Part 15
It has been contended by very respectable authorities that there should be representation of Australia at Westminster. And it has been contended, just as ably, that there should be preferential trade. Both contentions can be strongly supported on a logical basis. It is unreasonable to expect educated and civilised people to submit to interference from bodies whom they have no share in calling into existence. It is unreasonable--and yet the submission takes place. No doubt there are advantages by way of compensation. But the broad, and self-evident, and theoretically objectionable circumstance is that the people who have left England to build up Greater Britain agree to be governed without representation on their part by the people who have stayed at home. Then, again, the fact has been rediscovered that competing tariffs make the commercial relationships of the United Kingdom and Australia increasingly difficult, and tend to drive the two countries further apart. The brilliant idea has occurred to one statesman that it is possible to unite Britain and Greater Britain more closely together, and to keep the foreign gentleman at a more respectful distance, by the simple process of manipulating the customs duties. From one point of view--in fact, from many points of view--he is quite correct. Preferential trade implies a bond of mutual self-interest. And there is no reasoner in the world who would not say unhesitatingly that nations and individuals are more likely to hang together when there exists a tie of self-interest between them.
Every man or woman possessed of rudimentary intelligence would say this. But he or she would almost certainly be in error in applying the abstract principle to the union between England and Australia. Let it be said again that the bond is not one that has grown strong by reason of political adjustments, or of commercial necessities. Its virtue consists in the fact that it has not been manufactured in the mills of diplomacy. The more it is tampered with, the weaker it becomes. It is made of impalpable materials--of such materials as memory, sentiment, self-abnegation, heredity, pride. To attempt to trim it in one place or to buttress it in another is to attempt to alter its character, and thus bring about its decay. The Imperialist, if he is a genuine Imperialist, requires only to be let alone. He should not be irritated and thwarted, but he does not need to be artificially fed and pampered. Whether he will last for many more generations is an open question. But for the present he must be considered as a survival of a splendid age--the age of unreason and of chivalry and of people wisely unwise.
XIV
THE LITTLE AUSTRALIAN
Masters of the Seven Seas, Oh, love and understand!
The little Australian, despite his name, is not a product of the soil. He is manufactured abroad. In the main, he is the outcome of English criticism and of English public opinion. He is the result of influences at work outside Australia. Very often he is born with an Imperialistic, or it may be a jingoistic, temperament. But circumstances tend to drive him in upon himself; to dwarf his incipient ideas of Imperial greatness and of pan-Britannic confederation; to limit his vision and his sympathies to the country in which he lives; to substitute for his racial affinities a narrower feeling of kinship and a more local point of view.
“Forgive them,” exclaimed the first Christian martyr, “lay not this sin to their charge.” The tragedy of Stephen, though terrible and heart-breaking, was yet a tragedy in purple. The victim was, and is, a sublime figure. It is comparatively easy to ask forgiveness for those who, in putting a period to your material existence, lift you at once to a pinnacle of undying fame. But it is not easy to forgive a series of acts, or even an attitude of mind, that is a continual source of belittlement, annoyance, and exasperation. This task is difficult, whether for the nation or for the individual. It may be unwillingly undertaken for a while, but in the long run it is usually abandoned.
There is much in England’s attitude to Australia that is calculated either to put a strain on sympathy, or to sow the seeds of active discontent. This attitude cannot be brought within the four corners of one generalisation. And anything said about it in a comprehensive way must be subject to numerous exceptions. It is necessary to be fair to the people in England who know Australia personally; to those who, without knowing it personally, have taken the trouble to learn about it; and to those rare souls who appear to have an instinctive, undefinable sympathy with all efforts and achievements of their countrymen either at home or beyond the seas. Yet the fact remains, after all the circumstances have been considered, and after the last exception has been allowed for, that the Englishman’s conscious or unconscious bearing towards the man who lives outside of England is the best reason and excuse for the growth of the product that has come to be dubbed “little Australian.”
