THROUGH ENGLISH EYES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20383, 11 October 1929, Page 10

THROUGH ENGLISH EYES.

VISIT TO NEW LANDS,

FATHER MARTINDALE'S BOOK,

EMPLOYMErrr AND IMMIGRATION,

AUSTRALIAN ART AND SPORT. All things are grist to Father Martin--dale's mil!. To quoto him from "The* Risen Sun," his book of impressions ia New Zealand and Australia, may expose him to some risk of misunderstand--ing, seeing that usually it is importantto know the context, but probably he 1 would gladly take the risk if thereby some of his observations may reach** wider public. "I experienced a strange sense of in' 1 stability in this land," he says when describing his motor journey from Wellington northwards. ""It cannot possibly b#' like this in ten years' time. I kept being told that already the Chinese practically, owned the vegetable market. Exaggeration. Still it did seem odd to see thos® names over the shops we passed. Laundry-i work, too, seemed Chinese, naturally*' Already I keep hearing laments about the exodus from country to town; yeb the towns are planning to become a dozen times larger than they are, and in view of unemployment people talk of checking immigration, as if a negative solution ever, solved anything. Check it, by all means, if there is a better positive substitute.. Meanwhile, the cinema is poisoning, because standardising, the national imagina* The Gospel of Work. "And all this labour-apparatus I have) been watching can, of course, be applied l to enable you to do your work more fruitfully and even to increase its amount. But I keep hearing it referred to as laboursaving, as though you wanted, not to do* the most possible or the. best possible work, but tho least possible. This suggest* that work is undesirable and will produce a breed quite different from that which' we have seen and honoured among NewZealand, Australian and Canadian pioneers and, in short, any men who have dealt strongly. . Speaking of Wellington, he says:— ln«» only thing to which you can comparethis labyrinth of lovely seas and bills i» Greece —either end of the Gulf of Corinth.. Bidges and ravines; and suddenly th» blueness of the sea where you' least expect it. But I decided for LombardyThe general colour suits: lots of pines,, the harbour like a lake; the houses arecream; with roofs of corrugated iron, I confess, but painted so deep a red that ihey look like Italian tiles where the sun has not yet bleached them. • . If you took the houses one by one, whether wooden bungalows, or the new plaster-and-concrete working men's houses, yon might say, 'Why all these turrets, these gables, these fanciful verandahs ? Keep a little quiet, can't, you? Don't fuss so much.' But you don't take them one by one. Looking at these suburbs you love their gay coquetry. . . •" He pleads constantly for selfhood for . individuals and for nations. He says that nothing had given him tho full atmosphere of the Australian bush until he read John O'Brien, who "had become tha genuine Australian without losing anything of the Irish inspiration-.' I prayed, as often I pray," he writes, ' that every country might achieve that perfect freedom and selfhood which none that I know of anywhere have yet achieved, since only between such perfect units could there be created that union and peacß and charity which both nature and our Lord desire." • .

"Do Not Copy."

This passage followed a discussion uporn Australian art. First he mentions church art. He "craves permission to pray that all the decorations inside these and otner churches may be some day burned, ieduced to powder and scattered to the winds. Do not suppose 1 am down on Australian art. No church art is Australian. Church art in Australia isn t worse than what we have—it is what w» have. I presume it is Gallo-Germanic-Hebrew. . . I believe that Australia has it in her to produce that religion*, art which shall rescue us from the stun that smothers us." , , He mentions Mr. Norman Lindsay s remark that Australia, artistically, was » moribund hole, and that all young Australian artists should Ret out of it« "Should an Australian artist, then, seek if not inspiration at least craftsmanshipfrom Europe?" asks Father Marlindale* "I think he might. An inspiration, too* ." But, "if you go to Europe, do not go to copy; do not go to defy. Go to learn if Europo.has anything wort®, teaching. What is 'learning' ? Accepting information from another; assimilating what you can; rejecting what you can t. Incorporating into your personality whab your personality can master. Master* Not succumb to." In the tmall bush town of Dalby h#> found the Australian Church, "Australian" being printed in italics. "Widely; open able to the air on the cool side 5, heavily recessed and verandahed to thenorth, it took perfect account of local conditions. . . To find a thing so perfectly adapted to conditions, and yet sooriginal in this small bush town wa* to make one optimistic? all over again, as to the artistic spirit of this people and its destiny." There he saw in th»> people signs of race over which ha exults. In the speeches he kepi hearing the, prayer that Dalby might progress. VI. fear they meant 'Grow bigger,' _ 'grow like other cities.* I cannot join in that, prayer. I prefer it small, developing ltifc Self, not copying. But even this preference is idle. The cinema, on which 1 , I' have harped, the Hollywood microbe,. v already infects this pure air; girls willbe choking the pores of that healthyr skin of theirs with chemicals; boys will, be choosing the pictures instead of sport ;; to that will go the weekly wage; and the eye will get clouded with pestilential dreams. I don't think this is pessimisnu Hither, too, come the couple of degraded news-sheets that Australia 8 j{, produces; and you should see small' boys looking eagerly over one another & shoulders to find what the conscienceless, clique in the city wants to show them, - When Sport is Dishonest. In Melbourne they took him to sefc the Melbourne Cup run. Having left a, bed of sickness ho felt knocked out and, is afraid the day was wasted on him* "Moreover," he adds, "I saw a man in despair, and besides making me un--happy that fills me with scruples about, the whole affair. I'm bound to insist, that not a trace of drunkenness did t gee, but the whole jovial crowd seemed to me so silent, or rather so quiet." He also went to the Stadium to sea wrestling match. A taxi-driver had told him that the sport was not "clean," and for that reason gentlemen did not go to. see it. "I said that if they went it) probably would become so, for publicopinion would then be differently formed.* j I said that public opinion could express; itself already more vigorously than does, and that wrestling was not tlift only sport into which beastliness could creep. I had read of those instancos oc electric saddles and, I think, spurs. I said that the public should not rest till the guilty man (not the poor jockey) had been discovered, and publicly tarred and feathered. I find that very primitive instincts are aroused in me by foulness in sport, especially where animals are concerned. He (the taxidriver) insisted that the foulness was an importation. For Australia's sake I hope so. When sport goes crook, what catt remain wholesome ? For it may be dim* cult not to cheat in business; and fc mar* may be too weak to keep hw' P n * vate morals consistently intact; but da* liberataly to cheat in sport, is a y er ® cold affair, a low. lowness.'.' --, v