AS OTHERS SEE US

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 39, 15 January 1943, Page 5

AS OTHERS SEE US

-AMERICAN PROFESSOR'S VIEWS

CANDOUR AND HUMOUR This article was Avrittcn by Processor J. F. Wilson, of the University of California after a recent visit to this country. It appeared in the December issue of the "N.Z. -Economist and Taxpayer." The only really serious complaint -I have to make about New Zealand is that I arrived there during the i-rhubarb season. Otherwise the country suits me fine. Just why these -enlightened democracies, including ■our own, should spend so much -money on the control of noxious weeds and then deliberately ignore rhubarb is something for a psychologist to answer. I'was in. New Zealand three months, travelling all over the place, and every time I sat •down to a table in a hotel I had : to undergo the same ordeal. The waitress would stand a few degrees •to leeward and hold the menu card infinite patience and exactitude at the proper angle for me to read. Toward the end of my stay I got so I didn't have the heart to 'look at the first item. It was always the same—Fruit . . . stewed rhubarb. In other words, the choice lay between stewed ruhbarb and stewed rhubarb. My zeal for it ;might be illustrated by what the Irishman said about, spinach. He said he didn't like spinach and he was glad he didn't because if he did like it he might eat some and lie hated the stuff.

The pleasant Yankee custom of .guzzling orange juice is not followed in New Zealand. When I was -there oranges were beginning to gel scarce and the cost of a dozen small, splotched, infirm and insipid ones was about 40 cents ; a dozen. Australia, on the other hand, produces •oranges which are at least as good \(it hurts to admit it) as the best grown in California. But. something perhaps political considerations, -causes New Zealand to use the vastly inferior stuff from other sources. Now Australia is short on good potatoes and New Zealand can grow them almost as well as Idaho. Both are British countries, and one would think that since each is a component part, of the Empire they would gladl3 r swap spuds for oranges and make everybody happy. But no. They may be British colonies all right but that, does not prevent them from erecting trade barriers against each other. They both gripe a good deal over Uncle Sam's tariff on wool, but their own tariffs against each other, right in the family as it were, are just as bad. It reminds one of the attitude of a fairly high percentage of U.S. senators and congressmen who believe in free trade for all commodities except those produced by the. voters in their own bailiwicks.

The necessity of importing oranges had, not depleted the supply of orange marmalade up to the time of my departure. It. was: just as sure to be on the table as the table cloth was in spite of the fact that principal ingredients had to be imported. Couldn't get along without it— ray word, no! The odd part of this very odd situation is that you never -see blackberry jam in New Zealand and blackberry hushes occupy most of the west coast of the Dominion. When I made inquiry as to why the home-grown fruit was. not more widely used, my informant said it was due to a scarcity of blackberry bushes. Tliere. was only one, he said, in the entire country. The one bush was acknowledged to be several hundred miles long. Of course they do have rhubarb.

When the ship docked at the port of Auckland a letter was put aboard telling me of a livestock show starting the next day at Hastings, near the south-east coast of the North Island. Ii ran around to the station to get a reservation on the night train. The. ticket agent told me how very sorry he was: but the reservations had all been booked up for two or three days and he had requests from at least 40 people wham lie could not. accommodate. Of course I' had to see the show, and to do so I sat up in a chair car all night. The train was made up in Auckland, the terminal point. It didn't seem to occur to anyone to bring out a couplc of extra sleeping cars to take care of. those 40 people. The train was supposed to have a definite number of cars and that was that. Over here in America if 40 people were looking for reservations at Chicago or Ogden •or San Francisco on the U.P.-S.P. ■lines, we would expect the company •to trot out enough cars to take, care

of us. If they didn't we would raise Cain with the chief dispatcher, write nasty letters to the president of the company and. then take the Santa Fe the rest of our lives. Well, that's the advantage of travel in New Zealand—you always know how many cars there are in the train. In our country when you are travelling across the continent, after about two days of travel you begin to worry over how many cars the engine is pulling. Then you try to count 'em by 'putting your cheek against the window when the train goes around: a sharp curve, and before you get a good look the train has straightened, out. again and you lose count. All this trouble is caused by the quaint custom of our railroads of letting the number of passengers determine the number of cars. It could all be avoided by hauling a definite number of cars— and leaving 40 passengers standing on the platform. Railroads in New Zealand are owned by the government;

The native of Ntew Zealand, the fellow who was there before the white man, is called, a Maori. The word is pronounced as if it were "Mowery" Avith the "mow" rhyming with cow. The Maoris have contributed a good, deal to New Zealand, and the white population is quite proud of them. The fact that the Maoris have a very odd language did not deter the whites from giving or keeping native names, to about half the. towns, in the Dominion. To the innocent. American traveller, these names arc very disconcerting. You wouldn't dare tackle the pronunciation of some of them if you had false p'.atcs. For instance, Avhcn Dalgcty's representative was driving me from Palmerston North to Hastings to see that, fair we stopped for lunch at Waipukurau. I guessed correctly that the first syllable was pronounced "Y" but. when I hit the second one I didn't know whether to puck, pook, or puke. Tom Graham said to puck, so I pucked. The rest of tluv word rhymes, with a cat begging for something to cat. Understand I'm not complaining, but when a fellow like myself who is well along into middle age comes up lace to face with such towns as Whakarewarewa, Te Awe Awe, and Paekakariki, he instinctively wonders if his life insurance premiums have been paid.

