AS OTHERS SEE US

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 25, 29 July 1924, Page 15

AS OTHERS SEE US

NATIONAL EXCLUSIVENESS

A WIDEB OUTLOOK NEEDED.

(FROM OBR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 17th June. • Some weeks ago "The Spectator" published an article in its "EnglishSpeaking" column on the need for a greater knowledge of the scenic attraction! of New Zealand. In the current, number of the journal a resident of Sail Francisco, an Englishman signing himself "E. 8.," gives his impressions ■of the welcome given in the Dominion to tourists. He also draws attention to tho fact that under New Zealand administration is one of the loveliest islands of the. Pacific, practically unknown to the world at large and even to the people of New Zealand. Although people may disagree with the correspondent,- it is always useful to know what strangers have to say about their reception.and their experiences in New Zealand. .

"Far from welcoming visitors,, the New • Zealander, as many a traveller there will agree, appears to regard them with extreme reserve, mingled oftenwith suspicion," writes this correspondent. "He is intensely proud of his country and his climate, whether he", basks in the sub-tropical heats of tho. North Island or is braced by the Scottish rigours of Dunedin in the South.: His own newspapers are perpetually ■full of excellent 'photographs of its varied beauties. But hi? pride is a close, jealous pride. He hugs the beauties to himself, and has no. wish, as far as one can gather, for anybody else to see them.

"It would be useless for the New Zealand' Government to issue posters to the world, 'Come and See Us,1 if, when it came, it. was met by the first resident with an annoyed: 'What on earth have you come for?' British myself, I am no lover of publicity 'stunts,' and a residence of some months in America has greatly strengthened rather than weakened this feeling. But nothing so rigorous or alien need be necessary for Now Zealand if only she could be induced to develop a rather wider outlook on places and people beyond her own pleasant shores. A little morn friendliness to the outer world and she would soon be better known and her attractions appreciated.

"But not only is New Zealand itself little known, but no one, not even New Zealanders themselves, appear to know that the Dominion has possessions in the South Seas which, if made the subject, of a publicity campaign, could no doubt soon rival other resorts of that picturesque region. The Cook Islands, a group of five islands twenty degrt»? south of the equator and within some eight hundred miles or so of the famous Tahiti, are in the administration of the Dominion. Rarotonga, the chief of the group, ■is regarded by some South Sea writers as one of the loveliest ■ "islands in the Pacific. It is twenty miles round and five miles broad. Down its centre runs a chain of peaked hills clothed to the top in bush. It has, all the luxuriance of vegetation," riot of hibiscus and flamboyant frangipanni, which has made the islands of the South Seas so romantically attractive; its lagoon is opalescent; its bronze-hued maidens and youths go flower-wreathed and barefoot; it plays, the tom-tom beneath coco-palms and still dances the hula-hula, not for pay at tawdry music halls, but because it likes to do so.. Schooners occasionally make trips to the other islands of the group—Aitu, Aitutaki, Mangia, and Mauke. There is a monthly service of steamers which call at Rarotonga on the route from Sydney and Wellington to San Francisco. "

A CONSPIRACY'OF SILENCE. "Rarotonga is no more distant from Wellington than Honolulu from San Francisco. Yet while all the world has heard of the latter (or if they haven't it is through no fault of America, which owns it), and one gets an impression that it is a day's run from San Francisco, hardly ar.ybody but a few South Sea travellers have heard of, the Cook Islands or kno\vs that they belong to New Zealand. I have read numbers of articles and books about the South' Seas which have dealt with Tahiti and Hawaii, Sarhoa, and Fiji, the Marquesas and the Paumotus, the Solomons, and, :n fact, every group save the Cook group! j It has seemed sometimes as if there was a conspiracy of silence- about these islands. Not even, as I have said, do the people of New Zealand, who own j them, know them, beyond a few officials, j It is the most difficult thing when in that Dominion to get any information about them—and when you. do get it, it is only that any passenger for that port must buy a return ticket in case .the island authorities refuse to receive you!

"I do not in the least want to see Rarotonga made' into a second Honolulu, and it is a good side to New Zealand's reserve that, this, ib not at all; likely ever to be its fate. Your Writer's reference, however, to New Zealand and to Hawaii made me feel it might be of interest to note this remarkable instance of national exclusiveness." SCRIPTURAL HOSPITALITY. Lest some of the above statements should unduly disturb the people of the Dominion, it is fitting to quote from the special commissioner of the "Daily Chronicle," who lias just contributed his fitßt article on life and work in Australia and. New Zealand. . "I shall never forget," he pays, "that charming, spontaneous, unrehearsed, collective welcome that came from the quayside crowd at Wellington.'l-It was a lightning. revelation to me of1 the friendly, genial, warm-heartedness of tho New Zealand nation—a people who seem to be-so endued • with . a spirit of almost scriptural hospitality that strangers -about to_ enter-their, gates feel .that they -are' being received as honoured guests."