"The Past Has Another Pattern"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 549, 30 December 1949, Page 6

"The Past Has Another Pattern"

Written for "The Listener" by

ALAN

MULGAN

It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequenceOr even development .... -T. S$. Eliot TRICTLY speaking, a century begins in "01" and not in "00," but mathematical accuracy cannot affect the popular significance of the ciphers. "Fifty years," stretching from any point to point, means a long time, but the figure "30° indicating a man’s age or a mid-century date, has its own penetrative force. Fifty years is hardly a tick in astronomical time, and is tiny in historical. In the life of a nation it can be short, but it can also be formative, decisive, and even fatal. Forty-seven years after the German Empire was founded, its swollen pride crashed in the dust. With another generation it had risen and crashed again. During that seventy-four years other Empires and kingdoms toppled over or underwent a profound change. Western civilisation was shaken to its foundations, and is now challenged by a new ideology. In a birth of freedom and nationalism nearly all the East has thrown off the domination of the West. The world has moved from the railway train to, the faster-than-sound aeroplane, and the atom bomb. Whatever the Universe may be doing, history has quickened its pace. New Zealand is the youngest of the English-speaking Dominions. As a British colony, Australia had some fifty years’ start of us. Dutch South Africa "dates to 1652, and French Canada is older. Talk of the youth of the United States is still common, though it is more than fifty years since Wilde wrote of it as the oldest American tradition. We are apt. to forget that the Pilgrim Fathers landed as far back as 1620. New Zealnd has had a comparatively short infancy, childhood and adolescence. Moreover, it was born, not before or early in the

industrial revolution, but in the middle of it. Railways and steamers were running before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. The development of this colonial child was forced. We were not quite sixty years old when, after sending troops to South Africa, we began to think we might be a nation. Within fifty years of that time we fought for survival in the two greatest wars of history, and with a strength and in a geographical range that our grandfathers would have thought fantastic. It was as if a youth of eighteen, looking forward with no misgivings to a conventional coming of age, had suddenly been called on to play a man’s part in a long, complicated and tragic family crisis. SUGGEST that the effect of this rapid sequence of shattering events on New Zealand life is worth study. Take, for example, our literature. American letters were cradled over a long period in a rapidly growing and buoyant society that worshipped romance and hardly questioned the validity of optimism as a philosophy of life, Our literatute has not known this long-continued, confident, large-family life. When new stimulation came to our writers after the first war, the greater world to which they looked for models, and often a market, was sophisticated, disillusioned, and bitter. If a New Zealander wrote another Huckleberry Finn, his main object would probably be to depict Huck as the pitiful victim of a _ corscienceless capitalist economy, and .the story might be drowned in a flood of propaganda. What was New Zealand like in 1900? Externally, because our soldiers were fighting in South Africa, the first to go overseas, we were beginning to come of age. Internally another important event was on the horizon, The census of 1901

showed more people in the North Island than in the South, for the first time since 1861. Greater population and wealth had given the South political power, which it was not slow to use. By 1949, the North Island had more than twice the population of the South. The shift of political power was slower. A few years after the overtaking, an Auckland Minister noted that Cabinet was accustomed to look on Southern requests more favourably than Northern. Auckland fought furiously for what it considered its rights, the South clamoured for the like, and provincial agitation continued to be a national industry. The national wealth still came mainly from sheep. In 1900 exported butter and cheese were worth a million. To the Aucklander, wealth was predominantly gold, timber and kauri gum. Only a few seem to have visualised the enormous riches that were to be won for the province through the cow within a few ‘years. Auckland was even advised to farm ostriches. The boom in North Island, and especially Auckland, lands, that was setting in, produced a crop of tares as well as (metaphorical) wheat. In the new century there was another rough pioneering period, in which hardships were not mitigated by the corporate spirit of the early special settlements. There was wild speculation in land, so that from many farms strings of mortgages hung like sausages. One result was that the slump of the ’Thirties hit the North a good deal harder than it did the more stable South. An Auckland girl summed. it up uncon‘sciously in an essay: "A farmer is a man who sells farms." JN 1900 the Queen was still alive, and Victorian conventions ruled at this side of the world. The chaperone had not been ousted. To darice with one girl

