A Wellington librarian says that ‘modern reading palates favour the novel as the most acceptable form of literature.’ The titles that fly off library shelves most quickly are works of modern escapist fiction. Westerns, for example. Rex Beach, the bestselling American writer, is very popular. Zane Grey, also American, is another star. ‘Naturally the public is as keen on love stories as ever.’ Ethel M Dell, a British romance writer, is hot property. Mystery and detective fiction is also sought out. Although Sherlock Holmes continues to be popular the ‘ultra-modern’ crime novel’ has elbowed past ‘the older detective melodrama.’ Not that everybody reads commercial fiction. Some borrow serious essays. Plays by Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw are read widely. Yet overall, says the librarian, ‘the novel is the thing – and the less it makes one think, the better the public like it.’
Dominion, 18 December 1920
0 Comments
Fred Waits, a major in the First World War, writes today about the next world war. ‘When peace came to a stricken world in 1919 it was widely believed that the Great War had ended war. … To-day, instead of the Universal Peace, we find almost universal war. In Persia, Poland, Ireland, Turkey, and Russia sword and fire are sweeping where should be perfect peace.’ He goes on to talk about the naval race now under way in the Pacific. ‘The United States and Japan go steadily on with their building programmes!’ Japan has several new warships on the stocks. The United States provides the world with ‘the unedifying spectacle’ of a ‘great republic’ forging ahead with ‘the mightiest fleet in the world.’ Waits thinks that if war breaks out over control of the Pacific ‘it will probably be about 1923.’
Otago Daily Times, 17 December 1920 A journalist talks in the New Zealand Times today about women and marriage in relation to the ‘great struggle’ of the First World War. ‘There is no doubt,’ she writes, ‘that matrimony as a career or occupation for women has fallen from its former high estate in the estimation of women.’ Marriage means ‘a certain loss of personal freedom – especially for the women.’ A wedded woman ‘cannot any longer do what she would like, follow her inclinations, or develop herself on her own lines. She belongs to somebody else, and is expected to develop on his lines, or, at least, to conform to his ideas of what the home life should be. There are many instances where the woman takes the lead, and where the home is her absolute creation, but in the main it is as I have said. The man is the head of the house, and proclaims the fact, if not by his voice, by the whole concerted actions of his life. In the great majority of cases it is a system which works quite happily, and for the benefit of the family, but the women whom life is educating, and to whom during the last few years so many doors have opened, are found unwilling, in ever-increasing numbers to enter the cage, however heavily it maybe gilded. … During the years of the great struggle they discovered the joy of comradeship with one another, once almost the exclusive possession and prerogative of men – and they have found it good – one of the few compensations of the war.’
New Zealand Times, 15 December 1920 ‘A while ago everyone was complaining about the cold and changeable weather, and sunny Napier was fast losing its reputation, but now we are having real summer. The school children are all busy studying for their examination. Some schools have had theirs, but not many of the Napier schools. My sister is going up for her proficiency examination this year. Another sister has to sit for part of her D examination in January, and has an enormous amount of learning to do. Our Bible classes are getting a tennis court made. It was to have been finished by now, but we have just heard that it won't be opened till next year. I cannot play tennis, but hope to learn soon. At Christmas my sister and myself are going to the Bible Class Conference at Hawera, and are looking forward to seeing some old friends there. Last night we went to see Marama, given by the Hastings Operatic Society. There were a number of good choruses, and Marama, who was a Maori girl, is a lovely singer. We are just thinking of beginning our Christmas baking and cleaning – the last weeks before Christmas seem to fly always.’
Otago Witness, 14 December 1920 Today the Grey River Argus reviews ‘a handsome little volume of verses from the pen of one New Zealand’s most gifted writers of the younger generation.’ Eileen Duggan, twenty-six years old, grew up in a working class family at Tuamarina, Marlborough. She graduated with a master’s degree in history from Victoria University College. After teaching at high school for a brief period she began what will be a long career as a professional writer. Her first published poems appeared three years ago in the New Zealand Tablet. The editor of the Tablet writes about her work in a foreword to this new volume: ‘Four years ago a young girl, still a student in Victoria College, Wellington, sent me a little sheaf of poems. There was a grace, a finish of diction, and a spirit of refinement in them … it is with great pleasure that I introduce the first fruits of her gifted soul to a wider circle of readers.’ The Argus praises her ‘originality of conception, symmetry of form and beauty of diction.’
