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Title: The risen sun : impressions in New Zealand and Australia
Author: Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie)
Published: Sheed and Ward, London, England, 1929
THE RISEN SUN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR :
THE VOCATION OF ALOYSIUS GONZAOA CHRIST IS KING THE KINGDOM AND THE WORLD THE WOUNDED WORLD THE MIND OF THE MISSAL TRAVELLER'S PRAYERS THE CREATIVE WORDS OF CHRIST
THE RISEN SUN
IMPRESSIONS IN NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA
C. C. MARTINDALE, SJ.
LONDON
SHEED AND WARD
31 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
First Printed August , 1929 Second Impression September, 1929
CONTENTS
Itinerarium vii
Foreword to the Preface 9
Preface to the Prologue 13
Prologue to the Introduction—Sea and Sea-men 19
The Introduction 41
Ao- Tea-Roa —Wellington and 'St. Pat's'; Flock House; towards Taupo; the princely race of Maoris; Mill Hill heroism; cook your fish in the river where you catch it...; hot headers into ice-bound pools; the Bouncing Boulder, the mud volcanoes; the steaming villages; the pre-primeval forest; Interlude; The kindness and the courtesy of Auckland and its Bishop, and goodbye to a land so soon grown dear to me.
The Land of the Risen Sun 95
i. Sydney: Adorable autocracy of Lewisham; the Completion of St. Mary's; the Papal Legate and the Eucharistic Congress; a Catholic tour through Sydney, from St. Patrick's-by-the-Quay, via convents, schools, and many a reunion ; the Sisters of St. Joseph; Mary Ward ubiquitous; Sydney University. Is Catholicism the Religion of the Scullery? (I hope so; but that, too, of the remainder of God's Palace.) St. John's; Sancta Sophia. Goodbye from an aeroplane.
ii. Brisbane: Silver-grey and fiery-rose; its audacious architects; an 'Australian art'?; its Archbishop and the Foundation of its Cathedral; the Teaching Brothers and their colossal task — 'Do Catholics Grow Up?'; the problem of Secondary Educa-
tion; Nudgee. Interlude. To the Fringe of the Skirts of the Bush; Dalby; almost the happiest week-end...; 'Australia for Australians!'; and Australians for Australia?
iii. Melbourne: More friends, new and old; University Sunday; a Library and its apostolate; a Retreat at Gracedale; Women's Work; the Three Essentials —Book, Job, Retreat; the Mercy of Malvern...; a Diggers' Dinner; the Stadium and the Race-cource.
V
Page
CONTENTS
vi
Page
iv. Adelaide: Its wreath of flowers; its genial Press; How sanctify your Sunday?; Prisons and our work there; the Young Men’s Society, and an ex-soldiers’ club; Sunshine and Sanity; Interlude. Sevenhills and Clare; a Vergilian world and the problem of wheat and vine.
v. Perth: Another interlude. The trans-continental —Secret Waters; Mysterious Beasts; the Black Man’s soul —‘so very like our own.’ The Crown of Hospitality; the Bushies' School; industrial schooling (Clontarf); Castledare; the Future of the Land (Mullewa); a day in Paradise; the splendid Night of Stars.
Epilogue 246
Tear-salt; sea-dreams; Australia and Englishmen; the World’s work, and the To and Fro of Peoples; Ceylon; Empire and Imperialism; Nation and Nationalism; Without Differences, no Harmony; Without Harmony, no Union —ourselves, Grace, the Church, Christ, the Trinity. Aden, Port Sudan, and Egypt; Mass between Egypt and Mount Sinai; the Catholic Family; the Chosen Folk; the Pagans; Melchisedek and Abraham and Christ. The Pyramids, Crete, Asia and Italy; the huddle of Time and Spaces. Marseilles; Our Lady of the Guard and the Reds ; the Eucharist— ‘ charity, peace, unity’, and the war of classes and of nations; the Son of God and Mary; ‘In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Cultured nor Barbarian, nay, nor male nor female—you are all one thing in Christ Jesus’. Tilbury, and Goodbye to the Mongolia , but not altogether.
Post-Script 286
To the Diggers for whom this book was written, as the Foreword to the Preface presumably has made clear.
vii
ITINERARIUM
Here I am, begging that the great knowledge,
The enduring effort, may come to me—
The supreme and complete knowledge,
Such as arc possessed by Thee, O the All-Parent,
Foundation of the waters of life,
That they may come to Thy son, O Heaven-Exalted ! . . .
Now let me enter into Thy spirit . . .
Here am I, a traveller over lands,
A voyager over the Ocean,
To Ao-Tea-Roa.*
Here am I, directing my supplication—
Direct Thy course and face this son !
Now do I recite my lay,
For the direction is clearly set
On the course to the distant land,
To Ao-Tea-Roa.
Here I uplift my voice in prayer . . .
Here launch I my canoe ;
Now urge I upwards my lay !
Emerge, emerge, thy bow on high,
Emerge above the Ocean horizon,
Over the Ocean's breaking billow,
That thou mayest reach to the desired land
In the far distance —to Ao-Tea-Roa.
*Ao-Tea-Roa, the long bright cloud, or strand : the native name for New Zealand.
viii
ITINERARIUM
For thou art a consecrated canoe !
Emerge ! be buoyant thy great keel
Above the waters of Queen Ocean I
Emerge, uplift thy bow above
With a great and long uplifting,
As did the ancients, a powerful uplifting . . .
Let her rest upon the sea like the great albatross.
Come to our help I
With a lasting, shaking pull, straight away,
To the desired land !
From a Maori karakia : see Memoirs of the Polynesian Soc, Lore of Whare-wananga : part ii. S. Percy Smith : 1915-
FOREWORD TO THE PREFACE
My Dear Diggers,
I thought, first, that I would put down the names of all of you whom I met whether in England or in Australia, for I have the list. But it would be too much of a list and occupy several pages. Then I thought I would put your initials ; but a page-full of initials would look so very odd —besides, some would coincide, and you wouldn’t be sure whom I was meaning. Then I wondered whether a few could act representatively ; but that might have looked as if I forget the rest, which I don’t. In short, it seemed best to say : ‘ Diggers ’, by which title it was always safe to call you, long ago, before I knew your personal names. Enough to say that from Maryborough, north of Brisbane, right round to the West, you have reappeared. I promise you, that great as was the fascination of my New Zealand trip, and the religious inspiration of the Eucharistic Congress, and intensely interesting as has been each part of these last few months, what stands out in my memory as the perfect human happiness was seeing you once more. I began by saying : ‘ Look how you can pick up a friendship just where you laid it down ten years ago !’ ; then, it struck me how inadequate and even silly that was : for which of us ‘ laid it down ’ ? Neither you nor I. Nor were things just as they had been ten years ago. For it is one thing to make friends, and another to remain friends ; and ten years, if friendship survives them, don’t merely embalm it like a mummy, but intensify it. For ten years are no small test. If they have preserved a thing, they have increased it. Suppose we don’t meet again on the surface of this old globe ? Experience has been a sort of symbol. It will not be just the soul that survives into the * next ’ world, but
14
15
THE RISEN SUN
the soul with all its memories and affections, and God has given His loving little hint that the next chapter of our association will be still better, as the second has proved better than the first. That destined association is already forming itself. I can’t but mention the names : Gilchrist; Mick Tevlin ; Carson ; Harold Conrad ; Flett —I have special reasons for remembering these, and looking forward to re-meeting them. We won’t enter into a sort of rivalry in gratitude ; anyway, I am very grateful to you, and always shall be, and that’s enough about that part.
I must now do a bit of the feeblest of all things—self-defence. In Australia, a certain subject was constantly spoken about to me, but in very different keys. Some people said ; ‘ I suppose you’ll write a book about us now. Everyone who spends two days here does.’ ‘Theyneedn’t have spent that much’, others added : ‘ It’s written before ever they’ve left England.’ Others said : ‘ I’m afraid you’ll write a book about us. Do be kind ! We’re very sensitive.’ Others have said, with varying degrees of conviction, that they hoped I would write a book upon Australia. When you come to think of it, it’s all very well for people to up and smite you for expressing your ideas about Australia in a book, because they continually ask you to do so in conversation. What conversation does not begin with : ‘ Well, what d’you think about Australia ? ’ As if I’d have the nerve to answer ! How can I tell what I ‘ think ’ ? Have I the right to opinions ? What do I know about finance ? about politics ? about non-city-life in Australia ? Nothing whatsoever about the first two — I can’t so much as do sums ; and I hate politics anyway : and of the third, little save what I’ve read in books, and in your own letters to me. ‘ Impressions ’ would be better than opinions. But I haven’t really had even impressions of ‘ Australia ’, for most of it I’ve never seen. One Adelaide newspaper charmingly asked me to write Impressions of Australians ; but really, that would seem to me so very barefaced ! Well, then, ‘ Impressions IN Australia ’ ? Yes. I can’t deny I’ve been in Australia nor that I’ve had impressions while in it. Suppose then this
FOREWORD TO THE PREFACE
16
book contains rather a lot of ‘ I you must regard that as a paradoxical fruit of Modesty. If I say ‘ I’, it is because I would not venture to say ‘ you A lot of things ran through my head while so many things streamed in front of my eyes ; I make no one responsible for them—if they were silly, that was not your fault, but altogether mine.
‘ But anyway, why make a book of them ? Why write ? Why print ? Why publish ? ’ Now that is an awful question. Why indeed ? The old Roman poet talked about the pestilent itch to write. Is it just that ? Can’t keep one’s fingers off a type-machine ? No, no, no. I think I feel this book to be just a rather long letter to you. That’s it. A letter. I think you will understand it. You have always been very understanding men and still are so. ‘ But then why not print it for private circulation among your personal acquaintances ? ’ Oh, my dear sirs, you are perfectly right. I am not logical, I fear. Of course I half hope that others will like what I say, and even use it ! But please don’t chivy me about ‘ why ’ I write these pages, which I am beginning to funk the prospect of. I have had a happy time ; and an amusing and an interesting and a stimulating time. I want to say so. So there ! All I ask is, that you will believe I offer no oracles nor prophecies nor verdicts. Just ‘ impressions in Australia ’, experienced by a visitor who always felt at home, and is grateful for it, not least to men who had never made him feel anything but affectionate, even in their cussedest hours (if any).
Your old friend,
C. C. Martindale,
London : Feb., 1929.
13
PREFACE TO THE PROLOGUE
Forty and more crowd at the door ,
Quiet and friendly, they've been here before.
Less of laughter and lips more stern.
Leave is up. It's time to return . . .
You know the game, and you play it well.
Gravely you say, as you take up your pack,
' / will come again, if ever I'm back.'
Soldiers’ Hut ; A. Trotter.
When it became clear, during the war, that my application to serve as chaplain was to be ineffective, life, I don’t deny, became exceedingly bitter. I knew the correct considerations, but they sweetened nothing at all. In ’l7, I was sent to Oxford. I went without any special expectations. But Fr. Plater was living at Campion Hall there, and that man of varied and generous activity could not but have turned his mind to the army-world that had replaced the scholarly one. The vast florid building called the Examination Schools had become the Base of the 3rd Southern General Hospital ; Somerville College was an Officers’ hospital and from the rooms over the gate to the buildings on the far side of the lawn it was crammed. The Town Hall, both the gorgeous upper room where the organ is, and the vault-like lower one used now for heaven knows what, became a malaria hospital and certainly strong doses of bitter quinine are needed as corrective for an architecture which the City Fathers thought, I suppose, might rival the examination schools. I envied the men who were stowed in the plain Masonic Hall, with its entry into New College gardens where the summers at least were spent in beauty ; and even those in part of University College, though how they breathed, three or four in some
19
THE RISEN SUN
undergraduate’s room, who can tell ? Out up the Cowley Road the workhouse became another enormous hospital ; and gradually a litde place away up Headington grew into the great orthopaedic hospital of to-day. A few men overflowed into the normal city-hospital. Fr. Plater told me to visit the officers ; gradually the others fell to my share, even the Base Hospital, when Fr. Plater was away. In these, a good many Australians were to be discovered, though it wasn’t there that I mostly met them, at least till the great influenza epidemic, when the strongest went down first. Still, service as hospitals was the crown of the existence of those buildings : students must, I know, be examined somewhere ; civic potentates must fulfil their functions somewhere, and the poor be shoved away into something or other. But when Mass was said in that little room at the back of the Schools, and in the room to the right of the head of the stairs in the Town Hall, and in the little room to the left of the front door in Somerville, and in a sort of surgical gym. at Cowley, and often, till long after the war, at Headington ; and when the Blessed Sacrament was carried from one suffering lad to another, and confessions were heard and men passed thence into their eternity—l repeat, those buildings were full of Christ and won a crown of which those who use them are perforce, I suppose, henceforward unaware.
There was also, at Port Meadow, an aerodrome, and round about Oxford some more ; and from time to time an Australian turned up there. And an enormous camp at Didcot; but the non-Britishers there were, after a while, on the whole Americans. Several of the Oxford colleges housed young fellows part-way through their Air Force training ; but they were there for six weeks only, and their groups did not coincide in arrival or departure, and their time off was tragically short, so it was not easy to see much of them ; and, again, there were but few Australians among them.
Where my experience of the Diggers really began, was a little club in the Turl, to which hospital-cases came till 4.30, and, after that, cadets. If they overlapped, you hadn’t to
PREFACE TO THE PROLOGUE
20
say too much about it, because cadets, being half-way to officerhood, and the poor private soldier or N.C.0., hadn't got to talk to one another. The blue flannel suit and the red tie couldn't fuse with the khaki tie and the White Band of the Blameless Life. Oh, quite right, I know ; and we kept the rules in the sense in which we were meant to keep them ! The cadets, I needn't say, were lads or men training to be officers. Some were fresh from school ; others were singularly tough exN.C.O.'s. The Australians among them were not lads fresh from school, we will acknowledge. Well, it became my job to hunt out the Catholics in each new draft of cadets, whose stay in Oxford became longer and longer as the War developed its new needs, and, among other things, to see that they knew about the Club. And also about our little Campion Hall. I like to remember that they came to the latter at all hours ; and to the Club especially at tea-time, and to its dances on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights. For a moment, it looked as though those Sunday dances would raise a sacred outcry in the city : but, no ; common sense prevailed, and the long empty hours of Sunday nights were very innocently spent. Queer, that I found myself re-using almost those same old arguments ten years later in the South Australian capital !
It was a quaint little Club. You entered through a narrow doorway with a grille and a sign stating, most improbably, that it was St. Enid's Hall, or something no less refrigerating. You groped your way through a tiny courtyard adorned with dampish ferns and climbed a sinister staircase, feeling quite sure you'd got into the wrong house altogether. But, no, at the top you entered a. committee room, billiard room, sitting-out room —what you will. Dim photographs or olcos —Wellington meets Blucher, Death of Nelson —what not, peered at you and provoked (no doubt) thoughts of high patriotism. . . . Turn to your left, up a step between two curtains, and you are in the dancingroom ; and to its left again through two openings, on each side of the fireplace, another smaller room where most untiring ladies dispensed lemonade, tea, and very unsugared cakes. . . .
21
THE RISEN SUN
In the Life of Fr. Plater I tried to say a little more about that Club ; enough here to recall that in it I made many of my best acquaintances ; that at times it was an all-but Australian and New Zealand club ; and that between whiles one would issue forth to take the air with a friend and perhaps say things that the noise and merriment of even that best of clubs might have interfered with. Curious, how easy it was to find the chance of speaking of desired and maybe distant things, like sacraments, while sitting and watching dances and getting tunes into one’s head that have never quite got out of it. But the conversations did not finish in the Club. Nor, I may say, have I entered that hall again since the cadets evacuated Oxford and the hospitals were closed. Why should I ? It had done its work.
Almost immediately I reached Oxford, Fr. Plater fired me off to give retreats —tiny ones, I confess ; I was perfectly inexperienced. Then we thought of cadets’ retreats ; in a small book, Retreats for Soldiers , Fr. Plater explained what retreats were, and I added a page or two about those for cadets especially. The first year we used to start off by motor-lorry for Begbroke Place, seven miles out of Oxford, and though it is now a boys’ school, I can never pass it without seeing it as it used to be, when the Blessed Sacrament had been fetched in procession from the Servile church nearby, and the house became a shrine. The next year we could not get that house, so we used Campion Hall, though the loss of the wide fields was sad. But the retreats went as happily as ever. Each was photographed, and ten years later those photos travelled with me, from their places on my wall, to your continent where I found scores of other prints of them still. Well, then, not quite all my friends, evidently, made those retreats ; but there is something special in a friendship which rooted itself in that experience. So at least I’ve felt it. The last barriers fall when you meet so thoroughly in God’s companionship.
And can I forget that on the first Anzac Day, when (to your adjutant’s amazement) you came to Mass at 7.30 in Campion Hall, there were present those two ladies from Orange (I fear
PREFACE TO THE PROLOGUE
22
they figure in ‘ Jock' as Mrs. Talbot and Miss Belton), whose faces were the first I was to recognise upon the quay when I landed so many years afterwards, at Sydney ?
Well, Armistice had come, and in course of time men sailed for home, and who could grudge it them ? But for a long while the streets seemed empty when there were no more slouched hats with up-tumed edge or the pointed New Zealand ones to be seen. Oxford is still there—l suppose most people would say that the real Oxford has come back. The Thames flows between its willows and Magdalen tower reflects itself in the water, and the Parks are full of football, and New College, Kcble, Hertford, Balliol, St. John’s, Worcester and Wadham are populated with their due denizens, but not with the IVth or Vlth battalions of the 0.C.8. Yet I cannot twist the perspective altogether so as to see only the present or only the past. Hence I was glad to get away. It was the past that I loved best, after all. Men used to say, when one saw them off on that long disheartening platform, ‘ Come and see us in Aussie ’. Well, one smiled palely and promised that ‘if possible’. . . . The years slipped by ; letters came and went, sometimes fewer, sometimes more. One heard of happy reunions, happy marriages, and the birth of children : such a new life seemed to have shaped itself that one half felt that it would be better not to go, even if the chance should come. The thing mightn’t fit together any more. But in any case, I was never a free man in the sense of being able to ask to go to Australia without very cogent reason. Suddenly the Eucharistic Congress was mentioned. Anxious ears pricked up. The Australian mail became laden with invitations. So did the New Zealand one. And, abruptly, the thing was settled. . . . And June 8, 1928, arrived.
E
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
I bid fartwell to those mountains there :
I bid farewell to those promontories there
I bid farewell to my home and lands — Be it so.
I am about to board the Wawara-a-kura,
And in her to climb the great rolling waves,
The great surging white-crested waves,
The great waves, just combing, of the deep sea,
The great spread-out waves, spread out to the shore ;
Be it so.
And then I shall cross over to Hukurangi .
Maori karakia *
Even the Prologue had its own little Preface. That veteran Queenslander and Rivcrview old-boy, Dr. Fred Page, who must surely have played host to his compatriots half the world over, bethought him of a good-bye, or rather a good-speed, dinner. The room was decorated with Rivcrview white and blue, and I confess I hadn’t worn a button-hole since the Harrow and Eton matches long ago, when cornflowers and tuberoses were inevitable. This one I kept, and carried it to Australia with me, and handed it over as a tribute. The dinner was cheery. A Rhodes scholar came from Oxford. Frank Sheed, an Australian who has done so much for Catholic England, and whom I had vainly implored to come with me to Australia, and two New Zealanders were there. I was amazed to find how many Catholic Australian doctors were in London, and I began to hope that our Doctors’ Guild might be strengthened by the
*Sce Memoirs of the Polynesian Society, vol. i ; 1910 ; S. Percy Smith. I can’t help it if I sailed by a ship called Rotorua and not by the Wawara-a-kura canoe ; anyway Hukurangi was a name for the north island of New Zealand.
■9
25
THE RISEN SUN
access of all of them and link up with something of the same sort on the Other Side. I confess that I was destined to meet a good many doctors there ! That was on June 4, 1928.
June 8. To Waterloo Station, feeling rather jumpy. Yet once you commit yourself to trains and boats it is very difficult not to get to your destination. ' Nerves ' are but part of one's human conceit. One feels as if one were doing the thing oneself. Why, we talk of ' catching a train'. I would like to sec the train one could catch if it didn't wait for one. . . . One even, by a desperate effort to maintain one's self-respect, talks of catching influenza. How the mighty microbe must laugh ! Who catches whom ? Run away as you will, you won't avoid him ! Chastened by such thoughts, I arrived at Waterloo. Quite a cohort of kind friends to see me off. The indefatigable Dr. Page, the two New Zealanders, some friends who shall remain anonymous. And almost best of all, two young fellows from a Poplar club that is dear to me. lam told that half the Club wanted to come, but was advised that I wouldn't want them to risk being late for their jobs. Strange disposition of Providence —a brother of each of the two who came has died while I was away : one, in Adelaide, a young sea-farer. Dear Pat, I didn't know you well, but I wish I had been in Adelaide a month earlier, that possibly by some chance I could have been with you, as I was with Australians when they died in England.
. . . Well, rest in peace, both of you, and pray for your friends. Just as the train was starting, a hurried messenger from a State office, carrying advice about emigration. . . . The whistle ; the wavings ; and goodbye Waterloo.
The ‘ coloured counties ’ slipped past. Winchester : I always look for that square cathedral tower. Long, long ago I discovered the Catholic church there. I sat down in it after a heated bicycle-ride from Guildford-way. (No motor-cycles then.) I found a hymn-book. I perused it doubtfully. But ‘ Daily, daily sing to Mary ’ —ah, that was a hymn worth talking about! I wished I could hear it sung. .. . And behold, a boy came in and lit some candles. More boys came in, and they
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
26
sang ; 1 Daily, daily sing to Mary ’ . . . ‘ Omens and suchlike fooleries ’ ? Well, when I became a Catholic, I did not cease from loving it, and even its dance-y tune. Southampton. The docks. The gaunt sheds. My ship. It has only a single funnel ! That, cope with the Atlantic ? Anyway it has five masts. The Rotorua. And there, waiting, were the Southampton priest who devotes himself to sea-work, and the lady who since then has married the Secretary of the Apostleship of the Sea. They had brought altar-wine and altar-breads and cards for seamen to sign and other appurtenances of that Apostleship. And an S.V.P. man arrived to make sure that I was comfortable. Also a friend whom I met during a recent pilgrimage to Rome. And an Excellency had stacked my cabin with roses and buttressed it with fruit. . . . The friendly New Zealand shipping company invites all these friends to lunch. We feed ; warnings are given ; they return to the quay. One steward, they have found out, is a Catholic and perhaps will serve my Mass, though he doesn’t know how to. . . . Lots of emigrant boys and girls.
.. . The gangway is withdrawn—l am severed from England — and the ship begins to move.
(i)
Queen Elizabeth sat one day.
Watching the Tilbury guns at play,
With Walter Raleigh rich and gay,
p „ u ..». .»».*.£.. ...... b~Si And Drake, the bold Sea-Rover.
' 'Pon my soul,' said great Queen Bess,
' These are the pick of the lads, I guess.
* I couldn't say more, and I mustn't say less —
‘ They're known the whole world over / *
Suddenly out of the sea so green
Father Neptune's head was seen.
* Pardon me, madam,' said he to the Queen,
* Pardon me, bold Sea-Rover.
‘ Certainly I admire your grit;
* Still I suggest you should wait a bit.
' I've plenty of lads that shall equal it,
' From Dundee doitn to Doier.'
27
THE RISEN SUN
1 Quitt impossible, sir,' she said
1 Put such notions out of your head.
Swim away home and go to bed *
(And so said Drake the Rover
1 These are the lads that have swept the seas,
* Baffled the brisk Atlantic's breeze.
* Even America's heard of these ,
And so has Terra Nova I
(With apologies to the Harrow Song-Book.)
I went on board that ship hoping for three things, all of which were granted me. One was, to learn a little about sea-life ; the second, to learn something about emigration—both from the Catholic point of view ; the third was, to see some really blue water.
By the 11 th, the sea could be called blue after a fashion. But even next day, south of the Azores, it might have been the Channel on a fine day. On the 13th, to everyone’s surprise, a whale was seen spouting—a distant plume of white like a short fountain. And the sea was an honest ultramarine save where the light struck it crossways and made pallid reflections. I could not yet make the sea look anything in the least poetic ! When you get the smooth side of a wave, free of reflected light, it looks gummy, like Turkish Delight, with just those little lines upon it that you make if you try to cut it. . . . Still, there were three values of blue —the basic one, and two richnesses of shadow. By the 16th we had been in the Gulf Stream for some time, and yellow-brown seaweed interfered with the purity of colour. The sea really is blue, and doesn’t get its tint just from the sky. Because the sky is nearly always greyish ; so that this makes the surface almost black-grey, or whitish ; whereas when you look right into the curve of a wave, it is of a blue to make your heart beat. And I verified a discovery that I made when watching the Rhone run out of the Lake of Geneva. Homer called the sea oinops, which means wine-faced or wine-looking, people insist that it means ‘ -wine-coloured ’, and have argued themselves hot to prove that the Aegean really can be called
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
28
wine-coloured. They have even suggested that Homer meant yellow wine, and alluded to the sea at sunrise . . . ! No. Nobody in his senses can say that the sea, which is blue or green, looks the colour of any wine. Oinops refers to a quality. Negatively, the sea was not like the inky Greek wells or turbid little torrents or translucent springs or brooks. When I saw the Rhone, I remember exclaiming to my companion : ‘ It’s like port wine ! ’ I wasn’t thinking of Homer and certainly not of colour ; but the deep interiorly-lit peacock-blue of the Rhone had just the profound glow of port —what makes even a ruby look like a crimson liquid rather than a stone. Just as there arc certain purples which correspond to oranges, and again to greens, so there is a texture, a grave glory, in a deeti blue sea which corresponds to the texture of a noble win? red though that colour be. Good. The controversy is rest for ever, or would be, were a scholar ever likely to read this book. But none ever ought to. No matter.
After Panama, the sea was no more that soapy blue, which at times it was in the Atlantic. Moving-lapis-lazuli. But towards Pitcairn it outdid itself in hnues. The clouds there were very odd —extremely brilliant, yet softly tinted, like doves-of-paradise. I mean, their greys, pearl, pale-blues, white-golds, were intensely so, not hesitatingly. Also they lay one behind the other in perspective. You could see their various distances. At night they were very white —a great simplification and unfusedness of masses. But when Pitcairn was reached, and the ship stopped, then indeed the sea achieved the passionate glories of Guiana butterflies. No words at all for that. But, alas ! thereafter the weather broke. As often as not the sea looked like wrinkled asphalt, or a grcy-yellow-indigo mud. Still, even when the sky was grey, where the water was churned up, you had the effect of pounded emeralds and opals mixed with milk. And how very white is white ! The horizon looks misty and distant; yet on it you sec the surf.
By July 8, it was clear, but getting rougher and rougher ; the sea looked no more like gum nor pitch, but like satin ;
29
THE RISEN SUN
like the skin of a very good horse. Then, like carved and polished flint or obsidian, with an amazing smoke of spray blowing off the polished surfaces or the gnawed edges. Then the spray blew off just like very dry snow. And by July 13, the waves seemed definitely, in the sunlight, to catch fire at the top, so rapid and along-the-crest was their breaking into foam. I was afraid of being badly laughed at, so frequent and so loud were my exclamations about these things ; but one evening as I was passing steeragewards at sunset, a gigantic steward, whom I did not know, gripped me by the elbow, and said : ‘ Isn’t that glorious ? ’ I said : ‘Do you like it ? ’ or something equally flat. He said he couldn’t help looking at it, because it was ‘ in ’ hinx I quoted :
X, ' For to admire and for to see,
to behold this world so wide,
It never done no good to me
But I can’t stop it if I . tief.
This did not appeal to ; but we discussed the sea-blues and he agreed that a~t us* st it was ' proper Ricketts '. Rather later, he announced that the Pacific wasn't like the Atlantic. I said I'd noticed that to *. but couldn't make out why. He said that the Pacific waves weren't friendly. I asked : ' How not ? ' He could only assure me that the Atlantic waves came towards a man, while the Pacific waves wouldn't talk . . . ' Why not ? ' ' It's just them', he repeated. ' It's their dormant nature —it's in 'em —they can't help it, if you see what I mean.' The conversations prolonged themselves, and behold, he turned out to be a war-convert, solid, but shy. He has visited me since, and said that the Pacific waves are beginning to be a bit friendlier. . . . I'm glad, and I know why.
Now on this ship were the ordinary passengers —very few — and emigrants, and the crew. A certain number of the passengers were Catholic, and I felt sure that a good proportion of the crew would be, and obviously some of the emigrants. One had first of all to sort them out, and then to see if one might be
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
30
of service to them. Though nationality has not got to affect what you do as a Catholic, yet it is obvious that England has a special obligation towards seamen, and I fear that English Catholics have, so far, by no means properly shouldered it. I will speak first of that, prefixing my small experience not only during this trip out, but during the four days’ voyage from New Zealand to Australia, and again during the trip from Australia homewards. (Never once did I find the slightest obstacle put in my way by authority, even when I made some rather sweeping requests. On the contrary, every courtesy was shown me.)
For a day or two I said Mass in the first-class saloon till I should have discovered who of the passengers were Catholic, and till the world at large should have given over feeling ill. It turned out that there were only two Catholics among the first-class passengers, a lady and a gentleman, both of them quite ready to get up early and come to Mass in the third-class lounge. After a while all the Catholics, I think, were discovered ; their fidelity to Mass was very edifying and no day passed without a good number of Communions. One of the emigrant boys served regularly and we even had a small class for the explanation of the Latin words. You can get a long way if you make a boy think of all the English words he knows, of which the Latin words remind him. It can be amusing to discover that ‘ omnibus Sanctis ’ has provided a lad with a queer sense of subconscious puzzlement—how does an ‘ omnibus ’ come into the vocabulary of worship ? Not only he can learn, but he finds what ’bus means, and he perceives how words, too, emigrate. ... I think we had Mass on all but four days of that voyage ; the first, before I had learned my whereabouts ; two when it was very rough ; and one when I felt unwell in the damp heat of Panama.
I had been told that one steward on the Rotorua was a Catholic. Before the voyage finished, I had found seven (nine, in a sense). On the other hand, juggle the hours as one might, it seemed
31
THE RISEN SUN
impossible to say Mass at a time when their duties permitted them to attend. At last a method was found which enabled them, too, to receive at least their Sacraments. As for the members of the crew, I couldn’t see, at first, how on earth I was to find out who was who. I have but little nerve for asking one Unknown after another if he is Catholic, and being told he isn’t. A method that might have had to be adopted had not Providence intervened. I woke one morning at 3.30, and went out for some fresher air and to look at the dark sea. I stood, without noticing it, by a small door. At 3-45 fr° m this door a blackened man emerged. I passed the time of day, and asked him where he came from. ‘ Belfast’. I sighed and smiled and gave it a miss. Another came. He also was Belfast. I thought I couldn’t waste my time, and I asked if by any chance any of their mates were Catholic. ‘We both are Catholics. And another Belfast man’ll be up in a moment . . . ’ To be brief, we found some more, and after consultations in the men s quarters ‘forrard’, it became clear that the only time at which they could all coincide was at 4 o’clock, and the only place that would hold us comfortably was their wash-house. The officer whose permission I had to ask in order to use it was the least bit taken aback. Religion in a wash-house . . . ? I assured him that we had begun life in a stable, and that those chiefly concerned would not mind. He granted leave quite willingly, but gave up the Roman Catholics, I think, as 1 queer ’. To the wash-house, then, we used to go, one man who worked a long daily spell in the refrigerating-room getting himself woken up in the midst of his very well-earned sleep. The men had cleaned the place out, and brought up their blankets to adorn the altar with, and to make a precarious pile for me to stand on. They even brought a sheet for further decoration. Now where did that sheet come from ? Tactlessly I asked. Silence and coy smiles. Anyway, it too draped the altar-shelf; I decorated the altar with everything suitable that I could get ; lit it up brilliantly, and stood in its midst a dazzling little icon of Our Lady that 1 had bought at Czestochowa in Poland. Kneeling on that iron
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
32
floor, the men made their confessions, sometimes with tears, and received that Blessed Sacrament which some of them had thought they would never more obtain.* Gaudent angeli ; laudantes benedicunt Dominum !
And indeed to me, those Masses, whether in the third-class quarters aft, or here right forrard, were amazing moments. Very likely, on Atlantic or Pacific, Mass was being said in other ships ; but you could not see that; and perhaps at 4 in the morning it was not likely. The ship therefore seemed to become for us the top of the world : the round world heaved and globed itself up towards this little ship, and towards one room in the ship, and the Altar was the crest and crown of everything. When the Host was elevated, it seemed to draw up with Itself that room, those men, the ship and all the world towards God. And again, the whole Most Blessed Trinity as it were converged and tapered towards that tiny room, where a few happy men were making their loyal and loving act of sonship —adopted sons of God, brothers of Christ and with Him co-heirs of glory.
On the Mamma, coming from New Zealand to Sydney—a motor accident had occurred about a month before, and things were going badly again—all I could do was to ask my nonCatholic steward if he would find out if any of his mates were Catholics, and ask them to come to my cabin. To my amazement, not only he did so, but sent quite six along. An arrangement was made whereby these too could receive Holy Communion during that brief trip. I think it is important to get the Catholic passengers to offer, at daily Mass, some prayer for the crew, their homes and their dead, especially for those members of the crew one doesn’t ordinarily see, including, if you please ! the cooks. They are very necessary persons ; they have as bad a time as any in hot weather, and so far as I can see, they never get a tip ! Passengers are usually escorted below, and conceive romantic ideas about stokers and firemen and greasers, and they can’t help coming across the stewards. But there are
* They have faithfully written or sent messages since
33
THE RISEN SUN
others, too ! We are not shown the kitchen and its stifling annexes, so we take it for granted. A pity.
On the return journey, as though to complete my education, conditions were quite different. First, there was a population of about 70 Goans—to say ‘ Goanese ’ appears to me about as redundant as to speak of a Parisianite—and so often as possible you could say night-prayers with them before their shrine in their largest peak. Five decades of the Rosary, the Litany of our Lady, and a number of prayers that naturally I could not follow. But the atmosphere was so prayerful, in that crowded peak, even when in the tropics men dressed in singlet and shorts streamed with perspiration just for kneeling there, that to understand each word was in no way necessary. They had their Sunday or First Friday Masses in the second saloon music room ; and much of Christmas Eve was spent in hearing their confessions (we devised quite a simple method) ; and at midnight we had Mass in the peak. They had decorated the whole place with sheets and tissue paper, curtaining even the roof, and they had made marvellous battleships and aeroplanes and shrines, all electrically lit, and the altar was a blaze of candles. To my surprise, many non-Catholic passengers came, and I heard that when the Adeste was sung, and all the men joined their voices in the chorus, there were few eyes but had tears in them. Three or four men were able to serve my daily Mass, answering in unison. We have, I feel, an enormous responsibility towards these devout, gentle and affectionate Goans, who arrive to find the English winter so very cruel, and who so sturdily adhere to the practice of their faith —judging by the Mongolia and what I have elsewhere heard—even when no priest is there to help them. Apart from this, there were Catholics among officers, wireless operators, cadets, and others.
Work on behalf of seafarers concerns their life on board ship and their life when on shore but not at home.
On board ship, their life is presumably priestless. Religiously, they must help themselves, or one another, to act as they should.
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
34
This was why, first, a Seamen’s Prayerbook was compiled. Published by the S.V.P., it has already a large circulation.* It contains instruction, and prayers suited to various ratings, and perhaps above all the first sanctioned form of Catholic burial at sea for use when no priest is accessible, together with directions how to help a dying seaman. Do not think this was uncalled for. Almost immediately after publication it was used for that very purpose. Again and again men have written to say that they had hated ‘ giving their comrade to the sharks ’ without a prayer. Here is a true little story —raw comedy, if you like ; and tragic as much such comedy is. A man had to be buried. The captain asked if any of the men knew a prayer. None did. ‘ Not even the Our Father ? ’ he insisted. Not even the Our Father. Desperate that no homage, no hope, should be expressed by anyone, the cook came forward and sang : ‘ For he’s a jolly good fellow.’ Such a burial, I imagine, would have had to be kept well secret from the lad’s mother. ... If there is one thing that the Catholic mother wants to know, it is, how her son died, and what she may hope about the boy’s eternity. Not that the pathetic offering of that cook will have counted for nothing in the eyes of God, Who understands, better than His human creatures do, what is the meaning of man’s own heart.
Catholic literature, again, should reach every Catholic seaman on his ship. It is a myth to suppose that most men read bad books by preference ! I have known of an able seaman asking an officer, who was a Catholic, for instructionbooks —he was to many a Catholic girl in six months and wished to instruct himself during them. The officer, not well up in his faith and perhaps not too regular in practice, could not help. Like a bolt from the blue, a parcel of Catholic books reached him the very next day, and in it were some instruction books. They were sent, as I know, almost by accident. . . . And the two
*1 could not but smile, wryly, when I found it was quite well known in a G. of E. sailors’ institute, to which a nonconformist ship’s officer had introduced it, while its co-religionists had never heard of it !
35
THE RISEN SUN
men learnt thus the Catholic Faith, one for the first time, one afresh.
Supremely important in work for seamen still on board is ship-visiting. By now the Badge of the Apostleship of the Sea is known. One of the firemen on the Rotorua said to me : ‘ I knew there was a priest on board : I recognised the wee badge. . . . ’ Ship-visiting does not mean ship-preaching, or holding of services. A Catholic smile or handshake may make all the difference. And the ship-visitor makes the bridge from work on board to work on shore.
On shore the essentials are, to my mind, the Catholic porthostel and the Catholic port-chaplain. At Brisbane, there is a large room and a friendly welcome for seamen in the S.V.P. headquarters, but the place is not easy to find, nor is it near the water. At Sydney, you see the Catholic name looking you full in the face as you enter the harbour, and the seamen have an entire house, over which I was shown, where a superintendent lives, and which is but a few minutes from St. Patrick’s, that apostolic church of which I speak below. At Port Adelaide, a certain diffidence as to the possibility of such work was expressed. However, the Salvation Army and others do it, and Catholics soon will, I am sure. At Melbourne, though I think there is no hostel, regular work is done, if I remember right, by the University S.V.P. Conference. That is doubly fine ! Begin then, and it is hard to leave off. But though I was to have met this group, I didn’t, being in hospital. At Fremantle, there is, I know, some organisation, entrusted to the S.V.P. I found it a joyful duty to congratulate the S.V.P. in such places on the work that they gallantly were doing and on their co-operation with the card-system of the Aposdeship of the Sea. At Wellington and at Auckland, seamen were frequently directed to Our Lady of the Angels, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral ; but I cannot remember a hostel. But along with the porthostel, I would like the port-chaplain —a priest who would gradually get to know a good many ships’ officers personally, and who would often spend his evenings in the hostel or club.
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
36
Not that he would spend his time there, I suppose, fulfilling directly priestly duties, as a rule ; but he could often do even that, as priests who went frequently to military clubs know well ; and it is of high value for him to be handy, and for his presence to be sufficiently frequent as not to startle. Even if the church be near, it is none too easy for a layman to take another man round by the hand, as it were, to the confessional.
‘ But Catholics shouldn’t need all that nursing ! A properly brought-up Catholic should know what to do and take means to do it. A loyal Catholic will put himself out for his religion.’ Well, no doubt. But how many have hardly been brought up at all ? How many have been disloyal ? How few, relatively, are heroic by preference ? The Good Shepherd seems to prefer the unsatisfactory. He leaves the ninety and nine ‘ there in the wilderness ’ and goes after the lost sheep though it be but one. Humannature is none too logical. Many a man, kept on board dll after noon, will feel it’s no good going to Confession if he can’t also get Communion. A boy may be overwhelmed with shyness, especially if he have got for the first time into trouble. Anyhow, lam not inclined to argue. I pray that the priestly spirit may be one that seeks, and that it be infinitely gentle when a soul is found. The fire of the Holy Spirit warms, and does not scorch : He came, ‘ not as an eagle, but a dove ’.*
* This book is not meant to contain exhaustive accounts of Catholic societies or of anything else, in or out of Australia. Enough then to say that the Apostleship of the Sea and the Stella Maris conferences of the S.V.P. in England now work under a united Council. Its address is 66 Victoria St., London, S.VV.i ; and all information, including the polyglot journal Recht doer See, membership cards, the Seamen’s Prayerbook, etc., can thence be obtained. I left London convinced that one of my main ‘ impressions ’ would be connected with Sea-Apostolate ; and this journey would have seemed to me worth while had it done nothing more than indelibly to deepen that impression. The C.T.S. (72 Victoria St., S.W.i) has also published a pamphlet dealing more fully with the whole topic ; The Sea and its Apostolate.
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THE RISEN SUN
(n)
' All very well,' said the god of the sea :
' No one's denying it, good Queen B. ;
' But some of the lads I have got with me
Go twice as far from Dover.
' Panama's only half of the way
' They shall go travelling one fine day.
' What'll you answer to that, I pray—
1 You and your bold Sea-Rover ? '
Queen Elizabeth shook her head :
' Shakespeare tells the tale,* she said
'."ma i iy<i in t iciij imc ILltr, J/IC JUIU . ' But never I've heard and never Vve read
' Romancers such as you are ! '
' Come, Tour Majesty, yield to fate —
' I'll tell you the ship and I'll tell you the date :
1 It's nineteen hundred and twenty eight —
‘ The ship's the Rotorua.
* And as for the lads, I think,' said he,
1 You can he proud of''em, same as me —
1 Sailing across the distant sea,
1 Sailing away from Dover,
1 Sailing away to the golden West,
* Each of 'em anxious to do his best,
* Working and playing with zeal and zest,
' Till work and play are over.'
(With continued apologies.
The journey itself was peaceable. To me the sea was kind. True, it is long before the slight perpetual creaking and tapping and restlessness of curtains cease to challenge the nerves a little. I was infinitely more sorry for the 3rd-class passengers, where the pitching was far worse, and where the propeller would come constantly out of the water with a roar. We passed Porto Rico, whose President had been assassinated that afternoon. [R.I.P]. It is strange to feel one’s self, at least when praying for the dead, to be thrusting power forth into that second part of life where, if your effort avail at all —if a soul be not lost —it
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
38
cannot be resisted, but is seized upon and utilised by the soul in purgatory without the waste of any of it.
On the 23rd the Panama coast showed itself about 9 a.m., under grey skies, with leaden and choppy seas. As you approached, it was easy to see how un-European was the colouring. The light green was almost acid, and the deeper almost peacockblue. A few palm-trees showed their silhouettes. As we passed through the canal, I found that not a soul, however often they had been that way, could tell me the names of trees. I felt justified, therefore, in using my favourite method, which is to take an ordinary name and prefix ‘ Japanese ’ to it. I said the birds were Japanese teal, and some wide-leaved plants were Japanese cabbage-palms. All went well till, meaning to say some other plants were Japanese mangoes, I said ‘ mandrils ’ by mistake and I escaped with but my life.
Outside Colon there was a scene of vast breakwaters, aeroplanes, submarines, warehouses, and what looked like minewinding wheels. I saw no church. Most depressing, especially since just as we entered the canal, which you can’t see till you are right inside the harbour, torrents of hot rain fell, and even when it stopped the colouring was inky. Inky clouds, inky palms and bananas, inky-roofed and trellissed houses. Almost immediately you pass the diagonal relics of the earlier French cutting. Then Gatun Locks, in which you rise, by means of three divisions, 90 feet. Incredibly few men are needed to work this gigantic machinery ; still, it costs a ship like ours about £2,400 to go through the canal. Cost is regulated by tonnage. Small squat motors keep the ship even, by means of steel cables ; they caterpillar-wheel themselves up the most astounding inclines. Soon after lunch we were in the huge artificial Gatun Lake : out of this lofty water we would have to be let down 90 feet once more by the locks at Balboa. This dome of water had to be constructed so as to avoid excavating that 90-foot depth, an immense expense, besides increasing the risk of landslides. This involved damming up the end of the valley and letting the Chagres river fill it, so that every tiny hill-top
a
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THE RISEN SUN
is now an island. It is 20 miles across the lake, but hardly 100 yards across the canal after you pass Darien. To my regret, no crocodiles performed, though Providence had been very kind, and went on being so, in letting me see at least one of everything whales, porpoises, water-spouts, albatrosses, flying-fish of course in thousands, and later on snakes and goannas and lizards and bush-fires. At last we were lowered off our water dome, and came forth from the canal nearer England than we entered it. I suppose one can’t but imagine the Isthmus as stretching north-south, to link the two masses of America together. However, it is much more nearly east-west, and the canal slopes diagonally across it, starting at the east. So you retrace your steps, whichever way you enter it.
Everyone disembarked at Panama —I, reluctantly, for the damp heat had exhausted me, much as I love a blaze. It was evening, and the now exquisite sky produced all those clashes between sorts of lights, in its conflict with electric lamps, that are so agitating. New Panama was very like a cinema, and I felt too tired to drive to the ruins of the old one where Morgan wreaked his massacres. Yes : the cinema has set standards for our imagination, and Panama didn’t quite come up to it, despite its China-town, its coloured ladies and gentlemen, its stucco-palaces already collapsing, its high-minded Y.M.C.A. restaurant and swimming pool, and its air of threadbare raffishness.
We went to an Eat-House where the lights, shaded with violent orange, had the queer effect of making cigarette-ends burn metallic green. The menu was enormous : unfortunately it didn’t convey much real information, because under the head of ‘ sandwiches ’ it catalogued strange titles (as though they had been cocktails) like ‘ Hector’s Surprise ’ ; ‘ Ritz’s Rapture ’ ; with lyrical effusions appended, like ‘ You Just Eat It—Can You Beat It ? ’ or ‘ Chicken with 0 what Gravy and everything else.' This last sounded hintful and sinister and we ended by dining off the knucklebones of hens, bottled asparagus and omelette. Conceivably this half-Spanish town does not begin
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
40
its life till 11 p.m. or so ; and perhaps we saw it only in its interspace between hours of rape and murder. Anyhow we went home early, all of us tired ; I, perhaps, depressed. Panama, with its churchless engineering triumph, had been a strain on Hope. Neglected virtue ! But you would hardly expect the canal to be built around with shrines ? Well, yes, I somehow did. That isthmus has had a horrible history of crime and it needs much purifying prayer. Besides, soon you looked almost straight north to Mexico. It seemed incredible, here in this world of mechanical perfection, that martyrdom should be staining, up there, a whole map red. Might the graces earned by those martyrs drift down to Panama !
Next day half the ship was ill, owing, no doubt, to having eaten too many bananas when on shore. It grew steadily colder as the equator was neared and then passed. On July 3, we anchored off Pitcairn. From 8.30 the island was visible, pyramidical, straight ahead. Its people came on board, all descendants of the few mutineers of the Bounty, along with a few natives. I feared that they had degenerated very far. Till lately they had been not only Seventh Day Adventists—in fact they distribute leaflets about that cult —but very unworldly ; also tuberculous. Now money from ships like these has corrupted them. They bring oranges, bananas, gourds, beadstrings, carved walking-sticks, painted skeleton-leaves and coral. The emigrant boys bought me a mass of coral weighing at least a hundredweight. (And in New Zealand lam warned to travel light!) The Pitcairn islanders departed singing a hymn : but they grinned as they sang it, and, I fear, do not believe much in the notion, which was, that we should meet in the dear By-and-by. . . .
Now for these emigrant boys. The ship was full of emigrants, girls and lads and a few families. This is not the place to put down theories about emigration, and I don’t want to outstrip even those ‘ impressions ’ that this ship provided. First, then, there were a good number of girls. Among them, some Catholics were found. I requested a Catholic New Zealand lady
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THE RISEN SUN
in the first—class to do what she could for them, and very well she did it. But I gathered forthwith two impressions. One was, that it is asking for trouble to put a large number of girls on board a ship for a five weeks’ voyage, feed them generously, and give them nothing whatsoever to do, save games and fancy balls. The beloved waxes fat and kicks. I’m sorry ; but that is so, and perhaps especially when the girl is going out for domestic service. I would wish to see two things —a fairly stiff course of occupation and indeed training, for any girl who is emigrating, while she is actually on board. I mean, girls who are emigrating under a scheme ; else she would refuse orders and there would be no sanction. But if she starts under a scheme, such a course of training can be made into a condition of her going at all. Far better, obviously, is a course of training before the girl starts, though even this should not dispense with a regular occupation while on board. As for Catholics, the Portobello nuns have, with the amazingly generous assistance of the Ministry of Labour, inaugurated such a training-system in their convent reconstructed for the purpose. All honour to them as pioneers in a work of absolute necessity.
Nearly all the boys emigrating upon the Rotorua were going to ‘ Flock Flouse ’ and were under the control of a young New Zealand schoolmaster chosen, I gathered, by Salvation Army authority. Flock House, once for all, is a house and estate of 8,000 acres near Bulls in the North Island of New Zealand, where the sons or other relatives of naval men killed or disabled in the war are trained to become settlers. It was started by New Zealand wool-merchants out of gratitude to the British Navy for enabling them to maintain their trade during the war. I judged it excellent, and quite the most admirably conceived and executed plan that I saw anywhere during this trip. Out of 34 boys, 6 were Catholic, though of these one or two were emigrating independently of the scheme. To one or two of the Catholics, a priest had given a letter of introduction, optimistically expecting that the boy would not lose it, would find someone to present it to, and would in fact present it and meet with a
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
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Catholic response. I had no doubt, and have none, that this is not the way sufficiently to safeguard an emigrant boy. I did not permit myself to decide so early what the right way was. Anyhow, the official in charge happening to be an exceptionally friendly and open-minded young man, the Catholic boys (when sifted out) were enabled to go to Mass not only on Sundays but two or three times in the week, and to make their confessions and communions at due intervals. We even had something of a Massserving class. The boys had a lot ofwork to do —swabbing the decks, polishing brass, etc., and a fair amount of boxing and sports.
The boys on their side learned a perfectly astounding Maori Haka, at their young guardian’s instigation (a Haka is, on the whole, a war-, or other dance and song, and they simply took the roof off with it), and also a Maori ‘ Farewell’, which I heard once more in the Maori school at Napier ; while I on my side wrote them some very doggerel songs based on Harrow ones. I thought that the square-bearded ghost of Mr. E. E. Bowen, pacing nervously up and down Elysium, and even the shade of Mr. E. W. Howson, still rather too occupied, may be, with ‘ uplift ’ in the thin fields of asphodel, might not mind my manipulation of their words ; and assuredly the tun are so good that all the world may just as well make use of them. They learned a new edition of ‘ Queen Elizabeth ’, also ‘ Play up ! ’ and ‘ Forty Years on’, and a New Zealand version of ‘ Here, sir ! ’ It was good to listen to the crisp ‘ Here, sir ’, rattling under the deck, and to see the brisk salute. I suppose I must confess that there was a certain amount of ‘ uplift ’ even in these very serious parodies—or adaptations, or indeed creations, for there wasn’t much of the original song left when we had done with them. ‘ Learn the job, and hold your tongue ’ wasn’t a bad bit of advice. My word ! if our emigrants would agree to nothing save this —never to talk about themselves, their homes, their experience, or even England, and ‘ how they do things there ’, what a lot of exasperation they would save ! If only emigrants would take it for granted that they have got to learn a job—that they can’t possibly like every part of
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THE RISEN SUN
it at once, or ever ; but that nine times out of ten if they do what they are told they suddenly discover not only that they can do it, but even have a knack for it and do it well ! My second point about migration was already this—that while we can train girls at home to domestic service, which is needed in the Dominions, we can do very little to train boys for farm, or other such jobs, so that their training must mostly be done in their land of destination, and that an institution like Flock House is an essential, and that there should be a Catholic one. It will be seen that there is a chance of a Catholic one in Western Australia, and I hold that we would be fools as well as criminals were we not to make it an actuality. What we can supply is the careful picking of emigrant boys, and their thorough training in that self-control, in what concerns honesty, temper, and sensuality, which will make a base for any vocational or departmental training later on. As it is, I thought those boys on the Rotorua were excellently chosen ; I thought their destiny in New Zealand was more than hopeful ; I was touched by their friendliness and the full trust placed in me by their officer ; I was only shocked that out of their number so many were Catholics, sent out into a world where we had made no preparation for their Catholic well-being.
So, then, the journey neared its end. Had it been happy ? Like all human things, a mixture. The quite modern world seems to me to contain three sorts of persons especially : the complete pagan ; the vaguely religious soul that lives, it doesn't know why, in the faint atmosphere of a by-gone Protestantism ; and the Catholic. A few convinced non-Catholic Christians drift almost like ghosts in an alien world. At the most disastrous, you find the man who has been brought up on the modern passion for machinery. He has never thought—he cannot so much as follow the simplest abstract argument nor attach any value to ideas ; and he knows no history whatsoever, certainly neither the Old nor the New Testaments. The Life of Christ is totally unfamiliar to him. His idea of morals is
PROLOGUE TO THE INTRODUCTION
44
‘ playing the game a game of which he (or his environment) makes (and unmakes) the rules, and sexually at least these have nothing to do, need I say, with the traditional Commandments. ‘ God ’, ‘ soul ’, ‘ sin ’, mean nothing to him at all. Corresponding to him is the girl who has never so much as learnt those slightly foolish arts that her grandmother did —painting, singing, playing. You mightn’t mind so much when you reflect how very bad was, most probably, her grandmother’s performance ; but, in those old days, at least, the idea of giving pleasure, being unselfish, was emphasised : the girl I am thinking of is perfectly unable to do any of these things and is also untroubled by the thought of giving pleasure ; the gramophone and her partner enable her to get it. (Upon my word, our very language is showing our increased inability to co-ordinate anything whatsoever, let alone take trouble to do or say anything properly. Just when I had, with infinite difficulty, learnt which was starboard and which was port, I found that ‘ right ’ and ‘ left ’ were to be substituted for these, for the sake of foreigners, or so at least a thing called the Collisions-Committee recommends. Apart from this portending the obvious collapse of our navy and indeed the British Empire, what in heaven’s name can ‘ CollisionsCommittee ’ mean ? The language is breaking down into a sort of agglutinative Chinese.) To resume.
There is also the mystery of official Sunday services. I think a majority goes to them. It depends a good deal on the personality of the captain or the clergyman. There is that singular ritual of draping a pedestal with the Union Jack. There is the recitation of prayers and singing of hymns totally at variance with the inner mind of men and women whom one knows and with whom one has talked about that 1 inside mind ’, and ‘ what it all means to them ’. A formula keeps recurring— ‘ Ido envy you Catholics ! you seem so certain ! ’ Nearly all the objections to ‘ religion ’ seem to be drawn by such persons from the Old Testament ; not because they find nothing difficult in the New one, but simply because they do not know anything about it. The English religion is a pale Mohammedanism minus Mohammed.
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Then there are the Catholics. Certainly you meet the silly, the obstinate, above all, the ill-instructed, the non-instructed Catholic, and the Catholic whom priests have bullied. This, continually. But the men who knelt there on that iron floor, men still un-washed when there wasn't time for washing—men with tears running down their faces just because they were being absolved, or were receiving their Communion—- ' What further need have we of witnesses ? ' The journey had been happy.
July 13 was a curious day. The Flock House boys gave me a picture of the Rotorua with their autographs all round the margin. It is now up in my room. . . . The agitation of the ship was incredible. By 5, New Zealand was in sight. A long coast, down which we were travelling, dramatic and jagged, a coast of milky blue against milky-copper sky. The rest of the sky was blue, with slate-coloured clouds, and above them solid, copper-golden clouds incredibly holy —I can find no other word —to look at. The voyage seemed to finish amid a great affection and a sense of holiness in things. Several wireless messages had reached me. The rector of a Wellington college wanted a lecture. Bishop Cleary of Auckland, my marvellously generous host, was to meet me. The lights of Wellington are now visible —we anchor off there to-night and the doctor comes early tomorrow morning. During the voyage, I had translated the little Itinerarium, or ‘ Travellers’ Prayers ’ ; its petitions had surely answered themselves ; and I had written a small book upon the Missal,* and I had thought how perfect the Mass for the Third Sunday after Pentecost was for emigrants. On the eve of rather timidly setting foot on New Zealand ground, I repeated its Prayer :
O God, the protector of those who hope in Thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing holy, multiply upon us Thy mercy, that with Thee to govern us, Thee to guide, we may so pass through the good things of time, as not to lose those of eternity—through Christ our Lord.
* Both published by Shced & Ward.
THE INTRODUCTION
AO-TEA-ROA
«
Ana to Kai na
Man e ka : te mahawa o tauhou*
I woke at 5 on this day of good omen —July 14 is the feast of St. Bonaventure ! La bonne aventure ! A happy arrival, and, I felt sure, a good adventure. Adventures at my age ! Well, why not ? And it proved not unadventurous, and not ill-adventurous, when all is said and done. A world of milky gold. The sea was mother-of-pearl ; the hills, that seemed to clasp the water, pearly too, with delicate deep hints of green. Wellington seemed built of golden houses roofed with rose — an incandescent world behind milk-white veils. The sky was a perfect dome. Officials came on board. I presented myself and was greeted with loud cries. The excellent officer had read some books and forthwith accorded me a privilege or two which far be it from me to define. When we reached the wharf, I descried a clerical figure ; my hopes rose. But what a hat and gaiters ! No. It was a bishop ; but not my bishop. Almost at once, however, I saw him along with Fr. Ryan, rector of St. Patrick’s. They came on board, and we disembarked. The Flock House boys had announced they were going to perform me a final Haka : perhaps their official visitor made them shy of that; but drawn up in two lines they yelled a
* “ Behold thy food : feed thou upon the heart of the stranger ! ” An offering made to Tokahaere by one hoping to have his journey prospered.
46
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THE RISEN SUN
good-bye no less loud than lovable. After all, I was to meet them again within a week. And 'forrard', there were the firemen waving, and never to be forgotten. Motor-car. ' Now you must be got some thicker clothing.' '? ' ' You'll need it.' And indeed I became grateful for this first immediate act of generosity. Thence, would you believe it, to a photographer. . . . And then, thank goodness, to St. Patrick's.
First fleeting impression. . . . The city lies on a narrow strip between hills and sea. And most of the strip has been ' reclaimed ' from the water. Even so, Nature had played her part ; the main street, I gathered, had risen eight feet, owing to earthquake, and had then sunk two. No such terrestrial instability unnerved us, and we proceeded through streets that looked as un-English as the people seemed English. Now why ? I puzzled hard. Not the rarely more-than-two-storeyed houses ; not the übiquitous wooden bungalow? Not the frequent Chinese or Hindu names above the shops ? Suddenly I realised that all the electric wires were overhead, slung rather slackly on rather stumpy poles. That was it. That was where a cinema-sensation reached me from. One had seen that on films. Abruptly, a turn to the right up a short hill, and the College, a fine gabled building of which you can't realise the size because it stretches away backward. By now, believe me, I felt dazed. Tea, therefore, and a first glance at a bundle of welcoming letters from Australia and cablegrams. And a man I had known at Oxford, now domiciled out here, was seeking an encounter. Who could already feel anything but 'at home', though so far from it ? So enveloping was this welcome. But do not imagine that Authority had the least intention of allowing one to subside upon the cushions of inertia. 'We will go out for a Drive.' We went.
Sent some cables. (Edifying detail : it was quite hard to find a cigarette-shop.) By now, the day was super-superb. The sea out-blued the Mediterranean, or anything that I had seen as we came. No soapiness. No thick lapis-lazuli. Intensity, limpidity, and incandescence. Lit as from within, the
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THE INTRODUCTION
waves rose into sheer emerald, out of a great aristocratic blue—the only word. More blue than kingfisher or gentian or anything save those Morpho butterflies that have to be seen to be believed. But when the waves do break, on this most rocky shore, they do it frivolously. Small, rapid, fountainous. Cheeky boys teasing pleased but elderly and rather heavy-witted persons like myself. The road followed the indentations of the coast in amazing sweeps. Oriental Bay. Breakers Bay (very well named). Thence you see the grand snowy mountains of the South Island fifteen miles away, across Cook's Straits. Here and there the roads were incredible —the heavy Chrysler dived into abysses and emerged like any Atlantic liner. But you see well what a superb engineering future is intended.
