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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9096, 3 July 1888, Page 4

It is interesting to note that our excitable neighbours in Australia have had the enjoyment of a war scare. The people of Melbourne have long been noted for their militant character, and though the Broken Hills had diverted their attention for a time into more peaceful though also exciting channels, it required but the snapping of the cables to restore them to their normal condition, and the sound of revelry in the Stock Exchange was promptly hushed in the presence of war's alarms ; and the shouting of the price of stocks gave place to the din of arms. The Governor held a Council of War, and the gunboat Albert was hurried oft to defend the Heads.' It is all very well now to say that it was all makebelieve, and that the excitement and the Council of War were only to see how rapidly they could all drop into position. That is a story for the marines, the plain fact being that conscience did make cowards of them all, and that after the treatment given to the Chinaman they believed that the breakage of the cable was the preliminary to their being immediately visited by the puissant anger of the potentate who is own brother to the sun and moon, and first cousin to all the various constellations. That it could only have been the Emperor of China they feared is clear in the fact that Europe is in the most profound repose. In fact, as said by "Puff" in the Wellington Press the rumours of wars in Europe "have all gone to peaces," while England has not a ground of divergence of feeling with any power on earth. It was only the fear of the consequences of their own misdeeds that startled our Australian friends from their propriety, and now that they have felt the fact that China is a reality and not a myth, that the pigtails own a monarch who has ironclads and gunboats, it may be hoped that we have seen an end to their bumptiousness over the Chinese question. This is the most amusing incident that has occurred in connection with the "National Aspirations" which we are so often told are inspiring our Australian neighbours. When the Magistrate of Thursday Island annexed the Continent of New Guinea, and a Victorian Premier threatened to send Victorian bluejackets to oust the French from the New Hebrides, and when another Premier declared that so soon as Victoria was strong enough she would compel the surrender of all the French possessions in the Pacific, there was something bold and dignified even in the sheer impudence of it: but to see a colony starting to its feet in a fright, on the instant of being cut off from England, in fear that the Chinese were coming, is ludicrous in its absurdity.