Pen Mightier

This is shown by the drift of the flocks to the suburbs. There they gather in swelling numbers, bleating about rubbish collections. TV reception and cans of ersatz country-fresh beef stew. The truth is that New Zealanders do not like the countryside, which is why they forsake the green pastures to huddle in the cities, those ever-expanding stock yards. This proves the maxim that the pen is mightier than the sward.

Ultimately all New Zealanders will occupy pens, where they will be able to more fully co-operate in complete docile managability. In the meantime some managerial functioning must be maintained to ensure the country is inexorably ushered into the age of maximum conformity. And so there has been made room in the community for the sheepdog, who functions in the classic sense of guardian of the virtuous and nipper-of-heels of the tardy, and harasser of any who may look like straying out of line.

For this role of sheepdog, watcher of the flock. New Zealanders have a man who arrived at the job by the curiously New Zealand process of assumption rather than election or even nomination. Consider him, then, the good Brigadier Gilbert. ... Regard his entirely appropriate countenance—half mournful basset, half retriever, and as low to the ground as a dachshund. Give the faithful hound a fond pat on the dewlaps, but be careful lest you lose your hand.

This, then, is the New Zealand I have come to love and admire. A nation doing its utmost to approximate sheepishness, a cardinal virtue in a world of unChristian behaviour. The lamb will lie down with the lion, but the frightful flavour of its greasy wool will deter the lion's covetous eye.

So this is a nation not of altogether too many sheep but, in the present analysis, too few. The dream will be realised given sufficient lack of energy—New Zealand, for the sake of attaining heaven, don't rattle your dags.

* * *

So ends this remarkable document. It leaves me only to say that history will decide whether our society shall, for its efforts, be promoted to the Great Station in the Sky—or consigned to the eternal charnel house, the Great Abattoir Down Below.