GERMANY AT WORK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20384, 12 October 1929, Page 13

GERMANY AT WORK.

INDUSTRY AND PROSPERITY.

EVERY RUHR CHIMNEY SMOKING.

NEW ZEALANDER'S IMPRESSIONS.

[from our own correspondent.]

LONDON, Sept. 6,

Mr. H. E. Stephens, who has been on a mission to South Germany on behalf of the New Zealand Fruit Board, was greatly impressed with the prosperity and industry of the country. He travelled right up through the Rhine Valley and through the Ruhr industrial district. The Hague Conference had just been completed and everywhere he found that tho people expressed great satisfaction with the result. Hitherto they have had •to plead poverty. Now that they know exactly what they have to pay, they can get on with their work with undisguised energy and pride, pay their debts, and enter into competition with the markets of tho world. More than anything, however, they are overjoyed at the immediate prospect of getting tho foreign troops out of their country. In the country districts harvesting was in full swing, and every member of each family was working hard from six o'clock in the morning until late at night. Every piece of land was under cultivation. "Even in parts far removed from towns and villages," said Mr. Stephens, "every square yard was being used for cereal crops, cabbages, onions, or maize. Only in the valleys in the hills was there pasture, and this was being mown with scythes. Wo saw hardly a field with animals grazing. Right up tho Rhine Valley the sides of tho roads were planted with fruit trees. There seemed to be no wasto. Wherever anything would grow, there was something growing that would pay." In the industrial district of the Ruhr everybody seemed to be at work, and every chimney was smoking.

Although Mr. Stephens had with him his agent who speaks several languages, he found that most of the men he met spoke English. If he spoke to anyone who was unfamiliar with English, the nearest school child was appealed to as an interpreter. "Imagine an English child being appealed to to interpret German," said Mr. Stephens.