A COUNTRY FOR THE SHOWMAN!

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1352, 23 March 1916, Page 36

A COUNTRY FOR THE SHOWMAN!

MR. HUGH D. McINTOSH AND NEW ZEALAND. “When I ran through New Zealand last year,” Mr. Hugh D. Mclntosh recently told an Australian interviewer, “I found many things to impress, and many to surprise me. First of all, of course, was the country itself, full of lessons and stimulus for a weary Australian. A ferule country with an almost perfect scheme of land settlement, and no droughts worth talking about. A country so solidly prosperous that I sought in vain for a single case of destitution throughout the whole length of it. And what a country for the showman! The New Zealand cities, happily for New Zealand, are not bloated and overgrown. The population of the Dominion is splendidly distributed. On the main lines of* railway one runs through village after village and a succession of small thriving towns. All the New Zealanders have money, and all of them love the theatre. People who don’t approve of the theatres go to picture shows. Everybody goes somewhere. I suppose that, in proportion to population, the percentage of regular theatregoers must be higher in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world. Give New Zealanders the right stuff, and they’ll come and come again. “So I can’t afford to neglect New Zealand. Last year I sent over a big and expensive company at short notice on a sort of trial trip. I expected that with ordinary luck I might clear expenses, and in the end, despite some serious handicaps, the tour proved reasonably profitable. The reorganised Follies are going to New Zealand this year straight from their recent record runs in Sydney and Melbourne, and my firm is going to make a lot of money on the trip. That is the best of New Zealand. One can reckon on it. It is a solid coun-

try. So far as I am able to discover, it never fails to support a company that is worth while. “But there is more than that in my idea or scheme for regular New Zealand tours. I think that a yearly trip to the Dominion does the Follies a lot of good. They get the snap of a New Zealand winter into their blood, and are invigorated for all the long summer on this side. There’s no mistake whatever about the New Zealand climate. It literally does put new life into a man from Australia.

“Australia is every day coming into closer sympathy and touch with New Zealand. There used to be a certain antagonism of the parish. It has disappeared. New Zealanders and Australians have fought side by side on those shell-swept bloody hills at Anzac, and they will be brothers for all time after the war. We hear far too much talk of New Zealanders and Australians as separate peoples. In point of fact, we have common interests and common aims, we are Australasians all. After all, what do a few leagues of intervening sea amount to. How many leagues there are between us and the Motherland, but we are one with her in heart and purpose. We British can’t afford to make a bug-bear of the sea, since, for the good of all the world, we own it. I believe that in the future Australians and New Zealanders will be drawn to closer and closer recognition of the Imperial bond that binds all sons of the grand old mother; one blood, one faith, one destiny. For my part, when I’m in New Zealand I know that I’m still at home.”