MESSAGE FROM MR DEAKIN. MELBOURNE, August 26

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 19

MESSAGE FROM MR DEAKIN. MELBOURNE, August 26

A lengthy message from Mr Deakin appeared in the leading American papers on Thursday last, in which, after expressing 'his overwhelming sense of obligation to the people of the United States for generously despatching their proud fleet of "battleship, the Prime Minister declared that the invitation sprang solely from the earnest desire to deepen their mutual sense of kinship, sympathy, and solidarity. lie added: "Nor can their answer appear insufficient when it is remembered that these very sentiments and the profound impulses allied to them have out of many separate State© built up your own great Republic, stretching from ocean to ocean, enormous in range and development, and toith prospects that are illimitable. From the same sources and through similar channels here have come the same powers shaping our sundered - colonies into one Commonwealth, and enabling us to evoke a strength, equal to our vast opportunities, ffhe Mother Country itself, in whose giant cradle- of liberty both your freedom and ours was nursed, is meeting the strain on her far-reaching Empire by elaborating, slowly but surely, these new federal precedents which are the portent of the free union of the free dominions, each growing stronger as they grow together. In the meantime we are realising the riches of a natural and national relationship. We look instinctively to the Motherland first, •od confidently to you Americans who are

nearest to us in blood , in character, and ;in .purpose. It is in this spirit and in this hope thai Australia welcomes with open hand and heart -the coming of youT sailors and' of the flag, which, ' like our own, shelters a new world. Unde-i thJ6 symbol of vital union we present an accord between the English-speaking peoples. May it beget a perpetual oon-" t ..cord between us, thus making for the ; .fulfilment of the advent of the promise of ' 'peace on earth and good-will toward men.' "