CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 2, 3 June 1913, Page 4

CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE.

It is always the point of view, of course, that counts, and the fact that Mr. Hoiman 011 returning from his English visit stated that he found the average Englishman appallingly ignorant of Australian affairs, is not to be wondered. In our own little cornel of the earth we are a people of some importance, but among the nations of the world we do not. as Huckleberry Finn said, "amount to shucks." We hoe our little row with some determination, bred of the national spirit, and with no little success, but unless tlie All Blacks are playing Wales or we are presenting the Empire with a Dreadnought, New Zeak nd, in the eyes of the average Britisher, is simply a speck upon the map where a certain amount of frozen meat comes from. In the hurly-burly of national politics we are really only a gnat, although a gnat that has done some fairly significant buzzing. But unless we are dramatically in the public eye, we caniiot expect to be borne perpetually in public remembrance. Indeed, our very dramaticness in the arena of defence and the field of sport tend to keep us out of the public eye when we are not engaged in "doing things." New Zealand has grown to be regarded at Home as the country that gave a Dreadnought to the Empire, that produced Arnst, | that taxed its. resources in men and money to help the Motherland in the South African war, and that sent a Rugby football team to the Old World that played ducks and drakes with the traditions of the game. But the average middle-class Britisher regards the country as a desolate and savage region where his countrymen are obliged to live in sod huts and carry Colt's revolvers as a protection against the attacks of the primeval Maoris. We doubt if one Sixth Standard scholar in a thousand at Home could give the name of the Prime Minister of New Zealand or name its principal cities witli any degree of accuracy. A country like New Zealand, with an area larger than that of Great Britain: but with a population a little over a million, is not regarded seriously by the continental nations, and is pigeonholed purely as a side-line in their diplolr.atic circles, and not, as we regard ourselves, as "the only pebble on the beach," It is all purely a matter of perspective, and we take our own perspective from a different' plane to our kin at Home. Of course, they could retaliate in kind, for the average New Zealandcr knows very little of the political and national progress of the Empire, and is just as apt to confound Sirs. Pankhurst with Queen Anne as liis cousin-in-blood at Home is to believe that New Zealand is a legacy left to Sir Joseph Ward by Mr. 'Seddon. We have done our best, of course, to advertise to some extent, the resources of the Dominion, but it will be years before we really come into our own. After all, we are only a little community, although an intensely loyal one, and wo cannot expect to bulk largely in the public eye until such time as we possess tlie necessary population to make us. really the Greater Britain of the South. In the meantime, we must keep our little ad-

ventitious advertisement going, and make good whenever we are called upon. We are out of 'long clothes" now, and having been properly "shortened," it must be our effort to grow up as good a child as any of the Empire, even if the Czar fails to chuck us under the chin, or the Emperor William neglects to comment on our chubby limbs and the particular dimples in Taranaki. We shall grow up in due course, probably better but possibly worse than our Australian brothers and sisters. The matter rests with our own behaviour and our own endeavour. It does not really matter what Honduras and Tibet and Port-au-Pfince think of us or know of us, so long as we are doing our best for the Mother that bore us. We shall contrive to do that in the strong conviction that in the fullness of time, our sea-kissed islands will have to be reckoned with as one of the sturdiest of the Empire's children.