Watching the watchers

This is such a good book, written in the best military fashion, with all points assembled in proper order but written with the wit and irony usually missing from military historians, that it is a pity it is not better designed. The title page really lacks finesse. But the illustrations and notes are very well-chosen and easy on the eye. It deals equally with civilian surveillance as with military surveillance over, and the reduction of, the rights of others. One of the problems of political surveillance is that men with good intentions seem to develop an attitude that the end justifies the means employed and it is usually only the first step away from regarding the civil liberties of others as something to which they are not entitled as a right. This would seem to explain the attitudes of such otherwise good men who were engaged in these activities during the first world war as Latham, Bavin, G.V. Portus, Giblin, and Herbert Brookes. At the same time, it inflamed patriotic believers in Civil Liberties such as B.S. Ross, Gordon Childe, T.J. Ryan, and Henry Boote, to mention only a few. And it is now difficult to see that the opponents of civil liberties were not innate fascists but men with an enlarged sense of duty. The super-patriotism of World War I seemed strange even to many who fought and died in the second. And it must be said that the paranoia and megalomania of Billy Hughes becomes even more difficult to understand the more one learns the truths of that period, and no amount of political explanation could explain away his apparent hatred of T.J. Ryan and all he stood for in Queensland. Perhaps a Hughes had to produce a Ryan. One thing is certain, political surveillance provided a large member of the middle-class with safe berths and none of their officers seemed willing to leave Australia with the Armed Forces. When such changes threatened there were always friends or seniors to certify that such good citizens could not be spared. This applied particularly in the censorship section. It is certainly true that Crain is not the first to postulate the fact, but he certainly does demonstrate the truth of the universal maxim that in political surveillance, work produces work, and the number engaged in such was quite disproportionate to our size and distance from any possibly effective espionage. But it was an effective training ground. For example, Latham, as officer-in-charge of naval political surveillance, gained experience from monitoring Trade Union and radical activity which stood him in good stead when he was Attorney-General in the Bruce–Page administration. The book shows that there was intense jealousy in the intelligence services. When George Steward, who doubled at first in the position as Secretary to the Governor-General, then became head of Investigation Branch (subsequently for a short time Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria) died; his nominal chief and opposite number in London, a man called Thing, replied to his advisor in Melbourne, ‘I shed no tears over the passing of that man’. And, of course, there was no love lost between the civilian and service investigators and prosecutors. In fact, the service personnel always injected some bitterness into their descriptions of the ‘frocks’. As in Britain, the main function of the office of censorship, to which most of the "best people seemed to gravitate, was ‘to prevent alarm and despondency spreading amongst the population and to ensure popular support for the war’. To this end, casualties always had to be played down by all services and it became illegal to report or even discuss them. This was widely interpreted by magistrates throughout the country, with a little less fervour in Queensland, ‘as incitement to men not to join up’. Strangely, as I was reading this book I was reading at the same time Paléologue’s diary as last French Ambassador to Russia before the foreigners were expelled in late 1917 and he made the point that nobody was allowed to know the casualties suffered by the Russians but when the truth came out the peasants had no option but to revolt. And, of course, the Americans were beaten in Vietnam because television and other coverage showed the US public the degradation and uselessness of the war itself. Even hospital treatment, or lack of it, unlike in the Crimea, was during World War I forbidden as a subject of discussion. For example, in a letter to Senator Pearce, then Defence Minister, Hughes said, ‘in order to maintain recruitment it is essential that the Public mind should not be disturbed by complaints about hospital treatment and troubles or news of the war or opinions thereto’. Does anyone hear the voice of big brother who, of course, knows what is best? An example of this was the prohibition against dissemination of the news that the soldiers ‘over there’ had voted against conscription. To spread the truth of this was treason. It was not at all unusual that the ‘security’ forces, all three services plus the censorship branch plus the intelligence bureau, should spare no cost or effort to stop the successful formation of a Labor college in Sydney, based upon that started in Melbourne, for fear ‘that it should propagate and foster the growth of extreme doctrines amongst the working class’, overlooking the fact that, as with so many Labor organisations, ideological differences would wreck the college anyway. It was not until about one year after the war ended that the Censorship Branch, which Hughes had used as a personal tool, was disbanded; and it was not until 1924 that monies, postal and money orders that had been seized in the correspondence of people of ‘doubtful political integrity’, were returned or disposed of in some quasi-legal fashion. Which is just another way of showing that when war hysteria enters the door all normal and usual liberties fly out the window. There is not room to deal to a larger extent with the problems of World War Two. But readers must take note of the manner in which Lieutenant-Colonel J.C. Mawhood was ill-treated by Brigadier Simpson (head of the Security Service) and others, but befriended by Solicitor-General Knowles. Apparently senior people feared that Mawhood, who had risen from the ranks, would want to investigate the Army and General Studee decided he should be returned to United Kingdom, even though he was an Australian. Mawhood was damned in Australia and abroad without cause. One of the problems is that Australians might now think that all this belongs to the past and it cannot happen again. Whilst I agree that the picture of Australia in general and Melbourne in particular as depicted by Brian Elliott in Our War and by Frank Crain’s present book is unlikely to be repeated whilst Australians remember their past, it must not be overlooked that the influx of migrants from non-democratic countries will have diluted the strong democratic feeling which during World War I in some parts of Australia such as Queensland, created some opposition to repression. In other words, it is probable that in Australia today a larger proportion of people would be willing to accept repression of the left by the right. And, of course, it is possible that political differences are now more apparent and more bitter than when we were a more homogeneous population. Which is not to overlook the portion of newcomers who support the left against the right, or are truly neutral. The book finishes in 1949, more or less with the formation of ASIO, and the author rightly concludes that the new legislation which protects ASIO and nearly all of its operations from public knowledge presents a real challenge to future historians. It is probable that some time will have to elapse before sufficient documents will be released for a proper research to be undertaken. One can only hope that when such a time arrives there will be an historian as competent as Frank Cain to undertake the work and produce a book as good as this.

Alex Sheppard

From the New Issue

God and the Angel: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier’s tour de force of Australia and New Zealand by Shiroma Perera-Nathan

No Country for Idealists: The making of a family of subversives by Boris Frankel

The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift

Letters to the Editor - May 2024

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