Women
and RecruitingAt home during World War 1 it could seem to be a war being fought for the sake of women. In the recruiting posters and the great recruiting rallies it was mothers, wives, sweethearts or sisters for whom, as well as God, King and Country, men were being called on to lay down their lives. ('Any right--minded woman would rather be a mother or sister of a dead hero than of a living shirker.')
Even a large part of the small pacifist movement consisted of women. The Women's Peace Army had been formed in July 1915, with a regular magazine, The Woman Voter, that was censored regularly and sometimes banned - and when women pacifists made their calls for peace, they did it as sweethearts, wives, sisters or mothers. Their most successful campaign song (so successful that the Government declared it illegal) was 'I Didn't Raise My Son To Be A Soldier'.
In Britain, many women went into the factories, but Australia was not a great industrial country: when women were wanted, it was mainly in the commercial world, as 'business girls'.
Australian women also ran the canteens, visited wounded soldiers, sold buttons on button days, rattled collection boxes on collection days, organised fetes, baked cakes, put together 'comfort parcels' and, above all they knitted. Australian women knitted 1,354,328 pairs of socks for the Comforts Fund during the Great War.
Recruiting drives were held in the cities every day, with brass bands and long lines of speakers. Modern novelties were also being used: recruiting handbills wrapped around parcels, recruiting films, recruiting slogans hanging from box kites. At dances wounded soldiers appealed for volunteers, and there were recruiting speeches at the beaches. Huge footprints were painted on city footpaths leading to recruiting depots, rider-less horses rode past recruiting platforms and volunteers were called to fill the empty saddles.
As recruiting became more and more frenetic, posters asked God to 'bless dear Daddy who is fighting the Hun and send him HELP'.
During World War
I two referenda were held in Australia on the issue of compulsory conscription
for overseas service. On both occasions the proposal was narrowly defeated.
The first conscription referendum was held on 28 October 1916. Prime Minister
William Morris Hughes had visited England early in 1916 and had been convinced
by the British Government that conscription was necessary to replace the numbers
of soldiers being killed on the Western Front. Britain had introduced
conscription and pressured Australia to do the same.
Hughes's campaign for the introduction of conscription was supported by the
major metropolitan newspapers and the Bulletin magazine. It was also supported
by most of the Liberal Party including the Liberal state premiers, by the major
Protestant churches and the Universal Service League which had many prominent
Australians as members.
The pro-conscriptionists argued that the burden of war should be shared equally,
that the army could not raise enough troops by the voluntary method, and that
the soldiers already fighting would be 'abandoned' unless conscription was
introduced. They also contended that it was the patriotic duty of all
able-bodied men to fight, and pointed to the danger to democracy if Germany was
allowed to win.
Hughes was opposed by most of his own Labour Party that was traditionally
opposed to conscription for overseas service. He was opposed also by the
majority of Australian Irish Catholics, especially Archbishop Daniel Mannix of
Melbourne, left-wing newspapers, e.g. The Worker, Catholic newspapers, e.g. The
Advocate, the Australian Peace Alliance and by many prominent Australians
including former Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. The Australian Council of Trade
Unions (ACTU) was against the proposal as were many women's organisations and
well-known women such as Vida Goldstein and Adela Pankhurst. An anti-conscriptionist
Australian Freedom League had formed, and it had claimed 55,000 members.
Opponents of conscription argued that too many men had already died, that
Australia's small population could not continue to sustain such losses, that it
was morally wrong to force men to fight and that there was a danger of workers
being replaced by cheap Asian labour. Many Australian Irish Catholics were
against further support for Britain, especially after the suppression of the
1916 rebellion in Ireland. Others felt that conscription would put the burden of
war even more heavily on the working class. Farmers argued there would be a
shortage of labour on the land.
Against
Hughes the only really organised opposition seemed to come from the women
pacifists. The Women's Peace Army appealed to a mother's love for her son. The
most famous campaign leaflet on the 'No' side (banned in some States and handed
out illegally), featured a poem, 'The Blood Vote', which began:
Why is your face so white, Mother?
Why do you choke for breath?
O I have dreamt in the night, my son,
That I doomed a man to death. (Double Click on inset right)
Working-class distrust of authority and the self--concern of
farmers combined with a massive women's meant to defeat the referendum.
Its defeat was seen not as a protest against the war, but as an affirmation that
the war was to be fought in the Australian manner. 'Fight for freedom's cause in
freedom's way' was a principal 'No' slogan.
The final result was: 1,087,557 voted YES and 1,160,033 voted NO. Three states -
Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania - had voted YES. Three states - New
South Wales, Queensland and South Australia - had voted NO.
Vida Goldstein was born in 1869, the year that pioneer
feminist Harriot Dugdale wrote what is believed to be the first letter published
in Australia (to the Melbourne Argus) demanding full citizenship rights for
women. On her father's side Vida Goldstein had a Jewish-Polish-Irish background;
her feminist mother was the daughter of a Scottish-born squatter.
Vida's public career began in 1890 when she helped her mother collect signatures
for a huge Woman's Suffrage petition.
By the turn of the century, the witty and capable Vida had become the leader of
the Victorian women's movement; in I902 she was elected secretary of the
International Women's Suffrage Conference in the United States.
She was five times a candidate for the Australian national parliament: for the
Senate in I903, 1910 and 1917, and for the House of Representatives in 1913 and
1914. In spite of refusing to ally herself with any political party and standing
as an Independent, although never elected, she polled well, except in 1917 when
she lost her deposit, a humiliation attributed to her pacifist stance.
Vida Goldstein was chairman of the Peace Alliance, and in 1915 formed the
Women's Peace Army to fight conscription.
In 1919 she accepted an invitation to represent Australian women at the Women's
Peace Conference in Zurich.
Although she continued to lobby governments for social improvements, Vida did
not remain a prominent public figure. However, she became increasingly involved
in the Christian Science movement and continued to write about internationalism
and disarmament. She died in I949, at the beginning of the Cold War.
Reference
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