AMBASSADORS OF FRIENDSHIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1939, Page 6

AMBASSADORS OF FRIENDSHIP

If he had the power to correct the appalling ignorance of any one part of the world about any other, there were several things he would do, said Dr Thomas Wood, in an address at Manchester. “I should,” he said, “found a thousand travelling scholarships and tell the young men and women who received them to go out taking good news and bringing it back. I would send the next brass band that won the national contest to the United States, telling them to play good stuff and make friends. The next choir that won at Blackpool would go to Canada, South Africa and Australia with the same instructions, and the next choir that won at Morecambe would be sent to Italy to make friends and sing Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ The Italians think they can sing, but they have never heard singing as we understand it in the North of England, and the ‘Messiah’ would make them our friends for ever. I would also make the British Legion go on sending ex-service-men to Germany and bringing German ex-servicemen back, because they of all people know that the nations should keep friendly.”