A New Zealand QEarter!Jr

VOLl::VlE FOUR

Reprinted with the permission of The Caxton Press

JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION JOHNSON REPRINT COMPANY LTD. 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Berkeley Square House, London, W. 1 First reprinting, 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America L DF LL

A NEW ZEALAND Q!JARTERLY EDITED BY CHARLES BRASCH AND PUBLISHED BY THE CAXTON PRESS

VOLUME FOUR NUMBER ONE MARCH 1950

CONTENTS

Notes 3 Seven Poems, 'James K. Baxter 7 All Part of the Game, A. P. Gaskell !4 November Elegy, Alien Curnow 42 Two Poems, Paul Henderson 43 Variations on a Theme ofJohn Donne, 'J. R. Hervey 45 Huxley's Perennial Philosophy, S. A. Grave 47 Ihumatao, Keith Sine/air 57 The Floating Vote in New Zealand, K. 'J. Scott 60 Some Thoughts on the General Election, D. H. Monro 69 A Masque for Democrats, Maevius 79

Reviews: THE COMING OF THE MAORI, H. D. Skinner 85 TIDAL CREEK, Robert Cbapman 89 THE PRICE OF FULL EMPLOYMENT and FOOLS' CARNIVAL, W. Rosenberg 91 HERE AND NOW, Ormond Wi/son 93

Paintings by Eric NOTES

A MAN grows up, properly speaking, not when he reaches physical maturity-a relative term at best-but when spurred by doubt or pain or misfortune he begins the solitary and sometimes desolating process of thinking for himsel£ Growing up may take much the same course with a country: and that has been our own case. Looking back from 1950, we can see that New Zealand now is far more than a quarter of a century older than it was in the middle twenties. It has grown less in age than in experience; it did not live only in and for the day during that quarter century, it thought ahead and thought back. The initial spur to this came from without, in the form of the depression. In a sense, the depression simply proved that New Zealanders were capable of thinking independently, of learning from experience; but a lesser upheaval, or one that did not follow so closely the first world war, might not have proved so much. The depression ensured that New Zealand would not complete its first century of existence in the mood of the somewhat crass and bouncing young state of the twenties, and as the last of the provincial centenaries is celebrated this year it is possible to reflect that, mixed with much cynicism, there is yet a good deal more sober thoughtfulness in evidence among us now than there was then. But it is less certain that there is a well-informed body of responsible public opinion which can bring that thoughtfulness to bear. If there is, it is often strangely apathetic or inarticulate about matters which concern it very nearly. It ignored, for example, the discussion towards the end of the last session of Parliament of one such matter, the position of a disfranchised minority group in the community. This phrase, applied to New Zealand, may sound fantastic: it can't happen here-and yet it has happened. It has happened to the conscientious objectors who were classed as military defaulters and deprived of their civil rights during the war and are still deprived of them. And if it can happen to one group it can happen to any other. The case of the conscientious objectors is of importance not only in itself, as a question of elementary justice, but because it concerns every minority in the country. 3 One of our aims during the recent war was to assert, at least for ourselves, freedom of thought and the rights of the individual conscience, and it is ironical that in pursuit of that aim we should have reduced virtually to the status of criminals a group of young active-minded men who cared to exercise those rights differently · and as conscientious objectors refused to take part in the war. They claimed no privileges of exemption: they were prepared to do whatever was required of them otherwise, and to submit to any treatment the country might impose on them. Many endured four years of detention camp, in effect a term of imprisonment; others spent long terms actually in prison. They were treated as outcasts from the community and were denied the opportunity of serving it in other ways than through the war effort. Yet in 1945 a large proportion of them (sixty per cent of those who appealed) were declared by the revision authorities to have a genuine conscientious objection to taking part in war: that is, according to those authorities they had been wrongly classified as military defaulters in the first place. This is not the time to compare our unenlightened, repressive treatment of conscientious objectors with the relatively reasonable and civilized treatment of them in England; it is enough to remark that the English method was not only more just, but resulted in greater benefit to the community during the war, and left far less frustration and bitterness behind: England had learned from its experience in the first world war, New Zealand had not. But it might have been thought that, when the war ended and the right for which they in their way contended had been formally estab- lished, they would have been re-admitted to the community as full citizens. They were indeed released from detention, slowly and grudgingly; but four and a half years have passed since the war and they remain disfranchised. They were not allowed to vote in the general election-many have not been able to exercise a vote since 1938; legally most of them are still 'defaulters on parole '. The original declaration disfranchising defaulters was to be valid for the duration of the war and has continued in force because of the technicality that the war has not been declared officially at an end. They are thus strictly an ' oppressed minority ' in the sense in which that term has constantly been used in international affairs for many years past. It is consequently hypocritical for 4 New Zealand delegations at the United Nations or similar inter- national gatherings to criticize the treatment of minorities by other states. It may be argued further that in maintaining this minority without civil rights New Zealand is failing to fulfil its obligations under the United Nations charter and that it is specifi- cally violating the Declaration of Human Rights to which the New Zealand government is a signatory. By its signature, New Zealand affirmed that 'Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.' (Article 2). The rights and freedoms of which military defaulters are deprived are mainly those contained in Article 18 (' Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone in or community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.') and Article 21 (' I. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.'); while Article 7 includes the statement that 'All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declara- tion and against any incitement to such discrimination.' On October 21 last Mr Fraser as Prime Minister told the House of Representatives that he had ' no strong views ' about the restoration of civil rights to military defaulters. The implications of this crucial statement seem to have been overlooked or ignored. It means in effect that Government and Parliament (for Mr Holland as Leader of the Opposition did not dissent) have no interest in upholding the rights of minority groups in the corn- munity. Military defaulters are an unpopular minority, so they do not count: nothing will be lost, politically, by repressing them -indeed something (that is to say, a few precious votes) might be lost by proposing to grant them common justice; and they number only about seven hundred. Mr Fraser showed himself in this quite extraordinarily insensitive to a matter of principle. It happened that the minority in question were military defaulters; but they might equally well have been, let us say, Freemasons, or Presbyterians, or Maoris. If one minority, because it is unpopular, 5 can be repressed without protest from public opinion, so can any other: every minority is ultimately on the same footing and the rights of one are the rights of all. Either all citizens are equal before the law or there is no equality whatsoever and the law is nugatory. What has made this situation possible? How can ministers and political parties get away with such violations of the fundamental principle of our political life? Why are governments able with impunity to deny to an unpopular group the rights which the rest of the community enjoys? There is nothing to choose between the Labour Party and the National Party in their attitude to this question. What the Labour Government did-and it is a serious blot on its record, one that should not be soon or lightly forgotten -the National Party condoned. The reason can only be that public opinion in New Zealand does not care, and is wholly insensitive to matters of principle. Parties and politicians are not worse here than elsewhere; if they are lax in their regard for justice it is because the community allows them to be: its own regard for justice is lax. Governments are seldom better than they are forced to be. They reflect the state of feeling of the people whom they serve. Even the law cannot be enforced in some matters unless public opinion demands it; and public opinion in this country does not always do so. Every minority group in New Zealand needs therefore to be constantly vigilant in safeguarding its own rights and those of other minorities. The question of conscientious objection is likely to come up again soon, under conscription. But it is only one of many possible questions affecting minorities. And every organized group in the country is a minority: religious bodies and sports bodies, Trades Unions, Women's Institutes, the R.S.A. and the Y.M.C.A., private and public societies of all kinds, businesses and schools, printers and periodicals-and political parties too, in particular the Opposition. Once isolate them and this becomes plain; and in isolation, as the present case shows (and as the Nazis showed more clearly still) minorities are help- less: they can be deprived of their rights by the flimsiest legal fiction. Each social group in the state depends upon the mainten- ance of the rights of all by the enforcement of the law which protects all, and none can count itself safe when public opinion countenances the loss of rights of any one of them. 6 SEVEN POEMS JAMES K. BAXTER

VENETIAN BLINDS

WHEN four years old he fell asleep between Cold mountainous sheets in his grandfather's house, The slatted blind let through a zebra light Upon his pillow; moss grey, charnel green: Nor the toy bear even could ward the mouse Carving a secret stair, and the clubfoot faceless Night.

As he grew older, fought and cried and played Indians under lupins by the eel-thronged river, His daydream paths converged till one path led Him out of childhood trembling and afraid Toward a dream of Woman, touch and savour Behind venetian blinds, of flesh and feather bed.

Till, shadow victory accomplished, he Lay waking by a warm and casual side To tie all threads in a knot of disillusion. Meanwhile the average light, no mystery, With morning fell down wounded through the wide Green blinds on blinking eyes and the tangled sheets' confusion.

7 WILD BEES

OFTEN in summer on a tarred bridge plank standing Or downstream between willows, a safe Ophelia drifting In a rented boat-I had seen them come and go, Those wild bees swift as tigers, their gauze wings a-glitter In passionless industry, clustering black at the crevice Of a rotten cabbage tree, where their hive was hidden low.

But never strolled too near. Till one half-cloudy evening Of ripe January, my friends and I Came, gloved and masked to the eyes like plundering desperadoes To smoke them out. Qgiet beside the stagnant river We trod wet grasses down, hearing the crickets chitter And waiting for light to drain from the wounded sky.

Before we reached the hive their sentries saw us And sprang invisible through the darkening air; Stabbed, and died in stinging. The hive woke. Poisonous fuming Of sulphur filled the hollow trunk, and crawling Blue flame sputtered: yet still their suicidal Live raiders dived, and clung to our hands and hair.

0 it was Carthage under the Roman torches Or loud with flames and falling timber, Troy. A job well botched: half of the honey melted [ashes And half the rest young grubs. Through earth-black smouldering And maimed bees groaning, we drew out our plunder- Little enough their gold, and slight our joy.

Fallen then the city of instinctive wisdom. Tragedy is written distinct and small: A hive burned on a cool night in summer. But loss is a precious stone to me, a nectar Distilled in time, preaching the truth of winter To the fallen heart that does not cease to fall.

8 THE MORGUE

EACH morning when I lit the coke furnace Unwillingly I passed the locked door The room where Death lived. Shadowless infection Looked from the blind panes; and an open secret Stained even the red flowers in the rock garden Flesh-fingered under the sanatorium wall.

And each day the patients coming and going From light jobs, joking below the sombre pines, Would pass without looking, their faces leaner As if the wintry neighbourhood of Death Would strip the shuddering flesh from bone. They shouted, Threw clods at one another, and passed on.

But when at length, with stiff broom and bucket I opened the door wide-well, there was nothing To fear: only the bare close concrete wall, A slab of stone, and a wheeled canvas stretcher. For Death had shifted house to his true home And mansion, ruinous, of the human heart.

9 THE HERMIT

WHERE the salt creek broadens to a brown lagoon Fringed with matted swordgrass and seawrack, There in a corrugated iron shack Behind a brushwood fence, he lives alone- The odd-job man, old bludger, worn-out soak, Hoeing spuds in his garden on the dune Or mowing lawns by the summer cribs of townsfolk. Three children married and a wife dead, He has little enough to live for, one would say. In mine and thrashing-mill he had his day Bullocking, a strong back and weak head (Pipe music, Irish whisky, quids to spend) Now lies rheumatic in his stretcher bed Feeling the raw cold and his nearing end. The rotten boards are barely weatherproof, Grey spiders scuttle in the draught and damp. Late in the evening by his spirit lamp ' I am the Resurrection and the Life ' He reads, thumbing a worn Bible page- And when the kids throw pebbles on his roof Smiles, and remembers his own sapling age. Then, as his eyes fail in the growing dusk, Kneels down upon a sacking rug and prays, His heart like wax in God's meridian blaze, His body shaken like a burnt-out husk: Praises that Love who wakened him to weep When drawn vertiginous in a deathly masque By ignis fatuus and the smell of sleep. Morning finds him on his daily round, Stripping black mussels on a tide-swept ledge Or clipping fronds from the macrocarpa hedge That guards some well-fed bookie's house and ground. And soon a wave will take him, or the cold March gales, his lean flesh in a sodden mound, His spent soul to that river where none grow old. IO ON ENTERING LYTTEL TON HARBOUR

FROM open water moves the slug-like ferry Towards the land's rough gates: Place of departure in dull dreams remembered As turbulent, mourning; the unextinct volcano Of grief erupting slag, vomiting ashes On all green days-but now serene Propping the pale sky in idiot calm.

The land approves us, her too-prodigal Repentant sons, who all night waited In close cabins pitched on the windy Strait; And now a moment turn Seaward regretful eyes, as if her bare arms were Thrown wide to smother us, her haven a rock tomb.

Now inch by inch the angry ledges fall Astern; brown floating weeds Ride the bow wave. The harbour grows around us With pinetree island, road and bungalow, And old man's dome, the bald eroded summits Massaged unceasingly by the wind's pliant fingers.

The ship swings to the wharf Toylike with standing cars and cranes like giant moas; Below decks grind and scurry Of shuddering engine, heat, and mountainous baggage; Steady the wind pours from the valley funnel Above the town-cool terminus Of many roads, with suave smile promising New faculties, a death and a beginning.

II POEM IN THE MATUKITUKI V ALLEY

SOME few yards from the hut the standing beeches Let fall their dead limbs, overgrown With feathered moss and filigree of bracken. The rotted wood splits clean and hard Close-grained to the driven axe; with sound of water Sibilant falling and high nested birds.

In winter blind with snow; but in full summer The forest blanket sheds its cloudy pollen And cloaks a range in undevouring fire. Remote the land's heart: though the wild scrub cattle Acclimatized, may learn Shreds of her purpose, or the taloned kea.

For those who come as I do, half-aware, Wading the swollen Matukituki waist-high in sno\v water, And stumbling where the mountains throw their dice Of boulders huge as houses, or the smoking Cataract flings its arrows on our path-

For us the land is matrix and destroyer Resentful, darkly known By sunset omens, low words heard in branches; Or where the red deer lift their innocent heads Snuffing the wind for danger, And from our footfall's menace bound in terror.

Three emblems of the heart I carry folded For charms against flood water, sliding shale- Pale gentian, lily, and bush orchid. The peaks too have names to suit their whiteness, Stargazer and Moonraker, A sailor's language and a mountaineer's.

I2 And those who sleep in close bags fitfully Besieged by wind in a snowline bivouac: The carrion parrot with red underwing Clangs on the roof by night; and daybreak brings Raincloud on purple ranges, light reflected Stainless from crumbling glacier, dazzling snow.

Do they not, clay in that unearthly furnace, Endure the hermit's peace And mindless ecstasy? Blue-lipped crevasse And smooth rock chimney straddling-a communion With what' eludes our net: Leviathan Stirring to ocean birth our inland waters?

Sky's purity, the altar cloth of snow On deathly summits laid; or avalanche That shakes the rough moraine with giant laughter; Snowplume and whirlwind-what are these But His flawed mirror, who gave the mountain strength And dwells in holy calm, undying freshness?

Therefore we turn, hiding our souls' dullness From that too blinding glass: turn to the gentle Dark of our human daydream, child and wife, Patience of stone and soil, the lawful city Where man may live, and no wild trespass Of what's eternal shake his grave of time.

13 TO MY WIFE THOUGH your own self before the world I cherish Yet Him before the world and you I prize; My love to you without His love would perish But fed by Him renews and never dies. We being creatures, fear, travail, and pass Our twin lives wintering in a dream's delight, Our married fondness for a looking- glass That dully shows the uncreated Light. And ifi say our love outbraves the gloom Of sin, death, change, and the rough hand of chance, Or that the heaven of a firelit room Cannot be all consumed in night's advance- ! tell it now because beyond frail show In His eternal day it shall be so.

