DOMINION’S IDEALS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 206, 31 July 1937, Page 11

DOMINION’S IDEALS.

MR SAVAGE’S PRAISE. WELLINGTON, July 29. “New Zealand is a small place, but it has great ideals. It has scaled the heights in the days that are gone; it will scale the heights in the days that are to come. There is no better way of helping the people overseas than to light the fires here, and if we can show a light to the rest of the world then the sermon on the mount will not have been in rain,” said the Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) when replying to a reception given in his honour by members of the Labour movement, at Parliament Buildings to-day. The Minister of Health (Hon. P. Fraser) who presided over an attendance of several hundred, said that the gathering was a truly representative one.

“Even a brief survey of conditions in New Zealand to-day mentis the best of all welcomes to the Prime Minister,” said Mr Fraser. “If he looks around tho country as a whole he will see the substantial results of the Labour Government’s reconstructive policy.” During the last year the wages bill of the Dominion had increased by £15,000,000, and it did not require much .imagination to realise what that had meant in the homes of the people. Mr Fraser said that the Prime Minister came back to a happy and contented people, and in their name he welcomed Mr Savage most cordially. Mr Savage said that they had no idea of the joy they had brought to his heart. He would never forget the wonderful receptions accorded him by the people. “If I go down to the grave trying to help the people who have worked with me for tho common good I will have nothing to regret,” he said.

The Prime Minister was welcomed also at a private gathering of members of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Acting-Prime Minister, Hon. P. Fraser, presided, and after his health had been toasted, Mr Savage gave an interesting address on his visit to the Old Country. A resolution was carried that the Parliamentary Labour Party expresses its high appreciation of his capable and creditable representation of the Dominion at the Coronation and the Imperial Conference and assi'.ring Mr Savage of continued, united, and whole-hearted confidence and support in Parliament and throughout the Dominion.