SCHOLARS AT WAR AUSTRALASIAN SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, 1939-1945 SCHOLARS AT WAR AUSTRALASIAN SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, 1939-1945 Edited by Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Scholars at war : Australasian social scientists, 1939-1945 / edited by Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter. ISBN: 9781921862496 (pbk.) 9781921862502 (ebook) Subjects: Anthropologists--Australia--Biography. Anthropologists--New Zealand--Biography. Historians--Australia--Biography. Historians--New Zealand--Biography. World War, 1939-1945--Science. Social sciences--Australia. Social sciences--New Zealand. Other Authors/Contributors: Gray, Geoffrey G. Munro, Doug. Winter, Christine. Dewey Number: 301.0922 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Canberra, ACT, 1945-05-29, Members of the Instructional Staff of the Land HQ School of Civil Affairs at Duntroon Military College. Australian War Memorial ID 108449. Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2012 ANU E Press Contents Preface . .vii Contributors . ix Acknowledgments . xi Abbreviations and Acronyms . xiii Introduction . 1 Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter Part I: The Australians 29 Geoffrey Gray and Christine Winter 1 . A . P . Elkin: Public morale and propaganda . 35 John Pomeroy 2 . Conlon’s Remarkable Circus . 55 Cassandra Pybus 3. H. Ian Hogbin: ‘Official adviser on native affairs’ . 73 Geoffrey Gray 4 . W . E . H . Stanner: Wasted war years . 95 Geoffrey Gray 5 . Camilla Wedgwood: ‘what are you educating natives for’ . 117 David Wetherell 6 . Ronald Murray Berndt: ‘Work of national importance’ . 133 Geoffrey Gray 7 . The Road to Conlon’s Circus—and Beyond: A personal retrospective . 149 J. D. Legge Part II: The New Zealanders 163 Doug Munro 8 . Derek Freeman at War . 169 Peter Hempenstall v 9 . J . W . Davidson on the Home Front . 187 Doug Munro 10 . Neville Phillips and the Mother Country . 207 Jock Phillips 11 . Dan Davin: The literary legacy of war . 225 Janet Wilson Consolidated Bibliography . 243 Index . 279 vi Preface The idea for this book was initiated when Geoff Gray and Doug Munro first met, at a workshop on Pacific biography, ‘Telling Pacific Lives’, held at The Australian National University in December 2005. There was an apparent synchronicity, and certainly a meeting of minds. One of us was writing biographies of Pacific historians and, in passing, their wartime experiences; the other had written on Australian anthropologists and how the war impacted on the discipline and its development in Australia. Christine Winter, who joined in the project later, was writing about National Socialism in New Guinea and Oceania. By the time we next met, 12 months later in Dunedin at the Pacific History Association Conference, the idea for the present volume had congealed. We agreed that an examination of the war work done by Australian and New Zealand social scientists—especially anthropologists and historians during World War II— would enable a discussion of the way in which war affected the lives and careers of a selected group of scholars from the two countries. We were aware that, in Australia, the readjustments of war provided opportunities for intellectual talent to play a role in government policy and in the plans for postwar reconstruction that would not otherwise have been available. This group of mostly men was confident of their ability to influence the course of events—if not during the war then certainly in the postwar period; they saw themselves as liberal, reform-minded progressives, with a nationalist agenda and a bias for state intervention. They were representative of the new academic and professional elite that emerged during the war and which was to play an influential part in public life during the decades following the war. The different circumstances of New Zealand limited the mobilisation of scholarship for the war effort. The majority of university graduates served in the armed forces in combat roles. Only occasionally were their talents channelled into war work more in keeping with their scholarly callings, be it scientific research or security intelligence. The fact that we live in different countries has encouraged a trans-Tasman approach that allows comparisons that might not otherwise have been evident. That said, there is an element of pragmatism—unavoidably—in the selection of the individual scholars represented in this collection. Others could conceivably have been included but the final line-up was, in the last resort, a function of the availability of contributors. We hope that this volume will inspire further work on the broad subject of scholars at war and, in particular, attention to those individuals (such as the Australian museum anthropologist Norman Tindale and the New Zealand historian Angus Ross) not included in the pages that follow. Geoffrey Gray, Canberra Doug Munro, Wellington Christine Winter, Canberra vii Contributors Geoffrey Gray Geoffrey Gray is Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and Adjunct Professor of History, University of Queensland. His publications include A Cautious Silence: The politics of Australian anthropology (Canberra, 2007). Peter Hempenstall Peter Hempenstall is Conjoint Professor of History, University of Newcastle, NSW. His publications include The Lost Man: Wilhelm Solf in German history (Wiesbaden, 2005), co-authored with Paula Tanaka Mochida. John Legge John Legge is Emeritus Professor of History at Monash University. Publications include Australian Outlook: A history of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (Canberra, 1999). Doug Munro Doug Munro is a Wellington-based biographer and historian, and an Honorary Associate Professor, University of Queensland. Publications include The Ivory Tower and Beyond: Participant historians of the Pacific(Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009). Jock Phillips Jock Phillips is the General Editor of Te Ara (the Encyclopedia of New Zealand project), Ministry of Culture and Heritage, New Zealand. Publications include Settlers: New Zealand immigrants from England, Ireland and Scotland, 1800– 1945 (Auckland, 2008), co-authored with Terry Hearn. John Pomeroy John Pomeroy is an independent scholar and author of ‘Morale on the Home Front in Australia During the Second World War’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1995. ix Scholars at War: Australasian social scientists, 1939–1945 Cassandra Pybus Cassandra Pybus is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the Department of History, University of Sydney. Publications include The Devil and James McAuley (Brisbane, 1999). David Wetherell David Wetherell is Senior Lecturer in History at Deakin University. Publications include Charles Abel and the Kwato Mission of Papua New Guinea, 1891–1975 (Melbourne, 1996). Janet Wilson Janet Wilson is Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK. Publications include (as editor) The Gorse Blooms Pale: Dan Davin’s Southland stories (Dunedin, 2007). Christine Winter Christine Winter is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland, and a Visiting Fellow in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, at The Australian National University. x Acknowledgments First and foremost we thank Tim Causer, then at the Menzies Research Centre, for his outstanding research assistance among archival repositories in London. We have also incurred debts of gratitude to numerous archivists, especially to Sarah Walpole (Royal Anthropological Institute, London), Julia Mant and Tim Robinson (University of Sydney Archives), Maggie Shapley and Karina Taylor (Australian National University Archives), and Malcolm Underwood (St John’s College, Cambridge). More generally, we acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the Manuscripts Section, National Library of Australia; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Archives New Zealand, Wellington; the Department of Defence Library, Wellington; the National Library of New Zealand; and Special Collections, Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide. We are also grateful to Justin Cargill of the Victoria University Library for bibliographic assistance. An especial word of thanks goes to the contributors, many of whom put aside current engagements in order to write their chapters. Without exception they were cordial and cooperative. We are further indebted to Peter Hempenstall and Janet Wilson, Melanie Nolan and unnamed referees for comments on earlier drafts. xi Abbreviations and Acronyms 2NZEF 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force AIATSIS Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AIF Australian Infantry Force ANGAU Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit ANRC Australian National Research Council ANU Australian National University ANUA Australian National University Archives APB Aborigines Protection Board (South Australia) APTRC Australian Pacific Territories Research Committee ArchivesNZ Archives New Zealand (Wellington) ASAO Association