The real Australia

by Alfred Buchanan

But while there is no such thing as national character—except in the sense that historians find it convenient to use—it is yet a fact that certain people encourage each other in certain practices, and that these practices come in time to assume the proportions of public virtues and vices. One environment may permit an individual to wear a species of garment, or to indulge in a form of language that would be among other surroundings either legally forbidden, or frowned out of existence. The unwritten law in regard to externals insensibly modifies both the law of conduct and the habit of thought. In Australia there are opposing tendencies at work. There is, in the first place, the tendency to freedom and to license which the remoteness from an older civilisation fosters. Opposed to this, and rapidly overcoming it, is the tendency of a country, as it develops settled institutions, to mould itself on the ambitious models of fashionable society elsewhere. As a third factor, and an undoubtedly powerful one, there is the influence of climate. This is tending in Australia to produce a different race of beings, physically and morally, from that in the Northern Hemisphere. It is tending to do so—but up to the present it has produced a crop of half results, of insufficiently proven theories, and of partially established types.

There are certain qualities—virtues, they may be called—that come prominently under notice in Australia and appear, from their habit of repeating themselves, to form some integral part of the life of the community. The foremost of these good qualities is that of hospitality. And here a singular anomaly presents itself. Politically the Australians are the most exclusive and the most inhospitable race on earth. Their only rivals in this respect must be looked for among the bottled-up Confucians of China, or the mysterious Buddhists of Thibet. The “white-ocean” policy of the Federal Parliament, no less than the present Immigration Restriction Act, with its humorous travesty of an education test, is the most glaring instance of political bigotry that has come to light in modern times. The whole of this legislation has been described by an Australian Prime Minister as a “monstrous outrage” on every tolerant sentiment and every democratic ideal. Yet the law has been in force for three years and no Minister or Government has dared to repeal it. It is true that a certain concession has been made in favour of the Japanese. But it is only a partial concession. There the law stands on the statute-book; and there it seems likely to remain until the excluded victors of Tsu-shima show a desire to argue the question from the vantage ground of a battle-ship. In the latter event anything might come to pass.

The anomaly consists in the fact that the Australians, desiring to live politically like frogs in a well, are, as individuals, among the most open-hearted and hospitable in the world. The prevailing temper is shown in small things as in great. In England, if you are in doubt as to your locality, you feel some hesitation in asking a stranger to put you on the right road. The hesitancy may do the Englishman an injustice, but his manner explains it. In Australia you have only to enquire as to the whereabouts of a certain street or of a particular house, to be accompanied half the way there by a man who is manifestly and unmistakeably pleased to be in a position to give the information. The same hospitality is shown in the average householder’s desire to surround himself with as many people as possible, to entertain as many as possible, and to have as many as possible sampling his wines and his coffee and his cigars. If you are thirsty in Australia—and the thirst of the nation is proverbial—it is usual to look for some one who will drink with you. The hermit temper is not common, nor is the prevailing type that of the individual who wishes to be let alone, and to enjoy things alone. If there is a new lawn, or a new piano, or a new motor-car, the owner has a real anxiety that its merits should be tested, and its benefits shared by as large a circle as practicable. Vanity may have something to do with this desire, but however accounted for, it exists. The inconsistency between the temper of the unit and the policy of the Government—of each successive Government—runs from A to Z. The elector who will vote to have black men deprived of the means of earning a living, brown men deported, and blind or sick men refused the right to set foot on land, will, if he meets the alleged undesirable immigrant in the ordinary paths of life, come to his assistance with an alacrity that the good Samaritan of sacred history might equal, but could not surpass.

There are other qualities that must compel admiration. The Australians are receptive-minded, tolerant—except in the political sense just mentioned—and ready to learn. The intense conservatism of older countries is not theirs. Standards are not arbitrarily fixed as they are in Britain. The social groove is not artificially restricted. It is narrowing, but it is still fairly broad. The slavish adherence to a certain set of rules, designated collectively as “good form,” is not a characteristic of the people. In the unwritten code that finds most favour there is the principle that a person may be worth cultivating even though he does not pronounce his “a’s” as if they were “ai’s,” and even though certain monosyllables, by the aid of which the smart set avoids the trouble of conversation, form no part of his vocabulary. The Australian holds—in theory, at any rate—the revolutionary doctrine that every one should be given a chance. Now and again an individual is found who acts up to this unfashionable and somewhat crude precept.

There is something elastic in the people’s attitude to life. They have not become socially or mentally atrophied by centuries of convention, by centuries of custom, by centuries of meaningless and idiotic routine. The atrocious crime of being a young nation, with much of what the word youth implies, is still to be laid at their door.

