Guide to the papers of Australian National Defence League (NSW Division)

Collection Number: 2DRL/1098

Summary

Title: Papers of Australian National Defence League (NSW Division).

Date range: 1905-1938.

Reference number: 2DRL/1098.

Extent: 2 boxes: 32cm.

Location: Private Records collection, Research Centre, Australian War Memorial.

Abstract: The papers of the Australian National Defence League (NSW Division) document this important lobby group's organisation, membership and activities from its creation in 1905 to its collapse in 1938. They comprise three registers of subscriptions paid by members, five volumes of minutes of meetings held, a letter book of outward letters, five folders of loose, mostly inwards correspondence, and two folders of miscellaneous papers which include undated correspondence and legal documents.

Administrative information

Provenance: The collection was donated to the Australian War Memorial in 1938 by the league's honorary secretary, Colonel William Mackenzie, on the league's being wound up. Printed publications and some documents among the original donation were dispersed among the Memorial's collection. Copies of the Australasian Naval and Military Annual, for example, are now library items (C355.00994 A938aa), while correspondence about an essay competition have joined series AWM224 (as item MSS630). The extent of the original donation must now be comprehended through the Memorial inventory compiled on acquisition and kept on donation file 12/5/410 in series AWM93.

The collection has informed the work of several military historians including John Barrett (author of Falling in: Australians and 'boy conscription', 1979), Thomas Tanner (author ofCompulsory citizen soldiers, 1980), and Craig Wilcox (author of For hearths and homes, 1998). The collection has not yet been widely used, though. It is not listed in Joan Beaumont ed., Australian defence; sources and statistics (2001).

Access: Open.

Restrictions on use: Copyright of materials described in this guide is governed by copyright law in Australia. For further information contact the Curator of Private Records, Research Centre.

Preferred citation: Guide to the papers of the Australian Defence League (NSW Division), Australian War Memorial, 2DRL/1098. The league's only other division was a short-lived Victorian one, so its name may be abbreviated to ANDL.

Additional information

Related collections: AWM38, papers of Charles and Ethel Bean, item 3DRL/6673/422, correspondence including letters from the Australian National Defence League

• AWM93, Australian War Memorial registry files, item 12/1/15, unit history competition, Australian National Defence League (NSW Division), 1925-28
• AWM93, Australian War Memorial registry files, item 12/5/410, donation of records and publications of Australian National Defence League (NSW Division)
• AWM93, Australian War Memorial registry files, item 12/11/2778, request for donation of private records by Colonel W K S Mackenzie,1929-42
• AWM224, Australian War Memorial unit manuscript histories, item MSS630, Australian National Defence League (NSW Division): correspondence regarding essay competition, 1925
• AWM265, Australian War Memorial Sydney exhibition registry files, item 32/2/20, prize essays of 51st, 2nd and 45th Battalions, Australian National Defence League (NSW Branch), 1925-27.

Subject: Conscription; Defence Act; Cadets; Militia; Recruiting; Rifle clubs.

Names: Bean, Charles; Jose, Arthur; Legge, James Gordon.

Organisational note

The ANDL was one of several lobby groups formed in Britain and its white dominions between the Boer War and the First World War to urge compulsory militia and cadet service.

The ANDL was the product of the formation of Britain's National Service League in 1902, the apparent threat posed by Japanese naval and military victories over Russia in mid 1905, Australians' increasing habit of looking to government to solve defence and social problems, and the energy of a Sydney solicitor and militia colonel, Gerald Campbell. Formed in September 1905, the ANDL adopted the National Service League's call for 'compulsory military training' along 'Swiss lines', hoping to confound potential critics by presenting the martial but unmilitaristic Swiss as a model.

The ANDL soon had hundreds of members organised in more than twenty Sydney and rural branches, especially on the New South Wales north coast. Most members were militiamen or belonged to rifle clubs. Always referring to itself as the 'New South Wales division', the ANDL hoped to inspire divisions and branches in other Australian states. Only in Melbourne did another group form, and it proved short-lived. Calling for mass voluntary military service, perhaps in rifle clubs where the generals could not control, it quickly fell out with Sydney and then collapsed.

Gerald Campbell had more success in uniting prominent soldiers, journalists and moderate Labor leaders who, for various reasons, had long wanted to end voluntary militia and cadet service. Early ANDL members included Labor politicians William Holman, William Morris Hughes and John Christian Watson, journalists Charles Bean, Frank Fox and Arthur Jose, university professors Mungo MacCallum and Henry MacLaurin and senior soldiers James Gordon Legge and James Macarthur Onslow. Gerald Campbell, William Henderson (a publisher and former militia officer) and William Mackenzie (a militia officer in Campbell's old regiment) were probably the key organisers. Equally important was Frank Fox, a journalist and militia officer who edited the ANDL journal The call, and Norman Lindsay, whose cartoons simplified the ANDL message in its pages.

