All this went on in the open, and roused some comment in the press: at first a great deal of praise, later some suspicion and considerable antagonism, both from Conservatives and Labour. Ben Cooley was supposed to be working himself in as a future Prime Minister, with a party behind him that would make him absolute, a Dictator. As soon as one paper came out with this alarm, an opponent sneered and pooh-poohed, and spoke of the Reds lounging about, a fearful menace, in Sydney, and recalled the Reigns of Terror in Paris and in Petrograd. Was another Reign of Terror preparing for Sydney? Was a bloodthirsty Robespierre or a ruthless Lenin awaiting his moment? Would responsible citizens be lynched in Martin Place, and dauntless citizenesses thrown into the harbour, when the fatal hour struck? Whereupon a loud burst from the press: were we to be alarmed by the knock-kneed, loutish socialist gang that hung round Canberra House? These gentry could hardly kill the vermin in their own clothing, not to speak of lynching in Martin Place. Whereas the Maggies were a set of efficient, well-armed, and no doubt unscrupulous tools of still more designing and unscrupulous masters. If we had to choose between Napoleon, in the shape of Ben Cooley, or Lenin, in the lack-of-shape of Willie Struthers, we should be hard put to it to know which was worse. Whereupon a fierce blast about our returned heroes and the white-livered skulkers who had got themselves soft jobs as coast-watchers, watching that the sharks didn’t nibble the rocks, and now dared lift their dishonourable croaks against the revered name of Digger. And a ferocious rush-in from Labour, which didn’t see much Napoleon in Ben Cooley, except the belly and the knack of filling his pockets. Napoleon, though but a Dago and not a Jew, had filled one of the longest pockets Europe had ever emptied herself into, so where would poor little Australia be when the sham Kangaroo, with the help of the Magpies, which were indeed strictly Butcher Birds, started to coin her into shekels? Then the boom died down, but the Digger Clubs had grown immensely on the strength of it. There were now more than a hundred clubs in New South Wales, and nearly as many in Victoria. The chief in Victoria was a smart chap, a mining expert. They called him the Emu, to match Kangaroo on the Australian coat of arms. He would be the Trotsky to the new Lenin, for he was a born handler of men. He had been a lieutenant-colonel in the war, a very smart soldier, and there had been a great cry to keep him on, for the Defence Force. But he had got the shove from Government, so he cleared out and went back to his mining.