AUSTRALIA'S LOYALITY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3908, 29 January 1884, Page 4

AUSTRALIA'S LOYALITY.

According to tho Broad Arrow, Mr Forbes has a nervous droad of ever returning to Australia, lest his plain-spokenness should subject him to bodily pain and peril. The samo journal, referring to his article in tho Nineteenth Century, observes that "tho picture may be true, but it does 'not please us. We do not. liko the description of a loyalty of a ' British-hood' which can vanish liko a summer cloud. If the attachment to tho mother country is real, it ought to endure some littlo strain. But in the judgment of Mr Forbes, it is purely a fair-weather kind of devotion, as unreal as a fine sunset or a poet's dream. We can scarcely imugino that the Australians will liko this disclosure of their innermost feelings, and wo should hope they will resent it in a friendly and demonstrative manner. No one likes his fine emotions subjected to chemical and proved to be a temporary bundle of associations, a caleno of tradition, a collection of nerval tremors. It is disenchanting, if not a little demoralising. Tho Australian may bo an unemotional, common-sense being, shuddering at risks ho is conscious may bo iiicnired, but we hope that he is a braver man than he seems to Mr Forbes, and that in the day of trial he would not cut himself off from us unceremoniously, and rejoice that his future was in his own hands."