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New Zealand Tablet, 20 March 1919, Page 23

The Victorian Minister for Health (Mr. Bowser) has had to shoulder the odium which properly attached to his colleagues in the Lawson Cabinet (writes the Melbourne correspondent of Freeman's Journal), in connection with the Exhibition Hospital scandal which his Grace the Archbishop of Melbourne (the Most Rev. Dr. Mannix) characterised as "an outrage on public decency." It is an open secret that the Chief Secretary was over-ruled by his confreres, who shamefully cringed to the sectarian bigots and broke faith with the Archbishop, the heroic Sisters, and Christian Brothers. The whole-hearted manner in which the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Sisters of St. Brigid responded to staff the hospital recalls the saying of St. Vincent that the Church is "the same at all times, and in every place." Out of 35 Brigidine nuns no fewer than 28 volunteered. On all sides the Government is being adversely criticised for its senseless and stupid policy regarding the influenza outbreak. The two Melbourne morning papers, especially the Ape, were loud in their denunciation of the blundering and mismanagement of the whole business.