PATIENCE ENDED

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4808, 10 July 1939, Page 8

PATIENCE ENDED

ENGLAND AND HITLER. "SPOILING FOR A FIGHT." READY FOR ANYTHING. People in England are getting a little tired of Mr. Hitler and his ways, according to Mr. Rupert Harvey, examiner in elocution for Trinity College, London. Mr. Harvey left London in April on an examination tour and in an interview at New Plymouth he spoke of England's preparations for war, of his impressions of the Royal visit to Canada, of anti-British sentiment in South Afrca, and of New Zealand speech. "England was not ready for war in September and Mr. Chamberlain did the right thing - , but she is ready for anything now and people are just spoiling for a fight ? " he said.

It could be said for Mr. Chamberlain that he believed in what he was doing, said Mr. Harvey, and facts now being revealed showed Britain's unpreparedness in September and showed that Mr. Chamberlain had staved off war. There were air-raid trenches in most of the parks in London now and evacuation plans for the children of London were fairly complete. He had been interested just before he left in the opening at Cardiff, 180 miles from London, of the new aerodrome to be used as a base for aeroplanes protecting London. One hundred and eighty miles were a long way, but it was explained that because modern bombers could fly infinitely faster in a straight line than in circles, time was saved by having the base that far from London. Actually about five minutes were saved and five minutes were a long time when attacking planes were approaching.

Air Force Popular,

Thousands of young men were pouring into the Air Force and with good pay and an exciting life the force was certainly appealing to them. These young men were just spoiling for a fight. Mr. Harvey was in Canada at the same time as the King and Queen. "There was little cheering, everyone was crying," he said. "The men were gulping and the women had tears running down their cheeks; it was an amazing welcome."

The waitress at his hotel in Vancouver had said to him: "I've seen them twice and now I'm going to work my hardest to-day." Anti-British feeling in South Africa was considerable, he said, and the campaign for the use of the new Afrikaans language was bitter. New words were being added all the time and a revised dictionary was issued about every six months. There was a movement afoot to have the names of all railway stations changed from English into Afrikaans. In one grade of the elocution examinations the children were allowed a choice of six books to use for their elocution training. One of them was the life story of a remarkable South African, who, beginning when he was 16 years of age, had fought with the Boers in the Boer War and then in the war of 1914-18 had fought in the British Army, starting as a private and ending as a lieutenantgeneral. Now he was a prominent figure in South African Parliamentary affairs.

Outlook of Children

"How many of the 300 children in that grade do you think chose that book?" asked Mr. Harvey. ''Just one of them. The others did not because they considered that by fighting' for the British in the Great War he had been a traitor to his country. That is the outlook of these children of 15 and 1G years of age." Commenting on the assertion sometimes made that New Zealanders speak a purer English than the English themselves, Mr. Harvey said he could not agree with that, although from his fortnight's experience in New Zealand he considered speech very good, and better, on the whole, than in some parts of Canada. New Zealand speech, he said, had more traces of the Cockney than anything else.

Mr. Harvey said from what he had seen he liked New Zealand and New Zealanders very much. "I did not know you had a political situation here until I came here," he added.