LORD BURNHAM'S REPLY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1925, Page 6

LORD BURNHAM'S REPLY

PRESS AND PARLIAMENTARY

VETERANS.

"On behalf of the delegates of the newspaper Press of the British Empire, who are your guests here to-day, I return you our sincerest thanks for tile exceeding kindness of your welcome," said Lord Burnham, in reply. "I confess that I have heard it said that the only return that we have made thus far has been to bring you the worst weather on record for the time of year, a ilood not only of words but of water. We take is as a special compliment that we are here in this fine Parliament House, which, when it is completed, will be so worthy an ornament of your sea-girt Dominion, and of the British traditions o( free Parliamentary Government which it embodies and bounds on. It is a compliment to the newspaper Press of the whole of our ocean Commonwealth. Throughout this island, with its exquisite scenery and awe-inspiring wonder-works, with its fertile pasture and its forests and ferns and flowers, with its British sheep and its Jersey cattle, endowed above all with the patriotic and determined character of your people, we have been received with the most delightful hospitality as friends and fellow-citizens wherever we went. Macaulay's clas»ical figure of the New Zealander standing on the ruins of London Bridge and gloating over the remains of a vanished civilisation will no longer have any terrors for British journalists. We have only had a Press view of the Dominion, but that is not our fault, for we much wished to stay longer, and we much regret we have been unable as a body to visit the South Island. A few of our members went to Christchurch, and have returned with grateful hearts. It has been-the greatest pleasure to have been welcomed and accompanied by the representatives of the newspaper Press of New Zealand, and especially, if. I may single out three names of able editors and directors, by Sir George Fenwick, by Mr. Harry Brett, and Mr. Selig. We are very proud of the fame and reputation of the veterans of the New Zealand Press, which they and their predecessors have created in the short space of sixty years. As a Parliament man myself of forty years' standing, 1 may be allowed to pay the tribute of our gratitilde and veneration to the great heroes of your Parliamentary annals. I recall the name and fame of Sir Julius Vogel, at once able editor and adventurous statesman, who by his foresight and imagination drew this country out of. the torpor , and quiescence which followed on the Maori wars, and enabled your population to bo multiplied five-fold in twenty years. I recollect meeting Richard, commonly called 'Dick,' Seddon, the inaugurator of your bold experiments in social reform, when ho attended Queen Victoria's ■ Jubilee; the stalwart figure, whoso ebullient energy and transparent patriotism so greatly impressed the public mind in those Victorian days, and who did so much to arouse the common faith in and enthusiasm for the Empire, which has carried on to the end of the greatest war in human history. Last, but hardly least, I came frequently into pleasant and intimate intercourse with the late Mr. Massey, and on behalf of all my colleagues I wish to express our deep sympathy with the. Parliament and people of.New Zeafand- on the death of a great statesman, .who.se staunch and steadfast service to the Empire means almost as much to us as it did to you. I well recollect what he said in 1924—'the only way in which Britain can get back to prosperity is by utilising the waste spaces in her overseas possessions, thus widening her markets and building up strong communities of British people. The only hope-1 can see is for industrious men and women to come out to the Dominion and make homes for themselves and strengthen the markets of the Motherland."

ALL MAY YET BE WELL

"So say we all, let ua help one another and all may yet be well with Britannia's mighty but scattered brood. In peace you take .more of our goods per heai of population than any other people in the world. In war you sent us 10 or 12 per cent, of your whole population to fight for tfte existence and honour of the Empire, and no finer troops were ever put in the field, as I j saw them ipyself in training on Salisbury Plain and in tho field in the northern sector in France. What was so creditahle was the way you maintained their quality and their efficiency after Galliptili and the Somme. I hope that it may be possible to make up to some extent for your terrible losses by sending you out contingents of our boys and girls, carefully chosen and adequately trained, to develop still further the primary industries of their fair and smiling land, smiling even through its tears, as we have seen, and smiling for ten. months of the year. I cannot see why this Dominion should not extend the system of juvenile immigration on the approved lines of Flock House, if they stand the test, as I am assured they will, together with a further use of the nomination system by further bodies such as the churches and the chambers of commerce to increase the potency of your youth and to reinforce the frame of your community. Speaking to a committee of the British House of Commons nearly a hundred years ago, Edmund Gibbon Wakefield, who can truly be called one of the founders of the British Empire, said prophetically:— "New Zealand is the fittest country in the world for colonisation." Those words ring true to-day now that bo much has been so well colonised. Your loyalties to the Empire have spoken for themselves- You know no new connection and no other flag. You want to share the future as you have shared the past of the British Comomnwealth. and I know of no country better fitted to raise a British breed of staunch, reliant, and independent men and women living their lives and doing their worth with the widest possible diffusion of happiness and comfort, without class hatreds or almost withont class divisions, in union and accord with the Old Country, under all the fertilities of your southern skies lam told that when the children of New .Zealand write Home with a capital II (hey mean Great Britain. I only hope that Home may always hare that double meaning, which denotes a double but not. a divided loyalty to-your own unmatched Dominion and to l-he Mother Country of you all."