SERFDOM" IN NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1931, Page 6

SERFDOM" IN NEW ZEALAND

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln this1 time of grave national difficulty, jf not danger, it is necessary that our outlook should ibe wide and not focussed on the immediate present. We havp now ,to face up to a hew order of things and adjust our' ideas accordingly since the conditions that obtained two or three years ago this generation at any rate is not likely to see again. In grappling with our problems is there any example m history of a nation; emerging triumphant from the struggle against an even harder fate?

'On Saturday last some of us were privileged to hear an addriess, given, under the auspices of the Wii;,,by a young Dane with a command of the English language that would put many of us-to shame, and a breadth and sanity of view that were singularly refreshing. I do, not toiow details of Mr. Muller's education, except that he received part of his training at the famous "People's High School" at Askov, and part at an agricultural college m Canada, but I should gather that Ec owes most of it .to the fact that he has immersed himself, following the principles of the great Danish poet-philoeopher, in the practical affairs of life, and has seen lite steadily and—whole," not failing even to gather fruits of the mind when hoeing turnips ,„ Taranaki. In the course,of wnvl 8 Z+f' ul]eT referred to the jvoi.k of the "Danish Heath Society," and £ -nt *US<? hi s work is of- such meaning to New Zealand at this time of unemployment and is yet so little known, that I ■JS 6 to ask permission to call the attention of your readers to it Up to about 1860 Denmark had been mainly grain-growing, and had paid for her mports by the export of whe/t. When the bottom %yas knocked out of the European market by reason of the machine methods and immense fertile areas of America Denmark was left in much the same Plight as .Isew Zealand to-day. About this time, too, Denmark was robbed by Prussia ot her two most fertile and wealthy ProITrti ? chleßW]S and ) Holstein-disaster on disaster—and was left with only the peninsula of Jutland and a group of h™fr Til "V? haif °f the gfoZer and much of the latter consisting of barren ' «? d b °K and sand-dune* UndevT dXs «TI, °-T. a -?nJ P uatriot' Colonel "ajgah, ihe Danish Heath Society" was formed 'to Redeem for, the. fatherland,through works of peace on the land, the humiliating losses, of the recent war." When Dalgas died about 25 years ago no less than 2500 square miles had be«? "reclaimed and converted into forest, field, and meadow, and new industries eetablishshin f fi^n 14 *?■ 65 ciety had a member- *,? il ? 0> re<;e^ ed annual grants from tue State and from private sources amounting to £28,000, was. holding 17,000 isn c.L and supeV™«>s' the development of 180,000 acres privately owned. .'.-. .-'.. . There has been some talk of "serfdom" in connection with the camps for "unemployed men engaged on developmental work m Jjew Zealand. It is safe to say that no men in our camps will work under harder conditions of life than the Danish peasants who accomplished these Herculean tasks lor their fatherland under private enterprise and for a bare living Hut the D.inish peasant, if a servant of his country, is and was in no sense a degraded «ti *i • ? haw Desmond says. of them— -Hie high average intelligence of these

'Highlanders o£ Denmark' is surprising. The Jutland peasant will sometimes have on his table all kinds of scientific books from agricultural handbooks .to linguistic books, and possibly the English Shakespeare. His criticisms of England and of the English, as of other countries upon which he has never set eyes, are astonishing in their shrewdness."

New Zealand has 24 million acres of unimproved land out of her total of 66 million acres, and of these less than three million acres are "barren and unproductive. What immense scope there is here lor patriotic service after the-manner of the lyorkers under the guidance of the Danish Health Society;" The question is: are we in New Zealand capable of such achievements as theirs, faced with a grave national crisis?—l am, etc., ; ~ „, , JOHN H. HOWELL. 7th September;