The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1912. REPUBLICANISM AND LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1418, 19 April 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1912. REPUBLICANISM AND LABOUR.

The Labour Ministry in the Commonwealth has at times afforded some amusement through the breezy readiness of certain of its members to undertake the arbitrament of questions that most Ministers in' other countries would be extremely glad to leave to people with special knowledge. The latest Minister to fill Australia with mingled amusement and- indignation is the Post-master-General, Mr. Frazer, who has just approved the design for the new Commonwealth postage stamps. Designs were submitted by artists from all over the world, and a prize of £100 was awarded to the one which a committee of experts considered the best. Mr. Frazer, however, would have none of it. He said (and as a democrat with many Labour votes us evidence of his expertness in art and philately as in everything else) that he could beat the prize design'himself. He therefore" thought out a design of his own, and a moat extraordinary one it is. it consists of a white map of Australia, with the denomination in figures at the corner and in print at the foot. Inside the map i 3 a large, unwholesome looking kangaroo chewing a tuft of " 'roo grass," with a small aiid irrelevant rabbit watching it in another corner. We have seen the design, and it has a thoroughly silly look. To Mr. Fiuzkii, however, and to many of the same class, the design has a merit that triinsejml.s all other possible merits: it may be silly, it may be ugly, hut it is Australian. In the criticisms to which the islnmp is being subjcctcd a seri,jju« joint lias been raised.' It is ba-. v

ing contended that "there is really a good deal of significance in the heraldry of the post office." As the. Argus puts it;

Our postage stamps go all over the world; they become, in course of time, a ■sort of national symbol, and it is therefore very annoying to find that our country is to,bo represented in the eyes of the. world by a. grotesque and ridiculous symbol, and that .she will be a laughingstock even to childish stamp collectors of every nation. Mr. T'razer had no goud reason for departing from Imperial usage in this matter. Australia should do as the rest <jf the Dominions do; we should all aljke have the King's head printed on our stamps, because if is the most obvious and unmistakable symbol of Unconstitutional 1)0nd between the various members of our far-scattered Empire. But even if Mr. I'razer entertains Republicon sentiments and thinks it his duly to vipress them by means of the national sUlii]), he might surely have found some heraldic device more noble and dignified than that absurd kangaroo and that humorous rabbit.

It' is unfortunately only too true that a section of the leaders of the Labour movement in Australia imagines that the most sincere way of being a "Nationalist" is to deride and flout the Imperial connection. The average workingman in Australia may be as proud of his allegiance to tho Kino and his connection with Britain as tho vast majority of workingmen in New Zealand undoubtedly are; but there is a strong Republican ring within the Labour movement and among the Labour politicians. It has been reported that at a recent "Labour" social in this city at which some Ministers 'of the Crown were present the customary first toast of "The King" was superseded by the toast of "Maoriland."

■No doubt there are many ardent Labour leaders who think it a very fine thing to deny, on the stamp and on the toast-list, the paramountry of the Crown over colonial "nationalism." As a matter of fact, of course, there is nothing but boorishness about a "nationalism" of that kind. One of the noblest poems ever written in defence of a monarch (Queen Victoria) was written by the greatest Republican poet of the nineteenth century. And Swinburne's discrimination between the private political conviction and the public diit'y of a properly-balanced citizen is one which most deccnt men who are Republicans by instinct always make. The two incidents we have brought together arc straws which will be taken b.v many to show the direction in which the wind of Labour leadership is blowing. This is a symptom that requires the attention of nobody more than the workingman himself. The average workingman is quite as loyal as the average man in any other section of the community. and is as little likely to tolerate disloyalty in his leaders once it is brought under his notice as any loyal citizen could wish.