AUSTRIA AND GERMANY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4748, 19 September 1935, Page 6

AUSTRIA AND GERMANY

WHANGAREI MAN'S IMPRESSIONS. In a letter to his parents, FlyingOfficer Morrish, of Whangarei, says that when travelling by train from Nuremberg to Vienna, he had as a fellow passenger a Russian whose home is in Hungary, but who had been living in South Africa, where he saw the All Blacks play the Springboks. So, in a most unlikely place, New Zealand footballers were the subjects of conversation. A thing which impressed the writer on this, his second visit to Vienna, was that whereas on the former occasion he was amazed at the number of people who spoke English, this time hardly anyone seemed to speak that language. It contradistinction to this, the number of people in Germany who speak English was in striking contrast to the few who did so on the occasion of the writer's previous visit. In the same way the cost of living had decreased in Austria and increased in Germany. This was due to the introduction of the registered mark, which can be bought only outside Germany, and the £ buys about 19 of them, whereas it is worth only 12 in Germany. Wages are low, and consequently the Germans cannot spend much. The cheapness of living in Germany was surprising. Speaking of the Nazis, the writer says: I saw many evidences of Hitler's regime. There were many Nazis in their brown uniforms with swastika armbands, and they did a lot of saluting, but I noticed that the salute of a stiff outstretched arm had dwindled to a mere raising and lowering of bent at the forearm, Indeed, the salute the maitre d'hotel gave to clients was very much like the fleeting flap of a paw which a dog makes when swimming. I had read in England that every concert performer has to preface his act by the Nazi salute. I

went to a cabaret in Nuremberg, but saw no evidence of such salutes there. '

I spoke to a German and his wife on the train, and it was soon evident that all I had previously been told by Germans of life in Germany was true. We were alone in the carriage, and these two Germans told me that a German must not have any private opinions of the Nazi regime. He said that he could not open his mouth in criticism in a hotel or restaurant, as he would be instantly arrested. I asked them what they thought of the likelihood of war. They shrugged their shoulders. "Hitler, he always t talks of peace, peace, peace, always," the wife told me. "We must have peace, he says. There must be no war. But all the time the young men they like to wear uniform. They were not in the last war. They do not know what a war is like. They do not understand. They like to wear uniform, to march, to train." "Yes," the husband agreed, "it is the young men who do not know. We who have lived in the last war do not want war."