DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15312, 13 August 1923, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

A notable speech -was made by the Spanish Ambassador,

A Tribute to Britain.

xiiuuuooauui) Scnor Don A. Merry del Val, at the annual banquet of the London

Chamber of Commerce, when, on behalf of the representatives of foreign Powers and of the British Dominions, ho proposed the toast of "London —Capital City of the Empire." Ho said: —Is not Britain's commerce and London's trade of every kind, the nation's strongest connecting link with peoples of other lands inhabited by your own and a'lien races? Is this not the sure foundation of her relations with every foreign Power? Is not this peaceful force, which will not, which cannot, be gainsaid, the mainspring, the chief authority, of your diplomacy? British trade, and with it London's trade, is the most salient aspect of your intercourse with the world. A million unbreakable threads stretch from Britain's shores, far over the engirdling seas, crossing and recrossing, interwoven, interlocked with those spun out from other lands 10wards 'her, until we see the whole earth imprisoned in one vast golden meshwork. How many of those precious quivering strands spread out from London, or to London come as if they were the life-carrying ligaments of this great nerve-centre of the business world? Visible and invisible, who can count them? Enthroned among her bridges, her spires, her towers, her counting-houses, her tall factory chimneys, your great city, ever young in spirit, endures. And while Father Thames, at once her parent and her devoted slave, with Oiis waves kisses her feet, and upon his broad strong back bears her wealth-laden argosies, she holds those threads like reins in her masterful hands, unweatened by the course of centuries, ever weaving them in an endless cloth of gold. But 'tis good stout cloth of the best English make wherein, if, the woof be ability, the web is honesty, for none know better than we, who trade with you, the broad minds, the straight, generous, sturdy, understanding hearts to be found among those who make the fortune of London town. And valiant too I None who witnessed in August, 1914, the outbreak of the Great War can ever forget how London's sons and daughters, heroes and heroines all, sprang to the flag at the first bugle call for King and country, nor how those work-a-day, matter-of-fact, hard-bargaining citizens did and died in every clime, on field and flood, as had they been to warfare born.