strikingly shown by the financial results obtained. The dominant fact is
that, whereas in the United States and in England, Government control of
railways has been accompanied by heavy loss during the war, in New
Zealand the railways have remained on a paying basis throughout, though
the war rise in New Zealand traffic-rates has only been twelve and a
half per cent. in the case of passengers, and twenty-one per cent. in
that of goods, as compared with from fifty to seventy per cent. in the
case of the railways in Great Britain. At the same time the basic wage
for the employees has been increased in New Zealand by thirty-three per
cent., to which eight per cent. has recently been added, making a total
wage rise on New Zealand railways of forty-one per cent.
As regards the cost of the carriage of goods on New Zealand railways, as
compared with British, the claim is made by the New Zealand railway
authorities that their rates are the lower. I was unable to obtain any
conclusive evidence upon this point, during the short time available,
owing to the difficulty of extracting average figures capable of being
fairly compared. As regards passenger rates, I understand that the
present New Zealand flat-rate is twopence per mile for "upper class"
passengers, and one and one-third pence per mile for "lower class,"
rates which certainly compare not unfavourably with those obtaining in
England.
The gross annual revenue of New Zealand railways is now about five and
three-quarter million sterling per annum. Of this sum two million is
allotted to payment of interest at four per cent. upon the forty million
sterling of capital cost. The balance of three and three-quarter million
goes to working expenses, which before the war averaged sixty-four per
cent. of gross revenue, and are now sixty-six per cent.
Government goods consignments are carried at full rates, and troops at a
concession rate of one penny per mile return. There is no paper
inflation, therefore, in the figures.
I have given the above particulars at some length, as the management of
so big a business organization as the entire railway system of the
country is obviously a good criterion of the nature of the political
administration as a whole.
I may add two further instances of New Zealand methods. The first is
that the Government has embarked upon a seven-million-sterling scheme
for the development of hydro-electric power for industrial purposes, the
country being remarkably provided with facilities for this class of
enterprise. The installations, several of which are already well
advanced, are situated in widely separated localities spread over both
of the islands, so that a large proportion of the country will benefit.
The total power which this scheme is expected ultimately to develop
amounts to something like half a million horse-power. The work was to be
proceeded with as fast as labour, which was very scarce at the time of
the Prince's visit, became available. The second point concerns the
resettlement of returned soldiers upon the land and their restarting in
business. Upon this object the New Zealand Government had expended a
million sterling, of which the bulk consisted of loans on easy terms.
The feature that seems significant of the general situation of New
Zealand, was that practically all the fifty thousand men demobilized had
been found employment, and that the loans were being rapidly repaid,
one-eighth (L117,000) having already been refunded, while less than six
per cent. of the ten thousand men who had received advances were
reported as irregular with their instalments.
Travelling as the party did from end to end of New Zealand, such
national enterprises as the working of the railways, the development of
hydro-electric power and the restarting of the men returned from the
war, were often discussed. The considerations which emerged are
certainly encouraging, not only from the point of view of those already
settled in the Dominion, but also to that wider community throughout the
Empire that looks to Australasia as a future home.
The Prince left Christchurch by train on the morning of the 17th May, on
his journey to the southern end of the South Island and passed once more
through the Canterbury plain, a well-watered land of pleasant homesteads
and wide flat fields just then white with stubble from a recently reaped
wheat crop. His first stopping-place was the thriving town of Ashburton,
where an address of welcome was read by Major Galbraith, at one time one
of the best football players in New Zealand. In the course of his reply
His Royal Highness mentioned that he was a farmer in a small way
himself, which made him specially interested in the splendid farming
country through which he had been passing. The Prince's colonial farm is
in Alberta; he added it to the trophies of his Canadian tour in 1919. He
has already stocked and improved it and there is not a Canadian from
Halifax to Vancouver who does not look confidently to this holding to
bring him back there at an early date. Temuka, famed for its
trout-fishing, and Timaru, a rising watering-place, came next upon his
itinerary. Timaru is a port for the shipment of chilled meat, in
connexion with which several substantial cold-storage works could be
seen from the train. In this centre the Prince was given a picturesque
reception on the wide sands of Charlotte Bay, a popular bathing-resort
in the summer months. The cliffs here form an amphitheatre from which
twenty thousand people, including two thousand children from the schools
around, witnessed the usual reading of a civic address, and march past
of returned soldiers, red cross nurses, and other war workers. In the
afternoon the train traversed a fine bridge over the Waitaki river,
which is here the dividing line between the Scotch settlers of Otago and
the English of Canterbury. The Prince also stopped off at Oamaru, and
inspected a collegiate school, one of the foremost in New Zealand, where
an exceedingly smart cadet corps paraded before him, and he was
conducted by the headmaster, Doctor F. Milner, over buildings and
grounds comparable to those of a first-class public school in England.
