EMPIRE CITIZEN

NZ Truth, Issue 1143, 27 October 1927, Page 4

EMPIRE CITIZEN

UP aloft m Nathan's big building, Wellington, is the New Zealand station of the Eastern Extension, Australasian and China Submarine Telegraph Company — a nerve-centre of the body social, political and commercial. This section of the "link that binds" runs between Wellington and Sydney, and the superintendent of the station is Michael Edward Airey — a citizen of the Empire m very truth. The best years of his life have been spent m the service of the company, for he joined up as a youthful probationer and ere long will be qualified for a transfer to the retired list.

Airey, by the very nature of his calling, has been a rover and has sojourned m many strange lands; principally m the mystic Orient, where his company has numerous stations. ' He is just as much at home m the bazaars of Colombo, Singapore land Hong Kong as he is m the streets of Wellington — not to mention Sydney and Melbourne.

Airey can define the "call of the East" so graphically that your olfactory senses are almost assailed 'by the cloying bazaar and associated smells and you want to go questing "east of Suez" yourself. He is a big man physically, while much travelling and mixing with all kinds and conditions of men — both Occidental and Oriental — have given him a broad, tolerant outlook on the big, vital things of life.