105,000 MILES OF TRAVEL

Hokitika Guardian, 30 April 1929, Page 8

105,000 MILES OF TRAVEL

SEEKING NEWS. (Ry SIR PERCJYAL PHILLIPS Special Correspondent of “ The Daily Mail,” whose quest of news lias repeated!}’ taken him around the world.)

Tt was an ordinary wall map of th world in flat. . There were red line; showing the principal lanes of comma ideation between continents and conn tries.

Not an object calculated to thrill the average observer, yet to me it was more than a map. As 1 followed familiar routes with my eye, from this cap>'tal to that and along the waterways linking coast with coast, it became a screen over which passed a fascinating mental film of people, places, and events. I followed the course of my wanderings as special correspondent of

“ The Daily Mail ” during the past three and a halt years—to go farther back would have added greatly to the task—and I arrived at an amazing result.

Forty-two months of travel equalled 105,000 miles by land and sea. A stupendous figure! Twice round tin l world in three and a half years, always seeking news. Twice in the major places in the Emi)iro, in China, India, and Egypt. TTp and down Europe like a bagman on his rounds.

Experiences tragic and comic; contrasts strange almost beyond belie!. ''ays of biting cohl when England 'at least in theory) was perspiring in summer sunshine. Nights of scorching '.oat when England shivered as she has done this winter.

Dinner in queer places when London

vns just beginning to awake to the work'of a new day. Christmas under •'Petrie fans, with native hoys bringng more and yet more iced drinks, ho Two Minutes Silence on a sea like molten silver, the ship hove to amid \rah dhows, and again under tall .alms beside the surf of an African .•oast.

Uganda drums throbbing rin a humid night and their rhythm broken by the dear notes of Rig Hen brought by a loud-speaker from the other side of the r|obe. Glistening surf riders poised above the breakers of Honolulu. Pearl■ng luggers putting out of Thursday Island and the Mauretania mincing into tne harbour traffic of lower New York. A homesick man of Kent talking of Lord’s and Ascot as lie rode among his sheep in a valley ol New Zealand.

Fiji warriors 111 a circle, solemnly drinking khava before a wlrite-and-gold British "Governor. Up-ooviitry planters toasting rubber in pink gin in a bar at Singapore before the Saturday luncheon. Australian aborigines peering furtively from their wast-high kennels of old meat tins on a lonely strand in Queensland. A bearded monk in sandals walking calmly through a Chinese mob in the upper reaches of the Yangtse. These nrc some of the pictures that flit across the screen which is only a map of tho world in flat.

Hotels palatial and hotels foul in the •N'tieme. A bungalow of concrete with •cn bedrooms, ay bar. two dogs, and a •"onlrey sitting forlornly in a desert •loin of Tanganyika: poor, clean, and grateful for tbe attentions of sportsmen on safari. Tinned food, a 1 ackei \ gramophone, grinning Negroes with fdlted cars, an excess of whisky and a shortage of water. Lions in the suburbs, to the acute discomfort of eourti>g couples. Another bungalow hotel on another niain. hairy . hillmon swaggering through the bazaar near by; camel trains from Bokhara and a high road trailing past a mud fort to the gateway of the Khylier. Luxury lintels ••oriouslv out of place. Bedside telephones and liveried servants in a gorgeous caravanserai worthy of London „r Baris hut merely the dead-end of a railway in Anatolia.

A ballroom, more imposing than anv we now in Europe, set in the centre ol •mother gilt-alid-glitter hotel ten miles from the" China Rea. Canadian skyscraper hotels replete with modern comforts. A summer hotel in midwinter. dead as the bathing beaches of •lie Bos'diorus near by. A winter PcW'l in summer, deserted like the neighbouring casino, hemmed in by tw-> rocky headlands of Sicily. Cairo in Ibo season and Peking in a panic.

A French hotel in Honan surrounded In- nmi-ines and machine-guns, filled with frightened Bolsheviks, and be--iep-cd by tbe Chinese they bad tried to dupe. Another mob pressing into the broad lobby of a New A ork hotel with ears strained for tbe next wire!os- bulletin of a baseball game. Pictures of all kinds and conditions „|- pomtlc. The fugitive Amnnullah rushing to kiss his Queen after a game of dock t'Minis in tbe Bed Sea. All • cry Balkan Minister pounding bis desk before an angry Parliament. A discomfited rainmaker of East Africa staring gloomily at a brazen sky. Egyptian officialdom in iineoinfoitrhlo top bats waiting to greet the Prince of Wales. The Prime bimsell in safari shirt and shorts, busily typiiW his diary of tbe day’s adventures inutile wilderness. A solemn Peer of Hie Poalrn in converse with a Bed Indian, all paint and feathers, in the j lioct-y Mountains. An Australian Lord Mayor presiding at a champagne reception at eleven o’clock in tbe morn-, ing. A Maori belli' skipping blithely j between tbe geysers and craters of 80-i torua. I

A Viceroy of India trying to pick the next winner at the Calcutta Christinas races. -M. Veniselus beaming through his spectacles oil the day oi

his political resurrection in Athens. Rosa re Mori, the scourge of the Mafia preparing a new list of prisoners at Tiis desk in Palermo. A Negro king sipping tea in a transplanted English garden and discussing the merits of rival motor-ears. “Lawrence ol Arabia” m aircraft man's blue, mending the wing of a ’plane ill the shops at Karachi.

The Governor of a British Colony quoting Kipling and Conrad at three I’cloek in the morning. A woman missionary in rags, newly rescued Iron) the horrors of Nanking, smiling on the bund at Shanghai and saying, “They lidn’t know what they were doing.” Scenes of grim tragedy. A degraded Chinese general bound with ropes Minuting defiance on his way to execution. Fifty murderesses meekly working at batik in the women’s prison at Saiimrang. A girl of ten weeping for her parents, the victims of shipwreck off Tientsin. Starving Russian refugees wandering through the streets c; 1 ( ontantinople.

Living skeletons waiting for death in a famine district of India. Comedy as well as tragedy. A British official in grave conference with a Negro chief resplendent in top hat. puttees, and white nightgown. Queen -Mario ot Rumania, very regal, waiting helplessly for her tardy hosts at an hotel banquet in Canada. A ponderous representative of the Crown upside down in a tank of sea water at the Crossing of the Line. A noted traveller by air alighting full of cocktails in the Antipodes. The world at its best—and worst. Sunrise on Mount Everest from Tiger Hill behind Darjeeling. Sunset, on the golden dome of the Sliwe Dragon at Rangoon. The Taj Mahai by moonlight. Afternoon at Manly Beach with the rollicking bathers of Sydney. Loll" days 011 eastern seas as placid as the Serpentine. Long nights in a little coastal steamer buffeted by a typhoon. The shun* of Bombay and the lofty new water front of Shanghai. Shattered Yokohama, proud and self-reliant despite the ruin wrought by earthquake. Auckland, with its wooden houses, cheerfully alive in the shadow oi Mount Eden. New Angora rising almost over night on the debris of centuries. Old Trincomnlee, lovely and alone 011 the far side of Ceylon, brooding over its deserted fort and Government House. One view excels them all, as I wrote once before. It is that ol the Clock Tower and Abbey of Westminister swinging into view as the home-hound Golden Arrow speeds across the Timm es to Victoria.