AUCKLAND ROTARY CLUB.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 134, 8 June 1926, Page 16

AUCKLAND ROTARY CLUB.

At yesterday's lunch meeting of the Auckland Rotary Club the president, Mr. W, Coltman, occupied the chair. Amongst visitors present were: Messrs. Trevor Gilfillan (Peking), H. H. Sawyer (East St. Louis, U.S.A.), W. C. F. Thomas (Melbourne), Professor J. MacMillan Brown, and Mr. C. E. Jones (Christ - church), Messrs. A. Waterworth and D. Calder (Wellington), M. D. Richards (Sydney), W. G. Reid. F. H. Masters. and A. M. Purser (New Plymouth), and W. W. Timewell (Whangarei).

In connection with the community sing to take place in the Town Hall on Wednesday next, six members agreed to act as collectors.

The president announced that the lion. secretary, Mr. A. J. Hutchinson, was leaving the next day for a holiday trip to Honolulu, and expressed the hope of all members that the trip would be an enjoyable one and of benefit to his health. Rotarian Wilfred Manning sang "The Gallants of England," and Rotarian Barry Coney "Waiata Poi." The speaker of the day was Professor J. MacMillan Brown, who chose as his subject, "New Zealand." The professor, in predicting a great future for this Dominion by reason of the imagination and enterprise of its people, drew an analogy from other countries. There were three insular countries skirting continents, Britain, Japan, and New Zealand. They ran across, not along, the lines of latitude. Countries which lay along the lines of latitude possessed no variety of climate or character. Again, an island involved maritime instincts, and these made for adventure and enterprise. Menaces to be guarded against in New Zealand were Socialism and the yellow peoples. Dealing with the latter, the professor described the Japanese as the most forceful, most purposeful, most ambitious people known to history. They were out td rule the earth. Lack of wealth prevented this realisation, for Japan was a poor country. But alongside was China, the greatest potential market in the world for goods, and possessing vast unexploited mineral wealth and a people whose capacity for work was unequalled by any other race, and who properly fed and armed were great soldiers. Once successful in its efforts to gain control of China, Japan could undersell even the United States with its mass production. During his brief discourse the speaker interspersed humorous anecdotes, and at the conclusion was accorded a hearty vote of thanks.