Revie ir of lievie ics, 1/6J0G, 



History of the Month. 



433 



A regrettable feature of the Uni- 



A Strange versity Jubilee celebrations was the 



Anachronism, senseless interruptions indulged in 



by the students when representative 

 meii were addressing them. Why men like Sir 

 Robert Stout and others should be greeted by such 

 a stoma of interruption and rowdyism as would en- 

 sure the participators being turned out of an or- 

 dinary meeting, is hard to conceive. It is only a 

 relic of former days, and the good sense of Univer- 

 sity students to-3ay ought to discard it as being 

 unworthy of education and refinement. The visitors 

 bore the insults with good grace, but that does not 

 detract from the rudeness and boorishness of the 

 treatment accorded them. It seemed something 

 akin to the suggestion of the folly of casting pearls 

 before an unappreciative audience, too brainless 

 and gross to appreciate their value, for Sir Robert 

 Stout to urge the example of refined and notable 

 men upon an audience that make his words almost 

 indistinguishable. Surely the ordinary good sense 

 of decency in society will soon make these exhibi- 

 tions, too gross for even a common music-hall, a 

 thing of the past. 



It very often happens that very 

 Australasian strange things said of Australia and 

 Traducers. Australians by British newspapers 



create a feeling of merriment, but 

 the articles which lately appeared in the Western 

 Morning A'ews and the Dat/v Mail have been of 

 such a venomous character that they have created a 

 considerable amount of indignation, and the colonies 

 are asking why some British newspapers should 

 seem so anxious to decry anything that pertains to 

 them. It is somewhat on the same lines as some 

 parents who persistently and without reason decr\' 

 their own children's qualities. The attack was all 

 the more lesented because it was clearly used simpiv 

 to assist one section in connection with the Educa- 

 tion Bill in the British House of Commons, and 

 was published for party purposes. Everybody was 

 aghast when thev read in their morning newspapers 

 that: — 



All the talk .ibout plain Bible teacliing and about teach- 

 ing morals without dogma is the veriest nonsense. The ex- 

 periment has been tried in Australia, with the result that 

 the State schools are not merely unchristian, but anti- 

 Christian. Another result is tlie empty cradle. People 

 here have no conception of the condition prevailing among 

 the AustraliLin young people. Modesty and refinement 

 have vanished, and the Australian girls and young ladies 

 are very different from those in the mother country. The 

 streets are filled with larrikins with no morals, who are a 

 danger to thet community. A might.v revolution is setting 

 in in the colonies, parents demanding a referendum in 

 favour of definite religious instruction in the schools. 

 Wherever this has been granted a threefold majority has 

 been obtained. 



From beginning to end this statement is contrary 

 to fact. It is, however, a great pity that some 

 British newspapers do persist in publishing 

 calumnies about the colonies. It is an extremely 

 dangerous proceeding. If British newspapers under- 

 stood their duty to the Empire they would cultivate 



the colonies instead of insulting them. Indeed, 

 cultivation of the colonies will have to become a 

 national watchword in the future. It is not that the 

 colonies want nursing, or are averse to candid 

 criticism. They simply want to be spoken of with 

 truth, and the fact recognised that they are working 

 in the best way they know how for national great- 

 ness. The worst feature of it is that indications 

 point to the lie having been written by an Austra- 

 lian, whose sarcasms upon his own country have 

 more than once been condemned by truth lovers; 

 but it says very little for the literary discernment of 

 the editors of some of the British newspapers when 

 they are prepared to accept copy from a person 

 whose statements have in the past proved to be so 

 unreliable, and who is never taken seriously by any 

 who are capable of exercising a sound judgment. 



H-rf ■^ ^'^^' serious mistake which some 

 Needed.^Candid, British newspapers seem to make is 

 Fair friends, '^at everything in the colonies must 

 be regarded as final. They forget 

 that everything is in a process of development, that 

 their legislation, necessarily so in a young progres- 

 sive countr)', is largely experimental, the useless 

 being cast aside when proved useless, and the new 

 and better being taken continually. No one re- 

 cognises our own limitations better than some of us 

 do ourselves, but we are working hard to build up 

 a nation in the Southern Seas which will extend 

 equal rights to every resident of it, and become a 

 second Britain in nationality, a strong arm of the 

 Empire, with as few of the disabilities of the older 

 nations as possible. We may make mistakes ; we 

 do make mistakes, but they are mistakes which are 

 made in the evolving of a national ideal, and are 

 the result of the limitation of human insight into 

 the future, and not of a brutal and callous selfish- 

 ness and an utter irreligiousness. 



The 



The Premier's Conference in Syd- 



Murray "waters "^^ '« '"^f?"^''^]^ 1°' ^ S^^^' ^^^^ 

 Settlement, more ot kindly feeling between the 

 States than was manifested before, 

 and there could be afforded no better illustration 

 of the wisdom of inter-State or international visits, 

 as the case may be, for the sake of promoting 

 friendly relationships. The question which was 

 most in need of discussion was the settlement of 

 the Murray waters agreement ; State debts and 

 Braddon clauses questions did not advance 

 greatlv beyond the Hobart Conference stage. 

 The Murray waters agreement in brief is to the 

 effect that the three Parliaments will be asked 

 to ratifv the agreement made by the Premiers, to 

 the effect that South Australia is entitled to the 

 water she requires for navigation, and that the cost 

 of locks necessary to accomplish this, and erected 

 in either of the States shall be borne by the States 

 in proportion to the quantity of water used by them. 



