VAGABOND TOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 11

VAGABOND TOUR.

TALENTED REPORTER. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, JNR. FIVE YEARS IN A TRAILER. (From Our Own Correspondent.) S.-VH Fl! A NCI SCO, November 8. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., one of the most talented news reporters in the world, has arrived in California, on what he calls a vagabonding tour. Cost conversation* with dukes and duchesses —intimate discussions with dictators, prime ministers and presidents, camping in England's tree lined Devon and France's cross-lined battlefields, swimming with Continental society beside the Adriatic and sunning beside the Pacific at Santa Monica in Southern California, is part and parcel of the romantic life Cornelius Vanderbilt has chosen for himself ever since he said farewell to aristocratic Park Avenue and tlie publishing business, and to 'k to living in a trailer by the side of the road ti\> years ngo. "ft began as a lark, this trailer business," Vanderbilt declared at the Miiamnr Trailer Camp in Santa Monica as he was packing all manner of things to leave on a lecture tour taking him into 77 cities in the I'nited States, where he will speak on dictators and statesmen of Europe, all of whom he knows personally. "But ri>w it is so much ftirt that I miss eating and sleeping in Stardust 1L when circumstances prevent it. Why. since January 1 Tommy Brodix—he is vnv travelling companion and I have spent 130 nights out of 300 right here in the trailer. And I am president of the American Trailer Association, too. Fascinating life. "Of course it is much more than a place to sleep and live as it. is completely equipped as an office with reference hooks, files, typewriters, cameras, a short wave radi > set. as well as a motor •which generate" electricity for it. and a telephone on which I can call all over the world. When I went to the Duke of

Windsor's wedding I had sound movie cameras installed in the lights of the trailer, too. "Yes, vagaltondirig is a fascinating life," he went on as he tugged at the collar of his sport shirt. "I have been in 34 States since leaving New York on January 1. and travelled l(i.7fil miles. For camping I have paid only £lti 10/. \ Who wouldn't be a vagalnxid at those prices ? "I keep a complete log of every trip," he continued, as he discovered to his dismay that a Santa Monica laundry had returned his white underwear a strange-looking pink shade, "and this vear I have been in »>7 American t >wns and stayed for an average of ">() cents a night. "The longest jump I have made was f)4."> miles in a day from New ork to Frankfort, Kentucky, before the Derby. And Tommy and I lived in style in the Kentucky blue grass in a Louisville camp, but it cost us tops in prices. £1. Incidentally, since T have been living in a trailer I have travelled 97.108 miles over Europe, Asia and America. That leaves South America. Africa and Australia to go!" laughed the writer who has climbed in ten years since he 1 >st £. I .HO<l.(POO in the publishing business to one of the highest paid of his craft in America. "As T travel over the T'nited States." lie went on. "everyone asks me when the revolution is coming. Of course America will never have a revolution! All of us read enough and think enough and sec what happens in other countries so that we de*ire. above all things, to prevent our getting into a similar mess. Slap at Dictators. "European nations have only a synthetic democracy, so the dictators, by taking their lessons from American gangsters, have taken over the countries. Did you know that almost the onlr American films to be shown in Germany and Italy lately were the gangster pictures T , "The menace of Fascism ? Oh. ves. there is one. It might be possible in America's cities, but in the rural communities, never! And T don't believe America will get in a war for 15 yearr. because the people just don't want war. "What the world needs to watch," declared the writer. "i« Japan. It is a question of time before Japan will clean up China and then marshal China's,

millions into armies as she did in Manchuktio. Then Japan will officer the armies, move into Siberia and th? r eal •rouble will begin. I don't believe Japan will go ahead, however, until Hitler toward the Ukraine. But Siberia is the real international danger spot as Italy. Germany and Japan will probably stand together. Shrewdest of Dictators. "Mussolini, however, is the shrewdest of the dictators. He will wait to see how the cat jumps. ]f England is weak and vacillating, he will move with Hitler. If England gives a show of strength. Mussolini will go with Britain. In the meantime it is very pleasant here in Santa Monica," said Vanderbilt as his eyes rested on two sun-bronzed bathing girls playing vpllev-ball in the sand outside his trailer. "This is really the best trailer camp we have visited in America." Then he closed the t >p of the last suitcase, threw away some faded fl-wers and prepared to be off to Nebraska. "Let's go. Tommy." Vanderbilt called. "Let's away to our 77 cities and be on the vagabonding trail again!"