Grey River Argus, 11 December 1920 A new religious movement is spreading in the western world. Spiritualists believe that the dead can speak to the living through signs, visions or through a gifted ‘medium,’ almost always a woman. The huge surge of spiritualism is driven by the grief of those longing to link up with dead sons, brothers, fathers, lovers, husbands and others killed by the First World War. ‘Where are the dead?’ writes a citizen in Levin. ‘Tell me of the future; tell me if my son, who fell at the front, is still a conscious being.’ The churches are not happy. An elderly clergyman protests today about the spread of this ‘ocultism’ through New Zealand. Christian symbols and language, he claims, are being used ‘as a mask to cover the heinous sin of communication with and the worship of demons.’ Spiritualists are not only exploiting the ‘griefs and losses’ of the ‘sorrowing relations and friends’ of dead soldiers but disturbing ‘the minds and hearts of our brave fellows, who have been spared to us, and who now are trying to recover mind and body from the dire effects of the war.’ Spiritualist followers, the clergyman says, will come under the control of demons and end up with a ‘tendency to insanity, greater than ever before!’
New Zealand Herald, 10 December 1920 The exchange of ideas between the British Empire and Scandinavia ‘was almost severed during the war’ but is now picking up once more, notes The Press. Sir Ernest Rutherford has just given a series of lectures in the Hall of Festivities at Copenhagen University. The lectures are ‘The Counting of Atoms,’ ‘The Structure of Atoms,’ and ‘Isotropes and their Meaning.’ Copenhagen University has followed up by conferring the degree of doctor honoris causa on Rutherford. The scientist has already held a Nobel prize for twelve years thanks to his work on atomic physics. Only nine years ago he hypothesised that every atom consists of a highly charged nucleus ringed by electrons of low mass. And this year he has formulated a new hypothesis arguing for the existence of what he calls the proton. The Chancellor of Copenhagen University says that Rutherford’s work is ‘of the utmost importance to the whole world.’
The Press, 08 December 1920 Māori are portrayed in newspaper cartoons and comic books as easygoing, warmhearted, emotional, absurd, simple, laughable, lazy, rough and backward. The media group Stuff one hundred years from now will look at these stereotypes. Today a lavish indulgence of the racism features in a cartoon published in the Observer.
Observer, 07 December 1920; artist unknown Churches are still squabbling with one another about the Marriage Law Amendment Act. Catholic and Anglican bishops have lost the struggle over the new law. Presbyterians, Methodists and several smaller churches have won the struggle. So have agnostics and atheists. The new law makes it a crime for anybody to say ‘expressly or by implication’ that couples who marry in a registry office are ‘not truly and sufficiently married.’ The new law also makes it a crime for anybody to say that children born of such marriages are ‘illegitimate’ or ‘born out of true wedlock.’ Catholic and Anglican priests argue that they have a right to be true to their own religious beliefs by saying in public that people not married in a church are living in sin and that the children of such people, along with any others whose parents were not married when they were born, are ‘illegitimate.’
Observer, 04 December 1920 The Northern Advocate, a conservative Whangārei newspaper, editorialises today about the worsening economic slump. The slump, it says, cannot be turned around by taxing those with money. The best remedy is to axe the jobs of the parasitic army of white collar workers and small traders who coin cash by getting too many people ‘spending extravagantly.’ Ordinary people ‘used to get along very comfortably without the luxuries that now seem necessary.’ A ‘general extravagance’ in modern society has led too many people to go into warehouse, shop, office and other jobs where they do ‘very scanty service’ to the economy. They must go out to the countryside, out to the farmsheds and paddocks. They must start doing real work as labourers or other types of worker on farmland. Farms are the cornerstone of the economy. ‘The only means by which the country can increase its income and its spending power is more production ... everyone who is capable of adding to the nation's production should take off his coat and get to work. There are too many idlers, and too many who are partly idle.’ Conservatives have been saying these things ever since the early colonial period. Owners of farmland, not surprisingly, want workers to clear out of the towns and take on the tasks of tending the land for long hours and poor pay. Yet they exaggerate the importance of farming to the economy. Only around 20 percent of gross domestic product, as conventionally measured, comes from farms and stations. Output is even less as a percentage if we add to gross domestic product the huge money value of unpaid goods and services provided by mothers, wives, children, grandparents, friends, neighbours, nuns, prisoners and many others.
