MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IAM one of those people who loathe taking part in ceremonies. When I see a man inspecting a guard of honour, I raise silent thanks to Hermes (tutelary deity of all diplomatists and ex-diploma- tists), that I have never attained a station in life which might impose upon me so horrible a function. To Field Marshals and other military men the task, I suppose, comes quite easily. It is the civilian—the man in grey frock coat and grey top hat—who receives all my pity. He advances gingerly toward& the guard of honour ; the officer commanding springs to a salute ; the civilian (whether he be a Viceroy or a Governor-General) then raises his top hat slightly and shakes the officer by the hand. It is difficult to do that sort of thing with grace or ease. And then the band strikes up, the civilian falls into step with the commanding officer, and slowly side by side or in front of one another they walk down the line. What is the civilian to do during that stilted promenade— where are his eyes to look? Too minute an attention to the members of his guard of honour would savour of insincerity ; what does he know or care about ribbons and shoulder-straps? Yet if one is supposed to be inspecting a guard of honour, and has been billed as such, complete inattention might be rude ; and my ready sympathy goes out to the civilian walking stiffly in his grey frock coat and seeking to hit the golden mean. Even more horrible is the task of those who have to walk backwards at court functions, or act as pall-bearers at State funerals, or deposit wreaths on the tombs of unknown soldiers. The latter ceremony is specially trying. To lay a small or handy wreath is to evade obligation and to cause offence ; to lay a large and appropriate wreath is an opera- tion which only a trained ballet dancer can execute with grace. And thereafter comes the rigid embarrassment of a two minutes' silence.
* * * So intense is my dislike of officiating at ceremonies that I seek by every means in my power to avoid the comparatively simple ceremony of giving away prizes at schools. A deft or nimble man can perform this function with simple elegance ; he gives the book into the left hand of the triumphant boy, he says a few short but well chosen words of congratulation, and then with his right hand he grasps the right hand of the triumphant boy. That is how the operation ought to proceed. Yet when I perform this operation I become confused, not merely between the right hand and the left, but between the respective positions of donor and recipient. After the twenty-fifth boy has mounted the platform I find myself giving with the right hand and shaking with the left, which fills the recipient with overt and pardonable confusion. And instead of saying, as I ought to say, "It gives me much pleasure to present to you the Fifth Form prize for Divinity ": I find myself, as the bewildered after- noon wears onwards, saying "Thank you very much indeed." Shame at my own incompetence rises hot within me ; I look down from the platform upon the proud faces of mothers, upon the firm faces of fathers, upon the expectant faces of sons ; and I know that as they look up at me they see an elderly zany fumbling and mumbling like a bumble bee against a window. Yes, I rejoice that the paths of my life have so seldom led my footsteps into the grim avenues of ceremonial. Yet although, as I have said, I loathe having to per- form at ceremonies, there are few things that I enjoy more than watching, from a safe distance, the performance of others. The resultant pity and terror cleanse my soul.
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While therefore I like watching any sort of ceremony, it is French ceremonies that I enjoy watching most. On the one hand they are always the same : the band plays the same old military tunes over and over again, the master of the ceremonies loses his temper with the assistant master of ceremonies, everybody sits in every- body else's chair, the girl who has been dolled up to represent Alsace is mislaid and then hurriedly pushed forward, and the officiating Minister or General is forty minutes late. On the other hand they are always different ; the individual genius of the French,
their intellectual disregard of the disciplines of time or order, intro- duce into French ceremonies a delightful element of the unexpected. Although something always goes wrong, it is never the same thing that goes wrong. And the running commentary which a French crowd makes up on the absurdities or the clumsiness of the main partici- pants remind one that the words "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" are not a mere historic formula. It was thus with pleased expecta- tion that I attended last week the ceremony of the unveiling upon the wall of No. 4 Carlton Gardens of a tablet commemorating General de Gaulle's wireless message of June ath, 1940. The end of the street had been railed off, the wall of No. 4 had been draped with huge tricolor flags, at the foot of the small platform was a solitary palm tree in a tub, upon which a careless photographer had deposited a brown trilby hat, and opposite was a slight awning under which chairs had been arranged as upon the terrace of a Parisian cafe. The band played to us the Sambre et Meuse and the March of Lorraine ; the latter tune, while we were waiting for the Minister, was played three times. The rain dribbled on the hats of the spectators, on the standards of the legionaries, on the palm tree, and on the huge ribbons of the girl who impersonated Alsace. And finally Monsieur Jacquinot, the Minister of Marine, arrived from Le Bourget. Rapidly he shook hands with Mr. Eden, with Mr. Amery, with Mr. Alexander, with Mr. Bellinger and with the attendant admirals" and generals. Rapidly he mounted the ros- trum and made a short deft speech ; and then he tugged at a cord and the flags fell apart disclosing the tablet with its lettered words. The band played the Marseillaise and God Save the King. We all stood to attention in the rain.
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My mind flew back to that night in June, 1940, when in the corridor of Broadcasting House I had first set eyes on General de Gaulle. Accompanied by an officer and two officials of the B.B.C. he was hurrying towards a studio on the third floor. "It is I," he was to say, "General de Gaulle, speaking to you from London . . . France has lost a battle, but she has not lost the war." As I stood there last week, while the rain splashed upon the stone on which those great words had been engraved, I recalled how presumptuous, how reckless and how magnificent they had seemed to me at the time. I recalled how, in the dark weeks that followed, the tricolor had fluttered high above Carlton Gardens as the symbol of a resistance and a liberation which was then a dream and thereafter became a reality. And I reflected on the faith, the pertinacity, the rigid integrity of this obstinate man who during those lonely months bore upon his shoulders the dignity, the independence and the honour of France. In the years that followed, those of us who had to cope with General de Gaulle would often regret his obduracy, his touchy stiffness, his constant refusal to take the easier path. But was he wrong to be so difficult? He was determined that whatever happened he would not slip into the position of a junior French General living upon the subsidies of the British Treasury ; he was determined to become the personification of French inde- pendence; he was determined that when the great day came he would not return to France as a mere camp-follower in the baggage- train of the Allies. His self-assertion, inconvenient and provoking though it then was, fills me to-day with admiration.
* * As I thought of General de Gaulle, the amusement which I usually derive from ceremonies was replaced by anxious awe. To few men has been accorded so personal or so superb a triumph: in few men has the fire of patriotism blazed with so intense or pure a flame. Yet the quality of his faith, of his spiritual obduracy, still renders him incapable of compromise ; and may drive him to behave unconstitutionally merely because he dislikes a particular constitution. In his character he reflects and enhances the greatest virtues of the greatest number of his countrymen ; but inflexibility of intellect can render inapplicable, or even dangerous, the noblest purity of soul.
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