TRAVELLED VISITOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 191, 2 November 1927, Page 9

TRAVELLED VISITOR

PROFESSOR B. FREEMAN THIRTIETH TIME IN N.Z. A much-travelled man is Professor Bernard Freeman, F.R.G.S., linguist, journalist and lecturer, who arrived on his 30th visit to New Zealand on the Tofua yesterday. Fresh from a two-hour interview with the Greek Patriarch, who could speak nought but Greek, he is whisked across America to the Pacific to travel the disturbed islands of Samoa and the Solomons, the Gilberts and other groups. From there he has come to New Zealand. On his last visit he .was a fellowtraveller with the late Mr. W. F. Massey, then returning from the Peace Conference. Mr. Freeman, whose travels are partly in the interests of the Royal Geographic Society, maintains “that he belongs to no one.” “I am a free lance and an ambassador of peace,” he said in his rapid, nervous voice. Though over 70 years of age, he travels and lectures on the unity of the Eng-lish-speaking peoples. “When the English - speaking peoples dictate —I don’t say that in any objectionable sense —to the world, then will the world have peace and disarmament.” Professor Freeman, whose linguistic repertoire encompasses English, Italian, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, is chief interpreter of the International Emigration Bureau, an organisation which has for its object the control of the outflow of Asiatic emigration. Mr. Freeman believes in the imminent danger from the East. Unrestricted immigration is not practical politics at all, he says. Among the many notable folk whom he has met Benito Mussolini has m6st impressed him. “When 99 per cent, of his nation adore him, ‘then he must be a great man,” he says.