“No, I don’t,” said Jack, in a thin, sharp voice. “I don’t want to be bullied by any damned Red International Labour. I don’t want to be kissing and hugging a lot of foreign labour tripe: niggers and what the hell. I’d rather have the British Empire ten thousand times over, and that bed’s a bit too wide, and too many in it, for me. I don’t like sleeping with a lot of neighbours. But when it comes to going to bed with a crowd of niggers and dagoes, in an International Labour Combine, with a pair of red sheets so that the dirt won’t show, I’m absolutely sure I won’t have it. That’s why I like Kangaroo. We shall be just cosy and Australian, with a boss like a father who gets up first in the morning, and locks up at night before you go to bed.”
“And who will stop in the Empire?”
“Oh, I suppose so. But he won’t be asking even the British to go to bed with him. He knows the difference between Australia, and the rest of the Empire. The Empire’s like a lot of lock-up shops that you do your trade in. But I know Kangaroo well enough to know he’s not mixing his family in. He’ll keep Australia close and cosy. That’s what I want. And that’s what we all want, when we’re in our senses and aren’t bitten into spots by the Red International bug.”
Somers then mentioned Jaz’s proposition, of a red revolution first.
“I know,” said Jack. “It may be so. He’s one of your sly, crawling devils, Jaz is, and that seems to be the road nowadays. I wouldn’t mind egging the Reds in, and then slapping them clean out into nowhere. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I’m bound to follow Kangaroo’s orders, so I’m not bothering my chump over Jaz’s boodle.”
“You don’t care which way it happens?”
Jack looked at him sideways, like the funny bird.
“No,” he said, with an Australian drawl. “So long as it does happen. I don’t like things as they are, and I don’t feel safe about them. I don’t mean I want to feel safe as if nothing would ever happen. There’s some sorts of sport and risk that you enjoy, and there’s others you hate the thought of. Now I hate the thought of being bossed and messed about by the Old Country, or by Jew capitalists and bankers, or by a lot of labour bullies, or a Soviet. There’s no fun in that sort of sport, to me, unless you can jolly well wipe the bleeders out afterwards. And I don’t altogether want the mills of the British Empire to go grinding slowly on, and yourself compelled to do nothing but grind slowly with ’em. It’s too much of a sameness altogether, and not as much sport as a tin Lizzie. We’re too much mixed up with other folk’s business, what’s absolutely no fun for us. No, what I want is a cosy, lively little Australia away from all this blooming world-boost. I’ve no use for a lot of people across a lot of miles of sea nudging me while I handle my knife and fork. Leave us Australians to ourselves, we shall manage.”
They were interrupted by Harriet calling for Somers to come and rescue the tea-towel from the horns of a cow who had calmly scrambled through the fence on to their grass. Somers was used to the cow: she had scrambled through the Coo-ee fence long before the Somers had ever walked through the gate, so she looked on them as mild intruders. He was quite friendly with her, she ate the pumpkin rind and apple parings from his hand. Now she looked at him half guiltily out of one eye, the kitchen towel hanging over the other eye. She took it quite calmly, but had a disreputable appearance.
“Come here,” said he. “Come here and have it taken off. Of course you had to poke your head into the bush if you thought there was a towel on it.”