WORK YOUR WAY AND SEE THE WORLD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 7

WORK YOUR WAY AND SEE THE WORLD

O you'd like to see the world? But your purse isn’t at all well filled, you’ve no fourfigure balance in your London bank-and that worries you? Well, if you are free to go, there’s no, need to wait for either, according to Jocelyn Hollis, of 3YA. Just back from England, she told The Listener the other day that if you’re prepared to work your way you can move about with very little and see twice as much. Miss Hollis strongly believes also that young New Zealanders should see something of the world-that it’s only by seeing other countries that they will see their own in perspective. The Listener heard these opinions with some respect, for Miss Hollis had just mentioned that after working her way across the Atlantic "in the vilest weather," she arrived in England with about thirty shillings. The Listener caught up with Miss Hollis in Wellington a few hours before she left for Christchurch to take up her old position in charge of the session Mainly for Women at 3YA. She was still very much on the move, and it was only by talking with her in short intervals between other appointments that we were able to get a picture of her trip. We’d been left waiting, as it were, for half an hour on Waterloo Bridge before she came back to pick us up for a quick trip to Holland or a run through the BBC news room. Miss Hollis left New Zealand late in 1950 for a six months’ look around, and further broadcasting experience if she could get it, She went first to Canada for her first sight of the prairie in mid-winter-six feet of snow with the temperature always 40 below, no rain, only snow, and the air sharp and clear. In Vancouver she gave broadcasts to schools, spoke in the women’s hour and on trans-Canada links. Then a cable arrived from the New Zealand Government: Would she attend a course at United Nations? So off she set across the continent by Greyhound bus. ‘ "People from many countries attended the eight weeks’ course at UN," Miss Hollis said. "There were morning lectures on the work of UN, and in the afternoons we were attached te the division with which we had most in common. I was with the Radio Division, both at Lake Success and in the new Manhattan building." Miss Hollis sat in on meetings of the Security Council, where officers of the Radio Division note excerpts from speeches for Your United Nations. While in New York she broadcast in a Women’s session-one of the biggest in America-discussing the course she was taking at UN and answering questions about New Zealand and especially about che Maoris. The session was conducted by Mary Margaret McBride, who had heard Miss Hollis address a conference of about 400 American women on radio and television. She Crossed in the Cafeteria Three months in New York and, officially, time was up. But just when she should have been starting for home Miss Hollis heard that the American Council on Student’ Travel was hiring ships which had brought displaced persons

from Europe for the return voyage. "The idea was’that young university students could get to Europe that way at reduced rates," said Miss Hollis. "Then I heard that if you were really broke you could work your way. So I cleaned the cafeteria and ladled out the stew. It took us twelve days to cross the Atlantic in the vilest weather." Awaiting Miss Hollis in London was an invitation from the American Friends (Quakers) Service to attend a three weeks’ seminar in Holland on the causes of war. Several of these meetings are held every summer-last year the others were at Berlin and in France and Norway. Miss Hollis thought the seminars a fine idea. The Quakers, she said, felt that if students of many nations are brought together in this way they will "get things off their chests" and go back home with a-better understanding of other nations’ points of view. She found feeling was very strong among the European students. Twelve Years of "Making Do" Miss Hollis saw a great deal of Holland and had a week in Paris, but visits to the London East End gave her some of the most enduring impressions of her travels abroad. She was able to look at the Lansbury housing settlement in Poplar against a background of the slums that remain. In one old workhouse she saw 600 derelict men-and _ this, she stressed, was only one of many such institutions in this one great city. Speaking about those she calls "the little working people" in the large cities, she said she had talked about them in giving some impressions of Britain in a BBC Woman’s Hour broadcast. "I was speaking only about these little working people who have difficulty in making ends meet; can’t buy off-rationed foods and seem to be tired, shabby and grey

-looking as though they had had twelve hard years of it," said Miss Hollis. "And much as I admired the ‘Britain can take it? attitude, I wondered whether she must go on taking it, whether people must always have to ‘make do.’" When Miss Hollis got home after that broadcast a reporter was waiting for her, and both she and the BBC got a heavy mail about what she had said. The BBC repeated pagts of the broadcast in its Sunday n’s Hour Digest, ‘and again in Reaaing Your Letters, when letters received both for and’ against her point of view were quoted. Dispassionate Reporting New Zealanders know the BBC best, of course, through the news bulletins broadcast by NZBS stations, and for about six months Miss Hollis worked in the BBC news room. She was impressed there by the care taken in preparing the bulletins as news came in from all over the world. ; : "Every fact in every bulletin is checked and rechecked, and the bulletins are all fact-there’s no opinion," she said. "The news room is manned twenty-four hours a day by a news editor, two duty editors (home and overseas), two chief sub-editors (home and overseas), a copy tester, a lead sub-editor who handles the big story of the day, and about eight sub-editors, each with a typist to whom he dictates. his story. There’s also a big news information room-it’s _ staffed twenty-four hours a day, too-from which any fact, no matter how small, can be checked. "When a sub-editor has finished his contribution to the news-and he might work over it several times-it goes to a chief sub-editor who makes up the bulletin. The chief sub takes the greatest care to see that no- story contains

so much as a single word suggesting a point of view. Then the story is approved by a duty editor, "Before the announcer gves on the air he reads through the bulletin, which is checked for pronunciation-a girl in the news room is the referee on this question-and in the studio a sub-editor sits with the. announcer to decide whether any ‘item should be shortened or dropped to make the bulletin fit the time allowed." On her off days Miss Hollis sat in on the preparation and broadcasting of Woman’s Hour. A big staff works on this session, she said, and little recorded material is used-almost everything is broadcast live. Before the session goes on the air those taking part have a run through the programme, then take a light lunch together. This puts everyone at ease, so that there is an amazing difference between the run through and the actual broadcast.