all evening was not even thought of. Women drank nothing stronger than mild claret cup, and did not smoke. Their dresses touched the ground, and save for what was ironically called evening dress, went up to the neck and even to the chin. Mixed bathing-to say nothing of brassiere brazenness-had not arrived. A discreet ankle might be shown for tennis, and that recent arrival, hockey. Lipstick, like a red dress in the street, was for those who were no better than they should be. Even when engaged, men and women usually did not go about together alone. Young people might know each other for years without using Christian names, and quite likely the man proposed to "Miss Brown." There was little eating in public places. Afternoon tea was confined mainly to "At Home" calling days. The modern tea-room was beginning to appear, but afternoon tea in offices’ must have been very rare, and even in the home "elevenses" had not been discovered. Stiff white shirts for men were retreating slowly, but . high, stiff, sharp-edged collars-irreverently described as "a white-washed fence round a lunatic asylum"--were commonly worn. Top-hats and frock coats were city wear for business heads. One

did not have to be particularly well of to keep a servant. Land agents had lists of houses to let. Much more than today, people stayed at home and made their own amusements. They gathered round the piano, and played cards or round games. There may have been a few gramophones. The moving picture was still a curiosity; Hollywood was in the future. Stage plays, however, and musical comedy and vaudeville, came frequently, and for its size New Zealand received a remarkable number of overseas entertainers of all kinds. We .were content to leave foreign affairs to Britain (save when our Pacific neighbourhood was touched) and cultural standards as well. France was still the traditional enemy. The Royal Academy was art. Architecture was in the trough of Victorian bad taste. Very few New Zealanders wrote books, and very few read them. There was little Newspaper or magazine encouragement for the local writer. The Sydney Bulletin probably did more for the young New Zealand writer than any local publication. Professional training was backward, and little or no money was spent on research. Education was soundly based, but the way of the poor to secondary school and university lay through competitive scholarships. Free places and bursaries were to come. It was an empirical age, suspicious of the theorist and the expert: "Let a practical man do it." The country was deeply in the pioneering stage, and largely peopled and directed by immigrants. The first nativeborn Prime Minister did not take office till 1925. ‘THE whole tempo of life was slower. " Wants were fewer, and life more leisurely. Horse buses rumbled on macadamised roads, often rough, and coaches rattled over loose metal or ploughed through mud. Over great stretches, country roads were bad, especially in the :

North Island, and mud was a powerful social and political factor. Settlers might be marooned, or travel no faster than in the old bullock-drays. The shortest journey between Wellington and Auckland took from twenty-four to thirty hours, and involved a night tossing in a small ship. Compared with later years, there was little travelling for pleasure; Auckland and the South Island were to each other like foreign countries. But please don’t think of this as an unhappy time. The New Zealander was probably happier in 1900 than in 1950. For one thing, he had not lost faith in progress. \ HE Great Prosperity began in the *’Nineties, and, though checked now and then, lasted until the slump of the *Thirties, Prices rose; land was opened up; farming improved; science was increasingly applied to processes; and export quality was watched. Unfortunately the money that flowed into the pocket also went to the head. Land values became absurd. The trend was not appreciably affected by political change. In 1900 the Liberal-Labour party had been in office for ten years. It had encouraged land settlement, protected the wageearner, provided old age pensions, and generally practised a mild socialism, which its opponents called Seven Devils. Richard Seddon, huge in size, powerful though crude in intellect, dominating in personality, a master of the political game, was the most forceful and picturesque Prime Minister in our history. Elections gave him big majorities, and in the sessions of 1900-1902 the disheartened Opposition worked without a leader. In 1903 William Massey took over the leadership after nine years’ apprenticeship, but in 1905 Seddon .reduced his force to sixteen. Nevertheless, seven years later Massey was Prime Minister, and stayed there for nearly thirteen consecutive years, not far short of Seddon’s record reign. If Seddon had lived as long as Gladstone, it is doubtful if he could have held the party together indefinitely. Labour, hitherto satisfied with mild progress on the English model, became more and more restive. The left wing talked of the class war, and the Federation of Labour was popularly known as the "Red Federation." The Labour Party as we know it dates from 1916. The chief galvanisers :

were newcomers, and they shared in the Labour triumph of 1935. Michael Joseph Savage himself, and five of his colleagues in the first Labour Ministry, came from England or Australia. The Waihi strike of 1912 and the general strike of 1913 were uglier in their clashes than anything New Zealand had known. Even before 1914 we had moved externally a

