Sq. 10.
AN Australian newspaper just to hand gives a graphic account of a great public meeting recently held in Sydney Town Hall for the purpose of launching, in affix bation with similar existing bodies in other states of the Commonwealth, an organization to be known as the King and Empire Alliance, having as its main objects the welfare of the British Empire and the counteracting of attempts to introduce and encourage disloyal doctrines. That this new movement is spreading with remarkable rapidity throughout the Island Continent is a nutter on which all loyal Britons muy congratulate themselves, for it will do much towards stopping the insidious attempts to spread sedition which have been a marked feature in Australia during the past few years and will help to give utterance to that great love and loyalty towards the Motherland which is in the hearts ofthe vast majority of the people of the colony. That spirit has ever been present and at no time was it more marked than during the war, when Australia gave freely and voluntarily of her best in the cause of freedom jand righteousness, But the small minority who were working for the destruction of the Empire were able to appear much more in the limelight than their numbers would have warranted, and there is no doubt that they were and still are at work trying to capture the great trade unions and by this means engineer a move ment to cause Australia to break away from the Empire. What was needed was some society or organization that would be able to show in a practical way the feelings of the great majority of the people. In Queensland, which has earned"an unenviable notoriety from the acts of disloyalists, the new society has had enormous success, over 180,000 members having joined already, and if the movement is blessed with the grace of continuance, the preachers of the "down with Britain'' doctrine and the allies of the egregious Mannix are likely to have a rough time of it in the near future.
All this leads to the main point of this article, namely, that what Australia. is doing in this matter the rest of the Empire needs to do. Even Britain itself requires some such league of loyalty. We hear so much of hidden hands aiming at a disruption of our Empire, so little of the deep steadfast patriotism which is so silent and yet so strong among the millions of our race at home and scattered over the face of the earth, that other nations may perhaps question the permanence of the bonds that bind us together, and even Britons themselves in their more pessimistic moments. may wonder if the break-up is not about to begin. The fact is that the great masses of true patriots belonging to all classes and grades of society have not been in the habit of parading their beliefs, and those who belong to the band of disloyalists have equally miscalculated the strength of the forces against them; and this fact has no doubt made the latter faction more and' more daring in their efforts to bring about the collapse of the constitution. What the Empire needs is more and more organizations similar to those formed in Australia, the aims of which hail be to bind together those who stand by tke Empire and its ideals and which shall show the opposing cliques what they have to face in their endeavours to bring about governmental chaos. Nothing would be so likely to dishearten these ''underground'' workers as the realization that they are a miserable minority and to hear the opinions of a strong united band of patriots who through the loyalist association would be able to give voice to their ideas and aspirations, To come to the local aspect, why should Britons in, the East not help to carry on the King and Empire movement? True disloyalists out here are conspicuous by their absence, but that is no reason why we should not show to other nationalities that patriotism is a living thing. In some of the treaty ports even Empire Day celebrations have been allowed to lapse. In no place are such festivals more necessary than in China where the younger generation, who have perhaps never known any other country, need to be reminded on every possible occasion that though not in, they are still of, the Empire, and have their share and responsibility in its great heritage.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.