AN ANZAC IN ENGLAND
Sta,—Douglas London lets your readers draw the correct inference. The author of "An Anzac in England," which appeared a fortnight ago in The Spectator, self-confessedly is the sort of mental dod-hopper the average Australian has little time for in Australia. Their chief value is only apparent when, ill-equipped" to criticise even a bad Bradman stroke (and every ever critical" Australian is ready to have a shot at that!) they arrive in England and proceed to prove the toler:ice of the English by being able to get published such balderdash as " Sydney Melbourne " has laboriously produced. Britain should be under the plough now, and for ever more, he says, seemingly being oblivious of the fact that he would be boo-ed from the hustings in any farming community in Australia or New Zealand if, in replying to their demands as to where they'd get another market for their butter and cheese if Britain could not help them find one, he said to inquiring farmers, " I guess you'd better look elsewhere."
And his actual impression of London: "Dirt, dirt, everywhere. Shabby broken-down old houses and fewer modern buildings in the whole city than he would see in Sydney's Pitt Street alone." Non- sense, of course. There aren't buildings in Pitt Street to surpass South Africa House, Australia House, Bush House, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express, and Reuters, to mention a bare half-dozen in the Fleet Street-Strand region for a start. (Pitt Street, by the by, is not
more than miles long.) What's making him more muddle-he hied than he probably is, is that London's sky-line has tricked him: in Sydney, where it is slightly hilly and where the building line is higher than that allowed in London, a sky-scraper effect is easily achieved. This sort of " ever critical" Anzac is the startled male equivalent of Alice in Wonderland. " It is a new experience to stand shoulder to shoulder with women while buying a glass of beer." but that is all it is. In Australia we sit in lounges and watch them buy it. Surely he doesn't suggest that Aussie women don't drink as much as English women?
Finally, he tells your readers, the Australian soldier looks at the British Tommy and "dips his lid." He admires the rapidity ',ill' which raw recruits are turned into smart soldiers within a few weeks; yet they are the men who yesterday were among the " children whom he saw everywhere in the industrial Midland tov:'.' and of whose mothers he wondered if they " have no pride in '' children on whom the nation's future depends." The slum- 01 Melbourne and Sydney are not as extensive as those of London. but even " Sydney Melbourne " admits the two cities whose name, he takes to fashion his nom-de-plume have their bad spots. ActuAllY, their bad spots are worse than some,of the really bad spots in Britain. because there is less excuse for them. And he talks of inefficient' in London. First he ought to be aware that the Lord Mayors of Sydney and Melbourne would be delighted to think that either city could be run as efficiently as the Mother City of the Empire--
Previous page
