1 09 067
UNDERSTANDING NEW
UNDERSTANDING
NEW ZEAJ-&NB
BY FREDERICK L. W. WOOD
COWARD-McCANN, INC., NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1944, BY FREDERICK L. W. WOOD
Aft K&htstfftweQ ?# book, or parts thereof, must
in* any form without permission.
This complete copyright edition is produced in full compliance
with the Government's regulations for conserving paper and
other essential materials*
oy
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 Trollope's 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 mother country. 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
4 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
social customs, and economic system to its new environment and at
the same time keep intact the basic principles of its culture. What
happened with the Maori has been happening with the white man too.
It is true that his Europeanism is still overpoweringly strong. The
pakeha (Maori word meaning "foreign") has lived in New Zealand
for only a fraction of the time spent by the Maori. He has, through
special factors such as trade, travel, and continuing migration, kept
doser in touch with his homelands than ever the Maori did. Finally,
he came from a similar climate, not from the tropics, so that changes
would be far less drastic. Even so, isolation and geographic condi-
tions have had their usual influence. Subtle changes can be seen in
social ideals and political habits, in methods of work, and in games
and pastimes. The pakeha, like the Maori before him, is becoming
a New Zealander.
The first Europeans to see New Zealand were the crews who
sailed with the great Dutchman, Tasman, from Batavia. On De-
cember 13, 1642, Tasman, sailing westward from Tasmania, sighted
"a large land uplifted high/' and skirted northward along its coasts.
He had a brush with the South Island Maoris, and after a lew weeks
he turned for home. He did not land on the new country or describe
it in sufficiently glowing terms to attract more explorers, but his
visit gave to the Maoris a reputation for unprovoked ferocity and
left certain names to geography; and the Dutch ultimately gave the
name New Zealand to Tasman's discovery. It was the Englishman
James Cook, however, who explored and mapped the coast line
and sketched in vivid colors its barbarous but attractive inhabitants.
The eighteenth-century spirit of scientific and commercial curiosity
brought Cook to New Zealand in 2769* He liked the country, and
his visits made it certain that before long the white man would come
to stay. When shortly af terwardr~as a result of the American Rew-
lution the British government sought a new site for a penal colony,
Sir Joseph Banks, Cook's scientist companion of the first voyage,
recommended neighboring New South Wales; and a settlement was
ddy plairted in Sydney in 1788. Thereafter New Zealand could not
long be ^^lected, for through Sydney two powerful ookxoizing
forces werfc brought to bear cm It*
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 5
The first was the spirit of commerce and adventure. With Sydney
colonized, New Zealand offered increasing opportunities to mer-
chant and speculator, to the capitalist, and to the refugee who de-
sired to disappear for a while from civilization. Its timber and flax
were valuable. Seals could be hunted on its coasts, and its ports were
useful bases for whalers. Its land, though undeveloped, was fertile,
and as a speculation might perhaps be bought on easier terms than
those allowed in Australia by vigilant governments. In the early
years of the nineteenth century, then, the white man filtered into
New Zealand. In the economic sense it became virtually a British
colony, but with such disastrous results for the Maori that the Brit-
ish government could scarcely avoid taking responsibility sooner or
later. True, in the early days intervention of this kind was not
favored by the second great colonizing force which first struck New
Zealand from Sydney : the missionaries. Samuel Marsden, for long
chief chaplain in New South Wales, had contacts with traveling
Maoris, and in 1814 he visited New Zealand tp pioneer the work of
the gospel. Marsden himself was a practical man, farmer, and magis-
trate as well as minister, and he made a great impression on the
warlike Maoris of the north. His enterprise was quickly followed up
direct from headquarters in Europe as well as from Sydney and
within a relatively few years missionaries of different denominations,
including the French Catholic, Pompallier, had made a deep impact
on Maori life* Before New Zealand became a British colony, mis-
sionaries had established themselves as advisers to some of the most
'powerful and thoughtful Maori leaders. Missionaries feared, with
good reason, that European trade, and even official colonization,
would mean extinction for the Maoris; but circumstances defeated
th$ir resistance. However, if colonization could not be avoided, they
preferred Englishmen to foreigners and government officials to
speculators; and when Governor Hobson landed in the north, mfe*
sionaries were his willing and influential helpers.
Hobson's mission was perhaps inspired to a small extent by fear
that the French might get in first, but to a much larger extent it was
due to the statesmanship of a great official, James Stephen, and to the
stimulating activity of his critics, the "systematic colonizers." Ed*
ward Gibbon Wakefield and his friends were convinced that colooi-
6 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
zation was a science which could greatly benefit mankind. The key
lay in charging a "sufficient" price for land: a price hard, no doubt,
to decide upon, but which, wisely fixed, would enable the Old World
to transfer to the New both capital and labor which, at present lying
idle, could be fruitfully yoked to exploit colonial wealth. By follow-
ing Wakefield, the argument ran, Britain could at once solve her
immediate economic problem and have the satisfaction of creating
daughter communities in her own image but purged of her defects
and problems. Capitalists (often emigrating as gentlemen settlers),
parsons, and thrifty laborers could unite to hold the flag of British
culture in new and secure worlds beyond the seas. This was a striking
concept, and it was supported both by cogent argument and by propa-
ganda of genius. The British government harkened and applied some
6f Wakefield's ideas, but, so he felt, mangled them with unworthy
compromise. Accordingly he and his band of financiers, journalists,
and politicians clamored for a virgin field in which the doctrine could
be given a fair trial. And where more appropriately than in New
Zealand, then being colonized indeed, but in the worst possible way?
Traders, missionaries, and "systematic colonizers" organized into
the New Zealand Company : the work of these three groups underlay
the colonization of New Zealand and, together with that of the Brit*
ish government and its agents, molded its growth. The exact balance
between these influences is a matter of specialized history, but certain
landmarks stand out. In its land policy (except perhaps in Auckland)
the British government was to some extent influenced by WakefieldX
ideas, and all the main settlements (Auckland again except ed)
planned by him or by men who had caught the contagion of his cuo-
nial theory. In dealing with the Maoris, however, the government
listened mainly to the missionaries and their sympathizers in Lon-
don, who included James Stephen, wise counselor to successive Brit-
ish ministers- The result of their influence was that key document in
New Zealand history, the Treaty of Waitangi, the so-called Magna
Carta of the Maori people. New Zealand was not just seized by the
British, Aided by the missionaries, the governor between February
and September, 1840, persuaded a large number of Jnflttenttal chiefs
to accept a solemn treaty by which they transferred sovereignty to
the young Queen Victoria and were guaranteed tfa* possession of
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 7
their lands, forests, and fisheries. As one Maori remarked shrewdly
enough if the treaty be taken at face value "the shadow passes to
the Queen, the substance remains with us."
There followed, however, a confused conflict between the impulse
to try a new and generous experiment in race relations and the natural
ambitions of enterprising colonists. The South Island forged steadily
ahead; for at a time when North Island colonists were held up by
fear of Maori military strength and by unsettled land claims, the
Wakefield-inspired New Zealand Company had struck a bargain with
the crown which threw open great stretches of South Island land.
Accordingly, the Scots of Dunedin and the English of Canterbury
struck their roots deep into the soil of the plains before the big gold
discoveries (1861 onward) opened up new and intoxicating possi-
bilities. Meanwhile the handful of colonists had been granted self-
government. Though few and scattered, they were deeply imbued
with the principles of the British constitution; they disliked being
governed from London; and they detested "Good Governor Grey/'
He was a European radical in theory and in practice a wily autocrat
with a keen interest in the Maori people. Against him respectable
colonists waged wordy warfare in language worthy of Puritan revo-
lutionaries criticizing Charles I, and worked themselves into parox-
ysms of fury in defense of their "rights/* including the right to 4eal
with Maori lands as they wished* On the general principle of. sell-
government they were fighting the same battle as equally indignant
settlers in other colonies: the battlefield -jvas that of British politics,
a^^e colonists had the support of Wakefieldian' theorists and of
raflfeals in general. In the 1850'$ the main battle was won, and colo-
nial sdf-government was accepted by Britain as an immediate object
of British policy. In New Zealand's case, however, there were special
difficulties. The settlers were widely scattered in inaccessible places.
There were, it was said, six colonies rather than one, and the bond
between them was not mutual affection but a common loyalty to
Britain, Moreover, these handfuls of somewhat quarrelsome colo-
nists, at least in the northern island, lived among well-armed natives
to whom the British government had made the most solemn promises.
In these circumstances it was impossible simply to set up in New
Zealand- a constitution of the stock pattern copied from that of
8 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Britain herself. She was, indeed, given a parliament of the normal
type called the General Assembly in 1852; an elected house of
representatives, a nominee legislative council, and a governor who
exercised power in the name of the queen. Moreover, at the first
meeting of the General Assembly in 1854 the demand was 'firmly
made that it should have "responsible government" : that is, that the
cabinet should be responsible to the people's representatives, This
demand was at once agreed to by the British government, and for
ninety years New Zealand has managed its own affairs. Yet this
normal pattern was varied in two important ways to meet local con-
ditions: by the establishment of a system of provincial government,
and by an attempt to keep policy toward the Maoris at least partly in
the hands of the British government
Alongside the general government of New Zealand there was set
up a series of democratically elected provincial councils- Each of the
six provinces- later increased to ten, then reduced to nine was
given a miniature single-chamber parliament ; and a province's super-
intendent, who was chief executive officer, was also chosen as a rule
by the electors, not .(like the usual British cabinet) from among the
legislators. Moreover, these councils got a flying start* They were
summoned and $et to work before the General Assembly met, and
tbey suited the existing state of New Zealand admirably. At first,
therefore, the provinces were real and did most of the day-to-day
work of cdomzing. If, however, the "colony" of New Zealand might
sometimes have seemed a shadow, it was a shadow that steadily
gathered substance. As population increased and communications im-
proved, New Zealand became more of a genuine commimity. The
provinces varied in wealth, strength, and wisdom, and there were
many things notably finance and public works^which demanded
oeutral control and a national as opposed to a provincial point of
vfew, After a period of acute controversy on the comparative merits
of centralization and local autonomy, New Zealand took the plunge,
and in I&/6 the provinces ceased to exist. Since then her government
^ oentrali^ aiid tiwte^^
New Zealand, m& the habits of thought among
, owe a great deal to the fact that as a sdf^govmiing coun-
try sha started life as a confederation of almost indepetiKkot acttfe-
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 9
ments ; and the distribution and fragmentation, of bodies for local
government is almost endless.
The second big variation from the normal pattern of colonial self-
government was that control over native policy was kept theoretically
in the hands of the British government through the agency of the
governor it appointed. The British government, after all, stood
pledged to the Treaty of Waitangi, and it was all too accustomed to
the use of imperial troops for fighting colonists' battles in other colo-
nies to wish to give colonists in this one a free hand in causing
further racial trouble. The result, unfortunately, was a confusion, a
division of authority, just as the crisis approached. By the time New
Zealand became self -governing, the suspicion had grqwfc among the
Maori people that in spite of the Treaty of Waitangi the substance
was only too surely slipping to the Queen's subjects, leaving to the
Maori only the shadow of British citizenship and political freedom.
For twenty years after the treaty they played he white man's game,
farmed, labored, and traded; and they sold land. Though the sales
were mainly legal enough, it became plain to many Maori leaders
that they were parting with an ancestral heritage in return for per-
ishable goods, and that with the land they were losing the basis of
their people's life. There were spasmodic attempts among the Maoris
to organize themselves to stop the wastage by holding on to their
land, and to give themselves a genuine national leadership. This was
the background to the King Movement of the i86o's. To a man like
Wiremu Tamihana, one of the wisest among Maori leaders, it was
an attempt to save the self-respect of the native race' and to establish
its rights before the white man's strength became overwhelming. To
the colonist, however, the whole business was plainly disloyal ; and it
aimed at locking 1 tip the land permanently in the hands of barbarians.
In this atmosphere disaster was inevitable, and it dragged its
weary leogth for nearly ten years from 1860 to 1870* It was j a
struggle between Europeans, aided by some Maori tribes, against
"Kingites"; and it was also a struggle between the colonists and
Britain. The British government felt that the colonists had departed
from the humatutarianism which had been the major motive behind
Colonization and were inviting Britain to pay for the resulting wa?.
The colonists, on the other hand, complained that the British govern
io UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
mtnt meddled sentimentally with problems it did not understand.
They denounced it for the inefficiency of its commanders, and of
troops unused to bushfighting, whose presence prevented the colonist
from settling his differences with the Maoris in his own summary
way; or alternatively for proposing to leave its kinsmen to struggle
unaided against a valiant native race at a time, moreover, when the
United States was energetically helping its settlers to deal with
equally valiant. redskins. There was, in fact, wild talk of separation
from the Empire in association with America. But by 1870 Maori
strength was broken, and the querulous mood had passed, for the
white man could face the future with buoyant hope. True, the first
glorious wealth of the gold fields had been worked out; but a wizard
financier, Julius Vogel, preached to New Zealanders a new gospel of
scientific colonization. Capital, now to be borrowed on public credit
rather than imported by gentlemen settlers, was to be the key to
progress. It would give, the necessary physical equipment to the new
country, population would readily flow in, and the opportunity would
be there for intelligent nation building. Such was the plan; and
though distorted in the application, it met the needs of the time and
helped to create a golden age for New Zealand settlers on a basis
more secure than that of alluvial gold mining. It was Vqgel, inci-
dentally, who was largely responsible for abolishing the provinces
and for the creation of two key financial institutions under state con-
trol : the Public Trustee, and the State Insurance Office,
By 1879, however, the Vogel boom had burst, a minor victim of
world depression, and for more than a decade European New Zea-
land shared something of the despair that it had inflicted on the
defeated Maoris : there seemed no end to economic depression. Yet
in the depths of the slump the foundation was laid for a brighter
future; for in 1882 the first successful shipment of frozen meat went
to London. In the iSpo's, therefore, the colony came to life again
and with definite notions of how it was going to use its renewed
prosperity. It was late in this decade that the native race began grad-
ually to recover hope, led by the Young Maori party ; and as for the
pakehas, they sketched the main outlines of a "social security state"
under the Liberal-Labor ministry which made New Zealand famous
as the world's social Iab6ratory. Its forceful chief was Richard jfdte
ROUGH ISLAND STORY in
Seddon "King Dick" who reigned for more than a decade and
who moreover had emphatic advice to give in imperial affairs. Sed-
don was linked through ex-Governor Grey and Vogel with a thread
of radicalism which had been part of New Zealand life from earliest
times, and like them he was an imperialist with big ideas for the
future of the British race in the Pacific area; but above all he was a
man with a flair for running political machinery. He appreciated the
prejudices and ambitions of the "common man/' and could both sum
them up in popular phrases for the consumption of electors and
handle the parliamentary machinery to translate them into statutes.
For a time able men worked with Seddon, especially, perhaps, Pem-
ber Reeves in the early and formative years of the ministry; and
the government was given a fine opportunity by the country's steadily
growing prosperity, which in turn was due primarily to world eco-
nomic conditions. But Seddon himself remains as a forceful sum-
mary of New Zealand colonization at its most energetic, if not at its
most cultured and f arsighted,
Seddon died in 1906 and left no real successor in his peculiar vein
of "dictatorial democracy/' Moreover the constructive work of the
Liberal-Labor government was finished. Only a purely Labor gov-
ernment could have gone further, and Labor standing alone would
have been in a tiny minority. The Labor wing did in fact split off as
an independent party, and the liberal majority lived on till 1912 as a
government that had exhausted its original mission. Then it was dis-
placed by the conservatives, now calling themselves the Reform
party, tinder the leadership of William Ferguson Massey. The sym-
bols of the new age were the farmers who marched ori the seaports
in the great strike of 1913 to load and man the ships, and who rode
the streets amid cheers and jeers as special constables. In 1912
and 1913 militant trade-unionism was resoundingly defeated by a
bourgeois-minded and farmer-led community; and fanner conserva-
tism governed New Zealand, with minor interruptions, till 1928.
Yet the dock was not put back by Massey, or by his rival, Ward,
or by their successors, Coates and Forbes. In a sense New Zealand
was obviously resting on her oars; she was content to be acclaimed
as an innovator in social experiment without striving to earn her
constructive energy. With some serious breaks in the
12 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
IQZQ'S, after World War I, she was on the whole prosperous until
the Great Depression of the 1930*3 contented with herself and with
the Empire. This was the period of the so-called mother complex,
when New Zealand was Britain's most dutiful daughter. Yet the
broad line of her evolution was not interrupted. Each economic crisis
forced farmer governments to act on the principle which they strenu-
ously repudiated : state interference in economic matters for the good
of the community as a whole a fact of great importance even
though some thought that the public good was too closely identified
with the prosperity of farmers. On the other hand, there was from
the early years of the century a strong-minded labor movement, well
entrenched in trade-unions though at first weak in parliament, which
vigorously denied that New Zealand must stay forever as Reeves and
Seddon had left it. Finally, the farmer governments of this period
relied less on the big station owner than on the small man. The
"shepherd kings" of squatting days had been killed or tamed by
economic developments or by 'the legislator. The small fanners who
succeeded them had an outlook more like that of the common man of
the towns and had benefited immensely from the policy of Seddon
or rather from the ideas of Seddon's colleagues, especially that pas-
sionately devoted land reformer, Sir John McKenzie, The depend-
ence of the conservative governments on the votes of small farmers
meant that the tide would turn if the small farmer should feel, as he
had felt near the turn of the century, that his interest, like that of the
small townsman, would best be served by a radical government.
This happened, to some extent at least, in 1935 aJM * was one of the
reasons for the election of New Zealand's first Labor government
in that yean But behind that lay World War I and the fluctuations
that followed it, culminating in the social devastation of the Great
Depression, The war was a deep experience in New Zealand life. The
flower of her manhood served overseas, and for her as for Australia
the word Anzac is a symbol f or maturing nationhood* Yet it was a
war fought at a distance, and despite all the intense personal strain
on individuals it was for the community a muffled rather than ait
acute experience* Its impact was to a large extent economic and
taught lessons that were m everyone's mind hi 1939; *W* it may be
argued that it was less important in recent political derelopmeBt than
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 13
was the slump of 1929-1935. The depression struck New Zealand
with especial force through the collapse in the prices of her exports
while at the same time her debt payments were fixed and the prices
of her imports fell scarcely at all. Between 1929 and 1932, for in-
stance, the value of exports fell from 54 millions to 35 millions,
in spite of a big increase in volume; and between the same years, it
is estimated, the national income fell from 150 millions to 90 mil-
lions. The loss was in the first instance the farmer's, but the fall of
the fanner was that of the community as a whole ; and the economic
blizzard showed the contradiction which underlay New Zealand's
conservative government. Its instinct, like that of most contemporary
governments, was to economize, retrench, but somehow keep men
and institutions alive till better times came. Such a" policy, strictly
carried out, woftld be logical only if one believed that good times
would in fact return reasonably soon through the uncontrolled
play of "natural" economic laws : through private enterprise, stimu-
lated by changing prices and paying the penalty of failure in bank-
ruptcy and unemployment. No New Zealand government, whatever
its professed theories, has ever acted in practice as if this thinking
were sound, *nd the coalition government of Messrs. Forbes and
Coates (1931) soon found itself, again in company with the world's
governments as a whole, trying desperately to save the situation by
state leadership. In this vigorous counterattack against depression
the main leader was Gordon Coates, who strove with a mind open
to new ideas and with apparently inexhaustible energy to save New
Zealand society from a real collapse. In the days of crisis he got
little thanks. The stalwarts of his own party disliked both his energy
and the sweeping measures by which the government tried to re-
adjust New Zealand economy to changed conditions. They thought
he went much too far in jettisoning the wisdom of the past; but his
opponents thought he stopped far short of humanity and reason.
New Zealand's recovery plan, though in many ways well and cour-
ageously contracted, pleased neither of the two main parties in the
state.
There was in fact a fundamental difference of approach to the
strategy of social security as between the National patty (the suc-
cessor of Reform and of the old Liberal remnant alike) and Labor.
JC4 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
To the former, and especially to many of the farmers and merchants
who backed it, the formula of New Zealand's economy was simple.
She lived by exchanging farm produce for overseas manufactures,
and her standard of life depended on the value of her exports. If the
overseas price of wool, meat, and dairy produce fell, then she must
reduce her spending in proportion. She was inescapably tied to over-
seas markets and must cut her coat according to her cloth. To Labor,
however, this conclusion was an unworthy surrender of reasonable
aspirations. On the one hand, a good deal could be done to free New
Zealand from overseas fluctuations, and in particular to rescue the
small farmer from the utter collapse of the depression years;
the remedy here lay in guaranteed prices and orderly marketing. On
the other hand, much more could be done with New Zealand's own
resources. The remedy for depression was not government economy
but wise government spending both in wages and social services and
in capital equipment. By such means justice would be done, and the
people's increasing spending power would start the wheels of in-
dustry and commerce moving again. Thus, working independently
and in different circumstances, Labor leaders reached formulae not
unlike the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt; and they produced an
attractive case in 1935 to an electorate which remembered bitterly
the sufferings of 1932 and characteristically blamed the government
of the day* There were, it seemed, solid economic arguments for
doing something that was both easy and pleasant, and, as recovery
gathered pace, increasingly possible namely the spending of money.
Like their predecessors, the Liberal-Labor government of 1891, New
Zealand's first Labor government in 1936 found the country psy-
chologically prepared and the economic situation, for the time being,
favorable.
The official objective of the New Zealand Labor party, "sociali-
zation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange," was
described frequently enough in terms taken from European tinkers;
but in practice its governing tradition is native to New Zealand. No
one who had seen or listened to Michael Joseph Savage, the first
Labor prime minister, could think of him and his government in
terms of class wan He spoke kindly to the people, tailing the com-
mon man that there was no reason why in this, young and well-en-
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 15
dowed land he should not have that security and modest sufficiency
which had been sought for so many generations. This could be
achieved, moreover, without injury to those who had more than the
minimum. There was to be a leveling up o the poorer folks, not a
pulling down of the comparatively well-to-do, provided only that
these did not abuse their position. Meanwhile, houses would be built
for wage earners. Education, which had been cut to the bone in the
depression, would spring into renewed life, and social services of all
kinds would be improved. Where existing private enterprise was
doing a socially useful job, it could continue in the meantime; but
where, as in the dairy industry, it was plainly in difficulties, the state
would come to the rescue. Where, as in the sphere of finance, it
seemed that private enterprise could not adequately serve the public
interest, the state must seize strategic positions, as by taking complete
control over the newly created Reserve Bank. Above all, there was
"nothing to fear." But in all that was said defining the new govern-
ment's policy there was scarcely a word on socialist theory. The
motives of action were clear and practical. Most ministers were too
busy dealing with cases needing governmental first aid to worry about
the philosophy of it all. They were conscious of doing a good job
and realized that in their hands the control of the state over the com-
munity was growing steadily ; and to many, friend and foe alike, this
would in the fullness of time add up to socialism. But the govern-
ment's left-wing critics complained that it was merely "running
capitalism better than the capitalists."
Labor in office, then, pushed with buoyant energy along the lines
of New Zealand's existing tradition. When it asserted strongly that
power and responsibility must rest squarely with the people's elected
representatives, there was already a formidable array of institutions
ready to hand, and it was more often a matter of taking a still firmer
grip on an existing organization than of creating something new.
This was the case, for instance, with the Reserve Bank, the broad-
casting system, and the State Advance Office, which was one of the
state's most important institutions for lending money to citizens^
Again, pensions >yere raised and the number of people eligible f of,
them was increased, especially by adding an invalid pension to the
jbfa q&d in 1938 the whde system was codified in the Social Security
I 4 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
To the former, and especially to many of the farmers and merchants
who backed it, the formula of New Zealand's economy was simple.
She lived by exchanging farm produce for overseas manufactures,
and her standard of life depended on the value of her exports. If the
overseas price of wool, meat, and dairy produce fell, then she must
reduce her spending in proportion. She was inescapably tied to over-
seas markets and must cut her coat according to her cloth. To Labor,
however, this conclusion was an unworthy surrender of reasonable
aspirations. On the one hand, a good deal could be done to free New
Zealand from overseas fluctuations, and in particular to rescue the
small farmer from the utter collapse of the depression years;
the remedy here lay in guaranteed prices and orderly marketing. On
the other hand, much more could be done with New Zealand's own
resources. The remedy for depression was not government economy
but wise government spending both in wages and social services and
in capital equipment. By such means justice would be done, and the
people's increasing spending power would start the wheels of in-
dustry and commerce moving again. Thus, working independently
tod in different circumstances, Labor leaders reached formulae not
tinlike the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt; and they produced an
attractive case in 1935 to an electorate which remembered bitterly
the sufferings of 1932 and characteristically blamed the government
of the day* There were, it seemed, solid economic arguments for
doing something that was both easy and pleasant, and, as recovery
gathered pace, increasingly possible namdy the spending of money.
Like their predecessors, the Liberal-Labor government of 1891, New
Zealand's first Labor government in 1936 found the country psy-
chologically prepared and the economic situation, for the time being,
favorable.
The official objective of the New Zealand Labor party, "sociali-
zation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange/' was
described frequently enough in terms taken from European thinkers;
but in practice its governing tradition is native to New Zealand* No
one who had seen or listened to Michael Joseph Savage, the first
Labor prime minister, could think of him and his government in
terms of class wan He spoke kindly to the people, telling the com-
mon man that there was no reason why in this, young and well-en-
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 15
dowed land he should not have that security and modest sufficiency
which had been sought for so many generations. This could be
achieved, moreover, without injury to those who had more than the
minimum. There was to be a leveling up of the poorer folks, not a
pulling down of the comparatively well-to-do, provided only that
these did not abuse their position. Meanwhile, houses would be built
for wage earners. Education, which had been cut to the bone in the
depression, would spring into renewed life, and social services of all
kinds would be improved. Where existing private enterprise was
doing a socially useful job, it could continue in the meantime; but
where, as in the dairy industry, it was plainly in difficulties, the state
would come to the rescue. Where, as in the sphere of finance, it
seemed that private enterprise could not adequately serve the public
interest, the state must seize strategic positions, as by taking complete
control over the newly created Reserve Bank. Above all, there was
"nothing to fear," But in all that was said defining the new govern-
ment's policy there was scarcely a word on socialist theory. The
motives of action were clear and practical. Most ministers were too
busy dealing with cases needing governmental first aid to worry about
the philosophy of it all. They were conscious of doing a good job
and realized that in their hands the control of the state over the com-
munity was growing steadily; and to many, friend and foe alike, this
would in the fullness of time add up to socialism. But the govern-
ment's left-wing critics complained that it was merely "running
capitalism better than the capitalists."
Labor in office, then, pushed with buoyant energy along the lines
of New Zealand's existing tradition. When it asserted strongly that
power ajid responsibility must rest squarely with the people's elected
representatives, there was already a formidable array of institutions
ready to hand, and it was more often a matter of taking a still firmer
grip on an existing organization than of creating something new.
This was the case, for instance, with the Reserve Bank, the broad-
casting system, and the State Advance Office, which was one of the
state's most important institutions for lending money to citifc&is.
Again, pensions lyere raised and the number of people eligible f$r,
them was increased, especially by adding an invalid pension t& .lf$
list, and in 1938 the whole system was codified in the Social Security
16 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Act, on which the government was content to stand or fall. This act
made pensions slightly more generous. It continued and made per-
manent the unemployment relief system which had been hurriedly
improvised during the depression, and added a benefit for those
temporarily kept from work by sickness. And it ventured onto new
ground in promising a nation-wide scheme for free medical atten-
tion : a promise largely though not yet fully redeemed. Even in war-
time the government continued its social policy, which, in the phrase
of Mr. Nash (minister of finance, and also New Zealand's first
minister to Washington), still aimed in 1943 at "laying the founda-
tion of a productive and distributive system in which all who serve
with hand and brain may so serve without the fear of poverty, un-
employment, or the menace of uncared-for ill health." Yet it .might
be said that this aim, now clearly enunciated and diligently pursued,
had been one of the main threads in New Zealand evolution for the
best part of a century. Once again, when the Labor government
turned out to have ideas of its own on foreign policy, this was indeed
a breach with the attitude of amiable submissiveness to England
which many had rather unjustly thought to be New Zealand's es-
sential characteristic; but it was a return to an equally genuine and
still older New Zealand tradition. These radicals of the 1930'$ some-
times frankly disagreed with British policy, and sometimes spoke as
if New Zealand were a Pacific country as well as an offshoot of
Europe; so, in their own day had Seddon, Vogel, and Grey & loose
chain of spiritual independence reaching back into the 1840*8. Yet
these men, like Savage, Fraser, and Nash all of whom acted as
prime minister at different times between 1935 and 1943 showed
dearly tha* one may speak one's mind (and be in a minority) with-
out disloyalty to the British Commonwealth.
There is, and long will be, bitter debate over what happened to
New Zealand's social and economic system tinder her first Labor
government and whether changes (or lade of them) were due to
legislation, or to economic "laws," or to the broad trends of world
affairs. It is the same problem that faces those who study the soda!
laboratory in thi previous period of maximum activity tinder the
Liberal-Labor goverament of the 1890^8, but with the added compli-
cation of World War II, On the necessity of fighting Hiftarfsta, Mar
ROUGH ISLAND STORY 17
Zealanders were virtually unanimous, and even on the technical
methods of doing this there was a higher measure of agreement than
on any other big current issue. At this point, however, peacetime con-
troversies shade into the problems of war. Some of the most power-
ful arguments of those who challenge the ideas of social security and
a planned economy are practical ones. Can a country create the ma*
chinery to run such a state? Can it do without the crude motives of
fear and ambition as incentives to effort? Can the human brain really
hold together the complex threads of a modern community? Some
of these questions need no answer in wartime, but an efficient war
effort depends on the triumphant solution of the' remainder. Time
marches on and in war he moves fast and mysteriously. For the
present, answers to fundamental questions about New Zealand must
be sought on the battlefields of Greece, Crete, and Africa; in the
islands of the Pacific; in farms and factories, and the flow of goods
toward those who need them; and in the quality and stamina 6f the
home front.
CHAPTER TWO
The Wanderings of the Peoples
\j J JL
The islands of New Zealand are the remnants of a vast continent,
christened by geologists Gondwaiialand, most of which disappeared
beneath the sea millions of years ago. Since man has roamed the
earth there have been twelve hundred miles of stormy ocean between
New Zealand and the nearest land mass, Australia* Nor do the
Pacific Islands form a handy bridge or break the force of wind and
current. Norfolk Island and the Kermadecs He upwards of six hun-
dred miles away, and they are mere specks on the ocean. Beyond
them it is upwards of a thousand miles from the coasts of New Zea-
land to those of the Fiji or the Society Islands: and a total of five
thousand miles or more to the mainland of America, Asia, or Africa.
Those who come to New Zealand from the main centers of human
life must be prepared for thousands of miles of travel and must be
willing to navigate % f or at least twelve hundred miles without sight
of land and find a small country set in a vast ocean.
These thousands of miles of open sea govern New Zealand's life
and history. They give her a climate vastly different from that of
similar countries in much the same latitude in the northern hemi-
sphere: Japan, for example, the British Isles and Italy, or the Atlantic
coast of North America. They kept out the human race for centuries
after civilizations had risen ^nd decayed in Asia, America! and
Europe; free from predatory man, great wingless birds and p-his-
toric reptiles lived on into modern times. Even after the arrival of
man, barriers of distance sifted would-be immigrants by demanding
from each individual, generation after generation, the determination
and the physical equipment for a long and perilonsi voyage. Fi-
nally, those who did penetrate to New Zealand found thexnselves in
18
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 19
a pleasant and promising country from which return was difficult
for everyone and impossible for most. Promptly, and often quite
unconsciously, they adapted themselves to New Zealand conditions
and worked out new ways of living and thinking. Isolation gradually
broke down contacts even with their closest kinsmen and cut them
off from tlje stimulus of contact with other peoples and cultures. The
inevitable result was the development of a colonial community with
a character of its own a character founded upon that of the parent
country, yet subtly different.
This process happened with each of the two great migrations
which have peopled New Zealand. It can be seen actually happening
in the European community of the last fifty or a hundred years, but
the reaction of intelligent and active men to a different climate and
an isolated life is shown even more clearly in the history of the
Maoris, New Zealand's native race. Their ancestors found the way
to New Zealand and colonized it systematically at a time when no
European sailor would willingly lose sight of land; and for four
centuries they lived without contacts with the outside world. The
ocean gave to the Maori that complete isolation which the Japanese
warrior caste tried to preserve for their people at the point of the
sword during part of this same period.
The Maoris colonized New Zealand at the tail end of one of those
human tidal waves which from time to time alter the face of the
world. About the beginning of the Christian Era "barbarian" tribes
moved westward across Asia and Europe to shatter the Roman Em-
pire ; and in the same period the Eoljrnesian people moved eastward
to make their home in .the islands of theTFacific. Of these two great
movements the migration of Teutons, Magyars, and Turks has been
remembered in world literature and history. They came among civi-
lized peoples who observed, feared, and described the human torrent
which poured in from the east to revolutionize their world. Out of
the reaction between the invaders and the culture of Romans, Greeks,
and Jews there grew up that Western civilization which seemed
destined to engulf the world. In studying the roots of their own cul-
ture, Western students had ample records, an exciting tale to tell,
and a calm conviction that their own progress was the key to the
story of mankind as a whole. Polynesians, on the contrary, in spite
20 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
of a well-developed culture neither knew the art of writing nor fell
among others more literate. Their numbers were small. They lived
at the ends of the earth. When tested in later years by the Western
criterion of material achievement and organized physical force, they
were branded a backward people. Yet in the light of modern scholar-
ship and of modern human values the ocean migrations of the
Pacific are by no means unworthy to rank with the Volkerwanderung
of ancient and medieval Europe.
The world's six continents were peopled by those who walked or
rode from the homelands of primeval man, with cautious coasting
voyages to bridge an awkward gap. Polynesia, or Many Islands,
depended on enterprise of another sort. For centuries the Polynesian
race pressed eastward across the open sea: to them the sunrise was
the symbol of vitality and the aspirations of youth. Without knowl-
edge of metals or their uses they built great ocean-going canoes,
mostly from sixty to eighty feet long, though some were much
larger. There is still a sacred relic in New Zealand which confirms
the scientists's estimate. The Tainui canoe, one of the great fleet that
colonized the country six centuries ago, was hauled up on land and
quietly decayed. Nothing grew on the sacred soil to which it
crumbled, but stones marked its bow and stern, and they are seventy
feet apart. Such canoes would use outriggers, but on long voyages
would often be lashed in pairs with a platform between them, and a
double canoe could carry upwards of sixty warriors or colonists,
with provisions for a long sea voyage. Breadfruit, sweet potato, and
pandanus fruit, properly treated, would last for long periods, and so
would some kinds of dried fish. Livestock could lie carried, and
cooked, with sharks caught from the canoe, on fireplaces built upon
sand Water was carried in gourds or collected from the tropical
rains. If the voyage aimed at colonization, there would also be seeds
and live roots of ktimara (sweet potato) and taro on board, and if
possible fowls, dogs, and perhaps rats.
The building of canoes was work for master craftsmen and was
guided by careful religious ritual Their navigation, too, depended
on a combination of shrewd observation with tactful handling of the
phantom world. Polynesian seamen lacked even the most
instruments, but they studied stars, winds, and ocean currents. They
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 21
ead the signs of the weather and had been taught how to win and
:o keep the favor of Tane, "great god of the artisans."' It was a
natter of skill and foresight, not of chance; and when by the united
efforts of a tribe all necessary precautions had been taken, both ritual
and material, the canoes could sail with that cheerful confidence and
determination that have marked all Polynesian enterprise. The people
were led by their chieftains and guided by experts, but every major
act was that of the community as a whole. Earnest debate preceded
that wholehearted co-operation which was the only means of over-
coming the handicap of stone-age resources ; and the leaders were
strong only when they knew that they could rely on the moral sup-
port of their people as well as on the approval of the gods.
When Captain Cook's men rowed ashore in 1769, the Maoris
thought the white men were goblins ; they sat with their backs to the
way they were going, and must have eyes in the back of their heads.
The Polynesian sailor looked ahead, not back to the lands he had
left "Polynesian paddlers," writes Te Rangi Hiroa (Dr. Peter
Buck), "faced forward toward impending waves and ever-receding
horizons, and they gazed open-eyed upon titie ocean vistas that un-
rolled before them." Voyages of curiosity and hope carried this ad-
venturous people in the course of centuries from Indo-Malaya to
the legendary cultural headquarters of Hawaiki (perhaps the modern
Society Islands) and thence to the innumerable islands of the Pacific.
According to tradition, explorers sailed south into the antarctic and
as far cast as the American mainland, bringing thence the kumara
as an invaluable source of food. Behind the explorers pressed the
colonists; and centuries before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, most
of the habitable islands in the central Pacific had been visited -and
colonized.
The first human visitor to New Zealand may have been the great
navigator Kupe, somewhere about the year 950. He had to guide
him the flight of migrating birds and the legend of Hui-te-Rangiora,
who two hundred years before had sailed south to the land of ice-
bergs. Kupe left sailing directions for finding the land known to the
Maoris as Aotearoa, the "Long White Cloud" : from Rarotonga "let
the worse be to the right hand of the setting sun, moon, or Venus,
m the month of February." After another two hundred years (lye
22 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
are still in the realm of legend) Toi, a chief of Tahiti, followed those
directions in a voyage of search for his grandson and became the
first recorded colonist. Nameless men had preceded him, perhaps
Polynesians like himself, perhaps descendants of an unhappy boat-
load of Melanesians, storm-driven from the New Hebrides and for-
ever hankering after their warmer climate. The followers of Toi
married, ruled, or exterminated these Morioris ("inferior people"),
as they called them, and according to tradition drove some of them
to emigrate in their turn to the Chatham Islands. In this haven,
so runs the legend, the Morioris continued to slaughter each other,
after the fashion of the mainland, until a statesman arose who saw
the futility of warfare. Should there be a dispute, he said, let the men
concerned fight it out with eight-foot poles (like the followers of
Robin Hood with their quarterstaves) ; and when blood was drawn,
honor was thereby satisfied. Thus the Morioris lived in peace for
centuries, till in 1835 a band of Maori warriors arrived in a ship
forcibly hired from the white man. War and disease then did their
work, and the last full-blooded Moriori died in 1933*
Meanwhile the men of Toi sent back canoes to Hawaiki, and so
spread knowledge of Aotearoa. Two centuries passed, and then war
and the fear of hunger drove the Polynesians to make systematic use
of this large and promising island where pioneers already flourished.
According to -tradition there was one main expedition which left
Tahiti about the yesir 1330, and its details are remembered by
modern Maoris as clearly as New Englanders remember the May-
flower, though probably a good deal more accurately. These colonists
were all of the same race, but each great canoe brought a separate
community; and this has been the basis of Maori life up to the pres-
ent time. "Though coming from approximately the same area,"
writes Te Rangi Hiroa (Dr. Peter Buck), "it is probable that the
canoes brought little differences with them f torn their homeland
islands. These they maintained in the new land. I have always felt,
since my Polynesian wanderings, that New Zealand was composed
of a number of islands of spirit, though connected by land/' To
some extent the same is true of the Europeans in a later age. They,
too, are apt to live on "islands of spirit/' bound together by cotntncm
memories and partially cut off from kindred inhabitants of neighbor-
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 23
ing "islands." Yet there have been few peoples more governed by
their own history than the Maoris have been. Such was Polynesian
tradition, and it was given free play in the complete isolation that
descended upon them in their new home. Up to the time of the gr.eat
migration Maori sailors had not only voyaged southward, helped by
wind and current, but upon occasion had fought their way north-
ward again. Thereafter, however, there seemed to be a sound balance
between food and population in Polynesia. Problems of war and
food supply no longer spurred men of enterprise to seek a fuller life
in distant countries. The wave of Polynesian migration had spent its
force, and in the central Pacific as a whole men turned their splendid
energies into other channels than those of ocean travel. The special
forces which had temporarily dragged New Zealand into world his-
tory suddenly ceased to operate, natural isolation reasserted itself,
and the Maori immigrants were left to work out a way of life suited
to their new environment. According to the famous story, one chief-
tain made his landfall about Christmas time when the great pohu-
tukawa trees were covered with scarlet blossoms. At the sight of
them he cast overboard his coronet of red feathers: "The chiefly
color of Hawaiki is cast aside for the chiefly red of the new land thai:
welcomes us/* The did life was cast aside for new and challenging
tasks.
The Maori had come from a tropical climate where there was not
much inclination or necessity for sustained and systematic work. In
New Zealand, on the contrary, there was a sharpness in the air, even
in the north, and more pressing physical needs which could only be
satisfied by hard and careful industry. In the islands it was enough
to clothe one's self in rudimentary garments of tapa doth made from
the bark of the paper mulberry tree. In New Zealand that tree grew
poorly, and in any case tapa garments would appear inadequate foe
a New Zealand winter. Since there were no animals whose fur could
clothe the people, the Maoris turned to the native flax plant. The
women learned how the leaves could be soaked, scraped,.and pounded,
and the fibers finally woven into stout material. This was a highly
skilled process, for the garments had to be woven to the shape re-
qttired, not cut out and sewn together. But the Maoris made cloaks
both warm*a&d watertight, arid decorated them with pat-
24 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND'
terns of dyed flax worked into them in the making. Like clothing,
shelter, too, had to be more solidly constructed. The rectangular
houses' wliich had been open to all the tropical winds were given sides
of earth or strong thatch, and closed in completely except for a low
door and an equally low window or opening, both at the northern
or sunny end. The result was stuffy but at least warm, a refuge when
it was impossible to sleep in the open. The most serious problem,
however, was that of food.
The fleet had brought food plants and animals, the remote descend-
ants of those shipped by their ancestors from IndoMalaya. But
the pig and the chicken apparently never reached New Zealand. The
dog flourished only in sufficient numbers to be eaten by a select aris-
tocracy, and the rat had tp be elaborately snared. Worse still, the
taro and the kumara were tropical plants and in New Zealand would
at best produce only one crop in the year. Even a modest harvest
depended on elaborately purchased divine favor, aidefd by much back-
breaking labor* In the uplands and in the south the imported plants
would -not grow at all, and the main local substitute was the root of
the bracken fern, which had to be dug and dried or roasted, and
thoroughly pounded before becoming edible. To supplement vege-
tables there were, for those who could catch and preserve them, fish
and birds in almost unlimited quantities; and the Maori became one
of the world's most skillful and persistent fishermen and hunters of
birds. Yet the margin remained small even when all things possible
had been done by the co-operation of the whole tribe* The nightmare
of starvation, or at least of hunger, was a constant spur toward in-
dustry and foresight, and turned the cheery Polynesian into a skilled
and provident and self-disciplined worker. The people had responded
to a challenge. Sometimes they thought nostalgically of the dd easy
life; the proverb still runs "I will hie me back to Hawaiki, where
food is produced in profusion without the touch of human hand"
But in practice chief and commoner alike took as their social ideal a
sturdy reponse to difficulties. The most perfect man was strong,
skillful, and persistent, and was loyal and self-sacrificing in carrying
out the commorftasjk.
The same qpaaKties were encouraged by the n&<^ Q^$titi^
and pastime: war. The Maori peoples during tbw, four hundred
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 25
years of isolation did not draw together. On the contrary, thiere was
keen rivalry between well-organized tribes, each of which traced its
descent bade to one or other of the canoes which colonized New Zea-
land. This was the basis of that skill in oratory, diplomacy, and state-
^craf t in general which has so impressed all those who have known the
Maori; but its supreme expression was in warfare. The ferocity and
cannibalism of the primitive Maori is, of course, grossly exaggerated
because of the complete failure of the early Europeans to understand
"Maori customs, together with the impressive speed with which enter-
prising Maoris learned European methods of destroying human life.
The striking thing about pre-European Maori warfare was its social
importance and its elaborate code of honor a code as minute as,
and more honorable than, that which governed dueling among the
European aristocracy. Rival tribes kept a balance sheet with each
other, and each strove, season by season, to increasq its score of vic-
tories over defeats. Individuals, too, remembered past wars vividly,
especially if an ancestor had suffered "that final and unanswerable
insult" of being eaten by a triumphant enemy and having his bones
made into fishhooks or flutes.
"By women and land are men lost." So ran the Maori saying, and
it was vindicated in centuries of tribal warfare. But in fact it w$s
never difficult to find occasions for war when both sides were willkig:
The summer's campaigns would be planned well in advance, bt&iBQ
one dreamed of starting them before the crops had been planted in
spring, or of fighting on when the time had come for harvesting or
for the fishing or bird snaring which had to be! done in the right sea-
son. The food supply could be neglected only at the cost of a general
disaster, and it would scarcely occur to a Maori warrior to overcome
his foe by capturing his food supply or water or weapons or by (
starting a campaign with treacherous surprise. Victories worth win-
ning were those which came to the most skillful fighter, the ablest
strategist, and the most cunning military engineer.
In the great summer game of warfare physical fitness and social
discipline were the twin essentials ; individual heroism was useless
unless applied to the common purpose. From the first, therefore, the
boy sad girl were trained as part of a wider unit. This unit was in
the first instance the household. To this day, it is said, the Poly-
26 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
nesian finds it almost impossible to understand the European family
system, where there is only husband, wife, and their children: a
group which does not share food, buildings, household goods, or
children with others, and which does not encourage even close re-
lations to stay indefinitely. This system he feels to be selfish and
individualistic. The Maori household would normally be a fluctuating
group of three or four generations, all bound together by blood re-
lationship or adoption, and all sharing goods and labor in common.
Beyond the family came the subtribe and then the tribe, which was
the largest unit Tribal discipline and leadership was strong, yet in
a subtle and important sense democratic. Certain families were born
chiefs, or rangatira; but the mana (prestige or power) of the in-
. dividual depended also on whether or not he had those qualities of
wisdom, courage, and physical skill on which the success of the tribe
depended. The great chief in war and the most honored counselor
in peace was not necessarily the leading aristocrat
The Maori looked for and found leadership from rangatira and
tobtmga (priest), yet decisions were those of the tribe as a whole*
Every adult was trained in the tribal tradition and knew the tribal
boundaries and the genealogy which underlay so many problems;
and though the chief would give a lead, it was the tribal gathering
which solemnly and eloquently debated the issues. In particular, the
land, the forest, the hunting and fishing grounds on which the food
supply of the people depended, was the property of the tribe as a
whole. In a sense it was vested in the chief as the head of the tribe,
te any question concerning it could properly be decided only after
foil tribd discussion. It was only when a vital decision had been
jnade after full consideration, according to the right forms that the
tribe was fully committed, Then the warriors cotild go forth know-
ing that they f ooght not only with their own strength but with the
aaoral force of their whole people, which wa$ an inspinitioti and a
challenge to their most supreme efforts.
Such was the way of life of the Maoris hi their age-long isolation.
They were not the perfect men unsullied by Western civilization
that some past or present sentimentalists would have them* There
was about them no more nor less of the noble savage than there is
about the men of any native society with a highly developed ctdtare.
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 27
Some of their customs shocked the Western mind. Cannibalism had
its justification as a subtle form of revenge through insult, and is
now sometimes the subject of humor to Maori and pakeha alike.
"Tell me," a pakeha visitor once said to a Maori at the end of a long
and boring catechism, "Were the Maoris really cannibals?" "You
can be thankful you are not living a century ago," the Maori is re-
ported to have answered; "then I would not have put up with what
I have this afternoon, You would be in the pot, my friend." Yet it
remained cannibalism all the sam'e.
