Advance Australasia: A Day-to-Day Record of a Recent Visit to Australasia. / Second Edition.

by Frank Thomas Bullen

There is a good deal of poverty, undoubtedly, of a certain kind, and must be more than I have had any opportunity of ascertaining within the working-class localities. But I do not think there is any hunger, provisions being so very plentiful and cheap. It is curious, however, to see the rough, unkempt, hard-bitten men and women who mix with the busy throng in the principal thoroughfares, and look wistfully around them as if seeking sympathy and companionship. They have fled from the loneliness of the back country, and in the great, bustling city have found a greater solitude than ever. Now and then may be met in Collins, Elizabeth, or Swanston Streets, a swagman, usually old and grey, with his ragged bluey or blanket-wrapped bundle slung at his back, and his battered, soot-encrusted billy (tin tea-can) in his hand; just as much out of place in that busy, bustling throng, as any unit of it would be in the great solitudes whose message of mystery seems to peer out of his eyes. Occasionally one of these men will camp in some doorway, and on being arrested will plead, with an air of innocent wonder, that he was not aware of wrongdoing, seeing that for the whole of his life he had lived and slept in the open, and had never been arrested for it before. But I should say that the majority of the swagmen now, those at any rate who are found in the vicinity of the towns, are blood brothers of the hobo in the United States and the tramp in our country, nomads whose one characteristic is an utter aversion to work and whose one virtue is a love of the open. The old days when the honest splitter or shearer or farm-hand, the bushman of any kind, had perforce to hump his bluey and pad off on the wallaby track in search of work when his job was done, or he got tired of it, are practically gone except in the remote districts of this vast continent, whose denizens rarely see civilisation at all.

Neither in Adelaide or here in Melbourne have I seen any begging except by a couple of blind men, although there are a good many ragged, barefooted urchins running about in the vicinity of the railway stations selling evening newspapers. There is, however, an obvious overcrowding of the folks who ought to be in the country into the towns; and really it is not to be wondered at, seeing how many of those who come out here are entirely unused to and unfitted for a country life, and especially life in a new country. Which, of course, accounts for the lack of development of this amazing continent. The converse of this equally accounts for the advance of Canada, in that she welcomes those who have never known anything but the hard and grinding life necessary for wresting from wild nature the wealth that she holds in trust for the children of men, and who learn with a surprise that it takes much time to mitigate, that their earnings will not be snatched from them by force and fraud—who have looked, indeed, for nothing else but just the barest means of existence as the result of their incessant, terrible labours. Australia will have none of these, and as a consequence that mighty land is as yet barely scratched. Of what use can it be to advertise for farmers with capital to come to Australia and take up rich lands at a low price, if the labour to till and develop those lands is not to be had except at a price that precludes any idea of profit?

I make these remarks in no carping spirit, but when I see that there is a general tendency in the Press to grumble at the fishing being in the hands of Italians, and gardening in the grip of the Chinese, while at the same time talking of the wondrous wealth of the country awaiting development, I am filled with wonder at the curious turn of mind that imagines that you can keep a vast continent in the hands of a few people and yet exploit its resources—a process which they know can only be accomplished by much manual labour. The results which have already been achieved by the few are a sufficient proof of the amazing richness of the country, but with a sufficiency of the white labour which is craving for work and bread in the old countries what a mighty uprising of this great Commonwealth we should see! The cry now is all for population, but no provision is made for the obtaining of the proper kind of population—people that are willing to work, and are all unused to or demoralised by city life, but lack the means of crossing the immense distance which separates them from the starvation of the old land and the plenty of the new.

Moreover, this question of the white immigration is the only one of any importance before the Australasian politicians just now. The answer to it, free passages hither for white men willing to work on the land, British preferably, but white anyhow, is the only one that will satisfactorily meet the demand, never lost sight of, for a white Australia. A most desirable, an intensely reasonable demand, but one impossible of attainment unless white men of no means but their strong bodies can be assisted to get here as they are to Canada. No one wants to see a yellow Australia, but unless something is done speedily it will not be possible to avoid having a large part of Australia yellow within a very few years. Indeed I have great and grave doubts whether it will be possible to avoid it at all; because there is not the slightest use in blinking the fact that an immense area of the extreme north of Australia is not a white man's country. He may own it, but he cannot work it; and of what use is land without labour? It is the whole question of the Transvaal and Rhodesia over again, but in a more acute and decided form. Those regions are of incalculable wealth, but they must have men to work them who can stand the climate.

Those men, the very men for the business, are clamouring to be allowed to come in, and it is a most serious question how much longer will the Commonwealth Government be able to keep them out. They are quite within reason in pointing out as they do that even the vast southern half or three-quarters of the continent where white men can both live and work, is practically unoccupied except in a few isolated spots, and to keep them out of land which they do not wish to possess but only to have the privilege of earning a living upon, is most dog-in-the-manger like. It may sound like an exaggeration to speak of Australia as being practically unoccupied save in a few isolated spots, but it is quite true. When we remember that Australia alone is immensely larger than the United States, and that the whole of her population is not much more than that of the City of New York, we feel inclined to stand aghast at such a state of affairs.

