davis, as a well-prepared
candidate to his examination. So that as he made his way to
Fairbanks's room- fileless, paperless, leaving on his desk the daily
returns of the Authority's financial position, having transferred the
relevant figures effortlessly to his memory- he searched greedily in
his mind for some other reason for being happy, and lit on Judith. He
marched up to the next floor, looking down at the sharp crease of his
trousers along his thighs, sensing the satisfactory hang of his
unbuttoned jacket as it moved gently in the disturbed air made by his
passage, and thought: I'll keep her in reserve. The thought was
comic even to him- that he should treat her like an item in the
Authority's accounts. But how few men of his years had this unobvious
relationship, this inexhaustible source of aesthetic enjoyment, this
secret and unforeseen extension of their youth, and who of those few
would voluntarily surrender to the passionless final phase of their
lives.
=4
   The telephone rang and Colmore rose immediately. Dorothy said:
'Let Anna take it, darling. She ought to practise her English.'
Anna was their European girl of the moment, half maid, half student.
   'No,' Colmore said, 'she's been waiting long enough for lunch
as it is. And one of us will have to go in the end.' They had just
sat down at table after a rather extended session of gin and frenches
with Colmore's three companions of the morning's golf whom he had
brought home to meet up with their wives, already being entertained by
Dorothy. A comforting husk of inebriation separated Colmore from
reality and it seemed to him that his reaction in anticipating that
the call would be from Judith was phenomenally quick and sagacious.
They had not been in touch with each other since the unsatisfactory
evening that had begun with the intrusion of the callow young man from
Gilson & Freeman's, whose name he could not dredge up through the
alcohol, and the thought of speaking to her and even, in this
uninhibited moment, arranging to see her soon- tomorrow, tonight-
brought an excitement to him that was almost physically erotic. In
the few yards from the dining-room he had time not only to review all
this in detail but to savour the remains of his last mouthful of
6pa?5te?2 and to admire once again the colour and pattern of
his new tweed suit that he was wearing for the first time today.
# 212
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   'Then perhaps I should- shall we say- qualify my name,
sir,' he suggested. 'We are known- the family, I mean- as the
Stratford-Lees. My mother likes it. She was a Stratford, you
see, from Norfolk.' He spoke as though both of us should be
acquainted with the Stratfords of Norfolk, but neither one of us
commented. 'But the Old Man doesn't care for using double-barrelled
names, as he calls them. And I think I agree with him. That's why I
use just the plain "Lee" on my cards. But if you think'- and
his expression changed quickly to deliberation- 'that I should use
the Stratford-Lee, just out here I mean, then of course-'
   'Oh Lord, no,' I said, perhaps just a little too abruptly.
'There are far too many double-barrelled names out here as it is.'
   He sat back again, obviously satisfied. 'I'm inclined to agree
with you, sir,' he said.
   We had a leisurely lunch. Nigel's cook-boy had prepared an
excellent curry, hot enough with 6chili to make my eyes water a
little, even after so many years of hot curries. The gin pahits,
and now the beer with the curry, had their desired effect on us; or
rather, on Nigel and myself. Lee, I noticed, had asked for Coca-Cola.
This rather surprised me from a young man who was otherwise so
sophisticated. He was not, however, ostentatious about the matter.
If anything, he had merely become a little more reserved, and much
more polite. I thought to myself: 'A few years in the East, my boy,
and you'll drink- I've seen your kind before!'
   After the curry, I wanted only to go upstairs to bed. I had long
since become accustomed, and now addicted, to an after-curry nap.
Lee, however, showed not the slightest sign of fatigue.
   'I wonder if you'd mind if I took a bit of a look round,' he
asked Nigel. 'I don't sleep in the afternoons.'
   Nigel, I must say, was very good about it. I knew how much he
probably wanted to sleep himself. But, almost gallantly, he said:
   'Not at all. I'll show you.'
   'Oh no,' young Lee protested, considerate as always. 'That's
not necessary if you want to rest, sir. I'm sure I won't do any
harm.'
   Nigel laughed. I had not known he was so good-natured. But
then, I suppose I had never given him similar cause to display such
amiability.
   'I hadn't for one moment thought you would,' Nigel said.
'Bring your swimming costume, if you like. We've got a small pool
over on the other side of the estate, near the latex factory.'
   'Oh excellent!' young Lee said, and his face lit up with
enthusiasm, like an energetic young athlete.
   I only just recall hearing them drive off from the bungalow as I
took myself gratefully up the stairs and, stripping off to just
underpants in the heat of the afternoon, collapsed on the bed. As I
went off to sleep, I was very grateful to Nigel for not having
suggested that I should accompany them.
   I slept soundly, and much later than I should. It was already
after six when I awoke, and the sun was nearly setting beyond the west
window. Downstairs I could hear the murmur of voices, and knew they
were back. I wondered, as I wrapped a 6sarong around my waist,
if Nigel at all resented being deprived of his afternoon sleep.
   They were sitting over the tea things when I joined them. Nigel
didn't look at all put out; in fact I decided he must have quite
enjoyed himself with young Lee during the afternoon, and I was glad of
it. No, Nigel wasn't put out; but to my surprise, and amusement,
I detected a slight frown of disapproval from Lee at my 6sarong,
and my feet shod in only se?5patus. And I said to myself:
Oh, God, doesn't the boy ever relax! He turned his gaze away from me
almost instantly, but it had been enough to make me conscious of the
nakedness of the upper half of my body, even of the matted grey hairs
on my chest. He probably thought my appearance quite a breach of the
social graces; but, naturally, he said not so much as a word about it.
   'We've just had tea,' Nigel said. 'Would you like the cookie
to make you a fresh lot?'
   'I'd rather have whisky,' I told him.
   'Thought as much. Sun's nearly below the yard-arm, anyway.
Wouldn't mind a stengah myself. How about you, Harry?'
   So they had managed to come to the stage of using each other's
Christian names, I noted. Perhaps Lee wasn't quite as reserved as I
thought.
   'Thanks, Nigel,' he said. 'Just Coca-Cola. Although I'd
like to have whatever you have. I want to get to know the kind of
life people lead in the East, you know.'
   At this, I felt a return of the irritation I felt with him at
times. He would not have had a drink for the sake of the drink, but
only to know the kind of life we led in the East! But then I
dispelled my irritation, or endeavoured to; apart from its being so
irrational, I had, probably, another two or three weeks of his company
ahead of me. It would be silly, at this point, to let such
trivialities bother me. I was even surprised that they should.
   The drinks were served, not by the Chinese cook-boy, but by two
young Malay girls dressed gracefully in 6sarong and ke?5baya.
Barefooted, they moved around the room silently, but with
voluptuous and unmistakable insinuation. I could tell almost
instantly which one I preferred. As she set down my drink beside me,
I looked at her, probably with blatant assessment, and she returned my
gaze with a mischievous sidelong glance, and just the faintest
suggestion, though quite inaudible, of a giggle. Knowing Nigel, I
would have been surprised if he had not made his usual
'arrangements'. A bachelor himself, he knew well how to entertain
his bachelor friends.
   He caught my look and pursed his lips in a quick little grimace
of acknowledgement; then raised an enquiring eyebrow in young Lee's
direction. I shrugged a shoulder. Lee would have to decide about
that for himself, I thought, and noticed that although he was looking
at the other girl, he did so quite dispassionately, almost as though
he was merely interested in the unfamiliar clothes she was wearing.
And I thought to myself: He may be still too much of a 'new chum'
to see 'the beauty of the East'.
   There was still an ease in our conversation, but its scope was
restricted. I felt that I could hardly make the usual enquiries and
comments about Nigel's various mistresses as I was accustomed to
whenever I saw him, much as I wondered which of his girls was in
favour at the moment. And I suppose he felt the same. We had only a
few drinks, then decided to bathe and dress for a rather early dinner.
Lee was impressed not only with the estate, or so he said, but also
with the accommodation provided for a planter, and a bachelor at that.
It was, of course, very comfortable, and Nigel had made it very
presentable with additions of furniture, pictures, the radio
equipment, and personal touches of his own. He read widely, and had
collected a sizeable library. He was also interested in Malay
customs, more especially in those of the aboriginal Sakais, and his
walls were adorned with a varied collection of Sakai weapons. He had
one of the better Kashmir carpets on the floor. His pictures and
curtains, indeed I suppose the entire furnishings, had been selected
personally. The house was, as he occasionally proclaimed, his
home- and he had made it as such. I doubt if he will ever leave
Malaya, even when he retires. The country, and his mistresses, have
come to mean too much to him. And, indirectly, this impression I had
of him was one of several reasons why I had decided I should leave
it- before, for me too, it would be too late.
   I used the excuse of our early start in the morning to retire as
soon as it seemed prudent to do so, after the coffee and brandy,
already anticipating the familiar pleasures awaiting me. Lee did not
demur, and I gathered from Nigel's expression that he had presumed
that his other guest, even if of so recent acquaintance, would approve
of, and even appreciate, his usual 'arrangements'. After I had
showered, I found that the girl I had looked at was in the bedroom,
making a pretence of tidying my clothes. I got under the mosquito-net
and lay there in my 6sarong, waiting for her. Patiently,
precisely, she folded the last garment and put it on the chest of
drawers. Then she turned out the light and, without saying a word,
took off her ke?5baya and, unwinding her 6sarong, moved it
up from her waist to over her breasts in the sleeping position. There
was just enough light seeping through the windows for me to watch her.
Then she came to the bed, and I lifted the mosquito-net for her as,
still without a word, but with another barely audible giggle, she lay
beside me. Without further ado she began the assiduous and almost
energetic routine of love-play. For such a leisurely race in almost
everything else- not only leisurely, but renownedly lazy- the
Malays, surprisingly enough, have a sort of energetic deliberation for
their dancing and love-play, but which is not to be mistaken for
ardour.
   'Chantek,' I murmured obligingly, not really meaning it,
nor really caring whether she was beautiful or not, but only glad
to know that she kissed in the Western fashion and not just as Moslems
do. I kept her mouth busy so that I would not have to go through the
usual long and boring rigmarole of being told what her name was, who
her parents were, where she was born, where she had lived- and
especially the list of names, displayed like a string of beads, of all
the white tuans she had slept with. But, as I succumbed to the
lewdness of her skilled ministrations, I could not help wondering
about young Lee's reactions to 'the arrangements'. He in turn was
probably wondering, I supposed, if this was the kind of hospitality he
could expect in every bachelor's bungalow in which he might find
himself as a guest. But, even in Malaya, not all of them are Nigels.
   My companion of the night was gone when I awoke in the morning.
Nigel has them well trained, I thought to myself. I dressed quickly,
curious to see how Lee had reacted to it. I expected, or even hoped,
that it would 'unbend' him a little.
   I was surprised to find that he was not only dressed, but packed
ready to continue the journey. He was pacing up and down the
living-room with obvious irritation. Nigel was not yet down, and Lee
looked decidedly relieved when he saw me; wished me an almost
grateful, but still polite, good morning.
   'Did you sleep well?' I enquired, deliberately turning away
from him a little to look through one of the windows.
   'I kicked her out!' he said perfunctorily.
   The tone of his voice quite astonished me. Turning, I saw, with
surprise, and again with amusement, that he was standing rigidly in
the centre of the room, his arms held stiffly to his sides, almost
like a child playing soldiers and standing to attention. His eyes
penetrated mine with a fierce fixity, and his cheeks were inflamed
with two small spots of bright red.
   'I think it was damned presumptuous, I must say!' he
declaimed hotly. And then, perhaps because he had become conscious of
the slightly ridiculous pose he had struck, and this consciousness
humiliated him, he slumped slightly, spreading his legs apart, almost
like the child soldier standing at ease; or, rather, standing easy.
# 29
<377 TEXT K3>
   Yet, he might be wrong. A hope began to rise in his viscera.
Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps the entry in Sylvia's diary- she
hated her mother; she had been jealous of his attentions to her;
perhaps it was the hysterical invention of a child who herself in
puberty had fallen in love with the nearest, familiar man. Perhaps
that was the origin of her hatred which had then led him by her
subconscious design to the diaries. The memory of Elizabeth, greeting
him with her outflung arms, soared into his mind and with it the
recollection of the bloodstained towel which he had held to her
forehead.
   'Oh, God,' he thought, 'perhaps I'm wrong,' and with the
thought came an unexpected hope like that of a man who, told that he
has an incurable disease, hears that the pathologist had made a
mistake in examining the tissue. Perhaps I'm wrong. The hope became
a music, and with it a compulsive need to see Elizabeth again, to hold
her and to feel again their old safe love.
   
   'That ends our proceedings,' said the Chairman, and the
Members rose with a shuffle and scraping of chairs. They began to
leave the Committee Room like a pattern of the trends in the Party.
Ormston stepped down from the dais into the central aisle, taking the
longest route through the room to the Public Exit. He was greeted on
all sides with friendly smiles. Members made a path for him, and he
was quickly surrounded by a number of ex-Ministers who had retired to
the back benches, a few knights of his recommendation, and a
rank-and-file of younger Members whom he had encouraged with advice
and expectations.
   Gore and a few of his associates in the New Africa Group became
involved in this stream as it pressed towards the door like a
debouching cinema audience, and they were regarded with the same
indifference as members of cinema audiences reserve for each other.
   Melville moved towards the platform exit, together with some of
the Party officials and Waters. He was followed by about half the
Members in the room as if he were leading them into a plebiscite.
They grouped themselves around him, smiling and demonstrative as if
to show where their sympathies and loyalties lay, though no one
addressed him personally. In the Corridor, the Chief Whip caught up
with him, and said,
   'I thought the Chancellor settled Gore pretty well.'
   'Did you?' Melville said. 'I had a different impression; I
rather thought he was goading him.'
   'To abstain?'
   'Yes,' said Melville. 'There's nothing he likes more than to
frighten the Party. That's the first step. Then he likes to come
along and kiss it better.'
   He outdistanced his attendants with Waters, and said,
   'I'll have to talk to the P.M.. Will you telephone and
arrange for me to go down to Greystoke tomorrow?'
   'Yes,' said Waters. 'Are you lunching in the Members'
Dining-Room?'
   'No,' said the Minister. 'I want to walk across the Park.'
   
   He walked briskly without hat and coat, and soon felt himself
sweating under the hazy, copper-coloured sky, heavy with the storm
which had begun to rumble and crack beyond Buckingham Palace. The
ducks had retreated to the reeds, and the water had black reflections.
On the grass, couples lay stretched out, the men in shirt-sleeves,
the women in sleeveless summer dresses, some engaged in what otherwise
would have seemed coital preliminaries, were such activities not the
normal convention of London crowds in hot summers. Others picknicked
<SIC> close by- the whole a picture of domestic living in the
open air.
   As Melville walked, a thunderclap awoke the prostrate figures as
if by the alarm signal of a gigantic clock. They rose. The women
smoothed the creases of their dresses. The men languidly put on their
jackets. And to the accompaniment of the first fat raindrops, they
began to move swiftly away in pairs. The lake started to become
dappled with rain, there was a dazzling flash, followed by a massive
roll, and soon the Park began to scurry with figures running for
shelter from the storm.
   As Melville walked, he heard steps splashing behind him.
   'Like a share of my mac?' a voice said.
   He turned with the rain purling down his face to see Armstrong,
who had quickened his step to keep pace with him. For a moment, he
didn't recognise him. Then he said,
   'That's very civil of you. No, thanks. I'll just imagine I'm
doing a cross-country run. I'll change when I get in.'
   'As you like,' said Armstrong, and was about to turn into a
side path but Melville, thinking that he might have felt snubbed,
said,
   'Come this way- then you can cut across.'
   'I used to play rugger,' said Armstrong. 'I missed it when I
gave it up.'
   'How old were you?'
   'Thirty-six,' said Armstrong. 'I'm fifty-four now.'
   To make conversation, Melville asked a few questions about his
family and South Wales. He liked his cadenced voice, his easy,
undeferential manner and his pleasant, open face with the blue scar at
the side of his head.
   'You're having a bad time,' said Armstrong.
   'In Africa?'
   'Yes.'
   'It's pretty bad.'
   'Well, I'm sorry for you, lad,' said Armstrong.
   They walked along without speaking with the rain streaming down
their faces, and Melville wished that he had learned to know the
Opposition back-benchers better. He wanted to talk to Armstrong, but
he had difficulty in finding the language and so they walked in
silence. But the leaves gave off a warm, soaking smell, the pain in
his head lifted, and he felt refreshed.
   
   He changed his suit in his dressing-room into which a bed had
been moved, and then knocked on the door of the main bedroom.
Elizabeth was sitting propped up against the pillows, wearing a pale
blue bedjacket over a white nightdress. Broome was sitting at her
bedside, and greeted Melville with a broad smile.
   'She'll live,' he said. 'Don't let the head-dress worry you.
She likes wearing it. Thinks it makes her interesting. I'll look in
tomorrow.'
   When he had left, Melville stood by the window, looking out at
the street, and Elizabeth turned her face into the pillow. After a
minute of silence, Melville said,
   'Elizabeth- I must talk to you.'
   She didn't answer, and he faced her. On her bandages, there was
a trace of blood; her cheeks were pale; and her eyes had heavy violet
shadows beneath them. She was looking straight in front of her as she
answered in a flat voice,
   'I have nothing to say to you. You are a very wicked person.'
   'I have something to say to you,' he said savagely, sitting on
the bed and taking her wrists in his hands. 'I want to know- I've
got to know-'
   She turned her eyes on him, and said in the same flat voice,
   'If you say again what you said last night, I'll kill myself as
soon as you leave the house.'
   He slowly let go of her wrists and rose from the bed. His gaze
still held her expressionless eyes, and he withdrew to the door.
   Then he went to his study, his certainties complete. It was
done, and nothing could ever change it. Nothing. Ever. He looked at
a photograph of Elizabeth and himself taken on the Terrace a few years
before, and suddenly, covering his face with his hands, he began to
weep, the tears trickling through his fingers as they had done in his
childhood when his father had died and there was no comfort in the
whole world.
 CHAPTER TWELVE
   After lunch two of the Prime Minister's grandchildren who had
sat, rather intimidated by Ormston and staring at the Grinling Gibbons
carving around the fireplace, rose gratefully from the table, leaving
the two men together. A nurse came in, and asked the Prime Minister
if he wanted to be helped out on to the lawn, but he waved her away
impatiently. The Prime Minister was wearing a grey suit and a white
shirt with a soft collar, but his neck had become thinner and the
collar stood away from it as if it had been bought haphazard. His
face had a jaundiced colour, and his cheekbones were red, touched with
a feverish cosmetic. Only his voice was unchanged; it was slow and
thoughtful with its familiar, rehearsed calmness. He crumpled his
table napkin, and laid it on a plate.
   'I see no urgent anxiety,' he said at last.
   'Perhaps I can put it this way,' said Ormston, 'and now I'm
seeing the situation purely as Chancellor. Our reserves are low, and
are getting lower. I feel rather like a father whose child is
bleeding to death.'
   His simile disturbed him; it evoked other associations, and he
hurriedly drained the glass of water. The Prime Minister said
nothing, and Ormston continued,
   'Let's leave out the political merits of the situation.'
   'Is that possible?'
   'For the sake of my hypothesis- yes. I'm thinking for the
moment in plain, economic terms. We can't afford to increase our
costs in Africa- we simply can't afford it. I don't mean just our
direct military costs. I'm thinking of the African Boycott which is
already working up. I'm afraid, Prime Minister, you're not going to
like the trading position when you see it.'
   'I never do,' the Prime Minister commented wearily. The
Chancellor was repeating an argument which he had already developed
for an hour before lunch.
   'It comes at a bad time,' said Ormston. 'A singularly bad
time. The Party's very restless, you know.'
   'It's a sign of life- very encouraging!'
   'The younger men-'
   'Which ones?'
   'The younger ones like Gore, Vaughan, Hadley, Prebble,
Lambert-Price- the New Africa lot-'
   'Do they confide in you? Have you spoken to them?'
   'Only at yesterday's meeting- they're very restless, Prime
Minister. They feel that it's very old-fashioned- shooting down mobs
of natives. They're very much afraid that if the Opposition get a
Commission of Enquiry some rather dismal stuff is going to come
out.'
   'Young back-benchers are always restive when they're bored,'
said the Prime Minister, and for the first time since his
grandchildren left the table, he smiled. 'Why don't you give them
something to play with?'
   'They've found their own toy,' said Ormston, 'and this is it.
They want to abstain next week.'
   The Prime Minister continued in his flippant tone,
   'Tell the Chief to give them a talking-to.'
   The Chancellor closed his eyes, and then said,
   'I think it's gone beyond that, Prime Minister. They feel pretty
strongly about Africa. They are greatly disturbed by the new and
rather ugly image of the Party which our African policy is creating.
On the whole, the country is still in favour of moderation and common
sense. Melville has in a curious way made us look old-fashioned-
extravagant- nineteenth centuryish- almost cranky.'
   'Don't you think the British public has reveries of Britannia's
strong, firm hand?'
   'I think the British public doesn't dislike force provided that
it's short, sharp and rewarding.'
   They both laughed and felt relaxed. Then Ormston frowned and
went on,
   'What the British public doesn't like is violence that's
protracted, messy and expensive. At that point, you get a moral
revulsion against force- especially if it makes taxation rise. I
must tell you, Prime Minister- we're heading for an ugly crisis- and
I'm obliged to say this- Melville has a very heavy responsibility in
this matter.'
   'What could Melville have done to avoid all this?'
   'Well, obviously,' said Ormston, taking up a pair of
nut-crackers, 'he boobed by talking to Julia Drayford- and that was
the start of the whole thing.'
   The Prime Minister looked puzzled, and said,
   'Julia Drayford? How does she come into it? I can't follow
these complexities-'
   'It isn't quite that. The whole business blew up from
Melville's disgraceful indiscretion to Julia Drayford in Mrs.
M'landa's presence. I don't know the exact chain of gossip or who
told who what.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 21
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As he turned aside his head, since he could not bear to look at her
beautiful, pleading face, he was suddenly attacked by suspicion.
   'You wish to marry someone else!' he cried in a voice
roughened by jealousy.
   She sighed deeply, and looked away.
   'Do you? Do you?' he repeated, fiercely.
   'If,' she said gently, giving him a look that set his pulses
throbbing, 'if I wished to marry some young gallant, do you think I
would ask your help? You would be the last man I would ask.'
   Before he could collect his wits to reply to this, there was a
bustle and confusion at the end of the room. Prince Doria had wearied
of his toy and was packing it away in its painted coffer.
   The party was now preparing to see the tapestries, and in the
general movement, Vittoria was separated from Orsini. Although
neither of them wished to follow the sightseers, there seemed no
alternative. As she was about to mount a wide and shallow flight of
marble stairs, she became aware of someone watching her intently, and
turning in that direction, she saw Olimpia, standing beside her
admirer, Orlando Cavalcanti. The young man was bending over her with
the assiduity of a lover, but the girl appeared to be more interested
in her cousin's wife, whom she was regarding through half-closed eyes.
This was a slight shock to Vittoria, who had forgotten the existence
of the girl, and, up to this moment had been unaware of the young
man's presence at the palazzo.
   'Are you enjoying yourself, Olimpia?' she asked idly,
tapping the girl's cheek lightly with her fan, in passing; but she did
not wait for the answer. Disturbed by vague uneasiness, she was
wondering whether Olimpia had been watching her talk with Orsini.
Surely she could not have overheard anything they said? A moment's
reflection reassured her on that point, for she was certain no one had
been standing near them. However, something inimical in the girl's
look put Vittoria on guard. 'Santa Maria! These spying eyes!'
she thought, bitterly.
   Doria was continually stopping on the way, to point out, with
childish pride, objects of beauty or interest. Vittoria, on the
fringe of the party, caught snatches of this information, which held
no interest for her: '... now this sapphire ... I like to think it
may have fallen from the dark hair of the Empress Messalina, as she
crouched in terror in the gardens of Lucullus, awaiting the sword of
the executioner.'
   'Ah!' exclaimed Farnese, with a snigger. 'The old cuckold
Claudius had the last word, after all. He knew how to deal with an
adulterous wife, eh, Orsini?'
   If the duke made any reply to this, Vittoria did not hear it.
   Now they entered the long gallery where they dispersed and
wandered around, admiring and commenting on the glowing hues and
barbaric splendours of the tapestries Doria had brought back from
Lepanto. After a short interval, Orsini found an opportunity to
rejoin Vittoria.
   'We must talk further,' he said in a low urgent voice.
'Where?'
   'Be careful,' she whispered from behind her fan. 'Olimpia is
watching us. The young man with her is Orlando Cavalcanti,
Francesco's friend.'
   Orsini shot an impatient glance at the couple. 'The young man
with the mole?'
   'Yes, indeed.'
   'No matter. They are not looking at us. Now I must know,' he
whispered, 'what you meant, cara mia. Do you want your freedom
in order to marry?'
   Before replying to this, she glanced hastily around, then spoke
in tones so low that he had to bend his head to hear: 'I will never
be any man's mistress. As to marrying again ... if I were free ...
there is only one man I would wish to marry ... but ... he, like
myself, is now bound.'
   With a swift gesture she closed her fan and moved away from him
towards the group in the centre of the gallery, leaving him standing
alone, against that glowing, barbaric background, with a deeply
thoughtful expression on his face.
Chapter Six
   On a bright unclouded morning a few days after the visit to the
Doria Palace, the cardinal's coach left the villa, lurched over the
unpaved track and turned towards the ruined Baths of Diocletian.
Vittoria, accompanied by her maid, Lucia, was on her way to the
Accoramboni villa, ostensibly to pay a daughterly call on her father,
actually to coax money from that indulgent parent to settle her
mounting debts. Lucia was thinking how beautiful her mistress looked,
and how cunningly the olive-green dress with its underskirt of
rose-brocade fitted her perfect figure. Vittoria's thoughts were more
complex.
   The sparkling society of the Doria Palace, the flattery of
Orsini's obsession, the thwarted ambitions of her restless spirit, all
threw into sharp relief the contrast of her grey life with the
splendid one that filled her dreams. At the Villa Montalto she felt
an alien, and although she had repeatedly urged Francesco to give her
a separate establishment, he invariably pleaded his financial
dependence on his uncle, who had built the villa for his family. He
reminded her that they must abide by Roman custom, and dwell there
with their relations.
   Her values were those of the materialist who assesses every human
being in terms of fame, power and wealth. Francesco she despised for
his dullness, his lack of initiative, his subservience to his uncle.
Her husband's gentleness and amiability, his unselfish love for her,
she regarded as signs of weakness. He was a futile creature who had
not even proved capable of giving her a child. Whatever passion she
had experienced in the first months of marriage had been ousted by
contempt. She had never loved him.
   Her thoughts rushed to Orsini. Since the meeting in the Doria
Palace, no word had come from him, and this silence oppressed her
spirits with a weight of misgiving. She had, perhaps, demanded too
much. The kiss in the garden had plumbed unsuspected depths in her,
and she knew that if she yielded to him, her passion could, indeed,
match his. Every instinct urged her to surrender, for there was that
in his nature to which her own had responded as it had responded to no
other human being. Prudence, ambition and reason had held instinct in
check, and they must dictate her course. There could be no
compromise.
   For a brief interval she allowed herself the luxury of dreams.
She began to imagine life at Bracciano, the balls and fe?5tes, the
conversation of poets and dilettanti. She visualized the pageantry of
the tournament, and herself on the ducal dais beside Orsini, placing a
chaplet of roses on the brows of some young conqueror in the lists.
   This reverie was rudely ended as the coach gave a sickening jolt
and came to an abrupt stop, nearly throwing the two girls from their
seats.
   Lucia uttered a cry of alarm.
   'Look, madonna, we are surrounded!'
   It was true. Men armed with pikes and daggers swarmed about them
and a lean, swarthy fellow was peering through the window, grinning
impudently.
   'Santa Maria!' shrieked Lucia. 'Banditti!'
   Vittoria now realized that they were outside Santa Maria degli
Angeli, and that except for a few beggars crouching in the doorway of
the church and exhibiting loathsome sores, the area was deserted.
   'They are not banditti, Lucia,' said Vittoria, pointing
to the badge on the man's shoulder. The words were clear. 'Beware
my hug!' Lucia stared speechlessly at the golden bear; Vittoria
swiftly averted her head to avoid the impertinent glance of the
retainer. Her thoughts at this moment were chaotic.
   The coach now turned in another direction, towards the wild and
desolate region behind the baths. It was sparsely inhabited, dotted
with fallow fields and terraced vineyards, and here and there jutted a
brown outcrop of flower-wreathed ruins, a pathetic reminder of Rome's
former greatness. In this region of Monti most of the public baths
had been built in the time of the Caesars, but with the breaking of
the aqueducts during the barbarian invasions the baths had lost their
purpose; they had become stone quarries and their precious marble had
been burnt for lime. Now escaped criminals and bandits used these
quarries as hiding places, to the danger of travellers in the
district.
   As they lumbered past at a rattling pace, Vittoria could see a
wisp of smoke curling above the fire of a gypsy encampment and a few
tatterdemalion creatures gathered about it, cooking their frugal meal.
These were left far behind. An old man belabouring an overladen
donkey, and a withered crone appeared on the horizon, were overtaken
and forgotten. Except for their escort, Vittoria and Lucia might have
been the only living creatures on an empty planet.
   After the initial shock, Vittoria felt calm. She knew exactly
what she wanted, and was prepared to take it without scruple, if she
could. What she had forgotten in her self-absorption in her own
schemes was that other people were equally absorbed in their schemes,
which were likely to run counter to her own. This move today was a
reminder of that fact.
   Whilst she automatically patted the hand of the agitated Lucia,
her brain was working rapidly, and she decided that she must be
prepared to counter Orsini's demands, difficult though that would be.
   She became aware that the pace was slackening; now the coach
stopped. The moment had come. Upon the ensuing interview the future
would depend. Outwardly she was calm, but her heart was beating fast,
and the palms of her hands were damp. Orsini's high-crowned hat with
its jaunty plume blotted out the light; his hand was on the door.
Glancing at Lucia he said in French to Vittoria: 'Your maid ... is
she reliable?'
   She shrugged her shoulders, and replied in the same language:
'Yes. But make it worth her while.'
   'I see. I know how to deal with people like that,' and
turning to the cowering Lucia, he spoke in her own language. 'Do you
know who I am?'
   'No, signor,' she whispered.
   'I am the Orsini. My word is law in Rome.'
   Lucia was regarding him as a rabbit looks at a stoat.
   Thrusting his head farther into the coach, he said sombrely:
'Have you ever heard of a punishment called the cord?'
   She blanched and shrank away. Was there not a street near Sant'
Angelo called the Lane of the Corda where criminals were hoisted by
their wrists forty, fifty, sixty feet into the air, and dropped again
and again, until their arms were wrenched from their sockets.
   'You have heard of it? The Orsini give that to traitors. There
is no escaping the vengeance of an Orsini. We hunt a traitor down to
the ends of the earth, and no power can save him ... or her. Do you
understand?'
   'Yes, signor,' she faltered.
   'On the other hand,' he continued, giving her a keen look,
'the Orsini are generous to those who serve them faithfully.
Remember that, my girl.'
   Lucia was beyond speech.
   He turned to Vittoria, sitting erect, with flushed cheeks and
eyes sparkling with anger. 'And now, madonna,' he said smoothly,
'we will continue the conversation started at the Doria Palace. Be
pleased to alight.'
   'I think,' she replied coolly, 'I prefer to stay where I
am.'
   'In that case,' he reverted to French, 'I shall be obliged to
lift you from the coach.'
   Without answering him, she rose, and bending over the agitated
girl, said softly: 'No one will harm you, Lucia. Remain here.'
   Ignoring his proffered hand, she stepped from the vehicle.
   'Will you be so good as to order your men not to molest my
maid,' she said coldly to Orsini.
   'She is absolutely safe,' he replied; but he turned,
nevertheless, to the man who had peered into the coach, whom he had
addressed as Luigi, and gave him sharp instructions on the matter.
   Vittoria stood looking about her, breathing the scent of thyme.
The land at her feet sloped away into a tiny valley beyond which, on
the crest of a wooded hill-side, the ruins of a small temple were
etched against the clear blue of the sky.
# 229
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4
   LONDON Airport was an impressive monument to the air age.
Its stately, although modernistic lines, made it a dignified portal
to the capital, though visitors had to overlook various prefabricated
buildings that were still in use. The immigration officials were
courteous ambassadors, too. Vera, though international in outlook,
could not help feeling parochial pride in the way they handled the
passengers.
   She had not told Sir Arthur Nicholas the exact time or date of
her arrival and so there was no car to meet her. But she did not
regret it. In the large airport bus she had a better view of the
London she had not seen for over two years.
   Nor had she told her parents that she was coming. It would have
been too much of a disappointment to them if her plans had changed.
   For the first few hours she felt like a foreigner in her own
London. It took time to become used to hearing so much English
spoken. The London she savoured as she sped towards the air terminal
was prosperous and sleek- so like the well-fed cats she saw sitting
in the gardens and on the doorsteps of the trim suburban houses lining
the way.
   Yet it struck her as odd that the shops in the suburban shopping
centres resembled those of an English village. They were a reminder
of the time when the districts had been little hamlets before they
were swallowed up in London's vast sprawl.
   She observed with approval that many stages of history were still
written in the architecture of London. There were a few streets of
opulent, Victorian houses, now sadly declining like gentlewomen in
straitened circumstances. There were rows of workers' houses built in
the late nineteenth century. Some, now cheekily painted in gay
colours, with pots of little trees on either side of the doors, had
become the homes of young artists or writers. Houses were like
people, she thought, sometimes up, sometimes down.
   At the air terminal Vera hailed a taxi and gave the name of an
hotel off Curzon Street. It had once been a private home, and now was
a dignified discreet place catering for people who could no longer
afford to keep town houses. A few well-connected foreign scientists
were usually to be found there, a diplomat or two and American
tourists of the more conservative type.
   Vera had never stayed in a London hotel of any sort before and
had at first intended to stay with her parents. But she decided she
could not face it. She must avoid outside distractions at all costs.
She must conserve her strength for the vitally important business
meetings in which she would be taking part.
   London was like a sleeping princess, awakened to life and beauty
by the kiss of the sun. Often its attractions were veiled, hidden by
fog or dimmed by grey rain. But today the sun had broken through.
   As her cab sped towards the hotel, she planned an itinerary. She
would visit her parents that afternoon. Tomorrow she would arrange to
see Sir Arthur. After that, her schedule would look after itself.
   Her hotel room proved to be ideal for complete relaxation. It
was elegant and neat and Vera adored tidiness. As soon as the porter
had brought up her suitcase, she telephoned her mother.
   "Vera! Where are you? How wonderful to hear your voice. Are
you really here?"
   "Yes, mother dear. I'm at Crewe's hotel. How are you? How is
father?"
   "Fine, apart from his lumbago. You can telephone him at his
office. He doesn't like it but this is a special occasion. When are
we going to see you? How long are you staying?" The questions
tumbled out.
   "Only two days, mother. I am here on business. I have a job
now. I'll come over in about an hour and tell you all about it."
   "Is everything all right?" Her mother's voice sounded
anxious.
   "Quite all right, mother. Everything is splendid- never
better."
   "Is Jacques with you?"
   "No." There was a pause.
   Vera knew at once that her mother was thinking there must be
something wrong between her daughter and son-in-law. She said
good-bye and telephoned her father who tried out his night-school
French on her, very slowly and correctly. Vera often made mistakes in
grammar when she spoke French but she spoke as fast as any
Frenchwoman. Her father could never bring himself to do anything
imperfectly. His favourite proverb was that if a thing couldn't be
done properly, it shouldn't be done at all. Therefore his French
would always be halting.
   She telephoned Sir Arthur Nicholas and a crisp, cool, well-bred
voice asked for her name.
   "Mr. Arzrumian's secretary. I would like to make an
appointment with Sir Arthur."
   The secretary had been alerted to the impending visit of
Arzrumian. "One moment," she said. "Sir Arthur would like to
speak to you."
   Thirty seconds later, Sir Arthur said, "Welcome to London.
Come to the office about twelve and we can have lunch afterwards. Or
what about today?"
   Vera answered, "I'd like to see my parents first."
   "Quite right," approved Sir Arthur.
   Vera's parents lived at Southgate and although the underground
service was excellent, Vera felt justified in indulging in the luxury
of a taxi.
   The house was one of a terrace and was kept spotless. Her mother
often exuded, to Vera's sensitive nostrils, a smell of carbolic soap
and metal polish which were constantly in her hands. Hidden behind
the curtains, her mother had been watching for her arrival. As the
taxi drew up she ran out and hugged and kissed Vera. She held her at
arm's length. "How is my little girl?" she asked oblivious of the
fact that Vera was several inches taller. Vera felt that they were at
once on a far better footing than they had ever been.
   Mother and daughter entered the house arm-in-arm and the
questions began. "You're so beautifully dressed," she said and
added quite inconsequentially, "can't you stay the night?"
   "Not this time," said Vera, "I have to prepare some notes for
tomorrow. I have a very important business meeting."
   "How is Jacques? I'm longing to meet my son-in-law. Are you
really happy with him, darling?" asked her mother, gazing at Vera
searchingly. It had been her great regret that she had not been able
to attend the wedding in Hongkong. Vera wondered whether it was her
imagination or was there just a hint of hopefulness in her mother's
expression- did she wish to hear bad news? Vera's old irritation
with her mother returned for a moment.
   "Everything is absolutely fine," Vera assured her. "I have a
wonderful job. I am secretary to Mr. Arzrumian."
   "Arzrumian?" echoed her mother. "Where did you meet him?"
   "In Paris."
   "Does Jacques approve of you taking a job?"
   "Anything which makes money has his approval," said Vera,
tartly. Her mother said in scandalized tones that money wasn't
everything and thought how hard her daughter had become.
   The Brandons were working-class, without much money but she had
never had to take a job. They had always managed and Mrs. Brandon
could afford to scorn other people's interest in money.
   Her father arrived at six o'clock, a library book under his arm
as usual. After greeting him affectionately, Vera glanced at the
title. It was Religion without Revelation, by Julian Huxley.
"Dear, serious Father," she said. She thought, "How much I love
you." How many railway employees read books on philosophy? Her
father had given himself a first-rate education by reading good books
and remembering what was in them. He had left school at 14 but could
have held his own with the most educated people.
   Vera had decided not to confide any of her business affairs to
her parents. She did not want them to worry about her. Neither was
daring nor held views beyond the rest of the people with whom they
mixed. It had given them quite a jolt when she had married Jacques.
Her mother was barely a generation removed from people who considered
that a foreigner in the family was not quite respectable.
   Vera spent a happy evening. Her father proudly took her round
his little garden for, next to philosophy, gardening was his hobby and
every flower in the small rectangle was carefully watched and lovingly
tended. At last, it was time to say good-bye and both mother and
father escorted her to the Underground station. As Vera went down the
escalator she looked back and her parents were still waving to her.
She felt strangely moved at the sight of the two elderly figures
above her.
   The train roared in with a rush of pungent air. Vera sat down on
her comfortable seat, closed her eyes and thought a little sadly about
her parents.
   Green Park station was only a short walk to her hotel but the
streets had not yet been cleared. Several young women in eye-catching
well-made clothes stood at every corner. One or two spoke to each
other in French. An expensively dressed little man turned a corner
and approached Vera. "How much do you charge, dear?" he asked.
   Vera looked contemptuously at him. "More than you could
afford, my good man." She stalked on, wryly amused.
   Reaching her hotel, she was overjoyed to find a huge bouquet of
flowers, with a vase placed beside it, already filled with water. On
the card was written: "From 'Arsenic' to Mrs. Vital, our
devoted secretary." So Sir Arthur was a gallant as well as a
shrewd businessman!
   Next morning, Vera walked through the Park as far as Buckingham
Palace, and down to the ornamental lake. She found it exhilarating to
be back again. Although it was early in the year, tourists were
wandering about already. A group of people was watching open-mouthed
the sentries in their scarlet uniforms outside the gates of the
Palace. Americans posed for their pictures with the Palace as a
background. It was extraordinary how attractive Americans found
royalty and nobility.
   She looked at her watch and decided it was time for her
appointment with Sir Arthur. There was no doubt Sir Arthur was
pleased to see her. No doubt, too, that he had been conducting a test
of 'Hairmone'. His head was covered with coppery red hair which
made him look many years younger. It was about an inch long- long
enough for a crew-cut. "I am very grateful, my dear," said Sir
Arthur, running his fingers through the thatch. "I never thought it
would happen to me." If Sir Arthur had hesitated about going into
business with Vera, he was now her staunch ally.
   "This," said Sir Arthur, tapping his head, "is going to
convince that obstinate old buzzard, Eric Selby, to join us. He's a
hard-headed Yorkshireman and we need his advice. He's involved in
several of my business ventures but I have to twist his arm to make
him take on new commitments. That," said Sir Arthur, "is the
penalty of success."
   They left for the Savoy when Sir Arthur had signed more letters
and Eric Selby was waiting for them. He looked from Vera to Sir
Arthur and was astonished and amused at the same time.
   "Arthur," he whispered on the way to the table, "what's the
idea of the toupee? And why red?"
   "Toupee be damned," said Nicholas. "I'll tell you about it
at lunch."
   Vera sat opposite Eric Selby. She had already noted that he was
of medium height, very thin and gave an impression of greyness. Now
studying him more closely, she saw that greyness was the dominant
characteristic of the man. He had thick, rather long, grey hair.
"Not a future client for 'Hairmone'," she thought to herself.
He wore a grey Savile Row suit of exactly the same colour as his
hair. His eyes were greyish-blue- the colour of a winter sky. He
wore heavy framed glasses, which gave him a professorial look. If
accents have colours, his was grey, for he spoke with a north-country
voice.
# 26
<38 TEXT K6>
   'What's that?' she said, loudly, as if by speaking he had
released anger which she had been gathering against him all the time
he had been standing next to her. Keeping his face completely serious
Dr. Horn swayed two or three inches back then forward as if a wind
had struck him.
   She took a deep breath and gave her thick neck and shoulders a
shake which she probably thought a convulsive shudder. 'If you're
suggesting that Martin isn't old enough...' she said in a new low
voice of drama.
   She found no difficulty in assuming for convenience that the
attack she had begun on Martin hadn't happened. He was ashamed of the
way she credited other people with her own short memory. He went past
them into the narrow hall. He hesitated at the stairs, knowing they
had turned to watch.
   He needed some warning of what he would find. He could imagine
his mother saying later, 'If only I had had the sense to tell you
not to disturb him that first evening.' He went past the cream
banisters, down the passage to the kitchen.
   He stood near the gas cooker. Behind him in the hall the doctor
said, ~'Mrs. Mason, I don't want to worry you...' then they
passed into the sitting-room and closed the door. He had begun
quickly, as if, now that he had to talk, he must do it before she
could question him, bringing confusion to the subject. When Martin
stood in the hall he could hear him going on speaking to her, but not
what he was saying. He could hear his balanced speaking and the short
level snubs he gave her interruptions. He could hear the way that she
went on interrupting because she wasn't understanding that he was
snubbing her.
   Presently she started to talk and he was letting her. They had
turned towards the door and he heard the doctor say, 'That's what I
said, Mrs. Mason.' After she had said a lot more he said, 'No,
Mrs. Mason, that was not what I said.' He went back down the
passage to the kitchen. When he heard her coming he went to the far
end of the deal table and sat against it with his back to the door.
   'It's a stroke, that was what he was meaning. He wouldn't say
it, but I could tell.'
   Martin kept still, facing away. 'How serious?'
   'Oh, he wouldn't tell me that. Good gracious me, no!'
   'You can't remember anything he said?'
   'I tell you I can remember very well indeed...'
   She thought that as usual he was trying to make her seem stupid.
He wondered how to persuade her that she was wrong.
   'I'll go up.' He stood waiting, expecting her to stop him.
   She said, 'This is the time we should have someone we could
trust.'
   He went round the deal table on the far side from her, down the
passage and upstairs. He wondered whether she might cry because of
this rude way he had left her and knew that if she cried she would
make it loud enough for him to hear. One of the triangular
stained-wood stair-rods had come away from its lacquered brass clip.
He didn't like to think how it had happened.
   On the half-landing he stood near the porthole window. The
engine of the doctor's car revved loudly in the drive as if he
controlled it clumsily. The headlights came on, lighting up the
circle of window with the two-inch orange border. She had often
complained about his father's choice of doctor and knew now that she
had been right.
   He understood why his father had chosen him. He could only bear
to have a doctor who did not take the absurd business too seriously,
who realized that the whole sad joke of men living for only seventy
years was made worse if you treated it as anything else.
   On the upper landing he stood in front of his father's door, not
sure whether to knock. Something moved behind him.
   She was standing halfway up the stairs, so that her head was on
the level of his feet. 'That's right,' she said. He could not
think how she got there without making a noise. She usually went
upstairs heavily, lifting her knees sideways as if her feet were
weighted, frowning at the effort. She had never reconciled herself to
things which hurt her, and sometimes he was frightened that when bad
things began to happen she would have so little habit of optimism to
support her. Or perhaps she might never understand that they were
worse than going upstairs.
   'What is it?'
   'That's right,' she said, this time raising her arm in the
long-sleeved blouse to point. He opened the door and went in.
   There was a low light on a chest of drawers. The two beds were
at the far end with their feet towards him, one flat, the blankets on
the other raised in a narrow heap.
   His father lay on his back. His chest was curiously high and
sharp like a pigeon's. He wore a thin dressing-gown but most of it
was under the bedclothes. His face was white and a little shiny, as
if damp. It was turned away, so that for a second Martin thought he
was asleep, but his eyes were open.
   His father didn't move his head but after a second he turned his
eyes. He seemed to make no effort to speak or even smile. Presently
he turned them back. Martin doubted if he had turned them far enough
to see him.
   It was so unlike him that he could not understand it. He knew
now that he had expected his father to accept this with the same smile
that he accepted everything else. Suddenly he had an idea of how much
worse it might be, that his father was lying here alone and terrified
by what had happened to him.
   He wanted to say something to prove it wasn't true. He put his
hand on to the bedclothes where he thought his father's shoulder might
be. There was something below and he pressed it gently, trying with
all his power to convey the sympathy he felt. His father gave no sign
that he had noticed. Perhaps it had been a lump of the pillow. He
went quickly to the door.
   When he came on to the landing he heard his mother telephoning in
the hall below. 'Of course, he may have been feeling ill for weeks
and said nothing... Well, it would be just like Herbert... That's
right... Not at the moment, not one word... Of course, dear. As
soon as there's anything fresh... '
   
   A nurse came three times a day and sat his father up to feed him.
He let this happen but had no appetite, and the plates she brought
down to the kitchen often had white mouthfuls of steamed fish which he
had chewed but not been able to swallow. It was difficult to tell
whether he was unable to speak or whether he could see no point.
Sometimes he started to say things in a hoarse whisper, looking ahead
as if there might be people to either side who would stop him, but
never got further than one or two words. Most of the time he lay on
his back with his eyes open. After three days there seemed nothing
Martin could do and he went to the office again.
   They had given the speech to Burridge. They would be able,
later, when time had become a little confused, to explain his failure
by his father's illness, if they wanted to.
   When he came home in the evenings he sat in the chair by his
father's bed. At first he asked cheerfully how he was feeling, but
these questions, left unanswered, seemed to lead only to the bad
answers they might have had. He did not like to talk about other
things, because he could understand their terrible irrelevance to
everything his father must be feeling, and knew, when he mentioned the
new morning schedules on the Alton line, that he was only showing him
how completely he was failing to understand. He had an idea his
father would have liked to hear him say hopeful things about his work,
but they would have been too different from his usual silence.
   Sometimes he went away quickly, sometimes he sat for quarter of
an hour, saying little. The weather had changed and outside the
window strong winds swayed the heavily leafed chestnut tree in the
dark summer evening, sometimes showing the wet concrete of the house
next door, sometimes when the whole top was driven sideways by a
violent gust showing the grey clouds moving fast above. He wanted
badly to tell him how sorry he was for the hard, offhand way he had
sometimes behaved to him. He found himself more and more surprised
that any person could bear to be hard to another.
   He thought of the years a long time ago when his father had
seemed happy. There had been a feeling of hope then which had gone
later. Things had not been settled in the poor way they later became
settled.
   He remembered a time when they had gone to stay with the Bowerses
and Bowers had been building a mud wall, some rustic craft he had
discovered. He remembered the planks set up to form a mould for the
wet mud. Though he could only have been four or five he could
remember Bowers' enthusiasm and amusement, and how his father had
responded to this and how as they had wheeled the barrows of sloshy
mud they had sung songs which he now realized had been parts of some
opera they half knew and half could not remember. Bowers had sung the
male voice and his father the female, both doing it with great
seriousness which was half mock half real.
   Later he could remember the vicious things his mother had said
about Mr. Bowers. He had not questioned that he must believe that
he had always been wicked. His father had not said these things but
he had not contradicted them.
   He had been told that there had been a mistake and his father had
been blamed when it had been Mr. Bowers' fault. He could remember
how he had not been able to understand why his father did nothing
about this. 'But why don't you tell them?' It had all seemed so
simple but his father had shaken his head.
   After that there had been another job, then quite soon the war.
It sometimes seemed to Martin that this had been the best time for
his father. Being compelled to do a job which there was no point in
questioning and no chance of failing at had suited him.
   When his father told stories about the war a curious happiness
came over him which the stories themselves did not explain. There had
been one about helping to break all the bottles in a bar in Cairo and
waking up there next morning laid out between two chairs with nothing
on but his boots, which his mother had particularly disliked.
   Once his father had shown him a small automatic pistol from the
war and he had hoped for a moment to learn something exciting. 'Did
you capture it?'
   His father shook his head, smiling a little at something the
question had made him remember.
   'Did you find it?'
   He shook his head again. 'Someone gave it me.' Martin had
not liked to go on questioning him, suspecting that this would be an
intrusion on some private memory which he wanted to respect.
   After the war his father had gone to his first advertising agency
but he had not liked it. There had even been a time when he had left
it to take up tutoring and there was still a box of school textbooks
in the attic.
# 21
<381 TEXT K7>
   He fell morosely on the bed.
   She came over and sat down beside him.
   How old are you?
   Twenty-four- and fully grown as others can tell you.
   Well, I'm twenty-seven. Still young in years perhaps, but pretty
old in hours I can tell you. If I thought you were really in love
with me I'd never tell you, but as you're only in love with love I
will. You're inexperienced and that's the truth.
   Thanks for nothing.
   Don't get huffy. Why do men always think they're great lovers by
nature. To copulate is natural, to make love's an art.
   And I'm no artist?
   On the contrary! All men are, but, like all artists, they need
training.
   I'll roll up at the Polytechnic.
   Liszt and Tchaikovski were born geniuses but they had to learn
how to read and write notes.
   Love's a natural act.
   So's singing and dancing- but they still need training. To a
woman the preliminaries of love are the most important and that's
where art comes in. You have to learn what women like before you can
bring out the best in them!
   I'd have thought that pretty obvious.
   Don't be vulgar.
   Isn't it vulgar to want... I don't know what things you do
want!
   No. The body needs food- but you cook it to enjoy it as well.
The body needs physical love for many reasons but prefers it served
with attraction.
   What else can a man do?
   Boy, are you kidding!
   Ah well, our love affair was short if not sweet.
   You mean you don't want me any more?
   Don't tell me you're willing to sacrifice yourself again?
   For answer she pushed him back against the cushions and brought
her face very close.
   Don't you want to kiss my lips?
   Anger and desire fought within him, blow for blow.
   Her red mouth came closer and brushed against his lips, light as
a feather. Her voice came soft and sweet as a marshmallow:
   Just brush them like this and this... and this... you'll feel the
blood pulsing... don't attack a mouth as if you're dipping a mop into
a slop-bucket... always go much slower than you want to, it increases
desire...
   And Desire came up with a straight left and Anger staggered...
Her lips parted and the tip of a pink tongue came slowly out and
caressed his mouth from corner to corner, deliciously slow, back and
forwards, slipping in a fraction of an inch and out again to the
rhythm of a drum that had started somewhere inside his head. Her
voice was a gentle murmur, caressing him with words that were as sweet
as they were naughty and nonsensical.
   Desire followed up with a couple of nasty rights to the face of
Anger, who gave at the knees.
   Her head moved slowly, her lips and tongue spoke a language he
understood without having learned it. Her tongue went in deeper and
touched his own, gliding round it, pulling it in and letting it go.
   Desire uppercutted neatly and Anger took the full count.
   He looked up into her eyes and saw the immeasurable depth of
eternity that God has put in there for man to lose himself in.
   He'd taken over now and was looking down at her as she lay on his
bed. Her voice murmured on, soft and caressing as a kiss:
   Look at my throat... don't you want to kiss it... to follow its
lines and taste my skin...
   He forgot time and place. He, the master, was gently led along
erotic paths which he knew existed, but had never trodden. He learned
how to use his hands, how to adore that body without haste, how to
caress every inch with his mouth as well, to creep down along her
smooth muscles till he lost himself in a rapture of kisses in places
he'd dreamed of, where life began to ooze and quickened his heart beat
to a thunder.
   He looked at her. Head thrown back in a pool of hair, her
blood-red lips parted and the beating of her heart in the full throat.
   Her mouth did things he thought no human being could stand without
dying, but he went on living in an ocean of voluptuousness, that
swelled and ebbed over him, under him, in him and through him...
   He was having a ball!
   He twiddled the TV set with shaking hands. She sat calmly
on the bed smoking a cigarette.
   His face was white with two red blotches. Hers was flushed and
lovely.
   O.K. teacher! Was that any better?
   You know it was! You don't need teaching, only a little coaxing.
   He sat down and ran his finger down along her spine.
   Do you love me now?
   Like yesterday! I'm extremely fond of you. The fact that you're
beginning to satisfy my physical wants does not change that. Before
long you'll give me the satisfaction that'll set me rocking on my
feet, but I'll still be only fond of you.
   But you wouldn't marry me?
   No. I'm not your type. I'd make you miserable. I mean that.
I'd very probably be unfaithful and that'd kill you.
   Then I'd be unfaithful too, to teach you a lesson.
   It wouldn't work. You'd do it to spite me. I would never do it
for that reason. To me it'd be immaterial whether you'd retaliate or
not. You'd go crazy if that situation arose.
   Pretty conceited, aren't you?
   No, truthful. You're the faithful type. You'll marry a darned
attractive girl and you'll never tell her of me, but you'll be
grateful because you'll be able to give her all she wants by day and
night. And that's a lot, considering that 6 per cent of all
married women in the West never get full satisfaction. Mostly because
4 per cent never expect to get real pleasure out of it and are
convinced it's their duty to suffer the husband, and 2 per cent
because they never dare talk or do it by daylight. They don't dare
tell a loving husband they only begin to like it when he's already had
his fun and prepares for sleep. They don't dare tell him to find out
what she wants. They don't know that tastes differ just as much in
sex as in anything else. It's man's duty to find out and experiment.
   O.K. Now look in your tea-leaves again and tell me what's
in store for yourself?
   Have I never told you? End of the year I'm marrying Mason, the
sculptor.
   
   His affair with Charlie was the best period in his life so far.
   Sheila, who was a disconcertingly observant little pigeon for all
her reserve and innocence, once hit the nail fully on the head when
she said he looked as if he had everything he wanted in life except
money.
   That was true enough- for a while that is!
   He'd thrown his pride to the wind and accepted Charlie's
superiority in seduction. And it was hard to imagine a prettier
teacher. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to watch his
improvements in her face, when she would genuinely sigh and toss her
lovely head in sweet agony. To observe the colour rise in her cheek
and hear her breath come faster, to see the slight beads of sweat come
out on her glistening skin and see her move with uncontrolled rhythm.
To have her twist in an attempt to receive a caress he was purposely
withholding, to hear her deep-throated moan of full satisfaction and
feel her shivering, clawing surrender.
   Not so dusty, she might say afterwards, drawing at a cigarette.
   It's a wow! he said.
   She kissed him motherly:
   You just wait till you teach the girl you really love.
   He didn't protest any more to say he loved her because he knew it
to be untrue.
   Instead he said:
   Will that be better?
   She nodded:
   It's man's nature to teach and to teach those we love is double
pleasure.
   And she might add:
   And don't forget to leave the lights on. You lose half the fun
when you fumble in the dark.
   She had many direct comments like that. Once she quietly pushed
him back when he kissed her too fully and too soon:
   Oi, not yet, you oaf. What do you think my mouth is? A
billposter's bucket to be plunged in at random?
   He'd learned to laugh when something went wrong or the situation
became ludicrous, as when they were both caught in the raw when he'd
forgotten to lock his door and Derek had walked in unexpectedly.
They'd just had time to nip into the bathroom and stood there
shivering for fifteen minutes while their guest was smoking a
cigarette waiting for him. At last Derek got tired and left.
   Just in time, erupted Charlie. If he'd stayed any longer I'd
jolly well have asked him to join us. I'm so darned cold I could do
with two men.
   You perverted sex-maniac, you wouldn't dare.
   Show me what you can do and I'll tell you if you need help.
   
   Once he came back to the subject of her marriage and asked her
why she was going to marry her sculptor.
   Because I love him, of course. What do you think?
   But he's a lot older, isn't he?
   I suppose so.
   What attracts you? It can't be physical?
   Of course not! I love him for what he is- he's so great I'm a
bit scared of him- a woman must be a bit scared to be really in love.
   That's why you could never love me?
   Correct, ducky! You just wait till you meet the girl who thinks
you're a god. It'll make you feel like one!
   You think that sculptor's a god?
   Perhaps, in a way. All I know is that I need him.
   He kissed the heart beat in her throat.
   But how about the physical side? You're quite an erotic little
beast; can he satisfy that?
   You youngsters always overestimate yourselves. You can take it
from me that he can and does. But even if he were impotent I'd still
love and want him. There are sides to me you'll never know.
   Don't you feel guilty living with me?
   Often! Don't you?
   
   Mary had married her bill broker some time ago and he now
shuddered when he remembered the clinical weekends he used to spend
with her.
   He often used to try to imagine her reactions if he had once
treated her as he did Charlie, but his imagination failed.
   The efficient little Mary would probably have called it a
shocking waste of time and told him to get down to business!
   
   Charlie, who was perfectly at home at all sorts of artistic
circles, had amongst others wangled him a membership ticket for a
small club for artists only. It was situated in the attic of a huge
old-fashioned house and lit by candle-light, which made it seem very
romantic through a glass of something or other and which made it
impossible to check bills very carefully.
   Charlie and he sometimes went there for a meal and a dance. The
food was good and the three men in the corner made just sufficient
noise on a piano, an accordion and a set of drums, to enable the
patrons to cling together and call it dancing. There was never any
rock and rolling at the Chipsteak Club. Its members did not care for
physical exercise.
   There were a number of hostesses who changed constantly. They
certainly did not belong to the class of hostesses usually associated
with small clubs; on the other hand, many a member had often found
them very amenable if given sufficient time- and attention. Charlie
knew practically every one there, from the big Irish painter who sat
glued to his corner every night from opening at eight till closing at
one-thirty, to the latest addition to the staff of hostesses.
   These girls soon lost interest in him when they found he was
neither a painter nor an assistant film-producer and left him alone to
contemplate the motley lot from a corner.
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She had forgotten that she had already told him about the man who
was the hero in another context that could not, by any stroke of
circumstance or fate, be linked with what she had now concocted. It
had been calculated to place her in a romantic light, but all it did
was to make her seem more pitiable- and for that he could have hated
her. He liked her brash and vulgar, the teller, as she had
occasionally become, of dirty stories, because it was as chummy and
uncomplicated as being with another man in a bar.
   He didn't take her home that night; he made the excuse- lies
were contagious things- his car was in dock. Instead, he telephoned
for a taxi for her- which he would pay for when he saw her into it
outside.
   While they were waiting for it, she said, "Have you met your
neighbour yet?"
   They were in the entrance hall, and a car had driven up, out of
which stepped a grey-haired woman in a Persian lamb coat- but it was
not his neighbour, not the one Thornie meant. For a moment, he had
thought it was, but that woman was less tall and also younger.
   "No."
   "Seen her about at all?"
   "Now and again."
   The taxi came, and before Thornie got into it, she kissed him.
   "Give my love to your mother," he said.
   His distinguished neighbour had never been alone when he had
encountered her in the corridor. There was always her chauffeur with
her, and sometimes her maid. He had not even wished her good
morning- as was the polite custom between the tenants. She looked
too damn haughty every time, with her head held high- and in her
spiked heels she was taller than himself. Her eyes never once cast
him the merest glance. Sometimes she affected the smoked sun glasses
with the big blue frames she'd worn the day of her arrival.
   But the morning after Thornie dined with him, around midday, he
met Mrs. Longdon-Lorristone coming from the lift with the chauffeur.
They had barely passed him when he heard her tell the chauffeur she
had left something in the car, and that he was to go back for it, she
could manage. "I'm here," she said, "and I've got my key."
   As the chauffeur walked quickly past him, James looked back, and
he saw her standing by her door, fumbling with the key. She was
carrying a big black crocodile bag, and she had a parcel as well. He
saw the key fall from her hand, and her stooping to pick it up- and
he heard her swear. He went back, retrieved the key for her, and
opened her door with it.
   "Oh, thank you!" she said. "I don't think I know your
name?"
   "It's Longdon," he said, "I am a new neighbour of yours."
   "Oh! I have heard of you. Thank you so much. But- won't you
come in?"
   He looked at his watch; he would be late for lunch down-town, but
perhaps his guests could cool their heels for a little while. One of
them was trying to interest him in launching a literary magazine- and
there was no possible future in it, in a country with a population the
size of Australia's. The maid appeared, and took the parcel from her
mistress, who said, "Leave the door, Frances. Mathew is on his way
up again." And then she said, "Oh, do come in, Mr. Longdon,
unless you are in a hurry."
   Her flat was pretty much what he had expected; the apartment of a
rich woman of taste, and his eye immediately alighted on a Degas. He
remarked on it, and spoke of having seen her gift to the gallery.
"My son," she said, "has a Renoir, one I gave him when he married
the first time," as other women might speak casually of having given
their sons a car they had no further use for.
   "Oh, do please sit down!" She raised her voice then, and
called out, "Frances, bring the sherry, please." She sat down in
a wing armchair, and when the decanter and two glasses were brought on
a round silver tray, she said, "Will you pour your own, please, and
one for me?" James did so, and when he had put the glass into her
hand, she said, "Will you please bring up the little table. I am
stiff about the joints. I drop things- as you saw." And she
proceeded to tell him about her arthritis. He did not sit down; he
stood with his drink, sipping it, and studying her from top to toe- a
woman remarkably well-preserved for her age, who might easily pass for
one much younger. Beyond the mention of her disability, she gave
nothing else away. Very correctly, she was handing out the polite but
casual hospitality due to a new neighbour who had rendered her a small
service. Challenged more by her correctness than by any encouragement
to talk of any topic beyond the weather and how long he had been in
Melbourne, he said, "You know my flat, don't you?"
   "Naturally, Mr. Longdon! Wasn't that a rather superfluous
question?" But she smiled.
   He took his leave of her then, and they shook hands. Hers was
thin and bony, and very narrow across the knuckles. She did not get
up from her chair.
   He did not encounter her again in the corridor, but he thought
about her over the next ten days. Once, when her door was open to
admit a caller, he heard the radio on; and he heard it, again, late at
night, muffled through that closed door and the supposedly soundproof
wall.
   Then he telephoned her early one morning, and asked her if she
would come and have a drink with him that evening, or any other that
suited her. She said she was sorry, she couldn't that evening, and
she so very rarely went out in the evenings now. It was a decided
rebuff, although her voice itself sounded pleasant enough, not cold
and stiff, or off-putting.
   He said, "It's not intended to be a party."
   "No? But all the same, if you will forgive me. It is very kind
of you to have asked me." And then, when he would have rung off,
she said, "I suppose you have changed the flat a lot? I know you
bought the furniture, and I imagine you've turned it round, because no
one else's arrangement ever suits one, does it?"
   "I've changed nothing," he said, "except I've got my own
books and I've got the desk by the window, instead of in the middle of
the room."
   "That should be an improvement. It was always too big for the
centre of the room, but Sir Eric liked it that way. I think it gave
him the feeling of being in his office- and more at home."
   "Then, won't you come and see it all?"
   "Sometime, perhaps. I will let you know."
   He had avoided Thornie in her role of 6femme fatale, but
she went to a great deal of trouble to find him a book on old
Melbourne, which he'd casually told her he wanted to read and not been
able to find in any library. She had finally unearthed it at the back
of a second-hand bookshop, without any cover to indicate its title or
its value to collectors, and she left it in a parcel on his doorstep
one day when he was out. She must have hoped to find him in, as there
was no letter with it, only an obviously hastily-written message on
the outside, "With Thornie's love." So he asked her out to
dinner, and they were back where they were before she concocted that
fairy tale.
   Almost the first thing she said, was, "There's a girl lodging
with Mrs. Hogg who Stephen Longdon-Lorristone brought home one
night. What do you think of that?"
   He couldn't think of anything, and so he said nothing.
   "She works in the hairdressing at Longdon's, and he got her the
job. He picked her up somewhere."
   "That sounds very kind of him."
   Thornie laughed. "Oh, you men! Always stick up for each other,
don't you? His kindness extended to taking her out to dinner and to
his house for a drink after and bringing her back. Mrs. Hogg saw it
all."
   "What did she see?"
   "Oh, I suppose them in the car together, and she didn't like it,
even if it was milord. The girl's only a kid when all's said and done
and from up-country too. You'd think he'd know his onions a bit more,
wouldn't you, than to carry on like that? He may find his wife cold.
She looks it. A good-looker, mind you, if you care for that English
type. I don't often go down on the ground floor, but we get the usual
discount on what we buy and I was getting stockings one lunch hour
when she came through with all the kids in tow. It was the end of the
holidays, and I suppose she was getting them new school clothes. She
never wears a hat. That's very English, and it's caught on. Once no
Toorak woman would have been seen dead down-town without a hat on.
They used to look- and some of the old ones still do- as if they'd
got a lunch date with the Queen."
   He wanted to say to her, "Don't spread that story, Thornie."
But he wasn't her keeper; neither was he the guardian of the
reputation of the Longdon-Lorristone family. He wasn't, as she would
have said, in their league. Among the acquaintances he had made- and
he had made a good many by now- there was not one who could claim to
know the mother, the son, or the daughter-in-law, other than by
repute.
   About a week after hearing that piece of gossip from Thornie, his
doorbell rang one night, shortly before nine o'clock. The sound of
it, in its discreet little buzz, interrupted his reading. Putting
down his book, he went to the door, opened it wide and saw that the
caller was Mrs. Longdon-Lorristone.
   "I've taken you," she said, "at your word! Although I think
the suggestion was that I should telephone you first? But if you are
not alone, and I have come at an inconvenient hour, I will go away
again."
   "Please come in," he said.
   She stepped over the threshold, partly leaning on a stick, and he
shut the door behind her. In his surprise, speech had momentarily
almost deserted him. He had been deep in his reading, and in another
century, another world, and the adjustment to the present one had been
slow to come. He was associating her with the character of a
Byzantine empress, with conflicting tragedies being enacted over her
head, Nemesis catching up with her, punishing her for her ruthlessness
and selfishness and her passion for getting her own way. But what he
saw was an ageing, hesitant Australian woman in her slow walk from the
front door to the living-room, where she paused and said, ~"It is a
great improvement," meaning, he presumed, the desk he had moved near
the window. He drew up a chair for her, and took her stick away, and
offered cigarettes, asking if she would have a drink. She refused the
drink. Then, disarmingly, she said, "I suddenly felt lonely. My
maid is out." She laughed. "I found I was out of cigarettes too!
Perhaps I smoke too much!"
   It was the opening for a little discussion on the minor vices, as
two shipboard companions might talk while occupying long chairs side
by side. There is nothing like the shared confession of silly
weaknesses to set a ball rolling. That was only the preliminary, for
she wanted to know all about him; not quite all, she was too polite,
but the outline of his past, which he gave her as he had given it to
Thornie.
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<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
You have seen it. The big white hat, the white swallow-tailed coat
with the shiny braid, the ridiculous cravat- in action he looks like
a Southern planter at a picnic. His stock of bottles was all set up
on the wagon. He hadn't yet begun to sell them. He had to inveigle
his audience first...'
   How I wish I had been there. These forests of the Congo could
have seen nothing like it. The bland, self-assured voice enveloping
his spectators in a cocoon of honey: commercialism seemed to be the
last thing he had in mind. He'd started his show. He had to seek the
lowest common denominator of the audience. He was doing card tricks.
Tossing out the aces, then picking them out of mid-air. It might
have gone down well up near Lake Chad, where there is an Arabic
influence- on these denser sons of Ham it had no effect at all. He
went swiftly on to cigarette tricks. That was better. The audience
hummed. Father Felix told me: 'How he did it, I do not know. He
puffed at a handful of lighted cigarettes, threw them all into the
river and then retrieved them one by one from behind the ears of the
crowd. They rubbed their heads confusedly to see where they came
from. How does he do it?'
   'Why didn't you watch?'
   'I did. He drew a lighted cigar from out of my cassock. How
embarrassed I was.'
   'It would have been interesting to see him try it on Agnes.'
I spoke prematurely: he had something more dramatic for her in mind.
   And all the time that facile enchanting patter... it was a kind
of enchantment, wasn't it? 'It was impossible both to listen to him
and watch him closely,' said Agnes. 'In the end we didn't really
hear what he was saying, nor see exactly what he was doing with his
hands.' Which suggests a very expert patter.
   There is the moment when the mass tension of an audience has
suddenly to be heightened- the magician, like his brother the
demagogue, must know when to turn the screw. Agnes said: 'Of
course, he wasn't paying me any particular attention. But he was
aware of me in the crowd. I had no wish to be drawn into his
mumbo-jumbo...'
   'Agnes, can we forget the personal aspect for a moment? What
did he do?'
   'He produced a white chicken from his props. He held it up. It
fluttered and squawked. He said to it: ~"Go, little bird," and
flung a cloth over it. When he whisked it away the chicken was gone.
He began to call out, ~"Little bird, where are you?" and came down
from his wagon as if searching for it in the crowd. He stopped by
me- I hadn't the faintest idea of his intention- he slapped suddenly
at my skirt, and I swear to you I felt with horror the flapping
feathers between my legs. The chicken escaped from under me and I
heard everybody hissing with shock. It wasn't enough. He had to
embarrass me further- he picked up an egg as if it had been freshly
laid.'
   'I've seen that trick performed in the Bobino in Paris...'
   'The natives have never been to Paris. The effect on them was
staggering.'
   Father Felix said disturbedly: 'One mustn't take liberties with
people who are so susceptible to magic, ~What makes us laugh- these
music-hall illusions- can literally petrify them.' Did it matter?
The chief and his wives, his sons Shadrach and Meshach, had
approached the fringe of the crowd. Joe Moses opened up a large
coloured box to show that it was empty. He called out:
   ~"What shall we have for supper? ~Sucking pig?" and persuaded
one of the women to throw a cheap bangle into the box. More
incantations. He tossed the box over the heads of the crowd. It
burst open as it landed and a young pig squealed and ran out into the
forest.'
   I haven't seen that one in the Bobino.
   Then swiftly the 6pie?3ce-de-re?2sistance- after all,
he had to get down to the business of unloading his bottles. He must
have prepared one of the boys: the young black imp popped gigglingly
into a crate. That one I have seen. A few mock pistol-shots into
it. A sabre slammed fearsomely through it in all directions. The
natives suddenly expectant of tragedy- but the crate opened and the
young imp of mischief came waddling out.
   Agnes said with sudden pleasure: 'But he'd been too smart.
He'd undone himself. When he started his sales talk...' and she
began to mimic him ironically: ~'"My friends, I have here the
age-old remedies of the famous Shoshone Indians, the essences that
made them strong and virile..." nobody in the crowd would even
glance at his bottles. It was as if he'd bewitched them. They were
frozen into inertia. He went about trying to interest them in his
Shoshone cure-alls, but he might have been addressing black statuary-
it was quite uncanny, his face fell. When he'd gone the rounds he
hadn't sold a single bottle.'
   'Hoist with his own petard,' I said.
   'I didn't like it,' said Father Felix. 'There was something
about the tribe that troubled me.'
   'Joe Moses, too. Sales resistance troubles every business man.
What did he do with his bottles?'
   'Emptied them into the river. He was very angry.'
   'Perhaps the fishes'll grow as strong and virile as the Shoshone
Indians. Still, it must have been a wonderful show.'
   'He made a wonderful fool of himself,' Agnes said.
   
   It was fate, in fact, that was making fools of all of us. I said
before that the stage had been set- it awaited the last theatrical
prop. The curtain was now ready to go up. It only needed my personal
attendance. I arrived with thirty soldiers and a display of armaments
in three flat-bottomed river transports the following afternoon.
Chapter Four
   These weren't the Kano gendarmerie. They were soldiers.
Nothing as alarming as Caesar's centurions- even with Springfield
carbines it's difficult for thin black shanks and tarbooshes to strike
terror into the heart. But they were the best of our native levies.
French N.C.O.s can whip neolithic African bowmen into military
shape. It had given the Governor a bad half-hour of heart-burn before
he decided to send them. They were equipped with a few light
automatic weapons and tear-gas grenades. In command of them was a
cold sous-lieutenant, a veteran of the Indo-Chinese war. I think
he rather hoped for a small brisk action. He paraded his troops at
the fringe of the village.
   Like the schoolmaster's cane, every civilian administrator has to
keep the idea of the military instrument at the back of his mind-
but, when he first sees light machine-guns being assembled, his
stomach goes cold. The sous-lieutenant was placing them
strategically at the end of the street.
   And a silence fell upon the village. Nothing moved: not a child,
not a rooster. Father Felix had seen the platoon marching by the
mission. He came hurrying out.
   He cried: 'But I never dreamt you were serious.' It was the
nearest thing to rage I'd ever seen in him. Agnes came palely behind.
   'They've made it serious for me, haven't they? Did you think I
warned them so strongly just to exercise my voice?'
   'Louis, you cannot know what you are doing...'
   'I'm doing my duty as I see it. It's that perverse chief. He
has forced my hand.'
   'It is utterly unforgivable.'
   'It's easy for you to talk.' He was making me feel both
stubborn and guilty. 'If anything goes wrong, there's nobody but God
to blame you. I have the Governor to contend with. If he jumps on me
I'm out of a job.'
   'But they have guns. Look.' He pointed. He couldn't believe
his eyes.
   'You must think I like the military sticking its nose in.' I
said bitterly: 'We spend our lives running things the quiet way.
Then the army arrives- a blow, a false word- bang- suddenly there
are shots. All right. If that's the way they want it. But don't ask
me to clean up the mess.'
   Agnes said: 'Get those soldiers out of sight at once.'
   'They haven't come here to play hide-and-seek.'
   'If they come a solitary step nearer...'
   'Nobody wants to precipitate trouble. They'll stay where they
are.' Father Felix tugged incoherently at my sleeve- he took a
step towards the two light automatic weapons perched in the dust at
the end of the street. The sous-lieutenant had an eye for
positioning. Suddenly one realised exactly what was meant by
'covering fire'. I felt almost as nervous as Father Felix. I
dragged him back. 'Are you mad? These are disciplined soldiers.
They aren't Christians.'
   'What?'
   'Your cassock wouldn't save you. If you interfered with them
they would fire.'
   He said impatiently: 'As if that matters...'
   'It matters to me. The Governor would assassinate me.' I
stared beseechingly at Agnes. She said to Father Felix: 'Be
still.'
   'I have the Governor's written orders,' I said. 'We're to
move the tribe out of the valley with the minimum of force...'
   'How small is minimum?' asked Father Felix. He'd begun to
sweat.
   I wasn't answering that one. 'All inhabitants are to be
prepared for transit, all stocks, herds, movable goods. Compensation
will be paid for unavoidable...'
   'Stop waving that abominable paper in my face. I don't object
to them going. I only want them to go voluntarily.'
   'So do I. I don't want them to have to swim. Will you show the
chief the orders?'
   'I have a tongue.' He stalked off. I was in bad odour
with him. I watched the sous-lieutenant deploying his soldiers
through the trees. Agnes said coolly: 'You mean well, Louis.'
Thank God for small encouragement. 'But you're a foolish busybody,
if there are two ways of doing a thing, you'll always choose the wrong
one.' That wasn't so encouraging. She went striding briskly
towards the chief's hut.
   The village had become of a sudden thronged. There were too many
men: I strained my eyes, for the dazzle of the sun was painful and
perspiration wetted my lashes, to see if they bore weapons. Children
howled. An old woman advanced a few paces to shake her fist
virulently in my face. I brushed her off like a fly. Yes, there were
shields in the crowd. Except for hunting, they hadn't used bows and
spears since the mission had been planted in the valley: and now they
were banging the stretched hide shields, it sounded like the boom of
an approaching herd. The chief in his white coat was talking
excitedly with Father Felix...
   ...and sweat, sweat like cold needles, sprang out on me.
Something nosed like a gun-barrel into the small of my back. I
jumped about. That wretched beast, the elephant, breathing
inoffensively not a pace behind me. How silently it moved. Joe Moses
sat atop of it. I peered up emotionally and said: 'Do not ever do
that again.'
   'Your nerves are in bad shape.'
   'Yours would be, too. Remove that creature from me. It
smells.'
   'So the marines are here.'
   'What? Yes, the soldiers. It's the only way.'
   'When does the battle open?'
   'You're mad. This doesn't concern you. Go away.'
   'You don't listen, do you?'
   'To you? Who would?'
   'I told you, a man doesn't have to be big, doesn't matter if he
has a belly,' and again he surveyed me with cold languor, 'so long
as he has the sap in him to command respect. I should have qualified
it. He has to have brains in his head, too. Remember what I said?
About not shoving a mule to water when ten sweet words will coax it
along?'
   'Your- what do you call it- cracker-barrel philosophy makes me
sick.'
   'But better sick than dead.'
   'They're a very obtuse people. There comes a time when one has
to show strength.'
   'Suppose they resist you with strength?'
# 24
<384 TEXT K1>
He had raised his voice above normal to address his friend.
   'I would be delighted to show Mrs. Egerton my collection,'
Theodore replied. 'Perhaps you would all come and have tea with me
this week? Perhaps- Thursday?' He looked from Sylvie to Sonia.
   'Could you then?' asked Sylvie.
   Sonia thought rapidly. Harold would be absent in Salonika for
some days; this made the arrangement of her own timetable much
simpler.
   'I shall look forward to it very much,' she said.
   'And bring your icon with you,' added Andre?2.
   'We'll pick you up on the way,' said Sylvie.
   There was a movement behind them and Hugo, who had disappeared
for a moment, reappeared carrying a chair, which he placed beside
Andre?2 and invited him to be seated.
   'But, my dear boy- we must be going!' exclaimed Andre?2.
'Very kind of you- but we're the last. Of course we could stay
here talking and browsing among the books all night but I don't think
we'd be very popular.'
   They looked round the room to discover that they were indeed the
last there, except for the two men employed to keep an eye on the
books and rearrange them after the visitors had left.
   They dispersed in the entrance but Sonia accepted a lift in
Andre?2's car, which dropped her at her flat.
   Harold had not returned. She wondered uneasily where he could
be, but since he rarely told her his plans this evening was no
exception. She could not understand the nervousness that sent her
wandering through the rooms, into the hall, back again into the
drawing-room, out on to the terrace, until she was suddenly able to
pin down its causes. Magda's face hovered against the darkness,
disembodied, panic-struck; she could not eliminate it. She was afraid
and could only hope that the girl had gone home to Erich who loved
her, however hopelessly.
   The afternoon which had begun so promisingly with the friendly
laughter in Andre?2's flat and the new acquaintances she had made
through the French archaeologist, had turned sour since Harold and
Magda had put their acid into it. She had also been made restless by
the sight of Andre?2's and Sylvie's pleasure in one another's
company. Envy mingled in her mind with regret for what she had missed
and saw no chance of reaching in life. She wished she were old but
with their security.
CHAPTER =5
   ALTHOUGH she did not look forward to the occasion Sonia found
it impossible to avoid an evening at Magda's flat, especially since
Erich had pleaded with her so anxiously to do what she could to
befriend the girl, who tended to shut herself away completely from
society and not only made them both unhappy but also damaged his
chances of promotion by doing so, social life being part of their
duty. Harold was to join them straight from the office as soon as he
could get away. For once she was glad that he would be with her,
because she wanted a chance to observe him with Magda in order to
discover what was in his mind and how far she was under his control.
The few minutes at the book exhibition had seemed to show that the
girl was already dominated by him and ready to submit to all he
suggested. They must have been meeting fairly often and she now
believed that when Magda had left them after the bathe near Cape
Sunion her appointment must have been with Harold. There was still a
flicker of rebellion in her, however, and Sonia hoped to encourage
this tiny flame.
   She walked over to the flat across a patch of uneven waste land
that lay neglected between two blocks of modern houses. Poppies and
coltsfoot grew in profusion, giving colour to the dreary area, and
somewhere in the grass there must be edible leaves, for two old women
bent over the ground plucking them and stuffing them into paper bags.
She looked closely as she passed and saw that they were collecting
dandelions and nettles. The women must have come far, for they were
poorly dressed and did not belong to the prosperous neighbourhood.
They looked up as she passed and, noticing her eyes, filled with
curiosity, one of them said: ~'Salad!' with a grin and waved a
bunch of the tough, dark-green leaves at her. Were they driven by
poverty alone? By thrift? By avarice? She did not know, but the
contrast between these two dark, bent figures collecting the hard,
dusty weeds and the flowering gardens of plenty around them remained
in her mind's eye for some time and put her out of humour even before
she had reached Magda's flat.
   The young people had contrived to import some of their
possessions from Germany and the flat was delightful with its
golden-yellow cherrywood and ebony Biedermeier furniture and one or
two modern pieces, including a rocking-chair with a high back that
Magda had purchased after visiting an exhibition of pieces from
Denmark some months earlier. As far as the plan of the flat was
concerned Sonia felt at home in it immediately, for it had been built
on the same scheme as her own and she knew exactly where kitchen,
bathroom and bedroom lay, a disconcerting impression to have in a
house she had never entered until that evening. An air of fussiness,
however, was added by the innumerable little lace mats that covered
almost every polished surface.
   Magda and Erich were both awaiting her. He had arranged to come
home a few minutes earlier than usual and hurried forward eagerly to
welcome her. His gratitude was painful and made her ashamed of her
own lack of genuine warmth. It also, to her dismay, made the
isolation into which Magda was gradually forcing him even more
evident. Sonia and Harold coming to dinner was nothing more, after
all, than a normal friendly event among neighbours, all more or less
of the same age, and constantly drawn together through the various
cultural and social activities in the city, but his attitude seemed to
make a special occasion of it.
   'Tomato juice?' he asked.
   'I added lemon juice to increase the vitamin content,' said
Magda proudly.
   He brought her a glass and placed it carefully on one of the
little mats, then carried one over to his wife.
   'I don't know whether Harold will care for this,' he added
uncertainly.
   'It will do him good,' Magda declared decidedly.
   'Magda doesn't think alcohol good for the health,' said Erich
apologetically. 'But this stuff's delicious, isn't it?' he added
eagerly.
   Politely Sonia agreed. It was, too- ice-cool. But she could
not imagine Harold drinking it.
   'And what have you been doing since we met last time?' she
asked Erich, more by way of starting a conversation with him than from
a desire to know.
   The smile died from his face. 'I've had rather a dreadful
job,' he said. 'I don't know- .' He hesitated.
   'It won't interest Sonia!' said Magda swiftly.
   If this were the only objection, Sonia felt obliged to encourage
him.
   'Do tell me,' she said. 'I know it isn't always fun having
to work in an Embassy- I used to think it was one long cocktail party
and an occasional exchange of "Notes". The notes always made me
see a little 6billet doux on mauve paper being handed over in
deadly earnest by one imposing Ambassador to another, equally serious,
both wearing all their decorations, of course!'
   'It isn't quite like that,' Erich smiled. 'No- this time
I've been working on the German war-graves on Leros and other islands.
The relations- you know- they want to know where their boys are
buried and then they come out to visit them to lay wreaths. And they
all pass through our office or the Consulate. Sometimes pleasant but
moving experiences and sometimes very disheartening.'
   'These are Dienstgeheimnisse!' Magda interrupted. 'You
know you mustn't talk about them.'
   'Oh, I don't think I'm betraying any secrets,' said Erich.
   'No, there was even a note about the graves in one of the
British papers recently,' said Sonia. 'But in any case, my dear,
don't you think you could leave it to Erich to know what he may talk
about and what not? After all, it's his job!' she added
impatiently.
   Erich gave her an astonished look in which gratitude and alarm
were mingled. He was so comical that she almost laughed.
   'He's not a child,' she added. 'And it's his profession.
And he must be pretty good at it or he wouldn't be here in Athens
already, but sitting in some awful little place in South America or on
a Somerset Maugham kind of island in the Pacific. You with him!'
   'Oh, but I'm not so good as all that!' Erich contradicted
nai"vely. 'But my father is- er- well, rather influential in the
Party.'
   'Now, when I hear a German say "The Party" I always think of
the Nazis,' Sonia laughed, 'but I know it isn't that. Which one do
you mean?'
   'C.D.U. of course!' answered Magda.
   Sonia sighed. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I don't know what
that means. Harold's tried time and again to "put me wise" as he
calls it, to European politics, but I never could remember what all
those various complicated initials stand for. It's almost as bad in
England in Labour Party circles, though. I remember a woman who used
to come to see my mother. She spoke only in initials. It was a kind
of private, secret language. She would say such things as: ~"The
T.U.C. won't let the I.L.P. do so and so and the
G.W.R. and the N.U.J. have threatened to strike,"
and- it was all Greek to me!' she laughed. 'It's even worse with
the French! But I do think we could invent an abbreviated sort of
shorthand-speech for everyday conversation, don't you? I'm sure we
could!'
   Magda and Erich were staring at her dumbfounded, incapable of
knowing whether to take her seriously or not.
   'For instance,' she went on mischievously, 'when I arrive
you're bound to say, ~"How do you do!" and I'm bound to reply,
~"Very well, thank you." Now we could shorten all that. You'd
say, "H.D.Y.D." and I'd reply, "V.W.T.Y."
Think what a lot of time we'd save in the course of our lives! We
could shorten sentences such a lot- for instance, if I now say,
~"Isn't it a lovely evening?" you know, before I've finished, from
my eyes and intonation, what I'm going to say. So I'd only need,
really, to begin, ~"Isn't it...?" and you could imagine the rest.
People talk far too much and say the same things over and over again.
I don't mean they're boring- the lovely evening isn't- but we could
take them for granted, couldn't we? We could have two languages- a
cypher one, and then the proper language for our few, occasional
original thoughts. They'd stand out on their own like jewels, then.
What do you think of my idea?'
   'I think it's very silly and impracticable,' said Magda.
'What would we do without all those formal aids to talk?'
   'Perhaps the tomato juice has gone to your head, Sonia!' Erich
laughed. 'Would you like some more?'
   'Maybe it has.'
   Lightening their tone was not easy, she thought to herself. She
wondered what would do it. Then, suddenly, as she noticed the many
flowers in the room, she remembered that she had not brought any
herself but had something else as a gift for Magda.
   She bent over to pick up her handbag. 'I didn't bring you
flowers, Magda, because I know you always have so many- we all do.
But I did find this little book I thought you might like.'
   Magda flushed. 'It was not necessary- .'
   'Of course it wasn't! It's the not-necessary things that are
the nicest!'
   'Open it, Magda,' said Erich.
   It was a small book about birds, with many illustrations showing
their various types of nests, from the clumsy casual untidy heaps set
together by storks on roof-tops to the exquisite feather-lined,
moss-bedecked enclosure of warmth and security made by the wren.
# 227
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   'Oh, there's plenty of time,' the forester said, and yawned
and stretched himself.
   'Why do you wear those wellingtons when it's so hot?' she
asked.
   'I don't know, I always wear them when I'm out working. They're
useful, I suppose.'
   Then they were silent for a time. Mary shaded the sun from her
eyes and looked out over the valley. Julian watched the sawing. The
grass was very warm. There was not a breath of wind and the branches
of the tree were quite motionless. He saw that the forester had
closed his eyes and was breathing deeply.
   For a moment, as the sawing stopped for the next pair to take
over, he heard curlews far above them on the hillside. He felt drowsy
and lay back again.
   Some minutes later they shouted over for the forester to come and
take his turn once more.
   'Hi, Johnnie! Wake him up, will you!'
   Julian sat up. The forester seemed to be fast asleep. Mary was
smiling and obviously waiting to see what would happen. Julian
realised that it was up to him to do the waking. He crawled over and
shook the foot of one of the wellingtons, but to no effect.
   'Hit him!' one of the men shouted.
   Julian tapped him on the arm, and then pulled at his wrist, but
still there was no sign of life apart from the heavy breathing of his
chest.
   A large stick, coming from the direction of the workmen, just
missed Julian and embedded itself in the turf. He looked round
angrily and then glanced at Mary who was watching him with an odd,
rather anxious smile.
   Another stick flew over his head.
   He stood up, and then knelt down again and shook the forester by
both shoulders, and then let go quickly as he opened his eyes and sat
up.
   'They're calling for you,' Julian said, moving back and
sitting down again beside Mary.
   'Are they? Well, well!' He waved towards the tree and then
stood up. 'You stay here, you'll be quite safe here, it won't be
very long now. You watch and see exactly where it falls! I'll go and
tell your friends to come up here with you.'
   He strode off down the slope.
   'He's funny,' Mary said, rather doubtfully. 'He can make the
trees do just what he likes, but he's no idea how he does it! He's
almost like an animal.'
   'And he doesn't care at all what happens to the trees, or why
it's happening!' Julian said, feeling a need to criticise the
forester. 'You'd think he'd be more concerned about that sort of
thing, considering he's obviously such a good craftsman! He just does
what he's told to do. But he seems to do it very well, of course.
And do you remember how the driver said the woodcutters had gone, how
it was more like a factory, the way the people worked in the forest
now? Well, he was wrong! This man here must be as good a craftsman
as any, to know all about the felling like that! He must be one of
the old kind! I imagine he's lived out here all his life. Don't you
think it would be wonderful to live like that? You remember when I
said I'd come away from home to have a complete change, to break the
chain? And you asked me what it was I came away to find? Well, this
is the sort of thing I wanted to find! Somewhere where I could live
the sort of life this forester's living. His way of life is really
what I wanted to find. That sort of way of life. You know what I
mean?' He looked round at her.
   'I don't really. No,' she said. 'But you just couldn't live
that sort of life! You're not that sort of person, are you? You
might just as well try to change the colour of your hair. Why ever
should you want that sort of life?'
   Julian wished he had not said so much, he felt foolish. He had
said it partly because he really did feel it, and partly because he
thought it would make her think more highly of him. This second
reason seemed quite absurd to him even before she had replied.
   'You do like that kind of person, though?' he asked her.
   'How can I say?' she said abruptly. 'He's a better sort than
Hanson, more honest and straightforward. I don't exactly find him
irresistible though.'
   'I don't think you quite see what I mean,' he replied, as
Hanson and Elizabeth came up to them and sat down near them on the
grass.
   'No, it seems I don't,' she said, ignoring them.
   'So it's coming down soon,' Hanson said. 'What was he
talking about?'
   'Nothing much,' Julian replied. 'Only that it's going to
fall just where you were. He's got it all worked out, or judged
rather, to the inch. We're quite safe here.'
   'It's lucky there's no wind,' Elizabeth said.
   The blond forester was busy at one end of the saw again. It was
difficult to see how much farther they had to go, but the other men
were no longer resting. They were standing back and watching
intently, some down at the cut, others up at the top of the tree.
   'Did you tell him we disapproved?' Hanson asked.
   'I said I thought it was a pity,' Julian replied.
   'And what did he say to that?'
   'He didn't seem to know anything about it, beyond how to fell
it. Anyway, it's too late now to do anything about it.'
   'And what do you think you could have done about it before?'
Mary asked him, quietly.
   'I don't know. Tried to persuade them to leave it, I suppose.
They mightn't have known anyone cared about it.'
   'And why do you care about it?' she asked, still completely
ignoring the other two.
   'I suppose because it's taken ages to grow as perfect and
beautiful and tall as that, and because it only takes a few moments to
destroy it. And because it's impossible to create it again! It's a
fine sight, I'm sorry to see it go.'
   'It'll be a fine sight to see it coming down though, won't
it?'
   'Maybe,' Julian said.
   'Don't you think it's rather fine to see a man who doesn't even
know why he's wearing wellingtons bring down something as wonderful as
that tree? And for no reason at all, so far as he knows! But he does
it! I rather like that. He's really doing something big. Do you see
what I mean, I wonder?'
   'I don't think I do,' Julian replied. 'I think it's very
exciting though to watch someone like that doing physically strenuous
work. I'd much rather he wasn't destroying something at the same time
though!'
   'I agree. It would be exciting, if it wasn't so destructive,'
Elizabeth put in. She seemed to have very strong unspoken feelings on
the matter, judging from the way she was leaning on one arm and
staring down and nervously crumbling the dry earth of a molehill
beside her.
   'Destructive! Destructive!' Mary said sarcastically, turning
to her for the first time. 'What you'd call destructive, maybe! Oh
how unimaginative you all are!'
   'Mary, there's no need to indulge in this deliberate
spitefulness just because you're angry with yourself,' she said
without looking up. 'Other people will only help you if you give
them a fair chance. And why did you speak to me the way you did, down
there? I can't understand, how can I tell what you're talking about?
What is it you're blaming me for now?'
   'Blaming you?' Mary jumped up and stood bending towards her
sister. 'Don't you really know? Well, well! You needn't try to
pretend that I'm the only person who keeps things secret!' She
stepped back and turned on Julian: 'My own sister scheming to get me
out in the country alone with a boy like you who's run away from his
mother and wants to become a blond-haired woodcutter! Oh, you
understand people so well! You're a fine man! A real man! You've
got real feeling!'
   These last words she directed at Julian in such a withering tone
that she seemed completely unable to say anything more. She turned
and walked away from them, across and down the slope. Julian stared
after her, dazed. He felt profoundly injured, and unjustly but
absolutely rejected. But this feeling of weakness quickly merged into
impotent anger. Mary had begun to run, but then she suddenly stopped
and stood looking back at them. She was too far away for him to see
any expression on her face.
   'Hi, Miss,' one of the foresters shouted to her, 'you'd
better move a bit or you'll get your pretty self squashed flat!'
   She gave no sign that she had even heard him.
   They stopped sawing.
   She's gone back to her old methods, Julian said to himself, she's
trying to bully me again, and I thought she'd stopped that sort of
thing! She's standing there expecting me to go and rescue her. She's
trying to force me to show some concern for her. She wants me to give
in and run to drag her away. She wants me to commit myself. Because
if I did go to rescue her she'd consider it absolute proof that I was
fond of her.
   But I'm just not going to be forced like that! Anyway, what a
fool I'd seem to all these onlookers! They just think she's playing!
And she may be playing with them, but with me she's not! And she's
not hysterical now either. She's stone cold and determined. She
thinks she's got me on the end of a string. She thinks she's got me
helplessly in her power, but she's wrong!
   He looked round. Elizabeth had one hand on Hanson's shoulder,
they were both staring intently at Mary. All the men were standing
watching her too, in exaggerated attitudes of impatience and
annoyance. Mary was standing in the patch of thistles.
   'If only she wouldn't make such an exhibition of herself,'
Hanson said, and Elizabeth tugged at his shoulder.
   Then the blond forester looked over at the three of them. Julian
pretended not to notice, he knew he was expecting him to do something
about it. He felt suddenly afraid that the forester was beginning to
think it serious. He determined to remain completely aloof.
Deliberately he looked away, down over the manor.
   He saw a dark circular mark spreading towards them across the
meadow. It reached the manor and a pillar of dust swirled high into
the air. Then the huge eddy swept up the slope, catching wisps of
grass and catching Mary's dress and snatching at her hair. Then the
lowest branches of the great fir tree quivered and swayed, and the
surging of the heavy masses of dark foliage spread upwards and shook
the whole tree as for a moment it became the violent centre of the
whirlwind. A shout sounded through the strange roaring of the wind
and the blond forester ran forward. Then the tree, suddenly calm
again, towered over. It hung a moment against the sky, and then
crashed to the ground, lashing into the turf of the slope. It rocked
and shuddered, and lay still.
   Julian, who had watched in such helpless, petrified amazement
that he had been unable to move, ran forward with Elizabeth and
Hanson. The men clambered over the branches. Julian tried to force
his way through the foliage where he imagined Mary would be, but he
became entangled in the broken branches and could not get very far.
He felt his legs trembling. Then he climbed up on to a large branch.
Hanson was a little way beyond him, crawling underneath. Elizabeth
had run round to the other side of the tree. He climbed along the
branch to the main trunk, his hands getting sticky with resin and his
ankles getting scraped as he slipped on the bark.
# 21
<386 TEXT K12>
   'I want to marry you,' he said. 'We will live for ever in a
little house by the sea.'
   'I want a big house,' I said.
   'I will give it you,' he cried.
   How can one answer such promises? Innocencio's words were
dreams.
   'We will have some children with fair hair,' he went on. 'It
would be lovely if you had some children.'
   At the time I did not know what to say, but have often remembered
Innocencio's dialect version of the song;
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Palomita blanca reluciente estrella
   Mas chula y mas bella
   Qu'un blanco jasmin- 
<END QUOTE>
   I asked Innocencio about the crater I had seen from the
mainland, and the snowy peak I could even now see.
   'Yes,' he replied, 'Right in the middle of the island is a
huge volcano, a real volcano, quite as active as Vesuvius or
Stromboli. It is called the Bed of Empedocles, and the name is true
of this mountain, and of no other. We try to keep its activities
hidden; we don't often admit even its existence to anyone from the
mainland or even the other islands. When you see a glow in the night
sky and ask us what it is, we tell you it's a fire in the scrub. So
it may be, and very likely the olive trees are burning too; but what
has started the conflagration? We won't tell you anything about those
seething underground cauldrons that threaten to break through at any
moment, and occasionally do so!'
   'What does the pharos say, out there at the end of the jetty?'
I asked.
   'It flashes a message all night through, long after every other
lamp is out, but not a message of comfort. Keep away, it says, I am
alight, but so is the mountain! Keep away from these dangerous
shores. And from above the inland ranges, I shall be turned into
blood, cries the moon; and the stars wide-eyed with terror sink back
into their cavernous abyss.
   'Last eruption the mountain burst like a Bank and flung millions
of pieces of money high into the air. They were scattered over a wide
area of the surrounding hills, and were eagerly searched for and
gathered up by people from the villages. Many a mattress and stocking
now bulges with that extraordinary gold. Such was the explosive force
that a few coins fell even as far away as England.
   'But one never knows what a volcano will do next, so it is best
to say nothing about it.'
   Innocencio wandered away, his forehead clouded, as so often his
native peak, by the dark legends of his race. In the afternoon I went
out again, hoping to see him, but could not find the peaceful garden.
I was not far from it, though, for there was sea below me, and I knew
that the garden lay near that part of the estate which included a
strip of coastline edged with precipitous cliffs.
   I was looking down on the beach; was it a festival, that so many
people were about? It must be the day of the sea-sports; my eyes
search the holiday crowd for Innocencio. Shall I recognize him in
this dazzling light? There he is! No, it is someone a little like
him. I look in other directions and then suddenly I see him; he is
walking with one of his companions, and talking of the contest to
come. He is ready for it, wearing his bathing-slip and bonnet. He
does not see me.
   I am on the cliff-tops of my Uncle's domain; it is getting
towards evening, the wind has risen but there are no clouds, huge
waves are crashing on the rocks below. Spectators are gathered on the
opposite cliff, cut off from me by a chasm, and waiting for the chief
event of the sports. Here are townspeople and their visitors, with a
few rustics from the mountains inland. All at once a commotion stirs
them: Innocencio comes in sight round the headland, pulling a boat
with all his strength against the heavy sea. Will he ever reach the
bay? Time after time a powerful undertow sweeps him outward. Then
putting forth a supreme effort he rides inshore on the back of a ninth
wave and is flung beyond the drag of the out-rushing water. He cannot
be seen for spray, but a scream of triumph goes up from the watchers.
   'It has never been done before!' someone shouts in excitement,
'No one else has finished the course. He has pulled all the way
from Galva- how many miles?- and in the teeth of a north-east
gale!'
   'Innocencio! Innocencio!'
   The cries of the people soar higher than the stormy tumult; he
has put them above Galva of the Grasshoppers, their rival port;
Innocencio is their hero for ever, and even the people of Galva will
praise him.
   I look down into his boat, rocking now in a sheltered inlet; he
has brought from Galva where his sister lives a trophy without price.
In the distance and through tears it looks like two little brown
dolls, one bigger than the other and lighter in colour; then I see
that they are shoes from the feet of his sister's children, his elder
sister whose name is future and present and past. Are they made from
walnut-shells and the skin of mouse and mole? They prove that his
boat has been to Galva; they will always be his greatest treasure.
   I look now into the heart of Innocencio; below the proud surf lie
images of the perpetual terror of earth and sea; first the twelve men
he saw frozen stiff in the stranded lifeboat; then more recently the
brothers from Lumio drowned in each other's clasp, the one trying to
save the other- dragged from translucent depths, so fast were they
locked that no one could separate their last embrace and they were
buried in the same grave; and finally the corpse he had seen
half-eaten by worms at the cemetery. His ribs still echo with the
horror of their tawny hue.
   I open my veins to the east I open the veins of my arm with the
cut of a sliver of silicon. Blood pours out from the left flows out
till it reaches the sea goes on flowing pours inexhaustible through
the inexhaustible sea without chafe or pause till it surrounds the
island a line veining marble a red line in the green sea taut from my
arm making a long arm to his home circling the island a ribbon of
stain in the foam unmixing like a rusty chain to bind him in binding
his home so he never can go nor a boat's prow cut through a crown
renewed without end of mercurial metal from far-away gap whence it
flows only his tooth could mend the gap whence it flows only his
tongue lick up the stream at its source only his tooth and his tongue.
Cibation
   'In the wood of wonder her fountain sings.'
   The Magical Aphorisms of Eugenius Philalethes.
   
   Next day I persuaded the Anchorite to come walking with me in
the same neighbourhood. The coast-scenery was so fine that presently
we stopped to look at it, gazing across a bay to the far side where a
line of jagged cliffs rose against the horizon.
   'A year or two ago,' said the Anchorite, 'a girl and I were
walking along this road. There was a spring-tide, gone down very low,
as it has to-day; and as we looked across at that rocky shoal in the
distance, we saw the towers and spires of a Gothic cathedral rising
above it. The tide had gone out so far that this cathedral, normally
submerged, was plainly visible.'
   While the Anchorite was speaking I looked out over the expanse of
the bay, and could almost behold the faintly-discernible architecture
that he described. Outlined against the sky, it appeared distinctly
to the mind's eye at least; and I could imagine that it had taken but
little carving of the rocks from which it grew, to turn nature into
art.
   The Anchorite did not tell me who the girl was.
   'Just where we are,' he went on, 'the coast is so formed that
the water can't ebb as far as it does from the opposite side of the
bay. It's about dead-low now, and as you can see, there are only two
or three hundred yards of sand between the road and the water. Well,
as I was telling you, we were staring at the cathedral, which is
hardly ever uncovered, when a lady stepped out of the sea quite near
us. She appeared just where the sand dividing us from the water was
narrowest, that is, about opposite where we are now. She was tall and
fair and dressed in a robe of yellow silk, the colour between orange
and lemon. She came towards us, and we walked over the wet sand to
meet her.'
   My eyes had come back from across the bay and were now
concentrated upon the waveless touch of the nearer sea and shore. I
could all but see the yellow-clad figure standing at the water's edge;
and it seemed to me that there must have been other of her people-
sea-men and sea-women, with her or not far behind, though the
Anchorite said nothing about them.
   'She spoke to us,' he continued (and I could almost hear the
sea-woman's voice), 'telling us her name was Vellanserga, and
inviting us to go with her into the cathedral. I refused; but the
girl went, and was never heard of again.'
   I knew that if the same invitation had been offered to me, I too
would have accepted; and it showed how completely the Anchorite's
movements were in subjection to my Uncle's service, that he had not
done so.
   Seeing that I was engrossed in meditation on his tale, the
Anchorite withdrew.
   Storm is in the air, but distant. Does it echo, or threaten? Is
the air weighted by the melancholy of a tempest subsiding, or the
anxious hush that precedes its first assault?
   On the sea floats a head in profile, of heroic traits, a collar
of violets encircling the severed neck. The flaxen hair, once
looped-up, is now spread upon a watery surface, and tilted by
recurring small waves. Some distant storm, surely, tore this head
from a ship's prow; and the wood still bleeds, oozing a purple growth.
   The salty taste of blood, I mused, comes from the sea, which
being without colour, reflects a tint from the air above while turning
its red globes into sea-anemones; but blood has kept these as a dye.
   Here is the end of the land and the beginning of a country under
the sea; an impalpable region stretches over the last of the earth and
extends a long way under water. It is said that our starvation is
their plenty; that in time of war here, down there reigns the deepest
peace.
   In a douce air above stones and soil, one is not alone; mist is
blown out towards a silvered horizon, nothing perishes. Sometimes
there is a thickening, and a growing menace.
   Round coastal rocks flows a true water, the authentic Atlantide.
It is not the peacock that divides two continents, shrill-voiced but
never terrible; nor that narrow and more deceptive iris strait; nor
yet the electric blue sweeping from Teneriffe to Tory, though a swish
from the tail of the same dragon.
   Under granite the saints lie buried; here a monument measured to
human form still stands, there a tree takes shape from the bones
beneath, an honourable vessel. In yet earlier rock there pulses an
ancient sensual life, but the saints must be roused up first. Their
diadems are bright with Sunday flowers, already they lift head and
shoulders from their covering slabs. When they come alive and walk
their own realm, the kingdom of vegetation, then blood of beasts must
warm the older stones and power will wake from a deeper cave.
# 29
<387 TEXT K13>
=3
   Hardly noticed by Vicky in her grief and her expectant
motherhood, the political scene in Prussia had greatly changed. It
was only after the birth of her second son in August, that she resumed
her old interests.
   Fritz had shielded her from worry in the last weeks of her
pregnancy, but now with her second son thriving, delighted with this
strong and perfect child, Vicky's vitality renewed itself.
   Fritz, she observed, looked harrassed. He seemed unwilling to
talk about current events, but her direct questions broke through his
reserve.
   It appeared that Roon, the only conservative in the otherwise
liberal Ministry, had in accordance with the King's demand, drawn up
plans for an army reform, which the King approved, but the Diet did
not; whereupon the King dissolved the Diet, only to have the newly
elected one also vote against the reform. Furious, by this time, the
King dissolved the second Diet; and the third, although the majority
of its members were still in opposition to the King, suggested a
reasonable compromise.
   In this crisis, Fritz who was at his wit's end, advised
acceptance, and the King then turned upon him, and declared that
sooner than step down from the stand he had taken, he would abdicate.
   The abdication document was already drawn up, though not yet
signed.
   Vicky listened aghast. They had never, she realised been more in
need of the Prince Consort's advice.
   "The opinion in the country," Fritz said bitterly, "is that I
am urging my father to abdicate, in order that I may step into his
shoes."
   "What nonsense, oh, what nonsense!" Vicky cried.
   "It seems anything but nonsense to our enemies, my dearest."
   "But who could want to reign under such conditions? How could
you make a success of kingship knowing your father was bitterly
resentful and hurt?"
   "Not all sons love their fathers, Vicky."
   "But you do, don't you?"
   "Yes; though not as you loved yours. I doubt though, if our
opponents credit me with filial affection."
   "What will you do?"
   "Refuse the crown if it is offered to me. Apart altogether from
my father's feelings, if I accepted it, it might well start a civil
war. If the worst comes to the worst, and the abdication paper is
signed, I shall stand down in favour of Willy."
   "Which," Vicky said, "would mean a Regency for many years,
and heaven only knows who would be appointed Regent. There must
be some alternative."
   "The present Diet is trying to find a solution," Fritz told
her. "I have said that I will offer no further suggestions, for any
advice of mine is suspect. Roon has sent for his friend, Otto von
Bismarck, hoping that he may find some way to end the deadlock."
   "Bismarck? Oh yes, of course, the Paris ambassador." Vicky
knitted her brows, "Bertie of all people was talking about him, some
time ago. He said he had heard that this man was the hope of the
conservatives; that he was excessively able and ambitious. Bertie, I
gathered, thought he might be a very sharp thorn to us."
   "Odd to think of Bertie being so well-informed," Fritz
commented.
   Feeling rather proud of her brother, Vicky agreed. Bertie was
much more intelligent than most people supposed. Poor, darling Papa
had under-rated him, which was natural, as they were so very different
from one another.
   Presently, she said:
   "If it were not that we should be throwing poor little Willy to
the wolves, and depriving him of his father and mother- for you may
be sure that we should have no say in his upbringing- I should be
glad to go into exile. England would not be that for me, of course.
It is you... would it be grievously hard on you?"
   "I can imagine worse fates, and unless my father is pacified,
that is what it will come to. Willy would not be the first boy king
in history, and by the time he was old enough to rule, conditions
might have altered for the better. My darling, rather than risk a
civil war, we should have to give him up."
   "Prussia might become a republic," Vicky hazarded. "The
other States might be co-operative."
   "That I cannot believe. As a whole, Germans are imperial
minded. No, they would insist on a king, if only a puppet king."
   "Is there nothing we can do, Fritz?"
   "Nothing but wait. I have no influence over my father, and my
poor mother is in despair. Bismarck is expected to arrive in Berlin
tomorrow, and my father has agreed to receive him."
   Vicky was silent, unable, though it shamed her, to resist weaving
a roseate dream. What joy it would be to return to England with
Fritz, and to forget these few bitter years as though they had never
been. Even if they had to leave poor little Willy in the hands of
those in authority here, they would have their two younger children,
and when everything had settled down, it might not be an absolute
parting from their firstborn. Victoria would use all her considerable
influence to prevent that.
   It was a dream soon to be dispelled. The next day the King tore
up the abdication document. Bismarck promised him that given
authority, he would get through the army reform, whatever the
disposition of the Diet; whereupon the King conferred upon him the
title and position of Minister President and Foreign Minister of
Prussia.
   Hearing this, Fritz and Vicky scarcely knew whether to be
relieved or otherwise. At least the immediate crisis had been
bypassed, and the King, worn out with the struggle was content to
leave the affairs of state in the hands of his new adviser.
   Queen Augusta, who had hitherto seen little of Bismarck, but who
within twenty-four hours disliked him intensely, wept disconsolate
tears. Her influence over the King had never been great, but now it
was reduced to nil. The new President Minister bluntly announced that
he would not tolerate petticoat government, and in this he included
the young Crown Princess as much as the Queen.
   He would serve the King, Bismarck said, but him alone, and he had
no doubt but that he could serve him to his satisfaction. He swore
that if the King relied on him, he would finally be not only King of
Prussia but Emperor of a United Germany.
   Soon it was realised that the new Minister had an enormous
following and with the King's backing, his authority was paramount.
Within weeks, a new Diet, composed of those who slavishly believed in
him, was completely under his sway.
   Fritz was treated as a weakling enemy. Vicky as his evil genius.
Unpopular before Bismarck came into power, she was now hated. This
hatred took the form of ignoring her whenever it was possible, and had
she not been the Princess Royal of Great Britain, and her mother a
powerful queen, she and Fritz might, she thought, well have been
banished from the country.
   Vicky often wondered that she did not meet with an untimely end.
There were more ways than one of getting rid of an intransigent
princess.
   But it was not Bismarck's policy to so inflame Britain that he
had a war on his hands. It was far wiser to treat Vicky as an
ignorant, hot-headed girl, and while appearing to tolerate Fritz, to
estrange the King from him by various subtle means.
   Finally, however, Fritz was forced into open conflict with his
father.
   Bismarck, though the Diet was now subservient to him, was
constantly criticised by the more liberal newspapers, and he
retaliated by passing an emergency decree, which effectually muzzled
the Press.
   Now, no political opinion could be newspaper circulated without
the approval of the Minister President; free speech was annihilated.
On the other hand, any article in praise of him and his government
was given extravagant publicity.
   Scurrilous attacks were made on Vicky. Nothing was too bad, or
too personally insulting to be written about her. There were now no
objections raised to her visiting England as often as she chose; the
hope was openly expressed that she would never return to Prussia.
   Fritz, whose opinions and principles were outraged, and who was
furiously indignant on Vicky's behalf, came out into the open, and
when at an official reception at Dantzig he was asked outright by the
burgomaster if he had had any hand in bringing about the Press
Ordinance, he replied that he had not. He had, he said, been absent
from Berlin at the time, and had had no part in the councils which had
led up to it. His short speech which followed, showed clearly where
his sympathies lay.
   The burgomaster's question had come as no surprise to him; he had
been warned before the reception that he would be challenged, and
Vicky, who was with him, had implored him to make his position plain.
   They had their own following, she argued, though it might be a
minority following, and Fritz owed it to them to show that he was not
involved in this disgraceful measure.
   Within hours the storm broke about their heads. The King
threatened to cast Fritz off altogether. The Queen Augusta wrote him
an hysterical letter, in which she confusedly sympathised with him,
reproached him, and laid all the blame on Vicky who was proving
herself no friend to her adopted country.
   "I am not, I suppose," Vicky said sadly. "Not to this new
Prussia, which is changed and demoralised. You would be better
without me. Even some of your real, true friends doubt me; they think
you have wedded not only me, but my country; and they would rather put
up with this devilish Bismarck than run the danger- they think it is
a danger- of being Anglicised. I don't blame them in the least. I
know how repellent it is to me to be Prussianised. I should never
have loved you, or wanted to marry you, had that been your
attitude."
   "Thank God, it never was," Fritz said. "All I hoped was that
you would bring the fresh air of your country, to blow upon the
cobwebs in mine."
   "I haven't sufficient breath for that," and Vicky smiled
wryly. "Oh darling- I feel so hopeless. Sometimes I am afraid they
will contrive to separate us, dearly though we love one another."
   To think that, was to believe in the reality of a nightmare
dream, Fritz chided her, and added:
   "But I only wish you could get away from her- you and the
children as well- until the worst storm blows over."
   "We both ought to get away Fritz- not permanently, but for a
respite. I, in that way, am strangely free for the first time since I
came to live here, and with the King so opposed to you and your views,
you can scarcely be more than a figure-head in Prussia. Moreover, the
hateful Bismarck will see that you are not."
   "So it seems," agreed Fritz with a shrug.
   "Why not give the King and the country time to tire of him?"
Vicky urged. "What good can you do, as things are? Mamma, poor
darling, has sufficiently roused herself from her grief to be
concerned for us. She has a proposition in mind, though it greatly
depends upon what she thinks of Alix when she at last meets her. If
possible she will bring about that marriage, because Papa so much
wished it, though Bertie seems more or less indifferent. Poor boy, he
has been too miserable to think about his future."
   The Queen, Fritz opined, was certain to approve of the Princess
Alexandra, whose inherent gentleness would be an enormous asset to
her.
   "Well, we shall see," Vicky said. "The meeting at Laeken
has been arranged, and then Mamma has asked if we could take charge of
Bertie for a while."
   "Take charge of him? In Berlin? He would scarcely enjoy
himself here just now."
   "Mamma knows that. I am sure she would not advocate it.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 22
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   She glanced once more at the Colonel. He showed no signs of
being interested in what was going on before his eyes, and the shoe
remained, untouched, at his feet.
   It occurred to her briefly (two more prisoners were examined) how
odd it was that of all the people in the convoy who had been held up
by this 'Colonel' and his assistant, she and Benvenuto were the
only ones who knew that they could not be what they seemed. And did
Benvenuto know?
   It also seemed to her that the soldier was taking a long time
reaching Benvenuto, but she did not trust her senses. It must be no
time at all, she said.
   Then she heard the soldier shout: ~'Fall out! ~Get back in the
trucks!' and the Colonel add, in their language, ~'And don't waste
any time about it!' and though it seemed impossible to her that she
should have escaped, she could not think of any other possible
explanation for the command. As they started shuffling back towards
the truck she tried to keep walking evenly, in spite of the fact that
one foot was now higher than the other.
   No one moved very fast. She saw Benvenuto get into the truck
among the first without looking either right or left; she saw the
soldier help one of the wounded up over the tail-gate; she saw the
Colonel start to hurry the line along, pushing each man along by the
shoulders; and when she was a few prisoners away from boarding the
truck herself, she saw the Colonel step on her shoe.
   At first it seemed that he would not even notice his discomfort
in his impatience to get on to the next truck. But obviously the heel
of the shoe annoyed him and he got the soldier to point his flashlight
down at the offending object. The soldier picked it up and held it in
his hand, but the Colonel took it from him and methodically wiped the
mud from it so that its red leather shone. Clara meanwhile had passed
him and was in the truck, manoeuvring to be as close to Benvenuto as
possible. When she turned round she could see the shoe in the
Colonel's hand. It looked very small and the Colonel's hand looked
very large.
   'What a pretty shoe,' Lescaut said. 'What a very pretty
shoe.'
THREE
Liberation
=1
   UNTIL the very moment when she was captured Clara had
believed in her heart of hearts that she and Benvenuto would escape.
She did not know how, but she was convinced that it would be so. In
those few hours from noon to midnight of that August day that had been
so filled with the Unusual, she had never ceased to believe in the
Usual, in the day-to-day life she had enjoyed for many years. Today
she was with Benvenuto; tomorrow she would be with Benvenuto. Had it
not always been so? Would it not always be so?
   The more you love, the more you think it likely that the world
must love too. It takes stubborn facts to dislodge belief or habit.
Until the moment, then, that Manon Lescaut picked up the shoe, Clara
was convinced against all appearances that she and Benvenuto must be
saved: because they loved each other, if for no other reason.
   Another thing she had taken for granted was that Benvenuto also
had faith in their escape, for if he hadn't why had he undertaken to
fly with her? In fact, Clara had believed that it was she who
tended to be more realistic in appraising their chances, and Benvenuto
who had been swayed by the o'erweaning optimism of his nature.
   But when their capture was certain, she saw that Benvenuto had
never believed that they would escape. He made this perfectly plain
by his reactions.
   Far from being more frightened than before, his capture plainly
relieved his mind of whatever doubts he may have had. He followed and
obeyed Manon Lescaut as though he was absolutely certain that the
Rumanian knew what he was doing, why he was doing it; and even as
though he thought that the Rumanian probably knew better than he,
Benvenuto, did, what was good and suitable for him.
   Clara was used to following his lead, and within minutes she,
too, began to feel a certain relief that she had been captured. The
moment she realized that she and Benvenuto would not escape, she saw
that everything that had happened in the past twelve hours had
happened just as it had been ordained; and in the same way everything
that would happen to them now would happen as it was ordained. And if
this was so, there was no need to plan anything or to feel any fear.
   Several times, during the hour that followed their capture, when
they were being driven through the back roads in the mountains in a
jeep the Rumanian had commandeered, she looked to Benvenuto to see if
he thought the same way; and whenever she looked, she saw her own
feelings confirmed. Benvenuto's face was deprived of all expression.
It had done away both with its past and with its future; it neither
regretted nor expected. From time to time his large and strong hand
passed under her blanket to meet hers and lie there on her lap; and
even in this he showed neither pleasure nor pain. His hand merely
indicated that he was there next to her and that they were together.
She derived a great strength from this and she and Benvenuto were
able to sustain everything the Rumanian said and did in silence.
   The Rumanian was not cruel, except with his words, and his words
all seemed to deal with someone called the Capita?2n and with times
that had gone by and had no particular relevance at the moment.
Indeed, she could not imagine why he bothered to mention half the
things he mentioned: did he think Benvenuto had forgotten them? or
would deny them? But now that all those things were done, now that
they were over with, what could recalling them serve?
   They were taken to a cafe?2 in the mountains and told to sit
down on two chairs by the wall, on either side of one of those
football games which are so common, where all the players are on
handles and you make goals by twisting the handles and making the
players kick a ping-pong ball into the goal. Benvenuto sat down on
the side of the red team and she sat down on the side of the white.
   The Rumanian introduced her to a man called 'Major Vincent'
and then introduced Benvenuto. They did not get up from their chairs,
nor did the Major, whom she saw as a small, fat, pink man, seek to
shake their hands. She presumed that they were going to be handed
over into his charge, and she was surprised to find that she did not
care. Then a glance at Benvenuto told her that he too did not care.
It was unimportant in whose hands they were; all would happen as it
had been ordained.
2
   IT WAS possible for Major Vincent to misjudge the emotions
of Benvenuto and Clara as he did because from his point of view,
knowing what he knew of their fates, there was very little in their
present appearance to indicate anything else but the most abject fear
and humiliation.
   As he studied them in the fullness of his self-satisfaction,
nothing suggested that the pale, weary, shrunken, wizened old man in
his tattered rags was the same proud Capita?2n who had guided the
destiny of his country for twenty years. In Bassanio's patched and
threadbare uniform Benvenuto looked like an ordinary fugitive from
justice caught in an absolutely futile disguise. Gone was the
habitual arrogance of his expression, gone the proud thrust of his
jaw, the many gestures of the hands; extinct the brilliance and fire
of his eyes. Nor was it possible to see in her an Emperor's mistress,
a pampered Pompadour, as the Major had always imagined her. She
looked- the expression caused the Major a smile- like a wife, a
sort of faithful adjunct, a mute copy of her master. She sat in a
slouch with one fine shoe on one delicate foot, in a dress spattered
and stiff with mud: to the Major her cropped hair and thin breasts,
her pale and drawn face and her sleepless-strained eyes brought to
mind nothing more than submissiveness and servility.
   When the Rumanian brought them in, Major Vincent decided that
they were both in the last stages of fear and exhaustion and that he
would have no trouble with them.
   Benvenuto and Clara were not the first prisoners he had taken,
nor would they be the first he would execute. Most of his other
prisoners had behaved in a certain way, and he was confident Benvenuto
and Clara would behave in the same way.
   What he read as fear in their faces he ascribed to the
overwhelming depression of being taken when they thought they would
be free. He thought of Benvenuto as being in the same position as
that prisoner of the Spanish Cardinal during the Inquisition. One
night the Cardinal left the prisoner's door unlocked and through
endless dangers and mounting fear the prisoner made his way to the
very outer wall of the citadel- only to find the Cardinal waiting for
him there when he had scaled that wall. To be a few steps short of
achieving one's aims, Major Vincent thought, was as terrible a fate as
could befall a man.
   Like that Cardinal, the Major had his methods with prisoners, and
he believed them to be the most modern and most efficient methods, and
relatively without cruelty. What he wanted from the Capita?2n before
he killed him was to see him broken down into absolute zero; he wanted
him to deny ever having been a human being; he wanted him to unthink
every thought he had ever had. If he could succeed in this, he would
have accomplished two desirable aims. First, his own thoughts would
rule supreme and he would feel, as he had felt before, that state of
semi-exaltation in which his own ideas seemed to supersede all others
and have free play with the realities of the world. In that state
there were no cars that did not function, no stomachs with special
requirements and no imperfections of communication. Second, it would
be much easier to kill his prisoner once he had been reduced to
absolute zero. Somehow, he had found, the more afraid a man was, the
easier it was to kill him.
   The Major had his methods for achieving these aims: they had
always succeeded in the past. 'The mind is a simple thing,' he
thought. 'It is made to feel and understand one thing at a time, so
that you can make it swing like a pendulum. You can make doubt play
with hope, speculation with logic. Ultimately the only relief is in
not caring at all. The mind will take death with ease then, for life
is a burden and a torment and death is a liberation.'
   What the Major did not understand was that Benvenuto and Clara
had reached this point without him. It was the Major's odd vanity to
think that he could impose this on two human beings. In reality, they
were making it necessary for him to follow that path.
   But Major Vincent also had his moments of doubt. It was
impossible, for instance, to calculate what effect the girl would have
on his plans. What ought he to do with her? Wouldn't it be
considered unnecessarily cruel to kill the girl as well? And how
could he reduce her to zero when obviously all her concerns were with
the Capita?2n and she barely thought of herself at all?
   For the moment he sidestepped the thought. I will decide what to
do with her later, he imagined, not thinking that Clara would have
anything to say in his decision.
# 222
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   Yet even this did not yet trouble me very much. The thought
that, whatever my reception, I would see Honor again was, in the
frenzy of need and desire which had now come upon me, enough. I was
perhaps moreover a little the dupe of that illusion of lovers that the
beloved object must, somehow, respond, that an extremity of love
not only merits but compels some return. I expected nothing very
much, I certainly expected nothing precise, but the future was
sufficiently open, sufficiently obscure, to receive the now so fierce
onward rush of my purpose. I had to see her and that was all.
   What had more occupied my mind, as the train drew near to
Cambridge, was wonderment at the nature and genesis of this love.
When had I begun, unbeknown to myself, to love Honor Klein? Was it
when I threw her to the cellar floor? Or when I saw her cut the
napkins in two with the Samurai sword? Or at some earlier time,
perhaps at that strange moment when I had seen her dusty, booted and
spurred, confront the golden potentates who were my oppressors? Or
even, most prophetically, when I had glimpsed the curving seam of her
stocking in the flaring orange lights at Hyde Park Corner? It was
hard to say, and the harder because of the peculiar nature of this
love. When I thought how peculiar it was it struck me as marvellous
that I had nevertheless such a deep certainty that it was love. I
seemed to have passed from dislike to love without experiencing any
intermediate stage. There had been no moment when I reassessed her
character, noticed new qualities, or passed less harsh judgements on
the old ones: which seemed to imply that I now loved her for the same
things for which I had previously disliked her heartily; if indeed I
had ever disliked her. None of this, on the other hand, made me doubt
that now I loved her. Yet it was in truth a monstrous love such as I
had never experienced before, a love out of such depths of self as
monsters live in. A love devoid of tenderness and humour, a love
practically devoid of personality.
   It was strange too how little this passion which involved, so it
seemed, a subjection of my whole being had to do in any simple or
comprehensible sense with the flesh. It had to do with it, as my
blood at every moment told me, but so darkly. I preserved the
illusion of never having touched her. I had knocked her down but I
had never held her hand; and at the idea of holding her hand I
practically felt faint. How very different was this from my old love
for Antonia, so warm and radiant with golden human dignity, and from
my love for Georgie, so tender and sensuous and gay. Yet, too, how
flimsy these other attachments seemed by comparison. The power that
held me now was like nothing I had ever known: and the image returned
to me of the terrible figure of Love as pictured by Dante. El
m'ha percosso in terra e stammi sopra.
   It occurred to me later as remarkable and somehow splendid that
one thing which I never envisaged in these early moments was that my
condition was in any way bogus or unreal. Wherever it might lead, it
was sufficiently what it seemed and had utterly to do with me: I would
not, I could not, attempt to disown it or explain it away. If it was
grotesque it was a grotesqueness which was of my own substance and to
which, beyond any area of possible explanation, I laid an absolute
claim. I had no idea what I would do when I saw Honor. It seemed
quite likely that I would simply collapse speechless at her feet.
Nothing of this mattered. I was doing what I had to do and my
actions were, with a richness, my own.
   I glided, motley and all, into the great checkered picture of
King's Parade. Beyond the slim street lamps the great crested form of
King's chapel rose towards the moon, its pinnacles touched to a pallid
blue against the starry distance beyond. The moon-shadow of the
Senate House lay with a thicker obscurity across the grass until
dispelled by the lamplight. The majesty, the familiarity, of these
buildings seemed to add solemnity to my rite, as when old patriarchs
come to grace a marriage. I felt by now extremely sick again and
practically suffocated with excitement and with something which I
supposed must be desire. I turned into the street where Honor Klein
lived.
   I checked the numbers and could see ahead the house which must be
hers. There was a single light on upstairs. The sight of that light
made my heart increase its pace so hideously that I had to slow down
and then to stop and hold on to a lamp-post while I tried to breathe
evenly and quietly. I wondered if I had better wait a while and
attempt, not to calm myself which was impossible, but simply to
organize my breathing so as to be sure not to swoon. I stood for a
few minutes and breathed steadily. I decided that I must wait no
longer in case Honor should take it into her head to go to bed. I
knew she could hardly be in bed at this hour, and pictured the
upstairs room as a study. Then I pictured her there sitting at a desk
surrounded by books. Then I pictured myself beside her. I advanced
to the door and leaned against the wall.
   There was a single bell. I had not until that moment envisaged
the possibility that she might have lodgers. In any case there was
only one bell and I pressed it. I heard no sound within and after a
moment I pressed the bell again. Still no sound. I stepped back and
looked up at the lit curtained window. I returned to the door and
pushed it gently, but it was locked. I peered through the letter box.
The hall was in darkness and there was no sound of approaching feet.
I held the letter box open and pressed the bell again. I decided
that the bell must be out of order and I wondered what to do next. I
might either call out, or bang on the door, or throw stones at the
window. I stood meditating on these various courses for a little
while, and they all seemed insuperably difficult. I was uncertain
whether I could control my voice sufficiently to produce the right
sort of cry, and the other methods were too brusque. In any case I
did not relish a head thrust from a window, a confused encounter at a
street doorway. What I really wanted was to slink quietly into some
room and find myself at once in Honor's presence.
   It then occurred to me that just this was precisely what I might
be able to manage. I noticed a little gate at the side of the house
which doubtless led into the garden. I tried it and it was open. I
passed down a narrow passageway of mossy bricks which divided the
houses and found myself in a small garden. I stepped back a little.
Above the black shape of a drooping tree the high moon revealed the
back of the house, which was in darkness. French windows of a lower
room gave on to the garden. I tiptoed back across the grass and put
my hand against the windows. Here I had to pause again to subdue a
wave of sheer panic. My breathing, even my heart-beat, must I felt
already be audible through the house like the panting of an engine. I
tried the doors, got my finger into a crack and pushed them sharply
away from me. They gave; I was not sure whether they were unlatched
anyway or whether my violent push had broken some weak fastening. I
opened them wide with both hands.
   A dark room gaped before me, very faintly illuminated by the
remains of an open fire. By now I scarcely knew what I was doing. My
movements took on the quality of a dream. Things melted before me. I
crossed the room and opened a door whose white surface I saw
glimmering in the darkness. I came out into the hall. A little light
from the street lamp in front, coming through the open door of one of
the front rooms, showed me the stairs. I began to mount the stairs,
leaning hard on the banisters and stepping softly. Once on the upper
landing I could see the line of light under the door of Honor's room.
I hesitated only a moment.
   I advanced to the door and knocked. After so much breathless
silence the sound of the knock seemed thunderous. I let it die away
and then as there was no reply to it I opened the door. For a moment
the light dazzled me.
   I saw opposite to me a large double divan bed. The room was
brightly lit. Sitting up in this bed and staring straight at me was
Honor. She was sitting sideways with the sheet over her legs.
Upwards she was as tawny and as naked as a ship's figurehead. I took
in her pointed breasts, her black shaggy head of hair, her face stiff
and expressionless as carved wood. She was not alone. Beside the bed
a naked man was hastily engaged in pulling on a dressing-gown. It was
immediately and indubitably apparent that I had interrupted a scene of
lovers. The man was Palmer.
   I closed the door and walked back down the stairs.
Twenty
   I TURNED a light on in the hall, finding the switch
instinctively, and went back into the room through which I had come.
I turned the switch here and various lamps came on. I vaguely took
in a white book-lined room with chintz armchairs. I went over and
closed the french windows which were hanging ajar. It appeared that I
had broken the fastening after all. I pulled the curtains which were
also chintz. I turned back towards the fireplace. On a low table
before it stood a tray with two glasses, a decanter of whisky, and a
jug of water. I poured out some whisky, spilling a good deal of it on
the table. I drank it. I poured out some more, poked up the fire a
bit, and waited.
   Ever since the moment near Waterloo Bridge when I had come to
consciousness of my condition, I had felt like a man running towards a
curtain. Now that I had so suddenly and with such exceedingly
unexpected results passed through it I felt dazed and in great pain
but also curiously steady. I had entered the house like a thief. I
stood in it now like a conquering general. They would come, they
would have to come, to attend upon me.
   I felt this steadiness, this setting as it were of my feet
sturdily apart; yet with it I was in a confusion amounting to agony.
I had so rapaciously desired and so obtusely expected to find Honor
alone. The simple fact of her not being alone was a wrench almost
separately felt, even apart from the nightmarish significance of who
her companion was. From this there shivered through me a violence
of amazement not distinguishable from horror; and I felt as a physical
pain the shock of what I had done to them. How nai"vely had I
imagined that Honor must be free; I had even, it now occurred to me,
imagined that she must be a virgin: that I would be the first person
to discover her, that I would be her conqueror and her awakener.
Caught in the coils of such stupidity I could not yet even begin to
touch with my imagination the notion that she should have had her
brother as a lover.
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There is not much you can do with a mahogany wardrobe except put
your clothes in it. Save perhaps to the simple-minded, a
dressing-table and a gas-fire do not open up endless vistas of
amusement. I saw at a glance that the only possibility of diversion
lay in the bed itself, which stood in the middle of the room, hostile
and unruffled, as though convinced I would never have the courage to
use it.
   But then a thought struck me: the very fact that the room was so
uncompromisingly adjusted to lying down might make this easier to do
when the right moment came. But when was it coming? How would one
recognise it?
   By dismissing the porter with a florin, I brought that moment a
step nearer.
   For the time being, however, it seemed essential to distract
Priscilla's attention from such matters, though I can't think why. I
knew that she was not averse in principle to the loss of that
closely-guarded ladylike secret which has inspired respect in so many
poets, especially those of the old-fashioned type. I speak of her
virginity. Though not a poet, I had respected it myself. But that
does not mean that we weren't both quite anxious to have it out of the
way. It had been playing the part of a fifth parent for far too long,
getting between us whenever we began to slip from sofa to hearthrug,
raising a finger if we reached the feverish point of asking a favour
from it. The time had arrived to get rid of it. Just as our parents
had faded into slightly ridiculous memories gesturing in the
background, so too must virginity give way before the pressures of a
legal marriage.
   But Priscilla, who can be very matter-of-fact at times, was
plainly waiting for me to propose some suitable way of spending the
evening. Why should an item like marriage affect one's orderly mode
of existence? And she was right. A prompt seduction on my part would
land us with the necessity to rise, bathe and dress, chat falsely
about this and that, and emerge into the rest of the evening as though
nothing had happened. As it was, we had a ready-made climax to look
forward to, and it was merely a question of shaping the hours ahead
with tact and artistry. So I suggested we dine.
   But Priscilla wasn't hungry. She had eaten too much of the
smoked salmon at the reception.
   I proposed we visit a few of the places we had known together,
have a few drinks, perhaps dance.
   Dancing, she claimed, would exhaust her utterly. Did I want
that?
   No, I didn't.
   And as for the drinks, she had no wish to be left tossing
restlessly, while I snored my way into a hangover. Did I snore by the
way?
   No, I didn't. But I realised my invention was beginning to
slacken. Now that the tensions of courtship were over, was Priscilla
always going to be so difficult to entertain?
   I next wondered if she would like to bear down on Shaftesbury
Avenue and see a play. Priscilla fingered the knob on the bed and
looked shocked. She thought there was something immoral about going
to the theatre on what was, after all, the only wedding night she was
likely to have for some time.
   It was my turn to look shocked. When, did she suppose, would the
subsequent one take place? If that was her wish, I was prepared to
retire at once and leave the way clear for my successor. No doubt he
was already skulking in the precincts. Priscilla laughed a little.
   At this point I must put down, within inverted commas, the words
Priscilla next chose to use. Luckily I am not introducing her by one
of her more stupid remarks.
   'How long will it take you to realise,' she said, 'that the
only thing I want to do this evening is what you keep on trying to put
off in such a nasty way?'
   I could have no doubt of what she meant. If we had not been
married, this would have qualified as an indecent proposal. I
experienced a pang of regret that it was Priscilla and not I who had
given voice to the thought. But the regret was quickly overwhelmed by
the stunning knowledge that this, suddenly, was just the right room,
just the right hour, for what we had in mind. The curtains shivered
at the window in a slight breeze. The evening sunlight glowed like
skin on the stuccoed houses opposite. The room was already darkening,
and Priscilla was standing by the bed, one half of her face in shadow,
the other gold with a faint reflection of the sun. A gleam caught the
edge of her lip, the corner of her eye. I could not believe I had
married this quiet breathing creature.
   'Well,' I said slowly, 'all right.'
   I thought afterwards it was an inadequate reply, but I had no
time now to see it for what it was. Nor, evidently, had Priscilla.
She heaved an enormous sigh, and I thought I saw a tear glimmering
over her eyelash. Her mouth opened slightly to my kiss and moved
beneath it. And that kiss grew with a leap into a mammoth sensation
of the sort our former love-making had always been obliged to
restrain. My hand swam through her hair and pushed her face into the
kiss. Her eyelids dropped under the weight of it, her arms came up
under my shoulders and closed over them, and a low aching cry rose in
her throat. I had never heard anything like it.
   The kiss broke, as kisses do. But this was really the first
ever, because it was no longer an end in itself. We no longer had to
return to embarrassed reality, smooth down our clothes, wipe off
smudged lipstick and suggest putting on another record. It was safe
to dance on the edge of the precipice. We were licensed to jump.
   I have forgotten no detail of the scene that followed: Priscilla
behaved unforgettably. With the assurance of that kiss still between
us, she drew the curtains so that the fading day was narrowed to a
slot of deep amber light, then stood on the opposite side of the bed,
her eyes stark and unpretending and fixed on mine, and began
unbuttoning her blouse.
   'I am beginning to take off my clothes,' she said distinctly.
'You are not yet used to this sort of thing.'
   I watched her with care. She might have been giving a cool
demonstration to a class of novitiates. Her movements were precise,
practised and unemotional. I fumbled hopelessly with my tie in a
blurred imitation of her neat and methodical unclothing. She slipped
out of her blouse, unzipped and dropped her skirt, and stepped out of
it as though alighting from a bus. School had taught me that this was
the sort of thing men were normally privileged to watch only through
keyholes. But here I was, my senses involved to the point of
suffocation in the rustling magic of a woman's undressing, and the
fact that impressed me most was the purity of it: the simplicity of
soft white materials, almost as insubstantial as light, which covered
the sweet body in its own shape and slipped off it as quietly as a
shadow covering the sun and left the dark skin beneath. With hair
flopping over her shoulders, Priscilla squatted like an animal and,
thrusting out first one leg and then the other, ran her stockings
smoothly down and pulled them over her ankles. With every garment she
removed, her body appeared to pass more duskily into the shadows until
she stood in the nude, almost negligent in her attitude, not moving
any more, as natural as a tree that has shed its leaves, as casual as
a secretary waiting to take a letter.
   'That's what it's like,' said Priscilla. 'You'd better get
rid of any other ideas you might have had.'
   Then like a child she climbed clumsily into bed and sat up
shivering with the blankets round her shoulders. I put the coins from
my pocket on the mantelshelf.
   'Do you always do that?' she enquired.
   'Yes,' I said. 'Otherwise, you see, it pulls the pockets of
one's trousers out of shape.'
   'I do see that,' said Priscilla.
   She seemed interested, so I explained a few more masculine habits
which she might not have encountered. I informed her about braces: to
save trouble in the morning, one should remove them from one's suit
the night before and lay them out ready to be buttoned to another pair
of trousers for the new day. As my reason for rejecting suspenders, I
said that I had been told by doctors that they were apt to bring up
varicose veins on the legs. Priscilla uttered a groan.
   'Let me see your legs,' she said.
   I showed her one. She pronounced it satisfactory. Then I
noticed that she was not looking at my leg at all. I climbed hastily
into bed.
   'But I like it,' she said.
5
   PERHAPS we had read too few books. I once knew a man who
took a pride in practising on unsuspecting ladies the advice put
forward by authors of handbooks in respect of trial blandishments,
eccentric positions and so forth. If he did not care for the result,
he addressed witty letters of criticism to the publishers. He was a
wise fellow, and I had been wrong to question his morals. Perhaps, on
the other hand, we had expected too much from an activity which is,
after all, no more than a convenient method devised by nature for
reproducing the species. Anyway, whatever lay behind it, it was all a
ghastly flop.
   To begin with, as we lay side by side like effigies, Priscilla
seemed to have put the whole business out of her mind. She suddenly
began to talk about bicycles, of all ridiculous things.
   'When I was a girl,' she said chattily, 'I used to ride a
bicycle.'
   'Oh, really?'
   'Yes, and I was quite a horsewoman in my way too.'
   We had always been very much involved in the present during the
old days before the wedding, so this was something I had never
suspected about Priscilla. It was quite interesting. On the other
hand, I could have wished for a more suitable moment to digest such
confidences. My sense of fitness began to tussle with my natural
inclination to listen sympathetically to anything Priscilla cared to
say.
   'So it wouldn't be what you might think,' said Priscilla.
   'Life never is,' I suggested, in a philosophical tone.
   'It would probably be just the strain of gymkhana jumping and
cycling madly all over the place. It can happen.
   'Are you thinking of taking up riding again?' I asked.
   'No,' said Priscilla.
   I did not reply. There was a decent interval of silence. Then,
rather in a rush, activity took place.
   I hardly like to describe it.
   The bed creaked protestingly. I had visions, not of love, but of
waiters dashing into the room with scandalised expressions. My mind
wandered. The sweat broke out all over us, so that in a trice we were
struggling through sticky intolerable tropics of our own making. My
hair itched and I couldn't scratch it. I ricked my back. Our bodies
jumped nervously away at the slightest touch. Wriggling like an eel,
Priscilla complained of being tickled and her hand, raised in
hysterical defence, caught me painfully in the eye. I pictured a free
fight such as one sees in films and thought how much more manly it was
than this display of total incompetence. Indeed I felt, when for a
moment we paused and sank back on the damp pillows, that a fortnight
of debauchery could scarcely leave me more drained and feeble.
   I had put such agonising effort into the achievement of nothing.
I could feel the veins bulging in my head and my heart beating in
angry frustration.
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   In the bedrooms the children were preparing to sleep. In
turmoil and excitement probably, because of the strangeness, and being
packed together. What was Thomas doing? He liked to watch them; he
wanted children now; he might be undressing Bobbie.
   And Aunt Mary? She would be alone, as always. She would be
plaiting the iron hair in two stiff little pigtails, and when that was
done she would sit on the edge of the wide, lonely bed she had claimed
for herself, and she would rub her legs, and sigh, and she would pull
over her head the voluminous wincey nightgown with the tucks on the
bodice and the round collar up under her chin. And when at last she
lay down she would rise out of the bed in rigid humps, like a
mountain. She would not lie relaxed and peaceful, as though she were
resting, but iron hard, as though she were still fighting.
   Kate and Thomas came back along the hall, at ease and smiling.
Children on the point of going to bed, freshly washed, are at their
most lovable.
   "Hullo," said Thomas. "It's quiet. Where are the others?"
   "Sheila and Hugh are fixing the boat," said Esther. "Do you
think they can manage?"
   "What was wrong?"
   "What was wrong?" said Henry. "What do you think was wrong?
Bash, bash on the weatherboards all day! I'm tired of it! I told
him to fix it or take it away!"
   "And I told you it was to stay there! Even if it did bang!
What can the boy do about it?"
   Thomas slammed up the window. He climbed out on the verandah
roof, calling "Hugh!"
   The wind washed in a great gob through the house, sending the
curtains up to the ceiling.
   In a few minutes Thomas came back, grasped the sill, and looked
in.
   "Where are they? 2Goddammit, where are they?"
   Nobody answered. Then, ~"What do you mean?" said Kate.
   Thomas climbed in the window, catching his foot on the sill and
tumbling to the floor. He picked himself up in a frenzy, ran into the
blue bedroom, almost knocking Teresa down, hurled up the window there.
The stern mooring line of the little boat hung straight down into the
water. Of the boat there was no sign.
   Thomas rapidly hauled on the line. The end came up. It had been
cast off into the water.
   Thomas ran back to the landing, hung out the window there. The
mast and sail, which he had laid in the guttering were gone.
   He closed the window, turned to the old man, and said in a choked
voice, "I could kill you!"
   For a while it was Teresa they must cope with. She was
completely frantic. She would have attacked her father but that they
pulled her away, and Kate took her into the only free bedroom, where
for a long time she tried to calm her. Julie dragged off shoes and
stockings and searched in the kitchen for aspirin, because there was
none in the bathroom. The water in which she waded was cold, thick
and repulsive, and she shuddered all the time, but it was not only
with distaste of the water and the smell of it which was now
permeating the house. The clammy flood reached to her thighs, and she
could not keep her clothes dry. She had tucked her skirt up, but it
trailed in the water. Dusk was now thickening in the corners, and
outside the water slapped, not below, as when one was upstairs, but
round about, butting about one's ears, pummelling, menacing, with all
too little to keep it out, keep it from engulfing one.
   She found the aspirin at last, and climbed the stairs, to where
Thomas was waiting. He would not leave the old man. He would not let
him out of his sight again until they were all safe. He had wanted to
rush out, to swim to the boundary fence, at least, to see if he could
see them, but there was no sense in it. There was no doubt where they
had gone, downstream, to Sheila's home, which, as Henry pointed out,
aggrieved, wasn't far. There was no reason, he said, why they
shouldn't be perfectly all right.
   "But not sailing," Thomas had said.
   "They wouldn't need to sail," said Henry. "Just drift
there."
   "They have only one oar!"
   "They can use it to steer with."
   All of which was true, and no doubt Sheila and Hugh would be
perfectly safe. Unless they tried to come back. Which they would be
anxious to do, knowing their absence would cause alarm. At the
thought of it Thomas grew cold. Sheila probably knew nothing of
sailing, and Hugh thought he knew it all. There was one comfort, if
Bob Higgins were at home he would stop any such foolhardiness. But
was he at home? That was what Sheila had gone to find out.
   Thomas took the aspirin and gave it to Esther.
   "Julie, you're wet. You must change."
   "I'll find something. Thomas, its growing dark. Hadn't I
better bring up a primus and some tea?"
   "I should fetch them myself."
   "I can manage."
   "Bring some things on a tray. Then you must change."
   Julie went down again. The shadows were growing deeper, the
water sounded louder, both what was outside and what she was pushing
through. It made such a weight against her thighs, and the cold edge
of it was a knife on her body. Was it as high before, or do I imagine
it? She began to shudder again. Don't be silly. Think what you
need.
   The big tray was on the kitchen table. The primus, too, that
Aunt Mary had used. She shook it. It seemed full. But don't forget
the methylated spirit. Cups. A few will do. We can wash them in the
bathroom. The tea caddy. The biscuit barrel. Both of willow pattern
and as old and familiar as the milk jug, which would be in the
refrigerator.
   She could not open the refrigerator door. The weight of water
against its lower part was too much. Bother, I don't like tea without
milk. But I'd better leave it. To open the door would spoil some
food anyway.
   Thomas has matches. The lamps are upstairs. And the candles. I
don't know what else. Sugar, yes. Bread. And butter. A few knives.
We shan't starve overnight anyway. But can I carry it all?
   It's a good thing we have rainwater tanks. We do have something
to drink. Oh! Kettle and teapot.
   It's awfully hard to walk in the water. Am I tired? It wasn't
so hard before.
   She was lifting the tray before she noticed water washing across
the table. Now fear caught her. The flood was reaching towards her
waist, was covering the kitchen table. Water dripped from the tray as
she lifted it high. Her heart hammering, she began to wade from the
kitchen.
   "Thomas," she said, as he came down to meet her, and took the
heavy tray, "Thomas, the water is deeper. It's nearly up to my
waist."
   He looked at her, nodded.
   "Don't go down again, Julie. For anything."
   "Thomas, I didn't feel another wave."
   "No. But it's risen quickly, all the same. Now go and change.
I'll watch the water. Don't worry."
   Julie padded off to find some clothes, wondering, in spite of all
the worry and fear and the tiredness which was beginning to clog her,
whether she at all resembled Aunt Mary doing the same thing. Esther
gave her a frock and a warm dressing gown, and she changed in the
bathroom. When she came back Sophie and Esther were sitting
dejectedly, Henry was dozing, and Thomas peering into the dusk. But
of course he could see nothing.
   "Are the children asleep, Sophie?"
   "More or less. I've threatened them with everything. They're
settling down."
   "Oh, darling, don't cry." For Esther had pulled out her
handkerchief.
   "Cheer up," said Sophie. "But all the same, why didn't I
find me a husband at home in Wellington?"
   "Don't you use your handkerchief." Julie tried to joke a
little, and then Kate came back, looking as though she too were ready
to give way. It would be better if the children were here, thought
Thomas. They would pull themselves together.
   He came from the window and lit one of the lamps. The soft
yellow light flickered, then settled, pooling so that the corners of
the landing were still shadowed and remote, and peopled, suddenly, to
Julie, by the ghosts now awakened. First Grandmother, of course,
erect and certain, not fighting like Aunt Mary, but just- completely
sure of herself. From the tip of her feathered toque to the heels of
her speckless shoes she was groomed, polished, perfect and
unapproachable. And Uncle John who was killed in Flanders, and who
had become a legend and a symbol, someone for Grandmother to pin her
prayers on, so that one never knew exactly what kind of person he was,
and never would. His two brothers who had been a disappointment, and
so were never mentioned, skeletons in the family cupboard. But they
were there now, inhabiting the shadowy, shifting corners of the
landing. Did Esther notice them?
   "How is Teresa?" asked Thomas.
   "She's lying quietly now," said Kate. "I think she's all
right."
   "Poor girl," said Esther.
   "Hugh and Sheila are quite safe." Thomas spoke angrily, as
though trying to convince himself.
   Esther wept again. Kate bent over her and said "Weep now if
you must, Mother, but I ask you, please don't weep for him when
he's dead." She gestured towards her father. "If you do, I'll
remind you."
   Sophie looked uneasy, and Esther startled. Then she said calmly
"I'll probably die first."
   "No!" said Kate. Quite suddenly she crumpled into a heap on
the floor, laid her head against her mother's knee and cried as though
she would never stop.
   They were all utterly confounded. Then they became embarrassed,
as though this were something not meant for them to see. Only Esther,
after hesitating a moment, knew what to do. As though indeed Kate
were a child at her knee, Rose or Jane or Sally, she placed her hand
on Kate's hair. She did not say anything, but the gesture was all
that was needed, both to reassure Kate and to increase the feeling, in
Julie and Sophie and Thomas, that they were intruding. They were all
quite quiet and still. Only Henry's head nodded, his eyes were
closed, and his breathing loud and heavy, too loud in the quiet house,
where it was almost dark, and they did not know what the night hours
would bring.
   In Julie the peaks of this day could rouse no more emotion. She
was, she felt, wrung dry and flaccid, like a cleaning cloth. The
sight of Kate at her mother's knee, where not so long ago she herself
had ached to be, should have pierced her to the quick, and in truth
she found tears wetting her cheeks, but by now she was so exhausted
that she felt no jealousy and none of the hate she had resolved to
bear for her sister. Nor pity either. She was worn out, and felt
quite detached, and wished Kate had not broken down in front of them.
   Should I not feel for anyone? she wondered. Is that the only way
to live, the only way to avoid hurt, and make life bearable?
   But she knew that was not the answer. And she thought, perhaps
Mother is stronger than I realised. When she is needed she is there.
Perhaps it is my fault I never sat at her knee.
   I cannot lick the tears away. There are too many. Yet if I
bring out my handkerchief Thomas will notice. And I'm not crying,
really. I feel quite calm and cold. But so tired. So deadly tired.
   Sophie rose at last, and went to the table. She tried
ineffectually to light the primus, and Thomas came to help her.
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   "No, you're a humanist- so am I- I think. Words don't seem to
count where real feeling is concerned."
   "You'll only be able to judge of what's happened by the way it
turns out. And you must wait for that."
   "I'm so miserable- waiting ..." she confessed with trembling
lips.
   He swore roundly into his beard. "Listen Nan, our personal
desires can go haywire at times. If we all followed our desire what
kind of a world would we live in? Crime, disease, misery- no end to
it. There has to be law and order- and basically we make our own.
Try not to worry so much. Would you like me to have a word with
Stuart?"
   She started up wildly. "No. No. No. Keep out if this,
Doc. You promised ... I'll never forgive you if you speak of it to
anyone ..."
   "You can trust me. I wouldn't care to tackle a man on such an
issue. It would be interesting to hear what he is thinking right
now."
   "Oh, he'll be congratulating himself on a lucky escape," she
said bitterly. In spite of or because of the confession Nan was
feeling better. Doctor Benson had almost forced it from her, and she
knew that he was right, in spite of wilful desire to hug her
unhappiness to her bosom. His reasoning had given her another train
of thought.
   He went to the cupboard where he mixed them both a drink.
   "Drink this, Nan- and chin up. What can't be cured must be
endured. You'll survive."
   "A more unfeeling remark would be hard to find. Ugh! Whisky.
I hate the stuff. I don't know how you can drink it, Doc." She
drained the glass however, and handed it back to him, before
uncrossing her legs and going to him.
   "Thank you for everything. I think I get the general
impression. I'm still miserable though."
   They exchanged smiles. "It'll stop- in time. And if it
doesn't you'll learn to live with it."
   He sat down by the open window, while Nan went upstairs. She
thought of his words. He knew their truth as few could do. She
remembered the war, when he had his hand on the door of his home when
the bomb fell, taking with it all he held dear. His wife, his child,
and the child to be born- and he hadn't sought solace elsewhere.
He'd learned to live with pain.
   "I'd say he was happy- most of the time," she mused.
   Was that because, having made his choice- he stayed with it, as
he had advised her to do?
Chapter Nine
   NAN WOKE AT dawn prompted by a memory that eluded her at
first. She got up and dressed, and stood by her window, gazing out
across the garden to the road, and beyond that the beach. In the
early light the sands appeared lifeless, ugly, dark. The birds had
started their dawn chorus and it may have been this that had wakened
her.
   Her gaze swivelled towards the yacht, standing far out to sea
like a graceful gull riding the waves. Near at hand was Jimmy's small
rowing boat to which he had recently attached an outboard motor. She
could hear the chugging distinctly in the quietness.
   Two men were aboard ... Stuart and Jimmy. She watched them for
some time, seeing their absorbing interest in what they were doing.
Lobster would figure prominently on the menu at the yacht today. Yet
Stuart was after more than lobster fishing, Nan knew. He was too big
a man to waste time on anyone without sufficient reason.
   Doc had only judged from what she had told him, yet the other
side the story went so much deeper. There could be no sharp division
as one believed when one was young. Nan saw that now. The judging
must come from one's own experience, one's own conscience, and
understanding. What the world thought didn't matter.
   She saw one of the clumsy-looking lobster pots being hauled on
board and its contents taken out. This was repeated several times and
she tired of watching. She would have given much to know the
conversation between the two men as they worked.
   All day she worked, keeping thought at bay, trying to win back to
tranquility. The old house shone with the extra polishing for which
she found time. Mrs. B. was washing, hanging out the clothes on
the line in the back garden, revelling in the soft breeze that had
sprung up. Nan worked herself to a standstill. When night came she
was thankful to relax. Charles and Doctor Benson were both absent
from the house for it was always a busy time for them when so many
visitors flocked to the village. Their surgeries were packed, making
their calls later and later in the day.
   Jimmy brought two lobsters, dressed ready for the table. Nan
laughed when she saw them.
   "I saw you out on the water at dawn," she told him.
   "Yes, Mr. Maxwell was keen. He's done deep sea fishing in
Bermuda, Alaska, all over the world."
   So it was of that they talked? Nan waited, putting the lobster
on a dish. "They are fine ones, Jimmy."
   "Yes, I'm taking on that job, Nan." He looked at her
expectantly.
   "Are you?" she turned away. "Are you glad about it?"
   "Yes, It's a step in the right direction for me. Maxwell is a
fine chap. He says he'll help me a lot if I'll stick with him. He
says it will be permanent too. He wants me right away. I'm boarding
the yacht tonight."
   "Oh, no Jimmy ..." She was aghast at this.
   "Sorry?" he asked teasingly.
   "Yes. I'll miss you."
   His face changed its expression. "I'll miss you, Nan, but it
won't be for long. I promise that. I'll be home every chance I get.
Let's have a walk, Nan ... it's our last chance for a while."
   They spent an hour together, talking nostalgically as they
wandered slowly down the coast road to the village. Nan felt hedged
in by sadness which she tried to dispel for Jimmy's sake. It was only
later that she realised that he might have misunderstood her sad mood,
taking it to himself. He would think she was sad at his going.
   When they returned to the house he stopped her with a gentle
force she could not withstand. "Nan- you'll wait? Promise you'll
wait. I wouldn't go if I thought otherwise. It's real with me."
   "Oh, Jimmy, I can't promise. I wish I could. I wish I knew."
She sighed against him. "Try to forget about me. You'll meet lots
of other girls. Why has it to be me, Jimmy?"
   "There's no one to hold a candle to you, Nan." He whispered
the words for he was always shy of expressing his feelings. "You're
beautiful and strong and ... the girl I want."
   "Don't be hurt, Jimmy; I can't be tied down yet."
   "Will you give me a definite answer at Christmas?"
   That was what Charles had said- that it had to be yes or no with
Jimmy. He couldn't understand her hesitation. She felt his eagerness
and was sorry because the failure was within herself. She returned
his kiss because that was all she had to give.
   "Yes, I promise I'll give you an answer then. You may be the
one to feel glad that I didn't promise. You may meet someone else."
   "No. We've known each other too long for that."
   "Perhaps too long, Jimmy."
   "Think of me."
   "Yes. Now, you'd better go. Good night- and good-bye ...
Jimmy ..."
   He left her abruptly. She heard his footsteps on the road,
brisk, sure of himself, and where he was going.
   She turned back to the dark house, where only the light above the
surgery door showed like a pool.
   Stuart stepped into that light, making her start for she had not
known there was anyone near. He must have stayed in the shadows until
he heard Jimmy leaving. There was a moment of silence, hard to break.
Nan felt as if her breath had run out at the top of her head, leaving
her suspended, her lungs helpless.
   "Saying good-bye to Jimmy?" Stuart said.
   "You saw for yourself," she was thankful when her voice
followed her will. "Why didn't you speak sooner?"
   "I didn't want to spoil your last tender moments together."
   She let this pass because she hated him when he sneered.
   "I've been waiting for over an hour, cruising around on my own
in the car, then I knew you must return sometime. Where have you
been?"
   "Surely that is my affair."
   "Answer me."
   "We went for a last walk together- just talking. Any reason
why we shouldn't?" She went ahead of him into the house, switching
on all the lights as she went. There couldn't be too much light at
that moment and she prayed that either Doc or Charles would come soon.
   Stuart followed her. "Not any reason. Charles is with Hilary-
bidding her good-bye for a while. This kind of thing is
contagious."
   "I hate it when you sneer about Charles and Hilary."
   "I wasn't sneering. I'm just jealous as hell ..."
   She gave him a disbelieving look. "Please- do you mind? And
while we are alone, will you tell me the real reason why you gave
Jimmy that job?"
   "To get him away from here."
   "I thought so. It won't make any difference."
   "I gathered you were making him wait- too ..." The inference
was not lost on her and she flushed hotly.
   "Who told you so?"
   "He did, or words to that effect."
   She turned her shoulder, offended in a way she could not explain
even to herself. "Hadn't you better go?"
   "I too, came to say good-bye. I told you it was catching. We
rather missed out on that yesterday."
   "Your fault. Thank you for the flowers by the way. They are
very beautiful, but you needn't have gone to so much trouble. I was
pleased to give Brownie the goldfish on her own account."
   "Oh, I didn't send the flowers for that reason."
   "No? How is she, by the way?"
   "In robust health as usual. Mrs. Tyler is finding it a bit of
a strain looking after her on deck."
   "I'm sure. She is such an active child."
   "So- it's good-bye, Nan. You made me angry but I'm over that
now. I hope you have forgiven me."
   "Quite," she agreed quickly.
   "Then we could do the job properly perhaps."
   She moved across the room. "No."
   "Scared?" The jibe came softly.
   "I think I am. Her compliance closed the way to him completely.
   "You don't trust me."
   "Good-bye Stuart. I hope you enjoy the remainder of your
trip."
   He thrust both hands in his pockets and lounged closer, a pulse
beating intermittently in his temple.
   "I'm taking Brownie back home, then going to America. I'll be
away some time, Nan. This is something I must do."
   She wondered why he was at such pains to explain his movements.
It had nothing to do with her. He could go round the world and she
would not care- much. She glanced secretly at the clock, wondering
how to get him out of the house. She felt uncomfortable as she stood
with her hands on the back of the old chair.
   "Would you like some coffee?" she offered, hoping he would not
accept.
   "Thank you. That would be nice."
   "I won't be long." When she reached the kitchen he was close
behind her. He watched as she measured the coffee, and she wished she
had a fund of small talk with which to keep him entertained. It was
obvious that he had come to say more than good-bye.
   "I left something in the car," he said, and went out the back
way. While he was absent she prepared the tray with cups and saucers
and sugar.
   If only he'd go ... she thought desperately. The ordeal was
more than she could bear at that moment. The peace she had gained in
Jimmy's company was fast being dispelled.
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Here he checked the mare's pace to a gentle amble, and round a bend
in the road they came upon a low and elegant little house, standing
back behind a red brick wall with creepers that scrambled over it by a
small, green-painted gate.
   In the road outside the gate a young and pretty governess was
just setting out for a morning walk with her charges, a little boy and
a little girl. The children had hoops in their hands, and it was with
the greatest difficulty that they were restrained from bowling them
into the mare's legs.
   Hudson brought the gig to a stop and raised his hat to the lady.
Then, tossing the reins to the groom, he swung himself down into the
lane beside her.
   'Good morning, Miss Greenwood,' he said, and Horatia thought
she had never heard so much feeling put into such a prosaic greeting
before.
   'Oh!' said the little governess, blushing deeply. 'Good
morning, Mr. Crankcroft.' Then she turned to the children. 'You
may bowl your hoops to the corner and back,' she told them brightly.
'And see which can get back to me first. But no cheating, mind!
Sam, you are not to trip Sukey as you did last time... And Sukey,
you are not to bowl your hoop into Sam's deliberately...'
   'No, Miss Greenwood,' they cried, and they were off, their
small legs flashing down the lane, the little boy's long white
trousers not quite as quick as his sister's frilled pantaloons in
spite of her long skirts. In their absence the little governess
turned breathlessly to Hudson.
   'Mr. Crankcroft!' she said urgently.
   'Hudson... You know we agreed that it should be Hudson,
Sophy!' His teasing voice was tender as well.
   'Hudson then!... This is madness. I told you not to come here.
The children will talk and I shall lose my situation, and your father
will find out that you are meeting me and he will be furious with you.
I cannot be the cause of a quarrel between you and your father, and
you must not be the cause of my dismissal. We must not meet any
more.'
   'But we are going to meet, and as often as we can.' Hudson's
voice was firm. 'Sophy... darling, dearest Sophy, I must go on
seeing you because I shall die if I don't. And you would not like me
to die, would you, from such a cause?'
   He was teasing again, but he was serious, too. The children had
reached the corner of the lane and were arguing hotly before starting
back again, and the little governess caught at his arm.
   'Don't you see,' she cried, 'a governess, even in such a
kindly household as the one I am in, has no life of her own? She must
not. Her only reason for being in the house is to look after the
children and to teach them their lessons.' She glanced back at
Horatia, sitting there in the gig in her funereal garments. 'Better
you should forget me,' she said gently, 'while there is time.'
   'But there isn't time,' he replied. 'Because I have already
fallen in love with you, Sophy.' He introduced Horatia to her,
stressing the fact that she was a young friend of Lady Wade. 'I am
afraid I have made her a catspaw this morning,' he explained. 'But
you need have no fear of her. She is a very kindly catspaw, and I
know that if she can she will fish our chestnuts out of the fire for
us.'
   Horatia beamed her approval from the depths of her bonnet, and
Sophy gave her a timid little smile. But the children were coming
back, their hoops racing ahead of them, and she could only implore
Hudson to leave her before she met them. As they flung themselves
upon her she told them they had both won, and neither was an inch
before the other, and then she took them away for their walk in the
opposite direction, without another glance at her lover.
   Hudson drove back to Regent's park in silence, and Horatia felt
sorry for him. A hopeless love affair was almost as bad as having
coping stones on your head.
   But the March morning was sunny and blustery and the buds were
thickening in the trees. There was a freshness in the grass, too,
promising that April was in the wings waiting for the signal to take
the stage, and as they entered the park Hudson asked his companion
what she thought of his charmer.
   'Is she not the loveliest creature you have ever seen?' he
asked. He was obviously head over heels in love with his Sophy, and
Horatia was able to oblige him by agreeing with him.
   'She is very pretty,' she said. 'And she looks
sweet-tempered and gentle and kind. I congratulate you, Mr. Hudson.
Do you intend to marry her?'
   'I do indeed. I have never met another girl like her, you see,
and I do not suppose I shall ever meet such a one again. Therefore I
dare not let go the chance, and directly I can prevail upon her to do
so I shall make her my wife, though I have nothing to offer her except
debts. We shall have to live on bread and cheese and kisses.'
   'I have heard that it is a satisfying diet,' said Horatia
demurely, and he shot a quick glance at her and grinned.
   'I say,' he said, 'you know what is in their minds, I
suppose? Lady Wade and my father, I mean?'
   'No.' She looked blank. 'How could I?'
   'Why, they've got the idea that you and I ought to make a go of
it. Hadn't you twigged it?'
   'But...' Horatia coloured. 'That is absurd. Why, your
father has met me but once in his life!'
   'That doesn't matter. He would not care if he had never met you
at all.'
   'Oh, now I understand!' She was mortified. 'It's that
wretched money again!'
   'Quite so. That wretched money, as you say. Isn't it a
peculiar thing that half the world suffers from having no money, and
the other half from having too much? And of the half that has too
much I'd say that half of them again love money and the other half
hate it.'
   Horatia agreed that it was all extremely unfair. Here was
Hudson, only wanting to marry his pretty Sophy and having no money to
do so. And there was herself, only wishing to live quietly in the
country among horses, without coping stones falling on her head, and
being heiress to a fortune that everybody appeared to want, and
because they could not get at it without her, suffered her as well.
It was neither a flattering nor a gratifying prospect.
   'Mr. Hudson,' she said earnestly, 'I apologize. It is the
first time you have taken me out, and I promise you that it may be the
last.'
   'Oh, please don't say that!' He apologized in his turn. 'I
was clumsy in the way I put it, but I wanted to be frank with you,
Miss Horatia, because you are such an honest sort of person that I
could not be anything else. But, indeed, if you really wish to be my
friend, you will accompany me tomorrow, and the next day and the
next.'
   Her mortification left her and she laughed.
   'And all so that you shall meet your Sophy in her country
lane!'
   'You've hit it, ma'am.'
   'But you will be raising your aunt's hopes and your father's
anticipations to a cruel degree.'
   'If they are foolish enough to have such hopes and anticipations
it is scarcely my affair.'
   Horatia laughed again.
   'Well, I cannot say that I approve. You must remember that I am
taking your aunt's hospitality, and, if your plans go right, on
entirely false pretences. I will come with you tomorrow, but more
than that I cannot promise.'
   They turned away from Oxford Street towards the British Museum,
and presently clattered over the cobbles into Bounty Street, and in
front of Number Eleven they were surprised to see a phaeton drawn up-
a very new and expensive phaeton- with a pair of fine horses in the
shafts that Horatia recognised at once.
   'Why,' she cried gladly, 'I believe it must be Mr. Latimer!
I'd know that cattle anywhere!'
   Hudson glanced at her oddly, but he said no more than a mild,
~'A friend of yours, Miss Pendleton?' as he pulled in his little
mare behind the vastly superior equipage in front of his aunt's door.
   'He gave us a ride into Brighton in his carriage after the stage
had left us stranded in Lewes,' she explained hastily, and did not
wait for the little groom to help her down. She put her foot on the
wheel and dropped easily to the ground, and came up the steps to
Number Eleven just as the front door opened and Mr. Latimer himself
came out, a look of deep displeasure on his handsome face.
   
