TOURING THE WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 21362, 7 April 1931, Page 8

TOURING THE WORLD

LONDON JOURNALIST. ADVENTURES IN STRANGE LANDS. To have visited 35 countries in the world within a few years is the fortune of Mr Charles E. Eade, a young London journalist who is at present visiting Queenstown. . Mr Eade was until quite recently assistant editor of the London Daily Mirror, and was formerly proprietor of the East Ham Echo, and the South Essex Mail. He is not on a working tour, nor is he bothering much with scenery, but he is visiting various newspaper offices, meeting people of all classes, and generally absorbing the atmosphere of the places he visits. Mr Eade arrived at Wellington a fortnight ago and after visiting Picton, Blenheim, Christchurch, Hokitika, and the Franz Josef Glacier, he arrived in Invercargill during Easter, having covered over 30,000 miles in the course of his journey from London. He has 'visited France, Egypt, Ceylon, India, Burma, Malaya, Siam, French Indo-China, Java, and Australia, and is at present making a short tour of the Dominion. It is Mr Eade’s first trip to this part of the world, but by no means the extent of his foreign travels. On previous occasions he has been to every part of Europe and North Africa. Khyber Pass Crossed. On the present occasion he has spent most of his time in India, and one of his unusual experiences there was to be the first visitor to cross the Khyber Pass since two bank officials were murdered there by their escort of native soldiers last Easter. Visitors are forbidden to go through the pass, but an escort had been arranged for one of Mr Eade’s friends, and he was smuggled through in the same car. In addition to a camel track and a railway h good motor road runs through the pass. Once through the pass Mr Eade was treated to a unique sight. On that day the leaders, of the tribesmen were holding a jirga or conference with the British authorities, and, when Mr Eade’s car was passing the Jamrud Fort at the south end of the pass, the whole of the Afridi leaders with their lieutenants lined the roadside. Big game hunting attracted Mr Eade’s attention, but he failed to find any game that was really big, and the experience, he said, was therefore rather boring. A native school master honoured Mr Eade in his own fashion by writing a poem about him in Sanskrit and Hindi, and the visitor had to sit before the whole school feeling “extremely foolish,” as he put it, while the author read his composition aloud.

Another amusing experience was in front of Mr Eade when he innocently booked a seat on what he thought was a regular bus service running from Siam across the border into French Indo-China. The bus was held up by the military on the road, and was found to contain smuggled goods hidden everywhere. The spare tyres, spare petrol tank, and other places were crammed full of drugs, silks, coffee and so on. Incidentally, the road has the reputation of being badly infested with bandits. Mr Eade did not meet any of those picturesque gentlemen, but one of the other two Europeans on the bus had been set upon and robbed on a previous trip. India's Troubles. India, said Mr Eade, was a particularly interesting country, and most of the unrest there seemed to be confined to the big cities, such as Calcutta, and Bombay. There were no signs of trouble in the country districts, and it had to be remembered that the greater part of India’s population was rural. The country people seemed to be content to go on in the old lines. In all the countries he had visited he had never been treated with such respect as by the natives in India. He was not shown the same respect in the French countries, such as Morocco or French Indo-China. The trouble with India, so far as the visitor could see, was religious and racial differences. On the night Mr Eade arrived in Bombay there was a riot in which eight people were injured, but he walked about alone, unarmed, at all hours, and did not experience any trouble at all. Mr Eade said he did not think that the reports from India were so much exaggerated as misinterpreted. Many of the riots were merely fights between sects, such as between Hindus and Moslems, and were not anti-British attacks. The British were endeavouring to maintain peace among the sects. His own opinion was that if the British troops were withdrawn from India the fearless tribesmen of the north would sweep down on the plains, and the ordinary Hindus would find it very difficult to withstand the onslaught. There was almost a continuous state of war on the northern frontier, and when he was in Peshawar Mr Eade could hear the guns booming in the distance. No European was allowed to enter the city unless he carried a revolver. British residents were confined to a cantonment, and anybody walking in the cantonments at night had to carry a lantern. The north-west was very strictly controlled by the military, who were doing a wonderful work very quietly, just as if nothing was happening. Australia Visited. Mr Eade saw a good deal of Australia and its problems, not only in the more thickly populated areas, but in the west and north-west. The people of Java, he said, took an intense interest in Western Australia, particularly in the question of the secession of Western Australia from the Commonwealth, %nd Mr Eade was commissioned by a newspaper in Java to write a series of articles on that subject. He expressed the .opinion that there was a strong feeling among the people in favour of secession, but he thought that the practical difficulties were so great that secession would be difficult to realize. He thought the people in the other States did not realize how strong the feeling was in the west. He said that he did not think that the north-west and extreme north of Australia could be effectively developed except bv coloured labour, but he did not think there was a possibility of such labour being allowed into Australia. Australians contended that Australia was the only great undeveloped country left to the white man, and- if coloured labour were allowed the time would come when the blacks would far outnumber the whites. It was difficult to see,- however, how,the north-west could be developed with white labour. Never had he felt greater heat except in the: Sahara!

desert, which he penetrated for some 200 miles, the latter part by camel, in 1925. Mr Eade was in Italy in 1922 at the time of the Fascist revolution, when Mussolini became Prime Minister, a position he has held ever since. Nobody was allowed to leave Rome for four or five days, but visitors lived comfortably at their hotels and were in no personal danger. Mr Eade, some years ago, made a descent of the crater of Vesuvius when the volcano was active. Mr Eade .left Invercargill on Saturday for Queenstown, and will later visit the North Island. He will then go on to the South Sea Islands, China, Japan, Canada, the United States, and South America. .