CHINA WAS THE GO-BETWEEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 508, 18 March 1949, Page 28

CHINA WAS THE GO-BETWEEN

| Muriel Lester’s Visit To N.Z.

¥- O my aunt Muriel Lester who brought me to China." That dedication in the late George Hogg’s book I See a New China was the only introduction many of us in New Zealand had to the English social worker prior to her arrival here a few days ago. And for .her part, until this, her first visit to the Dominion, the only New Zealander she really knew was one she had met in China-Rewi Alley, with whom George Hogg worked. I was keen to hear how she had been instrumental in George Hogg’s going to China, whsre up to his untimely death he had played an important part in the

Chinese Industrial Co-operative Movement, and Miss Lester told how just as she was starting out on an tour overseas | her nephew had asked if he might ac|company her. He had enough money for a single boat ticket to Shanghai via America and he could hitchhike across the States while she was Jgcturing there. She was only too glad to have his interesting company, and the journey was made. While in America he became interested in a co-operative farm for sharecroppers in the cotton fields. Then Hogg and Miss Lester were invited by Dr. Kagawa, the Japanese Christian leader, to visit co-operatives in Japan and Hogg spent some time studying this work before he rejoined his- aunt, twho went ahead of him to China, In China George Hogg found: his life work. When Miss Lester came to continue her journey through India and backeto England, her nephew said he could come no further with her. He could not leave the Chinese people then suffering from the Japanese invasion, and he never did. There was much more to be learnt about Hogg and his work with the Bailie co-operative training schools, but time was short, for Miss Lester had one -of

her innumerable lecture engagements, and there were other questions to be put, since her China associations were not the sole reason for my. interviewing this lively, energetic Englishwoman. Prior to her arrival two friends had written to me about her. One reported that she was George Hogg’s aunt; the other spoke of her as a worker for international understandihg-in the course of which activity she had travelled widely, as a friend of Gandhi, and as a co-founder of Kingsley Hall, a London East End community centre. Miss Lester’s work in the East End began about 1903 and 12 years later she and her sister started Kingsley Hall in ‘the borough of Poplar, the building being given by their father in memory of a

brother #vho had recently died. There opportunity was provided for educational, social and religious activities. After World War I, Miss Lester became an alderman in the Poplar Borough Council and there also was able. to work to improve the lot of the people in the district. In 1933 she resigned from her work at Kingsley Hall and since then .she has ben travelling around the world lecturing for international understanding and peace. This work has taken her to India almost every three years over a _ considerable period of time, and _ has brought her into touch with many prominent Indians. Gandhi she met in 1926 and when he came to England in 1931 he stayed at Kingsley Hall. On one visit to India she met an Indian just out of prison. He was wearing the unpretentious clothes of a poor man, a spare dhoti over one arm and a small bag containing his possessions in his other hand. In face and bearing, however, he was impressive. A few weeks ago Miss Lester stayed with him in his magnificent palace, for that man was Mr. Rajagopalachari, who is now Governor-Gen-eral of India. Other Indian leaders, too,

ae ae knew in the days when they were sufferifig for their political :activities. She recalled visiting Nehru in gaol. "The weather,.was hot and-hornets were buzzing about the cell-and Indian hornets have arsting like a rapier thrust. I asked him if he didn’t find the hornets a nuisance and he replied that when he was first imprisoned he used to kill them, but the more he killed, the more that came, so he declared a policy of non-violence-if they kept their distance he wouldn’t kill: them-and that seemed to be working," ‘he said. Miss Lester spoke favourably of the progress India and Pakistan were making, and said she expected them to make, a major contribution to the world, "though not just yet," as their own tremendous problems were pre-occupying them most of the time. A most healthy augury, however, was the change in the attitude of students. Even when she was there in 1946 their own problems were taking their whole attention and their interest in the outside world was negligible, but on her latest trip a few weeks ago interest in the outside world had. been awakened and they were looking for means to express a desire for international goodwill. : Psychologically Backward Besides RNer many visits to India, and her five trips to China and Japan, Miss Lester has on several occasions toured the United States and Europe and now has visited Australia and New Zealand and she had this provoking comment to make upon trends she had noted after recent tours. "In countries like Australia," she said, "and even in England, where war suffering was less severe than it was, for instance, on the Continent, we have slipped far behind. these other peoples in psychological and spiritual development. Things which would knock us to pieces they can walk through untouched. We get all worked up over little petty things; they can pass tise by. We are still»in the adolescent stage wanting to hit’ back at injustices; but they have gone beyond that." By way of. illustration, Miss Lester told of a Norwegian who had suffered torture under the Nazis for four years, and after the war had joined a YMCA team to. work among the Nazis now in the concentration camps over which they had once ruled. When he first arrived two of the Nazis made haste to escape from his class. They had been responsible for some of the worst tortures inflicted upon the Norwegian and to them his only purpose of returning could be to revenge himself upon them. That he hoped to reform them, not revenge himself upon them, was so foreign an idea to the whole Nazi teaching that they could not for some time comprehend it. From such people in the war-stricken lands we had much to learn, said Miss Lester, and unless we made the effort through imagination with prayer, we were going to suffer disappointment because we could not meet them on com- |

mon ground.

P.

M.