The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1935. Strange Peoples

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1935. Strange Peoples

A hundred years ago the people of Europe and Asia had few thoughts about the inhabitants of far-off New Zealand; a handful of Englishmen and Frenchmen had taken an interest in the islands and had joined expeditions visiting them. • But on the whole New Zealanders were as unfamiliar to Europeans as the Europeans were to the New Zealanders—the Maoris. The whalers who visited these shores came to make profit and took little notice of the people who lived here or of the people who lived in distant lands. Now everything is changed. Men and women everywhere are interested in their fellow-beings in other parts of the world; visits are paid, to our Dominion by people whose parents and grandparents had probably heard of the islands only as minute specks in the South Pacific. In the old days when the white inhabitants of New Zealand were hardy pioneers, few persons other than captains and crews of sailing ships ever returned to the countries of the Old World—unless, indeed, they returned to die there. Now men and women leave the Dominion on holiday trips not only to the British Isles and the homes of their ancestors, but also to lands strange to them, in Europe and Asia. Not only does this happen; men and women from those countries now visit the Dominion perhaps for a short stay, perhaps for a year or so. It has often been' said that the world is becoming smaller, that modern travel facilities make it possible for us to know Canadians as well as we know Australians, the English, the Scots and the Irish, as well as we know each other. But the world is not populated entirely by the English-speaking races; and in the past faults in communications and the lack of transport have led many of us to behave as though this were the case. We have been rightly blamed for being insular or unable to see'the point of view of peoples living in different countries and in other climes. There has been no excuse for such an outlook for many years now; books tell us in words and with well-produced colour pictures how other races live and how they take their parts in the world's affairs. Further than this, visitors have come from Asia, Europe, America and Africa and have given us opportunity to find out the nature of their countrymen. The article on this page telling of the life of Russian children in the Chinese surroundings of Manchukuo—or Manchuria as it was called when the Chinese Eastern Railway was being built—was written by a Russian visitor to New Zealand whose father was in charge of the education department of that district. Miss Diakoff has many interesting things to tell us.