"OUR KINSMEN.”

Hokitika Guardian, 23 June 1921, Page 4

" OUR KINSMEN.”

THE KING ON ANGLO-U.S. AMITY. LORD NORTHCLTFFE’S MESSAGE. LONDON, April 25

Four years ago yesterday a British War Mission entered the United States, and last night some of its members and many others who went there on Government service during the war met to talk over old times. It was the second reunion dinner of the* British War Missions, held at the Hyde Park Hotel. Mr Balfour presided.

A loyal message was sent to the King and the chairman received the following reply: “The King warmly thanks members of the Reunion of British War Missions to the United States, assembled under your chairmanship at their 'second annual dinner, lor their message of loyalty and devotion and for their kind reference to the Prince of Wales. It is his Majesty’s earnest hope that the happy relations and close intercourse with our kinsmen across the seas during the great war may he further extended and encouraged in the days of peace. To this end he wishes all success to your association.” MR HARDING’S GREETINGS.

The President of the United States sent the following message: “Desirous as I am that friendliness and good will should always exist between the peoples of the two great English-speaking nations, I am happy to extend my greetings and best wishes to an organisation whose avowed purpose it is to contribute to this desirable end by seeking through kindliness and instruction to remove misconceptions and to bring the two peoples to a better knowledge of each other.”

Lord Northcliffe wrote: “I greatly regret being prevented through absence from England from attending the reunion dinner of the British Mar Missions to the United States. The occasion reminds mo of inv residence in America as' chairman of the Mission, and 1 have vivid recollections of the wliole-heartodncss of the effort of the

American people and of their unbounded hospitality to us. T am glad that these occasions for reunion are organised, for I am sure that they will conduce to the maintenance and strengthening o.f Anglo-American friendship, than which there is no more patriotic and practical ideal.” Messages in a similar spirit were also read from Lord Reading, Admiral Sims and General Pershing. ON THE SAME SIDE.

Mr Balfour, proposing the toast of “Anglo-American amity,” said: “The solidarity of the English-speaking neoplex is deeper even than community of language, law, and literature, the three things we have in common. There is an addition that indefinable similarity of intellectual and moral temper which cannot be created, which is the result of long tradition—perhaps the result of inherited aptitudes—but which certainly exists and which a cool observer will see underlying any such superficial difficulties as may divide the American from the Britisher.

“The more 1 see of the world, the more 1 am brought into contact in practical life with statesmen of various countries, so much the deeper is the conviction forced upon me that we of the English-speaking peoples more readily understand each other’s modes of thought, more readily accept each other’s ideals, more fully comprehend the instinctive judgment which we pass oil contemporary events than the statesmen of any other two countries. /Glieers). IT that is true—and 1 firmly believe it is—then surely Anglo-Ameri-can amity stands in no danger.

“Unless our affairs are more grossly mismanaged in the future than they have been in the past, I am convinced the wishes expressed by the King will he fulfilled and that at no distant date the peoples and statesmen of the two countries will feel that whenever the destinies of the world are in danger, whenever peril is around us, begins seriously to menace the interests of mankind, Kngland and America will be found on the same side, fighting tlie same battle, and fighting it with the same success as they were united together in the great war which lias recently concluded. (Cheers). ■

Mr J. Butler Wright, the American Charge d’Affaires, told how ten days ago some of the Ainercian students in London visited him and asked him if it would lie misconstrued if they joined the ranks of volunteers “to keep the home tires burning.” “That,” said Mr Butler M’right, “showed how they were feeling.”