NATIONS OF THE PACIFIC

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19804, 21 May 1934, Page 2

NATIONS OF THE PACIFIC

NEW ZEALAND'S PART. By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, May 18. An appeal to New Zealanders to recognise the urgent importance of their country’s influence in the councils of the Pacific nations was made by Bishop West-Watson at Dst evening’s meeting of the League of Nations Union. The Bishop declared that New Zealand must take a place of leadership in th 3 Pacific and assist in the direction of the Eastern renaissance that was now so evident in the affairs of the world. “It is no small privilege to be here, set in the Pacific, where very surely the destiny of the centuries to c-.ne is to be vorked out,” said the Bishop. “We are here with all the wealth of a wonderful national life, and in close fellowship with a world-wide commonwealth of culture. Are we to be a distributing station or merely a receiving station? I am sorry when I hear criticism by those who call England ‘Home,’ but at the same time I recognise the fi zt that there is an imperious call to New Zealand to realise that it has a mission and a destiny of its own in the councils of the Pacific nations; that it must develop its own genius and make its own adventures. To avoid a reproduction in the Pacific of the horrors of Europe under bloodstained international strife as the Eastern renaissance goes on, we must appeal to a nobler patriotism rnd nationalism than ever Europe has known. New Zealand has given noble proof of courage and fortitude on the field of battle. Can New Zealand not give proof of a no less noble courage in striving for fellowship and mutual understanding among Pacific peoples? “The work which is being done by the League of Nations Union and by the Institute of Pacific Relations Is done with the object of interesting New Zealanders in New Zealand’s growth as a nation, not for the purposes of self-preservation or of self-aggrandise-ment, but for her leadership of the Pacific nations towards something finer and more enduring in the realm of fellowship an' internationalism.”