NORTHERN LIGHTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 392, 27 December 1946, Page 7

NORTHERN LIGHTS

HANDY MEN

these notes to a weakness for men who can do things with their hands — mechanical things that are half craftsmanship and half the general competence that goes I HAVE confessed before in

with commonsense. I think New Zealand is well supplied with ¢ men of that type,

and that we owe more to them than to our legislators and teachers for the safe and smooth way in which life for most of us generally runs. I find them everywhere; on farms, I think, most of all, but in country stores and country schools, on our railways and highways, in the bush, and to a surprising extent also in the places where one would not expect to find them, barbers’ shops, hotel lounges, and even ice-cream parlours. If the light fails or the power goes off, a tyre burst or a car engine stops, there is almost invariably someone at’ hand who knows how to set things right, however remote the problem may appear to be from his ordinary work. As long as we retain such men I don’t think much can go wrong with us, but I was told by a launchman on Whangaroa Harbour that we are losing the older specialised skills. "Whangaroa boatbuilders," he said, "were once famous throughout the Pacific. Our materials were good and we took a pride in our skill. Now there is hardly one man left." "Have they died or gone away?" "Gone away. They were individualists, and could not fit into the bigger concerns that now do the building." "Where have they gone to? Where else could they retain their independence?" | "Well, some have secured land. Some have bought launches and gone fishing. Some I suppose have had to work for wages."

"In all those cases the skill has been lost?" "Yes, but it is always the same. The qualities that make a man a craftsman make him independent of control. He knows his worth, and he hates being pulled about." "But the average competence of New. Zealanders is high. I think they are among the ablest people in the world in a general way." "So do I. But craftsmen are more than competent. They are experts, and proud, and won’t be interfered with." "Is it your belief, then, that they will disappear altogether?" "Many of them will. Here they are gone already." His remarks interested me to ‘begin with because he was a quarter-or-eighth-

caste Maori and I could nct help wondering whether it was the Maori craftsman talking or the Pakeha business man. But they were a reminder, in the second place, that there is a kind of Gresham’s law operating on- labour as well as on money, and that here too the second-best can be the enemy of the best.

RAILWAY STATION

* % % | DON’T know how other people react to an hour in a railway station, but it is a depressing experience as often as it happens to me. And I don’t think

it ought to be so dreary. Tens _- of thousands of people use these places

every day, and it ought to be within our capacity to make a wait in any of them comfortable if not always amusing or exhilarating. Smoke is of course one of the problems, smoke and the dust that goes with it, and we shall have to endure those until we travel on waterpower and not on coal. But I don’t think we should have other discomforts added to the burden of inactivity. It is true that it is possible, in our two biggest stations, to have a bath and a haircut and a shave; that there are good restrooms for women; and that no one need travel very far without food and drink. But men travel as well as women; shaved men as well as unshaved; men and women with satisfied appetites as well as those who are hungry. It should not be necessary to be miserable if we don’t want to eat or drink or bath or shave or escape for an hour from the baby. If any reader thinks this comment harsh I invite him to spend an hour on Taihape station waiting for the Auckland express, two hours at Otahuhu waiting for a passenger from the suburbs, (continued on next page)

THROUGH NEW ZEALAND (continued from previous page) and as long as he'likes on the platform at Whangarei with the rain coming through the roof and splashing him from the down-pipes if he moves more than a yard in front of the open seats. I admit that it would not be easy to fortify railway stations against boredom and that it would be unreasonable to expect changes at the present time. It ,is better to accept some situations than even to try to change

them, and there are some things about railway stations that I would not change if I could. I would not change the notices on the walls, with their recurring reminders of our duties as citizens: if they could be more attractively printed sometimes, they tell some of us all we knew, and all, we ever learn, about health and diet and justice and law and defence and public administration. They tell us where to go and how to get there, and it is a pity some of us don’t read them more carefully. Nor would I have missed the lessons I have had on railway stations in social and economic democracy. I have long thought that those who are. afraid of democratising the fighting services must

have been blind to what has been going on for 50 years in the transport services, where there is perfect discipline without any class barriers at all. The stationmaster who would not eat or drink or swap yarns with a guard or a porter does not exist in New Zealand, but the trains run to time, and I never believe the man who tells me that railwaymen are uncivil to the public. They have not been uncivil to me in 50 years, and if they have sometimes cost me a little in taxation they have always kept their agreements to carry me safely home.

TREES OR HOUSES?

~~ DID not travel from Kaipara to Hokianga without getting involved in the Waipoua controversy. On the contrary, I just escaped getting involved

in a_ semi-judicial visit of inspection in which,. with my present prejudices

in favour of trees, I am sure I should have felt most uncomfortable. For it is easier to be romantic about trees than to be practical. Even when the need for them is as great as it is today, five minutes under a tree that has stood for 500 years is long enough with people like me to drive housing into the background. And that of course is the issue: to supply one generation now or enrich the lives of a hundred generations and in fact of all posterity. That is the crude issue-over-simpli-fied and over-generalised, but reduced to terms that most of us can understand. Those who favour cutting do not favout cutting the forest right out: they say only that some cutting does no harm, that scientific cutting actually does good, and that not to cut at all means

leaving dead and damaged trees standing and greatly increases fire hazards. The cutting abolitionists say that enough, and far more than enough, heads have fallen already; that we have destroyed in a hundred years what can’t be replaced in a hundred thousand years; but that we still have a chance, if we take it at once, to preserve a botanical glory that nature has not reproduced anywhere else in the world. The administrative problem is to find a reasonable course between romance and necessity, if one exists, and to be ruth--less enough if it doesn’t. But I found it both interesting and encouraging that local opinion, so far as I came in contact with it myself, was against further

cutting except for protection against fire. I do not suggest, of course, that I consulted the sawmillers. ak Po *

N the meantime am I right or wrong in thinking that no one has done justice to the beauty of the kauri bark? Artists have painted the trees and poets praised them, but I don’t remember a tribute anywhere to the beautiful pastel colours of the trunks. I am speaking now of the older trunks, which in any light are movingly beautiful, and in some lights glow, and smoke, and fade, and come again like beaten copper, if copper could ever go peach, and gold, and pink, and orange, and luminous grey, and peacock blue. 7 aa

PESSIMA CORRUPTIO OPTIMI

T was a shock when a handsome Maori in Kaikohe asked if I had come from Wan-garee. I had heard of that place often enough from people of my own

colour, but was not ready for it when it was thrown at me by a Maori. I might not have been s0 surprised if he had °

Deen a young Maori, but he was a man of 50; or if I had met him in Invercargill or Gore, but Kaikohe is almost a Maori town. It is true that everyone in Auckland talks about Oracky, that white people all over New Zealand talk about the Rangiticky, and that tourists are urged not to miss Wairacky. But now we have corrupted the Maori himself. I feel so confused that if someone invites me when I reach Dunedin to join him in a dock and dorris I shall expect to get a cup of tea. (To be continued)