Understanding New Zealand - Paperback

UNDERSTANDING NEW We hold these truths to be self - evident, that oil men cere created equal . ., . . dl earth one i land, And dl our travel circumnavigation. ALLEN CURNOW The Publishers desire to express their thanks to Mr. G Hartley Grattan, author of Introducing Australia, first, for sug gesting to them that Professor Wood write this book, and secondly, for invalu able editorial advice in connection with preparing the manuscript for the press. Foreword I gratefully acknowledge the help given me by friends more especially by colleagues and past and present students both during the actual preparation of this book and during that far longer period when the views here expressed have been discussed among us. It is impossible to speak too warmly, also, of the help of strangers. Up and down the country my wife and I have met with a warmth and generosity, a quickness of response, and a genuine personal interest that have helped to make the writing of this book an adventure in friendship as well as a fascinating task. To the Government Tourist and Publicity Department, both at headquarters and at the film studio, I am grateful for unstinted help in connection with illustrations. Though the responsibility is mine, the book was planned in col laboration with my wife, who is virtually coauthor with me of Chap ters IX, X, XI, and XV, and who has helped elsewhere in drafting the expression of views which we have often hammered out together. R L. W. WOOD, Victoria University College. September, 1943. CONTENTS I. Rough Island Story 3 II. The Wanderings of the Peoples 18 III. Three Foundation Stones 30 IV. Islands of Spirit 43 V. The Providential March of Social EqvaKty 59 f VT. Government 77 VII.Farming 95 VIII. Industry 114 IX. Education 129 X. Gentle Arts 152 XI. Maori People 166 XII. New Zealand in the World 187 XIII. War 206 XIV. Home Front 220 XV. This New Zealand 237 JVof en Books 255 259 Photographic Illustrations Witt Be Found Following Page 118 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND CHAPTER ONE Rough Island Story In August, 1872, the novelist Anthony Trollope arrived in New Zealand with his mind full of stories about Maori warriors and exotic scenery, about missionaries and the cannibals who ate them. To his astonishment it seemed that he had found another Britain. Round any corner he might find a scene to remind him of some part of the British Isles if not in England, then in Scotland or Ireland. On his first night in New Zealand he stayed at a hotel that might have been in any one of a hundred English towns, and had to bar gain and bully in the same old way to get a bedroom, a bath, and some supper. So, he cheerfully complained, he had sailed right round the world and yet could not get away from England. Trollope exaggerated. The colonists had transplanted what they could of England, but the native trees and grasses remained and as for the people, he soon found that they were developing their own ideas and customs. New Zealanders, like Australians and Americans, were already different in subtle ways from Englishmen and Scots, just as they were different from one another and in the seventy years that have passed since Trollopes visit these differences have grown. Powerful forces have bound modern New Zealand to what is still sometimes called home politics, sentiment, and economic interest have sometimes made British settlers morbidly conscious of their links with the mothercountry. Yet these colonists of the nine teenth and twentieth centuries have felt the same kind of influence that acted cm their predecessors, the Polynesians who colonized New Zealand six hundred years aga The story of the Polynesians, an cestors of the modern Maoris, shows how an active and intelligent immigrant people, living in isolation, can adapt its personal