But the views, or lack of views, of English statesmen towards Australia are far from being the chief cause of complaint in the younger country. Neither are they the source from which the little Australian most naturally springs. The stolid, unyielding, invincible prejudices of the English middle classes are a more important factor in the case. What does the man who has lived his life in the Midland Counties, or in Yorkshire, or in London, know about the Antipodes? What does he care to know? What is the use of telling him that at the Antipodes life may be as artistic, wit as polished, society as versatile, conventional codes as precise, manners as decorous, wealth as prodigal, intellect as keen, and the indefinable something known as savoir faire as pronounced as in England? The Midlander would not believe it. And his wife would believe it still less. The Englishman should make it his business to learn something of the land that his countrymen have peopled. His geographical ignorance should be less complete, less appalling. One obstacle to lasting cohesion will be removed when the man who picks up his paper in Yorkshire or Warwickshire is aware that Victoria is not the Capital of New South Wales, and that people in Brisbane are debarred by distance from paying afternoon calls upon people in Geelong.
Another of the centrifugal forces at work is the attitude of the older nation towards the incipient art and literature of the new one. It is always a mistake to despise the day of small things. The error is one that is being constantly made by the English critic, the English reviewer, the English publisher, the English artist, and—to some extent—by the English reader. You will hear it said in London that the Colonies have been “overdone.” You need not believe it. They have never been anything but underdone. They have always been fighting for recognition and very imperfectly obtaining it. The young men from Oxford and Cambridge have come to regard Fleet Street as their special domain. They have never been anxious to greet the outsider. They do not actually forbid intrusion, but they do not welcome it, and they do not wish it. The newspaper proprietors and editors are of the same way of thinking. A Colonial reputation to them means nothing, or less than nothing. The very fact that it is Colonial is enough to damn it. The word “Colonial” is unfortunate. Such a term, with such associations, might damn anything. Its use in this way is an injustice to the people to whom it is applied, a reflection on the manner of thinking of the people who apply it. It is a significant fact that the man who has done brilliantly in Melbourne or Sydney finds it harder to make a commencement in the metropolis of his own race than does the man who has achieved nothing better than failure in Birmingham or York. English experience, good, bad, or indifferent, is understood to be better than Colonial success.
Still another factor calling for consideration is the tone of English society. In some respects this is the most important of all. Were it not for this, much could be forgiven. The Australian could overlook the majestic indifference of the Assembly that sits at Westminster; he could smile at the profound lack of topographical information possessed by the middle-class Briton in reference to Australia; and he could put up with the hard suspicion that greets his claims to a place in the literary or the artistic world. He could put up with these, and endeavour to overcome them. But he finds exasperating and well-nigh unendurable the slight movement of the shoulders, and the imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows, that, in certain exclusive circles, greet the mention of the word Australian. These indications of opinion are trifles. Society itself is the most futile and absurd of trifles. But the ridiculous prejudices of the most trifling individuals may have more influence upon international relationships than years of actual misgovernment or oceans of wordy vituperation. The Australian is aware of one or two things. He knows that although his erudition may be sound, his clothes faultless, and his hands as clean as his linen—though he may have much knowledge, much tact, much eloquence, much refinement—his acceptance among the people who can trace their descent for a couple of centuries will be achieved in spite of, and in no way because of, the land of his birth. He knows that in a particular circle, a circle that is largely the preserve of soulless aristocrats and commonplace millionaires and pushful Americans, there can be heard every now and then the exclamation, “Oh, Australians!” The delicate, almost imperceptible, irony of the tone in which these words are uttered may yet bring about the dismemberment of the Empire. No man cares to be thought ridiculous. No man relishes the suggestion—even the most faintly implied, ostensibly denied suggestion—that in the social sense he does not know how to live.
Mainly as the result of what is going on in England, partly because of other reasons, there is growing up in Australia a feeling of antagonism to constitutional ties as they now exist. I say “growing up,” although the shoots are at present hardly noticeable, and the vitality is taken from them by the vigour of other trees. But no one can afford to be blind to the signs of the times. In the Southern continent there is a strong and developing Labour party. Politically it is of the utmost importance. Where it does not actually choose Ministries and pass legislation it is the controlling or balancing force without which the Government in office could not carry on. This political Labour party is leavened with Republicanism. More than that, it is in spirit and essence Republican; that is to say, anti-Monarchical, and in a measure Separationist. So far, it is not actively disloyal. It has by no means shaken off old associations. The influences of race and of heredity are with it yet. The name and fame of England are more to it than the name and fame of France or Germany, or America, or Japan. Many of its members took part in the honourable folly of the Mafeking celebrations. But old associations become older each year; and even heredity is not in the long run proof against environment. A party that has to fight for its existence in Parliament, and to earn its own living outside of it, has not much time for sentiment. It comes down to bed-rock sooner than do other parties. All the patriotic ideals, all the associations of remoter kinship, all the far-off memories of battle fields, all the impalpable nothings that help to bind an Empire together, are not proof in the long run against the practical tendencies of the man who knows only his own surroundings—who is chiefly occupied in supplying material wants, and who wishes to be let alone.
