JAZZ AND DESTINY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4608, 1 October 1923, Page 3

JAZZ AND DESTINY.

ADSTBALLA’S DUTY. DEAN CROTTY’S IDEAL. : . <• Australia is largely on the circumference, but we cannot afford to qtand apart from the world’s agony and travail/’ said Dean Crotty at Sydney. The subject of the Dean's address was, 'A 1 Message to Young Australia." “We cannot jazz our way into destiny/’ said the Dean. “ Some day Australia will cease from its carnival of pleasure, put its ear to the ■ ground, and catch the sound of the tramp of the moving millions in the world's wider arena." Australians had the name for being a very careless and ease-loving peo-ple,-but Dean Crotty said he did not doubt that somewhere at the root of -the Australian type there was a nascent idealism. Australians were very careful, to camouflage their deeper impression, :as though haflf ashamed of it, but it was there, and the Dean hoped God would call again this young sleeping Samson, as in 1914, until he awakened and stretched himself for the larger tasks. The dawning of that day, he believed, was not far off. The ■ young men of Australia had a duty to Australia, to the Empire, and to the world. To-day he found inertia and indifference;, riot and extravagance, and dismissal of the thought of God. ‘To-day the demagogue and the parasite were enthroned in Australian life; but Australians were capable of higher ideals. “We owe it to the dead, who died that iove might live,” said the DeanThey, could not even put their lips to the cup of life ,to-day without reinembering how it was they came to be drinking it at all. Was it not the blood of men who went in jeopardy of their lives ? Their capacity to serve their generation was bound up with the Empire, and it behoved them to strengthen every bond. They could not forever squat down on this continent and hold it as a close preserve for five millions of people. They owed it to the crowded millions of that island in the North Sea to fling wide their gates to a stream of British immigrants. There were ho bands of Empire stronger or more , valuable than those personal symbols and sacraments of their common life embodied in the representatives of his Majesty the King, who came from time to time from overseas, and of whom none had won their hearts more than the cultured large-, hearted Englisman who was to have occupied the chair, that night. Australia, the Dean trusted, did not forget the burdens that lay on the world at large to-day, and that lay heavy on the heart of every statesman. He refused to believe that they were? unready or unwilling to share those burdens.