An Anzac on England

Strewth! The Australian woman was among the first in the world to get the vote, but apparently did not feel free to indulge in the vices enjoyed by the average Australian man. That has changed dramatically since 1940, or least male levels of indulgence have dropped to close to female levels, at least for smoking.

Part of the dirtiness which offended our Anzac (and from the sounds of it, quite a few others) was the prevalence of venereal disease:

He finds the people careless and dirty, and venereal disease prevalent, and beyond a few notices in public conveniences he has found little attempt to combat the last evil. People ask him if it is true that there are licensed brothels in Queensland, and seem horrified to learn that such things are tolerated. Yet venereal disease is not rampant in Australia.

Well, that much hasn’t changed - there are still licensed brothels in Queensland (though I’m not sure if they’ve been legal for the whole period since 1940); most other states in Australia have something similar; and British laws are still less tolerant of prostitution than Australian ones. I do wonder how exactly he found venereal diseases to be so prevalent, though …

Mr Melbourne also remarked upon the numbers of evidently very poor children he saw in the industrial towns of the Midlands, and the low pay of Tommy Atkins (to whom he “dips his lid”), both of which he contrasted unfavourably with the Australian case. But he did at least close with some positive words about Britain:

There are also other things which he will not forget - the hospitality he has received, the calmness of the civilians in areas which have been subjected to constant air-attacks, and the tremendous improvement in the output of war-material and munitions which has been apparent since he first came to England. He knows that England will eventually prevail in the struggle, but he looks in vain for the man who will rebuild the nation in the years to come.

There were a number of responses to “An Anzac on England” in the Spectator’s correspondence columns, mostly rather defensive - including one by Alison Neilans, Secretary of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, who did not approve of Queensland’s licensed brothels at all.

Another writer pointed out that Tommies were paid so poorly because the British people were bearing almost the entire cost of the war alone, against a nation with twice its population.

Sydney Melbourne’s compatriot, Sydneysider, probably had the most amusingly snarky comment, calling him “the sort of mental clod-hopper the average Australian has little time for in Australia”, “the startled male equivalent of Alice in Wonderland”. But as I (hopefully) will be over there in Britain myself in a few months, I’ll be able to judge the accuracy of “An Anzac on England” for myself … or maybe things have changed in the last 67 years!