Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

The following day was a busy one for the Prince. It began with a levee at Government House, where he invested a number of returned officers and men with decorations won at the front. The reception of a score of addresses came next and the replying to the more important of them, including those from both Houses of the Commonwealth Legislature. The functions finished with a banquet at Parliament Buildings, at which the Right Honourable Mr. Hughes proposed the Prince's health. The toast was seconded, in the warmest terms, by Mr. Frank Tudor, Leader of the Opposition. The keynote of the occasion was sounded by Mr. Hughes when he said to his guest: "The people of Australia see in you the things in which they believe."

There followed a bewildering week in which the Prince was carried from one public function to another, through extraordinary masses of people, composed largely of women and children, but also comprising a very considerable number of men, who waited in the streets for hours at a time, sometimes in chill wind, fog or rain, on the chance of catching a glimpse of the Royal visitor. Many of them, when he appeared, made such efforts to approach and shake him by the hand, that the police had difficulty in getting his car through. His progress was so delayed in many cases that it became almost impossible for him to fulfil engagements at the hour appointed, in spite of the most liberal allowance of time for delays upon the road. Eventually appeals were made through the press for some abatement of this personal demonstration. The police arranged for a wider lane to be kept for his car, and the difficulty gradually disappeared. The Melbourne newspapers, meanwhile, day after day, made the Prince's visit their almost exclusive business. The smallest details of his doings were chronicled with minuteness, and long poems and articles about him were published. Photographs, in every attitude and at every function, appeared prominently amongst the news of the day. The Prince was "featured" inexhaustibly. Scenes of enthusiasm also characterized the Naval Review, where every fighting ship belonging to the Commonwealth of Australia was paraded. A special agricultural show was held to which landholders from distant parts of Victoria sent breeding stock so valuable that no previous exhibition had been able to attract it. A public reception was given in the exhibition buildings, where people stood from eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon to secure front places. An entertainment was organized at the cricket-ground where ten thousand school-children went through marvellously trained evolutions, and fifty thousand spectators cheered when the Prince appeared.

When one asked folk in the street what they thought of him, enthusiasm found various expressions, but it was always enthusiasm. I have heard a stout, middle-aged and presumably sane gentleman in the smoking-room of a Melbourne hotel declare in the most bellicose tone to all and sundry that he would like to fight for him. I never heard a word of criticism. Certainly Melbourne, and all the great interests it represents, took the Prince to a generous heart.

From Melbourne His Royal Highness made a two-days' trip by train into the rich districts of Western Victoria, through the Werribee Plain, where land fetches up to L60 per acre. Stone-walled fields of oats just rising above ground, with pleasant farm-houses amidst sparse white gum-trees, spread on either side of the track. Low, blue hills bounded the view. Country folk waved greetings from many homesteads, as the train sped onward. The first stopping-place was Geelong, on the sheltered coast of Port Phillip, once a rival to Melbourne for the honour of being the capital of Victoria, now a marine base, and prosperous shire town. It is known throughout Australia as the home of the doctrine of the one man vote, and eight-hour day, first promulgated in the 'seventies, by Sir Graham Berry, who represented Geelong in the Commonwealth Legislature. Here the Prince found himself in the midst of an agricultural, manufacturing and shipping community. The guard-of-honour was composed of naval cadets. He was shown thousands of bales of finest merino wool from mills which not only clean and sort it, but also, upon a smaller scale, manufacture it into blankets and cloth. Pupils were presented to him from Geelong's famous grammar school, which draws its students from all parts of Australia, and had a larger proportion of casualties, in the great war, than any other educational institution outside the British islands. Here also he visited a big wool-shed, that of Messrs. Dennys Lascelles Ltd., with a ferro-concrete roof weighing two thousand tons, so large that the sales-room it shelters covers an acre of floor, yet there is not a single pillar in support, the necessary stiffness being given by means of reinforced girders, built upon cantilever principles, above the roof. The streets were crowded with people, and the Prince had a very fine reception alike at the reading of the municipal address, and at the functions of shaking hands with returned soldiers, and inspecting school-children. A large number of schools from townships in the interior were represented, each with one pupil elected by its fellows to shake hands with the Prince. The selected mites stood shyly out, in front of the lines of scholars, as the Prince went by to honour the promise given.

From Geelong the Prince went on to Colac, shire centre of one of the richest districts in Victoria. Here he was shown what claims to be the second largest dairying factory in the Commonwealth. It is run on co-operative lines, and makes, in addition to such products as butter and cheese, large quantities of dried milk, a comparatively new preparation, for which increasing demand is springing up in all parts of the world. It is an enterprise to which all may wish good luck, as a long step toward solving the important problem of rendering milk easily transportable, without loss of essential properties.

In entering, and again in leaving Colac, the train passed quite close to a number of low conical hills and circular lakes, remains of comparatively recent volcanic action, which has given the soil over a wide area properties that enable it to grow Spanish onions in extraordinary profusion. In a favourable season, fabulous profits are made out of this crop. One man, with twenty acres, in one year cleared L1,800, of which L1,200 was net profit, after paying all cost of cultivation and harvesting. The Prince also saw some of the outlying trees of the famous Otway forest, home of the blue gum and blackwood timber used not only in Australia but also in America and Europe for decorative work.

