BRITISH INDUSTRIES

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1940, Page 10

BRITISH INDUSTRIES

IMPRESS MORE THAN GUNS Not the number of camps or the arry of guns impressed R. Aitken, N.Z.M.C., of the 1st New Zealand General Hospital when he reached England, but the amazing variety of industries and the application of the British workfnan to their job. In a letter received by . his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Aitken, Bell Block, he states: — "We managed to obtain a cross-section effect from the rail journey. One minute we would be flashing through an idyllic rural England and the next through the smoke-laden atmosphere and black drabness of the great funnels of the blast furnaces of an industrial centre of the Midlands of England— all like a great symphony of steel. . "The railways particularly intrigued me, with their wide gauge, fast travelling, luxurious carriages and an infinite variety of locomotives. "As regards the war Britain has the 'goods' though and the 'silvery strip' as Wellington described the Channel, will be our greatest. defensive factor. "A friend and I met the London editor of the Sydney Bulletin in a bus. We went up to his office and he told us some of the places of Interest not usually visited. For instance we went to the famous 'Mermaid Tavern,' frequented by Ben* Jonson and his friends, off Fleet Street. Food of the Army. "We are rationed to some extent in the army and civilians have ration cards, but during our stay in London there was plenty of food. The average Englishman seems to have had less opportunity than the corresponding colonial; he aspires to lesser heights, and takes it as the inevitable that he is a cog in a great machine. I "Cockney dialect is the exception rather than the rule. Some of the : women we met in the counties have rather a pretty intonation in their speech. In one place we wex-e told that we talked like Americans. "The New Zealand soldiers are amongst the most popular of the overseas troops. The arrival of the Anzacs has had a stimulating psychological effect on the English people," the letter concludes.