THE POINT OF VIEW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14927, 1 September 1910, Page 8

THE POINT OF VIEW.

. By Guy H. .Scholkfield. Not very long ago I blundered casually on a settler's home right back in the Taranaki Bush. Exactly where it was is inimaterial. As these things go it was an old home. That is bo say, the family had gone t-hcrft quite young, and now most of them were hiving oft. The old man had just come home. Ho tied his horse to the fence and came in for a cup of tea. " Where worn tlicy all?" was the natural query after he had explained- that he had been out since the dawn rounding up sheep on tho new grass to «« how . many were missing. .

"Of course, you know Harry's got the plaos now,'.' he replied, in- an offhand way as if he really tliought wo did know. "I thought it was about time the missus and ma had. a snel-1 so he took it ovor last yeur."

And tho did man's "spell,"-wo understood, oonsisted in fencing, rounding up cattle , amongst the logs on tho hillside, milking, eta-riflf;', some scrub-cutting, and eo forth. Wo asKed about the others.

"Oh, they're all about," ho replied, in a. matter-of-fact sort of way. "Harry's just gono up to'tho whare. He's got cattle on the grass there. He's going to Tatu in the King Country; be back on Saturday. Fred, of oouisc, has gone to Australia. What d'you ' call tho Dlaoe, Jennie? In Queensland. Myall Downs—yes; he's got a good plaoe -there—2ooo head of cattle, and never short of water, either. Franklin, you remember, th'« third boy: I think lie was at school when you werejiere; he's got a section- across the river "—and ho nodded his head towards the black forest across tkt Eao. ■

AVell I knew what that meant. In summer a good half-day's ride in clouds of dust; in winter a couple of day's drudgery with the mud up to the horses' knees, sucking and exploding with every lift of tho hoof. They speak cheerfully in''the bush of the new sections that the boys take up. "The whare." where Harry was, was simply a euphemietio name to distinguish his new section. It was 15 miles away, with no read or track. The Bteep liillsidts were scarred .and l blackened with the ravages of a recent "burn": huge logs lay about like corpses on. a 'battlefield, and amongst them a few score of cattle, lean.with the constant oli-mbing and scrambling, and discoloured with oharcoal, rummaged and foraged -for tho luscious grass which buret upward through tiie ashes of yesterday. This was the particular piece of the wilderness that Harry hnd. taken for his own to reclaim for civilisation

"Jack is in the Lands and Survey in Invercargill." continued the. old .man, with that tribute of pride which we ovesea Britons so often pay to a clean white shirt, "And young Bill's an engineer. He's in the Buclcnall line, trading out East." There they were, the bush settler's boys, half the world oyer. And the girls? Well, two were married; the other a stay-at-home sort. One had "Been to England. The others, with their mother, took occasional hoiidays to Auckland 1 -and Wellington, anu so forth. Yet there was nothing extraordinary in family. There aro dozens going through tne same gradual -process of distribution,' incontinently and without fuss. It is all in- tho course of their life. Distance is nothing to them. The -antithesis of the Taranaki family I mot with in an English' agricultural county, quiet and sweetly beautiful. For generations, I suppose, that family had found its world and 'being within the borders of the shire. Where was James? Oh, he was just to the market. And William, another grown man? I-Ie was working tor the squire. And Thomas? Gone to the village for the letters. Ann was tho only one with the spirit of adventure. And they were not too confident of her prudence. She,' brave girl, had ta'e-n her fears in her hand and lighted; out northward, right across the Tweed, and now she \yas in, Glasgow. What for? "In service. Ay, bin away for two year come Christmas." The old lady sighed. A faraway, contemplative look came into her eyes. evidently she was thinking of the possibility that she would never see her girl again. Letters passed to and fro each week, gaily bridging tho gap in- the space of four hours. Yet to all intents the old lady was in this quiet English shire, and her daughter in Siberia or Rhodesia of Australia. That was' their perspective. Distance with them was measured by quiet evening strolls down the lane, not by train jjourneys whirling the countryside astern in burets of 50 miles a hour.

With us oversea; the idea- of distance is so entirely different. After all, tho mental effort of travelling, depends not on "the miles, but on the density of tho population.' .To the average home Br-iton the mental effort of' a journey, say, from London to Aberdeen, is formidable. Yet tho travel is more luxurious and the physioal fatigue is actually no greater than from Sydney to Melbourne, which hundreds of Australians do daily and' nightly, or from Wellington to Auckland; a- trifle unconsidered by many New. Zealan'ders. The Channel crossing—an hour' 6 journey of only 22 miles -still possesses for the home Briton much of the terrors of the days when it was performed by the laborious galley in face of i the storm, _or when the little smuggler brig, with sails'(lapping idly against the .masts, drifted with tho North Sea tide-rip under the guns of Deal of Boulogne. It is still an undertaking 'involving great mental effort ■ and . fortitude considerable. 1 Vet- wo reckless Antipodeans night after night make our little, channel trip of 170 miles from Wellington to Lyttdton, and at! tho end step, blithely aboard- the train 'for a twelve liouis' journey overland. Distance is nothing to a colonial stockrider. In spite of tho disparity in the expenditure of energy, he will as lightly ride the sun behind a freely-stepping mob of cattle as his Home cousin'will make a journey of similar length in the luxury *of English railway travel. The perepective is different. The man from a crowded country is aocustomed to unpeopled distances. He is struck by the dreary vastness of, say, a deserted racccoursc. To him Epsom Downs look like, a wide expanse of prairie reaching to the skyline. Yet, .metaphorically, one never sees the true horizon in bis own country. He sees the. thick air blurring tho landscape a few miles off. Or, in our country, he sees tho limitless sky cheek-by-jowl with tho fringe of tho forest 80 or more miles distant on all sides. And he thinks, in his simplicity, that the world is the picture thus framed. So, for him. it is. It is only when he begins to move, and to move seriously, to see the sun down into his wake time and time again, that he realises that other.' people, too, have their horizons, and that the ultimate horizon for him, if he would understand perspective, is not merely the township, the province, the State or the city; not merely Now Zealand or, Australia or England or Europe, but as near as he can attain to a conspectus of the whole.

