Mannix, Goldstein & Conscription 1916

Scene – Melbourne, September, 1916. The steps of Parliament House, in Spring Street. A rally is about to commence in support of the “yes” case in the national conscription referendum to be held the following month. The convenor is Dame Eva Hughes, the aunt of Prime Minister William Morris Hughes.

You are invited to join in what may become a rowdy rally. Please feel free to interject, cheer or boo or even to join in the singing if you so choose. To assist you I will hold up relevant signs when appropriate.

O Paddy dear, and did ye hear
the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid
to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep,
his colour can't be seen
For there's a cruel law ag'in
the Wearin' of the Green.

O, I met with Napper Tandy,
and he took me by the hand
And he said, “How's poor old Ireland,
and how does she stand?”
She's the most distressful country
that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there
for Wearin' of the Green.

Would someone please shut down that Irish rabble who are disrupting these proceedings? Would the police do something instead of singing along with their drunken brethren? We are here to Support the War Effort and Stop the Hun! My nephew has just returned from meetings with Lloyd George and Churchill! That’s right, the men who will save Our Glorious British Empire on which the sun never sets.

Ladies… distribute white feathers to those young Irish louts…

Send yer own boys if yer so keen on the fighting Evie! Though with that sheep face, chances are Lady Mucketymuck would turn any man off giving her sons!

Give it to her Paddy! Her old man ran off to Gallipoli to get away from her!

Any right-minded woman would rather be a mother or sister of a dead hero than of a living shirker like you lot from the streets of Collingwood and Richmond! My husband served in Gallipoli. Did you?

Yeah but he was too old to be much use, never saw the business end of a gun, now did he? They sent the old bugger home and discharged him. Like you Evie – as useful as tits on a bull!

Where are the police? Where is the law and order we have inherited from mother England? The streets of Melbourne have become the province of larrikins and Bolsheviks!

Dame Eva …you are nothing but an imperialist warmonger! This is not your hallowed UK where women still await the vote which is their inalienable right. Australian women have that right and as mothers and sisters we oppose your jingoistic nonsense.

Ladies please distribute our pamphlet to the audience.

While the Manifesto of The Women’s Peace Army is distributed, Bishop Mannix is walking his Irish Terrier past. He stops and tries to listen discreetly on the edge of the crowd.

Women of Australia! I wish today to place before you a manifesto which I have been preparing for release in October. Do I have your ears?

Go for it Vida!

On October 28 we shall have had laid upon us the greatest responsibility and the greatest privilege that could be placed upon the women of any country.

For the first time in history, the people of a whole nation are being asked whether they shall declare their allegiance to the force of Might or the force of Right.

Never did much for the Irish!

It has been universally recognised that conscription and freedom are mutually destructive, and in conscript countries the aim of the masses, in contradistinction to the classes, has always been to throw off the crushing yoke of conscription and militarism.

Bolshevism! Unadulterated Bolshevism like they preach in Russia. Australians do not want that!

Your ignorance is unpardonable!

You sit in yer fancy mansion Evie and don’t give a brass razoo about us workers! Remember the Shearers’ Strike? Even your precious Billy Goat Billy supported the Maritime Strikers! Yer nothing but an ignorant parasite!

Now that war has come, Britishers who believe that Might is the guardian angel of Right, are driven to jettison all their cherished ideas of freedom and conscience in the frantic effort to get enough men to do enough killing to wipe out the enemy. Britain has become the land of military and industrial slaves, of shackled speech and shackled conscience. Instead of this being the “war to end all war”, all nations, neutral as well as belligerent, are preparing for future wars, and arming more and more feverishly.

Under these circumstances, do you wonder that free Australian men have come to see that the war is not being fought for the great ideals of freedom that were held before them at the beginning? Therefore, the few men who might still volunteer in the cause of freedom refuse to volunteer in a cause that aims at riveting the chains of European militarism on Australia!

