PRIDE IN DOMINION

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 125, 22 November 1935, Page 13

PRIDE IN DOMINION

AN INSPIRING ADDRESS

NEW ZEALANDERS' ASSOCIATION

A meeting of the general committee of the New Zealanders' Association was held this week and was well attended. This committee has continued in office for some time pending an annual meeting that had to be postponed owing to unforeseen circumstances—the death of Captain J. A. Shand, president, and the departure of other members of the executive from Wellington.

Mr. Charles Mclntyre, formerly president of the old New Zealand Natives' Association, who had been invited to accept the presidency until the annual meeting, to be held the first week in March, 1936, attended the meeting and was unanimously elected after stating his policy and outlining a programme. He stressed the point that if the association wished to make its influence felt there must be more deeds and less talk. Talents must be encouraged by giving opportunity to show worth to the public. God had given New Zealanders the best little country in the world and endowed its people with brain and energy that compared more than favourably with those of any other country. Not only encouragement was needed, but reward. If the association wanted more members, all classes must be catered for; there must be pride in local productions to see that they flourished; in this way it was made possible for manufacturers to give our own people employment. Mr. Mclntyre suggested the formation of a dramatic club, with the idea of producing plays that would not only be a means of entertainment, but would help to bring out talents in New Zealand boys and girls.

A choir of one hundred voices to be trained in choral and operatic work was another of Mr. Mclntyre's suggestions, and a debating club wasj also mentioned as being an excellent means of discussion of matters in the best interests of the Dominion. In regard to funds, he believed the association should have some object to fight for, and he was of opinion that the association should aim for a building that would be a fitting memorial to the pioneers and a meeting-place for New Zealanders for all time. The association should also have its own magazine—the mouthpiece of the organisation —to have in its pages picture, story, poetry, household, and domestic hints, etc., to give encouragement to New Zealand writers and poets. He considered New Zealanders too retiring and that there were in our midst story writers who only wanted bringing out. He instanced the success of Dr. Merton Hodge with his play "The Wind and the Rain."

Mr. Mclntyre also mentioned the feats of Jean Batten, the New Zealand girl world-famed for her flying; Grimmett, one of the best bowlers in the world, also New Zealand-born; Lord Rutherford, the scientist from Nelson; "Tiny" Freyberg, V.C.; and there were dozens of others who had made history, and hundreds who only needed encouragement. Mr. Mclntyre expressed his confidence in his own people and considered it better to hitch their chariot to a star. "If we fall, we will make a tremendous splash," he remarked, "and to my way of thinking that would be better than merely falling out of sight unobserved." True New Zealanders would fall into line with the association, not for what they could get out of the organisation,'but for what could be done to make, the Dominion what "good old Dick Seddon" named it—"God's Own Country." Mr. Mclntyre concluded his interesting address with the motto—"Ka mau tonu tatou ki a tatou ano tonga."—"We hold firmly to what we possess."