NEW ZEALANDS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4726, 18 July 1924, Page 3

NEW ZEALANDS.

HIGHLY FLATTERING OPINION. OF AMERICAN SURGEON’S VIEWS. It is always of interest to kno.w how we appear to other eyes (says the "Otago Daily Times”). If the eyes are those of a particularly keen and competent critic, and if his judgment is kindly and favourable, the information is doubly acceptable. Dr. Franklin H. Martin, of Chicago, the managing editor of “Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics,” the official journal of the American College of Surgeons, was a recent welcome visitor to these shores, and to the June number of his journal he contributes a description of his tour. He concludes with a striking and highly-flattering reference to the people of Australia and New Zealand. Though Australia is expressly mentioned, the wording of the passage makes it clear that the reference is chiefly to our own country.

“If,” writes Dr. Martin, “a- Royal Commission had been selected 200 years ago .to discover somewhere on earth ideal lands, with an ideal climate, with ideal topography, and with a diversity of resources, it could not have made a better selection than Australia and New Zealand to provide for a high civilisation. These islands extend from the milder tropics through the temperate to the milder frigid zone of latitude. They have rich agricultural plains that will grow in abundance all sustaining foods; they have rolling hills on which to graze their cattle and their sheep ; they have marvellous mountain ranges that furnish air varieties of minerals to the world, and that reproduce the scenery of Switzerland and the beauties of our own Rockies in Canada and the United States- They have thousands of miles of seashore, rugged and beautiful, with capacious harbours for commerce and long stretches of pleasure beaches that reproduce the charm of Brighton and Atlantic City. The islands are large enougn in/area to house an empire of people and to duplicate the wealth and culture’ of the United States or England; •» and they are isolated enough to make it possible to cultivate an independence that will rid them of the undesirable and antiquated conditions and usages of the older countries.

"The people of Australia and New Zealand are our k.ind of folk. They are predominantly Anglo-Saxon, and they or their immediate forefathers had the vision or independence to select these far-off islands for a future home. They must have had in their make-up not only a spirit of independence, but as well of initiative, of ideals, of frugality, and of industry. Thfe combinatioin in any people moulds the character that will peacefully conquer the world. They are the survival of the fittest of a great civilisation. These people create just that impression upon the stranger visiting their shores—the survival of the fittest. The settlers of these faroff countries, after assuming the responsibilities of establishing their homes there, have exercised their good judgment and have insisted upon keeping their stock pure by refusing to mongrelise themselves by unwise intermixture of races. The people of these countries, because of the equable ■climate, live in the open; they develop physically and mentally in the out-of-doors; they are advocates of friendly contests and sports which engender the spirit of fairplay ; they are predominantly meat eaters, utilising the stock of their great grazing plain.. Physically and mentally the men are veritable giants ; the women are strong and self-reliant, and have great charm and culture of person. These countries, have a future of infinite possibilities which will aid in balancing the peace and prosperity of civilisation.”