One of the features of the institution was unenclosed dormitories, in
which the lads sleep out of doors, in all weathers, with wonderfully
beneficial results to their health and endurance.
Dusk fell when the train was some twenty miles from Dunedin, the
Edinburgh of New Zealand, but the sky was lighted throughout the whole
of this distance by enormous bonfires, every village and every homestead
along the line competing as to which could make the biggest flare
against the forest and hills behind. Around these bonfires the local
inhabitants had assembled and cheered the Prince as the train ran
through. The night was alive with enthusiasm. Little old weary England,
at anchor far in her North sea, might have been glad to feel it.
Port Chalmers, the Rosyth of Dunedin, was a wonderful sight. Coloured
flares were simultaneously lighted in all parts of the town, as the
train passed along the top of the cliffs. The harbour was thus shown up
like an inland lake, in a setting of hills, against which houses,
shipping and docks stood out in brilliant relief.
At Dunedin the train climbed down into a fairyland of electric
illuminations, beginning at the railway station, where Mayor Begg and
the members of the civic council were assembled. A procession in cars,
through Princes Street and Stuart Street, to the Dunedin Club, where
quarters had been arranged for the Prince, showed him half a mile of
decorated, illuminated route, kept in absolute order by boy-scouts,
cadets and school-children, though every one of Dunedin's sixty thousand
inhabitants appeared to be participating in an orgy of cheering,
flag-waving and flower throwing behind this slender barrier.
On the following day His Royal Highness attended an open-air reception,
in the presence of an immense gathering in the city octagon, beneath the
cathedral, the steps of which were occupied by a big chorus of girls
from secondary schools. Here he received nine addresses of welcome. In
replying, he told Dunedin that the part she played in the life of New
Zealand was fully worthy of the noble traditions which her pioneers
brought from the schools and colleges of the Old Country. Later on the
Prince visited the hospital, whence he drove over the heights
overlooking the shore, and down a steep winding track to Port Chalmers,
where, amidst more decorations and cheering crowds, the Harbour Board
and Local Borough Council presented addresses.
On another day, in the presence of twenty thousand people, grouped
amongst green olearia bushes on grassy sandhills by the bay, the Prince
inspected seven thousand children representing two hundred and fifty
schools. A pretty incident occurred in the march past when the wide
ranks of the children opened, and a score of white-clad,
black-stockinged maidens trooped up and curtsyed before the Prince to
the strains of the March of Athol played by a drum and fife band in
Gordon plaids. The biggest and the littlest girl in the deputation then
stepped forward and presented the Royal visitor with a tiny greenstone
memento, purchased for him by the school-children themselves. A further
event of the visit of Dunedin was a march past by lamplight in the drill
hall. Five thousand tickets to this ceremony were issued to returned
men, each of whom came accompanied by relations or friends, so the
numbers present must have been considerable.
From Dunedin the Prince went by train to Invercargill, the fifth city of
New Zealand. On the way he passed, in a snow-storm, the woollen mills of
Mosgiel, also the Mount Wallace and Kaitangata coal-mines. Receptions
were given in the towns of Balclutha, an active farming centre; Gore,
the head-quarters of flourishing flour-mills, and Mataura, the location
of hydro-electric works, paper-mills and cold-storage plant.
