HOMESICKNESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 199, 24 August 1925, Page 9

HOMESICKNESS.

MOVING FACTOR IX THE WORLD.

Hardly had I been twenty-four hours ,in this great city than my Indian blood cried out for the wilderness, the wilds, the thousands of miles unmapped, uncharted, where the most beautiful I flowers in the world grow; where j'ou meet real white men! In these words the American novelist, Mr. J. O. Curwood, who is now on a visit to London, has described his feeling of homesickness for the land he knows so well and about which he has written so much. And T have been led by his remarks to consider what nostalgia really is and how large a part it really plays in our I lives, writes John Blunt, in the "Daily Mail." The region for which Mr. Curwood longs is obviously a romantic region, as described by him, but the homesickness an exile feels and the love of one's land which prevents a man from becoming an exile are actually based upon something which has nothing to do with external romance or beauty. Association of Ideas. They arc based, generally speaking, on an infinity of associations of ideas which are the strongest and often among the most voiceless things in the world. The peasant who loves his local village, who feels lost and unhappy away from home, is quite incapable of analysing his own emotions or of explaining why his village means more to him than any other. But all the same his devotion is in his very blood, and that is why many people prefer to remain at home in inferior positions, or perhaps even out of work, who might find admirable opportunities for improving their lot in other parts of the world.

Most people are drawn irresistibly to the. place where they were brought up and to the land of their birth. I have not the slightest doubt that many per- ! I sons feel just as romantic about their own particular suburb as Mr. Curwood feels about the wilderness; for places are only romantic in so far as the mind i of someone envisages them as such. Love of Country. The homesickness of an exile is a I very real and poignant thing, and that j i whole emotion is powerful in the affairs ' Jof the universe. People like Commuinists, who want to see the triumph of j internationalism and to whom one coun-, j try is the same as another, are incapable lof realising that the-basis of patriotism ', j—that is to say, love of one' 3 country —is far more deeply rooted than their shallow arguments can penetrate. '■ The kind of beliefs men hold for logi- " ' cal reasons are often capable of being upset* by other logical reasons, but the 1 kind of- beliefs they instinctively hold. ■" and which they neitehr do nor could i argue about are frequently impervious to any propaganda. ' And love of one's hon.o. love of one's i land—patriotism, in short —belong to 1 the order of things against which argu- : 1 ments beat in vain. I