In Colac, the streets had been elaborately decorated. Flags covered alike the stone and reinforced-concrete houses of business, and the brick and wooden residences. The accommodation of the place had been supplemented for the Royal visit, by encampments of tents, one large marquee flaunting the imposing title of the "Cafe de Kerbstone." Choirs, in Welsh and Scottish costumes, serenaded the procession. There was much cordial cheering, especially about the shire-hall, where the civic address was read.

The next halting-place was Camperdown, another farming centre, where again a surprisingly large gathering of country folk had assembled to welcome the Prince. Motor-cars, often of the most expensive British makes, in which the owners had come from their holdings, stood about in the streets. The Royal party here transferred to motors, in which the Prince drove out to the residence of Mr. Stuart Black, one of Australia's great landholders, descendant of settlers from Tasmania, who opened up this part of the country some eighty years ago. These settlers bore many distinguished names, including those of the Gladstone family and the MacKinnons.

The following day His Royal Highness went by train to Ballarat, past a fine stone memorial to members of the neighbourhood who had fallen in the great war, subscribed for by the residents of the district, and designed by Mr. Butler, of Sydney. The route lay through undulating agricultural country, past big heaps of white, pink, or yellow tailings, which mark the sites of now worked-out gold-mines. Some of the fields around were pitted with what looked very much like shell-holes, dug by early prospectors for the gold that made Ballarat famous. The Prince found the last-named place a prosperous market town, with substantial public buildings, and quantities of marble statues, dating from the days of easily made fortunes in the 'seventies. It contains also wool, and other factories, including that of Messrs. Lucas and Company, for the production of underclothing, with which the Prince became acquainted under circumstances worthy of the creditable history of this firm. During the war, some five hundred girls employed by Messrs. Lucas conceived the idea of planting an avenue, in which each tree should be connected with the name of one of Ballarat's large contingent of fighting men at the front. At the head of this avenue, which is now a dozen miles in length, a substantial masonry Arch of Victory has been set up. The Prince opened this arch in the presence of the entire establishment of the Lucas factory, which presented him with an embroidered set of underclothing--yellow silk pyjamas, to be exact--in the making of which every employee of the firm had taken part.

Rain had been falling heavily, but the girls faced it cheerily at the head of their avenue, many a tree of which bore the flag that told that the soldier it commemorated had been killed. The presentation was made to the Prince by two ladies, one of whom was Mrs. Lucas, the founder of the firm, which she had started on a very small scale, at a time when the miners were beginning to desert the Ballarat goldfield, leaving, in many cases, families behind them. Mrs. Lucas gathered these families around her, and by a system of profit-sharing, attached them to her firm, which is now well known throughout Australia.

This was not the only function at Ballarat. The Prince also received an address standing out in the rain, on a platform in the main street, in the midst of a crowd so large that those in the rear could neither hear nor see very clearly what was going on in front. As the result, both the reading and the reply to the address were much interrupted, a patriotic cornet on the outskirts playing "God Bless the Prince of Wales" part of the time while the Prince himself was speaking. The Prince got hold of his audience, after two false starts, however, and to such purpose that the latter part of his speech was listened to with an interest that the rain, which plastered his hair and flattened out his collar, appeared to enhance. The cheering at the end was most hearty. The crowd did not disperse when the speeches were over, but waited in the rain until after the completion of a further ceremony, which took place inside the town hall, where the Prince shook hands with numbers of returned men and nurses. He was again loudly cheered when he came out and got into his car _en route_ to the train to Melbourne.

The rain that was so insistent during the visit to Ballarat was of dramatic importance to the country at large. It broke a long and serious drought, extending over an enormous area--a drought so severe that we passed, on the road to Ballarat, way-worn sheep that had been driven three hundred miles in search of fodder and water. They were browsing, on their homeward way, on one of the farmer's stock-routes which traverse Australia from end to end. These cattle-tracks are generously bordered by pastures fenced off from the surrounding country, so as to conserve food for flocks and herds in movement.

Two days later, just three weeks from Australia's mid-winter, the Prince crossed, by train from Melbourne, the chill slopes of the Great Dividing Range, which separates the basin of the Murray river, flowing westward through central Australia, from that of the streams which pour their waters southwards to the coast. On the way, he received addresses at Kyneton and Castlemaine, once gold-mining camps, now not less prosperous dairying and woollen-working centres, the entire countryside turning out to receive him. Thence the train climbed down to a pleasant plateau on which stands Bendigo, city of flowers and dry, healthful breezes, and a centre of large and still exceedingly productive quartz gold-mining. Enormous heaps of grey "mullick" shale, and yellow and white tailings here stand amongst beautiful avenues of shady eucalyptus trees, and substantial buildings of stone and brick. One of the cheeriest civic luncheons of the tour was a feature of the day--the Mayor toasting the Royal guest as Duke of Cornwall, Prince of the "Cousin Jacks," to whom the development of the Bendigo gold industry is so largely due. A novelty also appeared on the triumphal arches in the streets, which, in place of wreaths and patriotic texts, carried whole bevies of the prettiest girls the city could find. These arches had been built in the form of bridges connecting the porticoes on one side of the street with those on the other. The girls occupied the middle and dropped flowers as the Prince passed in his car.

