CONFESSIONS OF A COLONIAL.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13611, 21 December 1909, Page 8

CONFESSIONS OF A COLONIAL.

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH

ENGLISH PATIENCE AND ORDER

(BT OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT).

If anyone osked mc what characteristic of the English people has most impressed mc during a ye«r in the Old Country, I should answer, without hesitation : "Their patienw." The patience of the English is colossal. Now I know what Napoleon meant when he said that the English never knew when they wore beaten. I con understand, too, why the English race is so long-suffering, and why, when it does strike, it is usually for a just cause long considered, a. cause to which it will remain Ioy«l long after hope has perished, and until it revives again.

In every phase of life yon see the eternal patience of tho English triumphant over all othur emotions. Jn the .street traffic the driver never fumes or frets when the constable raises his hand just ns he is about to dash past the crossing. Tho rear ranks of xhe theatre queue never push ami fidget and shout- to their predecessors to batter the door down. The railway traveller never paces up and down the plotform waiting for his train. The I*nidoner never swears when the traditional coal on its way into the traditional cellar completely blocks the foctway for on hour on end, and compels him to walk on the street. He does not mind it the small shop-keeper, unpacking his goods on the pavement, imposes on him the same necessity. The Englishman sits calmly smoking and meditating through a biock on the railway traffic which would set the colonial fretting and fuming with impatience. Tho British public submits withou. protest to dozens of little nuisances of which a colonial public would compel the removal. Tho British public is probably the only one in tho Empire which would consent to be shut out from its otyn Parliaments for months on end without a protest or a riot. It is tho only one that would stand in the rain for two hours waiting for a royal ceremony which had been postponed without any notice whatever. It is the only public that would miss its trams every morning for a week because the stopping places had been altered without notice. It is the only puolic that would allow the street traffic over a wide area of the ousiost part of the city to be dislocated for six hours a day half a dozen times in the year, so that the few might enjoy a triumph. It is the only one that, possessing a stock jibe about the dogs of Constantinople, would have its own life made horrible in the suburbs by multitudes of small dogs. Oh.! Blessed are the meek!

When I first saw the queues standing outside the ticket offices at the theatres and railway stations, waiting patiently for orderly admission to tramway cars and 'buses, I was struck with amazement that a virile people should be so lacking corabativeness as not to fight for front place. This did not present itself to mc as fairness. It seemed more like a lack of all that ambition which is so necessary to keep the nation at the front. When tliat idea faded this little circumstance of life presented itself in another objectionable form. It now seemed to mc to be a tacit approval of the morality of "squatting," by which term, we in Australasia know, that practice which allows a man to arrive in advance of his fellows and establish a claim to anything he desires which may not be assailed, by later comers. It took my colonial mind months to unbend in the slightest towards approval of the principle of the queue, it seemed so utterly undemocratic and destructive of the virtue of individualism, .which would enable a smarter or a outer man than the rest to "beat them for first place. More than that, it seemed utterly unfair that a man ■who might not be in a hurry at the ticket office, and might not have his money ready, should be permitted io "hold up" the whole line and perhaps bo the cause to many Behind him of missing their train. When I first came to England I used to hustle to patch trains in the tubes. "It's all right," my English friend Tised to say, as I tried to hurry him along the subways to get the nert train. "There will be another one in a ■minute. , -' "Yes," I argued, "that's all right, but there's the one I was trying to catch." And the twin lights dwindled! out of eight in the darkness. But now I have nothing but admiration for the English sense of order, which has been made possible by its patience. There is this reservation, of course, that the same eternal patience is directly responsible for a. good deal of the laissez faire and national laziness of which I have to speak later. But in so far as it has engendered and fostered the sense of order, tide colossal patience of the English is a splendid asset. It is an excellent thing, especially for ladies—who, by converse, are better protected in the colonies by reason of their sex—that once having secured a place in a line they should not be displaced or robbed: of their due seniority by boisterous newcomers. And even a colonial—socialistic in spite of himself must appreciate the spirit of fairness which secures for him, as long as he desires, his own seat and his uninterrupted view of the game. In the colonies we are more primitive in these matters. Property is not held in quite such a reverent respect, and the man who is not continually watchful of his interests is liable to find an intruding | person interposed between himself and j his vista. My only objection now to the English sense of order is that the British public are inclined to be rather slow in their movements, and a host of trains are missed by the chaffing impatients at the end of the queue. As for British discipline, that is a commodity so often regarded as purely military that colonials are apt to hold it in contempt. British discipline, as a matter of fact, is quite the reverse of military. It has no military tradition. Its genesis was in the law-courts, and its chief strength to-day is in the police uniform. Nobody can convince mc that the discipline of the English is a national characteristic. When I see a British crowd squeezed into one-quar-ter of its physical measurements, standing as quietly and meekly as lambs, without a suspicion or pushing or shoving, without a word of protest or argument with the police who stand comfortably along their edee, I know that there must have been thousands of cases of assault of constables in the history of British crowds, that in most cases the Bench meted out substantial punishment to the civilians who were disrespectful to the uniforms; and that this particular crowd, without exactly knowing it, has in its mind a lively tcoolloction of each case and each punishment. The quiet, orderly conduct of the London mobs, which must be the admiration of the whole world, is. in fact, the accretion of many generations of fear of the law. There are just the same men in the colonies, and the pobco are no less worldly wise in dealing with men; but the policeman's lot in the colonies is infinitely more difficult- On the most ordinary occasions of sifiht-seeing the crowd cheerfully carries the police with it. The colonial resents any attemot to discipline him, • l 1 ar SU'JS the point very forcibly with the constable "who try to do so. In a whole year in England I nave never heard a man so much as answer

back a policeman. That is an inconceivable offence. Here, too, one sees boys voluntarily subjecting themselves to discipline, drilling each other as it was never possible in our colonial days, when each wished to be the colonel and none to be privates. The English sense of law and order was not acquired in a day. It dntes severally and equally from the time when it was established that a baron took precedence of his retainers; from the time when Cromwell read savaiie lessons in altruism to hi* rulers; and from the time when the police ejected disturbers, from anti-Corn Law meetings. It is quite the most useful thine a colonial can appropriate while in (•rent Britain. Being commercially minded, I cannot but feel that a modicum of order and discipline infused into our institutions, our education, and our habits nf life, will be a powerful assistance when we have to mert the trained foes »f our race who will come just as surely to our land from the swarming East as to this from the Teutonic fields and cities and harlvuirs." That is why the other ten rer cent, oi colonial boys should be compelled to do what ninety _>er cent, have Wen doing by volition for years past—that is. submit themselves to the rigours and the advantages of military training.