By now I was saying to myself: The only thing to which you can compare this labyrinth of lovely seas and hills is Greece—either end of the Gulf of Corinth. Ridges and ravines ; and suddenly the blueness of the sea where you least expect it. But I decided for Lombardy. The general colour suits : lots of pines ; the harbour like a lake : the houses are cream ; with roofs —of corrugated iron, I confess, but painted so deep a red that they look like Italian tiles where the sun has not yet bleached them. Once in a way, green roofs ; but of the same rich quality as the red. The red is pomegranate, or dragon's-blood. The green, deeper than a field filled full of meadow-sweet. If you took the houses one by one, whether wooden bungalows, or the new plaster-and-concrete working-men's-houses, you might say : ' Why all these turrets, these gables, these fanciful verandahs ? Keep a little quiet, can't you ? Don't fuss so much.' But you don't take them one by one. Looking at these suburbs, you love their gay light-hearted coquetry. . . . And you see a delicacy like Japan's, owing I suppose to the clear-cut decorativeness of the evergreen vegetation. Though it was mid-winter, not only the gorse was ablaze, but in the brilliant gardens you saw jonquils, freezias, cinerarias, gladiolus, camellias white and carmine. . . . The silver-leaf tree kept putting puffs of vibrating smoke on the hillsides, just like olives ; and the other
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THE RISEN SUN
trees, all of them (save I believe the fuchsia) non-deciduous, had the hard glossy almost metallic surfaces of orange-groves, and of holm-oak. Yes, just like north Italy ; and the New Zealand flax is little else, I'm told and I believe, than a yucca. Box, too ; and cactus here and there.
Thereafter a complimentary dinner, where, to my proud delight, I met Archbishop Redwood, the world's veteran archbishop, and his coadjutor, Archbishop O'Shea. (Perhaps my one regret, during this voyage, is that I never heard a certain violin.) Relentless spirit of this high-hearted land—immediately after dinner, we took another drive.
Up astonishing gradients to the Redemptorist Church—such friendly priests, one already known by correspondence. The garden, looking precipitously down through pines into the water, is pure north Italy. Down again by gradients even more terrific —they seem to make the very best sort of road, here, when any. Down, then, to Kilburnie. How Scot the place is ! But Dunedin even more so, I believe. Here I watched part of a St. Patrick's Old Boys' and Present Boys' rugger matches, each against a University team. On Saturdays, one in every twenty New Zealanders is said to be playing football—playing, not watching it. As for St. Patrick's, its match against the State College—Wellington College—of 750 boys (I think St. Patrick's has only 200 or so), is of forty-four years' standing. When I was in New Zealand, St. Patrick's (after one disheartening spell of twelve years' failure) had pulled level. Each college had won twenty-one matches and two were drawn. These are perhaps the best-known inter-College matches in New Zealand, and many a St. Patrick's boy who has played in them has represented New Zealand in international fixtures. Still, I half think I would best like to watch St. Patrick's blue-and-white flashing about the field against the black-and-white and little flecks of gold proper to Wellington College.
From football to convent —the Mercy Convent of Star of the Sea—incomparable site on a steep ridge—so steep that you climb by a sort of Swiss stairway to its chapel. Already the sun was
THE INTRODUCTION
50
westering and drenching everything with its own colour that intensifies all colours and simplifies all planes. Level sonorous colour ; simple melodious shadows. Soaking into everything. Hespereoque madentia rura colore. Sol aureus et liquescens. The creamy houses became peach-bloom, crocus, apricot. Thence to the Sacred Heart Convent —voluminous welcome as usual —and thence through the now lavender twilight to a marvellous Incurables’ Home where I should have liked to stay for hours. It was staffed by New Zealand nuns, founded by that Mother Aubert who died but the other day (1926) at over ninetyone, I think, and who went to Rome at seventy-eight or so to bully Cardinals. More about her later. To-night I could but think of all those children and older people—were the wards ghastly or glorious ? Both, perhaps, as in all Catholic hospitals they must be.
Home to a cheery ' tea ', that we'd call supper. A few gentlemen had been invited ; but, alas, for my ungentlemanly manners —at eight sleep overwhelmed me ; they asked if I would like to go to bed ; I said : ' YES ', and went, and slept the clock round. So much for my first day on antipodean soil ! Next day was Sunday. Mass in the College —a sound,' ample ' chasuble, but of that vitriolic green nowhere observed save in ecclesiastical circles. During the morning went to the tiny convent and old men's incurables' home next door. This was the nucleus of Mother Aubert's marvellous work in Wellington. This astounding woman, niece of one President of France and cousin of another, Suzanne Aubert de Laye, born in 1835 and dead in 1926, friend of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat and St. Julie Postel, of Mile. Tamisier who inspired Eucharistic Congresses, of Pauline Jaricot who founded the A.P.F., who knew well the Marist Fathers from whom the earliest evangelisers of New Zealand were drawn, was above all the disciple of the Cure d'Ars, and he, she held, predicted to her in utmost detail her destiny.
A botanical and medical student, she was as welcome at Scutari during the Crimean war as later on in France during
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the cholera scourge. But the amazing tales sent from America by her first cousin, Ven. Philippine Duchesne, and the return of the relics of B. Chanel, first Marist martyr in Oceania, to Lyons, and the arrival of Bishop Pompallier, first Bishop in New Zealand, settled her vocation. She sailed in a whaling vessel, and after twenty weeks (and we grumbled at our five !) reached Auckland. After no long time she knew both English and Maori.
This is not her ' life ' : I merely mention that she walked hundreds of miles alone, or with one Maori woman, through bush you would have thought impenetrable, and canoed very many more, and lived in Maori kaiangas or villages and increased her already sound knowledge of botany till her remedies became known throughout both islands.
She founded the Institute of Our Lady of Compassion, and in 1913, when she was 78, went to Rome about it, nor could return till 1920. When she died, at the Home I mentioned, you may say that the whole of Wellington, all classes, all creeds, followed the funeral of " New Zealand's greatest woman ".*
If one had to foretell what would need to be the virtues of such a woman, one would choose (in the human scale) force of character and imagination. She possessed them ; and no wonder that they had their due shadows, obstinacy and, well, romanticism. Her vision was often truer than the facts. When the ' psychology of the Saints ' is written, as some day it must be, women like her will provide a vast illumination. For they will show how faults co-exist with virtues, and are almost the product of virtues —at least, of becoming virtuous. Difficult to be always kind, without being now and again soft; to be always mortified, without being sometimes hard. How narrow may be the gulf —though how profound —between hope and presumption ; faith and superstition ! Does it harm the reputation of a Saint if he be caught out as having erred ? Erred even till near the
* Her * life ’, reprinted from the New Zealand Month, is published in pamphlet form by the Australian C.T.S.
THE INTRODUCTION
52
end, as the Third Fall is portrayed near the summit of Mount Calvary, though that was innocent, and our falls are not ? No ; it does but enhance it. For no one believes in a living thing that does not grow ; Saints grew ; and growth mostly goes in jerks, even in humans, for the divine spring-time is recurrent. Who basks in unbroken summer ?
Dinner ; about fifty men-guests —young lawyers, doctors, clerks, men in the civil services. They sang ‘ For he’s . . . ’ at the slightest provocation, and how I enjoyed their hurrahs ! Like cracks of whips, very sharp, and much better than our long-drawled final syllable. Thereafter, a meeting organised by the University Guild which made the nucleus. Others were teachers. About three hundred and fifty came, packing the hall and the ante-room. The meeting impressed me —I decided to wait till I could dream a little before deciding just why and how it did. After it we went to Our Lady of the Angels’ Church, to which seamen and immigrants are directed. Very wide and light; brick with a concrete skeleton. The concrete arches for the roof are said to be the first erected anywhere. You can put twice the weight on this concrete, so they say, that you can on granite ! The glass is German and therefore likely to be good —lucid, at any rate, and providing genuine pictures. There is a whole Life of Christ in glass around this Church —a Children’s Bible of highest value. Then to the Basilica of the Blessed Sacrament, serving for pro-cathedral. It, like St. Mary’s, replaces a wooden structure burned down. Each has a fine site ; St. Mary’s is a bold Gothic ; the Basilica very fine Roman style, with coffered ceiling. Far and away more impressive than any non-Catholic building in the town, though possibly not so proudly uplifted as the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Christ Church, in that South Island that alas, I shall not see. After tea, talk ; and then Benediction ; and then more talk, and bed, and up early, and a brief talk to the boys, who gave their good sharp cheers and their College Yell, if I dare so call it—gave it with more vigour, I fear, than we might summon up ! Then the whole school transferred itself outside,
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after I had been allowed to shake hands with some of the senior boys and leading athletes, and, between lines of lads still yelling their ‘ Boomeranga ’, our car left Wellington.
I have written out these days at greater length than I mean to write of others, for, after all, they were my first two days in a new world ; I was susceptible, fresh, and mopped up impressions like a sponge. But apart from the beauty of the place, and the inspiriting hospitality, I found ‘ education’ emerging as something especially substantial from the mist of memories. I had learned that non-Governmental schools get no help at all from Government ; and that in Government schools no religion at all is taught, though the clergy or their representatives have, I think, a ‘ right of entry ’, hedged with many restrictions. I heard that there was a move to get a kind of Cowper Temple-ism imposed upon all schools. All schools would have to give a sort of Biblereading ‘in which all could join ’. Two-thirds of the various clergies were said to be against it ; but the movement, perhaps, is growing. I heard it called ‘ skeletonised religion ’ : I said the word was too good for it : a skeleton is a fine object; it has firm contours and is accurately logical. I hold we have proved in England that that ‘ smudgy ’ religion which New Zealand nonconformists and a minority of Anglicans seem to desire is hopelessly ineffectual. Nothing de-Christianises a land so soon as Undenominational Christianity. Living in a college as I was, naturally that was what I mostly thought of: but even so, not only a fact like the College having been built and maintained for over 40 years without a penny of State Aid : rather, its ideals and practice. They reach their complete expression in the University Guild. This was founded by V. Rev. Fr. T. A. Gilbert, S.M., in 1922. To quote from the college magazine, Blue and White, for that year ;
' A students' Guild is the natural outcome of a piece of logic to which the Catholic body of New Zealand pledged itself long ago. On account of a principle which it could not in conscience forego, it made immense sacrifices to build the network of primary parochial schools that spreads over
THE INTRODUCTION
54
the country to-day. That first step involves the rest. The next logical step is the Secondary School. To complete the scheme, to apply the principle of religion in education quite logically, Catholic effort must reach as far as the University. [lmpossible to raise a Catholic University.] Yet the logic of religious principle remains irresistible. Other methods that fall short of a University, or of a University Hall, must be tried. One such method is the University Students' Guild.'
Incontrovertible argument, felt by us in England even more forcibly. Even did Catholics not now go to the ordinary universities, which they do in very large numbers, we never could have created a Catholic University. Still less can we, as it is. Hostels in the younger universities may be possible, but merely as Catholic lodging-houses with a minimum facility for extra religious instruction if anyone cares to go to it. University societies are essential, and, thank God, exist ail-but everywhere where a University does. (In our smallest universities, Catholics are very few indeed.) The Wellington Guild, therefore, sprang up, centred at St. Patrick's. Its avowed object was : 'To foster and promote Catholic doctrine and thought', just as ours is : 'To build up an educated Catholic public opinion.' It was open to Catholic graduates and undergraduates of any university and to students of post-matriculation standard. Wisely widened field. The teachers, for example, at the Training College, were most judiciously admitted. While then the bulk of the members belongs to the Victoria College or the Training College, the Guild exists for all Catholic students.*
Its method is, to begin each meeting with a lecture, and to meet on each second Sunday of the University term (MarchOctober). In 6 years, 22 different lecturers have given 71
* The New Zealand University consists of the four University Colleges : Victoria U.C. (Wellington) ; Canterbury U.C. (Christchurch) ; Auckland U.C. (Auckland) ; Otago U. (Dunedin). Of these the first tends to specialise in law and science ; the second in engineering ; the fourth in medicine ; Auckland seems less specialised.
D
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lectures (up to July, 1928) on the most varied subjects, though they always have a point where contact may be established between a piece of secular knowledge or contemporary fact, and the Faith, unless they are directly 'apologetic'. In 1927, the average attendance at the 11 lectures was between 70 and 80 ! Discussion, tea, and social amusement follow these lectures ; and even the least interested, the dullest even, can go out into his life knowing that the difficulties he meets with are not unknown to his fellow-Catholics, are not feared, have a Catholic point of view to be opposed to them, are dealt with in Catholic books. It is good, too, that men of real eminence come, at times, to lecture—recently, for example, the Italian and the Belgian consuls.
Now I consider that the men who could invent and perseveringly carry on a scheme like this, cannot but give an education, in the College itself, that intelligently prepares for it. And they do. Official examinations are sat for, and passed—brilliantly. But they are no blight. Older boys, at any rate, select a non-examinational subject—thermal activity, Arctic exploration, what you will ! —and for two months get it up (every library is open to them) and then read the results to their class and are sharply criticised. Experience shows that not only do official exams, not suffer from this system, but it helps boys to tackle fresh subjects better than those who have had no such training. That is what I call ' education ' ! It reminds me of the best version of the best part of Oxford education—and that means much.
I needn't now go back upon the college's four Rugger XV's ; I cannot dwell on its active S.V.P. conference, managed by the boys ; nor on its fearless and developmental religious instruction. I must have said enough to make clear why my first two days in New Zealand supplied me with inspiration no less than they demand from me an unforgetting gratitude.*
* St. Patrick's, now far too small, has acquired a territory elsewhere, and its rowing should come to equal its football.
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56
(n)
' You will find holes in our fences, and you are the man to mend them.'
The Arawa chief, to Cardinal Cerretti on his first visit as Apostolic Delegate : quoted by Bishop Cleary on his return as Papal Legate in 1928.
We drove along the harbour till beyond Petone and then turned inland. They are pouring the hillside into the enormous harbour to make fifty more yards of land, and grade the railway better. The place is full of ambitions —all the sadder that they made the first railways so narrow-gauged. The carriages too must be narrow, for a big hang-over would be dangerous, and speed is small. But the road rising over the first range of hills was finely engineered and even now is being broadened and having its corners sheared. I wanted to see a kiwi, but I never did ; but the black and white crow was everywhere with its mellow voice. It imitates better than any parrot —even shades of accent ! Lots of larks, especially ground-larks ; finches numerous but, they say, a nuisance. They imported four nightingales in hopes that they would breed. Perhaps they have—or perhaps they went homing back and have been drowned. However I shall never be able to see a bird properly, so I prefer the trees. Already the spiky New Zealand flax, like an aloe, and the dishevelled cabbage-palm that I was to come to love dearly, and a few tree-ferns, which are real ferns with spores, showed themselves, and glossy unknown trees. After a while, deforestation became appallingly evident.
In some ways the country was like Cumberland, for shape of hills ; like Devonshire for colouring. The only brilliancy was gorse, as much hated here, along with the blackberry, as prickly pear is in Queensland. Cows, in their waterproof coats —it is raining a little, but cows don’t even ‘ sleep in ’, in New Zealand. Great globular sheep. Fields of turnips, hand-sown. Ghostly boles of dead trees that have been ‘ ringed ’ and slain. [I begin to think : ‘ I shall be making a fool of myself if I risk all these assertions. I am playing true to the tourist’s role, and
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proclaiming facts that are known to everyone, or are not facts at all.’] Porirua inlet ; Paremata ; Pahautanui—we pass these, and I surely can’t be wrong about what’s on the map, and the names are so jolly ! Reflecting on these names, and observing that the Maori ends all his words in vowels (pronounced ‘ Italian-wise ’) and that no two consonants may clash, and that s becomes hj (so that sheep is hipi) and that I becomes r —apple makes apero —and resolving to learn a lot of Maori before I’ve done (hope never realised), I fail to notice that we have been climbing high and we suddenly top a ridge and plunge rapidly down, the sea on our left. The day had become glorious : the sea, very far below, was as smooth as silk and as soft as wool—all the veiled vivid tints that only pastels give. The South Island floated far away ; Kapiti seemed quite close, in a dream that held no memories of its bloodstained past. Paukakariki : Paraparaumu—the country is now flat, rather like Norfolk, save for the flax where it is swampy.
At Waikanai we turn inland a little and lose the sea. Otaki, Manakau, Levin, Shannon, Tokumaru ; finally Palmerston. Garaged the car and lunched at a fragrantly clean hotel—the landlord refuses payment. Palmerston intends to be very large, and has immensely wide streets rectangularly laid out. Then to St. Patrick’s church. Concrete once more, very light and strong and airy. At once I recognised two windows as the work of a firm whose glorious jewelled blues and greens and purples (it doesn’t do so well, I feel, with reds and yellows) I had only seen in the Honan memorial chapel at Cork and at Notre Dame, Dowanhill. Here its beauty cannot yet be quite appreciated, for the sun falls heavily (through pale windows opposite) on one of the two windows. But when all is glazed similarly, translucency should be adequate. I think the genial parish-priest, who twice welcomed us, that day and the next, was glad that Iso exulted in his glass ! I begin, too, to observe the habit here of resting the sanctuary lamp on a pillar. Pleasing and liturgical, and no oil drips. And then on to Flock House, via Sanson and Bulls, aB| miles out of our way—but would I
THE INTRODUCTION
58
have missed it? Not for 100 miles of deviation ! We were told, at Bulls, ‘ The next two-storeyed house on your left—about 8 miles.’ That in itself was significant !
I had at first intended to synopsise literature that I possess concerning British immigration into New Zealand. I have thought better of that, and will confine myself to the one concrete thing that interested me, namely Flock House, especially as it is a thing that could hardly, it seemed to me, be bettered — save that it did seem to me appalling that an institution such as I shall describe should pay an enormous land-tax, educational and charitable as it is, if anything in the wide world is. It has other financial disabilities that seem to me astounding, and as though authority wished to kill the best thing, in its line, that New Zealand possesses. I even thought that the Flock House boys should receive that £lOO which the Overseas Settlement authorities were saying they were willing to give to any settler who should save a like sum before settling on his own account, which is just what the Flock House boys are doing, as I shall say. I would go further still, and profess my belief that New Zealand could hardly do better than start several Flock Houses for its own sons, if, as the president of the Auckland Manufacturers' Association said about the same time, New Zealand exports could be increased by an annual worth of ten millions if the population were larger and put to the proper work properly. And after all I will quote the end of a speech by Mr. T. R. Lees, managing trustee of Flock House, because the only possible objection that I can see to the existence of Flock House, of other Flock Houses for other sorts of boys, would be that farming has no prospects in New Zealand.
' It is futile to say that land values must fall. They have fallen ; and we all know that the actual selling value of farming land is now down to pre-war level and in many cases much below. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of good land open for purchase at 1914 values, and which, properly farmed, wiil return good interest at those values.
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' The whole crux of the matter to-day is the want of confidence and of reasonably cheap money for ordinary farming operations—scrubcutting and labour generally. It is that only and not the prices realised for produce which is responsible for land going back into fern, scrub and under-growth—-for land lying idle which should be under the plough, and for the unemployed in New Zealand to-day. To remedy this state of things we must restore confidence in the minds of the farmers and in the minds of those who have money to lend.
' During the years 1917 to 1920 capital was poured into the country districts by banks, lending institutions and private lenders, who were directly responsible for and encouraged the wild speculation and gambling in land, which forced prices up to such ridiculous heights. That money was not spent on the farms. Had it been spent on improving the land and increasing production, New Zealand would have seen a true prosperity without parallel in the history of the world. During the last year I have travelled several thousand miles through back country of grazing and farming districts, and wherever I went good land and poor land was crying out for labour, for manure and for cultivation. This want of confidence is only a passing phase and the result of the indigestion caused by the wild speculation of the past.
' This country has only been scratched. Eventually it can take on the land and give prosperity to not only the few hundred Flock House boys and girls, but many hundreds of thousands of young people of the right sort —those who are prepared to give up the hand to mouth existence in town for the healthy and natural life of a producer in the country. Townsmen have a direct responsibility and impetus to do all they can to ease the path of the farmer, for without him they cannot prosper or even live.'
It will save me a deal of trouble if I now quote from The Sun (Christchurch) of June 16, 1928 : besides, I shall be less likely
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to make the tourist’s silly slips, as probably I have already done.
* On several occasions, in discussing the question of immigration, The Sun has referred to the striking success of the work that has been, and is being, carried on at the Flock House institutions in the Manawatu. These two training centres — one for girls and one for boys—were established by the trustees of what is known as the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Acknowledgment of Debt to British Seamen Fund, a fund formed of certain additional moneys which were coming to New Zealand sheepfarmers when the accounts of the wool commandeer were squared up after the war, but which the growers agreed to set aside to assist the children of killed and disabled British seamen (both naval and mercantile marine) without whose services the seas would not have been secure for the passage of colonial clips to the Allied market. The assistance is provided by a junior immigration scheme under which girls and boys between the ages of 14 and 18 years, otherwise eligible, and approved by an advisory committee at Home, are brought out to New Zealand, given a period of preliminary training in farm or farm domestic work, and then helped to find congenial and profitable openings as farm and station assistants with a view to learning the business, and, later, taking up holdings of their own.
* All this will be familiar to most readers. It is set forth merely as preliminary to noticing a review, in the latest issue of Overseas to reach the Dominion, of the practical working-out of the scheme, the writer being Captain F. H. Billington, Principal of Flock House Station. Captain Billington’s account justifies the confidence with which The Sun and others of its friends have pointed to Flock House as an example of what can be done to assist young immigrants ; and his sum-ming-up is one that cannot be ignored by anyone anxious to make of our immigration system a real nation-building force.
' The trustees' London committee provides the girls and boys
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with the necessary outfit, and arranges for their transport to New Zealand under a conducting officer. At Flock House Station, the senior of the two institutions, there is accommodation for 60 or 70 boys, and the 8000-acres property carries, besides 6,000 sheep and 1,000 grazing cattle, a herd of 70 dairy cows, horses, pigs, and poultry. The period of training is from eight to nine months, during which time the boys work under the different foremen at all branches of farm work. Also, they take turns at housework. They are encouraged to take part in out-door sport, and are taught to be manly and self-reliant. During their training the boys receive 2s. 6d. a week pocket-money, but no other payment. This the training. And the result ? At any rate a setting of young feet on the right road, a shaping of strong hands for the task ahead. This is as Captain Billington sees it :
Whilst nine months is too short a period to train fully a townbred boy to become a skilled farm worker, it suffices, nevertheless, in most cases to acclimatise him to his adopted country, to remove his excessive ' greenness ' and to make him at least useful. Furthermore, as a result of the healthy open-air life and wholesome food, the boy's physical, and often mental, development is wonderful.
At the expiration of his training, the boy is placed with a carefully selected farmer under a three years' apprenticeship agreement at wages varying from 15s. to 225. 6d. per week (all found) for the first year, with annual increments of 2S. 6d. to ss. per week according to ability. The trustees act as guardians to the boys up to the age of 20 and, furthermore, retain and place to each boy's credit in the Savings Bank two-thirds of his wages until he reaches that age. The Fund's Welfare officer keeps in touch with boys out in employment, visits them from time to time, and investigates cases of complaints from both boys and employers.
' At their headquarters the girls are trained on much the same lines in housewifery, dairy, gardening, and poultry work.
' To date over 300 boys and 50 girls have been passed out to employment, and the great majority are doing well, the proportion of misfits being surprisingly small.
' To have been associated with work of this kind is both a privilege and an opportunity, and the close personal contact with the boys which has been Captain Billington's lot equips
THE INTRODUCTION
62
him to speak with authority. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Principal of Flock House will be heard in high places when he says : ‘ The experience gained through handling and training these boys has impressed me with the seriousness of the disabilities of newly-arrived immigrants , and how lamentable the results may be if they are left to shift for themselves. On the other hand, it is equally striking how much can be done, often with not too promising material, by even a limited period of training such as is given to these youngsters. Granted that the younger the immigrant the easier is he or she acclimatised and trained, nevertheless there is no doubt that older immigrants would benefit immensely by some training on the lines of that of Flock House. In my opinion, farm training in the Old Country preparatory to migration cannot be compared to that given in the country of adoption, where ‘ atmosphere ’ and other conditions enable acclimatisation and training to proceed simultaneously and leave nothing to be unlearned as inapplicable V
We therefore motored through the golden afternoon till the ' two-storeyed house ' appeared —a white house on a hill, white wood, with green finishings and a roof of real red tiles. Almost at once, I saw two of the Rotorua boys. Happy reunion. The superintendent (he will forgive me if that isn't the exact name) arrived and gave us tea before taking us round. One can't but ask, at once, if the Catholic boys are looked after ? Yes. A priest comes at stated intervals to Bulls, and the boys are driven in to Mass, and on special occasions to another larger town, Marton. Breakfast when they return ; so Communion always possible. And Catholic mothering—necessary, for the boys are young enough to need it—is given by a lady whom we also met. Alas ! we were told that the boys were away, who knew at what distance, burning gorse. Never mind : first, show us what is here, and then, distance or no distance, we will find them. The laundry, then. Clouds of steam and yells of welcome. Three more Rotorua boys. Then two more ; and the wash-
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house and bath-house, and yet another was extracted from his very bath. Then the older boys' dormitory. They sleep in two tiers of bunks, very austere, very clean ; exactly right. Large lockers for their belongings. Then we went all over the house, full of good naval pictures and sport-trophies and samples of farming-produce. Gay, clean, sensible. Then off to hunt down the gorse-burners. Found them. More yells. I can't tell you how glad I was to see them. Already so sunburnt and accustomed to cropped hair and sturdy clothes. They came crowding from half a mile away, and I feel sure that my episcopal chauffeur was as happy to see them as I was. Well, then, we had to say good-bye, and drove on, discussing American versus British cars, but my ears were ' listening two ways ', as Maoris say, for my thoughts were with the house we had just left. What puzzled me was, what would happen to it when the supply of boys, sons of naval men wounded or killed in the war, was exhausted ? You can't keep having wars to supply them. Perhaps our imperial or naval authorities, or mercantile marine, ought to buy it, while the existing fund would serve as basis for further development or as capital for young settlers from overseas, especially the sons and daughters of our seafarers. The full development of those 8,000 acres will take decades yet, and should go far to solve financial problems. The virtue of thrift, less and less prevalent in England, is vigorous in Flock House boys. (Their savings are deposited with the Public Trustee.)
' Of 258 trainees, 48 have saved over £lO and under £2O each, 89 over £2O and under £5O, and 99 over £5O and under £lOO. Ten trainees have saved just over £lOO, while 10 have banked between £llO and £l5O each, and two have banked over £l5O.
' The scheme was instituted four years ago, when the first batch of trainees arrived in New Zealand. ... It is recognised by trainees that their ventures on the land to be successful must be backed by finance.
In addition to these funds the Public Trustee holds accumu-
THE INTRODUCTION
64
lated pension moneys to the credit of the boys to a total of approximately £3,900, while further, 228 have paid one, two or three years’ premiums on life assurance policies varying from £2OO to £4OO, the total amount assured being £64,550. Many also own horses, dogs, saddles and equipment, and a number of them over 20 years of age, who draw their wages direct in full, have their own Post Office Savings Bank accounts in addition, though the majority of these still continue to have their savings sent in to the care of the trustees.
‘ The saving scheme also applies to the Girls’ Flock House, and it is stated the trustees are well satisfied with the results of two years’ operation ’.
Obviously, a boy who makes the best of his Flock House chances could, if he received the £lOO grant from ourselves, and especially if he received a pro rata assistance of so many shillings in the pound from the New Zealand Government (as would be but reasonable, since his life is to be spent wholly on New Zealand soil and much to the advantage of the land), not only find a leasehold farm with right of purchase and fully slock it and yet be free from debt, but soon enough repay himself and before middle-age be prosperous.
I like to mention the great kindness I received from Hon. J. C. Carrington, M.L.C., Hon. E. Newman, M.L.C., C.M.G., chairman of the board of trustees and in a true sense sponsor of Flock House scheme ; and from Captain Billington and his wife, whom unfortunately I did not meet (for our visit was a last-minute affair), but who corresponded with me so generously during a time when, for extreme weakness, I could hardly reply, and showered snapshots on me of which I have made slides. Captain Billington saw service in France, Macedonia, and Palestine, and it would be bad taste in me to comment on his record there. But the boys are lucky to have him, and Mrs. Billington, at their service. For service it is. As for me, I hope to receive The Flocktonian, Flock House’s magazine, to the end of my days. My statistics will soon enough be out of date :
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some of my comments may have been ill-grounded or ill-advised. But I am sure that my general impression is just.
Off then, after this episode, to the Marist Fathers’ noviciate at Highden : just time to note that there were only two priests there and a brother or two —the novices were elsewhere then — when dog-tired, bitterly cold, brandy-and-milk, bed.
Most of the night was spent in picking up the bedclothes that the cold caused their would-be inmate to kick off. An early good-bye to this house of kind and courteous bonhomie, and back into Palmerston. A rapid visit to the girls' Flock House, a mile or so out. Only two girls out of about thirty were Catholic, but the utmost care is taken to see that they have facilities for Mass. The girls wear corduroy breeches and bright brown jerseys and are sometimes sisters of boys at the other house. The buildings and the small estate delighted me, because while they were far brighter than what we might expect in England, there was no art-y faddism nor conscious uplift about this, but it seemed to reflect a kind of level of feeling about life that you detect in New Zealand. I may have had good luck in what I saw ; but certainly nowhere else have I met, for example, with small hotels, like these —good wide landings ; preference for air ; discreet greys and blues and purples in carpets, wallpapers, window-curtains ; no overcrowding of stuffy furniture. Perhaps our country hotels inherit, more than most places, an appalling tradition ? Yet there is one exterior item in New Zealand that is as traditional as any here—the pictures. Queen Victoria saying that she will be good : Victoria being crowned, and married : Frith : Landseer. I do not mind it : it is spontaneous, and unlike our own sophisticated reversion to Victorian types. For tradition puts a patine upon anything ; and much lovableness can attach to bequests from a real era, like the Victorian one.
Yet, as we drove off, I experienced a strange sense of instability
66
THE INTRODUCTION
in this land. It cannot possibly be like this in ten years’ time. I kept being told that already the Chinese practically owned the vegetable-market. Exaggeration ? Still it did seem odd to see those names over the shops we passed. Laundry-work, too, seemed Chinese, naturally. Already I keep hearing laments about the exodus from country into town ; yet the towns are planning to become a dozen times larger than they are, and in view of unemployment people talk of checking immigration, as if a negative solution ever solved anything. Check it by all means, if there is a better positive substitute. Meanwhile the cinema is poisoning, because standardising, the national imagination. And all this labour-apparatus I have been watching can, of course, be applied to enable you to do your work more fruitfully, and even, to increase its amount. But I keep hearing it referred to as as though you wanted, not to do the most possible or the best possible work, but the least possible. This suggests that work is undesirable, and will produce a breed quite different from that which we have seen and honoured among New Zealand and Australian and Canadian pioneers, and in short any men who have dealt strongly. I know very well what a pitiable specimen I should be if I hadn’t any work to do, and didn’t try, intermittently at least, to do it hard. Enough. ‘ Unconscious cerebration ’ is a good little phrase. It means that if you have a topic that has gripped you and might excite you and make you come to quick conclusions, you had better leave it alone for a bit, and it will go on working inside your mind and reappear in a much more manageable shape.
On then, out of Palmerston. The sky was overcast ; the hills were slate-grey with brilliant yellow patches where the distant sun struck them. The snowy mountains of yesterday were invisible. So was that vivid green with intense blue shadows that you seldom see in England save during great heat. Later in the day, the most astounding colour was always the willowtwigs, that looked as if they had been painted a fierce orange. Against the massed yew-trees, they flared royally superb. When
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THE RISEN SUN
the sun slipped through slats in the grey clouds, you could hardly have believed in those willow-flames !
Through the Manawatu gorge, railway and road one on each side, in a series of S’s, and supported on concrete pillars. Thence a long stretch of country not very interesting ; flat, save for the vast Ruahipe range on the left, full of deer, I believe. Despite river-beds, shingly, 200 yards wide, with a thread of water, it no more looks like Lombardy ! Lunch at Takapau, just such a clean and bright hotel as I have mentioned. Again they refuse to charge a halfpenny. Possibly they charge no priest; possibly they ask all priests thus sociably into their private sittingroom. Possibly in these very isolated lives newspaper-reports assume too heavy an importance. The priest from Waipawa came in, and we lunched together—l off sausages, plum-pudding, and tea —would you believe it! Another point ; never yet has my appetite here been demolished by any smells of cooking. You do not sigh, foreseeing cabbage ; you are not choked by the vaporised fat of sheep.
I can but hope that this and other hostelries will not be mobbed with clerical or lay visitors expecting free meals ! But I couldn’t but chronicle, somehow, my pleasure in these courtesies, offered with that sense of freedom within the courtesy noticeable in New Zealand.
Off again. Waipawa ; Pukehou ; Te Hauke ; Paki Paki ; past what the map calls Lakes : vast expanses of dried red reeds at present. Oddest hills—quite smooth turf, and domed rather like that pudding which has whole apples in it half submerged in something. Batter, perhaps. But near Hastings they became broken again and dramatic in contour. And then the sea once more, the eastward sea this time, with the Napier Bluff ahead of us, Kidnapper’s Cape behind us, and the far side of Hawke’s Bay still further ahead, and, I thought, faint on the horizon the land where Gisborne is. Among all these romantic and historical names, it was pleasant to find that close-connected one, and my kinsman whom the town’s name recalls, unforgotten even now by the very old men here. Then the esplan-
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THE INTRODUCTION
ade of Napier, and tea at the presbytery of that elaborate wooden church —almost tormentedly elaborate outside, but full of wide dignity within. I loved the geniality of those priestly welcomes ; nothing that could be done for you, was omitted : I loved to meet old priests working in the gardens, and young priests with jobs unhesitatingly undertaken which might seem all too rough for lads who have guessed nothing but the academic comforts of an English seminary. ... In a day or two, I hear that I shall see, and stay at, a presbytery where typical New Zealand work is done. Wait, till then, for comments.
After tea, we climbed through the sapphire and amethyst evening to the Convent where, having saluted the children, we went to a Maori department, and here first met Maoris to talk to. The girls had arranged a festa for us —songs and dances of the most intricate sort, and to my delight, as we left, they sang that Maori farewell which I had learned upon the Rotorua : ‘ When you return —You’ll find us waiting here ! ’ Poor dear young ladies ! I hope they’ll think better of it. Alas and alas ! Return is a very distant affair. I felt a little sad. After all, I was witnessing a dying thing. Those Maori clothes were not worn save to interest a stranger ; Maori seemed talked almost under protest. What will last, however, is the fruit of the affection one could see that the nuns were lavishing upon their children.
Then, very late, off to the Marist seminary across flats which 1 reclamation ' from the sea keeps changing in topography. Being about to lose ourselves, we enquired of a casual pedestrian, and he turned out to be living next door to the seminary itself, so not only he directed us but we gave him a lift. Providence does rather like to wait till the last minute. . . . Supper : but it was too late, and I was too tired, to collect many impressions save that of cold ; and when two priests came in to struggle to open my window as wide as possible. . . . However, someone else guessed, and came and lit a glorious wood fire, and in the scent and glow of it I slept happily.
This was the last time I was to meet the Marist Fathers till
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THE RISEN SUN
I found them again in Sydney, and it was good thus to see at work men of whom one had mostly read, and to encounter the living spirit of their martyr, Blessed Peter Chanel. They serve a vast expanse : I think it includes Samoa, Fiji, Solomon Islands, the Tonga Islands and doubtless much more. They deserve to be far more numerous —there are here 42 students, novices, philosophers, theologians, if I understood aright—but you wouldn’t want to see a set of finer lads. One came from Garnethill, Glasgow ! A pleasant ten minutes with them before we left. The Fathers have here some 800 acres on the flat, and hill-side with 2,000 sheep upon it. They have shearinghouse, vineyard, bee-hives and masses of vegetables and have terraced their steep hill industriously. In fact, I think they have reclaimed most of the flat. I wish all seminaries had that amount of physical labour to put through ! Even in this weather, flowers everywhere (in summer no green grass is visible). Geranium ; snapdragon ; cannas ; and a smother of bougainvillea, of which I can at last examine the flower, all but invisible inside the purple leaves (not petals).
(m)
Oh, my heart goes crying through the days of waiting
While our lilies open and our tuis sing.
Had my Lord been born here angels might have ringed us.
Standing round our island wide wing to wing.
Had my Lord been born here in the time of rata, Three dark-eyed chieftains would have knelt to him,
With green-stone and mats and the proud huia feather, And the eyes of Mary seeing would grow dim.
Eileen Duggan : New Zealand Christmas.
Off then, July 18, past reclamations where men with superb muscles are breaking the cliff down to fill the swamp. Over a long bridge and causeway to Petane and then inland. It was
THE INTRODUCTION
70
drizzling, and the country became more and more English with disconcerting cabbage-palms and lots of yews. But after a while we climbed and climbed through an endlessly changing country : dark trees among that brilliantly orange grass creating an effect of sunlight though there was none. Lonely tall brick chimneys marking where the wooden house had been burned down. Black Scottish cattle ; hornless cattle, too, but illtempered. They try, like some horses, to get you between them and then squash you. Then the country became amazingly barren and tumbled. At sea, I had felt : ' This is like the Alps, un-coagulated and heaving about—the molten world settling down into its solidities.' Here I felt the opposite —' This is a sea in storm, abruptly petrified.' Very tiring so much as to look at. We are both growing tired. Hairpin turns all the while, and no parapet. At times, almost brimstone yellow slopes with huge blackened stumps or trunks all over them —trees ring-barked and so dead, or else somehow burnt. Then after a 2,400 foot summit, a plunge down to the Mohaka river. The road lies along the side of the earthy mountain like a weal made by a whip—l had seen nothing like it save in Algeria. And when you think that the last generation has worked engineering prodigies, and that this Bishop used to drive his car (so far as I can see) along the sheer slope of a mountain-roof, and that even now we have had to be telephoning enquiries as to whether we were likely to ' get across'. . . . Well, after that swoop .. . down, by a road with crumbling edges, up again 2,600 feet to Tarawera (not the famous Tarawera that jumped in 1886 straight into the air in a volcanic spasm), where as usual there was the admirable inn. Now I will ask you to observe. We were 2,600 feet high, or more, with nothing within 20 miles on either side of us. The menu was : Vegetable soup ; hot shepherd's pie or haricot chops ; then mutton or beef or colonial goose (I rather think this was a kind of sausage ; anyway not a goose) ; then a choice of lemon jelly, steamed sultana pudding, creme (not even cream) of rice, apricot pie, semolina custard, or prunes and rice, and lots of real
E
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cream if you wanted it, all beautifully cooked, and in helpings of dimensions that would have baffled a bull. And needless to say, tea. Does this appear to you materialist and that ‘my ears are open only for food-time ’ ? Well, then, an edifying incident. We needed some more petrol, or benzine, or oil, or whatever you put inside a car. ‘ Take no more ’, said the man, ‘ than you absolutely need. For up here, twenty miles away from everywhere, it will cost you more than it will at the next station.’ How is that for Christian honesty ?
After lunch, a stroll. Astonishing mountains, jagged crests and precipitous descents : then perfectly flat-topped terraces where the river used to flow ; then ravines that the immemorial stream had split for itself. All this while the country had been becoming vaguely volcanic. Now it was definitely so. The sliced sides of the road showed white ash instead of yellow earth, and this dust lies 300 feet deep ! From those sliced sides project branches and stumps of trees, buried in the last great eruption, reduced to charcoal, and now restored to light. We are travelling over a world that was once ablaze. Up and up till gradually down over league upon league of pumicedust. (I believe that they find that something—fodder, say—grows on pumice as on nothing else. Perhaps a mighty future for these great distances. At present, nothing but the feathery broom-like tamarisk-like ti-tree.) The plain sloped till all of a sudden Mount Tauhara showed itself hummock-like (though from another angle it is coned) far away. It looks down into Lake Taupo, our objective. It stands 4,500 feet high, I fancy, and looks so lonely and unlike anything round it, that had I been a pagan I could have worshipped it. Am I wrong, however, in thinking that the Maoris didn't worship mountains ?
Meanwhile Lake Taupo had been appearing in glimpses of gentian blue between the tufty bush and under the limpid sky. Suddenly, after a dip through woods, it lay before us. It is 25 miles by 16—a vast crater —its lava-stem projects in it as an island, Motu Taiko. By now the day was exquisite. I kept being reminded of those Victorian landscapes when people
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THE INTRODUCTION
still painted carefully. No use talking of ‘ impressionism Here your impression was of details, in the sense that you had no doubt that, however far away, each cliff, each little hill, each plane of the distance, showed itself through the crystalline air, and all in most delicate cobalt. Cobalt is the colour, yet sapphire is the gem, that you must quote to describe this airy loveliness. But we were not to stop at the little town of Taupo. 34 miles further were to be accomplished, towards the south of the lake, by yellow roads through cloudy hedges of ti-tree (by the way, you pronounce that word like tea, and for a long time I thought it was spelt like that, but it isn’t). You kept emerging by the side of the lake, whose shingle seemed all pumice-stone, and I could hardly tear myself away from the game of chucking feather-weight boulders in to see them float. And again the road would rise and become a ledge carved in soft rock above the transparent water, or cross ridges built heaven knows how, with edges gnawed by rain and sharp declivities to this side and that, and how should they support the weight of a Chrysler 80 ? and what would happen if round one of the acute angles of the road another car should come ? I am a coward. I can’t pretend I’m not. I thanked every imp and elf of the locality when we descended once more to the level and—
At last the scene, that I had kept refusing to look at fragmentarily through the tufty ti-trees, revealed itself. The sweep of the lake ; the dim flat scrub ; the dramatic range of hills, jade, brown and purple ; and heaping themselves to heaven, the vast trio, Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro, a dazzling bastion of snow, and the perfect cone of Ngauruhoe very slowly pouring out its plume of steam and smoke into the blue.* You lower your eyes, only to see new brilliant plumes standing firm, then slightly swaying, then assuming all manner of new shapes, in the midst of the grey-green bush. Not allowing myself to look too closely at anything (because we were to have tea at the hotel in Tokaanu, and I felt that tea in the middle
* They are 9,175 ; 7,515, and 5,458 feet high. Egmont is 8,260 feet, but I did not see it.
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THE RISEN SUN
of my first experience of New Zealand's volcanic zone would be a sort of sacrilege) we hurried into the little place, tea'd in a room full of photos of the Duchess of York and of the incredible fish that leave no room for the water in these rivers, and wandered back to the street where, among stepping-stones, the whole place grunted and gurgled, gobbled and chuckled with hot water, tossing itself about at the bottom of little chimneys in the soil, or in pools, or in little channels. Sometimes the air would give a little cough ; a puff, a column, a cube of steam propelled itself; a fountain of scalding water would play for a minute or so, feel bored by our world, and suck itself back underground. You must not put your finger in these pools. You'd have no finger left. But after the water had run off, 20 yards or so, people were washing their clothes in it. Thence over a steaming lake by a little causeway that sometimes is submerged. The wind-screen becomes opaque and we feel our way. We turn a corner, and the mountain-side is seen steaming like a giant's laundry. This is where a landslide occurred—the whole cliff face came off and crashed down into the lake. By now the sapphire had changed into an incandescent film of imperial purple as if the far hills were all heather or thyme or something deeper still. A golden purple, like some pansies, or like amber wine in purple glasses—a colour without name. And so we arrived at the all but all-Maori village of Waihi.
This is no history of Maoris ! There is no doubt but that they are slowly increasing ; and thank God that there is at least one honourable race that we have not killed off. In 1927, there were 64,234 Maoris, of whom 61,410 were in the North Island. When half-castes were numbered separately—the last occasion when this was done appears to have been 1921 — compared to 52,751 pure-blooded Maoris, there were 3,116 half-castes living as Maoris, and 4,236 living as Europeans. But with the increased tendency of Maoris to live as Europeans, these subdivisions appear to have been abandoned in censustakings. The number of births in 1926 was 1,536 ; the total Maori population in that year, 63,670. This seems to give
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THE INTRODUCTION
24’ 2 births per thousand. In that year, the New Zealand birth-rate gave 21 05 per 1,000 ; the Australian, 22’02 ; England, I7'B. Maoris had four representatives in the House of Representatives in 1928 ; Tau Henare for Northern Maori ; Hon. Sir A. T. Ngata for the Eastern ; Hon. Sir M. N. Pomare for the Western ; H. W. Uru for the Southern. In the Legislative Council I see only one, whose provincial district is Auckland. So, though Waihi is a working-men’s village, all idea that the Maoris are not susceptible of a complete culture must be abandoned. In fact, were it not that New Zealand seems to me to possess a high general level of civilisation —by which I mean self-possession, courtesy, sensitiveness combined with solid character, 1 should say that the Maori ranks exceptionally high herein. He retains much of his traditional sharpness of intuition and vivacity of expression and has learned to control without too much repressing himself. I remember once that Bishop Cleary and I saw a quite ragged Maori working-man bicycling towards us. The man was a Catholic, and he hopped off his machine to salute the Bishop. The Bishop introduced me. ‘ Ah,’ said the man, smiling, and putting out his hand, ‘ I’ve been reading about you in the papers, and quite a number of your books.’ I think the ‘ books ’ included the Goddess of Ghosts ; heaven help him ! but how was that for straightforward self-possession ? I wonder what our British navvy would have said !
As we passed into the village-enclosure children came out joyfully, but quiet. Some were bathing in the steamy edges of the lake. Maori symbols alternated with the crucifix and Our Lady of Lourdes. The small church was perched high and the presbytery higher still —its priest came running out to meet us, a genial Dutchman from Mill Hill. Able to be carpenter, mason, plumber, electrician (a tall waterfall just beyond the village gives you light for nothing ; but there are some technicalities about the lighting that I needn’t spend time over), he is happy both in the mountain farms and the great saw-mill, into which huge trees come jerking down from the mountain-crest. It
75
sends out masses of sawdust from its electric saws to stain the lake blood-red, for the wood is a marvellous crimson-brown. A testimonial, as ever, hangs on his wooden walls ; but instead of the cloying lilies and ciboriums, doves and crowns with which such things are usually adorned, this testimonial has in its margin saw, saddle, lime-bucket and stonework—more than all the equipment of St. Joseph. Supper. Before His Lordship, the priest and myself, were set three enormous pigeons which eat a certain berry that makes them grow fat and taste—well, palatable, but slightly queer. They are pale green with white breasts. I believe that they are cooked with their insides inside, if you see what I mean. They are Pigeons of Ceremony, such as Maoris even now preserve, I am told, for their greater guests. Then sago and cream. A sharp reddish wine. And tea. I cannot imagine how people survive all this tea with their meat; but they do ; and it is nothing to Australia. Then talk by the big wood fire, and, cutting across it, the stern chant of the Maoris at their night-prayers in the church.
Then bed. Now remember that we were 1,200 feet up, and that one board separated us from the fierce winter frost. Though I tucked my feet into the lining of my trench-coat and wrapped a muffler round my head, the cold, and not the pigeons nor the tea, gave me such nightmares that I not only kicked the bedclothes off my truckle-bed, but also the mattress. Mechanically, it appears to me impossible, for how did not I, too, come off? Anyway, off went the mattress, and I remained, and the dawn came, to my gratitude, at last.
It came, deliriously beautiful. Great mattresses of steam lay upon the land where the earth was boiling. Where springs rose through the lake, the water panted gently and sent up its ghostly warmth. The church was full for the Bishop’s Mass at 7 ; the children and the elders remained for mine at 7.30. They chant the Mass —the liturgical prayers —in unison, usually monotone with a drop like the Carmelites’, but sometimes rising into melody. The last Gospel, too, they recite in unison. These incredible Mass-servers not only went barefoot on earth and
THE RISEN SUN
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linoleum when I could hardly tie my chasuble strings nor hold the chalice stem for frozen fingers, but play rugger by preference without boots even when others wear them, and join thus in scrums. ... A certain amount of Maori decoration in the church —black, red, yellowish hooks and lozenges—cannot but surprise a little the mauve and brown St. Joseph straight from Munich.
Note that these people, if on Sunday their priest be absent, ring their bell first for morning prayers, and later for the Mass prayers, and again for vesper prayers, and last of all for nightprayers. Our Lord's name is Hehu Kerito ; the Protestants call the latter word Karaiti, for they got it through the English ' Christ' ; the Catholics, by way of the French pronunciation. The priests and nuns who first came here all were French. In the course of the morning, I picked up an example or two of the Maori way of looking at things. A chief apologised to the Bishop —he came from the depths of the woods, he said, and was rough. ' From the deepest woods,' was the answer, ' come the best and tallest trees.' They like that. They are definitely witty : children listen to catechism and interrupt. A boy heard about Judas and the thirty pieces of silver. ' Sister, sister ! ' he called out, ' you bet that wasn't the first time ! Sister, he began with threepenny bits ! ' Nemo Jit repente turpissimus. . . . Here have we been honouring that ancient sentence by our use of it for near 2,000 years, and a Maori lad speaks it out of his own head, and who will honour him ? Never mind. No one ever says a good thing for the first time. Again, a young Maori asked this priest whether a certain woman were not a Catholic. ' She has been baptised, but . . . ' 'I see ! ' cried the young man. ' A wild cow with the brand on.' Now the wild cow has become useless and belongs to no one. . . . The captain of the Caranamana (Clansman), an honest Protestant, was explaining to an old chief, lately dead, the much-of-a-muchness of all religions. ' This ship goes to Auckland. That ship goes to Auckland. So does that one.' All roads lead to heaven. ' I know nothing about ships,' said the old man, ' but I do know
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about roads. If the town council wants a road, it gets an engineer, and he makes plans and specifications. He is the one who gets paid. If another makes a road, here, or there, not according to the plans and specifications, it is not a good road, even though it may get you there somehow ; and the maker isn’t paid.’
I do not wish to speak of modern Protestantism among Maoris. But its heredity is bad. Cook, it will be remembered, landed in 1769- But colonisation did not follow, becoming unpopular after the loss of our American colonies and impracticable after the Napoleonic wars. However, trade was sporadically making its way into the land, and even before the fatal gift of gunpowder, was responsible for grave dishonours, cruelties, and introduction of European diseases, which provoked frightful reprisals on the part of the true owners of the land, the Maoris. In the wake of trade came the Protestant missionaries. Samuel Marsden preached the first English sermon there on Christmas day of 1814 —a man far more ferocious as a magistrate than benevolent as a clergyman—even the secular authorities in Australia were shocked to the soul by his outrageous sentences and love for the lash and habitual footnote ; ‘ no mitigation Having mentioned this man, of whom people are trying to make a sort of saint, though his portrait well proclaims his natural brutality, I hasten to mention his distant successor, George Augustus Selwyn, who really was a Christian. But at last these missionaries took fright. Pompallier appeared upon a Frenchcrewed ship. The missionaries, who not only hoped to make of New Zealand a sort of Protestant paradise, but were making it even more completely a remunerative trading-station for themselves, and had hitherto been resisting tooth and nail any suggestion of altering the political status of the land, now joined earnestly in the petition that England should annex it as a colony. They could argue that it would else become French ; and also, were it English, Catholics might be hard put to it to stay there. In 1840 the British flag was in fact hoisted at the Bay of Islands, and by the Treaty of Waitangi, the sovereignty
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of the land was ceded to Queen Victoria.* There was a curious bye-product of all this agitation. Macaulay, who about this time was reviewing von Ranke's Lives of the Popes, and was much impressed by the missionary zeal of the Roman Church, was also in close touch with government officials concerned with colonisation, and cannot possibly but have heard about Rome's latest missionary exploit —the arrival in New Zealand of Pompallier. This, with moral certainty, accounts for the famous sentence that we so often quote, in which the essayist pictures the Roman Church still energising when, far in the future, some New Zealander shall stand on London Bridge to contemplate St. Paul's in ruins.
The ill-founded work of Protestant missions has been singularly shaken more than once by the revivalist preachers who influence the impressionable Maori ; and of late, that sense of nationality which degenerates into nationalism has created schisms even here. I mean, of course, the tendency to imagine that you
* This treaty was not the fraud that at first it looks. True, the Maori chiefs cannot have understood the abstract and alien notion of ' sovereignty'. The Crown guaranteed to chiefs and tribesmen possession of land or property ' so long as they should wish to retain them '. No doubt it was expected that the Maori would soon enough cease to wish, or be persuaded that he did not wish, to retain his land. Certainly he had far more than he could use ; and the New Zealand Land Company professedly regarded the treaty as ' a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment'. Europeans hitherto had succeeded in buying 26 million acres for an axe or two per tract ; 6 natives were said to have sold the whole of the South Island between them. The treaty at least recognised the right of the Maori to keep his land if he wanted to, and that land which was held tribally could not be sold by individuals. It replaced, moreover, the irresponsible land-shark by government officials, who, if they were honest, would have to deny the validity of all sorts of sales and prevent all manner of new ones. The officials were in fact honest substantially, which resulted in bloodthirsty disputes and dissatisfaction all round. The land-sharks were furious ; genuine settlers found their land taken back from them ; the Maoris themselves were quite sharp enough to cheat when they could. The credit for establishing a prosperous colony where the unfinished building was already in ruins, is due to George Grey, whose name even now is insufficiently in honour. He left in 1853, having worked marvels of reconstruction.
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must have a particular religion because you are of a particular nation. The more the Maori has (rightly) gained esteem for his race, its tradition and its future, the more exposed has he been to visionaries or scoundrels who exploit him. It is observed that the Protestant Maori clergy are among the first to lapse. Protestant Maori-Christianity must have had a fatal set-back due, if to nothing else, to the Ratana fiasco. This was the creation of a sect due to an ex-soldier Maori who discovered a religion suited to the Maori as such, if to no one else. Far from me to detail its vagaries. It is, as usual, a perfect example of the collapse of a cult based on a materialist conception like nationalism, into actual materialism !
I realised more than ever, when meeting the Maoris after breakfast (which consisted of black coffee, porridge, and roast mutton —very well cooked and tender), how grave a psychological problem is intertwined with the religious one. In proportion as the Maori gets what we call civilised, he developes new ideas and has to create words with which to express them. The Chinaman somewhat similarly has to teach in English (so I am assured by an Irish missionary) because to express the new thoughts he has acquired, in Chinese, would demand an infinity of time if not of paper should he want to write, agglutinatively, the words that symbolise his ideas. A tiny example is the Maori for ‘ Confirmation ’ : it is ; ‘ Vigour-giving Sacrament ’. Beautiful, but long. But parallel to additional mental responsiveness goes an additional physical sensitiveness. Maoris cannot bear any more to be tattooed. This is not merely that they want to copy Europeans who are not tattooed ; but they cannot bear the pain. No wonder. We met many old Maoris, men and women, tattooed with designs that might have made the envy of any modern artist—the women seem to tattoo only the upper lip and the chin when they marry, in order (so I was assured) to look more or less like warriors, at least conventionally, in an attack. But there was a man who had had half his face tattooed, and not the other half, because it hurt too much. In a selfconscious man the pain and fever must be terrible.
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I had better finish what I want to say about Maoris, speaking of them with sincere respect, gratitude, and fraternal hopefulness. I feel that here you have a race which is in reality simple, and accidentally being sophisticated : which is susceptible of love and of anger, and their parodies, which are lust and cruelty : which is extremely intelligent, and able therefore to be first-rate liars : which is still real, and having a human future, not like the Australian aborigines, who, frankly seem to me to be a dying stock that the Christian missionary can but help to die well. That is much : but, still, I foresee for the blacks no future. I could get on with the Maori just as a man, if he were kind enough to be willing to get on with me. I doubt whether I would be likely so to get on for another three generations with the Australian black, though no doubt I could do so if I invoked supernatural considerations. Therefore I was so edified, later on, by the training home, under Mill Hill Fathers, near Takapuna beyond Auckland. In it are many Maori lads being trained to trades, and also to a sound knowledge of the catechism, that they, Maoris, may teach the Christian faith to Maoris. What could be better ?
I shall often be perplexed, as already during this tour I have been, by the problem of nationalism. Obviously a man belongs to such and such a nation, and ought to love it. A man should love, first, his home ; then his country ; then the world at large. This is sheer St. Thomas, and, therefore, common sense. The first effort of a missionary should go towards —however distant be success —the creation of a native clergy. I need not fear to assert this most dogmatically, because it is the consistent and explicit teaching and injunction of the Holy See. Therefore, I hope to see a New Zealand born-and-bred clergy for New Zealand ; and a Maori born-and-bred clergy for the Maoris. Therefore, this St. Peter's house near Auckland, whether or no it produces in the long run priests or only catechists, seems to me an ideal enterprise. The tragedy is, that its claims are not realised. So far as I can see its Superior has to do about one hundred times the work of a parish priest on about one-sixth of
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his salary. I may be wrong, and when I visited it I confess I was feeling very ill ; but that is the conclusion that I came to. I doubt whether I should have been allowed to retain it had it been quite false. I wonder how many of our London Catholics realise the existence of Mill Hill ; or the work that ' foreigners ' are doing in it on our behalf, which we are too unimaginative even to conceive. Whether or no it be true (I think it is only half true) that for some New Zealanders ' God Save the King ' means ' God save the British Navy', lam sure that if we intend to maintain our association with New Zealand at all, we have the grave obligation of seeing what that involves about the Maori. The priest at Waihi has joined in persuading the Maoris to ' individualise ' their property, hitherto held communally ; it works far better, though the men now live out on farms and the actual village numbers no more perhaps than ioo. These work on the butter factory and the saw-mill. It is all co-opera-tive, and none save Maoris or the few ' white ' villagers have shares, unless I err. [I notice that lam always putting in ' unless I err ', ' so I understand ', etc. I propose to cut out such remarks. Of course, I assume the probability of continual ' tourist's errors'. I shan't observe everything accurately ; nor remember accurately all that I am told. This isn't a scientific book. Anyone is at liberty to smile at its author's naiveties !] The hills behind us are perhaps 300 feet high and then go up in abrupt ridges and peaks to 4,000 : we are 1,200 feet up, anyway. Higher even than the presbytery is the tiny convent that those admirable Sisters of St. Joseph teach in ; the children seemed rather smileless, but I think that the Maori eyebrow is a little twisted and that this gives an expression, at times, of melancholy that is not really felt. Not that the children were melancholy. Loving and lovable little things ! But the cold was making us all tongue-tied. Even the spartan Bishop had decided that it was unbearable and that we would leave that day. But the nuns had to stop ! Vows are enduring, and they work themselves out in a literal ' staying-power ' that few moderns seem to possess. Still, the nuns have the exquisi
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view to look at, and so much that reminds them of the eternity of God, and His prolific generosity to this lovely land. They will want to populate it with souls no less lovely, and to sacramentalise this mountain side. There are here two tabernacles, in the church and in the convent. Even the children can become little Blessed Sacraments of God. As a matter of fact, God has been markedly kind to this place in the hour of its disasters. As I said, the whole mountain steams and must be sodden, and such vast masses have been thrown out that it must be a honeycomb of caves. In 1846, a whole face of it slipped off and overwhelmed the village, save for one man who was sitting up studying the catechism Bishop Pompallier had given him. When he heard the preliminary detonations, he gave the alarm, ran for the lake, climbed a cabbage-palm, and the hillside swept down around him, making a great promontory in the water, but left the palm and himself uninjured. As for the 1906 landslide, the convent was being shifted at that time and all the wood and other material were piled by the lake-side. The gigantic tonnage of rock mixed with water parted peaceably to either side of the precious pile, and again went into the lake. Nothing was hurt. (I am bound, after all, to say ‘ unless I err ’, about those dates. I have ceased to feel much conviction even about 1066 ! What matter? It all happened then-ish.)
