Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  This discrepancy can be explained historically. The first serious settlers arrived in 1840, so that New Zealand is the youngest of nations. These settlers came from conservative, Victorian England and they tolerated no nonsense about “brave new worlds.” It was their proudly expressed determination to transfer “old societies to new places,” and a conscious plan was devised whereby settlers could be kept within sacrosanct social levels, ranging downward from “wealthy gentry of good family” to the laboring lower classes. As late as 1857 one of the gentry begged New Zealand to avoid the errors of the United States democracy and to follow instead a system whereby men of property and intelligence ruled as they deemed wise. To this end the price of land was rigged abnormally high so as to prevent laborers from catching a foothold on the social ladder. During one depression an arch-conservative government saw nothing lamentable in the flight of more than 100,000 New Zealanders to Australia, where they could find land and food!

  Reaction was inevitable, and under Richard John Seddon, a forceful immigrant workingman who rose to be Prime Minister, New Zealand passed the great liberal laws that laid its reputation for being in the forefront of social legislation. Federal votes for women, universal suffrage, forced arbitration of labor disputes, old-age pensions and a nationwide system of child care were all first provided in New Zealand. From a nation established for the benefit of wealthy men, the country expanded into what it still is: a workingman’s paradise. There were, however, temporary retreats from Seddon’s program, and in the early 1930’s a bewildered and incompetent conservative government could think up no way to fight the depression.

  Listen to what a workingman has to say about that period. Tom Neill is now over 60 and has retired to a small farm in the South Island. He is a tall fellow, handsome and mystically convinced about the rights of labor. In his small cottage, immaculately clean, he lives on a government pension and helps his vigorous wife take care of his chickens. His home contains a kind of altar: the glowing fireplace above which hangs the portrait of an unpretentious man in a black suit.

  Neill says, “I started work when I was 12. In a cheese factory. Five in the morning till six at night. Seven days a week. Often we had to work till ten or eleven at night, but our wages were the same. Three dollars a week and no overtime. Later on I became manager. Then I worked daily from six till nine at night. I had an accident and lay in hospital a long time. I lost every cent I owned and could never get started again.”

  Mrs. Neill serves a tea of hot scones, six kinds of cake, and thick cream. She says, “I worked at home till I was 31. Then, thank God, Tom found me and took me away. My parents couldn’t give me any pay because they earned none. I was never away from the farm till I was 18. The only entertainment I can even remember was church lantern slides, mostly upside down. I went to town once a year, but until I was past 25 I never had more than three dollars a year to spend on myself.”

  Tom continues. “When the depression came I got a job shoveling a ditch. There were two men working in our gang, strapping blokes they were. I noticed they always ate their lunch to one side. I, being older, said, ‘Look here! Eat with us!’ And they were ashamed to come over, for all they had was boiled potato skins. The meat of the potato they left at home for the kiddies.” Tom unclenches his hands and says, “I tell you, the rich man’s government had only one thought. Get us unemployed out of the cities so we wouldn’t create riots. The prime minister said, ‘Labor has taken the cuts without protest. Give them another.’ ”

  Tom has cruel memories of the depression but soon the anger leaves him. He looks up at the portrait over the fireplace and says, “That simple workingman up there threw the government out and set up a Labor cabinet that saved this nation. I don’t care what anyone says about Michael Joseph Savage. I was near defeated when he came to power. I can still hear what he said in those first days: ‘The Government will pay Christmas benefits to all needy families.’ ”

  The social services provided by Savage’s determined ministry are remarkable. There is an old-age benefit with liberal allowances plus a superannuation income for anyone who cannot otherwise qualify. There is a widow’s benefit, an orphan’s benefit and a family allowance of $1.50 a week for each child up to 16 years of age, extendable if needed. There are benefits for coal miners and for chronic invalids. There is unemployment insurance and a hilarious Emergency Benefit which was explained in this way: “Suppose your wife is in love with another man. You won’t agree to a divorce, so they burn down your store. Obviously you’ve suffered a catastrophe. The store I mean. But you’re not covered by any of the preceeding benefits. That’s where the Emergency Fund comes in.”

