The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1907 FOREIGN CRITICS AND NEW ZEALAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3753, 19 February 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1907 FOREIGN CRITICS AND NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand is not above criticism, and foreign strollers take full advantage of the facilities we give them to criticise us, mostly to our disadvantage. We don’t say this is unfair. We only say it is idiotic. A Russian or Polish journalist comes along and takes a hasty glance round : “You have some advantages maybe, but where is your art?” Always the unesthese foreigners talk qffyout. Our fault, in the eyes of most critics, is that we are so new. We haven’t any old, crusted nobility to show them. We haven’t any Shakespeares or Tolstois, Balzacs, Zolas, Bismarcks or Hooleys. There is a dearth of the fungoid growths of older countries. Wiiere are our Carnegies ? Why haven’t we produced some Rothchilds ? What have we done with our Rockfellers ? Why do not our working men read the ‘ ‘ Fortnightly Review ’ ’ instead of playing football? Why do they not tremble at the sight of the boss, and be nice, easy-mouthed animals, tractable to handle, and like the real thing where the critic comes from ? Critics in the colony are as handy as blowflies in February. One Russian pefson remarked that

he was astonished to notice that our

women didn’t draw ploughs, and that our people ate bread. A man from America comes straight to New Zealand to discuss the question as to whether the men of New Zealand are as good as the men of other places. He reckons he knows because he has been here a fortnight. A parson strikes this country and fires off a tre.nendou; lot of stale jokes about bed and other humourous subjects, and the local people applaud. Frank Bullen, novelist, trots Home again to tell the perspiring populace of Britain, who, of coarse, are wailing cn his every word, that the buildings of Auckland are not what he expected. Auckland, of course, didn’t know he was coming, or it would have imported some buildings. American journalists come here for three weeks, and return to the laud of rhc Timber Pig, and fill up pages and pages of lies that, if spoken, ought to give them sore throats for a year. All those people are treated like princes. The Tourist Department salaams to them, the Government crawls to them and places all sorts of privileges at their disposal, and most of them go away and write feeble wash that shows they are disappointed that a sixty years old country hasn't some useless pyramids, or a mad novelist, or an insane poet. Colonial vigour and materialism disappoints these flying foreigners. We, as a people; are too young yet to know how to kow-tow to the wanderers —and. the wanderers don’t like it. The foreigner who has come to examine our life always patronises us. The conductor of a wandering band condescends to all the bandsmen in New Zealand, by saying he will deign to give them points. But the wandering band charges ss, 3s and 2s before they do any musical condescension, all the same. British politicians drift over here to collect money, and claim to put their fingers on colonial political weaknesses in five minutes, after colonial politicians, reared to colonial conditions have been engaged all their lives in the business. New Zealand has had more twaddlesome advice tendered to her in the past few years than ever before, and we bear the yoke meekly, and pay the advisers fare, if necessary. And it mustn’t be thought that the colonial abroad is any less of a sky-born critic. We have our Vailes, and our Jellicoes, and our Napiers, ready and willing with their alleged knowledge of the perfect colonial life, to give points to Great Britain, America and the whole world, how to run a country or a continent. An aristocrat comes here and tells us this is not a workers’ paradise. How does he know ? He has never worked anywhere. The colonial prig goes to London and raves at" things he has never seen bsfere. What does he know about it? England does not take the advise of Napier, or Vaile, or Jellicoe any more than New Zealand takes the advice of Ramsay Macdonald, or Leffingwell, McMurran, Kharkoff, or Frank Bullen. New Zealand is far too courteous and kind to these wandering mud-slingers, and allows them to patronise and pat on the back, without retaliating. Boiled down, if we took Kharkoff’s advice, our women would pull ploughs. If we accepted Ramsay Macdonald’s.tip we would be freetraders, bacause Macdonald who was in New Zealand a month or two, says it is the right thing. If the Polish journalist, now at large in New Zealand, could insist, this country would have more poets and fewer “ cowspankers,” and in justice to the demands of the whaler Bullen, we should give over building in weatherboard, simply because Bullen thinks it is a paltry material. Always the foreigner who comes here treats the people as if they were children who had to .be guided in all their ways. On the other hand Kharkoff bushfalling would be a fine spectacle, Leffingwell milking cows would look well, Bullen bullockpunching would be amusing and the Polish gentleman with the name like a bad attack of influenza wouldn’t be so artistic diggingdrains. Why doesn't someone invade the capitals of Europe and tell them the people are Hopelessly in the rear of civilisation because they cant dig drains or fall bush ?