2020: DAY 25
FEDERATION (p5)
COMMONWEALTH BILL BEFORE THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
ARRIVAL OF THE DELEGATES IN LONDON.
CORDIAL RECEPTION.
CONFERENCES AT THE COLONIAL OFFICE,
HOPEFUL PROSPECTS OF THE MEASURE.
(FROM OUR SFECIAL CORRESPONDENT), LONDON, March 16).
The week – almost the day – which witnessed the hoisting of the British flag over Bloemfontein and the consequent inauguration of a new era for the British race in South Africa, also beheld the arrival in London of the Australian delegates who have come here to watch over the passing or the Commonwealth Bill, which is intended to initiate an equally new era for the British race under the Southern Cross. At the same time it must be said that the all-absorbing interest attaching here to the war in South Africa has tended somewhat to force into the background the interest which would otherwise have been taken in the epoch-marking Australian measure which is about to occupy the sympathetic attention of the Imperial Parliament. It is an old, old truth –"silent leges inter arma"*– and the popular imagination is always more fascinated by deeds of arms than by acts of intellect, or, in other words, war has far more attraction for the masses and even for the classes, than the peaceful issue of politics. Besides, the Australian delegates have arrived among us without any preliminary blasts of advertising trumpets, and it is only since they have had one or two conferences at the Colonial Oflice with Mr Chamberlain and other officers of the Crown that the public at large have begun to realise the momentousness of the question with which their mission is connected. Moreover, popular interest in the question has not only been diminished but positively discounted by the results of the war. It is, of course, realised here in England that the federation of Australia is but a link in the chain of events that ought to lead to the federation of the whole British Empire. But at the same time it is felt that this Empire has, practically, been federated already by the blood of colonial and home-bred Britons which has been commingled in the common cause of the Queen's flag on several battlefields of South Africa, not to speak of the battlefields of the Soudan, where the New South Wales Contingent of volunteers may be said to have inaugurated the true era of Imperial unity. “It is not,” said Bismarck a few days after his accession to power, “ It is not by speechifying and majorities that the great questions of the time will have to be decided, but by blood and iron." …
[*silent leges inter arma" or Silent enim leges inter arma – “In times of war, law falls silent.” - attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero (Pro Milone, 52 BC)]
BUBONIC PLAGUE
(p8)
DIMINUTION OF CASES
PROGRESS OF RAT-KILLING OPERATIONS
RELEASE OF THE QUARANTINED AREA
- Belmore Park released
- Chairman of Board of Advice responded that wharf areas were still under quarantine because of amount of rubble held there. Decision to be made at end of week when Premier returns from Melb.
THE RAILWAYS - a carriage used to convey a patient from Goulburn. To be reserved for any further cases & when finished with, to be destroyed.
TO THE EDITOR – suggestion that oil be used to protect because oil & water-sellers in Cairo seem to be exempt from attack because they're "more or less oily" (water sellers wore oilskins)
EFFECTS OF COOL WEATHER
Captain W. E. Clarke, of Hongkong and Macao, who ia at present staying in Watson's Bay, informs us that it was found in South China that as soon as the cool weather set in the plague disappeared.
John's Cottage off Margaret St, Sydney, 1900 - Source: State Library of NSW