"Over There" with the Australians

by R. Hugh Knyvett

I have no patience with the waterish sentiment that suggests that the lines of the Germans in America and Australia have fallen in hard places because they are called upon to take up arms against their own blood. For this is not a war of race, but of right! It is not a war of Britons, Americans, and French against Germans and Austrians! It is a war of men in all nations against beasts!

There is something in all of us that is stronger than kinship, higher than citizenship—manhood—and every one who is a man, though he be of German blood will join us in this struggle against the monster that has devoured women and children and many fair lands.

We have in the Australian army one general of German blood, another of Austrian, and hundreds of men of both, but they have been fighting loyally with us, because they were men and could not be held back from striking at tyranny and wrong. Remember, in the Australian army all are volunteers.

Every one now knows what Germany stands for and the menace she is to the future of the world if her power is not destroyed, and every one who does not help to defeat her is an ally of the Kaiser and helping him to win the war.

The Judge is to-day separating the sheep from the goats, not according to nationality, but according to how they stand in this strife for right, for never was there a cause so divinely right as the cause of the Allies, and never a cause so devilishly wrong as that of the Germans.

The great mass of the German people have shown themselves to be on the side of evil, but every German in our own countries is given a chance in the present days to prove himself a man who hates brutality and cruelty and wrong, or by standing aloof from helping us show that he has the will to do these things as his kinsman in France. These should be given the same medicine as the Kaiser's millions "over there." We should also root out the Kaiser's secret allies in our midst, some of them not of German blood, who for pay do his dirty work, never forgetting also that the neutral and the lukewarm at this present juncture are also our enemies and have their hands stained with the blood of our kin who die for this cause.

Washington when he called on the English colonists in this country to resist the German mercenaries of the German King of England did not bewail the fate that compelled them to fight against their own country and where their kin dwelt. No! For his cause was just and just-minded men must support it though a sword pierced their own hearts.

Lincoln when he called on the people of the Northern States to free the slaves did not exempt those who had friends or kin down South, but he called on every one who was free to strike a blow for the freedom of other men, though in so doing they should be cutting off their own right arms.

In this war we are not only fighting to free millions who are held in a far worse slavery than ever the negro was in, but we are fighting for our own liberty and that of our children, which has been directly attacked. Not all Germans are bestial and cruel, with no regard for honor, but just how many of them are not remains for the American and Australian citizens of German descent to prove.

Not all Britishers and Americans and Frenchmen are willing to sacrifice themselves in our righteous cause—there are traitors even here, and these I would rather shoot than the enemy in France.