Ambition and Adversity: Developing an Australian Military Force, 1901-1914

Abstract

Between its inception in 1901 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the Australian Army (or the Commonwealth Military Forces as they were then known) underwent two periods of extensive reform aimed at creating a modern effective force out of what had been inherited from the colonial governments. In both instances the reforms were ambitious and bold, but they were also severely troubled by the limitations imposed by government, insufficient resources and a fundamental problem of creating an army from an almost entirely part-time soldiery. This article was originally presented as a paper at the Chief of Army Military History Conference in September 2011. It was first published in the proceedings of that conference and is reproduced courtesy of the Australian Army History Unit.

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In September 1909 a group of Australian army officers filled a room at the United Service Institution of New South Wales to hear Major W F Everett, a permanent officer then appointed the brigade-major of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, deliver a lecture entitled, ‘The future use of cavalry, and our light horse’. Having recently attended the 1909 autumn manoeuvres of both the British and French armies, as well as visiting the battlefields of the Russo–Japanese War, Everett had returned to argue in his lecture that the regiments and brigades of the Australian Light Horse, being neither proper full cavalry nor the more limited mounted infantry, needed to be organised and trained ‘on definite lines’.¹ There was nothing extraordinary about Everett’s lecture, nor the discussion that resulted from it. They were but a contemporary example of the professional discussions about military developments that then occurred at officer gatherings and in service journals, much as they still do today. At this lecture, however, the officers, in discussing what form Australia’s mounted troops should take, were not simply debating matters of organisation or armament, but trying to grapple with some fundamental matters about the military system of which they were part. These matters stemmed in large part from an ambitious desire to create a modern, efficient and effective military force from an organisation where almost all officers and soldiers were part-time and the resources of all kinds were far from plentiful. One of the officers present at Everett’s lecture, Colonel George Lee, by then a senior permanent officer and respected veteran of the Boer War, noted:

It is absolutely impossible to train our mounted troops up to the standard of Imperial cavalry ... We can put into the field first-class irregular light horse ... I have no hesitation in saying that with the material we have in Australia an exceedingly useful force can be made available.²

In broad terms this is what Australia had supplied to fight in the Boer War of 1899–1902, which, if often imperfect, had been adequate—but what about the next war? As Major Everett pointed out in his lecture, ‘we will not have the Boers to fight again, and much higher training will be required against European troops’.³ And so it would prove to be.

... the state governments passed the control of the various colonial forces they had maintained to the new Federal Government ...

The Commonwealth Military Forces, as Australia’s army was then known, was created in the immediate aftermath of the Boer War. Then, just a few years before the Great War, almost completely recreated. In both cases the schemes implemented reflected the fundamental ambition to create something effective and efficient, but each time the efforts would be severely troubled by the problems that beset them.

The Commonwealth Military Forces came into being just a few months after Federation when, on 1 March 1901, the now state governments passed the control of the various colonial forces they had maintained to the new Federal Government and the Department of Defence, established in Melbourne. In most of the colonies, efforts to maintain some form of local defence force had begun with a degree of seriousness

in the 1850s, but generally speaking it had only been since the mid-1880s that the larger colonies had become prosperous and developed enough to maintain them on an ongoing basis; a resolve that had been severely tested during the economic depression of the 1890s. The forces that the Commonwealth inherited were all recognisable as examples of British–pattern nineteenth century citizen-based part-time forces, but were widely varying in their administrative and organisational forms, level of training, size and, it was soon discovered, quality. As part-time paid troops or part-time unpaid volunteers, their members also tended to be proud of their status as citizen soldiers and the units they belonged to had also often developed their own distinctive cultures and ethos.⁴ The result was that they could be vocal in their own defence. The fact that many officers were also pillars of their local, and sometimes colonial, societies meant that they could also create political waves if they were so inclined.

the units they belonged to had also often developed their own distinctive cultures and ethos.

To meld this disparate conglomeration into a federal force the Commonwealth Government, after several refusals, secured the services of the British Army officer, Major-General Sir Edward Hutton. An experienced officer with a record of active service in various colonial campaigns in Africa, Hutton was a vocal proponent of mounted infantry and perhaps an even more vocal advocate of imperial defence cooperation. He was no stranger to Australia and had been the commandant of the New South Wales military forces between 1893 and 1895. In that appointment Hutton had undertaken a great deal of useful reform and revealed a vigorous energy when trying to improve the colonial forces under his control. He had, however, also clashed with his civilian masters and shown himself be undiplomatically outspoken, often tactless, and dismissive and scornful of those with differing views. These were traits that came to the fore again in 1899–1900 when he got into serious trouble with the Canadian government while commanding their militia and was quickly removed to a face-saving field command in South Africa where he led a mounted infantry brigade made up mostly of Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders.⁵