Leading indoor sport in New Zealand at present is. cussing the government. I spent .most of my time among livestock producers' and not among labourers so I didn't get both sides of the story. The Labour Party is in control at the moment, and it seems the. government is just about as popular with agricultural

producers as some of our own racketeering labour unions are anions people capable of thought. Naturally it was no skin oil' my own. ejSuow whatever kind of a government the Dominion had, but it was most interesting that a country whose entire prospcritj r hinges on the export of agricultural commodities there should be a government capable of being detested by so nearly 100 per cent of producers. To iind out about it you do not have to ask questions; just meet a few farmers or wool growers ancl wait a minute. The verbal blitz will start without, your saying a word. Your host, after having exhausted his complete store of invectives and expletives and. having worked up a big lather over it, Avill invite you to have a "spot.' 1 ' Even after three or four generous ones of the brands we pay 3.89 dollars a iiftli for, the government is still no good. This proves it. must be really bad. Over here in America j r ou can go to. a wool growers' convention and after three rounds of Scotch some of them can think of a lew decent things about the New Deal.

We hear a good deal in America about how Australasians show their sheep in natural condition—no trimming you know: dash it all, that's fooling the public. But in the "open" classes at the world's, greatest Romney show at Palmers ton North, there were plenty of sheep whose fleeces had been treated, on the tips with oil and worked over until they opened up exactly right. At the world's greatest Corriedale show at Chrislchurcli in. the South Island, the prospective purchaser does well t» observe the • staple length at several points along the back; otherwise he may find that his new Corriedale stud ram, after he shears him, is not nearly so level as lie was before. I*n the good old U.S. you know perfectly well that every stud rom you look at when (Continued in next column)

}ou go to a show or sale has been trimmed and. then re-trimmed with the idea of fooling the judge or buyer if he can be ioolcd. In New Zealand you aren't quite so sure but you have to keep your eyes open. New Zealanders are nuts on horse racing. Nearly every city in the Dominion has; a good track and the hole, population, from politicians to street cleaners,- turns out and bets., It was impossible to find out whether the preachers, down there ai e addicted to betting on races, but if they don't bet they stand' in a class alone. Betting is, done through the pari-mutucls and bookmaking is prohibited by law. This law is exactly as well enforced as it is in the United States. Generally speaking, law enforcement in the British Empire is infinitely better than it is; in America, but in the case of the bookies it's the same. I wondered if the authorities really Avanted to see them put out of business. Alter all, if those prcaehers do bet they couldn't very well do it open]}*, and a few bookmakers would be most eom'enienu It is; not unusual to pick up a metropolitan newspaper and find all the real news on the first two pages Avith the next five pages deA'otcd to racing. At times it seems as; if the people can think of nothing else, ihey seem to be prepossessed, to have a one-track mind. However, if you look around and see the large number of baby carriages or 'prams' on the streets you begin to realise that tlie Dominion's citizens think occasionally of things other than horse, racing.

New Zealanders: are a very religious lot if you judge by their legal observance on Sunday, but only if you judge by the legal aspects of said observance. They may get hilariously pickled on Waitcmata ale Saturday aiternoon, they mav bet their shirts on the ponies, but when the Sabbath rolls around, no one is allowed to forget that it is the Lords: Day. Restaurants are closed tight, leaving only the hotel dining rooms to assuage the hunger of people without sense enough to stay at home. Not a newspaper is published. Railroads all but cease operations over the. entire Dominion. Post offices, are closed and since telegrams are sent Irom pqst. offices, the telegraph is closed too. in most places movies are blacked out. Indeed it is: Sunday with a vengeance. Nothing" must distract people from going to worship. Church bells peal, their tintinnabulation exorting the populace to enter the house, of God, and free the soul from the black light of clinkered sin. And do they go ? Well, yes just as they do in the U.S. In our land Sunday finds about 5 per cent of the population in churelk. in New Zealand 95 per ceni stay away from church. That's about, the only difference. Typical Christians, just like ourselves.

This short article has been devoted exclusively to New Zealand's shortcomings. I wanted to clear the decks by saying all the mean things I could think of at one time, firing a saivo rather than sniil'ng and taking both barrels loaded with rock salt and red pepper I shall have to admit that the good things about the country, as yet. unpaid, more than counterbalance the irritating ones. I am a loyal American who shoots off iirocracke.rs on the fourth of July to celebrate our independence from darned British Empire, but as a matter of cold fact I: am a little bit jealous of those foliks in New Zealand. [t,'s: just too bad the place w.as not owned by Spain at the time the U.S. was among the great aggressor nations of the world, for if Spain had owned the country we would have gotten it along with the Philippines. Now we don't aggress any more; we are all against it and we hate aggressors, and it'!s; too late to get New Zealand.