RETURN TO LAND AFTER WAR

Southland Times, Issue 24593, 15 November 1941, Page 8

RETURN TO LAND AFTER WAR

GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S SUGGESTION (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, November 14. “It is my earnest hope that when this war has been won and when the foundations of a just and lasting peace have been laid, we may see a widespread return to the land, not only here in New Zealand, but in the homeland and throughout the British Empire,’ said the Governor-General, Sir Cyril Newall, speaking at the official luncheon at the Metropolitan show today.

Discussing the return to the land Sir Cyril said he felt that one of the underlying causes which had led, if not to the war, at least to the uneasiness of the mechanical age, was that so many human beings had seen and knew so little of the land itself—the land which had bred them and to which they owed so much. The farming community in any land was always a stabilizing influence, perhaps because their closeness to nature saved their sense of ultimate values from many of the prevalent distortions. The work farmers were doing was of prime importance to the Empire’s war effort. He knew they were faced with many difficulties, but he knew also that they would meet those difficulties with the same spirit of determination and grit as enabled the early settlers of Canterbury to triumph over their early hardships.