HUNGER STRIKERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 173, 24 July 1941, Page 7

HUNGER STRIKERS

RELEASE REFUSED

Government's Finding Censured

In Australia

MELBOURNE, July 23

The Prime Minister, Mr. Menzies announced that the hunger strikers Thomas and Ratliff, will not be released from internment. In the course of a statement Mr. Menzies declared the men had been found guilty of deliberately hindering the war effort, and such conduct could not be tolerated.

Mr. Menzies said: "The Government cannot risk the country's war activities by accepting assurances from citizens who can profess to change their minds with such facility, and who even now apparently feel no sense of duty to their country, for which other men have been laying down their lives.

"To deliberately hinder the war effort is to be guilty of something singularly like treason, and represents a settled intention to deprive fighting men of the support to which they are entitled. Such conduct cannot be tolerated. I have no doubt the great majority of Australians view it with utter detestation."

Mr. Menzies quoted the report of the committee which investigated the men's case. The committee, in declining to recommend their release, said that in view of the previous activities of the two men it had considerable doubt whether their undertaking to refrain from activities prejudicial to the successful conduct of the war would be faithfully carried out.

Dr. H. V. Evatt, a Labour member of the Advisory War Council, appealed to the trade unions "and the great mass of the Australian people" to control their feelings and allow Parliament to take appropriate action. He said the Government's decision was as unwise as it was unjust, adding "'one more administrative blunder to the list."

Dr Evatt added that the Labour members of the Advisory War Council had regarded the question of arbitrary internment of Australian citizens as one of general principle. Thev would be gravely concerned at this" threat to the united war effort. They steadily refused to be diverted by Communist and Fascist propaganda. Obviously the common sense solution was to obtain satisfactory undertakings as to their future behaviour, which he understood the men had already given, and to terminate their indefinite internment.

Dr. Evatt described the Government's action as provocative, and said Katliff was a returned soldier with an honourable war record. It was most unlikely that ex-servicemen would tolerate either Fascist or Nazi tendencies in the country for which ,the«£ JLiad-dQjae~so- much. __*