Best We Forget: The War for White Australia, 1914–18

by Peter Cochrane

In the half-century preceding the Great War there was a dramatic shift in the mindset of Australia’s political leaders, from a profound sense of safety in the Empire’s embrace to a deep anxiety about abandonment by Britain.

Collective memory now recalls a rallying to the cause in 1914, a total identification with British interests and the need to defeat Germany. But there is an underside to this story: the belief that the newly federated nation’s security, and its race purity, must be bought with blood.

Before the war Commonwealth governments were concerned not with enemies in Europe but with perils in the Pacific. Fearful of an ‘awakening Asia’ and worried by opposition to the White Australia policy, they prepared for defence against Japan—only to find themselves fighting for the Empire on the other side of the world. Prime Minister Billy Hughes spoke of this paradox in 1916, urging his countrymen: ‘I bid you go and fight for white Australia in France.’

In this vital and illuminating book, Peter Cochrane examines how the racial preoccupations that shaped Australia’s preparation for and commitment to the war have been lost to popular memory.

Genres: History

Paperback

Published August 1, 2018

About the author

Peter Cochrane’s writing about war includes the award-winning Simpson and the Donkey: The Making of a Legend; the companion volume to the ABC TV series Australians at War; and two studies of wartime photography, The Western Front, 1916–18 and Tobruk 1941. Cochrane is also the author of Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy, which won the Age Book of the Year award and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and two works of fiction: the novella Governor Bligh and the Short Man and the recently published novel The Making of Martin Sparrow.

Reviews

[Text Publishing]

‘This careful, detailed account…establishes that an important motive for our participation [in World War I] was the preservation of white Australia from Asian contamination.’
Age

‘Unsettling and revelatory…The primary purpose of Cochrane’s fascinating book is to alert readers to the racial dimension of Australia’s participation in World War I. It also addresses the key historiographical question of what is remembered and what is forgotten, and why…He has succeeded admirably in this illuminating book…Illuminating.’
Australian

‘Revelatory history at its best. Every Australian politician, journalist and high-school student should read this fluent and compelling story that exhumes an unpalatable truth about our motives for going to war in 1914, and reflect on what it tells us about race fear and the value of history.’
Stephen FitzGerald, chairman of China Matters, former diplomat and author of Comrade Ambassador

‘Cochrane sweeps away the myth to expose the uncomfortable racial truth at the heart of Anzac.’
Paul Daley, award-winning journalist and author of Beersheba

‘Unsettling—it challenges so powerfully the traditional telling of the Anzac story.’
Peter Stanley, professor of history at UNSW Canberra and author of Lost Boys of Anzac

‘A great read, and an important contribution to making forgotten history more accessible—the kind of book that will seep into the national consciousness over time.’
Tim Watts, federal MP and co-author of Two Futures

‘The words “White Australia” and “Anzac" rarely keep company. In this brilliant and provocative reassessment, Peter Cochrane strips away the layers of myth to show that for Australian leaders World War I was a white racial struggle, with fear of Japan and distrust of Britain, as much as loathing of Germany, at its heart. After Best We Forget, Australia’s war should never look quite the same again.’
Frank Bongiorno, professor of history at the ANU and author of The Eighties

[Andrew Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australia's participation in the First World War is often told as just one more case of 'other people's wars'. This is bunkum as Cohrane shows. Instead, this was a war Australia entered whole-heartedly for what is a thoroughly despicable motive: preserving a 'White Australia'.

Rather than focus on loyalty to Empire, strategic motives, the lack of modern state institutions or other explanations historians cite, Cochrane weaves a compelling - if slightly too strongly asserted - argument that it was protecting the White Australia policy which defined what Australia did and how it sought the world.

This theme he shows was integral to the thought of leading figures at the time, such as Prime Ministers Alfred Deakin and Billy Hughes, and to the central myth maker of the ANZACs, the official war historian Charles Bean. Their race-based world view led them to fear Japan, to increasingly distrust the ability or capacity of Britain, to develop a compelling defence capacity prior to the war, to embrace the war when it came, and to deliberately undermine and impede the post-war idealism of the United States by denying any mention of racial equality.

