The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1927. PLEASURES OF LOYALTY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 61, 3 June 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1927. PLEASURES OF LOYALTY

IN honouring the King to-day by celebrating liis sixty-second birthday, the people of this loyal country demonstrate happily tli e pleasures of loyalty. And their happiness, relatively and actually, is an extraordinary thing. It is extraordinary because it is the happiness of freedom, entirely free from the influence of compulsion or even the old idea of domination. This feature of British loyalty to the Empire Throne might well be the wonder and the envy of the world’s other nations. There is nothing else like it in life or in history. To-day, by virtue of the new title that was essential to a full expression of the free nationhood of the Dominions, his Majesty “George V, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India,” is virtually seven kings in one. And everywhere throughout the great Empire to-day the loyalty of his subjects is complete and rich in the beauty of contentment. If there be any difference at all, such difference will not affect the character of British loyalty. It will be found only in the manner and form of its expression. In this, as far as the pleasures of loyalty are concerned, New Zealand will take a foremost place in the animated ranks of the King’s Birthday celebrants throughout the Empire. Indeed, many quiet and thoughtfid loyalists may be tempted to think that the loyalty of this country- is too much inclined to be exuberant, even extravagant in practice and expressed too frequently in pleasure. That view of a carnival celebration of our monarch’s birthday need not be taken too seriously or given encouragement. It is not an occasion for kill-joy philosophy. Without any flippancy of comment it may be said that, if King George had been in Auckland to-day, he would have been in the fronh place at Ellerslie not only thoroughly enjoying the swift contests of beautiful horses, but realising with his subjects that the happy roar of a multitude at sport is better and is a surer guarantee of the positive character of loyalty and love of freedom than the hoarse howl of revolution. Has it not been estimated that half a million people saw the Derby at Epsom in glorious summer conditions and that £3,000,000 changed hands? These things are not to be deplored as evidence of British decadence. They are, after all, nothing more than exuberant proof that Great Britain is sound at the core and that all the talk about England going to the dogs, doles and Bolshevism is malignant nonsense. To-day Auckland’s loyalty was expressed in the radiance of a jierfect winter day. In the same brightness of the city’s sunlit happiness and pleasures of loyalty let us toast his Majesty: The King! Long live the King!

HONOUR FOR THE NATIVE RACE

MO honour conferred by Royal favour upon New Zealanders Al in recent. years has been better earned than that of Sir Apirana Ngata, whose knighthood is announced to-day. A biilliant Maori, he is as modest as he is industrious, and his work in building the bridge of sympathy and common ideals between the Pakelia and the members of his own race will endure for all time.

Sir Apirana is a gentleman and a scholar, and a politician not for the empty honours of office, but for the good he can do the people he so worthily represents in Parliament. Born at Kawakawa 53 years ago, he attended the native school at \\ aiomatatini, and he later entered Te Aute College to matriculate at the early age of 16. He obtained his B.A. degree at Canterbury College, served articles in law under Sir Theophilus Cooper at Auckland, in which period he took his M.A. degree and honours in political science, and was admitted to the bar at the age of 23. Though highly qualified, and with every prospect of advancement and pecuniary gain in his profession, he forsook the Bar to devote himself fully to the service of his native race, and in 1905 he was returned for the Eastern Maori seat, which he has filled ever since with dignity and success. The new knight is an orator of rare eloquence, even in a race of orators. But his eloquence is not of the platitudinous quality of so many politicians. He is a thinker, also, and whenever h e rises from his seat in the House of Representatives it is to say something dictated by reason and supported by logic. Parliament knows no more convincing speaker. It is indeed pleasing to see thus honoured a chieftain of a race once subjected by force of arms, but now accepted as the equals and fellow-citizens of the conquerors, for it is owing to the influence of such men as Apirana Ngata among the Maoris that such a happy state of affairs has become possible. There is none who will not echo the greeting, “Well done, Sir Apirana!”