Paul Thomas: Just don't mention the war - or the whales

Basil Fawlty's formula for making German guests feel at home was: "Don't mention the war." When the pressure came on, though, he reverted to type: "One Eva Braun cocktail coming right up."

Basil isn't the only Englishman who just can't help himself, so an extravaganza of Jerry-baiting was avoided this week when the dreaded England v Germany World Cup showdown failed to eventuate.

The incendiary tabloid headlines will be mothballed until the next EU budget stand-off, and any mayhem involving English football fans will now be seen as good, old-fashioned hooliganism rather than World War III.

There's an increasingly resentful tinge to German complaints that when it comes to their country, England's first point of reference continues to be Hitler's war. A former German Foreign Minister recently observed that the only way young Germans can learn the Prussian goosestep is by watching British television.

I suspect the English are more reluctant to let go of a treasured comic stereotype than memories of their finest hour. After all, Winston Churchill, the symbol of resistance and personification of the British bulldog spirit, was turfed out of office as soon as the war was won.

John Cleese, who brought Fawlty so memorably to life, insists that the German episode was intended to ridicule the likes of Basil ("clowns pathetically stuck in a world view that's more than half a century out of date") but the audiences who lapped up the endless repeats didn't necessarily see it that way.

In sport you supposedly learn more from your defeats than your victories, and the same could be said of history. The lesson the nations of continental Europe learned from World War II was that they should defuse nationalism by promoting the ideal of a united Europe and create mutual dependence through a web of co-operative political, social and economic arrangements that would make future wars exercises in self-destruction.

The British didn't learn anything new. Ever since the Roman invasion they'd operated on the assumption that any European power which achieved hegemony over the Continent would eventually try to bully or force Britain into submission.

The Continentals are mystified and irked by Britain's refusal to withdraw from its special relationship with the United States and commit once and for all to Europe, a stance that's reflected in its caginess over the euro, its opposition to greater political integration within the EU and its military presence in Iraq.

But just as modern Germany is a product of its history, so is modern Britain. The British experience is that the threat comes from across the English Channel while help comes from across the Atlantic.

Not mentioning the war is one thing; forgetting about it is something else altogether.

A gentleman who wrote to the editor of the Dominion-Post this week on the subject of Japan's desire to resume commercial whaling had no qualms about mentioning the war. In fact, he made Basil Fawlty seem like Neville Chamberlain with his assertion that when it comes to bloodlust and unmitigated cruelty, there's not much to choose between Japan's whaling fleet and the Imperial Army.

The Government avoided mentioning the war but still gave Japan the rough edge of its tongue. The Prime Minister accused it of dividing the Pacific - luring some Pacific nations out of our camp and into theirs - and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, our man at the International Whaling Commission, denounced the Japanese for trying to blackmail the US.

Strange days indeed when a representative of this Government comes galloping to the aid of poor little America.

Is it just me or is our zeal in wanting to make the world safe for whales ever so slightly excessive? One has the sense that whale-love, a middle-class urban liberal preoccupation if ever there was one, is being grafted on to our national identity whether we like it or not.

I don't understand why the Japanese want to eat whales, but then India has its sacred cows, while to most New Zealanders cows are where steaks come from.

I'm sure a whale hunt is a stomach-turning sight, but then I can do without watching any wild animal being put to death. A bullfight holds no appeal for me but I accept that Spaniards have a different view.

The West's - and particularly America's - efforts to promote multi-party democracy and various freedoms that we regard as fundamental to an enlightened and civilised society are sometimes derided as neo-colonialism, driven by the crass assumption that our beliefs and values are superior and universal.

Yet some of those who push this line seem to think we have a perfect right to tell people in other - often older - cultures which species they can and can't eat or kill for fun.

Both the Government and the media sometimes give the impression of being more interested in whales than the mundane issues affecting ordinary New Zealanders.

I don't imagine the occupants of the 6000 Bay of Plenty households who were deprived of power during the cold snap because the system was in danger of meltdown were overly exercised by the outcome of the IWC ballot.

I know whales are mammals too, but I doubt they feel the cold as much as we do.