Alexander Rud Mills - Detainment

Detainment

Given Mill's known pacifist sympathies and his association with (although he was not a member of) the Australia First Movement, it was unsurprising that he was detained without trial for suspicion of placing Australia's interests before those of the Empire, and for offering his legal services to Australia First members on 10 March 1942. He was interned until 17 December 1942, having been set free at last by a tribunal. No charges were ever brought against him. Mills was cleared of any wrongdoing by a judicial panel, but received no compensation for his imprisonment.

In Parliament in March 1944 Robert Menzies, then leader of the opposition, later Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, said "I happen to know him quite well..... he was hauled out of his home, imprisoned and put in an internment camp..... his association, so I am informed, with the Australia First Movement amounted to this: some man who had secured appointment with the movement wrote to him and asked him to subscribe, and he forward 10s 6d. as a subscription..... I know this man and I know something of the disaster which this has brought upon him..... Here is a man who for twenty-odd years was building up a practice as a professional man. He was taken out of his home, just as anybody might be. He was incarcerated in circumstances of immense notoriety. When he came out, what happened? His friends were gone, his practice gone, his reputation was gone."

In "The Puzzled Patriots," by Bruce Muirden, Melbourne University Press 1968, page 128 refers to a bashing of Mills by an army officer at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. This allegation was backed up by Mills' wife, Evelyn Louisa Mills.

Alexander Rud Mills applied to join the AIF during World War I but was rejected on medical grounds. His soldier's reject badge was No. 65039.