   Horatia and her escort had been gone about half an hour when old
Lady Wade, indulging in her usual occupation of watching her
neighbours from behind her parlour curtains, observed a new phaeton
turn into the street and stop outside her own front door, and although
she did not recognize it or the horses she knew the driver at once.
   She was sharp enough to know that a morning visit in such a brand
new carriage- evidently brought there to impress the sadly
inexperienced Miss Pendleton- would not be paid for the sake of
herself: an enquiry and the formal leaving of a card would have been
sufficient for her. But Mr. Latimer had given the reins to his man
and was mounting the steps of Number Eleven himself, and she had no
doubt that it was the news in the morning's paper that had sent him
after Horatia.
   'Once they know where she is, all the fortune-hunters in London
will be after her like flies after bad meat,' muttered her ladyship,
scowling darkly through the curtains at Mr. Latimer's broad back,
and was in two minds as to whether she would receive him before
telling Josiah to show him in.
   If her visitor was disappointed that Horatia was not with her he
did not show it.
   'I came to assure myself that neither your ladyship nor Miss
Pendleton were any the worse for your journey last week,' he said.
   She looked him up and down.
   'I took no harm from the journey, thank you,' she said
disagreeably. 'But I'm afraid I cannot answer for Miss Pendleton, as
she is not here.'
   He flushed and his eyes glinted with temper, but his voice was
controlled and courteous enough as he replied:
   'Come now, madam, I'm not an emissary from the young lady's
uncle, that fire-eating Sussex squire. But she is young and
inexperienced in the ways of the world, and I wanted to be certain
that she is safe and in good hands. If she has left your house,
perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me where she has gone.' And
without being asked, he sat himself down as if the whole day was
before him.
   Her ladyship was alarmed. She did not wish him to be there when
Horatia returned; she thought quickly and she thought hard and then
she said sharply:
   'I can relieve your mind on that score then, Mr. Latimer.
Miss Pendleton is still with me. When I said she was not here I
meant to say that she was not in the house: she went out for a drive
with my nephew in his new gig.' And here she glanced out of the
window at the phaeton as if to say that he was not the only man to
have a new carriage that morning. 'She was looking a thought pale-
the effect of the London air, I daresay, after the country.' She
gave a shrill cackle of laughter which the parrot behind her echoed
with great veracity.
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   "What!" he cried, like a man astonished, "have you loved me
and I been so inconsiderate as to make myself unworthy of your
love?"
   "Did my eyes never tell you what I looked for in yours?"
   "I never had the boldness," he answered, "to make any such
construction of your looks."
   "Your fear was the effect of indifference," I said, "still,
no more of what is past. Tell me now; can you love me?"
   "Rather ask me, Ma'm," he confessed, "if all the affection of
my soul can merit your love? And whether the Earl of Leicester, whom
you design to make the happiest man on Earth, shall not carry the day
from me."
   "The Earl of Leicester," I explained hastily, "was but a
pretence to make you speak; I told you then the thoughts I truly had
of you. My trouble was not small, both in your absence and since your
return; but all is now forgotten."
   He answered me with some disorder which I imagined the effect of
sudden joy. I thought it time to be no longer scrupulous, that it was
in vain to have any reserve when I had said so much.
   "I will not let you go under any uncertainty," I proceeded,
"but to convince you clearly of the truth of what I've said take this
ring, as the highest mark of my favour. Keep it as a pledge of my
love, which I charge you to preserve, and on that condition I promise
never to deny you anything you shall desire when you shew it; though
it cost me my life!"
   His joy at receiving the ring was in appearance extraordinary and
unparalleled, and attended with promises of as high a nature.
   He left for Ireland in a few days leaving me fully persuaded his
thoughts were wholly taken up with me. But he had scarce advanced
upon the rebels than he was charged with all the crimes that brought
about his imprisonment, together with that of the Earl of Southampton.
Then it was I began to repent I had not given ear to the wholesome
advice Cecil would have given me concerning the secret conduct of the
Earl of Essex. In a word, while my thoughts were wholly employed to
make his fortune he was plotting with the Earl of Tyrone to surprise
and make me prisoner!
   You know the rest: his obstinate resistance, his want of respect
for my orders, his imprisoning my ministers, his murdering my
soldiers, and his intolerable pride in all his misfortune.
   So ended the Queen's confession, which having called fresh to her
mind all that had passed between her and Essex made her more troubled
than ever.
   The Countess of Nottingham had listened with keen interest, for
she, as well as the Queen, had been in love with the Earl of Essex!
But newly understanding the reason for his coldness it added
infinitely to her former resentment.
   She had no mind to condemn the Queen's weakness knowing herself
guilty of the like, nor was she inclined to speak in favour of a man
who had grown so much the more odious to her as she had formerly loved
him. She thought it sufficient to comfort the Queen with words that
seemed to proceed only from loyalty, when in truth her thoughts were
wholly bent for the ruin of an ungrateful lover, who, in her eyes
deserved nothing but hatred.
   Though the Earl of Essex did not fall for the Countess of
Nottingham, yet another was her admirer, whose character did in a way
make her amends. It was Secretary Cecil, who, amidst his great
offices and the gravity that became them, discovered in the beauty,
ingenuity, and personal charm of the Countess of Nottingham an
attraction that made him capable of strong feelings for her. This was
heightened by their mutual hatred of Essex, Cecil having always looked
upon him as an invincible obstacle to his ambitious pretentions,
whilst the Countess had against him all the rage of an aversion that
usually succeeds rejected love.
   They were glad of the imprisonment of the Earl of Essex, but the
favourable inclinations the Queen expressed alarmed them.
   The Countess had no sooner taken leave of the Queen than she gave
Cecil an account of all she had learnt.
   Having considered the consequences they concluded it necessary,
while their sovereign pined secretly for the prisoner, that ways
should be found, without their appearing conspicuous, to take away the
mercy which love might well inspire her with.
   Cecil, for the first step, pressed the Queen to bring Essex to
trial, and caused certain news of his death to be spread throughout
England.
   Essex, meantime, was busied with thoughts of more weight than
those of his life. He knew well enough the Queen loved him, also that
he had deceived her, and that she might with a great deal of justice,
not only reproach but condemn him.
   The Queen had not seen him since his departure for Ireland, but
not having the power to give him up to his ill-fortune she resolved to
go to his house, where he was prisoner, to reproach him as he deserved
and endeavour if possible to find him innocent.
   It was not far from Whitehall to Essex House, and the Queen so
arranged the matter that no notice was taken of the visit, having been
introduced by her confidants. Essex was very surprised at the arrival
of the Queen, and the languishing condition she was in made her weak
in his presence. All was in his favour, the victory seemed easy. He
addressed her with the utmost respect, but upon doing so she broke
down, crying bitterly for some minutes.
   "Well, Robert," she began, after a pause, "you see what I do
for you, notwithstanding all the crimes I can reproach you with. I
have come with a design to hear you, to see if you have anything to
say to justify yourself. I have loved you too well, and wish it above
all things; but I would that Heaven were pleased your justification
might be realised even by the most precious thing in my power!"
   "My greatest crime is that I thought myself too secure, Ma'm,"
replied the Earl, desperately.
   "Had you rested there!" said the Queen, "I should have been
too well satisfied. But to believe yourself secure, was it necessary
you should betray me? And did you have need to use violence, to make
yourself master of a fortune I was willing to share? What reason had
you to seek protection from the Kings of Scotland and Spain? Did any
interest force you to correspond with Tyrone? And was it for the
safety of my person you designed to make me your prisoner, and his?
   All you have done since to my subjects, against my orders; are
these the expressions of your respect? Is it by this murder and
treason that you shew your devotion to me and the public? Or is all
we have seen and heard of you but an illusion?"
   "Yes, Ma'm," he said, "those accusations of treason and evil
design have run me upon the desperate resistance I made. You have
been pleased to heap favours upon me, and I too proud of what I so
little deserved flattered myself with the expectation of a thousand
pleasures, which you had not forbid me to hope for. This let loose
the envy and jealousy of others against my good fortune. They abused
your Majesty with misinformation and I had the misfortune to be
assured you had ordered my arrest, although my innocence would have
persuaded me to the contrary. I confess, I was enraged to see my
enemies gloat over my downfall, being abandoned by your Majesty and on
the point of suffering, perhaps, a shameful death. I thought it
neither good for my reputation, nor your Majesty's honour, that I
should die as a criminal. This forced me to those ends they reproach
me with and the resolution I took to go out of England in hopes to
confound my accusers. But I found all ways of escape closed, and must
acknowledge that in so desperate a condition I took revenge on your
ministers. They, Ma'm, and only they, were the object of the
rebellion I am charged with. My design was that those who had so
industriously laboured to make me appear guilty should do me right in
declaring my innocence, and permit me to lay it, and my life, at your
Majesty's feet. I never doubted that your Majesty would have done me
the honour of a fair hearing. And that by a clear discovery of the
truth I should have certainly frustrated them. But their malice has
had success: to see me a prisoner, hated by my sovereign, despised by
the world, and made a sacrifice to their rage. And now, what remains,
that I receive the sentence of death pronounced by them, and see
Cobham, Cecil, Raleigh, and their fellows, share the favours you
honoured me with?"
   "Be assured I do not hate you," said the Queen, interrupting
him, "but shall I believe you? Yet should I not believe? Can I give
you up to your ill fate?"
   "I shall never murmur against your Majesty's orders," replied
the Earl, "but submit to them readily whatever they may be."
   The Earl of Essex knew the weak side of the Queen, and easily
revived in her that love he had formerly inspired her with.
   "No," she said, having paused a while, "you shall not die.
Make use of your advantage, triumph over a heart whose inclinations
you very well know. I will believe your intentions less criminal than
they appear, but, Robert, I warn you by that love of which you have
particular experience that you give me no cause to repent of it.
Trouble not yourself for your reputation and honour I will take care
to repair it, and before two days be over I will restore you to the
highest place you ever held."
   Essex, overcome with joy by the success of this meeting, affected
the Queen so much that he restored her spirits to perfect tranquility.
At parting she promised to call the Council on the following day,
and, in an ostentatious manner, declare him innocent.
   As soon as it was daylight, she sent for Cecil; the Countess of
Nottingham attended her. Having told them in a few words of a great
conflict between her Justice and her Mercy, she concluded for the
latter, and ordered Cecil to summon the Council that she might declare
to them the design she had to set Essex at liberty, assuring him she
had invincible reasons for doing so. This was a mortal blow to the
ambitious Cecil and the Countess of Nottingham; they looked at one
another perplexed, as if they would have asked each others <SIC>
advice on what course was to be taken. Afterwards they spoke to the
Queen in hopes to divert her, but she was inflexible; Cecil was forced
to order an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council.
   But while the Earl of Essex's enemies thought his good fortune on
the point of being reconciled to him chance laboured for them with
unexpected success.
   As the Queen was going to Council word was brought that the
Countess of Rutland desired an audience. The Queen blushed as she
remembered what was past, and looking on the request as unreasonable
and unlucky she was minded to put off the Countess to another time.
But considering that she never denied any person access, and that the
Countess of Rutland was a Lady of the highest repute, she commanded
her to be admitted.
   Though her face was sad, her dress and gait very careless, yet
her beauty was outstanding. Moving forward she threw herself at the
Queen's feet.
   "Madam," she cried, "I come to implore your Majesty's
goodness for the unfortunate Earl of Essex!"
   "For the Earl of Essex?"
# 2
<395 TEXT K21>
JOE JOE'S NOTICE-BOARD
BY B. A. McPHEE
   "Un paquete de cigarillos, seno?2r," said the man
with the small cloth cap, the white arms and the cheery tourist smile.
   "You mean a packet of cigarettes," Joe Joe replied in English,
first regretting his abruptness, then on instant reflection not
regretting it but thinking that perhaps he should have been even more
curt. These tourists were trying on one's patience at times, with
their vague ill-pronounced Spanish and their standard benign smiles.
   Joe Joe had once thought of putting up a notice reading ~'A
LITTLE ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE.' He had actually obtained the board,
and his friend Jose?2 Puerette?2 had gallantly volunteered to paint
it for him free of cost. They had set to work early one evening,
Jose?2 with a large tin of purple paint, which he said he'd found on
the wharf, and a strong brush borrowed from Carlo Berrano, the owner
of the only hardware shop in Pasto Del Sol. However, the word
'SPOKEN' had presented an unsurmountable problem. Joe Joe had
to admit that the spelling of the word was beyond him, and he knew no
one that night who could help him in any way. So the work had stopped
there; for Jose?2 had to get the paint back to the wharf before
morning, in case, as he said, "the person who owns it wants to use
it."
   In point of fact, Joe Joe was glad that the notice-board had
never been completed and that it was instead cast into the back of his
shop with the empty wine-bottles and the vegetable-bags- dust-covered
and useless. He had discussed the matter at length with Seno?2r
Juarez, who had once been on the town council and who was able (so it
was said) to combine aesthetic appreciation with a fine business
brain- a rare quality in any man. It was also widely known that
Seno?2r Juarez had composed a poem, and a few close friends of his
had heard this poem recited, but only after a lot of persuasion on
their part and a lot of vinos on the part of Seno?2r Juarez.
Seno?2r Juarez had advised that it was unsound practice to deprive a
tourist of the pleasure of trying to speak a little Spanish. He had
been told once, he said, that some English tourists took courses in
Spanish especially for their annual holidays, and these people must be
humoured and encouraged to use this knowledge of which they were
secretly very proud. If they weren't pampered in this way they could
find no justification for a fortnight's idleness in the sun, and
indeed their main sense of purpose was destroyed- they thereby
suffered a slump in morale and concluded that Pasto Del Sol was an
ungrateful place and would determine to go to Italy for their holidays
next year.
   Although Joe Joe could not understand all of what Seno?2r Juarez
had said, there was no doubt that one should accept the advice of an
experienced and educated man, and especially one who had been on the
town council and had written a poem.
   Life was difficult, Joe Joe reflected. Seno?2r Juarez was not
afflicted with a temper such as his, nor did he run a little shop
which, during the summer, was often filled with tourist people who all
smiled at you widely in the same tourist way, and expected you to
smile widely back at them in such a manner as to indicate that you
were pleased that they had smiled at you.
   Joe Joe made up his mind to see Father Brenes at the little
church on the hill about his problem. It wasn't that he liked
burdening Father Brenes with his minor worries, but the good and kind
Father had assisted him once before about the same thing, and hadn't
he said, "If this occurs again, Joe Joe, then please come to see me:
I'm always ready to see one of our little flock." That was the time
his wife Maria had called him an 'under-grown donkey' and after,
when he had restrained himself from saying anything in reply, she had
thrown a melon at him, and this when his back was turned and he was
looking out of the window for guidance.
   Then he had all but lost his temper. As he said to Father Brenes
at the time, "I nearly swore at her, Father. It was only by
clasping the window-sill and clenching my teeth that I saved myself
from uttering a blasphemous word."
   "You did right, my son," Father Brenes had said. "You did
right to clench your teeth and clasp the window-sill and utter not a
word. But you were wrong in even contemplating using such a word,
because the proper Christian attitude is one of patience, tolerance
and understanding, and two wrongs don't make a right."
   So now he hoped that he would not feel any similar temptations,
but it would be especially difficult if Maria threw another melon at
him when his back was turned.
   "...And two boxes of matches," the white-armed tourist
continued, the laughter having gone from his voice. Joe Joe cut a
piece of brown paper with the large wooden-handled all-purpose knife,
wrapped up the cigarettes and matches and handed them to the now
somewhat disinterested customer.
   "Gracias," acknowledged the white-armed one, a suggestion
of a smile returning to his lips.
   "Adios, seno?2r," Joe Joe said.
   Maria called down the steps that descended to the shop from the
two rooms above, which formed their little home.
   "Joe Joe," she shouted, "when are you going to close the shop
and clean the fish which are making my kitchen smell like a
fish-shop?"
   "I am going to close the shop now, Maria," he answered
resignedly, "and I will then clean the fish which are making your
kitchen smell like a fish-shop."
   Maria was sitting in her usual position in a heavy and ornately
designed wooden chair given to her by her mother at the time of her
marriage to Joe Joe. Since then it had occupied a large area of the
small kitchen. She had an almost irritating habit of shuffling her
feet on the bare boards as she sat and sewed. She was carefully
embroidering a lace handkerchief, as she had been doing for six weeks
now.
   "I can't smell anything," Joe Joe commented as he came up the
stairs sniffing loudly.
   "It's all right for you," his wife replied sharply, "down in
that shop all day while I'm stuck here with two uncleaned fish for
company."
   Joe Joe nearly said, ~'Why didn't you clean them yourself, by
Saint Christopher?' but remembered Father Brenes and instead picked
up the fish and began scaling them with the all-purpose knife.
   He glanced over at Maria as she sat there in her formidable
high-backed chair with her six-weeks' lace handkerchief on her knee,
and as he put one fish down and picked up another, his mind drifted
back to the night, many years ago, when he and Maria had together sat
on the little pebbly beach that adjoins the beach of Pasto Del Sol.
He and Maria had been courting then. She had stolen away from her
Mama (a significant woman) to meet him below the cliff-face at the far
end of the bay. Together they had sat throwing hard, round pebbles
into the dark waters, and there was a moon that was not a full moon
but was nevertheless the finest moon that Joe Joe had seen up until
then.
   Maria had long black hair when she was young. It reached down
her back in a broad sweep. It was her pride and joy, and the pride
and joy of her Mama, and the talk of the lads at the Market Square on
Saturday nights. Her eyes were deep and dark, and her waist one of
the slimmest in the village. It was possible to wind the cane band at
the top of a lobster-pot round it with ease.
   That night he had trembled. Trembled at the calm, dark waters,
the moon and the pebbly beach. Trembled when he touched her long warm
fingers and heard her soft low pebbly-beach voice. Then he had kissed
her red lips, once, clumsily but strongly. The night had been still
and silent and even the waves slumbered.
   He had said to her, as they sat there mute together, ~"Maria, my
lovely Maria, I want you to marry me," and she'd replied with a
spontaneity which amazed him.
   "I will, Joe Joe, my darling little Joe Joe, but we must wait
until your father lets you have his shop for yourself and then we may
make our home in the two rooms above the little shop. It is best Joe
Joe, and Mama would think so too."
   Joe Joe had been so elated and the months succeeding had been so
blissful that he had become less and less aware of Maria's four large
front teeth, which protruded from her mouth very sharply, and which
also were the talk of the lads at the Market Square on Saturday
nights.
   Now the ebony black hair was discoloured with grey strands and
tied in a tight and severe bun. Her eyes were still deep and dark it
was true, and flashed, it was also true, but somehow in a different
way. Now it would be impossible to wind around her waist even the
lowest band of a lobster-pot, and the voice of the pebbly beach was no
more.
   Joe Joe finished getting the fish washed and laid them neatly on
a large flat plate. He cleaned the all-purpose knife with the long
wooden handle and put it away carefully. Taking up his sombrero and
with a quick ~"Adios" to Maria, who did not take her eyes from
her sewing (for strict concentration was required), he walked out of
the door with his hands deep in his pockets. It was Joe Joe's custom
to keep his hands in his pockets on the way to the Cafe?2 Del Costa,
since he could count the coins he had there as he walked along and
thereby gauge the number of cognacs he would be able to purchase.
   At the cafe?2 he met his friend Jose?2 Puerette?2, as he did
every evening, and the two friends shook hands warmly and sat at their
usual place at a table in the corner.
   "Well, Joe Joe, my friend," Jose?2 said; "the fish were not
biting today, but the water was calm and the sun was hot and my
brother and I were not greatly disappointed."
   Jose?2 and his brother were the joint-owners of a fishing-boat
which, laden with nets, set off from the beach every morning just as
the sun peeped over the mountains at the back of Pasto Del Sol, in an
almost fruitless search for fish.
   It was said (allegedly by rivals) that the Puerette?2 brothers,
who had not been fishermen for long, lacked the native instinct of the
others whose fathers and whose fathers before them were fishermen of
the bay, and that this accounted for their singular lack of success in
obtaining hauls. Others said that they spent too much time in siesta
and that they would pull round one of the rocky inlets to the north of
the bay and anchor there, sleeping, munching bread and drinking wine.
   Joe Joe did not really believe this latter story which he
suspected was invented by Jose?2's wife, a hardworking but mean woman
with sharp cheek-bones. In fact, Jose?2 was a resourceful and
practical person who, one afternoon when the boat had started to fill
up with water from a large leak, had calmly awakened his brother and
then had swum ashore to enlist help, leaving his brother to tread
water so as to mark the spot where the boat had sunk. With the aid of
other boats the craft had been brought to the surface and towed
ashore, and Jose?2 had that night accepted many congratulationary
cognacs proffered him by those who admired his quick thinking and
coolness in a crisis.
# 213
<396 TEXT K22>
Never speak to strange men
BY DIANA ATHILL
   Conversation, as Oscar Wilde might almost have said, is the
easy art of losing friends and alienating people; if you've ever been
inescapably bound by the threads of conversation of two such gentleman
as Mr. Ball and Mr. Baring, you're likely to agree. If you
haven't, take warning and plan an escape route in advance.
   
   THERE are often too few chairs on steamers which visit
Adriatic islands, and those few are shackled together, to be queued
for until a morose sailor consents to unlock them. This gives them
rarity value. Uncomfortable though they are, it seems a privilege to
have one, even if you would rather be leaning on the rail. So if two
men insist on giving up their hard-won deck-chairs to two women, it
would be ungracious of the women to refuse.
   That was how I and my cousin Laura met Mr. Ball and Mr.
Baring.
   They came from Oldham, had been visiting a Trade Fair, and were
now on a spree, intending to spend one night in the town for which we
were bound. Mr. Ball, who boomed and had three strands of hair
trained across his skull, was about fifty-five. Mr. Baring, who
whispered and wore 6pince-nez, was seventy if he was a day. They
were probably the kindest men we shall ever meet and they were both
mines of information on draught-proof floor coverings and plastic
paints.
   Mr. Ball was also widely travelled and had brought back from
Malaya, Peru, Queensland, and the Friendly Islands an astonishing
collection of statistics concerning measurements. He could- and
did- describe how high, wide, deep, thick and heavy was any object
you might like to name in any of those places.
   Mr. Baring was less enterprising. This Trade Fair had been his
first journey abroad and his preoccupations were chiefly dietary.
   By the end of the first morning Laura, who has less sense of
social obligation than I have, had sidled out of her deck chair and
was sitting on a hatch beside a medical student with a guitar. I was
still stuck, and trying to view the experiences as a salutary
discipline. I hope that Laura and I travel to see new places and
enjoy new beauties in nature and art, but it is true that when we have
encounters we like them to be worth having. The encounters I had
imagined for this journey were certainly remote from Mr. Ball and
Mr. Baring in everything but sex (if, in this context, you could
call it that), but I reminded myself of how kind they were and I told
myself that anyway it would be over when we reached our destination.
   That was the first day. On the second I was beyond thought. I
was not suffering, but I had become numb in all my faculties ... a
point of boredom I had never reached before. When lunch came round
again it seemed to be by immemorial custom that I was listening, as I
ate, to an account of the exact dimensions of Mr. Ball's verandah in
Kuala Lumpur (some eighteen inches longer than his verandah in Lima),
and the weight of the largest and the smallest sweet potato he had
ever eaten.
   Meanwhile, as inertia crept up on me, the venerable Mr. Baring
was becoming more lively. At first he had been slightly oppressed by
his companion's sophistication, but when the talk turned to food he
perked up to the extent of telling me which breakfast cereals his
grandchildren preferred.
   The journey ended that evening. As the gang-plank went down,
Mr. Ball said to me, "I suppose you have a room booked?"
   "No," I said, without thinking. "We'll get an address from
the tourist office."
   "You're in luck!" exclaimed Mr. Ball. "Look what I've got.
A letter from the tourist chief in the capital to his man here,
telling him to look after us. You just stick with us and you'll be
all right."
   Laura began to edge backwards against the surge towards the
gangway. I began to babble about being a nuisance- but it was too
late. The porters had been unleashed, Mr. Ball had caught one and
handed over our baggage as well as his own, and there we were on the
quay with our benevolent friends, obviously "together." Other
people were borne off in large numbers towards adventure. Laura and I
(not, I suspected unhappily, on speaking terms) got meekly into a taxi
with Mr. Ball and Mr. Baring, the last traces of our initiative
vanishing as we did so.
   We were visiting a small, thickly walled and lovely town with
straggling outskirts. The straggle was long and thin- the mountains
came too close for it to spread backwards- and unless you were
careful, we knew, you could find yourself staying some way from the
old town. We had hoped to find rooms within the walls, or only just
outside, and before Mr. Ball got to work on the tourist chief we
said as much.
   "Oh no," he said, shocked. "You wouldn't like that. You
wouldn't like the noise."
   "But cars aren't allowed inside," I pointed out.
   "It isn't cars. It's the talking and the music- they go on all
night in these places. And besides- the drains. We'll find a nice,
clean, modern place, don't you worry."
   We were not worrying, we were panicking, but I was still numb and
Laura was speechless with rage. We could not think of words that
would not have been rude and wounding to this kind, kind man. So
before long Mr. Ball, Mr. Baring, Laura and I were being welcomed
to an eminently respectable, exquisitely clean, comfortable, modern
house, a good half-hour's walk (the trams did not go that way)
outside the walls. And then, before the night was out, the rains
came.
   It rained and blew for five days without stopping. Since it was
August, widely advertised as the Adriatic's most benign month, we had
not stopped at bringing no raincoats and no umbrellas: we had brought
no coats and no sensible shoes either.
   Had we been staying in the town itself we could each day have
darted across into the City Cafe?2 where it was possible to live a
full life for hours on end without setting foot out of doors; we
should have had a choice of eating places within a few yards; we could
have danced every evening.
   As it was, on the rare occasions when the rain diminished to a
drizzle we would hurry out in an attempt to reach the town before we
were drenched. Once or twice we did reach the town- but never before
we were drenched, and about the only amenity not provided by the City
Cafe?2 was a drying room.
   All this, as an act of God, might have been borne. The truly
testing aspect of the situation was that no aeroplane could take off
from the airfield, and Mr. Ball and Mr. Baring had planned to
return to their Fair, after only one night, by air.
   The local inhabitants, anxious for their district's reputation
for clemency, had decided that the best thing to do about all this
rain was to belittle it. Yes, of course, they said every morning at
the airline office, "It will stop tonight, planes will certainly be
leaving tomorrow." So our friends did not change their plans and go
by boat. No. They were immured with us in that spotless house for
five of the longest days I have ever lived through.
   We expected them to be fretful at this grave hitch in their
plans, but they did not seem to mind it. Mr. Ball had known far
longer and- incredible as it seemed- duller delays on savannah and
prairie, about which he now had time to tell us in detail, while Mr.
Baring, though gently distressed at first, in the end found his
imprisonment positively rewarding. To begin with, his digestion was
upset, and this led him to the discovery of yoghourt: a discovery
which he was clearly going to recall throughout his declining years as
an important event; though perhaps not always at half-hourly
intervals, as he did at the time.
   However long we stayed in bed every day, we had to get up at
last- and there they would be, cheerful and kind, ready for talk and
paper-games involving arithmetic of which, it turned out, the
resourceful Mr. Ball knew a great many. When they said charming
things to us- how grateful they were for our company, how pleased to
have found us such a nice house- we could not meet their eyes.
   Mr. Baring sometimes made it worse by taking us aside and
whispering that if we wished to go out and enjoy ourselves, to escape
from two old fogeys, we must not hesitate to do so. Conscious of our
bilious rage, suppressed, we feared so badly, we were driven by guilt
(not to mention the rain) to effusive protests. Good heavens no, what
nonsense, we would say, and settle down to another paper game.
   The climax of each day came at dinner time. We might have been
listening to wild music, we might have been dancing, we might have
been meeting young men with bold, flashing eyes; and instead, because
our landlady served no meals, we would splash across to the next-door
6pension under umbrellas held by Mr. Ball and Mr. Baring,
there to eat 6Wiener schnitzel at a long table with seven
middle-aged married couples from Wuppertal.
   Relief came on the sixth day. Having learned that bits of purple
storm cloud look deceptively like blue sky when seen through the
chinks in shutters, we had not bothered to consult the sky. The first
we knew of the weather's change was when Mr. Ball knocked on our
door and told us that a taxi had come to take them to the airport.
   "Well, young ladies," he said, "we have shared an interesting
experience. The rainfall in these last five days has been half as
much again as the average for the four months June to September,
inclusive."
   As the taxi bumped away we collapsed on our beds and exchanged
the first look we had dared to give each other since our arrival. We
still had five more days in this legendary place.
   "We'll move this morning," said Laura. "We'll move right
into the very middle of the town and we'll find a room above a cafe?2
which has music, looking on to the market place."
   "And what's more," said I, "we'll hardly ever be in it. I'm
only going to stop swimming in order to eat, and stop eating in order
to talk, and stop talking in order to dance."
   But as we spoke our landlady came in. She carried a tray on
which were two little glasses of cherry brandy and two big slices of
home-made sponge cake. "3Sun, yes?" she said. "3I am so
'appy for you," and she beamed with pleasure. Not only was she
the mistress of a respectable, clean, modern house, but she, too,
was- oh ominous word- as kind as kind can be. How could we possibly
run out on anyone so admirable, for no definite reason?
   Thus, though our holiday had begun at last, we were still under
the wing of Mr. Ball and Mr. Baring. Try as we might, no harm was
going to come to us. In the small hours of each day left to us, after
some nineteen hours of sight-seeing, swimming, talking, drinking, and
dancing, we still had to leave those bewitching noisy streets; we
still had to trudge for half an hour back to our eminently respectable
lodgings. And so respectable were they that once we had reached the
door our escorts- those, that is, who were stalwart enough still to
be with us- never dreamed of doing anything more than shake our
hands.
<BEGINNING OF NEW STORY>
   Here, in this country village, she had spent her childhood.
Here she had first been in love.
# 24
<397 TEXT K23>
   The white people seized on the slightest word, Nature took the
lightest footfall, with fanatical seriousness. The English nurses
discovered that they could not sit next a man at dinner and be
agreeable- perhaps asking him, so as to slice up the boredom, to tell
them all the story of his life- without his taking it for a great
flirtation and turning up next day after breakfast for the love
affair; it was a place where there was never a breath of breeze except
in the season of storms and where the curtains in the windows never
moved in the breeze unless a storm was to follow.
   The English nurses were often advised to put in for transfers to
another district.
   'It's so much brighter in the north. Towns, life.
Civilisation, shops. Much cooler- you see, it's high up there in
the north. The races.'
   'You would like it in the east- those orange planters.
Everything is greener, there's a huge valley. Shooting.'
   'Why did they send you nurses to this unhealthy spot? You
should go to a healthy spot.'
   Some of the nurses left Fort Beit. But those of us who were
doing tropical diseases had to stay on, because our clinic, the
largest in the Colony, was also a research centre for tropical
diseases. Those of us who had to stay on used sometimes to say to
each other, 'Isn't it wonderful here? Heaps of servants. Cheap
drinks. Birds, beasts, flowers.'
   The place was not without its strange marvels. I never got used
to its travel-film colours except in the dry season when the dust made
everything real. The dust was thick in the great yard behind the
clinic where the natives squatted and stood about, shouting or
laughing- it came to the same thing- cooking and eating, while they
awaited treatment, or the results of X-rays, or the results of an
X-ray of a distant relative. They gave off a fierce smell and kicked
up the dust. The sore eyes of the babies were always beset by flies,
but the babies slept on regardless, slung on their mothers' backs, and
when they woke and cried the women suckled them.
   The poor whites of Fort Beit and its area had a reception room of
their own inside the building, and here they ate the food they had
brought, and lolled about in long silences, sometimes working up to a
fight in a corner. The remainder of the society of Fort Beit did not
visit the clinic.
   The remainder comprised the chemist, the clergyman, the
veterinary surgeon, the police and their families. These enjoyed a
social life of a small and remote quality, only coming into contact
with the poor white small-farmers for business purposes. They were
anxious to entertain the clinic staff who mostly spent its free time
elsewhere- miles and miles away, driving at weekends to the capital,
the north, or to one of the big dams on which it was possible to set
up for a sailor. But sometimes the nurses and medical officers would,
for a change, spend an evening in the village at the house of the
chemist, the clergyman, the vet, or at the police quarters.
   Into this society came Sonia Van der Merwe when her husband had
been three years in prison. There was a certain slur attached to his
sentence since it was generally felt he had gone too far in the heat
of the moment, this sort of thing undermining the prestige of the
Colony at Whitehall. But nobody held the incident against Sonia. The
main difficulty she had to face in her efforts towards the company of
the vet, the chemist and the clergyman was the fact that she had never
yet been in their company.
   The Van der Merwes' farm lay a few miles outside Fort Beit. It
was one of the few farms in the district, for this was an area which
had only been developed for the mines, and these had lately closed
down. The Van der Merwes had lived the makeshift, toiling lives of
Afrikaans settlers who had trekked up from the Union. I do not think
it had ever before occurred to Sonia that her days could be spent
otherwise than in rising and washing her face at the tub outside,
baking bread, scrappily feeding her children, yelling at the natives,
and retiring at night to her feather bed with Jannie. Her only
outings had been to the Dutch Reformed gathering at Easter when the
Afrikaans came in along the main street in their covered wagons and
settled there for a week.
   It was not till the lawyer came to arrange some affair between
the farm and the Land Bank that she learned she could actually handle
the fortune her father had left her, for she had imagined that only
the pound notes she kept stuffed in the stocking were of real spending
worth; her father in his time had never spent his money on visible
things, but had invested it, and Sonia thought that money paid into
the bank was a sort of tribute-money to the bank people which
patriarchal farmers like her father were obliged to pay under the
strict ethic of the Dutch Reformed Church. She now understood her
cash value, and felt fiercely against her husband for failing to
reveal it to her. She wrote a letter to him, which was a difficult
course. I saw the final draft, about which she called a conference of
nurses from the clinic. We were wicked enough to let it go, but in
fact I don't think we gave it much thought. I recall that on this
occasion we talked far into the night about her possibilities- her
tennis court, her two bathrooms, her black-and-white bedroom- all of
which were as yet only a glimmer at the end of a tunnel. In any case,
I do not think we could have succeeded in changing her mind about the
letter which subsequently enjoyed a few inches in the local press as
part of Jannie's evidence. It was as follows:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   3Dear Jannie there is going to be some changes I found out what
pa left is cash to spend I only got to sine my name do you think I
like to go on like this work work work counting the mealies in the
field By God like poor whites when did I get a dress you did not say a
word that is your shame and you have landed in jale with your bad
temper you shoud of amed at the legs. Mr. Little came here to bring
the papers to sine he said you get good cooking in jale the kids are
well but Hannah got a bite but I will take them away from there now
and send them to the convent and pay money. Your Loving Wife, S.
Van der Merwe
<END INDENTATION>
   There must have been many occasions on which I lay on my bed on
summer afternoons in Worcestershire, because at that time I was
convalescent. My schooldays had come to an end. My training as a
radio-therapist was not to begin till the autumn.
   I do not know how many afternoons I lay on my bed listening to a
litany of tennis noises from where my two brothers played on the court
a little to the right below my window. Sometimes, to tell me it was
time to get up, my elder brother Richard would send a tennis ball
through the open window. The net curtain would stir and part very
suddenly and somewhere in the room the ball would thud and then roll.
I always thought one day he would break the glass of the window, or
that he would land the ball on my face or break something in the room,
but he never did. Perhaps my memory exaggerates the number of these
occasions and really they only occurred once or twice.
   But I am sure the curtains must have moved in the breeze as I lay
taking in the calls and the to and fro of tennis on those unconcerned
afternoons, and I suppose the sight was a pleasurable one. That a
slight movement of the curtains should be the sign of a summer breeze
seems somewhere near to truth, for to me truth has airy properties
with buoyant and lyrical effects; and when anything drastic starts up
from some light cause it only proves to me that something false has
got into the world.
   I do not actually remember the curtains of my room being touched
by the summer wind although I am sure they were; whenever I try to
bring to mind this detail of the afternoon sensations it disappears,
and I have knowledge of the image only as one who has swallowed some
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge- its memory is usurped by the window
of Mrs. Van der Merwe's house and by the curtains disturbed, in the
rainy season, by a trifling wind, unreasonably meaning a storm.
   Sometimes, on those restful afternoons, I was anxious. There was
some doubt about my acceptance for training as a radio-therapist
because of my interrupted schooling. One day the letter of acceptance
came by the late post. I read the letter with relief and delight, and
at that same moment decided to turn down the offer. It was enough
that I had received it. I am given to this sort of thing, and the
reason that I am drawn to moderate and tranquil motives is that I lack
them. I decided instead to become a hospital nurse and later to
follow my brother Richard, who was then a medical student, to Africa,
and specialise, with him, in tropical diseases.
   
   It was about a year after my arrival at Fort Beit that I came
across Sonji Van der Merwe and, together with the other nurses, read
the letter which was about to be sent to her husband four hundred
miles away in the Colony's prison. She posted the letter
ritualistically the next afternoon, putting on her church-going gloves
to do so. She did not expect, nor did she receive, a reply. Three
weeks later she started calling herself Sonia.
   Our visits to the farm began to take the place of evenings spent
at the vet's, the chemist's and the clergyman's, to whose society
Sonia now had good hopes of access. And every time we turned up
something new had taken place. Sonia knew, or discovered as if by
bush-telegraph, where to begin. She did not yet know how to travel by
train and would have been afraid to make any excursion by herself far
from the area, but through one nurse or another she obtained
furnishings from the Union, catalogues, books about interior
decoration and fashion magazines. Travel-stained furniture vans began
to arrive at her bidding and our instigation. Her first move,
however, was to join the Church of England, abandoning the Dutch
Reformed persuasion of her forefathers; we had to hand it to her that
she had thought this up for herself.
   We egged her on from week to week. We taught her how not to be
mean with her drinks, for she had ordered an exotic supply. At first
she had locked the bottles in the pantry and poured them into glasses
in the kitchen and watered them before getting the house boy to serve
them to her guests. We stopped all that. A contractor already had
the extensions to the house in hand, and the rooms were being
decorated and furnished one by one. It was I who had told her to have
two bathrooms, not merely one, installed. She took time getting used
to the indoor lavatories and we had to keep reminding her to pull the
chain. One of us brought back from the capital a book of etiquette
which was twenty-eight years old but which she read assiduously,
following the words with her forefinger. I think it was I who had
suggested the black-and-white bedroom, being a bit drunk at the time,
and now it was a wonder to see it taking shape; it was done within a
month- she had managed to obtain black wallpaper, and to put it up,
although wallpaper was a thing unheard of in the Colony and she was
warned by everyone that it would never stick to the walls.
# 264
<398 TEXT K24>
The Toothache
   Toothache on top of all this was too much. He had always taken
great care of his teeth, even as a child. A child. His marriage was
two months old and he wished that he was. Fifty years had passed in
as many days. That made him seventy three. Another two to go. His
life was almost over. He had come to the right place. The door was
divided, like a stable door, into two equal leaves. He knocked on the
upper leaf, a frosted glass panel with the name and profession in
heavy black capitals. The upper half opened. A clean, florid face
appeared and disappointment pricked him.
   -Yes?
   -Would you... attend to this for me, please?
   The slip of paper was carefully scrutinised. Himself. The
paper. Himself.
   -Are you the father?
   -Yes.
   -Come in.
   The lower half of the door was unlatched to admit him into a room
which seemed half church, half office. The ecclesiastical half was
neat and shining, the official half untidy, strewn with papers.
Nameless brass projections hung on the walls and looked as if they
had been looted from a church. There were glossy photographs of the
rest chapels in the city's crematoria. The funeral director busied
himself among his littered papers, and, in a few minutes, with the air
of having solved a problem, pronounced, as if he expected his client
to haggle:
   -That will be three pounds ten, young man.
   -Yes.
   He drew four new pound notes from his wallet, crossed the room,
and placed them emphatically beneath the undertaker's eyes.
   -It will be tomorrow. Will anyone attend?
   -No.
   -Has it got a name?
   -No.
   -Shall I inform you of the place of burial?
   -No... thank you.
   -Some people like to know, but best forgotten. <SIC>
   -If the child had lived only a few days or weeks it would have
had a name. And a stone.
   He felt he was apologising for not bringing better trade.
   -A different matter. But best forgotten.
   He seemed to have solved a problem.
   -It doesn't often happen these days.
   He wondered how much a child of a few months would cost.
   -Right. I'll see to it tomorrow for you.
   -Thank you.
   He turned to go. The business completed, the undertaker moved
from the official to the ecclesiastical side of the room, and took his
hand.
   -Put it there. I know what it is. I'm a family man myself.
   With his other hand the undertaker held out a small receipt for
three pounds ten and a crumpled ten shilling note. He took them and
went through the divided door.
   -Good afternoon.
   -Good afternoon, young man.
   It had been the same with the registrar of births and deaths,
when he had collected the certificate for disposal at the hospital
that morning. Names. Dates of birth. 1937. 1937. Professions.
Schoolteacher. Schoolteacher. The registrar wrote the date of the
stillbirth. 19 February, 196.
   -When were you married?
   -December the Sixteenth.
   -Nineteen Fifty Eight?
   -No, last year.
   The registrar smiled. Who had selected him to endure this?
Time? Like an ever rolling stream. There was comfort in that. His
tooth ached. No comfort. There was time to kill before his dental
appointment. There was always time to kill. You stood in the present
and watched either the last moment die or the next being born. As
they were ejaculated into being, his mind, like a spermicide, killed
off the seeds of time. All his moments were dying. When you were
seventy three you could only look behind you. At that age you walked
backwards into the future. There was time to kill before his dental
appointment, before he died. He would walk.
   To reach the dentist's, which he had not thought to change, he
had to walk from Town to Beeston, up the long hill that overlooked the
rest of Leeds. It was very near his old home. Since he had left so
abruptly he had not returned. The lack of forgiveness would remain
mutual. His resentment would consume his guilt. Supposing he was
seen? Let them see him. Supposing he saw his mother at the
greengrocer's on the corner? He would ignore her. He had written a
terse postcard to tell them about the child and that was all. They
would say it was a judgement. Besides if you were seventy three, your
parents would be dead. All the names that had been heaped on them!
All the fragments of morality that had fallen about their heads! The
fifth and the seventh commandments. They had burned his photograph
and the Bible he had kept at his bedside. Such as he had no right to
possess that, let alone read it. It had only been an ornament anyway.
A tit bit. A miniature edition, inscribed Joseph Carson, 1841.
He had picked it up in the market for a few pence, buried under the
battered copies of Marie Corelli, Ouida and Hall Caine.
   
   After only two months of absence the familiar streets showed
signs of considerable change. Instead of the lines of gas lamps he
was shocked to find overhead sodium lighting, and there was demolition
in progress on a row of terrace houses, almost the same as his own
street. He stopped to watch. There was time to kill. Ahead of him a
man on crutches stood watching the houses being torn down. That had
not changed. The afternoons were always peopled by mothers and
children under five, or by the aged and the maimed. All the
able-bodied, like the demolition men, were at work. He himself would
be back at school tomorrow morning. After his slight indisposition.
A chill? A bilious attack? The blood on the stair, the floor of the
ambulance, the attendants' hands. At his feet on a pile of broken
bricks, open at page 35, lay the grey remnants of The Beauties of
British Poetry:
   'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
   And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;'
   He turned the stiffened pages with his foot. Another by Lord
Byron. Mrs. Hemans. Hogg. Two men with sledgehammers were poised
on a high fragment of surviving wall. They might easily fall and kill
themselves. This part of the city had worn badly. It was good to see
it go. How 1doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
Seventy three. Fifty years had passed. You could expect changes
in fifty years. Every change after fourteen years was for the worst.
A plaque on the site testified that the work was being carried out by
a member of The National Federation of Demolition Contractors. On
it was a badge with a map of the British Isles. Great Britain and
Ulster were in black. On the circumference of the badge, surmounting
the Outer Hebrides, was a contractor's crane. A shovel intersected
Sligo and traversed Ireland as far as County Cork, where it emerged
into the ocean. A pick in the North Sea had its point curved towards
some coastal town beneath the Firth of Forth. A crowbar, its point of
balance opposite the Isle of Wight, floated in the English Channel,
extending, at a rough guess, from Plymouth to Brighton. Beneath all
this was the date, 1941, (he was four), and beneath that the motto,
RESURGAM. The cripple had moved off. He overtook him quickly,
imagining the cripple's envy at his straight, retreating legs. He
turned round. The cripple's head, as if it always had, hung, like a
cartoon Christ's, upon his breast.
   
   He was nearer to his old home. You could see almost all of Leeds
from the crest of Beeston Hill, the roofs, the chimneys and the
steeples, the higher civic buildings, the clock of the black Town
Hall, to which he had listened, in his attic bedroom, striking the
small hours of those mornings immediately before he left. The
slightest earth tremor could level them. He could see the familiar
landmarks that he had passed on his way up. The Salem Institute,
Hudson's Warehouse, formerly Wesley Hall, the gas cylinders, the
truncated pinnacles of Christ Church. Some time ago, these had become
insecure and the constant passage of heavy and rapidly increasing
traffic had made them a danger to the community. The incumbent had
sat for weeks at a trestle table, with placards ranged about him and
fixed above the church porch on either side of what seemed to be a
tinted photograph of Christ, beneath which was written in white
capitals, COME UNTO ME. Who would go to that? The faded figure
held out its arms in a gesture of welcome. AN APPEAL FOR
RENOVATIONS TO THE FABRIC OF THE CHURCH. +1, URGENTLY NEEDED.
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY. SAVE YOUR CHURCH. Hardly a tithe was
raised and, with no regard for proportion, the dangerous finials and
crockets were removed, leaving four stunted growths of stone,
projecting from a square tower. They should have left them to fall
down. Nearer to him was the large dome of a building, formerly The
Queen's Theatre, The Music Hall, the Queen's Cinema, now an unwanted
fixture, described as an excellent site for future development,
becoming more and more dilapidated, devoid of players, stars or
audience. Of the advertisement board above the entrance, between what
had been two giant tulips, there remained only the word, TODAY.
Just visible below, however, the Palace Cinema, formerly The
Tabernacle, was still assertive. Its prices had risen, so they said,
from fourpence to one and six or two and three. It had risen in the
world. The city was senile too. Let the everlasting stars go out.
They would all pass away as one, a slow driftage of stardust,
crumbled brick and plaster, powdered flesh and bone.
   
   The dentist had his surgery in Cemetery Road on the very brow of
the commanding hill. In the congested burial ground on his left the
remains of his family from seventeen something were laid at rest, the
butchers, the publicans, their wives, and some of their children. His
father took flowers there almost every week and sometimes came home
with the stains of clay on his trouser knees. The five sons, now
dispersed in various parts of England, sent every year, with their
Christmas Cards, a subscription towards an elaborate wreath.
   From the chair, as he was having his teeth tested and found
wanting, he fixed his attention on the landmarks below him, to
distract his mind from the pains of the dentist's probe. Four of his
teeth required treatment. Three new fillings and one about twelve
years old that needed repair. He had forgotten about that. The tooth
that ached was not to be extracted. It would just be possible to fill
it. Of course, they were paid more for a filling.
   -Do you still clean your teeth regularly?
   -Yes, of course. After every meal.
   -And you don't eat sweets?
   -No.
   -Or a lot of biscuits?
   -No. No.
   -Mm. Your teeth are poorly resistant to decay.
   
   They gave you nothing to numb the pain of drilling. No cocaine.
No laughing gas. The drill began. He stared at the heavens and the
higher landmarks. He pinched his hand beneath the protective sheet.
Birds circled within his vision, circumscribed by the tilted position
of the chair, seagulls fleeing the storms on the North Sea or the
Irish Sea, sparrows, starlings circling the stunted pinnacles of
Christ Church, the dome of the Queen's Theatre, the Music Hall, the
Queen's Cinema, the derelict, wheeling backwards and forwards above
the Gas Works cylinders, the Salem Institute, and, nearer, settling on
the houses on the hill immediately beneath the window. Concentrate.
Transfer the pain into the hand. The birds soar as the pain is sharp
on the crumbling tooth. They settle and it is subdued. The drill.
The drill. They rise, they wheel and turn, around the stunted
pinnacles, poorly resistant to decay, the Queen's Theatre, poorly
resistant to decay, the Queen's Cinema, poorly resistant to decay, the
derelict, the excellent site for future development, for future
buildings, future derelicts, that will survive my teeth, my flesh and
bone, my son, who died before he saw the broken world, that may
survive my second or my third, their first, or be demolished,
excavated, filled, plucked out, root and all, teeth and children torn
out of their roots, the nameless flesh interred in nameless ground,
the dead to judgement torn, Christ torn from the tomb, the roots, the
judgement, the welcoming, the faded Christ, poorly resistant to decay.
# 283
<399 TEXT K25>
Maiden Offering
Short Story by MAVIS FOREMAN
   She supported the dying hero's head in her lap. "Have no
fear, we shall meet again" he murmured. Belinda smiled through her
tears for she too believed that true love reaches beyond the grave.
   The End.
   
   I wrote with a flourish, the tears coursing down my cheeks as I
looked up triumphantly into my dressing table mirror. I am fifteen
and have just completed my first real story. I have written it all
sitting like this before my mirror apeing every expression of my hero
and heroine, sharing their every joy and weeping at their many
sorrows.
   It is such a sad story I cannot stop crying, so it must be good.
A story has to be sad and very mature and frank to succeed these days
and I feel that mine is quite fearless. In a way the heroine is
myself and the hero, Ben, is the boy I am rather keen about although
he doesn't take much notice of me. Of course he is quite a bit older,
nearly twenty I believe.
   My story has two thousand and one words. I know because I have
counted every word- two thousand and one!
   Now I must dry my eyes and go and tell someone about it. I am so
excited I just cannot stop crying. It is reaction after all my
effort.
   
   It is now two days since I finished "Death at Sundown" and I
am not quite so happy about it although I still believe in it and in
myself. But everyone has pulled it to pieces and I feel the heart has
gone out of it. I think I shall do what Grandpa advised...
   When I first broke the news to the family they were all very
thrilled and Mother said I must read it to them as soon as we'd
finished supper. My young brother, Billy, was rather fed up as he did
not want to miss his serial on the Radio and Father did not seem all
that keen either. Mother, I could tell, was really interested and so
was Grandpa. He did not say much but he kept looking at me and
nodding his head.
   During the meal Billy kept trying to find out what it was about.
   "Is it rip-roaring?" he said.
   "You'll have to wait and see. It will spoil it if I tell
you."
   My Father looked at me then.
   "I didn't know you were a writer, Julia" he said.
   Grandpa chortled.
   "Takes after me- stories by the dozen once and a book".
   "Really, Grandpa", I breathed. "How many words?"
   "Oh, fifty or sixty thousand, I can't remember."
   "Golly!" I said.
   "How many has yours?" said Billy.
   "Two thousand and one."
   Everyone looked impressed and Mother said proudly, "Julia's
going to be clever. I had a letter published once myself in some
woman's magazine, I forget which one. A household hint it was,
something to do with pegs."
   "Pegs!" said Grandpa. "Did you say pegs?"
   "Yes, pegs" said my Mother crossly. "It was quite a good
washday hint. I can't remember just what now, it was a long time ago.
I got ten and sixpence for it though. It was the time we were trying
to get enough together to send you to that good school," she added
reminiscently to me.
   "How much will Julia get for hers?" Billy said.
   "They pay quite a bit for a really good story," Grandpa cut
in.
   Billy looked interested.
   "Enough to buy a record player?"
   "Hm. It would have to be pretty good to get that much,"
Grandpa said.
   By this time they were all intrigued. Even Father seemed quite
keen to hear it.
   So, after supper, we all settled round the fire while I read the
tale out to them with much dramatic feeling and, once again, there
were tears in my eyes when I came to the sad ending, but this time I
managed to keep them from tumbling down my cheeks.
   There was quite a moment's silence when I finished and I took it
that all their hearts were too full to speak. Then they all said
together, ~"Yes, it's good, very good," and Grandpa added, "A
stout effort."
   Only Billy remained quiet and when I looked at him pointedly he
said.
   "It's a bit like that silly film we saw last week with that
smashing cowboy one."
   "You are too young to appreciate it," I said haughtily. "It
is written for grown ups, not boys of nine and a half."
   "They seem to spend a lot of time making passionate love,"
Billy said.
   Mother coughed.
   "Yes, I thought perhaps that was rather..." she tailed off
lamely.
   "Oh, but Mother" I flared, "everything has to be like that
now or it doesn't have a chance- 6risque?2, they call it."
   Father grunted.
   "I should have thought they would have caught their deaths of
cold lying about in the snow like that" he said.
   "Oh, but it wasn't snowing then."
   "But it was the day he was killed. You said something about his
'red blood on the white snow'."
   "Oh, yes," I said, "but that was another day."
   I was beginning to feel cross now and slightly disheartened.
   There was a further silence; then Father said, "I'm afraid
there are several bits regarding the Army that just would not
happen-"
   Grandpa cut in quickly, "That doesn't matter in a story. One
doesn't expect one hundred per cent accuracy. If it's a good tale you
can get away with that."
   "In one bit you said she was a beautiful maiden of twenty and
then later you say she has a squint," Billy said.
   I glared at him furiously.
   "I said no such thing."
   "Well, cross-eyed is the same."
   "I said wide-eyed. All innocent maidens are wide-eyed."
   "She didn't really behave like an innocent maiden," said my
Mother mildly.
   Suddenly, I had had enough and with a gulp I jumped up and ran
from the room, my story clasped to my breast.
   The tears came angrily to my eyes again as I slammed my bedroom
door. Why couldn't they have left it alone, saying they liked it and
then pulling it to pieces. Now, it would not seem right to me. Maybe
I should alter it to fit in with their criticisms.
   Then Grandpa came in. He did not knock as he usually does, just
walked straight in. He went to the window and stared out not looking
at me and not saying a word. I gazed at his dear old back in the
shabby, tweed suit and the funny little bald patch peeping from around
the white tufts, a bit like a poached egg I thought irrelevantly, and
said sadly,
   "I'm going to alter it the way they suggested."
   Grandpa flew round then his old face shining and red.
   "You do no such thing," he said. "It wouldn't be your story
any more. Leave it be child. It's your very own creation. It's fair
enough. You'll do better, but it's fair enough for a start. You may
use my typewriter to type it out if you like."
   My heart was too full for words. This was indeed an honour!
   So I typed my story on Grandpa's typewriter. It is a very old
typewriter and some of the keys are rather crooked. I can only type
very slowly as I am quite a beginner so it took me a long time. I am
afraid there were a few mistakes but I altered them all in red ink and
Grandpa says it doesn't matter how badly a story is typed; if it has
real merit it will sell.
   It was a wonderful moment when I pushed the paper clip into the
pages and folded it into a foolscap envelope. I put another in with
my name and address on it just in case. But, oh, I am sure it will be
published. It's just got to be...
   
   For several days I have been walking on air imagining my story
printed in the magazine-
DEATH AT SUNDOWN
By Julia Lane
   Then this morning I heard the plump of the letters on the mat and
somehow I knew immediately that this was my moment. I raced out into
the hall but, quick as I was, Grandpa was before me. He was
straightening up and there was a long, foolscap envelope in his hand.
I could see my own writing on it.
   "Shall we go to your room?" Grandpa said very quietly.
   I followed him with an aching heart; all the life seemed to have
drained out of me. Grandpa sat down slowly on the bed.
   "I'm afraid it's a return," he said.
   I bit my lip miserably and nodded.
   "You mustn't mind too much," Grandpa said. "Even the most
famous writers started like this, some have years and years of
frustration before they make the grade. Some never do," he added
under his breath. "Shall I open it?" I nodded dumbly and he slit
the envelope.
   Yes, there it was, my beautiful story and the paper clip had
gone. I threw myself on to the pillows beside Grandpa and sobbed my
heart out. He let me cry for a little then tugged me upright and
handed me his handkerchief.
   "Blow," he commanded. I did so and felt better.
   "You mustn't let this beat you," he said. "Try again, write
something better. One day you will go to the door and there will be a
little envelope with a publisher's name on it; in that moment, you
will feel it was all worth while. And look," he opened up my story,
"your very first rejection slip."
   I took it from him and read, THE EDITOR THANKS YOU FOR
SUBMITTING THE ENCLOSED MS BUT REGRETS HE IS UNABLE TO USE IT.
   "He thanked me," I said in wonder, "that was nice."
   Grandpa nodded thoughtfully.
   "Keep it," he said. "One day you may be able to laugh at
it."
Up the Elephant
Short story by ROY BOARDMAN
   AFTER tea Mum and Dad gave me the look they always gave me
after our first meal when I returned to London at the end of the
college term. They knew I was going out for the evening. Action and
conversation followed the usual pattern. I yawned, surveyed the
cramped room- the littered table, two armchairs, old football pools
and bills stuffed behind the alarm clock, the dominating television
screen- and said, "Oh, well, I'd better go and let everyone know
I'm back."
   "Where you goin', son?" asked Mum.
   "Up the Elephant, I think."
   "You look after yourself, son," said Dad lighting one of his
hand-rolled cigarettes and leaning back in his chair, his striped
braces straining over his striped shirt. "You know what the Elephant
and Castle's like. Mind you don't get up to nothing."
   "I might go and see Pete."
   Pete was the "nice young man" Mum approved of. We had been
contemporaries at the local secondary school until I had gone to
college, he into Local Government, "He's a nice young man," said
Mum hoping to begin a conversation. But I had my jacket on and my
hand was on the doorknob.
   "Well, see you later."
   "Nice of you to 'ave dropped in," said Dad with terrible
sarcasm. "Come again sometime." I heard the knob of the telly
click as I went down the stairs, and when I reached the front door a
blast of music hit me in the back.
   It was twilight. The street was deserted and there were few
lights in the windows of the two regular lines of houses that enclosed
me. It was telly time for everyone. A few knife-edges of light slit
the shrouded sky. I stood on the doorstep a while watching it, trying
to decide where to go. A visit to Pete certainly didn't attract me,
the conversation would die too quickly. But I wanted to talk to
someone. Every time I returned from college I felt the need to meet
people I used to know, to see the life I had known, to re-evaluate and
see if I could feel some of the old desires.
# 23
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ALL THE GIRLS LOVE A SCHOLAR
Short story by Malcolm Bradbury
   ONE FINE DAY in late August, a little more than a year ago, I
put on some clean socks, pressed my trousers, and made my way across
the downs to Southampton, where I was to take ship for America. After
governmental minions had knotted my suits together and counted the
contents of my wallet, under the pretext of facilitating my
embarkation, I went out onto the dock, and there she was, the
R.M.S. Grand Cham, a huge wedding cake of a ship, sturdy yet
pleasantly worn after yeoman service on the transatlantic run. I
paused and scratched my ear, touched by the moment; I was going to
America, safe in this titan of the deep- and what leisurely, playful,
and even possibly lascivious hours lay before me! I gathered up my
hand baggage, which consisted of a portable typewriter and a briefcase
containing a full-size X-ray photograph of my chest and a crisp mint
copy of my Master's thesis, on the Influence of Dryden on Anybody,
which I had just completed.
   I came fresh from two years of research, spent among the high
stone pillars and solemnly dedicated atmosphere of the British Museum.
I am essentially a provincial lad, lost in the vast, unwieldy city of
London, and the British Museum was the only place I knew. I used to
take the small red trains of the London Underground as far as
Tottenham Court Road station and emerge into the grey heady airs of
Bloomsbury. Then I would wend my way between the bookshops,
publishers' offices, and 6espresso bars, taking care not to go
off course into the void, until I reached the British Museum. I would
go into the Reading Room, where solid silence was packed hard and
green up as far as the bowl of the dome, and walk over, always, to
desk D-4. (After a few months, people knew that D-4 and Bradbury went
together; I was a member of a very exclusive club.) I would settle
down there amid the smell of leather bindings and leather desks and
the strange aromas of unguents worn by Middle European e?2migre?2s,
who notoriously used to repair to the British Museum to write
seditious pamphlets. Sometimes I would go down into the basement
lavatory, where small men could be seen from time to time washing
their hats. Such eccentricities were commonplace in this high world
of scholarship which I now frequented, and my urbanity grew daily. So
this, then, was living.
   At eleven, I would go out for coffee; at twelve-thirty for
lunch; and at three-fifteen for tea. In these interstices, I
conducted a love affair with a large, flamboyant, and rather rich girl
from Sheffield, who was also writing a thesis. I never saw her save
during the daytime, and our relationship was conducted largely by
correspondence within the museum. Notes would arrive saying 'I'm
mad at you. You said you'd have lunch with me yesterday.' Notes
would leave saying 'Sorry, my tutor came. <My tutor would often pop
in, and we would retire to a nearby teashop, eat buns, and discuss my
thesis, at the same time feeding crumbs to the mice that kept
appearing out of the wainscoting.> But how about today? I'm your
friend.'
   When I accepted a fellowship in America, the notes came thick and
fast; she was very mad at me. I had that day taken my thesis to a
little bookbinder up Gower Street, who had hit the edges with a hammer
and put a binding on it, I felt very proud. So I took her out to
dinner in Soho, then to a theatre, and finally I took her home on the
Underground. We sat on a bench in some gardens near the river. A
sign saying 'HOVIS' kept flashing at us from across the river,
but we didn't look at it. The seat was wet, and ants kept taking
things back and forth along it, but we didn't mind. At last, I
ushered her to her door and promised never to forget her.
   Now I was off to America to face a more rigorous re?2gime. I
was going to the Middle West to teach a course on gross illiteracies
to freshmen. The gross illiteracies didn't sound very interesting.
They included such deviations as the Unjustifiable Dangling Modifier
~('If thoroughly stewed, the patients will enjoy our prunes') and
the Fused Sentence ~('His bus was late he missed his train'). I
realised that I was now finished with the cosmopolitan gentlemanly
days of English research; no more men washing their hats in the
lavatory, no more eccentrics talking on economic theory to the stone
lions in front of the British Museum. Now, if I wanted to do research
work, I had to take courses and acquire credits for a degree. But
first, I told myself, forget scholarship and the academic life for a
while: revel in the joys of a cruise.
   Flunkies ushered me aboard the Grand Cham, and eventually I
found my cabin. It was a tiny cabin, no bigger than a good-sized
coffin, and it contained four berths, a communal set of drawers, and a
hand basin about the size of the bowl of my pipe. My three cabin
mates had arrived already; they were long-faced, dark-haired English
youths who looked exactly like me. One of them pointed out to me a
package from Interflora. It was white heather from the British Museum
girl, and the card said, 'I'M YOUR FRIEND'. I then began to
unpack my briefcase. I lifted out the X-ray photograph and the
thesis, and carried them to a convenient shelf. Then I noticed a
curious thing. Already on the shelf, there lay three X-ray
photographs and three fat Master's theses. I looked at my cabin mates
inquiringly. They nodded. We were all on the same errand.
   Bursting with bonhomie, we sat at the same table at dinner and
talked about Dryden and George Eliot and the criticism of F. R.
Leavis. Suddenly, in a pause in our conversation, we observed
something strange. The people at the next table were also talking
about Dryden and George Eliot and the criticism of F. R. Leavis.
So were the people at the table beyond that. Soon everyone was
turning round to look at everyone else, and it quickly became evident
that the vessel was largely given over to American intellectuals
returning from a year's stint in Rome or Paris or London and English
intellectuals going for a year's stint to the Folger or to Stanford or
to the palaces of cultivation in the Middle West. There were
English-Speaking Union Fellows, Commonwealth Fund Fellows, Henry
Fellows, and Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellows. There were
Guggenheims and Rockefellers, Fords and Gulbenkians. 'My
goodness,' remarked someone, 'what a blow for the human
intelligence if this ship should sink.'
   It was a sobering thought. Perhaps, someone else suggested, we
should have been shared out among several vessels, so that some of us,
at least, should survive. As one of my cabin mates remarked, the
incidence of scholars was more than random; it was statistically
significant. 'You know,' he said, 'the historians of race
migration have missed this. There's a thesis in it.' I hastened to
assure him that with a passenger list of this sort no potential
subject for a thesis would be likely to go begging. 'Oh, good!'
said my companion. 'I'm relieved. Because it isn't really my
field.'
   Already I was beginning to suspect that the passenger list of the
vessel was not my field either, and during the next day or two I could
not help but feel that the atmosphere was growing claustrophobic.
There were a few passengers without even their Master's degrees,
going to visit relatives or get married in the States, or returning
from a tour of Europe. You saw them occasionally, walking about
defiantly carrying copies of novels by Nevil Shute, and I, for one,
never let them go by without sparing them a few kindly words. By and
large, though, the passengers gathered in groups on the boat deck each
day in informal seminars, keeping alive the tradition of academic
debate during this tough, fallow spell while they were cut off from a
university and out under the open sky.
   One evening, my roommates and I were sitting in our cabin
deluging our nostrils with heather pollen when there came a tap at the
door and a young American scholar we had already met (he was a
Swinburne man) entered. 'Hi,' he said.
   We said ~'Hi' back at him, and he explained that a meeting had
been held and it had been decided to formalise the discussions on the
boat deck by holding daily seminars devoted to comparisons of American
and European life and thought, which would keep our minds from rusting
and at the same time serve as an orientation programme for those
unfamiliar with various lands. People would contribute papers, and
discussion would be encouraged. 'You know, this is the greatest
opportunity we'll ever have,' he said. 'We can't let an
opportunity like this go by.'
   There was, he had to admit, one painful drawback. 'We aren't
authorised to award credits toward any degree, but we don't think this
should stand in our way, and we hope it won't deter you from
coming.'
   We congratulated him on being so infected with the joy of pure
scholarship. He thanked us and adjured us to be present at ten-thirty
the next morning.
   For some strange reason, possibly a decline in my metabolism, I
couldn't quite relish the prospect. I went to the meeting the next
day, however, and an eminent professor from Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, gave a paper on the cheapest way to buy potatoes in
England, and then there was a discussion about how to get off a
turnpike in the States. It was good, searching stuff, well presented
and well delivered, and showing the stamp of original minds, yet
somehow I didn't seem up to it, and when the Swinburne man, who was in
general charge, assigned us Moby Dick, to be read before the next
class, I felt I'd almost rather take an Incomplete in the course.
   Fortunately for me, my fears of being bested in a debate on
Melville were relieved by a chance encounter, at the dance that
evening, with an elegantly proportioned American nurse, tanned as
brown as a berry by a two-month tour of Italy. I had no business
being at the dance at all, with so much reading to do, but I thought
perhaps he wouldn't call on me in the quiz. Looking on this
unqualified specimen of American womanhood, charming even without her
M.A., I found myself spiritually closer to her than I did to many
a scholar. I was, in short, tempted into silken dalliance. The
desire for knowledge, the desire to learn all there was to know about
the 6Weltanschauung of the female in America, egged me on.
   I began my course of study the next day. I was, as I have said,
a modest and provincial English youth, but my companion seemed
inclined to thaw me. 'You're so polite,' she said. 'It's cute,
but you won't snow an American girl that way.'
   She was telling me, in the late afternoon, how to snow an
American girl, when the Swinburne man appeared. 'Say,' he said,
'we missed you today.' I apologised for my absence.
   'We had a great class on how to use an Automat,' he said.
'Then one of the guys in your cabin talked about how to get
shillings to put into English gas meters. It was very interesting.'
'I'm sure,' I said. 'I'm sorry I missed it.'
   Next morning, the Swinburne man was at our cabin early, looking
for me. I told him that I should most surely have joined the group
that day were I not working on a project of my own. He left, a trifle
dejected, and my project came along shortly afterward from her cabin,
where she had been putting on a swimsuit, and we went to the pool.
# 222
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The Stile
   The mirror had a bevelled edge, so that by tilting it carefully
he could cut his eye in half quite painlessly. Now he had three eyes
and a harelip. He squared the mirror, made a cruel gesture with his
mouth, then put his hand down the front of his trousers to see if he
had more hair than Falkirk yet. Suddenly he noticed some flecks of
scurf that must have fallen on the mirror when he was combing his
parting. He began to worry about that instead.
   The waiting was intolerable. And yet he knew it shouldn't be.
The bed was a secure island where he was immune from time. That was
why before going back to school, or before going to the dance as now,
he would set aside a whole hour for lying on his bed. It was a
rational device for delaying fear. When he panicked, and he had been
panicking for more than a week, he could say to himself, 'There is
still the hour. There is no excuse for worrying before the hour.'
The strategem never worked, but he still enforced it rigidly because
the hour was the time for thinking.
   Now he felt silly lying on the bed in his blue suit and his
ridiculous patent-leather shoes with silver buckles. He strained his
ears to hear his mother backing the car out of the garage; all the
time his breathing coming faster.
   The other thought came back.
   He bit his lip and cut his eye in half again with the mirror. He
rather wished the down would disappear altogether. Last term had been
bad enough. Their voices were still in his ears like trapped bees.
   'Morton has a forest!' 'With a waterfall in it!'
'Morton! Morton! Morton!' 'Look at the Jelly Roll!'
   'I'm precocious,' he said carefully, and aloud to the ceiling,
turning away wearily from the sound of their voices.
   He wondered dazedly whether the term after next at his new school
everyone would have hairy Dings and it wouldn't matter so much. What
if his trousers fell off tonight and all the girls at the dance
started shouting... He reversed the mirror quickly, and as an
additional safeguard closed his eyes, so that he wasn't. But it was
not an easy thing to pretend: in no time at all he was again.
   Then what about the doctor at last term's medical inspection? He
was still wondering about that.
   'Stand up straight much?' the doctor asked, and he began
tapping his teeth with the tongue-depressor he had in his hand.
   Peter drew himself to attention and said, 'Sir?' They had to
call him that; it was good manners.
   'Play about a bit?' the doctor said. He seemed
absent-mindedly to be cleaning his teeth with the tongue depressor
now; then he stopped that and looked at his fingernails.
   'Football practice.' Peter shrugged. 'And camp-fires in the
woods mostly.'
   Then he left the room for the next boy, wondering why the matron
who was usually helping the doctor had disappeared.
   They were backing out the car. He panicked. Leaping off the bed
he scrabbled through his drawers. He must have something in his
pocket to show people. To talk about. He grabbed his bullet.
   Then he saw his hairbrush. At school boys hit their chests with
hairbrushes to look like measles. His hand hovered over the brush.
His father would see through it though. It might start him on one of
those speeches about, 'When I was a shy lad, Peter-son.' Then his
mother would say, 'You're a very pretty little boy, darling, people
love you. Be brave, lamb.'
   He shuddered, feeling weaker than ever, and made a tough, twisted
face into the mirror. He felt its contours carefully, and determined
to keep it there all evening. No; he couldn't because he loved
Rosemary.
   Suddenly he knew he had been thinking about the Ding and the
scurf in his hair so as not to have to think of her. His legs might
melt away if he thought about her now. They couldn't make him go to
the dance though if he suddenly had to walk on his knuckles like the
pavement artist outside the National Gallery. He thought about
Rosemary, but her picture wouldn't come into his mind. He watched his
legs in their sharp trousers, but they only shook like the cotton
sails of a Firefly when the wind veered.
   In the car he said nothing. His mother was going on to one of
her dotty parties, so she was practicing dotty remarks on him. She
was practicing smoking cigarettes too, because she only smoked them at
parties.
   He had to be casual; even bored about the dance. If his mother
knew about Rosemary he would probably have to wear a paper bag over
his head for the rest of his life; if he didn't fall through the floor
of the car first and get crushed. He thought about that sort of death
for a moment or two.
   His fingers moved from pocket to pocket of the stiff new suit
until they found the live bullet. If he held it against his head and
prayed, or scratched the tiny soft pimple of lead, it might go off.
'Peter is dead,' his mother would have to say. 'If there are
spare sausages and things I expect Rosemary will like them cold for
lunch tomorrow.'
   He thought about Rosemary's house. It didn't seem to have a real
existence in a real place like his flannel in the bathroom, or his
bicycle in the shed. He wondered how his mother would find it.
Anyway, she didn't seem to be able to keep a car going in a straight
line for very long, as other cars he'd been in managed to do. He
lurched against the car door, but the bullet didn't go off.
   'Tipsy taxi,' his mother called happily.
   Peter was thrown forward. If he wasn't being pushed about by
people he was being bounced around inside cars like a rag doll.
Everyone else had the power. He began to feel limp, exhausted,
calmer; almost to enjoy alternately having his head banged against the
windscreen, and his neck dislocated on the back of the seat. He was a
punch-drunk boxer sticking it out. No; a Christian being thrown to
the lions.
   He tried to feel himself dancing with Rosemary. Or rather to
feel himself stumbling clumsily after her as she led him with
movements light as an angel. The lurching of the car had dazed his
brain. Perhaps this year, dancing with her, he would get that strange
feeling he got that time when he crashed down on the tiny drip Hunter
in the rugger match and somehow just hadn't wanted to get up again, or
let go of him, though the whistle was blowing furiously.
   Peter jerked suddenly upright in the car with his face on fire
and his hands shaking. The shock of the idea raised a lump in his
throat like a mole-hill thrown up in an instant of time. There did
seem to be something alive and scratching there too. He was in love
with Rosemary. It would be dirty to think of hugging her, whilst a
kiss...
   He wanted to go to the lavatory, and laid his hand on his
mother's arm. She was wrestling with the steering-wheel like Tarzan
with the Wolf Girl and didn't notice. He forgot all about the
lavatory, and instead decided that if there would be any time in his
whole life when he could convert a try from the twenty-five yard line
it was this very second. Of course it would be with the Baby Game
rugger ball, not one of the full size ones.
   He was beginning to hear the music of the first Paul Jones in his
head now. He knew it would leave him facing Rosemary, but that he
would immediately seize one of the forty fat ugly girls who stood each
side of her. Probably he would start to sulk in the middle of the
dance and have to pretend to be very interested in the pattern of the
wallpaper. Perhaps they would think he was an artist. The whole
thing might be bearable if her mother didn't sit there all the time on
the sofa like a queen with silver hair. She watched him too. And her
father could be just like his and say things like, 'Your playing
fields flood last term? My youngest lad's did, you know. Now do pull
yourself together and dance with the girls. Come along! Want a spot
of whisky? Ho! Ho! Ho!'
   Peter found that he was out of the car with unfamiliar gravel
under his feet. His mother wasn't kissing him. There was light in a
great glass house; shadows moving with music and laughter. Now a
brighter rectangle of light appeared in the centre of the confusion
and he was stumbling towards the open door.
   Rosemary's mother was holding out her long hand like the branch
of a willow tree over the river. Her hair couldn't really be
thunder-sky blue. Peter took the drooping hand, and looked at her
just long enough to be polite, and to see if she was really like she
always seemed to be in his dream. She said something, and then
somehow willed him in to the dance room.
   Music and movement was all around him, bumping against the walls.
He was snatched in to a revolving chain of boys; not, though, before
he had had time to notice that they all had real dinner jackets.
   The music stopped. In the inner circle of girls Rosemary was
facing him exactly. She smiled. So he did. Then he shifted his feet
and looked at the floor. Now he was doing it; taking one of the fat
ugly girls on her left. He thought he saw Rosemary lift her chin in a
funny way. But he knew she must like one of the boys on his either
side better than him. He couldn't just take her like that
straight away.
   'How old are you?' the fat girl asked. 'Thirteen,' said
Peter.
   'You must be one of Rosemary's friends not Jane's then.' The
girl was looking at his suit now. 'I have a little sister who
crashes my parties and asks kids of her own age,' she added.
   'How old are you?' Peter asked stiffly.
   The fat girl stared at him; pulling him around the floor as if he
were a sack of something. 'You don't ask a girl things like that.'
   Peter was exasperated. 'Well how do you know how old they
are?'
   'That is just the point,' the girl said carefully. 'It
isn't intended that the male should know.'
   Then she let go of Peter promptly, though the music hadn't
stopped.
   The music began again, and he was dragged into the revolving
circle of 'males' inside which the smaller circle of girls was
spinning in the opposite direction.
   This time Rosemary was nowhere to be seen and an ugly thin girl
grabbed him with more haste than was really polite. Peter
determined to get in first.
   'Where do you go to school?' he asked, pretending to be
interested and sort of intense the way his mother was at her dotty
parties.
   The ugly thin girl told him. 'Why's it called a ladies'
college?' he said. This time he actually was intrigued. 'Are
you very- are you grown up, I mean. At Cheltenham university?'
   The girl just giggled and pressed him nearer to her breasts.
Peter swallowed twice very quickly. Then the music stopped again and
he began to think there was something unsatisfactory about a
succession of brief relationships that were imposed and dissolved
wholly at the discretion of a loud gramophone record.
   He caught a glimpse of Rosemary and at once fell into a trance.
It occurred to him that now he had seen her the vision might be made
to last another year, and so there was no reason why he should stay at
the dance any longer.
# 213
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Finally Julian re-crossed his legs, and concentrated on the news.
When Janet brought in tea he said:
   'Tell her we've got too many people coming, then. It won't
deceive her, but it will please you.'
   'No,' said Janet, tired, 'I shall ask her. You'd make us
miserable if I didn't. I shall ask her. Have you taken your pill, by
the way?'
   He smiled and felt hastily in his waistcoat pocket, apologetic
with victory. Janet drank her tea and compressed her lips, warming
her legs at the large coal fire.
   
   They were assembled in the hall that was large enough to be a
room, drinking sherry before dinner, on Christmas Eve. Julian's
mother, small and stout, in a lavender woolly and lavender skirt,
smiled at each member of the family as they came up to talk. She
alone sat down, a dignity due to age. Janet's widowed sister, Doris,
trotted in and out with more glasses: a robust, sensible woman,
similar to Janet in appearance. The elder grandchildren drank
self-consciously. Julian's brother, Paul, leaned on the back of old
Mrs. Harford's chair, and avoided his wife, May. He had been
drinking too much again. Julian wondered why, and was too afraid to
find out. The youngest children were in bed, ready to wake at 3
a.m. and open their presents. Someone had given John a drum,
blast them. And Celia had telephoned in the afternoon, breathlessly,
saying that the car had broken down and she was bringing a friend-
was that all right?'
   'I'm not putting them in the same room,' whispered Janet
furiously. 'I won't countenance cheap affairs at Christmas, with a
house full of impressionable young people!'
   'It might be a girl-friend,' said Julian rationally,
untruthfully.
   Janet gave a swift, sharp snort and flounced past him.
   Julian's eldest daughter, the one person he loved as much as
Celia, was coming downstairs. She was happy to be home for Christmas,
and this time with her first baby to steal attention. Julian patted
her as she walked past.
   'Everything all right, Sue?'
   She nodded and smiled. He hoped her husband, a nice enough young
chap, was good to her. She seemed to like him, anyway. They were
usually squeezing each other's hands and sidling together. Perhaps it
would work out, but time made a difference. Celia and that Forster
fellow had been wild about each other. Julian put up the money for
their elopement and never told anyone: it rankled with him.
   'I don't think we should keep the dinner back much longer, do
you?' said Janet, on a rising tone.
   'No, dear. Of course not,' said Doris, who agreed with her.
   'Celia won't mind, I'm sure,' said Julian, nervous for her
reception.
   Paul smiled into his sherry as though it were having a private
joke. Old Mrs. Harford began stiffly to rise, helped by her sons.
   Julian's head ached as he lead his mother into the dining-room.
All these people, he thought, and I don't care much for any of them.
What a stupid, expensive hypocrisy, family Christmas. If Sue wasn't
here, if Celia wasn't coming- nothing in it for me. Nothing in it at
all.
   He looked down the double row of family faces, eating, drinking,
talking, and wondered whether they felt the same. And he counted the
people he had really loved, in his life: the ones he would die for,
gladly. There didn't seem to be very many. It was a bit of a waste,
spending your life with people you didn't want. Why not collect round
you the odd few you loved, and spend it with them instead?
   A commotion in the hall. Julian's heart beat rapidly and he bent
over his soup and pretended not to notice.
   'That will be Celia,' said Janet, and scraped her chair back,
her napkin clutched in her large capable hand.
   A flutter passed visibly round the table. Celia was a
disturbance, pleasant or unpleasant according to taste. The door was
flung open and Julian felt her presence a few feet behind him. Her
light, quick voice pattered out a vague and charming list of woes.
   'Hallo, hallo,' said Julian, pushing back his chair. 'Merry
Christmas, C.'
   He got up and took both her hands in his, kissed her cold cheek.
Her voice bubbled past his ear as she answered and kissed him, but he
could not have told what she said. Janet and Doris were looking
stuffy and mottled in their tight best dresses.
   'Everybody's so smart!' wailed Celia, throwing her fur coat on
a side table. It fell, with a silky thud, on the carpet. Someone
picked it up.
   'I just came as I was,' said Celia, and had contrived to make
the others feel over-dressed, 'in my old sweater and skirt. But I've
brought you lovely, lovely presents. Let me show you-'
   'After dinner,' said Janet briskly. 'Do come and sit down,
Celia. And what have you done with your friend?'
   'Oh my God!' said Celia, 'I forgot. Yoo-hoo. Mark, sweetie.
Come and meet my lovely family.'
   She was determined in her gaiety, in her clinging to a style of
prettiness which had suited her when she was young.
   'Come on!' she called, nervous and laughing. 'He's shy.
Poor Mark.'
   Perhaps he sensed that he was 6de trop before he came in
because his entrance was both dignified and defiant. A universal gasp
among the family. Celia had done it again. Lean, tall and personable
though Mark was- he was an African.
   'What a terrible thing,' whispered Doris, 'and mother the age
she is, too.'
   'At Christmas,' said Janet.
   Celia held Mark's hand and smiled into his face. She had the
ability to concentrate herself on one person at one time and it took
some of the uncertainty from his expression.
   'They're awfully glad you've come,' said Celia to him, as
though the room were empty. 'He plays the trumpet,
professionally,' she said, turning to them. 'I made him bring it.
After dinner he'll play the blues. Markie,' she said, touching her
throat with a gesture that tore Julian, 'just gets me when he plays
the trumpet.'
   Still the family had not come up to scratch. Her wide-spaced
blue eyes garnered and sorted the message. Her smile wavered.
   'We're awfully hungry,' she said, 'awfully hungry, Julian.'
   'Delighted,' said Julian, jerked by her appeal into shaking
Mark's hand. 'Do sit down, both of you. You must certainly play for
us, if you will, Mr. er-'
   'Just call him "Mark",' said Celia. 'Second names are so
unfriendly, and his is unpronounceable. How is everybody? Darling
Mummy, always so sweet. Doris. Janet. May. Sue, have you brought
little poppet? I must see him. Do you adore him frantically?- lucky
you. And dear Paul- oh, Paul.'
   'Yes,' said Paul, 'I'm drinking too much, C.'
   'But why?'
   Julian wished he could have asked this, but he listened.
   'Because,' said Paul, 'a family is like a bloody great pillow
on your face. Suffocation. And I drink to forget that terrible
fact.'
   'Oh, Paul!' everyone said, laughing to cover up the truth.
   'I'm surrounded,' said Paul, 'by people I wish well. I do
wish you well. And I wish you well away. You're all lovely. Good,
clean-living, strong-minded, short-sighted salts of the earth. There
is no spot in you. But for Christ's sake why can't you be salty
without me? Why don't you let me alone?'
   'We'll have a long talk afterwards, Paulie,' said Celia,
touching the back of his hand. 'Eat your dinner, darling.'
   Comforted, keeping himself fastidiously from contact with his
wife or his wife's chair, he began to cut his meat into smaller and
smaller pieces.
   Julian formed a picture of Celia by frequent glances. She must
be touching up her hair, it never used to be quite that auburn shade,
more of a russet. She had noticeable lines round eyes and mouth and
her neck was hollowed. In repose her face showed her age, but Celia
was rarely still. She was dressed in some pretty, fuzzy material:
dark, soft blue and no jewellery.
   'You're looking well, C.,' said Julian, and cleared his
throat.
   A cross-current of conversation prevented her reply.
   'But I always put my babies on pots right away,' said old
Mrs. Harford, reprovingly.
   'But it's such a waste of time, the book says...'
   '...and it saved nappies and got them into good habits.'
   'Put a pillow on his face and get him out of it,' said Paul to
himself, 'it's kinder in the long run...'
   'I know you don't like sprouts,' said Doris, flustered, 'but
you've no need to make such a fuss. One would think you were seven,
instead of seventeen.'
   'More gravy, Mother?' said Janet.
   'Staying in England long, Mr. er- Mark?' asked Julian
courteously.
   'I don't quite know, sir,' said Mark.
   His deep voice jolted the family, and two rows of heads ducked to
their plates, silenced.
   'He's staying at my flat just now,' said Celia, and they all
started to talk at once.
   Julian, exchanging glances with Paul, caught a curious look in
Celia's eyes, of irony and sadness.
   'I hate family Christmas,' said Paul, loudly.
   She leaned forward, at once aware of him: a child to be
comforted.
   'Never mind, sweetie. Never mind.'
   And Mark could play. Licking his purplish lips, first, then
raising the trumpet as though it were a taste of wine: setting his
mouth to it as though it were a girl to be kissed. His long back and
legs, his narrow hips, arched into one effortless curve: an attitude
for the trumpet. And he played. The younger ones and Celia urged him
on. He drank water, rested, smiled, and played again. His music ran
in their ears, darker than his skin, sweeter than honey. They sat on
the stairs, listening. Old Mrs. Harford fell asleep. Paul,
stupified, shut his eyes. Julian stood, a little awkwardly, against
the newel post, and applauded loudly. He had little knowledge of
music but he wanted Celia to feel that he approved of her friend. She
squeezed his arm and smiled, translating him. Doris and Janet
disappeared, alienated, to discuss to-morrow's Christmas lunch, and
Celia's latest 6gaffe. Sue thought her baby was crying, though
no one else noticed. She hurried up the stairs: in the earliest stage
of loving him. She would have carried him about with her all the time
if it were socially permissible.
   'Now, sir,' said Mark to Julian, in his dark, slow voice,
'what can I play for you?'
   He implied compliment and Julian was flustered, afraid of failing
him. Celia leaned forward, her hair swinging past her brother's bulky
waistcoat.
   'Play "Savoy Blues", Markie, darling. Jule doesn't know the
name but he knows the tune.'
   Mark began to make melancholy love with the trumpet and Julian
was stricken as by Celia's pathos at dinner. His eyes sharpened for
an instant with tears which he was concerned to hide.
   What's wrong with me, this Christmas? he wondered, finding no
answer. Only it seemed to him that he was suddenly middle-aged and
had never possessed what he truly desired.
   Composed, he turned to smile at Celia and found his mood
reflected in her face. He concentrated again on Mark, and clapped
louder than anyone else when it was over.
   'Again, sir?' said Mark, absorbed, respectful.
   He had noticed something. Dignified beggar.
   'No, no, thank you. I enjoyed it, though. Tremendously. Old
favourite of mine. Thank you very much.'
   Mark bowed and stood silent.
   'I think we'll have some family carols now,' said Janet in a
high, bright voice, 'and Mama must go to bed. Come along, darling.
Where's Sue got to? That baby of hers will be ruined. She picks him
up every time he cries.'
   As Janet passed Julian she stared through him; her powdery skin
flushed on the cheekbones; her best court shoes uncomfortable and
smart. She trod on Celia's fuzzy skirt as she sat, rapt, at the foot
of the stairs.
   'Sorry, Celia,' said Janet heartily, 'but we're getting Mama
to bed.'
# 25
<43 TEXT K29>
Christopher Hollis
The Wind of Change
   THE FIRST white settlers came to the Highlands in 194 and
therefore an old man like Kungo could remember a time before there was
a white man in the land. He had seen the Serkali, as the Kikuyus
called the British Government, come, and if he could only manage to
live a few years longer, there seemed every likelihood that he would
see them go. The whole business was turning out to be that of but one
long lifetime. Kungo sat outside his thingira- his bachelor's
hut- and watched the hot equatorial sun going down the sky. He had
called to his senior wife to bring him some beer. She made her beer
out of sugar-cane and he preferred her brew to that of any of his
other wives. She brought him a calabash and he sat drinking it, and
as he drank, he meditated. The memories of a life came back to him.
   The first white men to come to Nanyuki were the missionaries, and
the first of them whom Kungo ever met was Father McCarthy. That was a
very long time ago- more, far more, than a hundred seasons- for
Kungo always reckoned his time by the seasons of six months, since the
rains and the crops come every six months. He did not reckon in years
as the white men so absurdly do. Kungo remembered Father McCarthy
well- a tall, white old man with piercing eyes. He was a good man
and a kind man, and he and his fellow priests had taught Kungo and the
other tribesmen some lessons which they had been glad to learn. They
had shown them how they could plant their crops and tend them so that
the yield would be increased. They had cast a spell on the tsetse fly
so that it did not eat their herds and they could now drive their
herds into districts where herds had never been able to go before.
They had shown them how to build up their land on the hillsides in
terraces, so that the rain no longer washed all their soil away. All
these were good lessons. Once when his first wife was ill, Father
McCarthy had taken her to Nyeri to a bad-smelling house called a
hospital, where a white witch-doctor had cut her open with a panga and
snatched out from her stomach the devil by which she was bewitched
within. He had then sown <SIC> her up with a needle, and, after a
time she had come back to him cured and able to bear more children.
This, too, was a good thing to have done, and seemed to show that the
white witch-doctors- their mundumugu- had more powerful spells
than had the mundumugu of the Kikuyu. If so, it must be that
their God was more powerful than the Kikuyu's Ngai, and indeed Kungo
had for a time accepted the God of Father McCarthy- had become a
servant of the Bwana Jesus- and had defied the old law of Ngai. It
had seemed to him clear when his wife came back from the hospital that
it was the Christian God who now sat on Kerinyaga in place of Ngai.
But in his old age he did not feel so sure. A hyena had left its
droppings near his thingira. He looked at them with disgust and
with terror. Father McCarthy, he well knew, would have said that a
hyena's droppings were a hyena's droppings and nothing more. But all
the Kikuyu believe that there is a thahu- a curse- in a hyena's
droppings. Would it not be as well to go to the mundumugu, to
kill a goat and get purification from the thahu? He did not say
that the Bwana Jesus was not powerful for evil, as Father McCarthy had
taught. But was that any reason why Ngai should not be powerful, too?
Might it not be that there were many gods, all of whom had their
power for evil? and was it not sensible prudence to avoid offending
any of the gods?
   Besides, though Father McCarthy was a good and kind man and
taught lessons which they did well to learn, he also said things which
it was less easy to believe and which Kungo had never been able to
find sensible. When Father McCarthy came, Kungo was still a young
man. He had just bought his second wife. Father McCarthy told him
that he should not have more than one wife. "What then should he do
with the second wife?" he asked. Should he just turn her out to
starve? If he sent her back to her parents, they would certainly not
return the bride-price with which he had bought her. Oh, no, said
Father McCarthy, he should keep her, but he should not use her as a
wife. This was plain madness.
   
   IT HAD seemed to him plain madness, but at least he had
imagined that, mad or not, it was the custom of the white man. Father
McCarthy and the other priests with him had a special thahu,
placed upon them by the Bwana Jesus, which forbade them to lie with
women at all, but he soon learnt that this thahu did not fall
upon all white men- that some white men did lie with women- and
indeed when, shortly afterwards, a white man, Bwana Dillon, came and
built a shamba and set up a farm amongst them, he brought a memsaab
with him and for a time he lived with her. Among the white men, Kungo
was told, a man has one single wife. It seemed a strange custom and
it was hard to see for what purpose a man would trouble to make
himself rich, if he could not buy more women with his riches.
Nevertheless, if that was the white man's custom, he had said, so be
it. Kungo was not greatly concerned to understand. Then after a time
Bwana Dillon's memsaab went away. They said that she had left him and
had gone over the sea to a country called England. For a time Bwana
Dillon lived, it seemed, alone. Then one day, he too went away, and
when he came back he brought with him another memsaab. He had, so
Kungo was told, been what was called divorced and had married a new
wife. Indeed after a time he divorced that wife too, and married a
third. Father McCarthy had left by then, so Kungo was not able to
consult him to find if he had understood it rightly, but it appeared
that among the white men it was possible for a man to have as many
wives as he liked, provided that he only had one at a time. This
surely, Kungo thought, was not a sensible arrangement. It was much
better for a man to have all his wives at the same time, as then the
wives could share out among themselves both the burden of the work and
the burden of child-bearing. The white man's arrangement did not seem
to him to be fair on the women. It is right that women should control
their desires. For that reason, said Kungo, do we circumcise them,
and, if one of my wives runs away to lie with another man, then, as is
the custom, I bind a hot stone beneath her knee-caps to cripple her
tendons, so that she can never run again. This is obviously common
sense. But how can one expect a woman to control her desires if she
is the only woman who can serve her man?
   Kungo of course had, like all Kikuyu, ever since his boyhood,
lain with any girls wherever opportunity offered. Since Ngai had
given him his desires it was but natural and right to satisfy them.
He had always been careful in obeying the custom of the tribe. He
knew well that it was wrong to impregnate an unmarried girl, for to do
so would reduce her bride-price and would thus be an injustice to her
parents. Therefore he had never sought to lift the second apron which
all unmarried girls wear in copulation to guard themselves against
being impregnated. But to lie with a girl could not be wrong.
Indeed, if there were no fornication, how could the girls tell which
men they liked and which they disliked? Yet Father McCarthy told him
that fornication, too, was wrong- that it was wrong to lie with any
woman unless a man was married to her. This also he found strange and
once again, when he came to know other bwanas- bwanas who had not,
like Father McCarthy, fallen under the thahu which forbade them
to lie with women- he found that this custom was by no means a
general custom of the white man. Bwana Dillon had after a few years
got tired of farming. So he started instead what he called a Country
Club for the rich bwanas and for bwanas who came from over the sea,
where they could go and get drunk when they got tired of looking at
the wild animals. Bwana Dillon hired Kungo to come and work in that
Club, and it was thus that Kungo came to learn something of the ways
of the white man. He had seen how in their dances the white men and
women held one another obscenely, the arm of the man around the woman
as if she was a whore, and as he brought them their drinks he would
often hear the white men talking easily and casually of the women with
whom they had lain. They did not know that he understood English and
therefore talked before him without restraint, but, though he did not
know all English words, he had early got to know the words which the
English most commonly used- such as those for food and drink, the
Government, and fornication, and motor cars- which were the subjects
upon which they mainly talked.
   
   WHAT Kungo could not for some time understand was why, though
those bwanas lay with unmarried girls and though the girls did not use
a second apron, yet it did not seem often to happen that the girls had
children. It was not until he was an old man that one day his son,
who, as was the way of the world, had left the shamba and gone to work
in a hotel in Nairobi, explained to him that the white women did have
a second apron of a sort, which they put on when they lay with men and
which guarded them against pregnancy. Or sometimes it was the man who
brought the apron as a gift when he came to lie with the woman. The
white woman's second apron was, said his son, a small apron of rubber.
He had often seen it among the luggage of the guests at the hotel and
a friend had explained to him its purpose. Kungo had then understood
why white unmarried women were not more often pregnant, but, if so,
why did they object to the Kikuyu girls if they wore a second apron,
which was surely in every way a more seemly and decent habit and in
accordance with the custom? White people, it seemed, when one looked
into it, did much the same things as Africans, though in a less
reasonable fashion. It was only that they talked differently and
pretended to act differently.
   It was natural that a man should wish to beget as many children
as possible, and the more wives he had, the more children could he
beget and with the less inconvenience. A rich man- it was only
reasonable- would buy as many women and as fat and with as broad
pelvises as he could afford. Besides, since it was forbidden for a
man to lie with his wife for twenty-four months after she had born him
a child, for fear that her milk would fall on him and cause a
thahu, or when a cow was about to calve, it was necessary that he
should have more than one wife.
# 224
<END>
<44 TEXT L1>
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
   He did well. He got in touch with the woman Pete was passing
off as his mother. Starmouth managed to win her confidence. It seems
that she was an honest enough woman, only her mind wasn't as clear as
it could have been. She showed him photographs. He found out that
the name of her house- Grand Greve- was taken from a bay in one of
the Channel Islands. One of the small ones. Sark, that's it. The
Caxtons used to have their holidays there. Starmouth went there. He
dug out some people who remembered the family. In the end he pieced
it all together.
   The Caxtons had two boys- Michael and Derek. Pete first met
them at school. It was a good school I sent him to, one of the best.
He was a boarder. He could always turn on the charm when it suited
him. The whole family came to like him. The real Michael- he was
the same age as my son- died of pleurisy when he was eighteen. Soon
after that Pete staged his drowning. He was always a smooth liar. He
invented some plausible story or other and threw himself on the
Caxtons' generosity. They accepted him as a kind of substitute for
the boy they had lost. Outside the family he began to pass himself
off as Michael Caxton. The father was well-off and easy-going. He
was easy meat for Pete. He sponged off him until he died just after
the war. Then Pete had to look around for some other security. He
found it- Dackson's Wharf, and Dackson's daughter.
   Mrs. Caxton's other boy, Derek, had been killed in the war.
After her husband died her brain began to fade. At times she thought
Pete was really her own son. Other times she remembered that both
Michael and Derek were dead. She couldn't work it out. She was
heading for a complete breakdown, Starmouth said.
   Then Starmouth found out that Pete was engaged to Geraldine
Dackson.
   (Up to this point Jesty had told his story in a flat, though
jerky, monotone. Now he grew more and more agitated.)
   The time for my revenge was just round the corner. I told
Starmouth to keep on watching Pete.
   Last Monday evening- a week ago to-day. God, only a week!- he
came to me. He had seen my son and another girl in intimacy.
   (Jesty's voice became shrill; his body began to twitch and jerk.)
   My chance had come at last. I had to take it. I was going to
smash him as he had twice tried to smash me.
   (His eyes, wild and frightened, were fixed on Tong. Tong guessed
that they did not see him.)
   I told Starmouth to go at once and report exactly what he had
seen to Dackson and his daughter. He did as he was told.
   (There was a thin trickle of moisture at the corner of Jesty's
lips, but his speech was parched and unsteady.)
   I thought that Dackson would ruin my son. I did not think he
would kill him. I swear that I did not want Dackson to kill my son.
I wasn't at the wharf at any time on Wednesday. That is the truth,
so help me God."
12
   Carol Carstairs, interviewed by Passon and Tong for the second
time, began by agreeing that she could have been mistaken about
the precise minute of Dackson's visit the previous Wednesday, and
ended by admitting that he was in fact at least half an hour late for
his appointment with her.
   "There it is," Passon commented afterwards. "She is a
business woman. No doubt he paid her well for stretching the truth a
bit. She was his second alibi, of course. The first was the
television set- and a daughter loyal enough, or distressed enough, to
lie for him."
   "I'm more sorry for Geraldine than anyone," Tong said.
"Unless it's Ella Marsham."
   "When you think it over, Harry, it's difficult to imagine any
visitor to the wharf other than Dackson himself persuading Caxton
to step out on to the quay on such a bleak night. Caxton could hardly
fail to obey his employer- and prospective father-in-law."
   "Pete Jesty, alias Michael Caxton," Tong said. "Think we
would have got the truth from his father if it hadn't been for old Sam
Toberson?"
   "Who knows? At least Sam was one of the factors the commander
didn't bargain for."
   "Another was the body fetching up on the mooring-hook-
practically where it started from."
   "And you finding out about the spy at the Marshams',"
Passon said.
   "Just a stroke of luck, sir," Tong said.
   "Luck or not, Harry, it was the real turning-point for us. Must
be true what they say. 'Tong can't go wrong!' "
   Coming from Long Dick this was praise indeed. Tong laughed
happily.
   "I'm a good dart-player too," he said.
13
   The long brutal winter ended at last. The plane trees in
Southwark Park were wrapped in a delicate mist of bursting buds; mild
sunlight played with the grey face of the river; the railway
embankment along Railside Terrace was thinly carpeted with upshooting
leaves of new weeds and grass; and a revolution had come to the
Toberson household.
   When Nick returned home he found that his mother was seriously
ill. She had pneumonia. The sight of her youngest son, the doctor
said, was the only thing that saved her; it gave her the strength she
needed to fight for life. Soon she was out of danger, but the doctor
told Dan that she would have to remain in bed for some time and that
thereafter it was essential that she should not have to exert herself.
Dan, not knowing which way to turn, took a desperate course. He
wrote to Rose beseeching her to help.
   The First Flower made a prompt appearance on the scene, bringing
the baby with her. She announced happily that her husband, with the
help of the eldest daughter, would be able to manage very well, and
that there was no reason why she shouldn't stay at Railside Terrace
indefinitely.
   With Grace helpless Rose set up her own autocracy. Her
squeaking, querulous accents were heard without intermission. They
rose over the baby's interminable howling and were directed at
everyone in equal measure. She was a poor and unpunctual cook.
Normally indolent, she was now and again seized with unpredictable
bouts of energy in the grip of which she swept through the house with
a fury that disarranged everything and left a trail of havoc behind.
Only the old man's room was too much for her. Once she put her head
round the door, and Sam shouted:
   "You get right out of this, Rose. You leave me in peace."
   Rose took one breath of the stagnant air.
   "You- you polecat!" she screeched, and retreated without
argument.
   Her re?2gime, hated alike by all the men, produced one
extraordinary result.
   One day Fred met Nick at the front door as they were both about
to enter the house. Fred grasped his brother's elbow.
   "Nick, I can't stomach this much longer."
   "Nor me. What's the answer? Mum's picking up, but she'll never
be her old self again."
   "That First Flower's driving me nuts," Fred said. "I'm going
to put a stop to it."
   "What with- arsenic?"
   Fred fixed his small eyes on his brother, beckoned him to stand
closer, and whispered into his ear the most unexpected words Nick had
ever heard.
   "I'm going to get myself married," Fred said.
   The next day he brought home a woman in her middle thirties and
took her straight to his mother's bedside.
   "Mum, this is Maggie. I'm going to marry her, and I'd like her
to come and live with us."
   Maggie was plump and plain with a pleasing smile, a placid
nature, and a slow-moving but methodical mind. For twenty years she
had worked in the bottling-store at the brewery, and Grace heard with
astonishment that Fred had known her on and off for nearly as long.
Grace, well aware of the turbulence that Rose was creating, was as
anxious as the rest of the family to find an alternative solution.
She took to Maggie at once; and at once began working on the problem
of how to accommodate Fred and a bride within the limited space
available. As always, old Sam was the stumbling-block. It was the
same dilemma she had to face when there was a prospect, now vanished
for ever, of Nick marrying Ella Marsham.
   It was Nick who found the answer.
   "Only one thing for it, Mum," he said, sitting on the edge of
the bed and holding one of her hands in his. "Let Fred and Mag have
the two upstairs rooms between them. Sam will have to come out of his
kennel. The two of us will sleep in the front room downstairs."
   "You won't ever shift him."
   Nick patted her.
   "We'll manage. Just you take it easy. We'll sort it out."
   Nick went at once to his grandfather, and found him buried in his
bed with his head barely visible upon the pillow. Sam spent much of
his time in bed these days. He argued that it was the only place
where he could be safe from Rose.
   "See here, Sam," Nick began. "You know Fred's getting
spliced."
   "Gone soft in the head," Sam said. "Same as I've always
said, women rule the roost and no man's safe from 'em. Ought to be a
better way of doing things. Take trees." He rattled on very
happily. "Trees have got the right idea. A tree's got more sense
than some people think. A tree don't have to worry. Just stays put
right where it was born."
   "Sorry, Sam, you're no tree, and you've got to shift from this
room."
   The old man was so incensed that after a good deal of wriggling
and twisting he managed to get his shoulders clear of all
restrictions. He propped himself on one elbow.
   "You can't do it to me, Nick. I've worked this room up to my
way of thinking like I'd educate a child. This room and me
understands one another."
   "Sam," Nick said firmly, "either you and me share downstairs,
and we have Mag, or you stick it out up here and we all get saddled
with the First Flower for ever."
   Sam sank back on his pillow.
   "Oh, my God! All right, you win!"
   With that settled Fred was soon married. The First Flower
snatched up her infant and departed, muttering sarcasms. The whole
household listened to the dwindling screams of the baby with relief.
Maggie soon proved her worth, and after a time Dan summed up the
general approval by saying:
   "She's as good a worker as you could wish for. She speaks our
language. Mag's one of us."
   Nick and his grandfather shared their bedroom amicably. The old
man, though fighting a grumbling rearguard action, permitted himself
gradually to become a little cleaner and tidier. In his heart he was
well satisfied to have Nick's company. When they were alone together
he often explained all over again how shrewd he had been in
discovering Alf Jesty's secret. "Imagine it, Nick, just that bit of
information Fred picked up about Pete Jesty always touching his nose,
and me remembering from that snap you once showed me that this Caxton
had some sort of a scar there. Just an idea to begin with, mind you-
then click! and I'd got it. That was smart work, say what you
like."
   "It certainly was, Sam," Nick would agree, and go on to say
with a touch of self-importance: "No wonder he tried to have me
suffocated back last summer. Must have thought I'd rumbled him right
from the start." By this time Nick was certain in his own mind that
he had really seen Caxton's hand snatching at the prop holding the
barge's hatch open, though he could never prove it, and it would not
be of much use if he could.
# 26
<45 TEXT L2>
But that was less important than the news that Sir Cedric had
visited Haines at the flat in Jarvis Street. Sir Cedric had never
spoken of such a call on the murdered man.
   "Off-hand" said Tarrant in reply to Oxenham, "I can't think
of any of my friends who fits that description.
   "Then you suggest that the information that you were seen in the
company of this man in Brighton is untrue?"
   Tarrant was irritated by Oxenham's tone as well as frightened,
and he made his reply as offensive as he could.
   "You asked me whether I knew the man and I told you I did not
recall anyone who tallied with that description. Only a perverted
mind would say that I had suggested your informant was a liar."
   Oxenham's face flushed slightly.
   "I find your remark offensive," he said.
   "That leaves me quite indifferent," snapped Tarrant.
   Commander Rodgers felt the situation was getting out of hand.
After all, he reflected, the police had nothing against Tarrant.
True, he had sponsored Bianca Poravia, who had lied about her
knowledge of Haines, but what had that to do with Tarrant? Also,
Tarrant's car had been seen near Battersea Bridge, but the explanation
offered seemed reasonable enough and could not be disproved on present
information. Rodgers knew that Oxenham was merely fishing when he
suggested that Tarrant might be the limping man who had been at
Brighton. Plenty of people walked with a limp, and no link had been
discovered between Tarrant and the white-haired man who had shown an
interest in Haines.
   Rodgers decided that the questioning must be brought to a close
immediately and he rose from his chair. He told himself that the only
reason he was stopping Oxenham from probing further was that he knew
Tarrant so well and trusted him. Not, Rodgers repeated, because
Tarrant was a senior director of the Ministry who was expected to
become the next Deputy Director General and who, even in his present
rank, exercised influence on the department's policy towards Scotland
Yard. Anyhow, he thought, it would be foolish to antagonise a man who
could be very awkward. The Commissioner of Police would not thank his
staff for precipitating a conflict with a highly respected and
responsible official of the Ministry of Security.
   "We seem to have gone off at a tangent," said Rodgers. "If
you should think of anything that will help us in the Haines case, I
know you'll give me a ring."
   Tarrant gave a stiff bow and went out without a word. He felt
ashamed of his behaviour. He knew he had made use of his position in
the Ministry and his friendship with Rodgers to bulldoze his way
through and that almost any other witness who had behaved so
scandalously to the police would have been quickly pulled up. But he
had to protect Sir Cedric and himself, and to find an excuse to cut
the questioning short. It was no time to be tactful and considerate
of others. An insulting superiority had been his best defence.
   The Yard, he reflected with satisfaction as he waited to cross
the road to the Ministry, had discovered nothing about the forgery of
Bianca Poravia's papers. That was a weight off his mind. He had been
prepared for Rodgers to say that the police knew of the fraudulent
application and to have the file placed before his eyes with a demand
for an explanation. That danger was not yet past, but at least for
the present no one suspected him of forgery.
   But did the police really believe, he wondered again, that he
might be concerned in Haines's murder? Tarrant smiled- the idea
seemed too ridiculous. Yet the questions had seemed to him to
indicate that Oxenham suspected him. At one time Tarrant had felt
almost sure that the C.I.D. must have learned of his meetings
with Haines and know about the blackmail. He had been right to deduce
that, if they had done so, Rodgers would not have stopped the
questioning.
   It was silly to feel indignant about being a suspect, Tarrant
reminded himself, when the truth was that he might have killed Haines.
He had intended to do so, and only his own lack of courage had made
him surrender the idea.
   He had found it a disagreeable experience to have to wriggle and
be wilfully obtuse and indeed engage almost in a kind of juvenile
brand of impertinence, but how would it have helped the investigation
if he had told the truth? He could have saved the Yard trouble
perhaps by disclosing that he was the source from which Haines had
amassed the six hundred pounds and by identifying his father-in-law as
the white-haired man who had enquired in Brighton about the
blackmailer. But he had withheld nothing that would have assisted
Scotland Yard in tracking down the murderer.
   He pondered on the significance of Sir Cedric Barker's visit to
Haines on the evening of the murder. The first thing to do, Tarrant
decided, was to warn his father-in-law. He could not depend on
intercepting him when he left the British Museum, and Tarrant made up
his mind to wait in the office until Sir Cedric would have reached
home.
   Miss Paynter came in with a pile of papers when Tarrant had
seated himself at his desk, but he pushed them aside carelessly. When
he heard that Manning wanted to see him, Tarrant shook his head but
changed his mind and told Miss Paynter to ask him to come along. It
was an effort to discuss official work but Tarrant thought that he had
hidden his perturbation. Manning was not very observant, too wrapped
up in his own affairs to pay much attention to others.
   When Manning had gone, Tarrant sent Miss Paynter home. He strode
up and down his room until it was time for Sir Cedric to have reached
his flat. He was relieved when he heard his father-in-law's voice
over the telephone. Another bout of probing by Lady Barker would have
been too much to bear.
   Tarrant asked Sir Cedric to meet him and his father-in-law
grudgingly agreed to have a drink in a hotel close to the Barkers'
flat. When he arrived at the rendezvous, Tarrant had to wait for him.
He ordered a drink and took it to a table in a secluded corner.
Though he told himself it was impossible that Sir Cedric could have
had any part in the murder, he could not dismiss the thought from his
mind. Tarrant remembered how close he himself had come to killing
Haines.
   When he saw Sir Cedric making his leisurely way into the hotel
bar, his light-coloured overcoat flapping round his legs, Tarrant
jumped up and went to meet him.
   "You must get rid of that coat," he said urgently.
   Sir Cedric stroked the material of the coat affectionately.
   "It's got a lot of wear in it yet," he said, "and I don't
really feel the cold."
   Tarrant helped Sir Cedric to take off the overcoat and bundled it
on the chair, with the lining turned outwards. When he had brought
another drink, Tarrant repeated at length the exchanges which had
taken place in Scotland Yard. Sir Cedric sat apparently unmoved, but
at the close of the recital, he gave a loud chuckle.
   "You were a bit rough," he commented. "I suppose it might be
called bureaucratic licence."
   "It seemed the easiest way to end the inquisition. You didn't
tell me you had visited Haines, Cedric."
   "I felt it better you shouldn't know," said Sir Cedric
defensively. "I hoped the police wouldn't question you but I foresaw
the possibility. I didn't want them to get the information out of
you, for I knew it would look suspicious."
   "And why did you visit him on the night of the murder?"
   Sir Cedric looked rather shamefaced.
   "I asked him his terms for keeping quiet about your forgery."
   "But that was senseless! Whatever Haines might have promised
before he took your money, there was no way of making him keep his
word."
   "I wasn't quite so simple, Bob. I told Haines that before I
handed over any cash, he would need to sign a statement confessing to
a crime for which he could be prosecuted. Then if he ever used his
knowledge against you, he'd know I could produce his confession and
he'd go to gaol."
   Tarrant stared at his father-in-law unbelievingly.
   "You really expected him to agree to that?" he asked. "I
never looked on you as a romantist!"
   "I was willing to try anything to end the threat. You couldn't
have gone on as you were doing, Bob. Even if Haines had kept quiet,
you'd never have known any peace and you'd have broken within a few
weeks- I could see it. You remember I asked you how much you would
give to buy his silence and you told me almost everything you
possessed. Well, I thought I'd make him an offer that would tempt
him. I told him he could have ten thousand pounds if he agreed to my
terms."
   Tarrant gave a soft whistle.
   "It would have been worth it," he said. "But Haines wouldn't
play?"
   "I think he was tempted. But he was eaten up with bitterness
against you and this woman Bianca. He raved at me as if he were
unbalanced."
   "He was a bit, you know."
   Sir Cedric took a sip at his sherry.
   "A pity somebody saw us at Brighton," he said. "The police,
though, can't be sure or they'd have clamped down on you."
   "I felt they couldn't be certain about my being there, but they
have your description and it isn't far out. That coat is dangerous,
Cedric. You must get rid of it."
   Sir Cedric promised to carry the coat over his arm on the way
home, and when he went to the British Museum on Monday. Then he would
leave the coat in the Reading Room and let his wife believe it had
been lost.
   "Best place I know to hide anything," he pointed out. "I'll
stuff the coat behind a set of old religious sermons which no one ever
looks at." He patted the material gently. "I shouldn't like to
part with it altogether."
   If he had been asked, Tarrant would have said at once that Haines
could not be bribed. He had seen, particularly at the last meeting
with the blackmailer, that Haines was determined on revenge. The idea
that he could be induced to accept money- even though the sum was as
high as ten thousand pounds- as the price of keeping quiet was based
on a complete failure to understand Jim Haines's warped and twisted
mind.
   And when Haines had rejected the proposal, what had Sir Cedric
done? Had he determined to kill Haines if he could not be silenced
otherwise, and, when the offer of money had been rejected, had he
steeled himself to murder?
   Tarrant looked across at Sir Cedric on the other side of the
table and felt a rush of affection for him. He realised how fantastic
it was to imagine that his father-in-law could have had anything to do
with so brutal a murder.
   "I'd begun to suspect you, Cedric," he apologised.
   "That was pretty obvious," smiled Sir Cedric, "and I admit I
once had doubts about you. The only thing that worries me is your
forgery of the immigration papers. I read that someone had left a
letter to be sent to the police two months after his death, and Haines
may have done something of the same kind."
   "You read the wrong sort of newspapers, Cedric," laughed
Tarrant, but he felt less confident than he sounded.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
   OXENHAM FELT incensed that Tarrant should have been treated so
leniently and been permitted to dodge questions. The chief inspector
could not argue with Commander Rodgers, but, when Tarrant had left the
room, he showed his irritation at the way the interview had been
conducted.
# 22
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The nose is one of the most pain-sensitive organs in the human
body- and Malone was discovering the truth in scientific detail.
   Kennan had only seconds left. He jumped forward to the far limit
of his chain, his right hand chopping edge-downwards in bone-jarring
force. The blow took the writhing thug a fraction above the boney
knob which landmarked the cervical plexus, the vital nerve-centre
which a long-ago Marine instructor had declared the pinnacle of
unarmed combat targets. The thug collapsed with a whistling moan, and
Kennan tore the Luger from the man's suddenly limp hand. There was no
time for rejoicing, but the hard, firm shape of the automatic sent a
new confidence surging through his body.
   Shouts, and the clatter of feet meant Goldie and Leo Grundy were
on their way. Kennan pulled the manacle chain taut, and blasted two
shots at the link which tied him to the ring-bolt in the rock. The
nine-millimetre bullets smashed the chain as if it had been plastic,
and, free, though the chain still dangled, he threw himself across the
floor towards the entrance.
   Leo Grundy materialized there at the same second, his gun
throwing down for a target. Kennan squeezed trigger first, and the
bullet, taking the other with blasting muzzle-velocity at close range,
high in the chest, smashed him back and downwards while Grundy's shot
bit splintering rock from the wall feet away, then whined in a double
ricochet. With scrambling intensity, Kennan hurdled the man as he
fell and was in the main gallery, looking for the last of the trio.
   Goldie Lord was running, back down the rock-walled corridor, past
the tangle of camp-beds, stove, and collection of crates which marked
their base, towards the far end of the tunnel where the lights stopped
and a deep blackness marked the start of the way towards the surface.
Kennan aimed, then lowered the gun and began sprinting instead. He
couldn't, even in his present mood, shoot the man in the back. For
Goldie had no gun, only the open razor held in his right hand, close
by his side.
   Suddenly the other man tripped and went sprawling, one foot
tangled in the rubber-armoured wire which snaked across the gallery
from the midget power generator. The lights flickered, then held
steady. Goldie lunged to his feet again, the razor flashing in a
frantic sidestroke as his pursuer loomed over him. Kennan threw
himself to one side to avoid the slicing metal, and swung the manacle
chain like a flail, reaping a bloody swathe across his opponent's
face, following it up with a blow from the gun-barrel which smashed
the man's forearm, the bone fracturing with an audible click. He
kicked the razor clear, then stood back, panting for breath, gesturing
with the long black muzzle of the Luger.
   'My turn ... get moving ...' he gasped, pointing back down the
gallery.
   Tears of pain in his eyes, facial muscles quivering, Goldie rose
slowly to his feet and obeyed. Kennan got behind him, let him reach
the camp area, then smartly reversed the Luger and brought the butt
down hard on the other man's head. Goldie went down, jack-knifing
across one of the camp-beds. Limping badly now- the old familiar
ache in his leg started again as the tension died- Kennan heaved the
man over, rummaged around the collection of boxes and crates, and
found a length of cord. He used it to lash the man's hands and feet
together, then passed a few final turns round Goldie's body and
camp-bed frame, anchoring him securely. The Luger ready, he walked
slowly back towards the little side-gallery which had been his prison.
   Leo Grundy was lying with his back against the rock wall, barely
conscious, his face suddenly younger and frightened, breath coming in
wheezing gulps. Kennan stepped over him, collecting the man's gun on
the way, and knelt beside Cutter Malone.
   The knifeman thug was dead.
   It was a moment or two before Kennan understood. The crushing
blow he had landed on the man's neck, paralysing the vital nerve
centre, by fluke chance had also been hard and accurate enough to
damage the delicate nervous lacework which controlled life's
respiratory action. Unconscious, Malone had died from lack of oxygen,
just as surely as if he had been strangled.
   He felt sick. But there were other things to do than crouch over
the probably unlamented remains of Cutter Malone. Kennan went back to
where Leo Grundy was slumped, and eased the man back into a more
comfortable position. Grundy's eyes, wide and bright with fear,
followed every move he made.
   The handcuff key was still in the twenty-year-old's trouser
pocket. With a sigh of relief, Kennan loosened the metal jaws, and
massaged his red-wealed wrist.
   Now, however, he had another problem: What to do with the two
surviving crooks. Goldie? He could be discounted for some time, and
his bonds should hold until he was collected by MacTaggart's men. But
Leo Grundy- he bent low over the younger man again. Leo was as
vicious as they came- but in a way he was sorry it had been he who'd
stopped a bullet. Whatever his record, and Kennan had no illusions on
that score, Leo had been the most humane of the trio towards him.
   'I'm going to lift you and get you on to one of the beds.
Understand?'
   Grundy coughed, and gave a faint mumble of acknowledgement.
   He wasn't heavy. Kennan carried him over, and laid him down on
the nearest camp-bed, a pillow under his head. A two-gallon
water-can, made of bright-red plastic, was lying near by. He poured
some into a cup, and let the wounded man sip the liquid.
   The eyes showed something akin to gratitude. But the red stain
on the front of Grundy's red woollen cardigan was spreading. Kennan's
fingertips were stained the same colour as he unbuttoned the garment
and loosened the shirt beneath. The Luger slug had made a neat round
entry just below the collarbone. Easing him up, Kennan found the
bullet's exit point, a more ragged wound, in from the shoulder-blade.
Grundy would live. His lung was probably nicked, but with no sign
yet of blood in his mouth he seemed to have been lucky.
   'I'm going to give you it straight,' said Kennan. 'I'll pad
up the wound, and send help as soon as I get out. If you stay still,
you've a chance. Try getting away, and you'll haemorrhage within a
hundred yards'
   Grundy nodded.
   He found a clean shirt in a small suitcase, tore it into strips,
and used the resultant rags as bandages. Grundy was too weak from
shock and his wound to do more than watch. When it was done, he
settled back with a sigh.
   'Answer me some questions.' Kennan sat on the edge of the
bed, the Luger on his lap. 'How far are we from the Polley-Bland
plant?'
   Grundy swallowed, and mumbled a reply so low and hoarse that
Kennan had to strain to hear.
   'About ... about forty miles. We're in South ... Ayrshire.
Takes about an hour, maybe more, to ... Glasgow.'
   'The inside man at the plant. He's an American?'
   A nod.
   'His name?'
   Grundy tried to turn his head away. But he couldn't escape. He
swallowed again. 'Spence ... that's what Vince Benson calls him.'
   Gene. Since he'd lain chained to the rock, Kennan had realized
that there was no other choice. But somehow he'd kept hoping he could
be wrong. Now, he had to face facts, and concentrate on the other
important task still on hand, saving Big Betsy, the crucial item of
equipment on which the Polley-Bland contract and so much more
depended.
   He lit a cigarette, and put his final question. 'How are they
going to do it? How do they knock out the transformer?'
   The fear of death was large in Grundy's eyes. He knew that
Kennan was his only hope of getting medical attention, and by his
standards it seemed logical enough that there was an unspoken threat
as to the consequence of failure to answer.
   'Spence ... Spence didn't tell us. Vince knows, but he wouldn't
talk either.' Grundy licked his lips, face white and desperate.
'All I know is the time ... eleven a.m. Hell, Kennan, I ... I'd
tell you if I could.'
   Kennan tried again. But, his voice hoarse and weak, coupling his
words with a plea for a doctor, the little crook persisted that the
exact method to be used was a secret Gene Spence had refused to
reveal.
   It was eight-thirty- only half an hour since the brooch and fish
hook trap had sprung. Time enough, Kennan knew, but leaving nothing
to spare. There was a storm lantern lying among the clutter of
stores, and he picked it up, took a last look around the underground
gallery, sniffing the faint odour of gunsmoke still lingering in the
air, then headed towards the black of the tunnel to the surface.
   Compared with the main gallery, the ventilation tunnel was
smaller and narrow. Even with the wavering beam of the storm light,
he more than once bumped his head on the two hundred yard trip along
the shaft's rough, rising surface towards ground level. The last
fifty yards or so was at an upward angle of almost forty-five degrees.
Then he was at the heavy door at the shaft entrance. For a moment,
staring at it, he thought he'd have to go back and try to find a key.
But Benson had obviously decided he'd never be locked in from the
inside. There was a simple handle mechanism which governed the
massive lock.
   The door swung wide, and he was free, in the open, standing in
the clean fresh air, the sun shining above, the soft, still dew-moist
grass springy underfoot. A curlew rose from a patch of heather only
feet away and soared skywards, giving its distinctive 'pee-wit'
cry. He felt like laughing and crying, both at the same time. And in
the middle distance, the narrow tarmac ribbon of a road cut across the
dark green of the moorland.
   Kennan dragged a heavy boulder over to the shaft doorway, placing
it in such a way that the door couldn't swing shut. Then, shoving the
Luger into the waistband of his trousers, he set off for the road.
   Half a mile along the road, after tossing a coin and electing to
take the left-hand direction, he managed to thumb a lift. The driver
of the farm tractor had taken some convincing when he first saw the
ragged, blood-stained tramp waving from the roadside. But Kennan
still had his wallet, and money.
   The tractor, its fare-paying passenger perched precariously
behind the driver, roared along the country highway at full throttle,
and after about a mile swung into a small plantation of fir trees.
The farmhouse was in the middle. More explanations, considerably
complicated by the fact that he had to explain the gun in his
waistband while the farmer's wife held an old-fashioned
single-barrelled shotgun pointed at his midriff, finally ended with
him being allowed to use the farmhouse phone.
   While he waited for the operator at police head-quarters in
Glasgow to locate Superintendent MacTaggart, Kennan asked his
audience: 'What's the name of this place?'
   The farmer's wife, the shotgun now laid against the table but
still near at hand, told him. 'Aultdonald. About three miles out o'
Cumnock, mister.' In her broad Ayrshire dialect she demanded in
turn, 'are you one of them Americans from the air base at
Prestwick?'
   He shook his head, and turned back to the phone as MacTaggart's
voice crackled over the wire.
   'Where the hell have you been, Kennan?' barked the policeman.
'I've had a full scale search going on for you for almost
twenty-four hours now. The American Embassy's been howling that
you've got to be found, the Home Office joining in the chorus, and
I've been left holding the baby. What happened?'
   Kennan told him as crisply as possible, conscious of the
open-mouth attention of the two other people in the farmhouse kitchen.
# 212
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   'Well, what do you think?' she scoffed, her brilliant
eyes challenging him.
   He made no answer. There was nothing to be said. He lifted his
glass and drained it, feeling the sweat breaking out on the palms of
his hands.
   When at last he looked up she was standing right in front of him,
smiling as if nothing had happened! He could hardly believe it and
blinked several times.
   'Well, don't I get a drink tonight?' she asked boldly.
   'Of course... anything you like', he murmured, relief flooding
over him. 'Kitty... I'm sorry....' His throat went tight and
words failed him.
   'Aw, forget it', she said cheerfully. 'I'll sting you for a
double for being a naughty boy. How about the telly tomorrow
afternoon?'
   He felt a glow of happiness steal over him. Everything was all
right now, thank God. She wasn't going to break with him, after all.
For the moment it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
   'Of course, Kitty', he said fervently, his eyes misty behind
their thick lenses. 'Well, I'll be off now. See you tomorrow... and
thank you....'
   'So long, Bob', she said, waving her hand to him.
   Harry followed him to the door, opened it for him and stood
outside on the step, looking up at the sky, where a few pale stars
shone between puffs of light cumulus cloud.
   'Nice night', he remarked affably. 'But they forecast rain
for tomorrow.'
   'Do they?' Bone glanced up at the sky, his thoughts
elsewhere. Personally, he didn't care if it rained cats and dogs and
he knew that Harry didn't either. He waited, pulling on his gloves
and adjusting his hat.
   'Look, Bob,' Harry began, after a brief silence, 'I don't
mean to butt in, but if you take my advice you'll 'ave no more truck
with 'er.' He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'That girl's
nothing but a load of trouble, I'm warning you.'
   'Kitty's all right', Bone contradicted flatly. 'It's her
boy-friend that's the trouble. If we could get rid of him...'
   Harry nodded his grizzled head like an old hound.
   'You're right there, Bob', he muttered. 'But it's easier
said than done. Kitty encourages him, too. No work, no background,
no regular money so far as I can make out. Probably on the crook.
But there you are, the girl's wild and headstrong. I can't do
nothing with 'er.'
   'Don't worry, Harry', the other said quietly. 'I won't make
a fool of myself. Kitty needs a good friend and I'll always be
that.' He paused, hatred of Stevie Hewitt rising like gall in his
throat. 'And I'll find a way of getting rid of that chap, Hewitt,
too. Leave it to me.'
   'O.K., Bob, but watch your step. He's a tough customer,
mark my words', Harry said in a low voice.
   Bone half smiled in the darkness.
   'I'll remember', he said. 'Good night, Harry.'
   'Good night, Bob.'
   Bone walked down the road, his cre?5pe-soled shoes making no
sound on the asphalt surface. As he walked he concentrated on the
problem of Stevie Hewitt. By comparison with the manner in which he
had dispatched Henry Mansell the elimination of a little spiv from
Brighton seemed an easy undertaking... once he'd set his mind to it.
   Back at the cottage he prepared his supper and ate it beside the
fire in the living-room, his thoughts once more on Kitty. If she was
really in love with Stevie Hewitt it was madness to go on worrying
about her, he told himself moodily. Yet it was not as clear-cut as
that. He not only felt his need of her but was equally aware of the
necessity to help and protect her, even against her will.
   Tonight, for the first time, he had abandoned all pretence and
shown her the honest desperation of his feeling for her. She had
neither encouraged nor completely rejected him. In some perverse way
their brief quarrel had forged a bond between them. No doubt she had
every intention of keeping both of them on a string. On the whole he
probably had a slight advantage over the young man, inasmuch as he had
money to spend and she was a girl who had a healthy respect for the
material things of life.
   Towards eleven o'clock he locked up, turned out the light in the
sitting-room, and went up to his bedroom.
   For several minutes he stared at his reflection in the oval
mirror on the top of the chest.
   The toupe?2e undoubtedly improved his appearance and made him
look ten years younger. His skin was a healthier colour and he had
put on half a stone in the last few months, filling out the hollows in
his cheeks and giving him a more rounded appearance. But he was still
no sort of match for a young and virile competitor and he knew it.
   He turned away and begun to undress, shivering with the cold.
   His eye automatically glanced towards the panel which concealed
the hiding-place of his secret treasure. For an instant he stood
transfixed to the floor, his eyes unwavering as they riveted
themselves on the wall. Was it his imagination or was the panel
slightly lop-sided?
   Leaping forward with a choked sound he grasped the oblong panel
and pulled it out. The black tin box was exactly as he had left it.
With heavily beating heart he reached out and lifted the lid.
Everything was intact and he gasped with relief.
   He lifted out the heavy bundles of notes and knelt on the floor
to count them. Of course, he remembered being in a great hurry to get
that fifty pounds for Kitty! Obviously he had been careless in
replacing the panel, but the possibility of anyone having discovered
his hiding-place gave him something of a shock. As he replaced the
bundles of notes, he withdrew the tin box from its hiding-place and
locked it inside the cupboard. It would be safer under lock and key
for the time being than behind a piece of panelling which did not fit
very securely. Tomorrow he would buy a heavy padlock for the box and
search for a new hiding-place.
   He lay in bed, cold and uneasy, unable to account for an
instinctive sense of danger.
   When he closed his eyes it was Henry Mansell's face he saw,
hovering above his head like a hideous caricature. The parrot nose
and straight line of the mouth, the pitiless blue eyes that seemed to
strip him right down to his abjectly quaking bones. The mouldering
horror that had once been Henry Mansell taunted him now in the silent
darkness.
2
   In a corner of the saloon bar of the Six Bells at Hawkeshurst
that Friday night Hugh Mansell and Roddy Dowell drank their beer and
waited.
   'It's too damn busy in here. We can't expect him to leave his
customers', Hugh said morosely.
   'Give him a chance, old chap. He'll be over. Jim's a most
reliable chap when it comes to picking up a small tip.'
   'O.K., Roddy, whatever you say.' Hugh drained his glass
and ordered two more beers. 'I'm really beginning to feel it's all a
bit of a waste of time, anyway. I've been collecting scraps of
evidence and piecing them together for four months now, and the whole
lot still doesn't amount to anything one could call concrete.'
   Roddy puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed on the white-coated
barman.
   'Oh, I think it does, Hugh. That's why I want you to meet this
bird. I think he fills in an important part of the background.
Furthermore, dear boy, it confirms what we already know of your
father's intention to leave the country on the night of October
14th.'
   Hugh nodded. His face wore the melancholy expression that was
habitual to him but his eyes showed his inner excitement.
   'I know, but from the moment he walked out of here we haven't a
shred of evidence to prove what happened. Obviously he met someone,
either by chance or by arrangement. Whichever way it was, that person
had a gun and he managed to persuade Father to drive along that quiet
stretch of road....'
   'Miles off his proper route to Dover or the airport at Lydd',
Roddy interposed quickly. 'And once there he was shot at close range
and his money smartly filched. You know, whoever it was might have
known of the existence of the suicide letter... providing him with an
almost unshakable alibi.'
   Hugh was thinking of his uncle, but said nothing. After all,
Julian had acted very strangely since the tragedy, always secretive,
always reluctant to discuss his brother's death. It was impossible to
associate him in one's mind with a cold-blooded murder but, in fact,
Henry Mansell's death had saved the firm and Julian's future.
Moreover he might well have been aware of his brother's intention to
skip out of the country and passed on the information.
   'I'm sure you're right', Hugh said thoughtfully. 'But
whoever did it got clean away without being spotted.'
   'Easy enough along that stretch of coast road in winter, believe
me', Roddy affirmed solemnly. 'He probably caught the next boat
across the channel and has been lying low with the money somewhere.'
   Hugh nodded. 'I realized that after my talk with Mrs.
Lawford. There are a dozen countries where a man could easily hide up
and change the money without danger. Unless we can get a definite
line on him it's hopeless....'
   'Something will turn up one day, you'll see', Roddy said
confidently. 'If we plug away at the leads we have....'
   'If only the police would do something...' Hugh cried out
in exasperation. 'I've put everything I know before them....'
   'No dice, Hugh.' Roddy shook his sandy head. 'They're bound
to want pretty solid new evidence before they'll agree to reopen the
case. From their point of view the evidence for suicide is
overwhelming. I spoke to a chap from the office of the Director of
Public Prosecutions I know pretty well, and he agreed that the missing
cash is a hell of a mystery. But as he quite reasonably pointed out
the money could have been disposed of in London before your father
left that evening. It wouldn't be unnatural for a man in his position
to make provision for an unknown dependent or settle what he regarded
as particular debts of honour before taking his own life. Also,
logically, there's nothing to show the money couldn't have been
pinched by someone passing the car after your father was dead.
Stealing from cars is about the commonest kind of crime in the book.
There's nothing that absolutely ties the missing money to the
circumstances of your father's death, that's the point. Same with the
passport. It's gone and that's that. It may turn up in a dustbin
somewhere or at the back of a drawer. As far as the police are
concerned there's nothing to go on. In our own minds we may be pretty
sure what happened, but that's not good enough for them. That suicide
letter did the trick- definite proof that your father took his life,
backed by medical evidence and the fingerprint chaps.'
   A little man with thin brown hair and a ruddy complexion came
over and greeted them. He wore a short white coat.
   Hugh ordered drinks.
   'I was sorry to read about your dad in the paper', the man
said to Hugh in a thick voice which bore traces of a cockney accent.
'I was telling your friend how he come <SIC> in here the very
night he passed away.'
   Hugh wasn't impressed with this ingratiating barman whom Roddy
had raked up. He was seedy and middle-aged with small black eyes set
close together beneath heavily marked brows and a sly, crafty
expression that failed to inspire confidence.
   'He was hitting the bottle pretty hard, sir...' the man said
in a loud whisper. 'Meaning no offence', he added, looking at
Hugh.
# 2
<48 TEXT L5>
   What had he really wanted to see? A copy of Hilary's will?
That wasn't impossible, though unpleasant to contemplate. A young
man of his ideas might feel he was entitled to know what provision had
been made for Hilary's daughter, in the event of Hilary's death. Now
that Rose was dead, the picture had changed substantially. There
would be no one to share the vast fortune with Lisabelle. She would
be the sole beneficiary, in the normal course of events, which would
make her a very rich young woman indeed.
   "Sorry I was so long," Peter's voice made Mary jump guiltily.
"I tried my hand at that cheese concoction I remembered you liked.
And heated up some soup. You deserve better than a cold snack."
   He placed an appetizingly set tray on the cleared end of the long
table. He had not only taken a great deal of trouble on her behalf,
but had foreseen exactly the kind of food that would appeal to her.
Beyond this there was such charming friendliness in his manner, he
was such an attractive looking fair-haired young man, his eyes so blue
in his tanned face, it was difficult to steel herself against him.
But charm and good looks and attentiveness in small ways were
qualities essential to the fortune hunter. They bore no relation to
trustworthiness or character. Nor did Peter's gift for companionable
silence, grateful though she was not to be forced to make
conversation.
   She heard the door open, heard the rustle of silk just as Peter
picked up the tray with the empty dishes.
   He stood quite still.
   When he spoke it was with an eloquent, far-from-Old-World,
~"Wow!"
   Lisabelle's cheeks were almost the colour of the watermelon pink
silk as she presented herself for Mary's inspection. The dress
itself, the unusual care she'd taken to arrange her smooth black hair,
the lipstick and powder she'd put on with surprising skill had
transformed her. She had become a beauty.
   She knew it, and the knowledge transformed her.
   "I didn't dream clothes could make so much difference," she
said. "You'll have to buy all my clothes for me! Although," she
added ruefully, "I don't know where I'd wear them. Where I'll even
wear this."
   "In New York, when you're staying with me." The opportunity
was Heaven-sent. "Look, Lisabelle, you're to go back with me next
week, I'll guarantee you'll have a good time."
   "I'd adore to go." Lisabelle's eyes shone like stars.
   "Then we're all set. The job here ought to be finished in a
matter of days. We'll ring up the airport in the morning and get our
reservations. Luckily I have a guest room in my apartment- a tiny
one, but you won't mind."
   "'Mind'? It would be bliss."
   Then the sparkle in her green eyes vanished. The excitement
ebbed. She said with the quiet of despair, "But I can't leave
Dad."
   Peter moved resolutely off with the tray.
   Mary picked up a cigarette and lighted it, without speaking.
   Lisabelle glanced appealing down at her. "You do understand,
don't you?"
   "Of course I understand, lambie," Mary said. She raised her
arms, and for the first time Lisabelle leaned down and gave her a real
kiss.
Chapter 29
   SUNDAY was another golden day of sunshine. A day when every
instinct rebelled against staying indoors.
   The chances were, she wouldn't get the telephone call until
tomorrow, at the earliest, Mary thought. But there was a dynamic
quality about James Danford that made anything possible. At 1
o'clock Mary reluctantly rose from the canvas chair outside her door,
where she'd been basking in the sun, and went across the court garden
to the living-room.
   She found that the last person in the world with whom she would
willingly have shared this tense period of waiting was ensconced
there.
   Dora May was settled in a comfortable upholstered chair, Sunday
newspapers strewn all around her on the floor. Her feet, in
high-heeled pink linen sandals, were resting on an upholstered stool.
She was dressed entirely in pink. The black of mourning for Rose had
been quickly discarded, but not the air of importance that had been
imparted by the legacy Rose had left her.
   "I'm waiting to see Cousin Hilary," she said. "I brought out
the mail while I was about it. There are four letters for you. They
don't look very exciting, though."
   Mary sat down in the desk chair, her back turned to Dora May's
gaze, while she opened the letters.
   They were not, as she'd judged, very exciting. Mary was reading
the one from her assistant a second time, when Dora May's flat nasal
voice broke in.
   "A little bird told me you had a real long visit with Manuel
night before last."
   Mary put all her letters into her purse, rose without haste and
moved towards the fireplace. Despite the warmth outside it was cool
in here and the fire was welcome. She tossed the envelopes onto the
blaze, stood watching them a moment.
   Somehow she must manage to cope with this wretched creature with
the tight blonde curls, whose every word and gesture irritated her
almost beyond endurance. There was no hope of dislodging her; she was
rooted here. Nor could any power on earth stop her from talking.
Mary realized that the part of wisdom was to accept the situation
without further protest, and, if possible, extract some benefit from
it.
   After all, Dora May had been a member of this household for a
good many years. She must possess information that would be of value.
Even the least observant person would have learned a vast amount; and
she possessed abnormal curiosity.
   The difficulty was not in getting her to talk, Heaven knew, but
in diverting her talk into channels of potential usefulness.
   "There's no knowing when Hilary will be back," Mary said.
"There is nothing for me to do but loaf and wait for a long distance
call about some materials I need." It seemed sensible to slip this
in. "So, if I could be of any help?"
   "I don't see how. What I want is for Cousin Hilary to advance
me the money Rose left me in her will."
   "No, I could hardly do that. Twenty-five thousand dollars is a
large sum. Although to Hilary, of course, it's peanuts."
   "That's what you think."
   The glint in Dora May's cold blue eyes was a signpost the least
discerning could follow.
   "I'm positive," Mary said firmly, "that twenty-five thousand
dollars doesn't mean any more to Hilary than twenty-five cents would
to me."
   "Then why has he mortgaged this ranch?" Dora May's voice was
shrill with triumph. "Borrowed every penny he could get against the
land, and the cattle and equipment, too? Just tell me that, if you
know so much about his affairs."
   "I don't need to know much about Hilary's affairs to know he's
one of the richest men in the state," Mary said. "You must have
been misinformed about his borrowing money."
   She sat down on the sofa as if dismissing the whole subject,
picked up one of the papers from the floor and pretended interest in
its headlines.
   Dora May rose to the bait. "Hilary's lawyer's secretary is a
close personal friend of mine. I guess she's not misinformed about
documents she drew up herself! And came out here with the notary and
signed as witness, the very afternoon of Rose's funeral."
   "More trouble in Africa." Mary kept her eyes on the
newspaper. "Oh, sorry, Dora May ... you said something about
documents?" She looked up, thinking, with wicked amusement, I
couldn't blame her if she slapped me! then shrank within herself for a
moment, as the wrath in Dora May's voice made that outcome not
impossible.
   "You needn't high-hat me! I'm trying to tell you something for
your own good- if you ever want to get paid for what you're doing
here! And I'll tell you something else. You can put it in your pipe
and smoke it. So long as Rose was alive Hilary couldn't have
mortgaged everything he owned without her consent. And she wouldn't
have given it ... Maybe she'd be alive today if she'd been willing
to."
   "That's crazy!" Mary declared, but she couldn't hide her sense
of shock.
   Dora May was gratified. "You know as well as I do Rose didn't
kill herself. Why did you go to Dr. Summersby's office and ask him
about those pain-killers of Hilary's if you didn't suspicion
something?"
   On guard now, Mary resorted to counter-attack.
   "Oh, I remember. You said once that Dr. Summersby's nurse is
a friend of yours, too,"
   "We went to school together."
   "And the good doctor tells her everything?"
   "Well, no. Not exactly. He has one of those dictaphone things
so she can keep a record of what his patients say. I guess he forgot
to turn it off when you were there."
   Mary's mind flashed back to her interview with Dr. Summersby.
Just what had she said in the so-called privacy of his office? She'd
asked for the English valet's address, asked if she could go to the
hospital to see Manuel. Spoken of Hilary's plans for a festive
wedding for Manuel and Sarita. What else that Dora May's bird-brain
could fasten on? Or, was it such a bird-brain? Was she inventing
this fantasy of Hilary's desperate need for money? The details had
sounded disturbingly convincing. Hilary was no niggardly gambler. It
could easily be all or nothing with him. It was possible that the
notary might have come out the afternoon of the funeral. Lisabelle
and Peter and she had been riding and away from the house for hours.
   "I certainly couldn't have given Dr. Summersby the impression
that I thought Hilary had anything to do with Rose's death," Mary
said. "The question that bothered me was why she should have taken
her own life, if she did take it deliberately, when she had so much to
look forward to. I know all about the man in Dallas. I think she
would have been very happy if eventually she'd married him. As she
deserved to be happy."
   Dora May looked up. Again she astonished Mary. There were tears
in her eyes. They were, however, tears of self-pity, "She was the
only friend I had at the ranch. She knew what it was to be an
outsider ...
   "I'm sure Rose knew that Hilary was going bankrupt," she said,
with another startling shift of mood. "I think that's why she left
her jewellery to Lisabelle. Not that I mean to complain. Not little
old me. I just don't understand it, that's all."
   She swung her pink sandals off the footrest, got to her feet;
elaborately smoothing the pink linen over her rounded hips, patting
her tight blonde curls.
   "If Rose had made that will after we had words, I wouldn't have
blamed her. But she didn't. She made it while everything was fine
between us."
   So Dora May had quarrelled with Rose! This was a new angle to be
explored. Had Dora May tried to blackmail her?
   Mary took a chance. "She probably didn't think you'd really
tell Hilary about the man in Dallas."
   Dora May pressed her lips, making a small red pucker in her
over-powdered face. Her eyes were wary. Obviously she was wondering
whether denial would do any good, since she had no way of knowing
whether or not Hilary had confided in Mary.
   Never had Mary thought the day would come when Dora May's silence
would be unwelcome. Now, as she remained silent, Mary could have
shaken her.
   "Is it your considered opinion," she said at last, "that
Hilary was responsible for Rose's death?"
   "Goodness gracious no! And don't you dare put words into my
mouth."
   "I don't know how else to interpret what you said," Mary kept
her voice calmly reasonable. "You claim Rose would never have
consented to Hilary's borrowing the money he needed. You said that if
Rose would have consented, she might be alive today. What other
construction can I put on it?"
# 28
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People weren't enemies. They wanted to help.
   When they'd reached the house she'd been swept inside to meet a
circle of faces and eyes and reaching hands, but it hadn't been for
her. She'd stood there, invisible. The eyes and the hands and the
quick voices had all been for the baby.
   That was how it had been, and afterwards, too. Someone had
brought her up and gone straight away again, to the room next door.
Where the baby was. She'd heard voices in there for a long time.
Even now, if she went close to the communicating door, she could hear
faint voices the other side.
   She wanted desperately to turn the flower-painted china knob on
the apple-green door, and go through, but somehow she couldn't. She
had a dreadful feeling that if she did she'd find she was really and
truly invisible; that eyes would look through her, and steps go past
and no one would see or hear her at all.
   She thought desperately, I'm going crazy, then turned sharply
towards the other door- the one leading out to the wide,
white-painted corridor. She called, ~"Come in" and the door
opened, to release bright electric light into the twilighted room. It
bounced in, scattering gay colour into the carpeted floor. A grey
ghost followed it.
   That was what the figure looked like. Grey and blurred. Hastily
Lea groped for her glasses again, and the ghost became a plump,
grey-haired woman in a grey pleated skirt and grey jumper. One of the
people who'd been downstairs in the hall. She didn't know which one.
All the names and distinctions had been jumbled up in her mind.
   The grey woman seemed to know that, because she explained now,
"I'm Abby Paladrey- Mort's sister, just in case you didn't get
things clear when we were introduced."
   "How... how do you do?" Lea rose stiffly, jerkily from the
window seat, striving to brush some of the creases from the cheap blue
linen of her skirt. She wished that she'd started to tidy up and
hadn't been found like this- a mess. She knew that was how she
appeared. She'd seen herself in the mirror coming up the stairs and
she'd looked terrible. All eyes and white hollow face and cheap,
crumpled clothes.
   "Are you comfortable?" Abby Paladrey asked, her bright gaze
going from Lea to the shabby suitcase by the bed. "Not unpacked?
I'll send Edith up to help you then. That's Edith Camm. Our
housemaid. A good worker, even if she is silly about boys, or
rather just one boy. She's determined to get married and leave, young
as she is. They're all too independent these days. Mrs. Stewart
too. That's our daily, Rita Stewart. She's a widow."
   She hesitated, as though expecting that Lea would break her
silence. When she didn't, she went on in her brisk, clackety voice,
that reminded Lea of nothing so much as a childhood memory of the boy
next door playing with a morse set. Clack, clack, clackety, clack.
It was just the same.
   "It's not like the old days at all. In a place like this there
would have been two housemaids at least and a cook and a girl for the
kitchen and maybe more, but now it's get what you can and be thankful
for that. Why, I remember, even at home when I was small there was a
woman full time and another for the washing and the rough work and we
never had money or much, but even in Wales it's all changed."
   The words had been flowing over Lea. Like the sea. Going in and
out. Softly, pleasantly. Lulling her. Then there was the big wave
of surprise and she jerked. "Wales! I thought you were
Americans."
   Miss Paladrey looked equally surprised. Her rosebud mouth went
into a perfect crumpled O. She answered, "No. That is, Babby is,
of course, and Honor. And Eddie was." Her plump bosom went up, and
down, just like a billowing wave, before she went on explaining,
"They all came from America. Babba married when she was sixteen,
which was worse than Edith, but there- they all seem to do it over
there. That was to Ed Anwood, but he died years back and then came
the day young Eddie got his draft papers, as they call them. He
should have had them before, only he hurt his shoulder at football or
somesuch and there was a long time spent in treatment, so it was all
deferred, but finally he went. Into the Air Force, that was, and next
thing they sent him over here to work out his spell of duty. So Babba
packed up and followed. Of course she came to see Ian and his father.
The old gentleman was dying then and when Babba made him an offer he
said yes."
   "An offer?" Lea was beginning to feel dizzy.
   "For the place. You've no idea, looking at it now, what it was
like then. So Babby says, anyway. Even when we came it was different
to now. Babba's just poured money into it."
   She was suddenly silent. Lea saw with surprise that the rosebudy
<SIC> mouth was no longer a bud. It was thin and straight and
tight. Then abruptly it relaxed. The bright little eyes looked into
hers and the clackety-clack continued as though the break had never
been.
   "Ian had to agree to the sale because it was the only thing to
do, things being as they were. So Babba moved in and Ian took over
managing the place for her.
   "And that was when Mort and I came into the picture. As I said,
we were brought up in Wales. Our father was a songster. Lloyd
Paladrey."
   She was silent again; expectant. Lea said with embarrassment,
"I don't know much about music."
   "Oh well," Abby didn't seem discouraged, "he was too much of
a dreamer ever to do any good. People used him as they liked and he
never seemed to get more than a penny or two out of it. Later on Mort
and I came to London and he made a good little packet for himself. I
kept house for him and things were just perfect, Mrs. Beverly. Then
we went for a touring holiday. A coach trip, all over the place, with
a group, and one day we finished up at a castle. Babba was there,
sight-seeing with Eddie, who was on leave. She'd bought this place by
then and had settled in and she asked us to come and see it. She made
a lot of jokes about it being an ancient monument she'd restored for
England.
   "Well Mort fell for her and that was that." She made a little
gesture of her plump hands, and the pouter bosom billowed again.
   Lea thought, she said things had been perfect. She didn't add it
to present events. She looked into the bright eyes, but they were
expressionless.
   Almost apologetically, Abby added, "I seem to have talked
enough, but I wanted to put you straight about everyone in the house.
You looked dazed down there in the hall, as though things were too
much to take in."
   Lea thought warmly, so I wasn't invisible to one person anyway.
She felt swift gratitude towards the plump, chattering woman.
   "I was dazed," she admitted.
   Abby nodded vehemently, "Just like a Ferris Wheel, I should
think. Honor made me go on one once at a fair and I've never
forgotten. Up and down and round and round and never getting to any
place and then leaving you that dizzy..."
   Lea repeated dully, ~"A Ferris Wheel," and shivered;
remembered a long-ago scene. She'd been tiny then. Her parents had
taken her to a fair and there had been a wheel, a great sparred
skeleton of bright red against the evening sky. It had gone round and
round and then people had been screaming and the wheel had come slowly
apart and had...
   Crash! She was back in the nightmare. She came out tearingly,
to hear Abby saying brightly, "But you'll be all right now."
   Will I? Lea wondered. I doubt it. Unconsciously her gaze went
to the other door. Everything now seemed silent beyond it.
   Abby hadn't followed the direction of the girl's gaze. She was
saying, "So do you know who everyone is now? Honor was the tall
fair girl and you know Ian, and..."
   Lea spoke without thinking. She asked, "What does Ian think of
being just a servant here now- in his old home?"
   Abby seemed to answer without thought, too. She said, "Oh he
hates it, and us."
CHAPTER FOUR
   Lea woke to the certain knowledge that something unpleasant was
to be faced. She lay still, staring upwards at the ceiling. There
was a shadow on it just over her head. She tried to make out what it
was, then rolled over and sat up, reaching for her glasses. The
shadow resolved itself into a large brown moth. It looked alien in
the carefully decorated pastel bedroom.
   Like I do, Lea thought and glanced across at the communicating
door. She slid softly from the bed, padding over the thick carpet,
hesitating, then turned the china door-knob and went into the other
room, a too-thin figure in the fragile blue nylon nightgown.
   The baby was still asleep. As always, when she looked at him,
she tried to trace some resemblance to herself in his tiny features,
but there was nothing.
   Standing there, she told herself she had much to be glad for.
She had warmth and shelter and food and comfort. And apparent
friendship. At dinner the previous evening Babba had been friendly;
had striven to make the stranger a part of the household. So had
Abby, with her constant stream of chatter, about the dairy herd of Fen
House, about the Fens themselves, about their neighbours.
   Lea remembered that Mort Paladrey had put an end to that, when
he'd interrupted one cheerfully scandalous anecdote with a terse,
"That's libel. Isn't so. You're a mean-minded gossiping old
woman."
   Abby's putty-blob of a nose had turned red. For a moment Lea had
feared a scene, then Abby had laughed; had turned the talk to
something else.
   Lea was not sure of Mort Paladrey. Short and rotund, with
thinning grey hair and ruddy face, out of which two surprisingly blue
eyes stared at the world about him, he hadn't said much and nothing at
all to Lea- not after the first greeting and later, when Babba had
shooed her upstairs, he'd said goodnight.
   Ian had said very little and Honor had just sat there, eating a
little, smoking a lot, never even seeming to gaze at the guest, but
always, when Lea looked away from her, she had the impression that
Honor's grey eyes went straight to her face.
   That had been one of the uncomfortable things. Another had been
Jean McLone's firm, "The baby's asleep, Mrs. Beverly. I wouldn't
go into his room now."
   Lea knew she should have held her ground. Gone in. But she
hadn't. Something inside her had curled up in panic and she'd said
something vague and gone to bed without seeing the baby at all. That
had been wrong and she'd wondered if downstairs they would comment on
it and say she didn't seem to love the baby.
   She wondered if they wouldn't be right. She was acting
selfishly, denying the baby a name- but perhaps she was giving him
more than a name. He had security, comfort, for a little at least.
Far more than ever she could hope to give him. She didn't dare think
ahead, to the day when she would have to tell about Arthur, confess
she'd preyed on these people, for the sake of a few months of comfort.
She'd been mad to come and yet...
   There'd been one more uncomfortable thing, too, before she'd
fallen asleep. Edith Camm coming into the bedroom just after Lea had
slipped between the sheets- apple-green sheets that matched the walls
and had made Lea feel as though she was part of a great apple-green
meringue.
# 224
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   "I'm very grateful to you."
   "You needn't be. I told you, I'm glad to do it."
   I was touched and flattered by his manner, which was most
attractive in its friendliness. As I said, I do not make friends
easily; my defences go up at the first sign of intimacy and when
people realise this, they withdraw. This young man was ignoring the
defences and I liked him for it. It did not occur to me until a long
time afterwards that he was, perhaps, a shade too friendly.
   Now all I had to do was to tell Max and that, I knew, was going
to be difficult. He called for me soon after I got back to the flat
and I made him wait until I had a quick bath and changed into a white
linen dress. There must have been something about my appearance that
he found disturbing because he looked at me as though seeing me for
the first time.
   "That was worth waiting for," he said. "You must be the
freshest thing in London."
   "The water was cold," I told him. "It nearly always is."
   His fingers lightly brushed something- powder perhaps- from my
cheek. "Cold water suits you. Don't complain."
   "I wasn't going to," I said. "I shan't be here much
longer."
   "I know. You're coming to Greece with me."
   I moved away. "No, Max. At least not yet. There's something
I've got to do first."
   "Of course, the trousseau." He was refusing to take me
seriously. "Tell me about it while we eat."
   He chose a Greek restaurant in Soho, to get me used to the food,
he said. It was a quiet place and I was glad; I needed to be able to
talk. As soon as the meal was ordered I said: "I went back to
Bletcham today."
   "To Bletcham?" The word was heavily underlined with
surprise. "I thought we'd finished with all that."
   "I was afraid you'd think so, but I've only just started. I'm
going to buy a boat and moor it near Hardy's house," I rushed on.
"I'm going to find out everything I can about him."
   "Why?"
   The question took me by surprise. "Because," I said
impatiently, "he may be the man who murdered Alice."
   "And what if he is? He'll be tried- if you can prove
anything- and you'll be a witness. You surely don't want to drag the
whole thing up again."
   "If he's guilty I'll go through anything to get him
convicted."
   "Why?" he asked again. "I can tell by your voice that it
means a lot to you, but I'm damned if I can see the reason. It's not
as if you were all that fond of Alice." He was interrupted by the
arrival of the food and wine. When the pouring ritual was over he
went on: "I'm as keen as the next man on justice being done and all
the rest of it, but I'd rather see you happy."
   "There won't be any happiness for me until I can prove him
guilty."
   "You're already certain that he did it, aren't you?"
   "Not quite. Well- yes, perhaps I am," I admitted. "I have
to be. If he didn't do it it must have been-"
   "Must have been who?" Max prompted.
   I looked into his eyes and longed with all my heart to tell him,
but I could not do it. As long as my suspicion remained in my head I
could pretend to myself, in moments of optimism, that it was not true.
If I told Max he might agree with me and then I could no longer
pretend.
   "It could have been anyone," I said lamely.
   "So you're going to live in this boat, though you know nothing
about boats, and try to prove Hardy's guilt so we can be quite sure
that 'anyone'-" there was a glint of humour in his eyes as he
said the word- "that 'anyone' was innocent. If you're right, you
may be in serious danger from Hardy. Even if you're wrong you'll most
certainly be in danger when you start handling a boat." He picked
up his glass and held it in both hands, looking at me thoughtfully
over the top of it. "No," he said at last. "I can't allow it."
   "You can't very well stop me."
   "I can do better than that. If we were to get married now I
could come with you."
   I looked down at my plate, not daring to let him see how much the
idea appealed to me, reminding myself that he could only have said
such a thing because he did not know the whole truth. "And I can't
allow that," I said.
   "Deadlock," said Max.
   "No, it isn't. I'm determined to go, and by myself, whatever
you say."
   "I was afraid of that." He sounded resigned but none the less
hopeful. "You're a very wilful woman but I'll change your mind for
you one of these days. The thing is: when? I can't wait for ever,
you know."
   "I know. Just give me a little time, Max, say three months. If
I haven't discovered anything by then I'll give up trying."
   "And marry me?"
   "And marry you."
CHAPTER SIX
   THE MAN from the newspaper office rang up two days later. He
gave his name as Clive Mortimer and pronounced favourably on the boat,
which was moored two miles up the river from Bletcham. "You can see
it any time you like," he told me. "The sooner the better. If you
can get to Bletcham this evening I'll run you up there in the car."
   "That's very nice of you."
   "Nice, nothing. I told you, I'm mad about boats. Seven thirty
do you? I could meet you at the bus station."
   "No," I said, "outside your office." I could not endure
the thought of another wait at the bus station.
   He was there punctually. Dressed in a loud tartan shirt and
abbreviated shorts he looked hardly more than a boy, a cheerful,
good-natured boy. He settled me into the car with touching care and
then drove like a fiend along the river road. Ten minutes later he
stopped in a lane and helped me out with the same careful courtesy.
   "What sort of boat is it?" I asked.
   "She," he corrected. "She's a converted life-boat. Not a
very good one, but she's sound enough and the engine's fine."
   We walked down to the river's edge. There were a lot of boats
moored there and he pointed to the one I was already beginning to
think of as mine.
   "That's her," he said. "Sandpiper."
   She was not an eye-catching craft. Years ago in her
white-painted infancy she must have hung presentably on the deck of
some luxury liner but now she looked like a gaudy ark, with a
top-heavy cabin streaked with layers of red and green and black paint.
Inside, she was untidy and grubby but roomy enough and well lit by
two rows of good-sized windows. It was a long time before I got used
to calling them portholes.
   The owner was a middle-aged man whose family had tired of the
limited excitement of the river and now had their eyes on a seagoing
boat. Clive- he insisted on being called Clive- haggled with him
and within half an hour Sandpiper was mine for three hundred and
fifty pounds. When all the business details had been settled and the
owner had departed with my cheque in his pocket, Clive started the
engine and gave me my first lesson in manoeuvring up and down the
river and in and out of the other boats. It was a warm, still
evening; the plop of fish and the gentle putter of the engine were
infinitely soothing after city noises, and I began to look forward to
my life on the water. At last he pronounced me riverworthy and wanted
to know when I would be moving in.
   "At the end of next week," I told him. "I shall have to give
a week's notice at the flat."
   "I suppose you'll be mooring her nearer the sea."
   "Not much. There's a place just below Bletcham, near the
footbridge."
   "I know it." He looked doubtful. "There are better
places," he commented.
   "I know, but that's where I'm going."
   He stroked Sandpiper's wheel lovingly. "Take her down there
for you if you like."
   He looked so like a small boy longing to play with someone else's
toy that I laughed. "No, thank you, Clive. I shall be able to
manage."
   There was a pub in the lane where the car was parked; to soften
the blow and also to thank him for his trouble I gave him a drink.
Afterwards he drove me back to Bletcham and we parted like old
friends. He suggested another meeting, but I refused; the boat was
such an attraction that I was afraid, if he came near it again, that I
should never see the last of him.
   The following Friday I moved out of my flat, and Max, who was
still- justifiably- doubtful of my ability to manage a boat, came to
help. We piled all my things into his car and drove down to that part
of the river where the boat was moored.
   The moment he saw Sandpiper I knew by the look on his face
that he had not much faith in her.
   "That fellow Mortimer," he said, "wants his head seeing to.
This must be the original ark."
   "I thought so too, at first, but it's quite nice inside. Come
and have a look."
   We climbed aboard and he eased his wiry frame through the cabin
door and wandered about inside, opening everything that would open. I
guessed he was looking for leaks and waited anxiously for him to say
he had found one, but his only comment was: ~"Plenty of room in here
for two," a remark it seemed safer to ignore. Like Clive, he was
enthusiastic about the engine and decided, apparently on the strength
of its efficiency, that Sandpiper was fit to live in.
   I was more than thankful for his help when we had installed my
things and the boat began to move. The river was crowded with flocks
of sailing boats which swirled round us like gulls and there were two
locks to negotiate, but Max seemed to know exactly what to do and at
the same time kept me supplied with important bits of information that
Clive had forgotten to mention, such as keeping to starboard and
giving way to sail.
   "How on earth do you know all this?" I asked him.
   "I used to play about in these things when I was a kid. And
then I acted as guide on a river boat one summer, to keep myself going
between terms at college."
   It was the first I had heard of it, but that's one of the things
I like about Max. He has done so many things that there is always
something new and exciting to discover about him.
   "You're wonderful," I said, meaning it.
   He pressed the tip of my nose with one finger. "That makes two
of us."
   It was about eight o'clock in the evening when we tied up almost
exactly opposite Hardy's garden and went up on to the roof of the
cabin to see what we could see. From this side, Rivermead was less
forbidding; it stood a long way back from the water at the end of a
velvety lawn flanked with flowering trees and shrubs. To the right of
the lawn, close to the water's edge, stood an ancient boathouse
shrouded in wistaria; it was built across a narrow backwater and there
was a delicate iron staircase climbing the outer wall to a room above.
   "You won't see anyone tonight, it's too late," Max said and
turned to go.
   "No- wait," I put out a hand to stop him. The sun was no
longer shining and it was dark across there by the trees, but I
thought I had seen something move.
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   "Madam, Madam, I beg of you- you mustn't do that!" Andrea
implored her. "You must help me to go! To- to beguile a man I
don't love in order to trap him- it's shameless, horrible! I will
not do it!"
   "You will- because you must!" Madam told her inflexibly. And
then, impatiently: "Heavens, girl, what a to-do! The man is
presentable enough- and if you marry him, you will get what you want.
You will be Mistress of Galleon House. What more do you want?"
   "More- much more!" Andrea was hardly aware of what she was
saying.
   "Love, I suppose?" Madam asked resignedly. "It is the way
with all young people, but it is an illusion- a mirage. You will do
very well without it. Or who knows, you may fall in love with
Simon."
   "Never!" Andrea declared passionately. "Never! He has
robbed me-"
   "And here is your chance to make him pay back!" Madam
interrupted. "Now go away and think over what I have said, for it is
the best advice that I or anyone else could give you."
   She shut her eyes resolutely, and because Andrea knew that it was
purposeless to stay, she went to her own room.
   As Madam's door closed, she opened her eyes and one thin hand
picked nervously at the sheet.
   Had she been wise? Ought she to have hinted at what she knew to
be the truth- that Simon had fallen in love with the girl at first
sight?
   "No!" she said aloud. "I doubt if she would have believed
it! And there is Simon to be considered. With his absurd chivalry,
he will need a little encouragement. And when the child has thought
it over, she will give it. It will all work out as Leo planned-"
   The tired eyes closed and Madam drifted into the brief, easy
sleep of age.
   
