LORD AND LADY BLEDISLOE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21423, 15 March 1935, Page 12

LORD AND LADY BLEDISLOE

CIVIC FAREWELL AT WELLINGTON THOUSANDS UNABLE TO ENTER HALL PRIME MINISTER AND MAYOR PAY TRIBUTES (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) WELLINGTON, March 14. Representatives of every section of the community assembled in the Town Hall to-night on the occasion of the civic farewell to their Excellencies Lord and Lady Bledisloe. The hall was packed, and thousands unable to gain admittance listened outside to the speeches by means of loud-speakers. The speakers were the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes) and the Mayor of Wellington (Mr T. C..A. Hislop), who presented Lord Bledisloe with an address from the citizens of Wellington and the residents of the surrounding districts. The address was accompanied by a small watercolour reminiscent of the district, and was enclosed in a casket of New Zealand woods. When their Excellencies came to New Zealand, said Mr Hislop, much was expected, for Lord Bledisloe was known as an eminent man of great scientific and scholastic / distinction; but those expectations had been exceeded many times, and no one ever vacated an office more honoured, more respected, or more beloved than their Excellencies. New Zealand owed them a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid.

Mr Hislop announced that Lord Bledisloe had consented to have a portrait painted in England for permanent housing in the National Art Gallery here. Mr Forbes, in a eulogistic speech punctuated by applause, said that no matter where one went, from one end of the country to the other, their Excellencies' name was spoken of with the greatest affection. "When one looks back on the time of their arrival and remembers how things have been very, very difficult during the period they have been here, one realises how much they have done to encourage a spirit of optimism when the clouds looked dark," he said. His Excellency's Reply

"The address which you have handed me on the eve of my departure from your hospitable shores and the speeches to which I have listened on this platform have touched me so deeply that I crave your indulgence in my attempt to acknowledge them," said his Excellency. "I cannot adequately express either our gratitude to. or our affection for, the kindly inhabitants of this loyal Dominion, and especially the people of all classes in this its capital city, among whom we have spent so large a proportion of our time during my term of office, and I shall not attempt to do so. "Suffice it -to sav that nothing could exceed your steadfast, loyalty to our niuch r loved Sovereign, wlwc representative I have been here for flic last five eventful and anxious years, your unswciving attachment to the land of vour forefathers, and your unbounded friendliness to ourselves. Your overwhelmingly generous appreciation of r.uch services as we arc deemed i.o have rendered while sojourning amongst you cannot fail to bo intensely gratifying to us. But I would beg of you to remember that at the best we have but done our duty, and the fulfilment of it has fallen far short ol our hopes and ambitions. The Task Undertaken "On being sworn in on arrival in this city exactly live years ago I gave vou one undertaking only. viz.. that we would do our best to identify ourselves with vour lives and interests. This f felt to be our prospective duty. I gather, Mr Mayor, from your address that you and your fellow citizens are good enough to consider that this undertaking at least has been fulfilled. If it has, -I have but to add that instead of being a duty it has afforded us the most supreme happiness of our lives. , "You New Zealanders—pakehas and Maoris alike—are curiously unaware of some things that you ought to know. One of them is that you have a greater variety of beautiful scenery than any country in the world and that, if duly exploited and advertised, your tourist traffic ought to be your most lucrative industry—a source of immense wealth as well as of aesthetic and spiritual inspiration. Another is that you are the world's most lovable people. "It is indeed your amiability and tolerance rather than our merits which you should appreciate and' see reflected in your all-too-generous valedictory encomiums. Your references to my wife I desire to endorse. Without her sunny comradeship and never-failing inspiration, my task would have been indifferently discharged. Your loyal message to his Majesty shall certainly be delivered, corroborated by our own unvarying experience throughout the Dominion. Your loyalty to the Crown is robust, universal, and unchallengeable. Let me add that his Majesty was much touched and gratified by the cordial and generous welcome accorded to his son. The Dominion Praised "This is not the occasion to assess in detail the qualities of your people, your natural endowment or your future prospects as a nation and as a partner in our great British Commonwealth of Nations, whether industrial, social, financial, ethical or cultural. But this I can say and say with confidence as my own settled conviction after a quinquennium of meticulous study and observation of your country, its resources and its potentialities—that I, for my part, have no qualms regarding its future prosperity, happiness, and progress, provided that you are blessed for the' next decade—which should open up for you a new era of confident progress—with wise and farsighted statesmanship, sound public and local administration, productive efficiency, generous educational enlightenment, and a growing sense of national solidarity and mutual interdependence. "I take this opportunity of saying in the presence of the Prime Minister that my relations with my Ministers, founded upon the most perfect frankness, have been throughout my term of office most cordial. My successor. Lord Galway, a man of high character, ideals, and traditions, will I hope, enjoy both from Government and people the same measure of friendly goodwill which has made my task so easy and pleasurable.

"The influence on the standard of life of a modern democracy and on its ethical outlook of an incorruptible and intellectually endowed judiciary and press is immeasurable, and in these respects no part of the overseas Empire is better equipped than New Zealand. The standard of achievement of your judges and magistrates and of your press is a valuable national asset which in your best future interests I trust may never be lowered from its present high plane. "We have travelled far and wide