WAS IT FOR THIS THE DIGGERS FOUGHT?

New Zealand Tablet, 3 June 1920, Page 11

WAS IT FOR THIS THE DIGGERS FOUGHT?

VERY REV. M. J. O’REILLY, C.M., AND THE MAITLAND DIGGERS. The following correspondence appears in the Catholic Press (Sydney) in its issue of May 20: The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia. Sub-Branch; Anzac Memorial Institute, Perkin St., Newcastle, School of Arts, West Maitland, May 11, 1920. The Rev. Father O'Reilly, Rector St. John’s College, Sydney University. Dear Sir, At a meeting of my League, held last evening at the School of Arts, West Maitland, it was reported that you had made the following statement at a meeting held in the Town Hall. The statement is as follows;—“That the Australian did not know what ho was fighting for, and that he was being used to further England’s own selfish ends.” This statement brought forth strong comment from returned soldiers, not only in my own branch but throughout the State, and we feel that no honest man could make these statements in cold blood; therefore we are giving you this opportunity to either publicly affirm or deny the statement. If you do not feel disposed to reply to this letter we will take it that the statement is true and publish same throughout Australia. Yours faithfully, Frederick Forbes, Secretary. Father O’Reilly’s Reply. St. John’s College, University of Sydney, May 13, 1920. Frederick Forbes, Esq., Secretary Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League, West Maitland. Dear Sir,l am in receipt of your favor of the 11th hist., in which you take me to task for statements alleged to have been made by me recently in the Town Hall, West Maitland. I note your gentle threat of publishing those statements throughout Australia. I also note your lamentable want of courtesy in communicating same to press, even before your letter could possibly reach myself, much less elicit an explanation. If I do make a reply, it is not that you can lay claim to any such consideration at my hands, but in the hope —I fear, a vain one— your sense of fairplay will cause you to publish throughout Australia, together with my alleged statements, this rejoinder. And, firstly, you make no reference to that portion of my address which should have interested you most nearly my reference to the 14 Victoria Cross men, four of them Protestants, who, together with 10,000 Diggers, formed portion of the gigantic St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Melbourne. That chosen band of “the bravest men God ever made” formed the bodyguard of Australia’s greatest democrat, who took the salute from those 10,000 Diggers at the top of Bourke Street. May I ask you whether your society has asked for an apology from the Melbourne V.O.’s and Diggers? I should love to read their reply. Secondly, perhaps you have not heard that the said V.O.’s sent from Melbourne to Mr. Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England, to Mr. H. H. Asquith, Leader of the British Liberal Party, and to Mr. J. R. Clynes, Leader of the British Labor Party, the following cable:

“That* we, 14 Victoria Cross winners, and 10,000 Australian soldiers, urge that self-government on the lines demanded by an overwhelming majority of the Irish people be given to Ireland. We fought for liberty, and we claim that Ireland should not be- denied j freedom. ■ . “(Signed): ’ ' _ - “Sgt. J. W. Whittle, V.O. D.O.M. “Sgt. G. J. Howell, : V.C., M.M.” Isn t it plain that those men find - that they fought for something that they now see is being denied by the Bnt-huns? Thirdly, perhaps you are unaware that both Lloyd George and Asquith declared frequently during the war that England was in the struggle with clean hands, and sought not an acre of territory ? And yet, you may have learned that,' when the game of loot began, we grabbed Egypt (now a Protectorate), Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Cyprus, the German African colonies,: etc., etc. Fourthly, perhaps you are in sympathy with the floggings by which free Egyptians were compelled to give their forced labor and service. Possibly, too, you favor the massacre at Amritsar, in the Punjab, on April 13, 1919, when. 50 Indian and 100- British rifles, , with two armored cars, fired, without preliminary warning, upon a square-full of unarmed Indians, and kept firing . until their ammunition was exhausted. And then their commander, General Dyer, left 500 dead, as well as the writhing bodies of 1500 wounded on the ground, without even an offer of assistance. Was it for such liberty that the V est Maitland Diggers went into action? If so, I owe them an apology. Fifthly. Are you aware that the Armistice with Germany was made on the basis of Wilson’s Fourteen Points? If you have read Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace and Keynes was the British Treasury expert, and one of the delegation at Paris— will be interested in his opinion of the Paris brigands: “Paris,” he says, “was a scene of chicane, in which the lives of millions and the fate of humanity itself were gambled with, and the gamblers recked little more of what they were doing than the dicers on Calvary. To watch the process of the transforming of the morality of the Fourteen Points into a blasphemous mockery of the peoples’ hopes, must have been an unendurable ordeal for Wilson.” And again: “Three men ruined the Clemenceau, George and Wilson. Clemenceau thought of France; Wilson, of abstract morality; George, of himself. Between the fixed idea of the French, the low idea or no idea of George, and the pathetic ineptitude, of Wilson, Europe came to grief.” Possibly this is what the Maitland Diggers were fighting for ? Sixthly, the Diggers, I presume, fought for the principle of self-determination for all people. From a cablegram in the Sydney press, dated London, April 3, we learn of the Home Rule Bill, now sought to be foisted on Ireland, that “not a single member, of an Irish constituency favoured the Home Rule Bill.” Is this the kind of self-determination for which the West Maitland Diggers fought? Is this what they want in Australiaa kind of Government for which no vote will be cast by a single representative of the Australian people? If so, the war has been fought in vain, the Australian dead have died in vain, and I have wronged the Imperial Diggers of Maitland, by supposing that they fought for such a vulgar thing as liberty. In conclusion, I know that I have only touched the fringe of the subject; but it will be something to go on with. And, as for an apology, I mean to stick to and do now re-assert everything that I am represented to have said in the account of my speech printed in the Maitland Mercury of May 4. Yours etc., M, J. O’Reilly, O.M.