Our Own History

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21334, 29 November 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

Our Own History

The chief interest of mankind is man. People are always interested to know how their neighbours live, and it is a very small step from interest in the imagined life of other people, which is fiction, to interest in the real life of people who lived in the past, which is history. So it is that history, when it is not a mere recital of dates, of the succession of kings, or battles or acts of Parliament, but a revelation of the way people lived in times past, can be the most delightful of studies. English history, the story of our race, abounds in interest, and a knowledge of it is essential. But for New Zealanders it must always be a little remote, and to ®any a knowledge built on books only, for it is difficult at 80 great a distance, and lacking reminders of names and Places associated with the events to think of history as paling with real places and people who were actually «***• With the history of New Inland, of our own country—■Aere is no such difficulty, and such excuse for lack of Yet visitors from ® Verse as too often have to remind ® that we do not know our country—that we are ®*orant and unappreciative not its resources and its but of its history. It be gratifying to refute a charge, but unforit is well-founded. no reason why New should not find the of their own country interesting. Young can present livelier and easily understood material History than older ones, and who live in them, a real contact with the that history, are jgzrjy placed to be able to it. And New Zea•eltoh, orj *' some the less incidents of which j ( | time to time been "The Press Junior," with exciting and inevents. Even in the % which escaped of the Maori wars *o afflicted the north, «f exciting procession the stories of dissettlement and IS]??}!? 1 - Unending interest 112"®? the gap between the % j£lr ars or so ago, when fc&y olaj!r saw Canterand the present day $6 events are made all 1% Ban-, ve because many of sn£ _.. w k° took part in alive, and it is •% -7 hear from their own >* of the past and r with the present.