After three more Pigeons of Ceremony, we started about 1, and reached Taupo quickly despite terrifying roads of pumice with edges like frost-cracked lips, where the car occupied the entire width, edge and all. Poor funk that I am ; still, you aren’t at your best when you’re so cold. . . . Not but what two incidents happened to warm me, soul and body. Soul first ! Just after Taupo, we turned aside to visit an old lady who had come thither from Wurzburg. After the introduction, it turned out that she had read Jock, Jack and the Corporal, and, in her kindness, liked it ! Now look at that ! Germany to Taupo ; London to Taupo ; and one little story makes you meet in more than friendliness ! Thence to the Spa hotel. On the way, you look over the cliff-crest down to the river with its boiling
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sides. The Crow's Nest geyser was down there ; it spouts every forty-two minutes, and was spouting then all right though the jet was almost lost in the steam. We did not stop to watch. Now listen. This river is full of fish. You can catch your fish in such or such a place, where the water is quite cold, and without drawing it out of the water you can pull it along, into the seething side-pools, and there it cooks itself. . . . Word of honour ! After this fierce fisherman's tale, which will have left you panting but did not suffice to thaw my wretched self, I will say that we got on as rapidly as possible to the Spa hotel, which is an almost Carthusian settlement of little wooden huts, and there I swam deliciously in the open air in water about as hot as a not too hot cup of tea. Then I took tea interiorly, and we went on towards Wairakei. We mistook the road, and got up on to a sort of Yorkshire moor, rolling scrub diversified by plumes of steam dazzling in the sunlight. I was not sorry for the mistake ; for, when we turned, we had ever before us the distant silver cone of Ngauruhoe, perfectly free from cloud, driving upwards its colossal jet of steam. The crater is a scalding lake amid the snow. I presume that when the bottom cracks and swallows the lake, then comes the explosion that periodically threatens the countryside for leagues around. Down again, then, and across the Waikato river where it slides almost immobile to look at, and the profoundest peacock-blue, out of Lake Taupo. After a while the stream, about ioo yards across, narrows itself into a ravine of hardly more, I should say, than 30 feet, or less. You cross it by a hateful bridge that sways, and follow a track that brings you over the Huka falls—Huka with the u long means ' snow ', I think : with the u short, it is, obviously, Maori for ' sugar '. Here 800,000 cubic feet of water per minute are hurled over a volcanic ledge of some 30 feet high—perhaps more —I am no good at judging sizes. Emerald-milky water, marbly-smooth till the chaos at the foot. Into some accurately-judged, neutralised pool, down there, a man called Riley dived. He had to do it three times before the photo, which I possess, could be taken. The whole notion makes me
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feel so sick that lam glad to hurry on to Wairakei. (In Maori you must pronounce each syllable. Pau, for example, is not ‘ paw ’, but Pah-oo.) The hotel revealed itself brilliantly lit, even throughout its gardens, for electricity costs nothing : even at Waihi they left it burning all day long. Hotel almost empty ; still, some Catholics, from whom a very cordial welcome. Dinner at 6.
At 7, we motored off, through cold to make you cry, to see the local Blow-Hole. After some distance, you dismount and walk through narrow tracks among scrub and forest till, though it is pitch dark, you feel you are out on a hill-side. A deep continuous roaring has been getting louder and louder. At last you see a diagonal smudge of pale against the black. Electric torches are turned upon it, and you see it is steam, a rigid column projecting from the slope at an angle of perhaps 40 degrees ; then wavering slightly, then swelling into a cloud. The roar is now that of half a dozen engines in a shed. You turn to the far side of the small crater —all these blown-out craters might have been scooped by a great spoon. The steam projects above your head —you feel you could clasp it in your arms like a treetrunk. At the bottom of the insignificant hollow is a 9-inch aperture, at one side. From this, the steam proceeds at 180 pounds pressure to the square inch. You throw kerosene tins in, and they come volleying back. A severely logical man threw his hat in, sure that it would come back, unharmed. So it did, but it went rocketting away to who knows what distances down the valley. Tragedy of not getting the premisses of your syllogism exhaustive. If the steam blows tins back, it will blow hats back. This is a hat. Therefore it will blow it back. Ah ! But if the steam blows kerosene tins back a certain distance, it does not follow it will blow hats back the same distance. Nor did that contemptuous battering-ram of steam do so. Poor hat! Poor logician ! Finally they put a lighted sack, soaked in kerosene, into the pit. It too went soaring away to incredible distances, superb display of sparks, unextinguished by the cruelly dry steam. As we climbed back, someone said
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what a pity it was that this mighty force could not be utilised for Some Commercial Purpose. . . . Lieber Gott ! Anyway, they did once try : they tried to make a steam-siren of it. But the scornful monster melted the pipes like butter and blew the rest of the machinery away. We departed, therefore, leaving this New Zealand safety-valve to prolong its portentous outcry into the lonely night. As for me, I returned with a skull almost split with cold, changed into pyjamas and trench-coat, scrambled down the hill, and swam in water of 98 degrees under the hard stars. Nor do I deny that at 7 I rose, put on the same trenchcoat, and crunched my way down through frost such as I had never seen—it stuck up like blades, like elm leaves —conceivably this was due to tiny puffs of steam percolating through the ground—and again thoroughly cooked myself in that astounding bath. Nor, in honesty, bathos though it be to mention it, can I pretend that I did not sit upon a wooden step, head just protruding, and so shave.
After breakfast we drove off towards the famous valley. As you approach over a plateau of ti-trees, lupin, and pine, you foresee quite well that between you and the horizon is a sort of split in the earth —a sharply cut ravine in short—but you would think nothing of it save that you appear to be walking into the heart of a bush-fire. Clouds and columns of white steam, such as you see on burning moors, except that steam is never quite like smoke. When you turn, and can look down into the valley, you see its far side, and the stream, steaming hard. One or two special clouds or columns challenge attention. It is nothing, by now, to see a valley steaming, but these volleying upbursts are tremendous. You begin to scramble down through shaggy scrub, by a rock-stair with steamy pits all round it. Then the Maori guide bids you place your feet with greater accuracy ; you turn to the left on to an open platform, making the floor of the narrow valley. A rocky pocket at the foot of the cliff down which you had climbed grunts and hisses and sends out volumes of steam. Being winter, there is so much steam that it practically hides the fierce lumps of water that suddenly toss
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themselves up for about two minutes, unless, taking a perverse whim, they jerk out sideways. The water does this every ten minutes exactly, and now plays only 25 feet high, though it used to go 150. You climb about, over scabs of pinkish-white formation, very sore-looking among the dark evergreens. You cross precarious planks. Everywhere are dragon-mouths, panting harder and harder until they are periodically sick with boiling water. Again, you come to pools, opal or emerald, absolutely immobile and 100 feet deep, satisfied with being 320 degrees hot, or with sending up intermittent globes and moons of light. To one great pool you cannot now approach, as since an earthquake some time ago it is not only much hotter but performs irregularly. You watch it from the other side of the ravine, taking your chance of seeing it through steam. When you are lucky, you watch it heave glassily like a dome, yet splash furiously round the sides : then it pours over ledges on to the valley-floor. Another pool is graciously filled with white slime that cures you rapidly should you be scalded by the neighbouring geysers. There is a lot of red earth here, just the colour of Maori red : in fact I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is what they make their red paint from. Rather further on, you see a terrace in process of formation like the famous Pink Terraces that were destroyed in the upheaval in 1886 near Tarawcra. They are like a rough staircase, rhubarb and milk to see, at the bottom of which lies a fountain basin of ceaselessly seething, violently heaving water. Then from the top of the stairs comes a cloud of steam, and water cascades down it, at I forget what intervals, but quite regularly. Elsewhere you can dam vent-holes and channels, till after twenty minutes of discomfort, the poor earth can stand it no more and emits three fierce divergent jets in great annoyance. The Eagle’s Nest is for once a perfect pipe of stone, sticking up on the top of a hillock, down which you look into nowhere. Then it palpitates and fills and spouts some 4 feet high. The most thoughtful pool is the one which gives you warning. It seemed to me 10 feet by 12, of the usual crystal-green, unutterably
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limpid. At the bottom lies a large boulder. Every nine minutes this boulder rises a little, and then relapses with a thump that shakes the place you stand on. After the third bump, you are bidden ‘ run for your life ’, and the whole pool flies ferociously up into the air and pours thuddingly away over the rock-brink. All this place depends, in the long run, on White Island in the north ; when that is very active, the long thermal strip is tolerably quiescent ; when White Island takes a rest, this valley goes quite crazy. But all these thermal zones are wearing themselves out. I take it that the great siphons underground cannot but gradually blow themselves free ; but if they get choked by a fallen rock for example, there must be the devil to pay somewhere.
I cannot say that I thought this valley beautiful. The terrace gave me my first hint—it looked like an Italian garden built by a madman, unless I should say that the garden was the sophisticated version of this coarse uneasy Nature. Apart from what beauty the place once had, being rather spoilt by a great fire about a year ago, and interfered with by the railings and plank bridges and steps, it was to me odd, rather than lovely ; a warthog of a place, rather than a gazelle—anyway a zoo rather than a fairy land. Ido not mean that I would have missed it —not for worlds. But honestly, I felt, as I walked about, almost too intrusive. The poor earth’s fit of fidgets ! Almost as if one forced it to have its discomfort watched for one’s own amusement. You felt that the unhappy Phenomena didn’t see why they should be criticised—* We didn’t ask you to come here. We can’t help our indigestion. Of course from time to time we are a little sea-sick. Anyway we shall gradually get over it—already we’re improving ; and then perhaps we shall be left in peace.’ Yes. The mechanics of the thing must be fairly simple. Realise that this mountain cannot be more than a crust over masses of water shoved high above where they ought to be. All the same, you have to look carefully where you walk, else in you go, and hell’s fires engulf you. It makes you serious, if not worshipful !
Thence to the Aratiatia Rapids, where the water for quite a
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mile churns itself once more into emerald-and-chalk; but though I could have sat and watched them in a stunned sort of way for hours, the morning had tired me and I was glad, after lunch, to set my face towards Rotorua.
The roads had nothing very special about them save twice, when we turned aside to find a geyserlet near Waiotapu, I think. We tracked it down at last, all by itself, in a scabby white ulcer in the midst of grass and scrub. All the district reeked of worse than rotten eggs, though hitherto the sulphur smell had been very faint. The whole countryside, of course, was steaming and gurgling through negligible holes ; but here the geyser had built itself up quite a tall cone with the hole in the top. We put a cake of soap into it, which should have made it play, but it didn’t, either because it had been soaped a.m. and couldn’t stand it twice in a day ; or, because the soap was too good to make the necessary scum on the water down below ; or, because there wasn’t enough soap. Anyhow, the geyser coughed and snuffled, but lay still, leaving us with a rotten-egg taste in our mouths that lasted for hours. Rather further off we turned aside to see a mud volcano. A more beastly sight can’t exist, save that this one was small. In the lovely pure grass and bushes and sandy soil, a saucer within a crater of solidified slime. The saucer was about 20 feet across, and full of a white-grey liquid mess, continually throwing up blobs and domes and little columns of slime of an incredible obscenity, and muttering to itself with thick sounds. One side of the crater was broken away, and the pool smurged over it into a larger pool, black-grey, behaving similarly but more liquidly, and having on it yellow-black patches of crude oil. We passed after this through some consolingly beautiful country with almost rainbow tinted rocks, and so down into Rotorua by way of a Maori cantonment, so to call it, at Whakarewarewa which we were to see properly next day. Then into the very grandly planned town of Rotorua. I love the poached eggs that they put at cross-roads instead of policemen —a white disc, a couple of feet in diameter, and a bright yellow bulge in the middle of it—-just
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like a poached egg, though, perhaps, at night one mightn’t see them. Luggage dumped at our hotel, and walk to the presbytery. Here alone did I see a drunken Maori. ‘ Too much smell-water’, he remarked. But the Maoris here have suffered as all such persons do in tourist centres. They ask for pennies and the girls are apt to smirk. They are said to sleep late on Sundays and Mass is depopulated.
On the way to the church—and everywhere one went afterwards —were little fumaroles in the streets with their wisp of steam. Sometimes they last, else they may give out and leave nothing but the tiny tube and its parapet of earth. Here again are two Dutch priests from Mill Hill—one of them knew such an excellent New Zealand cadet whom I had met at Oxford long ago—and with a third I walked down to the Maori village beside the immense lake with its volcanic and myth-haunted island, Hinemoa, in the middle. The lake here is hot and steams, and the whole shore is a warren of tanks and pits and geyserlets in which you wash yourself or your clothes and also cook your food. Either you just lower the food in a sack into a water-full hole, cover it with a mat, and leave it to boil ; or, you choose a dry hole, put two bricks in it, throw water on to make some steam, cover it up and leave it. I ate potatoes thus cooked, and would that most of ours were cooked so all-the-way-through. There are two Wharehuis here—Maori meeting-houses —one old and one new ; and though the carving on the new is as intricate as ever, no one could fail to see how devitalised it has become. Moreover the reed-plaiting at the side is merely painted, like the ‘ wood-carving ’ on the roof of Milan Cathedral. Here in the old carving the head of the figures is usually as it were taken off and laid sideways on the shoulders without any neck ; and the hands have as usual a hooked thumb and three fingers only. I wonder whether the broad planks that make the eaves are felt as wings ? They often end in what might be conventional feathers. If so, they are very like the Egyptian Atn or sun-disc, and still more, as to angle, like the wings between which is placed the profile half-figure of the Persian Ahura. The
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Church of England church has some bad glass representing Maori designs, and some really admirable plaited side mats and a quite appalling east window parodying Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World an awful picture, anyhow. Rotorua rather saddened me. I feel that the only chance for a missionary priest is to ‘ endure hardness ’, as these Mill Hill fathers do. Perhaps Catholic inattention to missions is their safeguard. The C. of E. pours millions into missions, but manifestly an enormous percentage goes in salaries. Who are the real missionaries now ? I feel inclined to say : the Dutch, the Belgians, the Germans, the French when they can keep off from their bent for Gallicising the native. I doubt if the English or the Irish are. We are apt to want to come home. ‘ Forget thy people and thy father’s house.’ I think that that is the only way. Not even dream of them. After supper I got so cold that I crept down to the bottom of the pitch-black garden and parboiled myself in a bath, despite the frightful smell of sulphur which I am hardly able to stand any more. I feel that you must either die or get horribly well in this atmosphere.
July 21 was Saturday and not too happy. It was heavy and likely to rain, and the steam hung low and the sulphur smell was worse. (I call it sulphur for lack of a more scientific name.) After breakfast we went first to the Government Park, which is laid out but not furnished, so to say. The best thing to be said about the statuary is that it is locally made and not imported. The Bath House. A real clinic, and admirable. Various waters : one so strong (the Priest’s spring, I think) that you can stay in it but for a very short time, and highly certificated. I was already getting suffocated, when the mud baths below put the finishing touch. I wandered round the park trying to rid myself of sick-headache. Useless. But on those who need them, the Baths here work real miracles. Thence to Whakarewarewa where I had met that very fine old Maori chief and Catholic gentleman, Mita Taupopoki. Went into the Maori preserve and saw their model pa, or village. The
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old defence was a barrier of stakes with gaps through which the enemy could crawl only to find himself in a triangle of other stakes through which he could be quietly prodded to death. Such at least appeared to me the system. Long before we introduced artillery, and even when we did, they perfected trenches with angles and earthworks which give a very good defence. Houses and huts and watch-tower. By now I was feeling almost insane from sulphur-laden steam and finally we moved from geyser to geyser over densely steaming rock and rotten earth —the geysers, save the biggest which hardly ever plays and wouldn’t even for the Prince of Wales, did their duty, but by now I was beyond geysers. Back to a convent for first aid. . . . Yet in the afternoon we felt bound to go to Tikitere, and I am for ever glad we did, though every time we passed through a specially pestilential zone my woes began again. We finally got to Tikitere, which was macabre and fascinating beyond words. It was all within a patch of perhaps an acre —a lupus, an ulcer, crawling up the radiant hill-side. Solid mud, with a few coarse grasses, and vats and pools of seething grey or white or black mud, exhaling an unbelievable reek, worse than any I had experienced in wards of hospitals not open to the public. One pool was, perversely, quite limpid and boiling furiously. The rest were sluggishly or feverishly bubbling mire. The bubbles were opaque —tumours, eyes of dead cutdefish, swelling till they exploded with that horrible blupp-blpp-blop. Or fizzling. The lower pools are dying and the higher ones are stronger and new ones open at any moment, and when you are naively asked to observe that the soil shakes where you are standing, well, you turn to prayer ! Talk of a fiery hell ! Fire is clean and holy. But for sheer obscenity, commend to me Tikitere ! I frankly gave up : I wrapped my muffler round my face, peered down the designated holes, and loathed my life. All the way home I had a sort of sham angina, and even my host owned that he Felt Queer. Aspirin, tea, bed. But better to have seen and gasped than never to have seen at all. Everything once. And all around, the lovely golden-tawny
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where the earth has mixed with pumice, splashed with that horse-flesh red and streaked with white silicate . . .*
July 22. Sunday. The priest preaches in fluent Maori. We left Rotorua after Mass, but I shall be forgiven for remembering very little about that day. It rained hard much of the time, and despite a few colossal skids I was thanking God there were at least no more precipices with crumbling edges. We passed near the Arapuni dam and got out and visited it. That great river had, in who knows what past centuries, cut for itself a new gorge. When the dam was made, it had to be diverted into its original bed. Forthwith a pre-historic forest was revealed. We saw those immemorial black trunks protruding from yellow mud. I know we visited the spillway and the power-house, and I know we passed through Cambridge towards Hamilton. And then, a gully. Our car ; another car. And then Waikato Hospital, and then Auckland. . . . Sorry ; but the days are now a dream.
During my stay in Auckland, I was undoubtedly driven to various places when I began to get better, but I find I remember none of it and have only the brief record in my notes. Else with what pleasure I would recall a visit to the Marist Brothers’ College, though I have kept the impression of how jolly was the spirit of the boys and how open-hearted their welcome, j In
* No one of sense will suppose, from the above, that I was sorry for visiting Tikitere, let alone Rotorua. Not only are these places immensely interesting, but as a curative station Rotorua is probably unrivalled, and the surrounding country is exquisite. Heaven knows what mysterious refraction makes one lake emerald-green, and its immediate neighbour brilliant blue. Why, had there been time, I would gladly have visited the Waimunga or Black Water geyser, even at the risk of its performing. It can ' shoot' 1,500 feet high, liquid mud ; and when it does, it devastates the country for a mile around, smashes up hotels, and sends you off to reappear miles away with all the flesh boiled off you. But no one, going to Rotorua, need place himself in any such situation ; and when the big Pohutu geyser plays, no fountain, at the end of that mile of avenue, can be more deliriously beautiful. I would be glad to act as tourist-agent to Rotorua ; but if you want to see all that can be seen, you must have strong nerves, and lungs different from mine, perhaps !
1 This college not only gained a Rhodes scholarship (W. Kalaugher) in 1936, but another (E. E. Bailey) in 1928, both at Oxford.
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New Zealand there seems to be a sort of unwritten law that boys at school should wear nearly all of them a quasi-uniform—-black or dark blue shorts and shirt, and often nothing else save stockings and boots, and caps with the college badge. Very sensible, quick to put on, and toughening. If I say that the Mater Hospital, the Sacred Heart Convent, and the Stella Maris Orphanage have exquisitely lovely views before and around them, that is because I don’t see how anything in Auckland could fail of a lovely view. From Mount Eden and another place, I think, you can see right across the isthmus to sea on this side and on that—a better-than-Corinth, surely. I could wish to have been there when the pohutukawa clothes the hills with scarlet, but it is a ‘ Christmas-tree ’ and flowers at mid-summer. Towards the end there was a talk to the University students and to a gathering of 800 men, and a sermon in St. Patrick’s where, out of all the music, the Tantum Ergo still rises in my mind as made from a Palestrinian theme with good thick harmonies and really satisfying. If this is wrong, I hope its composer, the Hungarian organist of that Cathedral, will forgive me ! I can indeed remember, and gladly mention once more, the Mill Hill College of St. Peter’s—when I say ‘ Mill Hill ’, I mean that those overworked Fathers have charge at present of this, perhaps noblest, creation of Bishop Cleary’s. Maori lads arc here taught by university men, and also in crafts by which they will be able to earn their living, and also, thoroughly, in the Faith, so that they may, as St. Peter bids us, ‘ be able, on each several occasion, to give an account of the hope that is in us to anyone who asks
Now you'll take up your burden and go ;
Though many varying words flow rapidly
From my lips, the heart within me
Ever remains the same,
A Maori Farewell.*
So I left New Zealand with impressions on my mind as well
* See T. E. Donne, C.M.G. ; The Maori: Past and Present: London, 1927.
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as dents upon my skull ! The least effaceable is the illimitable kindness of every one —Bishop Cleary, Bishop Liston, Archdeacon Holbrook, Dr. Buxton—there are many more even up in Auckland that I might mention had I not resolved not to mention names at all, and I won’t go on doing so, save just to record the names of Fr. Ryan, down at Wellington ; and Brothers Borgia and Benignus again at Auckland ; and there was another priest to whose visits, no less tempestuous than exhilarating, I so much looked forward ! But how many others ; and what doctors, surgeons, and nurses ; and what kindly laity. I must just mention Mr. Alan Mulgan whom I’d met at Oxford ; and the absolutely indefatigable kindness of Mr. Paul Kavanagh—it was he who gave me the lucent lumps of kauri gum and the deep green-stone of which the Maoris made —who knows how ? —their tiki amulets, and an actual amulet too. Already they have delighted boys down in our East-End Poplar, though nothing will make them believe my yarn about the fish : that cooked itself, you know, etc. . . .
Now I didn’t live in a Garden Enclosed of Catholics. Hence the perfectly definite impression that I derived about New Zealanders need not always have much, or anything, to do directly with religion. I have said enough, I think, of the sense of free yet reticent geniality, the courtesy without cringing, a sort of taking-for-granted of good sense and good feeling all round, which my trip with its many halts supplied to me, to make it unnecessary to say more ; and temperamentally I find it none too easy to say even that. This made me feel that religious rancour was not really characteristic of the true New Zealander. Did I then never meet it ? Yes, as you might come across a stinking little mud-volcano in pure and delicate scenery. Now and again I found myself in a kind of Tikiterezone, where the atmosphere seemed charged and suffocating ; but that was mostly in a newspaper or two. (I’m not alluding to the little Rationalist sheet which rather went for me ; I had said I found it old-fashioned, and so I did. It reminded me of Huxley, if not of Ingersoll or Bradlaugh—a mood nearly
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evaporated in England, as science and history and psychology have progressed.) I felt that the bulk of the readers didn’t want those bad manners —no ; they were quite unrepresentative of New Zealand. Its men do not snarl nor sneer by preference.
Did this make me feel that New Zealand was becoming, precisely, more ‘ charitable ’ ? I can’t quite acknowledge that, or that the island is more definitely ‘ Christian ’ than it was. But those old violences were not Christian either. I can imagine a race of young New Zealanders growing up wholly materialist, ‘ pagan ’ in the modern sense, exactly in proportion as religion is not taught to them in the schools ; and then you can foresee, as elsewhere, a generation of cynics, despondent men ; an era of sensualism with its automatic reaction towards suicide. (The suicide-curve can be studied usefully in several European countries and also in America.) This is the nemesis that rancour brings upon itself. Rancour breeds disgust, a contemptuous indignation towards both the quarrelling parties ; and, after a moment of ‘ a plague on both your houses Indifferentism. Where you get spiritual indifferentism character goes rapidly down the hill. So it is clear that lam not asking for a washingout of religious differences ; I have said what I think of a Lowest Common Denominational religion taught in school, if teaching it can be called. But a strenuous living up to your own belief, and respect for other men who are strenuously living up to theirs, that is promising and unitive and vitalising ! God save us from the discoloured and insipid Protestant; God protect us from the disloyal or timorous Catholic. The former gets you nowhere; the latter drags you down.
I was very touched by so often hearing (not only in schools, though there, of course, not least) : ‘We are so out of it—so distant —so on the edge of things ’, and I was asked to arrange for quicker and accurate information getting through, as to the best new books and so forth. Now there is a danger in ‘ new ’ countries complementary to the being ‘ behind the times ’. It is the danger of being ‘ up to ’ what is least worthy in contemporary products. The fad of the moment is always up to date !
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I thought I saw two instances of this dangerous scurrying ahead. One was the legislation that was being hustled forward by an insane bill for the sterilising of ‘ defectives Science is nothing like ready for any such thing, not to appeal to religious considerations. I had to allude —and gladly appeal —to the work being done at Besford Court, Worcestershire, a work truly called ‘ of national and indeed international importance ’, so grave a corrective does it supply to many current notions concerning ‘ defectives ’ and to the reckless deductions from such statistics as have been compiled.* Another thing that grieved me was the growth (I was assured) of artificial birth-restriction in New Zealand. The streets and shops, so far as I noticed them, seemed clean ; so did the Press. When it was announced in London that wares, which cannot brave the daylight, had as good a sale in New Zealand as anywhere, a New Zealand friend of mine refused to believe it and challenged the assertion. He is said to have found that they are sneakishly hawked abound to women along with innocent objects and that the assertion was justified. If then this gangrene is eating into New Zealand life, the two islands may as well fold their hands, sit down, and wait for extinction or invasion. Perfectly useless to talk any more about agriculture or immigration. Who will be buying, more than anyone, those inhuman wares, in no short space ? Workers in London or Scottish clinics would tell you—chiefly unmarried lads and girls, and especially the latter. Enough, then, about this cancer.
Besides, I feel no great conviction about New Zealand being ‘on the edge of the world ’. For once, I am inclined to quarrel with its very original and remarkable writer, Miss Eileen Duggan, for it is too wistfully she says that :
' We are the wheat self-sown
Beyond the hem of the paddock ;
Banned by the wind from the furrows,
Lonely of root and head.'
* See, not only the series of Annual Reports (Besford Court, Worcester, England), but the equally significant Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee, I, II and IV : H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1929.
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To be too interested in Europe would suggest a desire to copy Europe. There is a great deal in Europe that does not deserve to be copied. There is much in Europe which ought never to be imported into New Zealand. Most, if not all, her quarrels are of ‘ purely academic interest ’ to you. May what divides men there, never divide you ! If you guessed the sensation of relief, experienced by a man like me, when I come into your country as a guest and can feel that I have left right many a thing behind me. Well, there is so obviously a New Zealand personality ! At first, in the war, one lumped ‘Anzacs ’ all together. Then, one simply could not confuse a New Zealander and an Australian. Do not think of yourselves as a ‘ small ’ place. Belgium is small ; and so is Holland ; yet each has its quite definite culture —Belgium, in fact, has two : Flemish and Walloon. If you learn what we are at, I would implore you do not just copy : adapt; use what you can and reject what you can’t assimilate. This is much what I say to immigrants from our islands. I say : If you are going to New Zealand not intending to remain there, I’m sorry on the whole, because a drifting population is not a good thing. But at least remember, in that case, that you are guests. Guests are expected to behave properly. Guests don’t criticise their hosts. Guests don’t introduce their family quarrels. But if you mean to stay in New Zealand, become New Zealanders if you are lucky enough to be able to do so. If you can’t manage it, swallow your conceit and come out quick. Do not chuck about the names ‘ English ’, ‘ Irish ’, ‘ Scot ’, ‘ Welsh ’. You have become citizens of no mean City. ‘ Learn the job and hold your tongue’. And if at first you fail, as you probably will, for you have the dickens of a lot to learn, ‘Do the work and start again ’. Believe me, that Flock House song had a lot of good advice in it !
‘ But my inquisitors used to ask, expressing some surprise, ‘ don’t you want us to be “ English ” ? What about the Empire ? Are we not part of it ? ’ I suppose that before I’ve done I shall have to say a word or two about Empire, though it’s not a subject I’ve given much thought to, though I have to Nationalism.
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And I was far too interested in New Zealand to pay attention to my personal Englishism. The one thing I hope I never forgot was that I am a Catholic, and the Catholic Faith is not bound up with Englishism nor Italianism nor Goanism nor with any other -ism. But if you can bear to read the Australian part of this book, I daresay you will find a paragraph or two even upon ‘ Empire ’. I will here simply try to answer a question which I was often asked in New Zealand : ‘ How is the Catholic Church faring in your country ? ’
You can understand that I felt rather shy. One doesn’t wish to let down one’s household ; and one doesn’t like to boast. I choose two points only—we are not exotics ; and we are not under-dogs. (I have an affection for under-dogs ; so if we were, I should be even bolder to say good things about us.)
Well, we aren’t exotics. We take our full part in the national life. It is not boasting to say that there have been Catholic Lord Mayors of London, Catholic chairmen of the London County Council, and plenty of Catholic members of both houses of Parliament. Educationally and philanthropically we have been publicly recognised as pulling our full weight, and even more. We are not a nation within a nation. A famous weekly commented, just before I left, on the names of prominent Catholic writers. They were English, and it was recognised that the days when an ill-mannered archbishop could talk of an ‘ Italian mission ’ were now done with. So much for that.
And we aren’t under-dogs. God save us from conceit. But I have often told how, at Oxford, the greatest change that I have observed during the last twenty years, is, that Catholics are recognised as representing —not a strange system of ritual ; not a queer medieval survival—but a world-philosophy worthy of at least so much respect as any other universal view of life might demand. A discussion would be regarded as incomplete, very substantially incomplete, if the Catholic ‘ view ’ were not stated at it. Elimination of the Catholic argument would be regarded as retrograde. The same sort of thing is generally true, and is more important than statistics of conversion, though it is
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not nothing that 12,000 persons annually, in England, become Catholic. That our numerical increase within the island seems slower, has to be judged in view of the fact that at least 7,500 —probably 10,000 —Catholics leave England annually by emigration.
All the more do I pray for New Zealand that Catholics may never seem, within her, to be an undigested chunk, so to say ; a block of alien material. That would be false to fact; and false to what they stand for. I have said that I pray for a New Zealand clergy for New Zealand ; I beg, as Fr. J. A. Eccleton wrote so well recently, in The Month, December, 1928, that the young New Zealanders who are ‘ pouring into the seminaries ’, may realise that the ‘ bulk of our Lord’s work ’ lies there ready for them in their native land.
I had plenty of time for these and other simple thoughts to drift through my mind during my weeks in Auckland. And I carry away with me the memory of the house and room within which I thought them. A house of healing—a room of great peace. Its windows used to stand wide to the wintry stars : very soon after midnight, the crowing of cocks came up through them ; and, as the atmosphere of dawn grew keen, the scent of sawn wood too. I thought of St. Peter, who loved, denied, repented, and became the Rock. I thought too of St. Joseph, among the shavings and the sawdust, with Jesus at his side playing with iron nails. I thought of the heart of Mary, at such hours. Then, as the window ‘ slowly grew a glimmering square ’, I found I could see the outline of those cabbage palms, which, when I think of them, will always make me a little homesick for so lovable a land.
Post-script. —To my very great grief since this book is in print I have heard of the death after a short illness of the Very Rev. Father Ryan, Rector of St. Patrick’s. R.I.P,
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SYDNEY
W
Said Australia to Christ.
Youngest princess at the Throne,
* Sire, my little continent —
Let it be your altar-stoned
Eileen Duggan.
Long before I knew that ever I should go to Australia, I had read carefully the history of the Church there. Uneasy task. The confusion of the times seemed reflected in the accessible documents ; and the historical perspective of the writers made one sometimes doubt whether their use of even those documents could be perfect. You can be too close to events ; and you can be too personally sensitive about this or that category of events, to be fair all round. Ullathorne, for example, a serene-minded man, and invaluable as recorder of personally experienced facts, might still judge men from an angle unshared by others, just as he could not place himself where they themselves were standing. So for all the rest. The comprehensive labour and scientific method observable in the books by Fr. Eris O’Brien have altered an entire situation and those books, as well as what remains to be written by him, are now indispensable. Others, more learned than I, will find cause in them for criticism even now. Still, I think that they have made an advance from which there is no retreat.*
*E. O’Brien : Life and Letters of Archpriest Therry , ig22 ; The Dawn of Catholicism in Australia, 1928. A volume dealing with the earliest period is in preparation. See, too, Cardinal Moran’s History of the Catholic Church in Australia: and J. E. Tenison Woods , by G. O’Neill, 1929.
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Certainly I do not propose to write, here, even an outline account of Catholic progress in Australia. I recall, chiefly for my own sake, a few dates. In 1787, when the penal settlement was begun, a percentage of Catholics naturally was transported. In 1791, there may have been 300 at Botany Bay. By 1816 there were about 3,000. The majority of these were Irish, and of these, most, maybe, were transported for political reasons — participation in revolution and the like, or suspicion of such participation, and with or without trial. Three priests, transported without trial and on suspicion of having fomented the anyhow artificial revolution of 1798, laboured so well as they could among the men of their faith ; the last of them went home in 1809, and the years that followed were the blackest of all. In 1816, Fr. O’Flynn was sent to ‘ New Holland ’ by Rome as Prefect Apostolic : he went without authorisation from London, and after a while was shipped back by Governor Macquarie. It was he who left the Blessed Sacrament behind, in charge of a layman, Mr. Davis. From now on, the whole topic of the extent of the Governor’s powers in the colony was discussed in and out of Parliament ; from 1819, and the mission of Mr. J. T. Bigge, colonial reforms went forward ; and in 1820, Fathers Therry and Conolly were accredited by the British Government as chaplains to the Catholics and Macquarie had to pay them a salary. From the outset no denomination has been ‘ established ’ in Australia ; the Anglican Church, there, is technically on the same basis as any other religious group. Fr. Conolly having departed for Van Dieman’s Land, now Tasmania, Fr. Therry was left alone to cope with the enormous work till Fr. Power arrived in 1826. Fr. Dowling followed Fr. Power, who died in 1830 ; in 1832 came Fr. McEncroe ; and in 1833, the Benedictine Ullathorne, quite a young man, as Vicar-General of New Holland. When in 1835 the continent was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Vicar Apostolic of the Cape of Good Hope, it became the vicariate of Dr. Folding, 0.5.8., who arrived with eight companions to govern a flock of 20,000 souls. I hope that anyone interested in this subject of
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almost unparalleled interest will read the Autobiography of Archbishop Ullathorne, chapters 7tolB ; and I look forward to the adequate biography of that apostolic and far too little-known man, Bishop Folding. He died in 1877, and his admirable successor, Dr. Vaughan, bears a name which, frankly, I was astonished to find remembered with so much love and understanding in modern Australia. Its mention always provoked a burst of cheering. Had any of his kin been present at the Congress, he would have received a startling ovation. Vaughan was succeeded by Moran, who became the first Cardinal in Australia, and was himself succeeded by Archbishop Kelly, still happily reigning in Sydney.*
In studying the details of the earlier period of this gallant history of Catholic fight for justice, the whole condition of the Europe of that time has to be recalled. Violent emotions are apt to be aroused by such study. Not only the conditions of the penal settlement were appalling : credence would hardly be given, by the ordinary modem man, to what might be said of things habitually done there no more than a century ago : but, it is still more appalling to read how conditions, hardly less incredible, prevailed in almost all departments of human society—in the army, on the sea, in gaols of course, in asylums and in mines or works. Nor can any nation be absolved. Spain, Italy, France, were guilty among the guilty. If there are even now violent inequalities of fortune, the chasm between the server and served in the early nineteenth century was unfathomable, and as for the ‘ invisible folk ’, the sick, the insane, the prisoner—the change in the general attitude towards them suggests almost a new Pentecost.
But the general picture never can fascinate us as can that of
•Within the Sydney Province there are (1928) the dioceses of Maitland, Armidale, Lismore, Wilcannia-Forbes, Wagga Wagga, Bathurst and Goulburn ; the Catholics of New South Wales alone number (in 1928) 482,487 ; their secular priests are 463 ; regular priests are 146 ; Brothers are 451 ; and nuns are 3,968. By now these numbers are doubtless somewhat increased.
o
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individual men. Writers used to love to make out that prominent personages were villains or were saints. Of late a kind of reaction has set in, so far as the protagonists of early Catholic history in Australia is concerned. O’Flynn, Therry, Power, Conolly have suffered criticism, Macquarie has had good spoken about him. I find in myself sympathy with all these men. They were the human mixture ; even the genuine Saint has his queer preferences and inequalities and is often hard to get on with ; even the worst villain experiences strange moments that make you surmise that there is a ‘ glory hiding in his mind that’s not writ plain for folks like you and me.’ (Yes ; I know that for the sake of the dignity of this page I have altered one word in that quotation, but you will find it accurate later on !) At one moment, you are swept towards feeling that all this early history is an epic contest between Right and Wrong ; and then, that here are puzzled, inconsistent, irascible Governors ; brutal subordinates ; rash, contumacious, devoted, quarrelsome, heroic clergy ; a laity simultaneously saintly and degraded : and again, to the feeling that the whole lot of ’em were ‘ impossible ’ ; and you are in danger of subsiding into the estimate of Sophocles—that ‘ there are a number of mysterious things, but the most mysterious of all is human nature ’. Then collecting yourself, and remembering that the history of the world is the ‘ striving of the Spirit with flesh ’, you reach, please God, a higher level altogether, where you seek to have ‘ that mind which was also in Christ Jesus ’, and to love even those who engineered the Crucifixion, seeing that assuredly they knew not what they did. Human nature, odd, if you will, but odd because so limited, so squint-eyed, so prone to the partial—and, in a sense, for that very reason so lovable ; for who has not met the man who sees ‘ all sides ’ so clearly that he is not only paralysed in action, but sterilised in sympathy ? Great must be the love, that is, the Christian’s love, which can fully transcend the differences, and antagonisms, between the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the Barbarian, the free man and the slave —between class and class, nation and nation, race and race! Yet ‘in Christ’,
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we are all * One Thing ’, and the differences must be harmonised.
Towards Australia, then, I started on August 17.
About this time things were not going nearly so well, and I have to thank an archangelic surgeon, an angelic night watchman, and my travelling companion for making the journey from Auckland to Sydney tolerable. And heavenly powers smoothed those usually turbulent waters into mirror-like calm. Further, I had the memory of that Mr. Poynton who, long ago, used to sail in an open whaling-boat these same 1,200 miles in order to make his Easter duties and get his family baptised. Yes, the place is full of epic memories. Who dare be soft, if he inherit these ? And on board I met the brother of a cadet I had known at Oxford. Finally the stewards and others who came to confession uplifted the whole episode into happiness. Of the famous Sydney harbour I remember nothing, nor yet of that arrival save the invasion of reporters and the dear sight, upon the quay, of two Australian faces, known long since. In but an hour or two, that New Zealand doctor had personally dumped me into another hospital—the Lewisham Hospital worked by the Blue Sisters.
Here, to my intense amusement, when I could sit up to peer out of the window, I found that they had provided me with nothing but a cemetery to look at . . . they added hastily that it was disused. . . . From it arose one morning sounds that led me to suppose, I confess, that a hen had gone hysterical, or I, delirious. It was, a scandalised Sister told me, a kookaburra, or as we uglily call them, a laughing-jackass. (Now what schoolboy amongst us but imagines that a jackass is a quadruped ?) After a while I liked the kookaburras ; and as for the tiny bears that climbed up trees in gardens . . . But this anticipates. Till Melbourne I saw neither those birds not those beasts. How grateful I was for those pale-washed walls, with no pattern upon
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them to mix itself up with nightmares ! In daylight hours you saw so beautifully against the wall the shapes of boronia, carnations, roses, gladiolus, with which friends stocked that room. After a while, when allowed up, friends came in great quantities, most of them dating from Oxford days, but others, too. Rather shadowy at the time, I confess —dreamlike now. But I was to re-meet them later on.
I want to register my great gradtude to the four doctors who looked after me, though I fear it took long to recognise them from day to day. Doctors convey their personality by a glance, or a touch, or even just by coming into the room. These were healing personalities, also intuitive. They were sure I liked heat and pumped an incredible amount, diathermically, into me each day. Moreover, nursing-nuns, to speak with due reverence, are amazing creatures. They agree with all you say, succumb with unfathomable humility to all your arguments, surround you with an eider-down of meekness, and suddenly you observe that the exact opposite of what you had proclaimed or demanded has been done, not even without your noticing it, but with your charmed consent. Inexorable innocence ! Tender truculence and angelic tyranny ! When you arc petulant, a faint shadow of reproach flits across their countenance, but not reproach of you —heavens, No ! They are reproaching themselves for having made you fractious. When you begin to see through them, and show it, a smile of celestial impishness flickers in the extreme corners of their eyes, and you give in. Oh, believe me, you give in. Every time. These ladies in blue and white can carry through acts of outrageous virtue with sublime unscrupulosity. And then, when you really misbehave, they go and pray for you. They actually retire to their chapel and ‘ pray agin you ’. For one moment you feel like Jeremiah Cruncher, and then you laugh. Once you have laughed, you are half cured.
Meanwhile, echoes from the excited town were reaching me. What should there be a famine ? too few beds ? A very kindly journalist from Melbourne whom I often met, embarked upon
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statistics, which after all (despite their being classed as the third with ‘ liars and d d liars ’) couldn’t this time be accused of mere malicious mis-statement since no one seemed to have any idea how many visitors were to invade the city. The good hotels were reckoned to hold 3,000 ; perhaps 300,000 would arrive. Rooms became elastic ; furniture shops sang Te Deums : 10,000 to 15,000 men who had no work foresaw good wages. Revelations were granted—five turkeys count as 100 chickens, and one turkey does for 20 people daily. This nation eats, they calculate, three quarters of a pound of meat per day ; but when it is on holiday, wastage occurs, and you allow for a full pound. And each is to consume a pint of milk a day—2s,ooo gallons extra, at the very least, would be required from the New South Wales pasture-lands. The Master Butchers sought leave to work their men overtime ; the Metropolitan Meat Industries Board refused it, so sure were they of their organisation. All very well—but, poor hens ! poor cows ! They have no Union !
However, the SS. Orama had come into port, flying at her masthead the papal flag, tiara and cross keys, since the Papal Legate was on board. Onlookers were impressed by the geniality of the waidng crowd. Not every day do you see a layman stoop to kiss a ring, and then smite the prelate on the back, having been, after all, his school-mate, even though I was to see, in Brisbane, a policeman slap a Premier friendly-like upon his shoulder ! If the visiting Italians were enchanted (though slighdy surprised) by the Australian respectful sans-gene, seemingly even the Australian non-Catholic opened his eyes a little to see on what good terms priest and people co-exist. No priestly tyranny, after all ; not much of the proud prelate. . . . However, amid unfamiliar uniforms, the expected scarlet of His Eminence showed itself at last —and in honesty I have to avow that either the Congress coincided with some freak of feminine fashion with which I am naturally unacquainted, or, the shops decided that this was the moment for a brisk selling off of their stock of geranium, rose-red, vermilion, puce, purple, lilac, mauve and magenta-coloured clothing. . . . Well, the
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‘ tumbled music ’ of St. Mary’s bells soon were but an undertone to the 430 voices that greeted the Cardinal from the choir.
Now none of this did I see nor hear ; and if I am to be loyal and relate merely my own ‘ impressions’, I must refrain from repeating the story of the Congress ; it has been ten times told, and I was present at but little of it. And the first ‘ outside ’ impression was derived from a dinner given by the same KnightHospitaller who had entertained me just before leaving London !
This dinner welcome having had no disastrous results, I was taken down from hospital to the opening ceremonies of the Cathedral on September 2. There was a high Mass ; but I remember nothing of it save that the Archbishop of San Francisco preached a fine sermon concerning the ‘ westward trek of civilisation ’, and that at first I rather looked about the building to see if it was like what I’d hoped it would be.
Naif optimism of the Press ! It had asked me to write an article on the Cathedral before ever I saw it. I did —but I studied photographs. They made me, too, optimist. I had so feared a very good copy of something Gothic. I had feared that fatal self-repetition seen in our Houses of Parliament or in those of Budapest. Well, herein I was to be a little disappointed. I believe that there are a few massive inequalities, like the width of whole bays ; but, the windows and their tracery do repeat themselves, mechanically, I fear, and the mechanical sense is just what a medieval cathedral never conveys to you. Living things disguise their symmetry, however mathematically exact be their equilibrium ; look at a tree, a spray, a twig —how perfectly balanced, yet how exquisitely ‘ inaccurate ’. And a cathedral deserves to display, in all such tiny ways, its vitality. For even structurally it is alive —I love to feel the battle of vault with wall ; the joyous co-operation of thrusting buttress ; and honest downward push of rightlyplaced pinnacle. And I think that here and there in this new Cathedral, there is indeed what makes you see with your very eye that pure upward jet of stone, which is provided by the absence of all necklace or other transverse decoration, so that
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the line springs freely high till it bends and parts itself into the curves of the steep vault. But a cathedral is alive in more ways than the merely structural. Into its vitality have been inwoven lives of men.
In reading the history of Catholic origins in Australia, I had so often felt that it is easier to understand the minds of men in 1280 than those of men of 1820. Anyhow, it was then that the temperamental Fr. Therry began to entertain visions of a fit cathedral for his folk and contemplated asking for it in the western, wealthy part of the town. He was told the request was foredoomed to refusal ; he would not receive land such that on it 1 all the poor in the city would be paraded before the Governor as he went to church at St. Philip’s ’. He had better look for land near the barrack prison at Hyde Park. He did so, and thitherwards has the city swept, so that the Cathedral now stands upon lofty land, superbly approached, commanding the harbour with its destined spires, and worth two million pounds. On October 29, of 1821, the governor, Macquarie, as moodful a man as Therry was at times tempestuous —but just then all was calm —came to lay the foundation-stone of the earliest St. Mary’s. After the ceremony, Fr. Therry presented him with : 1 this Humble Instrument, which, undervalued as it may be by the Supercilious and unscientific, will not be condemned by any who has studied and patronised, as Your Excellency has done, the Science and Useful Arts ’. His Excellency forthwith ‘ wiped the trowel with his handkerchief and placed it in his bosom’. Trust that period for not calling a spade a spade, let alone a trowel a trowel ; but Therry spoke sincerely when he said Macquarie had established something of that ‘ moral edifice of unanimity, mutual confidence and fraternal love ’ that should ‘ cement the respect and affection of all persuasions and parties in this country to our Sovereign, to yourself, and to each other ’. Generous words, in their measure a prophecy, and prophecies take long to be properly fulfilled. But without any doubt, this vision can now ‘ hasten to its fulfilment ’.
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By 1823, the Colonial architect grumbled that the Catholics would not need such a building as was being planned, for 100 years ; Lord Brisbane not only removed Macquarie’s last restrictions but overrode the architect. Even in 1923, you could ‘ hide the old church in the new cathedral unfinished as it was. Old St. Mary’s crept up, waiting so long for a roof that ‘it looked like a ruin before it became a building’. In 1833 Ullathorne arrived, cabin-boy and monk ; wrong often in his aspirates, but never about men ; Benedictine mystic and Birmingham hard-head. He bequeathed many of his qualities to his brother-Benedictine, Bishop Folding, who consecrated old St. Mary’s on June 29, 1836, and watched it burning to the ground, June 29, 1865. ‘ Resurrection ’, said the courageous prelate, ‘ is not creation ’, and then and there gave Mr. Wardell leave to build New St. Mary’s as he should please. In those days there were not 13,000 persons in Sydney : the Cathedral was planned to be, and is, 350 feet long, and the spire will rise to 232.
I love to remember those very early days. I love to see the old cathedral surviving in the new. I am not blind to the mistakes, the naiveties, the pomposities of those men of a past generation ; but if you have any understanding of and love for human hearts, you will be so glad to have met with Therry and Conolly, Power, Dowling, McEncroe, and then the great Benedictines, right down to Vaughan and Moran ; and you will feel sure that our own generation may provide no less high a sense of honour and noble self-effacement than what those men provided ; if you find them childlike in some ways, you find them heroic in almost all ways !
Sitting in that Cathedral during Mass, I suffered my thoughts to drift not only towards these men but to the great Benedictine, and in the long run Catholic tradition that was expressed in this Cathedral. I wanted it to be Australian, and European, and 1 Catholic ’. In what might it be Australian ? I do not know. Australia has not yet created its own art, or architecture. I imagine for Australia, as I shall say, a very vigorous and I
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hope individualistic art. I would have been ready to accept a Cathedral all in cubes, like some motor works I passed on my way from Lewisham into town. I should not have grumbled if the glass were to be clear, firm, lucid colour-mosaic, like the daffodil glass in Lewisham hospital itself; I pray that some explosion, in a century or so, may blow out nearly all the glass we are putting in to-day. I know little modern glass that is not muddy : none that is unaffected. Frankly, I wished that St. Mary’s would rest content with its orange-amber glass that dyes the arches and the walls such heavenly jewel-lights. As for our modern statuary, that, of course, cannot last long. We may live to see a Bolshevik revolution everywhere. If it destroys church statuary, it will not have been wholly evil. Sydney’s St. Mary’s is certainly ‘ European ’ since it is ‘ Gothic ’. Very good. The tradition is excellent. Yet that European and Benedictine memories should flourish in Australia is still more marvellous than that startling series, Buckfast, Downside, Ampleforth, which rejoices us in England. In Devon, the Benedictines are building with their own hands an abbey in the oldest ‘ style ’ ; at Ampleforth, a marvel of stone—a moonlit peacock-blue combined with rosy-golden plaster—is beginning to arise ; Downside is more elaborate, but in ‘ the selfsame spirit ’. I do not quarrel with any amount of antiquity having driven itself into the history of this Sydney Cathedral, for the soul of Australia is in its stones. I pray that in its turn the Cathedral may form the soul of many an Australian—and most of all I hope that Australia may produce its Australian Saint, to whose chapel in St. Mary’s all may flock, and who shall build to Christ a shrine of living stones, for centuries hereafter. I should be quite content to see St. Mary’s towers stay spireless. Triple-spired Lichfield is marvellous—but could we repeat that miracle ? I love our un-spired Winchester, that sits heavy and cloaked among its trees, brooding, head bowed, and knees hunched up almost to its chin. . . .
Vaguely I gathered that at this preliminary Mass there were present Italians, Belgians, Spaniards, Czecho-Slovakians,
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Westphalians, Hungarians, Swiss, Filippinos, Maoris, Chinese, Libanese, United-Statists—lots of others, doubtless, and 10,000 of the Faithful inside the walls and 50,000 hearing the Mass ‘ amplified ’ outside. The Archbishop of Sydney celebrated that Mass. Palestrina, Vittoria, Perosi —and Ignaz Mitterer well placed in their company —made the music. But, paralysed with headache, I listened to none of it, nor did I assist at the unveiling of the statue of Cardinal Moran, in bronze, by Sir Bertram McKennal, the Australian sculptor, which followed the Mass.
In the afternoon took place the definite opening of the Cathedral with a golden key. The ceremony was half secular. The Blessed Sacrament was removed, and our wicker chairs placed back to the altar. Here were the (late, alas !) Lieut. Governor, Sir William Cullen (the State Governor alone had escaped from New South Wales) ; the Chief Justice, the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition, and representatives of every part of the life of the City and of State, ‘ political, civic, consular, judicial, university, literary, commercial, and professional, and members of the Cabinet
Archbishop Kelly read his brief address of welcome ; then the Legate spoke. His presence in that pulpit was in itself a sufficient sermon. True, he spoke of that solitary priest who, scarcely more than 100 years ago, planted on that spot the insignificant mustard-seed ; and recalled that Macquarie sent packing the first priest who came from Rome to Sydney, while to-day, Government, civic and harbour authorities, had striven to co-operate with their Catholic fellow-citizens in the completion of this church and the welcome given to Rome’s Legate. He was secure about the future. The patriotic spirit and power of initiative that ‘ wrote Australia so large upon the map ’ during the world-war would find their counterpart in the religious sphere, and show the nations that Australia could bring from her treasury things new as well as old, and could contribute her own solution to questions which were ageold in content however new in form. This phrase evoked
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tremendous cheers from a populace who, possibly, at that moment, did not appreciate its complete philosophy, but who by instinct knew that the Cardinal had reached down to a vital truth.
Thereupon occurred what was to me the least expected, perhaps, of incidents in this Congress. The State Premier, Mr. T. R. Bavin, layman and Baptist, mounted the pulpit of a Catholic Cathedral. Not even Mr. Lloyd George has managed that. It was my good fortune to see, afterwards, not a little of Mr. Bavin ; and my conviction was, that he could be trusted anywhere. He overworks himself horribly, and must be on his guard against. . . . But I told him all that, and he took it so tolerantly—l might say, so humbly ! Anyhow, there he stood, black-coated but not black cassocked, in that Catholic pulpit, rapturously cheered by a cathedral-full of Catholics. He spoke well about the beauty of this cathedral, designed by Australian architect and built by Australian builders ; but he spoke still better of the Cathedral, set in the very heart of Australia's busi-ness-life, and reminding men unceasingly that they do not live by bread alone. ' The only sound foundation ' he said, 'of a healthy individual and national life is to be laid on those spiritual forces that make for righteousness.' He spoke of ' the spiritual instinct, the purpose behind material things ' which alone ' unifies the forces in humanity.' 'ln every way', he concluded, ' the earth is bound about the feet of God.' The Cathedral would not only bring a joy to those who worshipped in it, but ' a new nobility and dignity in the national life of New South Wales '. I judge of how great an impression these words made, by the way in which both the Australian and the New Zealand Press begged to have them commented upon and by the prominence that they gave to articles entitled : ' Spirituality Counts '.
Archbishop Mannix, of Melbourne, then spoke ; and Archbishop Redwood, of Wellington, followed —forty-six years ago he had preached the sermon for the opening of the Cathedral so far as it had then been built ; and he could remember, seventy-four
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years ago, the old Cathedral, that was destroyed by fire. My imagination was deeply stirred by this living link between ourselves and that past which, as I said, feels almost a millennium removed from us. He was followed (on behalf of Canada) by the Bishop of Galway, the Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal ; by the Bishop of Namur, President of the permanent committee of the International Eucharistic Congresses ; and by myself as representing the English hierarchy. Thanks were expressed to the visitors by the ever calm, courteous and most kindly Dean of the Cathedral ; and a brief speech by Mr. Fleming, chief Civic Commissioner (a title corresponding to Lord Mayor), whose sudden death not very long afterwards all joined in unfeignedly deploring.
After this, I went to St. Patrick’s church near the quays, partly because I had for some time been booked for a sermon there that night and on the following Sunday ; partly because it is a unique spot in Sydney and indeed in all Australia ; and also because it is staffed by New Zealand Marist fathers to whom I owed a debt of gratitude. It was close to this place that in 1818 Fr. O’Flynn had lodged with Mr. Davis, a blacksmith, and, when he was to be transported home again, it was here that he left the Blessed Sacrament in a wooden chest. For months Our Lord dwelt in that house and became the magnet that drew all Catholics towards Himself. Some of the house itself is incorporated in the Convent of Mercy hard by ; some of the wood of that chest has gone to make a tabernacle. As from September 5, of 1928, St. Patrick’s has been granted the privilege of daily Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament from 8 in the morning to 8 at night ; a suitable privilege, if any ever was. It seemed apt to preach, then, upon ‘ Corpus Christi ’, the Humanity of our Lord Who understands and loves to dwell among His fellow-men. The Church, crowded to suffocationpoint, proved that even the afternoon’s packed ceremonies could not satisfy the trooping forerunners of the Eucharisdc Congress ; and even after the procession on the following Sunday, the insatiable pilgrims flocked to a second sermon, on the Divinity
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of Christ, and on how the most Hidden was the most Real.*
Two or three days after this, I was shifted down to the flat of those very old friends who had met me on the quay, that I might have the minimum distance to taxi in order to reach the Congress, its halls, and its secretariate, where Fr. Meaney held all the strings in heroic hands—l say 1 heroic,’ because it seemed the fate of half the people concerned in managing things here, to hurt themselves or somehow fall sick in the midst of their work ; why, even the valiant Comte Henry d’Yanvillc, secretary to the Permanent Committee, had to sacrifice nearly the whole Congress and live in hospital. The flat was in Darlinghurst ; and why, when I mentioned this fact, my friends should have curled their lips in a wry smile, is not for me to investigate. But the taxis ! They exist in all colours, at Sydney ; and, if their fares differed among themselves rather distractingly, one thing you could always count on —the politeness of their drivers. Those lean friendly men hop off their seats and have the door open for you before you so much as realise you have arrived. And if traffic held you up, so often as not they would switch the clock off, so that the fares do not go leaping up while the taxi is not moving, as they do in London, to the panic of the travelling Scot.] - And I even wished I could stay longer in Australia to make better acquaintance with the police. I heard a lot of stories about them ; but to me they behaved like regular uncles, such was their half-paternal, half-pally backchat, so to say. And I was sorry to say goodbye to my hospital and glad to return there for intermittent X-raying. May they never ‘ improve ’ their chapel, with its daffodil and primrose glass, and its great crucifix, and its cool cleanliness ! Dear
♦ To my regret I could not visit the Marist H.Q.. for their South Sea missions at Hunter’s Hill.
■f Each taxi had a little notice pasted up, saying that in case of difficulties you should apply to the Congress office, and telling you where it was. In one hotel, a similar notice was inserted between the glass top of every little table and the table itself.
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Sisters, thank you very much. I said one Mass there—my first in Australia.
I have no shame in confessing that I had been ordered to go to so little as possible of the Congress, and in fact went to none of its great religious functions save to the men’s night at the ShowGround. Even the Procession I followed only with my eyes, from a window. At the great ceremonies it would not be my duty to speak, and I think it would have been out of my power to pray. Indeed, of all the public meetings of the Congress, apart from the one at which I had to speak officially, I went to two only, when the subject was connected with the Mass, a thing of such transcendent importance that I could not persuade myself to be absent.
All those sectional meetings were meant to be concerned with the relation between Our Blessed Lady and the Eucharist. The relation is, massively speaking, obvious. As within God’s plan, without Mary, the Incarnation would not have taken place ; but without the ‘ Corpus Christi ’ there could have been no Eucharist at all. Yet I feared that the minute working out of this general notion in all its ramifications might introduce much theory, much abstract speculation, and this seemed to me out of place in a vast Congress like a Eucharistic one, especially so in Australia. For I had the ‘ impression ’ that the simpler and more firm the themes, the more they would be suited to the Australian temperament ; not that Australia is not intelligent, mind you ! but because I have not noticed that it prefers the speculative to the concrete, nor the subtle to the straightforward. Moreover, just when I heard of the detailed working out of the general subject set for the Congress, I was hearing too of the sporadic but violent opposition engineered against the Congress as a whole and its Procession in particular. I thought that the prominence of Our Lady and especially certain themes connected, for example, with her relation to
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Mass and Communion, might be seized on and used in order to create discord. I have heard that the Holy Father himself demanded that in the treatment of the whole matter a proper proportion should be kept —the due perspective of Mary, Christ, and Eucharist ; and so indeed it was, nor can I remember hearing of any rash phrase providing a handle to criticism. Everybody knows how peaceful and fraternal was the attitude of the entire continent of Australia ; nor was our homage to Mary used to provoke ill-feeling. The sectional meetings were in fact kept simple : the fantastic found no place ; the speeches that I heard of, and certainly those that I heard, were dignified and to the point. The two meetings I attended were those at which Dr. O'Reilly, rector of St. John's College in Sydney University, read a paper upon Sunday Mass : the Bishops of Wagga and Bathurst were there, bishops whose difficult dioceses I should so much like to have been able to visit under their charge ; and about 800 men. At the other, Dr. Sheehan, the Archbishop's coadjutor, unless I err, read a paper on the Missal to about 1,500 persons or more. It was here that I first met another most kindly bishop, of Wilcannia-Forbes, and Mgr. Chula-Parambil of Kottayam, Travancore—3s,ooo Catholics are in his diocese, who trace their spiritual genealogy back to the Apostle Thomas. He is himself a native, and more than once during the Congress made a pathetic and impassioned speech on behalf of his dear flock. A delightful element in Congresses always is their haphazard encounters. After the first of these meetings, two unknown young men took me to a coffee-room, where also I met a northern priest whose parish is 80 miles across and who has to drive 200 miles before he can reach a railway, and who knew an ex-soldier whom I too knew. After the second meeting, a still unknown doctor collected me and drove me home—when you estimate a Congress, always add ten thousand such acts of anonymous kindliness ! As for my own meeting, at which Bishop Heylen presided —that war-hero who is also the President of the Permanent Committee of these Congresses—he has presided at 15 International Eucharistic
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Congresses and has always addressed each in the language of the country where it was being held : in fact, he speaks Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, Flemish, English, each excellently, and more besides, for all I know—well, as for that meeting, it took me altogether by surprise. It was in the Town Hall, and began late, because even by the back-entrance it took us time to negotiate an entrance, such were the crowds. Already at 3, the long queues were being told that the house was full. So indeed it was : 5,000 had got into it somehow—they squatted on every available inch of floor and most illicitly, I'm sure, packed every gangway. The subject was very simple : The Eucharist and Martyrdom. Naturally, this topic had been, with gracious thoughtfulness, entrusted to me, that I might speak of the English martyrs to whose beatification we are looking forward, and I was able to relate some of those enthralling anecdotes that we all ought to know. But if you carry back the word ' martyr ' to its original significance, which is ' witness,' the subject of each Catholic's duty of witnessing to the Eucharist presents itself, and magnificent avenues of thought are opened up. I had been told, ' You will find Australians good listeners.' They were indeed. Never in my life have I experienced so immediate a communication of the goodwill of the audience to the speaker. Sometimes you face up to an audience grimly—- ' I've got to talk—well, here goes ! ' Sometimes, with sheer panic : ' I've got nothing but nonsense to say —they'll see through me at once ... I shall do only harm . . . ' Sometimes with a sort of a squirm :' I don't understand these people—/ don't know what to say to them . . . ' Sometimes with downright resentment : ' I thoroughly disapprove of this sort of crowd : I object to their presuppositions and their conceit. I shall lay myself out to jar them, to contradict their most petted sentiments . . . ' But in Australia, you seemed to feel one vast welcoming smile coming towards you —sometimes a regular grin : it enwrapped you and warmed you and held you up and seemed to infuse into you the collective vigour of the audience, and in Australia that is worth talking about ! You wanted to leave
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out the whole of your speech and simply say : ‘ I am so honestly pleased to see you ! ’ And sometimes you felt that they were saying something of the same sort to you. . . . Another anonym, and an old Beaumont boy, now farming in New Zealand, took me home after this genial experience. In a word, the least showy parts of a Eucharistic Congress may be among its most important ones. The big meetings must serve to bring very vividly into the foreground certain constructive principles of our Christian life; the smaller departmental ones play their substantial part in the hard-headed thinking out of the consequences of dogma —the intellectual, theological consequences —and thus does Dogma ‘ develop ’ —and the practical consequences, and thus is Catholic life made perfect more and more. So much, then, for this element in the Congress.