  Recent governments have added war pensions and a special fund for ex-soldiers “who, even though never wounded, are aging prematurely.” Every New Zealander receives free a complete medical service, including doctors, surgeons, drugs, certain patent medicines, hospitalization, maternity care, X-rays, massage, nursing—and artificial eyes and limbs at one-fifth cost. But to understand the spirit of social legislation in New Zealand you must read the directions regarding soldiers’ pensions: “Boards are instructed that when contradictions appear in records, the claimant shall receive benefit of any doubt.”

  The cost of this security is very high, not in money, for the deductions are modest. A man with a wife and one child pays on a $3000 salary $275 social security and $360 income tax. (In the United States he would pay $45 for social security and $185 in income tax.) It is rather the cost in restrictive legislation that seems paralyzing. Consider the case of Mr. C. G. Moore, a happy and popular haberdasher in Greymouth.

  Mr. Moore must have his shop open at 9:00 A.M. and closed at 5:30. He may neither open at 8 nor stay open till 6. Hours are set by the Government. The wages he can pay his help are stated in law and he must not deviate from them. Recently he got into trouble because the Government found he was paying a foreman less than prescribed. He pointed out that he allowed the foreman a commission on volume. Then he really was in trouble, for that put the wage above the legal limit!

  Mr. Moore’s son works for him and must by law belong to a union; he may not work voluntarily at night. Hours for tea and lunch are legal matters, as are vacations. A government inspector may visit the shop at any time and call for more heat, less heat, more clean towels, more space for drinking tea. And a rigid forty hour week is mandatory.

  The prices Mr. Moore may charge are set by the Government, which also insists that the books be kept according to their system (double entry) and be available for inspection at any moment. To buy stock Mr. Moore does not simply import it from England. He must apply for an import license, and the Government lists what may be bought and where. A woman in Greymouth recently read about a hayfever remedy made of rose petals. Unthinkingly she sent a letter to Australia, ordering some. When the medicine arrived the Government impounded it and raised the merry devil about sending money out of New Zealand without permission.

  If Mr. Moore had some money in London he would have to leave it there, since the Government must maintain a favorable balance in Britain. Same applies to any money he might have in Australia. Several young girls in Greymouth married Americans during the war. Their mothers may not visit them unless “the New Zealand girl has a child and the grandmother is over 65,” when the Government may permit foreign travel.

  If the Moores want to build a home, the Government will issue a permit if the home does not exceed 1300 square feet of floor space. If they wanted to sell the house they have, the Labor Government would say what the price would be. And if Mrs. Moore keeps more than twenty-four chickens, she must register them with the Government, which will buy the eggs at its price. It is little wonder that New Zealand voters finally tossed Labor out by a resounding majority.

  Yet it would be a grave mistake to interpret this as a retreat from liberalism. Before the election the new prime minister pledged that he would alter none of the basic laws. If he were to do so, it is probable that his party would be thro
wn out of office within a month. New Zealand is still a liberal country. What the new party did was to lift some of the onerous restrictions. Like Michael Joseph Savage before them they gave the people a Christmas present: unlimited whipping cream for private use. Mrs. Moore promptly mixed up some Pavlova pies, which she hadn’t been able to make for years under the Labor Government. Into a sugared shell she poured thick cream, covering it with a double meringue, maraschino cherries and brandied peaches. I am happy to say that I ate four-fifths of the first one. With its wonderful taste in my mouth I said, “C. G., you’ve made a lot of money. You have a son to watch the store. Why don’t you travel?”

  He thought a moment and considered the good, easygoing life he had. “Where would a man want to go?” he asked.

  The typical New Zealander is rather shorter than the average American, and slimmer, too. He wears gray flannel trousers, an expensive sleeveless sweater, and a trim sports coat. When he dresses up it’s in a stiff, high-breasted dark suit with vest, which he never discards, even on sweltering days. He is quiet, modest, eager to defend his honor and addicted to dreadful jokes: “Q. What jumps from branch to branch and wears a bowler hat? A. The manager of ten chain stores.”

