THE COMMONWEALTH'S TASK.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 24, 29 January 1908, Page 6

THE COMMONWEALTH'S TASK.

Nations do not grow in a day ; and we had already given the Commonwealth a trifle of fifty years or so to learn to use its feet and its fists. When the Commonwealth's Prime Minister recites the long tale of what remains to be done, as to .the Australian Natives' Association in Melbourne on Monday, he makes us wonder whether the term should not have been set at a hundred years. But for the welding of their war, the United States might still have been occupied with questions of Federal rights. These are the questions that trouble the Commonwealth. ( In order to start at all, it had to start with too little power ; and its* business for a long time- to come will be the gradual acquirement of more power, applied to a greater area of the constitutional field, from the jealous and reluctant States. The argument against letting go appeals with equal force to each successive State administration. "Why," says every State- to the Commonwealth, "should I dethrone myself to make you king?" The New South Wales Parliament, for example, used to dealing high and low justice and to conferring with the Imperial Government as peer with peer, adopts very sadly and unwillingly its new role of territorial council ; and is driven along the Federal road in remonstrating like an Irishman's pig. So that even where a State can obviously profit by relinquishing authority to the Commonwealth, as in, the unification of the public debt, successive State Treasurers continue accumulating obstacles and delays, and are likely to continue. ' And de&pite the authority which the Labour Party wields in Federal legislation, its State branches, as their cabled postponement of the issue helps to show, have the same natural disinclination to lessening their individual prerogative by referring all industrial matters to the Commonwealth. There is, . to our mind, rather less than an even chance that the Commonwealth will be able peacefully to set its house in order before the pressure of awakening Asia is seriously felt. Rather is it likely that Australia will have to find her real union in facing the foe — or in falling before him. When one looks at Japan, teeming and armed, driven to colonise by that natural law of overflow which breaks down all barriers and is superior to all calculated policies ; and at Australia with her mere four millions of people scattered over a territory so vast, and tho increase dribbling in by a few thousands yearly » — the omens seem all in favour of Asia. Yet Mr. Deakin, in urging that defence- .should be made real, and that a' small part of the present prosperity of the people should bo yielded as a premium of national insurance, talks to sleepy ears. We begin to see that something can be said for the philosophic argument that war, with all its cruelties and horrors, does human service in rousing selfish generations from their sloth, and in keeping tho race alive at whatever cost to the individual and the country "Australia will not be content with anything less than the universal training of all able-bodied males." So says Mi\ Deakin ; and wo should alter his woi'dn to read that Australia will not be even moderately safe with anything less than such a training. For his plans are farther in oi t)ie

popular mind than they should be His aspiration to know naval defence also secure^ — or to &cc "an Australian flotilla built as far as possible in Australia by Australian money, and manned by Australian men" — has grown familiar | by reiteration ; but that flotilla does not come. Australia, like New Zealand, is waiting on Providence, trusting that all will be well with the future as with the past._ It is not intelligent, this apathy ; it is deadly perilous ; but may bo a miracle will be worked on behalf of our children, may be we shall muddle through.