by Peter Rees
The object was so badly carried out that the result was that instead of lowering German morale and raising ours, we lowered ours by each of these battles and raised the German; and we won not an inch of ground. What excuse is the very best strategic or psychological object in the world, if the plan you pursue does not and cannot get it?
These failures contrasted with the victories of the two Anzac Corps in the three battles of Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde. As Bean concluded, the later fighting in the wet weather doubled the casualties, which mounted to 38,000 in the five Australian divisions in eight weeks. In all, the British forces lost at least a further 212,000 men against the Germans’ 200,000 casualties. Passchendaele had eventually fallen to the Canadian Corps in five operations between 26 October and 10 November, but Haig’s hopes of the Third Ypres campaign smashing the German line before the New Year had been dashed. All he had managed was to inflict proportionately more damage on his own forces than the Germans. For Australia, this left a rising mood of disillusionment, and an insoluble problem of reinforcement. And for Bean, the setback did nothing to restore his faith in the British Army—at all levels.
33
Cultural stereotyping
The more contact he had with British military leaders, the more Bean’s contempt for them, and the class system that spawned them, grew. There were ‘society cavalry generals’ who were ‘a sort of hunting squire put in charge of 300,000 men’ and exemplified the problems that Bean believed beset the British Army. ‘Our Australians are full of the impression . . . that the present British soldier and staff cannot stand up to the Germans.’ Bean further asserted that the only troops that could be relied upon to face the Germans were Dominion troops:
The example of a determined man amongst them is what they want. The British troops lack the men with the determination to fight who are necessary to make a stern defence. Our officers and men are all talking of this; they all speak of the British retreating without putting up a fight after the first few days. When they see the British troops retiring it is the ‘same old game starting’.
In particular, Bean had in mind British generals such as Hubert Gough and Richard Haking; and the Canadians generally shared similar views about the British commanders. Furthermore, Lloyd George’s government viewed both Gough and Haking as incompetent. Lloyd George later confided to Billy Hughes—who subsequently told Bean—that the War Cabinet tried to prevent the Third Battle of Ypres but was ‘powerless against the determination of their military advisers.’ The British Army, Lloyd George told Hughes, above the rank of brigadier general, was preserved for members of the old regular Army, particularly the cavalry branch, most of whom belonged to a limited and powerful class. ‘I do not belong to that class,’ said the British Prime Minister, ‘and, if I had stepped in and stopped their offensive, they would have said that I had held them up on the brink of a great military success.’
After Passchendaele, consideration was given to replacing Sir Douglas Haig as Commander-in-Chief. The trouble was, no one was better equipped for the job. Bean was scathing of ‘the extraordinary British method of choosing men not by their capacity but by their “breeding” or tact or birth merely in some cases.’ Such a system, he concluded, was the blight of all British institutions. He believed the root cause of the poor performance of the British Army had been ‘plain as an open book ever since Suvla Bay—it is far, far deeper than the failure of this or that division or general’:
The real cause is the social system of England, or the distorted relic of the early middle ages which passes for a system; the exploitation of the whole country for the benefit of a class—a system quietly assumed by the ‘upper class’ and accepted by the lower class, so that the upper class does not have to employ brains or ability or any virtue of modern value except tact or manners in order to occupy all the positions of command; and the lower class has to exist without any hope or right of betterment in whatever hovels and slums this ‘system’ allows for its workers. The upper class remain ‘upper’ without dependence on brains, by a sort of feudal right; and the lower class has no right to develop either brains or bodies. This system is necessary to the development of ‘national’ wealth—which means the wealth of the upper and middle classes. The other class, though an Englishman would wonder what you meant if you said so, has no rights. Generals without brains and an army without physique—there you have it.
Bean was not alone in his condemnation of the British class system and how it affected the Army. In the summer of 1914 a prominent American socialist, Charles Edward Russell, on a visit to Britain watched recruits being drilled and noted the disparity between the heights of the officers and men—the former were on average five inches taller. He was struck by the poor appearance of the men: ‘the dull eyes, the open mouths that seem ready to drool, the vacant expression, the stigmata of the slum—terrible spectacle.’ Nonetheless, the Tommies made resolute soldiers even if their physical condition did not match that of the Australians. As the Germans saw it, the reality was more complex than Bean acknowledged. One report by a German officer after Fromelles commented that although the Australian officers and men were in good physical condition, ‘they seem rather deficient in military qualities. The Australian officers are inferior in every respect to the British. As is to be expected in view of their educational background, they are completely lacking in judgment as to what is important militarily and what is not.’ Understandably focused on the Australians as he was, perhaps Bean did not always have access to the broader picture.
Despite his contempt for the class system, Bean had a cordial relationship with Haig, though he thought him gauche and nervous. While their contact was infrequent, they met again during Passchendaele when Bean attended a briefing that Haig was giving for correspondents. When it ended, Bean stayed behind to ask questions relating to Australia. Haig wanted to talk, and asked Bean what chance there was of conscription in Australia. Bean said Prime Minister Hughes had not handled the issue well and as a consequence, there was enormously strong, well-organised opposition to conscription from the Irish, the Catholics and the Industrial Workers of the World. Haig had never heard of the IWW, and Bean had to explain that it was an international socialist organisation founded in the United States. Bean told Haig the one thing that would bring conscription would be if the Allies were in a tight corner.
