The Australian Historiography of the First World War: Who is Deluded?

Anthony Cooper

Ernest Scott described the first world war as the pivotal event in the history of Australia,’ and the emphasis which has continued to be accorded to “Anzac” in Australian history and culture bears out the sense of his words. Gallipoli has continued to serve as the foundation myth of Australian nationhood, and Anzac Day has yet to be supplanted as Australia’s de fact0 national day. Each year, the commemorations trigger another round of discussion and evocation of the events at Gallipoli, and to a lesser extent, of those which followed in France and Palestine. The battlefields and cemeteries receive their quiet groups of Australian pilgrims year by year, as well as the occasional large, noisy group of official visitors. Modern Australian motion pictures have given a preponderant coverage to the first war, glorying in the romantic Australi‘mism which, in the popular mind, the AIF defined so wonderfully and wrote so large. All of this attests to the peculiar place which that conflict and the Australians who fought in it hold in Australian national self- consciousness.

It is arguable, however, that despite receiving an intensity of focus which no other Australian war has received, none of Australia’s wars has been more misunderstood. It has become a commonplace to hear and read comments from leanled and not-so learned authorities to the effect that Australian involvement in the Great War was delusive, mistaken, inappropriate, pointless; that it was of no real concern to the young Dominion. The soldiers of the AIF, according to this interpretation, were duped by the imperialists, and their role reduced to something analogous to that of the Gurkhas; their mighty efforts did not advance Australian interests and therefore their immense sacrifice was misplaced.

Consciously or not, this view coheres with the post-Versailles revisionist verdict upon the origins of World War I which rejected German war guilt2 and considered instead that the nations of Europe had stumbled into war, or “slithered over the edge”. Therefore, the war was senseless and Australian involvement indefensible. This “disillusionist” interpretation was evidently so persuasive and pervasive that it has become virtually axiomatic in modem Australian interpretations of that conflict. “Anzac” is therefore a senseless episode in a senseless conflict. This may heighten Gallipoli’s tragic mystique, but it obfuscates rather than clarifies the issues.

An examination of the Australian historiography of Australia’s involvement in the first world war is therefore long overdue, especially in consideration of the topical flavour with which the issue has been invested as a result of recent poIitical stitements. This essay attempts to enquire into what Australian “professional’’ and “popular” historians have said about both the nature of the conflict and Australia’s involvement in it as part of the British Empire. Indeed, the question of Australia’s part in the war forms part of the broader question of Australia’s place in the empire. The one question contiins the other, and thus both must perforce be discussed in order to gain a comprehension of the key issues.

Anthony Cooper 17

An overview is traced as to how Australian histori‘ms have interpreted the conflict, dividing the writers into “schools” (or at least phases) of broadly chronological sequence and ideological coherence, Various interpretations of the war are identified as emerging from these writings. These are examined, interpreted, and subjected to the weight of some contemporary scholarship, as well as, surprisingly, to the weight of some of their proponents’ other statements.

Post-World War I Conservatives: Imperialists and Doubters?

The generation of writers who lived through the time of the war were naturally the first to write outside of the hothouse wartime environment of crisis, schism and propaganda. Being “establishment” figures, we do not expect them to adopt a pacifist, revolutionary or Anglophobic stance, and such is indeed the case. Neither can it be said though that they adopted a trenchant defence, justification or even explanation of Australia’s policy and war aims. Indeed, Becan and Scott excepted, they are more remarkable for what they do not say rather than for what they do.3

W. K. Hancock’s Australia (1930), for ex;,mple, says little directly about the war apart from implying that Australia’s involvement had been an “assumption of responsibilities” befitting a nation (i.e. not a colony), and also declaring briefly that “Australia’s destiny depended on the survival of the British Empire . . . as a free Commonwealth she was ready to spend herself in a common cause”.4

F. W. Eggleston, A. W. Jose, A. N. Smith and F. L. W. Wood, all of whom wrote general histories around the same time as Hancock, were no more expansive, mostly only assuming the fact of Australian belligerence and imperial loyalty within broader discussions of Australian nation-building or of accounts of wartime domestic crises. However, some of the crumbs which fell from their table are germane: Smith noted that “Germany was the only enemy that could send a military force to the Commonwealth”. Wood considered that Gennmy’s crime in violating Belgian neutrality imposed a “sacred duty” to fight upon both Britain and Australia. Eggleston argued that neutrality had been rejected by Australians as a foreign-policy model, and militant imperial engagement adopted ins tead.5

C. E. W. Bean and Ernest Scott are more forthcoming, as one might expect. Bean described the nature of the war as a just “crusade” against the threatening and barbaric German Reich, with its state cult of militarism and anti-liberal “Kultur”. The Allies, Australia included, had their “independence threatened”; Belgium and the “sanctity of treaties” had been violated; democracy in the world was imperilled; and a moral obligation existed to stand by France, which was the bulwark of liberalism against Russian aggression. Moreover, the “motherland” was “confronted with a struggle in which she might actually cease to be a great nation”. Rallying to her cause was more than scntimental help to “an old friend in danger”, but was based on the realisation that “if Britain fell, Australia too must fall”, for “if the Navy of the British Empire succumbed, Australia had no defence ... Australia would be a spoil to the conqueror”.6 From the World War II-era vantage point of his last volume, he argued for the principle of forward defence in both time and space: “Those who waited for invasion waited beyond the time and place at which defence of their freedom was possible, and entered the fight only with the certainty of losing it”. Using Germany‘s “dictctt’ at Bresl-Litovsk as a benchmark (compared to which Versailles looked benevolent), he asserted that “the first achievement of the AIF was that ... it helped to save the world from a peace treaty dictated by

18 Australian Historiography of W W I

Ludendorff ... For the Australian people ... such an ending meant almost certain elimination”.7

Scott concurred, writing (somewhat rhetorically) in relation to the conscription controversy that “defeat in the war would mean sounding the death knell of all Australia’s hopes and aspirations, and rob her people at one stroke of all that made life worth living”. He considered that the bitter conscription controversies “obscured the paramount importance of the war”, arguing that Australia’s future was at stake, though admittedly to a less immediate extent than was Britain’s.*

Thus we can see that Bean and Scott were far more forthright in their exposition of the nature of Australia’s war than were their peers. For these others, the war appears to have been something of a “given”, whether reduced to the status of an “unspoken assumption” or used as the background to a discussion of some other aspect of Australian society, politics or history. This reticence could be adjudged somewhat curious in view of the publishing dates of the 1930s.

The work of G. V. Portus, however, may suggest an explanation. Portus, considered to be the most influential of the old “liberal patri~ts”,~ challenged the Versailles verdict of German war guilt (Bean, surprisingly, had been a little open-minded about this in Volume 1, but by Volume 6, with World War I1 under way, was in no doub$1° Instead, Portus appears to have adopted the same view as set forth by S. B. Fay. He-declared the war to have been the result of many causes, such as the fear and rivalry between the great powers, their secret alliances and trade rivalries, and the race. His view is that of uncontrollable forces leading to a lurch into war. Nonetheless he considered that the violation of Belgium obliged British and Australia to resist. For Portus, therefore, the imperial connection, though not the war, was a “given”.12

This was the era of “disillusionist historiography”13 on both sides of the Atlantic; though it seems that Australia was not unaffected by this current. The fruits of victory had been spoiled by post-Versailles self-doubt, by the failure of capitalism in the Great Depression, by the war’s very cost and by the black fury with which it had been waged. As the 1930s went on, the rearmament of Germany and the failure of appeasement (which Australia strongly and vocally supported) must have further belied and taunted the earlier “war to end all wars” against the earlier German Reich.