I shall be forgiven if I do not enlarge upon the dinners, lunches, and even garden-parties, save that I ought to mention one or two which had an intrinsic importance. It was good to hear of the Cardinal Legate’s Levee in the Town Hall, to which the Sydney public came without special invitations and without distinction of creed. The Cardinal, during these days, loved to repeat that during his previous stay in Sydney he had come to feel himself so much an Australian citizen that to be an Australian sufficed, in Rome, as a passport to him. Indeed, men before now had come to Rome, presented themselves to him, and said : ‘ We have no letters of introduction—we are just Australians ! ’ ‘ Good —so am I ! What do you want ? ’ ‘To see everything —to see the Vatican and everything in it, the Pope included ! ’ ‘ Very well ! You shall ! ’ And they did. That, if I may say so, was the Cardinal all over —and Australia all over. The civic authorities gave the Cardinal a dinner ; and the Archbishop gave another at the Sydney Town Hall, to which everyone connected with the Congress came, as well as every official of note, you may say, connected with the State of New South Wales and also with the Federal Government. But
H
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the other departmental events I will group, to save space, below.
The great pageants of the Congress were in the Showground, and the Procession. Of the former, the first was the Men’s Night, September 6, the only one to which I was able to go. The buildings round the immense area were outlined with electric lights that blinded out the stars. The altar stood beneath a baldacchino of dignified simplicity—a dome upheld by four pillars, upon which stood angels, and above the dome, the Cross. On either side of this the clergy massed themselves. It is thought that 130,000 men assembled here at 8 p.m. and it was characteristic of this Congress that no attempt whatsoever was made to ‘ emotionalise ’ them —a very simple sermon was preached by the Archbishop of Manila ; familiar hymns were sung; and Benediction was given. Impossible not just to mention that the conductor of the music was Fr. Herlihy, who had recently suffered the loss of an eye and had no right to be out of hospital. With perfect courage he controlled the whole proceedings. At the Benediction all the electric lights were extinguished, and the men’s candles were lighted. It was pleasant to note that just above the white cross over the baldacchino, the Southern Cross now hung clear in the velvety night. Next day, September 7, the children, 70,000 of them, had their Mass in the Showground : the Archbishop of Tuam spoke to them of Christ at Nazareth. But still more beautiful was the Communion of 30,000 children at the Cathedral, on September B—l8 —I say at the Cathedral, for not much more than a third of them were in it : the rest knelt on the grass of the park outside it, and perhaps no one sight touched the heart of Sydney more than those thousands of kneeling children at their Communion. And at a later hour that day, the women, 150,000 of them, had their Mass in the Showground ; and a choir of 7,000 girls’ voices sang the new Mass by Mgr. Refice, of Ste. Therese of Lisieux. The Bishop of Dunedin preached to the women, on, naturally, Catholic womanhood and its ideals.
September 9, like most of the days of the Congress, was both
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cool and brilliant. Here, if ever, for sincerity’s sake, I leave to one side every adjective of vehement or even decorative sort, for I was still practically unable to walk, and what I saw of the great Procession was from the window of a room belonging to two Catholic ladies. If I were at liberty to speak of the Catholic work they do, and Franciscan lives they lead, you would acknowledge that I was already breathing an appropriate and Eucharistic air. I knew that at 10 a.m. High Mass was said by the Archbishop of San Francisco at Manly Seminary—that massive building that I was not to see save from an aeroplane long afterwards. That is, perhaps, my greatest regret of any. The Procession was timed to start between half-past twelve and one. The steamer, Burra Bra, painted white and gold, with a great golden cross beside its funnel, and a glazed shrine erected at the bow where the Blessed Sacrament might repose, passed by a coast massed with people, followed by a flotilla of smaller craft laden with those who had begun the day at Manly.
Mr. Frank Russell, of the Melbourne Herald, not a Catholic, but from whom I received constant kindnesses during my Australian visit, wrote for his journal that ‘ Sydney has seen enter its harbour the mighty fleets of powerful nations as well as of her own Sovereign ; yet it is safe to say that no such exhibition of power was ever seen as was represented by the Manly steamer.’ And later on he wrote ; ‘ There passed in slow procession, not men, but embodied ideals born humbly 2,000 years ago, strengthened by difficulty, ennobled by danger ; ideals so powerful that they have succeeded in placing even human nature under obedience. Here, visibly proven, was the fulfilment of the command given at a time when a few poor, despised and ignorant fishermen were the only agents available to execute it—a command given to carry to all peoples, nations and languages the message which a village carpenter died in uttering.’ All the more glad was Ito hear of a tiny incident. Out on the harbour waters a very poor fisherman was constrained to carry on his necessary toil. As the floating Altar
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passed, he pulled up his line, knelt, bowed, and only when our Lord whom he had worshipped had passed by did he let down his line again.
Macquarie Street, on to which my window gave, had been thronged with people since a very early hour, since it debouches into Hyde Park where the Cathedral itself stands. About every third standard-pole that supported the electric wires had a loud-speaker attached to it, so that the hymns, sung in and transmitted from the Prince of Wales’s theatre, were heard everywhere simultaneously, and everyone could sing them if he chose, and what is more, in time. The brain reeled with the passing and re-passing of Children of Mary, in white and bluebell-coloured cloaks—really most charming ; of Knights of the Southern Cross, in black coats and bowler hats ; of boy scouts ; of diocesan guilds or sodalities with their banners. At last the procession came. To quote once more Mr. Russell :
' Paraded for all men to see, representatives of every land clad in the robes which hold within their folds a rich symbolism in which itself is a lesson. As I watched the unique spectacle, I felt that as the men marched onward, the centuries marched backward, and I realised, as did the people, that living history unrolled before my eyes, since for her scroll of greatness from every century this Church has taken something of culture, something of symbolism, something of grandeur ; a robe, a utensil, a gesture, even a chant. . . .'
That was very well said ; and indeed, as I recognised many in the procession, from the black Bishop of Kottayam whose acquaintance I had but recently made, to my old correspondent, Prince Wladmir Ghika of Rumania, to members of the Papal mission, both Italian and American and Hungarian, met long since in Rome or out of Rome, to Maori chiefs in their feathers and mats whom I had been introduced to in New Zealand, and Prince de Croy, cousin to the King of the Belgians, the snowyhaired Archimandrite of Tripoli; the Bishop of Caesarea Philippi, Patriarch of Lebanon, in stupendous oriental vestments ; the
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Bishop of Prague ; and Samoans or Fijians with their accustomed cassock and cotta and their fuzzy hair ; and I saw others, like Maltese and like Melchites, and I think 5,000 ex-soldier Diggers who made my heart laugh and cry —the V.C.’s who carried the canopy were five altogether, and many other ‘ decorated ’ soldiers took their turns —I felt, indeed, ‘ what further need have we of witnesses ? ’ Well, then, Jesus of Nazareth passed by, and yet remained ; and the very police bore witness to the fact that Him was the crowd worshipping, since to their amaze they found the near-a-million who were massed, ultimately, round the Cathedral, required no handling at all. It was the Prince of Peace with His peaceful population.
All the afternoon, five silvery aeroplanes, marshalled by Captain Hughes, M.G., had been flying over and around the Procession in perfect Cross formation. When Benediction was given from the Cathedral terrace, and the entire crowd (held together, again, by means of music ‘ amplified ’) sang the great Eucharistic hymns and spoke forth the Divine Praises, those aeroplanes must surely have caught what Fr. Nichol, who controlled this part, had asked for—the ‘ detonation ’ of man’s worship of his God, and the pigeons came swirling away from the towers of the Cathedral. For once, the scene overwhelmed the Cardinal. Brushing aside the priest at the microphone he spoke thus to the throng that Christ had blessed :
My dear Australian people, in the presence of this supreme spectacle, I cannot refrain from thanking you from the bottom of my heart for this great manifestation of love and faith for Our Lord Jesus Christ. I implore His blessing upon you and your families and all in this blessed land of Australia. All my life I will pray for His blessing upon the people of this wonderful land.
My own reaction to the Congress was one much more oi conviction than of emotion, seeing that in any case I dislike crowds, and that temperamentally, I suppose, I find myself on my guard against all pageantry, much as I love to see it well
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carried through ; on religious occasions especially I find it difficult to attend to it, and anyhow would be conscious more of the minds of the men who form the crowds than of the actual crowd itself. At least I hope I should. Therefore the things that moved me most were, I daresay, tiny things—like the fisherman I mentioned ; the old man who travelled the 1,500 miles from the Queensland border in an ancient gig drawn by an ancient horse called Michael : this old man slept in blankets by the roadside, and another had pedalled his bicycle all the way from Victoria. Or the newsboy, who, each morning, would sacrifice the extra minutes and the extra pence, bring his load of newspapers into church, timing himself for the approach of the Domine non sum Dignus, kneel on the papers for a few moments, make his Communion, return to his ‘ priedieu ’ for his thanksgiving, and be off again. Or the taxi-driver, who (when, hundreds of yards from the Cathedral, an amplifier hard by called out that the Elevation was about to take place) asked leave to halt his car, took his cap off, and knelt down in his narrow space till the great moment had gone by.
As regards more general impressions, I naturally had some, but I tried to check them by those experienced either by my friends, Catholic or not, or by the Press, which was recognised as astonishingly responsive. (In fact, the great newspapers were almost off their heads with the extra work : I know that they found it hopeless to provide even all those extra copies that were needed for sending abroad, or all the photographs asked for.)
Naturally, the first word that recurred in the Press was ‘ emotion ’. Religious emotion. This was superficial, but natural. There is in man the power of being thrilled. Masses of people, volumes of sound, dazzles of colour, the spell of the unusual and exotic, the communicative touch of men whose minds are patently and profoundly occupied with a thought you do not understand —all this creates emotions. To my way of thinking, the Sydney Congress was singularly unemotional in this sense—it had again and again the chance of elicidng
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applause, cheers, mass-emotion, in a word, and did not take it. That was fine. That showed that the sense of all engaged in the Congress was against any such cheapening and vulgarisation of the occasion. The Congress was in essence an Act of Worship and its objective was God, and not human nerves.
The next recurring word, in the Press, was ‘ power ’. The power of the Roman Church, hitherto unsuspected. The world-influence of Rome. This reaction was somewhat inhibited by the complete absence of arrogance on the part of the Cardinal Legate or of any of those other personages whose rank, secular or ecclesiastical, was commented on. The papers made the most of the five castles belonging to one prelate ; to the royal cousinships or descent of two others : but the ecclesiastics in question were (of course) so perfectly accessible and at their ease that no one else could fail to be so. There was nothing gushing about the geniality of these gentlemen or of any of the visiting clergy, but the geniality was there ; just as there was nothing arrogant about any one of them, though the certainty that there was nothing simile aut secundum —nothing parallel to or comparable with the Catholic Church was of course possessed by everyone. Later on I shall have to record a curious experience—that suburban snobbishness which suggests that the Church is the religion of the ‘ illiterate ’. In so far as it is, I am very glad that it is. I know of no other Church that succeeds in being so. lam glad that the Church can do what Christ could do, and St. Paul. Here I have but to say that the myth that the Church was the affair of a social class was disposed of. The Anglican Church, in England, is always being twitted, by the working-man, as being the perquisite of a clique, the social clique of the super-respectable—not of the ‘ real gentleman ’, as the soldiers used to say, with an emphasis on the * real ’, but of the super-respectable who didn’t keep shops. I suppose that to Royalty, everyone not-royal seems much of a muchness ; I suppose that to what they call ‘ gentlefolks ’ the infinitesimal shades of distinction between class and sub-sub-class in certain districts appear wholly unintelligible—and no politeness in the
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world, my dear Diggers, is going to make me pretend I didn’t observe quite as much 1 class distinction ’ among Australians as anywhere else ; one always does observe it in countries that would be democratic —and somewhat similarly, it may be that to the Roman eye the denominations really seem indistinguishable among themselves. It is true that the Church, as ‘ Church ’, never dreams that any other institution so much as enters into comparison with her. (This statement needs, and shall be given its complement. But such, in one aspect, is the truth.)
No one could fail to see that of all existing institutions one, and one only, could rivet the eyes of the world, even for one day, on Sydney. For a week, Sydney was the focus of the eyes of men in every land of the world. All over the old world —Hungary, Italy—there were little Eucharistic congresses being held, timed to coincide with the Sydney one. Nothing else could have done this. Nor was there anything save a Catholic Congress which could bring men of every land simultaneously to Sydney. The mere fact that some of them came, like Abraham, ‘ not knowing whither they were going ’ —almost absurdly ignorant as to what manner of city they were to see, professing (maybe half-jocularly, yet not wholly so !) that they expected to find themselves as much among black men as among white, and to meet the Australian quadrupeds running about the streets, proves how potent was the force that hurled them, none the less, into Australia.
Without any doubt, the Eucharistic Congress has made Australia known to the world at large better than anything ever —certainly better than an incident like, for example, the visit of the Big Four, as they say, which happened so soon after it. Possibly all this does seem to have relapsed into the baseness of mere boasting. I hope, not at all. But certainly it abolishes at one blow the identification of the Church with one social class ; and, I hope, for ever and ever the identification of the Super-National Church with any one nation ; but there is deeper far than that. To quote Chief Mita Tauponoki ;
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' It seemed to me as if the Atua (God) Himself were in the midst of His people. Only God could have brought so many different peoples together. The numbers of people—it seemed as if all the world was there ! But you or I did not see all who were there ! For, above and around us, were all the saints of heaven. And the departed spirits were there, and they joined us in our devotions to our God.'
When it was setded that I was to come to Australia, I received letter after letter telling me that it would be to a materialist country that I was coming. When then I began to think about my first sermon at St. Patrick’s, I felt it would be my duty to speak about that Spiritual Thing which underlay the Congress and its pageantry. Ultimately I did so ; but after all, I thought: ‘ I will begin with that very thing— matter —with the Corpus Christi; Christ’s Body. Corpus custodial animam! The Church’s amazing paradox —‘ May Christ’s Body guard thy soul into eternal life.’ So I preached on the humanity of Jesus. The thought of that makes an end, once for all, of the desire for worldly triumph, in or out of Congresses. A baby ; a little boy ; a growing lad in a remote country-town ; a young work-ing-man : and then a year or two of publicity and then ignominious rejection, and the gallows. Hunger, thirst, fatigue : friends, and treachery ; and the supreme human and most lonely experience of dying. Round the canopy under which Christ was borne ran the device — Christas Vincit, Christas Regnat, Christas Imperal: Christ Conquers, Christ is King, Christ Commands. Motto that has a thousand times been accused of un-Christian arrogance. But when you recall in what way He won His conquest and His kingship, you see that the motto is, in His case, but the equivalent of ‘ Christ serves, Christ suffers, and Christ pleads.’ In consequence I was sure I was right in thinking of the people of Australia and the world right down into their very flesh and blood, all the material element in human nature, and the lives that might be called ‘ fleshly ’ because it never occurred to them that there was such a thing as ‘ spirit ’ : I tried to send my prayer down into the
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very roots of all that might truthfully be called ‘ materialist ’ in this continent, certain that Christ would not scorn it but would have a destiny for it.
“ Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,
Unshrined on this highway,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,
Thou rood of every day."
For in spite of the brief triumphs of the flesh, how swift is the transit of human years ; you weaken ; you grow old ; men suffer. And when exhausted or wounded men in Flanders raised their eyes to some wayside Crucifix, it was much as if they recognised therein a Fellow-sufferer who understood them.
But, corresponding with the duty and the joy of remembering Christ’s humanity, and that He loves our own humanity, and that therefore our humanity is lovable and that each man must be lovable, came indeed the difficult duty indicated to me by those letters. If the Press had inevitably to concentrate on what could be described and indeed photographed, no prelate, nor any statesman (however far removed from Catholic belief), who spoke at the Congress failed to stress those invisible things which make the only sure foundation for individual life, or family or social or national life, or even human life at large. Nor were they speaking to deaf ears. Everyone must have been conscious of the atmosphere of ‘ reverence ’, of awe, of ‘ supporting the Invisible as if they saw it ’, which possessed and was communicated by the multitude. If indeed the ‘ Corpus Christi ’ does stress the notion of our Lord’s humanity and make it impossible for us ever again to slight—make it necessary for us to do homage to and serve lovingly—any one of our fellowmen, yet if there is one thing that the Blessed Sacrament by its very nature (as Catholics know it) preaches, it is, the supreme Reality of the Invisible. I see not ; I taste not; I cannot measure, weigh, nor enter into any sense-contact with that which I describe as the Real Presence. That which is really
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there ! Reality in a world so compact of illusion and convention and hypothesis, and of all that is not really. To this, the Blessed Sacrament opposes its portentous assertion. There is a Real ; but it is not what you see nor hear : there is here a Prince, and ‘ Prince of Peace ’ —but he is no more than symbolised by this Legate who has come from half across the world —the Reality is present; there is a mighty church a-building, and—yes—your Cathedral is like an algebraic formula thereof, if you will ; but the Church is. Souls of men, incorporate with Christ : and it is because the Reality is so strong, in short, so real, that it beats its way out into these external things and expresses itself on every plane of realness —only how much less real are all these outside things than the inmost one. A priest said suddenly to me : ‘ Do you think that this is our Palm Sunday ? ’ It was for a moment a shock to me, but I saw what he meant and honoured him for having an eye so ready to expect to see something that the outside did not show him, even though it were the still latent Crucifixion. I recalled two writers—writers separated, you might have thought, by the whole extent of human psychology—Rudyard Kipling and Mrs. Meynell. The poet of Empire, having lived and written under the spell of the British Empire, and seen its exterior triumph in the manifold procession of the great Jubilee, suddenly sat back, as it were, thrilled by a vision that the exterior was unsubstantial —was bound, in a sense, to be impermanent—could scarcely subsist for a generation, and would be worth nothing even for an hour, were it not founded on and knit together by a Law of Righteousness, a spiritual thing, in a word, by God. And he wrote ‘ Recessional ’. Tremendous responsibility bequeathed to us, by the Eucharistic Congress, that not for an hour do we occupy our Catholic minds and hearts with the unsubstantial fabric of a dream which all earthly edifices are —things made of finance, of politics, of diplomacy, of warfare—instead of the eternal things that form the substance of our creed and our hope and must inspire our loves. And Mrs. Meynell, who perhaps almost of anyone I have known saw what lay hidden
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within —so that in her hours of human weariness she would perceive that ‘ my shroud is in the flocks ; the hill within its quarry locks my stone. My bier grows in the woods ’ —in her times of heavenlier ecstasy could never look at harvest-field or vine-clad hillside without perceiving concealed among the clusters, ripening in the wheat, the destined Chalice and the Host of sacrifice.
Hence, perhaps just because I could share very little in the external splendours of the Congress, but I hope for other reasons too, its dearest moments to me were those when I was privileged to be one of twenty priests who for hours on end, at St. Patrick’s, in the church, in the hall beneath it, out among its trees, heard confessions of so many sons of this Australia, as I had not since the days when they had returned, wounded, from battlefields, or had finished their days of leave or months of training and were returning thither ; and those again when, at St. Cannat’s, out near Darlinghurst, I could twice give Christ in Communion to the thronged rails.
‘O Christ, in this man’s life—
This stranger who is Thine—in all his strife,
All his felicity, his good and ill,
In the assaulted stronghold of his will,
I do confess Thee here.
Alive within this life ; I know Thee near
Within this lonely conscience, closed away
Within this brother's solitary day.
Christ in his unknown heart,
His intellect unknown—this love, this art.
This battle and this peace, this destiny
That I shall never know, look upon me !
Christ in his numbered breath,
Christ in his beating heart and in his death ;
Christ in his mystery ! From that secret place
And from that separate dwelling, give me grace !' *
* The Unknown God, by Mrs. Meynell.
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(«)
Fond child, nourished in poverty ! Thou lookest
Confidently for wealth, clothes soft as water,
To deck the unbidden beauty that thou tookest
From generous earthy
O still fond child, and poverty yet present
Yet straitly questioned, still knowest thou what's pleasant,
As to the catechist the wanton boys
Can all make answer, that ' To keep them whole
Each must by day and night think on his soul.'
Ruth Fitter : Nourished in Poverty.
I shall find it much simpler if I add forthwith what else I remember about my days in Sydney, though they came after I returned from Brisbane. I had mapped out for myself a delightful tour, especially to schools and colleges, including one day in the Blue Mountains ; but unluckily I caught influenza and this complicated things. I had so much wanted to see those mountains, in building the first railway over which my grandfather, then a very young officer in the engineers, had, I understand, his share. However, I got the usual kind welcome from the Mary Ward Convent of Kirribili and to the other house of these übiquitous Loreto nuns at Normanhurst —I must say I love the bright uniforms Australian school-girls wear ! I always told them so at the outset of my humble discourses, and they became quite friendly on the spot ... I shouldn’t say ‘ became ’, for they were never anything else ! And as for the littlest Australian girls, they are perfectly adorable. Talk of the celestial ‘ agility ’ that is to be ours some day ! What baby-cherub could beat these ? I couldn’t get to the Convent school of the Sacred Heart, at Kinkopal ; but saw all I could of Rose Bay—charming name, suited to that ecstatically beautiful view. These two convents are of unconventional and effective architecture. Happily I could go to the Mother House of the St. Joseph nuns, where I met their Rev. Mother General. I implored them to remember the need of England.
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It is remarkable that a house here that once belonged to Mother Mary McKillop’s family (she was the foundress of this indigenous Australian congregation) now shelters a community of Mary Ward nuns. The link is close. Miss M. A. Finn, at the Women’s Meeting after the Congress, read a most interesting paper comparing these two ‘ valiant women ’. I pray for the canonisation of both of them.
On September 30, it was my good luck to be asked to preach at the little Jesuit Church at Lavender Bay in the morning, and in the really astonishingly fine church at Randwick, belonging to the Issoudun congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Unluckily influenza was just beginning to get acute ; and I can remember little save my own glumness on that occasion ; but later on I was asked to lunch at their great monastery at Kensington and I wondered why this Congregation, which seems to thrive here so well, which publishes so bright and energetic a magazine, the Annals, and whose young students seem so unaffected and open and warm-hearted in the right Australian way, and so keen to know about Catholic energies everywhere, has not developed more than it has, in England.
Both in New Zealand and here, the admiration for men like Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, Maurice Baring, is so alert you have to be ready with answers to all sorts of questions, such as : ‘ Does G.K. really roar with laughter ? ’ (I had to say : ‘ I haven’t heard him . . . I’ve never been at any of those Gargantuan festivities in Fleet Street, or in mysterious taverns like the ones American visitors show you , Mr. Sinclair Lewis took me to one called “ The Cheshire Cheese ”, I think . . .
What I have mostly noticed is the birth of a jest in the uttermost depths of Mr. Chesterton’s mind : its gradual, gradual coming to light ; the slow delighted recognition of its worth expressing itself in a quiet heaving and creaking and finally in a crinkling of his entire face, a shower of shooting-star enjoyment communicating itself to a whole roomful, and perhaps a quite silent laugh of his whole being . . .’) Well, questions like that, which have
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to be answered like that, or others like ; ‘ What does Mr. Belloc really mean in his Four Men ? ’ Living too near Mr. Belloc, I will not say what I answered to this question, contained in two letters from two school masters, one Catholic and one not. I\o one showed greater kindness to me than those Missionary Fathers did.
But can I say that anyone showed me less ? To my lasting regret I wasn’t well enough to call at the veritable colony of student houses belonging to the Christian Brothers at Strathfield ; but I did just manage to visit the vast St. Joseph’s College, managed by the Marist Brothers—there was only one more amazing thing than the fact that already it needs extension, and that was that it stands opposite the Jesuit College of Riverview, which also is destined to be perhaps four times its present size. It is a revelation of how many Catholic boys there are to be educated. How well this district realises the absolute necessity of ‘ secondary schools ’ ! Since the day of my visit to the Jesuit noviciate, Normanhurst, St. Joseph’s, and Riverview occurred when I had just made up my mind to have ’flu properly, it will be forgiven me that I had not the heart to visit the Riverview Observatory, nor to hunt up my old Dublin acquaintance—its director, Fr. Pigot.* That veteran astronomer, seismologist and musician, however, came to call on me afterwards at St. Aloysius s College, Milson’s Point, where I was staying, and gave me a photo of a reunion at the Vatican Observatory, where the Holy Father caused himself to be photographed among his sciendst-sons. I really must recall that Fr. Pigot not only is consulted by Sydney as to details concerning its great new bridge (a theme, it appeared to me, quite as important in dud interspaces as in the doubtless extra-important hours of Electioneering) . He tells me how much this enormous structure is likely to undulate in the wind ; how far it will pull the cliffs out when it contracts, or push them back when it expands in
* I have but recently heard of his death. R.I.P, Like all first-rate men of science, he was a very humble man, with a humility that did not irritate but endeared.
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the heat, and all that sort of thing ; but when asked by a reporter whether a recent earthquake somewhere in Madagascar, or the Orkneys, was really a decent earthquake, he replied that it had been a notable disturbance, but that he regretted he could not provide information as to its moral character.
I think that this is the place—though one shrinks from talking about one’s own family—for saying, once for all, how intimately thoughtful, generous, and substantial was the kindness I received from the Jesuit superiors and communities with whom I stayed, or whom I met, in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. They alternately mothered me and arranged most drastic programmes for me ; they bore with me when I said I wanted to go to bed ; and announced relentlessly that the Car was There.
. . . I can only hope that the hours of sleep they lost while making plans about me, were made up while they listened to my lectures. Especially at Sydney, they put up, and put up with, a crocked and useless man, with a super-tact and gentleness that I don’t forget.
I can’t do more, therefore, than allude to a colossal meedng of the S.V.P., to which 700 men came, representing every Conference in Australia, together with many delegates from New Zealand. My only quarrel with that meeting was, that His Eminence entered in the midst of a most amusing story, so that I never heard the end of it; and, that it coincided with a Hibernian dinner to which I was invited just when I had accepted the invitation to speak at the S.V.P. one. There is also in Australia, as I have mentioned, a society of men called the Knights of the Southern Cross. They are modest men, and do not advertise themselves, though since every newspaper commented on their superb ‘ body-guard ’ visible at the Eucharistic Procession, and since they have a very fine building in Sydney with the Australia Hall attached, they are the very last thing that can be called a ‘ secret society ’. They are not that ; but they don’t conceitedly advertise themselves, a practice that I applaud, since I really do mean that to ‘ do the job and hold your tongue ’ is a good motto ; and I fear that a ‘ book ’ like this affords a fair pre-
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sumption that one doesn’t do the job. For no one could call it ‘ holding one’s tongue ’. Anyhow, they, too, engineered a marvellous meeting of men, prefaced by a very friendly little supper. At the meeting purely domestic topics were treated, I hope frankly !
But just as Melbourne, despite the wonderful ‘ University Sunday ’ I shall have to speak of, left my mind chiefly occupied with the notion of ‘ Retreats ’, and, again, with a deep impression of the exterior work that Catholics need to do, and can do ; so in spite of everything else, Sydney in particular kept me preoccupied with the thought of Catholics at the Universities and the whole intellectual possibilities of the Catholic Folk in the Southern Hemisphere.
Sydney University is a magnificent place and will be more so. I enjoyed looking from its high windows at patches of ground still unoccupied —raw surfaces whose very rawness witnesses to how much is still intended to be done. What has been done, is stately and worthier than most modern Universities. It is neither florid, nor banal, nor flimsy, nor cumbrous. I repeat, it is unfinished ; but all growing things are that. The president of the Anglican college in Sydney University, St. Paul’s, gave me lunch in the Union Hall, and took me over so much of the rest of the University as I had energy to go to or remember. The great hall, the libraries, the majestic terrace, and a cool quadrangle are what I best recall. There is here a strong sense of Tradition ; and anyone who raised supercilious eyebrows at the costumes of papal chamberlains or knights of the Holy Sepulchre or the uniforms of the visiting gentiluomini must, to be consistent, turn up a contemptuous nose at the portraits, the sculpture, and the relics, let alone the costumes worn in this Sydney University. After that lunch, I had to address the League of Nations Union, on the grave obligation that rests on such a society, from which I should be sorry were any intelligent Australian student, or indeed others, to remain aloof. A thing need not be perfect, in conception or in execution, to warrant men of good will lending a hand in it. What is there, in this
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world which is good save I so far as it goes ’ ? Nothing human goes very far !
But naturally I was more interested in the Catholic element in the University. Sancta Sophia is the girls’ college, or hostel, in charge of the nuns of the Sacred Heart. The building is solid and simple, unadorned Perpendicular, I think. I was allowed to address the nuns, and expected to speak also to the girl-students, but they had boldly taken the Australia Hall and collected a large audience besides themselves. All such institutions witness to and create grave problems. The Catholic girl of to-day seems very different from the girl of a generation ago, and girls at large seem even more so, and all of them, if I dare hazard a guess, are less so than they imagine. Fashions are different, and that is about all you can say about fashions —they change. Still, there may be profounder differences, and doubtless one or two certainly exist. But please God, our problem of education will solve itself. The mystery of Vocation still operates ; and extremely ‘ modern ’ girls still become nuns. I should imagine that the hardest problem set to religious communities concerns, not those directly whom they teach, but the adaptation of their own traditions to our new, most experimental, period. On the whole, I should nearly always deprecate a girl being plunged from her school (convent school or not) into an unguarded, unguided University career ; hence, since a University career is necessary for a high percentage of girls, and will become so for more, I should consider an institution like Sancta Sophia to be an essential part of the Catholic equipment of a University town. The nuns of Sancta Sophia have shown imagination, insight, courage (for they have endured sharp criticism), and have perfect honesty of purpose. May that house prosper. It was a real pleasure to speak on its behalf and to try to forge some small link between it and at least the hostel of St. Frideswide at Oxford.
This Hall stands hard by St. John’s College, the University College for Catholic men which was designed sixty years ago and is half finished. I had just seen its dignified interior—the ‘ grand
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staircase ’ is magnificent for receptions : I can remember only one at Oxford quite so well adapted. But on October 3 I was invited to dine there with its President, Dr. O’Reilly, who showed me the rest of it. Surely no other part of the University can be better than this. Its cloisters ; its ante-chapel, and the chapel itself: the lamp stands within an elaborate casket on a pillar. Coats of arms everywhere. Nothing astonished me more, in Australia, than this all-but solitary symptom of artistic condnuity witnessing to a deeper continuity of ideal. For I cannot include within this witness what seems to me the pseudoGothic of (for example) the Anglican Cathedrals of Sydney and of Melbourne. They are not nearly so good as —to quote the first that enters my head —St. Chad’s at Birmingham, let alone the new Anglican Cathedral beginning to be built at Brisbane, which has unlearnt many lessons. Just as I had expected to address perhaps 20 girl students at Sancta Sophia, so here I had expected to speak, after dinner, to 30 or 50 Newman Society students connected with St. John’s. But they, too, put their meeting in a great hall, and though its seating capacity (I was told, 700) was fully occupied, what looked like another 100 had to stand. Expecting, as I said, a very domestic assembly, I had chosen for subject: ‘Do Catholics Grow Up ? ’ Boldly I tried to develop that theme in spite of the unlooked-for audience. It included —I can’t help recalling this —the taxi-driver who had brought two friends to the hall. He refused to go away, even to get an interim job ; his comment at the end, which I prize, and would that I could tell him so—was five words only : ‘ That gentleman has a Twinkle ! ’ How is that for a compliment ?
I am certainly not going to analyse my speech ! But the topic of the duty, and the chances, of Catholics to ‘ grow up’ is of eternal interest. I had been interested to discover in Australia and New Zealand relics of the notion that Catholics are an uneducated folk. I can remember how, still quite a young man, I heard the Faith, to which God was good enough to call me, alluded to as the * religion of the scullery ’. I would
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have been tempted to say that only a scullery-minded person would have condescended to that jeer, did I not think too well of the mind and manners of scullery-maids. I prefer to suggest that people who have stolen, ought to go easy about sneering at their victims for no more possessing what has been taken from them. The means of educating ourselves were taken from us for centuries, unless indeed we went abroad to Italy, Spain or Flanders, when we had the chance of getting a more cosmopolitan education than anyone was likely to get in England. I must in fairness own that there was a complementary comment—to the effect that Catholic Culture had about it an ‘ urbanity ’ that others lacked. So it had and has. ‘ Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat ’, said the last pagan Latin poet. ‘ Thou hast made a mere world into The City.’ When I return from ‘ abroad lam English enough to thank heaven when once more I set foot upon our dingy soil. While lam abroad, I ask myself with a sigh whether Englishmen are ever likely to be able to take this idea-full view of life, that I find, say, in Paris or Munich, in Valladolid or Warsaw.
But I restrict myself to saying that in these University talks to Catholics, I certainly insisted on their absolute duty of developing and co-ordinating their two knowledges—that given by their secular study and that given by their Faith. Else they would be dislocated —22 in what concerned their knowledge of the world, and 12 in what related to their Faith. (A paradox is, that you can know more about the Faith at 12, than you are likely to know about the world at 22. However. . . .) In consequence, I ventured to encourage my University hearers to think well of themselves, and not to succumb to the vampire-hallucination that they were intellectually contemptible. Nothing so sucks the mind’s vitality, as the suggestion that intellectually speaking, everyone is better than you are. If you don’t succumb, you may go through a period of swollen head, as most clever young men do ; but swollen head is not so bad as a spirit drained dry by criticism. Anyway, you soon enough learn how little, in the best sense, you do know ;
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and intellectual humility is one of the bests gifts of Oxford. I believe, therefore, that a clever young man starts clever ; he may develop into being brilliant, during which time he is intolerable ; he goes on to discover that he is still a baby, and wants thereupon to commit suicide or go in for stock-broking which may be much the same thing ; if he perseveres, he acquires knowledge and in the long run, becomes wise. Leaving these generalisations, I liked to beg the members of the Newman or other University Catholic societies of Australia to know one another. After all, it is easier to move about one continent than to move about two hemispheres. So reunions would be possible ; and in America, they regularly occur. Nothing can be finer than the ideal of the University Newman societies of the United States. This inter-communion seemed to me, both in Australia and in New Zealand, to be still imperfect. What I should like to see, is a Federation of Newman (or any otherwise-named) societies in Australia, confederated with a similar federation in New Zealand, and finally with another in South Africa—in the ‘ Lands of the Southern Cross ’, to which Cardinal Cerretti kept alluding. And I should like attention then to be turned to Ceylon, and Japan, and China. And I should like a continual interchange of news between all these centres and those of Europe. Thanks to our Catholic University Societies’ Federation, I was able to put those two young university men whom I had met at Sydney, in touch with Catholics at every university, I think, that they visited. I think it was useful ; lam sure they were pleased.
It was fortunate that while I was in Australia, the Pax Romana Conference was taking place at Cambridge ; and I could allude to twenty countries that had sent thither their delegates, and the subjects they discussed, which were, not the lack of Catholic Culture, but, the chasm between Catholic historical, scientific and philosophical thought, and the thought that surrounded it. ‘ Broken Bridges ’ was the general title of the subject to be discussed at Cambridge ; and the construction of bridges was the hope and aim of that Conference. I was glad, too, to be
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able to narrate the meeting of 600 Orientalists recently present for the 17th International Congress of Orientals at Oxford. Delegates from the Governments of more than thirty States met there. The Pontifical Commission was extraordinarily strong ; among the over 100 University Orientalist Societies represented besides, Catholic ones were prominent. The British Government entertained the entire congress in Christ Church Hall ; and the papal delegation was given its special luncheon at All Souls, by the Regius Professor of Civil Law, the first Catholic to hold that supreme position since the Reformation. I could not but be amused to find that the president of the papal delegation had been housed in my own old room at Oxford. He was Mgr. Mehemet Ali Mulla Zade, Professor of Islamic Languages and Literature in the Pontifical Institute at Rome. His ancestors came with the Turkish conquerors in Crete, where he was born ; his mother was descended from Mehemet Ali, an Egyptian viceroy. Trained as a Mohammedan, he joined a school of Turkish mysticism and proceeded for further education to France, and after eight years of thought became, first a Christian, then a priest and prelate. I recall that the Mohammedan Problem is immense and urgent ; it will interest soon enough, I have no doubt, the intellectual centres of Australia. Such fundamental topics, and attention paid to them, would preserve even the rickety-minded from dilettante enthusiasms for what can but issue into intellectual debauch, like modern Theosophy.
But again : Australia is distant from Europe. But Europe is full of Australians, and I sincerely hope that they will represent themselves numerously in the various congresses there held. But should they go to Europe for their university life ? Personally, I hold that going to Oxford and Cambridge is of value, but of a circumscribed value. Those two Universities need a lot of knowing before you can judge the worth of what you hear there, whether it be said by professors or by your fellowstudents. You may be disgusted by the pose (as it largely is) of languor ; or, lose your head over facile enthusiasms, and put faith in a lot that is epigrammatically said, or theoretically
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advanced, by people who don’t dream of putting even a grain of faith in it themselves. You may be so enchanted by the respect shown to every idea, every intellectual pagoda erected by the naive or the sophisticated, that you easily think that every system is equally valuable ; or, you may be so shocked by the light-hearted way in which the builders see their own edifices collapse, that you may tend to think that everything is equally valueless. Be all that as it may, I end by repeating that if the Catholic Church bleeds from any wound, she does so, from the wound of Un-Instruction. We know our own Faith in a catechism-way ; we are apt to know modern thought in a text-book way ; naturally, we cannot co-ordinate the two insufficient knowledges. Hence, lop-sided enthusiasms ; hence, no less lop-sided despondencies ; hence, apostacies. To those who have leisure, money, and brains, for prolonged education, I recommend an all-round, that is, a Catholic education : to all, I recommend some Catholic job ; to all, I insist that a continual rejuvenation of the Spirit is necessary, to obtain which nothing is more valuable than an annual retreat. But to this I return below.
The time then came to leave Sydney, and I realised I had not yet seen Sydney. I had seen much of you, my dear Jim and my dear Len (Balliol to Trangie—that is far : Magdalen to Ashfield—that is almost farther . . .) ; and of you, E.O’S, and only by bad luck did I not meet our friend M. (you know) ; and to my delight I had seen you, Harrie (I always spelt it like that, that I still must, though I may get into trouble with you, E !) ; and to my immense surprise and delight, you and I, C., met again ; and others of course who were visiting Sydney but didn’t belong to it. Still, I hadn’t seen Sydney. So on my last day I asked Captain Geoffrey Hughes to give me a comprehensive view from his Avian. From the Mascot aerodrome we ascended, and how truly I realise that a recipe for Sydney is : Take a number of race courses ; add a suitable amount of playingfields ; garnish sufficiently with houses, and serve up hot. I love being in the air : and what an afternoon that was ! At
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last I realised the Harbour —the sea spilt its way into the city and round about it in fascinating curves and creeks. Little by little I recognised the landmarks : Government House ; the Cathedral ; the Showground ; the Kensington Monastery ; Manly College. A factory ablaze ; great ships like minnows ; Long Bay Prison ; a city needing God, beloved by God, recently so richly graced by God. May the seed, so generously sown, grow into the wheat whereof may be made true Christian Bread. How should it not do so ? Strongest of all, is God. From up there, I could see Sydney. Only as once more the glistening spiders' threads revealed themselves as roads, only when I set foot once more upon Sydney soil, did I feel that I now indeed had left it, and must make the best of my journey away from New South Wales, laden with memories, and winged with hopes.
But, as I said, I have been anticipating. For in the midst of these events, I had been to Brisbane and returned.
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BRISBANE
(0
Dost thou not see the city,
All carven, all like snow ;
Canst thou not see the city Whither thou shalt go ?
They raise up thy springing towers,
They plant thy pleasaunces with flowers
Canst thou not see Zion,
O thou that hast vision ?
Ruth Fitter : The Errant Thoughts.
I left for Brisbane in the afternoon of September 14, knowing that I should not get there till 7.30 next evening, and filled with the loftiest intentions. I had possessed myself of literature which should have stuffed me with statistics about Queensland and indeed about the Catholic Church there. I read about a quarter of an hour’s worth of it and then gave up. A little made an ‘ impression ’ ! Queensland, would you believe it — the single State of Queensland —is about five time the size of England and Ireland together, and three times that of France. The old Empires of Germany and Austro-Hungary would have fitted into it and left a margin. Queensland is in short much larger than any European country except Russia. It contains very nearly five hundred million acres —670,500 square miles. Most of it lies well within the tropics, and besides sheep and grain you keep hearing of bananas, pineapples and sugar-cane. If I chose, I could look up lots of books I have and compile fine lists about all sorts of things ; but why should I do that ? This is not that sort of book. However, I felt a sort of glee to learn that while in Great Britain there are 477.71 persons per square
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mile, in Queensland there are about 1.32 ; 22.96 of the land is unoccupied, and of what is occupied 0.55 per cent, is under crops or artificially cultivated. I digested too the fact that of its entire population of 897,419 persons, 176,647 are Catholics, and are governed by the Archbishop of Brisbane, the Bishop of Rockhampton, and the Vicar Apostolic of Cooktown —but it is perfectly clear that there will fairly soon have to be another diocese or two.* Now reflect. Not a quarter of a million Catholics, and these audacious men and women are going to build a cathedral costing a million pounds, and they have already spent £ 60,000 upon it. The area of its entire emplacement is to be 121,350 square feet; of the actual building, 45,162 ; its dome is to be 80 feet across, and will rise to 280 feet high, and even then have upon it its ball surmounted by a cross. (And if you saw, as I was to, the framed collection of photos of all the churches that this Archbishop has had built in that vast territory ! I saw it in his own house, and stood amazed. For they are not only many, but beautiful and original. We have a few —a very few —beautiful new churches in England ; but, my word ! how very few with any originality about them ! I was to have the luck of sitting next to the architect of many of those Queensland churches : Mr. Jack Hennessy, still quite young for such a career (bom in 1887) ; it is he who completed the Cathedral at Sydney, and who has designed that for Brisbane.
Cardinal Gerretti was to lay one of the foundation stones of the Cathedral—it was to weigh 4J tons, and Mgr. CacciaDominioni had brought with him, as a gift from the Pope to the Archbishop, earth and stones from the Catacombs, in fact from the tombs of the Popes in the Catacombs of San Calisto and from those of St. Sebastian, where, for some time, the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul had rested. Another stone was to be laid by Archbishop Gilmartin of Tuam, and under it earth from every county in Ireland —an appropriate touch, since without any doubt not only the Catholic community of Queensland, but the very State itself owes so much to Irish immigration that
* Toowoomba is now a diocese.
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they have said it should be called Quinn’s Land. . . . When Folding went to Queensland in 1843, there was neither priest nor church ; even the first bishop, Dr. Quinn, twenty years later, had but three priests to minister to 7,000 souls scattered over the enormous territory : apparently the vast development, noted above, really dates from the period of Bishop Quinn.
Well, the evening and the night wore on. I confess I hate train journeys—they resolve themselves, and this one in particular did, into one long headache. But Providence (careful that I should see one of everything) arranged for a bush-fire. It was crawling up the side of a mountain, from this distance quite motionless, like a hundred rockets that had just burst and were then immobilised in mid-air. I went to sleep remembering that the first complete set of stamps I ever collected was a Queensland one . . .
My first experience of Queensland was, quite frankly, the breakfast at the border, Wallangarra. The sudden train poured out its rather irascible, polyglot multitude (who is at his best just then ?) into the restaurant. How the staff of white-clad girls managed to keep so cool, so courteous, and to be so quick, I can’t imagine. Coffee and a bit of bread and butter are enough for me, at breakfast ; but when I saw what some of my fellowtravellers demanded . . . Anyway, we then made off again towards Brisbane, in a different train, because the gauge was different. At every stopping-place, and more than usual ones had righdy been arranged for, there was a welcome for the Cardinal. Men, women, and (in the place of honour) children, were lined up along the platforms. The wide smile of the Cardinal drove them wild with delight. I observe that this is personal. I hate personalities, but here goes ! Have the courage of your convictions ! This Cardinal, if then I may say so, is on a large scale. I don’t mean just that he is physically large, though he is, and this does not just mean tall or stout, but large, generously constructed, a very good son of Orvieto, giving the lie in his own person to the absurd myth that Latins are but weaklings —well, I mean that, but not only that. His eyes
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look at what is in front of them, and see it. When he smiles, it is not with the comers of his lips : he opens his mouth and smiles with wide delight. His teeth make it quite clear that he could fasten them on to any problem. He snuffs up atmospheres and knows exactly where he is. That means much, since he has been in many countries, and I think has understood them all. To understand Italy, Australia, the United States, and France is no joke. A man of prayer and patent spirituality, a man of great self-possession and also of sympathy and enthusiasm, he probably is the best diplomatist among those whom he meets, because he tells the truth, a very baffling habit. He was kind enough to send for me to his car during this journey, and that conversation confirmed me in my certainties. I pray God to bless his destiny. Australia is a privileged land, to have had him, first for Nuncio, now as Legate.
In a sincere record, you must let me say frankly that all the while I was in Brisbane I felt horribly unwell and couldn’t attend properly to what I was doing and got the edges of many ‘ impressions ’ blurred. Even the arrival . . . Well, it was dark, anyway, and we went straight to St. Stephen’s where, in a crowd such as I have rarely experienced, the Cardinal Legate was rapturously welcomed. Home after this to Toowong, and quick to bed in a room stretching right across the house and having vast doors opening at either end on to the verandahs.
Even the next morning I felt rather vague as we were transported to the civic welcome in the unfinished Town Hall. The gaunt skeleton of its tower, waiting a sheath of stone, stood high over the city and you couldn’t judge the exterior yet. But inside, it made me think at once of the great London County Hall, rising on the south side of the Thames. It is smaller, of course ; but there was the same whiteness, and curving corridors, and the decoration of such ceilings as I saw was so wisely kept delicate and light. And there were two window's of coloured glass that interested me. Was it fanciful to detect in their basic tints the hues of gum-trees ? They represented the main
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industries of Queensland, yet how far better than the insultingly coarse, would-be modernist window in the International Labour Bureau at Geneva ! But I don’t like tiled dados. Where might you not see such tiles ? A Town Hall must be kept distinctive ! (Its potentates, at any rate, distinguished themselves by offering us all whisky in the middle of the morning. This is not yet the custom of our civic gatherings in England, so far as I have observed . . .) Immediately after this I was driven round the city, and seldom have I seen such a switchback place. Dr. Mannix, later on, was to say that Rome had but seven hills ; Brisbane, seventy-seven. It was very hot and a haze lay over the scene, so that my first impression was that of a ghostly town. Its wide bungalow-roofs are still mostly of grey corrugated iron, and they spread themselves like tents. I have seen real tents —Arab tents —like that upon a hillside ; but they seemed to me like birds, lying languidly with outstretched wings. They mean to tile these houses : I hope they will use tiles which, like the Roman ones, bleach in the heat; and I hope that the walls, if wood must yield to brick, will be covered with cool plaster, like the Roman plaster, that passes through every shade of tawny up to copper-gold. And I will say at once, how right was the Archbishop to choose, for this halftropical city, a Rome-inspired cathedral, and to foresee a dome floating above it as St. Peter’s does, whether the setting sun, behind it, blazes through the windows of its drum, and throws the vast cupola forward in greys and violets, or whether, at noon, it strikes upon it, leaving it ghost-colour, palest primrose shadowed with faint lilac.
The one firm colour, as you looked down on Brisbane, was given by its trees ; and I implore the city magnates that they will not cut down too many trees, or any, for the sake of those overhead electric wires, which won’t always exist for trees to interfere with them. Trees in this blazing city are essential, and the fountainous Brisbane palm is a beauty anywhere, and as for fountains, they too are practically essential for this city —look, already, what the water does for it, when it pours through
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those lions’ mouths in the enormous stone pedestal of the future Cathedral ! The movement ; the flash; the music ! The life gushing from that ponderous and rectilinear platform ! No open square in Brisbane will compare with that Cathedralpiazza : may it be made the most of; surrounded with no sky-scrapers, but tufted with curving trees, and having in the midst yet another fountain—one strong, though slender jet, with its upward rush, then its halt and hush ; then its return in a shower of pattering spray. (On my way into town one evening, we passed a cinema full of cheering children. ‘ Oh, let us cut out the function ’, I sighed, ‘ and go to the pictures. I shall enjoy the audience at any rate ! ’ ‘You might ’, answered my companion. ‘ Provided the film isn’t a soft one. Then we’d go to sleep. We’re a bit sophisticated, you know ’. Shall I be thought soft for being emphatic thus about colours and fountains ? Who cares ?)
But the next thing one noticed was, that certain buildings stood massively forth on all the highest sites. When I enquired, I was amused to find that nearly all were Catholic —amused, but not surprised. For one cannot deny that Australian Catholics have an astounding flair for sites. ... I don’t like to say they’ve ‘ captured ’ them —that sounds militarist ! But anyway, there they are, perched. (I confess that there is one church in Brisbane that I shall mention, concerning which an earnest person —assuredly not sophisticated, that one !—surmised, during the war, that its emplacement and its style proved that it was really a fortress, built for the pro-Germanic bombardment of the town. . . .) Look at Sydney, for example. What do you see at once when entering the harbour ? Manly seminary. In Rose Bay, the Sacred Heart convent-school imposes itself upon a whole hill-side. The Cathedral spires will point high above Government-House ; the Mater Hospital, Monte Sant’Angelo Convent, and the Monastery of the Sacred Heart Missionaries put bold silhouettes on their several hill-crests. In Perth, it is much the same ; almost any strikingly built educational or philanthropic institution that you see, is Catholic
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A Catholic spire rises highest of all over Melbourne ; and here in Brisbane, the church upon Red Hill (that is the fortress church—and righdy felt so, since it is inspired by the amazing Cathedral of Albi in South France), the Convent of Stuartholme, belonging to the Society of the Sacred Heart, seize on your eyes ; and All Hallows Convent, though grey, occupies an entire ridge to itself.
When I say, too, that the architecture of so much of this seems to me quite startlingly good and original, do not think me bigoted, for I add at once that I seemed to see more good architecture in Brisbane than anywhere. The Anglican Cathedral, though Gothic (here, to me, out of place), is sturdy and dignified ; there is a very modem, very pleasing, Presbyterian Church ; and close to it, a publishing house with a delightful Italian campanile ; and near the river are tram sheds so worthily designed ! A city that will take trouble about its tram sheds has a future ! And hadn’t I luck about those sheds ! I was sitting at dinner next the architect of some of the most important stuff in Brisbane and in Sydney. ‘ Speaking as every kind of fool said I, ‘ I admire the tram sheds here almost as much as anything ’. He turned and stared. ‘ You do ? ’ said he. ‘ I’m the architect. . . . ’ After that, I could have swum in the drinks he offered me. . . . But I resisted, and confined myself to praying that the new bridge that Brisbane means to build, may be worthy of her river. Bridges can be beautiful or hideous. Look at Ponte Sant’Angelo at Rome and the iron monstrosity hard by it ! Why the new Brisbane Bridge is to be just where it is to be, I can’t feel sure : but whatever it is, may it be fine ; and may there be much glass, in these new churches, just like a little bit that I saw in old St. Stephen’s, which reminded me exactly of the glass I saw with such delight at Palmerston in New Zealand.
I now crave permission to pray that practically all the decoration inside these and other churches may be some day burned, reduced to powder, and scattered to the winds. Do not suppose that lam down on Australian art. No church art is Australian.
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Church art in Australia isn’t worse than what we have it is what we have. I presume it is Gallo-Germanic-Hebrew. I must, no doubt, recall two facts. One, that there is a very serious effort being made in Germany, Belgium, France and I think Italy, to produce religious art that is sincere—loyal to the Christian vision of the artist. I know, too, that certain convent chapels, aware of the debased character of most ecclesiastical furniture, are trying to do without it, yet have no creative vision. The result is, either that their chapels have practically nothing in them—are cultured and chaste, implore you to notice how religiously refined they are, or that they try experiments, but lack craftsmanship. True artistry demands rigorous self-discip-line ; and the idea that an artist is a sort of skyey libertine, is false. A nun, who knows what the average statue of the Sacred Heart is, or the seminarian, who feels that the average madonna’s sentimentalism would, in real life, revolt and shock him, are apt to try to draw just ‘ something different from that ’. But few are the nuns or seminarians who have had any artistic training whatsoever ; and, it is no good trying to create something different from something else ; you have to see a vision, be absorbed in it, and try truthfully to express it. If you have seen it, and do so try, but are no craftsman, you will produce something sincere and convincing, but not on the whole for public exhibition, yet far better than what is exhibited. Much early medieval art is like this ; most Spanish popular art was. Now—l am very positive about this—l believe that Australia has it in her to produce that religious art which shall rescue us from the stuff that smothers us. Australians are not the Creator ; therefore they need something to get them going, so to say. But once they are got going, they have a ‘ vehement spirit ’ —and the word ‘ vehemence ’ is, as one word, the one I am sure I am right about when I use it of Australians —which is bound to work out into first-rate stuff, if they will take trouble. See what I mean. . . .
While I was in Australia, the ex-Australian artist, Mr. Norman Lindsay, said that Australia was, artistically, a moribund hole and advised all young Australian artists to get out of it How
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a hole can be dying or alive, I don’t see : this was not only an ill-tempered but a sloppy adjective, used as no careful craftsman, such as Mr. Lindsay can be, should condescend to use his words. For an Australian to have to desert Australia in order to be an artist, various things would be needed. First, there would have to be nothing in Australia to stimulate him. But there is plenty. People say : ‘ Oh, but it is all the same. We have nothing but gums.’ First, that is false. Australia is much more varied than that. Next, gums are beautiful, as Mr. Hans Heysen has proved single-handed. Are they velvet ? Silky ? Metallic ? Grey, green, ultramarine or crimson ? Opulent ? Haggard ? Suavely curved of leaf, or nervously arrow-headed ? Finally, you needn’t look at your gum-trees always at the same hour of the day. One of the loveliest things in Australia is its light. It is always lovely ; but different is the fragile loveliness of dawn from the thick gorgeous light of afternoon, and from the sapphire incandescence of the night. When I found that my spells in hospital prevented my paying two long visits to friends in the back-blocks, I went to a Sydney exhibition frankly in search of paintings which should show me the light upon the bush. I found them in plenty. Mr. A. Streeton ; Mr. E. Gruner ; Mr. A. Collins ; Mr. Daryl Lindsay ; Mr. S. Ure-Smith ; Miss Sheldon —see how I mix names up. What does it matter ? Every fantasia of light (out- or indoors) was to be found in their drawings. I felt : 1 Were I an artist, I would need nothing more than the infinite variety of Australia to inspire me.’
Should an Australian artist, then, seek if not inspiration at least craftsmanship from Europe ? I think he might. And inspiration too. For though Australia contains much, it doesn’t contain all. There is the special patine set upon things by antiquity, and Australia is not old. But when an Australian wrote : ‘Australia is only beginning to be affected by what burst upon Europe 20 or 30 years ago ’, I mark time. ‘ Burst ’ is equivocal. Bubbles burst. Lots of what bulged and ballooned above us, ten years ago, is bursting rapidly. It was the work of stuntists ; experimentalists, to put it more politely; people, too, who
K
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wanted to shock. . . . Epater le bourgeois —to flabbergast the average person. . . . Suburbanism ! If you go to Europe, do not go to copy ; do not go to defy. Go to learn, if Europe has anything worth teaching. What is ‘ learning ’ ? Accepting information from another ; assimilating what you can ; rejecting what you can’t. Incorporating into your personality what your personality can master. Master. Not succumb to.
Much then depends on the Australian personality. When the Italians woke up to ‘ art ’ after the Punic wars, they fancied that the Muses all were Greek. They intended, then, to write, if they could, as Greeks wrote. But they couldn’t. Not because they were too weak, but because they were too strong. Is Catullus like Sappho ? Horace like Alcaeus ? Vergil like Homer, Hesiod, or Theocritus ? Not in the least. Yet they meant to copy those models till they perceived that in their own way they were doing better. If an Australian can go to Europe with a receptive yet indomitable soul, learn all that Europe has to say, and return and produce Australian work, ah, then I should be proud of him.
But lam afraid for him ! Look what is happening in Sydney ! They have put up the Sydney hospital in Macquarie Street, pulling down I know not what to make room for that knobbly, complicated building, and I fear that the lovely ‘ colonial ’ buildings on either side are doomed. I pray that the little church of St. James in King Street will never be destroyed, even though Queen Victoria’s statue turns its back on it. Personally, I think the church should turn its back upon the statue ; but perhaps the statue wanted to enjoy Governor Macquarie’s enchanting little house still at the corner of his street. That were all to the statue’s credit. Just as a nation’s history acquires depth, that depth ought to be visible in its buildings. For it is hard for a period to be absolutely bad, like the monument to Nurse Cavell in London. Look at Rome ! There was just one period when they wanted to pretend that there had been no other Rome till then —neither imperial nor papal. They put up the Victor Emmanuel monument in order to
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obliterate the Capitol, and the Palazzo di Giustizia to suffocate St. Peter’s. Well, I wish the Victor Emmanuel monument were not where it is ; but it expresses an idea and I would leave it as a symptom of its age. The Palazzo isn’t a thing at all, but a lump, and I hope it will be demolished and the perspective of St. Peter’s from the Pincio be restored. But I am trying to insist that Australia has it in her to create a national art ; and if Catholic Australia can produce a Catholic art, why, it will be a new thing in the world, and the world should be grateful.
I now can’t but mention colour again because of the Brisbane flowers. Ido this the less blushingly because I have met here a Queenslander I knew in the days when they professed to wear kangaroo’s feathers in their hats, and he liked flowers. . . .
At any rate he reminds me that he used to get leave from the Sister to stay out of hospital a little longer so as to bring her back some flowers. Considering he got them from our garden, ten minutes off, he could hardly have spent three or four hours getting them, I imagine. But the Sister used to sigh : ‘ The Aussies again ! ’ and leave it at that. But Brisbaners may hardly realise how marvellous is their bougainvillea among the pale roofs, to a visitor’s eyes. It drives you desperate with its beauty. I had seen it in Algeria—purple fleeces hanging over walls of dazzling white —I had even sat in that ‘ House of the Little Dog ’ in the garden at Biskra listening to Larbi playing his melancholy reed (you have read The Garden of Allah ?) ; greygreen enormous trees : vista of brimstone desert ; tiny cubical white house ; and deluge of purple bougainvillea. But here that creeper is not only like the cloak of an emperor in fairy-land, but a fiery rose like sunset, and a pink more tender than the dawn, and a copper-golden fury like a furnace flame at midnight. As for the house I lived in at Toowong, on the one side mango and palm-trees whispered ; on the other, the ground fell away into a valley full of gum trees that trembled in their dreams. In the morning, you could catch, through great lattices, a thousand tints of flowers unknown in England, that suggested an orchardful of cherry, almond and plum tree
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aflower together. Since my accident, I had only been allowed to say Mass six times, I think. But now, each morning I took the five minutes’ fragrant walk to a tiny convent through what seemed an unviolated Eden. And as for snakes, not till I left Brisbane did I see any. . . .
