AN ENGLISHMAN DISCOVERS "HOME" AGAIN

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN ENGLISHMAN DISCOVERS "HOME" AGAIN

RECENTLY we have had many accounts of England as seen through the eyes of polite and candid overseas visitors. My viewpoint is that of an Englishman who has now been Home some 18 months, after spending seven years in the Dominion of New Zealand. Great expectations enlivened the months before return. Perhaps if I detail these and then describe how each has fared after contact with reality, my opinions will appear in the proper perspective and their value will be enhanced. First, I trembled to find England too old. "You won't like it at all," they assured me overseas, "for here the world is young, and there it is cankered and crotchety with age. Not for nothing i 6 England called the Old' Co try. She has had her day." And eighteen months of England have convinced me that this view is essentially wrong. Physically, I have encountered more newness and novelty, in the form of fresh paint, buildings, roads, vehicles, clothing, public amenities, domestic gadgets and appliances than I observed during all my seven years at the Antipodes. Mentally, I have met more new ideas and intellectual innovations than my overseas home had ever known. Perhaps the explanation is that the New World is such by virtue of its recent population, and that the people there hav e had to devote so much energy to the work of agricultural pioneering that they have had to deny themselves glosses and extravagances. Then again, the past does not weigh | - - heavily upon England as I had expected. From New Zealand the Old

Country seemed to <. insist mainly of ruined castles ai.J abbeys, ancient forms and ceremonials, haggard grey stone and dusty 5...-vivals. New Zealanders who had just returned from English holidays spoke almost exclusively of their encounters witn such relics. But 1 have already discovered that if England is proud of her history, she still lives a busy, indeed a furious life that is essentially its own precedent. The post fortunately means less than the future to this" inheritor of so many dead - glories. English More Resilient? Next I looked forward to England because I had found colonials somewhat rigid in their ideas and conventions. I seemed to remember that Englishm<ti were more- resilient or flexible. Well, I wasn't wrong-—unfortunately! The colonial is accustomed, once he has made up his mind, t» pursue an unfaltering forward path. You know where you are with the colonial, and he likes to know where you are. But in England it seems that the universal aim is to hide intentions and avoid decisions and policies. It is so difficult to pin an Englishman down. The professed pacifist talks in terms of armageddon. The stockbroker of to-day is the poet of to-morrow. Clerks in offices have immaculate clothes and manners, but peers in palaces talk and dress like tramps. The Englishman simply won't make up his mind. This may be the Englishman's strength, but it can also be a weakness. On the

By .. Donald Cowie

Author of "New Zealand from Within" few occasions when the Englishman has made up his mind—as in 1931—what notable accomplishments we have had. This topic leads inevitably to a discussion of politics. Overseas, from what I read, I obtained a lurid picture of chances that had taken place in the English political scene since my departure from England. It seemed that the old party divisions had been obscured, and that political opinion has resolved itself into two great groups, called for short Right and Left. Thinkers of the Right wanted Fascism and a totalitarian State; thinkers of the Left wanted Communism and ditto. Parliamentary government lay dead or dying between these contestant forces,: whose intellectual direction proceeded primarily from Berlin and Bloomsbury. That was the situation as it appeared from a feverish study of advanced political books, pamphlets and papers, as they arrived in New Zealand. 1 became convinced that British politics had completely gone to the dogs in my absence. Blessed heart of England! How could I have misjudged you so, and how little was my faith. I was hideously misinformed. Because I now know that the fundamentals of British policy have not changed. In spite of the incessant

talking and writing of the perennial revolutionary- few Continental notions of political behaviour have made little or no impression on the masses of the people. Verily I state, in expiation of my sin, that the Enplishman is still a Conservative at heart, even Avhen he ie voting Laiiour. One's cherished preconceptions are the laughing-stock of exjierience. If everything else in England suits you, they said to me before I left the New World, you won't be abla to stand the climate. Yet I have bad my most pleasant summer, autumn, winter, spring and summer for the last eight year, and the grumblings of compatriots have been my constant wonder. Sun shines bripbt in Antipodean winter, but coincidental cold "snaps" hurt all the more becau:-e they come by surprise. Actually England has the gentlest climate in the world, that neither blisters nor bites, and keeps Englishmen in a state of physical equilibrium that is their constant safeguard. Thus. I conclude at the end of my probationary 18 months, that England and her climate are one. I miss the brilliant definiteness of the colonial scene, but I find instead a composite picture in half-tones that is my only home. ♦ -f- + ♦