EMPIRE SOLIDARITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 930, 25 March 1930, Page 7

EMPIRE SOLIDARITY

LORD BLEDISLOE STRESSES NECESSITY FARMING ECONOMICS From Our Resident Reporter WELLINGTON, Today. Addressing the Empire Farmers’ Conference yesterday, the GovernorGeneral. Lord Bledisioe, stressed the necessity of Imperial solidarity if the various parts of the Empire were to make the most of their opportunities. It was a genuine joy to him, he said, to attend the present meeting where British farmers, New Zealand farmers and farmers from all over the Empire had met in friendly conference. ‘‘Most of us assembled here,” he sadi, “belong to an island home. We aro indeed in a geographical sense insular, but none of us, I hope, is insular in anm or outlook. If the Empire, to which we are all very proud to belong, is to be the greatest power for good in the world, as I am sure we all wish it to be, and the chief engine of cultured progress in every direction of national life. there must be no myopia, no narrowness in our outlook. “The chief antidote to insularity is undoubtedly Imperialism, not as a mere phrase or sentiment, but as a vital force which shall direct the activities of all our lives. The main handicap, in my judgment, to sane and constructive Imperialism is mutual ignorance, ignorance of each other’s environment, objectives and difficulties even in the occupation we are all engaged in. farming, the most vital and most fundamental in the world. “Ever since I sat on the Empire Marketing Board, just on its formation, as representative of the farming community of Britain, I felt that such periodical conferences as this—and I nope it will be possible to continue them at reasonable intervals — would promote the economic welfare of all Empire farmers, without detriment to other sections of the community. “I should like to emphasise, what I ventured to say in the Town Hall the other night, that, whatever some of our urban friends may think, it is not in the real interests of urban communities of any country that the farming community shoud be other than prosperous. After all, it is the primary industries of the world, and particularly of this country, upon which the secondary industries of the towns depend in a very large measure. “In this country, unless there is perpetual regrading of your urban population with the healthy men, whose ancestors at least have been in contact with the soil, there is a real danger of national decadence."