ENEMY DOCTORS

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 146, 18 December 1919, Page 6

ENEMY DOCTORS

AUSTRALIAN B.M.A. DEMANDS

DEPORTATION

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 10th December

Medical practitioners in Now Zealand will probably be interested in the resolution passed unanimously by a largely-at-tended meeting of the New South. Wales branch of the British Medical Association:— '.'"'■"','■•,!s,■ "That the British. Medical Association, New South Wales branch, protests against those medical practitioners who were interned during the'war as being alien enemy subjects or otherwise dangerous to the community being allowed to resume practice." '

"That the New South Wales Medical Board be asked to take steps for the removal from the medical register of— (a) o Persons registered in virtue of German Or Austrian qualifications, not resident or practising in New South Wales; and (b) persons registered who have been, interned'as alien enemy subjects or otherwise."

"That the Federal Government be asked to deport those medical practitioners who were interned during the war as being alien enemy subjects, or otherwise dangerous to the community. "That the Federal Government be advised that claims, understood to have been made on behalf of one or more of the medical practitioners who were interned during the war, that they possessed certain special knowledge essential to the well-being of the community, which would be lost by their deportation, are not based on any known facts; and that any special knowledge or expertness that they may have had is possessed, perhaps in greater degree, by many practitioners in different parts of the .Commonwealth."

The motion was submitted by Dr. R. Scot~Skirving, who declared that it was neither right nor fair that those whom they had treated before the war with all the camaraderie which they had given to their own flesh and blood, and who were openly or covertly disloyal to their hospitality, should now be received back and treated as if nothing had happened. What would be the fate of a British practitioner in Berlin or Vienna? It had been argued in 'Certain quarters, by lay persons certainly, and by political persons probably, that some of'these men ougnt to be allowed to practise again because of their special knowledge and their usefulness to the community. This argument was totally unjustified—doubly bo, m view of the special knowledge gained from war sundry. There were men in Sydney to-day.' for instance, whose knowledge on the subject of orthopaedics was as goo 3as and probably better^ than that of any alien practitioner. ii Politicai reasons and t.fco sublime folly and forgetfulness of the British race allow these enemies in our midst still to make a living out of us." added the doctor. "1 doubt if that living conld ever be a very lucrative one. For there must be scores of 'practitioners who. like myself will have no truck, personally or professionally, \vith any of these men who belong to the enemy nations, and whose depraved and unbearable outlook on life is as unchanged to-day as their action and power for evil has been in the past."