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New Zealand Society and the War Effort, 1914–19
STEVEN LOVERIDGE AND JAMES WATSON
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186 THE HOME FRONT
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CHAPTER SEVEN
CHALLENGES, STRAINS AND DISCONTENT Challenges, Strains and Discontent 187
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previous pages Men gathered in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, to read the latest war news and look at maps of the positions of armies in Europe. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, 1/1008414-G
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n an almost paradoxical fashion, intensifying mobilisation both rallied and destabilised New Zealand society. The enormous community efforts made over 1915–16 occurred as society’s moral and material bonds were frayed by the disappearance of thousands of men from households, communities and the economy, and disagreement over how New Zealanders should fairly bear the growing burdens imposed by the war. Polarisation, weary disengagement and protests resulted in some challenging the legitimacy of the war itself. Some of the most notable divisions appeared along ethnic, religious and political lines, but frustration was apparent even on the part of those entirely committed to the war. In April 1916 Allen, writing to Mackenzie in London, described the Gallipoli campaign as ‘[s]o ill-conceived and mad a proposition it is difficult to believe it could have come from British brains . . . I know from correspondence with men whose judgement I thoroughly trust that they agree with me.’1 The social–political consensus backing the war held, but its conditional nature became more apparent as positions asserted in August 1914 were renegotiated in the face of new expectations. Compared with other nations, mobilisation was less disruptive to New Zealand — a consequence of recruitment being directed towards young, unmarried men and the relatively limited opening of male work to women — but there was some relaxing of established modes of social control and some growth in female economic independence. Anxieties about deteriorating standards were sparked by the sight of drunken soldiers misbehaving when on leave. Some, like Wellington’s Anglican bishop Thomas Sprott, were willing to blame ‘foolish civilians for luring the young soldiers into bars and “shouting” for them, excessively’ but others saw only young men, away from home and under the influence of alcohol, making thorough nuisances of themselves.2 In September 1915, for example, four intoxicated soldiers on the night express train from Wellington to Auckland climbed onto the roof of their carriage, ending up ‘black with soot from head to foot’ after going through tunnels. They were eventually dislodged by railway staff at Taumarunui, a town which, reportedly much to their disgust, they found to be ‘dry’.3 Prostitution and a general loosening of sexual propriety also caused concern. As Truth insinuated, ‘War brings many horrors and loosens the social rein in such a way that the unwary
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one in search of heaps of daring excitement must come a cropper.’4 There was a sharp increase in the number of illegitimate children, whose fathers registered their paternity after marrying their mothers — 167 in 1915, 281 in 1916 and 309 in 1917.5 In May 1916 Truth reported on the evidence given in the Wellington magistrate’s court of Constable Joseph Gunn concerning Emily Thomas, who had a shop and a house in Cambridge Terrace. He had seen ‘soldiers and civilians there by the score. The King’s army was so well represented in the locality that it had become known as “Gallipoli”.’ Sergeant James Fitzpatrick agreed. He had observed ‘what appeared to be an army corps or two marching in and out . . . and they all seemed to bivouac at Emily’s house’.6 Women who boarded together to cope with rising costs (especially Wellington’s soaring rents) and to enjoy some congenial and socially acceptable company were also ensnared by concerns about moral standards. Such households inevitably attracted the attention of young men, and the suspicions of moral guardians. A concerted effort to reassert moral codes and reinforce boundaries created an atmosphere of moral revivalism.7 Illiberal restriction became pronounced during the war years, further fuelled by war-related passions — outrage, righteousness and sorrow. In a reaffirmation of boldhearted, dutiful masculinity, ‘shirkers’ were denounced as ‘cowardly undesirable specimens of manhood’.8 The traditional women’s roles of reproduction, mothering and supporting men overseas by maintaining a warm (yet faithful) hearth were also reinforced. 