CANADA GRATEFUL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1939, Page 7

CANADA GRATEFUL

FIRST VISIT BY REIGNING MONARCH TO OVERSEAS BRITISH NATION. DOMINION PRIME MINISTER’S SPEECH. QUEBEC. May 17. Welcoming their Majesties at the luncheon given by the Federal Goverment, the Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, said: “Canada is deeply conscious of the honour of being the first overseas nation of the British Commonwealth visited by a reigning King and Queen. “We are not unmindful of sacrifices involved in your long and arduous journey and in parting with your children—those cherished children of the Empire. May the sincerity and warmth of our welcome be some compensation to you during this tempoiary separation. “Your Majesties will find other children here longing to press around you, children who will hand on to the future generation the memory of a great moment in their lives. Here, too, you will be in. the heart of a family which is your own family, a family of men and women of varied stock and race, and who are in free association with the other members of the Commonwealth, but equally in their own way are working out their national destiny.

. “Your Majesties have but left one home to come to another. We are all of one household. Free institutions and democratic ideals are as dear to the hearts of your people in Canada as to your peoples in any other part of the Empire. We regard their preservation and perpetuation as the common concern of all. “The warmth of the welcome your Majesties will everywhere receive is bound up in a very special way with the admiration all feel for the qualities of heart and character which you possess. In your daily lives we see examplified the things we value most —faith in God, concern for human wed being, consecration to public service and delight in the simple joys of home and family life. Greater than our sense of the splendour of your state is our affection for two young people who bear in so high a spirit a responsibility unparalleled in the world.”

M Raoul d’Andurand, leader of the Government in the Senate, said. “It is fitting that the King should be welcomed in the capital of a new France and that the respectful homage of the whole population be offered in the language of Champlain, who founded Quebec in 1608. and the descendants of his heroic companions, who explored as far as the Rockies, since his Majesty claims common, though distant, ancestry.

"These pioneers came directly from the Duchy of Normandy, which gave to its leader William 50.000 men for the Battle of Hastings, which established his domination over England. "Two words which are deeply impressed in the Norman consciousness appear on the Royal escutcheon —‘Dieu el mon Droit.’ It is their unswerving fidelity to these two essential principles of life which had assured their survival. Under the aegis of this device they had been able in changing their allegiance to exclaim like the knights of old ’Le Roi est Mort. Vive le Roi. - So today without hesitation from loyal hearts they greet Your Majesty with ‘Vive le Roi’’”

Customers in German cafes and beer gardens will in future be warned of closing time by radio gramophone. There arc three messages: the first announces that the kitchens arc closing; the second is a polite farewell: the third is, briefly. "Go home, go home, go home!”