IN THE PACIFIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 686, 11 June 1929, Page 11

IN THE PACIFIC

TRAVELLER’S IMPRESSIONS To have visited 64 countries during the past few years is the experience of Mr. William H. Koenig, attorney at law, of Ohio, U.S.A., who, with his father, Mr. H. F. Koenig, a varnish manufacturer, arrived from the Islands by the Tofua yesterday. Mr. Koenig will spend five or six weeks in New Zealand and will then proceed to Australia, Dutch East Indies, Japan and Siberia, He was in Russia two years ago and is looking forward to seeing what changes have occurred in that much-discussed country since he was last there. Mr. Koenig’s mission is to study international conditions, and as a legal man naturally he is keenly interested in international politics. Already he has become deeply impressed with the necessity for a complete understanding between Australia, New Zealand and America in the Pacific. He considered that Europe had not yet awakened to the fact that there was such a place as the Pacific. To them everything centred around the Mediterranean. One or two books on his observations in different corners of the world have come from Mr. Koenig’s pen and he has also been engaged in journalistic work.

Mr. Koenig has just come from Samoa, but on that point he preferred to say little. “I don’t believe in interfering in the politics of other countries,” he said. “As a matter of fact it is very hard to find out anything about Samoa at all,” he added. “One hears that there is unrest, but to me everything appeared very quiet.”