ANYWHERE BUT FATHERLAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 18 June 1918, Page 6

ANYWHERE BUT FATHERLAND.

WHEN THE BOLSHEVIK! OPENED THE PRISON DOORS. Comedy does not even desert the Russian tragedy. We hear much of the German and Austrian prisoners. Fancy paints them as a kind of reserve army of manoeuvre, mysteriously disposable for some fell German or 'Bolshevik design. Their real condition was painted by a returned 'traveller in rather quieter colouring. When the Bolsheviks came in, they merely opened the prison doors on the interned enemy soldiers. Thenceforth they were free to come and go when they pleased. The interned at once decided to go anywhere but to the Fatherland. So, with German thoroughness, they came to the assistance of those Russian Friends of Man whose devotion to the race at large appears to exclude any meaner forms of personal service. In a country where no one was working they-began to work. They valeted the They couriered the courierless. They ran' messages, engaged rooms at the hotels, took the travellers' Mps. They show not the slightest inclination to leave Russia. Doubtless they will never leave it while the -war lasts. Quite certainly they will never fight for anybody any more.—The London "Nation."

, "OURSELVES!" AMERICAN CONTRAST WITH IRELAND. The New York Times, in a special article dealing with the proposal to introduce conscription into Ireland, after estimating that 161,000 young Irisn men are available for military service, says:— "Sinn Fein Ireland still remains fattened on war profits, vain, egotistical, sitting comfortably at home crying, "Ourselves, ourselves" The Irish as we have ?een have been promised a full measure of Home Rule, or selfgovernment, at the close of the war, but they want to get it without fighting. Let us establish a comparison: Some 10,000 British subjects in the Dnited States were accepted for service in the American Army in our first draft. They uo not expect any special reward after the war; they do not expect to exercise the right of self-deter-mination here ,or have a special State carved out for them from our territory. They will fight because the cause is just, without regard to grievances or selfish purposes of their own.

"Fifteen thousand Italian citizens were accepted in the first draft. They do not expect special privileges after the war. They have no personal axe to grind; no selfish bargain to make. Thirteen thousand Austrian subjects are in the same case. They are bargaining for no particular reward. Chinese and Japanese have been alcepted in the first draft, though their countrymen cannot even acquire citizenship here, much less special privileges. "So there remains one exception, the men of South and West Ireland, who have bargained for their reward—who have the certainty of their reward, and yet who sit by their firesides murmuring 'Ourselves, ourselves! ' while we are gathering our second draft. It would be perhaps an inspiriting thought iforr pur men Ito carry to the call to memory at some hour when they are hard pressed, when men about ithem >aro being put td. pieces, when our reserves seem available —it would be an inspiriting thing to remember these four army corps of Irishmen, all physically fit, all of military age, who might come to their aid against the Hun, but who have sat. at home, a privileged class, not fighting willingly and now protesting when at last it seems they will be forced to fight."