From – "To be Amused"

You ask me to be gay and glad

While lurid clouds of danger loom,

And, vain and bad and gambling mad,

Australia races to her doom…

You bid me make a farce of day

And a mockery of death,

While not five thousand miles away

The Yellow millions pant for breath!

Store guns and ammunition first,

Build forts and warlike factories,

Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst,

Give overtime to industries.

The outpost of the White man’s race,

Where next his flag must be unfurled

Make clean the place! Make strong the place!

Call in White men from all over the world!

Amazing Foresight

Henry Lawson – poet, patriot, swagman, social-revolutionary, political satirist and one of the primary spiritual founders of "Australian Radical-nationalism" – was vindicated by history. His prophetic warnings pertaining to apocalyptic global upheavals which would redetermine the political and economic status of the West generally and Australia in particular, have been fulfilled.

The most appalling examples have been two fratricidal wars of such dimensions as to remould forever the economic, political and bio-cultural patterns of this planet.

Referring to World War I, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee drew an analogy between it and the Peloponnesian wars. Both shared the same significance of heralding the decline of great cultures through internecine struggle. Following the Second World War the West entered the epoch of absolute decline with the surrender of its hegemony through "wars of national liberation" in the colonies, and with the promotion of the mass "Coca-Cola" cultural distortion of the remaining vestiges of its High Culture and its particularist Folk Cultures.

An issue of the nationalist paper AUDACITY (November 1982) featured an article: "The Third Development Decade." This dealt with the Third World food/population crisis, quoting statistics and estimates for the next decade. In this Malthusian Armageddon, presented as the only plausible scenario (exempting an act of "Divine Providence"), Lawson’s poems assume a new importance and urgency. "To Be Amused" embodies the essential solutions for the survival of the Australian people in the coming storm.

By our place in the midst of the farthest seas we are fated to stand alone –

When the nations fly at each other’s throats let Australia look to her own;

Let her spend her gold on the barren West for the land and it’s manhood’s sake;

For the south must look to the south for strength in the storm that is yet to break.

Now who shall gallop from cape to cape, and who shall defend our shores?

The crowd that stands on the kerb agape and glares at the cricket scores?

And who shall hold the invader back when the shells tear up the ground? -

The weeds that yelp by the cycling track while a nigger scorches round?

There may be many to man the forts in the big towns by the sea –

But the East will call to the West for strength in the storm that is yet to be:

The West cries out to the East in drought, but the coastal towns are dumb;

And the East must look to the West for food in the war that is to come

The rain comes down on the Western land and the rivers run to waste,

While the townsfolk rush for the special tram in their childish, sense-less haste.

And never a pile of lock we drive – but a few mean tanks we scratch –

For the fate of a nation is nought compared with the turn of a cricket match.

I saw a vision in days gone by, and would dream that dream again,

Of the days when the Darling shall not back her billabongs in vain.

There were reservoirs and grand canals where the sad dry land had been,

And a glorious network of aquaducts mid fields that were always green.

I have pictured long in the land I love what the land I love might be,

Where the Darling rises from Queensland rains and the flood rushes out to the sea.

And is it our fate to wake too late to the truth that we have been blind,

With a foreign foe at our harbour gate and a blazing drought behind?

With the versatility, colour, insight and foresight truly representative of genius, Lawson’s life and works rank him akin to the romantic adventurers of the Elizabethan period (perhaps a Raleigh of prose). He reminisced of mightier, grander days, when the world was wide and Australia could boast of Byronian characters such as Breaker Morant.

The world is narrow and days are short, and our lives are dull and slow,

For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go.

Greater or smaller, - the same old things we shall see by the dull roadside –

And tired of all is the spirit that sings of the days when the world was wide.

‘Twas honest metal and honest wood in the days of the Outward bound,

When men were gallant and ships were good – roaming the wide world round.

The gods could envy a leader then when "Follow me, lads!" he cried.

They faced each other and fought like men, in the days when the world was wide.

