Problems of the Pacific 



343 



study for myself upon the ground what 

 might be the truth in what they say. 



That I did not find any perfect people, 

 any realized Utopia, any cooperative 

 commonwealth is true ; but I did find 

 there that people of our kind confronted 

 with our problems have found a solution 

 so adventurous and so successful that 

 it is of surpassing interest to us all, as 

 much so to those who do not agree with 

 the methods employed there as to those 

 who do; and if it be true, as believed by 

 its admirers, that the democracy of the 

 future is rising in this new land of 

 human rights in the Pacific, then those 

 results are of especial interest to us, be- 

 cause they mark the path along which 

 our own future is to go. 



New Zealand is like Japan, a country 

 to the south of the Orient what Japan 

 is to the north. It is like Japan in the 

 beauty of its climate ; in the beauty of 

 its scenery, which wins the hearts of all 

 comers. It is like Japan, very windy, 

 except that in the New Zealand Parlia- 

 ment they have a time limit on speeches, 

 which is very rigorously enforced. The 

 scenery of New Zealand is an epitome 

 of the best scenery of the world. There 

 are Alps as glorious as those of Switzer- 

 land ; lakes as beautiful as those of Eng- 

 land ; mountains among the highest and 

 grandest in the world, as grand as those 

 of Norway, and rivers rivaling those of 

 the Orinoco and the Amazon. There 

 are beautiful flowering trees, spreading 

 their canopy of pink and white and 

 purple over the landscape, with the red 

 tree, the king of all. 



There are some earthquakes and vol- 

 canoes there, and you will learn from 

 the conservatives of New Zealand that 

 the old-age pension laws, labor laws, 

 and some of their other innovations are 

 among the most dangerous of their earth- 

 quakes and volcanoes. 



A traveler from a country so far away 

 is expected to bring with him at least 

 something of the marvels which are to 

 be found there ; but New Zealand, let 



me impress upon you, is not a country 

 of the abnormal, neither in the home 

 nor the nation; neither is it abnormal in 

 its social life. New Zealand is a country 

 of the normal. It is normal in its natural 

 characteristics, in its people, and from 

 my point of view it is normal in its in- 

 stitutions. They have, however, one 

 thing which might possibly bear men- 

 tioning in passing, because it appeals to 

 the curiosity of the traveler, and be- 

 cause, like so many of their natural 

 features, it is an allegorical metamorpho- 

 sis. They have a caterpillar that after 

 death turns into a plant and blossoms 

 and goes to seed, and to all appearances 

 it does so in the plain way that is usual 

 with the cryptogams, to which family it 

 belongs.* But it has been stated that 

 there is a certain parallelism between the 

 metamorphosis which takes place in the 

 case of the New Zealand insect and that 

 which takes place in the human world ; 

 but there is this difference between the 

 change which takes place in the human 

 case and in the case of the New Zealand 

 insect, the human worm in New Zea- 

 land does not wait till death to blossom. 

 Every country must be either an ex- 

 periment or an efflorescence. Japan has 

 flowered into that exquisite art which 

 has done more to influence the esthetic 

 development of mankind than anything 

 since Greece gave the Milo to art, and 

 New Zealand has flowered into democ- 

 racy. There waited the last piece of vir- 

 gin soil on earth where Britain's race 

 could expand its governing genius, its in- 

 stitution-making genius — for our genius 

 to govern ourselves, I hope, is an institu- 

 tion-making genius. There waited the 

 last piece of virgin soil on earth where 

 the race could expend its governing 

 genius and free from the slavery of 

 monarchical vested rights, and, what is 



* The insect is the " white grub, ' ' or larva of 

 the May-beetle ( Lachnosterva fusca) ; the fun- 

 goid plant which springs from its head is the 

 " white grub fungus " ( Torrubia rarenelii). — 

 WJM. 



