NEW GOVERNOR-GENERAL.
LONDON PRESS OPINION. DOMINION'S GRIEVANCES. Commenting upon the appointment of Lord Jellicoe to be Governor-General a: New Zealand, the London Times says:— ''The choice "bf so distinguished a sailor for the post may be taken as a direct acknowledgment of the magnificent part played by the men of New Zealand in the war, and of the alacrity with which the whole people responded to the call of the blood. On August 4th, H.M.S. Philomel and the whole of the New Zealand Forces were placed under the control of the Government of Great Britain, and long before the end of the year the Expeditionary Force had landed in Egypt. When he arrives in the Dominion, Lord Jellicoe, like the Prince of Wales, will be going among comrades in arms, and, liKe him, is sure of a warm welcome. . . ■
We, in this country, are too apt to take the Empire for granted, just because we live at the heart of it. That is a gravfi, and might become a dangerous, failing. The Empire can only remain an Empire' if the heart, as well as the limbs, fulfils its proper functions. We must not only realiso that we are all one body, bu: glory in the fact. ' Otherwise the lifeblood will not course freely through veins and arteries, and the body will grow .faint and fail. Mr. Andrew Fisher and Sir Thomas Mackenzie, the High Commissioners for Australia and New Zealand, have pointed out two respects in which we might profitably mend our ways vis-a-vis the rest of the Empire, Mr. Fisher warned us against the danger .of what he called 'patting' the Dominions. We may be as proud of them, and as grateful, and as brotherly, as we like, but, as he said, Gold help us if we begin to pat them. Presumably that means (for the verb is new to us) that any suspicion of superiority or patronage in our attitude of thanks and admiration, however sincere, may cause untold mischief The\charge brought by Sir Thomas Mackenzie was more specific. He declared that the people of New Zealand are not pleased with the way in which some of their exported goods, and especially their meat, are handled in this country. The Food Controller, he observed, in spite of expert advice, insists on a policy which interferes with the due circulation of New Zealand mutton, and the storage space which should be reserved for it has of late been usurped by thousands of tons of American bacon. Here, surely, is a concrete abuse which might be, and should be, easily done away with, to the mutual advantage of the New Zealand exporter and the British consumer. It is largely stupid mistakes of this kind that lend color to the accusations of
home-grown arrogance at which M*\ Fisher hinted. As to the Government and the Food Controller we can only wonder and hope. But in the case of the nation at large we believe that the day of th? j little rifts which have in the past somr- | times tended to destroy the general har- ' mony of the Empire is at an end, an! "that all of us, Mother Country and Donjiitions, are now fully alive to the valus of unity."
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Taranaki Daily News, 8 July 1920, Page 9
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540NEW GOVERNOR-GENERAL. Taranaki Daily News, 8 July 1920, Page 9
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