Victorian Historical Journal
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VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 86, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2015 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is a community organisation comprising people from many fields committed to collecting, researching and sharing an understanding of the history of Victoria. The Victorian Historical Journal is a fully refereed journal dedicated to Australian, and especially Victorian, history produced twice yearly by the Publications Committee, Royal Historical Society of Victoria. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE Richard Broome (convenor) Marilyn Bowler (Editor, Victorian Historical Journal) Chips Sowerwine (Editor, History News) John Rickard (review co-editor) Peter Yule (review co-editor) Jill Barnard Marie Clark Mimi Colligan Don Garden (President, RHSV) Don Gibb Richard Morton Kate Prinsley Judith Smart Caroline Williams Carole Woods BECOME A MEMBER Membership of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria is open. All those with an interest in history are welcome to join. Subscriptions can be purchased at: Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Journals are also available for purchase online: www.historyvictoria.org.au/publications/victorian-historical-journal VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL ISSUE 283 VOLUME 86, NUMBER 1 JUNE 2015 Royal Historical Society of Victoria Victorian Historical Journal Published by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Fax: 03 9326 9477 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Copyright © the authors and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 2015 All material appearing in this publication is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher and the relevant author. Honorary Editors of this special edition: Richard Broome, Jane Carolan, Judith Smart Review Editors: John Rickard, Peter Yule Design: Janet Boschen, Boschen Design Desktop Production: John Gillespie, Kiplings Business Communications Printer: BPA Print Group Print Post Approved: PP349181/00159 ISSN 1030 7710 The Royal Historical Society of Victoria acknowledges the support of the Victorian Government though Creative Victoria—Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources. Publication of this edition of the Victorian Historical Journal is made possible with the assistance of the ANZAC Centenary Community Grants, Department of Veteran Affairs. Front cover: Collins Street, Melbourne looking west from ‘The Block’ showing a Victory rally at the end of World War 1. E.J. Frazer, photographer, courtesy State Library of Victoria VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 86, NUMBER 1 JUNE 2015 ARTICLES Introduction 1 Judith Smart, Richard Broome and Jane Carolan Victorian Historical Journal’s: New Look 4 Richard Broome Vale: Dr Catherine Anne (‘Kate’) Jones 5 At Home with the War: The Great War in Victorian Private Life 7 The 2014 Augustus Wolskel Lecture Bart Ziino Doing it Tough: Life on the Rural Home Front 27 Michael McKernan ‘Heartstrings Aching for the Absent Boy’: Years of Anguish— the Losses of War 41 Ross McMullin Women Waging War: The National Council of Women of Victoria 61 1914–1920 Judith Smart ‘Doing All that is Possible’: Women State School Teachers, Girls and Preferred Contributions to Victoria’s War Effort, 1914–1918 83 Rosalie Triolo Federal Government House: Headquarters of the Australian Red Cross 105 Carole Woods v The Band Has Rendered Valuable Service: Victorian Brass Bands on the Home Front during the Great War 121 Jillian Durance Class or Nation? Worker Loyalties in Melbourne during the Great War 141 John Lack Frank Anstey, Money Power and the Labour Split in War Time 161 Peter Love Workplace Football and Industrial Recreation in the First World War 187 Peter Burke REVIEWS Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War. By Joan Beaumont 207 Judith Smart Kitty’s War. The Remarkable Wartime Experiences of Kit McNaughton By Janet Butler 209 Walter Phillips The War that Changed Us. By Clare Wright and directed by Don Featherstone 212 Lucy Bracey Khaki Crims and Desperadoes. By Russell Robinson 215 Andrew Lemon Soldier Boys: The Militarisation of Australian and New Zealand Schools for World War I. By Maxwell N. Waugh 217 Don Garden Notes on Contributors 220 About the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 223 Guidelines for Contributors 224 vi Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 86, Number 1, June 2015 Introduction This special issue of the Victorian Historical Journal is the outcome of a highly successful conference hosted by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914. The conference, opened by the Hon. Ted Baillieu, former premier of Victoria and chair of the Victorian ANZAC Centenary Committee, was titled ‘The Other Face of War: Victorians and the Homefront’. It focused on Melbourne, though the impact of war on rural Victoria and the hardship and sacrifices endured by small country communities were central to one