1916: Ettie’s Route

June 23, 2025

By AHNZ

Ettie Rout was another one of New Zealand history’s White Liberal Women. It was the cool thing to be for the ‘Vogel Boomer Generation’ as I call them. A Feminist, Socialist, Eugenicist, cyclist, Vegetarian, gender-pay gap fretting, cross-dressing Wokester. Christchurch, as in this case, was the chief factory for producing such people.

But, World War 1 was cleaning out people like her and the Liberals who had run the show for 20 years. It was Crisis time. Time to get back to Conservatism. Yet, though now in middle age, Ettie refused to be put into the Out Group. She found a way to get into the war unofficially by forming ‘The New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood’.

Like an Edwardian Greta Thunberg, Ettie made her own path into the warzone. She arrived in Egypt in February, 1916 and set up food and medical support for the Middle East theatre in Sinai and Palestine.

“During the Gallipoli campaign, she founded the New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood, a volunteer nursing group, for women between the ages of 30 and 50.” – Wiki

“Throughout its history Christchurch has been as famous for its cranks and zealots as it has been for its Englishness and its class distinctions. This is not to suggest that other cities are devoid of eccentrics and fanatics, it’s just that in most places, if they are not insulted, assaulted, or ignored, they are, more often than not, patted on the head and told to keep taking the pills. But Christchurch is a place where messianic zealots gather a following, attract influential patrons and go on to change the world.”-  A City Possessed, The Christchurch Civic Creche Case, Lynley Hood (2001)

“A socialist, a feminist and a committed vegetarian, she embraced physical fitness, dressing in short skirts or trousers and had an attitude toward sexuality that favoured the likes of Havelock Ellis…Rout’s organisation had no official status but was to be afforded “all official courtesies necessary” by the Minister of Defence. Or so she claimed in contemporary publicity.” – Richard Swainson, Waikato Times (2025)

“Israel intercepted a vessel carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists Monday that was attempting to break its naval blockade to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip.” – NBC (2025)

“Egyptian authorities have detained more than 200 pro-Palestinian activists in Cairo on Thursday, who were planning to march to Egypt’s Rafah border crossing on Friday to call for increased humanitarian aid access in the Gaza Strip.” – France24.com (2025)

Now came a big moral question about sexaully transmitted diseases. The mainstream way to deal with them was through internal regulation. Individuals should take personal responsibility by, for example, not inflicting adultery upon the peoples we were fighting to liberate. Ettie took a different route which was to accept fornication was inevitable and supply safe and clean means to facilitate it.

Conservative New Zealand recoiled from that. Yet, as the 20th century moved on it has been Ettie’s modality that has prevailed. We even have needle disposal boxes supplied by government in every public toilet. The normalising message is clear- infected drug users are taking their hit in public places and don’t care who their trash hurts; That’s OK, the government will allow it and pay for it.

Many public toilets have used syringe boxes as well as prophylactic dispensing machines. A silent signal to everyone, including children, about what is normal. We’ve accepted that the line on personal responsibility has fallen back. The Big Brother Managerialism prevails. Ettie has won!

The Big Brother mentality has also won when it comes to things like children’s playgrounds. Instead of learning to hone an internal model of risk assessment the Ettie Routs of this world have tried to wrap it up in cotton wool; An external model of safety. Ref. 1986: Adventure Playground

And, of course, another significant offshoot was the COVID Crisis where individuals were not free to make their own health decisions. The State created a two-tier society by forcing everyone to take their drug on pain of being managed out of society. The way to do this was paved by the collectivist mentality that Ettie championed.

“Marlborough barrister Rob Harrison said methamphetamine related charges coming through court had increased over the past five years. Addiction is a driver of crime, as those hooked will commit offences to get money to obtain drugs,…“But it’s become such a subculture, and it’s becoming ingrained….People are using it habitually, and it’s causing all kinds of problems.” – Drugs Creating a wave of problems across the region,  page 1, Nelson Mail (23 June, 2025)

“At this point we’re slightly desperate to get them in place, because it feels like there is a tidal wave coming our way, and very little being stood up to prevent the ramifications of that for the community,” she said.” – Cocaine, methamphetamine use soars in New Zealand, RNZ (2024)

The idea that people are going to do harmful things with sex and drugs is basically sanctioned and facilitated by this public policy. The normalising message is considered less important than the collective benefit to the aggregate statistics of our human hurd. Yet, another member of Rout’s political group, Sue Bradford, used the opposite reasoning when the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act (2007) became law. Here again, policy was being used as a signalling message to tell people what was socially acceptable or not. This time practical results to save people from harm directly wasn’t important. What was important was making sure people knew what was or wasn’t sanctioned. Either this is a reverse of moral reasoning or perhaps the Bradford and Rout types are consistently trying to erase conservative values. Once again, the top-down control over smacking children has taken away New Zealander’s opportunity to think for themselves and emerge with the their own conscious choice. Civil mandates prevent common mores from developing and we are alienated from our own moral lives. We may do the right things but we’ll be doing them for the wrong reasons.

Although Ettie was essentially cancelled by post-war New Zealand and, childless, killed herself she has remained a famous icon of revisionist historians for many decades. After all, she helped build Aotearoa New Zealand which is the world we’re living in now. For now.

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Image ref. Ettie at the typewriter from frontispiece to her book Maori Symbolism (1926,) AHNZ enhanced (2025)

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