FAITH IN LIBERTY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1938, Page 7

FAITH IN LIBERTY

ADDRESS BY AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TRIBUTES TO KING GEORGE V. AIMS OF THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 12. The American Ambassador, Mr J. P. Kennedy, unveiled at Winchester' today a window to the memory of King George V., which had been presented to the cathedral by groups of American citizens. In the course of his speech the Ambassador said: “King George V. occupied a very warm and special place in the hearts of Americans, and my fellowcountrymen will always cherish his memory. “We are now being called upon to stretch our already hard-pressed resources to cover the care of refugees cast out of their native land because they belong to certain races or profess certain religions or think the thoughts of free men. Let us do what we can to take care of this immediate emergency.

“The representatives of good-in-tentioned nations are now in session trying to devise ways and means to ensure that these refugees do not perish cruelly and hopelessly. Our hearts are’with our delegates in their difficult but humane task. FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS. “We must always be on the alert to defend the thesis that no permanent national happiness can ever be achieved, in the kind of society to which we are accustomed and which we wish to preserve, by one segment of our population being favoured at the expense of others. “I have heard it said in London, as well as in Washington, that democracy has failed, that a system of representative government is as outmoded as that of the ancient Greek States, that the individual can no longer claim to have inalienable rights such as those guaranteed in the Magna Charta, but only those which the State may, as a matter of convenience, grant to him, that the system of more or less free! economy under which we try to transact our business is self-destructive, and that all individualism must be crushed by the increasing weight of industrial and financial combinations. “I am sure that King George V. never believed any of these things, nor would he believe them today. So far as I could tell, observing his activities and life from across the Atlantic, he was determined that the humblest of his subjects should possess an ever-increasing store of rights and comforts, and that the economic machinery of this nation and the world should operate to increase the prosperity and happiness of all British subjects. I am- certain that never in his life did he wish any guaranteed right of any citizen to 'be diminished or abolished.

PRESERVATION OF STANDARDS. “Let us, then, do all we can to preserve, for our countries at least, the kind of life King George V. stood for and advocated. Decency, respect for the rights of others and a yearning for liberty have not been abolished from our hearts. Let us make sure they never are.”

Stating that he had just returned from a brief visit to the United States, Mr Kennedy observed: “One gets there much the same comforting feeling of solidity which is characteristic of the people and life of Great Britain. In both countries the people want change —they, insist on constant progress betterment. We must never rest on our laurels and think we have achieved the ultimate design for the ideal way of life.

“So long as we are holding out to the mass of our people the hope that their Government and their State are working ceaselessly and unremittingly for their benefit, just so long will those people pin their faith to democracy.”