A LESSON FROM HITLER

Evening Star, Issue 21748, 16 June 1934, Page 2

A LESSON FROM HITLER

[Written by Panache, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] The black-faced golliwog has been banished from Nazi nurseries. Like the Jew, the black-faced golliwog is not of Teutonic origin, and, like the Jew. ho has been banished. Tinder the new educational system in Germany, Hitler’s principles are to he inculcated from the kindergarten stage, and the Bavarian Minister of Education has stated that his aim is to “ encourage the boy's longing for adventure and the helmet, as also the girl with her doll and home.” Girls are to be fitted above all for home life, and black-faced babies spoil the Nazi colour scheme. Golliwogs come under the colour ban, and the colour ban must be observed, even in dolls’ houses.

Tn a more superstitious age Hitler could have bought up all dolls of the wrong shade, stuck pins in them, and by homoepathic magic caused as many enemies to perish. Exile is less drastic, though there may be some hearts breaking for proscribed golliwogs. Yet once more, 0 ye lindens, there is a chance for a nursery laureate to write a mournful elegy. Is there a noise in Berlin of bereaved Gretehens, wailing for their golliwogs and refusing to be comforted by rosy-cheeked blondes ? Are boneless, sagging golliwogs being buried dishonourably at the cross-roads; or are the banished, with German hatred of waste, being hurried over the frontier to unteutonic orphanages? Some men, torn between patriotism and fatherhood, are fei-erishly attempting to bleach black dolls, making the sign of the swastika as they un-dye. In all bookshops Nazis must be tearing the blackamoor story out of the classic ‘ Strcwel Peter.’

Not for racial reasons, but for aesthetic, I sympathise with Hitler’s ban. I should like to see not only golliwogs , but all the grotesque and freak generation of toys banished from nurseries. Kevypies should not be spared. Though the kewpie has something puckish about the shape of his head and the slant of his eyebrows, there is something revolting in his smooth. pinkness/ while the greedy rotundity of his curves should be sufficient cause to have him banished from all homes in which it is hoped to inculcate good ' habits. It is a pity that golliwogs and kewpies and other sophisticated grotesque toys should ever have entered our nurseries, for they mark the decadence of the race of,dolls, which are among the oldest of human institutions. Fashioned from clay, bone, wood, and the ivory teeth of mammoths, dolls have been found in the graves of Egypt and of other early civilisations. . In some countries dolls were considered sacred, and, made in the imago of the deity, were used in the religious instruction of the child. In New Mexico dolls are icarv.ed to I‘epresent tluu gods' and are. so holy that their sale is forbidden. The child wives of India were given dolls as wedding presents, and it is recorded that when his nine-yearwlcl wife brought her dolls to,his harem the mighty Mohammed himself was not above playing with them. Little Western boys sometimes followed Mohammed’s example, especially at bedtime, when model yachts and engines wore too sharp and cold to be comfortable companions. But male pridu demanded the invention of a toy that should be. warm, comfortable, and intimate, without being obviously feminine. Hence tho woolly, furry, unhygienic, microbe-breeding litters of nursery fauna, led by the Teddy Bear, who owed his ascendancy partly to his size, partly to his undeniable hugga bio quality, and partly to his laureate, A. A. Milne.

The dolls that little girls used to play with were fresh-complexioncd, .bright of eyo, and could be kept clean. Though those of tho lower orders were sewn into their clothes, the more aristocratic could have their garments removed, and really nice dolls were dressed and undressed several times a day. “ Made in Germany ” was stamped on those old dolls where their china busts met their sawdust trunks, and some were guaranteed again where their kid calves merged into jointed knees. Tho chief beauty, of these dolls was that they knew repose; they could, and did, close their eyes. But the new generation, ugly and unwashable, stare their lives through from beady unclosing eyes. We can build up a suitable environment for a doll; but beyond suspecting that a golliwog has some affinity for jazz, we are so ignorant of its antecedents and aspirations that nothing is done to improve its condition. In the history of the race dolls have always had some religious or social significance. Some who see a child playing with a doll like to think she is developing her maternal instinct; and some see a connection between empty cradles and the strange fauna and outlandish freaks like golliwogs and kewpies that ousted the doll. Your eyes may not brim witli sentimental tears when you see a little woman nursing a foundling clothes peg wrapped in a handkerchief. You may not insist, like Hitler, that your daughters should play With dolls in the kindergarten to get’into training as mothers of the race. But you will agree that children are not bored by oldfashioned or even by primitive toys, and that it is tho misplaced ingenuity ol adults that forces grotesque monsters into nursery cupboards.

Simplicity rather than novelty should be the standard tor toys. The organisation of taste cannot be begun too early, and children brought up with golliwogs may keep a taste for abor-, tions. Not only will the view from the back window of their motor cars be obscured by dismal Desmonds dangling from threads; not only will all India trumpet from their mantelpieces in long eugcnically spaced generations of ebony, but they will grow like their early gods, with loreheads villainous low.