From the physical- point of view wo oversea Britons do undoubtedly regard distance with a greater levity and recklessness than our cousins. Possibly it is the natural outeomo of scanty population and poor communication. My own grandfather left England, in -the year in which tho first railway, hurrying to bring Birmingham within six or" soven hours of London, passed through his land. That was just about the limit of imagination. He spent a dreary throe months at sea, learning something of distances on a world 6caJc, and when he landed in Otago it took him three days to transport himself and his family by ooach, boat, and bullockwaggon 36 miles from the'beach. Life in that virgin, barbaric land was bound to have its effect on the sense of proportion. Tho present-day colonial, or his father, grow up feeling that when he left ono township there was a long ride to the next.- Ho might meet a soul or two, but generally his horse would bo his sole oortipany. So he let the miles slip by, as of no account, kept his cars pricked forward, looked far ahead. Cabbage trees standing sentry on the hillsides, tussock waving like tho sea, flax bushes shivering their blades togethor, all meant nothing. It is the mass of humanity, the little villages strung out one after tho other, that make up the toll. In them the physical reality of distance is submerged in the mental sense.

Forward, too, the oversea Briton has a wider horizon than his cousins at Home. Tho habit of looking forward is stronger. An old man may be hearty enough, but it is not in human nature that ho should cast his thoughts far ahead of him, looking forward to fresh . achievements. His grandchildren, on the other hand, are deciding, almost from their cradles what their future is to be. Life, for them is one constant, contemplation of the future, of possibilities and chances, and 1 hopes and wstles in tho air. And what is true of the individual is also true of the nation. Each of the oversea dominions looks forward hopefully and with meet energy to some great national epoch—the completoin of a vital railway, the consummation of a political union, the success of a social policy. And each of its citizens feels his owii stake and interest in the coming achievement. Hero in England the history andi the greatness of the country are alike made. It comes more aptly to' look bid; and. contemplate the past than to look forward. Whilo the -average oversea Briton it looking .1 decade ahead the average

Homo Briton is not looking (si' boyond to-morrow. In this case tho horizon is simply a psychological one. Hopo reigns oversea; acceptance at Homo. Some people may see the root of_ the'difference in tho atmosphere. I think it is purely a psychological one, easily traceable to the history and traditions cf tho race.

In tho bold facts of Nature, the reality of distance as we measure it by tho survsycr's chain, wt have tho advantage of our Homo cousins because ivo live closer to Nature. But in the talcs ami toll of humanity they have us at. their mercy. Over en-cry little English village hangs the history of a thousand years. Perhaps tho apparent horizon does not crowd us in on. all sides. Perhaps our outlook does seem to .be stifled. But there is a glorious compensation for it. It takes people to make history, and in a few square miles of Eng. land there is huddled together a mass of humanity sufficient to peoDle plenteously, and with a strength' of JnusoK; and character, .many of the . waiting oxpanses ..of our oversea heritage. . Every social., problem, every triumph of government and public administration, every ingenuity, of industry, every subtle traffio of commerce, is there, huddled in a seething but ordered moss, shining an<l glittering and groaning.- and droning its way along. In a few Equare miles of England is a segment of the world in being, from tho .apex of its splendour to the depths of its woo. Life and death and struggle and victory and poverty and l wealth are there in the mass. In this respect diefanco is surely annihilated, and the Home Briton has tho advantage of us. Per 1 haps it is irot suoh an advantage as wo, in our matter-af-fact utilitarianism, would exchange with him; but it is, in its.way, just, such an advantage as we enjoy who can stand on the Ma-kara Hills a.trd tee the glittering peak of Egmont 150 miles away, Yet in a space of a mile England' bridges from 1.-ombton quay.. to Taumarunui, from .the .Chiiiwa'furniture-shops in Melbourne to the mansions of Toovak, from tho bush settler's ivhare to tho wool king's palace.

It is one thing to -reflect that 13erlin is no farther from London than Sydney from Molbourne; that Iceland is as close to Whitehall as the Bluff to Cape Maria Van Dit> men. But every' little, corner' of England has a dignity and a. glory far surpassing anything wo can show. The written history of England began centuries and reons before tho prows of theitangata whenua touched the beaches of New Zealand. At the time of Christ in Bethlehem the little villages dotted all over the> wolds of East Anglia were-struggling and toiling and cultivating and bringing forth- riches for the benefit of the last conquerors, the Romans of Ca3sar. Each century since then has added to traditions which are the common property of tlte English villages. "What can we show to match that? Our earliest history coincides roughly jyith the Com Laws and the Reform Kill; Australia's with the opening of the Napoleonic ivars. Even the Maori cannot trace a coherent traditional lore back to tho days of the first British Parliament. In historical reflection it' is we !.vho have no sense of distance and proportion, The "old days" of tho colonies are within almcet tho most recent phase of English history. For our little townships, with their first- wooden hotels still in tenantable repair, England has to show her sweet, peaceful little villages over whose face has passed the breath and ravage of a thousand years of real life, of conquest and persecution, reform and war, triumph and bloodshed. From such a point of view measured distances fall into insignificance, and' the Home Briton recovers practically the whole of the disadvantage at which ho is, placed by our utilitarian standards. The physical horizon of the English villager i 6 infinitely lhore restricted than ouns; the historical horizon infinitely wider.