SOME OF THE BIG ONES GOT AWAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 236, 31 December 1943, Page 4

SOME OF THE BIG ONES

GOT AWAY

Interviews OF The Year Recalled

Y convention, this.is the season for forward-looking: at New Year we toy with good resolutions and speak with real feeling of our hopes for the coming year. But "The Listener" proposes for the moment to be perverse, and to look backwards. The members of its staff have occasionally been in unusual places, and met unusual people since last New Year’s Day, and they have contributed to its pages their reports of interviews that took place successfully and tales of interviews that didn’t come off, conversations with all sorts of people, including the First Lady of the United States of America, and even with the Monkeys in the Zoo; with a missionary from India and a yachtsman from the Arégentine.

O all of these interesting "[ all of whom had something to say, and most of whom said it very graciously, we now offer our wishes for a happy 1944. . To Vito Dumas Argentine yachtsman, who claims relationship ‘with Alexandre Dumas, but who is picturesque enough in his own right-he sailed from Buenos Aires to Capetown, from Capetown to Wellington, alone in a 31-foot yacht. He arrived here hungry, thirsty, and lightly bearded, after 104 days at sea, without even a radio. He spoke very little English, but people were kind to him, and he was friendly to The Listener, And there is in The Listener office now an autographed copy of a book (in Spanish, unfortunately) which he wrote after a similar journey across the Atlantic. Senor Dumas spent a few weeks here, airing his mildewed clothes and re-lining his stomach, and then he bravely set sail again in a real Wellington northerly. Months later we heard that he was safe in Buenos Aires again. Salud y pesetas, Senor Dumas! To N. C. Tritton, a BBC emissary who had come to learn, not to inform, and who spoke most guardedly of the BBC’s policies, Two War Correspondents These three were all interviewed in our issue of January 15. A week later we found ourselves talking to an old companion of "the road," Osmar White, with whom we had once sat at press tables in meeting rooms and council chambers where the names of journalists already famous overseas were carved, though we little knew then that he was to carve out his own name years later as a war correspondent in the Pacific Zone. All his experience as a journalist

has not been in vain, for Osmar White ° told us that he will teach his two-year-old daughter to read, but not to write. He-had both his ankles broken "owing to enemy action" not so long ago, but now, we understand, he is well again. Following the same calling as Osmar White was Robin Miller, a New Zealander accredited to the U.S. Command in the South Pacific, who witnessed all or part of five campaigns-Libya, Greece, Crete, Libya again, and Guadalcanal; was twice rescued by the Royal Navy from German-occupied territory; and had flown with bombing raids against Germans and Japanese. W. Bankes Amery, C.B.E., was principal assistant secretary to the British Ministry of Food. His subject was food, and he would bite at nothing else; he told us how radio was saving the food situation in England by changing the people’s eating habits by sheer per-

suasion, and doing it at top speed, to beat Hitler’s submarines. Since he left, we have had letters from Mr. Amery, seeking copies of The Listener of March 12, and copies of the photograph we had taken. A Happy New Year, Mr. Amery, and we are glad you liked the photograph. To Dorothy Helmrich, Australian-born lieder-singer of the first rank, who arrived in Wellington not knowing anyone, and was so lonely that she went to five films in her first few days there, until The Listener discovered her, and her charming friendliness, and her taste for black coffee. A Missionary To Aldine Lantis, a charming American Methodist Missionary returning from India, where she said, "the trouble is largely misunderstanding." A seaman, an accountant, and a writer of radio features was Francis Renner, who came here on the Finnish sailing ship Pamir, which was interned earlier in the war and taken over by New Zealanders, A happy New Year, Mr. Renner, should you happen to be on our side of the date line at this moment! To Michael Traub, Zionist delegate who is here seeking the support of public opinion for the Jewish national home in Palestine. "Sympathy," said Dr. ‘Traub, "is not enough." (Continued on next page) ~

