TOWN OF 32 TONGUES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20526, 9 April 1941, Page 11

TOWN OF 32 TONGUES

STRANGE COLONY IN U.K. FOREIGN BROADCASTS LONDON, March 10. They speak 32 languages in Babeltown, which is a place in England I hope you will not recognise by the name, because it is one of the centres for 8.8. C. foreign broadcasts which the enemy would much like to locate, says a reporter in the Daily Express. One of the first people met there to-day was Ben Mahomed, a dusky Moroccan warrior, who talks to the Free French Forces in Africa for General de Gaulle.

Ben Mahomed Is the most picturesque, most romantic personality among 1 the black, yellow, brown and white people who keep up a 24-hour propaganda barrage over the medium and short waves. He knew little English when he arrived three months ago. This Moroccan warrior has a different costume for every day of the week. Sometimes lie wears a white turban with a French otilcer’s khaki jacket and breeches, but he often startles sleepy Babeltown with a sinister black cloak and hood, or a Moorish white cloak and turban. Jle is 30 years old, short, stocky, cleanshaven and tough. After nine years’ fighting in various campaigns he wears 13 decorations, including tho Croix de Guerre, and some intriguing sabre scars.

But lie is just one of that strange mixtures of beings who have settled down in billets here. Mix Red Square, Moscow, with the bazaar in Bagdad, include extras from “Bengal Lancer." add a bull-fighter, a real Arab sheik, a refugee or two from a German ghetto, and top-up with a professor from any European university and you have the east. Red beards, black beards and grey beards, walk arm-in-arm down the High Street. One cannot understand a word they say. “If you come here in the summer it’s a rare sight," said the news agent who supplies them with 1200 newspapers and books every week. “Talk about Ali Baba, the Arabian Nights and Gilbert and Sullivan! they are all mixed up together.”