SLAMMING AUSTRALIA

Evening Star, Issue 19352, 11 September 1926, Page 15

SLAMMING AUSTRALIA

LIBELLOUS BBAiSA Isn’t, it about time someone prepared a little boiling oil or a good stout club to deal with our overseas calamity howlers (writes David Worrall to tbo Sydney ‘ Sun ’) ? Every other Australian who gets publicity in the United States seems to take a morbid delight in boasting about droughts and other horrors until normal Americans have got to thinking of Australia as the land where the droughts come from, and they are puzzled to understand why there are any sheep left if they die so consistently in the parched deserts of tho Southern Golgotha. Nowadays it is jnst as hard to dissociate droughts from Australia as it was to rob tho old-tirne villain of tho melodrama of his black moustache.

The blue ribbon prize for calamity howling is held at present, by _ the dramatists who not so long ago inflicted two so-called Australian plays on Broadway. Tho only bright feature about them both was that they wero so bad as plays that they fizzled out after a few performances, ami the unhappy critics wero about the only ones to learn from them that Australia was a really good place to stay away from. One of tho plays featured a liyo kangaroo, and all tho critics agreed that this was tho most entertaining item of the evening. Sir James Elder and tho official Australian secretary (Mr Dow) put on their best shirts to sco this play, but after it bad maundered on for a while they both looked ashamed of their prosperous condition when tho country they represented was so poverty-stricken. This dark snot in the bright lights was called ‘Just Beyond.’ 'and sympathy for Australia .was nicely put by Bums Mantle in tho ‘Daily News.’ “‘Just Beyond’ is not far enough,” he wrote, and then ho continued: “ If I were tho Government of Australia, or president of tho Sydney Rotarians, or even a Melbourne realtor I should want to start proceedings of some sort to nip in the bud the distressing impression of my country the dramatists have recently been giving playgoers in these United States. Surely there is something to brighten life in the land where tho Anzacs come from besides the bush, droughts, dead sheep, hysterica! ranchmen, and unhappy wives. But if there is, you never would learn about it from tho plays wo egg.” The hero *of this particular melodrama took home a charming American

wife, who contrasted sharply with n miserable and slatternly Australian California’s sun-kissed raisin valleys can be just as hot as Bourke midsummer, and most of the water is obtained from irrigation ; but if a dramatist wrote a play with these items as atmosphere, added a few parched unhappy women, and a healthy earthquake or two, the gnashing of teeth among California’s native sons and the sympathetic screech from the rest ol America would make Germany’s hymn of hate sound like a bedtime lullaby by contrast. Americans don’t stand for that kind of slamming, realising as they do the incalculable harm that can _ he done by the wrong kind of _ The wav American communities and the United States as a whole stick together in this respect seems to be one of tho pleasantest features of American life. No American newspaper would publish a story knocking the natural resources of any part of the countrv. They may laugh afc fofHlcS of tho neonlo in the various centres, but that is all. . , The spirit of co-operative boost is behind every big American expansion, and it was never better illustrated than in the present Florida boom. "Let’s net together and make Florida whiz, said a few men down in Florida. They got together, and it did whiz. “ Australia would do well to adopt Florida’s methods,” said Francis M'Cullagh, English journalist with the American fleet, when addressing the British Luncheon Club in New York the other day.