THE TALL NEW ZEALANDERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1692, 29 March 1917, Page 1

THE TALL NEW ZEALANDERS.

THEIR LIFE AT THE FRO N'T A VERY COMPLETE LITTLE ARMY.

(By Lord Northcliffe.)

It seems a long, long while sinee the great Imperial highway, the Strand in London, began to be decorated by tall young men in khaki, with queer, bunehed-up hats with a line of red in their khaki pugareo. No one knew who they were at lirst, but they are now a familiar part of the scene —these New Zealanders, whose complexions arc as bright as the red in their hats. Their average size is more than equal to that of the average Highlanders or Australians. There must be something in the climate of New Zealand which makes things grow. The ordinary English brown trout becomes as large as a salmon after a generation or two in New Zealand rivers. A Hew Zealand stag of Scottish origin makes a home specimen look like a dwarf. The modest European watercress develops into an arboreal growth that blocks the streams. New Zealand soldiers, like Australian, have a distinct bearing and graceful walk peculiar to themselves. The New Zealand football team who visited Great Britain some years ago surprised our public by their size, but were regarded as picked men. The day I have just spent with the New Zealand Army in France is conclusive evidence of the wonderful physique of the New Zealanders, and makes one hope that after the war, when the agricultural land of England is once more tilled as it was 100 years ago, we shall approximate in size to the Antipodeans, which, except for the Highlanders and the Dalesmen, we certainly do not to-day. lam making no criticism of small soldiers in writing thus, for most Japanese soldiers are midgets by comparison with these over-sea troops. The Japanese are just as good in this new kind of warfare as they were in the comparatively antiquated met Inals in vogue in Manchuria, as the several specimens in our Army have proved. A FAMILY ARMY. The New Zealand Army is a compact and well-equipped family. It had the advantage of the later British Armies in the compulsory military (raining of its members before the war. It has another advantage that most of its Army is recruited from open-air men and not from clerks and factory hands; for even the clerks and factory hands in it are largely open-air men. A further advantage is that the military spirit was not extinct in New Zealand, as in England. The Maori War was fought within the memories of living men. The last blood shed in warfare in our fields and villages was in Stuart days — so long ago that Newbury and Sedgemoor are lost to knowledge except in books. I might even enumerate a fourth advantage of the New Zealanders. They are largely the offspring of picked adventurous souls of the best English yocman families, the thriftiest Scottish families, and the adventurous Irish who crossed the many seas in Victoria's earliest days as Queen. Woman Suffrage, as at the time of the Boer War, again proved militant in a just cause. The women voters in New Zealand, whose busy needles have never stopped since they sent forth (heir men. are as anxious to quell Prussianism as the most eager of the Allies. As a race wo are said not to be gifted with great imagination, but I doubt whether any other people would have sent so great a proportion of its manhood 13,000 miles to fight for a crusade. AT HEADQUARTERS. I found the New Zealanders amid the muddiest, floodiest scene imaginable. Streams had swollen into rivers, and rivers into lakes. It was a cold, drab, and cheerless morning when my motor car drew up at Major-General Sir Andrew Russell’s headquarters. The river which Mr Censor will not let me name, had almost swallowed up his garden, and threatened his drawingroom' office. A nail two feet up in the kitchen wall marked the measure of the last flood. Sir Andrew is from Hawke’s Bay. A typical New Zealand gentleman and sheep farmer, who, after a military education at Sandhurst, saw service in India and Burma, and retired to his flocks after a heavy experience of Indian fever. He bade a long adieu to his lambs at the outbreak of war, accompanied the New Zealand Expeditionary Force to Egypt, and then to Gallipoli, where he was a brigadier, then a divisional ' commander. He has agreeably easy [Concluded on Page 4.]