It is remarkable that so much unnecessary alarm should have been created over this subject. To say that the diminishing birth-rate is necessarily a bad sign is to ignore great part of the teaching of history, and of science, and of civilisation. Birth is stronger than death, and has been throughout the ages. It was so when the barbarians were knocking at the gates of the Eternal City; when the tens of thousands of Attila were falling before the tens of thousands of Aetius; when Goth and Vandal, Frank and Scythian, were transforming Central Europe into a charnel pit; when famine and pestilence were assisting the war-god of the Middle Ages to keep population in check. Yet population grew then, and is growing now. Science, by checking disease, and humanitarian sentiment, by preventing war, are helping it to grow still faster. No one can pretend to say what the end will be. The temper of Australian society is probably no more unselfish and no more moral than is that of any other society equally endowed with means and leisure time. But even out of evil good may come; and if selfishness and immorality are evils, it has yet to be shown that a declining birth-rate belongs to the same category.
The tone of what is called society is, as a matter of fact, the outward expression of the country’s ideal. Australia badly wants an ideal. At present it has none worthy of the name. It is not looking for one; at least there are few indications of a search. What is everybody striving for? Unto what altar is the mysterious priest of nationhood leading his followers? Of what nature are the offerings? Who are the deities that are being invoked? These are all questions that should interest the speculative mind. As to the habits and inspirations of the working classes, there is not much uncertainty. They are aiming—and it is an honourable and straightforward aim—at improved mental and material conditions of living. But as the present argument deals with methods of employing leisure, and the workers are understood to have no leisure, they may be omitted from the general conclusion. The leisured classes, the privileged classes, the social classes have one, and only one objective. Their familiar gods are those of the worshippers in Atalanta in Calydon—Pan by day, and Bacchus by night. Their mission is to pass the time, to kill it in the most agreeable way, to accompany its exit with the music of flutes, to see that its obsequies are attended by the most lulling effects, the most soothing harmonies, the most insidious appeals to brain and sense that money will allow.
Once upon a time there were ideals. The patriotic ideal was one of these, and it was decidedly useful, though from the logical standpoint rather absurd. The march of intelligence teaches that the willingness to die for one’s country is the survival of a crude and primitive instinct; that it is much finer, as well as much safer, to entertain a cosmopolitan feeling of regard for the foreigner, and not to put oneself unnecessarily in his way. Leonidas, when he put himself in the way at Thermopylæ, illustrated the earlier man’s fondness for an ideal. From his country’s point of view his ideal was a good one, though for himself it had no concrete value. Another manifestation that is occasionally to be met with in Europe and elsewhere is what might be called the aristocratic ideal. This is an inheritance from feudal times. Yet a third variety is the intellectual ideal. France in the time of Louis XIV. grew tired of looking up to the people of high birth, and for a brief space looked up to the people of high intelligence. Every member of the best society carried his sonnet about with him as the modern man carries his walking-stick. The age of Louis and of Molière was the heyday of the intellectual ideal.
In Australia there is no real acknowledgment of any of these three. There is no inducement to the average citizen to be patriotic. The quality, so far from being idealised, is hardly recognised. Times have altered since King Xerxes looked out over Salamis and since Arnold von Winkelreid fell at Sempach. The people of the new continent have never been called upon to defend themselves. Where there is no desire for fighting, no military spirit, no past history, no present danger, there is not likely to be a patriotic ideal. If you were to ask the average Australian whether it was not his highest ambition to die for his country he would take you either for a person of weak intellect, or for an eccentric amateur comedian. Neither is there any quality in the people that corresponds to the ancient practice of idealising noble birth. The country has no aristocracy of its own. It has no special desire for one. Whatever ambitions or aspirations it may acknowledge, they have nothing to do with a titled class. Neither is the typical Australian given to worshipping intellect as such. When the particular brand of intellect brought under his notice has been commercially successful, and can command a high market value, he is appreciative and respectful. But for the quality itself he has no special regard, and in nine cases out of ten does not recognise it when it is there.
Without any such ideals as connect themselves with patriotism, with good birth, and with intellect, Australia bestows its enthusiastic idolatry on the individual possessed of great riches. Patriotism, good conduct, character, intelligence, imagination, fancy, unselfishness, brilliancy of expression—all these things are quite unnecessary in local social circles. It is only when they have been translated into a cash value that they can be seriously considered. It is not that brains are ruled out of court. They are always tolerated. But it is only when they have allied themselves with some kind of commercial success that they are sought after. The ideal before the community—the ideal that finds expression in society, that shines through the restless eyes of the women, and stamps itself on the dissatisfied faces of the men—is nothing if not a monetary one. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not an ideal at all. Money will purchase everything that the country has to offer, and for want of something else it does duty as the country’s ideal.
It is unfortunate that the continent should be in this position—the position of having nothing but a large fortune, a motor car, and a quantity of expensive furniture to aim at. Henry Lawson and one or two other poorly appreciated writers of talent have endeavoured to inspire the people with a martial sentiment, but as yet without success. All invocations to the “star of Australia” have so far fallen on deaf ears. There is no star of Australia. It has not set, and it has never risen. Until something unforeseen happens it does not seem likely to rise. How can it? The well-spring from which patriotic aspirations mount up has not yet been discovered. People with admirable intentions have recommended Australia, as an escape from mere frivolous amusements, to cultivate various forms of the strenuous life—for example, the life in barracks, the life in libraries, the life on the intellectual mountain top, the life in the home. It is unquestionable that a new development of some kind is badly needed. Australia would reap a substantial benefit, and one reflected throughout all ranks and conditions, if in the near future it evolved something, whether it were a patriotic ideal, a jingoistic ideal, a home-life ideal, a moral, intellectual, religious, or even a physical ideal. If it is to play a respectable part in future questions of magnitude it must, at any rate, develop some variation in the pleasure-seeking, money-making, work-shirking propensities that represent the greater part of its social life. Probably the salvation, when it does come, will be wrought by the working classes; for though they have blundered industrially, and failed more than once politically, they have the confidence of numbers, they are emancipated, and they are quick to learn. The ultimate destiny of the Australian continent is very largely in their hands.
III
JOURNALISM
The many waves of thought, the mighty tides,
The ground swell that rolls up from other lands,