Invercargill was reached in cold wind and rain, yet the whole population
was found assembled in the streets. From the station the route led to
the racecourse, where in the presence of an immense gathering,
undismayed by the weather which had turned the whole place into a
quagmire, addresses were presented from the city of Invercargill and
from the Southland County. In the course of his reply the Prince
referred to Invercargill as being the last stopping-place on his New
Zealand tour, and added that fate would be unkind if it prevented his
renewing his recent experiences at some future time.
The return journey of four hundred miles by train to Lyttleton, where
His Royal Highness re-embarked upon the _Renown_ for Australia, was done
in record time. The Earl of Liverpool, Governor-General; Mr. Massey,
Prime Minister, and Mr. MacDonald, Leader of the Opposition, travelled
to Lyttleton to say good-bye. The Prince gave a farewell dinner on the
_Renown_, at which he conferred Knight-Commanderships of the Victorian
Order upon Sir William Fraser, and Sir Edward Chaytor, who had
accompanied him throughout the New Zealand tour. Junior rank in the same
Order was conferred upon Lt.-Colonel Sleeman, Director of Military
Training; Mr. Gavin Hamilton, of the Governor-General's staff; Mr. James
Hislop, Under-Secretary for Internal Affairs; Mr. R. W. McVilly, General
Manager of Railways; Mr. O'Donovan, Chief of Police, and Mr. Tahu
Rhodes, of the Governor-General's staff--all of whom had been actively
connected with the tour.
The Prince at the same time handed to Mr. Massey, for publication
throughout New Zealand, a farewell message, in which he expressed his
thanks to the Government and people of the Dominion for the splendid
reception given to him. The message continued: "Two things particularly
impressed me. New Zealand is a land not merely of opportunity for some
but for all. I have never seen such well-being and happiness so
uniformly evident throughout the population of country and town alike.
This Dominion is also a living example of the fact that a European race
may take over a new country without injustice to the original
inhabitants, and that both may advance in mutual confidence and
understanding along a common path. New Zealand is one of the greatest
monuments to British civilization in the world, and I have felt, from
end to end of the Dominion, that there is nowhere a British people more
set in British traditions or more true to British ideals. I have found
the strength of your loyalty to the Empire and its sovereign as keen and
bracing as mountain air, and I know you will never weaken in your
devotion to British unity and British ideals."
In conclusion the Prince referred to the journeys still to be taken
before he could say he had seen the British Empire as a whole, adding
that he still hoped to pay New Zealand another visit some day, a hope
cordially echoed by both press and people throughout the Dominion.
XII
VICTORIA
The voyage from Lyttleton to Melbourne was rough but uneventful. The
_Renown_ did the 1,651 miles in three days, and very uncomfortable days
they were. She carried a new passenger in the fine bulldog presented to
the ward-room mess by the Mayor of Gisborne, but it languished so
grievously that it had to find a new home in the Commonwealth. It had
joined the Navy too late in life.
The Prince had his first view of Australia by moonlight. The sea had
then gone down and mist hung in the narrow strait as the _Renown_ passed
between the dark shadowy hills of Wilson's promontory and the grey
rounded cone of Rodondo Island. The following morning, however, found
the _Renown_ still outside the confined entrance to Port Phillip,
enveloped in a clinging fog, that shut out everything from view. The
tide was then high, so the ten-knot current, that rushes through the
entrance when the water is low, had subsided, but this favourable
condition could not be taken advantage of to bring in the _Renown_ as
neither buoys nor lights could be seen. Impatiently the ship's company
waited for the fog to clear, but hour after hour went by and it seemed
to grow only denser. Tired navigating officers, in sopping overalls,
descended gloomily from the bridge, and it was realized that there would
be no crossing the bar that tide. The wireless meanwhile had crackled a
message through to the Australian fleet, lying within Port Phillip,
asking destroyers to come out and fetch the Prince, so that he might not
disappoint the enormous crowds waiting in the streets of Melbourne to
welcome him. The destroyers had forty miles of intricate navigation to
negotiate, but were speedily in the neighbourhood. The _Renown_
meanwhile had been carried by the currents out of her original position,
but the firing of guns and the tooting of syrens eventually discovered
her. That fine boat H.M.A.S. _Anzac_, recently attached to the
Australian Navy, came smartly alongside, and took off the entire party.