good way from 1900. At one time we gave £20,000 a year to the British Navy; now we presented it with a battle-cruiser. We introduced compulsory military training, and the British Government consulted us about Imperial defence. Recognition of the German menace developed swiftly, but the coming of war should not have surprised anyone. The unforeseen lay in its range and fury, and the effort required to win. As Dominion status was then (we had become a Deminion in 1907), we could not have chosen neutrality had we wished, but there was no legal obligation to go to Britain’s help. Actually, out of a population of 1,100,000 people, more than a hundred thousand soldiers went overseas, exclusive of New Zealanders serving in other units, and nearly seventeen thousand died. The presence of New Zealanders at the Dardanelles, as at Thermopylae a generation later, illustrated history’s infinite capacity for surprise. GALLIPOLI was the birth of a nation. The honour of selection for such a task, as well as the valour and the losses, gave us a new pride, which was increased as our general war record unfolded. With this came a stronger sense of equality with the Motherland. What so many New Zealanders saw of the British soldier and the British at home, modified our attitude. We were not less affectionate, but we were more critical. We had proved ourselves as good soldiers as the British; might we not rival them in other fields?

So a national spirit of independence and initiative was engendered, which grew in the difficult distracted armistice years, and shot up more quickly during the second war. We were now a recognised nation, with a seat on the League. Men and women wrote with a new outlook, and for the first time New Zealanders began to be really interested in New Zealand books. Writers were handicapped by the temper of a class which moaned too much about its disappointments when it should have been thanking God that society had saved its skin and its soul. However, a new voice was there, in letters and art, something that was, or promised to be, rooted in New Zealand. Our sense of history grew slowly. We left it to the generosity of a Governor-General and his wife to preserve the most historic building in New Zealand, and only now, at the beginning of 1950, is an official history of our part in the South African War being published. Not until our centennial year did this native sense conie to flower. We are better than our fathers and grandfathers in knowledge and appreciation of our birds and trees, and realisation that our soil is a heritage to be nursed and not mined. When the notornis was rediscovered, it was captured, photographed and released, and steps taken at once to protect it. , In this fifty years there has been a marked- advance in scientific research, professional training, and the status of the expert. In Oliver Duff’s words, "we have come to the end. of blind living." However, with the rest of the world we face the terrifying fact

that man’s scientific progress has outstripped his moral, MEANWHILE the armistice years produced a crop as diverse as the cocktail habit; freedom of dress for women, easier comradeship between the sexes; the universality of motoring, and a consequent death-toll that has been taken with extraordinary complacency; and _ the disappearance of the Liberals as a separate party,

between the incensed opposites of Reform and Labour. Thg old historic party gave of its strength to the others. Most important of all was the depression. That it came from abroad did not mitigate it. Conditions may not have been so bad as in the "Eighties, but people demanded a higher standard of living and were therefore more rebellious. There was a lesson to New Zealand that it was vulnerable, and tied to world economy. The situation was handled with little imagination, and the plight of tens of thousands did more than anything else to give Labour its sweeping victory in 1935, and enable it to enact a wide programme of social and economic legislation. We could have chosen neutrality in the second world war if we had wished, but Mr. Savage stood where Mr. Massey did in 1914. It was a greater war. Our enemies were more numerous, our responsibilities more widely spread, and our peril more mortal. The thought of the consequences of defeat was appalling. We had to mobilise our factories as well as our men, and call in an army of women. Victory left us more conscious of our nationhood and a more conspicuous figure among nations. Again our fighting men were second to none, but the world saw and recognised their qualities more clearly. In 1950 we are a far more important country than in 1900. The international status of our statesmen has grown. What they say, and how they fare in elections, are news for the world. They travel to England in days as against weeks. A New Zealand type is emerging more clearly, so that some are saying they can recognise a New Zealander anywhere, even before he speaks. We have had close and vital contact with America, and the Far East is no longer a distant mystery, but has become the Near North, a vast problem that touches our destiny. One thing has not changed at all. In 1950, as in 1900, our economic life is bound up with Britain’s. If she sinks, we sink. But though we see her with clearer, more experienced, and more independent eyes, we pray for her recovery as an affectionate daughter joined to her by innumerable common interests woven into the very stuff of our daily lives. rm