DIRECT RADIO

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1942, Page 4

DIRECT RADIO

N.Z. AND U.S.A. LINKED

EXCHANGE OF MESSAGES

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, Monday.

Direct radio communication between New Zealand and the United States was inaugurated to-day. Appropriate messages were exchanged between the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, and President Roosevelt and between Mr. Fraser and the New Zealand Minister in Washington, Mr. Walter Nash.

Mr. Fraser's message to President Roosevelt stated: "Tne inauguration of direct radio communication today between New Zealand and the United States enables me to send you a cordial message of greetings and goodwill from the Government and people of New Zealand and to wish you all good fortune in the days of stress that lie ahead. This further link will, I trust, serve to bind still closer the warm ties of long-standing friendship between the American and New Zealand peoples and will undoubtedly provide a most valuable means of practical cooperation in the prosecution of the common task to which both peoples have set their hand—the achievement of complete and lasting victory over the enemies of freedom and democracy."

President Roosevelt's message to Mr. Fraser stated: "My dear Prime Minister, the establishment at this time of a direct radio-telegraph circuit between the United States and New Zealand is another link in the ever-tightening bonds between our two countries. It gives me great pleasure to make use of this new and rapid channel of communication to convey to you personally, and through you to the people of New Zealand, the warm and fraternal greetings of American people and to assure you we shall leave nothing undone to achieve our common objective of freeing the world, once and for all, of the forces of aggression."

The message to Mr. Nash from the Prime Minister said: "I send you warmest greetings from your colleagues in the Government and from the people of the Dominion. I sincerely trust that the new service will not only promote closer relationship between the Governments and peoples of the two nations, but will also assist them materially in the present struggle for the preservation of the democratic rights and privileges which they now enjoy." In his reply. Mr. Nash said the new service heralded new possibilities for closer relations between two free countries.