ISLAND MISSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 69, 23 March 1933, Page 12

ISLAND MISSIONS

ADMIRAL BLAKE'S TRIBUTE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, February 9.

At a missionary luncheon a few days ago (says the "Baptist Tribune"), Rear-Admiral Geoffrey Blake, Fourth Sea Lord, gave a breezy talk upon "Peace-time Work of the Navy in the South Seas."

The Eev. Keginald Bartlett, presiding, said it was one thing to be kind and quite another to go out of your way to be kind. He could .personally testify that Admiral Blake "went out of his way to be kind to me, in relation to Samoa, and through me to the L.M.S."

. Admiral Blake said his associations with New Zealand were among his happiest recollections. He paid tribute alike to Captain Cook and to John "Williams—two great names with which the South Seas will ever be associated. In the course of an illuminating talk upon "what the Navy does in these wide open spaces of the Pacific," the Admiral said: "Before I went to the South Seas I often heard people say that missionaries, generally • speaking, were a nuisance, that they didn't do any good, and that they were very fond of poking their noses into other people's lives. I was particularly interested to go through these islands and make a study of the work these missionaries had actually done. I am sure that, as an Empire, we owe practically everything we have in these parts to the missionaries. Doubtless there has been one hero and there who wanted to go too far or too fast, but I am convinced that they have done an enormous amount of good and, speaking by and large, I take off my hat to them!"