Outside of political circles, and outside of the Labour party, there is a certain body of opinion that sees, or professes to see, indications of coming change. Causes of irritation are always arising. English newspaper criticism of Australia is one fruitful source of complaint. The returned Australian—the man who has battled hard for a living in London and has more or less failed—comes back with the conviction that racial sentiment is a vain and foolish thing. For him it is dead; its embers lie strewn about the pavement that runs past London newspaper offices, and are trampled under foot by the indifferent millions on their passage to and fro. The thoughtful and clever Australian, looking to the prevailing signs of the times, looking to the attitude of Downing Street, of Fleet Street, and of Belgravia, begins to pin his faith to a future that is not the future of the old world, but of the new.
For the present, old ties, old institutions, old associations are in the ascendant. The continent is owned, and to some extent governed, by men of peregrinating habits; by men to whom the Red Sea is as familiar as Collins Street; by men to whom the journey from Tilbury to Adelaide is no more formidable, and not much more unusual, than a cab-drive from the Marble Arch to London Bridge. These people, though they live in the Southern Hemisphere, have most of their financial, commercial, and social interests in the world’s metropolis. These people own most of the property and possess a preponderating, though a diminishing, share in the Government of the new country. Assisting them, and co-operating with them, is the racial and Imperialistic sentiment of the Australian middle classes. But the other type of individual—the man who believes that formulas have no hold over him, and who declares that he “may not call a throned puppet Lord”—is making himself felt more as a silent than as an eloquent factor in the life of the people. This is the type that is known as “little Australian.” On A.N.A. platforms, in suburban debating societies, at Trades’ Hall councils, and at Yarra Bank gatherings, it succeeds in making its aspirations heard. In social circles, in the region of practical politics, it is dumb and futile. But it is ambitious, and expects to grow.
For many reasons one might sympathise with the little Australian, and even feel some sorrow for him. He has so few materials with which to build. He has no national flag, no history, no bead-roll of fame, no justification for enthusiasm of any kind. He wishes to feel, and to spread around him, an atmosphere of enthusiasm for the land in which he was born. He wishes to see the embers removed from England, and relighted in Australia. But how is the thing to be done? National sentiment is largely the product of memories. And the Australian, as an Australian, has no memories worthy of the name. If he looks back a century—and he can look back no further—he finds merely the trail of the unattractive aboriginal, of the nomadic gold digger, and of that other man who, like Barrington, left his country for his country’s good. Hamlet declares that you cannot feed capons, that is to say, young cocks, on air; and you can hardly nourish the flame of patriotic sentiment on recollections such as these. So it is that in Australia the shrine of the local patriot is difficult to tend. The altar has not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation should be. A large expanse of territory, some trees, a whitey-grey or dull green landscape, a number of new buildings, a hard blue sky, a succession of fine days, and alternating periods of drought—these must be the outward and visible symbols, in default of others more histrionic and less tangible, on which the sentiment of the nation has to feed. It is no wonder that the result is a slow and fluctuating and uncertain growth.
But the little Australian lives on, and believes that time will have its revenges. He believes that each year as it passes is fighting for him. He knows that he is not strong enough to found a party that will carry any weight in the Government of the country. He is aware, also, that he can get no audience to listen to the gospel that is dearest to him, elsewhere than by the banks of rivers, at the less reputable street corners, or in the open spaces of a city domain. He recognises that the earth belongs to those who think very differently from himself. He has no hope of achieving a tour de force. But he is by no means idle. He does what he can. His voice is raised against all proposals that seem to have an old-world origin, or to be actuated by sympathy with old-world forms of Government. Thus he is an active opponent of the agreement under which Australia pays a naval subsidy of £200,000 to Great Britain. He is not candid enough to say what he really thinks—that he desires his country to be quite independent of the parent nation. But he talks, with an amusing sophistry that deceives no one, of the advantages that would accrue to the people of England if Australia possessed a navy of her own. Besides objecting to the naval subsidy he objects to State Governors, to all appeals from his part of the world to the Privy Council, to contingents such as those that went to South Africa, to the right of veto upon colonial legislation. All these are principles or practices that can be protested against without openly enlisting under the Separationist flag. The little Australian is not sure that the time is ripe for objecting to an English Governor-General, or to the appearance of the head of the Sovereign on the coins of the realm. But where there is a chance of doing something, he does it; where there is a head unprotected, he hits it as hard as he can.
What is the future to be? No one knows, least of all the little Australian. Sometimes he sees visions, sometimes he dreams dreams. But he lacks constructive ability, and he is wanting in definite aim. His antecedents are of a heterogeneous character. It may be that he is of Irish descent, and that memories of Drogheda and Vinegar Hill are running in his blood. Perhaps he has a Gaelic strain and refuses, as some Scotchmen still refuse, to forego the hereditary instinct which meant war to the knife against the race across the Border. Or possibly he is a German for whom loyalty to Great Britain has no meaning; or possibly an Italian, the child of a country that is always talking about liberty, but has for gotten how to use it. Perhaps he is an Englishman who for adequate personal reasons has a vendetta against his fathers’ country, and everything connected with it. There are a number of local causes, a number of nationalities, a number of racial prejudices helping to build up the little Australian. But for the present the Imperialists of the continent can afford to smile at him. They know that his day is not yet.