TO LIVE OR TO DIE?

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

TO LIVE OR TO DIE?

New Zealand Has Mental N eurasthenia. BUT LAND IS A PARADISE. By E. J. HOWARD. M.P. VEW ZEALAND is suffering from mental neurasthenia. She is full of doubting people. We knew this disease when it affects one or two. We have met it in the individual, but for a whole country to be affected by it is serious. They ask: 44 What is the good? Why do that. At any rate to-day we are roosters and to-morrow feather dusters; why should we build for posterity? We cannot do anything until someone buys our wool. Look at the price of butter. Hamlet was bitten by that bug, and bitten hard. A student, a philosopher, an artist, and yet Hamlet could not ma»ce up his mind. He wasn t sure of anything, even of death itself. Let , the individual put this to the test. Stop in the Square and look at the Godley site. It is surely a thing of beauty compared to, say, fortv years ago? But try it on your neighbour. Suggest that it looks well, and instantly you will get some such answer as this: 44 Yes, but what right had they to remove the trees the pioneers planted ? ’’ A sick man went to a doctor and told him he was worrying because he was not sure that he had been properly married. Although he was the head of a large and comfortable home he had developed doubts as to whether he had answered 44 I will ” on his wedding day. Of course if we are healthy and have taken our prescribed amount of medicine we can laugh at that man, but he was a victim of nervous weakness, or as the doctors called it, neurasthenia. The Nervous State. A friend pulled me up in Gloucester Street the other day and began telling me about how bad things were. According to him, there was hardly a business in town but that was near the rocks. It was a quarter to five in the afternoon, and I said, 44 Yes, but cast your eye along and count the motorcars parked at the kerb. Now watch where Colombo Street passes across Gloucester Street. Try to count the number of cars passing there every few minutes.” Then the picture shows started to empty their afternoon audience. 44 Look at the crowd,” said I, 44 coming from the shows. To-night there will be greater numbers.” But, according to my friend, the shows are not paying and the cars are not paid for. 44 But you are wrong, friend! See that show place; it has returned all the original capital, and is still paying 10 per cent.” But he left me satisfied that the bottom had dropped out of New Zealand. Of course, with between 60,000 and 70,000 sturdy men on relief work, and no openings for the children leaving school, w r e are not called upon to whoopee, or w r ords to that effect. But this is the same old New Zealand that the pioneers came to less than a hundred years ago; not a patch on God’s earth so rich in potentialities. But we are in a nervous state. Look at our national debt! Well, look at it. We can pay every penny, although we don’t really owe every penny. We have lost faith, let go, got into the habit of doubting ourselves and all around us. We want a kind of Torry-Alexander to come along and make us sing, to give us a dose of psycho-therapeutics, or something like that. Is Man Superior? A wonderful country. If a jolly old weed comes here in a fruit box and plants its toes in our soils, it spreads and spreads until it becomes a nuisance. Take ragwort, for instance. The pretty j'ellow flower! Tell a farmer in the north that it is a pretty yellow flower, and he will forget the Ten Commandments for a few moments. Take the pretty little bunny rabbit and remember how he is protected in Merrie England. Think what hard names they call the men who go after him of a night-time in that same England. But here they pay men to hunt him. Then there is the blackberry. There are two bushes of, this pretty fruitbearing shrub on the West Coast, one on one sid.e of the road and one on the other. Then the deer! Oh, yes, the deer all right, eating out our forests, and the southern farmers say the deer are eating everything but the mortgage. And the pretty white butterfly. If you call him pretty in the north, duck at once, because the farmer will have murder in his heart. The insects come here and enjoy themselves. Are we as good as the insects, or are we to acknowledge that with all our science and brain power the grass grub is our superior in getting a living ? Three meals a day, a • bed, and a few amusements, and they i are all here in the soil of New Zealand. Look at the beautiful things in the shops. The colours! A shilling a yard for stuff that Sheba would have given her sandals for. Look at the fruits! Grapes to-day are plentiful and in abundance. Throw a cutting from one of the vines on to our manure heap and it will turn and put its roots down and bear fruit. We have harnessed our lakes to turbines. We could have hot water in every swimming bath, but we have made rules and regulations to say we shall not. Science has given us radio. For a few shillings we can buy a box of gadgets that will put us in touch with every part of the world. But directly we found this available we wrote long rules and regulations and put inspectors around to see we didn’t use it. Digging In. The grass grub dug his nose into our lawn and started in to eat the roots of our grass. He didn’t put a policeman on to prevent his neighbour from filling up. Give us this day our daily bread, and up comes the wheat in abundance. ‘‘But Lord, Lord,” we say, “if you give us too much we shall starve! ” -a What’s wrong with New Zealand? Simply nothing. It’s a paradise, where everything but man can get a living and a jolly good living. But the people are full of gloom and doubt. Too much wheat; too much meat; too much milk! too much butter; too j much fruit. Everything we can think of is here for our taking. Power to 'waste; coal, timber, iron, copper, and • all that is needed. But we are down iin the dumps. We have lost faith in this bunch of islands. We are like Hamlet, we do not know if it is better to live or to die. We are afraid. Look at the national debt! Well, look at it and then grin and bog Jin and we can pay every penny. To Ibe or not to be? That is the question.