EARLY SETTLERS LOOK

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 101, 23 January 1943, Page 8

EARLY SETTLERS LOOK

AHEAD Good Out Of War

The ideals with which the members of the New Zealand Company landed on the I’etouc beach 103 years ago yesterday were liiiked with hopes for the itilure at the meeting of Ihe Early .Settlers Association in Wellington yesterday. ‘lt is not of the doings of our forebears that we think today. '.the memorial they left is well and truly built; may those who follow, build as well as ttiev,” said the president, Mr. E. I’. Wilson, in addressing the gathering. With the passing of the years, only five were present of those who had been living in Wellington in the ’forties. Those who answered the roll call were Mr. W. B. Allen, 'Miss C. A. Allen, Mrs. E. Chisholm, Sir. Mark Maxton, J.P., and Mr. J. Fenshaw. Mr. Allen, at Iffi was the bearded veteran of the gathering. Among the oldest was Mrs. E. Halley, aged 93, and together with the younger members of SO and even 70, they revive memories of 'Wellington in the ‘‘good old days.” Some of those present had travelled from Palmerston North and the South Island and one even from Invercargill.

The guests of honour wore Mrs. I*. Fraser and three officers of the United States Marine Corps headed by Major J. Griggs.

“If there is a better world after the war the sacrifices will not have been iu vain, but we will have to remember that men have duties to the State and. not merely rights,” said Mr. Wilson. In New Zealand there had been too much insistence on rights, with the result that in times of danger there had been strikes by certain misguided persons in the community. Many men would go through the war us true metal through a tire, relined by the struggle, and it would be to them that, the country would have to look for leaders, but there would be the dross also, those ruined by the war, with little mind for anything but their own ease and comfort.

“I have faith that something different, the security of the common man, will come out of the war, but it will not be achieved without hardship even when the war is over,” the speaker continued, after paying a tribute to Churchill, .Roosevelt and Stalin.