OUR HOSPITALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 99, 29 April 1933, Page 8

OUR HOSPITALITY.

ENGLISHMEN IN NEW ZEALAND,

(To the Editor.)

- "Exile" tries to ride away on the horse of exaggeration. Application of soft soap is necessary, he says, if the Englishman is to enjoy New Zealand hospitality. Not at all. What the New Zealander reasonably asks is that the newcomer shall not be continually grumbling about local conditions and contrasting them with conditions at Home, and that he"shall try to make the best of his new world. I can assure "Exile" that this attitude of persistent "knocking" annoys even colonials who love England and appreciate what is best in the English. It is irritating to be told over and over again that English houses are better, that the English spring is more beautiful than ours, that you ought to see English lanes, that English food is superior, and so on and so on. Father Martindale gives some excellent advice to emigrants in his book on New Zealand and Australia, "The Risen Sun." "Learn your job and hold your tongue," struck him as good counsel to the young. "My word! if our emi; grants would agree to nothing save this—never to talk about themselves, .their homes, their experience, or even England, and 'how they do things there,' what a lot of exasperation they would save!" Father Martindale is an Englishman. As to the confidence gentleman who had such a good time in New Zealand, I seem to remember that he had similar successes in Australia and in England. Fortunately, however, numbers of Englishmen and Englishwomen come out here with open minds and fine manners, and they achieve happiness bv making the best ef the new life, recognising that while they have left something behind in England they find compensation here. They are helping us to build a new nation and they are very welcome. NEW ZEALAND BORN