PRUNES AND PRISMS.

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 50, 21 August 1915, Page 2

PRUNES AND PRISMS.

The Alliance Abroad

THOSE Australians who have not visited this country, but who gain their impressions of New Zealand from itinerant lecturers, really believe that we are a nation of cranks. The wonderful work of New Zealand soldiers may allay some of the Australians' anxiety on our account and convince them that the masculine element is really not effeminate and the feminine element not so masculine as they suppose. It is exceedingly interesting to know that so great a proportion of our Australian relatives regard this country as one in which original sin has been eliminated. Mr H. I. Bruce, of N.S.W., put it rather neatly in a lecture at Mudgee. "If Adam had been a New .Zealander he wouldn't have picked, the apple—at least while anybody was looking." It's very hard to figlft the prevalent belief that the New Zealander is not a normal person with a normal person's appetite, a normal person's sins and is not a mass «rf icy virtue who shies at a racehorse "iand is stricken dumb at a bottle of beer. The real fact is that the New Zealander is as healthily normal as anybody else in the world, that nearly all the _ cranks have been "imported! into this country and are evidently here because the people are good natured. When a crank is emptied out of a-country by lack of business he comes to New Zealand! and starts a new religion, or a faith cure, or something in the patent medicine line, or a branch of the I.W.W.'

When the public speaking N.Z. gets to Australia he is obsessed with the idea that all New Zealanders are patterned on • him. However much one desires to be like the Rev. J. Dawson, - who is at.present: in Australia, one is sadly'afraid that several persons in New Zealand are not true to the pattern.. The rev. gentleman) said "that in New Zea-

land they cultivated patriotic piety and pious .patriotism, and had set their faces against two of the great enemies of the race, including the liquor business and German militarism. New Zealandlens meant to go on fighting them until a triumph was secured." What Mr Dawson really meant, of course, was "I believe myself to be piously patriotic. I coone from New Zealand. Therefore the New ZeaJander is a pious patriot." He wouldn't, of course, syllogise his thoughts, but he is loyal enough to suggest that as he is the great Exemplar the whole of New Zealand is obedient to his lead. Mr Dawson declares that New Zealand has set its iface against the liquor traffic. Mr Dawson really means: " I do not drink (alcohol). I have set my face against the traffic, I am a New Zealander. Therefore, New Zealand has set its face against the liquor traffic." No doubt Mr Dawson, as a typical 1 New Zealand No-license advocate, really believes what he says—that New Zealand is pious and non-alcoholic, and no doubt Australians will believe that New Zealand is non-alcoholic and pious.

Perhaps one might give another view of the New Zealandier. He has no real intention of becoming absolutely non-alcoholic, but that he has been among the most sober of nations is exemplified in the magnificent type of young men who nave survived to fight for God, King and country through a period during which ' the non - alcoholist declared was a period of moral degradation. The New Zealander is not so bright as the Australian, but he is more steadfast, often to doggedness. He is less vivacious but more tenacious. He is not pious, but he is sensible. He never can see any reason why he shall pattern himself on any man because the man says he is the perfect pattern. He is able to like beer and to hate drunkenness, he is able to be patriotic without advertising it, he is able to play the game even though he stays away from church. The itinerant lecturer who induces the people of other States to accept the belief that the small bodies to which they belong are typical of New Zealand citizenship means no harm. He is merely misinformed. If you take a typical No-license person, you will find that he knows absolutely nothing of the man who is not a No-li-cense person. He may want to "save" him, but he doesn't want to know him. Therefore be merely annoys him with accusations. "New Zealanders mean to go on fighting them (alcohol and Huns) until: a triumph is secured." What Mr Dawson really means is that people who do not use alcohol will go on trying to rob other people of something the don't want.

Regarding New Zealand's determination to fight the other evil until a triumph is secured, Mr Dawson really means that New Zealanders are still permitted the privilege of helping to s a ve their own lives. He means that New Zealand is a single drop in the great bucket of humanity, that alone it is a helpless little voice crying in the wildlerness, and that it is only a tiny cog. in the great Imperial wheel. The one outstanding thought that insists when lecturers boast of their achievements is one of wonder that the race survived through tbe ages anterior to the birth of alliances. How the race produced its Drakes and Forbishers and Nelsons and Wellingtons, its Shakespeares, its Pitts and Brights, its great wayfarers, its incomparable scientists, its wonderful inventors, its imperishable statesmen without guidance of alliances and -without the inspiration of a No-License vote. No one desires to canonise alcohol, uerely to say that genius survives diispite it, that the national life survives despite it, that the mental and physical qualities of the race survive despite it, and 1 that the great leaders of No-Mcense do not supersede the statesmen, or the scientists, the sailors or the soldiers. It is the Empire that is fighting this war—not any little clique with one idea of morality for- the whole of human . kind.