UNPAID SERVICE

Forest and Bird, Issue 45, 1 August 1937, Page 12

UNPAID SERVICE

A MEMORY OF DR. COCKAYNE AND SUB-ANTARCTICA.

EVERY people that has a public conscience will at times pause in its “business pursuits” and will take a look at its Unpaid Public Service.

To try to take stock of Paid Services, or even of Paid Public Services, would be too big a job. Paid Services include almost the whole population. Paid Public Services, covering people who receive public pay, also amount to a great army. They need, for their control, extensive administrative machinery. To the man in the street all this kind of remunerative service is a closed book. But though the people —the lay public—would find it too big a job to take stock of the Paid Services or of the Paid Public Service, a stocktaking of Unpaid Service is easy, simply because it is comparatively scarce. Consider, for instance, all those who give much of their time and some of their money to the cause of wild life—the protection of plant and bird. In every civilised country this Unpaid Service goes on. Is it not truly national work? Work given to the national interest, but not charged for. Work that was nobody’s job until a few enthusiasts took it up, and—without commercial incentivebuilt up a great national, and even international, public service, unpaid. There have been times, and perhaps they are to some extent with us yet, when the champions of birds were classed with the champions of lost causes. There was only one way of answering this, and that was to show results. But in the winning of results a decade of seemingly fruitless labour is almost nothing. The war against indifference may last decades, because the average citizen does not value what he gets for nothing. To see some of his fellows giving to (not receiving from) a public cause does not necessarily command the average citizen’s respect. He cannot see any credit, or even sense, in a non-commercial transaction; or in a propaganda that seems to fall ceaselessly on deaf ears. The average citizen does

not realise that, even in the drop of water that wears away the stone, there is supreme force, and (if the force is well directed)) there is national benefit. Vividly one realises this when looking again into a file of the New Zealand Forest and Bird Protection Society a file that supplied an article in the last Bulletin on the Lord Auckland Islands. The file begins in June, 1925, when the Society began to knock on the closed door of Government policy a policy that farmed the Lord Auckland Islands for the pitiful reward of £4O a year. This collection of papers and documents traces over a number of years the ebb and flow of the Society’s efforts to open the door; and at last, in 1934, the door opened. Though for years it defended its devastating policy in those natural museums of wild life, the Lord Auckland and the Campbell Islands, the late Government of New Zealand at last admitted its error. The present Government, and probably any future Government will not again deliberately farm these islands. To that extent the drop of water has worn away the stone. But the evil that past Governments have done lives after them. Some of the sheep are still there, ravaging the native growth, destroying the birds’ habitat. The Society has no desire to blow any personal trumpets, but would like to point out to all New Zealanders that it is engaged in national work (the work of the nation) and that it is getting results and requires their support. The cause is not lost. It can be won. It is being won. Help it and join it. But there is one whose trumpet the writer would like to blow. That one is dead. He is the great New Zealand botanist, Dr. L. Cockayne, whose heart was in the defence of the Sub-Antarctic Islands. He gave freely to the Society his distinguished advice. Yet it was given anonymously, and his reason for anonymity reveals in a flash what has been stated abovethat the defenders of wild life have too often been regarded as “enthusiasts” and

as the champions of lost causes. Dr. Cockayne wrote privately to the Society on July, 1925: “Keep my name out of the matter. I am so well known as a supporter of preservation of plant and animal life that my influence is really lessened thereby.” Does not this passage speak volumes? Here was a bontanist of world fame and a holder of the Darwin medal, yet his “influence was lessened” because he brought his great gifts to unpaid national work! Once again: Is it not time that the public conscience paused in “ business pursuits ” to take a look at Unpaid Public Services? And perhaps to join the cause, which is now spreading through the civilised world like a tidal wave.