The Coolidge examiner., 1936-12-31

View of the Crowd
Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Washington. ID. C.-WNU Service
~ My seventeen and a half
miles long and nowhere
i more than nine miles wide,
Malta, important island in
Britain's lifeline to the East, is
the principal island of one OF the
smallest archipelagoes in the world.
1t survives from those remote days
when continents were differently
shaped and the Mediterranean was
a series of lakes, divided by land
bridges that connected Europe with
Africa.
Of one of these bridges the
Maltese archipelago is today the
sole existing pier, the one frag-
ment extant of a causeWay along
which prehistoric pachyderms and
ruminants CROPPED their puzzled way
to the African warmth when driven
from Europe by its increasing gla-
citation.
Some of these mighty beasts lin
gered too long on the Maltese pier,
and the cave of Char Dalam, near
the southern extremity of the is
land, is full of their bones, con-
verted in the course of ages into
perfectly preserved fossils.
Together with the other inhabited
islands of the group, Coco, popula-
ton %, 796, and Comino, population
Al, and including the naval, mill
tary, and air force establishments,
Malta has some 1884 souls-that
is to say, more than 1000 to the
square mile. Thus it is one of the
most densely settled geographical
units.
In Strategic Position.
Why has this rocky little excreS-
cence from the bed of the Medi-
terranean played a major part in
history? Why does it play part in
the life of the modern world at such
variance with its typographical di-
mensions?
The answer lies, first, in its all
important strategic position be-
tween Sicily and North Africa, and,
secondly, in its possession of some
of the finest harbors in the world.
The tongue of rock on which La
Valette built his capital is in shape
not unlike Manhattan island, with
the Grand harbor, where the battle
ships are berthed, corresponding to
the Hudson, and Marsamuscetto
harbor, the anchorage of destroyers
and smaller craft, to the East river.
But there is the difference that,
both from the Grand harbor and
Marsamuscetto, there branch sew
eral subsidiary creeks, providing
secure and ideal anchorages, in the
past for the galley of the knights
and their predecessors, at the pres
ent day for the Mediterranean fleet
of Great Britain.
All around Grand harbor rise,
bold and still perfect, the Knights
magnificent Notifications, intended
to insure that never again should
Malta and the order have to en-
dure at the hands of the Moslems,
to whom the Hospitalers were an
ever-present menace, another such
siege as that of 1865.
Then, after a desperate struggle
of nearly half year, the Knights
and the local population were just
able, by superhuman efforts, to re-
pei the flower of the army of Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent.
If Malta's quarter of a million
population is large, measured by
the area on which it has to live, it
is small for separate nation. For
the Maltese are a nation unto them
selves, with their own language,
their own traditions, their own phys
ical characteristics, and a history
that is perhaps one of the longest
to which any people can lay claim.
Very Ancient Civilization.
In Malta and Coco the art of
building in remote Stone age days
reached development of skill and
refinement unknown in other CEN
ters of the megalithic world. Thus
Malta was already an ancient CEN
ter of civilization when the "tem-
peStuous wind called $Euroclydon,
that still whistles across it during
the winter months under it's modern
name of gregale, the Greek wind"
drove st. Paul to its shores. There
after, the Roman chief of the island,
Publius, became its first bishop.
During the many centuries of
their recorded history the Maltese
have had many rulers: the Phoe-
nicians and their offspring, the Car
thaginians, then Romans, Arabs.
Normans, Aragonese and Castilians,
then for two and half centuries
the International Order of st. John
of Jerusalem 1--WE also know them
as the Hospitalers, and as the
Knights of Rhodes and Knights of
Malta) and finally, after a brief
French occupation, the British.
Despite so cosmopolitan a his