LORD BLEDISLOE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25135, 17 March 1947, Page 6

LORD BLEDISLOE

BROADCAST TO N.Z.

“MOST LOVABLE PEOPLE IN WORLD”

“It is 12 years since my wife and I left New Zealand—the land of the most lovely scenery and the most lovable people in the world. Our deep affection for it and for them is unabated. New Zealand will always be our spiritual home,” said Viscount Bledisloe in a national broadcast last evening. “In the interval has occurred the Second World War. While deploring this Dominion’s serious losses and sympathising deeply with its bereaved, we have shared to the full your pride in the outstanding achievements of your fighting men and your admiration for the gallant leadership of the -great general who is now your GovernorGeneral. Your war-time output of food and of war material was no less a source of our wonder and admiration. “Our present visit to your hospitable shores is inevitably a short one and our personal contacts must needs be very few. Our hearts are full of gratitude to those who have sent us messages of welcome and of continuing friendship. “The occasion of our present visit is a goodwill mission from the Royal Agricultural Society of England, its premier agricultural society, of which I was president in 1946, to the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand, and through it to the whole farming community of this Dominion, whose average standard of husbandry and of food output per head of population is, under normal conditions, not exceeded anywhere in the world. I have just fulfilled a similar mission to the Royal Agricultural Societies in the six states of the Australian Commonwealth.

Gift of £10,000,000 “New Zealand’s recent gift of £10,000,000 sterling to ease the crushing financial burden of the Old Country occasioned by the war is a truly magnificent gesture of friendship and of practical sympathy, which has touched us deeply in common with our fellow countrymen in the Old Land. It will cement even more closely the imperishable solidarity of our two countries. We realise that it means a big sacrifice for a relatively small country like New Zealand to make. “Great Britain, although faping up to her unprecedented austerities with characteristic courage and endurance, is indeed in a sad plight to-day. She is not only (like this Dominion) underhoused; but she is underclothed, underwarmed (through lack of fuel), and above all underfed to an extent quite unparalleled during the last 100 years, and anything more that New Zealand can do out of her surplus resources and, las shipping facilities become available, to relieve her crying necessities, will receive the undying gratitude of my compatriots, ‘the old f&ks at Home’ or, shall I say, the folks at the old Home. They don’t approach their kinsfolk overseas as mendicants. They are well able to pay full value for any food—especially meat, butter, and other fats—that you can spare; commodities which are sadly lacking to-day in the shops of Great Britain. And please don’t think that we fail to appreciate what New Zealand has already done to feed us, both during the war and since. No country has a finer record in this respect. Our dwindling food resources and the poor prospect of any material improvement during the next 18 months can alone justify this appeal for still further food supplies, if circumstances permit. "Our anxiety is not that Britain will starve; but that her productive efficiency will'show a marked decline in the early future unless her workers are better fed and their food ration better balanced. Normally, as you probably know, four-fifths of the breadstuffs and one half of the meat required for Britain’s population of 46,000.000 people come from overseas and although the proportion of homeraised breadstuffs has during the war years been considerably augmented it nas been at the expense of her meat animals and of the fertility of her soil through excessive over-cropping with cereals. Not onlv has the productive capacity of her farm lands been thus materially decreased: but the truly Arctic conditions prevailing in Britain during the last two months—quite unprecedented in human memory—has rendered it impossible to get on the land for winter cultivations with a view to spring sowings of food crops, and this year’s harvests are bound in consequence to be far below normal. So rfiuch for our very grave food problem at Home. Plea for Two Virtues

“Pardon me if, as a former Gover-nor-General and a very real friend, I make bold, in these anxious days of post-wax- reconstruction and readjustment, to advocate the exercise of two virtues which in the past have carried the British race and your own brave pioneers through well-nigh insurmountable obstacles to successful achievement. They are faith on the one hand and vision on the other. By faith, I mean faith in God, faith in the continuing greatness, prosperity and progress of the British Commonwealth and Empire, faith in our own country (especially one so highly favoured by nature as yours), faith in our fellow countrymen (however wayward or unreasoning they may at times appear to be)\ and, last but not least, faith in ourselves and in our own sure destiny, if we will but remain true to our great traditions and our high ideals. And let our faith be buttressed by vision—vision which can look bteyond the obstacles and frustrations, which appear just now to confront us at every turn, to a brighter future of unbroken peace, greater mutual trustfulness, and co-operative progress. “International unity of purpose and of aim is rightly sought after, as an essential condition of future world peace. But unity among the nations is conditioned by unity within the nations and the avoidance of all domestic strife. In the councils of the world we can only speak with full authority and confidence, if we are united among ourselves, and in this grave crisis and turning point in the world’s history are prepared to place the interests of the nation and the commonwealth above all selfish considerations. Mutual distrust and lack of vision are far more likely to wreck civilisation than even the atomic bomb. Never was it more true than it is to-day that ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’ In this respect New Zealand can confidently and hopefully blaze the trail of true progress, as she has in many other ways in days gone by. Interest in Waitangi “In conclusion, let me confess that in addition to my agricultural mission, my wife and I have one other purpose—and a more selfish one—in coming on to New Zealand from Australia. That is to revisit Waitangi, the indisputable-cradle of New Zealand’s nationhood, the birthplace of the sovereignty of the British Crown in these islands. We are anxious to see the many improvements which have been executed on this historic estate with the generous assistance of your Government and under the wise direction of the Waitangi National Trust Board. “Waitangi not only marks the inception of a truly remarkable national history, of which no New Zealander need ever feel ashamed. It witnessed the signing of a sacred compact (which must never be broken) between the leaders of a high-souled, brave and chivalrous native people and New Zealand’s first Governor as representing the sovereign of a people which, throughout the centuries and in face of vicissitudes of fortune, has led the whole civilised world along the path of ordered progress, liberty and justice. Waitangi has always been to me and my wife a source of inspiration and of abounding hope for the future of your beloved country. May you all share that inspiration and that hope, for on the horizon of the world’s history a great future awaits you.”