Adelaide, when we reached it, was like the rest of the Australian continent, celebrating the declaration of war by a tremendous outburst of patriotism; the whole place fluttered with little flags, Union Jacks were on every bicycle or cart or motor-car, loyal crowds were assembling at street corners. We in England have no conception of the depths of feeling that our fellow-countrymen in Australia have for “home.” It embraces all those who come out there on a visit, so that instead of strangers in a strange land they feel like a dear and welcome friend returning to his own people. By the evening the occasion had been felt to be so momentous that the youthful male population, with whom the streets were crowded, had celebrated it in some cases to excess, and this was the sole occasion on which we saw anything approaching to intemperance while we were in Australia, or on which the population forsook its habitual and universal beverage of weak tea. That they were carried away by enthusiasm was all to their credit. Trained to military service from his school days every Australian realises, as few Englishmen have yet done, the importance of self-defence, and the obligation of every man in the country to take his share in it.

We have much to learn from Australia, but in no respect more than in her admirable system of universal military training. We have already mentioned her cadet training in schools. When a boy reaches the age of fourteen he becomes a senior cadet, and a general military training is added to the physical training that is already part of his school curriculum. At the beginning of the year in which he reaches his fourteenth birthday he has to be registered, and his registration papers are sent to the Area Officer, under whose jurisdiction he now passes. This officer sees that the boys go up for their medical examination; after passing this, a boy is measured for his uniform, and allotted to his company in the senior cadet battalion of the area. The average percentage of rejections after the medical examination is only seven and a half. The senior cadet is now subject to military discipline and becomes part of the military system of the country. He has to attend four whole-day drills of at least four hours, twelve half-day drills of two hours’ duration, and twenty-four night drills of one hour’s minimum duration. Boys who are still at school may be formed into special companies. It is an important feature of the system that all the companies in a battalion area form one battalion independently of the numbers involved, for the battalions are training, not fighting, units. The training for senior cadets consists of physical drill, company and some battalion drill, field training and musketry. An excellent provision secures good work on the part of the cadets. At the end of each year’s training an inspection takes place, and all who fail to satisfy the regular officer responsible, lose the value of their year’s work, as the Act requires an additional year’s training for each failure of the inefficient.

Ammunition and uniforms are supplied free. In his fourth year of training the senior cadet must satisfy the medical officer of the training area of his fitness, those falling below the standard are certified in their record books as “exempt.” In the third stage of his training, from eighteen to twenty-six years old, the young Australian becomes a member of the Citizen Forces. This system is gradually superseding the older militia, which prescribed a period of three years’ training only, and consequently attains so much the more an efficient military standard. The training is arranged as far as possible with a view to the convenience of the men, who are only obliged to be absent from home during a short period spent in camp every year. Parades are held on holidays, Saturday afternoons, or in the evening. In some districts Sunday training has been advocated and has raised considerable opposition, but Brigadier-General J. G. Legge, C.M.G., commanding, at the time of writing, the Division of the Australian Forces in Egypt, in an article on Australian Defence,9 reminds his readers that “not so many centuries ago it was the law of England that every able-bodied man should practise with the bow at the village butts on Sunday after church hours, and why not now on Sunday afternoons? This would get over the difficulty with employers quite well.” Pay is given for attendance at parades in the Citizen Forces.

Under the universal training system all start as privates, and each rank competes for promotion to the one immediately above it. But it must be remembered that in Australia, as in other new countries, there are no sharply drawn class distinctions, there hardly exists an idle class, and to quote Brigadier-General Legge once more: “Brains and practical proficiency alone will carry weight with units such as we now have to lead and discipline in Australia.” There is no room in that happy land for the promotion of influential incompetence.

The Australian system is working smoothly and well, and presents the spectacle of a trained and disciplined people, far indeed removed from militarism, yet with a corporate sense and a deep and zealous patriotism. Almost equally important is the fact that the Australian Government makes ample provision for all munitions of war and equipment for its forces.

