Notebook
Ido not wish in any way to denigrate the Power of prayer. But Brigadier-General nizier's emphasis upon it should not be ‘11°wed to overshadow the remarkable achievement of the Italian police in bringing
about his rescue from the Red Brigades in
The Italian authorities have already ,eeelved a lot of well-deserved compliments for this brilliant operation. And I would itilot have felt tempted to refer to it again if I bad hot been struck by the uncouthness of news of Reagan's first reaction to the _ews of Dozier's release. Here was an ex-
llent opportunity for the leader of the Free World' to pat the Italians on the head and tell them what clever little chaps they iaad been, thereby creating a little good will Italy towards the United States. But in-
bread he spoke almost exclusively about the avert and fortitude of the Brigadier- g7ieral, about which at that stage he could lans known very little, saying of the ti;ulans merely that they had acquitted beard with honour. Now we have cat) d from General Dozier's own mouth 1211l his experiences. He would seem to ave been brave enough, but hardly in this Ise a hero. He admitted, first of all, that had ignored warnings by the Italian i'ohee that he was a possible kidnap target, hbleh was not very sensible of him. During c's 42 days in captivity, very he does not 'goof to 4,vene do anything ve much except f fi." and take naps, play cards, and suffer hieln 'excruciating boredom'. What kept 11;1 going was a belief (foolish, I would rt;ve thought, in view of the Red Brigades' ivetard of assassination) that 'things usually 6'c out for the best'. Opportunities for
difference' were limited by the 'businesslike in- 4■lerence, with which his captors treated
wbelieve The Red Brigades simply could not hen that his Italian was as bad as it was. coheo they finally realised that he actually ihuldn't understand a word they were say- fog, they appear to have abandoned all ef- rs to interrogate him. He was not even PrIlt h 0cough the formality of a People's :°,1. So he was left with his boredom and th the suffering inflicted by the lack of 01,,13ortunities for physical exercise. Horror horrors, he could not jog! Normally,. he evld. he _logged about two and a half miles p6e,rYdaY. Here, then, is yet another exam- in` °I the ways in which addiction to jogg- g can be dangerous.
Those who have put their faith in Mr d; Robert Mugabe's desire to placate the %.:scontented whites of Zimbabwe will this peh.ek have suffered a rude shock. The Prime Minister decided to hit them where it gall hurts. In a prosperous suburb of a‘iburY, he gathered together several
thousand domestic servants, those people without whom the white man's life in Africa would be inconceivable, and regaled them with a few jokes. 'Those rich people cannot live without your work,' he is reported to have said. 'Their women cannot clean, cannot wash. Some of them cannot even dress themselves.' He then added, somewhat mysteriously: 'We have made them alive from head to toe'. These remarks are said to have been greeted with gales of laughter, which must have struck dread into the hearts of employers. Despite their growing fears for the future, the whites have at least till now felt able to rely upon the availability of cheap and docile servants. Now Mr Mugabe appears to be putting even this luxury at risk. It sounds like the beginning of the end.
The trial of Claus von Bulow, the Danish playboy accused of the attempted murder of his multi-millionaire wife, finally opened this week in Newport, Rhode Island. I seem to be one of the few people who have never met him. He is a friend of practically everybody, including our very own Taki who, in a sensational revelation in last week's Spectator, disclosed that his reputation for necrophilia was unjustified — it was a rumour that Taki himself had in- vented to make him sound more in- teresting. For those who have not been following this case, which is now gripping America almost as much as Brideshead Revisited, the background is as follows: von Bulow, law graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, former member of Lord Hailsham's chambers, and former assistant of the late J. Paul Getty, is accused of twice injecting insulin into his American wife `Sunny', who has been for the past two years in a coma, with a view to killing her and inheriting half of her 30-million-dollar fortune. Part of his defence, as loyally rehearsed by Taki last week, is that 'Sunny' brought on her own coma by drinking, tak- ing drugs and eating too many sweets. We will discover in due course where the truth lies. In the meantime, I have been receiving the impressions of my brother, who met von Bulow in New York a couple of weeks ago. Wearing a Tyrolean jacket and very shiny shoes, the accused was brimming with self-confidence and bonhomie. My brother decided it would be sophisticated not to mention the trial, so asked him instead what life was like in Newport at the mo- ment. It was here that doubts set in about the reputed wit and sophistication of von Bulow, it being the custom of High-lifers to glamorise each other by inventing reputa- tions of this sort. 'Ho, ho, ho,' replied von Bulow, 'What a magnificent question! I am on trial for attempted murder, and you ask me what life is like in Newport! Ho, ho, ho. It reminds me, yes, of a story about Mrs Lincoln. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, in the theatre, she was asked, I believe, by someone: "Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you " ' The most charitable explanation of this reply is that people under intense pressure do have a tendency to talk in clichés.
f Russia is tightening her strangehold on I Poland, she is at least having to pay the price for it among the Communists in western Europe. As Sam White writes on another page, support for the French Com- munist Party has fallen in the opinion polls to about ten per cent of the electorate because of its suicidal support for the military takeover in Warsaw. In Italy, on the other hand, the Party remains strong, but by pursuing precisely the opposite policy to that of their French comrades. The Italian Communists have not only at- tacked the military coup in Poland, but they have blamed the Russians for it, going much further in this respect than the Social Democrat government of West Germany. Russia has replied by accusing the Italian Communists of giving 'direct aid to im- perialism'. Relations between the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union have been strained on many occasions, but never so severely as now.
The claim by Sunday Times journalists that Mr Rupert Murdoch has broken his guarantees of editorial independence by ordering the dismissal of Mr Rota Hall as editor of the colour magazine shows up the limitations of such guarantees. The editor of the Sunday Times, Mr Frank Giles, said that he had participated in the decision to sack Mr Hall and that his independence has, accordingly, not been impinged upon. That may be true, for all I know. But if there were, for example, a different editor at the helm — one who was totally subser- vient to the wishes of his proprietor — there would be nothing that anybody could do to stop Mr Murdoch imposing his will. For the guarantees of independence affect only the position of the editor himself, who is theoretically a dictator. And a toadying editor is most unlikely to admit that he is toadying.
Alexander Chancellor
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