ALIEN: ENEMY DOCTORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17347, 19 December 1919, Page 9

ALIEN: ENEMY DOCTORS.

NOT WANTED IN AUSTRALIA.

RESOLUTIONS BY ; B.M.A. {FROM oue own correspondent. ] SYDNEY. Deo. 10. Medical practitioners in New Zealand will probably be interested in the resolution passed unanimously by a largelyattended meeting of the New South Tales branch i of the British Medical Association "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 Meaical Board be asked to take steps for the removal from the medical register of— (a) 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 facte; 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. K. 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 had been argued in certain quarters, by lay persons certainly, and by political persons probably, that some of these men ought to be allowed to practise again because of their special knowledge and their usefulness to the community. This' argument was totally unjustified—doubly so, in view of the special knowledge gained from war surgery. There were mm in Sydney to-day, for instance, whose knowledge on the subject of orthopaedies was as good as and probably better than that of any alien practitioner. "If political reasons-and the sublime folly and forgetfulness of the British race allow. these enemies in our midst still to make & living out of us," added the doctor, " I doubt if that living could ever be a very lucrative one. For there must be scores of practitioners who, like' myself, will have no truck, personally or professionally, with any at 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."