A NOTABLE CONFERENCE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1938, Page 6

A NOTABLE CONFERENCE.

ANYTHING that will tend to bring New Zealanders into closer touch and understanding with people in other countries evidently will take a particularly appropriate and worthy place in the impending centennial celebrations. On that account the decision of the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association to hold its next triennial conference in New Zealand in 1940 should be approved most heartily, not only by the women’s organisations in all parts of the Dominion which are being asked to give the project their support, but by citizens generally who are giving intelligent thought to the future.

An effective appeal for the support that is needed was made by Miss E. Andrews, M.8.E., when she visited Masterton recently and it need not be doubted that in the Wairarapa, as in other parts of New Zealand, women of an enlightened outlook will gladly do everything in their power to further the great work to which the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association is dedicated.

The association, which owes its existence, in a measure at least, to the happy thought of a New Zealander, the late Mr Mark Cohen, of Dunedin, is laying foundations on which, if the fates are kind, a noble structure of international friendship may be reared in time to come. While its aims are far-reaching, it relies upon patient, gradual and thoroughly practical effort. Its active membership includes able and distinguished women ifi many countries around the Pacific. In what has already been accomplished at the triennial conferences of the association, with the admirable opportunities they offer for the pooling and exchange of ideas, inspiration and incentive may be found, to continued and broadening effort. There should be no reason to fear any neglect in New Zealand of the painstaking preparatory work that will help to make the 1940 conference of the association all that it ought to be.