NEW ZEALAND REVISITED

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21954, 1 December 1936, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND REVISITED

CRAZE FOR FLATS DEPLORED

CONTRASTS SEEN BY ENGLISH BUSINESS MAN

“Two things have impressed me most forcibly. The first is the beauty and vigour of New Zealand children, who are, in general, the finest-looking lot of youngsters I have ever seen. My second impression is one of regret to see that you New Zealanders, too, have succumbed to the craze for living in flats.”

In these terms. Captain R. G. England, a director of Carter Paterson and Company, Ltd., London, am principal of Englands, the well-known travel and transport agency, summarised his impressions on revisiting New Zealand after an interval of 15 years. Captain England is no stranger to the Doniinion, and has been closely connected with this country for over 30 years. He first visited the Dominio.. in 1902 as a member of the relief expedition which made New Zealand the base of its search for Captain Scott in the Antarctic. The following year Captain England again visited the Dominion as second-in-command, under Captain Colbeck, of the second Scott relief expedition. Anothe. visit to New Zealand waters was made by Captain England in 1907, when he was in command of the Nimrod, Sir E. Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition ship. Retiring from the Navy in 1908, Captain England established the tourist and travel agency which bears his name, and his present visit to New Zealand, the first since 1921, is to make adequate arrangements to handle the tourist traffic to Britain for next year’s coronation ceremonies. Commenting on the remarkable increase in flat construction since his last visit, Captain England said he was sorry to see Christchurch people resorting to such a form of living accommodation. There were localities where flats were necessary, but he considered Christchurch was not one of those. The city was ideally adapted for suburban expansion. There was plenty of room, and suburban dwellers had a particularly wide range of choice, from hills, plains, and riverside to seashore. “For normal, healthy happy life, a man—and his family—require something which, at some stage of the day, brings them into close touch with nature. The city dweller finds this in his garden, where he can apply his creative energy, but your cannot have gardens when you live in flats,” he added. “Life moves at such a fast pace nowadays, that it is essentia] for workers to have some break between the time they lay down the cares of work or business and take up the joys, and responsibilities of home life. That space is provided in the modern city by the time spent in travelling from home to business. Flat life is equivalent to living over one’s shop as our forefathers did, but that is the sort of thing we want to avoid under modern conditions.” Prosperity in Britain Speaking of the purpose of his visit to New Zealand, Captain England said the accession of King Edward was coincident with the commencement of a period of pronounced prosperity for Great Britain. Unemployment had now reached its lowest figure for many years, and the nation was looking forward to a continuance of prosperous conditions. He considered the time was most opportune for the expansion of New Zealand’s commercial activities in Britain, and the success gained in that direction would do much to stimulate the feeling of confidence which had already been awakened in the Dominion.

Captain England added that it was his intention to use his travel and transport organisation for developing closer relations between New Zealand and Britain. He was especially inte rested in a scheme for providing direct transport of small packages of New Zealand produce to purchasers in England. “There is a feeling shared by many people at Home that, when they buy New Zealand goods in the Home markets, those goods are not entirely New Zealand in origin. However, that