Australian historian Craig Wilcox is equally critical. After expressing disgust that Australian law in 1907 could, "allow a murderer to make money from his story", Wilcox continued, "George Witton's "Scapegoats of the Empire" promised to tell the truth about a war crime. Instead the book offered a half-truth, one that painted the perpetrators as the victims and the judges as the villains. The half-truth was what many Australians wanted to hear and Witton's book became a rotten prop for a bogus legend that would help Australia win a cultural war of independence."