AUSTRALIA IN WAR TIME.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 March 1917, Page 2

AUSTRALIA IN WAR TIME.

Internal BickeringA Genera! Survey of tha Position. * Sydney, Ma»cb 22 While the destinies of nat-cno reck ia the. balance on Europe’s bloody battlefields, Australia is ia ti e throeß of ah election campaign. 'An Imperial War Oouucil r.its iji London, but Australia is unrepresented, because her politicians cannot suspend their patty quarrels for a few weeks or month?. Australian divisions are assisting the armies of the Empire to deliver hammer blows upon the eb;tk ing German lines in France, but they dwindle in strength because their, country is failing to send the promised ..reinforcementß. What ia the matter with Australia ? Pat thit question to an Australian, and in nine cases out of ien he' will answer, without any appearance of. re- [ eenting the inquiry, “ the politicians.” Generally he prefixes an adjective or [ two descriptive of the politicians. The r answer is obvious and tempting,though [ its incompleteness must be recognised. 7 Daring the last week or two your cari. respondeat has had several opportnni--7 ties of examining samples of the Aub* g ttali.au politician at close quartets, j One of the spiC tueus was a State Minister, who spoke at length and in 3 detail of patties and parsons, election r prospects and Pat Lament ary skirmish-

ing. Oica he paused to pomt, u'otn the window of a railway c.r, to a camp where a few times arid clean-limbed AusiraHahs prepare 1 foe tha Big Adventure. Aud quite obviously that camp meant less to him than a State Convention Gf bis own political party. He anticipated that the Hughes-Uook Government would secure a majority in the. Fedor; 1 House of Representative’, but would be in a minority in the Senate. What then “Well, I suppose we will mark time —in a way. No, there cannot be any conscription, . .Wo have had a pretty active recruiting campaign lately, but now, of coarse,[our time is taken up mainly with the election.” Another of Australia’s politicians was speaking to a lf.rge crowd from . . .1* __ ft nr« or*

the balcony of .an hotel. He was an official Labour candidate —“selected, endorsed, anti-conscription”—and hia ' immediate text was the charge levelled against him by an opponeut of. bemg a “disloyalist.” He objected to “personalities” of this nature. He protested that he waa as loyal as the next man ; nis loyalty to Australia mads it impossible for him to force any free-born Australian into the.bloodstained arena of Europe, The task of the Australian democracy, he proclaimed, was to defeat i.u—4-nraJfl— who had— it-diamptad-the party ” and “ betrayed their own cause.” If any consciousness of tha reality of the war lay in the back oir

his raind, ha did not allow it to intrude in tbs serious business of e'eo* tiouoering. Even hia peroration was political, not patriotic. Ha wanted Australia to note, not ta fight. . , In Martin Piece, Sydney, a few hours later, 'some 10,000 people attended a non-political meeting. A slim , Australian womau, in mourning for her dead man, appealed in ringing toues for recrnifs for tho Australian Expeditionary Force. A young officer with the scars of Gallipoli upon him, asked for men who would follow him to France Then Sir Ernest Shackleten sounded a nail of his own. " You have been told that you must fight to save Australia, and that is true,” he said. " But there is another reason why you must take your part in this war, You muat fight to save jour own seal, for if you flinch you will know yourself, ia your own heart, to be forever shamed. This call to service meanß more than duty, more than sacrifice, more than glory, more even than patriotism ; it is the supreme opportunity to vindicate your own manhood, to show that you oau6taod four square to the wigds. of Heaven, master of your fate and oaptain oE your souk” Seven men came .forward from among the listening thousands. • What, then, is the matter with Australia ? A casual visitor may well hesitate to answer that question. But the utterances of Australians them-, selves are the evidence that all ia not well politically in the big southern land whose volunteer soldiers have helped to form the very spear-head of the Empire’s armies on the Somme, The public men who ought to be giving the Commonwealth a sure aDd courageous lead at a most momentous stage in its history are bickering among themselves about issues that matter to the country less than the sigh of a u.: n le weary Anzac in France. The allocations of blame in just propor. tious among men and parties is not a task that interests an outsider parties larly. The essential fact is that the > internal squabble is proceeeding, and unfortunately all the indications suggest that it will continue when the general, election has tiesn completed.