The world is wide!

Otago Witness, Issue 4006, 23 December 1930, Page 11

The world is wide!

AUSTRALIA’S GREAT UNKNOWNS. MALOLO’S PASSENGERS PUZZLED. “ Are these the names of your great statesmen who have passed on, or are they alive to-day?” Mr Lang, Mr Hughes, Mr George Judah Cohen, Sir Mark Sheldon, and Sir Robert Gibson were among a list of 20 names submitted to half a dozen of the Malolo visitors with the object of discovering how far the fame of Australia’s public men earries. Most of the visitors interviewed had never heard of one of them (says the Sy iney Sun) —not even of Mr Jock Garden. It was Mr W. Hauenstein, of New York, who made the inquiry noted above after glancing through the names. Mr M. P. Morrissey, of Texas, had heard of Mr Scullin, and of Mr Cleary. He himself had been a railroad man, and he had read of Mr Cleary in a railroad magazine. “ I am an inveterate newspaper reader,” declared Mr John D. Dyer, “ but I have never heard of them.” “ No, I don’t know them,” confessed Dr L. D. Johnson, of Kansas, “though you have some mighty fine doctors over here, and they have done some mighty clever work.” He could not recall their names. “Lang? Yes, the name seems familiar to me,” said Mr Robert B. Teefy, a Californian banker. “Oh, he is your Premier, is he? _ “ Hughes. . . . Yes, I’ve read of him. He had a lot to do ■with the war, didn’t he? “ Can’t say I know much about the rest of your list, except Mr Marks. So he’s Lord Mayor now! Well, I w r ant to say that he is a very affable, agreeable gentleman. I met him here about eight years ago. He was a member of Parliament then.” (The Lord Mayor, Aiderman Marks, served in the last Parliament only. Mr Walter Marks has been in Parliament for years). “ Not much good asking me,” declared Mr Turn Suden, a tall and cheerful lawyer from San Francisco. But, then, the chef had just informed him that there were cherries for dinner, and he had an absent look in his eyes. Mr Suden likes cherries. “In San Francisco we all know of Kingsford-Smith, of course,” he continued. “We kind of tie him up with ourselves over there. “Billy Hughes? Yes, we have several Billy Hughes’s over in California. . . .” Mr Pat O’Higgins, sen., from California, said he had just been wondering who Mr Lang was. “ There was a gag about him in ‘ Song o’ Guns/ he explained. “ I thought he was a prizefighter! ” The only public man he knew in Sydney was the proprietor of the Hotel Bondi. All of the visitors had heard of the Governor. They put him, in fact, “at his mansion,” as they put it. A mighty fine gentleman. Yes, sir. But his name? Waal, now . . . Something to do with birds, hadn’t it? Sir Philip Game. Why, yes, sure, that was the name. A mighty fine gentle-

man. The names of Sir Mark Sheldon and Sir James Elder, both of them onetime Australian Trade Commissioners in the United States, brought no glimmer of recognition to the visitors’ eyes. Mr Bavin? Why, no, they didn’t know that gentleman. “ We’re intensely interested in Australia,” declared one of them. “ Your harbour . . . “ No, I don’t know Sir Henry Braddon . . . .” “ Your labour conditions. . . .” “Sir Clifton Love? Who is he?” “ Judge Gesford, now; he’s the man you ought to see. Your country has a brilliant future ” Sir James Murdoch? Don Bradman? Mr Justice Street? Mr Justly Rawlings? Mr H. B. Sevier? “ Never heard of ’em,” candidly admitted the visitor.