NAMES AND PLACES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 34, 16 February 1940, Page 2

NAMES AND PLACES

Labour Leader Sir Walter Citrine, K.B.E., leader of the British Labour delegation to Finland, has been general secretary of the Trades Union Congress since 1935 and President of the International Federation of Trade Unions since 1928. He is a man of wide interests and great vitality. Among his writings are interesting studies of his Russian visits, "I Search for Truth in Russia," 1936 and 1938. Sir Walter was a member of the British Royal Commission sent to the West Indies in 1938. He was the original member and governor of the National Institute of Economic and. Social. Research; chairman of the World NonSectarian Anti-Nazi Council to champion Human Rights; member of the British Government Economic Advisory Council from 1930 to 1933, and a member of the General Advisory Council of the BBC. In addition to many other activities Sir Walter has been associated with the Empire Exhibition in Scotland and with film control. He was born in Liverpool in 1887 and fought his first Parliamentary election in 1918. Almost English | André Maurois, the celebrated French author who is attached to the British Expeditionary Force in France as a special correspondent, is a great lover of England and one of the few authors writing equally well in both French and English. During the last war he was an interpreter, attached to a Scottish Regiment and recorded his experiences in two amusing books, Les Silences du Colonel Bramble and Les Discours du Doctor O’Grady, both of which sold equally well in France and England. Maurois spends a good deal of his time in England, where he has made many friends. He has written books about Shelley, Byron, Disraeli and Dickens, as well as a History of England and King

Edward and His Times. Maurois was made a K.B.E. in 1938. During the war he became a Commander of the Legion of Honour. The Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Princetown have conferred honorary degrees on him. Travelling Hospitals Ready As soon as war broke out special ships were quickly transformed into hospital ships to transport wounded soldiers across the English Channel. So far they have had

little to do. Huge red crosses are painted on the sides and funnels of the ships, which have been stripped of their civilian fitments. Ambulance trains were also prepared. The carriages, nine to "each train, are painted green, with large red crosses on the white roofs, Five coaches on each train are fitted up as wards, each with three tiers of 12 beds. Two medical officers and two nursing sisters have one coach; orderlies and kitchen staff occupy another, a third is a kitchen and a fourth the dispensary. Ambassador's Story Coming One of Britain’s inflexible laws has been broken to permit Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin from 1937 until the outbreak of war, to write a book about his experiences while he was in Germany. It is a strict rule that Ambassadors must not write their experiences while they are on the active list, but special permission has been given to Sir Nevile, whose Blue Book on the official correspondence

at the outbreak of war has been a bestseller. It is expected that the former Ambassador’s story will be a _ racy account of the Nazi leaders, with intimate pictures of them. Sir Nevile Henderscn has been in the Diplomatic Service since 1905, when he was first appointed 3rd Secretary to the British Embassy in St. Petersburg. Since then he has served in Tokio, Rome, Constantinople, Cairo, Paris, Belgrade, Buenos Aires and Berlin. Exit the Horse Horses played a valiant part in the last war. Think of the thousands which

saw service in Palestine and Egypt! When the Main Body of the Ist New Zealand Expeditionary Force left the Dominion in 1914 it included one whole brigade of mounted men. Artillery and A.S.C. waggons also required great numbers of horses to move them about the country. To-day not one horse is wanted. Mechanical transport does all the hauling and carrying required by the modern army. In India army officers are now able to buy surplus horses for £7/10/- each. Once proud cavalry regiments now travel in cars and lorries, In the days before the last war cavalry officers paid up to some hundreds of pounds for their horses. A Comfortable Prison Donington Hall, which housed 300 captured German officers and 117 of their batmen during the last war, has once again become a prison camp for captured Nazis. This great mansion, former home of the last Marquess of Hastings, is surrounded by fifty acres

ot park, where the imprisoned enemy take their exercise. During the last war frequent complaints were made that Britain was treating her prisoners too well, for they had comfortable lounges, smoking rooms, billiards rooms, heated bedrooms and a canteen where they were able to buy their favourite wines. Very few tried to escape, but many prayed that they might be sent to Donington Hall. Two officers did succeed in getting away, but one was capturéd before he reached the coast and the other returned to Germany to become a British Secret Service agent. Thyssen’s Rise And Fall Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who fled to Switzerland soon after the outbreak of war and whose huge concerns have now been taken over by the German Government, was the son of a man who started making hoop-iron in a small building outside Mulheim. Thyssen senior died in 1916, leaving an immense fortune. Fritz carried on the business and built it up. When the French occupied the Ruhr in 1921 he was imprisoned because he refused to obey their orders. By 1926 Thyssen had formed the great German Steel Trust which controlled 75 per cent. of Germany’s iron ore -products, owned 33,000 acres of mines and factories, 1,200 miles of railways, 14 private ports, 209 electric power stations, tenements housing 60,000 employees and their families, and employed 200,000 people. By 1933 Thyssen was ardently supporting Hitler and contributed three million marks to his campaign funds. He was made a director of Germany’s heavy industry and a member of the Reichstag. Rearmament brought millions to the Thyssen works, but two years ago a change came. He complained that he was being followed, and his mail was opened, and that his telephones had been tapped by the Gestapo. Then he fled to Switzerland, and now the Nazi Government has confiscated the whole of the Thyssen works. Old-World Universities Mr. Winston Churchill’s reference last week to the closing of all Czech universities recalls the famous Charles University in Prague. This was founded by Charles IV. in 1348, the King who also began the building of the famous St. Vitus Cathedral four years earlier. During 1882-83 the Charles University was divided in two, one becoming German and the other Czech or Bohemian. Other Central European universities followed. One was established at Vienna in 1365, one at Heidelberg in 1385, and one at Cologne in 1388. The oldest university in the world is that of Bologna, Italy, which was established in 1088. Paris is next; her university was established in the second half of the 12th Century. The third great university in point of date is Oxford, whose origin is largely conjectural and probably originated in a migration of English scholars from France after 1167. Numerous universities flourished in Italy in the Middle Ages. Salerno was famous for its medical school even before the institution of the University at Bologna, Poland’s first university was at Cracow, and was established in 1364,