YANKEE SNIPER

Evening Star, Issue 25068, 8 January 1944, Page 7

YANKEE SNIPER

IMPRESSIONS OF NEW ZEALAND A HUMOROUS SALVO The only really serious complaint 1 have to make about New Zealand is that I arrived there during the rhubarb season (writes an American, visitor). Otherwise the country suits me fine. Just why these enlightened democracies, including our own, should spend so much money on the control of noxious weeds and then deliberately ignore rhubarb is -something _ for', a psychologist to answeT. I was in New Zealand three months, travelling all over the place, and every time I sat down to a table in an hotel I had to undergo the same ordeal. The waitress would stand a few degrees to leeward and hold the menu card with infinite patience and exactitude at the proper angle for me to read. Toward the end of my stay I got so 1 didn't have the heart to look at the first item. It was always the same—Fruit . . . stewed rhubarb. In other words, the choice lay between stewed rhubarb and stewed rhubarb. My zeal .for. it might be illustrated by what the Irishman said about spinach. He said he didn't like spinach, and he was glad he didn't because if he did like it he might eat some, and he hated the stuff. A HOME THRUST.

The pleasant Yankee custom of guzzling orange juice is not followed in New Zealand. When I was there oranges were beginning to get scarce, and the cost of a dozen .small, splotched, infirm, and insipid ones was about 40 cents a dozen. Australia, on the other hand, produces oranges which are at least as good (it hurts to admit it) as the best grown in California. ■ But something, perhaps political considerations, causes New Zealand to use the vastly inferior stuff from other sources. Now Australia is short of good.potatoes, and New Zealand can grow them almost as well as Idaho. Both are British countries, and one would think that since, each is a component part of the Empire they would gladly swap spuds for oranges and make everybody happy. But no. They may be British colonies all. right, but that does not prevent them . from erecting -trade barriers against each other. They both gripe a good deal over Uncle Sam's tariff on wool, but their own tariffs against each other, right in the family as it were, are just as bad. It reminds one of the attitude of a fairly high percentage of United States senators and congressmen who believe in . free-trade for. all commodities except those produced by the voters in their own bailiwicks. The necessity of importing oranges had not depleted the supply of orange marmalade up to the time of my departure. It was just as sure to be_ on the table as the table cloth was, in spite of the fact that principal ingredients had to be imported. Couldn't get along without it—my word, no! The odd part of this very odd situation is that you never see blackberry jam in New Zealand, and blackberry bushes occupy most of the West Coast of the Dominion. When I mado._ inquiry as- to why the home-grown fruit was no more widely used, my informant said it was due to a scarcity of blackberry bushes. There was only one, .he said, in the entire country. The one bush, was acknowledged to be several. hundred miles long. Of course, they do have rhubarb] . THE MAORI. The native of New Zealand, the fellow who was there before the white man, is called a Maori. The word is pronounced as if it were " Mowery," with the "mow" rhyming with cow... The Maoris have contributed a good deal, to New Zealand, and the white population is quite proud of them. The fajct that the Maoris have a very odd language' did not deter the whites front giving or keeping native names to about half the towns in the Dominion.- To the innocent American traveller, these names are very disconcerting. .You wouldn't dare tackle the pronunciation of some of them if you had false plates. For instance, when Dalgety's representative was driving me from Palnierston North to Hastings to see that fair we stopped for lunch at Waipukurau.', 1 guessed correctly that the first syllable was pronounced' " Y." but when I hit, the second one I didn't know whether to puck, pook, or puke. Tom Graham said to puck, so I ,puoked. The rest of the word rhymes with a cat begging for something to eat. Understand I'm not complaining, but when a fellow like myself, who is well along into middle age, comes up face to face with such towns.

