Show 0 1 IMONG THE AUS the people kettin many ide 11 provincialism ro vincia lisin then is the great curse of the australasian and so it must needs be for years aye says a writer in the atlantic especially unfortunate howe however Verp is the ten dency already existent among certain young Austral asians to feel vt ini toward all influences from other parts of the world I 1 beard indeed more of this ibis indifference than I 1 saw many of our ur young men people eaid said knowing nothing of the older world fancy that nothing can be of great value in civilization which has not already been transplanted here they are intolerant and narrow I 1 con confess rm that such bigotry is not very noticeable on the surface of things 9 as 15 yet the australian dowse newspaper aper preserves on the whole the sound old english tradition traditions devotes large space to the rest of the wo world ald has correspondents in england and often offen also in america and on the continent of europe and slid discusses many of the worlds current social social I 1 and literary question questions almost as much aa as we do but the healthy sporting lidd of the intelligent young men does not leave them much time for reading or for thinking their parents still speak familiarly of home meaning england E ti gland but ere long this home leeling will pass alivan away and iud one question whether that intimate union with the w worlds intellectual life which we ourselves have cultivated with a very warm zeal only within the last quarter of a century will be possible for t the e coming generation in the colonies nothing could be more dangerous dan gerou for australia than to cut the painter 1 1 inter 1 in the intellectual life whatever 1 bever may be the result in in pa politics lipics 1 and the fact remains th that t a land which nt at best is about three weeks farther removed from 11 europe drope than is our eastern border can only 1 I too easily become abath apathetic about abort so 80 difficult a matter as the course of modern thought meanwhile the very tendencies tender that make the au gralian journal jour nalls eo so well ell edited and so encyclopedic seem to threaten in another direction d the cause caute of popular education edu catton callep in early california days Is newspapers were almost the an only ly pr printed anted matter that the mining p population ap read knowing this fact 1 I vi was as rather strongly etron gly impressed by the very first remark that I 1 heard heart from froni one prom prominent anent gentleman as to the intellectual te tel condition of australia you must know he eaid said our people do not read books they devour journals against this opinion one must of course put the existence of the splendid public library al at t melbourne the numerous town libraries scattered throughout the colonies and the very respectable trade of the booksellers in melbourne in sydney and even ii the much smaller city of auckland yet after all there are edly many influences at work in the colonies colon ice against the formation of a strongly literary class I 1 do not think these influences at all remarkable in their results so far what whai I 1 fear is the tle future when the belter better part of the people will have forgotten the old home and when a provincial self consciousness will tend more and more to fight against the vast industry required to keep pal pace ce with the world worlds e mental work think how vastly our own intellectual life such as it is would auf suffer if we were two or three week weeks farther removed from europe |