ALL PART OF THE GAME A. P. GASKELL

THE Sockburn tram clanked away. I picked up my suitcase and walked along to their gate. Well, there it was again, all just the same as I'd remembered it from last year; the long straight gravelled drive, the brick and roughcast house with the rose bushes over on the left, and down at the end of the drive the high brick stables with the loft above. Somebody led a horse out of the stable doorway as I watched, and took it round to the paddocks at the side. I couldn't see who he was. He didn't look like Cliff, but the shed under the windmill stopped my view before I had a good look at him. Perhaps he was a stable-boy. He looked small leading that high green-covered horse. Perhaps he'd been rubbing it down and was just going to turn it out. I couldn't see properly at that distance. Down right at the back was the row of poplars beside the water-race. The ground was flat for miles and miles, the soil was grey and glittered in the sun, the grass in the paddocks behind 14 the gorse fence was burnt brown, people rode their bikes on the footpath, everybody had a windmill, and in town, the trams were green and white, the pictures kept open continuously all day, clear water ran along in the gutters, and, of course, there was tlfe Avon. It was all so different from New Plymouth. We had hills all around there, and the Mountain too, but here I could look across flat country, away beyond the rows of trees, and see the Southern Alps right over by the sky. I liked holidays in Christchurch very much, even the air smelled different, and nearly always I used to cry on my last morning before I got up, because I didn't want to go home again. Of course other times Mum had come with me, but this time I had come the whole way by myself, except that Dad's cousin had seen me from the train to the boat in Wellington. I opened the gate, picked up my bag, and went in. I started to walk along the drive, but someone in the shadow down by the stables yelled, ' Get off the drive.' I saw that the drive had just been raked so I walked on the strip of grass along the side. That sounded like Cliff who shouted, though I wasn't sure of his voice after a year. I suppose he'd just raked the drive. I couldn't help smiling as I walked along. It felt so good to be coming here again. I went up the steps to the back porch and knocked. 'It's me, auntie,' I called. 'Is that you Gordon? Step over the step.' My auntie always kept the doorstep scrubbed very clean. I went in, and there was the smell of their place again, quite different from at home. My uncle kept a cow, and I could smell the big basin of milk that would be sitting in the pantry, and scrubbed wood, and cooking, and their own warm smell that came from the people who lived in the kitchen. My auntie was down on her knees polishing the range. She smiled up at me. 'Hello Gordon. My word you've grown. Give us a kiss, you're not too big for that are you?' I bent and kissed the faint dark moustache above her mouth. She was very dark and good-looking, and her eyebrows met faintly above her thin straight nose. She had dark brown eyes like Mum's. I noticed she had her hair short in a buster-cut. 'Mum told me you'd got your hair cut,' I said. 'Do you like it? It's the latest. Hasn't she got hers done yet?' 'No. She says she will if many more people do.' IS She told me to take my coat off and sit down, then she asked me all about the trip and about Mum and Dad, and told me about the wins they'd had lately with Red Wing, and about the nor- wester they'd had that she was still cleaning up after. She kept rubbing at the range until it shone. She was very particular about her house. All the time I was wanting to get away down to the stables and see Cliff and the horses and my uncle and Mary. 'Would you like a cup of tea?' auntie asked. 'They always want one after they've finished mucking out. They'll be up soon.' ' I think I'll go down and say hello to them.' 'Well you can take your things down. I've put you in the whare with Cliff and Norman.' 'Who's Norman? ' 'He's the new boy working for your uncle. He's a steeple- chase jockey.' 'I think I saw him. Does he get many wins?' ' He used to be very good, but he had a bad fall last year and he's just getting his nerve back. Your uncle thinks he'll be good again if he just has a win or two. He's a nice wee chap.' I picked up my bag and coat. ' If you want a wash, you know where the wash-house is. Or you can wash in the sink if you don't make a mess. I don't want you mucking up my bathroom. I've just cleaned it out.' ' Righto,' I said. I had looked in her bathroom once the last time I was there. It was corker and clean and shiny. But last year, when Mum was there I used to roll up my pants and sit on the bench and wash my legs in the sink. Some of the water would run down under my pants and not get dried properly and make my legs sore. I took my stuff and went smiling down to the stables. I looked in at the whare door and sniffed the familiar smell of tobacco smoke and grey blankets. Someone was lying on one of the bunks reading. My shadow on the floor made him look up. 'Hello,' he said. He had a smooth round little face. 'Hello.' This would be Rorman, the steeplechase jockey. ' Where's Cliff?' 'He's mucking out. In the stable.' I went through the big doorway on to the concrete floor. The air was full of the smell of straw and horses and leather. Someone was hissing through his teeth, and a horse stamped with a hollow !6 sound on the packed earth in the loosebox. ' Stand still, blast you,' said a voice. I looked in over the lower half of the door, and there was Cliff, hissing as he brushed down the horse's legs. The horse was flicking his tail and gnawing the edge of his manger and stamping. 'Oh you bad-tempered bastard,' said Cliff. He was thin-faced and dark, and a few years older than me. ' Good-day there,' I said. I could feel my face cracking, I was so pleased. He smiled up at me with his cheeky sort of smile, and came reaching over the door to shake hands. I was too slow and he got the grip on me and squeezed. ' Hello Gordon,' he smiled, squeezing, ' how are you?' 'Ow, Cliff,' I said. 'Cut it out. You're hurting. Oo. Dicken.' He let me go. ' I've just got to wash his face,' he said. ' Like to come in and do it?' 'What's his name?' ' Gloaming,' he grinned at me. He had dust caked round his mouth and it made his teeth look white. ' I'll just finish him and then I'm set. How about getting me some water in that bucket.' ' How many horses have you got now? ' I asked, handing him the bucket. 'Five. There's this one, he's Scallywag, and you know old Red Wing, and three others.' 'They're not all yours though?' 'Oh no. Only Red Wing. Scallywag's running at the next meeting. Haven't I got him looking good?' When he had finished we went into the whare at the end of the stables. ' Norm, this is Gordon.' Norman got off the bunk to shake hands. He was just about the same height as me and he was a grown man. He had funny little legs. ' Pleased to meet you,' he said, and he didn't squeeze my hand. When he smiled he looked like a little round-faced boy and he had a high sort of voice. ' See what happens to you if you start smoking too soon,' said Cliff. He was a good bit taller than Norman. 'Pity you didn't start a bit sooner,' said Norman bitterly. ' You've grown out of a job.' ' Don't worry about me, I can get a job all right.' Cliff took out a packet of Yellows. ' Have one? ' He held them out to me. 'Have you started smoking?' I asked. 'Does auntie let you?' Norman laughed.' She makes him. He's nearly ten stone now.' I7 'Some people never grow up,' said Cliff airily. in the head they don't.' Norman went and lay down agam. ' I had a cigarette the other day after school,' I said. 'Another kid and I smoked one in the woodshed.' 'Did it make you sick?' ' No, but afterwards we ate all sorts of things to take the smell away, cabbage leaves and raw onion.' 'Chewing gum's best,' said Cliff. 'Or Smokers.' 'Where's uncle and Mary?' ' They've gone down to the store,' said Norman. ' Hang up your coat. There's a hook.' ' Which will be my bunk? ' I asked. 'Do you wet the bed?' Cliff asked.' Well you can sleep above me.' Cliff was a hard case. He knew lots of yarns too. He'd always start by saying ' Did you ever hear the one about ...? ' He didn't seem to like telling them when Norman was there, but he told me some corkers after. He was a real wag. It was good fun going round with him. By and by, we went up for a cup of tea. Uncle had been a jockey once and he was short too, only he had got a lot thicker now. He was fair and red-faced with little veins on his cheeks, and he always had to wear a hat outside because he sunburned very easily. He never used to talk much to me because I didn't know about horses, so he kept asking 'How's your Mum and Dad?' and 'What class are you in now?' When Mary came in from the front, I noticed straight away that she had her hair up. She looked just about grown-up like that. I thought she was very pretty too, because she took after uncle and her face was fair and smooth and she looked corker when she smiled. ' Hello Gordie,' she cried, and grabbed hold of me and started hugging and kissing me a lot before I could get away. It was hard to know how to struggle with her because Mum had told me never to punch girls in the chest. It was funny too because when she kissed me she would look over at Norman to see if he was watching, and he turned very red. 'Here here here,' said auntie. 'That's enough of that in my clean kitchen. Mary, don't be such a damn fool. It's just as well for you my lady you didn't bump the table.' 'Yah, you big sissy,' said Cliff. 'Always kissing the girls.' I8 'You'll change your tune one of these days, smarty,' said Mary. 'What about Doreen?' ' Her! ' said Cliff, ' Why I - ' 'That's enough,' said Auntie. 'Gordon you get round there behind the table. Sit in your usual place Norman.' Gee it was good fun there with them all, talking about the horses and everything. I thought I'd better remember later on to ask Cliff about Doreen. He was a hard case with girls. Afterwards, auntie told me I'd better go and change my clothes. ' Can you unpack your own things? ' 'I'll come down and do them for him,' said Mary. 'I'll be his mother while he's here and make him wash his neck.' 'You'll do these dishes first. You haven't done a hand's turn all morning. Plenty girls are out working long before your age.' 'Now now,' said uncle. 'We've been over all that. Mary's work is around here, helping me with the horses. Isn't it, Mary?' ' Too right. Gordon, did you know I ride work now in the mornings?' ' Yes, on Red Wing,' Cliff broke in. ' That old thing. You try it on Scallywag. I bet you wouldn't stay long on him.' 'Cliff sometimes doesn't stay very long on him either,' said Norman in his soft little voice, smiling. 'Cliff got dumped the other morning,' said auntie. 'He's getting too long in the legs. We might have to find another job for him.' 'He won't dump me again,' said Cliff darkly. 'I made him feel sorry for it.' He took out his packet and lit a cigarette. 'Started smoking yet Gordon?' asked uncle. He took out a wooden match, split it with his thumbnail and started picking a place in his teeth. He opened the paper at the racing page. ' I've got to go to High School after I finish primary,' I said. 'You can't smoke there either, though some of the boys do.' ' More school yet! ' Cliff blew a smoke ring. ' Don't you get sick of it? You wouldn't catch me going there.' 'Everybody isn't-' Norman started to say, then he stopped and went red. 'I'll dry the dishes for you Mary.' ' See if you can put them away in the right places this time.' Auntie was smiling at him. She liked anyone who did things for her. Last time, she asked me to pluck and clean a fowl for her. It was a hell of a job, and I got in an awful mess. Mum was very 19 annoyed with auntie over that, but auntie just laughed. I suppose Norman was doing things for her now. I didn't mind doing them really because if she was around she would talk about people and crack jokes about them and make the time pass. She knew some yarns too, but she didn't tell very bad ones. She did enjoy a bit of fun though, like the time years ago when she was staying at our place and she came out all dressed up in Dad's clothes and bowler hat that he wore on Sundays, with a wee mou drawn with chalk, and said she was going down to work with him. She went right out the gate and along the street a bit. Dad didn't like it much, but Mum and I nearly died laughing at her the tricks she got up to. Mum used to say it was a different story in her own place though. Down in the whare again, Cliff stretched out on the bunk while I took the things out of my bag and changed my clothes. 'That little runt. He's always hanging round Mary these days. Mum lets him take her to dances, too.' 'Who?' ' Norman. If I catch him up to any monkey business with my sister I'll bash him.' 'Could you fight him? He must be pretty strong.' 'Him? Course I could. That little squirt. You just let him try anything on and you'll see. I don't like Mary going out with the stable boy.' 'But isn't he a jockey?' 'He's a jockey when anyone gives him a mount, but he's our stable-boy most of the time. He's half crazy too.' ' Crazy? He looks all right to me.' I began to feel a bit uneasy. 'Course he's crazy. He got dumped at the board fence last year and kicked on the head. You never know what he's going to do. He's moody as hell. Ifi was Dad I'd give him the sack. I could work Red Wing out over the. jumps. I'm a damn sight better rider than he is. It's only that they skite him up, and he's a bit smaller.' I didn't like to say what about getting dumped off Scallywag the other morning because Cliff knew some corker tortures. One of them he tried last time was to stick his finger in under your ears, or he'd get you down on the floor and kneel on your arm and roll back and forth. 'What books have you got there?' I asked. 'I'm reading a beaut now, Drag Harlan. Just when he's going 20 to draw he stops and lets the other joker draw first, and then he flashes it out. There's another one there by the same author, Square Deal Sanderson. Have you read it? ' ' I've read Bar 20,' I said, ' and Bar 20 Days and The Bar 20 Three and ]ohnny Nelson.' 'He's a wag,' said Cliff, 'that Johnny Nelson. He's like Hoot Gibson in the pictures.' ' He gets married in the last book,' I said. 'Does he? Aw hell, I hate that mushy stuff.' 'Have you read The Three Musketeers? I asked. 'It's a corker, all sword fights. Like Doug Fairbanks.' 'No, I don't like that old-fashioned stuff. Give me quick on the draw.' After dinner, everybody had a lie-down. They said it was because they got up so early in the morning to ride work. Norm was there reading a book called My Man ]eeves. He said he hadn't read any cowboy books for years. Sometimes he read Nat Gould, but he liked adventure stories best, or funny ones. Cliff had just put down his book and was going to have a doss when there was the sound of wheels on the drive. From the window you could see right up the drive past the house. It was a big two-horse wagon loaded with bales of straw. 'It's Charlie,' said Cliff. 'Blast him. What's he want to come now for? We only ordered the bloody stuff this morning. A man never gets any peace round this place.' He began slipping on his shoes. The two big heavy horses stopped just outside the door, and threw out their heads to loosen the reins. You could hear their teeth chewing on their bits. One of them lifted his tail and dropped some dung. Charlie, high on his seat, leaned away down to look under the doorway. 'Anyone home?' He wore a waistcoat and his shirtsleeves were rolled up showing freckly forearms. It was hard to tell what his face was like because it was almost upside- down looking under the doorway. I went out to see him. He was thin with a big sandy moustache and big eyebrows, and was wearing an old bun hat. 'I drove 'em nice and straight down the drive,' he said to Cliff. ' Look at it. Two nice straight marks down the middle. Decorate it for you. Bet you I can drive back on the same marks. Couldn't I girls? ' he said to the horses. ' I could draw flowers for you along the edge with this pair.' 2! 'One of them's not very well-behaved,' I said. ' Haw, haw, haw,' he went, ' that Bessie, she just don't like the job Cliff made of the drive, do you Bess?' He put his hand on her rump and jumped down. 'You can bloody well clear up that mess before you go,' said Cliff. 'Haw, haw, haw. He's a hard case our Cliff. She's thinking your skinny racehorses don't do much of a job so she's giving you some good manure.' He became very businesslike. ' Where will you have it? Up aloft?' He backed the wagon to the doorway of the stables. The horses moved stiffiy backwards, chipping their shoes down on to the drive and scattering the gravel. I went with Cliff up the steep narrow stairs into the loft. It was warm and dusty up there under the roo( There were some bales of hay and straw, and sacks of chaff, and some horse covers, and dry-looking cobwebby bits of harness hanging from nails. Three or four cats scampered out of sight. Cliff opened the door at the front and the light poured in. There was a little platform; and a beam above it with a pulley. Cliff fed a rope through, with a hook on the end, and we hauled the bales up, swung them in to the platform, and rolled them over into the loft. 'That's the lot,' called Charlie. 'See you some more. Tell your Dad I got a good line of oats now. Come on girls. Giddap.' We watched him go away down the drive. ' I'll tell you what,' I said to Cliff. ' I'll go down and you haul me up.' ' To hell with that for a joke. Do you think I like work? I'll tell you· what,' he said. ' I'll tie this end and you can slide down the rope.' 'I don't know how to hold it with my legs.' ' What, aren't you game? Go on. Look, I'll tie it here.' ' You go first.' ' Me? I could do it easy. I often do it. I'm sick of it.' I went out on the platform, leaned out, and grabbed the rope, but it looked a long way down and the stones were sharp. Cliff gave me a push and before I knew where I was the rope was burning through my hands and I was waving with my legs to grab it, and just when I was getting it the ground hit under my feet and I went down on my knees on the gravel. There was Cliff's head sticking out over the platform, laughing. 'I knew you could do it. Easy, isn't it?' 22 I gulped a bit before I could smile back at him. It didn't look very high from the ground, but from up there the ground looked an awful long way down. I'd got a bit of a fright and felt shaky so I went to sit on the whare step and look at my knees. One was bleeding. Norman came over to me. ' You be careful with him or he'll hurt you,' he said. 'He's got no common sense at all, especially when it doesn't concern himself. He's just at the awkward age.' · 'I'm all right,' I said. 'I just wasn't expecting it that's all.' Cliff came in. 'Well, now you know how it's done.' 'I thought you'd have more sense than let Gordon do that,' said Norman. 'You mind your own bloody business,' Cliff blazed at him. ' This is my business. I'm in charge of the stables when your father's not here.' 'Then why weren't you hauling up that straw'?' 'Oh, I let the stropper do jobs like that. I'm a jockey. And I don't want anyone hurt around here. You be more careful:' He stood there with his round little face looking up at Cliff, standing up straight, looking very light and quick. His eyes didn't blink at all but his face got red. I thought Cliff was going to hit him, but Norman smiled and said, 'There's enough mess to clear up as it is.' He got a shovel and a handful· of straw and picked up the dung. Cliff came back from the dressing-table with some ointment. ' Here rub this on.' It had a corker clean smell. Then he lay down on his bunk and didn't say anything for a long time. That night after tea, uncle got up with the match between his teeth and took his hat. ' Better see Harry about those acceptances,' he said and went out. 'Are there races soon?' I asked. 'Too right,' said Mary. 'Red Wing's going to win the steeple- chase, isn't he Norman?' ' He's getting a bit old now.' Norman was smiling at her. ' He might win if I get off and lift him over some of those fences.' 'I'll lift you,' said Mary, returning his smile, 'right under the ear. If he doesn't win it's because his rider's no good.' ' He won't win then,' said Cliff, lying back on the sofa. 'Are you going to ride him, Norman?' I asked. 'If Mary'lllet me. I'll tell you where I'd like to ride him, and 23 that's down to the glue factory.' Norman looked corker with that wee cheeky smile. You couldn't help liking him, though sometimes it seemed funny for him to be acting like a grown man when he was so small. 'What are your colours?' I asked. 'Sky blue. A nice clear colour. Like Mary's eyes.' Norman and Mary both went red when he said that, but I thought Mary was quite pleased about it. Cliff snorted and auntie looked up. ' Here here you two. That's enough of that damn silly nonsense. Just as well your father's not here my lady.' They were both uncomfortable, looking down at the table.' Well, what about these dishes?' said auntie. 'A woman's work is never done.' She was looking at Norman but he didn't move.' Norman, will you give me a hand?' She was smiling nicely at him, but his face had a funny closed look. 'Not tonight,' he said. 'I want to take some books back to the Ellis's.' He started to get up. ' You men are all the same,' said auntie. ' Big ones and small ones you're all the same. Who'd be a woman.?' ' You've got a big one lying there on the sofa doing nothing.' 'Never you mind about him,' said auntie sharply. ' I'll see he does his share.' ' If it goes according to size,' said Norman, ' he ought to do them a good bit more often than I do.' 'Leave his size out of it. We can't all be as small as you.' Auntie did look fierce when she was angry. She was so dark. 'I suppose it's just as well,' said Norman. 'Qgality before quantity.' He stood leaning his hands on the table as though he wanted to get away but was making himself stand and face her. 'You leave him out of it,' said auntie. 'Just leave my family out of it. When you get a family of your own you can start bossing them around. Poor little beggars.' Then she seemed to realize she'd said too much because Norman was looking awful. His face had gone pale and thin-looking, as though he was very cold. 'Now Norman, let's not quarrel again,' she said. 'My tongue runs away with me. Sit down for a while and we'll have a game of cards.' 'It's all right,' he said stiffly, and went out looking very small. 'Mum, you've hurt him. You are a devil,' said Mary. 'You know he's awfully sensitive about being so small.' 24 'You needn't start telling me what's right and what's wrong. I've got along so far without your advice, thank you.' 'But Mum, you must remember he's not right yet. Just when he's getting along nicely you have to go and upset him again.' 'I go and upset him. I like that. If he's so damned thin-skinned he can't take a bit of a joke he deserves to be upset. What he needs is a good hard kick on the backside to wake him up a bit.' 'Oh don't be so childish. He's not a little boy. You can't smack him to make him better.' 'I can still smack you, my lady. Not so much of your back- chat. It's all your fault anyway. If you didn't encourage him, he wouldn't-' 'I don't encourage him. I like him, that's all, and I feel sorry for him.' 'Oh, you feel sorry for him. So that's why you're always down at the stables instead of doing your room out. That's why you're off to dances with him every night of the week. That's why you're always talking about him. You better watch your step my lady. He's not your class and you better let him know it, the sooner the better.' 'There's nothing the matter with him. He's always perfectly all right with me. I know how to treat him. And I like him. So there.' Mary stood up and started clearing the table. She didn't look like a girl at all. She'd grown up a lot in the last year. Auntie was glaring at her. 'You watch yourself,' said Cliff from the sofa. 'I don't want any half-wits in our family.' Auntie rushed across to him and gave him such a box on the ear that his cigarette went flying out of his mouth. ' If you don't get up off your backside and help your sister this minute and stop smoking those damned cigarettes I'll knock you into the middle of next week,' she yelled. Cliff got up, whimpering. I was too scared to do anything. I didn't know what to do. If I went down to the whare Norman would be there. I just sat and shivered. The other three got busy on the dishes. After a time, auntie turned and smiled at me. ' Well Gordon, you'll be able to tell your mother I'm having trouble with my family.' I tried to smile back. That was one good thing about auntie, she would flare up suddenly, but she got over it just as quickly. She was right back 25 to ordinary things again now. 'Has your mother got any new hats lately? ' she asked. 'She's got a wee one,' I said. 'A high sort of a one with a narrow brim. She says she'll have to have her hair cut before she can wear it properly. It's not round, it's-you know-oval.' ' Mary and I are going to get new ones like that if Red Wing wins this race. They're the latest.' ' You won't know me if we have a win,' said Mary. ' I'm getting a new dress, very short, nearly up to my knees, with a low waist, and some new gloves, and a new coat, aren't I Mum? I'll be really coming out in all the latest. And Mum and I might go up to Wellington for the races. Gee, I'm looking forward to that. I hope we get a win.' ' You better keep Norman sweet then,' said Cliff. ' Shall I go and see if he's there?' 'No, I'll go.' And Mary was out the door before anyone could say a word. Auntie put the red cloth on the table and we sat down. Cliff handed me the cards. ' Let's see if you can shuffie any better than last time you were here.' I tried it, but we didn't play cards much at home, and my fingers were too short and stiff. Bits of the pack kept falling on the floor. 'Look, I'll show you,' said Cliff. He took them and did it easily, and then put two lots down on the table and flipped their corners in together. Auntie started laughing.' Gordon, do you remember that time years ago at your place-perhaps you wouldn't remember it-we played strip poker and we had your father sitting with only his pants and socks on?' 'He doesn't play cards as a rule,' I said. 'I suppose that's why he wasn't much good.' They were both laughing. ' I'll never forget that as long as I live. It was a cold night and he was sitting there shivering and looking miserable and he couldn't win anything back to put on.' 'And that Christmas a long time ago when we were staying at your place,' said Cliff, ' and we hopped out the bedroom window and sneaked round and looked in the sitting-room window and saw all the presents waiting to go in our stockings.' ' Yes, you little devils,' said auntie. ' You didn't deserve any presents after that.' ' Do you remember the time the pony chased you when you 26 were eating a carrot? ' Cliff was always reminding me about that. Cliff and Mary used to have a pony when they were in the old place, and it was dead keen on carrots. One day it followed me, trying to snatch one out of my hand. I ran inside and locked the door. I was small at the time of course, and not used to horses. ' Mary is a long time,' I said. ' Shall I go and tell her to hurry? ' Auntie nodded so I went out into the dark. I knew there was a clothes-prop leaning across the path so I was walking on the grass and not making any noise and I almost bumped into them. They were very close together, perhaps they were hugging, and Norman was saying, 'Please Mary. Will you? Please.' But she said, 'Not now Norman. Perhaps if Red Wing wins.' I said, 'Are you two going to play cards?' They got a fright and stepped back. Norman said,' Why, it's Gordon. How are you Gordon? ' 'I'm all right thanks. Are you coming to play cards?' ' Not me,' said Norman. ' I've got to take these books back. You'd better go, Mary.' As we walked back, Mary put her arm round my shoulders and took hold of my ear. 