TRAVEL CLUB

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23301, 10 April 1941, Page 3

TRAVEL CLUB

ADDRESS BY A “ CONTINENTAL ENGLISHMAN ” Mrs Royce Soanes and Miss Norah Nutt were hostesses at the Canterbury (N.Z.) Travel Club’s morning reception, held at Ballantynes yesterday. Sir Joseph Ward presided and songs were sung by Mrs A. C. Ledsham, for whom Mrs Storie played the accompaniments. The speaker was Mr M. G. Turner, whose parents at one time lived in Canterbury, but who has himself spent almost all his life in Europe. He is a grandson of the late Dr. Townend, formerly a well-known resident of Christchurch. Mr Turner gave an entertaining account of his boyhood spent in Switzerland, in the Riviera, and in Italy—always amongst foreigners and thus he became a Continental Englishman. In more serious vein, he described the state of mind of the Italians in 1935, in which year, he, and hundreds of others, were politely told that the Government of Italy would welcome his departure. He then had his headquarters for a time in Vienna, and when war was declared he had difficulty in reaching England. “I have seen, known, and lived through scenes of terror, mass hysteria, glorification of brutality,” he said. “I have seen heads bashed in, have known many that found peace in the only way left to them, have seen world-famous surgeons made to scrub streets with bare hands and acid.” A Continental Englishman, Mr Turner said, was often hurt and angry because the persons amongst whom he lived did not think of England as he would like them to. “In times to- come,” he concluded, ‘‘let us not forget, as we did in the past, what we now know and are conscious of—our role in the world.” Guests of honour at the reception were Mrs George Bell and Miss Ngaire Bell (Wellington), Mesdames W'. A. Caldwell and Bain (Gisborne), Miss Hazel Dunn (Wanganui), Mesdames Fife, D. Tannock, A. Gilchrist, and Miss D. Timlin (Dunedin), Mesdames F. E. Hulbert and Edgar Scott (Auckland). 1