as Whakarewarewa, Te" Awe Awe, and Paekakariki, he instinctively wxmders if his life insurance premiums have been paid. Leading indoor sport in New Zealand at present is cussing the Government. I spent most of my time among livestock producers • and not among labourers, so I didn't get both sides of the story. The Labour Party is in control at the moment, and it seems the Government is just about as popular' with agricultural producers as' some of our ow;n racketeering labour unions are among people capable of thought. Naturally, it was no skin off my own elbow whatever kind of a Government the Dominion had, but it was most interestingthat in a country whose entire prosperity hinges on the export of agricultural commodities there should be a Government capable of being detested by so nearly 100 per cent, of producers. To find out about it you do not have to ask questions; just meet a few farmers or wool growers and wait a minute. The verbal blitz will - start without your .saying a word. Your host, after having exhausted his complete store of invectives and expletives and having worked up a big lather over it, will invite you to have a " spot." Even after three or four generous ones of the brands we pay 3.89d0l a fifth for, the Government is still no good. -This proves it must be really bad. Over here: in America you can go to a wool growers' convention, and after three rounds of Scotch some of them can think of a few decent things about the New Deal. RACING AND RELIGION. New Zealanders are nuts on horse racing. Nearly every city in the Dominion has a good track, and the whole population, from politicians to street cleaners, turns out and bets. It was impossible to find out whether the preachers down there are addicted to' betting on races, but if they don't bet they stand in a class alone. Betting is done through the; pari-mutuels, and • bookmaking is prohibited by law. This Jaw is exactly as well enforced as it is in the United States. Generally speak? ing, law enforcement in the British Empire is infinitely better than it is in America, but in the case of the bookie* it's the sarnie. I wondered if the authorities really wanted to see them put oub '' of business. After all, if those preachers do bet they couldn't very "well do it openly, and a few bookmakers would be most convenient. It is not unusual to pick up a metropolitan .newspaper and find all the real news on the first two pages, with the next five pages devoted to racing. At times it seems as if the people can think of nothing else. They seem to be prepossessed, to have-a onebrack mind. However, if you look around and see the large number of' baby carriages or " prams" on the streets you begin to realise that the Dominion's citizens think occasionally of things other than horse racing. New Zealanders are a very religious lot if you judge by their legal observance of Sunday, but only_ if you judge by the legal aspects of said observance. They may get hilariously pickled on Waitomata ale Saturday afternoon, they may bet their shirts on the ponies, hut when the Sabbath rolls around no one is allowed to forget that.it is the Lord's day. .Restaurants are closed tight, - leaving only the hotel dining rooms to assuage the hunger of people without sense enough to stay at'home. Not a newspaper is published. Railroads all but cease operations over the entire Dominion.- Post Offices are closed, and, since telegrams are sent from post offices, the telegraph is closed, too. In most places movies are blacked out. Indeed, it is Sunday with ii vengeance. Nothing must distract people from going to worship. Church beids peal, their tintinnabulation exorting the populace to enter the house of God and free the soul from the black blight of clinkered sin. And do they go? Well, yes, just as they do in the United States. In our land Sunday finds about 5 per cent, of the population in church; in New' Zealand 96 per cent, stay away from church. That's about the only difference. Typical Christians, just like ourselves. GOOD THINGS UNSAID. This short article has been devoted exclusively to New Zealand's shortcomings. I wanted fo clear the decks by saying all the mean things I could think of at one time, firirig a salvo rather than sniping and taking occasional pot shots. Now that I have fired both barrels loaded with rock salt and red pepper, I shall have to admit that the good things about the country,-as yet unsaid, more thau counterbalance the irritating ones. I am a loyal American Who shoots off firecrackers on the fourth of July to celebrate our Independence from the darned British Empire, but, as a matter of cold fact, I am a little bit jealous of those folks in New Zealand. It's just too bad the place was not owned by Spain at the time the United States was among the great aggressor nations of the world, for if. Spain had owned the country we would have gotten it along with the Philip-; pines. ■ Now we don't aggress any more; : we are all against it, and we hate aggressors, and it's too late to got New Zealand.