THE BOOKFELLOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 12, 15 January 1910, Page 9

THE BOOKFELLOW.

Written for The Post, by A. G. Stephens. (Copyright. — All Rights Reserved.) NEW VERSES. FUIMUS. Of old wa knew a glade Whoso morn and evening shade Were dearer than the shine Of all the hills divine One flower is ftlway best; And, hidden near the nest, One bird of all the brood Will sanctify tho wood. Philosophy can show Why you delight me so; I never opened book To analyse a look. Since you and I were thrown Together, let a stono We loved and rode away. Be eacrod to the day LOWRY BAY. lam not bore alone. A hidden throng la round me in the vesper of the sky. Dead Babylon and Ninevah are nigh ; Rome, Antfoch; the slave who felt the thong ; The lord that slew him when the day was long, And tho soul heavy with satiety. And some are near who saw tho. Christ go by; With Pilate shut aloof, at gazo with wrong. And what are they those ministers surround ?—? — The cliff, tho sand, the islet at my feet Reef-scattered far below all human ken. Lo ! God hath bado a mighty -angel beat His wings, a benediction in their sound, Above the roof of the most forlorn of men. WIDOWED. I hoar the Summer breathing at my door ; So early that the thrush'a thankful air The night is done still sleeps — but never more Will your delight be there. The shadow on my roof is very small, The rose will shake it from her petal soon; The sun will enter, and my heart will feel Faint as the little moon That creeps behind the mountains — there to hide. Oh, would that to her silence I could go; „ Shut from the pain of all that doth abide — The tears for long ago. But thou shalt come, beloved, in a dream ; Like a cloud summoned from a misty sea ; And though it be but sleep, my heart will • seem Lifted again by thee. . — Hubert Church. A BOOK ABOUT NEW ZEALAND. Mr. G. H. Scholefield's book, "New Zealand in Evolution" (London : Unwin) is excellent in its kind. Chiefly it tells the story of industrial development — with chapters on timber, flax, wool, gold, coal, frozen meat, and dairying. There is a short description of the country, and sufficient reference lo history and politics to place the subject in perspective. Land policy, labour and arbitration, State activities and shipping, are dealt with. There are chapters on commerce, taxation, and the Maori. Of these things Mr. Scholefield gives accounts extending, in most cases, to the date of 1908. He makes no general acknowledgment of authorities, but it is evident that he has read much of the antecedent literature of his subject. , The book is chiefly narrative and descriptive. The author has taken the old knowledge already accumulated in books, with the new knowledge only to be found in newspapers and documents, and_ has- made a series of fresh summaries of the facts relating to a score of the features of New Zealand history, politics, and industry. Written in a good journalist style, and vivified by an energetic personality, these summaries aie well made. Mr. Scholefield writes from an independent point of view, and his incidental commentary is often well informed and sound ; but in the main his book is not critical. He recites progress, and sees New Zealand in rose colour. One may cheerfully admit that it should be coloured warm pink at least ; yet, except as a record of performances, New Zealanders themselves will not be greatly attracted by the book. It is spectacular, a book for the Briton and the foreigner, utilitarian rather than philosophical. Mr. Scholefield has a considerable power of synthesising and narrating facts, and within its scope the book's novelty in some particulars will make it interesting to outsiders. Political events happen so quickly in New Zealand that already some of the references — as in regard to the land policy — do not precisely fit the case. ' Of the social and intellectual side of life in Mew Zealand Mr. Scholefield has little to say, and that little. is said indirectly. He says little, also, of national finance, and nothing of the part which borrowed money has played in New Zealand's evolution. His book is not comprehensive, and the title is to some .extent misleading. "The Industrial Development of New Zealand" is a title that would better represent its contents. Nevertheless, Mr. Scholefield is to be praised for compressing his abounding material ably ; and his book is already bulky. The style well serves the author's purpose, and only occasionally does he lapse from dignity to tell us, for example (125) that 6heep-farmers "had bitten off more than they could chew." Perhaps he misconceives the meaning of a word here and there. The population is not yet "upwards of 1,000,000" (44). New Zealand trout are big, but they do not grow "frequently upwards of 201b." (292.) The declaration that "these and many subsequent proceedings were passing" (236) is an example of careless journalese. Such trifling blots, however, are rare ; and the narrative is always readable. Here and there one meets with an inexact passage. "*\ll classes in New Zealand are in favsar of arbitration" (xii.) is too wide a statement when applied as here, to the legal system of arbitration. The opinion of employers is certainly divided, ps Mr. Scholefield himself has shown on a later page (235). At page 37 we read : — "The character of' the English emigrant" — as opposed to other British and foreign nationalities — "has shown itself faulty in more than one colony. It lacks the shrewd instincts of adaptability which are necessary in all the little affairs of the emigrant." As a general statement, without qualification of time and place, this is certainly disputable. As applied to the colonisation of New Zealand, can it be defended ? For the vital point is not the initial error, but the final achievement; and can it be said that the achievement of English emigrants to New Zealand is not at least as great as that of any other race ? It is true that the Englishman is apt to quarrel with the new circumstances of a colony. But if in the end he masters the circumstances and re-makes them, or many „of them, to his own liking, can his opposition be accounted a fault in characi ter ? We think not. The Englishman's insistence on having things his own way does indeed breed many conflicts that could be avoided. But it is the fact that in the end he gets things /his own way that makes him the incomparable colonist. He comes to invert the order of the new world ; and he succeeds by dint of grumbling at it and fighting with it. The Scot is more disciplined for the day of small things; but often he has to be lifted to the larger day. How greatly is