The most barbarous customs, however, like ordinary rules of liv-
ing, were surrounded by rigid laws of tapu, and infringement
brought its own punishment through superstitious fear of the con-
sequences. No organized police force was necessary where sorcerers
could kill or maim by the use of black magic alone. Fear of evil
spirits, and propitiation of the good spirits that controlled fertility,
battle, and navigation, as well as the routine of daily life, made up
an elaborate system of religious belief that needed no more than a
modest and unobtrusive shrine for worship. The most strenuous and
long-planned communal work of the Maoris went into the building,
not of churches, as in Europe, but of meeting house and food store;
the rites and ceremonies into the practical activities of sowing and
reaping, canoe building and warfare. The life of the Maori was con-
trolled from birth to death by a religious belief and ritual which was
knit up into a highly complex system; into a view of life that had
dignity and ethical value. Its special guardians were of course the
tohtingas (the word means literally "experts") who had passed
through the tribal whare-wajianga, or sacred house of learning.
These colleges were staffed by priests who for four or five months
of each year drilled young men of chiefly status in the religion and
history of the people and in the arts of sorcery; the course lasted
up to five years and was dosed by a final test before graduation. All
that went on in the whare-wananga was strictly tapu, a close secret
from the common man, who knew the rules of daily living and felt
the effects of enchantment without knowledge of its deadly tech-
niques.
Around ritual and ceremony evolved poetry and art. The Maoris
had few musical instruments and no sense of tune in the Western
28 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
sense. Their chants ranged over an intricate field of fractional tones
(halves and quarters), the whole within the compass of three Euro-
pean tones. They are, nevertheless, an intensely musical people, and
what they lacked in melody and harmony they made up in rhythm
and bodily movement in dance and chanting. The Maoris evolved no
written language, but elaborate and poetic sagas were committed to
memory and passed from generati'on to generation to the whole com-
munity. Chant, saga, game, and dance may be forgotten in their
pure original form ; butthe Maoris decorated with carving and color
almost everything that they used. Some of the old carving on ridge
pole and canoe prow still remains to testify in elaborate scrolls and
intricate detail, in rhythm and harmony of design, to the perfect
judgment of eye and hand and to the rich development in artistic
conception. Old portraits of Maori chiefs show similar designs in
tattoo, a triumph of artist's skill and patient's endurance.
In spite of brilliant adaptations, however, Maori culture remained
in some ways very primitive. The Maoris never learned how to
model and fire the abundant clay. Instead of pots they used wicker
baskets, wooden bowls, and skins. They cooked their yams and
kumaras, fish and game in ovens in the ground, on stones placed over
fire and buried under earth and leaves. Nor did the Maoris know
the use of metals. They were still in their stone age* Those imple-
ments which were not made of stone were of bone* The abundant
totara wood was admirable material for working with such tods-
But some charms, many weapons, and a few tools were made of
greenstone, one of the hardest of known substances. It was greatly
prized by the Maoris, for it was only found in one part of New Zea-
land, on the west coast of the South Island, and it must be worked
with endless patience and skill A finely shaped and polished mere
(club) with carved handle was one of the most cherished possessions
of a chief, and usually it was buried with him. To receive such a
present was one of the greatest honors a pakeha could have.
The Maori, then, learned only the simplest uses of fine, but. he
was a master of manipulative skill in using most of the materials
that came to hand, and m building and construction along the simple
fines that he knew* The best-equipped European artificer could not
have improved on the workmanship of the Maori fortified 1*91 pa
THE WANDERINGS OF THE PEOPLES 29
(village), or of the war canoe or the elaborately decorated meeting
house.
A vital culture cannot entirely die while the race that evolved it
still lives on. The Maoris adapted their Polynesian heritage to suit
New Zealand, as only a strong and vigorous people could do. And
when the white men came, that strength and vigor enabled the Maori
to play an important part in the initial building of a new "civilized"
country. Something of the old Maori culture still survives in spite
of the wars and disasters of the last century. To some extent it still
governs the outlook of the Maori people and is therefore a key to
one of the most important and interesting problems of the present
time: the relations between the two races. To understand modern
New Zealand one must not only know the background of the Euro-
pean, that is, in the first instance the history and literature of Britain
and of the English-speaking peoples all over the world. One must
know something of Hawaiki and the navigators of the fleet ; of the
primitive tribe and its organizations. The fact is that New Zealand
is a country with a twofold tradition. The Maori has learned the
English language, lives in a European economic system, and shares
the European cultural tradition. So, too, the European has learned
from the Maori. This is a young country, from the point of view of
European settlement, and apart from the semilegendary figure of
the pioneer it lacks tradition. In important ways, therefore, the while
man has tended to associate himself with the native background. He
uses Maori words and is proud to be taught Maori music, games, and
ceremonies. In subtle ways he feels that the historic achievements of
Maori seamen and warriors are part of the common inheritance of
this country, once the home of the Maori alone, but now shared be-
tween Maori and pakeha. This feeling, one might add, is .not the
least strong among those pakehas with little knowledge of the Maori
people.
CHAPTER THREE
Three Foundation Stones
Modern New Zealand is built upon grass. She has many manu-
facturing industries, small but often efficient. A surprisingly large
number of the world's useful minerals are found in her soil, even if
only in small quantities. But sheep and cows that eat the grass, and
pigs that live on the cows, are the instruments by which she makes
her great contribution to world economy- The fact is that New Zea-
land's shape, size, climate, and soil, together with modern equipment
and the skill of her inhabitants, make her one of the world's most
efficient producers of butter and cheese and of some kinds of meat
and wool
New Zealand's climate, on which her wealth depends, is controlled
by the ocean and by her backbone of mountains* From the ocean
she gets an island climate, windy and equable. All through the
country the difference between summer and winter is small when
judged by continental standards* Moreover, a peculiar set of ocean
currents off the coast keeps conditions surprisingly uniform through-*
out the country. In the extreme north it is of course vastly hotter
than in the extreme south ; but the difference is much smaller than
would be Expected by one who knew the contrast between Quebec
and Charleston, for example, or between Portland and Los Angeles.
The result is that grass makes some growth throughout the year,
and the winter is not too hard on the grazing animals*
From the ocean, too, New Zealand gets her generous and reliable
rainfall; but it is the mountains that distribute the rain in ways use-
ful to fanners. New Zealand lies in the region of prevailing westerly
winds, which are particularly boisterous in the South Island the
region of the roaring forties, Down the west coast of that island
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 31
there is a chain of mountains often rising straight from the sea.
Their peak is Aorangi, the Cloud Piercer, which white, men call
Mount Cook, from whose slopes glaciers run down almost to the
ocean. Inland among towering mountains He snow fields and lakes,
a southern Switzerland; and at the southern aid of the mountain
chain are the South- West Sounds cut into high walls of rock, more
impressive, think some travelers, than the Norwegian fjords. On
this mountain chain the westerly winds discharge their moisture in
torrential rains, producing luxuriant forests of tropical density.
Then the winds rattle on over plateau and plain comparatively dry.
The result in Central Otago is a climate as dose to continental sever-
ity as New Zealand can manage, but for the island as a whole the
upshot is moderate rain and plenty of sunshine; ideal conditions for
sheep and men, and in some places for wheat or oats. Right down
the rich agricultural eastern coast, then, one looks westward to the
Southern Alps, which tower over the Canterbury plains as the Alps
tower over the peaceful farmlands of Lombardy.
Ocean and mountain also govern the climate of the North Island,
though with a difference. Here the westerlies compete with the winds
arising from the high-pressure belt in the subtropics, while the moun-
tains are neither so continuous nor so neatly placed in the path of
the rain-bearing winds. Mount Egmont, or Taranafci, the Fujiyama
of New Zealand, stands in solitary splendor on the extreme west,
but the main mountain mass lies in the center of the island. To the
north of it, found Tauranga, are the comparatively warm slopes fac-
ing the Bay of Plenty, where fruit, even oranges and lemons, may
be grown with profit. On the west coast, where the rainfall is rela-
tively heavy, the cow flourishes. Round Taranaki, for example, there
are countless small dairy farms, green and prosperous beneath the
perfect snow-capped cone of Mount Egmpnt. It is country of good
rains, luxuriant grass, and gently undulating land where cows may
eat without labor. On the east coast, however, the rainfall is com-
paratively light; and where it is heavy, the water runs quickly off
steep slopes on which sheep may flourish but cows exhaust them-
selves in fruitless climbing. There are places where dairies may
thrive, but this is sheep country par excellence. Much of New Zea-
land's wool is grown on one-man smallish farms, by the labor of the
32 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
owner-manager and his family with outside help for shearing. In
the Hawke's Bay district, however, brown hills run down to the sea
and even the winter sun is warm, and here is the natural home of
the large runholder. For many years its full use was barred by the
threat of Maori wars, and during this time the graziers to the south
especially in Canterbury got a flying start. They followed briskly
in the footsteps of the great Australian squatters, often with Austra-
lian leadership and capital ; in due course, however, the Hawke's Bay
settlers made a vigorous reinforcement to the economic aristocracy
of the South Pacific, against whom the democracy of laborers and
miners fought a long and inconclusive battle.
Ocean and mountain, then, have given moisture to the soil. They
have so distributed it that in one part or another of the country it
falls in the quantities and seasons which suit most of the grasses
and crops which the white man wished to grow* Moreover, they
determine that New Zealand gets an abnormal amount of sunshine.
As compared with other islands having reliable rainfall Britain, for
instance there is relatively little cloud. In New Zealand it is apt to
be definitely wet or definitely dry. The result is that even in the
wetter parts of New Zealand there are long enough intervals between
showers, and enough regular sunshine, to dry the ground and avoid
the agricultural waste of extensive peat bogs. Peat is not unknown*
however, and many bogs have been successfully drained and turned
into first-rate agricultural land, and there are still many small
swamps up and down the country. These are the home of the New
Zealand flax, Phormium tenax, which was essential to the Maori
and which is still the basis of New Zealand's oldest industry. In
general, however^ sunshine and steeply sloping ground mean that
water does not He on New Zealand soil but runs off, sometimes in
destructive floods, or dries up in time to keep the soil sweet and pro-
ductive,, New Zealand's great mountain backbone, which is said to
cover one-sixth of the country's surface, is not a mere economic
waste. It is one of the principal reasons why New Zealand is a
healthy and pleasant country and a great producer of foodstuffs and
raw materials.
Another main reason is the nature of the soiL This naturally
varies enormously up and down the country, but New Zealand as a
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 33
whole was admirably prepared to grow the white man's crops. For
centuries vegetation flourished untouched by man. Until about a
hundred years 'ago there were no animals in New Zealand that lived
on the produce of the soil, nor was the balance of natural life really
altered by the Maori. He sometimes tried to improve the growth of
edible fern by burning off, and he grew the kumara in suitable places
till the soil was exhausted, when he moved on. But these operations
did not touch the grand natural cycle: vegetation grew, died, and
decayed, thus returning to the soil the essential plant foods for new
growth. For countless ages the raw material for agriculture was con-
stantly being fed into the soil of New Zealand, and practically noth-
ing was being taken out a process which has been sharply reversed,
with disastrous consequences, in the last hundred years. When the
white man came to New Zealand, this vast reserve was lying ready
to hand beneath the forests of the North Island and in the broad
open plains of the South. No wonder the first settlers grew lyrical
about the prospects of their new country. "If you have the manliness
and energy to despise a life of Idleness," wrote Mathew, New Zea-
land's first surveyor-general, "and the resolution to labor, however
hard, for those you love go to New Zealand, where Nature is gen-
erous, luxuriant and fertile beyond your warmest conceptions
where she will reward you tenfold for all the labor you bestow on
her* . . . But go as a tiller of the soil go with a resolution to work
hard for the most fatal error into which you can fall is to suppose
that ease and indolence in a new country will command success
they do so nowhere. * . . But in New Zealand success will surely at-
tend honest Industry, and the humblest individual may go thither,
secure that with a spade, a good pair of arms and a determination
to work he can never want the necessaries of life."
In the eyes of Mathew, New Zealand's climate and soil were ideal
for the agriculturalist, and the future of the country would lie in the
hands of sturdy laborers armed with spades and with a determina-
tion to use them with energy. This was the view of almost everyone
who spared a thought for New Zealand in those days. Some were
sentimentalists, who compared the miseries of the Industrial Revolu-
tion with the legendary happiness of Merry England, and hoped
that the small independent farmer who had fallen a victim in Eng-
34 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
land to the march of economic progress would come to his own
again in the New World. Some were missionaries, who had learned
in New Zealand the same bitter lesson as the Maojris, that those who
do not produce their own food will starve; and who hoped to steer
the energies of their half-converted cannibal congregation into agri-
cultural work. Some, again, were economists and political theorists
of the Wakefield school. They hoped that a cunningly devised system
of land sales would build up and maintain in New Zealand a neat
cross section of British society, complete in everything but slums
and unemployment : at the top would be British gentry and church-
men with leisure to be cultured, thanks to the work of agricultural
laborers who would be contented because they had security and rea-
sonable prospects. Thus would Europe's surplus labor and capital
become fruitfully united in the colonies. From England there was no
mistaking the economic destiny of New Zealand.
But the theorists were wrong, and their plans were overridden by
the geography of the country, by the Maoris, and by the sternly
'practical men merchants, adventurers, and opportunists from
Sydney and from the east coast of the United States. These men
had got in first and found in New Zealand some admirable stations
for the hunting of seals and whales ; and small whaling settlements
often made excellent bridgeheads for European traders. The Maori
market was a promising one for cloth, strong drink, iron tools, and
above all for muskets, powder, and shot. In return the Maori could
supply flax, timber, and curios, including dried human heads, which
were for a few years eagerly demanded by European traders. More-
over these goods were soon supplemented by foodstuffs. The Maori,
who had long struggled to grow kumara in an unfriendly climate
and to snare the elusive rat and bird, welcomed the white man's pigs,
potatoes, and corn with enthusiasm. He could appreciate useful crops
when he saw them, and he had the industry and discipline to be a
successful farmer. Pork, potatoes, and (later) corn were therefore
added to the goods sold to the white man, and when New Zealand
became a European colony there was little encouragement for the
settler to demonstrate his energy with the spade. The Maori did it
for him, perhaps not quite as efficiently, but well enough, cheerfully,
and for low wages. Further, the Maori farmer grew the food, carted
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 35
it to market, bought a mill and ground the grain, bought small trad-
ing ships and sailed them round the coast to Auckland harbor.
In short, the Maori people were fitted by their own struggle for
life in New Zealand to do a good deal of what the theorists had
expected would be the tasks of white laborers. But they did more.
These were no servile lower class. They were a proud and independ-
ent people, very conscious that New Zealand was their country and
that they had concluded a treaty with the Queen of England. The
Maoris worked for the white man because they wanted to, and they
kept in their hands a guarantee of fair treatment military power.
It thus turned out that the foundation of the new country of New
Zealand was not the industrious British farmer conquering the wil-
derness, spade in hand. Rather it was a race of extremely intelligent
warrior-farmers, who habitually overstepped the bounds of the lower
classes by the independence of their bearing and by the large scale of
the enterprises which they sometimes organized. Thus in the first
years of English colonization, from about 1835 to 1860, Maori
farmers, especially in the North Island, enormously helped the natu-
ral tendency of the white man to earn his living in other ways than
by digging. Theorists in the mother country never quite realized how
long it took before even the most competent and energetic pioneer
could feed himself off his own land; and in New Zealand the primi-
tive white settler was beaten hands down as an agriculturalist by the
Maori. Therefore there was a strong tendency for the European to
let the native do the farming, make the roads, and build the houses,
while he specialized in commerce, management, and grazing. It was
not long before enterprising men found as they had found some
years before in New South Wales that animals turned in to the
bush survived. Even in the wooded regions of the North Island there
was enough grass and edible leaves (some few of them poisonous, it
was true) to support cattle. On the slopes of the mountains there
was poorish country which was in any case not much ttse for agricul-
ture, but which might support a useful number of sheep. Even
though many white men dug and made a success of it, the young
colony of New Zealand quite soon in life found a bias toward graz-
ing, at least as a white man's occupation. The native tended to share
in this particular industry mainly as a shepherd to keep the flocks
36 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
from running wild, or as the owner from whom the grazier hired
his pastures at a nominal rental. Stock generally had to be imported
from Australia a big venture for a native tribe.
New Zealand, then, stubbornly refused to develop according to
plan. Instead of being carved up into a number of small intensive
farms worked by industrious small farmers it became a country .of
open pasture where land and more land was all the cry; and if this
was the general tendency in the North Island, it was even more true
of the South. Here the Maori population was not strong enough to
cause the trouble or give the help that it did in the North (though,
even so, much of the hard labor was done by Maori workers). And
here again the grassy plains cried aloud to enterprising men who had
seen the way money was made in Australia that they should bring
sheep and cattle to the new settlements of Canterbury and Otago.
Scarcely had the new communities been formed than their leaders
noted with disappointment how far men had fallen short of the pre-
conceived ideal. The hope had been that the gentry of Christchurch,
for example, would live a civilized life in town and only occasionally
visit the country farms from which their wealth was drawn. Almost
from the first, however, the gentry disappeared to country stations,
there to enjoy an active, well-fed, hard-drinking and hard-riding life
while the wool grew on the sheep's back. Alternatively, leaving the
sheep runs to enterprising Australians, they turned to absorb the
comparatively numerous white-collar jobs of a flourishing provincial
capital and became a bourgeoisie divorced from the soil, though han-
dling its produce.
The quiet persistence with which the sheep turned native tussock
grass into highly marketable wool gave New Zealand a sharp twist
away from the blueprints prepared in England. The squatter, with
all his merits, was a very different person from the squire who, with
his ally the parson, Wakefield had hoped would dominate this new
antipodean England. And while the first sheep were feeling their
way across the pastures of the South Island, the rule of the squatters
was in its turn violently challenged by a force still more out of tune
with the preconception of the empire builders. This time the instru-
ment was gold and the tempestuous passions which it aroused. Cali-
fornia led the way in 1848, and in quick succession there were major
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 37
gold discoveries in Australia (1851) and New Zealand (1861). For
a time the life of the English-speaking world was violently distorted,
and the main lines of development in the colonial communities were
overwhelmed by an irrestible human torrent. The waters quickly sub-
sided, to reveal that the old communities were by no means de-
stroyed. Nature resumed its persistent sway after the orgy of wild
and fevered speculation. Yet the gold seekers and the hardheaded
men who had done business with them had wrought a profound
transformation in Australia, in New Zealand, and on the Pacific
coast of the United States, and had given these three English-
speaking communities' a new and important link.
The first effect of the American gold rushes for New Zealand was
a welcome stimulus. California in 1850 was an island only to be
reached by sea from Panama, or round Cape Horn, or by land across
long and difficult trails* The company of emigrants, with their prairie
schooners had to be organized almost as carefully as for a sea voy-
age. Compared to a shipload of emigrants bound from London to
New Zealand, they suffered from the same diseases, worked far
harder, and took longer to reach their goal. Yet they came by the
eager ten thousand, cutting themselves off from the farming districts
of their own country. New Zealanders co-operated enthusiastically in
the work of feeding them, and before long New Zealand food, in-
cluding butter and cheese, was selling at high prices on the San
Francisco market. Hitherto this country's traditional friendship with
the United States had centered mainly in the New England ports, the
headquarters of the flourishing whale fisheries off New Zealand
coasts. The gold rushes gave a link with the American west coast
which has remained strong to the present time.
Then the torrent of gold seekers churned up in turn the gold-
bearing districts of New South Wales, Victoria, and both islands of
New Zealand, Behind them came merchant and banker, coachman
and lawyer and journalist to sell their services to such reckless
spenders ; and behind them again the fanners worked for a secure
market and fat prices. These were the halcyon days when doctor and
merchant, mechanic and laborer jostled each other in pursuit of an
illusory, quick-won fortune. As in California and Australia, the age
of the prospector passed away, except for occasional rich finds, and
38 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
there came times when biting depression sent desperate .men to
scratch for fragments in deserted fields. In the main, gold mining
lost its romance and became an ordinary capitalist enterprise depend-
ing on expensive machinery ; as such it remained a useful industry
in New Zealand though not outstandingly important. In its new
form, however, it could only employ a fraction of those eager multi-
tudes who had occupied the fields. Of them the lucky few invested
their wealth in something more -durable than the gambling excite-
ment of alluvial mining or in strong drink. The unlucky many
drifted out into the community, taking with them an energetic inde-
pendence, now sharpened by disillusionment, which made them take
unkindly to the rule of the big landowners.
When gold was merely the pipe dream of the unlucky, New Zea-
land had known the division between the rich and poor, and there
seemed a chance that this land of promise would become a caricature
of England's aristocratic society : vast wealth locked up in the sheep
runs held by the chosen few, who would rule a community of poor
laborers and peasant farmers. In some cases the gold rushes made
matters worse, for prosperity made some rich men richer still and
therefore better able to defend their privileges. But the miners and
those who followed in their wake soon formed the great bulk of the
population: in 1851 the country's European population was 26,707,
and in 1864, 171,009. These newcomers were not content to see the
land locked forever in the tightfisted grip of the grazier. Among
them there were naturally men and women tinged by the radical ideas
which were fermenting in Europe in the middle of last century. The
fundamental thing, however, was not social the6ry but the common-
sense impatience of the ordinary man, who had not transported him-
self round the world in order to live under an aristocracy as tenacious
-as, and much less tactful than, that which he had left behind. On the
contrary he expected the state to serve his interests rather than those
of any select "ruling class/' In England the government had been
the defender of property rights, the irresistible force that had
crushed the poor man's feeble protest against economic slavery and
the idealist's plea for democracy. In New Zealand the government
was to be the instrument by which men could conquer nature and
remedy the injustices of huma,n society.
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 39
This point of view had flavored New Zealand society from the
first, and has been championed up to the present time by thousands
of men who have never seen a gold field. It was the gold-rush period,
however, which gave it irrepressible vitality and thu$ made it one of
the dominant facts in modern New Zealand. In this, young New
Zealand diverged notably from the path trodden two centuries earlier
by her American cousins. North America, like New Zealand, was
colonized by respectable Englishmen who wished to live in the New
World the same kind of life which they had learned in the Old. In
America, as in New Zealand, their plans were modified by the needs
of a pioneering community and by the development of new industries
like cotton and wool. But in America the frontier remained open as
an age-long guarantee that men of enterprise could carve their way
to fortune. The doctrine of rugged individualism flourished in the
soil and was sanctified by the Calvinistic view of money-making,
which was part of the mental apparatus imported from Europe. In
New Zealand, on the contrary, the frontier was -closed by mountains
and rivers, by Maori warriors, or by the firm hold of the grazier on
undeveloped lands. Some could surmount such obstacles by their own
efforts, but the majority instinctively looked to the state to carve
communications across forbidding country, to purchase Maori land
and subdue Maori protests, and to blast the land monopolist off his
holding. Democracy in the Old World often meant essentially that
the individual must be left in peace, and in America that he must be
left to forge ahead. In New Zealand it meant the mobilization of
society's whole resources to give the masses their will.
When the gold was worked out and a collapsing boom threatened
merchant, farmer, and laborer with a common ruin, it was a gold-
rush immigrant who met the needs of the time. It was natural that
the state should come to the rescue, and Julius Vogel drew together
the threads of the people's wishes and hopes and gave practical effect
to suggestions made by his predecessors in New Zealand politics. In
1870 he placed before parliament a well-thought-out scheme for New
Zealand's first large-scale New Deal. Its mainspring was to be a
vigorous public works policy, to be financed with borrowed money,
which would at once relieve the destitute and give the country the
economic equipment for growing prosperity, and for a greatly in-
40 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
creased population. The scheme was viewed skeptically by the pun-
dits, but it fired the public imagination and was carried triumphantly
into practice, with Vogel's safeguards removed. At remarkable speed
and at high cost New Zealand was given roads, railways, and
wharves. Population streamed in, the community hummed with ener-
getic life, and New Zealand became a curiosity to be inspected with
interest by economists and politicians.
When Julius Vogel fought depression in 1870 both his aims and
his methods were very modern, and the busy, ambitious, material-
minded colony which followed him had ideas about standards of
living and permanent prosperity worthy of twentieth-century op-
timism. But the foundations on which these hopes were built were
desperately shaky. Wool was New Zealand's only important product
(though with the aid of American machinery farmers were growing
a useful surplus of grain), and it was not enough. Round about 1879
falling overseas prices brought New Zealand prosperity crashing to
the ground, and thousands fled from the country which had deceived
them. Those who remained to endure an interminable depression
and they were the vast majority faced the future with a new bitter
determination somehow to get from life the security which they had
come to New Zealand to find. They could do little, however, to re-
build opportunity for the community as a whole, beyond keeping
alive the basic farming industries and picking up what wages they
could in sweated workshops. For the rest they must wait; but tJefore
many years their chance came again with an invention more impor-
tant than the discovery of gold: refrigeration. This, together with
wool and gold, made possible the development of modern New
Zealand.
The first commercial frozen cargo went to London in 1882.
Thereafter, as the result of patient research work backed by an
energetic drive from the economic aristocracy, New Zealand, like
Australia, developed a whole new range of industries. Hitherto a
sheep had been useful essentially for its. wool ; the carcass had to be
eaten on. the spot or converted by an evil-smelling and economically
wasteful process into tallow or fertilizer* Frozen meat, however,
could feed industrial populations on the other side of the world, and
frozen dairy produce crossed the tropics without loss of quality. New
THREE FOUNDATION STONES 41
Zealand's grass, therefore, which hitherto could only be exported in
the form of wool, could now be worked iup into meat, butter, and
cheese ; that is, provided New Zealand farmers could win the never-
ending battle of the grasslands. Refrigeration was of little use unless
New Zealand pastures could be given grasses far better than their
natural covering. A lean sheep piay grow admirable wool, but house-
wives will not buy its flesh, and cattle do not thrive on native tussock
grass. Meat and milk demand fat pasture; and this was found, like
most good things in New Zealand, in a blend of old and new, of
native and immigrant species. The open grasslands of the south
could be plowed for European grasses and clovers. In the north
fire rather than plow or spade carved a way for seed; for many years
upwards of a quarter of a million acres of bushland were burned and
sown year by year. The result was magnificent growth, followed
after years of stability by steady decay. Here was a challenge which
scientist and practical man joined hands with some friction to
meet* Top dressing with artificial fertilizer was a partial answer and
was used increasingly between the two wars ; through it something
could be done to keep the supply of grass- food well balanced. Plow-
ing and harrowing played their part, as well as the right timing and
degree of severity in the grazing of animals and the choice of the
right blend of seed for each particular field. On the other hand, the
slow forces of nature often intervened. Erosion might take its toll,
and in pastures native grassed often pushed in to share the soil with
imported species. So, as the forces of invasion began to exhaust
.themselves, a new balance was found on hill and plain: a balance
which depended on the incessant efforts of men.
On New Zealand's sixteen or seventeen million acres of sown
pastures a good fight can be made of it, though the fear remains that
the new mixed turfs must be less productive than when English
grasses were planted among the warm ashes of 'virgin forest. In
times of peace many held that, in spite of all efforts, grasslands in-
evitably slip back; and the loss, in wartime, might become catas-
trophic if skilled manpower could no longer play Its part through
demands of the army, for instance, or through interruption in the
flow of imported fertilizers. Apart from sown pastures, however, a
big proportion of New Zealand's sheep have in the past fed on the
42 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
fourteen million acres of native tussock on the hill slopes ; and here
the fight against a steady loss of fertility has no clearly marked
strategy or hopes. New Zealand has inevitably lived to some extent
on a slowly wasting capital asset. Such thoughts were far off, how-
ever, in the hopeful times at the turn of the century. England, it
seemed, had an insatiable need for frozen meat, butter, and cheese to
feed a growing industrial population, while New Zealand was an
apparently inexhaustible source of them, provided that she could
raise capital to buy equipment and find enough skilled hands to work
her farms, factories, and transport system. Capital was forthcoming,
for the British money market was attracted by the idea of gilt-edged
investments in a far-off but efficient farm which enjoyed the reputa-
tion of being the most English and therefore the most reliable of
Britain's overseas possessions. Money poured in freely, immigrants
followed the capital, and prosperity seemed assured : the march of
social progress could be resumed.
It was true that New Zealand wealth depended entirely on her
grassland produce, which she sold in one market only London ; and
her dependence on London was all the greater because it was the sole
supplier of her unceasing demand for capital. Commercial and finan-
cial dependence was the condition of her progress and was willingly
accepted: partly because it was invisible to the ordinary man, and
partly because high prices and expanding markets for New Zealand
produce seemed to be part of a divine dispensation. There were pass-
ing depressions, it was true, and each one of them served to empha-
size that in the view of the community it was the government's
responsibility to 'find a remedy for economic distress. They did noth-
ing to shake the conviction that intimate association with the mother
country was a ground of pride and satisfaction and that, thanks to a
beneficent London, New Zealand's sheep and cows were a completely
adequate foundation for a series of social experiments of which some
Englishmen became as proud as New Zealand herself.
CHAPTER FOUR
Islands of Spirit
There are today about 1,600,000 New Zealanders, of whom almost
99 per cent were born British citizens. These facts suggest that New
Zealand is a small country with a fairly homogeneous population
which should be easy to analyze and describe; and for this reason
they are completely misleading. New Zealand came to life segment
by segment and has lived much of its short life as a loosely hdd
group of almost independent communities. Many of these communi-
ties were virtually identical in origin, but whether they were alike or
fundamentally different, they lived in isolation until modern com-
munications broke down physical barriers and so gave a basis for a
New Zealand nation. Yet railways, service cars, and airplanes are
expensive to use, and the habit of isolation dies hard. In spite of a
centralized government, small population, and a simple economic
system many New Zealanders, pakeha as well as Maori, today quietly
defy the trend of modern times and continue to live on their "islands
of spirit." There are innumerable small and vigorous communities
with well-remembered local traditions and strong local pride which
still resist the flattening forces of centralization, and which still have
a hold on members who may be scattered among other provinces
through choice or necessity. In spite of all that New Zealanders have
in common, these differences are as characteristic of their country as
are the basic traditions which they share. Out of their own soil and
conditions of life they have even built up local variations pn the com-
mon theme, variations which do something toward giving vitality
and independence of view to the people as a whole.
Here as elsewhere geography has governed human development
The mountain spine running north and south divides the east from
43
44 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the west coast. Innumerable rivers rise in the mountains and mainly
flow straight to the sea. A few, like the Wanganui and the Waikato,
are partly navigable, but most of them are short, swift-flowing, and
apt to flood. They often cut deep channels for part of their course
and, as they cross the plains, fan out into wide deltas which are
stretches of barren stone when the rivers are low, and swirling sheets
of water when they are high. The profile of New Zealand is there-
fore something like the backbone of a fish, divided into compart-
ments by mountain and river bed. In the early days obstacles were so
great that it was often simpler to travel by sea than by land, and over
any considerable distance contacts depended on ocean-going ships.
Until 1908 there was no railway link between Wellington and Auck-
landj and even today the hill sections in heavy weather are a mainte-
nance engineer's nightmare. The east and west coasts of the South
Island were not connected by rail until 1923, when the Otira Tunnel
was completed : five and a quarter miles long, it is the longest in the
British Commonwealth. And in 1943 the Kaikoura district, with its
innumerable precipitous headlands and broad, barren river mouths,
still thrust a wedge into the almost finished north-and-south railway
artery. These facts are symptomatic of what was happening on a
small scale throughout the country. The early settler, and even the
prosperous twentieth-century farmer, was apt to find his little com-
munity cut off from the outside world by formidable rivers to north
and south, with mountain and ocean completing the four sides of an
enclosure.
This situation encouraged a kind of clan organization which at
'first sight seems more proper to an old country than a new. Apart
from some waves of individualism, as during the gold rushes, a great
deal of nineteenth-century immigration moved in groups. A family,
or even a large section of a village community, would in effect send
out an advanced guard to the New World and, if all went well, would
emigrate as a whole a few years afterward. A single emigrant with
ten children was half a clan in himself, and intermarriage with an
equally prolific family would lay the foundation of an entire pioneer-
ing settlement. In this way ties of blood and friendship were trans-
ferred from the Old World to the farms and towns of America and
Australasia, In New Zealand, however, this group immigration was
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 45
particularly well marked. Extreme distance from the motherland and
enforced isolation on a small rich segment of a new country forced
the clan together or, in the course of years, created a new closely knit
and intermarried society out of a band of individuals. The farm and
township became of necessity a citadel of community life and eco-
nomic strength a citadel to be strenuously defended against the
forces of nature or, of economic depression, and sometimes of civil
strife. Some groups were destroyed in the battle, and some won their
way to wealth and fame. Many more fought a fairly even battle,
winning security at least in good times without either great
wealth or great power. Some family names, therefore, bestride New
Zealand history. It would be easier to tell the story of the American
steel industry and leave out Carnegie than to write of the East Coast
and not mention the great missionary and landowning family of
Williams. Behind the well-known career of Sir Harry Atkipson,
sometime premier, lies the long battle of the linked families of At-
kinson and Richmond with the manifold problems of pioneering in
Taranaki. Anyone who has read of the economic or social history of
New Zealand could with a little thought add a dozen more names of
groups who had an outstanding cultural influence in the colony, who
led economic progress and to a greater or lesser extent shared its
benefits. Even more significant has been the onward pressing of the
ordinary man. It was he in his thousands, in loose alliance with his
brothers, cousins, nephews, and untold relations-in-law, who spread
out and conquered the lands, sometimes with fire and plow and some-
times by strategic marriage. He was part of a team; and though
individuals inevitably scattered, the family headquarters often stood
solid while the clan spread out over neighboring territory or struck
out into distant provinces. Thus there was woven a network covering
New Zealand's most desirable lands ; and in that network most of
those energetic and unattached individuals who played a vital part as
pioneers duly found a place.
Modern times have been unfriendly to small communities and have
weakened the bonds of family loyalty. Nevertheless no one can meet
many New Zealanders outside the cities, more especially without
realizing how tough the original units still remain and how well re-
membered are the blended traditions of the Old World and early New
46 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Zealand. Moreover, the Old World of New Zealand's collective
memory is richly varied, in spite of the pervasive influence of a nos-
talgically idealized England This genuinely and inevitably predomi-
nates, but certainly not unchallenged. The gold rushes, for example,
deposited in New Zealand men and women of all races. They in-
cluded thousands of Chinese, whose patient industry, now honorably
remembered, stung the colonists to crusade against Asiatic immigra-
tion. They included also many more thousands of purely European
stock who were quietly assimiliated into the British majority. Their
descendants are legion and are New Zealand to the core; but they
carry in mind, however vaguely, some tradition of lands other than
Britain. Further, both before and after the gold rushes chance or
deliberate planning brought to New Zealand many organized groups,
both from Europe and from the British Isles. All of these have
helped in making the texture of modern New Zealand, though some-
times only the antiquarian or the phenomenally observant can disen-
tangle the different threads, for the New Zealand community has
shown remarkable powers of assimilation.
Some admirably successful Scandinavian settlers, for instance,
have been absorbed without much outward sign except in the sturdy
physique of some men and women with northern names. But the
honorable story of their ancestors' battle with the bush round Danne-
virke is known only to the student, and their language has gone. In
the far south, however, the tough traditions of Scotland still prevail.
There are real Hebrideans, families who still eat porridge for tea,
and (it is said) at least one community whose mother tongue was
Gaelic. On the other hand, there are parts of New Zealand where
every second man, though he may never have left his birthplace,
marks himself as Irish long before his name is revealed to be
O'Regan or O'Malley; while in 1942 a visiting Pole found in Tara-
naki a little community which to all appearance might have been
lifted straight from Poland, yet every member of it except one sur-
viving founder had been born and bred a loyal New Zealander. A
once-flourishing industry, the digging of kauri gum, was the main-
stay of a large colony of Dalmatians, members of which can now be
found in most places where hard and rough work is done. Dotted
round the coast there are, or were before the war, small communities
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 47
of efficient fishermen who talked various dialects of Italian much
more* fluently than English; and a modern schoolgirl, asked to name
an eminent man of letters, could think of no one but a poet who
wrote in Welsh for the people of Wales. In valleys behind Nelson
there are small communities of German origin, some of them
German-speaking a generation or so back, and now German only in
proper names and in the steep-roofed Lutheran churches round
which they cluster. Some of these valley communities have lived com-
pletely cut off from outside contact, inbred, suspicious of strangers,
and with a fear of the bushland to be fought with fire as a major
local tradition. And so the list might be lengthened. The statistician
must be right : modern New Zealand is virtually 100 per cent British.
Yet she plainly carries on in a modest way the fine tradition of
Britain herself : she can absorb and make her own many different
strains and cultures, and can think of minorities with pride rather
than hostility.
In the past even in the present New Zealand's peculiar geogra-
phy protected small groups from being mercilessly swamped, and
gave an excuse, if not a justification, for provincialism. Mountains
and rivers would have made it difficult and expensive to concentrate
all trade into a few superports or to manufacture all the country's
goods in one industrial center. Each important segment of New
Zealand thought it needed its own port through which local produce
could be sent overseas, and its own industries to make goods which
could be brought from London only at great expense if at all.
Around the coast of New Zealand, therefore, there appeared small
ports, often with artificial harbors ingeniously constructed at vast
expense, while New Zealand industry took on its basic shape of small
units working for a limited local market. Moreover, powerful men
and institutions depended for their prosperity on this dispersion, and
vested interests fought to preserve arrangements which had their
roots in geography and in the mental habits built up in the course of
New Zealand's history.
The original pattern thus persisted; and though increasingly chal-
lenged in modern times, it has led to a sharp divergence from the
neighboring and kindred colonies of Australia. New Zealand lades
the great cities which became so characteristic of Australian develop-
48 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
merit, and her back blocks are far less extensive and less devastatittgly
comfortless. Her characteristic unit is the small town standing as
the social and economic capital of the surrounding province. Town
and province are sufficiently prosperous to have a reasonable share of
amenities within reach. Effective though costly communications link
them with the rest of New Zealand. The town will have electricity,
water and sewerage, cinema, up-to-date school and Plunket rooms ,
(baby clinics), and, for those who will use it, access to an admirable
country library service. Telephones and radio reach out to the re-
motest settlement, and in normal times cars give most farmers easy
contact with their fellow men. Before the present war few countries
had more private cars per head of population than had New Zealand,
and in general there can be few rural communities with better access
to the comforts of civilization.
Historically, then, the plans and accidents of immigration and the
position of mountains and rivers split New Zealanders into innum-
erable sections and gave to most of them a fair measure of economic
resources with which to indulge their respective tastes. The country's
general economic development, moreover, not only bred those forces
which give cohesion to a people but in some cases tended to perpetu-
ate early differences. Among immigrants, propertied agriculturalists
naturally gravitated toward such parts as had been pioneered by
those of their own social standing and where conditions favored
large holdings : Canterbury, for instance, and the east coast of the
North Island. Lesser men turned rather toward the mining and saw-
milling of the west coast or the dairy lands of Taranaki and the king
country: the cow is more the poor man's friend than is the sheep.
The merchant and banker, as he rose above the opportunities of the
country town or mining settlement, would naturally make for the
more cosmopolitan centers of Wellington and Auckland, for solidly
prosperous Christchurch or for Duhedin, the Scottish settlement
which was for so long the country's financial capital Even today,
when the North Island has pushed forward and the head offices of
companies *have migrated to Auckland or more often to Wellington,
Dunedin remains a creditor city. It has a strong hold on the country's
life as a whole, and through financial strength a stable basis for its
distinctive town culture. Farther south, and almost unknown to the
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 49
busy towns of the north, lies Southland, pioneered and still hgld by
New Zealand's most typical Scots. Entrenched in some of the richest
farming land in the country, and comparatively free from the bless-
ing and curse of high land values and mortgage finance, the Scots of
Southland could keep an even keel while the rest pf New Zealand was
rocked by boom and depression. And so provincial differences might
be elaborated. Though the provinces as a system of government were
formally abolished seventy years ago, they still live on as one of the
factors which prevent the people of this small country from accepting
a flat uniformity of outlook.
The symbol perhaps the active principle of this aspect of New
Zealand life is the phrase "the four main centers," meaning Auck-
land, Wellington, Christcliiurch, and Dunedin, which crops up per-
petually. In recent years Auckland's population has left the rest far
behind. In 1941 it was roughly 224,000, compared with 160,500 for
Wellington, 135,500 for Christchurch, and 82,000 for Dunedin.
These figures give some ground for Auckland's feeling that she is in
a sense the metropolis of New Zealand, and keep alive the underlying
sense of grievance which has persisted since she ceased to be "capital
city, in Wellington's favor, in 1865. Yet Auckland's lead in popula-
tion and in commerce is offset in other ways ; and it remains true
that the four cities have a real equality of status and that none of
them predominates in political or economic power. New Zealand has,
in fact, four capitals instead of one. If the 600,000 citizens of the
four centers were concentrated in one area, there would be a single
unit capable of developing the same kind of life as a fair-sized city
in Australia or America, if not in Europe. It would be comparatively
easy to organize amenities such as theaters, orchestras, libraries, and
institutions in general. Public opinion could be much more easily
organized and educated. Men of talent might find in such a city a
degree of stimulus and material reward which is at present lacking.
Yet such a revolution would not be an unmixed blessing. A single
large city could dominate the entire country, set a single standard,
and act as a magnet for men of enterprise and ideas. Concentration
would almost inevitably destroy a force which has always played a
vital part in New Zealand thinking: a well-established diversity in
point of view. Discuss a live issue with a New Zealander the effir
So UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
ciency, of the war effort, guaranteed prices for dairy produce, the
state of New Zealand art and letters and before very long there will
appear not only the man's personal background and status in society
but also his provincial bias. Things look different as seen from the
North or the South, from the East Coast or from the West, and a
sturdy difference in opinion forms the texture of life in modern New
Zealand. In a world of mass-produced societies the will to differ has
a value which cannot be readily sacrificed ; and that will to differ has
its stronghold in centers which have the status, the political and eco-
nomic strength, and the pride to be independent. It is part of the
social wealth of New Zealand that she has many such centers, and
the best guarantee of their permanence is the existence of the four
main centers, and the deep-rooted differences between them.
Largest among the four is, then, Auckland, heir to the first perma-
nent European settlements in this country. When New Zealand be-
came a British colony in 1840 there was a thriving commercial center
at the Bay of Islands in the North Auckland peninsular, and a rudi-
mentary settlement in which most of the work was done by Maoris
and most of the money gathered in by merchants who provisioned a
growing volume of shipping. The Bay of Islands was New Zealand's
principal link with the outside world, for it was an almost invariable
port of call for ships which came to pick up flax and timber, whale-
bone and whale oil, and to sell firearms to insatiable Maori warriors.
Among the most important visitors were Americans, who conducted
large-scale whaling ventures from headquarters on the New England
coast; but they had little influence on the colonization of New Zea-
land. Smaller vessels plying to Sydney took their part in the general
work of arming the Maoris, but also carried to the Bay of Islands
and its successor, Auckland, the vanguard of the race which was to
wrest control of these islands from the Polynesians. They came hap-
hazard. The Auckland province was unique among New Zealand's
basic settlements in that no agency, state or private, set itself to sift
immigrants according to some preconceived standard of citizenship.
Standards of a kind, however, were imposed by circumstances. Only
those could come to the Bay of Islands who were willing to live, by
their wits or prowess, with a valiant but murderous race of bar-
barians ; and for all the charm of the primitive Maori people, no
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 51
European would be likely to place himself in their power unless
driven by a high spirit of adventure, by an attractive vision of money
to be made, or by unusually strong reasons for changing his country
of residence. In the early days, therefore, immigrants to the northern
provinces included not only missionaries who were shrewd and mus-
cular Christians, but also escaped convicts and tough adventurers. In
the long run most of Auckland's citizens were, of course, solid and
soberly ambitious colonists of the type that was then pouring into
other British colonies and into the United States. Nevertheless,
Auckland remained a frontier town for a generation or so after the
South Island provinces had passed through their birth pangs and
settled down to the solid business of earning a living in a stable, Brit-
ish community. The North Auckland peninsular had a very large
number of Maoris in proportion to Europeans. (It still has; and no
one may dogmatize about the absence of a color bar in this country
till he has by hook or by crook found out fahat the North Auckland
Maoris think about it.) Within striking distance to the south there
lay the main centers of native strength on the slopes of the great cen-
tral mountain block, and Auckland was both civil capital and military
headquarters for the operations which finally destroyed Maori mili-
tary power.
Such was the rich historical background to modern Auckland; and
to many New Zealanders it seems that her early commercial pre-
eminence, the spirit of enterprise drawn from Sydney and America
spiced by the risk of Maori wars, has given the town an atmosphere
which still clings. In modern times a third of New Zealand's entire
trade passes through her wharves, and she is the center of rich and
rapidly developing provinces. By common consent she is not only the
largest but commercially the busiest of New Zealand cities. Money
can be made there, and can change hands, more rapidly than anywhere
else, and there is a greater consciousness of wealth and poverty. She
is in the closest touch with overseas countries : with Australia, Amer-
ica, and the Pacific islands. In Auckland the essential solidity of the
British community is shot through with a restlessness which Auck-
lapders like to think reminiscent of Sydney or San Francisco.
Four hundred and twenty-six miles by rail from Auckland and on
the southern tip of the island lies Wellington. Here was the first
S 2 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
headquarters of planned colonization in New Zealand, and for a few
hectic months the archcolonizer Edward Gibbon Wakefield himself
was member of parliament for a Wellington constituency. Yet of all
the main settlements Wellington bears least clearly the marks of its
origin. The first pioneers did not flourish. Auckland officials were
hostile. The fertile plains to north and northeast were cut off by
encircling hills, and the townsmen were uncomfortably hemmed into
narrow strips of land between mountain and water. Modern Welling-
ton was created not so much by the pioneers of a century ago as by
the engineers who built railways through the hills to the fruitful
districts of the Wairarapa and Manawatu, and by the political deci-
sion in 1865 that the capital should be placed centrally in the country,
In commerce and manufacture Wellington is now probably New
Zealand's second most important center. The floating dock reinforces
its importance for shipping, while factories and warehouses creep
greedily over the scanty level ground in Wellington itself and in the
Hutt valley, and cover the wide areas that have been reclaimed from
the sea. Her businessmen, at least as viewed from the South Island,
are only less busy and preoccupied with material things than those
of Auckland.
For all her importance in the world of money-making, however,
Wellington's special significance in New Zealand life lies in the fields
of government and administration. Whether or not New Zealand is
really a notable pioneer in state socialism, it is at least true that for
many years a variety of things have been done by the government,
tinder central control, which in older countries have been left to
private enterprise or to chance. This involves elaborate administra-
tive machinery and many thousands of civil servants* Many of these
are scattered throughout the country, but all must look to Welling-
ton for orders, not only in those matters of broad policy which poli-
ticians are supposed to decide but in everyday routine. For the most
part the key men live in Wellington, and so do a goodly proportion
of the juniors, some of them permanently attached to departments
which have few important branches, others awaiting long turns of
service in lesser places before they can hope to climb into the seats of
executive power. At any given time, therefore, there is a high con-
centration of civil servants in the population of Wellington. They
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 53
are men and women in secure though often ill-paid positions. They
are drawn from all over New Zealand, many of them knowing that
Wellington is only a temporary home but hoping, perhaps, for a spell
there as senior officers before retiring to a more genial climate.
In a sense, then, Wellington is essentially a government city. Its
life is nourished by scurrying crowds who about 8:00 or 8:30 A.M.
plunge from the narrow streets into the varied mass of government
buildings. The visible syihbol of Wellington's growth are the three
great blocks in the heart of the city. Parliament Building is the center
of it all : at one end nineteenth-century Gothic, at the other a low
rambling structure of timber that cries out for paint or demolition,
and in between a solid modern mass of stately though unfinished
masonry. Facing it across parliamentary lawns and a busy traffic
junction lies the Government Buildings, still probably the largest
wooden building in the world : externally it has a certain dignity, but
internally it is dangerously overloaded and endlessly propped up. It
is still flanked by massive "temporary" outhouses of timber, asbestos
sheeting, and corrugated iron rushed up during World War I.