Northern Advocate, 03 December 1920 GDP as conventionally measured (ie only accounting for goods and services bought and sold in the cash economy). Note that these figures also include mining, quarrying, forestry and fishing. Coal and gold were big earners in the cash economy. Industry shares in nominal GDP, 1920–2008 – Economic history – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand The civil war in Ireland stirs strong feelings among most people in New Zealand. Catholics and the Labour Party want an independent republic of Ireland. Anglicans, Presbyterians and conservatives, who mostly oppose Irish independence, believe that the country must stay within the British Empire. Yet even conservatives are appalled by the violence being carried out by the British state in Ireland. The Press, one of the most powerful conservative voices in the country, editorialises today about ‘the dreadful situation in Ireland created by the conflict of rival terrorist policies.’ The writer condemns ‘the terrorism’ of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The writer also condemns the ‘counter-terrorism’ of the British government. ‘Day by day the tragedy unfolds in assassinations and retaliatory crimes that need many columns for their recording. The crimes committed by the Republican Brotherhood are devilish, but not less horrible are the outrages — murder, looting, arson, and the wrecking of little towns — committed by the forces of the Government.’
The Press, 02 December 1920 A letter from a young woman whose family owns a boarding house in New Plymouth describes life in the last few days. ‘We have nine boarders and six of ourselves, so there is plenty for three of us to do. We could have taken dozens more, as board is so hard to get, especially here, but we have not the room. I must tell you there was a very sad event happened yesterday to the first aeroplane to arrive here. It was here three days previously, and on the fourth it was looping the loop hundreds of feet in mid-air, but luckily got through safely. On taking the second lot of passengers the engine got out of control, and the aeroplane fell with a terrible crash, killing three people — the Mayor, the pilot, and a young lady. Quite a gloom was cast over the town ... It was very sad indeed, as they were smashed about terribly. Last Saturday we went to the sports, which were postponed from Labour Day, and my auntie’s baby secured first prize in the baby show. We also hired a car and went to a dance at Bell Block last night, and we had a. glorious time, arriving home about 1 o’clock.’
Otago Witness, 01 December 1920 Bankers, business owners, coal mine owners, managers, farmers and landowners are trying hard to talk up the economy. New Zealand, along with Japan, the United States and a few other states that made money out of the First World War, are beginning to go into sharp economic recession. Britain and other Allied countries impoverished by the war are also going into recession. The voices of the political right in New Zealand say what they have said since the early days of colonisation: that the economy will grow so long as working class people work harder and longer for their pay. And take a pay cut. The Manawatu Evening Standard editorialises about it today. ‘New Zealand is in the happy position of being possibly the one country that has come through the war with the minimum of disturbance, commercially and politically.’ The country is ‘wonderfully prosperous.’ Responsibility for prosperity now ‘rests largely with the workers themselves,’ since the most likely cause of a slump is ‘waning confidence in the ability of the worker to make good, by increased effort and production.’
Manawatu Evening Standard, 30 November 1920 New Zealand Truth today tears strips off Winston Churchill, British Secretary of State for War and Air. ‘Whinstone,’ as the very popular weekly calls him, has just published an article in which he claims that Jews are ‘supreme manifestations’ of ‘the diabolical.’ Churchill writes especially harshly about what he, along with many other conservatives. now call ‘the international Jew.’ A coldhearted cabal of Jewish capitalists supposedly have a grip on world banking and are working to undermine western civilisation. At the same time, oddly enough, these rapacious capitalists are also the leaders of world communism; ‘the strongest group among the Bolsheviks in Russia.’ New Zealand Truth backs the Liberal Party and to a lesser extent the Labour Party. Churchill is unpopular among Liberals and very unpopular among those who vote Labour. At the same time, anti-semitism is probably as common in New Zealand as in most of Europe.
