Chapter II: Part 2

For them the anonymity of the profession does not exist. They live much in the public eye. They collect the praise; they accept the flattery; they grow rich on the proceeds. The blame, when there is blame, is also theirs. But what terrors can the breath of outside criticism have for men who sell their papers at the rate of 30,000 or 40,000, or 100,000 a day? What profit is there in kicking against the pricks? These men who control the city newspapers form a separate oligarchy, and a powerful one. They are not troubled with any misgivings as to their own potentialities in the cosmos. They have a practical working knowledge of the world, and a vast confidence in themselves. Sometimes they know how to write, sometimes they do not. In any case it does not matter. Whatever brains they want they can easily purchase. They live in large mansions in the suburbs, arrive at their offices at eleven o’clock in the morning, go regularly to Government House, and deal in Napoleonic fashion with complaints from the sub-editor, with suggestions from the commercial world, with expostulations from aggrieved politicians, and with applications for increases of salary from unsatisfied members of the staff. They have won their way to big positions, and they know it. It is an excellent and a pleasant thing to be the proprietor or the manager of a large newspaper in Australia.

The sub-editors, again, form a class by themselves; they resemble the managers in that they are not really journalists. Possibly at some stage of their individual careers they may have been, but they are so no longer. As a matter of fact they are the sworn enemies of journalism. They stand like the British infantry at Waterloo--a sort of cold iron palisade against which the effervescence of youthful journalistic enterprise dashes itself in vain. They represent not so much the literary, as the commercial instinct of the paper. They are the outposts which a cautious management sets to keep watch against the Philistines. The sub-editor has tremendous responsibility and very little power. Therein lies the tragedy of his existence. Before he begins his long series of vigils under the electric lamp, he knows that while he will get no manner of praise if everything goes right, he will get short and decisive shrift if anything goes wrong. He knows this very well; and the knowledge makes him what he is.

A strange existence, a strange personality is that of the sub-editor. He seems to resemble the patient, sleepless Eremite of Keats’s last sonnet; he is always there, and he is always “watching with eternal lids apart.” It is impossible not to admire him. He must, to be in any sense worthy of his post, possess great abilities. The machine that he controls is vast, unwieldy, and yet sensationally rapid in its flight. The Rio Grande of Paterson’s Steeplechase did not require a touch half so firm or half so fine to keep him in his course. Of the thousand objectionable, offensive, libellous, dangerous, unnecessary or unwise things that come under the sub-editor’s notice every week, how many get past him? How many does he suffer to see the light of day? It is impossible not to admire the sub-editor, but it is difficult to like him. He must be a man without pity and without remorse. If he made allowance for good intentions, if he judged otherwise than by results, he would ruin his paper in a month. If he did not effectively discourage the swarm of budding writers who attempt to rush him, he would speedily have to cease publication. If he were not constantly saying unpleasant things, he would inaugurate a reign of chaos. And yet there are one or two first-class sub-editors in Australia who are well liked, and by none better than by their victims. It is a strange anomaly, but there it is. In any case it is a great tribute to the personality of the man.

Of the third class, the order of journalists proper, a great deal might be said. This class includes all those who get their living by furnishing copy to the newspapers of the country. They are a motley crowd; they number in their ranks representatives of all the professions, and of no profession at all. They embrace men and women of good social position, and men and women who are distinctly outside the pale. They have no definite organisation, no professional status, no formal rules of etiquette, no exclusive caste, no artificial barriers against membership. They have one standard of living, unorthodoxy; one bond of fellowship, Bohemianism; one passport to success, ability; one aversion, dulness; one insidious enemy, human nature; one unreliable friend--the world.

For these workers of the community there should be, in the aggregate, a feeling of considerable respect and of no little sympathy. Of respect, because in the mass they accomplish great things. The really first-class journalist showers a wealth of good phrasing, clever word-painting, wise discrimination, light fancy, brilliant humour, and saving common-sense on the breakfast-tables of a quarter of a million people each morning. He does all this and more. The result has come to be looked upon as necessary, obvious, mechanical, in a sense inevitable. It represents to the average reader the outpourings of a great machine. And a machine it certainly is, but one that is intricately fashioned, piece by piece, out of the minds and bodies, and hopes and fears, and personal gifts and graces of tens of hundreds of unrecognised writers. Unrecognised--the word that expresses always the salvation of the bad journalist, and always the detriment, or the ultimate ruin, of the good one.

These men are entitled to sympathy, or would be if they did not include in their ranks so many specimens of moral obloquy, so many hopeless outcasts from all the paths of reasonably sane and tolerable behaviour. Journalism makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows. Yet, taking it right through it contains probably more _ability_ than all the rest of the professions put together, though possibly less _knowledge_ than is to be found in any one of them. The newspaper writer, considered as a type, is always overworked, and always underpaid. Australia in this respect is no exception to other parts of the world. The men who labour behind the veil of anonymous journalism are rewarded for the most part with a living wage, and are swept out of sight as the new generation comes along. When their initiative goes, they go. Time is their deadliest enemy. Instead of fighting for them as it fights for the barrister and the medical man, it is constantly threatening them with loss of initiative, with loss of energy, with loss of brilliance. Honey is proverbially sweet for a season; but no one knows better than the journalist that the laurel which he wins this morning cannot last till to-morrow.