Hutton arrived for his second stint in Australia in early 1902 and quickly outlined his plans for Australia’s new army. In broad strategic terms he reiterated the long held view that though the Royal Navy was the ultimate guarantor of Australian safety, there was the possibility that this might be temporarily unavailable and a unified defence force needed to be available as a backup.⁶ In this regard Hutton’s basic ideas were not revolutionary and this strategic assessment had been a staple of colonial defence thinking for some decades. Similarly the idea of creating a unified mobile military force to meet such an eventuality, in addition to the maintenance of coastal fortresses, had been part of local military thinking since another British officer, Major-General J Bevan Edwards, had proposed it to the colonial governments in 1889.⁷ It was an idea that the various colonial commandants of the 1890s, including Hutton in New South Wales, had pursued, but that had never gained the political and popular support necessary for it to be realised.⁸

With the opportunity to finally effect something like what Edwards had proposed, Hutton quickly outlined his plan to the government. There was no desire from anyone to up-end the pre-Federation reliance on part-time military service, and under Hutton’s scheme the number of permanent soldiers would be limited to that required to man the more technically demanding corps associated with the forts, mainly the coastal garrison artillery and the associated submarine miners. There would also be a small permanent administrative and instructional cadre that would tend to the requirements of keeping the forces running smoothly and teach the other members of the forces their duty. More numerous were to be the two kinds of part-time troops. First the unpaid volunteer, predominantly infantry, units that Hutton had inherited would be accommodated by attaching them to the coastal fortresses for local protection, and together with the gunners and other troops in the forts they would constitute the Garrison Force. More numerous and significant in developmental terms was to be the Field Force, which was to be predominantly made up of part-time paid troops with a stiffening from the permanent cadre in time of war. With a wartime establishment of 26,000 men this element was intended to be the highly mobile, well trained and prepared to move to threatened areas as required. Showing his imperial thinking Hutton also intended that troops of the Field Force could be embarked and sent to defend Australia’s ‘interests’, however that may have been defined, should it be necessary.⁹ This last idea was not in line with the Government’s thinking, however, and after making it clear to the British Government at the Imperial Conference of 1902 that no Australian troops would be earmarked for imperial use, it oversaw the passage of a defence act that ensured that its troops could serve outside Australia only if they specifically volunteered.¹⁰

(The Government) oversaw the passage of a defence act that ensured that its troops could serve outside Australia only if they specifically volunteered.

Because of the requirement for mobility, the Field Force was to have a very high proportion of mounted troops with six of the nine brigades arranged to be made up of light horse, which under Hutton’s scheme were a type of abbreviated cavalry known at the time as mounted rifles. The other three brigades were to be infantry, but in keeping with Hutton’s thinking they were to be organised and prepared to take up the role of mounted infantry if required. These brigades were to be balanced, self-sufficient formations that included artillery, engineers and service branches, and the intention was that a component of virtually any size could be drawn from them for independent operations.¹¹ The emphasis on mobile forces and the establishment of formations that were in many ways readymade ‘columns’, not dissimilar to those that had recently been ranging across the veld of South Africa, was no accident. Hutton believed that if a war had to be fought against an invader on Australian soil then it was likely that the campaign would closely resemble that which the British had just fought against the Boers.¹² It was not the only precedent, however; the idea that fast moving, firearm-equipped mounted troops supported by artillery could have a dramatic effect on the course of a campaign was an idea that had excited theorists of mounted warfare, including Hutton, since Union troops had marched deep into the Confederacy in the final years of the American Civil War.¹³

Hutton’s Field Force was an ambitious goal that would require a good deal of reform and improvement from the disparate forces inherited from the colonies. In the first instance it would require a dramatic expansion and reorganisation. Only in New South Wales had there been an attempt to create a military organisation above that of the regimental level before Federation (under Hutton’s direction in the 1890s), and aside from the larger eastern colonies such a step would have been futile given the number of troops at their disposal. With nine brigades to be created, including some that included units drawn from across state boundaries, existing units would have to be split and expanded, and some country infantry units would be required to convert to light horse. Men who could command these new entities at all levels would also have to be found, a problem that was made all the more critical because of two factors. The first was that Hutton’s vision of the Field Force required the pushing of responsibilities downwards through the ranks and a great deal was expected from regimental level officers who might have been required to act independently on campaign.¹⁴ The second was that in order for defence costs to be kept down the Field Force was to be established on a cadre basis; that is, that though each unit was to have close to its full complement of officers and non-commissioned officers, peacetime soldier numbers were to be kept to a minimum, meaning that upon mobilisation much would be expected of regimental leadership and the more experienced rankers to bring the new recruits up to the required standard.¹⁵

upon mobilisation much would be expected of regimental leadership and the more experienced rankers to bring the new recruits up to the required standard.

