“THIS UTOPIA"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19126, 22 September 1936, Page 3

“THIS UTOPIA"

TRAVELLER’S VIEWS

RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD

LESSON OF THE DEPRESSION

Tho independent outlook of :m experienced traveller and journalist on certain characteristic problems of Now Zealand is expressed in the recent book of Mr. B. Pospisil, “Wantiering' on the Island of Wonders." “Many critics have named New Zealand a. solitary Utopia,” Mr. Pospisil writes. “This Utopia wants to stay Anglo-Saxon. The islands ot natural and economical wonders, lost in the boundless expanse of the Pacific, are thousands of miles from the nearest continent. Tens of millions of immigrants have rolled on the waves across the Big Lake of the Atlantic into the Promised Land of America. The Pacific Utopia remains

untouched. Only now and then a few assisted Britons come into the paradise. Only an occasional Scandinavian or German drifts in to be forgotten by the rest of the world and mostly never to return, lie gets lost in the labyrinth of mutton, wool, cheese, hides, leather, rabbitskina, timber and gold prospectors’ camps and social laws. AFTER THE WAR.

"It was not only loyalty to Britain that, induced New Zealand to take a hand in the world war. Tho solitary 'Utopia, fell that, she could not live without, the world. After the war she was stricken by the world-wide fall in the prices of products. But again there followed a small boom. The soldiers returned. They wore gloriously welcomed. They were glorified more than our Czechoslovakian Legionaries, who fought in hundreds of thousands for our national independence against the Austro-Hun-garian yoke. For this patriotism Utopia, has paid handsomely, and, in comparison with European countries, kingly. •’The New Zealanders do not understand that they have been tolerably well compensated. They do not grasp the idea, because they are not aware of the fate of their follow-warriors in Europe. They maintain that they delivered services to the State, and therefore the State should look after them. 1 do not say they are not right, Undoubedly they are, , LAND FOR SOLDIERS. “The Government purchased land and settled upon it the returned soldiers. Tho prices paid for this land were high and rising at the time of purchase, but in the following years the prices of the products of this same highly paid for land dropped. More extensive cultivation, experimental