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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1916

Watling Street, October, 1915

Watling Street, October, 1915.

My Dear Spike,—It has always been a great solace to me in those dark moments I sometimes spend in looking back over my spasmodic career at College that, even in the wildest fit of delirium, I never contributed to the "Spike." It may be more accurate to say that what little I did contribute never got in. the editors were too prudish, too prudish by far. They didn't like my style and I didn't like their's. Decent enough chaps in their way, but however much they may have been good sorts in everyday life, when they sat in the editorial chair they became inflamed with a sense of modesty; they burned it and branded it into everything they wrote (or re-wrote) in connection with the journal. Its pages reeked with moderation and propriety till it became a paragon for failures to mould in. It did not suit a students community. It never aimed at portraying the students as they were. Men who worked vigorously, played vigorously, prayed vigorously and blasphemed equally vigorously, when they came to reflect the glamour of their doings on paper suddenly became dull and cold and issued a journal had neither the moral fibre of strong conviction nor the material fibre of good shaving paper. So far as I have been able to ascertain, this has mostly been due to a desire to be "literary." Perhaps you are still trying to be "literary," on the "If at first you don't," etc. principle.

And so it is with something of an apology that I appear with a manuscript. It is only my second offence. The first time was six years ago when I wrote two limericks about College professors, which, tho' they might have looked out of place in a Keat's authology, were still calculated to raise a titter of scandalised joy on some poor book-worm's face . but no! not even Taylor would have let them thro'—And Taylor was the broadest of the pack of them; or at any rate the one who let most of his real self into print. I remember the furore he created with one editorial when he stated the Imperial spirit was an artificial monstrosity and identified true patriotism in New Zealand with a desire to break off from the Old Country. I know how well he now sees himself to have been wrong when he wrote it; but the effort was laudable in that he was not afraid to write what he thought grey background of orthodoxy that goes by the name of the Spike. By the way he was literary at the same time; and while I hope to avoid the path of hypocrisy even as he, I of course cannot hope to use the same light rhetorical toe in doing so.

page 38

I want to talk to you about Colonials and how they fit into the scheme of things from the Englishman's point of view. And I might as well tell you right from the jump that the Englishman does not like the Colonial and the Colonial does not like the Englishman. Now wait a moment, Mr. Editor with that blue pencil. Let me explain. It is the fault neither of the Englishman nor of the Colonial. They are each born with mutually incompatible tempers. It is just like religious denomination. It is the mere accident of birth in most cases what your creed is but it always brings with it the conviction that you are it and everybody else is out of it more or less as he aberrates more or less from your creed. I can never conceive of the Anglicans and Presbyterians really loving one another. They may make an alliance for a set purpose as we all have been in New Zealand. They have a mutual hatred of criticism and comparative mythology and this tends to make them pull together in a general sort of way. But as sect to sect, the Higher Criticism forgotten for a moment, they mix as oil and water, mutually exclusive, mutually suspicious.

And so it is with the Englishman and the Colonial. There is the common dread of the Hun, the mutual self-satisfaction at the immensity of the Empire and the mutual resolve of about 20% of each to do something to put the Hun down and exalt the British prestige amongst the nations. But, the common fear left unconsidered, the Englishman in suspicious of the Colonial and the Colonial is satisfied that the Englishman is a prig and a fool.

Having stated the general case, I shall state the exceptions and then adduce evidence in support of the main thesis.

Firstly it must not be thought that I am hinting that there is any mutual contempt. Far—very far from it. The Colonial thinks the Englishman a fool on account of his laissez-fairs methods. "Let the Government take its time," the man in the street says and sits back awaiting news of bold action on the part of a Government incapable of saying boo to a goose (always excepting Lloyd-George) and of great victories on the have seen in spring 1915! What a move we saw. All the Government is doing here is to follow six months in the wake of the Northcliffe Press. Where the "Daily Mail" is to-day Asquith will rest to-morrow, protesting in irreproachable language that he was not pushed, nor did he fall. "My witnesses, my Lord, are the Coalition Government, the making of cotton contraband and later on will come National Organisation." That is why the Colonial in England thinks the Englishman a fool—because he believes in such a Government! But he is not contemptuous. He cannot help appreciating that fine dogged English spirit, that manly strength that the classes, we Colonials are proud of our English ancestry, altho' it doesn't take a foremost place in our conversation. Nor does the Englishman lack in appreciation of the rough and ready colonial character. He always thought we were active. But after Gallipoli he swelled with pride at the poor relation who had made good; and at the War Office, where previously Australsaians and Canadians page 39 could not get for love or money—I say for love or money, anything to the contrary notwithstanding—, and so had to join our Officers' Training Corps, now, since the Turkish campaign, a Colonial has only to show up and call a "day" a "die" and say "bloody" once or twice and the ink turns to steam in the feverish haste with which they write out the commission papers.

