A ‘‘SMART” MAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2234, 4 July 1908, Page 1

A ‘‘SMART” MAN.

■*'v" I'l'o TIIU EuiTOH.]' Sir,—l liavb: found hdose of Epsom salts jn hot -water, early, in the morn-, iii't, ,'a good thing to-take--when one teds inclined to write to tin*.• papers in the vein which afflicts “Pro Patrol. ’’ Nevertheless, there is grmlrnl lor some of his remarks. I rather suspect that the letter was inspired by some personal object; that the writer had in his mind some individual offender. If so, it is .1 pity ho wrote. Hut, speaking generally, and as a visitor from; the Old Country (that Old Country so little understood by those born in the colonies), I have met with great disappointment in the New Zoaland way of standardising the valuo of men. In.my innocence I expected to find a new people who, learning to avoid from the outset tho evils which afflict the Old AVorld, and having before them the opportunity of starting »n fresh clean lines, would reject the humiliating worship of money, and would makemoral and intellectual worth and'abilities well usod the standard by .which a man should be weighed. I thought it was a deniperacy'>that..-T was -to see,, in which "“worth” in tho old sense, not birth or cash, would attract-man to man, hut I find more inequality and less fraternity than in Old England, and a fierce struggle going oil, having for its object the curtailing of the liberty of one class 1 ,-' the employers, by 'mother. ;flm employees; and the dollar; worship in full Swing. Speaking with some New Zealand-born fellow passengers on the voyage out, the subject of the “great”- men of our day, living or dead, cropped up one day, and'in y New Zealand frieiids said that when I got to “God’s own country” I should find “none of that nonsense” ; one man is as good as another, there are no great men, in the sense of having done groat work, or being benefactors to tho race apart from the market cash value of the work to tho man himself. A doctor is great, lie told me, ill New Zea,--laud, not in proportion as his work is original, sound, and successful in saving life and diminishing suffering, but in proportion to the extent of the! fees ilie earns. This, I was told with pride, I should find to bo tho way in, which New Zealand thinks. Mr! Editor, it can’t he true, surely? D,, toll me that “'Pro Patria” has a liver, and that a. man’s cash value* is not tho standard you go by in New Zealand. And yet, I have my fears. It is hard to he truthful or to speak one’s mind; I, have tq' suppress my name under this letter because I should get into hot water If I did not do so. That looks bad. I was so delighted with Kipling’s address to those students. It was. a breeze of healthy thought, giving men hope that in spite of never .making money, perhaps in spite of actual poverty, a man may still hope to gain the rcsnect and esteem of Ids fellow men before ho dies; and a. hope that “integrity,” that magnificent quality, may still, when all is said and done, ho the standard of the value of a man and not the monev he nny or raiiv not have made. Money can be uia,le without integrity, fur more easily than with It ; that wo all know. Tint do let us 100k 1 at the quality, u<u the cash, when we mike our estimate of a man’s value in ibis life.— I am. etc,, “HERETIC,”