   And Simon, sitting at Leo's desk in the tower room, what did he
feel about it all?
   As Andrea herself had done, he had taken it for granted that Leo
would have left everything to her. His first reaction, when he heard
that he was Leo's heir, was to refuse his inheritance. Not only was
it grossly unfair to Andrea to do anything else, but, if he accepted
it, he was also accepting banishment from his own country and the home
he had known all his life.
   And yet- and yet- which was home? That far-off, sun-filled
house with its glorious views of pasture and distant mountains? Or
this grim, sturdy house that was practically a fortress? From the
moment of his arrival it had been as if he had known this place
before. It was like coming home, and yet, before very long, he had
been conscious of a feeling of unreality about it all. But that was
not because of the House. It was the people who lived in it. He
remembered having thought that they were fantastic, people left over
from an earlier age who defied the passing of time. Leo, who should
have been an adventurer. Madam, one of those rare, magnificent woman
who, no matter what their age, have the ability to attract and hold
the devotion and loyalty of men. And Andrea? What was she? A
younger version of Madam? In some ways, perhaps. As far as loyalty
and courage were concerned, without doubt. But as yet unsure of
herself, as Madam, he was convinced, had never been unsure.
   Andrea. It all came back to her. Whatever he decided to do must
serve her best interests. That being so, on the face of it, it would
seem that he must somehow pass his inheritance on to her. But there
was more to it than that. Luke, for one thing. And for another, the
secret of Galleon House which he believed he had all but solved. An
odd word here and there, a look of amusement in Leo's eyes- the
amusement of a man who has always enjoyed playing with fire. And, now
and again, a sudden feeling of tension in the air.
   There were other things too, some so nebulous as to make them
impossible to grasp, some insignificant in themselves, but adding up,
surely, to give substance to an incredible conviction.
   Yes, convincing to himself but lacking actual proof. And that he
was determined to have before he went to Madam and demanded the truth,
as he fully intended doing.
   Already he knew that he would not find that proof among Leo's
papers. Sitting in this quiet room with an unpleasant feeling of
guilt, he had gone through every cupboard, every drawer, every file.
All dealt with the normal business of the estate. And all were in
apple-pie order. Leo had been a good man of business as well as-
everything else.
   There was the safe too. That yielded up a certain amount of
jewellery, though none of very great value, a list of Leo's
investments, a statement showing at which bank they were deposited and
various certificates and statements from the same bank. These last
Simon went through carefully. For a good many years past Leo had been
paying in large sums from time to time- twice or three times a year
at the outside. One had been made very recently, and Simon recognised
it as being approximately the amount that the diamond necklace and
bracelet had fetched. Surely, all clear and above board! And yet he
was not satisfied.
   But for days past he had had the growing conviction that there
was one place where he would find the information he wanted.
   That story, which Leo had confirmed, about the Trevaine treasure
buried beneath the House itself, had always fired his imagination.
His grandfather had told him stories about it that, to his boyish
mind, had held the very essence of romance. And though he had never
mentioned the fact to Leo, he knew where the entry to the hidden
chamber was. What was more, he himself had taken the key on its
slender chain from around his dead cousin's neck and had worn it round
his own neck ever since.
   No one had asked him about it, but he thought Madam knew where it
was since he had made no secret of what he was doing with it and she
had doubtless been told.
   Now he slipped it off and looked at it intently. It was a modern
key, beautifully made and engraved with the name of a famous firm of
safe-makers. That further confirmed his suspicions. His grandfather
had spoken of a massive oak door, studded with steel bosses and
strengthened with steel bars- strong enough, no doubt, in the days
when it was put there, but evidently not strong enough to please Leo.
Well, he would go and see what it was all about, for only when he
knew the whole story could he decide-
   He went to his bedroom for an electric torch into which he had
recently put a new battery and made his way to Leo's bedroom- a room
which, in fact, he could claim for his own now if he wished since it
was always used by the owner of the House. This, however, he had no
desire to do, but at least the fact gave him the feeling that he was
not trespassing. When one generation succeeded another over so many
years as was the case here, some rooms, at least, acquired an almost
impersonal quality.
   It was so here. Presumably Madam had given orders for the room
to be entirely cleared of all of Leo's personal property. It was
simply a bedroom, swept and garnished for its next occupant- himself.
   Like many of the other rooms in the House, this was panelled. By
one side of the fireplace was a door which looked as if it might lead
to another room. Simon knew better. Carefully locking the door
through which he had just come, he opened the second door and flashed
on his torch. At right angles to the door and in the thickness of the
massive wall a flight of stone steps ran down and at the bottom was a
heavy oak door- the one his grandfather had told him about. As he
went down, he counted the steps and estimated that they must have
brought him just about to ground level.
   It did not surprise him very much to find that the door opened on
the latch, for it was so old and worn that it offered little security.
Beyond it Simon found more steps which suddenly took a turn, so that
he knew the old story was true; the Trevaine treasure was buried right
under the house itself.
   It did not surprise him to find that now, instead of the walls
and steps being of stone, they were hewn out of solid rock, and then,
at the bottom of the further flight, he found a new door. It was
painted a dull grey, but as Simon laid his hand on it, he knew from
the coldness of it that it was made of steel. He pursed his lips in a
whistle as he flashed the torch over it. Set in the rock itself, it
presented a formidable barrier- and it must have been no easy task
getting it into place. All the same, it opened easily at the turn of
Leo's key and Simon pushed it open. Eager though he was to get on
with his discoveries, he examined the edge of the thick door and its
interior carefully before letting go of it. He had no wish to take
part in a latter-day Mistletoe Bough story! It looked safe enough to
him to let go of the door, but just in case, he looked round for
something to prop against it so that it could not shut, and then, for
the first time, he realised that he was actually in the treasure
chamber. Neatly ranged against the rock walls were all manner of
chests and trunks. Some were comparatively modern, some, Simon
thought, Captain Jeremy might well have brought home full of plunder.
He found a good, solid metal one that was not too heavy to lift and
set it between the door and its frame. Then he began his search.
   It would have been tempting to investigate the contents of the
chests, but there was something else which intrigued Simon even more
than they did. Sunk right into the rock so that only its door showed
was a modern safe, and a glance showed that it had a combination lock.
   So, after all, he could not find out what he wanted to know
without taking someone into his confidence, he thought wryly. Madam,
presumably, would know the word that unlocked the safe, but the last
thing he wanted to do was ask her for it. Well, at least he could
have a shot- he did not know much about such locks, but he did know
that you could tell the number of letters in the word by the number of
dials. This was a six-letter word.
   Six letters- and it might be any word in the world! But it was
worth while trying words which had some connection with Galleon House.
Andrea- that had the right number of letters, but he quickly found
it was not the right one. Galleon- no, seven. Trevaine, much too
long. Well, how about- he looked about himself for inspiration-
Jeremy- or pirate? He tried each in turn without success. Feeling
considerably discouraged, he tried other family names. Cherry, Leo's
mother. Esther, his grandfather's sister. Two other surnames
connected with the family- Penlee and Polwyn- though with little
hope over the last. Leo, he felt, would hardly use the name of a man
he despised so heartily.
   He thought deeply. What else was there to try? Poldean, on the
other side of the estuary, was too long. So was St. Finbar-
although Finbar alone- suddenly he gave a shout of laughter that
echoed oddly in the confined space.
# 26
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She couldn't understand that any woman could resist for a moment
the prospect of an association- any sort of association- with the
wonderful, the handsome, the fascinating Connor Winslow.
   And Con? Well, as far as I could judge, Con thought exactly the
same.
   Fatted calf or no fatted calf, Annabel's homecoming would
certainly be a riot.
CHAPTER =5
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   Oh, the oak and the ash, and the 2bonny ivy tree,
   They are all growing so green in the North Country.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   Traditional.
   THE approach to Whitescar was down a narrow gravelled track
edged with hawthorns. There was no gate. On the right of the gap
where the track left the main road, stood a dilapidated signpost which
had once said, Private Road to Forrest Hall. On the left was a
new and solid-looking stand for milk-churns, which bore a
beautifully-painted legend, WHITESCAR. Between these symbols the
lane curled off between its high hawthorns, and out of sight.
   I had come an hour too early, and no one was there to meet the
bus. I had only two cases with me, and carrying these I set off down
the lane.
   Round the first bend there was a quarry, disused now and
overgrown, and here, behind a thicket of brambles, I left my cases.
They would be safe enough, and could be collected later. Meanwhile I
was anxious to make my first reconnaissance alone.
   The lane skirted the quarry, leading downhill for perhaps another
two hundred yards before the hedges gave way on the one side to a high
wall, and on the other- the left- to a fence which allowed a view
across the territory that Lisa had been at such pains to picture for
me.
   I stood, leaning on the top bar of the fence, and looked at the
scene below me.
   Whitescar was about eight miles, as the crow flies, from
Bellingham. There the river, meandering down its valley, doubles
round leisurely on itself in a great loop, all but enclosing the
rolling, well-timbered lands of Forrest Park. At the narrow part of
the loop the bends of the river are barely two hundred yards apart,
forming a sort of narrow isthmus through which ran the track on which
I stood. This was the only road to the Hall, and it divided at the
lodge gates for Whitescar and the West Lodge which lay the other side
of the park.
   The main road, along which my bus had come, lay some way above
the level of the river, and the drop past the quarry to the Hall gates
was fairly steep. From where I stood you could see the whole
near-island laid out below you in the circling arm of the river, with
its woods and its water meadows and the chimneys glimpsed among the
green.
   To the east lay Forrest Hall itself, set in what remained of its
once formal gardens and timbered walks, the grounds girdled on two
sides by the curving river, and on two by a mile-long wall and a belt
of thick trees. Except for a wooded path along the river, the only
entrance was through the big pillared gates where the main lodge had
stood. This, I knew, had long since been allowed to crumble gently
into ruin. I couldn't see it from where I was, but the tracks to
Whitescar and West Lodge branched off there, and I could see the
latter clearly, cutting across the park from east to west, between the
orderly rows of planted conifers. At the distant edge of the river, I
caught a glimpse of roofs and chimneys, and the quick glitter of glass
that marked the hot-houses in the old walled garden that had belonged
to the Hall. There, too, lay the stables, and the house called West
Lodge, and a footbridge spanning the river to serve a track which
climbed through the far trees and across the moors to Nether Shields
farm, and, eventually, to Whitescar.
   The Whitescar property, lying along the river-bank at the very
centre of its loops, and stretching back to the junction of the roads
at the Hall gates, was like a healthy bite taken out of the circle of
Forrest territory. Lying neatly between the Hall and West Lodge, it
was screened now from my sight by a rise in the land that only allowed
me to see its chimneys, and the tops of the trees.
   I left my view-point, and went on down the track, not hurrying.
Behind the wall to my right now loomed the Forrest woods, the huge
trees full out, except for the late, lacy boughs of ash. The ditch at
the wall's foot was frilled with cow-parsley. The wall was in poor
repair; I saw a blackbird's nest stuffed into a hole in the coping,
and there were tangles of campion and toad-flax bunching from gaps
between the stones.
   At the Hall entrance, the lane ended in a kind of 6cul-de-sac,
bounded by three gateways. On the left, a brand-new oak gate guarded
the Forestry Commission's fir plantations and the road to West Lodge.
To the right lay the pillars of the Hall entrance. Ahead was a
solid, five-barred gate, painted white, with the familiar WHITESCAR
blazoning the top bar. Beyond this, the track lifted itself up a
gentle rise of pasture, and vanished over a ridge. From here, not
even the chimney-tops of Whitescar were visible; only the smooth sunny
prospect of green pastures and dry-stone walling sharp with blue
shadows, and, in a hollow beyond the rise somewhere, the tops of some
tall trees.
   But the gateway to the right might have been the entrance to
another sort of world.
   Where the big gates of the Hall should have hung between their
massive pillars, there was simply a gap giving on to a driveway, green
and mossy, its twin tracks no longer worn by wheels, but matted over
by the discs of plaintain <SIC> and hawkweed, rings of weed
spreading and overlapping like the rings that grow and ripple over
each other when a handful of gravel is thrown into water. At the
edges of the drive the taller weeds began, hedge-parsley and campion,
and forget-me-not gone wild, all frothing under the ranks of the
rhododendrons, whose flowers showed like pale, symmetrical lamps above
their splayed leaves. Overhead hung the shadowy, enormous trees.
   There had been a lodge once, tucked deep in the trees beside the
gate. A damp, dismal place it must have been to live in; the walls
were almost roofless now, and half drifted over with nettles. The
chimney-stacks stuck up like bones from a broken limb. All that had
survived of the little garden was a rank plantation of rhubarb, and
the old blush rambler that ran riot through the gaping windows.
   There was no legend here of FORREST to guide the visitor.
For those wise in the right lores there were some heraldic beasts on
top of the pillars, rampant, and holding shields where some carving
made cushions under the moss. From the pillars, to either side,
stretched the high wall that had once marked the boundaries. This was
cracked and crumbling in many places, and the copings were off, but it
was still a barrier, save in one place not far from the pillar on the
lodge side of the gate. Here a giant oak stood. It had been
originally on the inside of the wall, but with the years it had grown
and spread, pressing closer and ever closer to the masonry, until its
vast flank had bent and finally broken the wall, which here lay in a
mere pile of tumbled and weedy stone. But the power of the oak would
be its undoing, for the wall had been clothed in ivy, and the ivy had
reached for the tree, crept up it, engulfed it, till now the trunk was
one towering mass of the dark gleaming leaves, and only the tree's
upper branches managed to thrust the young gold leaves of early summer
through the strangling curtain. Eventually the ivy would kill it.
Already, through the tracery of the ivy-stems, some of the oak-boughs
showed dead, and one great lower limb, long since broken off, had left
a gap where rotten wood yawned, in holes deep enough for owls to nest
in.
   I looked up at it for a long time, and then along the neat sunny
track that led out of the shadow of the trees towards Whitescar.
   Somewhere a ring-dove purred and intoned, and a wood-warbler
stuttered into its long trill, and fell silent. I found that I had
moved, without realising it, through the gateway, and a yard or two up
the drive into the wood. I stood there in the shade, looking out at
the wide fields and the cupped valley, and the white-painted gate
gleaming in the sun. I realised that I was braced as if for the start
of a race, my mouth dry, and the muscles of my throat taut and aching.
   I swallowed a couple of times, breathed deeply and slowly to calm
myself, repeating the now often-used formula of what was there to go
wrong, after all? I was Annabel. I was coming home. I had never
been anyone else. All that must be forgotten. Mary Grey need never
appear again, except, perhaps, to Con and Lisa. Meanwhile, I would
forget her, even in my thoughts. I was Annabel Winslow, coming home.
   I walked quickly out between the crumbling pillars, and pushed
open the white gate.
   It didn't even creak. It swung quietly open on sleek, well-oiled
hinges, and came to behind me with a smooth click that said money.
   Well, that was what had brought me, wasn't it?
   I walked quickly out of the shade of the Forrest trees, and up
the sunny track towards Whitescar.
   
   In the bright afternoon stillness the farm looked clean in its
orderly whitewash, like a toy. From the top of the rise I could see
it all laid out, in plan exactly like the maps that Lisa Dermott had
drawn for me so carefully, and led me through in imagination so many
times.
   The house was long and low, two-storied, with big modern windows
cut into the old thick walls. Unlike the rest of the group of
buildings, it was not whitewashed, but built of sandstone, green-gold
with age. The lichens on the roof showed, even at that distance, like
patens of copper laid along the soft blue slates.
   It faced on to a strip of garden- grass and flower-borders and a
lilac tree- whose lower wall edged the river. From the garden, a
white wicket-gate gave on a wooden footbridge. The river was fairly
wide here, lying under the low, tree-hung cliffs of its further bank
with that still gleam that means depth. It reflected the bridge, the
trees, and the banked tangles of elder and honeysuckle, in layers of
deepening colour as rich as a Flemish painter's palette.
   On the nearer side of house and garden lay the farm; a
courtyard- even at this distance I could see its clean baked
concrete, and the freshness of the paint on doors and gates-
surrounded by byres and stables and sheds, with the red roof of the
big Dutch barn conspicuous beside the remains of last year's straw
stacks, and a dark knot of Scotch pines.
   I had been so absorbed in the picture laid out before me, that I
hadn't noticed the man approaching, some thirty yards away, until the
clang of his nailed boots on the iron of the cattle-grid startled me.
   He was a burly, middle-aged man in rough farm clothes, and he was
staring at me in undisguised interest as he approached. He came at a
pace that, without seeming to, carried him over the distance between
us at a speed that left me no time to think at all.
   I did have time to wonder briefly if my venture alone into the
Winslow den was going to prove my undoing, but at least there was no
possibility now of turning tail.
# 215
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CHAPTER NINE
   The pale April sunshine filtered into the back court of a
Glasgow slum, throwing its soft radiance on grimy windows, blistering
the already ravaged paintwork and casting long shadows across the
broken masonry of the dirty evil-smelling hovels. This was Utah
Street, and Utah Street was a cancerous growth in the flesh of a great
city.
   The sunlight struggled over a thick layer of dirt on a window at
ground level and lightened the interior of a room that was no better
and no worse than the majority of its neighbours. An old-fashioned
range, yellowed by rust, housed the dying embers of a fire that made
the airless kitchen a veritable oven of unpleasant odours. At the
table, littered with a motley collection of articles, ranging from
empty beer bottles to discarded articles of clothing, sat the man
known only by the appellation of Gaffer. Among this wreckage of human
society, Gaffer was probably the most defeated of all the wretched
inhabitants who called Utah Street "home". Gaffer was an alien in
their midst, but the ways of a bully soon make their mark and he
swiftly earned a reputation for himself as a man who could defend his
chosen way of life. In five short years he was not only accepted but
had become a leading light in a rapidly dying empire of squalor and
decay.
   Gaffer bent his head over the newspaper bearing the day's racing
forecast, oblivious of the sun, the advent of spring and the murmur of
voices from the pontoon school in the corner of the yard. His
forefinger travelled slowly down the list of probable starters for the
three-thirty at Newmarket. Thoughtfully he tapped his teeth with a
pencil as he deliberated over the rival merits of the two horses of
his choice. Nothing in it as regards the starting prices. It was
simply a matter of choosing the right horse. He smiled to himself as
he fingered the five one-pound notes lying before him on the table. A
couple of good winners today and he could live it up for a week or so.
Might even go away for a couple of days. Reaching for the Form Book
he thumbed through its battered pages in search of the information he
required. When he had made his choice he rose and strode to the door.
He crossed the narrow close and planted a savage foot on the panel of
the opposite door. A small shrivelled creature craned a startled head
round the jamb, the cadaverous features creased into a nervous smirk.
   "A'right, Gaffer. I'm coming." He jerked on his threadbare
jacket and shuffled after the other back to the stuffy humidity of the
kitchen. "You wantin' somethin', Gaffer?"
   "You don't think I enjoy your scintillating company, do you?"
Gaffer scribbled on a slip of paper and tucked the banknotes into its
fold. "Nip round to Sammy and give him this. Wait until the race is
over." A slow grin revealed his perfect teeth. "I'm expecting
thirty quid back."
   "You floppin' five quid on one horse?"
   "What's that got to do with you?"
   "Nothin', Gaffer, nothin'. I just thought it's a bit risky,
that's a'."
   "And who asked you to do the thinking around here?" Gaffer's
lip curled in disgust. "Go on, beat it, and if you get nicked, I'll
paper the walls with you."
   Glad to make his escape Lofty scuttled off down the close,
grateful that the other was in such a mellow mood. Less than forty
minutes later he returned bearing in a shaking hand thirty one-pound
notes. Goggle-eyed, he watched Gaffer count his winnings. He
separated three from the pile and contemptuously threw them on the
floor. "Go on, buy yourself a Rolls-Royce," he sneered. A jerk of
his head signalled dismissal. "Don't go away. I might want you
later on." "Sure, Gaffer. I'll be next door."
   Gaffer returned to his study of his newspaper. This was his day.
He could feel it. Swiftly he scanned the sheet for the greyhound
runners. Yes, he was sure Dosser had said he was running The Slob
tonight. Tentatively, he fingered his winnings. Should he risk it
all in one fell swoop? Yes, he decided at last, why not, it was time
he had a run of luck in any case. He rose and moved to the broken
triangle of mirror hanging above the sink. He studied his image with
petulant concentration. Always a victim of his over-developed
imagination he thought himself a luckless individual for whom nothing
ever went right. He possessed a persecution complex that frequently
reduced him to a maudlin hulk of self-pity whenever opposition reared
its ugly head, but Gaffer, the supreme egotist, saw none of this as he
examined the face looking back at him through that distorted glass.
Spruced up and clean-shaven, he wasn't a bad-looking man, he decided.
His jawline was firm and there was no surplus flesh gathering on his
tall frame. The mouth curled sardonically as he smoothed back his
thick dark hair revealing again a glimpse of his teeth, strong and
white as blanched almonds. He drew in a deep breath and was on the
point of turning back to his newspaper when his eye fell on an
out-of-date magazine lying on the floor. A photograph taken at a
recent film 6premie?3re held his attention. Slowly he stooped
to lift the magazine and an idea began to ferment in his quick brain.
An idea so daring and yet so audaciously tempting that a shiver of
excitement quivered through him. He studied the photograph for a long
time before throwing aside the book and returning to his study of the
racing column, but this time his concentration was fired by the flame
of incentive.
   A sharp rap on the door brought a frown of impatience to his face
and with a low growl he gave permission to enter. The panel swung
open to admit a narrow-shouldered man in a black sue?3de zipper
jerkin and tight Italian trousers.
   "'Lo Gaffer. Heard you'd a bit of luck on the three-thirty.
Want a certainty for the dogs tonight?" "Such as?" sneered
Gaffer.
   "Hurly Burly. That dog's jet propelled." Cuddy Gallagher
winked. "2Over'n above that, I happen to know he's been got at by
the boys."
   Gaffer's eyes narrowed. "That a sure thing?"
   "Sure as death." Cuddy's sleek head jerked in the direction
of the table. "Want me to lay some of that lot on for you?"
   Gaffer lifted the money and slipped two notes into his pocket.
"There's twenty-five quid there. Lose it and I'll kill you. I'll
be at Joe's place tonight but don't let anyone see you flash my money
around."
   Cuddy peeled off five notes before stowing the remainder away.
"Commission," he laconically explained. "Well, I'm away. See
you later."
   "Tell The Wop I want to see him."
   "I 2havenae time to look for that 2wee greaser," Cuddy
objected. "If you want this lot on in time it'll need to be done
right away. Sent Lofty to do your dirty work."
   "Look," a dangerous glint appeared in Gaffer's bright eyes,
"I'll decide who does what. You get that money on first then look
for The Wop. Tonight I'm going to clean up so you'd better warn Sammy
to keep plenty of the ready by him. I want a hundred nicker off him
before I'm finished."
   Cuddy emitted a low soundless whistle. "That's a lot of
change."
   "Yes, but I'll get it."
   "You'll be lucky."
   "You bet I am. I'm on the right streak tonight, I can feel
it."
   Cuddy saw the look of fanaticism on the other's face. He did not
recognize it as such, but it was sufficient to tell him that this was
not the moment to argue. "O.K., so you're lucky," he swiftly
placated. "Have it your own way."
   Gaffer lifted the half-empty whisky bottle from the sink-board
and sloshed a liberal quantity into a tumbler. "Here's to your
information being correct, Cuddy, because if it isn't..." His arm
flashed out and grabbed hold of a handful of sue?3de jacket, "you'd
better not show your face back here, unless you want me to work on it
with a razor."
   Hate rose in Cuddy like mercury in a thermometer but fear stifled
his reply as the grip on his throat tightened. "Listen, Gaffer,"
he whispered in desperation, "even if that dog wins, you'll no' get a
hundred quid back." He swallowed with difficulty. "It's only
runnin' at even money."
   "When you get the winnings, put it on The Slob in the
eight-fifteen."
   "What, all of it?"
   "All of it." Gaffer threw him away and wiped his hand on the
seat of his trousers. "If Sammy runs out of cash lay the second bet
with Kruger. Now get out of my sight before I..." He grinned as he
realized he was talking to himself. He was well aware of the fact
that he was taking a chance in giving Cuddy a free hand with so much
at stake, but he was fairly confident of his hold over the
craven-hearted little tout. Some thirty minutes later he was still
avidly studying the photograph that seemed to fascinate him, when
Louie Morri sidled into the room. It did not take Gaffer long to
explain what he wanted the Italian to do. "Well," he concluded,
"what about it? Can you do it?"
   Louis looked worried. 3"Sure, I think so, Gaffer, but it'sa
no' easy." His big dark eyes swivelled upwards uneasily.
3"It'sa goin' to costa lota money, Gaffer. I needa special stuffa
from up-town an' it'sa no' easy to geta." His podgy hands turned
palm upwards. 3"You see how it is. It'sa no' easy."
   "If you say that once more, I'll ram your teeth down your
throat." Gaffer leaned menacingly nearer. "Now listen, Wop, and
listen well. You're going to do this job for me without any more
argument. If you do it right, you'll get paid right. If not, then
I'm afraid I'll have to get rough." His breath fanned the little
man's face. "You wouldn't like that, Louie. Maria wouldn't like it
either, so you'd better find out a nice easy way of doing it or you're
liable to be up to your fat neck in trouble, Louie boy."
   Stark fear turned the Italian's skin yellow. 3"I do it. I do
it. No' to worry, Gaffer, I do it."
   "That's better. I don't like when people argue, Louie. You
ought to know that by this time." He swung round on the ball of his
foot as the other winced and moved out of range. He smiled. "It's
all right, Louie, I'm not going to hurt you... yet. I don't think I
have to tell you to keep your mouth shut, do I? One cheep out of you
and Maria will be putting down an instalment on a nice marble
headstone. You understand, Louie."
   Louie's head rocked back and forward like a hinged flap.
3"It'sa a'right, Gaffer. I no' open my moutha."
   "I wouldn't, Louie, not if I were you," Gaffer advised.
"Just you keep thinking that way and everything will be all
right." He escorted his nervous visitor to the door. "You go back
to the shop and I'll send Cuddy down when he comes in. You can make
out a list of the stuff you need and I'll get it for you. How long
would it take?"
   Louie thought carefully. 3"No' very longa. A couple of weeks
I think."
   "O.K. See you later." His finger poked belligerently in
the other's face. "Now, remember, keep your mouth shut about this,
or..." He made an expressive gesture with his forefinger.
   3"I keep my moutha shut," Louie promised fervently.
CHAPTER TEN
   MARK'S feet made no sound on the smooth turf as he walked
slowly towards the chestnut tree. Christiane was sitting with her
back to him, her fair head bent over a book. He stood motionless for
a moment, watching her, his look gravely compassionate as he noted the
rug draped over her legs.
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   "Yes, quite."
   Maureen, afraid he might think she had asked too many questions,
said nothing for several minutes. They had turned the bend in the
road and were walking along with Loch Eighe on their left.
   "There's a road on the other side," MacLeod said.
   "Have you been about at all since you've been here?"
   "A few miles yesterday- to Dalloch and round that way, that's
all. Is there a ferry across the loch?"
   "Not for cars. It only goes when it's wanted. I shouldn't
think that's very often." He pointed to the far shore of the loch
where it met Loch Onaig. "That's the ferryman's house there."
   Maureen was just able to make out a croft.
   "Can we go across some time?" she asked. "I love ferries."
   "If you'd like to."
   "Please." Rather diffidently she added, "I'm sorry, perhaps
you'd rather ..."
   "I'd like to," MacLeod assured her. "The shore's rather fine
along there, there are a lot of birches and bracken."
   They walked a little farther, then he said, "We'd better turn
back if we're going to have that drink. And you'll be getting
cold."
   As they retraced their steps he wondered what Maureen's fiance?2
had been like. He had been a policeman too long to judge people too
swiftly but he would have thought most men would have been more than
happy to marry the girl beside him. Perhaps it had really been her
who had broken off the engagement.
   They reached the jetty. Maureen crossed the yard or two of grass
and stood on the beach, looking up Loch Onaig to the mountains rising
round its head. MacLeod joined her.
   "Isn't it lovely?" she said. "I feel I never want to go
back."
   "An hour ago you were telling me you should never have come."
   "Yes. I don't feel like that any more."
   She picked up a stone and tossed it into the water. It fell with
a dull plop and they watched the ripples spreading.
   "How did you come?" she asked.
   "Train."
   She turned and walked back to the road. MacLeod followed her.
   They talked little on the way back to the hotel, walking slowly,
each thinking. Arrived there, Maureen went up to her room while
MacLeod entered the bar. Since his last stay there Alan had had it
redecorated to suit the taste of his English patrons. The couple who
had arrived that afternoon were sitting on a low couch against one
wall. The contemporary furnishings seemed a more appropriate setting
for them than the bright sunlight and sparser surroundings of the
dining-room.
   The only other occupant apart from the barman, James, was a
shortish, slightly-built man of about MacLeod's age. He had rather
small eyes and thinning fair hair and he was wearing a tweed sports
jacket that somehow did not look quite right on him. He was leaning
against the end of the bar and when MacLeod came up to it he eyed him
as a man will in such circumstances when he had nothing better to do.
   "A gin and lime and an Export, please, James," MacLeod said.
   Still eyeing him the other man asked, "Is Mr. Ferguson in,
James?"
   The barman, busy with MacLeod's order, answered over his
shoulder.
   "No, Mr. Martin, he's out just now."
   Martin, MacLeod reflected. He had heard that name somewhere
recently. But where? In what connection? Moreover, something about
the man seemed vaguely familiar though he could not remember seeing
him before. Probably it was nothing more than a chance resemblance to
someone else.
   "It's been a grand day again," he remarked.
   "Damned hot," Martin agreed. MacLeod thought he looked
worried.
   "It was hot in the glen this morning," he said.
   Martin looked sideways at him.
   "You were there this morning?" he demanded.
   "Yes."
   "Did you go far?"
   The barman put two glasses down on the counter. MacLeod paid
him. Martin, he felt, was waiting impatiently for his answer.
   "Nearly to the top," he replied lightly. "Why?"
   The other did not answer at once.
   "There are some birds up there," he explained after a moment.
"I've been hoping no-one would disturb them."
   "What sort of birds?" MacLeod asked curiously.
   "Capercaillies."
   The barman looked surprised.
   "In Glen Onaig, Mr. Martin?" he enquired. "I've been here
all my life and I've never known any round here before."
   "Well, they're here now," Martin said shortly.
   MacLeod eyed him.
   "They're those big birds with a piercing cry, aren't they?" he
asked.
   "Yes," Martin agreed without much grace.
   Out of the corner of his eye MacLeod noticed that James looked
surprised.
   "I promise I won't scare them," he said. "I don't suppose I
shall go up the glen again while I'm here."
   Martin looked relieved.
   "It's just the top part beyond the fall," he explained.
   "So many rare birds are driven away nowadays."
   "Like the ospreys?" MacLeod suggested.
   "Yes."
   Over Martin's shoulder he saw Maureen come in. The woman sitting
on the couch glanced up and eyed her with an almost insolent
condescension as she crossed to join him.
   "Will you ask Mr. Ferguson to give me a ring when he comes
in?" Martin asked James.
   "2Ay, I will, Mr. Martin."
   With a curt nod to MacLeod the other went out.
   Maureen picked up her glass.
   "Good luck," she said. "Shall we sit down?"
   MacLeod dragged his thought back from the wild idea that had been
forming in his mind.
   "Yes, of course," he agreed.
   "Had something happened before I came in?" Maureen asked when
they were seated on the second of the two couches.
   "No. Why?"
   "I thought there was a bit of an atmosphere."
   "We were talking about capercaillies."
   "What on earth are they?"
   "Large birds found in the Highlands."
   "Oh."
   When they had finished their drinks MacLeod asked, "Will you
have another one?"
   "On condition you'll let me pay."
   "Certainly not."
   "Then no, thank you."
   Maureen smiled sweetly.
   "Look here," he began.
   "Please."
   She looked so serious that he smiled.
   "All right," he agreed. "If you really mean you'd rather."
   "I do."
   He crossed to the bar. While James was pouring the drinks he
asked him, "Was that the Mr. Martin who's taken the Lodge?"
   "2Ay, that was him."
   "Mr. Ferguson said something about him being a
bird-watcher."
   "He talks a great deal about them," James assented, managing
to convey an impression of fine contempt.
   He put the glasses down on the bar.
   "Do you know where he comes from?" MacLeod asked.
   "No, I do not. It is somewhere down south, I'd be thinking."
   "I've a feeling I've seen him somewhere before."
   "Mr. Ferguson might be able to tell you," James volunteered.
"He knows him well."
   "I'll have to ask him. What do the people here think of
Martin?"
   "2Och, it's little enough they've seen of him. He's not been
here more than a few days altogether. They don't mind him, he's a
harmless enough 2wee man."
   "Which might be perfectly true," MacLeod reflected. On the
other hand...
   As he turned away Alan Ferguson came through the door behind the
bar.
   "Did you have a good walk this morning?" he enquired.
   "2Ay, it's been a grand day again."
   Alan grinned broadly.
   "Man, you belong up here!" he exclaimed. "You've been back
twenty-four hours and already you're forgetting your heathen English
speech."
   MacLeod, grinning and not displeased returned to Maureen.
   "Mr. Martin was in just now," the barman told Alan. "He
seemed kind of nervy. He wants you to phone him."
   Alan stiffened slightly.
   "What the devil does he want?" he muttered.
   MacLeod, hearing him, wondered if Martin was a nuisance.
Certainly Alan did not look pleased.
=6
   During the night the weather broke. When MacLeod looked out of
the window the next morning he found that it was drizzling steadily.
Dark grey clouds hung low over the loch and the hills on the other
shore.
   It would probably last until the evening, he thought as he
shaved. Even if it did not there was little hope of its clearing
before the afternoon. Oh well, he would be happy enough in the lounge
with a novel.
   He took his time over dressing and when he entered the
dining-room it was empty. He had almost finished breakfast when
Maureen came in. She was wearing a white raincoat belted tightly
round her waist. A scarf was tied round her head but the rebellious
curl had escaped and hung damply over her left eye. She pushed it
back.
   "It's pouring," she announced, perching on the edge of the
chair facing him.
   "I know."
   "I hadn't anything to read and I finished all the Scottish
Fields in the lounge on Sunday so I went to buy a paper." She
pulled it out of her pocket and laid it on the table. "It's
yesterday's."
   "It would be," he agreed.
   "Yes, I suppose so. I hadn't thought." She watched him
eating for a moment. "I wondered if we might take the car and find
somewhere where it's drier."
   He looked at her. For a moment she met his eye, then, flushing
very slightly, she looked down at the table.
   "I'm sorry. Perhaps you'd rather stay here."
   "No, it sounds a good idea."
   "You want to go?" There was no mistaking the pleasure in her
voice and MacLeod felt suddenly cheered. Perhaps after all he had not
been really looking forward to spending the morning cooped up in the
lounge. "I don't like staying in when I'm on holiday," she said
with a hint of defiance. "It seems such a waste."
   "Shall we take lunch or eat in style?"
   "In style, I should think." She smiled. "We might not be
lucky and it's only a Morris Minor, there's not all that much room."
   "There's something I want to do before we go," MacLeod told
her. "Will twenty minutes be all right for you?"
   "Fine."
   She stood up. He watched her walk to the door, her slim figure
moving gracefully between the tables.
   When he had finished his coffee he went in search of Alan
Ferguson. He found him in his office dealing with the day's
correspondence. When MacLeod appeared in the doorway he was frowning
over a letter. Suddenly he swore and stuffed it into a pocket of his
jacket. Then he saw the other and grinned.
   "You're not thinking of walking up the glen this morning?" he
enquired. "The path will be more like a river."
   "No, I'm going for a drive."
   "A drive?" Alan stared.
   "With Miss Forrester."
   "Oh, are you now? Ah well, you'll not be seeing the sun here
today."
   "I was wondering if you've a book on birds I could borrow,"
MacLeod explained.
   "Birds? 2Ay, I believe there is one somewhere about."
   Alan rose to his feet.
   "I was talking to Martin last night and there was something he
mentioned I wanted to look up."
   The other stopped.
   "You were talking to him about birds?" he asked.
   "Yes. He said there were capercaillies in the glen."
   "He may be right at that."
   They climbed the back stairs to Alan's quarters. He had a
bedroom and a small sitting-room at the end of the building. While
MacLeod stood at the door of the latter Alan looked through the scanty
collection of books on his shelves.
   "It's not here," he announced. "I maybe lent it to someone
and they haven't returned it."
   "Thanks, anyway," MacLeod said.
   He made his way to his own room and collected the things he
wanted to take with him, his camera, a cap he wore only on holiday and
then only when it rained and a pair of powerful binoculars he had
bought second-hand years before.
   Maureen was waiting for him in the hall. Her car was already
outside the door.
   "You'd rather drive," she said.
   "Wouldn't you?"
   "No." She shook her head and walked round to the other side.
   He drove down the road, only to pull up outside the post office.
Maureen looked at him enquiringly.
   "Do you mind waiting?" he asked. "I won't be a minute."
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Through a mist of tears she went on smiling- the most wonderful
smile I'd ever seen.
   She whispered, "Oh, my dear, my dear..." Then she offered me
her mouth in complete surrender.
   Maybe she thought she could trust me. Maybe she didn't care.
   As always, I had to fight the temptation to take what she
willingly offered. And it was a lost battle from the start. When she
murmured against my lips, ~"Hold me tight... don't ever leave
me..." I could fight no longer.
   Her body was soft and yielding, her tender hands drew me down
into forgetfulness. Soon she quickened under my caresses as though
the touch of my hands brought to life something that had lain dormant
with her until this moment. When I unfastened her coat, she shrugged
it off with fierce impatience and then her lips sought mine again.
   All around us people slept. Outside in the windy darkness snow
blanketed the sound of distant traffic. Our world belonged to Sonia
and me- a world created for us alone out of suffering and loneliness
and heartbreak.
   Dimly I wondered if this night would spoil all the other nights
yet to come. She wasn't just another woman. We'd get married... and
have kids... and live like other folks.
   A voice in my head began whining: "...You're trying to
reassure yourself because you know all this has happened before. What
kind of mother will she make, anyway? She's told you herself what she
used to be..."
   I called myself a louse. Swell husband I'd make! She trusted
me no matter what I'd been... and I was eaten up with hatred for all
the other men she'd given herself to. Maybe to her I was no
different...
   But to-night was mine. To-night would wipe the slate clean.
To-morrow, Sonia and I would be just two people who'd met and fallen
in love.
   I reached out and switched off the light. Then I picked her up
and carried her into the bedroom.
   Her skin was smooth and cool as velvet, her hunger as great as
mine. With a little crooning sound in her throat she drew me close to
her.
   Once, she roused and asked in a sleepy whisper, "Do you love
me- really love me?"
   I said, "Sure, honey. Sure I love you."
   I meant it, too. But another man lay on the bed beside us. I
could hear his sneering laughter as her arms carried me off through
the fire of oblivion. I can hear it yet.
   
   Picking up a cab wasn't easy. But we got one at last.
   She kissed me good night before she climbed in- a kiss that was
just the barest touch of her lips. Her eyes were like stars. I've
never known anyone quite as beautiful as Sonia Rakosi.
   When the cab was out of sight in the swirling snow I walked back
to my rooming house and went upstairs with my head filled with
conflicting thoughts. Maybe I was too old to fall in love. Maybe
that was why I had a pain in my mind that wouldn't let me decide
whether I was happy or sad.
   As I opened the door I could smell her perfume. In the bedroom
there was the scent of the powder she'd used when I left her alone to
make up her face and tidy her hair.
   Thinking only made me more confused. So I had a small drink and
then I plugged in the coffee percolator. While it was warming up I
began remaking the bed.
   Bitter-sweet thoughts kept me company. Behind them loomed a
shadowy picture of Jakob Kadar, his lumpy face dark with suspicion.
   Everything pointed to him. Someone in the organisation was a
traitor. That fitted the circumstances better than the idea that Zuck
had been followed the day he ordered a music-box from a store on Fifth
Avenue.
   There was nothing against the theory that he had been followed,
but it had been done by somebody who knew his normal daily routine,
somebody who'd only been waiting for the right moment. If it had not
been the music-box, it would've been something else.
   Kadar had had the opportunity. Kadar was the one member who'd
left the meeting just before ten o'clock. Yet... he could've had no
hand in the switching of the valises. That was the last thing he'd
have wanted to happen.
   So it had been chance that saved the organisation. If Rickie
Oppenheimer hadn't picked up the wrong valise...
   But Rickie shouldn't have been carrying a brief-case that
morning. Every other time he'd left it in the office at the Blue
Bottle Club. Monday night he'd broken a long-standing habit.
   When he'd got no reply at Schultz's apartment he'd gone away.
Some time between then and eight-thirty next morning he'd disposed of
twenty thousand dollars. The question was- how?
   Zuck hadn't been lying. There had been no money in the
substitute valise. Which meant that Rickie had given it to someone.
And he'd seen only one person that night so far as I knew- Paula.
But why give it to her?
   I'd finished making the bed by then. As I pushed it back against
the wall I heard something drop on the floor.
   That was when the percolator in the living-room started making
bubbling noises. There was nothing on the floor that I could see. I
told myself it must've fallen down between the bed and the wall.
   ...Wasn't urgent anyway. Maybe my cigarette-case... or Sonia's
powder compact... I'd look for it later.
   So I got up from my hands and knees, went into the living-room
and fixed myself a cup of coffee. While I was drinking it I wondered
what Peter Rakosi would say when I told him I wanted to marry his
daughter.
   Did he know the life she'd lived in Budapest- or was I the only
person in whom she'd ever confided? What difference did it make? She
wasn't that kind of a woman, now. The past was dead. Why did I have
to go on tormenting myself? If only I could learn to accept, it would
be easy...
   There I had a new thought that drove everything else from my
mind. It couldn't have been my cigarette-case that had fallen on the
floor. I had it in my pocket. And Sonia had used her powder compact
just before she left. I remembered seeing her open it and glance in
the mirror for a moment or two before we went out.
   On stiff, unwilling legs I walked back into the bedroom and got
down again on my hands and knees. By the light of a match I saw the
thing that had fallen under the bed.
   It was a small metal box, maybe six inches by four and an inch
and a half deep- the kind of box that a well-known maker used for
packaging pipe tobacco. They advertised it on television and in all
the glossy magazines.
   Every muscle in my body froze so that I couldn't move. I'd never
had a box like that: I wasn't a pipe smoker. Neither was anyone who'd
visited with me in weeks. And it hadn't been in or on my bed that
morning.
   Sheer blind terror held me rigid as if I'd been stricken with
paralysis. All I could think of was a newspaper report. "...One
arm blown off... his head and the whole of the upper part of his body
a shambles... he had no face..."
   The same kind of death had been planned for me. Any moment
that innocent-looking tobacco box was due to go off. Even as I stared
at it with my skin crawling it was counting off my last moments.
   Judging from the spot where it lay it had been planted between
the underside of the mattress and one of the cross-supports. If I
hadn't re-made the bed... if Sonia and I hadn't made love...
   Sonia. Nothing else accounted for the presence of that hellish
box. I'd left her alone in the bedroom when we awoke from the brief
sleep of exhaustion.
   ...She'd given herself to me... then she'd asked me to leave her
so that she could dress and fix her hair. While I was in the
living-room she'd had time to plant the booby-trap...
   That's how it had to be. Behind all the kissing and caressing
she'd been planning my death. I'd become a menace that had to be
removed. So she had appointed herself my executioner.
   Then the match went out. I could still see the small metal box
under the bed. If I'd had the power of movement I could've reached
out and touched it. But I'd lost the will to do anything but kneel
there and sweat, my bones like rubber, my wits gyrating like a
carousel inside my head.
   ...If I got up and ran people would be burned to death in their
sleep when the thing went off... The old building would blaze like
tinder. Maybe I'd have time to rouse everybody and get them out
before it was too late... but not if they put up an argument, not if
they refused to believe me and demanded explanations...
   How long would it be before the bomb detonated? My watch said
the time was a few minutes off midnight. Whoever had set the fuse
would have had to allow for the possibility that I might come home
late.
   So much depended on how long Sonia Rakosi had waited for me to
return. She hadn't been in any hurry to leave.
   So there must've been an ample time allowance. Probably it was
meant to explode at three or four o'clock in the morning when they
could be sure I was in bed and asleep.
   But there was always the chance that I was wrong. Any way I
looked at it I had to take that chance.
   With sweat on my hands I groped under the bed and took hold of
the metal box. Slowly and stiffly I stood up and walked into the
living-room. I've never been so scared in all my life.
   Putting on my coat meant transferring the box from one hand to
the other. I wondered stupidly what would happen if I dropped it.
Maybe nothing. Maybe it didn't matter. If I'd miscalculated nothing
mattered.
   I left the light on and went out and down the stairs, the box
held in both hands. Outside it was blowing a blizzard. I had to
watch where I put my feet in case I fell. I had to force myself to
think. The one thing I knew with absolute certainty was that I had to
keep going.
   The streets were empty. Snow blanketed everything beyond a few
yards ahead. With the metal box hugged against my chest I went on.
   My hands became numbed with cold and I had only a vague idea
where I was. Somewhere a clock struck the hour. By then I was in a
daze. Time no longer counted, time existed only inside the thing I
carried.
   Above the noise of the wind I thought I could hear the ticking of
a clock. It grew louder and louder with every step I took.
CHAPTER =12
   EVEN NOW I don't know where I thought I was going or what I
meant to do when I got there. All I remember is walking on and on,
seeking a place where I could rid myself of the metal box- a place
that I knew only too well I might never reach.
   To leave the time bomb lying in the street was one thing I
couldn't do. It had been created for me. No one else must die
because I'd been a fool. No innocent passer-by must pay the price of
my stupidity.
   So I walked on in my own private hell, listening to the ticking
noise that I knew was inside my head, cringing in my stomach from the
holocaust that the metal box might unleash at any moment.
# 23
<416 TEXT L13>
   "One thing I forgot, sir. About what they told Murray at the
pub. The only other inhabitant's a girl. A niece, she's thought to
be."
   "Miss Kipper, in fact?"
   "That may well be, sir."
   "Splendid. This affair is going to offer one sheerly aesthetic
moment, at least. I look forward to it."
   And Appleby walked on.
   
   The drive was completely untended. It passed between ragged
shrubberies and skirted a garden which was a wilderness. But even
this hardly prepared one for the spectacle that the house itself
presented on a closer view. It stood, as it were, knee-deep in
weeds- like some forlorn prehistoric creature in an inedible pasture.
Its grey surfaces were flaked and cracked; its woodwork was denuded
of paint; many of the lower windows showed tattered curtains pulled
awry, and some of the upper ones lacked entire panes of glass. The
effect was the more shocking because the house carried its breeding on
its ruined face. If challenged to date it, Appleby would have said
1718; if challenged to name the builder, he would have said James
Gibbs. But now it spoke either of madness- which, indeed, was what
was attributed to its owner- or of penury. Perhaps it spoke of both.
Appleby found himself wondering how the false Astarte had risen to a
decent coat and skirt when she had presented herself to Gulliver and
Heffer on that fateful occasion. For this was Astarte's home.
Mysteriously, but finally, Appleby hadn't the slightest doubt of it.
   He glanced at Heffer's car. It told him that Heffer was either a
man of unassuming tastes or possessed of only a very modest private
income indeed. He glanced at the other car, which Parker had supposed
to be a doctor's. There was a brief-case on the back seat- and,
neatly stacked beside it, a sheaf of documents tied with narrow pink
tape. Not a doctor, then. A solicitor. This discovery was a relief.
   Appleby mounted half a dozen steps to the front door. As he did
so, he recalled Sir Gabriel Gulliver's guess at Astarte Oakes's
background: the ponies and the spaniels in decay, and a garden boy
beginning to feel entitled to a rise in wages. Genteel poverty among
the descendants of a Colonial Governor. Well, that looked as if it
had been a near miss. The poverty was here, all right. But it didn't
seem as if there were a garden boy. Appleby rang the bell.
   Or, rather, he went through the motion of doing this. But the
bell-pull went limp in his hand. It might have been the limb of an
infant corpse- he suddenly and ghoulishly thought- before 6rigor
mortis set in. Then he remembered a story of a man who had pulled
at a broken bell like this so vigorously that yards of wire had shot
out and strangled him. Veere House, he decided, didn't conduce to a
healthy state of mind. He clenched his fist and knocked vigorously on
the door. After a pause, he knocked again. There was every reason to
suppose that the effect in the interior must be considerable. But
nothing happened. Perhaps he ought to begin shouting an injunction to
open in the name of the law. But that was more in Parker's line. He
tried the door and found that it wasn't locked. So he opened it and
walked in. Trespass, perhaps. But not house-breaking or burglary.
   He was confirmed at once in his impression that here had been a
dwelling of some elegance. In front of him was a circular hall of
moderate dimensions, rising to a cupola and lantern, and clothed in a
plain honeycoloured marble which was relieved by engaged pilasters in
the same stone. Ahead was an archway beyond which a branching
staircase rose beneath a second cupola. On either side were open
doorways, giving on large rooms.
   The hall was quite empty. It could have done with a vigorous
wash down, but apart from this it retained the dignity of the day on
which it was built. Contrastingly, both the rooms leading off it gave
an immediate impression of being disgraced. And the reason was
obvious. Not only were the carpets and curtains in the last stages of
decay. The rooms were crowded- and crowded with junk. It wouldn't
all be junk, indeed, if transported to a junk-shop. But it was junk
here.
   Appleby concentrated on the room on his right. There was a
further open door at the other side of it, through which it was
possible to see part of another room beyond. This seemed to be
crowded in the same way. And neither room was furnished with the
slightest attempt at individual character or even specific function.
There were beds and there were sideboards. There were desks which
looked as if they had come from massive Victorian offices, and there
were dressing-tables which looked as if they had come from penurious
Victorian servants' dormitories. The walls were covered with
pictures- oils, water-colours and steel-engravings side by side.
There were bags of golf-clubs and bundles of tennis-rackets. There
was a vaulting horse and a croquet-box and a stuffed bear and a
harmonium. And in the disposition of all these crowded objects there
was only one principle to be observed. It was a principle, however,
that struck Appleby as a notable one. Nothing was entirely concealed
behind anything else.
   In the minute which it took Appleby to absorb all this, Veere
House was as soundless as the tomb. If the false Astarte were really
here, it must surely be in the character of a Sleeping Beauty. In
which case, Jimmy Heffer had certainly taken on the ro?5le of Prince
Charming. But whether his plan for arousing the lady was at all
moral- whether, indeed, they mightn't both wake up to find themselves
in gaol- was a different matter. Anyway, they must now be hunted
out. Appleby was about to address himself to this task when he became
aware that the deathly stillness of the place had been broken. It had
been broken by a light, firm tapping from- he judged- some distant
part of the ground floor on which he stood.
   The tapping came nearer. You didn't have to remember Treasure
Island and the blind pirate to be a little unnerved by it. Appleby,
who had fought for his life in thieves' kitchens almost as often as
Sexton Blake, felt a momentary tingling of the scalp. And then- at
the far end of the farther room at which he had been glancing- the
occasion of the tapping appeared.
   It was an old woman. She came from the shadow of some remoter
corridor into a shaft of afternoon sunshine falling through the
farthest of a series of windows which extended between Appleby and
herself. As she did so, the sound of her stick- for the tapping did
proceed from a stick- was muted but still irrationally alarming. She
had passed from a tiled floor to a carpeted one.
   It was a quick tapping- so that it suggested itself as indeed
produced by a blind person rather than a lame one. But this was
delusive. The old woman had eyes that could see. That she was using
them was almost the first impression you had of her. She was
advancing towards Appleby with her head turned steadily to her left.
Her stick was in her right hand. With her left hand- its
index-finger extended- she was making spasmodic but purposeful
movements as she advanced.
   She was very old. She was in black. The black was relieved by a
white collar and a white cap. And this, of course, was what made her
uncanny- uncanny as she advanced through this decorous house, a house
of the kind in which the successors of Sir Christopher Wren had
tactfully refined upon the Dutch taste of William and Mary. The old
woman was like an old woman by Rembrandt. That was it.
   Of course it didn't make sense. Mrs Kipper was not,
presumably, a Kipper. Very probably she had been a Miss Smith or a
Miss Jones. But perhaps she had grown into the place... Now she had
passed into the shadow between two windows- and now she was in clear
faint sunlight again. She was nearer. And she wasn't- Appleby saw-
a Rembrandt, after all. She was just a Frans Hals. She hadn't- that
was to say- grown out of the flesh with age. She was an ordinary
acquisitive old woman.
   But no- she wasn't quite ordinary, either. She was behaving in
too extraordinary a way. For he could see, now, what that left
index-finger was doing. It was ticking things off. It was ticking
off all those rubbishing material possessions, no one among which
quite concealed any other.
   
   The pathological old miser- for that, of course, was what she
was- advanced steadily towards Appleby. She looked at him, and
frowned. He ought not to have been there to be counted. She stopped,
and spoke sharply.
   "Young man," she said, "are you Richardson's clerk?"
   It certainly wasn't that she was purblind. A glance from her
eyes told you that she saw everything. So Appleby felt rejuvenated.
Whether he was a young man was, after all, a relative matter. On the
other hand, he certainly wasn't Richardson's clerk. So he had better
say so.
   "No," he replied. "My name is Appleby, and I have come to
call on your niece. You must forgive me for walking in. I seemed to
have some difficulty with the bell at the front door."
   Mrs Kipper- as she must be presumed to be- ignored this. She
had come to a halt for a moment, but now she walked on- crossing her
elegant hall and entering the first of the rooms on its farther side.
At the same time, she signed to Appleby to accompany her. She gave
the impression of being prepared to listen to him, provided this did
not distract her from the more important task of checking over her
property. This still took place entirely on her left hand. No doubt
there was going to be a return journey.
   "I asked"- Mrs Kipper said- "because Richardson is in the
house now. I heard his voice as he went upstairs. He has no business
here. I have a good mind to turn him out of the place."
   "Isn't Mr Richardson your solicitor?" Appleby asked this
very much at a venture.
   "Certainly not. My solicitor is Mr Wiggins of Gray's Inn. I
went up to see him only a few days ago. Richardson is a local man,
who did business for my late brother-in-law, Joseph Kipper. Most
mistakenly and unnecessarily, Joseph left a sum of money in trust for
the education of my niece. Richardson administered it. But that is
all over. The money has been spent and the trust discharged. The
girl may send for him as she pleases. But he hasn't a penny left to
give her, all the same. Unless out of his own pocket."
   "Your niece Astarte?"
   Mrs Kipper had now nearly reached the far end of the room. And
she took time off the more serious business of her peregrination to
look sharply at Appleby.
   "Astarte? Stuff and nonsense! My niece's name is plain
Jane."
   "Plain Jane, I am told, is one of the loveliest girls in
England." It was again in an experimental spirit that Appleby
offered this. What it produced from Mrs Kipper was a cackle of
highly disagreeable laughter.
   "Lovely? All the more reason why she should marry Charles
Onions. They will cancel each other out, so far as looks go. Mr
Onions is a revoltingly ugly man."
   "I see." And indeed Appleby was beginning to see what might
be called the archetypal simplicity of the situation at Veere House.
"Your niece has no wish to marry this revoltingly ugly man. But she
is penniless. And he is the match that you design for her."
   "You express it very clearly," Mrs Kipper said. And she
walked on. "The announcement," she said presently, "would look
well in The Times- supposing one were to waste money in that way.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 213
<417 TEXT L14>
   "Very interesting indeed," Miss Hocking murmured when he
ended. "But I'm afraid I can't enlighten you. Not at all. Mrs.
Pritchard frequently marked books, made little annotations on passages
that interested her."
   "Oh, lots of people do that, I know. But this mention of a
neighbour's name- and his suspecting something- and the sentence not
finished- and the book on the floor when she died. Come now, Miss
Hocking, you can't tell me you don't think that adds up to
something."
   She didn't answer, just looked down, her eyes moving slightly
behind lowered lids.
   Satisfied that he had silenced her, he said: "This message- do
you reckon it could've been for Mrs. McEvoy, warning her that her
husband suspected her of using the boatshed as a place of
assignation?"
   "I've told you I have no idea who this warning could have been
for. If it was a warning."
   "Did anyone turn up at her place," he probed patiently, "soon
after she was dead?"
   "Everyone. The news spread quickly, and everyone came in to see
if there was anything they could do."
   Grogan turned to Stephen. "What were the grounds for your and
Mrs. McEvoy's divorce?" he asked.
   "Desertion," Stephen said promptly, and flicked on a lighter
and lighted a cigarette.
   "On whose part?"
   "Mine. On our return from Singapore things weren't too happy
between us, and I left her and she divorced me."
   And that was that, Grogan thought. A nice clean decent
desertion, and she never so much as turned her eyes on any other
bloke! No! A brick wall here every bit as thick as the old girl was
putting up.
   Pointedly, Miss Hocking reached over and took Stephen's cup, and
put it back on the tray and straightened the things on it as though to
say, Good morning, Inspector, and I hope you're satisfied with what
you haven't learnt.
   Forestalling her, Grogan got up, took his hat off the chair and
stood a moment turning the brim round in his hands. "By the way,"
he said, and kept his eyes steadily on her face, "about where McEvoy
was shot."
   "Yes?" she said, as he paused.
   "We find now that it didn't happen down by the fowlyard and him
carried indoors. He was shot in the bedroom, as it first appeared.
So it doesn't have to be a strong man after all."
   Miss Hocking's expression was admirably impassive under his
stare. But the blood that rises to or drains away from the face at
certain moments is under no one's control.
   
   In the shade of a tree on one of the stones that enclosed his
small domain, Jeffrey Cornwall was sitting filling a mid-morning pipe.
To the tune of Cherry Ripe droned several tones flat he rolled
the tobacco round and round in his palms. Round and round and round,
while meditatively, as a cow chewing the cud, he let his eyes rest on
the flat water ahead of him. The near-to-overhead sun seemed to
flatten it still further so that hardly a ripple stirred its surface.
The shadow of a bird flying low was a black cloud, a small fish
leaping was an explosion.
   "H'm...h'm...h'm... Ripe I cry, Full <SIC> and fair ones
come and buy." Round and round and round...
   Grogan, leaving Miss Hocking's, stopped to have a word with him.
   Leaning up against the tree, taking out a cigarette and lighting
it, the inspector said there were worse occupations than what Mr.
Cornwall was engaged on! That himself he wasn't half looking forward
to the day when he'd sit in the shade and smoke his pipe and give the
job away.
   Cornwall agreed heartily. He'd always said, Retire while you've
got the health to enjoy your leisure, cultivate your mind instead of
an ulcer. Then, talking of jobs, he wanted to know whether the police
had got any nearer to solving the crime.
   Grogan said that there had been several small developments. For
instance- and he brought Cornwall up to date about the warning
message written by old Mrs. Pritchard in the book.
   Cornwall listened, blew a cloud of fragrant smoke, and pressed
the tobacco down with his thumb.
   "Would you think," Grogan asked, "that McEvoy suspected his
wife of meeting a 2feller in the boatshed?"
   "What fellow?" Cornwall wanted to know in exchange, with an
upward squint of the eye.
   "Say, Mr. Pritchard."
   Cornwall gave a soundless whistle. "Well... I don't know
anything about that. Everyone admires the girl, of course. But I
haven't seen any signs of her carrying on with anyone. But then, more
than likely, I wouldn't have seen it if it'd been right under my nose.
I've got beyond the stage, thank God, of being interested in love
affairs, wouldn't give a damn even if it was my own. And frankly I
don't think Boris would've cared two hoots if she'd had a dozen men in
the boatshed."
   "No? How say he wanted to divorce her and was snooping around
for evidence?"
   Cornwall rejected this, too, with a shake of his long, thick
head. "No..." He enveloped a passing fly in a cloud of smoke.
"No. Divorces cost money."
   "Well, he had a bit, hadn't he? Didn't have to work, seemed
comfortable enough."
   "Yes, but he didn't like to spend it. Not in getting rid of a
wife when all he had to say was- if he wanted to, that is- 'I know
what you're up to, beat it'."
   "Look, if you can prove adultery against a wife you don't have
to keep her. If you haven't got the evidence but just turn her out on
suspicion, she can force you to support her. Maybe it wouldn't've
suited her to clear out with nothing, even if it wasn't much of a
match for a girl as young and pretty as that."
   "You may have something there," Cornwall nodded.
   "For Dal's sake, too, she might've wanted to stay with him.
However, I wouldn't know. All that side of life- I'm not concerned
with it."
   Grogan, looking down at him thought, Not a bad looking old cove.
Upright and well-preserved, hair still dark and thick. Was he a bit
too emphatic about how little interest he had in the other sex?
   He said suddenly: "By the way, Mr. Cornwall, about that gun
of yours."
   "By jove, yes. When am I going to get it back?"
   "Chatting with Mrs. McEvoy, she says again that she never saw
her husband fire a gun, or speak of shooting."
   "Doesn't mean a thing. He was an odd sort of chap. He'd plant
vegetables and forget to water them, yet he'd wage war on anything
that took a nibble at them."
   "His wife says he didn't give a damn for the vegetables."
   "He didn't give a damn till somebody else wanted them- even if
it was only a rabbit. He was like that about a lot of things. He
didn't give a damn for a lot of his old records but he'd hit the roof
if young Dal Owen touched them."
   "You'd say, then, McEvoy wasn't too fond of his brother-in-law?
I thought that might be why he came down here to your place to
sleep."
   "Look, Inspector, I wouldn't know. Don't quote me," Cornwall
said hastily.
   No, Grogan thought as he nodded and passed on his way, Don't
quote me- don't expect any opinion- don't expect any help. Don't
help the police if there's a dozen murderers loose in the community.
Stand on the sidelines and cheer on anyone out to down the cops.
Well, he'd forget 'em all if he could just get one bit more on the
old girl.
   Half-way up the hill, he met Manning coming down it.
   Grudgingly, Manning admitted that the other's guess had not been
too bad a one. He'd just been talking to the Fordham police, and this
was the way it was...
CHAPTER =15
   THE FRYS WERE HOME BY MIDDAY. There had been no nice little
lunch out, no trip to the pictures; instead, the hire car deposited
them at the top, and they came down the hill even more slowly than
they had gone up it. Edward's face was still more pale and drawn, and
Jane's manner more determinedly cheerful than when they had set out.
   Walking ahead, as earlier, she quickly opened the door with her
key so as to have it wide before he reached it, and hurried into the
living-room, lowered the blinds half-way, arranged cushions on the
sofa, and went out to the refrigerator to get him a cool drink. She
sat and watched him as he sipped the milk and soda; and now one more
fear was added to all the others in Jane's eyes. One fear worse than
the others, worse than the hateful children in class, the birds in the
morning, the frogs in the night.
   Edward had voiced the fear several times in the car on the drive
home; and each time, with dry mouth and a faith that she was far from
feeling, Jane had said:
   "Don't worry, Eddie. It's like the confessional."
   "Should be, but is it?"
   "Of course it is. Of course it is."
   Even now, when steps sounded on the veranda, she said, with
last-ditch courage; ~"That'll be Vetch's boy," though the steps
were clearly of four feet, not two, and Vetch's boy never came to the
front door.
   The entry of Grogan and Manning, following on Manning's
information to Grogan, left no room for further ostrich tactics on
Jane's part.
   The Frys greeted the visitors with no small talk. Jane, having
brought them in, murmured: ~"The police, Eddie," and went back to
her chair and they sat looking at the two detectives with their
habitual air of resigned anxiety.
   The room was as trim and orderly as the Frys themselves. From
year to year not the smallest thing in it was ever changed. Jane
dusted it once a day, and put each object back in its allotted place.
   Grogan wasn't long in explaining the reason for their call: the
Frys' visit to a doctor's surgery, their visit to a chemist near by,
the purchase of surgical lint, bandages and antiseptics. The damning
facts gathered by a police constable in Fordham couldn't be denied,
nor could the deductions to be drawn from them.
   Yes- yes- and yes, Edward admitted. It was his blood that had
spattered the stones in the yard outside Boris McEvoy's fowl-run.
   Edward, his legs along the sofa, reached out and put his glass
down on a table. Jane, her eyes filled with burning intensity, seemed
not to breathe now. It would have been hard to say just what the Frys
were clinging to with such tenacity, life in the austere house seemed
so joyless, its barrenness so little different from that of that
"fine and private place", the grave.
   "Where were you wounded, Mr. Fry?" Grogan asked when the
facts had been stated and admitted.
   "In the calf of the leg, a flesh wound," Edward rapped out.
"The bullet ricocheted off a stone. My wife thought it had begun to
look more than slightly angry today, and I was persuaded to see a
doctor. Otherwise, we could have been able to keep the whole
miserable incident to ourselves. Or, even, if I could have relied on
this much-vaunted medical etiquette I might have maintained that the
things I bought at the chemist's were for some minor injury that had
nothing to do with McEvoy's death."
   "Who fired the shot?"
   "Boris McEvoy. I've lived in this locality for three years, and
all I ask is to be left in peace to-"
   "Was it deliberate?"
   "Kindly allow me to tell the story in my own fashion," Edward
rasped at him. The stern schoolmaster's glance was turned on the
inspector. Edward would be in control of the class and none other,
and interrupters would be promptly dealt with. His injured leg up on
the sofa did little to lessen his air of authority; his uplifted hand
commanded it, and the sharp turn of his head and the snap of his eyes.
# 216
<418 TEXT L15>
   I was alone at the moment, though we were two in the household.
My younger brother Tom shared our holding of some two hundred acres,
but he'd gone out to see about the barn door which was banging in the
wind, so if anyone had concluded that we two bachelors were also
wealthy, here was I <SIC> another such opportunity for murder. It
was fancy I know, but its possibility made me nervous. Tom was a man
you could never be sure of. He was eccentric, moody, and shrewd,
secretive to a fault, fond of company and very fond of liquor. He
made every trifling incident an excuse for a 'celebration', as he
called it, though he was steady enough when it suited him to be. But
as I said, he was most unreliable. I was the eldest of the surviving
sons, and three years Tom's senior. I had a different temperament; I
was always one to count the costs beforehand, I seldom smoked, I'd no
taste for it, and as to strong drink, well it didn't appeal to me,
though I took it when I considered it to be in my interests to do so,
otherwise I looked on it as a sheer waste of good money. I enjoyed
work for work's sake; a violin well played, or a well told story. Tom
was the reverse of my tastes, though good at heart. He was
thoughtless, more than selfish; an unknown quantity would I think best
describe him.
   As I sat there musing and waiting his return, a sudden and
powerful gust of wind shook the entire cottage, which trembled
violently and was accompanied by a sound of tearing, which terminated
in a dull thud in an adjacent room.
   At this I jumped to my feet in alarm, as I'd not have been at all
surprised if the entire roof had collapsed. It was very old and in
need of repair. However nothing further happened and I became curious
as to what had apparently fallen. Taking the lamp from the table I
went to investigate, but no sooner had I opened the room door than my
lamp was nigh extinguished by a violent draught. I was able to see
that the gable end of the roof had been ripped off and swept away.
Luckily it was a fine though windy night, or we would certainly have
been flooded. It was a room seldom used however, so things might have
been worse. The room contained little furniture- in fact I knew its
contents by heart, so that when I saw an unfamiliar parcel lying on
the floor I was mystified, and before another gust of wind came I had
hurriedly lifted up that loosely tied parcel and returned to my room
as I was fearful of my lamp's chimney being destroyed by the draught.
   The parcel was of a light though rustly nature, and appeared to
have been carelessly packed. Its cord was useless in effect, so I'd
no trouble in its removal, on doing so I was dumbfounded by its
unexpected contents. I must have stood some time motionless in awe.
On examination I found it contained about twenty bundles of one pound
notes, which I later discovered amounted to +2,1 in all.
   When my sudden excitement had subsided, I found I was becoming
very nervous, which later developed into anxiety as to what I ought to
do. I felt I could not consult anyone for advice, and I was equally
uncertain if I should even tell Tom my brother, for if we did share it
he might talk in his cups, or indeed drink its entirety, and if I kept
it secret, I could not use it without he in time asking awkward
questions as to where I had obtained all the money. To lodge it in
the bank might also make for embarrassment so I thought at the time.
Now I know better. There was only one alternative and that was to
inform the police. I didn't relish that. As a final solution I was
undecided. Its destruction by fire, although I was loath to destroy
wealth. Before however I had made up my mind as to what I would do
with it, the room door unexpectedly opened and Tom entered, sober and
silently. I'd been so engrossed in my thoughts that I never heard his
step above the high winds.
   When he saw the pile of notes, he rushed over and picked up a
bundle in silence examining it thoroughly as if to see if they were
real. Then he spoke hoarsely to me, saying 'Where did you get
these? Are they yours, and were you counting your wealth in my
absence? Or maybe you've stolen them, Eh?' His eyes were staring
at me wildly as if he'd not hesitate to do me an injury if I gave him
what he might think was a false explanation. I could see that he had
already made himself a satisfactory answer. That had always been his
piggish way- judgment before, and in spite of, any evidence.
   I replied at once. To have hesitated would have meant suspicion,
and he had a tinge of that already. I told him that I'd found the
money, relating in detail all I've said before. He kept watching me
all the time incredulously. I could quite understand this. It did
appear fantastic and almost improbable. But when I'd ceased talking
he said, 'Well Jim I believe you, I don't like it'.
   I agreed it certainly was unpleasant and peculiar. Suddenly he
pressed down the brown paper wrapper and said 'Look there! See it
has poor old David Tuns' name written on it'.
   I followed his pointing finger, and sure enough the name and
address was there, showing also a cancelled revenue stamp. A thought
flashed through my mind, but before I could give it expression Tom
banged his fist down on the table and exclaimed 'It's surely blood
money and will bring bad luck on us! 2'Tis plain that the murderer
wrapped his ill-gotten gains in the first thing that he could find and
placed it in our thatch. But why didn't he ever return? Was it to
throw suspicion on us two lone men?' Again he eyed me- I thought
suspiciously as if he thought 2'twas I who had done the deed and hid
the money, but as I could give no explanation, I said so. I was
always a man to speak out my mind straight, asking him what we'd do
with the money now that it was here. He paused long at that. Then he
said 'Perhaps it were a bank robbery, and if so the number of the
notes would be known'.
   It was possible, though hardly probable, I said, 'Yet the late
David was not believed to have been a man of means, so it was,' I
added, 'quite possible that 2'twas never his and the wrapper a mere
coincidence'. I was quite convinced and Tom agreed, that David had
never hidden it in our thatch with his address on it, though some
people are queer, and 2'twould have saved him income tax to have done
so.
   We could form no conclusion as to its origin, but had to face the
fact of its disposal.
   When I suggested the police, Tom would not even listen to me, so
after a long debate far into the night we decided to leave it till
morning and then decide. Next morning however he was up earlier than
usual and was attending the live stock when I came into the room at my
customary time. When I'd finished breakfast and went to find him I
did so, <SIC> and commenced to repair our damaged roof, as the
wind had ceased although it was still overcast. I questioned him as
to why he hadn't asked Hattie, our local expert thatcher to do the
job. He muttered something about not wanting strangers about our home
as they knew too much of others <SIC> domestic affairs already. I
could perceive that he was in a very sour mood, so decided not to
pursue the matter, nor indeed to refer to our agreement of the
previous night about the disposal of my find. There was no hurry
anyway, I thought.
   It seems hard to believe now, but it was not till five months
later that I brought up the subject in desperation. Tom made no
reference ever to it, and it was early Spring, with a lot of urgent
improvements due on our farm. Extra money could be usefully spent on
it, and if it was a thing that Tom agreed, I'd decided to spend a
discreet figure on this objective, so as not to arouse local
suspicions or talk. To make a big outlay was to start the busybody
neighbours <SIC> tongues with Jim Kogh's sudden wealth, and
indeed- ~'Where did he get it?'- 2'twas easily started, but
mighty hard to stop.
   Mid-February then it was, when I again approached Tom asking him
why it was that he didn't help me to decide our windfall of over five
months ago. He said that he'd been waiting for me, and so I saw that
one was waiting for the other, in some kind of awkward fear. It was
that <SIC> he eventually agreed with me that, barring telling
either the police, or any of our neighbours, we were quite within our
rights in equally dividing it, as 2'twas found unclaimed on our
premises, and so it was that we had a mutual share out of the +2,1.
He took it without a murmur, but turned as he made to leave the room.
At the door he said: 'I hope this does not get me into any
trouble'.
   I don't pretend to know what he meant by saying it, but it again
entered my mind that he might spend it recklessly on drink, and give
our secret away, for he was, as I've already said, a very intemperate
man when it suited him. I replied that I hoped it would not, unless
he ran the way of trouble. I thought my hint would be sufficient, but
he only looked at me and said that there were more ways of getting
into troubles than drink, and money was one of them, especially as it
had been queerly come by. With that he went out. I couldn't
understand him at all. He appeared to be both nervous and vexed, but
why, I couldn't even imagine.
   Sometime later- 2'twould be at least eighteen months I'd say-
to my great surprise I saw Tom emerging from the delapidated old house
of the late Dave Tuns, the neighbour whom I've already referred to who
had been found murdered and whose house was still unoccupied and a
ruin. We locals wouldn't enter it. It was the late owner's property
and he had died without issue or relatives. It could not therefore be
legally disposed of, though Tom and I had acquired the adjacent lands
by local authority. I saw Tom coming out of this dreaded house one
day, but I refrained from mentioning it to him for a time, as 2'twas
really none of my business. About a month later than this, he told me
one morning that he had had several bad dreams about the late David
and that he was going to have him prayed for, and to put a stone or
suchlike to his memory.
   Why he should decide to do this was beyond me. David was no
relation of ours, and a long time dead, but I didn't pursue this.
Nevertheless I was mystified as to why Tom took a sudden interest
after such a lapse of time as eighteen years. I was equally surprised
that he was not drinking. This was contrary indeed to my
expectations, for he was not one to hold money, much or little.
   Later I heard in a roundabout way that he was visiting a nearby
widow and her daughter, both considered to be well off in property and
gilt-edged investments, and above criticism.
# 215
<419 TEXT L16>
   Farland sat waiting in the lounge. He'd yet to meet Dr.
Halset, who'd arrived just after dinner. Following a telephone call,
a little earlier, Winter had said, "I'd like an opportunity of
explaining you to Halset before he sees you. Would you mind very
much? You can stay in the dining room, or..."
   "I'll be in my bedroom," Farland had told him. "There's
every comfort, and I've a letter to write."
   "So glad you understand. You'll hear us come upstairs. He's
certain to want Wally to retire early and will probably give him a
stronger sedative. When we're through we'll join you in the
lounge."
   "How much will you tell Dr. Halset about the reasons for my
being here?" Farland had asked.
   "I'll tell him as little as possible. He will, of course, have
to know about your rescuing Wally from the cliffs last night. That
falls into the medical picture. But the local gossip and other
troubles are outside his province. You'll be able to take your cue
from me."
   While he was waiting for them, Farland reviewed his own decision
to say nothing of what he'd learned during the day. For one thing, he
was reluctant to reveal the source of his information. He was
prepared to believe Susie Bowers, but Winter might feel very
differently. It wouldn't suit Farland's plans to have the girl banned
from the house on the grounds that she was an irresponsible gossip.
He'd other valid reasons for silence. So far there was no proof, no
confirmation, and there was still much to be discovered. He strongly
suspected that Smail was one of the men who'd been watching the house
at night; but the evidence of the chewing-gum was circumstantial.
Considered objectively it only proved that one of the intruders could
have been Smail. The identification of the second man as either
Harker or Beddoes was even flimsier.
   This was a lead. No more. He'd have to watch them; and if the
suspicions were proved right, then he'd have to discover who was
employing them. And had the same unknown person induced Bowers to
start the talk in the village? Or was that fortuitous?
   Farland summed up. Quite fair to hold out on Winter. It seems
he's keeping things back. If he knows about the knife... And if he
knows that Wally did attack the girl...
   There were voices in the hall and Winter entered with the
visitor. He effected introductions. Halset was not at all as Farland
had pictured. He was a shortish man of slight build. The nose was
the predominant feature of his face. It was long and beakish, coming
out so far that one felt the tip must intrude in his vision whenever
he glanced downwards. He was almost bald, the remaining hair tufting
at the sides and tending to curl at the back.
   He looked a mournful man and his handshake was loose; but his
voice was well modulated and, Farland imagined, could be soothing.
   "Mr. Farland, I've heard how magnificently you behaved last
night. I'm thankful you were here and averted what would certainly
have been a tragedy."
   "I did what I could," Farland murmured. He glanced at Rufus
Winter. "It was a situation that called for somebody pretty
athletic."
   "I'd not the nerve- let alone the body," Winter said
candidly. "Let me get you a drink. How very fortunate, doctor, that
you should happen to be coming down this way. It's not often you
leave town."
   "I escape too rarely," Halset said. "I prescribe rest for
myself; but I never manage to take it. However- there was this
long-standing invitation and I suddenly found myself with a number of
cancelled appointments. My secretary managed some re-arranging of the
remaining ones and- well- here I am."
   "Taking on an extra fifty miles of driving and a bit more
work," Winter commented. "I appreciate it."
   "Don't worry. I don't mind driving. In fact, I do so little
these days that I welcome it."
   When they were sitting comfortably, a drink at hand, Winter said:
"You can talk freely to Farland. I've told him very little-
largely because I don't sufficiently understand your methods."
   "Hypnosis," Halset said. He moved a little in his chair so
that he was facing Farland. "I expect you know that it's possible-
with the right subject- to virtually turn back the clock.
Fortunately for him, Waldo Sutton's a good subject. I can put him
into a hypnotic sleep very quickly. It took longer at first and the
results were no more than encouraging; but now we've reached the stage
where he falls into a trance in response to a simple word formula.
While he's in this condition I can take him back, make him relive
portions of the past. In particular that night of the air-crash. You
know of the disaster?"
   Farland nodded.
   Halset continued, "The value of hypnotic treatment lies in the
increased suggestibility of the patient and also what we call
abreaction- bringing repressed material back to consciousness. It's
a complex matter, not easy to explain in a few words."
   "I think I get the general idea," Farland said. "Do you give
this hypnotic treatment to all your patients?"
   "Indeed, no. It's only possible in certain cases. And it's
only one among many methods of treatment."
   Winter said, "You always have a soothing effect on Wally. We
shouldn't have any more trouble for the time being."
   "I hope not," Halset said. He didn't sound so confident as
Winter. In fact it seemed to Farland, who'd been watching closely,
that Halset was not entirely at ease. He gave the impression of being
a worried man and once or twice, during the explanation of the
treatment being given to Wally, he'd glanced at Winter as though for
support. Or is it just, Farland wondered, that I'm not too favourably
impressed?
   He wanted to study the psychiatrist more closely. He couldn't be
professionally critical but he might evaluate the man. However there
was no chance, for Halset looked at his watch and announced he must be
on his way.
   Winter, at Farland's shoulder, said quietly, "I hesitate to
suggest you should run any risk; but I'd like to be sure our unknown
friends aren't watching."
   "Leave it to me," Farland assured him.
   Halset had not risen from his seat. Winter said, "You'll
excuse Farland? He's a man of habit- likes his evening exercise."
   "Of course," Halset said. He accompanied the loose handshake
with a murmured hope that they might meet again sometime. Farland
left the house by a back door, just behind the garage, and here he
paused thoughtfully. Did it matter if the men who watched the house
saw Halset's car leave? Did Winter have a genuine reason, or was it
just a smooth dismissal? Remembering that Halset had remained seated
Farland favoured this explanation.
   He thought, Halset sees me- and then they get me out of the way.
Could be worth checking.
   Moving with cautious silence he reached the terrace and
approached the windows. One of them, at the side of the doors, was
open at the top. He moved a small garden bench nearer to the wall and
stepped up on it, leaning towards the window.
   Halset was talking. "I still don't like it. I don't like the
risk. We should have kept..."
   "Nonsense!" Winter interrupted briskly. "I know this is
complicated; but I can handle it. We won't fail."
   "I wish you'd never..." Halset lowered his voice, or was
moving farther from the window. Farland could hear no more; not even
Winter's reply. He guessed the two men must be leaving the lounge.
   He jumped down and replaced the bench. He went back to the
garage and stood there waiting. Within five minutes there was the
unmistakable slam of a car door. As the car drove off he made his way
along the hedge. Winter might stroll round the house or come out on
the terrace and Farland was anxious to give him no cause for
suspicion.
   Why was Halset uneasy and what was the risk he'd mentioned? Were
they discussing some aspect of the treatment Wally was undergoing? Or
was that last private conversation in no way connected with Wally?
Winter had business interests- or so he claimed. It wasn't
impossible for Halset to be financially involved. Investments,
perhaps. He'd presumably come to know Winter quite well. Certainly
it sounded as though Winter was making the decisions, and this rather
ruled out medical matters. That sentence interrupted by Winter might
have been: We should have kept to the original investments. Winter
might be playing the market. That could be complicated; but he'd
probably feel himself competent to handle it.
   Farland thought, If money's the answer it's nothing to do with
me, and politely pushing me off was justified. But was money the
answer? Farland tried to connect the words with the whispering
campaign against Wally, ignoring Winter's assurance that Halset would
not be told of this. The result was unsatisfactory.
   By this time he was nearing the bushes, so he dismissed the
overheard conversation from his mind. He needed to have his wits
about him. He'd no intention of being caught as he had on the
previous night.
   He came to a sudden stop, hearing a slight rustling ahead. The
sounds became more definite and he had a glimpse of someone running
across a gap between bushes, heading towards the orchard. He swore
under his breath. By some ill-fortune he'd been spotted first. He
plunged forward in pursuit but still using caution, remembering there
might well be two men.
   By the time he reached the orchard, though, it seemed certain
there was only one intruder, who was gaining ground. Thanks to
Susie's guidance earlier in the day he knew his quarry was making for
the cliff path; but this was of no particular value, for the man
obviously knew the layout much more intimately.
   Racing along the narrow path by the allotments Farland at last
had a clear view of the man he was after and there was no mistaking
the tall, gangling figure. It was Smail. Within seconds a bend in
the track hid him from view and Farland didn't see him again.
   When he joined the wider cliff path Farland stopped. Smail was
too cunning to keep to the path; he'd be making his way under cover of
bushes and stretches of hedge. Which was his way? To the
village? To Brigantine Cove, where the Diana might be lying? It
had to be a guess and even if he made the right choice everything was
in Smail's favour. There were hundreds of places where he could hide.
   Farland accepted defeat. He regained his breath, listening hard,
but there were no betraying sounds. He lit a cigarette and began to
retrace his steps. Alongside one of the allotments was a fence and
here he rested for a short while.
   It was a warm night and he was tempted to stay longer, but he'd
still quite a distance to cover and he'd the thought that Winter would
be anxious. So he moved on, walking briskly.
   When he finally came to the garden and had a clear view of the
house he could see the french windows were open and Winter was pacing
the terrace. Farland hurried across the overgrown lawn and Winter,
seeing him, came hurrying down the terrace steps. "Thank heaven
you're back, Farland. I've been so worried! I was trying to screw up
sufficient courage to come and look for you. Scared after last
night- I have to confess it. You're not hurt?" He sounded
anxious.
   "No. Someone was spying, but unfortunately he saw me before I
spotted him. Chased him as far as the cliff path- and then lost
him."
   "Did you get a good look at him?" Winter asked eagerly.
   Farland's hesitation was brief. "The chap had too big a start-
plus the advantage of being on familiar ground." There was little
to be gained by identifying the intruder as Smail, he felt.
# 27
<42 TEXT L17>
   'You got my message through the flower-seller?'
   'What message and what flower-seller?'
   'Please yourself. There's other talent for hire.' Loddon
began to signal the waiter.
   'All right, no need to go off half-cocked. You might be a
flick.'
   'Do I look like one?'
   'No...'
   'Okay. Anywhere we can talk?'
   'I'll leave in a moment; you go out the entrance where they come
in from Coventry Street. I'll probably be around.' The man got up
and left, pausing a moment at the door where the porter wanted to know
why he had no bill.
   Loddon paid his own account, finished his cigarette and got up.
He looked about him, wondering if Sergeant Leinster was in the room.
If so, he was not visible.
   In Coventry Street the reporter halted outside the doors of the
Corner House, waiting. His table companion appeared, touching his arm
and making a head jerk towards Rupert Street. They walked in silence,
turning into a wide court half-way up on the right where, half-way
along it, the man stopped.
   'Now friend, what's the job?'
   'Your name Light?'
   'What's that got to do with it?' His tone was wary.
   'I never talk to men without names.'
   'Choosey, aren't you? Call me Shiner. If you've got any funny
ideas about anything, forget them.' He touched his left arm that
Loddon had noticed was carried slightly away from his body, the
sign-manual of the man habitually used to a shoulder-holster.
   'I'm never funny when I'm out on business. But I'm damned if
I'm going to talk in a place like this. Know anywhere private?'
   'I might do, if you give me a lead on something interesting, for
example.'
   Loddon did not say anything, fumbling in the left-hand pocket of
his trench-coat. He half grinned when he saw Light's hand begin to
move towards his left armpit. When the reporter's hand reappeared, it
contained a thick packet. He flicked the top fold, revealing
five-pound notes in what was a very large collection of them.
   'This good enough? Plenty more where these came from.'
   Light's quick look was expert.
   'Looks about seventy of them in that lot.'
   'Eighty, to be precise.'
   'Good enough. We'll get a cab. Got any objection if I ask you
to hold your hat over your eyes on the journey, friend? I don't
advertise my home.'
   Loddon was amused at Light's caution, but impressed by it when he
stopped a cab in Wardour Street and held out a card to the man,
telling him to drive to the address it bore.
   From behind the shelter of his hat Loddon, whose knowledge of
London is almost as good as Superintendent Shott's, knew when they
turned left in Shaftesbury Avenue. From Piccadilly Circus, following
the curious angle round Hyde Park Corner, it was fairly easy and, by
the slight left hand sway of the cab, Brompton Road was identified.
Then Loddon got confused, but he had an idea they turned round the
Albert Hall and began to twist in a multitude of small streets,
halting at last. If he could not guess the address, he had a shrewd
idea of its whereabouts. When he got out it was in a short,
ill-lighted mews.
   The cab driver was paid off. Light led the way to a door beside
a closed garage. He took a key out of a pocket, smiling without
humour when he saw Loddon looking round.
   'Don't worry, friend. You'll never guess it in a thousand
years.'
   Loddon nodded in a baffled fashion, not bothering to add that a
small sign in the distance, caught by a trick of light from a badly
curtained window, said: 'Hickliff- Coals'. He knew he would have
no trouble in finding the mews when he wanted to come again.
   There was darkness behind the door that opened. Not until Loddon
had reached the top was a button touched, and he saw a door on his
right.
   'Go on in; it's not locked.'
   The door gave access to a tidily furnished sitting-room where
chintz and Japanese oak predominated. At one end was a large
record-player with, on the facing side of the room, a television set.
   'Make yourself at home.' Light threw his coat and hat on a
chair. Loddon retained his own.
   'Thanks, I'm not staying long. Only take a few minutes.'
   'Sounds like something easy. Drink?' Light moved over to a
table spread with bottles.
   'Whisky; if not, beer.'
   'Easy.' He filled two glasses and brought them across,
sitting on a low couch facing Loddon. 'Health.'
   'And yours.' The reporter sipped the drink, setting down the
glass unusually slowly. He was trying to find an angle, not so much
for the purpose of framing a proposition but in the hope of getting
Light to unwittingly give him a slant on the facts he was seeking.
'Now look-' then he paused. The door he had noticed on the far
side of the room was opened, and a big man with an extremely ugly face
entered. He was yawning and stretching as if he had just woken from
sleep. He stopped, and stared.
   'This the prospect?' His voice was soft, almost urbane.
   'That's right, Eeky. We was just getting down to business.
He's willing to pay-'
   Eeky Morris went slowly to a table near the wall, took something
out of it, and turned, a long-barrelled Smith & Wesson Service pistol
in one hand. He made a face at Light's expression of surprise.
   'Sucker, aren't you, Shiner? Seen this chap more than once.
Name's Loddon. He's a reporter.'
   The pale blue eyes became narrowed and bitter.
   'You sure?'
   'Sure I'm sure! Seen him at a 2coupla trials, and his picture
in the Daily Report, once. And you brought him here!'
   'His message came through the pillar-box.'
   'That damned flower-merchant!' Morris's voice was sour.
'Probably got the lead from one of the boys. I always told you it's
asking for trouble relying on that old fool.'
   'I'm here, too,' Loddon said; he disliked being ignored, even
if the party was scarcely in his favour. 'I'm a reporter. Okay.
And what the hell do you propose to do about it?'
   Light was on his toes again. One hand sneaked out and the
reporter's face became white then scarlet where the violence of an
open palm hit it.
   'That's what, friend.' He half turned to Morris. 'I'll take
him, Eeky?'
   'Please yourself. I'll cover him while you frisk him.'
   Loddon submitted meekly to the search, his blue eyes so intently
angry that Light was outstared, completing the search with rough
hands. He swore gently.
   'Precisely nothing to identify him. And-' he swore again.
'Two fivers covering a bundle of scrap cut the same size. You busy
little fellow!' His hand took Loddon on the other cheek, then he
began to remove his jacket. 'This is something I'm going to enjoy,
friend.'
   Loddon glanced at Morris's gun, guessed at the proximity of
neighbours, and decided to chance it. Light had only half removed his
jacket, he went forward as if he had jumped. One ready fist came up
from the ground in an almost classic haymaker. Light's head snicked
back; he folded up as if he had suddenly gone boneless, and lay still.
   Morris said something wicked under his breath.
   'Clever bastard! Stay where you are, unless-'
   'Unless nothing!' Loddon leapt at him, the comforting zeal
for battle rising with the swift urgency he knew well. 'You wouldn't
use that thing here, and you know it!' He dodged the downward lash
of an attempted pistol-whipping, and one fist smacked on Morris's ear
with a comforting thud.
   But Morris was both larger and tougher than his partner. He
threw away the gun, ignoring what must have been a painful blow, and
stepped forward. If he was big, Loddon was not short, if with far
less weight. The two of them stood toe to toe and traded blows with
the efficient economy of men who knew how to fight.
   Loddon realized his weight was just not good enough when Morris
began driving him back. He gave hurriedly, leapt over the chair he
had been sitting on, and before Morris could understand the manoeuvre,
vaulted back again with the help of a shortened handspring. Both his
feet in mid-air hit Morris on the chest.
   The action brought Loddon over, but it was on top of the
partially winded Morris. They began rolling over and over, hands at
throats and eyes, crashing into the silent Shiner Light on the way.
The table of drink bottles came down. They ended against the
record-player which tottered but did not fall, releasing a confetti of
gramophone discs on them.
   Loddon did not think he had the stamina of the other man. He
forced the attack to try and win the fight before he was exhausted,
both of them gouging and punching with a sort of envenomed hate,
grunting and cursing at each other.
   The pleasant sitting-room was becoming a chaos and neither of
them paid any attention to knockings on the wall, the protests of
alarmed and irritated neighbours.
   Morris, pounding steadily at Loddon, seemed determined to take
all the punishment going so long as he could prevail in the end. With
his physique it seemed highly probable he would. He hit the reporter
in the chest with the force of controlled fury.
   But he telegraphed the blow, and Loddon was already moving away.
He grunted, went head over heels and came up against a table behind
the fallen table of drinks. He hurled himself backwards over it,
sliding across and dropping to the far side. Morris angling himself
forward almost simultaneously, got the impact of the table thrust at
him. It was followed by Loddon in a headlong dive over the top.
   They went down with a violence that shook the floor, entangled
themselves and began methodically to try and pound the life out of
each other. It was bitter and merciless, and might have gone on until
the gasping Loddon was finished. But Light's voice came like the lash
of a whip:
   'All right, friend; stick 'em up. I'm perfectly ready to use
this thing.'
   Loddon paused, half turning. He saw Light on his knees, holding
Morris's gun, then folded up as Morris's fist drove into his wind with
deliberate savagery.
   It seemed hours before Loddon came out of the wrenching of agony
inside him. It felt as if he would never breathe again, but, somehow,
with little gasps he slowly came to a doubtful normality.
   When Light dug him in the back with the gun, he tried to get up,
failed, and tried again. This time he got to his feet, and stood
there. His hands bunched and he tensed himself to jump at the jeering
Eeky Morris. Light thrust the gun, and Loddon paused.
   'All right, guts. If I can't risk firing this thing, I can
still club it, so nark it if you don't want a sore head. Eeky, I want
to know what this chap knows- it'd pay to take it to certain people,
eh?'
   'Yes,' Morris, breathing heavily and dabbing at the blood
pouring from a cut ear, looked as if he was going to enjoy the party
after all. 'How?'
   'Ask him. If he doesn't feel like answering, I can handle
him.' Light looked as if any refusal to answer would suit him; he
stared at Loddon with an intent expression. 'Now, friend.'
   A battered, still gasping Loddon grinned crookedly at him.
   'Melodrama in A Flat!' It was a poor jest but it seemed funny
enough to laugh at outright, then Loddon's lips curled in agony. The
butt of the Smith & Wesson was slapped viciously against the side of
his knee.
   'That'll do to start off with.' Light moved back, waiting
until Loddon's involuntary tears of agony had stopped. 'Feel like
being civil, friend?'
   'If you put that gun down-'
   'I'm taking you-'
   'I think not.' The voice from the door brought round the
heads of the three men.
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   Shevlin said, "I've got more information for you."
   "Yeah? What?"
   "A scream from the Slaytons' living-room can be heard at the
Weeks' if the French doors are open. It can't if they're closed."
   "You tested it?"
   "That was my experiment this morning."
   Willis said, "Good going, Shevlin. That's important."
   If Shevlin expected a pat on the back from Camp, he didn't get
it. "Yeah," said the chief, "except he might've been smarter to
find out how loud a scream sounds in Star's bedroom."
CHAPTER NINE
   The papers Tuesday night spread the murder all over the front
pages. CHAUFFEUR HELD IN SOCIALITE SLAYING were the headlines and
they contained all the nuances of sin and sex that readers ate up. It
was the kind of case the papers loved. There were people in high
places, a beautiful and almost naked woman, and the possibility that
under the bright light of police investigation all sorts of scandals
would be uncovered. It was the dream case and editors had spared no
pains in their effort to give colour to the facts. One enterprising
reporter had dug up an old publicity photo of Phyllis taken when she
was pounding on the doors of show-business and that helped the cause
for it showed her as a ravishing beauty taken, as it had been, under
the best conditions and eleven years before. Phyllis' career on
Broadway was played up; the fact that she had been the prote?2ge?2
of a big-name director and that she had, for two years, been married
to Hans Meredith who had since become a prominent playwright. There
were even statements from Meredith and the director in which they both
said flattering things about Phyllis and regretted her untimely death.
   Phyllis was glorified by the articles but her husband fared less
well. In mentioning his five years of marriage, they didn't overlook
the fact that he had divorced an earlier wife who had run off with
another man. It wasn't the sort of material that helped the head of a
hospital and one of the top heart surgeons in the east.
   Wednesday morning's papers took a slightly different approach.
With few developments in the investigation, they turned to interviews
and speculation and the picture they ran was of Ralph, not Phyllis.
It showed him, head lowered, coming out of the Griswold Funeral
Parlour with Harry and May Wilson, and Phyllis' father and mother. He
was wearing a black suit and a black hat and dark glasses and he
didn't look happy. The questions that the articles raised were: Why
was Phyllis Slayton dressed as she was (overlooking the perfectly
plausible possibility that she was getting ready for bed), Why was
nobody at home that particular night, and Who had parked a big car
behind the bushes and gone to see her? The amateur detectives of the
press dismissed the hidden tea service as merely a plant, an attempt
to disguise the real motive for the murder.
   Wednesday was the day of the inquest and the crowds came early.
There were fifty people on the town hall steps at seven-thirty in the
morning and when the auditorium doors were opened at nine, a double
line of people extended across the street and all around the green in
front. The auditorium had eight hundred seats but more than twice
that number were waiting outside and fifteen minutes after the line
started moving, there wasn't a seat to be had outside of the section
reserved for principals and officials. Phyllis Slayton was packing
them in as she never had on Broadway and hundreds had turned out the
night before to file by her bier in the funeral parlour even though
the lid was closed.
   Judge Mansfield, with a flair for the dramatic, strode on to the
platform in a swirl of robes at precisely ten o'clock and the buzz of
the crowd turned into dead silence. He sat behind a table near the
front of the stage beside which an empty chair for witnesses faced the
audience. The inquest was conducted by Town Prosecutor Robert Herring
and Dr. Allen was the first man called.
   Herring spent twenty minutes questioning him with Dr. Allen
answering in a soft voice that people strained to hear. He described
the position and condition of the body and the means by which he
determined the time of death. Then Herring asked him pointedly about
the matter of sexual attack and it was obvious from Herring's manner
that he strongly doubted the claim that there had been none. It
seemed to Herring and all the other people in the hall that no woman,
clad only in a filmy ne?2glige?2e, could possibly be strangled
without being attacked, but Allen knew what he knew and he wouldn't be
swayed. There had been no attack.
   After Dr. Allen stepped down, Dr. Slayton took the stand and
the questioning was brief. He told how he had gone to the board
meeting, stopped for a couple of drinks at Phaedo's and come home to
find his wife had been killed. Slayton was obviously suffering on the
stand and Herring was gentle with him.
   Lt. Willis was next and he explained what had been done. The
victim's robe, dust from the scene, and fingerprints from all over the
house had been sent to the laboratory in Hartford. No clues had been
found in the robe or the dust and the fingerprints were still being
sorted. Further than that, extensive interviews had been conducted
and over seventy-five people had been questioned, not only those
acquainted or related to the deceased but all known criminals,
perverts, and sex-offenders in the area, everyone who had ever been
called to the attention of the police. Nothing conclusive had been
uncovered.
   Star Slayton was at the inquest with her father, as was everyone
else on Terrace Lane, but she wasn't called upon for testimony about
the grey-haired man who looked like Joe Morgan and no mention was made
of a chauffeur named Gary James, nor of his pink smudged handkerchief.
Herring conducted the whole affair in as general a way as possible so
that the only statements definitely made revolved around the time,
place, cause, and victim of death. Anything to do with the
perpetration was left wide open so that Judge Mansfield could
pronounce the broadest decision of the court, to wit: "The court
finds that Phyllis Slayton, ne?2e Wilson, was strangled to death by
hands and by sash in the living-room of her home on Terrace Lane
between the hours of nine and ten-thirty on the evening of August
third, nineteen hundred and fifty-nine, such death being at the hand
of person or persons unknown." Then he adjourned the inquest and
went into his chambers to pose for pictures with Herring.
   As the crowd filed out of the torrid and stuffy auditorium, Camp
and Willis went back to the basement headquarters. The chief was
perspiring freely and he was grumbling, as he always grumbled, at such
red-tape phases of law-and-order as inquests.
   A supernumerary was holding down the desk because all regular
patrolmen had been ordered to attend the inquest. He held up an
envelope and said, "This came while you were upstairs."
   It was a special delivery letter, made of an ordinary three-cent
stamped envelope with the fourth cent for first class mail and the
price of a special delivery made up by additional three cent stamps
with extra for good measure. It bore a Marshton postmark with the
time 9 a.m., and was addressed to: Chief of Police, Police
Headquarters, Marshton, Conn.
   The address and the words "special delivery" had been typed on
the envelope by a battered old machine that had a piece missing from
the "L" and a badly worn and unaligned "E".
   Camp looked the envelope over briefly, then ripped it open and
pulled out the sheet inside. He unfolded it carefully, as though by
instinct not touching it with more than his fingertips.
   Inside was a four-word sentence which read: "Ralph Slayton
killed Phyllis."
CHAPTER TEN
   CAMP read the note and frowned. Then, holding it by the
corners, he showed it to Willis and Shevlin. The lieutenant whistled
but Shevlin shook his head. "There's one in every crowd," he said.
   "One what?"
   "It sounds like a crank note."
   Camp grinned. "Kind of a funny note for a crank. Notice it
doesn't suggest Ralph might have killed his wife as a poison pen
writer usually does. This says he did kill his wife. The writer
talks as if he knew something we don't. He talks as if he'd seen it
happen."
   "And," Willis agreed, "as if he was afraid we were going to
send James up for it."
   Shevlin stood alone. He said, "I don't think Slayton did
it."
   "Give me a reason," said Camp.
   "He's alibied."
   "It's an alibi we haven't checked yet. The writer of this note
might have been afraid we wouldn't check it."
   Willis said, "He doesn't know the State Police."
   "Hell," said Camp. "He doesn't even know the local force.
Here," he told the supernumerary. "Go find a board and some
thumbtacks. I want Lieutenant Willis to take this to the lab."
   The officer went out in search of the materials and Shevlin said,
"Ralph went to a board meeting and stopped at a bar. He didn't get
home until twenty minutes past eleven and Phyllis wasn't killed any
later than ten-thirty. How's he going to lie about a thing like
that?"
   "It's funny about that bar," Camp said musingly. He sat down
at his desk and pulled out a black and acrid cigar from his shirt
pocket. He stared at it thoughtfully. "Slayton didn't usually stop
at bars after meetings. Interesting that he happened to do so this
particular night."
   "That's easy. He'd had a fight with his wife. He didn't want
to go right home."
   "A violent fight," Willis put in. "Very violent. It might
have picked up again after he returned."
   "At eleven-twenty?" Shevlin retorted. "An hour after she was
dead?"
   Camp lighted his cigar. "The good thing about your growing up
in this town is you have background," he said. "The bad thing is
that it makes you prejudiced. Forget the time element, Shevlin.
Forget that for a minute." He puffed on the cigar in enjoyment.
"A fight with Ralph could explain what she was doing in the
living-room."
   Shevlin shook his head. "Not from the way she was killed."
   "Are you going to try to tell me that because Ralph Slayton
operates on hearts he couldn't strangle anybody?"
   "Not that way. Not from the arguments you give. Ralph might
strike Phyllis in a rage, or throttle her, or even kill her. But to
half throttle her and then knot a sash around her neck to finish the
job, that's not just rage."
   Camp paused with his cigar in mid-air. He looked steadfastly at
Shevlin for a long moment. Finally he said to Willis, "You know? I
thought the men I had to make into cops in this place were pretty
hopeless, but I take it back. I think the boy has a spark. I think
in time we might make him into a real detective."
   It was about the first compliment Shevlin had got from Camp and
he couldn't help feeling flattered. "Don't tell me I win a point?"
   "Hell, no," Camp said, lowering the boom. "Don't go getting
a swelled head. One swallow doesn't make a drink. You come up with
one vague intangible in Slayton's favour and you think it eliminates
him as a suspect."
   "He wasn't even a suspect until you got that note."
   "Wasn't he?" Camp grinned at Willis. "We can spot
intangibles too, Shevlin. Don't you think the fact he and his wife
had a fight makes us perk up our ears? Don't you think we pay
attention when it's stated they fought all the time? Don't you think
we notice he never thinks his daughter might have been killed too?
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 2
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   "You went down to the theatre to meet Ellam, and that puts you
right there, on the scene of the crime."
   He smiled at her, and she saw his smile, and her eyes filled with
horror.
   "No! It wasn't like that. I didn't go to the theatre- I can
prove it."
   She was really frightened now, as she hadn't been before.
   "I knew Roger was going to meet Susan, because I'd met her
myself that same morning, and she told me all about it."
   "Didn't that make you wild?"
   "No, because Roger had often spoken to me about marrying her."
   "For her money?"
   She drooped her head and looked at the wine glass, turning it
round in her fingers and letting it reflect the light. She said: "I
wasn't wild, just miserable. I felt sort of helpless and perhaps a
little jealous. I decided to go for a walk to shake the feeling off.
I passed the end of the theatre drive, but I swear I didn't go in.
Roger was waiting there. He told me about his date with Susan, that
everything depended on it, and told me to keep away from the
theatre."
   "He didn't say why?"
   "He just said it was dangerous, and might ruin everything."
   She broke suddenly, and kept repeating that she didn't go inside
the theatre, in a sort of moaning voice.
   We left without another word. At the door I looked back. She
was still playing with the wine glass and staring at the hearth.
Somebody should have painted her, just like that.
Chapter Twenty-Six
   THE THEATRE building looked just as square and just as
plain as the first time, and the same shadows from trees swayed over
the brickwork like curious fingers. There was the same spring scent
of earth and woods, and the same feeling of remoteness, though one or
two people were about. A few boys drifted up the drive, the little
ones frisky and excited, the big ones with a certain condescending
tolerance. And the sight of them had the same effect on Shale it
always had- a kind of cynical contempt for the system that moulded
them.
   Lights were on inside the theatre, and the windows curtained, but
after the warm evening, it was like going into a colder place. The
hall was about two-thirds full of boys. They kept bobbing up in their
seats, chewing. There was a happy anticipatory drone.
   A prefect ushered us to our seats in the second row, and the
school orchestra in front began teetering nervously on their violins.
An amateurish air hung over the place like a pleasant infection.
   From the cover of my programme, I saw we were in for what is
affectionately known as English middle-class comedy. I sat down and
studied the people in the front row.
   Wylie's head was just to my right, and at close quarters, his
little grey waves looked thinner, like flimsy sponges on a pink sea
bed. His wife was wearing a hat I was glad I wasn't sitting behind.
She had played a gleam of triumph steadily on Shale as we came up the
row to our seats. When we sat down, her head snapped round to the
front. Wylie acknowledged us with a curt nod and a faint drawing in
of the eyebrows. He was rather subdued. It made him more human.
   Miss Teale looked almost soft and yielding, not so prim. She had
a new defiance, and her eyes wandered round the hall confidently. She
was wearing her hair long, and it made her look younger. Her gaze
rested often on Carter, who was sitting with a bright smile next to my
uncle. He leaned across affably and said in a whisper, "I say,
they've been looking for Ellam all evening. Apparently he's nowhere
to be found. Looks pretty mysterious don't you think?"
   I passed it on to Shale. He was reading his programme, and I
suddenly felt him nudge me. He was pointing out the names of the cast
and his finger was half way down the page. I read:
   "Laura Thistledown, the manager's secretary... played by William
Barlow, =6 A."
   He kept his finger there for my benefit and I saw what he meant.
The Christian name- "Laura". It should have signified something
but my mind wouldn't grasp it. I gave him a puzzled glance, but he
was settled back in his seat, staring at the top of the stage. He was
sitting like that when the prefect shuffled up the row and whispered
in his ear. "Willant wants a word with me," Shale said, and we all
went out. Heads turned, and there was a polite air of interest in the
front row.
   Willant was in the entrance, a study of indecision.
   "Ellam's nowhere to be found," he said. "Nowhere in the
school."
   His fingers strayed to his waistcoat, and he tugged nervously
like a man with a tricky point to make that was embarrassing him.
   He said: "In view of his behaviour this afternoon, I'm not
quite sure what I ought to do."
   Shale said: "You could tell the police."
   "But as it's only two hours ago since he was here, it might look
premature to say he's disappeared. He might return. After all, he
was suffering from- perhaps a nervous breakdown- it might be unwise
to draw attention to it-" He stopped, at a loss.
   "It might be better to wait." Ambrose said, with the air of a
tactician who'd weighed everything up.
   "You were pretty worried about him a while back, doctor,"
Shale said. "'Desperate' I think was the word you used. You
should tell the police."
   "No doubt you're right," Willant said weakly. "But first I
must start the play, we're late as it is- so many things to think
of-"
   He made for the door in the hall, and stepped back as Forster
came the other way. Forster was wearing a stage-hand's smock. His
face was shining, and happier than I'd ever seen it. He looked
harassed when he saw us, but recovered, and said to Willant: "No
sign of Mr. Ellam yet, headmaster. I really think we ought to
start."
   Willant took off his glasses and rubbed them. He gave a sigh.
"Very well, Mr. Forster. I'll just say a few words first." He
went in impulsively, glad to get away. Forster turned to follow him,
but Shale said, "One thing before you go, Mr. Forster. The
character Laura Thistledown. Who was to play her the last time-
young Burnage?"
   Forster nodded, and began to look worried. "That was all,"
Shale said gently. "You can start the revels now."
   We went back to our seats, and Willant, who'd been talking to
Wylie moved to the front of the stage and held up his hands for
silence. The shuffling died away and he spoke his piece without any
trouble. He managed to sound informal and light-hearted, like a vicar
at a whist drive. When he'd finished, he walked down the hall and I
saw him go through the door at the back. I felt a certain admiration
for the way he was keeping going.
   There was some polite applause, then the lights went out except
for a glow beneath the curtain, and blobs of light on the orchestra's
music stands. The overture was brief and chronic. Shale lit a
cigarette and relaxed, staring at the roof. The curtain opened on an
amateurish set with a french window looking out on to a cardboard
garden.
   It was slow getting underway, and the actors were elocution
conscious, but it went down well with the audience. There was a lot
of laughter, most of it at the expense of the actors, especially
Currie playing a middle-aged matron with a large lop-sided bosom.
   The first act lasted some twenty minutes, and in the interval I
watched the reactions of the staff. Miss Teale's eyes were shining
happily. Once she flashed me a smile- quite a becoming smile. Wylie
had unbent a little, and was trying to give the impression of a stern
man reflecting that a little nonsense was all right once in a while
for boys. His wife was telling someone in a loud voice that so-and-so
was good, and so-and-so wasn't quite so good. Her standards were
absolute. Carter was frankly in tucks about the whole thing.
   Shale seemed half asleep. Once, during the scene, he had watched
Miss Teale for a long time, but his eyes had mostly been examining the
top of the curtain, as if he were looking beyond, and trying to
picture the dust and the gallery and the wooden platform.
   The lights went down again, and I saw Willant come back. I
wondered if he had informed the police.
   A sudden gasp of hilarious delight made me look at the stage.
The character Laura Thistledown had made her first entrance. She was
meant to be pert and pretty, and something of a charmer. The boy
playing the part wore a slim black costume, a dinky hat, and wobbled
slightly on four-inch heels. He had a wig of blonde curls, and that
made me think of the wig that was still missing, and that made me
think of the green costume that was also missing, and I looked at
Shale. He was sitting forward, watching the play intently. I felt a
rise of excitement.
   There was some by-play going on on the stage. The idea seemed to
be that "Laura Thistledown" was vamping the goofy nephew of the
local aristocracy- a part played with gusto by a boy having trouble
with a pencil-line moustache. Suddenly this young blood took the
secretary in his arms, and said in an anguish of embarrassment: "Oh,
Laura! You're exactly like the other girl."
   The audience twittered with delight. I felt Shale stiffen and
then relax, very slowly. He gripped my arm, and began to write
something on the back of his programme. It couldn't have been easy in
the dark, but he wrote quickly. On the stage they were still fooling
about, and the audience was making happy noises, but I wasn't with
them any more.
   Shale spoke in a low voice. "Read it outside- three important
questions there. Go right away in the car, and put them to the
servant, Mrs. Olroyd. Got it?"
   I went as quietly as I could, but it seemed to me I made a lot of
noise. Ambrose looked annoyed as I squeezed past him, but I didn't
stop to explain.
   Outside I sat in the car, put a cigarette in my mouth, and read
the programme in the falling light.
   It wasn't easy to make out, some of Shale's writing had run
across the print, but I finally got it. Three questions, that was
all. Just three questions. Put them to a nice old servant who had
done her job well until one day she'd been sacked, and you would get
three answers. You had to get three answers because there could only
be three answers and they would make sense of everything.
   I lit the cigarette, and sat there and smelt the scents from the
wood, and watched the branches sway in the breeze, and listened to the
evening song of a solitary bird, and everything was suddenly clear.
The green costume and everything.
   I reached for the starter and checked my hand. Someone had just
come from the theatre. I heard steps hurrying down the drive. I
listened until they crunched away into silence, then I started the
car. I thought I'd see who it was as I passed, but there was nobody
on the drive. Whoever it was must have taken to the woods.
   It took me half an hour or so to get there, and she was in with
the old lady. I put the questions, and she answered them placidly.
It didn't mean much to her, and I was neither relieved nor excited-
I just knew what she would say.
   It was nearly dark when I got back to the Curlew.
# 28
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1
FOLLOW THE TOFF
   IT was not the first time that the Honourable Richard
Rollison had been followed. It would not be the last. It had
happened in many cities, and more than once before in this fair city
of Paris in the Spring. It had happened by day and by night, on land,
on sea and in the air. Rollison himself, if challenged, would have
said that he believed that every possible variation of the theme had
been developed, yet on this day in May he knew that he had been wrong.
   It was the first time that such beauty had followed him.
   The beauty was undoubtedly English, although he had not yet heard
her speak. She had that curiously indefinable quality, perhaps more
rightly air, about her. It was not only the supreme simplicity of her
black and white check suit, the coat short-waisted, the skirt just
long enough to be in fashion, and to show most of the shapeliness of
her legs. Nor was it those long, slim legs, or her height- five feet
eight or nine he judged- or her complexion, although undoubtedly her
complexion had something to do with it.
   It was a little bit of everything.
   She had followed him from the Cafe?2 de Paris, of which it
was said that if one sat long enough one would meet all the rest of
the world; in fact at the Cafe?2 de Paris he had first realised
that she had been interested in him. She had walked past the long
lines of wicker tables and chairs, most of them empty. The glass
screens of winter had been whisked away and the spring sunshine not
only made life serene but almost made it possible to forget the
surging traffic, the growl and snarl of engines, the bark and clatter
of taxis, the all-pervading stench of petrol fumes mingling with even
worse from diesel oil. As Rollison had sat over late petit
de?2jeuner, wondering why the French who made the world's worst
coffee had a reputation for making it so well, and why the English,
who made the world's best, were supposed to make the worst, the woman
had walked past. She had looked at him and then walked quickly away.
He had not been in a hurry, however; such grace and slenderness and
beauty were all too rare. He watched her go, a little pensive because
he doubted whether he would ever have an excuse to meet her, perhaps
not even to see her again. But soon she had turned back from the
corner by the Place de l'Ope?2ra. That in itself had not been
unusual; people often walked as far as that, and then turned back.
This time Rollison pretended to take no notice of her, but observed
that she stared intently at him, and looked back at him several times.
   By then, Rollison's interest had become much stronger. For one
thing, he realised just how remarkable the woman was to look at, and
remarkable women could usually make his heart beat a little faster.
For another thing, he was beginning to feel sure that she had
recognised him and wanted to talk but could not summon up the
courage- if courage was the word.
   He could make it easy for her, or make it comparatively hard. He
would have made it easy but for the little man.
   This little man was almost certainly the man who had swindled
Alice Day, who was now on her way to Australia. He fitted Mike's
description to a T, and he spent some time at stations, outside
night-clubs and other tourist haunts, offering money at a good rate of
exchange. Only a few people seemed to deal with him, and Rollison
planned to catch him red-handed with forged notes. Now this same man
was following the Englishwoman, and Rollison did not try to guess
whether she knew it or not. If she knew, she was taking no notice-
unless, of course, awareness of the surveillance of the little man
kept her from approaching Rollison boldly.
   It was a mildly intriguing situation, and quite entertaining; it
would have been amusing but for the woman's obvious anxiety. Beauty
in distress was never even remotely comic. An ordinary man, assessing
the situation as Rollison assessed it, would almost certainly have
found an excuse to talk to the woman, and might possibly have tried to
shoo the little man off. There were times when Rollison- known as
the Toff to the police of seven continents and to the criminals of
six, would have taken such direct action, but this was not one of
them. He had two reasons for being intrigued: his Aunt Gloria's two
hundred pounds, and this beauty.
   At ten minutes to eleven the woman was some way along the
Boulevard des Capucines in the direction of the Madeleine, and the
little man was fifty yards behind her. Every motor car in Paris
seemed to be crammed into the road which had seemed wide in the days
of horse carriages.
   Rollison called for his bill, paid, and allowed himself to be
swept across the road with a surge of human beings all racing to make
sure that they reached the opposite pavement before the roaring
monsters of iron and steel were unleashed at the whirl of a gendarme's
white baton or a trill on his hidden whistle. Once on the far side,
Rollison watched the woman, and he was tall enough to see and be seen
without difficulty. When he was sure that she had spotted him, he
discontinued a tentative interest in a window which exhibited every
refinement of feminine foundation in black, pink, and pale mauve silk,
and strolled towards the Madeleine. The woman walked in the same
direction on the other side of the road. She followed him along the
street opposite the church of the mammoth pillars towards the arid
wastes of the Place de la Concorde, and then by devious dangerous
routes towards the Seine. Now and again Rollison made sure that not
only the woman but the little man was behind him. Then, as if at a
loose end, he crossed to the Rue de Rivoli and became one of the
thousands of tourists promenading beneath the arches and seduced by a
million model Eiffel Towers and a thousand Joan of Arcs. The woman
drew closer. Rollison dawdled. He thought that this time she would
speak, for she actually passed within a yard of him. He imagined that
he could hear her breathing agitatedly- but she passed without
stopping.
   Rollison continued to study a window resplendent in Arab
leatherwork and Moroccan silver, as the little man drew nearer.
   This little man was quite remarkable too. The task of following
an individual through a city the size of Paris is not easy even for
those people physically adapted to it, but he was only about five feet
two inches high. Heads and shoulders of all sizes, chests and bosoms
of all shapes, arms and even hands got in his way, but doggedly he
kept on the trail. He wasn't remarkable in any other way; in fact he
was the type who could easily get lost in a crowd. Rollison judged
him to be French, not only because he was blue-jowled and wore a
slightly faded beret, but because he chain-smoked Skol cigarettes;
only a Frenchman could have such hardihood and courage. He had a
pinched nose which looked as if it had been pushed to one side, and a
little bloodless mouth, a surprisingly square and thrusting chin, and
a well cut brown suit; the beret did not quite match up to this. He
wore suede shoes too of dark brown, a shade darker than the brown of
his suit. All of this Mike had described very well.
   The woman had gone by. The little Frenchman was following.
Rollison judged his moment, and stepped into the little man's path.
There was a ridiculous contretemps of dither and dart, as if each man
was trying to give way to the other, but in fact Rollison did not mean
to give way until the moment was right. So they collided. A woman
gasped: ~"Oo!" as only someone born in Blackpool could. The little
man reeled back, as if dazed. Rollison gave a dazzling smile and
apologised, and allowed the man to pass. Then, watched by at least a
dozen people, he darted his left hand towards the inside of his coat
pocket. Every Method school of acting would have approved his
performance. He looked startled, aghast, appalled, angry, and finally
vengeful. Then in the clearest and loudest of English he called:
   "Stop thief!"
   Fifty people looked round, mostly English and American all
open-mouthed, some ready to fling themselves forward with great
courage, most trying to make sure that they could get out of the way.
"Stop thief!" cried Rollison again, and moved with astonishing
rapidity through the crowd towards the little Frenchman, who had not
hurried and had not looked round. The Englishwoman was now staring at
those massed gilt models of the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame, and Joan
of Arc on a gilded statue, the original of which was only a hundred
yards away.
   Rollison pounced on him, gripped his shoulder, and spun him
round. The man gaped. A gendarme standing in the roadway trilled on
his whistle, swung his baton and charged forward. A crowd collected,
most of them people at a safe distance, but one sturdy Yorkshireman
and his wife came to Rollison's support.
   "Is that 2reet?" the Yorkshireman demanded. "Did he take
2summat out of 2thy pocket?"
   "The scoundrel stole my wallet," asserted Rollison, and as he
spoke the gendarme came up and rested a hand on the butt of his
revolver, warningly, and machine-gunned a dozen questions.
   "I don't understand a word you're saying," lied Rollison
hotly. "This man pretended to collide with me just now, and stole my
wallet."
   "That is not so," declared the little man, in highly accented
English. 3"Eet is the big lie."
   The gendarme demanded, in French, to know what exactly had
happened. Rollison tapped his pocket, thrust his hand inside, drew it
out empty, and declared:
   "He- stole- my- wallet."
   3That- ees- the- lie."
   "M'sieu, je demande que vous parlez Francais."
   "He stole- "
   The little man turned to the gendarme and poured out an earnest,
even an impassioned denial- he had not touched Rollison's wallet, he
had not touched Rollison. He was a law-abiding citizen, he was not to
be insulted, he-
   "He stole my wallet!" roared Rollison.
   "Eeeh, lad, better leave it to me," said the Yorkshireman and
began to talk in surprisingly colloquial French in spite of an
unbelievable admixture of Yorkshire accent. Even the little man was
silenced, and the gendarme appeared to begin to understand. As the
Yorkshireman finished, the gendarme held his baton at the ready and
spoke with the air of a Solomon:
   "If this man stole your wallet, he will have it with him now."
   Rollison just saved himself from agreeing in French and asked the
Yorkshireman:
   "What's all the blathering about?"
   "He says that if this man stole 2tha wallet he'd still have it
on him."
   "Fair enough," agreed Rollison. "So why not search him?"
   3"You look, you see- nothing," declared the little
Frenchman. He gripped the edges of his coat, and flung it open at
arms' length, as if he hoped to be able to take off and fly with these
homemade wings. He was undoubtedly convinced that the wallet was not
there, perhaps because he had never met Rollison before. The gendarme
stared, the Yorkshireman gaped and glanced with earthy satisfaction at
Rollison. A dozen other people craned forward to see Rollison's
crocodile leather wallet showing fully an inch above the Frenchman's
pocket.
   "Eeeh, lad," said the Yorkshireman, "2tha'd best leave
talking to me. Just tell me where 2thou 2'rt staying and I'll talk
to copper for 2thee."
   "I don't know what I would have done without you," said
Rollison warmly.
# 26
<424 TEXT L21>
Concluding chapters of a great mystery novel
That long wet summer
by JOAN AIKEN
   They told her their insane plan- gloating and triumphant-
trying to force her hand...
The story so far:
   JANE DRUMMOND was trying to keep her marriage together- for
the sake of her children, CAROLINE and DONALD. Her architect
husband, GRAHAM, was selfish and self-centred, living above his
income to "keep up appearances." He encouraged her to return to
work while MYFANWY MACGREGOR was engaged to look after the
children. Myfanwy and her husband TIM, seemed to have some hold
over Graham.
   Living near the Drummonds was TOM ROLAND, a TV celebrity
Jane once met at a party, whom Graham tried to cultivate because Tom
was famous. Jane was driven home from the station each night by Tom
and their friendship grew. She suspected that Mrs. MacGregor- whom
she was beginning to detest- could not read or write and was
horrified when she found an anonymous letter in Caroline's
handwriting. The note was for Graham and read: YOUR WIFE IS
CARRYING ON WITH MR. ROLAND.
   Between the MacGregors and her strained relationship with
Graham, Jane's life became unbearable. She was pleased when her old
friend, ELLIE came to stay- but surprised to see that Ellie and
Tom obviously knew each other, though neither admitted this.
   Then Ellie- a scatter-brained blonde- told Jane she was
pregnant. Jane promised to help all she could- and to adopt the
child. Tim MacGregor tried to kiss Jane- and for a second she
mistook him for Graham.
   Later, in their bedroom, she told Graham the MacGregors must go.
"I'm terrified of them," she said. "You're terrified?"
Graham answered. "What do you think I am? Jane, do you know who
that man is?"
   Now read on:
   
   "NO, of course I don't know who MacGregor is," Jane
said, trembling. "How could I? Who is he?"
   "He's my cousin," Graham said.
   "Your cousin? Then that's why-"
   "He used to live in Tangier," Graham went on, ignoring her.
"It was he who suggested I should go out there. He had a factory-
a makeshift hole, in a tin shed, making plastic doorknobs," he added
with a sour smile, seeing Jane's look of incredulity. "But for all
that, Tim's a clever chap. Doorknobs weren't his main line. He had
quite a nice sideline in penicillin and black market machine oil."
   Things began to fall into place in Jane's mind.
   "And you helped him?"
   "Only occasionally." Graham's voice was angry, defensive.
"Only when clients weren't biting. At first it was all okay. Then
there was a bit of trouble."
   The curtain blew in above Jane's head and she heard a volley of
rain spatter on the window-sill. I ought to get up and shut the
window, she thought, and lay still, thinking of how she had first met
Graham in Tangier- the hot sun, the white roofs, the charming things
he had said. Now it seemed like some twopence-coloured fairy-tale.
   "I was helping him at that time," Graham said. "The profits
were going to be rather good. But someone had used a batch of Tim's
oil for making salad cream or something, and a lot of people had died.
Things had been tightened up and they were on the lookout. We were
followed into Spanish Morocco and we had to get away fast from the
rendezvous. There was a bit of shooting and Tim got hit. We- I
thought he was killed. There wasn't time to make sure."
   "What happened to him?"
   "We had to leave him behind and he was picked up. He was sent
to jail for three years. Quite a short sentence really. So I decided
the game wasn't worth the risk. It was rather a murky business,"
Graham said with a flicker of his normal self-righteousness. "And it
was just after that I met you, so I opted out and decided to come home
and set up as a law-abiding citizen."
   "I see." Jane turned away from him, willing herself to ask
the next question.
   "Graham, that legacy from your uncle in Scotland-"
   "Well?" His voice was wary.
   "Was it really the profits from that- that consignment?" His
silence said yes.
   "Why did you lie to me about it?"
   "Well, damn it, I hardly knew you. I couldn't very well have
told you a thing like that then." He was injured. "You
thought the world of me."
   And so you did of me, Jane thought, with a sudden,
uncharacteristically hard perception. I was broke and in a dreary
job; just the same, Daddy and I had something you hadn't got that you
needed on your climb up the ladder. Needed as much as a new house, or
a gardener, or Tom Roland's mower.
   "And MacGregor- what happened to his share of the profit?"
Jane asked.
   "For the Lord's sake, Jane, must we go over all this? It's
ancient history now and I'm tired, I want to go to sleep. I've got
enough to worry about; all I ask is that you don't antagonize Tim and
his wife."
   "You took his share, is that it?"
   "Well, what else could I do?" said Graham sulkily. "It
didn't amount to much, anyway, and there was no one to leave it with.
Naturally, I thought when he came out I'd have done well enough to
pay him back. It was just bad luck I couldn't."
   "Where was his wife while he was in prison?"
   "In Wales with her family."
   Jane knew that she ought to feel pity for the MacGregors, but she
thought of Tim's cunning sidelong look, his wife's hostile air of
concealed knowledge, and could find nothing but loathing.
   "We'll have to sell the house," she said. "Sell it and pay
him what he thinks you owe him and move away from here."
   "Are you mad?" Graham said with violence. "Sell this place?
Just when I've got it finished? Just when we're making some useful
friends? I'll pay Tim off somehow; it's just a matter of time. All
we have to do is keep him quiet for a bit. He can't really do
anything."
   He spoke with the old confidence that had once sounded so
reassuring to Jane. Now she knew how much it was worth.
   "But Graham-"
   "Stop nagging, stop nagging," he said with passionate
irritation, and turned towards her, holding her in a tense, nervous
grip. His voice changed. "Just let's forget about it all, shall
we?" Jane was used to these sudden exigencies of Graham's desire
when the world had gone against him. Long after he was sleeping, one
arm flung possessively across her, she lay awake, staring at the
greying sky, while slow, cold tears trickled backwards into the roots
of her hair.
   
