SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

D. W. BROGAN

I am delighted that the Greek government of colonels, or perhaps the King's nominee as Prime Minister, Monsieur Kollias, has quashed the absurd and odious conviction of Monsieur Averoff. I know next to nothing about Monsieur Averoff, although familiar with the name since, before the First World War, there was a very interesting set of cigarette cards with pictures of warships, and one of these was the `Averoff.' This vessel had been given to the Royal Hellenic Navy by a very rich Odessa Greek. I take it that he was the grandfather of the minister.

The idea of penalising Athenians for dis- cussing politics in a private house seems to me very un-Athenian. It is, of course, just what Spartan ephors would have gone in for. But the government of colonels (an ominous name, since the last government of colonels I know anything about was the government of Poland in 1939), is not even consistently Spartan. I am not as indignant, but just alarmed, as I was by Tordre moral' im- posed. Military regimes seem to go in for this kind of thing (so do communist regimes). There was the unfortunate Marshal Macmahon in the early years of the Third Republic. The belief that what countries need is rigorous puri- tanical legislation has haunted other soldiers, e.g. Oliver Cromwell. But the Greek colonels, banning some classical Greek plays, banning mini-skirts (have they lengthened the skirts of the Evzones?), imposing compulsory church attendance, recall a rather backward public school. The ban on long hair, even if directed against British beatniks on the bum (in the American sense of the term), has even an un- Spartan note.

The Spartans on the sea wet rock Sat down and combed their hair.

It was very long hair.

Stage army

Equally absurd is depriving Miss or Made- moiselle Melina Mercouri of her Greek citi- zenship. This, of course, is not at all un- Hellenic, but it is very silly. In 1940 I expressed in print my disbelief in the political impor- anc,e of any activities by actors. They had other different and possibly better things to do. Stage people always take themselves too seriously, but that is no reason why we or the Greek colonels should do so. Thus, in 1940, young Mr Michael Redgrave was all for opposition to 'the imperialist war' and, I fear, for a 'People's Convention.' Objectively, as the marxists say, this could have meant only a Hitlerite victory. Not thinking much of the judgment of Mr Michael Redgrave in 1940,, I do not pay much attention to the political demonstrations of Sir Michael's daughter, Vanessa.

I am not terribly impressed, even, by the political importance of playwrights. Shakes- peare had highly reactionary views, so that Coriolanus had to be banned from the Com6die Francaise when the turmoil that ended in the Front Populaire was mounting to its peak. Matthew Arnold wanted to 'organise' the theatre when the only contemporary English play which appealed to him was The Silver King; and Shaw had, or professed to have, extremely exalted views of the political impact of his plays. But what of Brecht? I shall be asked in- dignantly. Well, I can remember walking into El Vino's the morning after a Brecht first night and finding at the bar, rather depressed, the handsomest dramatic-cum-music critic in Lon- don. I asked him what he had thought of the first night. He replied, 'I am afraid I suffer from 'a handicap which my colleagues are exempt from. I know German.'

Anything goes

From the 'solemnities of the political stage to the musical is a step upwards. I have noticed in the last week or two reviews of a life of Cole Porter and I notice the increasingly slip- shod way in which important questions are reported on and discussed. Each of the reviews, in the two most solemn of our dailies, described one of the most successful of Cole Porter's songs as 'You're the tops.' This alarms me just as does the repeated failure to give the Glasgow shipyard in constant danger, Fair- field, its real name. It is not called Fairfield's, as nearly all the papers do call it. In the same way, this song, one of the best of Cole Porter's songs for verbal ingenuity, is not 'You're the tops': it is 'You're the top.' The distinction is not triviaL The American phrase is not 'You're the top,' but 'You're tops,' meaning first-class at something or other—ping-pang, swimming, indoor sports, etc. If that civilised man, Cole Porter, had wanted to use this phrase, he would have used it. But what he wrote was, 'You're the top,' meaning that the lady to whom the song was addressed was the paragon of her sex.

