SIR THOMAS BEECHAM

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 43, 14 November 1940, Page 7

SIR THOMAS BEECHAM

Beard Said To Have Been Cut By Australians Sir Thomas Beechnut, the distinguished English conductor, who recently passed some rather severe strictures upon Australia, will have reason to remember that country. Australian papers relate that two days before a Pacific liner arrived at Vancouver from Sydney via Auckland, certain Australians on their way to Canada gained admittance to the cabin occupied by Sir Thomas, and forcibly held him, while one of their number cut his beard.

This act of hooliganism is said to be by way of retaliation for criticism passed on the people of Australia by Sir Thomas while he was in Auckland. In an interview Sir Thomas was reported to have said that for a generation, public men, writers, and newspapers, aided by British politicians, had been proclaiming Australia to be a land of untold possibilities, rich in every natural resource, a flattering picture which had been Haunted before the eyes not only of the English, but of Italians, Germans. Japanese. and every other powerful land-hungry nation. Sir Thomas added, "If Australians have such a fruitful land, then they acknowledge themselves before rite world as one of its most backward and incompetent races.”