INDEPENDENCE DAY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 5 July 1943, Page 4

INDEPENDENCE DAY

“HISTORICAL U.S. LANDMARK’ 1 WELLINGTON OBSERVANCE Wellington, This Daj% “To the people of the United Stated of America, the 4th day of July, or Independence Day, stands as a great historical landmark for two reasons. It is the birthday of a nation, and it is a milestone in the process of human freedom.” said Chaplain W. W. Lumpkin, of the United States Marine Corps, when speaking at a special Independence Day service in St. Paul’s ProCathedral, Wellington, yesterday. “Amid the tumult and the shouting of wars, revolutions and internal strife, again and again the clear note of freedom has sounded, to recall both citizen and soldier to the true and eternal cause which men must serve,” said Chaplain Lumpkin. In to-day’s great global war the forging out of freedom continued and had found expression in the Atlantic Charter. Scoffers had had their fling, pessimists had shaken their heads, yet the Atlantic Charter stood as something new under the sun in the way of international agreement. “So,” continued Chaplain Lumpkin, “we see the golden thread of freedom’s process leading the peoples of Britain and America .... to find and to live in the manner of a free fellowship of selfruled men and to bring the same to the rest of the earth.” A GREAT DOCUMENT Stating that few other documents had influenced mankind as the American Declaration of Independence had, the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, in an address last night, said it was a brilliant exposition of the Rights of Man. When the Declaration was signed 167 years ago yesterday a great document was given to the world. In its production and publication a great blow was struck for democracy and human progress. “We are pleased and honoured to have our comrades of the United States fighting so courageously and effectively in the South Pacific, and to have their commanders directing and controlling the campaign,” said Mr Fraser. “We consider ourselves privileged to be able to co-operate with them and sharing alike in their dangers and victories. We are glad that the whole of the people of the United States can be counted as our friends, a friendship that we cordially reciprocate. We are specially pleased that the great President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who has done so much to assist and inspire all the free nations, and who shares with Mr Churchill the leadership of the United Nations, has extended his valued friendship to New Zealand and his personal friendship to our Minister to Washington, Mr Nash. “With a full sense of the responsibilities of that friendship from that great nation, and its great President, with a full sense of our obligation to our Mother Country, to our sister Dominions, to all the United Nations, and to the cause of God and man, we express our determination to carry on the task of utilising all our resources in ou; contribution to the common cause.’ *