THE COUNTRY'S REAL MAKERS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 49, 13 March 1937, Page 4

THE COUNTRY'S REAL MAKERS.

In an address delivered to the Hastings Rotary Club yesterday an Australian visitor did something that is badly needed in the way of reminding us of the lives of strenuous , toil and self-sacrifice that were lived by the pioneers who laid the foundations of the prosperity and relative easiness present generations enjoy. What he had to say about his own country is equally applicable to Our own, indeed it is quite likely that the hardships and privations to which New 2Sealand's early settlers submitted themselves were more marked even than those to which Australia's were subjected. In one respect, at any rate, the Australian pioneers were better placed than those of our North Island. Thdugh at odd times they may have suffered losses and been in some little danger from raids by bands of nomadic "Blacks," they never had to contend with a valiant, virile, warlike and cohesive native people such as the Maoris, fighting for their own rights. Probably there is not one in a thousand of New Zealand's present population that has any knowledge, let alone a full appreciation, of the perils in this respect to which her first settlers, with their wives and children, in.what are now our most productive districts were frequentily exposed, But iii the days of seventy or eighty years ago they were very real and by no means infrequently imminent. Apart from this special aspect, howevef, those of us who are old enough to have any memofy of them cannot but lodk back with reSpectful admiration upon the men atid Women who were the virtual makers of the pleasant country in which we live, yielding us practically all that is necessary to the comfortable living and sane wellbeing of the community, Not even those ainong our pfesent backblock settlers, hard put to it aS many no doubt are, can form any cdnception of the difficulties with which the earlier pioneers .and theif wives were confronted, day in and day out thrOughout laborious lives ^ With only what are now regarded as the most primitive of implements and tools, with no mechanical aid to speak of, they "bi'oke in" a virgin country for occupation by those who are mostly almost entirely thankless to them. The fare with which they and their families had to he content w.as without variety of any kind and such, too, as would turn up the indignant nose of the humblest of present-day workers. # As our visitor has said, their womenfolk, too, were of the ■ £eal heroie stuff, true helpmates and eomforters in all the many troubles that afflicted their men — housewives in every true sense of the word. How they came through it all and Veared their children, in most cases many of them, to lives of like usefulness would make those of to-day marvel could they only but have the conditions of those days graphically described to them. Yet how little of gratitude there is to the memories of those who thus, by the sweat of their brows, by working from daylight to dark, and after it, by self-denial, by ptLain living and with a full sense of sturdy independence and selfreliance left us the goodly heritage we now enjoy as if it were something that had evolved itself in the natural course of things. Science and invention, especially since the present centUry began, have done away with all these conditions, while godmotherly Governments — not our present one alone — are relied upon to relieve us of most of the troubles which either an unkind Fate or our own improvidence may have brought upon us. We have all come to expect that every thing we want, either in our work or in our pleasure, may he found ready made for us and easy of access, calling for little in the way of individual initiative or independent effort. More and more is the tendency in the direction of leaving other folk to regulate our lives and work out our destxnies for us. The question among thinking folk is as to whether this may work tow.ards the making of a strong and self-reliant race. Of the "raw material" our young folk provide there need be no doubt — physically and mentally it is of the best. What must be asked is whether they would not develop upon safer and saner lines if thrown a little more upon their own natur.al, inherited and acquired resources, and with some greater need to have regard for their own future.