AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9176, 27 August 1908, Page 5

AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA.

SENSE OF KINSHIP.

MR A. DEAKIN'S MESSAGE. Received August 26, 9.20 a.m. MELBOURNE, August 26. A lengthy message from the Federal Prime Minister (Mr Deakin) appeared in leading American papers on Thursday last. After expressing an overwhelming sense of obligation to the people of the United States for generously despatching the proud fleet of battleships, the Prime Minister declared: — "The invitation springs solely from an earnest desire to deepen our mutual sense of kinship, sympathy, and solidarity, nor can this answer appear insufficient when it is remembered that these very sentiments, and the proud impulses allied to them, have out of many separate States built up your great republic, stretching from ocean to ocean, enormous in ranee and development, and with prospects illimitable. "From the same sources, and through similar channels here, comes the same power of shaping our sundered colonies into one Commonwealth, enabling us to evoke strength equal to our vast opportunities. The Mother Country itself, in whose great cradle of Liberty both your freedom and outs was nursed, is meeting the strain on her far-reaching Empire by elaborating slowly, but surely, new j federal precedents which portend the ' free union of free dominions, growing stronger as they grow together. In the meantime, realising the riches of natural national relationship, we look instinctively, first and confidently, to you Americans, nearest to us in blood, in character, and in purpose. It is in this apirit and in this hope that Australia welcomes with open hand and heart the coming of your sailors and of the flag which, like our own, shelters a new world under the symbol of. its vital union. May the present accord between the English-speakfng people beget perpetual concord between us, thus making for the fulfilment of the Advent promise of peace on earth, good will towards men." j