I met Cole Porter only once, at a Holly- wood party given for me. I have been to several Hollywood parties given for other people, but this was the only one ever given for me. Un- fortunately, the givers had forgotten to tell me they were giving it, and I was peacefully lying down and going to sleep in a Los Angeles hotel when I was told that Mr and Mrs Frederick Brisson (Mrs Brisson is better known as Rosalind Russell) wondered why I hadn't come to my party. I could only say I didn't know there was a party. At the cost of $20, I got a taxi out to Bel Air and there was a party, as a cynic said, including 'all the pdbple in Hollywood who could read and write, about twenty,' and among them was Cole Porter, who was extremely charming and amus- ing, even although he was already badly crippled.

At the party was Colonel Jack Warner, who had just taken over the cinematic side of the American war effort, and with him was a large and chunky young man wearing an old Balliol tie or an old- Marlborough tie. For want of anything else to say, I asked when he had been at Balliol? He looked at me blankly and answered in perfect `Strine' that he had never heard of the place. He obviously thought I was trying upmanship on him before that word had been invented. I.ater, he came up to me and said, 'Colonel Warner is leaving the party and he does not like people to stay behind when he has left a party.' By this time, I was more in the party spirit and I pointed out' to him that neither I nor his host and hostess were under contract to Mr Warner and he (and Colonel Warner) could go and jump off" Sydney Bridge. I am sure Dr P. G. Wodehouse would have liked this specimen of a class even lower than the 'yesmen': the `nodders.'

Alexander's band

I only once met a full clamour of yes men, and that was in London. I ran into that charming and good thriller-writer, Valentine Williams, who announced that he was on his way to a lunch with Sir Alexander Korda, for whom he was working as a script-writer. I was introduced to Sir Alexander and a large num- ber of his immediate staff. Although Sir Alexander had no idea who I was, he chatted most amiably. He had just come back from Hollywood and was describing his distaste for that rival capital. 'They are so servile out there. When X said something, everyone said "Yes, sir." Wasn't it disgusting?' It is dis- gusting,' carolled his staff, as one man. The two non-'nodders' were Messrs Williams and Brogan. I was never invited to lunch again.

Danger: men at play

Since last week I attacked the legend of the 'Queen Mary,' perhaps I may attack this week the legend of cricket as the national game? Any game which takes three days to play is a luxury this country cannot afford. Any game which is so frequently interrupted by rain is unsuitable for the English climate. Any game in which a man can stonewall for eight hours or so as a way of winning the game is not suitable for human beings. (Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his nickname at the Battle of Bull Run after 'standing like a stone wall' for about two hours.) The English public, like Lenin's Russian soldier, is voting against the alleged national game with its feet—by staying away in masses.

Then the English are not very good at their national game, since they can scarcely stand up to quite small countries like Australia (when the Ashes were first lost, the population of Australia was one twentieth of that of England). But there is one country with a large population in which cricket has some justifi- cation. There is no doubt, as an Indian told me, that cricket is the real Indian national game, not polo, hockey, or what have you. I remember seeing a group of small Indian boys playing notional cricket on the Maidan of Bombay just before Christmas in 1965. They had no equipment. It wasn't a question of putting a coat down and then batting. They couldn't put any coats down for they hadn't got any. They had no bat; they had no ball. Nevertheless, there was a batsman; there were fielders; .there was a bowler. There was not, as -far as I remember, a wicketkeeper behind the non-existent wicket, but there was an umpire who ruled a batsman out when he was running.

It was impossible for me to discover why, =as I don't speak any Indian language, and it would have been difficult, even for an expert on cricket like my third son, to decide what the umpire was talking about, since the whole game was like staff rides, like conducting battles on the map. But this was real cricket and if I could have found a sporting goods shop close at hand, I would have bought the little Indian boys a bat and a ball and perhaps even wickets. Cricket is a game for Indians, who have a metaphysical and imaginative temperament. It is unsuitable for the English whose tempera- ment is neither. And a country that fosters the illusion that cricket is 'the national game' is In serious danger in the hard modern world in which it has to live.