The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1914. GENTLE CRITICISM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 34, 10 February 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1914. GENTLE CRITICISM.

A visitor from America who recently wont through New Zealand severely criticises this country in a Now York .journal, which he informed it had been his misfortune to visit New Zealand last winter. He went on to say that the opportuniy had been offered him to learn something of the actual results of the Dominion's "advanced" position jiiid "progressive" methods of government, so widely advocated and talked about by platform speakers and lead-pencil theorists. He wished that those in America who were so anxious over New Zealand's socialistic theories could be obliged to live in that country for a time. He

'further stated that the net results. jas ho saw them, were to place a con; plote embargo on all progress and t< jroh the individual of all incentive to ;put forth his best efforts. All had been placed on a level, but that level was of such a low order that the result must be disastrous to the progress and well-being of the country as a whole, and the condition of the 'people was no better than prevailed elsewhere in the world fifty years 'ago. In other words, this critic of I our country claimed that New Zealand was progressing backward! Mr iE. A. (Jowran, who thus caustically ;criticises what wo have been doing land leaving undone, explains that as a tourist, with friends, he has visited nearly every country in the world, land had arrived at the conclusion thai he had never been among a people supposed to be civilised where iliving conditions were so crude, out-jof-date, and uncomfortable- generally 'for the tourist, as they found in New ■Zealand. in Fact, conditions were better in Japan ami in many other -countries usually considered as being less civilised than this Britain of the South. Touching on labor conditions, this outspoken critic says that after .twenty years of so-called Labor laws there seemed to him to be mure strikes and labor troubles generally than they knew anything about in America. It appeared that in New Zealand as soon as business became profitable and successful, (he CJovornmoni claimed it and tool< it over, and the prosperous and successful man was treated as an enemy to society in general and the sick. lame, and lazy petted and nursed: consequentlyj New Zealand was a country in which' there was "nothing doing." Much; if this is, of course, exaggerated in h

the true American style, but it cannot be denied that the people of this country are apt to take themselves and others too seriously at times, and there has been rather much vainglory in holding out ourselves as examples to the rest of the world. Just occasionally something in the nature of this American "straight-talk" will not do any harm.