“THE PACIFIC TRIANGLE”

Taranaki Daily News, 19 April 1922, Page 5

“THE PACIFIC TRIANGLE”

PRESENT AND FUTURE. AN AMERICAN’S IMPRESSIONS OF NEW ZEALAND. London, Feb. 13. In “The Pacific Triangle” (Messrs. Mills and Boon, London, 18s). Mr. Sydney Greenbie, an American writer, has attempted to bring within focus the most outstanding factors in the Pacific. His travel experience has been very thorough, and, as he remarks in his preface, he has confined himself to the task of interpreting the problems of the Pacific in the light of the episodes of everyday life. Incidents he lias allowed to speak for themselves, and he has endeavored to include in the pictures the average ideals of the various races, together with his own impressions. The volume . is not a mere globe-trotting compilation, though it is well seasoned with the author’s elaborate analysis of his own sensibilities to tropical manners and scenery. Indeed, these very reflections are jn themselves an attractive element of the book. But there is more than this. There is reflection and judgment on problems which are of immediate concern. He pleads for a better understanding between the Pacific Powers. “The relations,” he writes, “between Japan and America are involved in an infinite number of petty political regulations on each side, and nothing but a complete sweeping away of all these restrictions would ever convey the semblance of 'justice.” He regards The maintenance of China’s integrity as essential to Pacific peace, and exhorts Japan to win her friendship, with its resultant benefits, by the exercise of fair means only. As to the Western nations concerned, they must appreciate the fine points in the Oriental civilisation, while the Orient will have to remove from its conscience the hatred of the foreigner. A prolonged tour through Japan, the coastal ports of China, the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Samoa, and the other islands of the Pacific—a tour made with deliberation, and not with the speed of an impressionist —puts the author in a position to analyse and to compare, and though he may make mistakes, they are not those which spring from superficial knowledge and undue egoism, a combination on which many books of travel are based.

AS OTHERS SEE US. There are things in Mr. Greenbie’u criticism of the social relations in New Zealand and, in Australia which are worth reading, for -he went to those t countries with a fresh eye and with no predisposition in favor of the British Empire. A typical American, he finds life in the Dominion rather tame. “The life in the Dominion was conducive to ease and dreaming. Nobody seemed in any hurry about anything, least, of all about taking you in. Everybody went upon a way long worn down by the tread of familiar feet. The conflicts of pioneer aggressiveness were over. I spent one month wandering up and down Auckland’s one main street, and I can assure vou it was like no other main street in the world, except those of every other city in New Zealand, There were the carts and the cars by day, and the clearing of the pavement of every vehicle for pedestrian parades by night. And then on Sunday nights there was the confusion of cults and isms, each with its panacea for spiritual and social ills. Nobody was expected to do anybut go to church; hence the street cars didn’t run during church hours, and the bathing-places were closed. And after ten o’clock it was as impossible to get a cup of tea outside one’s own home as it is to get whisky in an open saloon in New York to-day. ALL THAT IS GOOD AND WHOLE-

Of the home life he says: “It was saber and clean and quiet, and I accepted with great satisfaction every invitation offered me, because it was a thousand timas better than being alone on the deserted streets. But the good Lord was wise when He made provision for one Sunday a week, as His human creation could hardly endure it more frequently; and that is what one might say of New Zealand home life. It is all that is good and wholesome, all that is necessary for the rearing of unobstreperous young, but red Hoot! should not be made to run like syrup, though I quite agree with my New Zealand friend that it should not be kept at the boiling point either. Our evenings were usually spent .in quiet chatting on safe generalities interspersed with home songs and nice cocoa, and at ten o’clock we would separate. Home life on a Sunday evening was not worth going all the way diagonally across the Pacific to taste.”

“EXCEPT IN JAPAN.”

He finds the wilder life of the Dominion more to his taste. “In natural beauty,” he says, “New Zealand can rival any other country of its size I have ever been to, except Japan From Auckland in the North Island to Dunedin in the South Island I journeyed on foot through three long months, zigzagging my way virtually from coast to coast, dreaming away night after night along the great Waikato River holding taut my soul in the face of the mysteries, of the hot springs districts, and quenching feverish experiences upon the shores of placid cold lake and beneath anow-covered peaks of mountain ranges, thirteen thousand feet high; gripping mv reason during long tramps in the uninhabited bush (forests) or in Desolation Gully, forty miles from nowhere I know what wild life in New Zealand is, as well as tame.

CHARMING AND CHILLING.

It is doubtful if the New Zealand townsman will recognise himself in the following description. “Though each of the big cities in the Dominion has its own special characteristics, they are all considerably alike. The three chief ones are all port cities of about 80,000 inhabitants each, and except for the fact that Dunedin in the far south is essentially Scotch and somewhat more stolid than the rest, and. Wellington in the centre is the capita] of the Dominion and threefore suspicious, one may go up and down their steep hills without any change in one’s social gears. There i's a certain sobriety throughout which makes up for lack of the luxuries of modern life. But one cannot escape the conviction that regularity is not all that man needs. ' Everything moves along at the pace of a river at low level —broad, spacious, serene, but without hidden places to explore or spariding peaks of human achievement to emukite. One paddles down the stream of New Zealand life without the prospect of thrills. One might be transported irom Auckland in the north to Wei-

lington or Dunedin in the south, during sleep, and after waking set about one’s tasks without realising that a change liod been made. . . . While the wnml evils of social life obtain the small community life makes it impossible for them to become rampant. Everyone knows every one else and that which is taboo, indulged in, must be carried out with such extreme secrecy aa to make it impossible for any blemish to appear upon the face of things. In these circumstances, one is immediately classified and accepted or rejected, according as one is or is not acceptable.”

NEW ZEALAND GIRLS. “My one great difficulty/’ he says, “was in keeping from falling in love with the New Zealand girls. Rosycheeked, sturdy, silently game and rebellious, they know what it is to be flirtatious. For them there is seldom any other way out of their loneliness. Only here and there do parents think it necessary to give their daughters any social life outride the home. In these days of the movies, New Zealand girls are breaking away from knitting and home ties. But even then few girls care to preside at representations of others’ love-affairs without the opportunity of going home and practising themselves. Hence the streets are filled with flirtatious maidens strolling four abreast, hoping for a chance to break into the couples and quartets of young men, who choose their own manly society in preference to that of expensive girls. I have seen these groups pass one another, up end down the streets, frequent the tea-houses and soda fountains, carry on their own flirtations from separate tables, pay for their own refreshments or their own theatre tickets; but real commingling of the sexes in. public life ia not pronounced. At the beaches! That is different. There the dunes and bracken are alive with couples all hours of the day or night during the holiday and summer seasons. Thence emerge engagements and hasty marriages, nor can parental watchfulness guard against it. “Throughout the length and breadth of the two islands, islands more than two-thirds the size of Japan, there isn’t an outstanding structure of any great architectural value; there isn’t a statue or a monument of artistic importance; there is hardly a painting of exceptional quality; nor, with all the remarkable beauty of nature which is New Zealand’s, is there any poetic outpouring of love of Nature that one would expect from a people heirs to some of the finest poetry in the worid.” Though there is much in these impressions of New Zealand, which reveal a great many of the idiocyncrasies of the author himself, they display a certain detachment which makes them the more valuable.