by Peter Rees
After the plebiscite’s failure, Bean met High Commissioner Andrew Fisher in London, during which the former Prime Minister explained his opposition to conscription. ‘I’m not blind to the fact that conscription is logical,’ Fisher told Bean, ‘but men are not logical and you cannot rule them by logic.’ He agreed with Bean that conscription was ‘economical’ and overcame the problem of putting the wrong men in the wrong places. But Fisher said he had never believed that if conscription were carried in Australia it could be enforced, and felt there would have been ‘terrible trouble’ if the vote had succeeded. Bean admitted that there had been great trouble as it was, and added: ‘I can see your point—instead of getting the recruits they have only managed to divide Australia into two bitterly hostile camps.’ The debate had only brought ‘furious antagonism’. Fisher agreed. ‘I don’t believe that it was worth it, to get the few men extra who might have been raised by conscription,’ he said. Bean left with a clearer understanding of a man who had quit the prime ministership in October 1915 after finding the burden of wartime leadership increasingly unpalatable. He reminded Bean that his aim in office had always been to ‘keep straight and clean.’ These tenets appealed to Bean, and in his diary he commented: ‘One can see that this last has been one of the principal preconceptions of Fisher’s life—how to keep simple and straight in politics.’
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With the conscription debate over and no hope that it would be revisited in this war, Bean’s mood was sombre; it had not improved by New Year’s Eve. As the guns broke out at midnight he realised that it was 1918. He believed it would be hard going before the year was out, and could not see the fighting ending before mid-1919. Earlier that day he had driven over icy roads to visit troops of the 56th Battalion to get their account of Ypres. He came away reminded that the infantry were ‘splendid chaps’, always hospitable and glad to see you. ‘They live so close to death, good fellows, that they have a sort of pathetic generosity. One knows very well that, of an infantry mess with whom you dine today, probably not more than 2 or 3 outside of the colonel and headquarters will get through the year without death or a wound.’
His brother Jack was one of the doctors who tended these men, and had done so since the day of the landing at Gallipoli. Bean thought Jack ‘with all his impractical ideas was a bit of a saint in his own way.’ Yet Jack, for all the heroism that had seen him wounded twice on the battlefield while caring for the wounded, was not popular with the medical command, in particular the director general of the Australian Army Medical Corps, Sir Neville Howse, VC. Jack was an idealist who put the welfare of the men above his own career. He had been passed over many times by Howse for promotion. He had also run foul of the Royal Army Medical Corps when he criticised the poor quality of chloroform being used at the hospital at Warloy, near Amiens. When Bean heard in early November 1917 that Jack had been reprimanded, he made his own inquiries, which confirmed that his brother was correct about the ‘vile’ chloroform:
Jack was right, up to the hilt; and all these generals and big people who were sitting on him were simply doing their best to squash a fellow who had no other object than to save the lives of soldiers. I know my brother—working day and night without regard for himself in spite of his smashed hand. The idea of these hidebound RAMC leaders trying to squash him and snub him down, while he is giving to the country a quality of unselfish devotion which they cannot even imagine, is one that touches me on the raw.
One of Jack Bean’s main interests was treating venereal disease among the troops. As Bean wrote in his diary, his brother wanted ‘to protect the women of Australia and our future nation against the disease, by getting the men to realise the dangers to their homes and to the race.’ Jack wanted to form a Legion of Honour in which men could enrol themselves to ‘protect the purity of our nation; against disease and against drink.’ He found no support among his more realistic brother officers, however. (Howse, who had introduced a system of practical preventative measures against VD, including packets of prophylactics for men going on leave, thought the idea mad, telling Birdwood, ‘this is a primitive instinct with men and you cannot stop it.’)