"the model New Zealand society" of Otago indebted to " the Victorian influx !" Mr. Scholefield indeed realises this, and perhaps it is only his mode of expression that errs. The more one reflects upon the four races of the British Isles, the more one sees how admirably each supplements the other in the Briton. Mr. Scholefield says (40) : "The influence of Scots is undoubtedly the most concrete and appreciable of all nationalities engaged in the colonisation of New Zealand." It is a good thesis for a debating society ; but we doubt vtohether it is more than superficially true.' We should say rather that New Zealand has a distinct Scottish colour; but that, apart from localities, and as far as the composite has settled down, New Zealand has a distinct English character. Leaving debatable ground, an accurate critic would say only that New Zealand has a distinct British character. In Mr. Scholefield's excellent chapter on forests and timber, this passage is worth signalising :—: — " Having dismissed all idea of control over the forests exercised by the Government or Waste Lands Boards, there remains but little doubt that the sawmillers, handsawyers, and splitters have made the most they could, chiefly for tfi'eir own advantage, and doubtless also that of the purchasers.' They have usually cut out the best timber and left the rest standing, paid little or no attention to the exclusion of fire from their own or neighbouring blocks of forest — in sliort, conducted their operations on the simplest and most remunerative plan for themselves, but the most wasteful and detrimental to the public estate." This is a paragraph from a report by Captain Campbell- Walker in 1876. Mr. Scholefield declares it "as true to-day as when it was written." Mr. Scholefield's remarks upon State coal mines (113), State insurance (268), and co-operative railway gangs (265) have no trace of the searching criticisms which the subjects need. Here and elsewhere in his book he has an air of glossing over the results of State socialism in the interest of his rosy picture. "The private wealth of a million people is more than £350.000,000" (193). There is no evidence to prove this statement. It is a tentative estimate based on the assumption that the wealth of the living is proportionately equal to that left by the dead. The Registrar-General gives it — reluctantly, csne may well believe-*-as representing at most "only a rough approximation to the facts." It contains so many sources of error, and is liable to so great and sudden fluctuations, that it is misleading to cito as established without qualification. " ... the. cost of living, except, perhaps, for the low class worker who is a feature of the English industrial towns, is cheaper in New Zealand than in England " (215). Mr. Scholefield offers no evidence j and we do not believe the statement. We cannot think of any district in, England where £2 10s a week will not 'buy more utilities of 'an equal quality — food, clothes, and lodging— than it will buy in any district of Now Zealand. That the lot of the worker at £2 10s a week in New Zealand may be better ; that) his opportunities for advancement are far bolter than those of the Englishman ; are different propositions. We believe both to be true. Even to encourage immigrants, it is unwise to exceed the fact ; and the advantages of New Zealand are so great that they do not need to be magnified by one iota. In reference to industrial legislation, Mr. Scholefield juxtaposes the significant statements that (1) even more today than before the industrial era New Zealand depends for her' prosperity upon her expert of primary products ; and that (2) the primary industries have beon generally beyond the pale of the labour laws. That must always bo remembered. Elsewhere Mr. Scholefield quotes and discounts — as wo think, un warrantably — Mr. Ernest Ayes, who in 1908 investigated labour legislation and reported to the British Government : "Failure to reach this reasonable standard of efficiency is, however, constantly mentioned, and although it is difficult to prove and measure, I thin* the evidence is conclusive that present conditions in NeVv Zealand are tending, so far as adult male workers are concerned, and over a wido field, towards a, lower efficiency." Mr. Scholefield, calling New Zealand 'a country of engineering," rightly refers to the principal share which Npw Zealanders have taken m the development of gold-dredging "New Zealand engineers — young men trained in the schools of mines and afterwards in the compulsory term underground — went abroad with their knowledge. Dredges — at first made in New Zealand, but afterwards locally—^came into being on the gold-bearing rivers of Australia. Thence farther afield : and to-day the young New Zealand dredgemaster swelters in th;> steam of the North Borneo and Ashanti forests, in the Philippines, in Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, and a host of tropical countries. New Zealand engineers ride out the 40-foot floods on the Irrawaddi, wrestle with the mooring lines in the swift currents of the Yenesei and the Amur, in the streams of British Columbia and California, and far south in Patagonia." The special New Zealand