As to the products of this handiwork--what is to be said of them? The Australian newspaper has already developed a character of its own. Its place is somewhere between the startling sensationalism of New York and San Francisco, and the solemn impressiveness of the older London school. The representative editor balances himself between these two modes of journalism. He is seldom quite free from the English traditions, but he knows his readers; he knows that they, too, are somewhat under the influence of the older and more respectable associations; he knows that, while they have no taste for solid reading, and are always ready to be excited or amused, they have yet a contempt for machine-made sensationalism, for foolish and frothy elaboration, for staring capital letters, for shriekful epithets, for the flimsier kind of composition that rears itself on a basis of sand. Hence it may be that the press of the Commonwealth has followed, for the most part, a middle course, and has endeavoured to be neither too dull nor too picturesque. The effort has often resulted in insignificance; but it has now and again achieved great success.

For purposes of illustration it is not necessary to go beyond Melbourne and Sydney. The smaller capital cities, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth, are content as a rule to follow their leaders. Whatever is good or bad, or in any way distinctive at the centre, you will find reflected, though in a slighter and paler fashion, in the towns further north and further west. The same lines of demarcation hold good throughout the continent. In each city one morning paper calls itself “liberal” or “national,” while its rival goes one better, and styles itself “radical” or “democratic.” The word “conservative” has become a taunt, and is never an acknowledged title. The predominant tendency is for the younger and more democratic organ to go beyond its older and more serious competitor. The only important exception seems to be that in Perth, where the _West Australian_ occupies a unique position. It is the accented mouthpiece of “groperism”; that is to say, of those privileged few who came to the State in early days, and monopolised as much of the earth as seemed worthy of their attention. Needless to add, these people are more conservative than they care to admit. The newspaper of their choice is singularly popular considering the circumstances. Under the guidance of an extraordinarily far-seeing and subtle-minded editor who has a rare faculty for flattering a democratic audience, while really ruling and guiding it--who knows also how to bend to the storm when to beat against it is no longer possible--the _West Australian_ is more widely read, and more influential, to-day than it ever was, and that in the midst of a people containing a stronger socialistic infusion than is to be met with elsewhere in Australia.

It is in Melbourne and Sydney, however, that we get the most useful and instructive illustrations of the working of the journalistic machine. The _Age_ and _Argus_ in the former city; the _Morning Herald_ and _Daily Telegraph_ in Sydney, represent the best that Australia has yet been able to accomplish in this field of enterprise. The _Age_ is referred to first because it claims, and with an emphasis that frightens contradiction, to have the largest circulation of any daily south of the line. Its political influence, though perhaps hardly what it was, has also to be reckoned with. The _Age_ has been in existence just fifty-two years; it has been consistently fortunate in the men behind it. More especially it has been fortunate in its proprietor. It owes its power, its prestige, its circulation, its character, its very existence to David Syme, who is still, at a venerable age, an active, working journalist, and who has the distinction of being the most respected and the most disliked man in Australia--perhaps also one of the very best liked by the few who know him really well. That he has used his immense power fearlessly, and on the whole for good, is unquestionable. The present editor of the _Age_ acts up to the policy of the proprietor. Never laying claim to pyrotechnical skill as a writer, and not giving too much rein to his imagination, he is yet pre-eminently shrewd, far seeing, clear-sighted, well informed, capable, and where business interests are concerned, inflexible as death itself. In private life no man could be more popular or more deferentially urbane.

The _Argus_ suffers now, and has always suffered, from want of definite and decisive leadership. On its general staff it has had during the past ten or fifteen years more brilliant men--considered as reporters, at any rate--than any other daily paper in the English language. But instead of advancing to meet the times it has stood still, and talked impressively of _many_ things. More particularly it has talked about the dangers of empiricism, and the responsibilities of the press. People read it, and will continue to read it, not so much for its opinions, as for the graceful manner in which most of its writers contrive to deal with the English language. For the rest its views on Imperialism and Free-trade fall on unwilling ears.

The _Morning Herald_ is the oldest paper in the Commonwealth, and is built on the same lines as the _Argus_. It has done great things for the tone and temper of Australian journalism. Latterly, it has been showing signs of democratic restlessness that have caused its older admirers a certain amount of alarm.

The _Daily Telegraph_ is the Mary Jane of Australian journalism. It is the most active, the most aggressive, the most tireless, the most sensation-loving, the most hysterical, the most shrill-voiced, the most daring, and the most inventive paper published on the continent. It is a slab of San Francisco tumbled down in the vicinity of Botany Bay.