Post-World War II: Nationalists and Leftists

Stung further by the disillusioning failure of the empire in the Pacific war crisis of early 1942, the generation of nationalist and leftist historians who led the field in the modem corning-of-age of Australian history-writing were unlikely to reverse this historiographical trend or to re-assert Bean’s view. They were influenced by the earlier Australian “New World‘’ dreams, by socialism and by the anti-hegemonic collectivist traditions of Eureka, the shearers and the union movement. Their “vision splendid” was one of an independent new society - a classless democracy giving substance to the earlier dream of a “working man’s paradise”. It has been said that, for them, “mate” had much in common with “comrade ”.14

Ian Turner’s view of the first world war is quite representative of this group. He criticised the “childlike” Australian acceptance of support for Britain: “There was no shadow of feeling that the interests of child and parent might not be one”. He asked “what the human sacrifice had meant”? Characterising the war as “insane destruction”, he questioned “the motives of those who demanded that so many millions die”.l5 Turner supposed that “the men of 1914-18 had been deluded by imperial or national sentiment to

Anthony Cooper 19

fight in an unjust imperialist war”, and even identified those responsible for this delusive blunder - the middle classes, who in contradistinction to the “common man”, were “backward looking” and “irredeemably eurocenrric”. l6

Geoffrey Serle considered that the entire period from federation to the second world war was one of a “curious hesitation in development towards nationhood . . . Australia was captured by jingo-imperialism and British racism”. The war was therefore merely a phase in this conservative period of resistance to nationhood. l7

Brian Fitzpatrick was less forthcoming, seeing fit to complete his 1951 work The Awzruliun People 1788-194.5 without a chapter on the first world war, or any direct reference to that conflict. He confined himself to mentioning the economic problems attendant upon it, and even the conscription crises and the wartime problem of state authoritarianism were dealt with in one single page.’*

These men had not engaged in a discussion of Australia’s World War I as a problem in statecraft and strategy; their concerns were elsewhere and therefore such a discussion did not fall within the scope of their work. Michael McKernan has written searchingly about this, suggesting that the leftist presuppositions of such men explains the “war’s absence from the Australian historical agenda”, for “the digger myth sat uncomfortably with the radical tradition”. He goes on to argue with respect to Russel Ward’s avoidance of including the digger archetype in The Australian Legend, that the diggers’ empire loyalty “seemed too much of a contradiction to the Australian nationalism Ward celebrated”. l9 K. S. Inglis provided some corroboration here, arguing that the leftists’ interpretation of the war as a squalid trade war rendered it for them “a subject for angry tears rather than investigation”.20

The outcome was that the problem which the outbreak of war presented for Australia had escaped serious examination: the influential inter-war view of the British Empire having senselessly “slithered over the edge” into war had gone In fact, this view appears to have been the foundation upon which these writers built their treatment of their more specialised concerns, insofar as they touched upon the war at all.

C. M. H. Clark can be located squarely within this emerging inte fact, in his great multi-volume history, he is the most voluble of them montage style, he spoke of the “mad rush to war”, the aims of which were driven by “primitive hatreds”. He lamented the war as a shattering of the dreams of the pre-war visionaries, their dream of an independent Australia being swallowed up by the AIF‘s imperial command and purpose. The idea of “egalitarian soldiers” serving “caste and class” in the form of British generals was galling; war had converted Australian nationalists into defenders of empire and servants of the British aristocrats; the AIF had descended into hell for an unworthy imperial cause. “The men in black” were deciding Australia’s destiny,22 and Prime Minister Hughes had become a tool of the plutocracy. These “iron men” unreasonably drove the war on until Germany’s final defeat. It was all to do with Australians “grovelling” before the British, and had the effect of chaining Australia to the past. Most repugnantly, Australians refused to see the error of their ways, voting “conservative” in the 1917 election, forsaking the way of progress and “dooming themselves to go on repeating the past”. They had failed to liberate themselves from colonialism.23

Clark clearly loathed the imperial connection and the British ascendancy, both internationally in the form of their empire and “influence”, and domestically in the form of squatter, Governor-General, British capital and middle-class Anglophilia. He seemed to imply the existence of a plutocratic conspiracy, and bitterly resented the disappointingly incurable conservatism of the Australian populace in failing to choose the path of revolutionary independence. On the whole, his work is visionary, romantic and

20 Australian Historiography of WWI

entertaining, but his treatment of the British and of the Great War is jaundiced, venomous and spiteful. The historical interpretation which emerges is fantastic and tendentious. It is governed throughout by Clark‘s personal and political preoccupations and is thus more in the nature of a personal spleen-venting than an analysis of an historical problem.

Some contemporary nationalists have taken a similarly romantic line. Noel McLachlan’s revealingly-titled “Waiting for the Revolution” is an Anglophobic polemic inspired by Irish-Australianism. With respect to Australia’s foreign policy “dependence” upon others and the continued existence of the Governor-General’s office, his refrain is: “Clearly no nation!” The Royal Navy is dismissed as having been “that most dmgerous of habit-forming drugs”. In a clear parallel with the situation in World War I, in regard to the casualties among Australia’s volunteers in the Boer War he laments that it was “a far cry from the blood sacrifice in defence of native soil the Americans have given the world as the greatest glory available to modem man”. The emphasis given in his work to parallel events in Ireland, as well as his account of the operations of the Irish Division at Gallipoli, point to the source of his Anglophobic zealotry. Nevertheless, he does adtnit that Irish-Australians confused Australian with Irish issues and reali~ies.2~

Stephen Alomes’ A Nation at Last? is a nationalist polemic. Dismissing the very idea of forward defence out of hand, he derides the “fantasies” of Australian “imperialists” in supposing that “the fate of Australia . . . might be settled in the Soudm, in Egypt . . . or in the English Channel”. He mocks their belief that “Let England be defeated and humiliated, no matter where, and the colonies would suffer for it”. He argues that Britain’s perception of her own relative decline in power prompted her manipulatory facilitation of the creation of Dominion <armies and navies, and that, “In peace and war the colonies were needed by Britain more than they needed its traditional economic strength and the protection of the Royal Navy”. This is a remarkable thing to aver in view of present-day judgements upon the strategic absurdity of British “imperial defence”, and of the habitual “sponging” of the colonies and dominions upon British defence resources. Alomes goes on to declare that Australia “was never under threat”, and that “the excesses of jingoism simplistically asserted rather than realistically assessed Australia’s national interest”. Even if Australia’s diplomatic subordination to Britain technically obliged Australian official co-belligerence, he asks, “how great should [Australian support] have been?”. 25 Donald Home, in Ideasfor a Nation, agrees, challenging “Anzac” and the notion of the service of empire, and linking them to Australia’s “cultural cringe”.26

The expatriate Australian, John Pilger, in A Secret Country, echoes much of Manning Clark in his popular conspiracy-theorism and in his colourful vitriol. He quotes approvingly from Clark‘s account of Federation Day, 1901: “The whole performcame stank in the nostrils. Australians had once again grovelled before the English”. Like Clark, he laments the fact that Australian wartime sacrifice was not “in the cause of independence, but in the service of an imperial master”. Echoing MacLachlan, he is disappointed that, unlike other, poorer nations, Australia has not had its own bloody (but presumably “glorious”) revolutionary struggle. Rather, “the Australian tradition is to fight other people’s wars, against those with whom Australians have no qu‘urel and who offer no threat of invasion”. He explicitly declares that “the Kaiser offered no threat of invasion to the antipodes”. The first world war is seen as a mere “family squabble” between Kaiser Wilhelm and cousin George. Australh troops were exploited as “cannon fodder” in the execution of this unjust war, in engagements of no military or strategic worth - Pilger asks rhetorically, “and for what?”. The problem underlying all this is that Australians “are one of the most profoundly colonised peoples on earth”, “cringing” before the imperial inaster even up to the present day, having now become a “US. surrogate”.27 Pilger is clearly no scholarly historian, but his inclusion in this review is warranted by his

Anthony Cooper 21

enthusiastic acceptance of the wider interpreqve paradigm, as well as for the fact of his ideological similiarity to the professional hhtorians whose views have already been outlined.

