Twenty Years After

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 671, 16 May 1952, Page 14

Twenty Years After

‘TO mark the twentieth anniversary of the death of the New Zealand statesman, William Pember Reeves, 2YC will broadcast this Friday, May 16, at 8.0 'p-m., a talk on Reeves by the historian R. M. Burdon. Reeves was one of the few distinguished New Zealand politicians trained for a political career, says Mr. Burdon. His father was a member. of the House of Representatives, and he himself grew up in the very odour of politics. Entering Parliament with a knowledge of law, history and journalism, his qualifications as a legislator were not to be despised. Mr. Burdon gives a picture of the first appearance of Reeves in the House. His modesty, becoming to a young member speaking for the first. time, did not last; "at his first allusion to Atkinson he stopped purring and began to scratch." There is an account of Reeve’s work for the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which was to make him famous far beyond his own country, and his writings, particularly The Long White Cloud, are examined, Hungarian Nocturne \V HEN the Russians moved into Buda- | pest a few months before the end of the recent war the people hailed them as deliverers. "Never mind all the) suf-'fering-no light in the cellars, no water

no food, pea killed by bombs ‘and starvation-there is great secret rejoicing," says Elizabeth Kovacks, a refugee from Hungary since 1950, describing those days in two talks which she has recorded for the NZBS. Between then and May, 1951, when the transfer of "superfluous inhabitants of the capital’ began, there was a great change, The first talk in Twilight in Hungary, in which Mrs. Kovacks tells the story of the change, will be heard in the 2YA Women’s Session at 11.0 a.m, this Friday, May 16, and from 4YC at 8.0 p.m, on Friday, May 23. ;