AUSTRALIA AND ASIA A NEW OUTLOOK

Commonwealth and Foreign

By C. F. ANDREWS

DURING a recent journey round the world, I went to India by the Panama route, visiting the Fiji Islands, New Zealand and Australia. The journey brought with it some new and unex- pected conclusions.

New Zealand represents, in a delightful manner, the home country over again. But Australia has an atmosphere of its own. In spite of its huge modem cities there are vast, open spaces, rainless deserts, and burning skies. In many ways it forms an integral part of the Far East. The longitude of Fre- mantle, in Western Australia, is the same as that of Hong-kong, and a line drawn north from Adelaide, in South Australia, intersects Japan. Queensland was at one time connected with Asia by an almost complete land-bridge, passing through what are now called the Dutch East Indies.

The climatic difference between South and North Australia is immense. Melbourne has a really cold winter : Brisbane is on the border of the tropics. Further North, the heat is like that of Madras. While, in the old pioneer days, very little value was attached to the northern shores of Australia facing Asia, today they have assumed an altogether new impor- tance. The greatest problem which now confronts Australia is their scanty population. The subject is far too complicated for discussion in this article, but it clamours for some solution.

The aeroplane has done most of all, in recent years, to develop the interior of the continent. When travelling, I have seen in public places a singularly interesting map, marking out the different air-routes whereby medical help can be obtained at out-of-the-way stations. It reveals at a glance how Australia has suddenly become air-minded, and also how the sparsely- inhabited territory has been opened up.

The oceans which surround Australia are beginning to be traversed by air in a similar manner. The Pacific Ocean, with its coral islands dotted everywhere about, lends itself to air-flight far more easily than the Atlantic. The Indian Ocean offers an easy crossing from Port Darwin to the Dutch East Indies. Tasmania and New Zealand are also coming into closer touch with Australia across the intervening seas. The West Coast of the United States will soon be only three days distant from Brisbane and Sydney.

From the political standpoint, Asia has drawn nearer to Australia. Statesmen have watched with anxiety the south- ward trend of Japan. They are looking out towards India and wondering whether that country, within the same Common- wealth, can offer any moral and material support in case of ;lapanese aggression. As I passed on from one University to another, lecturing on India whenever an opportunity occurred, I was struck by the eagerness with which my words were heard. Questions followed each lecture as to India's attitude towards Japan. What could be done in the cause of peace to forestall the dangers of war ? Could a balance of power be reached in the Far East ?

As might be expected, the Institute of International Affairs in Sydney and Melbourne had already begun to study, in detail, the economic and cultural relations between Australia and the East. A book has recently been published on the subject. Now, surely, is the time—this is the book's thesis—to cultivate friendship. That unfortunate phrase, " White Australia," still stands in the way and is badly in need of revision. It ought to be pointed out by those in authority that the main object aimed at is economic, and not racial. Since the phrase has been regarded as insulting it should be withdrawn and some purely economic title substituted for it. As a simple matter of fact, the Indians who are domiciled in Australia are treated as equal citizens ; there is no colour bar at all. When I have spoken and written about this in India, it has often removed a genuine misunderstanding.

A political mission from Australia to India is long overdue. For there are many important avenues already open whereby the two countries might be brought closer together. To give one example only, there is no barrier even today (in spite of exclusion laws) against the entrance of Indian students into the Austral an Universities, wherein the standards of the practical sciences are very high. The only barrier is the desperate poverty of the Indian student himself. Would it not be possible for Australia to offer bursaries which might enable some a xhe best Indian students, who come from the villages, to finish their

medical or scientific courses in Australia ? Some of the strongest ties which bind modern China to the United States have been formed by such cultural friendships. If, instead of spending millions of pounds sterling on battleships, only a small portion were used in offering bursaries to Eastern students and welcom- ing them into the Australian Universities, the result might be incomparably great.

The closer relationship between India and Australia would not only remove misunderstanding and promote friendship : it would also speed up India's freedom. For there is a growing impatience manifest in Australia among thinking men and women because of the traditional slowness with which Whitehall

has been relinquishing its own responsibility in India. In the struggle for Indian freedom Australia would certainly be in favour of a more progressive policy being adopted by Great Britain.

In another direction, it was of the deepest interest to me personally, as an educationist, to watch in Australia the growth of common ideas, which will link up India far more closely with the southern continent in the near future. For Australia is very rapidly leaving behind the educational tutelage of Britain and launching out on a career of her own. Her sunny, out-of-door climate needs a different mode of school life from that prevailing in the cold, dark North of Europe, where classes must be held indoors for the greater part of the year. Sunshine, open air, cloudless skies, have their own lessons to teach. Life at school has ample, sunny leisure both in Australia and India. Lessons can never be made as strenuously exacting as they are in England. " Look at those sun-birds, bathing themselves in the sun," said an Englishman to me, as we watched some young Australian children reclining on the grass, reading their lesson books. It was easy to notice the difference that had begun to mark off an Australian education from that of England. This has brought the East nearer than it was before ; because this sunny leisure is a part of the background of the East.

As one striking evidence of a growing cultural kinship between India and Australia, I noticed with great pleasure how Tagore himself is admired and loved in every part of Australia, especially among those who are being trained for the teaching profession. When I was asked to speak in the Teachers' Training Colleges, by far the most popular subject was Tagore's School, at Santiniketan. Furthermore, whenever I broadcast about India, I found it most helpful to read some of his prose poems, and I was certain to receive later on, by post/some touching letters from those who were far away in the Australian " bush," telling me how much they had enjoyed "listening-in" to what I had recited. Their evident pleasure in coming into touch with an Indian mystical poet, such as Tagore, represents one side of the new cultural approach of Australia towards Asia.

There is a certain amount of disillusionment about Europe. In the first place, as I have already pointed cut, the climate is beginning to tell, especially in the North, and the strange unlikeness of semi-tropical habits of daily life is tending to produce a change of human character. Secondly, outside the great cities of Australia, there is none of that crowded rush, with its worship of speed, which has become almost normal in Givat Britain. For in spite of the coming of the aeroplane, speed does not dominate the whole of life in the Southern Hemisphere. Human existence is more leisurely and less artificial. There is a silence in the vast spaces of Australia which Modern Europe has lost.

That links Australia with the East. So, too, does the open-air life in the sun throughout the greater part of the year. It acts upon the pores of the skin and tempers the blood. No one can escape it. In that Australian " bush," the East is winning its victory over the West all the year round. They call it the " back of the Beyond," the " Never Never Land," where there is neither a road, nor a track, and silence reigns profound. No habitation of man is to be seen. Only the vast sky stretches overhead and the lowly earth beneath. It is that Australia which is continually claiming kinship with India and the East.