They begin to see that the belief in Might throws the nations into a bottomless pit of hatred, and oppression, and debt. They begin to see that conscription entrenches militarism still more deeply and breeds endless war, to which every conception of Right and Freedom must be ruthlessly sacrificed.

Therefore, we say, “To vote ‘NO’ means the beginning of the end of militarism in Australia, and of every other nation; the beginning of the reign of Right as the only Might there is or can be.”

And you, women of Australia, are asked to say the same thing, and more; for as women you are faced with a greater responsibility in this matter than men.

As the mothers of the race, it is your privilege to conserve life, and love, and beauty, all of which are destroyed by war. Without them, the world is a desert.

You, who give life, cannot, if you think deeply and without bias, vote to send any mother’s son to kill, against his will, some other mother’s son.

You may, if you choose, send your own son, but you are guilty in the first degree if you take upon yourself the responsibility of forcing someone else’s son to defy God and break His commandment, saying to him:

“Thou SHALT kill.”

We ask you to tell us what MORAL RIGHT you have to do this thing?

Which is the noble spirit? That of the woman who would say on October 28 to all men in Australia; “You SHALL Go, and KILL, KILL, KILL, till you have helped bring about ‘THE DAY’ when Germany is utterly crushed and every German mother has lost every son of military age?”

Or that of the Australian woman who stands for the eternal laws of God, of Right, of Reason, of Love.

So we ask you to be true to your womanhood, and, with your vote, bring to the State the same gifts that you bring to your homes, the gifts of order, of beauty, of forbearance, of harmony, of love. The nations are dying for lack of these gifts from women. Give them freely, give them gladly, but GIVE THEM YOU CANNOT IF YOU VOTE FOR CONSCRIPTION.

Therefore Vote NO on October 28!

Sedition! Treason! You betray all those brave boys who died for us at Gallipoli if you heed the words of this temptress. Stand up for Australia! Stand up for Britain! And here to remind you of our obligations to Britain is our esteemed Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes.

Prime Minister Billy Hughes emerges from behind the dais where he has been listening to Goldstein. He is greeted with both applause and heckling.

Take no notice of this rant! I have just returned from London and seen for myself how desperate the plight of our motherland and other European nations has become.

Been slumming it at the workers’ expense Billy?

This dreadful war was forced upon us. We are by instinct, a peaceful people – a civilised people. No better and no clearer distinction can be drawn between us and Prussia, with which we are now locked in deadly struggle, than the fact that the British nation stands for the highest ideals of civilisation. What the other stands for – let all their dreadful deeds since war began and the vile doctrines upon which their nation for forty years has battened, say. With them “Might is Right.” There is between the ideals of Britain and Germany a gulf as wide as divides heaven from hell, right from wrong.

The issues at stake are vital, and the fate of the world hangs upon them. The destiny of the world to-day is trembling in the balance, and every nation, as every man, must make up its mind on which side it shall take its stand.

Hear! Hear!

Jingoistic nonsense!

This war has come as a mighty incentive to urge us on – a spur needed perhaps by our race for its salvation. Out of evil cometh good. There is not, from one end of this mighty Empire to the other, a place where the people do not stand foursquare against their common enemy.

We Australians have fought, are fighting, and shall continue to fight to the end for those free institutions which to free men are dearer than life itself. We fight for the right of every nation, small as well as large, to live its own life in its own way.

What about Ireland? How about rights for Ireland eh Billy?

There are no rights in Ireland!

Today, Germany knows that when she fights Britain, she fights not merely the forty-five million people in the United Kingdom, but also those millions of free men scattered throughout the world who look to Britain as the cradle of their race. Let us pay a tribute to the loyalty of the Irish people and the valour of the Irish troops. Pay a tribute to those thousands of young Irish-Australians in the Australian Forces, who have put the cause of liberty above life itself.

They’ve been conned into taking the King’s shilling outa poverty, nothing to do with supporting the bloody Empire!