This reference to certain leading journals brings up a large question--the question of the power of the newspaper press in Australia. Is it an excessive power? And how does it compare with the power of the press in other countries? So far as their political creeds are concerned, the Australians have been called a newspaper-ridden community. They are often too tired to think, and they let the paper think for them. The writer recollects calling upon a prominent official who had just returned to Melbourne after a visit for political purposes to England. The first, and almost the only observation this gentleman made, was that “They are not afraid of the newspapers in the old country.” It was this circumstance that had impressed him more than anything else, although during his absence he had been everywhere, and had seen a great deal. If you are a public man you must read and despise the papers. If you do not read them, you will miss something. If you do not despise them, they will worry the life out of you. The _Age_ is the stock instance of a paper from which tens of thousands of adult, and supposedly intelligent voters have been content to take their opinions. This journal has made and unmade many Ministries. The _Sydney Daily Telegraph_ is aspiring to fill the same _rôle_, but so far with not the same success. It is quite certain, however, that Australian newspapers of the larger class possess more influence in certain directions than is good either for themselves or for the community.

Another question very often debated is that of the fairness or otherwise of the press of the Commonwealth. Some of the leading journals have a habit of assuring the public that they are scrupulously fair; others discreetly say nothing on the subject; but almost every one has adopted an admirable and impressive motto which it places on view in a conspicuous place over the leading columns. The motto may be intended as a salve for the consciences of the management. There is a well-known story of a man who was not religious, but who always took off his hat when passing a church. Having paid that homage to his better instincts, he naturally felt more at liberty to cultivate his other ones. Having hoisted his motto, and having made obeisance to the abstract idea of fairness, the newspaper proprietor feels that he must not allow himself to be regarded as in any sense a bigot, or a moral fanatic. He has passed the church and taken off his hat. For the rest, there are the interests of his paper to think about. If these interests do not always coincide with the interests of individuals, the circumstance is much to be regretted--from the point of view of the individuals.

Some admirable diatribes have been uttered from pulpits and platforms, and from Supreme Court benches, on the subject of newspaper morality in Australia. During the hearing of a recent libel case in Melbourne, a learned judge lashed himself into a white-heat of indignation over the sinfulness of press writers who advocate views which they do not hold, and refrain from publishing statements which they do not like. His Honour found it hard to believe that such monsters could be discovered walking the earth in the guise of men. Similar sentiments have been echoed and re-echoed everywhere. There is nothing in the world quite so fine as the average man’s idea of what a newspaper _ought_ to be. No matter what this average man may be prepared to do, or to advocate, or to believe himself, he is shocked beyond measure to find that even an influential newspaper may have commercial instincts, that it may not be disposed to love its enemies, that it may object to publishing statements which tell against it, that it may be both unable and unwilling to set an example of sublime innocence and spotless purity to the people who read its pages.

A newspaper’s virtue, like a woman’s, has a special meaning, and the meaning which outsiders attach to the word “virtue,” as applied to a newspaper, is not necessarily that which obtains within the craft. The goal which every management has in view is the goal of success--not spiritual or ethical, but hard, financial, and materialistic success. The proprietor’s virtue, the editor’s virtue, the writer’s virtue, are synonymous, among members of the profession, with the ability to produce a readable, a saleable, and an otherwise valuable article. No one blames a lawyer for advocating a cause in which he does not believe; no one censures a grocer for selling a brand of tea which he does not personally like; no one objects to a carpenter putting up houses in which he would not care to dwell. Why should the newspaper be accused of unfairness when it does what is best for itself? Like every private individual, it must keep within bounds. If it commits a transgression there is always the libel law. If it indulges in personal malice, there is always the gaol. The singular thing is that so many journals--particularly the patriarchs of Sydney and Melbourne--should be so anxious to assure the public of the excellence of their intentions. As though good intentions had ever a market value, as though the commercial instinct and the highest moral principles were not always and necessarily opposed!

What of the newspaper writer’s calling as such? Is it worth following? From the outside it looks attractive enough. Even from the inside it has its charms, meretricious and otherwise. There is a certain glitter and glamour about the profession, particularly in its early stages. The absence of class distinctions helps the journalist, and makes his work infinitely more agreeable. To a man with a real literary turn--or what is even better, a news’ instinct--promotion comes rapidly. He escapes the dull routine of other callings; he comes almost immediately into the larger portion of his inheritance. The reputation that blossoms towards the end of life, the rewards that come eventually, but with glacial slowness, the solid and sure gains of experience, all these are no part of his outlook. But he acquires in a few months a reputation and a standing that elsewhere are only the product of years. He steps at once into a wide and breezy circle; he is thrown into daily contact with the most interesting, the most notorious, and the most illustrious personages of the time. About the work itself there is a peculiar, mirage-like quality; it always seems to be pointing beyond the desert of daily drudgery, beyond the arid region of hack-work and small salaries, to the smiling country of fortune and literary fame. The young newspaper writer “never is, but is always to be, blest.”