In the political relationships of the two countries a certain amount of aloofness, a certain spirit of alienation, has always been noticeable. It is about half a century, or more, since a British Prime Minister was in the habit of making allusions to “these wretched Colonies.” This member of the privileged classes was candid enough to think aloud. Other statesmen have thought as much, but have said less. The House of Commons represents Great Britain and misrepresents Ireland. It has no wish to add to its aims of representation and misrepresentation the maladministration of the affairs of Australia. It does not desire closer union with that country. Colonial politicians are not wanted at Westminster. Downing Street does not love them, although it tolerates them, and on great occasions invites them to call. It sends them an occasional Governor-General, and a more frequent State Governor. It sometimes leaves the impression that the choice has been hastily made, and that the people responsible regarded the matter as of no great importance. Such an opinion, it may be said in passing, is the greatest mistake possible. An era of _perfect_ Vice-regal representatives might mean an era of universal Imperialism. Owing to the large amount of _indifference_ that prevails in British political circles, it has come about that a feeling of strangeness has been accentuated. Even the fervid Imperialism of a Chamberlain, if it abide alone, will not alter the trend of events.
But the views, or lack of views, of English statesmen towards Australia are far from being the chief cause of complaint in the younger country. Neither are they the source from which the little Australian most naturally springs. The stolid, unyielding, invincible prejudices of the English middle classes are a more important factor in the case. What does the man who has lived his life in the Midland Counties, or in Yorkshire, or in London, know about the Antipodes? What does he care to know? What is the use of telling him that at the Antipodes life may be as artistic, wit as polished, society as versatile, conventional codes as precise, manners as decorous, wealth as prodigal, intellect as keen, and the indefinable something known as _savoir faire_ as pronounced as in England? The Midlander would not believe it. And his wife would believe it still less. The Englishman should make it his business to learn something of the land that his countrymen have peopled. His geographical ignorance should be less complete, less appalling. One obstacle to lasting cohesion will be removed when the man who picks up his paper in Yorkshire or Warwickshire is aware that Victoria is not the Capital of New South Wales, and that people in Brisbane are debarred by distance from paying afternoon calls upon people in Geelong.
Another of the centrifugal forces at work is the attitude of the older nation towards the incipient art and literature of the new one. It is always a mistake to despise the day of small things. The error is one that is being constantly made by the English critic, the English reviewer, the English publisher, the English artist, and--to some extent--by the English reader. You will hear it said in London that the Colonies have been “overdone.” You need not believe it. They have never been anything but _under_done. They have always been fighting for recognition and very imperfectly obtaining it. The young men from Oxford and Cambridge have come to regard Fleet Street as their special domain. They have never been anxious to greet the outsider. They do not actually forbid intrusion, but they do not welcome it, and they do not wish it. The newspaper proprietors and editors are of the same way of thinking. A Colonial reputation to them means nothing, or less than nothing. The very fact that it is Colonial is enough to damn it. The word “Colonial” is unfortunate. Such a term, with such associations, might damn anything. Its use in this way is an injustice to the people to whom it is applied, a reflection on the manner of thinking of the people who apply it. It is a significant fact that the man who has done brilliantly in Melbourne or Sydney finds it harder to make a commencement in the metropolis _of his own race_ than does the man who has achieved nothing better than failure in Birmingham or York. English experience, good, bad, or indifferent, is understood to be better than Colonial success.
Still another factor calling for consideration is the tone of English society. In some respects this is the most important of all. Were it not for this, much could be forgiven. The Australian could overlook the majestic indifference of the Assembly that sits at Westminster; he could smile at the profound lack of topographical information possessed by the middle-class Briton in reference to Australia; and he could put up with the hard suspicion that greets his claims to a place in the literary or the artistic world. He could put up with these, and endeavour to overcome them. But he finds exasperating and well-nigh unendurable the slight movement of the shoulders, and the imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows, that, in certain exclusive circles, greet the mention of the word Australian. These indications of opinion are trifles. Society itself is the most futile and absurd of trifles. But the ridiculous prejudices of the most trifling individuals may have more influence upon international relationships than years of actual misgovernment or oceans of wordy vituperation. The Australian is aware of one or two things. He knows that although his erudition may be sound, his clothes faultless, and his hands as clean as his linen--though he may have much knowledge, much tact, much eloquence, much refinement--his acceptance among the people who can trace their descent for a couple of centuries will be achieved in spite of, and in no way because of, the land of his birth. He knows that in a particular circle, a circle that is largely the preserve of soulless aristocrats and commonplace millionaires and pushful Americans, there can be heard every now and then the exclamation, “Oh, Australians!” The delicate, almost imperceptible, irony of the tone in which these words are uttered may yet bring about the dismemberment of the Empire. No man cares to be thought ridiculous. No man relishes the suggestion--even the most faintly implied, ostensibly denied suggestion--that in the social sense he does not know how to live.
