Problems

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21746, 31 March 1936, Page 10

Problems

The question of what makes a problem is provoked by statements of Major-General Duncan, leader of a party of British and South African farmers now touring the Dominion. "You New Zealanders," he says, politely rebuking, "are far too serious, and you are " thinking far too much about your own prob- " lems." From that point he goes on to show, recording to hip personal view, that we have no problems at all in this country. We have no gangsters, or 10,000,000 unemployed as they have wi the United States; we have no revolutions as they have in South America; we are not in the shadow of war as they are in the Balkans, and we have not the distress and poverty to be seen in Great Britain. That is all true enough, but problems have to be judged relatively. If a man has a stomach ache, or even thinks he has one, his heart does not leap with happiness just because he is shown a man who has a head full of aching teeth. "You "have goodwill, sunshine, and plenty to eat," says Major-General, Duncan: but is that enough? And in any case these things alone do not make for a full and untrammelled existence. It may be inhospitable to shoot at a visitor, but it must be said that goodwill is a very vague word to use, and at the risk of disillusioning the Major-General he should be referred to newspapers to see what Mr Semple has said about scroungers, loafers, and capitalists. And, of course, to anticipate the future a little, some sections of the public may not have unqualified goodwill messages for Mr Savage in a few weeks' time. Perhaps we would like to believe that goodwill is universal

in the Dominion, but is it? Then there is the matter o'f sunshine. Major-General Duncan can easily be misunderstood in speaking of sunshine at the end of one of the worst summers recorded in New Zealand. His last point about having plenty to eat is only a partial solace for many who are in trouble. A farmer may have half a side of mutton in his safe and a gallon of cream in his shed; but still the fact that he possesses cream and mutton enough to * satisfy a giant does not make his mortgage look any more attractive. New Zealand, of course, has been civilised for less than a century. We have not the temperament for revolutions and gun-play, but apart from that we have done well enough in acquiring problems of our own. They may be small when compared with those of older civilisations, but they are our own, and we would have duller conversation without them.