UNKNOWN NEW ZEALAND. Why Not Advertise It?

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 124, 15 November 1902, Page 8

UNKNOWN NEW ZEALAND. Why Not Advertise It?

AFTER all, New Zealand is not known in the great, throbbing world. The Premier apparently dad not mention it at Home. Mr. . Reeves is too busy to tell the people where he comes from. New Zealand soldiers in London allowed the popular British conception of an out-of-the-way, cannibal country to remain, and the New Zealand Tourist Depai-tment does not exist. We do not advertise enough. Mr. Frank Dyer, who has just returned from Home, says so. Therefore, the statement that the colony was attracting more notice on the Continent, mi Englamd, and America, than any other British possiessaon, is a myth — a mere imaginative, "penny-a-line" taradiddle, run off in an idle moment by someone stuck for a subject. ♦ • • The Continental people evidently did not blot, out the scenery from the gaze of travelling Wellingtonians in crowding round them, and asking questions about this wondrous land, and New Zealand did not send many thousands of walking advertisements to South Africa, each worth a column in the London "Times." We have been deceived. There are no highly-coloured and startlingly-glazed pictures of New Zealand scenery on London railway platforms', there are no Manawatu railway time-tables at Marseilles, and there are no pictures of Maori bakas in the half-way house on Mont Blanc. It will have to be s- en to at once. * * • We fear the English people do not read newspapers, and so do not notice that medical and other students- from this country are frequently capturing diplomas, and ma.kii.ng the name of their country crop up in pHnt. We are sorry that the Germans' special reference to New Zealand, when the Fatherland menitionjed. the "broken reed" the Old Country was depending on, was intended for one of the Channel Islands, and that a Brazilian paper's cable, remarking that General Wellington Seddom, in command of the New Zealand troops at Johannesburg, had decided to end the war with the few men he had left, referred to another gentleman of the same name resident in the Scilly Isles.

Newspaper mem did pot rush Mr. John Holmes to be let into the secret of running a country on New Zealand lines. The Mr.- Holmes they saw was from Baffin's Bay. The John Smith, junior, and E. M. Smith, of that name, but another ilk, are both products of Jamaica. They said nothing about New Zealand. We are beginning to believe that the Contingent alleged to have gone to tlhe Coronation really only went as far as Somes Island, and so could not have surprised the British nlatives. As for the ninety-eight leading articles published in America, all dealing with New Zealand, wo are inclined to regard them with suspicion. • • • The only way to get this country pro^perly advertised is probably to prohibit the teaching of any other geography than that of New Zealand in the schools of Europe and the British [Dominions. President Roosevelt, of America, might be appixKached on the same subject, and a model of the three islands might be hung on lamp-poets in the chief cities of the earth. Then, the public of London do not get their "New -Zealand Times" for breakfast, or their New Zealand "Evening Post" for supper. Why is this thus? They pay 3d for the effete, old London "Times," which is rebailed at l|d next day, showing the people's love for stale news. A) 1 ] tjbjs must be altered. Why not advertise, New Zealand?

According to a Melbourne paper, the girls there have developed a craze far answering matrimonial advertisements "for a lark " and enclose another girl's phoffcoioraph but the game is not always a success, for a Richmond girl, who has the craze badly, did this lately, and succeeded in raising a cyclone. y ailing clerks, who combined together to insert an advertisement "for a bit of fun," met tagetiher to omen and examine the replies, when, from on leister out dropped the photograph of the prettjy sister of on© of tihe fellows, she being also engaged to another of the conspirators. A tremendous scene ensued. The girl, all unconscious of the use made of her photasraph, could not 'understand her nance's sud&en coldness, nor her brother'sl wrath. Her girl friend, hearing of the fuss, bravely came to' her rescue by confessing all.