AUSTRALIA.*
THE phrase, " Advance Australia," was coined many years ago as an aspiration or a prophecy. For some little time Australia may have seemed, at any rate to pessimistic observers, including some of her own children, to stagnate, if not actually to recede. Her advance assuredly was slow, and might have been described as precarious. Bnt difficulties have been met, errors have been rectified, and, to a very large extent, what was a buoyant motto has become a prophecy fulfilled.
Buoyancy is perhaps the epithet which describes best the prevailing spirit of the Australians, and it pervades the
• An Australian Native's Standpoint : Addresses. By W. J. Sowden. London: Macmillan and Co. [5s. net.] addresses which Mr. Sowden reprints in his interesting volume. By an Australian native he means a person of British stock, born in Australia ; and he has much to say about the Australian Natives' Association, a society founded for the mutual help and comfort of these fortunate persons, of which he is an ardent member, and over which he presided for a long time. Two of the addresses in this volume, one delivered in Adelaide and the other in London, aim at putting the Australian standpoint before the English people. Mr. Sowden complains that Australia is misunderstood, and he instances an English great lady inquiring of him, before his address in London, whether he would speak in English or in Australian. He replied, wittily and properly, " In both." And he goes on to say that many English people seem to imagine that Australians are mostly black, or at any rate something quite different from the inhabitants of England. He complains, too, and justly, about the hasty, superficial, and often untrue judgments of globe-trotters, and of the mingled pain, amusement, and mischief caused by their books. Let all this be granted ; but it cuts both ways, and there is need for improvement on both sides. Some twenty years ago, the then editor of a leading newspaper in Sydney told the present writer that his first visit to England, after his exclusively Australian experience of life and journalism, was like that of a man who discovered that he had been looking at the distant world through the wrong end of his glasses. Everything was out of proportion and focus ; all his values were wrong. The English people, whether in England or in Australia, are not, we think, either more ignorant or more prejudiced than other peoples ; but they are less imaginative than some other peoples, and therefore they are less sympathetic about matters which they have not experienced personally. It is much more a want of sympathetic imagination than a want of interest which has led to the misunderstandings on both sides, of which Mr. Sowden speaks.
One efficient cure for this defect is a better knowledge ; and that, for English people, can be obtained on many points by reading Mr. Sowden's useful and interesting little book. He himself, besides being an ardent Australian native, is a South Australian journalist of high standing and long experience. He knows what he is talking about, and his various addresses touch on many matters in Australian life which English readers ought to know, and will be much the better for knowing. For one thing, he points out the size of Australia, showing by a map that its area would contain the whole of Europe except about one-third of Russia. Including all Russia the square mileage of Europe amounts to 3,609,827, of which Russia accounts for over 2,000,000 square miles. Australia possesses 2,972,906 square miles, while the British Isles have only 120,994. Besides its enormous size, Australia abounds in mineral wealth of every kind. Between 1852 and 1904 its production of gold amounted to £611,000,000. It is not only a country of gold mines, but it is pre-eminently the country of the golden fleece. In 1904 its export of wool was valued at £17,000,000, forty times larger than that of Canada. Its climate is healthy everywhere. Its soil, with labour, planting, and irrigation, is probably the richest and most prolific in the world. Its water supply is abundant, but it needs regulation. There can be no doubt that cultivation, irrigation, and forestry will make its rainfall more abundant, and that even the present inland wastes may be turned into rich and fruitful soil. There have, of course, been political mistakes in the past, but experience is curing them. Australia
has proportionately " the biggest national and private debts in christendom," says Mr. Sowden, and he adds, truly, it is
"our own dear Australia " ; but he points out that most of these debts were incurred for productive purposes, and that they are as nothing compared to the gigantic resources and promise of the country.
Even more interesting than the material statistics axe Mr. Sowden's account of intellectual and spiritual forces. He says much that is encouraging, tempered with some grave and necessary warnings, about education, religion, defence, art, and language. As to art, let us own frankly that the modern Anglo-British race has not made life beautiful, either in its old homes or in its new. In architecture, the chief of the material arts, it has had no style of its own since the time of George III. Modern building, until quite recently, has been ugly, trivial, absurd, and mean. In the Old Country we have, at any rate, fine models before us, and a great tradition. Therefore there is no excuse for the hideousness of modern Scottish and English municipal building. There is more excuse for the ugliness of American and Australian building ; while the means of escape from it are not visible, as they are with us, to architects and the public. For these reasons, the way of art in Australia is difficult, and the zeal for it is most com- mendable, if not always crowned with success or regulated by unquestionable taste. In the matter of language, Australia is a country, or rather a continent, with only one dialect, though there are subtle shades of difference in its usage. Experience, we are glad to see, has led Mr. Sowden to utter some timely warnings about several current mispronunciations and accents in the English that Australia speaks. We also think he is hardly just to the interest and value of our various county dialects in England. We would suggest here that the vocabulary of our English peasants is probably richer, and nearer to Elizabethan speech, than the vocabulary of society and of the Universities.
In conclusion we can only say briefly that Mr. Sowden writes many wise and salutary things about education, citizenship, and military service. For instance, "If Great Britain had not gone to war in the case of South Africa it would have been dismembered." " The alternative was peace or pieces." He recommends that all children be taught how to vote, as "the means of fighting the enemy within the country " ; and how to drill and shoot, as a means of defence " against possible enemies from outside." Also in schools there should be a custom of saluting the flag ; and history, with a view to patriotism, should, above all things, be taught. School fees, he thinks, make education more valued by parents and scholars. " The best workmanship," he says, " is more effective in protecting the industries of a country than even the best protective tariff which could be devised." "Trade unionism was never intended to be a menace to the good employer, but to be a safeguard against the bad "; and he suggests that the unions should encourage emulation in sound work among their members. He warns us that parliamentary systems tend to degenerate ; and that nothing can be more demoralizing than the spectacle of politicians filling their own pockets out of the People's treasury, of which they are the ostensible trustees and guardians. In all these matters, Mr. Sowden has guidance and warning for us in England ; and we thank him. Let us remind him, too, as well as ourselves, that much in his book recalls the splendid vision of Oceana which James Harrington has described in his sonorous folio, as well as the burning words in which Milton prays for the " Britannick Empire." It is our work to embody these visions of the seventeenth- century seers ; and we are inclined to think there is more inspiration, at present, in the younger members of the Empire than in the oldest. Our young men certainly see visions, and enact them. There is some danger lest our old men do nothing but dream dreams, and talk of them.
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