SIR JOSEPH COOK

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 1 October 1927, Page 9

SIR JOSEPH COOK

SECRET OF LONDON’S LIFE PROBLEMS OF PERENNIAL INTEREST. PRESENT CONDITIONS BEST. London, Aug. 24. Before Sir Joseph Cook, the former High Commissioner for Aus ti alia, left for Australia ho had some veiyj complimentary things to say of the Home Country and of London. “1 do not liko leaving London behind me,” he remarked. “I cannot understand the mind of the man who does. I know of no finer civic spirit. Even your controversies about your bridges and your churches are evidence of the keen spirit to be found. To an outsider you present a problin of perennial interest. I have done my best for my country while I have been here, and when get back to my nine young Australian sons and daughters it will be a very pleasing duty for the rest «f my life to interpret to them and to the rest of Australia the mind of this England as I have seen it and known it.

‘‘London/’ continued Sir Joseph, “with its marvellous activities, is the one city whose interest no man can ever exhaust, and the longer you are here the more there is to see, to know and to experience. London to me is one of the marvels of Government m the world to-day. When you consider that on a piece of country not many miles across you have nearly 9,000,000 people presenting every problem—transit, light, water, drainage lor health and cleanliness —all this strikes me with , fresh wonder every time 1 think of it. You do things so efficiently. You do big things in a big way:” Sir Joseph then went on to speak of England as the heart of the ±/m--pire. “I am not one of those,” he said “who believes that this Old Country is decadent. I have seen no sign of it. On the contrary, the way this Titan is bearing its burden is to me a source of intense pride. England is not deficient either in statesmanship in business, and in executive ability, or in the other factors which minister to the efficiency of a modern civilised nation.

“In my opinion the present condition of affairs is the best that there has been seen, and there arc even better days in store lor Great Britain and the Empire. I have seen many readadjustments during the past six years. The last of them are containecd in the definition of Imperial status at the recent Imperial Conference. “Now that our dominion status has been defined—it was not obscure before to some of us—it becomes our duty to work for those things which make for unity. It still adds to the strength and prestige of the Empire to speak and act together as far as is reasonably possible.”