SHALL WE ANNEX AUS= TRALIA ? The Alarm of the Federal States.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 92, 5 April 1902, Page 8

SHALL WE ANNEX AUS= TRALIA ? The Alarm of the Federal States.

THERE seern^ to be a "rowing feeling in the Commonwealth that if that country doesn't keep a bright look out King Dick will step ashore at Port Jackson and take charge. Well, after all, the little islands of Britain have stepped ashore on bigger pieces of country than Australia, and New Zealand isn't so very much larger than Britain ! The Commonwealth papers are doing Mr. Seddon the honour to regard him as a sort of toipedo ready at any moment to blow their constitution into a thousand atoms, and to substitute a homemade article of his own. The clarion voice of the t'other-side press implores that country to keep a weather-eye open and assert itself, and " warn offwhat, if unchecked, might de\elop into Australia being governed in certain large resp cts from Wellington." » * * j% Peihaps the Sydney " Telegraph," which is more than usually hysterical at the fear of a coming annexation, cabled its views Home to the London " Standard," and is the reason for the latter paper's new title for Mr. Seddon, "Premier of Federated Australia." There are si\ modern full-sized Premiers in Austialia, led by that country's " noblest son," to grapple Avith one fairly large gentleman away out on a speck off the coast of their big island. How Dick must chuckle at the extraordinary admission of those grave papers that he is capable of dealing with the whole bunch and of beating them ! * * * After all, it seems to us Mr. Barton might have thought of that triennial meeting of Colonial Premiers and British statesmen, that Australia might have been first in the field in all the matters for which Mr. Seddon has shown his initiative, and gained all the kudos that has placed him on a pedestal. Why didn't Australian statesmen brim over with ideas, and get noticed in the Home papers ? They would have played the first fiddle, then vice King Dick's instrument relegated to a " back row." Surely the united brains of Australia are not of so flaccid a kind as to allow " Mr. Seddon's manifest disposition to grip a general sway " to amount to anything ? * * * Mr. Seddon's sin, of course, in the eyes of the Commonwealth was and is his refusal to allow New Zealand to become a suburb of Australia, and Australians seem to be in deadly earnest in believing that it will take them all their time to prevent the suburb that was to have been from running the States. The said States won't see, of course, that matters which affect them affect New Zealand also, and that Kmg Dick, as deputy for this speck of ocean-girt rock, wants every ad\antage for it that accrues to them. * * ♦ It is unfortunate for the Commonwealth that they have no man who can play a hand with Dick and win, but m this age of combination why don't they amalgamate their forces and refuse to surrender ? It is annoying that New Zealand, which could comfortably snuggle itself into a corner of the Federal States, should be heard of out of all proportion to her size, when the gigantic Commonwealth, with its united voice, is barely heard above a whisper. * # * If the Commonwealth will be on its best behaviour, perhaps King Dick will let it carry on in its own fashion, and magnanimously refuse to annex Australia, but really if the Federal States believe that we should hide our little head, and tie the Premier's hands behind his back, because we had the audacity to refuse to be gobbled up by them, they have quite incorrectly gauged the quality of New Zealand and of its administrative chief.