South, East and West in advance of Time – and far in advance of thought –

And is it for this damned life we praise the god-like spirit that died

At Eureka stockade in the Roaring days, with the days when the world was wide!

Unconsciously subscribing to "Hegelian Dialectics," Lawson glorified the heroic stratum of society – a milieu to which he himself belonged. That element within a people transcends economic classification. It is motivated by a nobler "raison d’etre" than simply the satisfaction of immediate personal, material and biological needs. It is this heroic culture bearing stratum that incarnates the Hegelian zeitgeist and is the real locomotive of history and not Marx's economic determinist claptrap.

It is through such extraordinary personalities, who, despite risk to life, limb or personal happiness, elect in times of national or cultural crisis to champion the needs of their respective tribes, peoples or cultures, that humanity has been graced with signposts leading them from the labyrinth of Palaeolithic caves to Cape Canaveral in the space of but fifty thousand years.

As a protagonist of the "Carlylean Cult of the Exceptional Human Being," (refer: Thomas Carlyle, Heroes And Hero Worship) Lawson belongs to the same artistic tradition as A.B. Paterson, Bernard O’Dowd, A.H. Adams and Norman Lindsey. All were Australian Nationalists. Lindsey and O’Dowd were proponents of Nietzsche’s Heroic philosophy of life as well as the values inherent in Classical Greek and Norse mythology. For an articulation of this value-system, and its archetypal mythic basis in the eternal verities of our Indo-European culture-soul, refer to the radical traditionalist Julius Evola's Revolt Against The Modern World (Rochester: Inner Traditions International). Complementary reading to Evola's various works are Robert Graves, The White Goddess, Caitlin Matthews, Sophia: Goddess Of Wisdom, Sir James Fraser, The Golden Bough, Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis And Religion, The Sane Society and To Have Or To Be etc.; these works in part cover the existential questions raised by Evola and others. The aforementioned Australian artists reflected this eternal "Value System" in their poetry and paintings, thereby attempting to popularise it as the only sound alternative to the bourgeois "culture" prevalent in the West of their day (and, unfortunately, our day also).

The following extracts from Lawson’s poetry are demonstrative of this "Hegelian-Nietzschean" world-view, and should be considered as pre-requisite for a modern Australian Nationalism.

Now with the wars of the word begun, they’ll listen to you and me,

Now while the frightened nations run to the arms of democracy,

Now when the blathering fools are scared, and the years have proved us right –

All unprepared and unprovided, the outpost of the White.

Listen through House and Senate – listen from east to west

For the voice of one Australian who will stand above the rest,

Who will lead his country’s dawning, who will lead in his manhood’s noon –

The man may come with the hour – but the hour may come too soon.

…. In my country’s hour of need,

For it shall surely come,

While run by fools who’ll never heed

The beating of the drum,

While baffled by the fools at home

And threatened from the sea –

Lord send a man like Oliver –

And let me live to see.

If you find him stern, unyielding, when his living task is set,

I have told you that a Tyrant shall uplift the nation yet;

It is within the light of these four quotations that Lawson’s socialism and republicanism, as evidenced also by "Faces in the Street" and "Eureka", assume a Holistic perspective. They offered the Australian people an alternative World-View to that which was then and is now being foisted on them by passe bourgeois and Marxist ideologies.

The following extracts are particularly pertinent to our contemporary political situation. The conditions, which gave rise to them, are being recapitulated today. Lawson’s reactions and solutions are explicit. We would do well to heed him!

To arms! To arms! The cry is out,

to arms and play your part,

For every pike upon a pole will find a Tyrant’s heart!

Now Lalor comes to take the lead,

the spirit does not lag,

And down the rough, wild diggers

kneel beneath the Diggers’ Flag;

Then rising to their feet, they swear,

while rugged hearts beat high,

To stand beside their leader and to conquer or to die!

Around Eureka’s stockade now

the shades of night close fast.

Three hundred sleep beside their arms,

And thirty sleep their last.

