UNFLATTERING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 173, 15 March 1932, Page 7

UNFLATTERING

SEVERE CRITIC FOUND AUSTRALIANS IN^INCERE AND CRUDE. ENGLISHMAN'S BOOE. •A sensation will be created -when Ifr. R. W. Thoippson's new hook, "Down Uhder," reaches Australia and New Zealand, for it contains probably the most acrid and unflattering criticisms of the Australian people and their manners ever published (wrote a London correspondent recently). Mr. Thompson, who is also the author of "An Argentine Interlude," went tq Australia as a young man "in search of life and work," and appears to have found neither to his' liking. In conversation' shortly before the puhlication of the hook, he said that he had endeavoured tp tell the truth as he saw it, and to give a; candid accouqt of his sojourn in the Commonwealth from 1926 to 1930. He empha-r sised that, despite all the hardships and disappointments attached to his experienee, he had formed a genuine liking for Austrplia and had nlade many good friends there. Indeed, he has every intention of returning at th.e fjpst opportppity— pather a courageous ambition, considering that his hook is one long tirade of fault-find-ing and discontent. Nature of the People. The following quotations are typical. Referring to his associates on a New Soutfi Wales sheep station, he says: — -"I had nothing comrqgn with these young Australians of the country class. I found them insincere and crude — uncouth, completely uneducated in all that matters, foul-mouth-ed, far worse than the lower classes, and hard drinkers." Later he writes: "It js patfier a curious thiqg that, although the general impression retained of Australians is one of uncouth, swaggering, ignoT rant, .pathetic men, repelling even pity by their stupendous conceit apd self-satisfaction, and their inability to learn? yet individually .one finds them an honest, friendly people, rather simple, perhaps, but good fellows. It is in the mob that they are so impossible. The working classes are decent, honest people, but too easily led and ready to believe what they are told if it appeals. Effect of Climate "The middle class is admirable in the main, thopgh too credulous. Real station people are good, though they are suffering under the handicap of had education, using the word in its widest sense. I think I can best express what Australians lack by quotiqg the words of a schoolmaster of a large Australian school: 'It is useless to put the boys on their honour'." Alluding to cjimatic influence upon character, the author states: "I realise that they have developed their bpdies at the expense of their brains. A Nordie race cannot be transplanted into a southern climate without illeffects. The climate is the probable exnlanation of the fact that Austra-

lians are developing a new race, eptirely different from the English. Douhtless, in time, it will be almost unrecognisable as English. Southern races generally are indolent, and Nordie races transplanted must ulti'mately suffer far more. Political Life. "Already the manana ('To-morrow will do') spirit is making itself evident in AustraJia, the sun breeding insidious langour in the Australian mind. The strength of their bodies lulls the Australian still deeper into a sense of their importanee. Troubles seem unreal, and triumph the only possible end. I really believe that this is the explanation of Australian life. The percentage of actual lunatics is very high, almost alarming. After declaring that the workers, and chiefly the wharf lahourers of Sydney, were not really Communist in spirit, but the victims of "perverted political bosses," Mr. Thompson said that he found the commercial and political life of New South Wales "an almost unbelievable jumble of graft, stupidity and jealousy." The Legislative Assembly, which he calls the "Sydney House of Representatives," seemed to him like a comic opera. He was always sure of an hour's amusement there, for members were like schoolboys, who early .eome to blows and hurling crude epithets across the floor."