LISTENINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 103, 13 June 1941, Page 15

LISTENINGS

Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN.

ALEXANDER

Mad Dogs And Ideologies

HE other day, Lord Halifax said that Britain would fight on regardless of the extent of United States aid, because there could be no peace with a mad dog. In short, it is absurd to expect a contented pow-wow with a demented bow-wow. Mad dogs are like that: you can’t reason with them, The bark of a gun is their master’s voice. Noel Coward says that mad dogs and Englishmen come out in the midday sun. This seems to support Lord Halifax’s contention that the show must go on until the haunted hound of Berchtesgaden has been denuded of dogmatism and the right to bite,

What sent him mad? Firstly, he was naturally that way. But he might have remained fit for human companionship if he had not got himself an Ideology. An Fdeology is a sure accessory to insanity. The dullest dog can survive ideas, and even ideals, but an ideology is

the first step to the bats. As proof, my dictionary says that an ideologist is one occupied with ideas of no significance, and an ideology is the science of ideas; which sounds like those foodless meals you have when you are on a diet. A dog with ideas can be interesting, though a nuisance, but a dog occupied with the science of ideas can be a positive blister, as anyone who is owned by a dog will tell you. In the last war, the current mad dog of Europe had ideas; we had to fight frightfulness, kultur, right-of-might and square-headedness generally, but there was no Ideology to muss up the show, Ideas about ideas play the very duce as Admiral Darlan is busy proving. The French need to beware. They may eventually shake off serfdom, they may survive Hun and hunger, but once they fall for an Ideology, they will find that the Mad Dog has sold them a permanent pup. It is said that dog won’t eat dog; but mad dogs will eat anything. They sometimes eat themselves, which is a comforting thought. As Euclid might have said if he had not been so busy making a crooked business of the straight-and-narrow, "All Ideologies are the same Ideology." Current history has proved it. Hitler’s Ideology and Stalin’s, although at loggerheads, now roll the same log-although they may be trying to roll it in different directions. Japan’s, although definitely non-Aryan in colour and shape, has contracted an Axis clinch with Hitler’s. Musso’s, which was almost entirely Musso-bound, changed its shirt to brown before it collapsed while doing its daily dozen. All Ideologies have the same aimto push themselves down the throats of those who will take them and, for those who refuse to take them, to make it impossible for them to take anything. The setting up of idols is bad. The setting up of Ideologies is fatal,

When this bad business is over, it might be said of Hitler, "And he set himself up an Ideology which fell upon him and rent him asunder,"