ALL ABOUT AUSTRALIA.

Evening Star, Issue 14117, 21 July 1909, Page 3

ALL ABOUT AUSTRALIA.

Under date May 21 out London correspondent writes:

If I were an Englishman looking for a country overrate to settle in, I should probably find it very difficult to choose between Australia 'and N«w Zealand. The New Zealand£f>Trill say: "Where's the difficulty? Tb£feis no comparison between the two." mb, then, thai is just what the Australiart/says also! And each country has been' ably championed. I can imagine an. Englishman after reading Mr Pember Reeves's recent book on New Zealand deciding forthwith in favor of the Dominion; but if he should happen upon Mr Bernard R. Wise's new book, 'The Commonwealth-of .Australia,' he would find it by no .means easy to choose between the two.

Mr Wise'© interesting book is the first volume of an "All Red" series of books on the British Empire which Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons are publishing. The companion volume on New Zealand has been written by Sir Arthur P. Douglas, and will appear in the course of another month or so. Mr Wise's aim lias been to give in some 350 pages- a readable survey of the young Australian nation, the special features of its- policy, and the ideas, temper, and conduct of its people. As he rays truly enough, "the plentiful lack of knowledge about Australia justifies such an attempt." Here are some of Mr Wise's obiter dicta on Australia and the Australians :

The most independent, self-reliant, and courageous of Australians is the Queenslander, who fights nature jesting, because he knows that in a country of such wealth the tide must one day turn. The Australian cuisine as, indeed, the English at its very worst, because the climate is entirely unsuited to what Dr Johnson called the "ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dxessed meats" which are the stand-by of every meal. Australians, accustomed to the li°ht colors and pretty. dre»ses of thedr countrywomen, are always struck bv the dowdiness of an English crowd. " Certainly Australian women have the American knack of " putting their clothes on well '; and their tendency is rather to over than under-dress. In Melbourne, where the Scotch element prevails, Sundav is still a day of gloom. Sydney, tliaiiks to her harbor has never suffered from the dour Scotch (sabbath. Unquestionably, the chief amusement of Australia is horse -racing. In no other country is racing so popular or of such absorbing interest. Nine-tenths of the embezzlements and forgeries and breaches of trust which •come before the Australian courts are directly due to horse-racing and its concomitants. No man' who has to work for his living, whatever his position in life, works anywhere under pleasunter conditions than in an Australian city. Comradesliip is the busliman's characteristic virtue. Energy is another marked feature. Ihe dominant icl oa . 0 f thlC awra „ e voter is to make Australia a better country to live in lor men of his own class-far he has learned bv experience that men.of wealth arid ability are well able to look after themselves Australia will be tlie priae of victory in a war between Germany and Wland. ' b

It is a perverted sense of loyally to the Empire which prompt* the chief opposition to the Australian, Navy. The habit of colonial dependence on the Mother Country has become to ingrained that a section of the people feels no sense of shame that a country so rich as Australia should " ca<lge " for ite defence upon tlie overburdened taxpayer of lireat Britain.