The Argus at KellyGang 30/12/1881
Ministers have promised to give their early attention to the report of the Police Commission, and it is advisable, therefore, that the grave issues involved in the recommendations of the report should be pointed out and commented upon. To-day we do not propose to refer to the feud between Messrs NICOLSON and HARE, and its consequences, on which the commissioners dwelt at length, beyond saying that the situation is for the most part the creation of Captain STANDISH. By favouring Mr HARE, whom he liked, and by acting harshly to Mr NICOLSON, whom he seems to have hated, Captain STANDISH converted what might have been an honourable rivalry into a bitter and unseemly strife, damaging to the two officers themselves, and disastrous to the country. It may he that if the police force is to be harmoniously worked, either Mr HARE or Mr NICOLSON must go, but that there is any necessity for pensioning off both of these officers, as the commission recommend, is by no means evident. Messrs NICOLSON and HARE are experienced officers, of high character and great ability; they are the picked men of the force, and to lose the services of both, even if the one must retire, appears to savour somewhat of folly.
The existence of a feud between Messrs NICOLSON and HARE is, how- ever, no excuse for the damaging imputations which the commissioners are pleased to cast upon nearly every police officer in turn, apparently without due reflection. Mention may be made of two passages, which it is to be hoped the Government of the country will expressly disown. The first is with regard to Superintendent SADLEIR at Glenrowan. The commissioners complain of a lack of dash on his part, and they state –
“A dispassionate observer could not fail to couple this inactivity with a want of capacity, if not of courage, to deal with the difficulty. Of course, if an attack were made as suggested, the officer in charge was in honour bound to take the lead, so that if there were any danger in having resort to such an expedient, the spectators could not be blamed if they thought more of Mr Sadleir's discretion than any other quality which he displayed upon that very trying occasion."
Superintendent SADLEIR'S reasons for not sanctioning an assault by the police upon the Glenrowan building are fully stated by that officer both in his evidence, and in his report to the Government :–
“Several of the police repeatedly appealed to me to let them rush the building. This I would not permit, for various reasons, chiefly that the party rushing in could not be supported by those outside; that a long narrow passage through the house had to be traversed before the outlaws-whose exact position in the buildings was not known-could be reached ; that they could not be knocked over, on account of the armour, until the police actually had their hands on them ; that I knew they still had large supplies of ammunition ; that there were yet several hours' daylight ; and that the final capture or destruction of the two outlaws was a matter of certainty. I therefore held to the determination, though under considerable difficulties, to sacrifice no life in this way if it could be avoided."
Superintendent SADLEIR also points out that if the assault had failed, and if two or three of the men had been left wounded in the house, his hands would have been tied. Therefore, while he had decided to try an assault before dark- ness set in, he left it as a last resource, Inspector SADLEIR may have been wrong in his tactics. No doubt an attempt to seize two desperate men who were fighting behind cover in bullet-proof armour, would have resulted in serious loss of life. There would have been more widows and orphans to provide for in addition to the families of the Wombat victims. Still, if the commissioners are of opinion that two, three, or four policemen should have been sacrificed, either to gratify the "dispassionate observers" or to maintain the prestige of the force, they should say so. It is entirely gratuitous on their part, however, to insinuate that Superintendent SADLEIR was deterred from ordering an assault, not by consideration for his men, but by regard for his own person. It is due to Mr SADLEIR to mention that the evidence discloses that he never flinched from danger in the Kelly search, and that there is really no warrant for the reflection cast upon him. Is it fair or seemly, we would ask, for a Royal commission to blast the reputation of a responsible officer by innuendo?
A parallel case is that of Superintendent HARE. The commissioners write –
The moment he (Mr Hare) was informed by Bracken of the presence of the outlaws at the hotel, he dashed away without waiting for some of his men to collect their arms . . . Did he propose to rush the place and at once overpower the outlaws ? If that were his intention he should not have been deterred by a mere wound in his wrist from doing so. Comparisons may be odious, but it cannot fail to strike one as singular that, while Superintendent Hare felt himself obliged to leave his post and return to Benalla, under the impression that the wound in his wrist would prove fatal, the leader of the outlaws, with a rifle bullet lodged in his foot, and otherwise wounded in the extremities, was enabled to hold his ground, encumbered too by iron armour, until 7 o'clock, when, in the effort to rejoin his companions, he fell overpowered by numbers."
This is truly an extraordinary passage, and an odious comparison. What was Mr HARE'S "mere wound in the wrist?" As the commissioners' own narrative says:-"The ball passed through the limb, shattering the bone, and severing the artery." Mr HARE kept the field, the reporters say in their evidence, until from loss of blood he was “staggering like a drunken man," and finally he sank down insensible in a faint. To the commissioners sitting in their easy chairs “a severed artery " is nothing. Yet if they had asked a question of any medical man, they would have been informed that given a severed artery, and not AGAMEMNON, nor MURAT, nor their own NED KELLY would or could have kept the field for any time.
Loss of blood will speedily tame the bravest and reduce the strongest of men. And the reference to NED KELLY is surely in the worst possible taste. It cannot be necessary to make a hero of this man. If an allusion was called for, the commissioners, we submit, should have mentioned how KELLY, when he was brought down, whined to the men whom he had endeavoured to involve in a treacherous railway catastrophe, asking them to spare his life. “For GOD'S sake, let me live as long as I can," were his words. Constable DWYER says, ‘I kicked him in contempt,’ saying, 'You wretch, when poor KENNEDY was begging his "'life of you, as you are begging now, you shot him like a dog.'" Constable DWYER'S kick is to be reprobated. But it is scarcely so much to be regretted as the eulogium of the Royal commissioners. The whole history of the Kelly search shows that the personal courage of Mr HARE is unquestionable. The sneer in his case is therefore as un- deserved as it is in Mr SADLEIR's, and we repeat that both officers have a right to expect an explicit exoneration from the Government to which they have appealed.
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