MEEKNESS AND HUMILITY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 661, 13 October 1933, Page 4

MEEKNESS AND HUMILITY

Meekness and humility are not among the characteristics of the good Australian or for the matter of that, of any of the Britons, who refuse to rejoice under the name of "colonials" in the what are widely described as His Majesty's Dominions beyond the seas. The success of the Australian loan conversions and the promptitude whith which the Federal Government has met its commitments in London, have shed the light of British benignity upon Australia. But the hint of patronage which at times creeps into British approval is inclined to irritate the sensitive texture of the Australian epidermis and it is not always received with the becoming humility which should characterise the "colonial" when he earns approval in the best circles. It is possibly as a result of this Australian hypersensitiveness to the English oraised eyebrow that the Sydney Sun introduces a note of irony into , its editorial reference to the smile on the face of the British lion. Says the Sun : For the moment, if we are to judge by the panegyrics of the English j press,» Australians are regarded with j a favour in London which has not so i admired us since the A.I.F. fought j in Gallipoli and Flanders. | It is fine to feel that the Englishi man has abated his cold appraisement ! of our "colonial" ways. Australians J abroad have felt at times that the Australian character is not appreeiated at its full golden value by Mayfair or Whitechapel. Some of our own race, coming back to us after a sojourn in Chelsea, have been struck by our appalling accent and our provincial manners and outlook. We have accepted this estimate of ! ourselves meekly, filling all our best j jobs with the superior Englishman — when we could induce him to shed his light upon our darkness. It now seems that we need not be so humble. We are good fellows, a little crude, perhaps, but honest and British in our outlook after all.

New Zealanders are perhaps °not Tu.ite so sensitive to the English superiority complex as their Australian brethren, because New Zealanders are inclined to be less aggressively national in their outlook. It is certainly a little tactless to treat a population of 6,500,000 inhabitants, a continent, occupying 2,974,000 square miles, as the Romans treated Gaul — "profanum vulgus" — particularly when their cricket team can beat yours. Americans have admitted the same feeling of irritation — the cairn assumption of correctness which is the Englishman's especial forte is not very soothing to trans-Atlantic individualism, while in certain circles in Australia an English accent has become more of a handicap than an American twang. But in these "antipodean isles" we must recognise that although we are still being led a little by the hand we are growing up. One of the surest signs of national maturity will be when we are able to overlook trifling irritations in mannerisms and inflections and recognise that if the other fellow occasionally irritates us it is quite probable that we irritate him as much or more.