OVERSEAS LEAGUE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 146, 23 June 1933, Page 8

OVERSEAS LEAGUE

EMPIRE TRADITIONS. HIS EXCELLENCY'S SPEECH. NEW CLUBEOOMS OPENED. I The official opening last night of the new clubrooms of the Overseas League in the Queen's Arcade was performed by his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, who was accompanied by Lady Bledisloe. A welcome to their Excellencies was extended by the president, Mr. John Alexander, C.M.G., who referred to the striking manner in which Lord and Lady Bledisloe had won the esteem of every class and creed in New Zealand. With every great religious force in the community they had allied themselves, and had set a great example by their actions and their utterances. Speaking of the work of the league, the president said its endeavour was to promote and preserve in peace time the wonderful bond of comradeship between British subjects that existed during the war. Stability of Monarchy. Declaring the rooms open, his Excellency recalled that the day was thu 23rd anniversary of the coronation of the King and the foundation of the Overseas League. "It is difficult to speak of His Majesty the King," said his Excellency, "without calling to mind the almost universal crumbling of monarchies that has taken place during and since the Great War, and the fact that not only is our British monarchy still intact, but it is more firmly embedded in the affections and loyalty of His Majesty's subjects in all parts of the Empire than ever it was before." (Applause.) One of the objects of the Overseas League was "to maintain the power of the Empire and to hold to its best traditions." It mattered little what course the British people took in working out the progress of the Empire, and incidentally the world at large, as long as they held fast to those traditions, the traditions of service before self, of scrupulous honesty in all their actions, of faith in God and their own destiny, of pride in race, and a consciousness that their material advantages, whether of brain, manual dexterity or wealth, were held in trust for others and primarily for the community in which they lived. Comradeship Needed. "If we want to develop and. maintain national solidarity," said Lord Bledisloe, "we have to be perpetually on our . guard to fight any sectional or class separatism within our borders—a separatism that is inimical to* national and Imperial solidarity. I say this because we are entering a new phase of national organisation and, as I believe, a new rearrangement of industrial conditions. Personally, I have no fear whatever of any such reorganisation as long as we realise that we are all in the same boat and that if one part of the crew goes overboard we are not likely to reach the land. The element of comradeship in deed as well as word is going to be the solution of many of the difficulties that face the world to-day."