   JANE made Ellie stay in bed until after lunch next day,
hoping an affectionate smile and the Sunday papers would serve as
sufficient evidence of sympathy until she had gathered herself
together. To listen with constructive attention to Ellie's problem
was more than she could manage just yet.
   Graham went out immediately after breakfast and was absent all
morning. When Jane collected Ellie's tray after lunch, Caroline went
with her and stayed chatting to Ellie while she dressed. Ellie was
devoted to the children and began brushing Caroline's hair and tying
it in ribbons. Then she offered to take Caroline and Donald for a
walk.
   Jane thankfully accepted, put the baby in his pram and saw them
off. She thought she would go to church; that might clear her
thoughts and bring her to a decision.
   Graham, who had come back just before lunch and been completely
silent through the meal, walked into their bedroom as she was putting
on a hat.
   "I want Ellie out of here by tonight," he said.
   "She's not going." Jane's tone was firm, light; she stooped
over a drawer, rummaging for gloves. Graham was obviously at a loss
before her unexpected mood. At last, angry and irresolute- "You'll
be sorry for this..." he muttered and turned on his heel. She could
hear his steps, heavy and defeated, dragging down the stairs.
   Something made her look out of the window. MacGregor had arrived
and was wheeling the mower out on to the lawn. His wife had installed
herself on a rug with Susan.
   The active force of her own hate startled Jane.
   She went into the garden. MacGregor had paused to say something
to his wife and Jane was able to address them both.
   "I understand I've been doing you an injustice," she said
coldly. "Naturally, if I'd realized that my husband owed you money
it would have been different. However, now I have found out it
makes it easier to say this. I don't want ever to see either of you
again. I shall get a full-time job and pay you back myself, if
necessary. But if you pester Graham or send any more anonymous
messages about me I shall go straight to the police.
   "I'm going to afternoon service now and when I come back I shall
expect to find that you've packed up your things and gone."
   She walked on without waiting for an answer, leaving four
malevolent eyes fixed on her back. A feeble sun was trying to shine.
Little Susan, sitting in a patch of sand on the drive, raised an
indifferent, vacant face to her, and Jane shuddered, seeing suddenly a
resemblance to Caroline. This child was her cousin!
   There were few people in the church. Jane, at first hardly able
to follow the service, presently found herself calmer.
   The office will take me on full time, she decided hopefully, and
I'm sure Ellie can be persuaded to look after the children for a bit.
If I contribute all my salary to pay the MacGregors, Graham will
surely agree.
   She ignored a small warning voice that said: Leave Graham. Take
the children and get away while you can, before you get dragged in any
deeper.
   For a brief moment she considered asking advice of the vicar, the
kind old man who had christened Donald. But the story was not hers
alone. It was Graham's, MacGregor's, even Ellie's. The MacGregors
might be a repellent pair, but they had a right to the money Graham
owed them; it was not for her to be sanctimonious about how they had
come by it. And Ellie- she had promised to help Ellie and would not
run out on her now.
   Tom, she thought. If only I could have asked Tom's advice. But
now it's too late for that.
   
   WHEN she walked home after the service, it was raining
hard. She had no coat with her, and hurried up the village street,
head bent against the cold, driving gusts.
   "Ellie!" she called, as soon as she was inside the house.
"Shut the bathroom window, will you? The rain always comes in on
that side."
   There was no answer. Were Ellie and the children not back from
their walk yet? They would be soaked.
   She went into the sitting-room- and stopped short. The
MacGregors were there, Tim lounging on the piano stool, Susan on the
floor, Mrs. MacGregor upright and expressionless on the sofa.
   "I told you to leave this house," Jane said.
   "Oh, madam," Tim said softly, "you wouldn't expect us to
leave in this rain, would you?" His narrow black eyes slid past
her, rested on his wife, came back to Jane again.
   "Graham!" Jane called. There was no reply. Apart from
herself and the MacGregors, the house appeared to be empty. A fear
began to take hold of Jane. "Graham!" she called again.
   "He was out sunbathing," MacGregor said, smiling. "Very keen
he is on getting brown. He went out to get a good tan. I shouldn't
wonder but what he's still there. Asleep maybe."
   He nodded down the garden, and Jane's disbelieving eyes saw
something on the sloping lawn- a round blob- Graham's head? Was he
lying on the grass in the pelting rain? She flung open the french
windows and ran over the sodden grass, calling frantically, "Graham!
Graham!"
# 21
<425 TEXT L22>
WHISPERING TONGUES BLAMED HER
   WHEN BOB ARCHER'S wife ANNE, disappears, the police
believe it is because she is guilty of poisoning Bob's mother.
Actually, however, she is being held prisoner by VERA CORBETT,
Mrs ARCHER'S ex-maid. It was Vera who killed Bob's mother and
she knows Anne can give her away. ARTHUR HEDLEY, Vera's
boy-friend, also knows of her guilt, but he is too deeply involved to
back out.
   It is a shock to Vera when she discovers that the old house where
she is keeping Anne is not uninhabited, as she believed, but is
occupied by an old man and his housekeeper. And the grounds are
guarded by a pair of fierce dogs, so there is no escape. Luckily,
however, the old man seldom comes near the wing where Vera is hiding
Anne and has no idea they are there.
   One day when he does come he leaves behind a local paper.
Studying it casually Vera sees she has been left +2 in Mrs
Archer's will.
   "Two thousand pounds!" she gasps turning to look down at Anne.
"It's a fortune! I'm getting out of here, no matter what happens to
you!"
   Now Read On.
   
   VERA stared at the paper, her brain reeling. Two thousand
pounds!
   Already her mind was racing. When you came to think of it, what
was there to stop her turning up to claim the money? The police had
nothing on her, especially now Anne was out of the way.
   There were all sorts of difficulties to overcome, of course.
First, there was the problem of getting out of the house. Second,
the question of what she could do with Anne. Finally, how was she
going to explain to the police why she had disappeared?
   The second and third snags she pushed aside for the moment. She
would find some way round them when the time came. She'd come back
for Anne and hide her somewhere else. She'd think of some story to
tell the police.
   But getting out of the house unseen- that baffled her. Those
two bull terriers were never out of the garden and it was easy to see
how savage they were. Why, whenever a tradesman called at the door,
look how they raced round, snarling and barking until he went away
again.
   Then suddenly Vera caught her breath. That was her answer!
   Next time a tradesman came!
   Sometimes he would be there for three or four minutes. If she
was quick, if she opened a downstairs window the moment the dogs
rushed round to snarl at the tradesman, if she ran as fast as she
could to the railway embankment, she might do it!
   With sudden decision she began to bind and gag Anne.
   "I'll be back for you- later." She gave a mirthless laugh.
"You won't be very comfortable, but you'll be safe enough for
twenty-four hours."
   In her dull, dazed way, Anne didn't even try to struggle.
   Without a backward glance, Vera tiptoed downstairs to wait. When
it came to the bit, every second would count.
   She slipped the catch off one window and stood waiting
impatiently.
   It seemed hours before her chance came. The dogs began to bark
furiously, but the sound died away as they raced round to the other
side of the house. Vera threw up the window and scrambled out, racing
blindly towards the fence at the foot of the garden.
   Seconds later, panting, her coat torn and her hands bleeding, she
tumbled to safety on the other side.
   She lay for a full minute, getting her breath back. But there
was triumph in her heart. She'd made it!
   She straightened presently and dusted herself down. Then she
stumbled along the embankment till she reached a point right beside
the main Mardsley road. There she caught a bus that would take her
right into Mardsley.
   It was later than Vera had realised- nearly midday- but that
suited her well enough. Before she went to the police station she
wanted to have a word with Arthur Hedley. Then, if the police did
hold her for questioning, Arthur could do something about getting Anne
away from that house.
   The bus dropped her almost opposite the factory where Arthur
worked. The rest was easy, just a matter of waiting in the shadow of
a doorway until the men began to trickle out.
   Presently Arthur came out. He was alone.
   "Arthur." She spoke his name very quietly.
   He spun round. "Vera!" His eyes darted uneasily up and down
the street. "Cross over, quick!" he muttered.
   
   It must come now- the showdown between Anne Vardon and her
greatest enemy.
   
   "We'll go to Church Walk- there won't be anyone about."
   They walked quickly, not speaking until they got to the deserted
lane. Then Arthur wheeled on her sharply.
   "Why have you come here? How did-?"
   "Take it easy. I had to come back when I discovered about the
money."
   "You know that?" he gasped. "But how?"
   "Never mind that just now. Just listen carefully. I told you
where Anne and I were hiding. Well, I got out, but I had to leave her
behind. But we've got to get her away to some other place as soon as
we can."
   "But what about the dogs? You said-"
   "We can throw them some poisoned meat. But there's just one
thing. You'll have to go alone if the police hold me for
questioning."
   "The police!"
   "Don't be a fool, Arthur!" she said sharply. "I can't claim
the money without seeing the police. I'm on my way there now."
   He stared at her. "You'll never get away with it!"
   "Why not?" she asked coolly. "The police haven't anything on
me. The only danger is if you lose your head and do anything silly.
Now off you go. If the police don't keep me I'll be waiting for you
when you finish tonight."
   
   VERA CORBETT knew now just what she was going to tell the
police. It was gloriously simple with Anne out of the way and unable
to contradict her.
   All the same, her heart was beating a little faster with
nervousness as she walked up the steps of the police station.
   As it happened, Detective-Sergeant Willis was with the desk
sergeant when she went in. He glanced idly round and stiffened
sharply.
   "You!" he gasped. Then he recovered himself a little.
"Would you mind stepping into my room?"
   Apparently completely at ease, she watched him close the door
carefully behind them.
   "Now then." He turned to face her. "Where have you been?
Why did you go away?"
   "I've been in London." She gave him the address where she
really had stayed. "But if you want to know why I went there, you'll
have to ask Anne Archer. It was her idea."
   The detective frowned. "Her idea? What are you driving at?"
   "She paid me to go and live there under another name. Don't ask
me why. She was paying good money, so I didn't ask too many
questions. Besides, there was no reason why I shouldn't go. I'd
quarrelled with my boy friend, and I wasn't happy at home. So I just
went like she asked me to, and told nobody."
   He was staggered. "But- good heavens, you must have some idea
why she asked you to do a thing like that!"
   She shook her head. "I tell you I didn't ask many questions."
   It was such an incredible story that it rang completely true-
because Willis thought he knew the answer to his own question. All
the same...
   "I suppose it never occurred to you that you were reported
missing?" he said sharply. "Didn't you read the papers?"
   She shrugged. "I've never been one for reading newspapers. I
mean, the London ones. It's different with local ones."
   He swore softly under his breath. "What brought you back,
then?"
   "Anne Archer stopped sending me money, so I decided to come and
see her."
   "Anne Archer stopped sending you money? That's why you came
back? When did she stop?" He shot the questions at her.
   "About a week ago."
   He nodded slowly. It all fitted. "But why come to me?" he
asked sharply.
   "When I got here I bought a local paper. I read how old Mrs
Archer had died and left me some money." She smiled at him
innocently. "I couldn't believe my eyes at first. But I thought the
best thing to do was come and see you. I knew you'd tell me what to
do."
   He was silent a moment. "Did you know that Anne Archer accused
you of trying to poison her mother-in-law?"
   "Me?" Vera pretended to be completely staggered. Then anger
came into her face. "What a dreadful thing to say! How could she!
What possible reason could I have?"
   "There's the money Mrs Archer left you in her will," he
pointed out sharply.
   "Don't be silly! That will wasn't made until after I'd gone
away!"
   Willis fairly pounced on that. "How do you know?"
   "Because I witnessed all the other wills she ever made," Vera
said simply. "And I read them all." Her face darkened again.
"Just wait till I see Anne Archer! She can't get away with saying
things like that!"
   "Anne Archer has disappeared," he said quietly.
   "Disappeared!" Once again she looked staggered. "But why on
earth-" And then she broke off, catching her breath. "Don't you
see?" she breathed. "It all fits in! She sent me to London so she
could accuse me of trying to kill the old lady! Then for some reason
she got the wind up and cleared out."
   That was exactly what Willis had been thinking, too.
   "Very well." His voice was a little weary. "You can go, but
I'll want you again."
   "I can go?" Vera echoed indignantly. "What do you mean? I
came here of my own free will, and don't you forget it. I told you I
came to ask you what I should do about claiming the money."
   Briefly he explained what she must do, then saw her out.
   Vera walked down the street more confident than ever.
   
   WILLIS had said nothing to her about going to see Bob
Archer. But the first place she made for was his home. She reasoned
that it would be the natural thing for her to do if she really had
been innocent.
   Bob gasped when he saw her. "Vera! Where on earth have you
come from?"
   "I heard about your trouble, Mr Archer," she said quietly.
"I mean about your mother's death and the way your wife has
disappeared. I- I just thought I'd like to say how sorry I am."
   He looked at her sharply. "But where have you been? What made
you come back? Did you read about my mother leaving you money?"
   She shook her head. "Not till I got back to Mardsley!"
   "Then why did you come?"
   She hesitated. "I- I don't really like to tell you," she
said reluctantly. "It was easier to tell the police."
   But she did tell him all the same. Bob listened in silence, his
face strained. But when she finished his eyes were hard.
   "These are very grave accusations you're making, Vera,
especially as my wife isn't here to defend herself!"
   "I don't care!" Vera said hotly. "How dare she accuse me of
poisoning your mother?" Her voice softened. "Oh, Mr Archer, I
don't want to hurt your feelings at a time like this, but there's a
lot I could tell you." She pursed her lips. "She's a bad one.
Look at the names she called your mother- the things she even said
about you behind your back. You'd never believe-"
   "That's enough!" he cut in harshly.
   "I don't care!" Vera repeated angrily. "I know Anne Vardon
better than you do, even if she is your wife. Don't forget who
she is! Remember what her father was!"
   Bob's jaw tightened. "I think you've said quite enough," he
said harshly. "You'd better go now."
   She shrugged and turned on her heel.
# 2
<426 TEXT L23>
Short Story by HUMPHREY ap EVANS
The Assessor
   "YES," said Mr. Ridley, taking off a pair of very thick
rimless glasses and wiping them over with a monogrammed handkerchief.
"You have to be a student of human nature to be any good as an
Assessor- any good to the Company, that is," he added. "Without
appearing to be unhelpful or hard-hearted, you've just got to cut the
claims as low as you can."
   He replaced his glasses, turning them upside down and swivelling
the earpieces round.
   "Of course I've been in this a long time now," he went on,
"and although I know there's a lot of rot talked about a sixth sense
and all that, I think I have got something that helps me size a
thing up pretty well. Not every case who comes before you is trying
it on, you know, but most of them are out for what they can get. And
who wouldn't be?" he asked, turning round and looking me full in the
face, through his upside down glasses. His eyes appeared enormous
when one looked back at him, like watery amoeba in a microscope. I
began to feel a bit amoebic myself, almost as if it were I who had
been found "trying it on."
   "Yes, of course," I agreed hurriedly. "But many of your
cases must be really deserving ones, aren't they? I mean,
bread-winners disabled with mouths to feed, and all that sort of
thing?"
   "Ah, yes, there is a bit of that, of course," he said, "But
we usually have some confidential reports beforehand which give a good
idea. I'm a medical man myself though: I used to be a G.P. in
the Midlands before I went over whole time as Claims Assessor. They
don't know I'm a medico when they come up before me. I get some yarns
spun me sometimes, I can tell you."
   He chuckled moistly, clouding his reversible glasses which had to
be removed again for demisting.
   "You take this case this afternoon, that I've come up about. If
this chap's shoulder- his right shoulder, too- if it's as bad as he
says, then of course he won't be able to work at all with his right
hand or arm- perhaps never again, which is a serious thing for a
family man with seven young children.
   "I can't go making mistakes, can I? His employers have been
sued for +1,- loss of potential earnings, inconvenience,
suffering- all the usual claims trotted out.
   "It's a bit easier when you've got a chap with something you can
actually see that's wrong. It's these fellows with 'loss of
concentration' or 'intermittent headaches' or 'recurrent
depression' that are the most difficult. How can you prove 'loss
of concentration'? He doesn't have to prove he ever could
concentrate. That's one of the little problems I have to sort out.
Headaches are the same- nothing to go on or prove either way. A bad
headache's a rotten thing, of course, if you really have one."
   "What about the 'recurrent depressions'?" I said.
   "Well," he replied, "That's difficult too. It's easy to go
about with a long face saying how terrible everything is, and who's to
say he doesn't really feel perfectly all right?"
   We pondered this situation for a moment or two in silence. As a
new member of this Department of Insurance, I was being sent round by
the Company to have a first-hand look at the way the Assessor worked.
Mr. Ridley was reckoned a wizard at the job. They said he saved
the firm tens of thousands of pounds a year, but nobody knew just how
he managed it.
   I was looking forward to seeing him in action. I had heard a lot
about his 'Psychology' angle, but could not see how this would help
in most of the cases.
   The 'case' up that afternoon had claimed that because the
management had not allowed a wide enough passageway between two
machines he had banged against one of them, seriously affecting his
whole nervous system down the right side of his body. He could, he
claimed, only raise his right arm to elbow level very slowly and with
great difficulty, and higher than his elbow, it would not go at all.
He had already been off work for a month, and the arm had not
'responded to treatment,' much to the surprise of the doctors.
   It had in fact got gradually worse, according to the man himself.
He needed help to put on his clothes, and had been obliged to learn
to do all manner of things with his left hand when he was not the
least bit left-handed, naturally. His wife would have to give up her
evening work to look after him: that meant a regular allowance out of
the Insurance to compensate her. He would need some form of electric
tricycle to get him about, and a small garage built to house it. The
injury, he had been told by a friend, might easily spread to his legs,
and in view of the worry about this, the sum of +1, would
probably be quite inadequate.
   His "statement of basis of claim" ran to three sides of
foolscap "dictated by me and written by my wife, owing to the injury
what prevents my writing."
   Mr. Ridley was unperturbed by this voluminous evidence of the
state of the man's injuries.
   "I'm afraid it doesn't seem quite right to me somehow," he
said, pulling off the glasses yet again. It was a very irritating
gesture: perhaps, I thought, he did it deliberately to put his cases
off their guard, to take their minds off themselves and to give
themselves away.
   "You see, if he really is as bad as he says, the sensitivity of
some nerves would be bound to be affected at the finger extremities
even supposing there has been no bruising of tissue. The doctors
apparently can find nothing actually wrong. It's only that he
maintains he cannot raise his arm. When it was raised up quickly by a
doctor when he wasn't expecting it, he let out such a scream that the
wretched doctor thought he had torn the arm right off! After that,
they have been a bit chary about wrenching it up and down.
   "However," he added after a minute or two, "I think it's time
we went over and saw for ourselves. Come along with me."
   We walked across to the Assessment Office and up into Mr.
Ridley's room. There was nothing particular about it. Just the usual
desk (back to the light of course), a couple of chairs, a reading
chart on the wall, and a bookcase about six feet tall with a few
papers and other oddments on it.
   Mr. Ridley spoke to the attendant: "Send Mr. Alton in now,
would you please?"
   A few moments passed. Then there was a shuffling outside on the
linoleum, and the door opened. Mr. Alton's left hand pushed at the
handle, for his right arm was hanging dejectedly at his side, patently
useless and perhaps even causing pain.
   "Ah, Mr. Alton, come in, how do you do?" smiled Mr. Ridley
holding out a hand. The limp right arm quivered, but quick as a flash
the sturdy remaining left hand took its place for a brave handshake.
   "I've been thinking your case over," said Mr. Ridley,
sitting down at once at his desk, leaving Mr. Alton standing without
a chair. "It is certainly one of the most unfortunate I have come
across and our hearts go out to you and your family in this serious
blow. I think +15, is the least we can reasonably offer in
compensation, and if you are agreeable to this, I am authorized to
write you a cheque this very minute in full settlement, without
ado."
   After rubbing his glasses as usual, Mr. Ridley pulled out a
fountain pen, took the cap off and briskly prepared to write.
   Mr. Alton evidently could hardly believe his ears, mercifully
unaffected by his injury. He could only nod his agreement. "Yes, I
think that would do very well," he managed after a moment when power
of speech returned.
   "Right then," said Mr. Ridley, pen at the ready. "Just
hand me down my cheque book from that bookcase, will you, and we'll
get it cleared up."
   Alas for poor Mr. Alton. I did feel a little sorry for him.
   The bookcase was on his right. From the top, the bright blue
cheque book was plainly visible. A step forward, and Mr. Alton's
arm- his right arm, that poor injured right arm upon whose failing
strength a wife and many small children had depended for their daily
bread- swung up as easily and quickly as that of a policeman on point
duty. Rapid fingers closed upon the beckoning cheque book with new
found health.
   He was halfway to Mr. Ridley's desk before the awful
implication of his action dawned upon Mr. Alton.
   His face went scarlet, then drained. Tiny beads of sweat
appeared. He turned and left the room without a word.
   "You see what I mean," said Mr. Ridley, as he put the cap
back on his unused pen. "The study of human nature is a great help
in this profession."
Short story by NAT EASTON
The way of escape
   THE wind had slapped the notice so hard and often you had to
lean with it to read the faded letters, Unfit For Motorists. I
smiled, patting the weather-roughened wood. I slipped the car off the
track onto the moor, left it behind the V-shaped ruin of an old stone
barn- pointing back the way I'd come.
   Light hearted, sure of myself somehow in my completely new
outfit, I walked to the edge of the great heather brow and looked down
its tumbling slopes to the sea below. For several minutes I stood
there, just wishing and willing, and taking in the spread of land and
ocean, then I slithered into the scoured out track and plunged
downwards eagerly.
   The banks were high, the surface like a forgotten river bed-
dry, bread-coloured mud and stones the years had smoothed but not
budged. About halfway down, a path of bare, trodden soil led to a
gate in a high privet hedge. I stopped, looking over at it,
pep-talking myself, then braced up and went forward.
   The bungalow was as neat a piece of transplanted suburbia as a
man could imagine. The path was concrete, straight as a railway line.
On each side there was a shaved square of lawn the size of a blanket
with a round bed of roses in the middle of it, slap in the middle.
Each lawn was overlooked by a bay window, one packed with red
geraniums. A wire basket of flowers hung over the front door. The
glass of the windows and the leaded door panel shone as though the
leather had just left it. The green and cream paintwork took a bath
regularly.
   I poked a gloved finger into the copper letter box and raised the
flap. The corridor hall was laid with polished orange and brown
linoleum, covered down the middle with a runner of plain beige carpet,
like a continuation of the path. The hall-stand held one umbrella,
impeccably furled, one horn-handled walking-stick, a heavy raincoat on
a hanger, a series of crisp trilbies and a check cap. Beyond that the
shadows took over.
   I lowered the flap gently and side-stepped to the bay window on
the left. Squinting through the geraniums I saw a green three-piece
suite, a bureau, dining table and chairs of dark oak, a red leather
tufty, and one of those modern cut-down pianos. The empty fireplace
was shielded by a blue hydrangea in a pot that had been painted green.
Above the tobacco jar on the chimney-piece six pipes hung from a
rack. The seventh slot was vacant.
   There were two letters in the middle of the table, one under a
heavy glass paper-weight.
# 22
<427 TEXT L24>
   The outline of the case which follows will, I hope, be
sufficient to secure a withdrawal of the questions. If this fails, I
shall of course be glad to offer the Members concerned a full and free
opportunity to question me, as well as the officers who have conducted
the investigation, in whatever fashion they think fit.
   Their suspicions are the more ironical in that Gillian was
actually arrested yesterday morning, on my personal instructions.
Since the Department of Public Prosecutions regards the evidence
against him as insufficient, the arrest was made without a warrant;
and within a couple of hours Gillian was inevitably once again a free
man.
   My action did, however, succeed in its intended purpose: Gillian
and Mrs Wynter had planned to be married yesterday afternoon; as a
result of the scene that occurred in my office the marriage will not
now take place.
   You will say, and rightly, that it is no business of the police
to discourage people who wish to marry murderers. Nonetheless, when
one partner is completely unsuspicious, there is, I believe, a good
deal to be said on humane grounds for at least dropping a hint. In
fact, the simple ruse we employed succeeded handsomely, thereby
confirming the theory we had formed as to the only possible method by
which this perplexing murder can have been committed.
   Gillian's arrest was so contrived that Mrs. Wynter would be
with him at the time; she was "allowed" to accompany him to
Scotland Yard, and on arrival both of them were brought to my office.
Also present were Superintendent Colleano (in charge of the case),
Detective-Inspector Pugh (who made the arrest), and a shorthand writer
(P. C. Clements). Despite Mrs. Wynter's urgings, Gillian
declined to send for a solicitor; his attitude was fatalistic
throughout and he looked ill.
   I need hardly say that if Gillian's arrest had been anything
other than a trick there would have been no question of my confronting
him personally. As it was, I was able to use our previous
acquaintance as a pretext for the meeting. I told him, quite
untruthfully, that I had just returned from leave, and was anxious for
old times' sake to hear an account of the circumstances which had
resulted in the Deputy A.C.'s ordering his arrest, and to look
into the matter in person; and it is the measure of the queer,
apathetic state he was in that he apparently swallowed this
preposterous tale without turning a hair.
   The proceedings opened with Colleano's giving me a summary of the
case. From our point of view this was mere camouflage; but it is
necessary to repeat it here for the purpose of clarifying what
happened subsequently.
   Approximately two years ago, Dr. Harold Wynter, a general
practitioner working in the Somerset town of Midcastle, was tried for,
and convicted of, the manslaughter of a patient through gross
negligence. The evidence against him was by no means decisive, but
both judge and jury seem to have been influenced by the fact that the
doctor himself was a morphine addict. He was adjudged guilty and
sentenced to imprisonment for three years.
   At Nottsville Prison- to which Gillian had a year previously
been appointed governor- Wynter's first few weeks were spent in the
infirmary, where he was weaned of his addiction before being
transferred to the cells. Very shortly afterwards, however, he began
to suffer from attacks of 6angina pectoris. Accordingly, he was
excused from all serious exertion; and in addition- since he proved a
model prisoner- was allowed a cell to himself, so that he mingled
with the other prisoners only on the occasions when he took light
exercise in the yard.
   His wife, Ellen Wynter, wrote to him regularly and seems to have
visited him as often as she could; these visits were, however,
restricted in number owing to the fact that for financial reasons she
had been obliged to take a job some considerable distance away.
   In the ordinary course of things- taking into account remissions
for good conduct- Wynter would have been released in October of this
year.
   On April 23rd he died in his cell.
   This was discovered when luncheon was brought to him at noon on
that day. In the absence of contra-indications, the death was
ascribed to the angina- for although a man suffering from this
complaint may, and often does, live on for a great many years, there
is no guarantee that any single attack may not finish him. As with
all prison deaths, however, an inquest was held. But there was no
6post mortem, since none seemed to be called for, and on April 27th
Wynter was buried in the prison cemetery, his death being certified as
due to his heart disease.
   There the matter might well have rested. Three days later,
however, we received here at Scotland Yard an anonymous letter which
accused Gillian of having poisoned Wynter with a plant spray
containing nicotine; Gillian's motive, the writer added, was
infatuation with Wynter's wife.
   I myself ordered that this accusation be investigated, and there
proved to be sufficient plausibility in it to justify us in exhuming
Wynter's body. The stomach was shown to contain a small but
sufficiently lethal quantity of nicotine; in consequence of this, a
full-scale examination of the circumstances was at once put in hand.
   The writer of the anonymous letter was traced easily enough. He
was a warder at Nottsville named Parker, who conceived himself to have
a grudge against the Governor, and who purely by chance had come to
hear of the irregular association which did in fact exist between
Gillian and Mrs. Wynter; the nicotine, he said, was only a guess,
based on the fact that he knew this type of plant spray was used
occasionally on the Governor's shrubbery.
   It was a suspiciously good guess, and Superintendent Colleano
devoted plenty of time and energy to investigating whether Parker
himself had opportunity or motive for poisoning Wynter. In the end,
however, it was established that he had neither. A second possibility
was that Wynter's death had some connection with the death of the
patient he was alleged to have neglected; but this again proved
unlikely, if not impossible.
   To cut a long story short, the closest checking and
counter-checking failed to establish a motive for Wynter's death in
any of the prison staff- except Gillian.
   Gillian's motive, however, was undeniably a strong one: he was in
love with Mrs. Wynter. There is no doubt, by the way, that Wynter
was devoted to his wife, to the extent that- in her view- he would
never have agreed to divorce her; and in spite of his illness he might
well have lived for many years after his release from Nottsville.
   As to the manner in which Gillian and Mrs. Wynter became
acquainted, that, I think, calls for no detailed description here. It
is worth noting, however, that Gillian's obsession with the woman was
by no means a happy one. The husband was a prisoner in his personal
charge, undergoing a relatively savage sentence for a crime of which
he may quite possibly have been innocent; moreover, Wynter loved his
wife; and finally, he was an incurable invalid.
   To a man with Gillian's record for probity these considerations
may well have been horribly distressing; he himself has said that they
worried him deeply- and his anxiety was naturally compounded by the
fact that from the official point of view his surreptitious
relationship with Mrs. Wynter was an unforgivable offence for which
his resignation would certainly be demanded as soon as the truth
became known. As you are aware, that resignation was tendered, and
accepted, a fortnight ago.
   Since Gillian is a wealthy man in his own right, his financial
position will not be affected; at the same time, for a man with his
long and devoted connection with the penal service, the wrench must
have been considerable.
   Was Gillian's passion for Mrs. Wynter sufficiently strong to
override all these considerations? Unquestionably it was; and if so,
we may not unreasonably assume that it was strong enough to impel him
to the act of murder. He had motive, he had means.
   Unfortunately, what he seems quite definitely not to have had was
opportunity.
   The medical evidence as to the time of Wynter's death, and how
long he took to die, is regrettably uncertain; but there is a definite
consensus of opinion to the effect that Wynter could not have ingested
the poison earlier than breakfast time- that is to say, 7.3
a.m. on the day of his death. It seems equally certain, however,
that the nicotine was not in Wynter's breakfast; two warders
(perfectly reputable men) were concerned in the serving of this, and
moreover they were, as it happened, accompanied on this occasion by
one of H.M. Inspectors of Prisons, who had been staying in
Nottsville overnight; without going into the matter in detail, I can
assure you that short of a conspiracy among these three it is
absolutely impossible for the poison to have been administered in
Wynter's breakfast.
   But if not at this time, when? On the morning of his death
Wynter did not, as it chanced, require fresh materials for the work he
performed in his cell; and the result of this was that the next visit
paid to him was at lunch-time- when his dead body was discovered. It
is certain that between 7.3 and noon Wynter was alone in his cell in
E block, and that during this period he came in contact with no one-
neither with Gillian nor with anyone else.
   These circumstances would seem to point either to suicide or to
murder by trickery- for example, Wynter might previously have been
given a preparation of nicotine under the guise of medicine, and have
consumed it of his own volition some time on the morning of his death.
There exists, however, an insuperable objection to both assumptions:
before breakfast on that particular morning a snap search of the cells
in E block was carried out. These searches are routine, but they are
nevertheless thorough; and because of the recent suicide of Pickering
at Tawton Prison, special attention is currently being paid to the
possibility of concealed poison.
   The upshot, as it applies to Wynter, you will guess: no pills or
powders or capsules or fluids were found in his cell other than the
small supply of trinitrini tablets which he was allowed to keep by him
in case of an angina attack. Of these, at the time of the search,
there were three, in a sealed container; and there is irrefutable
evidence to prove that this same container was still there, still
sealed and intact, when Wynter's body was discovered (it was, of
course, noticed particularly for the reason that at the time Wynter's
death was assumed to be the result of an angina attack sufficiently
disabling to have prevented him from getting at the tablets).
   Now, Gillian's last direct encounter with Wynter had taken place
more than a week before the death; and on that occasion, as always,
another member of the prison staff was present- this precaution is so
invariable in dealing with convicts that if Gillian had at any time
departed from it in his dealings with Wynter, the fact must inevitably
have become known to us.
   How, then, can Gillian possibly have committed this murder?
   Or if it was suicide, how can Gillian or anyone else possibly
have supplied Wynter with the means?
   The three warders who conducted the search on the morning of the
death might conceivably have conspired together to make Wynter a
present of poison; but in view of their excellent record this was not
a possibility which Colleano felt able to accept so long as another,
and likelier, explanation of the circumstances remained open to him.
   And such an explanation did exist.
   Despite the external appearances of what thriller-writers
describe as an "impossible murder" or a "locked-room mystery,"
the ingenious yet simple way in which Wynter had been murdered was
easily deduced from the facts I have given above.
# 218
<END>
<428 TEXT M1>
A shudder, more mental than physical, ran through him, and his mind
seemed to melt away into emptiness. His bulging eyes caught the
reclining form of Heather, who was still repeating in sing-song: ".
. . I will not give in. . ." He stared at her blankly, mouthing an
incoherent gabble of half words. Then he broke into a crazy laugh
that made rolling echoes through the house, and trailed-off into a
long-drawn-out unearthly wail. The wail should have been despairing;
but its eerie note, even in its senseless gaggling babble, was
jubilant, triumphant.
CHAPTER 7
HAPPY FACES AND AN EXIGENCY
   RETURNING to some degree of consciousness, Steve found
himself slumped in a chair trying to shake and blink away the
mind-deadening mists of hypnotic trance. To his still rather
stuporous perceptions, the world was an endless cloud in which he
floated, and in which various dark, shapeless objects went round and
round in concentric orbits. The rotations preceeded <SIC> by
rhythmic jerks, which were timed to a painful throb that bumped in his
head. He slapped himself in the face and cuffed the sides of his
head. Then by degrees the rotating objects slowed, and coming into
focus took the form of the furnishings in Dan Brown's living room.
   He stood up unsteadily and looked about the room, trying to
gather his wits. Outside the dusk was settling over Dow's Lake and
the heights beyond were in silhouette, already a solid black. He
bumped into a floor lamp and switched it on. Heather McNabb still lay
on the couch, her body uncomfortably twisted and afflicted with
occasional spasmodic jerks. He went to the kitchen for water and
found Dan.
   Dan was lying on a long bench in the breakfast nook, his head
bent upright against the wall. His usually animated face was
expressionless and looked flat, as though his nose had been pushed
back and his eyes and cheeks brought forward. He mouthed a low
mutter, punctuated at intervals with a few syllables of a crazy and
incoherent jargon. As Steve looked at him his mouth suddenly snapped
shut, with jaws askew. There was utter imbecility in his blank face.
Presently the muttering started again, and went on and on. Stunned
and shaken, Steve drew a glass of water and went back to Heather.
   Half an hour later Heather and Steve were still trying to
shake-off the last traces of hypnotic after-effects. For several
minutes they had been facing each other across a low table, like two
old convalescents thoroughly bored with each other through forced
association. Then something like a zest for living began to come back
to Steve and he squeezed her hand. Her face took on enough animation
to produce a wan smile.
   Dan's low muttering was just audible from the kitchen. And Steve
could see that as Heather recovered her senses and emotions she was
growing cold and numb with shock. She had seen Dan, or rather the
physical relic of him- the empty shell of flesh and bone, devoid of
intellect and personality. And these had been his great qualities, so
attractive to her.
   
   The Base Station had gone before, discharging its narrow plane of
4ementalating energy along the length of the Earth's imaginary
longitudes, moving eastward like a knife-edged twilight in reversed
progression. It had brought the First Stage in the Thetan pattern of
conquest, the empty-minded receptiveness that prepared the way for the
Second Stage.
   The Landingship followed with its longitudinal sweeps, an
invisible speck moving at incredible speed in the ionosphere. Up and
down, from pole to pole. Beaming down a moving cone of impulses, and
bringing the Second Stage. Bringing reverence and servility to
preconditioned humanity.
   
   Now the Thetan impulses of the Second Stage descended on Dan and
he received their inspiration. It was nine-thirty.
   He rose from his breakfast-nook bench and came into the
livingroom, where Heather and Steve stood aghast at his entrance. He
came, almost falling forward in an ungainly shuffle, neck thrust out,
arms dangling loosely. Then, abruptly, he drew himself up and walked
on the very tips of his toes. He stretched his arms over his head and
yawned agape, drawing-in great breaths that became great sighs of
ecstacy. <SIC> His flat moonface shone with an undescribable
expression of utter happiness. Seeing Heather he came to her and
danced her gleefully around the room. He slapped Steve heartily on
the back, and then sat down.
   He seemed preoccupied, as though groping for an elusive
understanding of some new and wonderful phenomenon. Then he beamed
upon his guests.
   "They have come!" he said reverently, gripping his hands
together between his knees and leaning forward. "Isn't it a glorious
thing! Long awaited transcendent event, the exalted desire of all
mankind through all ages! The Kingdom of the Mind is at hand!" He
turned beaming eyes upward and shook his head slowly from side to
side. "Oh, Lord of Lords! I commend myself, through my mind which
is part of Thine, to Thy Command. For in doing Thy command my
services become a part of the ultimate fulfilment. Fulfilment of the
Kingdom of the Mind on Earth!"
   He had intoned this awful devotion in rapt attention, as though
repeating the faint phrasing of a distant voice. And his fervour grew
in stringendo until his last words were uttered in a frenzy of zeal
and adoration. Then, very calmly, and with a light of inner peace and
sure purpose shining in his eyes, he said: "I go to bed now. Good
night."
   Steve drove Heather to her nearby apartment and then continued
through the sleeping city to his place in Rockliffe. He drove down
the lighted streets, his passage controlled by traffic lights that
blinked green and red in their proper intervals. A superfluous
precaution for there was no other car abroad; and no pedestrian to
cross his path nor to wait at an intersection for the light to change.
At his apartment he garaged his car and then stood listening in the
night. Listening in vain. For the earth had lost its life-tempo, as
the heart loses its beat in death. Deadly stillness, deadly portent!
   
   Steve awakened early and switched on the radio, which he kept
tuned to CBO. The set lighted-up but gave only a low buzzing
sound. He had just finished shaving when it came on, with a flat
voice repeating: "This is BBC calling . . . this is BBC
calling. . ." After what seemed an undue period of repetition,
the voice went on to describe the landing of the Thetan colony in
Sussex, in all its obscene details. Then the radio went dead again,
and Steve had no stomach for breakfast.
   It was a beautiful day, as firsts-of-June should be. Steve got
out the car and traversed the same empty streets as he had the night
before, to keep an appointment with Heather. Coming around the great
mass of the Chateau Laurier, he braked to a screeching stop. A flying
saucer was tilting and dipping over the War Memorial. There was a
deep whirring sound, and a high-pitched hissing overtone that sang in
his ears with an almost painful sharpness. He reversed and turned
back on McKenzie Avenue. The Thetans must not see him! He took
another route to Heather's and saw two more flying saucers on the way.
   Heather was very anxious to visit Dan at once; but Steve insisted
that they should first discuss their situation, as far as it could be
assessed, and to decide on what seemed to be the best way of meeting
it.
   "The Thetans," he said, "are presumably here to take charge,
as it were, of the minds of the people- who are probably falling all
over themselves in their zeal to get their orders and to carry them
out. Just what these orders will be, we don't know. Now, because of
prior hypnosis we have escaped Thetan subjugation. This time. But we
no longer have any immunity. There can be little doubt that if the
Thetans discover our mental independence they will promptly give us
their hypnotic treatment. If we can avoid undue prominence, it
may be that we can move about pretty freely without detection. If we
can- well, then we may be able to promote our own interests. What
those interests are, beyond personal security, I haven't a clue; but,
who knows, we may form the nucleus around which some sort of
resistance movement may be built.
   "Now, to summarize what I think our course of action should be.
First, to avoid the Thetans like the plague, for they must not find
us out! Second, to tread pretty warily among our own people,
finding out just how much freedom we can take with safety. And third,
to study these damned Thetans. We must learn all we can about them.
There is just a hope that we may uncover some weakness, and find a
way of fighting back at them."
   Heather agreed, and suggested that they use Dan as a specimen
demonstrating how the Thetan machinations had been working out. It
occurred to Steve that this may not have been entirely an objective
suggestion on her part; but he thought it a good idea nevertheless.
So they proceeded to see if the coast was clear. The street was
quiet and deserted, and there were neither sight nor sound of flying
saucers. So they ventured forth and made their way on foot to Dan's
house.
   Dan came to the door at their ring but neglected to offer any
greeting. He was deeply preoccupied, and it seemed that the ringing
of a doorbell was to him a new and strange phenomenon. When he
finally beckoned to them to enter, the action gave the impression of
having been thought out and decided upon.
   Inside they sat down unbidden, while Dan paced the floor. He
seemed completely unaware of their presence. They just stared at him,
turning their heads like tennis spectators as he walked up and down,
up and down. His whole attitude was a mixture of impatience pending
an awaited communication and of a vague perplexity respecting his
surroundings and the purpose he was to serve.
   Finally, being so obviously on their own, Heather and Steve tried
to make themselves at home. Steve switched on Dan's powerful,
world-wide radio and systematically turned the tuning knob through all
the tuning points of the world's great radio stations. The dials
lighted up but he got only a variety of squeaks and whistles. The
ether waves were without human voice or sound; they were dead to the
world.
   Overhead a flying saucer whirred and, pitched high above the
whir, whined its pungent song. Dan stopped his pacing and became
profoundly attentive. It seemed that he was listening to unspoken
orders and they could almost hear him say, "Yes, yes!", in his
eager acceptance of them.
   Then he beamed on Steve and Heather in turn with an expression of
ineffable happiness on his flat face. Quickly taking his coat and hat
from the vestibule closet, he rushed from the house without a word.
   They followed him to a city bus stop on Carling Avenue, where he
waited. The bus stop was a deserted island on an empty street. But
not for long, for soon pedestrians and cars flocked upon the Avenue
from its many tributary streets. It might have been a normal
business-day bustle, except for two anomalies. First, it was Sunday
morning; and, second, everyone walked, or drove, or waited as a person
possessed of a single all-exclusive purpose. There were no
pleasantries, no shouted greetings, no friendly waves of recognition.
Everyone minded his own business with a vengeance. Yet there was not
a grim or surly face in all the crowd. Anywhere that Heather and
Steve might look they found reflections of Dan Brown's indescribably
happy face.
   After a long wait a bus appeared and they followed the beaming
Dan aboard, taking seats some rows behind him. Steve was beginning to
find the stereotyped, flattish, happy faces very disconcerting; and
looking at Heather he found a welcome relief in her relatively long
doleful one.
# 215
<429 TEXT M2>
In W.C.U., too, reference to the evil in that system would
be avoided like the plague in public debate. Mutually-sustaining
opposites...
   Realtor's measure, being lost anyway, since the Mocrats were in a
minority, was not pressed to a vote; and it was a relief for the
Senate to turn from these remote and academic matters to the next item
on the agenda, a practical 4fug measure to "Spyproof the Membrane
and Expand."
   
   Harry did not know what this meant and, as in Casino Ronde, had
the Cherokee Indian feeling. He decided to slip down to the canteen
for a cup of coffee.
   "What's happening aloft?" drawled a journalist, his elbows
sprawling over the canteen table, his pencil doodling among his
shorthand notes. "This motion to spy-proof the membrane, what does
it mean?"
   "Haven't you heard? The 4fugs, especially, are scared by
reports that W.C.U. spies are being shot through the membrane in
capsules. They could guide missiles onto Back-Face targets which are
now safe." He picked his teeth. "In the mountains they've found
little capsules, this big"- he brandished a teaspoon- "with
hundreds of tiny little red men inside them."
   "Isn't it a bit far-fetched?" said Harry, recalling what
Lilipendi had said, about the Mos being as credulous as Africans.
   "If you ask me, the capsules and the red midgets inside them
come out of one of Moke's toy factories."
   "Moke- Moke Blenkinsop you mean?"
   "Wouldn't it make sense? Traditionally Second Coming is
associated with Daggitt's, the membrane people, and has put more money
into it lately. Coincidence? If spy-proofing becomes statutory,
it'll mean a complete 36 degree new trap in the membrane.
   "Will it become statutory?"
   "Realtor and his Mocrats will be against it, but Moke licked
them even when they were in power, though only just.
   "Isn't Mike Renshaw a match for Moke?"
   Though leader of the Anti-Presidentials, Renshaw was known to be
left of centre, so by no means uncritical of big business.
   "Renshaw's ulcers are bad this month. He's away resting and
playing clock-golf; and the end of next week, you know, the Bowery
President is coming over and they'll have a lot to talk about"- a
sly reference to the long break in Mo-American affairs occasioned by
the Panama Affair. The Mos had refused to deal with Marjoribanks, but
had just agreed to receive his successor, President Scribner.
   "So that's why Moke gets the right-wing A.P.'s to bring in
the spy-proofing now?"
   "I'm not saying so," but the journalist winked knowingly,
though probably he didn't know any more than Harry whether real
knowledge, rather than prejudice, or possibly just the policy of his
paper, lay behind that wink. And not for the first or last time the
American felt the Moon as an outsize social organism which is still
primitive in that it has not yet grown sufficient nervous system to be
aware of its own internal motions, far less of their outward
repercussions.
   "But this place isn't really a Political Centre if Financier
Moke secretly inspires it," he said, thinking of those stories he
had read as a boy.
   "I'm not saying so."
   "But why shouldn't you if it's true? Haven't you free speech on
Moon?"
   "Of course we've got free speech; and we'll smash in the face of
anyone who says that we haven't!".
2
   BUT during these real days in Aristotle Harry was not merely
dabbling in mighty Mo matters perhaps beyond the understanding of a
sub outsider: he was also carrying out his commitments to Mr.
Halliday, and Uncle Sam, by revising his stories. Energy had returned
with the Sun. Also the economic equilibrium which he had had in
Plato, before the interruption of the real nights. He determined to
spend the next series of them here in Aristotle, where the pace was
less than in Plato, almost reminding him of sleepy sub towns like
Philadelphia and Chicago. Then he would go back to Plato for a final
spell of real days and would return to New York in late January or
early February. Angelina might be a little sorry if we were not back
for Christmas as arranged, but he consoled himself by thinking that he
and Angelina would have plenty of time together in the future. And
Heaven alone knew when, if ever, he would be back on Moon again, and
able to do research at first hand into matters on which the future of
everyone, including Angelina, depended...
   The recovery of his balance was due to the fact that he was
living, virtually without expenses, with the people to whom Moke had
sent him: little people who regarded him as lucky to have descended
from such economic altitudes. Tom Dreyfus had a job on the machines
in the Secretariat (Stamp Department) while Sally sulked at home.
They had been married for six years, but the salary raise, on the
expectation of which they had done so, had not materialised. "Do you
know, I had to send back our bedroom furniture in the second year,"
she moaned. She had contacts in political circles, a schoolfriend of
hers having married Lester Peron, a Mocrat Senator with a seat on the
(literally) all-powerful Rocket Release Board. Sometimes she took
Harry around with her, but never her husband, a fact he accepted as
inevitable. "I guess Sally made a mistake about me," he said one
evening, when he had been left to cook his own meal. All Sally's
relations were 4makrodeb now, but Tom was a Static Mib, the
middle-income-bracket equivalent to 4sub-lil on the lower. The
economic shock had unmanned him and Harry, seeing his host busy among
soft foods in the kitchen, felt that the poor fellow was,
understandably, changing sex.
   
   So a happy week passed, and it was a lunar noon, and the dark
Earth was fringed with the "Wedding ring effect", when eventually
Sally Dreyfus took Harry to see the Lester Perons. All Aristotle was
excited at the time, not by the prospect of the U.S. President's
visit, but by a great storm in the photosphere of the sun. A matter
which on Earth would hardly penetrate beyond the minds of astronomers
was of general interest to the Mos, doubtless because their habitat is
not submerged beneath a deep natural atmosphere. One wondered if this
greater awareness of the physical cosmos might with time instil the
reverence which, on Earth, nature inspires, especially when one
reflected that the rockets over which Mr. Peron's Board presided had
it in their power permanently to warp the solar system. True enough,
such ultimate weapons had not been used in the last few wars, but it
seemed very probable that they would be in the next one, Moon and her
allies being more inferior than formerly to W.C.U. in the weapons
pronounced conventional.
   Lester was not home yet from his formidable duties and his wife,
in the manner of middle-brow wives, romanced about him in his absence.
   "Lester was a country lawyer, and we were very small
4microdebs, weren't we, Sally"- here she had dropped her voice in
homage to the economic system: that was reverenced- "when he
thought we might get GO a bit better if he entered politics. Know how
he did it? He's clever on the mouth-organ. So when he visited some
craterlet on Face (ours is an agricultural Back-Face area) the cry
would go up, as soon as he had spoken a few sentences of his speech:
'Cut the politics, Lester, give us something on your mouth-organ.'
That's how he got the votes, that's how we came through to 4makrodeb
status and got all these lovely things"- she waved a plump hand
towards her grand pianos, etc: at the same time a door banged-
"but don't say a word about it, Lester wants his mouth-organ to be
forgotten now. The time has come for him to be taken seriously as a
statesman."
   Peron entered, a large man, who had once been handsome but was
now seedy-looking, a sufferer from stomach-ulcers. In the Back-Face
tradition he wore, and kept on indoors, a fifty gallon hat. Harry was
prepared for something unpleasant, for this was the Senator who had
annoyed the United States by bragging how he had once won a trick from
W.C.U. by threatening to loose off one of his rockets (an
admission which would scarcely help bluff to succeed the next time)
and, lately, by saying that if Mo land-troops had to come to the aid
of the O.G.O. contingent in the Panama region, "no Mo dough-boy
will want to have an American G.I. fighting alongside him."
   But privately he turned out to be as friendly as Mr. Wise the
tube manufacturer, to have the same adolescent openness and freshness,
though perhaps not the same maturity. One remembered that he was a
lawyer by training, and suspected that the points he made so sharply
in international politics were as abstract to him as those a lawyer
makes in a court of law. The motive would be the same in both cases,
to serve this home of his, in which his heart lay. Here the rocket
man's charm was disarming.
   Yet when the time came to leave, Harry felt as depressed as when
he left Mrs. Halliday's office, exactly a month ago. If even Mo
statesmen only did what they had to do to get GO on an expanding
scale, and left the sum-total of their actions, and their lunar and
earthly repercussions, to luck (or to Moke), there was a vacuum where
there should be a centre of trust, responsible for the maintenance and
expansion of free society. The political life of Aristotle looked
more and more like a masquerade of business interests in disguise
which, far from attracting the allegiance of free men everywhere,
could only repel them.
   
   Then what of the cultural life? Did this perhaps nurture a
genuinely civilizing impulse which might in time become social fact
and counteract the obsession with economics which had grown up during
the Moon's first two centuries?
   Harry borrowed Sally Dreyfus' car and drove out to Eudoxus
University to see the famous Rodeos which take place at the end of the
Advent term, one more of those Mo "traditions" which look so
suspect to the American visitor.
   In the cold gas and harsh sunshine of the December afternoon,
last year students revolved in interlocking circles on the vast, round
campus. At the centre of each circle stood personnel managers of
corporations, together with professors and their filing clerks. The
students had bought their college education forward and were now being
bought forward in their turn. By comparing personal appearances with
university records, the agents of the businesses would pick on young
men and women who interested them, and contracts would be initialled
at the end of the parade. But since starting salaries would depend on
grade A or B in the finals next May, and since mating prospects would
depend upon salaries, scholarship for these fine young people was
closely geared to economic and biological ends which, essentially,
were really means. So, seeing them revolve in circles, Harry had the
feeling that Moke (or what Moke consciously or unconsciously
symbolised, anyway in Harry's mind) had these splendid young people by
the short hairs, and was diverting them from true life. Stepping out
in their white shorts, they looked glad enough to be diverted,
however, with the single exception of one worried little man-student
who kept getting out of step. He looked as if nothing Moke and his
minions could do to him would ever make him GO; but the reason
probably lay in elementary neurosis and not in some eruption from
those deeper layers in the human psyche which are trans-economic.
   So once again the metaphysics were depressing, and in absolute
contrast to the physical display. Mos have an un-American love of
parades, and these young ones, on parade for jobs which they had to
get to pay off their college bills, were naturally putting their best
foot forward.
# 21
<43 TEXT M3>
6
   A night or two later we were strolling, Lord Undertone and I,
on sentry-go, round the tents and we caught sight of Mr Septimus
looking out through the flap of the one he occupied with his
lordship's own self. 'Bit moody,' remarked my companion. 'Like
he used to be years ago ... remember?'
   Well did I remember the crisis of emotion into which he was
plunged one night at Abbotsfield... a dinner-party it was... when he
first set eyes on Miss Ariadne; but I did not wish to impart my
thoughts or any misgivings I might have on this subject and in any
case my recollections of the Manor, of my parlour and Sally sitting
there, and of all the amenities were at that moment so strong that I
dared not speak.
   'Something's up,' said Lord Undertone, carefully casual.
'The servants are all on edge... did you notice? And the mules
didn't seem to want to get off the raft.' He peered as it were into
the dark secrets of the jungle. 'Think there's Indians about?'
   It was most certainly an eerie night, exceptionally brilliant and
strange, for in the proximity of the mountains, whose presence I could
almost smell, the air grew less humid and as there was no moon the
galaxies had it their own way so that the forest looked ever more
mysterious in their faint, silver light. 'Impressive,' Lord
Undertone said, gazing reverently on the cosmic handiwork. 'All
those stars. But I'm a bit earthbound tonight, Trout. I've got a
queer feeling, like I always get when something sensational's going to
happen. There's things lurking if you ask me. Might be jaguar, might
be... head-shrinkers. Hope I die kind of composed, Trout. I mean you
can't imagine the Christian martyrs twisting and shrieking, no matter
how bad it felt, the fire you know, or a lion munching, or arrows
where it hurts most. Or can you. Look over there.' He pointed to
the shadows beyond the river. 'Something moved.'
   'It may well be the case, my lord, that the darkness conceals
some threat.' I did what I could to dissemble my dislike of the
situation.
   'Well, what are you going to do about it?'
   'I, my lord?' Somewhat resentful of a responsibility that did
not fall within the strict terms of a butler's engagement, yet at the
same time flattered, I felt bound to advance one or two suggestions
that occurred to me. 'Bottle-Foot, my lord.'
   'Bottle-Foot?' His lordship may have thought I had become
unbalanced through fear.
   'A character Mr Gilberto mentioned the other day, my lord. A
being of whom the forest Indians are said to be mortally afraid, with
a hoof shaped like the heel of a bottle. If your lordship will excuse
me a moment...'
   'All right, but don't be long.'
   Rummaging among the remains of our provisions I found a bottle
with which I made numerous marks on the ground surrounding our tents
and a few yards into the jungle, as far as I dared venture. 'If they
should observe these footprints, my lord,' I said, rather proud of
the device, 'they may be deterred from attacking us.'
   'Ummm. Any other ideas?'
   'Yes, my lord. There is also a creature known as the
water-mother who sits on a lily-leaf singing and entices men into the
stream, where they drown. She has long green hair and...'
   'Kind of Lorelei, you mean?'
   'Precisely, my lord. A highly poetical conception. If we could
impersonate such a being...'
   'What, me? Sit on a lily-leaf and sing? Not likely, Trout.
Better get hold of Mrs Caine... she's a witch if you like... draw
anyone into the water.' His lordship sighed as one who wouldn't
mind dying in certain unlikely circumstances. 'D'you think Septimus
has gone nuts over her?'
   The question startled my secret thoughts; but before I had time
to formulate a discreet answer the Indians were all over us and though
I was able by means of a trick practised in equally repugnant
circumstances to floor the first three who attacked the situation got
out of hand. Small, repulsive creatures they were, with black, matted
hair and a striking resemblance to the shrunk heads we had gazed at
recently; and I have no hesitation in saying that they would have made
an end of us but for an intervention so unexpected, so unusual, that
only the necessity of rounding my narrative compels me to mention it.
   It will be appreciated that whereas what I am about to relate
passed in a series of flashes it seemed very long during the action.
Standing with the blade of a rough kind of spear at my back (and I
was aware of cuts and scratches that might or might not prove
poisonous), I did my somewhat futile best by necessarily restricted
gestures to draw attention to the ground; but whether these savages
saw Bottle-Foot's print or not they seemed to have no fear of him,
neither did they take the least notice of the alarming countenance
Lord Undertone had assumed. At first glimpse of our assailants I had
of course smitten the empty tin of fruit-salad that constituted our
warning note, hoping that its flat tinkle would serve to rouse our
companions; trusting also that it might evoke some magical
demonstration on the part of Mrs Caine.
   In what was I suppose little more than a few seconds Canon
Pluckley emerged from his tent with the air of one who desires to
investigate a situation in the interests of scholarship, but the
Indians seized and threw the poor gentleman to the ground and when
Mr Septimus followed, armed with a boathook and fiery with
indignation, as having a measure of savage clearsightedness they could
undoubtedly see, they prepared for the kill. Certainly there would
have been a painful resolution of our existence but for the mysterious
intervention to which I have alluded.
   I had more than half expected that Mrs Caine, if and when she
appeared in our midst, would make with her raised hand a sign of
power; she did nothing of the kind. She came from her tent indeed,
with Mr Gilberto, both of them cool as you wish; but though at sight
of them the Indians made a curious hissing noise like the noise of
snakes and poised their spears with a view to hurling or stabbing,
having first no doubt dispatched those of us they already held, our
host and his lady seemed to have no resource but a kind of personal
immunity. It was scarcely a moment in which I expected to be reminded
of another book that is frequently in my mind, Through the
Looking-glass, in which, it will be remembered, as two characters
are about to engage in battle a fierce, black bird, a crow of unusual
size, appears over the wood, putting an end to the quarrel by its
formidable aspect. In just such a manner there now showed itself over
our heads, not with noise and menace but in silence more frightening
than thunder, a great bird not black but white, as it were an eagle;
and when, having circled, it rose and returned into the starry sky the
Indians, if Indians they were, had vanished. Believe it or not. I
have only to add that Mrs Caine dressed our cuts and scratches with
medicaments from her little box while Mr Gilberto held his hand over
them with effect that I myself felt a kind of radiant heat.
=3
   'IS this the place?' asked Lord Undertone, peering about
for vestiges of a golden temple or like portent. 'Is this where the
2feller jumped in, Gilberto?' We were gathered at the edge of a
cliff perhaps three hundred feet over a lake, deep in the Cordillera.
   'Es posible que... I mean...' But Mr Gilberto broke
off. 'What do you say, Feather?'
   'It is always told that where the man of gold plunged in his
image is to be seen under the surface,' she said.
   'Nothing there,' said his lordship, gazing down the wall of
clean rock that reflected mountain and forest, the cliff and our own
peeping faces.
   It was such a lake, remote and magical, as well might have been
the scene of some legendary event, though I imagine that the landscape
must have looked very different in those far-off days. We came to it
riding muleback along wooded slopes; and agreeable it was after that
humid, malodorous journey by river and swamp, for as the path ascended
the climate grew temperate and the vegetation, so Canon Pluckley said,
subtropical, characteristically so, although I myself should have
described it as fairylike. Here then we were, disposed in a
commodious hut built of pine-logs or some such timber, on the shore of
the lake at a point where it debouched in a stream that must find its
way, I supposed to the distant Atlantic; around us abundant provision
of fruit, fish and if we desired it duck. I had a distinct impression
that the hut had recently been cleaned and prepared for visitors.
   Mrs Caine said we were to go no further unless and until we
were sent for, confirming another impression that became more and more
definite, namely, that she was in touch with an invisible source of
authority. Naturally her words stimulated an already lively interest
in the near future and as usual Lord Undertone could not refrain from
questions. 'Sent for?' His gaze examined the hut. 'No
telephone. No wireless. No...' It dawned on him. 'Stupid of me!
Tele-what-d'you-call-it of course!'
   Mrs Caine smiled and with this all of us must be content. For
my own part I should have been ready to remain here several days,
collecting my wits so to speak, arranging my expectations, though
wondering if Sally could be brought here by aeroplane, as I am
unwilling to undertake any adventure without her; not that there was
any place where even a vertical landing could be effected. Sally and
of course Mrs Septimus, for surely Mr Septimus stood in the same
case as myself? But was it so? I allowed myself to entertain for an
instant the idea, the strange, the unwelcome, the almost inconceivable
idea, that Ariadne's arrival would be inopportune; and with the idea
came a somewhat vulgar impulse, which I refused, to watch Mr
Septimus more closely, Mrs Caine too and Mr Gilberto who would
surely show some anxiety by now if he noticed anything untoward. But
all three were to the casual observation I permitted myself unruffled;
Mr Septimus reserved and certainly very thoughtful, but that was his
habit.
   Indeed we were all invaded by a most tranquil mood. Even the
Indian servants relaxed, knowing, so Mr Gilberto told us, that the
wild and savage tribes never approached this region: at any rate they
remained with us, perhaps for such protection as our presence, or
Mrs Caine's, afforded, sticking rather to their quarters, going no
further than the beach to fish, whereas we ourselves explored the
whole neighbourhood, half, I think with an eye to fabulous remains.
But after what Mrs Caine had said it was never far from our minds
that at any moment we were to receive a summons. I could see that
Mr Septimus was impatient for it.
   This afternoon, then, we climbed a promontory, a mass of clean
rock crowned with trees and bushes, that stood well out over the lake.
The thing about this great sheet of water on which we looked down was
its astonishing stillness: it seemed to reflect not only its own
dreamy shores, not only the forests of red-leaved trees on the
mountainsides and the snowfields above, not only the sky but the
invisible ground of being itself, as if a man should gather himself
into himself and in meditation perceive what is otherwise
imperceptible. Away to the right, far below, I could see one of our
Indians fishing and I declare that the ripple his cast made was the
only change in all that expanse.
# 25
<431 TEXT M4>
THE 2.2 FROM DINAS
Start running punctual and- where are you?
BY E. L. MALPASS
   NO ONE has ever satisfactorily explained how a single-decker
Welsh bus could have got itself into orbit. Shooting up over the pass
a bit too carefree, and becoming airborne? Caught by a sudden gust of
wind? A combination of the two? No one seems to know. But the fact
remains that get itself into orbit it did. And a fine old fuss there
was about it, too.
   Here are the known facts. On 1th July, the bus, the 2.2 from
Dinas to Llangrwl, left Dinas at two-thirty-five as usual. Aboard,
apart from the crew, were Mrs. Megan Thomas and her five-year-old
son Cadwallader; pretty little Morfydd Owen; Mr. Stanley Hayball and
Miss Ethel Yates, hikers from Birmingham; Price the Provisions; and
the Rev. Edwards.
   Yes, the bus set out from Dinas. So much is established. Ifor
Huw Evans, Propr., watched it go from the windows of the Dinas Motor
Omnibus Co.
   Very interested, Ifor was. For there was his garage hand, Dai
Pugh, taking a tearful farewell of Morfydd Owen. Morfydd, who had
until recently been Ifor's typist, but was now returning to her home
town as a fully-fledged schoolteacher.
   "But I'm only going fifteen miles away," Morfydd was saying.
"Not the end of the world, is it?"
   "For me it is," Dai said wretchedly, wiping his hands on his
overalls preparatory to a last embrace. "You will not be remembering
a mere garage hand when you are lording it over the Mixed Infants of
Llangrwl."
   "Silly boy," said Morfydd. Though she could not help
wondering whether, now she had qualified as a schoolteacher, poor
little Dai was quite the man for her.
   A nice boy of course. But perhaps in the new world she was
entering there might be boys equally nice, and with far more to offer.
   The conductor rang his bell.
   "Good-bye, Dai," said Morfydd, smiling from the bottom step.
   "Good-bye, Morfydd." He sought to enfold her in his arms.
But he was too late. She was already up the bus steps, and the bus
was away. And Morfydd Owen waving, unkissed, from the window. And
Dai, on the pavement, knowing in his heart that Morfydd was leaving
him as surely as she was leaving Dinas.
   So the bus set out for Llangrwl.
   But it never reached there! Somewhere, on those fifteen miles of
mountain roads, it disappeared from the earthly scene.
   The first intimation that all was not well came when a Mr.
Isaiah Roberts, landlord of The Traveller's Joy, rang up the Dinas
Motor Omnibus Co. to ask what had happened to their damn bus.
   "Left here all right," said Ifor. "Two-thirty-five, on the
dot."
   "It's supposed to leave at two-twenty."
   "Who says so?"
   "Your timetable."
   "Don't want to take too much notice of those old timetables,"
Ifor said, reasonably. "Start running punctual and where are you?
People get left behind, isn't it? Very exasperating for one and
all."
   Exasperated is what Mr. Roberts sounded. "But it's over an
hour late, now. And me due in Llangrwl ten minutes ago for a meeting
of the Licensed Victualler's Association."
   Shaken, Ifor Evans was. But not showing it, mind. "Mustn't
expect too much on these Welsh roads, must we now?" he said, very
conciliatory. "Not on the M1, are we?"
   "And what are you going to do about it?" Tendentious, Mr.
Roberts sounded.
   "What do you want me to do? Send out a sheriff's posse, is
it?"
   No sense of humour, that Isaiah. He banged down the receiver.
Very uncivil.
   Dropped the mask, now, Ifor did. "Dai Pugh," he bellowed.
   "Leap on your bicycle and scour the countryside between here and
The Traveller's Joy. The two-twenty to Llangrwl has failed to
complete her mission."
   Paled, did Dai. For the two-twenty carried, for him, a cargo
more precious than jewels. Though Mofydd Owen was, as he feared,
departed out of his life, he still loved her dearly.
   Already, even as with trembling fingers he fastened his trouser
clips, he was seeing her lying in some dreadful ravine, or beset by
robbers, or being whisked off to Emergency Ward 1. But even his
imagination, luckily for him, did not visualise the awful truth- that
Morfyyd Owen was already qualifying for the title of "First Woman to
Enter Space."
   "Where are we going, Mam?" inquired little Cadwallader when
his child mind grasped the fact that the green earth was falling away
at a rate of knots.
   Where indeed? Megan Thomas spoke sharply to the conductor,
demanding an explanation. But nonplussed, the conductor was. A good
man, mind; knew his job. But out of depth in this particular
instance. Fingered his ticket-punch nervously. Peered out of the
window. Went and consulted the driver.
   "Where are we going?" he echoed Cadwallader.
   "Damned if I know, boy," said the driver. "But something
very untoward has happened, if you ask me."
   Immersed in the Dinas Advertiser, was the Rev. Edwards.
Now he put down his paper, folded it, and glanced idly out of the
window.
   Looked again, eyes starting from his head. "God bless my
immortal soul," he cried.
   "Never mind your immortal soul," said Megan Thomas tartly.
"Here we are traversing the heavens at the very moment when we
should be running into Llangrwl bus station. And no one doing the
first thing about it."
   Stung, the conductor was. "What you expect me to do?" he
inquired, bitter. "Radio Flying Control at London Airport, is it?"
   "Mutual recriminations will get us nowhere," boomed the Rev.
Edwards.
   "It's all very well," commented Mr. Hayball from the back
seat. "But Eth and me wanted to be at the Youth Hostel before
dark."
   Morfydd Owen was silent. But she looked down at the
fast-disappearing earth, and it seemed to her that she would never see
her Dai again. And though half an hour ago she had regarded this
possibility with fortitude, it now filled her with dismay. Quietly
she began to weep...
   Dai, meanwhile, was pedalling furiously on the road. Not a sign
of the bus. He passed The Traveller's Joy. At last he caught up
Mr. Roberts, walking very dogged towards Llangrwl.
   "Afternoon, Mr. Roberts," he called, polite, as he shot
past. His spirits were rising. He had seen no sign of an accident.
Therefore Mr. Roberts must have been mistaken. He would find the
bus safe and sound in Llangrwl, and his dear Morfydd quietly having
tea in her own home.
   But disappointment awaited him. A restive queue of people in the
bus station, waiting to be transported to Dinas. And when he went to
Morfydd's house, all he found was Morfydd's mam, working herself up
proper...
   Getting dark, now. The conductor switched on the lights. The
beleaguered passengers peered out of the windows. Little to be seen,
only a few lone stars, and the distant earth brooding in her shroud of
mist. Megan Thomas sat tight-lipped, nursing the sleeping
Cadwallader. Driver and conductor peered ahead into nothingness. On
the back seat Stan Hayball embraced his Eth. Morfydd thought of Dai.
The Rev. Edwards, standing at the front, looked at his forlorn
flock.
   "What about a verse or two of Cwm Rhondda?" he
suggested hopefully.
   They looked at him, sullen. His heart sank. If the Welsh found
the situation too desperate for singing, then the situation, he
realised, must be desperate indeed.
   But suddenly they were roused from their lethargy. Something was
approaching, faster, faster, a tearing hurrying blur that was past and
gone in a moment, followed by a great rush of sound. They waved
frantically. But the jet aircraft was already miles away, swinging
down to the darkening earth.
   
   "It passed me at fifty thousand feet, sir. It was climbing
steadily."
   Group Captain Llewelyn Jones, Officer Commanding R.A.F.
Station, Dinas, looked keenly at the Flying Officer who had burst so
unceremoniously into his office. "And what did it look like,
Broughtons? Some sort of rocket?"
   Flying Officer Broughtons shuffled his feet. "Well, actually,
sir, it looked like- like a bus. A single-decker," he elaborated.
   Daggers, the Group Captain looked. "Broughtons," he said
silkily. "Didn't they teach you at Cranwell that buses are
earth-bound creatures? Aeroplanes fly, Broughtons. Buses crawl."
   Very pale, Broughtons was. But determined. "It was a bus,
sir. They'd got the lights on. There were people inside. Waving."
   Like gimlets, the Station Commander's eyes. "Did you see the
indicator board?"
   "Yes, sir."
   "And what did it say? Mystery Tour?" Oh, very caustic, that
Group Captain.
   But Broughtons stood his ground. "No, sir. It said
Llangrwl."
   Llewelyn Jones sat back in his chair. "I see. So you met a bus
at fifty thousand feet. All lit up. Full of people waving as you
went past." Suddenly he crouched forward. "Broughtons, if I
thought there were anything in Queen's Regulations to cover this, I'd
have you court-martialled. But I know there isn't," he ended sadly.
   "I tried to read the registration number, sir. But it was
getting dark." He waited. But his commanding officer appeared to
have forgotten him. He saluted, and left the presence, very
crestfallen...
   Time passed. The bus climbed, and went quietly into orbit. Time
passed. The Rev. Edwards' pulpit remained empty. And so did the
arms of Dai Pugh. How could they be otherwise, when his beloved was
circling the Poles at three-and-a-quarter-hour intervals, regular as
clockwork?
   Time passed. Everyone said, ~"Pity about Megan Thomas, isn't
it," as though they didn't really think it was a pity at all; as,
indeed, they didn't.
   LOCAL BUS DISAPPEARS
   announced the Dinas Advertiser. But the London papers
ignored the whole affair.
   Ifor Evans reported his loss to the police. But they only
tut-tutted. "Lost a bus, is it. Very careless." That was their
attitude. Now if there'd been a good old accident, they could have
measured up the road and taken an interest. But losing a bus! People
were always losing things. You'd be surprised, they said.
   So it seemed, for a time, that the whole affair would be written
off as one of those unexplained mysteries, like the Marie Celeste.
Then things began to happen...
   But what about the voyagers? you will be asking.
   Well, the Rev. Edwards had taken command. "Our position,"
he said, "is somewhat analogous to that of a castaway on a desert
island. Now what does such a person do? He signals his position by
lighting bonfires or hoisting a flag on a palm tree. And he tries to
ensure a supply of food."
   "Can't go lighting bonfires on this bus," the conductor said
firmly. "Contrary to the Company's Regulations."
   "Of course not," agreed the minister. "No, we have another
way of signalling our position. The driver must sound his horn
continuously."
   Gave him a look, the driver did. "Where you think we are?" he
asked rudely. "Dinas High Street?"
   "Do as I say, driver." Very stern, the reverend gentleman
was.
   So the driver peep-peeped as though he were edging his way
through a herd of cows, instead of hurtling through empty space.
"Thank you," the Rev. Edwards said courteously.
   "Secondly, we must pool and ration our supplies of food, if
any." He looked at Price the Provisions, who was nursing a great
basket. "Now, who has any food?" he asked hopefully.
   Stared back did Price the Provisions, unwinking.
   "Mr. Price, I think you may be able to help us here," said
the Rev. Edwards.
   Price shook his head. "Intended for Plas Newydd, this lot is.
Paid for, too." He folded his arms protectively over the basket.
   Mutinous dog, thought the Rev. Edwards, who hadn't enjoyed
himself so much since reading Treasure Island. "What have you
got in that basket, Price?" he roared.
   Quelled, Mr. Price pulled out a grocery list, pushed his
glasses up on his nose, and began to read. "Six loaves, four pounds
butter, two pounds marge, one tin pineapple, one York ham."
   "Then we are saved," cried the Rev. Edwards.
   Shyly, Morfydd Owen produced a block of chocolate.
# 21
<432 TEXT M5>
ALLAMAGOOSA
Eric Frank Russell
   This is a story of a space-ship commander who faces an inspection
by an Inspector of Stores- and the Inspector is a Rear-Admiral who
cannot bear the thought of a space-ship that is short of even the most
minute item of equipment. The commander discovers he is short of an
'4offog'. That is bad enough. But he himself doesn't know what
an '4offog' is!
   
   IT was a long time since the Bustler had been so silent.
She lay in the Sirian spaceport, her tubes cold, her shell
particle-scarred, her air that of a long-distance runner exhausted at
the end of a marathon. There was good reason for this: she had
returned from a lengthy trip by no means devoid of troubles.
   Now, in port, well-deserved rest had been gained if only
temporarily. Peace, sweet peace. No more bothers, no more crises, no
more major upsets, no more dire predicaments such as crop up in free
flight at least twice a day. Just peace.
   Hah!
   Captain McNaught reposed in his cabin, feet up on desk, and
enjoyed the relaxation to the utmost. The engines were dead, their
hellish pounding absent for the first time in months. Out there in
the big city four hundred of his crew were making whoopee under a
brilliant sun. This evening, when First Officer Gregory returned to
take charge, he was going to go into the fragrant twilight to make the
rounds of neon-lit civilization.
   That was the beauty of making landfall at long last. Men could
give way to themselves, blow off surplus steam, each according to his
fashion. No duties, no worries, no dangers, no responsibilities in
spaceport. A haven of safety and comfort for tired rovers.
   Again, Hah!
   Burman, the chief radio officer, entered the cabin. He was one
of the half-dozen remaining on duty and bore the expression of a man
who can think of twenty better things to do.
   'Relayed signal just come in sir.' Handing the paper across
he waited for the other to look at it and perhaps dictate a reply.
   Taking the sheet McNaught removed the feet from his desk, sat
erect and read the message aloud.
<BEGIN QUOTATION>
   Terran Headquarters to Bustler. Remain Siriport pending
further orders. Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy due there seventeenth.
Feldman. Navy Op. Command. Sirisec.
<END QUOTATION>
   He looked up, all happiness gone from his leathery features.
'Oh, Lord!' he groaned.
   'Something wrong?' asked Burman, vaguely alarmed.
   McNaught pointed at three thin books on his desk. 'The middle
one. Page twenty.'
   Leafing through it, Burman found an item that said:
<BEGIN QUOTATION>
   Vane W. Cassidy, R-Ad. Head Inspector Ships and Stores.
<END QUOTATION>
   Burman swallowed hard. 'Does that mean- ?'
   'Yes, it does,' said McNaught without pleasure. 'Back to
training-college and all its rigmarole. Paint and soap, spit and
polish.' He put on an officious expression, adopted a voice to
match it. 'Captain, you have only seven-ninety-nine emergency
rations. Your allocation is eight hundred. Nothing in your logbook
accounts for the missing one. Where is it? What happened to it? How
is it that one of the men's kit lacks an officially-issued pair of
suspenders? Did you report his loss?'
   'Why does he pick on us?' asked Burman, appalled. 'He's
never chivvied us before.'
   'That's why,' informed McNaught, scowling at the wall. 'It's
our turn to be stretched across the barrel.' His gaze found the
calendar. 'We have three days- and we'll need 'em! Tell Second
Officer Pike to come here at once.'
   Burman departed gloomily. In a short time Pike entered. His
face reaffirmed the old adage that bad news travels fast.
   'Make out an indent,' ordered McNaught, 'for one hundred
gallons of plastic paint, Navy-grey, approved quality. Make out
another for thirty gallons of interior white enamel. Take them to
spaceport stores right away. Tell them to deliver by six this evening
along with our correct issue of brushes and sprayers. Grab up any
cleaning material that's going for free.'
   'The men won't like this,' remarked Pike feebly.
   'They're going to love it,' McNaught asserted. 'A bright and
shiny ship, all spic and span, is good for morale. It says so in the
book. Get moving and put those indents in. When you come back, find
the stores and equipment sheets and bring them here. We've got to
check stocks before Cassidy arrives. Once he's here we'll have no
chance to make up shortages or smuggle out any extra items we happened
to find on our hands.'
   'Very well, sir.' Pike went out wearing the same expression
as Burman's.
   Lying back in his chair McNaught muttered to himself. There was
a feeling in his bones that something was sure to cause a last minute
ruckus.
   A shortage on any item would be serious enough unless covered by
a previous report. A surplus would be bad, very bad. The former
implied carelessness or misfortune. The latter suggested barefaced
theft of government property in circumstances condoned by the
commander.
   For instance, there was the recent case of Williams of the heavy
cruiser Swift. He'd heard of it over the spacevine when out
around Bootes. Williams had been found in unwitting command of eleven
reels of electric-fence wire when his official issue was ten. It had
taken a court-martial to decide that the extra reel- which had
formidable barter-value on a certain planet- had not been stolen from
space-stores or, in sailor jargon, '4teleportated aboard'. But
Williams had been reprimanded. And that did not help promotion.
   He was still rumbling discontentedly when Pike returned bearing a
folder of foolscap sheets.
   'Going to start right away, sir?'
   'We'll have to.' He heaved himself erect, mentally bidded
<SIC> good-bye to time off and a taste of the bright lights.
'It'll take long enough to work right through from bow to tail. I'll
leave the men's kit inspections to the last.'
   Marching out of the cabin, he set forth towards the bow, Pike
following with broody reluctance.
   As they passed the open main-lock Peaslake observed them, bounded
eagerly up the gangway and joined behind. A pukka member of the crew,
he was a large dog whose ancestors had been more enthusiastic than
selective. He wore with pride a big collar inscribed: Peaslake-
Property of S.S. Bustler. His chief duties, ably performed,
were to keep alien rodents off the ship and, on rare occasions, smell
out dangers not visible to human eyes.
   The three paraded forward, McNaught and Pike in the manner of men
grimly sacrificing pleasure for the sake of duty, Peaslake with the
panting willingness of one ready for any new game no matter what.
   Reaching the bow-cabin, McNaught dumped himself in the pilot's
seat, took the folder from the other. 'You know this stuff better
than me- the chart room is where I shine. So I'll read them out
while you look them over.' He opened the folder, started on the
front page. 'K1. Beam Compass, type D, one of.'
   'Check,' said Pike. 'K2. Distance and direction indicator,
electronic type JJ, one of.'
   'Check.'
   Peaslake planted his head in McNaught's lap, blinked soulfully
and whined. He was beginning to get the others' viewpoint. This
tedious itemizing and checking was a hell of a game. McNaught
consolingly lowered a hand and played with Peaslake's ears while he
ploughed his way down the list.
   'K187. Foam rubber cushions, pilot and co-pilot, one pair.'
   'Check.'
   By the time First Officer Gregory appeared they had reached the
tiny intercom-cubby and poked around it in semi-darkness. Peaslake
had long departed in disgust. 'M24. Spare minispeakers, three-inch
type T2, one set of six.'
   'Check.'
   Looking in, Gregory popped his eyes and said, 'What the devil
is going on?'
   'Major inspection due soon.' McNaught glanced at his watch.
'Go see if stores has delivered a load and if not why not. Then
you'd better give me a hand and let Pike take a few hours off.'
   'Does this mean land-leave is cancelled?'
   'You bet it does- until after Hizonner has been and gone.'
He glanced at Pike. 'When you get into the city search around and
send back any of the crew you can find. No arguments or excuses.
It's an order.'
   Pike registered unhappiness. Gregory glowered at him, went away,
came back and said, 'Stores will have the stuff here in twenty
minutes' time.' With bad grace he watched Pike depart.
   'M47. Intercom cable, woven-wire protected, three drums.'
   'Check,' said Gregory, mentally kicking himself for returning
at the wrong time.
   The task continued until late in the evening, was resumed early
next morning. By that time three-quarters of the men were hard at
work inside and outside the vessel, doing their jobs as though
sentenced to them for crimes contemplated but not yet committed.
   Moving around the ship's corridors and catwalks had to be done
crab-fashion, with a nervous sidewise edging. Once again it was being
demonstrated that the Terran life-form suffers from 5ye fear of
5wette 5paynt. The first smearer would have ten years willed off
his unfortunate life.
   It was in these conditions, in mid-afternoon of the second day,
that McNaught's bones proved their feelings had been prophetic.
   He recited the ninth page while Jean Blanchard confirmed the
presence and actual existence of all items enumerated. Two-thirds of
the way down they hit the rocks, metaphorically speaking, and
commenced to sink fast.
   McNaught said boredly, 'V197. Drinking-bowl, enamel, one
of.' '3Is zis,' said Blanchard, tapping it. 'V198.
4Offog, one.'
   'Quoi?' asked Blanchard, staring.
   'V198. 4Offog, one,' repeated McNaught. 'Well, why are
you looking thunderstruck? This is the ship's galley. You're the
head cook. You know what's supposed to be in the galley, don't you?
Where's this 4offog?'
   '3Never hear of heem,' said Blanchard, flatly.
   'You must have done. It's on this equipment-sheet in plain,
clear type. 4Offog, one, it says. It was here when we were
fitted-out four years ago. We checked it ourselves and signed for
it.'
   '3I signed for nossings called offog,' Blanchard denied.
'3In zee cuisine zere is no such sing.'
   'Look!' McNaught scowled and showed him the sheet.
   Blanchard looked and sniffed disdainfully. '3I have here zee
electronic oven, one of. I have jacketed boilers, graduated
capacities, one set. I have bain marie pans, seex of. But no offog.
Never heard of heem. I do not know of heem.' He spread his
hands and shrugged. '3No offog.'
   'There's got to be,' McNaught insisted. 'What's more, when
Cassidy arrives there'll be hell to pay if there isn't.'
   '3You find heem,' Blanchard suggested.
   'You got a certificate from the International Hotels School of
Cookery. You got a certificate from the Cordon Bleu College of
Cuisine. You got a certificate with three credits from the Space-Navy
Feeding Centre,' McNaught pointed out. 'All that- and you don't
know what an 4offog is.'
   'Nom d'un chien!' ejaculated Blanchard, waving his
arms around. '3I tell you ten t'ousand time zere is no offog.
Zere never was an offog. Escoffier heemself could not find zee offog
of vich zere is none. Am I a magician perhaps?'
   'It's part of the culinary equipment,' McNaught maintained.
'It must be because it's on page nine. And page nine means its
proper home is in the galley, care of the head cook.'
   '3Like hail it does,' Blanchard retorted. He pointed at a
metal box on the wall. '3Intercom booster. Is zat mine?'
   McNaught thought it over, conceded, 'No, it's Burman's. His
stuff rambles all over the ship.'
   '3Zen ask him for zis offog,' said Blanchard,
triumphantly.
   'I will. If it's not yours it must be his. Let's finish this
checking first.' His eyes sought the list. 'V199. Inscribed
collar, leather, brass studded, dog, for the use of. No need to look
for that. I saw it myself five minutes ago.' He ticked the item,
continued, 'V11. Sleeping basket, woven reed, one of.'
   '3Is zis,' said Blanchard, kicking it into a corner.
   'V111. Cushion, foam rubber, to fit sleeping basket, one
of.'
   'Half of,' Blanchard contradicted. '3In four years he have
chewed away other half.'
   'Maybe Cassidy will let us indent for a new one.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 24
<433 TEXT M6>
   The Captives were painful to look on. All had some kind of
deformity. One had no legs. One had no flesh on his lower jaw. One
had four gnarled dwarf arms. One had short wings of flesh connecting
ear lobes and thumbs, so that he lived perpetually with hands half
raised to his face. One had boneless arms trailing at his side and
one boneless leg. One had monstrous wings which trailed about him
like a carpet. One was hiding his ill-shaped form away behind a
screen of his own excrement, smearing it onto the transparent walls of
his cell. And one had a second head, a small wizened thing growing
from the first that fixed Lily-yo with a malevolent eye. This last
Captive, who seemed to lead the others, spoke now, using the mouth of
his main head.
   'I am the Chief Captive. I greet you. You are of the Heavy
World. We are of the True World. Now you join us because you are of
us. Though your wings and your scars are new, you may join us.'
   'I am Lily-yo. We three are humans. You are only flymen. We
will not join you.'
   The Captives grunted in boredom. The Chief Captive spoke again.
   'Always this talk from you of the Heavy World! You have
joined us. You are flymen, we are human. You know little, we know
much.'
   'But we-'
   'Stop your stupid talk, woman!'
   'We are-'
   'Be silent, woman, and listen,' Band Appa Bondi said.
   'We know much,' repeated the Chief Captive. 'Some things we
will tell you. All who make the journey from the Heavy World become
changed. Some die. Most live and grow wings. Between the worlds are
many strong rays, not seen or felt, which change our bodies. When you
come here, when you come to the True World, you become a true human.
The grub of the tigerfly is not a tigerfly until it changes. So
humans change.'
   'I cannot know what he says,' Haris said stubbornly, throwing
himself down. But Lily-yo and Flor were listening.
   'To this True World, as you call it, we come to die,' Lily-yo
said, doubtingly.
   The Captive with the fleshless jaw said, 'The grub of the
tigerfly thinks it dies when it changes into a tigerfly.'
   'You are still young,' said the Chief Captive. 'You begin
newly here. Where are your souls?'
   Lily-yo and Flor looked at each other. In their flight from the
4wiltmilt they had heedlessly thrown down their souls. Haris had
trampled on his. It was unthinkable!
   'You see. You needed them no more. You are still young. You
may be able to have babies. Some of those babies may be born with
wings.'
   The Captive with the boneless arms added, 'Some may be born
wrong, as we are. Some may be born right.'
   'You are too foul to live!' Haris growled. 'Why are you not
killed?'
   'Because we know all things,' the Chief Captive said.
Suddenly his second head roused itself and declared, 'To be a good
shape is not all in life. To know is also good. Because we cannot
move well we can- think. This tribe of the True World is good
and knows these things. So it lets us rule it.'
   Flor and Lily-yo muttered together.
   'Do you say that you poor Captives rule the True World?'
Lily-yo asked at last.
   'We do.'
   'Then why are you captives?'
   The flyman with ear lobes and thumbs connected, making his
perpetual little gesture of protest, spoke for the first time.
   'To rule is to serve, woman. Those who bear power are slaves to
it. Only an outcast is free. Because we are Captives, we have the
time to talk and think and plan and know. Those who know command the
knives of others.'
   'No hurt will come to you, Lily-yo,' Band Appa Bondi added.
'You will live among us and enjoy your life free from harm.'
   'No!' the Chief Captive said with both mouths. 'Before she
can enjoy, Lily-yo and her companion Flor- this other man creature is
plainly useless- must help our great plan.'
   'The invasion?' Bondi asked.
   'What else? Flor and Lily-yo, you arrive here at a good time.
Memories of the Heavy World and its savage life are still fresh in
you. We need such memories. So we ask you to go back there on a
great plan we have.'
   'Go back?' gasped Flor.
   'Yes. We plan to attack the Heavy World. You must help to lead
our force.'
=6
   The long afternoon of eternity wore on, that long golden road
of an afternoon that would somewhere lead to everlasting night.
Motion there was, but motion without event- except for those
negligible events that seemed so large to the creatures participating
in them.
   For Lily-yo, Flor and Haris there were many events. Chief of
these was that they learned to fly properly.
   The pains associated with their wings soon died away as the
wonderful new flesh and tendon strengthened. To sail up in the light
gravity became an increasing delight- the ugly flopping movements of
flymen on the Heavy World had no place here.
   They learned to fly in packs, and then to hunt in packs. In time
they were trained to carry out the Captives' plan.
   The series of accidents that had first delivered humans to this
world in burnurns had been a fortunate one, growing more fortunate as
millennia tolled away. For gradually the humans adapted better to the
True World. Their survival factor became greater, their power surer.
And all this as on the Heavy World conditions grew more and more
adverse to anything but the giant vegetables.
   Lily-yo at least was quick to see how much easier life was in
these new conditions. She sat with Flor and a dozen others eating
pulped 4pluggyrugg, before they did the Captives' bidding and left
for the Heavy World.
   It was hard to express all she felt.
   'Here we are safe,' she said, indicating the whole green land
that sweltered under the silver network of webs.
   'Except from the tigerflies,' Flor agreed.
   They rested on a bare peak, where the air was thin and even the
giant creepers had not climbed. The turbulent green stretched away
below them, almost as if they were on Earth- although here it was
continually checked by the circular formations of rock.
   'This world is smaller,' Lily-yo said, trying again to make
Flor know what was in her head. 'Here we are much bigger. We do not
need to fight so much.'
   'Soon we must fight.'
   'Then we can come back here again. This is a good place, with
nothing so savage and with not so many enemies. Here the groups could
live without so much fear. Veggy and Toy and May and Gren and the
other little ones would like it here.'
   'They would miss the trees.'
   'We shall soon miss the trees no longer. We have wings
instead.'
   This idle talk took place beneath the unmoving shadow of a rock.
Overhead, silver blobs against a purple sky, the transversers went,
walking their networks, descending only occasionally to the 4celeries
far below. As Lily-yo fell to watching these creatures, she thought
in her mind of the grand plan the Captives had hatched, she flicked it
over in a series of vivid pictures.
   Yes, the Captives knew. They could see ahead as she could not.
She and those about her had lived like plants, doing what came. The
Captives were not plants. From their cells they saw more than those
outside.
   This, the Captives saw: that the few humans who reached the True
World bore few children, because they were old, or because the rays
that made their wings grow made their seeds die: that it was good
here, and would be better still with more humans; that one way to get
more humans here was to bring babies and children from the Heavy
World.
   For countless time, this had been done. Brave flymen had
travelled back to that other world and stolen children. The flymen
who had once attacked Lily-yo's group on their climb to the Tips had
been on that mission. They had taken Bain to bring her to the True
World in burnurns- and had not been heard of since.
   Many perils and mischances lay in that long double journey. Of
those who set out, few returned.
   Now the Captives had thought of a better and more daring scheme.
   'Here comes a traverser,' Band Appa Bondi said. 'Let us be
ready to move.'
   He walked before the pack of twelve flyers who had been chosen
for this new attempt. He was the leader. Lily-yo, Flo and Haris were
in support of him, together with eight others, three male, five
female. Only one of them, Band Appa Bondi himself, had been carried
to the True World as a boy.
   Slowly the pack stood up, stretching their wings. The moment for
their great adventure was here. Yet they felt little fear; they could
not look ahead as the Captives did, except perhaps for Band Appa Bondi
and Lily-yo. She strengthened her will by saying, 'It is the
way.' Then they all spread their arms wide and soared off to meet
the traverser.
   
   The traverser had eaten.
   It had caught one of its most tasty enemies, a tigerfly, in a
web, and had sucked it till only a shell was left. Now it sank down
into a bed of 4celeries, crushing them under its great bulk. Gently,
it began to bud. Afterwards, it would head out for the great black
gulfs, where heat and radiance called it. It had been born on this
world. Being young, it had never yet made that dreaded, desired
journey.
   Its buds burst up from its back, hung over, popped, fell to the
ground, and scurried away to bury themselves in the pulp and dirt
where they might begin their ten thousand years' growth in peace.
   Young though it was, the traverser was sick. It did not know
this. The enemy tigerfly had been at it, but it did not know this.
Its vast bulk held little sensation.
   The twelve humans glided down and landed on its back, low down on
the abdomen in a position hidden from the creature's cluster of eyes.
They sank among the tough shoulder-high fibres that served the
traverser as hair, and looked about them. A ray-plane swooped
overhead and disappeared. A trio of tumbleweeds skittered into the
fibres and were seen no more. All was as quiet as if they lay on a
small deserted hill.
   At length they spread out and moved along in a line, heads down,
eyes searching, Band Appa Bondi at one end, Lily-yo at the other. The
great body was streaked and pitted and scarred, so that progress down
the slope was not easy. The fibre grew in patterns of different
shades, green, yellow, black, breaking up the traverser's bulk when
seen from the air, serving it as natural camouflage. In many places,
tough parasitic plants had rooted themselves, drawing their
nourishment entirely from their host; most of them would die when the
traverser launched itself out between worlds.
   The humans worked hard. Once they were thrown flat when the
traverser changed position. As the slope down which they moved grew
steeper, so progress became more slow.
   'Here!' cried Y Coyin, one of the women.
   At last they had found what they sought, what the Captives sent
them to seek.
   Clustering round Y Coyin with their knives out, the pack looked
down.
   Here the fibres had been neatly champed away in swathes, leaving
a bare patch as far across as a human was long. In this patch was a
round scab. Lily-yo felt it. It was immensely hard.
   Lo Jint put his ear to it. Silence.
   They looked at each other.
   No signal was needed, none given.
   Together they knelt, prising with their knives round the scab.
Once the traverser moved, and they threw themselves flat.
# 2
<END>
<434 TEXT N1>
   Alastair was a bachelor. All his life he had been inclined to
regard women as something which must necessarily be subordinated to
his career. Now he realised that he was entrusting not only his own
life, but Geoffrey's as well, to a strange girl whom he had never met
and on whom after no more than a couple of telephone calls he was
prepared to place complete reliance. It was a novel experience.
Alastair was quite unable to explain why he should feel so much
confidence in her.
   Once again she checked back her instructions. It was obvious
that she did not fail to appreciate the faith which he was placing in
her and was prepared to accept the responsibility.
   "Good luck, Air Marshal," she said gently. "I'll be waiting
for you at the Hotel Roma at six this evening- and I shall look
forward to meeting you both at midnight." They might have been
arranging a supper party. Then she rang off. Alastair admitted that
never in a not altogether uneventful life had he come across a girl
who sounded so charming and appeared to be so efficient.
   He looked forward to meeting her.
Chapter Ten
   It was a perfect moonlight night; there appeared to be no cloud
over the whole of Europe. From a height of 5, feet northern Italy
strikingly resembled the great relief map which covers the floor of
the southern Europe briefing room at NATO headquarters.
   Seated beside Alastair, lulled by the uncanny silence of
supersonic flight, Geoffrey could imagine himself in one of the upper
galleries. For some reason the orderlies had forgotten to switch on
the lights; there was no colour- physical features were
distinguishable solely by gradations of silvery greyness. Even the
snow-capped summit of Mont Blanc, seven miles below, was not
recognisable among the host of lower peaks.
   The screen of the air-to-air radar glowed. Occasionally minute
spots flickered across its surface, but there was no permanent image.
The sky seemed to be deserted.
   Alastair leant across and pressed a switch. A tiny red light
sprang into life, only to fade as the screen of the second radar
scanner came into operation. This was the ground definition unit.
Although Geoffrey had relatively little experience of interpreting
radar pictures, he was able to recognise the land beneath him. In the
exceptional clarity he was even able to make a direct comparison
between the radar image and the ground itself. Ahead lay the Plain of
Lombardy; to the right, Turin; to the left, Milan.
   The directional angle of the scanner could be adjusted to cover
any particular area within its range. Geoffrey turned the scale
slowly to cover the ground immediately ahead. He was able to pick out
towns, unrecognisable to the naked eye, obscured by the ground haze
which even on the clearest night limited angular vision.
   He glanced at the speed recorder. It seemed almost incredible
that the tiny white figure of 8.5 against which the needle was resting
could really mean hundreds of knots. They were flying at more than
975 miles an hour, or nearly Mach 1.3 to use the modern jargon.
Thanks to the massive cooling plant there was no suggestion of
excessive heat.
   Suddenly the nature of the silence changed. During the fifty-odd
minutes since they had left Boscombe Down, Geoffrey had become so
accustomed to the unbroken note of the great engines that they were no
longer audible. Now, as Alastair reduced the thrust, the pitch
changed as the nose of the aircraft dipped slightly. The needle of
the speed recorder swung gently through 8., 7., 6. before coming to
rest at 5..
   "We're a bit ahead of time," said Alastair. "We'll run in on
minimum engine power."
   Geoffrey smiled. Alastair talked of running in when they were
still more than four hundred miles from their destination.
   They were nearing Modena. Geoffrey focused the radar scanner on
the bridge over the Po, barely forty miles to port. He was able to
trace the course of the river; he thought he could recognise the route
of N12, along which he had motored so desperately little more than
twenty-four hours earlier. Since then he had flown to England,
attended the vital conference in Bruce Denton's office, been whisked
by special helicopter from the Horse Guards Parade to Boscombe Down,
slept for six blessed refreshing hours and had now completed
two-thirds of the journey back to the place where every indication
pointed to Eve being held.
   Geoffrey set himself to consider the movements of the Bentley.
It had passed him at the temporary bridge over the Tartaro at a few
minutes past ten on the previous night. He worked out the distance on
the presumption that its route had been through Florence and Rome and
then across Italy via Foggia to Barletta. It came to just over six
hundred miles.
   Provided they did not stop (and with Eve unconscious- or worse-
they would be anxious to avoid attracting attention), and if they
drove as fast as the roads would permit, they could not hope to reach
Barletta before midday. Magnificent as was the performance of the
Bentley, Geoffrey doubted whether on the route they had chosen,
involving a double crossing of the Apennines- once at Raticosa over
the Futa Pass and once again near Campobasso- anyone could maintain
the average of forty miles an hour which would be necessary. Far more
probable that they would travel more leisurely.
   Of course they could have bound and gagged her; and provided no
one examined what was hidden under the rug, they might get by. But
they could hardly leave her in the car while they rested. No, he
concluded, the probability was that they would drive continuously,
only stopping for fuel and perhaps to purchase snacks of food and
drink. They might not reach Foggia until late at night; it was even
conceivable he would arrive before them.
   Geoffrey forced himself to consider another possible alternative.
Eve might be dead. If so, why had they troubled to bring her body
all the way from Trento? There were a hundred places between Trento
and the Po where they could have dumped her body without fear of it
being prematurely discovered. He had used one of them himself to
dispose of Stefano and Pietro. He determined to act on the assumption
that Eve was alive.
   He tried to imagine what the Italians would do next. Their final
objective could only be to deliver Eve to Herring's headquarters,
which in the light of the information he had gleaned at the morning's
conference and of Gloria Falcon's story appeared to be somewhere in
the Gargano Massif. Of course he was assuming that the man
responsible for the aircraft, for Peter Lambert's injuries and for the
abduction of Eve was one and the same person- in fact, Herring.
   Nothing was certain. All the deductions on which he was planning
might be false. The men who had captured Eve might have taken her
anywhere but to Barletta, but to speculate on the innumerable
alternatives was to invite confusion. Far better to adhere to the one
course which in the light of his present knowledge seemed most
probable, while at the same time keeping keenly alert for any
additional information which might prove to be of help.
   Gloria Falcon was the key to the whole operation. On what she
could report of her conversation with Peter Lambert depended ultimate
success. Geoffrey had had no contact with her but Alastair seemed to
have developed a tremendous admiration for her intelligence.
   During the earlier part of their flight from Boscombe Down he had
repeated the gist of his third conversation with her.
   Gloria had been waiting at the Hotel Roma when punctually at 6
the call from Alastair came through. He found that she had done all
and more than he had asked of her. She had managed to get hold of a
Lancia Rapido- just the car for the job: fast and at the same time
with a first-class performance over rough going. She had examined
every inch of the runway and found it quite serviceable, although, as
Alastair had feared, the whole landing area was obstructed by grazing
cattle. Gloria had visited the farmer, told him that a high-level
inspecting officer from the Italian Ministry of Aviation was proposing
to land on the strip during the night and that it was as much as his
life was worth to allow his cattle to be the cause of an accident.
   Gloria had laughed when she told him how she had accounted for
the impending visit of the official from the Ministry.
   "I hinted," she said, "that he and I were having an affaire
and only by making this desperate landing at night could he avoid the
suspicions of his wife. Every Italian is a romantic. He promised
that nothing should be allowed to increase the danger of our
meeting."
   Gloria emphasised that even a slight mishap would draw attention
to him being in the district and would be disastrous not only for her
but for his career, and, she added significantly, for those
responsible for obstructing the runway.
   Within an hour the strip was completely clear; a horde of the
farmer's family and all his workpeople hastened to remove not only the
cattle but every trace of their presence. Gloria admitted that she
had not intended to initiate quite so much activity, but once she had
told her story there was no way of going back on it.
   "I have arranged," concluded Alastair, "for her to have the
car at the point where the =14-kilometre stone track meets the
runway. It is about a hundred yards from the southern end; so that if
all goes well we shall come to a stop quite near her."
   Geoffrey was impressed by the efficiency with which Alastair
managed to surround himself. In his Service he was known to be
ruthless to incompetence, but he seldom had any difficulty in
recruiting precisely the staff he needed. He possessed the strange
gift of leadership which enabled him to imbue even an unknown film
actress with all the qualities of efficiency and decision which he
took as a matter of course among his own officers. Geoffrey
remembered that a famous field marshal, inclined to pontificate, had
once stated that a headquarters staff reflected the quality of its
commander. It certainly seemed to apply to Alastair.
   Now the N.F.E. 67 was losing height more rapidly.
Alastair had decided to make the final approach to the airstrip at a
very low level over the sea. He crossed the coast a few miles south
of Ancona and almost immediately made a steep turn to starboard. Now
he was flying at less than a hundred feet, about five miles off the
coast.
   "I bet the radar boys are worried," he laughed. "They'll
have lost us by now and will be wondering where we've got to."
   Geoffrey glanced at his watch; it was eighteen minutes to
midnight; just one hundred and seven minutes since they had left
Boscombe Down.
   "We'll land in five minutes," Alastair announced. "I'd like
you to be as quick as you can. Chuck your flying kit into the back of
the aircraft and I'll get weaving. The sooner I can show up on their
radar screens the better. This is a very hush-hush job and we don't
want to create alarm and despondency by giving them the idea that I've
skipped with it to the wrong side of the Curtain. If they spotted us
flying due east over Ancona, it might give them ideas."
   The landing was easier than either of them had dared to hope.
The old landing strip, perhaps helped by the spring-cleaning which it
had undergone during the afternoon, shone like black glass in the
moonlight. Alastair came in very fast, but within less than half a
mile the machine rolled to a halt. He cut the engines and flung open
the canopy.
# 2
<435 TEXT N2>
CHAPTER =16
   DARKNESS had descended like a curtain by the time they docked
at Belleray. And though Guy, made nervous by Beryl's silence, drove
at reckless speed to the Villa, it was quickly evident that the party
was over.
   Piers came strolling out to meet the Deanes, and as soon as Guy
had driven away, invited them casually to come to his flat for a
drink.
   To Beryl, at least, this was anti-climax with a vengeance. She
had expected to be met with violent reproaches- and here he was bland
and smiling.
   But it did not take her long to realise that his mood was less
pleasant than appeared on the surface.
   He told her nonchalantly, as he led the way to his own veranda,
that he had taken the liberty of asking Jack- as a representative of
the Vallin family- to come over and make the presentation in her
stead.
   "I caught him just as he was going to the airport to meet
Blanche," he said. "As a matter of fact I'd asked him last night
to deputise for me and fetch her. He brought her to the party too.
They're both here."
   "I didn't know she was coming back from Barbados so soon."
Beryl said the first thing that came into her head.
   "Oh, she was due!" And then he added in the same casual tone,
"She's not returning to her family. She's going to live with
friends of the bank manager, just this side of Belleray." Mrs.
Deane made a suitable comment, but Beryl said nothing. She was trying
to sort things out in her mind. That beneath his unnaturally smooth
exterior Piers was simmering with anger against her she had no doubt.
But hadn't she cause for anger too? Had he acted within his rights
in inviting Jack Vallin to act on her behalf, in having Blanche
there- not doing the honours, perhaps, but as the only white woman of
position?
   Be this as it might, she must on no account show resentment now,
and she greeted Jack and Blanche with friendly courtesy, thanking Jack
warmly for coming to the rescue, and explaining as best she could how
it was that she had been obliged to miss the celebrations.
   Jack and Blanche were quick to sympathise, and to express their
disgust at Sir John's abominable treatment of his guests. But Piers
remained aloof, and when Beryl suggested having a second party, the
following week, he poured cold water on the project.
   Everyone, he declared, had had a thoroughly good time, and it
would take them nearly to next week to settle down again. Meanwhile
Hubert would have betaken himself and his well-earned gratuity to his
native village at the north of the island. It was all over and done
with.
   
   For the time being Beryl was content to let it go at that, but
she resolved to have it out with Piers when a reasonable opportunity
presented itself.
   He must learn that he could not treat her with injustice and
contempt, ignoring her explanations as though he were a schoolmaster
and she a small, ignorant child.
   He gave her no chance of any private conversation that evening,
for when Blanche and Jack left, he went with them. But next morning
she insisted on his taking her out in the jeep- to find, if possible,
Hubert and his relations, and tell them of her great disappointment at
being held up in Balicou.
   With an air of resignation he sent Judy, his Boxer, to the back,
and made room for her beside him.
   "Is that all you want to do?" he asked, letting in the clutch.
   "No; I want to make you understand just what happened about this
Balicou trip," she returned coldly. "I'm a little tired of being
treated like an ineffective imbecile."
   "And I'm heartily sick of being constantly called to account
for my manners," he retorted. "What have I done wrong now? I
cover up for you the best way I can by getting hold of Jack to make
the presentation, I run the damned party to the best of my ability-
saying the sugary things you ought to have been there to say- and all
you can do is to find fault."
   "It's your superior attitude that riles me." Beryl was
scarlet with annoyance. "How I happened to be marooned at Balicou
doesn't interest you in the faintest degree. You look as though it
was only what you expected of me, as though I didn't care a hoot about
letting Hubert and his pals down."
   "As your employee it's not my business to understand all the
whys and wherefores of your actions," he said stiffly. "Still less
to criticise you."
   "Oh, drop that nonsense, Piers! Be yourself," she exclaimed,
with mounting exasperation.
   "Very well!" He brought the jeep to a standstill in a rough
path fringed and shaded by citrus trees. "If you want my true
opinion I'll give it. You made some sort of a protest to Graybury.
I'll give you credit for that. But you didn't press the matter
because, very naturally, you were thoroughly enjoying Forrest's
company in idyllic surroundings."
   "How dare you say such a thing?" she blazed.
   "For goodness' sake show a glimmer of reason," was his equally
indignant rejoinder. "One minute you order me to behave like your
secretary, the next like an uninhibited human being." And then he
added caustically, "I've only to mention Forrest's name to put you
in a temper. Why not admit that you're in love with the fellow and
have done with it?"
   "Because I'm not," she snapped.
   "You expect me to believe that?" There was open mockery in
his tone. "You'll be telling me next that you spent all those hours
together on Balicou without his kissing you."
   She caught her breath.
   "Of all the caddish things to say!"
   "Nonsense. If I'd been in his place I'd have kissed you
myself- good and hard, as I'm tempted to now."
   "You talk as though we were alone on Balicou!" She avoided
his gaze, and tried to ignore that last impertinent remark.
   "With four other people-"
   "Whom you never once managed to circumvent." The mockery in
his voice had deepened. "With all due deference, Miss Deane- come
off it!"
   She met his eyes then.
   "Very well," she said coolly. "We were alone together for an
hour or two, the first afternoon. And he did kiss me. But if you
think I acquiesced in the delay because I wanted his company- well,
you're misjudging me badly."
   "You mean that!" His expression had changed. "It wasn't on
his account at all that you allowed Sir John to get away with this-
this Hitlerish behaviour."
   She wavered, and at last said slowly, "If you must drag the
truth out of me, I must ask you to regard it as confidential."
   "My dear Beryl, don't tell me anything, if you'd rather not."
He was clearly startled by her words. "But remember, it was you,
not I, who started this conversation."
   "I know. Absurd as it may seem, I didn't want you to think
badly of me." She turned away from him to fondle Judy, who, sensing
something amiss, was nudging her in the endeavour to gain her
attention. "The truth is that if I had absolutely insisted on
sailing at the time originally arranged, Sir John would have had it in
for Guy. You see, it was, apparently, through a mistake on Guy's part
that we missed seeing the flamingoes our first morning on the
island."
   "What harm could possibly have come to Forrest through Sir
John's nonsense?" Piers could hardly have spoken with more
contempt. "A bully like that respects anyone who dares to stand up
to him."
   Beryl tried to suppress the thought that this was precisely the
remark she had made to Guy. She said icily, "As you pride yourself
on your knowledge of all the affairs of the island I needn't tell you
that Sir John Graybury is one of Mr. Hewson's most important
customers."
   "So what? You're not trying to say that Hewson would victimise
Forrest for behaving with ordinary moral courage! He's quite capable
of telling Sir John to take himself and his business to an
unmentionable destination."
   "There's a difference between what a senior and a junior partner
can do," was her quick reply.
   "What they can bring off! I'll admit that. But Forrest might
at least have tried. He's pretty spineless!"
   "You think you could have carried more weight with Sir John?"
she enquired cuttingly. "For all your good opinion of yourself, I
doubt it. He's about as easy to push around as- as a grounded
whale!"
   He had to smile at that, but went on airily, "I'd have made an
attempt to show my lady-love that I put her interests before my own.
I wouldn't have cared to risk her thinking me a selfish weakling."
   The barb hurt cruelly. For in her heart of hearts Beryl had
resented Guy's apparent indifference to her dilemma- had come near,
indeed, to despising him.
   But her soreness merely increased her anger with Piers.
   "Was it studying my interests to bring your girl friend to my
party for the labourers?" she demanded. "To have her act as
hostess in my absence?"
   He looked at her, not wrathfully now, but quizzically.
   "My girl friend, as you call her, remained as much in the
background as even you could wish." He patted the Boxer's huge
head. "Judy, here, was more forthcoming. In fact, she trotted
round, obviously trying to make everyone feel at home, gazing
reproachfully at the few timid ones who bolted."
   She was tempted to laugh, but it was as though that barb still
stuck in her quivering flesh.
   "You've an answer- of sorts- for everything," she said
shortly. "Personally I've no more to say, so I suggest we get
along."
   To her great relief they arrived at the cluster of little houses
where Hubert had been living to find the old man stowing in leisurely
fashion his few possessions into a ramshackle and incredibly ancient
car, surrounded by innumerable friends and relatives. Their air of
smiling somnolence showed them to have been guests at yesterday's
celebrations, and their friendly welcome and warm sympathy, as she
explained how she had come to miss the party, made her send a
complacent glance in Piers' direction. What a fuss-box the man was,
she thought impatiently, trying to worry her into the belief that her
failure to appear at a function on the estate was a major error: that
it was the kind of thing that, with these simple folk, spoiled the
master-servant relationship.
   And then she received a jolt.
   Old Hubert, standing beside her, his battered hat in his hand,
his toothless mouth stretched in a wide grin, told her in halting
6patois that "3Mistah Piers" had explained right at the start
that "3Mis' Beryl" would be 3"plenty, plenty sad" not to be
back at the Villa in time. That it wouldn't be her fault at all.
That she was a lady who, like her Uncle Charles, took the highest
pride in keeping her word. "I could see 3anudder 3t'ing," he
went on in a lower voice, his sunken black eyes twinkling. 3"He
powerful anxious, poor Mistah Piers. We all know how Balicou Island
dangerous to all kin' o' boats, wid d'ose big, big rocks in an' out o'
de water. He full o' fear you comin' bad harm, Mis Beryl. I see it
in his eyes, even when he smilin' and larkin' wid us. I knowin' him
well, Missie. He always sayin' he one of us, 'cos he born an' bred in
de islands. An' he say for true!"
   This sidelight on Piers had its effect on Beryl. Without taking
it too seriously she found herself regretting some of the sharp things
she had said to him and when, her goodbyes said, she climbed back into
the jeep, preparatory to returning to the Villa, it was with the
resolve to make up her quarrel with him- to achieve, at least, a
surface peace.
# 219
<436 TEXT N3>
   "You don't say?"
   "Yes sir! That's Gene all right. Say, did he tell you what a
rotten deal he's got, and is still gettin' from that Hawley girl he
married? Mr. Goddard, if that woman had treated him half way decent
she would've found out she'd got herself one of them perfect husbands.
But no! She 2aint got sense enough to see that, even if she is Dan
Hawley's daughter, which personally I think she 2aint."
   "What do you mean by that, Constable?"
   "Well, she could be a sort of catch-colt, couldn't she, or some
poor baby Hawley and his wife adopted because they couldn't have any
kids of their own. I tell you, Mr. Goddard, I would lay down my
life for Gene Pelcher, I admire him that much."
   "Well, I never make it a practice to inquire into a man's
personal or marital affairs, Constable, here is where I turn in."
   Too dense to recognize this dismissal for what it was, Nick
Newell would have continued the almost one-sided conversation if
Murdock had not called from the platform in front of his store-
   "How you feeling now, Brother Goddard? You look like you were a
little bunged up, from the way you walk."
   "Well, I will say, Brother Murdock," Goddard answered with a
sigh, "that the other day when I was out on that rabbit hunt I
overdid myself a little. From now on I am going to walk a little
among the hills every day, extending the length of my walks slightly
each day till I can get myself back in condition among these wonderful
mountains."
   "Now there's a man I'd tie to, if he ever give me the chance,"
the constable told himself happily as Goddard went into the hotel.
"2Durned if I don't like him most as much as I like and trust Gene
Pelcher, by jingo, I do! But havin' an official position, I just got
to be close-mouthed in expressin' my opinion of other men."
   On Poverty Flat, which was a comparatively level stretch of
gravelly ground that had once been part of the lake bed, Orestus
Hancock had had erected one of the finest houses in all the mountain
county. It was large and comfortable and practical, though there were
houses in Geneva that were adorned with more "gingerbread". He had
not disturbed nature, except close to the house where there were
gravelled walks and a drive turning in to the painted stable and
carriage house at the rear.
   The house itself had a shake hip-roof that covered a wide porch
that extended on both sides and both ends of the building which
contained seven large rooms, in addition to quarters for Willie Kim,
the Chinaman the judge and Bill had brought from San Francisco eight
years before, to serve as cook and housekeeper and sometimes family
consultant and adviser.
   The wide veranda was not only screened all around, it had hinged
windows that could be raised or lowered as weather conditions
dictated. Now as the judge sat in a large easy chair on the front
portion of this veranda, he had before him the path that led to the
pier which projected about a hundred feet out into the lake. The more
than a mile of water was violently disturbed today, and across this
expanse of uneasy water the ground rose to where it rounded off as a
thickly brushed mountain.
   Until a couple of hours before the judge had felt easier in mind
than he had felt for a long time. Since Bill had had his fight with
Goddard in Pinenut he had seemed to have <SIC> changed completely.
   The judge could not think of Bill's defeat by Goddard as a thing
of much importance except that possibly defeat by a smaller, lighter
man had brought Bill back to his senses and made him see the futility
of the life he had been leading. He had almost entirely settled back
into his old ways, even to reading law about two hours each day.
Though he did not refuse wine, which the judge always had on the
table at dinner, he did not act as though he found it necessary except
in moderate compliance with his father's habit.
   In one respect the judge was not at peace of mind, and probably
never would be. Though he never expected to attain the happiness he
yearned for in a daughter-in-law and grandchildren, he knew the big
house would never really be complete until Kate, as Bill's wife,
brought children to it. She would be here now, and probably with a
little one he might jounce on his knee, if it had not been for the
narrow-minded priggishness of Dan Hawley and his wife.
   "From what I have heard," he mused with a sigh that had
considerable bitterness in it, "they would have thought themselves
socially besmirched because of poor Bill's deluded mother. May God
have mercy on her soul! And may Lombard burn in hell! In his hands
she was as putty, and I myself am by no means blameless for not having
given more time and attention to her and less to the acquisition of
wealth, yes, and the establishment of a high reputation as an attorney
at law."
   Now the judge was not thinking about what might have been but for
Dan Hawley and his wife. He was thinking, even worrying about his
son. Soon after ten o'clock, when the lake had been as smooth as blue
water could be, Bill had set off in his sixteen-foot yawl with Bueno
Buck, a strapping young Pomo Indian, to row for him. Bill had
intended to do some trolling for lake trout beyond the rounded
promontory around which the shore bent to make the mile-wide cove
before it straightened out toward The Narrows above which the main
body of the lake lay.
   Now the judge was not worried about the permanence of the change
in his son. He was alarmed for Bill's safety. Rising two hours
earlier than was its habit, the northwest wind, prevalent at this
season, was marching high, white-capped waves down the lake, breaking
them into spray against the point and against the opposite shore, and
even sending spray so high it sometimes covered the pier.
   Of course in such a gale Bill and Bueno Buck could tie up in the
far end of the mile-wide cove and wait for the wind to blow itself
out, which it would probably do along toward sunset. But would they
do it? Bill had said he would be back home not later than one
o'clock.
   The judge had decided that Bill and the young Indian had accepted
the inevitable and sensibly decided to wait for the gale to blow
itself out when he caught and held his breath, then rose hastily.
Around that rounded rocky promontory where the white spray could be
seen flying across the distance of a mile and a half, came the yawl
under her full triangular sail, and to the judge's frightened eyes, so
close to the rocks that it would be dashed against them with the lift
of the next wave.
   "That boy! That damned fool boy! What does he mean by trying
to come home now, even if he did promise? What does time mean when
weighed against the life of two human beings?"
   Not until he was certain that the yawl had rounded the rocky
point instead of being flung against the huge boulders did the judge
empty his lungs of stifling air and refill them with part of that
howling northwest gale. But his fright and alarm were not gone, they
were merely lessened. He could see that a figure, undoubtedly that of
his beloved fool son, was now sitting in the stern sheets as the yawl
quartered out into the lake, and another figure close against the
weather gunwale was apparently bailing fast, with as near frenzy as a
young Indian who could swim like a fish could come to frenzy.
   Not until he was certain the yawl had successfully got away from
the rocks did the judge begin to stride to and fro on his wide
veranda, and then not really realizing what he was doing. He was
almost like the captain of a rudderless ship pacing his own bridge.
What control had he over that tiny craft that was lifting to a wave
crest, then dropping from sight in a trough? When the wind was on a
rampage, as it was now, it could kick up a sea-sized commotion where
it had a straight blow of eight miles down the lake.
   3"Big blow, Judge," remarked Willie Kim as the wind
billowed out and sucked in his baggy black blouse and pantaloons.
3"Blow like hell. Maybe by and by she blow some more."
   "Hello, Willie, where did you come from?" the judge said in
mild surprise. "I didn't hear you. Do you see that fool boy of mine
out there on the lake?"
   3"I see him. You don't need worry, Judge. Big wind like that
can't drown good man. Bill is good man, and Bueno Buck is raised on
lake. He no drown, too. Him, his mother throw him into water to make
him swim when he is born. Maybe so Bill, he can swim that good,
too."
CHAPTER 19
   THE yawl, riding the high waves with an air that might have
made an ocean liner envious, seemed prepared to make a safe though
violent landing when there came a sudden gust of wind from the west.
   "My God!" the judge cried out. "The boy is going to try to
make a landing on the weather side of that pier! He'll wreck!"
   Willie Kim was speechless, only his slant black eyes showing any
emotion.
   With a quick shift of tiller, and at the same time jibbing the
boom to which he had the stay rope fastened, Bill made the yawl
recover. It seemed to the frightened judge as though his son would
actually shoot the craft in under the outer end of the wharf. But by
pressing the tiller hard over and at the same time dropping the small
sheet of wet canvas, Bill cleared the corner of the pier by inches,
and with the tiller still hard over, brought the yawl up against the
waves with sufficient momentum to permit Bueno Buck, now on his feet
with a coiled rope in left hand a cowboy loop in right, to toss the
loop over one of the piles that projected upward for about three feet,
from the lee side of the pier.
   "Willie," the judge said huskily, "that was as pretty a piece
of seamanship as I ever saw. That boy of mine seems to know how to do
everything, when he wants to."
   "3Naw," disputed Willie. 3"Just play in damn fine luck
this time. He plenty smart though."
   As they reached the pier, the judge on legs that were a little
unsteady, they found Bueno Buck, now on the pier, leading the yawl
toward the wave-battered shore.
   "Hello, Dad!" Bill called. "I hope you weren't worried.
We're going to drag the boat ashore and turn her over. She has a
foot of water in her. I wouldn't be surprised if we broke all speed
records on the way in. Yes sir, I am slightly wet, and Buck would be
wetter if he had more clothes on."
   With four doing the job and the waves pushing at the stern, the
yawl was soon dragged out but before it was turned over Bueno Buck
reached into the foot of water, tossed out a string of silvery lake
trout and said-
   3"Bill, he's better man at catch 'em than Injun, Judge. You
look. Little one more as fifteen inches. Maybe big one four feet,
huh?"
   "By George, that is a beautiful string of fish!" exclaimed the
judge. "Toss them on the grass and then we'll all get hold and
heave."
   A few moments later the yawl was upside down, exposing its
shallow keel.
# 27
<437 TEXT N4>
   Bertram's face was grim. "You think it was the Snort, don't
you?"
   John gave a short laugh. "I did," he said; "but I'd better
stop thinking that now. Pericles is fitted with an identically
similar one."
   
   "So there you are, my dear."
   Peggy's eyes filled with tears. "It's so unfair," she said.
"That little beast Robbie Munyard spent six months ashore while
Pericles was refitting in the dockyard and now that she's ready
for sea he goes sick. Just because he's an Honourable he can do what
he likes. Anyway, why pick on you to succeed him?"
   John didn't answer. There was no point in sharing his discomfort
with Peggy. A submariner's wife needed to be spared as much as
possible. Anyway the Parsifal affair was far too fresh in both
their minds to be a comfortable subject for discussion. "It's a
command," he said. "We can do with the extra money. It'll just
about pay Jacky's school fees."
   "What shall we do about this house?- and Jill's school?- and
oh! how I hate the Navy! If I'd known what it would be like I'd
sooner have married a parson."
   He kissed her. "Parsons work on Sundays," he said. "They're
worse off than submariners. You ought to have married that fat
stockbroker chap and shared him with his three mistresses. Anyway it
might be much worse. Pericles is a Portsmouth boat. She spends
longer in harbour than any other submarine. Practically a shore job.
Cheer up."
   She wiped her eyes and reached for her address book. "I'll
write to those agents and try to get a flat in Alverstoke," she
said. "But I don't know what Jill will say about leaving her school.
It's a blessing that Jacky's off to boarding school. And all the
trouble you've taken with the garden! That little beast, Robbie
Munyard!"
   Having said her say Peggy manfully shouldered her burden and
prepared to break up yet another home. In the ten years of married
life this had already happened half a dozen times. Such is the life
of a naval officer's wife.
   
