WHAT IT MEANS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7915, 26 September 1911, Page 1

WHAT IT MEANS

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE BY "TIEU" What does Dominion Day mean to us? Tho people of the United States of America have their Fourth of July, which they celebrate with great exuberance, but the severance from kingship which they on this day profess to be joyful about in reality signifies very little, since in its results upon the essentials of commercial life the distinction between the rule of a constitutional monarch and the government of a President is* a distinction without a difference.

Dominion Day is not an occasion for Imperial thoughts. It Is a celebration all our own. It is a day upon which we can recall, and be thankful for, the many advantages that attend our youth. To really understand the significance of Dominion Day in New Zealand one requires to have personally experienced various phases of life in other lands. Witnessing the bright, happy gathering yesterday at Newtown Park one's mind wandered away to tho Bank Holiday crowds at Margate, Hampstead Heath, Hyde Park and various other places where the poor of the great cities of England hold their traditional outings. In their enjoyment of their liberty you would no doubt see tho same brightness and gaiety as yesterday, but the shadows of tho uncertain days that have to follow comes down upon them as the day draws to an end. The next day will see the same confines of misery, the dull slum walls, the strenuous fight for coppers, tho harassing fear that meal time will come without sufficient food. The coster will resume his hand-barrow, and the pavement vendor her cards of matches and boot-laces, and her look of misery. The clothes will be the tattered remnants of respectability, and the evidence of the wearer's lowly position in the scale of life. The old servility to tho wealthier classes is assumed again. Tho dirty, grimy attic, and the tiny coster shop in some dark alley will drive away the memory of the green parks. But why go on 1 Perhaps some of the gay ones, before the week is out, will bo forced by a compulsion more exacting than the law of the State—the tyrannical pangs of hunger—to enlist for military duty These things are not known among us here.

Then let us view another scene. It is an election meeting in rural England. The tenantry are fine stalwart men, the cider ones magnificent types of honesty and hardihood. But have they the freedom of their convictions or of their political opinions? Ask anyone who knows the real state of things from actual experience. In all probability—l have ©eon .it ‘-soTera.l times —one man, sitting apart from the rest, will be tho special emissary from "the Hall.” His purpose can be easily guessed. Ask anyone who knows what the tenantry of the poorer’, old-fashioned parts of rural Britain think about tho secrecy of the ballot. Then there are tho tiny homes of the tenants, the slaving •wife with half a dozen children, the tolling hueband whose utmost earnings are, on the average (harvest extras thrown in), thirteen or fourteen shillings a week. Compare this with conditions in our Dominion; also the fact that only 12 per cent, of the people occupying land actually own their holdings!

And so one could go on and institute contrasts in many phases of life. But cross over to other countries. In Germany, despite the practice nowadays of holding many of her institutions up as examples for legislation in this country, you have only to visit the folk-markets of her cities, or the homes and the gasthauses of her peasantry to see that there is still a very marked difference between the rich, and the poor in Germany. In the Saxon provinces, and in more progressive Prussia, everywhere in the fields you see the women labouring. But Germany is one of the brightest example® after all. In Austria the women seem to possess the exclusive privilege-of toiling in the wheat fields and in the other largo cultivated areas. Bent double often with their incessant labours, they arouse the greatest sympathy of the observant colonial. Many times they take the place of beasts of burden. You would wish to have them all transplanted to other, happier surroundings, where their woman iiood would bo given a high plaoo in the national ideals. In the cities of Austria you see them carrying hods of bricks, or doing work with navvies on the railway lines—their wages less than a shilling a day. In Italy, in any of the cities, you can see worse poverty and more miserable conditions still. I have watched day after day girls, bright-eyed and cheerful, buy their dinners—a little cheese,,a little wine, a small pieoo of bread and preserved meat —for the equivalent of twopence. The workers themselves have no breakfast such as wo have, and a midday meal that costs less than half a lire. It is all they can afford out of their miserable wages'. Their whole cost of living per day will scarcely total a shilling; and food in European countries, quality for quality, is dearer than in our own. The state of their daily existence can be thus imagined, and I am convinced that few imaginations will place the condition of tho poor of these countries on a lower plane than it really is. Then, in many parts of rural Italy there is an equally lowly- state of existence; an uncertainty what the next month will bring forth, an almost total subservience to those who possess a little wealth. In a brief article such as this it is necessary to write thus in general terms, but every assertion could be supported by details that have been gathered in many quarters. One could point to Turkey, to Russia, to Holland and. Belgium, could investigate tho sanitary conditions under which tho masses of the people live, their meagre wages lists, their servility, their considerable dependence on charity instead of expecting things that are their undoubted rights; the comparative restrictions regarding education. There are many vivid memories that come to the front when the casual individual in--quires, .sarcastically " 'Whaf a this Dominion Day mean?” To tho cynics who neither know nor care, who have no comprehension of. tho meaning of the term "democracy" Dominion Day is merely a: politician's outing. Bat surely to the man who has seen something of the tragedy of human, existence in other lands —who understands what his adopted country means to Mm—Dominion Day implies much. To him it stands apart for a celebration of the benefits bo enjoys, and_ which those who come after him will enjoy. It means for his children equal_ opportunities with anyone, whatever his grade in life may bo. • _ .. _ .