“TOO EASY=GOING”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1938, Page 6

“TOO EASY=GOING”

NEW ZEALANDERS AMD THEIR WAYS. VISITING ENGLISHMAN’S IMPRESSIONS. The opinion that the people of New Zealand were inclined to take things too easy and did not make the most of their country, was expressed by Mr David McWilliam, J.P., a former Mayor of Birkenhead, England, who is spending a week in Masterton during a tour of New Zealand. Mr McWilliam, who is accompanied by his wife, is a brother of Mrs W. McMinn of Herbert Street.

New Zealanders impressed Mr McWilliam as being very free and independent and not in the least subdued or depressed. He saw a great future for New Zealand and for craftsmen arriving here at an early age. Were he a young man, he said, he would not hesitate for one moment before tiying his luck in the Dominion, although. he added with a smile, he did not know what his wife would have to say' about it. He likes the people and he likes the country but he definitely does not like our prevailing weather, which he considers has treated him most unkindly. He enjoyed one beautiful day in Auckland. however, and was most impressed with the Queen City. He has never encountered anything to compare with the Ellerslie Racecourse, although he knows the Grand National course at Aintree well. The beauty of Ellerslie was wonderful. The glow worm caves at Waitomo were one of the sights of the • world, but he was not over-fond of Rotorua, in spite of its much vaunted attractions. There was too much sulphur about and the place gave him the impression of being merely “a crust over the infernal regions.” Mr McWilliam experienced his first earthquake while at Pipiriki, and he was not too pleased with the sensation.

Me William thought that much he beauty of our countryside was marred and disfigured by the burntnut patches of bush and fallen trees seen from the highways. The main roads, he considered, were excellent but the back-country roads were terrible. To an Englishman, some of our roads —the Manawatu Gorge, for. ina?lCG_7appear ed positively dangerous. What New Zealand needed most, in his opinion, was a greatly increased population.

Touching briefly on politics. Mr McWilliam said that the Labour Government was putting into effect what the National Government in England was doing in a much more moderate way. Labour here was moving too rapidly and he doubted whether the Government would be able to carry its policy to the extent it intended. "

Unlike many oversea visitors Mr McWilliam had no complaint to make about the New Zealand hotels, although one did not receive the same attention on arrival, he said, as in England. He brought with him a letter of introduction to the Mayor of Masterton, Mr T. Jordan, from the ?f ew Zealand High Commissioner, Mr W. J. Jordan, whom he met at an official luncheon in Birkenhead a few days before he sailed,