IN A FOOL'S PARADISE.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 73, 17 September 1917, Page 6

IN A FOOL'S PARADISE.

~. 'OUR DESPERATE PERIL.' AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR OP RECRUITING EMPHATIC. A note of warning to those casual Australians who believe that the war is almost won was sounded on August 6 by tho Director-GeneraJ of Recruiting (Mr Donald Mackinnon, M.L.A.), in the course of an address delivered outside the Melbourne Town Hall. Speaking with vehemence, he declared that before the struggle was ended they in Australia would have to throw into tho firing line every fit man between tho ages of eighteen and fortyfive years. 'And wo will be lucky,' ho added, 'if wo have not to include lads of seventeen years and men between forty-five and fifty years.' 'We aro giving in a, fool's paradise,' said Mr Mackinnon. 'The time has arrived when the people of Australia /require to bo spoken to in plain words, 'and told of the danger which confronts them. There is a stupid desire on the part of many people to regard our enemies as being so feeble that we can defeat them without doing anything but visit racecourses and football matches. Our newspapers tell us only the news that wo desire to hear, and we are kept in ignorance of what is really transpiring on the other sido of the world. We are not informed that, owing to the submarine campaign, the price of meat in Great Britain is 2s a pound, or that many people have not tasted potatoes for two months. But we know that Australian

vessels have been sunk —the Mongolia, the Mooltan, the Ballarat, and the Benalla aro but four of them —and those of us who write to friends in England are beginning to realise how few of our letters arrive at their destination. Now the Germans are building submarines of 5000 tons. It is quite probable that they will challenge the British Navy, and that these vessels will succeed in breaking through the blockade, and sinking all tho remaining vessels of tho British mercantile marine.

'How can any decent Australian hang back!' queried the DirectorGeneral in tones of disgust. 'When they read of the most recent outrage of our enemy—#he dispatch to Constantinople of 5000 Serbian girts of tender years, to appease the lust of brutal Turks-- j one would think that they might have been moved. But instead they rushed to the racecourse to put a few shillings on a quadruped. There is no question as to their courage, but they lack the imagination to enable them to see the war in its proper perspective, and those persons who are themselves unable to go forward must appeal to these young men to don the khaki.' 'The Allies were not winning,' said Mr Mackinnon. 'The present hour was the darkest in tho Empire's history. ' France had had a terrible blow. Busssia, too, was practically useless, and there was the danger that the huge stores of wheat which would have been made available to the Allies had the Australians succeeded in getting through to Constantinople might now fall into the hands of the Germans, to sustain them for many months. Like a drunken man, Russia was reeling back from the blows of the conquering Germans, and, despite Mr Lloyd George's optimism, he was convinced that our ally could not be depended upon for one moment for any further assistance. He had no desire to piny tho part of an alarmist, but he wanted to warn the people of Australia that they had never been in such dire peril as they were to-day. Some time ago a drawn battle might have been possible, but now it was out of tho ques-1 tion. The Germans would either punch I

their way through to victory or would go down for the next two hundred years. 'Wo have been forced by the vote of this great democratic country to appeal to you,' said Mr Mackinnon in conclusion. 'Surely the appeal will not go unheeded. Any lit Australian who atyows his fellowmen in Great Britain to fight while he remains safely at home is a mean and dishonest scoundrel. Married men and single men are needed—the single men first, if possible; if not all must come forward—no matter what their obligations may be. Those who cannot fight must preach the gospel of the desperate condition of their Empire, and of democracy as they know and love it.'