PARENTS FRANTIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 952, 21 April 1930, Page 9

PARENTS FRANTIC

GIRLS BOOKED UP FOR DANCE CONTRACTS TEARS AND FIGHTS IN BERLIN LONDON, April 10. Pathetic scenes were enacted at the departure of the Hamburg boat train from Berlin, when numbers of fathers, mothers, other relatives aud one frantic would-be-bridegroom tried iu vain to persuade 12 girls, who have signed an engagement to dance in a night club in Buenos Ayres, to give up the project and return home. Tears and pleading were unavailing, the girls insisting that the contract was a thoroughly honourable one, and that they had perfect confidence in the good faith of the woman who had organised the adventure. They refused to see anything but romance iu the journey which they were about to undertake. The employer, foreseeing opposition at the railway station, had engaged a couple of male assistants to prevent any interference.with his plans at the last moment. The precautions proved quite necessary for, a few moments before the train started, several frantic fathers, according to the “Daily Express” Berlin correspondent, tried to drag the girls from the carriages. The station was soon as mass of screaming, struggling men and women and the stationmaster was obliged to summon the police who, after separating the belligerents, decided that, as the girls were all over age and there was no actual proof that they were intended for illegal purposes, they could do nothing and the train steamed off to Hamburg. Visas Refused In the meantime, the Argentine Consul in Berlin informed the police that he had already had painful experiences with girls exported from Germany on a former occasion in the same fashion. The Consul, a few days before, had refused point blank to grant this woman and her charges visas for the Argentine. So seriously had he regarded the case that he gave orders that no Argentine steamer was to take the girls on board at Hamburg. The Hamburg police were also alarmed, and instituted inquiries as to the whereabouts of the woman and her party, but the investigations proved fruitless, and they think that the girls will probably be forwarded to their destination in small groups and in separate ships, so as to draw as little attention as possible to them. The Berlin Press is keenly indignant at the lamentable impotence of the police, and point out that four of 16 girls who originally went to the Argentine Consulate had been persuaded to relinquish the mad idea. They confess that they, like the rest of their comrades, were cajoled into signing contracts drawn up in Spanish without understanding a word of them.