NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1925, Page 17

NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

I A NEGLECTED STUDY. (By EILEEN DTJGGAN.) There is no country without a history, even though it be but a record of bloodless victories, a record of days of sowing and of harvest, of ships that come and go; for the mere flowing of the years brings change, and change is history. Those schooner wagons that went West after war and turmoil, made history more surely than battle-chariots. America knows that to-day, and it is the consciousness of the glory of her pioneers that will yet save her soul. How much does Young New Zealand know of its own history? It can tell you a little of Captain Cook, a little, a very little, of the Maori Wars, and perhaps it has heard of Wakefield. I am not speaking now of grown students. Those who attend secondary schools or colleges sometimes take a couree of New Zealand history there, but the average boy or girl takes New Zealand for granted. j We are young, but we are a nation. j No one, in spite of its size, could '■ claim that we are a small shadow cast by Australia. We have our own marvellous rocks and rock-layers; we have our short-tailed bat, one of the wonders of the world (nowhere else is it found, this wakeful little bat); we have our ; own flowers, those strange pale flowers beloved of moths and other things of air that fly by night; we have our trees, our ferns. The kiwi, the kauri, the springs of the North, the glaciers of the South, all the ages of the world, all the seasone of the world, all the beauty of the world caught in the lap of this child among the nations, this well-loved child, New Zealand! For she ia well-beloved. The blind instinct to love the sod Is here; it is rarely spoken of, too rarely, but it is here. Many poets of many nations have tried to put into words this piercing love of one's own sod. One of the moderns, Ralph Hodgson, has tried, too, and his effort is worthy of a place. He tells of the true patriots, "Men whose love of motherland is like a dog's for one dear hand, sole, selfless, boundlese blind." Sole, selfless, boundless, blind indeed! New Zealanders who go down to the sea in ships know what it means to see a ring of lights like flowers upon the eea, and, to know they are the lights of home. Love ie here in truth, eonlike,

doglik?. But is love enough? No, we must have pride too, to keep us from forgetting. What will it profit any nation if it know the history of all the others, and is ignorant of its own? This is the question that is troubling the hearts of many in this country, who see the very I names of the builders forgotten. In this connection the Early Settlers' Association is doing a noble work. It is not only a meeting ground for the pioneers, but it is a treasury of the records of the pioneers, and its founder was wise, for very soon they will be gone from us, that grand old generation, consecrated by toil, made holy by hardships. War is at least merciful in this—it has permitted this generation to see that compared with its horrors, hard work in peace is almost a privilege, and there are fewer murmurings from country hearts that were breaking for adventure. The adventure is over, and the plough seems homely and sweet. The work that was begun in stress and sweat by the older generations goes on still in sweat, but not in , stress. The stress is over with the pioneer days, but our wheat forever will be blest by the toil of those who first cleared the ground for the sowing. • Our symbols should indeed be a biU- • hook and a camp oven. It is not as if Romance were wanting ,in this history. We have our myths, our legends. We have our Pathfinders and our Mohicans. What Mohican was more chivalrous than Te Puni, what , Sioux more crafty than Tβ Rauparaha? That old hawk has given us in his flights the matter for fifty children's ' tales. It is hopeless for New Zealand if New Zealanders take up the attitude! ■ that they will learn only about their , own little patch, and sometimes not even about that. It is the history of 1 all the little patches that makes the ' history, of a people. Collect the stories, i the traditions of your little patch cer- , tainly, but collect them to add them to the whole. The county spirit is a fine ' thing, but it ia evil if it divides the ■ nation. ! A New Zealander should take the trouble to untangle that old troubled story, the tale of the Maori massacre in the Wairau districts, of the doings of the Northerners in the Maori Wars, ■of the storming of the Gate Pah. Our ! countrymen are often confounded by the questions of visiting tourists, and that (is not to our credit. As for the children, too many of them think that New Zealand sprang fully grown from the 1 mouth of the sea. ' An Australian called Abbot is recon- • strueting the history of his continent [ for his countrymen by writing quaint historical stories that bring back the days of red jackets and crinolines. Well, ! New Zealand, too, had its red jackets i and its crinolines, and Romance crooks a finger from her past. Are we never [to have an historical novel? Are we I to wait till Borrow comes in from the , sea with a spatter of i raindrops before , we can learn to love the story of this, 1 our country in the days of her morning, , her youth, «od her joyj