The partnership of soldiers, journalists and moderate Labor and the brilliance of Fox's journalism and Lindsay's drawings ensured the ANDL's popularity, in contrast to the general suspicion or indifference which met Britain's politically marginalised National Service League. Nevertheless, widespread concern in Australia about Japan, and increasingly Germany too, was more important than the ANDL in the Australian decision for compulsion. Some conservative League members deserted the League once the goal of compulsion became clear and achievable. A few even joined an Australian Freedom League which resisted compulsory cadet and militia service as unBritish and militaristic.

As cadet and militia membership became compulsory from 1911 the ANDL turned itself in a propagandist for the new military system and a guardian against any erosion of it. But it lacked its former sense of purpose, its branches wound up (remaining members being managed by the Sydney office), and it struggled financially. During the First World War the cadets and militia almost evaporated, Campbell was taken into overseas (though not front-line) service, and a Universal Service League emerged to urge conscription into the Australian Imperial Force. Already faltering before 1914, the ANDL became dormant.

It revived in 1919, in part to support calls by the generals for harder militia training. But militia service was now unpopular, and the Labor party was committed to ending compulsory recruiting. The ANDL could no longer draw on bipartisan support and shrank into irrelevance. No one, not even William Morris Hughes, heeded its protests when a Labor government ended compulsory military service in 1929. New defence lobby groups sprang up from 1933, including Hughes' Australian Defence League. William Mackenzie took charge from Campbell and wound up the ANDL in 1938, donating its records to the Australian War Memorial.

References:

• Barrett, John , Falling in: Australians and 'boy conscription', 1911-1915 (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1979), pp.548-9
• Barret, John, Gerald Ross Campbell, Australian Dictionary of Biography 7 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp.72-9
• Wilcox, Craig, Australia's citizen army, 1889-1914, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1993, pp. 268-72.
• Wilcox, Craig, For hearths and homes: citizen soldiering in Australia, 1854-1945 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), pp.56-7, 59, 90-1, 95.

Scope and content note

The papers of the Australian National Defence League (NSW Division) are held in the Private Records collection in the Australian War Memorial's Research Centre as collection item 2DRL/1098. They document this important lobby group's organisation, membership and activities from its creation in 1905 to its collapse in 1938. They comprise three registers of subscriptions paid by members, five volumes of minutes of meetings held, a letter book of outward letters, five folders of loose, mostly inwards correspondence and two folders of miscellaneous papers which include updated correspondence and legal documents. Prominent Australians whose correspondence forms parts of the collection include Charles Bean, Edgeworth David, Alfred Deakin, Frank Fox, Arthur Jose, William Morris Hughes, James Gordon Legge, Mungo MacCallum, Henry MacLaurin and John Christian Watson.

Printed publications and some documents from the original donation were dispersed among the Memorial's collection. They can be identified by consulting the Memorial inventory compiled on acquisition and kept on donation file 12/4/410 in series AWM93. The dispersed documents concern an essay competition and most now form item MSS630 of series AWM224.

SERIES 2: Minute books, 1905-1938

Description: Minute books kept in exercise books of the business of the ANDL from 1905 to 1927. The books chart the rise of the league, who was most active in it, how and why the league made decisions and how its funds were spent. The nine-year gap between the minutes for 1913 and 1922 is not explained. The minutes of the meeting of 8 November 1905 for example, record approval for branches being formed in New South Wales, Frank Fox's proposal for what became the journal The call. Volume 2 charts the height of the League's influence, including printed and press reports of annual general meetings, printed annual reports by the executive committee, a printed list of 1910 federal election candidates. Volume 3 includes notices placed by the League in the Sydney press, draft correspondence about proposed competitions to be organised to attract cadets and militiamen. Volume 4 minutes report the league's fight against the erosion of compulsory militia and cadet service. Volume 5 charts the league's dissolution, including correspondence from William Morris Hughes in 1929 documenting his refusal to support the league. This blow, combined with the league's losing battle against the suspension of compulsory militia and cadet services, led to its collapse. The only subsequent minutes, apart from cursory ones of an isolated meeting in August 1933, records the league's decision in 1938 to dissolve, its likely succession by a new National Service League and the donation of its records to the Australian War Memorial.

SERIES 3: Outward correspondence, 1905-1907

Description: This letter book holds copies of a small number of letters signed by Campbell from September 1905 to June 1907. Two letters, both dated December 1906 record the split between the ANDL and its short-lived Victorian division which balked at calling for compulsory military service. Another letter, dated June 1907, to a National Service League official wishes that prime minister Alfred Deakin, who had recently spoken in support of compulsory military service, would show 'backbone..equal to his oratory'. Some loose papers have been placed in the book.

Outward correspondence includes: External Affairs Department secretary, 7 December 1906, ANDL Victoria Division honorary secretary, 7 December 1906 and National Service League, 17 June 1907.

SERIES 4: Incoming correspondence, 1905-1938

Description: Correspondence, mostly comprising letters received by the Australian National Defence League, 1905-1938.

Correspondents include W K S Mackenzie, Alfred Deakin, Edgeworth David, M MacCallum, Charles Mackellar and William Chisholm.

SERIES 5: Miscellaneous, 1908-1920