Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/109

 distinctly. Kipling says the American language has nothing in common with English except the auxiliary verbs, the name of the Creator, and damn.

—Although New Zealand is supposed to be an English colony, there are no English soldiers here. A few soldiers are seen in Wellington, but they belong to New Zealand regiments. The young man who showed us about today is seventeen years old, and what we would call an A. D. T. messenger boy. But the telegraph business is a government monopoly here, and this young man is a government employee. There is a mild system of compulsory military service. The young man says he belongs to a military company of postoffice and telegraph employees, and that they drill one hour every week. All young men are compelled to belong to a similar company, from fourteen to twenty-five years of age. They compose a military reserve, and never go into actual camp. New Zealand also has a navy, which is about as much of a joke as its army. Australia, being larger, has a larger establishment, but the system is the same: New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania are exactly alike so far as politics, sheep, and labor unions are concerned. Tasmania is a little place, but it has mighty questions to settle. The Tasmania legislative assembly has been in a deadlock several years, and none of the big questions could be settled. An election was held recently, to break the deadlock; and again the assembly is a tie. Politically, the colonies remind one a little of Cuba,