A LESSON FOR AUSTRALIANS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 31, 6 February 1913, Page 2

A LESSON FOR AUSTRALIANS

m < ■ THE COMMAND OF THE §EA. Lord Chelmsford, responding to the toast 'of his health at the Sydney regatta luncheon last week, justified the observance of Anniversary Day, and incidentally referred to the importance of command of the sea as securing national supremacy. "I think that out here in Australia," said the Governor, "you should keep the historic anniversaries, because if there is any deficiency in the mental equipment ol Australians, that deficiency lies in the fact that they have no historic sense. Too often one comets across the Australian who talks as if he lived only in the 20th century, and was not concerned with the past, and with what has happened in the past. Yet" one of the things which science has brought home to us is the profound influence of heredity. We cannot get away from it, however much we try. "If you look back to the state of the world 125 years ago you will see thai, then no French Revolution had taken place at all, that the United States Were merely struggling for existence, that the names of Nelson and' Wellington Were not known, and that steam, for either rail or steamship, had not come into use. ' If you' glance from that to the next 27 years you will see that away in the North Sea there was a little country apparently of small population which for these 27 years stood up against the rest of the world, and preserved the freedom of the world. Are there not lessons to be derived from that page of history? "In this part of the world you have not a large population yet, but a struggle may come upon you before your population is anything like that of other nations; and the thought of that struggle of 27 years will remind you that' it is not merely a question of numbers, but of grit and determination as to whether you will win your way through in the end. Those two islands came through the struggle because they were supreme on the sea, and if we have the command of the sea we can be supreme. You here are making a new start in that direction. Heredity has given you the tradition of determination exhibited by those in England who preserved the freedom; of the World and here also in Australia you can derive some lessons from the history of Anniversary Day." " j