P.E.N. CENTRE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 239, 4 July 1940, Page 7

P.E.N. CENTRE

Annual Meeting Of New Zealand Members

Members of the New Zealand Centre of the P.E.N. met recently in Wellington for the annual meeting at which matters of interest to writers were discussed. , ~,-v The current issue of the.l.E.N. gazette, a quarterly brochure issued only to members,. was adopted in place of the annual report. It contained reports of the international conference of the I’.E.N. held in New York in 1939, at which Miss N. E. Coad was the official New Zealand delegate. At this conference writers agreed on’ the following resolution: ‘•Each of us will endeavour, by every effective means, to reach the consciences of those who live behind the barriers of the regimes of force and to reawaken in them the notion of human ideals. We will endeavour also, by all means . in out power, to consolidate the pacific coalition of all those peoples who would strive to arrest the progress of evil and intimidate the perpetration of aggression. ...” Two other international conferences had been postponed on account of the war. The seventeenth international congress was to have been held in Stockholm Late last year, and the 1940 conference at Mysore, India, has been postponed indefinitely. This year New Zealand writers had been busy with matters in connexion with the centennial. Three new members, Mr. Robert Gilkison, Mrs. Enid B. V. Phillips and Miss Catherine Keddell, had l>cen elected. A I’.E.N. library had been formed, consisting of autographed

copies of members’ works, and it was hoped that as the years passed it would form a valuable collection. Arrangements had been made for it to be housed temporarily in the Central Public Library, Wellington. The election of officers resulted as follows: President, Mr. Alan Mulgan; vice-presidents, Mrs. Mona Tracy, Miss Eileen Duggan, Miss Jane Mander, Dr. G. 11. Scholefield, Messrs. James Cowan, C. R. Allen, Johannes Andersen, C. A. L. Treadwell, and G. G. Stewart; executive, Mrs. Isabel Andrews, Messrs. O. N. Gillespie,. C. Stuart Perry, C. R. LI. Taylor, A. W. Reed. C. A. Marris and P. A. Lawlor; hon. secretary, Mr. Eric Bra dwell; hon. treasurer, Mr. George Joseph.