QUEEN MARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 66, 19 March 1925, Page 17

QUEEN MARY.

AND THE SALVATIONIST.

DEA WIirG-KOOM TALK.

CBDUSSION-EB-S EXPEEIENCES

i« had only to hear CommisFeOP r ne worth epeaking at the Town !i ° ner <- realise how far the Salvation Hall tins developed from a mere linkSher of odd groups of men. iDS Op featin- drums, and blowing b, nxmont,, about the windy bra nrnprs of Britain, and, latterly, fihe BritisL. empire, save the Twiner Uns-orth has come to ttasKtion Army Congress, winch is - tain" held in Wellington, as a n0 r representative from InterSal Headquarters, but ho is by no * T a atraneer to this part or the ""m For fifteen yeare he lived in Ifstralia, and the hopes and ambitions f w Zealand are by no means untSato him. Yet he has travelled much since he left Australia— Si ffl anv strange peonle.. and talked tomany "notable people A forty-five Minutes' interview with Queen Mary m w towing room at Buckingham Palace- a rather heated argument with TCratzin. the Soviet Ambassador m fondon' a neat exchange of compliments with the President of Peru— l cse were some of the incidents he Tiad to describe to his audience on Sundir afternoon. And all with the free, air of the experienced traveller, and the wide, tolerant geniality of the man who likes Ills religion with a laugh in it. j Queen's Message to New Zealand. j "Just before I came to New Zealand, -, ca jd Commissioner Unsworth, "Queen jfary sent for mc. Among her usually basy days she happened to hare a spare liour. and so I was asked to go along, and I had the privilege of spending three-quarters of an hour in the Koyal drawing room at Buckingham Palace. And let mc tell you this^ —you, in JTew Zealand, and the rest of the Dominions, have no better friends than the King and Queen.' , The words said with such a firm, full-throated sincerity that immediately- a great cheer rose from the audience. '"The Queen was so interested in you," added the Commissioner, "that I have to go back when. I Tetnrn to tell her how I found toil And I am sure I can take back Tour greetings to Her Majesty." And at that there was a greater cheet than ever. j ■■ : A Talk With Krassin. I "I doa't want to talk politics," the Commissioner went on, "but there can be no doubt that the Soviet did not treat us very well. Hie majority of cur officers in Russia were women; md when the distress 'became so bad there —and no one can doubt but what there was distress—Wß took them off their ordinary work, and put them on to help in distributing soup and so on. Then one day the order came that these girls were to be put into prison. After they had been in prison some lour months, the majority of them were snifering from, typhus fever; and one day the General, on hearing the news, said, to mc: 'Can you get in touch, with Government here and plead for these people?' And so, eventually, I was ushered into the presence of KrasaLn. I said to him 'Look here, you have imprisoned these girls for no more crime than helping to alleviate suffering.' He said 'That is not true; they are political offenders.' I said. 'Yoir are the first Government in the whole experience of the Army, who has made such a charge. And these girls arc being herded together, thirty-five in a cell, that was only made to accommodate six.' He said. 'I'll wirtf* Lenin, and 111 'bring you the proofs.' Well, I waited a whole week, and then "when no word came, I wrote ■to Mr. Lloyd George, and demanded that the girls ahould be set free, or all England must know the story. In two days the whole of our girls were free." The President of Peru. All very interesting and enlightening it would be to follow the Commissioner on. the remainder of his European travels—along the once-proud streets of Berlin, where starving men go to work shoeless, and in many cases even shirtless; among the students of Czechoslovakia, where the new post-war nations are having their beginnings. But something must be said about his experiences in South America —a great country in -which one State, the State of Brazil, he reminds his hearers, larger than the United States. v He talked about the Argentine first. "We English people have a grand name there," he said proudly. ''The people of Argentine swear by the word of an Englishman." And then to Chile: "I found the Chilians, instead of being backward, a very forward people." He is very proud of the way the Armj has progressed in Chile—proud of the way, especially, i n which the Army men were nave become adepts in the Spanish Jarguage. One of his interpreters he recalls as being particularly fluent—so nuent that a member of the audience Olne np and declared that he could be nothing l eS3 than a pure Castilian. a y," said the interpreter, "I come from Northampton!"'