There are many people who do not require to be warned against journalism; they drift into it, or fall into it, after chequered experiences elsewhere. But to the youth who has a choice of professions, and who thinks of choosing this one, a word of counsel may be tendered. There is no calling that makes such demands on talent, that asks so much, or that treats its tried servants so badly in the end. The man on the general staff of a big Australian daily, may for a year or two, or for a dozen years, have a good share of what the heart desires. He may have a degree of reputation, an amount of ready money, a following of friends; but the money, the friends, the reputation are all liable to vanish at brief notice. The more brilliant the writer is, the more quickly does he exhaust his stock of nervous energy. After the first few years, time, as already remarked, begins to work, not _for_, but _against_ him; the more capable and the more talked of he is, the more insidiously do adverse influences begin to grow up. As a rule, his is not the temperament which weighs chances, or lays up store for the future: and when the day of his mental ascendancy is past, the management regretfully but firmly shows him the door.

The writer has in mind four representative Australian journalists whose abilities were, or are now, of the very highest. From the ranks of any profession, or from all the professions together, it would be difficult to pick in Australia four men who could boast in the aggregate a greater measure of natural or of practised ability. Each of these four has, time after time, charmed, interested, and amused, hundreds of thousands of perceptive and critical readers. Had they given half the same talent to law or medicine, to science or politics, each of the four would beyond doubt have become rich and famous. But what has happened? One of them, possibly the most brilliant of the brilliant quartette, died early, in some measure a victim to the hospitality and conviviality that his own unique personality and charm of manner invited. Journalists in Australia will not need to be told that the reference is to the late Davison Symmons. The other three are still living. One of them, whose work conferred lustre on the Sydney _Morning Herald_ during the middle ’nineties, was in part the victim of circumstances, in part the prey of his own temperament. The knowledge that he was receiving 30s. or 40s. a column for his efforts, while worse writers in England were getting paid for theirs at the rate of shillings _a line_, drove him first to misanthropy, and afterwards to other things. The third of the quartette is the writer who is known throughout the continent by the pen-name “Oriel.” He is at the top of the profession; he is one of the few men in Australia who have combined social orthodoxy with newspaper brilliance; he has worked hard, and he has not thrown himself away. But what prospects of a tangible monetary reward are there for the gifted “Oriel,” or for writers like “Oriel,” in comparison with those which always await the cattle dealer, the rag merchant, or the bluffing attorney? The fourth of these typical journalists is he who disguised himself in the columns of the Melbourne _Argus_ and chronicled cricket, football, and other small beer for quite a number of years. He might have continued to do so indefinitely, had not the accident of the South African war given him a reputation and a name.

These are only a few illustrations, but they will suffice. The individual who launches out on the inky way must be prepared to be judged critically on his merits, and to be treated without leniency or favour. He must submit, for a time at any rate, to do the bidding of a man who is also a journalist, and perhaps a less competent one than himself. He must throw his illusions overboard; he must learn to give and take; he must be watchful and ready, prompt to observe, and quick to act; and he must be prepared to go without the richer prizes that can be won in the warehouse, or in the domain of medicine, or at the Bar.

Yet, if the would-be journalist possesses certain qualifications, in addition to literary skill, he may be recommended to join the ranks of the unlisted legion. If he has a saving sense of self-restraint; if he has the faculty for seeing ahead; if he has a definite amount of moral stamina; if he can treat the profession, not as an end, but as a means to an end; if he can live through it and eventually rise above it--if he can do this, the press is his most perfect and his ideal medium. The monetary test is not the final one. The working journalists can at least take to themselves one or two reflections. The ways of the grocer and of the apothecary, of the lawyer and the bill-discounter, are not their ways. Government House may not know them, and the drawing-rooms of Toorak and Potts’ Point may forget their feet. But they have their consolations. They are the rebels and the outlaws, and yet a strange paradox--the entertainers, the instructors, the beacons of the whole reading world.

IV

THE GAME OF POLITICS

Is it not better, youth
Should strive, _through acts uncouth_,
_Toward making_, than repose on aught found made?

The game of politics as played in Australia has a certain vogue with almost every class. In numerous directions are to be found striking evidences of the pervading character of this form of recreation. Every state, including those whose population is only half that of a decent sized English town, has its two Houses of Legislature, and all of the states in unison have their double-barrelled Federal Parliament. Thus we get a total of fourteen Houses of Parliament, and nearer seven hundred than six hundred members to represent barely four millions of people. The amount of space these fourteen Houses and these six hundred and seventy odd members take up in the newspapers, and other chronicles of the time, is enormous. Looking at some of the facts, one would be inclined to say that the word “recreation” was a misnomer, that the whole business was intensely and almost preternaturally serious. If a man confined his reading to the journals of Australia, if he talked to mechanics on their way home from work, or to business men over their coffee, if he attended only a few of the open-air meetings that are a feature of the life of the country, he would inevitably come to the conclusion that the whole duty of man in Australia was to record his vote, to watch his representative in Parliament, to burn incense to the proved and faithful servant, and to hurl violently from his seat any individual who ventured to tamper for a moment with the principles of justice, equality, democracy, individualism, socialism, or whatever the prevalent principle happened to be.

