The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1017. THE AUSTRALIAN VERDICT.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1017. THE AUSTRALIAN VERDICT.

The Australian public yesterday, at the second time of asking, turned down conscription, only more emphatically than before. Last time the majority against conscription was 72,000. This time the majority is 153,000, with the soldiers' votes to come. Tho result will bo deplored throughout the Empire. It has been conclusively shown that the strength of the Australian divisions in the field can never be maintained by voluntary enlistment. Voluntaryism, indeed, has, in all its forms and devices, been exhausted, and already the Australian divisions have been considerably attenuated through the lack of adequate reinforcements. We doubt whether the bulk of the Australian public desire to tesive their fighting men or wish to escape their obligations in connection with the war. Those to blame are the weak-kneed politicians who were lifraid to accept the responsibility for putting conscription through Parliament without reference to the individual voters. There are some questions on which the proletariat should not be consulted in war time, and conscription is one. The majority of women do not want to be parties to sending men to the front, there to risk life and limb, and married men do not like to force their relatives into the firing line. Australia, like our own country, is a long way from the fighting centre, and its people cannot, on that account, visualise the grave issues at stake—issues of vital consequence to the Australians as to the French and English. If all the Allies acted similarly .Germany would subdue the earth, and Australians would then realise what liberty and freedom meant. Mr. Hughes, the Prime Minister, is chiefly responsible for the present disaster. He tried to save his party by agreeing to a referendum. He has succeeded in losing his party after all, and wrecking the chances of carrying conscription. He talks of putting the vote to the soldiers alone, and carrying conscription in face of the adverse) public vote. But this may only be electioneering exuberance. What will lie and his Government now do? If they resign and go to the country on the conscription issue, there are the two adverse conscription referenda votes faeing them. I'hey are in a quandary, all due to the inlSal mistake of submitting the question to th« p&Ko, Had it been put tbwagh twHftmeoli » the first place,

the public would have probably accepted it with resignation, as in this country, and there would have been no fueling imported into it. Now feeling is running high, and the country is bitUrly divided oil the question, and there ia no public leader capable of bridging the chasm. The politicians, by their weakness, have queered Australia's pitch, and tarnished her reputation, which the brilliant achievements of her bravo sons at the front may not be able to dissipate. It ia a very deplorable state of affairs, aiul one that places Australia in an entirely false position in the eyes of the rest of the Empire, and our Allies.