The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 1919. A VISITOR'S PICTURE OF NEW ZEALAND.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 25 August 1919, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 1919. A VISITOR'S PICTURE OF NEW ZEALAND.

In the July issue of a well-known American magazine, the Ladies' Home Journal, there is an interesting, if rather too nattering, article upon New Zealand. It is from the pen of Rose Young, who, if we are not mistaken, is the lady who came amongst us to make preparations for the visit of the Chatauqua organisation, and of whom, we doubt not, many people retain pleasant recollections. It is true that she painted a picture of Chatauqua in the warmest of tints, coleur de rose in fact (as we shall find she has also treated New Zealand), and that a few of our keen business men were so charmed with her work that they readily consented to do a little themselves in black and white which, by the way, on a second view they considered not quite worthy of their reputation for care as to details. But people of Hawera generally, we beli«ve, are satisfied that Miss Young did our country a service by persuading us to take an interest in the Chatauqua movement, and certainly she will have added to that service if her article arouses American interest in our country and its institutions; still more so if her appreciation of our political and social progress should have a curative influence upon people here who are for ever "grousing." Miss Young, reviewing the history of New Zealand, pictures a people asking "Isn't there some way to make life enjoyable for the many as well as the few?" and she finds that the question has been answered in a way that has made other nations gasp. "To-day, :} she says, "the people of New Zealand stands as a nation where the people [ are too liappy and too comfortable. ' Telling the story of how they did it she reviews the legislation of two decades, showing that new departures were taken without fear in respect of land, labor, State-owned industries, care of the health of the individual from infancy to maturity, the granting of pensions to the old, the helping of those bereaved by the ill-fortunes of life, the extension of opportunity in many ways. "Of course," she proceeds to say, "it followed that all these different sensible and simple innovations into the life of New Zealand began to make the reactionaries of Europe sit up and scream," but she adds that all objections in detail were answered, and that ultimately poor old Europe, perplexed and baffled, asking "What it all meant?" had its reply from M. Metin, one of the more astute historians of the day, in a phrase of great finality, "Socialism without the doctrine!" And we are told that "the unbelievable thing is that in the result this Socialism without the ism, this simple, direct, unlabelled effort to make a land and the fullness thereof minister to the comfort and happiness of the people of New Zealand has I paid, and paid in dollars and cents. Happiness has paid in cold cash . . .

( Under f or-the-benefit -of - the - people philosophy and policy New Zealand has become one of the richest countries in the world. And it has done it within one generation." Putting it :n another way Miss Young says: "Human things, like happiness, comfort, hope, have sprung up flower fashion. And the substitution of the one set of things for the other has been accomplished without the shedding of a drop of blood, without revolution, without any vast clash of class on class, with a confidence awe-inspir-ing in its simplicity." The rather doubtful compliment is added that "the New Zealanders beat the Bolsheviki to it by twenty-five years." Well, this is obviously an overdrawn picture, but there- is this truth in it, that the Statute Book and the facts

of life in New Zealand cannot he

looked into by an impartial observer without yielding the conviction that as a community we have made real efforts to break away from conventional political action, and that within a very short time considerable success has been achieved. It presents the reverse side of the shield to that on which some people paint nothing but denunciation. We certainly have made progress; though in view of the unrest, unsettlement, now rampant it w hard to realise that we are yet the ' 'too happy, too comfortable nation which our visitor holds up for the admiration of the American people. That there is so much violent dissatisfaction must be a sad discouragement to those who were persuaded that their legislative achievements would bring .in the Golden Age.