Intensive small culture is so successful about Bendigo, that we were told as much as L300 has been made out of an acre of tomatoes in a single year. Bendigo may thus look forward to a future of agriculture when her reefs are exhausted. Gold-mining brought her population, but her fields and gardens will probably keep it.

Later in the afternoon the Prince, accompanied by the Prime Minister, in overalls, descended the shaft of one of the gold-mines that amongst them keep the mints of the country busy turning out sovereigns that bear on the reverse the effigy of the kangaroo. The Prince thus made the acquaintance of the gold industry which has played so dramatic a part in the history of the Commonwealth. The output has been falling off gradually since 1903 when the value produced was over sixteen million sterling. It still averages over ten million sterling annually however, and is likely long to remain a very important source of wealth.

It was on this expedition that newspaper men accompanying the tour had their first opportunity of becoming acquainted with a number of distinguished Australians with whom they were so fortunate thereafter as to travel extensively. I have already mentioned that the Rt. Hon. Mr. William Hughes, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, was one of them, his outspoken frankness and caustic humour illuminating and diverting long stretches of the railway journeys. Another member of the Commonwealth Government, closely associated with the tour, was the Hon. Mr. Pearce, Minister of Defence, who was supported, whenever the Prince was in naval ports, by the Hon. Sir Joseph Cook, Minister for the Navy, and Rear-Admiral Grant, Senior Member of the Naval Board, authorities who were able to afford the Prince first-hand information about the training and equipment of the forces that have given an account of themselves at once so memorable and so recent. Major-General Sir Brudenell White, Commonwealth Organizer of the visit, Brigadier-General H. W. Lloyd, Brigadier-General Dodds, Commodore J. S. Dumaresq, were also outstanding figures of the party. The Commonwealth arrangements, extensive though they were, represented only a small portion of the organization connected with the Australian part of the tour. Every State had also its own organizer, besides numerous committees--committees for decoration and illuminations, reception committees, committees for dinners and dances, school committees, committees to guide and instruct the British Press. These last-named bodies, to whom the debt of the visiting newspapermen was considerable, consisted not of delegated correspondents but of the editors and proprietors of the leading journals themselves. These gentlemen also took upon themselves the duty of making known throughout each State the story of the Prince's doings, thus giving to the business of publicity the best and most influential brains available, and placing at the disposal of the Overseas pressmen a constant reference to experience and local knowledge of the utmost value.

With the Commonwealth Prime Minister an ex-Labour member, and with Labour Governments in power in several of the Australian state legislatures, no one can visit Melbourne, seat of the Commonwealth Government, without coming up against some of the industrial problems and prospects in this country. It has already been mentioned that, at the dinner given to the Prince by the Commonwealth Government, in Parliament Buildings, Mr. Frank Tudor, leader of the Labour Party in opposition to Mr. Hughes' Government, warmly seconded the toast of the Prince's health. I repeat this fact, as it seems to be indicative of the general attitude of Victorian labour towards the Royal visit. The British pressmen had the opportunity of meeting some of the Labour leaders, amongst them Mr. E. J. Holloway, Secretary of the Melbourne Trades Hall, and Mr. D. L. MacNamara, Labour Member of the Victoria Upper House. They are men of moderate views, while full of schemes for bettering the conditions of labour on this continent. Mr. MacNamara is the author of proposals, now forming part of the Australian Labour Party's platform, for revising the Commonwealth constitution, upon lines designed to make the will of the people supreme. He would abolish existing State governments, and divide the States into provinces administered by councils exercising only such functions as might, from time to time, be conferred upon them by the Commonwealth Government, the Upper Chamber in the latter to be done away with, thereby leaving the lower Federal House a free hand to put through legislation beneficial to the masses. This scheme, whatever may be its intrinsic merits, is rather of theoretic than practical interest, as there is not much probability of any proposals for increasing the powers of the Commonwealth Government being accepted by the States, which are after all in paramount authority for the time being. It is nevertheless important as showing the constructive nature of problems with which Labour men in this part of Australia concern themselves. Mr. Holloway's activities have been chiefly connected with organizing proposals for the immediate advantage of workers, reducing their hours of work, and increasing their pay. Australian labour is watching developments in England, and a tendency is growing to substitute friendly round-table conferences between workers and employers for the less elastic processes of strikes and lock-outs which have so often been resorted to in the past.

There was no lack of evidence in Melbourne to show how closely the community, as a whole, is affected by the new distribution of political power. Smoke-room assertions that industry was being destroyed by the frequency of strikes need not be taken too seriously, since the manifest prosperity of the crowds and the well-ordered activities of the factories did not at the time confirm any such mournful supposition. It is apropos to mention, however, that in Melbourne places of business much capital is locked up in purely emergency apparatus for doing without such public utilities as water-supply, electricity and gas, these arrangements being designed to enable industry to continue during periods of municipal inactivity, a fact which is certainly significant of the frequency of strikes in the past. Another noticeable feature is the far-reaching nature of the activities of the unions. In the sub-editorial rooms of the leading newspapers may be seen labour forms, to be filled up even by men holding well-paid appointments upon the staff, giving detailed particulars of hours of duty, overtime and emoluments.