Bruce Grant, in The Australian Dilemma, characterises Australia’s twentieth-century military involvements as an assumption of “the role of spear-carrier to the chief’. He correctly identifies the source of Australia’s traditional policy of engagement abroad with a major power as being its sense of isolation and vulnerability in the Pacific. Australia’s inability to defend itself, or at least unwillingness to pay for the cost of defending itself, and the resultant policy of forward engagement with a great patron, is held to be something analogous to the “very small insurance policy” of the Vietnam emz8 Grant denies the validity of Australia’s social and political derivativeness, puzzlingly asserting that “until Australians seek for themselves a new form of western civilisation, their nationhood is crippled”. He decries Australia’s tie to Britain and her one-time dependence on British military power, these shortcomings being symptomatic of “an inability to find within the Australian experience an alternative to the highly successful British model of civilisation”.29

Gregory Pemberton has written a recent article, eulogising the Kokoda Trail and Milne Bay campaigns as having a better claim than Anzac to stand as symbols for Australia’s de fucto national day. It was in these battles against the Japanese that Australia faced “the only real threat against Australian territory”. The continued recognition and prominence of Anzac is the result of “collective amnesia” or “selective memory” steinming from the viewing of Australian history from “an imperial rather than a national perspective”. Echoing Alomes, he considers that Britain’s facilitation of Australi‘m federation was for the real purpose of securing for imperial purposes an Australian expeditionary force. He lauds he Irish-Australians for establishing ‘‘Australia Day” and effectively founding Australian nationalism, and condemns the Anglo-Saxon patriot Bean for his co-opting of national sentiment into the service of the empire. This same imperial service was evidently something black indeed; he wams that, “the Anzac tradition continues to sanction Australia’s imperial past”. Moreover, it hinders Australi,ans from celebrating events of true national importance such as the victories in New Guinea in 1942. “Australia’s search for a more independent future demands that Australians reclaim the past and dispense with much of the imperial historical baggage”. Pemberton‘s provoking article is graced with a note of conspiracy-theorisin through the banner heading: “THE CONSPIKACY TO KEEP SECRET”?’,

More prosaically, L. L. Robson in his scholarly sociological study of the First AIFs recruitment, asks “are there not some constructive effects of the war? It is hard to find any that may be sustained seriously as a counter-balance to millions of dead men.” He goes on: “The cost of the victory in which that superb force of infantry and other units participatcd has yet to be calculated, but so has the meaning of ‘victory’ in World War One”. The best that can be said about the war, he supposes, is that it had a nation-building cffcct upon the infant federation. Seemingly subscribing to the “uncontrollable forces” explanation of the war’s outbreak, he declares that “no man could control it, though all men together could have done

Australian Grovelling and Plutocratic Conspiracies

Thus far then, it is clear that Australia’s involvement in the first world war has been interpreted in a nuinber of highly critical ways. The war has been dmned as an outworking of Lhe insidious British hegemony; of Australia fawning before her imperial

22 Australian Historiography of W W I

master, subordinating her own interests to those of the motherland and shunning the path of independence.

Australia’s embracing of the imperial cause in 1914 is also condemned as a derailment of the “New World” promise of creating an innovative and especially egalitarian, democratic and independent society. Imperial loyalty is held to be inimical to genuine Australian nationalism; social and political derivativeness is invalid, and any form of dependency and subordination is unbecoming and shameful.

The 1914-18 war is also condemned as (to quote a slogan popularly applied to the American Civil War) “a rich man’s war but a poor man‘s fight”. It was driven by the plutocrats for their own ends (“a squalid trade war”), it was against the true interests of the working class (“the real Australia”), and it buttressed the existing social and political hegemonic order. Alternatively, the war was a family squabble between related crowned heads, with, once again, the exploited and deluded “common man” as “common fodder“ for someone else’s gain.

Alistair Thomson’s recent article about surviving diggers’ memories of the war is an encapsulation of such views; he writes in terms of their “fighting someone else’s war”, of fighting rich men’s wars, and of having been “duped

The Darkest Night of the Soul?

Perhaps most influentially, the war is seen as a ghastly event of unparalleled tragedy and destructiveness. According to this view, it was a killing ground for a “lost generation”, and the slaughter was brought on by imperial incompetence, that of the diplomats and politicians at first, but especially that of the ATFs military masters, the hated British generals. Nothing could justify the butchery, but especially so when it seemed to be the result of the almost calculated blundering of these men. The “colonials” are represented as their exploited and over-used shock troops: “cannon fodder” once again. The fact that the war is held to have served no good purpose (and indeed, perhaps an evil one) only heightens the almost palpable perception of insanity and senselessness.

John Robertson recognised the force of this view, but considered it to be induced more by revulsion at “the horrors of the fighting than by sensible assessment of the penalties of defeat”.33 Such revulsion is quite understandable. The apocalyptic darkness of the Western Front has been stamped indelibly on the minds of each succeeding twentieth- century generation, upon the popular mind as well as upon that of soldiers, diplomats, politicians, theologians, philosophers, artists and historians. Clearly, the conflict was a nightmare; “the Somme” and “Passchendaele” are bywords for slaughter on a ghastly scale, and for an apparently contemptible form of military incompetence.

Even “establishment” figures were deeply influenced by this. The disillusionment as to the war’s apparently barren results was parallelled by disillusionment as to its course and nature. John Terraine, among others, has written of the war’s definitive influence upon inter-war British strategy and policy, which developed the fixed-object of avoiding any petition.^^ A war upon which the verdict of “never again” held sway in both popular and official circles for twenty years speaks volumes. No matter what the ostensibly rational reasons were, they were not half so eloquent as the seemingly contrary testimony offered by mud, machine-guns, barbed wire, gas, and white crosses in their hundreds of thousands. McKernan argues that the disillusionist interpretation, driven by the war’s sheer cost, took an immediate hold upon Australian “opinion”: “People could not wait for Bean’s history, by the time it was to hand they had already realised the temble cost of the Great War and its senseles~ness”.~~

Anthony Cooper 23

Some Confounding Red Herrings

The disillusionist interpretation therefore, seems to be solidly grounded in an existential recoil from past experience. There were other notions, however, which have been influential in confounding an appraisal of the Great War, and of Australia’s place in it.

Purged Saints and Demonical Huns

Terraine has argued that the British people profoundly misunderstood the war at the time,36 and it seems clear that the Australian people were little different. Indeed, many of the explanations offered in both countries by “establishment” authorities were of little help in illuminating the issues, and in fact may have actually hindered. In Australia, although G. A. Wood and other liberal academics offered a reasoned exposition of the war a.. a life and death struggle against the world hegemony sought by the Kaiser’s peculiarly illiberal Germany,37 other more fanciful and pious explanations were proffered for the wartimc public’s edification.

