| <trailer><p> <Labor Call, 12 October 1916> 
| <pb n="6-7"> </p></trailer>
| <headline><p> <THE DESTINY OF AUSTRALIA> 
| <Down at the Bank.> </p></headline>
| <p> It is estimated that crowds aggregating over 
| 250,000 have assembled at the Yarra Bank on the 
| last three or four Sunday afternoons and during 
| Wednesday, October 4. Probably 80 per cent of 
| these visitors were new to the "Bank". Such 
| tremendous interest in public matters was never 
| before shown in this country <mdash>-</mdash> 
| General fact, not published in daily press. </p>
| <p> Who has not been there? Sunday after Sunday 
| the number that throngs down to the open forum of 
| Melbourne breaks record upon record. To say that 
| the heart of the people is stirred is to tell 
| what is obvious. There is no parallel to the 
| present demonstrations in this country. At first 
| the Maritime Strike was cited as illustration of 
| similar gatherings, but the growth of numbers 
| soon went far beyond the widest of the great 
| crowds that were wont to gather in the big strike 
| meetings of 25 years ago. </p>
| <p> Perhaps the culmination of interest was 
| evinced last Wednesday, when a continuous steam 
| of men and women poured to and fro along the road 
| to the "Bank" all day. Only a prophet could say 
| what will happen before the 28th of October, when 
| the shackles now sought to be riveted on this 
| country will be accepted or cast aside by the 
| people; but if a more earnest, self-sacrificing 
| crowd is brought together under conditions of 
| weather, time and place more dispiriting than the 
| ever-coming assemblages of last Wednesday, then 
| indeed the people of Melbourne are excited to 
| demonstration beyond the pitch of any 
| plumbing. </p>
| <p> THE PLACE </p>
| <p> There is little congenial to bright minds of 
| visitors at the Yarra Bank. The place is cast 
| away from habitation like the walk of a 
| penitentiary. A blank grey wall of corrugated 
| iron holds the northern line, beyond which rise 
| serried buildings, gaunt brick adjuncts of the 
| railway that sends intermittent trains thundering 
| and shrieking past during the whole day. The 
| ground is a waste of mire <mdash>-</mdash> a few 
| acres that have not yet fallen to the demand of 
| reclamation. The usage of half a million feet and 
| thousands of hands have made the natural field a 
| dismal place of sodden garbage. But it is yet 
| open; and there speech is given more freedom that 
| is allowed to truth seekers elsewhere. On the 
| southern fringe a road takes flying electric 
| trams and multitudinous vehicles along the 
| river's brink. Across the stream is another 
| world; green-flushed laws, parterres of bloom, 
| banks of shrubs, statues, groves and grottoes, 
| and every artifice of beauty have been placed 
| there as a setting to the high official home of 
| vice-royalty that crowns the prospect and waves 
| the flag into dim vistas of the southernmost 
| heaven. Eastward again the world is still another 
| place; a place of gleaming distance that is only 
| held by the confines of the Dandenong ranges 
| setting purple bounds to the misty vision of 
| ideal. </p>
| <p> AN AROUSED PEOPLE </p>
| <p> But squalor and inconvenience are nothing to 
| men and women who are aroused to indignity by 
| attacks on their personal liberty. The sure 
| incentive to action in a free people is a bid for 
| their bondage. Then the indifferent suddenly show 
| that quiet is not always submission. Where apathy 
| had lured power into thinking that any length of 
| injury could be put on the people there is a 
| sudden rising from apparent listlessness and 
| patient enduring that makes the most arrogant of 
| liberty wreckers conscious of their error in 
| judgement. Here on the Yarra Bank <mdash>-</mdash>
| as on the Domain in Sydney, and in other 
| places of access elsewhere throughout the cities 
| of Australia <mdash>-</mdash> the people come to 
| hear something of this unprecedented attack upon 
| their personal liberty. It has not taken long to 
| arouse them. In spite of the emissaries of 
| suppression and distortion, an inkling of the 
| truth has been circulated. That has disclosed the 
| incredible! Here in Australia, here in the 
| country where men had already advanced so far 
| that freedom was believed to have made this land 
| her throne <mdash>-</mdash> here an attempt was 
| being made to shackle the whole people in a way 
| scarcely another of the nations of the world 
| tolerated. And it was being done by the strange 
| anachronism called a Labor Government <mdash>-</mdash>
| and in the only country of the world 
| that had a Labor Government. No wonder thousands 
| of men came here for the day in order to meet 
| together and fully comprehend the plan of attack 
| upon their heritage of liberty. No wonder 
| hundreds of women came down to the clay-reeking 
| flat through rain and slush, enduring the outward 
| contamination of spattering mud that is so 
| particularly odious to the feminine spirit, and 
| suffering incessant pelting rain in full 
| exposure, so that the work of informing others 
| might go on. </p>
| <p> THE SPIRIT OF ACTION </p>
| <p> There is the spirit of action awake now that 
| no cloaks of silence can smother, no suppression 
| thwart from demonstration, no falsehoods turn 
| into futility, and no fear of punishment overawe. 