9 Prominent preachers presented the war as a crucible that would purify and redeem society or argued that society must reform itself to be capable or worthy of victory. A Methodist’s description of the war as ‘the fiery ordeal that the world will pass to a finer and gentler civilisation if only spirituallyminded men and women will be steadfast in their testimony, while they are valiant in their sacrifice’ was typical.10 Others conveyed a similar message in more secular tones, calling for individuals to curtail unnecessary consumption and cast off vices. Many social activities were denounced as frivolous and/or irreverent distractions from the serious and solemn duties of the war. Gambling and alcohol were damned as stealing time, energy and money from the war effort and there were repeated claims that if sportsmen were ‘able to play football they were able to go to the war’.11 Speaking on the need for a crackdown on prostitution, police superintendent John Ellison remarked that ‘one need not wonder at the number of young people wearing glasses, artificial teeth, and other evidences of constitutional weakness when female vultures are able to fatten and become wealthy while they disseminate disease in a wholesale manner’.12 There was anxiety, too, that commercial exploitation might defile sacred shibboleths. In June 1916 the Free Lance was noticing ‘an inclination on the part of the pushful shopkeeper to make business capital out of this war. It is bad enough to have Gallipoli and Dardanelles [sic] used in this way, but for goodness sake, for the sake of common decency, do not let us have the noble name of Anzac so degraded . . .’ The paper feared the country would soon be ‘deluged with advertisements of Anzac Tooth Powder, Anzac Antibilious Pills, Anzackilla, the Infallible Rat Poison, or such abominations as “Try Our Best Anzac Tea — Double Strength,” or “Step Right In and Inspect Our Anzac Silk Nighties at three and elevenpence three farthings — Just the thing For the Soldier’s Best Girlie.”’13 Even some findraising methods were challenged.
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The WCTU argued against raffles and criticised the inappropriately festive nature of Queen Carnivals. In Wellington, the Reverend Dr James Gibb asked how many more dead and wounded men were required ‘before the people of this country will awake to the seriousness of the situation and the hatefulness of carnivals . . . Hateful indeed must all this frivolity and gambling be to every thoughtful mind in the community.’ A correspondent to Truth, writing under the pseudonym ‘Common Sense’, complained of being ‘bailed up by strong young men dressed in the garb of a first prize idiot, their faces daubed with grease paint and their general appearance consistent with a lunatic’s masquerade. Now, while I do not doubt the ardor, nor the idiocy, of these proceedings, I do protest that this is not the correct way of raising the necessary funds to provide for the brave boys at the front.’14 Although such reactions did not go unchallenged, with some arguing, for example, that sport was an important means of maintaining morale, they clearly had an impact. In May 1916, the Auckland Rugby Union announced that no player aged over 20 on 1 April would be permitted to play in the union’s competition during the war.15 That year specific powers were introduced under war regulations to suppress drinking, prostitution and venereal disease by, among other initiatives, banning women from entering or remaining near bars after 6 p.m. and the practice of ‘shouting’ alcoholic drinks for soldiers.16 Tensions also developed around the war’s inequitable social impacts. Although the rise in grocery prices slowed during the second half of 1915, and was even briefly reversed in the early months of 1916, the cost of meat and dairy products, and staples such as bread, continued to increase.17 There was further austerity as shipping constraints reduced most imported commodities. For example, stocks of imported ‘apparel and ready-made clothing’ dropped by a fifth between 1914 and 1918, while the largest category of footwear fell by a quarter, hats and caps by a third and imported woollen blankets virtually disappeared.18 What was available also became less affordable: clothing prices rose an alarming 140 per cent over the course of the war.19 Residential rents levelled out, and in many instances fell, throughout most of the country, benefiting tenants but not their landlords. The notable exception was Wellington, where rates rose steeply, partly because the nearby military camps drew more people to the city.20 By the winter of 1916, wartime strains on working conditions were increasingly obvious. Seasonal unemployment and underemployment had largely disappeared and the conse-quences of a tightened labour market were apparent especially in sectors depleted by recruitment.21 Coal mining was among those industries suffering labour shortages. At the end of May 1915, the Blackball mine was ‘still in urgent need of truckers’, at the beginning of July it was claimed that ‘a hundred experienced miners could be placed’ in Auckland province, and by November Wellington factories were ‘depleted of operatives very considerably, and this has caused many employers to readjust their staffs, and in many cases to refuse orders’.22 By the end of the year, the nation’s freezing works were reporting a shortage of butchers, and at the beginning of 1916 Dunedinites were struggling to secure carpenters, painters and other tradesmen involved in outfitting troopships.23 Later that year, ‘several industries, principally in the retail trades’ had lost so many staff that it was ‘difficult to supply orders punctually and regularly’.24 The other side of the wartime boom was an economy with marked disparities and
