TOWN OF 32 TONGUES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 152, 9 April 1941, Page 7

TOWN OF 32 TONGUES.

BRITAIN’S STRANGE COLONY

FOREIGN RADIO BROADCASTS. . LONDON, March 10. They speak 32 languages in .Babeltown, which is a place in England J hope you Avill not recognise by the name, because it is one of the centres for 8.8. C. foreign broadcasts which the enemy would much like to locate, says a reporter in the “Daily Express.” One of the first people .met there today was Ben Mahomed, a dusky Moroccan warrior, who talks to the Free French forces in Africa for General de Gaulle.

Ben Mahomed is the most picturesque most romantic personality among the black, yellow,, brown and white people who keep up a 24-hours propaganda barrage over the medium and short-waves. He knew little English when he arrived three months ago.

This Moroccan warrior has a different costume for every day of the week. Sometimes he wears a white turban with a French officer’s khaki jacket and brooches, but ho often startles sleepy Babeltown with a sinister black cloak, and hood, or a Moorish white cloak and turban. He. is 30 years old. short, stocky, clean-shaven and tough. After nine years’ fighting in various campaigns he wears 13 decorations, including the Croix do Guerre, and some intriguing satire scars. But he is just one of that strange mixtures of beings who have settled down in billets here. Mix Red Square. Moscow, with the bazaar in Bagdad, include extras from “Bengal Lamer,” add a bull-fighter, a real Arab sheik, a refugee or two from a German ghetto, and top-up with a professor from any European university and you have the cast. Red beards, black beards aud \rcy beards, walk arm-in-arm down the High. Street. One cannot understand a word thev sav.

“II you coino lion' in the summer it’s a rare si;rlit.*’ said (!>*• news agenl who supplies them with 1 itoo newspapers aud books every week. “Talk about Ali Baba, the Arabian Nights and Gilbert and Sullivan ! —they are all mixed up together.”