EMPIRE’S BAD CHILD

Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1929, Page 11

EMPIRE’S BAD CHILD

IS IT AUSTRALIA? Is Australia being classed as the bad child of the British Empire—a race of thugs, gunmen, and all those predatory beings usually associated with the jungTes of the United States? Recently London published a formidable list of Australian enormities, not the least of which was bomb-throwing, and more recently Melbourne devoted considerable space in its journals to Australian I crimes, adding tAe astonishing stateIment that to walk down Melbourne streets was ar. act of daring. Added to I which an Indian paper, while omitting Ito mention the Commonwealth’s low death-rate, used a good deal of valuable space in describing the outrageous behaviour of Australian University students and their sacrilegious disregard for national memorials. All of which goes to prove that Australia is never noteworthy except when she is naughty, and that while Australians are congratulating themselves on their high buildings the rest ot the world is condemning them for their low morals. In a -recent issue of the Sydney Mail a more or less satisfactory reply is made to these charges. “Those people who are so ready to condemn us seem to forset that the epigram concerning casting the first stone applies to nations as well as' individuals, and that they also are not entirely free from blame themselves,” says the writer. “Take Hyde Park, London, on a summer Sunday afteroon —anarchy, blasphemy, infamy pouring out in a ceaseless stream and in every know’ll accent from the Glasgow ‘keelie’ to tlie Russian moujik. And what happens? Nothing but the amused interest of massed thousands. But does an hysterical Domain orator in Sydney become carried aw’ay by th" troubles that afflict the just and let himself go a, little, the world reads of it the following morning. “It is bad policy, too, just when we arc beginning this advertising Australia campaign, because the peace-loving tourist will be prejudiced against us, and the venturesome one who usually goes to Africa for big game will be disappointed if he comes herj instead. Bo that, whichever way you look at it, the whole affair is another instance of giving a dog a bad name and completing his humiliation by hanging him.”