POVERTY IN SPAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 266, 31 January 1928, Page 9

POVERTY IN SPAIN

PROFESSIONAL BEGGARS WORLD TRAVELLER RETURNS The professional beggars of Spain astonished Mr. Tfobert Bell, of Christchurch, who returned by the Marama this morning after a two years’ tour of the world. Mr. Bell is president of the World’s Press Congress, and attended a conference at Geneva. Since then he has visited most of the countries of Europe, and Singapore and Java on his way home. In all the countries Mr. Bell visited on the Continent of Europe, he found the people hard at work, trying to recover the trad© which had been lost during the war. Germany, said Mr. Bell, was particularly active. The beauty and the cultivation of the country in the South of Spain made a marked impression on Mr. Bell, but, h e continued, “in all my travels I have never been in any country where poverty is so pronounced or where the people—men, women, and children—openly begged. I was given to understand by British residents in Spain that begging has become a profession. At the end of a day the professional beggar says to the workman, ‘How much have you made?’ They compare figures, and the beggar always seems to have been more successful than the worker.” In Austria and Hungary Mr. Bell found a great deal of discontent as a result of the Treaty of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of considerable territory to those two countries. “The feeling is akin to that which existed in Alsace-Lorraine after the Prussian War,” he said. “A feeling of injustice has been created, and I firmly believe that the Treaty of Trianon should be revised.” During his visit to Singapore and Java Mr. Bell went into the question of trade with the East.