A CURIOUS PARALLELISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18601, 8 July 1922, Page 2

A CURIOUS PARALLELISM

In “ Tho Pacific Triangle,” Mr Sydney Groenbie, a young American, who visited the dominion some five or six years ago. writes Throughout the length and breadth ot the two islands, islands more than t two thirds the size of Japan, there isn t an outstanding structure of any great architectural value; there isn’t a statue or a monument of artistic importance; there is hardly a. painting of exceptional quality; nor. with' all the remarkable beauty of

nature which is New Zealand’s, is there any poetic outpouring of love of nature that one would expect from a people heirs to some of the finest poetry in the world. It is curious to notice a strikingly similar made by a leading American literary critic, Mr H. L. Mencken, upon the conditions prevailing in the Southern States of America, which he ascribes to the influence of Puritanism. Quoting John Fiske as saying, a generation ago, ‘‘ln the South to-day there is more Puritanism surviving than in New England,” Mr Meno ken writes in “A Book.of Prefaces”; — _ln that whole region, an area three times as large as France or Germany, there is not a single orchestra capable of playing Beethoven’s C minor symphony, or a single painting worth looking at, or a single public building or monument of any genuine distinction., or a single fao- ! tory devoted to the making of beautiful things, or a single poet, novelist, historian, musician, painter, or sculptor whose reputation extends beyond his own country. Between the Mason and Dixon line and the mouth of the Mississippi there is but one opera house, and that one is built by a Frenchman, and is now, I believe, closed. ' : Apart from the similarity of, language, even to the remarkable relation of the sentences employed, it is passing etjange that M' Greenbie should oorae to New Zealand to discover social conditions whichj if Mr Moncker is to be believed, exist in large part throughout the Southern States of America.