Australia's citizen army, 1889-1914

Abstract

Martial activity in Australia before the Great War was not confined to the sporadic raising of expeditionary forces for service in imperial conflicts. Rather, the martial spirit present in British societies until the 1920s expressed itself here without pause, though in varying degree, from the 1850s. The most practical expression of this spirit was the widespread membership of citizen military forces and semi-military rifle clubs and cadet corps. Australians did not maintain a professional army; Citizen soldiers were their defence should an enemy pierce the Royal Navy's protective cordon. From 1889 Australians seriously began to consider forming their citizen military forces into a single army. While the question was delayed during the 1890s, international tensions drew more men to the military forces and rifle clubs, and more boys to the cadet corps. Some Australians began to wonder whether membership of one or all these organisations should be even more widespread, or perhaps be made compulsory. But after the colonies federated in 1901, a combination of limited budgets, expert advice and _declining fear of war determined that the existing military forces were amalgamated into the basis of what was to be a small, voluntarily-recruited citizen army, with rifle clubs expected to provide reinforcements in war. The amalgamation was an uncomfortable process, and citizen soldiers objected both to retrenchment and reform. While the new army was being organised, equipped and trained, growing numbers of citizens around the British empire, including some Australian citizen soldiers, were calling on their governments to exhort or force all men to drill. The rise of Japan, and, perhaps, the accommodation of the antipodean peoples to growing government regulation over their lives, meant that in 1911-12 Australia, like New Zealand, followed Natal into building a mass citizen army, in which the fittest young men and boys living in cities and towns would be compelled to drill after work or school. The outbreak of war interrupted the building of the new citizen army, but the army enjoyed brief glory when it mobilised to defend the nation from expected attack in August 1914. The citizen army declined from the end of that year, as Australia's martial effort switched from building a part-time army for home defence, to maintaining a professional army overseas for the duration of the world war.