Friendly personal interest, rather than anything deeper, was perhaps apparent in what some of the Labour men said about the Prince. Friendly personal interest was always there, however. Even those who were inclined to ascribe the wonderful reception in the streets to the Prince being "a good sport, and well advertised," readily admitted the desirability of the British connexion, and their own cordial wish to keep up old relationships in this new land. At the time of the Prince's visit correspondence appeared in the Melbourne Press on the subject of alleged Catholic lukewarmness in regard to Royalty, and it must be said that political trouble in Ireland has not been without its echo of difficulty in Victoria, though the extent of anything of the kind might be very easily exaggerated.

The wonder is, however, not that isolated exceptions should be found, but that, with all the divergent political ideals, and conflicting social conditions, necessarily met with in a large city of such recent growth as Melbourne, so generous a measure of warm-hearted loyalty should have been manifested, loyalty in which all sections of the community, including Labour, showed themselves to be in warm accord.

XIII

NEW SOUTH WALES

Towards the end of the visit to Melbourne it became plain that the tension of repeated functions and strenuous journeys had begun to tell upon the Prince. He held out manfully, but was clearly overtired. This was by no means surprising, at all events to any member of the tour party, for all had begun to feel a strain which fell in a degree vastly multiplied upon His Royal Highness.

That well-informed journal, "The Melbourne Argus," referring to the matter, said: "When the programme was arranged, before the arrival in Melbourne, the opinion was expressed in these columns that it was proposed to place too great a strain upon the Prince, and since his arrival it has become every day more evident that human strength is unequal to the tasks which have been set. The Prince has not made any complaint, but has most generously and courageously met all engagements. Only those in close association with him know the expenditure of nervous force which this conscientious discharge of duty has entailed."

Eventually the programme was altered so as to give H.R.H. an additional week in Melbourne, free from public engagements. The hope that he would rest, however, was not in any literal sense fulfilled, as he spent his holiday in riding and golf, hardly less tiring than the public functions which the doctor had forbidden him. His staff were lucky if, after a long day spent in the saddle, he could be persuaded not to dance into the small hours. This strenuousness is characteristic. In the _Renown_ he spent much of his spare time exercising on deck or playing squash racquets. A mile run was his not infrequent preparation for a long day of public engagements. It is an attractive habit, but in the case of one subjected as the Prince is, at short intervals, to emotional as well as physical strain it hardly carries the recuperative benefit that it might in ordinary circumstances. The rest in Melbourne, such as it was, enabled him to carry on throughout the remainder of the tour. He seemed occasionally to take every ounce out of himself, but he "carried on."

Melbourne's send-off, when the Prince ultimately left to proceed to Sydney, was, if possible, even more demonstrative than its reception when he arrived. Nine aeroplanes, soaring round the Ionic columns of Parliament Buildings, as dusk was falling, created the first stir in the immense crowd which waited along the road he was to take. Presently distant cheering was heard gradually coming nearer, as his car made its way from the Moone Valley racecourse, where he had spent the afternoon, to the top of Collins Street, where the official portion of the route commenced. Slowly the procession extricated itself from the mass of people who rushed up to say farewell, and assailed his car with offerings of flowers and wax Kewpie dolls for luck. A real horse-shoe, tied up in ribbon, was thrown by an admirer unable to get near enough to present it. It was perhaps owing to the good luck it brought that it dropped harmlessly into the bottom of the Prince's car. Eventually, the procession was able to go forward along a barricaded lane kept by the police in the middle of the street. In this space children raced alongside, and a ripple of waving hats and handkerchiefs kept pace with the cars as they advanced, while the evening air rang with cries of "Good-bye, Digger": "Come Again!" interspersed with clapping and cheering. The Prince stood upon the seat of the car waving his hat through some miles of these demonstrations.

On the wharf at Port Melbourne a farewell address was presented by the local authorities beneath a gigantic arch inscribed "Australia Is Proud of You." Here the State Premier and other notables attended, also a guard-of-honour of the Royal Australian Naval Brigade. The reverberation of boots upon the wharf, as the crowd rushed afterwards to catch a last view of the Prince as he went up the gangway of the _Renown_, drowned the sound of a fife and drum band, operated by ladies in MacKenzie tartans, which banged on cheerfully alongside.

The _Renown_ sailed at daylight, escorted out of harbour by a flotilla of Australian destroyers. The voyage was along a hilly shore for the most part covered with forest. The first port of call was in the wide, sheltered harbour of Jervis Bay, the Dartmouth of Australia. Here Sir Joseph Cook and Rear-Admiral Grant, with Captain Walters, Dr. Wheatly and other senior members of the Naval College, received the Prince, who inspected a smart guard-of-honour of cadets, and was subsequently shown over the institution, which is well arranged and up to date. The buildings include airy dormitories, comfortable study rooms, convenient lecture halls, commodious laboratories, and spacious gymnasium and gun-room, and are built round a roomy grass "quarter-deck," on which the cadets in the course of the afternoon handsomely defeated the best Rugby football team that the _Renown_ could produce. Nothing could exceed the pleasantness and wholesomeness of the atmosphere of this fine naval training college. The life by the cadets is an open-air one, and a more healthy and promising body of youngsters it would be impossible to find anywhere. They are being given a sound education amongst surroundings calculated to impress upon them the beauty and attractiveness of the land whose service they are about to enter. The harbour, at the foot of the college playing-fields, is to be the port of entrance to the federal territory of Canberra. The site of the new capital itself is only some seventy miles inland, a distance which is thought nothing of in this country of magnificent spaces. A railway has been surveyed to connect the two places, and a corridor of federal territory had been marked out, so that the entire line, including the port, may be out of reach of any state influence.