'I don't know what you saw. But not a word of this inside or Mum will hit the roof. It's our secret, Eh?' She squeezed my ear. I wanted to ask why auntie would hit the roof, but I forgot because I was measuring myself against her to see if she would be much tafler than Norman. My head .came up to her ear. Gee, we had some fun that night. After we had played cards, we got to talking and laughing about things, and auntie took her teeth out, pulled her hair down over her face, and acted old mother Kennedy going into the store and trying to say, ' Three fresh sausages please.' Then Cliff put on some of auntie's old clothes, and Mary dressed me up in some of her things with a hat and powder and everything, and we pretended to be two girls. Mary got her father's suit and hat and then came out and pretended to be courting me. She took off her hat and asked me for a dance and wondered if she could see me home afterwards. She asked me to marry her, and auntie put some white paper round her neck and hung her top teeth down as though she was buck-toothed and pretended to be the parson. Gee, it was great fun. I nearly died laughing. We never had fun like that at home. Uncle came in and said what a skinny girl I was, but he said Mary had a good backside on her for a man. He said to be careful 27 she didn't bend or she'd burst his pants for him and then he:d have to wear hers. I think it was the best evening's fun I ever had. Norman came in later for a cup of tea, and he seemed all right again too. I always had corker fun at Christchurch. Next morning I .was tired and had a good sleep in, but later on in my stay I'd get up early and go over to the course to watch the horses working and rolling in the sand. I wasn't game to ride any of them. Cliff kept asking me to try, but they looked too tall. I used to help Cliff with the mucking-out. I could carry two buckets of water. Last time I was there I couldn't do that. Of course I slopped a bit, but still it showed I was getting stronger. Uncle wanted me to come and learn how to milk, but I liked the horses better. Besides there were plenty cows just over the road from our place at home, so I stayed in the stable. Up in the loft, there were bags of oats to dip your hands and arms down into and feel them dry and cold and slithery. One of the cats had kittens and they were a lot tamer than the mother, though the old mother didn't like you touching them, and she kept handy all the time. Sometimes uncle .would let me sieve the chaff, but I couldn't make it curve up in the air the way he did. Sometimes in the mornings I'd take a book up in the loft and sit on the wee platform in the sun and hang my legs down. I could look down between my knees and there was the gravel away down below. I always took care Cliff wasn't in the loft when I sat there. One morning when I was there, Mary came up and then called Norman to come and shift a bag of chaff for her. I don't think they knew I was there because they were talking quietly for a long time, and then there was a clatter and Mary said, ' You devil, you're stronger than I thought you were.' She didn't sound very annoyed though and Norman was laughing as they went down. I suppose he had hugged her or kissed her. I wondered for a while whether I should tell Cliff about it but I thought there might be a row, and anyway Mary hadn't seemed to mind. If it had been anything much Mary would have made a fuss. Besides, Norman was jolly nice to me. For a while I had been a bit nervous with him, and didn't like to say anything was very small or little in case he got offended, but I soon forgot about that. Sometimes he did get a bit moody and hard to please, and then he wouldn't answer and ask you to leave him alone and sit and look as though he was thinking of something unpleasant, but he never got as 28 crabby as our school-teacher, although I suppose they're different. Most of the time he was corker and friendly, and he didn't try to play tricks on me at all. One afternoon, Cliff and I went over to the water-race and caught some tadpoles. Cliff splashed me a bit of course, but I got him a beauty just at the end. He couldn't catch me either. I suppose the cigarettes made him short-winded. Another day, I went into town with auntie and Mary, and we had a good look round the shops and the Square, and then Mary and I came home on the top deck of the trailer. That was corker and breezy. Another afternoon, Cliff and I went in to the pictures to see Doug Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro. He was a stunner sword-fighter and he cut a Z on their faces. Cliff liked it too because Doug Fairbanks could ride so well. The girl in the picture said to him, ' You ride like a part of the horse.' The next morning, when they all came riding back from the course, before they got off at the stables, Cliff called out to me, ' Look at me Gordon. I ride like a part of the horse.' Norman started laughing so much he could hardly speak. ' Which part? ' he said. ' When that tram passed and Scallywag started to play up, you were riding like a part of his neck.' He was laughing so much he could hardly get down. Poor Cliff just glared at him and moved his mouth, but he couldn't think of anything to say at all. It was funny, and good too, to see Cliff without an answer. He was still pretty wild afterwards, and kept swearing and muttering that he would get even with Norman if it was the last thing he did. I felt like laughing, but if I had it would have meant a long run so I kept quiet. Well, by this time the races were only a day or two off, and we were all busy getting ready. Norman had washed his colours himself and Mary ironed them for him and they looked stunner. He was sitting in the sun on the doorstep of the whare cleaning his racing boots. They were very light and soft. I tried one on, but it was a little too small for me. 'Gee, I'm excited about these races Norman,' I said. 'Are you getting excited? ' 'Not yet,' he said, 'but I will. I always get a bit windy just before a race starts. It's so long-drawn-out, you know, the way you have to hang about before you line up at the barrier. Most of the jacks get the wind up a bit.' 29 ' Is Red Wing good at the barrier? ' 'Oh yes. Most steeplechasers are pretty quiet. It's the sprints where they play up.' 'Do you think you'll win? Honestly, do you?' I asked. ' I hope so. Your uncle and auntie will be very pleased if I do. Your uncle's got old Red Wing in great nick.' He went on rubbing away at his boot. ' Do you want us to win.'? ' Of course I do. If you win it'll be a sort of-you know the word, what it all works up to.' 'A climax?' 'Yes. It'll be theclimaxofmy holiday. I'm going home next week.' He asked me about home, and would I be sorry to go, and then he said, 'What about Mary? Does she want us to win?' I was surprised at that. I thought she would have told him. They were always talking about things and riding to the track together. She must have told him plenty times. It seemed funny he should ask me. But perhaps he didn't believe her. 'Too right she does,' I said. 'If you win she's going to do all sorts of things, get a lot of new dresses and gloves and things. She's going up to Wellington, too. She's dead keen on it. And she and auntie are going to get new hats.' He looked a bit funny as though he was disappointed, and kept rubbing at a shiny place on his boot. ' I might get a new hat myself,' he said, and got up and went inside, leaving me wondering what was the matter. 'Yoo-hoo,' auntie was standing on the porch and waving. ' Yoo- hoo, Gordon.' When I got there, she had on her nice smile. ' Gordon, would you like to turn the wringer for me? It makes the job such a lot quicker.' The wash-house was full of steam, and the smell of soap and wet clothes. She was getting our things ready for the races. When I started to turn the wringer, it squeaked a bit. 'Shall I get some oil? There's some down in the stables.' 'I'll oil you. Do you think I want oil on these clothes? Leave it just now.' I remembered Mum telling me how particular auntie was. One time, when auntie had been away, uncle did all the washing just before she came back, but auntie said that it wasn't clean enough for her, and she did it all again. But that wasn't really what I was thinking about as I turned the wringer. 30 'Auntie, do you want Norman to win?' I asked. 'What a damn silly question. Would you like £8oo?' 'You bet. I'd get a motor-bike. We have motor-bike races on the race-course up home.' 'If we win,' said auntie, 'we get £8oo. And then there are our bets too. Besides, if your uncle wins, he'll get more horses to train.' 'What about Norman?' I asked. Auntie was sloshing the clothes in clean water. Her hands were all pale ·and wrinkled and very clean from the suds. ' It would do him good too,' she said. ' Not only his share of tl1e money, but he'd get more mounts too. He's had rather a lean time since his spill. He used to be very good.' 'Auntie-' 'What?' I was going to ask her if she'd let Mary marry Norman if he won, but she was looking at me and I wasn't game. I started to turn the wringer. 'He thinks an awful lot of Mary, doesn't he?' ' Who told you that tale? Did he? ' 'No, but I mean-they go round a lot together, don't they?' 'Mary's a mile too young to think of settling down yet. She'll have plenty more boys before she strikes the right one. It's too risky marrying a jockey. You never know when they'll get hurt. Besides Norman's not her class.' 'But wasn't uncle a jockey when you married him?' ' That was quite a different matter. A flat jockey's quite a different matter. Your uncle was one of the leading jockeys. Come on, turn a bit faster.' She pushed the clothes in between the rollers. ' Has Norman been having any more of his moods lately? ' 'No, he's corker. I think he only has the really bad ones about Mary. I've never seen him really bad. Cliff makes him wild some- times but he doesn't get any moods over it. He just gets angry.' 'Cliff's just at the awkward age,' she said.' He thinks he knows more about training horses than his own father. Your uncle's thinking of sending him away somewhere else to work for a while to see if he'll steady up a bit.' That sank in. 'Won't he be here if I come another time?' That did knock the bottom out of things. 'Come on, turn the handle. We'll see about that.' ' But auntie, fair go, will he be here next year? ' 3I ' I suppose he will. Turn a bit faster or we'll never get to the races at this rate.' That was news indeed. I wandered down to the stables to ask Cliff about it. Mary was there, cleaning Red Wing's bridle.' Hello, sweetheart. Come to give me a kiss? ' ' Don't be silly. Tarts are always silly when you're thinking about something.' 'None of your cheek now, young Gordon, or I'll rub my hands all over your face. Look at them.' She held them out for me to see. 'You'd have to catch me first. Where's Cliff? ' 'He and dad have taken the horses down to have their racing plates put on. They were looking for you. You could have gone on the bike.' I stood watching her for a while. ' The winner must have a clean bridle,' she said. ' What have you been doing to Norman? He's as miserable as a bandicoot. I'll have to go in and sweeten him up as soon as I finish this. Shall I give him a nice big kiss. Like this?' She went to grab me but I ducked out. ' Couldn't catch a flea,' I said. I went into the whare to ask Norman if it was all right for me to take the bike. He was standing looking at his face in the mirror, not doing his hair, or shaving, or anything, just looking at himsel£ His reflection had a sad sort of expression as though it was looking out and seeing Norman and not liking the sight of him very much. ' Norman,' I said. After a while he turned towards me, and his reflection looked away. 'Norman, can I have the bike?' ' Don't bother me,' he said as though he hadn't really listened to what I said. He went and lay down on his bunk, still with that same expression on his face. I went to the shed under the windmill and got the bike and rode off to the blacksmith's. It was uncle's bike and I could reach the pedals by just stretching a little bit, and of course I rode on the footpath all the way. There were lots of horses and jockeys round the smithy, and there was the smell like burning toe-nails, and the hammering red- hot iron, and the smoke when they tried the shoes on. It was such good fun watching and listening to the talk that I forgot to ask Cliff. When race morning came, I can tell you we did bustle round to get there for the first race. Gee, it was great. There were crowds and crowds of people, and cars going in one gate all the time, 32 and trams with two trailers, and as soon as they stopped the people all made a rush for the gates. There were wee jockeys leading in horses, and some of the horses had covers right over their faces with just holes for their eyes and pointed things to fit their ears into. Men were yelling and trying to sell race-books, and round the back of the stand there were refreshment tents and places for hot water, and people carrying teapots, and the smell of hot pies and beer. It was a stunner day and the place was packed with people. I thought when we left auntie's place that she and Mary were all dolled up, but gosh, they were nothing to some of the sights. The men were just ordinary though. We went down to the birdcage to see the horses. It was funny too. The birdcage had white iron posts all round, on this side and on the far side too, and when you walked past them they looked as though they were going backwards. Mary said it was like the wheels in the pictures. We got a good possie just as the horses were coming in. Auntie and uncle kept talking about their names and weights and riders, and how they ran at the last meet- ing, but I just watched them walking round. Gosh, they looked stunner when they had their covers off. So tall and shiny and proud, and they just sort of drifted round as though the grass was springy and they didn't need to touch it hard at all, and their skins fitted them perfectly without any wrinkles or baggy places, all just smooth and ripply and neat. Uncle went away to have a bet, and Mary, auntie, and I went up to the stand. We had to go away up to the back to get a seat. It was high up and you could see for miles and miles right away over the smoky part of Christchurch. I could see auntie's place too. I could tell it by the loft above the stables. The horses started away over at the back of the course and when they got away it looked as though all the bright colours of the jockeys were sliding round on the railings. They soon swung into the straight and everybody stood up. I couldn't see very well, but auntie was yelling 'You beauty. You beauty,' and hammering my shoulder, and Mary rubbed her cheek against mine, so we were on a winner all right. That made us all happy, it was such a good start. Mary kept saying, ' I've got a feeling this is going to be our lucky day. Don't you feel lucky, Gordon?' She looked lucky. She was smiling all the time and her eyes were bright, and when we met Norman 33 at the corner of the stand, he couldn't help looking at her. He was all dressed up in a wee suit with his collar and tie and hat on, and he looked smaller than ever. I noticed that he went and stood on the uphill side of us, so that he could look down to us. Cliff and uncle were busy with the horses, so we went in for a cup of tea. When we found a table in all the crowd, Norman wouldn't have anything to eat, but he came and sat with us. 'Well Norman,' said auntie, 'how do you feel about it?' ' I'm beginning to feel a bit weak about the knees,' he said. Then he smiled. 'But Mary's my lucky charm. She says we'll be all right.' ' Too right you will. I'm sure you're going to win.' Mary patted his hand. I looked at auntie, but she was all smiles too. I was beginning to think they were a bit silly, and I wished Cliff was there. He'd lucky-charm them. I wanted to go and see him, but auntie said she couldn't be sure where he'd be, so I'd better stay with them or I'd get lost in the crowd. When the steeplechase came on, we went to the birdcage to see the horses, and there was Norman in his sky-blue blouse and cap and clean boots perched away up high with his knees up. Old Red Wing was looking quite used to all this and not making any fuss at all. Norman looked pale. Auntie said the others did too. They were nervous because a steeplechase was a big risk. 'I can't bear to watch this all the way round,' said Mary. 'Let's go down by the rails and see the finish.' Just as we got down there, a man in a blue suit began to stagger backwards and fell over, wallop. He just lay there. I was going over to look at him, but auntie caught my arm and dragged me up to the rails. 'Stay here,' she said. 'He's probably drunk or something.' He was lying there on his back just a few yards away. His hat was off and his face was a funny purply colour, he still had a dead cigarette butt in his mouth, and he was making noises in his throat as he breathed. Lots of people were turning round to look at him, and then they'd look away as though they hadn't noticed him. There was a roar, 'They're off,' from the crowd up in the stand. I couldn't see very well except when they went over the jumps, but blue seemed to be near the front, and auntie and Mary got over their fright about the man falling over and began to 34 get excited. While we were waiting for the horses to come round for the first time, I had another look at the man. I could just see his legs between the people behind us. Nobody seemed to be helping him. They should have loosened his collar. Just then there was a beating sound and people began to shout. I leaned over the fence in front of Mary. I had a great view. And Red Wing was first over the hurdle into the straight. He was. He stuck his head and neck out and stretched out his front legs and there was Norman in blue and they were over the hurdle. ' Norman,' we yelled, ' Go it Norman,' and old Red Wing came striding past, nice and easy with about four others fairly close behind. Norman was very serious and he didn't look when we yelled. I suppose he couldn't hear us. He told me the wind roars in your ears so that you can't hear anything. Besides, there was the crowd. Well, you can imagine how we felt after that. We couldn't see them after they'd gone round the turn. We could see little bits of colour hopping up and down over the jumps away at the back, and it looked as though blue was still in front. It took ages for them to go round the back stretch. My mouth got dry. I was holding tight to the railings. Ifl let them go, I felt Norman would get beaten. Mary was leaning on me all soft and hot and squashing me against the fence. 'What the hell's the matter with them,' said auntie. 'Have they fallen?' 'Mum, stop it,' said Mary, right beside my ear. 'Keep your fingers crossed.' I thought they were never going to come round again. Then the crowd at the back began to roar so loud you could tell it was going to be a close finish, and the yell got louder and more excited, and underneath it came that beating sound again. Over the top of the hurdle you could see heads bobbing, and then the first horse came up and over and it was Red Wing still. He landed with a jolt and Norman bounced in the saddle. The others poured over just behind him. Norman had lost his cap and he seemed to be riding lop-sided. 'He's lost a stirrup. He's lost a stirrup,' Mary yelled. ' Norman, Norman,' we screamed, but the whips were out and two or three others lashed their way past him just in front of us. The horses were running heavily with no spring, stretching out hard. I felt like crying. I didn't want to turn round in case the others should see. I suddenly noticed the crowd was still cheering. 35 Someone was pleased at any rate. My hands were stiff and I could hardly let go the rails. Mary leaned away and my back felt cold. We watched the Clerk of the Course bring in the winner. Norman was fourth. Poor old Red Wing looked very tired. Norman had both feet in the stirrups now. 'Well that's that,' said auntie. We turned away and there was the man in the blue suit still lying there with the blackened cigarette butt still in his mouth. It seemed ages since he'd fallen over. His eyes had only the whites showing. The people all streamed round him, leaving a gap where he was lying. They looked away from him as though they were ashamed of him. One man stepped over and winked at me. We just wandered along without saying much. We met uncle and he didn't seem to mind much. He said it was jolly hard luck Norman losing his iron like that. It was Red Wing landing with such a jolt over the last fence that did it. Norman did jolly well to stick on. He said Norman was very upset about it all. Well, the rest of the afternoon I couldn't get excited. Norman didn't come to see us. There was some fun at the last race though. Scallywag came second. He wasn't really second, he was third, but there was a protest, and the winner was disqualified. When the winner came in, some of the crowd started to boo and others took it up. A fat old lady just in front of me was boo-ing away, pushing out her mouth arid saying, ' Boo-o-o-o.' Then she turned to me and said, 'What are they boo-ing for son? What's it for? Boo-o-o-o.' Anyway they made Scallywag second. I don't know how uncle got on with the betting. As we walked home, auntie was talking to people she knew. 'It would have been very nice if we'd won,' she said, 'but it's all part of the game. We'll be lucky some other time.' I was glad to get home again, I was tired of all the crowds and the pushing. Mary had hardly said a word since the steeplechase. She didn't seem to hear ifi spoke to her. I suppose she was very disappointed at not getting the new clothes or the trip to Wellington or any- thing. And then she used to ride Red Wing to work, and she was fond of Norman, so I suppose just about everything had gone wrong. Well, when we got home, there was Cliff looking as pleased as punch. 'What about Scallywag now,' he said. 'Eh? Who's the best trainer in this house?' He pushed his hat on to the back of his head and stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. 36 ' Cleaned up the old man,' he said. ' The only one in the money all day. Think I'll leave you and set up as a trainer on my own. Got a second with my first start. Not bad, eh?' He was showing off in great style. 'How did you like him, Gordon? Didn't he finish well? Didn't I have him fit?' Auntie was laughing at him. 'Oh, you were wonderful,' she said. 'We all thought that.' 'Except that you didn't really train him, and you didn't ride him,' said Mary. She was still in a bad mood. 'And it looks as if you've left Dad to bring him home.' 'I did a damn sight better than your wee joker,' said Cliff. 'Calls himself a jockey. Hell! Wait till I have a piece of him. Talk about riding like a part of the horse. Where is he? There's a few things I'd like to tell him about riding.' But we didn't know where Norman was. Uncle came down the drive riding Scallywag and leading Red Wing, but he hadn't seen Norman either. We all changed into our old clothes again except Mary. There was going to be a dance that night and she didn't know whether to go or not. She said she'd see how she felt after tea. She didn't feel much like going. ' Go along, Mary,' said auntie. ' It'll do you good. It might cheer you up a bit. You took this race too damned seriously. There'll be plenty more you know.' ' I'll see how I feel,' she said. I was just going out the door when I think she said, 'I won't go with Norman.' I think it was that. It sounded as though she was going to rub it in a bit. Poor old Norman. 'Where do you think Norman is?' I asked Cliff. We were down at the stables. Cliff was feeding the horses and uncle was out the back, milking. 'Blowed if I know.' Cliff was sieving chaff and hissing so the dust wouldn't get in his mouth. ' Here you are,' he said. ' No, wait on.' He put some oats in with it. 'Put that in Red Wing's manger.' Old Red Wing was waiting for it, and leaned down over my shoulder to eat before I had it all poured out. He kept snorting down his nose to blow the chaff away so that he could get at the oats. 'I should think most likely he's gone to the pub,' said Cliff. 'Who, Norman?' 37 ' Yes. I thought I might drop in myself and celebrate, but old Harry knows I'm not near twenty-one. There'd be too many cops about there to-day.' 'Does Norman drink?' ' Does he what! I've seen him shickered two or three times since he's been here. He gets one of his moods, then off to the pub.' 'Why?' ' To get drunk of course. It cheers him up. You ought to see him trying to get to bed. He thinks he's hung his clothes up and they fall down and he just stands and looks at them as though he doesn't believe it. It's hellashin funny. One night I made his bed up on the top bunk for him, stripped everything off his bottom one. Laugh. I nearly burst trying to keep quiet. He couldn't climb up and in the end he just lay down on the wire mattress. Jesus I laughed.' Well that was how Norman came home all right. We were all having tea and there was a knock at the door. Mary went and we heard Norman speaking. Auntie called out for Mary to tell him to come in and have his tea, but he said he didn't want any tea, he just wanted to talk to Mary. He'd only be a minute, he wouldn't keep her, he just wanted to talk to Mary. Cliff winked at me, and I was going to go and see him but auntie made me stay in my place. It was a good while before Mary came back. 'He wants me to go to the dance with him,' she said. 'He's been pestering the life out of me. He's drunk too, and you can smell it a mile off.' 'Are you going?' asked auntie. ' Not with him like that. Not on your life. I think it's a damned insult him coming like that and expecting me to go with him. I thought he was a decent sort of a chap.' 'So he is,' said uncle. 'He1s all right. Just had a few too many.' 'One over the eight,' said Cliff. 'I'm not going with him,' said Mary. ' He's just being damned silly, coming here like that and expecting me to go with him.' 'I thought I heard you a couple of days ago saying you'd go,' said auntie. 'I said I'd go if he won. I didn't say I'd go if he lost. I wouldn't have minded so much, but for him to come here stinking like that, and he's all untidy, it's a damned insult.' 38 'You're too touchy,' said uncle. 'Where is he? I'll get him to have a sleep for a couple of hours, and then a good wash and a cup of tea and he'll be all right.' He went out. ' You don't have to go out with him,' auntie told Mary. 'There's plenty more boys. As far as that goes, you could go with Mabel and get a partner there.' ' Go with Fred,' said Clif[ ' That'll teach his nibs a lesson. You've hardly looked at Fred for months. Show Norman he's not the only pebble on the beach. Fred rode a winner today too, and he's more your size.' 'I know that,' said Mary. 'You don't have to tell me.' Uncle came in and said he couldn't find Norman. Well in the end, both Cliff and Mary went to the dance. There wasn't much for me to do with Cliff away. Auntie and uncle talked about the races for a long time, and then auntie started to teach me how to play crib. We were all pretty tired and went to bed early. I wasn't very scared at going down to the whare by myself. Of course I was a bit nervous at the noises, but I knew they were only the horses stamping and moving about. Cliff came in, I don't know what time it was, and woke me up when he put the light on. He said he had a hell of a lot of fun. She was a great show. He said if it hadn't of been for bringing Mary home he'd of been on to a good thing. He had a promise for another night. 'And you should of seen Norman,' he said. ' Did I rub it in to him. I paid him back for that " part of the horse " the other morning. I put a beaut across him.' ' How? ' I said, struggling up in bed so that the light wouldn't get in my eyes. ' What did you do? ' 'Well he came in about halfway through. He'd been drinking again and his coat was all dust. Mary was dancing with Fred and I said, " Mary only dances with jockeys who win," I said, "it's all over with you now. Especially coming along shickered like this," I said, "she's very offended over that. And who rides like part of the horse now," I said. He didn't like that a bit.' ' Did Mary speak to him? ' 'No, I don't think she saw him. We were just by the door. " Mary only likes big jokers," I said, and then I went away for a dance. He was standing there for a good while watching her. He looked pretty rough with his clothes all untidy and his face 39 red and puffy. He didn't say a word after he saw she was dancing with Fred, he just stood there looking miserable as hell. I got my own back on him all right. "Who rides like part of the horse now?" I said.' Cliff got into bed and I didn't hear Norman come in. In fact the next thing I knew it was morning and the sun was up. I was a bit dopey from waking up, but I thought I heard the lock rattling and uncle calling, ' Don't come out, Cliff, stay where you are.' Then the door opened and uncle reached round, took the key out and locked the door on the outside. That was so strange I thought I must have been dreaming because usually uncle had to yell at Cliff to get him up, and often Norman would call him too. Then there were quick steps scrunching on the gravel outside, and I twisted round and lQoked out the window. Uncle was running up the drive, taking fast little steps with his funny little jockey's legs. I heard the bunk below me squeaking, and Cliff said ' What the hell's all the fuss?' I peered down over the edge of my bunk at him and he was looking out the window too. ' Well, I'll be -. Look.' Uncle must have been in the shed under the windmill to get his bike, and now he was pedalling flat out up the drive. He skidded on the gravel, just about fell off at the gate, dragged his bike through, left the gate open and disappeared. ' What the hell do you make of that? ' Cliff looked up at me with his mouth open. His hair was all over the place. 'Search me.' Cliff got up and tried the door. 'He's locked us in,' he said. He scratched his chest, and rubbed one foot over the other. 'This floor is cold. Where's Norman?' Norman's bunk hadn't been slept in. His coat and hat were not on their pegs. ' Hell, he has had a bash,' said Cliff. 'Spent the whole night on the tiles, eh? I suppose he'll be asleep in a loosebox somewhere.' He tried the door again. ' I wonder why he locked us in? ' 'I don't know. And where would he go on the bike?' 'I'm going to have a look.' He opened the window, jumped out, and went round to the door. 'He's got the key,' he called. ' You'll have to get out the window.' I climbed down and jumped out. The gravel hurt on my bare feet. It was cold too. I hobbled round the front. 'Jesus Christ,' said Cliff in a funny voice. ' Oo-o-o-o.' He was looking up at the loft Norman was hanging from the beam above the platform. He had his overcoat on. His feet hung down pigeon-toed. The rope round his neck must have been very tight for his face was all blue and swollen and twisted. You could see his teeth. His neck seemed to twist up out of his coat collar and his face was round to one side. He was just swaying a little bit. His hat was down on the gravel in front of us. I started to shiver and I couldn't get my breath. Cliff gulped and turned and pushed past me and got in the window. I followed. I didn't feel the gravel at all. We got back into bed, but I couldn't stop shivering. Cliff said ' Oo-o-o-o ' again like a moan and started to cry. I was very frightened but I didn't cry.

