The Daily News WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25. COMPARISONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 26, 24 February 1909, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25. COMPARISONS.

The death of a prize bull 'hits the New Zealand farmer who owns him harder than the death "of a hundred thousand

persons in .some other part of the world, and it is fortunate for humanity that its vision is bounded by its own separate affairs. Among young peoples it is natural that affairs that are extremely trilling (viewed internationally) are of great importance to those immediately concerned. Therefore the bush I fire ttiat- destroys the property oi half-a-dozen Taranaki fanners would be looked upon as a great calamity locally. A news item of this description, if read in Europe,- would cause no sorrow, ally more than the report of a great theatre fire iu Europe would cause real sorrow in New Plymouth. If we bore the sorrows of otiier people as well as our own, life would not be worth living. But in a greater or less degree in regard to | Imperial affairs the tilings that interest i Britain should interest New Zealanders,

Eor we are inter-dependent, and nothing ippeals to human nature so strongly as those matters that may affect their lives or their pockets.

It is common enouglli for small communities such as the one lo which we belong to really believe in its own importance and its own superiority, and therefore very few New Zealanders exist who do not in their souls believe that they are a pattern, politically, mentally, and physically to the people from whence they sprang. • It is, for instance, the custom for young colonials who do Londoa the honor of living in I it to immediately begin, on their arrival, to teach tllie House of Commons how to deal with the vast perplexities of social life, to mention with dreadful reiteration the fact (frequently accepted in the colonies) that the Britisher knows nothing, and to generally teach the grandmother of the Empire to suck eggs as well as the great-grandchild. A youth went to London from New Zealand a few months ago. He is a writing youtlli. In his own opinion he is going to revolutionise the social system of Britain. J3cfore lie had been in the hub of the world a fortnight he wrote one magnificent sentence: "How slow these English arc!" You see,-it is the custom for chickens from afar to foul the parent bird's nest, and it is always forgotten by these chickens that the parent bird,: and the birds that were the parent birds I for countless generations before the chickens arrived, had struggled with the great questions that colonial chickens could answer offhand. The remarkable point about this is that even it the Englishman is conservative, he is also very kind, and is in the habit of accepting the »elf-estimate of colonial chickens with remarkably well-bred kindness. Indeed, the Britisher is a great deal more hospitable ' to the stranger than ho is to his own relatives, and in acceptance of this great ' national kindness the colonial chicken ' always at once shows what a -silly old | rooster John Bull is. Every day from ; Britain wc get some echoes of tdie great ' struggles that are in constaut progress ; in the land to which we owe everything. I The country that is the moneylender i of the worid is able to -be so because » of the quiet, persistent genius of its I people. It is a cause for sneering in t some colonies that John Bull is better I known as a moneylender than as any- \ thing else; but should John Bull cease £ to become the moneylender to his inj satiable youag friend New Zealand, no f doubt the young journalistic colonial f chickens in London would say, "How $ slow these .English are!"

[ It is not to be expected that the statesmen of Great Britain who are the i descendants of political rulers should i have such a grasp of Imperial affairs as f the colonial statesman who yesterday i ran a sock-sJiop and to-day runs a Det partanent of State. Also, it would be r impossible for the head of a great Britf ish business to know as much in sixty ■ years as a colonial could learn in a i'ort- ■ night. Consider the gigantic task Eng- ' land has to face and has always had to ; face in an endeavor —a ceaseless en- [ deavor—to ameliorate the conditions of [ the vast proportion of poor. It is cabled [ that the recent lioyal Commission which | has enquired into this great subject has l filled forty volumes witill evidence, Engi land is not only doing great work in : dealing with the unemployed, but in : dealing Willi the "unemployable,'' a : class of person the Dominion of New S Zealand has so far taken little notice f of. There are as many paupers in the ■ United Kingdom as there, are people in 1 New Zealand, . Generally the outlook of the New Zealander is entirely bounded by the limits of his own environment aud of one million of people, and when Britain does not solve the problem for fifty million people offhand, "thes<i English are so slow!" micro is among t'he British a dogged, careful persistence that has no counterpart in any nation or in any .British colony. The British worker is a better worker than any other in the world, because he is 'disciplined, controlled, and is proud of his work. The British statesman is an incomparably better man than the colonial statesman, because he is not content 'with an immediate effect and a little self-gloriiica-tion. Like the worker, he is slower and a groat d«?al surer tlluin & great many of colonials, and, generally speaking, he is a politician for the people and not for the politicians. The relative size of things is net obvious to the wander ; - injj colonial. One never hears much abrtvt the Chairman of the London Coumty Council, for instance; but the colonial is very angry if the remarks of Its wandering politicians are not chronicled. And yet (he London County Council controls a greater population than the population of Australasia with | its 'ciglht Parliaments. I The dominant feature of "these slow English" is 'their stubbornness, lteforms co,mo gradually, but, like most British 1 workmanship, they are sure and solid when they come. Parliament does not take its cue from the Amalgamated' Union of Bootlace-makers, and, unlike 1 colonial Parliaments, it takes absolutely 1 no notice of the frothy persona New 1 Zealand listens' to with such spellbound (

interest, ana wnose luimmatious are wired! all over this oountry. The naiional cirarueteristie 01 doggedn-css is not tdic sole possession of British men. It is equally shared by the women. British statesmen are doggedly opposed to the granting of the female franchise, a:id British women arc as doggedly determined to obtain it. The reason why the women must some day gain the franchise is because the movement is representative of all classes of British women. The woman who. is the wife or the sister or the daughter of generations of leaders must of necessity wield enormous influence, and she not only wields it by her ability to dominate he'r sister-women, but because she is the mother of the men, and, apart from aggressive methods, obtains (magnificent ' results merely because she is a woman. In the near future British chivalry will , recognise that it is debasing to a nation to permit fllie violent handling of many brave and brilliant women by the police, and the women's persistence will win ■the day.

Young colonial in London anight mention how easy it was to obtain the franchise. in New Zealand, and show with what facility the thing «ould ho done it New Zealand- methods were copied. They might also mention that in New Zealand tile demons'tratioa of one hun- I drcd unemployed (and unemployable) :n Auckland is a national matter and requires tJie personal attention of a Prime Minister, while the fact that Mr. Asquith does not rush every foreign showman witii a national welcome: shows howslow he is in comparison to the statesmen of New: Zealand. Then, as another evidence of slotll and pigheadedness, Britain, wliicli lias a, greater trade tlian any of the up-to-date and younger na- | tions, lias shown, liy medium of the King's Speech, that it will stick to freetrade, because, England owes her pros- ; perity to frcetrade. Now, any reporter fn London could show in half a para- ] graph that protection was the obvious "way to get along, for tlve reason that [

Ney Zealand has protection and tliat it is a, magnificent system of making everybody pay the highest prices for the worst possible goods in order to give :i : few persons the: chance of making , ' money. Then, as another evidence of ( the superiority oil the colonial intellect s over' that of the Jiritish, the. colonials' T magnificent genius for raising loans and r living on the slow Britisher's money I j should I>e mentioned, In fact, one migM '

I proceed to, show in a series of articles covering forty volumes (like the report of the Royal Commission mentioned above) that Britain as going to the (logs, ibecause she doesn't follow the advico of her young colonial friends.