TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 155, 5 July 1933, Page 6

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

RACE PURITY

(By PRO BONO PUBLICO.)

'Hie oft-repeated claim that New Zcalanders arc 90 per cent British is of course an implication that the qualities of the British people are peculiarly desirable. I don't know whether the claim is justified, and it doesn't matter a great deal because so long as New Zealanders keep the best British qualities before them as a standard it does them good to remember that they are British. They say to themselves "We are British," and the constant presence in their minds of the command, "Be British" must help them.

But we had a young New Zealander with us over the week-end who seemed to think that the Briton was an altogether superior being simply because he was of English ancestry. Apparently he had the idea that the British people could shut themselves up in an island, ignore the rest of the -world, and continue for untold centuries to be a superior race.

I dare say that blood does count, but what counts far more is the culture of the race. Our young visitor knew very little about the historical background of British culture. He knew very little, indeed, about the history of the race. I remember reading a very interesting essay years ago in which it was argued that the most attractive qualities of tho Irish were all of Spanish origin. Does anyone really know from what racial origins the modern Englishman draws his best qualities?

T rather think that the inhabitants of Great Britain must have had a genius for acquisition. They appropriated whatever they thought desirable. Geological and geographical conditions have both profoundly influenced British development, and to that extent the British people may bo said to have certain "native" characteristics, but their culture has been less of native growth than of acquisition.

Jn New Zealand we enjoy certain advantages of climate, but shut up in these islands even a "pure" British psopte must gradually become stodgy and bucolic. This is a lesson that New Zealanders in general have, to learn, that the penalty of isolation is stagnation. That is why the policy of keeping all our best jobs for Now Zealanders seems to mo to be so utterly wrong. We should never be afraid to import brains; it is the only way in which we can maintain the culture which is the real test of the quality of a race.