A LECTURE ON NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 86, 10 April 1924, Page 14

A LECTURE ON NEW ZEALAND

MR. V. FISHER AT THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE

PROSPECTS OF FUTURE DEVELOPi . ment;

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 6th February. Mr. Victor Fisher is delivering a series of Saturday afternoon lectures oh the overseas Dominions, at the Imperial Institute. "New. Zealand" was .the subject of one of these,.and on the occasion of its delivery he had a very large and interested audience. .., . . The lecturer touched, upon many points which are not always included in talks about the Dominions. He described New Zealand as: being in many respects a pioneer in the ways of democratic government. It had carried out ' ownership and part-control of certain public services further than we had ventured to go in the Old Country. In. a word, tho constitution-maker of democratic sympathies w_puld find New Zealand an almost perfect exemplification nf all his theories. If democracy failed hi New Zealand it could not be expected to, succeed anywhere. The whole life of the Dominion ran so pleasantly that wo might be inclined to think that tho comparatively .perfect peace of its social life was rendered purer from a democratic point of view by the general contentment and the universal . prosperity of its citizens. So long as man was man. there would be ample scope for those other factors in human life which were the mainspirng of the poet and the writer generally. ' THE DOMINION'S WONDERFUL \ WATER POWER, Mr. Fisher referred to the magnificent rivers of New Zealand, and he said: — "I think you may live to see the day when the water-power shall be har- - nessed to the will of man, as has not been hitherto done, and when power will be so cheaD that the manufacturing capacity of the Dominion will spring forward at one bound and far exceed the products hitherto, attained by the colony. If New Zealanders in the. near future can succeed in harnessing the wonderful water-power in tleir country there is little doubt that with, in a measurable distance of time, the Dominion could easily support a population of, alt least .thirty, million people;, vln.the meantime, we' may surely-set burselves to the* task of seeing that so far aj'.we are:able, this great, lusty, pro-, gressive. community should be rendered all the ..more prosperous by the.pres-' ence of an adequate number of the tiuman factor which it lacks;at the present time. It is a deplorable thing that we here in England pay out1 doles. Those who are engaged under this horrible system are not producing, anything, and the great majority of them, I am sure," would be only too anxious.to be doing lucrative work. A great community here is going to be perilously near tyrannised by a horrible industrial dispute in the social system. Strikes arise largely owing to the growing fact that we. have too many mouths to feed in this country to-Bay, and that there is no system within the measurable power of man's hand that is at all likely to be able to products in these islands sufficient foodstuffs to supply adequately,, pur material ..needs and to maintain our population, even at the low standard of material comfort which was enjoyed up to 1914. If this be so,' then it becomes the bounden duty of every respectable citizen to do what is in his power to relieve the growing and intolerable strain. If there can be no hope for healthy industry in this country' then we must support the work of our forebears, strengthen it,1 broaden it, and deepen it, and so make sure' the future of English citizenship in the South Pacific, where there is the peril of invasion by more fecund races .than ourselves. Dealing with the question of the'cost ot migration, Mr. Fisher asked: "But what is the cost compared with the cost of doles, and the great cost of sending thousands of lads into blind- alley occupations? How \infinitely better to spend the money in sending virile men and boys, with life opening out to them, to these entirely civilised, and in many respects, still virgin fields." New Zealand was. one of the outposts of British civilisation in 'the Empire. Apart from the responsibility of kinship, it seemed tolerably certain that it was a matter, not of theoretical or idealistic -fancy, but it was a matter of grim immediate responsibility to everyone to address himself to this problem, and of all the King's wide-fluug Dominions there was not one which was quite as comparable for an Englishman's home to the Dominion of .'New Zealand. He hoped that his audience would jnake themselves far better acquainted with the possibilities offered by the- Dominion. Mr. Fisher referred in detail to the pastoral 'arid agricultural features of the Dominion, which he described as- a beautiful country for the sportsman and the • holiday r maker. 4 Regarding the. lakes, he said: "The lakes of ■ England, ' beautiful as they are, > are dwarfed into lit-\ tie puddles by the magnificent ■ lakes of New Zealand," 'It . was a country which might well arouse the enthusiasm of any man or woman who had the least spark of the old British love of adventure and enterprise. Mr. Fisher devoted considerable time to the value of the Dominions to the' Mother Country from the trade aspect, and his concluding sentence was: "Like, most other of our problems, it is not merely ■economic, but it is a psychological matter. If Britain goes it will go down mainly because our people are asleep—they do not .care, they are not interested." . '. . At the end of the lecture a number of slides were thrown upon the screen, the new ones in the set showing inter-esting.sheep-mustering pictures. A wellknown Christchurch man who happened to" bo present said to me: "When are we going to have.some new slides? I saw these pictures of the towns 15 years ago." ;'