A HAPPY COUNTRY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 23 December 1922, Page 9

A HAPPY COUNTRY

DOMINION’S ADVANTAGES

Confidence in the Dominion was the keynote of a speech delivered by Sir John Findlay when proposing the toast of. the Dominion at the banquet, to Sir brand's Bel! in Wellington last week.

Sir John, in an eloquent speech, brightened with humour, enlarged upon tile influence of environment upon the New Zealand character. A French philosopher had said that even the name of a child had influence upon its character, whether the name be George Washington Smith or Ananias Smith. How much greater must be the influence of the great natural wealth and beauty, the fertility, mineral wealth, equal economic conditions, and elevated impartiality of the press of the country. Our geographical position had created an aloofness which was marked all over | the world. A country so isolated as this must have a character of its own. It could not borrow from neighbours, as it had none. The pioneers had courage and stoutness of heart proportionate to the distance they had to come and the difficulties they had to overcome. And this courage remained, however much they might discount it ,in their descendants. New Zealanders declined to lean on anything, except occasionally on the banks, and that lien, he believed, was Highly profitable to the banks. New Zealand fulfilled the test of a young democracy in the provisions made for the moral and physical well-being of the people, equality of opportunity, civil and religious liberty, respect for law and order, provision for old age, and impartiality of the administration of justice. Neither birth uor poverty were here a bar to the advancement of a man of brains and determination. We might have our internal difficulties, but the deraocrapy would emerge triumphant from its‘trials owing to the high level of average character. Sir John concluded with a reference to past Governments and Prime Ministers, and affirmed that in the judgment of the future the present Government and the Prime Minister would take a place second to none.