SAMOAN MANDATE

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20421, 16 December 1931, Page 11

SAMOAN MANDATE

♦- A FLOOD OF QUESTIONS. HIGH COMMISSIONER IN GENEVA. (from que own correspondent.) LONDON, November 10. Wlien the High Commissioner and tin private secretary crossed over to the Continent last week they happened to run into a fairly heavy gale, and they had quite an unpleasant crossing of the Channel. At Geneva, Sir Thomas Wilford was cross-examined on Samoan affairs by the members of the Mandates Commission from 2.30 to 7 p.m. on the day lie arrived, and on most of the nest day as 'well. "The members," said the High Commissioner, "took a very keen, and intelligent interest in the subject, and paid special attention to matters' of health, finance, exports, and Mau operations, and the absorption of the S&moans into the administrative activities. ' "The members of the Commission have a remarkable knowledge of everything that goes on in Samoa. What, struck me was that only four questioned me other than in English. The German, Netherlands, Belgian,-Japanese, and the Swiss representatives, the representative of the International Labour Bureau and the president all questioned me in English." No Press correspondents attended the meetings, and the official report of the proceedings will not be available for several weeks. Sir Thomas "Wilford referred to-day to the preparations for the Disarmament Conference. The whole of the ilegina Hotel had been taken by the Czecho-Slovakian delegation, he said. The British delegation had reserved eighty bedrooms for themselves _ and their secretaries and expert advisers. Prance will have 130 bedrooms, and Italy 150 bedrooms. At the Assembly, said the High Commissioner, the president made a speech criticising the prices charged by the Geneva hotelkeepers, but there seemed to be no redress. Hotels ara cnargHig £3 a night for a bedroom without food. The delegates themselves cannot economise by having only a bedroomIt is necessary to have a sitting-room as well, because visits are being paid by delegates to one another continuously, and one must find space for the vast number of documents that pile up every day. As Geneva is always rail when the meetings are in progress the hotel proprietors can name their own terms and grow rich.' •