Across a road is a big block of the most modern offices, back to back
with the growing premises of the State -Fire Insurance and Mort-
gage Offices. A host of other government offices are within a few
hundred yards, and their number is increasing. Many of them have
rooms in privately owned buildings, but growing piles of timber,
stone, iron, and plasterboard testify to Wellington's preoccupation
with the work of administration.
Moreover, alongside the civil servants there flock a sizable crowd
of private employees whose work, character, and prospects are not
very different In the work of governing New Zealand the state is
only one of a complex of agencies, some provincial, some nation-
wide, and some linked intimately with the great outside world. There
are the insurance companies and banks, for instance, and the stock
and station agents, with branches tip and down the country. These
last are remarkable organizations, with immense power over farmers
and merchants, and close though ill-defined links with kindred insti-
tutions in London and in Australia. Then there are shipping com-
panies, heacded by the great Union Steam Ship Company, once
genuinely New-Zealand-controlled and which played an honorable
54 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
role in the development of the South Seas. Its ancestry goes back to
Johnny Jones, notable whaler, pioneer, and land-shark; it is now
owned by a British shipping group. All these institutions are apt to
fall into the same pattern as government departments, with a solid
organization, steady though slow promotion for recruits, a superan-
nuation system, and often an employees' organization to watch their
interests. In spite of deep-seated differences between public and pri-
vate employment, therefore, private enterprise continually swells the
ranks of professional administrators. From the point of view of the
recruit, life may look much the same from the desks of Dalgety's (a
leading stock and station agency with headquarters in London) or
of the Bank of New Zealand as from those of the Public Trust Office
or the Department of Industries and Commerce ; nor is the position
of branch managers noticeably different. Moreover, these great semi-
public concerns for all of them have intimate relations one way or
another with the state confirm the concentration of white-collar
workers in the capital. Some of the older companies still have their
head offices in the south, some in Auckland and some overseas; but
for the most part administrative headquarters for New Zealand are
fti Wellington. This tendency is confirmed, moreover, by such or-
ganizations as the Employers' Federation and the Federation of
Labor, which link up independent units, and by the structure of the
two main political parties, Labor and Nationalist*
These points must not be overstressed. The texture of life in Well-
ington is not very different from that in Auckland and elsewhere.
Businessmen, workers, shopkeepers, and clerks are of much the same
type. Throughout New Zealand men are watchful to prevent Well-
ington "bureaucracy" from taking undue toll of their privileges and
independence. Yet the individual character of Wellington cannot be
described purely in terms of geography. Wellington hills are im-
portant enough. They turn her lovely harbor into an apparently land-
locked lake, with views which would be breath-taking if they did not
occur at the end of every street. They make transport awkward,
vastly complicate the housing problem, and give men and women' a
dogged stride and a taste for week-end hiking. The winds, though
popular legend exaggerates their vigor, compel citizens to stand
squarely on their feet, and modify their ideas of hats. By contrast
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 55
with Auckland's sprawling ease and genial warmth Wellington
houses climb into strange places, and her climate is stimulating both
in its greater coolness and its incessant change. Yet such things are
externals. Wellington's essential difference from other cities is that
she is, in addition to everything else, the meeting ground par excel-
lence of the men who govern, administer, finance, or quietly and
mysteriously influence the life of the people of New Zealand. When
wartime shortages cut down travel facilities, planes linking the other
centers with Wellington were often booked out many months ahead
by businessmen, and according to common report each boat from the
South Island for Wellington had a block of cabins reserved x f or
those who had business with the government.
In 1840, when Governor Hobson negotiated the Treaty of
Waitangi with Maori chiefs and proclaimed British sovereignty in
the North, there was a real possibility that the South Island might
fall to France, so that across the narrow waters of Cook Strait
British colonists would face a people of totally different race and
culture. That possibility passed away through the energy of certain
Englishmen and the indifference of most Frenchmen; nevertheless
Cook Strait has become in fact a real boundary in New Zealand
affairs. It would be rash but not grossly misleading to say that north
of it the emphasis is on progress, with an instinctive sympathy for
the United States, while to the south of it men think in terms of a
glorious past and of their British heritage. Population figures tell
part of the story. In 1900 the people of New Zealand were equally
divided between the two islands ; now nearly two-thirds of them live
in the North. In the twenty years after World War I the population
of Auckland plus Wellington grew at the rate of six thousand per
year, as opposed to two thousand for Christchurch plus Dunedin.
Appearances are even more striking. The streets of Auckland and
Wellington are sprawling and untidy, but the streets of Christchurch
are grouped in orderly fashion round a central square where the
cathedral stands. All the main streets of the city converge at the base
of this Gothic structure, designed by the most vigorously productive
of nineteenth-century cathedral architects, Sir Gilbert Scott The
convergence brings a unity, a center for civic pride.; -but the heart
of Christchurch is rather the (largely artificial) River Avon, which
56 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
winds not far off among smooth lawns and willow trees. On its
banks stand the provincial government buildings which in their gray
weatherbeaten dignity might have been taken straight from some
medieval English town. Indeed, on the banks of the Avon, walking
through Hagley Park, or standing before the doorway of the Gov-
ernment Buildings or of. Canterbury College, the visitor might well
conclude that here the dream of Edward Gibbon Wakefield had at
last come true; the England of a past generation seems to live again
in the quiet and unchanging atmosphere of a provincial cathedral
town.
Such an impression may have a measure of truth. A reincarnated
Wakefield might take greater pleasure in the development of Christ-
church, and more than one rich man's child has been sent to
Christchurch educational institutions to find safety from the god-
lessness presumed to haunt the hustling efficiency of Auckland and
Wellington. Yet to see in Christchurch merely the faint survival of
nineteenth-century England would be to misjudge grossly the vitality
of British culture, which flourishes in New Zealand not as a sickly
exotic but as a plant which has taken root, grown acclimatized, and
shown signs of vigorous growth. Beneatli the English externals of
Christchurch lies a characteristically New Zealand tension between
squatters and townsmen. Its industries, like those of Dunedin, are
decently hidden from the casual observer, but they flourish all the
same, and their presence helps to account for the strong radical
undercurrent that has always influenced Christchurch life. No
wharves can be seen, or seaport untidiness, but the port is only a
few miles off Lyttleton linked to Christchurch by railway through
the hills; the tunnel was the new colony's first great collective enter-
prise. It is no accident that the cathedral and the university, law-
courts and government buildings strike the eye more forcibly than
the signs of commerce. Education and religion, music and the arts
figured large in the plans of the Canterbury pioneers. They wanted
no crude well-fed materialism, and deliberately set apart money for
"culture." While the North Island pioneers were held back by Maori
wars or carved their way laboriously through virgin forest, Canter-
bury already had an established tradition as "the Boston of New
Zealand/' and the wealth to support it. The Press, perhaps the best
ISLANDS OF SPIRIT 57
New Zealand newspaper, bears witness to this tradition; yet it may
be significant that Christchurch was the home of a comparatively
long-lived leftist periodical, Tomorrow. Again, the atmosphere of a
cathedral city has stimulated religious thought; and as there is
usually a reaction to a dominant trend, Christchurch seems to be the
special home of small religious groups, just as groups of pugnacious
radicals flourish in Auckland to offset its pervasive capitalism.
Christchurch is a city of the plains and fields. The country en-
croaches on the suburbs and the suburbs on the town. The soil is
good and gardens flourish, so that spring is a legend : the smallest
holding blazes with fruit blossom and flowers. It is often bitterly
cold and foggy, but heat can shimmer on the plains even in winter,
and larks sing madly just beyond the tram terminus. Beyond the
town the landscape is divided into neat and well-marked fields of
wheat and oats and hay, and beyond these the Southern Alps rise
like a wall, snow-capped. From the hills that lie between Christchurch
and its port the whole Canterbury plain stretches out like a map :
town, farmland, and mountain in a broad expanse of beauty which
is some compensation for the raw winds that sometimes strike to
the heart of Christchurch citizens-
There is no such bird's-eye view of New Zealand from the out-
skirts of Dunedin, the fourth of the main centers, which lies 230
miles to the southward. Like Wellington, Dunedin was built on the
hills round a harbor, and it has not seriously outgrown its original
framework It is a solid comfortable town inhabited by solid and
respectable citizens. Its buildings give an air of prosperity and
stability. Its streets are broad and the town is well planned, its
center the "Octagon" whicfi is dominated by the symbols of Dune-
din's history and persistent character. Christchurch was led by the
Church of England, Dunedin by the Church of Scotland. Here the
statue of Robert Burns faces that of his less famous nephew, John
Burns, first spiritual mentor to this Edinburgh of the South. Almost
from the Octagon itself rise the slopes of Maori Hill. Here, just
above the town, are many of the houses of the well-to-do, the busi-
nessmen, the professional and the university people. Some of the
larger homes are solidly built without fear of earthquake, and dotted
among them are Scotch baronial halls, incongruous in this land
58 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
where the servant class has ijever flourished and now does not exist.
Dignity and history, as well as a sense of isolation, hold this little
community together. Dunedin has not forgotten the proud days
when it handled the wealth of the Otago gold fields and held in a
firm, unchallenged hand the financial and commercial strings of the
country's life. This early prosperity, with a province-wide sense of
the seriousness of life, the value of thrift, and the importance of
things of the mind, has left Dunedin with an endowment of insti-
tutions, traditions, and solid cash unique in New Zealand, It is no
accident, for instance, that Dunedin set up the first university insti-
tution in the country, or that its University of Otago acquired and
bitterly defended a monpply of medical teaching. The Dunedin
Public Library is one of the best-endowed in the country, and its
art and music flourish. Countless small societies have struck their
roots into the rich soil of inherited wealth and spread from Dunedin
northward to busier and perhaps less thoughtful centers. Conserva-
tism, therefore, which sits naturally on Dunedin, has its genial
aspects, even if it makes middle-class liberals walk with circumspec-
tion; for social experiments are still made, and American procedure
is sometimes fruitfully followed. Moreover, beneath the slow-mov-
ing surface of provincial life there flow brisk currents of opinion
whose existence is barely recognized in church and university, in
chamber of commerce and Rotary Club. Dunedin is still an important
center of the wool trade. It has engineering works and some of the
biggest woolen mills in the country. And in the parliament elected
in 1938, entrenched and patriarchal Dunedin was represented by
Labor members only.
^ This fact is a reminder that though the four main centers are
often surprisingly isolated from each other, they can be swept by
the same currents of thought Moreover, it would be astonishing if
wartime leadership and control did not concentrate more and more
power in one center presumably Wellington, Maybe the forces of
centralization, will in the future be strong enough to iron out New
Zealand provincialisms and to weld her islands of spirit into one
homogeneous mass. Meantime, however, she still has four main
centers, not one,
CHAPTER FIVE
The Providential March of
Social Equality
A hundred years ago Alexis de Tocqueville was convinced that
mankind was doomed by God to tread the path of democracy. "It
is not necessary," he wrote, "that God himself should speak in order
to disclose the unquestionable signs of his will; we can discern them
in the habitual course of nature, and in the invariable tendency of
events"; and God's intention was unmistakably revealed in seven
hundred years of world history. Whatever one might think of it,
progress toward social equality was as far beyond human interfer-
ence as was the movement of the stars. In these circumstances it
seemed plain to him that the wise man's course was not to be hustled
into democracy all unconscious of his fate, or to exhaust himself in
futile protest against the inevitable. By such attitudes, he thought,
his contemporaries were getting the worst of the new world that
was coming without preserving the good old times of their nostalgic
longing. Even those who felt God's plans to be mistaken must accept
them as basic facts and make the best of a menacing situation. There-
fore Tocqueville turned to America as being the country in which
the face of the future could be most clearly discerned, for the colo-
nists were in the nature of an advance party which has pressed ahead
of the main body of the European peoples. In his classic book,
Democracy in America, he reported back to Europe on the road
ahead, which they must all traverse in turn, in the hope that the ex-
periences of the advance guard might guide the halting statesman-
ship of the Old World
If Tocqueville should arise from his grave in 1943, still convinced
59
60 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
that the world was tending irresistibly toward social equality, he
would examine New Zealand with the greatest interest and appre-
hension. The community would in many ways remind him forcibly
of that which he had analyzed so searchingly in the United States
of America more than a centry before, and not only because both
were colonial communities of British origin living by agriculture.
As he framed the first paragraph of a new book, his pen might
easily follow the identical line it had traced once before: ". .
Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my
stay in New Zealand, nothing struck me more forcibly than the
general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious
influence which this primary fact exercises over the whole course
of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion and a cer-
tain tenor to the laws ; by imparting new maxims to the governing
powers, and peculiar habits to the governed." Similarly, as Tocque-
ville traced out the peculiar habits of New Zealanders in the 1940*3
in their government, education, and mental attitudes, he would echo
time and again the phrases in which he had described Americans
over a hundred years before. He would no doubt find and analyze
a fundamental difference in the attitudes of the two peoples. Lacking
the unlimited land of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America,
New Zealanders had no western frontier to which they could turn,
and the impulse toward "equality of conditions" worked itself out in
different ways and fulfilled itself through different channels. Yet
Tocqueville might well conclude that "rugged individualism" and
"security for all" were both expressions of a basic common trend.
Equality in New Zealand has indeed been no mere economic ac-
cident : it came largely through the steady pressure of public opinion ;
and mountains, rivers, and British capitalists helped to provide the
means. Ever since the foundation of the colony New Zealanders
have asked the same things of life; and the nature of their demands,
aided by local geography and world economics, controls the char-
acter of the country.
Modern New Zealand, like Tocqueville's America, has been popu-
lated mainly from Great Britain and Ireland, but not by a truly rep-
resentative section of British society. The very poor have always
been kept out by distance and expense: it is a far journey from a
MARCH- OF SOCIAL EQUALITY, 61
European slum to America, but it is even farther to New Zealand, so
those driven out by sheer starvation naturally did not flock to the
South Pacific. On the other hand, except for a few years during the
gold rushes, New Zealand was never a country of fabulous wealth.
She attracted neither the very poor nor the very ambitious, but rather
those thoughtful persons of moderate ambitions who hoped to do
better in the New World than in the Old, yet did not expect miracles.
The mechanic, carpenter, and laborer, even if he was not coming to
a guaranteed job (as many did), believed that in New Zealand work
did not fail, and that a careful citizen could build a home of his own
and rear a large, well-fed family without fear of the workhouse.
The young engineer and lawyer and would-be merchant who ate out
their hearts in fretful impatience in an overstocked British labor
market listened eagerly to tales of steady progress in a new and ex-
citing country which remained comfortingly English. The head of
a growing family with modest property calculated that he could ex-
change a bare though respectable existence in a London suburb for a
passage to New Zealand and a few hundred pounds to invest in
farming land. And if laborer, professional man, and property owner
could draw with him a whole clan of cousins, friends, and relations-
in-law, as he often could, he looked forward not only to a sufficiency
of food but to congenial company. New Zealand did not offer vast
wealth or even wild adventure, but it djid seem to offer security and
steady progress. It was known as a country in which men and women
of all classes (except the very aristocratic) could do somewhat better
than, in the Old World.
On the whole, therefore, New Zealanders have been seekers after
security rather than adventure. This was true alike for the solid
residuum deposited in New Zealand by the gold rushes, for the im-
migrants of the Vogel boom in the 1870*8, and for those who came
in the wave of renewed prosperity between 1895 and World War I.
Most of them from first to last fiave been wage-earners, mechanics,
craftsmen, and laborers reaching New Zealand with few assets but
their bodily skill and their expectation of success. On the whole they
were above the average of their class in prosperity and enterprise,
for otherwise they could not have afforded the passage or have suc-
ceeded in catching the eye of some public or private authority will-
62 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
ing to finance them. From the first they were comparatively well edu-
cated, and able to make the sober calculation implied in immigration
to New Zealand; having made it, they were determined not to be
cheated of the benefits for which they had crossed the world. The
modest ambition of the immigrant was basically.the same as that of
his cousin who stayed in the Old World : both wanted some genuine
security for themselves and reasonable prospects for their children.
In- New Zealand, however, a larger proportion of the poorer people
had realized clearly both what they wanted and how they proposed
to get it. They were therefore disposed to be impatient and intol-
erant if they found in their new home such old-world phenomena as
class privilege and economic depression, and their numbers and char-
acter made them politically far more powerful than the correspond-
ing groups in Britain or even in the United 'States of America. They
successfully turned to the state, therefore, for help not only in the
material tasks which demanded community effort (road and bridge
building for instance) but also in achieving their general object in
coming to New Zealand. The "common man" demanded his rights
from society rights which he felt were due to him not merely on
grounds of common humanity but because he had earned a special
daim by becoming a New Zealander.
The idea that New Zealand belonged to the common man reversed
a leading principle of the Wakefield colony-plannersleadership by
aristocrats and it established itself with some difficulty in a capital-
ist community. Among the pioneers who did most to build early New
Zealand there were many sturdy individualists, men of education
and moderate property, who thought that public service was a duty
as well as a right. They gave real leadership in the early years of the
colony; and during New Zealand's first half-century there was a
constant though confused struggle for dominance in New Zealand
politics between men rooted in successful (and presumably public-
spirited) private enterprise, and those who championed the rights
of the common man ; and public opinion (if indeed there was such a
thing) swayed between two vaguely formulated points of view. It
was the great crisis of the iSSo's and the 1890'$ which proved a
turning point in New Zealand opinion as well as in New Zealand
economics. Private enterprise was not seriously tampered with, and
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 63
the attitudes based on it were (and are) among the most influential
in New Zealand life. Yet from about 1890 it has been clear that, if
it conies to a choice, the welfare of the common man irrespective
of. his individual deserts must be acknowledged as the supreme
object of government policy.
New Zealand's great formative crisis took an odd shape, for it
seemed that she might be pitchforked into a career as a manufactur-
ing country. Round about the year 1880 one of the modern world's
first attempts to plan prosperity on a grand scale petered out in de-
pression and misery. There was a slump abroad. The world's econ-
omy was distorted by the vagaries of the gold standard, by the
lightning industrialization of Germany and the United States of
America, and by the economic crises that followed the wars of 1864-
1870. As usual, the fate of New Zealanders was linked with that of
Europe and America. The return from New Zealand gold, wool,
and grain crashed, and with it the national income. Loan money and
high wages on public works were cut down just as the need for them
was greatest. Farmers and their creditors, who alike had counted
on permanent good times, were caught in financial disaster, and
dragged down the community with them in a common ruin. Unem-
ployment spread like pestilence over the land, and thousands of re-
cent immigrants fled the country before its threat. Those who could
not flee demanded rescue of their rulers in New Zealand, and finding
little comfort, besought the President of the United States to save
them, and failing him Queen Victoria, or the government of that
still prosperous Australian colony which had taken the Queen's
name. Meanwhile, on street corners and in public houses, men de-
bated the reasons for their fate with the keenness born of acute dis-
tress, and in factories and on farms women and children struggled
at starvation wages to eke out the family income. Entrenched wealth,
it seemed, was defying the reasonable ambitions of the many ; and
with this background the common-sense radicalism of the gold-rush
immigrants and their successors took on a new sharpness and deter-
mination.
It was, in fact, not a pretty picture for a young country, and the
period left a permanent mark on New Zealand. The disappointed
cursed the government for luring them to New Zealand with false
64 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
promises and bitterly blamed it for failing to solve the riddle of
poverty in the midst of plenty. They determined that this thing
should not happen again : the poor must organize to help themselves,
and insist that the state should do its duty better next time. There
followed, accordingly, an upsurge of trade-unionism and strikes,
and a generation of social service legislation. Even while this will for
state leadership was being hardened, sweated wages drove down
costs and New Zealand cloth and agricultural machinery competed
successfully on a small scale in overseas markets. Among her immi-
grants were skilled artisans, and those who must slave or starve
chose slavery. Work on the land was blocked. It had fallen into the
hands of the Jew, so there was no question of a peasantry farming
for subsistence, and big farmers whose products were a drug on the
market had little use for hired labor. Therefore men and women
turned to factories, and to the tiny, struggling backyard workshops
that sprang up all over the country. A fantastic turn of fortune's
wheel suggested that New Zealand, with its scanty industrial re-
sources, might become a diligent supplier of cheap manufactured
goods to the Pacific area.
The nightmare passed away. Perhaps a part was played by man-
made barriers against that exploitation by which alone New Zealand
could have been industrialized. Perhaps the plight of the farming in-
dustries was not so desperate as it was sometimes painted. The es-
sential fact, however, Was that at the critical moment refrigeration
opened up new possibilities and enabled New Zealanders once more
to win a high standard of life as farmers. Industry returned to the
position which was by common, consent its due: that of handmaiden
to the farmer, and small-scale producer of articles which could not
be conveniently imported. Sweated labor, if it did not entirely pass
away, was at least not made the basis of the country's economic
structure. New Zealand, which had shown some signs of building tip
a Pacific trade in grain and manufactures became even more firmly
tied to the British economic system. British capital, which had al-
ready given New Zealand the basis of a modern transport system
based on wool and grain, now glddly developed that system in ways
suitable for frozen meat and for dairy products, and provided ma-
chinery for farms and freezing works. With rising prices and steady-
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 65
expenditure of borrowed money depression was vanquished but not
forgotten. The government, with a stern mandate to exorcise the
specter of suffering, had the genial task of presiding over an inflow
of capital and prosperity which was due to a happy combination of
hard work and good luck. In buoyant times social services could
develop in a favorable atmosphere, and a mild redistribution of
national income could succor the needy without injury to the well-
to-do.
The new trend of the times was recognized by men of all points
of view. Even in the i88o's, for instance, Sir Harry Atkinson as an
austere and honest conservative had preached state action. In 1882
he roused parliament to laughter, so it is said, by suggesting a
national insurance scheme to protect the ill and aged, the widowed
and the orphaned. In the view of many of his contemporaries such a
scheme, though no government money was involved, was anti-Chris-
tian and would undermine the basic virtues of thrift, labor, and self-
reliance. Atkinson was not, perhaps, alone in recognizing that civili-
zation brought with it a growth not only in wealth but in poverty;
but nothing was done. Six years later a significant new combination
trades-unionists and manufacturers persuaded him to give some
of New Zealand's young industries a certain amount of tariff pro-
tection. (Up to 1938, indeed, New Zealand remained a comparatively
free-trade country ; or at least its tariffs remained modest in an un-
free world.) Sir Harry Atkinson, at the cost of shattering his party,
had become the harbinger of a new era and paved the way for new
experiments in state-induced prosperity. New times, however, de-
manded new men and a comprehensive attack on the forces that had
ruined a generation of pioneers; and the need was vigorously met
in the Liberal-Labor government of the iSpo's. Within a few years
it seemed that the lawmakers had recast the country from head to
foot, and New Zealand, which had lagged behind the Old World in
social legislation, had won a reputation for bold and useful experi-
ment.
The best-known of these experiments, at least outside New Zea-
land, was the bold attempt to regulate the relations between capital
and labor. The new government took office in 1891, and by 1894
five great acts had been written on the statute book which still con-
66 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
trol and protect New Zealand industry. Four were a frontal attack
on bad conditions of work, following lines already moderately famil-
iar overseas, some of them sketched out under Atkinson. These were
the Factories, Act, 1891 ; the Shops. Act, 1892; the Coal Mines Act,
1891 ; and the Shipping and Seamen Act, 1894. In the fifth, however,
New Zealand, led by Pember Reeves, left the beaten track in an
honest effort to capture from the economic jungle "a new province
for law and order." Stung by depression, workers in Australia and
New Zealand had banded themselves together to fight for an im-
provement in their lot. One result was the great maritime strike of
1890, which, while it showed that the workers were not yet strong
enough to impose reform on society, demonstrated also that organ-
ized labor was a standing challenge to the old regime and perhaps
an opportunity for the liberal-minded. The upshot was that the new
government at a blow swept away the legal barriers to trade-union-
ism, which were still higher in New Zealand than in Britain, and at
the same time offered a new way of settling disputes. Instead of
fighting out their differences in strikes and lockouts, capital and labor
were to face problems like rational beings. In the first place a dispute
would be thrashed out before a local conciliation board with equal
membership from both sides and an impartial chairman. These
boards could advise but not direct, and only if they failed to settle
disputes was the authority of the state to be called in. In the Arbitra-
tion Court a Supreme Court judge, aided by an assessor from each
side, would give decisions which had the force of law. The conditions
under which men worked were to be controlled, therefore, not by the
will of the employer, or by the relative fighting strength of masters
and men, but by a court of law proceeding in public with every op-
portunity of finding out the real facts of the case. Nor was the new
court bound by precedent. It was launched with a broad mandate to
handle any questions which might arise and to find solutions which
should be in line with the principles of law and the sense of the com-
munity.
The arbitration system was not merely a police device to prevent
industrial warfare. It had from the first a more constructive aim:
that of encouraging trade-unionism as a permanent guarantee
against industrial chaos and slavery. Moreover, it was only one part,
, MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 67
though a very prominent part, of a general and many-sided recon-
struction. The state, for instance, made a drastic attempt to reform
the basis of New Zealand's economic life the land. Everyone, ex-
cept the big landholders, agreed that New Zealand's crisis had been
caused, or at least vastly complicated, by the fact that the land had
fallen into the hands of the few. With almost universal approval,
therefore, John McKenzie vented on them the pent-up discontents
of untold Scottish crofters. The state waged war on the land monop-
olists partly by direct attacks to break up the big estates, and partly
by putting into the small man's hands through state advances the
capital necessary to establish him in business. Again, during this
same period the coping stone was placed on political democracy by
stopping the last loopholes by which a man might have more than
one vote, and by giving votes to women. Graduated land and income
taxes were pushed ahead as a matter of principle. Finally, in 1898,
a system of old age pensions was created : at the age of sixty-five
respectable but indigent citizens were entitled, after searching and
humiliating inquiries, to a pension of eighteen pounds a year. This
modest result was the fruit of nearly twenty years of agitation, and
was in some ways a test case. For to the irreconcilable opposition the
whole plan was a piece of noxious socialism, designed by "dumb
dogs" and "born idiots/' and destined to create sturdy beggars and
criminals by sapping the virility of private enterprise. To the ma-
jority, behind whom rallied the newly enfranchised women voters,
it was a measure of social justice, a small but irreducible guarantee
by society to its less fortunate members. Small as the pension was,
it was at least a straight-out payment by the state, and it established
an important principle. Seddon himself pushed the bill through a
ninety-hour stonewall (filibuster) in the House, when, it is said,
fourteen hundred speeches were made; and he claimed it as his
crowning achievement.
The legislators did their work, and as early as 1891 new ground
was broken in administration by setting up a new government de-
partment, that of Labor, with instructions to carry out the indus-
trial code and with an official head, Tregear, who was as full of
energy and hopes for the future as Reeves himself. With officials as
well as a minister who believed in progress, vigorous administrative
68 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
machinery was set to work with the express purpose of enforcing and
keeping up to date a comprehensive new code of economic laws. Yet,
though Reeves might not have scorned the term socialism for the
objective, the code as a whole did not really alter the basis of New
Zealand's life. In the cautious phrase of the Official Year Book, the
code "was not so much socialistic as a correction of the more mani-
fest injustices of an individualist system. There was not so much
state control as an improved framework within which laissez fcAre
could operate." Reeves may have been a philosopher, but as the cur-
rent jibe had it, he was "watered down by political necessity," and
the program he sponsored was an attempt to deal with admitted evils
rather than to establish any particular system in the place of the old
regime. This was strikingly illustrated in the crisis of the Bank of
New Zealand, which was involved up to the hilt in the land and finan-
cial crash of the times. In 1894 the situation suddenly became acute,
and the country's principal bank was within a few hours of bank-
ruptcy. The state inevitably rushed to the rescue, guaranteed the
bank's solvency, and took the right to nominate four out of six direc-
tors. Thus the immediate problem was solved, the bank stood firmly
on its feet, and the government emerged with a firm grip over a key
financial institution. All this was characteristic of New Zealand's
basic tradition. It was equally characteristic that the government
neither then nor since made any attempt to use its new powers to
enforce a policy. In general it had no financial policy to enforce and
no intention of developing one until another disastrous failure of
private enterprise should force its hand once more.
In short, the government of the i&jo's was in fact Liberal-Labor,
as it claimed to be; and so far as this could be done by state action
it gave New Zealand a hearty boost along a familiar road in prefer-
ence to a jolt into new territory unexplored except by speculation.
The resulting impetus to the country was all the greater and more
enduring because it was not revolutionary, and it controlled the de-
velopment of modern New Zealand. Some argue, indeed, that the
importance of the politician has been grossly exaggerated, and that
the revolution in New Zealand affairs was due essentially to broad
currents of economic change without which the politician would
have beaten the air in vain. The slow but steady improvement in
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 69
wages and working conditions was possible, for instance, because of
the country's general prosperity rather than because the Arbitration
Court laid down certain principles, while small farming could spread
because refrigeration made dairying on small holdings profitable,
and because the end of the Maori Wars opened up vast tracts of
suitable North Island territory. These things may be true, and with-
out favorable conditions McKenzie, Reeves, and Seddon would have
been generals without an army. Yet without the legislation of the
Liberal-Labor government the army of indignant poor might have
been forced to lay a long and bitterness-provoking siege to the cita-
dels of economic power, and without assurance of ultimate success.
If the wealth brought to New Zealand had been allowed to t flow un-
controlled by the state, it might very well have passed into the hands
of an existing oligarchy, or to a new and haphazardly-made priv-
ileged class. On present evidence the legislation of the iSgo's seems
to have been a powerful force making for equality of conditions in
New Zealand. Moreover, even if this conclusion be denied, the work
of the Liberal-Labor government remains vital, for it expressed and
confirmed what had been hitherto merely a disrupted trend in New
Zealand life : the ultimate ascendancy in politics of the interests of
the common man. Though individual laws might be faulty, and
might even lag seriously behind those of older countries, this prin-
ciple could never be permanently dislodged; and this fact, rather
than any detailed achievement or plan, gave twentieth-century New
Zealand democracy its specific character.
Just before World War I, indeed, there was a serious attempt to
divert the broad stream of New Zealand development into more rev-
olutionary channels. Before this time the creative drive of the Lib-
eral-Labor government had exhausted itself, and in the first few
years of the twentieth century the New Zealand community adjusted
itself (rather smugly) to rising prices, good times, and a reputation
for social experiment. There were some, however, who were not con-
tent with the mere removal of the worst abuses of the capitalist sys-
tem, who wanted in fact not to patch and improve that system but
to abolish it. Drastic change demanded industrial warfare, it was
urged, not the solid and unambitious peace of a successful arbitration
system; it was to be achieved through the Marxian conception of
70 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
dass war, not through the bourgeois formula of equality of condi-
tions diffused with reasonable variations from the average among
a still-hierarchical society.
New Zealand, in short, was in the broad current of international
revolutionary socialism which seemed to be preparing a strong chal-
lenge to European and American capitalism. As far as New Zealand
was concerned, the revolutionary argument was underlined in 1907
by a depression which traveled from the United States of America
to New Zealand via London; and in 1912 and 1913 there was a fierce
trial of strength between the old ideas and the new. In this fight the
forces of organized labor were divided. The leaders of the Waihi
coal strike of 1912 and of the maritime and general strike of the fol-
lowing year spoke out in forthright Marxian terms ; but some of the
biggest unions supported drastic action halfheartedly or not at all,
and the rest of the community was well organized under the conserv-
ative government of William Ferguson Massey. In 1913 the
farmers vigorously responded to an invitation to break the strike as
special constables and wharf laborers; and there followed a sharp
and decisive struggle on the wharves and streets of the principal
towns. It was a colorful and tragic affair, about which few could
think without emotion; and it is hard to judge how public sentiment
regarded a clash that was very like a minor civil war. The fact re-
mains that the strikers were completely defeated, and that with them
there failed the most serious attempt to turn New Zealand liberalism
into something revolutionary. Seven months later the outbreak of
the Great War called a truce to class conflict, and incidentally started
a wave of prosperity that helped to smooth over social tensions. But
by this time the power of class-conscious unionism was for the
time being, at least utterly destroyed. It had been shown conclu-
sively that the powers of the state, and the machinery which had been
created by Reeves and Seddon, could be used not only to wage war
against sweating and destitution but to preserve the existing order
as a going concern.
The 1913 defeat of the United Federation of Labor the "Red
Fed" of hostile journalism was the triumph of equality of condi-
tions ; and this basic tradition made positive as well as negative gains
during the relatively quiescent quarter of a century preceding the
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 71
Great Slump. Seddon's old age pensions were gradually made more
liberal. A tiny pension was given to widows in 1911, and to the
blind in 1924. Two years later a modest beginning was made with a
scheme of family allowances : a family whose income was less than
four pounds a week was entitled to two shillings a week for every
child after the second. Meanwhile the state's health services had been
greatly improved. The Department of Health was created in 1900,
and steadily gained strength. In 1904 midwives were registered and
controlled. By 1907 the Plunket Society had begun to teach the
mothers of New Zealand, with brilliant success, how to care for their
babies on scientific lines. In 1912 the principle was laid down that
every school child should be medically examined: today every child
is supposed to be examined three times while at primary school, and
the medical officers have done something to carry the struggle from
the schoolroom to the home by laying bare tertain unpleasant facts
about malnutrition and the overworking of children on farms. Just
after World War I, moreover, a start was made with a school dental
service; and today the vast majority of primary school children have
their teeth cared for in clinics. Finally, just about the turn of the
century, secondary education was brought within the national sys-
tem ; not, indeed, as completely as the primary schools, but in such
a way that every child of fair intellectual ability could get post-
primary education without paying fees. Moreover, something was
done to broaden the scope of subjects taught and to give an oppor-
tunity for those with practical as well as orthodox academic tastes.
In short, beneath the surface of a contented, bourgeois-minded,
and farmer-led community the tradition of equalitarianism was ma-
turing. It was not a matter of spectacular advances but of quiet nib-
bling, of steady increase in the money spent on social services and in
the state's effective intervention in the life of the people. Where the
state acted openly, it was generally on humanitarian grounds, in
defense of elderly people, women, and children who for some reason
or another seemed to be suffering in the battle of life and who could
not be left to fend for themselves. There was no clear economic
planning behind it all, but rather a pliant opportunism in dealing with
individual cases so that laws and institutions often served quite dif-
ferent purposes from those for which they were originally designed.
73 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Yet when the confusion is broadly surveyed a pattern emerges. The
state was working fairly systematically and with some success to re-
distribute the country's wealth. Economic developments, popular
sentiment, and political action all pressed in the same direction. The
conditions were not there for a small wealthy aristocracy, for a
downtrodden and embittered proletariat, or even for a sustained ef-
fort at social planning. New Zealand democracy just grew up in an
atmosphere of sentimental kindliness and of faith that good times,
if not always present, were never far round the corner.
The depression of the early 1930*5 was a spectacular proof that
neither faith nor hope, nor even charity, could be relied upon to pro-
duce the essential security which the people demanded. That depres-
sion was, as usual, transmitted to New Zealand from the United
States of America through Britain, and it found New Zealand, like
most of the Europeanized world, ill equipped to handle a slump that
seemed to have no ending. There was no machinery for dealing with
mass unemployment, and her instinct was in the first instance to
hold on desperately, waiting for recovery overseas, rather than to
'find a remedy from within her own resources* Holding on meant
government economies in salaries, social services, and public works ;
an attempt to balance the budget and make the community as a whole
cut its coat according to its cloth : in short, the New Zealand govern-
ment reacted to the depression in much the same way as almost every
government in Europe and America. Austerity did not seem to hold
the key to the economic labyrinth, but it naturally focused on the
government of the day blame for disasters which were the result
(though not in their last detail necessarily the inevitable result) of
world economic trends to which New Zealand was inescapably
linked. There followed a period q suffering and desperate relief
measures, of hunger and hopelessness, the bitterness of which must
be measured, not by comparisons with the sufferings of the unem-
ployed abroad, but by the pitiful contrast between helpless near-
starvation, and that social ideal which New Zealand had hopefully
pursued for the best part of a century. In this atmosphere the govern-
ment a conservative "farmers 1 " government headed by Messrs.
G. W, Forbes and J. G, Coates rapidly added to the conception o
"holding on" that of counterattack by vigorous state action; and a
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 73
constructive recovery program which has been interestingly com-
pared with that of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was courageously
carried through. It depended on state leadership and the supremacy
of the public interest over any established law or privilege, and was
therefore anathema to the orthodox; yet it aimed not so much at a
prompt restoration of social services as at the patient building of
conditions from which restoration would follow naturally. But the
electorate had had enough of patience and turned eagerly to the more
popular doctrine preached by the Labor party. In Labor's vanguard
stood half a dozen of those men who, twenty years before, had been
the vehement spokesmen of the class war and had led industrial
unionism to honorable but crushing defeat in 1912 and 1913. In
I 93S> however, their leader was not Henry Holland, trenchant editor
of left-wing journals, but Michael Joseph Savage; and their belief
was that socialism could now best be served by a broad humanitari-
anism which happened to be economically sound.
There was in this attitude hope for the unemployed and reassur-
ance for the small farmer and shopkeeper who would have reacted
sharply against the Marxian principles of the Red Feds; and those
who thought that Savage was merely Holland in sheep's clothing
were blinded by their disapproval of Coates, or were swept aside by
the current. The result was a sweeping victory. Labor was returned
to office with a huge majority and with a mandate for social service
not for socialism; for humanitarianism not for the class war.
In 1936, therefore, the remaining cuts in salaries and wages, state
and private, were restored. Pensions and social services generally
were restored and increased, and an important new payment was
added : a pension for invalids. The Public Works Department was
re-equipped and set vigorously to overtake the arrears of work left
undone during the depression. A big housing scheme was launched
with central bank finance to illustrate Labor's thesis that work
need never cease while men and materials were available, and to
build homes which workers could rent. In a sense the government
was merely carrying on the tradition firmly established by its pred-
ecessors, including the iJepression-time coalition government which
it had defeated iii 1935. The habit of state leadership was there, also
the institutions through which it could be made effective ; and so was
74 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the emphasis onJhuman welfare. "Social justice must be the guiding
principle," wrote Mr. Savage, "and economic organization must
adapt itself to social needs." And he accurately summarized the views
not only of his cabinet and generation but of those of most New
Zealanders and most politicians for fifty years. Nevertheless, there
was something new in the energy with which the government pushed
along a fairly familiar route; and it was characteristic, too, that the
measure which summed up the cabinet's basic ideas and on which it
won the decisive election of 1938 was the Social Security Act of
that year.
The Social Security Act codified previous laws and added a good
deal more. Existing pensions were continued (though the word was
dropped for "benefits") at increased rates. The old age benefit, for
instance, became thirty shillings a week and the child allowance four
shillings a week. In addition, there was a benefit for wage earners
who were unemployed or who were temporarily away from work
through illness. For most of these benefits there was a means test ;
but a start was made with "universal superannuation," which ulti-
mately will give everyone, without discrimination, a retiring allow-
ance. Moreover, a bold attack was made on a problem which had been
much in people's minds : that of a national medical scheme. The hope
was in the long run to give everyone free medical attention of every
kind; but the matter bristled with difficulties, and it was approached
with typical New Zealand compromise. The existing public hospital
system, which balanced uneasily between centralization and provin-
cialism both in control and in finance, still continued; and those ad-
mitted to the public hospitals could get free treatment of every kind,
either from staff surgeons or from outside specialists who gave part
of their time to hospital work. As for general medical practice, power
to pay doctors from the Social Security Fund was taken; but the
doctors strenuously resisted various suggested methods of applying
the scheme, and it was 'only gradually introduced. By 1943 maternity
services were free, and the state was paying the greater part of the
fees for general medical services and was subsidizing those who
went to specialists. Doctors' prescriptions are now dispensed free;
and in some places, chiefly in country districts unpopular among
private practitioners, doctors are working as salaried civil servants*
MARCH OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 75
Social security is financed partly from general revenue but mainly
from special taxes, chiefly two taxes used during the depression for
unemployment relief : a poll tax (now one pound a year, for men and
five shillings for women) and a charge of one shilling in the pound
on all income ; and the total expense of the scheme in 1941 was about
14 millions, or nine pounds per person in the total population. The
scheme is, then, partly a compulsory insurance, but it is also one of
the many powerful instruments for transferring wealth and equaliz-
ing incomes. Its critics in 1938 brought two main arguments against
it : first, that it would undermine morale and discourage effort ; and
second, that the country could not afford it probably not at all, and
certainly not if bad times came again. The official reply was that
human nature (or ambition) was not so feeble that its stamina would
be destroyed by the prospect of drawing thirty shillings a week at
the age of sixty, or fifty-two pounds a year if permanently disabled.
As to the second point, Labor spokesmen frankly hoped that New
Zealand was going to expand in the future as it had done in the past,
and that sound economic policy would prevent future slumps from
getting out of hand as they had only too often done in the past.
Social security, then, was not merely a code of benefits ; it was a
symbol and a promise not to be judged purely in terms of hard-boiled
economic calculations. Public opinion demanded some guarantee that
the common man, if he was not to come into his own at last, should
at least never be driven to the bottomless depths of his depression-
time despair.
Social security, like the broader notion of equality of conditions,
must, then, be judged by social standards as well as by economic
ones ; and in both spheres there is room for constructive speculation
but not, as yet, for dogmatic conclusions. New Zealand is at least
trying a worth-while experiment. Partly accidentally and partly by
deliberate policy she has grown up without the extremes of great
wealth or great poverty, and at least as compared with many older
countries without great concentration of power in the hands of a
few. If there is any philosophy underlying it all, it is probably the
belief that man as such is entitled to a "fair" share of the world's
wealth and privileges: New Zealand is an experiment in the
eighteenth-century idea of the rights of man, carried out with mod-
76 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
eration and compromise. Politically, she may be able to show the
results of listening to everyone and giving everyone a chance
though not always the same chance. On the economic side, much
clearly depends on whether or not New Zealand will continue to
progress and prosper, and whether her population will stabilize (as
seems at present likely) and continue to farm on a large scale for
export. Yet whether the amount of national income to be shared
grows or shrinks, the question will remain whether that income
should be fairly evenly distributed or be concentrated in the hands
of relatively few. New Zealand is trying an experiment in the wide
diffusion of wealth within a country which still remains a "capitalist
democracy." Wealth is not equally shared, nor is there anything like
unqualified equality of opportunity; yet neither fear of acute hunger
nor hope of great wealth is likely to play much part in the life of the
average New Zealander. He has scarcely faced the underlying ques-
tion of whether this situation will in the long run stimulate or de-
stroy those. activities that make a country civilized; for the New
Zealand community is not given to deep thought on such matters.
Amid the chorus of somewhat uncritical approval and abuse that has
been hurled at the Labor government's embodiment of some basic
New Zealand trends, it has sometimes been pointed out that in its
pursuit of equality, in its insistence that the state must do something
energetic, even if mistaken, about problems of poverty and periodic
depression, New Zealand is on the same track as the rest of Western
civilization, though maybe a little further toward the triumph or the
disaster which lies at the end of the road.
CHAPTER SIX
Government
New Zealand's government is controlled by New Zealanders. It
would be legally possible for the British parliament to resume certain
powers over this country; but such action would be politically out of
the question, and apart from this very remote possibility no external
authority can issue orders to New Zealand. No taxes flow to another
government No laws bind New Zealanders without their own con-
sent. Moreover, for the most part this has been true since 1856.
Control over native policy was briefly delayed. Until recently New
Zealand laws could probably not be applied outside her own territory,
and the British parliament had a technical right which early lapsed
virtually unused except in special spheres like the merchant shipping
to make laws binding upon her. Moreover, before World War I,
New Zealand, like other overseas British countries, had no right to
an independent foreign policy. However, in spite of these and other
limitations the ordinary New Zealander for close on ninety years has
obeyed laws and paid taxes voted by his own representatives. When
he has continued to obey British law and to follow policy laid down
in London, this has been for the same reason that he wore English
clothes, played English games, and spoke the English language : there
was no legal compulsion, but it never occurred to him to do other-
wise. Ever since he or his father became a New Zealancjer, he has had
the right to regulate his. own life in his own way, subject only to
rules and customs which were under his own control.
In practice, of course, constitutional law is no sure guide to the
realities of power. In a world where the ethics of the jungle are still
lustily alive, no legal dodges can make the poor man the equal j>f the
rich or the small country equally free with the great. True, as a
77
78 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
partner in the British Commonwealth, New Zealand ha$ often had a
certain small share of great-power status. Within the Common-
wealth, however, she has necessarily been a junior partner, and the
fruitful intimacy with which she has been bound to the British eco-
nomic system has been one of the many factors limiting freedom of
action. Sentiment, economic forces, and a sense of isolation have all
played their part in making New Zealand the last of the Dominions
to claim independence of judgment. Yet however devotedly many
New Zealanders cling to the vision of British leadership, and how-
ever inexorably practical realities circumscribe constitutional liber-
ties, there is a big field wherein this country can and must plan its
own destinies. And the field is growing, for the facts are too strong
for the sentimentalists. New Zealanders, though British to the core,
are becoming New Zealand British, and the world presents them
with problems which cannot merely be referred to London for atten-
tion. Life marches on, and in the daily round of petty decisions New
Zealanders, like everyone else, must play their part in the framing of
a new order- They too must abandon long-established habits of
thought and action, and face fundamental changes in their situation.
It is hard, for instance, to see how New Zealand can retain the glori-
ous economic certainty that was based on a permanently expanding
British market for her goods. The future cannot be as simple and
clearcut as the past, when the leadership of London and the might of
the British navy were axiomatic. It is symbolic of change, for in-
stance, that in 1942 the naval defense of New Zealand passed from
British to United States control ; and it is significant, too, that so few
noticed the change, and that those who did notice it were well con-
tent New Zealand, like other countries, has quietly accepted Anglo-
American co-operation as a fundamental fact, in the implied faith
that it is a permanent feature of world politics. In the world of the
next generation, of which this is merely one symptom, the stage will
be held by the mighty play of Washington ^md London, of Moscow
and Chungking. Nevertheless, New Zealanders naturally assume that
the life of the ordinary New Zealander, the food he eats, the laws he
obeys, the ideas in which he believes, will be as much tinder his con-
trol in the future as in the past. And though material wealth and
security may come less readily, or from different sources, there may
GOVERNMENT 79
be increased opportunities for independent and constructive thought.
New Zealand is as watertight a democracy as it can be made by
ordinary constitutional arrangements, which are, of course, modeled
on those of England. The "government" is in the hands of a cabinet
of ministers nominally appointed by the governor-general as repre-
sentative of the king, but actually responsible to parliament. The
cabinet is usually a committee of the leading members of the party
which for the time being has the majority in the House of Repre-
sentatives. The leader of that party will be prime minister and key
man in the whole official machine of government. His influence will
naturally depend to some extent on his own personality and on the
general political situation. In the ordinary way, however, the prime
minister will have a decisive voice in choosing his fellow ministers
and in laying down the government's general policy. He will preside
at cabinet meetings and have the special function of organizing his
colleagues into a team. From the point of view of the country as a
whole, and of' all other countries, he will have a supreme right to
speak for the New Zealand people. Yet he can only hold his position
while he has the support of his team of ministers and of parliament.