Early in January 1918 Bean was shocked to receive a letter about Jack from his friend Brigadier General Tom Griffiths—‘one which made me so angry that my heart would not stop beating for a while.’ A War Office Intelligence Corps officer had visited Griffiths to inform him that a raid on the premises of the Young India League had found papers showing that Major Jack Bean was a member of the Home Rule for India League, and had paid £1 to its funds. The raid had also uncovered a letter from him offering to help in preparing a guide for speakers on the subject. When he read the letter Bean was outraged to find that the War Office had gone to AIF headquarters in London, behind Jack’s back, with their ‘miserable discoveries’, suggesting that ‘Jack had been engaging in seditious intrigue.’
Howse wanted to send Jack back to Australia on the sick list. Bean wouldn’t have it. ‘I went straight to White and told him I’d fight anybody or anything rather than have old Jack, who has simply given his life to the service of his country, subjected to the least suspicion of the possibility of disloyal action. I said I would fight anybody, in the English newspapers or anywhere, first.’ With White’s support, and Griffiths also on side, the matter was dropped. With his influential connections, when Bean was roused he could be a formidable opponent.
34
The juggler
Frank Hurley was frustrated. He wanted to capture the terrible scope of what he was seeing on the battlefields. Hurley and Hubert Wilkins were plunged into the bloodbath of Third Ypres, where they soon became known to the Diggers as ‘the mad photographers.’ But the events were so big and so terrible that Hurley felt they were beyond his ability to capture by normal photography. His efforts to resolve this problem inevitably brought him into frequent conflict with Bean. Hurley was stunned by the scenes he was witnessing:
Everything is on such a vast scale. Figures are scattered—the atmosphere is dense with haze and smoke—shells will not burst where required—yet the whole elements of a picture are there could they but be brought together and condensed. The battle is in full swing, the men are just going over the top—and I snap! A fleet of bombing planes is flying low, and a barrage bursts all around. On developing my plate there is disappointment! All I find is a record of a few figures advancing from the trenches—and a background of haze. Nothing could be more unlike a battle. It might be a rehearsal in a paddock!
Hurley regarded the camera as an artist does his brush, seeing it as an implement to be used with imagination and ‘judicious manipulation’. He suggested to Bean that he could overcome the limitations and add realism and drama to his battle series by ‘combination printing’. The process involved combining images from two or more glass negatives into a single positive print, making a new negative by re-photographing that print, then using the negative to print the final composite photo.
In his diary for 26 September 1917, Hurley noted that he had had a great argument with Bean about ‘combination pictures’. He was ‘thoroughly convinced that it is impossible to secure effects, without resorting to composite pictures.’ But Bean was horrified, seeing the technique as a falsification of reality, and wrote that he and Hurley had had ‘a long argument.’ Bean acknowledged that he could see Hurley’s point—‘he has been nearly killed a dozen times and has failed to get the pictures he wants—but we will not have it at any price.’ He accepted that the Canadians did this to some extent, augmenting their battle pictures with shell bursts from other photos—‘but we don’t want to rival them in this.’
Hurley was not so easily brushed aside. He dined with Birdwood and White and told them his views on the virtues of composite photos, and that Bean was opposed to the idea of even allowing clouds to be inserted in a picture. He said he thought it right to illustrate to the public ‘the things our fellows are doing and how the war was conducted.’ This could only be achieved by printing f
rom a number of negatives, or by reenactment. Birdwood promised to look into the matter.
Next day, 2 October 1917, Hurley resigned—a tactical move to ‘await the result of lighting the fuse.’ With an Australian photographic exhibition being planned for May the following year in London, before going to Australia Hurley spoke to Birdwood, who said ‘he hoped to fix matters up.’ Birdwood’s compromise allowed Hurley to show six composites, which were to be clearly labelled as such. Hurley retracted his resignation and continued to work in France until December, when he was sent to the Middle East to photograph the Australians for the exhibition. But Bean felt so strongly about composite photos that in his diary entry he failed to mention Hurley’s contribution to the exhibition. Wilkins, he wrote, ‘did the work.’