A protestant theology of war developed, which besides seeing the war as ajust defence of an imperilled civilisation against the Russian warlords, dso saw it as a spiritual trial and purging of God‘s people, rather after the manner of the Old Testament cycles of apostasy - judgement - repentance - restoration. The methodist Henry Howard considered the war as spiritual “discipline”, breaking down the faithful’s “trust in the material’’ and strengthening their “faith in the spiritual”, by which process the Australian vices of “intemperance, uncleanness, mutual distrust, commercial dishonesty” and ‘‘political chicanery” would be reformed. God was calling the nations back to the path of righteousness and his servants to the path of sacrifice in Christ’s footsteps; moral purging would be the result of going through the fiery furnace.38

Such views could only have been discredited by the course of the war, by the bitter sectari,an division and denunciations of the conscription controversies, by the wartime social and political strife, by the casualty lists, by wartime and postwar hardship and by the bitter fruits of “victory” which transpired in the following decades. Moreover, few of the laity even at the time could have really shared the rarefied piety and moral zeal of such men. The twentieth century‘s mounting secularism and indeed religious cynicism have since only served to heighten the sense of disparity between what was preached and what actually happened. Therefore, not only have such interpretations utterly failed to stand the test of time, but they have tarred the very conflict which they sought to justify with the brush of contrived folly.

The talk of falling beneath “the last of Prussian taskmasters”, and the stereotypical depictions of demoniacal Hun ogres of the “bayoneting-Belgi,an-babies” variety was also a trifle overdone, even allowing for the notable illiberality of Russia-Germany! This again was unlikcly to stand the test of time, and thus was likely to rebound adversely upon attitudes to the war. Inglis has aptly observed that “the years of the war were a great time for high-minded lies in the defence of an imperilled ci~ilisation”.~~

ANZAC and Digger Iconography

The digger mythology must also bear some considerable responsibility for taking the Australian conception of the war into strange, uncharted territory. McKeni,an observes that “(he deeds of the men of Gallipoli, of Pozieres, of Beersheba, stood outside time,

24 Australian Historiography of W W I

outside history, and were akin to the deeds of the half-mythical classical heroes to whom the Australian soldiers had often been compared”.40 “The weight of the Anzac legend”, through its yearly liturgical re-affirmation upon Anzac Day as well as through folk- memory, made of the First AIF not a symbol of the struggle against the threat of Prussian-German conquest, but rather a symbol of Australian manhood per se. This was reinforced by the grief and the pride of the families of the fallen - Richard Nile has observed that they could and would not see their men as anything but heroes, for sanity’s sake.41

Unfortunately, Bean himself did much to establish this semi-mystical conception of the war’s meaning. He identified the “dominant motive” of the diggers as being

the mettle of the men themselves ... life was not worth living unless they could he true to their idea of Australian manhood. Standing upon that alone, when help failed and hope faded, when the end loomed clear in front of them, when the whole world seemed to crumble and the heaven to fall in, they faced its ruin undismayed4*

It could be that the origin of this cult lay in the AIFs own fierce tribalism. Be that as it may, Bean’s romantic eulogising and Anglo-Saxon race patriotism had done his own work a disservice, removing it “beyond the canons of historical debate”,43 and joining it to an ahistorical cult. As Inglis observed, Bean’s work “has not been criticised, but ignored”.44 His books served as the scriptures of the cult, and like the Christian bible in millions of Christian households, remained basically unread. This has persisted to the present day, when interest in the series is largely confined to the first two volumes, which, dealing with Anzac, are used as source-books for Bean’s “creation” of the Anzac myth, and to Scott’s volume,45 with its domestic social and political preoccupations.

The Anzac myth as it developed therefore, perfectly complemented the disillusionist view of the conflict in which the men had fought. If the war itself was senseless and meaningless, then “the mettle of the men themselves” was a convenient focus for the national memory.

Irish Nationalism and Anglophobia

As we have seen in McLachlan’s and Pemberton’s work, the question of Irish nationalism has also been influential in shaping Australian attitudes and interpretations. John Pringle wrote regarding the Irish-Australians: “They thought of England ... not as mother to be cherished but as an oppressor to be hated. Australian nationalism, especially when it took a specifically anti-British form, was very largely their creation.”46 A. D. Gilbert considered Irish patriotism to have been a “powerful alternative” to imperial loyalty.47 Australian socialism was another source of anti-imperial, anti-British sentiment, but Russel Ward thought that Irish prejudice against the British connection was more influential than leftist intemationdism.48

The “two Australias” thesis, as put in various forms by Clark, Turner and Al0rnes,~9 for example, posits a dichotomy in Australian society between the working class “Australianist” Irish and the bourgeois “imperialist” British-Australians. Indeed, George Shaw has noted that the Australian-Irish “school” has not only identified the Irish side of Australia as being the true voice, but has denied or at least ignored the validity of the other, Anglo- Australian, voice.50

This Irish-Anglophobic aspect of Australian self-consciousness has become axiomatk in Australian life, so that even Australians of non-Irish descent (not only English, but Italian, for example) have fallen under its spell. Some Australian writers have themselves identified it as an inspirational influence, and others have revealed it less explicitly, but it

Anthony Cooper 25

is unarguably a strong prejudice which has coloured much of Australian historiography, including the historiography of the Great War and of the imperial connection.

A People‘s Republic?

’The variously-shaded leftism of the most prominent post-World War I1 historians has also becii influential, as we have seen. Whether Irish or not, the worker is the true voice of the.nation.51 Class conflict is the real conflict beneath the surface events of history, arid radical social change is the hoped-for goal. Nationalism is qualified by class iuterests. According to MacIntyre, Brian Fitzpatrick saw Australian history as a struggle between the organised rich and the orgaiised poor.52 Tunier, speaking for his peers, writes that,

many of us in the late 1940s had come to see the possibilities of an Australia which lived on its own ground, stood on its own feet, and spoke with its own voice. There was then 110

contradiction between radical nationalism and socialism; the one led towards the other - indeed, Australian independence was the necessary prerequisite for social advance.53

The focus in their writings was upon themes which related directly to their agenda - the war is extraneous to these concerns, and outside of the mainsueam (as they see it) of history. It is therefore easier to cast it as an imperialist, capitalist, andor monarchical irrelevancy, to subsume it within a nationalistic or ideological polemic, or to n,arrow the focus of enquiry only to tliose aspects of the war which touched upon the social/political mainstream of Australian history.

Robbing the Egyptians

So far, some adverse judgements upon Australian iiivolvetnent in World War I have been considered as well as some of the influenccs which may have conditioncd those judgetnents. There are, however, contrary (or at least inconveniait) vicws: the “delusionist” or “disillusionist” historiography is by no means a seamless, unitary edifice. In fact, amongst the writings of thc leftists and nationalists may be found some judgements which serve to weaken the force of their own arguments.

Stuart MacIntyrc, for cxample, in his admiltedly quite conventional volume in the Oxford History of Ausfruliu series, writcs regarding Prime Minister Menzies’ policy in 1039 (but offering a parallel with the earlier policies of Dcakiii a id Hughes), that he was not a “blind imperialist” oblivious to Australia’s interests but rather that he knew those interests were best served by tying Australian foreign and defence policy to Britain. Without Singapore and the Royal Navy, arid without Britain’s survival to fight the Axis, Australia would be in

Russel Ward admitted that the years between federation and the outbreak of the Great War had seen the destruction of the “small but vociferous republican minority” of the 1890s. IIe wrote that even the Irish-Australians felt “British” aid that tliis “Britishness” was felt to be “the extension and guarantee of his Australianness and certainly not as any kind of limibtion on it’l.55 Ward conceived of the Australian-British relationship in tenns of its being the soil in which the emerging Australian nationality grew:

The concept of generalised British imperial patriotism ... was obviously potent and on the whole beneficial in its effects in the last century. Then Britain was not only our mother country, dependence on whom most Australians took for granted, but she was incomparably the most powerful country in the World in science and the arts as in technical and industrial aid

26 Australian Historiography of W W I

military might. The sentiment of Australian British loyalty reflected and sprang from the real contemporary situation and, in perhaps most contexts, the real interests of our country.

