Melbourne, Sept. 25.
Probably Australians are beginning more thoroughly to realiza the extent of the Japanese earthquake, tidal wave and fire disasters. News is slowly filtering through as to what has become—or, worse still, what is not known and cannot be found out—of the Australians known to be in Japan about the time of the trouble. A few more lives have been mentioned as lost, but the names are little known in this country. The efforts to help Japan with money and material have been curiously circumscribed. A Melbourne newspaper sprang to the front and has already collected some £40,000, a considerable portion of which has actually been transmitted to Japan in cash. The Commonwealth gave £50,000 in cash, and promised £160,000 or more in goods. One steamer, the Austral mount, has been despatched with six to seven thousand tons of goods aboard, but there is really a curious lack of spontaneity about the proceedings for relief. It might be thought that, as in previous national movements of a charitable nature, the newspapers in all the States would make a featurerof not only their own subscription lists, but also all those of others throughout Australia There are not only the public subscriptions sent in to a solitary Melbourne paper, but also those to the various civic funds. Yet all the charitable movement seems to be centred ju one Australian newspaper—the one that got in earliest in the -spasm of good Samaritanship. There may be no special significance about this. Tu a country like Australia the huge interests are largely concentrated in the offices centred near the chief administration, and that centre, which just now happens to be Melbourne, finds the money for special public contributions.
One cannot dogmatise. It 1s only right to say that there is a hesitancy about offering Japan money, and it is the money offers which chiefly appear in_ the columns of the newspapers. There are those who give in material form, of which no public record is made. It is stated that another steamer is about to leave with a 7,000 ton cargo of material benefits; Japanese residents are Joud in their protestations of gratitude; but still—stil, I wonder.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.