FLATTERING PORTRAIT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 19 July 1924, Page 16

FLATTERING PORTRAIT.

—: q THE PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALAND. AS SEEN BY GREAT AMERICAN SURGEON. It i?. always of interest to know how we appear to other eyes. If the eyes are those of a particularly keen and competent critic and if his judgment is kindly and favourable the information is doubly acceptable. Dr. Frailklin H. Martin, of Chicago, the managing editor of Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics, the official journal of the American College of Surgeons, was a recent welcome visitor to these shores, and to the June number of his journal he contributes a description of his tour. He concludes with a* striking and highly-flattering reference to the people of Australia and New Zealand. Though Australia is expressly mentioned, the wording of the passage makes it clear that the reference is chiefly tp our own country.

•Tf,’’ writes Dr. Martin, “a Royal. Commission had been selected 200 years ago to discover somewhere on earth ideal lands, with an ideal climate, with ideal topography, and with a diversity of resources, it could not have made a better selection than Australia and New Zealand to provide for a high civilisation. These islands extend from the milder tropics through the temperate to the milder frigid zone of latitude. They have rich agricultural plains that will grow in abundance all sustaining foods; they have rolling hills on which to graze theit cattle and their sheep; they have marvellous mountain ranges that furnish all varieties of minerals to the wozdd, and that reproduce the scenery of Switzerland and the beauties of our own* Rockies in Canada and the United States. Thev have thousands of miles of seashore, rugged and beautiful, with capacious harbours for commerce and long stretches of pleasure beaches that reproduce the charm of Brighton and Atlantic City. The islands are large enough in area to house an empire of people and to duplicate the wealth and culture of the United States or England; and they are isolated enough to make it possible to cultivate an independence that will rid them of the undesirable and antiauated conditions and usages of the older countries. “The people of Australia and New Zealand are our kind of folk. They are predominantly Anglo-Saxon, and 'they or their immediate forefathers had the vision or independence to select these far-off islands for a future home. They must have had in their make-up not onlv a spirit of independence but as well of initiative, of ideals, of frugality and of industry. This combination in any people moulds the character that wdl peacefully conauer the world. They are the survival of the fittest of a great civilisation. These people create just that impression upon the stranger visiting their shores—the survival of the fittest. The settlers of these far-off countries, after assuming the responsibility of establishing their homes there, have exercised their good judgment- and have insisted upon keeping their stock pure by refusing to mongrelise themselves by unwise intermixture of races. The people of these countrips, because of the equable climate, live in the onen: thpv develon nhysicallv aiul mentally in the out-of-doors; they are advocates of friendly contests and sports which engender the spirit of tairplay; they are predominantlv meat eaters, utilising the stock of their great grazing plains. Physically and mentally the men are veritable giants; the women are strong and selfreliant. and have preafc charm and culture of person. These countries have a future of infinite nossibilities which will aid in balancing the peace and prosperity of civilisation.”