After lunch that first day I went to the Showground where nearly 3,500 children did massed drill and dances coram Cardinali. They looked delicious. Alas, lam on the colour-track and can’t get off it. I had watched, long ago, 2,000 young Slovene farmers doing the same sort of thing in a Stadium walled with multi-coloured dresses, fenced with brilliant trees, bastioned by purple jagged hills, and domed by a copper-blue-green sky. Those men wore dark blue trousers, white gym. vests, indigoblue caps with a crimson top, and their limbs were of bronze. Here the little girls were in white with yellow handkerchiefs round their heads —just daisies. The boys were in white, with green sashes and college caps. Older girls, in red, yellow and black, did Italian dances. In the midst of this occurred a tea interval, during which I was asked to preach the sermon at the forthcoming consecration of a church at Dalby, a neighbouring town (some 200 miles. . . .) and after tea I got lost. Some North Queenslanders, whom I did not know, collected me, and talked most wisely about agriculture and immigration ; and the climax was my meeting a man whom I had known as secretary to someone in England. Meanwhile the dances had resumed—a field of buttercups and daisies and here and there a poppy. It was charming when these flower-beds swayed rhythmically to the music’s breeze ; but what was it when the Cardinal and the Archbishop tried to go away and the whole fieldful broke up and became butterflies —Whites, Orange-Tips, Clouded Yellows, Brimstones, Red Admirals —yes, and a moth or two : Tiger moths, Red and Yellow Underwings—l’m sorry if you don’t know what these are like, but I’ve always loved them. They clouded round the amused and enchanted Cardinal—they almost clothed him with their colours like the blue and the yellow butterflies in 1 The Cuckoo Clock ’. And yet I couldn’t
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help thinking to myself— ‘ Yes, these nuns and these Brothers have worked miracles. But what happens next ? What is the bridge from this pure and radiant childhood to adolescence ? What, from adolescence to adult years ? ’ For the time, I sought no answer.
That night, I had been invited to the reunion of the Hibernian Association. The Archbishop of Tuam was there ; and, from Australia, the aged Bishop of Armidale, and the youngest of Australian bishops, Dr. Norton of Bathurst. They all, together with some local laymen who will forgive an exhausted man for not noting down their names, made witty speeches, after which it was the turn of the clumsy Englishman. I recalled that my first priestly work had been done in the Incurables’ Hospital at Donnybrook, and that I was booked to go back to Dublin in the spring to tell the Irish C.T.S. how well the Australian C.T.S. was doing. [As I write, I have to confess that my all-but second nature, influenza, prevents my doing this.] I said that I had long loved the poems Ginger Mick, The Sentimental Bloke, and Digger Smith, by C. J. Dennis ; but that even they had not given me the full atmosphere of the Australian bush till I read those of John O’Brien (Fr. Hartigan) who had become the genuine Australian without losing anything of the Irish inspiration. I prayed, as how often I pray ! that every country might achieve that perfect freedom and selfhood which none that I know of anywhere have yet achieved, since only between such perfected units could there be created that union and peace and charity which both nature and Our Lord desire. I register my gratitude for the great-hearted welcome given by these Australians, and others, of Irish origin, to me, who am neither Irish nor Australian. Here was the living proof that two things do transcend all else —Humanity, and Christianity.
Next day was Sunday, September 16. At the High Mass I had to preach the sermon before the laying of the Cathedra foundation-stone. After it, a space of quiet I can never be sufficiently grateful for. The Governor had asked me to lunch
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in his house high-pitched above the city. In his great thoughtfulness, no other guests had been invited. The gende hospitality of himself and his household were very healing, nor do I forget them. Thence I drove back to All Hallows, overlooking the vast emplacement of the new Cathedral, whither a long procession made its way. The afternoon was scalding; the ceremony long-drawn : but it made, if I may say so, a firm spiritual foundation for the enormous work foreseen by this Napoleon of an archbishop ; and I regretted no minute of it. Difficult as it was to feel sure whether it were more restful to stand up, or to sit down on the red-hot concrete, I meant what I said when to the thousands massed before that titan flight of steps I affirmed that Australia’s badge was the Rising Sun, but that to-day that Sun was surely risen, for the Glory of the Lord was risen upon her. As the procession returned, an cx-A.I.F. man pounced out upon me from the hedge of Faithful, whom I had not known how ever to meet again. Dear Steve ! What a difference you made to my few days in Brisbane ! And Con, how sorry I was not to be able to get to Maryborough. And how kind of the mother of an Australian, now in England, to visit me !
My mind at Brisbane became so much filled with one thing that I will but recall the ordinary incidents such as solemn dinners and receptions, though each managed to have its special note of charm for me. . . . Thus, before one dinner I suddenly met the famous Irish-Australian tenor, Mr. O’Shea, the trail of whose concerts I had followed in New Zealand, every Maori speaking of them, and one in particular who had screwed up his courage to the point of asking O’Shea to sing an Ave Maria, which he did, nor had those Maoris forgotten it. I like to remember that I obtained that he should sing to the Cardinal and prelates at that dinner. Poor Mr. O’Shea—two days after that I met him in hospital, than which no better case of ‘ post, non propter hoc ’ could be discovered ! And at the reception one night in the Showground, a man came clambering over the benches whom I had last seen at Doncaster
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during a lecture on St. Aloysius ! And in the Mater hospital I happened on the mother of an English-Australian soldier I had known, now married and in Melbourne, and she showed me photos of myself he had entrusted to her. Kindly ghosts of days that you didn't think could have their resurrection. Now what a splendid place is that hospital ; it stands on the side of a hill, and the flowers alone are enough to cure tired hearts or heads. The men in the wards made friends quickly. The men in gaol, too, as at Sydney, were very friendly and easy to talk to. And I found that in Brisbane, a man had died in hospital, a truly Catholic death, who had been perhaps the only one whose earlier career, especially when he returned after the war, had caused us deep anxiety and even anguish. His mother, now, knows well the worth of mothers' prayers. Thank God, the world is full of Monicas. I recall two more lunches, one with —I remember the priest's name, but I can't recall that of the suburb where his domed church crowns (once more) a hill ; there was a dear little Joseph convent hard by ; and a very friendly Anglican clergyman came to that lunch ; and it was my good fortune to meet several more such clergymen, especially at a luncheon at the Constitutional Club in which I was so kindly asked to speak : already timid, as I am about this book, I called the speech 'An Englishman in Australia', for, that I was an Englishman I couldn't deny, nor yet, that I was in Australia. ... In part, I think, I mentioned what I implied by the word ' Empire ' and the whole trend of civilisation ; a microphone (will one ever get accustomed to those blind little eyes on rigid stems, staring unblinkingly at one while one talks ?) broadcast my crude sentences to the whole of Queensland ! To keep the balance fair, I accepted the courteous request of the leading Labour paper to write daily for its columns ; and I am bound to say that neither in that club nor in those columns was there the least objection to perfect frank sincerity. I believe everyone, at heart, is quite glad when partisanship — when -isms, or the worship of the departmental—are excluded : if anybody doubts that, let him read ' Over the Fence ', in Digger
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Smith ! I have mentioned elsewhere a visit to the rooms of the Daughters of Australia and to the Seamen's rooms in the S.V.P. Headquarters. And, need I say, a liturgical talk or two to nuns.
But what was all the while pre-occupying me was : What becomes of Catholic children when they cease to be children ? It is one of our bitterest problems at home ; it was not denied that in Australia, too, it was a real problem. In Brisbane, I got many elements of an answer. But first I must just chronicle a visit to an enormous Mercy Orphanage. It was miles out somewhere in the bush ; you approached it by a very long avenue, that the nuns had planted, of gold-green camphorlaurels alternating with jacaranda trees —the jacarandas would not be flowering for another month ; but I saw them at Adelaide and Perth ; you know the intense yet subtle colour of a blue electric spark ? Well, take that and make it lilac, and you have the jacaranda. These nuns own here about twelve square miles, I think : much appear- at least, to be useless ground ; but there were patches of splendid chocolate-coloured soil. The children are kept here from babyhood till they are fourteen : then they are placed out in Catholic families and contact is preserved. The tiny boys and even the older ones swarmed round like bees—down at Orpington and Dartford they are friendly and trusting creatures too ; but they didn't seem to swarm quite so tumultuously as these young Australians did : the girls were slightly shyer. But this visit occurred immediately after one to the great Christian Brother College of Nudgee.
Now among the men who ‘ deserve well ’ of the Catholic Church, are the Brothers, both in New Zealand and in Australia. When I say ‘ Brothers ’, I include all the sorts of them, Marist, de la Salle Christian Brothers, Patrician Brothers—all of them, though I did not meet them all, and even in Brisbane I could not go to the Patrician School which is, I think, the oldest there. But I was able to spend an afternoon at Nudgee College, a vast building in what looks, to my cinema-taught eye, almost Californian architecture. It stands clean-edged and richly
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golden against the deepening sky. Coolness is always sought : a strong current of air is engineered, pouring the full length of the building ; the north side, where the sun beats strong, is always heavily verandahed. Strong-muscled and strong-headed must the boys be, all the same, who go in for either sport or study during those afternoons. I think that the boys joined in making their own very fine playing fields : I could wish for them that their swimming creek were a little larger ; but all these colleges possess such fine Associations of Old Boys—and it looked to me as if all these associations practically formed but one Association of Christian Brothers’ Old Boys, energising locally — and I should think that they are amply loyal, discerning, and generous enough to ensure the school getting anything that its boys might need.
I called the Brothers ‘ heroes ’ partly, of course, because both New Zealand and Australia are in far harder case than we are, educationally, outrageous as we consider the conditions under which we work to be —for there the Government gives no penny of assistance of any sort*—but also, because of the fight they are putting up for secondary education in the entire continent. The State is anxious about this too ; and while I was in Queensland I was reading of a plan for transforming the whole system of such education, rather like that of Mr. Hadow, so far as I might guess, but it was all still too much in the realm of discussion and re-shaping for me to risk an opinion of any sort as to method or value. But I also gathered that the Queensland Government provided scholarships which were to carry on a boy from the end of his primary education (i.e. 13 or 14) for more years in a secondary school. At first, this answered well. A great increase of junior candidates was at once
* A very clear summary of the history and actual situation of Catholic education in Australia was given by Mr. J. Holden in The Tablet, June 29, 1929. It is fair to say that secular education in Australia was a confessedly anti-Catholic and even anti-religious move. If Australia ever incurs civic, social and national corruption, this will be directly traceable to her secularist school system with the infection that oozes from it. If she is to be saved, it will practically be due to her Catholic schools.
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observed. Not only this increase was never so visible among the senior candidates, but, since 1919, when a maximum was reached, a decline seems to have been steady. Even of those who reach the junior standard, not all avail themselves of the full 4 years. Of 1,000 pupils admitted to Grammar Schools not long ago, 120 did not survive 6 months ; and at the end of 2J years, there were only 150 at Junior Standard and 52 at Senior. In the State High Schools, out of 1,000 scholarship holders, only 120 were still there 3 years later. This only concerns Queensland, and by now the statistics may well be inaccurate or out of date ; but there can hardly be a very substantial difference between one State and another, nor between one year and another. Such things do not alter by leaps and bounds—or if they do, they will soon alter back. Substantial changes in human nature do not come quickly.
The reasons for these numerical fallings-off are many —an important one is, that parents insist on removing boys from school at the first possible moment —a supreme example of saving a penny in order to waste a pound. Moreover, in Australia, ‘ a junior certificate is almost universally looked upon as the completion of a good school course. . . . Appointments to the professional, clerical, and education divisions of the public service are secured by passing the Junior.’ Too technical for me to have studied properly or now to rehearse, are regulations affecting apprenticeship, and other semi-financial legislation, which suggest that none but those going on for Universities have any need (or even proper chance) for secondary education, and that they are bound to lose money by taking one. I confine myself, therefore, to the point that people prefer quick money to ‘ culture ’, and by ‘ culture ’ I don’t mean, obviously, a mere elegant equipment, but having all your talents ‘ cultivated ’, made the most of, not the least ; not running wild and coming to nothing. That thoughtful paper, the Brisbane Courier, picked up these facts put forth by the Principal of Nudgee College and applauded them to the echo.
' Brains are our first national line of defence. . . . \\ e
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cannot afford to leave to chance the development of character, judgment and capacity. . . . We are letting the State’s best mental resources run to waste for want of timely cultivation. . . . The men who will be engaged in stock-breeding, agriculture, and commerce, need adequate training quite as much as the man who hopes to make a living at the Bar. . . . We cannot permit ourselves,’ repeats the Courier, ‘ to become a nation of “ literates ”, men who can read and write, but who lie quite outside the main stream of culture and literary tradition, sent out into the world “ handicapped with a narrow mental outlook ”.’
No one I met in Australia troubled to deny that there were elements in public life, let alone politics, which were distressing. I have heard, and even seen, enough of ‘ graft ’ in English public life to make me quite unashamed of saying that there is plenty in Australia. I have even heard it defended. I have heard it seriously said that if a man feels his talents, or his work, have not been sufficiently rewarded, he is justified in using the position, into which his industry or wits have brought him, for feathering his own nest. I believe that one dyke against the invasion of such destructive notions would be more secondary education. Heaven knows that (in spite of this book !) I dislike desultory talk, or the exhalation of what should be work, in words. Yet I think significant the lack, in Australia, of a number of magazines, in which men can write who have had just a sound secondary education. I don’t mean the very first-rate ones, like the Edinburgh, or the Cornhill, or Blackwood’s, or the Revue des Deux Mondes, but the kind that itself is ‘ secondary’. I find them irritating enough ; and often, probably, untruthful ; but they witness to a general interest; a certain level of information ; a general impetus of will. Such bulletins are a necessary step towards the first-rate. They mark a stage in ‘ culture ’. I did not find many in Australia ; and to prove that I don’t want to be unfair, I liked the Sydney Bulletin very much, and had occasion to write to tell it so, though it blue-penciled
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the two Catholic sentences in my letter ! . . . I could only think that such publications would not have found a public. Nudgee College has for motto, ‘To Work and to Teach ’ : may it live up to it, and continue to do both ‘ pro Deo et Patria ’, for God and for Australia. For if Australians do not develop for themselves their proper culture, someone else, from West or indeed East, will impose their own upon her, a horrible fate indeed.
A writer always hopes that he will be taken as meaning what he says. Ido not mean, for example, that because I praise the Christian Brothers’ schools I think lightly of schools not theirs ; nor because I have dwelt on Nudgee and pass quickly over St. Joseph’s at Sydney and say nothing of Strathfield, I prefer the former to these latter ones : of them, I was too tired to notice much about the one, and not well enough to go to the other at all. Even should I say that, from the look of Brisbane, I imagine that there would be room for three such secondary schools as Nudgee. I don’t imply anything to the detriment of the Brothers. Certainly not. I congratulate them not least on having there a man, whose acquaintance I was privileged to make, whose views are wide and whose sense of ‘ culture ’is exact. He refuses to admit that man can live by machinery alone, or by the physical sciences alone. He does not confuse varnish with polish, but he does know that somehow a real knowledge of the world, of what is and has been best in it, must reach his boys, and elicit from them and develop something far more ‘ humane ’ than the power to pass examinations or to collect shekels quick. So far as humanity goes, if one is merely out to collect those bits of silver, one seldom gets further than the traditional thirty.
But Secondary Education goes a very short way towards settling the whole question. I have had it said to me that the kind of boy who now goes to a Catholic Secondary School, as likely as not drops off from his Catholic allegiance if he leaves at 15, and is loyal to it if he remains till he is 18. But there are various ways of remaining loyal. Everyone knows the man who would not call himself anything save ‘ Catholic ’, and who
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may even defend the Church when he hears it attacked, and who actually gives large sums of money to Catholic objects, but who knows nothing whatsoever about the Catholic Faith, and observes neither the laws of God nor the laws of the Church, whether in personal morals or financial operations. Such men exist in every country and I have no doubt there are plenty in Australia as there are elsewhere. Nobody can feel happy about this, any more than they can about the vague multitude who drift off, marry outside the Church, bring up a non-Catholic family which in its turn, if by then it is consenting to have children at all, brings up several more non-Catholic families. Very far be it from me to condemn those whom Christ does not condemn, lest I incur ‘ the same condemnation ’. I have little doubt that, for the latter category, He would often pray that despite the incalculable, ramifying wrong that they do, they may be forgiven, for, they know not what they do. But woe to us, or to anyone, who may share the responsibility of their not knowing. As to the former class, however much they may know that they are endangering their eternity, and meanwhile disgracing the Catholic name in the eyes of all men and putting Christ to ‘ an open shame ’, yet even so, they are among Christ’s sheep that, for the while, are lost, and He seeks for them ‘ until He finds them ’ ! It may sometimes be that such men too started, they know not when precisely nor how, upon a career that has entangled them in knots too complicated to break through. Their gifts of money, even, may be a halfwistful acknowledgement that they are doing what they can, nor imply the hateful insult that they are buying condonation. But only by the fostering of a continuous and active Catholic life, can the multiplication of such or other ex-Catholics be prevented.
Of course a certain number of Queensland young men and women go on to take a University degree, though I doubt whether they number much more than 500 altogether. Catholics have a hostel, the Leo Hostel, and thither I went one night and was introduced to a very cheery gathering to whom after
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the visit to the Mater Hospital, to Nudgee, to the Mercy Orphanage and to the society I mention in a minute, I was asked to make a speechlet. . . . Poor lads ! Heaven knows what nonsense I may not have talked at that hour ; but they were as hospitable as ever and the talk even became a discussion, upstairs. A Catholic education within a university is certainly a link between ages and parts of life ; but the proportion of those who go to universities is as I said infinitesimal, and anyhow, I wrote all that I wanted to about this topic in connection with Sydney and St. John’s College there. But the Leonian Society, with which I had dined before going to the Leo Hostel, was an excellent institution and I would like to see it paralleled everywhere. It consists of leading Catholic business and professional men —doctors, lawyers, journalists—and so far as I could judge by that night, the speeches and discussion were extremely frank and to the point, very well-informed, and constituted altogether a very sporting effort. Finally, about 400 men, I think, came together in the hall of the ‘Age ’ bulletin ; and provided me with one of my happiest memories of Brisbane. Next day, I was to leave for Dalby.
I had to go by an early train ; yet I couldn't but stay awake thinking how sorry I was to be leaving Brisbane. Despite the vision of the vast Cathedral that had dominated those days, I expect I shall always think of the city as one of roofs silver beneath the heat-haze, in its setting of wide hills where even the gum trees stood immobile, so breathless was the week. I am always afraid of saying the wrong thing—but to-day, looking back, that city seems to me like a very large bush-town, and would it might remain so. Can there be a ' right size ' in towns ? lam not sure that there can't. London is a monster. I don't know the big American cities ; but I am inclined to think they may be monstrous too. There was a genial lovableness about Brisbane that I can't mix up, in memory, with my recollections (however happy) of other Australian cities. I am not falling into the absurdity of saying that because things are different, one must be better, the other worse. But I looked
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forward to Dalby, certain that I would like it, because I had so much liked the Queensland capital. Further, I had to confess that the capital seemed to me very largely brooded over by the memory of one man, its Archbishop. On my way to Australia, I had read some of his speeches and had been, if I may say so, struck by their serene and statesmanlike qualities. Statesmanlike—not politician-like ; for he could run counter to average opinion and popular catchwords when he wanted to. It is also statesmanlike to be able to conceive things on the scale of the Cathedral, and to attend to details as he does in things civic quite so much as ecclesiastical. The Press, and conversations with men of different creeds, left on me an indelible and uncontroverted impression of the esteem in which he is held as citizen no less than as churchman. His lavish hospitality was much more than just official ; and I can’t but speak with an almost awestruck admiration of his courage when it became known that he was already beginning to suffer from that local brand of influenza which afterwards laid so many low !
And last, after all, comes the impression of that exquisite little hill-side in Toowong, with its fragrant dawns and dusks, and the silences through which your heart can catch the chant of the Carmelites not distant, in a chapel where I know I am prayed for every day. So I can never quite leave Brisbane.
(II)
" Where is her Ladyhood ? Not here,
Not among modern kinds of men ;
Bat in the stony fields, where clear
Through the thin trees the skies appear,
In delicate spare soil and fen,
And slender landscape and austere."
The Lady Poverty ; Alice Meynell
September 23, then, I left Brisbane at 8.5, along with a very friendly young Queenslander tennis-player whom I hope to
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re-meet next —now this —year at Wimbledon. About 12, we reached Toowoomba, a township of some 27,000 souls, 101 miles west of Brisbane and 1,921 feet above sea-level. Met as usual by a kindly priest —this time from a neighbouring town, Oakey, through which we are to drive to Dalby 52 miles away. Lunch in the railway restaurant ; and again I must sing the praise not only of the clean freshness of these rooms but of the good gaiety and sensible familiarity of their —governesses, so to say. ' Meet Mrs. X', they say to you, and you shake hands with la patronne, or one of her handmaidens, and she sits down and chats for a moment when she has brought you your sausage. . . .
Thence we drove by a circuitous route round the city, up to a high place whence you had a vast view over a pale country of burnt grass shadowed with gum trees. But never have I seen an earth of more gorgeous red. ' That', said my companion, pointing to a town in the valley, 'is Helidon '. ' But', said I, ' that can't be more than 10 miles or so away.' ' Twelve ', said he. ' But', I urged, 'we passed that, coming from Brisbane, hours ago'. Well, yes : the railway had made a vast and apparently unnecessary deviation. Thirty miles plus. .. . Back, then, through streets planned with generous breadth and edged with superb foliage, to the presbytery, to pick up the Bishop of Bathurst. A very fine brick house amid the bungalows, with dark wood inside it against which brass fittings for the electric light and so forth showed up well. Dignified. The train had left me giddy, and I can't remember much about the church save that it was solid and cool. I contrast these qualities with the flimsy and the stuffy : these, I hate : both would be unworthy of the enduring Catholic fact, the bracing Catholic air. . . . Off, then, and after a 20-mile drive, spent in recovering myself, Oakey. Oakey sits in a flat world and can be flooded out. The houses are on high stilts and latticed orientally. Just now, in this 'heat wave', it is parched. Samaritan nuns —lovely name, and they live up to it. The priest here always duplicates, and goes 10, 12, and 29 miles to do so. This implies, of course, that some of the places he
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visits can have Mass but once in three weeks, and the resident nuns likewise. (I want to state once and for all that if I am guilty of inaccuracies about such points as these, they would only be inaccuracies as regards the actual place I am speaking of; they are true for somewhere or other, and for many somewheres : I had to listen to what I was being told, with a tolerably tired head, and the names of places were unfamiliar. Not that I think I have been inaccurate ; but I may have been. . . .) Westward, then, through interminable plains, slightly rolling, but flat taken as a whole, plains of burnt grass and rare gum trees. All pale ochre and pale indigo. Somewhere or other we had a breakdown of which the technicalities escaped me. A car drew up alongside of us and its occupant took a header into the inside of ours and finally mended it. ‘ That young man ’, observed the bishop, ‘ would undertake to mend an aeroplane, and would no doubt succeed. The bush teaches you to do that. . . . ’
The roads were, now iron ruts, now dusty levels. The place is full of snakes. Right across the road lay, first, a ‘ brown ’ one, then, a ‘ black ’ one, both very venomous indeed. There is a death-adder, I’m told, which is as bad. These were —4 and 3 feet long ? Something like that. We drove fiercely over them upon the iron ground ; still, they wriggled off into the bush, technically to ‘ die at sunset A myth ? I suppose so : but I hope they died. . . . Snakes upset me. So did parts of this grim country. Lots of prickly pear : they are studying how to kill it off, so that there are vast patches of blackened vegetation ; incidentally, they are said to be killing emus off, because they carry the prickly-pear seed about. I may be as credulous as any traveller should be ; but if they kill off the emus, what will happen to cross-word puzzles ? Three dead cows by the road-side. And an iguana—or goanna ? —ran across the road and sped rapidly up the trunk of a gum tree on the side which was turned away from us. It was large ; about 3 feet long, I should say, and looked like a cross between a dachshund and an alligator, but you shouldn’t mind its face ;
L
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it is far from a beastly beast. Little mirages kept putting pools of milky-opal water in the ruts, over the crests —one lifted a car ahead of us quite high into the air. At last Dalby showed itself, with the gable of its church visible as soon as anything else.
A lovely shower-bath, tepid though the water was ; and then tea with the kindest company of priests it has been my lot to meet. This place is as good as a retreat : partly this is due to the personality of its parish priest ; partly to the sense of the work that these priests, as a body, have to do, and do gladly. Till igig, when the parishes of Oakey and Chinchilla were formed, the Dalby parish numbered 17,500 square miles : the priest had to visit 27 Mass Stations, of which the furthest was 200 miles distant. By horse. Even now, if it has rained, your car gets bogged ; and the parish has 2 priests for 4,000 square miles to be visited. About 1870, the first half-finished church was left a heap of ruins owing to a hurricane ; what the sisters then lived in, heaven knows. But so prized was their work, that the first bridge over the creek was built for their convenience by the municipality that they might get to their religious duties. As for those religious duties, I was one of, I think, five priests who heard confessions all that evening. I sat in a wicker chair beside the end of a pew, in full publicity. For one woman who was my client, I should say that three or four men were. Then I went to bed on the verandah.
I say bed, not sleep, because you can be both too tired and too happy to sleep much. Moreover the fan of the well kept creaking so musically that you might have taken it for a bull-finch. And dry leaves, or berries, from the pepperina trees came rattling down upon the iron roof so that I thought it was rain. Rain would never do, to-morrow, though after that the country can have so much as it needs of it. I kept saying to God : ‘ You can do anything you like. You can even [this cost me something !] make a snake crawl across my pillow, and I won’t move —only You must not have rain to-morrow.’ No snake came ; but I kept butting the pillow off the framework on to the floor ; so perhaps that did as well. Moreover I was still embossed
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by the muscular mosquitoes who stamped on me in Brisbane. At last the sky changed rapidly from its unfathomable blue to filmy pearl, to rose, to gold, and to the pure turquoise of broad day.
I went off to the Mercy Convent for Mass. I arrived early and sat long in the garden, accompanied by wide black-velvet-and-mother-of-pearly butterflies and a very friendly and talkative grasshopper. Back, and for the first time I properly saw the Church.
Without any doubt at all, if you went to Dalby, the one outstanding thing you would notice is the Catholic Church. I have said by now how much I love the general aspect of these little Australian towns —this one is said to possess, near or remote, 3,000 inhabitants—with their low bungalow-houses, their spidery-legged well-fans, their sparse gums and pepper trees, their vast dusty roads, their corrugated iron tanks, their abrupt blaze of flowers in spring, their infinite stretches of burned grasses ; but you do not look, in them, for some startling explosion of artistry which would hold you up to admire it in the streets. Yet, when you see a Catholic church, that is, as often as not, just what happens. Here the church assaults your eye like someone in the spot-light on a stage. Not that the simile is good, because here everything was drenched in a dazzle of light. But in that light, all the bungalows and gums melted into a bleached and impersonal background : the church stood sturdy and with firm outline and true articulation among feathery green trees —a church of bricks coloured from coppergold to indigo, able to turn every shade of ruby and amber and amethyst as the sun rose or sank —bricks, moreover, from Toowoomba as the tiles were from Brisbane and most of the labour, I gathered, was from Dalby itself, while the architect (he of the Brisbane and Sydney Cathedrals) was Australian too. Widely openable to the air on the cool side ; heavily recessed and verandahed to the north, it took perfect account of local conditions and was, in a word, an Australian church, and to find a thing so perfectly adapted to conditions and yet
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so original in this small bush town was to make one optimist, all over again, as to the artistic spirit of this people and its destiny.
I think that the town appreciated its asset, and indeed the whole district did. Before 9 a.m. special trains were rolling in. Toowoomba sent its choir. The High Mass was sung by the Bishop of Bathurst; and that most kindly Bishop of Christchurch through whom I obtained, vicariously, almost my only contact with the south island of New Zealand, was present, and so was the Mayor of Dalby and a whole crowd of parish priests. The strong sun shone happily through the simple and lucid glass in much the same way as the simple music streamed from the throats of that choir. Nothing out of tune ; no affectations —the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (There are things in New Zealand that they call ‘ spout-baths ’. A solid shining stream thuds on to your back from a height and you feel as strong as it does. I hope the Toowoomba choir won’t mind my saying it reminded me of a spout-bath of music ! It is meant as a very sincere compliment ; a spout-bath in the sun is a joyous and tremendous experience !) Almost at once after Mass, we went to the Parish Hall, a very spacious building, and I looked first at the roof, so cleverly decorated with white and various yellow festoons —- primrose up to orange. (That was wise : the papal colours, if they be white and but one bright yellow, have a sort of sickly dazzle about them. Vary the yellows, and all is well.) I was thinking : ‘ They might have modelled themselves on those splendid fragile flowers of which one sees so many here —Iceland poppies.’ And they had. Looking down at the lunch tables, everywhere those flaming golds and yellows confronted me. Even on the railway platforms, they offer you great torches of that fragile fire. Lunch was served by Children of Mary in cool but colourful dresses ; and a smiling band played with delighted vehemence, and there were no speeches. (One other thing there was none of —the Special Collection. *ls this ’, a visiting potentate is reported to have said, ‘ a Catholic assem-
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bly, or a Presbyterian garden party ? ' Without delving deep into his meaning, I repeat merely that there was no collection.) However, in the afternoon, very rightly, there were speeches. The town band had already been playing out there beside the Church, and from the steps were those speeches made. In that admirable air, voices carried well. I forget my speech, just as I do my morning sermon, but how well I remember the collective countenance, so to put it, of the audience. Eyes wide open, lips smiling no less widely half the time—such strength and such comradeship ! And what signs of ' race'.
Had Australia been colonised 1,000 years ago by I care not what whites, and then been let alone, what a race would have grown up here ! Constantly these plains have reminded me of the vast Hungarian puszta. And what a civilisation grew up there during its thousand years of history, despite Turkish invasions and even the influx of other blood. What a force has broken through, expressing itself in all that is truly Magyar—in dress, music, poetry, method of building and of agriculture. Here, surely the same would have happened. As it is, Australia has accepted and above all is accepting so much that is not hers. In the speeches of this afternoon, we kept hearing the prayer that Dalby might ' progress.' I fear they meant : ' Grow bigger ', ' grow like other cities ' . . . I cannot join in that prayer. I prefer it small, developing its Self, not copying. But even this preference is idle. The cinema, on which I have harped, the Hollywood microbe, already infects this pure air ; girls will be choking up the pores of that healthy skin of theirs with chemicals ; boys will be choosing the pictures instead of sport ; to that will go the weekly wage ; and the eye will get clouded with pestilential dreams. I don't think this is pessimism. Hither too come the couple of degraded newsheets that Australia still produces ; and you should see small boys looking eagerly over one another's shoulders to find what the conscienceless clique in the city wants to show them.
And I think that this is where I will say, what I can't leave out, that from the city, too, which sings its hateful spell into the ears of
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these bush-people who, please God, will keep well away from cities, comes that doctrine of birth restriction which is making Europe kill itself off in favour of the Asiatic. Poisoned fangs are fixing themselves in the imagination of this people, too. I heard of a town no larger than this one, where a chemist could have added £3OO annually to his income, had he chosen to sell child-murderous wares. Being a Christian, he would not, turning over thus a large proportion of his livelihood into the pocket of his rival. I knew, too, of another chemist who, because of his courageous refusal, found life impossible and migrated to a little place where he was the only man who was a chemist. All went well, till another chemist came, without those principles. Soon enough, the former had once more to shut up shop. Be it said once for all : It is idle for Australians to talk about keeping Australia for Australians, if they refuse to supply Australians for Australia. Would that some voice might reach them, to persuade them that this cancerous practice saps the nerves, withers the heart’s affections, dissipates the mind, ruins communities, gangrenes nations. In Adelaide, I had to review, in the general Press, a book professing to tell the ‘truth ’ about this subject. It did, in so far as the truth can be told by one who disbelieves in God, or at least excludes Him from his calculadons, and understands nothing about the mind of those who profess to teach in His Name. The author left you free in this department, but he begs you not to indulge in the cant, which passes for argument, so far as health, patriotism, economics are concerned. He makes offal of those arguments —a muck heap ; and reduces the whole topic to what it is—either a method of sheer self-indulgence, or a seeming necessity cruelly imposed on men and women who don’t want it, by outrageous conditions of social life such as prevail in many places. Probably we need a very strong change of heart, of personal heart, so that we give up the notion of a soft and cinema-governed life ; and of social heart, so that we see that justice is done to the worker —justice as to wage, justice as to housing. When I see the fat, soft, middle-classist sacrificing children for a car, I know that his
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mind needs the fiercest of massage ; his pulpy wits must be kneaded till the rotten stuff be properly forced out of him : but when I meet the anguished wage earner, who must be such a hero as to be able to ask, and be sure that he will get, sheer miracles from Providence if he has one more child—my heart bleeds for him, and the next bit of useless luxury I get gives me soul-sickness. I think that the world is indeed gradually being nauseated by the flood of Stopesian sentimentalism : that did not prevent my seeing Married Love advertised in every Australian city I visited. If these lewd imported things should triumph, Australia will die before she is properly born. Honour to those families, those young men and women who have the future in their hands, to those tradesmen who might grow rich off the wares and lies of the Conscienceless City Lust-monger and refuse to do so. They are the leaven : theirs is the world ; on their side is God.
I thought it but fair to insert these paragraphs into the description of two of the happiest days I spent in Australia. The balance must be kept. And it was again redressed when I thought once more about John O’Brien’s ‘ Round the Boree Log Perhaps this writer has done more than any other one Australian to preserve and even restore the dignity of motherhood in minds that were forgetting it. The whole book is a merry, wistful, kindly-hearted hymn to the praise of the women such as she who ‘ with trust in God and her good man, Settled ’neath the spur : The old slab-dwelling spick and span Was world enough for her ’, shrunken as it might seem to sons grown accustomed to city and cinema-land. Even the beloved church was ‘ a simple thing of knotted pine and corrugated tin ’ ; as for the school, the children reached it on the no less ‘ corrugated backbone ’ of the casual bare-back horse, and propelled it with their schoolbags—thank God, I was still to see them doing it, about six at a time ; and I was to meet, too, the presbytery horse that ‘ knew the parish upside down ’ and would stop at
* Boree is native for “ weeping myall,” one of the best firewoods in Australia. The family would sit round it, poking the logs by turns.
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every ‘ Catholic gate John O’Brien loves to remember the ‘ home-made cradle where one more Australian sleeps and watch where ‘ the nation is a-building in the hearts of splendid men ’ —since the man is already in the child. No wonder he has felt himself bound by ‘ an iron vow of service ’ to the land that holds for him such memories. One poem on the Rosary—half sad, half humorous—has made him specially famous : but for me, naturally, the best of all is the one about that ‘ Parting Rosary ’ that was said when the lad was being feasted off to the war. Australia has had to say many a Requiem, not only over the men who remained on those far heroic fields ; may she never have to do so for ‘ the greatness and the kindness of the bush May no one of her sons have to have it said of him —to quote a very different poet—that
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great
Winds and the heavenly rain, unclean and unswept,
Like the heart of the Holy City, old, blind, beautiful Jerusalem
Over which Christ wept.*
I am sure that need never happen ; but it will need much of that ‘ iron vow of service ’, especially if Christ’s love is there to ease the yoke and lighten the human load.
A solemn Benediction followed those speeches, and the peace of a long-drawn evening. From a station still further than Dalby, a priest had carried the good wishes of an English immigrant, who had brought his faith along with him, and whose brother I had re-met at Brisbane ; and since I have returned to England, I have heard from an Australian airman, whose marriage I once had blessed over here, that had my visit to Dalby not been fixed at a moment’s nodce almost, his entire family would have journeyed to see me there, for they live but a score or two of miles away. And he himself was in Cairo when I passed through it on my way homewards. All very well, my dear C., to say how small the world is ! If you are but a stone’s throw apart, and do not know it, what avail ? Sad, not to have
*C. Mew.
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caught, among the twanging of ghostly Egyptian harps, the sound of your Hawaiian guitar and your ukulele and the other strange objects with which you accompanied songs that made many an air force camp so cheery ! To me, even these have grown almost so ghostly as the pipings of Ptolemy Auletes over in your Egypt-
Off, then, once more, on Monday, by roads where the mirage fills the ruts a hundred yards ahead with water that is not there, and floats like milk-white lakes under the horizon to bewilder you. Once more, it wavers, breaks and vanishes, leaving solid earth and limpid sky. So may all delusions disappear from minds of men so honourable and affectionate as Dalby’s.*
* Dalby’s butterflies sent me to read The Butterflies of Australia, by Waterhouse and Lyell, Sydney, 1914.
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MELBOURNE
I heard a man whistling in his room this morning as if he loved every note of the tune with his lips. ... In the early days of this country every man whistled. — Mary Gilmore : Hound of the Road.
On October 6 I left in the evening for Melbourne, and having changed trains, because of gauge, at Albury about 7.30 a.m., arrived at Melbourne towards 1. A bewildering crowd of priests and laity were there to meet me —almost too many old friends, some of them dating from my first weeks of priesthood spent in Dublin. And of course, O’C. But you know how influenza and that sort of thing knocks out one’s memory ; I was soon to get it, and I shall be forgiven if I canalise my thoughts of Melbourne rather narrowly. That very night there was a lecture at the Sacred Heart Convent, where the walls are painted with such large simple pictures about our Lord that surely He must become the centre of a child’s imagination. Soon, from a hospital verandah, that massive convent school was to become one of the noticeable features of a distant landscape. I was just able to see, later, the foundation stone of the new Mercy-noviciate being laid ; and another Mary Ward School (Mandeville Hall) ; and two Convents of the Faithful Companions ; but —allowing for my having missed much, and for noticing at least one very striking church with a dome, visible from afar, —I didn’t see architecture that astonished me, as in Brisbane.
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I said that this would be a book of ' impressions '. I have to own up to a quite different impression in, and of, each Australian city I have been in—Brisbane seemed to me still so truthfully ' Australian ', and now Melbourne seemed so, shall I say ? English—at least non-Americanised like Sydney. Do not imagine that people had told me that Sydney would seem Americanised —plenty said so afterwards —but that had been my first and independent impression. Not that in the whole of England have we, or could we ever have, so beautiful a street as St. Kilda*s, or even others of those immensely wide roads with their double (was it not sometimes quadruple ?) strip of white-curbed grass with huge fountainous palms. If we took a lot of trouble, we might get something so lovely as the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, though these are emphatically not meant to be flower gardens. Azaleas, rhododendrons, flowering shrubs and trees. Perhaps we shall some day take trouble to make our racecourses beautiful, though I doubt it : it was winter when I was in Auckland, but I could see what that course would be when all the begonias were bedded out ; I was invited to the Caulfield Cup at Melbourne, but was pushed back by an inexorable hand into the pillows when I wanted to craw 1 out and see the corner of the grand-stand from my window ; but the Flemington racecourse was charming just to look at. Even my consecrated nurses were clear that it would be sacrilege for me to be in Melbourne when the Cup was run, and me not see it. The kindest of families took me. The Melbourne weather had changed from the torrential rain of the day before to brilliant sun (the wind, since something always had to change, veered completely round every half-hour during those races). But though I was made, so generously and thoughtfully, member of various distinguished clubs for that day and for the Caulfield Cup, and though I love the satiny coats of horses, and though there was a horse called ' Aloysia ' that I thought in decency should have won me quite a lot (it didn't . . .), I was so knocked out by climbing up into that members' stand that I fear the day was wasted on me. Moreover, I saw a man in despair ; and
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besides making me unhappy, that fills me with scruples about the whole affair. I’m bound to insist that not a trace of drunkenness did I see, and the whole jovial crowd seemed to me so silent, or rather, so quiet ! Even in the bookies’ paddock, if that’s the proper name. A beautifully managed racecourse.
I should add that a courteous and thoughtful Stores sent me a wireless apparatus while I was in hospital, so that I might listen in to lectures on Chinese mathematics and so forth. I used it to listen to the vivacious Mr. Eric Welsh (I think) relating the wrestling between Mr. A. and Mr. 8., at the Stadium. The result was that when I got up I begged to be taken to the Stadium by an old R.A.F. friend who now writes sports commentaries for X ’s Weekly. The Stadium proprietor (unless I am mixing my memories) had already offered me passes for whatever I liked. Now, without committing myself to anything that I was told, I will say that a certain taxi-driver had been inveighing to me against wrestling and the commercialising of sport in general. He said that no wrestler had the chance of being honest. I said that if a man could win in three rounds, yet allowed the contest to be prolonged for seven, I thought that the wretched public, who wanted to see something, need not object, providing it was wrestling. He agreed, but said that biting and gouging people’s eyes out was not wrestling, and that you could get a lot of that done before you were stopped and that one section of the public demanded it. I said : ‘ Not the larger section, surely ? ’ He said ‘No ’ : but that gentlemen did not go to see it because it was not ‘ clean ’ sport. I said that if they went it probably would become so, for public opinion would then be differently formed. I said that public opinion could express itself already more vigorously than it does, and that wrestling was not the only sport into which beastliness could creep. I had read of those instances of electric saddles, and I think electric spurs. I said that the public should not rest till the guilty man (not the poor jockey) had been discovered and publicly tarred and feathered. I find that very primitive instincts are aroused in me by foulness in sport, especially where
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animals are concerned. He insisted that the foulness was an importation. For Australia's sake I hope so. When sport goes crook, what can remain wholesome ? For, it may be difficult not to cheat in business ; and a man may be too weak to keep his private morals consistently intact ; but deliberately to cheat in sport is a very cold affair, and a low lowness. Anyway, though the crowd at the Stadium, when I went later on to see some boxing and a wrestling match, looked pretty tough, I disliked only one section, and a few individuals of it ; the section, because in or out of a stadium you would have said it was a cynical lot of crooks ; the individuals, because they looked as if they never had done an hour's sport in their life, and yet made more noise than everyone else together : you had to assume their money was at stake. But I have heard more ' language ' in a ' gentlemen's ' club in ten minutes than in all that evening in the Melbourne Stadium.
I had been introduced to various kings, princes and lordlings of the ring earlier in the evening ; and both before and after the wrestling, which was between Mr. Ted Thye and Mr. Carroll ‘ Pink ’ Gardner, I re-met them in their dressing rooms, and though on such occasions I elaborately make it clear that I am not, and never have been, an athlete, I found them, as I find most such men, very friendly and modest gentlemen. I was talking to one of them while his grooms, so to say, were iodining his abrasions. ‘ I have always wanted to ask ’, I said, ‘ someone like you, how long it takes to recover from an hour of experience like what yours has been.’ He replied that he would pay for it next day, or the day after. He said : ‘You cannot defy the laws of nature and not pay for it.’ * The laws of nature ? ’ ‘A man can’t lay himself out to be hurt so much as this without defying the Laws of Nature.’ The grooms halted, gaping at these metaphysics. ‘ Such ’, continued this Philosopher in the dressing room, ‘ appears to me to be the Psychology of the thing ’. The grooms then fainted in a row. Mr. Ted Thye, to my regret, was engaged, but after I had inscribed my name (under those of much more suitable persons) on the
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whitewash of the dressing room wall, Mr. Pinkie Gardner was able to come with me to an Army and Navy Club, where he drank ginger-beer and told me a lot about Schenectady where in his spare time (for he has a heavy job) he teaches a Catholic club of boys how to Mix It with the Elks. A kind and unselfish thing to do. After half an hour’s more philosophizing, he proceeded to a dance, in spite of an evening that it gives me neurasthenia to think of. It seemed to me odd that I should have thought so little about wrestling since my boyhood days, when I watched mountainous men stand interlocked for an incredible time in Westmorland, while races and what not were being run ; they gently creaked and swayed until one of them flew over the head of the other and the fells shook. I was assured by my companion that the pagan morality of these younger men was good. Their trainer, Seat of Infallibility, issued a code which was implicitly obeyed, intermittent as was its operation. You must not drink ; nor smoke ; you told your Young Lady you must be in bed at 9, and so you were. The high percentage of these sportsmen that is Catholic, has long ceased to astonish me. I think it is a great thing for lads to find that mystical mandates or prohibitions are buttressed by regulations issued by men whom even Real Hard Cases regard with unarguing awe. If Sport remains clean, there is a great ‘ natural ’ bulwark in it for Chastity, Obedience, and even Poverty.
There was another delightful, though tiring, day when my old friend, O’C., and his brother, a missionary priest in China, drove out through long distances of ti-trees in bloom to a town called Frankston, about 40 miles away. The sense of irresponsibility was good in itself, for, actually, till the night there were no engagements ; but at Frankston is a certain hotel, and in the hotel I met one whom I can but designate as Melbourne Bill, and a more thoughtful and warm-hearted and faithful friend perhaps I’ve never made. By a sad fortune, which reacted happily for me, his wife was laid up afterwards in the same hospital that I was in, and that necessarily brought M.B. to see her, and there we consolidated our friendship. But Melbourne
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soon became a town of friends —' King', you know what a delight it was to see you ; wives sometimes acted as forerunners —yours, for example, my dear CO., of Nagambie ; and yours, dear Jim, though your work retained you at your awkward distance of two or three hundred miles . . . Still, I saw you in the person of your young son. And Snowy, whom I remember first in your cherry-pink hospital jacket, cheery then, cheery now, and over to see me from Geelong. And C, newspaper reporter well before the war, in London ; journalist now, and still not forgetting ; and Hugo, grave and ascetical man, ' with a twinkle ', all the same. And T., with the request that I should forthwith baptise his baby girl, but I was incarcerated by then. And L., and S., and O.H. —you would have come from Orbost had that long journey been in the least possible ; and Basil, you certainly came from far enough, even though your time was so short that our talk lasted chiefly while I was being ultra-violet-rayed ; and Joe O'O, in whose eye I believe I still can see a glint of those days when you were chartered comedian to your Company ; and C without the O' ; and C n, too, whom somehow I hadn't expected to re-meet. And finally (please God I've left out none !) my dear old Spuddie, whom I once nursed through 'flu, in that horrible epidemic, and whom, even now, I had to bully into getting your leg properly looked after. What became of that railway house you were supposed to be building off at K., when you loped away to spend these days in Melbourne, heaven knows, and perhaps the people who wanted it to live in. Perhaps they've murdered you since. I hope not. Anyway, there you were, complete with your gift of a nugget straight from Bendigo. Thanks to the kindness of a Mr. Waldron, Digger too, most of these men, and a few others, had before I left a dinner in a hotel on Collins Street. Outside the trams clanked and ground along, and the taxis hooted and the newsboys shouted ; yet into the room floated the thin chime of Balliol and the boom from Tom Tower, and Keble counting the quarters, and a mingling of the word of command called out by sergeants and the no less final ones spoken by hospital
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nurses ; and a thousand old things intertwined themselves with the new things, and yet nothing was changed. It makes no odds, when humanity is concerned, whether you be on this side of the world or upon that ; and what are ten years, when you have gained some inkling of Eternity? Who knows? Perhaps if I hadn't become ill again, I might have been so distracted by a hundred jobs, that I wouldn't have been free just then to put my whole heart into meeting you again. Luckily the vitality of the soul has nothing to do with that of the body ; and when you can do little more than blink your welcome, the inside of your mind can be more than ever active. Which even by itself is enough to make an end of the notion that when the body weakens, the soul follows suit, and that when the body dies, so does the spirit.*
So much (apart from individual kindnesses shown by Melbourne Catholics) for the ' amusement ' element in Melbourne, to give the word a very wide extension.
There were straightforward jobs, at first, of course. On October 7, the Cardinal Legate dedicated the new spire at St. Ignatius, Richmond, where I was staying. The black stone church was naturally crammed ; in the afternoon there were, it is said, 30,000 people round about it, who could listen to the proceedings by means of amplifiers. The spire is really beautiful. It rises like a white fountain on its hill. There was a talk—l can't call it a lecture—in the Cathedral Hall, organised by the Knights, which as usual took my breath away, so vast was the assembly, and so immediately genial the atmosphere. You look up at whole galleryfuls of men, and everywhere you meet the Aussie grin, and you really feel, What need of speeches ?
* Now at this dinner there was a certain pleasing incident. Anecdotes about the war were being swapped. A certain Captain X was relating how he had mysteriously lost a horse, no less. Now you know what the morals of the A.I.F. were. Or perhaps you don't. No matter. All I can say is, that Captain X's neighbour, to whom he had just been introduced, was the one man who could tell him truthfully about that horse. And he did. . . . Just the least bit coyly, perhaps, but in reality with great self-satisfaction. Universal glee.
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Let us cut them out, and make the most of this personal encounter ! But you can’t quite do that.
On October 11, occurred one of the most startling assemblies organised in Melbourne during this time : the Women’s meeting in the immense Cathedral Hall. I should say that 3,500 packed themselves into it ; the streets were seething with yet others, and an extra room was filled with yet more into which an amplifier put one’s voice. After a while, the Cardinal Legate and Archbishop Mannix came in, and so soon as possible I effaced myself, doubly glad now that I did so since I have found out that a really lovely act of Christianity had been arranged by the Women’s Social Guild—numbers of the blind, deaf and dumb of the city had been gathered there to be presented to the Cardinal. Ah ! that was a sweet and Christ-like thought ; may it be often paralleled all over the world.
It is here that I will concentrate, if I may, my expression of admiration for the Catholic Women’s work done in Australia. The only criticism I heard concerning them was in Sydney—--1 They profess to concern themselves with the Middle Classes.’ I never heard them say so : but suppose they do ? Somebody has to. And though there are violent inequalities of fortune in Australia, they seem less violent than in most other places of the old world at anyrate. Anyhow, it is best to indicate what the Catholic Women of Australia are working at, and their ideals can be judged accordingly.
One of the happiest experiences ‘ on the margin ’ of the Congress had been the meeting in Sydney of Catholic women from every Australian State. The C.W.A. there has a hostel for women and girls ; a registry office ; charity sewing guilds ; hospital duties ; prison work ; a Catholic Soldiers’ Aid and Seamen’s Aid Departments ; it sees to entertainments, e.g. in orphanages ; it has a debating society and a library ; a drawingroom, rest room, and lounge open day and evening ; a reading circle ; a dressmaking circle ; a music guild ; a ‘ travellers’ aid association ’ ; and it looks after stewardesses while in Sydney; a dramatic class ; most interesting to me, from
M
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certain points of view, it does all it can for immigrants. Now you may say : ‘ls all that on paper, or is it concrete fact ? We have had too much paper work in the past. Can we trust these ladies, or do they “ protest too much ” ? •
Well, I think you can certainly trust them. The Sydney programme of papers (covering two days, a.m. and p.m. sessions) showed too great a mental alertness to the urgent problems to permit me to suppose that nothing would be ‘ done ’ in the concrete. Moreover, the papers I heard were so good, so to the point, so short, that many a garrulous male might blush.
The Conference was ' Overseas and Interstate', and was presided over by Archbishop Duhig, of Brisbane. I rearrange the programme roughly according to topic. Catholic libraries, children's libraries ; Catholic poetry ; films ; children's welfare ; defectives ; Boy Scouts ; Girl Guides ; birth control ; family life ; women in public life, and its almost inevitable preface here, women and the University. The whole question of hostels, in relation (or not) to immigration. And in short, all that concerned the protection and development of Catholic womanhood.
As for myself, I did little more than show how we, too, were beset by similar and other problems, and how we tried to cope with them. I mentioned in particular the Madonna Home at Letchworth ; the Catechists of Our Lady ; the C.T.S. box work ; our crying lack of hostels ; our Scout and Guide work—and I confess that I mentioned names of individuals connected with all these things, but I think it would not be in good taste to rehearse them here. I alluded, of course, to our rapidly developing conscience in what concerns the sea ; and I implored that these Australian ladies would criticise drastically our as yet very imperfect work connected with emigration—immigration as Australia sees it. I emphasised the one topic that did not seem to come up in this programme—our homes for unmarried mothers.
I have spoken of the fight put up by the Christian Brothers and others for secondary education among Catholics. If that required a fight, it was at once seen what still greater difficulties
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surrounded a University education. But I have said enough, above, to suggest how bravely the Sydney Hostel has grasped the nettle so far as the problem of girls goes. I merely add that they have reduced their debt of £45,000 to £ll,OOO. May the rest soon vanish.
At Brisbane, I visited the H.Q,. of this finely named association, ' Catholic Daughters of Australia '. I understand that it contains what seemed to me a most human and sensible thing —a place for girls to change into evening dress when they wanted to go straight from work—or rather, after a rest and some food—to a dance. Many, wishing to brighten themselves up a bit, couldn't go home ; but neither would they wish, all too often, to use the only other changing places that a large city might afford to them. Of course, the association doesn't only think of that sort of thing ; but I am extremely glad it has the friendly and open mind that does think of that sort of thing.
It helps its ' mind ' by an annual retreat ; it copes especially with immigrants, with hospital and prison work, with sea work, with social work in general, and in particular with its cafe and all the annexes to such a thing. Of course, it is concerned with children and their treats, and, in Brisbane, very wisely, with the building fund of the Cathedral, and the providing of burses for priests.
Long, long ago, a correspondent in a certain Catholic newspaper attacked me for exhorting men to ' explain what they read to their wives'. She said I was a Woman-hater. She said I scorned the Female Intellect. No, no, no. Never . . . ! If ever I seemed to, may I here make amends !
I needn't underline the activity of the intelligence of these Australian ladies, nor the energy of their handling their special problems—special ? Well, they seem very like our own.
And sometimes, when praising a man's perseverance, I have said that he showed an almost ' feminine tenacity'. And what more crowning virtue is there than perseverance ?
I pray that all the Australian women's associations may
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become in ever closer touch with one another, and with our own League and other such societies.
I will, however, briefly summarise the activities of the C. W. Social Guild in Melbourne. Founded in 1916 by Fr. Lockington, S.J., it now has 51 branches in Victoria, each governed by a committee of 12 elected by its own members. It has a hostel for working girls, accommodating 33 ; scores have to be turned away monthly. It aims, therefore, at a hostel worthy of Melbourne —to suggest the way in which this active Guild gets to work, I mention that it conducts a Kiosk at the Annual Royal Agricultural Show which brings in quite £lOO a year. I think in vain for anything remotely similar to this in England. The Santa Casa, begun as a holiday home for ailing children, has housed over 3,000 such children since it was begun in 1917. Hospital visiting is organised. While I was in Australia, when distress, especially in the wharfs’ districts, was cruel, it opened soup kitchens and did untold good. The junior branches that I have mentioned number 16 : it was at a C.W.S.G. meeting that the notion of a Central Catholic Library was broached. It concerns itself with Travellers’ Aid ; with Probation work ; is recognised as a ‘ permanent charitable institution ’ by the Charities Board, and in fact plays a substantial part in the community life of Victoria. Its bulletin is The Horizon. I can answer for its activities not being on that
paper only ! I think it would carry me into too great detail were I to try
to explain the special point that struck me in Melbourne as to women’s work —how well it is distributed among various groups. Thus it begins actually in convent schools. Smaller girls are brought up to look forward to doing the work that older girls, still at school, can manage, for example, a share in looking after Catholic kindergartens. Non-Catholics, as usual, anticipated us in the matter of this sort of institution ; they have indeed used (so I heard) their kindergartens for proselytising purposes. In a sense, no blame to them. They believe in their religion, and when they get the chance of turning a little Catholic
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into a little Protestant, they feel no urge to enquire into the motive of the parent who allows it to be done. There are plenty of bad Catholics willing to sell souls for soup. But it is up to the ‘ good ’ Catholic to prevent that happening, and to succour the child whose soul is being bartered for the well-being of its litde body. Add, that the temptation is oftentimes terrific, though maybe acute poverty is not so noticeable in Australia as in parts of Europe. Anyway the point is that while still at school, girls are being initiated into the fascination of unselfish work. I rather think that there are three such kindergartens, and I seem to remember that such work as girls can do in them is distributed among various convents. The management of picnics, too, seemed allotted among convents ; cars are lent, no doubt, by parents, for taking children and girls for such expeditions ; but much of the preparation and the entertainment seemed done by quite young girls. Of course there are older jobs done by older people ; but I like so much the idea of convent schools concentrating on some one thing —-I believe one convent concentrates on Papuan missions. I enjoy seeing, in our own convents, how the Holy Childhood devotion flourishes —I can get quite excited by the races marked by tittle flags (or otherwise), showing how this class or that has mounted the flight of shilling steps towards the Baby Jesus, and by the pictures of small black and yellow babies holding out their hands for spiritual help. But very often such contributions fall into a general fund, and the school cannot hear how its own mission is getting on. What would I not give if our South African Missions were better known ! Perhaps I have them on my mind, as I write, more than usual, owing to a letter from Capetown lamenting the inadequate Catholic resources there ! Anyhow, Melbourne suggested to me that it was working admirably because working early, for it is not often that a girl will acquire a totally new taste for Catholic work after she has left school—and again, in trying to take a general view of the city, and apportioning the necessary work as may be most useful and most organic.
In the chapter about Sydney I moralised sufficently about
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Universities and Catholics there. So I will say little about the Melbourne one. To tell the truth I nearly missed it altogether, and did miss what I looked forward to keenly—a day’s retreat to the Catholic students of Newman College. For in Melbourne, as in Sydney, the system of denominational colleges, than which nothing better is likely to be devised, exists. Obviously, not all Catholic students are housed in Newman College—to my surprise I found one or two in the Church of England College, Trinity, to which the Warden very kindly invited me and where I was asked to speak for a few moments to a large number of its inhabitants. Newman College, built by the architect of Canberra, certainly astonished me by its architectural modernism. I think there are over 80 students, and they are planning, I should say, for quite 150, so you can imagine that only a small part —perhaps a third —is built. I had no time really to assimilate that architecture, which, in its massive lines seemed to me magnificent, in fact almost too titanic for its couple of storeys, and for the rather needle-y pinnacles that surrounded fretfully its dome. The dining hall is circular with a system of decoration that I liked less than its construction, and a very ingenious method of electric lighting. lam rather timid about writing thus, and I even omit one or two items that astonished rather than enchanted me, for the uproarious welcome that I received there during my very brief visit merited nothing but gratitude. Unlucky young men. I am sure they were longing to get out to exercise of some sort, yet there they waited till I should have finished my massive lunch, and should come and say those ‘ few words ’ that had been promised—not by me. I thought that this spirit of freedom mixed with discipline might be due to the genius of that mercurial Authority whose habit of pulling both the legs of his friends at the same time and equally, accounts for half Melbourne not walking with a limp. Now why do I, at this point, recall the following items of advice I received ‘on that side ’ ? In Wellington, someone whispered to me : ‘ While in New Zealand, for God’s sake don’t wear spats ! ’ To this enormity indeed I had never sunk. But in
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Sydney, they added : ‘ln Australia, you must never carry a cane, and never put on gloves.’ I said : ‘Just now I can’t walk without a stick : and gloves ? Not even when it’s cold ? ’ ‘ Well ’, they said, ‘ you would have to be a Most Remarkable Personality to get away with it ’. No doubt this is perfectly true. Nor did I wear gloves nor carry umbrellas while in Melbourne.
. . . Newman College has a valuable Ozanam Club for ex-students.
On this same day I visited St. Mary’s Hall, the University Girls’ Hostel supervised by the übiquitous and adaptable Mary Ward nuns ; and it is in place here to mention Werribee, the Victoria seminary not far from Melbourne whose rector had cared for me in my earliest days of priesthood at Milltown Park near Dublin.* The buildings perhaps are better than their site ; but the spirit was delightful—here too the ‘ few words ’ had to be submitted to by the tolerant young men —and in the grounds I made my first acquaintance with kangaroos. I fed them ; I felt sorry for their poor little fore-paws, which look to me atrophied ; but they aren’t really, and it is a joy to watch them leaping with the help of their vigorous hind legs and their colossally strong tail. In keeping too with the notion of Universities were those lectures organised by a priest—a very old friend ; irrepressible, indomitable, and patient beyond Job with his heavier witted critics. . . . From time to time you just see flickering on his lips Job’s inimitable compliment —‘ No doubt but you are the people ! and wisdom shall die with you ! ’ But, before he says it, he has walked it off in the woods and in the mountains, and he has devised a plan for adding a wing to his Central Catholic Library. Oh, if ever I have bored my own country’s men and women by insisting on ‘ Book ’ as one of the three essential items in a Catholic equipment, I felt encouraged to harp upon that theme in Melbourne ! Wholeheartedly I did so. Until we read, we shall not keep our position safe, our reputation unimpoverished, we shall not exercise the influence
♦ The Province of Melbourne contains also the dioceses of Ballarat, Sandhurst, and Sale.