But not in vain those Diggers died.

Their comrades may rejoice,

For o’er the voice of tyranny is heard the people’s voice:

It says, reform your rotten laws,

The Digger’s wrongs make right.

Or else with them, our brothers now

Will gather to the fight.’

‘Twas of such stuff the men were made

Who saw our nation born,

And such as Lalor were the men

Who led the vanguard on,

And like such men may we be found,

With leaders such as they,

In the roll up of Australians on our darkest, grandest day.

They lie, the men who tell us, for reasons of their own,

That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;

For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet

My window sill is level with the faces in the street.

Drifting past, drifting past,

To the beat of weary feet,

While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so good and fair,

To see upon those faces stamped the marks of want and care.

I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet

In sallow, sunken faces that are that are drifting through the street.

Drifting on, drifting on,

To the scrape of restless feet,

I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

Once I cried "O God Almighty! If thy might doth still endure,

Now show me in a vision for the wrongs of Earth a cure.

And lo, with shops all shuttered I beheld a city’s street,

And in the warning distance heard the tramp of many feet,

Coming near, coming near,

To a drum’s distant beat,

‘Twas despair’s conscripted army

that was marching down the street!

Then like a swollen river that has broken bank and wall,

The human flood came pouring with the red flags over all,

And kindled eyes all blazing bright

With revolution’s heat,

And flashing swords reflecting rigid faces in the street –

Pouring on, pouring on,

To a drum’s loud threatening beat

And the war hymns and the cheering of the people in the street.

And it must be while the world goes rolling round its course,

The warning pen shall write in vain,

The warning voice grow hoarse,

But not until a city feels Red Revolution’s feet

Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street,

The dreadful everlasting strife

For scarcely clothes and meat

In the pent tract of living death –

The city’s cruel street.

As is self-evident from these and other extracts, Lawson was proudly a social-revolutionary and a Republican. But the Social Republic he advocated had NOTHING in common with the Marxian drivel nor with the present-day liberal Fabian nonsense.

On the contrary, a summation of Lawson’s works necessarily produces a revolutionary manifesto, the foundation for a progressively evolving nationalistic social order. The following, intended solely as an example, is based upon principles distilled from his poetry: -

1. National ownership and control of the factors of production, exchange and distribution within the parameters of a "planned economy" co-ordinating private and public enterprise. Military integration as a feature imperative to the aforestated planned economy. A government which is socially considerate and humane whilst simultaneously guardian and patron of the Cultural and Biological integrity and exclusiveness of the Nation.
2. A meritocratic form of government which expresses an "Organic" as opposed to "Class" conceptualisation of society. Democratic and Republican in the Classical Greco-Roman sense (where Civic Duty and Privileges coincide as mandatory to Citizenship) as opposed to the 19^th century Bourgeois-Marxist sense which denies national cohesiveness through laissez-faire egotism and proletarian mediocrity. Such a "programme" has of necessity appeared again in Australia. It is held to by the emerging nationalist movement.

In as much as such a society would result from the synthesis of the matriarchal Democratic-egalitarian and patriarchal Elitist-authoritarian traditions peculiar to our Western Heritage, its general nature can be outlined as follows; -

Democratic and egalitarian insofar as all artificial obstacles to social-mobility will have to be removed (i.e. status of parents, status derived from membership of exclusive fraternities, "the old school tie", status derived from bank balance, etc.).. whilst facilitating genuine opportunities for the acquisition of skills necessary for social advancement within a healthily expanding economic, cultural and political climate. Such were Lawson’s objectives.

This system would be elitist and authoritarian insofar as, if there were no artificial determinants to produce the other, contemporary, elite, then its leadership must logically be the result of exceptional talent and dedication to the national-body, and the authority of that leadership should not be contested simply to satisfy personal egotism or sectional, as opposed to national interests.

