HOW IT STRIKES THE COLONIAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2690, 4 October 1905, Page 79

HOW IT STRIKES THE COLONIAL.

—An Australian Criticism. —

In tbe first of a s&iics of papers he is contributing to the Spectator, Mr J. H. M. Abbott, author of "Tommy Cornstalk," writes: --"It is nofc .so lonely to camp in the middle of a great plain by # yourself on j a moonlight night as it is for fee first few days after your arrival in London, before 1 you have presented any of your letters of j introduction. It is not so lonaly to be ' lying in a firing-line for the first time, wiuh your right and left hand neighbour j 10 yards away from you, as it is to walk down Oxford* street thinking: 'Amc-ngßjtj all these hurrying millions there isn't 1 ono 'j humiaii soul who cares about me, or for whe-m. as a mattoi o-f fact., I care two straws.' And these — the great ; ]>lain and j the first firing-line — are the two loneliest' situations of which the writer has ar.iy personal knowledge. There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a great city, and no great city wherein one may realise ths depths of solitude as in London. Is it so in all England? -you wonder. Does eveay Englishman hate aaid distrust a . stranger? Are the only people with whom Lhe Outlander may engage in conversation ' German waiters seeking twopence, or hall porters similarly anxious for emolument;' ' . . . At a little table in the hotel dining room I sat opposite a well-groomed gentleman of middle ago for several meals during those three sad days. 'A wet day !' I ventured on the first occasion. 'Yes,' admitted -my vis-a-vis, and 1 the conversation languished. From the tone of the 'Yes' it was ofoyious that it must needs languish. A genial policeman in Trafalgar square of -whom I asked the way late one night, and who made friendly observ/atao'iis | as to thte difficulties of London's geography to strangers, was the first human being in London with whom I -spoke at any length. I almost felt inclined to ask him to ran me in, he was so gocd. a soul. Thereafter was a 'bus driver — and always since one has respected 'bus drivers. How one . hated England and the Eng'ish in chose days ! It rained ; there was never any sunlight. Eveiyw'here were the hurrying people witTi the sad faces ; always the roar of the immense traffic. In the park* the trees wens dead, or seemed so. When one lay down to sleep at night always came the curious reflection — a strangely discomforting one. — 'All • about; me, in this one city, are as many people, packed together on a piece of land about I the size of a fairly large Fheep station, as we have va the whole of Australia, and I don't kiiow one of them ; and the only I people who are interested at all in my existence £>re tha hotel people, because they don't quite know yet whether I can pay my bill ! ' Truly it was a sad little period, exceedingly tinctured with nostalgia, and it took weeks andi months to remove the impression of England 'which, no doubt through one's own foolishness, it ' planted in one's mind. I write of it merely to show how the average stranger must often, in tbe first days of his sojourn in England, be unconsciously set against the country and its "people. . . And so, very often, incalculable harm is done to those Imperial relations which most Englishmen, and most Australians, desire to see strengthened and cultivated. Many of our people do not stay long enough in Englancf to learn to love the country, as ' they inevitably must sooneT or later, nor are they themselves seen in their best light by the TSnglish with whom they come in contact. The writers knows personally a.t least two Australian public men whose opinion carrier weight in Australia who, ardent Imperialists before coining to Eng land, • have returned not a little inclined the unsatisfactory v' We'd-separate-rf-it-wpre-safe' political frame of mind. And so, wibh all apologies for insisting upon a distinction between the terms ' English ' and ' Australian,' one -endeavours to account a little for the fact, which is obvious to" anyone who goes into bhe question seriously, that the distinction does Dot grow less. When, as months go on, and one has seen the sun again, seen the brilliant awakening of spring in, England — nowhere can there be anything more peacefully beautiful — 'learned a little to know it# pfeople and understand their ways, and grasped something of the significance of custom and tradition, one cannot but honestly confess to a certain ' falling in love ' with the country. England grows upon you. The trim little fields and tbe hedge-girt roads and lanes, which at first were so small and so cramping, have a fascination, of their own. The slow, ap" pointed orderliness which 6©ems to rule the whole of life makes itself clear as a part of the reason for England's greatness. That very greatness, you realise, does truly exist. You 'begin to understand 1 why, in spite of mucih that is wrong, and many evils that would destroy a weaker people, the people of England, still dwelling in their little islands, rank among the greatest people of the world. Of course, if you are a decent Australian you will never for a moment admit that England is as good a country as Australia, or that an Englishman is as good as an Australian — any more than a loyal Englishman would allow the truth of the converse, — but you will conceive a great and abiding respect for the Old Land and tbe Old People^