The intricacies and tensions in the AIF’s relations with the British military hierarchy began to surface as their discussion continued. Bean’s admiration for Brudenell White and dislike of John Monash were soon on show. Haig said he was convinced that Australia was right in wishing to build up its own staff and that the nation had some very capable commanders. He said to Bean: ‘Now—er—there’s General Monash, for example. He is a very capable man. He has made a great success of everything he has touched—a very solid man.’
Bean knew that Haig had had Monash to dinner lately; he also knew that Haig had suggested to Keith Murdoch that Monash might be given the corps command and General Birdwood the administration. No fan of Monash, Bean said at once: ‘Yes—but if it meant any change in the position of General Birdwood it seems to me that it would be a great pity. General Birdwood has an independent position and standing which is of the utmost value to us—Australians trust him and he has won himself a great place with them.’ Haig said he knew Birdwood’s value but—with all five Australian infantry divisions serving on the Western Front about to combine as the Australian Corps on 1 November—it seemed to him that Australia should have a corps commander and a complete corps staff. Bean responded: ‘Yes sir—you know we look upon General White as the greatest soldier we have by a long way.’ Haig said he knew White was a ‘most capable officer,’ but he wondered why Australia had declined to promote him. ‘I said I didn’t know they had, but if so it must be that they did not know him, that he had been too close to General Birdwood.’ Bean said that White was the one man to whom no Australian soldier would grudge promotion.
Haig ra
ised the concept of an Imperial General Staff—an idea that Monash supported and which would mean that he was answerable only to GHQ and not Australia. Bean thought there was ‘no doubt they have talked it out and Haig would be very glad to be quit of the independence of Birdwood and White.’ He told Haig there was no chance the Australian Government would agree to such an arrangement of a common service, if only because the nation would lose its best men. He added: ‘We could never keep a soldier like White if there were a common service—if our men could enter the Indian Service and the British Service we should lose all the best of them to India and elsewhere and we need them too badly.’ ‘You would get them back,’ Haig replied, to which Bean said, to bring the conversation to a close: ‘With a system of exchange we should, but not with a common service.’
Bean discussed the meeting with White, who told him of his own conversation with Haig. The British general had wanted to know why the Australians did not have a corps commander of their own, adding, ‘You know you ought to be commanding this Corps.’ White said he had replied: ‘God forbid. General Birdwood has a position amongst Australians which is far too valuable to lose.’ Haig said he knew all that; but Birdwood could have an administrative command. White replied that Birdwood’s great reputation in Australia depended on his being the fighting commander of their troops, and while Australia had a dozen men who could be as good or better administrators, there were none who commanded Australia’s confidence as Birdwood did. Bean noted: ‘Haig turned away impatiently and since then has been very short with White.’ White was clearly out of favour with Haig, while Monash had won his support—so much so that he had also taken the opportunity of sounding out Keith Murdoch, to whom he suggested that Monash should be appointed to command I Anzac Corps and Birdwood given the AIF administrative command.
The conversation with Haig raised serious issues in Bean’s mind: the need to keep up recruitment numbers without conscription; the consequent threat to keeping the AIF’s strength at five divisions, with the risk that one of them would have to be broken up to feed the other four; and, importantly, the need to keep all divisions together under an Australian staff. Given his critique of the British Army’s systemic and cultural problems, Bean saw this as a vital and urgent step towards AIF independence. He and Murdoch met eight days later to draft a cable airing their beliefs to Prime Minister Hughes. According to Bean, they both agreed conscription would make it possible to keep five divisions going; voluntary recruiting, they thought, was most unlikely to achieve this. If conscription were to be adopted, it would be necessary to assure Australia that all the divisions were together under Australian officers. Birdwood’s hand would have to be forced to get that staff because he was too loyal to his old friends to turn them out. However, he was keener than most on appointing Australians when new appointments had to be made. On the question of who should become the AIF commander-in-chief, Bean and Murdoch were adamant. As Bean noted:
Monash for an Australian C. in C. we cannot have. He is not the man. The purity and absence of jealousy and political intrigue in Birdwood’s administration, is worth anything. There is no ‘eyewash’—bluff and humbug and insincerity in it; and there is in Monash’s. White would do, but not Monash.
Besides we do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and inborn in Jews, to push themselves. Monash and Rosenthal have both that quality, though Monash does not use it shamelessly. Rosenthal does.
This diary entry is notable for indications of what one of Monash’s biographers, the historian Geoffrey Serle, describes as conventional prejudices about Jews. It also reveals that Bean had wrongly categorised Brigadier General Charles Rosenthal, commander of the 9th Infantry Brigade, as Jewish. Rosenthal was, like Bean, a Protestant—he had married in the Congregational Church in Melbourne and had worked as an architect for the Anglican Church in Grafton, Armidale and Sydney. Just as Bean had categorised John Treloar as a Catholic—he was a Methodist—so, too, he had made a wrong assumption about Rosenthal—perhaps because of his name. Clearly, Bean did not like the larger-than-life and conservative Rosenthal, whose audacity at the front line won the respect of the troops he commanded.