Nor am I to be charged with tacitly asserting that NO Englishmen and Colonials het on well together. Of course that would be an absurd statement to male. The English gentlemen in his home is charming and if he sees for 25 years' close contact with you are up to or over his social mark, you will find his heart big and his hearth warm. To us Colonials, however, who are used to making friends freely and seeing the inside of a fresh house about once a week, the cold eye with which the average Englishman greets you is very freezing indeed. He fairly oozes to know you. If you have the least doubt it at all, tell him it's a fine day. You'll be satisfied then. Plenty of English offices have admitted to me that to me that when they went to a fresh mess it took them a fortnight to get on bare speaking terms with anybody beyond the Colonel. And this is their own kind! Can you wonder that the poor Colonial must sit apart and eat and think alone when they are in doubt as to whether he will put his foot in his soup plate, and are not sure whether he talks English or not.

To return to the main proposition; I maintain that in spite of mutual admiration, in spite of many cases if warm hospitality extended by Englishmen to Colonials, in spite of our common nationality and national danger, there has grown up in the few generations we have lived apart a difference of temperament that leads to something akin to discord. The practical matter-of-fact life that we have led in the Colonies has given us great individual initiative and so a complete disregard for established institutions. We cannot bend the knee merely on account of their antiquity to customs in which we see no value. We have been used to judge all courses of conduct by their utility an anything savouring of the ceremonial or the circuitous stands condemned as a waste of time. The Colonial cannot bear the 1½ hours spent over the mess dinner, he resents the necessity of saluting officers would never obey, he objects to wearing different clothes for different meals and is galled by the isolation with which he is saddled by a community whose interest and occupations are at one with his. If he tries to break thro' this crust of custom he is snubbed. The Englishman loves these formalities. He does not uphold them be any conscious effort but they are ingrained in him by birth and education. At the great Public schools for instance, two boys may be inseparable chums—joint delinquents in a thousand scrapes; but no one expects the one to recognise the other on meeting him in the street in company with a third. No one recognises in the street—it simply isn't done.

It follows that if in later life he does unbend to talk affably to a stranger one evening it is the proper thing to show no sign page 40 of recognition on meeting again next day. This is what makes the Colonial really angry. He at last thinks he has made an acquaintance and is joyful accordingly, only to be "cut dead" within 24 hours. This is but one of dozens of conventions all calculated to irritate us from overseas and in the degree that we disrespect them we irritate the Englishman. We are bad form. And so it follows that we search out other Colonials from the mere animal craving for congenial company. We form a clique— Australasian, Canadians and even Englishmen who have been long resident in the East or West— and become known as "the adjectival Colonials." We unconsciously vie with each other in showing how we disrespect those little foibles, respect of which makes one tolerable from the Englishmen's point of view. Our passwords are "Kia Ora" and "Cooee" and these are taken as vulgar native phrases picked up in our lurid past.

On one occasion I was in a small tea shop in the Strand patronised only by officers and I saw a man with a badge remarkably like the Australian. So I remarked in the Freemason style common to us—"Hullo, Australia"! He answered that he was as Imperial man and evidently thought me one too as I wore the Imperial uniform. He told me his regiment and said that there were plenty of Australians and for that matter Canadians to be found about there. "Doesn't matter so long as they're Colonials "was my rejoinder. Said he, loftily, "well, I'm bally glad I am, Sonny!" Of course he begged my pardon, and doubtless likes me even less than before.

That same afternoon (a Sunday) I had a good sample of the opposite side of the question. A crowd was waiting at Trafalgar Square for a recruiting procession and there were many Colonials about. I was walking along the lower end of the Strand looking as much like an Imperial officer as I could when my belt was grabbed from behind and I was dragged up against a wall, my cap removed and a large dirty hand run thro' my hair and a bellow in my ear "Well, sonny, how are yer?" I looked up to behold three hulking Australian privates grinning in anticipation to my next remark. "By the blinking blazes, if I wasn't a Colonial you 3 beauties would all go up like kites—what are you doing this for?" "Yer a Colonial" said one, "Put it thar." I put it thar and they explained they were waiting for Imperial officers to show them how much they loved them. Yes, they knew it was a risky game but it was worth the fun and if anyone "squacked" they would "empty one into his jaw and move on." By this time other Colonials were arriving and as they grew noisier the police grew more restive. So I ordered in good old N. Z. Infantry style "Fall in there, you lubbers" an got them into line, numbered off and formed up into a sort of platoon.. The crowd took them for the recruiting procession and the last I saw of them was a mixed crowd took them for the recruiting procession and the last I saw of them was a mixed crowd of Colonials and their lady friends marching amidst the cheering throng till they rounded a lion in Trafalgar Square out of sight. There are not isolated instances but my everyday experience teems with such. I have been in page 41 England two months and even now practically my only friends are Colonials.

Of course all of us by the time this appears in print will have separated to batteries across the water somewhere, where one is sure to be warmly received; or may even with luck have joined the rends of another army altogether, where current superstition hath it one is even warmly received. All we ask is congenial company.

Goodbye Spike,

Love to Crassus and the chorus,

Yours never,

Boadicea.