Reflecting and consolidating

Chapter summary
  • World War I was caused by national rivalries in Europe being set on a rapid collision course after an assassination in Bosnia upset the European balance of power.
  • Britain was the most reluctant of the European powers to engage in the war, but once it did so, its involvement determined Australia’s participation, largely because Australia was a loyal member of the British Empire and therefore automatically committed itself to fight alongside Britain.
  • Australian soldiers served with distinction on fighting fronts in Turkey, Europe and the Middle East. Australia’s baptism in this war, the Gallipoli campaign, was a very badly judged military venture that ended in defeat and retreat. Australian troops, in greater numbers, then engaged in the destructive campaigns of 1916 and 1917 on the Western Front, again with little overall military success. They were instrumental, however, in the crucial battles that halted the German advance and turned the tide of the war in Europe in mid-1918. The cavalry successes of the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East were similarly central to the victorious Allied campaigns in Palestine in 1917–18.
  • Casualties were extremely high and unprecedented, producing intense grief and dislocation on the home front. This was the case for all the combatant countries. Australia’s casualty rate was high, especially as it experienced no civilian deaths due to war combat and did not institute military conscription, which was unique among the fighting nations.
  • War’s end revealed a battered and broken nation in much need of mending – a role that the ANZAC legend was eventually employed to play. The turmoil of war created enormous divisions on the Australian home front. Industrial, political and ethnic struggles were all marked outcomes of war involvement, making Australia by 1919 a far more divided country than it had been in 1914 when the war began.
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Short-answer questions
  1. Why did World War I break out?
  2. Outline which nations were involved in the war and which side they were on.
  3. Who was William Morris Hughes and what role did he play in Australia’s war effort?
  4. To what degree did the role and situation of Australian women change due to the war?
  5. Discuss what happened on the first ANZAC Day in
Source analysis

Anthony Splivalo was a young Dalmatian migrant living in Boulder-Kalgoorlie when the war broke out. He was interned on Rottnest Island and at Holdsworthy Internment Camp near Sydney. After the war, he left Australia for California, driven out, he writes, by ‘the anti-foreigner feeling’:

Soon the policy of internment was extended … Peaceful and law-abiding Dalmatians and other Slavs, working in the mines or in the bush, were rounded up and sent to Rottnest Island under armed guard …

Suddenly uniformed Australian soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets appeared as if from nowhere. We were ordered … into columns of fours, Australian guards swiftly taking their position alongside … So, flanked by armed men with cold eyes, we trudged with heavy step …. Thus, just a few months before my seventeenth birthday, I became Western Australia’s youngest prisoner of war … Around me soldiers, rifles, bayonets, cartridge belts and awful military officiality.

… Men, women and children lined the street to watch us pass. They stood silently, showing no enmity, looking puzzled as if unable to piece things together …

At Fremantle … a young fellow in a white shirt leaned over the railing and called out to us ‘Ah ha! We’ve got you now!’ And he made a sucking noise of satisfaction, through one corner of his mouth.

‘We’ve got you now!’ I have always remembered those words.

Source 16.19 From A. Splivalo, The Home Fires (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1982, pp. 50, 57–8, 60)

Read through Source 16.19 carefully and answer the following questions:

  1. Explain ‘the policy of internment’ during World War I.
  2. Where is Rottnest Island and what happened there during the war?
  3. Who were ‘the Dalmatians’ and ‘the Slavs’?
  4. Why were soldiers with rifles and bayonets rounding them up?
  5. Reflect what you think Splivalo means by the phrase, ‘awful military officiality’.
  6. What were the reactions of civilian onlookers to this scene – confusion, anger, apathy, support?
  7. Why did Splivalo always remember the words of the ‘young fellow in a white shirt’ at Fremantle?
  8. Interpret Splivalo’s phrase ‘anti-foreigner feeling’?
Extended-response question

Examine in closer detail the experience of Australian troops on different warfronts. Why does Australia remember the Gallipoli campaign more intently than what happened in other Australian troop campaigns in this war? What role, for instance, did Australian soldiers play in war’s outcomes in Palestine in 1917–18 and on the Western Front in 1918? Construct a parallel account of the three warfronts (in Turkey, Palestine and Europe) and assess the degree of military success, sacrifice and failure in each campaign.