A good-natured American critic, over the water at Santa Barbara, Cal., has been twitting New Zealanders with being a mere small edition of England, and Victorian England at that, in homes and habits, forms and conventions. But he perceives, too, signs of grace in us. “Everyone looks with great interest towards the U.S.A., and knows it to be the most glorious place on earth.”

Indeed, and do we, and is it then? We are inclined to buy more of the U.S.A.'s surplus products than is good for us, from motor cars to vulgar films, but there are not many New Zealanders who will endorse the Santa Barbara man's so confident belief. We still set Britain on a very different plane from that of America. It may be brought under Santa Barbara's notice, by the way, that old England is still at the top of the world in railway speed and efficiency for one thing, and in aeronautics for another.

As for us, one is disposed to be amused rather than annoyed by the remark so often made that New Zealanders are “more English than the English.” That certainly cannot apply to the real New Zealand type, the native-born. The true colonial—I like the old term—is not disposed to call England, Scotland or Ireland “Home.” His homeland is here, and while he reveres and loves the memory of his father's and mother's birthlands, the magnetic pull of his own native land is far greater.

For the rest, New Zealanders really need not get restive under the occasional criticisms of tourists from America. We like our U.S.A. acquaintances, we love to hear them prattle, and we like to offer them the brand of hospitality that is not synthetic; but we really don't want to imitate all their little taking ways.