What, however, has driven this home to me more than anything else has been the visit to Melbourne just now of the Japanese training squadron of three gunboats or third-class cruisers, the Hashidate, Matsushima, and Itsushima, under the command of Admiral Shimamura, who was Admiral Togo's chief of staff. Now it is entirely unnecessary for me to refer to the splendid behaviour of these men, who always win golden opinions wherever they go, or of the general courtesy of the officers, as you have had a visiting squadron at home at the same time. But I confess I was not prepared to find, as I did, so exceedingly hearty and spontaneous a welcome here extended to our allies as I have seen. At home it was impossible for it to be otherwise, remembering with what intense eagerness we had followed the fortunes of the Japanese, and how one and all felt interested in their success against the men who had committed the unatoned-for outrage of the Dogger Bank. Probably we have never had an alliance which has aroused such genuine, heartfelt enthusiasm as this with the Japanese, nor have ever felt such deep admiration for people apparently possessed of all the old-fashioned virtues of fidelity, courage, patriotism, and indifference to death. Beyond all this the Japanese are not our near neighbours, and we have no room in England to tempt them if they were. And so we are hardly in a position to judge of the general feeling towards them in Australia, which lives in constant dread of having a flood of Asiatic labour poured into it, and knows full well what that would mean. This feeling of dread finds malignant expression in certain organs which have a very large sale. There the Japanese are invariably spoken of as monkeys and caricatured in most unlovely fashion. And knowing all this, I wondered much what sort of a reception the Japanese would have when they came here in their warships as official guests. Well, the city just went wild over them. They compelled admiration by their behaviour, as indeed they always do, and they practically monopolised public attention in the most favourable way. They went everywhere and saw everything, every hospitality that the city could show, both official and private, being showered upon them. I was literally amazed at the show of enthusiasm manifested by the people, which perhaps reached its acme when some hundreds of the men, accompanied by a large detachment of our own bluejackets from the Psyche and Cerberus, marched through the principal streets on their way to a huge garden party at the Zoo. The streets were packed as thickly with shouting, excited people as would have been the case in London or Liverpool, and the air rang with Banzais. I was standing at one of the windows of the Vienna Café, whither I had been invited to lunch by Mr. Atlee Hunt to meet Mr. Alfred Deakin, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth. At first I was alone, but Mr. Deakin joined me before the martial procession had passed, and as soon as the cheering had subsided he said, "Fine fellows, aren't they?" "Yes," I replied, "but what are you going to make of this portent? After your speech yesterday, when you most justly and truly praised them for the noble deeds by which they had won their high position among the nations, how are you going to deal with their application to be admitted into the Commonwealth on the same footing as other civilised people?" "Oh," he said, "we shall refuse them admission, of course, as before. This cannot affect that." "Ah," I retorted, "but how will you maintain that attitude? Suppose that they insist upon being treated as white men and allies of Great Britain, how will you keep them out?" "We shall keep them out all right enough," he replied; "and besides, they have got their hands full in China and Korea for many years to come—much too full for them to worry about us."

I was fain to drop the subject then, but as may readily be supposed I was entirely unsatisfied with this method of disposing of a mighty issue which may be presented at any moment, and cannot but be precipitated by the language of the newspapers aforesaid.[1] Even the tiny squadron here present of third-class cruisers is armed and manned as if it were of battleships, and I fairly gasped with amazement to see that one of them carried a 12½-in. (66-ton) gun. I am almost ashamed to point out how absolutely defenceless this wonderful land is with practically all its portable wealth concentrated within easy reach of the sea, at the mercy of a modern fleet, and of the lamentable way in which defence is allowed to drift, in reliance unspoken, but none the less definite for that, upon the immensely burdened Old Country for protection. It is inexplicable that from the point of view of self-preservation something is not done and done quickly. If only they would, as I have had several opportunities of telling them in public meetings, tax themselves to the same extent for the Navy alone as we are taxed at home, or to the extent of, say, 25s. per head of the population, they would have instead of the beggarly £200,000 per annum they now contribute, an income of £5,000,000 per annum which, in three or four years, would make either Germany or Japan think twice before attacking them, if the money were properly spent.

I am immensely grieved at the defenceless condition of this people in case of anything befalling the Mother Country in the shape of a European war. Their only hope in such a case of preserving their independence should disaster overtake the British Fleet (and we must face that possibility) would be to enlist the aid of the Japanese, whom they treat at present as savages unless they come with a fleet. It is an impossible position, and one that cannot much longer be maintained. It must be settled one way or the other, in spite of all the wrangling of professional politicians, and I can only hope that it will not be settled by force of arms, because that could only be such a one-sided affair, could only be settled in the least desirable way by all English-speaking people.

I am leaving Melbourne much saddened. It is such a beautiful city. It represents so much of human energy and skill, and also such a vast amount of kindliness and courtesy, especially towards that country which the native-born still speaks of regretfully as Home. I was told by a great many people that I should find much of the offensive bumptiousness with which Americans speak of Britain out here. I have not found any of it. The people are, as is quite natural, fiercely resentful of criticism from anybody, and especially from the Mother Country. But they are also intensely loyal, as well as intensely self-critical. There has been quite a storm raised here just lately. The Exhibition building—State property—has been leased to a gambler, a speculator in other men's earnings, for the purposes of so-called sport, for a prize-fight. They called it a boxing competition, but we all know what that means. Several thousands of people crowded to see it, among them many prominent public men. In fact, if you can imagine the Albert Hall let for the same purpose to a prominent bookmaker for a boxing match and the leading members of both Houses of Parliament attending the show, you can imagine what it was like. There was a fierce controversy in the newspapers about it, in which all the old arguments about the manly sport were trotted out, but the result was that the speculator netted an enormous sum of money, and continues to defy the Government by keeping open gambling-houses where whosoever will may throw away his money on the possible result of a horse-race. Still, I have just read that the Government has decided that the Exhibition building shall not be used for such purposes again. That decision, however, may be rescinded to-morrow.