GEORGE SYMMON

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 39, 11 January 1944, Page 6

GEORGE SYMMON

(Official War Correspondent)

By Air Mail

CAIRO, November 20.

Above one. of the few remaining groves, of ccdars still clinging to the hillsides of the Lebanon, on a ledge beside an ancient church looking out across miles of the stony terraces, the grc.cn orchards and the red roofed villages -clinging to the cliff edgcSj under a canopy of, vines, I> listened to a man in the high boots and baggy trousers of the typical Lebanese, peasant discuss pre-war New Zealand politics; as I have heard other men, in very different places, discuss the same politics on forms outside the, pub or the blacksmith's shop or the town-i ship grocery store.

But 11 icy were not pre-war politics, they were, pre-last Avar politics, and the man looking out across the hillsides which grew the cedars, for Solomon's temple did not talk of Fraser and Holland,, Lee, but of Masscy find Ward arid another Holland. The present generation of. New Zealand: politicians means little, to him and he knows nothing of the New Zealand social security .and guaranteed prices and wartime economies for he lived in New Zealand in the days when rugged individualism had not yet been analysed and become a subject for political discussion.. But he> still calils anyone lie doesn't know "a bloke," and recalls the names of innumerable hospitable pub-keepers who regaled him all those years ago on real New Zealand beer in the days when real New Zealand beer was something to remember.

He rather likes to be called <4 a bloke" himself, but his name, is George Symeon and he is a native of Bccharre, topmost village below the final rampart of the Lebanese .V, mountains. Forty years ago, like many another of, his. adventurous countrymen before and since, lie packcd his; Avorldly goods on his back and; went out into the. world to seek his fortune. 'His wanderings brought him to New Zealand ?n the early years of the present century, and for 13 years more, with his horse and van, he roamed the Ceiv tral Otago und Southland districts as an itinerant hawker. He may even have visited the writers liome in those early years for, as a very small boy indeed, Is can still remember the occasional advent of a "Syrian," with his strange assortment of men's heavy underwear and nailed boots and workaday mercery. George Sj'meon knew these districts when there- were still- Chinese gold diggers living in their little, sod huts in the gullies of. Central. He carried a rifle presented to him by a friendly storekeeper to protect himself against "stick-up men," and he still treasures, a faded photograph which shows, his van pulled up beside the road; near Waikaia township while he drank two bottles of beer with the village, constable. It is true, because one can still discern the constable in the picture:, and also the beer, and the writer can still remember enough of Waikaia to believe that it once looked like that —and probably still docs. When Armistice bells were ringing in New Zealand after the last war George Symeon decided to resvisit his native mountains in faraway Syria and lie is still there. But now he is waiting, like so many more, for Armistice bells to ring again so that he can go back New Zealand —and this time he means to stay there. For George is (irmly convinced —and the occasional New Zealanders whom he has encountered on leave during the past three years have reinforced his conviction —-that New Zealand, is a land (lowing with milk and honey and peopled by kindly and hospitable pub-keepers.

''Those blokes," lie said, indicating two of his Lebanese compatriots standing by as an audience., ''tliey work here all their lives: but me, I want to go back to New Zealand."

George may or may not be right, and election time is scarcely a politic occasion to argue it, but there is no doubt that lie is a most suc-cess-fill. though unofficial ambassador. "The blokes" were plainly impressed and so, I gathered, were manv more.