FIVE HAPPY YEARS

Evening Star, Issue 25770, 17 April 1946, Page 11

FIVE HAPPY YEARS

LADY NEWALL'S FAREWELL BROADCAST (P.A.) WELLINGTON, April 16. Making a farewell broadcast to the people of New Zealand to-night, Lady Newall said it was difficult to realise that it was her last week in New Zealand, and that, with her. husband and children, she was, as she termed it, literally tearing up the roots of five happy years from a soil rich in treasured memories. " We have shared with you who may be listening and with other thousands of men, women and young people, the difficult and dangerous war years m this Dominion since February, 1941, when all our ideas were focused on sending supplies to the services and bombed civilians of Britain. During the many tours His Excellency and I were privileged to make to your cities and boroughs, it was of the greatest interest to us both to see your splendid organisations and their work, from the many branches of the Joint. Council of St. John and the Red Cross, the Lady Newall Guild, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.0.A., representatives of the Boy Scouts and) Girl Guides, and voluntary groups of all kinds, including those from factories, churches, colleges, clubs, the Salvation Army, the army of Land Girls, from farms and freezing works.

together with the women in the three services—all working in co-operation with the .Patriotic Committees, united in helping to the utmost of their ability the winning of the war. Friction her Excellency said, was reduced to a minimum. The will to help and to serve was there, far away though we were from the actual theatres of war. " I feel sure," she said, " that your own men and women abroad, as well as thousands of other members of the great British Empire, will long continue to be grateful for those New Zealanders, especially the New Zealand women, who worked so well to support their overseas fighting services." Indeed, it was especially to all the women of New Zealand whose teamwork in a hundred different ways she had had the privilege of seeing, that she now extended her congratulations, her thanks, and her admiration. "In our new tasks to preserve peace and the basis of that high civilisation which is our heritage,- and should! be the 'heritage of our children and' grandchildren, is it too much," Lady Newall asked, " to dream of a future for New Zealand which may include a national fulltime orchestra and a national theatre, together with the great national cathedral envisaged at Wellington, and always first and foremost the will throughout the land to give wholehearted service in a good cause? "To every man and woman, to all youth of all ages, to those in hospitals andi those in the autumn of life, especially to you all in your homes, I say not only ' Good-bye ' in its modern sense, but in the old sense of ' God be with you,' and in the words of your own song, 'God Defend New Zealand.' "