CONDITIONS ABROAD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21988, 24 June 1933, Page 7

CONDITIONS ABROAD

BRITAIN AND GERMANY MR W. P. MORRELL’S IMPRESSIONS. (Special to Daily Times.) WELLINGTON. June 23. On a holiday visit to his family in Dunedin, Mr W. P. Morrell, who has been in England for the past 10 arrived by the Akaroa to-day. Mr Morrell graduated at the Otago University and afterwards for two years attended Knox College. He has been teaching history at the University of London for the past three years. In conversation with a reporter Mr Morrell said he thought the universities of England were having an increasingly important bearing on the life of the community. Ou the whole the universities were standing up to the depression well, and they appeared to have suffered comparatively little as regards finance and numbers. There seemed to be a slight improvement in the economic position at Home, and he did not think anybody really doubted that the country would eventually emerge from the depression. He did not mean that there was buoyant optimism generally, but there certainly was less pessimism than probably in most: other countries. Referring to the situation in Europe Mr Morrell said he left England at a time when affairs in Germany had not straightened themselves out appreciably, and there was no doubt that public opinion at Home was seriously perturbed at the conditions in Germany, although the people on the whole were not panicky. Two days before he left England HenHitler delivered his first speech on Germany’s foreign policy and the newspapers in England interpreted it as a reasonable statement. Mr Morrell said that one of his intimate friends had spent last winter in Germany and had formed the impression that whatever his defects Herr Hitler was absolutely sincere in his convictions, and that the Nazi movement had the active support of the very large number of Germans, and at least the acquiescence of the bulk of the people. Mr Morrell is a son of Mr W. J. Morrell, who has been appointed chancellor of the University of Otago in succession to the late Sir Thomas Sidcy. He will leave for the south to-night and will spend about two mouths in New Zealand before returning to England.