GOODWILL GESTURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 65, 19 March 1943, Page 3

GOODWILL GESTURE

'MAORI GUTS FOR PRESIDENT AND MRS. ROOSEVELT (P.A.) Auckland. March 18. Gifts of a symbolic nature to the President of the U.S.A, and Mrs. Roosevelt will be handed to the United States representatives at a Maori regatta on the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia Pa on Saturday, when about 500 American servicemen are to be th*e guests of King Koroki and Princess Te Puea Herangi. The gift to the President is a carved inkstand, and that for Mrs. Roosevelt a large fruit bowl on a pedcste’. Explaining the significance of the gifts. Princess Te Puea said that with them would go a scroll asking the

President to reserve the use of the inkstand for the day when he would employ it to write news of the defeat or the Japanese. In the same way the fruit bowl, a symbol of plenty, was to be used to indicate the return of normal conditions after the war. The gifts were an expression of gratitude of the people of New Zealand, both pakeha and Maori, for the help and protection being given by the United States. To indicate this figures supporting the bowl of the inkstand represented both 1 pakeha and Maori.