Those outstanding people who, having achieved national recognition for their peculiar qualities, and having their authority periodically ratified by mass popular support by means of plebiscites, would act as the nation’s "Tribunes" (Roman) or "Ephors" (Greek) for the duration of the period allotted to office. Their task would be to act as "Ombudsman with Teeth" to whom the permanent national bureaucracy would be held accountable. In such a capacity they would ensure that national policy was genuinely representative of national feelings and needs, whilst being constitutionally empowered to act as the Protectors of individual sovereignty and felicity as well as Protectors of the independence and well being of the nation as a whole.

(For supporting evidence refer to all the poems quoted in this article in their entirety from: Lawson H., Collected Verse, by Colin Roderick, ed: Angus & Robertson, 1967. or any anthology of his works published prior to 1972 – the year of Al Grassby’s debut as art critic and censor.)

In conclusion, the following extracts are self-explanatory, reaffirming the historical validity of Lawson’s vision and demonstrating the continuity of the radical-nationalist world-view.

The geo-political realities which engendered this perspective have not altered in any regard favourable to Australia, but rather have been exascerbated with the advent of nuclear weapons and sophisticated means of communication. The capability for mass population shifts by newly aroused Third World peoples, combined with a progressive decline in Western self-esteem and the prospect of a third internecine war on the horizon, makes all of all of Lawson's work– and especially the following extracts – all the more relevant. -

(referring to the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, but which may prove to be more appropriate today)

"Tis the first round of the struggle

O the East against the West,

Of the fearful war of races

Fr the white man could not rest.

Hold them – IVAN! Staggering

Bravely underneath your gloomy sky:

Hold them IVAN we shall want you

Pretty badly by and by,

Fighting for the Indian Empire

When the British pay their debt,

Never Briton watched for Blucher

As he’ll watch for Ivan yet!

It means all to young Australia –

It means life or death to us,

For the Vanguard of the White Man

Is the vanguard of the RUSS.

We boast no more of our bloodless flag

That rose from a nation’s slime;

Better a shred of a deep dyed rag

From the storms of olden time.

From grander clouds in our peaceful

Skies than ever were there before

I tell you the Star of the South

Shall rise – in the lurid clouds of war.

It ever must be while blood is warm,

And the sons of men increase;

There’ll come a point that we will not yield, no matter if right or wrong;

And man will fight on the battlefield while passion and pride are strong –

So long as he will not kiss the rod,

And his stubborn spirit sours,

For the scorn of Nature and the curse of God are heavy on a peace like ours.

There are boys today in the city slums and the home of wealth and pride

Who’ll have one home when the storm is come,

And fight for it side by side.

All creeds and trades will have soldiers there – give every class its due –

And there’ll be many a clerk to spare for the pride of the jackaroo.

And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city sky’s aflame,

Will have something better to talk about than an absent woman’s shame,

Will have something nobler to do by far

Than jest at a friend’s expense,

Or blacken a name in a public bar

or over a backyard fence.

The selfsame spirit that drives a man

to the depths of drink and crime

Will do the deeds in the hero’s van

That live to the end of time.

The living death in the lonely bush,

The greed of the selfish town,

And even the creed of the outlaw

Push is chivalry – upside down.

‘Twill be while ever our blood is hot,

While every the world goes wrong,

The nations rise in a war,

To rot in a peace that lasts too long.

And southern nation and southern state,

Aroused from their dream of ease,

Must sign in the Book of Eternal Fate

Their stormy histories.

Out of Lawson’s vision of a tumultuous climax to three thousand years of Greco-Roman history, Australia’s destiny will be secured by qualities of character and personality intrinsic to our ennobled posterity. This idea was best expressed in the form of "Australian Engineers."

A new generation has arisen under Australian skies,

Boys with the light of genius deep in their dreamy eyes.

Not as artists or poets with their vain imaginings,

But born to be thinkers and doers,

And makers of wonderful things.

Boys who are slight and quiet,

Boys who are strong and true,

Dreaming of great inventions –

Always of something new;

With brains untrammelled by training,

But quick where reason directs,

Boys with imagination and unclouded intellects.