N.Z. JOURNALIST IN PRAGUE

Southland Times, Issue 23646, 22 October 1938, Page 12

N.Z. JOURNALIST IN PRAGUE

Former. Invercargill Scholar MR GEOFFREY COX AS CORRESPONDENT A New Zealand 1931 Rhodes scholar, Mr Geoffrey S. Cox, of Dunedin, who, during the past year, has acted as the Vienna, • and more latterly, the Pans correspondent of The Daily Express, has been sending daily messages from Prague, says the London correspondent of The Otago Daily Times writing on September 26. Until September 23 his reports were telephoned through to London, but on that date all telephone and telegraph communications from Prague were stopped. , His reports were taken oyer the frontier on September 24 by a colleague, Mr Sefton Dehner. who drove from Prague to Dresden. It was, he said, impossible to have a private call from one town to another in Czechoslovakia. From Dresden, Mr Cox’s reports were telephoned to London. Reporting on September 24, Mr Cox said: “Prague tonight is a city prepared to meet war at a moment’s notice. The lightning general mobilization decreed 48 hours ago has brought not only the army, but all the civilian service on to full war footing. 1 “Through the darkened streets of tonight hurry the blue hea (flighted cars of Czechoslovakia’s A.RJP. organization, seeing that dark blinds are drawn over every window, that hotels and cafes have only the dimmest blue lights in their entrances. , “Under the Defence of the Republic Act, which goes a good deal further than our D.0.R.A., General Sirovys Government decreed a state of ‘defence readiness.’ Under this every citizen between 17 and 60 years of age who has not been called to the colours must be ready for defence work of other types. Only the physically unfit, M.P.’s the head of the National Bank, Government, State, and municipal workers, women who have children to care fori, are exempt. “The general mobilization has been carried through swiftly and, it is officially stated, with practically no hitches. The Czech Government in a Iradio message declared that it was a purely defensive measure, taken only because the Germans have 1,500,000 armed men waiting on the CzechGerman frontier.” Mr Cox was a pupil of the Southland Boys’ High School when his father, Mr C. W. S. Cox was manager of the Invercargill branch of the Bank of New South Wales. He went on to Otago University, where he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. When he took up the scholarship at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1931, he read for philosophy, politics and economics. 'ln 1934 he read for B.Litt in economics and passed his BA- examinations. He spent the 1934 summer vacation in Germany, where he worked in a labour camp, and studied at a political science school in Berlin. He .came down from Oxford in March 1935, and took a two-months’ temporary position with the News Chronicle. The position later became permanent, and he went to Spain to report the earlier stages cf the Spanish war, later writing a book on his experiences.