Friendship Beyond Frontiers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 5

Friendship Beyond Frontiers

[Tt was delightful to walk into the Student Move ment House in London at afternoon tea time, a favourite time for gathering together, and see Arab and Jew sitting down together drinking a penny cup of tea and eating a penny sandwich and talking about anything from the Palestinian problem

to ping-pong. In the same way, you would see Moslem and Hindu, Indian and Englishman, Pole and Russian, Italian and African, talking together-- and often being the-firmest of friends. I have one very touching memory of this kind of friendship surmounting national barriers. A little Chinese man came to the club and everyone loved him. He was cultured, gentle and charm-

ing. He lived upstairs in the top regions somewhere and delighted his neighbour’s heart by reading English poetry aloud to himself in bed. One day he came into the club and I met him at the foot of the stairs. In his hands was a large flower-pot with one beautiful. cyclamen in bloom growing in it Chao-Tsui was smiling all over his face and quite unable to contain himself. "My friend gave this to me," he said. "How nice," I said. But Chao-Tsui, feeling that I obviously didn’t understand how terrific it all was, said simply " My friend is Japanese." And he went on upstairs carrying his precious gift in both hands -even his back looked happy.-(" Students of the World-Unite!" by Clare Prior, 2Y A, September 22.)