DUKE PRAISES NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 24

DUKE PRAISES NEW ZEALAND

‘4MOST BEAUTIFUL PART OF THE WORLD” fTROM OUR OWU CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, December 5. The Duke of Devonshire, Dominions Under-Secretary, who visited New Zealand last year, was the guest of the New Zealand Group of the Overseas League at a sherry party. • He was welcomed by Mr W. J. Jordan, High Commissioner, and Lieutenant-Colonel E. Lascelles, chairman of the group. Lord and Lady Bledisloe and many New Zealanders were present. Mr Jordan, introducing the Duke, described him as a friend of New Zealand and referred to their constant association due to his high position at the Dominions Office. “I shall ask him to tell us what he thinks of our little country so far away,” Mr Jordan added. “I shall never forget as long as I live my warm welcome to New Zealand or my impressions of that very beautiful country," the Duke said. “It is the most remote in miles of all Dominions, but so far as we in the Dominions Office are concerned there is none closer and none easier to work with. So long as you are represented in London by Mr Jordan I know that will continue to be so.” Referring to the work of the Dominions Office, he said that it involved discussions and transactions with all the Dominions, and in the last two or three years it had also included the task of administering Newfoundland and the High Commissioner territories in South Africa. It also had frequent transactions with the nearest in mileage of all Dominions (Ireland), and he wished he could say that relations were as easy and comfortable with that Dominion as with New Zealand. Conditions had greatly improved under Mr Malcolm MacDonald’s guidance, and he hoped that they would improve still more, “New Zealand is far the most beautiful part of the world I have ever seen,” continued the Duke, “and it is one of my hopes that my duties here will allow me to go there again and pay a more extended visit.”