The Jervis Bay College is a step in the direction of making the fine fighting ships, which Australia already possesses, independent of the help of the Mother Country. Boys are growing up there who will hereafter command them, and perhaps build the big naval graving docks, that are so badly wanted in Australian waters, to enable the modern battleships of Great Britain to reinforce effectually those of Australia in any trouble that may arise in the Pacific.

"What do you think of our harbour?" is as inevitable a question in Sydney as "What do you think of America?" is in New York. It was soon countered by the demand of the blue-jackets on the _Renown_, "And what do you think of our ship?" but its relevance was easy enough to understand, when, in the misty dawn, of what was mid-winter in Australia, but might have been a fine June day in England, we reached the high rocky headlands which guard the entrance to these wonderful inland waters.

A flotilla of war-vessels, including two Australian cruisers and a number of destroyers, escorted the Prince's ship into an aquatic amphitheatre. On all sides were beautiful wooded promontories sloping down to the edge of still pearly water. The slopes were studded with home-like villas, each gay in its own garden. Bays and inlets made shaded alleyways in all directions from the central expanse. Slowly the battle-cruiser threaded her way through the deep water marked but by buoys into the inner harbour. Hundreds of decorated motor-boats and dozens of double-decked ferry-steamers crowded round, each one of them a cheerful bouquet of brilliant parasols and fine-weather millinery. Well-groomed men, opulently dressed women, and smartly turned out boys and girls, on one boat after another waved handkerchiefs and Union Jacks, clapped, cheered, laughed, and sang. Brass bands banged out the National Anthem, and the usual petition to the Almighty to bless the Prince of Wales. The Prince waved and smiled in return, from his eyrie above the bridge, while fresh boats raced alongside, and continually restarted the hubbub.

As the _Renown_ advanced up the harbour droves of rowing-boats and flocks of sailing craft added themselves to the now slow procession. Gatherings of people became visible as dark patches on the white foreshore of every promontory. In the case of the rocky headland overlooking the middle harbour, the patch must have been many acres in extent. The _Renown_ dropped anchor half a mile from Farm Cove, a sheltered gap in the encircling hills. The Prince went ashore in his launch, through a decorated cheering sea-lane of tugs, ferry-steamers, rowing-boats and yachts. He landed on a shaded beach, the slope behind solidly crammed with people, while beside the water, in a grove of bunting and greenery, were assembled the most distinguished men to be found in this part of Australia. Those present included the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the State Governor, the State Premier, Members of the Commonwealth Government resident in New South Wales, the whole of the State legislature, Ministers, Judges in robes and wigs, Admirals and Generals in the last inch of permitted gold-lace. Immediately behind was a decorated marquee in which were the civic officials, including the Lord Mayor of Sydney in municipal robes and ermine, who presented an address. A naval guard-of-honour was drawn up on one side of the marquee, and a military guard-of-honour on the other. Salutes were fired, bands played, the guards-of-honour were inspected, the principal people were presented. The address was replied to, and amidst much cheering the Prince was conducted up a decorated staircase to the top of the cliff where a number of four-in-hands with large mounted escorts of "diggers" were in waiting to convey him through the city. The proceedings differed from those on the occasion of the entry into Melbourne in that they took place in bright morning sunshine, instead of in the fading light of evening. The route, including as it did long straight stretches of undulating ground, enabled the brilliant pageant of flags, escorts and pennants to be seen as a whole as the procession jingled through five miles of densely packed people.

The way was kept by returned soldiers and cadets. Triumphal arches, constructed throughout of such characteristic Australian products as wool-bales, corn-sheaves, or balks of timber, dotted it at intervals. Avenues of white colonnades supported flags and bunting which stretched continuously for miles. Sightseers festooned the parapets, crowded the balconies, tapestried the windows with eager faces, and formed a solid mass between the wooden barriers of the processional lane and the plate-glass show-fronts of the business houses.

In substantial Macquarie Street the Prince stopped to greet a terribly large community of crippled soldiers, who sat patiently in motors and bath-chairs by the wayside, attended by nursing sisters. Further on a no less touching spectacle awaited him, in a great gathering of black-garbed mothers, widows and orphans of diggers killed at the front, a pathetic reminder that, of the four hundred thousand soldiers raised by voluntary enlistment in Australia during the war, only one in two escaped wounds or death. Here the pressure was dense; and spectators, we heard, paid a shilling a minute to stand on packing-cases to look over one another's heads.

The route ended on the shady lawns of Admiralty House, where the Prince inspected a great company of war-workers, who stood in ranks of variegated colour, including the red and grey of sisters who served in hospitals overseas, and the white and black of those whose no less devoted labour kept public utilities active at home while the manhood of the nation was in the field. Before entering the building where he was to stay the Prince shook hands with no less than ten wearers of the Victoria Cross.

