FRANK IMPRESSIONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 88, Issue 7, 10 January 1944, Page 3

FRANK IMPRESSIONS

DR. NEVINS ON N.Z. VISIT LESSONS FOR U.S.A. AND DOMINIONS Recd. 6.30 p.m. Sydney, Jan. 8. “New Zealand and Australia on the one hand and the United States on the other have much to learn from each other,” said Dr. AlanNevins,' professor of history at Columbia University, New York City. Dr. Nevins is completing a tour of New Zealand and Australia on behalf of the United States Office of War Information. Some revision of the educational system of Australia and New Zealand and the United States was an essential first step towards effective co-operation between the countries. “Going beyond this,” he said, “the United States must realise that she has very special lessons to learn from New Zealand and Australia, which countries have carried out a number of interesting .experiments in the relation between Government and industry having the profoundest significance to the United States. The United States, which in the depression years had to abandon her traditional laissez faire policy of democracy, must go further along the road New Zealand and Australia began to follow many years ago. She must learn from your experience not only in what to do but in what not to do.” Dr. Nevins emphasises the lessons which the United States might learn form a study of bold New Zealand thought towards the more socialised State. It was perfectly clear, for example, that prices control was working much better in both New Zealand and Australia than in the United States, and Americans must realise the significance of the fact that New Zealanders and Australians w’ere conditioned to State interference, whereas Americans were not. On the other hand, he pointed out, New Zealand and Australia might take cognisance of the high incentives for individual initiative which Americans maintained the system of free enterprise. Americans on the social and cultural side could learn much from the orderliness and sobriety of New Zealand and Australian life. These two countries in turn had much to learn from America in the value of heterogeneity. There was too much uniformity in New Zealand and Australian life. “There is a certain tendency in New Zealand and Australia to become a monolithic social structure. You are entirely British in your social structure. We Americans have gained something as well as lost something bv our rich variety of social heritages from Europe. New Zealand and Australia might therefore reconcile themselves to what they could gain from a more diversified immigration system, which would mean a more diversified cultural life.”