Not surprisingly training was a significant matter and the men of the infantry and light horse would be expected to attend sixteen days training per year; artillery and engineers would do more.¹⁶ Essential to the program was the annual completion of the assigned musketry course and an inspection by the state commandant. For city infantrymen this meant an annual camp, usually of four days, plus a series of night and weekend activities. For men in the country, particularly the horse owners of the light horse, the training was concentrated into a regimental or brigade level continuous camp of eight days, supplemented with a smaller program of local unit-run parades.¹⁷ Officers had not only to make this basic commitment, but be prepared to study in their own time, attend the new ‘Schools of Instruction’ that Hutton instituted, pass examinations for promotion or confirmation in rank, be prepared to conduct administration on their own time, and if possible they were to take part in staff rides (tactical exercises without troops) run by state commandants.¹⁸ Given that before Federation soldier training had been usually limited to the traditional four-day Easter camp and a mixture of local evening or weekend parades, and that officer training programs do not seem to have even existed in any meaningful way, this training requirement was a substantial new commitment that caused considerable disquiet.¹⁹

Hutton’s ambitious plans ran into trouble almost from the start, and the problems he faced quickly seemed to outweigh the opportunities presented. The most pressing matter, not surprisingly, was one of money. The new Federal Government had limited taxation powers and there were strong parliamentary calls for military expenditure to be kept down. Hutton’s first funding requests, based on an assumption that his budget would equal the combined colonial defence budgets, had totalled more than £480,000 over four years, estimating that if this were kept up the Field and Garrison Forces would be fully equipped by 1908.²⁰ This proved overly optimistic, however, and upon submitting these and other spending proposals to the department Hutton was informed that his budget for the first year was not to exceed £50,000, which quickly stymied many of the changes afoot.²¹ The effects were obvious at the unit level and the light horse would have to continue using their completely unsuitable civilian pattern saddles, the field artillery would not get replacements for their obsolete guns, machine-guns could not be bought, the infantry would have to continue with the old pattern equipment they brought from the colonial stores, and there was no hope of creating the logistical train required to support the Field Force if had to be mobilised.²² Moreover it meant that attempting to expand the establishments to meet Hutton’s targets could not be contemplated.²³ Dismayed and, typically for him, enraged that civilian politicians could be so difficult and obstructionist, he could do little but amend his budgets and point out that no guarantees of military efficiency could be offered to the government any time soon.²⁴

The new Federal Government had limited taxation powers and there were strong parliamentary calls for military expenditure to be kept down.

The problems extended well beyond those associated with money, however. The requirement to convert rural volunteer infantry into part-time paid light horse, for example, ran into difficulties when the affected men pointed out that buying horses was beyond their means. In one instance the men of the Kerang Company of the Victorian Rangers found this such an impost that they enlisted the local newspaper and Member of Parliament to their cause and then, having gained the ear of the Minister for Defence, managed to fend off Hutton’s changes to their unit. Other units complained about reorganisations, the trampling of what they saw as their identities and traditions, and their being broken up to facilitate expansions.25 Senior regimental officers could be prickly too. Lieutenant-Colonel William Braithwaite, the senior officer of the Victorian Mounted Rifles, expected to command one of the new Light Horse brigades but was judged incompetent by Hutton and replaced. Braithwaite responded by venting his grievances in the newspaper, which led to more difficulties for Hutton and the government.²⁶

... the affected men pointed out that buying horses was beyond their means.

More fundamentally it was obvious that the quality of many units allotted to the Field Force was far from high. With the experiences in South Africa still fresh, training activities during the Hutton years often sought to draw on them. In Victoria, for example, both the 1903 and 1904 annual camps were conducted in areas chosen because of their physical similarity to the veld and which could be used to demonstrate characteristics of the fighting there.²⁷ But these and other camps quickly demonstrated that despite the smattering of Boer War veterans present, the overall quality of the troops and their training was low and that they possessed only, as Hutton put it, an ‘elementary knowledge’ of their duties.²⁸ Hutton had a poor opinion of the Victorian forces he had inherited and believed that only New South Wales and Queensland, which had maintained the highest proportions of part-time paid troops, had maintained reasonably effective organisational and instructional standards before Federation.²⁹ In the other states he felt the limitations of preFederation budgets and poor instruction had severely limited the development of their forces.³⁰ Upon his first visit to South Australia, for example, he had been so alarmed at the lack of instructors available that he immediately arranged for the dispatch of more from other states that could better afford the loss.³¹