The reception was over. Perhaps the feature in it which struck the visitor most, next to its magnificence and enthusiasm, was the light-heartedness of the crowds. After the Prince had passed, and had been everywhere cheered, Mr. Hughes, the Commonwealth Prime Minister, Mr. Storey, the State Premier, and other ministers who were further back in the procession were subjected to volleys of chaff and counter-chaff from supporters and opponents, in which they themselves joined with the utmost goodwill. Even the crashing into the harbour, close alongside the reception wharf, of one of the aeroplanes employed on escort duty, upset the equanimity of nobody. A motor-launch promptly picked up the soused aviators, who seemed to find the accident the greatest of larks.

The country round was as much interested in the visit as the city itself. For days before the Prince's coming special trains, crowded to their utmost capacity, had followed one another in quick succession into Sydney from localities sometimes hundreds of miles away in the back blocks. One heard of a father who squeezed his family of tiny children into one of these special trains, and was then unable to get a foothold on it for himself. The mites went to Sydney unaccompanied, but lacked for nothing, either upon the way or when they arrived, for every soul upon the train was prepared to father and mother them.

The ten days which followed were crowded with public functions in which what seemed to be the entire population of Sydney participated outside, if not inside, the place of occurrence. One of the principal was the state banquet in the enormous town-hall. Seven hundred and twenty diners here sat down. Three thousand of Sydney's maids and matrons watched the proceedings from the galleries on either side, and at a given signal after the dinner, when the Prince proposed "The Ladies," there was a sound like a vast flight of pigeons and three thousand Union Jacks fluttered into the air. The ladies had responded for themselves. Crowds blocked the wide streets for half a mile round the building, throughout the whole of the proceedings, and took up the cheering again and again. The toasts of the evening were honoured, not only in the banquet hall itself, but by some hundred of thousands outside as well.

Mr. Storey, the Premier of the Labour Government in power in New South Wales, made a most cordial speech in proposing the Prince's health. He described the Royal guest as a democrat in whose presence he felt no embarrassment in speaking frankly. He welcomed him on behalf of New South Wales, and declared that the Royal family had always shown sympathy with the ideals for which Labour men everywhere stood. In the course of his reply, the Prince said: "I realize to the full the great part which New South Wales and Sydney have played, and must always play, in the history of Australia. This wonderful city is the cradle of the magnificent development which has made the Australian Commonwealth. The whole thing started here, and in later days you were foremost in the movement of ideas which led to federation. The greatest of all the statesmen who first worked for federation, Henry Parkes, was a Sydney man, and a Premier of New South Wales. The first Australian Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton, also came from New South Wales. It is amazing to think that New South Wales holds two-fifths of the population of the whole Commonwealth and that Sydney holds more than half of the population of New South Wales. That fact alone shows the vast importance, not only to the Commonwealth, but to the future of the whole Empire, of this state and its lovely capital. Sydney is indeed the London of the Southern Hemisphere."

It is characteristic of Australia that the Commonwealth banquet in Sydney, at which the Prince subsequently made what was probably his principal speech during the tour, was an outwardly less imposing function than was the state dinner I have just described. The Commonwealth banquet was given in one of the upper stories of a fine building in Martin's Place erected under the direction of Sir Denison Miller, founder of that great national organization the Commonwealth Bank, which now handles the entire finances of the central Government, including the raising of loans and the issue of currency.

At the Commonwealth dinner the Governor-General presided and Mr. Hughes made one of those felicitous speeches which have won him a European reputation, though they are themselves surpassed by his lightning humour and uncompromising common sense in the cut and thrust of debate. "Time," he said, "circumstances, and the age-long struggles for freedom by men who held liberty dearer than life, have fashioned the constitution under which we live. The monarchy is an integral part of it. If Britain decided to adopt a republican form of Government that would be the end of the Empire as we know it to-day. The Empire has grown. It is, if you like, the most illogical of institutions. It is composed of many free nations very jealous of their own rights, and brooking no interference with these. Yet, to the outside world, it is, in time of danger, one. And the institution which binds all these together is the Monarchy of England." The Prince in reply declared that there was no finer body of men than those which Australia sent to represent her in the various theatres of the war. He went on to sum up the aspirations of Australia in the words of Sir Edmund Barton, "a continent for a nation, and a nation for a continent," and evoked a storm of cheering when he declared, "I am quite sure of one thing, that as Australia stands by the Empire, so will the Empire stand by Australia for all time."

The enthusiasm that characterized the Prince's entry into Sydney, and the State and Commonwealth banquets given there in his honour, became if possible more and not less accentuated as his visit wore on. Outstanding everywhere was the tumultuous cordiality with which he was greeted by enormous crowds. The same thing occurred at the races, at the gala performance at His Majesty's Theatre, at the parade of returned men, at a wonderful display by state school-children, also when he entered the chief military hospital beneath an arch of crutches, and when fifty thousand people passed before him in the town-hall.

The whole was an experience which can never be forgotten by any of those who had the good fortune to be there. The popular reception in the town-hall was especially impressive. Here, standing on the dais in the centre of this fine building, the Lord Mayor of Sydney alongside, and a number of ministers, judges and soldiers, grouped about him, the Prince, in plain grey jacket suit and soft brown hat, received the salutes of a great multitude of men, women and children--the blind man led by friends, the old lady who must see the Prince before she died, the baby who would be able to say in years to come that it was present. The people were shepherded past by members of the local police, for whose patience and courtesy it is impossible to express too great admiration, in one long, smiling, curtsying, hat-doffing stream. Numerous barriers had been erected, but there was no crushing whatever. It was a demonstration of orderliness and public spirit of the very best.

