AUSTRALIA FIRST

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1929, Page 3

AUSTRALIA FIRST

ADDRESS TO AUSTRALIAN YOUTH. “EVANS OF THE BROKE.” “Australia first,” should be the motto of Young Australia, and the way to put Australia first is to give the best that is in you for Australia.” The boys of Uranbrook school listened intently to Rear-Admiral Evans, Commander of file Australian navy, as he uttered these words during an inspiriting address on the eleventh celebration of Founders’ Day on July 22. “You boys must remember always that in agriculture, grazing, and wool, Australia’s wealth really lies,” .RearAdmiral Evans said. “It does not lie in cities, in motor-cycles, nor in wireless sets and cinemas, but in honest work in the great open territory, and in the understanding that capital, labour and industry are a triptych which make for success only if the leaders of capital and labour make every effort at understanding and fair play.” (Applause. )

“Grow up in the thought that the oest living conditions in the world are here. God has given you a magnificent island continent, and if you cut out snobbishness, laziness, jealousy, greed, and selfishness, and substitute loyalty to your country, fair play, understanding, enthusiasm and general nice-mind-edness, and you are true to yourselves and true to your friends, you will have done nearly all that is possible to be worthy of those fine Australians who died for you in the war, and those early Australians who endured so much to found this beautiful island continent.

“I am not an Englishman,” proceeded Rear-Admiral Evans. “I have an Irish mother and a Welsh father, but in my lifetime I have learnt some wonderful things from those English from whom you are descended. All over the world —the foreign world —when men strike a business bargain they say ‘parole d’un Anglais’—word of an Englishman—that, boys, is the universal standard of everything that is honourable. It is in your hands to make- the foreign world say ‘the word of an Australian.’ ” (Applause.)

SOME GREAT MEN, Rear-Admiral Evans said that one® in 1912 on that vast, bleak, silent plateau which surrounds the South Pole he said good-bye for the last time to five men —three English, one Scottish * and one Welsh. No folk in the memory of man faced what those five endured on their long 900-mile march back from the South Pole. Frst came biting blizzards and driving snows, then came hard ridges and wind-swept ice and yawning crevasses, where they fell and cut themselves about, and then came pitiless cold that ate into their bones and left them exhausted, starving, numb and in agony. CAPTAIN OATES’S SACRIFICE. “But those men fought they way northward with a fine perseverance, showing all the qualities of tenacity that made our nation what it is,” added. Rear-Admiral Evans. “Captain Oates, who, when he realised that with his frost-bitten feet and hands he could not hope to win through, deliberately walked out of the lonely little tent on the great ice barrier in a blizzard and gave his life to save his companions. That inspiring bravery was only an incident in Scott's last journey. He himself, the great leader, wrote later, when he lay at death’s door, with his pencil dropping from his frozen fingers:—‘How much better has this all been than lounging in too great comfort at home.’ FOUNDERS OF AUSTRALIA.

“Australia’s good, clean name was built on the bones of men like Scott — sailor adventurers, pioneers, and men, spelt with a capital M. Here in Cranbrook you have an education provided for you by the descendants of those who made Australia. You have a great future, because in your hands lies the key of power, and if you make up your minds to play for the side, to make Australia the better for your being in it, and to understand that everybody is not as fortunate as you are, you will start off well.”

Rear-Admiral Evans was accorded an -enthusiastic welcome, the boys giving him three hearty cheers.