The 51st Slate?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30982, 11 February 1966, Page 10

The 51st Slate?

Sir,—lt was disturbing that the one symbol of New Zealand nationhood—the Southern Cross —was placed on the lowest denomination of decimal coin. Is New Zealand only worth a penny as a nation to its own people? This, to me. was symbolic of an attitude I have often encountered in this country. It is the feeling that all the best things in life come from overseas and that New Zealand, as a people and nation, are really of little account. I

feel the penny coin design is a good example of this self-deprecatory attitude by New Zealanders toward their own heritage and nation. Perhaps it is bred into Kiwis that Mother (U.K.) or the new Daddy (U.S.) always knows best, and that Kiwis must keep their beaks to the ground and do as they are told, or have their feathers plucked. Lack of substantial opposition to suggestions that New Zealand become an Australian or United States state is yet another indicator of the attitude.—Yours, etc., L. F. J. ROSS.

February 9, 1966. Sir, —“Canterbury” outlines some of the “advantages” we would gain from becoming the 51st of the United States. He does not, however, include such horrors as “the American way of life,” legal system, corruption, racial intolerance, tendency to shoot their presidents, etc. He claims that they would protect us. Would they if it were not necessary to protect themselves? Above all else. 1 would ask this question: if we, Esau-like, sell our birthright for this mess of American pottage, what guarantee have we of the permanence of this great protector? Even in the next decade, this “Great Society” could disintegrate :n one big bang from outside, or in a number of smaller bangs from internal tensions. No, we are a British people; let us remain so and regard our future with Churchillian independence.—Yours, etc., QUERCUS. February 9, 1966.

Sir,—“Canterbury’s” speculations on turning New Zealand into another Puerto Rico or Hawaii, where Hawaiians in the 50th state are now a declining minority, are as insubstantial as the myth of American protection in 1942. The forces which stopped the Japanese Army then were Commonwealth troops in South-east Asia, who saved this country from invasion as surely as the Battle of Britain saved neutral America from German invasion two years earlier. New Zealand is not alone, but a leading partner in a Commonwealth of 750 million people—a great potential market for our products; a political, economic, and defensive partnership which has done more than any other association to secure the freedom and prosperity of the world’s peoples. New Zealand’s independence, as a British country of the Commonwealth and the United Nations, is worth infinitely more than bondage to a country whose racial and international policies have so often proved disastrous', —Yours. CONCORDIA SALUS. February 9, 1966.