This would be a reasonable conclusion in certain circumstances, but it would be an entirely erroneous one. As a matter of fact the game is never really serious. In a land like Australia where many things are dull, and lifeless, and mechanical, the tone and temper of public affairs must be regarded as a pleasant relief. From the deadly seriousness of cricket and horse-racing to the essentially humorous quality of politics, is the most agreeable of transitions. It is an incontestable fact that Australia is distinguished among all civilised countries for the buoyant atmosphere, the mirth-provoking attributes, and the Gilbertian features associated with its politics--features that constitute, indeed, the whole substance and essence of the game.

To be a successful player, you require a certain amount of aptitude, and a large measure of good fortune. Let it be assumed that you are a spectator, and desire to be something more; that you are anxious to get among the players, to handle the stakes, to hold a winning chance. The task is easier--much easier--in Australia than it is in Great Britain, but yet it is never altogether easy. The unwritten laws governing success and failure are uncertain and peculiar. You are anxious to sit at the table among the players. It remains to be seen what kind of hand you have got. There are certain cards it is very desirable to hold; others you can do without. Take it for granted that fortune has dealt you enterprise, ambition, intelligence, power of grasping political questions, faculty of speech, capacity for winning friends. This is a useful hand, but will not of itself get you what you want. If somebody plays the stronger card, that is to say the power of the purse, you will go under in nine cases out of ten; you will remain always among the onlookers in the outer ring, and will never get to the table. It is necessary to make this point clear. To say that the moneyed man can do what he likes in Australia, and that wit, eloquence, industry, and the rest are always beaten by a large banking account, would be to commit oneself to a foolish and palpable exaggeration. But no sane man would deny that, in the game now under consideration, Power of the Purse is the Ace of Trumps, and that to counterbalance it a very strong collection of cards indeed is required.

There are many things that have to be reckoned with by the man who desires to enter politics in Australia, but there is little outside the cloven hoof of mammon that he can safely reckon on. The sands of public opinion are shifting, changing. Even that useful attribute, gift of speech, is by no means a certain passport to the post of command. The crowd is jealous and suspicious of too much ability. It is not pleasant for mediocrity to see itself outstripped by talent. A man may talk himself into Parliament. On the other hand, he may talk himself out of the possibility of ever getting there. So much depends on the impression the crowd gets of the speaker’s sincerity, of his earnestness, of his moral, social, and other qualities. It may happen--in thousands of cases it has happened--that a man who can speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and whose whole life has been patriotically unselfish, has been unable to gain a place in the counsels of the nation. For some reason the onlookers would not take to him; they have disliked or misread his cards, disliked or misread the man. The influence of the Trades’ Union is one powerful lever. Many a man has succeeded in entering public life by its aid; but the Trades’ Union is becoming to a greater extent each year a political conglomeration of fiercely ambitious units, and nine-tenths of the speakers who declaim at a Trades’ Hall or Union meeting have Parliament in view. Every speaker watches, criticises, and mistrusts every other speaker. In the rush for the spoils it is difficult to say who will, and who will not, come eventually to the front. Capacity has to be shown, friends have to be made, opponents have to be silenced, rival interests have to be placated, cliques have to be frustrated, logs have to be rolled, wires have to be pulled, and much else has to be done before the goal can be attained. To the participant it is all very exciting, and to the onlooker it is very droll indeed.

But it is in Parliament that the fascination of the game really begins. So fascinating is it to the great majority of the participants who have reached this stage, that you will scarcely find one in a hundred who will offer to give up his place at the table, no matter how his chances of winning a large stake may have dwindled, no matter how much he may be out of pocket, no matter how his fellow-players may be wishing him somewhere else. To say this is not to suggest the worst kind of motive, or to cast reflections on individuals. The writer knows a great many Australian politicians, and is inclined to think that on the whole he likes them better than any other class. He regards them as, for the most part, genial, pleasant fellows. Speaking broadly, they are not dull-witted, and they are not corrupt. There was a time when the average member of an English Parliament was both. The Australian politician is usually a good sportsman: he can take his winnings without boasting, and he can take his failures like a man. He is under no illusions as to his own aims, or his own qualities. He knows that it is to his interest to be considered as a patriot, and he knows also, in his heart of hearts he knows, that he is only a player. Let us quote Browning, and thank God that the meanest politician boasts two soul-sides, one to face his constituents with, one to show to the man or woman who knows him. Let us thank God, for if it were otherwise the race of public men would cease to exist. They would be consumed in the fires of their own simulated fervour. And some highly interesting proceedings would be lost to the world.

