GEOGRAPHICAL BLUNDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 79, 3 April 1928, Page 6

GEOGRAPHICAL BLUNDERS.

A communication received at the office of the Australian Trade Commissioner in New York asking for information regarding Australia, whether printed in English or in the language of your own country," is said to have caused considerable amusement. Yet similar ignorance regarding geography is frequently displayed even in officia} quarters. Dr. Dillon in his history of the Peace Conference has given several instances of curious mistakes made by some of the delegates. One delegate thought that Dantzig was on the Adriatic, while another got hopelessly confused between Cilicia and Silesia. Mr. Lloyd George admitted that he had no idea whe're Teschen was and didn t think there were manv people in England who knew. An invitation to a conference on some naval.matters was addressed to the Swiss Minister for the Xavv. It would be difficult to say what the writer of the letter referred to imagined the language of Australia to be. It is just possible that, having read "The Sentimental Bloke" or similar publications published in the Commonwealth, he imagined this to be the usual speech of the country and merely meant that pamphlets printed in this language would be intelligible. Some people think that in time Australia will develop a speech and accent of its own, which will materially differ from the literary tongue of England. Numbers of people at Home seem to imagine that New Zealand is mainly peopled with Maoris and that the white people are few by comparison. This is probably due to the fact that tourists generally send Home pictures of Maoris and Maori curios, and, as many of them do not get much further than Rotorua, they naturally emphasise the Maori element in writing to their friends and relations. A communication was once received from Manchester inquiring how many papers there 'were in New Zealand published in English. Ignorance of geography and peoples is best dispelled by travel, and the tours of the Dominions now made by prominent men from England and other lands will do more than anything else to prevent similar blunders to that referred to by the Australian -little Commissioner. WM