Mysteries of Madagascar

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 170, 25 September 1942, Page 3

Mysteries of Madagascar

T is not clear as we write whether the campaign in Madagascar is proceeding according to plan, has been suspended, or is already over. All we know is that it has been about as bloody, so far, as the German capture of Denmark. The French have neither the means nor the mood for resistance and the British no desire for conquest. But it might be reckless to suppose that the possibilities end with a reluctant advance on one side and a courteous withdrawal on the other. We direct the attention of our redders to a letter from Madagascar printed on Page 8. It is certainly an old letter (August 11, 1729), and in places a little difficult to follow, but it appeared in the Edinburgh Courant, and it was written by an Abbot from Madagascar itself. It is quite clear, too, that it was written carefully, and after considerable observation and thought, since the Abbot warns his Dear Friend in Paris that what he is sending is a correction of the Falsehoods of those who represent things as "quite different from what they indeed are." Truth has always been stranger than fiction, but when we consider what terrors Madagascar held so recently as 1729, it is to Be hoped that the General Commanding the British Forces will not be any more difficult about an armistice than he must be. For the French have come to terms with "those that live in the Woods and Mountains, and make no scruple of eating one another." They have pensioned off or exterminated the Jaribots who, though they are only eighteen inches high, "keep Kennels of Animals of the Shape and Size of the Weasel", and have reduced human life to "a Kind of Farce." They have subdued the native Sheep, "as big and as high as our Cows", and they have found a use for the White Elephants. But the French have been there (off and on) for many years, and our armies have just arrived. They do not know that the fruit. of the Baricot Tree is as big as a football, and makes powerful cider; that sharpshooters in an upper branch would be out of range of anything but a modern gun; and that a soldier who goes to sleep on his post will probably be whisked away by a parrot much bigger than an ostrich, and be carried through the air at a mile a minute to a nest which is as big and strong as a house. If the Armistice has not already been signed we should pray that it soon will be,