Travellers.

There is an old saying that “One half of the world doesn't know how the other half lives,” but with the opportunities for travel that now exist, the right answer to that saying is: “Why not?”

This thought comes from the activities of such associations as the Travel Clubs of New Zealand through which visitors from the eastern and western worlds pass, and in passing leave with us graphic word-pictures of what is happening amongst the peoples of the countries they come from. These cross-currents of travel impressions supply an education of the best kind, for whereas most books of reference tend to become out-of-date, besides usually omitting the things in which we would be most interested, the traveller, fresh from his home land, can speak of what he sees and knows and can be questioned on the points that whet our curiosity.

The Wellington Travel Club recently had the honour of entertaining one of the most notable travellers to visit New Zealand in Dr. Kalidas Nag, from the University of Calcutta. Dr. Nag is editor of “India and the World,” and as a leader in the movement for the unification of India, and a world-traveller of wide and varied experience, was expected to bring a message that would deserve attention. In this he exceeded even the highest hopes of his hearers. His speech ranged from the music of the Vedas spoken in the original Sanscrit—the first language in which man could communicate with man—to a comparison between the countries and peoples of the modern world.

Dr. Nag is a missionary of peace and understanding amongst peoples of different races, a thinker thoroughly versed in the history of human progress, and a speaker whose eloquence tells of a mind alive to feel and quick to express the thoughts of one fit to be the friend of all the world. His visit is of more than passing interest to New Zealand. It has already made a deep impression on some of our leading writers, who were fellow guests with Dr. Nag on the occasion mentioned, and may be expected to divert at least a portion of their efforts into even more fertile fields of research and action than those upon which they are at present occupied.

Contacts of this kind serve to stimulate the sense of community of interests between one nation and another upon which it is not too much to say the whole future of civilisation depends.

Visitors like Dr. Nag are an inspiration, and as they invariably carry away happy recollections of what he described as “New Zealand's greenery and scenery,” they are the fore-runners of many more travellers whom this Dominion is only too happy to welcome.