AS OTHERS SEE US

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 32, 6 August 1921, Page 7

AS OTHERS SEE US

TO THE EBUQR,

Sir,—Having recently taken up my residence in Wellington, I have been impreaed, not so much with the windy nature of tho place climatically aj with tho wimliness of the inhabitants,* if such a term can properly be used to express the bray and blow iv which, unfortunately, many of them seom to revel. Take, for instanoc, the cocky assurance of both people and press in tho football powers of ' their representatives. Wero they not jrdinf* to "wipe the floor" wiUi South Africa? Taranaki and Wanganui were really not worth taking seriously into account, but, Wellington was quite a different proposition. Before it was played was not the match described in th» press as the " unofficial Test," thereby implying that the local team was to ail intents and purposes a New Zealand team?

Now, turning away from fobtbatt, wo have the utterances in the report recently presented before the Central Progress Loaßue. According to this report, Welligton is tho one and only place in New Zealand, and stands prominent, both as a commercial centre and as a residential oity, there being no other place compar- : able with it in any way, and none that count' at all except in so far as their prosperity is reflected in tho prosperity of Wellington. It has time and again been drummed into my ears that Wellington is of all places in New Zealand tho only one in which the narrow, parochial view is absent, but y in no iplace \ii which I have been have I found this spirit so evident. Pride in one's oity is a very admirable thins:, but why make oneself ridiculous by indulging in invidious and quite unprofitable comparison with other places, which, all, count just as much 'perhaps in the general wolfnreand prosperity of tho country as a whole?—l amy etc.,, VISITOR, ,

4th August-,