(To the Editor)

Sir, Rumours are flying around about aeroplanes having been seen over Sydney and as far inland as Parramatta and the police have been so notifed. Yet the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Navy, Messrs Hughes and Cook leave for England either just before or coincidentally with the appearance and report of aeroplanes, sea-planes, and cruisers off the coast, etc.

Are we about to have mobilisation for Home Defence? Now that the two Ministers have gone, Mr Watt, the Melbourne politician, is acting as Prime Minister, and a Forty-two Million Loan has been successfully made; and is not Melbourne to get some of it for uniforming, well not those whom they would have conscripted for over-sea service, but for fixing up those that they can and intend to "mobilise for home defence". Are we to hear in years to come of another two millions gone astray, and another hundred thousand epended on useless wagons as appeared in the recent military report that was pidgeon holed from November of last year till February of this. By the way, also nothing was done about the 68,000 pounds that went astray from military accounts.

Now as an ordinary man in the street I ask myself - if all these dangers are about away at sea, are not Mr. Hughes and Mr. Cook and Sir Robert Garran, and the two other accompanying and highly paid Federal Civil Servants wondrously brave men to brave these dangers on the latters own particular ocean - or is the whole "fake" about the aeroplanes etc, etc, a transparent attempt to give the "boodler" some sort of a shadow of an excuse for mobilisation for home defense and the never to be overlooked consequent profits to the "boodlers".

Query: How many aeroplanes are there at Point Cook, Victoria?

Yours, etc. "OXBRO"