Well of course the policeman came back with uncle, and a doctor came, and they got him down. They were talking and moving about just outside, but Cliff and I stayed in bed and pretended we didn't hear anything at all. We didn't know what to do. We didn't even talk to each other. There were people coming and going all morning, and I didn't know what to do. I seemed to be getting in the way all the time and nobody wanted to talk to me. Cliff didn't get up, and kept crying when they asked him to. I didn't see Mary either. Auntie didn't know what to do about me. I didn't want to go down to the whare again once I got in the house. I kept shivering. In the end uncle brought my clothes up, and auntie took me into town and managed to get me a berth on the boat for that night. She came right to Lyttelton to see me off. It was the first time she'd ever done that for any of us. She sent telegrams too, to Dad's cousin in Wellington, and to Mum. But it wasn't until the boat had pulled out and I was in my bunk, feeling it press up underneath my back and sink away again that I started to cry. I liked Norman, and it seemed so awfully sad to think that someone always had to be the loser. NOVEMBER ELEGY T.M.C. obiit 3 I.JO.I949

ALLEN CURNOW

SPRlNG in his death abounds among the lily islands, There to bathe him for the grave antipodean snows Fall floodlong, rivermouths all in bloom, and those Fragile church timbers quiver By the bourne of his burial where robed he goes No journey at all. One sheet's enough to cover My end of the world and his, and the same silence.

While in Paddington autumn is air-borne, earth-given, Day's nimbus nearer staring, colder smoulders; Breath of a death not my own bewilders Dead calm with breathless choirs 0 bird-creation singing where the world moulders! God's poor, the crutched and stunted spires Thumb heavenward humorously under the unriven

Marble November has nailed across their sky: Up there, dank ceiling is the dazzling floor All souls inhabit, the lilied seas, no shore My tear-smudged map mislimned. When did a wind of the extreme South before Mix autumn, spring, and death? False maps are dimmed, Lovingly they mock each other, image and eye.

The ends of the earth are folded into his grave In sound of the Pacific and the hills he travelled singing; For he ferried like a feather the crushing dream, bringing The Word, the Wine, the Bread. Some bell down the obliterating gale was ringing To the desert the visiting glory; dust he trod Gathered its grains for a miracle, and the nave 42 He knelt in put off its poor planks, loomed loftier, Lonelier than Losinga's that spells in stone The Undivided Name. 0 quickening bone Of the masspriest, under grass Green in my absent Spring, sweet relic atone To our Lord's earth for the pride of all our voyages, That the salt winds which scattered us blow softer.

TWO POEMS PAUL HENDERSON

TELLING OF CLOUDS

THE yacht's asleep. When ghostly clouds droop still Men and ships lie easily. They can forget The mocking whisper of the tide, the storm that breeds In quiet under the chuckling counter.

Known clouds are friends. Soften the sun, Ease the emptiness of long spaces. They warn of wind-hang out tight banners While yet there is peace on the water.

Clouds bring sweet rain. When sea winds have warped us, When salt snows eyebrows and scourges skin, Wash clean. Then pores drink deeply as parched earth That gaping, gasps in the wretched eye of the farmer.

Summer thirsts, and rain goes glucking gently Down the avid throat of the land, soaking to soothe; Forgetting barbs of winter, forgetting too Rain in September with the lucent quality of spring. · 43 But clouds have never sundered, dark, rain-heavy, Even when bellied big and loom to pierce On the jagged line of the hills-are never racked As south wind racks in marching his confusion.

Arch clouds, shriek shreds, long leagues of terror battle From edge of icefields: access of pain beats muscle- Stiffened land till bleached exhausted clouds Are white as brittle seas that break in sunlight.

Giants pass, storms cease, terror of wrack and scud, Armed host of clouds and seas uncoil in the chest; Minds have a way of forgetting, and wise earth bears New beauty from her womb at waking.

Red dawns, saffron sunsets, the panoply of portents Grow dim. What place for fear in the slow moving Of shadows over valleys, the lovely mating Of clouds and hills in the folds of evening?

Clouds, watch over us. Not with incredible beauty Of thunderheads, nor the first faint warning of mare's tails, But with soft fleece of cumulus, unruffled Save by the brave and boisterous north-easter.

Clouds, be peaceful. And ships and men, And birds and all that lives, will sleep again.

MOUTH OF THE WAIMAKARIRI

GOING back is stranger than remembering; The river circles the last mile, nearing The bar bound with white breakers; under Immense skies sea and wide river plunder The blue; hills are too distant to intrude upon The naked scene where anything might happen. 44 Only beneath these trees has season's time Altered the green growth. What does remain Of what was here before is timeless as the river. But the wind communicates its own fever, Frets at the long grass, the plumed trees' over And under, scatters the shot drops of water.

There is a flow in wind, in time, disturbing Matter (what matter?) I find, if memory's curbing Growth, reality disintegrates. Wind Is cold reason parting grass, re-sifting sand, Plunging trees through the sky, breaking the sun Till light and matter are fragments, and reason

Cries which is the one truth? Along the brink Of the river children and young dogs link Themselves to the same restless compulsion. Wind-whipped, they lunge, splash; bright union Of life with life; atoms commensurate With wind-dissected scene, and fishers of whitebait.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF JOHN DONNE J. R. HERVEY Only death adds to our length, nor are we grown In stature to be men till we are none. Donne. AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD

BENT beneath the boughs of time a man Is less than a man: Diminished, diminished, except for the grave's adoption, The anonymous. 45 Although he take the rain upon his shoulders The hapless root Is bitten by fire, and smothering the yellow grass Life is iron. Only out of a window open towards The extravagant grave May he see a summer, a madcap gleam of growth, In a thought stand upright. Else is he but a chime of bones, a rag Riding the wind, Neither enriched by a ghost nor entrusted with The key to a god. He is the agile pilgrim winning only A witless journey: Pomp-pauperized, with begging bowl of hope, Death owes him nothing. He may dream a crown but not for him shall be A coronation: Brave from all banquets not for him the table Of daintier death. What is he more than a waif woven into The autumn disaster? 0 rejected leaf black in the bitter alleys Where is your spring? Migratory, he shall seek and find pastures Pretending wealth, But through the wound of death shall he emerge On the lush levels. This leaden man by alchemy of death Is sudden gold: A god ruined beneath the roof of the sky Finds stature in a leap. His earth is a rocking stone in resolute waters, Not even a safety Island before the plunge, but to sink in death Is to be established. 46 HUXLEY'S PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY S. A. GRAVE ALnous HuxLEY's novels are preoccupied with beatitude. If this is not very noticeable, it is because until After Many a Summer, they are concerned with the almost total privation of beatitude. Crome Yellow is a happy story of a defeat in happiness. Every character in the book from the station-master onwards, takes the wind out ofDenis Stone's sails, and there was not too much there to begin with. It is bubblingly good fun for the reader, and the end of the world for Denis. The car was at the door-the hearse. The whole party had assembled to see him go. Goodbye, goodbye. Mechanic- ally he tapped the barometer that hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. A sudden smile lighted up his lugubrious face. 'It sinks, and I am ready to depart,' he said, quoting Landor with an exquisite aptness. He looked quickly round from face to face. Nobody had noticed. He climbed into the hearse. Huxley climbed into the hearse with him. And after death, hell naturally follows in the eschatology of the early novels. They are ' damned souls ' in Antic Hay, ' immured in an impenetrable privation of beatitude,' in the phrase of a later novel. The song in the cabaret scene-' What's he to Hecuba? Nothing at all'- squeezes out the essence of this lost world. 'What's he to Hecuba?' Lachrymosely, the hilarious blackamoors chanted their question, mournfully pregnant with its foreknown reply. Nil, omnipresent nil, world-soul, spiritual informer of all matter ... Nil in the form of a divine tune. Nil, the faces, the faces one ought to know by sight, reflected in the mirrors of the hall. Nil this Gumbril whose arm is round one's waist, whose feet step in and out among one's own. Nothing at all. 47 It is in the words of drunken Dante-Porteous: 'if there's one thing I dislike more than another ... it's one thing more than another'; in the Sisyphus image of Sheerwater in his hot-box, pedalling like mad on his scientific bicycle, trying to ride away from himself. Yet Gumbril heard the lovely footsteps once, only of course they receded from him. Huxley heard them and they echo faintly through the novels after Antic Hay and come quite close to one or two people-Spandrell dies listening to Beethoven's proof for the existence of God, and Calamy and Anthony Beavis emerge into an astringent sort of beyond-happiness liberation. In these novels, and in the essays parallel with them, Huxley's agnostic metaphysics is combined with a negative religious valuation, a Manichaean valuation. He finds people's humanity intolerable, finds that their original sin. He demonstrates what happiness does not consist in-fornication, art, progress, least of all in scientific thing-utopias. He purges the world from H. G. Wells- from all of Wells-from the humanity in Kipps and Mr Polly, as well as from the inhuman secular propagandist. When he wrote After Many a Summer Huxley had begun to discover what happiness is. It is a psychological heaven, an experience of timeless good, an eternal passionless mode of con- sciousness, as if there was a beatific vision. 'As if,' because Huxley had not yet reached a secure religious objectivity. His position in that novel is primitive Buddhist rather than Vedantist, as it now appears to be. The Buddha is said to have avoided metaphysics and Mr Propter in After Many a Summer says of the ' algebra ' of spiritual experience: 'The people who use it are committing themselves, whether they like it or no, to an explanation of the facts as well as a description. An explanation of actual experiences in terms of metaphysical entities, whose existence is purely hypo- thetical and can't be demonstrated. In other words, they're describing the facts in terms of figments of the imagination; they're explaining the known in terms of the unknown.' Huxley's Perennial Philosophy contains an ontology of beatitude, not only a psychology. His objective hesitation has disappeared. The book outlines a metaphysical doctrine of God and man, a relevant theory ofknowledge, an ethics and a political philosophy derived from the metaphysics, and an ascetic theology or technique of spirituality. 33 X 24 InS photo Cyril F. R. Lce-Johnson

