Chapter I: Foreword

There has been so much adulation lately of Australia, Australian institutions, and the Australian people by writers with axes to grind and English politicians with party ends to serve that the people of the Commonwealth have come to believe that they are the salt of the earth, and that their country is the earth. Personally, I am impatient of such credulity, and I think it is time somebody called upon the self-satisfied Australians to show cause why a little more humility and a little less arrogance were not more seemly. With a view to restoring an apparently lost sense of proportion to the press and public of the country, I have written the following pages. If in telling the truth I shame the Australian this book will achieve its object. Should a howl of indignation be provoked, then will the condition of affairs be proved worse than my pen has power to depict, and nothing will be left but to declare Australia past redemption. This is the case for the prosecution.

VALERIE DESMOND.

Sydney, July 15, 1911.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I.--AUSTRALIAN POLITICS 11
II.--THE AUSTRALIAN ACCENT 15
III.--AUSTRALIAN MANNERS 22
IV.--MISS AUSTRALIA 27
V.--AUSTRALIA FOR THE AUSTRALIANS 38
VI.--THE AUSTRALIAN IN SOCIETY 44
VII.--THE AUSTRALIAN AT SHIRK 51
VIII.--THE LISTLESS POLICEMAN 56
IX.--THE AUSTRALIAN'S PARASITICAL TENDENCIES 58
X.--THE AUSTRALIAN'S LACK OF PATRIOTISM 62
XI.--CLUB LIFE IN AUSTRALIA 66
XII.--THE AUSTRALIAN ON THE LAND 70
XIII.--THE AUSTRALIAN TITLED PERSON 76
XIV.--THE AUSTRALIAN AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE 80
XV.--THE AUSTRALIAN POETS 83
XVI.--THE C.Y.A. 90