Some Impressions From A Sister Dominion

MR. GIBSON: Our speaker will be introduced by Mr. Harry Oldham, United Kingdom Trade Commissioner.

MR. OLDHAM: "Mr. Gibson and fellow members of The Empire Club of Canada, it gives me great pleasure, and I regard it as an honour, to have been asked to introduce to you today His Excellency T. C. A. Hislop, C.M.G., High Commissioner for New Zealand. Mr. Hislop, as your invitation cards indicate, was born in New Zealand and was educated at Cambridge University, England. He served in World War I which was, as we have agreed at the luncheon table, "our" war and the "great" war, and later returned to New Zealand where, for fourteen years, he was the Mayor of Wellington. I hope that during his successful years in the tenure of that illustrious office, his path was not as stony or as thorny as is sometimes found by our Mayors in Toronto. Mr. Hislop is a barrister by profession and became a diplomat in August, 1950, when he came to Canada as High Commissioner for New Zealand. There are some in the world today, particularly in Canada, who are more than a little hesitant about using the word "Dominion", and it is, therefore, all the more courageous and commendable of Mr. Hislop to come today to The Empire Club in Toronto, and so courageously address you on "Some Impressions of a Sister Dominion." I commend to you heartily His Excellency T. C. A. Hislop, C.M.G., High Commissioner for the Government of New Zealand in Canada."

MR. HISLOP: It is with a feeling of very real pleasure that I find myself here as your guest today. It is now only some seventeen months or so since I arrived in this country to take up my duties as High Commissioner for New Zealand in Canada. In that comparatively short time it has been my good fortune to journey to many parts of the country, in fact I have travelled, by rail and road and a little by air, some 30,000 miles in Canada and in the course of these journeyings I have visited many towns, large and small, and met many thousands of Canadians. They, in their role of patient listeners, have heard me make many speeches which they have professed, I hope with sincerity, to have enjoyed, while I have had the opportunity of making friends and I hope of doing something in my sphere to draw still closer together in the bonds of friendship the people of your country and mine and so to make still stronger the spirit of unity within the British Commonwealth and Empire.

These visits have all been to me full of interest; I have learned much of Canada and its virile people and experienced in full measure the kindliness and hospitality of Canadians.

The meeting today, however, I look upon as a special occasion, because I come among a gathering of men who, by the charter of their organization, are united in a club founded for a single purpose and with a common aim, with which my country is in full and complete accord the aim and purpose of strengthening the bonds of unity within the Empire. I use the word "Empire" not only because that is the good old word used in your charter, but because whether you use it or the more modern "Commonwealth" or "Commonwealth and Empire" the ideal and the purpose is the same. In the pursuit of that high purpose we can move forward inspired by the story of our own beginnings, by the march of events down the centuries, by the courage and determination of our forebears, so that we move with resolution and with faith into the days and the years that lie ahead.

In your faithful pursuit of the charter of your organization to make strong and unbreakable in all the stresses of national life the ties of Commonwealth and of Empire, you have the inspiration of a proud and long tradition. Cheap and ignorant and sometimes willfully malicious gibes have been made at what was known as the British Empire, but I would venture to say that at no time in the world's history was there such an advance in the mental, moral and material welfare of mankind as in the days of the Pax Britannica. When we look back over the past and from it take our guide and inspiration for the future, let us pay our tribute to that land of Britain, cradle of those ideals of human liberty which are of the very fibre of our being. We can think with pride of the men and women who, down the centuries, set forth across the oceans and made the beginnings of your country and of mine and who nurtured and developed the spirit of freedom and of human enterprise in those far flung lands that made the British Empire and Commonwealth.

In that storied past, as in all human affairs, there are, maybe, dark pages, but, all in all, it is a great and glorious story of the progress of mankind, of "freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent", and finding its ultimate expression in the parliaments of the free nations of the Commonwealth.

Let us then ever remember the land and the people, the land whence spread the ideals of true democracy and ordered freedom, the land that never did, nor shall, waver in adversity and that time and again by the enduring courage of its people held the pass against the forces of tyranny. We remember with pride the part we of the Commonwealth and Empire played in those dark days of stress, but let us never forget the land of Britain, the land and people that stood steadfast in the very forefront of the battle and whence came the clarion call of the man who matched the dread hour with his dauntless courage Winston Churchill.