Mainly as the result of what is going on in England, partly because of other reasons, there is growing up in Australia a feeling of antagonism to constitutional ties as they now exist. I say “growing up,” although the shoots are at present hardly noticeable, and the vitality is taken from them by the vigour of other trees. But no one can afford to be blind to the signs of the times. In the Southern continent there is a strong and developing Labour party. Politically it is of the utmost importance. Where it does not actually choose Ministries and pass legislation it is the controlling or balancing force without which the Government in office could not carry on. This political Labour party is leavened with Republicanism. More than that, it is in spirit and essence Republican; that is to say, anti-Monarchical, and in a measure Separationist. So far, it is not actively disloyal. It has by no means shaken off old associations. The influences of race and of heredity are with it yet. The name and fame of England are more to it than the name and fame of France or Germany, or America, or Japan. Many of its members took part in the honourable folly of the Mafeking celebrations. But old associations become older each year; and even heredity is not in the long run proof against environment. A party that has to fight for its existence in Parliament, and to earn its own living outside of it, has not much time for sentiment. It comes down to bed-rock sooner than do other parties. All the patriotic ideals, all the associations of remoter kinship, all the far-off memories of battle fields, all the impalpable nothings that help to bind an Empire together, are not proof in the long run against the practical tendencies of the man who knows only his own surroundings--who is chiefly occupied in supplying material wants, and who wishes to be let alone.
Outside of political circles, and outside of the Labour party, there is a certain body of opinion that sees, or professes to see, indications of coming change. Causes of irritation are always arising. English newspaper criticism of Australia is one fruitful source of complaint. The returned Australian--the man who has battled hard for a living in London and has more or less failed--comes back with the conviction that racial sentiment is a vain and foolish thing. For him it is dead; its embers lie strewn about the pavement that runs past London newspaper offices, and are trampled under foot by the indifferent millions on their passage to and fro. The thoughtful and clever Australian, looking to the prevailing signs of the times, looking to the attitude of Downing Street, of Fleet Street, and of Belgravia, begins to pin his faith to a future that is not the future of the old world, but of the new.
For the present, old ties, old institutions, old associations are in the ascendant. The continent is owned, and to some extent governed, by men of peregrinating habits; by men to whom the Red Sea is as familiar as Collins Street; by men to whom the journey from Tilbury to Adelaide is no more formidable, and not much more unusual, than a cab-drive from the Marble Arch to London Bridge. These people, though they live in the Southern Hemisphere, have most of their financial, commercial, and social interests in the world’s metropolis. These people own most of the property and possess a preponderating, though a diminishing, share in the Government of the new country. Assisting them, and co-operating with them, is the racial and Imperialistic sentiment of the Australian middle classes. But the other type of individual--the man who believes that formulas have no hold over him, and who declares that he “may not call a throned puppet Lord”--is making himself felt more as a silent than as an eloquent factor in the life of the people. This is the type that is known as “little Australian.” On A.N.A. platforms, in suburban debating societies, at Trades’ Hall councils, and at Yarra Bank gatherings, it succeeds in making its aspirations heard. In social circles, in the region of practical politics, it is dumb and futile. But it is ambitious, and expects to grow.