It is assumed, then, that the first step has been taken, that you have got to the playing table, that you are directly under the eye of the marker who calls the game. The fun is now about to commence, and with it the danger. You are untried, and practically unknown. The first thing to do in the circumstances is to get into opposition. The manner of doing this requires a great deal of tact and finesse. Many a man, and many a possessor of a naturally strong hand, has spoilt it irrevocably by playing a wrong card at this early stage. The probabilities are that you were carried into Parliament on a wave of enthusiasm for the Government. You were chosen to sit behind the front Ministerial Benches. Your constituents expect this of you. Now, it is just possible to do precisely what your constituents do not expect of you, and yet, not only keep their good opinion, but rise very much higher in it. This, I say, is possible, but so far from being easy, it is distinctly the hardest piece of strategy in the whole political manœuvre.

However, something has to be done. You are unknown, and far from rich; you are ambitious, and cannot afford to remain for years an obscure unit among the followers of the party in office. The fascination of the play is upon you; there are tens of thousands of spectators watching intently, keenly interested, waiting to applaud. The temptation to catch their eye--that large collective eye which overlooks the continent--is irresistible. You are invisible because of the Ministerial phalanx in front of and around you, and it is necessary to get clear, to break away.

The opportunity will almost certainly arrive before long. The clever gamester is he who recognises the chance when it appears and makes the most of it. You must have a certain amount of patience. It is ruinous to be too precipitate, but it will almost certainly happen, and probably before the end of your first triennial term, that the Premier will come down with certain proposals to which you are not committed before the eyes of your constituents, and which are intrinsically important enough to arouse popular feeling. This is the opportunity to break with the Government. But as you represent a government constituency you must be careful. You must go to the electors and take them into your confidence; you must explain that after a tremendous and heart-breaking struggle between devotion to a political leader and devotion to principle, the latter carried the day. It is well to point out--as truthfully you may do--that your threats, tears, and entreaties have been fruitless to turn the Premier from his fell purpose; that your expostulations have fallen on deaf ears. Henceforth, you may add, all personal attachments, all private longings, all political amenities, are to you as nought; all the friendships of a lifetime have been laid on the altar; for the future you live only in the endeavour humbly but unswervingly to give effect to those eternal principles in comparison with the majesty of which, the life and aspirations of the individual are as the small dust in the balance, are a not worth naming sacrifice.

Once in opposition it will be found that your sphere has extended, your reputation increased. It is now possible to marshal all your forces. Allusions can be made that would previously have been inadmissible; words can be used that before would have been treason. At this period of the game it is advisable to cultivate a method, a manner of your own. It is desirable to be in some way _distinctive_. There is much virtue in a particular look, in a mode of speech, in a mannerism. If you have not the main thing, which is natural ability and power of carrying conviction, it is possible to get something else--something that will focus the attention of the spectators in the outer ring. Every one knows the story of the man who laughed. He has had his counterpart, and a very successful counterpart, in Australian politics. It will be recorded of one man of obscure beginnings that he was a genial, capable, extremely popular person, who laughed, and became Premier of Victoria. If laughing is not your _metier_, if it goes against the grain, it is just as effective, or even more so, to cultivate a cast-iron demeanour. The “cool, calm, strong man” has been played admirably on several occasions, by none more finely and successfully than by Mr W. H. Irvine, of Victoria. Yet another pose that will often be found extremely useful is that of the bluff devil-take-you kind of individual, as impersonated by Mr Thomas Bent, of contemporary fame, and by Sir George Dibbs, of happy memory. The astute Cornwall in _King Lear_ says some words to the effect that this kind of knave--the bluff, outspoken knave--has more craft than any other kind that could be mentioned. However that may be, the gruffly candid demeanour has proved useful in Australian politics in the past, and is likely to prove useful again. Then there is the humorous pose, of which Mr G. H. Reid furnishes the best living example. This is invaluable at times, but its successful adoption is so difficult that it cannot be generally recommended. Only the highest kind of ability should venture to undertake this manner. It may be of advantage to affect a plain, or even a dowdy, appearance. The first Federal Treasurer wore an old suit of brown clothes for a lengthy period, and with conspicuously good results. But, whatever you cultivate, whether it is the manner of the sage or the buffoon, of the circus or of the graveyard, it is necessary to cultivate something, and to cultivate it well.

With a modicum of good luck, and a sufficiency of good management, almost any one can rise to Ministerial rank in Australia, or for that matter can obtain the highest post of vantage, namely the Premiership. The comparative shade of private membership is no sooner left behind than the game takes on still different phases. The cards are reshuffled, the partners are altered, the rules are revised. The play is as fascinating as ever--even more so--but it has become much more difficult, much more complex. One has only to reflect for a moment on the absence of any really live question in colonial politics to understand the trouble that the head of a Government must have to keep up some semblance of enthusiasm in the country, and to retain his place. There is no large Imperial question. There is no Home Rule question. There is no longer a tariff question, although there are occasional murmurings and mutterings from one or two sections of the people, and from one or two dissatisfied newspapers. It is impossible to beat up a party, either in the State or the Federal Parliament, on such lines as Imperialism, Nationalism, Jingoism, Fiscalism, Conservatism, or any other “ism” belonging to the larger domain of national affairs. What is there left to fight about? There is very little. In three cases out of four the incoming Government takes up the measures of its predecessor. In three cases out of four the differences, other than the personal ones, are barely discernible. In this political atmosphere of Australia, Amurath with Amurath is eternally being confounded.