| Because the people of this generation had never 
| shown themselves prone to public rallies it was 
| thought that nothing would stir them to revolt. 
| But the appointment of political Labor was not 
| wholly a dope to the body politic. True, the 
| people put great trust in the men they elected to 
| serve them. The confidence they placed there 
| chloroformed them for a time, so that the 
| operation of the coercive knife of despots made 
| deep slashes in the tenderest places of personal 
| liberty of the body, corporate as well as 
| individual. </p>
| <p> But the drug was not strong enough for the 
| last great pain. CONSCRIPTION FOR FOREIGN SERVICE 
| shook the lethargy out of the most insensate. 
| Every man, every woman, knew that sacrifice was 
| called for by the war. As earnest of their grim 
| resolve to do the very best that the worthy 
| democracy of Australia could fitly provide, they 
| have sent forth so many, and are still bringing 
| forward so many more, for the need of the Empire, 
| that Australia's name is now a symbol of high 
| service in the eyes of the world. So much has 
| been done, indeed, that there are few homes in 
| this country where grief and bereavement have not 
| entered from the sacrifice of the present 
| war. </p>
| <p> But it was felt, is still felt that all that 
| was done, or could be done, was in the interest 
| of liberty. It was to fight the dominance of 
| militarism that Australia sent forth her sons. 
| Now, in the absence, the eternal absence in so 
| many cases, of the very champions who went forth 
| against the Prussian dragon, Australia is being 
| canvassed to suffer the same monster in her fair 
| domains. </p>
| <p> AN UNHOLY CLIMAX </p>
| <p> The air rings with execrations on those who 
| would perpetuate such an unholy climax to efforts 
| that have been so nobly exercised here. What a 
| reward is this!  We have looked to this land as 
| the one free spot from old-world ills. America 
| excepted <mdash>-</mdash> and there modern ills 
| have made freedom a much trammelled reality 
| <mdash>-</mdash> there is no other place in which 
| the best blood of the most progressive peoples 
| could be blended into a strong conglomerate that 
| would make finer individuals, finer nationality 
| than was ever possible elsewhere. </p>
| <p>Already we have set ourselves on the way of a 
| pure and noble destiny. If proof of this is 
| needed, look at the doings of our contributing 
| people to the stricken nations afar. Australians 
| have heard the cries from over the ocean for 
| charitable help, and have responded to the extent 
| of about 5,000,000 pounds <mdash>-</mdash> over 
| 1 pound a head for her whole population. If America 
| had made equal response, America that is piling up 
| stupendous fortunes from the war, she would have 
| furnished over 120,000,000 pounds to the needy and 
| stricken of the European war. Australia has done 
| this quietly <mdash>-</mdash>  one hand scarcely 
| knowing what the other did. But she has done 
| more. She has done deeds that are blazoned out as 
| proof of personal prowess, the like of which the 
| world's most daring heroes of romance, history or 
| legend, never dreamt of. She has shown what 
| physique is in the lands of the South, what 
| indomitable spirit and unfailing resolution are. 
| Whence came her virtues of body and heart and 
| spirit? They are the outcome, the manifest of her 
| mode of life. She has built up a standard whereby 
| her people live nearer the ways of humanity than 
| is or can be attained elsewhere. She is yet far 
| from her ideals. But her realities are yet above 
| the ideals of many other lands. Now at a stroke, 
| all that she planned and set herself upon 
| accomplishing is imperilled. It is being 
| threatened in the name of liberty! </p>
| <p> THE CORDS OF PRUSSIA </p>
| <p> Australians are being asked to bind themselves 
| by the same cords that bind Prussia. Unlike 
| Prussia, Australia is not a great manufacturing 
| nation. She is burdened with responsibilities 
| that are not too heavy for a free land, but must 
| be crushing if she is to carry conscription so 
| far as to denude herself of her virile wealth 
| makers. Her wealth is in her primary industries. 
| In the continual course of its production her 
| people build up a community that can ever expand 
| in value-making, both personal and material. But 
| if her primary workers are to be severed from 
| her, what can she do? She has her debts to pay. 
| She must pay them. She has the women, children 
| and aged to feed. She must feed them. She has the 
| uncountable cost of war cast upon her normal 
| needs and obligations. How can she look the whole 
| world in the face if she owes and does not pay? 
| Of course she must strive to pay. Then by what 
| hands can the imperative wealth be made? It must 
| be by those of a different race, of a lower 
| standard, than the hands that have been so far 
| working for her high destiny. With the lower type 
| of worker installed here down go all hopes of 
| racial purity and strength. Australia must 
| inevitably sink into a motley colored land once 
| she must depend upon a low status of men to do 
| her work. Her primary production may be 
| stimulated. Her secondary industries may be 
| tremendously increased. By such means her 
| obligations may be met. But all of this is 
| dependent on men to do the work. Is it not clear 
| as the fact that night follows day that another 
| form of labor, another status of citizenship, is 
| being enforced upon this country if she adopt 
| conscription? </p> 
| <p> <LJ VILLIERS , 15 Collett-street, Kensington.> 
| </p>