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constraints. One clothing manufacturer, for instance, noted the ‘satisfactory’ impact of import restrictions, but consumers were more likely to notice restricted goods and rising costs.25 Likewise, the prosperity of this period largely bypassed those reliant on fixed incomes and static returns from investments and pensions. The moratorium on pre-war mortgages made it extremely difficult for those dependent on that common form of retirement income to enforce payment of interest, to foreclose or to sell their investment. Returns from rental properties, another common source of retirement income, generally lagged far behind the ascending cost of living. In the winter of 1916 Miss Morrison of the Auckland Women’s Branch of the Labour Department reported: The special feature about the last few months’ operations has been the number of old-age pensioners who have applied for some kind of light employment for a few hours per day, to help them to eke out a living. Many of these have only their pension to exist upon, and they find even by practising the strictest economy, with the present high cost of living, and having to pay for a room, that they are unable to exist upon 10s. per week, and necessity drives them to the Department for help. These old people are not suitable for employment, yet their need is sincere.26
Those living on returns from investments (whose returns improved), professionals (who often benefited from the enlistment of their competition) and those paid hourly (who gained higher wages, ‘considerable overtime earnings’ and the leverage of labour shortages) were the major economic winners; those on fixed pay were the most severely affected.27 To many New Zealanders it seemed that some were making record profits while others were making sacrifices. Pre-war labour polemics attributing price rises to market manipulation by business rings intensified, with condemnation of ‘mutton magnates’, ‘wool kings’, ‘butter brigands’ and ‘beef barons’, and with caricatures of the capitalist ‘Mr Fat’ repurposed to damn war profiteers.28 In an example of the naming and shaming similar to that some proposed for shirkers, in December 1915 the Maoriland Worker printed the names and incomes of those ‘rich men made richer by the war’.29 Unease about profiteering also played out within the business community. Indeed, the initial description of war-related profits as ‘blood money’ appears to have come from a prominent Manawatū farmer, Peter McHardy.30 Weeks later, the chairman of the Whangarei Co-operative Dairy Company, Henry Wakelin, also ‘declared that the high prices for butter-fat were like blood money. They knew what was the cause of the high prices to their sorrow. He hoped the shareholders would show their gratitude.’31 Labour shortages and the need to maintain production proved ideal grounds to boost union power and reorganise militant labour, in the aftermath of 1913.32 At the end of 1915 the membership of unions registered under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act stood at 67,661 and steadily climbed to reach 82,553 by 1919.33 In the face of rising discontent and increasing union leverage, the trend of industrial truces begin to erode. The 20 industrial disputes of 1914, involving 4089 workers, had fallen to eight in 1915 involving 295 workers, but the pattern started to reverse in 1916, with 899 workers taking part in 15 disputes.34 Some
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industrial action was clearly related to war production: for example, complaints that industries were using sweated female labour became a political concern.35 In March 1916 the female employees at the Wellington Woollen Manufacturing Company went on strike, demanding a 10 per cent pay rise. They were working 60-hour weeks and were paid 60 per cent less than male employees. They won their increase, but the union was fined £50 for participating in an illegal strike.36
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s the war dragged on, there were increasing arguments that the costs of the war should be spread as evenly as possible and that all sectors of society should make, or should be forced to make, fair contributions. By late 1915, tensions over ‘equality of sacrifice’ were perhaps most evident regarding recruitment; the system’s long-term viability, and even its ultimate desirability, were being questioned. Champions of the volunteer system noted the pleasing congruence of volunteer soldiers with ideas of dutiful, self-reliant masculinity and the struggle of free societies against tyrannical militarism. They could also point to an impressive record: by 31 October 1915 around 54,155 men had registered for military service, a figure that continued to exceed requirements or capacities to train and field men. At that stage 35,638 men had been or were being trained and the strength of the NZEF overseas was nearly 24,000, including a reserve force in Egypt. They might also have noted that the volunteer system was continuing to deliver remarkable results and volunteer totals were higher in 1916 than in 1915.37 There was growing anxiety, however, that volunteering was sparing ‘shirkers’ at the expense of the dutiful. Social and political commentary about degenerate, lazy, immoral or irresponsible men avoiding service abounded, and was typically accompanied by insistence on corrective measures.38 Traditional social divisions were also discernible in shirker hunting, with commentators homing in on what they saw as Catholic apathy or workers’ over