That is, in the first instance, he must keep control of the forty or
fifty members of his own parliamentary party; at any time, a group
of them can turn against him and perhaps vote him from office, or
bring about an appeal to the people. In any case a general election
must be held normally at least once in every three years, when in
theory the mass of the people choose the men and the principles by
which they wish to be governed. Moreover, the masses can take a
genuine part in this process. For half a century every adult has had
one vote, and no more, in parliamentary elections. Political issues in
a small country often look relatively straightforward and are habitu-
ally discussed with the greatest vigor. There is very little illiteracy,
and almost every elector can, if he wishes, read the voluminous press
reports and propaganda material which from time to time can flood
the country; furthermore, in, recent years the more important parlia-
mentary debates have been broadcast, so that the elector can keep
close watch on his representative. There can be few countries where
the ordinary man can get so clear a picture of political issues and of
the results of government policy for which he ultimately is responsi-
8o UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
ble. Moreover, he takes the matter seriously. Voting is not compul-
sory, but in 1938, for instance, 93.43 per cent of the men on the roll
exercised their votes, and 92.27 per cent of the women. It is notable,
too, that voters do not take their opinions ready-made from the
press. In recent years the daily press has been almost unanimously
and very strongly anti-Labor : a fact which has not prevented the
Labor party vote from forging ahead. The Labor vote, in fact, in-
creased in each general election since 1905, but especially since World
War I, reaching over 530,000 (or 56 per cent of the votes 'cast) in
1938.
In outward shape and in constitutional law New Zealand govern-
ment still follows remarkably closely the model of British democracy
and for the most part has only deviated from it in ways which
strengthen the people's control. There is no hereditary caste, for
example, identified with a second chamber, as with the House of
Lords; the elder statesmen of the Legislative Council are nominated
for a period of seven years and seldom make their voices heard.
Members of the lower house must face their electors every three
years in place of every five; and though it is still by no means easy
for an obscure person to fight his way into parliament, it is at least
easier than in Britain. In a small country it is possible for the in-
dividual citizen, to make personal contacts not only with his own
member of parliament but even with cabinet ministers; and some-
times the public business must wait while one of the chief men in
the' state listens to the tale of private woe. The government is mani-
festly not something remote and inaccessible, outside and above the
people. On the contrary there can be few countries in which the im-
portance of the government in daily life is more frequently and forci-
bly brought home to citizens, or in which key men are more freely
accessible to the people.
Yet all this does not mean that in New Zealand the principles of
the British constitution have at last had free rein and have in them-
selves set up a perfect democracy. As in every country that has bor-
rowed political ideas from Britain, and as in Britain itself, times
have changed. New duties have been thrown onto governments, new
centers of political power have developed, and new forms of demo-
cratic control have been devised right outside the field of orthodox
GOVERNMENT 81
constitutional law. Correspondingly, new functions have been ful-
filled by old institutions. Names often are unchanged, forms and
ceremonies date back to feudalism, though the functions, they served
have died and others have crept in silently to take their place : and
the unobservant wax hot as parliament in 1943 fails to play the same
part in the community as it did in the golden days of a happier gen-
eration. Yet the new dispensation is not necessarily less vital or less
democratic.
The British constitution grew out of the need to check the execu-
tive. By gradually winning control over taxation, power to veto par-
ticular laws, and the right to eject an unpopular minister, Parliament
learned how to keep a possibly tyrannical king within bounds. As
vigilant watchdogs, members of parliament could prevent things
from being done, and they did so traditionally in the name of the
people as a whole, however narrow might be the class which in fact
they represented. Nowadays, however, the demand is for positive
leadership, not for laissez faire. Freedom is to be found, not in the
mere absence of interference by some outside authority, but in cor-
rect and very positive action by the state. Clearly, then, constitutional
machinery originally devised to prevent action must somehow be
used to insure that action is both energetic and. efficient. Arrange-
ments growing out of a stable, hierarchical England of the eight-
eenth century must be adapted not only to a fast-moving, industrial
twentieth-century England but to the equalitarian, social-service New
World community of New Zealand. Whereas in the older society
political and moral issues predominated and economic arrangements
were left to look after themselves, in New Zealand the state can be
seen more truly as a vast organization of economic administration.
It is inevitable that new devices and new ideas should grow up to
meet this fundamental revolution.,
In the first place, representation cannot possibly work according
to the basic naive principle that the people every three years will
choose agents to speak and govern in its name land in strict accord-
ance with its ideas. The electorate as a whole can have no clear grasp
of the details of that mass of business which will be decided for-
mally at least in parliament. Nor can electors of their personal
knowledge often pick out individuals to whom they are willing to
82 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
give a free hand. Sometimes such men will stand as independents,
but in general the elector's choice will be simplified by the party
system. As a general election approaches, each party will prepare its
fighting program, which will be a subtle mixture of detailed promises
and statements of general policy. The elector, faced with rival plat-
forms and bearing in mind the character of the leaders and the past
records of individuals and parties alike, will make his choice and vote
for the local representative of the party he favors. Maybe he does
not know the man, or thinks nothing of him as a person. He must
vote for him notwithstanding, secure in the knowledge that he is
voting for a policy, for a prime minister whom the local candidate,
be he knave or fool or wise man, must normally support to the politi-
cal death. As a rule, electors do not vote for individuals but for the
representatives of rival machines ; though when the election is over,
it sometimes turns out that the individual has his uses. Political
parties, in short, dominate elections, and the parties are to a large
extent prefabricated outside the constitution. They must run the
gauntlet of a general election from time to time, but it is an open
question whether this ordeal has more influence over their policy and
personnel than has the steady pressure of their day-to-day contacts.
There are at present two main parties in New Zealand, each of
them with a nation-wide organization. The National party, political
legatee of the old United and Reform parties, is at present (1943)
the official opposition. Its constitution is based on the roll of party
members in each constituency. They choose the local parliamentary
candidate and also the committee which sends delegates to divisional
councils and ultimately to the party conference. This conference,
which also includes delegates from women's and young people's or-
ganizations, is presumably the final governing authority, and elects
the dominion council to administer the party's affairs* In principle,
then, each private individual has an equal right to enroll as a member
and share in controlling party policy. In reality, however, it is well
known that the National party's main support comes from such sec-
tions of the people as the farmers, the businessmen, and the profes-
sional meant of the cities* Alongside the democratically elected Na-
tional party organization, which functions for short periods and for
limited purposes, there are solid and continuously active organiza*
GOVERNMENT 83
tions like the Farmers' Union, the employers' and the manufacturers'
federations, the chambers of commerce, and the New Zealand branch
of the British Medical Association, organized for the specific pur-
pose of protecting the interests of their members in every sphere,
including that of politics. It is only reasonable to suppose, therefore,
that those who frame policy for the National party will have an eye
not only to what they as individuals consider the best interests of
New Zealand or what they think will win elections, but also to the
views held by their organized supporters. Before ever a policy can
be framed and laid before the people, there will be several preliminary
battles to be fought. Each of the main organizations will try, suc-
cessfully or otherwise, to define its own ideas. There will, perhaps,
be a trial of strength between two such organizations' as the Farmers'
Union and the Federation of Manufacturers, which agree on which
party they prefer, but whose views on details of policy do not neces-
sarily coincide. The ultimate decision of election policy may well de-
pend much more on the outcome of such conflict (or discussion)
than on the views of the unorganized, individual party members.
Yet if democracy consists in giving the ordinary man an influence
over his own fate, all this is not necessarily undemocratic. It merely
shifts the scene of his activity. Instead of expressing himself through
the ballot box at election time he can have his say inside a noncon-
stitutional body, secure in the knowledge that through it he can
influence not only the party of his choice but also its rivals. No gov-
ernment, however securely seated in parliament, can comfortably
ignore the wishes of a powerful pressure group, whether composed
of its habitual supporters or not.
The National party's affiliations are none the less real because
unwritten or because they rely essentially on the close personal con-
tacts and community of interest which knits together the commercial
men and the leaders of the farmers. Nevertheless, the alliance be-
tween farmers and the businessmen who sell things to them and
manage their money has often proved an uneasy one, and the Na-
tional party and its predecessors have suffered in political strength
through the absence of that organic solidity that has always marked
the Labor party.
Labor party branches are composed, like those of the National
84 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
party, of private citizens; but they share control of the movement
with affiliated organizations, which normally are trade-unions. Dele-
gates from branches and unions form executive committees in each
electorate, and labor representation committees ; and in turn delegates
from labor representation committees, plus those from branches and
affiliates in proportion to membership, comprise the party's supreme
governing authority, the conference. Both in the branches, there-
fore, and in the national conference, trade-unions hold a powerful
position. At the outbreak of war there were about 200,000 members
of recognized trade-unions, or about half the wage earners in the
country : for all those working in industries covered by Arbitration
Court awards are compelled to join the union concerned. Since 1937
these men and women have had a solid organization of their own,
the Federation of Labor, to co-ordinate the work of the individual
unions, and the annual Easter conference of the Labor party is al-
ways preceded by the annual conference of the Federation of Labor.
Funds drawn from trade-unionists are the main source of income of
the political Labor party an income automatically increased by the
boost given to trade-union membership by compulsory unionism. The
financial strength of trade-unionism makes it no longer true that
Labor's Nationalist opponents are supported by almost all those
individuals and organizations who can afford to spend money on
politics.
Yet it does not follow that the Labor party is merely the political
reflection of trade-unionism, or that Labor politicians are bound
hand and foot by the instructions of the Federation of Labor. The
Federation, of Labor, and still more the Labor party as a whole, are
huge organizations; they reach decisions not merely by counting
votes but through the ability, activity, and determination of key men.
The party's conference is a body comparable in size to the British
House of Commons, and like the Commons can only get through its
business by careful organization; and this inevitably throws power
into the hands of the executive- Provided the national executive of
the party keeps in close touch with the national, council of the Fed-
eration of Labor and with the leaders of the parliamentary party, and
provided their policy is not unduly out of line with popular senti-
ment, their will is likely to prevail. Moreover, habits of discipline arc
GOVERNMENT 85
traditionally ingrained in the movement as a whole. For a poor man's
organization challenging the "natural" or at least the established
rulers of society, union plainly was strength, and in politics as in
industrial strife discipline was a primary virtue. If it was essential
to the health of the Labor party that each man should be able to
express his considered judgment through the right channels it
was equally essential that he should rally wholeheartedly behind his
leaders in defense of the policy ultimately adopted. Private discon-
tent must be subordinated to the good of the whole.
In short, just as the centers of power in the country as a whole
cannot be found merely by analyzing constitutional law, so the rela-
tions between leaders and followers in the labor movement and be-
tween politicians and unionists cannot be discovered simply from the
constitution of the Labor .party. In both spheres personalities are
vital, and so are groups and meeting places which are quite unknown
to the constitution. A good illustration of this is the caucus system.
In its early days in parliament, Labor was in a constant minority and
learned to make the most of its small numbers by strict discipline.
The group acted as a unit, and on all important issues it followed the
policy endorsed by caucus ; that is, by a meeting of the parliamentary
party as a whole. To the present day, candidates make the caucus
pledge: "that if elected to Parliament I will vote on all questions of
policy in accord with the decisions of a majority at a duly constituted
meeting of the parliamentary representatives of the Party."
The same system has been copied, though with less rigidity, by-
Labor's opponents. Accordingly, before the leader qf either party is
likely to commit himself deeply to a new policy, and before any im-
portant matter is brought before parliament, deep preliminary dis-
cussion will take place in the caucus room. In the case of either party
a f ull-dress debate may take place, rather like parliament in minia-
ture, and members will appear at the House on the following day
knowing exactly what the voting will be. Torrents of eloquence will
be expended in public, and sometimes a really useful and constructive
debate will take place. Only in the most exceptional cases will any
vital change be made, however, without giving the caucus of the
government party a chance to reconsider things. The essential deci-
sions as to what shall be done, and when, are made, not in parlia-
86 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
ment, whose proceedings are fully reported and broadcast through-
out the country, but behind the jealously secret walls of caucus
rooms. In theory the people's representatives, acting under a vigilant
public eye, choose the prime minister and his ministers and by con-
stant supervision insure that these high dignitaries frame laws and
administer them according to the will of the people. In practice, the
people merely express a broad preference by th$ way they vote or
refrain from voting on election day, and the details of policy, on
which all depends, are hammered out by a complex of partly subter-
ranean forces. Caucus is now the instrument by which the final deli-
cate operation is performed of weighing up the balance of forces
which mold political action ; and, in defiance of theory, parliamentary
procedure is only one element in the situation and not necessarily the
controlling one.
Nor are party programs necessarily a sound guide as to what will
be done. The National party got on for some years with an attitude
rather than a policy. It regards state interference in economic matters
as an evil in principle, though sometimes a necessary evil, and prom-
ises to stand up "for private enterprise, personal responsibility and
individualism and the preservation of existing society." Such gen-
eral aims, however, do not necessarily guide an administrator in
making detailed decisions. On the other hand, the Labor party has an
objective the socialization of the means of production, distribution,
and exchange which no one but the most panicky conservative ex-
pects to rule its immediate actions. In practice the difference between
the two existing parties is defined not so much by their professed
objectives as by their actions over a long period of years, or perhaps
more clearly in the nature of those powerful nonconstitutional asso-
ciations with which they are linked* It is a matter of general attitudes
the difference in interests and point of view between those who
have grown up as owners or as employees in a capitalist system. It is
true that capitalism in New Zealand has been profoundly modified
by the trend of events and by state action: the very terms "owner*'
and "employee" have quietly changed their meaning. Yet the differ-
ence in viewpoint remains, and incidentally it is a difference of the
kind that can often be expressed by administrative actions without
alteration of the law. Voters choose between two tendencies as much
GOVERNMENT 87
as between two contrasting sets of detailed proposals, for the odd
fact is that however widely the politicians and their supporters may
differ in their view of life, the need to conform to the well-established
opinions of the common man reduces them to a singular unanimity
on immediate aims and will similarly discipline their successors. At
the general election of 1938, electors who read both party platforms
found that the detailed means by which the Nationalists proposed to
preserve existing society were almost identical with those by which
Labor hoped to lead the country painlessly toward the joys of social-
ism. And the same phenomenon has been noted in key by-elections
up to the present time (1943). Political programs may abound in
discreet references to ultimate objectives; but when the ordinary
man inquires as to what steps are immediately in prospect and how
they will affect him in particular, he finds that circumstances have
set narrow limits to the variety of politicians' promises.
In the first place, the conservative's retreat toward genuine un-
restricted private enterprise and the untouchability of private prop-
erty is firmly blocked. His most vehement supporters have become
accustomed to various forms of state help and regulation (sometimes
known discreetly by other names, and sometimes openly fought for,
as when employers have campaigned in defense of compulsory arbi-
tration) ; and they have no intention of being left naked in a world
of cutthroat competition. Again, New Zealand's general humani-
tarian tradition, which was a power in the land before any leader
had heard of socialism, has been turned into an absolute value by the
Great Depression. The sufferings of that period, which have a
legendary force after nearly ten years of recovery, would rise up to
blast the career of anyone rash enough to deny the broad conception
of the state as universal benefactor. It would be risky to challenge
the term social security as an ideal, and fatal to forecast a cut in
social services. In her view of the duties of the state in economic
matters, New Zealand has followed the same path as every other
country in the years since the depression, but with greater enthusi-
asm. However heated the debate about details of policy, there can be
,no question that the state has a direct responsibility to protect the
community's prosperity and to preserve for the individual at least a
minimum standard of life.
88 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
But if the road to laissez faire is blocked, so is that toward social-
ism. New Zealand agriculture, for instance, is in the hands of a
multitude of small farmers, the vast majority of whom react vio-
lently against the very word socialism, or even against the idea of
nationalization. Many a farmer who has spent most of his life vir-
tually working on a salary for a financial institution or an absentee
owner is a violent supporter of the principle of private property.
Moreover, there is little drive, from the traditional opponents of the
existing order, for the basic reorganization of society. The trade-
union organization is undoubtedly powerful; but its tradition is that
of the Arbitration Court rather than of class war, and it is very
doubtful whether the average trade-unionist, or even the average
trade-union official, is deeply interested in socialist principle. They
are busy earning a living and fighting for improvements in wages
and conditions of work. In New Zealand there is little of the des-
perate urge that comes from utter destitution or the fear of it. On
the whole, life has been fairly easy, and prospects for an industrious
person, though not dazzling, have been reasonably encouraging. And
so, while the Federation of Labor has worked steadily ahead, serving
the interests of the worker in obvious and practical ways, it has not
harbored the revolutionary thinker and sent him forth to sting the
politician into tearing up society by the roots. The very size of the
trade-union organization has made it more and more representative
of New Zealand opinion as a whole, and therefore more inclined to
favor steady progress under state leadership rather than experiment
based on socialist theory.
This trend has, indeed, been challenged. In 1912 and 1913 there
.was a short-lived but violent attempt to give the Labor movement a
definitely Marxian basis ; and in more recent years there has been a
.small Communist party which has played a part in politics, A few
trade-unions still have a certain reputation for "militancy," but
unionists have been suspicious of Communists* fanaticism and "for-
eign control," and in the main communism has had a purely negative
importance. It is, for instance, a concept against which many people,
especially in the country, still react with emotional violence; and the
leaders alike of political and of industrial labor have feared the dis*
ruptive influence of the Communist party all the more so perhaps
GOVERNMENT 89
because it now lays claim to some of the battle cries with which they,
in the fairly distant past, once tried to lead the working class.
Though numerically only a handful, however, Communists have kept
alive a line of critical thought which has played its part in preserving
the vitality and variety of New Zealand political thinking; and in
one sense they may be taken as an example of the tendency in New
Zealand politics to throw up small groups to challenge the two-party
system. The Labor party was once itself originally such a group, till
it became strong enough to stand as official opposition in a two-party
system. Since 1940 there has been a minority labor movement, the
Democratic Labor party, which unsuccessfully challenged the leader-
ship of the existing cabinet On the other side there have often been
businessmen's movements, "people's" parties, "democrats," and
groups with some specific policy to push, such as social credit ; and
independents have often found their way into parliament. Recent
elections, however, have been unfriendly to small groups, and the
general elections of 1935 and 1938, in particular, confirmed the grip
of the two main parties over the New Zealand parliamentary system.
Small parties, then, do not in practice alter the general picture or
focus attention on social theory; and friends as well as critics of
socialism in New Zealand have been inclined to take its principles on
trust and to be guided by their common sense and benevolent instinct
in each individual case as it arises. Lack of drive from either con-
servatives or radicals, then, makes sudden or violent change unlikely;
and, as in most modern states, the very progress of state socialism
slows up further change. Big organizations, whether state or private,
notoriously have a slow tempo, at least when it comes to the framing
and carrying out of new policy decisions ; and generally speaking, the
bigger the organization, the longer it takes to reach decisions on new
policy or to carry out instructions which involve a break with rou-
tine. In New Zealand, though the small producer is tenacious of life,
big questions fall more and more into the hands of big organizations.
Some are government departments. Others are technically private
firms and institutions. Nevertheless, firms and departments which in
principle are independent are driven by necessity into dose collabora-
tion. In a small country bridges are easily built; a telephone call or
lunchtime talk, a quiet word at a Home Guard parade or parents'
90 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
working bee at a suburban school, may effectively link up independent
institutions and thus foi;m a living part of the country's public ad-
ministration. Moreover, the forces drawing together policy- formers,
whether public or private employees, have been powerfully reinforced
by the processes of depression, recovery, and war. It might be a ques-
tion of some big unit suspected of abusing its power over the lives of
the people; or an organization (or whole class of producers) threat-
ened with ruin; or a war situation which forced the state to take
responsibility for raw materials and marketing and for large-scale
defense construction for New Zealand and Allied forces. In any case
the conclusion was the same: state action, often using existing insti-
tutions or men trained in the old system. Though there is some
noisy protest for the contented are generally silent about their satis-
faction the irresistible pressure of facts and of public opinion has
increasingly knit up the economic organization of the country into a
single whole and laid the responsibility for misfortunes (though not
necessarily the credit for successes) on the government.
Many hands share the labor of administering New Zealand's
politico-economic system, but probably the lion's share of toil falls
on the Public Service. The number of public servants is legion but
can only be vaguely guessed at. A recent estimate is that there were
well over 80,000 at the outbreak of war; that would be about one in
eight of those classed by the statistician as "actively engaged" (a
category broadly like the "gainfully employed" of the United States
census). Moreover, these figures do not touch those thriving firms
whose main activity (and profit) is to do the government's business.
So big a body of men and women must be broadly representative of
the community as a whole, and this is all the more likely because of
the methods of recruitment and organization. There is always a
chance that men with special qualifications (or specially powerful
friends) will find a niche, and at times of sudden expansion (as since
I 935) numbers of adults are necessarily taken in; but for the most
part the civil service is recruited young. As the boy or girl leaves
secondary school a choice is made, perhaps by pure chance, among
a big range of government departments and private firms, and for
the most part the young civil servant progresses in much the same
way as his colleague in the commercial world. He gets as low a
GOVERNMENT 911
salary, but probably has greater security and may ultimately get more
opportunities through being a member of a bigger organization.
Granted reasonable competence on his part and the absence of major
depressions, he can rely on steady though modest promotion. He has
well-defined rights and is protected by a judicial system from any
political interference or from victimization by his immediate su-
periors. Apart from the Railways and the Post and Telegraph De-
partments the great majority of civil servants are under the control
of the Public Service Commissioner, who is responsible only to
parliament, not to the government of the day. He makes all appoint-
ments, except some of the very highest. He promotes the worthy,
disciplines the recalcitrant, and controls the system of classification
which determines salaries and prospects, in all cases subject to the
right of appeal by the disappointed. It is for him to hold the delicate
balance between seniority and special merit which is a fundamental
problem in any civil service.
llie civil servant is kept up to the mark, not only by the activities
of his superiors, headed by the Public Service Commissioner, but by
a suspicious public. An instinct to suspect the official and to believe
in the merits of "the ordinary citizen" is part of the tradition of
British democracy and is shared by laymen and public servants alike.
And, so far as can be judged, the general result is satisfactory. The
New Zealand civil service does its job with diligent efficiency. The
heads of some departments are outstanding men in their generation,
.and in most of them there are men of enthusiasm and ideas far tran-
scending, their routine duties. The word bureaucracy has an un-
pleasant flavor and is freely used as a term of abuse; but to say the
least, there is no evidence that the public service falls behind the
commercial community in competence and public spirit, and no rea-
son to doubt that in carrying out a given policy it would hold its own
with comparable services overseas.
Whether it, in conjunction with the other organs of government,
is an adequate instrument for controlling the ambitious schemes of
national planning on which New Zealand is embarked is another
matter. Public servants, like politicians, share the general views of
the community as a whole, and in New Zealand the mental climate is
unfavorable to certain qualities that must be vital in a planned econ-
92 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
otny. New Zealanders, it is often said, shy off the pains of pure re-
search. Though they proudly inhabit a social laboratory, they shun
the advice of the theorist and scientific investigator and turn instinc-
tively to the practical man with his patiently accumulated background
of detailed experience. Moreover, leadership is hard in a country so
-deeply gripped by the principle of social equality. Thus, for example,
the civil service dislikes the Brtish plan of picking out academically
brilliant men and giving them a start in administratve posts. This
practice implies that some men are born leaders and can be picked by
artificial tests while others are by nature routine men only, and (the '
argument runs) it inflicts injustice on the good man who is born into
the wrong economic class and cannot afford to prove himself in the
academic world. The better plan, according to this line of thought, is
to recruit men- and women young and then to give opportunities to
those who show that they could profit from it to get higher academic
training; but the result is not always the same. Again, when it comes
to the business methods of cabinet, that supreme repository of po-
litical power, New Zealand tradition often seems to insist to a para-
lyzing extent on the equal importance of all men and all problems.
Ministers habitually tour the country, and whether on tour or in
their Wellington offices, they are traditionally accessible to citizens.
When cabinet meets, its time may be taken up by matters of purely
local importance. When, as is often the case, one or two ministers
are key men, their desks are swamped with files, and policy decisions
are held up while an overworked man plods his way through an end-
less mass of problems ranging from the profoundest matters of high
policy to the most minute detail of daily action. Only too often long-
range problems are left untouched while prime ministers wrestle with
cases of individual hardship.
All this is in a sense very democratic. Men like to shake ministers
by the hand and receive letters signed, even if not written, by mem-
bers of cabinet They suspect private secretaries as a device to pre-
serve politicians from the fresh blasts of public opinion, and like to
feel that decisions are made by "the people's elected representatives"
rather than by "an anonymous official" who may happen to be the
expert who knows all about the matter in hand. Yet this habit among
leaders of doing everything for themselves instead of delegating au-
GOVERNMENT 93
thbrity, this implied assumption that the time of a prime minister,
who holds the fate of a nation in his hands, is no more valuable than
that of anyone else, can be fatal to statesmanship.
Matters were different, forty or fifty years ago, when the present
tradition became well established. When the country had half its
present population, when its problems were relatively simple, and
when only a few of them fell on the state, a volcanic personality
like "King Dick*' Seddon could without disaster be at once a policy-
forming prime minister and a forceful administrator, an astute party
manager and an indefatigable maintainer of contacts with ordinary
men. Today these functions must be divided, otherwise even the most
diligent toiler must leave part of the field untilled especially those
remote, more distant, and less clamorous problems which are in
the long run often the most important. Moreover, if New Zealand
tradition insists that statesmen must lead their troops from the front
line, with the dust of battle perpetually in their eyes, there is no cor-
responding tradition that the strategical leadership should be sup-
plied by the Public Service. On the contrary, though departmental
heads must often be policy makers, its firmly held tradition is that
this is purely a matter for politicians, while civil servants merely
carry out the will of their masters. Moreover, the service is still apt
to think in watertight compartments, relying on cabinet to link up
departmental efforts into a national policy. Something has been done
by committees of key men from different organizations, and war-
time needs may effectively break down some obstinate barriers.
Material is there which could be molded into an economic general
staff. But it is not yet a matter of declared national policy that there
must be someone, somewhere, whose function it is to think and plan
ahead, with machinery to gather and co-ordinate information, and
with the authority to make his voice heard.
In short, means have not yet been found for preventing key men
from overworking and swamping themselves with detail to an ex-
tent which may cripple imaginative leadership. Yet New Zealand's
machine of government is not only reasonably efficient : it is essen-
tially democratic in the sense of being sensitively in tune with the
life of the community as a whole. This result is achieved by devices
drawn from British experience but radically changed from the orig-
94 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
inal models. The people's will is revealed not only through the bal-
lot box but through countless private organizations. Parliament is
not so much the supreme organ of government as a channel for the
expression of opinion; according to the original meaning of the
term, it is a place where men speak their mind, and perhaps speak
it all the more freely because they know that nothing they are likely
to say will have the smallest influence on the immediate decision.
Members of parliament, deprived of their one-time functions of leg-
islation and government, are channels through which individual
electors can make contact with Authority and get the impression
not always illusory that they can have 'their views and requests
favorably considered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Farming
A country's industries naturally determine the life of its people,
and New 1 Zealand is as it always has been predominantly a farm-
ing country. But geography, history, and human will have combined
to give this basic farming industry a well-marked character. It is, in
the first place, scattered widely and fairly , evenly throughout the
country, without even a single predominant center for the processing
and marketing of produce, .which would have become the natural
habitat for secondary industries. In neighboring Australia, for in-
stance, a capital city may hold well over half the people of its entire
state; in New Zealand the largest city, Auckland, holds roughly
13 per cent of the population. Even if a place with 1000 inhabitants
be called a town, 40 per cent of New Zealanders live in the country.
Taking occupations, over 28 per cent of income earners are primary
producers, while a goodly proportion of so-called industrialists,
financiers, and administrators spend their time almost entirely in
the difficult process of getting produce from farms to consumers.
There can be few countries in which the townsman is closer to the
farm than in New Zealand, not only in the literal sense for towns
are small but because he has friends and relatives on the land or
because his occupation is linked up with the handling of farm pro-
duce.
He is all the more likely to have personal links with the farming
community because New Zealand is a country of relatively small
holdings. One phase of New Zealand farming was pioneered along
Australian lines : by squatters with huge holdings on which they ran
nimble, bony Merino sheep brought from Australia. Refrigeration,
however,' put a solid premium on dairy cows and on placid, meat-
95
96 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
producing sheep, both of which preferred level ground, and which
could be profitably raised on small farms. Behind this economic
trend stood the legislator, determined that the small man should
have his chance. Economics and legislation between them pushed
the Merino and the big runholder back into the hills: fine wool
ceased to predominate, and had to take its place in the New Zealand
system with fat lambs and dairy produce. Today there are about
80,000 separate farm holdings, and among them variety is infinite;
yet one may speak of a "typical" New Zealand farm. It is a relatively
small affair, in cow country not more than 100 acres and often very
much less, and in the mixed farming regions of the South Island
roughly 300 acres. The farmer working these modest estates is his-
torically the backbone of New Zealand economy,
A small farm may be a very prosperous one, granted successful
adaptation to New Zealand conditions. One particular difficulty to
be overcome is lack of labor. From earliest days farm labor has been
scarce and expensive. Whether this is due to the farmer's failure to
provide suitable conditions, or to the laborer's disinclination for the
steady grind of farm work, the fact is that farmers have felt them-
selves driven both into long hours of labor and into expensive devices
to save human effort. This is not merely a matter of buying an
up-to-date milking machine and separator, a refrigerator for the
house, and a new-model car. A well-planned milking shed and draft-
ing yards are equally important, and they depend, not on expensive
machinery, but on work done about the farm carpentry and con-
creting, and well-placed fences and gates. No device can save the
dairy farmer from getting up at the crack of dawn; but the pro-
portion of the day that must be spent on routine work is governed
largely by his own attitude and caplcity. Nothing can prevent wild
rushes of seasonal work on sheep farms ; but wise planning can re-
duce the flood of work to a well-controlled torrent and insure ample
intervals for recovery. In both cases it is an incessant battle, but
with a fair combination of skill and luck it is not necessarily a losing
one. The obstacles to be overcome are for the most part known ;
knowledge is increasing; and the number of factors genuinely be-
yond the farmer's control has been steadily reduced in recent years.
FARMING 97
The use made of these opportunities is a matter for the taste and
foresight of the individual.
Some farms are owned by town dwellers and run by managers,
but for the most part the owner lives and labors on the soil. The
farmer who merely supervises the work of others is virtually un-
known. He himself (often aided by his wife) splashes through the
mud of Taranaki or the Manawatu or the Waikato to the cowshed.
He, if he is doing his job, will watch zealously over the grasses and
clovers of his pasture and plan the strategy of endless war against
fern and manuka, gorse, blackberry, and thistle. He handles the
sheep, drives the tractor, trains the dogs, and digs the holes for his
fences. He is often his own butcher, carpenter, and mechanic. His
'field is wide, therefore; yet his efficiency depends on the fact that
he is in many ways as highly specialized as any industrial worker.
As things have long stood in New Zealand, the fanner's comfort,
even his livelihood, depends on someone's judgment of the subtleties
of an overseas market, which in turn is controlled not only by public
policy but changing fashions and housewives' prejudices. These vital
estimates, however, are rarely made by farmers. They are the func-
tion of public agencies, not only the government but bodies like the
Meat Board and Dairy Board, on which representatives of producers,,
and the state act together, and big companies like banks and stock
and station agents which are concerned with getting produce to the
market. These public agencies may not all have given the subject
the attention it deserves ; and when they have done so, farmers are
not always receptive to their ideas. On the whole, however, they
have been responsible for such long-range planning as the farming
industry has received in recent years, and the marketing of produce
has taken place under their supervision rather than under the eye
of the farmer. Therefore, though farmers are often eloquent about
the problems of marketing and the mistakes made in the handling
of produce, their skill and interest are mainly confined to the
technique of production. Only too often it is assumed that all that
. is necessary for the prosperity of the individual and of the country
is to continue to produce more and more of the same kind of things
by methods whose excellence is an article of inherited faith.
Farming, especially farming for sale to a distant country, seems
98 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
on the face of it an essentially hazardous occupation, vulnerable
alike to the vagaries of nature and of men. On the whole, however,
competent farmers in New Zealand have been able to meet this two-
fold challenge and to build up a remarkable degree of stability. One
reason for this is the way in which the farmer has been backed by
the community as a whole. Self-reliance in matters of detail is no
doubt of the essence of successful farming; but in a country where
so much depends on government action, farmers have realized the
need to organize themselves to see that their interests get at least
their due. In this they have been remarkably successful. The Farm-
ers' Union and the Sheep-owners' Federation are among the most
important private institutions in the country; the Women's Division
of the Farmers' Union has drawn country, women together and
provided a solid backbone for women's organizations in general;
and the voice of the farming industry has been emphatic in parlia-
ment In this the so-called country quota has played a part, for
electoral boundaries are so drawn that the country man's vote is
given 28 per cent more weight than that of the townsman. In the
past, however, such devices have scarcely been needed. The commu-
nity as a whole does not seriously question the farmer's own estimate
of his essential importance and is accustomed to the idea that farm-
ers or at least farming interests may dominate governments. It
is very significant, for instance, that the Labor government elected in
1935, which was freely criticized as containing far too few farmers,
undertook most ambitious plans for stabilizing the farming industry
and showed itself on critical occasions very sensitive to farmer pres-
sure. The attention paid to farming interests by parliament does not
necessarily mean that a government will act on any given issue as
farmers desire. Toward the end of a parliament's life one could
travel far in farming districts and hear little said of the government
of the day, whatever its political complexion. It does mean, however,
that when it comes to the point, the farmer can rely on parliament
to do its utmost to prevent so important a section of the community
from suffering "undue 11 hardship from the operation of economic
laws* To allow any section of the people so to suffer would be seri-
ously contrary to the New Zealand view of life, even though the
hardship might have been accentuated by the lack of wisdom of the
FARMING 99
victims, but it is inconceivable when it comes to a group so obviously
important and so powerfully organized as the farmers. They have
always been able to rely on the support of the state, and in times of
crisis the community as a whole helps consciously or otherwise to
cushion the blow suffered by its primary producers.
This, then, is one of the reasons why farming in New Zealand
can be a specialized industry rather than a speculation; but the basis
of the farmer's security must in the long run lie in the forces of
nature rather than of man. And, on the whole, nature has favored
the fight for security. The weather may be wildly changeable and full
of surprises, but in the aggregate it rarely fails to produce a generous
and well-distributed supply of rain and sunshine. Where it departs,
from the average, it does so with a regularity that makes adaptation
relatively easy. In some well-defined parts there is a real danger of
minor droughts in summer, and in lambing time snow sometimes
takes a savage toll in the hills. Taking the country as a whole, how-
ever, there is little of the savage alternation between good seasons
and bad that may break a farmer's heart. Again, the experts say
that the soil has its deficiencies; and if badly handled, it will exact
heavy penalties from the unskilled or from his successor. But its
weaknesses are known and can be remedied. Apart from the lore
which is handed across farmers' f ences; the state maintains efficient
research services. No one need remain long in doubt as to the par-
ticular fertilizer or rotation of crops or type of grazing that is called
for by his land. Moreover, a combination of public and private enter-
prise public predominating has provided lorries, roads, railways,
ports, and ships, and knit the whole into a well-developed system of
transport linking farm and market. Finally, there has never lacked
an overseas market for those goods which New Zealand, by reason
of her climate, soil, and transport system, was best fitted to produce.
Australian hunger for our grain gave a great stimulus to wheat
farming at a critical time for New Zealand in the iS/o's and i88o's.
Wool of the right kind and at the right price has never lacked a
market. After about 1890 meat and dairy produce were needed in
apparently unlimited quantities to feed the growing industrialized
population of the Old World. Modern New Zealand was built on
the nineteenth-century axiom that expansion of population and pro-
ioo UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
duction was a fixed law of nature. The tacit assumption that Britain
could eat all that New Zealand could grow was shared by those
(mainly in New Zealand) who planned the physical development of
the new country, and by those others (mainly in London) who di-
rected to New Zealand the necessary flood of capital. It would be
hard to say whether the greater responsibility rests with the ambi-
tious colonist or with the complacent capitalist, but in fact both the
physical equipment and the social ideas of New Zealand were
founded on the certainty that the nineteenth century would last for-
ever.
Up to the present time this apparently outrageous assumption
seemed substantially correct, in so far, at least, as it has affected
New Zealand economics ; but by the 1930*5 it was plain enough to
experts that the old system was doomed. The supremacy of British
industry was no longer unchallenged, and the British population was
becoming stationary. Like every European country, moreover,
Britain was paying heed to the arguments favoring economic self-
sufficiency, which meant among other things the building up of
British agriculture. Before the present war there were clear enough
indications that Englishmen would not much longer be able to eat
all that New Zealanders could grow; unless, indeed, their standard
of living were effectively raised. However, before the market seri-
ously shrank and forced New Zealand to plan for restriction instead
of expansion, the war once more transformed the whole situation.
None but the most shortsighted ignored the fact that this wartime
postponement of the marketing problem was temporary; but for the
time being, the demand was for increased production as New Zea-
land's main immediate contribution to the defeat of Hitler. There
were difficulties in getting food to England, and the nightmare of
shipping losses fell over the country, particularly losses of ships with
refrigeration. But fears that meat and butter might accumulate un-
shipped in vast quantities were never realized, and broadly speaking,
the situation in the early years of the war fell into the familiar pat-
tern : it was not so much a matter of finding buyers for New Zealand
produce as of seeing that prices were neither too high nor too low.
High and low prices are the hammer and anvil between which
New Zealand has been traditionally tormented* High overseas prices
FARMING
encourage the farmer toward good living and expensive equipment.
By holding out hopes of secure and growing profit, they lead some
men to buy and sell farms for mere financial speculation: one of the
main problems of New Zealand farming, therefore, is the man who
works, not as a craftsman who loves the soil and who builds for his
children and his grandchildren, but merely in order to resell at a
profit in a few years* time. He attempts to squeeze out of the land
more than its quality can produce and so exhausts the soil, at the
same time driving up the nominal value of the farm to outrageous
figures. Thus the value of the land rises to a point where the soil
can no longer give the profit required to pay for proper restocking,
top-dressing, and modern machinery; and to keep going, the farmer
must borrow money at fixed rates of interest, which in turn can only
be paid while prices hold. When they fall, the income of the farming
community may be cut by a third or more within a few years, as it
was between 1928 and 1931. Then, at best, farmers will have to cut
down expenses, and the community as a whole, which profited from
their prosperity, will share their gloom. At worst, many will find
that their incomes no longer meet the promises made while times
were good, and thousands of productive citizens will be threatened
with bankruptcy. Some are tempted to borrow more money, gam-
bling on a turn of the tide, and to continue with their former practice
of overloading the land, not now in the hope of excess profits but
in a desperate struggle to squeeze a living; and so the condition of
the land continues to fall away. But not every farmer is so blinded
by the hope of quick returns that he is unable to take a long-term
view. The country is being slowly educated to the dangers of over-
stocking and of erosion ; and even when times were at their worst,
there was many a farmer who hesitated to ruin the future of his
land and chose instead to cut to the barest minimum his current
needs. In such circumstances all must suffer, and most of all, those
who yielded to the temptation to borrow or buy on the basis of
boom values, buoyed up by the irrational hope that each depression
was the last. But the speculation has taken heavy toll of the resources
of the industry as a whole.
However, if the wild fluctuation between high and low prices fre-
quently confronted the farmer with ruin, it also pointed the way to a
102 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
remedy. In the first place, it strengthened the hold over the farmer
of the financial institutions, state-owned and private; the banks, in-
surance companies, and, above all, the stock and station agencies.
These last are among the most important and the most mysterious
influences in New Zealand life. Their origin lies back in New Zea-
land history, in the dealers who bought the produce of sheep stations
for sale in London ; and this is still their primary function. Almost
inevitably, however, they began to advance money on credit to their
clients and so turned virtually into banks. Many became merchants,
supplying the goods needed by farmers, and even ran factories and
freezing works. Some of them operated in Australia as well ; three
of the most important had headquarters in London ; and all of them
had intimate links with the British money and commercial markets.
Thus they were able to draw capital from many sources, local and
overseas, and they were one of the main instruments by which loan
money was pumped often generously, but not always wisely into
the farming industry.
Stock and station agencies, it was true, catered mainly for the
sheep man and the mixed farmer (whose main income came once
a year) rather than for dairy farmers. When refrigeration opened
up big possibilities for butter and cheese, provided they could be
properly processed, neither banks nor stock and station agencies
pushed in to finance the necessary factories. The work seemed out-
side their field, and it was dispersed and hidden in country districts in
ways unattractive to townsmen capitalists. Dairy factories, especially
if they made cheese, had to be close to the cows, so hundreds of small
units were called for; and they were supplied through co-operation.
The farmers themselves raised the capital, and almost all New Zea-
land butter and cheese is made in factories owned co-operatively by
the farmers who supply them. Incidentally, these factories are among
the biggest and most efficient of their kind in the world. Recently
these co-operative dairy companies have begun to finance their sup-
pliers with short-term loans for farm equipment; but the dairy
farmer has not paid his way by borrowing money indefinitely and
buying goods from the organization that buys his produce* For dairy
farmers as for sheep farmers, however, there was no lade in good
times of individuals and Institutions to whom they could light-
FARMING 103
heartedly turn for loans which were often as lightheartedly granted.
To such institutions, therefore, the farmer was apt to owe far more
money than he could possibly pay when prices crashed, and a finan-
cial enslavement, begun by a huge mortgage based on a belief in
permanent high prices, was complete. Yet as always, slavery- has its
compensations, and from the very extremity of farmers' indebted-
ness they could draw a certain security. With hundreds or thousands
of farmers unable to pay their way in full, their well-being became
a supreme necessity for their creditors. The financier perforce kept
his farmer client going in bad times, and in recompense took an
extra slice of his profit when the tide had turned. Moreover, since
so much of their resources was involved, powerful institutions neces-
sarily became the spokesmen and guardians of farming interests,
though not necessarily of the interests of individual fanners.
Through entanglement with the financier, in short, the farming in-
dustry became to some extent organized, and in crude and expensive
ways the extremes of prosperity and destitution were to some extent
leveled out. Moreover, this was done without sacrifice of principle.
In many cases a farmer became "under lien" to a stock and station
agent. The agent would take- the farmer's produce, supplying him
with goods in exchange. In effect the farmer worked on a salary
sometimes a generous salary for a big corporation. Nevertheless,
the rights of private property were legally safeguarded, and among
such "tied" farmers could be found some of the bitterest opponents
of any suggestion that the land should be nationalized and the farmer
should work for a salary paid by the state.
Though there is some social gain from farmers' indebtedness,
thiere is also a great loss, both in freedom for the individual and in
1 farming efficiency. When half or more of a fanner's income is swal-
lowed up in interest on his debts, even in good times, there must oc-
casionally be an irresistible temptation for him to farm his land for
present cash profit at the expense of the future. Again, in spite of
the strength and hard-headedness of financial institutions major de-
pressions demand greater resources than any private corporation can
muster. Therefore farmers, like any other citizens in distress, have
looked to the state to lead them from the morass and rarely in vain.
Each depression has seen a further experiment in state leadership,
104 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
which only too often has had to work in the worst possible condi-
tions : called in to wrestle with a desperate situation, dismissed with
curses when its efforts, or a happy turn in world affairs, have re-
lieved the tension. Nevertheless, each experiment had added to
knowledge and left a residue in habits of co-operation and institu-
tions. Over the course of years an individualistic profession slid
imperceptibly toward collectivism, because each crisis revealed prob-
lems that could only be solved by joint action. Moreover, the impact
of depression led more and more men to think that, pleasant as high
prices might be, the essential thing for the fanner was a steady and
secure income, which could perhaps be secured by pooling the returns
from exports, setting the good years against the bad and paying out
the average received over a fairly long period. If this was in fact
the remedy, it was a matter for national policy, for it was too big to
be handled by any private organization; and security, under the
benevolent supervision of the state, was more in line with the general
New Zealand view of life than was the irresponsible speculation
which had played its part in the farmers' difficulties.
The clinching argument was the Great Depression of the 1930*8
which hustled New Zealand, in company with most of the world,
along the road toward state socialism, or a New Deal Moreover,
since she had already gone farther than most countries on the prin-
ciple that the state had a duty to protect the individual from the blind
violence of economic "laws/* her antidepression measures sometimes
broke new ground. To the horror of the orthodox, a conservative
government openly proclaimed that if the letter of the law inflicted
grievous social injury, then the law must be altered. If, for example,
debts contracted in good times threatened to bankrupt half the
farmers in the country, those debts must be modified, wen at the
cost of packing the sanctity of contract and private property into
the lumber room. If a privately controlled banking system seemed
more apt to transmit depressions to New Zealand than to ward them
off, then a state-planned central bank might be superimposed with
advantage. If orthodox economic policy, as recommended by the
most noted local and overseas authorities, led to still further depres-
sion and to riots in the towns of a farmers' country, then maybe the
authorities were wrong. Long before the election of a Labor govern-
FARMING 105
ment at the, end of 1935, the depression had blasted New Zealand
far from routine measures based on past experience, and New Zea-
land fanners had benefited from a comprehensive and reasonably
coherent recovery plan which was devised in New Zealand without
slavish copying of overseas patterns. The Labor government in 1936
drove still harder along the same line. It completed and made perma-
nent the plans of its predecessors for rescuing the farming industry
from existing* financial entanglements : rnortgage debts were firmly
cut to the point where (in principle) they stood in a reasonable pro-
portion to the value of the land. Moreover, since land values were
obviously tied up with the selling price of produce, the government
summed up a generation of experiment in state control of marketing
and a century of social idealism in its scheme of guaranteed prices.
The- aim of guaranteed prices was to give the conscientious worker
a reasonable and secure return. According to the act,.the price "shall
be such that any efficient producer engaged in the dairy industry
under the usual conditions and in normal circumstances should be
assured of a sufficient net return from his business to enable him to
maintain himself and his family in a reasonable state of comfort."
The whole concept, and some of jtes phraseology, was medieval and
Elizabethan, and also specifically New Zealand. It had a strong
ethical flavor and hinted at the reciprocal duties of the state and in-
, dividual. It assumed that there was such a thing as an "efficient pro-
ducer" and a "reasonable standard of comfort" which could be
recognized by sensible people though undescribed in a statute.
Though drawn up by a "socialist" government, it assumed that the
broad forms of economic organization inherited from the past would
not be harshly swept away but would be reformed and made to pro-
duce social justice. Though friend and foe for contrasting purposes
insisted that the measure was intensely radical, it proposed to find the
wherewithal for social justice by means already soundly pioneered
to meet previous crises: stabilization of returns from exports over
a period of years, plus rationalization of marketing methods. This
had been done for the Australian and New Zealand wool industry
during World War I ; why not for the dairy farmer tinder pressure
of a crisis no less critical than that of war itself? Yet by adding the
ethical notion of a "fair deal" for farmers, ,the guaranteed price
106 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
brought in a new element that was both attractive and dangerous.
It was admirably in line with New Zealand ideology that farmers,
like everyone else willing to do a job efficiently, should get a "fair 5 '
wage and a secure position in society; but what if the "fair" wage
indicated by New Zealand standards was bigger than could be fi-
nanced by revenue from overseas ?
In the upshot the Labor government in 1936 applied guaranteed
prices only in the dairy industry. In this, the small man's branch of
primary production, the need was held to be greatest; for charac-
teristically enough the reason for action was not principle but the
practical need to set an industry on its feet again, and equally char-
acteristically every care was taken to graft the new arrangement
neatly and without disturbance onto the existing private profit sys-
tem. The whole machinery of production, for example, was left un-
touched. Privately owned farms, co-operative factories, and state
railways played their part as before. It was only as the dairy produce
was placed on the overseas steamer that it became the property of
the state and cash was paid over which quickly found Its way back
through the factory to the farmer. The actual scale of payment was
fixed by the government from year to year under the principles laid
down by 1 the act; but each farmer's share was determined, as had
long been the rule, by the amount of butterfat he had contributed.
