“AS OTHERS SEE US”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 13

“AS OTHERS SEE US”

Sir, —would it not be interesting to learn whether the New Zealanders complained of by your American lady correspondent were really New Zealand born; or some of the people from other countries who have flocked to New Zealand since the war, and whose manner of speech and undesirable sentiments, in some places at least, are making New Zealand almost a foreign country to the children of her own soil and clime? Between the character of the colonists who came to New Zealand fifty years and more ago to colonise as well as live, and that of some of the immigrants of recent years, who come to take all and everything they can grab, and give nothing to the country in return, there is a great gulf. The only return these make is to run down the country and its conditions. How many of the 21,000 lives sacrificed in the Great War were descended from the fine old bands of pioneers and colonists, and when will New Zealand character now reach the high mark which they and their children would have attained. That high mark will certainly never be attained for us by recent importations, who may pass themselves off to tourists as New Zealanders, but are a spurious article, in comparison with our lost multitude of splendid young New Zealanders whose memories we honoured on April 25 last. The writer would be grateful for information in regard to the officers of the Wellington Maorilanders’ Association. —I am, etc., A NATIVE-BORN NEW ZEALANDER. Wellington, April 30. [The officers of the Maorilanders’ Association are:—President, Mr. M. J. Forde; secretary, Mr. J. H. Barnett; treasurer, Mr. F. H. C. Smith; committee, Messrs. M. Hyland, G. A. Nicholls, J. Brady, J. O’Brien, J. J. Murray, J. Ryan, D. McKenzie, A. Cassie, J. A. Shand, Mrs. M. J. Maslin.],