The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, March 31, 1910. THE FLYING CRITICS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 820, 31 March 1910, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, March 31, 1910. THE FLYING CRITICS.

Kvkk and anon some patronising person who desires to make money, comes to New Zealand and Australia, stays a month or so, rushes from one town to another in a train, rushes home again and writes a book. Foster Fraser, the unremarkable journalist, who has made something of a reputation by writing several books conveying information that is more or less reliable, made a healed journey through Australia, came to New Zealand, wheie he got himself more or less loved and went Home to contest an election at which, happily, he was beaten. Foster Fraser lacked a good many of the instincts that make up the character of a man whom everybody adores, and during his flight through this land he was frequently angry that we were not in a nun ■■ to lionise him He showed pi iiic by being late for engagements, by grumbling at our assembly balls, the electric light or any other of the great things that a mars of his eminence would be

: dkeiv to grumble about. Considering that Foster Fraser was i billed as big as if he were really i eminent he was the gravest disi Appointment. Fraser believes hlmUelf to be an impressionist. He can tell by the speed of a train what :he coalmining industry is doing tor Australia. He is able to judge from the hop of a kangaroo whether there are gum trees on Cape York, aud he is a whole cabinet of Prime Ministers in regard to the Australian politics be learned in two months. Foster jp'rasm did not see Australia at ‘work any more than he saw anyi him, but a few New Zealand 1 vv.vn - , but his word will be taken L . tens of thousands of EnglishI uen who also have never seen -'Ar.mmlians at work or New Zealaiideiat anything but play. I 'ascr, who ii) himself flaccid, accuses Australians ,of flaccidity anu ‘ slackness.” He says the

’ ’uorousuess” of the climate ivakeb [.he slack. Aleminent bqt qupolished jovnn'adst may haVd fclt that the climate was languorous, we haye ourselves never heard the Australian - climate thus traducedTlu ,'Jiief characteristic of the astrqfiau “ even a , § rea ' ;er than the New Zealander—- ; nervous, tireless energy. If Foster Fraser wished to see an xatuple of perpetual motion he shmdd have journeyed iuto tbs back blocks to examine the small “cocky” who begins fighting the laud at sunrise and only straightens his back for meals between that time and daf'k- Ihe eminent statistician, Mr Coghlan, one of Australia’s most acute, restless and able sons, according to a meagre cablegram replied to the unremarkable Fraser, setting out that the Australian coopers, bricklayers, linotypists, and so on, were faster workers than their English brothers. These illustrations are meagre. The “new chum” tradesman of whatever kind is very frequently a very finished worker. His skill is generally undoubted, but in comparison with the colonial worker “he is too slow to throw a shadow.” This proves anything but “slackness” but shows that the colonial worker has greater mental alertness. Foster Fraser possibly hobnobbed, as is his

wont, while in Australia with the

wealthy persons who dearly love | a “lion” if (hey can’t snare a lord. There are innumerable lazy, slack and flaccid persons at Pott’s Point and elsewhere, but Foster Fraser should have gone to Mayfair and London’s West Kud generally to find slackness and flaccidity in its native purity. Foster Fraser is a type of the person to whom it does not pay to be hospitable. If he is capable of seeing further than the railway line, he does not stay in one place long enough to make a just estimate of the people he believes he is studying ; and yet persons of this type dare to sum up in a week or two, the characteristics, lite, trade, habits and ambitions of people who are generally more useful than the passing stranger. Foster Phaser is not always uncomplimentary to colonials ; and his praise is as vapid as his blame lor the same reasons. It is a curious thing that persons going to a new country always want to write it down as a failure the moment they arrive. We had an example of this a year or two ago when a young New Zealander poured out anathema about Knglaud, almost before lie had left Tilbury. The slackness of Australians is shown by the way Australians fight. The flaccidity of Australians is demonstratad by tlieirjpre-emiuenceatcricket. Their lack cf bustle leads them to travel over thousands of miles of sunsmitten country, in search of laud, in search ot gold, in search of adventure. The slack Australian is everywhere conducting great enterprises. You will find him geologising in India, conducting great dredging schemes in the Americas, mine-managing in the United Stales, beating the local medical men in London, farming ahead of the native in Canada, wielding the best pens in Fleet street, teaching the nigger how not to loaf in South Africa ; and bustling all he knows for progress in his own splendid sunny laud. F'oster Fraser would make a poor Australian. He hales anything with hard work in it.