It is with the boys that every country must begin. “I believe this,” wrote Lord Methuen,10 “to be the proper solution for the national defence of this country.... It is to be noted that each colony has adopted compulsory cadet training as its foundation. We worked on Lord Kitchener’s admirable Australian scheme in forming the Citizen Army in South Africa.... The physique and discipline of our nation will gain enormously if the lad is trained from the age of twelve till he reaches eighteen.... Let the nation accept the principle and the details can be made to fit in without any difficulty.”

With regard to Education South Australia is, in one respect only, the least progressive of the states, for it has fixed the minimum age at which children may be employed in factories at thirteen, as compared with fourteen elsewhere. Victoria leads the way with a minimum of fifteen for girls. On the other hand, the state has been a pioneer in dealing with destitute and neglected children. The Chief Secretary of the Government appoints a State Children’s Council composed of men and women. Its work is conducted on the most enlightened methods. The children, whether, as in most cases, they are boarded out, or in institutions, are judiciously looked after and provided for, till the boys have reached the age of eighteen, and the girls of twenty-one years. The work, whether paid or unpaid, of the large staff of assistants in urban and country districts, is given alike “ungrudgingly and in the spirit of the volunteer,” says Mrs. Margaret Wragge, a member of the council. Thus the state is providing with foresight for the useful careers of every one of its future men and women.

In the matter of general education the system is that in force elsewhere. Primary education is free and compulsory, there is an elaborate system of training for teachers, who are given every facility for self-improvement. Technical education is provided for by the “School of Mines and Industries.” The Adelaide University is of comparatively old foundation, as it dates from 1874. It has been fortunate in receiving generous endowments from local benefactors, and has handsome spacious buildings. The name of the late Sir Samuel Way, the Chief Justice, and a prominent, active citizen, will always be associated with the progress of the University.

As we have said, Adelaide is girdled with hills, of which the most important is Mount Lofty, and part of this high ground has been set aside as a national reserve, a park in perpetuity for the community; a large area left in its natural state, to show what Australia once was to the children’s children of the first settlers.

The drive up the hills is not an easy one, for the road ascends steeply and the ground falls sharply away. The view over Adelaide grows more and more beautiful with every few feet of the ascent, as the semicircle of hills, with their valley and city, and the illimitable expanse of ocean are spread out below. The reserve is a vast area of sloping green lawns, more or less thickly covered with trees. Growing among the gums were the curious shea-oak, and the still more curious wild cherry, whose stone grows outside the fruit; the wattle was here only bursting its yellow balls into flower. We saw a clump of the pretty drosera or sundew, and a quantity of small purple orchids not unlike our blue squills in shape and size.

All kinds of birds live in this retreat: especially the Australian magpie with his odd conventual air, and the white cowl and black frock that make him look like a Dominican friar.

The magpies are sociable birds, friendly and companionable. They are, besides, greedy and carnivorous. An Australian lady, who was acting as our hostess on this occasion, told us she had once seen a magpie swallow three mice in succession, and sit afterwards ruminating over their digestion with the three tails hanging down from his beak.

There, too, was the laughing jackass, or to call him by his musical native name the “kookaburra,” who resembles in shape and colour a large untidy jay. We heard for the first time the sweet note of the Australian thrush, and saw several redheaded parrots. The road led into a beautiful wooded glen, a favourite place for picnics.

Picnics are a great institution in Australia, and to avoid the dangers of bush fires little open-air hearths are made in such places as these, with an iron rod across them and hooks for hanging the “billy” to boil the water for the weak tea that is the invariable accompaniment of all meals. There is always plenty of dry wood in that dry climate, and generally a little shelter is put up, with a rough table and benches, sometimes a tank for rain water, but this, when it is there, has a way of being rusty. On this occasion time demanded our return, for we were lunching with one of the University professors, so we came back to the city that is only less pastoral than its hills, and were deposited at our destination by the kind new acquaintances, who had devoted a long morning to us.