New Zealand Truth, 27 November 1920 Christchurch police have impounded copies of the book Red Europe by Australian Labor politician Frank Anstey. The book looks at ‘treatment received by Russia at the hands of the Allies.’ The conservative government led by Massey has recently ordered that copies of the book stop being imported into New Zealand. ‘Seditious’ and ‘unpatriotic’ books, pamphlets and newspapers are causing the government ‘serious concern,’ notes an opposition Liberal newspaper, the Evening Star. Yet censorship is proving a very blunt instrument. One of the unintended consequences of censorship is that when citizens hear of a publication being banned they become curious and often try to buy a copy on the blackmarket. ‘Once a book is prohibited, people want it,’ says a trader. ‘Booksellers can hardly keep proper check on their stocks.’ Banned books and other publications can be found fairly easily throughout New Zealand.
Evening Star, 26 November 1920 ‘War is the one remaining relic of barbarism in modern society which is regarded with any approval or is explained away by any excuse,’ editorialises the conservative newspaper Otago Daily Times. ‘The modern practice of war is in dark contrast with the progress of the world — on the one hand everything in life is becoming more and more humanised, while in war alone the most devilish and destructive devices are employed foi the annihilation of mankind.’ The editorial has been written in response to a resolution passed by the New Zealand Presbyterian Assembly. James Gibb, the leading minister who brought the resolution before the assembly, is typical of many interwar clergy. He strongly backed the British Empire in the early days of the First World War. As the war went on, his support started flagging and he has now become an active opponent of militarism. God today calls on the faithful, he tells the assembly, ‘to do all in their power to repress the spirit of militarism.’ The Otago Daily Times speaks in favour and also lends its support to a scheme some people are now proposing for ‘a federation of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic peoples, free and enlightened and hating war, as a necessity for the very existence of civilisation and free Christianity.’
Otago Daily Times, 25 November 1920 A young letter writer reports on his life in South Canterbury. ‘I have been enjoying myself famously lately. In fact, too much, as, now it is all over, I am just longing for more. The Show in Timaru was the best there has been for the last four years, and I enjoyed myself very much. Last Wednesday I motored up to a place about 20 miles from here. I stayed longer than I had intended, and it was dark before I got home. But I only had one spill, and a ducking in a creek I went into. It is decent and warm here now, and the river is splendid for dipping in. It’s rather hot working, though — that’s the only trouble, — and we have such a rush of work. About half a dozen cars waiting to be overhauled. We had a lovely day last Thursday for the opening of the cricket. Afternoon tea was also provided for visitors and the weary players. The dance in the evening was good too, even if supper did run out and we had to get more. The annual sports are next month, and I hope it is a good day for them. It is rather a shame all the holidays come at once. One almost gets tired of them.’
Otago Witness, 23 November 1920 A young letter writer reports on life in a farming family at Mossburn, Southland. ‘We are having terribly cold and snowy weather up here lately. ... It is more like winter than the winter we had, but I hope it will soon clear now, and that we will have good weather from this on, as it is so near now to shearing, and we don’t want this kind of weather at shearing time. There was supposed to be pictures in Mossburn on Friday night, but they did not turn up. They broke down on the road somewhere, so we had a trip for nothing. I don’t suppose they would be much anyway. It is very seldom there are pictures here. It is hardly worth their while coming to such a small place. ... The Invercargill Show is soon, but I don’t think I will bother going to it, as I think when one sees one show they are all alike.’
