AS OTHERS SEE US.

Otago Witness, Issue 3500, 12 April 1921, Page 53

AS OTHERS SEE US.

A Dunedin lady who has resided in Canada for many years now forwards the following extract from a Canadian paper with the brief commentary—“ This is how others see us” : LAND WITHOUT MILLIONAIRES AND WITHOUT—FASHIONS. (By A. C. Cummings.) Auckland, New Zealand, January 3. —- A word about the people of New Zealand themselves may fittingly bring this series of articles to a conclusion. The country is divided into three well-marked sections. The south end of the South Island is mostly peopled by Sc-ots. There the prevailing religious controversies—and New Zealand is a place where religious controversy bulks largely even at election times —have to do with Presbyterian theology. Christchurch, oil the other hand, is the centre of an English settlement—all the street names are English, like Hereford street, Worcester street, and so on. Auckland is the commercial centre, situated in the North Island. Its population is mixed, hut not so mixed as Winnipeg’s. Wellington is more English in appearance than any city except Christchurch. It is also the most picturesque city, for it is built on half a hundred liilis each higher than the last. The Wellington suburbanite going home at night can well wish for a- balloon to take him to his doorstep—no ordinary streetcar apparently could do it. Yet, marvellous to relate, the street car does—in much the same way as the C.I’.R. surmounted the famous “Loop” in the Rockies before the construction of the Connaught tunnel. In Wellington 1 encountered an interesting link with Canada. Lambton quay is the main street of the city. Lambton is llie family name of Lord' Durham, whose famous report on Canada laid the foundation of Canadian self-government-. Lord Durham was one of the governors of the New Zealand Company, and when he went to Canada he was accompanied by Mr Puller, his private secretary, and by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who afterwards took the chief part in the settlement of New Zealand. Wakefield's grave is in Wellington Cemetery, and to Wakefield is

attributed the real credit for the Durham report rather than to Durham himself. —Not One Millionaire.— Business life in New Zealand is by no means so energetic nor so “hustling” as in Canada. There are no chances of making fortunes so readily. In all New Zealand there is not a single millionaire in the British sense of having 5,000,000 dollars. The general level of business ability is high, but the cautious, not to say conservative, way in which business is done comes with rather a shock to a Canadian. When one finds one’s bank charges one for the privilege of being entrusted with one’s money, one is apt to wonder what would happen if one desired an overdraft. Perhaps overdrafts are not required in New Zealand. On the other hand there is certainly a high level of both business and political morality, and the word “graft” is considered an American importation which it is unnecessary to acclimatise. New Zealanders are fond of sports. Race meetings are held nearly every day in the year, betting by means of the totalisator is general, and the hottest discussion I heard in Parliament during my visit to Wellington was whether the number of race meetings a year should be increased by 34 or left as they were. Anti-increase exponents are denounced as “wowsers,” a term which apparently connotes something of the same contempt for social reform as the term “highbrow” in the United States suggests in relation to intellectuality. A “wowser” is almost always a prohibitionist, and New Zealand, singularly enough, is rapidly turning prohibitionist. Last referendum carried by the home vote, but was defeated by the soldier vote overseas. If another is held the general belief is that prohibition will carry. Unfortunately, although there is early closing in New Zealand, there is also a good deal of drunkenness. There is no fashion in New Zealand. What strikes the Canadian visitor first of all is the dowdy appearance of both sexes in the streets. The school girls wear a sort of uniform surmounted with a straw hat like a nidi’s “boater.” You can always tell a school girl by that hat. The female sex runs not to Paris fashions, and those of 20 years ago may frequently be recognised by the expert feminine eye. The men wear clothes, and that is all. But as in Christehurqh, where you find cricket, cabs, and bicycles, so everywhere in New Zealand you find the frock coat and silk hat of European civilisation corning from domestic celebration or in attendance at a place of worship. Tims it is that one great British tradition is faithfully maintained under the Southern Cross. New Zealand is not a land of young men like Western Canada. In most offices you find grevbea-rds who have grown old ungracefully along with the business. They naturally resent hustle, and no doubt it is these who set the business pace for the community. They are of an older school, and seldom is anything more perfect than their courtesy. Indeed nothing in New Zealand strikes a Canadian more forcibly—coming from a land where to be polite is considered equivalent to a lack of business ability—than the universal politeness met with on all hands. The railway conductor—l mean the guard,—the public official, ilie man on the street car who takes the tickets, the urchin you stop in the streets—all are adepts in those forms of speech which in themselves mean so little, but which, as smoothers of social intercourse, amount to so much. One leaves New Zealand with altogether happy recollections as of a country whore people are prosperous, where they are peacefully engaged in working out their own problems in a sturdy independent fashion, where they are not theorists, but practical citizens not afraid. however, of doing the thing that needs to be done and leave the philosophy of it to be thought out by others. No British community so far has evolved a better type of civilisation or one freer from, social blemishes or flaws, and though perhaps the progress that has been made in some of the cultural aspects of life is less notable than in the political and economic sphere, nevertheless, as a land for a Briton to make his home in, it would be hard to find a better.