FORMER U.S. CONSUL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19443, 31 October 1925, Page 3

FORMER U.S. CONSUL

xN NEW ZEALAND AGAIN LIKE COMING HOME Mr D. F. Wilber, formerly United itates Consul-General for New Zealand, who arrived in Wellington, xia San 1 rancisco, confessed in an interview: “I feel just as if I was home again now that I am in Wellington. Here I have a host of friends and it was quite easy for me to feel as if I was coming home when I booked for New Zealand.” Mr Wilber is accompanied by a personal friend, Mr W. S. Whipple, of New York, one of the leading basines in that city. They left for Roto•ua last Wednesday. “Mr Whippie and I are very old friends,” explained Mr Wilber, “and we were talking about New Zealand one day. He said, ‘ I think I’d like to go there, from what you say about it.’ I said, ‘Very well, go, and I’ll go with you. I can assure you a warm welcome from kindly people who mean what they say’; and here we are. When we have done Rotorua we’ll go down to the Palmerston Show. I would not miss that and the renewal of old friendship*? and seeing familiar faces there for anything.” Now that he had returned to his; home State of New York and was out of public life he was “leading a life of indolence.” ‘.’Summer time,” Mr Wilber said, “the family and I spend up in a little place that I have in the woods in the State of Maine, quite close to the Canadian border. The rest of the time I spend at my home in Oneonta, Otsego County, New York. 1 have led a fairly active business life : and now it is my Indian summer.” Speaking of trade and industry ' in America, Mr Wilber said they were » in quite a flourishing condition every- . where, so far as he was informed. The • country, taken as a whole, was very • prosperous. Confidence was well es-1 tablished and the volume of business I this fall was expected to be the heavi- 1 est recorded. When the recent visit of *he Amer- I (can fleet to Australia and New Zea-1 tend was referred to, Mr Wilber said: ’‘You might not have seen much of the , good effects of that visit in our papers. I but you can take it from me that all i thinking people of America were deeply impressed by the cordial recep-* tion given to the fleet in Australia. They, too, did not say much about it at the time the fleet was in these parts but I know, and have the best of reasons for knowing, that Americans at home highly appreciated the kindness shown to the fl»*et visitors of every degree. That feeling will do an immense amount of good in bringing the great English-speaking peoples closer together. It is absolutely necessary for the peace of the world, League of Nations or no, that those peoples should know fend understand one another, for the peace of the world lies *in their hands. Speaking as one. what nation or nations dare gninsav them?” During the conversation reference was made to the Wilber Cup. This massive example of the art of the silversmith was given to the Mantawatu A. and P. Association to stimulate interest in the Friesian breed of dairv cattle. It was a memento of Mr Wilber’s sojourn in New Zealand as con-sul-general. “It was rather funnv about that cup,” he steid. “Frank Lethbridge was president that year and he said to me ‘Before you go. we’d like something to remember you by—a little cup or something.’ I replied. 'You’ll get no little cup from me before I leave.’ He looked surprised: then I added, ‘But if you wait until I get back home 11l send you one from there.’ That’s all there is to it. I’m glad they like the cup. It gftve me more pleasure. I’m sure, to give it than it gave *hem to receive it.”