"Principles Or Free Trip And Glory”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 1

"Principles Or Free Trip And Glory”

No Rugby player or athlete, to his knowledge, had yet seen fit to put his principles “ahead of a free trip and a dollop of glory,” said Sir Edmund Hillary when in an address in Christchurch last evening he touched on the All Black tour of South Africa and Rhodesia in 1971 and the athletic tour of South Africa this year. This worried him, he said.

“Perhaps our often-criti-cised, long-haired university types, to date anyway, have shown more moral courage and a more humanitarian outlook,” he said. Sir Edmund Hillary was a guest speaker at the annual dinner of the RiccartonHornby Chapter of Jaycees. “With blessings from the Maori Council and Mr Holyoake the Rugby tour is on,”

said Sir Edmund Hillary. “These trips, unfortunately, have an importance far beyond the playing field. “I just basically find repugnant a philosophy that insists that any coloured man—however well educated and talented he maybe—is automatically inferior even to the most ignorant and moronic of whites.

“Such tours will certainly do New Zealand’s reputation a great deal of harm in most countries and make it a little embarrassing for those of us who try to show some interest in the nonwhite peoples of the world,” said Sir Edmund Hiiiary. Sportsmen were frequently New Zealand’s best ambassadors and representatives overseas, and as such they had a considerable responsibility.