Meanwhile the butter and cheese voyaged toward England, there to
be sold by the government through the conventional channels: the
big distributing firms on the London market. The whole process
worked smoothly, for it followed lines pioneered in the past by the
state and by the organized farmers, and the pay-out to farmers cor-
responded roughly to the actual income from overseas. The dairyman
was for the first time given real security of return, for the last great
variable factor had been tamed by the state. Granted New Zealand's
reliable weather and the existing state of knowledge about pastures
and cows, he could calculate reasonably accurately how much milk
he would get from a certain effort. He knew that his goods would
be continually tested for quality, beginning with the Babcock or the
Gerber test which for half a century have measured the amount of
butterfat in milk taken by factories; though standards of quality
were rigid, there was 'a careful code of government-supervised rules
FARMING 107
which, if properly followed in cowshed and factory, would ensure
that all was in order. With fixed selling prices, therefore, the dairy
farmer knew just where he was. Moreover, the government tried to
spread the area of security thus obtained. If the dairy farmer had a
definite price, his creditors were protected and could afford to take
lower interest. Farm labor, too, could be better paid and its wages
linked with the guaranteed price, just as the wages of shearers had
been for some years linked with the selling price of the wool they
had shorn.
Stability, in fact, held promise for all those dependent on the dairy
industry, and it was in line with deep-seated trends in New Zealand
life. Individualism, and even the state-aided efforts of the organized
producers, had failed to ( solve the farmers' essential problem. Taken
by and large, his income was high, far higher than that of most of
the world's primary producers, and he had a high standard of ma-
terial comfort. Yet even in good times he felt that much of his effort
was going for the benefit of other men and institutions, and with his
high income there seemed to be involved wild fluctuations which
periodically plunged him into disaster. It was merely following prece-
dent that the state should cut across this situation to defend the se-
curity of the common man. Yet state action, as often before, brought
a whole new flock of difficulties, political, economic, and admin-
istrative, some of which were more than ripe for solution when Hit-
ler's war made it unnecessary to find immediate answers to some
crucial questions of peacetime policy. In the past, for example, bene-
fits given to the farming community, such as higher prices, cheaper
fertilizers, and better transport, were apt to be swallowed up in
higher land values. Only too often the farmer borrowed money on
the strength of his better income, or sold out at a high figure. The
result was that in a relatively short space of time many working
farmers were back where they had started: higher gross income was
balanced by higher debts. The government hoped that it could pre-
vent this from happening again and destroying the benefits of the
guaranteed price ; but war cut short the test. Again, there was always
the fear that the volume of production might be thrown out of gear
by the new experiment. Too high a price might attract farmers to
produce more dairy goods, too low a price might push them into
io8 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
other lines, either development quite independent of the world de-
mand. This fear was, for the time being, exorcised by the categorical
imperatives of war. Finally, there was the underlying problem of
whether the whole scheme was to be controlled by economics or by
social policy. Would it merely stabilize the farmer's income over a
period of years, or would it give him the income which he and others
thought would be a fair thing in view of New Zealand costs and
conditions, irrespective of the value of his produce in the world's
markets ?
On this last issue the farmer, and more particularly the organi-
zations that spoke for him; had emphatic views and a sympathetic
audience. Moreover, they had direct access to those who made the
final decision. In the past the price of butterfat had been settled,
more or less impersonally, by a vast complex of forces chance,
overseas conditions, changing habits, the economic ideas of private
bankers, the policies of governments and of the farmers themselves.
Under guaranteed prices the decision was thrown firmly onto the
government, and interested parties saw that their task was simply to
apply to politicians all the pressure they could muster. Guaranteed
prices had substituted for a distant and abstract London market a
tangible group of men living in Wellington and striving to reach
a fair decision in the midst of a chorus of advice and criticism. This
chorus was only temporarily silenced by the outbreak of war; and
war conditions plainly created* new problems (and new opportuni-
ties) for all concerned with a delicate and dangerous experiment in
planned economics.
Though the short peacetime life of guaranteed prices was vexed
by incessant controversy as to what, if anything, was its basic eco-
nomic principle, the scheme undoubtedly pushed out the frontier of
state activity into much previously debatable territory. The idea of a
primary industry operated privately but under state control was by
no means new. For many years, for example, the wheat industry had
been so placed. For part of last century it was a major export in-
dustry, but it was checked by Australian tariffs on New Zealand
grain and by the development of Australian wheatlands; and in re-
cent years New Zealand has been barely self-supporting in wheat.
In these circumstances the wheat grower has been protected from
FARMING 109
overseas competition by a sliding scale of customs duties. He has
been paid a guaranteed price for his grain, which has been ground,
blended, baked, and finally distributed, tinder government super-
vision. Each main process from the sowing of the seed to the sale
of bread over a shop counter is done by private enterprise, but the
profit to be made at each step and the conditions of work are fixed
by the government. In the most direct way, therefore, the state makes
itself responsible for the conduct of an industry ; and it is a debatable
point whether this comprehensive control, with its compensating
security, is far removed from state socialism. Moreover, this tontrd
could be paralleled in other aspects of New Zealand farm life.
Nevertheless, until 1936 the state had not controlled a major pri-
mary industry exdept in time of war. Wheat was the most important
commodity concerned, and wheat growing was virtually confined to
one province, Canterbury. The number of producers was relatively
small, and there was no difficulty about markets. In particular, there
was no question of selling abroad. The market was local and com-
pletely secure. Surely, it might be said, if ever state control should
be able to work smoothly, it would be under such conditions. But
it was a totally different matter when the state tackled the dairy in-
dustry.
Few countries are so dependent, economically and socially, on a
sixigle industry as New Zealand is on dairy farming; and that in-
dustry lives by selling in a market over which New Zealand has no
control. To manage the local end of the business was a formidable
task, in spite of New Zealand's small size and long experience in
subtle mixtures of public and private control. In addition, however,
there ws the problem of estimating and perhaps trying to influ-
ence economic policy and popular sentiment in the parent com-
munity on the other side of the world. Many doubted whether any
government was as yet equipped to undertake these new tasks of
economic planning and diplomacy; yet no one, least of all the farmer,
would really go back to the nineteenth-century nonhdping, noninter-
fering state. It no longer is a question of whether the state shall act,
but of how its action shall be brought into harmony on the one hand
with economic possibilities and on the other with the insistent de-
mand for certain desirable social results.
i io UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
In the long run, however, the possibility of New Zealand giving
her people the security which they have sought will depend not only
on tangible things like the British demand for her goods, price fixing,
and control of quality, but on the long-term statesmanship underly-
ing the use of her resources. Moreover, this is a matter for com-
munity leadership. Though the government works some coal mines,
private enterprise is still the mainspring of almost all New Zealand's
primary production. The state regulates, finances, protects, and dis-
tributes; but, in peacetime at least, it trusts farmers and fishermen,
sawmillers and beekeepers working for private profit to keep the sup-
ply of goods flowing briskly. And though private enterprise has in
many ways done an efficient job, it has been notoriously indifferent
to some of the consequences of its actions. A classical case is that
of the allied industries of sealing and whaling, which first dragged
New Zealand into the full stream of international commerce. Seals
and whales were pursued so industriously and efficiently, and with
so complete a disregard for the need for them to breed, that so far
as New Zealand was concerned they were virtually exterminated,
and with them the industry. Today it is a news item if an odd seal
should climb onto beaches and rocks where his ancestors bred in
their thousands, and a single whaling station does a modest business.
Some of the early wheat growing was almost equally destructive;
the soil was simply mined and left exhausted. Even today the deter-
mination of enterprising men to seize the profit of the moment can
take visible toll of future prosperity.
A case in point is the tragedy of the forest, which has been carried
over from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. When the white
man came to New Zealand, it was a thickly wooded country, except
that the trees had been pushed back from the Canterbury plains
probably by Maori fires leaving them an open invitation to Euro-
pean money-makers. Generally speaking the Maori, though he made
great use of timber, did so with care and ceremony, and did not upset
the balance of plant and bird life. The white man, however, was in
a hurry. He knew little and cared less about the centuries of growth
which had gone to make the stately forests of untouched New Zea-
land. He knew only that certain trees could be sold with good profit
on the world's markets, and proceeded to mine the timber resources
FARMING in
of New Zealand without thought for the future. He knew, too, that
in certain parts of the country where it would not pay to cart timber
to the market or where the trees were commercially valueless, the
land could be cropped with immediate profit. The fire t which cleared
the land at the same time fertilized it with wood ash and gave grass
or grain a start in virgin soil. Axe and fire, therefore, cut into the
native forest and in a 1 hundred years reduced its area from thirty
or forty million acres to not much over twelve million. Moreover,
the expert today can see that, even if he is now permitted to handle
.the situation with perfect wisdom, centuries must pass before New
Zealand's forests will be producing timber to the greatest capacity
of the soil. He can see, too, that current needs must bite into existing
forests so deeply that New Zealand will be short of timber long before
his plans have matured. Today, therefore, it is urgently necessary to
plan for the welfare of New Zealanders living several hundred years
hence; and this is a type of planning where private enterprise has
not been notably successful. Profit-seeking companies have played
their part in planning for the problems of the not-so-distant future:
there are private as well as state-owned forests of quick-growing
exotic trees. But the timber supplies of three centuries ahead will
depend essentially on the wisdom of the community as a whole, as
reflected in its government.
New Zealand is paying for past greed in timber shortages present
or prospective, and in the need for hard and constructive thought
which may or may not be carried into action. But the tragedy of the
trees cannot be expressed merely in terms of timber. The forest was
an essential link in the centuries-old natural sequence which had
stored New Zealand full of agricultural resources. Trees were linked
with rainfall. Their roots played a part in holding the soil together
and in regulating the flow of springs, while their leaves and decaying
trunks built up the humus for still greater growths to follow. By
destroying them indiscriminately, the pioneer tampered with the
sources of his country's wealth. But the penalty did not fall on him.
His grain and grass could draw on the accumulated resources of
centuries, and it was only in the course of years that the well-stored
soil became exhausted. On the slopes the decaying roots of slaugh-
tered trees lost their grip, so that the earth fell a prey to torrential
ii3 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
rains and slid onto the flats and out to sea. Floods increased, for
treeless hills could not hold moisture and river beds were choked
with debris; and on hill slopes grass gave place to shingle and to
rank growths that are scorned by every useful animal.
, The destruction of the forest, like the everburning and overstock-
ing of native grass, has, then, played a big part in erosion the slip-
ping away of the soil that made New Zealand rich. Winds in some
cases have completed the process, paralleling in a small way the giant
dust storms of America. Throughout the country the hills have been
scarred, sometimes so deeply that the most careless must be appalled,
and sometimes as yet merely in bare patches significant only to the
expert But erosion is only one aspect of a still deeper problem : the
basic fertility of the soil For many centuries plant food was stored
in the soil and virtually nothing taken out ; then for decades the soil
was bled and virtually nothing put back, while the choicest products
of the country were shipped across the world. Falling returns
brought sharp penalties, and even those only concerned with short-
run profit were driven to experiment with fertilizers and new
pastures. But the community as a whole cannot be content with
short-run remedies. Artificial fertilizers have increased production
enormously," where they have been rightly used, and have made fruit-
ful wide tracts of land the pumice country -which was apparently
useless. Evidence accumulates, however, that there is southing lack-
ing in the soil thus treated ; and it may be that some diseases among
animals and men are due to the fact that nature's balance is not yet
restored New Zealand practice is still far from the Old World
maxim that whatever has been taken from the soil must somehow
be put back again.
The soil, like the forest, challenges the community; and though
public-spirited individuals play their part in meeting this challenge,
the ultimate responsibility rests clearly on the state. It is character-
istic of New Zealand that in half a dozen government departments
there are men and women who face these long-term issues with com-
petence and enthusiasm. It is equally characteristic that some of them
despair of planned action, and that half a dozen semi-independent
and sometimes mutually suspicious authorities are concerned
with the different aspects of the same problem. For all the wisdom
FARMING
of individuals, the New Zealand climate is unfriendly to leader-
ship in general, and 'more especially unfriendly when it comes to
thinking of the future to the temporary neglect of urgent current
business. Here, then, lies another problem. Will the future of the
soil be settled by scientific forethought assuming such a short cut
to be possible or will it be settled experimentally by countless in-
dividual farmers, possibly after many years of effort and much loss
to the country? One thing is plain. Slow-moving nature is demand-
ing a generation of painful thinking, as penalty for a century's light-
hearted optimism, before the white man can really learn to adapt his
farming methods to his new home which is so like, and yet so un-
like, agricultural England.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Industry
New Zealand industries have had little to do with the smoke and
grime of European or American factories, with teeming industrial
towns, with hopeless wage slavery and malnutrition. They have
grown out of farm and forest rather than out of coal mine and
smelting works ; and they have remained close to the soil.
The industrial worker of New Zealand has always been essentially
the man who processes primary produce, and this fact spells dis-
persion. From the country's earliest days, for instance, sawmilling
has been an important industry; and many sawmill workers rarely
see a town, great or small. They pursue timber in receding forests
up the sides of mountains. They convey giant logs to the mill by
lorry or tramway in earlier days by bullock dray and with strenu-
ous dexterity feed the insatiable saws. Yet however much their labor
may be lightened by machinery in modern plants, they remain crafts-
men rather than "hands," and they work alone or in small groups.
At the outbreak of war the average sawmilling plant employed
twenty men, and most of the 461 mills were in the country, so that
many of their employees worked in the bush or on the tramway, not
in the mill at aH. Dairy factories were almost as numerous 424,
with an average staff of nine. Factories making cheese must, indeed,
be close to the f arn^ for cheese is made from fresh milk, which will
not keep. Cream for butter making keeps longer and is easier to
handle (in extreme cases farms can send cream eighty or more miles
away), but for the most part it is both more convenient and more
efficient to have a factory fairly dose at hand. Up to a point efficiency
improves by working on a big scale, but thereafter gains are more
than swallowed up by difficulties in transport. The co-operative dairy
114
INDUSTRY 115
factory, therefore, which is owned and managed by neighboring
farmers, not only suits the social conditions of New Zealand: it is
economically sound as well. Many of these units are among the
biggest of their kind in the world. In the 1920*8 it was calculated that
the average New Zealand butter factory had five times the output
of the average Danish factory and four times the average in Wiscon-
sin. Yet even a giant dairy factory is a small affair compared with
a mass-production plant in a manufacturing town; and its output
depends, not on a concentration of wage earners, but on electrical
machinery and on gigantic mechanical churns which have displaced
manpower.
Dispersion and mechanization in small units mark the dairy in-
dustry, then, in the factory as well as on the farm; and the same is
broadly true, though with a different emphasis, in another major
New Zealand industry: meat freezing for export. When the New
Zealand mind grasped the fact that refrigeration had come to stay,
each district fought hard for its own freezing works. For reasons
of local prejudice as well as of efficiency the factory came to meet
the animal instead of the animal's being brought to giant factories
on the outskirts of one or two leading ports. This trend has been
partly reversed in modern times, and some provincial works have
been closed down.
As compared with dairy factories, then, freezing' works are big
units, among the biggest in the country; and many of them highly
organized and efficient, working on a chain system so that each
skilled man will perform the same gruesome task on hundreds of
carcasses each day. Freezing works are financed in orthodox ways
through limited liability companies, some of them subsidiaries of
those world-wide firms generally with headquarters in London
which control the British meat trade. Yet the freezing industry con-
forms to the general New Zealand pattern. It is widely dispersed:
there are nearly forty works, or on an average two for each port
that can handle overseas trade. Again, even the biggest plants employ
only a handful of men compared with overseas industrial standards :
the average is something over 200 per freezing works. Finally, th6se
privately owned units have long been linked in an organization,
backed by government authority and encouragement, to overcome
ii6 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the inconvenience of uncontrolled private enterprise. The Meat-pro-
ducers' Board, set tip in 1922, was composed of eight members, five
representing the producers, two nominated by the state, and one by
the stock and station agents. This board was given and has used wide
powers, especially to standardize qualities, regulate the flow of ship-
ments, and organize research and advertising.
For reasons which are part historical, part economic, then, the
great processing industries follow their raw materials into the
country; and their junior partners, the so-called true manufacturing
industries, are still more widely dispersed. It is natural that true
manufacturing should be on a small scale in New Zealand. So long
as she remains a great exporter of primary produce she must be an
importer of manufactured goods. Moreover New Zealand has very
little iron and only a moderate amount of coal and. other minerals,
and there is not muchi prospect of selling New-Zealand-made goods
abroad; nor are there many modern mass-production industries that
can work efficiently for so small and scattered a population. Never-
theless, New Zealand has never been merely a farm. Such an idea
would have been rejected with scorn by the powerful theorists who
planned the settlement; and though their ideas were swamped in the
prosperity of the graziers, they were never quite lost. Moreover, na-
ture gave some small support to the idea of a balanced and resource-
ful community. Some industries, indeed, sprang naturally from New
Zealand conditions. The early settlements, for instance, depended on
sea transport, both coastwise and overseas. Shipyards were a ne-
cessity, not only for the country as a whole, but for each individual
settlement. Small ships were built from local timber before New
Zealand became a British colony; and ship repairing in different
ports, and small-scale shipbuilding, have been carried on up to the
present day with enough efficiency to be able to make an important
contribution to the British and American war effort. Again, in a
country where communications were at first lacking, and expensive
even when provided, things which were bulky in proportion to value
cottld scarcely be brought from overseas* or even from a central' fac-
tory in New Zealand. The making of cement, tiles, and pipes, of
bricks and furniture and beer accordingly developed as provincial
industries. Native flax, too, was at first made up by innumerable
INDUSTRY
small factories near the plants from which it was gathered. But its
main use was in ropes for sailing ships, and in modern times the
industry has languished, until very recently, when flax has been made
up in a single factory into woolpacks to replace materials that could
no longer be imported. Again, it was natural that wool should be
spun and woven in New Zealand ; and though the great bulk of her
wool has always been exported, woolen mills appeared in compara-
tively early days. They, and to a greater extent the clothing factories
whiqh grew out of them, were also scattered, not only because it
seemed handy to be near the sources of raw material, but because of
provincial rivalries ; and the same kind of thing happened with boots,
shoes, and tanning, and the making of soap and candles. Finally,
printing is one of the biggest of New Zealand industries, for each
center demanded its local supply of printed material, including, often
enough, two daily newspapers.
Industries that are more or less indigenous to New Zealand in that
they process her raw materials on the spot, conform therefore to the
general pattern of dispersion and provincialism j and the same is true
of those industries that have grown out of the special difficulties of
pioneering days, or out of tariffs or embargoes. The pioneer who
lived twelve thousand miles 'from "home" had to learn upon occasion
to do without accustomed goods or to make them in his own back-
yard Resourceful gentlemen about to emigrate took lessons in shoe-
making for the same reasons that their sisters learned how to milk
cows and make cheese. None but a fool or a pedant would buy in-
ferior substitutes when London goods were to be had; but sometimes
they were not. Distance encouraged the small workshop, and in the
early days of New Zealand, handy men turned out. articles which
they and their customers would have much preferred to boy in a
shop. At need the job could be done, and in those pioneering days
New Zealand manufacturing took oa a character which it has never
entirely lost. Efficient as the modem ship can be, distance from.
Britain, America, or Japan gives the local manufacturer a certain
advantage. He may have a good idea which he can try on a small
scale, or be able to capture a local market by meeting peculiar needs.
He may even be able to ttiake some articles in an efficient local work-
sttop to compete with mass-produced goodst brought from the other
n8 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
side of the world to a New Zealand port, and thence through many
hands to a small group of country customers. And, moreover, high
internal transport costs a direct result of New Zealand's geography
'< will often protect him effectively from the competition of pro-
ducers elsewhere in New Zealand.
From prosperity built on the trade of a single district a manufac-
turing business may expand, but the typical New Zealand industrial
unit is still a small affair (though usually organized as a company)
and run by its founder or his son. The big meat- freezing works are a'
partial exception, but factories are more often run by owner-
managers than by boards or paid officials. Most New Zealand indus-
tries are, however, inevitably linked up with the great outside world.
Some are directly 'financed from overseas, and even the independent
New Zealand manufacturer is often very dependent on imports of
machinery and industrial raw materials. Nevertheless New Zealand's
peculiar geography and tradition still strongly resist concentration.
Industry remains decentralized, fitting into the basic pattern of New
Zealand life. It is scattered up and dowij the country in small units
and with local leadership and modest possibilities. Some manufac-
turers earn big money, and the prosperity of some breweries and
.tobacco plants is legendary. But the average factory owner or man-
ager remains of the middle class both in income and in ambition.
Industry in New Zealand does not, as in many countries, put un-
measured riches into a very few hands or concentrate great wealth
and great poverty into a very few places. The competent and success-
ful farmer, businessman, manufacturer, and doctor reach much the
same solid, upper-middle-class standard, and they are dispersed
through the cpmmunity. For the most part they keep their roots in
their home town or province, however widely they may travel in .
New Zealand and abroad. There is no single center to which every-
body who is anybody must flock. Even the four main centers do not
monopolize the wealth and enterprise of the country. A well-to-do
iriiddle class has its strongholds in farms as well as factories and city
offices; and is to "be found throughout the length and breadth of the
Dominion.
Industrial dispersion is the enemy of mass production, and in New
Zealand it has often spelled inefficiency and waste; but this is not
MOUNT TASMAN AND FOX GLACIER
Government Tourist
Government Tourist
VALLEY ROAD
Evening Post
CITY STREET: LAMBTON QUAY, WELLINGTON
C. P. 5. Boyer
POST GIRLS
C.P.S.Boyer
WOMEN AT WAR
MAORI WOMEN PREPARING FOR THE FEAST
Government Tourist
STATE HOUSES IN HILL SUBURB, WELLINGTON
PIONEER S HOMESTEAD
From water color by J. Wylq
H.Drake
SORTING WOOL
SHEARING
Government Tourist
BUTTER FACTORY
Government Tourist
MILKING BY MACHINERY
H.Drake
'Dominion'
LIVESTOCK SALE, PALMERSTON SHOW '
EWE FAIR, AND A TYPICAL COUNTRY TOWN
Aerial Mapping, Lt&
i
3
w
i
MAORI SCHOOL CHILDREN
P. A.Smithells
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
P. A.Smithells
<> International News
ANCIENT MAORI GRAIN HOUSE
J. T. Salmon, A.RJP.S.
[NTERIOR OF TURANGA
MAORI HOUSE
STATION HOMESTEAD
Weekly News
INDUSTRY 119
always the case, and resourcefulness sometimes pays good dividends.
It has been worth while for someone somewhere in New Zealand to
make most articles which are useful in a modern community. It is
true that quality was sometimes poor, and that before World War II
many so-called industries were little more than assembly plants which
fitted together pieces brought from overseas. Even in such cases as
the airplane works, however, the idea was gradually to draw more
and more on New; Zealand workmanship for the parts handled, and
as the need arose ways have been found for doing the impossible.
Basic raw materials must still be imported : for example, there is as
yet virtually no working of iron ore in New Zealand. However, New
Zealand factories both those locally owned and the big and impor-
tant plants that have recently been put up by overseas firms as branch
factories have been taking on more and more of the preliminary
processes instead of merely importing finished or half-finished parts.
The evolution of the big automobile works is a good example. The
government railway workshops, again, have for many years built
nearly all the rolling stock needed for the state railways. This in-
cludes modern locomotives and rail, cars steam, electric, and oil-
driven designed for New Zealand conditions, and also the very
special transport equipment needed by the great export industries. It
is no mean technical feat to transport frozen or chilled foodstuffs
from the interior to the ships' side without damage, especially in
view of the difficulties created by New Zealand's peculiar geography.
Though the workshops must import iron and steel, their reputed effi-
ciency is high ; they have taken on a wide range of new work, and
they are now part of an industrial system which, in time of war, has
shown that it can make a really important contribution to the war
equipment of New Zealand's allies as well as of its own armed
forces.
The railway workshops are collectively the biggest industrial
enterprise in New Zealand, and it is significant that they, like pri-
vately owned industry, are scattered in half a dozen centers through-
out the country. Even this great centrally controlled unit conforms
to the general New Zealand pattern. Industrial areas are small; and
mechanics from the biggest workshop, and workers from the biggest
freezing plant, can, if they like, live in neat surburban cottages along-
120 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
side the white-collared middle class, whose income is no higher and
not always more secure than their own. Needless to say, there is
grime and -sordidness in New Zealand; but compared with that in
older and richer countries, it is thin and scattered and small in quan-
tity. Few New Zealanders are shut in from sunshine and fresh air,
and scarcely any of them live beyond walking distance from trees and
open hills; and town dwellers walk to an extent that surprises new-
comers. In that grimiest of trades, coal mining, some of the miners
live in conditions that make their high wages a mockery; but in other
cases probably the majority a mining township may be remark-
ably like the market center of a purely agricultural district. Much
coal is mined on the West Coast by men who live in scattered cot-
tages on agricultural land. When times are slack, they spend more
time on cows, sheep, and garden. Such men are, of course, excep-
tions; but they underline a general truth. New Zealand industries
and their problems are not like those of older countries but are on a
smaller scale, and the difference is not due merely to lack of well-
devdoped industrial raw materials. In this matter New Zealand is
different in kind as well as in degree, because her industry has been
fitted into a particular pattern: a wide dispersion in small units un-
der her own individual compromise between central control and pro-
vincialism. It is true that the size of industrial units has grown
rapidly in recent years, but they have scarcely challenged her essen-
tial character as a social security state with its roots firmly planted in
flourishing farm lands.
Manufacturing industry, therefore, could not expect customs pro-
tection on the scale that was being given in other self-governing
cdonies; and New Zealand has remained a low-tariff country to the
present day. Import duties .have, indeed, been charged from the
colony's early days. Its revenue has always come largely from this
source, and since 1888 some New Zealand industries have had some
degree of protection: the general principle has always been, however,
that the tariff should not be used to prop up industries that were
badly uneconomic. And finally, the tariff was deliberately used to
encourage trade with other British countries. Yet the duties, whether
for revenue, protection, of imperial preference, remained relatively
low. Many imports paid no duty at all ; and on the rest a typical rate
INDUSTRY 121
was 20 or 25 per cent, with an additional charge against foreign
goods. It was significant, too, that in the depression New Zealand
did not share the general instinct to push protection to the limit; on
the contrary, many duties were lowered, following the Ottawa Con-
ference apparently without ill effect on New Zealand industry.
Protective tariffs, then, have been relatively little used, but the
state has encouraged and controlled industry in other significant
ways. It owns and operates two great public utilities, for instance,
the post office and the railways ; and though sea and air communica-
tions are still technically in the hands of private enterpriserheaded
'by the great Union Steam Ship Company the transport system as a
whole has come more and more under state supervision and control
in recent years. Again, public works may to a large extent be called
both an industry in their own right and a powerful aid to industry
and commerce in general. Public works have, of course, been used
for many different purposes. During the depression they were,
among other things, part of an elaborate system of unemployment
relief. In the hands of the Labor government in 1936 onward they
became an instrument for organizing economic recovery by the in-
jection of purchasing power in the community, while at the same
time resuming their basic function of developing the resources of
the country. Within a couple of years of Labor's return to office the
Public Works Department had been thoroughly re-equipped and- was
employing over twenty thousand men, with an annual expenditure in
the region of twenty million pounds.
The range of work done by the department is very wide, the main
items being roads, railways, public buildings, land improvement, and
hydro-electric development This last has been, indeed, one of the
state's main direct contributions to the country's industrial progress.
New Zealand is comparatively badly off for coal, but its mountains
and reliable rainfall give it vast potential water power. In the early
years of the twentieth century, therefore, there was an insistent de-
mand that this should be harnessed by state action for the public
good and just before World War I a serious beginning was made
at Lake Coleridge, with a station to supply the Canterbury district.
Thereafter progress has been fast. In 1903 less than 10,000 horse-
power of water power was available; in 1923 the figure was 54ooo,
122 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
and in 1941, 485,000. Almost all these stations were built and op-
erated by the Public Works Department. The government's general
policy, however, has been not to sell electricity direct to consumers
but to delegate this function to local bodies, including specially cre-
ated power boards. Some of these local authorities run small plants
to supplement the main supply, but their main function is to sell
current bought in bulk from the state. This has, been done to such
good effect that a very high proportion of the population, in the
country as well as in the towns, is within reach of electric power;
and this in turn has had a tremendous influence on the life of the
people. It has, for instance, encouraged the dispersion of industry,
and has revolutionized the life of the farmers and their wives
through labor-saving machinery; and it has spread modern conveni-
ences and such important "luxuries" as radio broadly throughout
the community. Both production and. consumption of current has
leaped ahead in recent years; and with huge war demands coinciding
with interruptions in development schemes, electricity shortage has
been one of the serious inconveniences of New Zealand's wartime
winters.
Hydroelectricity is, then, a key industry run by the state; and part
of the coal-mining industry is also government-operated. For the
most part, however, industry in New Zealand is in the hands of pri-
vate firms who work within an economic system which is set about
with state controls which are more or less actively enforced. The
main lines of these controls were sketched out boldly by the Liberal-
Labor government of the 1 890*5, as part of a broad program of
social reorganization ; and with the notable exception of the Arbitra-
tion Court there have been few essential changes for forty years. The
whole arbitration system, however, soon developed in ways quite
unforeseen either by its inspirer, Pember Reeves, or by the members
of an apathetic House of Representatives who allowed him to launch
his little experiment in industrial peace-keeping. In the first place,
the original hope had been that most disputes would be handled by
local conciliatibn boards, which were set up in each industrial locality,
composed equally of representatives of employers and men. They
had power to "hear, examine, and recommend." But though they
could compel witnesses to give evidence, there was no force behind
INDUSTRY 123
their decisions, and conciliation failed. The employers in particular
were hostile, and often refused to appoint their representatives ; and
from the first, therefore, the burden was thrown onto the court, be-
hind whose decisions there was the force of law.
The Arbitration Court's primary function, which it discharged
with considerable though fluctuating success, was to settle industrial
disputes. From this it was no great change in emphasis, however, to
meet trouble in advance by fixing wages and hours of work in awards
that should be binding upon both parties ; and this came to be its
main work. Before very long, in fact, the court developed into one of
the standard instruments of government: a court of justice had
turned into a part of the administrative system through which the
state controlled the economic life of the country. True, its work has
been largely confined to town industries; small farmers and their
assistants have had to fend for themselves, or rather have had to
invoke the state's help through other channels., Nevertheless there
was ample work to be done within this restricted field. The small and
scattered units of New Zealand industry naturally developed infi-
nitely complex problems, which were all the harder to solve because
they were on such a minute scale ; yet public sentiment demanded that
industry should make some show of conforming to a moderately
active social conscience. Direct interference by act of parliament had
its limitations ; statutes are of their nature rigid and hard to adapt to
the special cases in which New Zealand industry abounded. A dy-
namic department of labor could ferret out problems and do some-
thing to meet current needs as they arose; but its decisions lacked
the force of law unless they were followed up by parliament The
Arbitration Court, on the other hand, was free to examine and pro-
nounce upon any problem, however vast or however petty or special-
ized. It could draw on expert knowledge in any part of the country,
and frame detailed technical regulations beyond the comprehension
of the layman. Yet its decisions became the law of the land. In effect,
therefore, the Arbitration Court gradually took its part in the fram-
ing and keeping up to date of a code of labor laws which were a
reasonable compromise between the community's economic resources
and its longing for progress and security.
The court, in fact, quickly fell ihto place in the general New Zea-
124 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
land system and did not become the spearhead of change which some
hoped and others feared. In industry as in finance. the state did not
impose a clear-cut policy, for the good reason that it had no policy
to impose. With some notable exceptions, government officials had
much the same ideas as private citizens who were handling the same
kind of problems. They were guided by general ethical notions of
fair play and decent behavior rather than by any definite social or
economic philosophy. By mutual consent, therefore, New Zealand
was not so much steered as encouraged to drift toward a goal that
no one was concerned to define. Nevertheless there was a goal at the
end of it all, and the Arbitration Court did in fact help a good deal
to bring it nearer. Desire for fair play, expressed in a long series of
detailed awards, built up the theory and practice of a minimum wage ;
and this concept was quickly worked into the New Zealand industrial
system. In the court's early and formative years there were wide-
spread hopes among radicals that it would go much further and
would deliberately set itself to redistribute the wealth of the com-
munity, for example by linking wages with profits, thus establishing
a system of profit sharing. The court shied off such a difficult and
dangerous task and followed the far safer plan of merely setting
minimum standards standards which were not too rigidly tied up
with the prosperity of industry, or with the human needs of men, but
which represented a loose and presumably benevolent compromise
between them. This attitude was so deeply ingrained in the court that
when it was instructed in 1936 to declare a basic wage governed ex-
clusively by the human needs of a family with three children, the net
result was practically to continue its existing practice: by a singular
dispensation of Providence it appeared that the new formula led to
about the same practical conclusion as the old lack of formula.
The court's influence over wages and over the development of
trade-unionism has been of first-dass importance in New Zealand
life. One of its main effects on the wages system has been to delay
changes. In good times wages have risen somewhat more slowly than
might have been possible with strong trade-unions and a system of
free collective bargaining. On the other hand, in bad times the court
has upon occasion obstructed the instinct of some town employers to
seek recovery by slashing the wages of their men ; though the work-
INDUSTRY 125
ers found in 1931 that its power to protect them was taken away just
when they needed it most. However, its influence over the develop-
ment of trade-unionism has been a major factor in New Zealand life.
From the first ihe encouragement of unionism was one of the main
objects of the whole system, and there are in fact numerous unions
which were specially created to do business with the court, many of
them very small and sectional in scope. Moreover, arbitration has
done for the unions, especially the smaller arid weaker ones, many of
the things which in other countries they have had to do for them-
selves ; and it has had the specific effect of turning New Zealand trade-
unionism into a solid legal-minded organization preoccupied with
getting a fair deal from the present system rather than with fighting
for revolutionary change. This trend in organized labor has, of
course, been vigorously resisted by leaders who hold that a sheltered
union is inevitably a feeble growth, and by powerful unions who
hoped to gain more in the rough-and-tumble of industrial warfare
than from the court. Some of the most famous and bitter strikes in
New Zealand history such as those of the Waihi miners in 1912
and of the watersiders in 1913 had a twofold object. They were
aimed both at the enemy and at timid, legalistic friends. In these
cases, ( however,.as in 1891, the strike weapon failed, and the majority
of the trade-union movement marched persistently, if somewhat un-
steadily, along the path of arbitration and political action. A mile-
stone on the path was the court's success at the beginning of the
century in upholding against the employers the principle of prefer-
ence to unionists ; and the culmination was the law of 1936, which
made it compulsory for workers in industries covered by the court's
awards to become members of a union. In the same year a widely
^representative conference was held, and New Zealand trade-unionism
created for itself a new federation of labor with a nation-wide
organization and 200,000 members out of a total population of
1,600,000. With membership at this level it is plain that the militant-
minded and the keen .theoretical socialists must be in a very small
minority, and the federation is unlikely to crusade for new and risky
social experiments. What it lacks in fire, however, it makes up in
solidity and political influence, particularly through its association
with the political Labor party. According to some the federation is
126 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
so closely linked to the political Labor party that the second is but
the political aspect of the first, a suggestion denied by spokesmen
both of the trade-unions and of the politicians ; and the present Prime
Minister has said plainly that a Labor government is trustee for the
people as a whole, not an agent for carrying out the program of a
dass. Further, since trade-unionism has broadened its basis so ex-
tensively, it is doubtful whether it now represents a class at all, at
least in the Old World or Marxian sense. The Federation of Labor,
and still more so the Labor party, is apt to look like a characteristic
New Zealand institution, representing ideas of compromise, of gen-
eral fair play, of steady but cautious progress with little trace of a
lively demand for "socialism in our time."
The career of the Arbitration Court has, then, taken it far from
the modest position envisaged by Reeves half a century ago. The
court has become a recognized instrument by which the government
of the day may carry out its general economic policy: in 1931, for
instance, it was used to cut wages on the ground that recovery de-
pended on reduced costs, and in 1936 to restore them again, on the
ground that recovery depended on wage earners' spending power.
And save for a period of violent questioning between 1908 and 1913,
the labor movement has on the whole accepted the labor laws in
general and the Arbitration Court in particular as a means of im-
proving the present economic system rather than as an instrument
for sudden and violent change. This has been a major factor in a
transformation of the character of that movement, which has
brought it clearly into line with New Zealand's basic traditions, as
was seen in the whole attitude of the Labor government which took
office at the end of 1935.
By this time the course of events had revealed new problems and
imposed new duties on the government as custodian of the people's
interests. The inexhaustible British demand for New Zealand food,
on which this country's prosperity had been built, was turning out
to have a limit after all, and New Zealand's first Labor govern-
ment, which was elected to raise the standard of living, had to face
the possibility of a cut in overseas trade and therefore in national
income. Its attempted solution lay in the broad concept of orderly
marketing. In a world where the masses lived far below healthy
INDUSTRY . 127
nutrition, so the argument ran, it should never be impossible to find
people willing to eat our meat and butter and to send in exchange
manufactured goods which could be made more economically over-
seas than in New Zealand. A presiding government could make sure
that New Zealand products were offered for sale in an organized and
economical way, and in excellent quality; and it could see that the
inflowing manufactured goods were of the kind and quality best
suited to New Zealand conditions. It could decide, for instance,
which kinds of goods could be most economically made in New Zea-
land, and select its imports among those multitudinous articles which
could not be made locally except at ruinous cost. Rationalization of
overseas trade could be accompanied by rationalization of domestic
industries, and the whole worked into a coherent and sensible pattern
to the benefit both of the people of New Zealand and of overseas
peoples who received cheap and excellent primary products and sent
in exchange those particular manufactures which they could supply
most economically.
Such ideas were in the mind of the incoming government. How-
ever, they were general rather than particular, and they had to be
worked out into detailed measures in the rush of general govern-
mental business and in an international atmosphere made tense by
the approach of war. Moreover, New Zealand secondary industry
was still scattered in small and often uneconomic units throughout*
the country, and still lacked the means by which its resources could
be mobilized in an orderly way. Nor could the state as yet supply the
necessary leadership. Though it had intervened widely in industrial
matters, its action had been mainly concerned with framing regula-
tions within, which a somewhat chaotic private system operated
rather than with giving a positive impulse along the line of some
coherent policy. The need for some new machinery had been realized
by the government of the day and by the Manufacturers' Federation
even before the election of 1935 which put Labor in power; and it
was along the lines of rationalization which had then been sketched
out that the new government acted. Alongside its guaranteed prices
for dairy produce which included a far-reaching scheme of orderly
marketing it set the Industrial Efficiency Act of 1936, which pro-
vided the means by which industries could rationalize themselves
128 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
with government help and supervision. The main instrument created
by the act was the Bureau of Industry, a characteristically mixed
body of public servants and representatives of manufacturing, farm-
ing, and labor. Its power, also characteristically, was in the first in-
stance negative, for it could, without prior approval, prevent matters
from growing worse by the starting of new plants, whereas its posi-
tive plans for the more efficient working of any industry could only
be enforced if accepted by the majority of those engaged in it
. The Industrial Efficiency Act was greeted with the usual mixed
chorus of praise and blame ; according to some, it contained a threat
of socialism in our time, while to others it seemed to give the state's
protection to existing private capitalism. However, before the act's
possibilities could be thoroughly tested, the rush of events 'had cre-
ated new conditions and had thrust new powers, willy-nilly, into the
hands of the government. In 1938, when Labor had held office for
just three years, a financial crisis forced it hurriedly into a drastic
step which was really implicit in its aims : the selection of imports
enforced by a system of exchange control. This measure brought the
manufacturer new difficulties with his supplies of new materials, but '
for the first time it gave him a virtual monopoly in some fields ; and
coming at a time when the people as a whole were prosperous, it gave
local industry a great stimulus. Indeed, its output and range grew
steadily from the moment New Zealand began to climb upwards
from the trough of the depression, and the rate of growth increased
under Labor administration. In this sphere, however, as in so many
aspects of New Zealand life, ,World War II cut across a situation
that was developing fast, and set new tasks and opened up new,
though dangerous, possibilities.
CHAPTER NINE
Education
New Zealand was planned as a hierarchy, layer upon layer to be
knit together as an idealized version of nineteenth-century British
culture. It has turned out an equalitarian society, even fiercely demo-
cratic, and resentful of inherited privilege. Its pioneers brought to
New Zealand definite notions about education, lifted bodily out of a
British background. For some, education was a cherished bond with
the culture of their homeland* To others it was a means T>y which
they, or their children, could get on rather better in the New World,
than they might have done in the Old. To others, again, it was an
unnecessary frill which many of their forefathers had lived very
satisfactorily without. Imported ideas, however, altered subtly as
they became acclimatized; and in the education system there ap-
peared New Zealand's two characteristic tensions between dispersion
and centralization^ and between an imported tradition and local pres-
sure for change, jjfcroughout, there was felt the influence of those
social trends which New Zealanders are apt to have in common, in
spite of an infinite variety in other aspects of life : the drive toward
equality of conditions, for instance, and the emphasis on material
things, or at least on those achievements of the mind that can be
measured with some show of accuracy./
Faith in examinations, or at least' their diligent cultivation, has
been deeply characteristic of New Zealand education* The pursuit of
equality has led to useful experiments to overcome a specifically New
Zealand problem : the dispersion of the population in scattered settle-
ments. Overseas ideas have acted powerfully on New Zealand ar-
rangements, not only through the tenacity of immigrants' theories,
but through the stimulus of new ideas developed abroad and delib-
129
i 3 o UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
erately adapted to New Zealand conditions. And finally, control of
the whole system has been shared between the center and the prov-
inces. Most of the money is provided by the central government; but
power of the purse is by no means solely decisive^ Primary schools,
for instance, form a closely knit system inspected and in many ways
directly influenced by the central department's officers; but they are
still administered by the nine local education boards which are ulti-
mately responsible to the householders^ Most of the postprimary
schools are controlled each by an 'individual board of governors
elected locally on a complicated franchise. Here again it can be said
that the department holds the whip hand and that it prescribes the
framework within which the various boards operate. Yet education
boards and the governing bodies of postprimary schools may still be
able to mobilize against the department the remains of New Zea-
land's basic provincialism. On occasion they stand as a bulwark of
conservative defense against the "newfangled notions" that have
sometimes been sponsored by the department in advance of public
opinion ; and there are some who sustain their influence in the faith
that vitality is more likely to come through local initiative than
through central direction. In short, the education system shows with
remarkable clarity some of the characteristics of New Zealand's
methods of organizing its life, including centralization of power ac-
companied by a notable caution in using legal powers to override
local divergencies.
r
.[The orderly education of most New Zealanders begins at birth,
for nearly three quarters of the children born in New Zealand be-
come "Plunket babies/' The Royal Society for the Health of Women
and Children was founded in 1907 "to help the mothers and save the
babies," and largely through its work New Zealand's infant mortality
rate is the lowest in the world Jit is, incidentally, called not by the
name of its late presiding genius, Dr. .Sir Truby King, but after the
governor's wife, Lady Plunket, who first gave it social prestige. Sir
Truby King, who had been studying the scientific feeding of young
calves, reduced the art of baby rearing to a simple code of rules
which was taught to New Zealand mothers by unceasing propaganda,
followed up by a nation-wide system of trained nurses. The whole
EDUCATION 131
Pltmket organization, including hospitals, training, and the salaries
of the nurses who visit the homes or preside over dinics held in Sun-
day school halls or special "rest homes" in town or country, is kept
going by a combination of private subscriptions, fees from tHose who
can afford them, and state subsidy. Above all, it depends on the
voluntary help^and enthusiasm of thousands of private citizens,
chiefly womeaLThe Plunket Society is the largest of those innumer-
able private societies through which New Zealand women contribute
to the well-being of their fellows outside the domestic routine.
When the babies leave the Plunket fold, usually about the age of
two, they have a fairly uniform outlook on at least some of the
major bodily functions ; but they are then left almost alone as far
as state institutions go until the age of five, when the state's infant
schools take over the task of turning them into citizens./ Another
private society, the Free Kindergarten Association, has struggled
valiantly to fill the gap, kept going by private subscriptions and a
small government grant First started as early as 1899 by public-
spirited citizens who were anxious to see some of the children off the
streets of Dunedin, it has had an uphill fight. Today there are only
41 free kindergartens in the Dominion, with places for only 2000
children, and there are long waiting lists. The preschool child is the
Cinderella of the education system.' '
At the age of five, however, eight out of ten New Zealand children
enter the infant department of a state primary school, and the aver-
age child stays there, free of charge, for more than eight years : a
long time by most overseas standards. Education is compulsory from
the age of seven till fourteen, or until a child has completed his pri-
mary school course, wfiicITmost do at the age of thirteen or fourteen.
Seventy.pejr cent of the children then continue for at least one or two
years in some kind of full-time postprimary schooling; and in 1943
the government announced that it intended to raise the school-leaving
age to fifteen.
Last century the primary schools, being "common" schools from
their inception, were expected to do little more than give a minimum
level of efficiency to all, starting with the three R's as an equipment
for a job. The schools were hidebound affairs, deeply rooted in a
barren tradition and governed by an examination system that allowed
132 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
no scope for 'development even if the social temper had willed it. In
a young democracy, where promotion for the most part was not set-
tled by privilege of rank or station, there must be some means of
ticketing and sorting; and this was found from quite early days in
progressive examinations starting in the primary schools and_ cul-
minating in the highest degrees and professional qualifications. New
Zealand, it has been said, went examination-mad, and there was even
a little mild betting when citizens, colonial fashion, put their money
on their favorite school. The main bulwarks of the examination
system have now been destroyed, but material results long remained
the only test of efficiency, and in education "equality of opportunity"
meant an equal right for all to sit for a series of examinations cul-
minating in "matriculation." This test was meant originally as a uni-
versity entrance examination, but it became rather a ticket of entry
to most jobs with any prospects : a crude intelligence test, to which
parents, pupils, and employer alike attached an exaggerated impor-
tance.
From the first there were rebels among the schoolmasters; but
tradition was strong, and where imported ideas had been modified, it
was often in the direction of greater rigidity as a check on the in-
efficiency of untrained teachers!\In 1899, however, one of the princi-
pal critics, George Hogben, became inspector-general of schools (his
office corresponded to that of the present-day director of education)
and launched a vigorous attack on the system. He loosened to some
extent the grip of external examinations over the primary school ; he
improved the system of teacher training and raised the salaries and
status of the teaching profession; and he struck at the root of the
stiff formalism of the New Zealand primary school by a strenuous
effort to "bring the school into touch with life.^ Yet he could only
begin a movement in the direction of that atmosphere of liberty
wherein alone, he said, true teaching may thrive. For one thing, his
own principles, enlightened as they were for the time, tended in some
ways toward a new formalism; but the root of the matter was the
persistent conservatism of the teaching profession as a whole, in
which it truly represented tHe attitude of the community. In theory
Hogben could have ridden roughshod over the prejudices of teacher
and parent alike; but in practice the tradition he was attacking was
EDUCATION 133
impregnably entrenchecj in the human material with which he had to
work. He could give a powerful impulse but not impose a revolution ;
educational conservatism was shaken and dismayed, but not de-
stroyed.
Hogben retired in 1915, and the next twenty years were a period
of retarded development irLthe field of education, as in New Zealand
social services in generaL^t a time of almost world-wide educational
revival which brough a reorganization of the theory and practice of
primary teaching, New Zealand lagged behind. On the physical side
there was progress. New Zealanders woke up to the fact that schools
were unhygienic and often grossly overcrowded, that school children
were suffering f roiii defects which were not proper in this new land
of promise, and which could be remedied. School medical and dental
services were developed, and more attention was given to physical
education. Open-air schools were built on a pattern comparing favor-
ably with overseas standards, and health camps were organized for
defective children. On the cultural side, however, the primary schools
remained stagnant, and many New Zealanders became uneasily con-
scious that here, as elsewhere, their country was resting on its oars
and falling far behind achievements in countries which lacked the
pride in social experiment which had become part of the New Zea-
lander's inheritance. Yet when the Great Depression brought an
urgent demand for cuts in government spending, education was
selected as one of the fields in which most money might be saved
with least damage to the state.
The tide turned sharply at the end ofjEQ35, j^ith the election of.
