Germans in Australia during the Great War were held in high suspicion and were often treated oafishly by Australians intoxicated by patriotism. One hundred years ago this week "Clio" of Melbourne's Punch, sometimes made oafish by her extreme patriotism, told with relish this ugly story.
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"A most amusing story comes from a sister State, showing the danger of musical enthusiasts indulging their personal feelings where anything pro-German is concerned.
"The students at a college of music, who are militantly loyal and furiously British, were incensed at the action of one of their professors, a German, and bald-headed and beyond repair, who incautiously included on the program of a students' concert a German national composition which is second cousin to the Prussian National Anthem.
"Nothing was said, but one afternoon, this professor was surprised in his music room by a dozen masked visitors who surrounded, then bound the astonished man to his own chair, produced brushes and tubes of paint, and proceeded to adorn his bald pate with a beautiful oil painting of the Union Jack.
"Quickly, silently, was the masterpiece performed, and the invaders departed, leaving the professor shivering with fright and with Rule Britannia in colour decorating his hairless head.
"The official investigation of the affair was so perfunctory the identity of the artists was never discovered; but the hand-painted teacher [terrified into behaving acceptably] now opens and closes every programme with God Save the King played fortissimo [very loudly]."
