LITTLE KNOWN OF N.Z. IN AMERICA

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26020, 25 January 1950, Page 2

LITTLE KNOWN OF N.Z. IN AMERICA

IMPRESSION OF AUCKLAND WOMAN New Zealand was a small . place somewhere at the North Pole. It had 200 barefooted inhabitants who did not live in proper houses. They could not speak English. That was the impression of her home country which astonished Mrs T. JSweeney in Hartford, Connecticut, America, when she left Auckland to live there four years ago. Mrs Sweeney married an American serviceman, and has returned to spend six months with her parents, Mr and Mrs F. W. Pye, of Mercer road, Herne B “There is one thing I would like, to emphasise,” said Mrs Sweeney, in an interview. “Greater publicity is needed for New Zealand in America. Scenic films would help. I found that, to the people there, New Zealand did not mean a thing. At first, when my husband’s friends came to our home, they did not address me at all—they thought I could not speak English. I was humiliated. Since then I have done my best to tell everybody about New Zealand. But,” she added ruefully, “one voice against thousands is ‘kinda hard.’ ”

Housekeeping in America, Mrs Sweeney said, was not a toil but a pleasure. Washing machines and refrigerators, in many designs, were the rule, and not the exception. Gas and electric stoves were complete with “timers.”

Americans, she thought, were very “germ conscious,” particularly since the spread of virus diseases after the war. Doctors were fighting hard against the socialisation of medicine, and the people found they had to fight hard against being ill, because it cost so much.