MANY NATIONS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 238, 8 October 1941, Page 13

MANY NATIONS

English Countryside Goes International (By ROSE PATTERSON) LONDON, August 30. The English countryside, already becoming international in character, put on a new spurt in this internationalism during the past summer.

A very mixed bag of young people, for example, has been catered for during the last few months by the two hundred of Britain's three hundred youth hostels which are still in action; that is to say, in action with their normal functions, for of the remaining hundred, some have been commandeered by the Government Departments or ihe Services, some used for housing evacuees and some are in defence areas and cannot be visited.

Membership of these hostels, which in spite of the war has dropped only to 70,000 against the peace-time figure of 83,000, is becoming more European all the time.

E. St. John Catchpole, national secretary of the Youth Hostels Association says: "Hundreds of would-be guests have to be turned away every night, for our hostel accommodation is taxed to the utmost. Many of our members now in uniform and their Allied comrades, French, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegians and Poles, spend their short leaves with us, for they are great country-lovers." The catering charges are still very modest. The "under-eighteens" pay only sixpence a night, older members twice that sum. Sandwich lunches are still made up at Gd and 9d, and breakfast and supper prices are around a shilling. There are many jokes about little cockney boys evacuated from London to the country since the first months of the war speaking in broad country dialects, but there might be many more about the divers foreign tongues spoken all over England. Not only are the Allied forces almost everywhere in good sprinklings, but many country houses have been taken over for schools, colleges or hostels by the organisations looking after the young people of many nations now in Britain.

Like Dick Whittington Some thirty or forty French, Belgian and Dutch children are to-day living in Dick Whittington's old house on the bordters of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. They are in the care of Miss Lucv Palser, who says many of her charges want to emulate the famous Dick Whittington and become Lord Mayor of London. A few would like to take Mayor LaGuardia's job in New York.

Belle of the school is 11-year-old-old Josephine de Hailse, who has decided upon a Hollywood career. She comes from Namur in Belgium. In many parts of the country programmes of French and other Continental films are now being shown, Jfrge of charge, to groups of "allied nationals." Our visitors are, in fact, privileged to enjoy a good many films which are not available to members of the general public. Cooperating with the council, the British Film Institute is lending films for these purposes from the National Film Library.

There are other cultural schemes, too. which include lectures, concerts ana gramophone recitals. In this service are included both civilian and military nationals of the Allied Governments.—(Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.)