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XXXIII
Some Reflections

Life in a new country is in itself an education.

While, on the one hand, the absence of so much on which you have hitherto depended, teaches you self-reliance, and leads you, after a time, to think you can get round any difficulty and tackle any job with success, yet, lest a state of undue conceit should supervene, it is borne in on your mind to what an enormous extent you are still dependent on the knowledge and power acquired by the race in the age-long growth of civilisation. Where would you be, for instance, to take only simple and concrete things, without your rifle, the temper of your axe blade, or your box of matches, even if you leave out of consideration the organised material power at your back?

Another valuable result of this life is that, when once a man has really had, for some length of time, to do everything for himself, it is easier for him, on his return to civilisation, to realise how many things are done page 239there for him by others, and to be reasonably considerate to those who do them.

To my mind it would be an excellent thing if all young men could go through a few years of such pioneering, preferably entirely "on their own," and where there is no subject race. What an enormous help it would be, for instance, towards humanising the average schoolmaster!

As, in his first chapter, the writer stated that what had had a good deal to do with his leaving the Old Country was a dissatisfaction with the standards and ideals of ordinary commercial life, it may be not entirely out of place to set forth here, how his twenty years in the Colony have affected his attitude on such matters, even if in so doing he may seem a little prolix.

New Zealand had the reputation at one time of being rather a Socialist country, but it was never really so. In the writer's time, at any rate, it would have been better described as a land mainly inhabited by very individualistic growers of wool and meat, with holdings of from a few acres upwards. The farms or runs were, in nine cases out of ten, freehold, with capital usually obtained on mortgage for a fixed term of years. As there was seldom any difficulty in renewing mortgages for another term, the sheep- page 240farmer, so long as he paid his interest, was a free man with no one above him that he had to consider. And these hard-working people of all classes, with their employees, were the people who really mattered, the people who made New Zealand. But, on the coast, were the inhabitants of various not very large towns who lived by supplying the settlers with imported goods, by freezing their mutton, and by shipping both it and the wool clip.

Now and again the working men in these towns, however highly paid, would strike for even more. The people of all conditions up country would then say, "No, you don't. You asphalters have a darned sight better time, better food, better pay, and more amusements than most of us have, and you think you have us at your mercy. But you shan't squeeze us beyond reason. We will come and get our stuff away ourselves." And all classes of the free country democracy would come into town, kill the sheep at the freezing works, and load the ships at the wharf, until matters were reasonably arranged.

At that time there was always plenty to do for those who would work, and every prospect of their being able to acquire a house, and even land of their own. Any-page 241thing like destitution was entirely unknown, for the modern "Industrial System" had hardly touched New Zealand. There were no negroes nor any servile class; so all and every kind of work was honourable.

A good couple, who wished to send their son to New Zealand with the writer, boggled badly at a clause in the form of Agreement submitted to them. It was to the effect that in no case was the boy to refuse to clean out the pigsties. Not till they had very ruefully signed the paper, was it explained to them that pigs were not kept, nor likely to be kept, but that the clause had been inserted in order that it might be clearly understood, that, in New Zealand, no sort of honest work was considered infra dig. or degrading.

And there was this further charm in our way of life; there was no cut-throat competition; in fact there was not, rightly speaking, any commercial rivalry at all. Newcomers only competed with us, and that to an infinitely small extent, in the markets of the world, and so were generally warmly welcomed as helping with road matters, and increasing the social amenities of the district. Furthermore, there was no need for continual bargaining and chaffering. Wool was commonly disposed of at the London auction page 242sales, and the private sale of store stock was usually a short and simple matter, with a local auction to fall back on if necessary. Fat sheep and cattle, if there were no offers at ruling rates in the Colony, were frozen and sent to London.

In fact, New Zealand run-holding is an occupation in which there is really no temptation to try and overreach your neighbour —you can work as hard as you like at it, and remain a gentleman.

