“EXACTLY FULFILLED”

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 271, 21 August 1925, Page 8

“EXACTLY FULFILLED”

EXPECTATIONS OF NEW ZEALAND LORD BURNHAM’S IMPRESSIONS By Telegraph—Special Correspondent. Auckland, August 20. “New Zealand has exactly fulfilled my expectations,” said Lord Burnham in an interview with a “New Zealand Herald” reporter at Rotorua. “The standard of comfort and general well being are higher than I recollect seeing in any other country. I know that there are industrial problems facing you'here, but it seems to me that they are not serious. In your country districts you seem to have made up your mind to devote yourselves to cultivation and primary industry.” Lord Burnham proceeded to discuss the butter factory and timber mills he saw at Frankton. “I appreciate {he fact,” he continued, “that you are making full use of your tumber resources. The only thing I have to say on that point is that I hope New Zealand will recollect that if you continue your utilisation of timber you must make up for it by increasing your subvention to afforestation. In Sweden, where I was two years ago, and where timber figures as one of the main industries, partly for paper, the law provides under a penalty of £5 that every landowner must replant tree for tree. More than*. this, they are mostly extending timber ■ limitations to provide timber, especially for sulphate pulp, which may come to New Zealand. I have seen to-day something of what you are doing by way of afforestation in this district, and it seems to me extremely good. I understand that you are to plant 10,000 acres more round about here. . Considering that all these hills will bear afforestation and that many are being stripped of the native timber, I mav be permitted to say that I do not think you are doing quite enough to provide for wastage and to help the country in future to be self-supporting or almost so for timber supplies. “This bright place has delighted our eyes,” continued Lord Burnham. “We were greatly interested in the Maori singing and dancing, as well as gratified by our reception at the Maori village. When you are in Maoriland you understand the atmosphere of romance and folklore. I always think that the reconciliation of the Maoris to British rule and to the New Zealand Government is one of the finest trophies of British civilisation. An unquestionably brave and attractive race, they have become part of the general body politic of this Dominion, and they show so far as I can see no signs of that degeneration which we have lamentably had in North America, but not to "such a degree in Canada as in the United States. Happily New Zealand (fame late into the field, and there was not the awful corruption of the native mind and nature which took place in North America, where traders were allowed to bring in ‘firewater’ without restriction and other means of demoralisation. I heartily congratulate New Zealand upon the fine proof of national sanity and strength of purpose that slie has shown in bringing the Maoris more completely into the body politic than is the case with any of the primitive races elsewhere in the British Commonwealth.”