   John's father had been a naval officer of the old school; some of
his rigid ideas had been passed on to the second generation. One of
these was that an officer should join a ship, on taking up a new
appointment, at nine a.m. precisely, dressed in the modern
equivalent of frock-coat and sword. It would have been acceptable to
all concerned if John had stepped into Fort Blockhouse clad in
plain-clothes on the previous night, but ways instilled by martinet
parents have a habit of sticking. So he put up for the night at The
Admiral's Head, that famous Portsmouth hostelry, second only in
historic interest to The George, unhappily destroyed by German bombs
during the last war.
   Having deposited his baggage and unpacked his overnight-bag he
went in search of a drink. The lower bar was empty, save for the lady
known by all habitue?2s as 'Seaweed', and a youngish, sharp-eyed
man who was staring moodily into a gin and tonic.
   Seaweed's memory was prodigious; her manner must have been worth
a great deal to the proprietors of the hotel. She greeted John,
however, with less than her usual cordiality and flashed a warning
glance at him. Evidently the other occupant of the bar was not
6persona grata. If her memory was good, so was this
stranger's.
   "You're Commander Winter," he said. "Have a gin?" He
turned to Seaweed- "Make it a large one, darling. I know the naval
habits. 'Drink gin and call each other wallahs, what!'- as the
Guards officer said on his return from a visit to the Royal Navy.
Submarines, what. Youngest D.S.C. in the war, what? Crawled
inside a submarine casing to defuse a Jerry bomb. Should have been a
V.C. What are you waiting for, darling? The officer is
obviously thirsty."
   John fought back his inherited desire to snub the man. If he did
he would have to leave the bar and either sit in the lounge or return
to his bedroom.
   Seaweed sensed his embarrassment and came to the rescue.
   "You haven't introduced yourself," she said with mock
severity. "It's a rule on these premises. No treating with
strangers- that's right, John, isn't it?"
   "My fault entirely," said the stranger. "It's my conceited
nature- I assumed that you both knew who I was. I'm Ian Bawley.
Does that mean anything to you?"
   It did. Ian Bawley's name was printed at the head of most naval
articles in the Daily Courier.
   "Oh, the Press," said Seaweed. "Down here on business,
Mr. Bawley?"
   "A pressman is always on the job." He held out his hand and
John could not do otherwise than take it. "Pleased to meet you,
Commander," he said. "Now what about that drink?"
   John nodded- he could afford to buy one in return and he was
lonely.
   "For the sake of accuracy," he said, "and I know how you
newspaper people value that commodity!- please don't address me as
Commander. I'm a Lieutenant-Commander. Perhaps we could drop the
rank- such a mouthful!"
   "You're absolutely right," said Bawley, as he pushed over his
glass. "Fill it up, darling. Accuracy above all else. We pride
ourselves about accuracy on the Courier. Ever known us bowl a
wide about your Service? Check and counter-check- nothing but the
truth. Somewhat embarrassing, what?"
   "How can the truth be embarrassing?" John sipped his double
gin with relish. It was his favourite brand, he was on the verge of a
new chapter in his career, and his companion's attitude was
challenging. Life at home and in Bath had been a trifle too
comfortable and humdrum. He'd never before met a pressman and found
him curiously stimulating.
   "You're a bit of a humorist, aren't you?" said Bawley. "The
truth is usually very embarrassing. You're in submarines, aren't
you?"
   "You know a great deal about me," said John.
   "It's my business. I'll tell you more. You're going to take
over command of Pericles. Am I right?"
   "Who told you?"
   "Little bird. Other half?"
   John nodded. "On me."
   Bawley shook his head. "All paid for by His Lordship," he
said. "Expense account. You're a married man with a couple of kids.
Can't go wasting your substance on a complete stranger. Set 'em up,
darling!"
   John flushed. "I'm not in need of charity."
   "Come off it," said Bawley. "The proprietor of the Daily
Courier knows what's going on. If he doesn't mind, why should
you?"
   "I see." John took the refilled glass and looked over the rim
at his companion. "You want me to talk, is that it?"
   "You misjudge me," said Bawley. "You have nothing to tell
me, yet. But we'll be meeting again, no doubt, and then you will
have. Regard this as a softening-up process, and have dinner with me?
On His Lordship, of course."
   "On one condition," said John. "Tell me who the little bird
was."
   "Can't you guess? Whose portrait appears regularly in the shiny
papers?"
   "You mean Munyard?"
   "Sure. Very useful contact, is our Robbie; he gives us the gen
and we give him the publicity. 'The Honourable "Robbie" and
friend', what? You know the sort of thing."
   "You'll get nothing out of me," said John, "but you can pay
for my drinks if you want to, as long as you keep off Service
matters."
   "Good-oh! One for the grill-room, darling, and tell George to
bring in the 6carte du jour."
   Bawley was a man of his word. He kept away from Service matters,
was an excellent host and a splendid raconteur. The evening passed
all too quickly. As they parted in the vestibule the two men were
well disposed towards each other.
   "Ever been to Fleet Street?" asked Bawley. "You should.
Next time you're in Town give me a ring at this number and I'll take
you round the pubs where most of the work is done." He held out a
card. John took it and put it in his pocket.
   "Thanks," he said. "If ever my missus lets me off the chain
I'll take you up on that. Ever been out in a submarine? I'll give
you a spin round one of these days, if you like. You could write it
up."
   Bawley made a face. "Not in Pericles, old man."
   "Why not?"
   "Better ask Robbie Munyard."
   "What's he been saying?" John was furious. The little
squirt! To go gassing to a newspaper man!
   "Look!" he went on earnestly. "You're not going to write up
Pericles in some way or other, are you?"
   "What is there to write up?" said Bawley. "There are
forty-three submarines in the Navy- why should I pick on
Pericles?"
   John eyed him steadily.
   "It's the Parcifal business, isn't it?" he said quietly.
   "I don't want it to happen again," said Bawley- "more so
than ever since I met you."
   "What did Munyard say?"
   "The Snort- hull fitting fractured."
   "Supposing I was to tell you that we've had Pericles' entire
Snort equipment removed and X-rayed and that it was as sound as a
bell?" said John.
   "Munyard didn't tell me that. But I must confess I'm relieved.
But it still doesn't do away with the possibility of faulty
design."
   He held out his hand.
   "Maybe I will take a trip with you one of these days," he
said. "In the meantime I'll tell my editor that the story's a dead
bird. Glad I met you. Don't forget to give me a ring- any time-
knock twice and ask for Bawley, what?"
   "I don't know when that will be," said John. "I shall be
busy for a while, cleaning up after Master bloody Munyard."
=2
CAPTAIN HENRY TURTON, D.S.O., R.N.
   THERE were six submarines, lying in pairs alongside the
jetty at Fort Blockhouse. Black and grimly businesslike they both
looked and sounded, for all of them were rumbling as they charged
their electric batteries. A light wind wafted the smoke of diesel
exhaust in through the open windows of the Captain's house. It
pervaded every room but neither Harry nor Madeleine Turton noticed its
existence as they sat in silence over a substantial breakfast.
Although usually a very talkative lady Madeleine respected her
husband's silences, for she knew they betokened a worry of some sort.
There had been many such breakfasts lately since the affair of
Parsifal. Harry had lost a good deal of weight. His normal
placid and steady-going manner remained, but she could see that it no
longer came naturally. It is the common lot of all Squadron Senior
Officers to experience such catastrophes as the loss of a submarine,
though in peace time these happenings are few and far between. This
is the testing time for all. The affair blows up into a national
disaster and then when it is all over life must continue as before.
During this period the Captain must present an unruffled appearance
and carry on as if nothing unusual has happened. Harry Turton had
written letters to the bereaved, had visited many in the locality, had
been interviewed by the Press, had driven his surviving submarines a
good deal harder than usual and in fact had applied all the usual
specifics suitable for such occasions. The worst was over now, except
for the Pericles affair.
   It had never occurred to Harry Turton that Robbie Munyard,
popular as he was, especially with the ladies, son of a famous man and
an (apparently) well weathered submariner, should go to pieces as he
had done with disastrous effects on the morale of his crew; but he
had. Quite suddenly he'd walked into the office and declared that his
command was not fit to go under water and then he had burst into
tears. Now he was at the naval hospital. Acute neurasthenia, said
the Surgeon-Rear-Admiral. The affair had been handled quietly and
efficiently but rumours of this extraordinary scene in the office had
reached to the far corners of the establishment. Munyard had left his
jitters behind. Long conferences had been held between Harry Turton
and his Admiral in which various alterations had been debated.
# 217
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Fred was eyeing Hanson with a little tingle passing up and down his
spine. This police inspector looked genuine enough, but Freeman was
taking no chances. The fact that the inspector was a total stranger
increased his suspicions. Fred was well acquainted with most of the
police officers who operated in this district....
   "Sorry, sir," he said blandly. "I'd better tell you the
truth, I think. No need for you to waste your time. Mr. Conquest
went out some time ago."
   Hanson's lips tightened. He believed this to be a lie. Landis
had been watching, and he was convinced that the Conquests had not
left- and Landis was a man who had been well trained for work of this
kind.
   "So Mr. Conquest went out?" said Hanson, with ominous calm.
"I'd advise you not to lie to me, my man. If Conquest gave you
orders to say that he was out..."
   "No, sir. He went out. I saw him go."
   "When did he go? And where?"
   "Didn't say where, sir- never does say."
   "When do you expect him back?"
   "Never expect him back, sir," said Fred, in the same bland
voice. "He's a very uncertain young gentleman, is Mr. Conquest.
Might be hours. Might be days."
   "Was he alone?"
   "No, sir. His wife was with him."
   Hanson was now certain that Freeman was lying. Landis could not
possibly have missed seeing the small, attractive figure of Joy.
Hanson was rapidly becoming exasperated, and he showed it in his
manner.
   "Who else is in the flat?" he snapped.
   "Nobody, sir."
   "No servants?"
   "There's Miss Bliss, the housekeeper, but she left an hour ago.
And there's Livingstone, who looks after Mr. Conquest's car, and
does odd jobs. He went out, too. The flat's empty."
   Hanson swore.
   "Listen to me, my man," he said grimly, as he laid a hard hand
on Fred's arm. "We in the police are well aware of Conquest and his
tricky ways. He may live like a gentleman in an expensive penthouse,
but he's worse than half the crooks in London. You're lying to me-
on his orders. Take me up to the penthouse at once."
   "What's the use?" asked Freeman. "It's empty."
   He was inwardly excited. He believed this police inspector to be
a phony, and he had to decide what to do on the spur of the moment.
It was the first time he had ever been required to take a really
active part in one of his employer's enterprises, and he was thrilled.
   "That's enough," said Hanson curtly. "Take me up
immediately."
   "All right, sir."
   Freeman led the way to the private lift, and a minute later they
were ascending. At the top, as soon as the door slid open, Hanson
stepped out, and was annoyed to find Freeman following him. The
lounge was empty.
   "All right- you can take the lift down," said Hanson curtly
"I shan't need you now."
   "No, sir," said Fred stubbornly. "I've had the 2guv'nor's
orders not to let anybody into the flat, and if you wasn't a policeman
I wouldn't have let you in. I'm staying until you've finished."
   Hanson had not expected this difficulty. Even in his role of a
police inspector there was a limit to the amount of ordering he could
do. It would be dangerous to arouse this porter's suspicions. Also,
the lounge was very empty, and the entire penthouse was silent, with
no sign of life.
   "Mr. Conquest!" shouted Hanson loudly.
   Silence- except for a discreet cough from Fred.
   "I told you there wasn't anybody home," he said. "No good
you shouting, sir."
   "Stay where you are," snapped Hanson.
   He was not only puzzled, but alarmed. The Conquests were here-
they must be here. If they had left, Landis would have seen them.
Hanson suspected a trick. With a hand in the pocket of his uniform
jacket- where he carried the gun- he made for the nearest door. It
led through into the kitchen quarters. Everything tidy and neat, but
no living thing present. Hanson quickly explored Aunt Susan's
bedroom, which was also in this part of the penthouse.
   Baffled, he returned to the lounge. An examination of the
bedrooms and bathroom led to the same result. Empty. He passed
through the passage, watched amusedly by Fred, into the garage. No
sign of life here, either. The shiny Merce?2de?3s was there, its
windows shattered as of the previous night.
   "Hell!" muttered Hanson under his breath.
   He inwardly cursed Landis. The man had obviously fallen down on
his job. In some way, every occupant of the penthouse had left the
premises- and Landis had not seen them go. It was understandable
that Aunt Susan and Livingstone had escaped the watcher's attention;
but it was incredible that he could have missed such striking figures
as those of Norman and Joy. How the devil had he been tricked?
   "Well, sir?" asked Freeman patiently, as Hanson re-entered the
lounge.
   "You appear to have been right," admitted Hanson savagely.
"There's nobody here. Take me down."
   He made a move towards the lift, and then halted. He had caught
sight of a card prominently displayed on the cocktail bar. He strode
across, and examined it- and a fluttery sensation assailed his
stomach. The card simply said- "Back on April the nineteenth."
   The implication was obvious. The world, in Conquest's opinion,
would still be functioning after the expiration of the True Prophet's
deadline. Hanson inwardly squirmed. This young hell-hound was
prepared for everything! He had even suspected that the opposition
would invade the penthouse, and he had left this card for their
benefit!
   Hanson's very appearance- his hard breathing, his frustration,
his savage expression- assured Fred Freeman that he was a fake. No
genuine police inspector would have reacted in this way. And Fred was
agog with excitement because he had suddenly decided to make a move
which might, or might not, meet with Conquest's approval. He was
going to act on his own initiative, and his heart began to pump.
   "I'm sorry, sir," he said, striving to keep his voice normal,
"but there's one room you haven't seen. At least, I don't think
you've seen it. I meant to tell you about it. It's a sort of private
room. Mr. Conquest might be there."
   Hanson swung round, staring.
   "A private room?"
   "Yes, sir. You wouldn't have seen it."
   "Take me to it."
   Hanson had no suspicion that this ordinary-looking porter was
adopting something of his employer's technique. He was not surprised,
however, to hear that the flat contained a "private room." Fedder
had told him a great deal about the trickiness of the young man who
signed himself "166." It was unfortunate, however, that Fedder
had not mentioned the "private room"- which Fedder himself had
occupied, to his mortification, at the time when Conquest had been
getting to grips with Pierre Dacca, the Paris criminal.
   "This way, sir."
   Fred was quivering with eagerness. He led the way into the
laboratory, which Hanson had already examined. A plain, austere
apartment, gleaming with porcelain-tiled walls and glass shelves.
Fred went straight across to the plain wall opposite the door.
   "It's here, sir," he said, grinning.
   "What are you trying to do- make a fool of me?" shouted
Hanson. "There's no doorway in that wall."
   Fred reached up, but Hanson did not see what his hand was doing;
all he knew was that a portion of the wall silently opened, revealing
a void. Lights sprang on, and Hanson found himself staring into a
comfortable little inner room, where there was a lounge and other
articles of furniture. He took rapid steps to the doorway, and peered
in.
   A fatal move....
   For Hanson had placed himself exactly where Fred Freeman required
him. A quick shove, and Hanson blundered headlong into the inner
room. Before he could recover his balance, the wall had closed upon
him. Fred, on his side, breathed heavily.
   "2Blimey, I hope I've done right!" he muttered, thoroughly
scared now that the thing had been accomplished.
   Months ago, Conquest had shown Freeman the secret of the inner
room, saying that it might be useful, one day, for Fred to know about
it. For Conquest trusted the man implicitly, and with good reason.
Fred was as loyal as Livingstone himself. But this was the first
time he had ever actively assisted Norman, and the occasion rather
overawed him. He remembered something else. He again turned to the
blank wall, and this time a little cubby-hole opened, not far from the
door- much too small to admit the exit of a human body. He bent
down, and saw Hanson's face staring at him.
   "How do you like it, mister?" asked Fred recklessly. "You a
police inspector? A cop? Like my foot! When do you think I was
born- yesterday?"
   "My God!" panted Hanson, his brain nearly bursting.
   He had been alarmed to find himself trapped, but to see the
gloating face of his trapper peering at him through this hole was more
than his nerve could stand.
   "Conquest put you up to this!" he snarled. "Let me out of
here!" He pulled the gun out of his pocket and thrust it forward,
thus certifying himself as a fake- for no genuine police inspector
carries a gun. "Put your hands up!"
   Fred laughed. The threat was so idle that he could afford to
laugh. All the same, he lost no time in sliding along the wall, out
of range. There was still the danger that the trapped man would reach
as far as possible through the opening, and use the gun, but Fred
scotched this by operating the mechanism again, and causing the
opening to close itself up. Not that he need have worried; for Hanson
was no gunman, and in the excitement of the moment he had forgotten to
release the safety-catch of the automatic.
   "I was right," whispered Fred to himself, with jubilation.
"He's a phony."
   The word put an idea into his head, and he hurried through to the
lounge and went to the phone. He dialled a Streatham number, and in a
few moments was gratified to hear Conquest's clear voice.
   "It's me, sir- Fred," panted the porter. "Something's
happened, sir. I don't know whether I've done right, but I hope I
have."
   "You sound hoarse, Fred. Calm down, and tell me exactly what
happened," came Conquest's voice. "Spare no details, however
slight, for I suspect that your singular narrative will be fraught
with interest."
   "Come off it, Mr. Conquest," protested Fred. "This is
serious. I've got a man locked up in your secret room...."
   He went into details, describing exactly what had happened....
   "Did I do right, sir?" he ended anxiously.
   "The word 'right' is totally inadequate, Fred," replied
Norman, with a chuckle in his voice. "Well done! As nice a piece of
work as I can remember. I thought there might be some kind of enemy
activity, although I hardly expected it to explode so soon. This
blighter has a gun, eh? You'd better warn Bill Williams about
that."
   "Mr. Williams, sir?"
   "Yes. As soon as we've hung up, get through to Scotland Yard,
ask for the superintendent, and tell him what you've got. He'll be
charmed. Another of the ungodly for Bill's collection. We're not
doing so badly, Fred. This bloke of yours seems to be one of the more
important specimens."
   The porter, who had not the faintest idea of the game which
Conquest was playing, asked no questions. He was satisfied with
Norman's words of praise, and he lost no time in getting in touch with
Scotland Yard....
   At Hampstead, Fedder was impatiently awaiting Hanson's return.
He was not too satisfied with Hanson. More than once, since they had
parted, he had felt that he should have sent a more determined, more
ruthless man on this particular assignment. Too late now, of course.
All he could do was wait.
   The truth was, Fedder had been pitchforked into near-panic action
by the fear that Conquest, if any delay took place, would elude him.
# 26
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   There were tears in her eyes then and it was a mighty big
temptation to back down and tell her to stay which would be just what
I would want in my 2goddam selfish way. So instead I hardened my
heart, and it was real hard work. Even Matt Tompkins gave me a dirty
look. I expect he figured I was a real mean hombre.
   "I'll be here to see you onto the stage tomorrow morning," I
said. "Meantime I should stay indoors. This town is no health
resort."
   "Amen to that," said Ma Tompkins unexpectedly.
   "It's a sink of iniquity, a real Sodom and Gomorrow."
   "Gomorrah," I said absent-minded like. My Pa never made any
mistake over words from the good book. "So-long then till tomorrow,
Miss Jeannie, and look after yourself."
   And with those weak words I walked on out, avoiding Jeannie
Bain's accusing eyes and wishing I had the strength to say a half of
all the things I'd have liked to say to her.
   I stood around in the early morning sunlight not knowing quite
what to do next and then of course I remembered that I had better go
find Dan Maffrey and get him wised up about last night's occurrences.
I ambled on from Ma Tompkins's house to the livery stable. The owner
was inside rubbing down a horse. I stood around watching him and
listening to him hiss through his teeth in the peculiar way hostlers
have.
   "That's a fine horse you've got there, mister," I said at
last.
   He broke off his hissing for a brief space and took a quick look
at me.
   "Yes," he said. "It's a Morgan. Belongs to the Town
Marshal."
   Something in his eyes as he said this, a swift flicker of double
knowledge, made me think. Here was someone who'd known all about Bill
Appleton and someone who'd had enough time to let Pell and his gang
know about Appleton's movements and identity too. Someone maybe who'd
been at the meeting. This man had been at the meeting too.
   "You heard what happened to Appleton after the meeting?" I
said.
   "Yeah," he said. "I heard."
   "Someone must have arranged that," I went on.
   "2Mebbe so. I 2jest hear things. Everyone talks to
liverymen."
   "Yes," I said. "There's too much pow-wowing going on
hereabouts."
   He came out from behind the Marshal's horse.
   "You want your pony, mister?"
   "Yes," I said, "I'll take a little pasear around. Maybe I'll
hear a little more talk along the trail and maybe I'll find out who
killed Bill Appleton."
   He went off then to get Bessie from an inner stall. She came
along and whickered when she saw me. The liveryman pulled my rig off
a nail and slapped it on the mare.
   "You coming back?" he said when he'd got the saddle fixed.
   "I aim to," I said, cold as a fish. "This town kind of grows
on me."
   I climbed up onto Bessie and he watched me with resentment, fear
and self-disgust fighting for possession of his face. I rode out and
away from town at a quiet trot. I would circle around and try to find
Dan Maffrey on the other side in the hidey-hole he'd ridden off to
last night.
   It took me an hour to make my circle of the town. I found the
trail along which Dan must have come in. It was well-worn,
wheel-marked and dusty. It would be the trail up to Colorado, I
figured. About four miles along, it swung north-east, twisting and
turning through rough country with big rocks sticking out all round.
A coach, I thought, would have to slow up some on a trail like that.
I trotted on. The perfect spot lay about half a mile further on, on
an upgrade that was steep enough to slow any coach to a crawl. I
reined in and took a look around. There were medium-sized rocks and
mesquite bushes on both sides at the top, with enough cover for men
and horses until the right moment. Further over, about four hundred
yards west of the trail, the ground rose again to a ridge. I was
staring at it when I heard a voice.
   "You got the same idea as me." It was Dan of course, bellied
down on the far side. I saw him stand up and then he disappeared for
a moment, reappearing seconds later on his cayuse. He rode down to
where I was waiting. I was thinking what a skill he had for reading
my mind.
   "This would be as good a place for a hold-up as any," he said,
reining in near me.
   "Yes," I said. "It'll be here tomorrow as likely as not."
I paused. "Miss Jeannie'll be on that coach, Dan."
   "Yes," he said. "I know."
   "No harm must come to her, Dan."
   "She'll be all right. It's the men who'll be after that coach
I'm interested in, Johnny."
   "I know. But if lead starts flying she might be in danger."
   "That's so. But I reckon they'll be too busy shooting at us to
bother with the coach and the folks in it."
   "Maybe," I said. "But we've got to remember that girl all
the time, Dan. I feel kind of responsible for her."
   "Of course," he said, giving me one of his strange looks.
Then he turned the conversation. "Let's ride over and have a look
at the mining camp. After all it's them we're supposed to be working
for, as well as the townsfolk and the agency detective."
   With something of a start I remembered the man who'd brought us
into this business.
   "Maybe you don't know about Appleton, Dan?"
   "Know what?"
   "That he's dead," I said. I watched him because I was always
fascinated by the way he looked when you tried to surprise him.
   "Dead?" he said.
   "Yes. Dead. Shuffled out of the deck. Blasted down with a
shotgun outside the Palace last night."
   "Fenton or Somers," he said.
   "Or the Town Marshal," I added.
   His face was fixed, unreadable as a rock.
   "Let's get over to the mining camp," he said abruptly.
   He wheeled his horse back off the trail and up the slope leading
to the ridge. I followed. From the top you could see something of
the wild hill country that lay all round Gilburg Crossing. The air
was fresh and clear and you could see far over west and north for many
miles. The real high country of the Rockies lifted up in the distance
like a pale water-colour drawing. Between us and that lay a vast
stretch of hills, canyons, buttes and malpais.
   "The mine-workings lie north of the town," said Dan. "If we
head west we ought to cut the trail leading from Gilburg to the
north."
   So we swung west, making slow going over rough country, sliding
on shale, climbing down into draws, circling a big mesa by a four or
five mile valley, sandy-floored. It got hotter as the day wore on and
we rested gratefully by a small creek where we watered the horses and
drank enough to cure our thirst. An hour's riding brought us to a
trail that we figured would lead to the miners' camp. We turned north
into it and after about four miles it led into a small canyon which
opened out into a wide shallow draw. Here in a dried-up creek-bed we
found the miners at work. They were scattered over a fairly wide area
working singly or in pairs.
   We didn't approach unchallenged. Just short of the diggings
there was a roughly-built shack and as we got near someone inside
bawled out,
   "If you come any closer, I'll sure blow your whiskers off."
   "Take it easy, mister," I sang out. "We don't aim to come
any closer and we've got no whiskers so as you can see. Just you go
and tell Nick Dowd we've come to talk to him about what happened last
night."
   "Oh," said the unseen guard. He blew a whistle then, loud and
shrill. The gun barrel peeking out through a hole in the shack never
wavered.
   We sat our horses, waiting.
   "Looks as though they're expecting trouble," I said.
   "Where there's gold and women there's always trouble,"
observed Dan, shifting about in his saddle. He was never long on
patience.
   I saw several men running down towards the shack. They were all
armed with rifles. As the nearest of them came round the shack, his
rifle at the ready, I saw it was Nick Dowd, still wearing his blue
check shirt. He came up close, eyeing us suspiciously.
   "We've come 2a-calling," I said.
   "Can't see no reason for calling," he said. "Still long as
you're here you may as well stay a while. 'Light an' come on in."
   We dismounted and one of the miners who'd come along with Nick
Dowd took our horses off to water. We followed Nick Dowd into the
shack. They'd rigged up a stove of sorts and on it a huge blackened
coffee-pot steamed. Other miners followed in at our heels. Nick Dowd
found us a couple of boxes to sit on. A small man in bib overalls and
a battered Derby hat fussed around the stove.
   "2Ain't exactly the Ritz Hotel but we've got our little
comforts," said Dowd. He introduced the men who'd come in as Roper
Smith, Shorty, Mick Golightly, Swede and the Sodbuster. This last was
the little hombre in big overalls. Very soon he had tin mugs filled
with hot black coffee sweetened with molasses for all and for us there
were two plates of beans.
   "They gives you the wind," said the Sodbuster handing them to
us, "but it's all we got as of now, apart from a few sacks of gold
dust." He winked at his partners. They all watched us as we ate
the beans. Then when we'd finished and I'd rolled a cigarette the man
called Shorty said, "You were saying when you came in that 2somep'n
happened last night."
   "Yes," I said. "Something happened all right. After you'd
left the meeting, mister"- I looked across at Nick Dowd- "someone
cut down William Appleton outside the Palace with a shotgun."
   I paused and watched my words affect them in their different
ways.
   "That's sure bad news," said Dowd, sombrely.
   "It 2jest about leaves everything wide open for Mr. Pell and
his bunch," observed Shorty. The rest of the men there said nothing
but you could see they were hard hit. They were simple men who knew a
lot maybe about digging for gold but were babes in arms when it came
to dealing with owlhooters and desperadoes like Pell and Fenton and
the rest.
   "I guess we'd better hold onto the gold right 2hyar, Nick,"
said the Sodbuster.
   "Yeah," said Dowd dubiously. "2Mebbe we'd better."
   Surprisingly Dan Maffrey came in at that point.
   "If you do," he said, "you'll be sure asking for trouble.
They'll be on your necks before you can say 'knife'. It wouldn't
be the first time they've held up a diggings at gun point either.
They've done it before and got away with it."
   "You're 2durned tootin', mister," said the man called Roper
Smith. "We've got five rifles among us and a few six-shooters. But
most of us 2ain't 2eddicated in shootin'. It'd be a 2massacree,
2yessir."
   "If you'll take a chance on getting your gold to the bank, then
we'll abide by what we said at the meeting," said Dan. "We'll
watch the stage out of reach."
   I couldn't quite see how all this fitted in with Dan Maffrey's
aim to avenge himself on the Fenton bunch but still it was a handsome
offer so I chimed in too.
   "That goes for me, gentlemen," I said. "If they do try and
hold up the stage, it'll be a couple or three of them, no more. I
reckon we can deal with them all right."
   "All right," said Dowd. "We'll leave it as we planned it
last night.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 27
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<BEGIN QUOTE>
An Apache will give plenty silver for a magazine rifle. And
somebody is seeing that they get 'em. We've been alerted."
   Brock said, "Looks like I got here at the right time."
   The Major's smile was grim. "May need every man we can get."
   "Count me in. I'll keep an eye on Parkhurst- Slocum, if that's
what he wants to be called- while I look into other things."
   "Like what?"
   "Well... Carlyle, for one. Just don't like him. Look, Pete.
Didn't it strike you funny, the way he clammed up on the shooting?"
   Shaking his head, Ahrens said, "No, it didn't. I told you he
was a cold fish. Asked a few questions on the way back yesterday, but
nobody opened up. Didn't expect them to. Reckon we'll just have to
let the matter solve itself."
   "I'm not waiting."
   "Now look, 2feller. It's none of your business."
   "I'm making it my business."
   "What in blazes got you so-" His eyes sparked with
understanding. "Ahhhh! I see, I see!" He slowly nodded his head,
smiling. "I told you she was a beauty. I told you."
   "You're crazy." Brock felt a sudden warmth prickle his face.
"Go climb your horse. Don't know who you're talking about."
   "I'll bet you don't. Very well, Sure-shot. You're a big boy
now. Should be able to look after yourself without-"
   Brock waved the grinning Ahrens out of the shack. "Go play with
your Indians, will you!"
   "That's just what I'm going to do. Came up this way to look for
Indian signs. Got patrols cutting the country. Our friend Carlyle
should be grateful since his wagons will soon be back with supplies.
Might be he'll need a little Cavalry protection."
   "You're taking those dispatches seriously."
   "Darn right I am. Anything about Indians I take seriously. And
they'd like to get their bloody hands on the beef and whisky and beer
and stuff he hauls back."
   "He ships out unbroken ore and brings back supplies?"
   "Takes about a month. Due back in a few days. Goes south
someplace. Anyway, much as I hate to do him a turn, it's my duty to
keep an eye out for him."
   The troopers had been joshing with a starry-eyed Toma?2s. They
snapped to rigid silence as the Major approached and mounted his roan
gelding. The boy ran to the gate, scraped it open, and waved the
trotting detail on its way.
   "Mister Brock," Toma?2s asked, watching the riders through
the haze of kicked up dust, "How long before I can be a soldier?"
   Brock rumpled the boy's hair. "Don't be in a hurry. Enjoy what
you have around here while you can."
   "Oh, I do, Mister Brock. I do a lot of things here that I like.
And I can ride the mules very well, too." Pondering, he tipped the
curly head to one side. "That is, Juanito I ride well. The other
one, Diablo, does not like for me to get on the back."
   "Then stay off."
   "Oh yes. But not Juanito. He is a good mule. Sometimes I ride
him almost as far as where the Sheriff lived. When I am a soldier, I
will ride and ride and-"
   "Hold on, now. A soldier has to walk too. Walk far."
   "Oh, I can walk far, Mister Brock. I can walk all the way to
the mine."
   "You keep away from the mine. No place for boys to play."
   The suggestion of a pout puckered the boy's face. "You talk
like my mother talks."
   "You listen to your mother."
   "I have to."
   Brock said, "A soldier must learn to take orders, do as he is
told. Your mother is your commander- like the Major. See? When she
tells you not to go to the mine, that is an order."
   The brown eyes rolled slowly upward, searching Brock's serious
gaze. Softly, the boy said, "It is?"
   "It is. How about it? A good soldier, or a bad boy?"
   A tough decision to make. Half the fun of being a boy was in
doing the things you were forbidden to do. On the other hand, to be a
soldier...! The picture of snorting horses and blue uniforms and
sheathed sabres was too fresh in his mind.
   "A soldier, Mister Brock."
   "Promise? On the honour of a soldier?"
   The large eyes lit up. "I can do that? I can promise- like a
soldier?"
   "You can."
   "I do it, Mister Brock. I promise, like a soldier."
   "No more going to the mine, then."
   "No sir, Mister Brock. Soldier's promise."
Chapter Eight
   It was late in the afternoon before Magdalena returned the
cleaned and mended clothes. Saddling Rusty as soon as he was dressed,
Brock cut eastward in search of the Stevens' place. As long as he
felt compelled to look into the shooting of the Sheriff, he might as
well visit the victim's late home. Maybe Stevens' niece could furnish
a clue, he told himself, as the proud chestnut stretched limber legs
across the rocky soil. His interest was purely in the shooting!
Nothing else!
   Topping a slight rise, he looked down on a squat white-painted
frame cottage- a square box dumped in the middle of the drab desert
with a white slat fence girdling it in uneven lines. Two low stringy
shrubs afforded the only touch of green within sight.
   A weathered unpainted stable stood about fifty feet behind the
cottage, and a man came out of it, carrying a shovel and bucket, and
walked unhurriedly around the side. A dull orange shirt hung loosely
over dust brown pants; a red band circling long black strands of hair
clearly identified him as an Indian.
   Touching Rusty, Brock guided the horse down the slope to the
white picket gate, dismounting as the cottage door opened.
   She stood framed in the doorway, a formal full-length portrait
with hands clasped before her, head high. The soft violet eyes-
well, they were neither soft nor violet at the moment.
   "Just what do you want here, Mister Taylor?" Whatever it was,
he was not being invited to find it.
   "Why...." He hesitated, hat in hand. "Just dropped by to
say hello, Miss Stevens. We're neighbours, 2y'know."
   "Mister Carlyle told me."
   He had been certain the eyes were more violet than grey. Could
it have been the black dress of mourning that brought out such warm
lights last evening? Surely, the gown she now wore- corn-flower
blue, waist-tight with full skirt- should complement tender violet
tints instead of accentuating the cold impersonal grey stare that
challenged him.
   "Just thought I'd say hello," he repeated awkwardly. "See if
there's anything I can do to-"
   "I assure you, sir, there is nothing worth spying on!"
   "Spying?"
   "Mister Carlyle told me!"
   "Told you what, ma'am?" He forced a smile on his lips, even
though it had left his voice.
   "Of your- profession! I was compelled to tolerate Yankee
subjugation back home, sir. I hoped to be free of it out here. At
least I could evade them when I saw blue uniforms."
   "Sorry you feel that way, ma'am. But I don't see what that has
to do with calling me a spy."
   "Please don't try to brazen it out, Mister Taylor- if that is
your name! Your companions have the questionable decency to show
their colours, but you..."
   "Yes...? But me?"
   She leaned forward, small fists clenched white at her sides.
Sparking each word with bitter contempt, she accused him with shaking
vehemence. "You pose as something you never were! Trying to win
your way into Mister Carlyle's confidence, just to spy on him for your
Yankee masters!"
   "Now just a minute, young lady!" His face reddened, darkening
the welts and bruises, and emphasizing the purple bulge under the
right eye. "I don't like being called a spy!"
   "Call it what you will! There's a nastier term for it!" She
stepped back, slamming the door shut, leaving him fuming as he gripped
the white picket fence.
   Mister Carlyle told me!
   Oh, he did, did he! Jamming the hat on his head, Brock leaped
to Rusty's back, swung him towards the mine. He'd look there first
and find out just what in the blazing hell Mister Carlyle had told
her!
   
   A thin freckled-faced youth sauntered from around the far side of
the loading platform as Brock drew Rusty to a rearing halt at the
mine. The boy's black hat sat far back on his head; his thumbs were
hooked in a wide cartridge belt. The hog leg butt of a long pistol
stuck out from a holster that was tied to his skinny thigh.
   "Mister Carlyle around?" Brock asked.
   "What you want 'im 2fer?" The boy tried to make the
age-changing voice sound hard, and it might have sounded ludicrous had
it not been for the reckless chill shimmering in cat-yellow eyes.
   "Want to see him," Brock said. "Know where he is?"
   "Maybe. Who are you?"
   "Neighbour. Is Carlyle here?"
   The boy spat between his teeth- just like O'Shay- and pressed
his thumbs down on the pistol belt- just like Clanton. He tried to
squint his eyes like Beeman when he said, "Don't see 'im, do
2yuh?"
   Brock looked the boy over from shabby boots to over-sized hat.
"What are you trying to do, sonny? Play like you're a man?"
   A freckled hand flashed to the hog leg butt. The gawky frame
tensed.
   Brock said, "Better be careful who you play with, sonny." He
swung Rusty around and toed him into a run without seeing the
black-haired man waiting motionlessly behind the opposite side of the
platform.
   Gimpy Beckett limped up to the youth as Brock disappeared down
the grade. "See him before?" he growled.
   The boy shook his head. "I 2shoulda give it to him!"
   Gimpy glared at the boy. "Listen, Kid. Just 'cause you shot
one man, don't feel like you can shoot 'em all!"
   "You don't need to tell me."
   "I am tellin' you! Get snotty with me, youngster, and I'll
take back that hog leg and warm your skinny butts with it. Carlyle
told me to learn you, and by God I will!" He turned away and limped
to the shade of the mine office.
   
   Arkie was standing next to the saloon's hitching rail, minding
the red-wheeled chaise, when Brock rode up. The black stallion reared
in the shafts as Rusty drew close, and Arkie had to hang on with both
hands.
   "Heck all!" Arkie scolded Brock over his shoulder, "You
know 2better'n to bring a horse that close to Jet! Mister Carlyle
sure give it to 2yuh, he finds out!"
   From the saddle, Brock said, "You just tell me where Carlyle is
and I'll see that he finds out."
   Arkie gaped up at him. "You talkin' 'bout Mister
Carlyle?"
   "Where is he?" Brock nodded towards the saloon. "In
there?"
   Stunned, Arkie gasped, "You mean you 2gonna tell Mister
Carlyle?"
   Dismounting, Brock slip-knotted the reins around the end post of
the hitch rail. "Keep that black devil away from Rusty or you'll
have a sick horse on your hands," he warned, and leaped to the
wooden sidewalk.
   About to push open the swinging doors, he stopped as a woman
touched his arm. A gaunt little creature, her pinched face seemed
more eyes than anything else. A faded blue sun-bonnet hid most of the
face and all of her hair, and she clutched a thin grey shawl as though
the sun's rays were streaks of penetrating sleet. Her long full
skirt, a worn drab plaid, swept the boardwalk in uneven folds. "I
must see you, Mister Taylor," she whispered, leaning close. "Just
for a minute. Please."
   Brock glanced impatiently inside the saloon. "Yes, ma'am?"
   "Over here." She led him to the second building past the
saloon.
   "Look, ma'am." He tried to sound patient. "I have business
to attend to. I'll be glad to listen if-"
   "You don't remember me Mister Taylor?"
   The interruption caught him by surprise. Remember this frail
little old woman? He'd never seen her before in his life.
# 22
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   But there was none. Only silence.
   I staggered to my feet, went over to the packing-cases, rummaged
among them. They had been held together, bound, with galvanized wire.
I began to twist and turn, feeling the wire heat up between my
fingers, begin to burn my flesh, but I ignored it and kept twisting
until a piece of about six inches in length came free.
   I limped back to the door, knelt again. The lock was massive but
ancient and simple. There was no key in it. I could look straight
through into the dimming light in the corridor. I probed with the
wire, got to the tumbler and lifted. But the wire bent. I cursed,
pulled it clear, straightened it, tried again, but again it bent.
   'Here,' Seona's voice from behind me. She had a nail in her
hand, a long nail, stronger than the wire. I snatched it from her,
probed again, lifted and this time the tumbler rose a little way
before it slipped back into place. I paused, wiped sweat from my brow
and listened at the door. If the guard was still outside he must have
heard the attempts at picking the lock. But all was still. With
trembling fingers I thrust with the nail, the tumbler rose the whole
way and the lock snapped open.
   My nerves were jangling. I stood for a second with my back
against the door, breathing heavily, then I turned and slowly,
stealthily I eased it open. It creaked. My heart missed a beat. I
waited. Still no sound from outside. I opened the door wide.
   Carefully I looked out into the passageway. The chair was empty,
cigarette-ends littered the floor beside it and in the gloomy light of
evening I could look straight along to the hallway. It, too, was
empty.
   I grasped Seona's arm, pulled her with me as I went silently
along the passage keeping close to the wall. My groin was paining: it
was swollen but somehow it didn't seem so bad now.
   We came to the hallway. Still the silence, an eerie silence. I
didn't know what to make of it.
   'Stay here,' I said to the girl, and then on my toes I went
over to the main door, looked out into the courtyard. It was empty.
The truck had gone. I beckoned. Seona came to join me.
   My lips were against her ear, her hair brushing my face. 'You
know the road to the coast. You know of Farrel. Ask for him. Go to
him or De Sotto.'
   Her face turned. I looked into her eyes. 'And you?'
   'I will follow,', I said hastily. 'I have to find out if he
is still here. I will not be far behind you.'
   'No,' she said, her voice little more than a whisper. 'We
have come this far together. I will not leave you now. You may need
my help. Besides, the little man has said that Jeronimo's men are
between us and the coast.'
   'Do as you're told.' My voice was harsh, impatient.
   'No. We go together.'
   There wasn't time to argue. I took her by the hand, went quickly
over to the stairs, began to climb, placing my feet carefully on each
step, keeping close in the deep shadow of the balustrade and at the
top of the stairs I stopped, bent double and looked each way along the
length of the landing, along the dim empty silence of it.
   On to the landing then, padding softly, making for the far end.
Double doors stood open. I looked inside to a bare empty room. The
evening breeze blew gently in through windows from which most of the
glazing had gone. On to the next room. The doors were shut. Slowly
I opened them a fraction, looked in. It showed signs of recent
occupation. Papers scattered over the floor. Cigarette-ends too. A
couple of what seemed to be pin-up pictures stuck to one wall.
   Then on to the next room, and the next, working my way along,
seeing signs of some of them having been in use until at last I came
to the room where I had met Jeronimo. I was more careful here. I
used the keyhole first. But it too was deserted, most of the
furniture covered by dust sheets, and I stood for a moment or so,
frowning, puzzled, not knowing what to make of it.
   Next to it was a bedroom, fully furnished, a great canopied bed
occupying most of it. The bed was still made up. I left it, went on
and two doors farther on, and almost at the end of a landing, I turned
a handle, went in to a horrible sickening stench.
   I staggered back. Behind me Seona retreated hurriedly. I went
forward again into darkness. I still had the matches. I struck one
and in the light from the tiny flame I saw shuttered windows, saw a
low truckle-bed, a small table beside it, and on the bed a form, the
form of someone covered by a blanket.
   On the table stood a small oil lamp. I held my breath, went over
to it, raised the glass, lighted it and the room filled with a warm
mellow light.
   Gingerly I raised the edge of the blanket. A dead face looked up
at me, the eyes closed, dark-ringed, the face waxen and showing still
the lines of pain and suffering. Hurriedly I ripped away the blanket
from the body. It was naked, the body of a man, well built and young:
one arm was still bandaged, an arm which was swollen to enormous
proportions and stinking, gangrenous. His other arm lay across his
chest, unnaturally, as if placed there deliberately, for a purpose. I
bent closer, saw the pinprick of the hole made by a hypodermic
syringe. Someone had been merciful.
   I threw the blanket back on him. His clothing lay piled over a
chair, trousers, shoes, socks, underclothing, a shirt, but no jacket.
I picked up the shirt. The right sleeve had been ripped open. It
was heavily bloodstained.
   The right sleeve. I went cold. It had been that same sleeve of
Baker's raincoat which had been torn, ripped open. But this wasn't
Baker. Baker was on the short side, past middle age and sandy-haired,
balding. The room seemed to whirl around me. I couldn't think. This
was beyond me.
   I went back to the clothing, rummaged through the pockets of the
trousers. They held nothing. I looked around for the jacket. There
was no sign of it. I flung the clothing back on to the chair and as I
did so I noticed the shoulder holster. It hung by the side of the
chair, partly concealed from me. I picked it up, drew out the
automatic. A P.38. A full clip in the butt, a spare clip attached to
the holster. Quickly I slipped off my jacket, hung the holster from
my shoulder and shrugged into the jacket again.
   Then I went over to the lamp, bent to blow it out. The sooner I
made contact now with Farrel the better. From behind me in the
doorway I heard the slither of footsteps. I had forgotten Seona. I
turned to see what she was doing and I froze. Standing in the
doorway, her nose wrinkled in disgust at the smell in the room, was
the woman Jeronimo had called Elsa. Behind her, peering round her,
were Ginetti and one of the boys, surprise on their faces, and in her
hand pointing straight at me was a long-barrelled Luger.
9
   'TAKE your hand away from the lamp.' Her voice was high and
thin and sharp. She stayed in the doorway, perhaps because of the
stench from the body, perhaps because even though she had the gun in
her hand she felt safer with distance between us. Ginetti was by her
side and slightly behind her, her shoulder blocking him from the room
while the boy peered in between them.
   Slowly I straightened, let my hands drop away from the lamp.
   'Come away from it.'
   I moved a couple of steps nearer her.
   'That's enough.'
   I stopped, tense, every muscle in my body taut, my mind reeling,
trying to find a way to cope with the situation.
   'How did you get out?'
   I didn't answer. My eyes were fixed on the pistol she held, on
the finger which was crooked around the trigger and which showed white
with the pressure she was exerting. I was close, very close to death.
   'How did you get out?'
   Still I was silent. Her voice had risen still higher. She was
nervous, uncertain, and I gauged the distance between us judging
whether I could get to her before she could pull the trigger. But
eight feet or more separated us: and Ginetti too had his pistol in his
hand, as always held loosely by his side but nevertheless ready for
action. Then the boy: it was obvious that he too would be armed.
   'Answer me.'
   The voice was a danger signal, a sign of nerves reaching a pitch
when anything could happen.
   'Through the door,' I mumbled, my mouth dry. 'How else?'
   She seemed to relax a little, but only a little. 'And the
girl?'
   'Gone,' I said.
   'Christ!' Ginetti's voice broke in. He looked frightened.
'Jeronimo's got to be told. And now. Don't play with him,
Contessa. Shoot him. Get him out of the way.'
   Nervously she licked her lips. 'Yes,' she said, and her voice
was uncertain. But all the same she set herself more firmly on her
feet and the barrel of the pistol quivered as an extra pressure was
put on the trigger.
   And inside me my nerves seemed to shiver, to jar. Now. It was
coming now. And I gathered myself to leap at her, to try and get the
pistol before it went off.
   But nothing happened. It is no easy matter to kill in cold blood
if you haven't the mentality for that sort of thing. Very few women
have. Vicious though she looked the Contessa was no exception.
   'Get out of my way.' Ginetti's voice had risen. He seemed to
be panicking a little, to be losing control. 'Move. Let me do
it.'
   He edged forward, began to shoulder her aside, to get freedom for
the arm and the hand which held the pistol. The boy had closed in
upon the two in front of him so that they were now grouped tightly
together in the doorway. And then my heart lurched. A shadowy figure
appeared behind them, a figure who could only be Seona, who moved up
to them, into them.
   She must have jumped at them, her arms outstretched, and she
caught the Contessa full in the back, sending her staggering in at me
and barging Ginetti violently to one side as she did so. And at the
same time I leaped to one side, the Luger going off almost in my face,
the bullet missing me by inches as I swayed back at her and chopped in
a blow with the edge of my palm alongside her jaw. Her head snapped
violently around and sideways, her eyes rolled to show the whites as
she slumped to the ground.
   And then Ginetti. He hadn't a chance. He was down on one knee
and I was on to him before he had time to do anything. Again that
chopping blow, a blow that could kill if aimed at the right spot, but
this time on the wrist of the hand which held his pistol, and hard,
really hard. I heard his gasp of pain, heard too the clatter of the
gun hitting the floor as I brought my knee up violently into his face
to send him flying backwards on to the landing.
   I staggered with the effort, then gathered myself ready to deal
with the boy. He had slipped back. He had a shotgun, the shortened
barrels swinging as he wrestled with Seona: a Seona whose teeth showed
in a tigerish fury as she pushed and pulled, the knuckles of her hands
white as she gripped on those barrels, fighting to keep them away from
me.
# 238
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   "My dear Frank. When you hear this, I shall be dead. It is
now ten o'clock and I am quite alone in the laboratory. I have
fastened the door and am now seated before the recorder. Frank, I
have invented a weapon which I call Liquid Glass. The atom bomb
causes death by fire. My invention causes death by freezing. Liquid
Glass is in the form of small crystals. Five of these crystals
enclosed within a glass cylinder are sufficient, when dropped from a
plane, to reduce the land beneath to a thick crust of ice. All people
caught within the belt are frozen to death instantly. Therefore,
should a free nation be threatened by another, they can meet the
menace of their enemy's atomic fire with the introduction of a new Ice
Age. I have placed my formula in a secret cache for greater safety,
for I fear, Frank- I very much fear- that I am shadowed and that
some person may have more than a faint inkling as to what I have
brought into being. Have you ever heard talk concerning three men who
are known as the Terrible Three, who have managed so far to elude
capture. Their field of operation is world wide, but there is a
rumour that they are at present in the States. These three men have
the reputation of possessing superb nerve and cunning. I know many
inside stories of the happenings under cover within Europe. The
merest glimpse of a man's face is sufficient warning to the initiated,
but I have no proof. Therefore be on your guard.
   "Now for your instructions.
   "Snatch a moment when the house is unoccupied- but don't send
the servants out too obviously- then go upstairs to the attic. In
the second room you will find a line of pictures resting against the
wall. Choose Psyche and Pan, and take off the back. Between this
outer covering you will see a sealed packet. The words 'Liquid
Glass' are written upon the envelope. Take it to Professor Slade,
'Carmel,' Balfour Crescent, New York. Once it is in his possession
your task is completed. But whilst this operation is in progress I
beg you to use the utmost discretion. Trust no one; neither a friend
nor a beloved one. Remember- you will be holding dynamite.
   "There remains nothing more for me to say, I think.
   "Thank you, Frank. I know you will do it... well."
   The tape ran on soundlessly until Frank, breaking the spell,
pressed the fast-wind switch. Now he understood the Professor's agony
of indecision. This was, indeed, the answer to the atomic bomb, but
what a fearful answer. He felt the mantle of responsibility
descending upon his own shoulders.
   Lifting off the tape, he hesitated over what he should do with
it. He could of course remove the message, but he naturally preferred
to carry it with the sealed packet to Slade. In the meanwhile where
could he keep the tape? He dared not leave it about, so he decided to
carry it perpetually around with him. This point settled, he
reflected he wanted to take a shower. When he'd tied the belt of his
bathrobe he slipped the tape into the pocket. Within the shower
compartment his brain ran riot, in company with the falling jets of
water. He ran his fingers through his hair while he figured.
   "I only need the right opportunity to snatch the packet, then
carry it to New York and my part is over." When he returned to his
room he found he was again looking around for the unexpected. "It's
too darned easy to let your imagination take the reins," he
admonished himself. He did not really believe Zinnerman's secret was
known. He didn't credit the Professor's notion that he'd been
trailed. "No- just a sick man weaving fantasies, and you'd better
watch out for yourself," he warned, "or you will be starting on the
same road, too." He turned the key softly in the lock for the first
time since he'd slept in this house. Half an hour later Frank lay on
his bed in the inner room. He was smoking and flicking over the pages
of a book. The tape now reposed beneath his pillow. It seemed to him
that the night was endless. Had he the least hope that he'd sleep?
At length he laid aside his cigarette end in a silver tray and turned
out the light. In retrospect he saw again Zinnerman's face close to
his, and felt the Professor's hands gripping his shoulders. He
relived the scene in the laboratory, then he drifted into sleep. What
was that! Frank sat up and listened. He heard a sharp click-click.
He switched on the table lamp, swung his feet to the floor and
reached for his robe.
   "Is anyone there?" he called.
   In the next room he groped for the light button and flooded the
apartment with illumination. He had to wait a minute to adjust his
own vision. Then going over to the door he released it. The passage
was empty.
   "Is someone there?" he queried. No one replied. No sound
disturbed the heavy silence which now ruled the house.
   He closed his door. His watch registered two o'clock. He
extinguished the lamp and pulled back the heavy drapes from the
window. The dark sky was lit by a silver moon boat. The trees were
scarcely discernible; a serene autumnal scene.
   He wandered back into his bedroom. Here, he shook out a
Stuyvesant from the packet on the small table and used his lighter.
Seated on the side of the bed he commenced to evolve plans for the
morrow.
CHAPTER TWO
FRENZIED WEB
   THE NEW DAY proved a whirlpool of activity. Frank had to
cope with dozens of letters, attend to callers, and take each phone
call which occurred about every fifteen minutes. At mid-day Benn
entered Frank's study carrying a tray. Frank wanted only a sandwich
and a glass of milk for luncheon, and as the butler deposited the tray
upon the desk he asked if he might slip out for half an hour.
   "Sure," Frank agreed absently. Then as the man departed
realisation dawned. With Benn removed, the house would be virtually
empty. The other two servants had gone out a while since. Johnson
was in the laboratory with sufficient work to occupy him for an hour
at least. He'd been very late the previous night and was trying
desperately to make up the time he'd lost. He had hinted to Frank
that he'd had a lot of fun and consumed quite a number of highballs.
Possibly he'd been responsible for the noise that had woken him,
Frank had decided; and now within a short span of time he would have
his chance within his grasp. He waited until he heard the front door
slam; made a quick check to ascertain that the house really was
untenanted, then he swiftly mounted the stairs which led to the next
storey.
   He opened a door. The first room looked rather eerie in the
faint light filtering in from the lowered shades. Frank crossed to
the second door and turned the handle. There were several pieces of
furniture stored in here.
   Resting against the opposite wall were a row of pictures, gilded
frames turned towards the wall. He examined each in turn, then as the
fifth picture passed through his hands he knew with quickening pulses
that this was the one he sought. A lovely study of the kneeling
Psyche imploring the aid of Pan who, in his genial way, was apparently
giving advice to the stricken girl who had lost her lover through her
own imprudence and mistrust.
   Frank produced his penknife and gently attacked the back of the
picture. He was aware that the task must be delicately done. He owed
that to Zinnerman. At length it was finished and the square piece of
plywood fell away.
   There, resting against the canvas was a small sealed packet,
measuring not more than six inches by four. He lifted it up and read
'Liquid Glass' inscribed in the Professor's neat script. He
slipped the package into his pocket, and then commenced the work of
restoring the picture in as perfect a condition as before. When he
was at last satisfied he came away and descended the staircase. He
strode swiftly into his room- and stopped- eyes riveted upon his
black jacket lying across a chair. Within the right hand pocket
reposed the tape. How could he have been so careless as to leave it
here? But it was all right, he reflected the next instant. The
dwelling was deserted. Nevertheless his conscience troubled him as he
slid his hand into the pocket to recover it. The tape was not
there. He explored the left side pocket, and again drew blank.
Where was it? He was certain beyond a shadow of doubt that he
placed it there this morning.
   His gaze flashed around. There was a tape on the recorder which
he'd left bare last night. He bounded over to the machine. The tape
was a quarter wound off.
   He switched on, fast-wound, and pressed the playback button.
With an indescribable shock he heard Zinnerman's voice saying the
first words of his message.
   Frank stopped the machine and stood taut. Someone had been in
this room during his absence. For a moment he could not move as
realisation flooded his brain, then he fled into the corridor.
   "Who is there?" he shouted.
   His voice echoed- and there was no reply. He made a swift
search of the first floor rooms and rushed down the stairs to explore
the rest. He found no one.
   He ran across the lawn to the laboratory and threw the door wide.
Johnson, who seemed to be terribly busy, glanced up at him in an
apparently startled fashion.
   "Hello, Frank," he greeted. "Have you come to give me a
hand? That sure would be acceptable."
   Frank ignored this.
   "Did you come into the house just now?" he demanded abruptly.
   Johnson ruffled up his hair.
   "Who, me?" he exclaimed. "Good God, no. I've far too much
to do, but if you were thinking of brewing coffee, I'd love some.
Better make it black though. I went out on the town last night."
   Frank stared at him, trying to read within Johnson's eyes whether
he was speaking the truth or not. Then Frank withdrew, closing the
door after him. He went swiftly back up to his room and removing the
tape, slid it into his pocket. He thought wretchedly, "How much
harm have I caused already?" It was abundantly clear to him than an
intruder had been here, but just how far that person had advanced in
knowledge was open to speculation. He might only have had time to
hear a part of the tape, or- he was now as wise as Frank was. How
could he tell? There just wasn't time to waste in self-reproach for
this criminal carelessness on his part. There was only one thing to
do- think fast, and decide just how the situation should be remedied.
   He moved over to the window and looked down upon the garden.
Johnson, of course, was the most probable candidate for the unknown
intruder. If only there was some way of checking up on him.
   The tall trees stood sentinel below dressed in their garlands of
russet leaves. Autumn. The loveliest season of the year.
   A figure was crossing the stone courtyard below. Benn, returning
from his errand no doubt.
   Frank turned away. Then a new line of thought arrested him.
Could this have been the work of a stranger? A person Frank had
never seen? A creature well adapted in the art of a quiet unnoticed
entry and a swift melting away afterwards when the task had been
completed? A saboteur perhaps? One of the Terrible Three?
   But let him deal with facts known. However much his enemy had
learned there was one point he couldn't be aware of, namely that Frank
had already secured the packet.
# 216
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   Feeling rather diminished by being reduced to such an obvious
manoeuvre, Sam swung abruptly round a corner, vaulted, as silently as
he could, over a low garden wall, and crouched in the prickly refuge
of a bush.
   The following footsteps panicked. They were almost running.
Evidently the trailer was a novice.
   Then Sam saw that the footsteps belonged to the man with a
straggly beard, the one who had claimed Han's attention at the party.
   Suddenly Sam felt reckless. He wasn't going to wait for danger
written in the stars. He was going to write his own autobiography.
Without taking any further precautions, Sam followed the follower.
   The man lost his nerve, and turned to face Sam.
   'Well?' Sam demanded.
   The straggly beard trembled.
   'I was trying to catch up with you, sir.'
   'What a coincidence! for it seems,' Sam pointed out, 'that I
have caught up with you.'
   But the other was recovering his composure.
   'I was waiting,' he explained, 'till we passed a bar. Then I
was going to ask you to have a drink with me. I asked Han to tell me
about you...'
   'We'll talk here,' Sam answered, 'Mr... er...?'
   'Singh,' said the bearded man as if he were conferring a
favour. 'My name is Singh, but I wanted to talk to you about
Foster.'
   'So many names!' said Sam. 'Why should you want to talk to
me about Foster? It happened before I came to this country.'
   Singh said, 'I think there is going to be a storm.'
   The night, certainly, seemed to be loaded with thunder; and Sam
wondered how intolerable the other's social manners could get. Were
they now going to talk about the weather?
   Sam was conscious of his muscles absorbing the secrets of
flexion. There was a tremendous synaptic gathering inside him. But
would it be worth pulling such a silly little beard?
   'I'm glad you know about Foster,' Singh said.
   But one would need a genius for letting the world rip by not to
know about Foster. Newspapers had bellowed headlines about the
settler who'd complained that his native gardener was getting too
interested in his wife, and who'd slugged the man so hard that he'd
pushed him into eternity. Foster had always been hitting his native
servants, but with the gardener he had gone too far.
   'It's only right that Foster should hang,' Singh said curtly.
'Yet this New Government may not like to start what they call a New
Era with the execution of a white man. They may feel that it will
bias their relations with other Western Powers. So I would like you
to sign our petition. As a visitor from The States, your signature
would mean so much...'
   But the man had not even troubled to ask Sam whether he believed
in capital punishment, whether he thought that vengeance was a dish
best eaten cold! Of course it was not right that the black men who
killed whites should always be punished, while the white men who
killed blacks should go free. If there was a law, it should be
impartial. But was capital punishment part of any law that could be
justified?
   Singh would say, Sam was sure, that Sam was standing with the
white men when he waved away the petition. But surely he was doing
more than that? For Sam ought to be prejudiced. Sam was as black as
night. That was why his mother, not knowing his father, had called
him Sam Dark. 'My name's trash,' she'd said, 'but we'll give you
a nice one, so that you can be proud of yourself.'
   Sam said, 'Mr. Singh, I'm going to return to my hotel. In
the circumstances, perhaps you'd give me ten minutes' start. I do not
wish to walk with you, or have you on my heels.'
   After that, there was no tail of footsteps just out of synchrony;
and when Sam passed the first small bar that was open, he took his own
solitary footsteps into it. The place was utterly undistinguished,
but Sam wanted to drink away the taste of Mary Parker and Mr. Singh
with his wish to see Foster strung up from the rafters. And after he
had drunk away the rancid taste, Sam wanted to think of Han.
   He did not know how long he spent drinking, and his thoughts
reached no conclusions. He left the bar finally because the
proprietor begged him to go.
   
   THERE was no sign of the night porter or of any of the
night staff at the hotel. Yet Sam wanted one last cool glass before
going to his room and the whirling fans. After all, Grandad's Soda
Pop was paying enough to justify Sam throwing a little weight around.
Sam, the consultant on market research in relation to coloured
citizens in America, who'd been yanked out of the advertising
department and sent off as ambassadorial salesman to the New State.
Sam, the Soda Pop salesman, who kept his finger jammed on the bell;
but the eerie thing was that he felt that nobody would come, that
somehow the luxury hotel was adrift and floating away without a crew
into the stifling night.
   He looked for another bell, in case the one he had been ringing
was at fault. When he found it, he jabbed it with a viciousness that
surprised him.
   He might have saved his finger; but obstinacy made him sit
himself down in a padded chair. Surely sooner or later some servant
would have to pass through the foyer?
   But it was a long term policy, and Sam began to weary. He
realised that he might acquire a skull cap of dust before anything
happened. He decided that the hotel had won the round, and he got up
and moved over to the lifts.
   But when Sam flipped on the light inside his room, he was no
longer alone: there was someone on his bed, a woman who had made
herself at home and had gone to sleep!
   It was Mary Parker, the bogus fortune teller who "read" the
vibrations accumulated on things people had carried around them, the
impetus of fate, psychometry.
   Mary wasn't handsome when she was awake, and asleep she looked
ghastly.
   Then Sam realised that Mary was dead.
   He saw the penknife.
   His penknife.
   It was plunged into the old woman's heart.
   Sam staggered into his private bathroom and passed a wet sponge
over his face. Then he unhooked the shaving mirror and took it back
to the bedroom. He put the mirror over Mary Parker's mouth. Mary was
dead all right.
   There wasn't much blood, but Sam knew that if he pulled out the
knife there'd be plenty.
   Ought he to pull out the knife? It wouldn't help the witch now,
and a lot of blood would be awkward if...
   If what?
   If he took the body down to the foyer and left it in a chair in
that mausoleum. A blood trail would be a confession. He could
recover his knife in the foyer, and let the corpse bleed comfortably
into the cushions...
   Yes, Sam's one obsessive idea was- to get rid of the body. What
had happened and how it had happened, these were hideous questions
which would have to wait.
   Sam would have liked to have complained to the management! What
damned right had they to give permission to a caller to wait for a
guest in his room? Such slipshod security was bound to lead to
trouble. Even if Mary had given a wink meaning ~"Sam's expecting
me", they oughtn't to have fallen for that flattering assumption of
sophistication. This was supposed to be a first-class hotel in the
New State, and not a brothel under the Old Regime.
   Jesus!... if Mary's body was found in Sam's room with Sam's knife
pinning it down to the dimension of eternity...
   Although Sam wanted to concentrate on getting the body out of the
room, he couldn't control his thoughts. But he tried to force himself
to number off the tasks in hand: 1) Drag the corpse to the door, 2)
Look out to see if the coast was clear, 3) Get to the lift before the
night porter took to operating the damned thing again, 4) Get back to
the bedroom and change clothes in case of bloodstains, 5) Think up a
good bluff if some minion came up with a story about showing Mary
Parker up to Sam's room.
   But to perdition with trying to think straight. What was needed
was a little crooked action.
   Sam forced himself back to the bedside, and put out his arms to
grab the corpse under the arm pits...
   'Dear me, Mr. Dark, I would have thought that any further
violence was quite unnecessary...'
   Sam spun round.
   A small man, who was pushing out his lips as if he wanted to kiss
or be kissed, had come silently into the room.
   'Oh dear,' he said, 'I'm the hotel detective.'
   Sam goggled at him.
   'Where the devil have you been?' he said bitterly. 'Why
can't you prevent this sort of thing happening?'
   'Do you think I could have done that, Mr. Dark? I can't be
everywhere at once, you know. We've had trouble with an old lady who
lost a valuable brooch. I've been interviewing all the staff. The
old lady insisted on it. Of course in the end we discovered that
she'd used the brooch for pinning a cheque to her laundry list. Old
ladies are capable of anything. You'd never credit what they'll do
without a second thought.
   'They stick a hat pin into a tiresome dog or leave a valuable
brooch in a laundry list, and then forget all about it. Whereas you
and I, we'd have a twinge of conscience, wouldn't we? or else we'd be
a bloody sight more careful.'
   The little man tried to suck in his lips, but there wasn't much
he could do about it.
   'My name is Ralph Chand,' he said, 'and you ought to be
pleased to see me. Perhaps I've prevented you from doing something
foolish. We do get flustered, don't we, in a crisis?'
   Sam was speechless. Do hotel detectives talk like nursery
governesses? We must eat up all our bread and butter before we
have any cake, mustn't we?
   Then Sam tensed. Perhaps this imbecile was the murderer who'd
come back to gloat and perhaps to do some more damage?
   Chand said conversationally, 'Stabbed, isn't she? But if you
prefer it, she could be poisoned or strangled. We must suit your
personality. But you are a man who carries a knife, aren't you?'
   Sam felt his eyes swelling like bubbles.
   'Will you say that again?' he demanded faintly.
   'Perhaps, Mr. Dark,' Chand said brusquely, 'you are finding
it hard to believe in me? Do you think I ought to be holding a gun in
one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other? Here is my warrant.
You will verify, I hope, that it is perfectly in order.'
   It looked real
   'And now,' said the hotel detective, 'I will have to ask you
to accompany me.'
   Sam stepped back.
   'Oh no,' he retorted, 'I'll wait here till the real police
take charge. I don't want to be locked in the kitchen and told I've
got to wash dishes for the rest of my life.'
   The detective succeeded in getting his lower lip under his upper
teeth, and then he released it again. It sprang back to the bulge as
if to attack.
   'Sir,' Mr. Chand said firmly, 'what you want is a lawyer.
After this unfortunate incident, he'll be waiting for us. The best
lawyer in town, Mr. Dark; and he's our acting President while
Bassanto is in Nyamba. I could not take you to a higher authority.'
   Sam lifted the telephone, and to his amazement it was answered
almost immediately. Anyone would think the hotel was running to
orderly schedule.
   Sam said, 'Give me police headquarters.'
   The girl on the switchboard did not seem to be surprised.
# 28
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   I drank off the Scotch.
   'We'd better find out,' I said. 'Another one, Sergeant?'
   He grinned.
   'May as well make a night of it, sir, don't you think?'
   
   We made it quite a session.
   In the next two hours I gathered more information about Sergeant
Ellison than I had in all the time I'd known him. The bar at the
Bloomsbury was a quiet sort of place, and we drank just about enough
to loosen our tongues. That was all to the good because, apart from a
load of irrelevant data, I picked up an odd fact about him that,
though it seemed unimportant, came in very handy later on.
   I tried to draw him out on Malaya and the rubber plantations, and
after a time he weighed in with some of the problems of Indian labour.
Strikes, it appeared, had always been blowing up on the flimsiest
pretext, and he went on to talk about one that had threatened to
paralyse production just before the war.
   'That,' he remarked, 'was when I learnt to drive an
engine.'
   'You mean a railway engine?'
   'A small one.' He grinned. 'Much smaller than anything
you'll see down at Ravi, but the cab lay-out's roughly the same. We
had a branch line connecting the plantation with the main Singapore
track. When the strike came we had to keep the wagons on the move,
and there was only one way to do it.'
   I asked him half-jokingly whether he thought he could drive the
Calcutta-Peshawar express.
   'If I had to drive it out of hell into heaven,' he said, 'I'd
at least have a damn good try.'
   We were neither of us talking in deadly earnest, and I'd no idea
then that I'd ever need to ask him to drive a locomotive. Yet when
the time came that I needed a driver and seconds were precious, the
little that I'd learnt about him that evening snapped into mind with a
sweetness that made all the difference.
   
   Looking back, I learnt quite a lot that was useful in the course
of that couple of hours at the Bloomsbury.
   It was close on eleven o'clock when I left, and as I turned the
jeep towards the gates, another car came blaring up the road from the
station. It was an American make, half the size of a tank and
unmistakably belonged to Sarwate. I'd seen it too often at Dalgoorie
to have any doubts about that.
   I caught sight of his face, all flesh, peering through the
windscreen, and beside him a woman in a sari.
   I couldn't see her features. She was turned away from me, but
she seemed to be young.
   It must have been the Scotch, but right at that moment I felt
very much alone, a world away from Fay. I muttered an entreaty that
the next three nights at least would be quiet; then, swinging the jeep
on to the tarmac, I followed Sarwate up the hill.
22. A LUSCIOUS LITTLE WINDFALL
   I slept soundly from midnight to six in the morning, and woke
feeling more thoroughly rested than I had for ten days. There'd been
no hornet-buzz from the bazar and no jangling telephone-bells in the
small hours. Some distant Hindu deity, possibly Vishnu the Preserver
in one of his nine incarnations, had lent an ear to the prayer of an
unbeliever and laid a peaceful hand on Kulachi. That was one thing to
be thankful for at any rate, and to me there was another that was
equally if not more important. This was Tuesday. It was August the
eleventh, and Fay was arriving from Delhi.
   I slipped on a pair of sandals, snatched myself a quick, cool
shower and a dollop of breakfast, and ran the jeep down to Area
Headquarters with the airy feeling that in spite of the heat I was
going to remember this day as a pleasanter landmark of monsoon 1942.
   Betty had only just arrived, but she'd called at the Signals
Section on the way and picked up what messages there were. One of
them was sealed in an envelope and labelled TOP SECRET- obviously
from G.H.Q.- and I slit the flap and pulled out the folded
slip of paper with all kinds of misgivings. Not that I was
desperately worried about Fay. I'd spoken to her on the phone less
than twenty-four hours before, and she hadn't seemed in any way upset;
but, from my own narrow shave outside the Kutcherry, I knew just how
little was needed to spark off an outbreak of violence, how swiftly a
peaceful street could become as dangerous as a valley in the path of a
crumbling dam. The mere mention of Delhi, on this of all days, was
calculated to set all my nerve-ends tingling; and with the Press and
radio clamped into virtual silence on the subject, there were only two
sources of news: rumour, which was wild and unreliable and reports
from G.H.Q., which were reliable as far as they went, but
which, I suspected, never told more than a quarter of the truth.
   Still, casting an eye down the message, I didn't see anything to
cause immediate concern. The only mention of Delhi was in the context
of student demonstrations, but all hell, it seemed, had been let loose
in Bombay. A railway station had been raided, a Government grain-shop
looted and burnt, telegraph wires cut and stones thrown at trains.
The police and the military had had to intervene and there'd been a
number of casualties, some of them fatal.
   There'd also been some firing in Lucknow and Poona, and more
trouble in Ahmedabad; but it was even more disturbing to find no
reference at all to what had happened at Kulachi. At least half a
dozen places were detailed in connection with what were called 'minor
disturbances', but I couldn't spot Kulachi anywhere among them.
   That made me think, not once but three times. I knew the Brig
had sent a wire up to District, and both Rob and Scattergood must have
made their own individual reports, and yet what I'd seen down in the
Sadar Bazar wasn't even classed as a 'minor disturbance'. I looked
down my nose at the message, and wondered what the hell sort of
trouble G.H.Q. meant when they talked about 'a student
demonstration'.
   Then I realized abruptly that it wasn't worth the effort. Even
if they meant what Rob described as 'wilful bloody murder', there
was nothing I could do to prevent it. Delhi was a hundred and fifty
miles across the Ganges plain, and that was a damned sight too far.
In six hours Fay would be sitting in a train, and until it was time
to wheel the jeep down to Jagapur to meet her, the best thing I could
do was to forget the whole business completely.
   I floated the message-form to Betty and told her to file it.
   'And give the D.S.P. a tinkle,' I added. 'See if
he'll be down at the Kutcherry in half an hour's time. I want to have
a word with him about a bungalow at Ravi.'
   She reached for the phone, but before she could so much as lift
the receiver the bell began to ring.
   'Damn,' I said. 'Find out who it is.'
   She found out. It was Rob, and I took the phone from her.
   'I was just going to toddle down and see you,' I told him.
'I've a small twist of dope about our friend from Asifabad.'
   I heard him chuckle down the wire.
   'I've got more than that. I've a packet right here that'll make
your eyes pop.'
   'Oh? What's in it?'
   'Another twist of something that's turned up at last.'
   'That tells me a hell of a lot, doesn't it?'
   'Yes,' he said, 'it's meant to.'
   'D'you want me to guess?'
   'Not while we're talking on the blower. Just get toddling, old
son.'
   I told him I'd be with him in roughly ten minutes.
   'Make it five,' he urged. 'This is manna from the skies.
It's a luscious little windfall if ever there was one.'
   'What shall I bring then? A spoon or a penknife?'
   'Neither,' he said. 'Pack a thinking cap. That's all we're
going to need.'
   
   I did more than toddle. I was down at the Kutcherry in six
minutes flat.
   Rob was standing by his desk gazing down at a black metal box on
the floor. It was the sort of box that anyone could have bought in
any of a thousand bazars: a small tin trunk, flat-topped, fitted with
a hasp and staple and secured by a padlock. There were millions of
them in India.
   This one, from the look of it, had seen better days. It was
scratched and dented, the hasp was broken and some sharp concussion at
some time or other had strained at the hinges. The paint had long
since lost all its gloss, but I could see very faintly the letters
'M.F.' lacquered in white on the lid.
   'Some windfall,' I remarked.
   'Don't kick it,' said Rob. 'Sit down. Have you heard about
the bus?'
   'What bus?'
   'First one down the hill from Dalgoorie this morning. Struck a
patch of oil on one of the hairpins and nose-dived over the side of
the khud.'
   I wasn't surprised. The buses on the winding road to the hills
were the kind I remembered on country routes in England back in the
late nineteen-twenties: rattling affairs, sparingly sprung, with
bulbous horns and a single door at the rear. They were driven with
erratic and reckless fury by a team of Sikhs, and on the odd occasions
when necessity had forced me to use them I'd suffered a multitude of
hideous deaths in the course of an hour's fertile imagination.
   I said as much to Rob, and asked him how far this one had
dropped.
   'Five hundred feet, almost sheer,' he replied. 'Finished up
in a stream. Little of it left except for the chassis.'
   'Any military personnel aboard?'
   'No. There were only five passengers. Six with the driver.
Devil of a shambles, though. Seemed to be bodies here, there and
everywhere.'
   'Anyone escape?'
   'Killed four of them,' he said. 'Simply hadn't a chance.
But the two on the back seat threw themselves out. They're in the
I.M.H., one with a couple of broken legs. The other got away
with cuts and a bump on his head like a pigeon's egg. He's the
luckiest beggar still breathing this morning.'
   'Who is he?' I asked.
   'A friend from the hills. That's a bit of his property.' Rob
pointed to the box. 'Tossed off the luggage grid the first time the
bus turned over. Fell in a clump of thorns and lodged there. Luckily
for us it burst at the seams, and when the sub-inspector from
Dalgoorie saw what was in it, he sent down for me.'
   'And you impounded it.'
   'I borrowed it,' said Rob, 'and all the other personal
belongings I could find scattered on the side of the hill. Took them
into safe custody till I could discover whose they were.... As soon
as you've taken a look at that little lot, I'm having the hasp riveted
back into place and the box delivered to the I.M.H. It'll be
held in store for a certain patient and he won't be any the wiser.
When I picked it up he was flat on a stretcher, out to the wide, and
the sub-inspector's down at his bedside to give him all the flannel he
needs as soon as he begins to worry.'
   I turned the box around and stared at the letters stencilled on
the lid.
   'But who the devil is he?' I queried.
   'Goanese,' said Rob, handing me a clue. 'A thin, sallow
streak of mixed Dago and Madrassi. Waves a stick in front of that
lousy set of saxes at the Mayfair.'
   'Fernandes?'
   'Manuel Fernandes.'
   I knew him, of course. He was the boss of Sarwate's dance band.
# 26
<445 TEXT N12>
Sam looked away and Willie thought, he's got you, Sam, you're
afraid. You're not a Socialist now.
   'You see,' Parnell said. 'It shows the power of a newspaper
which has strong beliefs and acts on them and perseveres.' He waved
a sheaf of letters. 'Congratulations pouring in.'
   'So what?' Willie said. 'You've proved the power of dirty
propaganda. That's been done before.'
   Parnell came around the desk and embraced his shoulders.
'Willie, when will you realize? Every newspaper makes propaganda.
You know what Beaverbrook told the Royal Commission. He owns his
newspapers for no other purpose. It may be propaganda for the left or
right, it may be for the middle way. But it's all propaganda and with
good reason.' His white hand tightened on Willie's shoulder.
'What you'd have is a sheet which tells the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth. But what is the truth, Willie? I don't
know. I only know what I think is true. I act on it and try to show
others, like the politician on his platform and the parson in his
pulpit. You must allow me that, Willie- the freedom of holding an
opinion and expressing it with every force at my command.'
   Very plausible, Willie thought, except for one thing. You hold
the opinion, then make others express it. You don't allow them the
freedom which you claim as a right.
   'I know you're a Socialist, Willie. With your background you
have to be. You've never got 1926 out of your memory. But you
mustn't take it so hard. You should learn to lose more gracefully.'
   Willie looked at the white hand, then at Parnell. He kept his
gaze steady until the hand fell away. Then he said: 'It's not the
victory, it's the means. You've done your bit towards making
journalism a shameful thing.'
   He turned slowly and went out. Miss Simpson raised a hand to
him, slightly and secretively, because he was her favourite. As he
raised his hand in mild answer, his thoughts said, something happened
in there just now. We moved another step nearer the inevitable, the
show-down. Parnell on one side, me on the other, and no compromise in
between.
   He went up the stairs to Joe's room. The News Editor was
cleaning his pipe; pushing the white cleaner in one end and waiting
for it to come out brown at the other.
   'Have you seen the letters?' Joe said. 'All the
congratulations?'
   Willie went to the window, looking out at nothing. 'I could
puke.'
   'You don't want to take it personal, Willie. You and me and the
rest of us. We do what we're told. We don't make the policy.'
   'That's no answer. No excuse.'
   Joe dropped the cleaner into the waste-basket. He replaced the
stem in the bowl, twisting it another squeak so that the mouthpiece
became comfortable to his teeth. He took out his tobacco-pouch and
filled the bowl, fingering down a shred which curled over the edge.
Then he tapped his pockets for matches. 'It doesn't matter,
Willie,' he said, finding them. 'It isn't worth the trouble.'
   Willie did not answer. He knew that in this room it wasn't worth
the trouble; that nothing mattered except Joe's do-nothing,
say-nothing, be-nothing. He knew that if he stayed long enough, here
in this room which this man had made, he would do nothing, say
nothing.
   He went out to the corridor and along it to his room. In the
reporters' room Ritchie's voice was plain: 'On some newspapers
there'd be champagne to celebrate.' Through the opened door of
another room he saw the sub-editors, crouched over their copy like
cold hens on a perch.
   Willie opened the door which said 'Mr Whittaker' and slumped
into his chair; biting his thumb, his thoughts boiling with anger and
disgust and humiliation. He reached for the telephone and half a
minute later her voice was there.
   'Helen, will you eat with me, drink with me... somewhere...
anywhere?'
   He imagined her surprise.
   She said: 'Why, yes, Willie, of course.'
   'We could go out in the country somewhere. One of those places
where we used to go. Before,' he hesitated and added, 'before the
war.'
   'That would be nice.'
   He knew she was perplexed by the peremptory invitation, by his
sudden need of her.
   He said: 'I want a drink, a good long drink. I've a bad taste
in my mouth.'
   That was the beginning.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
   No, not the beginning, Willie thought. Our beginning is years
ago, when I thought my tie was a propeller and you were on the
outside, always looking in. Since then it's been there, like a star
in the night.
   They lay in the green shade beneath trees, where the river ran
away with the sunshine and the leaves went up and down, like the
sleeping breath. He told her about Slack Lane and his boots and
Blonkin; of the great, wagging head and the yellow teeth and the
watchful cruelty. But that was not all about Blonkin. There was more
to him than hooligan boots.
   'During the war,' Willie said, 'Blonkin was a prisoner of the
Japanese and they thought he knew something, so they filled him with
water and held him upside down and hit him with rifle-butts while the
water fell out. At ten o'clock each day they hit him, and at half
past nine each day he was mad with waiting. Of course he didn't know
what they wanted him to tell, and though he tried to guess what they
wanted and told them all of it, his poor mind wasn't clever enough to
guess what they wanted, so they clubbed him again for trying to
deceive them. Now Blonkin is back in Slack Lane, living on medical
certificates because of what the Japs did to him, and other men say
there he goes, always boozing, living free and doing nothing. See
what happens when there's a Welfare State.'
   He told her of Creedy; tall and pale and intense, for ever
dependent on his wife who knew about his studs and socks and what he
had done with the tickets.
   'I used to hate Creedy, when I was twelve and he forced me to
learn more than I believed I could learn. I used to lie awake
planning how to kill him, how I would kill him when I was a man and
big enough. All my love was for his wife. She was my first love and
when she smiled at him I was jealous, and when he bullied her I
changed the gun to a knife because it would last longer. But now I
see what he tried to do and what it cost him. Now I'm grateful for
all he tried to do and ashamed of the boy who gave him nothing in
return, not even thanks. He wrote me long letters during the war,
clever letters but excited, too, excited not about the war but about
what would happen afterwards. In Greece, the Balkans, in Arabia and
Egypt and Africa, in India and Burma and Malaya. He was always
looking ahead to what the war meant to those countries and what
freedom would mean to them.'
   Helen murmured: 'Is he a Communist?' and Willie smiled as he
shook his head.
   'Everybody these days has to be something. Conservative,
Socialist, Communist, as though you must belong to some party to have
any opinion worth calling an opinion. But Creedy doesn't belong to
any opinion. He's an individual. He thinks for himself. Sometimes
he sounds like a Communist. Sometimes like St Francis. Sometimes
like a boy lost in the dark. But to me he'll always be what he was
all those years ago. A sincere man, for ever crusading, if not
against ignorance, then for a boy from Slack Lane who sat in the back
row and made raspberry noises. I know now what I didn't realize then,
that without Creedy I'd have been in Slack Lane for ever, doing
nothing and learning to know that it was nothing. Dying by eight-hour
stints.'
   Then he told her of Aunt Nance and the dream; a white cottage in
the country with the wood-smoke pottering from the chimney and the
delphiniums blue. She asked questions about this cottage, probing
him, so that he told her about the logs of wood, criss-crossed in the
hearth, about the kettle-holder on its hook and the red curtains and
the low beam at the bottom of the stairs. He could not understand her
interest in this cottage, for, of course, there was no such cottage
and could never be; it was just the creation of a dream. He did not
ask why she probed for details. It was enough just to talk.
   They began to go everywhere, so that people learned to say:
'Hello, Willie, hello, Helen, nice to see you, Helen.' He loved
to hear them linking their names in this way. The link was a form of
marriage. At the races they said it. Harry Carr said: 'Hello,
Willie,' then touched his cap for Helen. At the theatre they said
it. Charlie Chester welcomed them to his dressing-room- 'Only
milk,' Charlie said, 'I'm drinking milk'- then pulled up a chair
for Helen. At the City ground they said it. Stanley Matthews said:
'Always nice to see you, Willie,' then gave his shy nod and smile
to Helen.
   Willie was grateful to the big names; to Colin Cowdrey and Jack
Hawkins and Ted Ray. They could see how much it meant to him. And
when there were parties to celebrate a new play, new book, new
hit-song, new exhibition, Helen was there to help him through,
although he'd always said he despised parties; you paid too high a
price for the free drink.
   He said: 'It's all right as long as I look across the room and
see you, Helen. Never mind the crap talk, the scratch-my-back talk,
the men pretending to be women and the women wishing they were men.
As soon as I see you and know you're still there, then it's all
right, Helen.'
   They never mentioned Parnell, but he seemed to be there; in the
back seat, his forearms on their seats, watching with amusement,
because the more they shared the more vulnerable they became.
   Once Helen said: 'We're not married, not really married,' and
slowly, reluctantly, disjointedly it came out. How it had begun by
Parnell sleeping in the dressing-room, because he came home so late
and did not wish to disturb her. Then he had put aside pretence and
slept in another room, making it plain to the girl who could not
understand. 'That was 1939,' Helen said, 'the year of the war.'
   His glance was shocked and the car swerved. That's a long time,
the glance said.
   Helen's smile still showed the hurt. 'It took me a long time to
realize that he didn't find me attractive any more. I made excuses.
Hundreds of excuses. I pretended not to know about the other women.
Then there was the war and the evacuees, such beautiful children, and
my letters to you and yours to me and in the end there was this,
Willie, what we have now. You and me.'
   'You could divorce him.' He knew at once that she would not.
   'Before she died Mummy wanted me to divorce him. She'd learned
to hate, she who was always so gentle, she'd learned to hate and cared
about nothing except that hate. Not the scandal, not the gossip, nor
the harm it would do to the newspaper. But I can't. The Herald
means too much for that.'
   He drove with sudden anger, glancing at the speedometer, then
boosting it higher. It flickered around seventy and she glanced in
alarm. He saw the alarm and let the rage go out of him. The needle
flickered down to sixty, to fifty, and the old car relaxed like a
horse when the race is done.
   'Careful, Willie, or we'll never get there.'
# 26
<446 TEXT N13>
   'Isn't there something simpler you can do, like taking her
dancing. There are one or two restaurants out on the islands. They
look very romantic.'
   He took my advice. That same evening he and Elaine dressed in
their best and went out to dinner. But oddly it was not the dinner
which distracted her from her troubles but what came after. They came
back from the pension after I had gone to bed and I did not see them.
But a little after six, I woke to hear a tapping on my door and found
Steve in his pyjamas, his shoulders wrapped in a blanket.
   'What the hell...' I began, then noticed that his face was
grey. 'Steve, what's wrong?'
   "I don't know. I've been in the lavatory since four o'clock and
I feel as sick as a dog.'
   'It must be something you've eaten.' His teeth were
chattering. 'Don't stand here: you'll catch a cold. Get back into
bed.'
   He walked back meekly to his room and got into bed. 'If you've
been up since four,' I said, 'why the devil didn't you call me
sooner?'
   'I tried to but you were sound asleep.'
   'But couldn't you have tried any of the others?'
   He shrugged. 'I suppose I've known you longest.'
   His teeth were still chattering but his forehead, when I felt it,
was hot and clammy.
   He said, 'I must have a temperature. I've been sitting exams
half the night that even Einstein would have flunked.'
   I went to the wardrobe, found another blanket and spread it on
the bed. 'Next time you catch the pox,' I said, 'do it in
England. It's so much cheaper on the National Health.'
   'Next time that's what I'll do.'
   I tucked in the blanket. 'I'll go downstairs now and see if
they've something you can take. If it's not any better by
breakfast-time, we'll get a doctor.'
   I felt pretty useless, standing and watching but his face was
growing paler. At any moment he would vomit and I did not want to
leave him by himself. I went outside, towards the stairs, then
tumbled to what I should do. I stopped at Elaine's door, tapped on it
and went on tapping until it was opened and she stood there, her eyes
half open, in nightgown and wrap.
   'Peter, what is it?'
   'It's Steve. He's not very well.'
   'He's not.' Her eyes opened. She seemed concerned. I had
done right to wake her up. 'But what is it? What's the matter?'
   'I don't know. I imagine it's something he has eaten.' She
tied the cord of her wrap and stepped into the corridor. 'It was my
idea to wake you. He wouldn't have wanted to disturb you himself.'
   'I'm glad you did. There's nothing worse than being ill away
from home.'
   She led the way into his room. When she laid her hand on his
forehead he opened his eyes. 'Hey! What are you doing here?'
   'You should have called me,' she said. 'It wasn't
friendly.'
   He made a sudden gesture towards the wash-basin and understanding
quicker than me, she dashed across, lifted the bidet from its stand
and held it against his chest just in time. 'It must have been the
fish,' she said, 'it's the one thing I didn't have.'
   From her fear of insects, I would have expected her to be
fastidious but not a scrap. She took the bidet away, wiped his face
with a towel as if she were doing these things every day, and then to
my astonishment, laid her cheek gently against his forehead. And it
wasn't done for effect; she really meant it. For she stayed with him,
sitting by the bed until he dropped off to sleep and then went out in
his car to bring back a doctor before she would think of having
breakfast.
   He was ill for three days and for the whole time, she stayed near
him in the hotel, either in his room or sitting on the terrace, where
she could hear him when he called. With dark hair and haggard face,
he made an appealing patient. But because I thought of her as hard
and egotistical, I could not believe that she stayed with him simply
from affection. It is something I can't be sure of, but I think
perhaps after her disappointment she felt unwanted and to have someone
dependent on her must have consoled her a lot.
   On the morning of the fifth day, I went into his room as I
usually did, soon after I had woken, to see how he was, and found
Elaine lying next to him in the bed. I don't believe they had been
making love- that, I imagine, did not happen until a day or so later.
But the fact that I stood there, wishing them good morning without
the slightest embarrassment showed how closely in those few days they
had come together.
<4>
   It was the same, too, for Alison and me. We were English and,
without discussing it, had taken separate rooms; and we kept our
promise never to snog in front of the others. But that, instead of
keeping us apart, made us all the more passionate once we were alone.
   We spent our time, sometimes with Max and Jill but more often
alone, swimming, or on the steamers, or wandering in Steve's car into
the hills. In the heat of the day we would come back for lunch and
afterwards I would go upstairs, sleep it off in a quick half-hour,
then creep along the corridor and tap at Alison's door; and asleep or
awake, she would hear the first tap and come to the door to let me in.
   We made love in those few days many times. The heat, the wine,
Stresa itself- the beauty of it- made us both unbelievably amorous.
Perhaps because we knew each other that much better, or simply
because we had privacy and a spring mattress, we enjoyed each other
very much more. With regular oats and mounds of spaghetti, I put on
weight. I became bronzed, almost handsome. And the same process
turned Alison into a raving beauty, so that sometimes when we were
making love, I had to close my eyes and keep from looking at her, in
case I became too roused and satisfied myself before her. Afterwards,
while she dozed, I would lie back against the head of the bed, staring
into the twilight and feeling wonderfully calm, wonderfully rested. I
would sit there, my body cool and naked, the sheet for comfort tucked
into my crutch, stroking her cheek or her hair and listening to the
sounds, the clatter of a train, the spluttering of a scooter, that
drifted in through the closed shutters. And I'd think how right it
was, how much more moral, to live like this than like a hermit.
   I was calm, contented and then for three days making love was not
possible and I found out what had happened. I still spent the siesta
in Alison's room but instead of making love, we would lie side by side
and talk. We talked a great deal in those days at Stresa, and the
more we talked, the more I liked her. She was slow sometimes to sense
the comic- her life perhaps had been too easy- but she never
pretended, she never talked for effect. I never felt with her as I
had felt with others, that I was talking to myself in a padded room.
In everything she said, was enthusiasm and a sort of passion.
   For three days I went without my oats. Then, on the last night
we spent in Stresa, I went up to bed a little early while Alison went
for a shower. Because it was the last night I opened the shutters and
looked out through the trees. A faint scent came from the flowers on
Steve's balcony. The sky overhead was a mass of stars. I could see
the lights of a steamer far away on the lake and right beneath me, in
the dark beneath the trees, I could see a firefly winking to and fro
in the bushes. Then the door behind me was opened, I turned and saw
Alison. She came over to me and kissed me on the cheek. 'Peter,'
she said, 'I thought I should tell you, I'm clean again and
decent.'
   I took her to bed and we made love. Because I hadn't expected it
and because she had come to me, I was taken unawares. In the last
moment I opened my eyes and saw her face and there it was, right in my
throat, the urge to say that I loved her. The words came to me like a
pain but I held them back. I knew even then that I'd be stupid to say
them. But afterwards when I was lying quiet, with my head on her
shoulder, I did not feel as I had felt before. I felt exposed,
unprotected, somehow afraid of what might happen.
   When I woke in the morning, it was none too early and Alison had
gone already. I sat up and gave my head a damned good scratch.
Through the window, from the terrace underneath, I could hear Max and
Elaine and then Alison; so instead of lying back again for another
five, I got up and went to the window to open the shutters. I had
just begun to open the first when I saw Steve on his balcony. He was
standing quite still and well back from the balustrade so as not to be
noticed. I could see only his profile and that not very well, yet I
knew at once he was looking down at Elaine. I left the shutter as it
was and went back silently into the room. I had some idea now of what
was happening to me and I suppose because of it, I knew for certain,
without even seeing his face, that he too was on the hook.
<5>
   I went down to breakfast that morning with a sort of
pre-examination shakes. The hot weather, or the wine at dinner had
given me palpitations and I felt suspicious. I had seen the world the
night before as one gigantic romance. Yet, when I joined the others,
everything, from the littered table to the look on Alison's face,
seemed horribly normal, horribly mundane.
   Max was worrying, as he always did because he liked to. 'Venice
will be crowded. This time of year it always is. We ought to 'phone
Vittorio and ask him to book us rooms.'
   'But why bother him?' Steve said. 'We can manage.'
   'We'll have a lot more fun if we can meet up with some of the
Venetians.'
   'Well, we can easily 'phone him when we get there,' Steve
replied. 'There's no need to bother him now.'
   'Anyway,' Jill said, 'we're not quite sure when we'll arrive.
It sounds from the guide book as if Verona were worth a visit.'
   And that was how it was left- that we didn't 'phone. But
instead of being relieved, I felt a little hurt. I should have liked
it much better if Alison had spoken up, if she had said for instance
that Vittorio was a bore.
   We left Stresa shortly after breakfast and were approaching
Verona by the afternoon. Verona at first sight seemed dusty and
unremarkable. I asked Max to stop the car outside a greengrocer's and
went in to buy peaches, luscious and as big as melons. I took one of
the ripest and stood on the pavement, with Alison beside me, holding
my head well forward and letting the juice trickle over my chin. I
was wishing Bowling had been there to turn up his nose, when I noticed
Alison, looking down at a poster on the wall.
   'The opera,' she said. 'I forgot all about it.'
   'Opera? What opera?'
   'They have it here in the open air, in the Roman arena.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 27
<447 TEXT N14>
CHAPTER TWO
   HE REMEMBERED his parents talking of Maine, where they came
from, a vague and distant place girded with rocks and bound by hard
winters. Thinking back sometimes, was pleasant in a painful way, and
the sum of recollection inclined him to believe his parents had
settled the emerald meadows because they reminded them of Maine.
Small, rich fields interspersed with fingerlings of forest, along the
swift-falling curves and bends of the watershed they had called Roan's
Creek.
   It was easy to recall the slab-house under trees that leaned and
creaked like antiquated gladiators when winter hurled its fierce
assaults. And the creek that flowed southward, down towards the flat
belly of prairie, and squandered its clear-water strength there. And
the crooked road wrought by his father with its fringe of shade the
full length; a narrow old snake of a road, all shade-mottled and dusty
looking, leading up out of the prairie into the blue-shaggy Beyond;
into the highland where deer and bear and all manner of game lived;
where meadows lay hidden, swollen with stirrup-high grass.
   There was a great fullness to the uplands, where the land swept
back from the prairie-desert, broadening out, lifting higher and
becoming wilder in its rich fertility until it burst against the sky
in a dark and straining way.
   Somehow, Ben thought, and not only because there was beauty up
there, that land had a hold on him. He'd travelled far and wide, seen
tons of country, some full of beauty and a grand solemnity that made a
man hurt for looking on it; some harsh and forbidding, some jagged and
untamed, or tilted against the flaming sunsets, or flat and docile,
but he had never seen a country that reached down inside and gripped
him like the uplands he'd known since infancy, held him now.
   He belonged there. Nothing; man, animal, or element, could
turn him away. Least of all the Marlows. He arose and dressed with
these thoughts; he ate at the diner with them for company, then he
went over and bought a sturdy wagon from the liveryman, to implement
them. He also bought a team of big bay horses, a good set of harness.
Then he drove to the Deming Mercantile Company and loaded up kegs of
nails, a big grindstone, two axes and two saws, all the impedimenta of
building, all the requisites for putting down roots. And finally,
with his saddlehorse tied to the tailgate, his carbine on the seat
beside him, he took his way northward out of Deming.
   Cliff Thompson lingered in the shade of the Oasis Saloon's
overhang, smoking a cigarette, and watching. When the wagon was lost
in the shimmering, heat-scourged distance, he flung the cigarette down
and stamped on it. It irritated him that Ben Roan would not see that
he was heading straight for a killing; his own or someone else's.
   "Morning, Marshal. Wasn't that Ben Roan that drove that wagon
out of town?"
   Thompson bent a hard look at the lawyer. "It was," he said
shortly. "Why didn't you tell him to wait until there was a hearing
over that road before going up there?"
   "Someone has to bring action before there's any case,
Marshal."
   Thompson looked unpleasant. "Yeh," he said. "I know. There
are two sides to the law- your side and my side. I get paid to
prevent trouble and you get paid for starting it. In fact, you don't
get paid unless it does start."
   Charlie Bell squinted northward. "Unless there's a restraining
order issued to prevent him from using that road, it's his right to
use it. He can go up there any time he wants to. You know that. So
far there's only been talk, and talk doesn't mean a thing."
   "Law-book theory," Thompson said shortly. "Did you ever try
law-book theory against a cocked pistol, Bell?"
   "Don't be ridiculous. As a matter of fact, you should be riding
up there with him. That's the only way you can prevent trouble- stop
it before it starts. If you can do that, there'll be no need for
attorneys."
   "Now who's being ridiculous? You know damned well I can't
forbid either the Marlows or Ben Roan from fighting one another
without a court order, and by the time I get the order, the killing
has already begun. I wish folks who make laws had to carry law books
in their holsters instead of guns."
   Bell continued to squint into the distance and Marshal Thompson
fell into a deep and disgusted silence. A solitary vertical groove of
disapproval lay deep between his eyebrows.
   Ben drove steadily and did not look back. Deming squatted far
back in the quivering heat one moment, and the next moment it blurred
into a soiled murk low against the roll of far horizon. His thoughts
were on other things. The Marlows might have money now, good horses
and a large herd, but he knew men; that kind didn't change inwardly.
He knew from a dozen gunfights that it was what lay inside men that
counted, not their bankrolls nor their herds, nor the quality of their
stock. The Marlows had never had it, and all the money in the world
wouldn't put it into them.
   They might try scaring him out; probably would. Or they might
shoot his horses, or even try to bushwhack him, but when it came to
stand-up-and-fight, or cut and run, lead bullets or fast horses, he
knew which way they'd go.
   He forged steadily ahead towards the blue-shadows where the land
swelled upwards with a heavy lift and fullness. He kept a sharp watch
but made no attempt to conceal his coming by clinging to the
creek-willows or the meagre shadows. If they were watching, let them
watch. If they'd found a pinch of guttiness among them, let them show
it.
   He was drinking in the beauty of the shade and the uplands' deep
silence when movement to his right, a quiver of colour, of red and
white, snagged at the corner of his vision. Facing swiftly half
around, one hand moving in a blur, he saw the horse, head up, tail
high and waving, running westward. A lemon-yellow sun, burning-huge,
cast a haziness over the distance. He watched the horse long enough
to discern flopping stirrups and broken reins, then he back-traced
with his eyes to where the sprawl of colour lay in the dead grass;
swung the team, urged them closer and kept staring at the vivid hues
until he was close enough to make out arms and legs, then he slowed,
set the brake and jumped down.
   He rolled her over with one hand, straightened her limbs and
knelt there wondering who she was, where she had come from. Her
blouse was tight-rising, violent red, and her riding skirt was creamy
and expensive looking. Her face, even in unconsciousness, was square,
full-lipped, and wilful appearing, and a thick riot of auburn hair
glistened fiercely in the sunlight. He shaded her face with his hat
and waited. She was uninjured so far as he could see, except for
being knocked senseless by the fall. He twisted to look after the
horse. It had disappeared.
   He was smoking and studying the upland shadows when she said,
"Oh...!" He punched out the cigarette, lifted her head and
smoothed away the hair.
   "What happened, ma'm?"
   "Oh... He bucked me off."
   He propped her up against his knee, put his hat back on and bent
to shield her from the sun. "Nothing's broken that I could find."
   The girl felt the back of her head and said, "Ouch!"
   He watched her a moment, then gripped her by both arms. "Come
on; you can stand up. I'll drive you home."
   She looked into his face for the first time, and her long eyes
narrowed. "Who are you?"
   "Ben Roan. I own some land up in the foothills."
   "Roan...?" She blinked and stared.
   He nodded. "And who are you, ma'm?"
   "Sarahlee Marlow."
   He stared. "Marlow? Kin to old Will and the others?"
   "Will is my uncle. The boys are my cousins."
   "I don't recollect ever hearing of any other Marlows
hereabouts."
   "My people live in Santa Fe. I've been up here since last May
looking after 2grandpaw. He's very old."
   "Well," Ben said, helping her to arise. "Come on; I'll drive
you on up to the Marlow place."
   While he was setting the lines straight with his back to her, she
straightened her clothes, brushed herself off, and looked westerly,
after the horse, with anger in her eyes, but she said nothing. He
helped her up, went around and climbed up beside her, and flicked the
lines. The team leaned, the wagon ground back onto the road, and for
a while the only sound was of iron tyres grinding down into the gritty
dust.
   Where the green bog lay the ascent began. Ben slapped with the
lines, the team leaned into their collars, and the trail steepened.
Not until they were on the level again, moving through tree-shade,
did the girl speak.
   "What you're doing is foolish, Mr. Roan."
   "Is it?" Ben said easily, without looking around at her. "It
doesn't seem that way to me." He let the lines lie slack. The team
dropped their heads and toed into the next upgrade.
   "My cousins won't let you do it."
   He turned, finally, and gazed at her. "You know, ma'm. I've
heard that before. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it
now."
   "You have no right-of-way to the old Roan place."
   "Ma'm, my father built this road almost thirty years ago.
Before the Marlows were in this country."
   "But the road hasn't been used since you left."
   "Maybe not, but whether I've got a right or not is for a
law-court to decide- not your cousins, or your uncle." Ben
shrugged slightly, studied the land ahead, then said, "I can't make
old Will like the idea of my being up in here, but he might as well
get used to the idea."
   She studied his profile for a moment, before she said, "You're
going to make a lot of unnecessary trouble, Mr. Roan."
   "No; I'm not going to make any trouble. All I'm going to do is
build a cabin, a barn, some corrals, and try to live in peace. If
there's trouble it won't be me that starts it." He was going to say
more when movement among the trees ahead caught his attention. The
lines lay in his left hand; the right hand was curled and moving when
a big-framed man moved out into the road in front of the team. He was
holding a carbine one-handed; it was cocked.
   "That's far enough, Roan."
   Ben recognised Harold Marlow. "Hello, Hal," he said quietly.
   "Sarahlee!" The way Marlow said it, it sounded like
'Sally'. "What'n 2tarnation you doing up there?"
   "That horse El gave me bucked me off."
   "Are you hurt?"
   "No; but-"
   "El told you he was green-broke. It's a wonder you didn't get
hurt bad." Marlow gestured with the carbine. "Get down 2off'n
there."
   "Wait a minute," Ben said. "She'll get down when you empty
that carbine."
   The big man looked hard at Roan. "Empty hell," he said.
"You're not talking to Guy now. You're going to turn that caravan
around and head back out of here."
   "Be a shame to see you kill your cousin," Ben said. "Be sure
you shoot straight, Hal."
   "Roan! Don't try it!"
   "Behind two big horses and beside a girl? Of course I'm going
to try it. The odds're in my favour."
   One of the team-horses blew its nose and the girl started. Her
single ~"Don't" was half scream, half sob. Neither man looked
at her. The silence was tight around them all. "Harold, let him
go."
   "Can't, Sarahlee; you know that."
   "Then wait until I get down."
   Ben caught her right wrist with his left hand. He never took his
eyes off Hal. "All right," he said.
# 2
<448 TEXT N15>
He kept trying for the heart when he should have gone for an
exposed wrist or arm.
   His tie was flapping loose now; his hat was gone and his shoes
were dusty. His face was shiny and sweating; so was mine, no doubt.
He came in again, and as I parried I realized that he was tiring: his
point was far out of line. There's an old trick whereby you can,
theoretically, disarm a man if he'll stand still for it. I don't
suppose it was ever used in actual combat, any more than any of the
old Western gunmen ever used such fancy stunts as the highwayman's
roll or the border shift. You don't generally do juggling tricks when
your life's at stake.
   But still, it was a theoretical possibility, and he was right in
position for it, and I had to do something with him that wasn't
lethal. I made a sharp counter-clockwise circle with the cane- I've
forgotten the technical name of the manoeuvre- catching that wide
point and spinning it around, twisting the weapon in his grasp...
   An alert swordsman, in good condition, would simply have come
smoothly around my blade, or cane, and continued his attack; but the
little man's reflexes were slowing, his wrist was tired, and the
sudden wrench caught him by surprise, took the sword away from him,
and sent it flying across the road. He stood there for a moment,
disarmed and vulnerable, and I couldn't decide what the hell to do
with him. I guess I was a bit tired, too.
   When I moved, it was a bit too late. He gave a kind of sob and
ran after his weapon. He beat me to it and picked it up and came at
me again, but he wasn't fencing any more. He had the sword in both
hands and he was wielding it like a club, beating at my head and
shoulders. He was crying with frustration and anger as he whacked
away, trying to chop me down like a tree.
   It was all I could do to defend myself against the crazy attack.
I could kill him, all right- he was wide open, with his arms above
his head like that, and one straight-armed lunge would have driven the
brass-tipped cane through the cartilages of his throat- but I wasn't
supposed to kill anybody. Under no circumstances. This is an
order. This is an order. Suddenly I had too many weapons. My
hands were full; I had to get rid of something if I was going to take
him alive, although this seemed to have most of the pleasant aspects
of getting a living, spitting bobcat out of a tree.
   I parried a two-handed cut with the sword that would have laid my
scalp open even if the weapon didn't have a edge <SIC> on it. I
threw my arms about the little man, dropped everything and, clutching
him desperately- if he got free now, he could run me through in an
instant- I gave him the knee just as hard and dirty as I could. When
he doubled up, I clubbed him on the back of the head, not with the
edge of the hand to break his neck, but just with the heel of my fist,
like a hammer, to drive him down into the road. He went down, and
curled up like a baby, hugging himself where it hurt.
   Breathing hard, I retrieved my knife. I picked up the sword, and
the cane sheath, and fitted them back together. It was a beautiful
job of workmanship: you couldn't see the joint at all. I picked up
the Homburg hat and dusted it off, and carried it back to the little
guy, who was still lying there. My left hand ached, and I didn't feel
a bit sorry for him, although I had to admit, in all honesty, that
he'd put on a damn good show. Whether it was genuine or phony
remained to be determined. I bent over to hear what he was moaning.
I caught a name, and leaned closer.
   "Sara," he was whimpering. "I did my best, Sara. I am
sorry." Then he looked up at me. "I am ready," he said more
clearly. "If I were just a little bigger... But I am ready now.
Kill me, murderer, as you did her!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
   IT TOOK US a while to get things straightened out. When he'd
finally become reconciled to not dying heroically at my hands, the
little man told me he was Sara Lundgren's fiance, Raoul Carlsson, of
the house of Carlsson and LeClaire, women's clothing, Stockholm,
Paris, London, Rome. He'd met Sara at her dress shop in the line of
business, it seemed, and romance had flowered.
   He'd been worried about his Sara lately, however. She'd seemed
preoccupied and unhappy, he said. Finally, when she stood him up for
lunch and then called up later the same day from a certain hotel to
cancel their dinner engagement for reasons that didn't ring quite
true, he'd taken it upon himself to go there and... well, to tell the
truth, he'd spied on her. For her own good, of course, not because he
was the least bit jealous. He merely wanted to know what was
troubling her so that he could help.
   Watching her surreptitiously as she waited in the hotel lobby,
he'd soon realized that she, in turn, was busy watching for somebody
else. He'd seen me come through the lobby with Lou Taylor. Sara had
followed us, and he'd followed Sara. After dinner, he'd trailed us
all back to the hotel. Then Sara had got her car and driven into the
park. He'd been behind her until she stopped. She got away from him
briefly while he was looking for a suitable place to leave his own
car. When he got back to the parking lot on foot, her fancy
Volkswagen was standing there empty.
   He'd waited in the bushes for her to return. He'd seen her come
back to the car with me. We'd had a long conversation not as friendly
as it might have been, he thought. I'd left abruptly, he thought in
anger, and disappeared into the darkness. Almost immediately, as if
dispatched by me, two men had come and dragged Sara out of her car and
carried her off in the direction I'd taken. While he, Carlsson, was
still trying to make his way after her through the trees and darkness,
there had been shots. He'd come to the edge of the clearing and seen
me standing there, looking grim and terrible. At my feet was his
beloved, his Sara, lying on the ground, brutally beaten and shot to
death. He'd started forward, but the police had come...
   "Why didn't you tell them about me?" I asked, when he stopped.
   He shrugged his shoulders expressively. "They would have put
you in prison where I could not reach you. I was crazy with grief and
anger. I was going to punish you myself, not give you to some stupid
policeman!" After a moment, he went on: "I slipped away. I
learned your name at the hotel. When you left, in the morning, it was
easy to determine your destination. I followed."
   "With your little sword-cane," I said dryly.
   He shrugged again. "Pistols are not so common here as they are
in your country, Herr Helm. It was the only weapon I owned. I
thought it would suffice. I did not expect to meet a swordsman with
an American passport." He grimaced. "You are skilful, sir, but
that little knife, I do not think that was quite fair." After a
moment, he said, "You cannot tell me this secret business in which,
you say, my Sara was engaged, that led to her death? You cannot tell
me who killed her?"
   I said, "No, but I can assure you the man will be taken care
of."
   That was big talk, for someone whose hands were tied by official
orders, but I had to say something to get this little firebrand out of
my hair. The situation was complex enough without being loused up
further by vengeful amateurs. I finally got him to promise to go back
to Stockholm and leave everything to me. I took his home address and
telephone number, and promised to notify him when I had something to
notify him about. I watched him get into his big American car and
drive away. Then I got into my little Volvo, drove back to the hotel,
stuck some bandaids on my fingers, and went to bed.
   In the morning, I had my breakfast in a corner of the hotel
dining room, which I shared, for the moment, only with a pair of
railroad workers and a tourist couple from Norway- the language
sounds like badly garbled Swedish, to a Swede. Outside the windows,
it was a bright, clear fall day. I hoped it would stay that way, for
photography's sake. I sipped my coffee, and nibbled at the stuff on
my plate, and thought about Mr. Raoul Carlsson, which was a waste of
time. If the little man was kidding me, I'd know more about it when
Vance made his report, I hoped within the next day or two.
   A shadow fell across the table. "Are you thinking deep
thoughts?" Lou Taylor asked. "If so, I'll go away."
   I rose and helped her with her chair. She was wearing the same
rust-brown skirt and sweater as yesterday, with the same sturdy
walking shoes. She had a trench coat with her, but she'd dropped it
on a chair. As far as I'm concerned, a trench coat looks fine on Alan
Ladd, and not bad on Marlene Dietrich, but she wasn't either one.
   She smiled at me across the table, and stopped smiling abruptly.
"What happened to your hand?"
   I glanced at my bandaged fingers. "I cut it," I said. "I
dropped a glass and cut myself picking up the pieces."
   She said dryly, "I think you'd better get yourself another
girl, Matt."
   I frowned. "What does that mean? Are you bowing out?"
   "Oh, I wasn't referring to myself," she said, laughing
quickly. "I mean, your night girl, the one who plays so rough. A
black eye yesterday, two cut fingers today- or did she bite you?"
   "Keep it clean, now."
   "Well, what do you do nights, to get yourself all beat up like
that, if it isn't a girl? The secret life of Matthew Helm... Helm?"
she said. "Is that a Swedish name?"
   "More or less," I said. "It used to be fancier, but Dad
whittled it down to something even Yankees could pronounce."
   "I thought you must have some Scandinavian blood, or you
wouldn't be sitting there eating that stuff so calmly. Fish for
breakfast, my God!" She glanced at her watch. "Well, we'd better
hurry; they'll be here in ten minutes. Do you think I could possibly
promote a simple cup of black coffee and some toast? Rostat
bro"d, they call it," she said. "That means, literally,
roasted bread..."
   It was hard to figure her. If she was on the other team, she was
very good indeed. She'd have been told I knew Swedish perfectly well,
yet here she was calmly instructing me in the language of my
ancestors, as she'd taught me their system of measurement the day
before. Well, it was always nice to deal with people who knew their
business.
   When the company car arrived, right on schedule, it turned out to
be a long, black, dignified-looking old Chrysler limousine complete
with one middle-aged gent in a chauffeur's cap to drive it, and one
young guy named Lindstro"m to answer our questions and keep us out of
trouble. The two men helped me load my paraphernalia aboard; then we
drove to the mine entrance, less than a mile from the hotel, and were
passed through the gate with some formality. We took a road up the
side of a mountain named Kirnnavaara- vaara means mountain in
Finnish, Lou informed me.
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   The country lane was lonely. Terrified, she faced the man who
barred her way. He gripped her arm... then he suddenly turned and ran
as he heard
VOICES IN THE DARK
A Short Story by Trevor Allen
   AS dusk deepened to darkness in the gloomy beechwood Sheila
shivered. Shadows on either side of the path scared her. She was out
of breath, stumbling over roots and ruts, pressing on to reach the
road before utter darkness swallowed her.
   If she hadn't taken the wrong path on the common and gone miles
out of her way, she would have been home long before sunset.
   Now she felt, with mounting terror, that she might never find the
road at all and have to spend the night huddled in the shelter of
bushes or a hedge.
   What a fool she'd been to come on this walk alone! But she'd set
out in a temper. She was fed up, desperate to get away from everyone
for an hour or two- especially father. He'd been nagging her again.
Nothing she did ever pleased him.
   He was a builder's foreman and seemed to think he could order her
about as he did his men- as if she was still a child instead of a
girl of seventeen earning her own living. When she grew her hair
beehive style because other girls were doing it, he said:
   "Why do you have to have your hair like that? It's hideous!"
   When she bought her first stiletto-heeled shoes he grumbled:
   "How can you walk on those things, wobbling at every step?
They'll ruin your feet- and the carpets, too."
   He didn't like her wearing jeans. He objected to her going to
the juke-box cafe?2 where her friends met regularly.
The last straw
   SHE'D just bought a transistor radio set. When he saw it all
he could say was:
   "Why on earth do you want to cart that about with you
everywhere? You've got the telly at home; isn't that enough?"
   "I like it," she had retorted, stung by this latest reproof.
"And it's my own money. I can listen to what I want any time, and
it doesn't do any harm.
   "Why must you always be getting at me, Dad? Nothing I ever do
is right!"
   "It's just a waste of money," he had persisted. "You ought
to start saving now you're in a good job, as your mother and I did
when we were young."
   The transistor was the last straw- over Sunday tea, too. She
had sulked, then wandered out, past the new housing estate on the
outskirts, up the road that climbed to the beechwoods and common, on
and on, furious, rebellious, thinking over and over:
   If Dad doesn't stop going on at me I'll leave home and get a
room somewhere. I'd do it now if it wasn't for mother.
   Mother had always tried to smooth things out, saying: "She's
young, she'll learn."
   But father was obstinate, domineering.
Panic
   THAT was how, too angry to notice where she was going, she
had taken a wrong path back and got lost. But at last, with thankful
relief, she came out on to the road and saw, through a gap in the
hedge, the town lights in the valley.
   It was little more than a lane between high hedges. The lights
looked a long way off. The road seemed to want to imprison her in its
funnelled gloom.
   As she set off along it she heard footsteps approaching ahead of
her and crossed over to the opposite side. "Good evening!" said a
thick voice in the darkness, as a man came abreast of her.
   Too scared to reply, she hurried on- then became aware that he
had suddenly turned and was following her.
   The footsteps behind terrified her. She quickened her pace. The
man quickened his, too, and was overtaking her.
   Panic seized her. She thought of the murders she'd read about-
of girls waylaid on lonely roads like this, girls missing for days,
weeks, with search parties scouring the countryside, and then, in some
hidden spot...
   "Oh, God," she prayed, "let me get home safely, let me get
home, away from this terror!"
   She wanted to run, but didn't want to show she was afraid, it
might make things worse.
   Her tight new skirt was hampering to the knees, and she wondered
if she could run. Terror had taken the strength from her legs.
   She prayed that someone would suddenly come along the lane out of
the darkness and save her. As the footsteps drew close behind her she
crossed to the other side of the road again, still frantically
hurrying, panting and palpitating with fright.
   The man came alongside. She stopped, with her back to the hedge,
facing him.
   "In a hurry, aren't you?" he slurred. "Thought you might
like company... like..."
   His breath smelt of drink. His tone was bantering, insinuating.
He towered above her, an evil shadow in the night.
   "Please!" she gasped, her heart pounding. "I don't want
company. Please!"
'Someone's coming'
   SHE made to pass, but he blocked the way.
   "A nice girl like you," he smirked, "all alone. You can be a
bit friendly, can't you? I'm alone, too. Maybe we'd get on all
right. Maybe..."
   She tried to sidestep him. He caught her arm.
   "A nice girl like you," he repeated.
   The grip numbed her. She felt she was going to faint.
   Then... dimly, distantly, voices sounded in the stillness. They
seemed to come from down the road. Two men were talking. Now the
voices sounded nearer, slightly louder, but still remote. Thank
heaven, she was no longer alone, at his mercy...
   "Help me!" she screamed. "Help! Help!" Then,
wrenching her arm away from him: "Now you'll get what you deserve,
you beast! Someone's coming!"
   Startled, the man instantly released his grip and backed away
from her. She heard him running up the road, the way they had come.
   Relieved, she started running in the opposite direction, towards
the lights and the town, lifting her skirt to free her knees.
   Half running half walking, stumbling, she didn't slow down until
she was out of breath and the lights of the new housing estate
glimmered ahead. And now she knew whence the voices came.
   Involuntarily, as the man gripped her right arm, her finger had
touched and turned the knob on top of the transistor, held by the
strap in her left hand- this had been just enough to tune in faintly
to the two men talking. Luckily he had heard them, too.
'Waste of money!'
   IT might have been tuned to another station. It might have
been music instead of a discussion, a play, or whatever it was.
   She might have turned it full on instead of faintly, so that the
voices seemed to come from a distance, down the road...
   Then she hurried home to tell her father what the "waste of
money" had done for her on the lonely road in the dark, with no one
near to aid her.
   
   The menacing gunman was getting impatient as she stalled for
time. Her position seemed hopeless... then her desperate plan showed
him that...
DIAMONDS ARE HARD TO GET
A Short Story by SHEILA BURNS
   CHERRY backed her car up the drive to the garage, glad to be
home. She had hated every moment of the television theatre away from
her young, adored husband.
   She saw the light in his study and guessed that he was working on
a new TV play.
   Closing the garage doors behind her, she was about to turn when
she felt the cold muzzle of a gun against her back.
   "Just a minute," said a gruff voice.
   Quickly it flashed through her mind that it was John's
anniversary gift the man was after. The newspapers had carried a
story about it- a diamond brooch, and her first really expensive
gift.
   Perhaps the man thought she had been wearing it at the broadcast.
But it had been left at home in the tiny safe behind the picture of
Mount Everest in the sitting room.
   "What do you want?" she asked.
   "That brooch."
   "I'm not wearing it."
'A muffet'
   "WALK to the house," the man commanded, "and don't look
back. Go inside and I'll follow. Is your husband asleep?"
   "He's working late," she said.
   "Go in just as you would if I wasn't with you."
   The house was empty, except for John and Bongo, the dog.
   Cherry walked up the side path to the door; her fingers shivered
as she put the key in the lock.
   She paused- and the gun prodded still harder in her back as the
man said: "Go on."
   From upstairs, John called: "That you, Cherry?"
   "Yes, darling, I'm back."
   "Everything OK?"
   This was the moment. She broke into a sweat, then said
automatically:
   "Everything's all right."
   She crossed the little hall, the man close up behind her.
   Bongo was whining from the kitchen where he had been put to bed
for the night. She walked into the little sitting room where she and
John spent their happiest hours together.
   Usually she didn't come into this room immediately she returned
home, and hoped that John would hear and notice it.
   But nothing happened.
   She had to attract his attention somehow, for she was "in a
muffet." That was what they had always called getting into a jam.
As a child John had called a muddle a "muffet"- "Miss Muffet and
the spider" he had explained and laughed at her.
   "What are you going to do?" she asked the gunman.
Playing for time
   SHE turned to face him, agony in her heart and hoping that
she would not faint. He was smaller than she expected- a little rat
of a man with close-set eyes.
   "I want a drink," he said.
   There was a bottle of beer on the sideboard. She fetched it and
held it out to him.
   "Put it on the table, lady," he said, still pointing the gun
at her, "and then tell me where the brooch is."
   "It's in the safe."
   She spoke the truth, for she thought he might already know that
John had got a home-made safe for it. A woman's magazine had used the
story as an item in the home life of celebrities.
   "I read about the safe," the man said. "Where is it?"
   She conquered the compelling desire to take a quick glance at the
picture of Everest, and with her first flash of spirit, said: "That
is my secret."
   "I could make you tell me. I'm here to get what I want. I live
this way.
   "But the big breaks are too tricky for me. I want small pulls,
something that fences don't shy at, diamonds without a history behind
them, but big enough to bring in the next meal."
   He rapped the gun. "Open that bottle for me," he said, "and
pour it out. With a head on it... that's right. Now tell me where,
lady."
   She was amazed at the courage with which she said: "They're
upstairs."
   "You could get 'em for me?"
   "Yes."
   "But unless I went along with you, you'd tell your husband, I
bet. If I did go with you, he'd know, anyway."
   "I wonder."
   The man drank the beer, held out the glass for more, and for a
second she faltered. She had got to think of some way out; the longer
she lingered, the easier it could be, for sooner or later John would
realize that something was wrong.
   Closely the man eyed her.
   "If you don't get it for me, lady, maybe I'll go right up and
shoot your husband. I could."
   She winced. "Surely we could settle this between us," she
said suddenly.
   It would be easier to give the man the brooch, but somehow she
still had a hope of not doing that.
   "You've got to get it for me," the man said between his teeth.
Terrified
   THEN she heard John's sudden footstep overhead and wondered
if at last he realized that something was wrong.
# 211
<45 TEXT N17>
It Happened On The 6-15
   JOYCE SEATON was quarrelling with Barry West again. Barry
had brought her more happiness than she had ever known was possible,
and in her quieter moments she never had the slightest doubt she loved
him.
   But lately they'd been quarrelling far too often. She had never
quarrelled with anyone more fiercely than she did with Barry and it
was always about the same thing- whether she should give up her job
and get married.
   "Why can't you understand?" she said despairingly. "It's
more to me than just a job. It's true I've only been a secretary for
a few weeks, but it's what I've dreamed and worked for since I started
work. I'm not just an ordinary typist any more, I'm someone
important."
   Barry's face set in the obstinate lines she had learned to
recognise.
   "I know. At last you've got the chance to order other people
about and you get a kick out of it. It's making you hard, Joyce. If
you really meant what you said about loving me and wanting to marry
me-"
   Seeing the wistful look on his face, Joyce began to regret all
she'd said.
   "I did mean it."
   "Then why don't you agree to be properly engaged?"
   Joyce drew a deep breath, determined to remain calm and
reasonable.
   "I thought I'd explained how I feel. If I go around flashing an
engagement ring it'll look as though my mind was on something else
instead of my work.
   "We neither of us go out with anyone else, do we? What
difference would an engagement make?"
   Barry was quiet now, quiet and in deadly earnest.
   "It would mean that you really had made up your mind that your
future lay with me. We could fix a date for our wedding and I could
look forward to having you beside me all the time, instead of seeing
you for an hour or less every night.
   "You wouldn't have to catch this darn train each day, getting
home too tired to do anything."
   He gazed at her earnestly.
   "It's putting years on you, travelling to Marbury every day.
You ought to take a look at yourself. You look much more tired since
you took on that new job. Oh, I suppose you've a bit more money to
spend on clothes and make-up, but-"
   "That's enough!" said Joyce sharply.
   Barry had really touched her on the raw, telling her she looked
older. She knew in her heart that the responsibility of her new job,
the hectic day that never seemed long enough, was telling on her. But
she wouldn't admit it for worlds.
   Joyce stood up and took down her shopping bag from the rack.
   "I think I'd better find another compartment," she said. "I
was quite pleased when you came to Marbury to travel home with me. I
didn't realise you'd come to give me a lecture about the way I run my
life.
   "Let me tell you, Barry West, that marriage isn't the only thing
a girl thinks about these days. She can make a career for herself,
lead a busy, useful life. That's what I'm doing, and I love it. In
fact, I may never marry."
   "Now look here, Joyce-" he said indignantly.
   
   SHE brushed past him and, stepping out into the corridor,
closed the door behind her with a slam. She was always
quick-tempered, and now tears of vexation blinded her eyes. She
hesitated in the corridor, and the chill draught that swept along it
calmed her a little.
   Of course she would marry Barry one day, but she was in no hurry
to bury herself in a small house in Wilford.
   Barry really knew her, though. She loved the importance of her
new job, the sense of urgency, having people doing as she asked-
having extra money in her purse for new clothes, even for silly things
like bits of costume jewellery or a new lipstick.
   She shivered again. She mustn't stand here and catch cold, she
told herself.
   Joyce hadn't expected Barry to follow her, for she knew he was as
obstinate as herself. It would look like a sign of weakness if she
turned back and walked past his window.
   There was only one compartment between where she had been sitting
with Barry and the end of the coach, so she opened the door and took a
corner seat.
   After a second or so, her indignation subsided and she felt calm
enough to take stock of her fellow-travellers.
   There was a man sitting opposite her holding a sporting paper in
front of his face. Joyce didn't like what she saw of him, the long
legs in narrow trousers and the shoes with pointed toes.
   The man lowered his paper to look at her and Joyce quickly
glanced away, but not before her dislike of the stranger had been
confirmed.
   He was older than she expected, about thirty, and his eyes were
black and unusually searching. The thin mouth had an equally thin
moustache above it. He might be harmless enough, but Joyce was
relieved they were not alone in the compartment.
   There were two men sitting facing each other at the far end of
the compartment.
   They'd been chatting together, but as Joyce glanced at them, they
both turned their heads and stared back.
   She closed her eyes, suddenly sick and more than a little scared.
The look in their eyes had been one of pure hate.
   Joyce took another look at the man facing her, but he had raised
his paper again. She was sure she had just imagined the strange look.
Tonight, she was even more tired than usual. But, despite her
assurances, there was still a nagging little fear in her heart.
   I'll move farther up the train, she decided. Perhaps I can find
an empty compartment.
   She rose, took her bag, and went out. She turned the corner and
came across the door to the next coach, which the guard was locking.
He turned towards her, a grey-haired, elderly man with a kindly face.
   "You can't go through here, miss," he said.
   "Why not?" said Joyce. "There's plenty of room at the front
of the train. I thought I might find a compartment where I could put
my feet up."
   The guard smiled at her but put away his keys.
   "You can't get through, miss," he insisted. "This is the
mail-coach and there is only the sorter inside. I have to lock this
door everytime I pass through myself. Come along and I'll find you a
seat."
   He was polite but firm as he led her away. He opened the first
door he came to, the compartment with the three men inside. There was
nothing else for Joyce to do but step inside and sit down in her
corner again.
   The man across from her was still holding up his paper, and the
other two men were leaning back. One of them looked as though he was
asleep.
   
   JOYCE closed her eyes and tried to sleep herself, but an
unusual inner excitement possessed her, and the noise of the train as
it pounded through the night seemed louder than usual. She gave up
the attempt to sleep and watched the empty corridor.
   The guard passed by towards the mail-van again, jingling his
keys. The man across from Joyce tossed his paper aside and rose,
stumbling over her feet.
   He didn't apologise. He opened the door with a curious intentness
and followed the guard along the corridor and out of sight. He won't
get far, Joyce thought. The guard will turn him back at the mail-van
door.
   The man was away longer than she expected, and when he opened the
door again, he was breathing quickly. He stood in the doorway,
looking past Joyce to the other men, although previously there had
been no sign that they knew each other.
   "Right," said the man at the door. "Let's get going."
   "Sit down," said one of the thickset men quietly. He looked
at his watch. "We've got another three minutes."
   Through her lashes Joyce watched the man with the pointed shoes
sit down tensely on the edge of his seat. She knew now that something
was really wrong. She kept very still, her head tilted back as though
sleeping.
   Fear had her in its grip, for she knew now that she'd been right
the first time. Those men had resented her arriving in the carriage
and upsetting their plans. Three silent men, tense and waiting, and
the mail-van directly in front of them.
   What had happened to that kindly guard when the man with the
pointed shoes had followed him? Why was he anxious for action? And
why had the other man held him back with a curt command?
   Joyce felt that she knew the reason. Later, as the train drew
nearer to Wilford, it would slow down for the long climb up Shirley
Rise. That was where these three men intended to leave it, after they
had robbed the mail-van.
   I must tell someone, thought Joyce desperately. I must be calm
and keep these men from guessing that I suspect anything. I'll leave
the compartment quietly and unhurriedly and go for help.
   She thought of Barry, sitting unsuspectingly beyond that wall
only a few yards from her. She felt nervous and shaky, but willed
herself to be natural and composed.
   She shook herself, opened her eyes and put up her hand as if to
stifle a yawn, when she stood up, took her bag from the rack and
turned towards the door.
   The man with the pointed shoes stood with his back to it, his
beady, close-set eyes fixed on her.
   "Not now, sister," he said softly.
   For a moment, Joyce felt her mouth go dry, but she answered him
indignantly.
   "What do you mean- not now?"
   He held his closed hand up before her, clenching something within
his fist. His thumb moved, and she heard a sharp click. She found
herself staring glassily at a knife-blade, only inches away from her
face.
   Joyce turned and found that the other two men had risen and
closed in on her from behind.
   "You're coming with us, girlie," he said. "We didn't want
you, but it seems we've got to take you along."
   Joyce opened her mouth to scream, but he was gripping her arm,
digging his fingers into her flesh. He thrust his face close to her
own.
   "If you make a sound you'll regret it," he said menacingly.
   He broke off, and Joyce's gaze shifted fearfully, looking
anywhere except into that cruel, fleshy face. The man with the knife
moved it sideways significantly, as if drawing it across her throat.
She wilted, and they moved on.
   
   THE man with the knife stepped out first, and Joyce was
pushed out behind him. She was hustled round to the door of the
mail-van.
   Now there was a sense of urgency about the three men. Joyce was
pushed roughly aside and she saw the man with the knife had the
railway guard's keys in his hands.
   He opened the door and at first she saw nothing but fat,
disordered mail-sacks, with another closed door beyond where she
guessed the sorter was at work.
   One of the men kicked a sack aside as he entered and she saw
something else- a pair of feet jutting out from behind the bags- the
guard.
   "Where's the registered stuff?" said one of the men.
   The man with the keys jerked his thumb towards the closed door.
   "In there, with the sorter."
   "All right. Open up."
   One man was guarding Joyce closely. She kept trying to tell
herself that this wasn't really happening. That she wasn't involved
in violence and robbery.
   The inner door was unlocked and flung open. A man in
shirt-sleeves, working at a sorting rack, turned to stare.
   "Look out!" Joyce cried.
   A hand clamped over her mouth. She was jerked backwards so
painfully that her spine was jarred.
# 2
<451 TEXT N18>
   SHE HAD TO DECIDE QUICKLY WHICH MAN TO TRUST- AND SHE CHOSE
THE WRONG ONE!
THE NIGHT SHE CAUGHT THE LAST TRAIN HOME
   SHEILA FARRELL, waiting for the last train home, wasn't
happy about the way the Teddy boy kept eyeing her. After the past
hectic hours at her girl friend's twenty-first birthday party, she
felt as flat as a deflated balloon. She wished that the train would
hurry up.
   The Teddy boy glanced at the station clock.
   "Train's late," he said.
   Sheila was about to answer automatically when she realised what
she was doing. She turned her head away uneasily.
   The stranger wasn't put off. He tried again, sliding along the
seat towards her.
   "Going far? I'm for Pulfern Green, myself."
   He hesitated, then plunged on. "Don't I know you? I'm sure
I've seen you before. Do you get this train often?"
   What a corny line, Sheila thought, her heart thumping.
   A quick glance round told her that they might as well have been
the only two people in the world. There wasn't another soul to be
seen, not even a porter.
   Would the Teddy boy follow her when she got on the train?
   Sheila gave him a cold stare, rose to her feet and moved along
the deserted platform, feeling lonely and afraid.
   Oh, how she wished she could have stayed the night at her
friend's!
   If it hadn't been her dad's week for night shift, her mum
wouldn't have minded. As it was, Mum couldn't stand being alone in
the house at night, and Sheila had promised that she'd catch the last
train.
   The approaching train made her jump nervously, although it was a
relief to hear it.
   It drew noisily to a halt. Sheila entered an empty carriage and
moved down the aisle towards its far end.
   She settled herself in a dark corner, every nerve strained,
listening intently. It wasn't until the train pulled out and she felt
certain that nobody had entered the carriage, that she relaxed.
   She yawned, slipped off her shoes and, stretching out her legs,
lay full-length along the seat.
   
   BY the time the train had pulled into the next station,
Sheila was in a half doze.
   She was shocked awake, nerves leaping, at the sound of a carriage
door being opened nearby. She lay still, waiting, her hands gripping
her handbag.
   She could see the emergency chain just above her head and hoped
that she wouldn't have to use it. When she heard several men's voices
she felt relieved, and relaxed again.
   A gruff voice rose from the next compartment.
   "No, there 2ain't nobody in this carriage. I looked as it
pulled up. You don't get a lot of people travellin' at this time o'
night. That's why I thought it 2'ud be safer.
   "We've got to get to the Green tonight or else... Them 2rozzers
is gettin' too hot for comfort. We'll have to lay low, or it's
curtains for us, mate!"
   Sheila shivered. Had she jumped out of the frying pan into the
fire?
   A different voice, younger and nervous, began:
   "What if the ticket bloke remembers us? 'Ow do you know 'e
2ain't ringing the 2rozzers right now? We'll likely be met by..."
   "Oh, stop your whinin'!" interrupted the gruff voice. "We'll
be met all right. Fred's meeting us with 'is car. There won't be any
trouble unless you lose 2yer 'ead..."
   The voice dropped menacingly.
   Sheila's hazel eyes widened. She drew back into the corner,
trying to make herself as small as possible.
   She listened to every movement that the men made, all her nerves
alert. The slightest sign that they were coming her way and she would
have to pretend to be asleep.
   As the train drew into another station, she realised, with
thankfulness, that the next one was hers.
   She listened unwillingly, as Gruff Voice continued the
conversation.
   "See what I mean? Nobody there, either. The train's deserted
at this time of night.
   "Len and Busk got away. They're making for the north. If they
get picked up, they won't grass. They know better than that."
   "What about Fred? 2D'ye think he's safe?"
   "Fred?" scoffed the gruff voice. "As safe as houses. If we
make it worth his while, we can stop there for a week or so, then move
on down to the coast.
   "Those blokes at the bank don't know what hit 'em. They'll
never be able to recognise us. What are 2ye 2gonna do with your
lolly?"
   "Buy a car. Get some fun before it runs out. I like blondes
best. Saw a smasher the other day. She wouldn't look at the likes of
me, though, unless I'd plenty of lolly to spend on her."
   "You and your blondes!"
   A coarse laugh drowned the other's reply, and sent shivers down
Sheila's back.
   Surely they were nearly at her station by now? How was she going
to get out so that the men wouldn't realise she'd heard them?
   She knew just how dangerous her position was. That gruff voice
had no mercy in it.
   
   WITH mixed feelings of relief, Sheila saw the lights of her
station come into view. Very gently she slid out of her seat and
round to the carriage door. She eased back the catch and held it
steady as the train pulled up.
   She got out, and was beginning to close the door when she saw
that the next one was opening, and a man's startled face was gazing at
her.
   In mounting panic, Sheila turned and fled down the deserted
platform. Thudding feet started after her.
   She raced for the exit, her mind searching desperately for a way
of escape. She'd got to get to the police, somehow.
   There was no sign of a porter. Instead, a well-dressed,
dependable-looking man stood near the exit.
   Sheila made up her mind quickly.
   "Please, please help me!" she said urgently. "I've just
overheard two crooks on the train, and I must get to the police. I'm
sure they know I've overheard them, and they're coming after me."
   The stranger looked at Sheila oddly for a moment, hesitated as
though making up his mind, then propelled her out of the exit towards
a waiting car.
   As he did, the two men burst out into the quiet street and
pounded up to them. The stranger stood quietly, waiting for them.
   Then it dawned on Sheila who he was.
   "Fred!" she gasped in horror.
   As Sheila tried to dodge past them, her heel caught in the
pavement and she stumbled forward.
   She managed one cry for help before a hand closed over her mouth.
   A voice snarled in her ear, "Keep still, or else..."
   Sheila was bundled into the car. There she sat, squashed between
the two men, heart pounding wildly with fear.
   The younger man looked her over admiringly.
   Sheila shivered.
   "OK, Fred," said the burly man. "Take it away."
   Sheila stared at the silent man's back. She'd picked the wrong
man. But how could you tell which man to trust and which to avoid?
   She'd gone for the nice face and clothes and she'd been
hopelessly wrong. First the Teddy boy... the Teddy boy! He'd had a
nice voice behind all that talk-gimmick. But she hadn't given him a
chance after the first sight of his clothes.
   Suddenly, there came a gleam of hope. He'd said that he was
going to Pulfern Green, her station. Had he got off here? Could he
have seen anything? Would he act on it if he had?
   Sheila looked back as the car turned out of the street, but saw
no one.
   Nobody spoke. At last, Sheila could stand it no longer.
   "Where are you taking me?" she burst out. "What are you
going to do with me? Please let me go. I won't say a word, I promise
you. My mother's waiting for me, and she's alone and she'll be so
upset. Please let me go!"
   "Well now, 2ain't that a pity? Her mummy's waiting up for
her."
   Gruff Voice grinned nastily, then his voice altered cruelly.
   "You got yourself into this- nobody asked you to listen to our
talk. You've heard enough to get us put away, so you've got to be put
in a safe place. See?"
   With the last word, he took her wrist and gave it a quick twist,
making her gasp.
   "That's just a little taste of what you'll get if you try
anything on, see?"
   Sheila nodded, eyes blinking back the threatening tears, as she
nursed her sore wrist.
   
   THE car drew up beside a large, detached house. Sheila was
bundled out, propelled along a passage, and pushed into a room.
   "2Yer stay there till we decide what to do with you!" Gruff
Voice growled. "And make no mistakes- if I hears a peep out of you,
you're for it!"
   Then the key was turned in the lock and Sheila was alone.
   She gave way to tears of hopelessness.
   As the tears relieved her immediate tension, Sheila realised
everything had gone quiet in the house. She supposed that they were
having a meal- they certainly weren't bothering about her.
   As she sat there, she was suddenly aware of a tapping at the
window. She went over.
   "Who is it?" she said nervously. "Who- who's there?"
   She could only just make out the whispered reply, but it filled
her with unbelievable hope.
   The voice said:
   "Have you been kidnapped?"
   At her answer the unknown voice went on:
   "I was the chap who spoke to you at the main-line station, but
you wouldn't have anything to do with me, remember? I saw you being
pushed into that car. You didn't look as if you went willingly, so I
followed on my motor bike. Thought I'd better find out for sure
whether you needed help, before I went for the police.
   "I came round the back of the house wondering which room you
were in, when I- I heard you cry.
   "I'm going for the cops now," the voice went on. "You won't
be there much longer, if I can help it. Keep your chin up! Be seeing
you."
   Sheila found herself shaking, without really knowing why.
   Rather than lose all control, she turned her thoughts to the
young man who was proving such a friend in need.
   What a nice person he must be to help her after the way she had
treated him at the station!
   
   THEN at last Sheila heard the sound of a car outside. The
sudden shrilling of the doorbell made her jump.
   Presently, she heard the footsteps of the men as they clattered
downstairs.
   They held a whispered conversation outside her door, then the key
turned in the lock and Gruff Voice and his accomplice entered.
   The younger man was plainly scared, and the older man was cursing
under his breath.
   Sheila backed away from them and managed one scream before a
scarf was thrust round her mouth.
   They heard the front door being opened and Fred's voice asked,
"Yes? What is it? You've got me out of bed!"
   Sheila's pulses leaped as she recognised the Teddy boy's voice.
   "Excuse me, but does Mr. Smith live here?"
   What on earth was he playing at? Did he think he could rescue
her alone?
   Fred's innocently outraged voice began, "No, he doesn't!
What's the big idea..."
   Then came a sudden crash as the front door was thrust violently
open, and several deeper voices sounded.
   The gripping hands around Sheila tightened until she could barely
breathe. As the door gave way before a brawny shoulder, she was
thrown into a struggling mass of bodies.
   A fist aimed at somebody else caught her a glancing blow on the
side of the head, and she fell backwards. Another pair of hands
caught hold of her and began pulling her away from the fighting men.
   She struggled weakly until a remembered voice spoke urgently to
her.
   "Don't struggle! It's all right, now. I've brought the police
and it will soon be over."
# 21
<452 TEXT N19>
A Present For General Calinga
   HE WAS BETRAYED- BY THE ONE MAN WHOSE LOYALTY HE HAD ALWAYS
TAKEN FOR GRANTED
   
   THE President continued holding the telephone to his ear
long after he knew beyond all doubt that the line had been cut. Then
he gave a despairing little sigh, returned the now useless instrument
to its cradle and sat staring with unseeing eyes at the wall opposite.
   A sudden outburst of machine-gun fire from outside the Palace
caused him to shiver and rise from his chair. He began to walk
quickly towards the door. But as he reached out to turn the handle
the door opened and his aide, Major Pillar Juarez, entered.
   Juarez was a young man of the slim athletic type. Unlike most of
the Air Force pilots his uniform was always immaculate, a fact which
had commended itself to the President when he had first considered
making him his personal aide.
   But now the major's uniform had lost its immaculate look; it was
dusty and his right trouser leg had a large tear in it.
   "Excellency," he said quietly before the President could
speak, "you will have to leave. The rebels are closing in and the
troops we have here cannot hold out much longer. Santos has made the
Palace- and you- his main objective. He is concentrating his forces
here because once you are in his power, well, it's all over."
   The President swallowed. "Did you know the telephone line is
cut? Our position is hopeless."
   "That is why you must leave here, Excellency. I have the
helicopter standing by and I'll take you down to La Plomas. General
Calinga has the city completely under control. We'll fight back from
there, Excellency. Yes, with General Calinga behind you-"
   "I don't know." The President's words broke in almost
nervously. "About Calinga, I mean." He shook his head. "No, I'm
not at all sure of him."
   "But Calinga is loyal to you, Excellency."
   "Maybe he is, maybe he isn't." The President half closed his
eyes, "I've had my fill of bitter disappointments since this
uprising, Juarez. So many people I'd trusted have turned against
me." He lit himself a cigarette with a jerky movement. "You,
Juarez," he added, "are about the only one whose loyalty I can take
for granted."
   "You trust me implicitly, Excellency?" The words came
quickly, almost sharply.
   "I do, Juarez."
   "But you are not absolutely certain of Calinga's loyalty?"
   "Not quite. His loyalty will depend on which way the wind is
blowing. And at present-"
   "So, should Calinga have decided to throw in his lot with the
rebels and I take you to La Plomas, well, I shall in effect be handing
you over to Santos?" The major's words were more a statement of
fact than a question.
   The President drew heavily on his cigarette. He nodded slowly at
it.
   "So therefore you won't come with me?"
   "No."
   Major Pillar Juarez slowly undid the flap of his holster. He
withdrew his revolver. He pointed it straight at the President.
   "The helicopter is all ready," he said quietly and evenly.
"You will fly to La Plomas in it."
   The President stared. "Juarez," he said huskily, "you seem
particularly anxious to take me to Calinga. Suspiciously anxious, I
would say."
   Juarez tightened his grip on the gun. "You said you trusted
me."
   The President nodded. "I did. And I meant it. At the time."
He paused. "Now I'm not so sure. I-"
   "All right," cut in Juarez sharply, "my crew-men are already
aboard." He made a little movement with the revolver. "Come,
we'll go now."
   As Juarez opened the door the President suddenly started biting
at his lower lip. "The helicopter," continued Juarez, "is
standing in the interior gardens." The President walked slowly out
of the room; his eyes were now blinking spasmodically.
   
   "WAS it necessary to tie me up like this?" The
President looked tired and old as he indicated his bound wrists.
   Juarez did not answer. He turned to his radio-operator. "I'm
dropping to a thousand feet," he said. "Try to contact Santos
now."
   The President's eyes filled with an ocean of contempt. "And to
think I once gave you my trust," he choked. "Much rather had I
stayed at my Palace and-" He suddenly leaned forward and buried
his face in his bound hands. He started sobbing silently to himself.
   For a moment Juarez contemplated the broken man beside him. He
opened his mouth to say something but as he did so his radio-operator
announced that he had contacted Santos. Juarez nodded. He took his
microphone and started talking slowly, deliberately.
   After he had finished doing so he dropped the helicopter to five
hundred feet. He banked slightly. When he saw three men leave a hut
and walk out towards the middle of the field in front of it he dropped
even lower.
   "That's Santos," pointed the radio-operator. "The one in the
middle."
   "Yes, I know." Juarez made towards the group. He landed the
helicopter about fifty yards away from the three men. He kept the
rotor blades turning. "Right," he said sharply to the President,
"out you get. Santos is expecting you!" He removed his gun from
its holster.
   The President lifted his head. He glanced at the revolver and
also at the carbines the radio-operator and Juarez's other crew-men
were holding. His eyes started blinking again. Then slowly he rose
from his seat. He followed Juarez out of the machine like a man from
whose body the last spark of life had all but departed.
   
   SANTOS could not contain himself any longer: when he saw
his dejected enemy before him he started running towards the
helicopter. He was shouting almost incoherently.
   It was then that the carbines opened up catching Santos's two
henchmen completely unawares; they died instantly. At the same moment
Juarez moved forward to the rebel leader. He put his gun close to the
other's stomach. He pulled the trigger five times.
   Now the two crew-men had dropped their carbines. They leaped out
of the helicopter and unceremoniously tossed the dazed and bewildered
President back into it. Then, while Juarez climbed frantically for
the pilot's seat, they also tossed aboard the dead body of the rebel
leader.
   As the helicopter began to rise they regained their carbines and
poured a stream of bullets at the shouting groups of men who were now
running out towards the field.
   At two thousand feet Juarez set course for La Plomas. He smiled
tightly as his radio-operator leaned over and cut the bonds on the
President's wrists. "Well, Excellency," he said, "it was a long
shot but-"
   "It was indeed a long shot," interjected the President in a
strangled voice. "A very long shot." He swallowed. "But I am
still bewildered. Why was it necessary to force me into this
helicopter at gunpoint? And why the bonds? Why-"
   "Excellency," said Major Pillar Juarez, "I had to force you
into the helicopter because otherwise you would have stayed at your
Palace. And died. Also, with the greatest respect, Excellency, you
are a very poor actor; you cannot hide or disguise your emotions. So
I had to make you actually believe I was handing you over to
Santos.
   "No, Excellency, you could not have played the part you did; it
had to be, as far as you were concerned, only too horribly true.
Otherwise it could not have succeeded. You did believe it-"
   "Yes. And I believed that you too had turned against me,
Juarez." The words were uttered as an apology as humble as it was
sincere.
   Juarez smiled. "Yes, you had to believe that too,
Excellency." He altered course ten degrees to starboard. "La
Plomas ahead," he announced. "Now when we land and you show
General Calinga the dead body of the rebel Santos, there is no doubt
where his loyalty will be, is there?"
   The President nodded and fell silent. About a minute later he
said: "Juarez, I can never reward you enough. I-"
   "Excellency," smiled Major Pillar Juarez, "I have a wish I
hope you will grant."
   "Name it."
   The major's smile widened. "A new uniform, Excellency.
Hand-tailored in English cloth." He glanced at the tear in his
trouser leg. "I think I am almost entitled to that, Excellency."
   The President laughed. It was the first time he had done so in
over three weeks. It was a long laugh. A slightly hysterical laugh.
THE FRIEND
   SANTAGO WAS A MAN TO BE TRUSTED... HE COULD USE A SUB-MACHINE
GUN
   
   CAPTAIN RAMON CORDORA'S voice was loud. "Corporal
Santago," he shouted. "Where's Corporal Santago?"
   One of the privates looked up briefly from his cards. "Back
there somewhere," he grunted.
   Cordora opened his mouth again as if he were going to remonstrate
with the private for his appalling lack of discipline but, thinking
better of it, he moved off in search of Santago.
   He found him behind the hut cleaning his rifle. "Well,
Corporal," he smiled, "I'm glad to see someone in your platoon
cleans his weapons regularly!"
   Santago did not answer until he had removed the piece of
four-by-two from his pull-through. "I always used to clean my rifle
regularly." His voice was surly. "If you made an inspection now
and then, you'd know that I still do."
   Cordora continued smiling. "Now, now, can't you take a little
joke, my friend?"
   Santago slowly raised his head. "Don't you call me your
friend," he said. "The only friend you have is yourself."
   The other's smile remained fixed. "We were friends once upon a
time."
   "Yes, but that was long, long ago."
   "Not so long ago." The Captain paused. "It's only six
months since we were serving together under La Cruz."
   Santago now began to examine the bolt of his rifle. "Yes," he
murmured, "we served together under him. As privates. Then along
came Kassan. And with him in power what happened? You became
sergeant the very next day."
   "Yes," broke in Cordora, "but shortly after that I was able
to get you promoted to corporal."
   Santago lifted his head. "True. But you also got yourself
promoted to lieutenant. Then a month later you became a captain."
He bent down once again and started cleaning his rifle bolt. "Yes,
you were a good friend to yourself. But not to me. Any friend of
mine would have made sure I got a bit higher than this."
   His eyes flicked contemptuously to the rank badges on his right
sleeve, then back again to his rifle bolt.
   Cordora switched his smile off and managed to look sympathetic.
"I know how you must feel," he said. "But it's not so easy as
you'd think. I did my best for you but President Kassan has never
forgotten that day over two years ago, when you let him have the butt
of your rifle right across his face."
   "I couldn't help it," muttered the other. "I was ordered to
disperse the crowd and I was only doing my duty. How was I to know
that one day he'd be President?"
   Captain Cordora made a little clicking sound with his teeth.
"Well, nevertheless, he's never forgotten it. And every time I've
brought up the subject of your commission, well, he has said no. In
fact, it took me a great deal of persuading to even get you your
corporal's stripes, Santago, if the truth be told."
   He paused and lowered his voice. "But now something's come up
which, if you do your bit, will maybe enable you to find favour in the
President's eyes.
   "For a start, he has given me authority to promote you to
sergeant if all goes well."
   Santago stopped cleaning the rifle bolt. "To sergeant?"
   "Yes. Now, if he's prepared to forgive you enough to agree to
your promotion to sergeant, well, who knows? Maybe sometime later he
will forgive you completely and grant you a commission."
   Cordora paused again. "Of course, all that is conjecture. You
will have to carry out this special little job first and qualify
yourself for promotion to sergeant before the officer question could
even be considered."
# 214
<453 TEXT N2>
Destination Danger
By ERNEST HAYCOX
ILLUSTRATED BY EDWIN PHILLIPS
   Bill wanted her to be his alone- despite her past. But first
he had to settle a grudge
   THIS was one of those years when Apache smoke signals
spiralled from the mountain tops, when many a ranch-house lay as a
square of blackened ashes and the departure of a stage from Tonto
started an adventure that had no certain ending.
   The stage, with its six horses, waited in Tonto's town square.
On the box was Happy Stewart, the reins between his fingers. John
Strang rode shotgun guard. And an escort of 1 cavalrymen waited
behind the coach, half asleep in their saddles.
   In the dawn, this high air was cold. A small crowd stood in the
square, presenting their final messages to the passengers.
   There was a girl going to marry an infantry officer, a tall, thin
Englishman carrying a sporting rifle, a gambler, a cattleman- and a
slim blond man. Happy Stuart and the shotgun guard looked at him
with narrow-eyed interest.
   This seemed all until a girl known commonly throughout Arizona
Territory as Henriette walked from the crowd. She was small, with a
touch of paleness in her cheeks. The blond man stepped back from the
coach door and her eyes lifted at his unexpected courtesy. They
showed faint surprise.
   Men in the crowd were smiling- derisively. But the blond man
turned- the movement like the swift cut of a knife- and his
sharp-bright attention covered them until the smiling quit.
   He was a lean man, and stamped as a gun-fighter by the Colts
slung on his hip.
   But it wasn't the guns alone. Something in his face, watchful
and smooth, showed his trade, too.
   Happy Stuart kicked off the brakes and yelled: "Hi!" The
stage rolled from the town in a cloud of dust, the cavalrymen trotting
briskly behind.
   Beyond them stretched the journey no coach had attempted for 45
days. Out below in the desert's distance stood the relay stations
they hoped to reach and pass.
   Between lay a country swept empty by the quick raids of
Geronimo's savages.
   The Englishman, the gambler and the blond man sat jammed together
in the forward seat. The cattleman and the two women shared the rear
seat.
   
   NOW the cattleman leaned towards Henriette, his knees
almost touching her. A huge gold nugget slid gently back and forth
along the gold watch chain slung across his wide chest. His eyes
looked into hers, reading something that caused him to smile.
   They were strangers packed closely together with nothing in
common save a destination.
   Yet the cattleman's smile and the boldness of his glance was
something as audible as speech, noted by everyone except the
Englishman, who sat bolt upright in the corner, covered by stony
indifference.
   The army girl, tall and demurely pretty, threw a quick
side-glance at Henriette, then looked away with a touch of colour.
   Three hours from Tonto the road, making a last round sweep, let
them down into the flat desert.
   From now on they would be on their own. The cavalrymen wheeled
back to town, their sergeant yelling, doubtfully: "Good luck."
   The miles fell behind and the smell of alkali dust got thicker.
Up on the box, Johnny Strang shifted the gun on his lap. "What's
Malpais Bill- the blond one- riding with us for?"
   "I guess I wouldn't ask him," Happy Stuart replied,- and
studied the hazy horizon.
   All day they were tormented by a cruel, relentless sun. Now as
the coach trundled to a stop outside Gap Station, they were red-eyed
and aching from the stinging dust.
   A short man with a tremendous stomach shuffled through the dusk.
He said: "Wasn't sure you'd get through, Happy."
   "Where's the soldiers for tomorrow?"
   "Other side of the mountains. Everybody's chased out. What
2ain't forted up here was sent into Lordsburg."
   He looked first at the army girl, then appraised Henriette
instantly. His eyes slid on to Malpais Bill standing in the
background. Recognition stirred him then and made his voice careful.
"Hello, Bill. What brings you this way?"
   Malpais Bill's cigarette glowed in the gathering dusk and
Henriette caught the brief image of his face, serene and watchful.
Malpais Bill's tone was easy, it was soft. "Just the trip."
   They were moving on towards the frame house. As the army girl
walked into the station's big room, a soldier in a dishevelled uniform
stepped forward.
   He said: "Miss Robertson? Lieutenant Hauser was to have met
you here. He is at Lordsburg. He was wounded in a brush with the
Apaches last night."
   The girl stood very still. She said: "Badly?"
   "Well, yes," said the soldier.
   Henriette's dove-coloured dress blended with the background
shadows. She was watching the other girl's face whiten.
   But there was a strength in the army girl, a fortitude that made
her think of the soldier. For she said quietly: "You must have had
a bad trip."
   "Nothing- nothing at all," said the soldier. As the trooper
left the room, the gambler turned to the army girl with an odd
expression, as though he were remembering painful things.
   After dinner, Malpais Bill lounged, cigarette in hand, in the
yard. The moonlight was a frozen silver that could not dissolve the
desert's incredible blackness.
   
   AS Henriette walked towards him from the Tonto road, her
face was clear and strange and incurious in the night. He said:
"Apaches like to crawl down next to a settlement and wait for
strays."
   She was indifferent, unafraid. Her voice was cool, and he could
hear the faint loneliness in it, the fatalism that made her words so
even. "There's a wind coming up, so soft and good."
   He took off his hat, long legs braced and his eyes quick and
puzzled in their watchfulness. His blond hair glowed in the fugitive
light.
   His lips were restless and the sing and rush of strong feeling
was like a current of quick wind around him. It was that unruly.
"You have folks in Lordsburg?"
   
   SHE spoke in a direct patient way as though explaining
something he should have known without asking. "I run a house in
Lordsburg."
   "No," he said, "it wasn't what I asked."
   "My folks are dead- I think. There was a massacre in the
Superstition Mountains when I was a baby."
   He stood with his head bowed. There was a hardness and a rawness
to this land and little sympathy for the weak. She had survived, and
had paid for her survival and she looked at him now in a way that
offered no explanation or apologies.
   He said: "Over in the Tonto Basin it's fine land. I still have
a piece of a ranch there- with a house half built."
   "If that's your country, why are you here?"
   His lips laughed and the rashness in him glowed hot again and he
seemed to grow taller in the moonlight. "A debt to collect."
   "You will never get through collecting those kind of debts.
Everybody in the Territory knows you.
   "Once you were just a rancher. Then you tried to wipe out a
grudge and then there was a bigger one to wipe out- and the debt kept
growing and more men are waiting to kill you. Some day a man will.
Run away from the debts."
   His bright smile kept constant, which made her shoulders lift in
resignation. "No," she murmured. "You won't run."
   He said: "We'd better go back," and they went across the yard
in silence.
   She turned to look at him once more and then passed down the
narrow corridor to her own quarters.
   Beyond her window in the yard, a man was murmuring to another
man: "Plummer and Shanley are in Lordsburg. Malpais Bill knows
it."
   Through the thin partition of the adjoining room she heard the
army girl crying with uncontrollable regularity.
   Henriette stared at the dark wall, her shoulders and head bowed.
Then she returned to the hall, knocked on the army girl's door and
went in.
   It was morning. Six fresh horses fidgeted in front of the coach
and the fat host of Gap Station came across the yard swinging a
lantern against the dead, bitter black. All the passengers filed
sleep-dulled and miserable from the house.
   The Gap host grumbled: "If they don't jump you before you get
to Al's ranch, you'll be all right."
   It was noon when Henriette caught the smell of smoke in the
windless air. Looking through the angled vista of the window panel
she saw a clay and rock chimney standing up like a gaunt skeleton
against the day's light.
   The house that had been there was a black square on the ground,
smoke still rising from pieces that had not been completely burned.
   The stage stopped and all the men were instantly out. An iron
stove squatted on the earth, with one section of pipe stuck upright to
it. Fire licked lazily along the collapsed fragments of what had been
a trunk.
   Beyond the house lay two nude figures grotesquely bald, with
deliberate knife-slashes marking their bodies. Happy Stuart walked
over and returned quickly. "Al and his wife."
   Malpais Bill knew now that they had a battle ahead. With Happy
and the shotgun guard he clambered on to the coach roof- ready for
the fight.
   Back on the coach, the gambler said to the army girl: "You're
pretty safe between two fellows." He hauled a .44 from a back
pocket and laid it on his lap.
   The Englishman pulled the rifle from between his knees and laid
it across the sill of the window. The cattleman swept back his coat
to clear the gun holster.
   Henriette sat with her eyes pinned to the gloved tips of her
fingers, remembering the tall shape of Malpais Bill cut against the
moonlight of Gap Station.
   He had smiled at her as a man might smile at any desirable woman,
with the sweep and swing of laughter in his voice. His eyes had been
gentle.
   The gambler spoke very quietly and she didn't hear him until his
fingers gripped her arm. He said again, not raising his voice: "Get
down."
   
   HENRIETTE dropped to her knees, hearing gunfire blast
through the rush and run of the coach. Happy Stuart ceased to yell
and the army girl's eyes were round and dark, yet showing no fright.
   Looking upward through the window on the gambler's side,
Henriette saw the weaving figure of an Apache warrior reel nakedly on
a pony and rush by with a rifle raised and pointed in his bony elbows.
   The gambler took a cool aim. The stockman fired and aimed again.
The Englishman's sporting rifle blasted heavy echoes through the
coach, hurting her ears, and the smell of powder got rank and bitter.
   The blond man's boots scraped the coach top and round small holes
began to dimple the panelling as the Apaches' bullets struck.
   An Indian came boldly abreast the coach and made a target that
couldn't be missed. The cattleman dropped him with one shot. The
coach hubs screamed as its wheels slewed around the sharp ruts and the
whole heavy superstructure bounced high in the air.
   The gambler said, quietly: ~"You'd better take this," handing
Henriette his gun. He leaned against the door, with his small hands
gripping the sill. Pallor loosened the cheeks. He said, to the army
girl: "Be sure to keep between those gentlemen." He slumped on to
the window sill.
   They were rolling down the mountain without brake. Gunfire fell
off and the crying of the Indians faded back.
   Coming up from her knees then, she saw the desert's flat surface
far below, with the angular pattern of Lordsburg vaguely on the far
borders of the heat fog.
   
   WITH a roar, Happy Stuart's voice lifted again and brakes
were screaming on the wheels, and going off, and screaming again.
   The Englishman stared out of the window sullenly. The army girl
seemed in a deep desperate dream. The cattleman's face was shining
with a strange sweat.
# 26
<454 TEXT N21>
AT THAT MAN'S MERCY
   As Jenny lifted the receiver, an arm suddenly came over her
shoulder and a hairy hand gripped her wrist.
   
   NOTHING WARNED JENNY THAT THE PEACE AND QUIET OF HER LIFE WAS
TO BE SHATTERED.
   
