ANZACS IN AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 May 1925, Page 8

ANZACS IN AMERICA.

ASTONISHING POPULARITY PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFTO. VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS. The popularity of Anzacs iu the Untt« ed States, and the growing friendiineaf between the United States and Britain were among the points emphasised in an address given by Mr. H. N. Holmes at the Wellington Rotary Club luncheon, A former resident of Wellington, Mr. Holmes is now a well-known figure in New York City. “I believe that there is no more worthy ambition for any man,” Mr. Holmes declared, “than to cement the good relationships between both great branches of the English-speaking people: the great Republic and the great Empire. It is perfectly astonishing the popularity of the Australia and the New Zealander in the United States. X really believe that every American soldier returned as an ambassador for Australia and New Zealand. They seemed to have found wonderful qualities in common—lots of virtues and lots of vices. And the result has been that the story of Anzac has swept over the country from end to end, and there is no people who better understand the Australian and New Zealand attitudes — and prejudices, if you like—than the people of the Republic. And there can be no doubt, I think, that one of the real basic principles that will govern politics in the Pacific Ocean xn the next generation will largely be this fundamental friendship between the great Republic and these growing nations in the Southern Pacific ”

THE AMERICA OF TO-DAY. It was extraordinarily difficult, ever, pointed out Mr. Holmes, to understand America until you had been there. We frequently thought of America as an Anglo-Saxon country, but sh« was no longer that, in the old sense. The migration that had poured into New York City, for instance, had included a million people from Southern Europe. Walking down Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth Street to Thirtieth Street, between 12 and 1 o’clock, one hardly heard a word of English; it was nearly all Hebraic. Thirty-six newspapers were published in foreign languages; and the circulation of theM thirty-six foreign papers was now ai great as the eleven published in English “And we are always inclined to forget,” observed Mr. Holmes, “that prac tically the whole of the emigrants whe have come from Europe have come witk a grudge against Europe. They wanted to leave Europe for a new chance—and to that is largely attributable the present policies of the United States. But despite that, and now that the Irish question has been settled—we all hope permanently—l really believe there was never a time in the history of the Republic and her relationship to Europe when the men in responsible positions were so friendly disposed to British people, British hopes, and British aspirations.” (Applause.) America, declared Mr. Holmes, was gradually, and with all the force of a great idealism, moving not toward a' place of isolation, but towards a place of co-operation in the forces of the world. And anyone who thought on the problems of life, or examined the tendencies of national life all over the world, must feel that the ocean of the future was the Pacific basin. Speaking recently in the House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain had said that big as were the problems of Europe, they paled into insignificance beside the problems that loomed up in front of some of our Dominions. “There is no one,” declared the speaker, “who does not realise that there is a great undercurrent of vital connection between America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. lam certain of this: that you, perhaps,out here, did not quite understand what happened as a result of the American emigration law. It was not so much that Japan objected to her exclusion, as she objected to the way in which it was done. I was present at a luncheon at which a distinguished American came back and said this—and this indicates what is happening: ‘For the first time in history, the face of Japan was turned from Europe; for a second thing, it healed overnight the breach between China and Japan, and Japan felt that her future destiny was inescapably linked with China. Then for the first time in modern history, the face of Japan was turned towards Soviet Russia, and China also opened her doors to the emissaries of Soviet Russia.’ ”

Mr. Holmes added that he was one of those who felt that in the problems that were looming up, and that were to be forced on the attention of the peoples who fringed the Pacific, the one basic policy for the well-being of the world and the nations that lived in it, must be the mutual understanding between the two great peoples —the people of the Republic and the people of the Em pire.