PAPERS FOR THE TIMES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4825, 1 December 1902, Page 7

PAPERS FOR THE TIMES.

[All Rights Reserved.]

A NEW ZEALANDER ON LONDON BRJDGE.—No. 1. (By Arthur H. Adams, author of “Maorihuul,” •Tli« Nazareno,” etc.; It is prophesied that on a day a Sew Zealander will si and on ono of tho broken arches of London Bridge and sketch the ruins of SL. Paul's. This is the record of a New Zealander who. coining from afar, found Loudon Bridge still intact, and on producing Ins sketch-book was promptly moved on by a personage m blue. But, before leaving, be noticed that, owing to the ugly roof of a railway .station blocking tho view, it would be hard to tel! from London Bridge whether fit. Paul's was in ruins or notNevertheless, during his stay in this strange country ho found much that: to Ids antipodean outlook was quaint , and wonderful*in the manners and customs of the race known as English. Here is set down, with as mneh exactitude as is possible to a member of another race, the result of bis observation. If in this writing lie may have at, times misunderstood England and her Englanders, ho asks that people to remember that he has come to them from tho Outside, that journeying from a land that lias not yet begun to make its history, ho views England through no haze of reverence; that his impressions have nob yet had time to acquire “at mosphere.” Yet ho is presumptuous enough to believe that, crude as Ids impressions necessarily arc, ho sees Lngland as clearly as those ‘‘who only Kngland know ” Ho had, too, no guide-book to this undiscovered country : Bodecker is not written from a colonial stand-point; and, above all. there is no Bcdeckcr to the Englishman. It is tho writer’s hope that perhaps these observation* may servo as a basis for tho compilation of such a badly-needed and useful work. As ,i preface to this record it will bo useful to briefly indicate tho impression tho untravelled Now’ Zealander has of England. And if that conception is less flattering than Englanders believe to bo tho case, it may help somewhat .to a better understanding between those two races, separated by a hemisphere, tho geographical antipodes of each other. An Englishman that I met on tho Continent—ho was a poor, undersized, pottering sort of a man—onoo said to mo, —

"So you como from Now Zealand ?” "Yes,” I said, curbing tbo desiro to vaunt myself. “You know, I look on an Australian ” “Pardon me, but I said New Zealand.” “Well, isn't it tho same thing as Australia?” ho asked in surprise. "No,” I said, and briefly gavo him tho facts that New Zealand is twelve hundred miles from Australia, possesses a rainy, breezy and temperate climate, a mountainous configuration, and is inhabited by a race absolutely distinct in origin and temperament from that of his continental cousin. "Indeed !” ho said, politely uninterested. Then with an attempt at enthusiasm, “You know, I look on a colonial almost as a brother!” “Excuse mo, but a colonial looks on himself as equal to, perhaps better than ain Englishman.” That staggered him. “But you call yourselves Englishmen, don’t you?” That staggered me. Bid we? I thought it over. “Yes,” X said, “I suppose so; we’re a branch of the British race, of course, but so are you. We all belong to the Empire, certainly, but we’re not English. Wo have a couutry of our own, thank you; we are Now Zealanders, just as you aro English We’ro both branches of tho ono race, yours is the older stock, of course, but it is the Empire, not England, that is our common roof-tree. What wo want is a name for that Imperial race that will include every member of ft. Wo are all Imperialists, not all English. And whether yon look on ns almost os brothers or not, we aro full-grown now, and want no patronising. We insist on being treated as men, and are prepared to undertake tho duties of mon.” “Indeed 1” he murmured, and edged away. The Now Zealander, then, as I take it, regards himself first as a New Zealander, secondly as a member of tho British (or Imperialist) race. On tho Englishman he looks as on the Capo Colonist, tho Canadian, the Australian, the American. True, tho Englishman is tho oldest member of that world-family; hut in a country that is quite devoid of the sentiment of history, that has no past, tho claim of ago is not ono that is regarded as giving priority. Tho colonial has scon the Englander outstripped iu numbers by his New World cousin; for ovory man who speaks English there aro two people who speak that variant of tho language known as “United States,” and he has seen, too, the Englishman deposed from his position as the best business-man in tho world. To tho Now Zealander tho American is, mentally and historically, nearer akin. Now Zealand scorns to bo on tho way to ho entirely Americanised. Tho fact is that tho American, despite his foreign appearance and the almost foreign language that ho speaks, is of tho sam generation, as tho colonial; tho Englishman belongs to a prior generation. That is tho barrier that is hard, if not impossible, to overleap. There is between England and tho colonies the difference in outlook, the difference in ideals, that exists between father and son; tho sympathy that exists between tho members of tho same generation the colonial instinctively socks from his follow-colonists or from Americans. Between these branches~of tho English confederation already there is a wireless telegraphy going on to which tho receiving instruments of England are not tuned to respond. England sits alone, hedged with her ago. shut out from tho froo converse of her far-scattered brood, “Crabbed ago and youth!” Passing to a more personal phase of tho question, tho colonist has not a very hjigh opinion of tho Englishmen ho has met. Ho is compelled to form his judgment upon tho few specimens of English that are sent his way. There is something of stolidity about the usual Englander who comes to tho colonies that a colonial mistakes for stupidity. The wonderful reserve that is a barrier round the mental processes of tho Englishman is regarded as a sign of mental vacuity, and tho stare that ho affcots wounds by its apparent slow impertinence the colonial’s very sensitive ego. ' The New Zealander is alive, alert, nervous, quick, shallow, modern. Ho walks fast, ho thinks fast. He has an instinctive contempt for the man who is slow in speech or in action. Tho colonial's vices and virtues are all on the surface. He is not old enough as a race to have acquired a reserve. Ho is" impatient of everything.; ho has no time for labori- 1

