MUTUAL LESSONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 5, 8 January 1944, Page 6

MUTUAL LESSONS

AMERICA AND ANTIPODES

(Special P.A. Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 8.

New Zealand and Australia on the one hand, and America on the other, jhave much to learn from each other, says Dr. Allan Nevins, Professor of Anjerican History at.Columbia University, in New York City. Dr. Nevins is now completing a tour of New Zealand and Australia on behalf of the (United States Office of War Information. Some revision of educational systems of Australia, New Zealand, and '■ America was an essential first step forwards future effective co-operation between the countries. "Going beyond this," added Dr. Nevins, "America must realise that she has very special lessons ,to learn from New Zealand and Ausitralia, which' countries have carried out a number' of interesting experiments in the relation between the Government and industry having the profoundest significance to the United States of America, which in the degression years had to abandon her traditional laisseiz; faire- policy of democracy, must go further along the road . New Zealand and Australia began to follow many years ago. "She must learn from your experi-ence-not only in what to do, but in what riot to" do." Dr. Nevins . emphasised the . lessons which America might learn from the study of. bold New Zealand thought itowards a more socialised State. It .was perfectly clear, for example, that iprice control was working much Better in both New Zealand and Australia than in the United States, and must realise the significance of the fact that New Zealanders and Australians were conditioned to State interference whereas Americans were not. On the other hand, New Zealand and Australia might take cognisance of the high incentives for. individual initiative which Americans maintained in a system of free enterprise. America, on the social and cultural side, could learn much from the orderliness and sobriety of New Zealand and Australian life. In their turn, these two countries had much to learn from America in .the value of heterogenity. There was too.much uniformity in New Zealand and Australian life. "There is a certain.tendency in New Zealand and Australia to become a monolithic social structure," said Dr. j Nevins. "You are entirely British in* your social structure; we Americans' have gained something, as well as lost something, by our rich variety of social heritages from Europe." New Zealand and Australia might therefore reconcile themselves to what they could gain from a more diversified immigration system which would mean a more diversified cultural life.