Word: anthem
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...lavish Hotel Indonesia, a sign showing a jowly Uncle Sam with a dagger at his throat had quietly disappeared. "It was the wind," explained grinning Indonesians. Near the reeking kali-kali (canals) off Merdeka Square, Moslem youth groups in straw hats drilled where young Communists once sang their favorite anthem: America, Satan of the World. Through the capital's dusty, palm-studded streets, army patrols quietly rounded up minor Red officials and led them off to secluded firing squads. And on walls, fences and curbstones blazed the angry slogan: "Sauté Aidit" (Fry Aidit...
...sidesaddle on their donkeys to fight vendettas. Their wives still milked the native sheep to produce a cheese with the clout and consistency of a plastic bomb. The sun still sank blood-red behind the Sanguinary Isles, while local folk singers recalled the prowess of Bonaparte in their atonal anthem, L'Ajaccienne. A calm enough scene-until early last summer, when the somber, somnolent island awoke to the 20th century. Suddenly, bombs exploded in the night, and walls proclaimed the scrawled slogan: "Corsica for the Corsicans!" By last week, the Corsican question had even entered France's presidential...
...hundred curious spectators filled out the crowd of 1700 that stood around the Parkman bandstand to hear four anti-administration speeches. The speakers were continually interrupted by organized cheers of "Stay in Vietnam" and "We want victory" from the hecklers, who also sang the national anthem...
Even so, the new nations are not much worse off than their elders. The Dutch, whose anthem dates back to 1568, still sing their allegiance "to the King of Spain." At least a dozen nations have had anthems to the tune of God Save the Queen-including Germany during World War I. West Germany now sings only the third verse of what through Hitler's time was known as Deutschland Uber Alles, and even that was borrowed from Austria. Two East European nations are now revising their own postwar anthems, written to please their Russian masters. Rumania is cutting...
Remarkably, most new anthems have managed to avoid personal jingoism. Ghana, of course, sings the praises of Kwame Nkrumah, and Tunisia pays tribute to "the spirit of our Habib, the great leader," but few other new nations have used their songs to glorify current heroes. South Africa's whites have even resisted, mercifully enough, the temptation to change their lovely anthem to the Verwoerd March...