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ol N For several reasons I want to examine the metaphysics of this very sophisticated theosophy rather carefully, determining the matter of its truth primarily by a consideration of its coher- ence, and acknowledging to begin with the wisdom and goodness in so much that Huxley says, which however makes the other things that he says all the more dangerous. Huxley claims that he has got hold of the highest common factor of the great historic religions. That is a very serious claim amounting to no less than the offer of a new Catholicism, a really catholic Catholicism. It is all the more serious because as Huxley was not the first to make it, so he is not .alone in advancing it today. The same sort of claim was r:nade by the Gnosticism coeval with Christianity which it nearly strangled in the first centuries, and it has behind it still the actuality of the Oriental religions, whose distinctive tenets are alleged to be the perennial philosophy. This theosophy has had rather shabby exponents in the West for some time, but now it is being taken up on a highbrow level by distinguished intellectuals like Isherwood and Heard, as well as Huxley himself. It should be fairly successful, fitting in as it does both with the popular non-religious disposition that regards all religions as basically the same, and grounds the practice of none on that opinion, and more sinisterly with the Manichaean world-denial, which one feels at times is almost archetypal to the religious disposition. For in this philosophy, in its sources and in Huxley's exposition of it, there are terrible metaphysical negations, a terrible death element. In this philosophy there is evil in the nature of things. In Christianity there is evil, but it is against the nature of things,. adventitious, accidental, brought about by voluntarily perverse wills. There is a death element in Christianity, but it is a death to death, a death to what is against nature-for the sake of life. As Screwtape complains of God: 'He's a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a fa<;ade. Or only like the foam on the sea-shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are " pleasures for evermore " . . . He has a bourgeois mind.' The Catholic formula of redemption is: Gratia non to/lit, sed praesupponit et perjicit, naturam-Grace does not take away nature but presupposes and perfects it. The Oriental for- mula is the destruction of a part of nature. If it is a crude 49 misunderstanding to regard the Buddhist nirvana as annihilation, sheer nothingness, it can hardly be misunderstanding to regard it as the annihilation of desire, when the Eastern philosophers speak of that, without metaphor, as the cardinal necessity. The Christian heaven is the fulfilment of desire. Mr Propter says: ' Time and craving, craving and time-two aspects of the same thing and that thing is the raw material of evil.' St Augustine says it is a case of: 'Give me thy will now, and thou shalt have all thy will for all eternity.' The final reason for a careful attention to the metaphysics of the ' perennial philosophy ' is because from the metaphysics are derived certain ethical principles and value judgments. Against their intention these are, I think, a dangerous contribution to the depersonalization of man which is going on so fast towards the utopia Huxley once anticipated, or rather, since he under-estimated the energy of disinterested cruelty, to something more like the social pattern Orwell drafted out in Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Four. His book begins with an equivocal statement of an equivocal philosophy. ' Philosophia perennis-the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing-the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being-the thing is immemorial and universal.' The word ' substantial ' here. Its ambiguity in this context conceals the contrariety of two entirely different metaphysical systems. In the scholastic definition: substance is that which exists per se, and as independent being; accident, that which inheres in a substance precisely as its modification, therefore not independent being, but ens entis, being of a being. For example a jonquil is a substance; its movement, etc., accidental qualification -the ' way ' the jonquil is. If God is conceived as substantial to the world, as substance to accidents, that is a form of pantheism. The world is in some sense God. To say that there is one divine reality substantial to the world may however mean that there is a Being upon which everything else depends for its existence and conservation as effect upon its First Cause, that cause absolutely distinct from its effect, as maker from thing made. This is mono- theism. The world is in no sense God. so Huxley never explains the statement that God is substantial to the world, or its equivalent that God is the 'divine Ground', in such a way as to distinguish between the theistic and pantheistic senses of the expressions. (If I remember rightly the word ' pantheism ' never once occurs in his book to be acknowledged or disowned; an omission which must be unique in an account of oriental philosophy). He speaks theistically of the creation and preservation of the world, as analogous to human making, but pantheistically of God, as the 'essence of all existence' (p.30). The essence of anything, according to the ordinary signification of the word, is what that thing is-its nature. But Huxley must be giving the term a private meaning, for he immediately adds: ' the divine nature is other than and incommensurable with, the nature of the creatures in whom God is immanent.' There is the same crucial ambiguity in the phrase' immanent and transcendent.' These terms have a precise meaning in Catholic natural theology. The transcendence of God means that He is wholly other than the world, in no way dependent on the world, in no way perfected by it. In Archbishop Temple's equations: 'the world -God= o; God- the world = God.' The im- manence of God is His omnipresence and divine concurrence in every operation of creatures. There is not only therefore no contradiction in speaking of the immanence and transcendence of God as so defined, but this double assertion is necessary to avoid what Catholicism regards as the opposite errors of deism and pantheism, the one an exaggeration of God's transcendence at the expense of His immanence, the other the contrary exaggeration. What does Huxley mean by the immanence-transcendence of God? He explains transcendence as the 'complete otherness' of God (pp.8, 42 ). When he speaks of the immanence of God there is the recurrent suggestion, never quite explicit except when he is talking of the soul, that God, as immanent, enters into the composition of the creature at some level of its being. And on p.83 Huxley uses the typical pantheistic formula: 'God is all and all is God.' He adds the impossible proposition that 'nirvana [eternity] and samsara [perpetual perishing] are one '; i.e., immutability and not immutability are identical. That is plain contradiction and so is God immanent and transcendent, if trans- cendence means wholly other than creatures, and immanent means constitutive of the nature of creatures. )I Huxley always calls his philosophy monotheistic. Mono- theistic doctrine must assert the absolute simplicity of God. To admit that God is in any way composite, is both to introduce the element of contingency into the divine nature (and a contin- gent God is not God), and to contradict God's aseity (in which God essentially differs from creatures, which are essentially 'from another '), for it is obvious that nothing composite can be its own principle of existence, since parts are logically prior to a whole. Now in chapter two of the Perennial Philosophy, Huxley dis- tinguishes in the Absolute Ground, ' God ' and ' Godhead ', quoting with approval Eckhart's words: 'God and Godhead are as distinct as heaven and earth ... God becomes and disbecomes' (p.38). God, Huxley says, is personal, Godhead 'supra-personal'. Since God as conceived in monotheism is self-subsistent, simple, eternal and immutable being, it is clear that: (a) What Huxley calls 'God', viz. the deity which changes, is not the God of monotheism. (b) The 'Godhead' and 'God', a complex with a temporal element, is not the God of monotheism. Though (c) the supra-personal 'Godhead' alone might be, if we knew what Huxley means by ' supra-personal '. Boethius defined a person as ' an individual of a rational nature ' and Catholic theologians, since the middle ages, have used this definition with analogical adjustments, as applicable to uncreated and created personality. The triune God might be said to be supra-personal, because God is not comprehended (i.e. exhaustively described) by any human concept, or because He is mysteriously three-personal. (Huxley seems to think that Christian doctrine regards the Trinity as a personal manifestation of non- personal deity, and that attributes such as wisdom, love, etc., are predictable of the Persons, but not of the Godhead (p.29). A glance at the Athanasian creed would correct this error-the Father is God, so also is the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the attributes predicated of the divine nature are predicated of each Person in the divine nature.) Huxley does not define ' supra- personal', and one is left with the feeling that he regards the Godhead as an abyss of non-rationality. So again, there is the uncertainty whether his perennial philosophy is monotheistic or something else. The analysis of human nature is even more puzzling than the analysis of the divine nature. In chapter three, Huxley says that the perennial philosophy in general recognizes a triple compo- sition in man, body, psyche and spirit, though Buddhism denies the existence of a substantial and enduring psyche. It reduces body and soul to an aggregate of ' psycho-physical skandhas ', in a way very similar to Hume's reduction of a man to a 'bundle or collection of different perceptions.' This Buddhist point of view is admirably expounded in chapter ten of After Many a Summer: 'There is nothing on the human level except a swarm of constellated impulses and sentiments and notions; a swarm brought together by the accidents of heredity and language; a swarm of incongruous and often contradictory thoughts and desires. Memory and the slowly changing body constitute a kind of spatio-temporal cage, within which the swarm is enclosed. To talk of it as though it were a coherent and enduring"soul" is madness.' Whatever disagreement there is about the psyche however, Huxley reports that the exponents of the perennial philosophy agree that the ' spirit ' is ' similar to or even identical with divine reality.' They agree on this. Huxley writes as though the agreement was profoundly significant and the difference trivial, or even merely verbal, and due, as he suggests in Grey Eminence, to caution on the part of Catholic mystics. Actually the agreement is about as significant as if you and I were to agree that ' X is black or white', or to take an historical parallel, as significant as the agreement between Catholics and Arians, that Christ is either God or like God, while the difference Huxley indicates so casually, is the difference between theism and pantheism. He, and the oriental philosophers, agree with the Vedantist proposition: 'Atman is Brahman'-' That art Thou'. This propo- sition may be a tautology-God is God. If it is, it will have universal assent, but no one will be any the wiser. Almost certainly, however, it means that the human spirit is consubstantial with the divine reality, and obviously Catholic mystical philosophers, for more than mere caution's sake, cannot assent to that. And if they seem to, that is either because they are disguised pantheists like Erigena or Eckhart or because they use the language of ecstasy. Huxley warns us that there is no adequate terminology of mystical experience. If he had paid attention to his own warning he would have seen that you cannot always take the 53 ecstatic speech of mystics at its face value, seen that when St Catherine of Genoa says: 'My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself', she does not mean what Huxley and the Vedantists would mean by this statement, or she would not be St Catherine of Genoa. He would have seen that there is not one but two perennial philosophies, theistic and pantheistic, and that in writing as if they were one he is mixing oil and water. According to Huxley's philosophy, there is another aspect of human nature, what he calls 'personality'. Since he regards salvation as consisting in liberation from personality, and union with the Godhead, it is very important to know what personality is. It is, Huxley says, 'selfness ', the 'stinking lump' of a man's self, as the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing describes it. We must sorrow over it as over nothing else, because the ego is the cardinal impediment to the beatific vision, one that has to be liquidated by the heroic co-operation of free will with super- natural grace. What is the relation of' personality ' to the other constituents of human nature? (a) Is personality or selfness the 'spirit'? Since Huxley regards the 'spirit' as identical with God, a mode of the divine consciousness, the question would appear to be absurd, only, what does the formula,' that art thou', mean if not that the self is God? (Those who do not regard themselves as identical with God, and therefore have no need to distinguish between the ' spirit ' and the ' psyche ', would regard either the psyche, or the compound of psyche and body, as the sel£) (b) Is personality the psyche? But the psyche as such is a creation of God and therefore good. (Though in a Manichaean way Huxley looks on the creation, as 'to some extent the Fall', p.209.) More importantly, either psyche or spirit must be the seat of free will-it is unintelligible contradiction to make the ' swarm ' of necessitated psycho-physical states the principle of free choice, as is done in the ' Buddhist ' psychology of After Many a Summer. Now it seems preposterous to say that the condition of beatitude is that the wilier wills his own annihilation, because until the self-liquidation is successful beatitude is impossible, and when it is successful beatitude is impossible, for there is no longer anyone to be beatified. 54 (c) Is personality some sort of construct? That is what Huxley briefly and enigmatically says it is when expressly treating of the question (p.48): ' Selfness or personality is a product of the first two elements [i.e. of the body and psyche].' From incidental comments in this book, and in Time Must Have a Stop, I think this can only mean that personality is the 'swarm', the complex of memories (especially memories, which are denounced sharply and inhumanly p.217 of the Perennial Philosophy, as intensifying ego- consciousness), desires, sensations, acts, etc. In the purgatorial scenes in Time Must Have a Stop the memories of Eustace Barnack are called 'fragments of himself'. Apart from the metaphysical difficulty in the conception of an aggregate of accidents existing without a subject, to call this complex of experiences' personality' or 'self' seems to be gravely misleading and a bad abuse of language in one who rejects, as Huxley now does, the atomistic psychology of Hume. Besides, it is surely absurd to hold that this coinplex, which includes acts of devotion and charity, is intrinsi- cally ' God-eclipsing ', and if one excepts that class of actions one is saying, not very significantly, that a man's personality consists in his sins and morally neutral experiences-a very private meaning for ' personality '. I do not know what Oriental spirituality understands by the renunciation and annihilation of the self, but it is clear what Christian ascetic theologians mean. They mean primarily the destruction of egotism, the principle of sin. And I think they also mean aversion from that backward look at the self-I am enjoying this; I am doing that-which subtly corrupts any pleasure and eats away the excellence of good works. They mean the total concentration on man's Last End-sheer objectivity- without any self-reflection. The music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts. There is implicit in this metaphysics a judgment against the created world, and particularly against human nature. Not only implicit either-Creation is ' to some extent the fall '. If multi- plicity is evil, as Huxley repeatedly says, then the world, by being the world, is evil. Even if the multiplicity is only an appear- ance, as many Eastern philosophers say, though Huxley does not, it is an evil appearance. Real or apparent, the world has an element 55 of evil in its very being. Some of the Gnostics explained the of things by a procession of intelligences from Absolute One, getting baser and baser until at last in the chain of degradation the Demiurge was reached who was powerful enough to create the world, but too stupid or too malevolent not to see that it was wrong. Huxley's system would have to refer the stupidity or malevolence straight back to the First Cause himself. The Catholic doctrine is that every creature, high or low, is in its own way a similitude of the Divine Essence, an image of God, made by disinterested love and wisdom. Huxley speaks of the reverence due to all being because it is in some sense God, but of creation as a fall into multiplicity and time. The two state- ments together do not make sense to me, though the intolerable inference from the second does-it would be better if things had never been. Huxley may mean by the annihilation of personality no more than getting rid of egotism. If so it is a pity he does not say this clearly. I am afraid his meaning is much more radical than that. It is one's individuality, whatever that consists in, that has to go. This ironing-out of every man's uniqueness is a horrible aspect of the thing-utopia-the 'faceless collectivity ', in Berdyaev's phrase-without charity or justice, which are relations between persons, that we are hurrying towards. What is the ground of charity but some intrinsic goodness in the thing to be loved, however spoilt by evil? And the rule of charity? 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' Then if you ought not to love yourself, how do you conclude that you ought to love your neighbour? Of course if you apply the doctrine of non-attachment that Huxley is so emphatic about, you will avoid injuring your neighbour, because you claim no temporal rights for yourself. In other words, up to a point, you will treat him as ifyou loved him; the negative effects of non-attachment would be the same as the negative effects of charity. It is like that substitute for an act of contrition on so many death-beds-' I've never done anyone any harm'. Thatis not true, but even if it were it would not be good enough. You seek no temporal rights for yourself and there is no sufficient reason for seeking them for anyone else. (Here is the essentially negative basis of Huxley's pacifism as the rule of political action.) This is the fallacy of the ' total altruism ', which high-minded Victorian agnostics thought so superior to the concern of the s6 Christian ethic for the self. Total altruism is suicidal; if one's own self is not good enough to be cared for, no selves are. Huxley speaks and sincerely of compassion but its sufficient reason 1s m1ssmg. There are universal and perennial elements in religion, none more important and pervasive than sacrifice, almost the symbol of religion, which Huxley dismisses contemptuously as relevant only to a purely transcendent and legal conception of God. Sacrifice is irrelevant if there can be no forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness if there is no repentance. Therefore sacrifice must be irrelevant to man's salvation if his sin is his personality, for that is something it is impossible to repent of.

IHUMATAO* KEITH SINCLAIR

I

THE 'Ishumata' fields are kitchen farms, Where men have made themselves at home so long, Drawing the city's milk from the green teats Of the nursing grass, that even the bulls seem tame. The windmills, neat and tinier than toys, Bring a foreign peace to islands where the hills Speak louder than mankind, finding it deep In the world's inside, where they drink beneath the sea In streams that never heard the rain, and draw Their skyless waters up to be stained by the air. 0 there, the larks, matching their throats in the fields Of wind, 0 mating on a branch of light, And nesting their quavers in the cradling clouds! Here men have even made the air like Home.

*Ihumatao is a locality near Mangere, By the local inhabitants it IS pronounced 'Ishumata' or even 'Ishymata ', 57 These cows, within their lucerne hedges, walls Of stone, know no Antipodes, but speak With English voices on the polished hill And sense no past in its monumental lines.

II

Here the long waves of grass break, Checked by the mud's acres, where strange Cows pasture in the sea-grass, Chewing their salt cud on the meadows Of mud, insane winged cattle Braying to the far tide, miles Away across the flats, recalling The quick fish and the sly scallop, There, beyond the great muddy rim of the tide, Untamed kine, suspicious of the land.

Beaches have so exercised our minds, Directed our life of sail and sun, Do not let us hesitate to examine our loves And name· them on this great Beach. Let us list our loves, let them be tasted Slowly, each word a holiday.

The rock-pool is a universe Where the shrimps obey some liquid law And form alternate currents in An incarnate magnetic field.

The horn shells prove that life persists, Perhaps they antecede creation, Boring their haphazard holes In unpremeditated motion.

The tommy-cod precedes mankind And wags his puzzled way along The evolutionary tack That leads from God to Darwin. ss The skirted lewd anemones Dance their elegant quadrilles, Invite the casual passer in To share their vernal ritual.

Despite our inability to sense The bright spiral relics of the squid With the same serious animism of children, Placing themselves in every tree And empty shell, possessing nature As we now yearn to, remembering A vague richer life, forgetting Its immediate magic, yet still Here on the edge of life we leave Our house-wife civilization To live in a brief apprehension In this undomesticated waste, Joining with the savages we were In a warm, naked celebration.

m

Who has contemplated the mud's acres, Not remembering with sunshine the yacht's sails, The icecream and the eeling in the channel, But hung his mind on the essential Hemisphere of the mudfl.ats? The tracts Ennobled by the splendid life of the crabs, The offensive situation, waste and wild, Seized the horror of this unpredestined soil And measured it in a grave of words?

Look from the meadows and the purple willows, Where the beach fends off the wild-tongued Sea from our metropolis, the grey host Of the waves from our bright crumbling enclosure. We have tamed and caged the land, we know The sea, despite old victories, foe, 59 But what is the diplomacy of the mudflats, Neutral, and though defending, not partisan? A paean of horns, banners in the rhetorical surf, But who has heard in the coast's murmurs, Benevolence, analysed this alien intention?

The world of mud is flat and without edges, Our other element, we are right to judge Not to linger and listen, Columbus, To guess the kings and silver, the cities, under The skies of this strange India, We are right to play with rivers and Alps, Pretending pas are fields, and forests pastures, For who will costume the mangrove crops? Who will hide in the closet of creation?

THE FLOATING VOTE IN NEW ZEALAND K. J. SCOTT

MOST people believe that our political system subordinates the general welfare to the welfare of the interests that lie behind the government party of the day. This belief is incompatible with facts that everybody knows about the floating vote. The trouble is that people forget these facts when they're not talking about general elections. The floating vote, though a commonplace of conversation about general elections, is usually left undisturbed in its mental pigeon-hole when other political subjects come up for discussion. The emphasis should be the other way round. The floating vote is not just a spanner in the works on election day; it is the regulator of the whole system, indicating to the party in office how it must balance the interests of the classes. Its power 6o of making and breaking governments on election day is spectacular, but does less to mould the political system than the indirect power it wields between elections by holding out carrots to the government of the day. A government cannot govern solely in the interests of the class it represents, for that would be certain to alienate most of the floating vote; and a government knows that it cannot afford to do that, and that it can afford up to a point to offend its steadfast supporters. Its motive may be to cling to office; the consequence is likely to be good government, establishing a fair reconciliation of sectional interests. Although I am concerned principally with the influence of the floating vote on party policies, its influence on election results needs to be considered first. Most New Zealanders think of it as swinging the pendulum backwards and forwards between the two parties. This was originally an English theory, and has long fitted the facts of English politics, but New Zealand politics have only recently assumed the same pattern. In England for almost a century the two important parties (Conservative and Liberal till the First World War, and Conservative and Labour since) have most of the time had approximately equal numbers of stead- fast supporters, and the floating vote has swung the pendulum. In the fifty years before the First World War, when already most changes in the party complexion of government were the results of general elections, there were ten changes of government from Liberal to Conservative or vice versa. In the period of thirty years since, which includes however the interlude of three-party politics in the nineteen twenties, there have been five changes of government from Conservative to Labour or vice versa-or, perhaps, by the time this is in print, six. The electoral importance of the floating vote is clear. In New Zealand we cannot safely carry our analysis back to the period before 1890 when the parties were poorly developed and most electors chose between persons rather than between party policies. If we consider the major political changes of 1890- r, I9II-2, 1935 and 1949, we find that only the last two can be regarded as swings of the pendulum-i.e., that only the 1949 change can be regarded as a return swing of the pendulum. It was not till 1949 that the complete facts existed to fit the hoary theory that the floating vote swings the pendulum back and forth. This can be demonstrated from a brief survey of familiar ground. 61 The Liberal victory of 1890 marked the political coming-of-age of the opponents of the landed oligarchy, not the temporary whim of any intermediate third group of voters. The invention of refrigeration had created a hunger for land by increasing the profitability of small-holding; and the landless found that they had a distinct economic interest to promote. Their junior partner was the emerging proletariat, persuaded by the failure of the Maritime strike to supplement industrial methods with political. The depression provided the impetus for both rural and urban wings, and the abolition of plural voting in r889, though it removed what was only a minor abuse, emphasized the oppor- tunity. The oligarchy, who had been able to remain in office so late only because their opponents were so slow in developing political consciousness, were permanently submerged. The Liberal succession was not the work of the floating vote. No doubt there was an intermediate group of voters hovering between the two parties, and its attitude may have caused the Liberal victory to come in 1890 instead of say r887 or 1893; but it did not create the victory. The election of 1890 reflects the submerging of one social class; the election of I9II reflects the shrinking of another, the class of the land-hungry. Refrigeration and the Liberals had put them on the land. In the familiar saying, the Liberals had made them Conservatives by giving them something to conserve. The Reform Party was not the old oligarchy trading under a new name; it was a new party representing the new class of small farmers. The rise of Reform was not caused by the temporary inclinations of the floating vote, but by a permanent change in the social composition of the population. Again, it was not the floating vote that persuaded the party leaders to create the war-time and depression coalitions. The nineteen twenties, as in England, were a period of three-party politics in which governments could be made and broken by parliamentary manoeuvres as well as by electoral verdicts. It was against this background that the floating vote first took a major part in causing a change of government. The parliamentary manoeuvres that put Sir Joseph Ward's United Government in office in 1928 were only possible because the floating vote of that time had withdrawn some of its support from Reform in the general election. Though the new Govern- ment represented urban rather than rural interests, its election 62 platform, apart from the promise to borrow seventy millions, had been very similar to Reform's. With the money unprocurable, there was virtual continuity in policy. The .floating vote had not played its full role of changing its opinion on issues that are regularly before the electors; it had merely expressed its opinion on a single issue that is usually kept out of politics because it cuts right across normal party lines. Meantime industrialization was making another permanent change in the social composition of the population. The Labour Party, formed in 1916, was not a new version of the old Liberal Party (which in fact still existed), but a new party representing a greatly expanded proletariat. The proletariat continued to expand, and the Labour Party increased its vote in every election (and was not to suffer a set-back till 1943). By 1931 the Labour Party was strong enough for the rural and urban anti-Labour parties to deem it advisable to coalesce, and the two-party system was restored. National Party is not a new party representing a new social class; it is a direct lineal descendant of the Reform Party, and serves much the same interests, though it is allied rather more closely with urban business than the Reform Party was. Since 193 r the two parties have had approximately equal numbers of steadfast supporters, and the floating vote has been the arbiter of New Zealand politics. The first swing of the pendulum came in 1935 and the first return swing in I949· The class basis of the parties is fairly clear. Farmers and wealthy urban voters are pitted against manual workers. The lower middle class, typified by white-collar workers, is divided: some members of this class habitually support one party or the other, but most belong to the floating vote. The floating vote consists principally of these lower middle class voters, but includes also a few members of the other classes. Unfortunately the way the different classes vote cannot be conclusively established without a Gallup poll. The election returns are suggestive without being conclusive. But the election returns do at least show that the safe Labour seats are in industrial areas, that the safe National seats are in farming areas, and that most of the marginal seats are in the secondary cities or in the suburban areas of the four centres. A brief examination of the farming vote will show the sort of evidence that emerges from the election returns. The 1946 Representation Commission constituted thirty-four seats in the four centres, eight 63 entirely urban seats in secondary cities and· thirty-four entirely or partly rural seats. Of the thirty-four entirely or partly rural seats, National won twenty-eight in 1946 and thirty in 1949· The six seats that returned Labour members were Raglan and Oamaru (both 1946 only) and Gisborne, Waimarino, Buller and West Coast (1946 and 1949). Gisborne and Oamaru are principally urban, Buller and West Coast are principally coal-mining, Raglan is largely coal-mining and Waimarino is largely timber-milling. National won every farming seat in both elections. Judging from the election returns as a whole, it is almost certain that from 1931 onwards the vast majority of the farmers and of the wealthier urban voters have consistently voted National, and the vast majority of the manual workers have consistently voted Labour, with these two exceptions: that in 1931 a substantial number of manual workers had not yet begun to vote Labour, and that in 1935 a substantial number of farmers supported Labour for the social-credit planks in its platform. Without a Gallup poll the percentages of the electorate who are steadfast National voters, steadfast Labour voters and floaters can only be estimated, but the election returns suggest that the figures from 1935 onwards have been very close to forty per cent, forty per cent, and twenty per cent: It happens that the floating vote consists principally of lower middle class voters. In a different political situation it could well have a different class composition. In England, before the rise of Labour all classes were well represented in the floating vote, but today the class basis of the parties and of the floating vote is much the same as in New Zealand, with the difference that many manual ·workers consistently support the Conservative Party. If they did not, Labour would have a permanent majority, and the lower middle class would not be able to hold the balance of power. In England a higher proportion of the population are industrial proletarians than in any other country except Western Germany and Belgium; workers in insurable occupations, employed or retired, and their dependents constitute two-thirds of the electorate. When the Conservative working-man dies off (and he is dying off), the power of the lower middle class will be broken and Labour will be certain of office for as long as English politics centre round the present issues. The floating vote's electoral importance has come later in New Zealand than in England, and there are indications that it will survive later in New Zealand. 64 The two major economic classes are more evenly balanced, and both solidly support their own political parties; nor is there any immediate prospect of changes in their political affiliations or in the social composition of the population that would dethrone the lower middle class. In any country where both parties need to appeal to the same class the differences between their platforms tend to decrease, but not to the point of becoming unimportant. The opposition party, needing to steal some of the government's party votes, is forced to steal some of its platform, unless of course it believes that for other reasons the floating vote is turning against the government party. The opposition party almost always shows a centripetal tendency; but quite often the government party does not. The government party cuts its coat according to the size of its majority. A government with a large majority knows it can afford to offend part of the floating vote, and makes important innovations to satisfy its steadfast supporters. A famous instance is Gladstone's first government, formed in 1868, with a majority of over a hundred. For six years Gladstone put major Liberal measures through Parliament, though he knew that each one would drive some of the floating vote over to the Opposition party. He lost the 1874 election. It was said that he had 'spent his majority like a gentleman '; but it would be more correct to say that he had spent it like a businessman who gets in the red through underestimating the cost of his ventures. The New Zealand Labour Government's vigorous days were the days when it had a majority to spend. A government with a narrow majority knows that it must at all costs appeal to the floating vote, and if necessary it will disappoint its steadfast supporters. It knows they would be most unlikely to rally to the opposition party. Labour in its last Parlia- ment gave the country very much the sort of government that could have been expected from the National Party if it had been in office with an equally narrow majority. It is significant that the Government's bitter disputes were with traditional supporters, not with traditional opponents. The left-wing critics were right in saying that the Party was abandoning fundamental Labour policies, but wrong in supposing that, if only different individuals had become the Party's leaders, politicians would not have been politicians. For a party to be able to develop its distinctive policies it must not only be in office, but must also have a majority to spend; the bigger its majority, the more it will feel able to do for its supporters. But that is an over-simplification. The extent to which the government fosters the interests that support it is not the only thing that counts with the floating vote. Different floaters form their political opinions in different ways. The floating vote is not a united group. It is a miscellaneous collection of medium and small groups and stray individuals. The lower middle class is the most heterogeneous of the classes, and the floating vote contains in addition elements of the other classes. Some floaters are politically immature, and vote as they do on irrelevant or inadequate grounds. In England this group is relatively numerous, and some observers believe that the floating vote's changes of opinion are in general motiveless; that it is fickle and unstable, easily stampeded, the unresisting victim of propaganda. The New Zealand electorate has a creditable record for resistance to election stunts; the pendulum so far has had a slow swing; the floating vote has not changed its mind till the political situation has changed in significant ways. Of the politically more mature floaters, some will swing one way or the other for reasons that have little to do with the government's record and platform-for instance, to get on the band-waggon, or because it's time for a change, or because the government's supporters are getting arrogant. Others, the most mature of all, will swing one way or the other as a reaction to what the government is doing. The currents of opinion are flowing all the time, and sometimes there are cross-currents. The government knows that its popularity among the floating vote will have increased or decreased since the last general election; the intuition of cabinet ministers analyses the complex state of opinion to compute how big an electoral majority the government has to spend at any given moment. The government's policies are always geared to lower middle class opinions. The fickle floaters and the floaters whose political opinions are determined by factors that have little to do with the govern- ment's record and platform are virtually beyond the reach of the government's influence; the most the government can do is address blandishments and propaganda to them. The floaters the government can influence are those who more or less deliberately judge the government by its record, and more or less deliberately 66 choose between the two platforms they are offered. The govern- ment, if it cares to water down its distinctive policies, can ensure that not many of these floaters will swing over to the opposition on the merits of its platform. These floaters we can call the rational ones, for they form their political opinions after consideration and base them on relevant and adequate grounds. Every govern- ment's basic aim is to do all that it can for its steadfast supporters without spending so much of its majority among the rational floaters as would endanger its electoral majority. The rational floaters are thus the regulators of government policy. Usually a large proportion of the lower middle class are rational floaters. They choose between the two parties on the merits of their platforms, and it is touch and go which party they prefer. With the classes that supply the two parties with their steadfast supporters it is not touch and go. Their political opinions are determined by economic interest. That is not to say that farmers and industrial workers sacrifice their political principles to economic interest; in all sincerity they form their political principles in the light of economic interest. The process is well understood thanks to the sociology of knowledge, fathered by Mane The lower middle class are heterogeneous economically as well as in other ways: foremen, clerks, small shop-keepers, etc. They have no common economic interest. And each group within the class is hard put to it to know which party offers it the more attractive economic programme. A clerk cannot possibly know whether high wages are an adequate compensation for high living costs and high taxes. Some members of the lower middle class think they can see where their economic interest lies, and many of these vote accordingly. But most are uncertain about their economic interest, and consequently economic considerations play only a small part in the formation of their political opinions. They are forced by the absence of other criteria to make politics a matter of moral judgment. They are not alone in thinking that they are considering the good of the whole country rather than just their own good; but they are alone in having no economic interest to distort their moral judgment. For want of another method of arriving at political opinions they have to be guided by their moral prefer- ences. That is not to say that they are beings of a higher moral order with a greater general propensity for disinterested conduct. And of course they generally think in the phraseology of 67 a text-book on morals; they may merely think that somebody's not getting a fair go. As the lower middle class has no separate economic interest that the government can appeal to, the government is forced to appeal to its moral views; and the best way to do that is by giving fair treatment to the class that supports the opposition party. This is not in the vain hope of detaching them from their traditional allegiance, but to prevent members of the lower middle class from thinking that the opposition side are not getting a fair go. The farmers were never better satisfied than in 1949 with their income and their systems of marketing. What beat the Government in 1949 was not that the rational floaters as rational floaters swung to the Opposition, but that, since there was less than usual to pick and choose between the platforms of the two parties, many who are usually rational floaters transferred to the group of floaters who are swayed by factors that have little to do with the government's record and platform-and voted the Government out because they thought it was time for a change, or because they thought that the working-man was becoming too arrogant, or was no longer doing an honest day's work. New Zealand gets the sort of government its lower middle class deserves. From one point of view it is the reign of humanitarianism, mediocrity and caution; under such a system patent injustice is not likely to be found, but neither is courageous reform. From · another point of view it is the reign of moral ideas divorced from economic interest. Such ideas are likely to be innocuous to all but limited in their range. Socialism, as Marx first pointed out, can be attained only through harnessing economic interest; and few would condemn it on that account. This does not look like the dictatorship of labour alternating with the dictatorship of capital. In fact, we have almost exactly realized in New Zealand the state that Aristotle favoured because it would prevent that alternation from occurring. Our system of responsible government corresponds much more closely to Aris- totle's best practicable state, his polity, where those intermediate in wealth hold the balance between rich and poor, than to the form of government that was known in his day as democracy, where the poor plundered the rich till revolution brought their reign to an end. And yet the features of democracy that Aristotle regarded as desirable are incorporated too. Again, Mill would not 68 have regarded our system of government as the dictatorship of sectional interest; when he set to work in his Considerations on Representative Government to find how to prevent sectional interests from exercising unchecked political power, he devised electoral machinery that would produce just such a supremacy of the lower middle class as we have in New Zealand. Whichever party is in office, the government pursues policies calculated to favour both major classes. The lower middle class in choosing the government and fixing its majority determines the proportions in which these policies are to be mixed. Class legis- lation and vote-catching are complementary constituents of a fair reconciliation of sectional interests. It is unfortunate that so many citizens see the class legislation and the vote-catching, and fail to see what they add up to. When a people loses faith in its system of government a dangerous breach is opened up in national morale. The breach is most dangerous when the system of government is the one that relies least on force and most on loyal opinion.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE GENERAL ELECTION D. H·. MONRO

