YOUNG AUSTRALIANS

Otago Witness, Issue 2924, 30 March 1910, Page 25

YOUNG AUSTRALIANS

LONDON, March 24. Mr Foster Fraser. in an article in the Standard, accuses the young Australians of slackness' and flaccidity, due to the langouroua climate. Mr Coghlan, Agent-general for New South Wales, in replying to Mr Fraser, points • to their proficiency in athletics, and denies that the Australian workmen's energy and enterpi-ise are inferior to those of Englishmen. He instances linotypers, compositors, cooper's, and bricklayers as quicker workers than the English. ' MELBOURNE, March 28. The Premier considers Mr Foster Fraser's comments as to the flaccidity of. .the Australians simple nonsense. On the average, the Australian workman will do as much work in eight hours as the British workman in nine or 10 hours. The Rev. E. Sugden, Master of Queen'a College, has no patience with a peripatetic journalist like Mr Fraser, who spends a few weeks here, and from the pinnacle of his superior position presumes to criticise. Mr Fraser's libels on the Australian youth are unjustifiable. His statement that Sydney stands for pleasure, Melbourne for business, and Adelaide for culture is ridiculous, and has nothing to recommend it except its epigrammatic form. He shows a superficiality, and should not be taken seriously. Dr Leeper Walden, of <Trinity College, thinks there is something in >Mr Fraser's strictures. An ambitious student at Melbourne University dpes not-work as hard .as 'his brothers in the Home universities. The Australian students seem lacking in a spirit of enthusiasm for national affairs.