representation in enlistments.39 The results of volunteering were also increasingly being weighed against rapidly escalating demands: 12,000 men were sent to camp in the first eight months of 1915, and 12,500 in the last four months.40 Moreover, the ambition to expand British forces on the Western Front for a great mid-1916 offensive promised no respite. As part of this strategy, the NZEF, stationed in Egypt after evacuation from Gallipoli, was reorganised into the New Zealand Division, which officially came into being in March 1916. The division was shipped to France in early April while the Mounted Rifles were deployed, as part of the Anzac Mounted Division, to the Sinai. Compared with the 8000-strong Main Body deployed some 15 months before, New Zealand’s major contribution was now an 18,000-strong infantry division with artillery, engineering and pioneer elements bringing the total force to over 25,000.41 This reorganisation consumed the reserve, and reduced the infantry’s reinforcement rate from 20 to 15 per cent. Although the government accepted these new commitments, Allen, Massey and Robin were all anxious about the finite nature of the country’s manpower and the reinforcementhungry nature of infantry commitments.42 On 15 February 1916, Allen wrote to Godley noting that providing and maintaining a division would prove a large task: ‘I do hope that you will not
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without the very gravest consideration suggest that more be done by New Zealand. We have supplied considerably more than our share of soldiers as compared with the Commonwealth [of Australia] or with Canada and the willing horse cannot be worked until it drops.’43 A system of voluntary enlistment was inevitably going to face difficulties as the pool of young, adventure-seeking, relatively unattached men who had manned the NZEF through the early part of the war grew smaller. Meeting ongoing demands would increasingly mean appealing to a wider cross-section, including older men with more obligations and those who had less interest in fighting. The tensions of some potential soldiers is captured in Harrold Ennor’s diary: ‘I should like ever so much to be at the Front. I’m not a fighter but I don’t like to think of the fellows “out there” doing all the work. I can’t see my way clear to go I feel that the office work is so very important. Perhaps I am helping that way. I hope so.’44 In October 1915, even before the end of the Gallipoli campaign, Allen made a public appeal for married men to consider themselves as potential recruits: ‘Recruiting has proceeded very well in the past, but the strain is now becoming more severe. I am making a special appeal now to the unmarried men of military age who have not yet registered . . . We are not exempting the married men from the appeal for recruits. The married man who feels that his responsibilities will let him enlist now is wanted.’45 Changes were also made to boost the supply of eligible men. After the departure of the Seventh Reinforcements, in October 1915, the equal quotas system was replaced with a proportional system in an effort to balance demands against each military district’s capabilities.46 In November, the physical requirements for enlistment were reduced — height and chest measurements were both
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Māori soldiers gathered outside Auckland’s town hall for a departure ceremony, which included a traditional farewell, in September 1915. AUCKLAND WEEKLY NEWS, 23 SEPTEMBER 1915, PP. 43, 46
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decreased and the previous weight limit of 12 stone was abolished — and the maximum age was raised from 40 to 45.47 Various incidents illustrate heightened sensitivities over shirking in late 1915 and almost certainly affected public confidence in voluntary recruitment. There were suspicions about the noticeable jump in marriage rates in the latter part of 1915 and the first quarter of 1916 and allegations that eligible men were attempting ‘evasion by matrimony’.48 Allen warned women ‘not to marry a man who is going to hide behind you and so escape his duty . . . If any man does not think you are worth fighting for, then he is not worth being your husband.’49 Although men continued to marry before they embarked — there were 51 weddings at Featherston in 1916 following the opening of the military camp, more than double the number in previous years — many suggested that the looming national registration had brought many wedding dates forward.50 As the Official Year-book noted, ‘The large number of marriages in 1915 included many that in the ordinary course of events would have been celebrated in 1916, but were hastened by the operation of the National Registration Act, and the desire of many men to be shown in the register as married men and to obtain certain anticipated advantages or escape certain obligations.’51 These ‘anticipated advantages’ referred to the almost universal belief that single men should enlist before married men and especially before married fathers. Even at the beginning of 1916, two married men were removed from the West Coast quota for the Twelfth Reinforcements ‘on account of objections by their wives’; one had six children.52 The prospect of family men taking up the slack while single men avoided enlistment would remain a major issue. As the