AS OTHERS SEE US

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1932, Page 8

AS OTHERS SEE US

A NEW ENGLAND

IN THE PACIFIC

In "The Listener," the 8.8.C. publication, there has been a series of articles describing the nations that assembled at Ottawa. New" Zealand comes into tho series under the heading of "The New England in the Pacific," Kenneth Bell writing as follows:— '

"There is plenty of beauty to' be found in Canada and Australia, and there is something glorious and majestic in the very sight of both. But New Zealand is different: it is a fairyland. There is something magical about these two narrow little islands sticking up alone in the huge expanse of the Pacific, and packed from end to end with every kind of beauty. Take water, for instance. Everything that you can. expect water to do it does in New Zealand. It falls over precipices in cascades of foam, and it meanders about through rich meadows with the reflections of mountains painted < all over it. It lies out in the middle of the mountains in great silent, tranquil lakes. It dashes about in gorges, and it pushes its way deep into the land m magnificent fiords, and, as if that was not enough, it bubbles up out of the ground in geysers and does everything that water can do to put one's liver right, banish rheumatism, or bring off any of the cures that people who have overworked or overeaten go to Droitwich or Baden Baden or Bad Gastein f or. It hoists itself out of the sea to form the great clouds that gather over the mountain tops, and pours itself out of them in the torrents of rain that- make possible the great tropical forests which are one of New Zealand's glories. It freezes itself into glaciers. If -water does npt do its job in New Zealand there is nowhere in the world where it does. It is marvellous, too, for plants. There is hardly anything that will not grow' there in. one place or another/ from olives to furze bushes, and from great jungle creepers to buttercups! "Then the land itself really does do everything possible that land can doshoots up into snowy mountains, lies out flat in plains 100 miles long, dodges in' and out to make a marvellous, indented coastline, breeds a special kind of volcano,, and, when really roused, the most shattering kind of earthquake. You can be as cold or as "hot as you like in New Zealand, and ■. boil yourself to death by falling into a .hot stream, or embalm yourself in a coffin of ice. Yon can -lose yonrself in a tropical forest, or lie on your back, listening to sheep bleating, till you can imagine yourself on the Berkshire Downs. Yon are hard to please, indeed, if you cannot find something to admire in the scenery of New Zealand* ,THE ADAPTABLE NATIVE. "There is a special sort of thrill,' too, to be got from a country" which has only been part of the British Empire for less than a hundred years, so that the parents of people now living could, if they were alive themselves remember the time when they had no claim.to the place, when as far as we were concerned it was just a haunt "of pirates and other kinds of ruffian, with a few missionaries dotted about amongst them. It is not much more than a century and a half since the first white man set foot in the place As a Dominion it has hardly had any history at all, and if you live in Europe or thereabouts and think of all the hates\and.passions that history has bottled up, and all the foul memories and bitter thoughts that history gives people, and how they keep on rising up out of the^past like exhalations from some witch's cauldron or otffer, it really is a relief to find a, place where there are so few good reasons for hating anybody or anything, bo far as politics are concerned, New Zealand is practically virgin soil. Thare are not any ancient grudges or raucM memories, gone bad by being kept bottled up m people's minds and hearts for centuries. / . . "It is true that New Zealand is almost the very last thing -in -/Dominions, but it is also the home of one of the strangest and in /some respects most primitive of the races of roan. New Zealand would lose half j. its glamour if it was not for the M*iori There is a gloomy side to the Maori story: there is a real danger that in time to.come the whole race will? leave a, mere memory behind. One of the odd things about' New Zealand i« that though it is so good at growing plants it does not seem to be at all nood at growing people. But if the "white population does not increase as quifekly as you would expect, the Maoris are definitely dwindling. They are a 'tropical race, for one thing, and the southern island is much too cold for them. They are very susceptible to diseases of the lungs, and one:is told that they tend to lose their vigour and vitality as soon as they grow up. But) they are an amazing people, and it-will be a real tragedy if they cease to.playr, the great part they have played in the life of the country. I suppose «here is no other non-white race, not ;: even the Japanese, which as reganfflß individual cases anyway, has sho-wm "itself . more quick to pick up Europejm ways and take its full share in the'"life of the Europeanised community.. It is absolutely miraculous that thejre should have been Maori Cabinet Mijnisters in the public life of New Zealand, when you think of what the Maflri had in the recent past to equip him for this kind of work. When Europeans first came into the country there was not a single mammal in it. The Maoris had no beasts of burden at «llj they did not know.the use of any sort of metal; they had no pottery, no wool, no cotton, no silk and net linen. For centuries they had been completely iso: lated, and in lots "of ways they were thousands and thousands of years behind the most primitive peoples of Europe. But they had, ana still have, amazing qualities 1;a compensate them for this. How eljBQ could they have hollowed out canoes for 100 paddles, with only bone and stone implements to do it with? ]flow could they have learned to bring flown birds in wildly tangled jungle forest country with thirty-foot wooden spears tipped with bone? How oould they have built fortified strongholds which held up the best European troops for weeks? And how could they-have made,a Teal art out of tattooing each other's skins into incredibly complicated designs? Anyway, Maori 'legends and folklore and Maori arts a.nd crafts, customs and traditions, make a wonderful study, and there are grandchildren of the ferocious warriors who. nearly fought the English to a standstill getting up in faultless frock coats' to address each other in Parliamentary language, and to administer one of the most complicated modern social *odes of law in existence. I remember seeing a gang ofi Maoris working oiji a plank road in one of the worst placjes on the "Western Front, in the foul feather of 1917, and I can't think of anything which brought home to me moire clearly what strange things can happen in the British Empire. MO1«E ENGLISH THAN THE ENGLISH. "Against this background you get the typical Now Zealander; and it is not tlici least interesting thing about New Zealand to discover the kind of person he is. The first thing that strikes you about him is that he belongs to the most English of all the actions at Ottawa, not even perha^oe excluding England itself. He comes from this tremendous distance awayy out of this fairyland of the