Your Society, the Empire Society, works to retain the inspiration of the past and to nurture the growth and development of its ideals to meet the needs of human progress, so that we can go forward together as a united British Commonwealth and Empire in the van of human progress. Your Society here in Toronto is active and vigorous. You will, I am sure, be glad to hear that in my country we have similar societies, each vigorous and active and growing in strength. I am satisfied that through the activities of these various societies, and through the circulation of that admirable journal "United Empire" we each appreciate the better the extent and diversities of the Commonwealth and Empire. We appreciate the better both its strength and vast potential strength and the many problems it faces. Above all, I think we realize that we are members each of a great family and while each works freely in its respective sphere, it is in basic unity that our strength and our salvation lies. But with all this be it remembered that our family unity is not designed to make us an isolated unity among the nations. Far be this from our aspirations. On the contrary, our family unity can make us far the more effective to work side by side with the freedom loving nations of the world to safeguard and to develop the spirit of ordered liberty and the material progress and happiness of mankind.

I have told you with what pleasure I am here today. I regard it as a compliment to my country that its representative should, on such an occasion as this, be invited to address you. But I think it is due to you, and may be of interest to you, that I should tell you a little about that part of the British Commonwealth which is known as New Zealand. It is possible, indeed probable, that some of you are by no means certain where New Zealand is. I am fortified in my belief in this possibility by some amusing experiences I have had in Canada. I have been told on some occasions when I have tested the knowledge of some Canadian friends that New Zealand was part of Australia. One paper once announced me as the Aussie High Commissioner; one Chairman announced I had for 13 years been Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

The other day a friend took me to a fishing club and told the Manager in advance that he was bringing the High Commissioner for New Zealand. The day after my arrival my friend told me the manager had said to him in great astonishment, and in reference to myself, "He (i.e., myself) talks quite good English". Well, New Zealand is not part of Australia. It lies 1,200 miles from Australia to the East across the Tasman Sea. It is only 100,000 square miles in area, roughly the same as Great Britain, and is only one fortieth the area of Canada. But it is a land of surpassing beauty with every variety of scenery, mountain, lake, fiord, thermal, rivers and wide and fertile pastures. With no extremes of climate, temperatures of 75-80 in summer and 50-45 above, and not below, zero in winter and with an ample rainfall. Gifted thus by nature and with the industry and skill of farmers the farms of New Zealand are among the most productive in the world.

We are the world's greatest exporters of dairy produce, butter and cheese, and the second largest producer of wool in the world. From New Zealand comes half the butter and cheese that goes into Great Britain from all over the world and more meat will go from New Zealand to Great Britain this year than from the Argentine and Australia combined. We have our local industries and we have our sports and our amusements. Our rainbow trout fishing and our deep sea sporting fishing are not surpassed, if indeed equalled, anywhere.

Amidst all this beauty and productivity we are not unmindful of our obligations as a sister nation of the Commonwealth to which we are intensely proud to belong. Our two million people are 90% descended from pure British stock and when the call to arms came the response was immediate. In the first great war out of a total male population between the ages of 20 and 46 of 250,000 no less than 117,000 served with the armed forces overseas, suffered 60,000 casualties of whom 17,000 were killed in action.

In the last Great War out of the entire male population between the ages of 18 and 45 no less than 67 out of every 100 joined the armed services, while 10,000 women served in the forces. When the menace of Japan came a Home Guard of 125,000 was formed while 150,000 joined the Emergency Precaution Service for civilian needs. We suffered in the armed services 36,000 casualties of whom 12,000 were killed.

I should not leave these few words about my country without a reference to its earliest inhabitants--the Maori. Some 100,000 of these brown skinned fellow citizens of ours dwell among us in amity and complete equality today. They take and have taken their part in peace and in war service overseas in our national life. They are a superior race which has given us some men and women distinguished in public affairs, in the church, in academic life and in every day activities.

I should like to tell you a short story, the truth of which is vouched for by a very distinguished man of earlier days, in connection with the chivalry of the old Maori warrior.

