MR. SHAW'S IMPRESSIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21765, 3 April 1934, Page 8

MR. SHAW'S IMPRESSIONS

When Mr. Bernard Shaw suggested to a Wanganui correspondent that New Zealand national characteristics had been brought about not through change in this country but through change in the Motherland, he may possibly have been in the same frame of mind as Professor Schlesinger, of Harvard University, when he sjooke about American English at University College, London. Obviously with his tongue in his cheek, the professor declared that speech shared with the late enemy, after independence, was not only an annoyance, but might mean a continuance of intellectual vassalage to Britain. This was intolerable to the free American. This is. reminiscent of Shaw. So also is the remark that under Webster's influence the Americans came to think of the English language as their own, to treat as they liked, regardless of the sensibilities of people across the Atlantic who were known to speak in a dialect somewhat similar to their own. Passing on one side the reflection that Mr. Shaw had better hurry Home lest Professor Schlesinger steal his thunder, may it be observed that New Zealanders are a little proud of the fact that in sentiment, if not in language, they help to maintain the British tradition which launched them in stormy colonial seas toward nationhood. It was A. P. Herbert, of Punch, who said that New Zealanders were more English than the English, more loyal than the Throne. Naturally, Mr. Shaw and Mr. Herbert a.'-e not to be found in the same political pen, though, no doubt, they have drunk tea while Mr. Herbert, strong for personal liberty, has reviled '"Dora," and Mr. >Sha.w has expressed rerrret that "Dora" was not stronger, much stronger. This, of course, is not exactly the. question. Mr. Shaw makes the "guess"—horrible Americanism cv,;n though it prevailed in the days of Chaucer that an Englishman born after 1900 would regard us as "quaint, foreign and incredible." He had better discuss this with Mr. Herbert and communicate the result;-—both results. Perhaps Mr. Shaw forgets that the greater number of New Zealand's hundred thousand soldiers saw Ensland, and many of them Scotland, Ireland and Wales without ever feeling that, they were quaint, foreign or incredible. Indeed, hundreds of them found brides at Home—Mr. Shaw will forgive the term Home—and have now lusty families extraordinarily keen to be loyal to both little islands. If Mr. Shaw would consider the source of New Zealand's immigration he. would marvel at the maintenance of the Victorian tradition, pure and undefiled, but if it is a truth then why not indeed? However, many of those who sit in judgment, upon the Dominion's youth will not agree with Mr. Shaw when he talks of Victorianism.