HIT AT AUSTRALIANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 597, 25 February 1929, Page 9

HIT AT AUSTRALIANS

SIR HUBERT WILKINS'S BOOK PLAIN-SPOKEN CRITICISM (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) WASHINGTON, Saturday. The “New York Times” publishes areview of a newly-published book by Sir Hubert Wilkins, “Undiscovered Australia,” which deals with his expedition to collect fauna for the British Museum in 1923, and in which lie also depicts conditions in the out-back districts. Tho reviewer says: “The book is likely to arouse indignation in Australia, for the people of that far land are intensely sensitive. Sir Hubert does not spare plain-spoken criticism of the conditions and spirit found on the stations which he visited.

“He found the settlers living under wretched conditions, although they could afford much better, because they did not intend to stay on the land longer than the few years necessary to secure a small competence, when they would retire from productive life, to live a life of leisure in a cheap and bare suburban home. “There are so many of these that they form,‘lie says, ‘a leisured class without high culture, and without the desires or inclinations that foster the development of art or learning.’ “In the meantime he thinks it deplorable that Australia is not being developed in material ways, notwithstanding all her rich resources, nor are the standards of life and of culture being raised.”