  Along with the Spaniard, he is probably the most conservative white man still living. He is rarely at ease in public with his wife, whose new-found freedoms have not yet been clearly defined. In print he invariably refers to girls by initials, leading to the impassioned message I saw scrawled in schoolboy writing within a carved heart: “T. Davies is nice.” He abhors American boasting but indulges in what might be called reverse-braggadocio: “Although the author would not dare to presume even the scantiest knowledge of the subject, yet he must confess to a not altogether inconsiderable experience in the field.” He badly overuses such words as frightful, beastly, wretched, horrid, miserable and awful. If he has a trivial headache he will say proudly, “Really, I’ve got the most frightful head,” whereas if he actually has a splitter he’ll say, “Rather a nasty twitch.” But don’t fool yourself. When he says that, he wants sympathy!

  He is most unsentimental, which probably explains why there has been no first-rate art of any kind produced in New Zealand to date. Yet he can become maudlin if you mention the gallant All Blacks, two famous Rugby teams (all-black jerseys with silver badges) who went to Europe and massacred the opposition.

  He speaks softly, using precise English even on road signs: TWO DECEPTIVE BENDS. He is troubled by the intrusion of Australian and American speech forms, yet he himself has many odd expressions and would be astonished to learn that anyone else thought them amusing. Food is never delicious; it’s beautiful. A good fried fish with lemon butter is apt to be especially beautiful. Assume is often pronounced with an h; controversy is accented on the tro, capitalism on the pit; food is tucker; a man’s wage is his screw. Thirteen, fourteen, etc., are pronounced with d’s, as thurdeen. Uncertainty is expressed by a drawled “Ah dunno,” and you never speak with a man; you have a yarn to him. Anything good is wizard; you don’t make sandwiches, you cut them; you never go to the hospital, you go to hospital; and the refrigerator is invariably the frij. Nor does the New Zealander often say yes or no. It’s usually “Ah no,” and “Ah yes,” the latter sometimes being pronounced yay-yissss.

  There are four sure ways to infuriate a New Zealander. The first is to call his land New Zillan. The second is to confuse the islands. If he’s from North Island you must say, “Those South Island blokes are pretty stuffy.” If he’s from the South you say, “Auckland men are all right, but they seem a bit unsound. Too American.” The North Island is progressive, Labor, industrial and butter. South Island is Conservative National, agricultural and sheep. North Island is the smaller, the less beautiful, the more developed and the more heavily populated, with two-thirds of the 1,700,000 total population. (Detroit’s population is 1,838,000.) South Islanders pride themselves on being better educated, more loyal to England and more substantial in all ways. For many years South Island’s conservative substantiality was recognized by giving it a bonus of several seats in Parliament beyond those its population warranted, but Labor governments changed this, and now the Auckland area alone has as many seats as all South Island.

  The third way in which to invite trouble is to confuse New Zealand with Australia. They lie 1400 miles apart and it takes three days by ship to get from one to the other. They have no political connections except loyalty to a common king and membership in the Commonwealth. Actually, New Zealand is much more like Canada than like Australia, whose goods may not enter without permission. Each country uses pounds-shilling-pence, but the New Zealand coinage is worth 25% more than the Australian. New Zealand has no separate state governments; Australia has a federation of six states plus an immense federal territory, plus an over-all national parliament. Furthermore, Australia has thirty times as much territory as New Zealand and five times as many people. But New Zealanders claim that they are better educated, read more books and have a greater per capita wealth. Australia has much the better radio stations; New Zealand much the better newspapers. New Zealanders call Australians Aussies and are in turn called Pig Islanders, from the porkers landed by Captain Cook, “thus forming,” says the Australian, “the parent stock from which the present inhabitants have sprung.” The two nations have a common defense policy and an agreement, The Anzac Pact, defining their common policies in the Pacific; but even so relations became badly strained when England and America hailed the popular song “Now Is the Hour” as Australian. It’s a Maori folk song, and any New Zealander will put up his dukes if you claim otherwise!

