X SOME FRIENDLY CRITICISM
Sydney is a city that grows upon a visitor immensely. Not merely from its almost ideal situation as the commercial capital of a great and growing country, or from the reminders which greet you on every hand of the fight which its people have waged to make their city worthy of its splendid environment, but from its amazing likeness to our cities at home, and from the general air of homeness, if I may coin a word, which pervades it. This one may say without any suggestion of detriment or derogation of or to the other Australasian States, because it comes as a natural consequence, Sydney being the Mother City of them all. There is, I find, among Sydney-siders the same diffidence of self-assertion that we have at home, with one exception—their harbour. Don't, as you value your happiness, say a word of dispraise of Port Jackson even in fun, it cannot be said in earnest. It will be taken most seriously, and will certainly be accounted unto the utterer for anything but righteousness. In other matters you may have your little joke and find your friends not at all thin-skinned, but please don't joke about the harbour.
Yet the citizens of Sydney need not fear comparison of their beloved city with any other in the world, except, as I have said, in the matter of the roads and the noise of the trolley-cars. The buildings are truly splendid, the two chief, the Post Office and the Town Hall, being certainly the finest in the whole of Australasia, and worthy to take rank with any similar buildings at home. Indeed, it is nothing short of marvellous how so comparatively small a population can manage to erect and maintain such splendid buildings as these, and many others which greet the eye on every hand. It has been said, and I believe with truth, that the vast majority of the Australasian population is to be found in the cities and towns on the seaboard, engaged in the work of distributing the imports and exports. But if this be true, what amazing energy must be manifested by the people "out back" who produce, and what would be the condition of these cities if only they had a population behind them able to cope with the teeming wealth of the soil? Which raises again the eternal question of population of this vast country—a country which has as yet only been played with, but which has shown such immense productive capacity, that its possibilities fairly stagger calculation, supposing them to be dealt with intelligently.
That, however, seems past praying for—as yet, at any rate. Can you imagine anything more unutterably foolish, short-sighted—oh! the dictionary does not contain adjectives to fit the situation—than the action of the Government which has been presented to all the world this week? The Japanese squadron, of which I wrote in Melbourne, has arrived here, and has been received with a perfect tempest of acclamations, both by Press and people, with the sole exceptions of the Bulletin, which in its charmingly witty and brilliant manner persistently refers to the heroes of Port Arthur and Tsutshima as "monkeys," and one other newspaper, of which I can only say that its publication is a disgrace to New South Wales, and would be a disgrace to Paris, which is not squeamish. At ball and banquet and reception the Japanese were rightly received with immense enthusiasm—a reception they have earned by their deeds, if ever men did. All honour to Australasia that, in spite of its intense dread of and antipathy to the yellow people, has thus recognised transcendent merit, both in civic and martial virtues. But while these festivities were going on, there happened to enter Port Jackson a certain steamship, the Pacifique, conveying six Japanese passengers to Japan. They were to be transferred to the Kumanu Maru, a fine mail steamer of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, lying at the Circular Quay, but as their period of waiting extended over three days, they were naturally anxious to see the sights of Sydney and witness the reception accorded to their countrymen. They were not allowed to land! In spite of the fact that they were in transit, were clear of all suspicion of disease or anything of the sort, they were forbidden to set foot upon the sacred soil of Australia, where their naval heroes were being treated as demigods. Comment here is impertinence, but it may be pointed out that not one man in authority appeared to think that possibly a few of the 2,000 Japanese who were being thus fêted and made much of might be taking voluminous notes of this occurrence, and compiling a bill to be presented in the near future. I ventured to point this out to several influential people, who admitted that it savoured of idiocy on the part of the powers that be, but also gave me to understand that it was none of my business, and that when the time came for that bill to be presented, they and the Australasian States might be trusted to—although they didn't use these exact words—muddle through it somehow. Which gave me quite a pang of home-sickness, for I recognise the speakers as veritable chips of the old block.
Of course I know that these remarks will be fiercely resented, because your Australasian (it will be noted that I no longer dare to say Colonial), while intensely eager to criticise all the rest of the world, is fully persuaded that no one has any right to criticise him, or at least the doings in his particular State. This, of course, implies that while you may in any one State criticise any other as severely as you choose, you may not criticise Australasia as a whole. This, equally, is very strange to an Englishman, who is so accustomed to having the shortcomings of his own country held up to scorn by all the rest of the world, and of calmly accepting the remarks made about her, that he is amazed when an expression of candid opinion by himself or his country's public men is taken as almost a personal insult.
The plain, unvarnished truth about the attitude of the Australasian Colonies generally towards the Mother-country is that they are and will be intensely loyal to her as long as they may do as they like without any interference, which freewill they interpret to mean also that if the Mother-country does anything to which they object they may not only protest against it but repudiate it as not binding upon them. That they may treat Britain in the matter of trade no better than any foreign nation, while at the same time enjoying as of right all the protection that the British Empire is capable of affording them, for which they do not consider it incumbent upon them to give anything in return. I asked a prominent editor out here the other day, who was very strong in his remarks about the Old Country, what benefit he supposed she derived from the Australasian Colonies. His answer will live in my memory. He said, with an air of gracious condescension, "Why, we send you all our produce!" I was so amazed, as well as amused, that I could say nothing for a little while, and when I did it was merely to remark, "That is an advantage, certainly; but whether to you or Britain is another question."
Please let it be understood that in the foregoing I have been speaking throughout of the professional politician, whom I cannot profess to admire in whatever country he may happen to be, and not of the general public, which is loyal, lovable, and level-headed. All the best traditions of our dear land are carried on here, and it is almost impossible for even the most nervous, morbidly sensitive man or woman to feel themselves strangers. And what strikes one as being quite touching is the way the Motherland is continually being spoken of affectionately, regretfully as "Home." You will hear it on the lips of grey-headed people who were born here (and it is surprising how many of them you meet), and have never been out of the Colony, "Ah! how I should like to go home for a trip." But the strangest of all is the way in which foreigners, such as Germans, Italians, citizens of the United States, &c., who have been domiciled out here for many years, will speak of Great Britain as home in the same way as do the Australasians.
A remarkable feature of Sydney, as of Melbourne, is the way in which the city has run over, so to speak, into suburbs; but there comparison ends between the two. For Melbourne suburbs, fine, prosperous-looking townships as most of them are, cannot be called beautiful, except where they are on the Bay, the country around being so very flat. But Sydney has every variety of scenery for which the heart could crave—hill and vale, rock and wood, while no residential suburb need be more than a few minutes from either one of many of the beautiful bays which run into the country from the main harbour like the tentacles of some gigantic but beneficent octopus, or the shore of the mighty Pacific itself. And communication with all these places by steamer, electric car, or train is at once cheap, rapid, frequent, and easy. So that housing of Sydney folks is never likely to become a problem, and overcrowding (although there are still a few slums) is entirely unnecessary, and would not exist if a certain type of people did not insist upon violating all hygienic laws and crowding together as closely as they can get. There will always be overcrowding unless the most drastic laws are passed to prevent it, as may be seen in any English or Scotch village, where, goodness knows, there is room enough and to spare, but the villagers persist in huddling their cottages close enough together to step across the lane from the front door into another opposite.