“ANTIPODES EXIST”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19371, 8 July 1937, Page 16

“ANTIPODES EXIST”

ROMAN CHRISTIAN’S ERROR .MR. NASH AT GAM BRIDGE (From a Special Correspondent) LONDON, June 15. The presence of the New Zealand Minister of Finance, Mr. Walter Nash, at Cambridge last week to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Law was taken as proof by the university orator, Mr. T. R. Glover, St. John’s College, that the Roman Christian teacher St. Augustine had erred in asserting that Antipodes did not exist. Speaking m Latin, the orator said:— “ ‘They talk of there being Antipodes,’ says St. Augustine. ‘I mean men on the opposite sicle or tne world where the sun rises when it sets here, Cheir feet against odrs.’ And he adds, It is in no way to be believed.’ But the gentleman whom I now present to you will perhaps prove, against the Saint, that there really are islands in the Pacific, bearing a Dutch name but inhabited by a British people, exceedingly happy isles ‘granted by Heaven’s gift to tired mortality.’ “They live there under British institutions, choose a democratic Government and send to us their Finance Minister.”