For many reasons one might sympathise with the little Australian, and even feel some sorrow for him. He has so few materials with which to build. He has no national flag, no history, no bead-roll of fame, no justification for enthusiasm of any kind. He wishes to feel, and to spread around him, an atmosphere of enthusiasm for the land in which he was born. He wishes to see the embers removed from England, and relighted in Australia. But how is the thing to be done? National sentiment is largely the product of memories. And the Australian, as an Australian, has no memories worthy of the name. If he looks back a century--and he can look back no further--he finds merely the trail of the unattractive aboriginal, of the nomadic gold digger, and of that other man who, like Barrington, left his country for his country’s good. Hamlet declares that you cannot feed capons, that is to say, young cocks, on air; and you can hardly nourish the flame of patriotic sentiment on recollections such as these. So it is that in Australia the shrine of the local patriot is difficult to tend. The altar has not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation should be. A large expanse of territory, some trees, a whitey-grey or dull green landscape, a number of new buildings, a hard blue sky, a succession of fine days, and alternating periods of drought--these must be the outward and visible symbols, in default of others more histrionic and less tangible, on which the sentiment of the nation has to feed. It is no wonder that the result is a slow and fluctuating and uncertain growth.
But the little Australian lives on, and believes that time will have its revenges. He believes that each year as it passes is fighting for him. He knows that he is not strong enough to found a party that will carry any weight in the Government of the country. He is aware, also, that he can get no audience to listen to the gospel that is dearest to him, elsewhere than by the banks of rivers, at the less reputable street corners, or in the open spaces of a city domain. He recognises that the earth belongs to those who think very differently from himself. He has no hope of achieving a _tour de force_. But he is by no means idle. He does what he can. His voice is raised against all proposals that seem to have an old-world origin, or to be actuated by sympathy with old-world forms of Government. Thus he is an active opponent of the agreement under which Australia pays a naval subsidy of £200,000 to Great Britain. He is not candid enough to say what he really thinks--that he desires his country to be quite independent of the parent nation. But he talks, with an amusing sophistry that deceives no one, of the advantages that would accrue to the people of England if Australia possessed a navy of her own. Besides objecting to the naval subsidy he objects to State Governors, to all appeals from his part of the world to the Privy Council, to contingents such as those that went to South Africa, to the right of veto upon colonial legislation. All these are principles or practices that can be protested against without openly enlisting under the Separationist flag. The little Australian is not sure that the time is ripe for objecting to an English Governor-General, or to the appearance of the head of the Sovereign on the coins of the realm. But where there is a chance of doing something, he does it; where there is a head unprotected, he hits it as hard as he can.
What is the future to be? No one knows, least of all the little Australian. Sometimes he sees visions, sometimes he dreams dreams. But he lacks constructive ability, and he is wanting in definite aim. His antecedents are of a heterogeneous character. It may be that he is of Irish descent, and that memories of Drogheda and Vinegar Hill are running in his blood. Perhaps he has a Gaelic strain and refuses, as some Scotchmen still refuse, to forego the hereditary instinct which meant war to the knife against the race across the Border. Or possibly he is a German for whom loyalty to Great Britain has no meaning; or possibly an Italian, the child of a country that is always talking about liberty, but has for gotten how to use it. Perhaps he is an Englishman who for adequate personal reasons has a vendetta against his fathers’ country, and everything connected with it. There are a number of local causes, a number of nationalities, a number of racial prejudices helping to build up the little Australian. But for the present the Imperialists of the continent can afford to smile at him. They know that his day is not yet.