This is a compelling, very well written account of an important and often downplayed period of history. Cochrane draws on a range of established academic histories and re-states them in an accessible, engaging way. I picked up Best We Forget as part of my own research of the same period for my book, and I have to give strong credit to Cochrane for how well he manages to summarize and synthetises the main scholarship. He covers a lot quickly and very readably, and it has been a fascinating learning experience to see someone else attempt a similar task to the one I am currently on.

In putting a strong and clear case, I do think he over-states it slightly. A race-based world view may explain what the Australians wanted, but not necessarily how or when they acted to achieve it. Identifying Japan as a threat may have been based on racial grounds, but the differences within the Parliament over how to balance between getting British protection and providing for their own security is not easily explained by a largely static explanation of race.

Reading the speeches of the time, I believe there is a clear sense of independent strategic interests which, as Cochrane sometimes is want to put it, may have had racism 'behind' them, but which are important in their own right for understanding what happened and how. I also read some of the actions and responsibilities different - on my understanding it was the Liberals such as Deakin and Cook who better twigged to British duplicity than the more 'go along to get along' Laborites such as Fisher and especially Pearce. But these are minor historical differences of opinion.

If you want to know where the ANZAC myth came from, what Australia leaders thought, whether they had a sense of their independent interests, and a reminder of the central, core, foundational role of the White Australia policy in Australia's federation, this is an excellent read. Public history at its best. Well worth your time.

[Jazzy Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many war memorials are built with the slogan 'Lest We Forget', but as Alan Bennett stated in The History Boys, the true meaning is 'Lest We Remember'.

An eye-opening account of the racist motives behind the fighting in the Great War.

[Ellen Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, with its cleverly twisted title, Cochrane argues that the seeds of Australia's involvement in World War I began in the half-century before 1914, when a self-governing and increasingly prosperous Australia began to feel the chill of its geographical location so far from 'mother' England, and the ominous size of the Asian populations that surround this island nation. It's almost impossible to read this book today without a consciousness that, with the rise of China in the 21st century and the United States led by an erratic president, there is much in common between us today and the politicians and leaders of 1914.
...Cochrane does not deny the potency of the other spurs to military action, like fear of Germany and disgust over Belgium, but he does raise the question over why the anti-Asiatic rhetoric has been expunged from our popular memory of World War I.
...This is an important book, well written as all of Cochrane's work is, accessible and controversial. It places the war within a continuum of Australian history, rather than as a purely external disruptive event, and forces us to expand our view of 'loyalty to the Empire' to encompass uncomfortable truths.
For my complete review, visit
https://residentjudge.com/2018/12/20/...

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the only white settler colony in South Pacific, Australians were obsessed with the purity of its race, which culminated in informally called White Australia Policy. In late 19th and early 20th century, Japan's rise as regional power compounded Australia's fear of being swarmed by the Japanese. Australia's only protector, The Great Britain, was unwilling to entertain Australia and New Zealand's wish of having its own navy. Instead, The Mother Country was calling for its colonies and dominions to contribute to the building of a large home fleet, while subcontracting the naval defense of its overseas possessions to allies, most controversially, to Japanese Empire.

This of course, put Australia in an uncomfortable position of pushing its demands while avoiding jeopardizing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. And in this, Australian political figures from both sides of the isles, such as Alfred Deakin and Bill Hughes succeeded spectacularly. While the prioritization of conscription and naval building differed on various governments, everyone united in vitriolic racism of defending the purity of White Fortress on the Pacific. In the end, Australians got what it wanted. After sending its men to die in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, Bill Hughes succeeded in torpedoing the Racial Equality clause in The Treaty of Versailles, ensuring that white supremacy reigned supreme, despite the eloquence of the Japanese delegation, asking for Japan's rightful place in Imperialists Club.

The book also discussed the sparse discourse on racial policy as the motivation for Australians to plunge itself into World War I, despite the final defeat and irrelevance of White Australia Policy. Instead, today's politicians tend to blanket Australia's military participation with the ANZAC myths in Gallipoli.

[Steve Anchondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best we forget? No, this author has done a great deed showing is the truth, especially the crux of what made Australia, Australia. Our ancestors were right all along, should have listened but now the country is going down the toilet.

[Ellen Rowatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The process of remembering

An important contribution to Australian historical research that provides an alternative narrative from popular myths about Australian involvement in WW1.