EUROPEAN UNREST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 37, 14 February 1939, Page 2

EUROPEAN UNREST

INTERESTING LETTER i] The situation is Europe is having » * repercussions in other parts of the world. The unrest felt in Tanganyika |is described in an interesting letter 'written by the New Zealand novelist | Sheila Macdonald (Mrs. S. S. Moore), i'to a friend in Wellington, states an : | exchange. > | “All around us are coffee sham- ■ | bas,” writes Miss Macdonald in hei 11 letter; “most picturesque they are. Jas the coffee trees, or rather shrubs, I are not only beautifully flowered ! and as beautifully berried, but are protected from the sun by great plantations of carefully-chosen and spaced trees. “But coffee at present is not fetching the price of its cost of production, and this, in conjunction with every other kind of slump due to the uncertainty of the mandate, has reduc ed hundreds of settlers to absolute want. The children of gentlepeoplc lack shoes in which to go to school. Whole families have to subsist on food which at one time would have been for natives only. “Most of the settlers immediately in our neighbourhood are German Royalists who came here when Hitler lirst came into power. Their plight is pitiful, for, though many of them were landed aristocrats at home, they can now draw only 15s monthly from Germany, and that only on condition that they send their sons and daughters home to be trained in the Hitler ideals. • “One secs counts and barons, and 'even a prince, working on road contracts, doing motor transport service * and any old job, however, humble, that will keep a roof over their heads and put food in their stomachs. “Almost all the Germans want us to retain the mandate, as, should

Nazism take over here they would be regarded as renegades, and forcibly converted. Were the question only decided, one way or the other, the suspense would be lessened, but as things arc, everything —business, production, even pleasure—is at a standstill.”