NEW ZEALANDERS APPRAISED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30739, 1 May 1965, Page 4

NEW ZEALANDERS APPRAISED

New Zealand. By William J. Cameron. Prentice Hall, New Jersey. 180 pp. A New Zealander, now Professor of History at McMaster University Canada, has been given the opportunity to write of his country of birth, in the American series “Modern Nations in Historical Perspective.” Dr. Cameron has succeeded in producing a readable and useful appraisal of ourselves, all the better for the analytical and pragmatic scrutiny written from a distant view. Being a student of literature, and an historian, the author has used the technique of analysing what our own literature has revealed of ourselves as New Zealanders and we appear to be quite an interesting nation. Other inter-related essays examine the economic state (our efficient and inefficient industries), social experiments (attainments and failures), the way of the Maoris, and the facts of our peculiarly omnipresent State (our Government which directs almost all, marketing, tourism, transport, communications, education and more). The outcome of the authentic and documented

study is a summary of what we are like, what we do, where we may go in the near future. The book deserves wide circulation and copies should be promptly given to all politicians, local and national. Some of the propositions are contentious, as in the urge for us, as inhabitants in the two largest Pacific islands to seek a greater role as leaders in the Pacific. How we can do this if the other islanders cannot afford or do not want to buy our primary produce is not clear.

The chapter on Maoritanga —the way of the Maoris—could be to the pakeha one of the most informative and needed surveys of Maori experience and culture, but how these areas can really beneficially modify our national culture is obscure. Dr. Cameron has exposed our preoccupation with producing pastoral products for a no longer inexhaustible market. Federated Farmers will note the view that the times no longer justify an attitude that their job is merely to produce goods that will sell themselves. He welcomes the demise of the ghost of colonial trust in a “Mother

Country,” now being replaced by a cultivated internationalism, of which the Meat and Wool Boards are appreciative, though the dairy interests are beset with an alarming prospect. The single illustration is a poor one—a map of our dominant industry (sheep), excluding, of all places, Southland. The index, confined to place names and persons, precludes ready reference to the excellent subject material so well assembled in the text.