GENEVA SIDELIGHTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17949, 29 November 1932, Page 9

GENEVA SIDELIGHTS

WA|JONS MR. HUGHES’ LETTER itf i-< i'l -1‘ Mr. W. M. Hughes, writing from Geneva on October 11, gives some interesting sidelights on the conference whiSji he was attending as one of the Australian delegates. “J£ have been here nearly three weelts/’ he states, “engaged with the representatives of 55 other nations in the 'great work of bringing peace and prosperity to a distracted and impoverished world. Our labors are prodigious Circumstances are agafdst us. Try to picture the Assembly in session, with the representatives of all the world —Russia, Brazil, and one .other excepted—black, brown, yellow, and white, all seated cheek by jowl. The representative of Australia Within arm’s length of him from Ethiopia, Japan, and Chiua —Manchuria throwing its dark shadow between them. Ijreat nations and small ones- Britain and Luxemburg. Nations with a history stretching back through the ! .'ages, like France, and Iraq literally in her national cradle. “"Then there is the bar of language; and w T hat a bar this is one is only able to realise in the assembly such as wo are In. All speeches are delivered iti ■ English or French, and are translated immediately, French into English and'English into French. The French speak French —they are bad linguists, as bhd as the English. The Germans, Austrians, and the Scandinavians A -.Tnnsllv speak English; also the Nearly all the others speak French, when addressing the chair. A .great manv more of the delegates address the Assembly f in French than in English, " ' r‘": < '' w * ‘Tfio interpreters are wonderful. ! lie othlr day the Norwegian delegate delivered a speech, closely reasoned, lasting at least 45 minutes. He spoke in English. The interpreter who translates English into 1 reneh happened to be out during the carliei pardbof the Norwegian’s speech, and ■wheto he came in his colleague, an Englishman, told' him that he would carrj? on, not thinking that the speech woulcl last more than a few minutes. It viks a fine speech, made without notes of any kind, and, as I have mentioned, lasted 45 minutes. Without a moment’s delay the Englishman rose, went; to the rostrum, and gave a marvellous reproduction of it, giving, not only 1 the arguments in ordered sequence, but the idioms and the illustrations with which these had been pointed. It was well worth while coining’to Geneva for that alone. “6f course thc;= delegates know very little: of the* difficulties of any country but their owrt or those contiguous to tfiem. As W Australia; no one—except, perhaps, the New Zealanders —know the first thing about it. This is aflittle chastening to Olio’s national pride. But one recovers poise on reflecting that little as they know about Australia, Australians know less about th “ The whole thing is throbbing with humair interest -anlFwithTntrigues.’’ 1 Mr. Hughes’ summing up is, ‘ the more I see of other "countries; tho more I love Australia.”