The Red Refusaliers
[Australia?]: n.p., [194-?]. A scathing anti-Communist poem “dedicated to the rip roaring recruiting agents in the Communist Party who would conscript others but stay at home themselves.” The poet, the unidentified “W.J.C.”, accuses the leadership of the Australian Communisty Party, such as Lance Sharkey, Elliot V. Eliot, and Ernie Thornton, of urging others to fight against the Japanese while avoiding the war themselves (“We have heard you’re short of diggers / Who would rush to stop a Jap, / So we’ll volunteer as urgers, / Though we don’t fight we can yap”). He also criticizes Prime Minister John Curtin of the Australian Labor Party of being soft on Communism (“Now the A.L.P. has promised / To lift the Commo ban”) and of enacting conscription. The poem concludes, “Our leaders have EXEMPTIONS / And so can talk quite free / ‘Gainst anyone who claims the rights / Of this democracy; / And so we have this slogan, / (To me it seems quite right) / WE COMMOS MUST REMAIN AT HOME / WHILE OTHERS GO TO FIGHT.”
A 5” x 8 ¼” of printed newsprint. Some wear along the top and bottom edges with a small piece missing from the bottom right corner. One copy in OCLC at the National Library of Australia. Item #08019
Price: $75.00