AN ATMOSPHERE OF ENGLAND

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21236, 7 August 1934, Page 12

AN ATMOSPHERE OF ENGLAND

I VISITOR'S OPINION OF j i CHRISTCHURCH j j "MOST ENGLISH. OF THE | DOMINIONS" j "The atmosphere of Christchurch seems extraordinarily English to a visitor from England," remarked the Rev. D. W. Murray, a retired British Army chaplain, who is visiting the city. "Your cathedral, your university, the buildings of Christ's College, and many of the other buildings in the city all remind one of England," he said. Mr Murray was pleased to find this resemblance, because it agreed thoroughly with the idea of New Zealand possessed by many Englishmen. He said New Zealand was regarded by many persons in England as being by far the most English of all the Dominions, as the Dominion in which the greatest effort was being made to retain English traditions, English customs, and English forms of speech, and, moreover, as a Dominion that was something of a little social paradise. England Mr Murray believes to be the most stable and the most prosperous of all the great nations of the world. "On the whole conditions in England are as satisfactory as they are anywhere in the world," lie remarked. "They have improved remarkably in the last year or two, and I am sure that politically the country is very much more at rest than many others in the world to-day. In the south, where I live, unemployment does not appear to be serious, and the average member of the public sees little of it. In the north, of course, it is much worse, but the worst of it is eased by the grants and sustenance provided." Mr Murray will leave to-day to ' visit friends near Kurow, and then ! to visit Mount Cook. On his re- i turn to Christchurch he hopes to meet Bishop West-Watson, who was his tutor at Cambridge. Mr Murray served in France during the war and met the bishop again on the Rhine at the end of the war. In the six months since he left England, Mr Murray has spent some time in East Africa and Rhodesia, and paid a short visit to Australia. • He is particularly interested in | studying the ways in which the ; various Dominions and Colonies are i developing social organisations of ! their own, differing from the i original English sy.'-'jm. Australia, he thinks, has developed on dis- I tinetive lines, while what he has ! seen of New Zealand in the fort- j night he ha.s spent here leads him to believe that this Dominion, too, is taking a course of its own, though at present it still retains a strong flavour of England. Mr Murray considers that on the I whole the governments of the Do-. ' minions and Colonies are doing more for education than the Eng- j lish Government is doing. This, he j says, is necessary because there is ! none of the old scholastic founda- ; tifms in the Dominions such as there | are in England. He thinks the New > Zealand high .school system com- ! pares favourably with the public school system of England. | Mr Murray will remain in New i Zealand until August 25. when he j will sail for England bv wnv of ■ America. " ' ;