(Continued from previous page) To the Monkeys in the Zoo, who appeared to our contributor "J" altogether too much like ourselves. To Rowena Meyer, who had been in Moscow, and was on her way back to America after eight years of teaching English in Soviet Russia. She found us living in "unexampled luxury,’ and said we "just don’t know what shortage and hardship can be." But then that was last July, wasn’t it, Miss Meyer? You, yourself, wouldn’t know on which side your bread was but-

tered if you came again now. And to three musicians now in uniform who were interviewed in that same issue of July 16Peter Cooper, from Christchurch, now playing to the troops "somewhere in the bush" in Australia, and Harry Aronson, a New Yorker, whom war has brought to these shores — both pianists. Also. the bass baritone, PF-C Ray Baber, U.S.M.C., who sang over the ZB’s. To two more musi-cians-Artie Shaw, swingband leader, recluse, and

Beethoven lover, who successfully fended us off, and made us feel like any American journalist wanting to get the low-down on his marriage to Jerome Kern’s daughter. We hope you enjoyed hearing Beethoven’s Sonata, Opus 111, in Wellington, Mr. Shaw. We would like to have heard it with you, though we are not quite so sure about your swing band. And Terry Vaughan, who led the Kiwi Concert Party, and told us how he had vindicated good music, and had proved that "you don’t need to cheapen it," when playing to our men in the Middle Easte Those were all the musicians-and from music we went to munitions, where we found L. W. V. Thunder, and that really was his name. Furthermore, he said he was a descendant of the family whose illustrious forebear became the hero of a current popular serial. Mr. Thunder is in the Munitions Section of the Railway Department, and his aunt has a flag that was given to the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. When Fortune Frowned Then there was Charles Edmondson, representing the paper Fortune. Mr. Edmondson was reticent. He knew what journalists were like. But didn’t you form those impressions in your own country, Mr. Edmondson? Nevertheless, we wish you good fortune, for we got a story, even if you didn’t help us with it much. An American who gave us the most important interview of the year, was

also one who had reason to know journalists. But then she knew what to do with them: a British journalist was once granted a special interview with her and thought he had an exclusive story, but next day he found that it was she who had been interviewing him, and her story was being read all over the United States. Her name was Eleanor Roosevelt, and we found her friendly, natural and gracious. Within more recent memory we talked with another traveller from the~ . Pacific-the Rt. Rev. W.

H. Baddeley, Bishop of Melanesia, who told us how the Church works and teaches and fights in the islands. And _ with Lieut.-Col. F. Baker, D.S.O., who, thanks to plastic surgery, can talk to 100 people in the street without one of them suspecting that one cheek and part of his tongue were torn away by a bullet. But that was not Colonel Baker’s claim to our interest-he_ is Director of Rehabilitation, and he is a big man‘in a big job. We remember his frankness, and the honesty

with which he talked of problems he has not solved-yet. And only the other day there were our Canadian colleagues, Messrs. Ford, Richardson and Paré, Canadian Press representatives, with whom we discussed New Zealand beer. There were also the ones who got away: L. W. Brockington, advisor of Empire affairs to the Ministry of Information, who told us to put our questions in writing and he would answer them that way. We withdrew regretfully but politely. And Gene Tunney; he had an appointment with "Mac, of 2YD," whom we had deputed to face the monster in the flesh, but we needn’t have been afraid, for the monster didn’t turn up. He did later, though, and it wasn’t his fault the first time. To these, and the others who got away, we repeat our greetings. But not without wondering why it was that the only ones who avoided us were from either the United States or Canada-there was Artie ' Shaw, who positively loathed reporters, Charles Edmondson, who ‘showed us how Fortune could frown, Gene Tunney, who simply wasn’t around except at the Press function, a most un-inti-mate affair, and L. W. Brockington, who didn’t trust our shorthand. Could there be any sort of suspicion of reporters in that North. American continent, perhaps? Or does the one big exception, the First Lady of the United | States, disprove this theory?