New Zealand's first Labor government. Its policy of state spending
as a recovery measure brought a splendid opportunity for expendi-
tures on up-to-date schools and equipment. Moreover, the Labor
party had always believed in education, and the new minister of the
department, the Hon. Peter Fraser, was keenly interested in the new
trends in educational thought ; and he was, incidentally, one of the
most influential men in the cabinet The result was a revival of edu-
cational enthusiasm comparable with that of the Hogben period
under the Seddon ministry, and an ambitious education program on
which the government has scarcely faltered up to the present time,
in spite of the war. This revival was much more than a stirring at the
I 3 4 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
center ; the temper of the schools themselves changed. A New Educa-
tion Conference was held in 1937, with speakers from overseas ; and
public interest in education was aroused as never before. Thus there
was provided perhaps for the first time a social background as
well as government drive for reform.
One of the most important changes was the dropping of the pro-
ficiency examination an external examination that closed the pri-
mary course and gave those who passed it two years of free education
at a secondary school. Since free secondary education had in practice
been open to almost everyone, the main importance ttf "proficiency"
was the control it exercised over the primary school teaching. By
sweeping it away, the government set the primary schools free to
develop along their own lines. Instead of being tied to what was in
effect a rigid syllabus, virtually enforced by inspectors, schools were
encouraged and, to the alarm of some teachers, even expected to
experiment. Freed from the old philosophy that the three R's were
ample to equip the middle class for life, the schools now aim at pro-
viding "a basic common culture." A real attempt has been made to
humanize the teaching of basic subjects, and the children are reading
more widely and intelligently than ever before. Great emphasis is
placed on physical training, including games and hygiene ; and the
appointment of a superintendent of physical education has resulted
in much enthusiastic and up-to-date work in the schools. Special at-
tention is paid to swimming, and many of the schools now have their
own learners' pools. Handwork and music still lag behind; but a
handwork expert was recently appointed at headquarters. Through
his work, and through the excellent articles published in the depart-
ment's monthly Gazette, more attention is being paid to such creative
activity as spinning from the fleece, weaving and dyeing, painting
.and finger-paste work, puppet making, and the construction of model
farms, sea- and airports in conjunction with civic studies.
Moreover, a new type of school has over the last decade become
an integral part of the education system, and its particular nature
gives ample scope for such developments. The idea of a break at the
age of eleven is at last finding a place in New Zealand education, and
by the end of 1943 there were twenty-three intermediate schools or
departments giving a two- or three-year course to children mainly
EDUCATION 135
between the ages of eleven and fourteen. The schools are a direct
descendant of the American junior high school, but have tended to
fluctuate between t the American policy of a vocational tryout in
workshops and classroom, and the English central-school policy with
its underlying idea of a finishing course for those who will not con-
tinue with further schooling after the age of fourteen. In effect the
intermediate school has proved an admirable field for experiment. It
has been generously equipped with rooms for woodwork, metalwortc,
and domestic science, with such apparatus as film projectors, and
sometimes with a printing press; and it is staffed with specially
selected teachers from the primary school service.
There have been developments, then, in both method and curricu-
lum. Over a good deal of the field a "play way" takes the place of
much formal work. The infant departments have been brought more
into line with modern kindergarten practice; and in the rest of the
primary school, project work and excursions give the children much
greater activity, while additional equipment, such as gramophones,
radios, and films, gives more scope for teaching. Apart from manual
training and woodwork for the two top forms, children operate sav-
ings banks, visit museums, art galleries, and factories, organize
money-making drives for school equipment and patriotic funds, and
run clubs and Junior Red Cross groups. Many of these things had
been done before, but there has dearly been a widening of the school
horizon in recent years. According to some, this has not been
achieved without loss. Secondary school teachers sometimes speak
rather gloomily of the loss in powers of concentration, and of a turn-
ing away from the old ideals of hard work and accuracy for which
primary school and home alike are blamed. Some go on to complain
that, with so many social activities, the basic tools of learning which
fit children to continue education at the secondary level must suffer.
Yet the experiment is launched and will run its course. Moreover,
every effort has been made to see that country children share with
their town-dwelling cousins, so far as is humanly possible, the benefit
of recent educational progress.
History and geography have distributed New Zealand children
thinly over wide spaces, and this has long been seen as a challenge to
overcome the inequalities of nature and offer the same treatment to
136 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
all, -whether in town or country, in pastoral or mining districts.
Quite a high 'proportion o children start off in little one- or two-
teacher schools, to which they often come from outlying districts on
horseback, with a riding allowance, or by train or bus at the state's
expense. Even with modern communications, however, there are still
many hundreds of children beyond reach of any school; and for
them the department maintains a correspondence school at head-
quarters. It has grown enormously in recent years : in 1940 its roll
stood at 2890, of whom 644 were secondary-school pupils ( for teach-
ing goes up to matriculation), and there were 102 teachers. In the
same year, out of a total of 2204 state primary schools, 1577 had less
than 70 pupils, and 855 less than 25. In recent years, indeed, the
number of these small country schools has been considerably reduced
by consolidation; the children are collected by fleets of school buses
and taken to bigger schools where they have the benefit of .better
teaching and equipment This movement has been slowed down by
wartime shortage of gasoline and tires ; but even if the considerable
and steady prewar movement toward consolidation had continued,
the tiny country school was so widespread that it must long have re-
mained characteristic of the system as a whole.
In such schools, however, pupils are not unduly handicapped. The
New Zealand country school is no shabby dilapidated affair, with a
disappointed failure of a schoolmaster eating out his heart in the
wilderness. The general plan of teacher promotion means that every-
one must spend several years in the country before he can hope for
one of the better town jobs, and many of the small cotmtry schools
are of an admirable modern design. Equipment is often excellent
better than iu the towns and facilities have been enormously im-
proved lately. The country school child, for instance, will be taken at
the state's expense to manual training centers, if his own school is
inadequately equipped. Before the war, with the help of a Carnegie
grant, special officers were attached to the museum in each of the
four urban centers. They prepared museum boxes containing speci-
mens and lectures, and dispatdied them to country schools. An excel-
lent children's library service sends out books to country schools.
Film strips are sent round to those that have projectors, and there
are systematic broadcasts addressed to the schools.
EDUCATION 137
By such means, then, the country child is given an education re-
markably similar to that of his town cousin : a uniformity which has
definite drawbacks of its own. It is one of those forces tending to
give New Zealanders a single point of view; and from the angle of
the country child it means that his teacher is apt to be out of touch
with his environment Recruits to the teaching service come mainly
from urban secondary schools, and during their course at the train-
ing college they handle only town children. There are no rural special-
ists ; indeed, the primary school makes little use of the specialist at all,
every teacher being trained to take complete charge of his or her
class in every subject. The main exceptions are the itinerant instruc-
tors who teach physical education, cooking, and woodwork and, in
the country, agriculture. These last are responsible for some excellent
work done through a club system borrowed from America. Some
children become enthusiastic breeders of calves and poultry and have
their own shows. Through lessons in nature study and elementary
agriculture many country children are at last learning that the school-
house does not necessarily shut its doors on their daily life. And
teachers are learning that experiment in bringing the school into
touch with its environment will have the enthusiastic support of the
central department.
Uniformity of standard as well as of curriculum could only be
achieved in a country where control of education was largely cen-
tralized, or where there was a fairly wide agreement through the
community as to social aims and the part that education was to play
in them. These conditions exist in New Zealand, for there is just
such a general agreement and the government is its natural spokes-
man. Increasing state dominance is as characteristic of education as
of industry or agriculture. The national government provides educa-
tion as a social service, just as it supplies police, pensions, and de-
fense. As is usual in New Zealand, central control has to wrestle with
the solid and vociferous remnants of the country's basic provincial-
ism. When primary education first became a national affair (by an
act of 1877) the country was divided into education districts, and
primary schools were controlled by local education boards and school
committees ; and this framework still exists. There are nine education
boards, consisting of th6 representatives of school committees, which
138 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
in turn are elected by the handful of householders who will turn up
to a meeting 1 , and who are apt to hold decided, if unenlightened,
views. These boards employ teachers and control school buildings.
Actually, however, this has come to mean very little. The story of
educational administration in New, Zealand has been that of the
steady draining away of power from the school committee to the
board, and from the board to the Department of Education.
The education boards have to a large extent lost control over their
own finances. They are given grants by the department, and all new
buildings must be approved and paid for by it. The numbers and
salaries of the staff are decided automatically according to the num-
ber of pupils, and the actual appointments to any vacancy are vir-
tually taken out of the boards' hands by the grading system. Teachers
enter the service through teachers' training colleges, which are, in-
deed, still under the control of the education boards of the four main
centers. On emerging from training college, each young teacher is
given a numerical "grading mark/' which is revised every two years
according to the reports of inspectors responsible to the Education
Department When any vacancy is filled, it must usually go to the
applicant with the best grading mark man or woman; for before
the war the proportion of women to men teachers was only three to
two. So the inspectors indirectly control the appointments to the
schools. Naturally enough they also influence deeply actual policy in
the classroom, since teachers know that their promotion will depend
more on the opinion of the inspector than on that of their education
board or even of. their headmaster. In theory, at least, the inspectors
are therefore one of the main channels by which new educational
thought can be spread right down through the schools, though it
'should be added that the New Zealand teacher has a high degree of
professional freedom.
The official school-leaving age is soon to be raised to fifteen;
meanwhile about a third of those leaving the primary schools at the
age of thirteen or fourteen get no more schooling at all, but go
straight into jobs; half of the boys in this class go onto farms, and
- half of the girls stay at home. The remaining two-thirds of the pri-
mary school population pass on to some kind of postprimary school
for an average period of between two and three years, though
EDUCATION 139
education is for practical purposes available to all up to the age of
nineteen. In all postprimary schools there is some choice of program ;
the majority of pupils take a course which is basically "professional,"
or "general," and was originally designed to lead toward the uni-
versity. Many forces have combined to keep the broad pattern of
education in all the day schools general and prevocational : geo-
graphical conditions, for example, and the fact that New Zealand is
an agricultural country with little concentration or specialization of
industry. Many employers look first for general knowledge and edu-
cation, then for initiative, and only then for special knowledge. There
has accordingly been no strong economic drive to upset a traditional
respect for the white collar; and the democratic notion of leveling
of function and opportunity has led parents to demand and schools,
therefore, to provide a strong general course, leading where possi-
ble to matriculation, at the -expense of more practical courses* This
has been true for the country equally with the town.
In 1941 the government's broad objective was set out in terms
which undoubtedly express the general feeling in the community.
"Every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be
rich or poor, whether he live in the town or country, has a right as a
citizen to free education of the kind for which he is best suited, and
to the fullest extent of his powers." In the past such ideals have
meant, in practice, essentially that town and country children must be
given an almost equal right to sit for examinations, or to take a
course that will lead them preferably into the civil service, and failing
that into clerical positions, then into shops and warehouses. Often it
has been only as a last resort, through failure to make their way in
formal arithmetic and French, that they have turned to trades and
industries or agriculture: a fact, incidentally, which has tended to
drain the more intelligent children to the towns, at the expense of
the farming profession. Yet the tradition of the white tollar has not
been unchallenged. Throughout the century there has been an in-
creasing demand for more practical types of education; a demand to
which the Education Department early responded, and which led to
the establishment of technical high schools. These have developed
into a type of school peculiar to the New Zealand system, and over
them the department has had a fair measure of control. It is the
140 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
general secondary schools which are most deeply rooted in the aca-
demic tradition. They are the strongholds of the older lines of
thought, and over them the department's influence, strong as it has
become, is less powerful than over any other part of the whole
system.
When the central government laid down a policy for the primary
schools in 1877, the secondary schools were left outside the scope of
the act. They were endowed but fee-charging institutions, and they
crystallized all the early colonists 5 longing for "home." Whether the
colonist yearned for the higher schools of Scotland, for the public
schools of the English upper classes, or for the middle-class school
of the urban dissenting tradition, he had in any case the ideal of a
school devised for the socially or intellectually elite, where instruc-
tion in the recognized academic subjects was the only means of train-
ing worthy citizens. And little adaptation was made to meet colonial
conditions.
A few children whose parents could not afford to pay fees found
their way into those early schools, for there were some scholarships
granted by their governing bodies, and a few more were given by the
education boards to their primary school pupils. But though the
secondary schools were partly financed by public money, often
through early land grants, it was not till the period of .general reform
under the Liberal-Labor ministry from 1891 onward that a serious
attempt was made to throw them open to the people in general. The
instrument of change was finance. In 1902 those secondary schools
which would give free places to pupils successfully completing their
primary school course were offered grants in proportion. Most
schools accepted the offer, and in the following year the arrange-
ment was made mandatory for all but two well-endowed denomina-
tional schools; and by 1920 the process was complete. The schools'
endowments had been virtually nationalized, and most pupils who
had passed "proficiency" got their secondary teaching free. (By 1938
less than i per cent of the pupils in state postprimary schools paid
fees.) Within relatively few years, then, secondary schools had un-
dergone revolutionary changes in financing and in the numbers and
type of pupil admitted But they were still controlled by individual
boards of governors over which the state had very little control, and
EDUCATION 141
the grip of ninteenth-century British tradition held firm. Most of
the teachers had age-old notions of teaching methods (even today
there is relatively little professional training for secondary school
teachers) ; and teachers, parents, and governors alike dung to the
belief that for almost everyone an orthodox course, leading to ma-
triculation, was the best preparation for life.
Against this conception the Education Department waged war, led
by the reformer Hogben. In the first fifteen years of the IQOO'S he
struggled by every means threats, bribery, and the encouragement
of rival institutions to persuade secondary schools to widen their
curriculum. Opposition was tough, however, and Hogben and his
successors were too wise to try to override by force traditions that
were so deeply ingrained in New Zealand life. Progress was slow,
therefore ; but today most secondary schools give alternative courses :
commercial, industrial, and agricultural for the boys; commercial
and home science for the girls. Three-quarters of the boys and three-
fifths of the girls still take the general course; but greater changes
than such a fact suggests are well under way. The world-wide educa-
tional revival which followed World War I has had its profound
influence on the secondary as well as on the primary schools. In 1937,
for instance, the Secondary Schools Association (representing the
teachers) passed resolutions that were almost revolutionary, coming
from such a source. "The curriculum," resolved the association, "has
lost touch with the realities of modern life and especially with the
changing needs of our own society. [It] fails entirely to interpret
social studies as a preparation for citizenship. [It] should contain a
cultural core of English, Social Studies, General Science, Health,
Handwork, Art and Arithmetic . . . and the Matriculation exam-
ination so far as it effects secondary schools should be abolished."
Thus British and American liberal opinion was echoed in the erst-
while stronghold of conservatism, and a lead given toward the
sweeping away of that examination which had long been denounced
as the most cramping influence over secondary education. The year
1943 is, in fact, the last in which the matriculation examination in
its present form will be held. Thanks to a conjunction of reforming
opinion in the ujiiversity, the schools, and the department, it will be
replaced by accrediting as the principal means of entry to the uni-
142 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
versity, and by a broader final, or school-leaving, examination con-
trolled by the department.
The secondary schools are only one of several instruments of post-
primary education in New Zealand. In accordance with the principle
of giving the same opportunities to country children as to those in
towns, a special type of school was developed in the country in quite
early times. Any country primary school in which twenty children
wish to continue beyond the primary stage but are beyond the reach
of a high school (or technical high school) may become a district
high school by the addition of a secondary department and staff. The
district high schools are therefore coeducational, and their secondary
departments are still under the control of the primary-school educa-
tion boards. Such schools go back to the very early days, for the
Scots of Otago put "tops" to their elementary schools and gave
them an academic tradition which they have continued to follow.
Forty years ago Hogben gave them special grants to include man-
ual instruction and agriculture in the curriculum ; but they stubbornly
dung to the old tradition. Up to the present they have been channels
to the city rather than real rural schools. It is true that they offer
courses in agriculture, home science, and commerce, but the majority
still place most emphasis on the orthodox academic course. In par;
ticular, the agricultural courses have tfot been popular. There is an
understandable prejudice against specializing too young, a feeling
that farming is not a subject to learn from schoolmasters, and a tra-
dition that a general course leaves more possibilities open. So it has
seemed that those boys who do well at the district high school tend
ito head for the clerk's desk, to the loss of the countryside.
The district high schools were one of the means by which Hogben
hoped to give the secondary schools a lead toward broadening their
syllabus: but in vain, for they were as firmly held in the academic
tradition as were the secondary schools themselves. It was somewhat
otherwise with the technical schools, which owed their origin in large
measure to Hogben's drive to bring the school back into touch with
life. Hogben in effect allowed technical day schools to develop in the
main centers as examples to the academic-minded secondary schools
of the kind of work which he thought they should have been under-
taking* The secondary schools still refused to develop along the lines
EDUCATION 143
he considered essential for the very numerous children now entitled
to some secondary education but without strictly academic interests,
and accordingly technical schools were organized in provincial towns
as well.
The technical schools, which are coeducational, are tinder the con-
trol of a special branch of the Education Department, but each, has
its own school board. The principal is often secretary to the board,
and has a very .considerable control over school policy. Generally
speaking, these schools are not technical at all in the overseas mean-
ing of the word : they are definitely prevocational, and they give, in
addition to practical courses, a general course of a type very similar
to that offered in the ordinary secondary school. JEn those country
districts where the technical school is the only kind of postprimary
school available, this general course must be made strong, and often
a high proportion of the children take it. There is a bias toward
practical subjects, but rural technical high schools take little advan-
tage of the terms of their foundation, which give them the right to
organize more truly technical evening classes ; they remain, on the
whole, multipurpose day schools. In the main, evening classes draw
only a handful of students, and most boys and girls get tlieir indus-
trial training, if at all, by other means.
In the cities the picture is different Here there are secondary
schools of the usual type to cater for professional people, and though
the technical schools called colleges sometimes step out of their
original sphere into the examination race, they perform a useful
function in providing a core of general education plus a large meas-
ure of practical activity. The colleges are coeducational day schools,
sometimes with an enrollment of thousand or more, which is very
large by New Zealand standards. They are in no sense trade schools,
and pupils who want real vocational training must continue in the
night classes. In this interesting experiment in all-round education
for the nonacademic, with general course provided, but with a strong
emphasis x>n practical subjects and well-equipped workshops, the
urban technical schools have certain handicaps as compared with the
secondary schools. For all the equality at the primary stage, the white
collar and a certain amount of snobbery has its influence at the sec-
ondary stage, and creates a prejudice against the "tech." Moreover
144 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the school life of the majority is short, for most students stay less
than two years, which makes it comparatively hard to organize cul-
tural activities and to create a corporate spirit.
Although the organization of the technical colleges emphasizes the
day school, evening students far outnumber the day students in all
the four main centers. The evening classes are attended mainly by
young people and adults who may have had very little previous train-
ing in their trade, who come after their day's work is over to build
up their knowledge. Employers give little special encouragement to
their employees to develop skill and have never concerned themselves
much with technical education. Nor, from the student's point of
view, is .there much economic inducement to perfect his skill. The
difference between the wages of skilled and unskilled tradesmen is
not enough to stimulate very great effort. Indeed, the high wages
offered for unskilled work have lured boys and girls into "blind
alley" jobs, at the end of which they may have to learn a trade or
face unemployment. This is a situation intensified, but not created, by
the war. In a modern factory, for instance, a boy can readily learn
the simple skills that are required of him ; and with high wages avail-
able, there seems no reason for accepting an apprentice's wage while
becoming a genuinely skilled worker. Nor is there an effective rela-
tionship between the apprenticeship-system and the technical colleges.
The state has, however, recently taken responsibility for the gen-
eral problem of vocational guidance. In each of the four main centers
there are now vocational guidance officers and a youth center which
works in conjunction with the Department of Labor. These havfe re-
cently been taken under the control of the Education Department,
and they provide some kind of a link between school and industry!
There are also "careers teachers'Mn postprimary schools, who add to
their ordinary function that of giving some vocational advice to
pupils. There has recently been a strong awakening of interest in the
general problem ; but it still seems true that New Zealand is facing a
shortage of skilled workers of all kinds. Rightly or wrongly, it is not
yet the recognized function of the schools to provide them.
The pattern of New Zealand postprimary education is, then, on the
face of it exceedingly complex. Besides the dements already de-
scribed, there are, mainly in the country, the "combined schools"
EDUCATION 145
technical and secondary schools fused under a single governing body.
There are six hundred* or more pupils in the secondary department
of the Correspondence School, and there are eight Maori secondary
schools. Finally, the situation is complicated by the private and en-
dowed schools, which teach about one-seventh of New Zealand's
37,000 or 38,000 postprimary pupils. Parallel to the public or state
system there are, in fact, private schools at both the primary and the
secondary level. The great majority of private primary schools are
maintained by the Roman Catholic church. At the end of 1940, for
instance, there were 28,454 pupils at private schools, of whom 24,049
were on the rolls of Catholic schools, the enrollment in state primary
schools at the same time being 203,951. Among private primary
schools there are a few which act as feeders to a group of private
secondary schools (mainly country boarding schools) among whose
ex-pupils will be found the closest approach to a New Zealand aris--
tocracy. Two of these are Anglican schools, founded largely on sub-
stantial public endowments. Receiving no state money, they charge
fees ; and, with some of the more favored of the older public second-
ary schools, they have a certain exclusiveness and esprit de corps.
Unlike the English public schools, whose tradition they to some ex-
tent follow, they carry little weight in the professions : except, it is
said, in the army. Incidentally, these schools, like those maintained by
the Roman Catholic community, are registered private schools and
are inspected by officers of the Education Department. The important
schools from the point of view of the community in general are those
big secondary schools, equipped with large buildings and wide play-
ing fields, and having something of the appearance and tradition
of a minor English public school. The visitor from England is aston-
ished to find, however, that the pupils pay no tuition fees, and that
provided accommodation is available parents in any part of New
Zealand can send a child as a boarder for the cost of sixty to seventy
pounds a year.
For all the complexity of the system, there is a tendency for post-
- primary schools to conform to a definite type. In modem times, for
instance, the technical and secondary schools have become more and
more alike, especially in the country, and even the private boarding
schools do not diverge very widely from accepted standards. This
146 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
drawing together is due not so much to pressure from a strong cen-
tralized department as to a continuing broad agreement in the com-
munity on what the schools should try to do. Yet neither the pressure
of public opinion nor the strength of centralization has prevented
interesting experiments in recent years. At Feilding, for instance, a
district high school has developed, thanks to the energetic drive of
its headmaster, into a more or less specialized agricultural high
school. To a large extent the academic tradition has been overthrown,
and much of the school's life is centered in the school farm; and the
experiment is given a good deal of support by surrounding farmers.
Again, at Rangiora, near Christchurch, an ordinary high school has
departed entirely from orthodoxy both in curriculum and in methods
of school management. Its headmaster, J. E. Strachan, still remem-
bers the schoolboy feeling which most forget when they escape into
adult life that the conventional school was a denial of the life and
vitality of youth. He has made a real attempt to show that work in
the schoolroom can be related to life, and that children can usefully
shoulder responsibility for managing their own affairs.
Wild of Feilding, Strachan of Rangiora, and Somerset, who has
shown how a school can become a real community center, are no
doubt exceptions; yet in the teaching service and in the Education
Department there is no lack of enthusiastic men and women ready
to experiment boldly. A few summers ago war needs suddenly de-
prived a country town of its primary school buildings. It was term-
time ; and as the children had no buildings in which to go to school,
they went to school without. The Education Department sent some
of its experts to organize physical education and handwork out of
doors, and music in any available hall. The children were divided into
groups under their own leadership. They organized projects, made
puppet theaters, visited factories and the radio station, gardened and
painted fences for the local residents. Many suspicious parents were
converted and spoke of the scheme with enthusiasm, as did the chil-
dren and the specialists ; but it was whispered that the boys and girls
went back to their buildings and more formal work with not un-
mixed feelings. Taken as a whole, however, this one of the biggest
educational experiments ever tried in New Zealand was remark-
EDUCATION 147
ably successful : which is a tribute not only to the department's ex-
perts but to the attitudes of mind in the ordinary primary school.
And other experiments will follow. In recent years there has been
a change in policy at headquarters. The Department of Education
is no mere office through which public money is distributed to local
bodies to spend. It has increasingly concerned itself with policy
matters. The present director, Dr. C E. Beeby, has a background,
not of departmental routine, but of university work and research;
and he is one of a group of relatively young men who are open to
new ideas, full of enthusiasm, and strategically placed. Moreover, it
is a fact of first-class importance that information on which to base
progress has become available as never before. This is primarily due
to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has played a great
part in New Zealand educational life in recent years. Some of the
most valuable developments have been financed in the first instance
by Carnegie funds, alike in schools and universities, libraries and
adult education. In 1933 the Council for Educational Research was
launched with a generous grant. Carnegie money has enabled it to
build up a central staff headed by first-class men the first director
was Dr. Beeby and to commission solid research and publications
dealing with many aspects of New Zealand education.
University education in New Zealand in many ways holds a mirror
to the people's life and organization. The University of New Zea-
land is dispersed, for there is a university college in each of the four
main centers, and two agricultural colleges. These six units all
depend on government money (though the two southern colleges
hold considerable public endowments) and are linked in a federal
university system, but they are jealously independent of one another
and of any suggestion of state control. Dispersion and independence
had a historical root, and they are now guarded by the vigorous rem-
nants of provincial loyalties. One of the toughest tasks of university
administration is to remind all concerned that higher education is a
national interest, not merely a provincial one. Dispersion, while pleas-
ing provincial sentiment, also helps to apply in university education
the broad maxim of equality of opportunity. The basic subjects of
arts, science, law, and commerce can be studied in each of the four
main centers. Moreover, except in experimental science, classes are
148 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
generally arranged to suit part-time students. No one must be ex-
cluded from higher education merely because he or she lives in the
wrong city or has conformed to the social habit or necessity of find-
ing a job at the age of sixteen or seventeen. Nor, indeed, is actual
attendance considered vital. Those who cannot attend because of
their occupation or place of residence must be accepted as extramural
students. They get nothing from the university except the right to sit
for the annual examinations, through which they are often steered
by well-advertised business colleges; but the principle of equality is
preserved.
Beyond a certain point equality of opportunity has proved illusory.
Some of the important professional courses medicine, dentistry,
engineering, architecture, home science are not taught in all the col-
leges, and after the preliminary stages students must make their way
to the appropriate center as best they can. Some students, profes-
sional and otherwise, can maintain themselves by part-time or vaca-
tion work; but for the most .part the more expensive professional
schools, notably the medical, have been the special preserve of those
whose parents could afford to invest considerable sums in their edu-
cation, This fact has been seen by the Labor government as a chal-
lenge, and some special grants are now given to help those who could
not otherwise continue with the course.
There is, however, a broader point which concerns all the univer-
sity centers. The University of New Zealand was originally a purely
examining body, which, for the greater security of standards, em-
ployed overseas examiners only. Such a scheme did violence to edu-
cational thought, and it was more and more felt that good educational
practice would regard examining as indissolubly linked with teach-
ing; to which many added that if New Zealand university staffs were
soundly recruited, they should be able to guard their own standards
without dependence on the external examiner. Gradually, therefore,
university examinations were brought tinder local control, a move-
ment virtually completed when the present war convinced even the
most conservative that it was impossible to send papers to England
for examination; and even more gradually there has come a certain
recognition that sitting for examination is not the whole of univer-
sity education. If work done in classes and seminars, and the general
EDUCATION 149
mental stimulus of university life, are also regarded as of vital im-
portance, then the extramural student, and even the overworked city-
dwelling part-timer, have nothing like an equal opportunity with
those who can give their whole time to the work.
In the past the universities have illustrated yet another tendency :
a suspicion of the expert and an undervaluing of research. In the old
days university teachers were rigidly excluded from the control of
the university colleges and of the University of New Zealand as a
whole; they were employees, and policy was in the hands of laymen.
Nowadays the influence of university men over their own institutions
has greatly increased, but it does not stand as high as in many over-
seas countries ; and the atmosphere is not very favorable to research.
This is partly a matter of money. The university colleges especially
in the North, where staffing has not kept pacewith population growth
are shorthanded, and the staff member's original work is weighed
down by teaching routine which must cover many subjects. Yet it is
in line with tradition, and with the general ideas of the community,
that university teachers should spend their time on such routine. New
Zealand in general does not put a high premium on research work
and does not insist that universities should do it. At heart the belief
is that the common man, in whose interests the country should be
run, knows how those interests can best be served without asking
the advice of any academic person detached from life. In this matter
the main exception is provided by the two agricultural colleges, which
have always been more important for their research work than for
their training of students (they had only 330 students between them
in 1940) , and which co-operate closely with government departments
interested in research. Even in this sphere, it is said, the practical
man is slow to take advantage of the scientist's progress.
Despite a general temper unfavorable to the very highest levels of
university work, valuable research is often carried on largely
through the enthusiasm of individuals in the university colleges, in
government departments (headed by the Departments of Scientific
and Industrial Research and of Agriculture), and in a few more or
less independent scientific institutions. One of the most important of
the latter is the Cawthron Institute, founded in 1920 by a large pri-
vate benefaction and since subsidized with public money. Moreover,
ISO UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the Labor government, though often very suspicious of experts, has
been sympathetic to education at the university level as elsewhere.
Buildings and staffing have been improved, and the means by which
students could get free university education restored and extended.
Apart from competitive scholarships and grants, any student has
been able to qualify for such free tuition by passing the entrance ex-
amination, in which the standard is not high, and then spending an
additional year of satisfactory work at a postprimary school. In
1940, 2508 men and women were receiving free university teaching,
out of a grand total of 5528 students enrolled. Though much so-
called university work is not of a very high standard, New Zealand
does at least give a glimpse of university life to a large section of
her people.
On the whole New Zealanders have always been great believers in
formal education of the type that leads to recognized qualifications
and gives the prospect of better jobs. Yet New Zealand has tried
worth-while experiments in adult education for living as opposed to
the earning of money. In the colony's early days there were number-
less small cultural societies ; in recent years the main instrument has
been the .Workers' Educational Association. This was originally
modeled on the corresponding body in England but has developed
along new lines, especially in the effort to deal with New Zealand's
characteristic problem : that of giving reasonable equality of oppor-
tunities to small and very isolated communities. In the towns there
are short lecture courses, often of very good quality, but very
sparsely attended. For the country there has been developed a "box
scheme" and a technique of discussion groups which, it is said, is
an original New Zealand contribution to the theory ancl practice of
adult education, The idea is simply the circulation to interested
groups boxes of duplicated lectures, together with books and other
material bearing on the subject in hand. Groups are periodically
visited by traveling tutors, and in some towns lecturers can be found
among residents.
Such groups can only work successfully if there is enough interest
in country communities and enough financial backing. The WiE.A.
is financed by a combination of private subscriptions and public sub-
sidy, the latter being administered by the National Council of Adult
EDUCATION 151
Education. The Carnegie Corporation has frequently helped to
launch experiments and upon occasion has kept the organization
going in bad times. As for interest, that is a matter not only for the
traveling tutor but for those who benefit from his or her services.
One of the most interesting developments in recent years has been
the way in which organizations started by private- initiative have co-
operated, both formally and informally, in furthering the broad work
of adult education. The Women's Institute and the Women's Divis-
ion of the Farmers' Union, for instance, were organized for quite
other purposes ; but they have become part of a loose system by which
country women can, if they wish, bring themselves into contact with
modern thought, and they even bring the study of cultural subjects
into a countryside which is only too often culturally starved. They
were started on English and American patterns by enthusiastic
women who had traveled abroad and come back to New Zealand
fired with zeal to help their countrywomen. Both organizations have
grown enormously, taking in a large proportion of rural women.
The Women's Division was founded mainly for philanthropic pur-
poses/ and the Women's Institute for educational. Both are sub-
sidized by the state ; and the Women's Institute has been particularly
eager in spreading tuition in all types of activity, from handwork
and drama to canning and dressmaking. The Association for Coun-
try Education, with headquarters in Dunedin, also arranges broad-
casts, sends out boxes, employs tutors, and holds correspondence
courses. It is run as an extension of the Home Science Department
of the University of Otago. It was greatly helped by a Carnegie
grant and now has a government subsidy. Since 1938 an excellent
country library service brings the most up-to-date books into the
country even more freely than they are sometimes" available in the
town. Adult education organizations, the library service, the radio,
and the automobile have together done much to insure that in cultural
as well as in material things the country shall not fall behind the
town.
CHAPTER TEN
Gentle Arts
To the nineteenth-century immigrant, art was a side line, denied
the high seriousness with which one mastered the details of politics,
sheep breeding, or butter making. If the middle-class immigrant gave
any thought to artistic expression, it was probably in terms of water
colors, with the sampler and perhaps a pianoforte for his wife ; while
the arts and crafts of Merry England had long departed from the
life of the artisans who formed the bulk of the new stock. When the
day's work was done, the thoughts of master and man alike would
turn naturally toward the field of sport, and both could join in that
worship of horse racing that has colored the life of Australia and
New Zealand alike. For the rest, these men and women of the nine-
teenth century were fighting a battle for material progress, and the
more thoughtful were set on improving and saving their souls, and
many held the current notion that "knowledge is power." They
turned to books, therefore, and organized such institutions as
"mechanics institutes" or "athenaeums," with libraries, lectures and
study groups. Those who did dabble in "culture" were firmly held in
an English tradition, with a strong bias toward the pianoforte and
toward painting ,and the writing of verse. They therefore learned
virtually nothing from the artistic achievement of the Maoris. Maori
arts and crafts were too far removed from the ideals of the white
man. They seemed to him barbarous ; they expressed nothing that
he knew, and met no urgent need of his material life. Professional
artists, too, brought a European background, and it was only too
easy f o!r them to see the New Zealand landscape in terms of Europe.
Mountains and torrents are common to both hemispheres. Lombardy
poplars start the mind on a line of nostalgic thinking even if planted
152
GENTLE ARTS 153
fot the specifically New Zealand purpose of obstructing^ howling
northwesterly. Willows cluster along river banks and still trap the
unwary into sweeping comparisons with the Thames, and into think-
ing that he sees another England where in fact a film of English
sentiment covers the vitality of New Zealand. Immigrant English-
men inevitably started off with imported technique, both in the pri-
mary business of farming and in such secondary matters as art and
literature. Adaptation to a new environment comes slowly, and all
the more slowly where there is no strong community interest or de-
mand for results of a high standard. .
Dominance of English technique was therefore natural and in-
evitable; and it was inevitable that New Zealand art should have to
tread the same long pathway toward maturity that has been trodden
in every young country. In some respects the path was harder for
New Zealand artists than for others. In spite of modern science,
geography still prevents stimulating contact with contemporary effort
overseas ; and within New Zealand itself, artists are scattered. New
Zealand is provincial, it is said, without having a rich and healthy
provincial tradition. Even the artistic developments of Australia,
twelve hundred miles away, are scarcely known, and knowledge of
trends in the United States is confined to a very few, while the most
recent movements in the basic British tradition have had a very
delayed action in New Zealand. Moreover the New Zealand com-
munity still tends to regard art as a recreation and a social grace
rather than as a serious business. As in every sphere, modern trends
have been unfriendly to the discipline and control that must underlie
the finest craftsmanship. The broad attitude is that things should be
there for those who want them, and should not be the prerogative
of the highbrow, the rich, or even of the industrious and persistent.
Therefore standards are hard to maintain. Moreover, as in most
spheres of New Zealand effort, there is a lack of that searching and
constructive criticism that makes life hard and drives men to give of
their best Discriminating critics are not lacking, but their views have
relatively small publicity or 'influence. Indeed it may be doubted
whether the New Zealand community is large enough or sufficiently
interested in such matters to make criticism the full-time profession
that it must be if highest standards are to be reached. Much can be
154 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
done by the amateur and the enthusiast; but the limitations of public
criticism are shown in such excellent journals as Art in New Zealand,
which is typical of the community both in the art which it reproduces
and in the caution of its judgments. In some spheres, notably politics
and economics, critics can still be outspoken and publicly rude,
though they have lost the wholehearted vituperation of colonial
journalism. For the rest, serious criticism of the kind which might
hurt people's feeling is not "done" ; and especially in cultural matters,
the community is instinctively shy of criticism and is tempted to take
shelter behind self-deprecation and the acceptance of a solid Euro-
pean-made convention. In a sense New Zealand is only too conscious
of her inferiority and gives a mythical value to anything from over-
seas. Conversely, in natural and healthy reaction against the, short-
sighted failure to search the home community for talent and experi-
ence, the work of those who have honestly striven to stand on their
own feet is sometimes uncritically honored. The will is taken for the
deed* and a budding school of genuinely native inspiration, which
may cry aloud for friendly but searching criticism, is only too often
greeted with, a doubly deadening response: ignored by the many, it
is adulated by the few.
One way or another, however the artist can rely on a remarkable
buying public, especially for landscapes. If ever nature has packed
too much variety and beauty into too small a space, she has done so
in New Zealand, and the New Zealander pays homage in many ways.
He may walk sturdily over the hills, or admire at a distance and give
sound advice to tourists. He may paint, or buy the works of those
more skillful than himself at transferring the charms of New Zea-
land onto canvas. But for the general taste there must be a certain
idealization of the landscape along conventional lines, and there are
few, if any, wealthy and discriminating patrons to encourage a
breakaway and set a fashion. The artist, like other New Zealand
craftsmen, suffers the penalties as well as enjoying the benefits of
social security and the general insistence on social equality. In a com-
munity where there is neither great wealth nor intense poverty, there
can be few brilliant prizes. Where moderate achievement gets a satfe
reward, the first-class technician may be paid little higher than the
second- or thircj-class man. .Where neither criticism nor patrons are
GENTLE ARTS 155
very emphatic, ambition is not stimulated, nor does carelessness
bring summary punishment. Moreover, few can earn a decent living
by art alone in any community, and in a small and young country
like New Zealand the competent artist is more than ever thrust by
the necessities of life into commercial art, into teaching, and into a
reasonable conformity to tradition in his own work. In such ways he
may make a respectable living and even find some outlet for creative
work; but this is not an atmosphere to encourage originality. Yet the
artist who saw New Zealand through English eyes has been displaced
by those who can faithfully portray her many moods with a tech-
nique uncramped by nostalgic ideal. It is a living countryside that:
can be seen on the canvas of such men as Nugent Welch and Lindley
Richardson. Moreover, in recent years there have appeared artists
who, according to conventional dassifications> are postimpressionist.
They are concerned not so much to hold a mirror to nature as to give
an interpretation; which in a young country must, perhaps, be more
a matter of courageous individualism than of tradition. Of such men,
only one well-known painter has reached maturity: T. A. McCor-
mack; but others notably perhaps, John [Weeks and M. T. Wool-
laston give hope for the future in a healthy independence of
tradition.
It is doubtful whether a national attitude or temperament can
show in a musical composition. One New-Zealand-born composer,
Alfred Hill, did attempt to use Maori themes and rhythms in his
early songs and chamber music; but his Maori cantata, Hinemoa,
has been virtually appropriated by Australia, which has been for
many years the composer's domicile. It is rarely performed in New
Zealand. Recently, however, one distinguished young composer,
Douglas Lilburn, after studying abroad, has elected to work in his
native country, fired with an ambition to translate the contour of
New Zealand hills into musical line and harmony. How far this is
possible is a matter of musical philosophy. It may be significant, how-
ever, that Lilburn has been much influenced by Sibelius, in whose
music more than one New Zealander claims to have found something
of the atmosphere of his own country. Lilburn has already made a
name for himself outside New Zealand. His work has been broad-
j 5 6 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
cast, for instance, in both Britain and Australia. It is a serious handi-
cap for a composer a handicap which is, of course, not peculiar to
New Zealand to have little chance of hearing his work performed
and searchingly criticized in his own country. There is, in fact, no
effective demand for local performance of really high standard Nor
can there be until two weaknesses are overcome: the dislike of real
criticism, and the instinct to prefer the imported article. No doubt
in such a small population there must be a limited market for good
music; but matters are made worse by that deep-rooted sense of in-
feriority which leads people at once to encourage local talent as a
[whole, without discrimination, and to assume that the best must
come from outside.
The "mana" of overseas governs professional performance as well
Sas composition. Standards are set for learners by external examina-
tions, under experts provided from London; here, indeed, the New
^Zealand passion for examinations is given ample scope. An overseas
artist, well advertised, can fill the biggest hall in any New Zealand
town ; and amid the general approval of anything he may do, he may
[well overlook the keen criticism of an alert minority. A New Zea-
lander, returning from overseas, will get a flying start over equally
accomplished artists without handles to their names, though even
then familiarity will soon breed, if not contempt, comparative dis-
regard. This substitution of overseas recognition for local achieve-
ment is one factor helping to produce a general slackness in stand-
ards. There is no focus for local talent, for the conservatorium
planned by the National Broadcasting Service must await happier
days after the war. Meantime the service is tempted to give the pub-
lic what it imagines the public wants rather than to head a discrimi-
nating drive in the interests of New Zealand music. Three of the four
university centers teach for a musical degree ; but their work is mainly
academic, and they have not in the past effectively drawn together the
threads of musical activity in the community. Yet there are many
competent and energetic mu^ic teachers in all the main towns; and
numerous private organizations like the Music Teachers' Associa-
tion and the various branches of the British Music Society do
something to bring together those who are interested and to bridge
the gap between professional and layman.
GENTLE ARTS 157
Meanwhile there is intense, though uneven, musical activity among
the people. Connoisseurs, deprived of first-rate orchestras and full
of intolerance for anything New Zealand could possibly do, turn
into gramophone fans. The highbrow collects records as a philatelist
collects stamps. He sharpens his thorn needles to the finest point,
waxes his discs, puts his loudspeaker in the ceiling,' and knows the
date of every recording. And alongside the classicist is the swing fan
whp scents new records with the same clairvoyance. There are many
young men and women who listen to the performance of the best
. American swing orchestras with a critical ability based on real
knowledge both of composition and performance.
As for the performers, an astonishing number of people learn to
sing or (up to a point) to play the piano. In both respects English
tradition is strong, and there are choirs all over the country. Until re-
cently, music found little place in the schools, but its importance is
now recognized in teacher training and to an increasing extent in the
classroom. In this field a stimulating experiment has been tried by
Dr/Vernon Griffiths, now professor of music at Canterbury Univer-
sity College. When teaching at Dunedin Technical High School, he
miraculously found some musical activity for the whole school popu-
lation of five hundred, two hundred of whom formed the school
orchestra. It performed annually and packed the town hall for four
or five years in succession, and it is said that the performance was
of an astonishingly high order. This is an exciting way of expressing
the ideal of music for the common man. If Dr. Griffiths, and those
who have followed him, can make almost every one of the children
in an ordinary postprimary school actively interested in music, how-
ever inadequate the performance of some of them must be, there is
great hope for New Zealand.
If the "music in schools" experiment should continue and spread,
it should bear fruit in the form of more chamber music and of better
orchestras. Music making in the home has played its part in the social
life of many New Zealanders, and string groups, amateur and pro-
fessional, sometimes flourish. Many hold, however, that the radio
has weakened the impulse toward making music, though they look
to the National Broadcasting Service to sustain the professional. The
form of concerted music-making which continues to flourish is the
158 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
brass band; and that, it is said, is for a reason rooted in the schools.
The New Zealand youth likes to make music, but until recently it
took some courage for a schoolboy to play a violin, while there could
be no doubt that blowing a trumpet was a manly pursuit. Nor did the
playing of those particular types of woodwind which function in a
jazz orchestra involve any falling away from the ideal of toughness
which is passionately followed from the age of six up. There has in
consequence always been a dearth of certain instrumental players
necessary to make the full complement of an orchestra. But that is
by no means the whole reason why New Zealand has no national
orchestra. It is largely a matter of expense. There was one brief
period, however, when New Zealand celebrated her growth to nation-
hood with glorious extravagance. A national orchestra was recruited
without difficulty for the Centennial celebrations, held together by
the broadcasting service. It toured the country and gave semipopular
concerts (including what has been called that very New Zealand
opera, Faust). It died with the celebrations, but not before it had
shown what could be done with adequate financial backing.
In the work of coming to terms with. his new environment the
musician, like the artist, has had comparatively little help from the
man of letters. Art in New Zealand is a valiant quarterly which con-
tinues to give a true index and record of the trends in New Zealand
art. Music Ho is a vigorous, young, and more specialized monthly.
The New Zealand Listener, in spite of limited space, prints vigor-
ous thinking about every phase of New Zealand life. For the rest,
the press in general has never given more than a very limited space
to-cultural subjects, and that modest allotment has been cut to pieces
by wartime shortages.
The New Zealand daily press has a well-marked character. On the
face of it, it is "made in England." Its news comes via London, it
looks the same as a standard London or Scottish paper, and its ma-
terial is arranged in much the same way: births, deaths, and marri-
ages on the outside, while in the middle the foreign news- faces the
leading articles. Moreover, with some change in emphasis, writing as
Well as printing follows a broadly English pattern. With honorable
exceptions, most writers on foreign news give a narrative of facts
GENTLE ARTS 159
and an explanation of what London thinks about them. Where there
is a genuine discussion of controversial issues, they are nearly always
issues of local politics having an essentially economic bias. Talk .of
moral problems is usually the prelude to an assault on the govern-
ment of the day. Clergymen, however, are well reported: the reason
can be seen in any Saturday's paper, which reveals the number and
variety of religious services to be held on the following day. Sport
or at least racing is elaborately reported, and there is always the
women's page, which is concerned with social happenings and
recipes. Books are rarely and unobtrusively noted. The occurrence
of concerts and exhibitions is similarly mentioned, often with a
factual description, but rarely with a critical appreciation even on the
modest lines familiar twenty or thirty years ago.
Within these limits the press undoubtedly does its work well. Its
reporting is full and conscientious, and its writing is competent.
Its advocacy cannot be bought for cash. It is not artificially regi-
mented into the expression of a single opinion. There is, in fact, a'
multitude oi journals ; in 1940 there were 280 items on the Post
Office register of newspapers, of which 51 were dailies. Behind most
of these papers there is some force of provincial patriotism, and
they are apt to express provincial differences of opinion. Though
some papers are poor and others are among the richest concerns in
New Zealand, genuine competition helps to keep the press up to the
mark. Political criticism, though often outspoken, has lost the venom
of colonial days and respects the boundaries of good taste and the
law of libel. There is, in fact, a suggestion of provincial caution
which prevents the press^ like the radio, from crusading on behalf of
minority views. The press reflects, rather than leads, currents of
opinions.
In its merits and technical competence, in its preoccupation with
material issues and its caution especially if there is any question of
departing from a tradition believed to be British-inspired the press
undoubtedly reflects a very considerable section of New Zealand
opinion. Yet much that happens in the country finds no expression
in the solemn columns of the daily press. One decisive test will suf-
fice. In its political comment the daily press is 95 per cent of the one
opinion. It is critical of anything which has been authoritatively de-
160 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
scribed as state socialism. It dislikes trade-unions, concludes that in
every strike the men are probably at fault, seeks for a government de-
partment to blame when the economic machine moves creakily, and
is convinced that a scheme of social security, when it is new, may
very well destroy the stimuli that led the pioneers to make us what
we now are (or might be, if properly governed) . In a word, the press
is almost unanimously anti-Labor, Yet the vote of the Labor party
has grown steadily, and in the last election (1938) the party won a
smashing victory which was all the more devastating because many
observers inside and outside New Zealand had learned from the trend
of press comment that Labor was likely to be defeated. In the factory
and workshop, on the wharf and farm, even in suburban households,
there is a world undreamt of by those who think that the whole of
New Zealand is of the same solid, prosperbus, rather stodgy and un-
creative virtue as their favorite newspaper.
