THE ALL BLACKS SAY FAREWELL TO ENGLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ALL BLACKS SAY FAREWELL TO ENGLAND.

DURIXG the past few weeks our readers have been following the All Blacks as they have toured the British Isles. With them we have wandered down in lovely Devon and Cornwall, we have journeyed into the highlands of Wales, we have crossed the Midlands, and lingered in the lowlands of the eastern counties. We have crossed the border into Scotland, and have steamed across the Irish sea to Ulster and the Free State.

And now, in a few days the All Blacks Mill be taking their farewell of the old Motherland. Some, it is said, will probably return at an early date; but even so. not one of them will be able to take his leave without a feeling of sadness. No man or woman, or boy or girl, who lias been Lorn in the Dominions and has been fortunate enough to visit the Homeland, enjoys leaving it.

Perhaps this is partly due to the friendships one makes there. People say sometimes that the English folk are stand-offish and shy with strangers. This may be true of some, no doubt; but many of them are the soul of kindliness and hospitality right from the first. And when they do give their friendship, it is friendship of the truest and most lasting kind. In every corner of the British Isles, by this time, our All Black countrymen will have found new friends, and it will be hard to leave them.

But there is something more than this —something about the old Homeland itself that grips and holds you. It may be that so much of what we read and are told belongs to the Old Country. The stories in our magazines and hooks, the songs we sing, the pictures we see, the history of our race, oiir own aunts and cousins, it may be —all belong to old Britain. How can we help but love her? And then, the country itself, with its old dwellings and churches, has such an air of peace and homeliness, which somehow our. newer Dominion, has not yet secured. For example, look over your collection of Christmas cards and notice how many of them show pictures of old English farmhouses. Who would think of drawing a New Zealand farmhouse as a sign of peace and good will?

And so the All Blacks will take their last train journey in Britain with sad hearts, as many another Kew Zealander has done. How swiftly the trains seem to go, as they bear us on our way to the seaport. On we go, through green fields, past sleepy villages with their comfortable looking inns with names like "The Bose and Crown," and the "Merry Month of May," and the "Hit or Miss," and the "Jolly Wagoner"— and we have no time now to stay at any of them. And in a couple of months now it will be spring in England, and the lanes will be abloom with daffodils, and bluebells, and violets; and the bare trees will put on their mantle of delicate green; but we cannot wait —we must say goodbye.

It seems most probable that the All Blacks will take their departure from Liverpool, the great gateway to the Western World. In the beginning of things, the Mersey Estuary must have given little promise of becoming, as it has done, the second port of Britain. A muddy, tidal inlet, witfli shifting sand bars ever forming at its mouth, it bristles with difficulties for shipping. Yet, by industry and skilful engineering, these have been overcome. Powerful dredges are constantly at work upon the sand banks, while the rise and fall of the tides is met by a system of "wet docks." in which the great ships enter basins at high water, and lock-gates are closed behind them, keeping the water at a constant level until the ship is ready to move out.

The big ocean liners leave from the Prince's Landing, which is really a huge floating raft half a mile long

and 80ft wide—large enough to contain many substantial buildings and places of amusement, and a wide roadway along the waterfront, along which the people of the town are fond of taking their daily walks in order to see the great steamers of the world come and go. For 200 years Liverpool has depended chiefly upon shipping for her prosperity. To-day she is a city of over 800,000 people, while another 150,000 live in the sister town of Birkenhead, on the other side of the Mersey. Liverpool has many important industries, but shipping—especially the handling of cotton for the great mills of Lancashire—is still the most important of all: though in these days a considerable proportion of the cotton trade goes through to Manchester by means of the Manchester Ship Canal. And so at last, the All Blacks, surrounded by friends who have tra-

veiled from all parts of the British Isles to see them off, and by crowds of Liverpool folk who come down to see the liner depart, make their way on board, laden with trophies of their victorious tour, and with gifts for those back in little New Zealand. The mooring lines are cast off. Down the Mersey they go, past miles of crowded docks, past the busy dredges at work to keep the channel open, and out to open sea along the track of the setting sun. As the dusk deepens the lights spring up along the shore and pass astern —the last lights of Old England.

And as they fade from view, they seem to wink a message. "Farewell and God-speed," they seem to say; "whether ye return to my shores again, or whether ye stay for ever in your own Britain of the South, Ye are my sons bound to irie by ties which shall never be broken, while life shall last."