THE ENGLISHMAN AND THE AUSTRALIAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13202, 13 June 1906, Page 8

THE ENGLISHMAN AND THE AUSTRALIAN.

Mr. Walter James, the retiring AgentGeneral of West Australia has been subjecting the mental attitude of the English people towards " our colonies" to a sort of process of dissection "in' London, and he records the result in the course of the paper that he has read at the Royal Colonial Institute on "Australian Immigration." "The Australian," says Mr. James, "is isolated ; the Englishman is insular. The self-reli-ance of the former leads him to overestimate the relative importance of Australia ; the self-contentment of the latter to under-estimate it. The Briton almost unconsciously assumes that he is'the sole repository of racial wisdom and experience; the Australian resents the assumption.; The Englishman, -whose fathers mads the Empire, thinks he can best manage the whole of it; the Australian, who has actually made the Commonwealth, and in his nation-building has prospered in proportion to his measure of self-dependence and self-government, has no doubt, whatever that ho can beat manage his' own pari of the Empire. Both, ■however, share the racial trait of selfsufficiency. To the second generation of Australians England is the heart of the Empire, but Australia is their home; to Englishmen of every generation England is both Home and Empire. The Australian is not indifferent- to English opinion and English standards, but he prefers to form hi own; the Englishman habitually wants to set the 'standard for 'his' Empire. To him snly the English are English. This the Australian resents, at least passively. He claims to be English too—in the Imperial sense. He resents the silent butpervading conviction that the racial purity of Australian opinion must be tested by the standards laid dowi> by the presentday Englishman." The English, he suggested, would get on better with Australia, if they were to realise how nearly their own ideals were reproduced in the homes, the public life and the national institutions of the Australian people. Mr. James went on to say that "this unconscious habit of the Englishman to regard England and Empire as interchangeable terms is responsible for some misconception in this country as to the motives and the reasons that prompted Australia's voluntary and whole-hearted participation in the Boer war. The Englishman regarded it as a personal tribute to his statesmanship, his cause, his military and administrative methods and his Imperial leadership. Such an interpretation was not unnatural, while it certainly was personally gratifying— him. As, however, it was not accurate, it- led to disappointment when Australia resumed her old attitude, and in subsequent acts showed the continuiug force of colonial . nationalism and the existent vitality of th?,t insularity which is called narrowness in the Australian and patriotism in the Englishman, but which the foreign observer notes as the real secret of the colonising power of our race."