TRANSLATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 40, 29 March 1940, Page 5

TRANSLATION

T is with the greatest pleasure that I ] present this brief preface at the beginning of an issue of The Listener which has been dedicated to France. It is a graceful tribute, the publication of which is most opportune. It illustrates the identity of vision and action which inspires our two peoples at this moment. I trust that it will also stress the permanent reasons why our two countries should fully understand each other and work in harmony. Destiny is not disdainful of paradox. One such paradox is that our two countries, situated at the opposite ends of the earth, should so often have witnessed the mingling of their history, more particularly in such decisive hours as at the present time. Exactly a century ago, French initiative hastened without doubt the exploit which must have decided the British future of New Zealand, a country which had been visited by certain French navigators and later described by at least two of our most famous authors, It was on French soil, the liberation of which was partly due to their gallantry, that the men of the lst New Zealand Division, in 1918, successfully ended the combat for the defence of the Empire. To-day, for the same cause, the heirs to that glorious tradition are ready to shed their blood willingly in company with their brothers in arms, my fellow countrymen, Identical aims and ideals are sometimes more effective in drawing closer together individuals and peoples than a common frontier or the proximity of territory. There is no other place under the heavens where a Frenchman feels more perfectly at home than in far-away New Zealand. Here he undoubtedly recognises his own climate and a certain familiarity of landscape, but more especially does he find himself in his own moral atmosphere -the daily practice of those immortal values which he honours, love of liberty, respect for the individual, a spirit of tolerance, humanity and peace. Here he finds all that he understands in the meaning of the word " Civilisation," and those essentials which give full value to life. I hope the following pages will inspire the same sentiments in readers of The Listener. I hope, also, that they will play a part in drawing closer together the people of two nations, to whom it must be sufficient to meet in order to know each other and, in so doing, to esteem one another,