Another picturesque function was where, under the twinkling pendants of the big chandeliers in the ballroom of Sydney's Government House, beneath the portrait of his ancestor George III, and before a brilliant assemblage of naval and military officers, judges, ministers, civic authorities, and members of consular bodies, the Prince shook hands with several hundreds of representative men belonging to all sections and communities of the Australian continent. Interesting also was the day he spent amongst the young folk. It began with a visit to the Sydney Cricket-Ground where twelve thousand children of the local Government primary schools, headed by Mr. Mutch, Minister for Education, Mr. Board, Director of Education, and Colonel Strong, Chairman of the Executive Committee, organized and supervised a picturesque exhibition of physical drill. The children deployed upon the grass in the centre, where they went through evolutions and exercises, and arranged themselves so as to form patriotic emblems and messages of welcome. Fifty thousand parents and relations occupied gigantic stands around the ground and added a bass to the treble of the children's cheering.

Later on the Prince proceeded to the University. On the way he passed through some of the less fashionable quarters of Sydney, where he was warmly received by crowds consisting largely of artisans, amongst whom his popularity seemed to grow each day he remained in Australia. At the University, a place with fine buildings, in pleasant country surroundings, on the outskirts of the city, he was cheered by some two thousand undergraduates, five hundred girl students, and a big gathering of graduates and members of their families. The great hall, with stained-glass mullioned windows, dark grained timber roof and grey stone walls, broken by a long array of mellowing oil portraits, where the Chancellor, Sir William Cullen, read an address, recalled the beautiful precincts of Christchurch, Oxford, upon which it appears to be designed. The feeling of home was heightened, alike by stained-glass portraits of Cardinal Wolsey and other famous founders of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and by the presence in the assemblage of a number of red and black Oxford hoods amongst the grey ones worn by graduates of the Sydney University. The gathering included a fine body of students in uniform, many of them wearing war-decorations won overseas. The blue and gold flag of the University corps occupied a place of honour at one end.

Replying to the address, the Prince referred to the profoundly important work the Sydney University was doing, and its splendid record in the war, and went on to say: "The generation which faced the war ennobled your traditions, fine as those already were, and left a great example of personal service to the King and Empire for the present generation to pursue."

Replying later to an undergraduate address read by Captain Allen, M.C., the Prince said: "You have referred to my comradeship with your own two thousand fellow students who went to the front in the great war, and I assure you there is no part of my experience which I value more than my long association with those gallant troops, both officers and men." Concluding he said: "Many of you are now completing or beginning a university course after service in the field. I hope that these will not find themselves handicapped by the time they spent overseas." It was a hope that perhaps the easier conditions and nearer prospects of young life in Australia may well fulfil. In any case its expression was one of the many graceful gestures of consideration that did so much to bring the Prince close to the hearts of the people of that country.

XIV

SOME COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

"One heritage we share though seas divide" surmounted one of the decorated arches on the route traversed by the Prince on the day of the military review at the Centennial Park, Sydney--a phrase no doubt, but one that expressed the sentiment which pervaded this striking occasion. Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal commanded the parade, which included a naval detachment under Lt.-Commander Patrick, a body of Light Horse under Major-General Ryrie, and portions of five Divisions respectively under Brigadiers Bennett, Martin, Jobson, Herring, and Christian. The command was made up entirely of demobilized men, who, despite cold grey weather on a full working day, had donned service uniform and assembled--many of them from long distances--to do honour to the heir to the Throne. The numbers present were not precisely ascertainable, as the men were not under discipline, but had turned up of their own accord. Estimates of how many attended therefore varied considerably, but any number up to twenty thousand may have been there.

When the Prince reached the ground he found the units drawn up in formation about half a mile in length in front of him. Long lines of bath-chairs and motors were on his left, filled with disabled men who had been brought from sanatoria and hospitals in the districts around. Behind him some thirty thousand spectators joined in the cheering. The Prince went down the lines, shook hands with all the officers and spoke to a number of the men. He also shook hands with every disabled soldier present. The proceedings terminated with a general march past in column, so arranged that the disabled men could see their old regiments go by.

A sequel to the military review was a visit a few days later to Duntroon College, the Sandhurst of Australia. Daylight on the shortest day in the Australian mid-winter found the Royal train, now on the standard four-feet-eight-inch gauge of New South Wales, speeding through dry, rolling country, dotted with occasional blue gums beneath whose tattered foliage sheep were picking a wholesome meal. Bright sunshine reminded one that it was Australia, though the cold wind, which drove clouds of dust and grit into our faces, might have been from a March east in England. At the township of Queanbeyan, where the Prince changed into a motor-car, the entire population had assembled and the usual ceremonies of welcome were gone through. The country beyond Queanbeyan was open, and barbed wire fences bounded the road on either side most of the way to Duntroon, which proved to be a pleasant garden township of white-walled houses, set upon a low hill amongst many trees.

