Wellington to Washington

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 133, 9 January 1942, Page 4

Wellington to Washington

HE Prime Minister has told us why Mr. Nash is going to Washington. He has told us, that is to say, why Mr. Nash and not someone else is going and why he is going just now. He has suggested also, and it is a most interesting suggestion, that in addition. to reducing the distance between Washington and Wellington-his primary task-Mr. Nash may bring Washington nearer to London. In the meantime it is worth reminding ourselves that Mr. Nash can accomplish his task in the United States only if we help him here. With all his knowledge and all his skill he will fail if we fail. Just as it takes two to make a quarrel it takes two to establish a friendship on a firm foundation, and the first step therefore to the closer fellowship he is going away to establish is a clearer understanding by the people of New Zealand of the people and policy of the United States. Those who think that the United States means Hollywood are about as near to the truth as those Europeans who think that New Zealand means cabbage-trees and cannibals. Those. who think that Chicago means gangsters are as ill-informed and as ill-bal-anced as the Australians who think that New Zealand is continually. shaking and the New Zealanders who suppose that Australians go day and night in deadly fear of snakes. The real America has almost nothing to do with Hollywood, or no more to do with it than the real England has to do with Berkeley Square, or the real New Zealand with Mitre Peak or.the Pink and White Terraces. For every ‘movie star in the United States there are thousands of scholars, musicians, engineers, and men of science doing work‘ that the whole world knows about, and for every gangster there are hundreds of philanthropists and saints. It is curious that so few New Zealanders remember how much of their knowledgé is gleaned from libraries built with American money and _ staffed by American-trained librarians. The events of.the last two or three years, and especially of the last two or three weeks, have made it unlikely that there are any New Zealanders left who do not want a closer association with the United States. But if there should be some who wonder whether we need America spiritually as much as we need her materially,! it would be a useful test to re-read Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and ask why, though the words are so ee they are still so vibrant and so re