LOAVES, FISHES.
Men, Women, and Children.
THERE are in New Zealand . at the moment of writing, two ladies—a commission sent by the Imperial Government to discover whether we can be hospitable to British women and supply them witli work. It is possible that in course of time the occasional antipathy shown by New Zealanders to the women from a country to which their own mothers belonged, will die down —and that, in fact, British men and women from Britain will not be looked upon as "foreigners" by British men and women in a British Dominion.
There have been a good many British commissions to New Zealand, but up to now the whole of them have gone empty away. Nothing has been done during the past twenty years as a result of the enquiries and activities of, British delegations, which could not have had harder tasks if they had been making enquiries in countries containing people of foreign blood.
The Commission, which included Sir Ridel- Haggard, is a case in point, the Commissioner having found that there was no real desire to be hospitable to immigrants, and to open up New Zealand land to them at prices that would make it possible for them to exist. The vital question in New Zealand is Women" and Men. It is insufficient for New Zealand women to regard this British Commission of two women as mere suppliers of domestic service or "land girls" for New Zealand farmers. Anyone knowing New Zealand will conclude immediately that there will not be in the next ten years a single imported British woman who will remain for. two weeks in the employ of a New Zealand farmer as a labourer, and the importation of domestic servants to ladies who persist in regarding the imported person as an inferior will be as great a failure as the intended importation of "land worker" girls mobilised in Britain during the war.
The whole point is that any organisation that can give tie men and women is a good organisation, because strong people of either sex are our one real need.
It doesn't matter to the colonies whether the British women who come to them are Wrafs or exsoldiers, or flying angels, or anything else, as long as they are of our own race. The Government need not bother with organisation. Its job is to get the People. We all talk a fearful lot of tommy-rot about the selection of fit people to help us inhabit this beautiful country. We ourselves have proved that upwards of fifty per cent, of our own people are unfit, if the medical persons who examined military recruits are to be believed.
Our business, first and last, is to cease to bother about this or that organisation, but to get British people by every device known to statecraft. We are not going to grow wheat or mutton or beef with words, but by the hands of Men. We can't fill the cradles with speeches, but by the aid of Women. It doesn't matter twopence whether a woman comes here wearing the wings of a Wraf or the grey blue uniform of some other body. The only point worth consideration is, "Is she a British woman who will marry a British man, and produce British children, to keep a British colony from domination that is not British."
It is worth thinking about by any Government not incurably pledged to a "loaves and fishes" policy.
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Bibliographic details
Observer, Volume XL, Issue 12, 22 November 1919, Page 2
Word Count
576LOAVES, FISHES. Observer, Volume XL, Issue 12, 22 November 1919, Page 2
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