Senator Pearce, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, and General Legge, Commandant of the College, with a group of red-tabbed field officers, received the Prince on a sheltered lawn overlooking a wide grassy plain reserved for aeroplane manoeuvres. Those presented included a number of the professors whose rank between soldier and pedagogue was quaintly expressed by their black mortar-boards and college gowns which only partially concealed service uniforms and war-decorations. The Prince afterwards saw the cadets at exercise in the gymnasium, and took the salute of one hundred and twenty of them as they marched smartly past on the parade ground. Addressing them afterwards in the big mess-hall at the dinner-hour, he recalled the fine war history of the college, which had lost no less than forty-eight of its students in battle, and was cheered when he repeated the story of that gallant soldier General Bridges, who had found his way from the Kingston Military College, in Canada, to make a new Kingston in Duntroon, and to lead Duntroon's first contingent of trained officers to Gallipoli, where he himself was killed.

It was dinner-time and "Carry on" was the word passed round to the cadets, when H.R.H. had finished his speech, and the cheering had momentarily died down. The soup was then served at all the tables, but it must have grown cold while cheer after cheer followed the Prince as he left the hall and re-entered his motor _en route_ for Canberra, a place only a few miles distant.

The way from Duntroon climbed slowly through undulating, park-like country, dotted with blue gums, two thousand feet above sea level. Freshly made roads, with water-pipes and sewers laid on, presently indicated that the site of the much debated new capital of the Commonwealth had been reached. The scene continued to be rural, however. The pleasant stream, which meandered amongst willow trees and grassy solitudes at the foot of the hill--where the Prince subsequently added a foundation-stone to the already considerable number of these expressions of hope and faith--might have been a hundred miles from civilization of any kind. The little river gave to the scene that touch of verdure so grateful in the dry and dusty bush, and one day will doubtless be spanned by the arched bridges of the Commonwealth's capital. At present it must be confessed that the metropolis is hardly more than a sketch of itself, and a sketch that presents no very distinctive features.

The importance of Canberra, however, is not to be judged from the present condition of the site. As the Prince pointed out in his speech at the ceremony, although the city still consists largely of foundation-stones, this is chiefly because the war has delayed progress with the scheme of construction. Mr. Groom, Commonwealth Minister for Public Works, who presided, summed up the position when he said, "Victory having been happily achieved, once more the mind of the nation is reverting to the provision of a national seat of Government where Australia will be mistress in her own house, and where there will be no room for the complaint of provincial influence in pursuit of national aims." The idea thus expressed that the Commonwealth administration should have a territory of its own, away from the influence of any individual state, holds the imagination of the majority of Australians. It is an idea that has worked out satisfactorily alike in Canada and the United States, where the circumstances, which justified the building of Ottawa and Washington in the past, are essentially similar to those of Australia to-day. The fact that India's endeavours at capital building at Delhi may not yet have met with corresponding success, does not affect the matter, since the conditions in a bureaucracy differ essentially from those obtaining in the democratic association of self-determining Dominions.

Public opinion in Sydney supports the Canberra scheme on the practical ground that it will bring the Commonwealth capital nearer to itself. Melbourne is naturally lukewarm, since the present arrangement whereby the central legislature meets there, so long as Canberra does not materialize, is one that local pride desires to see continue as long as possible. The remainder of the States, while not very actively enthusiastic about a scheme which must necessarily divert a large sum of public money from railway and other useful local projects, recognizes that the atmosphere surrounding the Commonwealth Government would be none the worse for being removed from the wire-pullings of state politics. Scenic beauty, healthfulness, a good water-supply, and accessibility to the two principal Commonwealth centres of population and industry, combine to justify the choice of Canberra for the purpose concerned, and the fact that a sum of some two million sterling of public money has already been sunk in preparing the site, increases the probability that the scheme will eventually be brought to completion.

One of the party accompanying the Prince on his visit to Canberra was a minister of state, who loved to tell how he had left his home in the Canberra district on a push-bike to seek his fortune twenty years before, now to return, in company with the Prince of Wales and as the responsible head of an important Government department. Like every one else who knows this part of the country, he overflowed with enthusiasm as to the healthful prospects of its future. It was from him, I believe, that the Prince first heard the ancient tale of the cemetery for which, after long and infructuous waiting upon local necessity, the inhabitants were driven to import a corpse from outside. That cemetery has served many a rising town. It must be closed by now except for purposes of historical research, but no doubt Canberra's claim to it will be justified when the time comes.

Another expedition from Sydney was by train and launch, up the Hawkesbury river, and on to Newcastle. On this occasion the Prince was accompanied by the entire New South Wales Labour Cabinet, including Premier Storey. One of the features of the trip was a remarkable demonstration on the part of the men working in the Sydney railway sheds, who assembled in large numbers along the line, and shouted good wishes as the Prince's train went out. Every engine in the big station yard at the same time blew a shrill accord on its whistle, a choral accompaniment which was as convincing as it was deafening.

Addresses were presented, on the way, at the towns of Parramatta and Windsor, while the residents, along fifty miles of the river traversed by the Royal launch, assembled at the water's edge and waved flags and cheered as the Prince went through what is probably one of the most beautiful water-ways in the world. At Hawkesbury River Landing, where the Prince rejoined the train and met a number of mothers and widows of men fallen in the war, the entire station had been decorated by the unpaid labour of those working upon the line. At Fassifern, which he went through after nightfall, the entire valley was lighted up by bonfires, and the station and wharf at the small township of Toronto, where the Prince spent a night at the house of Mr. Duncan McGeachie, was a fantasy of Chinese lanterns.