Blindmcm's Buff

As Britain's Commissioner General for all of British Southeast Asia, breezy, affable Malcolm MacDonald, son of the late Laborite Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, is a most un-pukka sahib. He never dresses for dinner in the jungle, and is not afraid to be seen in slacks, sport shirts, or swimming trunks--or even in the company of Asians.

Many an Asian finds this relaxed fac,ade of imperial might reassuring, but many a clubman in London finds it an affront to the dignity of empire. Last week the Churchill government announced Mac-Donald's reappointment as Britain's Southeast Asian proconsul for another year. At about the same time, a copy of the Singapore Straits Times Annual turned up in London, containing an illustrated article by MacDonald on "My Friends the Dyaks." One photograph showed Britain's high commissioner playing blindman's buff with some native friends in Borneo. Another showed him walking along a pebbly beach hand in hand with two dusky young ladies clad in skirts and nothing else.

Hinferiors. Pictures and article alike, scornfully complained Columnist "Peterborough," in the Tory Daily Telegraph, show Mr. MacDonald's middle-class ability to be "haffable alike to hequals and hinferiors." Editorially, the Telegraph asked its friend Churchill: "What is behind this? Is it that Mr. MacDonald cannot be spared in Southeast Asia, or that he can be spared elsewhere? His functions are so vague and diffuse that it is hard to say whether he performs them well or ill, if indeed, since he has no power, he performs them at all. The wheels he oils seem to revolve aimlessly in space [while he] plays blindman's buff with Dyaks and rushes rapidly to and fro ... If there is anything more corrupting than absolute power it is absolute impotence. Is it really kind to Mr. MacDonald to give him yet another year of it?"

Blimps. Happy at the chance to do battle with the Telegraph and incidentally run a blowup of the bare-breasted photograph, the tabloid Daily Mirror raced to MacDonald's defense. The two girls, the Mirror pointed out, were relatives of a tribal chieftain, and dressed in ceremonial costume to greet the visiting Briton. "Does that dignified but stuffy newspaper," asked the Mirror, "seriously suggest that the ladies of Borneo are not entitled to be citizens of the Commonwealth unless they attire themselves in the styles now favored by the ladies of Cheltenham and Bath? Does the Telegraph suggest that there should be an official issue of brassieres, picture hats and long gloves before a representative of Her Majesty is allowed to land? Tut, tut."

In Singapore, under the heading, BLIMPS AND PRUDES, the Straits Times had the last word: "What Asians think of Mr. MacDonald conceivably is more important than the shock to the blimps. The blindman's buff which Mr. MacDonald plays with the Dyaks on longhouse verandahs he plays in fun. The blindman's buff which the blimps play with Asia, they play in horrible earnest."

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