IT IS a pity that the American leader writers who have been talking about New Zealand's rejection of 'Fair Deal' policies could not have heard some of the Nationalist speeches during the election campaign. What would they have thought of the insistent slogan: 'Labour did not invent Social Security', of that long list of state hand-outs begun by Conservative governments in the past, of those glittering offers of free housing loans, of the claim that Labour had stolen its best ideas from the National Party? It is true that nothing last November quite equalled Mr Holland's auctioneer's speech of 1946: 'Here is a little proposition that 69 I think may interest you ... if that appeals to you, vote for the National Party, for no other Party will give it to you.' But what- ever else it may have been, the decision was hardly a vote against the Welfare State. Conservatives overseas may amuse themselves with the fallacy of an oppressed country casting off the fetters that have galled it cruelly for fourteen years, but no one in New Zealand can take this very seriously. What, then, do the election results mean? There are, I think, three explanations, all of which are partly true. First of all, it may be said cynically that election results always reflect the prevailing economic conditions, whether or not the government of the day can fairly be held responsible for them. The big mistake of the Forbes-Coates administration was that it held office during a world-wide depression. As Nationalist candidates have pointed out, Labour governments in Australia handled it no better; but that did not prevent the landslide of 1935. Conditions improved between 1936 and 1938; and the Labour vote increased accordingly. Then came the war, with shortages and inflation as its necessary consequence. The Govern- ment was no more to be blamed for these than its predecessors for the depression, but that did not prevent Labour majorities from dwindling. This is not the whole truth, but it is true enough to be dis- turbing. Two observations may be made. New Zealanders claim to be practical people, who do not bother their heads about political or economic theory, for whom the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. They have never hesitated to use the power of the state to get what they wanted without worrying whether this was Socialism or not. Alleged plots ' to Russianize New Zealand' have moved them no more than that older election cry, ' the seven devils of Socialism ', in the nineties. On the other hand, the neat theories of the Fabian pamphleteers have little appeal either. Bluff common sense and an insistence on practical results have their uses in politics; but they are likely to make politicians more irresponsible rather than less. So long as political fortunes depend largely on world economic trends, which are for the most part unaffected by anything anyone does in New Zealand, politicians can afford to laugh at logic and consistency. And they do. That is the second observation I wish to make. With one or two honourable exceptions, candidates on both sides 70 were quite unscrupulous in their appeals to popular prejudice. The National Party was the Party of unemployment and starvation; the Labour Party was the Party of high prices and inflation, all brought about by bureaucratic meddling in business. As a fair specimen of the general level of argument throughout the cam- paign, consider Mr Holland's reply when challenged (by no means unreasonably) to explain his economic policy in more detail: ' Mr Fraser accuses me of running away from his questions. But when my country called me, it was not I who ran away'. This broadcast was followed, the next evening, by Mr Fraser's address from the Wellington Town Hall, at which the exploitation of mass emotion was even more blatant. American party conventions, with their cheer-leaders and their banners and their brass bands, can hardly be less hysterical. Well, it will be said, what do you expect? And why blame the poor politician? He has to give the public what it wants. A politician who disdains rhetoric and rabble-rousing will soon be displaced by one who doesn't. And anyway, the electors are not so many university professors. You can't expect academic detach- ment and a passionless appeal to pure reason. On the whole, the things the people cheer (help for the sick and old, free education, the right to live their lives their own way) are worth cheering for. They may not always be able to detect a logical fallacy, but on the whole they know what they want and they see that they get it. Why spoil their little bit of election fun? There is, of course, much force in all this. But is it so certain that the people do get what they want? There is, after all, wide- spread cynicism about politicians and political parties. People are ready enough to believe that all of them are time-servers and hypocrites. We are convinced at one· and the same time that Democracy is worth dying for and that politics is a dirty business: a curious and unstable state of mind. So long as election campaigns are the degrading spectacles they have become, so long as they consist in the bandying of catch-words and half-truths, democratic institutions are in danger. The danger from within is probably greater than the danger from without; and those who cry loudest about the lesser danger are largely responsible for the greater. I have said that this first explanation is only partly true. After all, it may be said, there is a certain rough justice in blaming the Nationalists for the slump and the Labour Party for the high 7! cost of liYing. In so far as they stand for unrestricted capitalism, the Nationalists can fairly be blamed for the misery capitalism brings to its victims. In so far as they stand for political inter- ference with the economic machine, the Labour Party can fairly be blamed for the failure of the price mechanism to operate as it should. Import restrictions, the licensing of industry, and the artificial protection of uneconomic industries do, after all, lead to a fall in real wages, just as unrestricted competition may result in unemployment. The electors had to decide which risk they preferred to run. No doubt the choice could have been put more fairly, on both sides; but it is hardly true to say that governments are elected or rejected for wholly irrelevant resaons. But at least it can be said that highly complex questions have been grossly over-simplified. The National Party does not stand for unrestricted competition, nor the Labour Party for thorough- going state control. The electors voted for a reduction in the cost ofliving, but also for full employment and high wages; for reduced taxation, but also for increased social services. There was not a deliberate choice between clearly understood alternative policies; and it remains true that the duration of the new government will depend much more on world trends than on the soundness or otherwise of its economic policy. The second explanation is partly historical. The best book about the Labour administration of 1935-49 is Andre Siegfried's Democracy in New Zealand, written after a visit to this country in 1904. ' What the New Zealanders most need ', says Siegfried, ' is principles, convictions, reasoned beliefs. Parties are based much less on ideas than one might at first suppose from their pretentious legislation, and much more on the interests of sections, classes and groups. As for the influence of imagination and sentiment, it shows itself in the curious form of a patriotic vanity, which makes the New Zealanders believe that the world expects much of them, and that they must not be false to their destiny. This blend of a too practical outlook with a too exalted sense of apostle- ship will meet us over and over again in our study ofNew Zealand.' Both National and Labour Parties claim the mantle of Richard Seddon; but the Labour Party has the better claim. Apart from the general similarity of their aims and measures, there are some curious minor resemblances. Seddon was helped into power by the single-tax movement which followed Henry George; Labour 72 by the Social Credit movement which followed Major Douglas. Neither allowed their main policy to be affected very much. The Liberals made minor experiments with land tenure, the Labour Party talked vaguely about ' using the public credit ', and took over (for no very obvious reason) the Bank of New Zealand. Both parties were influenced only slightly by socialist theory, in spite of the accusations of their opponents. The chief ' intellectual ' in the Liberal Party, William Pember Reeves, who was also their ablest minister, was kept in the background: the limelight played on Seddon, the big- hearted son of the common people. The Labour Party has had no leader with Seddon's personality; but Mr Savage was built up in much the same way, with the emphasis on his heart rather than his head. And it is perhaps significant that the favourite target for Nationalist attacks has been Mr Nash. The Liberals remained in office because they were able to keep behind them two large and hence influential sections of the community: the industrial worker and the small farmer. That they kept them together, in spite of mutually divergent interests, was due to a shrewd but simple-minded policy. Seddon gave benefits with both hands: with the left hand to the worker, with the right hand to the smallholder. He was able to do this because he had behind him the London financial market, which was prepared to lend liberally to a young and undeveloped country. Seddon's gifts to the workers are well-known. He gave them shorter hours, regular holidays, better working conditions, a minimum wage, old age pensions, compulsory arbitration. For the smallholder he opened the State Advances Department, with loans at low rates of interest and repayment on easy terms. Better still, he split up the large estates, compelling the landowner to sell to the State if required, and re-sold the land to the small- holder. Seddon borrowed freely; most of the bounty handed out to the smallholder came from borrowed money. This policy was quite defensible: New Zealand was a young country needing development. The smallholder was the man to develop it; and money spent on him might reasonably be expected to yield an abundant return. And, with the smallholder's problems settled in this way, the fruits of taxation could be applied to social services designed to help the city worker. Thus both the worker and the small farmer were made happy; and the government could afford to laugh at the much smaller class of employers and large landowners. 73 In the end the policy was too successful. As he grew prosperous, the small farmer no longer identified himself with the city worker, and grew more critical of high wages and short hours. In the attempt to keep both groups behind them, the Liberals finally pleased neither: the workers formed their own party, and the smallholders went over to the opposition. In 1935 it was once more possible to unite the two groups. Bankrupt dairy farmers were ready enough to support the party of the trade unions; so, too, were the smaller business and pro- fessional men, the corner grocers and schoolteachers and clerks. Labour could offer the workers much what Seddon had offered them; it was quite easy to carry on where he had left off. But what could they do for the farmers? In 1935 they could hold out the guaranteed price, and some relief from debt. But this had little appeal once prices rose. It soon became obvious that the interests of the farmer and the city worker were in conflict. One can argue that in the long run high wages benefit the employer, since they increase the purchasing power of those who buy his goods; but the farmer produces almost entirely for export. More- over, the farmer may employ labour; and often enough he genuinely cannot afford high wages. The government could hardly ignore the farm labourer, who was in 1935 very much in the position of the city worker of fifty or sixty years before, working long hours for low wages, often with no holidays at all. Yet it was hardly possible to improve his conditions and keep the farmer's vote. In 1935 Labour won a surprisingly large number of rural seats. Most of these (Hauraki, Manawatu, Mataura, Mid-Canterbury, Rangitikei, Tauranga, Waikato, Waipawa, Waitaki) reverted to the Opposition in 193 8 (though Labour gained Bay of Islands and Motueka). The others followed in 1943; the few exceptions turn out to be partly mining electorates, like Raglan and (to a lesser extent) Motueka, or partly urban, like Kaiapoi, or full of timber workers, like Waimarino. Labour survived the loss of the rural electorates, because the urban population had increased proportionately since Seddon's day. But the farmer was followed by the corner grocer and the school teacher. After losing the rural seats, Labour began to lose the secondary cities and the middle class residential areas in the metropolitan areas. The secondary city is predominantly the home of the smaller business and professional man. In 1935 Labour 74 gained Whangarei (Marsden), Hamilton, Hastings (Hawkes Bay), Palmerston North, Oamaru and Invercargill. One might perhaps add Rotorua, Masterton, and Blenheim (Wairau ), though these electorates were largely rural. Gisborne and Timaru had been Labour before 1935; Nelson was in friendly hands. Only New Plymouth remained aloof; and this was won in 1938. In 1943 it was lost again, along with Marsden, Masterton and Rotorua. By 1946 Hamilton, Invercargill, Blenheim (Marlborough) and Nelson had also gone. Palmerston North, Oamaru and Hastings joined them in 1949. The other electorates that contributed to Labour's defeat were three Auckland residential suburbs and the politically mixed electorate of Raglan. One is tempted to conclude that history has repeated itself, and that a Labour government makes the ungrateful lower middle classes prosperous only at the cost of losing their support. But one must beware of taking these sociological fictions too seriously. There is no ' lower middle class voter ' any more than there is an 'average man'. To say that 'the farmer' voted Labour in 1935 and swung back again in 1938 and 1943 obscures the fact that there are farmers and farmers, and that electorates often change hands because a few hundred voters change their minds or their residences. The opposition vote is usually fairly sub- stantial, even in the safest seat. If we look at the total vote, and not merely at electorates won or lost, the account just given is less convincing. According to Professor Lipson's figures, the Labour vote in 'entirely rural' electorates was four per cent in 1931, thirty-three per cent in 1935, forty-seven per cent in 1938 and thirty-eight per cent in 1943. It will be seen that in 1943, when almost all the rural seats were lost to Labour, the vote was higher than in 1935, when so many were won. Even the startling increase in the Labour vote in 1935 is not quite what it seems: there were seventy Labour candidates in 1935, and only fifty-three in 1931; the newly contested seats were, of course, chiefly rural ones. Labour, it seems, gained ground in 1938, even in the country: it lost rural seats only because there were fewer split votes. Finally, the decline of nine per cent between 1938 and 1943 is matched in both the ' mainly urban ' electorates (where the percentage fell from fifty-nine per cent to fifty per cent) and the 'entirely urban' (from sixty-four per cent to fifty-three per cent). 75 Nevertheless, it is probably true enough that Labour lost office largely because of the defection of at least a substantial number of small farmers and white collar workers. It is still too simple an explanation to say that these voters had ' ceased to identify themselves ' with the workers. Simple snobbishness no doubt played some part: there are still people who seem to think it against the laws of nature that a wharfie should get the same pay as a clerk. But on the whole I doubt if these electors were voting against a relative equalitarianism; many of them are probably proud of the New Zealand tradition (never quite realized in fact) of a classless society. But they probably do not realize that equal- itarianism, even when it leaves the middle income groups with greater purchasing power than before, decreases their bargaining power. The housing shortage, for example, is probably due less to a decline in the number of houses than to an increase in the number of people who can afford them. In various indirect ways the white collar worker is exposed to the competition of the collarless. He may not conclude that the workers are pampered; but he does listen to the Nationalist who tells him that he is not as well off as he thought he would be, and that it is all due to government controls and extravagance. The third explanation would point to splits in the Labour Party, and to the dissatisfaction of Labour supporters themselves. Some of this was, of course, inevitable after fourteen years of power. It is much easier to be enthusiastic about the rosy dream unrealized than about the daily round: every Opposition party has that advantage. But there may have been more solid reasons for dis- illusionment. The two chief ones were, I think, the Government's treatment of industrial troubles and its disregard of civil liberties. A Labour Government trying to draw the teeth of capitalism is of course in a difficult position. Nationalist talk about destroying incentives is not all poppycock. Production does depend on the opportunity to make profits; and the claims of justice have to be balanced by those of expediency. The result is a compromise which pleases neither the unionist nor his employer. That is why Labour's handling of strikes has been attacked both from the right and from the left. The same considerations apply to price control. If wage increases are to mean anything prices must be kept down. But profits cannot be cut too drastically without disrupting the 76 economic system. Moreover, a margin of profit which makes a big firm prosperous may be barely enough to keep the small man solvent; and Labour, however suspicious it may be of the wealthy capitalist, has no wish to hurt the small man. The result is, once again, a compromise; and it is easy for the ' militant ' trade union leader to quote figures to show that the Labour Government has been too tender to its traditional enemies. The merits of his case cannot be decided without a much more complex economic analysis than he or anyone else in the political arena is likely to make; but the unionist, like the white collar worker, can see clearly enough that increased wages have not left him as well off as he thought they would. It is an overstatement to say that the Labour Government has disregarded civil liberties. But, in numerous small ways, they have been less tender of them than their speeches in opposition would have led one to expect. Mr Fraser and several of his colleagues were conscientious objectors in 1914. They need not be blamed for changing their minds in 1939, but need they have prosecuted former allies like Ormond Burton, or declared those harmless decoders of Biblical texts, the Jehovah's Witnesses, a subversive organization? The Conservatives in England were much less vindictive. The Labour Party protested when men like Mr Webb lost their civil rights; it has itself disfranchised a later generation oflike-minded men. Again, Mr Fraser may be pardoned for changing his mind about conscription in peace-time, but not for his handling of the referendum campaign. It is to the credit of Mr Holland that he protested when it became apparent that opponents of conscription were not to be allowed the use of the air; perhaps nothing shook Labour men among them so much as finding themselves indebted to the Opposition for a little elementary fair play. Both the Nationalists and the Communists could justly complain about the allocation of broadcasting time during the election campaign. Labour supporters can hardly have felt happy about the Holmes case, or about the use of war-time censorship to prevent the transmission to the New Statesman of a commentary on the 1943 elections. Most of these are perhaps small matters; added together, they were disquieting. It is hard to say how much effect they had on the election results. Certainly the Nationalists thought the dis- illusioned Labour vote worth angling for. 'Many of you have 77 voted Labour for years', said a Nationalist candidate, 'but you should ask yourselves whether the Labour Party today holds to any of the principles it stood for in 1935.' 'I have voted Labour all my life ', said an old man from the floor of a Communist meeting, 'and I can't leave them now; but they oughtn't to interfere with freedom of speech.' An audience of Labour supporters, there to heckle the Communists, gave him a clap. But it is easy to over- estimate incidents of this kind. The candidate most likely to appeal to the old-style Labour voter was Mr Langstone; and his vote was not impressive. The disillusioned Labour voter was, after all, not very likely to vote for the National Party; and he had no other real alternative. His disillusionment may, however, have indirectly affected the floating vote. The man who did not know where he stood politically was much more likely, in this election, to meet enthusiastic Nationalists than enthusiastic Labour supporters. In spite of all the appearances to the contrary, votes do not go quite without reserve to the highest bidder. One of the strongest assets of the Labour Party in 1935 was the vague but widespread feeling that it had ' ideals ', that it was concerned, not merely to put money in your pocket or mine, but to help suffering humanity in general. That feeling has largely gone (whether deservedly or not, whether it was ever deserved or not); and its loss may mean more to the Labour Party than appears on the surface.

