/The Maitland Weekly Mercury (NSW : 1894 – 1931)
Sat 20 Dec 1919 Page 9 FIVE ARRESTS EFFECTED.
FIVE ARRESTS EFFECTED.
TARRING AND FEATHERING OF MR. M’DOUGALL.
Detectives Jones and Madin, who have been investigating the tarring and feathering of J. K. M’Dougall at Ararat (Vic.), on December 6, last week arrested five men on warrants issued by Mr. N. Moore, P.M., on the information of Mr. M’Dougall, charging them with inflicting grievous bodily harm.
The accused are returned soldiers, and two at least hold commissions, while one of them was the first to win the D.C.M. at Gallipoli. The names given at the Melbourne watch-house were: Cyril Fred Joseph Eastgate, aged 24, secretary to the Returned Soldiers’ Association, Essendon; Richard Williams, 23, clerk attached to the office; Harold Arthur Barker, motor proprietor, Moonee Ponds; Charles Edward Young, woodworker, Field-street, Moonee Ponds; Richard Dennis, painter and contractor, Barn-street, Moonee Ponds.
The accused emphatically deny that the incident had any political significance. They had read the poem, and a section of the Essendon branch of the Returned Soldiers’ Association decided to take action against M’Dougall. The accused were all admitted to bail, in £50.
Mr. M’Dougall says he was not feathered, but a bag of kapok was drawn over him, acting like a strait-jacket. The men accused him of doing more against conscription than any other man in Australia.
What else informs this terrible outcome?
A couple of local Laborites have suggested the publication of the following, which appeared in Wednesday’s Ballarat Echo in defence of Mr. J. K. McDougall:
Mr. J. K. McDougall, the Labor candidate for Grampians, is an ardent lover of his fellow-men and a fierce hater of anything that serves to interfere with the right of every individual to peace and happiness. Hence it is that his attitude towards unbridled militarism is bitter and keen, and his attitude is clearly shown in the poems which he has written from time to time.
Long ago he saw how militarism on the Continent was strangling the aspirations of nations towards social, political and economic reform, and some years since he published, amongst others, these verses concerning the soldiery armed and drilled in times of peace as a menace to the continuance of that peace and as earnest of the terrible doings of war with which the past six months has familiarised us:
Ye are the sordid killers
Who murder for a fee;
Ye prop the rotten pillars,
Trade’s lust and treachery;
Hog-souled and dirty-handed
Ye sell yourselves for gain,
And stand for ever branded,
Red felons after Cain.
This verse and another of the same character is being circulated through the length and breadth of the Grampians electorate in order to injure Mr. McDougall’s candidature. How? One asks if there is aught of wrong in holding up to scorn a military system which has reddened the fields of Belgium and Northern France. Is the prophet-like language of the poet too strong a description of the bloody work of men trained to be “sordid killers” who prop “trade’s lust and treachery”? Are they who circulate this leaflet hurt because the lines of Mr. McDougall reflect bitterly on German militarism? No; those who are responsible for the republication of Mr. McDougall’s verse are professedly as vehemently anti-German as they are anti-Socialist.
How, then, do they expect the republication to injure Mr. McDougall? By the cowardly, malicious insinuation that Mr. McDougall’s attack was aimed at our Australian soldiers. The leaflet is headed, “Opinions on the War.” The lines are from a blood-and-thunder poem, entitled “The White Man’s Burden,” appearing in the Labor Call of January 11, 1915, and an appended note in conspicuous type reads: “What a patriotic tribute to our kith and kin who are fighting in a just cause against Kaiser Bill!! And Mr. McDougall is the man who seeks to represent you in the Federal Parliament!!!”
The prefatory lines, by the suppression of an important fact, is one of those half-truths which are “ever the blackest of lies!” The lines were not written in 1915, and with relation to our Australian troops now on war service, but were written and first published eight years ago, though recently re-published. They do not refer to our kith and kin, but show in every line a fierce, but just, resentment at the mad militarism which has set the world in flames, and to frustrate the evil ends of which our young manhood in thousands have volunteered for service!
The verses are not Mr. McDougall’s “opinions on the war.” Neither are they Mr. McDougall’s opinions concerning our lads who have volunteered. Rather are they Mr. McDougall’s trenchant denunciation of that curse that has brought about the war which our “kith and kin” of Australia, who did nothing to bring it about, are risking their lives to finish in such a way as to serve the ends of justice.
And supporters of Dr. Salmon in the Grampians have stooped so low in their tactics as to misrepresent Mr. McDougall as a hater of his “kith and kin,” who are in arms to-day against the evil thing which Mr. McDougall denounced years ago.
Every vote cast for Mr. McDougall on Saturday will be a protest against the mad military pride which is responsible for the surging seas of blood shed within the past few months. For Mr. McDougall has always voiced that protest, and every vote cast for Mr. McDougall on Saturday will be a vote of contempt against the distributors of a leaflet which, by dishonest suppression of facts, unwarranted insinuation, and downright falsehood, was intended to bar his candidature.—T. C. Carey, 2 High Street, Ballarat East.
The verses referred to were re-published, with comment, in the Horsham Times of Tuesday last. The comment then passed still holds good. The explanation as to the origin of the metrical outburst is ingenious, but it is far from convincing. The Empire is too busily employed just now prosecuting a war for national existence to be interested in reading the opinions of Mr. McDougall, or anyone else, on the general principle of militarism. It matters not whether these lines were moulded years ago, or whether they are just fresh from the pen of the writer, since their publication at this time—and that without any reference to a reprint—could only be viewed by those who see them for the first time as being intended to reflect upon the military situation as it exists to-day.
If Mr. McDougall or the Labor Call wished people to understand the true motive of the original effort, why was it not stated that the verses were old and had no present application? And if they have no immediate application, why were they reprinted at all? Surely it will not be suggested that the effort is a gem of such transcendent brilliancy that its resuscitation at a time of unprecedented national crisis, when the nation needs all the volunteers it can muster, was imperative—even excusable.—(H. Nesbit, McLachlan Street, Horsham).