   JENNY put the last of the dishes in the cupboard, and then
walked back into the living-room.
   She wished Ian were back. The house always seemed very still and
quiet when he was away and he would not be home until late.
   Tonight Jenny felt uneasy. That announcement on the radio about
a man who had escaped from the mental institution in a neighbouring
town had disturbed her.
   She stood looking out of the wide bay-window on to the garden.
The great copper beech cast a lacework of moving shadows across the
smooth, sunlit lawn, and in its whispering branches two magpies
quarrelled noisily.
   As far as the eye could see there was nothing but trees, and, in
the distance, the bleak moors, so beautiful, peaceful and isolated.
That was just what she and Ian liked, but not when there was a maniac
at large.
   Jenny sat down on the settee and picked up the paper, trying to
keep calm. After all, there was no reason why he should come here.
The road past their house led only to a small secluded bay a mile or
two further on.
   The reason for his escaping from the asylum was presumably to get
as far away from confinement as possible, in which case he would
naturally go in the opposite direction.
   Her fears somewhat lulled, she began to read. The radio was on
and she could hear the baby upstairs whimper in his sleep.
   The clock was striking six when a loud knock on the door made her
start. Slowly she lowered the newspaper. She wasn't expecting
anyone. Oh, yes, her young sister, Betty, had said she might call.
   She got up and went to the front door. As she opened it, a
good-looking man wearing a grey suit, pushed past her into the hall.
She turned on him indignantly, but before she could protest, he
leaned over her shoulder and shut the door.
   Her mouth went dry. A large hand gripped her arm and turned her
towards the living-room.
   "Go on," the voice said metallically, and the protest died on
her lips as she obeyed.
   She walked over to the settee, and then turned and smiled
nervously.
   "Won't you sit down?" she asked, her throat constricted.
   "Food, have you any food?" he growled, and there was a strange
glint in his eye as he looked her up and down.
   She swallowed hard, her fingers fumbling nervously with her
wedding ring.
   "I haven't got much- my husband's supper-"
   Her voice trailed away.
   At the mention of Ian, the stranger half-rose, his eyes wary.
   "Your husband, where is he?"
   "He'll be back soon."
   "Give me food."
   His eyes were fixed on her, and, try as she might, she could not
take her own away. There was something almost hypnotic about those
eyes, and yet something lonely- a loneliness of the spirit that was
terrifying, as though his mind were far beyond reality.
   Suddenly she remembered the announcer on the radio. He had
warned anyone who met this man not to provoke him in any way. The
slightest disagreement could send him into an uncontrollable rage.
   He began to rise slowly from the table.
   "Yes, yes, I'll get you some food now," she said hastily.
   Her hand found the door handle and she slipped out. In the small
alcove by the kitchen, her eyes fell on the telephone. She paused,
looking at it longingly, but a sixth sense made her glance over her
shoulder.
   He was standing in the doorway. Threateningly, he began to walk
towards her. She stooped to pick up her handkerchief, and went on
into the kitchen.
   As she opened the pantry door, he was there behind her. She put
bread on the table, and took the butter and a cold veal and ham pie
from the refrigerator.
   He stood in the middle of the room, watching her every move.
   Putting the food on a tray, she cut a piece of apple tart, and
carried it all into the living-room. Again, he followed close behind
her.
   He sat down at the table and she placed the tray in front of him.
Ignoring the knife and fork, he picked up the meat pie, and, breaking
it in two, began to eat.
   Jenny could feel her hands trembling, and when the man coughed,
her hand jerked, and the sauce bottle lay on its side. A brown stain
slowly spread over the cloth.
   Her hand went out to pick up the fallen bottle- and froze. She
saw him stop chewing. His eyes were fixed on the spilling sauce.
Then he raised his head and she shrank back. He had the expression
of a wild cat that had been disturbed at its meal.
   "Sorry, that was silly of me," she said, forcing a laugh.
   Then she got up and moved towards the door.
   "Where are you going? Come back."
   The voice was like a whip-lash.
   She closed her eyes and swayed slightly.
   "I- I'm going to make you a cup of tea," she explained
shakily. "You'd like a drink?"
   "Beer."
   She left the door half-open, and, walking quietly, reached the
alcove. If she could only dial 999. Jenny glanced over her shoulder.
The door was still ajar and there was no sound, except when his hand
touched the cutlery.
   Reaching out, she took hold of the receiver, and raised her left
hand to the dial. She was breathing with difficulty, and her legs
felt unsteady.
   As she lifted the receiver, an arm came over her shoulder and a
hairy hand gripped her wrist. Her heart leaped and the blood pounded
in her ears. For a moment, she was paralysed with fear.
   Then slowly she turned and looked up into his face. She hardly
recognised it. It was very flushed, and seemed to have grown larger.
The mouth was slightly open, and jerked spasmodically at one corner.
   
   HER breath came in gasps as she ran her tongue over her dry
lips. Suddenly his grip tightened and, with a gasp of pain, Jenny
dropped the receiver.
   He stood, still holding her wrist.
   "I was just going to ring the doctor to see if he was calling
tomorrow. The baby isn't too well."
   "You're not ringing any doctor," he said thickly.
   "All right then. Come with me, and we'll get that bottle of
beer."
   She smiled at him hopefully, and he released her wrist.
   Jenny took a few tentative steps forward, and then waited, her
heart pounding. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she saw him
following. Slowly, she went into the kitchen and took a bottle of
beer out of the refrigerator.
   Back in the living-room, he stood by the table as she opened the
bottle and poured out the drink. She held the glass out to him.
   "Come on, drink it. You'll feel better."
   He took the glass, looking suspiciously at it and then at her.
   "What d'you mean, 'feel better'?" he growled. "There's
nothing wrong with me."
   Jenny smiled placatingly.
   "No, of course not," she soothed, "but you said you were very
thirsty. It's a good brand. My husband's very fond of it."
   He looked at the label.
   "I know it's good. I can see, can't I?"
   "Yes, yes, of course. I- I didn't mean to be rude."
   "I didn't say you were rude." His eyes were beginning to
glaze over. "What's the matter? You think I'm mad, don't you?"
   "No- no. Why should I? Look, drink up. Have a cigarette."
   She offered him the packet. He took one and examined it, his
thick fingers turning it over and over. He sniffed it, his brows
drawn together in concentration.
   Jenny lit hers and watched him in amazement. Why all this fuss
over an ordinary cigarette?
   She flicked her lighter and held it out. He took hold of her
wrist, bringing the flame to the cigarette. As he puffed, his hands
gripped her more tightly. His eyes met hers through the thin veil of
smoke.
   Her heart pounded and she closed her eyes. That wild look of
animal desire- and he was mad. She felt utterly weary. Gently she
pulled her arm away.
   "Oh, God, please help me," she prayed inwardly. "I can't
stand much more of this."
   The baby upstairs began to cry loudly, giving great hiccoughing
sobs. Then his voice rose to a scream. Jenny whipped round and raced
for the door, but the man caught her arm.
   "Where are you going?" he demanded.
   His face was fierce and ugly.
   "My baby's ill. I must see to him." She glared at him, fear
forgotten because her little son needed her. "Let me go."
   "Come here. I want you."
   She took one look at his face, now a deep red, the veins bulging
on his forehead, his madness plain to see. With a desperate effort
she wrenched her arm away and dashed into the hall. She heard him
shout, and start to lumber after her.
   With fear as the spur, she leapt up the stairs, the madman at her
heels. She paused for a split second, and then seizing a large
Chinese vase that stood at the turn of the stairs, she pulled it over
and sent it rolling down.
   It caught him across the thighs, and man and vase crashed in a
heap at the foot of the stairs. Not waiting to see the results, Jenny
dived for the bedroom and slammed the door, turning the key. Gasping,
she leaned back against the door. Looking wildly around the room, her
eye fell on the chest of drawers. It was heavy and made of oak.
   She went across and slowly began to push it over the floor.
Hearing the noise, the baby stopped crying.
   At last the chest was in position. Panting, she pushed her hair
off her forehead and went over to the baby's cot. She lifted him and
laid him on the bed.
   Then, picking up the cot, she carried it into the small ante-room
which led off the main bedroom. There was no other way in, except
through the bedroom. She collected the baby and laid him down in the
cot. Then she drew the curtains, and, going back into the bedroom,
closed the door.
   
   THERE was the muffled sound of scrambling on the stairs.
He was coming up again. She eyed the oak chest. That should hold
him off, at least for a time. She went to the extension phone by the
bed, and, with trembling hands, dialled 999. Soon she was blurting
out all the essential details to the police.
   As she replaced the receiver, Jenny noticed the house was
completely silent again. Where was he now? She went as near to the
door as she could and listened intently- not a sound.
   She slipped back to the bed and sat down weakly. Taking her
cigarettes out of her pocket, she lit one. Inhaling deeply, she let
her head fall forward.
   Suddenly she jerked upright. That was the side door that had
creaked. He had been outside, but for what? Then nightmare visions
of things she had read in the papers flooded back to her- of people
being axed to death! Only last week, Ian had bought a new axe. She
could picture its gleaming head now.
   She darted over to the window, and gazed vainly in all
directions. There was not a sight or sound of anyone- only the
sun-dappled lawn and the whispering trees. Peace was everywhere. She
smiled bitterly.
   Her heart leaped at the sound of an approaching car. Running to
the window Jenny saw it sweep round the bend and pass straight on,
heading for the cove.
   Again there was that awful silence- silence except for the sound
of a man with an axe, who began to stumble up the stairs.
# 25
<455 TEXT N22>
Continuing Reveille's exciting serial
VICE KING'S SWEETHEART
HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH A KILLER
by Douglas Enefer
   A glance in the driving mirror told me I was being tailed by
another car. I knew the man at the wheel. His name was Ugo
Caramello.
   I had met him a few days earlier- after I had found lovely Anna
Pavone dead in Rome's famous Fountain of Trevi. He had been with
Anna's sister, Adriana, when I went to tell her the news.
   Adriana had denied that her sister was dead. And Ugo had
threatened me.
   Events moved rapidly after that. I had run across New York
vice-boss Frank Delgarra in Rome in the company of a call-girl, Gina
Vanoni. A few hours later I found Gina murdered- and Adriana left
for New York to collect an oil fortune she should have shared with her
sister. Helping her to collect would be her fiance, business tycoon
Lance Mallory. I followed.
   I talked to Adriana in her penthouse suite. She told me her
sister had died- in a car crash. Her eyes and lips had been
inviting. But I had snubbed her and stalked out. Now watchdog Ugo
was following me. And he had a gun in his hand.
   
   I WAS still being tailed by Ugo Caramello in his blue Chev
when I drove downtown through Columbus-circle. He was still keeping
the sort of distance he figured necessary for me not to know I was
being followed.
   But I had seen him.
   At Times-square I made a sharp left turn and went down
Eighth-avenue as fast as the traffic would allow.
   I had not shaken him off, but I was widening the gap. Then I
slewed into Greenwich-avenue and twisted and turned in the little side
streets with their curio shops and outdoor art shows west of
Washington-square.
   When I finally ran the car into a narrow alley I knew I had
Caramello beat. I got out, walked to the mouth of the alley and stood
back under a shop awning waiting for him.
   Three minutes later the blue Chev poked its nose into the street.
   Ugo had his dark glasses off now and was peering around. His
dark Sicilian face was savage with annoyance.
   He killed the car engine, stepped out and dodged into a corner
drugstore across the street.
   I waited for a second, then drifted over the street and pushed
the drug-store doors open.
   Inside four teenage kids, two boys and two girls, were drinking
cokes and chattering.
   
   THE counterman, a hefty lad with the shoulders of a
quarter-back, was polishing glasses with quick, deft movements.
   In the middle of the store a middle-aged guy with waxed
moustaches was reading as much of a magazine as you can do without
buying the thing.
   No sign of Signor Ugo Caramello.
   Then I saw the telephone booth. I strolled down to the end of
the long counter and pushed my ear against the side without glass. I
could just hear Ugo's voice. It seemed a bit agitated.
   "Is that Plaza 6-179, please?" A pause, then: "Who is
speaking, please?" Again a pause. 3"This is Caramello. I follow
him but he disappear in the traffic."
   Another pause. "No, I do not know where he went. I- oh,
damn."
   I heard the phone slam back on its rest and went fast into the
street and across to my car. I sat in it until Caramello came out and
drove off.
   Then I went back into the drugstore.
   The counterhand eyed me coldly. "You want something, mister?"
I bought a pack of cigarettes, shut myself in the telephone booth and
dialled Plaza 6-179.
   "Mr. Lance Mallory's residence," said a voice.
   I let the receiver slide down on its cradle and went back to my
car with a head full of thoughts- none of which started to make
sense.
   I drove home.
   Lesley, the brown-haired girl who operates the switchboard in my
apartment block, looked up pertly as I came in.
   "Did you have a nice time in Rome, Mr. Power?"
   "Swell."
   "You've a good tan, but otherwise you don't look like a man
fresh back from sunny Italy," she said critically. "And why aren't
you at the office?"
   "I've two more days' leave before I check in," I told her.
   
   GOING up to the little railing which protects her from the
harsh world, I leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
   "I've been counting the hours to that," she said.
   "Put your face up and I'll do better," I said recklessly.
   Her smooth oval face came up directly. Her mouth was warm and a
little moist and not immobile.
   Finally she moved away from me and said, briskly: "A telephone
message came for you while you were out. From a Miss Adriana
Pavone."
   She eyed me mockingly. "So they even follow you from Italy, do
they?"
   "Oh, sure- I see them in rotation," I said. "What did Miss
Pavone want?"
   Lesley tapped her small teeth with a newly-pointed pencil. "She
said she wanted to speak to you rather urgently, but as you weren't in
she would send a written message. About a half-hour later this
came."
   She handed me a small, pale-blue envelope.
   "Thanks, Lesley." I had started for the elevator when she
asked innocently: "Aren't you going to open it, Mr. Power?"
   I grinned. "Yeah- where you can't watch my emotional
reactions."
   I went up to my apartment and read the letter. I didn't know
quite what I had expected- if I had expected anything in
particular- but what it said shook me.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Dear John- I was very distressed when you left me with those
dreadful words. I simply do not know what I can do to convince you
how wrong you are. But I shall never have the opportunity- because
tonight I am flying back to Rome.
   I have been uncertain for some time about my engagement to Mr.
Mallory and today I decided not to marry. I have explained this to
him and I think he understands- better, I am afraid, than you
understand me. So it is goodbye- Adriana Pavone.
<END INDENTATION>
   I dropped the letter on my desk and rammed tobacco into the
biggest pipe I have. The hell with Adriana Pavone!
   If she wanted to skip back to Rome- let her. I didn't give a
damn.
   
   JUST the same, I found myself picking up the letter and
reading it again.
   So she wasn't marrying Mallory. Maybe she wanted old man Power?
   Maybe she didn't care about either of us? Maybe she didn't care
about New York once she had latched on to that five-million-dollar
pay-off? The thoughts jostled through my mind- and came to a sudden
stop.
   She could not hope to conclude a deal like that in a couple of
days, could she?
   She was just stalling.
   "I'm flying back to Rome, my sweet, so you don't any longer
need to poke your 2goddam nose into my affairs..."
   That could be it.
   I grabbed the telephone and got through to the air terminal.
   "Is there a reservation on the night flight to Rome in the name
of Signorina Adriana Pavone?" I asked. "I have to contact her
before she checks in."
   A girl clerk answered: "Wait a minute, sir. I'll find out."
   There was a long pause. I dragged pipe smoke in coughing clouds.
   Then the line came alive again. "Sorry, sir. We have no
reservation in that name."
   "The morning flight tomorrow, then?"
   "I've looked, sir. No one of that name is booked to Rome."
   "Thanks," I said thickly.
   
   FIFTEEN minutes later I was driving north again. The
commissionaire wasn't on hand at the plushy hotel where Adriana was
staying, so I rode myself straight up to the penthouse suite.
   The door was locked. I banged on it three times. That made it
open about a foot and a face came into slit view- a thin, faintly
yellowed face with eyes like deadly sins and shining crinkly hair.
   He was around twenty-five years old and looked like a Filipino
houseboy. Before, I had not noticed that she had one.
   "Miss Adriana Pavone," I said. "John Power calling."
   He twisted a wide mouthful of teeth into a grin.
   3"Miss Pavone not in, sir."
   "You know where she's gone?"
   3"No sir. But no come back." The grin had died but the
eyes were alert. Too alert.
   "I haven't seen you here before, have I?"
   I put a foot in the door as I said it. He looked down at the
foot and smiled a long slow smile.
   3"If you are friend of hers, I tell," he said. "Miss
Pavone left just now with all her baggage. She fly back to Rome,
sir."
   "On the night flight?"
   He started to nod, then checked himself. But he was too late.
   "The night flight doesn't take off until eleven-thirty," I
said.
   "She has some shopping to do first, I think." His eyes were
snapping at me now. A tiny globule of saliva pooled on the left side
of his mouth.
   I swung my shoulder against the door. He reeled back, his arms
flailing.
   I went in.
   "You're lying, Flip. Where's she gone- and why?"
   He backed warily from me, going across the hallway towards the
wide lounge. Then, without warning, he lunged.
   Something long and blue and shining had slid down his sleeve into
his right hand.
   I hit him on the point of the jaw with everything I had. For a
second he seemed to hang, suspended in mid air. Then he zoomed
backwards, hit the floor and rolled over.
   But he was not done.
   He came face-upwards on the roll, his wrist angled for a
knife-throw.
   I trod savagely on his wrist and ground it until he screamed his
agony. The flick-knife jumped out of his hand, clattering over the
floor.
   I reached down, hooked him up by his collar, and hit him one more
time in the mouth. I felt a couple of his teeth crack.
   
   HE sat sprawled on a large sofa, his mouth full of blood
and his eyes full of death. I felt inside his jacket and down the
outside of his pants. He was not wearing artillery.
   "All right- talk," I barked.
   He dragged a handkerchief from his breast-pocket and dabbed at
his mouth. I took the gun from under my arm, the big Luger I thought
I had not needed in Rome.
   "You can go into the bathroom and fix your mouth," I said.
   He stood up soundlessly and speechlessly and glided across the
hallway and through a door. I went in after him and watched while he
got the dislodged teeth out of his face.
   "All right," I said again, "tell it."
   He smiled wolfishly, but no words came.
   "I could beat it out of you, Flip," I said, "but I haven't
the time and I haven't sadistic instincts.
   "On the other hand, I could drag you down to police headquarters
and the boys could stand you under the lights."
   He swayed against the wash-basin, killing me with his eyes.
   I shrugged. "I haven't the time for that, either. You stay
tied up in the locked bathroom until I get back- with a gag in your
mouth. And if it's damned uncomfortable I'm not going to shed
tears."
   I turned the lock and went into the big lounge. I dropped the
key on to Adriana's writing desk. Something was on it. A piece of
paper, pale blue, like that she had used to write to me.
   It had writing on it, too:
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
   Dear John- I was very distressed when you left me with those
dreadful words. I simply do not know what I can do to convince you
how wrong you are, but I would like-
<END INDENTATION>
   There was no more. Just a letter she had begun and then
started again on another sheet.
   Pushed against the back of the desk top was a newspaper, folded
down on black headlines which read:
   FRANK DELGARRA, BACK FROM ROME, TALKS OF BIG DEAL.
# 24
<456 TEXT N23>
   Durieux unbuttoned the right breast pocket of his parachute
smock, his fingers fumbling with the stiffness of the new canvas.
   'This is my party card,' he said, holding it high, that all
might see it. 'I am more proud of this card than of this badge.'
   When he said this, Durieux tapped the silver-nickel badge that
was pinned to the flap of his right breast pocket. The badge
consisted of an opened parachute flanked by wings. Cynics said the
wings had been added to remind the wearer that he might one day have
need of them, for parachute-packing is not an exact science, and
parachute packers have been known to err. The badge meant that
Durieux's parachute had six times successfully responded to his pull
at the ripcord, with himself dangling from the rigging lines,
fluttering to earth like an autumn leaf discarded from the military
tree.
   'Is it a real party card?' asked Rossi. 'It's not like any
party card that I ever saw. I'll bet it's a forgery.'
   'See for yourself,' shouted Durieux, thrusting the card close
to the Corsican's face.
   Rossi spat very deliberately, and very messily, upon Durieux's
party card. The other paras, who had guessed what was to come,
shouted with laughter.
   'I'm going to make you lick that card clean,' said Durieux.
   He reached down for the nape of Rossi's neck with his left hand.
His intention was to force the Corsican's nose into the spittle. But
Rossi jerked Durieux's heels from beneath him. Durieux pitched
forward, falling over Rossi. Durieux could have clutched at Rossi to
save himself, but he still held on to the party card and would not let
it go. The restraining hands of two paras, one at either side of
Rossi, were all that saved Durieux from falling into the fire.
   One of the paras who held Durieux spun him roughly about, so that
he stumbled away from the fire. His first concern was for the party
card. It was scorched- as were the fingers that held it- and
Rossi's spittle was bubbling on the cardboard. Durieux wiped the card
clean, using great care, with his handkerchief. He placed the card
back in his breast pocket and buttoned it beneath the parachute badge.
Only then did he return to Rossi, who was still lying beside the
fire.
   'Now you won't be able to make me lick it off,' said Rossi.
   'I'll do better than that,' promised Durieux. 'Get up,
Rossi.'
   'Enchanted by the invitation, comrade Durieux.'
   Rossi arose with the muscular tension of a caged leopard at
feeding time. Durieux almost regretted having issued the invitation.
Rossi was tall, but he did not tower above Durieux; he was broad, yet
not significantly wider than Durieux; but he was unmistakably the more
aggressive.
   Looking at Rossi, Durieux could not believe that his opponent
possessed the fighting instincts of a mere man: it was as though the
Corsican belonged spiritually to another species. The leopard-skin
pattern upon his parachute smock might have been an outward expression
of his character.
   Yet Durieux was no coward, nor was he easily intimidated. So he
fired his right fist into Rossi's face and caught the Corsican on the
mouth. His knuckles made a wooden sound against Rossi's teeth. Rossi
rode the blow, swaying back from the hips upon which his hands still
rested, but his lips split like an over-ripe tomato. Blood flowed
from them and ran down his chin like wine. Rossi ran his tongue over
the blood: he seemed to savour the taste; he was smiling.
   Then Rossi struck Durieux a terrible blow that landed midway
between crutch and waist. Durieux had never been hit so hard before,
though he had become an amateur boxer in his student days in order to
gain popularity and engender self-confidence. But he had never even
imagined that it was possible to be hit so hard. The blow took all
pleasure out of anger, out of fighting, out of life itself. Durieux's
head went down until it was level with his knees. He folded up so
fast that Rossi's second blow- a right cross- landed on his temple.
Instead of breaking Durieux's jaw, as Rossi had intended it should,
the blow split his scalp. He was felled to the ground as a bullock is
felled by a humane killer. His head suddenly became enormous and
empty: the echoes of the blow rang through his brain like the angelus
bell in a church tower. He felt the blood move stickily from his
split scalp and trickle down his forehead. He felt as though all
feelings were at an end.
   Then Durieux realized that he was still capable of having such
primitive feeling as pain. He could still hear, despite the sounding
in his ears, despite the lights behind his eyes, despite the knotted
cramp of his intestines. And Durieux became intensely relieved that
he could still experience these things.
   If he hits me like that again, thought Durieux, he will
undoubtedly kill me. If by chance he does not kill me I shall be
crippled for life. Even if he fails to kill or cripple me I shall be
permanently disfigured. None of these things is going to help
propagate Marxist-Leninist doctrines.
   Therefore, Durieux continued when he could hear himself thinking,
I must somehow save myself. The best thing I can do is lie still and
let him think that he has knocked me out. If everyone believes that
Rossi has knocked me out they will not expect me to get up and fight
him again. The fight is over. Even the best boxers get themselves
knocked out, especially by a lucky blow. There is no dishonour in
that. I struck the first blow. I have shown them all that I am not
afraid of Rossi. I was disabled by a foul blow and knocked out by a
lucky blow. It was almost an accident. I have now earned my place by
the fire. I believe that I really must have been knocked out. I am
only just coming to my senses. That is why I am only now able to
think clearly. I was knocked out, but I bear Rossi no ill-will. The
fight is finished.
   'He's shamming,' said Rossi.
   'He's shagged,' said someone.
   'Balls,' said Rossi. 'I was playing with him. I only used
my fists. I want to have some fun out of this fight. It's a long
time since I fought a Viet.'
   'He isn't a Viet,' said someone else. 'He's only a
commie.'
   'Viet or commie,' said Rossi, 'I'm going to beat the crap out
of him. I'll teach the depot to send us commies.'
   'They probably didn't know he was a commie,' said someone
else. 'You know how the bastards infiltrate.'
   'They'll know he's a commie when I've finished with him,' said
Rossi.
   Durieux felt a sudden pain in his side; and he was flung over on
his back. The kick had landed sickeningly just below his ribs.
Durieux was relieved that Rossi was wearing rubber-soled jumping
boots and not the steel-tipped infantry issue.
   'Don't kick him,' said a voice, Marechal's voice.
   'He's a subversive,' said Rossi. 'I could kick him to death
and get congratulated for it. I caught him encouraging us to read
left-wing journals, didn't I? Wasn't he about to encourage us lads to
desert?'
   'That's a load of bull,' said Marechal. 'You needled him
until he produced his party card.'
   'I knew he was a commie,' said Rossi. 'I can smell the
bastards out as surely as I can smell the bogs.'
   'Perhaps he's an ex-commie now,' said someone. 'It looks as
though you did him in.'
   'He's firing at the flank,' said Rossi.
   'He's been shamming for a long time then,' said someone else.
'Not everyone has a head as thick as yours, Rossi.'
   'I'll hold a light under his mug and see if he moves,' said
Rossi.
   Durieux could smell the brand from the fire as Rossi approached
him. It was so close that he inhaled the sweet smoke, and felt the
heat glow against his eyelids. He decided that it was time to groan
as a preliminary to feigning a return to consciousness. Rossi kicked
him again, but mildly this time, an exploratory kick. Durieux raised
his head slightly, let it loll back, and opened his eyes. Rossi threw
the blazing brand back into the fire.
   Durieux groaned again. He rolled his eyes and raised himself on
one elbow. The recovery, he decided, must be very gradual; otherwise
Rossi might take it as an invitation to renew the fight. He groaned
and sank back again.
   'Commies,' said Rossi. 'I could crap a better commie.'
   Marechal stood up and walked over to where Durieux lay. He was
carrying his canteen and he offered it to Durieux.
   'Drink this,' said Marechal.
   'He doesn't drink,' said Rossi in a mincing voice. 'And it's
quite possible that he doesn't poke either.'
   'He'll learn to do both,' said Marechal. 'And to fight.
He's got a lot to learn.'
   Durieux took the canteen, not because he wanted to drink, but
because to lie there drinking would prolong the period before he must
rise. So he drank slowly. He found that he was drinking neat pastis.
The liquorice taste was unmistakable even though he had not tasted it
before. He spluttered and coughed as the liquid ran down his throat
and surged into his stomach. But he suddenly felt a great deal
better.
   This stuff is liquid fire, thought Durieux. It's like napalm.
What do you know of napalm? he asked himself out of journalistic
habit. Nothing, he admitted, or very little, but I'd like to have
some for Rossi, he told himself. I'd like to see that bastard burn.
   'Go easy with that stuff, man, if you aren't used to it,' he
heard Marechal warning him.
   'It will do him good,' said Rossi. 'It may even put some
guts into the miserable little sod.'
   Accepting this as encouragement, Durieux took another long drink
from the canteen before returning it to Marechal. Then he looked
directly at Rossi. Durieux forced himself to be no longer afraid of
Rossi.
   'Shut your dirty trap, Rossi, or I'll shut it for you,' he
announced.
   'Want some more?'
   'I'll smash your mug in,' said Durieux.
   He lurched to his feet and as suddenly sat down again, for the
ground appeared to rise with him. He got to his knees and became
conscious of pain where Rossi had struck the blow. Durieux fell
forward and was violently sick in the fire: yellow bile that bubbled
and spluttered. Everything tasted and stank of aniseed. But when he
had wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Durieux felt much
better.
   'Now I'll finish him off,' said Rossi.
   'Shut up,' said Marechal. 'He's beaten up already. Leave
the poor bastard be. What's the matter with you, man? Can't you find
anyone of your own weight to fight?'
   'Are you looking for a boy beneath your blanket?' asked Rossi.
   'You know me,' said Marechal.
   'Why else should anyone want to protect a commie from what's
coming to him?' asked Rossi.
   Durieux had at last succeeded in staying on his feet. The stars
of the African night were duplicated in his head. The pastis had
entered his blood stream.
   'I'm going to have your guts for a tie,' he told Rossi.
   'He's as pissed as a Pole,' said Marechal.
   'I can lick any man in this stick,' announced Rossi.
   'Except me,' Marechal reminded him.
   'I can lick you in a stand up and smash down fight,' shouted
Rossi. 'Who cares about wrestling?'
   'I care, man,' said Marechal. 'I like to wrestle
sometimes.'
   'I'm going to do you both,' announced Durieux, approaching
them at a stagger. 'I'm going to do the whole world.'
   'You're too ambitious,' said Marechal. 'Has anyone got some
black coffee?'
   Someone handed over a mug of black coffee and Marechal gave it to
Durieux. Durieux spilled some of the coffee down the front of his
uniform; it mingled with the stains of his blood, now drying out
brown, and merged well with the dapple-camouflage pattern.
# 228
<457 TEXT N24>
A Night in the Firth
BY JOHN MACGILLIVRAY
   WILLIE MOIR is a big-boned, fresh, sandy-haired young man
of about twenty-five, with bushy brows and a ready smile. He was
washing himself at the sink after a day spent working hard in the
wood, and his evening meal was all ready hot and steaming on the
table.
   His father was sitting there waiting for Willie to join him,
whilst his mother, short and tubby, was hovering between the oven and
the table, like a broody hen; not quite clucking.
   As he dried himself Willie said: "I came round by the harbour
on my way home. Jimmy Fraser was there and I think I'll go with him
the night. Fishing. He's going out later on."
   "Fishing?" his father asked. "I was never fishing in my
life."
   "Why 2d'ye not come with us then? It'll be a grand night. You
could come."
   "No' me. I don't like boats."
   "Were you ever on one?"
   "2Ay, many a one. Troopships, in the war. Men and horses all
together- and comin' home when it was done. I don't like them at
all."
   "2Ach, be quiet. That's different altogether. You 2couldna'
get a goat on Jimmy's boat, never mind a horse. It'll be fine and
quiet, 2oot on the firth."
   "2Ay, maybe quiet. It's quiet enough here for me. I'm no'
going. Come and get your tea before it's cold."
   "That's right. Sit in, Willie. You'll be hungry I'm sure, out
all day. Sit in," said his mother.
   "I don't 2ken one fish from the other," said the father.
"Except maybe a salmon and a spelding. They're a' the same to me.
I like fish. Or a herring."
   "A spelding's a 2haddie," said Willie. "It's smoked."
   "Maybe it is. What time are you going wi' Jimmy?"
   "2Aboot ten o'clock. It's the tide."
   "H'm. An' what time will you be home?"
   "In the morning. About nine o'clock maybe."
   "And what 2aboot your work?"
   "2Ach, it's Saturday. Surely I can take a Saturday morning once
in the year. It's no' much; only a half holiday."
   "It's a half day just the same. It 2wouldna do if we were all
taking half days."
   "2Ach, be 2quate. In the 2Sooth they don't work on any
Saturdays at all, and they do all right."
   "2Ay, the kind o' them! I'd shoot the half o' them. What kind
o' an engine has he in the 2boatie?"
   "It's a Diesel," said Willie. "Very good, he says, when it
goes. 2Hasna quite got the hang o' it yet."
   "Watch yoursel' then. Don't be goin' to America or something.
You'll maybe be sick, will you? Can you swim?"
   "All Commandos can swim," said Willie. "But I'm no' swimming
the night. Too cold. I'll take a flask o' tea wi' me, Mam, and a few
sandwiches."
   "All right, boy, all right. I'll make them ready for you at
nine o'clock. Will that do?"
   "2Ay, fine. I'll be in for them then."
   Big Charlie, the father, took a turn outside in the calm, long
summer evening. The hills to the south, and Ben Wyvis to the west,
stood clear and near.
   He could occasionally hear the sea washing on the beach, and he
remembered those other hot sandy beaches and the warm middle sea, so
many years ago.
   Willie collected his food parcel and made for the harbour, going
in through the fishertown. Here and there people were gossiping at
gable corners in twos or threes, mostly short round folk, men and
women, the men with layers of jerseys and clean flat caps.
   Jimmy Fraser was a fisherman. Fresh, wrinkly-faced,
clean-shaven, and good natured, he was working on the deck of his boat
Magda, and called to Willie, "That you, Wull? Stop there till I
start the Diesel, then bring in the lines and we'll away." He
disappeared down a small hatch and Willie could hear him at the
engine.
   Jimmy came up and into the little wheelhouse, waving Willie to
come aboard with the mooring lines; then he gently edged the nose of
his craft across the still harbour towards the entrance and the firth.
   "Just the two o' us, Jimmy?" asked Willie.
   "2Ay, 2ay, Wull. It's no' much the night, just a few lines, I
thought we'd manage fine. Mind your feet when we get outside, she'll
maybe lift."
   As the evening spent the light grew less and the firth turned
dark grey. The breeze blowing across the tide made a little lop on
the surface, so when Magda left the shelter of the harbour her bow
lifted to the lop and she heeled to the push of the breeze. Jimmy
increased his speed and the exhaust beat hardened, though still not
fast.
   They turned to the north-east, heading for the darkening, and the
bows set to a rolling lift and fall, slight and regular. "She'll do
six or seven knots, dependin'," said Jimmy. "She's no' just right
this last few days. But there's no great hurry."
   "Can I no' steer her?" asked Willie. "I think I'll manage
her. What way are we going?"
   "2Ay, take her, Wull. Here and I'll show you. I'll go and
make a 2droppie tea. 2Gie me a call if you see anything."
   He went below and Willie had the night and the boat to himself.
As Magda chugged through the dark he constantly glanced at the
little tell-tale compass. Sky had merged with black sea all ahead,
but away to the north-west, on his left hand, it wasn't yet so black
dark, and an occasional light blinked or flashed over there. "Tarbat
Ness," he thought. "Or maybe the Sutors." He was startled when
Jimmy's voice at his shoulder said, "Here 2y'are, Wull. Tea. I'll
take her while you drink it. There's a light in the cabin if you want
to sit below."
   "I'll have it up here, Jim."
   Willie enjoyed the hot sweet tea, standing on the deck in the
cool of the night, leaning against the wheelhouse and taking his ease.
   "It's near twelve o'clock, Jimmy" he said. "When will we get
to your lines?"
   "2Aboot two, boy; near the slack o' the tide. We'll get the
first o' the light. Are you for the wheel again?"
   "2Aye, Jim, I'll take her. You get your tea.
<END QUOTE>
   Willie leant slightly forward over the wheel as he conned the
boat, peering into the dark. With a lurch he fell forward over the
spokes, and one of them drove blunt into the pit of his stomach,
stealing his wind, at the same time as he heard Magda's bow strike
with a thump. She paused, and the Diesel missed a beat; before it
regained its regular chug Jimmy was on deck, running to the bow,
stumbling in the dark.
   "What is it, Wull?" he shouted. "What ha' we struck?"
   Willie gasped deep, trying to recover his breath. "Don' know,
Jim. Never saw a thing. What is it?"
   "It's a dam' tree. 2Gie's a han' to shift it, man. Wait you
till I put the Diesel 2oot o' gear." The engine idled easily,
relieved of its load, and together they went forward where Jimmy's
torch revealed the tree with some branches reaching into the dark,
still across the bow, held there by way of the boat, which hadn't
quite stopped.
   "It's 2doon from the hills wi' the storms and the floods,"
said Jimmy. "I'll back her away from it. Push wi' this boathook,
Wull. Take care an' no' lose it."
   Willie pushed as best he could, and when the engine ground the
boat astern they came free of the tree and Jimmy released the engine
again.
   "What a 2dunt," he said. "I wonder has it sprung the
stem." He went below into the hold, shining his torch.
   "Looks a'right, Wull," he said when he came back. "Just a
bit o' a weep. She'll be a'right if we don't force her."
   Before the first gleam had showed in the north-east sky Jimmy had
taken the wheel and set Magda more to the south, easing her along
as the dawn came to them. His eyes were screwed nearly closed as he
searched ahead, to right and to left over the face of the sea, and
always he sniffed. Then "2Ay," he said. "They're there, boy.
That's my buoy. Bring over that bait, Wull, in the two baskets at
the bow." He had cut the engine to idling speed; the boat was
losing way, coming up to the fishing buoy dead slow.
   Jim had explained the job to Willie. They were to lift each line
and rebait it, taking aboard any catch that might be on the hooks. It
was to be a busy job because Magda had to be watched and guided as
well, and Jim knew how best to do this. "See and mind your fingers
wi' the hooks, Wull," he said.
   Most of the lines had bare hooks as they were hauled aboard,
where the bait had been taken and the fish had escaped, but there were
fishes on some and these flopped and slithered about, trying to get
back to sea. They had nearly filled their second box of fish when Jim
called a halt.
   "It's near hand six o'clock, boy. We'll have some more tea,
will we? Then we can work on and away home. There's wind coming from
the south-west. We'll need to work fast."
   He was edging Magda across to his further lines whilst they
ate their bite in the fresh cold morning air.
   "She's no' just right, man," he said. "Kin' o' grinding a'
the time." And then, ~"Oh, damn, what's that now?" as the engine
laboured to a standstill.
   "Something wrong this time, Jimmy. Let's have a look." Jimmy
put the engine out of gear and turned it over with the starting
handle. "The engine's free enough; wonder is it the shaft? Maybe
we've caught up my headrope."
   "How can we see, Jim?"
   "From the small boat, Wull. We'll put her over. Make fast that
line, so we'll no' lose her."
   Together they lifted the small boat overside, near Magda's
stern, and Jimmy crouched down in it, searching through the water,
trying to see the propellor.
   "I 2canna see it, Wull," he said.
   "It's all grey. I 2canna see clear at all. If I could swim
I'd 2doon and have a look at it."
   "I'm no' wanting to wait here, Jim. I'll go in and have a look
at it. It's damn cold, though."
   "Will you manage, boy?"
   "Fine that. What do I have to do?"
   "Just see is there a rope or something holding the propellor,
and take it off. Cut it."
   "Better get me a sharp knife, then. Tie a string to it."
   Willie stripped naked and stepped back into the small boat,
shivering. Jim followed with his opened gully, a long string tied to
its handle.
   "Have a look first, Wull. You'll need to work fast. The
water's cold."
   "I 2ken fine it's cold. I can feel it. Here goes," and
Willie eased himself overside into the sea. "Hoo," he wheezed,
then, holding his nose, he bent over and kicked his way downhill. In
half a minute he surfaced.
   "2Losh, it's cold. 2Gie's the knife. There's rope tight wound
between the propellor and the boat. I'll need to cut it." He dived
again and stayed under for about a minute, bobbing up blowing and
wheezing.
   "It's tight and tough," he said, teeth chattering, and went
back to it. Several times he dived. Jimmy began to worry because
Willy was obviously wearying in the cold north water.
   "This time, Jim. Finish this time." When next he surfaced he
held up an arm, holding to the small boat with the other. "2Gie's
han'," he panted.
   Jimmy hauled on the arm, then on a leg, and Willie rolled
exhausted into the bottom of the boat. "I'm done," he gasped,
breathing deep and shivering violently.
   "2Oot o' here, Wull, man. Back aboard and get dry. You'll get
your death," ordered Jim.
# 22
<458 TEXT N25>
Vendetta!
by Brian Cleeve
   THEY faced each other in the lamplit room, her hands pale
against the black of her dress, clasped together, as if she was afraid
of what he would say to her, or of what she would answer.
   "Tell me what really happened," he whispered. "How did your
father die?" He saw the hands twist, the fingers clench with the
effort of holding the words in. "Was he killed?" he said.
   She lifted one hand, pressed its knuckles against her mouth.
   "Yes," she breathed. "They killed him..." She turned
away, towards the deep, narrow window that looked out on the valley,
and Mount Tamborene. There was no moon yet, and the stars were heavy
as gold coins in the South Italian sky.
   "And your brother? Silvio?"
   "What do you think?" she said, trying to keep the bitterness
from her voice. "He is carrying on the vendetta. Like a hero of the
old times." She leant her forehead against the cool plaster of the
wall, beside the window. "He is up there, on the mountain. Stealing
their sheep. Burning their shepherds' huts. While we stay here..."
   She was crying now, with a quiet despair that was worse than if
she had screamed aloud. He was afraid to touch her: afraid of many
things, perhaps most of all to wake the thing that he had tried to
forget after all the years in the North, since he left this house.
   Seven years. Seven years ago, stealing out of the house on a
night as dark as this. Running away, a boy's dream in his mind that
one day he would come back with a fortune, to dazzle this family that
had taken him in as an orphan, saved his life- and exacted the
fullest price for it that they could.
   He had been seven years old when they found him, a piece of
wartime flotsam cast up in a Calabrian valley from God knew where.
Starving, remembering nothing but his name, Ettore, and a
mind-picture of buildings lit by a fantastic glare, tumbling, falling,
while a woman screamed.
   And the Feltri, the richest family in the valley, had let him
sleep in a corner of their yard, and fed him scraps in return for
work; drawing water, minding the goats and chickens, seeing that this
girl beside him didn't stray out of the courtyard. She had been five
then, small and dark and supple as a kitten; running away from him,
laughing at him, hiding, while he ran after her in despair, calling
~"Ginevra, Ginevra," terrified that he would be beaten or left
without food for not minding her properly.
   There had been Silvio too, almost his own age, but already a
young prince, slender and arrogant. It had been Silvio who gave him
his new name, Orfano. Ettore the Orphan. He had grown up to carry
the name with a kind of sullen pride.
   But for that name he might truly have become one of the family.
They were kind enough to him, as far as they understood what kindness
was. After the first year or so, they didn't beat him any more. They
gave him his place in life against the world, as they gave it to their
dogs, their shepherds, the women who worked in the house, the peasants
who worked on their olive terraces. He belonged to them, to their
faction, opposing the other faction in the village, that of the
Crespi, bitter enemies of the Feltri for more than a hundred years.
   He might have grown up to be like Silvio's true brother, or
cousin, but for that name, Orfano. The children in the village
shrieked it after him, "the orphan, the orphan!" Sometimes at
night he prayed, "When I wake up tomorrow, let me remember my real
name." But he never did. Only the buildings falling, burning, the
woman screaming.
   The only person that he was really close to was Ginevra;
protecting her from her brother; bringing her new-born chicks in his
cap for an Easter gift. He pretended to himself that both she and he
were orphans; that they were the brother and sister, not she and
Silvio. He gave her all the love that he would have given his whole
family, if he had had one...
   Until quite suddenly, between one day and the next, he realised
that it had become a different kind of love. For a week he had held
the knowledge inside himself, half ecstasy, half terror, like a
pleasure so unbearable that it becomes agony. Then, one evening, when
both of them were drawing water by the well, he had told her what he
felt; had taken her hands, held them against his heart, drawn her
close to him, so close that he could feel the warmth of her breath
against his mouth...
   "Ettore?" she had breathed, afraid of what she saw in his
face, what she felt stirring in herself. "Ettore..." And he had
kissed her; not wanting to, holding himself back as if it was a
sacrilege, and yet drawn down to her. And then they had really
kissed, and it was like drunkenness, like falling, like fire in the
mouth, and they both leaned against the well, sick and dizzy, hardly
able to see one another.
   But her father had seen. He came out from the house, shouting
curses. He knocked Ettore to the ground and beat him with a harness
strap until he was barely conscious.
   That night Ettore ran away. He had known that there was no
chance of his being allowed even to speak to Ginevra again. He ran
away, to make his fortune. In a year he would be back, with a motor
car and a sack of gold, and he would pour the gold on the great
kitchen table in front of all of them. When he told them that he had
come back to marry Ginevra, they would go down on their knees to him
in gratitude.
   But that dream had faded very soon, as he begged his way north,
picking up what work he could in Rome, in Bologna, in Milan, Turin.
Until eventually in Turin the police picked him up as a vagabond,
found that he was due for his military service, and shipped him off to
the barracks instead of the gaol.
   He thrived as a soldier. He was drafted into the engineers,
showed promise and intelligence, and was trained as a road surveyor.
When he finished his service, one of his officers found him a job
with a road construction company, and for two years he was working in
the Alps. Calabria, the Feltri- even Ginevra- seemed to belong to
another world.
   He felt that it was better like that. It would do him no good to
carry useless regret through life. He tried never to think of her...
   And then the construction company was granted a contract in
Calabria. Ettore Orfano was assigned to it because he knew the
dialect, and would get on with the local workmen. And suddenly he
found himself within twenty miles of Tamborene, and the house which
for ten years of his life had been his home.
   
   FOR a month he debated in his mind whether to go back, then
whether to write first, or simply to arrive. Finally he compromised.
A week's leave was due to him, and he simply wrote that he was
coming, and followed his letter so closely that there would be no time
for a reply.
   He spent the hour-long journey in the bus trying over a dozen
different speeches for his arrival, wondering how they would receive
him, nursing the little pile of gifts in his lap: a pipe for Giovanni
Feltri; silk scarves for the women; a box of cheroots for Silvio. He
was half-eager to walk into the great kitchen with its smoke-blackened
timbers, its huge table, its massive chairs and cavernous hearth; to
show himself to them in his suit from Milan, his town shoes; to show
them what he had become; a man on the rungs of a skilled professional
career, educated, self-assured. And yet also half-afraid. Of what?
Nothing. He could imagine the clamour of welcome. Even old Giovanni
would welcome him, the cuffs, the beatings, the brutalities and the
last quarrel forgotten.
   Ginevra would surely be married now. Perhaps she would have
children. Would she have called one of them Ettore? Whom would she
have married? One of the Crespi? Not very likely. And yet who else
had there been for her to marry? Perhaps she had healed the
century-old vendetta between the families. He tried to be pleased at
the idea.
   The bus hammered to a stop. He was the only passenger to get
down. A few men were sitting in the cafe?2 opposite, but it was
already half-dark and no one recognized him. He walked very quickly
up the street, into the familiar lane, to the wide, double doors set
in the fortress-thickness of the courtyard wall. He found that his
heart was beating fast, and his mouth was dry.
   Then he heard old footsteps shuffling across the courtyard, an
old voice grumbling, the leaf of the great door swinging open with a
whine of hinges. He recognized one of the servants who had been there
in his time: Franca, who had been old then, and seemed no older now,
as thin as a stick in her widow's black that she had worn for forty
years.
   She stared at him.
   "Franca," he said. "It's me. Ettore Orfano. Don't you
remember?"
   "Madonna mia," she whispered. "Ettore..." Suddenly
she ran back towards the house as if possessed, shrieking at the top
of her voice, "Ettore Orfano, little Ettore; he has come back!
Ginevra, Signora Angela... Maria!"
   He followed her, laughing, and at the same time scarcely able to
breathe for the thudding of his heart, the tightness in his throat.
And then she was in the doorway, looking at him, grown very tall and
slender, her face ivory pale, her dark eyebrows frowning a little,
looking at him among the shadows of the courtyard. Until suddenly her
hand went out to him, her eyes lighting, her remembered voice saying,
"Ettore! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome home!"
   He took her hands, and looked at her from head to foot, while his
fingers felt to see what rings she wore. No wedding ring. And he was
absurdly glad, and then angry with himself.
   He noticed that she was wearing black.
   "You are in mourning?" he said. She was already drawing him
into the kitchen.
   "For my father", Ginevra said. "He died a month ago. A fall
on the mountain."
   "May God rest his soul," Ettore said. "I am very sorry. I
would not have come- "
   From inside the kitchen, Ginevra's mother caught the last words,
grasped his arms and shook her head at him in rebuke.
   "Would not have come?" she exclaimed. "You have kept us
waiting too long as it is. How long will you stay? Where have you...
oh, how fine you have grown, how tall! Eh, Ginevra- eh, Maria?"
   She seemed not to remember how he had left; only to be glad to
see him again. She had changed, Ettore saw. In the old days she had
been harsh and stiff; afraid of her husband and yet arrogantly proud
that she had a husband strong and fierce enough to make her afraid.
Now all that seemed gone. She seemed to have shrunk, and to have
lost all the certainties that once held her upright.
   "And Silvio?" Ettore asked, looking round for him.
   A silence fell on the kitchen. Ginevra looked down, avoiding his
eyes. "He is... he is away," she said, and immediately began a
great bustle of laying a place for Ettore, of giving orders to Maria
the cook, of fetching wine.
   No one mentioned Silvio again all through the meal. And when
Ettore asked exactly how old Giovanni had died, the same silence fell,
as if there were things about the death that they were unwilling to
discuss, or that made them afraid.
# 217
<459 TEXT N26>
He Got What She Wanted
by NIGEL MORLAND
   He was haunted by an Income-Tax man- and She by Desire.
   THE years have passed at times like beads told by ancient
fumbling fingers; in other moods I have seen those years race, tearing
out of my uncertain grasp, leaving me with a sense of time laughing at
me.
   But Time in its flight has no pity, nor have the skies mercy. I
have tried to flee my twin devils only to see them running at my side,
pacing me with nonchalant disinterest, neither mocking nor savage,
just there. They stay, impalpable, inflexible, constant, yet beyond
reach as a man's shadow.
   And when did it actually start? The first frail tendons of
misery wrapped round me unseen tentacles as tenuous as the first
shoots of a malignant tumour which remains unknown... and triumphant
on the day the surgeon's knife finds it and is defeated by it. It
grew round me like that, sheltering in my sense of shame, overwhelming
me until I could do nothing, bringing with it a resurgent second
devil, one I thought I had lost. A monstrous towering pair, the
hunger and the thirst, the unfilled, the unslaked...
   But autobiography is apt to run amok with a writer's sense of
drama, for I am, indeed, a writer by trade: were I on my death-bed, as
well I might be, my pen would record the moments as the
self-experimental researcher notes his symptoms. Writing is surely
nothing but the tape recorder of its creator. He might hide, with
thin furtiveness, behind the hedge of fiction, yet, nevertheless, all
writing is merely the writer playing to the audience of himself,
abject before the rowdy despot of the subconscious mind.
   I write because I must, write as Dr. Jekyll might have written
when Mr. Hyde was absent. But I have no doubts of my closeness to
my Mr. Hyde. I am both a human being and the devil's cherished,
indissolvably one in an unending oneness.
   When I look round and see my friends, such as they are, and when
I think on <SIC> them I am lost in a sense of wonder. They see me
as I see myself now in the mirror on the far side of this table at
which I am writing.
   Ordinary? Indeed so. A slightly built man of medium height;
slim, rather feminine hands, small feet and good bones. My face is
simply that, the epitome of John Doe: quiet blue eyes, dark hair and
what the nice-minded call pleasing features. A man, a passable,
civilised, modest man of perhaps forty. Obviously cleanly; obviously
of good parentage and of good education. Those who attend to my wants
call me 'sir' and I treat them fairly; head waiters are polite to
me.
   My friends see all that in me, too. "Frank Damon?" so they
would answer an enquiry, "old Frank? Lord, yes, a nice chap. Quiet,
you know. Good company over a drink and a useful man at bridge and
tennis. Writes, you know"- here that inevitable apologetic English
chuckle- "and good at political stuff. Thrillers as well." Here
the amused smiles. "Never read the things myself, of course! But
they must be good. He makes money."
   Old Frank, and I look in the mirror at old Frank, one invisible
devil on each shoulder.
   I always did like political science, but thrillers pay, not that
I really need it. I use a pseudonym, John Laker Considine (carefully
chosen, that- Carr, Chandler, Charteris, Cheyney, Christie; and
Considine fits neatly in the middle on the shelves, picking up some
reflected glory). You know my characters? Dr. Malobo? The Red
Aces of Justice? Rafferty of Scotland Yard? Colourful stuff, wild,
and perhaps melodramatic, but impervious to my devils.
   John Laker Considine and his bright jackets. Poor old shadow!
Piling up wilderness of escapism for those who would flee themselves.
And behind this veritable escapist stands his 6alter ego, the
substantial presence of Frank Damon, old Frank, the nice chap who
would give everything in his world, unto the clothes he wears, to
become John Laker Considine who dwells in his one-dimensioned
pseudonymous world.
   Out of the windows of my gracious study I can look across my
small garden, backing on this house my family left me, and becoming
Hyde Park. On the other side, the front of the house, is the rear of
Knightsbridge. A noble and valuable house, big for a solitary man,
and one that I love.
   However, I digress. With my ballpoint in my hand and my thoughts
arrayed, my greater morbidities shrink back though they do not leave
me entirely, even with the spring brightness of Hyde Park to delight
my eyes.
   Brightness in Nature in no way detracts from my devils. The one,
the older one, I endured and continue to endure though its
continuation shocked me; the second devil came on me a year after
Dunkirk, over a decade ago; it was the more awful of the pair.
Fortunately it was in London in the chaos of war with bombs turning
civic life to ruin. I was able to disappear, for money I had and I
was able to buy oblivion and secrecy.
   That second devil came on me so stealthily that I did not believe
it at first; then I shrank back affrighted, crushed, nauseated. I had
to bear it alone- and it is only now, thinking on it all, that I
understand how the leper must feel.
   My mother and father died before the Second World War broke out;
they left me this house in which I have returned to live again, and
they left me money. Writing I took up as a release from myself, and
as a means to power without visibility- a purely morbid passion!
   Yet I always require anonymity. That is easily found in London.
The world and the people I knew before Dunkirk went with those same
tides of war which washed smooth the sands of my acquaintance,
enabling me to start again.
   So, too, went Mary Damon. The world had no need to recall her at
all, for those same tides had washed her away as well. But this
little man must come enquiring. A troublesome little man, seemingly
as harmless as a fly on the wall: brownish- hair, skin, eyes- and
slight. Not young, and sadly dressed, with fraying cuff edges and a
dusty old hat, a man you could see with a cake and a glass of milk in
a cheap restaurant, a man no one would ever notice, wholly a human
zero except, perhaps, in his name- Arthur George Zink.
   He was here last week, enquiring so mildly, blinking at me from
behind his thick spectacles, affable, self-effacing, desiring not to
trouble me, enquiring for Mary Damon, apologising for bothering me,
gentle, kindly Arthur George Zink- as weakly persistent as a dripping
tap, so damnably, politely, endlessly persistent!
   I see the tremendous juggernauts of bureaucracy hauled by
regiments of Arthur George Zinks, little men and even little women at
their eternal writing, making their entries, adding their sums,
putting one and one together, until a total must emerge. And asking
questions, unavoidable questions, persistently, persistently...
   
   The inspector's glare was ferocious.
   "You think that, sir?" He put both hands on the desk, leaning
forward to tower over the plump amiability of Superintendent Leeds.
"It's the fifth one- don't forget it."
   Leeds beamed at Detective-Inspector Chater. Because they had
become friends when they met as uniformed probationers on their two
basic years, they usually forgot rank when alone.
   "You're letting the thing infuriate you, Tom-"
   Chater threw up his arms and sat down, placated by the use of his
Christian name.
   "Naturally I'm a trifle distrait." He glared. "Five
kidnappings and five kids returned without a hair of their dear little
heads being harmed, without a single mother screaming blue murder
after the first knowledge of the thing-" Chater jerked a thumb to
indicate all New Scotland Yard. "The pundits must be delighted."
   "They are indeed." Leeds flapped his hands at the lean black
Highland fury of his friend. "But I'm your super, old boy. Won't
the mothers say a thing? You can tell me."
   "Tush! Compounding, 2dammit! And do they care?" Chater
sniffed. "2Ach! And how can I move? I can't even prove they've paid
or how much or where. Women!"
   "Kids all right, I s'pose?"
   "I've got my methods in finding out. 2Aye, they're 2bonny.
Clean, well-fed, cared for, happy as Larry. I've known a few
kidnappings but none like this."
   "And why won't the mothers talk? What's behind it? Can't you
get one of the Yanks to come across and help us? They're used to the
snatch racket."
   Leeds grimaced.
   "Now, Tom. We're in a cleft stick, you know it. Nobody's
complained, at least the complaints've been withdrawn as soon as made.
We can't prove anything, or even how the money passed-"
   "There's such a thing as compounding-"
   "Be quiet, Tom. It'd be a hellish charge to get across in
court. Can you see the Attorney-General's face if he was asked to
support a charge against a mother for compounding when her child has
been kidnapped and she wanted it back?" Leeds leaned forward.
"Tom, get the bastard, will you? Apart from everything else, it's a
dirty business."
   Chater snorted irately.
   
   But this is not work. I have the newest adventure of Dr.
Malobar to finish, a matter of ten thousand words, yet I find essays
at autobiography so fascinating, the ancient principle of confession
being good for the soul!
   It may be. It is also a minor antidote to devils. I am feeling
clearer in mind, more comfortable. There is the Malobar manuscript to
fetch. I am old-fashioned in that I write in longhand, for my mind
constructs and perfects the next sentence while I am still writing.
The folder of manuscript lives in the built-in cupboard in the
bedroom, for no sensible reason.
   When I opened the door and bent to pick up the folder, a wave of
nostalgia swept over me. Not for months had it happened. Perhaps the
spring air intensified the deep scent of gardenia, that
well-remembered scent.
   All carefully preserved, hanging there, the outer world of Mary
Damon... there was the coral taffeta with the full skirt, the brown
check suit- a costly article- bought in Bond Street, and the ivory
satin cloak that had gone to all the best theatres in London. There
was the fur coat- Persian lamb, a most expensive thing, costly, too,
but I saw it as hateful, for only the other day I read of what happens
to those small lambs... I touched garment after garment, each
fashioned article had a memory a decade old, a story, an appeal, and
each reached out to me, disturbing me, hurting- me, a man, a writer
of bloodthirsty tales, John Laker Considine, no less!
   But the requested Danegeld was paid in the coinage of uneasy
recollection which memory demanded. I was a fool, a thrice damned
fool to keep these things here, a stupid danger in their way, yet I
could do nothing, could not get rid of them any more than could a
mother throw away the relics of a dead child.
Five children kidnapped- and no clue to the guilty
   Then it began worrying me again, that probing little man, that
subtle and insinuating Zink. A wholly absurd name which comes
dangerously close to Mary... God forbid that he can disinter her, yet
in a most shocking sense he can do that if he comes too close, and
then?
   These morbid thoughts did not help me. I thrust the pen at the
paper, back again at my table, and thought of Dr. Malobar, 'The
tall man with the dramatic green eyes seemed to tower over the whole
room, a growing domination of terror.' There it stopped, a hiatus
which remained.
   It was no use trying; I could not write. That brownish little
man of the frayed cuffs and the dusty hat would not leave my mind.
# 212
<46 TEXT N27>
LARSEN'S LAST HAUL
   "Lucky" Larsen, the ruthless skipper of the Arctic trawler
"Volsung", did not believe in Hell hereafter. He only believed in
the immediate hell of his savage way of life... by George
Goldsmith-Carter
   THE ARCTIC TRAWLER Volsung laboured heavily at her trawl
in the looping ground-swell to the west nor' west of Andenes
lighthouse, flashing feebly against the sleet-blurred, rocky backdrop
of the coast of North West Norway.
   Above the tiny vessel the Northern Lights rippled in green,
barbaric radiance across a sable, freezing sky. Beneath her restless
keel rolled water which, glacial blue in the few hours of half light
yet to come, was now black and bitter as death.
   The massive bulk of "LUCKY" LARSEN, skipper of the
Volsung, loomed in the open window of the wheelhouse, from whence
he stood watching, heedless of the gathering rime of frost which
glittered on the red stubble of his heavy jaw. He looked across the
dark sea to where the tip of the new moon was thrusting like a silver
dagger from behind the shark-toothed peaks of Andoy, then his wolfish
eyes shifted to the fish-pounds in the fore-deck beneath him.
Illuminated by the glare of the deck lights a dozen men were toiling,
their oilskinned backs hunched against the bite of the searing wind
which glazed the ship with ice. Those men had been on their feet for
seventy hours now, labouring without a break, and, half blind and
savage with exhaustion, they were reduced almost to the level of
beasts. Men driven beyond endurance by the silent menace of the
watcher above to shoot and haul the giant net, to gut and pack the
torrent of bronze-backed haddock which shimmered endlessly inboard,
and curse the cooks if the mugs of strong and scalding tea were not
forthcoming.
   Larsen's "Luck" lay in his inherited ability to find the
roving fish shoals when others could not and having found them, harry
his crew without mercy until the fish holds were full. Yet in spite
of his reputation men still joined his ship to share the wealth he
found, knowing that in the finding he would break their bodies and
their spirits, driving them with flaying tongue and fist until the
voyage was made. Then when at last the hatches were battened down,
they would reel below to drop exhausted in their reeking clothes,
lying like corpses where they fell.
   The crew of the Volsung had almost reached that point now,
for their bloodshot eyes were glazed with exhaustion and the blank
look of sleep walkers was on their scale and slime masked faces as
they toiled unceasingly amid the slaughter of the fish-pounds.
   There was comprehension but no pity on Larsen's face as he
bleakly watched his crew, for he knew that there was no room for pity
in this way of life. A few hours back a young deck-hand on his first
trip had stumbled up to him, his frost-ravaged, bleeding hands held
out in supplication. "For the love of God, skipper, I just can't
carry on!" he had cried. With bitter and contemptuous words Larsen
had ordered him below to help the cook, telling him that thereafter he
would receive no pay.
   Larsen's restless gaze swept to the fish-gutters, their inflamed
and toil-swollen wrists swathed in old rags to ease the abrasion of
the sand spilling from the bellies of the fish which they were ripping
open. The gutting knives flashed ceaselessly, in at the vent, out at
the gills. Like automatons the men worked, flinging the livers into
baskets for rendering into fish-oil, tossing the entrails overboard in
an endless stream.
   Larsen's frost-blackened lips curved cynically as he watched the
screaming horde of sea-fowl swooping avidly at the offal which
encircled his ship. All about him gleamed the fishing lights of many
nationalities. He knew that each trawler, like his own, was emptying
the sea of fish, destroying unborn life and fouling the sea with an
endless torrent of filth. With savage irony men had called this
mighty gathering of fishing craft "The League of Nations", for the
trawlers fished in bitter rivalry, the larger vessels ruthlessly
thrusting the smaller ones from where the haddock shoaled the
thickest. One thing alone Larsen knew these raiders had in common- a
blind rapacity which chose to disregard the barren future of the seas.
Yet this heedless rapine meant nothing to him, for in his
grandfather's day men had thus plundered the North Sea. "The
Gamecocks", "The Short Blues" and other great fleets of rival
sailing trawlers had swept bare the Dogger Bank, denuded the fabulous
"Silver Pits", looted the fishy gold of the California Grounds.
Then with the North Sea almost barren they had turned to the west,
scouring away the Lemon soles of Cornwall's Klondyke Ground.
   In his own time the Spanish trawlers had pillaged, almost
overnight, the silver hake of southern Irish waters, ruining Milford
Haven, once the chief hake port of the world. Then with home waters a
desolation, a new type of trawler had appeared. The powerful "High
Altitude" trawlers which now ravaged the bitter waters of Bear
Island and Nova Zembla; the plaice abounding shallows of the White
Sea; the cod-rich Icelandic Banks- and these haddock-teeming
Norwegian Deeps.
   "The Wall of Death" some called the place, a grim spot where
the Continental Shelf swooped steeply from the surf smashed rocks of
the shore, ending in a submerged precipice which plunged twelve
thousand feet into the Oceanic depths beneath. Against this
deep-drowned cliff the gale-driven surges of the Arctic Ocean beat in
elemental malice, creating a maelstrom which was death to ships and
men.
   Yet Larsen knew no pity for the dead whose bones lay far beneath
him, he knew only the law of the Northern Trawl, "The weak perish
but the strong survive." Nor did he heed the fools who believed
these water <SIC> haunted by ghost ships with the earth-bound
spirits of their crews doomed forever to endure the torment of their
earthly memories and re-enact in endless ghostly parody the last
moments of their lives. He smiled sardonically to himself, for he
knew that there was no hell hereafter. Reason told him that nothing
but oblivion, blacker and deeper than the depths beneath him, lay
beyond this hell that men called "life".
   Leaving the wheelhouse, Larsen glanced astern to where the wire
trawl-warps twanged and quivered away into the heaving night. "Get
some weight on that after warp, bos'un!" he bellowed. Going back
into the wheelhouse he scanned the echometer, "Watch your steering,
blast you!" he growled at the weary helmsman "You're wandering
over the edge."
   Tonight the haddock were shoaling massively in three hundred
fathoms, along the very edge of "The Wall of Death". A little to
the westward of this sounding lay an abyss of eighteen hundred
fathoms, beyond the reach of any trawl and the haunt of alien species.
Here swam the snake-like Cyclothones, the rat-tailed Chimerae, the
swag-bellied Oceanic Angler fishes, useless monstrosities, armoured
against the cold depths with incredible slime and carrying their own
weird luminosity to light their mindless gropings in awful pressure
and a blackness beyond night. Larsen was not interested in marine
biology, only in profit.
   The mate came into the wheelhouse. He was a young man whose eyes
were black holes of fatigue burned into his thin, dirty face. The
scarred and broken nailed fingers of his left hand were locked in the
handles of two grime-streaked mugs of tea, whilst his right hand
steadied him against the uneasy lurching of the ship.
   "Have a mug o' lotion, skipper," he said hoarsely. Larsen
gulped the lye-strong, scalding fluid then rasped "How are the
men?"
   The mate shrugged, knowing well that Larsen's concern was not
with the crew's welfare, merely with their ability to continue
working. "They say that they're spragged, skipper, and that whether
you like it or not, they're stopping for a kip."
   Larsen leaned out from the wheelhouse window, his out-thrust face
like that of a gargoyle "Which of you... is stopping for a sleep?"
His voice was hardly raised but it seemed to bite into the very
ice-bound fabric of the plunging ship. The men beneath him raised
their haggard faces and though dull hatred glimmered in their clouded
eyes, none spoke.
   "Come on my lads" he chided softly, a thick vein hammering in
his corded throat "Who wants to sleep?... don't be afraid. Speak
up."
   When nobody answered him he nodded as if satisfied "Good. Any
more of that talk and I'll be down amongst you..." his voice cracked
suddenly like a whip "Now get back to work you 5...s!"
   For a moment he watched them go, trying to flog the life back
into their frozen limbs. Then he spoke to the mate. "How does the
fish tally stand?"
   "Fifty thousand stone of haddock, skipper. The holds are
full... a record catch."
   Larsen's bitter face showed no jubilation "This next haul will
be our last. That's all."
   When the mate had gone Larsen went back to the open window, where
oblivious to the slashing, needle-pointed sleet, he stood with his
powerful legs braced against the motion of the ship. For an eternity,
it seemed he'd been at strife with the elements and at strife with
men. With axes and steam horses he had fought the creeping Black
Frosts which had tried to burden his ship with their deadly weight of
ice. With brain and furious strength he had fought the giant seas
which had licked men away like flies and threatened to engulf him.
With cruel fists and crueller words he had cowed crews made mutinous
by wicked overwork.
   But memories he could not cow. They crept into his mind at
unguarded moments. He remembered the day on the Rockall Bank when he
had heaved down on the winch to free the trawl which was fast to some
obstruction two hundred fathoms down. The net had not come free and
he had heaved down like a madman, in spite of the lurching ship and
frightened glances of his men. He had heaved until the water lapped
the rail. Heaved until a massive iron bollard had exploded like a
bomb and the trawl-warp flailing clear of its captivity, had scythed
away a man's head. He remembered how the decapitated body had taken
three dreadful steps before it fell.
   He remembered, too, the night off North Cape when only he had
dared fish whilst other craft lay hove-to for their lives in the
hurricane wind and giant seas. The ton-weight otter board of the net
had ripped free of its dog-chain and swinging inboard from the
fore-gallows, had crushed the boatswain to a pulp. Yet men called him
"Lucky"- a man whose wife, overwhelmed by loneliness, had left
him. A father whose grown children had long since become as strangers
to him.
   In the tiny radio cabin behind the wheelhouse the radio operator
had switched on the receiver and a babel of voices and tongues broke
in on Larsen's thoughts. The skippers of many nations were asking for
instructions from their company offices; some were rejoicing in their
run of luck; others blasphemously cursing it. One voice was drowning
all the others with its ire. "Lost all my nets but one and that's
ripped to doll rags... all for the sake of a lousy two hundred boxes
of fish. Won't clear my expenses! Over and out. Gone me..."
   A look of contemptuous amusement came to Larsen's face. He knew
the owner of that rancorous voice, it belonged to the skipper of the
trawler Valkyrie... DAN SCARDEN, a man known for his bitter
complaints.
   Going into the radio cabin Larsen switched on the transmitter and
called "Volsung to Valkyrie, Volsung to Valkyrie. 2D'ye
hear me Dan?... over."
   He waited for an answer but none came.
   Tapping the speaker in his hand Larsen called "Volsung to
Valkyrie, Volsung to Valkyrie. Need a hearing aid, Dan? For
god's sake stop chafing and start fishing..." he grinned maliciously
"you can have a couple of my spare nets.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 213
<461 TEXT N28>
Begins today: dramatic story of a Scots girl sold as a slave
A GIFT FOR THE SULTAN
   THAT Scottish autumn of 1767 was a cold one. Ice rarely melted
in the rutted country lanes, and the fields and hills were permanently
blanketed in thick, white frost. Winter would come early and stay
long, and in a country poverty-stricken since the disastrous uprising,
the prospect was grim indeed.
   With strange English landlords usurping their chieftains' seats,
the scattered clansmen were gradually deprived of home and hope.
Sheep were a paying proposition, men were not, so the new
"lairds" wanted land. By paying starvation prices for their
tenants' crops, and cruelly raising the cost of food and fuel and
rents, they got it.
   Faced with eviction and worse, men despairing of their children's
future turned in their thousands to the bright New World that beckoned
from across the sea. It was heartbreaking to go, but worse to stay,
and soon every district had its share of deserted cottages and crofts.
   Even in the tiny Aberdeenshire village of Mill o' Steps there
were smokeless chimneys and blank, unlighted doorways. But the
windows of the blacksmith's cottage on that cold September night
glowed warm and welcoming. In the living-room a blazing peat fire lit
up the red-gold hair of a young girl who stirred an iron soup-kettle
at the enormous hearth.
   She was listening with more amusement than respect to the old
woman who sat hunched beside her, staring into the flames.
   "You can laugh, my girl," the other reproved her. "But the
day will come when you'll remember what I tell you now. You'll stand
where eagles fly-"
   From the scullery there came a sudden angry snort, and an
irritable voice called: "Will you stop this nonsense at once, Morag
Paterson?"
   But the woman at the fire ignored her, and pressed on
unperturbed in her droning sing-song voice.
   "You'll stand where no woman ever stood- and be in mortal
danger for it. And all about you there'll be cruelty undreamed of,
and those who would kill you if they could. But there's love
undreamed of for you, too, and some who'll live to serve you and die
to prove it. You'll walk with a man beside you that men bow down
to-"
   "Mistress Paterson!" the girl protested laughingly.
   But the other nodded her head solemnly. "2Aye, it's the truth.
And you'll be so high and mighty-"
   "She's that already!" The exasperated speaker appeared in the
doorway. "Will you stop filling her head with such blether?" she
demanded.
   "Blether, is it, Jessie Gloag?" retorted the other, stung.
"And who was it sent for me to come and say what lies ahead?
Blether, indeed!"
   She turned to stare into the fire again.
   Quietly she said: "Nay, but it's true. She'll wear silks and
laces and ride where others will walk, and we that hear of it will
marvel at what comes to pass."
   
   THE girl beside her laughed again, her green eyes dancing
in the firelight.
   "2Och, Mistress Paterson- you should be telling fortunes at a
fair!" she teased. "It's rich you'd soon be, with such fine fates
for the asking!"
   Old Morag shrugged, but before she could say more the woman she
called Jessie turned on the younger one.
   "What ails you, girl?" she snapped. "Himself will be in this
instant and never a drop of hot water to be had. Will you fetch the
bucket at once!"
   With a toss of her head, the girl flounced past her.
   "Say 'if you please' and I'll maybe send you a jewel from my
crown," she mocked and went, slamming the door behind her.
   Jessie's face darkened and the older woman eyed her shrewdly.
   "Don't be so hard on the lass, Jessie. It's envy that ails
you- envy that your man had a child by the wife before you. But
there'll be sons for you- 2aye, and happiness, too- when Helen's gone
from your sight." She sighed and turned back to the fire. "And
that will be much sooner than you're thinking."
   "It'll not come soon enough for me," retorted the other
ungraciously, and turned as Helen entered to berate her for leaving
the outside door ajar.
   "I left it for himself," the girl replied, her manner suddenly
oddly subdued. "He and Uncle Donald are just coming."
   She had moved the soup-kettle to one side and now began to fill
the cauldron on the hob. But at the sound of footsteps on the path
outside she half turned to the doorway, slopping the water badly as
she did so.
   "Land sakes, will you look what you're about!" her irate
stepmother exploded, as Andrew Gloag entered the room.
   "2Och, hold your 2whisht, woman," he said irritably. "We'll
have none of you scowls and scolds on my brother's last night with his
family."
   Flushing, she turned on him. But before she could retort, she
saw him slump heavily into a chair, and there was something in his
attitude that silenced her.
   Watching him from the fireside, Helen was suddenly wildly elated.
Forcing herself to be calm, she set the bucket down carefully and
then stood to face him, her hands pressed together to still their
trembling.
   For a long moment he sat silent and she glanced nervously at the
young man who had followed him in. Reassured by his nod, she waited
to meet her father's gaze, steeling herself against the remorse she
knew she would feel at hurting him.
   
   AT last, with a shake of his head, Andrew raised his eyes
to hers.
   "It's really what you want, lass?" he said quietly. And,
seeing the answer so clearly in her face, added in the same tone:
"Then that will be the way of it."
   "America!" she breathed, and for a moment could not make
herself consider how her delight must wound him, compunction killed by
the realisation of a thousand dreams.
   "You're sure you know what you're about, lass?" he said,
eyeing her searchingly. "Turning your back on all you've ever
known- have you thought you'll likely never see your family or
friends again?"
   "I know it all, father. But I must go- I must go!"
   He sighed heavily. "And you will leave with Donald in the
morning?"
   "If you will let me."
   
   FOR Jessie, this sudden turn of events seemed too good to
be true. But as she saw the dispirited sag of her husband's shoulders
she forced herself to speak to Helen.
   "You've no call to be leaving home," she said, and flushed as
she added, "if it's 2ought that I've said or done-"
   But old Morag cut across her words.
   "The kitchen's not been built that will hold two women- it's
not your fault or the lass's. And don't you glare at me, Andrew
Gloag! Your girl is seventeen and she'd be away from home soon
enough, one way or the other."
   Donald spoke for the first time. "She'll take no harm with me,
Andrew. I'm sure you know it."
   "2Och, man, don't speak of it," his brother answered.
   With an effort he smiled, and it broke the tension. Helen
crossed to him and, in a rare show of affection, bent to kiss his
cheek.
   "Uncle Donald must have someone to cook and clean and keep house
for him," she said eagerly. "And maybe he'll make a fine fortune
and marry- and then he can buy me a passage to come back to see
you."
   She glanced hopefully at Morag, expecting support. But the old
woman turned again to stare into the fire.
   "All that's as maybe," she said flatly. "But you'll not
change what's to come, though you talk till you drop. You'll follow
the path that's been laid for you- 2aye, and Donald will follow
his."
   Sleep was a long time coming to Helen that night. There had been
so much to talk about, so much to plan. It was only when she was
alone at last in the curtained comfort of her wall cot that she could
think at all clearly.
   She had grown up in the knowledge that a large part of her
father's fondness for her was on account of her remarkable likeness to
the mother she had hardly known. Now she suddenly saw that her
absence might well be the best thing for them all.
   She had been touched and troubled by Jessie's obvious effort at
conciliation, and knew it for what it was- a gesture of
self-sacrifice for the man she loved. The evening's excitement seemed
somehow to have brought a sharper awareness of her own thoughts and
emotions, and now, ashamed, she realised that she had never before
given a moment's consideration to Jessie's.
   It could not have been easy to try to take the place of an adored
memory. And with a spoiled child to contend with as well, it must
have seemed an almost hopeless task. She flushed suddenly in the
darkness, remembering the times without number when she had
deliberately scored off the young stepmother, childishly flaunting her
ability to wheedle all she wanted from her doting father.
   She could see again Jessie's odd, strained expression at such
times- and suddenly she recalled another face, another expression,
and her cheeks grew even hotter. Uncle Donald.
   
   SEVERAL times in recent weeks she had caught his
thoughtful, measuring gaze on her after some sharp exchange between
herself and Jessie, and now she suddenly knew without any doubt that
this was his reason for taking her away. Not because he needed her or
particularly wanted her company, but because he thought the situation
unfair to Jessie.
   It was Jessie who awakened her in the morning- a strangely
different, quieter Jessie.
   For the moment, they were alone: the two men were over at the
smithy and old Morag was washing at the pump in the yard.
   In the light of her new understanding, Helen would have dearly
liked to take advantage of the moment and wipe out all past trouble
between them. But in her inexperience she found it difficult even to
act at all naturally.
   Then Jessie placed a bowl of porridge on the table and pushed
Helen's own horn spoon towards it, and this small courtesy undid them
both.
   After mumbling her thanks, the younger woman sat red-faced and
unmoving until the other suddenly said in a tired voice: "I've not
been much of a mother to you, Helen. You'd not be wanting to go away
from your home if I had."
   "It's not that," Helen said lamely, then tried again: "I've
not been much of a daughter to you, come to that."
   
   JESSIE appeared not to have heard.
   "I meant to be, dear knows. There were plenty to say I'd rue
the day, but I wouldn't listen. So certain sure I was that God had
put me here on earth to care for Andrew Gloag and his child that
nobody could tell me different. And now just look what it's come
to!"
   She sat down suddenly and faced Helen across the table.
   "You'll break his heart if you go, you know that?"
   Helen shook her head, all uncertainty amazingly gone.
   "No. I thought about it, last night. I think it's best for
everybody."
   As Jessie looked at her oddly, she hurried on: "I realised a
lot of things, last night. Things I should have thought of sooner."
   Embarrassed, she said: "I was thinking, you couldn't have been
much above my age when- when you-"
   She broke off. She could not have said "married my father"
for the life of her. She knew what marriage entailed, and only now
did it occur to her that there could have been little of true marriage
between Andrew Gloag and his second wife.
   "I was sixteen," said Jessie, quietly.
   "Sixteen!" Helen repeated, startled.
   From the doorway, old Morag said: "2Aye, but she'll not be
twice that before she's bouncing her first-born on her knee."
   "Don't talk so daft, woman!" Jessie said, with a return of her
old spirit.
# 2
<462 TEXT N29>
THE GUN
BY HARRY RICHMAN
A very short story that is not what it seems
   GINO stopped pacing the floor and walked over to the
sideboard. Gently, he pulled open the middle drawer and stared at the
huge black Luger that was once his father's, lying serenely in the
farthest corner. Still without a sound, he closed his huge brown hand
over the cold steel, and hastily transferred it to his jacket pocket.
A few seconds later his wife walked into the room.
   'Gino, what are you doing?'
   'Nothing!- Thinking.' He walked away from the drawer and
put his hands in his pockets to stop them from trembling.
   '3Why you no think about getting the work?' She wiped her
hands on a dirty apron. '3Thinking- walking up- down... No food
in the house, what you think about that, huh? You gotta any plans
about that? We'd be better if we stay in Viareggio.' She wiped
an imaginary tear from her rosy cheek.
   '3You wanna go back to Viareggio- go! I no stop you. I stay
here. Go back if you wanna go. You think I no try and get the work,
huh? What you think- you think I no try?'
   Gino turned and stalked out of the house. A hard, loud slam of
the door stopped his wife's voluble Italian adjectives from following
him out.
   
   Ever since he'd lost his job two weeks ago, they'd done nothing
but squabble. He pulled out a cigarette packet and stared
disconsolately at the last Woodbine. He placed it carefully between
his lips and lit it. He winced as the empty packet landed in the
gutter. Food he could manage without for a few days, but
cigarettes... He inhaled deeply and kept the smoke inside of him for
as long as he could.
   He walked all morning. In the afternoon it began to drizzle.
Gino pulled his jacket collar up high and for the umpteenth time
placed his hand on the Luger. He felt nervous and undecided. He
glanced up at a clock hanging over a jeweller's shop. It was four
o'clock- he had time. He decided to wait in a doorway for the rain
to stop. He wanted to think.
   He wouldn't go back to Viareggio. If she wanted to go, let her.
He dug into his pocket for a cigarette, and was irritated when only a
box of matches came out. His irritation made him think about his
wife's mother: '3I don't let you to take my daughter to London. A
daughter's place is by her mother- you no right- you no right to
take my bambino away.' She'd gone on and on, even when the train
moved off she was still shouting.
   He wouldn't go back, no matter what. He ran his hand over the
gun and the anger he felt subsided slightly. He'd show her. He'd
show everybody.
   Gino moved out of the doorway into the drizzle, that showed no
signs of stopping. It was four-thirty and plans had better be made.
His face was covered with thoughtful wrinkles as he walked steadily
forward.
   
   From time to time his deep concentration was floored by the aroma
of hot coffee from the many cafe?2s. The smells of fresh bread and
fried chicken caused his stomach to scream in anguish. Cigarette
smoke seemed to find his nose from all of a hundred different brands.
He dug his nails deeper into the palms of his hands, as his head
began to reel. Frantically he swallowed huge gulps of air and then
closed his eyes to help stop the buildings from going round and round.
   In desperation, he branched off into an alley-way, and there,
breathing heavily, and by now almost wet through, he waited for peace
to return.
   It was now five. Gino wiped his face and head with an old
handkerchief. It had stopped drizzling, and he was annoyed at having
allowed himself to be soaked. He squeezed the water from his
handkerchief and strode forward. His mind was made up.
   He walked straight toward a little shop he had once seen in one
of the many side streets that ran like arteries off Soho's more public
thoroughfares. There were only a few people about. Some fifty yards
from the shop, he put his hand on the Luger and made it feel
comfortable.
   An old woman stopped to look into the shop's windows. Gino
hesitated. The gun was heavy in his pocket. The whole left side of
his body seemed to feel the weight. The old lady went away.
   Gino moistened his lips. He'd never done anything like this
before. He uttered a swift, silent prayer, finishing with 'dear
Father and Mother, please forgive me.' His forehead was covered in
perspiration. He arrived at the door and stopped.
   He couldn't go through with it. He was from a good family. The
name Farrari was known all over Italy. If the news ever got back
home- he shuddered.
   He moved to the corner of the quiet little street and watched a
light come on in the small shop. 'Dear God,' whispered Gino,
'what shall I do?' The gun was beginning to feel heavier and
heavier.
   
   Suddenly, he knew what he must do. His face grim, his demeanour
calm, he again walked forward. What did he care what anybody thought
or said! No one worried about him. Nobody cared. He stalked into
the shop and stopped three yards from the counter.
   There were two men inside. The older one was putting something
away on a shelf. Gino put his hand on the gun and walked toward the
fat one, who was reading the evening paper.
   With a short, jerky movement, he drew the Luger from his pocket.
His hand shook, and he felt sick with shame.
   'How...,' he put the gun on the counter, '3how much you
give me for this, please?'
COMMUNICATION
   Terror roared at his family out of the lonely night. But no
one could help him, in his agonising struggle to save them- and prove
himself.
BY A. E. TREPPASS
Illustration by Bernard Blatch
<ILLUSTRATION>
   THE large illuminated sign at the road side etched its
message sharply in the cool darkness:
   STOP- ONE HUNDRED YARDS AHEAD- FOR THE LAST CUP OF TEA FOR
MILES.
   Charles Corran smiled and remembered the red brick cafe?2 with
its rose garden and gravel car park. They had been tempted to stop
there at the beginning of their holiday. Now, late, on the way home,
he was more than tempted. Besides, just beyond the cafe?2 lay the
twenty-mile long, lonely road across Rannet Moors; a wearisome
journey, particularly so late at night when all he wanted to do was
doze over the steering column.
   He slowed the car and turned to Meg, his wife. In the half light
she looked tired and a little sad. It had been a good holiday and
they had all been reluctant to leave the sea and the sun.
   'Shall we?' he asked.
   She nodded lazily and stirred in her seat, enough to glance at
the two children who were snuggled sleepily in the back.
   Tony, who was five and precocious, opened his eyes and murmured:
   'Shall we what, Daddy?'
   'Have a cup of tea,' Meg replied.
   'I want orange,' Belle informed them, with all the authority
of her eleven years.
   'With a straw,' Tony added.
   'Good.' Charles signalled that he was turning left, and, at
the very moment he nosed into the cafe?2 car park, there was a noise
beside them like an aero engine and two unsilenced motor cycles
carrying black, helmeted figures roared right across his path,
spraying gravel over his bonnet.
   He braked instantly and the steering wheel hit his chest and he
gasped. Meg cried out as her head bumped the windscreen and Tony
began to sob on the floor.
   'The devils! The fiendish devils!' Meg snapped as she leant
over the back seat to help Belle gather Tony into her arms.
   Charles said nothing. He realized he had heard the motorcycles
approaching and he knew they had had time to see his signal. He
waited until his family were settled, then he accelerated into the car
park. He caught the motorcycles and the riders in the full glare of
his headlights, braked and slipped purposefully out of the car.
   'Don't!' Meg pleaded, but he ignored her.
   He had the acrid taste of fear in his mouth and his chest ached.
His legs were rubbery but he was angry. He pulled his tired body off
the rack of the long, weary drive from Dorset and clenched his fists.
   The riders were standing beside their motorcycles waiting for
him. They were dressed from head to foot in black; black leggings,
boots, zipper jacket, goggles. Their manner was as insolent as the
startling white skull and crossbones on each black crash helmet.
   They were young and Charles wanted to lash out at them.
   'You maniacs!' he snapped, and they stared at him.
   'Turn the light out, Mister,' the slighter one drawled. 'It
hurts my eyes.'
   
   HE stood a yard away from them and tried to feel he was
towering over them, but they were as tall, or even taller than he.
   He tried to control his fury and his hammering heart by taking a
deep, slow breath.
   'You crazy lunatics,' he said, and his voice sounded strange
and weak. 'You'll kill someone someday <SIC>.'
   One of them laughed; a sharp, hysterical sound. The other spat.
   'So what? As long as it isn't you why should you worry?'
   Charles stepped forward, incensed beyond reason. Instantly the
taller thrust his body forward and warned viciously:
   'You touch me, mate and I'll call the cops.'
   Amazed, Charles hesitated, and the taller one sensed his
advantage. He flipped Charles' tie out, turned and caught his
companion's arm.
   '2C'mon, boy. Let's blow! Man, this 2fella's a drag!'
   Charles watched them strut into the doorway of the cafe?2 and
realized his inadequacy. There was no way in which he could
communicate with them. They were in their own, arrogant, teenage
world; a world of curt questions and harsh answers, of sudden
irrational impulses; a world that had changed radically in the twenty
years since he had left it.
   At the car he was faced with the silence of his family. He
sensed their fear, saw Meg's sharp, shadowed profile, saw Belle
sitting tense, wide awake, her arm round Tony.
   It was Tony who spoke first.
   'What did the man do, Daddy?'
   'Hush!' Meg silenced him quickly, but he would have felt
better if she had said nothing. He wanted no protection from someone
weaker than himself.
   'Nothing,' he said and tucked the tie back inside his jacket.
   Meg watched him, then held the car door for him and his anger
switched to her. He was not an invalid. But he checked himself, held
the anger back, and slid into the driving seat.
   'Shall we go on?' she asked and it was really a request, not a
question.
   He nodded. Twenty miles across Rannet Moor, through Bisset and
Scowlea, then home. He could wait an hour for a cup of tea.
   'I want some orange,' Tony begged, and Meg soothed him.
   'Hush, darling. When we get home. There isn't any here.'
   'But daddy didn't ask,' the boy insisted.
   'He did,' Meg replied easily as Charles switched on the
engine.
   He drove the first five miles along the black ribbon of the moor
road carefully, in silence. He was ashamed and he felt that all his
family, even Tony, were ashamed of him. Slowly his body calmed and
his brain cooled, but he wanted home; the touch and sight and smell of
familiar things.
   He tried to tell himself that the car was an extension of home
and that while he was in it nothing more could go wrong. But the
moors were a cold, uneasy waste where every bush and shadow and dark
rise hid watching eyes and alien fingers.
   Suddenly Meg nudged him gently and he glanced in the rear view
mirror.
# 26
<END>
<463 TEXT P1>
CHAPTER =29
   THE BLACK CANDLE Saturday night cellar party was on. The time
was approaching midnight. Margot and Jasmine had left together
shortly after ten. Before doing so at Mr. Copthorne's invitation
they had spent a pleasant half hour with Con O'Shea, Mr. Butler and
Mr. Narain Khuma at a table for four. At another table nearby Mr.
Smith and two of his officers in plain clothes were quietly chatting
together.
   Ordinary members had quitted the club premises which appeared to
be closed and only Percy, weary and fed up was compelled to stay in
his ill-lit little cubby hole still on duty after hours until Mr.
Herman gave him permission to depart.
   Saturnalia was about to proceed within that profane cellar. A
black cock and a white hen had passed through the flames and to quench
the unpleasant stink of burnt carcases and feathers, Mr. Copthorne
in his purple and scarlet Bardic robes and peculiar turbanned
headdress, had been swinging about an incense censer. The air was
heavy and thick with the combined smells.
   Mr. Herman, who had been absent for a short while, entered very
hurriedly by the back stairway leading from the kitchen premises. His
face was as white as the damask deeply lace-edged cloth spread over
the refectory table on which stood the golden chalice from which all
had drunk and drained. He whispered hurriedly to his chief.
   "We're cornered. Not a hope unless we can get them all away by
the side entrance."
   Mr. Copthorne turned grey.
   Without any waiting, panic-stricken and regardless of the rest,
he made a scuttling exit through the cloak-room door leading out on to
the side entrance.
   Mr. Herman took over with one word.
   "Scram!"
   Fright and alarm spread amongst the party guests and in the
sudden confusion to press through the narrow doorway a paraffin
radiator just under the purple and scarlet muslin draped platform was
upset followed by an explosion and a burst of flame, instantly
igniting the draperies and matching curtains at the sides. Seizing a
piece of carpeting Mr. Herman attempted to smother and quench them.
There was a fire extinguisher, but that was kept in the club itself
for handy use. The flames spread and mounted. He staggered up the
back stairway into his office and dialled 999.
   As he came out of it, Mr. Smith and his two companions came
round the side of the rostrum where they had been concealing
themselves, and stood in the way.
   Mr. Herman faced them. He had been trembling and shaking. He
ceased to tremble. He stood rigid and straight. He was on the stage
once again and it was the first night of a new play in which he had
been cast for the minor role of an evil man's dupe and confederate.
Could he have cast himself in the part of Mr. Copthorne, the
villain and apostate, he would not have attempted to run away from his
captors. He would have made his appearance. The Show must go on.
   His first night nerves on this that was also his last night
dropped away from him. He had lines to speak.
   Mr. Smith gave him his cue.
   "Now then, Herman!"
   Mr. Herman's faintly mask-like smile was almost pathetic.
   "Gentlemen, of course, I am at your service, but listen to me,
please."
   "Don't take too long then," said Mr. Smith.
   "I will be brief. Can you not smell smoke? Turn your noses to
the kitchen." The men sniffed and coughed.
   "Is that your trick?" snapped Mr. Smith. "Trying to smoke
us out, eh? Been burning something? You'll have to think of
something better than that. Show us the way below."
   "Impossible. No doing of mine. A pure accident. One of these
paraffin lamps has been upset. The premises are on fire. I have just
phoned for the brigade. Arrest me. Whatever information you wish me
to give you later I am willing to provide. I am a knave and a low
fellow, a spreader of iniquity. I have no intention of scarpering
even if I had the chance. I have had enough to last me."
   "Tail it off, Herman!" Mr. Smith and his men were now
uncomfortably aware that Mr. Herman was speaking the truth and that
the club was on fire. "Where's Copthorne?"
   "My leader in this fiendish racket, my dear sir, is not in the
house. He is well on his way by now to where I do not know, but even
if I did know for certain and told you, I doubt if you would be able
to catch up with his Rover 9 as he has had a good start. It might
conceivably be down to Sussex or to the nearest airport. You will be
much better advised to take me into custody forthwith and lock me up
once more in the all too familiar confines of a prison cell."
   "You are under arrest." Mr. Smith coughed as a swirl of
acrid smoke drifted past him and his officers.
   Mr. Herman held out his hands.
   "Put on the bangles. The fire brigade has arrived. Hear it?
Regis Road pavements will soon be crowded with late-homers <SIC>
gathering to witness a fire in full bloom. Standing room only for
nothing to pay. I pray you let me continue to speak the tag. I
played Hamlet once and how I gloried in that role although the
performance only took place in a country public hall-"
   "That's enough, Herman."
   The firemen were in, Percy, Con O'Shea and Mr. Butler were all
upon the scene.
   Mr. Herman raised his voice above the hubbub and roar of smoke
and flames. Infinite pathos, regret and sadness was in it.
   "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem all the uses of
this world! It is an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Things rank
and gross in nature possess it-"
   "Pipe down!" The two police officers hustled him forward
towards the entrance.
   Con suddenly brushed past them.
   "The cat, the white cat!"
   Percy tried to hold him back. So did Mr. Butler.
   "The cat will have got itself out through the coal-shoot. Bound
to-"
   "It hasn't. I heard it mewing. I am sure and certain it was
the cat- let go of me, George!"
   "Don't be a fool, Con!"
   "Get outside, all of you, unless you want to be smothered, and
wait for me. I'll be joining you in a minute or two with the little
white cat in 2me arms!" Con pushed himself free and dashed
forward.
CHAPTER =3
   THE SPEED dash into Sussex was near to its end. The titled
displaced person chauffeur who was at the wheel, intent on the wheel
and covering distance, had not spoken a word. Nearing the village he
turned to look for Mr. Copthorne in the back of the car. He was not
on the seat. He was cowering on the floor.
   "Stop!"
   "Do you not wish to be driven home?"
   "No. Put me down at the church."
   "Very good." The chauffeur did not 'Sir' his employer.
   He halted the car by the Lych Gate.
   "Thank you." Mr. Copthorne almost fell out of it, his
Bardic robes impeding him. "I will see you in the morning."
   "Perhaps."
   "Perhaps. But- but you are not going to leave me, Count? You
know how I rely on your services."
   The chauffeur did not deign to answer. He was self-possessed and
silent as always.
   He opened the Lych Gate for Mr. Copthorne, closed it after him
and drove away.
   Mr. Copthorne stumbled towards the church door and tried to
turn the heavy handle. It was locked. The verger would be there to
open it first thing in the morning. The rector liked to leave the
church open all day until the evening. He was very proud of the
venerable old edifice with its Norman tower. It would be made good
and sound, the restoration of its stone and wood that would ensure its
preservation for many many years to come, by means of the generous
purse of Mr. Copthorne, squire, and lord of the manor.
   Mr. Copthorne knew a way round by the side of the church where
there was a small open outbuilding where the grave digger kept his
spades and forks and tidying up implements. It might be open. It
was. He entered, and seated himself in a huddle upon an upturned
wheelbarrow. His curious headgear fell off.
   Strange things were going on in his bewildered brain. When a man
was drowning and towards his last gasp it was scientifically supposed
his whole life came up before him in some cinematic kind of sequence.
Mr. Copthorne was on dry land in a church outbuilding, but this was
happening to him now. He saw himself as a sulky, ugly, malformed,
repressed boy, then a young youth. He saw himself refusing baptism
according to the sect his parents belonged to. Walking out of the
chapel later on. Continuing on, his leaping mind flashed pictures of
chicanery and corruption, the growth of the deadly decadence and
absorption in debasement and Satanic debauchery. He saw himself as he
was and as he had become, a misbegotten, infamous, recidivist, past
praying for.
   The church clock was striking seven. He had slipped on to the
stone floor. He gathered himself, swaying and uncertain and stumbled
round to the front door of the church again. The door was open. The
verger had just unlocked it and was about to depart when he saw Mr.
Copthorne entering in his very strange purple and scarlet robes
get-up. He didn't know what to make of it, but it was Mr. Copthorne
all right. Perhaps he had been attending some kind of fancy dress do
in London. Very strange his eyes looked. Mad, hunted eyes, as if the
poor fellow had rocks in his head, so the verger described afterwards.
   "You're very early about, sir," he said, trying to speak
normally.
   "Yes. I travelled down from London as the dawn was breaking,
and the thought came to me I'd like to take a look at the church.
I've never been inside. Very remiss of me," said Mr. Copthorne.
   The verger led the way in.
   "The stained glass windows, sir, they date back to the
fourteenth century."
   Mr. Copthorne looked and saw the light stealing through upon
the illuminated figures of Saints and a central figure upon a Cross.
   "Ah!" he said. "That figure- that Man wasn't afraid to die,
was he?"
   The verger was simple in his nature.
   "No, sir. He died for all."
   "And Christianity goes on!"
   "Yes, sir, and always will."
   Mr. Copthorne's breathing was deep and laboured. He seemed to
be sighing.
   "I'd like to go up to the belfry. Don't come with me. I'd like
to go myself." The verger waited for him by the Lych Gate.
   Mr. Copthorne ascended into the belfry. The verger could see
him standing there on the very edge. A bit risky. The next moment he
had either cast himself down or stumbled and fallen.
   There he lay stretched out, his fat figure in a crude
spread-eagle, face forward.
   The verger ran towards him. He tried to shift the unwieldy
figure and raise him.
   Mr. Copthorne's head fell sideways. Very faintly, in a bare
murmur, the verger caught the last words he uttered:
   "I am still baffled."
CHAPTER =31
   ON SUNDAY afternoon a telephone message was conveyed to Margot
by Miss Maclaren, very quietly, on the fourth floor landing. Her
father was having his Sunday afternoon nap and the considerate little
woman did not wish to disturb him.
   "A gentleman whose name is Mr. Butler, has just rung up to say
he has some urgent news for you and Jasmine, and he is coming round
now in his car with a friend to tell you. His voice sounded very
grave, dear, and he stressed that as it was on a subject that might
upset your father, it would be best to say nothing to him yet awhile.
Jasmine is getting herself ready now.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 25
<464 TEXT P2>
   There were few passengers on the plane and Gavin was quickly
through the customs. "Gay!"
   "Gavin!"
   The girl and her luggage had disappeared and they were alone
together. The porter brought Gavin's bag out to the taxi. "Just a
moment, darling," Gavin pressed her hand and smiled. "I want to
check up on the flights back."
   Gay went out to the waiting taxi, and then found that in the
excitement of meeting Gavin she had left her sun-glasses on the
veranda. She went quickly back to fetch them. Gavin and the girl who
had got off the plane with him were talking. He was writing something
in his pocket-book, with a sick feeling of despair Gay knew that of
course it was her address.
   Gavin joined her and at once dispelled her fears.
   "That little bit you saw me talking to, her father is a big land
agent, she says that he sometimes has farms for lease ... you know
that's what I want, Gay, a farm and you!"
   
   "Shall we go over to the little cafe?2 opposite after
dinner?" Gay, sitting opposite Gavin on the terrace could hardly
believe that she was the same girl, miserable, shy, who had sat at the
little table for the first time a few days ago.
   Gavin raised his glass to her and smiled and Gay's heart turned
over. "I'd like to do that." Gavin drained his glass and refilled
it. "And then we'll go for a stroll along the beach. A moon like
this mustn't be wasted." He gestured towards the bay where the full
moon was just rising over the rocks, then laid his hand on hers.
   Gay smiled at him again, happy beyond belief, knowing that now
Gavin was in love with her and her only, yet remembering for a second
the kisses she had seen him giving Elaine. All that was part of the
past, she would put it behind her. She would never be jealous again,
would even take Larry's advice and look the other way if need be.
   "I say!" Gavin was looking over her shoulder. "That's a
pretty girl!"
   Gay glanced behind her, "Isn't she lovely, she's French, a very
well known model I believe. She only arrived today. That is her
father's yacht in the bay. The people she is with are the Belgians I
told you about who have been so nice to me."
   "Does everyone go to the cafe?2 opposite after dinner?" Gavin
enquired casually.
   "No, the older people usually stay here and have coffee and some
go to the night club up the road."
   Bernice came over and was introduced. Gay felt happy and proud
as she made the introduction. "We are going to the night club,"
Bernice said, "are you coming?"
   "No, we thought that we'd go opposite." Gay didn't want to do
anything other than be alone with Gavin and later under the light of
the glorious moon hear his explanation of everything and in shared
kisses put it all behind her.
   They came out of dinner and Gay went upstairs to get her stole,
the night was warm, the sky cloudless, but it might be cooler later on
the beach.
   She looked at herself in the mirror, wanting so much to look
lovely for Gavin. She lightly powdered her face, drew a pale lipstick
across her mouth, picked up her stole and ran down the stairs to where
she had left him.
   The hall was empty, and she looked round thinking that perhaps
Gavin had gone outside when Larry came through, tall and elegant in
his white dinner jacket.
   "Hullo, you're looking very lovely."
   "Thank you, Larry, I'm feeling very happy."
   "You are? Good girl. Everything all right now?"
   "Oh yes, thanks a lot for your advice. Gavin is here! and
before I had time to write!"
   "Here? You mean the man you were dining with is Gavin?" Larry
asked, looking surprised.
   "Yes, isn't it wonderful? He flew over from Barcelona and is
going to stay two days. I can't think where he is, he said he would
wait here." She looked around.
   "He's in the bar ..." Larry looked at her a little strangely,
paused as if he were going to say something, then with a wave of his
hand walked off to join a smart looking woman.
   Gay, a little puzzled, went through to the bar. Doc and Lilyan
were sitting just inside having coffee. "Come and join us and bring
your boy friend," Doc called.
   "No, Doc!" Lilyan remonstrated. "They want to be alone."
   "I've booked a table at the cafe?2," Doc said, "they are
packed tonight so come and join us if you can't find a table for
two."
   Gay thanked him and walked out on to the terrace thinking that
perhaps Gavin had bought a drink and taken it outside.
   She looked round scanning the tables, then caught her breath, a
cold hand seeming to clutch her heart.
   Gavin was seated at a small table in a shadowy corner talking
animatedly to Simone. As Gay watched he offered the girl a cigarette
and lit it, his hands cupping hers in an intimate way.
   Gay stood irresolute for a moment, half decided to go back and
join Lilyan and Doc, while she wanted to do no more than run upstairs
to her room, knowing that Gavin although he had told her that he loved
her, was already flirting with a girl that he had only met a few
minutes before. Larry's advice flashed through her mind, but she
turned away, giving a little gesture of hopelessness, knowing that her
pride would never allow her to look the other way and aware too, that
her love for Gavin had already lessened, although she was suffering
the pangs of jealousy.
   "Gay!" Gavin came up behind her and took her arm, "where have
you been?" Simone stood behind him, cool and poised.
   "Come along," he took them both by the arm, "now show me
where this cafe?2 is."
   Gay withdrew her arm on the pretext of adjusting her stole,
almost shuddering at Gavin's touch.
   The cafe?2 was crowded as Doc had predicted and Gay led them
over to his table, glad that she was not to be alone with Gavin. The
others were all dancing and as Gay drew out a chair and sat down
Gavin, without a word, swept Simone on to the floor.
   "It doesn't mean anything," Gay told herself desperately,
trying to understand Gavin's point of view and remembering the advice
that Larry had given her, while she felt wretched beyond words. She
shivered a little despite the warmth of the night and turning round,
reached for her stole which was on the back of the chair. Without
meaning to spy she caught sight of Gavin and Simone. They were
dancing very closely and she saw Gavin lay his cheek against the
French girl's and whisper something in her ear. Simone looked up at
him smiling and nodded.
   Feeling sick with unhappiness, Gay drank her coffee, aware now as
she had really known before that there was no hope of happiness in the
future for her and Gavin. If he could come all the way to Marjorca to
see her and then immediately start flirting with the first pretty girl
that he met, and in front of her, it showed only too plainly that his
affection for her had no depths at all. His behaviour was not only
boorish and in the worst of taste but it was unkind beyond words. She
fumbled with the cigarette packet which lay on the table not wanting
to smoke but needing some action to help her control her feelings.
   "Come and dance," Doc's cheery voice came as a lifeline and
Gay got up quickly, managing a smile.
   As he swung her on to the floor Gay saw Gavin and Simone go
through the doorway that led down to the beach. Gay closed her eyes
for a moment in disgust. She was fully aware that Gavin would make
love to the French girl on the sands, and no doubt he would come back
soon and after Simone had left expect her to accept his kisses on the
way back to the hotel.
   "And that's the man whom you have been eating your heart out
over?" Doc nodded towards the door. "You may consider him a man,
I would say he was a mentally adolescent cad."
   "Oh, Doc ..." Gay protested weakly, "you don't know Gavin."
   "I've only met him today but I think I can safely say that I
know him a great deal better than you do." Doc gave her hand a
shake. "Wake up Gay, and don't even contemplate throwing yourself
away on a chap like that. You're a fine girl, intelligent, and
pretty, and I had thought you were sensible too. Don't make a fool of
yourself over someone who doesn't care two jots for your feelings. If
he behaves like this now what is your married life going to be like?
Hell." Doc answered for her. "Just Hell. Never able to trust
him out of your sight and having to put on a brave face and pretend
that you don't mind whenever he flirts with another woman. He will
you know, always, and you aren't the type who is tough enough to
change him."
   Gay nodded. "I know that you're right Doc, I think now that I
do realise that, and in any case," she added a little sadly, "if I
did change Gavin, he wouldn't be the same, if you know what I mean."
   "You sound like Alice in Wonderland," Doc gently mocked her,
"and I'm glad you're beginning to see that you're wasting your time
on that chap. Now let him go and you won't have to wait long for the
right man for you to come along. If I was thirty years younger and
weren't married to the sweetest wife in the world I'd marry you
myself." Gay laughed, Doc was so kind and nice and she hoped that
one day she would be able to see the situation as it obviously
appeared to everyone else.
   Doc asked Lilyan to dance and once again Gay found herself alone
at the table feeling self-conscious and awkward, sure that people were
talking about the way Gavin was behaving since they had seen them
dining together. She opened her bag to get out her compact and saw
Grace's letter. She drew it out and opened it, glad to be able to
occupy herself.
   "So glad that you are having such a lovely time, dearie," it
ran. "Your cards are lovely. I rang up Miss Harland and have been
over to sit with her father and do what I can for him so that she can
get out to do her shopping. He's getting on well but is pretty
helpless still with his broken arm. No other news except that Elaine
is engaged and going to marry a foreigner ..."
   Gay read the rest of the letter then put it back in her bag.
Elaine was engaged, to the man she had spent so much time with at her
party. That was why Gavin had come back to her. Everything was quite
clear now, and to her own surprise Gay felt no heartbreak, rather a
sense of relief now that she knew why Gavin had come to see her.
Because she was second best.
   The others came back to the table, all of them making a fuss of
her and at once she felt happier. Gay loved them for their warm
sympathy, knowing that they were real friends, even if they were new
ones.
   "That is a pretty dress," Lilyan commented, obviously sensing
Gay's distress and in a way that Doc, as a man, could not understand,
knowing that Gay was as much ashamed for Gavin at the way he was
behaving as she was hurt for herself.
   "I made it myself," Gay tried to speak normally.
# 2
<465 TEXT P3>
CHAPTER ONE
   THE hospital was literally sited at the cross-roads, though set
back from the street by a drive of about a hundred and fifty yards and
cushioned by rounded shrubs and a belt of trees which helped to absorb
the noise of the traffic.
   There was a large new roundabout and a sign which gave the
distances to both Edinburgh and London, Great Yarmouth and Liverpool,
for besides being at the cross-roads, St. John's was also sited
roughly at the heart of England, the highways resembling vast arteries
pouring the flood tide of commerce and private pleasure in four
entirely different directions.
   Diana Wills often sat on the brand new seat outside the hospital
gates and thought vagrant thoughts. At one time she had watched the
workmen constructing the roundabout, which was to put St. John's
Casualty Department out of operation- in theory, at least. She would
think of herself as a stranger in these parts studying these
cross-roads.
   Which one to take?
   "If I were a tramp I would simply blow a feather," she
decided, rather envying the gentleman of the road his freedom of
decision, and wishing life would sometimes allow serious-minded women
doctors to blow a feather and follow its airy directions accordingly.
   "If I were needing a job I'd go to London, of course," she
went on. "There are all sorts of wonderful jobs in London and I
could take my pick, whereas in Yarmouth one has to know something
about fishing and in Liverpool they'd want sea-farers. I don't think
I'd go to Edinburgh unless I was a Scot and wanting to get home, or
perhaps a student studying to be a doctor, and I already know all
about that."
   Being at a cross-roads was unsettling, she also decided. One
felt as though one hadn't arrived anywhere. True, St. John's was on
the outskirts of Farlingham, a small, prosperous North Midlands town,
but apart from the inhabitants everybody else regarded Farlingham as a
spot where one could fill up the car, have a cup of tea and go on to
somewhere else with vastly more to offer in the way of opportunity and
entertainment.
   It was getting too cool for sitting on the seat by early October,
Di decided, as she collected her various items of shopping- she never
carried a basket- and prepared to go inside for tea. She felt
chilled to the bone and somewhat depressed. Normally she looked
forward to her days off, an expedition into town, a visit either to
her hairdresser or the cinema and Nigel dashing out to join her for
either luncheon or tea in his screaming red M.G.
   She was engaged to Nigel, had been for two years. Sometimes they
talked on the theme of "when we get married", and then all was
wonderful, and perhaps it had only been a slip of the tongue when
Nigel had said, only last evening, "If we get married, old girl,
you'll have to stop that lark, I can tell you!"
   She couldn't remember what they had been talking about or which
'lark' she would have to stop, only that significant tiny word
shouted into her very soul a horn of warning, and with it was coupled
a disembodied fragment of information, which now took on an ominous
significance: Nigel had been seen in Farlingham on an occasion he had
sworn he had been standing in for Luke Parsons at his surgery in
Little Phelpham.
   Now Nigel had every right to go where he liked during his
off-duty periods when she was not free; this much they had conceded
one to the other. They rarely found they were off duty together, and
the situation would have been intolerable had there not been some give
and take about their relationship.
   So when Nigel had told her about taking Luke's evening surgery
she had said, "Bless you! I hope Luke is suitably grateful,
darling."
   "Oh, well," he shrugged diffidently, "I like the work. One
gets plenty of variety and it's a change."
   Nigel was the hospital's Junior Medical Officer.
   "You won't be free about nine, I suppose, to meet me for supper
somewhere?" she had asked hopefully.
   "Hardly likely, my sweet. Luke's surgery goes on for hours. If
they get in before eight-thirty, even though they're standing on one
another's toes, I've got to see 'em. If I am free, though, I'll
give you a ring, O.K.?"
   O.K.," she had replied readily.
   So how could Nigel have been at the Load of Trouble roadhouse,
dancing with a blonde at eight-thirty that very evening?
   "No," she told Phil Gubbins, a junior houseman, "it wasn't
Nigel you saw, my lad."
   "It was Nigel's car, anyway. NUF 121."
   "He probably loaned his car to somebody, Phil. He's always
doing that."
   Young Gubbins shrugged.
   "I didn't see his face, Di, but it certainly looked like Nigel
from the back. D.j. and all. Of course such as I couldn't afford
to go into the Load of Trouble."
   "Neither can Nigel," smiled Diana. "He's saving up to get
married. Remember?"
   "I remember," quipped the houseman, meaning no offence, "but
does he? That blonde was something."
   "Anybody I know?" she smiled.
   "I think so. I got a good look at her. But if Nigel wasn't
there it isn't important, is it?"
   "No," Di said immediately. "It isn't at all important."
   But after that slight slip of the tongue on Nigel's part she had
realised it was important enough for her to have remembered, and it
was as though a red mist veiled her usually clear sight and made her
think there was an abyss immediately ahead.
   "Nigel," she had besought him, "you know that evening you
took Luke Parson's <SIC> surgery and there was a woman with a cyst
on her ear ... ?"
   "5Ye-es?" he lowered his eyes and kissed her on the mouth,
an act of devotion he didn't over-indulge. "What about it, my
sweet?"
   "Well," she laughed suddenly in an upsurging of relief, "that
stupid Gubbins boy thought he saw you at the Load of Trouble. With a
blonde, too. Imagine!"
   Nigel was frowning. He looked distinguished when he frowned;
boyishly handsome at other times.
   "Gubbins? Gubbins?" he fretted. "Who's he?"
   Though Diana knew the name of every member of the staff,
distinguished or not, Nigel often had to think hard to sort them out.
   "He's the carrotty <SIC> lad, isn't he?" he now demanded.
   "What was he doing at the Load of Trouble?"
   "Oh, he wasn't. His motor-bike had broken down outside and he
noticed your car and then you dancing with this blonde."
   "Really?" Nigel cocked one eyebrow. "Actually she was
brunette at the roots and I had a redhead on the other arm. He would
have told you this, too?"
   "No," she laughed. "He didn't actually see you. Because
it was your car I suppose he presumed it was you, all dressed up in
your dinner suit."
   "My white or my black?" Nigel enquired. "Now I wonder which
I wore at that particular surgery?"
   "You are a fool, darling," Di said happily. "I shall
take great pleasure in telling that young man exactly what you were
doing that evening."
   "No, don't," he said, after kissing her again. "I rather
like to have the housemen think of me as a two-timing Don Juan. I'm
such a dull fellow, really."
   "Dull?" She couldn't believe it. Self-deprecation was not
one of Nigel's usual attributes. "You need your holiday,
darling. I only wish I could go with you!"
   "Doctor Wills, if you're making improper suggestions ...?"
   "It would make me more interesting, I suppose?" she enquired
archly.
   "No, it wouldn't!" he almost snapped, surprising her.
   "You sounded like somebody else for a moment there. It doesn't
become you to behave like a- a tart, Di."
   "Nigel- !" she gasped. "I didn't mean to behave like
anything of the kind. I was only joking."
   "Well, don't. It's miserable enough my having to take my leave
in the autumn without you trying to be bright and gay about it. I'm
going with a shooting party. What else can I do at this time of year?
I can't ask you up because it's a strictly stag affair."
   "I know. I didn't expect ..."
   "Well, don't keep hinting, then. You wish you could come with
me; you hope I'll miss you; you can't imagine the hospital without me
for three weeks, etcetera, etcetera!"
   Diana's face was drained of colour. She was almost angry for a
moment.
   "Am I expected not to mind your going away for three weeks?"
she asked simply.
   He looked at her, noting, as for the first time, the pansy blue
of the eyes that were his fiance?2e's best feature. Her hair was of
a chestnut brown shade, which glinted with gold in the evenings, he
had noticed. Her figure was small and exquisite, like a schoolgirl's
still, and he admired her legs, which the male sex were inclined to
regard first.
   "I would mind if you didn't" he told her grimly, and
tugged her fiercely into his arms. "You're right, pet. I do
need this leave. I'm bad-tempered and broody and going out with
brash blondes. I don't deserve you."
   "Darling!" her voiced caressed him. "Moments like this make
all the waiting worth while. When we're married we won't have these
explosions of emotion, will we?"
   "No," he eyed her strangely. "I wish we were married, Di.
Like a patient wishes his operation was over."
   Again her laughter trilled.
   "Marriage isn't as bad as an operation, Nigel!"
   "Isn't it?" he rose and smoothed himself down. "Ask any
bridegroom-to-be. Anyhow, that particular problem isn't looming
at the moment, thank God!"
   Problem ... ? looming ... ?
   "Are we discussing a marriage or a burial?" she asked, hardly
believing he could be serious. "Surely marrying me isn't going to be
all that bad? If it is-" she laughed uncertainly- "you can have
your ring back."
   She loosened the half-hoop of diamonds on her left hand third
finger and held it out to him, still playfully. Without a glimmer of
amusement in his own eyes, however, he took it, looking moodily beyond
her.
   "Perhaps it's as well if you don't wear it for a bit, Di," he
told her.
   "But I want it!" she protested. "It's my ring."
   "You just gave it back to me."
   "I didn't! I was joking. You know I was joking, Nigel."
   "You shouldn't joke about serious things like engagements."
   "Don't be such a baby!"
   They were going to have an open quarrel any minute, and she knew
it. Almost in desperation she appealed, "Will you meet me at the
gate, four o'clock tomorrow?"
   "Why?" he enquired, combing his thick, tawny hair.
   "To bring me up for tea, of course. I just thought."
   "I'll see," he told her, and suddenly seized her in an embrace
which really hurt. "Without your ring it's just like kissing
somebody else's girl," he decided wickedly, and kissed her again,
somewhat startled to receive a sharp slap for his pains.
   "If I were somebody else's girl that's what you'd get," she
flashed at him, and so had left him, on her dignity and not seeing the
look of admiration and revelation which had followed her slim young
figure out of his sight.
   "Mine," Nigel Lester had decided with a sigh of satisfaction,
and then regarded the ring which he retrieved from his pocket. "At a
price," he concluded, with some bitterness.
   