All these explanations are, I suggest, partly true. But don't they contradict one another? Labour, it would seem, lost power because of post-war economic conditions quite beyond its control; because it did control them, to the real or fancied detriment of the farmer and the white collar worker; because it did not control them enough to satisfy the trade unionist; because it antagonized the middle classes and because it forgot its ' working-class principles'. There are two answers. First, that politics are not as simple as they seem, and that the most useful generalization about this or any election is the inadequacy of most generalizations about it; secondly, that ' the people' who ' speak' and ' give mandates' have no existence: there are only Bill Jones and Jack Smith and Mary Brown, who speak in different voices, and often enough contradict themselves as well as one another. A MASQUE FOR DEMOCRATS MAEVIUS

(Darkened stage; dim vaguely reminiscent of the Witches in are crouched over two one on the right and one on the left.)

CHORUS off): Vox populi Is the voice of a rigidly Calvinist God And Election Is not by Works (The widow helped, the post office erected: These things are the fruit of Election, Not its occasion) Nor by Faith (The tireless repetition of a rosary of cliches Freedom, Private Enterprise, The Welfare State) But by an arbitrary And quite unfathomable Grace. Vox populi Is the voice of a strictly Old Testament God Whose chosen champion Wields As his most formidable weapon The jawbone of an ass. Vox populi Is the voice of a pagan and profligate God Whose favours are sought With charms, Chants, Ritual And human sacrifice By the light of the November moon. 79 CHARM FROM THE LEFT : Slum and slump and hoary Tory, Dole and dump, memento mori! Pinchbeck, gradgrind, rackrent bloated, Vanish, banished and out-voted! Ghoulish, foolish profiteer, Wages-cutter, lamb-gorged kea, Leech and vampire, come not near!

CHARM FROM THE RIGHT: Gremlins gather all about us, Foreign spies prepare to knout us! Dollars dwindle: repercussion, Ruin red and ruin Russian! The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead, And the Cabinet is wholly Red. Red, red ruin and red, red tape And the red on the map has lost its shape. Adam Smith, be with us now! Britannia needs you at the prow! Cecil Rhodes and Kip ling, come! (and Samuel Smiles and Bulldog Drummond.) From Marx and sharks and tax and debt, Gods of Empire, save us yet! (Music changes, and they break into a chant.)

CHANT FROM THE RIGHT: A company manager in a cage Puts Sidney Holland in a rage. They must be free or die who speak To dictaphones all through the week. They cannot praise a cloistered virtue, They know that Regulations hurt you! The banker beats on the window-pane His luminous golden wings in vain, The pinioned broker sings no madrigal And Freedom shrieks when import quotas fall. (Very faintly, in the far distance, another chant can just be heard.) So CHANT FROM THE OUTER DARKNESS: Beneath the people's flag unfurled Behold the brothers of all the world! No narrow loyalties exist For the Dialectical Materialist! Our boundless sympathies embrace The whole extent of the human race. Every worker of every trade We recognize as our comrade! Day in, day out, we plot ·and plan Towards the Brotherhood of Man. Behold us, then, a happy band, As we march towards the Holy Land.

Refrain: Holy Russia and Holy Joe And the Holy Prole-tariat!

Except, of course, that we must black-list The Entrepreneur and the Capitalist, The Right, Left and Centre Deviationist (Oh, those are the fellows to be wary at!), And besides, of course, we can never agree With the Intellectual and the Bourgeoisie, With the worker who's sunk in apathy, Or the Lumpen-Proletariat. These are the foes whom we all must fight, Together with Labour and the Trotskyite!

Refrain: Our boundless sympathies embrace The whole extent of the human race. Shoulder to shoulder, on we go With nothing whatever to vary at, To Holy Russia and Holy Joe, And the Holy Prole-tariat!

(At the sound, both groups shudder, and those on the left perform a sacrificial dance, to the following chant) 8r CHANT FROM THE LEFT: Oh, Liberty is what we love, Democracy we cherish, We lose no opportunity to turn the Russian Bearish, We have no kind of time for Marx, excepting only Harpo, We could not bear to live beneath the Ogpu or Gestapo.

So If you find a Satchel, will you please appropriate it, And put it in a dossier, and label it and date it, And thus you'll save your country from Infernos worse than Dante's For know the Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilantes.

We live beneath the Reign of Law, and hence no civil servant Need fear to be dismissed because politically fervent; Though Russians, Czechs, Bulgarians may perish on the gibbet, he Is happy in a country where the watchword's always Liberty.

So If the tax-collector's pinkish, or the cameraman subversive, There's a Regulation somewhere that he's bound to get the worse of; It's ten to one but we can show, with statute and with clarity, That his appointment's nullified by some irregularity.

Oh, Liberty we're wedded to (we say it with humility) The Reign ofLaw is sacred (and is not without utility) To live with the Gestapo in a union unblessed, we Are sure we'd find revolting (and besides, there's no necessity).

CHORUS, WITH MIME: Election addresses Frequently begin with the National Anthem (Frustrate their knavish tricks Confound their politics) And proceed to the marshalling Of trenchant and pitiless argument Presented with irrefutable logic. Ladies and gentlemen, I have here a telegram From an old charwoman 82 Deaf in the right ear, Palsied in the left arm, Gouty in both legs, Mentally defective; And she says ' Best wishes for an overwhelming victory '. (Thunderous cheers and tumultuous applause) Ladies and gentlemen, My opponent accuses me Of sixty- seven logical fallacies Two hundred and forty distortions of fact And a complete ignorance of economics. Ladies and gentlemen, I have fought a clean fight. I have not stooped To answer the abuse The lies, the Billingsgate, the daggers in the back, Of these filthy curs, These snivelling hyenas, In their own coin. Nor will I do so now. I shall only remind my opponent That in the year 1892, At the age of seven and a half, He is reported to have insulted Her Majesty the Qgeen (Insult to Womanhood Insult to Empire Insult to us all) By placing a postage stamp On an envelope Upside down. I wonder that he has the effrontery To show his face in public life again. (Tumultuous cheers and thunderous applause) Ladies and gentlemen, The issues before you are plain. On the one hand Are we who stand For the sanctity of the home, The stability of the pound, The free distribution of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday (With butter on both sides Instead of one, as formerly) And on the other Anti-Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, I need say no more. I leave it to the good sense of the electors. But I should have added, Ladies and gentlemen, That I yield to no one In my admiration Of Lake W akatipu, The Franz Josef Glacier, Whakarewarewa, The Maori people, The wing three-quarter, Captain Cook, Or any of the manifold-scenic-gems-and-tourist-attractions-of GOD'S OWN COUNTRY! (Thunderous, tumultuous cheers; tumultuous, thunderous applause.) REVIEWS

THE COMING OF THE MAORI. Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., M.A., Litt.D., D.Sc., M.D., Ch.B., Director, Bishop Museum, Professor of Anthropology, Yale University). Maori Purposes Fund Board, Wellington. 30s. THIS is a great book, the best in its own Polynesian field ever written. Among anthropological books from that area it can be most profitably compared with Best's two-volume work The Maori. Some features in which it surpasses the latter are due not to weaknesses on Best's part but to the shortcomings of his publishers. The Coming of the Maori is better in type and format, is printed on better paper, and is much better illustrated than its predecessor. Best's style was admirably clear. There are times when he writes with a clarity and a controlled but moving emotional quality which place him among the best writers of New Zealand prose. But such occasions are rare, found only in brief autobiographical papers, and not present in The Maori. Buck has had advantages denied to Best of training, travel, and personal contact; he handles his material with greater ease, his style is clear, and humour plays a part, and so his book will be enjoyed by a much wider public. The Coming of the Maori is divided into four sections entitled 'Book I. The Coming of the Maori' (82 pages). 'Book IT. Material Culture' (247 pages). 'Book Ill. Social Organization' (roo pages). 'Book IV. Religion' ( ro6 pages). There is a good bibliography and what appears to be a very good index, though by some chance it does not record Te Matorohanga, an enquiry into whose status as historian forms an important part of Book I, and who is extensively quoted and criticized in Book IV. The Coming of the Maori is stated to be an expansion of the 1925 Cawthron lecture which also bore that title. In actual fact it is a new book, and the title, correct in its original setting, is now a misnomer, only eighty-two pages of the book being devoted to discovery and early settlement, while the remaining four hundred and fifty are ethnographic. Te Rangi Hiroa has an advantage which no future ethnographer can share: Maori was his mother tongue, and he was born into a community the older members of which had grown up uninf!uenced by any culture other than their own. To these survivors of an older culture he listened with attention and respect; some of his most effective passages owe their force to his affectionate record of their source. No future ethnographer will write a passage comparable to the one beginning: ' This is what I saw in my own village over fifty years ago' (p.376). The passage describes in detail the well-remembered lighting of the umu fires, the placing of the uncooked food, the cooking, the uncovering, and the placing of the cooked food before the guests. 'Gatherings usually lasted some days, and the feeding of the people went on during the whole time without any trouble. The organization was perfect and there were always people ready to do the work cheerfully . . . The guests derived pleasure while the hosts acquired ss prestige ... When particular local foods were abundant, guests were given a special distribution to take home. I remember receiving a string of dried clams (pipi) from relatives who had been away to a distant gathering.' The book is largely based on personal experience. Though not generally recognized as such, New Zealand's greatest socio-economic problem is the incorporation of the Maori people into the body of New Zealand society. The scientific approach to this central problem is by the investigation of local district situations-social, hygienic, economic - due to cultural changes arising from the impact of European on Maori culture. The book ' was planned to supply a background of native culture against which such changes could be more readily recognized and evaluated' (p.2). In this Buck has been completely successful. Maning left a series of vivid sketches of Maori life but no integrated P-icture of Maori culture. In his books and monographs Best recorded an enormous agglomer- ation of facts which will be used by all future research workers. But The Coming the Maori provides in a single volume a clear and accurate account of Maori culture as a whole. The only part of the book which invites criticism is the first section from which its title is drawn. Here Buck discusses the relative values of the material on which any reconstruction of Maori or Polynesian history must be based.' Much space' he writes (p.2)' has been devoted in this work to material culture ... In reconstructing the history of the past, the best evidence is provided by the material objects which people of past generations have made with their hands; for the immaterial things handed down by word of mouth have undergone change from their original oral text. Thus a skeleton in its original resting place surrounded by adzes, ornaments, and a blown moa egg speaks with more truth concerning the past than the living graduates of an accredited house oflearning ... My criticism of some Maori sources of information may appear severe at times but it was necessary to stress a warning against accepting later literary compositions as old and authentic. The richness of Maori culture is lessened and not enhanced by post-European rationalization alleged to be old and criticism coming from me cannot be said to be tinged with racial intolerance.' Here are clearly recognized the two classes of material, archaeological and traditional, available to the student working on historical reconstruction. But archaeo- logical data are valueless unless collected with meticulous care, subjected to critical standards which are the product of dispassionate investigation and experience in the Old World. Equal care is essential in sifting mytho- logical and quasi-historical traditional material collected from Maoris of the old school. The publication of this book marks the emergence of standards by which the historicity of Maori traditional matter will in future be tested. Buck has struck at the heart of the matter by attacking Te Matorohanga's statements as recorded by Te Whatahoro, material which had acquired a special kind of sanctity from its complete acceptance by Percy Smith and Elsdon Best. On a number of points the Matorohanga manuscript is criticized so incisively that it can no longer be regarded as an historical document. It is good to see a beginning made in the criticism of Maori traditional source material, and especially good that criticism is inaugurated 86 by a Maori. But much further sifting even of the material discussed by Buck will be necessary before we know what part of recorded tradition is historical. A single example may clarify the point. If we depend on tradition alone we shall conclude with Buck that the kumara was first brought to New Zealand by the great migration of 1350 A.D. But the"kumara gravel-pits at Temuka and the cultivation they imply require a climate appreciably milder than the present South Canterbury climate. Climatological studies in New Zealand suggest for the cultivation of the kumara at Temuka a date rather earlier than 1350 A.D. No final conclusion as to date can be reached until both lines of evidence have been thoroughly tested. If the archaeological evidence remains firm the traditional date at present accepted for the introduction of the kumara will have to be abandoned. This would be a matter of much more than local interest, for the kumara is generally accepted as of South American origin. In recorded Polynesian tradition there is no hint of the contact with South America necessary before the transfer of the kumara to Polynesia could be effected. If the archaeologists and climatologists can sustain the dating of the Temuka gravel-pits at about the year 1250 A.D., then not only will the traditional dating of the introduction of the kumara have to be abandoned, but a date of great importance in the reconstruction of Polynesian history will have been secured. It is probable that most readers will be interested in the historical rather than the technological or sociological discussions, and although the latter provide ample material for consideration, the rest of this review will be restricted to historical problems. Among Polynesians both long heads and broad heads are found. In spite of this variation there is a constant recognizable physical type. ' The opinion that Polynesia was settled by a number of distinct migrations, each characterized by a distinct physical type, rests mainly on the differences in head form between island groups but neglects the broad and consistent similarities which could never have arisen by mixture within Polynesia ... Somewhere outside of Polynesia, the ancestors of the Polynesians became welded into a distinct population which served as a source from which immigrants streamed into Polynesia ' (p.70-1). The areas from which these ancestral Polynesians might have come are discussed, and Arabia, Ur of the Chaldees, and India (each proposed by some early authority) are rejected in favour of South-east Asia. From this area they emerged as Fay-Cooper Cole's 'proto-Malayans ', spreading through Indonesia: ' some moved north and are represented today by the Igorot and Ifugao of northern Luzon. Another branch moved east and from proto-Malayan, we may now change their name to proto-Polynesian. If we regard their passage through the Micronesian route as a steady infiltration, we may assume that the vanguard escaped with little Mongoloid inter- mixture whereas the rearguard ... became more mixed with the Mongoloid broad-heads. Thus the long-headed vanguard ... broke first into Polynesia, took up their headquarters in Tahiti, and spread to the outer margins. The broader-headed rearguard followed to Raiatea and later conquered Tahiti and sent out expeditions which led to further intermixture within the same racial stock' (p.72). This reconstruction of the biological side 87 ofPolynesian history fits the facts as at present known, and will be generally accepted. No such unanimous acceptance will be accorded Buck's early history of Polynesian culture. It was set out clearly and in some detail in his earlier book Vikings of the Sunrise. In The Coming of the Maori he says (p.326): 'I believe that when the Polynesian ancestors entered Polynesia after a gradual infiltration through Micronesia, their arts and crafts had been reduced to the level of an atoll culture.' In discussing the origin of Polynesian forms of adze, he says (p.I8I): 'The ancestors of the Polynesians must have made various forms of adzes before they left Indonesia on their eastward move- ment through Micronesia ... the Marshalls and the Gilberts at the eastern end of Micronesia were atolls without any basalt. It may be assumed that the Polynesian ancestors spent some time in the eastern atolls before they moved further east. The stone adzes they carried with them from the last volcanic island must have worn. out, thus forcing them to make adzes of shell. The shell material made it difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce the various forms of the basaltic adzes which they had previously made. Thus the lack of raw material created a gap in the direct transmission of ancestral forms of basaltic adzes from Indonesia. When the Polynesian ancestors reached Samoa and the Society Islands, the abundant supply of basalt enabled them to discard shell in the manufacture of adzes. The abundance of suitable material, however, could not revive the memory of forms they had never seen, let alone made. It would seem that they had to start all over again with the making of basalt adzes after they reached Polynesia.' On pages 326 and 329, the history of decorative art is stated to have followed the same lines. It is not proposed to discuss in detail this very important problem. But it should be pointed out that, in the first place, there is no evidence to support the hypothetical lengthy stay in the Marshalls and Gilberts. To some it seems that all the probabilities are against such a stay. Further, adzes of the most characteristic Polynesian types are found in Indonesia, and in that very part of it where live the groups most closely allied biologically to the Polynesians, namely the Ifugao and Igorot of northern Luzon. Some, at any rate, of these allied adze-types are present also in Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, and in North-west America. They can be shown to owe their ultimate origin to the Arctic Culture which stretches from Scandinavia to Greenland and has its roots in the Old Stone Age. Knowledge of the Luzon forms is due to recent publications by Dr Otley Beyer, and knowledge of the other Asiatic forms is derived from Japanese works listed in Dr Beyer's bibliography. The distribution of the woman's slate knife (often found in nephrite) is the same, except that, though present in South-east Asia and Malaya, it has not yet been reported in Luzon. It is present in south New Zealand (in slate and nephrite), the Chathams, and Pitcairn Island, and will presumably be found in Tahiti. What appears to be a related form in nephrite is strongly represented in New Caledonia. Leroi-Gourhan's Archaeologie du Pacifique-Nord has profusely illustrated the distribution of this knife in the North Pacific, East Asia, and South-east Asia, and has done the same for the harpoon and bird-spear. Both these latter forms are well-represented in New Zealand and the 88 Chathams, and the harpoon is present also in the Marquesas. Related forms of patu and many of the motives of decorative art are also found in areas around the North Pacific. The material culture of Polynesia is thus a local southern development of the ' neolithic' culture of the North Pacific, the road by which it came being the coastal lands of China, and particularly the islands of Formosa and Luzon. It would appear that the ' neolithic ' culture of the North Pacific extended south across the equator and then south-east into Polynesia. In his final chapter Buck deals with Io, the alleged great god of the Maoris. He shows that the beliefs surrounding Io are unrelated to any beliefs elsewhere in Polynesia, and so must have arisen in New Zealand. Some of them he shows to be post-European. A still closer examination of the rest of these beliefs seems called for. Half a dozen massive volumes, of which the book reviewed is one, and a score of shorter publications demonstrate Te Rangi Hiroa as the greatest ofPolynesian scientists and as one of the group of native-born New Zealand scientists which includes Best, Holloway, and Rutherford. H. D. Skinner

TIDAL CREEK. Roderick Finlayson. Angus a1td Robertson. 9s. 6d.

