AUSTRALIA ATTACKED.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1922, Page 5

AUSTRALIA ATTACKED.

BY GERMAN PROPAGANDISTS. MANDATORY POWERS CRITICISED. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Sept. 8. The correspondent at Geneva of the Australian Press Association says that one of the German propagandists is apparently broadcasting among the League pamphlets and leaflets virulently accusing Australia of exploiting her mandated territories. The documents consist principally of voluminous extracts from the Australian > Labor organs, also the Berlin Koloniale i Rundschau. I Colonel John Ward. M.P., a member of the ‘English delegation, received three documnts which he handed to Sir Joseph Cook. One pamphlet was- headed: “Shameless Robbery of German Colonies”: “Exposure by Australian Labor Press of the shady methods and maladministration by the mandatory Power”; “Australia, following the lead of England in defiance of international law, steals German private property, sets German settlers adrift, and confiscates the savings of deported Germans.” This pamphlet, after announcing its indebtedness for these facts to the Australian Labor Press, proceeds: “These facts relate to the trickery whereby Australia, in the name of the League of Nations, obtained a mandate for the administration of German colonies in the Pacific. In doing this, she was merely taking her cue from the British Government. thus continuing the huge fraud whereby England tried to justify the seizure of German colonies of enormous value which, with the destruction of German commerce, was England’s object in fomenting the world war. “The great work of civilisation and commercial development which Germany carried on in her colonies for the benefit of all nations is being destroyed under British rule through the incapacity of the administration and greedy capitalists. Here again it is the Labor Press which exposes the injustice and immorality of British Imperialism. It seems that Germany can only look to the representatives of Labor in Great Britain and the Dominions to obtain the return of her colonies.”

Another paragraph of the same pamphlet headed “The Beginning of Australian Thieving.” accuses the officers and soldiers of the Australian forces of looting private houses at Rabaul and openly shipping the stolen goods to Sydney. Other articles describe Australia as unfit morally to act as a mandatory Power, and accuses Australians of imposing enforced labor upon German settlers after robbing them of all their possessions. The Koloniale Rundschau, in an analysis of the mandatory system, declares it a mere sham to cloak practical annexation.