He goes on to say that Australian (Empire) loyalism was based upon both “sordid and self-interested calculation” as well as upon “irrational, romantic and generous feelings”. For England, the “archetypal war poem” of J. D. Bums, expresses such (in this case, sentimental) Anglophile romanticism:

The bugles of England were blowing o’er the sea, As they had called a thousand years, calling now to me; They woke me from dreaming in the dawning of the day, The bugles of England - and how could I stay?

Of this poem, Ward wrote, “even now with the benefit of hindsight ... it is possible for the historiaan to decide that the sentiment of Bun’s poem corresponded with the real interests of Australia in 1914”.56

Ian Turner wrote that the Australian dream of a new society was itself enabled by the ocean’s security, via the Royal Navy.57

In his biography of John Monash, Geoffrey Seble refers to the modem perception that Australia’s involvement was “none of their business”:

k

Historians have not succeeded in explaining the elemcnts of the situation, of defending British civilisation against the barbarians. The underlying realistic appraisal was that, if Australia did not take part, it would almost inevitably be taken over if Germany won the war.58

Elsewhcrc, he characterises the pre-war nationalist stance of the Bulletin as that of “primitive isolationists who assumed Australia could develop into utopia almost without a deferice policy and with 110 commitment to Britai1i’.~9

Robin Gollan notes that by 1907 the ALP “were accepting the view that there was no conflict between Australia gaining the greatest degree of freedom and doing it as a member of the empire”. “Notably absent” from the Labour platfonn was “any idea of the internationalism of the working class”.60

The Empire Strikes Back

It appears then, that the matter was not as simple as the more indignant nationalist statements might suggest. A number of historians of the post-World War I1 era have agreed. Marjorie Bauiard, for example, described Australia’s position earlier in the century as follows:

Despite self-government ... Australia’s motive force remained outside herself ... A homogeneous people, no ‘melting pot’ .... with one main source of man-power, ideas, incans of development and security ... A nation might be forming within a nation, but it had neither the wish nor the ability to separate itself. Eve11 the elements that were from time to time referred to as seditious were inherited rather than indigenous. They were . . . mainly Irish in origin .. .

An allegiance that went deeper than will or knowledge hound Australia to Great Britain; no other power made any bid for her allegiance. She was, as she wished to be, isolated from Asia ... Australia desired isolation to become herself. That self was, by a saturation of influence, predominantly British.

Anthony Cooper 27

When war came, it was seen that “Britain, and all she stood for as mother and defender, was seriously threatened and that the Empire of which Australia was part . . . was in great danger?’

In a similar manner Gavin Souter in Lion and Kangaroo considered that the empire was a “shield” within which the new Commonwealth “could assert itself on more equal terms”. Moreover, “there was no denying the extent to which Australia depended fur protection upon the power of the Royal Navy”. Souter quoted from Sir John Foster Fraser, whose contemporary view as an outsider (an Englishman) is illuminating:

You drop from imperialism to something like parochialism in Australia, with little of the real national spirit intervening . . . there is more evidence of loyalty in Australia than . . . in any other part of the King’s dominions . .. But it is loyalty to the Empire, not to Great Britain.

The empire, moreover, served a psychological need on the part of the isolated and (in world terms) insignificant Australians:

[The Empire] comforted Australia against geographical and racial loneliness, and within ... [her] ... friendly confines the young Commonwealth could feel rather more important a part of the world than in fact it really was.

All of this sets the scene for the Australian response in 1914, a response which Soutcr considers to have been:

not altogether irrational, for it involved some calculation of self interest as well as jingoism ... not ‘My country right or wrong’ but The Empire right or wrong’. Australia depended upon the British Empire ... the Commonwealth would respond instinctively, and that would go not only for the Union Jackals but for Andrew Fisher, the Worker‘, and, after a while for the ’Bulletin’

W. F. Mandle agreed with the imperialist rather than Anglophile thrust of this interpretation, considering Australia’s focus to have been “imperial rather than British”. Within the “halls of power”, Australia’s leaders were “calling for greater recognition of Australia within the Ern~ire”.~3

The empire had a useful economic value also; Charles Grimshaw wrote of the strong Ausualian belief in having the “closest economic relations” with Britain. These relations were not seriously criticised - “no influential political opinion” saw Australia as colonially exploited by British economic interests. Britain was unchallenged as Australia’s number one trading partner in 1914. Nonetheless, Australia’s policy was not one of passivity or deference - the turning to protectionism in defiance of British policy was a deliberate assertion of national self-interest.

With regard to foreign policy, Grimshaw considered that De<akin led the way in developing Australian statesmanship within the empire; Australia’s bold pre-war military and naval measures stemmed initially from “geographically determined fcars”, but were also related to Australia’s promotion of her own participation and status in the empire.

Australia in 1914 did not wish, nor was it obliged, to launch an independent foreign policy. Empire evolution had kept abreast of nationalist demands for a steady increase in national independence, and British power ... was to continue of first order significance for another thirty years. Australia was afforded a further generation of protected apprenticeship and national evolution before it had to assume responsibility for an independent foreign policy.64

L. L. Robson, though critical of the process by which the war came about, and appalled at its cost, nonetheless points out that “True neutrality was out of the question; the Dominions had no standing in international law”. He declared that “Great Britain had made Australians free”, and that the pre-1914 rise of Germany and Japan had “compelled Australians to realize the value of the system of imperial defence”.

too.62

28 Australian Hisloriography of W W I

Without a great history of their own, Australians could feel a pride of race, a sense of achievement in being British. In an increasingly hostile world it was encouraging to measure one’s strength as part of the force of an Empire greater than Greece or Rome had known, and inspiring to feel that a colony’s achievements were part of the historic mission of an imperialist power.65

Neville Meaney, in a 1967 article, agreed with Grimshaw that Australian assertiveness within the empire was geographically determined; it was an attempt to influence imperial policy so as to compensate for Australia’s sense of vulnerability in the Pacific. Her assumption of increased defence responsibilities and costs were attempts not merely to look to her own defence, but to influence imperial policy so as to make it “more truly imperial”. Australian policy was calculated and broadly consistent, and was characterised by the assertion of fuller national responsibility within a context of promoting a more effective, more coordinated empire.

Australian defence and foreign policy initiatives were then not nationalistic in a culturally conscious or ideological sense but rather in the older, narrower political sense of a government’s obligation to take all prudent precautions to protect itself and those over whom it rules from external danger.66

In his later, fuller work, Meaney argued that it is a myth that Australia had no foreign policy or independence until 1942. With regard to the “Commonwealth crisis” which followed Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, Meaney writes that Australia’s responsc was that of “a small nation actively working inside an intimate cultural and political alliance, to develop its own defence capability and to gain greater influence over the policy of the empire as a whole”. In the course of the post-federation struggle for recognition, responsibility, and cooperation within the empire, Australian statesmen had become quite “sophisticated” by the time of World War I, and this set them in good stead for thcir inter-war advocacy of coordinated imperial defence. With regard to the ground-brecaking 191 1 Imperial Conference, Memey writes that:

What was remarkable was the tenacity with which the Australians had pursued their object and the important precedents for consultation and co-operation which, primarily because of their efforts, had emerged from the conference.

