PLANS FOR TOUR

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 147, 19 March 1934, Page 8

PLANS FOR TOUR

Mr. George Bernard Shaw WELLINGTON VISIT New Zealanders’ Sentimentality Dominion Special Service. Auckland, March 18. The famous author, Mr. Bernard Shaw, aud Mrs. Sltaw, who have been in Auckland since their arrival from England last Thursday, will probably leave on Tuesday morning for their southern motor tour. Mr. Shaw met a number of Auckland Labour officials on Saturday morning and was the guest of the Fabian Club at a reception in the evening, Mrs. Shaw also being present. During the week-end they were entertained privately and spent some time in motoring to places of interest near the city. Arrangements for Mr. Shaw’s southern tour have been made by the Tourist Department. It is,expected he and Mrs. Shaw will reach Waltomo Caves on Tuesday evening, and go next day, by way of Arapuni, to Rotorua, where they will stay a little over a week. From there they will go to Walrakei, to the Chateau for a few days, and on to Wellington by way of Wanganui.

After several days in the capital, they may cross to Picton and motor to Nelson", returning by the same route for a further short stay in Wellington before they embark by the Rangitane for London on April 13. Mr. Shaw has decided against visiting Christchurch or the southern lake and mountain resorts in the limited time at his disposal. Mr. Shaw has been inundated with requests to address public and other gatherings and to meet all sorts of people. “I have a pile of letters that high.” he said on Saturday, indicating the height of a couple of feet, “and I can’t possibly answer them. If I tried to do all that people are asking me to do I should have to be carried aboard the boat on a stretcher.”

A request that Mr. Shaw mentioned specifically was one from Canterbury College to deliver a commemoration address. He said he had refused it because in the first place he had decided not to travel, so far south as Christchurch. The Broadcasting Board has been in communication with Mr. Shaw, and it is practically certain he will broadcast from Wellington to the whole Dominion before he sails. “I have no doubt I shall have a num ber of things to say to New Zealanders,” he remarked. “Take, for example, .the sentimentality of calling England ‘Home.’ New Zealand is your borne because it is the country where you do live and do your daily work. From what I have seen of it you ought to consider yourselves lucky. I do not imagine that you would care to call the slums of London ‘Home.’ If I had insisted on remaining an Irishman, although I was living in London, where should I be now?” he added. "In the war Englishmen only had to be patriotic; if I had adopted the Irish patriotism of that period I should probably have got into communication with the enemy and finished where Casement did.” ‘