EUROPEAN NEWSREEL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 8, 8 December 1936, Page 9

EUROPEAN NEWSREEL

SNAPSHOTS FROM LONDON. BOTARY CLUB ADDRESS. Snapshots from London of events in Europe formed the subject of an address delivered by Rev. Maurice Hadder, who recently returned to New Zealand, to the' Palmerston North Rotary Club yesterday. He fulfilled this engagement immediately after his arrival by aeroplane from Blenheim. Mr G. G. Priest presided, and visitors welcomed were Messrs E. Aagaard (Christehureh), A. A. Hume (Wellington), F. L. Milnes (Oamaru), D. L. Patterson (Oamaru), F. Chapman (Wellington), and P. R. Grigor (Palmerston North). Invited to dinner in the House, ot Commons by a member from Wales, said Mr Hodder, he had seen at close hand Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who had been described by Mr Winston Churchill as having the ability of compressing the maximum of words into the minimum of thought. Indicating the political conscience of Great Britain, Mr Hodder said that there had been a united protest at the formula arrived at by Sir Samuel Hoare and M. Laval in solving the Ethiopian question, because it had appeared to justifv Signor Mussolini's action, and the people of Britain believed in justice, at whatever the cost. Described as the most powerful single factor influencing Adolph Hitler's life, the Versailles Treaty, written in passion in 1919, was now out of date in many of its clauses, particularly dealing with reparations and the allocation of war guilt, said Mr Hodder. Herr Hitler saw in the Treaty, so far as Germany was concerned, the symbol of Allied victory, and an instrument of national humiliation. It had been "kicked again." On coming out of his church at noon one day in London, Mr Hodder said, he had seen two anti-aircraft guns and loud-speaker apparatus move up, announcing to the thicklypopulated neighbourhood the measures which could be taken to safeguard against aerial gas attacks. This was one phase. Another was that a man who invented an incendiary bomb had been offered £36,000 for the device. However, though he was penniless, a change came into his life, and he destroyed the formula, securing his own happiness. It had been said that men worshipped the Bank of England six days of the week and the Church of England on the seventh, commented Mr Hodder. Two hundred Protestant churches had been closed in the last few years in London. However, there was "another side. Mr Hodder had encountered at Stockbridge a polyglot group who lived on a plane of absolute equality in complete and absolute honesty and were not only willing to share everything with each other, but did so. The group consisted of an English lord, a Scottish baronet, a Russian princess, an exCommunist recently released from gaol, unemployed men, a high business executive, a retired army general, and people from every walk of life.

The speaker was accorded a hearty vote of thanks on the motion of Mr J. O. Boniface.