Our hosts lived in a charming bungalow on the side of a hill, the garden was full of early spring flowers, jonquils and other bulbs. Their guest house was detached, as it were, in a little garden of its own, which seemed a particularly pleasant way of entertaining one’s friends, giving a sense of freedom both to visitors and hosts. In the drawing-room was a big bowl of camellias, which flourish in the open air in Australia. Our host and hostess came of one of the oldest Australian families; that is, their daughter told us her grandfather came over in 1837 and her grandmother three years later. Life was a hard thing in those days. To begin with, there was the six months’ voyage in the old sailing ships. In their early days of married life they had no food except salt pork and damper, or a kind of bread made without yeast, which is very nice on a picnic, but would be trying as a staple form of food. On Sundays they had rice boiled in water and raisins. “My grandfather used to be so hungry that he once shot a sitting magpie.” It must, even so, have been a meal of bones and feathers.

There was something patriarchal about this pleasant, cultivated household. The settlement which the earlier generation had won from the bush remained in the family, and the descendants of its servants still served them. After lunch we were taken off to tea in the hospitable Australian way to some friends of our hosts’ who were giving a tea-party. Their house lay at some distance from the town, with its back to the hills. It was approached by a park much like an English park, with eucalyptus for oaks and magpies for rooks, and the house itself was much like an English country house, and an English tea-party, with great bowls of roses and violets in the drawing-room.

It would be difficult to find anywhere a lovelier situation than the slopes of these hills, facing the far-distant sea. The entrance to the drive was heavy with the scent of stocks, and gay with masses of red geranium, a bougainvillea covered with purple flowers hung over the flight of steps, and below the garden lawns, on which the large, handsome black and white Australian wagtails were hopping about, orange trees displayed their golden fruit and glossy leaves against a background of almond blossom, and ripe limes and grape fruits.

As it was only about three miles back into Adelaide, with a good road and a fine evening, we proposed to walk home to our hotel, as we had had no exercise since we had left England. The suggestion, however, was considered so entirely impracticable as to be not worth discussing. It was merely waved aside, and the whole time we were in the country we were impressed by the fact that Australians never seem to walk. They motor, they have excellent tram services, but except up-country they don’t seem to ride. An older resident at Adelaide lamented that there were actually so few young men who could ride in the district, that their numbers were insufficient to keep up the local Hunt Club.

We left Adelaide on a warm sunny August day. The long, long railway journeys from one state capital to another are made by night. The trains are dusty, the scenery monotonous, so that the tedium and discomfort are by this means minimised as much as possible. Of course, there are beautiful tracts of country, that the railroad passes through, but in a land where the eucalyptus is everywhere the prevailing form of vegetation, and water is rare, monotony is inevitable. On leaving Adelaide the main line towards Melbourne runs through charming park-like country, with green lawns and trees and deep gorges. The train climbs the Mount Lofty range with delightful glimpses of the sea, and an ascent punctuated by peculiarly sulphurous little tunnels, reminiscent of those on the Apennines.

Afterwards we crossed a spacious pastoral country dotted sparsely with homesteads, peaceful in the great calm of the luminous evening, then the swift dusk fell and blotted out all. At Murray Bridge we paused for dinner, in the old-fashioned continental way. Dinner in railway stations in Australia is simple and expeditious, and in our experience invariably excellent. It is thrown at the traveller by a miscellaneous assortment of young women, who fall over each other in their hospitable anxiety to get through the menu in time. That, however, did not suffice, for having hastily despatched our soup and the very good turkey, which is always a standing dish in Australia, and trifled with a sweet, we were summoned back to the train. Here we observed in passing along the corridor to our own carriage a bulky-looking passenger disgorging from his pockets large quantities of the dessert, which we had had no time to eat, and which he had adroitly commandeered. He was bulging with it, in fact, and was now proudly exhibiting a selection of it spread out on the opposite seat of the carriage—five oranges, three apples, and some bananas. Seeing our eye upon him he offered us a share of the spoils, as a species of hush money in kind. Oranges and apples and bananas are delicious in Australia; the dry soapy things sold for bananas in London give no idea of what a pleasant form of food a fresh banana can be.

He is no traveller who cannot sleep on any occasion under any circumstances, even in a rattling and draughty train. After a good night we woke up next morning to see an immense grassy plain stretching away to the horizon on either side. Cattle and sheep were feeding, and there were patches of plough land. For the first time the “bush” had retreated to a respectful distance.