THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1928. AMERICAN OR BRITISH?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20115, 28 November 1928, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1928. AMERICAN OR BRITISH?

That Australia and New Zealand aro destined to become American in thought and life is tho belief of the New York Sun. Tho thesis is not new. It has been voiced in these southern lands. Thcro nro influences and tendencies supporting it. Whether they are sufficiently marked and potent to justify the conclusion so confidently drawn by this American journal is another matter. Read by New Zealand eyes, tho signs of tho times seem not to warrant that conclusion. Nevertheless, the arguments advanced as leading to it are worth examination. "It is partly a matter of geography," the first runs: New Zealand and Australia arc demonstrably nearer to America than to England, particularly if the Hawaiian islands are taken into account. Yet this argument may be asked to carry too much in a day of multiplying and quickening communications. Alone, it is certainly unconvincing. These lands are nearer still to tho Orient, but no one would be bold enough to say that therefore there is a prior possibility of China or Japan exerting a dominant, influence here. Contiguity is a factor, doubtless, but certainly not the only one, not even the major one. Things have not gone that, way, as a rule. Spain had an oversea influence in the New World for a considerable period, far greater than she had in Europe. The British Isles, geographically attached to the Continent—separated by a mere strip of water that a woman can swim—have not been overrun by French or Dutch or German influence. Mileage is no sure measure of relationship or neighbourliness among peoples any more than it is among individual dwellers in a town. American inventiveness and tho practical application of it arc urged as a further "natural force" aiding the Amerioanisation of Australia and New Zealand. Tho inventiveness may be admitted—it appears even in the programme of national ambitions as notilied in some American newspapers—and these Pacific countries are glad to profit by some applications of it; yet the strength of this factor may easily bo exaggerated. It may be acknowledged, with gratitude somewhat modified by regret, that the prevalence of the American cinematograph "feature film" has introduced a touch of Americanism in the social outlook of our young people and in their casual speech ; given a British film of equal appeal and technical excellence, however, the young New Zealandcr is ready to part with the Hollywood article without a sigh. Motor-cars built in the United States are plentiful in tbis country. Have they induced a passion for acquiring an American accent, or even tempted their users to call them, in the American way, "automobiles"? The lifts in our buildings are the product of American inventiveness, but we continue so to call them, in preference to j "elevators." The New Zealand farmer, on tho word of the New York Sun, cannot but be aware of America when his American alarm clock awakens him. Cannot lie? He probably does not give America a thought; if ho docs, in these times of earlier arousal by half an-hour, it is to bemoan with an imprecation that America ever sent him that clamorous clock. It may be that an American sewing machine sews at his wife's requirement; yet that fact has not led him to add his requirement of her that she shall make with it an "Old Glory" to fly over the milking shed. The fact that a tablecover is made of "American cloth" has seldom been known to turn table-talk to New York habits of diet, nor does the occasional mention of "American corn" tempt calculation of the farm income and expenditure in dollars instead of good British pounds, shillings and pence. To buy China tea or preserved ginger is not necessarily provocative of a wish to grow a queue. This argument from importations goes to illogical extremes when it reaches out to matters of taste in everything. Thcro is sober truth in the suggestion that mutual interest in Pacific problems tends to bring Americans, Australians and New Zealandcrs together; but nothing so pleased these lands, when the second conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations was held at Honolulu, as the presence there of an influential delegation from Great Britain. Nor is it only with the United States that better relations arc desired in this region and by such methods of discussion : they are sought as well with China and Japan. Thero is some truth in the statement about sharing democratic ideals, but even this can be overdone as a basis of relationship: most Australians and New Zealanders aro not frantic about "tho bird of freedom" or lusting after the American Constitution, and

many of them aro praying that their countries may bo preserved from ■machine-made American politics. Thcro is full readiness to welcome many things American, but not merely because they are American; and there is an earnest wish to maintain friendly intercourse. Yet these lands arc fundamentally British and mean to remain so, and one of the inducements to maintain that determination, rather than bo over-run with American manners, is the poor fist tho United States has made of Americanising tho hundreds of thousands of foreigners dwelling within its borders. Its chief cities aro polyglot patchworks, and the 100 per cent. American is often hard to find. New Zealand, at all events, shuns and scorns the thought of giving up its British allegiance to be added to tho medley of peoples known as America; and it will bo set curiously wondering why the Monroe doctrine of non-intervention is being so flagrantly ignored in this illdisguised attempt to promote virtual annexation of tho British lands at the remotest corner of the Pacific.