BETTER THAN CHINA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 28, 2 February 1928, Page 18

BETTER THAN CHINA.

LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND.

CHARMED WITH CONDITIONS.

ENGLISHMAN COMES TO RETIRE.

There in probably no one in New Zealand at the present time who is able to speak with greater interest or with more authority ou affairs in China than Mr. E. S. Little, an Englishman who retired from business in Shanghai some few years ago, and who has since for a period of three years acted as trade commissioner for Australia in China.

Since coming to New Zealand in November Mr. Little has been taking a look around, and he has just returned from the Bay of Islands with the intimation that he has bought a small holding at Kerikeri, on which he hopes to cultivate lemons and passion fruit as an interest for himself and the members of his family in the coming years. Mr. Little says that he is charmed with the natural conditions, and especially with the climate in the North. He can conceive of no place more ideal for retirement after strenuous years in unsettled China.

Mr. Little was asked how he expects to find conditions when he returns to Shanghai in April to finalise his arrangements for retiring to New Zealand. "I expect to find them," he said, "exactly the same as when I left in October last, except that different names will be on top." It was Mr. Little who arranged the meeting between Eugene Chen, the then Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs, with Mr. O'Malley, the British representative in China, which led to the agreement of Hankow. He says that Eugene Chen was a British subject, born in Trinidad, and on one occasion, when his life was in danger, he sent a message to the British Embassy to save him. No sooner had he escaped, however, than he resumed his plotting for the overthrow of the British Empire. He is now in banishment with his Russian Communist friends. "That is the type of man he is," said Mr. Little.

The visitor can see no way of securing peace in China except by united action on the part of Britain, the United States and Japan. He believes that if these nations combined to disarm China the trouble would come to an end. "We disarmed Germany after the European war," he said, "and disarming China would be child's play compared with that. If the seven or eight arsenals were destroyed, and a strict ban placed on the importation of arms, the warring groups would find themselves without the means to . keep up their warfare. Only firm action of that kind can save the situation."

Mr. Little believes that the centre of the world's affairs is gradually shifting to the Pacific. He says that there are good markets in China for wheat, flour, meat, and other produce, but owing to difficulties of shipping he does not think that New Zealand is likely to share in these markets to any extent, at least for years to come.