SENSITIVE NEW ZEALANDERS

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 68, 21 March 1910, Page 4

SENSITIVE NEW ZEALANDERS

TOO READY TO RESENT CRITICISJ ft SAYS ME. FOSTER FRASER. (From bur Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February 11. ■Mr. Poster Fraser lias some pleasant things to say, and some mildly critical comments to make regarding "the New amongst whom he spent a brief six weeks in the course of his recent Antipodean tour. ■ He thinks New Zealanders are abnormally sensitive to criticism. "The one thing in which the New Zealander is not British," says Mr. Fraser in this week's "Sunday Chronicle," "is his sensitiveness to outside opinion. .The Englishman does not care twopence what other nations think of him, except that he is more disposed than not to agree with those who adversely criticise him. The New Zealander is perpetually inviting criticism, but resents the slightest suspicion of criticism. "I used to think out friends of th& United States the most 'touchy people' on earth. They are hardened and callous alongside the New Zealander. Two out of every three persons I met in the Dominion flred'the stale inquiry, 'What do you think of this country? . In less than a day I discovered they did not want to know what I thought of it; they only wanted mc to praise it. "There is much to praise—such as the wonderful work of settlement—and that was accepted as all right. tJut there are other things wherein New Zealand toddles at the tail of the rest of the world. A hint of these was generally bitterly resented. A little comparison and an example of how some things were done better in some other lands—well, they simply did not want to hear, and the conversation had to be shunted to another track. "There were exceptions to all this;— and I keep- those exceptions in my mind as I write —but as one who has studied national characteristics in many parts of the world, I was frequently prone to an inward smile at the way the New Zealander would talk to mc by the hour about the marvels of his.land, and then display a positive dislike to listen to anything favourable about other lands. "The New Zealander is a fine fellow, but this insularism makes his friend? laugh. Of course, the cause is chiefly due to the fact that he is so far awa'v from the industrial centre of the world, and that he lacks the opportunity of comparison. I suppose most of us would have a defective perspective if we were similarly situated." The traveller seems to have been particularly impressed wtih the "old identities" of New Zealand—"sturdy men, with determination chiselled into every line of their faces. One afternoon in Wellington, after locking at a collection of photographs of these pioneers, he took a walk through the streets to have a look at the present generation. "It was impossible." he says, "to resist the though that tne young New Zealander lacks the virility and rugged independence of his grandfather. The modem New Zealanders look to Parliament to obtain for then? what their sires obtained for themsleves with taut sinews and the sweat of their brow."