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\ REVIEWS 115 the text seems to have been carefully collated. A number of e.xamples among the textual variants disp'rove Ward's statement that the only errors in the original text are in 'punctuation, and that in comparison the later, ,text of the collected Posies is corrupt. N. J. E. Understanding New Zealand. By FREDERICK L. W. WOOD. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc. [Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company]. 1944. Pp. x, 267.. ($4.50) New Zealand: A Working Democracy. By 'WALTER NASH. New York: World Book Company [Toro~to: Collins]. 1943. Pp. x, 335. ($3.75)_ NEW ZEALAND has been singularly fortunate in many of the 'analysts who' have describeq. its life.. Forty years ago Andre Siegfried) after visiting the country, wrote his earliest and perhaps his best study of an Anglo-Saxon state, translated into English as Democracy in New Zealand. Siegfried's work remains to the present a classic essay of its kind, with its comprehensive ,sweep and its shrewd social psychology in the tradition of French political science from de Tocqueville; In the same period William Pember Reeves, born in the South Island and prominent in its political affairs, wrote his fascinating volume, The Long White Cloud, wherein he described with genuine literary distinction not merely the history and politics but even the flora and fauna of his native country. Since then many other scholars have added to a growing library of careful analysis, and i~ the present year two significant -books have appeared in Frederick L. W. Wood's Understanding New Zealand and Walter Nash's New Zealand: A Working Democracy. Professor Wood has written a brilliant book, hardly in any m~asure inferior to the studies mentioned above. He has all the qualities necessary for interpreting New Zealand to itself and to the world: comprehensive knowledge, a philosophical turn of mind, a penetrating political judgment, and a highly dexterous pen. An Australian by birth, Sydney and Oxford by education, he has lived and taught history in Wellington for eight years. He comes to the subject with something of an outsider's perspective, but with a deep knowledge gleaned from historical study and direct observation of the society about him. Notable in particular are his discriminating observations on New Zealand democracy, which throughout bear interest- - ing comparison with those of Siegfried four decades ago. ' In broad es-. sentials the picture is not greatly different from that of Siegfried, although, as Professor Wood amply indicates, the character and alignment of social forces have undergone some profound changes in the past forty years. He is at pains to emphasize, as Siegfried had been, that New Zealand democracy is not moving toward goals set by rigid and doctrinaire leaders. The real trend in the state is prescribed by the ascendency in politics of the interests of the common man, and needless to add the common man is not the single-minded proletarian of Marx. He does not think that Labour) even 116 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUAR':fERLY if it wished, can build in th~ present a socialist order in the strict terms of a theory, for the two weighty reasons' that' agriculture throughout New Zealand is in the hands of a multitude of small and relatively comfortable farmers, and trade unionism is not revolutionary, its tradition being "that of the arbitrati~n Court rather than of class 'war." The New Zealander i'~ characterized by a sturdy British human.itarianism and empiricism, and both qualities lead him, whether he is a labourer or farmer, to accept the state as an instrument to gradual social improvement. There is little else in what is called New Zealand's "socialism." Much of the interest of Walter Nash's volume dwells in the position and personality of its author, a highly influential member of the Labour Governmen~ since 1935 and 'for years before that a national secretary of the party. His book lacks the incisive quality and careful balance of Professor Wood's, and introduces.much that is not closely relevant to an understanding of New Zealand democracy, such as the chapters on "World Organisation" and the "End. of Imperialism." But merely to have what an important Labour leader thinks about...

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