"ANGLO-SAXON LEGACY."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19094, 12 August 1925, Page 16

"ANGLO-SAXON LEGACY."

PRAISE FOR AUSTRALIA. COUNTRY'S FINE BIRTHRIGHT VISITING NAVY'S PERSONNEL. BY LEWIS R. FIIEEMAN. (Late Lieut. R.N.V.R.. Official Correspondent with Grand Fleet; Author of Stories of the Ships/' " Sea Hounds, To Kiel m the Hercules, etc.) U.S.S. CALIFORNIA. Aug. 8. Wo steamed in from a high-humped rolling sea of polished indigo, and wo steamed out to a high-humped rolling sea of furrowed jade. Between tho coming and going there was an interval of two weeks spent in a placid, sun-bright, friendly harbour, learning to know and to love a peoplo 'who, to 99 out of 100 men of the American Fleet, wero previously no more than a raco with a musical name.

What is it that has happened? With North and South Heads still etched sharp against, .he skyline astern and the strains of " Auld Lang Syne " and " The Girl I Left Behind Me " still throbbing in the ears, it is porhaps a bit early to attempt to answer the question. And yet

Tho men are calling tho Australians " Regular fellows," and ta king about having had tho timo of their lives, tho oflicers speak of the " greatest reception the Navy has ever known in a foreign port," and look a bit uncomfortable because the limitations of their vocabularies force them to tho use of " foreign." Both, consciously or unconsciously, speak with something in reserve. This becomes apparent when, in alluding to something experienced or observed, they preface their remarks with, " I had no idea that. . ." or " I never realised before. . . "

This, I think, givos at least a suggestion of the deeper thing that has transpired. Two peoples, who previously had known next to nothing of each other, have been getting acquainted. Each has been having intensive education in the ways of the other, each finding in the new. knowledge the tilings upon which enduring friendship may be based. In this sense one is free to allude to the visit of the American Fleet as historic without indulging in high sounding platitude, An event which paves the way for a better understanding (not merely political but racial as well) between two peoples fully merits to be rated as historic.

Fair Sample o! the Race. For the personnel of the visiting fleet, while but a small fragment of the American people as a whole, is still the American peoplo in microcosm. From mess-cook to admiral, it is a fair sample of the American race of to-day. This is not the American race of yesterday, as it is, not that of to-morrow. That it even failed to typify the American as pictured by the average Australian was evident from comment, personal and written, to the effect that so many of the naval ratings marching in the parado were of "foreign" rather than of the preconceived \ ankee type. It was even suggested that a better impression would have been made had a hand-picked assortment of real Yanks been selected to make our opening bow to Australia. But. however effective it is to put the largest strawberries on the top of the box, or the best faces and figures in the front row of the chorus, it is not fair. It would have been fair neither to the Navy, to America, nor yet to Australia, to have picked the stock for a special window display. Australia saw a cleancut and openly exposed cross-section of present-day America marching down the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. If that cross-section was studded with fewer Uncle Sams, western cowboys and sheriffs, and tortoise-shell-rimmed-eyeglassed business magjates than the cartoon or the movie had led Australians to expect, it was not our fault. Just as the Navy had to take present-day Americans as they came, so had Australia. And just as the Navy has found in him tho makings of a very useful sort of a man-o'-war's tnan, so has Australia (it would seem) found in him tho making of a perfectly feasible sort of a companion and friend. To me—an American of somewhat mixed racial antecedents—perhaps the one most moving impression of tho visit is that of the miles of Sydney streets lined solid with men and women of almost 100 per cent. Anglo-Saxon blood. Nowhere else in the world, save in New Zealand, could such a brotherhood of blood have been assembled except by a process of deliberate selection. It was—as the memory of it wil! always be—a stirring thing to realise that, from the heads to the reviewing stands in Macquarrie Street, one was seeing nono but those to whom the richest of the Anglo-Saxon legacy was transmitted by right of birth. That ; and a new land—what a birthright! No wonder, then, that the Australians remarked the "funny foreign faces" among the sailors in that fust day's paade. For they were only seeing the American as he is, not as they had fancied him. It was that, I think, which must have made their surprise tho greater when they came to know the visitors man-to-man.

Dilution of Old Blood. Many a decade has gone by—possibly almost a century—since the mother-stock in America was as pure as is that of Australia and Now Zealand to-day. We had kept the language, and the best of Magna Cliarta had been written into our Declaration of Independence. These wero ours in perpetuity, or at least as long as we were worthy to hold them. But with the continued dilution of tho old blood through the increasing influx from Continental Europe, camo a time when the rest of our Anglo-Saxon heritago was t no longer ours by right of birth. Fewer and fewer of us could claim direct descont from tho original colonial strains. And hero was where the thing wo havo latterly come to speak of as Americanism was put to the test. Could we pass on as a legacy, to those to whom it did not belong as a birthright, those attributes of the AngloSaxon which have operated to make the race, for better or for worso, what it is ? Outstanding among these things was the love of sport, and the sporting code which goes with it, by which every man and woman shal! play the game—including that of life- according to the rules. That we have su(ceeded fairly well in preserving and passing on—even to tho brother wno has come to us " hedged by alien speech, and lacking all interpreter " —the Ericeless legacy of our Anglo-Saxon forears, most of those who fought with us in the war, or who havo met us on the field of spo;t or in the realm of business, will agree. It was in bringing home to Australians of every class and degree that tho American of to-day, be he ever so " foreign " of name or face, still stands for the best traditions of the Anglo-Saxon raco that the visit of the fleet was so overwhelmingly worth while. «. Reciprocally, of course, the American has learned the same thing about the Australian. Only in the Yankee's thoughts,' for " best traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race," insert "Americanism." And that in itself is the most conclusive evidence of the way the leaven has worked. Only it required just such a meeting and mingling as the late vWt has made possible to bring both parties to an understanding. And racial friendship is built on racial understanding—in the very rare instances where such an understanding is possible. What has taken place in Australia will, so far as we Americans are concerned, make the oath of understanding easier to tread in New Zealand.