NO CENTENARY SONG.

Evening Star, Issue 21689, 7 April 1934, Page 12

NO CENTENARY SONG.

Thk celebrations of the Melbourne centenary to be held later in the year will be profuse and impressive, but one thing will be lacking. There will be no centenary song. The Centenary Council has announced that none of the 279 lyrics submitted by competitors, including New Zealanders, to fill that purpose, for which a prize of £SO was offered, was regarded as suitable or worth setting to music. Our admiration goes out to the council, or to the judges for whom it speaks. Not every examining tribunal would have had so much the courage of its opinions. A far easier thing to do would have been to pick the best of a poor collection—not many would have reflected how poor it was—and hope that it might be worth £SO. As it is, the ignorant may think that a bad advertisement has been given to Australia by proclaiming to all the world that it has not a poet able to turn out a centenary song for such a reward, but the advertisement, viewed properly, will be a good one. There must be a few thousand “ poets ” in Australia and New Zealand, and the fact that not one of them, at short notice and for a fee, has been able to satisfy this demand must confirm a conviction not too widely held that there are some real poets among them. Centenary songs which will be authentic songs are as incapable of being artificially produced as national anthems, for which also prizes have been offered in Australia from time to time with most disappointing results. Civic songs must be almost the hardest of all to write, because, while there are a few good and more bad national anthems in the world, municipal anthems do not exist as a type. It would be hard to point to any great city that has a song of its own, though local songs, after the type of ‘ Dixieland,’ are numerous, and some Australian might conceivably have found his inspiration in Victoria. There are songs about Sydney—except that they are not sung—but Sydney has a poetical charm of her own. It was unfortunately translated when an earlier prize poet represented the Sydney coves as rejoicing at the inauguration of the Commonwealth, and a flippant reviewer asked: “ Why leave out their ‘ donahs '?” The village of Villers-Bretonneux, in Prance, which has been “ adopted ” by the City of Melbourne, has been celebrating this week its defence against the Germans by Australian troops sixteen years ago. Its children have been singing, in French, an Australian song, ‘ Australia Will be There.’ We have never seen the words of this ditty, which was sung, if we remember rightly, by the Australian “ diggers ” who assisted in the recapture of Villers-Bretonneux, which was decisive for the safety of Amiens when the Germans were pressing strongly in that direction. Apart from that it has small fame as a lyric, though it may be improved in French. There will be no special song when the Melbourne celebrations are held, but it will not be missed.