INDEX
A
Achilles, 122
Actors, 138-141
Actress, Young American, 147
Adams, Francis, 113
Adelaide, 53, 306
_Adonais_, 114
Adonis, 260
Æstheticism, 168
Aetius, 37
Afghanistan, 284
Agamemnon, 209
_Age_, 55-58
Aide-de-camp, Government House, 28, 34
Amaryllis, 110
America, 142, 144, 305
Amurath, 81
Aphroditë, 190
_A Pretty Woman_, 232
Araluen, 92
_Argus_, 55, 56, 66, 93
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 169
_As long as any May_, 249
Astoria, 145
_Atalanta in Calydon_, 39
_At Dawn and Dusk_, 227, 234
_At the Opera_, 232
Attila, 37
Aurelius, Marcus, 260
_Australasian_, 128
A.N.A., 307
Australian men, 1-22, 199-203
---- society, 23-44
---- women, 32, 160-180, 251
Authors, dramatic, 141
_Autumn Song_, 124
Azores, 115
B
_Bab Ballads_, 148
Back-blocks, 215
Badajos, 283
_Ballad of Dreamland_, 123
Barrère, 1
Barrington, 308
Barton, Sir E., 89, 252-258
Bayard, 133
Beaconsfield, 216
Beau Brummell, 260
Beersheba, 112
Belgravia, 306
_Belle of New York_, 146
Bent, Thomas, 78
Birth-rate, 36, 37
Bismarck, 1
Bjornsten, 146
_Blanchelys_, 233, 234
Blue Mountains, 209
Boers, 283
Botany Bay, 57, 285
Brighton (Melb.), 113
Brisbane, 53, 153, 158, 300
Brisëis, 122
Browning, 1, 68, 74, 91
Bryne, Desmond, 113
Buddhists, 3, 169
_Bulletin_, 103, 108, 109, 205
Bunthorne, 124
Burke, Edmund, 9
---- Street, 195
Burney, Miss, 124
Byron, 133, 259
C
Cæsar, Julius, 280
Cambridge, 171, 301
_Camille_, 150
Carlton, 265
Carlyle, 203
Cecil Family, 284
Cereals, 209
Chamberlain, Joseph, 299
Charters Towers, 158
Chateaubriand, 1
Circë, 183
Circular Quay, 142, 162, 207
Cochin China, 284
Collins St. (Melb.), 195, 207, 291, 306
“Colonial,” 301
Colonial Secretary, 16, 191, 192
Commonwealth, 36, 56, 259
Como, Lake, 215
Condorcet, 15
Confucius, 3
Contingent, S. A., 203, 310
Cowper, 277
Cricket, 155, 156
Cromwell, 1
Cronje, General, 291
Crosland, Henry, 24, 161, 162, 271
_Cui Bono_, 127
Cup Day, 199
Curate, the Anglican, 169
Cytherea, 190
D
_Daily Telegraph_ (Sydney), 55-58
Daley, Victor, 23, 92, 94, 225-236
Danton, 267
Darling Downs, 208
Darling Harbour, 182
Darlinghurst, 142
Deakin, Alfred, 89, 258-264
De Brett, 26
Demosthenes, 260
_Deus ex machina_, 168
Dibbs, Sir George, 78
_Dolores_, 150
_Doubtful Dreams_, 127, 130
Downing Street, 288, 299, 306
_Dreams in Flower_, 246, 247
Dress, love of, 174
Drogheda, 311
Dumas, 146
Dumplings, 158
E
Edward, the Confessor, 257
Egypt, 280
Egyptology, 172
_Elegy_, Gray’s, 269
Eliot, George, 23, 24
English middle classes, 300
---- newspapers, 111, 143, 145, 301, 305
---- society, 24, 25, 302
Epicurus, 1
Epsom, 156
Established Church, 187
_Euphues_, 123
Evans, Essex, 94
Expediency, 287
F
_Faces in the Street_, 242
Federation, 256, 264, 266
Flinders Lane, 162
Flippant style, 107
Forests, Australian, 208
_Fra Lippo Lippi_, 91
Free Trade, 266, 275
_From the Wreck_, 128
G
Gambling, 11, 34, 153, 156
Gamins, 14
Geelong, 300
Germany, 19, 305
_Girl, The Country_, 224
Gissing, George, 214
Godwin, William, 15
Golden Age, 190
Goose-step, 14
Gordon, Adam L., 113-136
Gorky, 214
Government House, 28, 30, 34, 47, 67
----, N.S.W., 37
Gracchus, Caius, 260
Graduates, lady, 173
Groperism, 54
Guildhall, 254
H
Hackett, Dr, 54
_Hamlet_, 252, 308
Hardy, Thomas, 209
Harland, Henry, 177
Harte, Bret, 96
Heine, 1
_Henry V._, 105
Holt, Bland, 142
Hooligans, 14
Horace, 168, 269
Hospitality, 5
_How we beat the Favourite_, 128, 130
Humorous style, 106, 217
I
Ibsen, 145, 146
Icarus, 231
Illegitimacy, 10
Illiteracy, 97
Immigration Restriction Act, 3
Immorality, 17
Imperial Defence, 289, 310
Imperialist, 277-295
I.O.G.T., 191
I.O.R., 191