The rise of the Labour Party has been the most remarkable feature of the situation during the past three or four years, and the whole history of the Labour Party is the most conspicuous illustration of the general truth of what has just been said. In Opposition it has been magnificently strong and war-like. It has talked, through its leaders and its units, firmly and finely of the necessity of checkmating capitalistic greed, of nationalising industries, of abolishing the large land-owner, of setting up a State Bank, of establishing a State iron industry, of taxing the wealthy for the benefit of the poor, of granting pensions to the aged workers, of saving the weak from the strong, of improving industrial conditions, of giving every man a fair return for his labour, of shortening hours, of widening the avenues of employment, of adding something material and tangible to the pleasures of the people. The Labour Party out of office has talked impressively of all these things--so impressively, indeed, that it has been taken at its word. During the last year or two, Labour Ministries have been in power in the Federal Parliament, in Queensland, and in Western Australia. What has happened? Where is the monopoly that has been nationalised? Where are the wages that have been increased? Where is the Bank that has been established? Where is the land tax that was promised? Where are the old age pensions in Queensland, in Western Australia or in the Federal Parliament? More than this: where are the records of any serious attempt on the part of one of the Labour Ministries of Australia to nationalise even one industry, to check capitalisation, to pay old age pensions, to run a State Bank, or to do anything that the average Liberal, or even the so-called Conservative Opposition would not cheerfully undertake? Not only has there been nothing revolutionary accomplished, but nothing revolutionary has been even tried.

To keep your place at the inner table, to be able for any length of time to set the pace for the rest of the numerous company, it is necessary to remember that the other players, and not yourself, are the actual masters of the situation. By proceeding warily, and by showing a thorough knowledge of every unwritten rule and precept, you may get as much as a reasonable man should require. You may have the appearance, if not the substance of power, and all the honours, emoluments, lime-light and other accessories connected with it. But to attempt to run a crusade of your own, or to attempt to put into practice the sentiments you preached in opposition, is merely to commit hari-kari, to rush on your own doom. The Labour Party, or the more intelligent members of it, have found this out. My own opinion is that the Labour leader is a trifle less insincere on the whole, than the average leader of any other party or section. Yet the difference between the fighting Labourist’s word in opposition and his performance in office is great and ghastly. It is not necessary to blame him. He has simply _had_ to realise that Australia is in a condition, politically speaking, of being willing to listen to everything, and of being able to accomplish nothing. It is always talking about its breathless speed, and perpetually falling down in the mud.

Undoubtedly the most humorous, the most delightful, and at the same time the most useful institution known to the continent is the Upper House, or Legislative Council. What the Premier of the day would do without this stand-by, it is barely possible to surmise. To the head of an allegedly Radical government, the Tory Chamber is always a God-send. Even the cleverest tactician finds now and again that he must press forward when in office with measures that he advocated when sitting on the left hand benches. It is an awkward predicament for many reasons. He knows that if the reform is carried, it will probably bring about a reaction, and that he himself will almost certainly be hurled from office at the next election. Yet he dare not jettison the principal plank in his fighting platform. What is he to do? Amid the storm clouds that are all round him, out of the night that encompasses him, above the tempest that is driving him irresistibly forward there gleams one ray of light--the light of the Legislative Council. There it is, straight ahead, standing between himself and swift and sudden extinction. Confidently he presses on. His vessel triumphantly breasts the waves of the Representative House, and is dashed to pieces on the adamantine rock of the Council’s inaccessibility. But he himself is safe. He gains breathing time while the fragments of his craft are being pieced together again. His constituents are satisfied. He comes back stronger than ever from the next election, and goes through the performance again.

Will any one deny that all these possibilities, all these variations, all these moves and countermoves, all these chances of success, all these risks of failure, go to make the pursuit of the political prize in Australia one of the most absorbing in which man can engage? The governing fact as already stated is that the game is not confined to a privileged class, as is practically the case in England. Subject to certain conditions, it is open to all. It is true that the possessor of a banking account has an advantage. In the language of pedestrianism, he beats the pistol; he gets a certain start every time. But the start is not so great that it cannot by a display of agility be overtaken. And the fact remains that the chief attraction of Australia from the player’s point of view, and one of the chief risks from the point of view of the spectator, is that political competitions are conducted actually, as well as nominally, irrespective of wealth, or rank, or status in life.