A BOOK whose main characteristic is that it is not all of a piece is the despair of the reviewer without pages to spare, providing, of course, that the book cannot be instantly dismissed. And Tidal Creek will not be ignored even though it wavers in almost every respect; in significance, perception, treatment and language. It is primarily an anecdotal tour round the eccentricities, and in its better places, the morphology, of a neighbourhood of habits and attitudes and a landscape that the author patently respects. It is a tour which is worth the making largely for the views of that home- made cultural anthropology to which several New Zealand authors appear to be semi-consciously contributing. The relations, for instance, between Tidal Creek and Frank Sargeson's new novel I Saw In My Dream would repay an hour of anybody's musing. Tidal Creek is a series of tales vaguely focussed on a 'towny' boy's two visits to his country uncle. The form is part novel, part collection of short stories and part set of serio-comic 'yarns' of the Sydney Bulletin stamp where parts of this book first appeared. There are two possible characters around whom the book might have been united. The boy Jake is left as an audience, without development or, indeed, much mental change between his two visits seven years apart. It is on Uncle Ted that the book turns, though the author by his treatment leaves what Uncle Ted represents partially dislocated from Ted as a person. The latter aspect is the weaker. One is confronted with Ted as it were, full blown, while such of his present emotional life as is given does not suffice to back the fa<;ade of a type, however complete with quirks, characteristic acts and responses. Ted's present simply does not account for itst;lf which it must if Mr Finlayson's hero is to pull the whole work into significance. A novel requires a very 89 large character to emboc;ly and thus explain a type and its origins, though it may be granted that Uncle Ted, ·conceived less grandly, is typical. Certainly the minor characters are of little importance and at the most are in the half-round. Mr Moss, the Englishman, living on investments and nursing a minor neurosis about the alien hills, is a fair sample. The reason seems to lie with the imprecision of the dialogue. Mr Finlayson has an honest evocative power of description as witness the first chapter, 'The Voyage.' But his conversations do not add much to what the plots and descriptions offer. One never knows, for example, just how rural Jake is going to sound in the next paragraph, while whole speeches like Jake's relating a trip from Sydney are more than a shade out of character. The author does, however, display a penchant for' characters ' in the raconteur's sense. Monday Wiremu, the Maori prophet who misfires or Pete ' the seafaring blacksmith' serve to start a yarn. There is indeed a faintly Pickwickian, even Kiplingesque, flavour about this book as there is, apparently, about the attitudes of the district. As in the episode of the mistaken elevation of Uncle Ted to the baronetcy this tang verges on that of' the old time theatre.' It does lend the book a similarity to those many memoirs where some late-coming pioneer indignantly prefers the contorted surface individualism of the eighties, or at least of the nineteen-tens. This is not accidental. Mr Finlayson in his essay Our Life in This Land* outlines a point of view somewhere between Eric Gill's and that of' Sun- downer' in the New Zealand Listener. This point of view appears in Tidal Creek as Uncle Ted's dicta on such subjects as the virtues of dung-dropping horses versus inorganic tractors and in his sturdy incomprehension, then rejection, of the nervous townsman's six-o'clock-closing attitude to life. Uncle Ted is something of a backblocks Rousseau. He is also a member of that species the New Zealand Bachelor, married or unmarried. This aspect is shown with considerable insight. The guilty distrust of women, rationalized in Uncle Ted's case as his skill in eluding non-existent caps set at his non-existent wealth, the bluff ' manly' affection for men, the lonely cranky dignity of his solitary rituals and pursuits, all suggest the mother-dominated pattern and tin chapel values and guilts of New Zealand. The New Zealand bachelor is one version, an older, less profound version perhaps, of that man alone whose incidental naming we owe to John Mulgan. In the cases of the bachelor and the man alone (and they are often one and the same) the solitary life itself is a protest against the values of the lower middle class community. The mores and the upbringing imposed by this community produce cultural sports. These variants, who do not comprehend the mould they object to, become asocial, remote and singular, even violent in their constriction. Mr Finlayson sees Uncle Ted's indepen- dence as being linked with the pioneer's; as though not only were men remoulded to become new in the face of the new land they had to make but also society passed along the lessons as a process affecting its products and their virtues. Uncle Ted is less than he might be because even if such

*Our Life In This Land. Roderick Finlayson. The Griffin Press, Auckland. 1940. a process exists at all it is too thin emotionally to make Uncle Teds. It would seem we are in reaction not against the spectre of the alien land but against the shadows of John Wesley and James Mill. The appearance of the man alone in some aspect in Finlayson, Sargeson, de Mauny and Mulgan points to the interest this type has for the novelist at grips with the New Zealand scene. For the existence of the man alone is a projection of our traits, a criticism of society embodied in a type- personality, and a subconscious analysis in a visible form which can there- fore be utilized. It counterpoints another concern of New Zealand authors -the writer developing-who does not come to silent comment as the man alone but to articulate revolt as the artist. Mr Finlayson by his creation of Uncle Ted walks simply and honestly towards this complexity and then skirts it. Consequently Ted's life is not in touch with anything deeper than its own events; it has no inevitable shape. Uncle Ted is the symbol manque. He can feel deeply that he has been rejected by the community and relish his readmission on his own lonely terms. Yet these two crises of the book on which its underlying meaning should rest, remain the most contrived situations in the work. The machinery of the mistaken baronetcy, by which the readmission is procured, clanks beside the episode of the shave or the making and burning of the haystack of weeds. Altogether, Tidal Creek runs deepest in what might have been the meanders of a stronger stream so that the value of the book resides not in a whole but in the sum of its better, more carefully observed parts. Robert Chapman

THE PRICE OF FULL EMPLOYMENT. George Fraser. New Zealand Fabian Society, Wellington. 2s.

FOOLs' CARNIVAL. Kennaway. Christchurch Co-operative Book Society Ltd., Chrirtchurch. gs.

A NEW growth of radicalism will be necessary if Labour is to return to power. Labour's defeat at the recent elections marks the fulfilment of the party's programme. When the forty-hour week, social security legislation and full employment had been realized and consolidated, nothing was left for Labour to do. Labour had become the conservative party in New Zealand politics whereas the Nationalists presented, at least, some promise of change. In our era of continuous fast change, conservatism is the one thing which electors will not tolerate. For that reason Labour's time will come again when it can present a new, dynamic programme to the people. There are signs of a new radicalism growing on the Left. Mr Fraser's pamphlet is an expression of this movement. Significantly enough-although coming from the Left and not being Communist-it is strongly critical of the Labour Party in power. Since radicalism was on the point of being suffocated by the ruling Labour oligarchy, Mr Fraser's pamphlet would 9! have carried little favour with the complacent men-in-power. Will all this change now? Will Left radicalism obtain the official approval of the powerful Labour Party machine? It may be that Labour's defeat will avoid a split which might have cost Labour its most active and original brains, and that it may have come just in time to save the Labour movement in New Zealand from disintegration. George Fraser's appraisal of the political and economic situation created during the last years of Labour's full employment policy deserves attention because it holds promise for a reformed Labour Movement in the future. Mr Fraser thinks that full employment is here with us to stay and that for that reason the time has passed when the achievement offull employment could have been considered as an end in itsel£ He therefore analyzes the contents of New Zealand's full employment policy and finds in it a rather upsetting number of ingredients for a full-dress police state. Everyone interested in Left politics in this country knows of course that the police,since the outbreak of the war-has assumed an increasingly powerful position in interfering with and controlling political and industrial activity. Mr Fraser suggests that this is the logical outcome of a state of affairs where full employment is brought about-not by conscious planning -but by the distribution of excess purchasing power. This excess pur- chasing power creates a sellers' market for labour and tempts unions to ask for higher wages. If the avowed aim of the government is to maintain and stabilize the existing distribution of incomes, militant unionism must be suppressed under full employment because working class militancy under such conditions would lead to a growing share of wages in the national product, as opposed to profits. Labour's policy (and incidentally the policy of the British and Australian Labour Parties) was largely directed towards stabilization and not towards redistribution. From the point of view of the working class politician who sees the object of policy not merely in ' a fair day's wages for a fair day's work' but in the abolition of the wage system George Fraser's conclusion appears, therefore, quite justified: 'This pamphlet concludes that full employment in its present form has already become a tactical defeat for the people, and if no counter attack is launched, this defeat will degenerate into a debacle opening the door to the corporate or police state.' But dissatisfaction w:ith the status quo is only the first prerequisite for a constructive radical policy. Means towards an improvement of the situation so forcefully criticized should also be discussed. It is in this respect that the pamphlet exhibits its weakness. Three desiderata are presented: We must find a way of redistributing the wealth of the community so that those engaged in production draw an increasingly greater share of the national dividend; we must preserve the liberty of the individual and the independence of the trade unions; we must call a halt to the police-state and corporate trends which are present to-day. 92 a process exists at all it is too thin emotionally to make Uncle Teds. It would seem we are in reaction not against the spectre of the alien land but against the shadows of John Wesley and James Mill. The appearance of the man alone in some aspect in Finlayson, Sargeson, de Mauny and Mulgan points to the interest this type has for the novelist at grips with the New Zealand scene. For the existence of the man alone is a projection of our traits, a criticism of society embodied in a type- personality, and a subconscious analysis in a visible form which can there- fore be utilized. It counterpoints another concern of New Zealand authors -the writer developing-who does not come to silent comment as the man alone but to articulate revolt as the artist. Mr Finlayson by his creation of Uncle Ted walks simply and honestly towards this complexity and then skirts it. Consequently Ted's life is not in touch with anything deeper than its own events; it has no inevitable shape. Uncle Ted is the symbol manque. He can feel deeply that he has been rejected by the community and relish his readmission on his own lonely terms. Yet these two crises of the book on which its underlying meaning should rest, remain the most contrived situations in the work. The machinery of the mistaken baronetcy, by which the readmission is procured, clanks beside the episode of the shave or the making and burning of the haystack of weeds. Altogether, Tidal Creek runs deepest in what might have been the meanders of a stronger stream so that the value of the book resides not in a whole but in the sum of its better, more carefully observed parts. Robert Chapman

THE PRICE OF FULL EMPLOYMENT. George Fraser. New Zealand Fabian Society, Wellington. 2s.

FOOLs' CARNIVAL. Kennaway. Christchurch Co-operative Book Society Ltd., Chrirtchurch. 9s.

A NEW growth of radicalism will be necessary if Labour is to return to power. Labour's defeat at the recent elections marks the fulfilment of the party's programme. When the forty-hour week, social security legislation and full employment had been realized and consolidated, nothing was left for Labour to do. Labour had become the conservative party in New Zealand politics whereas the Nationalists presented, at least, some promise of change. In our era of continuous fast change, conservatism is the one thing which electors will not tolerate. For that reason Labour's time will come again when it can present a new, dynamic programme to the people. There are signs of a new radicalism growing on the Left. Mr Fraser's pamphlet is an expression of this movement. Significantly enough-although coming from the Left and not being Communist-it is strongly critical of the Labour Party in power. Since radicalism was on the point of being suffocated by the ruling Labour oligarchy, Mr Fraser's pamphlet would 9! have carried little favour with the complacent men-in-power. Will all this change now? Will Left radicalism obtain the official approval of the powerful Labour Party machine? It may be that Labour's defeat will avoid a split which might have cost Labour its most active and original brains, and that it may have come just in time to save the Labour movement in New Zealand from disintegration. George Fraser's appraisal of the political and economic situation created during the last years of Labour's full employment policy deserves attention because it holds promise for a reformed Labour Movement in the future. Mr Fraser thinks that full employment is here with us to stay and that for that reason the time has passed when the achievement offull employment could have been considered as an end in itsel£ He therefore analyzes the contents of New Zealand's full employment policy and finds in it a rather upsetting number of ingredients for a full-dress police state. Everyone interested in Left politics in this country knows of course that the police-since the outbreak of the war-has assumed an increasingly powerful position in interfering with and controlling political and industrial activity. Mr Fraser suggests that this is the logical outcome of a state of affairs where full employment is brought about-not by conscious planning -but by the distribution of excess purchasing power. This excess pur- chasing power creates a sellers' market for labour and tempts unions to ask for higher wages. If the avowed aim of the government is to maintain and stabilize the existing distribution of incomes, militant unionism must be suppressed under full employment because working class militancy under such conditions would lead to a growing share of wages in the national product, as opposed to profits. Labour's policy (and incidentally the policy of the British and Australian Labour Parties) was largely directed towards stabilization and not towards redistribution. From the point of view of the working class politician who sees the object of policy not merely in 'a fair day's wages for a fair day's work' but in the abolition of the wage system George Fraser's conclusion appears, therefore, quite justified: 'This pamphlet concludes that full employment in its present form has already become a tactical defeat for the people, and if no counter attack is launched, this defeat will degenerate into a debacle opening the door to the corporate or police state.' But dissatisfaction w:ith the status quo is only the first prerequisite for a constructive radical policy. Means towards an improvement of the situation so forcefully criticized should also be discussed. It is in this respect that the pamphlet exhibits its outstmding weakness. Three desiderata are presented: We must find a way of redistributing the wealth of the community so that those engaged in production draw an increasingly greater share of the national dividend; we must preserve the liberty of the individual and the independence of the trade unions; we must call a halt to the police-state and corporate trends which are present to-day. 92 Mr Fraser's suggestion is that 'all this shows the urgent necessity for a national economic plan '. This plan must be carried out in co-operation with active and independent trade unions. Yet the problems raised by such a national economic plan are not discussed. And while one sympathizes with the author-if one likes promenading on the Left side of the political fence--one feels that more space should have been devoted to the construc- tive part of the pamphlet. However, Mr Fraser's pamphlet is only a beginning on Labour's long road back, and it is to be hoped that the Fabian Society in Wellington will increase its activities and will publish more such thought-provoking pamphlets. Kennaway's. Fools' Carnival is radicalism on a different level. George Fraser is a representative of an active young group of forward-looking people who wish to formulate a policy for our country built on the present state of social science (if there be such a thing). Kennaway (Kennaway Henderson) is a survivor of the Labour Party radicals who put Labour into power in 1935. And while the people who became New Zealand's first Labour Government moved slowly but steadily away from their former creed and principles, Kennaway remained behind and kept on preaching the gospel of the 1914-8 Bob Semple and Red Fed Fraser. Necessarily, Kennaway's book thus becomes an historical document rather than a forward- looking programme. To some extent Kennaway's furious attacks on propaganda, ' dope' and the press-all offered in a rather amusing Alice-in-Wonderland style- are a bit out of date. We have lost faith in truth and wonder if any alterna- tive system of press and public reporting could be more satisfactory. Yet we relish Kennaway's fierceness; for who has not been exasperated by the torrent of distortion or the gulf of omission which offers itself daily under the trade-name ' public opinion'. Readers of Landfall who enjoyed reading Tomorrow before it had to cease publication (shades of the police state) will remember that Kennaway Henderson tried to produce there a periodical up to his high standards of independent reporting. But I am sure that those who knew Kennaway's cartoons before and those who are introduced for the first time to this outstanding New Zealand artist now will enjoy his caustic comments. His illustrations have the same quality as his text: they are as bitter as they are clever. There was no longer a place for a Kennaway under Labour. Will there be one under National? W. Rosenberg

HERE AND NOW. AN INDEPENDENT MONTHLY REVIEW. The Peforus Press, Auckland. 2IS. a year. 2s a copy. IN discussions about free speech, it is commonly taken for granted that only governments are the enemies of free speech and writing, and the sole threat to their maintenance. To guarantee the press against state censorship is accepted as a sufficient goal for good liberals. Socialists, on the other 93 hand, are inclined to argue that the ownership of the press by big business has resulted in a new censorship exercised, not by the state, but by the capitalist proprietors-and ' New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.' They generally assume that though the censorship is operated by a different power, the principle of it remains the same. In this, I think, they are wrong. There are, of course, press lords, like kings and dictators, who use their papers (and any other means of publicity available) as a vehicle for their own particular purposes, and exclude all ideas repugnant to them. But the main interest of the commercial owners of the press is not propaganda, but profits. They are not, generally speaking, interested in ideas themselves, for their own sake. Their interest lies in circulation figures and advertising revenue. To a limited degree there is a tacit censorship on the publication of material which would offend large advertising groups; but the main stress is not so much on the exclusion of what is considered objectionable, as on the selection of material which will please the group for whom the particular journal is intended. The policy of censorship by governments and dictators is directed towards the exclusion of dangerous ideas. The commercial press is more concerned about the selling value of ideas than about the ideas themselves. Sometimes this produces surprising results. The classic paradox was· the long association of David Low with Beaverbrook's Evening; Standard. But apart from this, the capitalist press is less one-sided and bigoted than the press of totalitarian countries. Indeed, the common criticism levelled at it by communists is not that it censors the news, but that it lends itself to sensationalism and is morally corrupting. On the whole, I would say, the capitalist press is free from the evils of censorship as such. But its profit-seeking motive and commercial purpose leads to an equally dangerous influence. It treats ideas and opinions like any saleable commodity, to be purveyed according to the popular taste, and according to the trend of fashion. The truth or justness of ideas are of little concern to it. There are, therefore, few commercial journals which express a clear and consistent policy, and are seriously concerned with opinion. There are, in fact, few journals of opinion, and those few are mostly run by non-profit-making bodies. The point of these remarks is to stress the need, particularly at this time and in this country, for the encouragement of journals of opinion, free from the corrupting influence of the profit motive. The publication of Here and Now, of which at the time of writing only the first two issues have appeared, represents an attempt to establish such a journal. But if profits are not aimed at, income must come somewhere near to meeting costs, and to achieve the necessary circulation in a small country is hard going. I hope Here and Now will succeed, not only on the general ground that journals of opinion-almost any opinion-are needed, but because of the expectations about its future that its opening numbers give rise to. Those responsible for running it, however, do not appear yet to have formed clear views as to its policy. The opening editorial stated: ' Here and Now will be, as far as we can make it so, an open forum.' This, surely, is the fallacy of 94 those radio forums in which no conclusions can ever be arrived at. Dis- cussion, yes, and -the mbre genuine discussion between people who have opinions to express, the better. But the editor, or editorial panel, of a serious journal must have convictions, and the journal itself must represent a point of view. Just as well, probably, not to start off with too fixed or dogmatic a point of view. But the point of view, the general policy line, must be worked out, and work itself out, in the coming issues. The same editorial promised that Here and Now would not ' become completely gummed up with politics.' Good-there are plenty of matters to be thought and written about besides politics. Yet in our present age the political issues dominate and include most others. Whether we like it or not, art, sport, farming and .industrial policy, science and fashions are all influenced by political outlook. The policy which Here and Now will eventually find for itself will clearly be left of centre. Just how far left, and what left itself will mean, is a problem which others besides the editorial panel will help to settle. The special need for Here and Now at this stage in New Zealand's history is precisely to act as a forum for those seeking a fresh approach to and a new outlook on current political, cultural and economic issues. Independent of party ties and commercial interest it certainly must be-but non-committally 'open', no. In one respect, however, I trust that Here and Now will not change: it is to be hoped that its excellent printing and zestful wit may be maintained. And so long as its production is watched over by R. W. Lowry and A. R. D. Fairburn we can be pretty sure that it will be a pleasure to look at and provide stimulating entertainment to read. Ormond Wilson

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

H. Winston Rhodes. Human Values and Literature. The Canterbury District Council of the W.E.A. Gordon Watson. His Life and Writings. Edited by Elsie Locke. The New Zealand Communist Party. Auckland. Ios. Kiwi, 1949. Edited by Murray Martin. Students' Association, Auckland University College. Donald Earl Edwards. The Cycle of the Seasons. The American Weave Press, Cleveland, Ohio. Rolf Boldrewood. Robbery under Arms. The World's Classics. Oxford University Press. 7s. 95 G. Rostrevor Hamilton. The Tell- Tale Article. William Heinemann. IOS. 6d. John Masefield. On the Rill. William Heinemann. Ss. 6d. Magda von Hattingberg. Rilke and Benvenuta. William Heinemann. IOS. 6d. Laurence Whistler. The World's Room. Collected Poems. William Heinemann. I5S. Nine. A Magazine of Poetry and Criticism. Edited by Peter Russell. Vol. I No. 1. October I949· Quarterly. Ss. 4d. a year, single copies 2s. Id. Outposts. Edited by Howard Sergeant. No. I5. Winter I949· IS. Catalogue of Colour Reproductions of Painting from I S6o to I949· Unesco, Paris. Ss. (Obtainable from Unesco Sales Service, I9 Avenue Kleber, Paris I6me)

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

A. P. GASKELL. Author of The Big Game and Other Stories (The Caxton Press, I947)· S. A. GRAVE. Born I9I6 at Oamaru. Has been in Anglican orders since I93S. Was Vicar of Mosgiel, then Sub-Warden of St John's College, Auckland. Now Lecturer in Philosophy in the University of Western Australia. MAEVIUS. ' Dira est detestatio Maevii, mali poetae, bonorum hominum obtrectatoris.' Dillenburger's note to Horace, Epode X. See also Virgil, Pope, Gifford, and Auckland University College student publications c. I930. W. ROSENBERG. Lecturer in Economics, Canterbury University College. H. D. SKINNER. Born in New Plymouth, graduated at Victoria University College, and studied anthropology at Cambridge under Haddon; greatly influenced by H. S. Harrison. Director, Otago Museum, since I937· ORMOND WILSON. Born at Bulls I907. Educated Christ's College and Oxford. M.P. for Rangitikei I935-S and Palmerston North I946-9. Worked in News and Talks Division of the B.B.C. I939-44· Now farming in the Manawatu.