The Happiest Country.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18902, 18 January 1927, Page 6

The Happiest Country.

It was reported from Montreal on Saturday that a committee of men and women leading the campaign in Quebec for women's suffrage had been introduced to Mr Coates, who " expressed "great interest in the committee's " activities." It would perhaps not be hard to exaggerate Mr Coatcs's interest in Canada's struggle to make up her mind to the inevitable; but there must have been at least one point in Miss Idola St. Jean's speech at which he looked up with a light in his eye, the point at which she said: "We " understand that New Zealand is the "happiest country in the world." Mr Coates has had to say it so often, in the ordinary way of business here, and has listened to it so often, and read it so often, anywhere between Parengarenga Harbour and the Tapanui Mountains, that faith no doubt has sometimes shone less brightly and conviction grown stale; but how pleasant and how reviving to hear it as a wanderer abroad, and from a tongue unsuspect of formula or facile repetition! Prime Ministers are not, lightly to be accused of poetic thoughts; yet it does not much strain imagination to picture Mr Coates's lips moving to the measure of Scott's famous lines, and murmuring, as his heart within him burned, " 'This is my own, my native "'larld' that this woman is speaking "of," adding with relish a couplet from Wordsworth, A voice eo thrilling ne'er was h*&*d In springtime ftoin the cuckoo bird,

and sighing like another Rupert Brooke in Germany, Would I wers In Kaipara, in Kaiparal Those were happiest in Arcadia, we may be sure, whom business or other cause banished from it for a while; and Mr Coates is a lucky man, not because he is a Prime Minister who has run round tho world, but because he is a New Zealander who is coming home. We most of us realise in a vague sort of way that our condition is a happy one; but the secret of full understanding is hidden away in strange places, in Philadelphia, in Tierra del Fucgo, in Liverpool. To hear it said here that New Zoaland is " the happiest country "in tho world" is to hear only a platitude or a form of words; but to hear it in Quebec is to know it for the truth. And Mr Coates probably, agreed with so warm a sympathy that he did not even notice Miss St., Jean's cunning insinuation of a very doubtful reason.