AS OTHERS SEE US

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIX, 8 February 1936, Page 2

AS OTHERS SEE US

—^s^— —— MECHANISED VICTORIANS VIEWS OF SIR FRANK FOX DECOROUS NEW ZEALANDERS Interesting comments on the visit he paid to New Zealand in April last year are made hv the noted imperialist and author. Major Sir Frank Fox, in the latest issue of Overseas, the journal of the Overseas' League. “Imagine the mid-Victorian English if they had accepted all the modern apparatus of progress in science and industry, but- had kept religiously to the older ideals of thought and culture,” lie writes, “and you would have a fairly accurate picture of the New Zealanders of to-day. “Or the effort of imagination may be saved if. you wish, for there may still be found surviving in many quarters of the British Islands groups of families faithful to the standards which our bright young people would be inclined to regard pitingly as ‘hopelessly oldfashioned.’ Their ways of living, now becoming the exception in the Home Country, are general in New Zealand. “What may be roughly indicated as the jazz elements in social life have hardly touched New Zealand. The home, rather than the restaurant and the hotel, is the proper centre for hospitality. To follow all the whims of fashion in raiment is not at all necessary, nor even considered admirable. To dine early is no crime. Contentment is possible on one’s . sheep-run or farm, with a certain amount of sport, a little quiet home recreation, a yearly visit to the nearest provincial city or tourist centre, and the hope, as the reward of careful, thrifty management, of, once a lifetime, ‘seeing Europe.’ Europe means Great Britain with a few contiguous foreign places of interest. ... “The best of the county and the civic feeling in English life is reproduced in New Zealand. The people, as a nation, are very closely united as New Zealanders, but the first basis of this sentiment of union is a passionate attachment _ to their own province and its capital city. The Aucklanders, the Wellingtonians, the Dunedinites, are all confident their city is the centre of the world. That is the beginning of patriotism. It extends, naturally, to a Dominion patriotism. Beyond that the New Zealander docs not usually enlarge his range of thought. Ho has a full confidence that the Home Country will give his relations with the outside' world a proper leadership. ENERGY AND RESOLUTION

“In their local patriotism, tile New Zealanders show energy and resolution to the highest degree. Wellington, the political capital, is opposed, seemingly, by obstacles to the growth of a great city as formidable—though of a different nature —as those which confronted the early founders of Venice. The surrounding hills are steep almost as walls. Many of the villas are like eyries and arc reached by stairways. The homecoming Wellington man must observe a high standard of sobriety when ho is out for an evening. . . . “The New Zealanders’ characteristics arc very clearly reflected in their newspapers." E\ery town of any size has its daily newspaper. They are entirely without the ‘jazz’ element. They indicate a decorous, serious-minded people who want a faithful record of the news of the day and sober comment thereon. Their interest in the scandal side of life is slight. Altogether a wholesome, cheerful, sturdy folk, these New Zealanders, with their capacity apparently to he happy without the silly features of modern life in some other countries.