The Australi,an dread of isolated abandonment had ambivalently produced both centripetal and centrifugal forces, but Australia’s stance had been a long way removed indeed from “grovelling”! Looking ahead to the looming European crisis, Fisher had expressed Australia’s ambivalent but clear-sighted policy:

I do not think that ... Australian warships should be sent to take part in any paltry trouble which may arise. But if there was a contest between Great Britain and a power of the same class, I believe that our ships would undoubtedly find a place alongside the British warships during the

W. J. Huctson, in a recent edited work, concurs with Memey’s findings: Australia was “fearful of lonely and vulnerable independence”, and was conscious of being small and unimportant, an alien racial outpost in an Asian sea. “London’s indifference” to Australia’s concerns was recognised, but the British imperium was nonetheless congenially permissive:

troubie.67

even if less from overpowering goodwill than from resignation that colonies anyway were bound to go their own way . .. London tended to go along with the colonists’ political ambitions.

Anthony Cooper 29

‘The Australian leaders had felt no need to rebel nor “the slightest inclination to rush for independence from a powerful empire which placed few trammels on them”. Australia thercfore determined to remain British from a combination of sentiment and self-interest.

because they happened to be citizens of a powerful empire, it seemed ohvious to them that they must do nothing to sunder that empire but to contribute as they could to the maintenance of its strength and cohesion. At the same t h e , they must try to have the imperial headquarters in London meet their needs against the competing needs of other parts of this huge and diverse empire.

Hudson considers Australian policy to have been consistent and calculated, intent both upon assuming responsibilities and cooperating with the imperial patron. Australia’s defence contributions were seen ‘‘as a quid pro quo for assistance when in need”. This policy, moreover, kept the costs of defence down, relative to complete self-reliance: “Alliance diplomacy was cheap defence policy”. Hudson considers this calculated combination of loyalty and self-interest to “have shown a nice sense of judgment, not to say cynicism”. Naturally enough no one was foreseeing the scale and the cost of the ordeal to come, but the rational self-interest which lay at the heart of Australian policy is clcar. Relating this to the situation in 1914, Hudson writes that:

Australians felt they had no choice. The European empires and ... Japan clearly were heyond Australian military resources to resist if they should apply military or economic pressure ... llad the German empire triumphed in Europe. in 1914-1918, Australia certainly would have been subjected to economic dictation, possibly to military dictation, conceivahly to reallocation.G8

John Eddy, in a recent work upon the subject of colonial nationalism within the empire, traces the development in the pre-war era of an Australian identity within an imperial framework. The empire served almost as an extra level of government, in the sense that “the ‘imperial‘ symbols of loyalty, the monarchy and much more, were at all levels derived from Great Britain”. For the citizens of the newly fedcrated ex-colonies, die umbrella of empire meant that they had a virtual triple citizenship: State, Commonwealth aid Empire. Relations within the empire, between dominion and mother country, were [nore prosaic than sinister:

The informality of British imperialism, without any formidahle bureaucracy, with only a relatively modest and semi-consciously formulated notion of ‘civilising mission’, was pragmatic and piecemeal. Consent was ultimately the key, with commerce and naval power the glue.

With representative institutions and “responsible government” emerging strongly in the dominions, local autonomy was virtually axiomatic, but the increasing intcmational rivalry oC the pre-war years had an empire-wide “unifying potential”. ”lie Australian leaders, whether Deakin, Hughes, Creswell, Cook or Fisher, were all “trying to discover the middle way between the separationist arid the [empire] fcdcrationist solution”. The year 1914 brought proof of Australia’s imperial commiment in the fonn of her “enthusiastic entry into the war”, but this was done with eyes open.

Empire policy depended on a series of informal understandings and gentlemen‘s agreements - and there would be full scope for disagreement in evolving circumstances. Whatever imperialists made of the past, it was the irreversible growth of ‘colonial nationalism’ which made dependence on imperial ‘dicta&’ no longer thinkable.69

Australian Historiography of WWI

The “Prussian Menace”

Many contemporary Australian historians, then, do not support the interpretation of Australia being duped or deluded into an affair of no concern to them in 1914, or of the interpretation of her place in the empire as being one of exploitation and irrelevancy. There is, however, another factor which cannot be neglected in a consideration of this topic: Imperial Germany.

It would seem that the nationalists who baldly assert that the war was of no consequence for Australia, have either overlooked or misunderstood the nature of the Kaiser’s Germany and of its war aims. In fact, a flourishing literature has emerged concerning this topic, much of it stemming from Fritz Fischer’s ground-bre‘aking thesis of “continuity” between the state aims of the Kaiser Reich and those of the Third R e i ~ h . ~ ~ Australia’s remoteness offered only an illusion of detachment from the “German problem”, for Tirpitz’s naval pl‘an was a direct challenge to the Royal Navy’s supremacy, and a direct path for Germany’s pursuit of “world power”.

By the time of the pre-war diplomatic crises, Germany, driven by a mood of desperate bellicosity, had shunned the path of compromise - “she had equated moderation with an inferiority incompatible with the World power status which was her aim”.71 Admiral von Muller spoke chillingly of Germany‘s stance vis-a-vis “Weltpolitik”:

our motto must be all or nothing. Either we harness the total strength of the nation, ruthlessly, even if it means accepting the risk of a major war, or we limit ourselves to continental power alone.72

The implications here for Fr,ance and Britain are clear enough. Trevor Wilson has addressed this point from Britain’s perspective. He asks whether Britain could have realistically entertained the policy alternative of k ~ n g no counter-action to the Tirpitz Plan; this would have meant an abandonment of her interests and an adoption of the position of client state to Germany. Instead, Britain abandoned her “splendid isolation” and increased her involvement in European affairs, entering into alliances and rearming. British neutrality was out of the question, for in the circumstances it would have constituted an ab‘andonment of France, and in fact, a “far-reaching and most formidable commitment” to Germany. When war came, Germany’s violation of Belgium was recognised as being pregnant with meaning and menace:

The Kaiser’s assault upon so crucial and so oft-asserted an area of British anxiety defined, with even more fearful clarity than did his Navy laws, the attitude of Germany’s rulers to Britain’s position in the world.

Wilson points out that Asquith’s and Grey‘s successors of the 1930s have been roundly condemned by posterity for their appeasement policies under similar circumstances. Posterity, it would appear, has been fickle and inconsistent, but there was little inconsistency in the position Britain was forced to adopt in 1914

Had Britain stood aside from all international engagements in these years ... Liberal democracy would have been crushed in Western Europe, and Britain would by stages have become dependent on the sufferance of the rulers of Ge1many.7~

What then of Australia? The overthrow of British power, and the substitution of a German world-wide colonial and economic imperium, were not petty matters which could be dismissed in Australia as irrelevancies. Given the strength of the British imperial relationship which existed at the time, and the solid sense of self-interest which undergirded it, it does not seem realistic for Australia to have decided to “opt out” by taking a passive or neutral stance.

