N.Z. AND THE PACIFIC POWERS

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33083, 25 November 1972, Page 10

N.Z. AND THE PACIFIC POWERS

New Zealand and Japan, 1900-1941. By M. P. Lissington. The Government Printer. 206 pp. New Zealand and the United States, 1840-1944. By M. P. Lissington. The Government Printer. 114 pp. When, in 1958, Professor F. L. W. Wood published the first of the Official War History volumes dealing with the “New Zealand People at War,” under the title of “Political and External Affairs,” he acknowledged the use he had made of research done by Miss M. P. Lissington on New Zealand’s relations with the United States and Japan. Because of the broad scope of his general history of New Zealand’s external relationships, Professor Wood was not able to make as extensive use of that research material as he might have liked. Recognising the value of a more detailed treatment of New Zealand’s relationships with these two key Pacific nations, the Historical Publications Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs has now undertaken the publication of Miss Lissington’s two narratives, revised and up-dated by the inclusion of such material as has subsequently become available, and by the addition of a bibliography.

Though written as independent narratives, and published separately, Miss Lissington’s accounts are so interrelated in subject matter as to make it very well worth while to read them together. It was the threat from Japan, after all, which first led New Zealand to seek closer ties with the United States, after almost a century of developing commercial contacts, but only sporadic diplomatic activity. Quickly dropping her complaints about United States attempts to provide bases for a South Pacific air service by “atoll grabbing,” complaints which reached a peak in 1939 with the discovery that the United States Government was laying claim to the Cook and Tokelau groups, New Zealand established good relationships with the one nation able to prevent the Japanese from invading the Dominion. New Zealand has been careful (one

might almost say sedulous at times) to maintain and foster that relationship ever since.

New Zealand’s relationship with Japan began negatively, in 1895, with the New Zealand Government’s refusal to become a party to the AngloJapanese Commercial Treaty of 1894, largely because of fears that under Articles I and 111 of the Treaty, Japanese immigrants- might flood into New Zealand. It grew more positive during the Russo-Japanese War, when vehement anti-Russian feeling led the public to rejoice over the drubbing being administered by the Japanese, but, predictably, became negative again as the fact of Japanese naval and military strength sank in. From then on, Japan replaced China as the prime source of local fears about invasion. The “yellow peril” changed its hue and became brown, but in no whit diminished. In the event New Zealand’s fears proved amply justified; the crude suspicions of the populace and their elected representatives that in time to come the Japanese might try to change the complexion of islands ran remarkably close to the truth.

Well and economically written, Miss Lissington’s accounts make excellent use of a wide range of printed and manuscript sources. Though not particularly numerous, the illustrations are apposite and occasionally, as with the frontispiece to the United States volume, beautiful as well. Only one error in the text was noted, and that a minor one. On page 23 of the study of New Zealand’s relations with Japan, Miss Lissington describes Britain’s naval forces on the China and East India stations as composed of predreadnought battle cruisers. The description is contradictory. Battle cruisers were a post-dreadnought creation. The Minotaur and her sister ships were properly armoured cruisers; vessels of the same type as (though slightly stronger than) the German units they were designed to match, Von Spee’s Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.