THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1907. SENSITIVE CANADA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8359, 15 February 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1907. SENSITIVE CANADA.

Paris has compared the English tourist who roams round her streets to the stable-boy. He wears a scrappy tweed cap of loud pattern, worn either at the back of the head, or over the nose, check pattern knickerbockers, baggy in parts, and tight in others, leather leggings, often of orange hue, and huge boots. It is of no use to tell the Parisian that this is not a typical Englishman; the evidence of his eyes is too strong. Now the Canadians are also noticing the predilection of the Englishman for this "horsey" costume,and protesting that the immigrant from England ought £to dress himself becomingly. There is, of course, an idea in England that. colonial life is a study in riding costume—generally immaculate —and this, no doubt accounts for the Englishman's sartorial transgressions in Canada. We cannot say that we have ever heard of similar complaints in New Zealand, but perhaps we are not so sensitive as the Canadians, who really take the matter very seriously. A well-known Canadian railway official declared recently that it was nothing short of a great misfortune that so many Englishmen, whom he warmly admires for their sterling personal qualities of head and heart should offend Canadian taste by landing in and persisting in wearing a costume which Canadians universally looked upon as the acme of absurdity. He mentioned in his criticism the little tweed cap of the stable-boy pattern and the red leggings, and actually suggested that the English authorities should do a

little missionary work in trying to persuade these unfortunate fellows to drop this outre clothing when they had their way to make among a people "as sobei*, earnest and practical as the Romans of the early republic." It is said that a man who parades Canadian streets in this outfit is ostracised. He is terribly handicapped in a land where competition is very keen. The Canadian writes him down as "no good," and will not have him even at the price of his board. Such little things have wrought infinite harm to the English immigrant in Canada, for the Canadians are passionately fond of their country, its institutions, its history; intensely resentful of the foreigner or the Old Country man who comes to with scornful criticism of Canadian things on his tongue, and raiment that to Canadian eyes seems outlandish and offensive on his back. Truly the British Empire is a problem. The New Hebrides at one end of the scale of difficulties and check knickerbockers at the other!