The Postman Knocks Twice

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 349, 1 March 1946, Page 5

The Postman Knocks Twice

T is not often the postman behaves as obligingly as he did last week, delivering the article on Page 7 on the same day as he brought us the article on Page 6. The two ought to be read together, not because the account of how would-be immigrants to New Zealand are besieging our High Commissioner’s Office in London should be smugly regarded‘as an antidote to the "confession" by a talented young New Zealander of the reasons why he is looking forward to leaving this country for England, but rather because both articles are, strictly speaking, parts of the same story: both are symptomatic of a world-wide condition of unrest. But Mr. Meek’s side of the story is, from its nature, the part that should concern us most. | He is not the first New Zealander to have felt the way he does, nor will he be the last; and there is of course the consolation, if we feel the need for any, that on figures the balance is all in New Zealand’s favour. In a matter like this, however, it might be unwise to see too much virtue in figures, off-setting the loss of one disgruntled radical against his replacement, as soon as circumstances permit, by all these scores of useful and worthy citizens catalogued on Page 7. For Mr. Meek is to some degree our responsibility in the present, whereas those others have still to become our responsibility in the future: it is dissatisfaction with New Zealand as he finds it now that is sending him overseas, and that fact in itself gives cause for a certain amount of national selfexamination. It would be foolishly complacent also to accept his own valuation of his principal motive; for what he calls "cowardice" might with equal justice be described as a form of "divine discontent." To say all this is not necessarily to support in any way Mr. Meek’s reasons for going: indeed, he does reach England he will very possibly find that those reasons were quite inadequate and that he is to some extent the victim of a romantic imagination, But whether one agfees with him or not, it should be readily admitted that he has made a challenging statement. To meet that challenge the figures from New Zealand House are in themselves not sufficient.