HOSPITAL CHAT.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16310, 6 September 1918, Page 8

HOSPITAL CHAT.

"DRAWING THE LONG BOW." WHAT THE MAORI SAID. (KROM OUB OWN COBBESPONDENT.) LONDON, July 16. Some time ago I showed what excellent apostles for New Zealand are the thousands of our men who have passed through English hospitals and made English friends from end to end of the Kingdom. One only hopss that some of the pictures they have painted of their native land may not sink deeply into the souls of their hearers. There was the case of the boy tna other day who was discussing very tenderly with his English fiancee this relative merits of settling down in England instead of going back to New Zealand. It was quite impossible, he said, for he. had his property in God's Own Country and must go back. "But couldn't we take a small farm here?" she pleaded. "Oh, no, it would never do," said the trooper. "You see, mine is a walking stick farm, and the sun in England is not hot enough to turn the handles." A member of such a respectable regiment as the Otagos was being earnestly interrogated by a lady visitor about his home country, and bo on. "Are you married?" she asked. The Otago man looked sadly at the ceiling and declared himself a widower. This produced immediate sympathy and further questions. "You see," he said, "it's this way. They get trench feet very badly in New Zealand, and when wives get trench feet there's nothing for' it but to shoot them. I shot mine just before we came away."

The hardships of "colonial" life wero made very graphic by an Auckland member of the Rifle Brigade to a fair visitor. Many people in New Zealand, he said, do not wear boots at all.

"Of course they start ont with boots on, but in walking from one goidfield to another they wear them right off their feet. Gradually a hard crust forms on the bottom of the foot with the constant walking, and finally, instead of getting more boots, they get shoes nailed on to the pad. More than half the people of New Zealand wear these horse shoes." But the palm goes to Private Piripi. of the Maori Battalion. A dear old ladv sat at hiß bedside cheering his Sunday afternoon. "You speak very good English," she was saying. Piripi blushed at the compliment, but rose at once. "Yes," he said, "it isn't bad, and I have learned it all since I came to England." "Really?" "It is quite true," N said Piripi. "I have only been tamed a short time ago. My father is still wild. He has never* been tamed." "How wonderful. Where does he live?" "He is still in the bush," replied Piripi unabashed. "They tried to catch him to say good-bye before I left but thev could not get him." ! The old lady's eyes were filled with wonder. "Whatever does he live on?" "Oh, anything he can shoot—goats and calves, and sometimes babies."