Evening Post’s editor proclaimed in late 1915, ‘New Zealand cannot afford to be sacrificing husbands and fathers on the unholy altar of single men’s selfishness.’53 There was more direct evasion, too, with reports of eligible men leaving New Zealand to avoid service. On 12 November 1915, the New Zealand Herald reported that firemen on the San Francisco-bound Moana, docked in Wellington Harbour, were refusing to work ‘because among her passengers were some 58 young men of military age, alleged to be fleeing for safety to the shelter of neutral America’. In the ‘expectant crowd’, all eyes ‘were on a knot of very undemonstrative, sullen, anxious-looking young and middle-aged men hanging over the rail in the steerage section of the deck’. Eventually, the Moana did depart: ‘At the first motion of the ship all sign of anxiety vanished from the men’s faces. They cheered and waved their hats for joy, and there was a distinct note of triumph and defiance in their shouts.’ The paper also noted that Massey had been told about ‘the exceptional number of young men leaving the Dominion by each boat for America. This matter was now receiving attention.’54 There was further angst when the results of the National Registration in December were published. These revealed that, of the 303,704 respondents, 193,341 were eligible for service; the remainder included men over the eligible age, returned soldiers, those unfit for service and foreign subjects. Of those eligible, 112,778 (58 per cent) were willing to enlist; 44,838 (23 per cent) were not but would willingly serve in a civil capacity; and 35,725 (18 per cent) were unwilling to serve in either capacity.55 In the considerable discussion that followed, there was a particular focus on the 8821
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above The Observer derides the ‘shirker’ who abandons New Zealand for neutral America.
below The Observer references wider suspicions over the rising marriage rate in 1915 and shows a ‘shirker’ hiding behind a timely marriage to avoid serving.
NEW ZEALAND OBSERVER, 20 NOVEMBER 1915, P. 13
NEW ZEALAND OBSERVER, 11 DECEMBER 1915, P. 13
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single men and widowers without dependants within the 35,725 stating they were unwilling to serve. Their reasons were compiled and published in January 1916. The five most common explanations were business obligations (2237), health (2692), religious or conscientious objections (819), family reasons (215) and favouring the introduction of conscription (210). Eleven respondents simply noted that they were afraid.56 Doubts over the ability of volunteering to meet future manpower requirements came to the fore in December 1915 when the Eleventh Reinforcements experienced an unusually slow rate of enlistment. This was attributed to the demands of the harvest and the imminence of the Christmas holidays, which few potential recruits wanted to spend in camp. Newspapers spoke of a ‘recruiting crisis’ and ‘urgent appeals’ for men. Massey was among those urging men not to delay their enlistment: I ask our boys to remember their comrades who are spending their holiday season in the fighting line, where along with other brave men and trained soldiers they are doing their duty to the Empire, their country and fellow citizens. I ask them to remember how thorough training has enabled our soldiers to distinguish themselves, and to do credit to the land to which they belong. If they remember these facts and act accordingly, if they give up the fleeting pleasure of a few days for the more lasting pleasure of having done right things at the right time, I am quite sure that in later life they will always look back with satisfaction to the Christmas holiday of 1915 spent by them in Trentham training camp.57
Such appeals ultimately fell flat: by mid-December recruitment was over a quarter short of requirements. In another first, all districts failed to meet their quotas: Auckland was short by 119, Wellington by 153, Canterbury by 231 and Otago by 150.58 Although vacancies in the Eleventh Reinforcements were filled in the new year, and the Twelfth Reinforcements had a slight surplus, the episode appears to have left a marked impression on public confidence.59 It also signalled the start of a semi-regular pattern of enlistments falling short of recruitment deadlines: in January and April 1916, the Thirteenth, the Fourteenth, the Fifteen and the Sixteenth Reinforcements mobilised at under full strength. Although these shortages were of varying severity, and were soon filled, they fuelled arguments that volunteering could not meet the country’s larger commitments.60
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or a growing number of New Zealanders, the obvious solution to such inequality of sacrifice was compulsion. Paul Baker’s landmark study of New Zealand’s experience of conscription noted that although many New Zealanders wanted conscription before October 1915, most wanted it by December, estimating that between 60 and 70 per cent were in favour of conscription and no more than 20 per cent were opposed.61 Some arguments for conscription had a largely pragmatic basis. The Liberal MP James Craigie, for example, argued that ‘[t]he only way to end this war is to keep on sending troops, and the only way to get to Berlin is to provide men to increase and maintain our battalions.