The dispute between Bean and Hurley highlights Bean’s devotion to accuracy and his determination to protect what he believed were Australia’s interests. Reality could not be tampered with—a photo should be the same as a battlefield relic. Bean objected not just to Hurley’s use of composites but to Hurley’s tendency to stage and misrepresent photographs and scenes. They were also contrasting personalities. Self-promotion and showmanship were second nature to Hurley, but to Bean they were anathema. Bean was a truth seeker in his chronicling, while Hurley sought to represent ‘realism’ in a way that the camera could not catch. After the Third Ypres campaign, Bean warmly recommended Wilkins for a Military Cross, while for Hurley it was a rather less lustrous mention in despatches.
If Bean was unhappy with Hurley, he was dismayed with the War Office Cinematograph Committee headed by Sir William Jury, and the debacle of the film of the Australians in action on the Western Front that he had helped edit with the company a year earlier. Bean had worked hard on the film, leaving ‘a thoroughly true interesting story of the Australians.’ He had left the film with Jury with only the captions to be done. Having now seen the film, he found that
about 2000 feet of miscellaneous rubbish had been put together, containing no single title that bore any relation to the ones that we had settled, in no sort of order, jumping from Fleurbaix to Pozières and back in the wildest disorder, without the faintest attempt of any sort at any comprehensible sequence of ideas. I simply felt at the end of it as though the work were hopeless and one had scarcely the strength to tackle it again from the beginning . . . In the meantime, the film which went out to Australia, was of course, a hopeless frost.
A few days later, Jury’s office contacted Bean to say they had found a part of the lost film. When Bean went to see it, Jury ‘had me in and tried to get me to say it wasn’t their fault.’ Bean noted drily that, ‘I would not do this. I fancy he has just an idea that there may be trouble ahead.’ More of the film was subsequently found, but what happened to the original film would remain unresolved. What further annoyed Bean was that Jury had been knighted that same week for ‘great services’. Jury had clearly ignored Bean’s instructions for final editing of the film—and charged Australia for the work, regardless.
At the time, Bean was settling into his new London office in Horseferry Road. Bean thought that Arthur Bazley, who was now organising the office, was working too hard, as was John Treloar. The Australian War Records Section, which Treloar ran, had a staff of about six and was growing. Treloar and his staff were the most ‘conscientious, untiring, limitless workers’ that he had ever met. Again, Bean could not stop himself from a sectarian appraisal of the staff, noting that several were Irish and Catholics. Whatever their religion, they had worked through Saturdays and Sundays, beginning early and ending late, for three years. For Bean, this meant that they had ‘quite overturned a good many old ideas about the Public Service.’ Treloar impressed him most.
Little Treloar is a Methodist, and though he will not work on Sundays, which he spends at church and in writing home letters, he works in the office from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on other days including Saturdays, and often later and takes home work with him. He will not take afternoon tea and spends only half an hour at lunch. Bazley works in the same manner, sometimes later than Treloar. Both are doing far too much for their health.
Writing to Harry Gullett in Egypt early February 1918, Bean lamented that he had not had time to concentrate on writing the Official History, such were the administrative tasks still involved with collating records, photographs and other material. Not least among these was the future of war relics. He and Treloar were ‘fighting for all we are worth against the supposed promise of the Australian Government that the pick of Australian trophies should go to the Imperial War Museum in London.’ They were appalled at a claim by the War Office that Australia had agreed to this. Bean cabled Australia to have the consent reversed, and sent a strong cable to the press. This had the desired effect of forcing Defence Minister George Pearce to deny that any such promise had been made, nor was it likely to be. Bean was gratified when Prime Minister Hughes made it clear that all Australian trophies should go to the proposed Australian war museum.
