THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1937 THE LANDS OF THE TASMAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1937 THE LANDS OF THE TASMAN

What is the best thing about the Science Congress, the thing that has no rival amid all it is doing, and will live in the mind of every member as the most lasting of its results? No riddle was ever easier to solve: to put the question is to prompt the sure and ready answer. It is the spirit of happy friendship between the two parties to the union of purpose in the meeting. What says the title under which this meeting is being held? "The Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science." Into that has been put the purpose —the advancement of science ; the union is in the earlier wordsAustralian and New Zealand: and the fact that they are earlier has real meaning. Of course the purpose is uppermost in thought as the sessions proceed, for the work to be done has been ruling every conscious effort, whereas the union has been subtly felt. It has not vaunted itself, not asked for mention, not thrust itself in the way; yet it has .kept pace with all the mental going as the absorbing task has been pursued. It cannot be made the subject of any technical finding nor be embodied in a volume of transactions j where skill of brain is so fully present this grace of the heart can be given no evident place. None the less, its service to the success of the meeting will be often recalled as a constant aid, and by virtue of its spiritual quality will survive intact when the passage of time has played havoc with every recorded note of research. By means of its own quiet contriving it has flown the Tasman with greater speed and ease than any pilot of the skies will ever do, and can be trusted to keep the far shores in living touch.

There have been attempts, in past years, to weld the great fifth continent and these little islands into a permanent political unit. They failed as they deserved. New Zealand chose to hold aloof when the federal movement, more than thirty years ago, created the Commonwealth of Australia. That decision was not,made in thoughtless haste. At the round table of preliminary talk New Zealand was present and spoke with friendly voice, but ere the epochal venture was taken it gave its reasons for going its own way. It has since been unvisited by doubt of the wisdom of that resolve. The name "Australasia" makes little appeal to New Zealanders; by no stretch of fancy can they regard their land as a part of " Southern Asia." A different destiny is clearly theirs. Once, for a brief while, they were legally joined to the older and bigger British land across the intervening sea, but they have valued highly the independence that was so early granted, and to-day cherish it as a patent of growing nationhood. And they know that, had they entered the federal unit, an embarrassment might have arisen for Australia as well as for themselves. What would the senior partner of the ill-matched pair have said if New Zealand had presumed, at some critical stage of domestic development, to speak up in assertive protest? It is far better, in the different circumstances that have resulted from that declining of an honour and a risk, to enjoy an occasional exchange of pleasantries, with potatoes and oranges as the only missiles. That may really amount to an expression of mutual respect; the other would almost certainly have been a continuously bitter girding at each other, made galling by intimate and inescapable friction. Respect might have died a horribly unnatural death. Apart at will; these two constituent units of the British realm are closely one in spirit, and welcome every opportunity to give that spirit exercise. This land can never forget its early association with Australia. At first, when valiant Western eyes found them in these obscuring waters, it was Australia's fortune to have prior discovery, but soon they entered together into fuller knowledge by the outer world. Tasman Ccime hither after scanning part of Australia; Cook, later reversing the order, lighted upon Australia's eastern shore as he sped westward from his finding of New Zealand. Then, following a brief interval, association in the exploits of white navigators was succeeded by a closer and more vital bond: to the earliest white New Zealanders, dwelling here in days before British rule, New South Wales was "the Colony" whence came much of which they stood in need, and in due time was the parent of such law and order as was then possible under the flag that came to stay. Before long, that filial dependence on Australia ended, never to be renewed, yet in some important nonlegal but material ways the link remained. It has inevitably worn thin, but in its stead is another, fashioned of robust sentiment. Imperishable names bejewel it. "Marsden" is there, and "Leigh," and many another of high purpose—and, as this generation remembers deeply, " Anzac." The uniting history, the shared progress, the similar problems, the kindred hopes, the same loyalty to one national origin, have breathed in the congress. To its success this splendid spirit has contributed greatly. In turn, it has been given renewed vitality and power,,