The Other Anzacs (46 page)
The issue deeply divided the Labor Party. Ministers such as Hughes and George Pearce strongly pushed the case for conscription even though it was contrary to the ALP platform. Hughes denounced anti-conscriptionists as traitors. A climate of bitter sectarianism developed, with most Catholics opposing conscription and most Protestants supporting it. This was fanned by the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland and the brutal treatment of the rebels by the British.
One of those embroiled in the conscription debate was Colonel William Bolton, who had had brief command of the 2nd Australian Infantry Brigade at the Battle of Krithia at Gallipoli in early May 1915. His health and nerves had failed and he had been repatriated to Australia. Despite his experiences, Bolton supported conscription. However, the vote was lost, with 1, 087, 557 in favour and 1, 160, 033 against.
The nurses, too, cast their votes. In England, Anne Donnell observed, ‘This morning we voted for Conscription—or against it.’
2
The sisters were, she added, ‘the first women in England who have voted on a national question’. There was no doubt about where many of them stood. After the result became known, Alice Ross King wrote in her diary, ‘Voting in Australia unsatisfactory.’
3
Tev Davies, now in Peshawar, India, agreed. ‘Poor Australia being shown up by those agitators and Trades Hall people after so many brave men falling for the cause.’
4
She believed the government should have made the change ‘without putting it to the vote, anyhow none of us in India had a vote but the Labor Party make me tired’.
In New Zealand, a Military Services Bill introducing conscription was enacted in May 1916. Only four MPs opposed it. One of them, Peter Fraser, who had played a leading role in forming the Labour Party and would become Prime Minister during World War II, was arrested for sedition for advocating the repeal of conscription. He served a full year in jail. Conscription was initially confined to New Zealanders of European ancestry, but it was extended to Maori in June 1917. More than 30, 000 conscripts joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force by the end of the war.
In Australia, recruitment continued to lag. Pressure for conscription increased when in 1917 Britain sought a sixth Australian division for active service. With emotions still running hot, pro-conscriptionists gave white feathers to eligible men, either sending them through the post or handing them out in person. There was no greater shame. Anticipating a noconfidence vote, Hughes crossed the floor with about half of the parliamentary Labor Party and became Prime Minister of a conservative Nationalist government. Hughes invited Colonel Bolton to join his new party, and he was elected to the Senate at the May 1917 federal election, which the Nationalists won.
In Amara, Mesopotamia—modern-day Iraq—Sister Narelle Hobbes, thirty-six, the former matron of Brewarrina Hospital in northwestern New South Wales, took a special interest in the debate, even though she was on a posting with Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Reserve. She had travelled to England to join up in May 1915, and after working in Malta now found herself involved in a conversation with ‘a nice old colonel’ from Scotland. He was unhappy with the outcome of the vote on conscription. He told her:
My brigade fought side by side with the Australians at Anzac, I was proud of it, I’ve seen the Australians going into action and it was one of the finest sights God ever allowed me to see . . . I longed to be in command of them, taken on the whole they are the finest lot of men I’ve ever seen, as I watched them make one of their many charges I just said, ‘God I’ll stake my all, my very life on those men, ’ and then his voice rose and he said, ‘and what are you doing, what are the people in Australia doing, that they are not sticking by their men, what are they doing that they are not sticking to their splendid dead, why are they allowing one of the finest armies we have helping us, to have to shorten their front in France for want of reinforcements. I said I would stake my very life on those men, so I would, on that first army of men at Anzac, but of Australians, no, they’ve gone back on their men who have made history, they have gone back on their dead.’
5
Narelle mostly agreed with him, but felt she had to defend Australia. ‘I knew it was true of the people who voted “No” but I wasn’t going to let him condemn the Australians because of those cowards, so I just gave him a few remarks to go on with, and especially about the W.W. [International Workers of the World] people.’ But the colonel refused to be mollified.
Sister, I know you are an Australian, and I admire them and I salute the men from Gallipoli, but the people who went against conscription I would never forgive, just as I a Scotchman, will never forgive the Clyde strikers, or the people in the Irish rebellion, for doing these things at a time when every man is wanted, when it means that the war is prolonged, for the want of more and more men, and men of your fine Australian type, ‘the finest thing God ever made’.
6
Narelle was sympathetic. ‘Poor old chap, he goes back to the trenches today, quite an old man, has done 20 years in the army in India besides his home service. Oh dear
how
I wish Hughes had brought in conscription, you have absolutely no idea of the disappointment over his blunder, among the British people.’
The mood among the sisters ran strongly. In Salonika, Tasmanian Sister Laura Grubb could not understand the antiwar mood in Australia.
The strikes and general unrest all over Australia are doing a great deal of harm. I do wish one half of these agitators could be compelled to come out here and live under the conditions the men simply have to put up with—there would be no strikers, there would be no shirkers, it fairly makes one’s blood boil to think of the grasping, callous crowd of men there living lives of positive luxury and armies of men out here.
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As 1917 came to an end, Hughes decided to hold another plebiscite on the issue. He wanted to give the people another chance to overcome what he saw as their great mistake. Again the campaign was bitter and divisive. Hughes proposed that voluntary enlistment should continue, but that any shortfall would be met by compulsory reinforcements of single men, widowers, and divorcees without dependents between twenty and forty-four years of age, who would be called up by ballot.