Anthony Cooper 31

In fact, evidence exists which suggests that the war could have had a more immediate aiid direct impact upon Australia in 1914 than was actually the case. Peter Overlack is conducting research into German naval plans and operations in the Pacific, especially as they related to Australia and New Zealand. The Australian fear of commerce raiders appears to have been quite justified, as this was precisely the role of the German Pacific Squadron. Such operations were naturally only seen by the Germans as a “sideshow” to thc main confrontation with the Royal Navy in the North Sea, but suffice it to say that were it not for the pre-war creation of the RAN with its powerful and modem battle- cruiser arid cruisers, then Australians would have had a more positive view of thc cxtcnt to which Australian interests wcre directly involved in World War I!

As it turned out, the Australian Squadron being so strong, and Australian and New Zealand action so quick in taking over German coaling stations to the North, the German raiding operations (SMS Emden apart) were unable to be implemented. Interestingly though, Australian co-belligerency with Britain seems to have been assumed by the German planners; moreover the pre-war nelwork of iiitelligence-gathering sourccs based upon the German Consulates did involve Australian interests.74 The clear evidence for these networks flatly refutes McKernan’s assertion that there was no German spy activity in Australia.75 Gerhard Fischer in his critique of the Australian internment policy76 also nccds to take more cognizance of some of these issues, as the mattcr was certainly more complicated than he implies.

John Mordike similarly appe,m to have failed to take adequate cognizancc of thc international situation leading up to 1914. In his recent articles and book he traces the development of Australia’s military forces from the colonial era, through fedemtion until 1914. Thc heart of his argument is that the imperialists, both British and Australian, had outmanoeuvred those Australians who had hoped to establish Auslralian defence forces for the purpose of Australian continental defence. He argues that the initial inspiration for such forces was the defence of Australia, not imperial “adventures”, and that this purposc was subverted by the imperialist politicians and officers. IIis piece de resistance is his uncovering of the secret minutes of the 1911 Impcrial Conference, which record Defence Minister Pcarce’s secret agreement to surreptitious preparations for the raising of an imperial expeditionary force. It was these preparations which facilitated the rapid mobilisation of the A F when the time came. Bean had claimed that this had been spontaneous and fortuitous, and thercfore gets damned by Mordike for misleading his rcaders, for distorting the real picture and for being party to the conspiracy. Mordikc’s disapproval of the entire process is palpable, as is his implied disappointment with the result, and the whole affair is cast in conspiratorial ~ v c r t o n e s . ~ ~

Of course, it was technically a conspiracy, but according to this pedantic definition, it must also follow that most cabinet meetings and “gentlemen’s agreements” are likewise.

Morcover, Mordike utterly fails to take account of the inteniational situation. The 191 1 Conference was the ground-breaking conference in which Sir Edward Grey opened his mind to the Dominion representatives, giving them an intimale arid expansive bricfing upon the European situation such as not even the British Cabinet habitually received. Germany’s stance was explained, as was the British response, plans and projections. It would hardly be unreasonable to prompt the dominions insofar as thcir defence preparedness was concerned. Organisation aid coordination would clearly be vital if the contingency eventuated. They were, after all, on the “same side”, with a common recognition of the source of the threat. Mordike has done some impressive “spadework”, but has failed to contex~ilise his findings or to widen his focus sufficiently.

32 Australian Historiography of W W I

The Prostitution of History?

W. J. Hudson considers it to be a “fatuous myth” that: Australia in 1914-1918 surrendered its youth in a European war of no direct concern to it, as though that war was not a conflict between half a dozen empires of one of which Australia was a minor and subordinate part, and as though Australia somehow would have been unaffected if a different outcome had seen the British Empire, rather than the German and Turkish empires, dismantled and its parts allocated among the victors.

One idea at the heart of this kind of nonsense is the odd assumption, abroad since the middle of last century, that international politics should be conducted in a moral utopia quite unlike the context for necessarily sordid domestic politicking?8

This statement is directly applicable to Mordike and also to those nationalist historians who, as George Shaw observes, write history based upon senthne~i t .~~ It is arguable that such sentiment-driven history is clearly exhibited in the Australian nationalist interpretations of Ausmlia’s involvement in the first world war. Manning Clark’s roinantic nationalism, for example, constitutes a “wish list” of what Australian history might have been like in a more perfect world. The “agenda” is one of Australi‘ul (anti- British) independence, prompting the assertion that the war itself was unjust and irrelevant; and that Australian involvement was stupid and obsequious. This is an emotional position, based upon an unexarnined accepk?ice of the disillusionist interpretation of World War I. It evidences considerable strategic and political naivety, fails to take cognizance of contemporary scholarship vis-a-vis Imperial Gennany, and is utterly dominated by present-day realities. To that extent therefore it is anachronistic and ahistorical, and is itself “delusive”, imposing contemporary possibilities and alternatives upon an era which was altogether different. Modern Australians are able to countenance neutrality as a real policy alternative (although it continues to attract little support) but such was not the case in 1914.

The events of the 1941-45 war in the Pacific, the eclipse of Europe by America, the subsidence of the British Empire into that curious amalgam termcd the Commonwealth, and the radical demographic changes within Australia have produced utterly different attitudes and relationships with regard to the fonner “mother country”, Britain. Australia’s “schizoid love/hate” for Englandso lies somewhere at the root of the problem; in order for Australia to be distinctive it had to be different from some “other”; the “other” in this case being necessarily Britain.81 Some tendentiously bigoted historiography has resulted.

The nationalist writers have been successful in creating disproportionately influential interpretations of the Great War. In the process, the Australian leaders of the time have been underestimated and slandered, and the purpose to which the AIF bent its efforts has been grossly misrepresented. It is to Bean’s credit, on the other hand, that for all his romanticism he kept the rational end of defeating Russia-Germany in mind throughout his vastly impressive operational history. Australia has remembered the Gallipoli failure, but it was on the Western Front that Germany was defeated. The work of the Australian Corps in hastening this end in 1918 has received surprisingly litlle emphasis, however. Their victory was obscured, the campaign maligned and the purpose of the whole affair thrown into disrepute. John Robertson, however, was in no doubt:

Those who declare that Australia’s interests were not at stake in the Great war are victims of a strange amnesia. They cannot be actuated by an understanding of the issues or by any awareiicss of the fate of defeated countries. The men who served in the AIF were under no such illusions. They knew the were fighting an important strugglc that had to be won to avoid disastrous consequences. s l

Anthony Cooper 33

‘he AIF needs to be reclaimed for posterity as an expression of Australian Realpolitik,83 instead of being romantically perpetuated as a sort of massed military re- enactment of the legend of Ned Kelly. This can only be done if Australia’s place in the world of 1900-1918 is realistically and historically assessed. Pemberton advocates “reclaiming the past” by dispensing with the “imperial historical baggage”. One wonders how far he is prepared to go in rewriting a version of Australian history which will cohere nicely with his nationalist ideology. Re-interpreting the past according to contemporday insights and realities is one thing, but misrepresenting it to accord with a contemporary nationalist myth is quite another. Kokoda and Milne Bay were tremendously importmt, but yet more so were the roughly contemporaneous American battles in the Coral Sea, near Midway, and at Guadalcanal. Yet more so again were the battles at Stdingrad and in Normandy. The fact that these were non-Australian achievements ought not to detract from thcir importance to Australians, for Australian interests were vitally at stakc. It was just so in the case of the first world war, but here the AIF was absolutely “centre-stzge” (in 1918, that is). A clear distinction needs to be drawn between national pride and myopia. In order aptly to re-define their present and create a new future, Australians may need to come to realistic terms with their past.