It is hardly profitable to indulge in generalisation as to the kind of ability that is needed for success in public life. A certain kind of man flourishes, and another kind--the opposite kind--is seen to fall; but in a year or two the positions are reversed, and the set of qualities which seemingly commanded success are those which invite or compel failure. Therefore the generalising process is for the most part vain. But if one were asked to name the attribute that is most useful to an Australian politician--the attribute that it is ruinous to be without--one might be tempted to mention knowledge of human nature. The phrase implies a great deal. It implies such characteristics as tact, foresight, and sense of the fitness of things; power of being genial, or of seeming to be genial; knowledge of when to strike, and when to refrain from striking. It means the capacity to put yourself in the place of those for whom you are legislating, to whom you are appealing. It suggests in the possessor a degree of intellect, combined with a degree of sensibility. It is the opposite of narrowness, of bigotry, of fanaticism, and of folly of the more glaring kind.

A second quality to be considered eminently desirable is that of accessibility. In the vernacular this is usually called “absence of frill.” It is an asset well-nigh indispensable for any successful public man in Australia, though it must not be confounded--as it sometimes is--with lack of dignity. Most of the leaders of ministries and heads of parties that I have met in Australia have been, and are, extremely dignified; and, as a rule, the most dignified have been the most accessible. It is not the kind of dignity that surrounds itself with much outward pomp and ornament; not the kind that emulates Mr Forcible Feeble, and proclaims its existence as loudly as possible, for fear that it should be overlooked. It is the dignity that results from mental processes not visible to the eye of the vulgar. It can unbend, jest, laugh, look stern, wear the mask of folly or any other mask, because it is sure of itself. The fortifications of reserve, and the serried front of isolation, utilised by the typical English Prime Minister, are not wanted in Australia. Here the obscure unit and the political chief meet on equal social terms, to the advantage not merely of the one, but of the other as well.

A third qualification which may be mentioned as very desirable, if not as absolutely necessary, has been already alluded to as the gift of speech. To accomplish much in public life in Australia, it is necessary to talk, and to talk a great deal. Whether it is on a platform or in the open air; whether it is within the walls of Parliament or outside them, you must, if you desire to become well known, tell the public something, and _keep on_ telling it to them. The Australians are quick, impressionable, receptive-minded. Their highest awards are given, in nine cases out of ten, to the man who can appeal to them in the most direct, the most personal, and the most intelligible way.

The four men who have held office as Prime Minister of the Commonwealth form, in the aggregate and as individuals, the best illustrations of the qualities just enumerated. Each has displayed a sound knowledge of human nature, evidencing the knowledge by his many-sidedness, his tact, his judgement, his mingled daring and caution, his willingness to compromise. Each has made himself readily approachable, alike to indignant people who had grievances to ventilate, to friendly people who had congratulations to utter, to newspaper people who had questions to ask--in fact to all sorts and conditions of people who used the right means of approach. And each has been endowed with the gift of speech. Two of them--Mr Reid and Mr Deakin--have exhibited it in a singular and superlative degree. Sir Edmund Barton is a speaker of the very front rank. Even Mr Watson, though not a fiery, forensic orator, is a very able debater. Only those who have heard and watched him in Parliament know how keen and capable and resourceful he really is. Quite apart from these individual instances, facts may be found to show that one may apply over the whole field of Federal and State politics the conclusions just arrived at.

To be a prominent public man in Australia it is not necessary to do great things, but to act as though you could do them, or wished to do them, or would be certain of doing them if you got the chance.

’Tis not what man _does_ which exalts him, but
what man _would_ do.

Achievement is dangerous, or fatal; the promise of achievement is brilliant or inspiring. The truth of the matter is that Australians are engaged, individually and collectively, in a game of which they cannot see the end. Politically speaking, they don’t yet know where they are, or where within the course of a generation they are likely to arrive.

V

PSEUDO-LITERARY

This world’s no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

It is strange that a people possessed of literary instincts, and of the literary temper, should be without a literature of their own; but so it is. The shadow of a remembered personality does indeed flit now and then across the brief page of Australian history. There was a writer of verses named Lindsay Gordon, and a novelist of repute named Marcus Clarke. Each of these struck out a path for himself. Each left a record that will not soon be forgotten. But neither was a product of the Southern Hemisphere; neither could be described as native, “and to the manner born”; and neither of the two, nor both together, could be credited with creating a literature for the country in which their work was done.

It is true there have been, and there are, others of note. There was a poet who wrote some very fine lines about the yellow-haired September, about waste places of Kerguelen, about lost Lorraines, about a frail, flower-like, dead Araluen, and about much besides. It would argue ignorance of the subject to be unaware that the book of rhymes beginning with an account of the man from “Snowy River” has sold to the extent of 30,000 copies, or more. There is the statement, made on what seems reliable authority, that the author of _Our Selection_ was paid for a continuation of that work the remarkable sum of £500. And Victor Daley was, until a few months ago, alive amongst us. The torch of inspiration is, therefore, not quite gone out. Throughout the continent it flickers and falters, never shining with a steady and continuous flame, rarely giving the wayfarer a light to guide him, but every now and then dancing with a faint, fleeting, will-of-the-wisp quality before his astonished eyes.

He sees a reflection, or he catches an echo, and then he is in the dark.