2110-19-1-10

Quebec. 31st July, 1936.

Mr. President, as the personal representative of His Majesty the King I welcome most warmly to this ancient capital the First Citizen of the United States. Canada welcomes you not only for your owm sake as an old acquaintance - for I think you know well our Eastern coasts - but also as one of the major forces to-day in the statesmanship of the world. She welcomes you not least as the head of a country to whose people she is bound by ties of kinsmanship and tradition; a country whose problems she shares, and whose future deeply concerns her own. As a North American nation, we have much in common with you; yet our countries have their distinctive characteristics. Our differences, understood and respected, are, not less than our similarities, a firm foundation for co-operation and friendship.

Canada is a free and a sovereign nation and f or generations she has dwelt side by side with yours in perfect amity - an example to all the world of how civilised neighbours should live together. She is also a principal constituent part of the British Empire, and as such she is a link between your great Republic and that Commonwealth of Nations which covers so large a part of the habitable globe.

Mr. President, it is my earnest hope - and I know that it is also yours - that our friendship and good-will may grow to a still closer understanding and become that strongest of human creations, a thing about which men do not argue but which they can take for granted. It is my prayer that, not by any alliance 1 but through thinking the same thoughts and pursuing the same purpose, the Republic of the United

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States and the British Commonwealth may help to restore the shaken liberties of mankind.