ously excavating tho presumed virtues of the Englishman. Again, there is an attention to the mere surface side of life—a regard for o;»j's dross, a well-bred manner, a tact unfading and in its perfection almost feminine—that serves to_ irritate the cruder Now Zealander. Ho hasn’t got. these graces; ho will toll you that he despises them, or that ho has had to do more important things than acquire a manlier. Tho impassive air of assured superiority, which seems a part of every Englishman’s equipment, affects the Now Zealander's nerves, by Ills inability to scratch 'the surface of that, massive

But on reflection, I find t he picture a little overdrawn. There are many Englishmen in the colonies who are regarued quite as if they worn Now Zealander.;—and New Zealanders have no higher standard of approval. ’Tho appalling stupidity of the British War Office anti the apparent helplessness of the British officer and “Tu-nimy” in .South Africa are facts that have not been lost upon tho colonial. He has been quick to accept the vainglorious opinion of ids own war-correspondents

: iet. (he British officer is somewhat vacant of brains, and that tho bravery of ■Tommy” does not compensate for ids stupidity. Ho has seen in Africa tho helplessness of tho London recruit set down for tho first time in the, midst of tho opc n veldt. In contact all his Jifo with Nature and the open air, he finds himself at homo here as in his own laud, and he cannot credit witn brains a peojilo who arc so lost in their new environment. And in his converse with these men ho finds a cramping ignorance of tiio Empire—tho one outside fact that is of supremo importance to a colonial. Of England tho. Englander knows, hut of Now Zealand and tho other colonics? Nothing. And though that may bo merely a proof of Ids own unimportance, to a Now Zealander it is an acknowledgment of appalling ignor ance.

Sinco my arrival in England I have made a point of asking people the plump question—“ What do yon know of Now Zealand?” And 1 have found that tho Englishman knows more of Now Zealand than I had expected. Ho knows that wo aro not all black: ho has some idea of our labour legislation and our ‘experiments in the way of universal suffrage; ho has heard of our scenery, has seen our meat at tho butchers’ shops (but would on no account, if lie could help it, eat it), has learnt that Now Zealand produces fine soldiers ana talkative politicians, and lias not yet made up his mind whether to tako Mr. Seddon seriously or not. Then, what aro tho preconceptions a Now Zealander has of England? Ho knows that tho size of tho British Isles is just that of his own land ; he knows that London is a vast city, full of splendour and serdidnoas, of Royalty and Dr. Barriardo’s- Jiomes. Ho has heard of its teeming millions, its logs and that vague terror, its winter; and in his mind exists a London of his imaginings, quite unlike, and much more picturesque than, the London of reality. For this ideal London is built, on tho basis of onr little open cities, and peopled with all that English literature and English history have to toll. Consequently the London of tho colonial’s imagination is rather overcrowded with celebrities. Ho imagines that ho has only to walk down the berand to meet Dr. Johnson.

But of the actual appearance of London—tho fact of London—ho has but tho vaguest idea. “Tell me, what does London look like?” I have a-sked returned colonials again and again, and they have all forgotten. Impression after impression has crowded in upon them during their stay in that vast and inchoate city, and they aro able to describe some of its features with commendable detail, but of tho broad effect, tho culminating idea, tho tangible entity of Loudon, they have no conception. And it is tho same with England. The New Zealander has heard of tho English village—poor man, in his own country ho has to put up with mero unpainted townships—and ho believes that England is one wide garden of roses and trimmed hedges rnd winding lanes and little fields of poppies and wheat and wild flowers, and everywhere great overshadowing oak trees. Ho does not know that the nightingale sings only during ono month in the year, and that for nine months of tho year tho birds of England are practically voiceless, that wild flowers grow only in tho spring, and that most of the oaks have been cut down long ago to build England’s fleet. And a New Zealander has heard of the dialects of England. H© has no dialects of his own, except tho one he is gradually evolving for himself; but ho is not prepared for the fact that there are parts of the British Isles where it -is quite impossible to understand the talk of tho natives. Such backwardness shocks him; ho had thought to find tho English hotter educated. And, when ho finds Englishmen of education actually proud of those unintelligible dialects, be begins to understand something of the mystery of the English diameter. So in these records I shall merely, attempt to express England and her Englanders as they seem to mo; I shall do my best to explain to my own people what England is, what London is, and I shall venture to explore, with many fears, yefe-with a dauntless courage, that terra incognita—tho mind of tho Englishman. If I fail, I shall have tried.