FAVOURED COUNTRY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 240, 11 July 1928, Page 14

FAVOURED COUNTRY

NEW ZEALAND REQUIRES NO BOOMING

PRINCE OF WALES RECALLS HAPPY MEMORIES

The Prince of Wales retains the happiest recollections of his visit to New Zealand eight years ago. His Royal Highness showed this plainly in a speech at the New Zealand dinner in London in May. “I am very grateful to the High Commissioner for his very interesting speech on the present economic situation as regards New Zealand and the Old Country, and also for his kind words about myself,” he declared. “The chief guest at your last dinner was Mr. Amery, and at the one before you had my brother, the Duke of York. Both showed their appreciation of your very kind hospitality by visiting New Zealand within a year. (Cheers.) Ido not know whether your invitation to me to-night is in the nature of a hint that it is about time I was back there again myself, but I am afraid that, although the spirit and the flesh are both of them willing I have other plans in view at the moment which will prevent this happening in the very near future. I shall have to content myself with memories, very happy ones, of my first visit. . h “My brother and I have compared notes of our two different trips,” he proceeded. “We have compared our programmes and our experiences, and I must say that in most cases we covered both in the North and the South Islands very much the same ground. Comparisons are odorous, but, when we compared notes, naturally small differences arose, and one I noticed particularly concerned the geysers of Rotorua. Not only from what my brother told me, but from the newspaper reports, the geysers played up very much better for my brother than they did for myself. (Laughter.) “Then again we compared notes, and I told my brother that the New Zealand Government had not provided him with one of those very slight, very peaceful, and short industrial disputes that happened in New Zealand. That was excluded from his programme. I told him that he had missed a good deal: But I had to assure him that I had never handled any of your officials so roughly as he, or maybe the members of his staff, treated the Town Clerk of Nelson, for, if we can believe the reports, he was literally pushed into the sea.” (Laughter.) “Then Mr. Amery has been to New Zealand. I have read of his trip, and I hnve read some of the admirable speeches he has made. I have also read that he climbed your highest mountain. (Laughter.) I could tell you stories and incidents —some of them serious, some possibly amusing—that happened to me those eight years ago. I could talk to you on the subject of the recent development of the Dominion, but from what the High Commissioner says I do not feel that at this moment New Zealand is in want of ‘booming.’ (Cheers.) “I wish sometimes that New Zealand was not quite so far away. If it was not quite so far I might know it almost as well as I know Canada. I made the suggestion at the 'Canada Club dinner last winter that the people of Great Britain should, if they can do it with their own means, and, if they cannot, they should be encouraged to, do so by other means — step right over and see the Dominions for themselves, even if they do not mean to settle there. If they see the Dominions in the right way and come back they are very good agents for the Dominions. There is a scheme which carries out in practice the ideas I have often advocated. There has been recently a .very successful tour of public school boys to South Africa. They are to go to Canada this year, and I hope that a tour to New Zealand and to Australia is contemplated for next year. (Cheers.) I envy those boys. I think they are very lucky to have this great opportunity. You cannot go away from this country too young. They will have .an opportunity of really learning and getting down to bedrock. “With the advance of aviation,” concluded His Royal Highness, “who knows that one of these days I might not be able to fly to New Zealand? Anyway, if that does not come in my lifetime, the fact that I cannot fly will not stop me making every effort to return. (Loud cheers.) I always have a very warm place in my heart for New Zealand.” (Cheers.)