GREW GREAT ON TEA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1932, Page 7

GREW GREAT ON TEA.

BREW BEST. LONDON, June 3. "I served beside the Australians in the war. They are the finest specimens of mankind in the world because they drink more tea per head than any other nation."

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Walter Smiles. M.P., who was for eight years a member of the Ass'am Legislative Council, paid this tribute to Australia as chairman at the Assam dinner. He went on to say that if other countries imitated Australia, they also would be Al nations. Good health depended entirely upon the quantity of black tea drunk per head.

When Mrs. Putnam landed at Londonderry after flying the Atlantic, she asked for tea in preference to coffee. She would not have accomplished that flight unless she had been a tea drinker.

Sir Walter, declaring that Canada anrl New Zealand pave Empire tea a preference, asked: "What about Australia and South Africa?"

Sir Walter Smiles, who is Coiifiervative member for Blackburn in the Commons, is a grandson of the late Samuel Smiles, author of "Self Help." He is also chairman of a tea company. He served in the European war, 1914-18, and won the D.S.O. and bar. He lives in Belfast, and is author of a work on "Armoured Cars in Modern Warfare."