AS OTHERS SEE US.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8669, 11 September 1891, Page 6

AS OTHERS SEE US.

MR. D. CHRISTIE MURRAY ON THE

ANTIPODEAN S. [FROM 0014 OWN CORRESPONDENT.

London, August 8. Following the example ot most visitors of literary eminence to the distant possessions of the British Empire, Mr. D. Christie Murray, who not long ago returned to this country from his extended tour in Australia and New Zealand, is giving to the world his impressions of what ho saw and heard among the people - of. Greater Britain. In this month's Contemporary Review appears the first of several articles in which, under the heading of "The Antipodeans," the popular novelist proposes to tread in the same path as that which led Mr. Froude and Mr. Sala to a pinnacle of such unenviable eminence. Your readers are aware that Mr. Christie Murray has been a soldier and a war correspondent, and in the present contribution ho avows himsell an admirer of, and a believer in, the old prize ring, with its rules of fair play, its contempt of pain, and its excellent tuition in temper and forbearance, so that we may take it his courage is above the average. That he is cither very brave or very rash, is abundantly proved by the fact that, at the very outset of his article, he delivers himself of an ipse dixit which even the boldest might have hesitated to utter. He frankly gives it as his opinion that Melbourne is commonplace. _ There is no ueed to bo eloquent about it, because, too many people have sung its praises already. Imagination fairly reels in the effort to picture the state of the Victorian mind on reading this awful heresy. This is not the worst. Mr. Murray's courageous candour carries him to even further length. He alludes to the Victorian's devotion to his capital city with something like amusement, and relates the story of a young Victorian who, having been shown over Westminster Abbey for the first time and asked whether they had anything like that in Australia, replied with a. touch of scorn, " My word ! No fear ! You should just see the Scotch Church at Ballarat!" All*. Murray, indeed, seems to have come back with a good. budget of anecdotes illustrative of the little weaknesses of the dwellers under the Southern Cross. Hero is one which will possibly go nearer home : At tho Bluff, in New Zealand, ho says, people show the stranger the southernmost gas-lamp in the world, and it is the correct thing for the stranger to touch this in order that he may tell of the fact thereafter. The traveller may take the spirit of Sheridan's excellent advice to his son, and say he has touched it; but, as a rule, he takes the trouble to go down and do it. Mr. Murray was escorted from this festal ceremony by a resident, and leaning against the southernmost lamp-post was a Scot in an abject state of drunkenucss, and, as Stevenson says of a similar personage, " radiating dirt and- humbug." Nigh at hand was another drunkard, sitting, pipe in mouth, on an upturned petroleum _ tin, and the two were conversing. " Et's a nice leetle coal'ny," said the man against the lamp-post, " a vera nice lectio coal'iiy indeed. But it wants inergy, and it wants inter prise, and it wants (hie) sobriety." He spoke with a face of immeasurable gravity, and Mr. Murray -laughed so that he forgot to touch the lamppost. But to return to Melbourne. Patriotic Victorians, proceeds Mr. Murray, declare that London is vilely supplied with cabs (in comparison with Melbourne), aild they will tell you that the flavours of English meats, game, fishes, fruits, and vegetables are vastly inferior to those they know at home. To.his thinking, however, " Melbourne is the worst cabbed city in the world, or among the worst. A gourmet would find a residence in Australia a purgatory." For his own part lie has learned in a variety of rough schools at whatsoever meat he sits therewith to be content. In matters of gourmandise he is contented wi' little an' cantie wi' mair. "But shade of Savarin ! how I relish my morning sole after two years' banishment from that delicious creature ! How I reverence my sirloin ! How I savour my saddle of mutton! What a delightful thing I now know an English strawberry to be! But to the New South Welshman my doctrine is a stumblingblock, and to the Victorian it is foolishness. Mr. Sala preached it years ago, and the connoisseurs of the Great Britain of the South have never forgiven him." In one respect certainly the popular novelist qualities this unfavourable judgment concerning the gastronomic resources of the Southern Cross, lie tasted in Adelaide a favourable specimen of the wild turkey, and he believes it to be the noblest of game birds. " Its flavour is exquisite, and yon may carve at that bounteous breast for quite a little army of diners." The recollection of the toothsome turkey puts him into a better frame of mind, and lie speaks in warm praise of Australian hospitality. Is there, he asks, anywhere else on the surface of our planet a hospitality so generous, so exuberant, so free and boundless as that extended to the stranger in Australia !" If there be, the deponent, D. Christie Murray, avouches that lie knoweth it not. They meet you, says he, with so complete a welcome. They envelope you with kindness. There is no nr.