NOW WE KNOW

Evening Star, Issue 21130, 16 June 1932, Page 8

NOW WE KNOW

ALL ABOUT OURSELVES ACID ANALYSIS OF DUNEDIN “ But now I am past all comforts hero, but prayers.” Wo are despondent—or we should be. We arc told that we are as glum as our miserable town, a “ half-pie town full of lawyers, money-lenders, and tight-wad, small-town business men.” Because some perverse inhabitants like not Dunedin and ex-residents in Christchurch abhor this city, its traditions, its commerce, and its amenities, we are expected to utter the despairing words of Katharine in ‘ Henry VIII.’ For a week the correspondence columns of the Christchurch ‘ Sun ’ were filled with frantic prayers for the salvation of Dunedin and counter-eulogies. If all the condemnations of Dunedin were accurate, then the whole of the city should hang its head in pathetic shame, don sackcloth, and sleep on ashes. But unlike Tristram Shandy, Dunedin will not feel that the cant of criticism in this instance is the most tormenting. Not so many years ago a journalist left Dunedin for Christchurch, and penned a scathing attack on Dunedin. So far as can be recalled, no one took any notice of his fulminations, and the same writer returns annually to Dunedin for his vacation!

Critics there have always been, yet Dunedin has survived their outbursts and progressed steadily. But now that the Christchurch stalwarts have so fearlessly shown how enormous and numerous are our deficiencies, Dunedin will be expected to do the honourable act and commit commercial and civic hari kari.

Somehow the city to-day appeared to be just as pleasant to live in and as busy as ever. It is a shame that so much space has been wasted in the Christchurch paper. The good features of Dunedin are evident, and no purpose would be filled in reprinting the solid defence made by loyal supporters in Christchurch. However, we are always interested to learn about ourselves.

This is what “ Ex-Dunedin ” has to sav about us to the editor of the < Sun ’Sir,—l lived eight years in Dunedin, and I consider it the dumbest, glummest, and most miserable show I ever existed in. Through family affairs I could not leave then, but after travelling around for a few years I came back and settled in Christchurch, the best, cleanest, and prettiest place in New Zealand. The Dunedia people are as glum as their miserable town. They are a lot of Scotch-Jews, who would wring out a fly which fell in their beer —always granting, of course, that someone else pays for the beer. Their halfpie town is full of lawyers, moneylenders, and tight-wad, small-town business men. And their squat stone buildings, solid enough I admit, reek of mortgages, debentures, and other people’s money. “ They have neither a taste for fun nor a liking for amusements in Dunedin. They are poor sports, who do not like to see an outsider win. Their climate is cold, clammy, and miserable, and the people live under hills in an atmosphere that is as cold as their charity. “Give me Christchurch, where business men will give a man a fair go and where there is a little sunlight.---I am, etc., Ex-Dunedin.” “Land’s End” holds no choice opinion of Dunedin either. He wrote: —“‘No Councillor’ suggests Cr J. W. Beanland did not stay in Dunedin long enough to have learned something about civic government that would have been to his advantage. Doubtless Cr Beanland stayed just as long as he could suffer the place. It is a pity the Dunedin City Council does not extend its business sessions beyond an hour. It then might find time to consider improving its hump-backed, winding, and medieval streets and to modernise the town. The narrow vision and parochialism of the average Dunedin citizen is pitiful; but then one cannot expect the true civic spirit when in most suburbs residents are content to allow their front gardens to resemble their unkempt and squalid backyards. How can one speak of Dunedin as the City Beautiful when there is no real gardening tradition among residents, as there is in Christchurch, and when unlovely monuments rear themselves apd mar the open spaces of the dour Scots settlement?”

The correspondence is some measure of worthwhile compensation for the loss of amusement which Dunedin has suffered by the University Council declining to allow the students to hold a procession through the streets this year.