"What do I think? We couldn't get any wires through that explained anything. There was nothing on but the ordinary strike business when I came down. I suppose some of the chaps have been talking wild and the Government has snapped at the chance to down the union. You know what our fellows are."
"Yes. But I don't quite see what the Government's got to gain.
Proclamations and military only make men worse, I think."
"Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't," answered Ned. "A crowd that's doing no harm, only kicking up a bit of a row, will scatter like lambs sometimes if a single policeman collars one of them. Another time the same crowd will jump on a dozen policemen. The Government thinks the crowd'll scatter and I'm afraid the crowd'll jump."
"Why afraid?" enquired Nellie, biting her lips.
"Because it has no chance," answered Ned. "These are all newspaper lies about them having arms and such nonsense. There aren't 500 guns in the whole Western country and half of them are old muzzle-loading shot guns. The kangarooers have got good rifles but nineteen men out of twenty no more carry one than they carry a house."
"But the papers say they're getting them!"
"Where are they to get them from, supposing they want them and naturally the chaps want them when they hear of military coming to 'shoot 'em down'? You can reckon that the Government isn't letting any be carried on the railways and, even if they did I don't believe you could buy 500 rifles in all Queensland at any one time."
"Then it's all make-up that's in the papers? It certainly seemed to me that there was something in it."
"That's just it, there is something in it. Just enough, I'm convinced, to give the Government an excuse for doing what they did during the maritime strike without any excuse and what the squatters have been planning for them to do all along."
"One of the Queensland men who was here a week or two ago was telling me about the maritime strike business. It was the first I'd heard of that. Griffith didn't seem to be that way years ago," said Nellie.