THE BULL AND THE GATE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 140, 11 December 1930, Page 8

THE BULL AND THE GATE

Australians, says Sir Otto Nierneyer, "do not know how to be pessimistic." They are optimists both in peace and war. In battle, their friends and their foes both allege, the Australians were never able to decide that the next position was too far away to storm. So often they went on, and their officers had to go with th.em. Likewise, in peace, they have certain political-social objectives which they decline to abandon, and they hold certain, positions which, though economically under-mined, they refuse to regard as untenable. To deride the tactical teachings of the expert sent out from the Staff College represented by the Bank of England, Australian Left Wingers threaten to break out in a wild raid into No (sensible) Man's Land. Their political officers, Messrs. Scullin and Fenton and Lyons, may go with them— or may not. That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the Bank of England tactician, after the manner of the French General's comment on the Charge of the Light Brigade, says that this Australian optimism is magnificent, but it is not (economic) war. Hard times were ahead for the Australians. . . If they had a few Canadian breezes it might help to cool them off. Even if they only had Wellington's blow of last night, it might warn them that though panic is useless, overconfidence is worse. Sir Otto's idea seems to be that a too sunny climate does not bring people up to face realities. So there is a rugged virtue in Canadian snows and New Zealand blows. Certainly the Empire seems to be developing various patterns of the British type. Continentals like Canadians and Australians have vastly different environments, and the conditions of insular communities are apart from both.