THE WRONG SALUTE

Evening Star, Issue 22383, 6 July 1936, Page 13

THE WRONG SALUTE

ACT OF WELCOME BECOMES DEFIANCE

Salutations are many and varied between peoples. Britons shake hands, people of the Continent embrace, and the Maoris rub noses, states an exchange. Foreign visitors to New Zealand are not unwilling to greet- Maoris in their own way, nor do New Zealanders on the Continent show themselves reluctant to conform to.custom. But as between nations there is a very strict and unalterable form of greeting; and dreadful consequences may follow a breach of etiquette. Once when a play was being acted in Paris the Spanish Ambassador was so incensed at a galicherie involving the honour of his country that he jumped up on the stage and stabbed the offending actor to the heart. New Zealand was therefore fortunate in getting off so lightly when the officer in . charge of the battery at Point Jerningham hoisted the Union Jack instead of the tricolour when the French sloop was entering the harbour. An'act of welcome thus became an act of defiance, and Captain Robert might well have gone speeding across the Pacific to tell the excitable French people that Albion was still perfidious.