  We present the soft X-ray (0.1--2.4 keV) properties of a complete sample of
88 southern radio sources derived from the Wall \& Peacock 2-Jy sample. It
comprises 68 radio galaxies, 18 quasars and 2 BL Lac objects. Whereas both BL
Lac objects and all but one quasar are detected in the {\it ROSAT} All-Sky
Survey, the fraction of detected radio galaxies is only $\sim$ 60 per cent. For
the undetected sources upper limits to the X-ray flux are given. We confirm the
correlation of the soft X-ray luminosity (\lx) with the core radio luminosity
(\lc) for galaxies as well as for quasars using partial correlation analysis,
whereas the corresponding correlations between \lx and \lt are probably
spurious due to sample selection effects. We also find strong correlations
between \lx and \lc for both Fanaroff-Riley type I (FR~I) and type II galaxies.
The broad-line radio galaxies (BLRGs) and the quasars are at the top end of the
X-ray luminosity distribution and the detection rate of these objects generally
is higher than that of the narrow- or weak-lined radio galaxies. This indicates
the presence of an anisotropic X-ray component in BLRGs and quasars, as
predicted by unified schemes for radio sources.
