"TOO HUMBLE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 12

"TOO HUMBLE."

A VISITOR'S OPINION.

OF "NEW ZEALANDERS.

" INFERIORITY COMPLEX." New Zcalanders are too loatli to advance the qualities oE their own country. How many times lias this been drummed into New Zealand cars by tourists from overseas? The latest visitor to think the Dominion is holding itself back by its own humility is the Hon. Anthony Winn, a young English journalist who left Wellington by the Wanganella for Sydney after spending five weeks in the North and South Islands. At Auckland, after seeing Wellington, Napier, Kotorua and the country in between these towns, Mr. Winn published some observations which were meant to be salutary, but which were apparently taken by a number of persons to be ill-informed and unfair (says the "Dominion").

"It seems I gave the impression that I thought New Zealand was a boring country—uninteresting to travel through," said Mr. ' Winn. "But that is totally untrue. Nobody with any sense could dislike a country so beautiful and whose inhabitants show so much decency and good will. But when one finds those same inhabitants suffering from an 'inferiority complex'— to use a stupid but convenient phrase— about their own capacity for mental and social, development, one does feel inclined to try and jog them into throwing it* off."

New Zealanders, he said, were far too ready to accept their country's geographical position as imposing isolation upon it. This was a habit of thought which should be thrown off at once. Actually it was an argument against development which would become progressively less applicable.

Mr. Winn had Lis own ideas about, tjie beauties of'the country. "They crack up the bush scenery*" he said, "but personally I prefer the open rolling slieep country.

"Although theoretically the South Island is more remote," he said, "the people are more independent. They think for themselves and do not try to think in the English way. In the North Island I found many people whose thinking was imitative. It should not be cultivated."