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we can and should. Well, of those lectures, I was induced to give the opening one of a series on the Middle Ages in the Town Hall. Easier task by far than that of those who followed me, who had to speak in greater detail on narrower subjects ; almost anyone can generalise, and from what I read of the lectures that came later, I realised how high their standard was.
But what astonished everyone, from the Legate, I think, and the Archbishop downwards, was the loyalty with which University girls and men flocked to that University Sunday which had been arranged in the Cathedral. The experiment had been tried before- —I don’t know how many came. Perhaps not 50, I was told. This time, in homage to His Eminence, there were (said the press) at least 1,000, and the rest of the Cathedral was packed with the laity —they said, 6,000 to 7,000. All, who had the right, wore wigs, or gowns and hoods, and entered the Cathedral in procession, filling much more than half the nave. Normally I have a horror of ‘ intellectual ’ sermons, though an even greater horror of emotional ones. On this occasion, you experienced a sort of duty to preach to brains, though the theme was little else than the duty of using them, and of linking up the two knowledges—secular and Catholic. But once more, you can trust an Australian audience. You felt a kind of gust of general will, insisting that you be not trivial, nor conventional, but sincere, and yet no fool. God knows what a fool the poor preacher felt that night; and in my experience there is nothing better that a man, who has to preach, can feel. It keeps him well subordinate, ‘ beneath the mighty hand of God
I had been assigned the task of giving two retreats in Bendigo for the clergy of that diocese. I had looked forward to this with anxiety and a sense of anticipatory humiliation, as anyone naturally would, at the prospect of confronting men in every way more experienced and set to a colossal work beyond, really, all human power —but then any priest’s work is that—yet anyhow work at whose details I could do little more than guess. However, sickness cancelled these and a whole series of other engagements. But lest I should have been disappointed of the
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whole topic of spiritual retreats, Providence permitted to me the one which had been arranged for laymen by a zealous priest and several of those laymen themselves. On October 12, nearly forty laymen, Fr. Hackett and I went by way ofHealesville* to the Gracedale Hotel in the mountains beyond it, and not only were that hotel and those who managed it perfection, but so was the locality. We were on a hillside and looked across a wide and deep valley to another hill and beyond all the hills were mountains, with here and there vast vistas towards the plain. The end of the valley has been dammed up so that a great lake has been formed ; unless you actually see the dam, you have no hint that the lake is artificial. The hills are densely wooded with gums predominantly, and other trees, only not the firs which would make it like the Tirol. The days were windy ; but that was all to the good. Never have I seen a lake surface change so often, so completely, and so variously. For it would now be sapphire like the sky, then almost black, then silver, and then an unfathomable green. And the very hillsides rippled, as the wind plunged over the gum trees, and as for blues —well, I half ceased to regret I never saw the Blue Mountains, for they might have been more precipitous, but couldn’t have been more blue. And astonishingly, between the deep blue hills, you would catch sight of the plain, a golden orange where the sun shone just softened by the pearly distances. Down to see the lake, wombats came trotting and wallabies and even kangaroos, still numerous in these hills till recently inviolate.
The men who came to the retreat differed widely in age, in profession, and sometimes in what they call social standing. As usual, none of these differences made any difference. In an atmosphere created by the Catholic faith, on a basis of Catholic faith, there could exist none but the will of Charity. That always is so, in a retreat. Hence, there was no obstacle, as indeed there seldom is, to the Holy Spirit’s work. Not for me to speak of this retreat as such : retreats are things between
* Since I have been back in London I have been able to tell Dame Nellie Melba in person what the trees of her garden were looking like !
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the soul of each and God. Enough to say that to me it gave great happiness, and was a support during the weeks that followed. On the day when I am writing this, the Church’s prayer asks that the Christian people may ‘ agnoscere quod profitentur ’ —which I take to mean, using Newman’s expression, ‘ give a real assent to that to which they give a notional one ’, or, lest that seem more obscure even than the Latin, that they may somehow respond with an all-through conviction to that which they profess with their lips. For the great tragedy is, not that non-Catholics don’t think, live and feel as the Catholic faith would wish them to, but that too often Catholics themselves don’t. Whose conscience is going to tell him that he is the perfect Catholic—a prize specimen of his profession ? Everyone knows how we can go on professing what ‘ carries no conviction ’ and does not much affect conduct. It is the old difference between a coat, and a skin. In quite a real sense I ‘ extend my personality ’ over my coat, no less than my coat is extended over my person ! But that is different from the vital and organic part-of-myself-ness proper to my skin. A retreat then is not a depressing or demolishing experience, but a vitalising one ; it is not penitential and spent in lamenting sins ; it need not even be so very ‘ pious ’ in the sense that it is filled with prayers. But the mind, in freedom and undistracted, sets itself in an orderly way to review the facts, to get them in perspective and proportion, and to allow them to energise. The retreat giver is quite the least important person. In fact it is his business to prevent his personality getting between the retreat makers and the facts —between them, indeed, and God and His direct action. He serves up the dishes, and the retreat makers eat, masticate, digest and so assimilate them. Hence the whole man profits. For we are not a body plus a mind, a mind plus a soul. We are just men, body-soul, and that is why, after retreats during the War, Australian soldiers used to say to one another (as I incessantly quote) that they could play football better ; and why army doctors used to ask to have patients taken from hospital to retreat, and even lend ambulances for the purpose ;
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for, said they, such a week-end ‘ seems to do the men more good than a month in here
Retreats can be looked at from many angles, but perhaps from two especially. Fr. Plater and French and Belgian retreat givers seem to have regarded them largely as means of forming an ‘ elite ’ of Catholics, whether among working men or not —for, of course, by ‘ elite ’ I am not alluding to any kind of social prominence merely. For my part, I have loved to have in retreat men who are never likely to play any remarkable role in Catholic things, save in so far as a convinced interior Catholic life always is remarkable. I cannot help looking at the ordinary man and loving him, whether I see him one at a time or a thousand at a time. You must let me quote once more one of my favourite texts ;
" Becos 'e never 'ad the chance to find
The glory of the world by land and sea,
Becos the beauty 'idin' in 'is mind
Was not writ plain for blokes like you an' me
They calls 'im crook ; but in 'im I 'ave found
Wot makes a man a man the world around.'
That is from Ginger Mick , as you very well know ; and I would really like to quote the whole of West and of A Square Deal in Digger Smith. There are things lacking from those poems, but I needn’t specify them. The real point is, that retreats are not for specially virtuous men only, still less for intellectual men only, but for ordinary men, to whom we do an outrageous wrong if we imagine they can only, at best, be frightened into some technical observation of religious rules : there is ‘ beauty hiding in their minds ’ ; there are ‘ things moving in their heads. ’ I haven’t the least wish to be romantic about the Noble Larrikin, or to sentimentalise about the drunkard, the immoral or the criminal, nor even to deny the existence of the frivolous, the vulgar-minded and the great mass of the indifferent. It remains that millions are indifferent because they have never been shown anything ‘ different ’ ; and they love the wrong thing after a fashion because they have never seen the right thing in
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the only right fashion. But a memory of pure joy that I took away from Melbourne was, that it had been practically settled to get a retreat house going somehow, and I pray earnestly that it may be filled with all sorts of men who might too easily be thought of as the ‘ maimed, the halt, the lame ’, and the products of the by-ways and the hedges. Ido myself violence in order not to go on writing about this.
The day after the retreat it was felt that I oughtn’t to be in that neighbourhood without being taken to see the marvellous tree-fern forests that clothed the mountains for leagues beyond Gracedale. Neither I nor my friends knew that I was just working up towards my second dose of ’flu and worse, and I felt mean to be not enjoying it. However, next day I found myself, with overwhelming gratitude, being put back into hospital on a regime of hot water bottles, strychnine injections, and ultra-violet rays. As before, there was a conspiracy to send up flowers, and by a miracle they never clashed. When there were tulips like pink and white marble, there was also boronia (not bronze blue this time) but like vividly pink and giant heath ; when there were copper-red carnations, there were red coppery roses. To be scrubbed with alcohol is a queer experience ; but there were gifts also which implied internal application. After a while there were visits from friends —nearly all whom I have mentioned and others too, and the invigorating reappearance of Melbourne Bill, whom to his face I called the hardest of Hard Cases, but unless I’m mistaken, an Australian can be called that in two quite different senses. I meant, with all my heart, the sense in which I meant it. . . .
Now could one call Nuns ‘ hard cases ’ ? I’m afraid so ; though here, too, at St. Benedict’s, Malvern, if they thought you were going to be obstinate, they would rally a crowd of First Communion children to * pray agin you ’, and with a grin you obeyed, or got better. . . . Of course, far from me to remember the occasion when they went out to pick parsley to adorn some dish, and brought back carrot-tops. Nor will I recollect the night when, being promoted to chicken sand-
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wiches, I heard that no less than two Sisters (besides the cook) had nibbled them to see that they were fit for my consumption and had then collectively remembered that it was All Saints' vigil and therefore a non-meat day. . . . Such incidents I sedulously forget, my memory being in excellent control. I prefer to recall the decision that of course the sandwiches must be laid upon lettuce, as I would expect it, being one that ' knew right from wrong'. How right and kind and scrupulous, too, were those Mercy nuns, when they kept Mothers Superior, Mothers Provincial, Mothers General even, out of my room, lest they should ask for those ' few words ' for their communities — since my nuns knew quite well that I wouldn't be able to do more than address, on a couple of occasions, a ' few ' poor ' words ' to them. . . . Oh, my dear Sisters, whose initials I could write down, but won't, I promise you that if ever I get ill again, I will sail out to Melbourne, and taxi out to Malvern, and be nursed by you and only you. I loved your merciless manipulation of the counterpanes ; I loved your two kookaburras in the garden who so hilariously assaulted the rising sun and liked to be douched from the various garden taps : I liked your gardeners (all with names from the Idylls of the King) who didn't mind, later on, my pulling up of groundsel (the only weed I recognise) and leaving it in piles upon the lawn : how kind your other patients were to me ; how long-suffering was my doctor ; how you believed me when I said I could smell ether when no one was supposed to ; how bee-like and summer timeish was the buzzing of those electric bells ! ' Peace ', the Benedictine motto, isn't just idleness ; nor did you show inertia in straightening out those linen coverlets that had the word inscribed (challengingly) upon them. Believe me, I don't forget my rooms ; nor the wards ; nor lying in the garden, where Archbishop Mannix came so charitably to talk to me ; nor your little chapel where twice I could say Mass ; nor the wide view from the verandah, just to stare at which was so healing, nor that dozen of pillows that padded me just as I was writing to the papers that man mustn't lead a cushioned life ! Moreover, in
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that hospital was a young lad who was going through a very bad time indeed. However, he was always whistling. And whenever you asked him how he was, he smiled wanly and said he was good-oh, and only once had he to own up that he was not too clever. Even then, I think he wanted to whistle. I was encouraged by that boy, whose name I don’t remember.
Now on the eve of my departure from Melbourne, these amiable ladies let me sally forth for a final lecture in the Town Hall, on ‘ Modern Problems,’ a title selected originally out of pure laziness, because I had thought it would cover anything I might want to say. So it could : but it involved a deal of thinking before I could say what I wanted. So well organised had been that lecture, that the Town Hall was packed ; and it can be truly said that the St. Vincent’s boys made admirable music. ‘ Impressions of Melbourne ’, then, were many ; but the Diggers as usual left the deepest, and no one will mind if I say that among the deepest were yours, Spuddie, and yours, Frank, assuredly ; and yours, dear Bill.
I had rejoiced to know that my old friend, J.M., of Adelaide, had arranged to take the same train as I ; but my delight was doubled when Melbourne Bill (as I shall continue to call him . ..) announced that he was coming too. I arrived at the station to find J.M. in process of evicting the wretched man who should have shared my sleeping car, a process which M.B. carried to completion by replacing the evicted one by himself, so that he might dose me with medicines and alcohol at stated intervals. (The nuns had equipped me with a perfect truck load of medicines. One was quite nice ; I forget what it was called, but everybody liked it. . . .) M.B. actually made me go to bed at 8 o’clock, to my fierce indignation. However, by 7 p.m. we had reached Ballarat, where a priest and some laymen had in their kindness and despite the cold come down to pass the time of day and wish me a good-speed. I woke refreshed at 7, though I must confess that I was to sleep again that day from 11 till nearly 1, from 3 to 6, and again, next night, from 11 until 7, all without any dope !
IV
ADELAIDE
(I)
They left the furrow, left the plough,
They flung the axe upon the bough ;
The trapper left behind the trap
And took the road discounting hap . . .
And each who followed, cried The King !
God save the King ? oh, sure He
Once walked with bleeding feet His road
That He might bear another's load.
God save the King —O Galilee,
Thy shadow walked Gallipoli.
Mary Gilmore ; Passionate Heart: The King.
The Church in South Australia began heroically as usual ; the State itself rather differently. The S. Australian Company was formed in 1834 to colonise the province which was in fact proclaimed a separate colony in 1836. The new-comers definitely wished to make an entirely non-convict and nonCatholic State : culture and conformity were their ideals. They did all they could to keep out the Irish, while they introduced numbers of German Lutherans ; and while the Governor was empowered to appoint ministers of the established churches of England and of Scotland, no mention was made of Catholic priests though Emancipation had been granted in 1829. A government store-keeper, Mr. Phillips, opened his house to Catholics ; said the rosary with them, read Catholic books, baptised children and even attended a condemned man on the
>9'
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scaffold. Here, in 1838, the Catholics petitioned Bishop Folding for a priest : not till 1840 could Ullathome, his vicar general, be sent. In June of that year, Mass was for the first time offered in South Australia and in fact in Adelaide, a town which, carefully planned by Col. Light and named after the wife of William IV, witnessed to the elegant aspirations of the colonist company. For over three years, then, the Catholic community had held itself together without priest. It could not possibly fit into Mr. Phillips’s store ; Ullathome went to ask Governor Gawler for the use of the school, which was lent to other denominations for worship. He sent in his card : the Governor sent it back. Ullathome told the servant to say the school was being asked for. The Governor sent the lackey back again to say that he would not lend the school ‘ to the popish priest to go through his Mass or to the ignorant Catholics to be present at it ’. Indignation was general : Ullathome said that as a civil servant and colonial chaplain he had an equal right to the school and would complain to the Home Office. The Governor, in a panic, invited Ullathome to his house : Ullathome in his turn refused. A Protestant, Mr. J. B. Neale, lent him his large auction room and store for Sunday Mass and even closed it earlier during the week that evening devotions might take place there during the Bishop’s stay, and afterwards gave him a piece of land. Ullathome sailed back to Sydney after a fruitful fortnight. In 1841 the first priest, Rev. W. Benson, arrived and stayed four years. He was not a success ; he only emerged from his hut, where he did carpentering, in order to quarrel. A very zealous man, Fr. E. Mahony, followed him ; he made a census —out of 19,317 colonists in 1844, 1,273 were Catholics. He died after exposure to torrential rain. Meanwhile, Dr. Murphy had been consecrated at Sydney to be Adelaide’s first bishop, and arrived there very reluctandy, along with a Fr. Ryan, lent to him for one year. He had no church, no presbytery, no school ; the income for 1845 to 1846 was £267 14s. id. ; expenditure, £387 10s. 6d. Fr. Ryan, from Penrith in Cumberland, had learnt to ‘ endure hardship ’ ;
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a poor speaker but a magnificent horseman, and a man of iron, he rode hither and thither through the enormous diocese ; Dr. Murphy, schooled in Bradford and Liverpool, remained in the town, and worked wonders in the conciliation of non-Catholics and the preservation of that good will about which Adelaide Catholics were very sensitive. He said at the outset: * Let no difference in country, in colour or in creed interrupt for a moment that holy affection and charity towards each other so emphatically insisted on by the common Father of all ’, and declared that Catholics were disliked because they were known only through the medium of foolish publications and the like. Thus a great responsibility was felt by the local Catholics, to keep their reputation pure, and they succeeded well. And at the moment of the worst financial crisis, Mr. Leigh, of Woodchester, in England, who had estates in South Australia, gave £2,000 and then some land, in his fresh convert zeal, and St. Patrick’s Church was built on West Terrace, where it now displays a dignified Victorian rectangularity and lifts twin towers in good contrast to the Gothic of the Cathedral started later on. Still, the first church in South Australia was opened in 1845 at Morphett Vale, and the early drama of this history closes perhaps with the appalling shipwreck of Fr. J. Watkins on his way to be priest there. Rescued from the sea, he was attacked by blacks, and after a second escape the poor man had to walk from Kingston to Adelaide and thus to begin his charge. Yet by the end of 1847, the diocese had eight priests and one deacon, and Dr. Murphy could at last send them forth regularly to evangelise the district. They resided in the bush, houseless as well as churchless.
From 1847 to 1851, State aid was given to the ‘ denominations ’ on a basis of ‘ sittings ’ in their churches or of persons desiring to obtain religious instruction. * It was then withdrawn, and simultaneously gold was discovered in Victoria. A terrific
* Catholics received £626 Bs. gd. for the stipends of their priests and £261 for building, compared to £707 and £572 received by Anglicans, which speaks well for the loyalty of so small a flock.
N
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exodus took place : children turned to stare at able-bodied men in the streets. The Bishop had now little but debts—no stateaid ; no more collections. However, Fr. Ryan was sent to Bendigo to beg. Generous as ever, the miners gave largely. Many returned rich. Again, copper was discovered at Burra and Kapunga, and South Australia began to be repopulated. Catholics, Germans and Poles, had come with the Lutherans and settled especially in the wine growing district round Clare ; domestic service was in demand, and immigration orders were given to those who had purchased land. Hence, the Irish came over more numerously : Irish girls married and brought their children up as Catholics ; and though the Catholic population of S. Australia is said to be but 1 in 7, much lower, therefore, than elsewhere, the Catholic situation can be said to have been saved. But the special feature of all this episode was the influx of German and Austrian Catholics accompanied by priests and lay-brother religious of characteristic thoroughness and enterprise. An early member of the German contingent was a Dr. Backhaus from Paderborn and India ; but though one of his eyes was said to be very wide-awake at least so far as concerned finance, his very long hair and thick spectacles hid the other, which was of glass, and not much could be made of this Wotan. The anti-Jesuit persecution in Austria during 1848-49 had sent a number of priests into Germany, and thence they were trans-shipped to Australia and did much building—though I understand that good as was its design, lack of modern methods has caused practically the whole of it to be useless to-day. Even the fine church and house at Sevenhills lack elementary features like damp-courses.* These men did better and more lasting spiritual work, despite the failure of the German immigration as a whole ; many returned, priests included. Yet it was
* It is strange to reflect that the great stones in the walls and floor of Sevenhills Church were hewn by priests—its great stone columns are the work of a single man —and they, too, made the rafters. Touched by what she heard, the Empress of Austria sent out the great picture of Our I ady, that still hangi over the high altar.
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200
they who opened at Sevenhills the first college for ecclesiastical and other students, and cultivated the surrounding vine-growing lands, which industry is all, really, that survives of their efforts there. It was here that Fr. J. Tenison Woods,* was ordained. The foundation stone of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral was laid in 1856, the Church being modelled on Baylard Abbey, Yorkshire. It was under the third Bishop of Adelaide, Dr. Sheil, 0.5. F., that the congregation of St. Joseph entered on the first and storm-tossed years of its career, and that the first Catholic monthly, the Southern Cross, ancestor of the bulletin still bearing that name, was begun. The fourth Bishop, Dr. Reynolds, became archbishop and metropolitan of West and South Australia and the northern territory, when Port Augusta was made a separate diocese in 1887 ; it was not his fault that an appalling flood of debt poured on to his successor Archbishop O’Reilly in 1893. This prelate was not only a financial genius but perhaps more efficaciously an apostolic and humble man to whom the faithful responded with incredible generosity. He took over an archidiocesan debt of £56,968, and during his all-but twenty years of rule had to incur further debts of £434,865. Despite everything—like drought—against them, the 50,000 Catholics of his archdiocese raised during those years no less than £482,672, and when he died in 1915, the total debts were but one sixth of the assets. His vicar general, Mgr. Byrne, was the author of the History of the Church in S. Australia, to the Death of Bishop Sheil. The happiest memory of the present Archbishop, Dr. R. W. Spence, 0.P., may have been the completion of the stately Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier. This took place in 1926. The last outstanding event was the celebration connected, June 1928, with the Eucharistic Congress : some 40,000 persons flocked to the Jubilee Oval to pray for the success of and unite themselves in spirit with the forthcoming Sydney festival. Thus the association swung full cycle, since Adelaide’s first bishop brought with him from Sydney a small
♦ Co-founder with M. Mary McKillop of the St. Joseph nuns spoken of above. See his Life by G. O’Neill, S.J., 1929.
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fragment of the foundation stone of Mr. Davis’s house there, and had his episcopal chair carved from one of its beams (see p. 152).*
We climbed high, and then descended again as Adelaide drew near ; red sandstone had been visible, and a richer vegetation, and at last, bright sun. Upon the platform of that massive and dignified Adelaide station—real trouble taken with that bit of architecture ! —lo Fr. Corish, my superior, and a deputation of Catholic Federationists, and some reporters and photographers, and, hovering in the background, so I learnt, you, my dear FI.P., who, thank God, revealed yourself later on, though then, out of consideration for my sleep-blinking eyes, you still effaced your presence. I don’t think that, since your cadet days, I had ever heard from you. . . . Modesty and affection sometimes clash. . . . Off, anyway, through the sunlit city into which more than half of the half million inhabitants of South Australia are penned, by a marvellous street (reminding me of Prince’s Street in Edinburgh, but more beautiful by far—there ! I can never go to Edinburgh again !) to the leafy suburb of Norwood where our church is—an Italianate little church, white among pepper trees and with a blaze of purple pansies in front of it.
I suppose that everyone who comes to Adelaide talks about its gardens. I can't help, myself, just for a line or two, saying how they almost made me cry with colour. Outside the city, beyond even Norwood, you reach the suburbs still in process of development, where bungalows (only unsuccessful when they try to make use of Gothic) stand in their little gardens. Sometimes, these are just a sun-burst of broom, but the delicacy of the broomflower in itself, and the purity of its yellow, are such that even without anything more deep or solid in tint to set it off, it suffices, like a mist full of sunrise. But again, you may find whole banks
* The Northern Territory is under V. Rev. F. X. Gsell, M.S.C., as prefect apostolic. In 1928, the secular priests in S. Australia and the XT. were 63; regular, 33; the Brothers were 45; nuns, 514; and the Catholic population was 65,618.
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poured over by a torrent of pale pink geraniums ; and apart from the infinite variety of the pinks and discreet Nature’s intermingling of other crimsons and rose reds that are never wrong, you get the geranium leaves ; they lend a basis to the constellation of bloom, and are so perfect not only in reddened-green colouring, but in shape, and not only in shape but in that curious fragrance that geranium leaves do have —under this blazing sun it is quite discernible from afar ! Idle to talk about roses : but after those flaming or silky flowers, I like to remember the masses of velvety snapdragon —I have often mentioned the vehemence that is Australia’s, and I’m afraid I’m likely to do it again ; but take all the tints of English snapdragon that you know, especially the crimsons that are almost black, and the crimsons that are almost copper, and intensify them till they have the profundities of skies and the heat of furnaces, and you will have the effect of these banks upon banks of snapdragon against which the geraniums fuse into a soft nebula of beauty. And at the back of all this, you will see larkspur and delphinium, carrying the molten blues of the sky down into the gardens. One thing—one only—l missed in the Adelaide gardens—very old grey walls, like Oxford’s, for the larkspur and delphinium to stand out against. But perhaps that tender softness of blues and greys suits England and its mother-of-pearl skies and its veiled horizons, its muted violins and rounded hypnotic wood music : into these Australian gardens have descended all those strong ‘ sons of God ’ who, in their morning ecstasy, says the Scripture, ‘ sing together, shout for joy ’. Let, then, the larkspur blaze in blue against the dazzling white, and above the orange and scarlet, gold and copper-rose.
From Adelaide I made an expedition which ranks in my memory with that from Melbourne to Frankston. It was November 21. With J.M. and about six others via Macclesfield and Strathalbyn to Victor Harbour. Up admirable roads through fine yet not precipitous mountains with rapid turns and glimpses of the sea, and full of gums of a different sort or perhaps younger-leaved, for the leaves are often quite crimson and fill
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the gullies with warm colour. ' Sleepy lizards ' here and there : very good against snakes, for the snake can't get through their armour plate and has no chance unless it shoots itself into their mouth and under their tongue. I asked how these remote farms got their produce into market in Adelaide. Sore subject, apparently. Once, the farmer's man got up at 2, trekked down to Adelaide, sold his wares, returned in the afternoon and arrived once more at night. Now the farmer has his lorry : the man gets up at 6 or later, plunges down these gradients to Adelaide, sells quick, lounges the afternoon away, and returns at a furious pace, late as ever, but as often as not drunk. (Not for me to assess the truth of this : I ' tell the told '.) But now, terrific taxes are being put upon motor travel. They will kill the car to the profit of the railways. Hence, many firms are buying horses again. Once more the murderous cycle of civilisation.
. . . The colour of the road was almost striped—orange, brown, yellow, grey. When all these roads are bitumenated—but in view of the above, will they ever be ?—one more beauty will be lost. Hedges are cataracts of strong honeysuckle ; great tufts of cannae. At Strathalbyn the third Fr. G. (I had met his two brothers, one a Cathedral dignitary ; the other in gaol [as Chaplain, of course]) was awaiting us. He does not like his church nor his altar—l do, because they are simple and solid, not wedding cake-y ; the outside is grey-pink marble and the foundation stone like a pink and grey sunset on a just rippling sea, ' too full for sound or foam ' . . . a dream ! They use a lot of plain coloured glass in the windows of Australian churches, I think. At Fr. C's little Los Angeles-like church outside Adelaide, it is apricot and pearl and most peacefully exhilarating. Here it was all purple, and when the tawny burnt grass is seen across it—well, once more you get that mysterious pansy shade for which there is no name. Sandwiches and whiskey. Then I was privileged to bless each room in the presbytery. Then we wound our way out of that devious little town and mounted into much wilder country —moor and tussock-grass, ti-tree and broom, and fire-red bottle-brush
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flowers—they are just like bottle-brushes, but I wish they had prettier names — pyracanthus flammicomans, flammicolor —I know not what ; perhaps they have, in books. I never thought of looking ! On the pale turf, tamarisk trees made each a tiny pool of shadow, slate coloured ; a post put about a couple of inches of shadow at its side. Enormous distances these priests have to travel ! One school-mistress till quite lately used to ride 180 miles, alone, to make her Easters, and ditto back. And the roads. . . . Suddenly the sea showed itself, a brilliant green-blue, in texture like cream, solid and rich yet taking all shapes. Victor Harbour. Again such nice hotels. We went to two, one for dinner, one for tea. X, don't think I forget you ! It was meeting you, and the rapid development of our acquaintance, that have made me forget practically all else about that afternoon, except that there was an island that we didn't go to. .. . You said, that ages ago when you were in a war hospital at Bristol, you had wanted to make acquaintance. Now, like two chips off meteors, we meet, each of us unwarned, at Victor Harbour. May God bless the event and further it. Home, then, through vast vineyards and a drenching sunset — all the hills seemed overgrown with violets, pansies and thyme, and then misted with hot gold. A very happy day.
I have to mention other friendly entertainments in Adelaide —one, a dinner so kindly given for me by the Archbishop in his charming house at the foot of the hills (I keep being startled by the perfect yew hedges continually seen in Australia and here perhaps especially ; they are so firm and well clipped, like our centuries-old ones here : and nowhere save at Archbishop's house have I seen prickly pear in flower—a quick-fading flimsy yellow flower) ; and another at his fellow-Dominicans', hard by their very fine church (it was a lasting regret that I could not visit the Passionist house) ; and some quite cheery little luncheons with University professors arranged by a very old friend whom I had known at Cambridge and at Edinburgh, now professing classics here. Add a luncheon given by the League of Nations Union whom I addressed ; and a very splendid one in
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Parliament House at which so many distinguished gentlemen were present that I had far better not attempt to catalogue their positions, let alone their names. Speeches in that dignified hall are apparently, if not forbidden, at least ‘ out of order ’ ; for a speech, therefore, was substituted ‘ a few words I had a devastating headache and forget what I said : the Premier, unless I err, considered me to have remarked that Australians were better in adversity than in prosperity. Did I ? Are they ? How awful it is to say things. And half this tour has been spent talking. ‘ For every idle word . .. ! ’ God pardon us all !
I am appalled when I think of the talking done at Adelaide. Two sermons in our little church, and an address to its men’s sodality. A kind of private address to University students and graduates—the University authorities here are said to be very equitable, always a nice thing to hear. And partly in consequence of this, a University Sunday in the Cathedral ; though wigs and hoods and so forth were not worn, the place was packed with people, who are better than pigmentation, so to say, and I should think that the future of a Catholic University Society here ought to be a fine one.* It must be careful, though, to regard its University as the home of ‘ universal ’ education, and not a high-school. To the S.V.P. I ventured to talk as usual chiefly about prison and probation work and the sea ; to the Women’s League, chiefly about immigration. The Mercy nuns invited Sisters from other convents to their great hall near the Cathedral, and I think they listened to a liturgical discourse ; and there was a perfectly glorious supper of professional men and others, where not only there had to be a speech or two, but where some very jolly songs were sung and a cornet magnificently played, and in fact that was a robust and exhilarating evening that I like to think of. But I can’t help, in my heart, keeping a huge affection for an hour at the Young Men’s Guild in the hall by the Cathedral, which followed straight upon a concert which itself followed a rather colourless half-hour at
* Since then, I hear, the Aquinas University Society has been founded.
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the local Toe H. Now that Guild was glorious. What a thing it is to meet with good red blood and properly exercised muscle, and the supernatural ! Any city, any state, would have been pleased with that young crowd of lads who, later on, will recruit the older men’s societies and their more definite jobs ; and the Church must be pleased with them, and so must God. (One word about that concert. A Schubert anniversary was going on. So all the music was Schubert—a great delight. I liked it all ; but what was so interesting was, that the entire band (splendidly conducted) was ‘ silver ’. It seemed so strange to hear what you knew to be string parts imitated—very well imitated, yet texturally quite transposed—upon metal. I seek in vain for a word to express the quality this conveyed. Of course the infinitesimal vibration of strings was absent : the purr of ’cello and double bass was not there : nor the sense of a great warm cloak of sound—a cloak of sound as warm as frieze yet as soft as silk. . . . Something leagues away from the coarse or the raw ; yet had the band been badly played (which it wasn’t) coarse and raw the music might have been. It seemed to me to suit Australia ! I have said again and again that there is an Australian version of wine, flowers, of landscape. Well, no one can object if, when I have said that this version, stronger and heartier when it is good, can be coarse and raw when it is bad, I add at once that our vice over here would be to become as it were over-boiled —sodden, blurred. Have you ever heard the silver trumpets in St. Peter’s ? Well, if you have, you may recollect that at moments an echo, a draught, I don’t know what, but something gives them a touch of stridency, whereas as a rule they stroke the ear. Suppose then that Australians in music or in anything else, caricatured themselves, or struck an unlucky patch of mood, they would, I think, be strident, whereas at their best they’re strong. Thus, timidly, and well on the world’s other side, I say what that concert made me think ! As for me, I shall tell you that only one evening in Adelaide gave me a greater pleasure, and there were special reasons for that, so that the Guild will forgive me.
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On a larger scale was a lecture on the ‘ Catholic Mind in the Adelaide Town Hall ; and one (it came first, but logically should have been second, since thought and principles should precede and govern activity) on ‘ Catholics at Work ’ in the Town Hall at Norwood.
Part of the pleasure of my stay in Adelaide was, however, the friendliness of the press, from reporters to editors. My experience was interesting and, to me, a little surprising. I had been asked my opinion about sport on Sundays. I naturally answered that, with plenty of qualifications, I thought well of it. I knew all that had been said about sport being Australia’s chief ‘ secondary industry ’ and so forth ; none the less, I knew that there were not a few professions which prevent a man getting any proper exercise on week-days, especially during the winter or rainy seasons. But apart from that, physical exercise is a good thing, anyhow better than lounging, and a man cannot pray or even read all Sunday, nor even go for mere walks or use dumb-bells. I expressed these hustled sentiments, so far as I remember, on the railway platform actually within a minute of my arrival, or, very soon afterwards in my room. The editor of one prominent paper not only asked for a column on the subject, but for other articles as well. Naturally, in them, I tried to explain human psychology as I understand it, and also the law of God and man’s duty of worship, individual and collective. The articles came in for a good deal of criticism. One writer —oh how truthfully ! —called them ‘ pretty rather than profound ’. [I got some very good criticisms in Adelaide ! One small child, on being asked what she remembered of a sermon of mine, paused, and then remarked : I He pronounces his words clearly.’ . . . And another, when I was introduced to her, exclaimed : ‘ Why ! You’re just an Ordinary Old Man ! ’ The dear kiddie ! Ex ore infantium. . . . Like a fresh breeze, thus to get the pure truth catapulted at you !] But what interested me was, not the actual ‘ letters in reply ’, for they contained nothing special, but the chance remarks I picked up through my friends who heard them in clubs and so forth. It
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was considered disgraceful, by some, that a letter from a Catholic priest should be inserted in such or such a newspaper : another announced that he would cancel his subscription were I to continue advocating the desecration of the Sunday : others, unexpectedly on my side, are said to have preferred the kind of Sunday I advocated to the increasing practice of going away for the whole week-end to places where certainly there was no chance whatsoever of public worship, and again, to starting so early for your Sunday picnic, on the beaches or anywhere else, that ‘ church ’ was out of the question. Certainly, I think that Nonconformist criticism in Australia were more wisely turned against the latter practices, than against the use of tennis courts on Sunday or even of golf course, though golf I suppose is more a game for the well-to-do than for the poorer classes, and it is for these, and for the incarcerated clerk, that I am most concerned. Whether or no recriminations of this sort reached the several editors involved, they alone could say. Enough to recall that they behaved with the most perfect courtesy and equity, and these, too, were the qualities of the Anglican clergy whereever I went —in fact, at Adelaide, too, I was invited to speak to a group of Anglican students, as well as to Toe H. But almost my happiest hours in Adelaide were spent in gaol. . . .
Our. Lord said : ‘ I was in prison, and you visited me : I was in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’ Why should one take that allegorically ? Moreover, He insisted that He regarded what you do to ‘ the least of these My little ones ’ as done to Him. How can anyone be less than the least ? No one. So when they say : ‘ You’ll never get any satisfaction out of prisons. Of all jobs prison-visiting is the most disheartening ’, what force does that argument contain ? None. Suppose the inmates let you down ? Suppose they try to sponge on you ? Suppose they are ‘ always in and out ’ of gaol, and never reform ? What of it ? Were they always grateful, always trustworthy, likely to make satisfactory citizens, they would be very far from being ‘ the least ’ among one’s fellow-men. But if one doesn’t reach the ‘ least one still hasn’t reached one place where Christ is hiding
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in disguise. He likes one to see through His disguises ; He likes to be unable to escape one. He likes to be hunted out, and prisons often take a deal of hunting. Modest places ! They shrink and lurk. . . . You don’t run out to Long Bay for picnics, I suppose. Yatala isn’t exactly the central hub of Adelaide activity. You can be in Perth quite a while without investigating Fremantle ; and even when you’re there, you mightn’t zigzag off through those side-streets till you reach the monastic facade of the gaol—lBss ! To think that they built such a Spanish monastery of a place in 1855 !
Now, am I quite honest ? I believe I like gaols. I get the same sort of feeling that I 1 know where I am ’, as I do in any place which is under discipline. Barracks, for example ; or a ship. You see a man with three chevrons on, and you know he is a sergeant and you can’t be wrong about it. Even a poor wretched down-trodden lance-corporal —well, you know what he is and what he can’t or can do (he can’t do much, but still. . . .) You don’t require to know names, at first ; you haven’t to adjust yourself to subtle social shades. It is like the science of Heraldry, where there are five colours and two metals and no more. On a coat-of-arms, you will find ‘ azure ’, ‘ gules ’, and it means blue and red, and no nonsense about pale blue or dark blue, or old rose or crushed strawberry. What a lot of time and nervous tension such a situation saves ! Moreover, I like straight lines and simple curves. lam not keen on ornament. Now no one can say that gaols are over decorated. On those wide white walls, how many frightful pictures might be hung. But they aren’t. . . . Possibly, therefore, the lazy side of myself, which likes the simplicity of what is regimentalised, likes everything which is reduced to mere essentials, and feels comfortable in a gaol.
However, that’s not all ; for prisons are without doubt dreadful places. I don’t mean that I’d like to see them become sheer high-schools, if not clubs, free comforts and psychological Uplift administered daily ; but I would certainly like to see the educational and craftsmanship side developed very thoroughly ;
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and how much I admired the workshops at Fremantle ! I hadn't the chance of seeing this side of Australian gaol life elsewhere, though it doubtless exists. I was struck, too, by the Xews-letters published there, and excellently printed on good paper, though I felt that a man would need more training than a prisoner mostly has to appreciate those little news paragraphs at their proper value, and to inter-connect the snippets of information. But they would make admirable raw material for a wise lecturer and perhaps that is how they are used. One thing I shall always wish, in a prison, and that is, that the execution shed should be but a step from the room whence the condemned man walks to it. In one English prison, not only the man has to leave his cell, and to walk quite fifty yards or more through the open air, but the ghastly little shed, serving one purpose only, is built in isolation there among the asphalt and the grass. That walk is too much for any man's nerves. On the other hand, in a different place, the man steps across a corridor to a new cell, and the first thing he sees is an altar, brilliantly lit and with flowers upon it, and Mass forthwith starts, and he is held enthralled till all but the last moment. Then, as the hour strikes, the last duties are performed ; he takes but one step through a door, and all is finished before the hour stops striking. Do not imagine I have the cult of nerves. For one thing, lam all for flogging. Not just any kind of flogging, nor for just any man or any crime. I merely mention it, because I prefer the charge of brutality to that of sentimentalism. Anyhow, I pray that in every prison, this matter of the execution room may be wisely arranged.
But I did not ask to visit the Australian prisons on general principles alone, still less, as a sort of tour of inspection. It has always seemed to me sad that when a thing like a Congress happens, and the Pope sends special messengers charged with blessings, some of his sons should feel shut out from them. Flence, I ventured to beg leave—in this case I asked it from the Cardinal Legate—to convey his blessing, which is that of the Universal Father, to the sick or prisoners or others who cannot go and
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fetch it for themselves. I was given this kind leave. So one morning I began that interminable drive out from Sydney to Long Bay, through suburbs that even a Sydneyite will forgive me for finding the least charming that I saw ! The sea came sweating its way in through sand and dismal grasses on the left —when you turned off the main road you could see brackish water standing even in the middle of that speed-track. Then came sand and rock and shrivelled herbage, discoloured the more because of the brilliant ocean and its contrast. Its blinding blue, and then the colourless dust and grasses of the land ! There on its little hill, stood the uncompromising gaol. From the terrace before it, you looked out over Botany Bay ; at that distance, its sands were as silver as the bay was blue, and the now empty shores were vividly green. I know. But who could fail to be conscious of those drifting ghosts, ghosts of most miserable thoughts, and the spectral despair and mad ferocity bequeathed by days long passed, I know, but claiming assuredly the prayers of to-day for whole legions of poor souls. Mass was just over as I arrived ; and from the tall steps of that altar I was allowed to speak first to the men, then, after a cup of tea, to the women, and then to a small and special category of men. I came home with an ache in heart no less than in head, and could but hope that Christ’s Vicar’s blessing had meant a little refreshment within those glaring walls. I peered down into them again, later on, from the aeroplane that was carrying me so freely over Sydney. Such freedom, up in that tingling sky ; and below, imprisoned men each with his own anguish, yet seeming, from above, so small that no wonder people forget them, and even, half feel they are too small to matter.
At Brisbane, some of the prevailing geniality of the place seemed to have got into the gaol itself: the men laughed quite heartily as the talk proceeded ; and as an important official was supervising the proceedings and laughed too, I hope it was all right. ... At Melbourne, I was myself chained by the leg in hospital so that the prison had to be omitted ; but Adelaide—now what a curious experience that was ! Yatala. To begin
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with, there is such a glorious tree just inside the gates at Yatala — a South African Acacia, was it ? I forget : no matter ; it was as golden-green as any camphor laurel —that I must succumb, I fear, to sentimentalism after all, and say that it and the other trees of that enclosure gave that place a sort of handicap. The chaplain, Fr. G., burly brother of two other Australian priests, took us up into the little chapel, and I felt the talk went well — faces brightened up and so forth. And we went straight back to the gaol just beyond Adelaide station. And during that talk, my spirits went lower and lower. What horrible nonsense, I felt, lam talking. Could I listen to it myself? Certainly not.
‘ Lord ’, I said, ‘ I am talking nonsense. Say what You want to say Yourself.’ One always ought to ask that, but at times you are simply forced to ask it, and that is all to the good. No illusions, if obviously you talk nonsense, and Christ whispers what He wants quite independently of you. And it was here that I made a friendship that I think will last. ‘X, the Z will you ever see this ? Unnecessary. Your letters have cheered me up a lot. ‘No luck this time ’ was all you said, when we shook hands. But who knows . . . ? And finally, Fremantle, as I’ve mentioned.
To some, perhaps all, of these prisons, nuns go. Once they have taken the first plunge, they won’t want to be congratulated, so happy must those visits make them. It is very good indeed, both for the men and for the women prisoners, to see the little nuns. Little brown angels : celestial brownies ! Never doubt about the value of your task ! The men’ll take you in ? You’ll feel glad about mere fake conversions ? Never mind. They aren’t so fake as all that ! And I ventured always when talking to the S.V.P. to recommend to their zeal a work which in many places they do so well. I doubt if nuns can do all the needed work. Even if they can, it is so good for the layman and laywoman to join in it ! I refer to every department of prison work : visiting prisoners ; looking after their libraries ; meeting them on coming out and seeing to their jobs ; looking after a prisoner’s family while he or she is in gaol ; organising concerts
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and lectures, and all that has to do with police court work and probation work.
Will it indeed prove ‘ unsatisfactory ’ ? No, a thousand times. Apart from its supernatural value, its sheer philanthropical value is enormous especially as regards after-prison work, and in the case of the young. The Old Lag is perhaps a problem in himself. But the boy (or girl) must at all costs be prevented from losing self-respect. Once that is lost, humanly speaking all is lost. You have at all costs to prevent a prisoner from brooding, whether he recognises that his past was guilty, or believes that it was innocent. He simply must not be allowed to think ‘ backwards ’. You have to persuade him to put his whole heart into the prison jobs—once a man does a job well, he thinks well of himself. And you must at all costs keep him off that sexual pre-occupation which besets men and women living so introverted and unnatural a life. I pray with all my heart that our Lord, looking at the clergy, the nuns, and the laity of Australia, will not even once have to say : ‘ I was in prison, and you visited Me not.’
Hurrying as I must, I cannot linger over two visits to the military hospital at Myrtlebank, and one or two other visits to sick ex-soldiers ; but these make for me the bridge to the memory of those joyous reunions with old war-time friends, with two particularly, whose homes I was now able to see, and a third, J.G., whom I re-met, after all, at a certain dinner. This dinner took place in a Returned Soldiers’ Club that was so good that I would like to spend long in describing it. Its manager couldn’t be bettered —the ideal man for a fine yet difficult job. I don’t think he would take much trouble to disguise that he had a wrist of steel; but it is certain that the hand at the end of it was open and generous, and I wish luck to him and to that club for ever. When I called it a dinner, it was better than anything so formal—just sandwiches and beer ; not that the Melbourne dinner had anything formal about it, but not all men have much appetite and I hadn’t, just then. Again the whole mystery of the war came back upon me.
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Without it, I —speaking selfishly—would not have had that affection from those men, nor would I have been able to experience the affection that Ido for them. All this is the shadow of God’s love, and getting very near towards being its substance. And again it seemed so strange to be there among men who knew what work upon farms was, what war and marriage were ; and I knew none of these things : somehow, spiritually, one must go through more than war, financial torment, even than the best forms of human love, if on a spiritual plane one is so much as to catch up with what builds a man on the human plane. What then have the Saints not known, within secret places of their souls ? To accept what these men gave, I could not hesitate ; yet almost there was a temptation so to hesitate, because they gave so much. This was all-but my last meeting with war friends in Australia, and I treasure that night particularly. Next day, I was to be off to Sevenhills, definitely on my way to Perth, and Perth meant, so soon, the sea.
(II)
Mary the maiden walked out in the country,
Telling the wheat what the angel had told her,
The bees tumbled out of the flag-towers to listen,
The birds stopped their fledglings and told them to heed her.
' A woman in blue with wheat to her knees,
Mid a silence of birds, and a stillness of bees,
Singing, " Golden, ah golden, with seedsprays unfurled,
Ripen within me, O Wheat of the world ! "
' Mary, blue-hooded, walked out in the country,
Telling the vine what no other must know yet,
The butterflies flew to her hems as to harebells,
The flowers on the bushes shook gold rain upon her.
' A woman, gold-wet, with rainbow eyes,
And a border of living butterflies,
Singing, " Purple, ah purple, with tendrils close curled,
Ripen within me, O Vine of the world ! " '
Eileen Duggan, in The Commonweal.
o
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Towards the historical region of Sevenhills, therefore, I started on November 24. H. came to see me off, and I felt homesick for Adelaide. The country seemed average till at Riverton one changed into an electric trainlet ; and, while the line still passed through scorched grasses and enormous lilac thistles, in the distance the hills began, and the crops grew richer, and you noticed vines. At Sevenhills, there was Fr. Fleury ; and as I climb into his buggy and jolt over white stones, clinging to it with toes and teeth, I reflect that when an aged priest of my acquaintance first made this journey, he did it in a bullock cart and took three days. . . . And I have done it in a morning. In those days, this white horse would have meant that its owner was very rich. Now men may have quite fifteen horses ; but then, if it does not rain, they have to buy fodder for them all the year round, and they can’t afford it. Once more, prosperity swings back and hits you. ‘ We’ve advanced ’, a man said to me, mentioning the fifteen horses and the machinery of to-day. ‘ Perhaps ’, I said, ‘ we’re not much happier ’. ‘No ’, he said, ‘ nor healthier. Doctors all the time.’ Of course it is a question how many children died off then. And again it is a question whether the child that survives to-day is, on the average, as tough as the child that grew to manhood then. Still, I confess that the race around Sevenhills seemed pretty sturdy.
The road tumbled upwards through a wood : great boulders projected among the gums. Then, on the left, the tall reddishgrey church with its unfinished tower, nave, and transept, part of which has been added. I gathered that the design of this church was better than the execution. But how firm and simple is the decoration ! No fool planned that main door and that tower. But we pass the church, and come to the house — definitely in the eighteenth century tradition and perhaps earlier. One is back in southern Europe. The only non-European element is the iron roof; under this amazing sky these roofs reflect the light and turn a brilliant yet delicate blue, like a Chalkhill Blue Butterfly, yet more granulated, like some pebbles (who knows what they were ?) that I found in the sea at Sorrento
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when I was four. The only south France detail that I missed, was persienne shutters for the windows. Perhaps they hung there once upon a time. . . . Inside, narrow corridors ; whitewashed, with chocolate dados. How I recognise all that and how I love it. My room, too, was washed a pale and patchy blue : it had the strict minimum of furniture. I like that too. On its walls are the prints and pious oleographs of distant days. They seem in place. This world is, suddenly, a Latin world, lit by stars, and by oil lamps like those St. Aloysius cleaned. The chapel is narrow and plain. Somehow it seems equipped with tarnished gold and vestments of faded tapestry. I could linger for hours folding up those faded vestments and bringing back to myself the old Provencal country house of my noviciate. Through it all, stole the hot scent of pines. And I could dream long in that flower garden where no one troubles to know the names of the flowers, but where I recognise everywhere gladiolus, and walnut trees and bays, and orange groves. Crickets maintain their sharp vibration ; and at night surely I recognise the still sharper harrassed talkativeness of frogs ? Little green frogs, implying water somewhere ?
Water is here ; normally, plenty of it. All the valley is a well. Yet they rely chiefly, I believe, on rain-water. You may go for years without rain, and then suddenly, as the other day, get two and a half inches. This refills the tanks, which hold 250, again 250, 300, and—can it possibly be ? —70,000 gallons. But this last must be mainly underground. What you see is always a cylinder of horizontally corrugated iron, which keeps the water cooler and relieves the outward pressure. This land cannot be drier than Asia or parts of ancient Greece or Italy were before men tackled them. In modern Provence they bring water incredible distances and up to the tops of the hills by means of siphons. You stand on a hilltop and 10, in a pit of masonry, water comes torrentially gushing upwards. The Homeric man, the Vergilian man, would have put tiny runnels everywhere with their miniature sluice gates, and in the evenings the whole hillside would have been musical. . . .
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Et, cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis,
Ecce, supercilio clivosi tramitis undam
Elicit. Ilia cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva.
Upon my word ! In this Georgic land I ought to be able to translate that ! ‘And, when the scorched field pants, and the grasses die, look ! how he coaxes water from the brow of the trodden ridge ! The water falls, and amid smooth pebbles wakes its melodious whisper, and the spray cools the gasping soil.’
Rotten. But so much the more to the glory of Vergil. By no manner of means can one reproduce that delicate sonorous music, so simple, so wise ; so ‘ country’, so aristocratic. Fancy using a cheap word like ‘ coaxes ’ ! Fancy not even trying to reproduce the rhythm, and that admirable full-stop after elicit ! Nor the astonishing contrast between the sharp edged cs and the smooth and slipping is ! Well, I can’t, anyway ; and I had better stop this classical stuff and just say that even without Vergil I should have felt this countryside full of an austere yet joyous music. Still, it is a happiness to link beautiful things together, even when they are two thousand years apart. When night fell, there were no nightingales ; but there were the eternal whisper of the gum trees and the creaking of the well fan —in fact, I went out one night with the Superior to try to stop that fan, but he couldn’t manage it, and as for me, I was distracted by the beauty of the roofs, snowy beneath the torrential moonlight, and the filmy distances of the hills, and the black velvet of the flowers from which that light had stricken all the colour. Colour ? Who asked for it, just then, with all those different textures of shadow, from floating films of darkness down to the profound black velvet ? It will at least be obvious how intoxicated I was with the beauty of Sevenhills.
On the 25th, Sunday, we drove to Clare. The town was still beflagged after its patriotic week. The church was set well upon a hillside, with cypresses at last to put the finishing South of
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France touch. And what an admirable church ! No nonsense about Gothic here. A sort of Roman or Italian—l don’t know what sort ; perhaps a sort all to itself, with a touch of English Georgian. A diminutive Tom Tower, from Christ Church at Oxford, instead of the flat top you might have feared. A kindly congregation, one side being almost entirely filled with men, and men lining the walls. The choir sang in unison simple, clear, and joyous tunes. I preached—heaven knows what about : but afterwards a man came up to shake hands, and, said he, Australian-wise, ‘We expected something better from you ! ’ ‘Ah well ’, he proceeded : ‘ that’s what the Catholic religion is. Same old thing : same old way of saying it. That’s what I tell the boy. Always the same, wherever you are, and you can’t say different ! ’ I loved that ; and how grateful I was for the testimonial that at least I had preached Catholic truth ! I think that most of that afternoon I slept or wrote letters, content at anyrate to be once more in the country, if only for a day or two. Tamarisks. Their fluffy tufts have the same quality of pink as pepper tree berries have, with the difference that exists between what is fluffy and what is glossy. The berries reflect more light. Possibly there is a little yellow in the berry corresponding to the touch of lilac in the tamarisk. Lilac. The Greeks had lots of tamarisks ; but you couldn’t put ‘ lilac ’ into Greek. If I wrote a story about the Greeks, what colour could I assign to tamarisks ? If I said what the Greeks could have said, it wouldn’t convey what we see : if one wrote down what we see, it wouldn’t be what the Greeks saw or could have said. Unless one imagines the Greeks struggling to express what they felt but had no words for, which I am sure was not according to their nature. For that clear-sensed, strongly yet delicately and above all accurately expressive race would soon enough have found a word. They couldn’t even have said ‘ fluffy ’ ; but they could have said ‘ feather-like or even ‘ misty,’ and perhaps they did. I am reading We of the Never Never, by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, a very vivid story or rather just chronicle about life in Northern Australia. The picture is so
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unembarrassed by idle adjectives or sensationalism, that while not a page could have been written by anyone save a woman, it rings as sharp and true as any of the books about the A.I.F. that I have also been reading in my hospitals. Even in those, there is a deal of repressed emotion and even sentiment; Mrs. Gunn’s book might have been, so easily, dreadfully self-conscious and sentimental, but isn’t, because her husband died at the end of their first year in the bush, and the cheerfulness that pervades it mounts therefore towards the heroic, and the last chapter, reticent as it is, overwhelms you without being cruel. In the midst of this, a pale lad interrupted me. He produced a stockwhip with an enormously long thong. ‘ You can take a bit out of anything with this ’, said he serenely. ‘lf you catch a bullock even with this little yellow tip, you can take a bit right out of him. . . . ’ The truculent child then went down and shattered the green and golden afternoon with a series of pistol-cracks.
Next day, I saw over the Sevenhills cellars, but they interested me least of anything. At noon, Dr. G. drove us via Mintaro to his home and thence to Martindale Hall, a large and very solid building in Anne-ish style, I suppose. The original builder was ruined and his family seems to have died out ; else I should have liked to know how he got his name, which exists quite frequently round here as a ' first ' name, and there are races called by it. But no one could tell us anything about it, and we turned our back on the English country house and went and talked to a herd of kangaroos, who were not much more communicative, I own. Thence, to Mr. F.'s, for dinner, and more of the frank and large Australian hospitality. But it was very thundery, and perhaps I was depressed, and the doctor issued orders that I should sleep. I lay down anyway, saddened rather by the sight of so many townlets dead or dying, despite the quarries, and even those on motor roads living chiefly, it seemed to me, off inns and petrol pumps. It does not look as though, should a man have a large family, he could keep more than one son on an estate unless it too be very large. For the land, or a very great deal of it, seemed worthy of work. I kept passing
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fields of 1,600 acres with superb crops, and then others of 1,000 acres lying fallow. Perhaps they all belonged to one man. Perhaps a system that has always killed European countries, is necessary in this vast and undeveloped one. And how evangelise these enormous spaces, of which even here I can scarcely guess the beginning of the fringe ? For even here, one keeps hearing of one Catholic family, far from all others, and we visited a tiny convent and a no less tiny school, worked as usual by those valiant Joseph nuns. But what loneliness ! Once more I prayed in my heart not so much for more priests, for there would never be enough to create presbyteries everywhere, and what use were a presbytery if it had only one farm to serve —but for aeroplanes to carry priests to places ten thousand times more isolated than this district is. Precarious life at best. Up at Sevenhills, one night’s slight frost, at this time of the year, and at that height of 1,600 feet, would destroy the entire vine crop. You would say, too, a vicious circle. The farmer must feed his men and pay them a basic wage ; this is impossible to him, if he is to make enough for himself and the estate. Yet cultivate it by himself he cannot. So, judging from what they told me, in no way can he cultivate it. And the poor immigrant ! How should he understand these reaper-binder-threshers ? Know how to steer with one hand and guide a machine with the other so that it may reap just underneath the ear ? Know so much as how to get out of rabbit burrows ? And while he is learning, what a loss, in many ways, he must be ! Yet I am sure that the Vergilian farmer would have had the whole of this, in tiny plots, under cultivation. Thus once more machinery defeats man. True, the Latin would have lived on his own produce ; here, to live, you must sell. Grain is not good enough. You must get something else with it, namely, gold. Heaven forgive these amateur moralisings ; or rather, since heaven always puts up with a lot, may my readers forgive them. But the ones I have in view are a forgiving lot, too, and at worst I foresee a slightly sarcastic grin.
After tea we drove back over grassy roads through an evening
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deep green and golden passing rapidly (instead of the slow discolouration of the dusk) into profound peacock blue and then night with its dazzling stars. Clare, where there was to be a lecture. People drove in from long distances or drifted round quite casually half an hour late. Perfect good temper. Everyone seemed shocked at the idea of beginning till all were ready. I expect many of them met but seldom, and could sit in the hall chatting quite comfortably. Magnificent crowd of young men : here anyway the physique has not deteriorated. The town hall was fine in itself, and really charmingly decorated —yet how simply ! —with streamers of deep blue and apricot, and golden prickly pear. These, too, were the relics of the ' Back to Clare ' week. I hope that week did more than add money to hotels—though I keep the friendliest memory of the hotel we visited and its genial lady. lam sure there was any amount of good feeling about that week, though the method of choosing its Queen seemed to me financial rather than flattering. . . . However, I tried simply to relate, once more, incidents of Catholic life I had come across in other lands—Croatia, Slovenia, Austria : anything to help men and women, who perforce lead a somewhat isolated life, to realise that the Church is not just a sect among other sects, as it might seem, say, in this one town or valley.
Then we drove home. To-morrow I start for Perth. I tried to sleep, haunted by such conflicting memories. That old dead Austrian world ; the lonely church with its picture given by an Empress—there is hardly an Austria ; there is no Empress now —and the faded vestments and white-washed walls. The vines—and what will happen to them should Australia go prohibitionist . . . ? Will they too die, and a great human effort disappear, and the cellars collapse and await who knows what distant excavation ? Who, then, will remember the ancient sorrows of these hillsides —when I arrived, the Superior had been tramping them, half the night through, in search of a shellshocked lad who had been lost —and the simpler happiness of days when there was no cinema to tell its vulgar lies ? Life ;
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decay ; new life perhaps ? Eternal life, in any case. In the refectory here there is a picture of a Saint, a picture ill-painted and hideous to petrification point. Perhaps St. Francis Xavier, or anyone else. A black cassocked saint, at any rate, with a palm tree to show he is a missionary ; a saint fiercely holding up a crucifix. Is my mind like his ? I like to seek the human element in Saints, the better to appreciate the heavenly one. But I always have a shrinking doubt whether the Saints were in the least like what I say about them. How would I, for example, begin to preach the Faith to a new tribe in Central Africa ? Or here, up north, among the aborigines ? Would I be semirationalist in method anyway, however little I were so in intention ? Would I give up the adults, and just hope I might do something with the children ? Or would I have that fierce and almost terrifying faith, and unflinchingly use methods wholly out of proportion with the effect I hoped for, and lift up a crucifix, like that picture, and trust to the swoop of the Holy Spirit into hearts ? After all, that is what one always practically does, when one embarks on the ‘ folly of preaching ’. What preacher but knows only too well that it is not his words nor his personality nor his skill that are to achieve anything supernatural whatsoever ! Woe to him if he dreamed that he as he were to produce results. If he did, the results would be commensurate with his miserable self. No. One talks : one digs and puts in seeds. And the miracle of life is wrought, patently by God. For whatever else one does, life one creates not. Veni Sancte Spiritus, Domine, Vivificans ! —Then the scent of the pines predominated, and the gentle creaking of the well that I was to hear now for the last time in Australia.
V
PERTH
(I)
'My oath ! ' the Duchess sez. ' You'd not ixpect
Sich things as that. Yeh don't mean kangaroos ?
Go hon ! ' she sez, or words to that effect
I tells 'er of the wondrous Boshter Bird
That builds 'er nest up in the Cobber Tree,
An' 'atches out 'er young on May the third.
Stric' to the minute, jist at 'arf pas' three
'Er eyes get big. She sez, ' Can it be true ?
'Er eyes was blue
Digger Smith : C. J. Dennis.
On Tuesday, November 27, I started then for the west, with a sinking of the heart because I knew it was the last lap of all. While I waited for the car, kookaburras sat shrieking with sardonic laughter on a bough. They laughed till they could laugh no more, but when a new arrival turned up, they started to laugh again. It looked extremely painful. I hope it was. I was not in the least inclined to laugh. We drove to Merildin and there, on this brilliant day, you would have sworn that you were looking forth towards a dazzling estuary. The north was filled with an enormous mirage. Only the fluttering of the nearer inlets gave you pause : but you would have assumed that the vibration was some trick of sunlight upon water. It was extremely hot and I slept a good deal till Terowie 1.546 miles from Perth, my destination) where you change from a 5.3 gauge to a 3.6 one so far as Port Augusta, though why they didn't keep the wide gauge till Peterborough only two stations
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ahead, who knows ! Perhaps Peterborough wasn't so much of a town then as Terowie. At Port Augusta one was to change into a 4.8.V till Kalgoorlie, when one would have to go back to 3.6. 'Nuff said. Anyway at Terowie the carriage had wickerwork armchairs facing one another down each side : I had no one opposite me, so I could stretch my legs and also yawn without being stared at. This part of the journey lasted from soon after 3 till after 10 and was awful. However, at Eurelia—pretty name —6.30, we dined in the station restaurant : excellent meal for 3s. and a small bottle of good cool clean hock for 2s. I was restored to good will with the world.
