CONDITIONS IN GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22345, 8 March 1938, Page 13

CONDITIONS IN GERMANY

"LIFE MUCH THE SAME AS ELSEWHERE" PROFESSOR RETURNS FROM TOUR ABROAD ITHE PRESS Special Service.] WELLINGTON, March 7. "Life in Germany was very similar to what it is elsewhere, although there is undoubtedly a shortage of certain articles of food, and in particular of fats and bacon," said Professor J. Rankine Brown, Professor of Classics at Victoria University College, Wellington, who returned by the Tainui to-night after a visit to Europe, during which he spent two months in the Rhine province near Cologne. There was very little interference with the internal lives of people as far as he could see in that part of Germany, the Professor said in an interview. Uniforms were more visible in Germany than in other countries, but that had always been so.

"Internal trade in Germany is pretty prosperous just now, but foreign trade is still very far short of what it used to be, and of what is necessary for the country," he said.

There was a very general feeling that Herr Hitler had done a very great deal for his country, although there was a certain amount of interference with business that was objected to in certain circles. English newspapers seemed to circulate freely. He regularly read the London "Daily Telegraph" in Germany. There was no objection to people listening in on the radio to any country except Russia. The wave-lengths of Russian, stations were not marked on German-made receiving sets. An attempt was made to see that everybody had enough, and the people appeared to be very well clothed. At Christmas the shops were crowded, and money seemed to be spent freely. It was customary for most manufacturing firms to give their employees a bonus of a week's wages at that time to enable them to participate in the festivities.

There were no signs at all of anything like abject poverty, and no begging, but there were a considerable number of street collections for the indigent members of the community. These collections, however, did not appear to be any more burdensome than street collections in Wellington, although they were for a different object.