N.Z. PATRIOTISM

Evening Star, Issue 24989, 7 October 1943, Page 7

N.Z. PATRIOTISM

A VOICE FROM THE PAST ' The following article on ' New Zealand Patriotism ' was written" by the late Dr Rutherford Waddell for a publication, ' The Carnival Tit-bit,' which was issued in 1915 in connection with the queen carnival organised for the •purpose of assisting the patriotic fund of that day. The sentiments expressed by Dr Waddell might equally apply to the present situation; — ; Life begins in selfishness, wrote the doctor. It ends, or ought to end, in the obliteration of self—in the merging of it in this collective life of the nation. That is patriotism. The babe is the biggest of egoists. But as he develops he finds himself up against the rights of others—first in the home, then in the school, then in society, and then the nation. Patriotism is the transference of the passion originally exercised for self to secure equal privileges and pleasures for all. It is a relation to the State so close and sensitive that we cannot see a law broken or a public trust abused or an office perverted or a privation endured without a vivid sense*6f personal wrong, without a willingness to endure loss and pain and even life itself to have right done. This is the ideal. But it is not always attained. What are the conditions that help towards its attainment? I have space to mention only two—a great past and a worthy land. Patriotism has nothing to stand on if it cannot look back, if it cannot make its appeal to heroic records and noble traditions. We see this abundantly verified in, history. Take Greece, for instance. Byron, as he gazes on Marathon and on the sea, dreams " that Greece might still be free." Why? Because of, her great past. For, standing on the Persian's grave, I could not dream myself a slave. Or take the Jewish race. What is it that lias enabled them to remain a separate people amid the dissolving races of the world? It is the memories of their great sorrowful victorious past. EMPIRE TRADITIONS. Now, it is our good fortune to belong to an Empire, whose history and traditions are among the noblest and most brilliant in the world. We have an origin and a pedigree that we need not exchange for any share in the fabled antiquity of Greece, for any share in the conquests or the bondages of Imperial Rome. We have had this treasure given to us, stained with the blood of lives laid down to win it. It is a sublime trust. We have to preserve it and hand it on enriched to our children. '

But patriotism needs a-fair.land as well as fine traditions. A land is to this passion what walls are to climbing roses. It twines and blossoms around it. And we have got that here. It is not, indeed, a land steeped in memories like the Home Country. It is virgin soil. The patriot's work here differs from that in older nations. There the accumulated wrongs of centuries have to be cleared away. Here we start clear —comparatively at least. We have the clean page that Plato desiderated for the world's saviour. It is ours to keep it, so. t Our patriotism thus draws its inspiration from the heroic traditions of the ra<;e to which we belong and from this new, fair land, set like a gem in the long wash of Southern Seas, and that has been given us as our possession. This is the reason why we leap to arms when the Huns and "Vandals threaten our liberties. We should- be recreants if we did not. Wo feel with Wordsworth that We must be free Or die. who speak the language Shakespeare spake, The faith and morals hold that Milton held.