THE SCHOOL FORDICTATORS
27
to be the most common animal in Europe." On another occasion he
was
present at the launching of a ship. "Excursion to the sea," he
noted. "Christening of a big ship. A lady breaks a bottle against the
ship's side. They tell me it
was
a bottle of champagne. 'What a pity,'
I remarked, 'it would be better to drink the champagne and break a
bottle of water over the ship.' 'In that case the christening would not
be valid,' they told me. I pointed out that Jesus
was
baptized with
water. They said I
was
a fool. I asked whether a ship had a soul. 'No,'
they replied. 'What is it then that is being christened?' I asked. They
said I
was
a bigger fool." Another day he wrote: "Today I watched
a lot of men marching. They were all dressed in the same way. In
front of them walked a man carrying a pole to which a piece of cloth
was
attached. Everyone saluted it respectfully. One old man even
wept. One man who did not take his hat off was set upon and beaten.
I asked why. I was told he did not salute the flag. 'But it is only a
piece of wood with some cloth attached to it,' I pointed out. 'The
flag,' someone shouted, shaking his fist at me, 'is the sacred symbol
of the country.' 'It is the country's blood and soul,' somebody else
shouted, drawing a knife.
'Has
the country a soul?' I asked. At that
they wanted to take me to prison." Other incid,ents he described re–
ferred to the magic power of stamps, uniforms, emblems, and so on,
and I shall not tell you of them now because you already know them
very well, though being so used to them, one ends by paying no more
attention to them.
MR.
w.
Your Papuan story is at least entertaining, \ ven
if
it isn't true.
THOMAS THE CYNIC
I found the following passage in a study by the ethnographer
A.
P.
Elkine of the secret life of the Australian aborigines: "The tie
between a person and his country is not merely geographical and for–
tuitous; it is a vital, spiritual, and sacred tie. His country is the symbol
of the way of access to the invisible and powerful world of heroes and
ancestors and the powers who dispense the life of which man and
nature profit." I warned you in advance that this passage applied to
Australian aborigines, who are entirely out of touch with so-called
civilization, lest you should
think
it referred to the slogans of Nazi
propaganda. Nevertheless there is a difference between the mental at–
titudes of the Nazis and the natives of Australia in this respect, and
it
is
entirely to the advantage of the latter. In their case the mystical
contact they maintain with the forces of nature
is
genuine and spon–
taneous, while in the case of the contemporary Germans it was
im–
posed by the suggestive power of a nebulous ideology, the success of
which is to be attributed to the terrible state of spiritual bewilderment
