CLOSER RELATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 25, 29 July 1940, Page 9

CLOSER RELATIONS

BROUGHT BY AIR LINE

CALIFORNIA AND NEW ZEALAND

NEAR NEIGHBOURS

NOW

From the president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Mr. J. L. Van Norman, have come greetings to Wellington business men and the hope that through the commencement of the Pan-American Airways flyingboat service closer relations and a still better understanding will be built between California and New Zealand. The president of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, Mr. R. H. Nimmo, has reciprocated the good wishes.

"With the taking off of the PanAmerican airplane' from Los Angeles this, afternoon," wrote Mr. Van Norman, writing on July 12, "New Zealand will be brought within four days of Los Angeles, and you good people down under the Southern Cross will become near neighbours of your friends here in California.

"We come from the same race, speak the same language, and have a common j heritage, and this new air service of j 1940 brings the two corners of this great Pacific Ocean of ours into close proximity. "This new air service should aid us to become much better acquainted than ever before, and in the months and years ahead, when the blessings of peace shall once more reign throughout the world, we hope that we may progress together m ail lines of human achievement. "As each plane returns out of the sky to the south-west and comes to rest at this first port of call in America, we shall look for messages of friendship from you, our friends and neighbours down below the Equator, aiyl we also extend to you a most cordial invitation to visit us." A STRONG LINK FORGED. "The arrival of the Pan-American airplane from Los Angeles has welded another strong link in the chain that binds us to our American cousins," Mr. Nimmo wrote in reply. "We are indeed proud of what has been achieved by the people of our race who not only speak the same language but have the same basis of justice and the same spiritual ideals, both characteristic of the democracy that we cherish and the very existence of which is now challenged.

"The linking up of New Zealand with the U.S.A. by your highly efficient air service comes at a most opportune time and I think it is- safe to say that the English-speaking peoples of the Pacific feel that we stand at the threshold of the dawn of a new era that calls for a united front of such interests in the Pacific."

Mr. Nimmo, after referring to the friendship and hospitality extended to him by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce on his visit to America eighteen months ago, said that it gave him great pleasure, on behalf of the Wellington Chamber, to reciprocate heartily the kindly greetings extended.

"It is our earnest prayer that peace will soon be restored and that we will continue to enjoy the liberty and freedom that we so greatly treasure throughout the British Empire, particularly in the Western Hemisphere," his letter concluded. "Let us therefore confidently march together in a crusade destined to lay the foundations of a greater Christian civilisation and a better and more tolerant world."