The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 27

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

W 1 *HY is it,” began the school--11/ master, “that we are so fond ■ /*/ of sending Home for men to , f fill bur best posts? If we want an engineer, or a professor, or a bishop, we almost always choose a man from the Old Country. It offers very little inducement to our lads to enter any proiession when they know that all the prizes will be given to the imported article. I see even the Presbyterian ministers are beginning to kick against this arrangement. They say that all the best city livings are given to men who know nothing of the colony, and who keep the colonial men back from any advancement. Why can’t we have some system of preference to our own men? Even in the scholastic line they seem to prefer men with any outside degrees to men who have graduated at our ■own university. We are no longer a young colony; we are growing up into ■being a nation with a national pride of , our own. And yet, however well a I young fellow may do in his exams, out , here, let him take as many , first classes and scholarships as he will, no one ever dreams of nominating him for a vacant J professorship. . vve always find that tne Government ’ has instructed the High Commissioner to advertise in the Home papers for a suitable man. How many of our judges, or bishops, or city engineers, or heads of large schools, are nativeborn New - Zealanders? Fellows say, ‘What is the use of swotting up for an exam, when you get nothing for it?’ 'And you can’t blame them. If our educational system is half as good as it is cracked up to be, r we' ought to be able to fill all our best posts with our own graduates.”’ ‘ ■ © © . © “I presume,” suggested the cynic, “that you have been unsuccessful in your application for the headmastership you were talking about last week. A prophet is proverbially without honour in his own country. But ybu may yet be- / come a great man if you emigrate to another land. All distinguished New < Zealanders have gained distinction away V from their native soil. If you stay out here you will either always be a nonentity, or, worse still, you will be created a justice of the peace. That is an awful ' fate for any self-respecting man to contemplate. The truth is that we colonials are a queer lot in sonfie ways. We talk ■big about God's own country, and our superior intelligence, and all that sort of thing,"'and at the same time we don’t really believe in ourselves half as much as we ought to. I fancy you would find tnat if our fellows had the chance they 5 would carry off a good many firsts at Oxford and Cambridge? We‘haveh’t got the advantages for our boys that tney ■have a.tHome, and yet we turn out some pretty good men. The Englishman kicks his goals from a place kick; we drop purs from the field.” © © © : “I have had a good deal of experience in teaching.” put in a well-known coach; ‘'and I have always found boys out here painstaking and conscientious in their ■work, and much better than the average English boy up to a certain point. For instance, the son of a newspaper proprietor in Taranaki quite recently passed Responsiotts al Oxford. although he had only studied Greek for three months. Very few boys at Hom.? could do. tdiat. But where our fellows fail is in the higher work, in what is technically known as scholarship. They will get up a subject most carefully and thoroughly, but they lack initiative. Composition, for instance, shows very little originality. I put this down to the fact that our university professors ar.? in reality little better than tutors cramming pupils for examinations. We want some sort of system by which Original work can be encouraged, and in-

terest stimulated in a subject for its own sake. You will find that questions requiring thought and intelligence to answer are never so well done as those that merely require book learning. Fellows who take up English, for example, know a lot about the history of the language, and the biographies of great authors; but very few of them could give an intelligent and critical estimate of, say, Matthew Arnold, or Shelley. They reproduce the professor’s criticisms with considerable accuracy and fidelity, but seldom produce much that is original. This fact has been frequently commented on by English examiners, and argues something wrong with our educational system.” © © © “One notices that very much in barristers’ work,”, said the lawyer. “We have no really eloquent pleader at the Bar. We have plenty of really sound lawyers, and most of our men can speak after a fashion. But what I mean is that we have no one who can take an apparently hopeless case, and gain a verdict by sheer eloquence. For, mind you, no amount of painstaking or even clever arrangement of facts will pull a really desperate case out of the fire. You can only do it by a careful study of your jury, and a masterly appeal to their feelings. I have seen Montagu Williams .carry, the whole Court with him, without touching on the evidence; by the mere passion of, his oratory. 1 was present, on th? famous occasion when the. judge reserved his suipming”up till the next day, because he ffelt that Williams’ speech had cast such a spell over the jury that they would be unable-to take a dispassionate, view of the case. Coleridge wen a verdict in a murder trial, in the teeth of the most damning evidence for the prosecution, through a candle going out and having to be re-lit. He compared it to the human life hanging on their verdict, a life that if once extinguished could never be rekindled. A man, who was present at the time, told me that Coleridge seemed almost sppernaturally inspired, and that a most weird kind of hushed solemnity held the whole Court whilst he was speaking. We have never had anything like it in New Zealand; indeed, I doubt if we have ever had a really first-class forensic orator at all. And you never see a dramatic piece of cross-examination life? Sir Charles Russell’s cross-examination of Piggot in the Parnell ease. We seem able to produce men of talent, but we don’t seem able, somehow, to produce a genius.” © © © “I quite agree with you in that,” remarked the politician. “The speeches in the House are usually well thought out and sensible, but they are hardly ever eloquent. It is the gamfe with our writers and painters and musicians. Their work is nearly always praiseworthy and free from serious faults, but it is seldom inspired. I put it down to the fact that we lack confidence in ourselves. We’are afraid to’let ourselves go. We are too self-conscious, and aim more at escaping blame than at securing applause. It is a small step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and our public speakers are not sufficiently sure of themselves to venture on oratorical effort. The same reason causes our students to rely more on what the books say than on original thought. They distrust their own powers. And to return to our original subject, I must say that I think our habit of giving our l>est posts to mon from outside has fostered this spirit of self-distrust. Our own men feel that they are not good enough for the highest work, and so they never exert themselves to the utmost. What 1 say is: Give our fellows a chance. They do brilliantly in other countries, why not in their own? Let us have our native born judges and

professors and engineers and bishops and headmasters, even at the risk of not getting quite such good men at first. Encourage native talent. We must do so if we ever wish to become a nation. We will never learn to walk alone as long as we rely on outside aid for support. Our Presbyterian friends have, I fancy, a perfectly legitimate grievance. We would never have built up any of our colonial industries if we had relied mainly on the home market for supplies.I quite admit that we have never yet produced a genius, but I maintain that we never will till we learn to rely more on ourselves and less on outside help.” © © © “At any rate,” said the sporting member, “we hold our own in sport. We can lick the world at football, and we have the champion oarsman. And our fellows did jolly well in the shooting. We can breed good, .horses, too. After all we don’t want to turn out a lot of rotten poets and other wasters. As long as we can come first in football they can keep their judges and professors. All you chaps are talking a lot of rot about things you know nothing about. Nearly all our'championships are held by New Zealanders, born and bred.” © © @ “I presume,” suggested the cynic, “that if anyone remarked that we were a gifted people, you would reply “about the feet.’ Certainly our genius seems to lie in this direction. The geography books, tell us that New Zealand produces mutton, flax, and kauri guni. They niigbt more truthfully say that we' produce footballers, J.P.’s, and inspectors.”