Philip (Prince, 1921-), Duke of Edinburgh. A lengthy Autograph Letter Signed, ‘Philip’, Victoria, 8 March [1954], to Sir Harold [Hartley], the Duke writing during the Australian Royal Tour, which he made with Queen Elizabeth II, to inform his correspondent of some of ‘the more interesting things we have seen’ and states, in part, ‘New Zealand arranged their tour extremely well and we ended up having seen at least something of almost everything…. I had a look round the museum, which is very well arranged. I was particularly fascinated by the Maori bit having read Peter Buck’s “Coming of the Maori”. There do not appear to be any Maori’s (sic) of his calibre at the moment and the result is that the growing Maori population is growing up without proper leadership. The New Zealanders appear to regard them somewhere between museum pieces and domestic pets. There seems to be no official policy for them which is at all enlightened. For instance they quite rightly insist on all N. Zealanders & Maoris doing their military service together but they have disbanded the Maori Battalion which with it’s (sic) magnificent record might have been a tremendous influence for the good and a means of keeping Maori pride alive… I saw something of the Cawthorn Institute at Nelson… they were getting a bit scared of wholesale parasitic control of pests… Their favourite nightmare is that the gorse weevil, which lays it’s (sic) eggs in the seed pods, has taken a liking to laying it’s (sic) eggs in pea-pods!!… New Zealand on the whole struck me as over-governed with not much room for initiative – the perfect welfare state in fact! The people were universally charming and on the whole most considerate. Their press is serious-minded and appears to have a sense of responsibility. We are still in the heat and battle of Australia so that my opinions are rather fluctuating. Industry and agriculture are impressive but it won’t be for lack of trying if they become an entirely industrial country in the next 50 years… Their press and politics are quite unbelievable and the inter-state jealousy and state v. federal animosity has to be seen to be believed. Of course the Federal constitution is quite crazy and should never have been accepted in the present form… They also seem to have a genius for getting worked up about trifles while really important issues are fairly stinking under their very noses… Their hospitals and repatriation hospitals are remarkable… their scientific research is also in a very good state. I was shown various aspects of virus research which were most interesting…’, 11 pages on separate sheets, 8vo