Page 1 Advertisements Column 5

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1987, 24 January 1907, Page 1

AUSTRALIA OF TO-DAY. By J. RAMSAY MacDONALD, M.P. On n sunny Sunday morning I behold' Australia for the first time. A grey sandy river margin, scrubby trees, a shoothly gliding stream, a dredger in tho middlo distance, and something like a town beyond—that was Australia's introduction. There wo lay as though we, too, wore to keep Sunday, and the bumping engines were to have a rest. But by and by tho doctor arrived, and shortly aftorwards a Government steam launch eamo hurrying down with the Homo Secretary, a Lancashire lad and a late school teacher, in command. Somebody on hoard, leaning over the rail, of the boat, and seeing nothing but the sandy shore, had remarked that Australia was just ns Captain Cook left it; lint this little ver.-.ment launch, with its Labor Minister and deputation from the Labor party, overwhelmed the doleful voice of the shore, and by jaunty flag and aggressive steam puff informed me that I had reached the most advanced of all tho democrats in the world. . Here an iron-moulder is Premier, and it is his Cabinet which sings after lunch that tho British Labor party are jolly good fellows. In tho next State the Labor party is the official Opposition, and .its Sir Aeland Hood is a member of tho Typographical Society. Again, the quiet smiling man with the steady eye and closecropped board, who conies with the deputation of Labor members to meet us at the station, has been Premier of tho Commonwealth, and will bo so again. LABOR TILL RULER.

Such receptions almost stagger the British democratic weakling who op to now has thought that it was something of an achievement to get 30 Labor members elected to a Parliament of G7O. There is something of tho fairyland about it all. But when I remember the anathemas which clouded the first-class smoking rooms on the steamer when tho Australian Labor party was dismissed, or the woful jeremiads which have been poured forth in the respectable clubs by hosts who try to bo civil to their guest, but whose hearts are too full for them to keep silence, the stern reality of all these strange experiences becomes evident. Labor is .-governing Australia, and it is ruling with a high hand By and by I shall try and explain iho aim and the method of its rule. It is the most interesting experiment' in politics that the world has to show to-day. Meanwhile, what of Australia herself, It had been hinted to us that she was sharpening a knife to cut a painter; and on tlie other hand we had been told that she was the most Imperialist of the colonies. Australia does not fit either of these descriptions. She is a land of vastness and of solitary and mournful men. In tho sub-tropical belts the palm and the tree fern break the monotony of the dense scrub, but there is a funereal solemnity brooding over those dark masses of deep green which enters jmo’s soul like a chilling mist. Elsewhere one travels hour after hour over country unrelieved by a break in green and grey—at best a mixture of Donegal and the Scottish Highlands. without " color and without cloud. When tho Australian landscape, so far as we have seen it, becomes most beautiful it becomes most like Britain—the weald-like prospect, for instance, which is seen from the summit of the Darling Downs, or the Scottish west coast appearance of tho Hawkesbury River. Nature is a prodigious factor in the Australian psychology. That 0110 knows instinctively. Here man feels thnt he is a thing moved by an outside will—a whim of the seasons, tho floods, and tho droughts, like the wheat ho sows and the herbs he tends. You have to go out of the towns to find this, hut until you have found it you do not understand Australia. The towns get more and more hustling. The greed of commerce fills the lives of men in Sydney and Melbourne, but. tho reservoirs of Australian life are away in the West, in the bush, amongst the shearers, in Ihc mining settlements. BRITISH AT HEART.

Coming from Canada to Australia tho first thing that strikes ono is tho English aspect of .everything here. You have -to search in Canada’ for Great Britain; Great Britain seems to bo stamped from one end of this continent to tho other. On the tables of the Parliament lie those litle greenbound books containing our House of Commons Standing Orders, the nor. papers in type and.get-up might have been sub-edited a'lid printed in Fleet street, I landed in Queensland' to hear tho eolioes of a'‘great controversy about teaching tho Bible in schools —in an hour’s talk with Cardinal

Moran Irish Homo Rule and religious education were tile topics discussed ; the habits, tlio speech, the dress, the “cut'” of the people, make me lorget that I am five weeks o'v..s from the British isles. But one must be careful in interpreting the meaning of this. I heard a groat deal about the- Imperialist pride of Australia before I left. I have found none of it. With the bent of his instinct, he thinks and acts upon British axioms. His subconscious seif lives and moves, 'ainl has its being at “home.” But challenge him to think about his political life and express it, and lie instantly blushes lor his colonianisni. He then becomes the Australian Nationalist, to whom Australia is homo, and whoso destiny is Australia’s future. He then cannot help seeing liow much clay there is iii our Imperial feet. Not so many years ago, the growing sense of national life within him naturally demanded an extrpmo oppression, and ho talked of separation and an Australian republic That epoch has gone, although Mr. Chamberlain and the South African war very nearly revived it. THIS NATIONAL SPIRIT. Australia is tb ho Australia just ,as Canada is to he Canada. She, is already founding ’ a literature'of her own. Her Stephens, her Adams, her Paterson, her Lawson, she holds in motherly affection, however she may have buffeted them. She will have «n art of lier own which will express her own soul and individuality, her weird sadness, her contest with fate. She lias a politics o.f her- own, and Europe is all the'poorer for being out of touch with it. She is demanding a navy : she is creating her own army without tinsel or badge; she is forming her own likes r.pd dislikes; she hears in the washing su l-t of the Pacific a special call to herself to arise and be mighty. lu the bookshop where one learns how the current of national thought runs, in the Trades Hall where one can explore the rough quarries from which the foundations of the State are hewn, in the smoking-rooms of clubs where one can gather from all sorts of coteries how the mind of the nation is being formed, i;i the private rooms of Parliaments whero Premiers unfold their policies and discuss their troubles, I have met with but one personality And at the end of all the interviews and all the inquiries, it seems to whisper: “1, the spirit of Australian nationality, am everywhere; and remember I am Australia —not a dependent part of sometiling else, but a free, self-existent Australia, and I am to work out my own destiny.”—N.Z. Herald.

DIGEST WHAT YOU EAT. I’lio reason why any wholesome food is not properly digested is because the stomach lacks some important element of digestion. Some stomachs lack peptone, others are deficient in gastric juice or hydrochloric acid. The one thing necessary in any case of poor digestion, is to supply tliose digestive elements which the stomach lacks, and nothing does this so thoroughly and safely as Dr. Sheldon’s Digestive Tabulos.. They digestwhat you eat, thus giving the stomach a rest and assistance until it is restored to its normal action and vigor. For sale by A. W. J, Mann, Agent, Chemist, WHEN BABY BURNS HIS HAND. When sistor cuts her finger. When brother gets a bruise. In short, when anything happens to the children wliicli causes them pain, it is mother’s delight to comfort and relieve the little suffer-is. She cai: n:wny-» di this when she has Dr. Sheldon’s Magnetic Liniment in the house. Rubbing a little of it over a sore or wound immediately takes away all pain, and vastly hastens recovery. Keep a bottle, in the house always, and you will agree with a thousand other mothers who have said that they could not keep house without it. For sale by A. W, J. Mann, Agent, 1 Chemist,