Otago Witness, 23 November 1920 A case in the Dannevirke magistrate’s court has set people talking about the way school teachers whip or beat students. David Cullinane, a high school student, has taken legal action against his ‘master,’ Donald Kennedy. David and a student friend ran into their teacher in town one day. Neither lifted his cap to show deference and obedience. ‘Next day at school they were called out by the master for punishment.’ David refused ‘to bend into a position to receive punishment, and it was alleged that, when he was attempting to leave the room, he was seized by Kennedy and given 10 strokes in all with a supplejack. A doctor called in for the complainant said examination showed several bruises, which were, he considered, unduly severe, and on an improper part of the body.’ The magistrate, after hearing the evidence, says that a teacher has ‘the right to punish a pupil for offences against the rules’ so long as the punishment is ‘reasonable.’ He dismisses the case because he thinks that ‘under the circumstances’ the punishment was not ‘excessive.’ All school students are liable under law to be beaten by their teachers. Leather straps are wielded in primary schools. Canes are used in high schools. Boys are beaten far more often than girls since society is very gendered and a widespread view is that boys need to learn to be ‘manly.’ The practice is common everywhere in the world. Coporal punishment of school students will still be lawful fifty years from now in every country other than Japan, Italy and Mauritius.
New Zealand Herald, 20 November 1920 The New Zealand Herald reports today that many North Island Māori are experiencing a ‘good deal of excitement’ over the ‘alleged marvellous success’ of a new prophet who is healing the sick. The prophet is Tahupōtiki Rātana. He has become so famous that ‘hundreds of natives with ailments of various kinds have, during the past few months,’ made pilgrimages to the Rātana village between Turakina and Wangaehu. One group of formerly disabled people from the King Country and Hawkes Bay say they are ‘gladdened’ to have ‘the free use of their limbs again.’ Two years ago the prophet saw a heavenly vision. He believes that he must now preach the gospel to all Māori and heal their bodies, minds and hearts. He sees himself as working within Christianity. At the same time, he and his followers are beginning to move towards a wholly new religion that will be set up a few years from now as Te Haahi Rātana (the Rātana church). Pākehā in surrounding districts are uneasy. They feel ‘much perturbed over the coming and going of so many natives.’
New Zealand Herald, 19 November 1920 The Evening Star, the biggest Liberal newspaper in Otago, editorialises today about the ‘acuteness of the house-shortage.’ The editorial begins by telling the story of a working class family in Christchurch who have pitched tents in New Brighton domain because of the shortage of affordable housing. The family, with nine children, were turned away by landlords who only want tenants who have no or few offspring. The tent dwellers ‘had to make the best of this primitive accommodation through the worst weather conditions possible.’ The Evening Star says that such things ‘should not happen to any worker in this so-called “workman's paradise”.’ The state should step in because it is ‘the Government’s plain duty to equalise the supply with the demand.’ The Liberal Party and the Labour Party are both keen for the state to become more active in housing. The governing Reform Party is not keen.
Evening Star, 18 November 1920 ‘In these days ... the turbulent spirit of Bolshevism permeates the world,’ editorialises one of many conservative country dailies, the Rangitikei Advocate. Late last century the government legalised working-class unions. What has been the upshot? ‘It gave legal standing to combinations of men, nominally to safeguard the interests of workers, but really to enable them to be exploited by agitators and used to influence politics. The power thus given has frequently been used arrogantly, and to the detriment of the interests of the people.’ Unions have become ‘a power that threatens the very existence of Government while in the meantime defying it.’ The Rangitikei Advocate, like many conservative voices, wants workers to be denied the right to go on strike. A law should be passed ‘making an outlaw of every striker whose action in holding up industry or commerce is equivalent to an attack on the public interests.’
Rangitikei Advocate, 17 November 1920 ‘An epoch-making event’ took place yesterday when the New Zealand Aero Transport Company, ‘leapt into the air’ for the first time, says the Timaru Herald. The company will be the first to offer intercity passenger services in New Zealand. Transport as a whole is being revolutionised during these postwar years. Cars, trucks and buses are quickly changing the way people get about on land. Ocean liners and cargo ships are being converted from coal power to oil. Flying seems the most futuristic of all new types of transport. The New Zealand Aero Transport Company has acquired three planes to begin its regular air service. The first, a De Havilland 9, can carry or four three passengers and caused ‘quite a stir’ yesterday as it flew over Timaru. The company is an imaginative investment by a wealthy landowning family, the Wigleys. Passengers will now be able to be ‘transported to any part of the South Island at the shortest notice and in the shortest possible time, an arrangement which will no doubt appeal to business men. In order that the Company’s machines may be known in any part of the Dominion there will be a red and yellow wave colour effect along the fusilage.’
Timaru Herald, 16 November 1920 |