Newspaper Article 1926 – Rotary International – Ex-President Hill’s Visit

THE
H.B. TRIBUNE.

FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1926.

Rotary International

Promotion of Goodwill

WORLD OBJECTIVES OUTLINED.

EX-PRESIDENT HILL’S VISIT.

The largest Rotary meeting yet held in Hawke’s Bay took place at the Salisbury Tea Rooms, Napier, on Wednesday night when the Napier and Hastings Rotarians and Rotarianns forgathered to welcome Rotarian Everett Hill, of Oklahoma, ex-President of Rotary International. Among the guests of honour present were Mrs Everett Hill, Mrs Rolf Cummins, and Rotarian Governor Dr. W. E. Herbert, of the 53rd District (New Zealand).

After the toast “The King” had been musically honoured and the singing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner” with Madame Eileen Johns as soloist, Rotarian President Edmundson extended a warm welcome to Rotarian Everett Hill and the other guests of honour. The question of the world-wide scope of Rotary, he said, he would leave to Rotarian Everett Hill. To his mind the spirit of Rotary was not what they did outside, but what each member brought into his own calling and occupation. The movement had grown quickly in New Zealand, and it was expected that in the near future it would spread even more rapidly. He coupled the name of Rotarian Everett Hill with the toast “Rotary International.”

Rotarian Everett Hill, in reply, said he had not had much time to see their country and its beautiful scenery, four weeks were not long enough, but yet he was going to have a very favourable report to carry back not only of their happy land, but also of the progress Rotary had made in it. The Rotary movement was strictly international. Every member in every club holds membership in the International movement. Each week on the same day you hold meetings they are holding them similarly in thirty-five nations, all with the same ideals, all having the same purpose. The knowledge of this should get you out of the local atmosphere and get you into the world atmosphere. The people of 14 different languages were sitting round the one common table. Rotary had been found acceptable to nine distinct faiths, and if men of different faiths can thus be brought together it must be doing good. Three of his greatest cronies were men of the cloth – a Jewish Rabbi, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Presbyterian Minister, and it was Rotary that brought them together as the fondest of friends. The flags of Britain and America were woven closer together through Rotary than they could be by any other force in the world and flags of other nations were being wound in with them.

To make Rotary a full success each member must be sincere in carrying out its ideals. There were some members who were only on saluting terms with the movement – men who have no desire to give service themselves, but aim to get for themselves all it could give. Such men were not on speaking terms with Rotary – there was no room in the organisation for drones. Not only in our clubs but in our communities men were not putting out all they have got within themselves, there were too many parasites who live on the community, taking all they can get and putting nothing back into it. The thing to remember is that your influences reach far, far away. Your community and my community are influenced in their relationship to each other by the way your business men and our business men act. The man unethical is going to cause a reaction: international trade is being influenced daily by the contacts, and Rotary has stepped in and elevated the standards. All business is public in the sense of responsibility to the public. Each can weave into his business a romance that will lift it to a higher standard, and attending Rotary ought to teach us how to be better men. There are friends to be made – friends in foreign countries who will strive for peace and goodwill between nations. There is social and humanitarian work to be done. There are crippled children who need a helping hand. Rotary, in its way is trying to develop the necessary man-power to further international goodwill, if every man in business would follow one thing – that he was giving service as well as selling goods, he would be working on the right lines.

In all countries that Rotary has gone into, there is a pull to it that you can’t get away from. You have got to be constructive in your work; you’ve got to have an ideal if you are to be safe in your work, for no man or woman is safe without an ideal to live up to. You’ve got to give the time to your community that is due to your community. At present too little community work is done, and what is done is done by a small coterie of men, while others do nothing, or indulge in destructive criticism. We must all be weavers of life. A friend of his, realising this, wrote a poem in which he expressed the right sentiment.

THE LOOM OF LIFE.

I stand beside the loom and ply
My shuttle with a watchful eye
Designs I weave from patterns
In the sky.

Sometimes the strands are brightest shade
The woof sometimes is coloured jade
Aghast I see the fabrics
I have made.

But I my busy shuttle ply
My place you could not beg or buy
I weave the best I can
Until I die.

If each man of us try to weave our lives in such a way, ‘‘the best I can,” at their end we will all be surprised at the result, What we individually have to do is to live our lives to the best of our ability so that Rotary International may weave around them and in the end perfect the finest fabric. (Loud applause.) Space does not permit the reporting of other excellent addresses which were given by President Rotarian Hallett, and District Rotarian Governor Dr. W. E. Herbert. The toast “to the Ladies” was given by Rotarian N. Kettle responded to with brilliant flashes of humour by Rotarian L.C. Friend.

Songs were excellently rendered by Madame Eileen Johns and Herrick Tonkin, and flute solos by Rotarian J. A. L. Hay. “The Press” was proposed by Rotarian G. A. Maddison and responded to by Rotarian W. C. Whitlock. The singing of “Auld Lang Syne” and the National Anthem brought to a close an instructive and thoroughly enjoyable evening.

69

Memo

A combined meeting of the Napier & Hastings clubs was held to welcome Rotarian Everett Hill and party in the Salisbury Tea-rooms Napier, at 7p.m on Wednesday 5th May ’26.

Present from Hastings 15 members & 10 Ladies.