•inre pensile in their cordiality, no touch lacking in sincerity. This is a characteristic of the country. The native born Australian differs in many respects from the original stock, but in this particular he remains unchanged. You present your letter of introduction, and it makes you the immediate friend of its recipient. lie spares no pains to learn what you desire, and then his whole aim and business in life for the moment is to fulfil your wishes. Your host will probably be less polished than an Englishman living in a like house and boasting an equal incoiu:-, but his bonhomie is unsurpassable. Mr. Murray used to think there was nothing like an English welcome. Australia has killed that bit of English prejudice. Another patriotic delusion with which the Victorian hugs himself is his "glorious climate." But hear what the disillusionised stranger has .to say about it" The plain fact is that in Melbourne' there is no such thing as a climate. They take their weather in 'laminae, set on end. You walk from the tropics to the pole in five minutes. A meteorological astonishment lies in wait at every street corner, ft blows hot, it blows cold, it scorches, it freezes, it rains, it shines, and all within the compass of one hour. Yet these wonderful Australians love their weather. Other people would endure it. They brag about it." The two darkest shadows on the picture of Australian life as Mr. Murray paints it, are the growing feeling of disloyalty or dislike to the mother country, and the spread of the labour troubles, He was evidently surprised to find bow widespread is the feeling in favour of severing the connection with the j parent State, and bow oft-repeated is the cry of Australia for the Australians. Concernin™ this latter sentiment lie asks with great relevance, " Well, who are the Australians? Are they the men of the old British stock who made the country what it is, or the men who had the luck to be born to inheritance of a splendid position for v, : 'i they have not toiled? It is the honest simple truth, and no man ought to beangry at tliestatement of it— though many will be—that Australia was built up by British enterprise and' British money. It is a British possession still, and without British protection, British gold and the trade which exists between it and Britain, would be in a bad way. Looked at dispassionately the cry of Australia for the Australians seems hardly reasonable. The mother country has a right to something of a share in the bargain." The inflated pretensions of the labour party Mr. Murray judges as severely as he docs the narrow local patriotism of the Australian Natives Association, and lie justifies his strictures by the narration of what recently took place in your colony. In New Zealand, lie tells us, where, under conditions similar to those of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, the labourer has grown to think himself more worthy of his hire than anybody else can possibly- be, the fight between unionists and non-unionists, with capital as an interested spectator, began on a curiously trivial question. A firm of printers and stationers in Christehurch were ordered to reinstate or to discharge an employee. The firm declined to obey tho mandate of the union, and an order went forth from the representatives of the latter body to the effect that no man belonging to any of its branches should handle the goods of the obdurate firm. This was all very well until the order touched the railway hands, who are in the employ of the Government. The union appealed to the Railway Commissioners to " remain neutral," and vol to curry the (/ootl-t of the otj'mdinij firm. The Commissioners responded that they were the servants of the public ; that it was no part of their business to recognise the quarrel, but it wan their business to carry for any and every citizen who did not infringe their rules. The representatives of the union renewed their plea for "neutrality." Why would these domineering Commissioners take the side of capital and light in its interests? The Commissioners again represented that they were the public carriers, that they had no right to refuse to work for any law-abiding citizen, that they had no place or part in the quarrel, and intended simply and merely to do the duty for which they were appointed. The din which arose on this final declaration was at once melancholy and comic. Here was the Government lending all its power to crush the working man. Here was the old class tyranny which had created class hatreds in the old country. This was what we were coming to after having emancipated ourselves from the trammels of a dead or effete civilisation. Hero was a Government m crassly wicked and purposely blind as to profess neutrality, and yet refuse. to fight our battles. What did wo-the workingmcn of New Zealand—

ask for? We asked that the Government should hold our enemy while vie, punched him, and' whilst ' they traitorously proclaimed their neutrality they refused this simple request for fair play. Therefore are we, the worlcingmen of New Zealand, naturally incensed, anil at the next election we will shake these worthless people out of office, and we will elect men like Fish, who know what - neutrality really means. The Hon. Mr. Fish' was one of - the labourer's faithful. The palpable unfairness of.the Commissioners wounded him profoundly. I cannot quote anymore from Mr. Murray, but I have said sufficient to show that his remarks upon his two years' pilgrimage in the Australias prove, and no doubt will continue to prove, very interesting reading.