The moon rose, inexplicably crescent, since it had been almost full yesterday. I argued and argued till I decided it was an eclipse : so it was ; but no one seemed to mind. Perhaps it is babyish to be thrilled by an eclipse. I like seeing the moon look spherical. It makes one believe it is, and brings it closer.
. . . You realise the earth too, and that you are travelling round it. The soil was very red : it retained its amazing reds till quite late, the trees and distances being black-purple, or lavender veiled in black, or the bloom on sloes. Suddenly the earth went black and the sky was peacock blue for a long time and then no less suddenly transparent ink behind the moon. At Carrieton you turn east and there was a fairish wait at Quorn where there is a great piazza before the railway line (no platform) like Italy or rather Spain. People patrolled it to look at the train. Finally, Port Augusta (only 1,426 miles now !), where I was very touched to find that two priests had come to speed me, though the train did not go till after 11. And who should turn up but the members of the British Immigration Mission, Messrs. Crutchley, Bankes-Amery and Skevington. After some chat with them, I found that my guard had evicted my fellow passenger to my (and no doubt his) delight : so I shall have a carriage to myself till Kalgoorlie the day after to-morrow.
For some reason I couldn't go to sleep after all, which turned out lucky, as I could watch the ' lakes ' under the violent moon. The whole landscape was like snowfield shadowed with small
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scrub, the lakes being little save a film of salt in slight depressions edged with mimic cliffs but, they say, of enormous extent. The lakes sparkle while the rest is cotton-woolly. Tea at 6.30, and I got up at 7-ish and emerged at near Tarcoola only 257 miles after all from Port Augusta. Not long afterwards you come to the last fence, apparently, that you see till you reach Kalgoorlie, 1,051 miles from Port Augusta. There is a ‘fairsized ’ run here, they say, of 3,000 square miles. The soil already begins to look very red with what may be ti-trees spaced very widely over it, and little white-blue-grey bushes from the size of cabbages to that, for example, of lavender shrubs. At 9 o’clock it was already 92 degrees and their average here, they tell me, has lately been 112 or over. Soon enough the sand began blowing in, though we weren’t really in it yet, and though it isn’t real sand like the Sahara’s, and doesn’t form hills that travel, but it is very fine earth off the plains ahead of us, accumulated through the ages. During lunch it was very hot indeed : you hadn’t to take more butter out of its little ice house than you meant to eat at once, as it turned instantly to oil upon your plate. The train was dry. I suppose because you could hardly trust passengers with liquor on this scorching idle trip. My luncheon vis-a-vis who had travelled much in the U.S.A. chose this unpropitious moment to discourse to me on the facility with which you could get alcohol, iced ad lib., in that blessed land. Mr. Beverley Nichols, in The Star-Spangled Manner, said it was rare not to see two or three young men carried out from dances in quite decent houses, and that lots of the girls, too, were tipsy. Curious throw-back to the habits of our great greatgrandfathers, though then I don’t think the bottle habit extended itself to girls. Hip flasks easier. As for me, I refuse to generalise, despite a good few letters I have received to the same effect. I sighed, and recalled the innocent cool vintages of Sevenhills. I thought of the tea-spoonful of gin and the bitter tonic water of the Rotorua —perhaps less innocent than that Australian hock, but not so very wicked after all ! At Barton, aborigines appeared for the first time ; much saltbush, looking like great green
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hedgehogs, but other treelets still, of which I couldn’t get the names. Sheep can eat saltbush.
I forget what time we reached Ooldea, 427 miles from Port Augusta and 624 from Kalgoorlie. Here the Nullarbor plain begins and it is true there is not a tree upon it. It reaches to Naretha, nearly 400 miles, and in one stretch the line runs without the slightest swerve for 330 miles. You can see the metals shooting forward and back, till they meet in a dazzle at a horizon. The granite has dipped beneath limestone and what you see is an infinite flat burnt-siena level, blotched with whitey-blue bush and grey-green saltbush and whitey-yellow lime stones. Nothing seems more than 9 inches high. Not a tree ; not a shrub. Yet wheel tracks, and mysterious rusted springs or hoops and blackened spars ; and bottles all along the line. Towns like Cook, a large one, had twenty ? thirty ? houses, raised on stilts, as in Queensland. But, even there, in the immense expanse of red, a tennis court, wired in, and two young men in thick black trousers playing hard. Who shall conquer such a spirit ? The woodwork is unpleasantly hot to touch ; and the water in the bottle quite hot enough to wash your hands in. You can get iced water from a little grotto in each carriage ; but it would only make one thirstier. Under the moon all this is filmy and cotton-woolly—not in the least like snow any more ; I don’t know why. The Sahara is quite different—at least the little bit of it that I saw was. That was brimstone yellow, sparkling, and shooting a million crystal arrows into the turquoise sky. Perhaps there is no life on the Sahara save that of the wandering tribes. Here, to judge by a little book —The TransAustralian Wonderland, by A. G. Bolam, which I bought on the train —there must be quite a lot, and the most fascinating animals with enchanting names. The Pig Beetle, spiky and snouted. The Circular Saw Grub, which not only can move backwards or forwards equally, propelling its body by caterpillar wheel legs, but has a circular saw on each side of its head which works at any angle desired, while the head turns in any direction as on a swivel to assist the saws. Admire moreover
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the Barking Lizard, whose head is like a frog's, and who not only barks, but, when attacked, can throw away his tail, which twitches around on its own, and distracts attention. . . . But what is that to the Racehorse or Cycling Lizard, who may grow to 15 inches long, and uses his back legs exactly like a cyclist, and so fast that the Blacks themselves cannot catch up with him. He is timid, and can blush all over, and, says Mr. Bolam, ' to know him is to love him.' Affection would, however, be wasted on the Sleepy Lizard, of which I saw several in South Australia ; this long lethargic beast can only be roused by a hard kick, and when roused he merely bites you certainly no less hard. Goannas are giant lizards and can be quite good pets ; but what would you say to the Mountain Devil, or Moloch Horridus, which is one mass of horny spikes and has a large lump like a second head behind its real one, and absorbs liquid like a blotting pad ? Well, it too is a pacific and tender-hearted beast, and when attacked by birds just puts its head down and lets them peck away at the lump, and is a good fly eater, and quite friendly about the house. ... As for big animals, there are kangaroos and above all the hated sheep-slaughtering, stealthilyhunting dingo ; but I think I would love best the little ones, and among them, not least the Marsupial Mole ! It is 6 inches long, creamy furred, and carries its young in a pouch. No eyes ; no ears. Its fore-paws are five digited, but two of its claws are enormous : its hind-paws are webbed. Its sinewy knobbed tail steers it. It can burrow vertically, disappearing in a few seconds, its fore-claws digging, its webbed feet shovelling the soil away behind it. It never emits a sound, and is subject to what you might call nerves —it wakes suddenly into feverish activity and then as suddenly drops off to sleep. As for the Kangaroo mouse, no larger than our own mouse, his legs are just like a kangaroo's and his tail is 6 inches long, and he hops 3 feet at a time and keeps it up indefinitely. He and his wife, when burrowing, make a dummy hole. That is, they burrow, come out again at a distance, but carry all the earth they have excavated out through the original hole so that none lies about
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outside the one they mean to use. The tossed-out earth they then use for blocking up that original hole, and weather soon removes all traces thereof. Then they use the remaining hole, not an inch across, and with no sign of disturbance outside it. The burrowing is done by the pair alternately, the one removing the earth that the other has cut out. The House Building Rat burrows indeed, but will build himself a house above ground so solid as to withstand the gales and even to support birds’ nests on the top ; the usual size is 3 feet across and 2 feet high ; but one was found 6 feet across tapering to 1 foot at the top which was 4 feet high. They add to these houses piecemeal, according as the colony increases ; underneath are cellars and withdrawing-rooms. ... I don’t think my imagination played about much with the Dormouse Opossum (despite its enviable habit of going to sleep and stopping there whatever you do to it) nor the various Bandicoots nor even the pathetic little Phascogale. which like so many of these animals carries its young sometimes for several weeks after birth, attached to its breasts. Nothing but extreme violence detaches them. Then they die. But when it comes to insects—scorpions, spiders—l hated so much as to think of them, save maybe the Trap-Door Spider who first excavates his tube-home, sheathing the sides with silk and carting away the debris, and then recoats the walls with silk and with a silken hinge fastens a lid to the tube which fits exactly and is smeared to rhyme in colour with its surroundings. Formidable eagles and bustards are still to be seen, despite our instinct for killing all noble things ; and some time ago hundreds of cockatoos seized on the telegraph line at Ooldea, turning head-over-heels with the wire in their beaks. The wire snapped, being bitten right through, and forthwith the birds began upon a second one. . . . Heaven knows whether all this is true or not. I can’t believe it isn’t, for Mr. Bolam is a man of research and first-hand experience. Anyhow, I was thrilled to imagine all this invisible life rustling and whispering out there, upon and underneath the cruelly red plain, with its tiny tufts of bluebush and of saltbush. God is good. Many
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of these plants, and especially of the trees like mallee, nearer the edges of the plain, retain water in their very roots in unthinkable quantities. You can drain it off, and both men and animals can live quite a long time without getting a proper drink from anywhere else. But the mallee, the mulga, oaks and broom came to an end at Ooldea.
In the whole of this enormous district, water reaches the surface at three known places only, one of which is Ooldea, with no other water for hundreds of miles around. Oddly enough, not far from the ‘ Soak ’, brackish and salt water oozes up, and you never would have expected fresh water here. The wells are now arranged in batches, and yield 4 million gallons yearly and make all the difference to the railway. And quite as thrilling as the thought of that invisible animal-life was the knowledge that though not a trickle of water puts its silver thread across that sultriness, 8 inches of rain per annum fall in heavy showers on to the plain and disappear into the porous limestone and must run, who knows how, into the sea out of which the plain has risen, or rather, away from which the present sea-floor sank. The plain is a mass of sea-fossils. (As for the skystones, as they call them, which are like natural glass, and are showered over the Plain, students have given up the theory that they are volcanic, and most people regard them as meteoric, I believe. They are jet black, and can scratch glass.) But as for that water, it runs away underground through vast caverns and corridors. This is not just imagination, because the Plain is full of blow-holes. They don’t spout forth steam like the one at Wairakei; but they send out draughts so fierce as to keep a hat suspended in them, or on the contrary suck things in, or do both these things alternately, presumably according to the variations of temperature inside and out. They roar and whistle. Usually they are at the bottom of a sort of depression or saucer in the earth : mostly they are quite small ; but sometimes you can climb down into limestone caverns and then you find more holes going deeper still. Sometimes you see, in the caverns, holes going upwards to within a foot of the soil. Limey
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water has built a crust across them—they ring hollow, as horses’ hoofs or wheels pass over them. Into these holes water runs away. Who knows what may not be the future of that water ? Who knows whether it all is brackish ? Even some brackish water, though no good for engines, serves quite well for stock. Perhaps some day a means of treating brackish water may be discovered, and then it will all be good for everything. And since, practically wherever you bore, you reach some sort of water, the whole of this gigantic desert may yet blossom as the rose. Meanwhile, when you have got so accustomed to the roar of the train that you cease to notice it, you get the impression of a huge silence all around you ; and then that silence wakes up and peoples itself with the rush of innumerable waters underneath you : the crust of the soil goes thin and transparent —you almost feel you are upon the sea. The soft thunder and rushing underneath you, and that whisper and rustle of a myriad life among the bluebush —scurrying tacitly across the russet sand and lurking beneath the limestones and furtively peeping forth when no one looks. ... I never was tempted to feel that that Plain was dead.
At the stations, one saw Aboriginals. They offered black glass ; they threw boomerangs ; they gave me one. . . . Poor wretches ! How one saw they oughtn’t t( have clothes on. Or if they must , choosing as they do to come to railway stations, a large cloak would surely be enough, which they could get rid of so soon as the train was gone. As it is, they wear filthy rags and perish from consumption. In the old days, explorers, socalled, used to shoot them ‘ for practice ’ —a man called MacKinlay, for example—and I had read of the same thing elsewhere. I think that pursuivants in England used to take pot-shots at Catholics in something the same way. But I can’t think that our modem evangelists have been much wiser, though they have been less cruel. In fact, I expect that in the Government reservations the Blacks are now treated so reasonably as may be. Not that it is ever reasonable to try to Europeanise such men. It means money, clothes, and alcohol, and above
p
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all the destruction of that curious mentality which is theirs and within which their brain is so much more active than ours. I am not going to write an essay upon Blacks.* But, so long as they live in that part of the world, their intelligence is as sharp as ours, and far more adapted to their life and its conditions. We can do arithmetic ; they, not. But the things they can do are useful here, and we cannot do them. Long ago, at Zagreb in Croatia, by chance I sat next to Dr. Schmidt, the worldrenowned founder of Anthropos, Curator of the Missionary and Ethnological Museum of the Lateran, and the inventor of a new theory of civilisation which, if developed and proved, ought to recast the whole notion of evolution as applied to human lives and mentalities. Even then, he said that the Holy Father had urged him to push forward his studies of the Australian Aborigines. ‘ Read these human documents ’, said the Holy Father, * before they perish ’. It was with a shock of delight that I read that actually while I was in Australia the Orientalist Congress had been going on at Oxford and that Dr. Schmidt was there, and that he urged that while it was still possible a scientific study of the languages and habits of the Aboriginals of Australia might be pushed forward on the lines, say, of an organised linguistic survey such as has been used in India, or, by means of a Research Institute of Australian Languages, like the Smithsonian Institute at Washington.
I thought, during half the next night, when shuntings and long stops and jerks kept me awake, of all those blacks. They are dying out. Would they might die ‘ good ’ deaths ! Of what use to meditate on those subterranean waters, or on lizards, spiders and birds, when I might have been thinking about men ? I had been worried, during the Congress, because no one seemed to allude to the Blacks. I tried to. I wanted to get the Pope’s blessing through to them, and did not know how to, save by a prayer now and again. For they are sou^
♦ The last book I have read on them is Capt. Sir G. H. Wilkins’s Undiscovered Australia (Benn : 1928). He is an Australian explorer. A learned, caustic, witty book, personal throughout.
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and cannot perish. I fear our Catholic Missions have failed amongst them, on the whole, and that many (not all) of the missionaries have withdrawn.* Would they had persevered ! ‘ The least of these My little ones. 5 Again, no one can be less than the least. No argument, then, that they are ‘ degraded.* We all are. Omnes nos erravimus ; and no degradation equals the loss of Grace. The night became sad. But the streaming moonlight made it easy to think of the Holy Spirit, and to invoke His heavenly dew upon all arid spaces. Cutting across all these reflections came the memories of an unfinishing argument with a very friendly young fellow-traveller who seemed to have every pleasant human gift save, precisely, that sanctifying, vivifying Spirit, unless indeed God understood him very much better than he did himself, which seems probable, since even I thought I guessed that he neither meant all he said and most certainly didn’t say all he really meant. We had talked about
* I have unluckily found no exhaustive account of them. In the Annals of the Missionary Fathers of Kensington, Sydney, for May 1, 1929, Fr. McCabe gives a brief clear account of the Northern Australia mission which those Fathers have held since 1906. The ‘ Northern Territory’ contains about 500,000 square miles. Darwin is the capital of Northern Australia ; Alice Springs of ‘ Centralia’. A gap of about 600 miles in the North-South railway from Adelaide to Darwin is rapidly being filled. The population is about 25,000 : 3,000 whites ; 2,000 Asiatics ; and 20,000 aborigines. These last are protected by the Government and live in or possess ‘ reserves.’ By a (to me) odd regulation, one Christian denomination only is allowed in each several reserve. (What happens to converts ? either there are none, or must they emigrate ?) The Catholic Mission is charged with the Bathurst Island reserve. When Mgr. Gsell chose Bathurst Island as the centre of the actual mission, the first missionary landed there, in 1911, with virgin forest before him, and no habitation whatsoever. Priests, laybrothcrs, and natives work side by side. Nuns too are there. As always, as always, imagination plays us false. What we do not sec, we don’t believe in : we care nothing for. One hears that since the foundation of this mission in 1911, less than £lOO has been sent to it from all Australia. Sir G. H. Wilkins comments on a similar lack of imagination so far as the scientific aspect of his expeditions was concerned. He could not find associates. Well, those expeditions were no matter of conscience : our missions are. May Our Lady, Help Christians, help too those Blacks whom she would like to have for sons.
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immigration, sport, sex, the press, machinery, Russia. . . . Probably we both got very muddled. How God’s Spirit is needed to clarify human minds ! Who could blame a man for finding modem life a puzzle ? Perhaps the saving grace, given to so many whose minds are not what we should call ‘ Catholic ’, is, that at long last they do realise that things puzzle them.
Some, lost in dusk of life abroad,
Have fondly thought to err from God,
Nor knew the circle that they trod.
Death dawned : heaven lay in prospect wide —
Lo ! they were standing at His side.
I don’t know whether I have got Francis Thompson’s verses accurately. I haven’t looked them up—on purpose. For in that shape they then came into my head. Anyhow, he went away at last to his own bunk, and the train roared onward, devouring the leagues, and I put my light out and the moon grew clearer. A night of hidden waters, pouring constantly, though invisibly, under the stifled earth and the outcrop of hard rocks and the dried twigs. A darkness that was full of mysterious light that revealed nothing clearly. The mysterious twilight of the prophet, ‘ neither day nor night ’, when the waters went forth softly from Jerusalem, watering God’s world. The teeming life of little insects, some horrible to us, or absurd ; but surely not horrible nor absurd to God. Thoughts, roving rapidly all over the earth —desperately twisted thoughts, gnarled, altering abruptly from one species into another, as beedes look like pigs, as Horrid Molochs turn out to be good pets, as phascogales kill rabbits but are fond of one another and take such trouble to keep each other warm. . . . Thoughts, too, of the Blacks ; souls into which one might despair of penetrating. Never mind. Among all these ghosts of queer beasts and birds that haunt this night, I prefer to dwell on the brooding of God’s Dove, and to hope that those gentle feathers make a mantle over the minds of all of us. And so at last to sleep, ‘in pace, in idipsum ’.
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Woke to find the long plain just ending at Rawlinna. Mulga and low gums reappearing. Nothing of interest happened till we reached Kalgoorlie about 3. On the platform, A.F., whom I used to know and last saw in London. He has been working for quite some time at Kurrawang and had come to meet me. So delighted, that I failed to see the Kalgoorlie parish priest, who also in his kindness had come down. Rapid emigration to a hotel ; shower-bath ; tea ; back to the station where by now I don't know how many priests had accumulated ! What is one to do with men who put themselves to such trouble in their wish to welcome a stranger and make him a little less uncomfortable ? Never forget it, anyway. I felt half at home in Kalgoorlie, because it had the indefinable sense of being a mining town, which indeed it is. I cannot trust my memory so as to be sure that I could see a huge dump at the end of the long blazing street, but I think I did. I should imagine an Australian mining-town to be a pretty stiff proposition. . . .
Yet I believe that mining creates something special and lovable at the bottom of the souls of men, somewhat as the sea does. I went to bed very early and woke early too, and could watch without moving the exquisite changes in the sky. An enormous pipe borders the line, bringing water from Perth to Kalgoorlie, unless it's the other way round, but I don't think so. Another priest came to the station in Coolgardie, but I was having dinner and the guard missed me. Viatorem suscepisti. The vegetation grew richer ; you saw smothers of flowers, but the spring was definitely over. At last, we cross the Swan. Perth. The Vicar General and two other priests on the platform, and several laymen and a couple of photographers. Arranged that a Syrian officer from Lebanon, who had been touring Australia to see how his immigrant compatriots were faring, and who had been our companion since Merildin, should be interviewed and photo'd. He was pleased with his reception : the Libanese are doing well. And so good-bye to trains—incredible ! the next will be in England. And I have reached Australia's edge and the ultimate sea. God bless this last little lap.
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(n)
With his red beak
Uttering his wild, his pulsant cry,
The Swan into the wild did fly.
Into the fiery dawn rode he,
And many burning cherubim
That know the face of the Most High.
In godlike flight did go with him.
Ruth Fitter : The Swan.
When Fr. Brady went to Perth in 1842, he had with him a Dutch priest who had been a chaplain in Napoleon’s army and one lay catechist. Two Spanish Benedictines also came, and some Irish Sisters of Mercy. They found but 306 Catholics but soon had made 300 converts. Even when he was bishop, this hero used to sleep between the four posts that supported his bell, a boarded-in space of four foot square, with an umbrella over him. . . . When Fr. Salvado, 0.5.8., started among the Aborigines, they were found eating lizards and roots and dressed, if at all, in kangaroo-skins. He, too, was a hero, and sank his own wells, sawed his timber and drove bullocks, and once had to carry his ploughshare 50 miles and 50 back upon his shoulders to get it mended. (All this was in what became the abbacy of New Norcia, that little patch of Spain that alas I was to have no time to visit, where now the settlement possesses 50,000 acres, has built a great dam, and produces from what was desert olives, wheat, vines, and makes soap, macaroni and olive-oil. And to think that Salvado died so recently as 1900 !)
When Dr. Griver became Bishop of Perth in 1872, what still had to be done may be judged from the following—A priest stationed 250 miles north of Perth was called to baptise a child 130 miles still further north ; he went, halting for vestments and so forth, at his Church of Our Lady 55 miles from where he was. He had returned by the Saturday. On the Sunday, he had to travel 35 miles south to give the Last Sacraments ; then again
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go miles, and was back on the Friday night. He was, say the records, ' a very mortified man '. He needed to be. I will risk saying here, what without the stimulus of such examples might be an impertinence, that I hope that all we priests, in our soft English billets, may never once grumble, never once hesitate, never shirk, may once and for all put behind ourselves even one moment's attention to personal ease, let alone comfort ; may blush to co-exist even with the memory of men like these, if we do not live according to their example. With the ' memory', did I say ? Why trouble to remember merely, when contemporary with ourselves there exists the diocese of Geraldton, five times the size of Ireland —and containing how many priests do you suppose ? Six. And when Dr. Clune, who was to be my host, and who became first archbishop after his succession to the see of Perth in 1925, has even now to take three Sundays to visit one parish, and on each Sunday to go to three stations, each group of three necessitating the travelling of 200 miles ? And still have not finished the parish ! Indeed he needs to be inspired by the redemptive ideals of that Redemptorist order which he ultimately joined. Ido but mention the Kimberley Vicariate, a district of 120,000 square miles, which contains a population of 5,000 exclusive of Aborigines.
Wliile I was approaching Perth, I tried to study, in documents, what I would never see with my eyes. Archbishop Clune has wished religious instruction to be on a very high level. An annual conference of religious who teach was, therefore, arranged and a very remarkable syllabus compiled. But above all was I enthralled by the correspondence classes set going on behalf of the children in those far-distant back-blocks in 1923. Some 1,500 children were thus at once instructed. Typed letters were sent : books were lent free lest some families should be too poor to buy, too shy to beg. A Chief Inspector of Schools asked, I gather, if he might copy the system. 'lt is the only private work of its kind in the Commonwealth', he wrote, ' and the finest thing in the West'. There are quarterly examinations, though the chief one is at Christmas. Convents, and Sodalities,
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adopt children ; solid ties of affection are formed ; lasting religious consequences are brought about. In the past there have been whole landslides into apostacy. Whole townlets are full of Irish names borne by families that are not only no more Catholic, but bitter against all religion. This tragedy which would extract tears of blood from any priestly heart, may, by the admirable and self-sacrificing and persevering system of Correspondence instruction, be avoided.*
I cannot but synopsise with ruthless brevity the account of the Bushies' Summer School of 1926-7. Boys arrived from the Bush on December 22 and 23 ; these days were spent in preliminary arrangements and the provision of such meals as should anticipate home-sickness. (Sorry ; but that really is what the report half suggests !) On Christmas Eve, after a clear instruction from His Grace that the fortnight was to be a school as well as a holiday, the boys were classified for religious instruction, and then turned loose upon the beach. Many had never seen the water . . . such was their wild enthusiasm that they rushed in fully dressed. . . . This provided a lesson : on Christmas afternoon, under the supervision of the Cottesloe Life Saving Club, the boys went in again, but only after a photo of the murderous shark that had recently provided a tragedy, had been exhibited to warn lads who might be tempted out too far. The exhibitor of the shark, who appeared in the photo, was taken by some of the lads as being the man whom the shark had eaten. Impossible simplicity ? By no means. They had read of Jonas. . . . On December 26, the real work of the school began, namely, religious instruction, duly varied with cricket, swimming, sports, learning of hymns, instruction in the rosary, Benediction (which many of them had never seen before), and meals. I put meals last because on more than one occasion boys protested at the dinner-bell's robbing them of an extra few minutes' class. Moreover, O cynic, the meals were excellent.
. . . There were four squads of boys, and I know not how many
•Since this is in print, I find this clearly summarised in M. McMahon’s Perth Plan for Teaching Religion by Correspondence (Brown and Nolan).
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Teaching Sisters devoted their own holidays to instructing them. They were rewarded —they had to set aside large rooms in their schools to enable the boys to rehearse in their free time what they had listened to during class. These boys—loo in number, from the whole wheat-belt, group-settlements included, were true-born Australian, but also Irish, English, Scot ; they ranged from 8 years old to 17. They slept in a dormitory built to be a ball-room. .. . Here is their time-table—6, rise, dress, morning-prayers ; 6.30, parade and physical culture ; 6.45, to Cottesloe Church and Mass at 7 ; 8, breakfast; 8.45, medical inspection; 9, study; 9.30, instruction; 10.15, ‘expressionwork ’ in Christian doctrine ; 10.45, lunch ; 11, Bible history ; 11.30, object lessons on the Mass, in the Church ; 12, hymns ; 12.30, dinner ; 1, recreation ; 6, tea ; 6.30, Rosary ; 8, indoor games ; 8.30, night prayers and bed. On New Year’s Eve, 34 boys made their first confession. On New Year’s Day, Mass was in the open, at the Loreto Lourdes-grotto ; and next day, the dress-circle of the Claremont Cinema was kindly offered free to the boys, many of whom had never seen the ‘ movies ’ before, just as many had never ‘ listened in ’, as they did each night. January 3 was a First Communion day. There was a kind of tour round ‘ Catholic Perth ’, almost like what I, too, was hoping to make ; there was a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament ; and a Confirmation, preceded by a Retreat-day. On January 11, they went home. I see three names connected with this event that should not be forgotten—Mr. Molloy’s, who put the Brighton Hotel at the boys’ disposal as domicile ; Fr. McMahon, who inaugurated the whole scheme ; and the Archbishop’s, who was its better-than-fairy-godfather. There are many more names, of nuns, of priests, of doctors, of laymen and ladies who co-operated, that I noted as I read ; impossible to chronicle them here : enough to say, that I envy those lads, and wish I had been brought up, body, mind, and soul, as they have been.
With the highest of hopes, and the warmest of sympathy, then, did I enter this archdiocese, albeit very sleepy. . . .
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For a moment I was rather disconcerted at being told, forthwith after my shower-bath, that I was to go to lunch with a number of ‘ old-boys ’ from various Jesuit schools in other parts of Australia, Ireland, and England. The date and hour were chosen because one of them was leaving Perth almost immediately. Sleepy as I was after the Tuesday to Friday journey, the kindness of the thought touched me so much that I enjoyed that lunch, lobster included, very sincerely ; and it is but one more instance of Australian hospitality and loyalty. A drive was then suggested ; I welcomed the notion ; but found that I was nodding in the car, and thinking little else save that to-morrow or the next day I shall appreciate this view of the Swan estuary which provides the end of my journey with a scene of lovely water and hills not out of keeping with those of Wellington and Sydney—oh how long ago already ! When the car turned, I seemed to perceive after a while that it was bearing away from the city. Blinking like an owl, I asked if we were not going home ? Well, I was told, we are first going to see Clontarf. I confess I sighed. But after a longish drive through sparse bush glorified by the astonishing Christmas-tree—it has great tufts or clusters of a crocus-yellow flower, crocus, combined with every splendour of nasturtium-gold and orange ; they say it is a parasite and they threaten to cut the lot of it down —we came to so admirable an institution that I woke up wide.
St. Joseph’s School, Clontarf, is on the Canning River, whither the Christian Brothers came in 1901, after caring for the Catholic orphan boys of West Australia elsewhere for four years before that. Enough to say that, from incomplete records, it is clear that over 200 of St. Joseph’s boys served in the A.1.F., and among these was the man whom the Times called the ‘ super-V.C.’, Laurence McCarthy, also Croix de Guerre. As for the house, it is a huge place of local stone (Cottlesloe), based on sensible slightly flattened arches and a verandah-storey above them. Much if not most of the ground between the house and the river has been reclaimed, I think, by the successive generations of boys. One of the first things I was taken to see, after the house
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itself, was the band. You expect boys to make a noise ; you expect Australian boys to make a vehement noise ; and in a Brothers’ School, you expect precision in time and tune. But I confess I hadn’t expected so much sensitiveness along with brilliance as I heard at Clontarf. You could see that a lot must be put down to the Bandmaster ; but I should be surprised if two or three of those boys hadn’t a real spark of genius in them ; and they were all responding to the music—after all, it was Gilbert and Sullivan ; and anyone who can’t respond to that had better take to gardening. These boys do also take to gardening and also learn to manage horses and cows and also carpentry and make boots. I liked to watch them at that —barefooted youngsters in shorts and jerseys and splendidly sturdy. I gathered that those 140 boys stayed there till about 14 ; thence they proceed to the great Catholic training-station at Mullewa, 70 miles from Perth. There Christian Brothers and Benedictine priests minister to them. England should recruit, and share in financing, this excellent scheme. It will save time if I mention here what I saw quite at the end of my stay, namely the Castledare House which, it seemed to me, was the apple of the Archbishop’s eye. But then, during my many conversations with His Grace, I began to feel there were so many apples of that sort that his outlook on the world implied a regular orchard. . . . However. Mgr. Newsome, once more to quote Besford Court, has proved what fine stuff many so-called ‘defectives’ are. Cruel nick-name, when half the time the deficiency is first in the parent, not to mention the environment. An overworked and sometimes faddy State is apt to go round institutions and pick out children they judge to be defective, and if the official organisation be not absolutely perfect, these little boys or girls may find themselves housed along with epileptics and perverts of all sorts. Hence the probable degeneration of the child, the distress of the better sort of parent, and the compilation of perfectly misleading statistics. As for me, I state bluntly that I don’t believe that anyone can really look after that sort of child save Catholics ; and that they can, and do, because they start with a true view of
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the soul, its immortality, and its Christian-wise infinite value. With what delight then did I hear of the building of Castledare, an institution for boys who would not wholly profit by the training they might get at Clontarf, and would need special treatment. Eighty-three acres have been bought not very far from Clontarf; an existing house is being adapted and more is being built. Besides the house for the Brothers, and another for nurses, there are three large buildings for different categories of boys, and workshops and so forth. On the sandy soil, anything, they say, can be grown. I hope so. It entered into my very soul, not to mention my shoes. Well, in my soul it produced a sturdy crop of hopes. I would like to be frank and mention two things. The first is, that much attention is being given to the psychology of the boy : that is good. The second is, once more, that in a ' new ' country (no one can blame me for using the adjective applied a thousand times in my hearing, by Australians, to Australia) there is a very natural wish to be ' up to date ' and a consequent tendency to succumb to the European fad of the moment. It would be ungracious of me to allude to the faddy suggestions that ' experts ' had made about Castledare. Some were very funny indeed. One would have involved the cutting down of the only decent tree in the immediate vicinity, for the sake of getting a glint of the Canning river to inspire the boys while they were eating. It would have involved moreover putting the refectory about half a mile from the kitchen. Another plan involved putting expensive grass in a place where it would have bred innumerable insects when wet, and have been horrible to sit upon when burnt—but to be sat upon was the alleged object of it, that boys might there tell one another stories. . . . God help us ! Those stories . . . ! However, wise compromises have everywhere been reached, unless obstinate refusals, no less wise, have been interposed. Castledare, when completed, looks as if a sensible Government department and a wise Archbishop will have profited by all that is good in modern scientific method, and have steered clear of fads. I am not at all sure but that Besford
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Court is not giving Australia the benefit of its rich experience.
Not that these two houses exhaust the activity of the Christian Brothers in Perth itself. They have a large school in the heart of the town, for boarders and for day-boys alike. ‘ln the heart of the town.’ But it is to emigrate. Just as in England, so apparently in Australia the modern parent, upborne on pious gusts of paternal or maternal instinct, is liable to swoop down at any moment on its offspring and carry it off to cinemas. Why not arrest and asphyxiate such parents ? In a Democracy you cannot. A pity. Why should they send their boys to school if they forthwith propose to make hay of their schooling ? Apparendy if the modern schoolmaster resists this haymaking, the wretched boy is liable to be pitchforked altogether out of that scholastic field into some place where the intellectual husbandman will be less scrupulous. In other words, he is taken away and put where no one much minds what happens to him. The present school-buildings will be put to a good Catholic use ; but I think, and I hope, the present boys’ school will be put right outside the city. Better playing fields, for one thing ; though I confess that I was tremendously impressed by the athletic records and trophies that I saw all over the walls of that school. After all, the river is near at hand. It was my privilege to speak there first to those who had just been confirmed, and to most of the school at the same time ; but since the older boys were perforce away at a match (which they triumphantly won), I was asked to talk to them separately, and I assure you that it is always pleasure undiluted to talk to older Australian boys. They listen ; and they understand : they laugh : they are modest : they are frank.
If I may, without impertinence, again give a word of advice to West Australian (or any other) parents, it would be : Give your boy, and his schooling, a proper chance. Leave the boy at school so long as you can manage it. Do not take him away at fifteen. If they leave at fifteen, they will not have profited by the school as school , and that is not fair to it ; and they will not have profited
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by it as Catholic school, and that is very unfair to everyone concerned. If your boys become careless about religion later on, do not too easily allude to ‘ enormous distances ’, remoteness of churches and sparseness of priests. After all, more than one half of the population of this State—and I suppose of any Australian State—is or soon will be within one city, and no one must allude to distances or lack of priests. Intellectually, and spiritually, it is unfair to masters, and to boys, to remove them just in the middle of their development for the sake of getting some small financial return. East London is gangrened by the madness of parents who won’t allow their boys so much as an apprenticeship because they insist on getting the extra shilling or two forthwith. Blindness to the whole of the real future ! But something similar is to be found among much more ‘ educated ’ people. Wringing wet after my sermon and brief ‘ talk ’, I sat discussing this topic with the genial and wideminded Superior of that school, and he re-convinced an already convinced man as to the iniquity of removing boys from school before they were half done with ! He saw what any sound ‘ educationist ’ sees, the world over.
Perth is lucky enough to possess two Mary Ward Convents, in one of which I said Mass when I felt well enough. Its garden looks down to the water and is full of hibiscus and weepingwillows. What I liked so much was the shelf of books which I saw in my breakfast-room explaining the music of the great composers. It is clear that these Australian Convents don’t just teach music as an elegant frill to education, but use it to open a whole new world to the pupil. I confess I couldn’t read much of those books. . . . Nuns expect you to eat a breakfast such as I had supposed would suffice a battalion of coal-miners for a week, and several came to invigilate my doing so. . . . I remember a Reverend Mother in a convent near Dublin telling me that the Sister-Cook had spent the previous day in tears because I hadn’t eaten half the porridge, eggs, bacon and chops that she had sent up to me, and had despaired of suiting the British palate. ... I had to explain that I was a
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degenerate scion of that race, and that it was an affair not of nationality but of sheer relation between capacity and bulk. Amount. Volume. Mass. . . . Anyhow, I loved that little convent and its cool chapel into which the river breeze whispered its way. But further out is the Loreto Boarding-School. Keen interest, as always, in the Beatification of Mary Ward. In these Loreto Convents, her calm, aristocratic, spiritual features always gaze on you from a place of honour. How I want to see, before I die, a halo round them ! Here, at last, I looked down, from a high verandah, on a red-flowering gum in bloom. A dome of red like the red of red-hot metal seen not quite in the dark. Just a film above its redness to cool it. Like the red of red-chestnut flowers without that touch of cream that they have. A warm yet gentle red. A dome of it. Like the love of a rather shy saint. Intensely hot, yet veiled. And these wise nuns have surrounded their garden-centre with fountains. The one thing I regret about such fountains is, that they are primarily utilitarian and therefore sprays. They fling forth their veil of water all around. I understand the point of that ; but I do regret the beautiful slick jet that water can make, with the moment when the delicate liquid stem hesitates, pauses, and then turns over upon itself and falls in large and crystal drops, tracing a clear design. The arabesques of falling water ! However, those whirling mists were very exquisite, too. A chat to these dear nuns about Liturgy, supplementing the one on the same subject to the day-school in the city. Nuns ! They give you no chance of repeating yourself. You say something to one community, and then queer wireless communications steal outwards to all the others and repeat what you have said. So you mustn’t be lazy, but you must be different each time. Remorseless ingenuity of these ladies. . . .
I have already said how kind a welcome I received on my two visits to Fremantle gaol, and how excellent I thought its bootmaking department and its fortnightly News-letter which, I understand, goes the round of the West Australian prisons. I still think it assumes too much knowledge on the part of its
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readers. If it doesn't, I should like to meet the English gaol-ful who would appreciate it !
It gives me pleasure to think that I was allowed to speak at a concert in the Theatre Royal on behalf of the various works of the Brothers. It was on a Sunday night and I understand that no Sunday entertainment is allowed to begin till well after the hour for services. Anyhow that theatre was packed. About seventy small boys sang from the stage, dressed in red cassocks, and cottas, so far too good to be true that I had no difficulty in translating them back into their shorts and jerseys and bare feet—at least, I hope I’m not mixing up two sets of boys. Anyhow they sang briskly and well. A young convert violinist played Schubert’s Ave Maria with a perception of what Schubert meant, that no one else, whom I have heard, could have improved on. A charming Sydney lady conducted much of the singing with a control that almost anyone might have envied ; and a vivacious Italian, her husband, who brought all the gaiety of Naples into that theatre, was singing. And an Australian officer, first known in a sappers’ camp in England and re-met in Sydney and again here, was among the audience.
I had a couple of sermons in the Perth Cathedral and a talk to women and one to men ; and the way those Catholics turned up on sweltering hot nights was a lesson ! And another little sermon in the Marist Church at Fremantle —lucky parish, equipped with six priests, so it seemed ! But what a Cathedral Perth is going to be ! Creamy stone, which can hardly degenerate in this air, and a very majestic Gothic as to style. Unless I err, Catholics were given this ground for a song, because it was thought ‘ waste ’ ; the city has grown in that direction, and the Catholic hill, crowned with the Cathedral and clothed with schools and convents, is what you see from every angle. The old Cathedral is now as it were dovetailed into the new building. I would give much to see it finished.
But the best day after all, along with its vigil, was not spent even in that Cathedral. The eve included a visit to the vast Good Shepherd Convent with its laundry, its peacocks and its
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canaries. The heroism of Good Shepherd Nuns is such that it has to be everywhere the same, so that one Good Shepherd Convent is very like another. But the next morning, Saturday, December Bth, began with Mass at the Mercy Convent hard by the Cathedral. Forthwith after it, a car to whisk me away to the Little Sisters of the Poor. It was some festa of theirs —I think the renewal of those vows which bind them to the service of God’s poor. And no sooner was breakfast over than the Authority that none might dispute said : ‘You have now to preach to them. . . . ’ Well, ‘as the Spirit shall give me utterance ’, I hope, for nothing is prepared. But I remembered how, long ago at Aix, in that scorched and fragrant Provence, my first experience of heroic Catholic charity had been provided by the Litde Sisters. I could almost re-hear, in these tremulous aged voices singing the Benediction without organ or harmonium to support them, those old French voices, gradually sinking down the scale as they intoned their ‘Jesus, Marie, Joseph ! je vous donne mon coeur et mon ame.’ . . . All those old men and women that as a youth I knew, are dead. Generation after generation of Little Sisters arise to succour those who all the while are falling towards death. I love the Little Sisters, even if some of their customs make me growl. ... At Gibraltar, two (I anticipate) came on board. For some reason I was sulking, and had refused to go on shore. So I met them. They sat disconsolate —the stewards were asleep and the larders were locked and they had collected no meat but only a vast sack of flour and some heavy loaves and one or two kickshaws. So we made a little procession round the ship and collected quite a lot in coins. By that time the flour-sack had not only covered me with white, but had made me realise that these little mouselike nuns couldn’t possibly carry it home. On the other hand, their cart wasn’t allowed to come in to that part of the quay. On yet another hand, I as a civilian wasn’t allowed to set foot on that quay either, else I’d have carried it round for them. But 10, a military officer of incomparable dignity, complete with car. ‘ Sir ’, said I : ‘ forgive my butting in. But these ladies are.
a
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as you see, in a quandary. Do I venture to beg you to give them and their sack a lift in your car to the place where their own conveyance is ? I do.' The astonished officer, gentle in the best tradition of the army, consented freely. But I think—l half think —that after all an order was issued permitting the Little Sisters' cart to come right round on to the prohibited quay. I am sure that the fate of Gibraltar has not been imperilled. . . . Forgive this digression.
After the Little Sisters we called at the Redemptorist Monastery, and then went straight to Paradise. Paradise was the St. Vincent's Home for orphans and foundlings. There appeared to be quite a lot of buildings, at last among olive-trees. It was sheer Holy-Land. The grass was covered with small children who raised shrill cheers at the sight of their Archbishop. You sat down on the grass too, and they crawled all over you — fragrant, clean small creatures, and even in the midst of one's delight one couldn't but observe with relief that they had all been bathed. Thence to the wards of the tiniest —for this first crowd had been quite aged ; 4to 7, maybe. Here were the real babies in their cots beneath mosquito nets, some hardly a month old, with their fixed frown of pain—had I ever seen babies with haggard fallen cheeks ? Never, I think, till now. Some of these looked eighty. Outside that tragic ward, rather older infants were crawling about the floor. Affable folk. Thence, to a ward for mothers where the cradle hangs at the foot of the bed so that the mother can kick it gently and set it swinging without herself arising. . . . Not but what she will creep out and get the baby with her into the bed. Then she drops it on the floor. . . . Oh well, perhaps that doesn't happen often, and no doubt it bounces. But a mother does want to have her baby right there, and what a hint this is as to the management of our homes for girl-mothers and their little ones. I cannot see that they may legitimately be separated. Divine St. Vincent's ! Our Lord and His Mother were walking everywhere among the olives, and sitting in those wards. . . . Who could fail to perceive their presence ?
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And thence to the great hospital of St. John of God, which is doubling its enormous bulk. Again and again I noticed that the outstanding masses of masonry that you see from around Perth, are the Catholic institutions. That morning I managed to visit half the men patients—it was as good as the war ; and in the afternoon, having seen a private hospital, we got back to St. John of God and preached at a clothing and saw the rest of the men. This was a divinely happy day. And to think of Dollis Hill, and the Ealing Home for totally disabled soldiers and sailors, and St. John and St. Elizabeth’s . . . why is one such a fool as not to go there oftener ? London, too, has its divinely happy spots, though they are not so visible.
I slept, these nights, on the great terrace-roof of the palace, under stars that I loved to look at. The last night came. What an incomparable ten days. Lots of fun. We had watched some wresding . . . hardly so captivating as the Melbourne match, because I could not convince myself that all of it was wresding. And we had seen some boxing, open-air boxing, with the rather resentful stars competing with the blaze of light concentrated on the ring. Incredible number of Catholics in this sport. . . . An old S.J. boy beat a local hero —his first question, on arriving from Melbourne to Perth was, where the nearest Catholic Church was. And I had swum deliciously in the sea at night, Jupiter making a path of brilliance in the water, so large was he and moonlike. Sharks come within 40 yards and in 4 feet of water, or less ; so you have your chance of excitement. But none arrived ; only the long, sonorous rollers with their portentous back-drag. And I had seen friends—poor Dick ! You couldn’t come from Geraldton, because you couldn’t get leave ; and you couldn’t get leave because some of your mates had had it, and, in their innocent lightheartedness, hadn’t returned from it. . . . But it was your brother I saw at Kalgoorlie. And you, J.0.M., came with your wife and one small son nearly 300 miles to see me for five minutes—luckily we could extend the five minutes into half a morning, and you almost made me like beer, in that leafy courtyard of a little
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Perth hotel. ... I wish I could have come to Kulin ; but you saw it was impossible. And I met an ex-bailiff of Beaumont College and his three daughters. And a very distinguished old Beaumont boy, who feasted me at Parliament House. That is a fine place ; but if ever the Government of Australia is unified, what will become of it ? Will it so much as be finished ? What will become of its magnificent carpets, woven with alternate Crown and Swan, so that wherever you go, you perforce trample the symbols of State and of Empire underfoot ? And at Government House I found, in its charming host and hostess, very old friends —parental, so to say, if not hitherto mine personally. Yes, lots of friendship. But I have a wrist-watch that I hadn’t when I came to Perth. It is inscribed : ‘ From Three West Australian Friends.’ My host-in-chief is certain of my unforgetting gratitude. I needn’t enlarge upon it. I have never been sincerer in my life. And Fr. X and Fr. Z ? Not for me to speculate upon futura contingentia, nor the possible incidence of purple. . . . But what is one to make of people whose names won’t fit into Limericks ? Well, if they won’t, they won’t. But there is little else those two priests didn’t do, to make an actually contingent traveller happy.
So I stare at these stars, that I shall perhaps never see again. Perhaps I shall never again sleep on a roof like this one. It is hard to see how I shall ever again experience kindness like this kindness. I don’t know why, but I have felt almost more at home in Perth than anywhere. Directly I have said that, I regret it; for it may make some of my friends elsewhere feel sorry. It may make them feel that they didn’t make me feel at home. They did. I never felt anything but at home, in Australia. Perhaps it is just that when the time to leave has come, one clings more tenaciously to one’s terrain. For I hold that human life is right to cling to its earth, provided that it is always ready to be uprooted in favour of its Pilgrimage. lam about to be uprooted. Right. I don’t protest. But who can be angry with me for clinging to this West Australian earth ? Queer human nature. I am homesick for England ; but I
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shall be, and already am, homesick for Australia. ‘ Vitam sine tcrmino nobis donet in Patria.’ There certainly is but one ‘ abiding City ’. Probably it is one’s job to be homesick for everywhere and most of all for Heaven. There, no distances. No railway fares interfering. No hurry, nor that awful fear that you may not be making the most of a meeting with old friends. Well then, the red flowering gums, and the electriclilac jacaranda, and the golden Christmas trees, and the faint wavering smoke trees, and the wrestling and boxing, and the sick and the children and the prisoners, and all this kindness — and the last night of Australian stars. .. . Good-night, and may we waken happily.
EPILOGUE
Ships swift as a wing, or as the mind of man.—Homer : Odyssey vii, 36. When a man has travelled over much earth, and in intimate thought he muses, and his mind leaps : ' Ah, were I there ! or there . . . ! ' and many whither strains . . .—Homer : Iliad xv, 80.
When December 10 arrived, friends both from Perth and from Fremantle and further came to the quay to say good-bye. When the ship moved, and the last streamer snapped, and I could not distinguish any more the waving hands, I stopped just long enough to salute the gable of the Oblate Church and the long roof of the Fremantle Gaol that I still could see, and a bay of peculiarly pure green water that I had noticed each time I had been down there, and then retired to my cabin far too sad to watch the Australian coast fade on the horizon. Does anything precious ever come to one in life, without one’s saying to one’s self, afterwards, ‘ Why did J make so little of it ? Why did such good moments slip through my hands so unappreciated ? ’ I had been happy beyond my dreams ; but if only I’d been a little pluckier and less indolent, more unselfish, more wide-awake, less shy, more ready to ask questions . . . ! Well, you know the sort of thing one always does think. One gets a little angry, in order not to soften into melancholy ; and I faced the ship and the voyage with half a scowl. To start with, the wretched thing again had only one funnel. And let no one jeer because a multiplicity of funnels impresses me. I share this impressionability with the masses. When two new ships were to be visited at (I think) Sydney, swarms of people came to tee the one with two funnels and very few the ship with only one. Moral, recommended to shipping companies : Always have a dummy funnel, however many real ones you require.
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Now look what a fool one is. I had practically said to myself : I will be a hermit, on this voyage. I will talk to no one. I cannot speak the language of Lascar or of Goan, anyway : I am sure not to hit it off with passengers or with officers. I will sulk. . . . Such was the consequence of leaving the beloved continent. And behold, an Australian lady, wellknown in Sydney, kept the whole of our table cheery : no one could have been more edifying than the other Australians who came to my daily Mass ; the Lascars ended by giving me a daily and broad-grinned salute ; the Goans were dark angels (well, perhaps they took a holiday once in a way ; but on the whole they were angelic . . .) and as for officers, engineers, electricians, wireless operators, and even the meek, innocent, sober and hard labouring cadets—well, as for these gentlemen, they gave me the best holiday I've ever had in my life ; and though I thought I was very well when I came on board, they announced with one voice that I was unrecognisable at the end of the trip. What exactly they meant by that, may not have to be probed too deeply ; any improvement, in any case, must be put down to them ; and I like to think that a hilarious time became productive of much more than mere hilarity, and has issued into lasting friendships.
However, between Australia and Ceylon, there was plenty of time for reflection.* I began to ask myself seriously a question to which, so far, I have been shirking more than a mere allusion.
* This is where I begin, along with you, to remember how a relative of mine, Aunt Maud, for years had longed to go abroad . . . She often felt that she would choke if she remained at Basingstoke. In spite of her husband, and even the Vicar, she booked her passage to Bombay. But after scarce a week, alack, a cable came to call her back, announcing that her daughter Kate proposed to wed a plumber’s mate. None the less, back home in Basingstoke to-day, Aunt Maud still dreams about Bombay. She lives on curric ; she weaves garlands for the cow ; she calls her butler her ‘ boy ’ ; she has married off her daughter to a ‘ pukka sahib.’ I love to hear Aunt Maud enlarge on problems of the British Raj. On questions that concern the East, her talk is a perpetual feast. And who so qualified to speak ? She’s lived in India—for a week ! [Communicated : C.C.M.]
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Is Australia a place to which I would care to recommend anyone to go ? In other words : What about Immigration ? I began by saying to myself that the question anyway was wrongly put; for, you can no more talk about ‘Australia ’ than you can about ‘ Russia and that is a lesson I was taught long ago by a British Minister in Poland. I don’t mean that Australians in the various part of their continent have nothing in common. They manifestly have ; and may they have more ; and may there be no influences to set one group against another, whether the group be formed by locality, or national origin, or finance, or politics, or religion. Nor do I mean merely that one great town differs from another as I felt that it did —I said, that the ‘ feel ’ of Brisbane could not possibly be mixed up with that of Sydney or Melbourne. But rather as Russia differs within itself almost so much as Iceland does from Italy, it seems to me necessary to remember how different a proposition life would ususally be in North Queensland, in Bendigo, and in Perth. It would be unfair, were a man to ask : ‘ Shall Igo to Australia ? ’ to say either Yes or No even from the limited point of view of which part he was asking about.
Then I thought that quite so important as the sort of place to which a man might want to go, was, the sort of man who wanted to go to it. And ‘ sorts ’of men themselves fell into two departments —in fact, three. English-speaking Europeans : other Europeans : non-Europeans.
But first, do I think that Australians and Englishmen are likely ever to get on together ? Yes, if they understand one another. . . . And I forthwith acknowledge that Australian and Englishman may not always understand one another easily. I expect they have in common all that non-Latin races possess, such as a reluctance to think things out clearly, and a habit of moving by massive lunges of instinct rather than by reason. The Irishman, like the Frenchman, is more logical than the Englishman, so that having obtained a premiss from which to reason, he will argue a thing out more remorselessly than the English are inclined to do. If the premiss be sound, so much
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the better the conclusion. But supposing one starts from a premiss that is inspired by passion, as for example the French very often do with regard to Germany, or the Rumanians as regards Hungary, or the Poles as regards Russia, the more logical all that follows may be, the worse will be the conclusion, because the original passion-inspired premiss may not have been reasonable at all. But we need not linger over what is common to us, though I think that the vague English climate and scenery will anyhow produce a different imagination than that born of the vehement Australian sun, the vivid sky and the simplification of so much of the view. Australia struck me now and again as a very successful placard might : I mean, in a placard, the design has to be simplified so far as possible, and the colouring should be intense and without modulations. But the Englishman is a mass of tints that shade off into one another mentally ; he lives in a world of half-tones and far prefers a hint to a definition. One needn’t argue about this, because the whole of French and English literature can be put side by side to prove it : moreover, the Frenchman makes the perfect lawyer, and the Englishman has created the most complicated legal system imaginable — only less complicated and hazy-edged than the Bridsh Constitution itself. But in the Englishman, again, a mass of queer semi-virtues has accumulated itself, which issue into reticence about all that he cares for most; into desires to hide what he holds sacred ; into many queer forms of modesty. I say ‘ queer ’, because it may imply its opposite, apparent bumptiousness. Even the superciliousness of the ‘ cultured ’ often is a mask for a fear of compromising themselves. Above all, the Englishman loathes being compromised ! Committed to something. That is why the current brand of religion suits the English nation as a whole so well —or rather did, until the war (I think) simply forced us to ask ourselves whether really we believed in anything that could help us over so bad a patch. But as a rule, the ‘ gentieman ’ disguises his emotions and still more thickly anything (like religious conviction or surmise) that is deeper than just emotion : the uneducated average
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man has never learnt any catechism and has not even forgotten a set of words in which at a crisis he might express his faith, so he, too, remains inarticulate : as for the scholarly person whether clerical or lay, he likes to substitute (as Fr. Knox nearly said) ‘ Does one not feel ? ’ for ‘ I believe I must confess that in his heart the average decent Englishman, that is, the enormous mass of the people, loathes and disavows this pretence, as he well knows it is. But that will not prevent him, in all other matters save religion and perhaps his pedigree, boasting loudly, as a sort of smoke-screen. Mere shyness is, however, not the virtue of modesty at all, but a lack of simplicity and indeed a form of conceit : yet I understand it, for I suffer from shyness myself, acutely !
Having said this much about my own race (which is little compared to what I could say for good or ill !) I recall that, as I have already mentioned, I was told that I would find Australia * materialist I was also warned by several journalists that I must be careful what I said, because I would find Australians
‘ sensitive (The two things seemed to clash : because material objects can’t feel : but pass on). Finally, before lectures I was sometimes told that the audience would accept any amount of flattery. I have said what I thought of Australian ‘ materialism ’ ; and, if anything, I felt I wanted to cheer up the poor ‘ materialist ’ by reminding him that the Catholic Faith holds that ‘ matter ’ is perfectly good, and that Christ was fully Man, with flesh, blood, instincts and all the rest of our bodily equipment; and that all that part of creation only becomes spoilt for us, and by us, when we turn it into an idol, prefer it before everything else, and in short let it run away with us. I should say that the Australian does exactly that —when things go wrong with him ; he is run away with. He seems to me more apt to blaze up into a sin, than we, who are more apt to slop into one. What I should be afraid of is any kind of theory of materialism growing up, among the educated, and the triumph of go-as-you-please behaviour among the less instructed. If this happened, I fear that the passion for sport would tilt
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away from the actual sport, towards mere gambling, of which (here too) there is plenty apart from sport, to the injury very often of justice, since money is lost which is owed elsewhere, for example to wives and children ; and if money is chucked away, the only plausible excuse for not having any children has to be cancelled out. Again, I fear that the passion for drink might reach the proportions of a national danger, and then drastic remedies which never ought to have so much as to be mentioned —like Prohibition, would become serious questions. Finally, in some countries, like France, the peasantry display ‘ materialism ’ by working themselves half dead and hoarding every halfpenny (all these are generalisations to which I could myself quote contrary instances) : in others, by wishing to be comfortable without earning. lam impenitent in my belief that the human heart deserves comfort ; but lam very reluctant to agree that we ought to be so very comfortable, anyhow while we are young. I hold that every atom of comfortableness ought at least to be earned, and I apply this to the millionaire’s son quite as much as to the navvy. A clever writer has lately said that we have improved in England to this extent —no young man is ashamed of having to do a job. In the United States, she proceeds, things have advanced to the point of a girl, even, being ashamed if she has not got a job. ... If one does not work up to one’s maximum, in amount and in quality, I hold that one softens. And if one softens in one way, one softens in all—in sexual morality, for example ; and while sexual explosions due to vehement passions are a pity, sexual slackness means the ruin of individual and country very fast.
In short, while I presume there are plenty of materialists in Australia —and I don’t like the selection I met —I haven’t the least feeling that Australians are materialists by nature. Rather the opposite. ‘ There must be something else, some’ow ’, seems to me to express a very general, lovable and tragic state of mind. For, if there is no one to explain what the ‘ Something Else ’ is, that unsatisfied yearning certainly will harden into cynicism or melt into sentimentalism, and I’m not sure but that I prefer
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the former. At the risk of seeming impertinent, I will confess to having thought, both during the war and during ray recent visit, that I discerned a kind of —dare I say ‘ wistfulness ’, anyhow gentleness, rather than a fundamental materialism in nearly all of the hardest of ‘ hard cases ’ that I met. I like that expression ! It can mean such very different things ! But if the average Australian develops without any Christian teaching to soften him in one sense and to toughen him in another—well, not for me to speculate upon his future.
As to that ‘ sensitiveness ’, as I suggested, the true materialist does not feel —that is, he doesn’t feel any of the more delicate things that the human heart and soul can feel. Coarse sensation, yes : what you would like a proper man to feel, no. You can be sensitive when you are conscious that you have true and valuable qualities, and it hurts you if they are not recognised. But I would not like a man to be only sensitive even in that better sense. I would like him to have the courage to listen to and make use of criticism. That would mean real strength. It may be that an artist who combines extreme sensitiveness with great strength, is all but a Saint. At anyrate, a saint does so combine them. Happily it isn’t my business to criticise. Yet I couldn’t succumb to the so-called necessary flattery. I respect myself (I hope without self-delusion !) too much to sink to cadging applause ; and above all, I respect my warmlyloved Australian friends far too highly to suppose that they would really like me to deliver such very fifth-rate goods as flattery is. I really think that while I know that an audience will momentarily swallow almost any amount of bad butter (though they may feel rather bilious afterwards), my memories of war-time friends freed me from any temptation to administer such doses. I remember that if I wanted a thing done, I might sometimes be told to go further, so to say ; in which case one knew exactly where one stood. But if the digger in question, even when accompanying his consent with growlings many and hoarse, did consent, one was quite sure that the thing would be done. One never was let down. The same couldn’t be said about
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everyone. Hence I believe in the danger of materialism, which I think is so far the characteristic of quite a minority and not true to the Australian nature yet : I have but a very partial quarrel, if any, with the sensitiveness : and I think that a request for flattery would be but likely to elicit a smile from me together with an expression of my inability to provide any. I can only hope that these paragraphs haven’t been personal to the point of bad taste : I think I said most of these things in public ; and I don’t remember getting into trouble. . . . Anyhow, my friendships certainly weren’t made on a basis of materialism, for they were mostly Catholic friendships, and even when they weren’t, materialism didn’t underlie them. There had to be some sensitiveness on both sides, for friendship to exist at all ; and I got much more pleasure from affectionately chaffing my friends than I could possibly have got from the results of flattery, and I think I got my due share of chaffing back. I remember that if anyone did get a little —well, assertive, I had only to say ‘ Reahlly ? ’ in an Oxford voice to get my neck nearly screwed off.
