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This U.S0 Columnist
Doesn't Like Us!
"News" Special Service
NEW YORK, Monday.-One of the bitterest attacks
ever made by an American newspaperman against Aus
tralia has been delivered by columnist Westbrook
Pegler.
T is contained in his column to-,
day, published in Hearst anti
British newspapers throughout the
United States.
In a discussion of the term
"double talk," Pegler describes
Australians as a "sticky, boggy,
braggart lot." and describes Aus
tralian slang as "muscular and
mirthless."
Pegler says:-"Double talk isn't
pig Latin, that juvenile prattle
which essays to disguise the mean
ing of the verb 'to scram' by the
form 'armscray.' Nor is it that
stupid abomination imported from
the Australian docks about 30
years ago which called a suit a
'fiddle-and-flute.' and a girl a
'twist-and-twlrl.'
"How some of us came to regard
the Australians as our nearest of
kin among the peoples of the Bri
tish Empire I shall never clearly
understand. For the compliment
is all theirs. and tIeir slang so
muscular and mirthless that it can
not truly be expressed in words or
line-drawings, but only in lino
leum cuts.
"A sticky. boggy, braggart lot,
but never able to take their own
part in a big world and always de
pendent on Americans for their
ultimate salvation from a fate
worse than death; thex exclude wit
and grace and exude bravado.
"The Australians' contribution
to the songs of the late war was
an incredible banal thing called
'Waltzing Miatilda.'
"Inquiry discloses that a Matilda
wvas a bundle that a hobo carried
on his travels, and that to 'waltz
Matilda's was to hit the road-for
1eaven's sake!
Pegler confines the rest of his
column to more discussion on the
meaning of double talk.
$