   Thus had they parted the previous evening and now Diana was
trailing up the gravelled drive to the hospital alone. Of course one
couldn't say for certain when a doctor would be free during the day;
tea was served from four until five-thirty in the residents'
common-room, which proved the elasticity of medical commitments.
Something had cropped up which required Nigel's attention, she was
convinced, or he would have granted her small request to be met at the
gates. They often had such a rendezvous, for there was just time to
smoke a cigarette, if one walked slowly, between road and hospital.
# 26
<466 TEXT P4>
   Carol waited until after the child had gone, then she sprang
out of bed and started quickly to dress. She would waken Jacques and
get him to drive her into Nice to Jimmy's hotel and together they
would go to the police with the diamond and emerald clip.
   She didn't want to bring Ray into this. He had sentimental
loyalties towards Grant. He might still give him the chance to
escape, and if Grant did escape all hope of proving Ray's innocence
would be gone. But she knew she had to act- and to act quickly. She
had already aroused Grant's suspicions by her questions.
   She went quietly down the staircase. There was only a short
distance through the foyer before she reached the front door. But
when she tried to close it after her a foot was forced in the open
doorway. Her shoulder was seized, and before she could scream a pad
was thrust into her mouth. She felt something shoved into her ribs,
and turning slightly sideways she saw it was the nozzle of a revolver.
   "Keep going," Grant said in a low harsh voice. "One false
movement and you're as good as dead. Don't kid yourself I'll be timid
about using this revolver; it's my life or yours."
   She couldn't scream because of the gag in her mouth and he held
both her hands tightly behind her back. He made her walk round to the
garage and once there he bound both her arms and her legs tightly.
Then he bundled her into the back of his car, laying her on the
floor.
   It had all happened so quickly she felt completely numb. And
anyhow she had had no chance; he had taken her completely unawares.
She hadn't even time to think where he might be taking her or what he
intended to do with her. He threw a rug over her and shortly
afterwards she heard him start up the car.
   Jacques slept above the garage, but he was used to Grant taking
his car out at night. Ray and Sarah were also accustomed to it. Even
if they were still awake they would suspect nothing. It was no
consolation to know that Jimmy and she had been right, that Grant
obviously had not only been the notorious jewel thief but had also
murdered Greta. It seemed reasonable to suppose he had murdered her
because she had come upon him in the act of stealing her jewellery.
For once his timing had been wrong. He wouldn't have made the
attempt if he hadn't thought she would be out and he had undoubtedly
known that the few servants, who slept in another wing, were asleep
and would hear nothing. Probably he had had inside knowledge from one
of them. It had obviously been the same with the other robberies he
had pulled off.
   But the knowledge that she and Jimmy had been right didn't help
her now. She didn't think that Grant would show her any more mercy
than he had shown Greta. She blinked up at the stars and occasionally
she saw lights and heard traffic as though they were passing through
villages or towns.
   But presently they began to climb up a twisting road. They
climbed higher and higher. The thought flashed through her mind, this
is the Grande Corniche, the scenic highway road which links Nice and
Monte Carlo. Very few people drove the Grande Corniche at night; they
either drove round the Moyenne Corniche or the road that skirted the
Mediterranean.
   Her heart sank. What hope would she have of rescue in this
desolate region? Jimmy had warned her that questioning Grant might be
dangerous. But what had finally prompted him to abduct her in this
way with the obvious purpose of killing her? Did he know that she had
Greta's clip? He might easily have been listening outside the door.
But if he had been, Sarah was equally in danger; it was she who had
found the clip in his car.
   She felt icy cold and completely desperate. He would have no
hesitation about getting rid of the child as well as her in case she
babbled something about the clip. Or would he be afraid to kill
Sarah? He had done his best to put the blame for Greta's death on
Ray; but surely the police would never suspect that Ray had murdered
his own daughter? The thought gave her hope, though her own
predicament was still as desperate.
   Grant was driving the car carefully. Obviously he didn't wish to
be stopped for speeding. But finally after a terrific climb he drew
the car to a standstill.
   Carol had managed to twist the rug off her head. She saw that it
was a beautiful Mediterranean night with a full moon, a blue-black
sky, and the stars were shining brightly. What a night on which to
die, she thought, trying to feel amused. But it was impossible to
feel amused for the cord with which he had bound her cut into her
wrists and ankles; the gag hurt her mouth. How would he kill her? A
shot would be the most merciful end and she knew he had a revolver
with him.
   He came round and opened the back door of the car. "Had a nice
ride?" he asked in a hoarse, cynical voice.
   He removed the gag and untied her legs. The sudden sensation of
freedom from her cramped position was almost exhilarating.
   "Few people pass here at night," he said, "and I still have
my gun. So you won't dare scream. I heard you and Sarah talking so I
crept to your door and listened. I've been worried about that damned
clip ever since I lost it. You're not a fool. I know you've put two
and two together ever since the child told you about the clip. But
you suspected me before that, didn't you? I knew by those questions
you asked me the other night."
   She raised herself to a sitting position. "Yes, I suspected
you, but Jimmy Mattson also suspects you. He contacted the firm of
Brevet & Rene?2 in Marseilles. You haven't been trying to buy the
lease of any luxury hotel. We also know there's no Hotel Imperial in
Marseilles where you could have stayed that night. If you kill me, as
far as Jimmy is concerned it will be a definite proof of your
guilt."
   He asked almost wildly, "But how can I let you live, knowing
that you know the truth? You might propose a bargain- your life for
your silence. But how could I ever trust you?"
   "What are you going to do about Sarah?" she asked. And
despite her own danger that was the thought uppermost in her mind.
   "An accident," he said. "Probably while she is swimming with
the dog."
   Carol shuddered, remembering the dream Sarah had had. All the
same her voice was very calm as she asked, "What are you going to do
with me?"
   "You're going over the edge," he said. "This is the highest
point on the Grande Corniche. It's doubtful if they'll find your body
for many days- even weeks. And in the meanwhile I'll be clear of the
country. Your friend Jimmy Mattson may have his suspicions, but he
won't have any proof. Ray won't have any proof either. Besides, Ray
doesn't suspect me of having had any connection with the recent jewel
robberies or with Greta's death. He doesn't know that I have been
bribing the household staffs of his friends for information about
their employers' habits and where they kept their jewellery, or that I
was responsible for those friends who called upon the Baroness
Beaufort the night her jewellery was stolen; their presence gave me
the chance to do what I wanted to do."
   "Why did you kill the Countess Doriana?" Carol asked.
   "She came home early from the party and found me at the job. I
had to strangle her to silence her. I don't feel any sense of guilt.
She had always been a no-good woman. I'm sorry about you, Carol;
you're not a bad sort. It's a pity you took it upon yourself to
interfere with my affairs."
   "Why wouldn't I?" she threw back at him. "You left Ray's
cigarette lighter beside his dead wife's body; you did your best to
implicate him."
   "I happened to have the lighter in my pocket. I borrowed it
ages ago when my own lighter ran out of fuel. I had to protect
myself, and Ray was the obvious suspect. I'm going to give you a
drink and then I'll take that clip from your handbag. There'll be
something pretty potent in that drink; you won't feel any shock or
pain. You'll be unconscious by the time you go over."
   He took a flask from his pocket and got a glass out of the glove
compartment of the car.
   She set her lips firmly. "I won't drink it."
   He shrugged. "Please yourself. But you're a fool if you don't.
The sensation of falling from a great height can't be over
pleasant."
   "I'd rather risk it," she said. "You'll have to shoot me
before I'll jump. And when my body is found the bullet will be traced
back to your gun."
   He gave a low laugh. "It happens to be Ray's gun. I took it
from his bedside table while he was sleeping. The police will
undoubtedly think that you stumbled upon some fresh evidence which
made it certain that Ray had murdered his ex-wife. The only thing he
could do was to get rid of you. I'll unbind your arms and then you
drink this down. That's the last thing you will remember."
   He unbound her arms and then he tried to force the glass between
her lips.
   "No," she shrieked and pushed the glass away from her.
   He hit her hard across the face, but in her present state of
nervous tension she scarcely felt it.
   "If you won't drink it, I don't care," he said presently.
"You're going over the edge anyhow."
   She screamed again as he dragged her from the back of the car.
Her legs collapsed under her. She fell sprawling at his feet. And
then suddenly it happened. A shot rang out. He lurched and gave a
cry and dropped beside her.
   It could not have been more than a few minutes later that she
felt a man's arms about her; arms which were familiar and very dear to
her. She opened her eyes and in the white moonlight she saw Ray's
face bending over her.
   "Darling, darling Carol," he cried. "Are you all right?"
   "Ray," she whispered.
   She must have passed out for the next thing she knew he was
shaking her.
   "My darling! My darling! Say something to me."
   "I'm all right, Ray," she murmured. "How did you find where
he had taken me?"
   "Sarah hadn't gone to sleep. She saw him grasp hold of you and
gag you and take you out of the house. She rushed in and told me. I
jumped out of bed and was dressed in a jiffy. While I dressed she
told me about finding her mother's clip in Grant's car. I wasn't so
long after you. During a hold-up in the Nice traffic I was able to
pick up his car. But when he started up the Grande Corniche I lost
him temporarily. I was too intent on catching up with him to be aware
that another car was following me. I had him in sight until he
disappeared down the side road. I turned off the engine of the car
and listened, and then the other car drew alongside me. It was a
police car. They had been detailed to watch the villa and follow me
if I tried to escape. Thank heavens they did follow me and that you
screamed. I had no gun and Grant was armed. I shouldn't have had a
chance if they hadn't seen what was happening and shot him down.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 21
<467 TEXT P5>
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
But I should be back in an hour or so."
   "Oh, at the hospital, I suppose!" Lorraine did not wait for
her mother to confirm or deny this, but turned back to Noreen.
   With a smile and a sigh- for it was obvious that the twins were
too taken up with their own affairs to enquire or sympathize- she
went out.
   "Mr. Delorme was thrilled!" Joanna went on breathlessly.
"He's suggested we should go to town as soon as it can be arranged,
and, when we're settled, he's going to put us on at the Lys d'Or,
which is a very exclusive night club."
   Noreen looked doubtful. "But is that what you wanted? I
thought you hoped to get on the stage or television? A night club
sounds rather a come-down. I don't want to sound discouraging, but
aren't some of them pretty low dives?"
   Lorraine, who had been lounging on the cushioned window-seat,
straightened up and leant forward eagerly.
   "Don't be so nai"ve and stupid, Norrie! There are night clubs
and night clubs, as you'd know, if you weren't such an ignoramus!
This is one of the top places, frightfully swell. We'll get a
wonderful salary if we deliver the goods, and get to know a lot of
useful people."
   "Oliver knows Mr. Delorme quite well," Joanna put in, not
noticing how Noreen's eyebrows went up at her unthinking use of his
first name. "And if he backs anybody, that's surely good
enough!"
   There was such warmth of partisanship in her tone that Noreen was
astonished. She said impulsively: "But you hardly know him, Jo!
Mr. Randall, I mean. How can you be so sure that he's on the
level?"
   Joanna stubbed out her cigarette with unnecessary fierceness.
Her lovely eyes were defiant above cheeks whose colour had deepened
at Noreen's remark.
   "There are some people you don't have to know for years before
you can trust them. And Oliver Randall's one of them. He's
absolutely wonderful! He's promised to find us a flat-"
   Over Joanna's coppery head, Lorraine's eyes met Noreen's
enquiring gaze. She laughed mischievously, and without envy.
   "As you may have gathered, Norrie, Jo's fallen for the man,
hook, line and sinker! And I'd say he'd be equally enthusiastic, if
it wasn't for his wife's restraining influence. I've warned Jo
already that she must walk warily when that lady's around."
   Joanna sprang suddenly to her feet. "Don't talk rubbish,
Lorraine! I do like Oliver, and he's been perfectly sweet to us
both- you must admit that! Not only to me, as you seem to imply.
There's no need to put ridiculous ideas into Norrie's head. By the
way!" She turned to Noreen. "I suppose you realize that we want
you to come with us when we go back to town? We explained to Mr.
Delorme that we must have you as our accompanist."
   "Me?" Noreen was taken aback. Somehow, she had quite
overlooked this possibility, and though, at one time, she had been
hurt by her sisters' apparent disregard of her, she was now aware that
the prospect of leaving Dorlcombe was oddly unwelcome. "Mummy won't
like it if we all go off and leave her."
   Joanna shrugged impatiently. "If you prefer to stick here in
this dreary place- and you know just how dull and forsaken it is
after the season's over- that's your look-out. But I must say I
think it's rather mean of you, especially after we insisted to Mr.
Delorme that we must have you, as well. Let me talk to Mummy! I
don't suppose she'll raise any objection."
   Noreen said no more. She felt that the twins would not
understand if she attempted to make them see her point of view. Their
trip to town, she thought, seemed to have changed them in some
inexplicable way. She knew that they had always been ambitious, eager
to try their wings in a wider sphere, but, now the chance had come,
they seemed to be thinking of nothing and no one save themselves. Yet
their mother, as Noreen knew, had done everything in her power to make
them happy. Surely she would feel very lost and lonely if all her
children deserted her?
   When Mrs. Sangster returned, they could hear her talking to
someone as she came up the stairs. Joanna and Lorraine looked at each
other in bewilderment, but Noreen, recognizing Stephen's quiet,
pleasant voice, went out to meet them. She guessed, even before she
saw the eager look on his face, that he had come with the express
purpose of seeing Joanna, and her heart sank at the thought of his
probable reception.
   "Mr. Redfern very kindly brought me home in his car," Mrs.
Sangster explained as they came into the room. Lorraine greeted him
pleasantly enough, but Joanna's greeting was barely polite. After a
few moments of general conversation, Mrs. Sangster said: "Well,
I'm going to see about some supper. You'll stay and have some with
us, won't you, Mr. Redfern? Lorraine dear, do come down with me and
tell me all your news. I'm longing to hear how you got on in town.
And, Noreen, did you remember to feed the chickens?"
   The two girls followed their mother downstairs, Noreen carefully
shutting the door behind them, and deliberately ignoring Joanna's
murmur of protest.
   After they had gone, there was an awkward little silence, then
Stephen said gently: "I hope everything went as well as you
expected, Jo?"
   "Oh yes! Better, really. We shall be going to London at the
end of this month." She jumped up and began straightening some
magazines on the table. "We've been offered a very good engagement,
you see."
   He rose and came over, standing just behind her. A tiny shiver
went down Joanna's spine, but he did not touch her.
   "Well, that's grand! Just what you hoped for, isn't it? As a
matter of fact, I've got some news for you, too. Though I'm afraid it
won't seem very exciting to you- now."
   She swung round to face him, arms folded, clear eyes wide. She
had changed from the suit she had worn for the journey, and was now
wearing her favourite attire- a thin, woollen jersey and slacks. His
hands clenched involuntarily as he looked at her- so lovely with that
glow of colour in her cheeks, her hair a bright halo about her
upthrown head.
   "Why not, Steve? Always glad to hear of a friend's good
fortune!" Her tone was deliberately casual and gay, and nothing in
her manner betrayed the way in which her heart was racing.
   "Have you gone and got yourself engaged or something?"
   He faced her steadily, no answering gaiety in his eyes.
   "You can't really think that, Jo. When you know there's only
one girl I'd ever want to be engaged to. No, I've come into some
money- not a vast fortune, by any means, but enough to make me feel,
at least, that I have something to offer you."
   "But I-" Joanna began. She stepped quickly aside, and would
have moved away from him, but he laid a restraining hand on her arm.
Gentle though it was, there was the suggestion of power behind that
touch, and involuntarily she stood still.
   "I've never told you in so many words," he went on, his voice
as quiet and controlled as ever, "but you must have guessed that I
care for you- very deeply. I've loved you ever since you were a
schoolgirl, Jo, but I didn't think I stood a chance compared with all
your other admirers. You wanted gaiety and fun; I was hard up and had
to put my studies first. My parents sacrificed a lot to pay for my
training, and it wouldn't have been right to let them down. But now
I'm really established, and with this unexpected legacy coming
along-"
   With an impatient movement, she pulled free from him and turned
quickly away towards the window, speaking with her back to him.
   "Don't go on, Steve! Oh, don't think I don't like you, and I
suppose I should say thank you for- for wanting to marry me. But
it's quite impossible- it always will be impossible! Don't you
understand, the sort of life you're offering me- just living in
Quaystone and keeping house and all that- it's so deadly dull! I
want something different- all the things that I've now got the chance
of enjoying. Even if I loved you, I'm afraid I wouldn't say yes!"
   There was silence. Wondering, expecting a protest, she half
turned and looked at him. He was standing motionless, a queer
suggestion of defeat, of hopelessness, about the powerful shoulders,
the bent head where the fair hair was so smoothly brushed, save for
the unruly drake's-tail on the crown. Joanna's eyes suddenly
softened, and a reluctant feeling of compassion swept over her. But,
before she could speak, he had recovered his normal self-control.
   "If you loved me, as you say,- well, it might not seem so
'deadly dull.' But you don't, and that's that!" He smiled, and
held out his hand. "Let's part good friends, Jo dear. If you're
going to get your heart's desire, that's all that really matters to
me. Will you apologize to your mother for me, and tell her I'm sorry
I can't stay to supper, after all?"
   As the outer door shut behind him, Noreen put her head round the
kitchen door and said doubtfully:
   "Did I hear somebody?"
   "Steve's gone. He couldn't stay, after all," Joanna said.
She went quickly along the landing to her room and shut the door
behind her. There she sat down on the edge of the bed, dabbing at her
wet eyes, and telling herself not to be such a sentimental idiot.
   Silly to be shedding tears because you had turned down a man who
didn't really matter a button to you. Oh, he's nice enough! Joanna
admitted. But there's nothing thrilling about poor old Steve.
Nothing to make one's nerves tingle and one's heart race- as it had
done only this morning. A dreamy smile spread over her face as her
mind went back to those heavenly moments. Leaving Lorraine to finish
their packing, she had gone out to buy some cigarettes, and, just
outside the hotel, had almost run into Oliver.
   "I wanted to come and see you off," he had told her, with that
softening of his expression which always made her feel oddly
breathless. "But my wife reminded me that I have an appointment at
just about the time your train leaves, so I decided to nip along in
the hope of seeing you before you left the hotel. It's going to seem
a long time until the end of this month, Jo my dear, but when you come
back ..." his hand had closed over hers warmly "... we'll make up
for all the empty days. Will they seem empty to you too, do you
think?"
   She had nodded, unable to find words that would tell him her
feelings.
   "Well, it must be 6Au revoir, then." He had put his
hands on her shoulders and smiled down into her eyes. "Wish this
wasn't such a damned public place, or I'd say good-bye to you
properly- you sweet thing!" His voice fell to so soft a tone that
she barely caught the last three words. And with that, before she
could take a breath, he was gone, leaving her caught up to a pitch of
excitement and ecstasy that was yet perilously near to tears.
   All the way home that parting speech had sung itself, over and
over, in her mind. "You sweet thing." Did that mean- no, it
couldn't mean that Oliver was in love with her? But she reminded
herself, he doesn't say things like that to Lorraine! He must
like me better! And then, following hard on that delicious
knowledge would come the inevitable thought, But he's married! It
can't mean anything- except that he's taken a fancy to me.
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Why you took the case, when you never touch anything of the
sort.'
   For a second his grim, menacing anger frightened her as he half
shouted: 'Are you trying to suggest that I was her lover?
Responsible for-' He stopped. Conflict tortured him. Here was
his supreme revenge: to tell her the truth; shatter her faith in
Philip... Beryl was dead... He shivered. Taking with her the only
proof he had to discount this accusation.
   Sandra prayed, despite her vituperation, that he would have
some defence, give her some denial, but all he said was: 'If you
believe me capable of that, we have nothing more to say to each
other- nothing.'
   The hurt in him was like a wound- stinging, aching. Was this
Philip's work? And even if it were, it came back to one man's word
against another and... she loved Philip. Until then the exactitudes
of his profession had demanded his silence, and now he was absolved
from that promise, he found himself bound by his own love for her, his
desire for her happiness. Far better that she should believe him
to be a cad than the man she was going to marry and obviously loved
so deeply. He doubted that Philip would betray her after all that had
happened. Fear would be a deterrent.
   Sandra flung her arms out in a gesture of despair. 'Do you
leave me anything else to believe? Or is your silence the
cowardly way out?' She hated the words, but they leapt from the
torment of loving him; from the tension, the weariness that made even
breathing an effort.
   'Is this what has been in your mind all the time?' He spoke
with greater passion. 'Was this why you wanted to leave the job just
before Philip was taken ill?' His mouth hardened, his eyes became
steely. 'I see.' Scorn lashed his words. 'I wonder you dared
trust him to my care.'
   'Nicholas-'
   'Well! At least I know the truth. Truth!' His gaze held
hers masterfully. 'You wanted it so badly- at any price. I hope
you are satisfied.' And as he spoke, the thought of Philip lying in
the other room filled him with a revulsion that was homicidal. Even
in that, his hands were tied. He dare not precipitate what might well
be another coronary. And in that second he put back his professional
mantle, and said with such icy politeness, such withdrawn bitterness,
that Sandra withered before it: 'I will leave you the necessary
prescription for the sedatives. You will contact your new doctor when
you reach your parents' house.' She watched him flick his
fountain-pen from his waistcoat pocket, take out his prescription pad,
and scribble on it. Then, with a gesture she knew so well, he tore
off the leaflet and handed it to her. 'Good-bye, Sandra,' he said
with a deadly finality. Watching him go, unable to speak, she felt
that part of her was leaving with him. She couldn't hate him... If
only he would have confided in her, given some explanation. Now there
was nothing- not even friendship.
   She went back to Philip. But all she could hear were Nicholas's
words: 'I love you- oh, you know that well enough.' Love.
She revolted against the word. Nicholas, Philip... where was
happiness, or peace of mind?
   Philip put out a hand and grasped hers. He needed her. She
would find solace in that fact at least. And she hadn't to doubt his
sincerity any more... She had her truth. How much had built up
from that first ideal, and how little joy, or satisfaction, it had
given her. 'I'm sorry, darling.' He looked nervous. It had been
hell lying there, knowing she was talking to Nicholas and wondering
what they were saying.
   Sandra said instinctively: 'I told him I knew he was
responsible for Beryl's death.' She rushed on: 'His attitude...
I don't know- something snapped. I couldn't stand it... Why do you
look at me like that?'
   'I asked you not to mention it.' Philip felt that he was
running a high temperature as fear swirled back. What had Nicholas
said?
   'I would never have done so while Beryl was alive. He hadn't
any answer- except to suggest that if I believed him capable of
that-' Her eyes darkened in torment. 'Are you sure that
she was telling the truth?'
   'Good heavens, darling, why on earth should she lie? Besides,
it wasn't just her word. There was enough evidence, no matter how one
might want to disbelieve the facts.' Elation touched him after the
cold wind of suspense. 'It will be interesting to see what comes out
at the inquest. What his story will be. I reckon he'll confine
himself to the nervous origin of her recent illness. His notes will
be truthful, but what he leaves out will matter most.' Strange how
just then Philip was so certain that Nicholas would never betray
him. He loved Sandra too deeply to ruin her future happiness.
Had ever circumstances conspired so cunningly? Philip's spirits
soared. He was better; he had made a miraculous recovery and Sandra
would soon be his wife. The Devil, he thought, certainly looked after
his own. Something in Sandra's attitude struck him suddenly, making
him say: 'You can't forgive him for this- can you?'
   'Forgive is an unctuous, patronizing word,' she replied. 'I
despise the deceit. The lies.'
   Philip couldn't keep the words back. 'Suppose you had loved him
and all this came out. What then?'
   Suppose you had loved him...
   Sandra realized with a bitter futility that now it was her
silence that was the lie. And Nicholas's words re-echoed mockingly:
'No human being could live with absolute truth.'
   'I couldn't live without faith, Philip. Or with pretence.'
She shivered. She was going to pretend for the rest of her life.
Pretend to be in love with Philip even though she knew she would try
never to utter those words. How honourable was that? She looked at
him, and his need of her, his dependence upon her, created a climate
where self-delusion masqueraded as the right thing to do. How easy it
would have been to cling to Nicholas, tell him that she could hardly
bear life without him, no matter what he had done to make her despise
him... But to walk out on Philip, break her promise and end their
relationship, for no better reason than what appeared as innate
self-preservation. That was impossible. He had been honest with her
and didn't deserve to be let down. She said suddenly, irrelevantly:
'Beryl's life recently- the whole thing- was very strange when you
think of it.'
   'How?' Philip looked startled.
   'Would she have married Nicholas in any case, since she loved
you?'
   Philip felt a stab of jealousy. 'Are you trying to make his
case good?'
   'No; to be fair. He seemed so amazed when I suggested marriage
to her. I've only thought of your illness lately- never studied all
this beyond the angle of Beryl's unhappiness and Nicholas being
involved. I didn't tell you, but she called here two days ago.'
   'What?' Philip felt that he had been swirled down a bumpy
lift. 'But- why?' He hastened. 'Why should she call?'
   'Oh, just to thank me and to inquire about you. Looking back,
her attitude was strange. She seemed afraid-'
   'Of Nicholas,' Philip said insinuatingly.
   Sandra couldn't deny that, and the more she dwelt on it all, the
more curious it became. 'She spoke about wondering if she ought to
tell me-' Sandra began to shiver.
   Philip managed to keep his voice steady. 'I can imagine
Nicholas putting the fear of God into her. The last person he would
want told was you.'
   It added up, and Sandra nodded. 'But it is still like looking
at a picture in shadow.'
   'I told you that- soon after the cottage episode. What was she
keeping back... We certainly shall not discover now. One thing I am
convinced about. Her death links up with her miscarriage. She told
me once he was determined she should not go through with the
pregnancy.'
   Sandra gave a pained cry.
   'Darling, I hinted that, too, you remember. I didn't want to
sound too dramatic, or- well-'
   'I know.' She felt very sick as she sat there, desolate. It
was all so ugly.
   Philip wanted to settle the problem- leave no loopholes.
   'She lost either way, really. He wouldn't marry her, and he
dare not risk the threat of the child. Obviously it would have been a
handicap to her, too, and in her saner moments she must have been
thankful to get out of the mess... But she was neurotic. It's my
guess that the cottage episode was the beginning of the end for
her.'
   Sandra pressed the point. 'Meaning that Nicholas deliberately
got rid of the child?'
   Philip was far too deep in the lies to retreat from that direct
question.
   'Yes. Her fear of him was pretty obvious. He had to take care
of her professionally, but he certainly didn't want you to know the
facts. She probably did. Beryl was a lonely person and had
very few friends.'
   Sandra nodded. 'Let's not talk of it again,' she said dully.
'I can't bear it... Everything's ready.' She looked around her.
Part of her life was ending; a part she had loved. Leaving the flat
and staying at Monk's Toft would be an ordeal, despite the rest from
perpetual work.
   Philip relaxed again. Now there was only the inquest, and he had
nothing whatsoever to fear from that. It was far too late for
Nicholas to make any accusations.
EIGHTEEN
   THE inquest offered no surprise. Nicholas's evidence conformed
strictly to the law and ethics. Miss Graham had been in his care.
She had been in a highly nervous state. A verdict of suicide while
the balance of her mind was disturbed, was returned. Philip put down
the evening newspaper, looked at Gordon Neal, and said: 'Very sad.
Nicholas's testimony said everything and nothing. One never knows
the truth of these cases.'
   Sandra didn't speak. She felt that some part of her had
petrified, leaving only a shell. She lived mechanically, and while
physically rested, even as the days became a week and then two, she
found it impossible to overcome the desolation building up around her.
Philip was amazingly better and already busy on a new play. He
worked in bed, using a portable typewriter, and was completely
absorbed in his task. Sandra was there- to attend to all his
needs. His world was whole again and he, to himself, its hub. With
illness had come an intense instinct for self-preservation, a
concentration upon his desires. What was good for him; what was not.
Not overdoing it. The doctor recommended by Nicholas called each
week and then suggested that no further calls were necessary. Philip
felt like the child no longer centre stage.
   It was Beatrice who said one evening after dinner, 'Hadn't we
better make some plans for the wedding? Quiet, of course.'
   Philip smiled smugly. 'They are made. I've a special licence
and notification has been given to the vicar. The best of having a
secretary,' he added, talking of one he had acquired since leaving
London. 'Brandon's good. It only needs Sandra to name the day.'
   Gordon said curtly, 'It is usual for the bride's parents to
have some hand in all this, you know, Philip.'
   Philip bristled. 'It was never our intention to have one of
those carnival affairs,' he retorted and in that second, he became
the man of success exerting authority.
   Sandra watched her father's face pale. Philip, she knew, got on
his nerves, but everything had gone over her head. It didn't really
matter what was being said because she was no longer a part of it.
The thought of Nicholas haunted her, the sense of loss crucifying.
Her father's comment roused her as he said, 'I was not talking of a
carnival. But I presume we shall be allowed to have one or two of our
friends at the ceremony.'
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   "Yes, we were," she stammered out and hated herself for a
nervous stammer.
   "Won't you two ladies both join me in a little drink then we can
all go into the dance room together."
   Vera looked at Caroline. "We shall be pleased to, Mr.
Carson," said Caroline.
   David found them a small table pulled up three chairs waited
until the two were seated, then he said:
   "I think this calls for a celebration. It is not often I have
the luck to be entertaining two such charming ladies. Excuse me a
moment."
   As he strode off towards the bar, Vera said:
   "Isn't he delightful?"
   "He seems nice. Perhaps he has taken a fancy to you, Vera."
   "Not he. I told him on our first meeting that I was engaged to
a very nice young man."
   At the bar David ordered a bottle of champagne and three glasses
to be sent over to his table. He thought that perhaps a glass or two
of champagne might get Miss Dodd into a friendly mood. He returned to
the table, sat down and offered them both a cigarette from his gold
case. They both took one, he flicked on his lighter and held it for
them then lit his own. A waiter came along with the glasses and the
champagne, he started to open the bottle.
   Vera said:
   "Champagne! This is certainly a celebration."
   Later after they had finished the bottle of champagne and David
had taken care to see Caroline had had her glass filled three times
they adjourned to the dance room to dance. Vera immediately excused
herself to go off and dance with a man she knew.
   David said:
   "Shall we dance?"
   "I should love to."
   The band had just started to play a waltz. David was a very good
dancer, rather to his surprise he found Caroline was also. Their
steps fitted excellently together. A waltz is one of the dances which
enables a man to get close to the woman. The moment he found she
danced as well as he did he drew her closer to him, she gave
willingly. When the dance came to a finish, he said:
   "It is awfully hot in here. What about coming into the lounge
and having a cool drink?"
   Now while they had been dancing Caroline had not failed to notice
the eyes of quite a number of women were eyeing her with envy. She
thought it would be rather fun to walk off with this nice-looking man
into the lounge and leave them all annoyed.
   "I think a nice cool drink would be nice. As you say it is very
hot in here."
   Taking her by the arm David led her from the room into the
lounge. He beckoned over a waiter.
   "What would you like to drink?" he asked.
   "A lemon squash with ice."
   David ordered it, and a whisky and soda for himself. After they
had been served he said:
   "I was taking a stroll the other morning and happened to pass by
your house. From the glance I obtained of the ground through the
gates you must have quite a wonderful garden."
   "We have. I say we because it does not all belong to me, my
sister and I share the place between us."
   Pretending he was unaware the sister was away he said:
   "Doesn't your sister ever come here to dance?"
   "Often when she is at home. At the moment she is staying with
friends in Eastbourne."
   "So you are all alone for the time?"
   "Not quite alone. I have the servants and lots of friends. Are
you staying long here?"
   "I wouldn't know. Depends on whether I get bored or not. When
I get bored I move on.'
   "Not bored yet I hope?"
   "I should never be bored in such charming company as yours."
   In spite of herself Caroline felt herself flush.
   "You must come and take a look round the grounds of the Manor
House one day, that is if you would care to do so."
   "Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Can we make a definite
date?"
   "Come and have tea with me tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock.
After tea I will show you round the house and grounds."
   "I shall be delighted to. Most kind of you to ask me."
   Caroline was thinking, that will make some of the women in the
other room jealous when they hear I have landed this man to tea with
me.
   David was thinking, I believe if I play my cards rightly I shall
land this woman in my arms in time. How wonderful it would be to
marry a quarter of a million pounds. He felt she had been on the
shelf for so long, if she really fell for him, once they were married,
he would have no difficulty in getting her to settle a nice sum on
him. Feeling it would not be wise to rush matters so soon he finished
his drink and suggested they returned to the dance room. Caroline
could do nothing but agree although she would have liked to stay and
continue talking with him.
   Back in the dance room David found her a seat and went and asked
Vera to dance.
   "Well, how do you like my friend Carrie?" asked Vera as they
took the floor.
   "I like her very much. She dances well and seems quite a
charming young woman."
   "Carrie is a darling really. Just unfortunate for her she does
not possess the lovely looks of her sister. Every man in Gallows
Corner is mad on Susie."
   "That I suppose leaves Miss Caroline rather out in the cold?"
   "Yes. They are both terribly wealthy. I have never been able
to understand why some man has not tried to snap up Carrie. She is
the sort who would make a good wife for a man."
   "You don't think the sister would, is that it?"
   "No, that is not it. It is Susie, although she has heaps of
admirers she never seems to bother much about them. When at home she
is always too busy with her horses, riding to the hounds and taking
part in ladies' point-to-point races. Susie is a wonderful
horsewoman."
   David had one more dance with Caroline later that evening then he
excused himself with the excuse he was feeling tired and thought he
would turn in. Saying he would be sure to be with her at four o'clock
the next afternoon, he said good night and left her.
   David could see she was longing for him to stay and dance once
again with her. He knew he was doing the right thing in not doing so.
That would make her look forward all the more to the next day. He
went to bed feeling most satisfied with the evening.
CHAPTER FOUR
   EVERYONE in Gallows Corner spoke of it as a whirlwind
engagement when it was announced two weeks later that Caroline Dodd
had become engaged to David Carson.
   David had hurried his love-making up for the very good reason his
capital was fast disappearing and he was wise enough to know it would
never do to ask Caroline to lend him any money, after they were once
married he would see to it she made a settlement on him.
   Caroline had never been made love to by such an experienced man
as David Carson, he literally swept her off her feet. She felt sure
she had at last found a man who would make her happy for life.
   The moment the engagement was announced congratulations from most
of the women in Gallows Corner poured in to Caroline. The men had
varied opinions, the single ones began to feel annoyed they had not
tried to snap up such a wealthy woman in spite of her plain looks
before this Carson appeared, the married men told their wives Caroline
was a fool that they were sure Carson was merely wishing to marry her
for her money. Most of the wives argued the point, they, like their
single sisters, felt Caroline was lucky to have managed to get one of
the best-looking men they had ever seen.
   David, who sensed the various opinions and felt some pressure
might eventually be brought to bear on Caroline to think again,
pleaded for an early marriage. She was not adverse to the suggestion,
but he had to use a deal of pressure before she would agree to a quick
marriage at a registry in Starminster. She wished for a marriage in a
church with bridesmaids. It was only when David said he was a Roman
Catholic, and unless he agreed to embrace her religion, it would not
be possible for him to marry her in the Church of England, that she at
last agreed to a registry marriage. Perhaps what finally decided her
was a letter she received from her sister, Susie, telling her not to
think of getting married until they had found out more about this
David Carson, than she had been able to tell her in her letter. Susie
said she would be returning to Gallows Corner the following week and
would like to meet this man and decide what she thought of him.
Knowing what a lovely girl her sister was, Caroline felt by doing so
she could be running the risk that David, once he set his eyes on
Susie, might change his mind about her so she told David to go into
Starminster and arrange the wedding as quickly as possible.
   That fitted in well with David's plans. In Starminster he
arranged for them to be married in three days' time. It was only on
the morning before they were to get married that he arrived at the
Manor House pretending to look a very harassed man.
   "Darling," he burst out with, "I fear we shall have to
postpone our marriage for a few days."
   "Why, David, why?" cried Caroline, feeling alarmed he had
changed his mind.
   "Well, dearest one, it is like this, when I left my apartment in
London for a short holiday I only drew from my bank enough cash to
last me about three weeks. The trouble now is, I left my cheque book
in my rooms and only recalled that I had done so about half an hour
ago. I must go back to London to get some more money, we cannot start
off on a honeymoon on the small amount I have left, and I've got to
pay my hotel bill in the morning. That is why I said we must postpone
our wedding until I get back."
   David Carson had no apartment in London, he had no cheque book.
He had carefully thought out the lie he had just told hoping the
reaction to it would be Caroline would refuse to have her wedding
postponed and offer to lend him money enough to last until they
returned from their honeymoon. If her reaction was not like that and
she just said, very well, go to London and get back as quickly as
possible, he would then just have to disappear from Gallows Corner for
ever leaving his hotel bill unpaid. Luckily her reaction was what he
had hoped it would be.
   "David, I simply won't agree to any postponement of our wedding
tomorrow. You are a silly to look so worried about the matter. I can
lend you whatever money you require until we return then you can pay
me back."
   "That is sweet of you to say that, sweetheart, but I hardly like
to borrow from you the large amount I shall require for our
honeymoon."
   David was continuing to play it up well.
   "Don't be absurd, darling, I can advance you any amount you ask
for," said Caroline. "Don't you know I am a very wealthy woman?"
   David pretended astonishment at this announcement.
   "Heavens! Carrie, I had no idea you were a wealthy woman.
Naturally I thought you must have some money to be able to pay your
share of the keep up of the Manor House.
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I shall serve them with tomatoes and olives, which I hope you will
enjoy."
   "I'm sure I shall. Your cooking's wonderful."
   Julia lingered on in the room for another few minutes, then she
ventured cautiously downstairs again. Adrian was now sitting with the
Portuguese engineer and his silent wife, and another man, discussing
seafaring matters in English. Julia attached herself to Lieutenant
Robson, reminding him he had promised to play dominoes with her again.
Their game lasted till nearly ten o'clock when Sen?4ora Gonzalez
commanded everybody inside for dinner. Adrian excused himself, said
"goodnight" with a meaningful glance which Julia chose to ignore,
and drove off in the jeep.
   Julia felt depressed and a trifle sad as Luis conveyed her to Don
Felipe's house on Saturday morning. Just before she left the Tafira,
a message had been delivered from the shipping company, instructing
her to be at their offices on the quay at seven o'clock on Monday
morning ready to embark in the Juno for Southampton, sailing
punctually at ten. As she looked out at the white sunlit streets, and
the palms and the flowers, with glimpses of the blue sea and the
golden beaches between the buildings, Julia knew she did not want to
leave all this so soon. Yet in another forty-eight hours her holiday
would be over, and she would be on her way back to the grey English
winter and all the worries of finding a new job and a roof over her
head. She sighed, thinking how unkind fate could be at times.
   The morning began just the same as the others. The old
flower-woman sat in her usual place, and as Julia mounted the steps to
the house, Alvaro opened the door and made his bow to her. Pepita was
wheeling a little wicker cart round the pool today, the white cat
sitting inside on a cushion. She rushed to meet her friend eagerly.
"Yoo-li-ah! Yoo-li-ah!"
   When she had swept her curtsey, and held out the lace-trimmed
flounce of her frock for admiration, Pepita led Julia off to help her
push the cart. Soon they were chattering away gaily. "El
helado," gurgled Pepita as the maid brought out two glass
dishes. "Ice-cream," Julia insisted. They both thought it quite
funny when they discovered chocolate was the same in both languages.
Suddenly Julia realised she was going to miss this little Spanish
child, so full of affection and the simple joy of life. It was
impossible to feel dull when Pepita was there.
   Julia said as much to Don Felipe when he came home.
   "I haven't the heart to say goodbye," she remarked as they
watched the maid pick up the little girl ready to carry her off to the
nursery. "I've enjoyed Pepita so much."
   "Ah, yes. You propose to sail home in the Juno, do you
not?"
   "That's right, alas. And you won't want me here tomorrow, as
it's Sunday, of course."
   "I must tell Pepita then," he said firmly. "You cannot be
allowed to part without exchanging your farewells. It would not be
courteous."
   He spoke rapidly in Spanish and the result was extraordinary.
Hastily the maid set the child down again and retreated into the
background. Pepita stood there staring at Julia with all the
happiness draining out of her pretty little face. Her black eyes
filled with anguish, the tears brimming over and coursing down her
cheeks. Without speaking a word, she flung herself upon Julia,
seizing the girl round the knees. When Julia bent to try and comfort
her, Pepita uttered a heartrending wail and then broke into a torrent
of excited Spanish punctuated by screams and sobs.
   "Pepita does not wish you to leave her," Don Felipe said
quietly. "She is desolate, as indeed I am myself."
   "This is awful," Julia exclaimed in consternation. "Do
please tell her to stop crying, Don Felipe. I can't bear it. If you
could explain it isn't that I really want to go home. I just have
to."
   Her father spoke to the child, but she went on weeping.
   "Yoo-li-ah! Yoo-li-ah!" she moaned beseechingly, still
clinging to the girl's knees and refusing to be lifted up.
   "Oh, dear!" Julia exclaimed. "Whatever can I do?"
   "You could remain in Las Palmas," Don Felipe pointed out.
"That would make my Pepita so happy again. It is rarely she finds a
companion who is as congenial to her as you obviously are."
   "But how can I stay?" Julia began. "I only wish I
could."
   "I should be only too delighted to engage you as governess for
Pepita," he answered. "You would soon acquire sufficient Spanish
to be able to help her with her first lessons. You could read to her,
and sing with her and so on. Enlarge her knowledge of English still
more. It would not be arduous, and naturally I would pay you an ample
salary. So will you not agree to spend the winter in Las Palmas, Miss
Barclay, and dry Pepita's tears?"
   Julia hesitated. It was certainly an exciting offer, far more
attractive than going back to London. She might continue to live at
the Hotel Tafira for the next few months, enjoying the climate and the
friendly beach and cafe?2 life. And there was Don Felipe himself,
the handsome man watching her now with an unaccustomed trace of
anxiety in his eyes. Feminine intuition told Julia he wanted her to
stay on for his own sake as well as Pepita's. It was flattering to
know a man like this one considered you important to him.
   She realised she was weakening, but then all at once she
remembered what she had heard the previous evening. Yet it was
probably no more than gossip that Mrs Henderson had repeated, and
what Sen?4ora Gonzalez had told her cast no reflection on Don Felipe
either. He could not be blamed for his father's state of mind.
Adrian had said she might be running into danger with him, but Adrian
could be wrong, and anyway it was no business of his what Julia
Barclay did. He had no right to dictate to her, behaving in that
high-handed fashion. She felt herself stiffening again as she
remembered his voice and manner. She would show Adrian he was
completely wrong, and stupidly old-fashioned at that. She found Don
Felipe fascinating from every aspect. She lifted her eyes to smile at
him now.
   "You make it sound too tempting," she surrendered. "Very
well, then, if you do really think I'm capable of being Pepita's
teacher. I've never done anything of that sort before, you know."
   "I am quite satisfied," he replied. "So you will stay, Miss
Barclay?"
   "Yes, I will. And thank you ... Do please tell Pepita. I
can't bear to see her like this."
   She watched the child's expression change as her father spoke to
her. She ceased to sob and the light stole back into her face again.
For a few moments she gazed up at Julia doubtfully, incredulously.
Then gradually the dark eyes grew bright once more, and even began to
sparkle as was their wont. Julia lifted her up, and she immediately
wound her small arms round the girl's neck, nuzzling her cheek,
snuggling against her hair. Don Felipe smiled as he watched them.
   "Pepita is restored," he said. "We are both most grateful to
you."
   There was a rustling sound behind them, and Julia half-turned to
see Don?4a Beatriz standing on the tiles. It was the first time
Julia had ever met the older woman outside the dining-room. One
moment Don?4a Beatriz was in her vision, a tall black figure staring
at the little scene. The next she was gone again. Julia was almost
convinced her eyes must have deceived her. Pepita was finally carried
off to the nursery, and as Don Felipe led the way indoors to luncheon,
Don?4a Beatriz was already there, sitting in her accustomed chair at
the foot of the long table. She bowed gravely to Julia, acknowledging
the girl's greeting, and began to serve in her usual silence. Julia
had already realised there was something quite off-beat about Don?4a
Beatriz, so she was careful to address only Don Felipe at her side
throughout the meal.
   They discussed the fiesta, which he waved aside as a trifling
celebration in Las Palmas.
   "In the country it is much more important," he said.
"Harvest is something for which we offer gratitude indeed there. I
shall be out at my own estate in the morning, marking the day with my
workpeople. My land is around the village of San Bernardo, a
beautiful valley with many foothills. I have a large house there
beside the river. You must see it one day."
   "Yes, I should like to."
   "You have not penetrated the interior of the island yet? No?
It will surprise you. The mountains are so majestic they take the
breath away when they are viewed for the first time."
   "You've another house at Tojeda, haven't you?" Julia
remembered. "On the cliffs- somebody was telling me-" Then she
stopped abruptly, realising what she was saying.
   Don Felipe had begun to peel himself a peach. He completed the
delicate operation before he answered. Then he laid down his silver
knife and looked at Julia directly as he spoke.
   "So. People have talked about me. I wonder what else they said
about Tojeda. No, do not trouble to tell me, Miss Barclay. I can
guess. I know what scandal is tossed about in the cafe?2s and
hotels."
   Julia felt a trifle uncomfortable.
   "I didn't really pay great attention," she began, but
imperiously he cut her short.
   "We will discuss this matter later," he said, "when we may be
private. Now tell me, have you been to the aquariums yet? ..."
   As soon as the meal ended, Don?4a Beatriz slipped away as usual
and Don Felipe indicated that Julia was to follow him.
   "We will go to my study," he decided. "I have to speak to
you about Pepita's education among other things."
   He led Julia to a wing of the house she had not seen before.
Like all the rest, this room was richly furnished, with handsome red
brocade curtains, and a carved mahogany desk and chairs. Don Felipe
unlocked a drawer and handed Julia an envelope.
   "Your salary to date," he explained. "On Monday we begin our
new arrangement, of course. I had thought ..." He named a figure
which Julia knew was generous in the extreme. "So you will be here
at the same time then. The car will call for you as usual."
   "Thank you very much, Don Felipe. I'll do my best."
   She waited, thinking he was going to talk to her about his
daughter, and what he wanted a governess to do, but Don Felipe made no
mention of Pepita now. Instead he frowned to himself for a moment, as
though lost in thought. Then he lifted his head and asked quietly:
   "I wonder what tales you have heard about me, Miss Barclay.
Could you not repeat them to me?"
   "Well, I don't quite know-" Julia hesitated.
   Don Felipe twisted his lips into a wry smile.
   "It was obviously unflattering to me," he remarked.
   "But there is no need to be embarrassed, Miss Barclay. I know
what is said on the island. Loose tongues wag here just as they do
everywhere else. Gran Canaria is certainly a paradise, but it has its
serpents too."
   He paused to consider her. Julia returned his glance
sympathetically, appreciating that it was not easy for this man to
bare his innermost feelings. Don Felipe continued:
   "You have plainly heard uncharitable comments about me, so you
must permit me to tell you the facts myself. Seven years ago I
married the daughter of one of my fellow landowners, Don Miguel de
Francia. We were deeply in love and very happy. After Pepita's
birth, the doctors informed my wife that she could bear no more
children. Naturally it was a tremendous grief. We had hoped for sons
to carry on our name.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
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<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
The best thing we can do seems to be to concentrate on work,
doesn't it?"
   "Under Rufus Horgan!" he said.
   Andrea flinched. For a moment she had forgotten that, and now
the sting in his voice made her think he was trying to hurt her. Not
that she could have blamed him. Then she remembered how he had been
passed over, and realised how he must feel. And on top of that to
have almost won her, only to see for himself how the idea suddenly
revolted her. No, she couldn't blame him for wanting to hurt her!
   "Under him, as you say," she agreed dully. "It's life, I
suppose. And now- goodbye."
   "Will you be here or at the house tomorrow?"
   "Here- to begin with. Goodbye."
   On the second attempt, she got away. She could not bear to let
him know Mark had not made any definite arrangements about her going
to his home again.
   Perhaps never, she thought, when at last she was in her own room,
staring at her white face in the mirror. Perhaps she had given
herself away too blatantly, and he would keep clear of her. He had
Pauline to interpret his wants, so perhaps any typist would do-
   Next day, a sickening desert of hours in the office, it seemed
she was right. There was no phone call for her. Normally she could
have telephoned the house to ask how he was, but now she was too
ashamed. Then, late in the afternoon, when she had ceased hoping to
hear his voice every time her telephone rang, Gus answered a call.
She stiffened, listening.
   "Oh, it's you, Mark?" she heard him say. "Still making-out?
Fine! Something you want us to do here?"
   Andrea trembled. She kept her pencil moving and her head bent,
but she was straining to hear every word.
   "Oh, hell!" was all Gus said at first. The receiver crackled
for a while, and then: "Well, we'll go through with it. You know
you can trust Andrea and me. The guy needn't know we hate his guts
for coming here instead of you. You want me in on your first
conference? O.K. Thanks a lot-"
   Mark must have said goodbye then, for the American put down the
receiver. She felt him looking across at her, but would not look up
until he said:
   "Horgan's coming tomorrow. I guess I'd better go and break it
to the boys in the lab."
   He eased himself up and ambled off. By the time he came back,
she had taken a grip on her whirling emotions, managed to sound cool
when she spoke.
   "Gus," she said, "what about that leakage business? Does
Dr. Horgan have to know?"
   "He'll have to know I suppose. It'll all come out in the
handover. Now, if I could just trip over one of my own feet, or
something, and didn't have to meet him tomorrow over at Mark's
place-"
   "Don't be absurd. You have to keep your job."
   "And I have to bring him back and induct him here, and the
scientist in me sure hates it. Understand?"
   "Yes. And I'm sure Mark does, too. I'm sure everyone feels the
same."
   "They're taking it badly in the lab. You know, I think Mark's
latest theory about the leakage- that it was just coincidence- was
right. I can't see any of those boys letting out a word of what
passes here, even if they know- which, thanks to the system, none of
us really does."
   "I think it's all over, anyway. Any instructions for me
tomorrow, while you're away?"
   "Just see the place is all spruced up and no dust on the
files," he said with an attempt at an understanding grin. "And
have one of the girls from the typing school warned she may be needed.
Mark will want you with him and Horgan quite a bit. I've to run the
show here until he has everything sewn up. Though how I shall do it,
I just don't know."
   "You'll manage perfectly," she said automatically.
   He said nothing more. Next morning she was in charge of the
office; Gus didn't come back for lunch, which she had a vision of
Pauline serving to the three scientists.
   Andrea ate in the canteen hastily, but forcing herself to mix
with the other girls as though today was just like any other day- as
it was to them. The shock and sensation of Mark's blindness was over,
and unless his successor turned out to be young and attractive they
were barely interested.
   The moment she glimpsed Dr. Horgan through the office window,
getting out of Gus' car, she knew he was no heart-throb. He wore
rimless glasses, was short, conventionally dressed and
dedicated-looking. Mark, without his height and personal magnetism,
she supposed bitterly.
   Then the two men came into the office, and Gus was introducing
her. Dr. Horgan's eyes behind his spectacles were friendly and his
smile kind.
   "Dr. Pentland told me about you, Miss Holme," he said,
shaking hands. "I'm sure we shall work well as a team- and I'm to
have the benefit of sitting-in on your work with him for a time. The
idea is that we meet and work at his home in the mornings and I remain
behind for fuller discussion in the afternoon. Today I'm simply
looking round-"
   Gus led the way, showing him what had been Mark's desk and his
small inner office which he had used for highly secret work. Then
they went off to the lab and the other departments, and Andrea could
drop the forced smile from her lips and stare into space.
   It sounded as though she might never again be alone with Mark.
   Why should she want to be? she asked herself furiously. Why
offer herself again and again for punishment?
   The door opened and Gus came back.
   "Leaving him to get acquainted," he explained.
   "Did you see Pauline?"
   He blinked, looking at her vaguely. "Did I? Sure. She served
us a pretty good lunch.
   "She's certainly settled down. Old Mark seems to rely on her
quite a bit."
   Even if the words were not meant as a barb they drove deep into
Andrea's heart.
CHAPTER 14
Talk Of Pity
   FOR Andrea the next few days were terrible. Not only for
herself, but in knowing Mark's agony in gradually transferring his
affairs, including his confidential secretary, to the older man.
Particularly the agony of those talks from which even she was
excluded, when he confided the highly secret details of his
discoveries.
   The only way she could get through the days was by turning
herself into a sort of robot and trying not to think- not to feel
when she saw from Mark's expression that his head was aching with
strain. Not to care that behind the very dark glasses, that gave him
such a distinguished look, were eyes that could not see.
   It was about ten days before Dr. Horgan worked in the factory
office, when he dictated a few letters after returning from Mark's
home. And then one afternoon Horgan came soon after lunch. Andrea
saw him drive up and get out briskly.
   "Dr. Pentland has some jobs for you, Miss Holme," he said,
striding in. "Call in a typist for me and go over to him, will you?
I may not get back there today- it depends on the work here."
   Andrea telephoned the typing pool. As she did so, she met Gus'
eyes. This is the take-over, they said, as plainly as speech, and she
knew that it was true. This might be the very last time she would go
to the Pentlands' home to work for Mark...
   It was a lovely afternoon, mockingly lovely. Once the
rectangular steel-and-glass blocks of the factory were behind her and
she was cycling along the short-cut, she might have been in the heart
of unspoilt country.
   There was a drone of bees in the roses over the porch of the
house, and a great bowl of half-opened roses on the old chest in the
hall. Pauline, Andrea thought, as she turned into Mark's office- and
then the flicker of jealousy roared up into a great burning flame.
For Pauline was in the office with Mark- very close to him. Andrea
had a horrible impression that they sprang apart as she entered.
   "Oh-" the blonde exclaimed, turning. "I didn't hear you."
   For a moment Andrea thought she was going to burst into tears so
overwhelming was the certainty that all her vague feelings about
Pauline and Mark had been only too well founded.
   And then her throbbing pulses steadied, for she saw there were
books scattered over the carpet between them, and an overturned bowl
of roses. Pink, cream and scarlet, they were lying everywhere.
   "Dr. Horgan said you wanted me-" she got out.
   "I do." Mark turned his head in her direction, while his
hands groped for the back of a nearby chair. "But I've just been
extremely clumsy, trying to find my way around. Knocked something
over and turned the whole room into a shambles, apparently!"
   "Oh, no- it's not so bad as that." Pauline stooped and began
dabbing at the water on the carpet with a scarf she had pulled from
her neck. "It's just a good thing I hadn't left to do your mother's
shopping before you shouted for me."
   "Don't worry. Andrea could have cleared up."
   "Why yes, of course. But I didn't know she was coming. It's
all my fault, Mark, not warning you where the flowers were."
   "Well, leave it, now, or you'll miss your bus."
   "Yes. I'd better get another pair of gloves-"
   The girl was wearing her outdoor coat- fabric gloves, and big
china earrings that, as usual, warred with the rest of her outfit.
She was strangely breathless. As for Mark, unless it was a trick of
the light, he looked very white.
   Was it true that Pauline had dashed in in response to a shout
from him when everything cascaded down off the top of the bookcase?
Or had there been a love scene, when some clumsy movement of Mark's
might have caused the accident? There was certainly a strange tension
in the air.
   "You don't mind fetching a cloth from the kitchen?" Pauline
asked. "I simply must run!"
   "I'll see to it. Don't worry."
   Andrea wheeled and went off, leaving them to say what they liked
to each other. But Pauline came out at once. Andrea heard her go
racing upstairs, then the rapid opening and shutting of a drawer and
her footsteps coming down again.
   "So sorry to trouble you!" she called, turning her fair head
to flash the other girl a smile as they passed in the hall.
   As Pauline ran out and down the drive, Andrea braced herself and
walked back into the office. Mark was still standing where she had
left him- she had to go down almost at his feet, to mop up the water.
   "I'll rearrange the flowers and I'd better get a towel to dry
the books," she said, trying to sound casual and failing. There
was something in the atmosphere! It could only mean she had
blundered in on a love scene, however unpremeditated and brief it
might have been.
   "Do, please," Mark said curtly.
   It seemed to take hours of coming and going, and all the time he
stood there, until he must have known by her silence that it was all
cleared up.
   "Have you finished?" he asked. "Sorry to be such a clumsy
oaf. Better get down to work now, hadn't we? It's really only a few
personal letters."
   "I'm ready. Aren't you going to sit down?"
   "Thanks, I'd rather stand-"
   He paced up and down, feeling his way by the chairs that were
always strategically placed for him. His mind was obviously
distracted- these letters to people who had written sympathetically
about his tragedy seemed to give him more trouble than the most
intricate scientific calculations.
# 2
<472 TEXT P1>
   Gaby touched his wrist. "Now that we are in my country, will
you allow me to choose for you a really French meal?"
   "Of course."
   As she gave the order to the waiter, using her hands so
expressively it was difficult for Rob to imagine why she had singled
him out. She could surely have had any man she wished. She was
looking very young tonight, and, as usual, indescribably beautiful, in
a simple strapless dress of a green and white silky cotton. Her
shoulders and face were still tanned, and in this light the shade of
her hair had deepened to a burnt honey.
   She met his gaze. "You are looking at me again, Rob."
   "I was just thinking how lovely you are. You make me say all
the things I never thought I could say aloud."
   "Not even to Diana?" There was a glint in her eye.
   "We won't mention Diana tonight," he said abruptly. "I don't
want to make comparisons." He sounded pompous, but he did not want
to be made to feel guilty this evening, of all times.
   "No, of course not." She was silent while the first course of
steaming artichokes, soaked in a buttery sauce, was served.
   Then her smile dazzled him. "I hope you have a good appetite
tonight, Rob. I have ordered a lot of things."
   "I'll eat them somehow, then we'll walk it off afterwards."
   There was blue trout next, then a young chicken that had been
cooked in wine and herbs, finally a platter of cheese and fruit.
   Rob took a deep breath. "I think that was the best meal I've
ever eaten. I think of beans on toast in Birmingham and shudder. Or
spaghetti. I won't like going to Italy!"
   "Will you ever go back, Rob?" she asked, skinning a peach with
absorbed skill.
   "Not if I can help it. That phase of my life is over."
   "And the future, Rob, what do you look for in the future?"
   "Whatever comes," he said lightly. "This is a see-saw
business. I'll stay at the top just as long as I can, then try to
accept defeat as gracefully as I can."
   "You'll stay at the top for years, Rob. We both will. I know
that," she said vehemently. "Before we are finished, everyone in
Paris, Rome and New York will have heard all about Rob Martin, the
famous British singer." She leaned across the table so that the
perfume of her hair drifted up to him. "With the two of us in
partnership, we can go a long way. You do believe that?"
   The expression in her eyes was hidden from the lamplight. He
looked at her for a long time. Then he said slowly, "Yes, I believe
that. I believe that, with you, I could do just about anything anyone
asked me."
   She sat back smiling triumphantly. "We shall sing our way round
the world, Rob. Perhaps we shall be invited to those cities we have
only read about. People will talk of us as they did of Nelson Eddy
and Jeannette Macdonald. That was a long time ago, I know, but no
singing partnership achieved quite the fame they did. But we will,
Rob, we will," she ended fiercely, and she gripped his hand as
though she would never let it go.
   Abruptly he said, "I'll pay the bill and we'll walk down to the
sea. I want to see if it's as clear as they say it is."
   They took off their shoes, and the sand was soft and smooth
beneath their feet. By the time they came to the sea the lights of
the terrace looked a long way off. Rob bent and put his hand in the
water. It was warm and still.
   Gaby said impishly, "Let's paddle. No one can see us from
there."
   Rob tucked up his trousers and she kicked her nylons towards the
high, white sandals. They waded into the shallow water.
   "Look across there." He pointed the way they had driven
earlier. The whole coast was like a strip of twinkling stars. "We
could be on an island, cut off from all those people there. In fact,
I wish we were. I don't want to go back."
   "Neither do I, Rob. If you are going to stay, then I shall stay
with you."
   He turned towards her. Her face looked very pale in the
darkness. A strange, burning feeling was creeping over his body. He
felt as though he were poised on the brink of some new, wonderful
experience.
   "Gaby..."
   "Yes, Rob?"
   "Oh, Gaby, Gaby!"
   Her lips were cool and smooth under his, and her cheeks were
like silk. He held her, wanting to retain this moment all his life,
the two of them in the warm, shimmering darkness, rocking gently to
and fro in the rustling water.
   When at last he released her, he was still feeling dizzy from the
impact. Without speaking they gripped each other's hands, and walked
back to the dry sand and sat down.
   Gaby started to rub at her feet with a wisp of a handkerchief.
She had amazingly small feet. But everything about her was petite.
   She said at last, "I've been waiting a long time for you to do
that, Rob."
   "You have?" He was amazed. Then his arm came round her bare
shoulders. "I suppose I've wanted it too, but I've been afraid."
   "Afraid?"
   "Yes. Afraid that you would push me away, and then everything
would have been over before it started. I couldn't have stood that.
I think I felt this way about you the moment I saw you at the Savoy
party. People laugh about love at first sight, but sometimes it's
true- only you don't see it at the time."
   "Then you do love me?" she said slowly.
   "Oh, yes. You've hit me like... like a boomerang."
   "And what about...?"
   "... Diana? Yes, I know." Was it only this morning that he
had told Diana he loved her? He had believed it then, and in an odd
sort of way it was still true. He did love Diana, but it was nothing
like this flame that blazed within him when he was with Gaby. The man
who first said there were many faces of love was right. He went on
slowly, "I don't know what to say about her. I can't let her down
just like that, yet one day it will have to come. I can see that
now."
   "Rob." She rested her head against his shoulder. Her perfume
had none of the gentle scent of Diana's. It was some excitingly
subtle blend that tore at his senses. "We have our careers to think
of first of all. I think it would be best to go for a little while as
we were, seeing more of each other perhaps, getting to know each
other, but doing nothing definite. A romance can do no harm to our
publicity at the moment, but marriage must wait. Don't you agree?"
   "I suppose so. But it's you I want above everything." He was
startled that she put their publicity so firmly before their private
life, but she was probably right; there was still time to get to know
more about each other. Aloud he said, "I never imagined anything
like this would happen when we both were invited to Monte Carlo."
   "And would you still have come if you had guessed, Rob?" she
asked quietly.
   He smiled into the darkness. "Yes, I would. Of course I would,
that's the glorious part of it. Oh, Gaby!" He turned and kissed
her again, running his hand through her hair. "I think I must be the
luckiest man in the world."
   They lay on the sand a little longer, talking, listening to the
sound of the sea, and the breeze rustling through the pine trees
behind them, and just dreaming. Then Gaby said, "Rob, if you want
to stop for a few moments at Cannes, perhaps we had better go.
Tomorrow night will be exhausting. I shall never be able to face
it."
   He jumped up. "I had forgotten all about tomorrow. How selfish
of me. It doesn't seem quite real somehow, after this."
   He drove along the coast in high spirits, their voices joining in
the liquid melody of their new song. At Cannes he parked near the
harbour, and they found a pavement cafe?2 and sat for a while,
watching the boats and drinking black coffee.
   "Funny," he mused. "This is what I always imagined myself
doing in the South of France, sitting idly, drinking coffee, watching
the people and the boats. And aren't some of the boats fabulous?"
   They lit up the harbour, some miniature liners, launches, speed
boats and small, colourful sailing dinghies. They seemed joined in a
community of their own.
   He and Gaby watched in silence, holding hands. For the moment
everything had been said. They were content merely to be together.
Reluctantly then, they went back to the car and to the hotel.
   Outside Gaby's room he said, "I wonder what time band call will
be?"
   "I've heard in the morning, but I'm not sure."
   "Then we'll have time for a swim in the afternoon. Is that a
date?"
   "It's a date. Goodnight, Rob, and thank you." She put up her
face for his kiss. "Sweet dreams."
   "They'll be sweet all right. I shall be dreaming of you."
   He drew back the curtains and let the sea breeze in before he got
into bed. He lay awake for a long time, thinking about the evening
and the whole day that lay ahead. It was all too short, but he
intended to hold on to it tightly with both hands.
   He breakfasted alone, learning with disappointment that Gaby was
having hers in her room. He had been particularly looking forward to
this, breakfast in the cool of the morning on the broad terrace,
looking straight out to sea. There would have been something
particularly intimate about it. He toyed with the warm rolls and
cherry jam, but drank two large cups of coffee.
   Their call came about eleven o'clock. He went up and knocked on
Gaby's door.
   "I missed you this morning," he said, when they drew apart.
   "You'll have to get used to my bad morning habits," she teased
him. "I never get up unless I have to. Even for someone like
you."
   "I'll try to remember. Shall we go now?" He reached for her
hand. She looked this morning as though she had stepped straight out
of the sunshine. She wore a full white skirt of some silky material
and a yellow top. She looked slim and tiny and he badly wanted to
protect her.
   They worked hard for the rest of the morning. The producer
wanted nothing less than perfection. Again and again the same acts
were called for a repeat. Rob watched, amazed, as many more
professional stars than himself were made to run through their words
or their music five or six times.
   It was a cosmopolitan gathering of stars. There were English,
American, French, Italian, and a couple from Brazil. Rob began by
feeling overawed before realizing that most of them had probably come
up the same way as he had.
   The rehearsal finished at last and they all trooped in to lunch,
arguing good-humouredly about how the evening's performance should be
staged. Rob did not have a chance to be alone with Gaby until after
three o'clock when most of the others had gone to their rooms to rest.
   "Still game for a swim?" he asked.
   "I'll fetch my things and be with you in five minutes."
   For half an hour they splashed about in the water, more clear and
blue than Rob had believed possible. Then they lay in long
deck-chairs, dozing under their striped umbrellas.
   Rob reached for Gaby's hand after a few minutes, but she was
asleep, looking as deeply at peace as a young child.
   He lay back in his chair.
# 24
<473 TEXT P11>
CHAPTER ONE
Southern Ireland August, 194
   DUSK WAS softening the coastline of County Kerry as Diana
West turned reluctantly from her window to go downstairs.
   She hesitated on the landing, remembering that Gregory disliked
cre?3pe-soled <SIC> brogues and tweeds, and knowing that he would
make some barbed remark about her wearing her
"Lady-Bountiful-uniform" in the gracious drawing-room of Rosebrae.
Six months of being Mrs. Gregory West had taught Diana that the
only thing to do was to grow a protective shell and to let her
husband's arrowed words glance off unnoticed. Not that they hurt any
the less for being ignored; sometimes the ache and the bewilderment
and the disillusion was so fierce that the future became a burden to
be endured and never never a happiness to be anticipated.
   Now, her young mouth set and a bleak expression in her dark brown
eyes, she went down to where an elderly manservant was beckoning to
her from the hall.
   "You're late," he reproved. "I was nearly coming to fetch
you. Come in here a minute, Miss Diana, there's a thing I have to
show you before you go in there."
   He nodded towards the drawing-room and then steered her into the
unlit butler's pantry next door.
   "But, Fergus-"
   "2Wheesht! Stay here- I'll be right back."
   With a faint smile Diana leaned on the table in front of her and
prepared to wait as Fergus had ordered. He had been her father's
batman in the First World War and for twenty years after that he had
bullied and served and adored the whole family, with the exception of
his master's sister Miss Charlotte Cavendish. "A poor fool woman,"
was the kindest thing he had ever said of her, and angry tears stood
in his eyes when his master's will was read and he heard that his
beloved and orphaned Diana was left in the care of Miss Charlotte.
His dislike and distrust were returned in full measure by that lady
and by Gregory West, but he was Diana's man and she would as soon do
without an arm as do without her oldest friend, Fergus Burke.
   A moment after Fergus left the pantry Diana became aware of a bar
of light in the dimness, and moving along a bit she saw that the
serving hatch was slightly open at one side giving a narrow view of
the drawing-room. Without curiosity because it was such a familiar
scene, Diana watched her aunt presiding behind the tea-tray.
Firelight gleamed on silver and fine china, and lamplight flattered
the smooth skin and fading fair hair of Miss Charlotte.
   "Diana's late again," she said, passing a plate of hot
buttered scones to Gregory. "Really, we don't see much of her at all
these days."
   He shrugged. "She's probably taking soup or whatever it is to
her ghastly villagers. Beats me how she can bear to enter their
hovels!"
   "Do try not to be any more ignorant than you already are!"
Miss Charlotte snapped. "You seem to have taken all your ideas about
what you call 'the landed gentry' from Victorian novels. Diana has
lots of responsibilities here and you ought to help her out with some
of them instead of sitting around here like an ornament. And you
needn't glare at me like that! We know each other too well for either
of us to put on an act when we're alone, and if I hadn't had a soft
spot for your father long ago I would have left you to go to the devil
in your own way!"
   Diana drew back from the hatch, her mind a riot of emotions as
she realised that she was deliberately eavesdropping and that her aunt
and Gregory weren't strangers as they had led everyone to believe.
   Fergus gripped her arm and she jumped. "This is no time for
party manners!" he hissed. "Many a choice bit I've heard here and
I thought it was time you heard it too. They're in a 2girning mood
today and that's why I wanted you down earlier, so keep your ears
2skint!"
   Without a scuffle Diana couldn't get away from the determined
Fergus, and almost against her will she looked once more into the
drawing-room.
   "And another thing," Miss Charlotte was saying, "we didn't
finish what we were talking about when tea was brought in. Diana will
soon be twenty-one and I have no intention of being done out of my
share of our bargain just because you can't hold her."
   Gregory laughed softly and smoothed his brown wavy hair. "I can
get any woman, and keep her. Every woman needs to be shown who's
master and in the end they love it, and Diana's no different."
   "Oh yes she is. You can't class girls like Diana with the
'women' you've known. She was fresh home from finishing school-
and heaven knows it might as well have been an enclosed convent for
all she knew of life- you swept her off her feet, and she was all
prepared to love you for ever. But what happens? You seem to have
frightened her to death, because she's just a shadow of the girl she
was six months ago. I'm warning you, Gregory, when a Cavendish digs
her toes in neither you nor any man living will move her."
   "You're just getting anxious about your twenty thousand quid,"
Gregory muttered, but some of the assurance had gone from his voice.
"Oh all right, just to please you I'll start being the niminy-piminy
lover she seems to expect, but honestly, Charlotte, she's such an
innocent and she always looks so- so untouched that any man would
lose patience and want to bring her down to earth."
   "Not any man," Miss Charlotte said coldly, and anger
glinted in her pale eyes. "Your father may have been a bit of a
rogue but he was also a gentleman, and that you will never be. He
would have kept his sights fixed on the Cavendish wealth and he would
have had Diana eating out of his hand until she would have begged him
to take over the management of her money when she was twenty-one. I
begin to regret that I groomed you for this part for which you have
turned out to be so manifestly unsuited, but if you don't hand over to
me that twenty thousand pounds within a month or two after Diana's
birthday be very sure that all the regrets will be yours."
   A wave of nausea hit Diana and she bent over to rest her clammy
forehead on her hands. Beside her, Fergus muttered black oaths and
heaped imprecations on the two conspirators, his hand resting gently
on her bowed head. Then the bell tinkled above their heads and he
smoothed his jacket before going into the drawing-room.
   "I'll say you're not home yet," he whispered. "You'll need
time to think. But 2lassie, I had to do it, I just had to do it."
   Left alone, Diana straightened and looked dully at the hatch. No
one ever remembered that it was there as it was never used. On the
other side it looked like part of the white panelling, as did the one
on the opposite wall of the pantry which led to the dining-room and
which was used every day. Neither Miss Charlotte nor Gregory were
welcome in Fergus's domain, and it was unlikely that either of them
had ever been inside his pantry.
   Knowing that she didn't want to talk to anyone, not even to
Fergus, Diana ran quietly across the hall to the garden-room and
taking the first coat she could find she left the house by the side
door. Clouds obscured what little light there was in the sky, but
Diana knew every path in this part of Kerry and almost blindly she
made her way to the hill above Whitewater Bay. The bay was a quiet
anchorage on a rocky part of coast, but privacy was jealously guarded
by Captain James Wallace who owned the biggest estate in the area, and
no villager from Morne ever went near the little beach.
   Diana didn't know- and at the moment she didn't care- if
Captain Wallace had ever seen her on the hillside or not, but she
never did any harm just by sitting on the sheltered side of the big
grey rock below the skyline. The slope in front of her was steep but
it wasn't very far down to the beach where the waves swished gently on
the shingle.
   How long she sat there she never knew, thoughts chasing endlessly
through her mind.
   "Sold," she whispered once. "Sold like a sheep at a Kerry
Fair. But it wasn't my fault- I've never come up against people like
my aunt and Gregory- oh, of course it was my own fault, dreaming
of a knight in shining armour and thinking I'd found him in Gregory-
how funny that is- Gregory! a new-style Sir Lancelot!- it's really
terribly funny when you think about it-"
   And suddenly the laughter which shook her turned to tears and she
rested her cheek against the cold grey rock and cried as she hadn't
done since the death of her father ten years before.
   It was the memory of her father which calmed her at last, and she
sat motionless as she recalled his unfailing light-heartedness even
when the pain of an old war wound racked him; his deep love for her,
and his sorrow that she had never known the mother who had died when
she was an infant; his affection for his wife's beautiful home in
Kerry and for the people of Morne whom he viewed with tolerant and
amused English eyes.
   I'm English really, Diana thought, and it's in England I should
be now and not skulking over here in a neutral country when my own
people are at war with Germany. Or I could go over the border to
Ulster and try to do something useful for a change instead of running
an estate on more money than I'll ever know what to do with.
   Money. Her expression hardened as she thought of the two who
were haggling so shabbily in the Rosebrae drawing-room. Well, they
were going to be disappointed this time. There would be no control of
her inheritance by Gregory, and no twenty thousand pounds for Aunt
Charlotte who no doubt felt she had earned it by introducing the son
of an old love to her niece.
   Diana tensed suddenly as a low murmur of voices reached her and
then she heard the crunch of heavy boots on the stones of the pathway
just above her head. She kept very still as two men passed by, aware
that Miss Diana of Rosebrae- few people had ever called her Mrs.
West- would look rather silly if she were found on the Captain's land
with her eyes red and her face all streaked with tears. Gregory
hadn't gone down well with the locals but there was no need to
proclaim her own misery in front of them even if they had proved to be
better judges of a man than she had been.
   She looked cautiously round the edge of the rock beside her and
saw that against the lightening sky the two men stood out fairly
clearly and that they both carried rifles in the crooks of their arms
as they patrolled the little headland.
   Diana frowned. The voices had had a clipped intonation unlike
the soft speech of Kerry, but of course Captain Wallace was a law unto
himself and there was no one to say him nay if he wished to employ
non-local gamekeepers and to have them patrol his bounds after dark.
But such doings were alien to a simple place like Morne, and without
knowing why, Diana was glad that her coat was one she had bought and
worn at school in Paris, a soft grey wool which blended with the rock
against which she was leaning.
# 21
<474 TEXT P12>
He realised that she was also wiping her eyes. He hated having to
hurt her, but he had known ever since he had announced his engagement
to Hyacinth, that he would have to talk seriously to his ex-wife. He
had suspected her of wanting to renew their relationship before she
accepted Charles Rawlings, but afterwards he had believed that she had
found happiness with the bluff sailor and he'd been genuinely glad-
until this holiday in Singapore. Then it had occurred to him that she
had not got over their disastrous marriage.
   "I'll- try and make Charles a good wife," she said when she
had controlled herself and turned to face him. "He is- devoted to
me, and I know he will make an excellent husband. I have already told
him about you, and- and he is prepared to forget it. He believes
that it is possible for two people situated as we are to have a
platonic friendship."
   "And you know that's true, Biddy."
   She shook her head.
   "I don't think that a man and woman who have lived together can
ever be friends; sex is bound to enter into their relationship....
Perhaps you are right." She made a determined effort to speak
naturally. "It would have been a bad mistake to try and pick up the
threads again. You always were a devil, Nick, and I'm sorry for the
girl you marry, whether she is Hyacinth or- someone else."
   "If it is not Hyacinth it will be no one," he assured her.
"But meanwhile, I must find her. If only I had a clue where to look
for her."
   "Has it occurred to you that when you told her about- us it was
such a shock to her that she has run away."
   "If that had been the case she would have left a letter or a
message, surely?" he protested.
   "She might have wanted to punish you; to make you half frantic
on her account, and if so, she has succeeded admirably."
   "I am sure Hyacinth would not be so childish," he retorted.
   "It's just possible that she did leave a letter and it
hasn't been delivered yet," said Bridget. "What about Tu Kota-
perhaps he knows what has happened to her?"
   "As soon as Charles comes back I'll send for him."
   The Vice-Admiral returned a few minutes later, his face very
grave.
   "Miss Chalmers did leave the hotel last night," he said.
"She was seen going down the servants' staircase. Those on duty
took her to be a Eurasian sewing maid; she went out very quickly and
spoke to no one. One of the boys who was just going off at the time
saw her walking to the corner of Empress Place, where she got into a
ricksha."
   "Did he notice the number of the ricksha?" asked Nick eagerly.
   "He says not."
   "Then- he probably recognised the coolie who drew it? These
boys know the ricksha coolies by sight. Once we can find the fellow
we shall also find where Hyacinth went. There's no time to be
lost."
   "The boy says that the coolie was a stranger to him; he had
never seen him before. I think he was speaking the truth; there was
no reason for him to lie."
   "Damn!" Nick pounded his clenched fist on the table. "If
only he had kept his eyes open! In which direction did the ricksha
go?"
   "He didn't wait to see; there was a great crowd in the streets
last night, owing to the Chinese festival, and it was easy enough to
lose sight of a ricksha. I am afraid, Nick, old fellow, that we shall
have to ask the police to help us, for there has been a very sinister
development."
   "You- mean...?"
   "That Malay boy, Tu Kota, is missing; he, too, didn't sleep in
the hotel last night; he has not been seen since just before midnight,
and he told no one where he was going."
=2
   "There you are!" exclaimed Bridget. "Hyacinth was not
alone; granted she's run away, but she took Tu Kota with her; and I
can assure you that she'll be quite safe with him. Don't look at me
like that, Charles, I'd trust that boy anywhere. He is perfectly
reliable. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Hyacinth has returned to
Lipur."
   "But she wouldn't do that. How could she, when your brother is
there alone!"
   "Perhaps that's why," said Bridget, then as both men looked
blank, she cried. "Oh, how stupid you two are! Didn't Edward
propose to her? She may have decided to accept him after all, and
he'll lose no time in marrying her; he won't give her a chance to slip
through his fingers again."
   "We must get in touch with Lipur at once!" cried Nick.
=3
   But it was not so easy to get in touch with Lipur; there had been
a heavy storm twenty-four hours previously, and telephonic
communications with the district had been cut, and with Pekama. Nick
managed to get on to the nearest estate and they promised to send a
runner to Lipur with a message for Edward Grampian, and when they
received his reply, telephone it at once to Singapore. Meanwhile,
Charles Rawlings systematically called on all the people Hyacinth had
known, and questioned the officers who had dined with them the
previous night, but none of them had seen Hyacinth, nor could give any
clue to account for her disappearance. It was a complete mystery.
   When the following day had dawned and she had still not returned
and there was no news of her, both the men realised that they must
approach the police. Nick had not slept all night and looked haggard;
he was so restless that he couldn't bear to sit still. Even Bridget
was no longer suggesting that the girl had been caught out in an
escapade; if she had been she'd have been back long ago.
   "But there's still a chance that she went to Lipur," she
insisted. "And you mustn't worry too much, Nick. If Tu Kota is with
her; he'll look after her."
   "The boy who saw her get into the ricksha said she was alone."
   "It may not have been Hyacinth; he couldn't swear to it. It may
really have been one of the Eurasian sewing maids."
   "He said she was wearing a light coat and a gauzy scarf round
her head, and those are two of the articles missing from Hyacinth's
wardrobe."
   "It may be just a coincidence," said Bridget. "I shouldn't
pin too much faith on that. Wait until we have heard from Lipur."
   But Charles Rawlings agreed with Nick that they could not afford
to wait, and he offered to go to the police. He knew them and could
impress upon them the need for as little publicity as possible,
though, of course, if publicity would help to find the girl, then they
must employ it.
   The girls and Nick should have returned to the country today, but
with Hyacinth missing, it was unthinkable that they should leave
Singapore. Nick had done everything possible to discover her
whereabouts, but from the moment she had stepped into the ricksha it
was as if the earth had opened and swallowed her.
   He decided to go and make some tactful enquiries in the Chinese
quarter; not that he expected to find Hyacinth there, but someone
might have seen her. Nick himself had many acquaintances in the
Chinese quarter, friends from the war days, and he knew he could rely
on them to do everything possible to help him.
   He was just about to leave the hotel on his quest when one of the
clerks in the reception desk- a young educated Malay- came up to
him.
   "Mr. Trelawney, sir ... about the young lady...."
   "Yes," replied Nick, suppressing his eagerness with an effort.
   "I have made a discovery, sir. It may be of no account, but I
think that you will find it- interesting. If we could go up to your
room, sir...."
   Nick wondered if he was about to be touched by a blackmailer, but
the young man sounded genuine enough.
   "Very well," he said. "Come with me now."
   Once in his room he closed and locked the door, then faced the
Malay.
   "What is it?" he asked. "If it's information which will lead
to the finding of Miss Chalmers I'll make it well worth your
while...."
   "As I said, sir, it may be of no value, but briefly, I have some
scraps of paper which the boy who cleans her room found in her waste
paper basket. I thought they might be a clue." He took an envelope
out of his pocket, and emptied a number of twisted scraps of paper on
to the desk in the window. Nick saw that they contained words printed
in block letters, and that some of them had been part of an envelope.
   "When were these found?" he asked.
   "Yesterday morning, sir. I was passing when I saw the boy
emptying the waste paper basket, and I gave him a coin to let me have
the contents and not say a word about it to anyone."
   Nick was already sorting the scraps of paper.
   "Have you put them together?" he asked.
   "No sir." But Nick guessed that the Malay was lying; he had
put them together and then crumpled them up again. He thrust his
hand into his pocket and handed a note to the man.
   "Keep your mouth shut, do you understand?"
   Nick gave up all thought of going to the Chinese quarter; he had
glimpsed one significant word, and he was determined to piece the
whole of the scraps together, no matter how long it took him.
   It was over two hours before he had finished, and then he had the
entire message and the envelope.
<BEGIN INDENTATION>
<BEGIN QUOTE>
   If Missie Chalmers wishes to know about Mr. Trelawney's
business in Singapore, a ricksha will be waiting at the corner of
Empress Place tonight at midnight, to take her to the lady known as
Chinese Lily. Come veiled and say nothing of this. It concerns
Missie's happiness.
<END QUOTE>
<END INDENTATION>
   So that was it! Someone was anxious to break his engagement to
Hyacinth, and had sent her this damnable note which she ought to have
brought straight to him. But she had not done so and had undoubtedly
gone off in the ricksha which had been sent for her; the boy who had
seen her get in it had told the truth. But where had she been taken?
And why hadn't she returned? Who was at the back of all this?
Chinese Lily? He could not think so. He had always regarded her as
his very good friend, though one could never be quite sure when
dealing with an Oriental. It might be that the announcement of his
engagement had roused some dormant demon in her and she'd had Hyacinth
kidnapped. But she had congratulated him and told him she was very
happy for him when he had spoken of his fiance?2e the other night.
   Who else could be at the bottom of this attempt to get hold of
Hyacinth? Attempt, he thought angrily. It was no attempt; it was an
accomplished fact. If the person had just wanted to put her against
him she would have been back by now; the fact that she was missing
assumed a very sinister aspect.
   Chinese Lily was quite capable of having a European girl
kidnapped if she wanted to do so. She was utterly fearless, and had
been too long associated with the underworld not to know exactly how
to set about it. He knew that certain girls who had been in her
employ during the war and had chatted too much to the Japanese had
simply disappeared, and as one girl was as good as another to the
occupying troops- and if any special man was interested in the girls
in question, Chinese Lily always saw that there were others, even more
attractive- no awkward questions were asked.
# 26
<475 TEXT P13>
This might account for much that puzzled her.
   "Mollie, there's no sense in stalling when we both know our own
minds. I've had girls before but never the real thing until now.
I've been waiting for you darling. Thank God I found you in
time..."
   Again the premonition shook her. What did he mean?
   "I've been waiting for you too," she said shyly. "It's so
simple really, isn't it?"
   Either you were one of the lucky ones and met your fate, or you
weren't- and didn't. The world was a different place because she and
Nigel had met. She drew a steadying breath, realising how near they
had come to missing each other. If he'd gone to America they might
never have met. Somewhere across the world he would have roamed about
seeking her- while she would have stayed home, doing the job nearest
to her, but empty and unhappy. The thought brought the misty feeling
back to her eyes. They were lucky.
   "You feel as I do, so it couldn't be better," he whispered.
"Let's get out of here when I can do more than talk."
   Mollie followed him, bemused with happiness. She moved on a
cloud, floating effortlessly out to the car. They got in without a
word, and he drove on, careless of direction, intent only on getting
her alone.
   "Now." He slammed on the brake, drew into a lay-by.
"Darling girl..."
   They were in a leafy lane, hedges high about them, the evening
closing in slowly. It had not rained after all. She turned to him,
her face showing her love and understanding.
   "Nigel- I love you."
   "I know. I feel it here." He touched his broad chest, before
drawing her into his arms. She trembled at his touch, realising his
complete domination over her will. She had read of such things
happening to others, but this was her first experience and she was
unafraid. His cheek rested against hers, he held her close, and for
the moment was content.
   "I love you. Thank God I found you in time."
   She touched his face gently with her lips. "It's wonderful. I
didn't know it would be like this."
   "I did- with the right girl. We must be married at once,
Mollie. I can't stand anything else. You must agree."
   Could any promise made before this moment really count? She
subdued the rising uneasiness, wanting to promise Nigel anything he
demanded.
   As if he read her thoughts he said: "Your guardians haven't a
hope of holding you to a promise made before we met. I'll talk them
round. They can't withhold permission once we're determined."
   She laughed softly against his ear. "It's remotely possible
that they won't be swept off their feet as I have been..."
   "You'll make a fight for it, won't you?" The words were an
intimate whisper, and seemed to carry them forward more than anything
yet.
   "Yes. Oh, I will. I will."
   "I want us to belong from the first possible moment."
   "So do I." She wondered at herself, but no other answer
was possible. "I'm spineless- I'd no idea it took one this
way." Perhaps it wasn't always so. Perhaps other men were not as
fascinating as Nigel, with his Viking appeal. She studied him
quietly, seeing the strength in his face, that backed his
handsomeness.
   He began to kiss her mouth, deliberately trying to rouse her,
experiencing the first thrill of her being as she responded. He was
quick to follow this with a more intimate embrace.
   "I'm the first," he mused against her soft lips. "The very
first. I can tell- and I'm glad. I wanted to be first- with the
one woman. You've never been kissed before."
   "Not this way. Just cousins and things."
   "Things?" He pretended a brief jealousy.
   "Games- relatives- and things..."
   "Not one of them kissed you so- and so- and so..."
   "No." She breathed lightly, because it seemed impossible to
draw a long breath. "Oh, please, Nigel..." His increasing passion
was almost more than she could bear just then, yet she wanted to
respond, to be to him what he obviously wanted her to be. In the
confines of the little car it was difficult to cast off a feeling of
apprehension. She grew tense, wishing she had more experience. When
was it time to call a halt? Perhaps it was all new to him, also, so
she must go carefully. Her last wish was to hurt him, or to harm this
wonderful feeling they shared. "You- you are going too fast for me,
Nigel."
   "Don't you like me to hold you?"
   "Yes, but..."
   "You'll get used to it, adorable baby. I'm glad you're not
ready with all the answers. I always hoped for a girl like you. Most
of them drive a chap too far."
   She realised that in spite of his words, he did place a brake on
himself in some way and she felt considerably relieved. He leaned
away, considering her, his eyes teasing. She felt shy again, gauche
and young.
   "You'll have to make an honest man of me soon, darling. Let's
make plans. Definitely before I go to America! We both want
that."
   "I may not be able to travel with you."
   "I can scarcely bear to leave you behind even for a few
weeks."
   "You're too impatient. Let's just be engaged for a few
months." It would be so pleasant knowing that he loved her and was
waiting for her, and they would have time to make a proper start to
their life together.
   "No. That's not enough. You know it too, but I forgive you
because you don't realise what it means to me. We must be married,
Mollie."
   "Well- won't it be worse if we're married- and then I can't
get out to you for months? There is all the business of the passport,
and visa, you know what it's like."
   "I could fly back every weekend."
   She laughed shakenly. "You're in love."
   "Yes, I am in love; be gentle with me, sweet Mollie."
   The appeal touched her heart. He drew her back into his embrace.
She knew then that he was too big a man to conceal his feelings from
her. His simplicity sprang from his strength of character, and was
not weakness as she had first thought.
   "You will come to see the family at the weekend. I'll make all
necessary plans. They'll know I mean to marry you."
   "They may feel that I'm unsuitable."
   "It doesn't matter. It's what I want that counts now. I'm not
a boy."
   "You must meet my guardians too," she whispered.
   "If that's what you want me to do, but it doesn't make any
difference. I'll raise heaven and earth to get you. We've time if I
start moving tomorrow. We'll treat the trip to America as a
honeymoon."
   "I should have thought that in this scientific age you'd be
flying to America?"
   "No. My chief is doing so, but I'm taking out some special gear
that we'll need over there. I must see to the loading and unloading,
for some of the instruments are fantastically sensitive. Whether we
reach the moon or not depends entirely on my efforts- alone and
unaided!" He laughed at her crestfallen expression. "I love to
tease you darling. Actually I'll manage so much better with you
along."
   "I hope it's the right thing to do. Could it be a stumbling
block in your career later on?"
   "Our marriage? No... but you may rue the day you ever met
me."
   She put both hands to his face. "I'll never do that, Nigel.
I'll always understand. Men have jobs that take them out of a
woman's sphere sometimes. I'll not be jealous of your work. At least
I hope I won't."
   They sat for an hour, bemused by their happiness, feeling that
all things were possible. The tremendous difficulties ahead began to
dissolve beneath their sanguine hopes. Night was closing in when
Nigel thrust both hands through his thick hair and sat erect. He
pressed the self-starter grimly.
   "We'll call it a day. I must see Terence tonight and tell him
our news. I must also be in London before breakfast. Don't forget
your promise to spend next weekend with me at home."
   She sat back, knowing that he was leading and she must follow.
She felt depressed when she remembered the promise made to her
guardians. Would they understand that this feeling for Nigel was
something she had not foreseen?
   "Are you regretting anything?" Nigel said, as he drew up in
front of the stone steps leading to the main hall of the college.
"Wait- we didn't say goodbye." It was a stormy, protracted
farewell, which bewildered her. Nothing could possibly be as
important as this. He opened the car door for her, following quickly
on to the steps. "I'll see you in, darling."
   "It really isn't necessary..." Yet it was comforting to know
herself protected. She went up the steps ahead of him. The door
opened before they reached it.
   Terence stood looking down at them. His expression was cold,
utterly unreadable. He was not in the least like Nigel then. He was
wearing a navy double-breasted suit and looked formal and stiff to
her. Some of the stiffness was in his bearing, and she realised in
surprise that he was angry- very angry. For an instant she
hesitated. She felt that Nigel was momentarily startled too. They'd
both forgotten about Terence.
   "So there you are." Terence spoke first, through set lips.
"I might have known you'd be together. You could have given me a
hint, Nigel."
   "None of your business- was it?" Nigel said.
   Mollie glanced from one to the other in keen dismay. It was to
Terence that she made her appeal. Why was he so angry? "Please,
Terence..."
   His cold smile did not reach his eyes. "All right."
   She looked back at Nigel, seeing his mocking smile as if he
appreciated Terence's temper. There was a tiny silence, which she did
not try to break.
   "Now you're here you can give me a lift back, Nigel." Terence
was trying to recover lost ground, but finding it difficult.
   Mollie was so unprepared for this open antagonism between the two
men that she did not know how to cope. Dismay held her silent and
uncomfortable. Had they quarrelled earlier in the day? She thought
Terence looked white and wondered why he was there, as if awaiting
them.
   "Don't be in such a hurry to push me off," Nigel drawled as if
amused. "It may interest you to know that Mollie and I are engaged-
we'll make it official as from next weekend. We are to be married as
soon after that as I can manage it- any objections, old man?"
   The silence was quite terrifying to Mollie as she looked up at
Terence. What was wrong? She had not known either of them long
enough to guess at the source of the trouble, and she had certainly
not been guilty of flirting with either of them.
   Terence made an effort to answer the challenge. He was a more
slender man than Nigel, but still stood about six feet tall. He felt
mechanically in his pocket for a cigarette, and they waited as he
lighted it.
   "Congratulations," he said, puffing out a cloud of smoke.
   Nigel grinned and waved a hand in an airy salute, evidently
knowing that he could not at that moment expect more from his brother.
"Thank you."
   Had Terence expected this would happen, and had tried to save his
brother from committing himself? Nigel had hinted that she was not
the first girl in his life, and she realised with a fresh pang that he
had seemed thoroughly experienced in the way he'd tried to rouse her.
   "Aren't you going to kiss your future sister-in-law?" Nigel
said.
   "I'll claim that privilege on the wedding day." Terence
turned away.
   Nigel stared hard at him, not too pleased, but for once bereft of
words.
# 23
<476 TEXT P14>
   Lois did so, deftly removed her scarf and gloves and followed
her friend into the house. Bertie and Robert were in the living-room
which, despite the bright fire, had a cold, unused appearance, natural
enough considering that Bertie preferred the kitchen and Joan was
always too busy to sit down anywhere.
   Lois's arrival seemed to warm and enliven the atmosphere, and, as
Joan had predicted, there were no gaps in the conversation. She was
not in the least self-conscious and so obviously bubbling over with
youthful high spirits that the two men could be almost seen to
thaw in her presence. Before she came, there had been a slight
stiffness, due chiefly to the fact that they were practically
strangers with little in common.
   Joan brought in tea, tiny, diamond-shaped sandwiches and cake.
Waiting on the others, she was a little hurt by their attitude.
Bertie, as usual, expected to have everything done for him and
Robert's attention was given to Lois. Every now and then he would
turn to Joan, including her in the conversation, but she could not
help feeling that he regarded her as a mere child, the little girl who
had been the Rose Queen- even though he had forgotten her! Whereas,
he treated Lois in a subtly different manner. More like a woman,
thought Joan, though she was three years younger than herself. It
must always be like that, she supposed. The pretty ones got
everything! And Lois was essentially feminine, although it would have
been unfair to dismiss her as a mere flirt. She was interested in
men, her looks and manner aroused their interest. 'And I,' thought
Joan, 'am interested only in Robert. As for my looks, they don't
amount to a row of pins in contrast with what Lois has to offer.'
   After tea, they sat round the fire. When Bertie had visualised
Joan taking Robert on a tour of the property, he had forgotten how
short the afternoons were. Darkness was already gathering, and when
it became necessary for Joan to excuse herself in order to feed the
hens, there was still no chance for him to be alone with Lois. Robert
was left to play third whether he liked it or not. Apparently he did.
He and Lois were getting on splendidly together.
   "I thought you were a hermit, Mr. Hepworth. Joan says you've
been away, but I pictured you shut up at Silverstone, the windows
shuttered, the tradesmen leaving just enough food outside the back
door."
   Robert looked at her with amusement. "Are you disappointed?"
   "Quite the reverse, but I do wish you were married."
   Robert laughed outright. "You're a bit young to be a
match-maker. It's a favourite hobby of those who can't- well, match
themselves!"
   "Oh, I don't bother about most people, but if you had a
wife, it would be such fun. She would be living in the largest house
for miles, and she'd give lovely parties and everything would be gay.
Larchwood is a bit flat, you know. My stepmother plays bridge and
that's awful. You should see their faces, as solemn as if they were
at a funeral and if you dare interrupt they chop your head off. There
are the church bazaars, too, and outings and amateur theatricals and
the Women's Institute, but nothing can be compared to the parties your
wife would give."
   Bertie was frowning at her, afraid that Robert would imagine she
was giving him too broad a hint. It was a bit much the way she
was carrying on, he reflected. Of course, she was so sweet and
innocent she didn't realise she might be giving a false impression.
   "Lois works at Mrs. Harris's Dress Shop in Waverley," he
told Robert. "I expect she's thinking how good it would be for trade
if there was a touch more social life here. She's gifted at her
job."
   He glanced at her with pride, glad to show her in a different
light from the one produced by her own scatter-brained chatter.
   Lois threw up her pretty little soft hands in a gesture of
protest.
   "You ought to hear Mrs. Harris's opinion of me! The things I
forget! The things I don't do! She'd have fired me long ago if it
wasn't for my figure. I can model clothes, you see. She has to admit
they look better on me than on any of the other girls, and that makes
the customers more inclined to give an order."
   Feeling a trifle out of his depth, Robert said: "Do you like
your job, Miss Wade?"
   "I would if the clothes were real."
   Robert floundered deeper than ever, and, seeing his expression of
bewilderment, she added: "Mrs. Harris has to please her customers
and they're mostly farmers' wives or just the locals. Not that she
could fly higher. She hasn't got it in her. But, if I never marry, I
shall try to get a job in London, modelling. I get fed up with
ordinary clothes, garments. I'd like a real creation."
   Her eyes were large and dreamy as if gazing upon some celestial
vision. How odd women were, thought Robert, amazed at her reverence
for what he considered so trivial. Bertie, however, pounced on one
sentence of hers.
   "How d'you mean if you never marry? Of course you'll marry.
There isn't any never about it."
   At this moment, Joan re-entered the room. Tom had managed to
escape having to accompany his wife to evening service, and, in what
Joan considered a most touching way, had insisted on finishing all the
final chores.
   "You run along and enjoy yourself with your friends, Miss
Sutton. It's not often you get the chance of wearing a nice red dress
instead of your old blue trousers. Apron over it's all right with
chicken, but, with the old sow there's bound to be trouble. Rub
herself against you as likely as not, and then where will you be?"
   "Rolling in the mud, I expect, Tom," she responded,
laughingly.
   "That's 5egg-zactly what I meant. You go indoors and keep
yourself nice and clean for once."
   Obeying him thankfully, Joan slung her apron on to a peg, shed
her rubber boots in favour of high-heeled black shoes and combed her
hair in front of the small mirror in the kitchen.
   A nice red dress, Tom had said. Probably that was how it looked
in his eyes, and she had herself chosen to wear it in preference to
her blue woollen or the tweeds, believing, hoping- even though rather
shamefacedly- that Robert would notice her and think she was pretty.
The blue suited her better, bringing out the colour of her eyes, but
she knew she must do something to distinguish herself if possible.
Lois was so fascinating that whether she wished it or not she was
always a powerful rival. The deep red colour of this dress would
surely procure its wearer a little attention.
   During tea, however, Joan realised that she might just as well
have worn her ancient corduroy trousers, or swathed herself in a red
blanket! There wasn't a man in the world who would have given her a
second glance while Lois was in the room. She heaved a sigh, then
laughed at herself for being so silly and self-pitying. It was her
own fault for inviting Robert on a day when Lois would be there, and,
instead of standing about, feeling sorry for herself, she ought to be
doing something to help poor Bertie. He must be itching to get rid of
the other man.
   Entering the living-room, Joan put forward the first excuse she
could think of to ensure that her brother might have his coveted few
minutes alone with the girl he loved.
   "Mr. Hepworth- I mean Robert- I wonder if you'd mind coming
upstairs to look at a damp patch we've got. I thought- while you're
here..."
   He rose at once, but she saw the surprise he could not altogether
hide. Although technically the owner, his father's old bailiff
performed all that was necessary from a landlord.
   He followed Joan up to the next floor, without comment.
Meanwhile, she was racking her brains for a means of delaying him,
and, at the same time, was wondering where to take him. There were
three bedrooms, Bertie's, the one where she slept and which had
formerly belonged to Uncle Greg, and a tiny spare room, kept sacred
for the infrequent visitor. Avoiding all these, she led him up the
remaining few stairs to the loft, flicking on lights as she went.
   "I'm sorry to take you away from the fire."
   "I'm not a hot-house plant, I shan't wither. Where's the damp
you mentioned?"
   Joan glanced wildly about her. There was an old couch whose
upholstery needed repairing, two tin trunks, a large lithograph of
Canterbury Cathedral in a hideous frame and some cardboard boxes. The
walls were white-washed and the ceiling innocent of any stain.
   Blushing scarlet, she stammered: "There isn't any 5d-damp."
   "Then why the blazes did you say there was?"
   "I- I just wanted- people sometimes like to be alone
together- please try to understand."
   Raising her eyes to his, she saw that he was looking at her with
an expression of contempt.
   "I believe I do understand," he said. "Well, if you really
want it, you can have it."
   Before she realised what he meant, he caught her by the
shoulders, drawing her towards him. She had an instant's glimpse of
grey eyes, hard as steel, then his lips were on hers.
   For one fleeting second, her senses reeled and a sweet thrill ran
through every nerve. Then she had wrenched herself free, her cheeks
burning, her eyes bright with unshed angry tears.
   "How dare you!" she gasped.
   "Very easily. You've never taken your eyes off me the whole
afternoon, yesterday you managed to fling yourself into my arms- I
thought it was an accident at the time, I admit, but in face of this,
I'm not so sure."
   "You conceited idiot!" exclaimed Joan, furiously.
   "No, I don't flatter myself it's my superior charms which turned
your head. I can imagine how bored you must get here, but you
shouldn't play with fire, you might get the wrong man."
   "I have," she retorted. "I don't know anyone who could have
behaved so abominably. It was an accident yesterday, I fell over
my shopping bag."
   "At the very moment when I happened to be there to catch you. I
suppose you'll tell me next that staring at me all afternoon was
merely the natural anxiety of a hostess waiting to pour out the second
cup of tea." Robert was speaking as unkindly as he could, driven to
it by a frightful suspicion that he had made an unforgivable mistake.
"If you're so innocent," he went on, "show me the damp patch on
the wall- or would you prefer me to search the ceiling?"
   Joan positively stamped her foot with rage. "There isn't a damp
patch. It was an excuse to get you out of the room."
   "Ah, now we're getting at the truth," he interposed,
sarcastically.
   "Will you listen to me and stop interrupting! The reason
why I wanted to take you away from the others is that my brother's in
love with Lois. He never gets a chance of being alone with her and I
thought- oh, never mind, you'd never understand. Think what you like
of me. Why should I care? You're only a stranger. Besides, I've
done what I wanted to. They are alone together."
   She spoke with an air of triumph which had very little to do with
her true feelings. For one dreadful moment she had longed to slap his
face, just as hard as she possibly could. Now, all she wanted was to
drop on to the beastly old broken couch in the corner and sob her
heart out.
   Robert spoke apologetically.
   "I'm sorry. I've made an appalling mistake, I see that now."
   "Sorry!" she repeated, derisively.
# 21
<477 TEXT P15>
   We were on a stretch of straight road, climbing up towards the
Heights, and he risked taking his eyes from the road for a second to
look fully at me. I couldn't read anything from his face. Apart from
a certain gravity there was nothing in it but the impersonal scrutiny
that belonged to his vocation. He let another car overtake him before
he spoke.
   "Still speaking from a professional point of view," he said,
"I would strongly advise you to pay a visit to your doctor in the
very near future."
   I didn't answer him until we had reached the row of cottages that
nestled in a hollow underneath the final ascent to the Heights. He
drew the car to a stop on the green in front of the last one in the
row and was in the act of getting out when I said quietly, "You're a
doctor."
   He reached over into the back and lifted out his bag.
   "But not yours, Mrs. Landry. I attend only to the lower
members of your household."
   He said it quite without rancour, and I was positive none was
intended. "But you could be mine," I insisted.
   He inclined his head. "I could, yes. But I would advise you to
see your own man, one who knows and understands you." He shut the
door and leaned down through the window to ask, "Are you coming in,
Mrs. Landry?"
   "No." I shook my head. "No- I'd rather not."
   "As you wish. I may be a little while in here. You've time to
climb up to the Heights if you feel like it. The view is well worth
the scramble if you haven't seen it before."
   I waited until he had disappeared into the cottage before I got
out and started up the path that wound its way up behind the row of
houses. I had been there before and I wasn't particularly interested
in the view. It was the old restlessness that drove me on once I
found myself alone, away from the calming influence of his presence.
   I was panting by the time I got to the top and sank on to a small
outcrop of rock. I got my cigarette case out with a certain amount of
defiance and watched the blue smoke drift lazily away on the still
air.
   The view was a magnificent one even in the distant haze of the
November morning. The sun caught and sparkled on the river as it
wound its leisurely way far below. Bare of leaves, the wooded
hillside had a stark beauty, and the fields still held practically the
fresh greenness of midsummer.
   I was sitting there, lost to time, when I heard the foot-steps
behind me and turned to see Dr. Broderick clambering over the uneven
ground. I jumped up in quick remorse.
   "Oh, I'm sorry- I've kept you waiting," I said hurriedly, but
he waved me back on to my rock.
   "There's no hurry," he said. "I guessed you'd be up here. I
often come up myself when I'm out this way."
   He sank on to the rock next to me. I noticed that he was not in
the least exerted by the rather stiff climb. His breath came evenly.
   And, strangely, I felt a return of that calmness. I sat there
quietly with him, waiting. I had the feeling that he was waiting,
too- serenely patient.
   But it was a long time before I spoke. He hadn't invited my
confidence- rather he seemed to have gone out of his way, a little
earlier, to reject it. He might not like me but I felt that he would
listen, and that he would have an understanding I could never expect
from Charles.
   And so I said at last, "I think I'm losing my reason, Dr.
Broderick."
   He gave me no more than a casual glance.
   "And what makes you think that?" he asked calmly. "As a
rule, a person who is becoming mentally unhinged is the very last to
suspect anything is wrong."
   "But I can't remember who I am," I said, wretchedly. "I know
that I must be Lisa Landry, and that Charles is my husband and Joanna
my daughter- but I don't know them. I don't know anyone with whom I
come in contact- the servants, our neighbours- I didn't know you
the other day-"
   "Just a minute, Mrs. Landry," he broke in gently. "Loss of
memory is a very common occurrence. There are many factors that can
contribute to its cause. You mustn't worry that you're losing your
reason because you're suffering from a temporary amnesia-"
   "But it's more than that. Don't you see? I have a memory-
but it isn't the right one."
   "What do you mean by that?"
   I asked him then the question I had wanted to ask the vicar, that
man of God. The question I had been too afraid to ask myself in the
darkness of the unsleeping night.
   I asked it unflinchingly, out of the stillness which had
descended suddenly upon us.
   "Do you believe, Dr. Broderick, that the soul of a girl who
has been dead nearly sixteen years could inhabit and take possession
of a complete stranger?"
7
   THERE was a bird singing in a tree near at hand. I couldn't
see it but the high, sweet notes of its song held a plaintive,
appealing sadness. The faint whirring of some distant machinery
reached us clearly, a dull monotonous sound. When Dr. Broderick
moved his foot suddenly I jumped nervously.
   He had sat quietly, not looking at me, his face quite inscrutable
so that I had no means of knowing what he was thinking. When he spoke
at last he sounded oddly helpless in his hesitation.
   "My dear girl- I don't profess to know anything about the
spiritual body- only the physical one. A clergyman would be better
equipped than I am to answer such a question. But tell me why you ask
it?"
   I took a deep breath and faced him fully.
   "Because that's what I think has happened to me. If it hasn't-
then I know I am mad." I gave a little mirthless laugh. "Take
your choice, Dr. Broderick, which would you rather be if you were
me- possessed or insane?"
   "What makes you think you are either?"
   "There's nothing else I can think- when the only life I know is
that of a girl who has been dead more than fifteen years."
   I took the cigarette he offered, drawing at it raggedly. I gave
him a quick, nervous glance but he wasn't looking at me. He was
gazing out across the wooded stretch beneath us. I knew that he was
waiting for me to go on but wouldn't hurry me, that his calmness
didn't mean that he was disinterested.
   I started to tell him about Dorcas Mallory. I began with abrupt,
sometimes not quite coherent sentences, but presently beneath the
soothing influence of his quiet attention I went on more fluently.
   I told him about her adoption when she was a child- no more than
three years old- so that there was no memory of a previous life
before that with the Mallorys. There was only a vague recollection,
too, of the new mother who had died not much more than a year later.
But the memory of the life with Adrian Mallory was clear. I told him
of her childhood in the house, High Towers- a lonely childhood,
perhaps, but a happy one, with dear old Henrietta and the kindly
Mrs. Bakewell. I told him of small, uninteresting incidents that
only Dorcas Mallory could have known; those trivial, everyday
occurrences that mean nothing to anyone other than the person they
happened to. I evoked memories of old Henrietta who probably hadn't
been as old as she seemed at that time to the young Dorcas- of her
warm motherliness and her fragrance of lavender; of Adrian Mallory,
his shyness and his gentle kindness, and as I talked about him I think
I realized for the first time that I would never see him again- that
perhaps I had never known him, for how could I have done so? I know
that I talked of him with a sadness that went deep inside me.
   I recalled Dorcas Mallory's schooldays- rather lonely schooldays
with not many close friends because the reserve that was in Adrian
Mallory was in Dorcas, too. But she had not particularly felt the
loneliness and the holidays had been happy ones- spent mostly at
home, at first because of her father's reluctance to travel and then
because the war made travelling impracticable.
   When I told him about Russ I found it difficult to speak
impersonally. There was so much that I couldn't put into words, not
even to someone as understanding as Dr. Broderick. How could I
possibly describe to anyone the love between Russell Winslow and
Dorcas Mallory? My voice broke when I finally told him of the wedding
that never took place, of the journey to London of Dorcas and Adrian
Mallory, of the happiness of that girl on the eve of her marriage.
   I sat silent at last, my head bent, watching the slight breeze
lazily stirring a curled brown leaf at my feet. It rustled faintly as
it moved, and then a sharper breath of wind caught it and hurried it
away.
   Dr. Broderick said gently, "What then?"
   I looked up, somehow startled that he had been unable to follow
the wistful trend of my mind. "What then?" I repeated, and then,
keeping my voice as steady and expressionless as I could, "Dorcas
and her father were killed in an air raid. There was no wedding.
They both died that night."
   "This girl you have been telling me about- she is the
one...?" He paused uncertainly. I think his logical mind found it
difficult to put my fantastic supposition into words. I waited to see
if he would continue.
   When he didn't, I said, "I woke up on the day of Joanna's
wedding thinking that it was my wedding day. I didn't know where
I was, or why, but the events I have been telling you about- that
evening in London- were so clear to me that I thought it was still
April, 1944. I took up Dorcas Mallory's life exactly at the point
where she died." He stirred slightly as though he would have
interrupted but I went on, "I can't tell you a single thing about
Lisa Landry's life prior to that morning in August, but I can tell you
all about Dorcas Mallory. I can tell you of these things that no
one- not even Charles- could have told me. I am Lisa Landry- but
my mind is Dorcas Mallory."
   He said, "Charles- your husband?"
   "Yes."
   "Why do you say- that even Charles could not have told you?
How could he know anything at all-"
   "Charles and Adrian Mallory were stepbrothers," I said. "I-
Dorcas never saw him until a few weeks before- before she died. He
spent most of his time in Canada."
   "Did you know this girl?"
   "No."
   "But you probably heard your husband talk about her?"
   "He never really knew her." I said it defensively, but
against what I wasn't quite sure. "I told you- Dorcas never met him
until a few weeks before she was killed. And then she barely knew
him- they only met a very few times. Charles couldn't possibly know
all the things I have told you about her."
   "He could know a good deal of it," he said gently. "And some
of the things... Are you quite sure that you know these things,
or could you have imagined them?"
   "No!" I said it with a sense of outrage. "No one could
possibly imagine everything I know about Dorcas Mallory- every
detail of her life- every incident, day by day. And Russ..."
   "The man Dorcas was to marry?"
   "Yes- I knew him immediately I saw him. How could I have
recognized a man I have never met?"
# 29
<478 TEXT P16>
Yes, he would see Mackinnon and see if he could get anything out of
him. For Jane's sake he would have to know. So that this could be
stopped before it was too late- if it was not too late already. To
his surprise he found himself hoping that there was nothing dreadful
to discover. For Jane's sake, of course. She would be hurt. And he
did not want her hurt. And young Grant- damn it, he had almost liked
him the other night. And he could not help admiring him, for his guts
in tackling the job he was tackling.
   But Alison, who, after all had brought up four daughters, seemed
to think it would all fade out. And Elizabeth had some plans...
   "You'll be starting counting days to your holiday soon, Jane,"
he said cheerfully.
   Jane smiled but did not answer. If she counted days it would be
for a reason contrary to what the General thought. She gave him half
her attention as he went on talking about what Elizabeth had said in
her last letter, conjecturing about when they would see Susan again.
She was thinking of how she would tell Neil what her father had said
about his parents, seeing the look of relief which would come into his
dark eyes when he knew his aunt's disparaging remarks had had no
foundation in fact. How glad she was that Neil could now look back to
his young parents with affection, untouched by fear. How glad she was
that they had decided to recreate that flower garden which Angus
seemed to think had been created by Neil's mother.
   "Father, I'm going to ask you for a heap of cuttings in the
autumn. There's a wide strip of land at Dalnadoire which Angus says
was once a garden. So we-" she coloured and changed it, "so Neil
is going to start it again. I've said we'd give him lots of
plants."
   "Plants! Plenty of those, Jane." Here the General was in his
element. "Come out when you've finished, and we'll mark what you
want. Best to do that when they're flowering." He got up stiffly
out of his chair. "There's that new delphinium I put in last autumn.
Coming out now. Grand colour. You'd like it in the background,
Jane. And it's growing so well that it will split. Come out and look
at it?"
   "Yes. I'll just get rid of these." She got up from the
table, stacking dishes, and smiled to herself as she ran between the
dining-room and the kitchen. Once they got to know Neil they would be
sure to like him. She would just need to have patience.
   The next three weeks went by with what seemed to be an
astonishing rapidity. Jane had had little enthusiasm for her holiday
at the beginning, but now she had even less. To have to exchange,
even for a fortnight, the warm happiness of being with Neil, of
sharing with him their growing love, of watching how everything was
progressing at the farm she was coming to love as much as he did, for
Elizabeth and her lectures, for spells of baby-sitting, and keeping at
arm's length the rather callow young men whom Elizabeth seemed to
know, was far from pleasing. But she could see no way to get out of
it. Her mother was constantly talking of it, enlarging on the
supposed pleasures in store, expecting from her an enthusiasm which
Jane could not produce.
   That Lady Rose was thinking more of getting Jane away from
Drumlairig than of her having an enjoyable holiday, Jane was well
aware. General Rose might be starting to think more kindly of Neil,
be beginning to take an interest in him and his doings, to see in him
something to admire, but her mother was not. To her Neil Grant was
still someone of so little account that he could be completely
ignored. It almost seemed that she was completely unaware of her
daughter's friendship with him.
   But, despite that, for Jane those weeks were happy ones. Neil
was still working hard, indeed seemed to be working even harder.
There was so much to be done and everything had to be done in a
manner conforming to the high standard he had set himself. Dalnadoire
was beginning to look like a well-kept, prosperous farm, the old house
was being gradually cleaned and painted.
   Jane watched progress with eager, loving eyes, was there to give
praise and encouragement.
   The weather was fine, the days were hot, but one morning Jane,
rising early as usual, looked out of her window to see that the trees
and the chimneys were almost blotted out by mist. There was not a
mountain to be seen and there was a stillness over everything. Was
this the first sign that autumn was coming? Surely it was still too
early in the year for that, but everything was early this year. But
whatever it was it was a disagreeable morning, and she would need to
get away quickly for it would take her much longer to walk that mile
to the station with visibility a mere ten yards.
   Shrouded in a mackintosh, shivering a little in the damp still
air, she hurried down the drive. It felt as if she were alone in the
world. Apart from the never ceasing swishing and pounding of the
river, there was not a movement, not a sound. And then a dog barked,
another joined in excitedly, and two small forms ran eagerly towards
her.
   "Why Rory! Gill! What are you doing here?" she exclaimed and
looked beyond them, as a man's figure loomed out of the mist.
   "Morning, Jane," Neil was greeting her cheerfully. "Want a
lift?" He put an arm about her shoulders, smiling at her surprised
face. "Not the sort of morning for a walk. Here's the car."
   "Why, Neil! I never expected to see you. Are you going to the
station?"
   "Yes." He had the door of the car opened. "In you get."
   She got in, the puppies scrambled in after her and she let them
jump eagerly on to her lap as Neil went round to the driver's seat.
   "Have you something to collect, Neil?"
   He shook his head as he started the engine and they moved off.
"I want to see you get safely there," he said quietly.
   "You mean- you've come especially to take me?"
   He smiled. "You don't think I was going to have you walking
that lonely road on a morning like this?"
   "Oh, Neil!" she murmured and felt wonderful. And when in a
few minutes they reached the station, she leaned over, put her hands
on his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth, not caring at all that a
smiling Willie MacIntyre was an interested spectator.
   There were many other small incidents to show Jane what she was
to Neil, to make her feel warm and rich and essential. On the
Tuesdays when she met him in Inverness for lunch, they usually managed
to have a little time left after their meal was over. At first they
had walked along the river to the islands, or climbed the hill to the
castle, looking at the statue of Flora MacDonald, at the view westward
at which she gazed. But latterly they had spent their time among the
shops. Window shopping, Jane said. Nor did they restrict their
window gazing to the books which delighted them both.
   It was the week before Jane was due to go on holiday that they
saw the chest of drawers. It was small, in a beautifully veined
walnut, and its bow front gave it an elegance which pleased them both.
They agreed that it was the sort of thing they liked, they looked at
it from all angles, discovered its price and then Neil said quietly,
"Shall we buy it, Jane?"
   "Buy it?" She looked at him quickly, her colour heightened.
   He was not looking at her and there was some colour too in his
tanned face. "I mean, when we see it- Dalnadoire needs a lot of
furniture and- later we might not see one we like as well as this
one."
   Jane smiled. "Could we, Neil?" she asked.
   "Yes."
   "Let's buy it then," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I
can just see it against that short wall beyond the window, in what
will be the lounge."
   He turned to her, smiling now. "Have you time, Jane?"
   "Oh yes," Jane said happily.
   So on the Sunday Jane found a new task. With a soft duster she
had to carefully polish the lovely walnut chest. Neil watched her
young, earnest face lovingly, but with the shadow in his dark eyes
which was often there when his face was in repose and when he was
watching Jane. Later he took her off for a walk on to the moors.
   The day was hot and in the early morning there had been a
suspicion of thunder, but the clouds had passed, although there was
still a heaviness in the air.
   When they reached the second stile, Jane perched on the top of
it, and they looked back down the slope.
   "A storm, if it isn't too wild, wouldn't do any harm," Neil
commented. "The river is running much slower than usual."
   "Yes. Did you bathe in that pool above the falls when you were
a boy, Neil?" she asked.
   He grinned as he turned to look at her, leaning against her
knees. "I did. Every morning before anyone else was astir I'd run
out and have ten glorious, splashing minutes, before I dashed back
again, pretending I'd never left the house."
   "Did Mrs. Cummings object to you bathing?"
   "I don't know about the bathing, but she didn't want her house
messed up. Though one morning she did catch me, and I was the usual
lazy ingrate and so on and so on. I decided then, Jane," there was
a twinkle in his eyes as he went on, "that my family- for some
unknown reason I seemed to think I was going to have several children
and that we'd be living at Dalnadoire- would be allowed to play in
that pool whenever they liked."
   There was an answering twinkle in her blue eyes. "Are you still
of the same opinion, Neil?"
   His smile widened. "I am. But their mother would have to
approve. She mightn't think it a good idea."
   "I'm sure," Jane said carefully, "that any girl you'd made
the mother of your children, would be quite sensible about that sort
of thing. She'd want them to have fun."
   Neil laid his cheek against the back of her hand, which she had
resting lightly on his shoulder, for a moment. "I think Dalnadoire
is a house which needs a family of children," he said quietly.
   "It does," Jane agreed. "It should be filled with fun and
laughter. Neil," she went on seriously, "you never told me what
made you run away just at that time, after all those miserable years.
Was it because you were unhappy, a sort of cumulative unhappiness?"
   "Well," he answered slowly, "I didn't run- I walked. All
the way from here to Aberdeen. Unhappy? I suppose that came into it.
But the main, the overwhelming reason, was pride."
   "Pride?" Jane repeated in surprise.
   "Pride," he said again. "To be told, day after day for all
those years, that you were living on charity, that there was no reason
why they should have to work their fingers to the bone to keep an
ungrateful cur like you were- I was determined that as soon as I
could I was going to go somewhere where she hadn't to keep me. And
what was more I was going to repay her all she'd had to spend on
me."
   "But, Neil," Jane was red with indignation, "you weren't
living on charity. It was yours."
   "I didn't know. And she said I was. I planned it carefully,
Jane.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 21
<479 TEXT P17>
   "June, do you mean that?" he exclaimed.
   "Yes," she returned and her steady gaze conveyed as much as
the brief reply.
   He caught his breath and swung back to his own seat. He started
the car, and sped on at a speed that gradually filled her with alarm.
   "Where are we going? You must turn back!" she cried, as a
milestone flashed by.
   "We'll go where there can be no turning back," he replied.
"We'll drive till midnight, and stay at the first place we come to.
Then neither of us can ever go back, and the matter will be
settled."
   "Eustace!" She caught hold of his arm. "You're mad! Turn
back!"
   "No," he muttered. "Other people give up everything for
love, and why not we? Love may not be all, but at least it's more
than all the rest. I can't give you up, June. I won't."
   That his reckless impulse was due as much to pride and anger, the
chagrin of an imperious man thwarted, as to any warmer passion, made
it easier for her to recall him, his own natural good sense and
worship of the conventions coming to her aid, but June had her hands
over his, trying to force him to turn the car, which performed some
queer antics during the brief struggle, and she was imploring him,
half sobbing, before she succeeded in persuading him to bring the car
to a standstill.
   "Oh, turn round and drive back at once," she cried, sobbing
openly now the danger was past. "How could you be so mad?"
   He allowed her to shed agitated tears for some moments, without
offering a word of apology, his mouth compressed, his features cruel
in their clear-cut rigidity.
   "I'm sorry," he said then. "And nothing will make you alter
your decision?"
   "Please don't talk about it any more. Drive home."
   "You think you'll make him happy by marrying him out of pity?"
he asked.
   "It isn't pity. I'm fond of him. I was glad when he asked me
to be his wife, and if- if meeting you earlier might have made a
difference, it can't do now. It would be mean to throw him aside,
just to suit my convenience."
   "If he were well-" began Hilton.
   "I'd act exactly the same," she broke in. "Please drive
back. It's quite dark."
   Hilton gave a sigh of fierce protest, and in another minute they
were rushing back along the way they had come.
   
   AFTER a temporary improvement, Frank Elvington's health
ceased to show any advance. Even his own optimism became slightly
dimmed. Whilst still confident of his recovery, he did not talk of it
and his marriage with such eagerness as before, obviously regarding
both as some distance away.
   June watched him with an ache in her heart. She seldom saw
Hilton, both she and he avoiding each other as much as possible, and
she devoted herself to Frank, trying to put Hilton out of her mind.
   One day, when she found Frank preoccupied, he confessed that he
had been strongly advised to leave England, and had refused, at any
rate, for the present.
   "But why not go, dear?" she urged. "You must do anything to
get better."
   "Because I don't want to leave you," he confessed.
   "You mustn't hesitate to go anywhere where there's the least
chance of hastening your recovery."
   "Oh- well," he said reluctantly. "I've promised to think of
it."
   Whilst he hesitated, June met Dr. Rother, who told her that
Frank's only chance of life was to sail immediately for South Africa.
He and Dr. Hilton, he added, had done wonders in keeping him alive
as long as they had done, but nothing more could be done for him in
England. The warm climate of South Africa was his last and only
chance.
   June had not thought his danger so great, and hearing that Dr.
Hilton was still with him, she hastened to Cliff Top, and was in time
to stop Hilton as he crossed the wide entrance-hall to the door.
   He was passing her with an inclination of his head.
   "No," she said, unsteadily. "I must speak to you, please!"
   He followed her into the room near by.
   "Dr. Rother says that Frank must go away at once," she said.
   "He has just consented to do so," replied Hilton.
   "But is it true that this is his last chance?" she asked, and
when he averted his head, not answering, "Doctor Rother says it's
his only chance," she added distressfully.
   He turned his head sharply looking down at her with a ruthless
directness, and his words fell with icy distinctness.
   "It is not his only chance," he said. "It is no chance at
all."
   June turned white, her lips falling apart, speechless.
   "He may never come back," announced Hilton deliberately.
   She was horrified. For all her fears, it came as a shock to hear
Frank's doom pronounced in so many words. She looked out of the
window to where the leaves were already turning to pale yellow and
deep copper, a mellow sky above them and she thought of all the
beautiful things awaiting his enjoyment, of all the many years of life
he was to miss.
   "Are you sure?" she whispered.
   "Yes."
   "He doesn't know?" she faltered, and professional instinct
brought his brows together.
   "No," he said, "and you must not allow him to guess. I have
told you he may never come back, but that must not be repeated to him.
A patient's optimism has performed miracles before now."
   "Of course, he must not be robbed of hope. But you don't expect
any miracle to happen?"
   "No."
   There was a little pause, whilst June mourned. Remembering
Frank's unwillingness to be separated from her-
   "Then is it any use sending him away to- to die among
strangers?" she asked. "He doesn't want to go."
   "He must go," replied Hilton. "However useless, we must
insist upon everything being done which possibly can be done."
   "Yes, of course," she assented, sadly.
   "You see, June," said Hilton, softly, "you cannot put another
man in my place even if you wish."
   "Don't talk of that," she begged. "How long- how long do
you expect?"
   "It may be as long as seven or eight months, but you'll be
married to me before that, June."
   "Oh, no!" Even his attraction was powerless to affect her at
that moment. "How can you mention such a thing?"
   "Our marriage won't hasten his end by so much as a second, for
he need not know of it," remarked Hilton, "and I cannot pretend to
love you less, now I know you're going to be mine."
   He stepped to the door and opened it for her to pass out. She
could not answer. She knew it was only natural that he should not be
deeply affected by Frank's death, and equally natural that he should
be pleased at the possibility of making her his wife, yet there seemed
something callous about his calmness.
   She braced herself up to face Frank, but the ordeal was far worse
than she had expected, for she found him in quite good spirits,
waiting eagerly to tell her the news.
   "June, darling, I'm going to South Africa," he announced.
"I've just promised Hilton. He says I haven't a chance here, but
he's certain that a year out there will make me as well as ever I've
been. He's told me of another case similar to mine, which he sent out
there with excellent results. I didn't tell you, darling, but I
hadn't much faith in the idea before. I thought I'd perhaps go away
from you and- all to no purpose, and if I wasn't going to get better
I wanted to stay with you. But now I feel satisfied it's just a
year's absence and then- oh, June!- health and you! No price is too
great for that!"
   It took all her courage and self-control to hide her tragic
knowledge from him and to respond to his cheerful talk. She tried to
remember what Hilton had said of the miracles performed by optimism
and the desire for life, and to will passionately that Frank's belief
in his recovery would add another miracle to the annals of the sick.
   "But oh, June, to leave you all that time!" he exclaimed.
"Eight or nine months at the very least, he said, and most probably
a year. Will you forget me in all that time?"
   "No, Frank, I'll be marking the days off on the calendar and
waiting for your return," she said, though she choked over the
words.
   He pressed her fingers to his lips, afterwards holding her hand
close against his cheek.
   "I'd rather stay here and die, with you beside me to the end,"
he whispered, "than go away for all that long dreary time and then
not return to you after all. Supposing something happens to part us,
June?"
   "Nothing will," she declared, with the tears running down her
cheeks, her hands holding him protectingly. "Because do you know
why, Frank? Because we're not going to be parted."
   She spoke vehemently in the impulse that had come to her, the
passionate desire to comfort and serve, to sweeten his tragedy.
   "I'm going with you," she announced, firmly.
   "June, darling!" He raised himself, his face irradiated.
"Do you really mean you'll marry me before I go?"
   She nodded, a smile quivering under her tears, and as he clasped
her to him, kissing and thanking her, she had no regret for her
impulse of pity, only a great thankfulness that she could at least
make his last months happy.
   "Sweetheart, I'll ask so little of you," he whispered, when
his first rush of gratitude was over. "I only want to have you with
me. You're not going to marry a miserable invalid. We'll have a real
honeymoon when I'm well. It will be something to get well for. Until
that time you'll be Mrs. Elvington only to other people. To me
you'll still be my beautiful sweetheart who's waiting for me. And oh,
darling, you won't have to wait long! I'll make such haste to get
well."
   Every moment she remained with him increased her satisfaction
with the step she had taken, and when she left him she felt more at
peace than she had done since Eustace Hilton had come into her life.
   She had undertaken a definite service, one that both her head and
her heart approved, and which left no room for personal
considerations.
   Thus it was that when Hilton called that evening, she was beyond
his power to influence.
   She was in her room, making out a list of the many things she
required to take with her out of England, when his car stopped at the
gate. Thinking it must be Frank who had sent for her, she leaned out
of the window, alarmed when she recognised the car, fearing he had
brought her ill news of Frank.
   She did not imagine that he would pay her a visit except in
Frank's interest, and when she hurried into the room where her mother
was trying in vain to learn the reason of his visit, her first words
were of her fiancee <SIC>.
   "No," he replied, "there is nothing to be anxious about, but
I shall be obliged if you can give me a few moments alone."
   Mrs. Arnage rose somewhat haughtily, taking her departure with
distinct displeasure. She might have borne much for Dr. Hilton
once, but as mother of the so soon-to-be Mrs. Frank Elvington, of
Cliff Top, she resented his cool dismissal.
   "What is it?" asked June, when she was alone with Hilton. She
could not think what had brought him.
   "Elvington telephoned me to announce your immediate marriage,"
he replied, through his teeth, it seemed, his tightened lips moved so
little.
   "Oh!"
   June was simultaneously relieved and troubled. Relieved that his
call meant no fresh ill to Frank, distressed and perturbed that he
should be going to reopen personal matters which now more than ever
should be buried and forgotten.
# 214
<48 TEXT P18>
The Birds
A short story by Barbara Comyns
   Little Hal was like a boy made of butter- yellow complexion
and yellow hair. After his mother's death, his thin little face
contorted into sudden grimaces. His younger brother Charlie held up
his chubby arms with love towards Cousin Nelly, who kept house for
their father now he no longer had a wife; but Hal would sit behind the
shed door, grimacing under his large straw hat, his long yellow
fingers twisting the tags at the back of his boots.
   'That boy's highly strung,' Nelly would say to his father.
'He don't seem natural. Why don't you get him a pet, Bert- a
kitten or a dog?'
   'He'll be all right when he goes to school,' Bert would
answer, and he would give the robust Charlie a poke with his
earth-grimed forefinger, which caused the little boy to roll about
with laughter, then disappear under the green serge tablecloth until
Bert prodded him again and there would be more laughter.
   'There's a boy for you,' Bert would proclaim with pride, and
Hal's unnatural behaviour would be forgotten.
   
   Hal was not all right when he went to school. He was afraid
of the other children and was sick in the Plasticine box on the first
day. He refused to speak a word, and kept leaving his desk to stand
by the door and make faces. The following day he behaved in the same
way, except that he wasn't sick. As he stood by the door, a sinister
wet patch appeared round his feet and the children shouted, 'Please,
teacher, that there Hal has wet himself.' The teacher, very red in
the face, gave Hal a smack on the hand with a ruler, and put some of
the sawdust that the chalks had been packed in on the wet patch. Hal
did not cry, but the rims of his eyes became red as though he had, and
he sat quite still for the rest of the morning just watching the door.
   When Nelly came to fetch him home the teacher said, 'That Hal
of yours lives in a world of his own. He doesn't seem to be all
there.' Nelly looked rather put out and replied that he was quite
all right, only the poor little chap was highly strung. 'His dad's
going to get him a pet. He'll be all right then, you'll see.'
   When Bert came home for his dinner she said, 'What about that
little cat or dog you were going to bring home for Hal, to give him an
interest in things. The boy wet himself at school today. It don't
seem natural at his age.'
   Hal's eyes became red rimmed again, but he did not speak. He
seldom did. His father said, 'Well, I've got him a little bird, but
I must buy a cage first. You'd like a nice green bird, wouldn't you,
Hal?' The boy just nodded his head, but Charlie said, 'Charlie
wants a green bird too. Will it lay green eggs?' and Nelly picked
him up and, hugging him, said he was a caution.
   
   The next day, when Hal returned from school, there was the
bird in a wooden cage with bars in front. His father showed him how
the cage should be cleaned and the seed and water containers filled;
and he told him that the bird could be taught to talk 'if you speak
to it nice and quiet.'
   Hal put the cage on the table and gazed at the bird, fascinated.
He put his face close and whispered something very softly, then put
his ear close, hoping for a reply. At that moment, Charlie came
running up and put his fingers between the bars, shouting ~'Hallo,
green bird,' and the terrified bird fluttered into a corner of its
cage. Hal turned to his brother and slapped his laughing, pink face.
Nelly jumped to her feet, yelling 'You've no call to do that.'
Hal, afraid that his new treasure would be taken away from him,
picked up the cage and dashed from the house to the garden shed, where
he spent the afternoon softly talking to the bird and watching it.
   He became devoted to the bird. He was allowed to keep it in his
bedroom under the eaves, where it was safe from Charlie. Usually,
when he came home from school, he would free the bird from its cage,
and it would fly around the room, picking up little things with its
beak and sometimes settling on Hal's head or hand. He talked to it
and he said it talked to him, but no one knew if this were true
because it flew back to the safety of its cage as soon as anyone else
entered the room.
   The teacher said Hal was doing better at school- not that he
learnt anything, exactly, but he did sit still and behave better, and
sometimes drew birds in his copy-book. Perhaps he would get around to
letters later, she added.
   
   Then, one afternoon, a fearful thing happened. He was up in
that little room of his, with the bird sitting on his shoulder. He
was talking to it very quietly, and perhaps the bird was talking
back- no one knew for sure. Outside the door, Charlie was listening
hard because he wanted to hear the bird talk too. Suddenly he burst
the door open and cried, 'I heard it, I did.'
   The bird left Hal's shoulder and, afraid, flew across the room,
searching for its cage. Not knowing about reflections, it first flew
straight into the old brown-framed mirror on Hal's chest-of-drawers
and then, in panic, out of the open window and away. Hal knew at once
that his bird had gone and would never come back.
   It was after the bird's disappearance that Hal had his first sort
of fit. He never mentioned the bird again. Perhaps he had even
forgotten all about it, but as he almost never spoke now no one really
knew what he was thinking about. He had taken to sitting behind the
shed door again, and sometimes he could be heard talking to himself.
   It was in September that Bert brought home the two cockerels, one
white, one black. They were leggy young birds, just growing their
wing feathers. The father said to his boys, 'There's a bird apiece
for you. I want you to fatten them up, and when they are fit for
eating we'll have a great party and Nelly will become your mother.
Now see which of you can make his bird grow the biggest.'
   Charlie chose the white bird and Hal had to have the black. It
was slightly on the small side, but the difference in size soon
changed and Hal's bird grew and grew. On the way home from school he
gathered corn from the sides of the fields and stuffed it in his
pockets, and as soon as he came in by the gate the cockerel used to
run to meet him. Nelly said, 'Well, Hal, I must say your cock is
growing into a fine bird. Little Charlie's can't hold a candle to
it.' Hal gave one of his rare smiles and looked at his bird with
pride. It certainly was almost twice the size of Charlie's.
   The cockerels grew very large, and early in December Bert said,
'Nelly, those birds are ready. We must see about the banns.'
When Hal heard his father say this he knew that one day when he came
home from school his cockerel would not be there to meet him. It
would have to be sacrificed if there was to be a party and Nelly was
to become his mother. He could imagine everyone's surprise when Nelly
began to change. He wondered if she would be wearing mama's blue
dress with the lace on the collar. Perhaps, as it was winter, it
would be the brown one trimmed with braid, in patterns he thought
resembled snail shells.
   
   The days passed and still the glossy black cock waited by the
garden gate for Hal's return from school. Some days he felt he could
not bear it any longer, and he would plan to ask his father to cancel
the party so that his bird would be saved; but this would mean that
Nelly would not turn into his mother, and that would be terrible. The
black cock would have to die. He almost wished it would peck him so
that he need not love it so much. Charlie had given up feeding his
because it had pecked him right across the nose. Nelly had thrown a
stone at it and shouted, 'Your days are numbered, you bad old
bird.'
   Then, one afternoon when Hal came home, there was no cock waiting
by the gate, and the knob on the kitchen door had blood and feathers
stuck to it. He went to the back of the shed and was sick. When he
saw Nelly he asked her when it was she was going to turn into his
mama.
   'Why, fancy you remembering that, you clever boy! In two days I
will be your mama and cousin too.'
   Hal sat on his stool by the fire and tried to work this out in
his mind. Later, he asked, ~'Will you have two heads?' and Nelly
said, 'Bless the boy. Whatever is he thinking about now?'
   
   The day of the wedding came. Hal and Charlie had new blue
shirts and new belts with buckles to fasten them, shaped like snakes.
Nelly had a green velvet dress and a hat with pansies on it. When
Hal asked her why she wasn't wearing his mother's brown dress, she
replied, 'Oh, that old thing! Why the moths had it months ago.'
   The cottage became filled with people, and there was a lot of
noisy talk and laughter. Then it was time for the party, and they all
sat down to devour Hal's and Charlie's birds. When Hal could bring
himself to look at the steaming brown carcasses he could see how much
larger his bird was than his brother's, and although he felt a great
sadness there was a feeling of pride as well.
   A man with a large waxed moustache and a mop of curly damp hair,
whom Hal thought might be his uncle Fred, said, 'That's a fine bird
you're carving, Bert.' Hal waited, breathless, to hear his father
tell everyone that it was his bird that was so large, but Bert was too
preoccupied with carving to answer. Sweat was pouring down his face,
and he did not like to take his jacket off in company. Later, he
turned to Hal and said, ~'You'd like a little of the breast and
perhaps some stuffing, Hal?' and the boy replied that he would like
to eat some of the smaller bird, please. He could not eat his own; it
was dreadful to see it there all cut about.
   Every now and then he'd look down the table at Nelly, who was
sitting there looking flushed and very pretty, but not in the least
like his mama. The cocks had been killed and were almost eaten now
and the party had been going on a long time, but there was no sign of
his mother's return. Perhaps there was some mistake. The last knife
and fork had ceased to rattle against the plate, and the bottle of
port had been opened. For a moment there was silence; then Hal braced
himself to ask, 'Dad, whose bird was the largest, Charlie's or
mine?' Everyone turned towards him in surprise and, with half a
smile on his face, he waited for them to know whose had been that
splendid bird.
   Bert considered for a moment. Then, remembering that Hal had
asked for a slice from the little bird, he answered, 'They were both
real fine birds. I was proud to carve them. Yours was very tender
but I think Charlie's was the largest.'
# 21
<481 TEXT P19>
   It was one of the strangest courtships I'd ever known- it held
society gossips by the ears all that Season
A pretty case for Freud
BY ALEC WAUGH
ILLUSTRATED BY BOB PEAKE
   I NOTICED him in the first place because he was the only
other person in the pavilion wearing a silk hat. I had the excuse of
having come on there from a wedding. But I should have gone back and
changed had I known how conspicuous I should be.
   It was ten years since I had been to the Varsity Match at Lord's.
And I was astonished by the change; by the empty stands, the absence
of smart frocks, the lounge-suited atmosphere of the enclosures. A
social occasion, for whose sake in remote rectories mothballs had been
once shaken out of braided coats and wide-brimmed "toppers"
stripped of their tissue wrappings, was now a very ordinary cricket
match in which the general public took little interest.
   As I walked in my sponge-bag trousers and shining hat through the
long, high, many-windowed morning room, I felt as antediluvian as the
curved bats and pastoral portraits that adorn its walls: so
antediluvian that as I took my seat beside the one other Edwardian
survival, a hackneyed Latin tag- the tongue that it is a solecism now
to quote- actually seemed appropriate to the occasion.
   I thought of Lord's as the pre-war pages of Punch presented
it; of Lord's as I had known it in the early 'twenties; the
tight-packed mounds; the coaches by the tavern; the parade of parasols
between the innings; colour, excitement, glamour; and now this:
Homburgs and bowler hats in the pavilion, long terraces of white
beside the screen... Nos duo turba sumus, I thought, as I
leant sideways towards my fellow relic.
   "I wonder," I asked, "if I might see your scorecard?"
   
   HE turned; and I immediately forgot that it was a need for
sartorial kinship that had decided my choice of seat.
   He was one of the most striking-looking men that I have ever
seen.
   He was young: in the latish twenties; and handsome in a
clear-skinned way. But it was not merely his good looks that startled
me. The impression that he made is not to be explained by any
cataloguing of separate features; high forehead, grey-blue eyes, full
mouth, long pointed nose. I was no more conscious of those separate
features than one is of the pattern on a transparent lampshade. Just
as there are two kinds of lampshade, the one whose object it is to
retransmit a softened light and the other that is a decoration,
simply; so are there certain types of face, the one in which the
personality is subservient to the featured mask of lip, brow, cheek,
to which it gives mobility and meaning, the other in which you are so
exclusively conscious of the personality behind that mask that you
sometimes find yourself unable to describe the physical appearance of
someone with the very texture of whose thought you are familiar.
   It was like that now. I was conscious not of a handsome face,
but of a new person; of someone who was masterful but unworldly;
practical but inexperienced; masculine but with that look of
anticipation, of waiting to be fulfilled that you expect to find in a
young girl; a combination of characteristics so self-contradictory
that the obvious corollary to their catalogue would be: "What a mass
of complexes. A pretty case for Freud." That was what you would
have expected.
   He wasn't, though. He was of a piece, without
self-consciousness; the kind of man who does not know what the word
shyness means.
   I was curious, alert, excited. I've got to find out who you are,
I thought.
   In the lazy atmosphere of a cricket match it is easy to start a
conversation. The cricket was slow, desultory, undramatic. In a
little while we were more interested in our talk than in the match.
At any rate, I was.
   His talk had the same contradictory characteristics as his
appearance. It was boyishly eager, yet at the same time
authoritative. It was the talk of one who stood on the brink of
experience, yet was accustomed to the exercise of authority. More
baffling still, though his voice had a slightly mannered intonation,
it had no trace of the drawl that you would expect to find in a
fashionably-dressed young man. He was a puzzle, right enough.
   
   THE hands of the turret clock pointed to five o'clock.
Stumps would not be drawn till half past six. In an hour and a half
I ought to be able to find out something about him.
   Luck came my way.
   An exchange of ideas became an argument, a point which could only
be settled by the consultation of a particular book of reference. I
had fancied the book was in the pavilion library. It did not prove to
be; or anyhow, we could not find it. I happened to have a copy at my
flat.
   "It's not five minutes' walk away," I said. "Let's go back
there afterwards and have a sherry."
   "Let's go back now. This cricket bores me."
   An answer that combined his boyishness and his authority; his
readiness to accept new suggestions with his assumption that no wish
of his would be contradicted. It did not occur to him that I might
want to stay on and watch the cricket. Like a schoolboy on his way to
a party he chattered without stopping till we reached the large,
barrack-shaped apartment-house on whose highest floor I had a one-room
flat where I keep clothes and papers, that I use as a kind of office
6pied-a?3-terre when I am in London.
   "Is this where you live?" he asked.
   I nodded.
   
   HE looked up inquisitively at its straight sheer surface,
as though he were seeing this particular kind of building for the
first time; as though he were a foreigner obtaining the material for a
monograph "How London Lives".
   As I opened the cocktail cabinet and set about the preparation of
an "old-fashioned", he deployed none of the diplomatically assumed
indifference with which it is customary to take stock of a new room
without letting it appear that you are conscious of being in one.
   With an unabashed curiosity he took a mental inventory of the
room: its lighting, its shelves, its chairs, its pictures, the jumble
of knick-knacks along the mantelpiece; then started on a tour of
investigation, taking up a book, peering into an etching, lifting a
cigarette-box; without comment, as though he were visiting an
exhibition, till suddenly, with a note of real interest in his voice,
~"What's that doing here?" he asked.
   He was pointing to the framed original of a jacket design for one
of my novels.
   "That? Oh, I'm responsible for that."
   "You drew the picture?"
   "No- wrote the book."
   "What, you, the author!"
   There was a surprised excitement in his voice that I should have
found extremely flattering had not experience counselled me against a
readiness to believe that here, at last, I was about to meet the
perfect, that dream reader whom every novelist is convinced must exist
somewhere, the one reader who has not only read everything that he has
written, but read between the lines.
   On those rare occasions I really am the target at which
enthusiasm is directed, it is usually to receive some such testimonial
as "I've been wanting to meet you for so long. There's a mistake in
that last book but one of yours that I've been longing to point out.
On page thirty-seven you talk about Mildred's gas fire, and in the
last chapter you have coals falling through a grate. Now I wonder if
anyone else has spotted that?"
   Previous experience did not encourage me to expect from my
guest's excitement a long, sympathetic, interpretive analysis of my
short stories. I should have been disappointed if I had.
   "There's something I've always wanted to ask you. Was Julia
Thirleigh really the model for your heroine?"
   "Well..."
   It is the kind of question that usually a novelist resents;
resents because it is impossible to reply honestly. The answer is
always "Yes and No". No full-length character is ever a direct
portrait; yet no character that is alive has not been drawn in part
from life. A trick of speech has been borrowed here, a gesture there.
The process of creation must start somewhere; must have some solid
foundation in experience. But by the time the story is quarter
finished, the novelist has forgotten his model altogether; his
character has developed a temperament and destiny of its own.
   
   USUALLY, at least, that is the way it happens. In the case
of Julia Thirleigh it had been rather different; possibly because I
have "put" her into the kind of novel that is less a story than an
argument, that requires distinct types to contrast different points of
view. I needed a character to typify the debutante of the late
nineteen-twenties, the second edition of the Bright Young People, the
London of the slump. And it was just because Julia is herself less a
person than a type that, when I had finished the book, I was
astonished to find how closely my finished character resembled the
model which i had meant to employ merely as a first sketch: so closely
that I did not see how a great many people could fail to recognise
her.
   Through a decade when young women not only claimed, but asserted,
their right to the same independence as their brothers, Julia was the
most discussed of those Londoners whose activities are photographed
week by week in The Tatler and Bystander and Sketch.
   She was not so much famous as notorious. She had avoided, it
is true, any open scandal. She had not shot an unfaithful suitor,
been convicted as a drug addict or cited in the divorce courts. To
that extent she had been discreet.
   At the same time she had been subpoenaed in a slander suit that
had been heard 6in camera. It was at one of her
bottle-parties in a top-storey studio that a free fight with
gate-crashers had ended in a crumpled figure on the pavement and a
comment from the coroner that only her most loyal friends held to be
unjustified. There had been no open scandal.
   But the clothes she had worn, the company she had kept, her
manner, her habits, her whole way of living had given her the kind of
label that made her current coin in any argument.
   "Well now, take somebody like Julia..." and when people said
that, no one had any doubt of what was meant.
   
   PRUDENCE as well as friendship counselled me to show my
manuscript to Julia before I delivered it to my publisher.
   She returned it with a very typical remark.
   "I don't use Blue-grass."
   "Is that your only comment?"
   "My only criticism."
   "There's nothing there that you object to?" I asked her.
   "Why should there be?"
   "Well..."
   She smiled.
   "Is there anything in your book that people haven't said about
me and believed about me?"
   "There's a difference between gossip and a thing said in
print."
   "If your publishers are afraid of libel I'll write them a letter
of absolution."
   I could scarcely deny, in the face of that, that I had used Julia
as a model, yet I was reluctant to admit that my character was a
photograph.
   "In a kind of way," I said.
   "You did? I'd always heard you did, but I wasn't certain. You
must know her, then?"
   "I was lunching with her yesterday."
   "Yesterday!"
   He regarded me with a strange veneration, as though I were haloed
in such a light as had transfigured Moses on his descent from Sinai.
   
   "YESTERDAY! I can hardly believe it. I've heard so much
about her, read so much about her. It's strange to be meeting
somebody who really knows her. Is she as beautiful as her
photographs? They are all so different.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 24
<482 TEXT P2>
COMPLETE STORY by May Somerset
So she invented George
   To be young- and alone- in Paris... What else could either
of them do but pretend they were in love?
   
   JUDY stuck it for two days. Then she revolted. And, being
Judy, she decided she must do something about it.
   Coming to Paris had been the biggest thrill in all the twenty
years of her life. She had got the chance when Mr. Cartwright's
personal assistant had fallen ill at the last moment.
   Judy, who had worked under her, knew more about what this Paris
conference was about than anyone else in the office- apart from Mr.
Cartwright, of course.
   So, at two days' notice, she was off to Paris.
   Paris in the spring! With mist rising from the Seine in the
early morning and the cafes gaily spilling out across the pavements in
the midday sunshine.
   She could see Notre Dame from her hotel window and the Arc de
Triomphe from the window of the office where the conference was being
held.
   It was all fabulous. Walking to work, she wanted to sing. At
lunch time she was torn between the desire to window shop and just sit
at a cafe table and watch the world go by.
   It was the evenings that were the trouble.
   Strolling along the streets, exploring Montmartre or the Isle de
Cite was possible only if she had company. Alone, it was apt to give
the wrong impression. As Judy had found out.
   Another girl would have done; or an aunt or uncle, father or
mother. It didn't have to be a young man; though, naturally, that
would have been better still.
   Judy knew no one in Paris, except Mr. Cartwright, who was
engaged every evening, and who was, anyway, at least sixty.
   But she certainly was not going to spend ten glorious evenings
sitting in her hotel.
   So, something had to be done. And there was something she could
do. At least, there was the possibility of something. Being Judy,
that was enough.
   One other person shared the room she had been given to work in,
when she was not actually in the conference chamber taking notes. He
was the personal assistant to the leader of the other English
delegation.
   His name, she knew, was Charles Hanson. He was tall and lean and
quite heart-stoppingly handsome, or would have been if he hadn't
looked so solemn all the time.
   He sat across the room from her and concentrated on his work.
   Obviously he was immune to females or, at any rate, he was intent
on giving that impression.
   But he was the only possibility. On the third afternoon of her
stay Judy was desperate at the thought of another wasted evening in
front of her.
   She didn't want to scare the poor man across the room. Neither
did she want to give him the impression that she was "that" type of
girl.
   All she wanted was a companion so that she could move freely in
the evenings.
   She'd make quite, quite sure there wouldn't be any
misunderstanding about it.
   So she invented George. Well, perhaps not quite invented.
Because there was a George at home in England and he was apt to
proudly announce he was "her fellow," and there was no need to
explain that he was five years old and her nephew into the bargain.
   
   COMING back to the office after lunch, Judy stood at the
big window for a moment before she went to her desk.
   Below, in the Champs Elysees, the cars glittered in the sun and
the pedestrians were dappled by leaf shadows.
   Then, abruptly, she turned round.
   "Oh, I wish George was here."
   "Eh?" Charles Hanson was already at his desk. He raised his
head, looking a trifle startled.
   Judy crossed to her own desk. "I said I wished George was
here," she repeated. "He- he's someone I go about with a lot in
London. It would be so heavenly to have him to go about with here.
What do you do with your evenings here?"
   "Er- so far I've gone for walks."
   "Are you going for one tonight?"
   "I- yes, I thought of doing that."
   "By yourself?"
   He straightened a little. "Certainly by myself. I don't know
anyone in Paris."
   "Neither do I. That's the trouble."
   She launched herself into her plan. "You see, it's all very
well for you; you can go for walks by yourself, explore anywhere you
like. But I can't; not alone. People seem to- to get the idea that
I don't really want to be alone.
   "I'll go crazy if I have to spend every single evening that I'm
in Paris just sitting in the hotel. Why, I may never get the chance
to come here again.
   "It would be all right if- George was here. But he isn't. So
please, when you go for your walk, may I come with you?"
   "Good heavens! Do you know, I never thought of that. I
imagined you'd have lots of friends; be out every night."
   "I haven't and I'm not," she retorted. "I came at two days'
notice, so there wasn't even time to find out if anyone I knew had
friends in Paris. I know George hasn't." She had to keep him in
the foreground. "He's never been to Paris." That was true,
anyhow.
   "Wouldn't George mind if you came out with me?"
   Judy felt her colour rising. Thank goodness he had no means of
knowing she always did blush furiously if she had told even the
tiniest and whitest of lies!
   "Well, he does rather like me to himself." That, too, was
true.
   "But I can't waste all my evenings here. I want to see so much.
I want to go on buses and the Metro, up to Montmartre and along the
Left Bank. I want to go on a river trip."
   Then a thought struck her. She had invented George, but, after
all, Charles Hanson might have someone who would prefer that he did
spend his evenings in Paris in lonely solitude.
   "Of course, if you've got someone who might not like it..."
   "Well, I don't think Peggy would take to the idea, but she isn't
here, is she?"
   Suddenly he grinned. "If you'll risk George finding out, I'll
do the same with Peggy. After all, as you obviously can't go around
by yourself I'd be a boor to condemn you to your hotel for the rest of
your evenings in Paris.
   "So, shall we say six o'clock, providing this afternoon's
conference doesn't run late. Still, as we'll both be there..."
   They met at six, by the elevators on the ground floor.
   Charles grinned again as she came towards him and Judy found
herself thinking that this Peggy was pretty lucky.
   Plainly, Charles was shy at first, but when his smile was so wide
and friendly you just had to like him.
   As far as the evening was concerned, her plan couldn't have
worked better. She'd been right in thinking that Paris in the
evening, with a companion, would be a simply wonderful place.
   They ate in the Place de Republique and then went up to
Montmartre and found a fair going on in the streets.
   They talked and laughed with all sorts of people. They had
coffee at several different cafes. They looked down on the twinkling
lights of Paris. And then they walked down the steep streets and back
to her hotel.
   "It was marvellous!" There were stars in Judy's eyes. "It's
exactly as I thought it would be."
   He looked down at her. "You must bring George here, one day,
and show it to him. Is he fun to be with?"
   Because she felt such a stab of guilt she said quickly: "He's
the greatest fun in the world. And I will bring him one day."
   She'd be grey-haired by the time he was old enough and probably
still a spinster.
   "Will you bring Peggy, too?" she asked.
   He hesitated, then he shook his head. "I don't think so. She
finds going abroad too complicated. She's content with Britain."
   So Paris could stay "theirs."
   Judy couldn't help her heart giving a little leap. Neither could
she help the malicious little thought that Peggy sounded both drab and
dreary.
   Charles was certainly neither.
   
   SHE took herself to task several times during the next few
days, however. After all, she had thrust herself on to Charles when,
quite obviously, he'd had every intention of staying solitarily true
to Peggy.
   To do anything unfair to Peggy would be mean and despicable.
   But it was a little difficult to remember that when they were
seated, shoulder to shoulder, on a boat on the Seine and there was a
moon overhead.
   Neither was it easy when they walked back to her hotel and their
hands touched and linked for a moment before she pulled hers away.
   "George?" he asked.
   "And Peggy," she retorted, almost sharply.
   He moved a little away from her.
   "You're right, of course. But it's been a good evening, hasn't
it?"
   "Wonderful." It was extraordinary how it could hurt to say
just one word.
   It would have been silly- and it would have admitted things she
didn't want to admit if she had refused to go out with him any more.
   So at the week-end they explored further. They went to St
Cloud and, of course, Versailles.
   The sun continued to shine and Judy wore the summer dresses she
had packed with so much excitement.
   But at night, back in her hotel room, she took to standing at her
window for a long time, leaning on the window sill and looking out at
Paris as it slept.
   She was storing it all up in her heart. Though now, she knew, it
would hurt unbearably every time she remembered it, and she would go
on remembering it all her life.
   Perhaps Charles would remember, too, even if he did have his
Peggy who never wanted to leave England. She certainly couldn't know
what she was missing.
   Charles was lucky; this could fade to a dream for him. He had
someone to put in its place.
   But she- well, George, at five years old, didn't promise to be
much help, even though she did love him so much.
   Rather ostentatiously she bought postcards for George everywhere
they went. If Charles didn't like it, well, he could buy them for
Peggy, couldn't he?
   Inevitably their last day came, their last evening.
   "We're doing a show tonight," Charles informed her
masterfully. "And a night club afterwards. You're not going back to
George without sampling that side of Paris night life."
   
   ACTUALLY Judy didn't enjoy it very much. She kept
remembering that tomorrow night she'd be back home, and there would be
no Charles.
   It was her own fault, of course. She had started it all, and if
she'd got hurt there was no one else to blame.
   But it was going to be lonely after tonight. And the loneliness
seemed to have crept into her heart already.
   After they had been at the night club for some time they fell
silent.
   Judy watched the dancers firmly. She mustn't blink or the tears
in her eyes might spill over, and she knew that Charles was looking at
her averted face.
   "Ready to go?" He said suddenly.
   "Quite ready." She rose at once.
   But when they were outside neither of them made any attempt to
turn in the direction of her hotel.
   The night club was in Montmartre and, wordlessly, they walked up
towards the Sacre Coeur, and then, in the shadow of the great church,
they turned and looked down over Paris.
   The moon was paling; it was almost dawn.
   Charles said softly: "Shall we see the sunrise? Everyone
should do that once."
   So they waited, and gradually the sky turned to a pale green and
then to pink and then to misty gold which seemed to envelop
everything.
   Judy knew that if she made the slightest move towards Charles she
would be in his arms.
# 211
<483 TEXT P21>
   "Tell me, how did you come? Did Weir bring you?"
   Before Linda could make any reply Ralph Batley's voice cut in
sharply from behind her, saying:
   "This is my uncle, Mr. MacNally, and this"- the hand came
past her and rested on the boy's head- "this is my nephew,
Michael." Before she could acknowledge the introductions he went
on: "Take Miss Metcalfe up to the house, Uncle Shane."
   "2Aye, Ralph. Yes, I'll do that. Will you come along now?"
The old man backed away from her, one arm extended in a courtly
gesture. She felt inclined to laugh. From first impressions she
didn't think she would get many laughs from her employer, but this old
man seemed to be bubbling with a peculiar sense of joy.
   In the yard the wind tore at them, and as the old man steadied
her with his hand on her elbow he yelled: "Have you long come? I've
been away up in the top field, the fence is flat."
   "No, I've just arrived."
   "Then you haven't been in the house at all?" His voice was
high with surprise.
   "No."
   She could feel his bewilderment. "I wondered about your case
there." He put out his hand for it, and she let him take it from
her.
   "Did Weir bring you up? You didn't say."
   "No, Mr. Weir was out."
   "You couldn't have got here 2afore dark then?"
   "No, I lost my way and I arrived at another farm. The name"-
she paused, then went on- "the name was Cadwell."
   
   THE old man came to an abrupt stop and his hand came off
her arm. He turned to the boy and said: "Michael. Here, take hold
of this case and go on up." He pushed the case and the lamp into
the boy's hands, then added: "Away with you now." It wasn't until
the child had moved off that he said quickly: "Don't tell me that a
Cadwell brought you up here, then?"
   "Yes, the young man. Rouse, I think his name was."
   "You didn't tell him- Ralph back there?"
   "Yes, I'm afraid I did, I didn't see any reason not to. What
have I done wrong?" There was a tremor of apprehension in her
voice. "I didn't know that Mr. Cadwell and Mr. Batley were at
loggerheads. I'm terribly sorry if I've caused-"
   "That's all right, you weren't to know, girl, but I don't know
how Maggie will take this. Come," and he took hold of her arm
again.
   They were walking along a broad flagged terrace now and the wind
was meeting them head-on, and when they reached the porch they both
stood panting for a moment, before the old man said: "I'll take off
2me boots. Maggie would brain me if I went in with 2me boots on."
Then bending towards Linda he whispered: "Wipe your feet-"
   Feeling very like a child, Linda did as she was requested, while
she watched him hop from one stockinged foot to the other over the
cold stone flags to the door. When he opened the door the reason was
made plain, for the floor on to which she stepped was polished as she
had never before seen a floor polished.
   But her attention was lifted from the floor to the hall which
opened out before her, for in size and shape it was an exact replica
of the hall of the Cadwells' house. There was the same large open
fireplace. There was the same winding staircase going off to the left
with the balcony running from it along the entire length of the far
wall; yet for all the similarity this hall had nothing of the other's
charm.
   A long black oak refectory table ran lengthways down the hall.
Standing with her back to it was a woman. She was of medium height
with greying hair and had two patches of red high on her cheek bones.
Her expression checked Linda's progress.
   
   THE Cadwells had looked at her each in their own way.
Ralph Batley's appraisal had shown his surprise. The old man had
greeted her gleefully, the boy with wonder; but this woman's look was
so different. It seemed as if she was being called upon to make a
quick decision and was finding the process difficult.
   The woman was now coming towards Linda.
   "I'm sorry you've had to find your own way. When you didn't
come at two he thought maybe... anyway he couldn't leave the
calving." The woman's voice was soft and thick and pleasant, but
before Linda could say anything she had turned on the old man, crying:
"It's your fault. Where d'you think you've been?"
   "Now Maggie, 2whisht a while, I was up in the top field with
the railings as flat as a pancake. You wouldn't have me let the
cattle get through, now would you?"
   "Oh." She moved her head impatiently then turned to Linda
saying: "Well, come in, come in. Here, let me have your coat.
You'll be frozen."
   As Linda took off her coat Shane, tripping towards the fire-place
like an aged gnome, said gaily: "She's got her hand in already,
Maggie, she's been helping with the calving."
   "Helping with the calving?" The woman looked up at her
incredulously.
   Linda, going hot with what she knew was to come, said hesitantly:
"Apparently I came in the back way. I saw the light in the byre."
   "You came in the back way? From the main road?"
   "Yes."
   "Oh." She nodded at Linda, a smile now softening her face.
"Mr. Weir brought you?"
   "No."
   "No. Weir didn't bring her." They all turned their eyes
towards the door under the balcony through which Ralph Batley was
entering the room. As he came slowly across the hall he said to no
one in particular: "She took the wrong road."
   She watched him reach up to the high mantelshelf and take a pipe
from out of a wooden rack, then he turned to his mother. But his eyes
remained on the pipe as he said heavily: "She forked right at the
cliff end."
   Mrs. Batley's brown eyes were wide and, unmistakably, there was
fear in them.
   Ralph Batley turned from his mother's gaze to the fire now and
lifting his foot he thrust it into the heart of the blazing logs. A
shower of sparks sprayed around the chimney. Then taking a home-made
spill from out of a bunch and putting it towards the blaze, he said
coldly: "Our neighbours were kind enough to bring her to the top
gate."
   He was attempting to light an empty pipe. Realising this he
threw the spill into the fire and, as if to cover up his mistake, said
with a poor attempt at lightness: "I'm forgetting, you haven't met
my mother."
   Mrs. Batley's response to this was to say quietly: "You'll be
wanting a wash, will you come up?" She turned about and walked
across the hall. Linda, picking up her case, followed her up the
stairs, along the balcony to the far end. There Mrs. Batley opened
a door, saying over her shoulder: "I hope you'll be quite
comfortable."
   Linda moved into the room. Then turning quickly about she looked
at the older woman appealingly and said under her breath: "Mrs.
Batley, I seem to have done something wrong. I'm sorry."
   Mrs. Batley stared at her for a moment, then stepping into the
bedroom and closing the door behind her, said: "I'm sorry too, my
dear. I'm sorry you had to start like this. One thing I'll ask of
you, keep away from the"- she paused here, then brought out- "the
Cadwells. If you want to work here and in peace, don't even mention
their name. And another thing I would ask you, do your best for him,
will you? You see he never wanted a woman on the place. But I was
for it, and you're not quite what I expected." She held up her
hand. "No offence meant, but you don't look exactly cut out for this
life. Still, time will tell. Come down when you're ready."
   She went quickly out of the room leaving Linda staring at the
closed door in bewilderment.
   Slowly she turned and looked about her, and what she saw held
some comfort, for there was a wood fire burning in the grate, the
furniture was old-fashioned but solid and shining. The floor was bare
wood and again highly polished, and before the hearth and by the side
of the bed were two clippie rugs. In the corner stood her trunk and
two cases. This then was her room. It was comfortable and homely,
but all she wanted to do was sit down and cry.
   
   LINDA did not unpack but washed herself and combed her
hair. Yet fifteen minutes later when she went quietly down the
stairs, she could have been dressed for a ball, the way their eyes
turned and watched her approach.
   The table was set now with a white cloth and was laden with food
and she said apologetically: "I hope I haven't kept you all
waiting."
   "No, no, we're just going to start. Come and sit down."
Mrs. Batley took her seat at one end of the table and indicated a
chair to the right of her.
   Linda had always considered that she had a good appetite although
she may not have shown it in her figure, but she could not attempt to
eat half of the dishes that were offered to her. There was little
talking during the meal except at one stage when Mrs. Batley asked:
"Are your parents in farming?"
   "No, but my uncle, my mother's brother, manages a farm."
   No one made any comment on this and Mrs. Batley put in quickly:
"Well if you've all had sufficient you can make a move to the
fire."
   Linda's help was accepted by Mrs. Batley without comment.
   When some time later she was standing at the sink drying the
dishes that Mrs. Batley had washed and was searching in her mind for
something to say to break the awkward silence, Mrs. Batley said very
softly: "Were you inside the house?"
   "You mean the Cadwells?" Linda's voice, too, was quiet.
   Mrs. Batley nodded.
   "Yes, I was in the hall."
   The older woman flicked her hands downwards into the sink with a
violent movement, and with a harsh bitterness but still under her
breath she said: "I suppose you're comparing it with ours? We
haven't got a hundred-pound carpet nor all the fal-dals <SIC>."
   Linda looked at Mrs. Batley who was now thrusting the china
noisily into the cupboard. She found herself pitying this woman, and
she lied as she said softly: "I didn't notice how the place was
furnished. All that I can really remember is that the hall is similar
in shape to yours. But one thing I did notice, the floor and
furniture didn't gleam nearly so much as yours do."
   Even if it had not been true she would have been bound to say it,
for there was a loneliness emanating from the other woman that touched
Linda.
   As she spoke Ralph Batley came into the kitchen. He looked
neither at his mother nor at Linda but went straight to the back door
and was on his way out when his mother said: "Will she do?"
   For a moment Linda had the awful sensation that the question
referred to herself, but when the reply came: "She'll do all
right," she was forced to smile. It was the calf they were speaking
about.
   
   IN the living-room Shane was sitting with his feet
stretched out to the blaze but he heaved himself up on her arrival,
saying: "Sit yourself here."
   "No, no, I'll sit here."
   "Do what he says, he's getting selfish enough."
   Mrs. Batley was busy now setting up a framework to the side of
the fireplace and Linda saw it was a half-finished rug. She watched
her drop a carrier bag on Shane's knee, saying: "Get yourself busy,
that'll keep you out of mischief.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 24
<484 TEXT P22>
   Then he lazed back, laughing by her side, motionless in the
sun.
   He used to drink the cheap, warm wine straight from the bottle.
   'You first,' he told her, 'I want the bottle neck to be
smothered in your kisses.'
   He made her laugh so much that, sometimes, she spilt it down her
dress and left a purple stain on the pique?2 collar.
   'When I'm rich,' he cried, 'I'll buy you champagne, nothing
but champagne. You can bath in it, drink it, spill it down your dress
and it won't even leave a mark.'
   With these words he sprang to his feet and cried into the
swirling blue, ~'I love her, I love her, I love her... ~It's you I
love, you silly girl... Anna and Hugo... Anna and Hugo...' until
their names echoed and trembled to the distant hills.
   He chased her barefoot over the scented grass and thistledown
until they fell panting into each others <SIC> arms on the ground.
Then he gasped for breath, his body humped and contorted as he
clutched at his own throat in convulsive agony and desperation.
Between the coughing and the retching, he begged her: ~'Don't look,
Anna, please don't look at me,' and she would slump to the grass
until it was over. Sometimes, there was blood even on the flowers, on
the daises which had, already, pink-tipped petals.
   The days, the weeks, the months rushed by, express train-like but
with no destination, no beginning and no end. He used to walk to the
studio where he was learning to paint.
   'To save money,' he told her, 'so I can buy you presents.'
   He bought her books, flowers, bits of cracked and broken junk
which he thought pretty, and sometimes clothes. The mackintosh was
the last thing he ever gave her.
   'For once I'm being practical,' he said. 'After all, it's
meant to rain in England.'
   He walked everywhere and the endless exercise made him hungry.
She spent twice as much as he saved to appease the hunger and they
both laughed when the false economy dawned on them. She bought him
fruit, meat, cheese and eggs and together they strived to cook them
over the gas-ring in her bedroom with the help of a French cookery
book. Their faces were smudged, their foreheads sweaty, their hands
garnished with garlic and, laughing, they would decide to cook the
English way and fall back on fish and chips.
   In the winter, the snow helped to hide the barrack grimness of
their surroundings. It lay like petals on the deserted garden patch
and even transfigured the limp lines of washing into dazzling
obelisks.
   Hugo's cough seemed better in the snow. He would gather handfuls
off the trees, kiss it, eat it and chase her laughing and crying down
the street, hurling it into her streaming hair.
   He painted her room for her as 'white as the snow' he said.
He stripped off the sad wallpaper, almost angrily, and in its place
put up fresh and merry whiteness. She made him hang his paintings on
the walls and could scarcely believe the brilliant transformation.
   'This is the first time I've ever hung a painting,' he told
her smiling, 'and probably the last.'
   She liked best the pictures of Provence, the fishermen with black
nets drying on platinum sand, the baskets of rainbow fish which still
seemed to squirm in the sun-glitter. She liked the lonely stretches
of Camargue wasteland, wild, melancholy and mysterious; she liked the
vastness of the rice-fields, once mistral-torn and mosquito-ridden.
She loved the pictures of housewives, brawny and good-humoured,
haggling with their Midi accent over the monk fish, the grey mullet,
the tiny squid and the lobsters while the naked starfish sprawled dead
in the sun. Even dead, the colours were dazzling- silver sea bream;
slithery, bright pink demoiselles; the angler with mad antennae-like
hooks sprouting from its huge head; the gigantic turbot and the sleek,
black dogfish with its greyhound head.
   When she looked at his paintings, she could hear the auction bids
and smell the fish and pebbles, she could feel the sticky salt in the
women's hair and the tired sweat on the men's faces.
   Over and over again, he tried to paint a picture of Anna. He
couldn't. 'I love you too much,' he explained. 'Anyway, I can
only paint fish and peasants.'
   He made her look sad, he made her look happy but somehow he never
captured the startling strangeness which was Anna. In the winter
evenings, she sat for him hour after hour but, in the end, he hurled
the canvas from the easel, cursing himself and his lack of talent.
She reassured him, told him the light was wrong, that he was tired or
hungry, that she loved the picture and it was more real than she was
herself. Then he burst into laughter and asked: 'Do you mind if I
turn you into a fish?'
   And, in half the time, he blotted out her likeness and brought
fiercely to life, the sea-glimmer, sunlight, fishwives and the sparkle
of salt water on sealy skin and delicate fins. His excuse was always
the same.
   'You see I love you too much, I can't paint the woman I love,
the only woman I've ever loved.'
   'The only one?' she asked him.
   He looked at her through flickering lashes, half smiling.
   'The only one,' he repeated. 'The others were just games.'
   'What do you call games, Hugo?'
   Then he looked guilty like a child caught stealing an apple.
   'Well,' he said kissing her cheek, 'I knew them in the
biblical sense. They were nothing to me, just nothing.'
   Biblical sense or no, she felt sad and jealous and questioned him
closely as to their names and faces. Whereupon he swept her into his
arms and carried her struggling to the bed.
   'There,' he said as he knelt on the floor by her side, 'on
bended knee I swear it. The only one, it's you.'
   He lay his cheek upon hers, silent for a while, then he whispered
in her hair: 'Anna, make love with me, real love... please do.'
   Before she could think or answer him, he was a tangled heap on
the floor, a spitting, gasping heap, half-sobbing, half-human.
   She ran out to get some water and, when she came back, she found
him lying on her bed, laughing.
   'So I have to make do with this, do I?' He held up her
portrait still wet and sticky. 'It's prettier than you, you brutal
angel.'
   'There's not so much of it though,' she answered truthfully.
   Thereupon he jumped up and said that he was hungry.
   'And all because of you,' he told her as he kissed her, clung
to her and led her away. She was glad it hadn't happened. She didn't
want to be a game, not even in the biblical sense. Anyway, he was too
ill and she loved him too much.
   Her mother enjoyed having Hugo in the house, her father resented
him. He didn't like to see other people happy around him. It wasn't
his Methodist upbringing, it was just his nature. He was like a damp
cartridge; however much force or pressure was brought to bear, nothing
happened. He never exploded, either joyfully or angrily. He was
simply an unfriendly maggot that you might find under a stone. She
and Hugo had a secret language which they spoke with their eyes and
their hands, and many was the mad, snuffed-out laughter conversation
they carried on behind her father's disapproving newspaper. He was
only concerned that Hugo should pay his rent, not put French coins in
the gas-meter slot and not seduce his daughter. The third condition
was the least important of the three.
   Sometimes Anna wondered if he knew that she wasn't his daughter.
But of course he knew and that made it worse. He didn't mind, he
didn't want children of his own or despise his wife's illegitimate
one. It was this complete indifference to everything, whether mental
or physical, that astonished and terrified Anna. On both counts he
was a miser. He gave nothing, he took nothing but he resented
everything.
   She could recall Hugo's farewell so clearly. It was so vivid
that she often wondered if it had not occurred the day before and
whether it were not just another good-night with another greeting in
the morning. It had been July, almost three years to a day since he
first appeared in their lives.
   'We must pretend it's for a day,' he said, 'because we know
it's only a month and then we'll be together for the rest of our
lives.'
   'A day,' she repeated slowly, 'but even a day without you is
a lifetime.'
   'While I'm away ,' he said, 'you must write to me every
single day and I'll write to you. You know I can't live without you
so promise me you will.'
   She didn't even bother to promise- it was so unnecessary.
   'Don't come to the station,' he begged her, 'I'll burst into
tears and make a fool of myself.'
   Nevertheless, she had gone and each tormented minute had been a
tiny stretch of happiness. He leaned from the carriage window and
clung to her, unaware of the selfish noise and activity of a
boat-train crowd and they- unaware of him. He begged her, made her
swear to go on loving him for ever and never to see, touch or talk to
another man. The whistle went and she brushed the tears from his eyes
with her hand.
   'Keep one,' he said smiling.
   'I have my own,' she replied.
   The train shuddered, gathered speed and was gone.
   The blurred heads of holiday-makers leaned out, waving and
kissing to the platform of spectators, to the litter of squash
cartons, ice-cream wrappers and separation. She walked away as in a
trance, walking always forward but always left behind. No one noticed
her. On a boat-train station, people look sad or happy- there is no
in between. She went home and looked at her face in the glass. It
was like a mask of granite which cannot melt, break or be crushed. It
seemed to have no reason for being there at all- simply a memento of
the past. She assured herself that in a month everything would begin
again as sweetly and smoothly as winding a clock. She wrote to him
every day for a week and every single day she waited for his answer.
There was no question of his letters becoming colder, wearier or less
affectionate. There were no letters- it was as simple as that. The
postman came to know her face quite well- it was white and drawn and
seemed scarcely to exist. He gave her gas bills, butcher bills and
canvassing pamphlets but her fingers sorted through them hungrily and
she closed the door and thanked him.
   She made the lodgers' beds, went to work and returned at night to
wait for the morning. After a week, she stopped writing letters
altogether and after a month she sobbed herself to sticky sleep each
night and woke to the swollen-eyed dawn. From that time forth, she
lived in the past and three years' recollection offers a sort of
companionship although it has no future. She walked down the streets
where they had walked together, went to the same pubs and cafe?2s,
visited the same museums and cinemas and even took bus-rides into the
country where each blade of grass reminded her of him. She wondered
if he were ill, she wondered if he were dead and suddenly she realized
that she was the ill one, the dead one, the idiot and the possessed.
   Her father was glad it had all ended; her mother was too busy to
comment. 'Find yourself a nice steady man,' he told her, 'not a
choking, arty-crafty foreigner.' And he returned to his evening
paper in justified and contented humour, pleased that he'd been right
all along and that his day was over.
# 25
<485 TEXT P23>
"I felt sure that you would like her, Bill."
   "We got on famously," he replied curtly, finding it next to
impossible to discuss Betty like this. "But tell me more about your
mother, Kay. Is all need for anxiety at an end? You must have had a
very worrying time of it, poor old girl!"
   "Yes, it's been anything but pleasant," she replied.
"Naturally, I was very disappointed about not having this holiday
with you, Bill. I'd so looked forward to getting away with you alone.
As it is, we shall only have a few days to ourselves, for I suppose I
ought to get back to mother as soon as I possibly can. But never
mind, it won't be long before we shall be married, and then we shall
be together always!"
   It was the first time Kay had ever spoken to him in such a strain
about their approaching marriage, and, somehow the remark jarred on
herself almost as much as it did on Bill.
   He said hastily-
   "It's quite a long time to September, Kay."
   "But the time will go so quickly, what with one thing and
another. Buying the furniture for one thing- won't it be exciting,
Bill, choosing just what we like? You can't imagine how happy and
excited I feel about it all."
   Bill's heart smote him. Poor Kay! He had sinned against her,
unwillingly, it is true, but nevertheless he had sinned, and however
he looked at things, he saw pain for her in the future.
   He said gently-
   "It- it's awfully decent of you to care so much about me, Kay.
I'm not really worth it, you know. You're the sort of girl almost
any man would be glad and proud to marry."
   "But, Bill, you are the only one I want to feel like that,"
she said, squeezing his arm, and feeling more reassured. "Let's sit
here for a few minutes, shall we? This boulder looks very
inviting."
   It had to be the same boulder that he and Betty had sat upon so
often. Bill gave an inward groan. He felt that the situation was
getting beyond him.
   
   Meanwhile, Betty, feeling wretched and unsettled, had collected
her belongings and stowed them away in the suitcases she had packed so
gaily before setting out for this eventful holiday. This done, she
contemplated with dismay the solitary hours that lay before her, with
only miserable thoughts for company, and yet dreaded still more the
return of the other two.
   In the end she went to one of the cinemas and tried to forget her
own problems by becoming absorbed in those of the people depicted on
the screen.
   It was time for supper when she returned to the boarding-house,
and after one anxious glance at the faces of the two lovers, she
heaved a sigh of profound relief. It was obvious that Bill had been
behaving himself correctly and that Kay suspected nothing.
   Betty forced herself to a display of high spirits and gaiety
which she was very far from feeling, and in which she was assisted by
Bill, who, by now, had reluctantly decided that Kay must be kept in
the dark as much as possible concerning the wrong they had done her.
   Kay's unusual display of affection had touched his heart, even
while it had increased his sense of despair and hopelessness, for Bill
realised that all chances of making her a really good and loving
husband were forever dead.
   After supper, they all three went on the pier to listen to the
band, and if the sweet, lilting music woke Betty's heart to fresh
agony, she gave no sign. It was only for a few hours longer that she
would have to wear her mask and act her role.
   And afterwards? Shudderingly she acknowledged to herself that
she dared not face what lay before her. "Sufficient to the day,"
she told herself drearily, looking at the sea, upon which the magic
moonlight shone with the same radiant beauty it had displayed on the
previous night, when it had so thoroughly bewitched herself and Bill.
   Oh, how gloriously happy she had been during those few fleeting
moments of time! They were engraved upon the tablets of her memory
for ever; they marked for her the pinnacle of life- throbbing,
emotion-packed moments, in which, for the first time in her life, she
had seemed to really live.
   The contrast between that time and this was too sharp, too
poignant. She longed to plunge into that silvered sea and swim and
swim into forgetfulness!
   "To-morrow I shall be thinking of all this," she said.
   "Yes, Betty, and you'll be sorry you deserted us," Kay
replied. "We shall have to come here for our holiday next year and
make it a proper one," she added, smiling wanly.
CHAPTER =4
LOVE'S ORDEAL
   NEXT morning Betty bade them both good-bye and returned to
London.
   For one long moment Bill held her hand and looked deep into her
glorious brown eyes which held his world, and there passed between
them that same irresistible electric thrill which had signalled the
avowal of their love.
   Then he had stepped back, without uttering a word, and Kay had
raised her face and kissed her friend. A moment later, the guard's
whistle gave its shrill warning, and the train started on its way.
   Betty felt a strange sensation as she looked out of the window
and watched the figures of Kay and Bill diminish, and then disappear
from view. She told herself that she would do her best never to see
either of them again. Yes, it was strange <SIC> a sad sensation,
and her eyes were misty as she sank back into her seat.
   So it was over at last! All that now remained was for her to
face reality with as brave a heart as she could muster. A little
desperately Betty told herself that there must be other things in life
besides love. She had been happy and content enough before she had
fallen a victim to its magic spell- why shouldn't she be able to
recapture that old, gay, careless contentment which, up to now, had
been all she had asked of life?
   "I'm glad that Kay will never know," she murmured to herself,
as she watched the beautiful summer landscape fly past the carriage
window.
   And again, late that night, as she lay tossing restlessly in bed,
she murmured-
   "Yes, I'm glad that Kay will never know!"
   Even that cause of thankfulness would have been denied her, had
she known of what was taking place at almost that selfsame moment
between Kay and Bill.
   After supper, they had wandered, a little aimlessly, down to the
water's edge, where once again the moon spread that shining track of
silver light which seemed to lead to some far-away enchanted country.
When they reached a deserted stretch of beach, Kay pointed to a
nearby groyne.
   "Let's sit down," she said, and even to Bill, preoccupied as
he was with his secret thoughts, her voice sounded strange. "I- I
want to ask you something, Bill."
   Somehow, he seemed to know, without being told, what she was
going to ask him. There had been a brooding look in Kay's eyes, and
an absent-mindedness in her manner which, subconsciously, must have
warned him, for he sensed at once that she discovered the truth.
   "I think I can guess what you wish to ask me, Kay," he
stammered.
   "Then- then it is true? You are in love with Betty, aren't
you, Bill?"
   It was impossible for him to deny it, for a moment or two, his
lips refused to frame the words. But at last he spoke.
   "Please let us not speak of it, Kay," he said. "It was
Betty's earnest wish that you should know nothing of it."
   "No wonder- she's too ashamed, of course," Kay returned
hotly.
   "That's not very charitable of you, Kay, in view of the fact
that Betty has left here solely for your sake. Don't you
understand? She voluntarily gave me up because of you."
   "You were not hers to give up," Kay retorted.
   "Anyway, she knew that my love was hers," Bill admitted, in a
low voice.
   Kay closed her eyes. A sharp pang of pain shot through her at
his words.
   "Bill- Bill, my darling, you are not going to give me up, are
you?" she cried. "Please- please don't, Bill! It's only an
infatuation. It cannot last- it can mean nothing to you in view of
the long and deep affection we have felt for each other. Bill dear,
my life will be completely ruined if you throw me over. Oh, I could
never face such a thing! You are my world, my all!
   "This- this sudden infatuation you feel for Betty will pass.
It cannot possibly last, Bill. You have not known her long enough
for it to mean anything to you. Oh, Bill dear," Kay pleaded in a
broken voice, "please don't throw me over after all this time, for
the sake of a girl you have hardly known for a week!"
   Such impassioned words, coming from the usually calm, reserved
Kay, went straight to Bill's heart. He could not bear to see her
humbled thus before him- this girl who had promised to be his wife
and to whom he owed fidelity and respect and love.
   "Of course I'm not going to throw you over, Kay, dear," he
said quickly. "Why, Betty wouldn't hear of such a thing. That's why
she has gone away, as I've already told you. She refuses to have
anything more to do with me. She has behaved very nobly, Kay.
Listen, my dear, I asked you to marry me, didn't I? And I'm going to
do my very best to make you happy."
   Over her bent head, Bill's eyes were fixed in misery on a fast
vanishing hope of ultimate happiness. Betty was right. Kay must not
be forsaken; for decency's sake he must keep his pledged word to her.
   The sound of Kay's quiet weeping came to him, and resolutely he
set himself to ease her injured feelings.
   "Don't cry, darling," he said. "You are right; all this
unhappiness will pass. It will seem like some vanished dream from
which we have awakened to reality once more. You will try to forgive
me, won't you, Kay dear? It all happened before I was really aware of
it. Believe me, Kay, I'm just as fond of you as ever I was- yes,
just as fond of you, my darling."
   Kay longed, but did not dare, to ask him if he cared more for her
than he did for Betty, but she knew the desolate answer to that
question. Instead she said-
   "Of course I shall forgive you, Bill, fully and freely. Betty
is a very attractive girl and no doubt she took advantage of the close
proximity into which you were thrown. Anyway, let us never speak of
it again, Bill- let it be buried and forgotten for ever."
   "It shall be as you wish, Kay," he answered, but more coldly,
for he strongly resented the injustice she was doing to Betty.
"Let's go somewhere and find a sherry, shall we?" he added. "It
may cheer us up a bit."
   "Yes, and we'll drink to our future happiness, Bill!" she
answered, raising her face to his for a kiss.
   But of all this Betty knew nothing, of course. The days went by
slowly and wearily. She was longing for the time to come for her to
return to the office. Her parents had gone to Wales to visit an aged
aunt, and most of Betty's pals were equally inaccessible, so that for
a time solitude was her portion.
   She had plenty of leisure to dwell upon those vanished days spent
with the man she loved- days of golden sunshine and music and utter
happiness.
   The knowledge that she might never see Bill again was very bitter
to her, but it couldn't be helped.
# 26
<486 TEXT P24>
CONCLUDING Woman SERIAL by MARGARET SUMMERTON
ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER WYLES
the Sea House
Out of violence and fear love could still flourish. For now love
was theirs
   A MOMENT after the kitchen dresser had swung to and left us
in the darkness of the secret passage, there was a sudden, blinding
light. Ivor had switched on a torch.
   Esmond grunted: "Bolt the door. It'll give us an extra half
hour while either Mark or Adkins gets hold of a crowbar. Then go
ahead, shine the light backwards."
   There was the long, sustained whisper of oiled metal moving, and
then Ivor stumbled over my feet. My wrists, stinging with cramp, were
free from Esmond's grasp.
   "Don't start making a fuss all over again Charlotte, there's a
good girl," Esmond said. "Save your breath. You've got a long
climb. Follow Ivor. I'm right behind you."
   The steps went on and on; sometimes steeply, sometimes on a wide,
low incline, and the depths of the treads varied.
   After ten minutes, Ivor had gone so far ahead that it was dark.
My head struck rock, my feet misjudged the step and I fell with a
scream.
   Esmond's arm came round my waist, but there was no resilience
left in me to help him.
   "I can't breathe," I whispered. "I'm choking."
   "No, you're not. This is the worst patch. You've only about
another hundred yards to go. Come on." He heaved me upright, and
half carried me to a point where the steps ended.
   
