The conscription referends, October, 1916 and December, 1917 : an inward-turned nation at war

Abstract

Every student today is conscious of, if not attuned to, the angry frustrated outbursts of the radical student movement. He has almost certainly been eligible for 'call—up' and has usually trusted to 'indefinite deferment'. He cannot help but be alert to the contemporary significance of and continuing controversy over conscription in Australia. The difficulties in relating 'Objective' research into the history of conscription to 'subjective' contemporary moral commitments are not resolved simply by reminding oneself that the conscription crises of fifty—four years ago are half a century distant. The gorge still rises at many of the attitudes and actions of the committed on either side than, as now. They do not appear to have simply lived and, for the most part, died before our time. How, then, was I to show that the results of either Referendum hinged not upon moral disputation and idealism but upon everyday expediency without importing my own moral imperatives, my own tendencies to distinguish 'high' principles from 'common' opportunism?