Any man, whatever his nationality, who should choose to go to a land not his own, ought (banal as it is to say so) to be a man worth having in his new home. I doubt whether anyone in England regards any other country as a dumping-ground for its undesirables. We must make the most of our undesirables, even if it be not much. Oddly enough, the only official I have known who was very careless about passing individual emigrants, was a member of the country to which they were going. Let us say this, if you like—There may be carelessness in subordinates, who may be unfit for their job because lazy or lacking in insight ; but there is no policy of ‘ dumping ’ on the part of those responsible for solving the emigration problem. It would be incredible that there should be so ; for they would not only be rendering their tenure of office precarious, to put it at the lowest, and again, doing harm to a land they are concerned for, since they regard it as part of the Empire they are serving, but finally, they would be reduplicating their own problem since their emigrants would
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return, or remain to make the whole question of emigration unpopular in the place whither they had gone. Still, to take everything into account, I consider that a judgment is very hard to reach. Thus it is notorious that men, who have been ne’er-do-wells at home, have done amazingly well in a quite new environment : all their entanglements had been cut through with one blow. Then, with all the good will in the world, a prospective emigrant may find that he had been unable to ‘ imagine ’, and cannot fit into, the new life in which he really meant to do well. And last, after examining the preliminary argument : ‘ Look at the crimes committed by immigrants ! ’ : I have seemed to find that as a matter of fact they are about average in sort and number. Perhaps, a certain proportion of men are worse away from their homes than in them : I snobbishly loathe the English tourist, myself included : I catch myself out, in Belgium, pretending (to people not likely to see through me) that lam French. A large proportion, maybe, of English and Irish emigrants, of late years, have been men whose youth coincided with a lawless time, whether abroad during the war, or at home. They will find it hard to settle down anywhere into disciplined existence. I might recall that Australians, during the war, acquired a probably very undeserved reputation for lawlessness ! It remains that I have met some silly, some vulgar, some conceited and some languid Englishmen in Australia and in New Zealand ; and I have met the other sort. It comes back to what I said —The right sort ought to go, and not the wrong. How flat that sounds ! But it implies that one would exercise a special and ‘ psychological ’ attention when recommending emigration.
Idle to describe in detail the ‘ character ’ one would wish to see emigrate. The tragedy is, that it is the character one would like to keep at home, because it is a good character. Foreseeing the remarks to which I am leaving myself exposed, I would say, first, that I would like a man to possess staying-power, in both senses —first, sheer ability to stay in the place he has gone to. Else he will not strike roots ; and it is roots that hold the ground
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together, like those of willows planted along a creek. I would not wish a man or a family to emigrate, meaning to return. Only the other day a woman said to me ; ‘ When do you think my daughter will come back ? ’ I said—how cruel it sounded ! —‘ I hope, never.’ I would ask of him too the other stayingpower —power to go on at an apparently hopeless job. ‘ Tough the task and stiff the strain : Do the work and start again.’ Hence only from one point of view am I in favour of whole families emigrating, unless indeed they have a very clear and ascertained position ready for them to utilise. For a man may begin with a run of bad luck which his wife and babies could not endure. Finally I commend to a man modesty. By this I mean, not a grovelling spirit, but a recognition that he is a newcomer among people who are not new-comers, and that he is in consequence at first, at anyrate, a guest, and that he proposes to be a co-operator in a work he has probably not yet learned, and in which he is certainly not the pioneer. These considerations combine to create for him the duty of keeping quiet. Let us hope that all guests are good-mannered. Let us hope that their hosts are too. A host’s job is, to make his guest feel at home ; a guest’s job is, to respect the home into which he has entered, and, not to make his host uncomfortable even should he not feel at home. You seldom do feel so, in an unfamiliar house, at first at anyrate. But you would be intolerable if you told your host that ‘ This is not how Ido things in my house.’ Similarly with regard to work ; it is enormously improbable that a man will have learned, in England, land work that will fit him for land work in Australia. Hence, he must ‘ learn the job and hold his tongue ’, which requires once more a lot of self-discipline, since two semi-similar sorts of people, like English and Australian, Irish and English, are apt to annoy one another much more than quite different sorts of people, like Hindus and Danes.
This suggests that I expect an immigrant to go on the land. Leaving aside, once more, further questions about the land, I answer : ‘ Preferably ; but not necessarily.’ Not necessarily, because if a man is a good worker after his kind, he is an asset
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anywhere. So I could not object, for the sake of the country of immigration, if a really good city worker of any kind went to a city. But as I’ve said, I regret the tide setting city-wards whether in England or Australia or anywhere else. I hold that the city does few men any good. Mr. Clynes spoke, while I was in Australia, of the ‘ colonisation of England Would that it might come to pass. Owners of large estates, lam convinced with regard to all but a negligible minority, wish well to those who live upon them. But most are now giving up all that they can in the way of land. I say, ‘ that they can ’, for it is difficult now to get rid of land save for the purpose of building, in short, of extending cities. And what building ! It is no satisfaction to me to see jerry-built houses, or even houses able to contain a man and his wife and one child—no more —springing up in hundreds of thousands around our cities. I think ill, on the whole, of city life, and of the mentality it produces. I deplore the man who cannot put up with the country, especially since the advent of wireless ; and the girl who forces her men-folk to go to the town because she requires the pictures thrice a week, is, to my mind, as near being a ‘ defective ’ as half of those now being put into homes are. Appalling, so totally to lack resources within one’s self ! Frightful comment on our so-called advance in education ! Horrible prospect for Australia, if she is to become merely a necklace of cities round a withered neck.
From this it practically follows that I should like people to come to Australia, above all, possessed of certain moral qualities —and not the easiest to obtain or preserve —and, either trained or trainable. Hence (from my very limited experience), I have settled down to the wish to see our emigrant girls very well trained for domestic service—that is, general service and as cooks, and this can be done at home, and I pray earnestly that the scheme for training girls at the centre known as Portobello Road, in London, may be brought to a happy conclusion. The Dominican nuns, to whom that place belongs, have remodelled much of their premises to suit their new purpose, and it can be trusted that the training will be the very best, suited
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moreover to the places of immigration and not as though the girls were destined to cook, and so forth, in England. I understand that the British Government thinks so well of this scheme that the Ministry of Labour is financing it up to a very high percentage, and has also assisted the structural alterations. Since the one thing on which I found people unanimous in Australia and New Zealand was, the need of good domestic service, and in view of what I have hinted as to the absolutely reckless way in which girls were often enough sent out, so that in no long time they lost their jobs and were recruited by the streets, this scheme, at least, seems all to the good, and was acclaimed when I had occasion to mention it in Australia.
Adults may be trainable ; but it is obvious that youth is more plastic ; therefore I would prefer, all things being equal (which they never are), that boys should at least predominate among the males who emigrate. Now I have said that despite a few training colleges possessed by us, it would be better that they should be trained at least for land work in the land of their new life. So I would prefer them to go quite young. And I would like to see many an institution corresponding to Flock House, of which I have said enough. The second item therefore to which I have settled down is, a belief in the Archbishop of Perth’s scheme that I call Clontarf-Mullewa. It is obvious that I am thinking at the moment of Catholic immigrants, and am not saying that no other systems, no other institutions in Australia, are worth anything. But the placing of a small immigrant first at St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Clontarf, and then for a considerable space of time on the Mullewa Estate, seems to me ideal, for it ensures that Catholic element in his training which adds the perfecting, indeed transforming touch, to what is already in every human way so good. A lad who remains vitally Catholic, will Catholicise. Catholic emigration work is an apostolic work. That is why Satan hates it, and does all he can to hamper it*
* This is obviously not an essay on Migration, nor even on Catholic migration. Else I might insist on the need of catering for, and not disregarding, the
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A bridge to the last topic I would wish to touch on is formed by my mentioning ‘ other Europeans ’ and ‘ non-Europeans If you eat, the happiness of the results depends on the quality of your food and on the quality of your digestion. (And upon your eating slowly, I might say—giving yourself not too large mouthfuls at a time ; and recognising that digestion is not the affair of a moment.) Far from me, then, to regret the right kind of man, whatever his origin, coming to a country, if the country is the right kind of country. It breaks my heart to see our Durham miners emigrating, for I think there is hardly a finer class in England, and we need them. I know many a docker in the East End of London who is as tough and wiry and wellliving as anyone. And though I have had no experience of the southernmost Italian, I have not observed that the midor north-Italian yields to anyone in toughness, or in capacity for hard work. In East London, I seem to see that the hardest and most successful workers are the Italians, the Poles, and the Jews. The last are apt to oust their competitors and have in some districts destroyed what was called the ‘ middle class ’ there : this I think is a pity. Every ‘ middle class ’is a valuable item in a society. I cannot feel convinced that Italian labour has done any harm to Queensland. ‘Ah ’, I remembered hearing in New Zealand, ‘ but the Chinese have stolen all our market gardening and our laundry work’. I ask myself, first, whether they do the job better than others would. If they do, I feel they deserve to get it. We cannot possibly put up with the deliberate
due Catholic percentage among immigrants, lest after all Australia grow up a non-Catholic country in which the pagan majority (which always creates itself) would hopelessly swamp the Catholic minority. Indeed I was very struck by the dose attention which Catholic groups as well as individuals, and women equally with men, are giving to the immigration problem. We in England cannot yet boast that our organisation even for protecting emigrants (which is quite different from encouraging emigration) is sufEdently co-ordi-nated to justify our criticising a similar lack of co-ordination elsewhere. Yet I am convinced that for the welfare of Catholics at large, a perfect organisation must exist in all countries alike between which a migrationary movement exists.
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second-rate. I hope lam fair. Long ago, I used to hear that Sheffield would not make the kind of agricultural instruments New Zealand required for her soil. Therefore recourse was had to America. Since then, at least till the visit of Sir William Morris, it was said in every key that England refused to adapt its makes of motor car to New Zealand roads. Therefore recourse again was had to America. And deservedly. If America could, and would, make what was wanted, and we couldn’t or wouldn’t, we had to learn a sharpish lesson, and I hope we have.
I fear that this suggests the question of cultivatability of parts, at least, of Australian soil. I was shown large tracts of hills which, I was told, ‘ cannot be cultivated ’. Yet here and there, I could see a field, an orchard. ‘By what happy instinct ’, I asked, ‘ were those far-separated patches in a seemingly homogeneous country hit upon ? ’ Hard to get an answer. ‘ Could ’, I proceeded, ‘ an Italian cultivate those intervening ridges ? I don’t ask, should he ? But, could he ? ’ Could he, by the long drudgery of terracing them ? Could he, by eliciting with minute industry the last soldo's value from the soil ? Well, usually, Yes. I know that reference would be made to vast reaches as barren as the Sahara : but no one, it seems to me, need yet think of enormous distances : the laborious French are always developing the fringes of, say, their African territories : a depth of 50 miles, or even 15, will absorb a lot of men. There is water enough, where I am thinking of. But, ‘ What would be the good of those tiny plots ? How would a man make an adequate profit ? ’ Alas, I fear I must say : He would live upon his produce. That would imply, no large profits ; and no hankering after towns. However, as a series of such colonies came into existence, much of the transport problem would be solved.
I must now confess to an impression that has been deeply made upon me. It is, that quite probably a nation has not a right to a territory that it cannot use, or does not need, if others could use it, do need it, and are anxious to make the most of it. This consideration is very grave ; but so is the parable of the
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talents, which holds good in the sociological sphere as well as the personally moral one. It certainly applies to private property. But, apart from such speculation, it must be remembered that many eyes, besides the English, arc turned towards Australia. While I was there, the Archbishop of San Francisco spoke incessantly, and with historical correctness, about the ‘ westward trek of civilisation ’. Civilisation has lurched across the world from Mesopotamia to the United States ; and one cannot arbitrarily deny the possible further progress of that movement. Neither the Archbishop nor I, if I may couple myself with him, hold a brief for a Pan-Pacific policy. Certainly not he would use the rash language that I heard once or twice, mentioning Australia almost as an American annexe. All I would say to those who announce that they 1 don’t see why the land should be developed at all —it is [that is, they are ] very well at present ’, is, that there is such a thing as a world will, an inscrutable shove forward of the peoples, and ever has been, and no imaginable force will stop that sort of thing. Again, to show how little wedded I am to the ‘ westward ’ theory even, I can imagine a sort of world shock, such as undoubtedly has taken place in the ‘ east ’, which might involve an eastward ‘ trek ’, first of ideas, then, if not of anarchy, of organised force, starting from Russia, and passing by way of the Turkish Republic and even Persia, not to insist on Afghanistan, and finding no sufficient breakwater in either the India or the China of a generation hence, and affecting Australia from that side. Such alternative futures cannot possibly be left out of account by any save the quite casual and irresponsible.
But this mere mention of ‘ we are very well as we are ’ has transferred us into a downright psychological area. My personal conviction is, that psychology underlies even politics. (Let us assume that all politicians of every party are honest, and that there is neither place-seeking nor place-keeping-at-all-costs, no playing to galleries, no being wagged by the tail of your party, no use of ‘ slogans ’ which (to my thinking) arc always misleading catchwords.) I heard, and saw, something of the
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unemployment problem. I was in Australia while the wharf strikes were going on. I am going no nearer to this problem than to say that ‘ there is not enough work for our own men ’ may not be an accurate statement. I don’t say it is inaccurate ; but if it means : 1 There is not enough work in the towns or ‘of this or that sort of work or ‘of work at certain wages ’, then it is inaccurate. The words, ‘ certain wages ’, involve further problems : again I say only that if prices are put up in proportion to rise of wages, nothing has begun to be solved. When I was last in Rome, the stabilisation of the lira made living cheaper. Mussolini ordered that the price of every article should be exhibited in every shop in two forms—the. old one, erased ; and the one to which, at the new value of the lira, the old one would be equivalent. Thus no shop could profiteer. I had to buy a few things : shop-keepers always showed me the two prices, and saved me a lot of money. That is honourable. But if ‘ standard of living ’ means an ‘ easy ’ life all round, I disbelieve in such a standard. lam no believer in an easy life. I apply this to all ‘ classes ’, and, I pray, to myself. But I feel sure that this semi-psychological, semi-ethical topic, did not come into my head properly till later on in this voyage, though
' Like a silly child that wishes all things pleasant,
I thought I saw a land where every peasant
Was gay and wise and far removed from folly,
And statesmen in their secret hearts were holy.'
It was a relief, on my return, to find that Ruth Pitter had the same dreams as I, and could express them so much better.
Nor is it too silly, too childish, so to dream. ' Cobber, it's up to me and you to see that half his dream comes true. .. . '
Back, after all, to one of your own poets.
We got opposite Ceylon at about 3 on the morning of December
ig. Towards 6, the sun rose beautifully. I had always bathed
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in the bathing tank at 6, and sometimes watched the sun shooting upwards like a lance-head —a tongue of fire —and then the swift uprush of the flattened globe ; then its slow development. Aureus exoritur SOL ! Golden forthsprings the Sun. Ennius. He knew what he was about all that time ago B.C. To-day you had the sense that behind Ceylon the sun would rise with a fan of rays. No. Flat floods of light. The sky deepens all of a sudden ; after being a roof, it is a hollow dome, superb and pathetic. In towards the harbour. Outrigger canoes —impossibly clumsy, you would have thought. Yet they get about. The cargo men —purple-chocolate of skin —in pink or plain long and (you would have thought most awkward, yet apparently not) linen skirt from waist to ankle, or a strip just knotted around them—alarming till you see that it never does come off. Long hair, sometimes hanging loose ; sometimes tied at the back. One sub-race —Tamil ?-—has a comb whose teeth stick, seemingly, straight into its skull. Crescent-combs like coronets with an opening in front. I had been asked to lecture to the Catholic University students, but the University had just gone down, and I was so tired as to be glad to be let off what else I would have liked. I went on shore and a Catholic guide took me by tram through blue-painted suburbs towards Kotahena, where the Cathedral is. I then transferred myself to a rickshaw pulled by a Catholic ; and, absolutely sick as I felt at being dragged by a trotting human being, I felt exhilarated when he assured me at the end that I was over-paying him. I had given him an English shilling (because to translate Australian coinage into rupees was quite beyond me) and he said it was only sixpence. . . . Yet the sun was fierce, and much of the road was uphill. The Cathedral was enormous ; rather Neapolitan —cool and most suitable. I talked long to the white-cassocked Breton priest in his verandah. The Bretons are ‘ stayers ’ if you like ! Ceylon is 25,481 square miles, and the archdiocese of Colombo 4,448. In 1921 the population of Ceylon was 4,498,605 ; that of the archdiocese 1,739,028. In 1921, the pagan population of the archdiocese was 1,429,933 ;
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its Catholic population, in 1924, was 275,441. Its European priests are 70, of whom one is a secular, the rests are Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Its native priests are 68, of whom 29 are seculars, 39 Oblates. Its senior seminary (Colombo and Jaffna) has 44 students ; its junior one, for Colombo alone, has 63. Its Christian Brothers are 16 Europeans to 27 natives ; its Marist Brothers, 8 Europeans and 1 nadve. There are 38 native Franciscan brothers. There are 192 native Sisters of St. Francis Xavier ; 202 native Sisters of the Holy Family. Tedious to relate the good works that the missionaries, largely French or native, have inaugurated and maintain. In this archdiocese I hear (to mention one or two items) of 2 industrial schools for boys and 6 for girls ; 359 churches or chapels ; 4 circles of S.V.P. ; and 5 of the Ladies of Charity ; 4 secondary schools for boys and 4 for girls (and I heard how warmly the Government appreciates them) ; a leper colony ; and 2 clinics where Franciscan Sisters attend to nearly 25,200 sick folks yearly ; Catholic hospitals and Good Shepherd houses ; and a printing press where journals and monthly magazines in English, or in Cingalese, appear. There are 43 Catholic libraries in this sole archdiocese. These are but few of the institutions I might mention. This Cathedral parish of St. Lucia contains 18,200 Catholics ; and its Communions are 225,000 annually. This implies an average of 700 a day, if you choose to plot it out like that. In the archdiocese there are well over three million Communions a year. I was so fascinated by my talk with this French priest that I made no attempt to leave him nor to go to Kandy (where the Buddha’s tooth is), nor to see sacred elephants nor anything else. I did just visit the vast Good Shepherd Convent near the Cathedral —it is a school and has (unless I err) about 1,600 pupils ; and the Christian Brothers, not far off, have about 1,200. From the roof of the former lat last realised I was in Ceylon, because, I think, of the palm trees. A generous layman gave me an enormous car ; but in the end I simply crossed to the further side of the city—plenty of begging for a penny ; but it was remarkable that nearly all
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the small boys called me ‘ Father and often added ‘Me good Catholic ’ —and sat in a lonely place by the sea and thought about all this. The light was white and dazzling. The sky was grey over blue ; the sea, green behind grey ; the palms, grey silhouettes. We had come to this, from Fremantle, 3,126 miles. And what a different world. Destined to be still more different. ‘ The mentality ’, said the priest to me, ‘is changing rapidly.’ Native nuns vastly outnumber the European ones. So will the clergy, soon. That is good ; yet what friction, what danger even of schisms, may not be foreseen ! Ah, well ; as we left Colombo next morning, the sky was kind. All milk and gold, intensified with every shade of amber, and shadowed with sapphire. Unspeakable. Two silhouettes stood clear—the enormous Adam Peak, a perfect cone ; and the dome of the Catholic Cathedral. Nature and Grace. Goodbye then to Ceylon.*
On the 21st, I think, we passed Minikoi. The sea had been simply silken —the flying fish left almost interminable trails upon the surface, and the V of the ship’s progress seemed to extend to the horizon. Every shade of blue —so bright, so soft. I wanted to see one coral island, and II Signore has provided me with this one. Just a long ridge of cocoa-palms ; then the entrance to the lagoon —sheer cobalt silk outside ; inside, pearls pounded up with emeralds. Well, if I am to remember ‘ minds of men ’, nor be deluded by this pageantry of the sea, I have the leper settlement to look at, and the memory that the lighthouse is now manned by natives because of the crimes of the whites who once controlled it, and the revenge that the natives took upon them. So at least I was told ; and it clashes all too little with one’s knowledge.
Having developed the pestilent habit of reflecting and even
* These statistics, too, are probably wrong by now. Much the best book I have read since, on Ceylon is ; Sous lesfeux de Ceylon : chez les Singhalais et les Tamouls, by R. P. Buchanssois : Paris, Grasset, 1929. The author is an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, and was transferred to Ceylon from the frozen immensities of extreme North-west Canada.
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moralising, I could not but keep it up after seeing Colombo and Minikoi ! Ceylon —island of at least two native races ; part of a British Empire ; with those French priests and that great and growing number of native nuns and clergy, and a mentality ‘ changing rapidly
It is certain that I can look at a notion, or fact, like ‘ Empire ’ about which I was so constandy catechised in Australia, in various ways. I suppose I can think of it from the point of view of a political party, or of sheer nationalism, or of some intemadonal ideal, or of the would-be impartial historian, or (surely) of the Christian and Catholic as such. As for politics, I confess that I have never wished to discuss them, both by preference, and on principle. By preference, because they link themselves up with much that I shall never understand, like finance ; and again, with intrigues, which I loathe, for anyway I don’t believe I could ever tell a really good lie, and if anyone tells me one I am so astonished that I end by laughing at myself; and because I hold they introduce one into a world of unreality—parliamentary discussions are unreal, and so are electioneering speeches, and so is the political Press. The wretched people seem to me nearly all the while the victims of men on the make, and the men on the make are not the ones, half the time, at the “ head ” of affairs, but these are victims, too. Hence while I think that it is a pity if honest men keep out of politics because they are a dirty job, I should wish men to enter the political world almost in the spirit of penance, self-sacrifice and in fact martyrdom ; and, for my part, as a priest—here the principle comes in—l would wish to make, once and for all, the sacrifice of my political preferences, if any, for, if I commit myself to a party, I am forthwith and necessarily at variance with others, and my priestly work is hindered. In Australia, I begged often not to be told whether so and so was involved in politics, lest my vision of him should be confused. When I spoke to politicians, and whether I lectured to the Constitutional Club in one city or was writing daily for the leading Labour journal in the same place, please
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God, I avoided altogether any topic as political—for any topic can be dragged into political squabbles ; but you can confront it outside of them if you choose.
Nor, though I am by breeding English and Scot, would I wish to be infected by what I mean by Nationalism. By that word, I should mean a belief in and devotion to my country such that it disunited me in mind and will from other countries. I fear I must repeat my threadbare view that words that end in ism imply a caricature of a good thing. Individuality, individualism ; society, socialism ; community, communism ; love of one’s nation, national-ism. What generates jealousy, vengefulness, hatred, schism, seems to me both as a matter of observation and of Christian ideal, bad. To develop my country at the expense of another country is as bad as developing my class at the expense of another, my self at the expense of another’s self. The War has taught Europe nothing whatsoever in this department. The emancipated nations of central Europe seem ready to imitate, in a petty way, what the Powers, that they called tyrannical, did on a grand scale. And as a Catholic, I observe that where the sense of nationality has degenerated into nationalism, there is invariably a tendency to ecclesiastical schism. I quote the names Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Poland, even France, without developing details about any of them. It is extraordinary to read, so long ago as 1839, the words of the Marquis de Custine. ‘ The sight of the degradation into which the clergy can sink, in a country where the Church depends wholly on the State, would make any logical-minded Protestant shrink. A “ national ” church ; a “ national ” clergy—these words should never be allied. The Church is in essence superior to any human society ; to leave the Universal Church in order to enter any political church, is, then, more than to go wrong in one’s faith —it is the denial of the Faith ; it is falling back from heaven on to earth.’ These words were applied to Russia, he country where more than anywhere else the Church was and more than ever is) enslaved to a rigid State-ism. Hence I ould never look at ‘ Empire ’ as an extension of Englishism.
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As for ‘ Empire I apply the same test. Imperialism would mean, for me, the exploitation of a weaker country by a stronger one, for the latter’s gain and obviously at the former’s expense. But what I mean by ‘ Empire ’ involves none of this. We are continually being cheated by the use of the word ‘ Empire ’, much as we are by that of Liberty, Equality, Progress, Science. The meaning of ‘ empire ’ has proved to be most fluid. It meant very different things in the history of the Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Holy Roman, Spanish, Napoleonic, Austro-Hungarian and British Empires, to mention no others. It can be made to suggest, to inflammable brains, sheer centralised tyranny, whereas it has been reasonably said that probably never has there been so much ‘ home rule ’ as that arranged for within the old Roman empire. There was infinitely more, for example, than there was under the old Republic. Republic is another word of almost quite fluid meaning, like, once more, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, of which last I hold that there has never yet been an example in history save conceivably in Switzerland. I suppose the least democratic countries in the world to-day are Mexico and Russia, leaving to one side oriental princedoms that Ido not know. Most countries are managed by an oligarchy, itself dependent upon financiers, and communism is not heading towards anything in the least ‘democratic’.
Hence the only intelligible meaning I can attach, to-day, to Empire, is : An orderly Union of Nations. That is not a perfect definition, because it might cover more than I mean it to. But within that complex unity which any Empire manifestly is, there must be Order, else there is disorder, which is purely destructive —that is the static point of view—and there must be Rule, else there is anarchy, which also is destructive—and that is the dynamic point of view. And in all orderly affairs, there is a focus for the order, and a fountain for the rule ; so there will be an ‘ imperial centre ’in an empire. Again, by ‘ union ’ I don’t mean merely juxtaposition ; for quite disconnected things can be juxtaposed (not that, in human affairs, they are ever likely to stay so ; there will be reciprocal absorption
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conflict soon enough) ; nor do I mean ‘ fusion when things separate in themselves are so smudged into one another as to lose their identity. There are plenty of instances, in the modern world, of attempted fusions instead of attempted unions, and disaster has always followed. For no body of men is ever quite content to lose its common mind. It is that Common Mind which constitutes a nation, and no mere secondary affairs like frontiers, finance, descent, or even language. These may be consequences of the sense of nationality, but do not create nations. Obvious instances of a ‘ common mind ’ are supplied, I judge, both by England and by Australia ; a Dorsetshire man is extremely different from a Lancashire man ; a Londoner from a Northumbrian ; yet there is certainly a national mind, a sort of super-mind, or else a fundamental mind, common to Englishmen. I could not possibly fail to notice, as I said, a difference between Australian cities, a difference presumably in the minds of the men who compose the cities. Yet I think all Australians have something in common, mentally, too.
Therefore I begin by saying that I like a man to be a man, a proper individual. Then I like a town to have its proper consciousness, and a region to have a regional mind and (if it is worth anything) to take pleasure and pride in it. Hence patently I wish for Australia to consist of many fully individual units, in full organic co-ordination and co-operation, so that a true Australian ‘ personality ’ be formed and so that ‘ Australia ’ can be truly spoken of as a perfect Nation. Anything acting as a cause of schism is, therefore, nationally speaking, a crime. But if any nation can enter into a unity wider than its own, without losing its own, so much the better, according to what I have said. Further, in this world, development is more natural than creation. Therefore if a unit exists, vitally, within a great unity, it is better to develop that, than to try to make something else, as I have constantly to say to people who want to create new Catholic societies ! Historically Australia has been, and actually she is, within a certain association called the British Empire—a multiplex unity of nations, having an interior order,
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and having an ultimate source for the ultimate order which unifies it. Were I then a Frenchman or an American, if I retained the general principles that I have mentioned, I still should say that it was better that that union should develop itself (as indeed it keeps doing) by the richer development of each of its component factors, generally, and in association with the rest. This is an expression of a vital law, and not artificial. Hence I hope no one can suggest that I am a bigoted imperialist, and certainly no one can say that I am disloyal in any intelligible sense to the British Empire, though conceivably I ought to have thought more about it. I wonder if Englishmen do think, explicitly, about the ‘ Empire ’ ? I doubt it. The word hardly ever occurs in ordinary conversation. When it does, does it include the slightest flavour of ‘ Aow-ship ’ so far as England goes ? I am sure it doesn’t. Alas—l expect sentimental songs and political harangues have done much to create that tawdry version of the facts, and especially outside England.
The moment I have said that a thing develops, I have said that it changes. The sort of change I like to see is that which you note in the healthy human (one person made up of many limbs and of a single soul) when he goes ‘ from strength to strength ’ in mind and body. Human creatures die. And no Empire in history has lasted for ever. Hence there may be, and probably will be, vital changes within the British Empire (that is, the adolescence and then adult age of its component units) which modify the entire aspect and even equilibrium of the whole. For my part, I see no injury done to the notion of ‘ empire ’ by a settlement becoming a colony, and a colony a ‘ dominion ’or a ‘ commonwealth ’. I should see no vital injury done to it, were the centre of Order and Rule to be shifted—say, to Canada, South Africa, or Australia. I sit light to all such quite subordinate considerations. But I cannot conceive of any advantage now to be gained either by fissures in the structure of our complex vital unity, nor in any such transference of its vital centre, even though I could not object to the notion in itself.
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Let me be frank ; being a Catholic, I hold that the True Truth is in God, and that if we have the chance of knowing anything about God, we are wise to begin there, and to descend to our world from thence, in order to try to reproduce in human things so close a likeness to God as we can. The nearest image of God that we possess, is the Church. The Church is a perfect Unity, composed of individual souls, and indeed of various groups ; nor are, for example, the Uniate groups fused with the Latin Church with which, none the less, they are perfectly united under one Head. There is, within this complex unity, a centre and source of Authority —the Pope. But the Church herself enters into a higher unity still —she is the Body of Christ, and through her we all are incorporated into Him ; and He remains the Head of that whole body thus vitally united with Him and by means of Him. He is not we ; we are not He ; yet in Him and because of Him we all are ‘ one thing ’. And again, in Christ are two Natures, and yet one Person, not fused nor mixed, but distinct, perfect, yet supremely, substantially, One Christ. And in the Trinity, Origin and End of all our world, are Three Persons, distinct, yet One God, and from the Father is begotten the co-etemal Son, and from Them both eternally proceeds the Holy Spirit. And it is that Spirit who is working in the world, since ‘ the whole creation groans and travails together even until now ’. The world then must move towards God, even as it came from Him ; in Christ it holds together ; through Christ’s Spirit, it grows. In all that is, according to God’s Will, a perfect and consummate Communion is establishing itself, and in its establishment all we, free in will, able to take stock of these mighty facts, have to co-operate.
I make no excuse for approaching to human life from the starting point of what the Catholic Faith teaches ; what I hope is, that a Eucharist Congress may make it easier for all its participants to do it better and more heroically than I can, who by my profession as priest, am bound to stand outside so much that of necessity preoccupies the layman. Much more heroism is often demanded of the layman, than of priests. Temptations
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beat upon him, which can, and I think should, almost pass us by. Still, in a world dislocated and re-dislocated by sin, by accumulated sins of centuries and by our own, all of us have to thrash ourselves at times —our wills and our hearts—into obedience to that Law of Unity, Peace and Charity which expresses itself supremely in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist. What else is the Eucharist, save Mass and Holy Communion ? What else is Mass, save Self-Sacrifice ? What else is Communion, save the denial of all schism, and the knitting together and for ever the bond of brotherly love in the Person of the Brother of us all, Jesus Christ, our Lord ?
On Christmas Eve we passed Socotra, lying like a ghost along the starboard side, and then the two enormous Brothers Rocks. Midnight Mass took me, thank God, into a world of thought in which it was easy to remain. On the 26th we were off Aden. The sea outside the actual harbour was like silken crepe ; inside, simply like glass. Above the evanescent blues, the terrific crags of Aden hurled themselves against the sky. I went on shore, naturally, to see the Tanks of Solomon—wasn't it ?—anyhow, they belong to about his period. The dreadful dusty Mohammedan cemetery, with its rags ; the Jewish cemetery is just so tragically bare. The C. of E. church is perched on such a noble little crag —but, would you believe it, it is Gothic ! One could forgive the malapert little building were it on the flat ; but up there, silhouetted against such a sea. . . .
I am glad that the Catholic Church and Convent are better. Honest straight lines, such as alone there ought to be in this world of glassy sea and intolerable rock. None the less, after I had left it, I discovered I had loved Aden and I believe I wouldn't mind going there to die. It is stripped of everything save essentials ; and such drastic austerity would surely ' make your soul ! ' But though ' heaven is everywhere at home ', even in Aden, where you would judge there was a fair amount of hell also, one must remain independent of mere places !
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In the Red Sea it grew definitely cooler, but I could still swim in the tank at 6 a.m. till we reached Suez. Or rather, an accident prevented its being used, on the last day, by the two or three officers with whom I shared it. I was very glad. . . . Ghostly mountains kept pace with us, and no less spectral islands floated past us, as we neared Port Sudan. We reached it on the 28th. Enormous barren contemptuous rock-mountains to the west, with a perfectly flat plain at their feet, so that the seashore is like an earthern river-bank. A sheer little cliff, but a foot or two in height. Under the heat-white sky, against the colourless plain, and with the tremendous mountain-chain still ghosthued as a background, a black profile of machinery—cranes, electric plants, half-finished skeletons of sheds, oil-tanks ; all of it black, hideous and inhuman. However, humans came on board to unload 800 tons of flour ; blue-black men, with sacking round their waist and enormous heads of fuzzy upright hair. One of them had an owl ; he had tied a string to one of its feet and was fooling around with it : he ended by chucking it upside down on to a coil of ropes. Tender-hearted Authority sent down a quarter-master to rescue the owl. A cloud of natives set upon him ; he squared up, at first, but thought better of it and bolted up the companion-ladder. Forthwith the natives fell back, shrieking with laughter. . . . Had they ever foreseen fight ? Who knows ? Inscrutable wits of the Abyssinian, if Abyssinians or Nubians these be. None can tell me. At first the spirit of the place settled down on my mind like a leaden cowl ; then I saw a large new mosque ; then, obviously, a Catholic Church. There must be, too, some Anglican place of worship, because the padre came on board to ‘ ship-visit ’ ; no Catholic visitor —I had almost said ‘Of course ’. Still, here in this new town, a post-war creation, a perfect miracle in its own line, the irresistible will to pray is manifested. Off comes the cowl. Later, I went on shore. A town all of cubes, very striking. Perfect in all parts —hospital, gaol, hotels. About 120 whites, I am told. I hear too that 900 ships a year now touch here. Everyone stood astounded at this New Thing
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beneath the sun, that is Port Sudan. The Assuan dam creates up there cotton and rice which needs to be shipped here ; but later, who knows what siphons may not bring water through the valleys, till this great desert, too, may blossom like the rose ? Need I say that in the hotel I met a Scot ? From Glasgow, in fact, who knew places that I knew. Also I bought four grass hats, tufty, and of startling colours. I caused four important persons to wear them with great 6clat. Better not specify whom. . . .
December 31. During the night we had entered the Gulf of Suez, with, definitely now, Egypt to port, Sinai on the starboard side. Sinai itself was visible for one moment towards 10.30.
Impossible to think of everything at once. Therefore I found that I thought of Sinai as Mountain and as Law, and gave no thought to Mohammed and his spiritual sons nor Medina nor Mecca ; and I thought of Egypt as of sand, with little heed even to the Nile. I thought of Israel, and of Pagan. I thought of Abraham, leaving that yet further East, the titanic civilisations of the Euphrates and the Tigris ; Abraham, building an altar in that Canaan up there, and calling it Beth-El, God’s House ; Abraham, laid hold of by the immemorial magnetism of Egypt and travelling thither, and seeing those pyramids that I hope to see to-morrow. Then came that long swing to-and-fro, of the Elect people or its ancestors, between the Forbidden Land and the Promised Land. God’s thunders crashed down upon Sinai ; and through Egyptian sands flitted the Holy Family. In the glass-house of a saloon where I said my Mass, at Dominus Vobiscum, I had to recollect that to this side and to that, God had come. To right and to left : ‘ Thine almighty Word, O Lord, came from Heaven from its royal throne.’ Nay, as Abraham returned from Egypt, he met Melchizedek, priest of El Elyon, priest of ‘ God Most High ’, and though not to Melchizedek had the great office of ancestry been entrusted, he and the Father of the People understood each other, and the sacrifice of each was accepted. Sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod Tibi obtulit summits sacerdos Melchizedek. . . ,
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Behind ils heat-haze you could positively feel Sinai vibrating with the energy that it drove forth into the world. The Horde became the People. On the glaring gravel beneath the eight-thousand-foot upheaval of sheer granite, disgusted with their brackish water and sickening at the insipid manna, longing to collapse once more among the pulpy leeks and onions and melons and the lush vegetation of the Nile, the wretched folk sprawled and then struggled in its strait-waistcoat of a Law, till it gradually stood upright, a Man, and could move forward. Recurrent paradox—Life has to be paid for, and paid with vital sacrifices. The whole of Sinai became an altar, that Moses ascended to offer to God His People, an acceptable gift. And the rock steamed and swayed beneath the hurricane of God's approach. Notice, they were accepted, despite their insistence that 'it was well with us in Egypt . . . and now we have nothing to look at but this manna . . . ' ; despite their gorging themselves with the quails that September winds sweep yearly down from Cyprus till ' it came out at their nostrils ' ; despite their throwing their gold things into the melting-pot ' and there came out this Bull '. The Bull stalked before them while still the Mountain blazed and thundered, and still they were not rejected. Not until they had chased God out of their land—God come now so very low, right into their midst, a child, as they too had been accounted God's ' firstborn son ' —they chased Him out so that in Egypt He took refuge, and He, too, saw the pyramids that Abraham had seen, and that I shall see.
I said Mass that day for the Catholic Israel of God, and for the pagans among whom that People lives. There seemed to me to be, in the world, two overwhelming duties —first, for Christ's Christians to purify themselves more and more from idols ; and second, that they should evangelise the world. God knows how many idols each man has in his own heart ; why, man himself does not guess. And God knows how far the Catholic family, and the Catholic community in each town, and the church of each land, is from the pure worship of God. Yet does He not reject us. Patience and tolerance and long-
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suffering of our God ! Our worship of the senses, of reputation, of money, of position, of all those secondary things that often are not even the caricature of God, but in the likeness of what pagans worship ; there are moments when you could not tell a Catholic from a pagan. Meanwhile, we criticise those pagans. . . . We are 'of the Household '. . . . And indeed the modern world is pagan and becoming more so. Our fight is not against the heretic ; still less against mere human programmes or methods or institutions not to our liking ; but against that whole spirit which is anti-Christ—what is out of Communion with our God. And yet, look at the mass of men that you know ! The pagan men. Half the time, how likable, how honest and honourable, hospitable, putting up cheerily with so much, often so unselfish even secretly. Hard will you find it to discover a man in whom you cannot see good, and forthwith wonder where he gets it from, without sacraments, without belief in Mary or her Son, without prayer. Men not seldom seeming to make so much better a thing of life, without religion, than we do, who have so much. That is the ' scandal ' of to-day—that men without religion are so good ; and that we, with our faith and graces, are so lamentably imperfect ; often so hostile in life to our creed, so heedless of our treasures. What is our destiny ? What the pagan's ? The Church, we know, is indefectible : even Israel is to be ' re-grafted ' on to the divine Olive-tree. God ' remembers for thee the kindness of thy youth—the joy of thine espousals—How thou wen test forth after me into the wilderness —into a land not sown'. And as for ' Chaldaea', whence Abraham journeyed forth, one day it was to send the Magi, obedient to the summoning star : as for Egypt, it was to be the refuge for Messias. Hence, we, too, will rely on the divine declaration :
In that day there shall be an altar to The Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and He shall send them a Saviour, and the Lord shall make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know The Lord in that day. Yea, they shall worship with sacrifice and oblation, and shall vow a vow unto The
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Lord and shall fulfil it. In that day there shall be a highroad out of Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptian shall worship with the Assyrian. And in that day Israel shall be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth,because The Lord of Hosts hath blessed them, saying : Blessed be Egypt, My people ; and Assyria, the work of My hands ; and Israel, mine inheritance.'
So the Mass of that day enriched itself with happy meanings. Introibo —But quis ascendet ? Who shall dare climb those mountainous altar-steps ? ‘ The clean of hand, the pure of heart ’ — he may ascend God’s holy hill. At the foot then of its stairs the priest bows to confess his sins, sure now that God, who called him in his youth, will remember that youth on his behalf—that baptism ; that first Communion —and will renew it all. Emitte lucem Inam —O Pillar of Fire ! Thou didst lead me at the first; lead me still, ‘ unto Thy holy hill and to Thy dwelling ’. Impossible that He will reject the prayer He has inspired : so why so sorrowful, my soul? Why so disquieted within me? Your Kyrie- cry for mercy is sure to be accepted : let your Gloria be whole-hearted. You can say, what not even the faithful among the Hebrews had yet learned to say— ‘ Through Jesus Christ our Lord ’ ! They from far off saw these things, as in a figure, dimly, and yet saluted them. I possess them in my hands. The Offertory ! Enough of the granite rock against which the soul crashes itself like bird against a crag. . . . The little Host slides gently off the Paten, to become in a moment that Bread wherein we are to find a better Manna, having in itself all sweetnesses ; the Chalice deepens itself into an unfathomable well within our wilderness, and the well becomes a fountain ; from the golden depths the fountain leaps and brims and overbrims and the desert grows crimson with the heavenly Rose.
Yes : in this Mass said so near Christmas Day, when God comes near, it is Jesus who comes near, and in the arms of Mary.
' Thy Sole-Begotten and His New Birth by way of flesh delivers us whom the immemorial enslavement has held beneath sin's yoke ' : the Saviour of the world not only inaugurates for us, too, a
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divine begetting, but eternalises it— ‘ In His likeness we are found, in Whom, O Lord, with Thee our human nature is ’ ; ‘ His earthly substance confers on us too That which is divine ’ ; and we, ‘ cleansed thus by mighty power, are caused to attain, made pure, to Him our Origin ’. Great is the privilege to have been thus allowed to say, at Christmas-tide, Mass between Egypt and Mount Sinai.
Suez, too late to see anything. Drove off to Cairo. Black road with white sand each side, lit by the car-lamps till the moon rose red and enormous —a very flushed and unvirginal Isis. Through Heliopolis, hardly visible. Shepheard’s hotel, vast monument to self-indulgence, very late. In it, nothing Catholic advertised. A Church of England ‘ pro-cathedral ’, complete with ‘ archdeacon of Egypt ’ ! French evangelical Church and German Lutheran, unless I err. Also, the U.S.A. Church of Cairo. Its hours are —Sunday School, 4.45 ; Christian Endeavour, ditto ; Preaching-service at 6. Also a big advertisement : ‘ Visit the American University at Cairo. The West in the East. The Egypt of To-morrow. A Bridge of Friendliness between the Arabic speaking and English-speaking worlds.” — How that would infuriate me if I were an Egyptian. Well, it means belief in a destiny ; and that is what sets things moving. I expect there really is some friendliness mixed up with the d —d cheek and the finance and the politics. Next day, December 31, called at 5. About twenty-five minutes by car to Ghizeh, much held up by camels bringing in food-stuff. They have foolishly planted what look like pepper-trees all along the Mena road, which interrupt the view of the Pyramids all the way : now a Pyramid is a thing you should always see from a distance ; because near at hand naturally every line runs away from you and the thing foreshortens itself into a small heap. Some barbarian archeologist, I suppose (I hope not the Egyptians), has put a wooden or metal upright (with supports) on top of the Khufu Pyramid to show how high it was before the casing, and therefore, the apex, were removed. Khafra’s Pyramid is the only one with any of the casing left. Ra had risen
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sumptuously en route ; but even so, the Pyramids looked alarmingly cleaned, at least until the sun dyed them, or until they became ethereal and ghostly in the blaze. Being a pitiable tourist, I was put on a camel to give me local colour. I would far rather have walked, despite a volcanic headache, because for one thing I hate a camel’s teeth and its sneer when it turns round to look at you ; and then I couldn’t touch the Pyramids : I want every sense to help me. So, lest you think meanly of me, did St. Ignatius. As for the Sphinx, I now believe that Herodotus didn’t mention it because —well, I used to think he was too frightened by it : but now I think he wasn’t very interested in it. I expect he thought it was just a very large sphinx. Things here now look smaller than they are, I expect, because they are either isolated, like the Pyramids, in a gigantic world of sand-hills and so forth, or, because like the Sphinx they are sunk in a pit. When Herodotus saw it, it was all huddled up among temples and he would not have seen it terrific against a sky-line. There was just one moment of ‘ perception ’ —when the guide (whose voice nearly made me physically sick, such was my headache) pointed to the place where some Government had begun to mend the wig on the left cheek of the Sphinx and had not finished even that side. ‘lt was bad ’, he said with conviction. ‘lt is always bad to touch It.’ Good. However, I perceived that X was much more impressed by the cabbages which irrigation has made it possible to grow quite close to all this, and by the foul hotel of Mena.
Back then to the citadel and its enormous mosque, already corroded by time, though it was only built in 1824 or so, and looking any age. The fort was occupied by the English. Lots of khaki. Odd and irking, I should think. The interior of the mosque was rather Brighton Pavilion-ish, I thought. But the gigantic view from the terrace was worth the whole journey. A pale bleached city, lovely with minarets, and the Pyramids now mountainous and ghostly, miles away. Thence to the bazaars, which mean the pet shops of your guide, and much thrill for the ladies. As for me, I got smeared all over with fierce
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scents that completed my disintegration. I slept nearly all the way from Cairo to Port Said, save when the canal became visible like a slab of solid lapis-lazuli amid faint, dazzling, mirage-like filmy sand. I returned gratefully to the ship and I slept. And then with the rest of everyone saw the New Year in. God bless it.
We pass Crete looking like Socotra . . . yet I had never worried about Socotra’s existence till the other day, and think of all the libraries on Crete ! Was the Double-Axe of 2000 b.c. the ultimate source and origin of Constantine’s Christian labarum and so forth ? Everything seems so huddled here. I feel pelted with ancient civilisations. From Crete, civilisation passed to what was not yet Greece ; and what has been Greece is just over the horizon, and Troy is hardly further. Then Italy, its toe, and Magna Graecia, and its brown mountains under snow, and over there, Sicily, Greek-er than ever, and a most majestic Etna, dazzling white ; and the Straits, and you follow Ulysses and Aeneas through them, though no Scylla grabs at you any more and no Charybdis swallows you, but instead, a barrel is thrown overboard containing photos of the Test Matches in Australia and is picked up by a motor-launch and is given to an aeroplane and thus the readers of a British daily get the photos one day earlier than the rival papers do, unless, that is, the pilot gets killed in the blizzards that are from every direction signalled. If the ancients lived in a fairy-land, our world has turned into an insane-asylum, which is at least no prettier. Past Stromboli, volleying smoke from its scooped-out crater ; and there are all the island-rocks with which I forget what giant pelted whom. Sardinia, source of a million slaves once upon a time ; and eastward from its tip, Rome ; and as you pass Corsica, ghost of Napoleon to right and left, for there lies Elba, not to mention Monte Cristo. And due north, the Italian Riviera, where I first saw mimosa only to find it again in Australia as wattle. How focus all this ? Whence start my perspectives ? Knossos, Greece, Rome, Corsica, modern Italy.
. . . Knossos, the Red Sea and Sinai, Ceylon, Fremantle ?
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But already I have got wrong : for Sinai and Egypt are nowhere near the middle of any perspective. From here especially, how agonisingly problematic seems the future of Australia ! Perhaps our nervous life hurries us on so fast that we use ourselves up quick and are middle-aged in boyhood. Then what future is there for anyone ? Relapse into being thankful for the present, since, though it is cold, the blizzards (which we see on horizons to right and left) leave us alone, and we sail not pitching, not rolling, over sea like barely ruffled silk even from Corsica to Marseilles. Nothing is odder than Marseilles with its scorched hills under snow. In the harbour, a French ship, fired and gutted from end to end —they say, by Bolsheviks. Certainly the town is placarded with Red qffiches —‘ Why work ? “ They ” are amusing themselves at your expense.’ And so forth. Marseilles was always a place of violent and revolting contrasts. The proper event for it is a plague —like the cholera one ; not as a punishment, but because then its latent heroisms display themselves. Not but what the plague suits its organised vice-spots. I am nearly driven to say that there is a sane immorality and a rotten one. Hatred for Christianity can burn with so fierce a flame as to be almost pure : but there are spiritual abscesses in Marseilles too putrid for anything so sound as honest hate is. And on the day of our arrival, Notre Dame de la Garde was thickly veiled in mist. So I could not see her, and found it hard to believe that she was really there.
I had been glad to see how clearly the ‘ social ’ idea seemed realised by many Catholic Societies in Australia, though, to be frank, I was not sure whether the Catholic social principles were so much studied as Catholic methods of beneficence were applied. Perhaps that was natural. Probably at a quieter time than a Congress, I would have heard more about that. But I am pretty sure that there is only one well thought-out theory operating in the world other than the Catholic interpretation of life, and that is the Bolshevik-communist one. I permitted myself often, in Australia and New Zealand, to mention our little Workers’ College, at Oxford, where certainly men are prepared
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to take their place bravely and intelligently among their fellowlabourers and to confront what threatens so to destroy the framework of our civilisation as to render impossible all Catholic activity that has developed as within that framework. Should anarchy triumph in Europe or in lands whose origin is European, the Church will have to re-invent all her methods, as see how she is having to do in Russia, not to insist on the East where her missions have been ruined. Meanwhile, what wastage of souls ; and has it ever been known that a land has been re-Christianised ? I pray for a very clear-headed study of Catholic social principles and a very ruthless application of them by Catholics to their own behaviour.
There is a certainty that this would be a true fruit of a Eucharist Congress, seeing that the Eucharist is essentially a social thing. If indeed Holy Communion is the most intimate of associations between the soul and Christ, quite so essentially, if not more so, is it a social meal —at one Table we eat One Bread, and what links us to Christ links us to one another.
And since there is to-day no problem worth attending to—certainly no social problem—that is not in a true sense international (either because all nations are troubled by it, or because what happens in one nation directly affects another —the price of coal, for example), I would wish that every nation should know so much as possible about other nations, and perhaps I regretted to see how relatively little there was about other countries in the Australian Press. I was thunderstruck, in one city, to find that a very important (secular) paper had never heard, even, of the Action Franchise ! Still more necessary is it that Catholics should know about the welfare, or the sufferings, the activities and the plans of their fellow-Catholics elsewhere, since ‘ all we are one Body ’ and, as Catholics, belong no more to one nation than to another. Hence I should welcome to see instituted in Australia something like—and, God knows, much better than—our somewhat ill-named Catholic Council for International Relations. I say ‘ ill-named ’, for that title suggests that the society exists in order to organise Catholic international
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relations as such. It is true that it exists to study—as Cardinal Bourne never ceases to remind it—the immense obscure areas where internadonal problems exist and to throw upon them the Catholic light. Such problems are : Peace and War ; Rights of Minorities ; or concrete topics like international traffic in women and children. But it also exists, precisely, in order to make known one country’s Catholic life to the Catholics of another land ; and to welcome visiting Catholics from foreign lands ; to ensure a Catholic welcome to our Catholics entering another land ; and to establish contact with Catholics everywhere, especially by sending delegates to international Catholic congresses, of which there are now so many. This is possible. I have found the English working-man ready to listen for an hour and a half to a lecture on, say, Catholics in modern Hungary, and ask not to have lantern-slides, because they distracted him from the facts and the ideas being put forward. And both in a more sophisticated audience as at Melbourne, and a less instructed one at Clare, I found Australian listeners most eager to attend to what their fellow Catholics were doing in Poland, in Croatia .. . The secular Press cannot help. Political finance in one great country rigidly muzzled (indelible crime !) the world’s governments and press as to the worse-than-Diocletian’s persecution in Mexico.
Such, were a good issue from a Eucharist Congress, which reminds us that in Christ all we are brothers, and that it is tragic if one Family is ignorant about its members. One of my dearest memories is of how, in a German prisoners’ camp, I could give—nay, had to give—one Absolution, and one Communion, to German, Austrian, Pole, Belgian, Irish, English, at one altar-rail and in one confessional. Could a Christian heart do anything but embrace them all in one same love ? Christ’s Heart couldn’t do otherwise, at any rate. ‘ Sacred Heart of Jesus —make my heart like unto Thy Heart.’
This brings us back to the basis of all human life, which is the individual. True enough that I hold deep wounds to be inflicted on the Body of Christ, the Church, by the insufficient
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instruction of her members ; by schisms between classes, and between countries, by the alienation, in some lands, of priest from laity, and by the intrusion of secondary, non-Christian considerations into the religious domain ; but it remains that the Christian life is an exacting life ; friendship demands a maximum rather than a minimum, and if we are not friends with Christ, it is none too easy to see ourselves as Christians save in name. We shall never begin to surmount that selfishness, which must be so thoroughly surmounted, if we are to be true to our vocation as men who are genuinely brothers despite division in perhaps everything save Faith. Far from seeking to attract men to the Catholic Church by suggesting that the Catholic life is easy going, I am sure we shall actually attract more souls, and certainly the more generous souls, by insisting with them that they must infuse into our modem life a dose of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience that it lacks. ‘ More Money ’, ‘ Pleasure ‘ Individualism ’ —of these we dare make neither fetich nor watchword. Work, Self-forgetfulness, Self-offering—the Dedicated Life—that is what we need !
Providence really has been very kind to me on this voyage. Just as Adam’s Peak showed itself, clean-cut, pearl-grey, upon a white-gold sky, when we were about to leave Ceylon ; and as for a brief minute Mount Sinai rolled back from its grim crest the smothering clouds and let me see it; so, after a day of impermeable mist, just as we were for leaving Marseilles, Notre Dame de la Garde became visible. To me, the spectacle was wonderful in itself. The air was still full of mist, and the mist of brilliant sunlight. High uplifted, perhaps three miles away, increased by some trick of the light to far more than looked-for size, palest blue on palest gold above, below, around her, there stood Our Lady of the Guard, her Child in her arms, a vision accurate and defined. Afterwards, out at sea, we could look back and see her tower and her statue clear upon their rock ; but now, still in Marseilles, there in mid-heaven, in the swirling brilliancy, stood Mary and upheld the whole world’s Saviour. I called many of the passengers : I think they stood in awe ;
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tears came to their eyes. One of them said : ' Isn't that a thing to thank God for ? ' From youth, I had loved that shrine and had sought Mary's help there ; seamen, not of the faith of those who put that statue there, tell me how they look for it and greet it and bid farewell to it. It reminds them that in lives that are too often harsh and raw, there is after all a Mother, there is a woman who is pure as they would dream their dearest upon earth should be, and yet a mother too. Somehow they understand that in their lives is God, yet God who can understand His men, not only because He made them, but because He took man's nature and made it His. How little do we dare to judge men by their mere actions —perhaps especially these seamen ! Perhaps never dare we be sure a man is properly represented by his actions. Seldom has a man crossed right over into the world of exterior action. Almost always is there a secret recess within him, where he guards—well, something ; and often enough, the memory or the vision of Our Lady. And where Mary is, be sure that she guards the Presence, in some manner, of her Son. I was glad that the Eucharistic thoughts, which this voyage had so strongly revived, should have extended themselves so as to include our Lady, as the Congress had bidden us do. No picture, after this one of Our Lady, filled my mind during the fewdays that remained to us.
Perfect passage down the magnificent coast of Spain. Gibraltar. . . . But this rock would surely not stand shelling . . . ! I imagine that if it fired its own guns it would crumble. . . . Anyhow, I half think all such straits should be internationalised. And then off up the coast of Spain —still a perfect calm. Experts stand aghast. ' Wait for the Bay.' Not at all. I keep pointing out that during the well-known rough bits of sea, despite the progressive lightening of the ship, despite the blizzards, despite wireless messages from ships held up by storm or snowbound, we have had cold, indeed, but calm. See what it is to have scores of convents praying for one ! Finisterre ; and now into the Bay. And across the whole of it, sea like crinkled silk. I believe I have seen rougher water on the Serpentine. Ushant.
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Round into the Channel. The least bit wavier ; but even so, it is the vibration alone, I think, that makes you know you are at sea. Of course if you look and see the dirty black-green, yel-low-black water . . . but heaven save us from grumbling ! We have had just enough breeze to keep fog away. Meanwhile, there have been a few ' Channel nerves', but nothing to squeal about in the pitiful way that gulls do. Past Dover ; round the coast of Kent ; into the Thames, and then, Tilbury. And a priest to meet me, and Goodbyes, and the special train—the first train since the Transcontinental and Kalgoorlie on to Perth . . . Cross-word puzzle. All just as when we started. London. Did any of it ever happen ?
POST-SCRIPT
There is no Pilotry my soul relics on
Whereby to catch, beneath my bended hand,
Faint and beloved along the extreme horizon
That unforgotten land
We shall not round the granite piers and paven
To lie to wharves we know with canvas furled
My little Boat, we shall not make the haven—
It is not of this world.
H. Belloc.
My Dear Diggers. I told you I should write a mere letter of a book, and I know (before any cridc tells me) that it’s a shapeless sort of affair at best ; repeats itself; says a lot of things that can’t interest any one much save me, and has far too much ‘ I ’ about it. Too true . . . But I told you why it would be so I-ish. I did not want to say : ‘ Australia is so and so ’ ; and my more modest option was to say : ‘ In Australia I felt, thought, and even did do and so.’ The one thing lam sure about, and that I want you to be sure about, is, I was very happy in your country ; you had a great share in making me so, though I have to confess that everyone else took a hand in your great collective act of Australian kindness. (Only one letter offered me the Gap, near Sydney, to commit suicide over.—the quicker the better ; only one other described me as a ‘ full-fed, laceclad cleric ’, and really that rather described what I was, though I borrowed a cotta only now and then . . . But as for forcible feeding . . .!) (And I would like to add, in another parenthesis, that I’m hoping you’ve realised I was happy on the Mongolia. That was to be put down to its—what does one say about a ship ? Staff? Anyway, officers and others. I don’t
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suppose they will ever read or even hear of this book, unless I give it to them as birthday—or should I say wedding—presents ; but I like to tell you, anyway, what a good trip it was ; I was asked back to the ship while she was in dock, for two hilarious little suppers—and we, most of us, met more than once in London, before she sailed again, leaving me to look forward to her return in May. And who knows whence I acquired the bit of P. & O. bunting that hangs by my mantelpiece ? As for the huge P. &O. matchboxes —oh, them I merely pinched.) (And now she is back ! Till September 1929. And again we all have met.)
Now here and there, you may say, this book becomes rather serious—rather a sermon. Well, there are certain things I believe with great conviction and they occupy my thoughts a great deal. Such as retreats ; books ; and encouraging Catholics to think, and helping them when they do ; work, both ordinary this-world hard work and Catholic work as such ; charity between classes, as they call them ; charity between nationalities. Now and again I have had incidents in my head that I didn’t mention —but why should I ? I don’t want to hurt So and So’s feelings, and I do want to get back to some great Christian principle. And constantly I have had at the back of my mind (oh, I have it there in England, too, all right !) the technical ticketted Catholic, the tragedy of the man who calls himself Catholic, defends the Church if it is attacked, gives money to her works, very likely, but doesn’t live as a Catholic. Not one of you, whom I knew long since, and know now, is like that. But in all the world there are many like that, and they make Christ’s work so much harder. They make Him ill-spoken of. For you will have seen how always we must think of the Church as Christ’s Body, and of men who do not belong to the visible Church as men whom Christ wants to be ‘ incorporated ’ into Himself, and who, maybe, in ways that neither we nor they know, but God knows, actually are. Not for me to exclude the crassest sinner, the most contemptuous critic, the slackest sensualist, from some hidden point of contact with the incredible love of Christ.
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THE RISEN SUN
Life passes very fast. I first met you in Oxford, in London, in all sorts of places ; it seems yesterday, but it is more than ten years ago. Though some of you look different (and for all I know I do 1) it is so clear that the Faith, which first made us meet one another, and affection, which went on making us meet one another, haven’t altered. These are the things that last out into Eternity, Truth, and Love. Sins, please God, are absolved and vanish ; misunderstandings, personal, social, national—all of them melt. At the hour of death, who would even think of them ? I assure you, when, once or twice, in New Zealand and even afterwards, I thought I had a week, an hour, a couple of minutes more, not one of these secondary things came into my head for a moment. So whether or no the casual reader (if any !) will believe that I wrote these pages for you, I honestly did, and I finish as I began, by telling you so, and by hoping (as I often do) that if you get into heaven first, you will hitch me up, by the tug of your friendly hands, letting down, maybe, a long-discarded Sam Browne for me to get a grip on. May God give us all His Blessing !
Printtd in Qrtat Britain by TX* Crypt Bouts Pros Limittd , OUmeutar and London.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/books/ALMA1929-9917503903502836-The-risen-sun---impressions-in-N
Bibliographic details
APA: Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie). (1929). The risen sun : impressions in New Zealand and Australia. Sheed and Ward.
Chicago: Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie). The risen sun : impressions in New Zealand and Australia. London, England: Sheed and Ward, 1929.
MLA: Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie). The risen sun : impressions in New Zealand and Australia. Sheed and Ward, 1929.
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105,202
The risen sun : impressions in New Zealand and Australia Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie), Sheed and Ward, London, England, 1929
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