As in politics, so in literature : the press, the platform, and the
public statements of eminent men are not an adequate index to what
people are reading, thinking, and writing, more particularly the
younger people. The press, for example, shows little sign of Ameri-
can journalistic influence, but there are many who draw on AmeHcan
sources of information. There are men and women who neither read
nor write leading articles but have read as widely in American litera-
ture as in English. Again, though there may be a germ of truth in
the jibe that for those who control our schools and journals there
has been no poetry or art since the death of Tennyson, that is not
true of the community as a whole. A casual observer may jump to
the conclusion that New Zealand is a reflection, not merely of
Britain, but of a mystically idealized Victorian B.ritain. He may be
deafened by the boom of nineteenth-century orthodoxies in the
mouths of the middle-aged. He will note the crowds on the race
courses, the vast consumption of beer, the preoccupation of politi-
cians, trade-unionists, and employers with short-term objectives
which seem obviously to betray the philosophies in whose name they
are pursued. Yet the voice of the many is not that of the whole, and
New Zealand is, after all, a very normal community. She may lag be-
hind older countries in independence ctf thought or in its fearless ex-
pression, but in Wellington as in older cities students can sit up most ,
GENTLE ARTS 161
of the night to discuss poetry and the nature of life, and the words of
the pompous can be pierced by a glance of quick understanding
among skeptics. Among the young of all ages there are rebels who
react even too sharply against the orthodoxies. They can be met in
all spheres of life by diligent inquiry; and only by an understanding
of the militant minority can the state of New Zealand's creative
thinking be estimated.
One of the problems facing the alert minority was that of finding
a publisher for creative writing done in New Zealand. There are
publishing firms with a sense of social duty; witness the fine range
of history and biography published about the time of the Centennial.
Nevertheless, apart from an author's natural fear that something
appearing in New Zealand will reach no wider audience than his own
countrymen, it is inevitable that New Zealand publishing should be
small in volume and with an overwhelming bias toward the prac-
tical: toward education texts which pay handsomely and toward
more-or-less technical publications bearing on New Zealand agricul-
ture, economics, or politics.
Recently, however, there has been more opportunity for serious
writers to publish their work mainly through the efforts of small
co-operative societies and idealistic individuals. At Christmas, 1942,
there appeared the first issue of New Zealand New Writing, which is
a significant index of present trends in New Zealand writing and
publishing. Its format is modeled on that of a famous English series
except that its seal is a kiwi instead of a penguin and its contents
bear comparison with the later English New Writing. Its contribu-
tors collectively show a nice balance between independent writing, a
strong .English tradition, and a growing American influence, espe-
cially over prose writing. There is also evidence of that self-con-
scious New Zealandism and preoccupation with material values and
problems of poverty largely a legacy from the depression which
have marked much recent writing. And the list of publications on
the back cover gives an only slightly exaggerated picture of the eco-
nomic bias that must be followed in New Zealand publishing. New
Zealand New Writing was published by a new venture, co-operative
in origin ; for the rest, such independent work has had to rdy mainly
on students' publications and on the small but vigorous publishing
162 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
ventures that have grown out of them. Of these the best-known have
been the Phoenix Press in Auckland, which expired some years ago,
and the much longer lived Caxton Press in Christchurch, which, at
least till the outbreak of the war, flourished exceedingly.
The Caxton Press began as a student hobby in a college basement
during the depression years of 1931-1932. At this time a thoughtful
radicalism boiled up among students and drove groups of them to
write and print. A twenty-five-page journal printed on a Platen hand
press drew wrath from suspicious authorities, and the press migrated
through successive wooden sheds to its. present home. Its guiding
spirit, Denis Glover, had not only drive and vision but sound taste
in typography and shrewd business sense; and as times improved, a
little capital was gathered and modern equipment bought In the
period just before World [War II the Caxton Press was a dream
come true. It was run by a partnership to give a modest living to
four or five people, and by sheer excellence of workmanship it held
together a profitable business in the ordinary lines of job printing.
For the Caxton Press, however, profit remained subordinate to an
ideal to build a future for the literature of this "other island,"
and to treat printing as a craft in its own right and to a large extent
it has succeeded. From time to time it has produced well-designed
collections of the work of contemporary New Zealand writers, and
also a little periodical, Book, which gave some scope to newcomers
as well as to those who had already made their names. Small as its
output must be, the Caxton Press has 'done something to make New
Zealanders aware of the talent in their midst and has helped to make
New Zealand writing known overseas. The name of Katherine Mans-
field still, of course, stands pre-eminent among New-Zealand-born
writers, and in their different spheres Ngaio Marsh and Robin Hyde
have won considerable reputations through ordinary overseas pub-
lishing houses. The Caxton Press, however, has placed the prose of
such men as Sargeson and Holcroft effectively before the public,
with th$ verse of Fairburn and Mason, Curnow and Glover. These
men and others have also published work in overseas journals : in the
English New Writing, for instance, and in America's Poetry and
New Directions. Quite apart, therefore, from work in New Zealand's
special field of politics and economics, New Zealand writers of im-
GENTLE ARTS 163
aginative literature have turned out material sufficiently vital to
rouse sharp criticism as well as warm praise, and have been recog-
nized abroad as forming part of the broad stream of European-
American culture.
Whether they are making a really significant contribution to that
culture, and, if so, what is the essential New Zealandness of their
work, is another matter. Their background has already developed a
well-marked, if unstable, character. At the root of it lies the conflict
between geography and human society : isolation on the one hand and
the pull of overseas influences on the other. "Between the pohutu-
kawa and the rose 12,000 miles of sea still interpose" ; and not all
the wonders of modern science can protect New Zealanders from the
sense of being a handful of people shut up on sea-girt islands. The
war has naturally strengthened that feeling. Barriers to travel have
sprung up on all sides. Mails have become slow and irregular, and
the flow of overseas publications is unreliable. Though there has
been no fighting on New Zealand soil, war has given the community
a new and growingly intense experience in common. Yet the whole
war situation is, in another aspect, merely the most spectacular of
many proofs that New Zealand, humanly speaking, is part of Europe.
Parallel with isolation there is the feeling of being forced to partici-
pate in events outside ourselves, and of being involved in problems
which only by an effort of the understanding can be made to seem
our own. Yet it is a very real participation. New Zealand shares
world booms and slumps,. London's approval or disapproval of our
economic policy may make all the difference between prosperity and
gloom. Nine-tenths of our books, journals, and films come from
England or the United States. In 1939 New Zealand was called upon
to defend other countries for her own safety once removed; "and
since then she has paid for being British with young men/' "Wool
and soldiers are New Zealand's chief exports," wrote a school child
in 1942.
There can be no question of the willing acceptance by New Zea-
landers as a whole of their overseas entanglements. The facts of eco-
nomic organization and human loyalties have been overwhelmingly
stronger than the physical barriers of space and time. Yet this un-
resolved conflict, this impulse at once toward independent life and
UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
toward the treasuring of outside contacts and influence, is sufficiently
sharp to be a fundamental factor in New Zealand culture and a fit
subject for probing by a philosopher or a poet In other directions,
too, the raw material for literature is being accumulated. New Zea-
land has been called the country of the common man, some aspects
of whose life are being crystallized in an occasional novel (such as
Lee's Children of the Poor and Mulgan's Man Alone) . The influence
of Dos Passos and Saroyan is plain, as can be seen, for example, in
the work of Gilbert and Sargeson, best known of the short story
writers, and the Saroyan manner sits very happily here. Maybe there
is a side to New Zealand life that closely parallels Saroyan's Amer-
ica. Certainly there is a feeling, especially among young men and
women, that American fiction and the best American films deal with
problems like ours and with a kind of life kindred to our own. It is
hard to say just where the kinship lies. Most probably it is in the kind
of stress and movement which develops in young countries, where
immigrants have to adjust themselves to a new tempo and lack the
shelter of an old country's conventions.
However, New Zealanders look to the past as well as to the present
to buttress their sense of individuality. The longing for history is
part of New Zealand consciousness, and this is one reason for the
part played in thinking and writing by Maori navigators and war-
riors, by gold seekers and undaunted pioneers. In 1940 the same im-
pulse found expression in a fine range of published work for which
the excuse and focusing point was the Dominion's Centennial. There
were works of imagination, but the whole emphasis was historical,
and one of the most important works was one of interpretation. It
was symptomatic of New Zealand's thinking that one of the most
important Centennial prizes should have been won by Holcroft's
Deepemng Stream, a careful and outspoken analysis of 'the cultural
influences that have made modern New Zealand. It was significant,
too, that the Centennial as a national experience was created by the
leadership of a government elected on a platform of social security,
and that this government's officials were directly responsible for
making the Centennial publications into models of the book pub-
lisher's art. Moreover, at the end of 1942 government leadership
led to a striking illustration of the vitality of tradition in New Zea-
GENTLE ARTS 165
land and of the way in which it can be linked with creative thought.
Three hundred years ago Abel Tasman first saw the coast of New
Zealand. Boisterous winds forbade his landing; through a misunder-
standing the Maoris massacred his men, and the dramatic story
ended as the sails of Tasman's ships disappeared over the horizon.
Thereafter for over a century New Zealand remained beneath a
cloud of mystery and suspicion, awaiting the arrival of Cook. Tas-
man, therefore, was not to the popular eye an obviously important
link in the sequence of events that have made New Zealand. How-
ever, a group of New Zealanders looked upon his visit as a piece
of island tradition and found it good. The government commissioned
a monument to be built on a cliff overlooking the bay where the na-
tives of New Zealand first encountered Europeans. A special pub-
lication was prepared, including not only a new translation of the
relevant part of Tasman's journal and a historical essay, but verse
by one of the best-known young poets, Allen Curnow. Moreover, it
was not a tale told in heroic couplets but a mature and lovely poem,
by a visionary who sees the function of a poet as giving background
and cohesion to a people so that they may live more surely.
The little handful of New Zealand poets now writing may not
all have this high purpose or the skill to catch the thoughts of the
people in vital words. They are scattered and separated from each
other, and occupied with daily drudgery. Nevertheless for some there
is a high seriousness, and it is bearing fruit. Moreover, New Zealand
living and thinking are already building a foundation for the men
of letters, and already there is a body of experience, shared by New
Zealanders and by no other people, to which they can appeal. In
literature, as in every other sphere of life, New Zealand has devel-
oped a delicate balance between native growth and overseas importa-
tion. Being a practical people, however, New Zealanders have been
less bold in such fields than in material things. When it is a matter
of cows or sheep, of football or racing, the community can face the
world with a calm consciousness of acknowledged achievement In
poetry, and particularly in music and the plastic arts, the ground is
less sure and the tests are less objective. Therefore it is especially
tempting to take refuge behind a respectable tradition, and the
prophet is even less likely to fend honor among his own countrymen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maori People
Fifty years ago halfway through New Zealand's span as a
British country it seemed that there would be no native problem
in New Zealand, for the Maoris were fast dying out. Virile people
as they were, they suffered shattering blows in their first contacts
with the whites. Traders brought not only drink and firearms, which
made the national pastime of war a deadly game, but diseases which
took a fearful toll. The primitive social system of the Maori seemed
to be on the verge of complete breakdown ; and the missionaries who
taught the white man's culture in some ways increased the crisis.
None can doubt the excellence of their practical work. Under their
leadership Maoris became good carpenters, laborers, and above all,
skilled fanners. Missionary schools taught a surprisingly large pro-
portion of the population to read and write. And beneath it all lay
the Christian faith, which, it seemed to many thoughtful people then
and since, might have proved the foundation for a new Maori order
to replace that which was irrevocably doomed. Yet Christianity not
only attacked war and cannibalism. It inevitably weakened the hold
of the laws of tapu and of Maori domestic life, and sapped the basis
of Maori art and self-expression; and its preaching of the worth
and importance of the individual struck at the root of the Maori
communal system. To this extent the men of God unwittingly helped
to undermine spiritual as well as cultural values.
This was not due to lack of effort by the Maori people ; for though
their century-old values were toppling, they met the challenge of the
new culture squarely. They learned the white man's ways, and con-
tinued in their habits of diligence in a money economy which they
never fully understood. As laborers and traders and as fanners they
166
THE MAORI PEOPLE 167
sustained the infant colony, and a limitless era of prosperity seemed
to open out before them: provided only that they labored. But the
promise was false, and after twenty years the bottom fell out of the
market for their produce. They could understand even less than their
pakeha brethren the reasons for world-wide slumps, and deep dis-
illusionment seized them. They had listened to the words of the mis-
sionary; but when they read the Scriptures for themselves and
studied the ways of professing Christians, there seemed to be strange
contradiction between the. principles and the practices of the Euro-
peans. They had entered the white man's economic system full of
well- justified hopes; but within a few years they had 'become its
helpless victims. Meanwhile the land, the very basis of their life, was
slipping from them. One motive of British colonization had been
the determination to frustrate the speculators and save the Maoris
from wholesale spoliation, and the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteed
them in their possessions. But though this policy succeeded in the
first phase of colonization, the land hunger of the settlers was great,
and many Maoris were willing to sell; and by the 1850*3 the con-
viction was growing among the Maori people that their age-long
heritage was being dissipated for worldly goods which in a few years
would have perished. Much land still remained, however, and the
strength to defend it. What was lacking was an organization that
would draw the people together, give them common leadership, and
express their common purpose. By their growing will to sell no more
land, therefore, the Maori people were driven into political organ-
ization.
This was the background to the King Movement. Not so muck an
anti-European movement as pro-Maori, this was an attempt to bor-
row a white man's institution kingship and give the native race,
split up among its countless tribes, something of the cohesion of
the Englishmen under their queen. It was one" of the most promis-
ing of many efforts made by Maori groups to organize themselves
in defense of their culture and land. This is not the place to tell in
detail of the disaster that followed. It is easy to condemn the poli-
ticians Vho failed to find a peaceful solution when the Maori people
was strong and still hopeful, and when its leadership rested in the
hands of able and mature statesmen. Yet difficulties were great.
168 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
There was barbarism and hot blood among Maoris just as there
was greed and intolerance among the pakehas; and the wise men of
both sides were frustrated. Suffice it to say that between 1860 and
1870 there was a period of long drawn out and exhausting warfare,
in which, incidentally, many Maoris fought beside the British, partly
through loyalty to the Queen but partly to avenge tribal animosities.
In the upshot the land lay open to the pakeha, and the Maori people
emerged with a magnificent military reputation but with their spirit
broken. "Bright hopes had been quenched/' writes a sympathetic
historian,* "and all confidence in the pakeha, his laws and religion,
had been destroyed. Lands confiscated, leaders dead or discredited,
the lights for a second time darkened in heaven, the Maori relaxed
his grip on life."
Yet the vitality of the native race belied the calm pessimism which
had said in so many words that the duty of the conscientious colonist
was merely to smooth the dying pillow of a people irretrievably
doomed; for by the end of the nineteenth century new prospects were
opening up. By this time the Maoris had developed some resistance
to the European diseases that had been so disastrous, and there
seemed more hope in the economic field. Above all, however, a psy-
chological revolution was taking place. The reasons behind this re-
vival were obscure, but its character was well marked, for the Maori
people themselves had thrown up leaders to teach them how to live
in a European-made world. The Young Maori party of the 1890*8
represented in its blood and in its thinking a fruitful fusion between
the native and the European. Its .best-known leaders were Te Rangi
Hiroa (Dr. Peter Buck), Sir Apirana Ngata, and Sir Maui Po-
mare; and it had the benevolent patronage of Sir James Carroll, a
Maori of an earlier generation, who, like Ngata and Pomare in later
years, was long a member of parliament and minister of the crown.
Buck, Ngata, and Pomare were all educated at Te Aute College (one
of a group of missionary schools), the most distinguished of a gen-
eration of young Maoris who drew from a pakeha education a mis-
sion to awaken in their people both pride in the past and hope for
the future. Buck and Pomare were doctors who found in modern
medical science the key to the future health of the race; but the group
. * Harold Miller, The Maori People Today, p. 95. '
THE MAORI PEOPLE 169
as a whole believed firmly that Maori life had its own permanent
values and that revival must come from within. They dug deep,
therefore, into the rich cultural background of the people. They be-
came experts in the intricate tribal system, the arts and crafts, the
oratory and art of government indeed, in the whole traditional
background that still ruled the Maori mind. With knowledge of
Maori and pakeha alike they could see in a new light and explain
with a new force the fundamental significance of the land problem
for the Maori people and the manner in which Maori practices could
be adapted to modern needs. As a group, then, they had both the
knowledge and the personal prestige to build their work on Maori
tradition as well as on pakeha science; and thus equipped, they trav-
eled the country (Pomare and Buck were successively officers of the
Department of Health), rousing their people to pride in their race,
history, and tradition, while at the same time teaching pakeha ideas
of hygiene, housing, and education. By making the best of the two
worlds between which the Maori people hovered, they offered a
remedy at once for the diseases of body and the disturbances of mind
that together had threatened to exterminate the native race in New
Zealand.
Whether the Young Maori party was the cause or effect of the
revival, the fact is that in the years following its lators, cold figures
testified to renewed life of the Maori people. Between 1840 and 1890
the Maori population had fallen from a quarter of a million per-
haps much more to a little better than forty thousand; but in the
twentieth century it has increased fast, following the same trend as
that of the American Indians though a generation earlier. In 1921
the figure stood at 56,987 (half-castes and more being counted as
Maori), and in the next twenty years it almost doubled: in 1941 it
was 92,248, (of whom a little under 60 per cent claimed unmixed
Maori descent) in spite of the fact that a considerable body of Maori
troops was then serving overseas. Nor is that the whole story. In
1941 the Maori birth rate Tfaas 46.26 per thousand as compared with
22.12 for the European population, while 58 per cent of the Maoris
were under 21 as against 35 per cent for the Europeans. The native
race was not only multiplying but was gaining fast on the Europeans,
and there could no longer be any question of its vitality and power
170 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
to survive. Yet the character as well as the strength of the Maori
renaissance has set a grave problem for the future. In the last fifty
years Maori nationality has been re-created in precisely the same way
that submerged nationalities of Europe were rescued in the nine-
teenth century and the American Indians in our own time. Scholars
and statesmen studied the literature arid the history, the religion, the
art, and the customs, of a half-forgotten age. Through their labors,
and through the tenacious traditions of small communities, hope
came again to a disheartened people. But it was hope based on the
memory of a racial tradition different from that of the European,
not on the thought that Maoris could, if they wished, forget their
past, enter the full stream of European culture, and beat the British
at their own game. Many individual Maoris have shown this last to
be true, but the Maori people as a community have rejected quick as-
similation into a wholly European community as a solution to their
problem. They have a nationality of their own, and their relations
with the pakeha are not only a matter of brown men and white but
of a national minority dealing with a generally sympathetic but not
always well-informed majority.
The attitude of the Europeans is governed to some extent by the
uneven distribution of the Maori people. Taking New Zealand as a
whole, the Maoris number only 5.6 per cent of the population, but
three-quarters of them are concentrated in the top third of the North
Island. In this region, therefore, they were an important minority of
the population, and in some districts of North Auckland and the
East Coast a big majority. Here contact between the two races was
closest, and danger of friction and misunderstanding greatest, espe-
cially as there was a serious local problem in finding work for the
young people. On the other hand, many people in the rest of New
Zealand have no regular contact with the Maoris at all; and taking
the country as a whole, comparatively few white men are aware that
there is a "Maori problem" at all. For the most part they are firmly
convinced that the Maoris have been well treated as indeed they
have, according to some standards and that New Zealand is a shin-
ing example of how white men and brown may live amicably to-
gether. When evidence proves that difficulties still exist, there is a
temptation to plunge into unthinking condemnation of human frailty
THE MAORI PEOPLE 171
as personified in the Maori. The more normal attitude however, is.
sentimentally eulogistic and protective; and even the condemnatory
would take up the cudgels on behalf of "our Maoris" against outside
criticism. The Maori belongs to New Zealand. It is a matter for sel f-
congratulation that the early colonist had to conquer the country
from such stalwart foes ; that these had a culture of which the white
man can be proud; that New Zealand has, in short, so intelligent and
superior a native race. This kind of pride is especially evident, per-
haps, in times of war. Maori soldiers on the march will raise an espe-
cially hearty cheer, and the papers rejoice in stories of Maori valor
and the effect of a timely hakaon Axis morale. There was real satis-
faction when the Maori battalion was placed under a Maori com-
manding officer (it scarcely needs saying that there is no place in the
military or social hierarchy barred to a Maori) ; while it was a na-
tional event when the Victoria Cross, the highest British decoration
for valor, was awarded to Lieutenant Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa NgarimtL
The modern pakeha's appreciation of his Maori fellow citizens is
a tribute to the success of the last half-century's revival, in which,
indeed, he honestly did his best to help. There is at least some justi-
fication for the feeling that the present state of the native race re-
flects credit on the recent leadership of pakeha and Maori alike. Yet
neither Maori gratitude for pakeha help, nor pakeha pride in some
of the Maoris* achievements, necessarily solves the fundamental
problem of finding the right place for a fast-multiplying native peo-
ple in the jpiodern social and economic system/ In spite of sales and
confiscations a considerable amount of land is still "native" accord-
ing to recent figures, roughly 4 million acres out of a total area of
66 million. Much native land is unfit for cultivation, however, or
could be farmed profitably only af terlmuch capital had been invested.
Of the rest a big proportion was leased to Europeans. Many leases
are now gradually falling in, and the land passes under the control of
Maori land boards to be farmed, nominally at least, on behalf of the
Maoris; but however efficiently existing land? are developed, they
can never give a reasonable standard of life to more than a fraction
of the present-day Maori population; hence a problem of unemploy-
ment was becoming acute just before World War II, a challenge to
Maori and pakeha alike. For the time being, indeed, there is no lack
172 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
of more or less casual work, in public works, for example, building
roads and railways, or fencing and scrub cutting. Maori shearing
gangs, traveling as complete little communities, can easily earn
enough money to see them through the off season ; atid many Maoris,
like the pakeha, have drifted to towns, finding what employment they
can in heavy industries and unskilled work which in wartime, at
least, commands high wages. But the Maori has had little chance to
learn a skilled trade of any kind, and such rough and spasmodic work
could never be accepted by either Maori or pakeha leadership as a
permanent basis for Maori life. The problem demands radical treat-
ment, which implies educational reform, co-operation with town and
country employers, assistance in land development, but above all a
genuine knowledge, among administrators, of Maori temperament
and values.
In the early days Maori education was wholly in the hands of the
churches. Today compulsory education applies to Maori and pakeha
alike, and most Maori children get their primary education through
state schools. Half of them go with pakeha children to ordinary
.public schools; but where the Maori population is thick, there are
specifically native primary schools. These are controlled directly by
the Department of Education, with a special inspectorate, "and are
up-to-date and well planned. Each small school is controlled by the
schoolmaster and his wife, not specially trained, and rarely speaking
the Maori language, but sympathetic enough in attitude. The Maori
children must, to take their part in a pakeha-made world, speak the
English language and have much the same general training as the
pakehas^but there are no penalties for lapses of tongue in school or
playgrotmd, and the curriculum is given, so far as is possible, a prac-
tical emphasis. The children are taught their own arts and crafts and
their own history. The boys are given a smattering of agriculture.
The girls get training in homecraft and hygiene in model kitchens
often strikingly unlike those of their own homes. Through agricul-
tural dubs the children learn to rear calves and pigs, their own prop-
erty. But at this stage it is considered too early to teach any special
craft; and when the children leave the primary school, really serious
difficulty begins.
The children themselves, it seems, begin to lose interest during the
THE MAORI PEOPLE _ 173
last year or two at thie primary school, and from the parents' point of
view there is no guarantee of getting a better job merely through
prolonging education. There are still, unfortunately, districts where
a color bar operates at one level at least, and some boys and girls with
secondary education, even with clerical training, find themselves
thrust back into unskilled work. Nor is further schooling always .easy
to come by. Where Maori and pakeha go to the same primary school,
a few Maoris go on to secondary school in the ordinary way. For
those who can stay the course, and there are not very many, there is
here an avenue to the university, to the teacher training college, and
to the nursing profession. But where native population is thickest,
there are only native schools and was until recently no chance at all
of postprimary education except for scholarship winners. Maori sec-
ondary education is still denominational, though the state provided
for a good deal of the cost through land grants and also provided a
number of scholarships at the Maori church boarding schools. But
these schools are small and few they have recently become fewer
and their aim has been to provide a "superior social environment"
with a general training. They have done admirable work, and have
trained the scholars and professional men who in the past generation
were the leaders of the Maori people, but they cater primarily for
those with academic tastes. It is doubtful whether the extension of
such schools would solve any problem at all. Apart from the expense
entailed in spite of scholarships, the Maoris have a natural disinclina-
tion to send their children from home, and there has never been any
presumption on the part of New; Zealand authorities that complete
segregation from the parents is the only way to hasten assimilation.
There has, however, been a demand for secondary education on the
spot in one or two districts having a certain educational tradition or
one or two well-educated leaders. The demand has not been for tech-
nical education but for the good old academic secondary type, the
vagu assumption being in the pakeha tradition that further educa-
tion is in itself a good thing.
It was partly in response to such a demand and partly in realization
of the serious gap between the end of primary school and employ-
ment that the Education Department recently set up on the East
Coast three Maori district high schools. These consist of three forms
174 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
tacked on to the tops of the existing native primary schools. The
schools aim at giving, besides a continuation of general education,
some practical training in carpentering, plumbing, and housecraft by
the building and management of a school cottage, and some agricul-
tural work. A Maori distVict high school formed recently far north
of Auckland is giving special attention to farming. The basic idea
has been more to help the children to adapt themselves to a European
economy and to demand decent living standards than to turn out
young people equipped to fill specific jobs. Doubtless some of the argu-
ments against giving too specialized a training to the pakeha children,
dealt with in an earlier chapter, hold here as well. But the fact re-
mains that there is no special provision for technical education for
the Maoris, nor can technical training be found through apprentice-
ship. Even before the war this system was breaking down for the
pakeha and was virtually useless for Maoris; and under war condi-
tions difficulties have been ever greater. There are no special voca-
tional guidance officers for Maoris, and as yet there is little contact
between native schools and prospective employers a type of liaison
which is fruitfully developed by some pakeha schools. The upshot
is that the breakdown between school and employment has not yet
been remedied. It is perilous for the Europeans but still more so for
the Maoris, and it leads to delinquency problems which are left to
child welfare officers to patch up.
These welfare officers do excellent work among the Maoris and
help to repair many casualties; but a fence at the top of the cliff
would enable them to employ their time more fruitfully, and part of
the fence might well consist of a little adult education. Some of the
schools are run by sympathetic headmasters and their wives who are
trying to forge a link between home and school and make contacts
with parents, though language difficulties are a barrier to full under-
standing. Many parents must regard the Europeanized schools as
something detached from the life which they and their children
must live a thing to be tolerated as one more concession to pakeha
ways. But where parents have been drawn in, as through the work
of agricultural dubs, the venture has been a real success; and here
and there can be found the germ of a community center with the
school as a basis* There is no tie-up, however, between schools and
THE MAORI PEOPLE 175
land development schemes: the native schools have done nothing
comparable with the Indian schools of America in their dealing with
the land problem, nor has the state provided anything comparable
with their technical education. The most it has done has been to give
some adults training in the actual construction of the Maori state
houses. Broadly speaking, then, not much progress has been made
in adult education, at least of the kind which might be built on the
flourishing life of the native schools. This means that one avenue by
which parents might help their children in the matter of employment
is blocked. It means also that they themselves get little help in the
business of making two worlds fit. For all the good work of school-
masters, there is little impulse here to make Maoris insist on raising
a standard of living which, balancing uneasily between the two
worlds, is sometimes far lower than it should be.
Perhaps the most fruitful experiment in adult education* from this
point of view has been made by Maori effort working in a small,
almost closed community on the banks of the Waikato River. Here
at Ngaruawahia is a striking instance of what may be done by com-
munity education among Maoris who heed the exhortation of Sir
James Carroll : Kia mau ki to koutou Maoritanga: Hold fast to your
Maorihood. Ngaruawahia lies in the heart of the country which
supported the Maori king eighty years ago, and its people are among
those tribes who were broken by military defeat and by the deeply
remembered land confiscations that followed. Among them Te Puea
Herangi has labored for many years to re-create pride of race
through an understanding of Maori culture. She bought again from
the pakeha part of the land that had been confiscated from her an-
cestor Tawhiao, the second Maori king, and built on it a pa in which
Maori houses could be constructed in traditional style, yet conform-
ing to pakeha standards of hygiene. Traditional ceremony, and the
Maori arts and crafts done within the community, are knit in with
pakeha technique. True to custom, the community's effort was lav-
ished on McMnarangi, the magnificent meeting house, which oddly
represents the fusion of Maori and pakeha culture; the photographs,
satin cushions, and brocaded chairs are overshadowed by magnifi-
cent wood carving and panels of tuku-tuku, which is flax woven into
traditional patterns. Attached to the meeting house is a bungalow
176 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
furnished in modern European fashion and kept ready for official
occupation by the Maori king; but it is the princess Te Puea who
rules this community through that combination of birth and personal
ability in which Maori leadership is traditionally found. Another
community enterprise was the revival of canoe making, in which
experts could still be found among old men to instruct the younger
generation. The annual regatta was an event honored by the leaders
of Maori and pakeha alike ; and the canoes of Ngaruawahia were to
carry the imagination back to the great migration six centuries ago.
The aim of it all, however, was the well-being of the Maori of today
through Maori leadership which had its roots deep in the history of
the race.
Ngaruawahia, however, is an exceptional case, which depends not
only on the inspiration of the princess Te Puea but on the fact that
this was a compact group in the center of a rapidly developing dis-
trict. The Waikato prospers, and there is work for the Maoris in
neighboring shops and factories, or on the land, to give a simple and
in many ways satisfactory standard of living within the pa. For the
most part, however, the Maori people live scattered among the white
population, in some places in a large majority; for the Maoris have
never been kept to special areas by allotment, as have the Indians of
America. The problems of the great majority of the Maori people
are different from those who can live as compact and rather exclu-
sive communities; and there is one name which stands out in the
mind of Maori and pakeha alike in connection with all the efforts
that have been made in this broad field for a generation or more :
that of Sir Apirana Ngata. He was a member of the original Young
Maori party and was a member of parliament for many years ; and
during a critical period he was the very active head of a government
department staffed largely by Europeans. Moreover, through a pow-
erful personality, and through notable eloquence of tongue and pen,
he has impressed his ideas on pakeha as well as on Maori.
The root of the Maori problem, psychological as well as economic,
lies in the land ; for the land is not merely as for many pakehas a
device for earning one's living, but is fundamental to social organiza-
tion. Ngata's energies have therefore been directed toward reinstat-
ing the Maoris on the land, teaching them to become able and
THE MAORI PEOPLE 177
independent farmers, and filling them with pride of race; and lately
he has been given wholehearted support by the state. Like the prin-
cess Te Puea, Ngata has built the community spirit on the old tribal
basis, starting with his own tribe, the Ngatiporou. They, incidentally,
had fought for the pakeha during the critical wars eighty years ago,
and therefore retained a comparatively large amount of good land
to be the raw material of Ngata's experiments in reconciling Maori
ideas of communal ownership with pakeha efficiency in working. He
has systematically helped to revive interest in arts and crafts, and in
the building of meeting houses, traditionally the summit of the com-
munity's artistic effort and now encouraged throughout the Maori
district by generous government subsidies. He has stimulated the
revival of the poi dance and the haka and the action song, sometimes
in a modern form invented by himself. Ngata has taught his people
how they can once again tell the story of important events in song
and movement, in a manner in keeping with the type of event now
to be described. The songs are sung to adapted pakeha tunes which
are given a strong Maori rhythm and are accompanied by a conven-
tional set of descriptive actions. They are immensely popular, per-
formed at dances, meetings, concerts, and by the children at school;
and they are an effective instrument of propaganda. . When Ngata
wanted to popularize the milking machine among conservative fann-
ers, he did so, it is said, by inventing a new action song about it.
Today many of the action songs cpmposed for special occasions have
as themes overseas war news and the exploits of the Maori Battalion.
One very telling song in 1941 represented the English crying for
help in Egypt. The antiquarian or purist deplores the modern action
song as the travesty of an ancient custom, just as he deplores the
degenerated language spoken by modern Maoris ; but both are very
much alive for the Maori as well as for his pakeha sympathizer.
The work of Ngata and his colleagues in the Young Maori party
was largely responsible for the tardy recognition by the pakeha au-
thorities that any fruitful handling of Maori problems must come
through Maori belief and custom ; and this was especially the case in
the fundamental question of the land. The modern Maori does not
forget that his ancestors once owned the whole of New Zealand, and
that his patrimony has now dwindled to four million acres. True,
178 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the change was brought about entirely by technically legal sales
(apart from the confiscations following war); nevertheless, the
Maori was given just cause for suspicion, and he still fears that the
pakeha may find means again to draw on his lands. And to the older
Maori, in particular, ownership of land is a spiritual as well as a
material heritage. Moreover, a complicating factor in the problem of
Maori land development has been the whole native economy, which
has in its system no place for private ownership of land as the white
man understands it Land was held communally, and ownership titles
are still apt to be extremely complicated. It is now at last realized
that the Maoris still work better and more happily as a group than
as a number of individuals, just as in the days when it was the cus-
tom for all belonging to the pa to share in the activities of gaining a
livelihood. The recognition of this took material effect in the form-
ing of co-operatives on the East Coast. As early as the beginning of
the century a Maori co-operative sheep-farming company was
formed at Tokomaru Bay, And today a co-operative store and dairy-
factory at Ruatoria bear testimony to the entirely satisfactory work-
ing of such enterprises.
But this is not the whole of the story, and in order to compete
successfully in the white man's market a dairy farm must be run by
one man alone. The government had recognized this fact, and when
Maori land was available an agent was often put in charge usually
a pakeha to farm it on behalf of the natives. Land held by trustees
or statutory bodies and farmed by pakehas as a business proposition
did not satisfy the Maori's instinct to get back onto the land; and a
plan that was better from this point of view was developed in the
early years of the twentieth century: the incorporation of native
landowners. By this device the Maori tribal system could itself be
used to put authority into the hands of some individual without in-
fringing community rights. But in New Zealand farming, authority
is not enough without capital; and the institutions (state and pri-
vate) which financed pakeha farmers were shy of Maoris. Gradually
the government evolved means by which the funds of the natives
themselves could be invested in the land; but Maori leaders urged
that some means should be found by which public money might, with
due safeguard, be used to finance Maori settlers, as they had long
THE MAORI PEOPLE 179
been used to finance pakehas. So was evolved the great land develop-
ment scheme linked with the name of Sir Apirana Ngata, which was
adopted by the government in 1929 and administered for a critical
five years by Ngata himself as native minister.
Ngata's scheme aims at putting the Maori himself on the Jand, in
circumstances where he will have a reasonable chance of commercial
success, and giving him the responsibility as well as the dividends. A
Maori landowner may ask to have his land brought within the
scheme; and where a holding is communally owned, the Maoris se-
lect one of their number to farm it He is then placed on tfie land as
a "unit" and given government aid in the form of a house, utensils,
seed, stock, and fencing. The cost of this becomes a load on the land,
and the government takes in repayment a portion, which may be as
high as 60 per cent, of the cream check' from the factory. JVhen the
land is in very poor condition, the farmer is allowed subsidized
labor to put his farm in working condition. Through this scheme
many admirable farms have been developed and wide areas of
hitherto idle land brought under cultivation: by 1941 the total area
involved in the schemes was over 900,000 acres, on which the Maori
population was 1933 settlers, 2824 other employees, and 16,000 de-
pendents. The Maori has proved himself again and again to be an
able and diligent farmer, needing only financial backing and a sense
of security, encouragement, and a little extra stimulus and advice in
looking to the morrow.
The land development scheme has its defects from the Maori point
of view. For instance, the supervisors who inspect farms, hear com r
plaints, arid give advice are for the most part pakehas, and it is some- -
times said that the scheme is less generous to its farms than are some
of the stock and station agents and dairy factories which finance
pakeha farmers. Still, writes Ngata, "in the launching of the develop-
ment policy all relevant factors, historical, traditional, cultural and
psychological, were assessed, current tendencies within the race were
examined; and due consideration was given to the factor of leader-
ship and persistent survival of the tribal organization. Every re*-
source, physical, mental, and spiritual, was marshaled in the 'argu-
ment to support the inception of. the project." In short, the whole
resources of the Maori renaissance were put behind the scheme, with
i8o UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the active support of the pakeha authorities. And though the time
has not yet come to assess the general result of the experiment, it has
at least given one more proof if proof be needed that, working in
his own way, the Maori can hold his own with the pakeha, whether
as farmer or in running a co-operative dairy factory and general
store.
Important and successful as the land development scheme has
proved to be, it has a limited sphere and so far has been able to help
only a relatively small number of Maoris. The rest still face unem-
ployment problems, and many of them live in poverty. Pensions of
various kinds now consolidated in social security prevent destitu-
tion, but many Maoris are still satisfied with a very low standard of
living. As a people, indeed, the modern Maoris scarcely feel the
pakeha's incentives toward long and sustained effort. "The Euro-
peans bustle and hurry always/' said a half-caste Maori. "They are
always strained. They think of nothing but making money. We must
do the same to live among them, but it's sometimes very good to get
back to the mat.'* Going back to the mat is the equivalent of the In-
dian's return to the blanket, and it means a return temporary or
prolonged to the native community, where one can sit in the sun
if one wants. For many Maoris, therefore, a party or a community
gathering of any kind is apt to be more important than the business
of making money to buy things that no one particularly wants. To
the pakeha this signifies unreliability, and it is sometimes held
'against the Maori by the critical that even when apparently progress-
ing well in some career, he may give up the struggle at the critical
stage and go back where he feels he belongs. The fact is that there
are fundamental attitudes in which the Maori differs from the pa-
keha and which it is not easy to abandon ; and any attempt to remedy
the Maori situation must take them into account.
The Maori, for instance, finds it almost impossible to accept the
-pakeha's view of property, for he seems constitutionally incapable
of hoarding. According to his tradition riches of any kind are there
to be used, and their sharing and distribution give the owner that
mana whicbi the continued ownership of private property gives to the
white man. For a tangi or a htji the Maori may kill his best breeding
pigs, for to provide the very best gives him status as well as pleasure.
THE MAORI PEOPLE 181
The present is far more important than a hypothetic future, and he
takes unkindly to the arithmetical calculations necessary to a money
economy. Moreover, the communal ownership of property gives an
entirely different basis to Polynesian society, especially since the view
of the family is so different from that of the white man. The family
unit includes not only parents and their children but any number of
relatives. Even the children seem to be nobody's property in particu-
lar, once they are past the infant stage. The Maoris, however, adore
children. No house may be without them, and a system of wholesale
adoption sometimes baffles the law. Indeed, in family units of this
type, pakeha notions of property are plainly out of place. Where
there is need, thinks the Maori, there property belongs. A Moari will
never be hungry or destitute so long as his community has food and
shelter. No man or woman will ever be forced into an institution,
nor any child into a charitable home, whether he is legitimate or
illegitimate. The Polynesian family and the Polynesian attitude to
property live on persistently, to the puzzlement of Europeans, who
are unaccustomed to seeing their scale of values cheerfully ignored.
This community spirit still holds many of the people together in
small concentrated pas, or villages; and often enough indifference to
money as a means of security, and the general happy-go-lucky day-
to-day attitude, results in much apparent poverty. The pa& are some-
times nothing more than a collection of miserable shacks looking like
an unemployment camp in a slump; though it should be added that
even where there are mttd floors and walls patched with kerosene
tins, there is frequently spotless cleanliness. But there is still touch
to be done in the way of helping some of the Maoris to raise their
standards of living. A government housing scheme has helped a
small percentage; but the Maori who applies for a house must be able
to offer something in the way of security, and even so the govern-
ment has not been able to deal withi more than a portion of the appli-
cations which the Maoris have lodged. Many Maoris live now as
Europeans, with, superficially, little to distinguish Maori from pa-
keha dwellings. Sometimes, however, Maori housing is desperately
poor according to pakeha notions. In spite of these conditions in
some areas, however, the general condition of the Maoris has greatly
improved over the last few decades, and particularly in health. The
182 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Maoris have always been a physically fine race, but a low resistance
to epidemics has been among the chief causes of a high death rate.
Their resistance has been steadily increasing. Tuberculosis, however,
takes a heavy toll ; and there are certain infectious diseases, including
skin troubles, which are still rife. This is partly due to ignorance
regarding the principle of infection.
On the whole the state's medical benefits are less effective for the
Maori than for the pakeha, partly because of Maori prejudice: like
every conservative people,. white or colored, they are suspicious of
modern medicine. The government, however, appoints special district
nurses for Maori areas to visit schools, pas, and individual homes,
waging constant warfare against epidemics, tuberculosis, and the too-
high rate of infant mortality. The nurse still has a hard battle to
fight against ignorance of proper feeding and hygiene, against bad
housing, poor sanitation, and overcrowding. Maori mothers, for
instance, are suspicious of the Plunket principles and do not take
kindly to the arduous business of scalding bottles and making "modi-
fied cow's milk." Moreover, the laws of tapu still play an important
part in the life of some sections of the community. It is sometimes
harder, for instance to persuade a Maori to heat washing water on
an inside fire than to get a superstitious pakeha to walk under a ladder
or to forget his distrust of the number thirteen. There is still a hor-
ror of hospitals as places, where one dies, and a strong impulse
toward faith healing; while many will creep to the tohunga (remote
descendant of the influential priest of the primitive Maori) behind
the nurse's back.
/
Faith healing and tapu, then, and the influence of the tohunga still
play their art in the problem of Maori health, and indeed in Maori
life in general. In response to missionary teaching in the early days
the Maoris all over New Zealand gave up the core of their own re-
ligious system j but the principle of universal brotherhood and love
was hard to accept as a rule of practical life, and the existence of
somewhat quarrelsome sects among the Christians gave the Maoris
plenty of precedent for seeking different interpretations for them-
selves among the scriptures. General acceptance of Christianity, then,
did not by any means imply uncritical acceptance of pakeha ideas
'either in religion or in politics, and during the past century a leader
THE MAORI PEOPLE 183
has several times arisen to bolster tip Maori grievances and resent-
ment against pakeha domination by organizing a part-religious, part-
political movement based on Christian teachings as well as on Maori
lore and custom. Such, for example, was the so-called Hau-Hau-
organization, which began in Taranaki eighty years ago and spread
to the East Coast and Bay of Plenty. On its political sidfe it was a
nationalist movement comparable to the King Movement of the
tWaikato. Its symbol, the upraised hand (Te Ringatu) was later
taken by Te Kooti, organizer of a religious and military movement
also based on a mixture of Maori tradition and Christianity. It is
the ancestor of the present Ringatu faith, which is widely held
among the people of the East Coast district. Finally, in the present
century, there was a powerful movement, originally started by Ra-
tana near Wanganui. Ratana was a mystic, and a faith healer, and
his movement has been compared by a Maori scholar with Christian
Science. The movement is, however, essentially Maori, and politi-
cally it has powerfully expressed Maori grievances with a certain
amount of anti-pakeha feeling. Ratana himself died some years ago,
but the movement is still strong and widespread. Yet it may be ques-
tioned whether Ratanism and its predecessors as purely Maori re-
ligions are more significant at least in the religious field than
those thousands of Maoris who join with pakehas as sincere and
active members of one or other of the more orthodox Christian
churches, Catholic as well as Protestant. The Church of England, for
instance, which stood behind some of the most successful missionary
work in the last century, whose missionaries are remembered as
sturdy defenders of the Maori against the settler, is still very power-
ful, and a few years ago a distinguished Maori churchman was con-
secrated bishop. And there are other churches with less well known
international links, A word must be found, for instance, for the
small but flourishing Mormon groups. They take their religion seri-
ously, and are industrious and temperate and keenly anxious for
their children to be educated in the European way. Though most of
their American leaders have been recalled, they carry on faithfully,
alert for converts.
In the field of religion, then, the adaptation made by the modern
Maori to Christianity in the light of his own traditions is a complex
i86 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
viewpoint of both European and native a genuine racial consolida-
tion among the native race might remove some of the greatest weak-
nesses of the past. One of these has been the tendency to condemn
Maoris harshly for "faults" which they share with the rest of human-
ity. The white farmer of the North naturally resents the fact that
many acres of native land are, for want of capital and organization
rather than of experience, still dismal wastes of scrub and fern. He
forgets the large tracts of partially cleared land all over New Zealand
owned but not efficiently developed by pakehas. The moralist speaks
of Maori improvidence and love of liquor; but he has no statistics
of the quantity of beer consumed by white men, or of the number of
pakehas who fall short of their own standards of virtue and thrift.
The more the Maori people as a whole recover their dignity and
self-confidence, the easier it will be for the pakeha to abandon his
tendency to alternate between ignorant condemnation and equally
ignorant sentimental praise of Maori qualities, and to co-operate
with the native race in solving its problems of economic and cul-
tural adjustment. These problems are serious even mo;re serious
for Maori than for pakeha in a world of uncertainties but the
whole history of the Maori people testifies to their capacity to help
themselves.lt is not merely a matter of the charm and generosity of
the Maoris, which have -Won the hearts of generations of pakehas,
or of the intelligence and strength of purpose which Maoris have
shown in every field when they have been able to work under favor-
able circumstances. After all, the Maori people has in modern times
made profound adjustments to adapt itself to new conditions, and
perhaps it can do so again, all the more hopefully because thoughtful
pakehas are no longer so sweepingly confident that wherever Maori
and pakeha attitudes differ, the Maori must necessarily be wrong.
On the contrary, there is nowadays & lurking suspicion that the
Maori view of material wealth may contain a grain of wisdom that
the European has mislaid in his bustling pursuit of material pros-
perity.
CHAPTER TWELVE
New Zealand in the World
New Zealand is a Dominion within the British Commonwealth of
Nations : a mystical statement which is only to be fully understood
after long study and experience of British institutions. Dominion
status means a subtle combination of independence and organic union
with kindred countries. Its foundation is a community's belief that,
it is more free in association with other British nations than it could
be as an independent unit, In practice it has given the Dominions,
who are small nations in a power-ridden world, wide freedom of
action in managing their own affairs, and also some degree of influ-
ence in world affairs : for .they are small powers with a share of great-
power status. Here is a plain paradox, which cannot be resolved by
too patient analysis. Shelves full of books by lawyers and historians
help to explain the system and point out how it came about; buf
every attempt to be definite falsifies the truth. The British Common-
wealth is a developing institution and is governed by custom and
personal understandings rather than by law. Its habits can be
changed overnight to meet new needs. It has many sides, and looks
different when observed from the different dominion capitals, from
London, or from Washington. A statement which may be vividly
true of one Dominion today may be utterly false tomorrow, and may
never have been true of a fellow Dominion. Yet the confusion works,
because its meets the facts ; and it is a fair claim that in wrestling
with its own problems the British Commonwealth of Nations has
experimented in vital and constructive ways in the art of govern-
ment. Centuries ago, Englishmen and Americans tried out bold ex-
periments in self-government; and humanity is indebted to them. In
the twentieth century the British Commonwealth has been trying
187
i88 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
similar experiments on a world scale and with countless peoples of
differing race and culture as subject matter, in addition to the British
stock which is still a connecting link. There have been endless diffi-
culties and tensions, gigantic failures as well as great though often
less publicized successes. The balance sheet is infinitely complex, a
happy hunting ground for controversialists of every kind in search
of material to support their current dogmatism. But it is also a field
in which those who seek to plan a better future for humanity by
scientific observation may find evidence on what to do as well as
on what to avoid.
