VIEW OF NEW ZEALAND.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4978, 24 May 1926, Page 1

VIEW OF NEW ZEALAND.

THROUGH GERMAN EYES. A JOURNALIST’S IMPRESSIONS. During recent months there have appeared a number of articles on New Zealand in two or three of the most important German newspapers. For the translation of one appearing in the Berliner Tageblatt I am indebted to Mr H. E. L. Friday (says a correspondent of a South Island newspaper), who is studying, the language in Berlin. The article in question is by Herr Arnold HoMreizel, a very well-known journalist-critic, who .seems to have paid a visit recently to New Zealand. The writer fl ret o f all describes the physical features of “this desirable, country—ohe of the richest lands of promise on the earth.” New Zealanders, he maintains, have preserved the traditions, customs, and prejudices of Victorian England in a 'remarkable way. . “This is the and .»n which the wpmen practically never smoke, and have not taken to bobbed hair ; here Europe’s mode-before-the-l.ast is worn without special, grace; Sundays are. a hideous void, such as London for a long time has known no more; all the virtues are intransgressable, and the. cooking, served up with. a superabundance of mutton is honest. This provincial island democracy does not possess five stone buildings that one .could call beautiful; scarcely one permanent theatre, and so little music that the drummers an‘d bagpipers of a Scottish regiment, which came to Dunedin for the exhibition, were swarmed round as if they ha 4 been the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It is io be doubted whether a good picture or a single noteworthy poem has yet. been produced in New Zealand.

Richest, Happiest,.andi “But this people, though unkissed by any mujseT living in .sleepy wooden' townships, or in corrugated huts in the bush, this sober folk df sheepbreeders and butter-makers is nevertheless actually the relatively richest nation on earth, and certainly the happiest and healthiest. “New Zealand, unlike Australia—which is, indeed, quite another country—has been' settled from the beginning by free men, .and, indeed 1 , by astonishingly vigorous and prominent people. Nowhere in .the world’s hisitory has there been a finer spectacle, than this 'conscious and nobly-planned colonisation. The number of statesmen, noteworthy pipfieexs, ,and energetic legislators who shaped the destinies of New Zealand in the nineteenth century ijs: astonishingly above all measure. New Zealand, in 1830' still a cannibal-inhabited wilderness, had by 1853 a democratic constitution. The country, even as it is to; day, is the work of a few great men df consciously creative genius, and pf people who came here hot merely by chance, but who knew the why and wherefore of their coming.

“This country, which for the size of its population exports more: goods than any other (here, are produced •the meat, butter, and cheese on which half England lives, to say nothing of the wool), possesses to-day hardly a single citizen whose yearly income reaches £25,000 ; .a,nd there no citizen goes hungry. Private property and capitalist, economy have not been uprooted. But New Zealand Was the first English-speaking , country to frame decisive laws for the protection of the workers, to give old age pensions, And givg women th® right to vote; and .the first thorough which the establishment bt courts of arbitration has taken away the extreme bitterness. of the wage’fights even though it has not brought tha,t' bitterness to an end. The New - Zealand ’worker says with animated eyes’* that he is in this country ‘exactly as good as his boss’; here it is 'worth ;a man’s while to work.’ There are certainly social differences, but not a shade of caste spirit. It is understood that the chauffeur should eat the same lunch and at the same table as his employer, and that the wife’ of a navvy is just as, much a lady and quite as well dressed as tne wife of a laiidbwner. The New Zealand worker eats meat at, least three times a, day, and drinks tea at least ten- times. (He drinks whisky also, and not a little.) In the neighbourhood of the large harbour town of Auckland: I saw charming villa colonies, clean houses, ot at least four roomsi,. and 'incredibly beautiful gardens ; here the industrial proletariat lives, nearly every family in its own house, with b.ath, ga ( s, and electric light. ‘ Serious Stagnation.

“But it cannot be denied that this blissful condition has its shady side. The high scale of wages, the fixity of the social ordinances for the protection of the social charges have indeed not hindered the extraordinary prosperity df New Zealand, but they haye interfered with > the further development of the country. New Zealand is to-day a satisfied provincial community without fresh impulse. The country has, as it were, fallen asleep on the culture step of the Victorian age. Her railways are miserable, her townships, young as thtey afre, appear here and there to be facing into decay, the life on the land Is still .that of the ‘way-backs,’ like the life ip the Wild West, which for a long timo has been no more. (But this ‘wild west’ is almost unbelievably tame amd commonplace.)