That’s true! Ireland has been condemned to poverty!

The Australian is coming out to do battle for the country that made him what he is. We speak with pride, and rightly, of the glorious charge of Balaclava, where men charged bravely in the heat of battle. But that pales in comparison to the young soldiers of Australia who, in the cold hours before dawn, handed to those who were to remain in the trench their poor brief messages of farewell and waited calmly for the order before leaping out to almost certain death. Like the Spartans of Thermopylae, what these men did will never die.

Brave and also stupid Billy! If they wants to volunteer let ’em, but we’ll have no forced enlistment here!

You shirkers! Indulging in idle pleasures while a small number fight for your freedom!

Vote ‘NO’ and you are supporting the vile Prussian doctrine of “Might is Right”!

Vote ‘NO’ and you are a blackleg and scab on the tens of thousands of brave Anzacs that have shown the world we are a nation that puts death before slavery and dishonour!

I urge all present to vote ‘YES’ in the coming referendum! We owe a vote of loyalty to those who have already made the supreme sacrifice. And we owe it to the future generations who will thank us for protecting their liberty.

What about us black fellas, we’re not even citizens!

At this point Vida spies Bishop Mannix in the crowd and calls to him:

Your Lordship! Please tell us where you stand on the conscription issue. I hear you had some new things to say at Clifton Hill last weekend.

I was just taking Rafferty here for his Sunday Constitutional in the gardens and was not expecting to be bailed up by an Ulsterite!

I am no bushranger My Lord Bishop! I have just heard such wonderful reports about your speech at Clifton Hill last Sunday and I would like to hear it from your own lips. I’m sure many in the crowd would appreciate it too!”

Yes My Lord Bishop. Strike a blow for Ireland!

Avenge the deaths of the rebels!

Why should the Irish die protecting the dogs who have oppressed us for centuries?

I used to refer to this conflict as "just an ordinary trade war!" For that alone I have been categorised as a traitor by the Anglican Bishop, the conservative press and even one of my Catholic brethren. What I said at last week’s bazaar was that I hope for an honourable peace. I hope and I believe that that peace can be secured without conscription.

For conscription is a hateful thing and it is almost certain to bring evil in its train.

I still retain the conviction that Australia has done her full share—I am inclined to say more than her full share—in the war.

Australians, brave as they have proved themselves to be in the field, are a peace loving people. They will not easily give conscription a foothold in this country.

We can only give both sides a patient hearing, and then vote according to our judgement. There will be differences among Catholics, for Catholics do not think or vote in platoons.

On most questions there is room for divergence of opinion. But, for myself, it will take a good deal to convince me that conscription in Australia would not cause more evil than it would avert.

And I am inclined to believe that those who propose it have misjudged the temper of the Australian people in the mass and their passionate love for freedom…

… and if it is a just war then I ask whether the Dublin rebel leaders received justice this very year when they were summarily executed without trial? The British cannot preach justice to the world while they practice injustice in Ireland.

My Lord, I also hope you will support other causes of The Women’s Peace Army such as better working conditions, equal pay, better children’s services!

I will not be lectured by the likes of you on such matters! I am not a Bolshevik sympathiser. That ideology poses a great threat to the Catholic Church! The roles of women were clearly prescribed by our Church Fathers! They are primarily wives and mothers and that is what the Gospel proclaims!

You clearly read a different version of the Bible from me! That is outdated thinking from a patriarchal institution. You represent traditions which continue to oppress women!

I shall not be joining you outside factories and sweatshops where you advocate contraception and abortion, two of the great evils of the current age!

No… like the Germans you would confine us to Kinder, Kirk and Kreche! Will you support equal wages for women?

Indeed I will not! Women should leave the workforce upon entering into sacred marriage! Their husbands must be the breadwinners! That is their role!

I shall not be inviting you to join us at our factory meetings!

Even if you did Madam, I would not attend! Good day to you and may God continue to bless you.