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The only thing that matters at present is to speedily end this awful war with victory to us.’62 Conscription advocates typically went beyond expediency, though, and emphasised the need to counter the inequalities inherent in the voluntary system. Leonard Isitt, the Liberal MP for Christchurch North, denounced the voluntary system as possessing a ‘most unfair, most unequal, most cruel, blind and idiotic nature’: If I have to choose between a system that takes three sons of a widow, leaving five sons of her neighbour untouched; that seizes on a patriotic poor man with a wife and four children and sends him to the war leaving untouched a selfish man with 6000 acres and an abundant income, single, 25 years of age who spends his time between his motor car and the golf links, then I choose legitimate conscription every time. If I have to choose between moral conscription that seizes on a workman who does the hard dirty work of this world at a low wage, and is often exploited, but loves his country and forgets his disabilities as soon as it is in peril, while a shirker blatherskite remains behind to govern the country . . . then I choose conscription by Act of Parliament. The only free agents under moral conscription are thickskinned men with no conscience.63
Such thinking was not confined to parliamentary speeches. By late 1915, around 40,000 men had enlisted, and their families, neighbours, workmates, fellow parishioners and other social connections constituted a potent faction. Letters addressed to the defence minister contained numerous variations on reports of a local figure or family failing to enlist, invariably noting the sacrifices their own loved ones had made, and calling for state action. In Gisborne, ‘Patriotic Mother’ supplied the name and address of a young man in her neighbourhood: ‘I would very much like this one to be made to go soon . . . he is in the territorials, and a good bit over twenty, he just helps his father about the place . . . my own two sons are gone, one is in Egypt, and the other one has just come home on final leave, as I am a pure English woman myself, I think it is every young man’s place to go.’64 Such attitudes were even common among those eligible for service. When Allen made a recruiting speech at a railway workshop, he was bluntly asked why the government did not simply introduce conscription and was told that the men had no intention of giving up their positions if it meant they would be taken by others equally capable of military service.65 In January 1916, the socialist James Thorn noted, with frustrated astuteness, that ‘[w]henever a worker in New Zealand agrees with conscription it is because, to use his own words, “it will make the cockies’ sons go”. What justifies conscription in his mind is the illusion that it compels equal service and equal sacrifice all round.’66 Conscription was also presented as a solution to the level of spite now being used by those pursuing ‘shirkers’. By late 1915, previous opponents of white feather giving had begun to adopt strategies of shame and ostracism. Truth’s ‘Lady Dot’, who decried white feather giving as ‘a cowardly act’, was keen to use the ‘columns of the newspaper’ to expose the rich farmers’ sons who were not doing their bit: ‘There is only one way to bring the wealthy shirkers into the ranks, and that is for the Womens’ [sic] National Reserve in each district [to] make a list of such
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above Truth observes the ‘unmarried man’s dilemma’, noting the government’s ‘gentle hints’ that a failure to volunteer would result in conscription being introduced and compulsion applied. NZ TRUTH, 26 FEBRUARY 1916, P. 1
below The interior of an Auckland recruitment office in 1917. AUCKLAND LIBRARIES HERITAGE COLLECTIONS, 1-W1597
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families . . . and have them published.’67 Ward, who had previously condemned white feather giving, told a meeting that the ‘Maidens of New Zealand’ should disown those men who were fit but would not go to the front.68 The pressure placed on eligible men also extended to restricting their employment prospects. In September 1915, Allen had urged the country’s employers ‘to arrange that medically fit unmarried men in your employment may be free to register for service’. Many perceived it as encouraging employers to fire eligible employees.69 Certainly, a range of employers signalled that they would not hire eligible men. A Wellington manager, for example, advertised for a ‘male or female Bookkeeper for Shipping Office . . . No man fit for military service need apply.’ The public service commissioner also stated that applications from single eligible men would not be considered ‘during the present crisis’. In December came an announcement that eligible men were to be excluded from ballots for government land.70 Under such moral suasion, it is not surprising that some seemed to welcome conscription as a more civil means of meeting the military commitment. As a general consensus formed around conscription, the government elected to proceed with caution and Allen, in a letter to Godley dated 4 January 1916, expressed both his confidence and his concerns: ‘there can be no doubt about it that the bulk of opinion in the Country is in favour of compulsion, and has been for some time. As far as one can judge, this appears to the bulk of the people, the fairest way to deal with the problem.’ This feeling seemed particularly strong among returned soldiers ‘and the relatives and kith and kin of those who have gone’. If, as seemed likely, conscription was ‘adopted even partially in England, I have no hesitation in my own mind in coming to the conclusion that it will be adopted here. For we are right for it and it is only the fear of what might happen in Labour circles, [which] prevents it being adopted here, with also a desire not to embarrass the Home authorities by doing so before they are right for it there.’71 The possibility of ‘embarrassing England’ was soon inconsequential; a conscription bill was introduced into the British Parliament in January 1916 and came into force in March. This left the issue of ‘what might happen in Labour circles’ as a key concern. Conscription divided the labour movement as wider arguments around equality, pragmatism and principle played out. Some moderates, often those with past Liberal associations, were willing to accept conscription or even to approve of it as enacting socialist principles of modern organisation and equity by ensuring that all classes would serve.72 Others argued conscription’s merits on pragmatic grounds. The moderate socialist David McLaren, for example, asked workers to consider the consequences a British defeat would have on the labour movement and workers’ rights: If Germany should win, or even be able to force a peace to her advantage, democracy throughout the world will suffer for a hundred years to come. The working class of all Europe will come under the same iron rule of Germanic despotism as the workers of Germany are enthralled with and curse most bitterly . . . Labour has got to fight and win the war against Germany because, only by so doing can the humane principles of the Labour movement be sustained.73
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Other labour figures inverted those priorities, presenting conscription as the greater threat to workers’ interests. In December 1915, Peter Fraser, as organising secretary of the Social Democratic Party, stated, ‘Wars come and wars go. The working class struggle for economic freedom always goes on . . . Conscription, if imposed upon us, will make our work harder. We must fight it.’74 Likewise, the Maoriland Worker urged its readers to ‘resist this atrocious attempt to estrange you from your liberty’: ‘We must never permit this glorious Empire, engendered in the sanctity of freedom — brought forth in the nobility of patriotism, cherished and nourished by the red rivers of voluntary sacrifice, and reared to its present glorious state under the sun of universal emancipation, to be foully struck down in its hour of trial by the Juggernaut of military despotism and buried in the Conscript’s grave.’75 Some elements within the labour movement even began questioning the worth of continuing the war. Conferences in 1915 discussed proposals for a negotiated peace, and in 1916 the Social Democratic Party issued a peace manifesto, stating that ‘the time for a free and frank discussion of Peace Terms is long overdue’.76 For such activists conscription was one more sign of the war’s illegitimacy. The Canterbury Women’s Institute, for example, wrote to the government that there was ‘vast reason to believe that the sinister power of the Armament Kings of the world is attempting the complete domination of the world through control of press and parliament, and that we in New Zealand are now in imminent peril from reactionary statecraft and its attendant officialism’.77 Others avoided questions of the essential legitimacy of conscription and focused on the conditions under which it might be accepted. As MP Alfred Hindmarsh told the House, ‘I hold on the one side it is the duty of men, if necessary, to die for the State; and I do not object to conscription, because there may be a time when conscription is absolutely necessary. But while it is the duty of the individual to serve the State in this way, I say the State has a duty to the individual.’ Typically this approach reasoned, as the Maoriland Worker suggested, that improving soldiers’ pay from ‘a shockingly sweated rate’ and social reforms would result in more extensive volunteering. Such efforts would, argued Hindmarsh, attract ‘probably considerable numbers of men’ who were currently repulsed by the idea of enlisting to preserve the economic status quo.78 Webb went further, declaring that ‘no socialist in the whole land would not willingly go out to fight and die, if necessary, for a country owned by and worked in the interests of the whole of the people’.79 Throughout the second half of 1915, labour MPs, with their radical Liberal allies, called for improved soldiers’ pay and pensions to be funded by increased taxation on upper incomes and an export tax, arguing that equality of sacrifice was lost when the financially fit shirked their part and reminding the government of its promise to fight ‘to the last shilling’.80 Such initiatives also provided the labour movement with a unifying cause, just as conscription threatened to divide it. Indeed — possibly to forestall potential divisions over conscription — many gravitated to the common ground that conscription, regardless of whether it represented equitable efficiency or encroaching militarism, must be preceded by a ‘conscription of wealth’. ‘I would not,’ stated one activist, ‘think of asking a man to give his life for his country until wealth comes within the scope of conscription.’81 What exactly a
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A Maoriland Worker cartoon suggests a ‘conscription of wealth’ and depicts ‘Mr Fat’ as a financial shirker. MAORILAND WORKER, 12 JANUARY 1916, P. 1
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‘conscription of wealth’ might entail prompted various proposals that involved ideas of state confiscation of wealth, or the means of production, to reduce profiteering and bring about a more equitable distribution of resources. The possibility of an anti-conscription faction emerging from within a divided labour movement was clear. Suspecting that the National Registration Bill was a precursor of conscription, Hiram Hunter, the secretary of the United Federation of Labour — and the man who had declared ‘my country right or wrong’ 11 months before — forwarded a resolution from his organisation to the prime minister. During the currency of the present war those people who have been most strenuously opposed to militarism in every shape and form have preserved a dignified neutrality. They adopted this course because they did not want to cause any embarrassment whilst the war lasted, believing that the Empire was engaged in a supreme struggle to uphold the principles of Democracy . . . why should this country be used as a lever for the introduction of a system of militarism which aims at placing the whole burden upon the industrial classes in the community, by making them fight the battles of the Empire, foot the bill, and at the same time rob them of the freedom which they consider they are fighting and paying to uphold?82
Other labour elements issued explicit warnings about the consequences of conscription. In early December 1915, the Point Elizabeth and Liverpool State Collieries Employees Industrial Union of Workers, on the West Coast, printed a resolution expressing strong resentment of those promoting conscription of men without an accompanying conscription of wealth and private property, adding that they were ‘determined to meet such a calamity as conscription by industrial revolt’.83 Various newspapers returned fire, denouncing miners as pro-German, influenced by IWW ideology and as ‘the enemy in our midst’.84 Others added further prophecies of ‘industrial and political revolt’, ‘disastrous upheavals’, insurrections that would ‘imperil the whole social order’ and ‘civil war’.85 A more considerable warning was signalled at a conference organised by the United Federation of Labour in Wellington from 25 to 27 January 1916 with attendees representing 82 organisations and 18,449 union members.86 Anti-conscription positions dominated proceedings, as those favouring conscription shunned attendance, and a manifesto committee comprising James McCombs, James Thorn, Holland, Fraser, Semple, William Parry and E. Hunter produced a summary of the positions discussed. This document emphasised that conscription was a class weapon (‘The clamour for conscription simply resolves itself into the demand of private enterprise for more weapons for its entrenchment and aggrandisement’) and that it might be justified only after a ‘conscription of wealth’, which meant that ‘the land, mines, mills, factories, ships, banks, and all the collectivelyused means of wealth production shall be seized, and operated for the collective benefit of the people during the war, and shall remain the property of the people after the war’. The manifesto concluded with a call for a negotiated end to the war: ‘This conference is strongly of the opinion that the time has arrived when the Allied Governments should publicly state
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A Maoriland Worker cartoon depicts the inequality between those making sacrifices and those making profits. MAORILAND WORKER, 8 MARCH 1916, P. 1
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