PIONEER PAPER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 November 1943, Page 4

PIONEER PAPER

PUBLISHED BY THE ARMY IN MADAGASCAR. A tribute to the value of the 8.8. C. Press service “in keeping the military population of Diego Suarez in touch with the affairs of England—from, which most of them come/’ is conveyed in a letter to the 8.8. C. from the editor of the “Morning Pioneer.” This is a British military newspaper, published three times weekly, for the forces in Madagascar. The “Morning Pioneer” is aptly named. Some idea of the patience and resourcefulness that go to the excellent production of its six pages of letterpress, pictures and maps, may be gathered from an account of its beginning and its progress written, to mark its first birthday, and published in June, 1943, in “Jambo,” a magazine for the services in East Africa. The following is an extract: “Difficulties, both technical and physical, were inevitable. Neither of the town’s mediaeval printing establishments had ever seen a linotype machine; every tiny letter, every comma, every snace, had to be put in by hand, and, when printing was completed, just as carefully put back again into its place in an antridden ‘case’.” This complicated and tedious operation of typesetting by hand was performed by a Malgache native, who “spoke no word of English and only very poor French,” spurred on by “Grandpa,” the foreman, aged sixtynine, who also spoke no English and was stone deaf. Yet, after a few weeks, he performed typographical wonders the like of which he had never imagined could exist.