THE UBIQUITOUS NEW. ZEALANDER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15948, 19 June 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ÜBIQUITOUS NEW. ZEALANDER

BT FRANK MORTON. The New .Zealander is, in one respect especially, the Scotchman of tho South. Ho travels everywhere, and whenever he is so minded he takes root easily. If you roam about the world to discover it, you will find New Zealanders in places that have never yet seen an Australian. Truth is so rare nowadays that nothing seems more singular than fact. Hero are one or two facts for the truth of which I vouch. A friend of mine who spent some months on business in the native Malayan state of Kelantan had as his next-door neighbour a New Zealander, who hunted concessions and in his spare, time collected curios and postage stamp 6. This friend went to London, and there was straightway invited to attend the wedding of a cousin to a New Zealand girl, whose name is probably known to all of you. After that, my man went to Punta Arenas on his syndicate's business. At tho hotel in that outlandish town a New Zealander occupied tho next room to him, and when he went down to Tierra del Ftiogo to look over some country, he enjoyed in that blenk region the hospitality of a couple of New Zealand mining-men. A little later he ran across a party of New Zealanders at Panama, and be didn't see an Australian till ho nwt my friend Jimmy Ryan in New York. It is truly remarkable—as you will find if you inquirehow many New Zealanders occupy positions of importance and responsibility in the Australian States. There is a New Zealand colony in London, larger than the American colony in' Paris; and my cousin, who, is farming in a remote region of Canada again, having wearied of the brain-wearing metropolitan ! rush of journalism in Vancouver, seems to be meeting New Zealanders nil the time. | If you fall over anything in the Yellowstone Park when you go out with Araminta to taste the moon, it is quite likely to be a New Zealander.

All this is in some' respects a good thing for New Zealand, since it tends (on the whole) to increase the repute of tho Dominion in lands and communities outside; and it is in one respect a bad thing for New Zealand, since very many of the excellent New Zealanders who make their names and fortunes abroad never return to the place of their origin. That is a bad thing, as I nay, because absent brains are a greater source of loss to a country than absentee landlords ever were or could be. Only it happens that the people who' ravo about absentee landlords seldom have any respect for brains. New Zealand is still one of those countries whose brightest young men show .a disposition to leave the homeland early find stay away.

And, so far as I can gather, the reason of this is that Now Zealand does not offer ' sufficient inducements to all its ambitious sons to make a career in the land of th'eir birth : in which respect also New Zealand'is very like Scotland. Careers (other than political careers, which surely don't count) are not made easily in soarsely peopled places. When New Zealand has a population of five millions the,great majority of the most brilliant and promising fellows in the country will be well content to take root in their native soil. I am not i:tv love with Americans, but they have their uses, and for some things I admire them very much. I admire them because they are all enthusiasts in matters vitally concerned with the ■ development and' prosperity of their great, their loud, their passionately peaceful land. There seem to be many Americans abroad in the world; but there are in reality very few: it merely happens that tho few are so noisy and insistent and obtrusive 'that they seem a lot. If the proportion of New Zealanders at home to New Zealanders abroad were as great as is the proportion of Americans at home to the proportion of Americans abroad, we should already count somewhere about ten millions in these islands. Thanks to her wonderful resources, New Zealand, with that population, would truly bo the greatest little country in tho world. The country could support 'ten J million people very easily. With ten millions of a population we should be spared much of the harassment of these arbitrary legislative and industrial experiments at haphazard that are such a 6tumbling-block in the path of our prosperity just now. I think that the com-1 ing big man in New Zealand politics—or, I should say, in New Zealand statesmanship—will be the man who courageously and without mean thought of self initiates and fights through a wiso and comprehensive immigration policy; and I find that all tho New Zealanders I meet outside New Zealand are of that opinion. The world grows apace, and -there is likely to be a tremendous reaching-out for new fields of enterprise and endeavour when mankind settles solidly to the true business of 'life after this war. Wo can't expect permanently or for long to hold one of the richest countries in" the world with a mere handful of a million people the population of a provincial English city. After all, we are' stewards of humanity, if we are anything worth while. I hear it everywhere, the talk about New Zealand's sparse population— everywhere, till I am tired half to death with it. "Men in Australia say : " There must be something radically wrong with Now Zealand, or the population would go ahead quicker. Look at us, with our huge desert areas and our droughts!"

And what can one reply? We know, you and I, that our population ought to go ahead quicker. We know that a lavish and constant policy of immigration, and that alone, lias raised tho United States to tho position of a great Power. The staple New Zealand industries are capable of almost incalculable extension, and in face of that fact wo still trifle and palter with a small and raucous party whipped by demagogues, the party that insists that immigration is not warranted, because increase of population even rudimentary ■ intelligence argues would tend to lower wages. No man of honestly when he argues like that. It is absurd to talk of adequate population while any reputable industry is short of operatives : absurd, while an acre of good land lies undeveloped; absurd, till every available resource is fully and legitimately exploited. To that end our teaching of tho young should tend to the supplanting of empty national bombast by a true rational spirit. A counsel of perfection, perhaps; but the world is kept healthy audi sweet; by fiouasela of perfection,.