May 24 was duly celebrated, especially in Sydney, where the Union Jack was apotheosized as a set-off to recent red-flag demonstrations. Lord Forster, the Governor-General, took an active pact in Sydney, while Lord Stradbrook, the Victorian State Governor, took the rather unusual course of making a fighting speech in which he called for the suppression of disloyalty.
At a huge open air gathering in the Sydney Domain the Attorney-General of the local Labour cabinet found that he was by no means persona grata with the crowds, and even from the platform, on which he was seated, was violently attacked for disloyalty. Eventually he saw fit to retire from the scene. His name is McTiernan, and that of the acting Premier Dooley, while the next most important minister is McGirr. It is hardly necessary to say more.
Sir Walter Davidson, the New South Wales State Governor, unlike his Victorian confrere, ridiculed the very idea of there being any disloyalty in Australia, but then of course he is—temporarily at least—the official mouthpiece of the Labour Government, which includes the gentlemen mentioned. The executive of the New South Wales section of the Australian Labour party has thought fit to issue a manifesto in which it sets forth that its real object is "complete Australian self-government as a British community, with no {mperial Federation."
Seeing that there is no serious school of thought which argues for an Imperial Federation it must be assumed that what the party seeks is independence of the nominal control of the British Crown. After that, the deluge. While the manfesto applauds the Governor-General's slogan "Australia for Australian," it is careful to explain that by Australians it means anyone who comes to the country and good citizen." The same ecutive not so long ago advocated the retention in Australia of notorious Germans and—pro-Germans, presumably because they were what it considered "good citizens." On the whole, Empire Day gave evidence that there is a strong feeling of hostility to the growing disloyalty which finds expression in Sinn Fein sympathies and much violent talk for which we probably have to thank Archbishop Mannix, who is now on his way back to Australia after having been practically interned by the British Government in the United Kingdom.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.