Thus Bean’s hopes for the war museum housing these major trophies achieved the momentum he wanted. Already he was adamant that while there would be other centres and institutions, the main museum must be in Canberra. This would underline the reality ‘that our capital is a metropolis, and not merely a provincial city.’ Bean had become a nation builder, and he wanted to generate national spirit, without which ‘we shall never get the best out of our people.’ His aspirations were high: ‘We are out to make our war museum, our war gallery, and our war library, if possible, not merely fine museums for Australia, but the finest that the world contains.’
Bean was already thinking beyond the war, and beyond the creation of institutions such as the Australian War Memorial. He lobbied Brudenell White to allow newly arrived American war correspondents to inspect the Australians and write about them. His rationale was strategic: he feared that Americans knew little about Australia and after the war ‘we shall need the sympathy of America in the Pacific to the fullest extent to which it is possible to obtain it.’ Bean thought the end of the war would probably bring a League of Nations, which he saw as ‘a sort of superior parliament or council.’ In this he reflected the thinking in Britain following the release of a report in February 1918 on a so-called council of states.
Bean saw the new body resolving international questions so as to prevent wars; countries would join together to fight rogue nations in any war. His arguments went back to his prewar support for the White Australia policy, and the need for a strong navy to protect Australia’s interests in the Pacific. He now spoke of ‘the question of our relations with the Asiatic Races, which we intend to keep out of Australia.’ If this issue ended up before a League of Nations, Australia would have ‘raised up a most deadly peril for ourselves’ because the new body might not have the ‘least sympathy or understanding’ and might decide that Australia ‘must admit the Oriental Races into our country.’ Australia’s only support would come from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and possibly South Africa. He believed it was essential for Australia and Canada to be on the same side as Britain and the United States: ‘if an English-speaking Federation is the outcome of it, bound by loose ties, representing only their interests, this would most probably be the most satisfactory solution for us in this war. It is, however, urgent for us to obtain the interest and sympathy of America, which at the present moment knows very little about us.’
On one level, Bean was perceptive in predicting that Australia would come to rely on the United States, as would occur in 1942. On another level, though, his views reaffirmed that he still saw the world in racial terms. Hypothetically, the Anglo-Saxon nations would band together to form a powerful block that would protect their particular interests. Such hegemony would underline the geopolitical and cultural predominance of an Anglo-Saxon federation over others. But getting greater American understanding and knowledge of Australia was a necessary first step. Brudenell White agreed.
On a trip back to France in the midst of these fights and fli
ghts of fancy, Bean met Fred Cutlack, who he thought had settled nicely into the job. With Cutlack’s company, he took a rare break and caught the train to Paris with the intention of enjoying a night out. On the trip down Bean reflected on the social changes that the war was bringing. Two young British women, members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, were in the carriage. He noted that the Australians interpreted the WAAC acronym to mean ‘Warned Against All Colonials’. These young women were ‘clearly having the time of their lives in getting away from the very narrow little home circle.’ He realised that the women in this war, like the men, would never be content to return to the restrictive limits of prewar life.
That night, in Paris, Bean was seduced not just by the city but by the vibrant nightlife and the crowds at the Folies Bergère, the nightspot famous for its female nudity. He quickly saw that Parisians were living better than the British, who were, he thought, bearing the greater burden. Unlike in England, bread and most other foods seemed abundant in France. Ever the observer, he was fascinated by the crowds during the show’s interval. There was ‘every nation under the sun,’ all recognisable by their uniform. There were French civilians and their wives, sweethearts and cocottes [prostitutes, or so-called joy girls]; American officers by the score, who stood out in their khaki tunics with stiff high collars. They mingled with spruce, polished British officers. He noticed the French officers and men in their grey-blue uniforms and their peacetime blue and red. Big Yankee soldiers stood out in their long overcoats and roundel hats, reminding him of so many monks. There were Canadians, too, and a few British Tommies, who had the least money of all. Australians who were also there, a good sprinkling of them ‘in their dashing upturned hats and loose easy fitting uniform.’ They stood out from the rest by their easy, frank natural manners; their confident walk, their free unstrained enjoyment.