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Hokitika Guardian, 27 July 1927, Page 2

The advent of Mr Amery. head of the Colonial Office in. the British Government, is sure to cause widespread interest. Mr Amery is now on route, and is expected in New Zealand about September. Speaking of his visit at a special gathering at Home he said if there was one thing that the Imperial Conference taught, it was the effectiveness of personal contact, and personal understanding, sympathy, and friendship lietween those who were independently conducting the affairs of the great Empire, so that they might know that though they were working separately in freedom they wore all colleagues in a common task, inspired by a common duty. Such a confer-ence-csuld only take place once every two or three years, hut it was desirable in the intervals between Conferences that British Ministers of the Crown should get into personal contact with their colleagues in the service of the Crown overseas, and so expedite the business they have in common. He was only too delighted that a long cherished and a long deferred wish to visit the Dominions was now likely to

take place. It was all too short a visit he paid to New Zealand fourteen years ago. Ho had been chaffed about his desire for mountaineering. He was not at all ashamed to admit that ho found one of his greatest delights in the beauty and stillness of high mountains. There one acquired something to gladden the heart and enrich the soul. Anyone who had looked down from Olympus, or from Mount Egmont over the richness of the North Island, could not wonder why the primitive races made those high places the home of their gods. His main object however, was not to see the tops of great mountains, wonderful as they were in New Zealand, hut to meet the public men who were his colleagues in the work of the Empire. Mr Amery went on to speak of the development of New Zealand, and of the products which Great Britain took from her. Ho spoke of the 100,000 men who had made history iu Gallipoli and in 1 landers. But it was even more remarkable that New Zealand, in times of peaie. should produce a statesman who should rise to the conception that the Dominion should take her part in hastening the completion of that great enterprise, the Singapore Base. the construction of which was so essential for tlie security of the trade in every part of the Empire in tlie Southern Seas.