Sihanouk Appeals Against ‘Scornful Adjectives’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30938, 20 December 1965, Page 17

Sihanouk Appeals Against ‘Scornful Adjectives’

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) NEW YORK. Dec. 19. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Of Cambodia, has addressed a fervent plea to the world press to step using “scornful adjectives” such as little, saull, tiny, minute, minuscule and petite to describe his country, the “New York Times” news service reported.

In a printed letter issued under his golden coat of arms Prince Sihanouk pointed out that his South-east Asian realm of 88,780 square miles was larger in area than 47 other nations. To prove it, he listed them alphabetically, from Albania to Tunisia. For good measure. Prince Sihanouk added a list of 58 countries, including Israel, Norway and New Zealand, that have smaller populations than Cambodia’s six million. The Chief of State said that the press of “the tree worldhad been most frequently guilty of derogating his land. Denmark and Belgium, a

sixth and less than a fourth the size of Cambodia, respectively, were never described as “small” or “a pocket kingdom,” he said. He expressed “the hope of being merely treated in the same fashion as other countries by the foreign press.”