A certain warmth, a certain generous instinct, a certain spontaneity of thought and action, a certain buoyancy of temper, must be placed to the credit side of the ledger. A certain fairness to opponents must also be conceded, despite the remarks of a noted English cricketer to the contrary. This fairness becomes all the more praiseworthy when it is remembered that the only topic on which the Australians, as a people, hold any definite opinions is that of sport. Such being the case, it is inevitable that some feeling should be shown when matters of sport—that is to say, matters of far more general interest than the fate of Governments or the choosing of Parliaments—are being decided. Invidious comparisons are sometimes drawn between the behaviour of crowds in Sydney or Melbourne, and the behaviour of crowds at Lords’ or at the Oval. The fact is usually overlooked that the London rough, who is the counterpart of the Australian larrikin, is not to be met with in any numbers at an athletic contest. For one thing he has not the money to go there, and for another thing he has not the desire. But the more boisterous and more objectionable type of Australian has a habit of finding his way to cricket matches in Sydney or in Melbourne. Broadly speaking, it is a select crowd that watches the game in England—a crowd made select by the price of admission. It is a crowd less select in Australia, for the reason that the price of admission is more easily obtainable. Allowing for all the circumstances, and measuring unit for unit, it is a fact that the virtue of fairness to opponents is one that the new nation can confidently claim.

Much might be said—in fact much has already been said, and much more will be said—of the vices of the people. This is a topic on which it would be foolish to dogmatise, seeing that so much depends on the individual point of view. Vice itself has become a term of obscure meaning. What with our logicians and metaphysicians, our up-to-date moralists, and our new hedonists—what with our emancipated lady novelists, our reforming social philosophers, and our revolting sisters and brethren—what with all these, we have no arbitrary rules of conduct, and no definitions that can for a moment be relied upon. Even so correct and comparatively orthodox a writer as Edmund Burke has made a statement implying that vice practically ceases to exist when it is sufficiently embroidered and set among sufficiently magnificent surroundings. To be vicious to the accompaniment of fine phrases and minuet-like movements—to be vicious while the rich embroideries are sweeping the floor, and the lights are falling on velvet curtains, and “the stately silver shoulder stoops”—that is not really to be vicious at all. Such at least would appear to be the general opinion. And if the general opinion is not to be taken as a guide in these matters it is difficult to say what is.

So far as national vices come under the heading of national crimes—and the terms are more or less related, though they are not identical—it can be easily shown that Australia is neither very much better nor very much worse than other countries. The number of people who are punished each year for crimes of various kinds is, relative to population, much the same as the number similarly punished in the United Kingdom. Statistics of drunkenness are incomplete and unreliable, but there is the authority of Mulhall for the statement that while the United Kingdom consumes 3.57 proof gallons of intoxicants per inhabitant, Australasia consumes no more than 2.50 gallons. Illegitimacy is somewhat more prevalent in the Southern Hemisphere than in Great Britain, but the difference is not considerable. The proportion of illegitimate births is 6 per cent. in Australasia and only 4.15 per cent. in England and Wales, but in Scotland, where morals are understood to be rather austere, the proportion of illegitimate births is 7 per cent. And so it is in regard to most other offences—in regard to burglaries, assaults, thefts, murders and the rest. The lot of the average policeman is neither more nor less unhappy, neither more nor less strenuous, in Australia than in England. The chances of being murdered in one’s sleep—though the middle-class English household may disbelieve the statement—are not appreciably greater in Australia than they are in Great Britain.

Yet a nation that is outwardly law-abiding may be inherently vicious. The habit that saps vitality may not be the habit that advertises itself in the police-court. As a matter of fact, a heavy crop of burglaries, and assaults with violence, may be quite a healthy sign, tending to show that national vigour is unimpaired. Every philosopher knows that the abounding energy which, in the one case, drives the possessor to break open doors and to hit other people on the head will, in ninety-nine other cases, impel him to daring feats in exploration, or in athletics, or in war. It is the drug-taking habit, the cigarette-smoking habit, the card-playing habit, the gambling habit, the loafing, swearing, work-shirking habit that produces the most insidious results, and tells the most disastrous tale. None of these practices are liable, in the ordinary course, to land the perpetrator in a Court of Law. There is no statistician who can say anything definite about them. But that they are all unduly and dangerously prevalent in Australia is a fact admitting of no reasonable doubt.

The most pervading phase of Australian character is its irresponsibility. If this is not a vice in itself, it is the parent of a great many vices. The term by which it is usually designated is lack of principle, or of moral sense. The average Englishman may be innocent of much outward profession of virtue, or, for that matter, of any definite, cut-and-dried standard of beliefs. He may be a very long way from the ideal of the just man made perfect. But very often he is discovered to possess something that may be neither creed nor conscience, but that is more potent than either. It is more than a fear of the law. It is more than regard for the opinion of others. It is more, even, than sense of shame. It is the inner something—accumulated instinct, if you will—that makes a man prefer, when the pinch comes, to do the honourable thing. At the very least, and at the very worst, it makes him silent as to his vices, and conscious of the fact that they are not virtues. But the Australian is beginning to run into a different mould. It is the commonest occurrence in the world to find him talking and boasting, jesting and laughing, over that about which he should be most inexorably dumb. Of his successes with women, of his breakages of the seventh commandment, of his nights at bridge or in a public-house, of his supposed power of cajoling man, woman, or child—and more especially woman—he will talk as long and as often as he can get an audience to listen to him. The larger the audience the better he is pleased. It is an unfortunate tendency of the people, and the fact that there are conspicuous exceptions to the rule just laid down does not make the tendency any less noticeable or less unfortunate.