Canberra
r rVIE makers of the Australian Commonwealth did well when they decided to build a new Federal capital and to make it as beautiful a city as modern taste and skill could provide. The descriptions and the photo- graphs of Canberra have excited the interest and stirred the imagination of the whole English-speaking world, and have made us realize anew the superb confidence with which our Australian brethren envisage the future of their great country. The Duke and Duchess of York must, we arc sure, have felt well repaid for their long journey by the charm of the landscape no less than by the hearty enthusiasm of .the people. The Duke, in opening the Federal Parliament's first session in its new and stately house on Monday, spoke for us all in expressing the King's hope that time Commonwealth and its new capital may flourish.
The conquerors of old did not err when they celebrated their triumphs by building new cities as symbols of ;their power. The reunion of Spain under one Christian. dynasty.
typified by the establishment of the capital in- an enlarged and transformed Madrid.- Louis the :Fourteenth Celebrated the rise of the-French monarchy to its-highest pitch by. building his great palace-city-of Versailles. Men arc ruled by their imaginations not .less -than by force,. and look naturally for a visible- representation; in great buildings, of the State to which they owe fealty. The- principle applies with special force in a Federal State, *bere it is peCuliarly desirable to merge all the local- and provincial patriotisms in a common attachment to the Federation as a whole. It was' for this reason that the fathers of the American Republic decided. to set up a new capital in which all the citizens of the thirteen States. hitherto so much divided by conflicting interests, could take equal pride. In a similar way the statesmen of the united. provinces of Upper and Lower Canada asked Queen Victoria to make choice of a' new -capital for them and ratified in 1859 her selection of what was then the little town of Ottawa. So, too, Lord Morley decreed that the inauguration of new Methods in-the Government of India should be accompanied by the construction of the New Delhi. And now Austkalia, though she has Si% State capitals and two of them very great Cities; has Very properly laid out her new Federal capital which, for all her people and for the World,'will symbolize the Common- wealth.
The boldness and grandeur . of the Canberra wig"' must excite admiration, 'tinged with- a, little pardonable envy in -the minds of the 'millions of us who arc. monstrous of time- defects -of our old:and- crowded cities .which - have grown up haphazard; :For 'Canberra; like • Washillgtin has been -planned as -a :city of magnificent- distances, and-the- planners have: had nothing to consider: but the natural 'features of the site. - The-United States Gacyn- ment in 1790 gave Major L'Enfant sixty SqUare miles of wooded land on the Potomac and told him to lay out a capital. The Commonwealth,- outvying the Ameriecor served over nine hundred square miles in the 'Vass- anberra district, one of the Most beautiful in New oath Wales, and then held a competition, open to the -odd, in order to find a new L'Enfant in Mr. W. B. 'riffin of Chicago. The plans show that the new city, -ith its hills and its lake-front, and its radiating avenues, lay well compare hereafter with the famous American apital, though years _ must pass' before the celebrated iew from 'the Capitol Hill along the Mall to the Vashington Monument • can be- actually rivalled. Vashing,ton 'was not built in a day or a generation, nor -ill Canberra be.• But the Australian capital has been aperbly planned, and we 'may be sure that the -Federal 'ommission will not allow the plan to be marred. The ;overnment owns all the land and is leasing but not selling , so that the eccentricities of private . builders can be sitrollect. Whereas Washington was built in a _forest, .atibeira's • hills and vales have had to be planted with rees, .sa that it too may hereafter be a garden-city: loreover, it-has a far better climate than its American rototypc. . .
We arc well•aware that the scheme has had its critics. ea years. passed after the establishment of the Common- vealth in 1900 before the site was agreed upon; and the secretion of the preliminary works was delayed _ partly v the reluctance of the officials to leave Melbourne for a somewhat remote country place, and of course, partly by the War. It was said that Canberra was a needless extravagance and that Australia should wait until she had more people. Let us remember that Congress in 1790 had to face precisely the same objections. The United States then had barely five million inhabitants, and its finances were in a desperate condition. Australia to-day has over six million people, and is extremely rich and prosperous. Surely,. then,. it is fully justified in taking a long view and building a capital for the future, just as Washington and Hamilton did when the outlook for the United States was far more uncertain than it is for Australia now. That great island-continent might easily support ten or twenty times as many people as it has now. Every casual tourist is impressed by Vastness of Australia's empty spaces, and wonders how and when the over-crowded millions in our cities will discover that they can have homes of their own in that most favoured Dominion at the cost of a long sea voyage. The migratory movement is slow to acquire impetus, just as it was in the case of America. But sonic day it will gather force and proceed rapidly. Australians will then be proud of their forefathers, whose prescience had created in Canberra a capital worthy of a great nation and of the British Conimonwealth of Nations in which Australia plays so distinguished a part.
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