THE WAR SPIRIT IN MELBOURNE.

Evening Star, Issue 9911, 24 January 1896, Page 1

THE WAR SPIRIT IN MELBOURNE.

Referring to an incident of which a brief report was cabled to this colony, the ' Argus' of recent date says : " An amusing phase of the war spirit was manifested in the city yesterday. A German band was playing in the street, when some of the bystanders interrupted the ordinary programme, and insisted on the band playing ' Rule Britannia.' The leader willingly obliged, and was loudly cheered and promptly rewarded. He offered to play 'God save the Queen' on the same terms. Every company of musicians in the street is in the common impression necessarily a ' German band.' A number of harmless Hungarians, who have latterly been earning a precarious livelihood by playing popular music in the streets, were recently made painfully aware of the fact, as well as of another, that to belong to a German band is not just now the most pleasureable position to fill in a British possession. The band were playing Continental music in Flinders lane during the day, when some one demanded that they should play ' Rule Britannia.' After some chaffing the band struck up the well-known air, and for the rest of the day they were suffered to play nothing else. For some time they reaped a rich harvest, but later more robust Britons, who were full of liquor and warlike sentiment, insisted upon them playing without reward. They often objected, ' struck work,' and shifted their stand, but wherever they went only one tune would be accepted, and that-was 'Rule Britannia.' Another display of the war spirit was. made at the Opera-house, when the Ivanoff Brothers, Bingers of national song, attempted 'Der Wacht am Rhein,' the German national anthem. The audience rose at once, and hooted and hissed so vigorously that the anthem was badly mangled. When the 'Red, White, and Blue,' was announced the people nearly raised the roof with their cheers, and fairly astounded the vocalists, who are Russians."