  But the one unforgivable offense to a New Zealander is to speak disparagingly of the Crown or of the tie to England. King George VI is the personal King of New Zealand. (He also happens to be King of England.) The devotion of New Zealanders to the Royal Family is unique. Country newspapers carry in their society columns casual items like this: “Today Queen Elizabeth poured out the tea for a bricklayer’s wife, a stoker’s wife and a dairy worker at a gathering at Sandringham Women’s Institute, of which she is President. Princess Margaret served the wives of a verger, a motor mechanic and a farm worker.”

  Yet New Zealand has suffered two inconsolable tragedies regarding the Royal Family. Edward, Prince of Wales, loved the land and was the most popular visitor ever to tour the islands. His betrayal of the Crown has left a lasting hurt, and although people rarely speak of him, it is obvious that he has wrenched their loyalties. In 1942 the clerk of a crowded hotel could call querulously to the manager, “Would it be proper, do you think, to let American soldiers occupy Prince Edward’s suite?” He had stopped there one night two decades ago.

  No king of New Zealand has ever visited his Dominion while ruling, although several have while still serving as Prince of Wales. In 1949 King George planned to do so, but illness prevented the tour. It is difficult to comprehend what this postponement meant. In Christchurch all buildings on the Square were to have been cleaned. With the King not coming there was no reason to proceed. In tiny Timaru the main street was to have been repaved for the Royal limousine. Now it is still bumpy. Plumbing was to have gone into hotels that had none, carpets into bare hallways, and paint onto racetrack stands. All New Zealand was going to get a face lifting, but none of it was completed, for the King was not coming to see. In early 1950 plans were announced for a substitute tour in ’52. New Zealand went wild with joy, and the old plumbing diagrams were dusted off.

  New Zealand pays no taxes to England, is completely free of laws passed by the British Parliament, has its own coinage and is free to exclude British goods if it sees fit. New Zealand enjoys a national existence completely free of English domination, except that curiously she prefers to use the Privy Council in London as the supreme court of appeal.

  Yet the love that binds New Zealand to England is immeasurable. When Britain went to war in 1914, a Conservative New Zealand prime minister declared war a few minutes later. In 1939 a Labor prime minister did the same.
To have acted otherwise would have been unthinkable. When peace came, New Zealand gave hungry Britain an outright gift of $28,000,000, then allocated almost all butter, the best beef and the finest mutton to the motherland. The number of food parcels still mailed each week is enormous. I met an old woman who takes a tin can, packs the bottom with lard, fills it half full of fresh eggs, pours in more lard, tops it off with a slab of bacon and sews it into a stocking for posting to London. Then she herself eats oatmeal.

  Few Americans appreciate the tremendous sacrifices made by New Zealand in the last two wars. Among the Allies she had the highest percentage of men in arms—much higher than the United States—the greatest percentage overseas, and the largest percentage killed. She rushed the cream of her manhood into Africa and Crete and Narvik and Singapore. Then she watched helplessly as the Japs crept down the islands until only the miracle of Coral Sea prevented actual invasion. So many New Zealanders were overseas that even women were conscripted into labor corps and told where they must work. Many American families learned how terrible it was to have men overseas for three years. New Zealand men were gone five years, or more.

  Bernard Freyberg was born in England of undistinguished parents and soon emigrated to New Zealand, where he became a dentist. He was not too successful and quit to serve as a mercenary soldier under Pancho Villa. While in the Mexican desert he heard that England had gone to war. Rushing across the Atlantic he joined the New Zealand forces in London in time to serve at Gallipoli, where under intense Turkish fire he swam the Hellespont towing a barge full of flares which lighted the way for invasion. Later, in France, while suffering from four bullet wounds, he led three forlorn charges and in a fourth took a fortified village. Later he performed other wild feats and won all the medals a soldier could win. He was hailed by Sir James Barrie, a specialist in these matters, as “the bravest soldier in the war.” Now he has returned to New Zealand as the personal representative of the King, a post previously held by titled nobodies. Even the conservative press applauded the appointment, observing, “Sir Bernard is a happy choice, even if somewhat revolutionary.”