Bean’s disdain for Monash was already evident, of course. Their relationship had soured at Gallipoli; Bean clearly had not forgotten Monash’s unethical behaviour towards him during that campaign, when he sent his own reports to his wife in Melbourne to have them published in The Argus. Bean saw Monash as a self-promoter—and for him this was a character defect. But if Bean was now blind to the honing of Monash’s abilities since Gallipoli, he had been reminded only a few days earlier that Haig held Monash in high regard. Haig, despite the criticism levelled at his performance during the war, unquestionably knew leadership qualities when he saw them. He had praised Monash, but Bean had ignored this. Not all of Monash’s peers approved of his assertiveness—among them Brigadier General John Gellibrand, with whom Bean shared a close friendship. This disapproval even extended to Monash’s great contemporary, the Light Horse Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, commander of the Desert Column in Palestine and the first Australian to lead a corps. From the sands of Sinai, Chauvel watched warily as Monash’s promotion prospects blossomed in the mud of Flanders. To Bean, if someone other than Birdwood or White was going to command the AIF, then Gellibrand was the one.
Where Monash differed from many of his peers, including White, Gellibrand and Chauvel, was in the forcefulness of his personality. He was not one for self-effacement. Those officers and Bean disliked pushiness. The future World War II AIF field marshal Tom Blamey, who was then Chief of Staff, 1st Division, saw it as a plus. Blamey thought Monash ‘had the most highly trained mind that I had to deal with in the war,’ and commented that they got on ‘most excellently together.’ Bean acknowledged that Monash had his capacities, among them a lucid mind and a knack for grasping what had to be done and explaining it. But he also had ‘such a desire to make out the best case for himself after the event, that he accepts any pretty story which is put to him.’ A truthful battalion commander therefore got less favour in his eyes than one whose battalion had not done so well but who was ‘ready to tell a pretty story about it’:
Monash for this reason has not the slightest grasp of what has happened in action—he never has had. His ambition makes him an underground engineer—he has the Jewish capacity for worming silently into favour without seeming to take any steps towards it, although many are beginning to suspect that he does take steps. Holmes was a thousand times too proud to do any such thing.
The criticism, fuelled by cultural stereotyping not uncommon in that era, sat oddly with Bean’s strong belief that all the AIF divisions should be under the command of Australian officers. With Murdoch also opposing any promotion of Monash to command the AIF, and working in tandem with Bean, the campaign was already exposing bitter divisions with no apparent sign of resolution. This was underlined two days later when Bean added that among the AIF’s senior leadership White was seen as a ‘strong determined general’ and that everyone said he was Birdwood’s ‘only possible successor.’
The matter lay unresolved as attention turned to the second conscription plebiscite in Australia. As ‘to the Polling Booth’ signs were erected in the AIF camps, Bean again remained confident that the conscription case would triumph. Certainly, earlier in the year Murdoch was doing his best with overt propaganda, including spreading the most notorious Allied propaganda fabrication of the war, the story alleging that the Germans were converting human corpses into soap. In contrast to the Australian Press Association, which virtually ignored the story, Murdoch gave it great prominence in UCS cables and follow-up correspondence.
Bean thought that on conscription, Prime Minister Hughes was ‘putting the exceptions and conditions very fairly to the men,’ and Bean had ‘a very strong impression that the vote is better here than before.’ He also believed that in Australia the crisis in the Allies’ fortunes and the great need for strong energetic
action would carry the vote. ‘I have very little doubt it will go through,’ he wrote.
Yet again he was mistaken. Three days before Christmas, news reached France that on 20 December Australians had voted against conscription for the second time, by an even greater margin than at the 1916 poll. This time the proposal was less far-reaching, eschewing full conscription of able-bodied men and instead proposing to conscript men between the ages of eighteen and forty-four through a ballot system, and only in months when voluntary enlistments fell below 7000 men. The result left Bean disappointed. ‘However,’ he rationalised, ‘one is not going to hang one’s head over one’s country.’ After all, Australia, with fewer than 5 million people, had sent away as many divisions as Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa put together. However, Bean wrongly believed the result would mean the break-up of the 4th Division.
Although officers and non-commissioned officers almost universally supported conscription, the troops voted strongly against its introduction. Bean believed there were six key reasons. In his view the men believed that full reinforcements meant time in the line, whereas shortage of men had meant rest. The men further believed that the Australian divisions had been rather exploited, and had more than their share of heavy fighting. A further fear was that the death penalty would accompany conscription, and that discipline would harden. Bean knew that the troops were tired of war, and disillusioned at finding that they could do so little personally to bring victory. Bean continued: ‘They know what war is and they are disinclined to force anyone into it if he does not want to come. They rather object, some of them, to having the conscript among them and to lose the kudos of having come away voluntarily.’