Through her relations with Great Britain and other countries New
Zealand has played her modest but individual part in the British
people's experiments in international government. She has been the
slowest of the Dominions to claim anything like independfence from
Britain, and for this there are good and sufficient reasons. Apart
from her Maori people she has had no racial minority to play the
.part of the French in Canada, for instance, or the Dutch in South
Africa. Nor is there, as in Australia, a vigilant and well-organized
group to carry over into the New World some of the discontents felt
by Irishmen against the English in the Old. For the most part her
colonists came in hope, not in despair, and brought no longing in
their hearts for revenge on their erstwhile rules. For that matter, in
New Zealand the line between ruler and subject, though held clearly
in mind by pioneers, has been somewhat obscured. Neither the very
rich nor the very poor have ever come to New Zealand. Her people
have been drawn from the middle parts of the social scale. They have
tended, therefore, to have a certain community of outlook, especially
when their thoughts traveled homeward or dwelt on problems of
government in general. In the old days a small but thoughtful mi-
nority felt themselves to be the economic castoffs of Great Britain,
and more recently some New Zealanders could feel a certain pity for
a parent community which was backward in dairy machinery, social
services, and perhaps even in Rugby football. But these were ex-
ceptions which merely emphasized a basic fact: that New Zealand
as a community looked with pleasure on its links with Britain, and
that it took a genuine delight in being the "most English of the Do-
minions," an outlying agricultural dependency that was an enthusi-
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD. 189
astically dutiful daughter-community. Filial sentiment for Britain,
which at some times and places became unruly and irrational, has
been fundamental in New Zealand life.
Sentiment is, of course, powerfully reinforced by geography, and
by its corollary, strategy. Though the well-to-do New Zealander is
an inveterate traveler along the orthodox routes that lead to Lon-
don isolation has helped to give thousands of New Zealanders a
rosy vision of "home", : it has become a half-known country to which
the faithful attribute unnumbered virtues. Isolation has also tended
to breed a feeling of insecurity, or at least of national loneliness, and
with it a tendency to claim the protection which a mother country
should give to a loyal and obedient dependency. This feeling has
often been challenged, and it is in fact a fairly late development in
New Zealand's short life. Her pioneers, like the citizens of all pro-
gressive western countries of the mid-nineteenth century, had certain
fixed principles in mind, all the more axiomatic because unformu-
lated. One of them was the divine dispensation by which Europeans
were charged to rule and exploit the world. In some minds there
might be doubt as to which of a number of conflicting nationalities
had the firmest grip on the divine mandate; but this doubt could not
be shared by those who populated the new lands of the Pacific and of
North America in the nineteenth century. They emigrated in the
faith that their way of life would be absolutely secure, granted only
vigor and determination. In this atmosphere a handful of pioneers
could carve out their homes in New Zealand without too keen a sense
of their obligations to Britain. Seventy years ago men could argue
half seriously that British colonial policy was governed by business
principles, not family sentiment, and that New Zealand would be,
more secure and prosperous as an independent nation than as a
British colony. Of these statements, the first was a half-truth which
grossly libeled the much-abused officials and politicians of White-
hall, and the second was manifestly untrue. It could be made only
because political security was accepted as an established fact of na-j
ture, and because the spectacle of American progress seemed to give
tangible proof. Sentimental links with United States of America had
.been strong since the earliest days, and it is doubtful whether New
Zealand opinion has ever really classed Americans as foreigners in
190 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the ftill sense of the term. New Zealand boys still play as cowboys
and Indians rather than as Maoris and pakehas; and in the nine-
teenth century the onward march of American prosperity was a com-
forting background to New Zealand's solid, though much less spec-
tacular, achievements.
Even into the twentieth century, then, the background to New
Zealand's relations with the outside world was the axiom of political
security. There were, indeed, war scares. In turn the French, the
Russians, and the Germans fell under suspicion, and upon occasion
New Zealand threw up hurried fortifications around her chief ports.
Such spasms were salutary reminders of the existence and impor-
tance of the British navy, and in the long run prompted an honorable
impulse to subscribe toward that navy's upkeep. After 1882, more-
over, New Zealand gradually became conscious, as a great exporting
country, that her frontiers were no longer on the long coastlines of
her own islands and secure in their isolation. Her life lines were the
trade routes which linked her with overseas customers ; and as the
twentieth century advanced, New Zealanders developed a growing
suspicion that wolves prowled in the world Fortunately, however,
the sense of uneasiness was balanced by the belief that trade routes,
like islands, can be defended by sea power, and that the British navy
was, humanly speaking, invincible. Accordingly, in spite of doubts
as to the ultimate results of Japan's appearance as a first-class power
doubts which, in the early years of the century, never reached the
occasionally feverish apprehension of Australian opinion New Zea-
land's sense of security remained. In the twentieth century, however,
it could no longer be thought of as an axiom, a gift of nature. It was
a gift of Britain. At last, and very forcibly, the argument of strategy
reinforced the inclination of sentiment.
During precisely the same years the argument based on economics
became overwhelming. In the last half-century New Zealand has
grown into a flourishing community through her overseas trade. In
1893 tMs amounted to 15,900,000. In twenty years it had multi-
plied nearly threefold; on the eve of World War II it stood at
100,000,000 per year or more. All this was manifestly due to Brit-
ain. For many years she had been New Zealand's only important cus-
tomer. It was not only that 80 per cent and more of New Zealand's
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 191
exports went to the United Kingdom; for many of them there was
no other obvious buyer. Wool often had a genuinely international
market; but meat, butter, and cheese have been deliberately produced
to meet British needs. It has been a specialized arrangement which
has suited both parties well. British capitalists have co-operated en-
thusiastically, all the more because New Zealand was so dose in senti-
ment to Britain. Their cash provided modern and specialized equip-
ment with which New Zealand's pastoral industries produced goods
cheaply and in growing quantities. Britain gained, therefore a field
for sound investment, a supply of reasonably priced pastoral produce,
and a market for her manufactured goods among New Zealand's
prosperous farmers. New Zealand, for her part, could specialize with
confidence that her exports would find a market All her eggs were
in the one basket ; but that basket was sound and ample and hallowed
by sentimental aff ection for the mother country.
The whole relationship, was, then, one of mutual interest, and it
drew the two communities together. The political and economic in-
tegrity of New Zealand was dearly an important interest for British
housewives, manufacturers, and bondholders, just as security in the
British market was a matter of life and death for New Zealand
farmers. But the two partners in this arrangement were grotesquely
unequal. For New Zealand the whole economic life of the community
was bound up with the British connection ; for Britain, New Zealand
was merely one small element in a complex world situation. No doubt
sentiment gave one and a half million New Zealanders more weight
in British statesmanship than could have been claimed by a far
greater number of foreigners ; yet it seems evident that sentiment
will in the long run prove most powerful when allied with sound
business principles. The undoubted kinship uniting British peoples
throughout the world, and the genuine community of interest be-
tween Britain and New Zealand, could not disguise the fact that New
Zealand was a very junior partner the smallest, most distant, least
self-sufficient member of f the British household.
Problems of defense, economic ties, and sentiment have acted on
all the members of the British Commonwealth, but on none so
powerfully as on New Zealand; and they are responsible for the
dedine of independence whidi is a striking and characteristic phase
192 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
of New Zealand development. In the spacious days of the nineteenth
century the eye of New Zealand statesmanship ranged in wishful
thinking over the whole Pacific as a suitable field for an English-
speaking empire with New Zealand as its heart. Such dreams
withered before the caution of British statesmanship and died in the
chilly atmosphere of impending world war; and in the twentieth-cen-
tury development of dominion status, New Zealand often lagged
behind, even fighting sturdy rear-guard actions in defense of a by-
gone age. Just before World War I, for instance, a major problem
was the control of naval defense. It was a well-established principle
that Dominions should contribute to their own protection, and the
experts certified that the most efficient plan would be to pool joint re-
sources and build a single fleet to be centrally controlled by the
British Admiralty. There was, however, a strong current of opinion
in the Dominions that it was undignified for a free country's ships to
be controlled by another even by a kindred and benevolent mother
country; and in 1909 Australia's 'growing nationhood insisted that
her ships should be wholly paid for by Australians and controlled
by them in peace and in war. In the same year New Zealand, with
equal ostentation, presented to Britain a battle cruiser which was to
be perpetually under Admiralty control. Another vexed question of
commonwealth statesmanship has been the right of Dominions to
negotiate treaties with foreign powers; and in 1919, after some
skirmishing, the Dominions signed the peace treaty with Germany
and joined the League of Nations as individual members. To domin-
ion opinion in general this signified a great step toward nationhood :
to New Zealand, however, the whole episode was held, with some
misgivings, to be a signal demonstration of the indivisibility of the
British partnership. Finally, as the culmination of a long period of
colonial evolution toward nationhood, dominion status was defined
in 1926 in the famous Balfour Declaration: Dominions, including
the "Dominion" of Great Britain, were henceforth to be held "equal
in status though not in stature/' Against this conception New Zea-
land expressed the most violent dislike, and found some consolation
in promising alone among the Dominions to make a substantial
payment toward the building of the new imperial naval base at Singa-
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 193
pore. Incidentally the payments were faithfully made, in spite of the
interposition of a severe depression.
Such practical examples could be multiplied indefinitely, but they
can all be summed up in a general statement : during- most of the last
half-century, when the Dominions as a whole were more and more
claiming and exercising the right to stand before the world as
virtually independent nations grouped in the same commonwealth,
New Zealand was a minority of one who spoke up, as boldly as was
permitted by a growing modesty and by the obvious hopelessness of
her cause, for a contrary view of imperial relations. She saw the
British Commonwealth as a partnership, and for generations her
leaders hankered after some arrangement to make that partnership
solid and coherent But in the view of most of her statesmen it was
sheer nonsense to talk of equality. The power, the wealth, and in
wartime the main sacrifice were Britain's. Responsibility must there-
fore be concentrated in London ; he who by common consent paid the
piper must call the tune. In such a community of peoples, in the New
Zealand view, it was essential to freedom that the smallest as well
as the greatest should feel able to express her judgment with all
frankness and vigor ; but, that being done, all must accept the final
decision of the dominant partner. Like theif colleagues from other
Dominions, New Zealand statesmen were interested in the machinery
of consultation between the member states of the British Common-
wealth, but for a different reason. According to the majority view
consultation was a means by which half-a-dozen free powers might
organize themselves into a team, or, alternatively, was an instrument
by which a dissentient Dominion might learn the plans of other
British powers in time to dissociate herself from them. To New Zea-
landers, however, consultation would make available vital informa-
tion as to what was happening throughout the British Common-
wealth, and in particular would insure that key men in London would
.know dominion opinion before they made the decisions that would
bind.everyone.
All this is true ; yet an obvious truth must not be exaggerated. New
Zealand never quite lost her sense of independence and her willing-
ness to press her own point of view. In 1911 when Ward, New Zea-
land's prime minister, urged as a minority of one that the British
194 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
Commonwealth should give itself a constitution and should shun the
idea of dominion nationhood, he said as emphatically as any Ca-
nadian or South African that a free people must have some, share
however small, in the framing of foreign policy, and therefore in
controlling the vital issues of peace and war ; he merely differed from
his dominion colleagues as to how this might be brought about. Dur-
ing L World War I the British Commonwealth did in fact seem to be
developing into the kind of partnership favored by Ward and his
successor, Massey. The Imperial War Cabinet gave unity of action,
and at the same time a feeling that each Dominion played a full
part in framing the policy to be followed by all. After Versailles,
however, this rudimentary unity was broken up, to the acute distress
of New Zealand's spokesmen, and in the fancied security of the
postwar world all the Dominions except New Zealand seemed intent
on protecting their right to independent action rather than on giving
constitutional form to the warm and democratic comradeship of
wartime co-operation. In these circumstances New Zealand could
only ding to the principle of imperial unity and ultimate British!
leadership, watching rather apprehensively the progress of her fellow
Dominions toward nationhood. It was during this period that New
Zealand's so-called mother complex reached its climax, and it was
said that in each phase of imperial consultation New Zealand's re-
sponse was apt to fall into a stereotyped form : "New Zealand is
content to be bound by the determination of His Majesty's Govern-
ment in London/* In the I92o's it seemed almost incredible that New
Zealand should fail to support any decision made in due form by
the British government, even if war should come about by actions
guided purely by British interests.
Yet even in the 1920*3 this apparent submissiveness was a little
deceptive. New Zealand never gave up the right to speak if she had
anything to say, and when her government went out of its way to
express its highest sense of the excellence of British policy, there is
no reason to say that approval was automatic There was, it would
seem, an honest conviction that the British foreign office was doing
its job well, and that New Zealand's interests were in good hands.
The fact was that in this period New Zealand had no particular plan
which she wished to push. The only two problems of foreign policy;
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 195
which had ever been important to her were definitely; settled one way
or the other. The British government had not only conceded control
over immigration but had acquiesced in New Zealand's policy of re-
stricting non-European immigrants, which was never regarded en-
thusiastically in London. On the other hand, New Zealand's age-long
ambition to rule Pacific islands was no longer a matter of practical
politics : before the war because there could be no question of Pacific
annexations, and after it because the control of the long-coveted
territory of [Western Samoa had been handed over and was pro-
viding well-intentioned New Zealand administrators with an ample
supply of knotty problems to handle. For the time being, therefore,
New Zealand had no foreign policy. Many of her citizens were
keenly interested in world affairs, but they regarded them with a
somewhat impersonal eye : foreign policy was a drama enacted on
another planet, and though it might react on the observer, fre could
do little or nothing to shape the course of events. In these circum-
stances there was no reason, for New Zealand to affront sentiment
by any assertion for nationhood. But the circumstances might change
at any moment, giving New Zealand some very practical interest in
foreign policy ; and if this should happen, the way was open for New
Zealand to assert the same rights as any other Dominion and once
more to give vigorous advice on British policy as she had done in
the 1870*8 and i88o's.
This did actually happen between 1936 and the outbreak of World
War II. All through the height of the mother complex there had
been a strong minority opinion which expressed less-than-normal
enthusiasm for British foreign policy, and which urged that New
Zealand, like her fellow Dominions, should in practice daim more
of that genuine nationhood which had been won on the battlefields
of World War I and recognized at the peace conference. This view
was strongly held by some of the leaders of the Labor party; and
with the election at the end of 1935 of the first Labor government
it was dear that in her external relations, as in other aspects of New
Zealand life, developments might reasonably be expected. This was
all the more the case because at this time the British government
was pursuing the middle course sometimes called appeasement, while
New Zealand's new ministers, some of whom were well-known stu-
196 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
dents of world affairs, were supporters of the League of Nations
and the principle of collective security. In 1936, therefore, New Zea-
land began to take a more vital interest in overseas events and in
international institutions. Her delegations to League of Nations
bodies, including the International Labor Office, were strengthened,
and it became evident that these delegations were by no means mere
duplicates of those from the United Kingdom. Finally, when in
1936 the League asked its member states for suggestions on the or-
ganization of the world, New Zealand put forward a comprehensive
and radical scheme based on collective security, an international
police force, and perhaps a revival of the Geneva Protocol, against
which a preceding government had vehemently protested. This
gesture was important in itself, and important also in that it showed
a dear difference of opinion between the British and New Zealand
governments. Both parties were tactful and loyal, and whatever may
have been said in private, there was no public collision. But it was
clear enough that they were standing for different principles. New
Zealand in 1936, like Ireland, South Africa, Canada, and Australia,
at last assumed the right to have a foreign policy of her own.
New Zealand's experiment came under evil auspices. Her predeces-
sors had tested out their nationhood in the confident days of peace,
and the coping stone was placed on dominion status New Zealand
dissenting by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. In those days,
in spite of depression and tension, small powers could reasonably
frame their policy without a nagging suspicion that World [War II
was just around the corner. Power politics, though it manifestly
survived the blows struck at it in the name of democracy and the
Fourteen Points, at least did not possess the field unchallenged, and
the League of Nations stood for a hope, if not for a definite achieve-
ment in the political field. Peace was in fact the background to the
development of dominion status, whose fruits were claimed by New
Zealand in 1936. By this time, however, the face of the world had
changed, and the shadow of Hitler's war lay across Europe and the
world. In a sense, therefore, New Zealand's move was ill timed; yet
the imminence of disaster gave it a special significance. As usual,
New Zealand was not worried about a constitutional principle but
about a practical problem. Like all the world she feared a drift to
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 197
v
war both in Europe and the Pacific, and she expressed with all em-
phasis, and often in undiplomatic language, the conviction that the
best way to avert war was to apply the principles of the Covenant. .
To assert this in the 1920*3 was as easy as to sign the Kellogg
Pact renouncing war; to do so in 1936 and 1937 was to fly in the
face of world trends. The time has not yet come to assess whether
this challenge to fate was wise statesmanship or irresponsible ideal-
ism. Still, in a period when almost all others had lost faith, New Zea-
land earned all the credit that may be due for keeping alive the idea
that the Covenant, honestly applied, might have been the cure for
the tragedies that fell on China, Abyssinia, and Spain.
Credit or blame for New Zealand's stand in 1936-1937 can of
course only be given to the people of New Zealand in a broad and
general sense. Only a minority thought along the lines supported by
the New Zealand government at Geneva. Another minority, in vigor-
ous opposition, thought that New Zealand's action at Geneva and
everywhere else should be guided by the ultrasimple formula : joy-
fully approve all things British. Between these two extremes lay all
shades of intermediate opinion and the vast mass of the people, ab-
sorbed, as in most countries, by domestic issues. Interest in inter-
national affairs was no doubt spreading; but even among the most
interested there was a persistent feeling that New Zealand could not
do very much about them a feeling which dragged at the heels of
those who believed that it was time for New Zealand to assert her
nationhood, and which reinforced a general tendency to acquiesce
passively in the obvious fact that the foreign policy of the British
Commonwealth was managed from London* In these circumstances,
as the crises of 1938 and 1939 deepened, there was an irresistible
tendency to slip back into the old ways of handling New Zealand's
external policy. There is no reason to doubt that the views of the
New Zealand cabinet remained unorthodox and were expressed with
customary vigor in confidential discussions with fellow members of
the British Commonwealth. Nevertheless the feeling was growing
that however genuine might be New Zealand's belief in the prin-
ciples of collective action, she was the smallest member of the team
and geographically the farthest removed from the probable firing
line: In these circumstances it scarcely seemed decent to clamor in
198 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
public for policies which might bring down savage destruction on
the cities of Britain and France. Therefore the New Zealand govern-
ment gave no lead to its own people or to the world during the
Munich crisis. When that crisis became acute, she was busily engaged
in a vigorous general-election campaign, and whatever may have been
said between prime ministers, the public minded its own business
with an anxious ear tuned to the news broadcasts from London.
By 1939, then, New Zealand's brief public excursion into the
formation of foreign policy was over; but the solid achievement of
dominion status remained : the fact that a long evolution had trans-
formed an empire centrally ruled from London into a genuine part-
nership of nations. The real basis of this partnership was simply the
wish to hold togethefr, but it had some definite rules and recognized
machinery. In the first place, its members had equal status. The
United Kingdom, originally ruler of the whole, had deliberately re-
signed the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of any Domin-
ion. It is true that, the suspicions of some Irishmen and South
Africans were not killed : might not a later British government break
its predecessor's promise and repeal the Statute of Westminster ? Yet
it is hard to see how the promise could be made more binding.
Though New Zealand has never adopted the Statute of Westminster,
it would be scarcely more lawful for the British government to in-
terfere directly in the domestic'affairs of New Zealand than for New
Zealand to interfere in the domestic affairs of the "Dominion" of
Great Britain. The events of 1939 showed that a Dominion's control
over its own affairs included even the right to declare war and peace.
New Zealand declared war by an act of her own government ; she
did not say that because Britain was at war, so was New Zealand.
And the action of Ireland showed that a Dominion could, if willing
to face the consequences, stay neutral when the rest of the British
Commonwealth was at war.
Nevertheless the British Commonwealth did not split up into its
component parts. The right to decide one's own policy and fate was
one aspect of dominion status, but equally important was the build*
ing tip of machinery by which this team of nations could work out
a common policy, if they so wished, and carry it into effect. The
foundation of this machinery was laid accidentally in 1887, when
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 199
overseas statesmen met in London to congratulate Queen Victoria
on having ruled them for fifty years ; since they were there, it seemed
obvious that they should take the opportunity to discuss the affairs
of the British peoples with the ministers of the United Kingdom.
The same thing happened in 1897, and periodical conferences among
the wise men of the Empire gradually became one of the habits of
the British constitution. At first proceedings had a marked imperial
flavor : colonists came up to the capital to meet the men who con-
trolled the vital issues of peace and war for the Empire as a whole.
In the twentieth century, however, the atmosphere subtly and rapidly
changed. Colonies became Dominions. Visiting politicians were met
as fellow statesmen, not as inferiors. The conference itself became
not so much a gathering of distinguished persons as a consultation
among governments. It was not a parliament, or a council controlling
a federation. A minority was not bound by the votes of the majority.
There was no executive to see that decisions were carried out All
depended on the good will of the men concerned and of their col-
leagues and opponents in dominion parliaments. It gave, however, a
basic organ of free co-operation : personal contact among key men,
preferably meeting all together at reasonably short intervals. For
the best part of half a century, then, the conference has been funda-
mental, and in war as in peace leading men from the Dominions have
moved fruitfully round the member states of the Commonwealth.
The basis of common action among free peoples must be agree-
ment as to the task in hand. Even before World War I it was dear
that consultation between equals meant complete mutual frankness : it
is said that the conference of 1911 was given better information of
British foreign policy than was the British cabinet itself . Between
the two wars the means of spreading confidential information were
vastly improved. Air travel speeded ministers and experts between
capitals. High commissioners who sometimes looked almost like
ambassadors linked London with the dominion capitals and also
many Dominions with each other: and though high commissioners
cannot speak with the authority of prime ministers, they can be on
the spot when prime ministers cannot, and can do something to give
continuous personal intimacy to imperial relations. Finally, a: stream
of dispatches and cables, supplemented by round-the-world telephone
200 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
calls, formed the daily meat and^ drink of commonwealth co-opera-
tion. The sheer volume of material exchanged in this way was stag-
gering so big, at times, as to defeat its own object of conveying
information. Custom demanded that no member of the British Com-
monwealth should do anything of interest to a fellow member with-
out giving due notice and, if possible, allowing time for comment
and discussion. In addition, great files of routine information circu-
lated in all directions principally, though not solely, from Great
Britain outward. Any cabinet in the British Commonwealth could
have before it the basic information on which any other cabinet pro-
posed to act. Most senior ministers and officials knew personally the
statesmen and experts who guided policy in every other capital. Be-
fore any important step was taken anywhere, unless in response to
an unforeseen crisis, each government knew that it had the right to
express its views and have them seriously and courteously con-
sidered.
Such was the system in outline. It was not perfect It did not turn
Afrikanders or French Canadians into Englishmen, or make Irish-
men forget centuries of grievances. It did not annihilate space or
entirely remove the differences in point of view that must develop
between kindred communities rooted in different hemispheres. Yet,
remembering the difficulties as well as the advantages imposed by
geography and bequeathed by history, the workings of the British
Commonwealth extracted a remarkable degree of common action
from its member states ; and it gave a modest ground for hope that,
granted the healing passage of time, freedom as between peoples
might cure ancient enmities and build a progressively more fruitful
collaboration in the future. As regards New Zealand, however, such
cautious phrases are out of place. In 1939 she was well pleased with
her political status. For her, as for every Dominion, it was broadly
true that she could have as much independence as she might choose
to claim and exercise. She had a small fleet of her own : the New
Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, founded in 1913 after a good
deal of local controversy. The argument was that New Zealand
should begin to shoulder her responsibilities as a Pacific country and
put some of her own citizens onto the ships guarding her coasts.
However, by her own choice she controlled the division's movements
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD - 201
in peacetime only. She had negotiated trade treaties directly with
foreigners and could clearly negotiate political ones too if she wished.
No New Zealand minister had been sent to a foreign capital the
first was appointed to Washington soon after Pearl Harbor but she
could dearly have as many diplomatic representatives abroad as she
might think useful and be willing to pay; meantime, like the rest of
the Empire, she shared freely in the services of British diplomatists.
She was a member in her own right of the League of Nations and
the International Labor Organization and played a useful and in-
dividual part in both. Within the British Commonwealth she, the
smallest, weakest, and most isolated Dominion, had a genuinely equal
status, with the right and opportunity to express minority views. In
the crises immediately before World War II, for instance, she had
her say though in vain on British foreign policy; and she strove
to convince the hard-boiled statesmen of the 1937 Imperial Confer-
ence that international tensions were largely economic in origin and
could be constructively handled by an international program of
social betterment along the lines pioneered by New Zealand inside
her own small community. On certain occasions her initiative bore
definite fruit: as, for instance, when representatives of Britain,
Australia, and New Zealand met m Wellington in April, 1939, to
co-ordinate defense plans for the Pacific area. Her action in organ-
izing this conference was, incidentally, one of several snjall signs
that responsible men on the eve of the war were coining to think of
New Zealand as a Pacific country besides as a detached fragment of
! Europe. In 1939, as during the nineteenth century, New Zealand
felt that she should have a special, definite, though no doubt modest,
part in the framing of the British peoples' attitude toward Pacific
problems.
In general, then, New Zealand's membership in the British Com-
monwealth of Nations gave her an independence of action which
small powers can only enjoy in times of secure peace, together with
an international status which no unattached community of one and
a half million people could possibly claim ; and from her point of
view the constitution of the British Commonwealth could scarcely
be improved. Yet modern communities do not live by law alone, and
good constitutions ate not enough. They may even be delusive
202 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
t
camouflage hiding a disagreeable reality.; and, in the affairs of the
British Commonwealth, the reality was that in a world of power
politics no constitutional formula can give small countries K>r per-
haps large countries either genuine power to decide whether or not
they will fight in any given war; nor can constitutional reforms or
political promises easily frustrate powerful and silent economic
forces.
For example, the right of a Dominion to make its own decision
on the vital issue of war was jealously demanded and was as power-
fully buttressed as constitutions could make it. Yet when war actually
loomed up on the horizon, the whole constitutional paraphernalia
seemed almost irrelevant No one, in New Zealand at least, even
asked whether the guarantee to Poland had been given with domin-
ion consent and after all the prescribed forms had been duly fol-
lowed. When Britain was at war, it was perfectly clear that New
Zealand had no choice but to follow, and her constitutional rights
and obligations had nothing to do with the matter. The fact that both
her government and her people approved of British policy in stand-
ing up to Hitler on the final issue made it certain that no issue was
going to be raised. New Zealand as a community is^not in the habit
of raising matter of principle unless there is a definite practical pur-
pose to be served. Yet the fact remains that New Zealand went to
war, not as a direct consequence of a foreign policy in which she had
participated after due consideration of the risks involved, but because
when a great power is at war, so are her satellites ; and more funda-
mentally because Great Britain stood as the guardian of a way of life
which was shared by her kindred nations overseas. In spite of dif-
ferences, and in spite of the fact that for years the British govern-
ment seemed to be following a foreign policy of which New Zealand
actively disapproved, the points of agreement were in the last resort
more fundamental than any conceivable points of difference.
Finally, if a doubt had been possible in 1939 and there was none
economic ties might well have proved decisive. There was no
market, other than Britain, for the goods which New Zealand must
sell or perish; and if other markets could have been found, there
were no ships, other than British, to move them from her shores.
Moreover, apart from this crude wartime fact, it had recently been
NEW ZEALAND IN THE WORLD 203
shown clearly that even in peace economic ties set very definite limits
to New Zealand's freedom. These ties were a matter not only of
trade but of finance. A large part of New Zealand's economy farm-
ing, transport, manufacturing was carried on tinder the presumably
benevolent supervision of British financiers. Sometimes this was
direct, as when operations were under the control of stock and station
agents, transport firms, or merchants financed from London and
often actually controlled from London head offices. Sometimes it
was indirect, for New Zealand had been developed very largely by
money borrowed in London by the government, for which the gov-
ernment accordingly was responsible to British investors. This
money had been raised on good terms, because New Zealand's repu-
tation was high and because since 1900 her loans (like those of other
Dominions) were classed as "trustee securities/* which meant that
she could borrow at comparatively low rates of interest. No one
knows how far New Zealand development may have been influenced
for many years by quiet and steady pressure from London, through
the ideas and prejudices of investors who were not necessarily well
informed about dominion affairs. In 1938 and 1939 it was shown
in a spectacular way that New Zealand was still a dependent com-
munity. London opinion had been worried about the economic policy
of New Zealand's Labor government. Labor men were professedly
socialists, and though they said firmly enough that they were in no
hurry, the circumstances were suspicious. In particular, Labor had
somewhat unorthodox views about the use of public credit, about the
good sense of pushing ahead with public works in good times, and
about social services. Whether or not the orthodox criticism of New
Zealand's social program was justified is not the point. The fact, is
that this was a matter of New Zealand's own domestic aff airs, which
interested an overseas country owing to economic interdependence.
Moreover, power resided in that overseas country. In 1938 there
was a flight of capital which compelled the New-Zealand government
to throw up a system of exchange control to avoid national bank-
ruptcy ; and in the following year New Zealand had the greatest diffi-
culty in arranging for the renewal of a big loan that had fallen due.
The combined effect of these events of 1938 and 1939 was to compel
an important change in domestic policy. The coming of war obscured
204 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
the situation ; otherwise it might have seemed that the financial con-
trol held in London had put a limit to New Zealand's experiment in
social security.
This incident was a comment upon the theory of dominion equal-
ity, not a proof that equality does not exist or that it is of no im-
portance. The course of New Zealand foreign policy and of her
economic relations with Britain just before the war were forcible
reminders of a fact which was too often forgotten during the honey-
moon period of Dominion status. Constitutional arrangements can
do something to iron out the differences in position between a great
nation and small ones ; but these differences can not be entirely re-
moved. The success of the British Commonwealth of Nations does
not depend on the preposterous notion that New Zealand or any
other Dominion should be as important and influential as Great
Britain. It does not depend, ultimately, on the working of any partic-
ular legal or constitutional formula. It does demand, however, that
those who hold power whether based on custom, economic strength,
or strategic position should exercise it in a way that is recognized
as fair and reasonable. This in turn assumes a basic unity of pur-
pose ; an agreement that common interests are greater than disagree-
ments. Community of purpose has not been created in the British
Commonwealth by successful institutions, though they have done
something to foster it and make it effective. Nor has it been created
by the need to stand together in defense, or by the economic advan-
tages of the British Commonwealth. These things have played their
part. The root of the matter, however, goes deep down into the his-
tory of p'eoples and of their cultures, which are drawn not merely
from England but from the motherlands of all these groups which
form more-or-less enthusiastic members of the Commonwealth.
Though New Zealand paid a certain penalty in 1939 and after-
ward because her economic notions were unpopular in London, her
basic right to manage her own affairs was not challenged, and only
the outworks of the policy endorsed by her electors was touched. It
remained unmistakably true that, whatever might be the political and
economic inconveniences of New Zealand's organic link with British
economy, the advantages vastly outweighed the drawbacks. More-
over, some of those who noticed that there had been a passing rough-
NEW ZEALAND IN THE .WORLD 205
ness in imperial relations felt that the statesmen of LonHon were
wiser than those of [Wellington, and that the possibility of a rebuke
from a 'benevolent mother country was an additional advantage to
New Zealand in the British connection. In short, the relations of
New Zealand and Great Britain in the years just before the war are
an example of teamwork based on deep-rooted affinity in two peoples.
Their continued smooth working will depend not only on sentimental
and economic ties but on the wisdom and restraint of those with
power and prestige. And Britain, as the leading figure in a group of
freedom-loving nations, has the inherited wisdom of many centuries
of varied 'experience.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
War
Britain has waged four major wars since New Zealand became a
British country. When told in 1854 that the Queen was at war with
Russia, the New Zealand parliament expressed fervent loyalty and
regretted that the colony with a white population of thirty-two
thousand could give no help to British arms beyond earnest prayers
to Almighty God. Forty-five years later, with a white population of
three-quarters of a million, she could be more practical, and in 1899
Parliament enthusiastically resolved, by fifty-four votes to five, to
offer New Zealand troops for service in South Africa. It is doubtful,
however, whether any of the fifty-four knew more of the causes of
the Boer War than did their predecessors of the war in the Crimea,
or whether they paid much attention to the sound argument of a far-
sighted prime minister. Those who shoulder the burdens of empire,
said Seddon, earn the right to be heard in imperial counsels, and
contingents fighting in South Africa would be the best possible argu-
ment in favor of a federated empire. For New Zealand as a whole,
reasons were scarcely needed. Britain was at war, and volunteers
flocked to the colors without too much thought as to the cause or
the aims of war. In the end sixty-five hundred New Zealanders
fought in South Africa. Their military prowess was everywhere
acknowledged, and the colony which spontaneously offered their
services proved in the way that the world finds most convincing that
she was a loyal daughter-state.
With war against Germany in August, 1914, New Zealand once
more sprang loyally to support the mother country; she was in fact
the first Dominion to offer help, and the first to capture enemy ter-
ritory. Most New Zealanders, like the rest of the civilized world,
206,
WAR -207
lived till the final crisis in calm ignorance of international tensions
and were caught mentally -unprepared by the final plunge into dis-
aster ; but they had, to sustain them, the axiom that victory (which
could not be long delayed) would establish the British way of life
on still surer foundations, and that for victory there was a simple
formula: support Britain and march at her orders. Moreover, the
forethought of empire statesmen had given her the means to do so
with some effect. New Zealand had long made a genuine though
modest contribution to her own naval defense, both in men and
money. In 1909 she had recast her military system under British
Army supervision Chough on the non-British principle of universal
compulsory service. Compulsion applied to home defense only; but
in 1913, when the shape of coming war was fairly clear to the expert
eye, plans were laid for an expeditionary force. Then, as in 1939, it
seemed that New Zealand could best be defended thousands of miles
from her own shores. .When the blow fell, therefore, it was essen-
tially a matter of carrying out plans drafted in time of peace. Within
a few days a force had sailed northward to capture German Samoa,
and in the middle of October the main body of New Zealand's ex-
peditionary force sailed with a mixed escort of British and Japa-
nese warships toward the battlefields of Gallipoli and France.
New Zealand troops in South Africa had been an imperial gesture ;
Britain was not in danger. To fight Germany was manifestly an-
other matter, and there could be no question of New Zealand's will
to help. Out of her 1,000,000 people she found 117,175 for service
overseas, of whom about 100,000 had actually sailed when fighting
ceased; and though conscription was extended to overseas service
in 1916, the great majority were volunteers. These men were taken
from civilian life without interfering with the flow of primary
products to Britain, which was New Zealand's second great contri-
bution to the Allied war effort. She was an agricultural country and
cbuld produce next to nothing in the way of munitions, and her pop-
ulation was a mere handful when reckoned in terms of world forces.
Even so, she had 52,000 men in the field at the end, and their quality
ranked high among Allied troops. Casualties were heavy nearly
17,000 dead and 41,000 wounded testifying both to the deadly char-
acter of trench warfare arid to the fact thiat the New Zealand divi-
208 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
sion was apt to be found in some of the hottest spots in the line. It is
true that the home front in New Zealand was calm. There was no
threat to her territory and not much shortage in the necessaries of
life. Nevertheless her war effort was no merely formal recognition
of her membership in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It bit
deeply into the minds of her people and distorted an economic devel-
opment which, after an erratic course, seemed to have settled down
to steady progress.
.With the treaties of 1919, problems of peace and war slowly
slipped into the background of New Zealand consciousness. No con-
flagration threatened, and her people and government were eager not
to follow her fellow Dominions in claiming the rights (or responsi-
bilities) of nationhood earned by her young men on the battlefields.
This mood of loyal colonialism passed, but not till Hitler had ruled
Germany for three critical years. In 1936 New Zealand had a new
Labor government which was eager to accept New Zealand's nation-
hood, but which was too late to participate in the vital policy deci-
sions which had already set the stage for World War II. New
Zealand could make her protest on behalf of collective security. For
the rest, a government of idealists and social reformers soon found
itself saddled with the grisly task of preparing the country to fight.
There was no choice. Europe was plainly on the brink of -disaster,
and Britain, for all her hankerings after isolation, was anchored to-
Europe. New Zealand, even more than other Dominions, was tied to
Britain by every link that can bind two communities, excepting only
the fear of military reprisals in case of desertion. There were, in-
deed, active and critical minority groups, as in all the English-speak-
ing countries, but it would have been a denial of all New Zealand's
history and of the social ideals on which the country was built for
her to have hesitated. On the main issue those who had battled for
dominion nationhood stood solid with the least critical admirer of
the mother country; for the most part the minority that complained
that British foreign policy had in some respects played into Hitler's
hands were the most determined that Hitlerism was the enemy of
civilization, and the most pleased that a stand had been made against
it
Such was the background to New Zealand's war against Hitler,
WAR 209
It was no irresponsible adventure of nineteenth-century colonials.
It was not a major war which had crept upon an unsuspecting com-
munity with no knowledge of what war might be, Nazism had cast
its shadow before, and in 1939 a high proportion of New Zealand's
active manhood were veterans who had seen service on Gallipoli or
in France. Moreover, as thoughtful New Zealanders realized how
narrow had been the margin in World [War I, and as they appre-
ciated more fully the nature of modern warfare and of Nazi Ger-
many, and weighed the consequences of Japan's change of camp, the
atmosphere was chilled by a feeling that was foreign to the worst
days of 1914-18. The threat to human liberty and to the British way
of life, which had been a phrase dimly apprehended, began to look
uncomfortably real, at least to a minority that no longer believed in
axiomatic victory. Their view gave the country a new sobriety of
outlook, which was reinforced by a certain element of disillusion-
ment In New Zealand, as in older countries, the slogans of World
War I had a sour taste. The world had not been made safe for. de-
mocracy nor fit for heroes to live in. It was harder in 1939 than in
1914 for young men to believe that trouble was due solely to one
country or one man, and that military victory would automatically
be followed by solid peace and economic security. Public opinion was
growing up, becoming just a little more* skeptical and more critical
of authority. The decision to fight could not be made with a high
heart, as twenty-five years before. It would have to be made with a
realization of the risks of war, of the complexity of politics, and of
the way in which good intentions can be frustrated.
Yet when the time came, there was no hesitation on the part of this
more maturely informed public opinion or of the government which
correctly interpreted the people's attitude. At 11:45 p - M - on Sep-
tember 3, 1939, a tensely expectant New Zealand cabinet was handed
a brief official message: Britain was at war with Germany. New
Zealand's own formalities were complete in a few minutes, and for
the first time she, as a self-governing people, declared war against an
enemy. Two hours later her own defense had been set in motion,
and a pledge had been given which set the whole tone of New Zea-
land's war effort, at least until Pearl Harbor. In the famous Aus-
tralian phrase of World War I, New Zealand undertook to stand
2io UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
behind Britain "to the last man and the last shilling." Both her man-
power and her economic resources were to be completely mobilized
and placed at Britain's disposal. This involved no surrender of inde-
pendence. Orders from London were neither given nor expected,
except as regards the navy and shipping, which were always under-
stood to be a matter for the Admiralty. New Zealand, however, rec-
ognized Britain as the inevitable director of the fight and the bearer
of the principal burden, and asked for suggestions as to how her own
efforts could be most fruitfully organized. In war as in peace, sug-
gestion, followed by consultation and consent, should find a way to
combine freedom with efficiency in carrying out an agreed program.
The main lines of New Zealand's war effort were fixed by geog-
raphy and history. She could offer to the common cause great but
highly specialized agricultural resources, a large variety of small-
scale industries which depended to an unusual extent on imported
materials, and manpower which was small in number but excellent
in quality. For the best use of her resources she depended on leader-
ship from abroad ; only in terms of world strategy could it be decided
whether her men could be used most fruitfully as soldiers or farmers
or industrialists, and -only Britain, as controller of shipping, could
carry her men and her products to the seat of war. Sentiment insisted,
however, that a war effort meant men in uniform, and preferably
men fighting overseas under British command in the Empire's bat-
tles. As soon as it jvas clear that Japan was standing aside, therefore,
New Zealand offered to Britain an expeditionary force of one divi-
sion with the necessary reinforcements, as in [World War I. The
offer was accepted, volunteers were called for, and within a few
months the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force had been
created and dispatched. At the same time a number of Pacific islands
were garrisoned, including Fiji, and the equipment of the Public
Works Department was switched over to serve the needs of the
armed services in New Zealand and abroad. New Zealand also prom-
ised to take an active part in the general empire plans for finding the
necessary specialists for modern war. A number of small groups of
technicians were sent to different parts of the world to do specific
jobs, and a steady stream of specialists were trained for the Navy.
At the same time a much larger stream was being fed into the Royal
WAR 211
Air Force. Hundreds of trained airmen were there when war broke
out, and soon afterward New Zealand took her place in the empire
scheme of air training. The foundations for this expansion had been
laid in the last years of peace. The Royal New Zealand Air Force
was organized as an independent unit in 1937 on plans drafted by
an officer on loan from the British air force, and between 1934 and
the outbreak of war vigorous efforts were made to improve air-
dromes, train airmen, and buy up-to-date aircraft. One of New Zea-
land's first contributions to the British war effort, however, was to
hand over to the R.A.F. some badly needed Wellington bombers
which had been on order, together with the crews who had been
about to fly them out to New Zealand. Since then 42,000 or more
New Zealanders have joined the air force, and between 13,000 and
14,000 of them have gone overseas, some fully trained in New Zea-
land, others sent for their final course to the airfields of Canada.
The output of fighting men strained, though it did not break, the
voluntary system, and there arose a demand that all should be com-
pelled to take their part. The Labor party was deeply pledged against
conscription of men, and it was not till the disasters of May, 1940^
crowned by the fall of France, that the bitter pill was swallowed. In
June, however, New Zealand followed Britain in giving its govern-
ment almost -unlimited power to organize for victory. The "all in"
legislation, according to Labor's long-standing promise, gave power
to conscript wealth as well as men, and in the new tense atmosphere
of the Battle of Britain, New Zealand's war effort was sharply
stepped up. A steady stream of reinforcements went overseas; home
defenses, which had been manned from the first,' were still further
strengthened; and the Territorials, who had been stripped of their
most active members for the expeditionary force, were* built tip by
drafts from those not yet needed for overseas. Then in 1941 the New
Zealand -division fought with high credit in the magnificent and
tragic campaigns of Greece and Crete. For a time the names of an-
cient Greece Thermopylae, Olympus, Heradion stood before the
people as symbols of a fight for liberty well fought against over-
whelming odds. Here was a baptism of fire to compare with that of
Gallipoli in 1915. And it was also a test of the workings of the Brit-
ish Commonwealth. The expedition to Greece was a forlorn hope,
ai2 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
undertaken under British leadership in those dark days when Hitler's
enemies fought dive bombers with an inadequate supply of last war's
weapons. It was natural that men should ask whether the leadership
was sound and the sacrifice necessary. To these questions, spoken
and unspoken, definite answer could be given. Though the adventure
took place under British command, New Zealand was fully consulted,
and given the information on which policy was based. She con-
curred in the decisions that were made, and her men were launched
into action as the result of policy which her representatives had
helped to make. A small nation could not expect more, though a free
nation could be content with no less ; and on this basis public opinion
approved of what had been done, not uncritically or without regrets,
but with a sober realization of unpleasant necessities.
By the end of 1941, measured by men in uniform, by casualties,
and by strain endured, New Zealand's war effort, already stood high;
and ships had been sunk by enemy action a few miles from the coast.
Nevertheless, no attack had been made on her soil, and her people
lived in comparatively safe obscurity, far from the world's battlefields.
Pearl Harbor made her overnight a key point in Allied communica-
tions and for the first time in her history open to serious attack by a
first-class power. From her point of view, however, the disasters of
December, 1941, had at least this considerable compensation: the
presence of United States among the United Nations, and American
leadership in the Pacific area. New Zealand's friendship with the
United States is deeply rooted in her history, and it lived on sturdily
in the stagnant atmosphere of quiescent colonialism between the two
wars. The United States was obviously the mighty champion of the
democratic way of life on which New Zealand was built, and her
presence as a Pacific power was comforting, especially to that major-
ity which had not reckoned too closely the thousands of miles that
separate Auckland from Honplulu and Honolulu from San Fran-
cisco. Yet among thoughtful New Zealanders, those who expected
that in case of trouble the United States would rush instantly to the
rescue of the British and Dutch countries in the Pacific were a small
minority thoroughly outweighed by those who had a fairly sound
knowledge of the roots of American isolationism. New Zealand,
therefore, had not dared to think of America in more positive terms
WAR 213
than as a very good neighbor, and she watdied with anxiety as well
as with hope the slow movement of American opinion towards mem-
bership in the anti-Hitler front.
New Zealand thoughts turned increasingly toward the United
States not merely through habit or immediate self interest but be-
cause of a new trend in New Zealand aff airs. For a century she had
been an offshoot of Europe, insulated from her Pacific environment
by the British navy and the British merchant marine. In the I93' s
however, the Pacific impinged increasingly on the consciousness of
some New Zealanders. This could be seen in the interest taken in
regional defense and transport: in the trans-Pacific air service, for
example. From 1936 onward, moreover, New Zealand had a policy
in Pacific affairs. Collective security was not, in her view, merely a
European device. China, like Abyssinia and Spain, was a proper
sphere for the operations of the League of Nations and for the
drastic treatment of the economic roots of international tensions.
Such being her general views, there is no reason to think that she, for
her part, favored the apparently appeasing tone of the so-called
Tokyo Agreement, 1939, or the temporary closing of the Burma
Road in 1940. Here, as with problems centering in Europe, she was
probably content, after a clear statement of her policy, to bow to
circumstances and leave the final decision to Britain, and later to the
United States. With France struck down, and the British Common-
wealth fighting for its life in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the
grip of the Commonwealth must weaken in the Pacific, and America
alone could, for the time being at least, act as an effective guardian
of democracy in this hemisphere. This fact was plain to thousands of
New Zealanders who did not see, as some did, 'that the war was
bound to loosen the economic and political ties which had bound New
Zealand so intimately to Europe. Here, then, was a new stimulus to
Pacific-miridedness, which was one of the forces behind an insistent
demand that New Zealand should break new ground, appoint her
first diplomatic minister, and send him to Washington. The decision
to do this was announced early in 1941, and meantime New Zealand,
with world democracy as a whole, watched anxiously the diplomatic
tussle between Japan and the United States throughout the year. Mr.
Churchill spoke for her when he said that the British peoples stood
214 UNDERSTANDING NEW ZEALAND
behind American policy in the Pacific, thereby acknowledging Amer-
ican leadership and responsibility,
Japanese bombs cut short a tense situation, and there was joy in a
new and confident comradeship with the United States. In spite of a
gripping fear that the disaster at Pearl Harbor had been shattering,
no one doubted that American aid would come in time to the South
Pacific. New Zealanders thought themselves to be a democracy which
according to American ideas was worth preserving, and they felt that
their country must be an important stepping stone for America's
march against the common enemy. Sentiment, together with the ele-
ments of strategy obvious to anyone with a map of the Pacific,
seemed to have given New Zealand and the United States a firm com-
mon interest in the war launched by Japanese dive bombers. These
hopes were not disappointed. Within a few months there was a very
welcome invasion by American servicemen, and it was announced
that New Zealand's naval defense had been transferred to American
control. Here was a revolution indeed. As far back as living memory
went, the Royal Navy had been a symbol of power and security and
of New Zealand's loyalty to Britain; and the Navy League, which
preached its virtues and mobilized New Zealand's support behind it,
was one of the most respectable of private organizations. Yet in 1942
British and New Zealand warships passed smoothly under American
command, and the responsibility for protecting New Zealand's Pa-
cific Ocean routes was placed squarely on the broad shoulders of the
United States Navy* Moreover, this revolution took place almost un-
noticed, and New Zealand's only discontent was that the strategic
link with the United States was not made even closer. She had a
policy of her own in the matter : she wished to be part of a compre-
hensive South Pacific command under General MacArthur. Once
again, however, having stated her case, she acquiesced in the deci-
sions of London and Washington and went about her business, glad
to see American servicemen and to prepare for the reception of them
and their successors, casting occasional glances skyward in the hope
of seeing American planes overhead, but increasingly confident that
her fate was in wise and benevolent hands.
Hope of 
