The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1935. RAW MATERIAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 46, 23 February 1935, Page 8

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1935. RAW MATERIAL.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

Among the visitors who eomc to us and I place their impressions on record there are a few who, by their -training- and experience, speak with special weight. Dr. F. J. Keppel, president of the Carnegie Corporation, is one of these. A trained observer who lias seen much of the world, his chief interest is cultural development, and his views on our progress in this field are therefore particularly interesting. He found it relatively difficult to obtain a New Zealand as opposed to a provincial point of view; our loyalties, he says, are "real but inclined to be rather local." This he attributes to our geographical shape and the development of our government through a provincial system. Both are potent causes. The formation of Cook Strait has been described as the greatest disaster in the history of New Zealand, in that it divided the country into two main islands. Nature went further and made the South Island very different from the North, and historical development added differences of Maori and European settlements which have left deep marks on our society to this day. With a good deal of justification Mr. Downie Stewart describes the Mortgage Corporation proposal as one designed for North Island conditions and not for those in the South. v The result has been a deep-rooted growth of a provincialism that has been a political curse. Several factors may account for the comment of visitors that we show no sharply-marked national type. Canada is huge; it is within a week of England; and the Canadian nation is exposed daily to American influence. Australia is ?tn island continent, vastly different in configuration and climate, and stretphing out a hand to the East. In South Africa there is also this continental influence, and life is complicated by a main division between the European population and the ever-present huge native problem in the background. We may be thankful that our society is more homogeneous —Dr. Keppel finds it more so than in any qther- English-speaking community—but there are critics with experience in other lands who on that account find our life relatively tame. The special problems of other lands, they say, give an edge to intellectual life and create a

definite characteristic atmosphere and national types. A New Zealander, it might be said, would be identified as such in England, not so much by positive qualities as by a process of elimination; he was not an Australian, a South African or a Canadian.

An increasing number of NeAv Zcalanders are asking whether this is altogether satisfactory, whether we as a people are not too imitative. We have, Dr. Keppel kindly, "the raw material for a rich cultural life," but what, use are we making of it, and how will our use develop? In what way shall we cultivate originality ? He bids us not to think too badly of ourselves, and makes full allowance for our previous pre-occupation with pioneering. The excuse is valid, but not completely so, and it grows less valid as the years pass. We have done a great deal. We have a sound broad-based educational system, and abroad its products are well thought of and often attain high positions. The average level of intelligence and knowledge is high. We have the beginnings of a national literature and art. Also the truth must be faced that in so small a population the demand for local literature and art must be small, and our accumulations of private wealth arc not nearly sufficient to enable us to compare with larger communities in benefactions to culture. All this, however, is no excuse for inaction and self-satisfaction. Unless those who really value the cultural life fight for it ceaselessly', the next inspector for the Carnegie Corporation who- visits us may have rather rougher words to apply to us.