significance of the term "workers" under the Arbitration Acts (236) should have been made clear. A stranger will read the statement that "the workers were thoroughly and irreconcilably dissatisfied" as referring to the whole body of labourers, instead of to a comparatively small number working under the Actß. It should have been pointed out also, in reference- to Mr. Justice Sim's declaration that "the workers" cannot have both "strikes and arbitration," that in a sense they have both, since they have the option of choice, and some unions choose strikes while, others choose arbitration. Mr. Scholefield's comment on the Blackball strikers is that "After being 'out* for eleven weeks they accepted conditions which spelt defeat, and returned to duty disgusted and chastened in their hostility to the Act." We cannot accept this as a correct statement, nor the. statement that "The employers demanded that the Act should be maintained*' (240). The employers de-, manded that the Act should be enforced, and by "changing one word Mr. Scholefield gives a notion of the employers' attitude that is quite erroneous. Mr. Scholefield says (242) that by the latest legislation "the general public is protected against sudden dislocations of services of utility" in the event of the interruption of the supplies of "coal." It is not ; as coal-miners have been carefully left out of the Act: Mr. Scholefield says (242) : "To-day all classes in New Zealand are firm believers in a legislative object" (arbitration law) which has "practically eliminated the strike and the lock-out from the- consideration of business men.' 1 This is a bad example of the unwarrantable statements we complain of. Our author, whose statistics usually run to 1908. stops comparing imports and exports (317) at 1907. The reason of the suppression is obvious ; the suppression is unwise. We believe that anybody who knows its wealth and worth will admit that New Zealand can afford to tell all of the truth all of the time. At least an unbiased historian should tell it. "That the pakeha of New Zealand have never entertained the idea of renouncing the Treaty of Waitangi stands to their credit as a nation" (334). Yet Mr. Scholefield has foreseen the new , Maori land policy and the paragraph in

the 1909 Financial Statement which refers to the acquisition of Native land "compulsorily if necessary." That paragraph means a big breach of the Treaty, of Waitangi — with the approval of the Maori leaders, and, it is hoped, in. the interest of the Maori people. This is Mr. Scholefield's opinion : "Should the Maori fail to proceed now to a practical possession of his land the time must come when the legal processes which exist will be used to despoil him of it.And that simply means, to all who know native races, that from a landed aristocracy the Maori will become a proletariat of paupers." We have given full consideration to Mr. Scholefield's book because it is bound to be widely read in Britain and America, and to exercise a considerable influence upon the British and fpreign opinion of New Zealand to-day. Its defects, from a New Zealand point of view, are easily outweighed by its merits. Mr. Scholefield's knowledge and intelligence really illuminate the facts.' Mr. W. P. Reeves, who supplies an introduction, rightly says that to one side of the growth of New Zealand the book' will do justice to an extent not done by, any previous writer. RECENTLY PUBLISHED.. W. De Morgan's "It Never Can Happen Again. (Heinemann) is a disappointment. We admit a declination from 'Joseph Vance" to "Somehow Good," through "Alice-for-Short" j but all these were readable. "It Never Can Happen, Again" is unreadable. It is eeventy, years old, like the author; and is a framework without life in it. Page after page purports to say something, but is nothing but an old man's doting chronicle. No doubt we may attribute it to the English devotion to reputations, however acquired, that the aged author was not warned of his error. Well, Joe Vance, and Alice, and some passages of Sally, are enough to have written. The strength and charm of the English; character of men and women have not been better displayed. "Jack Carstairs of the Power House," bj Sydney Sandys (Methuen) is a quaint, fresh, readable novel. H. G. Wells'e en-gineer-man-of-the-future is hero and villain. He is engaged on this occasion in electric lighting, and the background of municipal enterprise is new and entertaining. Sensational adventures, fistfights, and romance are added to make the book precisely suitable for virile young New Zealanders. What w? like jjarticularly is the vision of the author's mind. He certainly represents a numerous and increasing class of Englishmen, and is worth cogitation. An ex-editor of CasselPs Saturday] Magazine has published his recollections., Except for a craftsman, they have little merit ; but there are on© or two flashes of interest. "After I had an article on the sale of foreign titles, an anxious gentleman asked if I would inform, him' confidentially- where they could be pur« chased. I do not want a title for an) improper purpose," he added, "but to 'boom' my specific for cold feet." Th» arduousness of a great surgeon's life wa» learned from Sir Frederick Treves, Ser-jeant-Surgeon to the King, who described' one of his days when in practice and! also gave his reasons for retirement.. "I was invariably downstairs," he stated ;, "at five o'clock. I breakfasted at halfpast seven, and almost without exception there was an operation at nine.. Then ' right up to one there were pat-> ients to see. After that I went out,; and, after having lunched in my carriage, devoted the afternoon to consultations. When did I get home? At all hours. . . I gave it up because there was too much to do. Performing big operations every day makes existence rather trying, i got tired of my duties, they bored, me to death ; so after fix and twenty years of practice I retired."