WORSE THAN CANNIBALS

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 99, 3 May 1935, Page 7

WORSE THAN CANNIBALS

AUSTRALIAN TENNIS PUBLIC FAMOUS PLAYER’S VIEW PRAGUE, April 2-1. “The tennis public in Australia are worse than cannibals,” declared Roderick Menzel, the Czechoslovakian tennis star when interviewed to-day by Dr Willy Meisl, a sporting journalist. “Never in my whole career,” he added, “have I met more terrible people. Mr Youdale said that the Czech public irritated Crawford .and his colleagues here, but, compared with our sufferings in Australia, this must have been negligible. “We are invited to show our best form, but it is impossible to concentrate on (the game when the public shout, shriek and whistle as they do in Australia.” “Pioneering Spirit Lost” Menzel, in an article in lhe Prague “ Tageblatt, ’ ’ says he cannot under-] stand the existence of a labour problem in such a vast coumtry as Australia, and considers that it would not be difficult to send unemployed into the interior to make real oases like the cultivated land in the south and west and 'the plains of Queensland. “Probably they do not feel the hard-/ shijris that are so painful to the for-

eigner, to whom they are willing to discuss any subject in full friendliness.’ ’ “Workers declare,” he says, “that they cannot stand the climaJte in the interior, which proves that modern Australians have practically nothing left of the exploring pioneering spirit 1 shown by the Spanish, English and | Dutch in. their colonies.

“The immigration laws, especially Ithe provision for a dictation test, are ridiculous. For instance, Egon Kiseh was submitted to a test, in Gaelic. “The aborigines are more or less protected as one protects a museum piece, hut they are immediately chased out of their reservations if gold or silver is discovered there. “Assaults on Good Taste” “The foreign traveller must, have humour and patience if he desires to survive his experience with the Australians, who are accustomed to suffer terrible assaults upon good taste as represented by the adventures of their architects. “Besides allowing all sorts of church organisations to tyrannise them every Sunday, they play tennis on the most lamentable grass courts.