GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

Southland Times, Issue 19837, 7 April 1926, Page 15

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

EX-NEW ZEALANDER’S VISIT. PLEASING IMPRESSIONS A HIGH REGARD FOR ENGLAND. London, Jan. 28. Dr. C. S. Hicks, formerly of Dunedin, accompanied by Mrs Hicks, will leave England for Australia on March 12. Dr. Hicks is going to Adelaide to take up the Marks lectureship in applied physiology and the Sheridan research fellowship in medicine — the newly-established chair at the university. He is taking out with him a special colony of cancer animals, a gift from the Imperial cancer research fund, to Adelaide University, as well as a colony of his own goitre animals —quite a menagerie, in fact. Dr. Hicks is to act as liaison officer for the medical research council in Australia. Dr and Mrs Hicks went to Germany and Austria in the middle of December. They had a delightful trip and were well received, especially in Vienna, where the problem of goitre in the Karnton Province has been studied for many years. In this centre Dr. Hicks met Professors Kolmer and Von Furth—th'e latter being chiefly instrumental in persuading the New Zealand doctor to speak on the goitre work in England and America. Since he came to England Dr. Hicks has made a special feature of studying German, so that he was able to deliver his lecture and to mingle with the people in the languarge they best understood. He is very greatly impressed with the uniform courtesy of the Germans of all classes evinced to the English travellers, and he was often told that English would be the universal language in Germany in ten years. He could not fail to be struck with the regard which most people have for England—Austria in particular showing this. They frankly admire British political ability, and while perhaps the Prussians doubt the British in some respects, on the whole one can find good cause for pride of place in the manner in which British people are regarded by their former enemies. INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. “One cannot but recognise in the industriousness of the Germans,” says Dr. Hicks, “a great effort in such trying times as they are now having— great industrial concerns of long standing go bankrupt almost weekly. It is very easy to get a wrong impression of the financial prosperity of the people, for superficially they dress well and seem to crowd cafes in a manner not known in England. But they live in cafes a great deal—their social life is so, and for a small amount they can enjoy comfort and good music, while sipping beer or having a meal which does not cost very much. “A quite well-dressed man in a bookshop in Berlin told me that his wages were £2 10s per week. His taxes were pretty heavy, and as the cost of living is not lower than in England, he could not have much with which to support his wife and family. The same seems true throughout, and one feels that unless the high tariffs in Europe separating the various nationalities are removed it must result in increasing difficulty all round. In Vienna 33 per cent, of the people are without work of any kind, but to see the great and beautiful city with spacious, clean streets and no outward sign of difficulty whatever, a quite opposite opinion might be formed.” Among Dr Hicks’ friends were two prominent bankers in Austria —directors of two separate banks—and from the evidence of their own home conditions for people of such influence, much could be inferred. They carried on the responsibilities of people of their class, but under different circumstances from what they had been. The blockade, too, had its effect. Soldiers returning from the front quite often were operated on for removal of bone fragments which they had eaten to get some nourishment—bones from the scrap and soup cauldrons. Of course, the epidemic, too, has left a terrible memory. There is a vast contrast between the South German and Austrian and the North German, which latter is the Yankee of Germany—full of hard work and efficiency. INCREASING REGARD FOR SPORT. One thing, however, which struck Dr. Hicks as possibly the greatest tribute to Great Britain is the increasing regard for sport which is everywhere fostered, nowhere more than in Austria, and the admiration for what is termed “Sport” in the Enghshman is almost universal now in Germany.