At one time after the arrival of we whites in the country, through certain differences a war broke out between the Maori people and ourselves. At one stage a considerable force of Maoris were beseiged in their fort, or "pah" as it is called by their people. After the seige had been progressing for some time without any success on our part, our people ran short of food and ammunition. The situation was ideal for the Maori to break out and raise the seige. Mark, then, the astonishment of our Commanding Officer when the Maori chief approached under a flag of truce for a parley--the parley was in these words,--The chief said--'We hear that you are out of ammunition and short of food. That would mean that the good fight would end. We have plenty of ammunition and food--let us give you half, so that the battle, which we so much enjoy, can go on".

I have mentioned to you that the Maori has given us some men distinguished in public life; of one I will tell an incident. He was a scholar a magnificent speaker, either in English or in Maori, and was the Minister for Native Affairs some years ago in the Massey Government. I was present at a St. Andrews Night dinner, an occasion of great significance to the Scots and the descendants of Scots. To our surprise this Maori Minister, Sir Maui Pomare, arrived to represent the Government at the gathering. We were a little astonished that one who had, as far as we were aware, no Scottish blood in his veins, should be present on the occasion. However, in his delightful speech he put all doubts at rest--he said this, "You may be astonished that I, a Maori, should come here to represent the Government on this occasion, but I assure you that the blood of Scotland flows in my veins. I am certain of it beyond doubt through the records of my family, handed down from generation to generation, and I know from these records that the blood of Scotland flows in my veins because one of my immediate forebears once ate a Presbyterian minister". Of course, the process of assimilation is less drastic than apparently it was in the long ago.

But I must not weary you with overmuch talk about my country. Let me rather for a moment say, in all humility, a little about my impressions of your great land. Your size is immense, your wealth and your actual and potential natural resources beyond all calculation. Your population is seven times ours and ever growing. All these things harnessed to a vigorous and resourceful people envisage a great nation. But with all these great material assets something more is needed I believe, and that something more you and we and our Commonwealth do share. It is the ideal of the dignity of man, man not as a mere cog in a state machine, but man as an individual with the inalienable human right to use in ordered freedom his God-given attributes of mind and spirit and body. A belief in the right of man to use his gifts not as a tyrant but in a spirit leavened with a sense of justice and the rights of others so that in the end one day the ideal of the brotherhood of man may become a reality.

It is this spirit more than anything else, more than the ties of material interest, that has held the Commonwealth and Empire together through all the stresses and strains of national life and it is on the strength of this spirit and ideal that our common safety over the years ahead depends.

You here in Canada are, I believe, perhaps half of British stock. But you are enriched by the culture and civilization of ancient France and you have among you many whose ancestral ties are with other lands. But all are one in the basic ideal of ordered freedom and belief in God. And so comes from diversity an added strength marked by the proud and honourable name of Canadian.

The British Commonwealth is a family of sister nations united under the symbol of The Crown and a beloved and Honoured King and Queen. We are bound by the common ideal of ordered freedom. We have proved our faith and strength in the great wars when our blood has been mingled to save our ideals and our way of life. The trials and stresses of war have brought us ever closer together. Danger unites.

But let us so shape our national lives that when the dangers go and the darkness recedes and days of real peace come once more, let us ensure that ease and comfort do not lead us into sloth and forgetfulness. Let us keep in the forefront of our thoughts the basic ideals that united us, let us remember our past, let us meet one another and really get to know each other as members of a family and so preserve the unity that has kept us through the years and amidst all the dangers that have beset us. Let us ever be vigilant and ready if need be to show the "metal of our pasture".

And now let me end by using the words of a great British sailor, one of that long line of men who played so great a part in the story of our national lives down through the centuries. He kept the faith and the code and his name is a shining light in the long record of heroic sacrifice.

I think of Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Royal Navy, a great Englishman whose memory we cherish in New Zealand and mark by a perfect piece of simple, lifelike statuary done by his wife and kept always floodlighted at Christchurch in New Zealand. As he lay dying of starvation with his comrades in the frozen wastes of Antarctica with failing strength he penned these immortal words:--

"We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we know we took them; things have come out against us and, therefore, we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last . . . Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions, which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale".

And so let that sublime message of courage and mutual helpfulness give to us of the British Commonwealth and Empire an enduring determination to help one another, to stand in unity in peace as in war and so with the sister nations of the free world move forward together, under God, to the reign of human freedom and justice among mankind.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. D. H. Gibson.