As the campaign proceeded, Sister Ada Mary Willis, from Crookwell in southern New South Wales, became increasingly angry. She had lost her younger brother, Frank, to a sniper’s bullet while he was fighting with the 1st Australian Light Horse at the Battle of Romani in Egypt the previous year. A straight-speaking countrywoman who had been matron of Bega Hospital, Ada had wanted to do her bit like her brother, and was finally able to join the Army Nursing Service in September 1916, a month after Frank’s death. After a posting in Egypt, she was sent to Salonika. In November 1917, she wrote to her mother about the reluctance of some people in Crookwell to enlist.
So they are still trying to get Dick G—to enlist! What an abomination and a blot on one’s own town he and a few others are. Yet the ‘microbes’ are given work and no doubt are encouraged by individuals as mean-spirited as themselves.
Are the ‘tin soldiers’ at the brick-works still determined to bravely stay at home and keep the Germans out of Crookwell or have they weakened?
8
On 20 December 1917, Australians voted on the question: ‘Are you in favour of the proposal of the Commonwealth Government for reinforcing the Commonwealth Forces overseas?’ After learning that the plebiscite had failed, with 1, 015, 159 votes in favour and 1, 181, 747 against, Ada wrote again to her family.
If I looked through the dictionary do not think I could find words exactly suitable to express the disgust I feel at the result of the conscription poll. I cannot say I expected much, did not dare hope it would be carried but did not think Crookwell would disgrace themselves so badly. It will be hard even after the war to forgive some of the people.
They don’t understand in the smallest sense the meaning of patriotism. It is self, self all along the line and if we lose the war, and it’s not finished yet by any means, they will be the first to squeal when the iron heel of Germany begins to crush us.
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In London, Elsie Eglinton spent Chistmas Day reflecting bitterly on the decision. ‘We are feeling very sore about Australia turning down conscription. I am ashamed to mention it here.’
10
May Tilton pondered the result not long before she returned to Australia in January 1918. She had voted at a convalescent home at Menton, near Monte Carlo on the Mediterranean coast, where arrangements had been made for all Australians in the south of France to cast their votes. As she did so, May thought back to the first plebiscite more than a year earlier, and the many arguments that had been raised for and against conscription.
These naturally influenced our vote in the first instance, but they had no effect the second time, for we had seen men, wounded four and five times, return to the line again, until finally, in many cases, they died serving their country.
During 1917, when every man was so badly needed, boys left our wards before they were fit to return to the line. Gunner A. S—, shot through the jaw, was sent back to France before he could properly masticate his food. Yet he never uttered a word of complaint at the decision. He, happily, came through safely.
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Sister Stella Colless, after two years’ service in England, on hospital ships and then in France, was exasperated.
I wonder will they ever get conscription in Australia? I cannot see why so many of our noble boys should be killed, and the large number of eligibles left who are doing nothing towards defeating the Hun. There does not seem any chance of Australia being able to keep up the voluntary replacements at the present rate of casualties.
12
As the votes in the plebiscite were being counted, Narelle Hobbes’s health deteriorated. Some months earlier, she had been bitten by a sandfly and had become seriously ill. She developed a gastric ulcer, then had repeated attacks of gastritis. Diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, she was put on the hospital ship
Kanowna
when it docked in Bombay on its way to Alexandria to take on more wounded before heading back to Australia. With her was her sister Elsie, who had travelled from Australia to take her home. In May 1918, just four days out from Fremantle, Narelle died and was buried at sea.
13
Conscription, likewise, was buried for the rest of the war.
Anne Donnell was ‘white, limp and helpless’, shuddering as yet another shell from an air raid exploded a few metres from her room. It was September 1917, and as the Ypres Offensive ground on, nerves were fraying. The Calais townsfolk could seek shelter in cellars, but the sisters at No. 38 Stationary Hospital had no protection at all. Their patients were terrified. Many said they would rather be up in the front lines under artillery barrage than at Calais, for there they would have some protection in their dugouts. Anne and her fellow nurses took to sleeping under the bed when the German aircraft came. ‘Once Matron came along with some whiskey that one of the Captains had kindly sent over. I popped my head out gingerly from under the bed and refused, the more I refused the more she insisted it would do me good. I said, “Truly, Matron, I am not frightened.” She quickly replied, “What are you doing under the bed for then?”’
1
Anne hated the nights. If she went to sleep, there were only nightmares of guns, bombs and aeroplanes. She thought it silly to be so afraid but she would not believe anyone who said they were not. The nightly air raids wore her down and she became more fatalistic. ‘We are powerless. This is how I feel as soon as I know Fritz is above and the guns start. I seem to lose all my strength, a band tightens around my head, my senses are annulled, whether from the noise or fear I cannot say.’
2
To work under such circumstances clearly required an inner strength that Anne began to doubt in herself. Each night she awaited her fate ‘midst the tumultuous noise of bombs and shells’. She survived Calais, but admitted that the experience ‘has taken it out of me a bit’.