A DOMINION TYPE

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1919, Page 10

A DOMINION TYPE

OBSERVATIONS IN LONDON

SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Some who have watched the parades of overseas troops in England have fancied they detected the emergence of national types. Seeing large bodies of men from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in the mass is a different thing from coming on equal numbers scattered in various places. It'was the long succession of faces which seemed to imprint on the observer's brain a recognisable composite photograph, as it were, of the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealander, respectively.

Comparing impressions, two men who cherished this fancy agreed on the Australian and Canadian types. Australian, they told each. other, was a fine fellow physically, and had a' countenance wh#h would look well on an old Roman coin, there being about him a suggestion si beaked nose and ancient Imperialism. The Canadian, on the other hand, was more English in his traits, and but for a certain breadth oi feature might make an excellent Cockney. THE NEW ZEALANDER. As for the New Zealander, one of the two observers had carried away an impression of slighter and more agile make, with a richer colouring, both in face and eyes, t_an either the Australian or the Canadian. The second man denied that New Zealand had evolved a type; but, as he happened to be a New Zealander himself, it might be argued that his perception was obscured by familiarity. Professor Keith, the eminent anthropologist, who has recently been giving such interesting lessons from the human skull, was asked whether this empirical theory of types was soundly based. Though sympathetic, he was not reassuring, being inclined to think that if Englishmen and their overseas brethren were mingled in equal proportions it would be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between them. EFFECTS OF CLIMATE. Climatic conditions produced superficial differences. The New Zealander's colour, for example, might be ascribed to the atmospherical surroundings of his life at home; to the same causes, indeed, which impart the tinge to the Englishman's cheek, and to which the English girl owes her complexion. But science is so far from being dogmatic on the question that it regrets the opportunity afforded by the. massed presence of so • many members of the British family in England has been lost, owing to the immediate necessities of war.. Instructive data might have been obtained if authority had not been compelled to fix its attention on more urgent matters. Even now there remains a chance of securing details, of the kind to which science can pay attention, before the great battalions are broken up for ever. Meanwhile, from the scientific point of view, we must be cautious of talking of types, lest we be misled by the multitude of details which are apt to lead observation astray. ,