The Western Front’s carnage is another, though related, matter. It must be borne in mind that none of the protagonists anticipated having to fight the type of war which they actually did fight; in 1914, no-one was proposing four years of costly trench-bound stalemate. It was that generation’s misfortune to tight a war of mass industrial firepower, without the technological means of bre‘aking the resulkwit tactical deadlock. It w‘as also the ill-fortune of the hastily raised and mohilised (civilians-in-uniform) armies of the British countries to have to fight most of the war as amateurs against (pexetime-service) professionals. Much blundering and unduly heavy casualties were the result. Once having cntcred the war, however, and bcen locked in a death-grip with the Gcnnan armics bent upon “crushing France”, there was no way out short of, once again, abandoning France to defeat, and acquiescing in a German hegemony over Europe. Such a resull in 1917 or 1918 was no less disadvantageous to Australia’s interests th<m it would have been in 1914. ‘lactical head-banging was ahnost certzinly a more rational option than politico-strategic suicide.

Sentiment may protest that nothing could have been worth the price which was paid, but pacifism has yet to be adopted as a policy model in the 1990s, let alone in the 1910s. In any case, this may be more a question for philosophers and theologians, rather thm for historians.

NOTES

1 2 3

4 5

Ernest Scott, Australia During the War (Sydney, 1936), p. 858. Llcwellyn Woodward, Greut Britain and the Wur of 1914-1918 (London, 196I), pp. 582ff. Michael McKernan, “Writing About War”, in M. McKernan and M. Browne, eds, Australiu: Two Centuries of War and Peace (Canberra, 1988), p. 14. W. K. Hancock, Australia (London, 1930), pp. 243-8. F. W. Eggleston, “Australia and the Empire 1855-1921”, in Ernest Scott, ed., Australia (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 52Sff; Arthur Jose, Australia, Hunzun and Economic (London, 1932), pp. 138ff; A. N. Smith, Thirty Yeurs: The Commonwecclth of Australia 1901-1931 (Melbourne, 1933), pp. 139ff, 142; F. L. W. Wood, A Concise History ofAustralia (Sydney, 1944), pp. 15f.

34

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41

44 43 44 45 46 47

Australian Historiography of WWI

C. E. W. Bean, The OJicial History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, Vol. I : The Story of Anzac (Sydney, 1934), pp. xlvi, 15-19. Bean, Vol. 6: The A.I.F. in France, 1918 (Sydney, 1942), pp. 1076, 1094. Scott, Australia During the War, pp. 339,443,471. Rob Pascoe, The Manufacture ofAustralian History (Melbourne, 1979), pp. 1Sf. Bean, Vol. I , p. xlvi; Vol. 6, pp. 1074ff. Sidney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War (Macmillan, 1930). G. V. Portus, Australia Since 1606 (London, 1932), pp. 199ff. Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History ojthe United Stafes (New York, 19S5), p. 834. A. 11. Turner, “Australian Nationalism and Australian History”, Journal of Australian Studies 4 (1979): Iff, 6. Ian Turner, “1914-19”, in F. K. Crowley. ed., A New History of Australia (Melbourne, 1974), pp. 314,349. Turner, “Australian Nationalism”, p. 6. Geoffrey Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come (Melbourne, 1973), pp. 89f. Brian Fitzpatrick, The Australian People 1788-1945 (Melbourne, 1951), pp. 77,79, 237f. McKernan, “Writing About War”, p. 16.; Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (London, 1983). K. S. Inglis, “The Anzac Tradition”, Mecmjin 24,1(1965): 34. 11. W. Koch, ed., The Origins of the First World War (London, 1979), pp. 5f. C. M. if. Clark, A History ofAustralia, Vol. 5: The People Make Laws, 1888-1915 (Mclbourne, 1981),pp. 375, 399,376,403,386,401,418,417,397. Clark, Vol. 6: The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green, 1916-1935 (Melbourne, 1987), pp. 35, 101,54,21,57, 119. Noel McLachlan, Waiting for the Revolurion (Penguin, 19891, pp. 170, 180,203-8. Stephen Alornes,A Nafion at h t ? (North Ryde, 1988), pp. 21,50,57f. Donald Horne, Ideas for a Nation (Sydney, 1989), pp. 30, 162-4. John Pilger, A Secret Country (London, 1989), pp. 137ff, 141; and “Wild Colonial Boys”, New Scateman and Society, 6 March 1992, pp. 10f. Glen St J. Barclay, A Very Small Insurance Policy (St Lucia, 1988). Bruce Grant, The Australian Dilemma (Rushcutters Bay, 1983), pp. 80,4f, 29. Gregory Pemberton, “Our Finest IIour”, The Weekend Australian, 18 April 1992, p. 13. L. L. Robson, The FirstA.I.F. (Carlton, 1970), p p . 2, 203. Alistair Thomson, “A Past You Can Live With: Digger Memories and the Anzac Legend“, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, No. 20 (1992): 7ff. John Robertson, Anzac and Empire (Port Melbourne, 1990), p 264. John Terraine, The Right ofthe Line (London, 1988), pp. 59ff. McKernan, “Writing About War”, p. 13. John Terraine, Impacts of War, 1914 and 1918 (London, 1970). John A. Moses, Prussian-German Militarism in Australian Perspective (Bern, 1991); “Australia’s Academic Garrison, 1914-1918”, Australian Journal of Politics and History 36, 3 (1990): 361-76; “The Mobilisation of the University of Queensland, 1914-lS”, Journal ojthe Australian War Memorial, No. 20 (1992): 11-17. Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Greal War (Melbourne, 1980), p. 18. K. S. Inglis, “Conscription in Peace arid War, 1911-1945”, in Roy Forward and Bob Reece, eds, Conscription in Australia (St Lucia, 1968), p. 35. McKernan, “Writing About War”, p. 15. Richard Nile, “Peace, Unreliable Memory and the Necessity of AnLac Mythologies”, in Alan Seymour and Richard Nile, eds, Anzac: Meaning, Memory and Myth (London, 199 I), p. 86. Bean, Vol. I, p. 607. McKeman, “Writing About War”, p. 15. Inglis, “The Anzac Tradition”, p. 33. McKernan, “Writing About War”, pp, 16f. John Douglas Pringle, Australian Accent (London, 1959), p. 14. A. D. Gilberf “The Conscription Referenda, 1916-17: The Impact of the Irish Crisis”, Historical Studies: Auttralia and New Zealand 14 (1969): 56.

Anthony Cooper 35

48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64

65 66

67

68

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70

71 72 73 14

75 76 77 78 79 80

81

82 83

Fritz Fischer, Germany‘s Aims in the First World War (London, 1967); and World Power or Decline (New York, 1974). Fischer, Germany’s Aims, p. 24. Zrnanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy 1871-1914 (London, 1976), p. 82. Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War (Cambridge, 1986), p p . 16f. 23ff. Peter Overlack, “Australian Defence Awareness and German Naval Planning in the Pacific, 1900-1914”, War and Society 10, 1 (1992); and Peter Overlacks article in this issue. McKeman, Thp Australian People, p . 157. Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens (St Lucia, 1989). John Mordike. An Armyfor a Nation (North Sydney, 1992). Hudson, “Strategy for Survival”, pp. 26f. Shaw, 1988 andAll That, p. 15. Michael Roe, “An I listorical Survey of Australian Nationalism”, Victorian Historical Magazine 42,4 (197 1): 664. Mandle, p. 16; see also J. B. Hirst, “Australian Defence and Conscription: A Reassessment, Part 1”. Australian Historical Studies 25, 101 (1993): 622f. Robertson, The Fir.st A.I. F. p . 267. See Hirsf “Australian Defence and Conscription”.