For two weeks I lived out at Manly Beach, nine miles by ferry from Sydney, and went in and out every day. The Heads lie to the right, and as we made our way across, the swells from the sea beyond rolled the little ferry teasingly. At times, when the swells were heavier and the crowds excessive, a sort of panic would spread over them, but some of the inevitable minstrels that swarm the streets and by-ways of Sydney, would counteract contagion with music and song.
The beaches are always crowded. Annette Kellerman is Australian, and somehow, whether as cause or effect, Sydney people are the most amphibious folk in the world. They seem to live in the water. Every spare hour is spent on the wide stretches of sand that lie warm and white in the blazing sun. But nothing takes precedence over the harbor in the adoration of Sydneyites.
Sydney is known for its gaiety, yet I was lonely in Sydney,—bitterly so. Perhaps people are too gay to think of others, perhaps their gaiety made me exaggerate my loneliness. "Nothing like the Australian larrikin when he gets going," you will be told. But what struck me was the latent distemper that lurked beneath much of the hilarity that I saw in Sydney. Australia is not very different from any of us,—a little more imitative, a little more outspoken, a little more gruff, a little more youthful. But wildness is not specially Australian; nor is bluntness; nor yet youthfulness. The Australian is perhaps a little more reckless, individually or en masse, than the people of other lands, but he puts up with the same social inconveniences; he reasons falsely at times and gets fooled; he gloats over the spectacular, becomes intensely excited over nothing,—and suddenly relapses. In a crowd he sometimes becomes belligerent, yet is easily led and easily relinquishes. But, above all else, he is gregarious. And it is because of this that he takes you in in Sydney,—and drops you out before you have known what has happened to you. Hence he is an inveterate sportsman, a heavy drinker, a perpetual gambler at the races,—faithful to his whimsicalities.
Intellectually he is a fanatic, but tolerates all sorts of fanaticisms. A Sunday morning on the beautiful grounds of the Public Domain is enough to convince you that Sydney would welcome the most freakish freak in the world, imprison him for the fun of it, then sympathize with him if he dies in prison, as did the famous naked man, Chidley. I have seen Sydney men who seemed to me men without hearts, as soft and gentle as women in the face of another man's hurt. Yet when a well-known army officer stole funds that belonged to wounded soldiers and their needy families, I heard respectable Sydney men say they were glad he got away with it. I have seen girls at carnivals, who at ten o'clock went about tickling strange men under the chin, snarl at them at eleven and order them to "Trot along, now." I have heard Australians say harsh things of themselves in criticism, but true loyalty is widely prevalent among Australians. An Australian always wants a mate, "some one who would stick like lead" if he were up against it. The self-criticism comes rather from the more thoughtful Australians, who, looking out upon the future, want to see their country hold on to the prize it has won, and grow and become a leader in the affairs of the Pacific.
But though Sydney and Melbourne are the leading cities of the commonwealth, he who has to judge of the nation by them wonders where that leadership is to come from. The love of pleasure is a sign of health in any people; and Australia is in that sense most healthful. Material progress is the next best indication of the state of a nation; and Australia is universally prosperous. But it is in the outlook on life that a country justifies its existence and insures itself against decay. Until the war, all reports of Australia on that score were negative. Provincialism, of the most ingrowing kind, obtained. Every state thought chiefly of itself; every city of itself only; every district of none other than itself. But with the war Australia took a tremendous leap forward. For the first time in her history, her men had a chance to leave the land which intellectually was little more than a sublimated prison to them. Half a million men left Australia for Europe and other sections of the globe. And if Australia knew what she was about she would now send the rest of her men and women abroad with the same end in view,—the education of the people for the place they occupy in the world.
Much criticism is flung at Australia because her young men and women are inclined to enjoy life rather than burden themselves with a succeeding generation. If the beginning and end of life is reproduction, then that is a just criticism. But the welfare of the living is as important as the welfare of civilization. The greatest criticism is not that people will not bear children in the face of trying economic conditions, but that, having exceptionally favorable circumstances, they show no special inclination to become parents, and that nothing is being done to create conditions under which the bearing of young would be no handicap. But that requires an intellectual outlook which is at present wanting in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. There is an over-emphasis of pleasure per se, a lack of seriousness in the concerns of life.
Sydney lures men and women from the back-blocks and makes them feel human again, makes them forget the plains are sear, and that manliness is next to cleanliness. It affords dull station-owners a chance to mix with folk where sweetness and refinement, and not crudeness, is the order of the day and of life. It takes men and women who have been told that to increase and multiply is the only contribution they can make to the welfare of the community and shows them that there is something in life besides that. So when I think of what Sydney means to the world that lies behind it I cannot refrain from offering my contribution of praise. But then I ask myself and Sydney what it has done to make the back-blocks better, what it is doing to build up the country, and the fact becomes evident that it is only draining it. Fully 51 per cent of the inhabitants of Australia live in cities. It is for these cities to lay railroads and highways and to open the vast continent; and that can be done only by putting prejudices aside, by adding to recreation real creation and a soberness in the affairs of life which alone will win for Australia its place in the affairs of the Pacific.
What, socially and individually, then, is the contribution of Australia to the civilization of the Pacific? Is her position to be one of eminent leadership commensurate with the welfare of the individual members of the Commonwealth, or is their joyousness going to make her citizens forget ambition and their ruling destiny? This much must not be forgotten,—that born as a convict colony, Australia has more than justified itself; that the term "convict colony" is now no more applicable to Australia than it is to Virginia. That handicap notwithstanding, Australia to-day is as far advanced as any nation in the world. The people do not generally take to higher mathematics, to philosophical thinking, or to science, but illiteracy is rare in Australia. Given a continent wherein nothing of civilization was to be found, Australia has made of it, in a little more than a century, a land productive, healthful, and promising. Much praise is due Japan for what she has accomplished along material lines in seventy years; how much more praise is due Australia for what she has done in about the same time!
3
As one journeys north along the Australian coast, life begins to thin out. Fate must have been in a comic mood when it apportioned me my experiences as I was leaving that island continent, for in Brisbane it allotted me an august funeral, and in Thursday Island it sent a missionary out to "attack me." Thereby hang two tales.