LAND OF THAI

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 March 1940, Page 3

LAND OF THAI

SURVIVOR OF MANY STATES. All the maps are out of date again: not one of them gives Siam its right name, for Siam is abolished and Thailand takes its place. As a matter of fact, the native description has for centuries been Muang Thai, which means the Land of the Free, but to the rest of the world it was Siam, and its people, now to be known as the Thai, were Siamese. There must be many returned men who know them as such when Siam sent troops to Franco to help the Allies in the Great War.

Thailand is the only independent survivor ol many States that existed as national entities in South-east Asia a century : go. A passion for freedom c rove numerous bands of Southern Chinese 1300 years ago into what was later known as Yunnan, whore, until they were conquered six centuries later, by Coleridge's Kublai Khan, they reigned free. Before Kublai they fled on again, inis time lo join fellow'Thais who had already settled in what was to be the nucleus of the modern Shim. Within the next 100 years the Thais had become a powerful State, strong in arms, wise in law-making. From that time forth. Siam was alternately challenged and challenging, losing her freedom to neighbouring rivals, ever lighting successfully from time to time to regain i. and always calling herself Land of the Free.

Now she has informed all peoples and nations that her name is Thailand, and the name of her official resilience in London has been altered from tile Siamese Legation to the Thai Location.