KEEP THE FLAG OUT OF THE GUTTER

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1920, Page 13

KEEP THE FLAG OUT OF THE GUTTER

Someone really should start a League for the protection of the Union Jack (comments The Bulletin, Sydney). Like the terms “Digger” and “Anzac” the flag ought to be preserved from the mud of trade and political traffic. Actually, every politician, or militarist, or scoundrel who has decided to make patriotism his business is at liberty to use it to confuse issues for his own base ends. When the E.A.N. was first mooted the scheme was denounced by the importing interests as an insult to the Union Jack and the manifestation of disloyalty. When a N.S. Wales Ministry decided to put Sydney Government House to its present use and throw portion of its needlessly vast grounds open to the public, Henley, M.L.A., the possessor of an unequalled nose for “disloyalty,” condemned the scheme as an “insult to the Flag.” In the early,stages of the war Australians who joined the A.I.F. when they were in a financial position to enlist in England were looked on coldly by the bogus loyalists: the call of the Union Jack was represented as being to the British Army. Under a British Tory Government 20 year's ago it was an insult to the Flag to advocate freedom for the Boers; a few years later a Liberal Government came into p-wer, the Boers got self-government, and the Flag, being of no further use in the matter, was allowed to drop out of the

c-ntroversy. Of late years it has been exploited by the antiHome Rule party. The.idea is that the Unionist is loyal to the Flag, though in 1914 Edward Carson and his colleague, F. E Smith, were raising and drilling an army of rebellion against it; while the Home Ruler is ipso facto disloyal. Yet the Home Rule leader Redmond died of wounds for the Empire in Flanders ; ■while the Unionist leader Smith, though a Yeomanry officer when the wir began and a much younger man than the alleged disloyalist, kept out of the firing-line. By a similar queer reaction it is practicable for an eligible who shirked military service throughout the war to question the loyalty of a Digger V.O. of Irish descent and have a reasonable chance of carrying off the bluff.

The war for freedom having been fought, and unparalleled sacrifices having been made by the people, as distinct from the politicians, high officials and certain speculators who did well out of the calamity, there was a natural expectation that the article for which so hideous a price had been paid would be delivered. It has not been delivered. There may be sound moral- grounds for holding Egypt ; though the commercial value of the Canal is even more important, probably, in the opinion of the present British Government. Persia may be occupied for its own good; and then, again, the fact that oil is the naval fuel of the future may have a bearing on tire question. All over tho world the spectacle is offered! of people in bondage. Yet if that patent truth is commented on there is a type of citizen who, by some crazy inversion of logic, denounces the complaint as a reflection upon the Union Jack. As if the tremendous symbol which stands for the valor and sublime selflessness of the Empire’s fighting-men was to blame for the villainies or stupidities of Executives !

The party-politicians, whose lust for power is second only to their lust for office, have never been blind to the possibilities of the Flag. Our own W. M. Hughes is a case in point. The war has been over a matter of nearly two years. Germany is as impotent to hurt Australia, militarily, as Lapland. Yet the

War Precautions Act, which gave Ministers such powers as' the Kaiser himself never wielded, on the understanding that they were necessary to guard the Commonwealth against German aggression, remains in force. The recent, deportations of . Germans and pro-Germans have been carried out under it. The country is probably well rid of those who have been deported. But that is not the point. The matter which should concern all lovers of real liberty is the fact that it lies in the power of a politicianwho, judging by recent events, doesn’t even hold the confidence of the country —to imprison or exile anyone, and no reasons given. Because those deported happen to be Germans, or the possessors of German names, the autocrats and their dupes postulate that whoever calls for the wiping-out of an Act which is now a menace to liberty, is a traitor to the Union Jack. The impudence of the contention as well as the danger of the present situation, may be exemplified by imagining that, instead of W. M. , Hughes, Imperialist, the office of autocrat in control of the War Precautions Act, were W. M. Smith, Bolshevik. Smith might gaol and deport under the Act the very loyalists who at recent meetings have claimed that those who ask for its repeal do so out of hostility to the Union Jack. There is, of course, a wide difference between loyalty to the Union Jack and loyalty to a gang of opportunist politicians. Most intelligent people are getting to realise that a new war for freedom began among the civilians when the soldiers had done their work. It suits autocrats like W. M. Hughes to create an impression that’ anyone who attempts to undermine the immense and! dangerous powers to which they are clinging is insulting the British "Flag. But it is none the less infamous that they should be allowed to do it.