Hell-bent: Australia's leap into the Great War.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Book review

HELL-BENT

Australia's leap into the Great War

Author: Douglas Newton

Published by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2014, 344pp, A$32.99.

Last August we commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. As self-governing Dominions of the British Empire, Australia and New Zealand were involved in this conflict by King George V's declaration of war on Germany late on 4 August 1914 (UK time, but 5 August in the Antipodes). Neither had any say in the decision for war, which was made by the King's ministers in London. Like New Zealand, Australia had no problem with this situation, accepting that the foreign policy of the empire was in the hands of the British government. They responded with patriotic fervour. Within weeks both had expeditionary forces ready to take part in the fighting on the Western Front, or wherever else the British authorities decided. After concentrating at Albany, Western Australia, the combined forces left in a 38-ship convoy on 1 November 1914, heading across the Indian Ocean for the Suez Canal. The expectation of many that the war would be short was sadly misplaced. Before the guns fell silent four years later, 18 million would die, an average of 11,000 a day. More than 60,000 Australians would fall--along with 18,000 New Zealanders.

With the outbreak of war, Australia pledged its support to the last man and the last shilling, and its contribution to the defeat of Germany and its allies would be immense. But was it an entirely innocent party in the proceedings that led to the war that the commemoration last August portrayed? And was its offer of assistance the reactive and duty-bound response to the empire's embroilment in a continental war that underpinned that commemoration? In Hell-bent, Australia's leap into the Great War, Australian historian Douglas Newton seeks to answer these questions. All is not simple and straightforward', he suggests. Focusing on the days leading up to the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany, he puts the events surrounding Australia's involvement in the war under a microscope and comes up with a different interpretation to that prevailing in Australia today.

Essentially Newton argues that most Australians' perception of what happened in August 1914 is flawed. Far from answering the call patriotically, he maintains, Australia jumped the gun, offering a 20,000-man expeditionary force, to be at the complete disposal of the Home Government', even before war began. Australia's offer...