GERMANY AND AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2916, 31 October 1916, Page 4

GERMANY AND AUSTRALIA

It is hard to believe that tho world contains human beings sufficiently degraded to do the ghastly deeds recently recounted by the Paris correspondent of the New York Times. But we are assured that this writer has simply summarised documents which provide indisputable proof that Germany is infecting British, French, and Russian'prisoners with deadly diseases with_ the deliberate intention of sending them borne to die, and of spreading contagion among their own people and among the inhabitants of neutral nations. The American message may not. carry the same weight as the British official report regarding tho typnus epidemic among the prisoners at Gar-; delegen, but one cannot help feeling that the Government responsible for the misery, desolation, and brutality described in this official document is quite capable of almost any outrage that the mind of man can conceive. The rulers of Germany have, shown ,that they have no respect for law, human or divine. They have; butchered innocent women and children on land and sea; they have been guilty of pillage and piracy; they have endeavoured to terrorise their enemies by wanton destruction and devastation on an unexampled scale; they have bullied and threatened neutrals and abused their hospitality; they have torn up treaties and have resorted to falsehood and forgery in order to justify their conduct; they have destroyed universities and cathedrals to gratify their fury; the brutality of their soldiers,, officers, and men has at times been so bestial that it has been impossible to publish some of the worst things they have done; they have tried to crush the very souls of men by the adoption of methods of frightfulno3S which have no' military justification whatever. And it is into the hands of these people , that the anti-conscriptionists in i Australia, led on by German agents and prompted by ignorance and prejudice, have been playing. The torpedoing of tho Lusitania, the judicial murder of Captain Fryatt and Nurse Caveix, and the unparalleled horrors of the prison camps, are not isolated acts of barbarism. They are merely outstanding Events in the long and terrible story of German frightfulness. When we cast our minds back over tho appalling list of atrocious crimes committed by Germany, and realise tho terrible position in which the whole world would be placed, and more especially the British Empire, if Germany should escape from the war without being completely cripplod, it is astounding to find_ that there arc still people within the Empire who fail to appreciate how much they have at stake in this struggle. In face of tho duty we owe to our murdered kinsfolk; in face of the fact that every man who can bo spared is needed at the front to lighten the burden of the brave men already there, and hasten the day of victory; in face of the terrible menace which must confront us in the years to come unless wo win a sweeping victory; practically ono half of the people of Australia have voted to tie the hands of their Government

and cripple its offorts to bring the war to a successful end. With all that thev have at stake: honour, duty, self-interest, one-half of the population, of the Commonwealth have, voted, to quote the words of one of their own. papers, that Australia, shall be the first "quitter" in tho struggle on which the future of Australia depends. Australia may perhaps find some consolation for tho unenviable position in which the Referendum vote has placed her in the eyes of the world in the iact that the real issue at stake has been obscured in the heat and passion of the struggle. The reason for the Commonwealth Government seeking the authority voted on has been to a large extent lost sight of in the bitterness of the antagonism, personal and political, to tho leaders of the movement in its favour. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and the people of Australia squabble and half of them vote to cripple their own efforts in the midst of a war with an enemy who threatens: their existence as a free people.