NEW CONSUL FOR FRANCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22845, 28 September 1937, Page 8

NEW CONSUL FOR FRANCE

The arrival yesterday of a new Consul for France in New Zealand is an event of particular interest to Auckland, where the French Consulate is located. M. Edmond Meyer, although a stranger, should quickly enter into the heritage of friendship that his predecessors here have amassed; among its notable contributors is M. Joubert, whom he succeeds and whose departure will be sincerely regretted. In general, New Zealand Consuls for France have been allowed to remain a considerable time, and this fact has been greatly appreciated here. To wish M. Meyer many happy years in this appointment has the prompting of both instinct and eagerness; this is an occasion when "the name of hope is remembrance." There is reborn a pleasant reminder—that although on the outer rim of the world, measuring from the land he represents, the home to which M. Meyer comes is not so remote, after all. Conditions have vastly changed since French and English speech were persistently used side by side in a few localities of early New Zealand settlement; then the Old World lay across a waste of waters, now it is" but a few days distant, and its thought is about these islands like a living breath. But having travelled much and lived just across the Tasman, M. Meyer knows this and can count 011 feeling at home. In turn, he can minister to New Zcalanders* need to maintain their fellowship with venerable lands.