president's address. 15 



forward, with gj-eat interest, to the results of this well-organised, well-equipped, 

 co-ordinated effort, the most notable in these respects that we have yet had in 

 New South Wales. 



One of the events of the year has been the oulinination of a disastrous 

 drought ; and though there has been relief in some districts, other localities are 

 still much in need of rain. It has been a costly visitation to the State. The 

 returns of the approximate number of live stock in New South Wales on 31st 

 December, 1919, as compared with those of the corresponding period of 1918, 

 show that there has been a decrease of 72,434 horses, partly due to very little 

 breeding on account of low prices and small demand, and in part to the drought 

 conditions experienced in many districts for the greater part of the year; of 

 399,378 cattle, attributable mainly to the effects of the drought, namely, to death 

 from starvation, conditions not favourable to breeding, and the forwarding of 

 cattle to market on account of the holdings not being able to carry large stock; 

 and of 7,028,852 sheep, attributable almost wholly to the droughty conditions, 

 which have been very severe on breeding-ewes, so that over the greater part of 

 the State, the lambing was a failure.* in addition to the pecuniary loss repre- 

 sented by the depreciation of the State's flocks and herds by drought, it is neces- 

 sary to take count of the fact that the Government is raising a loan of £1,000,000 

 by the issue of Treasury Bills bearing interest at the rate of 5J per cent., with a 

 currency of two years from March 1st, 1920, for the purpose of providing funds 

 to finance advances to distressed farmers, and also to meet payments for seed- 

 wheat purchased by the Government for issue to farmers, and for other purposes. 

 The drought, therefore, has not only been another expensive intimation that Aus- 

 tralia has still some lessons to learn about the solution of drought-problems ; but 

 that Australia has not learnt all there was to learn from previous similar ex- 

 periences, particularly the drought which culminated in 1902, and was responsible, 

 among other losses, for the reduction of the flocks of the State from forty-three 

 to about twenty millions. "Prevention is better than cure," but as periodical 

 droughts have a legitimate place in Nature's scheme of things in Australia, Man 

 cannot, therefore, prevent their occurrence. But is it impossible to learn how to 

 mitigate, if not to prevent, at any rate in some measure, the periodical levy on 

 the wealth of the State by droughts? Why is it, for example, that it is left to 

 droughts to cull the flocks and herds in the exacting way in which it is done by 

 every serious drought? Answers to these, or other cognate questions are not 

 bard to find. What Australia especially needs to learn is how to cope successfully 

 with drought-problems; and to learn that, it is necessary to understand and take 

 to heart, that droughts are teachers, and not a curse; since they are a legitimate 

 factor in Nature's scheme of things in this quarter of the globe. Rabbits and 

 Prickly Pear, &c., may be curses; but Nature is not responsible in any way for 

 their foothold in Australia. A recent writer has diagnosed the state of Britain, 

 before her eyes were opened by the War, in the following wordsf — "We have 

 sloughed our besetting sins in many mental processes. Before the War, men of 

 science were grossly academic and individual : often abstract to the point of per- 

 verted mysticism; and the line they took encouraged the men of commerce to the 

 contempt of pure knowledge. Men of science, merchants, the banks, and the 

 Government were all in watertight compartments, working apart, and more than 



* For further details see the Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 1920, p. 5 to which 

 I am indebted for the particulars quoted. 



tThomas, W. B., "A Better England — Not a Worse," Nineteenth Century, No. 514, 

 December, 1919, p. 1013. 