Steaming at twenty-eight knots, with a following wave so high as nearly
to conceal the accompanying destroyers from the _Anzac's_ quarter-deck,
soon brought her through the Heads, in spite of the ten-knot tide then
running full against her. The fog thinned off, and showed the _Anzac_ in
still autumn sunshine, pushing through a misty expanse of grey
landlocked bays. Yellow sandy hills, dotted with soft-toned buildings,
receded on either side as she advanced and the bay widened out, to
reappear later on as she approached Melbourne harbour, which first
presented itself as a forest of gaunt black cranes, with a background of
roofs and chimneys emerging mistily from a low foreshore.
The destroyer was cheered again and again, as she approached amongst
launches and steamers crammed with holiday-makers out to see the Prince.
She made fast to a red-carpeted wharf, in front of goods sheds flaming
with decorations, where waited a smartly turned out naval
guard-of-honour, and all the port authorities in full dress. Greetings
and salutes accomplished, the party transhipped to a shallow-draft
steamer--the _Hygeia_--which carried the Prince to the St. Kilda pier,
in front of the residential quarter, through a fleet of yachts and
launches filled with cheering people.
On the pier four figures stood out prominently--the Governor-General,
the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, the Lieutenant-Governor of
Victoria, and the Premier of Victoria. Behind them were staffs in
uniform, scores of dignitaries in top-hats and frock-coats, and a
guard-of-honour in khaki. Long lines of marines and sailors kept a lane
down the pier, and out into the crowd beyond. The Prince landed, and
shook hands with the Governor-General and the Prime Minister, who
afterwards presented to him the Premiers of New South Wales, Queensland,
South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania, besides numerous
members of their respective Governments, most of whom had travelled long
distances to attend. The civic address gone through, a procession was
formed, the Prince, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, and other
bigger officials in barouches, the rest of the party following in motors
behind. The mounted escorts included a fine squadron of police on grey
horses, each of which was a picture. The procession traversed eight
miles of wide, well-kept streets, with swarms of well-dressed,
well-nourished people, applauding, laughing and chaffing on either side.
The crowds were enormous. The streets were crammed. Thousands were
accommodated upon stands against the sides of the buildings. Every
balcony, window, roof, and parapet, whence, in any way, a glimpse could
be caught of the procession, was filled with people. Commonwealth
troops, cadets in khaki, and police in black uniform, though stationed
only sparsely along the line, maintained excellent order. The crowds
were as full of good-humour as could be, despite having been kept
waiting by the fog for more than an hour after the advertised time. A
wave of clapping and cheering went down the street alongside the Prince,
and tailed off into chaff and criticism, at the expense of Mr. Hughes
and other members of the Government, at the end of the procession. The
cheering grew stronger as the business quarter of Melbourne was reached,
and the procession passed through its spacious thoroughfares. "Generous"
seemed to be the adjective most appropriate alike to the broad outlines
of the architecture, for Melbourne despises sky-scrapers, to the width
and dignity of the well-paved streets, and to the profusion of costly
motor-cars and horses seen on the way. Those who accompanied the party
were soon to discover for themselves that it applies equally to the
quick-witted, outspoken, hospitable, kindly people of Melbourne.
The following day was a busy one for the Prince. It began with a levee
at Government House, where he invested a number of returned officers and
men with decorations won at the front. The reception of a score of
addresses came next and the replying to the more important of them,
including those from both Houses of the Commonwealth Legislature. The
functions finished with a banquet at Parliament Buildings, at which the
Right Honourable Mr. Hughes proposed the Prince's health. The toast was
seconded, in the warmest terms, by Mr. Frank Tudor, Leader of the
Opposition. The keynote of the occasion was sounded by Mr. Hughes when
he said to his guest: "The people of Australia see in you the things in
which they believe."
