"A Great American Orator."

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 178, 15 March 1902, Page 3

"A Great American Orator."

0 AUSTRALIA'S LOYALTY.

Some little time ago a& American was billed throughout these islands under the above high-sounding title. He fell very flat, and was told so. Evidently he has been venting his spleen in the great land where he may be accepted as a great authority, and in a manner which stamps him as a great—stranger to truth. The following letter is clipped from a Canadian paper:— Sir, —As you doubtless have access to newspapers published in Australia and New Zealand, as /well as other means of ascertaining public opinion, you will probably be kind enough to tell me just how much truth is contained in the following paragraph referring to our Antipodean fallow Britishers : •'The loyalty of these States and colonies to the British Crown is imaginary in the main, and it is certainly a mistake to suppose that the war in South Africa has increased it, or that the Duke's visit has secured it. The war has left a bad taste in the mouth. It has ruined many of the finest youths and sent many others back not ruined-morally, but restless and unfitted to take up life where they left it when they went away. The Duke's visit, on the whole, has weakened the Imperial sentiment. The bills are being paid now, and they look bad at this distance from the exoitement and the pageantry. : . These people almost unconsciously begin to look for independence, and it is not veiy far; away." The author of the foregoing rather startling paragraph, which lately appeared in the New York Voice, of Chicago, owned by Mr John G. Woolley, is the said' Mr Woolley himself, who recently visited Australasia for the purpose of delivering temperance lectures and incidentally, of course, earning a little of the coin circulated in that part of Hisi Msjesty'B dominions. Is Mr Woolley simply lying ? Or was his tour a financial failure, or is he merely one of those Americans who are seized with a u bad taste in the mouth " whenever they attempt to discuss anything that has reference to Great Britain?— Yours etc., " JOHNNt Canitck. Toronto, January 3rd. It would be interesting to obtain further titbits from Mv Woolley's " experiences." We would thon be better able to receive him in a manner worthy of so great a personug*..