   IVOR had set the lamp on the floor. He stood over it,
visible to his waist, the rest of him a formless shadow. We were in a
cave. As Esmond put me down, I lifted my arm. I could just touch the
roof.
   The air was a little sweeter but it was still heavy and my breath
came in gasps. I would have given ten years of my life for sight of
the sky.
   I began to beat my hands against the slime-covered walls. I
cried out one word repeatedly: it was Mark.
   "Don't, Charlotte. You've got to stick it out for another few
minutes." With hands that had suddenly grown protective, Esmond
turned me round, pushed the hair from my forehead. "You and Mark
have got the rest of your lives to fix yourselves up. But this small
piece of you belongs to me. If you don't stay with me until I get
into the open, I'm finished, Charlotte."
   "You've no chance," I said, repeating Mark's words. "There
isn't a yacht waiting for you..."
   "Probably not." He shrugged his shoulders. "But if I can
get clear, make the beach, I'll find some sort of boat..."
   I glanced over my shoulder. Ivor had moved a little out of the
range of the light.
   "Why did you come in here? If you're afraid of what he might
do?" I asked Esmond.
   "He wouldn't have given me a chance to do anything else. He'd
have shot us all down, made his own getaway alone."
   "What's he doing?"
   "Don't panic. He's clearing the way ahead. Except for an air
passage, the way out of this cave is blocked with stones and old
rubbish. After that, there's a low tunnel, one last cave... From
there, out on the cliffs, the odds are against him, not me. I know
every foxhole a darned sight better than he does. I'll leave you
there, Charlotte, and you can double back to Mark. He'll have the
door down by then." He raised his voice that he had held to a
whisper. "All clear, Ivor?"
   
   AS he pushed me forward Ivor moved into the light. There
was a glint of metal in his right hand. Esmond laughed, and in the
same second pulled me back hard against him, a living shield between
him and the threat of the gun.
   "Just as I thought," he said shortly. "My insurance has paid
off."
   I froze against him, as Ivor, giant-size in that low cavern,
moved one step, then another towards us. I felt Esmond's left hand
move down to grapple in his pocket.
   Then he shouted: "If you want to kill me, you've got to kill
her first."
   "You're at the end of the line, Elliot," Ivor said in a voice
of steel.
   Esmond screamed: "You'll have to shoot her first. Lisa won't
be so keen to have a double murderer on her hands, you'll find."
   Their voices overlapped and were trapped in the echo.
   "Lisa's finished with you. You're a wastrel, a sponger," Ivor
hissed.
   "You never meant me to get out of here alive... Webster... and
the boat, they were a pack of lies... Mark was right." Esmond was
now gasping for breath.
   "Of course he was right... You're going to die, Elliot, and the
girl can go with you..."
   The gun in Esmond's hand spat. The light was gone. In the
sudden, blinding darkness I managed to wrench myself free of Esmond's
grasp and dive to the ground. There was a tumult of noise and the
spatter of fire. Something struck my arm. There was no pain after
the first searing blow, only numbness, and sticky warmth trickling
over my hand.
   For a moment I crouched there, dazed, then I stood up and shouted
as loudly as the breath in my lungs would allow.
   Almost immediately I heard the scraping of heavy, stumbling feet,
a voice choking in curses, a fall that sent stones tumbling. Then
silence again, and after timeless seconds, a long-drawn-out gasp.
   "Esmond! Esmond!" The echo mocked my cry. I fumbled
frantically in the darkness, bending double, brushing the wet, filthy
floor with my hands... Then I fell over the prone figure that was
still moaning and dropped to my knees.
   I whispered: ~"Esmond!" not sure in the blackness whether it
was he or Ivor.
   He breathed the first syllable of my name. I shifted his head to
my knee. It was heavy, and when I felt his face it was wet... or was
it my fingers that were coated with my own blood or slime from the
cave?
   My hands on his shoulders moved down to his chest, and then
dropped away as he gave a terrible scream. I bent my head until my
face was over his mouth, trying to make words out of the senseless
mumble that followed the cry of agony. But they made no sense.
   And then, behind me, I heard another sound: slow, dragging,
tortuous. I froze, my body bent over Esmond, my hand grasping the gun
that was, miraculously, lying on the ground beside my finger tips.
Ivor was moving.
   
   THEN he was on me, his foot tripping over my leg; my teeth
bit my lower lip to stem the scream, and my free hand covered Esmond's
mouth. Beneath the weight of his body I willed my limbs to stay stiff
and waited to feel the touch of his hand that would tell him Esmond
and I weren't dead. In that moment my finger found the trigger of the
gun.
   Would I have pulled it? I don't know, because the weight
gradually heaved itself from me. Footsteps, scuffling, uncertain,
dragged themselves away, and finally, there was utter silence.
   I lifted my shoulders, eased the burden on my knees, and
waited...
   I fought hard not to wake up. Desperately I clung to the
remnants of unconsciousness, burrowing in the thinning layers, trying
to ignore the pain in my arm and a voice that called my name.
   But the voice and the pain were winning. A hand on my shoulder
scattered the last fragments and I cried out.
   The voice said: "I'm sorry, but it's time you woke up,
Charlotte."
   Odd, I thought, it sounded like Edwina's voice. I opened my
eyes. The room was full of daylight.
   "There! You'll be perfectly all right know." Her voice was
relieved.
   I pushed myself up on the pillows. "What time is it?" I
asked.
   "Almost ten o'clock." She glanced at my arm. "You're not to
worry about that. It was only a simple flesh wound. Dr. Farnes
stitched it up for you last night."
   I was still only half awake.
   "Could I have a cup of tea?" I said.
   "Ivy is bringing you your breakfast as soon as she can manage
it, but she's all behind this morning. Nothing has been done
properly. It's all extremely upsetting."
   I stared at her. The memory of the afternoon and evening before
came faltering back to me, in patches. I could feel the dazzle of the
torches as Mark, Adkins and the others reached me in the cave.
   "Are you hurt, Charlotte?" Mark had gently eased me upright,
away from Esmond.
   Adkins had bent over the body that I had guarded, and a whole
world of tortured waiting passed before Adkins said: "I'm afraid
there's nothing else we can do for him. Mr. Halliwell, I suggest
you help Miss Elliot back to the house. I'll follow you."
   Even now, I could hear my own voice crying out, and Mark saying:
"Hush, darling. He's dead. I've got to get you out of here."
   I could remember nothing after that but a close-up of Dr.
Farnes's face as he bent over me, and his cheerful voice saying:
"Now don't worry, young lady. This isn't going to hurt you. You're
going to have a nice, long sleep."
   I twisted round, so that I could look fully at Edwina. Her face
was grey and pinched, but from the light in her eye I could tell she
was on the brink of reading me a lecture.
   I cried out accusingly: "Esmond need never have died if you
hadn't given him away. You came straight back here yesterday
afternoon and telephoned Inspector Adkins. How could you be so
cruel?"
   
   SHE shook her head at me, patiently admonishing, as if I
were a child. "If you commit murder, Charlotte, you must be
punished."
   I said: "Why did you play that horrible cat and mouse game if
you knew Esmond was there?"
   "I didn't know he was there until I saw the way that dog
behaved, that the dresser hinges had been mended and oiled, and the
attic was bolted. When that meddlesome policeman forced himself on me
in the morning with his story of Esmond being alive, I didn't believe
him."
   She leaned forward, said fiercely: "And do you know why I
didn't believe him?"
   I shook my head.
   "Because if he were speaking the truth it meant that all of you,
and you in particular, Charlotte, had wilfully deceived me. Do you
think it's pleasant to learn that a granddaughter to whom you've given
nothing but kindness, whom you've tried to love, is sheltering the
murderer of..."
   She broke off, as if Danny's name was too precious to be spoken
before me. For a moment her eyes closed and then she recovered
herself. "I'd never have believed you were capable of such deceit.
However, it is Mark I blame for the way you behaved. I shall never
forgive him. He's to leave this house..."
   I broke in on her tirade. "That's not how it happened at all.
I found Esmond. Mark wanted to go to the police. I wouldn't let
him."
   "Let him! Let him!" she burst out. "A grown man should be
the keeper of his own conscience, not at the mercy of a silly,
sentimental girl. And a fine help he was to you! You might have been
killed."
   "Where is he now?" I asked.
   "Where you'd expect him to be! Explaining his conduct to the
police."
   There was a fumbling at the door, and Ivy came in, breathless,
awkward.
   When she'd gone, Edwina bent over me. "You've got an egg. I
gave orders for it. And there's some honey. That'll do you good."
   "I just want the tea," I said.
   "Oh, no," she protested. "You must eat a good breakfast. I
can't promise you what the rest of the meals will be like today.
Mrs. West has left, you know.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 21
<487 TEXT P25>
Mrs. Crichton smiled at Tandy.
   "Come into the drawing-room, dear, and talk to us." And, as
Tandy followed her into the room, and Mr. Crichton got up to greet
her, Mrs. Crichton added: "If this visit is what we think, Tandy,
I hope you're as pleased about it as we are."
   "I'm delighted," she said. "Marion's such a darling."
   "And your brother is the first young man I've ever encountered
that I'd trust my girl to," said Mr. Crichton.
   Ten minutes or so later, and looking like a girl who had been
very thoroughly kissed, Marion came into the room, Jock's hand in her
own.
   "Mummy- Daddy- we-"
   Gently, smiling, Jock interposed. "Marion, my love, I have an
idea that if my sister has had anything to do with this, they won't
need telling. But, just for the record, we're engaged!"
   After that, everyone seemed to be kissing everyone else!
   Intermingled with her pleasure for them, Tandy felt a private
little glow of happiness. For so long, now, she'd felt responsible
for Jock, whether or not he would have wanted it. And now- he had a
grand girl like Marion to look after him, and she herself would be
free.
   Free... to let her love for Granville rule her life for ever.
Long after she and Jock had got back to the flat, she lay awake
thinking of Granville.
   She'd see him again tomorrow, but not till tomorrow night. That
meant the whole of a long day to live through first. I'm wishing my
whole life away, she thought, and smiled gently to herself. It was
worth living through hours of tedium, for those precious hours with
Granville in the evening.
   Next morning at breakfast, Jock said: "Don't do anything about
supper for me tonight, Tandy. Marion and I want to go out to
celebrate our engagement. We shan't be buying the ring until the
weekend, but tonight I want to take her out to the best dinner I can
find!"
   "Yes, Jock." For a moment, Tandy felt sad, thinking that many
of the pleasures most engaged couples shared would be missing for Jock
and Marion. Dances, theatres, cinemas. She herself had never worried
about any of them, but then she hadn't grown up in a city as Marion
had. Would Marion mind? Yes, sometimes. But reassurance came to
Tandy in the knowledge that Marion adored Jock. Being with him was
what would matter most to her in life, now and always.
   "I'm beginning to feel a bit conscience-stricken about you,
Tandy," Jock said suddenly. "I'm a selfish devil. When you're
happy as I am, you're apt to forget-"
   "Forget what, Jock?"
   "Well- if we get married-"
   "Listen, Jock dear, when you get married, if you want this flat
I'll move out. It's as simple as that. I can go into a hostel, or
get digs with one of the other girls at the college. Or-"
   He didn't even hear the other word as it trembled softly as a
whisper. She didn't finish the sentence. She just couldn't- yet.
But, she thought, as she started on her way to the college- maybe
Jock wasn't the only member of the family to have exciting news this
week. Only, until Granville really told her, she could say nothing to
Jock at all.
   The sun was shining and Tandy's heart was singing as she crossed
George Street that evening and made her way down to Princes Street for
the bus to the studio.
   "You're late!" Granville said almost accusingly, as she walked
into the studio.
   "Sorry-"
   "So you should be, my sweet. Don't you know I've been counting
the minutes, all day, till you came!"
   He moved to her and took her into his arms, and the wonder of his
kiss blotted out everything.
   "Granville-" she said at last, shakily.
   "Yes, my love! That's just to keep you quiet till I finish the
picture! With any luck we'll be through with it tonight!"
   She didn't bother to change. He'd finished the painting of the
dress last night and it was only work on her face and arms that was
left. She took up the familiar pose with a kind of sadness in her
heart because it was the last time.
   Yet it was stupid to be sad. The picture meant something;
certainly. It had brought them together. It would, she thought, be a
symbol...
   As she stood, feeling the familiar fatigue creep over her,
Granville suddenly threw down his brushes.
   "Well, Tandy? I didn't let you see it properly before. What do
you think?"
   Tandy walked over to the easel and then stopped, frowning.
"She- she's prettier than I am, Granville," she said at last.
   "Nonsense. Your trouble is that you don't know how damned
attractive you are." She could see she'd annoyed him, even with the
implied criticism, and she didn't know what to do to put things right.
But it was true. The picture was of a very pretty girl in a white,
full-skirted evening dress. But- it wasn't her. She couldn't have
said where it failed, except that the eyes staring out of the canvas
had a boldness which was quite alien to Tandy.
   "It's- very nice," she managed to say at last.
   "Nice! That's a stupid word. I tell you it's my best ever.
I'm going to submit it for the next Exhibition in London."
   She smiled. Seeing his pleasure in the picture she forgot the
doubts in her own mind.
   "And now," Granville said, "we'll go down and have a drink
and then perhaps go out for some food."
   He went through to the bathroom to remove the paint from his
hands, and she sat quietly on the settee, wondering why it was that
she felt strangely flat and disappointed.
   Perhaps she was tired; she hadn't slept much last night. But,
perhaps, a little of it was reaction, because the picture that had
kept them together all this time was finished- and she didn't like it
as much as she'd thought she would.
   "Ready, my love?" Granville came through and pulled on his
jacket. He took her hand as they walked to the door, and just as they
reached it, he took her into his arms again.
   "Sweet Tandy," he said, huskily, "beloved Tandy. Oh, Tandy,
I'm crazy about you, my love." They stood locked together in an
embrace which made Tandy's head swim and then they slipped down the
staircase and along the road to the hotel.
   "A quick drink," Granville had said, "and then we're going a
bit farther afield."
   His car was in the garage and Tandy waited for him in the hotel
lounge till he'd collected it, feeling, as she always did, out of
place among the smart people who invariably patronised this favourite
bar of Granville's. As she saw Granville coming back, she rose to go.
A voice, just a little louder than perhaps was intended, floated
towards her.
   "Yes, that's Granville's latest. Cradle-snatching, isn't he?"
   She felt the blood rush to her head. Granville's latest! Just
as if she was some girl he'd picked up and would drop again when he
was tired of her! It wasn't like that, she thought fiercely, it just
wasn't. Granville loved her.
   Granville saw her expression and frowned. "What's the matter,
my sweet?"
   "Nothing-"
   He didn't persist as, irrationally enough, she'd wanted him to.
He just said: "If one of the lads has been making cracks, I'll deal
with him. But any young woman who goes around with me is apt to get
some, Tandy. That's fair warning, my girl-"
   His tone was light.
   "Where are we going," she asked as they got into the car.
   "On a tour of inspection. There's a place I particularly want
you to see by moonlight... It's there, complete, even to the wishing
well, my love."
   "You mean?"
   "Our small hotel," he quoted softly. "You'll fall in love
with it the way I have, when you see it, Tandy."
   
   "Here we are," said Granville.
   Tandy took a quick breath. It was perfect. Hardly an hotel at
all really: just a long, low-thatched building, its white-washed walls
stark in the moonlight. Lit up with fairy-lights, it looked like
something out of a dream.
   He slipped his arm round her. "I knew you'd love it, poppet."
   She went on staring, utterly bewitched. He'd been right. There
was a well, a wishing well, in the front garden. As she watched
she could see a couple standing there, hand in hand, oblivious to
everything but themselves.
   "Oh, Granville, it's just what I dreamed of," Tandy said in a
whisper.
   Granville smiled gently. This was the way to do it...
   "That's what you call a preview, Tandy darling." He backed
the car out again and drove back swiftly in the direction of the city.
He could see the way she kept glancing at him, and he knew exactly
what was in her mind. She wanted him to stop the car, to make love to
her. He turned down a small lane, and slowed to a stop.
   "You're very silent, Tandy," he said lightly.
   "Am I?"
   "You are. And I'm glad. I hate women who chatter the whole
time."
   "Granville- Granville darling-"
   He put his arm round her, drew her towards him. "I love
you..."
   "And I love you, Granville, I love you." The words came out
with a fire that almost frightened her. Her very feelings were
frightening her now. She'd had no idea, until this moment, just how
desperately disturbing love could be...
   His lips came down hard on hers and she clung to him.
   "Granville- darling-"
   "My love-"
   At last, she struggled free from his arms.
   "Well, Tandy," he said, "you've seen our hotel. You know
it's waiting for us. When is it to be?"
   "Granville!" Suddenly now everything was right and wonderful
and not a bit frightening any more. "Granville darling, not just for
a little while. I mean, you see, I must wait until Jock and Marion
are married. I don't think that'll be long now. They've found each
other and they want to be together always. But- but once they're
married, then you and I. Oh, Granville, say it."
   "Say what, my sweet?"
   "Say- I love you, Tandy. I want you to marry me-"
   Abruptly he drew his arm from her shoulders. Abruptly he
switched on the car ignition. "Another of them!"
   His tone was like a lash. But what had she done?
   "Another of what?"
   Over the purr of the car engine, his voice came to her: "You're
like the rest of them, Tandy! I just can't believe that." He put
the car into gear, put his foot down. In silence they drove back into
the city. He said no more until they had stopped right outside the
flat.
   "Well, Tandy?"
   "You're angry with me, Granville. Why? What have I done?"
   "Done? Nothing I suppose. It's just that I'm disappointed. I
thought you were different. Like me. Honest. Straight."
   "What on earth do you mean?"
   "How I hate and despise the kind of woman who will only settle
for a wedding ring, Tandy. Marriage is something foisted on us by
people who like the idea of living in cages because they're too scared
of freedom."
   "I don't understand," her voice trembled. "Loving people,
Granville, means you want to be with them always- and that's why
people get married, surely, so that they can be together always."
   "And you think a few mumbled words in front of the Registrar and
a gold band on your finger makes you more capable of loving? Is that
it?"
   "Granville- it wouldn't be the Registrar for me. I- I've
dreamed about falling in love and getting married and though I didn't
know what love was like then, I just felt that I'd want to stand in a
church, and- have the blessing-"
   "I'm sorry. It's obvious we just don't look at things in the
same way, you and I. Tandy, I don't blame you for your attitude.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 23
<488 TEXT P26>
SHORT STORY by MARTIN MAYCOCK
He wondered throughout the long dark hours he spent...
WAITING FOR STEPHEN
...what had come between him and his son
ILLUSTRATED BY MONICA GILL
   THAT Saturday, Stephen was due home from the church hall
before five. His father, who was hard at work at his desk, didn't
notice the time passing and it was well past six when he looked at the
clock.
   He thumped his papers into a tidy shape, lit his last cigarette,
and went out on to the landing.
   "Stephen. Are you back, Stephen?" His voice sounded through
the house. But there was no reply.
   Alan was puzzled. He came down the stairs rather quickly, looked
into the living-room and the dining-room, and then walked out through
the kitchen into the garden. There was no one there, but Alan stood,
for a moment, on the edge of the lawn, enjoying the warm evening.
There was no wind; the oak tree on the allotments behind the house
was standing absolutely still. It was perfect for cricket. If
Stephen had been back from the rehearsal on time they could have had a
spot of practice...
   
   ALAN mooned across the grass, feeling vaguely let down. If
Mary had been home, they would have been going to the Swansons' dinner
party. That was out, and now no cricket. Alan went inside again and
stood by the bay window in the front room. Except for George Sheriff,
clipping his hedge, the road was empty. Alan stood there, looking
out, his fingers drumming lightly on the sill.
   His fingers stopped drumming. A small boy in a blue blazer was
walking along the pavement. He came about a quarter of the way along
the road, and then turned in at a white gate.
   Alan went out by the front door, hurrying towards the white gate.
The boy in the blazer answered the door when he knocked. Alan knew
him; he was in Stephen's class.
   "Gerald," he said. "Stephen's not home yet from the
rehearsal. What time did you finish?"
   "Not till five. I've been around at John Purdy's since."
   Alan looked at his watch. It was now ten past seven. He said:
"I suppose you didn't see who Stephen left with?"
   Gerald shook his head doubtfully. "I didn't see him go." He
paused. "I think he left earlier." He started swinging the front
door nervously.
   "Why did he leave earlier, Gerald?"
   
   GERALD was silent for a moment, then, still swinging the
door, he said: "He thought they were laughing at him."
   "Laughing at him?"
   "When he recited his poem they were laughing at the back because
Anderson tore his trousers on a nail. Stephen stopped saying his
poem. Mr. Field told him to go on, but he just stood there. And
then he walked off the stage. He went out by the side door and I
didn't see him again."
   "Any idea where I might find him?"
   "Well, no... not unless he's round at Cobbold's."
   "Cobbold's." Alan repeated the name. He said nothing. Then:
"Where does he live?"
   "I'm not sure. Somewhere the other side of the church."
   It took Alan some time to get across to the church. He walked
round to the porch and pushed through the inner door. There was no
one inside, but the vestry door was open. Alan crossed the nave,
knocked on the open door and looked in. Field was working at some
papers. He was old for a curate. Fortyish. Alan's age.
   Alan explained about Stephen being late and Field said he hadn't
realised that Stephen had left before the others.
   "He muffed some of his lines this afternoon, Mr. Deane. That
probably upset him a bit. But don't worry. "He'll be back for
supper."
   "I hope so," Alan said. "Mary's visiting her sister. If
Stephen's not home when she gets back I just don't know what she'll
do."
   For a while it was quiet in the room. Then Alan asked Field if
he knew where a boy named Cobbold lived. Field delved into a card
index and came up with the address.
   
   HE wrote it on a slip of paper. "Is young Cobbold a
friend of your lad then?"
   Alan shrugged. "If it's the boy I'm thinking of, Stephen
brought him round once. Just the once. I had to put my foot down
there." He turned to go. "Mr. Deane."
   Alan turned.
   "Mr. Deane, why did Stephen decide to take part in the
concert? He doesn't really like that sort of thing, you know."
   Alan did not reply at once. At last he said: "Some people
leave it to others, Mr. Field. And some people get down to the job
themselves. I've always buckled down to it."
   "And Stephen, he feels the same?"
   
   ALAN nodded. "I believe in training," he said, and
moved away across the nave. He was back at the porch when he heard a
step behind him. It was Field again.
   "You go down to this Cobbold boy," he said. "I'll make a few
calls, and meet you back at your house. If I find Stephen, I'll bring
him straight home."
   There was no front gate to Cobbold's house. A small van, rather
dilapidated, stood on the grassy gravel drive. Cobbold's mother
answered the door. She smiled at Alan rather vaguely and sent him
round to the back. Cobbold was there, feeding some small animals in a
hutch.
   He was the boy Alan remembered: thick glasses, and rather weedy.
None too clean. He had wanted to drag Stephen off somewhere with his
elder brother after dark. To photograph bats, or something equally
ludicrous. Quite an unsuitable type of boy.
   Alan didn't refer to their previous meeting. "I'm Stephen
Deane's father," he said. "Do you happen to know where he is?"
   The boy shook his head. "He hasn't been round today, Mr.
Deane. Isn't there a concert or something up at St. Mary's?"
   Alan nodded.
   Cobbold seemed to find it difficult to express himself clearly.
"Is Stephen lost then?" he said. "Do you want me to find him for
you?"
   "No. No, thank you," Alan said rather sharply. "If he
should call in, tell him to go home at once, will you?"
   Stephen still wasn't back when he got home. It was dark now
indoors. Alan switched on the light in the hall. Then he switched on
the kitchen light, filled the kettle and set it on the gas. He walked
into the dining-room and switched the light on there, too.
   Out in the hall someone was tapping the door-knocker softly.
Alan went to see who it was. It was Field.
   "Home yet?" Field asked.
   Alan shook his head.
   "Well, I've no news of him, I'm afraid," Field said. "No
news is good news, of course. I called at the police station.
They've had no accidents reported."
   "Would you like a cup of tea?" Alan asked. They went into the
kitchen.
   "I insisted that he should take part in the concert," Alan
said.
   Field looked at him across the rim of his teacup.
   "Shouldn't I have?" Alan asked. "I want him to pull his
weight. The concert's for the parish development fund."
   "It's a good cause," Field said briefly.
   
   THEY finished the tea and then Alan started ringing people
up. At half-past nine, in an interval between calls, the telephone
rang. It was the police station. A voice wanted to know if Stephen
was home yet. When Alan said he wasn't, the voice said a car was
coming round.
   The police car seemed to arrive almost at once. When Alan went
to the door there were two men on his step, both in plain clothes.
Alan took them into the living-room; he felt suddenly cold and
switched on the electric fire. The older man, who was a sergeant, sat
down on the sofa. Alan told him how Stephen was said to have walked
out of the concert rehearsal and hadn't been seen since. He explained
that his wife was away visiting her sister.
   The sergeant had a notebook on his knee. He asked for the full
name of the boy. Stephen Roger Kearsley Deane. Age? Ten
years. Description? The sergeant's notes soon filled a page of his
book. He turned over on to a clean page, and asked for the names of
boys that Stephen knew. When Alan thought about it, it seemed that
Stephen had no very close friends. "He's rather a shy boy, you
see," he said.
   The sergeant finished writing. He looked up. "You've not told
your wife yet?" He gestured at the phone.
   "Not yet."
   "Are things normally a little difficult between you and the boy?
Don't mind me asking this, Mr. Deane. It might help us. From
what's been said I gather that he wasn't very keen on being in this
concert at all. Do you often have rows over things like this?"
   
   HE stared at the sergeant. "There was no row. There are
never any rows. We don't brawl in this house."
   "Trouble between you and your wife?" There was no shade of
expression on the sergeant's heavy face. "Anything that might worry
the boy?"
   There was a momentary pause.
   "No. Nothing."
   Field left about ten minutes after the two detectives. Alan went
with him to the gate. As Field drew away on his motorcycle Alan
noticed a knot of men under the street lamp across the road. One of
the men broke away and came over to Alan. It was Roy Fox, father of
the boy, Gerald.
   "We are going out round the streets," Fox said. "They're
parcelling them out now. We're going in twos."
   "I ought to come with you," Alan said. "But the police said
to stay here for Mary."
   Fox was a tall, thin man with a big ginger R.A.F. moustache.
He gripped Alan's hand. Then he went back to the group under the
lamppost.
   Alan went indoors. Upstairs in his bedroom he put on a thick
blue jersey under his sports coat. In the kitchen again, he looked
for his torch but could not find it.
   Mary arrived home by taxi.
   "Stephen's not come home," Alan said, pushing the door closed
behind her.
   Mary sat down on the stairs. "Where is he then?" she said.
Her face seemed very pale in the weak light of the hall. Alan told
her how things were.
   "Who have you checked with? The Bruces? The Smails? The
Willoughbys? The Cartwrights?"
   At each name Alan nodded. "I phoned them. And the police are
going round." He explained about the detectives.
   "David Forrest's mother?"
   "Field saw her. Field from the church. But none of them would
have kept him until now."
   Still in her coat, Mary stood up and went into the living-room to
the telephone. Most of the people she rang had been checked already
but Alan let her do it. At last she put the phone down, went over to
the sofa and sat there hugging her coat around her.
   "Would you like a cup of tea?" Alan asked.
   Mary said nothing.
   "They seem to think he was upset at being in the concert,"
Alan said. "Perhaps I shouldn't have put him in for it. But he's
got to learn to mix and to do his whack."
   "Why?" Mary said. "I'm not a good mixer. Some people
aren't." She had been looking intently at her hands. Now she
raised her head and looked into Alan's eyes. "Sometimes you are
disappointed in me, aren't you- because I don't join in with this and
that? I think you love me, but sometimes you are disappointed.
   "And what you don't like to say to me, you say to Stephen, don't
you? You're worried in case he grows up like his mother."
   Alan said: "I want to do my best for the boy."
   "That's not good enough. Your best doesn't matter. It's
his best that is important. He has to be himself, Alan. Make his
own choices. Look how he wanted a kitten for his birthday, and you
gave him football boots.
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 26
<489 TEXT P27>
The Doctor's Daughters
by ANNE WEALE
ILLUSTRATED BY DENIS ALFORD
   It was like a pebble thrown into a quiet, still pool when
Daniel Elliot met the doctor's daughters!
THE STORY SO FAR
   For three years after the death of Sir Robert Elliot, Branford
Hall lay empty and the overgrown grounds became a favourite haunt of
RACHEL BURNEY, eldest of the local doctor's three daughters.
Rachel had kept house for her widowed father, her younger sisters,
CAROLA and SUZY, and their fluttery aunt, RACHEL BURNEY,
ever since leaving art school some years previously.
   One sunny May morning Rachel woke from a daydream in the Branford
orchard- she had been wondering whether she would ever marry EDWARD
FORRESTER whom she had known since childhood- to find herself being
scrutinised by a tall, bronzed man. In her consternation and not
realising he was Sir Robert's Canadian grandson, DANIEL ELLIOT,
she accused him of trespassing!
   Later, listening to the Canadian's sarcastic comments as she
accompanied him through the dusty, neglected rooms of the Hall, Rachel
became convinced he was the most provoking, arrogant man she had ever
met...
   At tea she was filled with dismay when DOCTOR BURNEY suddenly
announced that he had invited the new owner of the Hall to dinner that
evening.
   Twenty-year-old Carola, the beauty of the family, returned home
delighted because she had been appointed house model of the store
where she worked. Tubby, fourteen-year-old Suzy was frankly envious.
   Promptly at six-thirty there was a knock on the front door.
Rachel opened it- and was struck dumb. Gone was the casually
dressed Canadian she had thought a "backwoodsman"- this Daniel
Elliot was immaculately tailored...
   The story now continues
   
   ALTHOUGH Rachel had spent most of her life in a
neighbourhood where even rich people wore ancient tweeds and faded
raincoats, she could not fail to recognise the faultless cut of the
lounge suit which now replaced the disreputable slacks Daniel Elliot
had worn earlier that day. She knew, too, that the immaculate cream
silk shirt and olive green gum-twill tie must have been bought at some
very expensive shirtmakers.
   Perching on the edge of the sofa, she tried vainly to think of
something to say and was relieved when the visitor broke the silence
by asking permission to smoke.
   "Oh, yes, please do," she said hastily, looking about for the
ivory cigarette box that her father- himself a pipe-smoker- kept for
guests.
   But before she could discover where it had been moved, Elliot
produced a slim silver case and offered it.
   "5N-no, thank you." The foolish stammer made her even more
self-conscious. "My father says you are staying at the Saracen,
Mr. Elliot. Is it comfortable? The couple who run it now have only
been there a short time. The hotel side is quite new."
   He was flicking his black enamelled lighter and she noticed that
his hands, mahogany dark against the pale cream cuffs of his shirt,
were clinically clean, the nails pared short at the tips of his long
lean fingers. His cuff-links were plain gold rectangles and he did
not wear a signet ring.
   "Yes, extremely comfortable, thanks," he answered quietly.
"My room overlooks the village green. I am told that the stream
running through the centre of it has quite a history."
   "The Goose Beck? Yes, it has. People used to do all their
washing in it years ago. It widens into a pool up near the church.
That's where they ducked witches in the Middle Ages."
   He drank some sherry, his eyes disconcertingly keen as he watched
her.
   "I imagine you were not very pleased to hear I was coming
tonight," he remarked bluntly.
   Rachel swallowed, unable to meet his glance.
   "I think I should apologise for saying what I did to you this
morning," she said, flushing. "It was very rude of me."
   "On the contrary, I found it refreshingly frank. You look very
attractive when you are angry," he added, with a hint of mockery.
Then, glancing round the room: "Where is the Hound of the
Baskervilles tonight?"
   She stiffened.
   "Bolster is in the garden," she said coolly, furious that the
lazy, almost caressing note in his voice had succeeded in heightening
her colour.
   "You know, I am beginning-"
   He broke off, rising to his feet as Miss Burney and Suzy entered.
   Rachel made the introductions and left her aunt to take over the
conversation. She was pouring a sherry for Aunt Florence when the
door swung open and Carola made one of her grand entrances.
   After contributing a couple of pounds to the family exchequer-
some of which she invariably borrowed back before the end of the
week- Carola spent all her earnings on clothes and cosmetics. Every
Friday saw some addition to her wardrobe. If no dress, shoes, or
handbag had appealed to her, then she would buy jewellery, make-up or
nylons. To be up to the minute was as essential to Carola as eating
or sleeping. She pored over fashion magazines with the same
professional absorption that her father gave to his medical journals
or Miss Burney to horoscopes.
   Tonight she was wearing her latest acquisition, a dress of misty
blue-green chiffon with a sleeveless bloused bodice and a flurry of
pleats from the waist. Her eyelids shimmered with silvery aquamarine
shadow and her lipstick was a subtle amber-rose. She looked willowy
and fragile and a delicious scent wafted from her as she moved.
   
   ELLIOT stood up, his eyebrows tilting appreciatively.
   A little put out by the interruption, Miss Burney said:
   "This is Carola, my second niece, Mr. Elliot."
   Carola smiled and held out a small cool hand, her silver
bracelets tinkling.
   "How do you do? Welcome to England, Mr. Elliot," she said
charmingly. Then, with mischievous candour: "I must say you are not
a bit what we expected."
   He laughed.
   "What did you expect?"
   Carola sank gracefully into a chair and crossed her legs,
revealing so much knee that Aunt Florence, who disapproved of recent
fashion trends, made anxious signals to her to pull her skirt down.
   "We weren't really expecting anyone at all after so long,"
Carola said, ignoring the signs. "But you are not at all like your
grandfather. He used to stump round the village with an enormous
stick and growl at people through his moustache."
   "I'm sure he never growled at you."
   Daniel looked amused.
   "Oh, yes, he did. I was terrified of him."
   She gave a reminiscent shiver. Then, twirling imaginary
whiskers, she did a very creditable imitation of Sir Robert's deep
bass voice.
   "Really, Carola! I am surprised at you!" Miss Burney
protested indignantly, her long thin nose turning pink with
mortification at this irreverent piece of mimicry. She looked
apologetically at their guest. "Your grandfather was a most charming
old gentleman, Mr. Elliot, and greatly respected," she assured him
earnestly.
   "I dare say he was milder than he looked," he said carelessly.
"I believe he made several attempts to patch things up with my
father but none of them was successful."
   "What did they have a row about?" Carola asked. "Everyone
knows there was a colossal bust-up, but no one knows why."
   Before Elliot could reply, Doctor Burney came in and Rachel
slipped away to put the finishing touches to the supper table. She
took little part in the conversation during the meal, in the course of
which it emerged that Daniel Elliot could pilot a plane, had travelled
all over the world and had an informed taste in art, literature and
music.
   By the time they had reached the coffee stage, it was sickeningly
clear to Rachel that, far from being an uncouth product of the
backwoods as she had supposed- and perhaps indicated by her manner to
him- Daniel Elliot knew ten times more of the world than anyone she
had met.
   "May I give you a hand with the washing up?" he asked her, as
they rose to return to the sitting-room.
   "Thank you, but I would really rather do it myself," she said
politely.
   "Rachel is the madly domesticated type. You would probably put
everything back in the wrong place and then she would have to
re-organise them. You hate things to be out of order, don't you,
sweetie?" Carola said teasingly.
   Rachel smiled, wondering why a passion for tidiness always
sounded such a petty, old-maidish foible.
   "I do a bit," she admitted evenly. "I'll make some more
coffee. I won't be long."
   
   SHE had just dried the last plate and was setting clean
coffee cups on a tray, when a dark-haired, spectacled young man put
his head through the kitchen window.
   "Coming for a walk, Rachel?" he asked.
   "Oh, hello, Edward! No, I can't tonight," she said
regretfully. "We have a visitor. Come in and pay your respects to
the new lord of the manor. He is in the sitting-room with the
others."
   "Yes, I heard the prodigal grandson had finally turned up."
Edward came into the kitchen. "It's all over the village. What is
he like?"
   "Quite pleasant," Rachel said evasively, going to the pantry
for more milk.
   Edward leaned against the dresser, watching her. He was tall and
lanky, with a thin, clever face and slightly stooped shoulders. As a
small boy he had never fitted into the rowdy gang of village lads and
later, when he went to Branford Grammar School and walked away with
most of the academic laurels, his friends had been similarly quiet and
studious. Oddly, Rachel, then a pigtailed tomboy, had liked him
better than the more boisterous youths.
   "I say, Rachel-"
   He broke off, fiddling with the strap of his wristwatch.
   "Mm, what?" she asked, wishing the kettle would hurry up and
boil.
   "I rather wanted to see you tonight."
   "You sound very mysterious. What's up?"
   He hesitated.
   "Well, for one thing, I've been promoted."
   "Oh, Edward, how lovely! Congratulations!"
   He flushed.
   "It is pretty encouraging and, of course, my income will
improve considerably. That is why I wanted you to be the first to
know."
   Rachel smiled at him.
   "I always knew you would do great things," she said
affectionately.
   And then, because it seemed the appropriate gesture and because
she had known him for so long, she laid her hands lightly on his
shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek.
   Edward's reaction was to clasp her eagerly round the waist and
return the kiss so heartily that she was too much taken aback to do
anything but submit. When, after a moment, he released her, she was
too breathless and shaken to free herself and could only stand dazedly
in the circle of his arms, trying to decide whether she had liked it.
   "Oh, Rachel, don't you see, I can ask you to marry me now," he
said huskily. "You do care for me, dearest? You will say
'yes'?"
   Rachel stared at him blankly. She had known for years that
Edward was fond of her and that everyone assumed they would eventually
marry. In a vague, wait-till-it-happens way, she had assumed it
herself. But now that he had actually proposed, she discovered that
she had no notion how to answer him. Although she was twenty-four,
she still thought of marriage as something in the future.
   "I don't know, Edward," she answered lamely. "I'm not sure.
It's all so- so sudden."
   And then, as she searched for words to explain that she was
touched and flattered, but that it wasn't a question which could be
settled in a split second, a movement in the doorway caught her eye
and she turned her head, a wave of furious and embarrassed colour
suffusing her face and throat.
   Calmly, his mouth twitching, his eyes brilliant with undisguised
amusement, Daniel Elliot strolled forward.
   "I came to carry the tray for you," he said politely. "I
seem to have chosen an inopportune moment."
   
   FOR what seemed an eternity, but was actually about fifteen
seconds, there was a strained silence.
   Anyone with a skin thinner than a rhinoceros hide would have
muttered an apology and hastily retreated, Rachel thought furiously.
# 26
<49 TEXT P28>
Across the Square
HILTON FRIARS
   TOMMY BLANEY'S nose was pressed flat against the shop window,
his blue eyes gazing seriously through a wisp of fair hair which would
keep falling across his eyes. He pushed his lower lip forward and
blew the strands away again and, at the same time, stood back from the
window and rubbed his hands together happily.
   His sister Margaret would look beautiful in that dress, he
thought wistfully, just like he imagined an angel would look. His
eyes lit up with excitement as he dug his hands deep into the pockets
of his duffle coat. He would buy it for her.
   And then, as the feel of the twopence halfpenny which his fingers
closed upon revealed the cold result of his financial position, his
happy expression faded. He gave a manly little shrug and turned
slowly away.
   How much was it, anyway, he asked himself miserably. A lot more
than he had in his money box. He sidled back to the window and looked
for the price. Fifteen guineas it said, plain as anything- that was
paper money that was. He stood thoughtfully looking at the dress from
the doorway of the shop.
   
   ON the other side of the square, Michael Price paused in
his dictating and stared absently down through the window of his
office on the first floor of Bank Buildings. Behind him, Stella
Travis, a discontented-looking girl with a notebook balanced on her
lap above shapely crossed legs, looked casually at her long
silver-lacquered finger nails. She was fast coming to the conclusion
that she was wasting her charms on this new boss of hers, who seemed
to look upon her as a mere dictating machine.
   If he didn't get on with this letter she would be late for her
lunch date, and what's more she'd tell him so shortly.
   Michael watched the little figure standing in front of the shop
window and wondered what could possibly be attracting a small boy so
much in a window displaying outfits for a bride and wedding guests.
He remembered that in his own childhood he spent hours looking into a
shop that sold meccano sets, but ladies' shops never had any appeal
for him.
   The child's attitude intrigued him until he just couldn't contain
his curiosity any longer. He turned suddenly. "That's all now, Miss
Travis, thank you- we'll leave the rest till after lunch," and
quickly gathering up his hat and gloves, he left the office.
   "What's got him?" Miss Travis wondered, her curiosity taking
her to the window. She saw Michael cross the square and stop in front
of the shop window that had attracted Tommy, who had just disappeared
round the corner.
   Michael scrutinised the window display in the hope of discovering
what had so held the child's attention. Surely it couldn't have been
the dresses. What a lovely creation in lace that was in the centre.
He supposed it would be accompanying some lucky fellow down the
church aisle soon.
   A little disappointed at not having his curiosity satisfied, he
turned away and almost collided with Stella Travis.
   "Pretty, isn't it?" she purred, as he raised his hat in some
embarrassment. "Some lucky girl," she pouted, and looked at him
coyly.
   "5Er-er-yes. I was just admiring the lace- quite a change
from the usual woollens we see at the office," he stammered
clumsily. Why did Miss Travis always make him feel such an idiot-
she was so poised and self-assured.
   She made no attempt to move away and he said firmly, "Well, I
mustn't keep you from your lunch," and quickly left her. Stella
Travis was, however, far too thick-skinned to take that as a rebuff.
   
   THE next day as Michael sat in his office his mind wandered
to that earnest little boy he had seen across the square the previous
day. The ordeal of dictation with Miss Travis was over for the
morning, thank goodness. Yesterday's encounter outside the shop
seemed to have given her ideas and she had been casting coy glances at
him all the morning.
   It was no good. He would have to get her transferred. She was
far too much of an embarrassment for him. He would speak to the
secretary about it.
   He went to the window and immediately forgot his problem typist
when he saw the little boy outside the shop again.
   Tommy bent to take a ruler from the top of his stocking, held it
at arm's length and surveyed the length of it. Then, with one eye
closed, he tried to measure how many times it would go into the length
of the bride's dress. He did this several times, much to the
amusement of passers by, of whom Tommy was quite oblivious.
   Michael's eyes softened as he recalled his own childhood. He had
good reason to be grateful to St. Edward's Orphanage for the
opportunities which they had made available to him and which
consequently led to the good position he now held in his firm. Little
boys, therefore, always had a very special interest for him. He was
out of his office and across the road at Tommy's side in next to no
time at all.
   
   TOMMY was far too busy with his measuring to notice
Michael, who couldn't help smiling at his serious little face.
   He put an arm gently on Tommy's shoulder. "Who's the lucky
girl?" he asked seriously.
   Tommy answered excitedly, "My sister Margaret... I've
measured- it's just right for her- it's as long as her nighty".
Michael stifled a laugh and adopted a man-to-man attitude.
   "Does your sister want that dress?"
   "She'd look beautiful in it,' Tommy said dreamily.
   Michael tried again. "Is she getting married?"
   "She will be soon, and I want her to have that lovely dress.
It's just like the one she told my little sister and me about in a
story where the prince came from far, far away on a big ship.
Margaret said she would like a dress like that when she married her
prince. My sister's the best sister in the world," he finished
proudly, putting the ruler back in his stocking.
   "Have you any money?" Michael asked him.
   "How much is fifteen guineas really? I've got 12s. 7 1/2d.
in my money box and I've got a super butterfly collection I could
sell. My dad said it was worth a lot of money."
   "Wouldn't your dad buy the dress for Margaret?" Michael asked
helpfully.
   "We haven't got a dad- or a mum, now, mister. They got burned
when our house caught fire," he said, almost without expression.
"That's why I want to get the dress for Margaret- she looks after
Tina and me, and she's beautiful and kind".
   Tommy looked at the clock in the nearby church. "Ooh, it's
late- I'll have to be going home for my dinner or I'll be late back
for school".
   
   MICHAEL was too interested now to leave Tommy. "I'm going
your way". He took Tommy's direction. "I'll see you across the
road... Where is your school?" he asked.
   "In Bridge Street". Tommy indicated the direction with a nod.
"Just behind the station". Michael remembered seeing a small
school near several rows of houses. He supposed it was probably the
only school in the centre of the city.
   Tommy pointed to a tall, important-looking building rising high
above the other blocks of buildings. "See right at the top, mister,
where the curtains are- that's where we live. My Grandpa is the
caretaker and Margaret and Tina and me came to live there after our
house got burned. Margaret helps Grandpa now 2'cos Grandma's ill but
she's going to get a job soon".
   He paused to consider and then chatted on. "It's nice living
high up- you can see all over the town, and we can hear the big burr
of the Town Hall clock when it's going to strike". He burred
several times in demonstration.
   Michael thought how quiet and lonely it must be at night living
at the top of one of these buildings, when all the office workers had
left the city and were spending their leisure hours at home in the
suburbs.
   "How does it feel going to bed so high up?"
   "Oh, it's nice..." Tommy smiled up at Michael. "Every night
Tina and me sit by the window looking down on all the twinkling lights
while Margaret tells us a story. It's quiet and beautiful, Mister".
   "Just like being on a ship at night, I expect," Michael said,
"with the twinkling stars to light up the dark sky".
   Tommy's eyes shone. "Have you been on a ship then?"
   "Yes, I sailed back from South Africa a few months ago".
Tommy showed his admiration.
   "You would love to see the animals in the Game Preserve there, I
know".
   "Sounds smashing".
   They turned a corner and Tommy pointed to an imposing looking
entrance across the road. "That's where we live," he said, and
turned to wave goodbye as he crossed into the roadway.
   There was a screeching of brakes and a shout and Michael was just
in time to snatch a white-faced Tommy back on to the pavement, the car
just grazing his leg.
   "Are you all right?" Michael's face was full of anxiety for
the frightened child. The colour had drained from his face. Michael
gently steered him across the road. "I'll take you home," he
comforted.
   Tommy had obviously had a nasty shock and Michael was just
wondering what to do with him when a young girl came hurrying down the
steps, her face flushed and her fair curls bobbing as she ran.
   Tenderly she placed her arms round Tommy. "Oh, poor Tommy, are
you hurt, are you hurt?" she cried. "You didn't look both ways
before crossing the road like you promised. I saw you through the
window".
   All her thoughts were for Tommy as she looked him over for hurts,
and comforted him with loving words. "Oh, Tommy, nothing must happen
to you," she whispered as she clutched him to her, quite oblivious
of Michael.
   She's little more than a child herself, Michael thought, and
couldn't help staring. Her dark eyelashes lay damp and shining on her
cheeks. She smiled then and opened her eyes- blue as the sea on a
cloudless day. "Come along, Tommy," she said, "Come and show
Grandpa you're all right."
   It was then that she noticed Michael. "Oh, I'm so rude. I
thought only of Tommy. Thank you for saving him from a nasty
accident," she said shyly, her eyes full of gratitude. Her arm
round Tommy, they went up the steps together. Michael stood for a
moment feeling useless and very much the passer-by.
   The warmth and affection showered on young Tommy by the girl, who
was obviously sister Margaret, brought home to Michael the absence of
family affection in his childhood. He thoughtfully walked away.
   
   MICHAEL looked out of his office window very often after
that and wondered whether he would see Tommy again, but several days
went by without even a glimpse of him. Miss Travis constantly
followed Michael's gaze and once she asked him if he was looking for
anyone special.
   She knew now that she was being moved to another department, and
as she did not seem to be making any headway personally with Michael
she didn't mind, in fact the sooner the better and more luck next time
was her motto. She had been told she would not be transferred until
they got someone to take her place.
   "I see that dress has gone from the window over the way," she
remarked pointedly, "the lace wedding gown, I mean... the one you
were looking at a few days ago..."
   "Oh that- I expect you'll be thinking of having one like
that," he said, with an attempt at laughing it off. He found it
easier to evade her advances now that he knew that she was being
transferred. "One of your many young men will be sweeping you off
your feet, one of these days," he went on provocatively, "Better
mind your step".
# 217
<491 TEXT P29>
A GIRL ON HER OWN
   "QUEEN STREET at last," sighed the plump woman as the
train slackened speed. "What a time it's taken to reach Glasgow!"
   Morag Baxter gave her a surprised smile. She had not found the
journey from Oban long or tedious. There had been so much to see. So
much to think about. She had scarcely glanced at the magazines she
had bought.
   Morag looked eagerly out of the window as the train drew into the
station. She was excited but tried not to show it. After ten years,
nearly half her lifetime, she was back in Glasgow. In a way she was
returning home.
   No one would ever have taken Morag Baxter for a Glaswegian.
There was a fresh country bloom in her cheeks and she spoke with an
attractive Highland lilt. But for all that she felt she truly
belonged to this great sprawling city.
   As an orphaned ward of Glasgow Corporation, she had spent the
first eleven years of her life in the city. But Beechwood Children's
Home, which had run on oiled wheels under Miss Simpson's motherly
guidance, seemed like a dream now.
   Infinitely more real were the years she had spent in the north,
eight of them boarding out on the Robertsons' farm and the last two
living in digs in Oban.
   Morag's eyes clouded as she thought about these past two years.
Nothing had been the same since Mrs Robertson died. Though time
had softened Morag's grief, it had not helped her overcome the strange
emptiness in her heart. It was as if her roots had been cut off.
   Although she had a good job, she felt Oban held nothing for her.
It wasn't long before she began to think about Glasgow with a certain
longing. After all, that was where she really belonged.
   So this year she had decided to spend her fortnight's holiday in
the city.
   Miss Simpson, now retired from her post at Beechwood Home, had
fixed up accommodation and promised to meet her at the station when
she arrived. Everything was arranged.
   As the train jerked to a halt and she joined the throng of
passengers on the platform, Morag felt a thrill of anticipation. She
had saved up for a long time for this holiday and she meant to enjoy
every minute of it.
   "Morag, my dear!" Miss Simpson, white-haired now and trim in
silver-grey, met her at the barrier. "How nice you're looking! And
so grown-up!"
   "It's a while since you saw me last," the girl reminded her
smilingly.
   "Almost two years." Miss Simpson laid her hand lightly on
Morag's arm to guide her from the station. "Come along and we'll
have a cup of tea before I take you to Grove House and hand you over
to Miss Whelan."
   "Hand me over?" Morag was faintly alarmed. "Is it a
hostel?"
   "Of course not!" The older woman's eyes were twinkling.
"Grove House is an excellent hotel for young business women. Miss
Whelan's an old friend of mine, so I've asked her to keep an eye on
you." She sighed as they paused at the kerb. "If only you could
have come earlier I could have put you up at my flat. As it is, the
removal men are coming on Monday and my sister expects me at
Girvan."
   Over tea in Fuller's Morag talked gaily about her plans. Miss
Simpson smiled at her enthusiasm. It was a pleasure to meet her
one-time charge again. She was only sorry she would not see more of
her on this visit.
   Time passed so quickly. She could hardly believe it was
twenty-one years since Morag had been placed in her charge at
Beechwood Home. Only five months old, and tragically bereft of both
parents. Although extensive inquiries were made at the time no trace
was found of any relatives.
   Miss Simpson had taken the child to her heart. She had watched
her grow into a likeable, happy little girl. It had been like losing
someone of her own when the Welfare Committee decided to board Morag
out with foster-parents in the north.
   It had all been for the best, of course. A home where she could
become one of the family was better than the best institution.
   Mrs Robertson already had two orphaned children in her care at
Balamore Farm, near Oban, and Morag made a welcome addition to the
family. She had settled down happily at the farm. Her schooling
over, she found a job in an Oban shop.
   Later, when Mrs Robertson felt less able to cope with three
charges, Alison and Johnny Pedon returned to Glasgow. But Morag chose
to remain in the north.
   She was nineteen when Mrs Robertson died. Miss Simpson had
travelled from Glasgow to talk over her future with Mr Robertson and
the local Welfare Officer. Agreeing that Morag should stay in Oban,
they had found suitable lodgings for her in the town. Mr Robertson
himself was giving up the farm and retiring to a cottage he had bought
in Gairloch.
   It had seemed a wise decision at the time. Morag, bewildered and
unhappy by this sudden change in the even tenor of her life, had
raised no objections. But within the past year Miss Simpson fancied
she detected a restless note in her letters.
   Now Morag had come to Glasgow for a holiday.
   Miss Simpson studied the girl seated across the table from her in
the busy tea room. In the years since they had last met she had grown
into a charming young woman, with attractive, auburn hair and wide,
gold-flecked grey eyes.
   "I wish I weren't leaving you here on your own, my dear."
Miss Simpson sounded anxious. "Won't you be lonely?"
   "I don't think so," Morag replied. "Not more than anywhere
else," she added after a moment's pause.
   Miss Simpson glanced shrewdly at the girl. So she had been
right. Morag was unhappy in Oban.
   "I wrote to Mrs Hendry and she's asked me out to Mosspark,"
Morag went on, clearly trying to change the subject. "Isn't it kind
of her? I- I'll never forget all she did for me long ago. Then I'd
like to go to all the theatres and look round the shops. I've got
enough money for a completely new outfit and-"
   "You will need a full purse!" Miss Simpson laughed. "Have a
good time then, dear. If you feel at a loose end after this week, you
can always spend a few days with us at Girvan."
   It was nearly five o'clock when they arrived at Grove House. It
was a large, rambling building on a corner site in Queen's Drive,
overlooking the park.
   Miss Whelan was a tall, fresh-complexioned woman. There was a
glint of humour in her eyes that seemed to belie her rather forbidding
manner.
   "Just in time for tea, Miss Baxter," she remarked. "We have
it early on Saturdays because the girls are always in a hurry to go
out. Would you like to take your case to your room right away?"
   Morag gave Miss Simpson a parting hug and promised to have lunch
with her at her flat next day. Then she followed the maid upstairs.
   She was delighted with her room, eyeing with approval the
built-in cupboards and the small wash basin that stood in one corner.
The carpet was a delicate shade of blue, and the flowered curtains
matched the bedspread.
   The tea-bell rang before Morag had time to change. She ran a
comb through her hair, applied some fresh lipstick, and went
downstairs. Miss Whelan took her along to the dining-room and
introduced her to a slim, dark-haired girl at a corner table.
   "Miss Johnston has been here more than a year now," she
explained. "She'll soon make you feel at home."
   Morag smiled hesitantly as she sat down, searching her mind for
some way of starting a conversation. She need not have worried, for
Kathy Johnston was refreshingly free from shyness.
   Within minutes she found out Morag was on holiday and went on to
suggest what she should do and see in town. She broke off as they
were joined by a slightly older girl with fluffy fairish hair and
winged glasses that gave her an attractive, fawn-like appearance.
   "This is Jean MacLean," said Kathy by way of introduction.
"Morag Baxter comes from Oban, Jean. She's only here for a
fortnight and-"
   "Give the poor girl a chance to get a word in!" Jean laughed.
"Hullo, Morag! Nice to meet you!"
   Morag enjoyed the company of these two pleasant, friendly girls.
She learned that Jean worked in a lawyer's office and was engaged to
a young doctor doing his final year in hospital. Kathy Johnston was
training as a junior buyer in Sturrock's, a large department store,
and cheerfully admitted to having several boy friends.
   Both girls belonged out of town and only managed to visit their
families occasionally at week-ends.
   Morag found her own reserve crumbling. Before the meal ended she
had told her new friends a good deal about herself. Kathy's eyes
widened sympathetically and she exchanged a glance with Jean.
   "Oban's a lovely place, of course," she said slowly. "But
don't you find it a bit lonely- especially in the winter?"
   "Well, I didn't until just lately," Morag replied, colouring a
little. "And I don't have to stay there, you know."
   Kathy gave her a questioning glance, but made no comment.
Presently she and Jean took Morag into the lounge and told her about
Grove House.
   "It's better than coping on your own in some flatlet," Jean
said emphatically. "You get decent meals and there are no dishes to
wash afterwards. All you've got to do is pay your dues, keep your
room tidy, and be back indoors at a reasonable hour. I reckon it's
worth it."
   "Miss Whelan's a dear too," Kathy put in. "Even if she does
like to see all your boy friends!"
   The door opened just then and some of the other residents came
into the lounge. Morag glanced casually at them, then her gaze was
riveted on the last one to enter- a tall, blonde girl in a black
tailored suit.
   She stared uncertainly for a moment, then almost unbelievingly as
recognition dawned in her eyes.
   "Alison!"
   Her exclamation made the other girl turn sharply.
   "I- I've wondered so often if we'd ever meet again," Morag
went on.
   "That's more than I ever did!" Alison Pedon told her,
colouring guiltily as she spoke.
   "Do you two know each other?" Kathy asked.
   "Oh, yes." Alison pulled herself together and managed a cool
smile. "We met several years ago when I was staying in Oban. What
on earth are you doing here, Morag?"
   "I'm on holiday."
   Morag was puzzled. Staying in Oban? Why, Alison and her younger
brother, John, had lived with her at the Robertsons' farm for over six
years!
   "I see." Alison shrugged indifferently. "Well, I hope you
enjoy yourself. Now you must excuse me. I'm expecting a phone
call."
   She turned on her heel and left the room.
   Somewhat disturbed Morag sat down. It was painfully obvious that
her former companion was anything but pleased to see her.
   "Strange you should know Alison," Kathy remarked, breaking the
awkward silence. "I suppose you met her at her folk's hotel in
Oban?"
   Morag swallowed uneasily. Whatever had Alison been telling
everyone? Fortunately Jean hailed a friend at that moment and she was
not called upon to answer Kathy. Then someone switched on the
television and she took the chance to go upstairs to unpack.
   She had only been in her room a few moments when there was a
knock on the door. It was Alison Pedon, her fine eyebrows drawn and
her eyes fixed on Morag accusingly.
   "Why did you come here?" she demanded as she brushed past
Morag and came into the room. "To Grove House of all places!"
Bridging The Years
   MORAG shut the door. She had been embarrassed by Alison's
rudeness a short time ago.
# 21
<END>
<492 TEXT R1>
   Jones, it need hardly be said, stopped that off at once.
   The days have gone when foreigners copied the British.
   With Jones in power, the British are encouraged to copy the
foreigner.
   The foreign-made muck, which British quality goods were supposed
to be pushing out of the market, is now being pushed out of the market
by British-made muck.
   Jones does not believe in quality. He believes in low prices.
He is not interested in the old slogan, ~"British is Best". He is
interested in the new slogan, ~"Jones is Best", and the fact that
Jones is British will, he believes, reflect prestige upon Britain. He
is not interested in goods that last a lifetime, a tradition started
by snobbish manufacturers who wanted their children and their
children's children to reap the benefit of their impeccable trading
probity. Jones wishes to reap the benefit himself, in his own
lifetime, and let his brats and brats' brats fend for themselves. To
this end, he is interested in goods that do not last a lifetime, but
which require large replacement orders to be made every five years.
Foreign contacts
   When Jones goes abroad, he does not go as a member of any
group, delegation or coach-party. He goes alone.
   Jones goes alone, secure in the knowledge that wherever he goes,
his arrival will not go unannounced or his stay unnoticed.
   At the hotel, in a capital that he has never visited in his life
before, he will meet an old American friend whom he last met in Paris,
God, it must be years ago, and soon that old American friend is
introducing him to the local Joneses right, left and centre.
   At Harry's Bar, in any foreign city, it turns out that the
particular Harry of the joint used to be the barman of a little club
in London that Jones used to use in the days when Joneses still used
little clubs, and this same Harry gives him the lowdown on where the
native Joneses are currently eating and drinking.
   At the American Express, which is a very Jones place in which to
cash your travellers' cheques, Jones just happens to run into an old
army pal who has now got this amusing job of showing the yobbos around
the night-clubs. The old army pal takes Jones to a number of
night-clubs, most of them specialising in one sexual eccentricity or
another, to which the yobbos would not be admitted, whether with or
without paper hats.
   From the fact that Jones never fails to meet contacts such as
these on his foreign travels, it is obvious that there must be an
International Jones Organisation (Interjones), whose agents disguise
themselves as barmen, old army pals and roving Americans.
   However Interjones may be organised, it is certainly a powerful
and influential body.
   Thanks to Interjones, it is now possible for Jones to travel
throughout the world without losing any of his status, modifying his
standard of living, or, out of sheer loneliness, being compelled to
sit in the reading-room of the British Embassy doing the crossword in
the air-mail edition of The Times.
   Thanks to Interjones, it is possible to cross the Equator
either way without leaving air-conditioning behind. Chains of new
hotels, indistinguishable from one another, have sprung up in the
capitals of the world, and- without actually being called the
Jones-Plaza or the Jones-Carlton- they are Jones all right, because
look at the showers, look at the swimming-pool, look at the arcade of
shops, look at the express elevators, look at the six or seven
restaurants, one of them on the roof from which it is possible to get
a panoramic view of London, Beirut, Madrid, Bonn, New Delhi or
Copenhagen, as the case may be.
   Thanks to Interjones, Jones in any foreign city can hire a car,
use a credit card, send a transfer-charge cable, or get a ringside
seat for the student riot in the course of which the British Council
building is burned to the ground.
   Thanks to Interjones, Jones can now travel from airport to
airport, from hotel to hotel, from Harry's Bar to Harry's Bar,
without ever setting foot outside the Jones country.
   Jones ideas are now so firmly established abroad that as
primitive states develop, it is not the Old Country on which they
model themselves, but the New Jones.
   In Africa, Jones hotels spring up even as the Prime Minister
elect is being let out of prison. In the Middle East, oil royalties
are turned into Jones amenities, such as ice, big cars, and
night-clubs that would not be out of place on Miami Beach. In Brazil,
an entirely new capital has been hacked out of the jungle as a living
monument to Jones and all he stands for.
Foreign visitors
   Interjones naturally works on a reciprocal basis, and when
Monsieur Jones, Herr Jones, Signor Jones, Jones Pasha or Don Jones
arrive at the Westbury, whom should they meet in the lobby but
Jones, only this minute back in London himself.
   In this context it is worth noting that, although Interjones
maintains branches in all countries, some nations do not appear to be
signatories to the Interjones Treaty. There are nations which are
exclusively Robinson nations, such as the Dutch, the Bulgarians, and
the Burmese.
   The French are essentially a Jones nation, but like to be
governed by Robinsons. The Germans are essentially a Robinson nation,
but like to be governed by Joneses. The Italians are Jones when
abroad, but Robinson when at home. The Swedes are the Jones-nation
among the Scandinavians, and the Norwegians are the Robinsons.
   England, which bred the first Joneses, is Jones. Wales, from
which the Joneses took their name, is Robinson. Southern Ireland is
Jones. Northern Ireland is Robinson. Scotland is Jones to come south
from, but Robinson to remain in. The Isle of Wight is a compound of
Robinsons.
   Extremely small countries, such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, San
Marino, etc., are Robinson to be born in, but Jones to be a foreign
resident of. (This applies particularly to the Channel Islands.)
   The Russians are ideologically Robinson, but throw up
Jones-deviates from time to time. All Iron Curtain countries, except
Czechoslovakia, are statutorily Robinson.
   Iceland is not only Robinson to be born in, Robinson to live in,
Robinson even to have correspondence with, it is also the only country
outside the tourist belt that it is Robinson, and not Jones, to visit.
   Spain is unique, inasmuch as there it is Jones to be a
monarchist, the reason being is that Jones is always on the side of
the future. Portugal is entirely Robinson.
   Switzerland is Robinson to visit, but Jones to bank with. Egypt
is Robinson, but is studying to be Jones. India fought to become
Jones, but did not succeed. South Africa is fighting to remain
Robinson. Australia revels in being Robinson.
   By a trick of light, Canada is Jones when seen from London, but
Robinson when seen from the United States. Within the United States,
it is Robinson to appear like a Jones. In Latin America, Jones and
Robinson live in a constant state of revolt against each other; it is
always possible to know when Jones is revolting against Robinson,
because then we hear about trams being overturned, and Jones detests
trams.
   China, with superhuman effort and against all odds, remains
Robinson. Japan, despite all those paper flowers that blossom in a
jam-jar is becoming Jones.
   The North Pole is Jones. The South Pole is Robinson.
CHAPTER FIVE
TO JONES ACCORDING TO HIS NEEDS
   THE political pundits, the literary weeklies, the more
telegenic Members of Parliament, the leader-writers and the
public-opinion polls- to say nothing of various summer schools,
conferences, congresses and other centres of political group-therapy-
have devoted some attention to the question of who will rule Britain
in the future.
   Jones may occasionally join in these discussions if the beer is
good. But for him there is no question to be argued. Jones will rule
Britain in the future.
   Whether Labour or Conservative, the next Government- or it may
be the next but one- will be a Government of Joneses.
   What are the facts behind this political reshuffle?
   There is only one fact, and that is that Jones feels unable to
lend his allegiance to any one political party.
   Tory Jones likes the idea of free enterprise, but can't stand the
idea of class privilege.
   Labour Jones likes the idea of equality, but can't stand the idea
of regimentation.
   The Labour Party, as we know, is in decline. What we may not
know is that the Tory Party is also in decline. The Jones Party is
slowly emerging, composed of the Jones-elements from both these
declining bodies.
   Already Jones has established his position in both camps.
There are Labour Joneses and there are Tory Joneses in power today.
(There are no Liberal or Communist Joneses, since Jones is not
interested in causes but in politics.) The Labour Joneses write for
Tory papers. The Tory Joneses write for Socialist papers. The two
Joneses, Labour and Tory, appear on the same television programmes and
unite against trade union Robinsons from the Left Wing and backwoods
Robinsons from the Right Wing.
   Between them, Labour Jones and Tory Jones are forging a new
policy. And that policy will be the Jones Policy for Britain.
Why you should vote for Jones
   At present, Robinson has a clear majority in the House of
Commons. Robinson M.P.s go about on buses, hold dreary clinics
in their constituencies, ask dreary questions about peat, and go on
dreary fact-finding missions to dreary countries on either side of the
Iron Curtain.
   What, in contrast to this, has Jones got to offer? Why will
Jones make a better Member of Parliament than Robinson?
   (a) Jones does not waste time on dreary routine. Everything
he touches he makes exciting, and he is able to create enthusiasm,
which helps the electorate no end.
   (b) Jones is in touch. Where other politicians have to
consult polls, statistics, graphs, fortune-tellers, to find out what
people think, Jones trusts his instinct and is always right.
   (c) Jones lives in the present. He will cheerfully agree
that his party has a shocking record, for his party's past history is
of not the slightest interest to him. Neither does he make sweeping
promises for the vague future. If Jones says he is going to do
something, he means tomorrow.
   (d) Jones has the gift of the gab.
   (e) Jones is a good mixer. It is only on the Jones level
that Tories and Socialists can mix as equals, and consequently he is
able to avoid all those unprofitable stalemates that politicians are
always running into.
   (f) Jones is very good on television.
   (g) Jones is always positive. He would rather be a supporter
than an opposer, and he will always endorse good ideas, whichever side
they come from.
   (h) Jones knows all about images, and in fact invented them.
   (i) Jones is always ready to re-think.
   (j) Jones is very good at inventing slogans. And the slogan
of the Jones Party might well be:
WHAT'S GOOD FOR JONES IS GOOD FOR BRITAIN
The Future Jones Offers You
   The Joneses, Socialist and Tory alike, believe in an
egalitarian society (within the limits of the Jones Practical
Democracy, outlined on pp. 83-87), where the best brains (i.e.
Jones) rise to the top, but where there is wealth and opportunity for
all.
   Jones has no wish for Britain to be a major power, so long as she
can hold first place in the markets of the world.
   He is all for co-existence, peace in our lifetime, and anything
that might come under the heading of progress.
   He is against outmoded traditions, gunboat-diplomacy, and
monopolies.
   He would take the tax off coloured refrigerators.
   Let us examine in detail some of the Jones Policies for Britain:
1. THE JONES FISCAL POLICY
   There will be no significant fall in income tax, since Jones
does not, in fact, object to paying income tax.
# 23
<493 TEXT R2>
He had long sensed injustice in the distinctions drawn between
ordinary wage-earners and those self-employed. By the time his
monthly salary arrived, the Inland Revenue had already taken their
share, and there were precious few reductions in tax save for wives,
children, life-insurances or any of the other normal encumbrances
which Cecil had so far avoided. He read the film star's sorry story
and frowned at the provisions of Schedule D taxation which not only
allowed her to claim relief on the most unlikely purchases, but also
postponed demanding the tax until her financial year was ended,
audited and agreed by the Inspector. The process could, and often did
take several years. At one point the astute Miss Cheesecake had
claimed tax relief on the purchase of several mink coats which, it
seemed, were necessary to further her career. Alternatively, it was
reported, she tearfully claimed that the warm coats were heating
appliances and therefore susceptible to a depreciation tax allowance
as plant and machinery. The Commissioners of Inland Revenue wisely
refrained from asking how she paid for the mink coats but demanded a
receipt instead. Between all the interested parties, the final
agreement had been delayed long enough for Miss Cheesecake to spend
all the money which by rights should have been reserved for her tax.
Discounting one chinchilla jacket, a Rolls-Royce and a Sussex manor
house, all three of which were in her husband's name, she now declared
herself bankrupt.
   The train drew into another station and Cecil, with a further six
stops to go, was left almost alone in the coach. He fumed as he
recollected the long correspondence he had had with the Inland Revenue
in an effort to obtain tax relief for a jacket used solely in the
office. 'If the jacket is a condition of your employment,' the
Inspector had written, 'it may qualify for relief.' Cecil snorted
aloud. So long as he did his job satisfactorily, Frask and Kitsell
Ltd could hardly have cared less if he wore even a bikini in the
office. In fact, the previous summer, his girl comptometer operator
had done so. It led to no end of a muddle with the figures.
   Then there was that long wrangle with the Inland Revenue over
travelling expenses. The journey from Bank to Norbiton took a large
slice out of Cecil's surplus spending power. He had tried to obtain
tax relief for that too, only to be told that journeys from home to
work did not qualify for relief. So Cecil had pursued the matter on
the grounds that he took his work home and, for a week or more, he
took a bundle of record-cards each night in the hope that a passing
Inspector might see it. The final word, as always, came from the
Inland Revenue who fell back once more upon the 'condition of
employment' clause.
   Again Cecil glared at Miss Cheesecake who was not only allowed
travelling expenses but was also allowed to buy herself a Rolls-Royce
'on the Tax'. No wonder she could not pay up; one half of her
money seemed to have gone into purchases designed to defray the tax
incurred by the other half which was, in any case, earmarked for
normal living expenses such as publicity parties, beauty treatment and
frequent foreign holidays to the right places.
   The train drew to a halt. Cecil's sole companion, the
parcel-laden housewife, staggered to the door and prepared to alight.
'Madam!' he called after her. 'You've left your briefcase.'
His public duty performed, he pointed at the seat opposite without
making any effort to hand it to her.
   The housewife turned a baleful eye and gazed at him over a large
hat-box which, to judge from the Bond Street label, had taken a large
bite out of her husband's taxable income. 'It's not mine. I wasn't
sitting there.' She blinked disdainfully at him and stepped out.
   It was a new briefcase, and as the train jogged along the shiny
clasp twinkled invitingly at Cecil. He wondered what it contained.
Probably the remains of someone's lunch or a few secret files. He
smiled at his own joke. Of course, it might be holding wads of five
pound notes earned on the black market, if there was still such a
thing as a black market. It might be a shady cash deal though,
specially designed to avoid passing through the books. Perhaps the
case belonged to one of those fellows who were organising those girls
who operated from cars. There could be a lot of money in the
call-girl racket, and not many expenses either, just a telephone, some
wear and tear on the girls and a change of address from time to time.
The briefcase must be crammed with money.
   Cecil realised that four minutes of solitary running time
separated him from the next stop, his home station and, after an
unnecessary glance around, he stepped across the car and tried to open
the briefcase. It was locked. Eager fingers felt bulky contents and
when he shook the case there was a rustling thud of wads of paper.
'Cor!' he muttered aloud, 'there's five thousand at least.'
   He felt in his jacket pocket and pulled out a key ring. In
succession he tried his own briefcase key, a suitcase key and a device
designed to lock typewriters. Cecil searched in his pockets once more
and came up with two paper-clips. After a few seconds of twisting, he
roughly thrust a bent wire loop into the lock and waggled it around
vigorously. There was a click and the briefcase opened.
   Cecil thrust an eager hand inside, his fingers groping after wads
of five pound notes. They closed on a single bundle and, fumbling
with nervous excitement, he pulled it out. His eye rested on a wad of
stiff white paper printed on one side. 'Old fashioned fivers!' he
muttered again, and tried to recall if they were still legal tender.
Surely the Gov:r:. and Comp:a:. of the Bank of England
would never break their promise to pay on rude demand, let alone on
polite request. Cecil frowned in disappointment as he focussed upon
the printing to find no Gov:r:., no Comp:a:., in fact no
five pound notes at all. He was holding a paper booklet, the top
sheet of which bore, in large Baskerville type, the words
   METROPOLITAN MONOTECHNIC INSTITUTE
   ADVANCED ACCOUNTANCY
   COURSE NO. 3.
   He ruffled the sheets irritably and glowered at his own breach
of social morality. There are few people who would not jump at an
opportunity to rationalise away the theft of a briefcase full of
illicit fivers, but to sell one's soul for a handful of lecture notes
presented quite a different kettle of metaphysics.
   The train slowed down for Norbiton station and Cecil hastily
repacked the briefcase. There was a hiss of opening doors and Cecil
carried his conscience out upon the platform. He climbed the stairs,
eager to unload the guilt-symbol upon the ticket-collector and then to
emerge carrying his shame unseen, but burning, into the night.
   He reached the barrier and fumbled for his contract before
thrusting the briefcase at the ticket-collector with the firm
intention of playing the dutiful citizen retrieving lost property.
Before he could open his mouth, the collector stretched out a hand.
'Watch your step there, sir! Your briefcase is hanging open.
You'll have someone shoving their hot little hands inside. Here,
I'll do it.' The collector pressed the twinkling catch home with a
click.
   Cecil, irretrievably laden with both briefcase and conscience,
stumbled away into the darkness.
=2
   'HELLO, CECIL. HAD a busy day?' His mother came into the
hall as he opened the front door. He nodded irritably and, turning
his back to her, contrived to slide the briefcase into hiding between
the do-it-yourself cupboard and the polished brass fourteen-pounder
shell-case which served respectively as coat cupboard and umbrella
stand.
   'You're later than usual, aren't you?' His mother tidied her
grey hair in the hall-mirror they had once obtained as a free gift in
exchange for the labels from half a hundredweight of Trunk and Greppes
Tannin-free Tea. Cecil shook his head and hung up his raincoat and
hat inside the cupboard. 'Aren't you going to say hello?' His
mother stood and faced him with a smile. 'I've got some lamb chops
for you this evening.'
   'Hello, mother.' He kissed her cheek perfunctorily. 'Lamb
chops, indeed. Any letters come?'
   She grimaced. 'Only the electric bill. It's up again. We'll
have to go easy on the immersion heater next quarter.'
   Cecil gritted his teeth and glowered at the inequity of Miss
Cheesecake well-nigh bathing in tax-free champagne whilst he had to go
easy on the immersion heater. 'What is it, Cecil? Don't you feel
well?' his mother asked solicitously. 'You do look tired. Go and
get yourself a drink.'
   'Don't fuss, mother! I'm quite well and no more tired than
usual, and we finished the gin last week, you know that.' Cecil
stepped towards the dining room.
   'I'm sure you must be tired,' his mother insisted. 'You're
very irritable, anyway.'
   'I'm NOT tired and I'm NOT irritable.'
   'Very well then.' His mother nodded with understanding.
   'You're not tired. Nobody's tired. Now just you run along
upstairs and wash your hands whilst I get dinner ready.' Cecil
wriggled irritably under the misplaced management of a mother who had
failed to realise that a son who is nearly bald is no longer a baby.
He started to climb the stairs, stamping with unnecessary vigour upon
the treads. 'And don't wipe the dirt off on the towel like you did
yesterday. Your Auntie Edie's coming in for a cup of tea later and
you know how she has a good look round everywhere.'
   There was a tinkle and a thud from beside the coat cupboard.
Cecil's mother turned around in time to see the briefcase collapse
against the brass umbrella stand. 'Well now!' She hurried towards
it and picked it up. 'What have we here? A new briefcase! So
THAT'S what it's all about.'
   Cecil halted in mid-step near the top of the stairs and clenched
his fists. 'So that's what WHAT'S all about?' he hissed
without turning round.
   She pointed to the briefcase. 'So that's why you are so
irritable. You thought that I'd think you'd been extravagant.'
   'But I'm NOT irritable!' He rushed down the stairs and,
snatching the case, ran back upstairs with it. 'And I've NOT
been extravagant.'
   "Naughty!' she called after him. 'Mother knows her boy
better than he does himself.' She smiled at herself in the mirror
and reflected how mothers always know their dear impulsive boys better
than anyone- especially better than not so dear, not so impulsive
daughters-in-law. Her smile faded at the thought of female
competition, but brightened again in the belief that her son was not
cut out for that sort of nonsense. Widowed mothers often expect their
only sons to be very lone rangers.
   Dinner was taken as usual before the television. Cecil's mother
had arranged the receiver to face two armchairs by the fire. They sat
uncomfortably hunched in mutual inclination, and ate at arm's length
from a common occasional table placed opposite their adjacent knees.
In the days when he had still a liking for cigarettes, Cecil had
well-nigh proved the statistical relationship between them and lung
cancer in an effort to obtain the table free by smoking his way into a
collection of six hundred gift tokens. The flush of achievement had
long passed and as Cecil sat, eyes on the television screen, not even
the napkin tucked into his neck could prevent lamb-chop gravy from
carelessly bespattering the table he had risked so much to obtain.
   Mother and son gazed in fascination at the story, unfolding
before their eyes, of corn cultivation in Capokoland. 'What time's
the 5Olde 5Tyme Dancing on?' she asked absently. 'My goodness,
look at those women planting things, isn't it primitive?'
   'About ten-o'clock, I suppose, the 5Olde 5Tyme stuff.'
# 21
<494 TEXT R3>
He did, however, give her the name and address of a very good
lawyer who had got him an injunction to restrain a firm from
publishing a book until the author had removed a passage attacking him
for some slander which had been, in fact, a case of Privilege.
   
   In spite of all the transferred maternity she was endowed with by
her patients, poor Serena was an infant-in-arms as a buyer of
property. No, not even an infant-in-arms but a new-born babe, a
premature piece of frailty in an oxygen-tent of utter innocence.
   The complexity of that innocence was colossal. It had layer
after layer of illusion to be peeled off and replaced with sad
knowledgeability. It was a nakedness of nai"vety to be clothed leaf
by leaf with the disappointment of experience.
   Her first illusion consisted in the belief that all she need do
was to go to an agent, visit half a dozen houses in one day, choose
one, make an offer, put it in the hands of a lawyer and go away on her
holiday while the whole transaction was put through. At the worst,
she could postpone their holiday, if she didn't find anything she
liked at once. August would after all be a little hot for Greece.
All that mattered was moving. For quite suddenly she couldn't stand
their flat any more. She must come back to something new, even if it
meant shortening their trip abroad or taking an extra week off to get
settled in.
   She soon found that Tom Stevens was right about the prices,
whatever their cause. The market, moreover, seemed more like one of
her graph representations of a psychotic's dream world than a rational
state of affairs carefully calculated by a handful of wicked
speculators, though she supposed that these latter might well be the
chosen instruments of the city's collective unconscious. For the
prices of houses bore no relation whatsoever to their size, beauty, or
convenience, only to some lunatic hierarchy of districts by which any
area, however traffic-ridden, that could by any considerable wrench of
the imagination be called a Village, was also the most plutocratic in
its price-range; that is, any piece of town with one pretty street,
square, corner, stretch of river, bit of heath, common or park, round
which lesser, uglier streets clustered hopefully, borrowing the same
name for themselves as crescents, gardens, garden-crescents, rises,
hills, hill-rises, ways and ends, mewses, lanes, groves and vales,
could aspire to and perhaps eventually earn the name of Village. Slum
terraces and workers' cottages would be bought up, sometimes by
enterprising individuals but more often by the wicked speculators for
a profitable sale to less enterprising individuals, and one by one the
black brick houses would turn white, or pink or blue, with bright
yellow doors and flower-boxes in the windows. "This street," the
agents would say, "hasn't quite come." When it did so, and several
more around it, the area would at last receive by way of final
decoration and of course price-promotion, the name of Village.
   Second to Villages were the Best Residential Areas, where the
affluent middle class had always lived, but they were, after all,
limited and unexpandable, and now that practically everyone was
affluent middle-class, the Best Residential Areas were so much in
demand that prices shot up well beyond the range of the affluent
middle-class, and only the milk-bar millionaires lived there,
expense-account experts, some of the more successful comedians, the
odd reckless film-star, and of course the speculators themselves.
Fortunately, however, the fashion for Victorian architecture which
Mr. John Betjeman had started several decades before had caught on
at last and therefore saved the situation for the affluent
middle-class, who now had plenty of lovely-ugly to be coldly elegant
in.
   All this Serena discovered, and more, but in stages. For the
first thing she did was to make an offer on a small pink terraced
cottage, two beds, two inter-comm. rec., mod. k. and b.,
sep. W.C. small back yard, newly dec., near shops and tube in
up-and-coming Camden Town Village, +6, Freehold.
   The next thing that Serena discovered was that she could not
afford to buy a house at all. And this in spite of having at last
managed to save the ten percent needed. Or so she thought, being then
in possession of what seemed to her the princely sum of six hundred
pounds.
   The lawyer said:
   "Of course you must count about two hundred for legal charges
and stamp duties, maybe less, depending on the price of the house, and
whether it has been registered. I take it you have a mortgage lined
up, then, Mrs.- er- Buttery?"
   "Not yet, but the bank would give me a loan, I'm sure."
   "Er, yes. You have some securities, then?"
   "Well, no. Just my work. And my husband's."
   "No ... life insurance?"
   Serena had more in common with Stella than she realised, for the
word security had meant little to her until now, when she felt this
sudden urge to buy property, paying off a mortgage like rent for
twenty years and then living free of expense, she thought, when they
were "old and grey and full of sleep"- though she hoped she would
never be as psychologically asleep as all that. All she had ever
bothered to insure was her conscious self against just such a
submerging sleep.
   She shook her head at Mr. Clacton, who seemed asleep enough
himself, both in her terms and his, for it was a hot day and his
office was stuffed to its low ceiling with undisturbed books,
undisturbed files and dust from probably Dickensian times. His aspect
was as dusty as his office, with scurf from dusty hair on the dusty
shoulders of his black suit, cigarette ash down the front, an ashen
face and yellow sleepy dust in the corners of his pale grey eyes. His
finger-nails were dirty, though he tried to make up for it by
constantly paring them with the finger-nail of the opposite hand. His
voice was like his black and pin-stripe, a grey superimposition of
respectability over the original colour of his own natural vowels, the
result being somehow as ineffective, not just dusty-grey but muddy,
slimy even. His digressions too, seemed to have no other purpose than
the throwing of dust in his client's eyes, the dust of fake security,
of the fake friend of the family, like the puffs from his Gauloises,
which said ~'Don't you worry your fluffy little head about that, just
lull back in the layers of my experience,' as he told her how he had
saved one of his clients from buying a house in which he somehow owned
all the bricks and mortar but not the joists, which had been omitted
from the Deeds, and how he had learnt from another client who was a
greengrocer that all greengrocers cheat the income-tax by a
complicated system of unrecorded purchases which has become the norm
at Covent Garden.
   "Yes, well...." He judged that she had been sufficiently
dazzled and gave a long raucous cough. "Only cigarettes worth
smoking, these. Most unhealthy, English ones. Well, now, let me see.
I think I can put you onto some people who might, I say might, let
you have a mortgage on this property...."
   "But, they're safe, are they? I mean, they're not-
money-lenders?"
   "Mrs.- er- Buttery, all mortgage companies are money-lenders.
That's rather the point, isn't it?"
   "No, but I mean-"
   "I know what you mean. You may trust me, Mrs. Buttery. I
think, however, that you might have to revise your ideas about- er-
the type of property you intend to purchase."
   She revised them.
   The little man from the Inter-Insular (British Archipelago)
Insurance Company soon saw to that. He was bald and bouncy, jumping
up from her sofa with each explanation, whether because of the sherry
she offered him or from a passionate interest in his work she couldn't
tell. When he had jumped up some twenty times, talked of premiums,
policies, tax exemptions and survey fees, worked out sums rapidly on
Inter-Insular Insurance Company sheets of paper which he produced from
a shiny black brief-case, asked many questions about Rupert's age,
health and income, even his salesman's patter failed to smooth over
the traumatic experience undergone by Serena's relatively sheltered
psyche that afternoon.
   Poor Serena. In spite of the good marks she had brought home
from school she had never grasped the implications or practical
application of compound interest. She used to solve all the problems
set of course, but her conscious mind must have refused to accept the
moral shock of it all, so that even now at the age of forty and eleven
months, she still assumed that if one borrowed six thousand pounds at
six per cent, one paid back, in the end, six thousand plus six per
cent of six thousand, that is, six thousand three hundred and sixty
pounds. The meaning of the words "6per annum" had somehow got
lost with the years.
   Her second shock was the mortgage rating.
   "You see, Mrs. Buttery," said the little man rather sadly
now, but very fast, like a comic spouting gags, "the value of the
policy would be worked out entirely according to your husband's
earnings. I'm afraid we can't take yours into account at all. It's a
rule of I.I.I. You see, you might stop work to have- well,
for all sorts of reasons, or you might leave him."
   "But how utterly extraordinary," said Serena angrily, "you
must be living in the nineteenth century."
   "Oh, but it's a very general rule, Mrs. Buttery, you'll find
that no insurance companies, or building societies, for that matter,
will allow for the wife's earnings. Our lawyers-"
   "Who are your lawyers?"
   "Clacton's."
   "Well, I'm damned."
   "Now, let me see, you say your husband earns about ... yes, that
would come to ... three, carry seven, six nines are fifty four- of
course we'd have to have some sort of proof, you know, it's very
difficult with self-employed persons, carry two. Yes. I'm afraid we
couldn't raise this loan to more than three thousand three fifty at
the most. Now you could get quite a nice little semi-detached house
in Grimstead for three thousand, that's where I live, just before the
green belt, lovely and modern, you know. I forgot to tell you, we
don't usually lend any house built earlier than 1918."
   But Serena was not easily discouraged. She had, moreover, a
reasonable endowment of intelligence and enough analytical training,
specialised though it was, to get to grips with the more megalomaniac
vagaries of an unfamiliar world. Within three days she had worked it
all out. It was all quite clear. Houses were too expensive, at any
rate for poor self-employed individualists like themselves, who
nevertheless hankered for respectability and membership of the new and
widespread, property-owning, affluent middle-class. Therefore they
would buy part of a house. The market was flooded with long-lease
flats for sale, on one and sometimes two floors of vast Victorian
mansions, bought up by speculators and converted with more paint than
architecture, a glass door here and there, a vine-leaf or cabbage-rose
paper on one of the walls, a stainless steel kitchen-sink with perhaps
a +45 waste-disposal unit to send the price up by a couple of hundred
more.
   "You see," she propounded to Rupert after her last patient had
gone, "we can get three thousand three fifty, perhaps a little more
if we can cheat your earnings a bit. I'm sure you could raise the
rest from one of your publishers, get two books commissioned and write
them later. I've got a bit owing too. Now, I saw some flats in
Hendon for four thou, and some in West Hampstead for four two fifty,
two beds, two reception, k. and b., just think, our own bathroom.
Much more spacious than that poky little cottage, which wasn't a bit
practical really, the reception room was too small when divided and
too big when not.
# 26
<495 TEXT R4>
My Work for the Russian Secret Service
By BERNARD HOLLOWOOD, in an interview with Barry Normanton
   I HAD been working at the Council of Industrial Design, in
Petty France, for about three months when it happened. One day my
secretary announced that "a foreign-looking gentleman" wished to
see me about a new plastic fabric he had invented.
   "Plastics, schmastics!" I said. "Tell him I'm not ..."
And at that moment Mr. Rudi Smith announced himself and strode into
the office.
   "Please, see," he said, holding up a square of shiny material,
3"it don't creasing, it don't shrinking, it don't ripping. I
show." He tugged at the plastic which immediately and noiselessly
split down the middle. Mr. Smith laughed. "Ah," he said, 3"I
notice you having sense of humour."
   Over lunch I got to know him better.
   We arranged to meet again in Toni's Cafe?2 off Bread Street.
For recognition purposes I was to carry a small hammer in one hand, a
tiny sickle in the other, and the password was to be "Herbert
Read." Fifteen years ago I was pretty innocent. You will have to
believe me when I tell you that my suspicions were not yet aroused.
   Over coffee and pretzels we talked. I complimented him on the
improvement in his English. "It is nothing," he said. "I
perfected my speech in order to know you better."
   And then he launched into a long, exciting history of the birth
of Communism, giving credit punctiliously to the work in England of
Marx and Engels, and touching briefly on such matters as dialectical
materialism, the marginal utility of land, and Ernest Bevin.
   "You too are for freedom, comrade," he said.
   I nodded my agreement.
   "It is a new technique, evolved in the Kiev University Faculty
of Psychological Warfare. It is called brain-washing."
   What Mr. Smith wanted me to do- and he was of course prepared
to pay handsomely, in pounds, dollars, ration books, anything- was to
deal him the details, plans and prototypes of the goods being
collected together for the great "Britain Can Make It" exhibition.
He seemed particularly interested in Wedgwood beakers, a Decca
record-player and Cooper's Oxford Marmalade.
   "But if you think British industrial design is so hot," I
said, "why don't you go ahead and copy it, like the Japanese?"
   "That would be unethical," he said, shaking his head.
"Besides we haven't the manpower available for such work."
   Every month for two years we met, never of course at the same
place twice. Usually it was in the stand at a football match, in some
billiards saloon or strip show. Then we would repair, separately and
by different routes, to his rooms on the eighth floor of the Sudbury
Hotel in Chiswick, where he kept a small radio transmitter and all the
other paraphernalia of his nefarious craft.
   "To think," I said to him one day, "that in a few moments
these microfilmed working drawings of Mappin's improved percolator
will be in Moscow!"
   "Alas," he said, "the radius of transmission is small. The
information will be picked up by our receiver in Reigate and from
there smuggled out of the country by pigeon- first to Dinard, then to
Ko"ln, and from there by fast car to Moscow."
   The first break in our arrangement occurred after about eighteen
months. He had been complaining about the slow rate at which I was
feeding him the designs of British consumer goods. "Moscow," he
said, "is furious. The second five-year plan is nearly up and all we
have so far are the drawings for a new cut-glass decanter, an improved
aluminium percolator, a trouser-press and a pen that writes wet with
dry ink. The economy of the USSR is becoming lop-sided.
Beyond the Urals 35, men and women sit idle at the giant
refrigerator plant waiting for plans. Our department store is
overflowing with pens. Stalin is livid."
   And then he told me about Russia's long-term struggle to wage
economic war on the West. "The bomb means military stalemate," he
said. "From now on we fight for economic supremacy in the world's
markets, in the uncommitted nations. We Russians have no experience
of consumer goods. You British are renowned as the world's
shopkeepers, so-"
   "Some people," I interrupted, "would say that the Americans
now have the lead in industrial design."
   "American design is vulgar. No character. The British have
dignity and taste and quality. Please, comrade, will you not
co-operate in the interests of world Communism?"
   After this I visited Mr. Smith very seldom, and if my memory
serves me correctly, the only additional secrets I handed over were
plans for a new-style cardigan, a patent cycle hub-cap, a beer-engine
and some air-line cutlery. Our me?2salliance slowly collapsed and
until last week I had almost succeeded in forgetting all about it.
   What brought it back were the recorded impressions made by
BBC reporters of their May Day visit to Moscow. Several of
them visited the great department store, Gum, and were surprised to
find that many of the goods on sale bore a striking resemblance to
their counterparts in British shops- particularly the ball-point
pens, cardigans and cut-glass decanters.
   Needless to say, I was not surprised.
GWYN THOMAS
Growing up in Meadow Prospect
6 Reluctant Trouper
   MOST of us come through the years flanked by actors
manque?2s who placate the virus by getting hold of us from time to
time, plastering paint on our faces and pushing us into any strong
light that happens to be handy.
   My own Svengali was a teacher called Howie. Over the whole
period of my youth he kept after me. I don't know exactly what kind
of a dog Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven was but if it was
surer-footed than Howie I would be surprised. I am not sure what the
Hound wanted of Thompson but what Howie required of me was very
simple. He wanted me to act.
   The relationship began in the Primary School. I was about ten.
Howie was a graduate who had failed to get a Grammar School post. He
was disgruntled, idle and apparently mad. He had a dark, dissolute
face and his main tactic was to lean against a window ledge, looking
at us from between his fingers, as if, for sanity's sake, he was
rationing the sight of us. The school's curriculum was narrow and
Howie, by the use of a silent inertia, brought it to the point of
vanishing. He was convinced that we were all perfectly able to write,
spell and figure, but that we were making a show of being misinformed
to bring Howie a daily inch nearer his last seizure. At any show of
idiocy he would shout: "Nature bleeds, but I didn't go to University
to be a first-aid man. Wound it some more."
   Howie was a Welsh nationalist. He swam like a duck around the
tank of tears that is fixed firmly in any Celtic past. He wrote
patriotic playlets. Howie had stared at me for a long time and he
said I had the true truculent face of an embattled Celt, the sort of
features that had looked down at the Saxons through the fogs of
Snowdon, thickening them. I tried to explain to Howie that my scowl
had nothing to do with my being Welsh or a bristling insurgent. I
looked the way I did because I was in the first stage of nicotine
poisoning, genuinely foxed in my attempts to find any hint of promise
or logic in my environment, and subject to some terrible ventral
upsets brought on by an unwise excess of lentils in the Meadow
Prospect diet.
   But I played along with Howie. The play cycle he had written had
two wheels: anguish and insurrection, and I was the boy who did the
major pedalling. My first appearance in each case was as a captive
and in this Howie left nothing to the fancy. I would walk on to the
stage bowed down by chains. These were very real chains and they
slowed me down considerably. Most of the first act was taken up with
me moving from the wings to the middle of the stage, clanking and
enraged, to be told by some king or chieftain to get used to these
trimmings because they were to be on me for life. I hated those
chains. They had been left in the Memorial Hall by some escapologist
with a leaking memory who forgot not only the essential details of
trickery that would have him sailing out of boxes and sacks, but also
left his equipment behind him. In the Memorial Hall he had had
himself chained up and enclosed in a sealed barrel from which he
proposed to make his escape in four minutes. The darkness must have
put him off his stroke, or the chains were of too honest a brand. It
took two coopers or hoopers to get him out.
   The play on which Howie expended the most labour was one which
showed St. David founding his cathedral on the cliffs of
Pembrokeshire where a couple of his shin bones can still be seen.
There was some talk of my taking the part of the saint and I worked
my face into a whole new set of patterns to be able to present a
picture of gentle innocence. I thought that this might possibly mark
the opening of a new phase of more tractable and nourishing
relationships with my fellows, and I could shed that iron top-coat.
But Howie was dubious. The sight of me fettered and revolted had
become one of his drawing cards, and it seemed to pull a satisfying
bristle of excitement over the dry skin of his psyche.
   He enquired of a few local hagiologists as to whether St. David
had ever gone around in chains. They said no, all agreeing that David
had been a fairly limber intriguer with a way of keeping on the right
side of the gyves. Then Howie had the idea of casting me as the
sullen landlord, a pagan bully, who takes pleasure in saying that he
would much prefer to put David over the cliff than let him have the
land required for building the cathedral. But Howie could see no way
of having this landlord appear in chains. The whole point of the play
was that from the beginning to the end where he is struck down by a
miracle this landlord is a puissant and overbearing man. But Howie
worked me in after a lot of hard thinking. In the last scene the
landowner is raising a club to St. David and the saint just stands
there smiling, not even lifting his pastoral crook. In the original
version the landlord gets his quittance by some bit of intercession
from on high. Howie had favoured a bolt but this would have been hard
to stage, so he fell back on a stroke. Then he got an even sharper
idea. As the argument between the landowner and the saint is warming
up a very fierce-looking felon, chained, is brought on by an escort of
gaolers on his way to the gibbet. That was me, back to base. I ask
my captors for a few minutes' pause. The gibbet is a fair way from
the gaol and the chains are heavy. I stare at the saint. I am trying
to remember something. The memory gets through. Years before, in the
middle of some bit of delinquency I had been caught and led before the
saint. He had fed me and advised me to go straight. He had even
given me an address to which I could go and apply for some sort of
honest work. But I had been making too much of a noise with my eating
to catch the last part of the address, and in any case I was stupid
with youth and flushed with confidence. The food had merely given me
fresh strength to move more briskly towards some new bit of
crookedness.
# 24
<496 TEXT R5>
The Ghostess
by BETTY JAMES
   'AND,' added my teenage son, 'we shall also need a
Necking Room.'
   Coming as it did upon previous requests for beer and cigarettes,
this caused me violently to wish that I had never agreed to a party at
all, in spite of the fact that my son had filled me with pride by
undertaking a paper-round to pay for it.
   Catching me in a busy moment, he had asked me if I would mind
lending the sitting-room for a dance for his friends; and I- my
sanity clouded with visions of launching my boy handsomely into a
reciprocal round of innocent entertainment- had foolhardily agreed to
roll up the carpet one night and to go and do my typing elsewhere.
   Owing to my son's easy-going disposition and preference for the
exotic and the modern, it suddenly dawned upon me that I was about to
meet a posse of embryo beatniks and, as the date of the party
approached and the needs of the occasion became more and more
horrifying, I began to doubt the wisdom of my agreeing. Patently, the
party was due to last all night. I telephoned a few of my more
off-beat friends and was indulgently advised to give the kids what
they wanted unless I wished my son to be socially ostracised- and to
go out and leave them to it. This, however, I firmly refused to do.
To come back to the home I had built with the sweat of my brow,
typing my fingers down to the knuckles, and to find it full of drunken
children and irate parents beating at the door of the Necking Room was
more than I could stomach. I decided secretly to buy some ginger-ale
and to creep around like Banquo- popping it into the beer.
   And so... Dawn having finally flung her most ominous Stone, I
went to work in aweful prescience and came back ready to do my son
proud if it killed me.
   To my amazement, I found three children already there, working
away like blacks. Or- I should say- two of them were working like
blacks and one of them (my son) was directing operations in a masterly
fashion. The carpet had already been taken into the bathroom; a
charming boy was polishing the floor of the sitting room; and an
adorable little girl, who was introduced to me as 'Marblehead,' was
making sandwiches in the kitchen.
   Apart from being touched to my very soul I was also sickened to
my stomach to think that these innocent little darlings were about to
turn into hideous, beer-swilling, chain-smoking, Necking monsters in a
very short time. At an age and time of day when, in my own youth,
Christopher Robin was Saying His Prayers, the pink and healthy chip
off my own block was probably about to sprout horns and a tail.
   
   OUR flat consists of a sitting room and two bedrooms.
Feeling it less of a condonation of the corybantic diableries about
to be performed by the invited 6jeunesse dore?2, I had
allotted my own bedroom for Necking, prudently removing both the bed
and the key, and taken both myself and my typewriter into my son's
bedroom.
   At intervals between 6 and 7 p.m. bunches of children
arrived and, to my surprise, I was hauled out with each new invasion
to be introduced by my son with what seemed to be a certain amount of
inexplicable pride. Inexplicable, because our guests looked at me
doubtfully, possibly due to the fact that I had not dressed to meet
anybody, since I had expected to be kept well out of sight. I was
wrapped in my usual working costume of huge and somewhat grubby red
flannel dressing-gown, I had omitted to don a face and- another
normal concession to work- had twined curlers in my hair in order to
deter my fingers from plunging wildly through my new hair-do in
moments of creative stress.
   Finally, to my dismay, three boys arrived bearing musical
instruments and the festivities got under way.
   I had placed the beer in a strategic position on the hall chest
outside my son's door so that I could listen for the moment when
childish thirst overcame caution and the time arrived for the ginger
ale to be wielded as a defensive weapon. For an hour nothing
happened, nobody came near the beer, and I typed away with my other
ear attuned to my bedroom door- which remained firmly closed.
   The noise from the sitting-room was deafening but tuneful. The
boy prodigies might play loudly- but they were obviously able to play
in tune.
   
   AFTER another hour of this I heard footsteps approaching and
dashed for my deterrents. Whether in drink or deflowerment I was
obviously about to have to defend to the death the innocence of some
defenceless girl. All very well for my friends to tell me that my son
was doomed to a lonely and celibate life if I interfered. That was
before I had laid eyes on all those Bright Young Things. All right,
go on and tell me that they are nothing but disburgeoned delinquents-
they didn't look like that to me.
   My door opened and a child of about fifteen put her head round
it. She looked at me for a second, wide-eyed, and then asked, 'Am I
interrupting you?' I assured her that her visit was welcome and,
encouraged, she added, 'Are we making too much noise?' I thanked
her for her thoughtfulness and explained that, since this was my son's
party, I did not feel entitled to complain. She then asked me why I
didn't come and join the party.
   This undoubted compliment took me by surprise. I thanked her
very much and told her that I was quite happy and felt that my
interference at this stage would not only be unsuitable, but would
also make her unpopular with her contemporaries.
   After I had explained what I meant she seemed flattered and
pleased but emphatically denied that parents were necessarily squares
and thus geometrically unsuited to teenage coruscations.
   In fact, we had an enlightening conversation- on both our parts.
   'Angus told me that you write,' she stated, as if this fact
whilst inarguably forever condemning me to the ranks of tepid
Bohemianism- nevertheless earned for me the right of entry into any
company, even theirs.
   After this she, and a couple of friends she had called to the
rescue, helped me to a pair of leopard-skin tights and a black sweater
from my depleted wardrobe and I was hustled into the sitting-room and
taught the rock n' roll <SIC>, the cha-cha and other gay, if
labyrinthine, mystiques. Five of the elder boys (including the
instrumentalists, who deserved it) drank four bottles of beer apiece;
the others fell with delighted cries on the ginger-ale. The
sandwiches were devoured, and one small girl fell asleep in the
Necking Room. At 9.3 the lights were turned out and dancing
continued in the dark. I returned to my work and the little girl in
the Necking Room slept undisturbed.
   Nine of the children left at 1.45 obviously with appreciable
respect for the instructions of stern, but just parents. Three boys
(one the brother of the sleeping child) stayed overnight- after
phoning for permission- to help restore order in the morning.
   
   AMONGST my so-called grown-up acquaintances where shall I
ever find gathered together such a charming, friendly, unspoilt and
generous cross-section of humanity as graced our home on the night of
my son's party?
   Where are the profligate little terrors I hear about? Not
necessarily (as some would have it) amongst the members of
co-educational schools. These young people seem to have acquired a
healthier slant on life than have some of their more conventional
contemporaries and, if they are a sample of youth today, the
psychiatrists' couches of the future should creak much less frequently
as they get ready to bear the burden of yet another pathological
despair.
<NEW STORY>
   Asked at a Coroner's inquest to prove his identity and to agree
that he was a medical practitioner, a doctor replied: 'Yes, sir. I
am a medical practitioner- in fact, one of the best in the
country.'
   Ribbed afterwards by a colleague for immodesty and unprofessional
conduct, the M.D. replied: 'Alas! What else could I say?
After all, I was on oath.'
Castle Wanted
by JOHN HAMMOND
'Being a Top Person, it would appear, is not so much a question
of balance as a state of mind....'
   THE British character is not quite dead. That is what I am
able, and delighted, to report after devoting twelve months to reading
the personal column of The Times- that daily barometer of the
hopes, the fears, and the dreams of the nation's Top People. Even in
the 196s, it seems, there are still among us independent spirits who
refuse to allow their horizons to be limited by the 8.15 and the
goggle-box; who will go anywhere and do anything, fight a duel, hire a
parachutist ('either sex') for a special assignment, and are in the
market for anything, from a rocking horse, 'traditional', to a
chastity belt, 'metal overlaid with velvet'.
   Reduced to their baser elements the motives that drive anyone to
invest in a few lines of Times type are not so greatly different
from those of advertisers in lesser journals: the desire to acquire
something you have not got yourself, including money; the
complementary urge to sell someone else something you have yourself
but would sooner be without.
   What distinguishes a Times Personal Column ad. is its
careless, well-bred 6panache. For example, lots of people in
this sad, overcrowded little world of ours suffer from a housing
problem but how different from the pathetic appeal in the local
newsagent's window is ~'I am urgently seeking an enormous country
house anywhere in England...', or ~'Castle wanted as permanent home
by young couple....'
   There is, however, a hint of well-bred panic in ~'Agonized
family (5) aesthetic and practical ambitions, urgently require
Georgian (or similar) house... derelict castle, unmanageable mansion
or anything...'; and perhaps an appeal to the 6esprit de corps
which, one imagines, exists among our Top People, in ~'My husband
and I, Nanny and the children will be homeless next January unless you
sell or let us that six bedroomed Georgian country house on the
Herts-Essex borders that we have sought sorrowfully these last
two years....'
   Nor should one assume that money is no object with every
advertiser. Being a Top Person, it would appear, is not so much a
question of bank balance as a state of mind, and sprinkled among the
demands for ancestral homes are to be found requests like the one from
'Impoverished, very junior executive' in need of living space.
Naturally though, it has to be within walking distance of Mayfair,
but, apart from that, an attic with only a shower and a gas ring will
suffice.
   Practitioners of the arts are to be found at both ends of the
financial scale, from the quiet-seeking writer wishing to rent a wing
of a 'too-large castle' or mansion in the Scottish Highlands ('a
library, music room, or private chapel would be much appreciated')
to the 'very poor novelist' in search of shelter for himself and
some furniture in London, 'charitable offers only, please.'
   
   THE possession of a four-footed friend is a problem to all
seekers after a roof and puts the experienced advertiser on his
mettle. The 6bravura of ~'Accommodation for amiable bloodhound,
grand piano and architect owner sought; old vicarage? ~Disused wing?
~Help!' has already been celebrated by a leading article in the
journal in which it appeared; but equally moving, in a more restrained
key, is ~'Old English Sheepdog pup and Canadian Gentleman desire to
be paying guests at Farm or Country House....'
   However, even if the worst happens, the Top Person's dogs-
provided they are few and small- may be 'boarded out en
famille', in another advertiser's country residence. And their
felines, you will be relieved to know, may find accommodation suited
to their station at the 'Cat-a-Guest House', with 'expert care;
cuisine a speciality.'
# 221
<497 TEXT R6>
The Voice of the Turtle-dove
ANTHONY CARSON
   Vence is a sober spot, half way between small town and village,
pigeon grey, sly with arches, and linked by a whispering plot of
fountains. In the main tree-heavy square you can sit in the autumn
sunshine, still burning like a half-cooled iron, sip pastis and
read the local newspapers. One called La Patriote is
Communist, and at the time of our arrival it was throwing huge
over-ripe verbal tomatoes at General de Gaulle.
   One side of this square is a smart but modest bar called Pierre's
Bar. For one day, with the help of the Syndicat d'Initiative, we had
been hunting for furnished rooms, and had given up, when an elderly
lady, the owner of a residence called the Poet's Nest, had firmly
closed the door in our noses. 'It is a pity,' said Mart, 'because
it would have been a good address.' Now, after a woman's radar
look, she decided Pierre would solve our problems.
   This was true, Pierre was a true Provenc?6al, thin and yellow as
lemon peel, wrestling with some gnawing rat of an illness, man of all
trades, married to a commanding lady who loved small talk and the
discreet accumulation of money. We went in. There were a few people
in the bar, elderly, well-off, artistic, who, you felt, had made a
hard bargain for giving up.
   'I have furnished rooms,' said Pierre, 'and all mod
cons.' The price was 16, francs a month.
   'Yes,' we said immediately, even before viewing. We were
shown around by Pierre. The flat was on the third floor; two rooms;
soft Provenc?6al view; good intimate furnishing and colour; running
hot water from Butagas installation for washing-up, basin and bidet;
own private, modern lavatory.
   The first night's sleeping was like a long convalescence. We
were woken up twice about dawn by a soft eruption of turtle-doves.
This was strange, even magic, because the owner's name was Pierre
Tortorolo which, in Nicoison Italian means 'turtledove'. Pierre
Turtledove. When we woke up properly it was raining, an even more
hopeless rain than London, and we looked out of the windows at the
weeping trees and the curling white breath of the mountains. The land
looked like a beaten woman and the turtle-doves cried her shame.
There they were, in fact, below us, eight of them. Four of them were
flattened on the window sills, two immolated on a nearby roof top, the
other pair copulating.
   We had a morning at Pierre's. He talked about people. Marc
Chagall used to live here and an Englishman named Lawrence. He was
here, near the railway station, three or four years. During this
period he wrote a book, The Lover of Lady Chatterly. No, he hadn't
read it; Madame did all the reading. Lawrence died in this very
place. He used to come to Pierre's Bar again and again. No, he
couldn't really remember him, he was one of the crowd.
   The sun came out; Mart went shopping; I sat in the square reading
the Patriote. There was a front-page rear-attack on de Gaulle,
and the rest of the paper was given up to murders, apart for <SIC>
an outcry against a proposal to drop radio-active material into the
Mediterranean between Corsica and St Raphael. All the murders were
well documented and had the air of being written by an ingenious, but
mad film director of the Thirties. They mostly occurred in lonely
farm-houses.
   Monsieur H, for instance, had been clubbed and throttled to
death by his wife, children and father-in-law, after muddling up some
sheep while the worse for drink. The family group then sat down for a
late lunch before the father-in-law telephoned the police. Then
again, Monsieur V, owing to family troubles, had written to the
local paper and the superintendent of police, informing them that he
was on the point of committing suicide, and gratefully leaving his
house appurtenances and utensils to the superintendent. Monsieur
V's house was immediately surrounded by firemen and other officials,
but there was no Monsieur V. He telephoned a few minutes later from
a nearby village, apologising for the trouble, but explaining that the
walls were porous and the gas had escaped.
   General relief was expressed, but Monsieur V (this was actually
reported in the next issue) returned home and shot himself, leaving a
note which again left his household goods to the superintendent. Some
grim comic relief was provided by an elderly farm labourer out for a
shoot who hid himself in a bush and imitated a blackbird.
Unfortunately a sporting taxi-driver was after this very bird and
shot the farm-labourer in the face. All, however, ended well,
reported the paper, since the pellets were easily removed and the
labourer was able to return to work the same afternoon.
   We travelled down to Nice on the Lambretta. You can free-wheel
down a quarter of the way. In the middle of the journey is a valley
with a sea of vines and olives and beaches of earth pricked to blood
by the hoe. Rising from the flecked sea are islands tapering to
shipwrecked castles and towns, grey, rose-headed mariners clinging
like limpets to the rock. There is a curd of morning smoke and a
muffled bell taps the sky. Here we stopped, as in fine weather we
always stopped.
   Down below is the village of Cagnes, but between are pockets of
heat and cold like the hands of friends or strangers, and a flurry of
early smells, the dark bosoms of beech and the thin pine fingers
kissed by the sun.
   Then here was Nice, and the old holiday sea, blue as a new school
exercise book. The same old Nice, creamy, vulgar, out of time,
bitter-sweet with the ghosts of dead monarchs and brilliant
prostitutes, edging past grubby grandeur to the old sleeping port.
This, and Paris, were my ruined pavilions, and I could catch the
taste of dead dreams on my tongue like spray.
   We parked the Lambretta opposite the Negresco, and went to the
beach to have a swim. Amazing bedlam rocked in our eyes. The sea
boiled with waves, they galloped to the walls and spumed over the
Promenade des Anglais. A huge crowd had collected. There were
firemen and policemen and ambulances, and the eyes of the spectators
were hard with disaster. They all had that neat look of Mediterranean
people to whom nothing could ever happen, the chosen sane, the
uncuckolded, unrobbed, sheltered from disease and accident by doctors,
God and the municipality. Yet, at any time now, the bell would ring
for them- the gilded love house, the mad grandmother or the bloody
child at the crossroads. Mart, too, was sucked into the crowd, not
because she felt immune from horror, but because for her the world was
always ending, except in bed. I joined her. Far out at sea we could
see a circular rubber object with a body on it. The body was the
colour of rotten marble.
   'It's a woman,' said Mart. A boat was approaching it, and
someone in oilskins leant over the boat and fell in. It was
accidental, but nobody in the crowd made a sound. It was as if the
visible world were an infamous church. Then two men grappled on to
the marble body and slowly dragged it up on to the boat.
   It was growing cold. We left the crowd and drove back to Vence.
The cool evening perfumes stood beckoning at the corners of the
roads. Mart is unable to smell (her sense organs were impaired years
ago), and I had to explain the low, sharp and sweet signals in the
air. When we got back home we felt exhausted. London sickness (a
sense of guilt, mingled with the memory of sandwiches and incestuous
Soho pubs) still numbed our brains and bodies. We went straight to
bed and slept until the turtle-doves drummed up the sun.
   The next morning, in the square opposite Pierre's, I read about
the Nice beach catastrophe in the Patriote. Mart had been right,
the body had been a woman's. It belonged to a Madame N. Enquiries
had been made in the neighbourhood, and it transpired that Madame
N's husband had made an arrangement with the dead lady's sister to
launch her into the strong sea and there be left to perish. The
sister, able to swim, had returned to the shore, but instead of
returning to her brother-in-law (with whom she had an illicit
relationship), she went to her fiance?2's house and confessed
everything. Her fiance?2 reported her to the police, and then jumped
off a cliff near Monte Carlo.
Homage for Isaac Babel
DORIS LESSING
   The day I promised to take Catherine down to visit my young
friend Philip at his school in the country, we were to leave at
eleven, but she arrived at nine. Her blue dress was new, and so were
her fashionable shoes. Her hair had just been done. She looked more
than ever like a pink and gold Renoir girl who expects everything from
life.
   Catherine lives in a white house overlooking the sweeping brown
tides of the river. She helped me clean up my flat with a devotion
which said that she felt small flats were altogether more romantic
than large houses. We drank tea, and talked mainly about Philip, who,
being 15, has pure stern tastes in everything from food to music.
Catherine looked at the books lying around his room, and asked if she
might borrow the stories of Isaac Babel to read on the train.
Catherine is 13. I suggested she might find them difficult, but she
said, 'Philip reads them, doesn't he?'
   During the journey I read newspapers and watched her pretty
frowning face as she turned the pages of Babel, for she was determined
to let nothing get between her and her ambition to be worthy of
Philip.
   At the school, which is charming, civilised and expensive, the
two children walked together across green fields, and I followed,
seeing how the sun gilded their bright friendly heads turned towards
each other as they talked. In Catherine's left hand she carried the
stories of Isaac Babel.
   After lunch we went to the pictures. Philip allowed it to be
seen that he thought going to the pictures just for the fun of it was
not worthy of intelligent people, but he made the concession, for our
sakes. For his sake we chose the more serious of the two films that
were showing in the little town. It was about a good priest who
helped criminals in New York. His goodness, however, was not enough
to prevent one of them from being sent to the gas chamber; and Philip
and I waited with Catherine in the dark until she had stopped crying
and could face the light of a golden evening.
   At the entrance of the cinema the doorman was lying in wait for
anyone who had red eyes. Grasping Catherine by her suffering arm, he
said bitterly: 'Yes, why are you crying, he had to be punished for
his crime, didn't he?' Catherine stared at him, incredulous.
Philip rescued her by saying with disdain: 'Some people don't know
right from wrong even when its <SIC> demonstrated to them.'
The doorman turned his attention to the next red-eyed emerger from
the dark; and we went on together to the station, the children silent
because of the cruelty of the world.
   Finally Catherine said, her eyes wet again: 'I think its
<SIC> all absolutely beastly, and I can't bear to think about
it.' And Philip said: 'But we've got to think about it, don't you
see, because if we don't it'll just go on and on, don't you
see?'
   In the train going back to London I sat beside Catherine. She
had the stories open in front of her, but she said: 'Philip's
awfully lucky. I wish I went to that school. Did you notice that
girl who said hullo to him in the garden?
<MIDDLE OF QUOTE>
# 23
<498 TEXT R7>
Stopping and Mowing
(Instructions that should have come with my motor mower)
   WE WELCOME you to the ranks of satisfied owners of Motor
Mowers. Well, 'ranks' is hardly the word, you think you're an
officer now you've got one of these, don't you, ha ha! Just because
your lawn is a bit bigger than the average suburban size, you see
yourself gently ambling behind this thing, painting a swathe of
perfect greensward as you go...
   Who do you think you are? This is the cheapest model we make,
all gaudily painted to attract people like you. You must know that
proper lawns, belonging to stately homes or golf clubs, are made with
proper, dark green mowers, that the man sits on in a shiny steel
saddle; old mowers, that we made fifty years ago, efficient, heavy,
inherited by their owners, long before these modern notions of
egalitarianism and an expanding economy compelled us to turn out these
fiddling little things for people like you, to keep our factory going
in off periods, when we are not servicing these proper, old mowers for
our titled clients. However, since you've bought it, and much good
may it do you, here are a few hints.
STARTING (a) From cold:
   1. Take the plug out. Watch that little tin thing sticking up;
it catches your knuckles when the spanner suddenly gives. We've given
you a set of spanners, made of lead.
   2. Clean the plug, if possible. It will be smothered in oil,
because you have to put the oil in the petrol; there is no separate
lubrication system. You probably think the oil is ignited with the
petrol vapour in the cylinder, so how can you lubricate an engine with
smoke? Well, as you can see, it isn't ignited. It just wets the
plug.
   3. Undo the nut at the bottom of the cylinder, and a lot more oil
will dribble out- well, you shouldn't have it on the grass yet.
Put the nut back- steady, not too tight, the bottom of the cylinder
is made of lead, too. Well, now you've broken the thread, just make
it as tight as you can.
   3a. You've left the washer off that nut. That's why you broke
the thread. No garage will have a washer that size, you'd better
start looking for it in the grass.
   4. Put plug back, and watch out for your other knuckles. Aah,
sorry! The same knuckles. Not too tight, you won't get away with
doing this just once, you'll only make it hard to undo again.
   5. Kick starter (or pull rope, if it's one of those). Again.
Full choke. Again, again, again. Full throttle. Again twenty-seven
times, with every possible combination of throttle and choke. Again,
with half 5thrott-
   6. Switch the petrol on, you fool.
   7. Repeat (5). Then repeat (1-4), plug will be wetter than when
you started by now.
   8. Repeat (5) again. Go and lie down for a bit.
   9. Run like hell with it in gear.
STARTING (b) From hot:
   It is impossible to start this engine from hot. It is something
to do with that oil vapour. Once you let it stop, you've had it,
you'll have to wait for it to get stone-cold and start from the
beginning. Just don't leave it for a second, and keep it roaring.
ADJUSTMENT OF BLADES:
   There is a hairbreadth adjustment on this machine, between the
position where it just brushes the top of the grass and the one where
it digs great gashes in the earth. Practice with a new electric light
switch. If you can find a position where the light just flickers
between 'on' and 'off' you'll be able to wangle these blades.
Remember that they are finely, not to say neurotically adjusted.
Quite a small pebble will wrench the blades out of shape. You will
know when this has happened when they either make a frightful clanging
noise or won't go round at all. The people for whom we make our
proper mowers do not have pebbles on their lawns, let alone the small
metal fire engines, dolls' boots, plastic alphabets, nails and spoons
that litter yours.
OPERATION:
   It is only possible to operate this machine at a steady trot.
At ordinary walking pace it will stall. And remember, the clutch is
not a gradual affair like the one on a car. The instant you engage it
the machine will rush away, with or without you. So it's no good
trying to cut round those silly little circular rosebeds you have.
This machine only mows in a dead straight line, any curves and you'll
dig into the earth. What do you expect for the price you paid, a
differential axle?
MAINTENANCE:
   You will find a number of little contraptions with spring caps,
for putting the oil in. They won't leave room for the spout of any
oilcan, however thin; you'll just have to squirt away, making an oozy
mess, and hope some of it's getting in. Soon the spring caps will
come off, anyway; then there'll just be these little holes blocked
with oily grass.
   Finally, three golden rules:
   1. Keep a magnet for finding washers, spring caps, nuts, etc.
   2. NEVER LET IT STOP.
   3. Don't give your hand-mower away.
Official Deceiver
   AS ANY typist knows, the typewriter reveals the subconscious
of the machine age mainly by three simple devices (or 5decives); the
confusion of c with v, of k with l, and the interchange of vowels
(e.g. 5paino for piano) or 5vonsonants. Much more
linguistic research has been devoted to these three 'major'
substitutions than to the two 'minor' ones- the appearance of the
figure 8 in place of the apostrophe and of m for the comma. This last
always seems to me like a self-deprecatory clearing of the throat, a
rudimentary ahem, as if to suggest that all 5man8s thought is
5improvisedm and should not be taken too seriously.
   Of all the words thrown up by my typewriter I have yet to see one
more real and significant than 5bunkrapt. Everybody knows what
ordinary bankruptcy is, and the gloomier 5vommentators often speak of
'the bankruptcy of our civilisation'. Now 5vivilization can never
really be bankrupt; the very word suggests that 5vivilized man is
vivified, alive- and as long as 5he8s 5alice 5there8s hope. It is
mere defeatism to say that our 5vicilization is bankrupt; but once,
by means of the 5typewriterm we have isolated this 5voncept of
5bunkraptcy, we are like Bright and 5Hodgkinm isolating and naming
those diseases which bear their names. We are half-way, if not to
curing, at least to 5vuring it.
   For what is 5bunkraptcy but the state of being rapt by bunk,
entranced by rubbish, absorbed by 5frovilous unreality? A 5bunkrapt
is, surely, a man who sits for hours staring at 5TC, or reading
newspapers filled with 5gissop 5volumns retailing the 5acticities
(too often 5extramartial) of worthless 5nenontities such as 5acrots
and 5catresses, film 5srats and coroners. There is an 5invurable
5fricolity about a 5bunkrapt, a refusal to face up to reality; the
full stature of man is diminished in him. After all it's no good
pretending the world 5isn8t real. It's only too 5lear.
   But in our 5vicilization any man who 5faves up to the real
world is 5pat to be dubbed 'square'. There is real danger to the
civilization of the 5Wets here. It is no good simply sneering at the
Russians for being '5puranitical' when actually they are simply
more 5teun with the 5lear facts of life than we are. Unless we
5pukk up our socks the 5Russiansm the 'squares', will have the
5kast 5kaugh; and very unpleasant it 5wikk sound.
   What is to be done, then? I would suggest, now we have found the
word for what is wrong with us, that there is a way out without being
5purinatical or '5quares'. Why do we not treat 5bunkraptcy
precisely as we treat bankruptcy? Let us have a 5Bunkraptcy 5Vourt,
before which persons who had gone 5bunkrapt would have to appear.
But the proceedings would be medical as well as legal. 5Bunkraptcy
is a disease as well as a crime, and would have to be treated partly
as crime was 5terated in Samuel Butler's Nowhere- i.e.
5medivally.
   It should not be difficult to work out a set of standard tests
for determining a man's Reality Quotient (5RQ), analogous to the
IQ tests. After all, many 5psychoolgists spend their whole
lives working out tests named after themselves. The tests should take
into account a 5man8s whole being, not just his tastes in
entertainment. A baker, let us 5saym would score so many points for
doing a real job that for him to read or view bunk would not be nearly
so serious as for a stockbroker, engaged in a job that is
fundamentally 5unlear, nothing to do with making or fashioning
anything except money. A stockbroker would lose heavily for reading
5fricolous newspapers. Anyone with children reasonably well brought
up would have a head start. But a serious person who read no bunk at
all 5wouldn8t come off too well; the thing is not to be rapt by
it.
   The legal side of the 5Bunkraptcy 5Vourt would consist in the
fact that a person with a 5RQ below the 5statuotry 5mimunim
would be registered as an 5induscharged 5bunkrapt, not allowed to
take any part in public life until, after attendance at a
5Herabilitation Centre, he had upgraded his 5RQ.
   
   Some may think that this would be starting from the wrong end,
that personal 5Bunkraptcy is an inevitable, unblameable response to
living in an over-complex, fractured society in which even the
creative 5ratists who set the tone of our 5cicikization are no
longer all-round totally real men like Shakespeare; they are men who
exclusively, intensely 5mebody one 5snigle facet of life, such as
5dismebodied intellect (Shaw), 5misonygy (5Stringberd), historical
pattern (5Tonybee), 5sexaul 5feredom (Lawrence. Only a 5bunkrapt
5vicilization could have made such an extraordinary 5cause
ve?3lebre of Lady 5Chattelrey's Lover). This may be so. But if
writers 5hace changed the 5worldm may not typewriters change it
also? M?
The Obliviscents
   HOW CURIOUS England will be in fifty years' time, when every
fair-sized town has a university, doubtless interconnected by
motorways, and everyone under twenty-five is a student, belonging
to that Union (ideally the motorways would have a special lane for
dons- a tutorway- so as to make these increasingly scarce men
rapidly available to several universities). People like me, who spend
their whole lives trying not merely to keep the facts within a subject
separate (answer quickly now, what are a full cadence, a half-cadence,
a plagal cadence, a false cadence?) but to prevent the subjects
themselves from merging into a comfortable academic dreamland, nothing
to do with actual life, will be even worse off than we are now. How
shall we possibly hold up our heads among all these students, on whom
these universities will have acted like hypo, fixing for ever the
clear photographic images, bright, separate, distinct, that we all had
at the height of our powers, when we were sixteen? (Hypo what?
Hypochloride. Hyposulphate? Hypocrite? You see what I mean.)
   There ought to be a word for us: obliviscents, people who forget.
Of course, everyone forgets; but obliviscents are people who try not
to, who worry about it. The other day the word Mardonius popped
into my head from nowhere. I couldn't for the life of me remember
whether he was Greek or Persian, although I could remember writing
an essay about him at school. But surely it isn't all or nothing,
must we admit that all that effort is as if it had never been? Was it
not something, at least, to know he was B.C., and not, for
instance, a Roman? So I clung to this shadowy Mardonius,
simultaneously a hard, noble Greek soldier and a soft, curling-lipped
Persian tyrant; bearded and clean-shaven; on both sides at once, a
faint ghost-Mardonius in the sky; a potentiality, only half-real.
# 22
<499 TEXT R8>
16
CHINESE GEESE
   EARLY in our occupation of Pond Cottage, when it was yet
scarcely homely, I heard another and uglier noise. It was the voices
of two geese, and they were to plague us for many a month. Looking
out of my bedroom window in the early light I observed these lovely
birds floating lightly on the water's surface and giving off at
intervals a colourable imitation of a klaxon-horn. Inquiry revealed
that they were the property of one of my neighbours, whose custom it
was to give them the freedom of the water at frequent intervals. They
were of the kind called Chinese geese but they were far from
inscrutable. They were vile in temper, dreadful bullies and cowards,
noisy in and out of season, and, as I have said, really beautiful. It
seemed surprising to me that so much that was objectionable should
reside in such a lovely source.
   An inquiry of their owner, a calm man who seemed unmoved by their
clamour, as parents enjoy the crying of their children, revealed the
excellent news that, though he had hoped for better things, they were
both females and unlikely on that account to produce young of their
kind. I realized that I had had a fortunate escape when he also added
that they were the only two survivors of a brood of eight. 'Terribly
delicate, they are, as chicks', he said, and it was, I dare say, too
much to hope that this delicacy would persist into adult life. It was
perhaps evidence of their unabatable vitality that during the two
years I knew them they produced, and brooded upon, infertile eggs of
very large size in considerable numbers, one of which the owner
presented to me 'for my breakfast'.
   Now either I had to live with them, a nearly impossible
proposition, since every time I put my head over the hedge they
produced a series of loud metallic cries, or I had to get rid of them.
Actually the latter was my only course since they had already decided
either to attack or hoot at all comers. Their technique was to rush
at you, and they were not small birds, heads lowered and outstretched,
and uttering their offensive cries so loudly that they could be (and
in fact they were) heard a mile off. If you stood your ground they
came to a stop and sidled off in another direction.
   How could I dispose of them? I had to do it without offence to
their owner- who, as I say, was a peaceable, decent chap- but I had
also another hurdle to jump. Just along the road lived a local animal
lover, who had already eyed me suspiciously when I had moved on the
several cats who, in various degrees of decrepitude, were mothered by
her. I began my campaign by the usual shooing process. This merely
amused the geese. They appeared to look elsewhere, indeed, until I
realized afresh, as you have to, that all birds look at you from the
sides of their heads. They might sail a couple of yards away, drawing
themselves up to the highest points of their dignity, but they would
immediately and in unison, as if from a radio signal, veer around and
make back to the place from which their manoeuvre had begun. Arm
waving produced no results except to incite them to guttural grunts of
derision.
   I must admit that I thought of many desperate measures: of going
out at night with an airgun; of throwing poisoned bread upon the
waters (which would have been useless since, unlike moorhens, they did
not take to bread, and appeared to subsist on a diet of grass). My
alarm was increased by my reference to a book on pet keeping which
confirmed my worst fears about Chinese geese. It actually warned pet
keepers against the wisdom of attempting to keep both Chinese geese
and friendly neighbours. I presented the book to their owner but if
he read that passage it did not affect his behaviour.
   In fairness to myself I must add that I had no wish to hurt the
geese. It had to be psychological warfare, mental cruelty. In the
end I decided that a process of steady discouragement was the only
policy. Whenever they appeared on the pond, and I was present, I
threw a sprinkle of small grit around them. At first they exhibited
no emotion apart from comical surprise. I persisted in this
sprinkling campaign for nearly a whole winter, not without success.
As spring approached they appeared less and less, and indeed on
seeing me they would, without undue haste, turn around and retreat to
whence they came.
   For a time an intermittent peace reigned on the pond. If other
terrors arising from the pond population came and went (as, for
instance, the day my wife saw a large rat walk slowly across our
bridge towards the front door, or the sudden surprise of beady
shrew-eyes from the pond's grass banks), at least we had seemingly rid
ourselves, without offending anyone openly, of our Chinese geese.
Between whiles a charming bevy of about a dozen white (and more or
less silent) geese occasionally trooped down the village street,
fluttered and splashed in the pond for a while and then, in solemn
dignified file, returned to their drier quarters. They should have
been grateful to me, for when the Chinese geese were about they had no
difficulty in hounding off these peaceful creatures.
   If this chapter reads like a successful rout, I am sorry to have
given you the wrong impression. Those Chinese geese finally fooled me
and everyone else. In May, in our second Pond Cottage summer, these
two geese returned, and with them, unaccountably, there shuffled to
the water's edge a clutch of six chicks, faintly yet assuredly
resembling their parents. That was one of the turning points of my
life as a pond-dweller.
17
PARISH PUMP
   RUMOUR had had it for some years past that water- a parish
supply as it is called- was on its way to Wilborough. The supply of
water to remote villages and hamlets is one of the beneficent
functions performed in this rather deplorable century. In villages it
marks the end of water as a precious liquid, to be dispensed frugally,
weighed out drop by drop.
   Living at Pond Cottage I had been able to appreciate my own ample
supplies while viewing the bucket-dipping villagers from my window.
There were periods when I was amazed at the rareness of their visits
to the spring- yet it could not be denied that the villagers were
clean people, even shining clean. Those who had lived in the heart of
the countryside will know that, in the sense of grubbiness, as opposed
to good, clean dirt, it is not easy to get dirty. When we first lived
in the country my wife worried as to who would clean our windows. We
searched around for a window-cleaner, but she need not have worried.
When we left that cottage two years later the windows, though never
touched, were as clean as when we came in.
   If the country air is good for complexions and windows it must
also be marvellously disinfectant. The amount of waste of one kind
and another that has to be destroyed or concealed in any village has
to be thought about to be believed. In villages- of the thatched
variety- it is not safe to light a bonfire to burn rubbish. In most
cases it is consigned to the kindly, effacing earth; in others
chickens and birds are the agents of disposal. Where the material is
indestructible, well, every village has its dumping ground, its
ancient pits- and now and again, as we know, there is luckily a pond
or stream.
   One day the surveyors arrived. They paused long outside Pond
Cottage to decide the line of pipes, and they eyed the pond itself
with glances made up equally of anxiety and animosity. This was their
lowest point, and after the spanning of our little valley they could
once more rise. The village was full of depressing rumours. They
would drain the pond; they would run pipes across the arches of the
little bridge; and so on. Fortunately the plans of the water
engineers lay elsewhere. With a mechanical digging monster, eating up
earth and rocks with equal ease, they dug a deep trench on the side of
the road furthest from the pond's edge.
   To the barely suppressed satisfaction of most of us the
excavation immediately filled with water, and thereafter the scene
became a morass: ditch, ruts, mud, grey-brown hillocks of earth, large
stones, untidy clods of grass, with a few pieces of newspaper and some
old cement bags thrown in for good measure. It remained thus for a
whole summer.
   An attempted laying of pipes began. A small pump arrived and
cleared the trench of water long enough for the pipes to be set in
position. Then the water once more resumed its engulfing sway. So
that the ditch could be cleared sufficiently of water for sealing the
joints, a more delicate job, the little petrol pump was again conjured
to work valiantly- but it proved unequal to its task. The trench
remained obstinately full; the water seeped in as fast as it was
pumped away. For some weeks the matter remained thus, while the
supervisors, who occasionally arrived in shining saloon cars,
scratched their heads over the problem.
   The impasse was finally broken one rainy Saturday. A man-sized
pump arrived borne upon the platform of a lorry. It was this pump
which was to prove the major enemy, and not the water. Anyone who has
ever had to deal with a Diesel or petrol engine will know the
possibilities of trouble here. They are bad enough on a hot afternoon
with a lawn-mower. These men went through all the known processes to
the point of exhaustion. The engine started, stopped, started,
stopped again, always for no apparent reason. The four men concerned
explored all possibilities and experienced every feeling from hope to
despair. They cajoled, wheedled, entreated, tinkered. Eventually
they knocked off for a smoke and a cup of tea.
   This campaign proceeded for an entire morning. I was amazed at
the workmen's stolid patience. Then as we were all giving up in
despair, for I shared their experience from my window, the pump
started and continued genially as if it too had had enough and wanted
to perform its task and get home for the day. Once going, the job was
tidied up, the trench filled, in less than an hour; and the landscape
settled into the condition of quiet waiting which had been its role
through the ages. Soon the grass would grow again over the trench and
over the piped water of the twentieth century.
   About a month later a number of workmen came through the village
and, with the active co-operation of the villagers, made little
right-angled connections with the main pipe to each front door taking
the water. This was a job soon dispatched although fraught with small
obstacles in the way of trickles of springs beneath the road surface.
It remained then for the villagers to take the water indoors. On a
fine spring morning came the news by post from the rural district
council that water would be put into pipes on a particular date, and
that supplies could then be delivered. On that day a villager in a
cottage turned a tap- and the utility of Wilborough Pond was, after a
thousand years, ended. Thereafter it became a piece of the landscape.
   I had a sign written, taking the first Saxon mention of the
village. I hung it on our gate: THIS POND, FOR A THOUSAND YEARS,
PROVIDED WATER TO THE VILLAGERS OF THIS HAMLET A.D. 888-1957.
18
CHAIN OF LIFE
   STEADY effort for nearly two years, punctuated by bursts of
great energy, had been put to the end of making the pond and its
cottage a piece of landscape such as you read about or see in a film:
a veritable picture.
# 226
<5 TEXT R9>
   All new equipment takes a bit of getting used to. It was some
time before one's spoon became a weapon of relative precision and the
pudding finished up in one's mouth instead of in one's right ear or on
the wall behind one. Gloves, hairbrushes, lavatories- pretty well
all the accessories of everyday life- were unmanageable to begin
with; but in that distant era one received patient and elaborate
coaching in their use.
   Middle age has no mentors; nobody says, "No, not like that,
dear. Like this." I defy anyone who puts on a pair of
spectacles for the first time not to feel that he has done it in a
slightly ridiculous way. And so, in all probability, he has, as,
grasping the fragile contraption in both hands, he fastens it
uncertainly on his face like a man putting on a false beard at some
ghastly rout. Not since- in something of the same surreptitious,
apprehensive manner- he smoked his first cigarette has he been so
unexpectedly reminded that there is a right way and a wrong way of
doing things.
   
   Once having lodged upon his nose what he used scornfully to call
gig-lamps, he makes a long, searching scrutiny of his reflection in
the mirror. There can be no doubt that he looks extremely odd. Life
has played a practical joke on him, but it is an obscure rather than
an unkind practical joke. Although he still regards spectacles as
6per se faintly ridiculous (why else do we say bespectacled-
cf. begrimed, bedizened and besotted- and not betrousered or even
bebearded?), he persuades himself that he looks no sillier than
he looked before. Rather, indeed, the reverse. A certain gravitas
has been added. He finds himself for the first time wondering
whether he might not have had a considerable future as a dentist, or
in the Treasury.
   But he has still to present this new 6persona to the world,
and face the world's reactions. Way back, when similar ordeals were
undergone, no pains were spared to allay his misgivings and boost his
morale. "But, darling, you look so nice in it! Doesn't he, Nanny?
It's awfully becoming. All the other little boys at the party
will be wearing- well, the same sort of thing only I expect not so
nice. I promise you they will." None of this nonsense now.
   He knows what he will get from his children. The spectacles
confer, in his view, a patriarchal air; they delicately underline the
eventual need for petits soins; he can almost feel the rug
round his knees, smell the aroma of the cocoa simmering on the hob.
(The blacksmith should be able to knock up a hob.) But he knows what
he will get from his children, and he gets it.
   "Daddy!" they scream, convulsed with laughter. "What are
you up to? Why are you wearing spectacles? You do look
funny!"
   A rat caught in a gin-trap by one leg will often gnaw the leg
off. To disembarrass your face of spectacles involves a simpler, far
less drastic process; but if you have never done it before it is
difficult to do it as though to the manner born. You cannot lay your
ears back; you do not show the whites of your obsolescent eyes. But
your face, emerging from between the shafts, inevitably reflects the
part-rebellious, part-apprehensive, part-apologetic expression of an
old saddle-horse which has not previously worn harness. Once you have
expunged from their minds the idea that you are dressing up in order
to amuse them, your new gimmick can be explained to your children; but
it cannot be airily explained, any more than it can to your
over-facetious or over-solicitous contemporaries.
   I had hardly obtained a pair of spectacles when I ceased to need
them, my eyes suddenly getting a second wind. This reprieve (which
for all I know is a common occurrence) began soon after one of my
aunts recommended yeast to me as a cure for failing memory. My memory
is appalling. I shovelled down the unexpired portion of my aunt's
yeast-ration- this was at the breakfast-table- and continued for a
time to eat the stuff. 6Post, I suspect, rather than
6propter hoc I threw away my reading glasses; my memory
continued to deteriorate.
   Two or three years later a minor military campaign in Arabia
strengthened the delusion that for me spectacles were a thing of the
past. So refulgent was the sun, and so few the place-names on our
unreliable maps, that I snapped my fingers at Salisbury Plain and the
deep misgivings aroused upon it.
   But now- grateful for a reprieve none the worse for a dummy
run- I am once more, when I read, bespectacled.
THE MAN WE KILLED
   One of us is a Cabinet Minister. One of us died of drink last
month. One of us is an earl. One committed suicide many years ago.
One, I think, is an expert on Russia. One is an admiral. Some I
have forgotten altogether. Several others must be dead.
   The man we killed was called Mr Jackson. He was a master at
our private school towards the end of the First War. I do not
remember him as clearly as I should; one reason for this is that he
did not last long.
   I suppose he was about twenty-five. He had reddish hair which
stood up over his forehead in a quiff. He wore spectacles with metal
rims and a blazer with a crest on the breast pocket. He was very
short-sighted and we believed him to make matters worse by not
cleaning his spectacles. He had a plaintive, rather common voice and
a lolloping gait. He took the Sixth Form in (I think) Greek; I am
ashamed that I cannot remember his subject with certainty.
   Mr Jackson was, I suppose, fairly typical of the sort of
material with which headmasters have to make up their staffs in the
closing stages of a major war. All I can recall about his previous
career is that it had taken him to Singapore, where, he told us, the
natives played football with bare feet. He had served as a special
constable during disturbances in the city, and was easily encouraged
to relate his memories of those stirring times. They were not
sensational; once Mr Jackson had been on duty all night and it had
rained without stopping.
   It would be interesting to know how many hours or days or weeks
in the school year are lost to learning by boys inducing masters to
embark on martial or other reminiscences. In my time at Eton there
was a French master- and he really looked like a French master-
called M. Larsonnier, who had served with the French contingent
which helped to sack Peking after the Boxer Rebellion. If you could
only get him started, he had a splendid set-piece. "Who was 3ze
first into 3ze Forbidden City? It was I! Who was 3ze first into
3ze Winter Palace? It was I! Who was 3ze first into 3ze Empress
Dowager's bedroom? It was I!" "And who" (we would wittily chime
in) "was 3ze first into 3ze Empress Dowager's bed?" I
imagine that less time is wasted in this way at girls' schools.
   Mr Jackson never had a chance. It was not merely that he had
no authority and was easily gulled; school-masters of this more or
less helpless kind generally arouse in their tormentors a sort of
mercy or tolerance, based perhaps on the feeling that if they are
handled too barbarously they will be replaced by some sterner fellow
and there will be no more cakes and ale.
   But for some reason we actively disliked Mr Jackson, who had a
cocksure manner and a grating personality, and we gave him the full
treatment. Our school was near the coast, and soon after he arrived,
Mr. Jackson, jaded no doubt by the enervating climate of the
tropics, was heard to speak in appreciative terms of the sea-breezes
which stole into his bedroom. We took the first opportunity of
wedging a bloater under the springs of his mattress.
   "Good morning, sir. Lovely fresh breeze this morning, isn't
there? You'd never think we were a mile from the sea, would you,
sir?"
   Mr. Jackson would concur in a baffled way.
   At length masters with adjacent bedrooms were impelled to
investigate, and the putrescent bloater was removed.
   "Good morning, sir. Did you see that perfectly beastly case in
the paper, sir? No, sir, not that one; after all, there's nothing
specially unpatriotic about murder. We meant the case where the
man was fined for hoarding food. I do think that sort of thing is
absolutely rotten when there's a war on, don't you, sir?
Apparently he used to hide it in his bedroom. . . . "
   And so on. Our worst excesses are lost in oblivion, but my
recollection is that we kept up a relentless pressure and that Mr.
Jackson ceased to be cocksure and became jumpy, irritable and
maladjusted.
   
   In the only incident I remember clearly, indeed vividly, I played
the leading part. Mr. Jackson was the sort of master who impels
boys, once they have established an ascendancy over him, to see how
much further they can go, and one day I decided to take a grass-snake
into his class.
   We wore, in the summer, grey sweaters and grey flannel shorts. I
put the grass-snake, which was about three feet long but used to being
handled, in my pocket and kept my hand over it as a precaution. It
had had a feed a few days before and at first observed a perfect
decorum.
   After a bit I became over-confident and relaxed my vigilance.
The snake got its head up my sleeve and began to climb up my arm.
Readers who have been in this particular situation will know that,
once a serpent has started climbing up your arm under your sleeve, it
matters little how much of the serpent is left in your pocket; you
cannot get it back into the pocket by using the arm it is climbing up,
and you cannot bring your other hand into play against it without
taking your sweater off, which- leaving snakes and schoolmasters out
of it- I defy anyone to do with one hand in his pocket.
   Being at the top of the class, I sat directly underneath Mr.
Jackson's beaky nose. I was in a quandary. Seventyfive per cent. of
the snake had not yet passed the start-line and was still in my
pocket. I decided to try to stabilise this situation and gripped it
convulsively round what, if it had been me, would have corresponded to
its chest.
   The snake cannot be blamed for failing to understand my motives.
It felt thwarted, and began to hiss. Human beings, when they hiss,
hiss outwards; a grass-snake makes a sound exactly like a human being
drawing his breath sharply inwards while stitches are being taken out
of a wound.
   "Strix," asked Mr. Jackson, peering down at me, "are you in
pain?"
   "No, sir," I said. I thought it prudent to let go of the
snake. It stopped hissing but went on climbing.
   My urgent duty now was to prevent it doing what, if left to
itself, it would do, which was to make a bid for freedom by wriggling
out through the collar of my sweater. By this time, the snake's rear
echelon having left my pocket, I had both hands free and was easily
able, by clasping them to my throat in a rather precious manner, to
deny it egress. The snake turned south, towards my midriff.
   It now had room to manoeuvre and was moving well; there was
nothing to do but to grab it before it escaped from my sweater. I
clasped one hand to my stomach and got it round the neck. It started
hissing again.
   "What is the matter?" asked Mr. Jackson irritably. "Is
something hurting you?" My bosom was heaving convulsively, on
account of the snake.
# 24
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