| <trailer><p> <Labor Call,> <30 September 1915,>
| <pb n="4"> </p></trailer>
| <headline><p> <THE CONSCRIPTIONISTS> </p></headline>
| <p> The Defence Acts contain provisions that 
| Parliamentarians and other sacred persons are not to 
| risk their limbs or lives within or without our 
| borders. Thus they can afford to heroically shed the 
| last drop of everybody else's blood without fatal 
| consequences to themselves. </p>
| <p> Not one in a hundred of the conscriptionists 
| intend to fight. They tell you how many dear 
| relations they have given to the furnace. It is a 
| noble sacrifice that palms the agony on to 
| others. </p>
| <p> Will somebody tell me why one section should give 
| its arms, its legs, its blood, its life, to the 
| service of the nation while another draws profits on 
| the requisites of war and another draws perpetual 
| interest from money invested in blood? </p>
| <p> That's the rule in Russia, Servia, Austria, 
| Germany, France and Great Britain. It is the rule in 
| Australia.</p>
| <p> But Russia is an autocracy; Germany, a Junkerdom: 
| Great Britain, a Tory Liberal Alliance. In Australia 
| six of the seven Governments are Governments of 
| "Labor." </p>
| <p> A LABEL OR A POLICY? </p>
| <p> What makes a Labor Government? Is it a label or a 
| policy? If it be a policy, will somebody tell me 
| wherein the policy of Labor on this continent in this 
| crisis is one whit ahead of the Governments of 
| Europe? In what does it compel equality of sacrifice 
| more than those other Governments that are not 
| "Labor"? </p>
| <p> When a man goes to the war he puts his life 
| <mdash>-</mdash> his living capital <mdash>-</mdash> 
| into the balance. He does not haggle on the rate of 
| interest to be paid for ever on a quart of blood or a 
| portion of his body. He takes his chance of losing 
| everything. But the Money Hog not only gets his money 
| returned. He gets, in addition, even under Labor 
| Governments, a perpetual lien upon the toil of the 
| survivors. To this hideous scheme <mdash>-</mdash> 
| this one-sided arrangement <mdash>-</mdash> Labor 
| Governments have no hostility, no counter policy. </p>
| <p> WHY NOT CONSCRIPT PROPERTY? </p>
| <p> Men die, limbs are torn off, eyes blown out, but 
| the burden of interest upon the survivors is daily 
| increased, and the profits of the windy patriots 
| remain intact. The multitude are impoverished, but 
| the moneyed interests wax fat. Conscript human lives! 
| <mdash>-</mdash> on that theme what rhapsodies. 
| Conscript profits, interest, factories, banks, 
| minerals <mdash>-</mdash> on that theme there is the 
| silence of the grave. These "National Service" men 
| want a confiscation of human lives <mdash>-</mdash> 
| not a confiscation of property. </p>
| <p> MEN AND WEALTH </p>
| <p> They say, "Nonsense." They declare that wealth is 
| compelled to pay its share. Is it? All that is done 
| is to skim off a slice of the annual increment, but 
| the principle remains untouched. A man may give his 
| arms, his legs, his sanity, and be so much the 
| poorer, but to take so much of a rich man's wealth 
| that he will be poorer at the end of the war than at 
| the beginning, that is beyond them; that is going too 
| far; that is too radical ~~ that is the kind of 
| conscription the "National Service" advocates do not 
| want, and won't enact. </p>
| <p> FLY-BLOWN CARCASSES </p>
| <p> On this war policy question the Parliamentary 
| leaders are not in advance of the most conservative. 
| They shout to the multitude, "Give your life!" yet 
| handle the profiteers with tender care. The workers 
| get reduced purchasing power and the Money Hogs 
| increasing interest. Leaders of Labor spread 
| themselves in fulsome eulogies of the "inspiring 
| patriotism" of bankers and the brokers. Yet these are 
| not in the firing line. Their fly-blown carcasses are 
| not to be found on the battlefield. They are on the 
| Stock Exchange or in the banking chambers, 
| calculating the profits on the next loan or on the 
| platforms of the National Service cheering others on 
| to die. </p>
| <p> If a Government commandeers life, let it 
| commandeer property. If it nationalises the manhood 
| of the country for slaughter, let it nationalise the 
| wealth of the country for a like purpose. If it 
| conscripts labor, let it conscript capital 
| <mdash>–</mdash> not a fraction of the annual increase, but 
| the thing itself. But these conscriptionists 
| <mdash>-</mdash> these radicals, these advocates of Labor, 
| these enemies of trusts and moneyed spongers ~~ they 
| take one man's life and butter another with the fat 
| of interest. </p>
| <p> THE SLAUGHTER POT </p>
| <p> Ask these one-sided conscriptionists to go up 
| where blood is squirting and they provide a thousand 
| reasons for being a thousand miles away. They don’t 
| want to go where men groan and scream and laugh and 
| curse and die. Change the Defence Acts, remove the 
| exemptions, sweep out the clauses calling the 
| youthful first to the harvest of death. Put every fit 
| man into the barrel, irrespective of age. Ask the 
| conscriptionists to advocate these changes in the 
| Act, and then you will find where are the professors 
| and politicians and bankers and bishops and leaders 
| of Labor and captains of industry who now mount the 
| platform in unison. See whether they will advocate a 
| change in the Acts that may give them to the 
| slaughter pot. That’s the test of their heroism. </p>
| <p> The London <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Economist," </title> in a recent issue, said:~~
| </p>
| <p><q> 
| </q></p>
| <p> THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION </p>
| <p> But Conscription does not mean Revolution. If it 
| did, it would be militant Labor policy to advocate 
| it. But it does not. It means the organised 
| extermination of a large portion of the working 
| class, and the weakening of the remainder. It means 
| the triumph of the Reaction, the supremacy of the 
| Money Power, the tyranny of the interest monger. And 
| the war, whichever way it goes, means such abject 
| misery for the working class that, unless it is 
| prepared to revolt and shake Mammon from its throne 
| it might as well be dead. </p>
| <p> GO AND DIE </p>
| <p> The politicians offer to the workers no glimpse of 
| a happier day. Their only message is "Go and die." 
| The answer should be, "Go yourselves." </p>
| <p> The bloodthirsty interest mongers and profiteers 
| present in this crisis a lovely spectacle of 
| patriotism, but nobody puts them under arrest for 
| "stopping recruiting." Put up a poster. Ask these 
| parasites to lead the way to the trenches, and Labor 
| Governments will lead you to the gaol. That's the 
| world a-marching on for you in 1915. </p>
| <p> FRANK ANSTEY </p>