There followed a bewildering week in which the Prince was carried from
one public function to another, through extraordinary masses of people,
composed largely of women and children, but also comprising a very
considerable number of men, who waited in the streets for hours at a
time, sometimes in chill wind, fog or rain, on the chance of catching a
glimpse of the Royal visitor. Many of them, when he appeared, made such
efforts to approach and shake him by the hand, that the police had
difficulty in getting his car through. His progress was so delayed in
many cases that it became almost impossible for him to fulfil
engagements at the hour appointed, in spite of the most liberal
allowance of time for delays upon the road. Eventually appeals were made
through the press for some abatement of this personal demonstration. The
police arranged for a wider lane to be kept for his car, and the
difficulty gradually disappeared. The Melbourne newspapers, meanwhile,
day after day, made the Prince's visit their almost exclusive business.
The smallest details of his doings were chronicled with minuteness, and
long poems and articles about him were published. Photographs, in every
attitude and at every function, appeared prominently amongst the news of
the day. The Prince was "featured" inexhaustibly. Scenes of enthusiasm
also characterized the Naval Review, where every fighting ship belonging
to the Commonwealth of Australia was paraded. A special agricultural
show was held to which landholders from distant parts of Victoria sent
breeding stock so valuable that no previous exhibition had been able to
attract it. A public reception was given in the exhibition buildings,
where people stood from eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon
to secure front places. An entertainment was organized at the
cricket-ground where ten thousand school-children went through
marvellously trained evolutions, and fifty thousand spectators cheered
when the Prince appeared.
When one asked folk in the street what they thought of him, enthusiasm
found various expressions, but it was always enthusiasm. I have heard a
stout, middle-aged and presumably sane gentleman in the smoking-room of
a Melbourne hotel declare in the most bellicose tone to all and sundry
that he would like to fight for him. I never heard a word of criticism.
Certainly Melbourne, and all the great interests it represents, took the
Prince to a generous heart.
From Melbourne His Royal Highness made a two-days' trip by train into
the rich districts of Western Victoria, through the Werribee Plain,
where land fetches up to L60 per acre. Stone-walled fields of oats just
rising above ground, with pleasant farm-houses amidst sparse white
gum-trees, spread on either side of the track. Low, blue hills bounded
the view. Country folk waved greetings from many homesteads, as the
train sped onward. The first stopping-place was Geelong, on the
sheltered coast of Port Phillip, once a rival to Melbourne for the
honour of being the capital of Victoria, now a marine base, and
prosperous shire town. It is known throughout Australia as the home of
the doctrine of the one man vote, and eight-hour day, first promulgated
in the 'seventies, by Sir Graham Berry, who represented Geelong in the
Commonwealth Legislature. Here the Prince found himself in the midst of
an agricultural, manufacturing and shipping community. The
guard-of-honour was composed of naval cadets. He was shown thousands of
bales of finest merino wool from mills which not only clean and sort it,
but also, upon a smaller scale, manufacture it into blankets and cloth.
Pupils were presented to him from Geelong's famous grammar school, which
draws its students from all parts of Australia, and had a larger
proportion of casualties, in the great war, than any other educational
institution outside the British islands. Here also he visited a big
wool-shed, that of Messrs. Dennys Lascelles Ltd., with a ferro-concrete
roof weighing two thousand tons, so large that the sales-room it
shelters covers an acre of floor, yet there is not a single pillar in
support, the necessary stiffness being given by means of reinforced
girders, built upon cantilever principles, above the roof. The streets
were crowded with people, and the Prince had a very fine reception alike
at the reading of the municipal address, and at the functions of shaking
hands with returned soldiers, and inspecting school-children. A large
number of schools from townships in the interior were represented, each
with one pupil elected by its fellows to shake hands with the Prince.
The selected mites stood shyly out, in front of the lines of scholars,
as the Prince went by to honour the promise given.