VALUE OF CONTACT

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 189, 19 August 1935, Page 5

VALUE OF CONTACT

In Imperial Sphere

STRESSED BY PRIME MINISTER

POPULARITY OF KING & QUEEN

(Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, This Day. The value of the closest possible contact between various parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations was stressed by the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes on his arrival in Wellington to-day from the King's Silver Jubilee celebrations and the Empire Economic Conference. The Prime Minister said the homage paid to the King and Queen was wonderful, illustrating the deep and abiding affection which the people have for their Sovereigns. Londoners were in closer contact with the King than any other people of the Empire, and their demonstrations of fervent loyalty were spontaneous as well as unprecedented. They made one realise the pre-emin-ent and noble part which the King played in unifying the British Empire into the world force it was to-day. Mr. Forbes said he had visited a number of research stations and gained much valuable information about problems the solution of which our producers and industrialists are endeavouring to find. Experiments in coal carbonisation and hydrogenation made one realise that the future of coal is much brighter

than it was a few years ago. Mr. Forbes also visited Yorkshire, and met the committee of the British Wool Federation. He discussed fully the position of the New Zealand wool trade with Bradford, and the suitability of the New Zealand-made

wool-pack. The committee showed a keen desire to assist in the further development of trade.

There was no doubt but that Britain to-day stands in the forefront of nations, and is the

envy of most other nations of the world. She had achieved stability while many other nations were still groping

for panaceas. She is in a position to take advantage of the upward trend of industry and trade.

Congratulated Her In illustrating the wide range of duties that a Government representative abroad was called upon to perform, Mr L. J. Schmidt, formerly New Zealand Trade and Tourist Commissioner in Australia, related at a luncheon of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce an experience he had had in being asked to locate a lost husband. An extremely agitated woman, who was born in Wellington, went to him in his Sydney office and said she had lost her husband. He had last been seen, she said, in America. The woman was informed that an effort would be made to trace him. "About six months later,” Mr Schmidt continued, “a very excited woman came into my office. ‘You remember me?’ she said. I did not, but politely said I did. ‘Well, they found my husband.’ I congratulated her and Said I was pleased. ‘Yes,’ she added. ‘They found him murdered in San Francisco’.” Facing Death To face death on a lonely island ' from a disease which he was endeav- | curing to conquer was once the experience of Professor E. Aitken Seagar, a j specialist in tropical diseases, who recently arrived in Auckland from London. Research work (says the "Auckland Star”) has taken Professor Seagar into many out of the way diseaseridden parts of the world, but his major scare came to him last year on Caicos Islands in the West Indies. In these islands, he said, every native at one time or another suffered from a severe form of typhoid —called locally "intestinal influenza”—which cither killed them or left them immune. To one of these islands ("a God-forsaken .spot,’’ he described it) went Professor Seagar, conducting his researches into virus diseases. And there, away from all except native assistance, he was himself stricken with typhoid. Bay by day he grew weaker, and day by day hope grew more faint that he would be rescued. At last, when he had resigned himself to the end, a passing sloop picked him up and took him to Grand Turk, where he was transhipped to a steamer bound for Jamaica. It was not the first time that Professor Seagar had suffered for his researches. On a number of occasions when working alone in the jungle, he suffered from fever, malaria and dysentery. Tt was a danger faced by all men in thosie parts of the world, said Professor Seagar, and he at least had his medical and stores to assist him.