These things being so, the writer, who was brought up as a Gladstonian Radical, beginning to feel that it was not such a bad world after all, soon mellowed into something very like a Conservative. But as a matter of fact, politics in the country districts were not much concerned with principles. It was a question, when voting, of what the candidate, if elected, would be likely to do for the district in the way of Government grants for roads, bridges, railway, or harbour—that, and that only. For apart from these matters, the country on a whole was doing pretty well, and there was very little call for new legislation of any kind.

I think it was only once that I attended a political meeting of any kind in New Zealand. It was in this wise.

A runholder in the district, a cultivated page 243man and a delightful host, had been exceedingly kind to us when we first came out, and had in fact seen to it, among other things, that my brother should not even consider the purchase of any but good land with a sound title. He was able and well informed and a fine speaker, but he had a weakness, and it was on the good sense of his steady old mare that he generally had to rely, to get him safe home at night along bad roads and through the big river.

Now from a distance another fine man, also a good speaker, was coming to Gisborne to encourage those of his political way of thinking (though, by the by, I cannot quite remember what that way was), and it was up to our people to arrange some sort of a reception. And when I reached town one morning an informal deputation waited on me and put this case.

"We have had several political evenings of late in this town," they said, "and they have all turned out so shockingly 'wet' that the party here is getting a bad reputation. We are determined to have this one respectable, and to that end will allow nothing much stronger than claret. But what is sticking us is this: our president (my above-mentioned friend) is the only man possible for the chair, and he has unfortunately at page 244this moment come to town, and you know what coming to town means for him. We want him kept right till the meeting, and you are the only man who can possibly do it."

Moved by their solicitations I dashed across to the Masonic Bar and found my friend just ordering his first whisky. Having rather timorously (as being much the younger man) and as discreetly as might be, put the case to him, he, having drunk his own glass, smilingly agreed to my proposals, and we spent a very pleasant day together, on tea, at my house some five miles out. Then I took him in, and to the astonishment of the meeting and to my no small pride planted him dead sober in the chair, and mild convivialities then began.

But all this scheming resulted in a dead failure. Our ready and witty chairman was that night a "dud," as cold as charity, as glum as a goby, as melancholy as a bandicoot on a burnt ridge, and it was not till, as I afterwards heard, one or two surreptitious whiskies had been administered that he thawed into his ordinary self.

The meeting itself, however, was, in the matter of the desired respectability, quite a success, though the more heartfelt applause only came at the end, when the charming guest of the evening, the late Mr. Herries, page 245at the end of his last speech, boggled at the word statistics.

In New Zealand, as I have said before, Politics might be taken pretty lightly, but when, before the war, the writer returned to live in England that frame of mind became no longer possible for him, for no thoughtful man could have believed, even then, that things were all right in this country, and what any such saw and heard could hardly have failed to fill him with melancholy and even horror. The writer, like many another person of good intent, joined the Fabian Society, only to see very shortly that the Collectivist Socialism it advocated could only intensify the disease. Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour, all seemed to him equally sterile in policy. No hope, no intelligent suggestion of a cure in any of them, and his vote, which he ceased ever to cast, a mere derision. And this latter so much the more as it was borne in on his mind, that even the very phrase "to put a party into power" was nonsense. To believe that the British Government really governs is to trust in a fallacy; it can move neither hand nor foot without the consent of the small group of cosmopolitan financiers (now largely American), who control money and credit.

And he further reflected. If this country page 246is necessarily a place of slavery for nearly all, and a very hell for the poor, there seem but two courses to choose from. Either to refuse to think and "to eat, drink, and be merry"; or if such oblivion be impossible, to "curse God and die." But hereabouts there came hope.

It was seen there was no such necessity. The clear way out had been discovered. It was quite possible for the country to resume the usurped control of money and credit-to set the economic machine going again in such a way that all classes should participate in the resultant wealth. But as this is no place for economic propaganda,¹the writer will conclude by pointing out that whereas in New Zealand it seemed to some of us, so controlled were we by long habit, almost a sin to go for what we really needed, instead of voting on party lines, yet it was common sense. And the same common sense should now lead us here, to give all our support to anyone who will do his utmost to bring about immediate public inquiry into the vitally important question of the control of finance.

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