South Seas. If you can get1 hold of him after a good dinner, he will do you an awe-inspiring rendering of a Mao-ri war dance and leap about in the most terrifying manner, giving vent to bloodcurdling and incomprehensible cries. But he fits into, English life all over the world as if he had been born in Hampsfead or Newburyi I * have often wondered what the reason is. Perhaps it is because, unlike the Australian, he has not. had btreathed into him from birth a whiff of the desert And unlike the Canadian, he has not got blowing in at his ba»k door the great hurricane of- American capitalism-^ And'he is .not, like the, South African, up against the native problem, which gives him something to think of utterly different from anything we have to cope- with here. O£ course, the most idiotic of all questions you could ask a New Zealander is Maoris make good servants. It is one of the happiest things about -tfhe country that it has never had a subject race: it has had race war, but not race slavery; it has not got a colour bar. In fact, the New Zealander really does live in an English world. It is an English world with, a whole lot of iihe top layers cut off, with no coronets and very few top I hats, and with- no slwms either. It is a land of villages and country towns, with plenty of peon.le who are quite well off, but pretty nearly all of them m a small way. It has got a lot of very goocl schools, and -there are plenty of chances of gettimg a first-rate education. There is jiot the rush and hurry about life that makes people too impatient to learn'how to write Latin prose or really study English literature, and there is a. tremendous bond between New -Zealand and the: Home Country just because they are, so far apart. Nino people out of ten: whom you meet there come from the British Isles, only a genieratiori or two back at the very most. They have built up a little England, and no great outside force has been brought to. boar on them to alter or change it. So you will find New Zealaaders. all over the Empire and beyon/X I have got friends from New Zealand myself who are doing typical Englishmen's work" in Chin.ese Canton and. Nigerian Kano, as well as in the Citr, or the Temple, or at Marlborough College or Oxford. They fit in, and find their • feet at once. They ,are mostly quiet, steady- going, sensible people, who know what they want and g<?, after, it steadily." The best dugouta.we ever had on the West-' crn Front far my ; battery were built by New Zealand engineers.. It was thorough, careful work, and exactly what was wanteA. That is the sort of thing the New Zoalander does. He may have been.bora in. fairyland,, but he is a grand man ; to have behind you in the ordinary "workaday, world."