MOUNTING HOPES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1943, Page 4

MOUNTING HOPES

ADDRESS BY LADY FREYBERG IN CAIRO ON EMPIRE DAY. (NZEF Official News Survey.) CAIRO, May 27. “Empire Day this year finds us looking back over the past year's achievements with almost incredulous wonder, and ahead to the future with mounting hope and confidence," said Lady Freyberg, when speaking of New Zealand’s appreciation of the ties of hospitality and warm friendship which bound Britain and her Allies. “War has drawn the people of the Empire together like never before, and Ncav Zealand Club. Cairo, is a splendid meeting ground. Australians gravitate naturally to the club, which has extended hospitality to men and women of many countries. “New Zealand associations with the South Africans, including the women’s services, is increasingly cordial, while some effort has been made to extend a hand to Canadian airmen in repayment for Canadian hospitality to New Zealand airmen training in that country. Though we have less opportunity of getting to know the Indian community, the deeds of their glorious divisions have thrilled us, and the links foiged between our troops and Indians on the battlefield must surely draw us closer when we are able, as we hope, to get into more personal touch. “I am an Englishwoman, but it has been my privilege during the past three years to be associated with the New Zealand forces. It has been a privilege indeed. Over and above the personal happiness of working with a group of exceptional men and women, it has been a stimulating experience which opened new worlds for me. From noAv onward, instead of looking out across the world from the small circle of my own home to unknown continents inhabitated by strangers, I feel that in faraway places I have a community of friends and comrades. What is true for me as an individual is becoming a widely general experience. This personal drawing together of the peoples of the Empire is surely the brightest hope of the future.” Captain Halstead, official archivist, spoke of Empire Day, 1941, when the New Zealanders took it at Galatos on Crete, when dive-bombers and mortars blasted them out of their positions and then, in the evening, when the divebombers went away, they rallied and gave the- Germans terrible punishment at the bayonet point in the last great battle for Crete.