Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/131

 —A man on board was born in Warsaw, New York, but has been in business in Sydney for the past thirty years. He says the Australian and New Zealand newspapers are habitually unfair with events in the United States. He often writes to the editors, and corrects their blunders, but they refuse to print his letters. The papers frequently print references to American crooks arriving in Australasia which are palpably unfair and untrue; on one occasion the American obtained a letter from the police authorities saying that certain thieves referred to as Americans, were not Americans, but not a newspaper in Australia would print the American's indignant denial. All American news in the Australian and New Zealand papers comes from London, although it might be easily obtained direct from American papers. American news coming by way of London is of course unreliable. He says that the middle-class people here admire Americans, but that the Imperialists do not, and always misrepresent them. I asked him what he meant by the term "Imperialist."

"Well," he replied, "an Australian or New-Zealander will go to London, and be entertained at dinner by a cheap duke or knight. After that, he is an Imperialist, and talks of England as 'back home.' Admiration for the rich is often ridiculous, but it is nothing compared with admiration for a title."

I asked him how the general prosperity here compared with the average prosperity in America. He replied that the farmers here are more prosperous generally than the farmers of New York state.

"But," I said to him, "the farmers of New York