CORWIN SUMS UP DOMINION

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5315, 30 January 1947, Page 5

CORWIN SUMS UP DOMINION

(Press Assn.-

bol'd experimknts racial equality is an actuality

-Rec. 9.S0 v.m.)

NEW YORK, Jan. 29. The radio author, Mr. Norman Corwin, who made a world flight under the auspiees of the Willkie Memorial and Common Council for American Unity, ha# released a report entitled "One World Revisited." In the report on his world tour, Mr. Corwin gives the following impressions of New Zealand: — "As in Czechoslovakia, we found in operation a bold experiment in social patterns. New Zealand, though permitting no small degree of private enterprise, has given the highest priority to seeurity for all its people in the way of ho'using, health, maternity, and old age . . . "The Government's housing is the best of its type I have seen anywhere in that it accomtmodates a high degree of individualism, looks to beauty and comfort, and inspires ihe pride of the community. "There are not a few in New Zealand who regard tbe Government's programme as a mixed blessing, but in the week of my stay, there were exactly 138 unemploved of a national population of 1,750,000. The Ministry of Labour explained, almost apologetically, that some of the 138 were in the regions of remo-te exemployment opportunities and others were physieally handicapped. "Among New Zealand's other distinctions is the fact that it enjoys the world's lowest infantile mortality and the highest life expectancy rates. I interviewed medical men and found most of them were against the Government's health plan for two reasons: (1) They, or their secretaries, are obliged to fill in a form for each patient, which they regard as annoying red tape. (2) Some patients come running to them with the slightest ailment. "On the other hand physicians who support the plan argued that it is a good thing that patients come running with the slightest ailment, because in this way maladies can be caught and remedied before they become serious. "They say that doctors* incomes have increased because everyhody now can afford to have medical attention and bad debts have been eliminated. As for red tape, they say that is just too bad, but the nation's j health is worth the annoyance . . . In few places throughout the world is the principle of racial equality so firmly established and hono'ured in its observance as in New Zealand. | New Zealand ^«id Australia were clean, alive and bright countijies, whose people seemed ready to take on the kind of responsibilities and contribute to the kind of thinking called for by Wendell Willkie's One World . . . "I believe the Western democracies should watch with neighbourly interest and goodwill, rather than distrust, the social experimentation of countries like Czechoslovakia and New Zealand, which are trying to reconcile extremes of Socialism and private enterprise. "If their experiments contain anything worthy of emulation by the rest of us let us take their best features, just as so niuch of the world, outside America, benefitted from our experiment with independence and democracy after 1776." '