front ranks.
‘Come on, son!’ Ted Hill said. ‘Give ‘em curry!’
Molly took a step forward, twisting free of Mick, who gave up trying to hold her back.
‘He’s got something to say for sure you stupid man,’ she shouted, ‘about Kaiser Wilhelm and all his kind! Those shameful parasites in the royal families of Europe and their family squabbles! Millions dead because of them!’
A few weak cries,
‘Disloyal!’ and
‘Saboteur!’ greeted her remark amid ‘Hurrah’s’ from the Socialists. But Molly wasn’t finished,
‘Disloyal am I? So you support the English murdering the Irish Martyrs for declaring a free Republic in their own land? That’s loyalty to your own is it? That’s …’ But Mick would have no more. He stepped up and dragged her back. She glared, shaking her open hands, first at the hecklers, then at Joe. He shot her a despairing look.
Then, high above the crowd’s head, a hat was hoisted on a walking stick. Everyone knew it was Monty Miller’s, around it the red pugaree he’d first worn on the Eureka Stockade. His voice followed it on high,
‘I’m with you, lad! Give us Peace and be blowed with politicians!’
The crowd gave him a loud,
‘Hooray!’ Calls of, ‘That’s the spirit!’ echoed around the Domain.
Kathleen O’Donahue saw the uncertainty on the face of her son. So, while the crowd were still at sixes and sevens, she burst into the song they’d sung so often to beat the last Conscription Referendum. She gave them Go to The War, Toiler – full bore. The crowd joined her, ringing closer around the podium. The rowdies and detractors were drowned out when they tried to start up their own Rule Britannia and God Save the King.
‘Decide now, Joseph Hill, if we have something worth saying!’ Segeyev urged from behind him.
Oh to be Segeyev – to have his passionate eyes, his revolutionary hair and his mesmerizing, stentorian voice.
Before the last note died in the throats of the singers Joseph Hill turned to them, his face afire with savage indignation. Clenching his fist around his notes, he punched the sky,
‘Comrades!’ he bellowed, his voice cracking with the strain. The crowd cheered once more. ‘Comrades!’ he cried again, egging them on. ‘We want Peace! We demand Peace, now! And an end to any more talk of Conscription!’
At last his voice had come.
‘Comrades! We, the Executive of the Children’s Peace Army want two things,’ Joe continued, half-turning to acknowledge Mick and Molly and the children behind. ‘We add our voices to the tumult of dissent from around the world – Socialists, churchmen, Pacifists, people of good conscience all – to demand an end to this bloody Capitalist war! And we, the Children’s Peace Army, demand the Commonwealth Government repeal its legislation to hold this second Referendum on Conscription. It is immoral. It is unnecessary. And-it-is-wrong!’
From the corner of his eye Joe saw the black devils scribbling away in their notebooks to send off to their Commonwealth masters in Melbourne. He had just the thing for them.
‘Fellow-workers, the ruling classes must be held to account. War is when governments coerce us into believing that murder is right and to commit it is to do good. To compel more young men to die, beyond those brave souls who have already volunteered to do so, is a tax on our Nation conjured by the very Devil himself. Conscription is a blood tax. A blood tax, nothing more!’
Joe looked down to the field of faces shining like ploughed soil waiting to receive the grain. The reporters scribbled on.
‘Billy Hughes, the Prime Minister of this great nation of ours, already has blood on his hands! The blood of our brother-workers! Not content with that, he now wants to be able to conscript young men to send to Europe to fight for the Empire.’ He stared defiantly down at the nearest government agent.
‘But he has been directed! He has been told! No! He has been commanded by the first referendum of the people on this matter – we said NO then, we say NO now to conscripting the youth of our nation to his war!’
The crowd cascaded his vitriol.
‘Hughes the rat!’
‘Turncoat!’
‘Down with Hughes!’
‘Even after he lost the referendum, or should I say,’ Joe corrected himself, ‘even after we won it.’ He saw his father smile broadly up at that, smiled and tapped his finger down hard on the notebook of the reporter standing beside him, dislodging his pencil into the mud.
‘This misbegotten politician still bathes in the blood of your children, your sons, fathers, uncles and brothers.’ Joe lowered his voice to a stage whisper and pointed at the youngest Peace Army children for the effect.
‘This government must be stopped! Let’s conscript all politicians to go to the war!’
The audience broke into factions at this final remark, some baying for Hughes’ blood and some for Joseph Hill’s.
‘How much more of this slaughter? Will we all simply fall silent? We will never be so timid a people! Never! Speak, Comrades! We must speak or we acquiesce! Damn the talk of another Conscription Referendum! Damn William Morris Hughes! We will redouble our voices and – Vote No!’
The crowd cheered anew. Joe shuffled his notes.
A tomato, rotten by the stench of it, careened past Joe’s nose. Tomfool stretched out a huge hand to catch it in a spray of splattered juice. Joe glanced around quickly, reading the surprise on Molly’s face and the grin from Tomfool, he turned back to his crowd. Zuzenko and Madorsky, began to shoulder their way through the mob to the point from which the projectile seemed to come. Tomfool took aim and hurled the remaining mush in the Peace Army children’s direction. They giggled, skittering out of the way. Mrs Griffiths stood to move forward and take control of the meeting.
‘It’s bleeding!’ Tomfool laughed with joy. ‘Billy Hughes has blood on his hands!’
Segeyev’s hand clapped down on Joe’s shoulder,
‘You have alarmed the Capitalist lapdogs. You must be saying something right, Comrade!’ Joe thought quick.
‘Tomatoes remind us all of the life-blood that is spilled daily!’ he ad libbed weakly, raising his voice and arms above his head. A bit of movement often worked.
‘We will agitate until this madness is done!’ Joe continued. ‘We will educate, agitate and organise!’ he thundered, enunciating his words, ‘And-we-will-win!’
But the crowd’s attention was gone.
Joe turned to Mrs Griffiths.
‘A song maybe?’ he asked, lost.
‘Go on, Joe!’ Molly urged. His father looked at his feet.
Segeyev pulled out a pea-whistle and blew – hard and
