The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1009. AUSTRALASIAN LOYALTY.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 431, 13 February 1909, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1009. AUSTRALASIAN LOYALTY.

_ As was to be expected, a good deal of indignation'has been excited by the statement of Mn. Johnson, a member if tho New South Wales Parliament, that tho naval policy of the Australian Government is anti-British. Mβ. Johnson is of course quite wrong, and absurdly morbid in his suspicions, .when he says that tho Australian Government is secrotly .antiImperial'in its defence policy. Unfortunately, however, it cannot be denied that he is quite acciirato in saying that this anti-Imperial sentiment exists in Australia, although ho is again quite wrong and unjust in locating it "in quarters which the Orango institutions actively opposed." His speech, in fact, while it is offonsivo, indiscreet, and in the main untrue, is not absolutely groundless. Every week there is furnished to those who can understand what they read the most abundant evidence that tho Nationalist movement in Australia is subject' to evil influences. A noble and worthy ideal is jboing sedulously > perverted to ends .which no loyal, Nationalist can possibly approve. Sometimes openly, but ally by persistent implication, tho Australian public is urged by some newspapers and some politicians to believe that Australian nationalism cannot flourish while the Imperial connection exists. The thousand and one texts for this "sort of teaching are familiar to everyone who keeps himEolf abreast of the Australasian press. It is only natural that many people, inclined by temperament to feel discontented with existing .systems, and ready to surrender to tho,charms of the plausible and the sensational, should have been persuaded by this means into a dis-' like for the Imperial connection. We had recently an example of the now spirit in the manifesto of tho Young Australian National party—a document in which tho principles of tho Imperial connection aro repudiated in almost overy lino. But oven nearer home we have had evidences of a readineßß in Homo quartern to throw tho Imperial connection overboard. Whoa r

the American fleet visited New Zealand last winter, we expressed a fear that it might lead a section of the press into saying, as a compliment to the visitors, things which would bo very offensive to loyal New Zealanders and to Imperialists everywhere What wo feared took place, and in some local journals it was even suggested that America know the Australasian mind better, and was likely to prove a bottor protector, than Great Britain. It is little wonder that some people raako very wide deductions from such hints of feeling. The great mass of Australasia is thoroughly loyal, but it is idle to deny that there is a disloyalist party, and that this party receives a good deal of direct and oblique encouragement—some of it conscious and some of it unconscious. It is much better for newspapers to recognise this fact and to weigh their writings accordingly than to continuo unrestrained on the courso of Australasian spread-eagleism.