The Australians meanwhile, seeing the course which the future development of their country is likely to pursue, have taken time by the forelock, and in order to obviate the recurrence of the disastrous conditions in the Old World have inaugurated an elaborate system of Labour Legislation calculated to safeguard the interests of working men and women in all branches of occupation. Such measures as Wages Boards, Conciliation and Arbitration Court Systems, a minimum wage under the Factory Acts, an eight-hours day, early closing, and holiday regulations, are accomplished facts all over Australia, though their constitution is not uniform in the different states.
A Government Labour Exchange was established in 1911 to bring employer and workmen into communication. This does not, of course, include professional and clerical labour. All the departments of Public Service, including the railways, apply to the Labour Exchange for workmen, and if the work lasts for less than two months the men’s fares are refunded to them.
Of course, not all Australians see the social development of their country in the same rose-coloured light. The social reformer and the moral enthusiast are seldom business men; to such the question appears in a wholly different aspect—in terms of material profit and loss.
Each state has its own industrial problems, and the question of water supply occupies the attention of all who are concerned with the development of South Australia, for the only area in the Commonwealth having an average annual rainfall of less than five inches, the Lake Eyre region, lies within the limits of this state. Throughout the more closely settled part of the state the difficulty has been met by the Government by the construction of reservoirs and the distribution of supplies.
CHAPTER VIII
COMPULSORY TRAINING AND SOCIAL LIFE IN ADELAIDE
Adelaide, when we reached it, was like the rest of the Australian continent, celebrating the declaration of war by a tremendous outburst of patriotism; the whole place fluttered with little flags, Union Jacks were on every bicycle or cart or motor-car, loyal crowds were assembling at street corners. We in England have no conception of the depths of feeling that our fellow-countrymen in Australia have for “home.” It embraces all those who come out there on a visit, so that instead of strangers in a strange land they feel like a dear and welcome friend returning to his own people. By the evening the occasion had been felt to be so momentous that the youthful male population, with whom the streets were crowded, had celebrated it in some cases to excess, and this was the sole occasion on which we saw anything approaching to intemperance while we were in Australia, or on which the population forsook its habitual and universal beverage of weak tea. That they were carried away by enthusiasm was all to their credit. Trained to military service from his school days every Australian realises, as few Englishmen have yet done, the importance of self-defence, and the obligation of every man in the country to take his share in it.
We have much to learn from Australia, but in no respect more than in her admirable system of universal military training. We have already mentioned her cadet training in schools. When a boy reaches the age of fourteen he becomes a senior cadet, and a general military training is added to the physical training that is already part of his school curriculum. At the beginning of the year in which he reaches his fourteenth birthday he has to be registered, and his registration papers are sent to the Area Officer, under whose jurisdiction he now passes. This officer sees that the boys go up for their medical examination; after passing this, a boy is measured for his uniform, and allotted to his company in the senior cadet battalion of the area. The average percentage of rejections after the medical examination is only seven and a half. The senior cadet is now subject to military discipline and becomes part of the military system of the country. He has to attend four whole-day drills of at least four hours, twelve half-day drills of two hours’ duration, and twenty-four night drills of one hour’s minimum duration. Boys who are still at school may be formed into special companies. It is an important feature of the system that all the companies in a battalion area form one battalion independently of the numbers involved, for the battalions are training, not fighting, units. The training for senior cadets consists of physical drill, company and some battalion drill, field training and musketry. An excellent provision secures good work on the part of the cadets. At the end of each year’s training an inspection takes place, and all who fail to satisfy the regular officer responsible, lose the value of their year’s work, as the Act requires an additional year’s training for each failure of the inefficient.
Ammunition and uniforms are supplied free. In his fourth year of training the senior cadet must satisfy the medical officer of the training area of his fitness, those falling below the standard are certified in their record books as “exempt.” In the third stage of his training, from eighteen to twenty-six years old, the young Australian becomes a member of the Citizen Forces. This system is gradually superseding the older militia, which prescribed a period of three years’ training only, and consequently attains so much the more an efficient military standard. The training is arranged as far as possible with a view to the convenience of the men, who are only obliged to be absent from home during a short period spent in camp every year. Parades are held on holidays, Saturday afternoons, or in the evening. In some districts Sunday training has been advocated and has raised considerable opposition, but Brigadier-General J. G. Legge, C.M.G., commanding, at the time of writing, the Division of the Australian Forces in Egypt, in an article on Australian Defence,[9] reminds his readers that “not so many centuries ago it was the law of England that every able-bodied man should practise with the bow at the village butts on Sunday after church hours, and why not now on Sunday afternoons? This would get over the difficulty with employers quite well.” Pay is given for attendance at parades in the Citizen Forces.
Under the universal training system all start as privates, and each rank competes for promotion to the one immediately above it. But it must be remembered that in Australia, as in other new countries, there are no sharply drawn class distinctions, there hardly exists an idle class, and to quote Brigadier-General Legge once more: “Brains and practical proficiency alone will carry weight with units such as we now have to lead and discipline in Australia.” There is no room in that happy land for the promotion of influential incompetence.