NEW ZEALANDERS & "HOME"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 125, 22 November 1935, Page 10

NEW ZEALANDERS & "HOME"

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In a recent broadcast talk on Oxford and New Zealand an English visitor to New Zealand was critical of our habit of calling England "Home." He described Bernard Shaw as the modern substitute for, or equivalent to, the medieval court jester, and not taken very seriously, but he went on to say that "he must say he agreed with him in his remarks about our calling England 'Home,'" and he made some very critical remarks which I strongly resent. Why should we not call it Home? I personally have resided in New Zealand for 51 years, but I come of a family which can trace its descent right back to Lord Burleigh in Queen Elizabeth's time. The gentleman was kind enough to say "He could understand people themselves born in England calling it home," but not their children. When I come in after an English mail has arrived, my first question is, "Are there any letters from Home?" and naturally my children call it Home, too, and why should they not? Is anything to be gained by this kind of criticism? Is it not rather a time when we should draw all the bonds of sympathy tighter? When England is leading the world in its fight for democratic ideas, or rather the preservation of peace by the League of Nations, as against the tyranny of dictators, and rule by poison-gas, machine-guns, and all the ghastly weapons of modern war? Britain is the home of, by far, the majority of New Zealanders and the Mother of the Dominions. How long would we, with our one and a half million inhabitants, be allowed to monopolise this country with so many nations determined to have room to expand, but for the British Navy and Army?—l am, etc.,

I. BLACK.