paper and were alluded to in others. The federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 had marked the inauguration of Melbourne as the first national capital, a status the city held until the Commonwealth parliament was transferred to Canberra in 1927. Melburnians’ sense of the city’s significance was confirmed and expanded during the years of the Great War, which saw the most vital economic, administrative and military powers concentrated in the national government. Melbourne thus became the focal point for interest groups of all kinds and the place where they mainly gathered to lobby, to meet, to confer and to demonstrate. The publication of these articles makes an important contribution to understanding not only the Victorian home front, but also the national experience of suffering, hard work, bitterness and conflict the war engendered. Bart Ziino was invited to give the 2014 Augustus Wolskel Memorial Lecture, which inaugurated the conference. Titled ‘At Home with the War: The Great War in Victorian Private Life’, the resulting article examines the Great War in Victoria through the lens of private sentiment. The article draws primarily on personal letters and diaries to tell a story of the war as a constant preoccupation in which people struggled to cope with the demands it made on them psychologically and emotionally. Ziino suggests that the interplay of personal anxiety about loved ones and public conflict over the distribution of the burden of sacrifice may provide a conduit for reconceptualising the bitterness and anger that divided so many communities. These themes of personal suffering and sacrifice are also central to Michael McKernan’s article, ‘Doing It Tough: Life on the Rural Home Front’. It focuses on the losses suffered by many thousands of families 1 in country towns and communities throughout Victoria, losses that were not only deeply personal, but also devastating for the economies of country communities where the labour of those who enlisted was never replaced. The enormous effort that went into memorialisation was one way these towns and districts were able to restore a sense of unity and to advertise the extent of their sacrifice for the new nation. Ross McMullin’s contribution, ‘“Heartstrings Aching for the Absent Boy”: Years of Anguish—the Losses of War’, also focuses on suffering and loss. However, while stressing the life-long pain of families that lost sons, brothers and husbands, he also puts a compelling case for the profound loss incurred to the nation by the deaths of many particularly gifted young men. Their rich potential to make major contributions to Australia’s future in a variety of areas was lost. Three articles deal particularly with the part played on the home front by women and girls as well as the conflicts the war engendered among them. Judith Smart focuses on some of the issues that divided the 52 member organisations within the National Council of Women of Victoria, particularly the battles between feminist pacifists and imperial pro-war loyalists over questions of peace and free speech, recruitment and conscription, attitudes to Germans, and between middle-class and working-class housewives over means of reducing the cost of living. Rosalie Triolo’s article, ‘“Doing All that is Possible”: Women State School Teachers, Girls and Preferred Contributions to Victoria’s War Effort, 1914–18’, argues that while male teachers and senior male students were encouraged to enlist and provided with facilities to do so, women teachers and girls were channeled into a narrow range of home-front comforts activities. Indeed, the Education Department was ‘nearly silent’ about the possibility that they might ‘go to war’s battle front’ as nurses or members of Voluntary Aid Detachments. While this, she claims, reflected gendered assumptions, it was also a consequence of the need to fill the vacancies in teaching left by the enlistment ofa ‘staggering 50 per cent of male teachers’. Carole Woods also stresses the patriotic work of many Victorian women in her examination of ‘Federal Government House: Headquarters of the Australian Red Cross’. Marshalling the voluntary work of thousands of largely middle-class women in suburbs and towns across the nation, the Red Cross was headed by the governor general’s exceedingly able wife, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, who co-ordinated its energies and activities and oversaw their extension to Egypt, England, France and beyond. 2 Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 86, Number 1, June 2015 The patriotic role of brass bands on the Victorian home front is the subject of Jillian Durance’s article, ‘The Band has Rendered Valuable Service’, which examines the response of these community organisations to the needs of recruiting, fundraising, and the farewelling and welcoming home of the troops. It also assesses the losses many bands suffered from enlistment of their members and the consequent threat to their survival, but concludes that the bands were still playing an important part in sustaining community identity and morale at war’s end.