Despite the effort to inject rigour, learning and professionalism into the militia and volunteer forces, the likelihood of success was always going to be diminished by the inherent problems of the defence scheme’s structure and resources. Sixteen training days per year including, at most, an eight-day annual camp was a good deal better than the more relaxed pre-Federation arrangements, but was still not a period of time sufficient to create competent soldiers, let alone effective units or brigades. There was some hope that the leavening of South Africa veterans would help, but this was a small and diminishing pool whose talents were often open to question given the patchy performance of many of the Australian contingents in that war.³² Moreover, it was becoming increasingly clear that finding enough men to fill even the limited peacetime establishments was a challenge. The strength of forces that Hutton had inherited from the colonies had been artificially high thanks to a spurt of martial enthusiasm that had accompanied the Boer War, in much the same way that war scares and Britain’s imperial conflicts had spurred colonists into military uniforms for brief periods throughout the nineteenth century.³³ As the memory of the war started to fade, however, so did the taste for soldiering. When this combined with the ordinary difficulties of part-time service such as giving up precious time, facing the burdens of buying kit, repetitive or dull training, maintaining a horse, putting up with officers of dubious quality, or having to continually travel to parade, it soon meant that units’ strengths were often well below even the restricted establishments.³⁴ In many places it proved impossible to raise new detachments and sub-units in compensation when the hoped-for wave of local volunteers failed to materialise.³⁵ On top of this was a continuing need to keep defence spending tightly in rein, and for some years after Federation many units were not authorised to recruit up to even their limited peace establishments.³⁶

Hutton may have been able to correct these problems, but his time as General Officer Commanding came to an end in late 1904, not surprisingly in acrimony with the Government over plans, among other things, to replace him with a committee rather than another opinionated and perhaps difficult senior officer.³⁷ Hutton had not been successful in his effort to create an efficient and capable field force, but this did not mean he was a failure either. He had carried out the essential and difficult process of amalgamating the various colonial forces (the difficulty of which should not be underestimated) and, for all its failings, created a military force that aimed to address the country’s defence needs with the limited resources at its disposal. With Hutton’s departure the Government and his replacement, the Military Board of Administration, undid more than a few of his less popular reforms and undertook many of their own. In broad terms though, his Field and Garrison Forces continued on as they then existed until new, even more ambitious schemes were developed towards the end of the decade.

[Hutton] had carried out the essential and difficult process of amalgamating the various colonial forces ...

In 1905 Australia’s defence outlook changed considerably with the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War. The possibility of a competent Asian military and naval power was one that had exercised Australian minds for a generation and the development caused much vexation. This, combined with a growing realisation that the military forces created after Federation were unlikely to overcome the problems that beset them to become effective, led to increased thought being given to some form of universal military service obligation. In 1906 a committee formed at the behest of the second Deakin ministry, headed by the Inspector-General, Major-General J Hoad, reported that despite the assurances about Japan and the power of the Royal Navy coming from London, Australia had to have a more capable military force. Several political and military threads were woven together over the next few years and the result was a shift towards the creation of a broadly-based citizen force founded upon the idea of compulsory military service for all able-bodied males, inspired in part by the Swiss model. Though the push began as early as 1906, it was 1910 before the Government of Andrew Fisher passed the final legislation that would bring the Hutton era army to an end and replace it with what was virtually a completely different force.³⁸

Drawing on work done by Australian officers, notably Colonel JG Legge, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener visited Australia in 1910 at the Government’s request and in his report on the military forces offered a template for the army of what is generally known as the Universal Training era. The scheme adopted called for all males to commence their military service at age twelve in the junior cadets and, after passing through the senior cadets later in their teens, continue until they were twenty-six years old when they would complete their service in what became known as the Citizen Force.³⁹ Unpaid volunteer troops, which had always been the most problematic and under-trained element of the colonial and federal forces, were to be done away with, and all men of the force were to be paid (though for privates at half the rate than under the old system).

The expansion that the scheme was to bring about would make what had been attempted under Hutton seem puny, and the goal for the Universal Training era was a peacetime strength of about 80,000 personnel, expanding to 135,000 upon war breaking out. Kitchener proposed that there be twenty-one brigades of infantry, which made for eighty-four battalions, twenty-eight regiments of light horse and fifty-six field or howitzer batteries—objectives that were all increased very shortly.⁴⁰ To facilitate the plan, the country was divided up into unit and brigade areas from where the men that would fill the ranks would be drawn. The expansion was not to be immediate and it was planned that the scheme would take eight years to reach its intended peacetime establishments. Moreover there were notable exceptions to the idea of universal service. No man who lived more than five miles from a training centre would be obligated to endure the difficulties of travel to serve, and because of the need to provide a horse, the light horse regiments would continue to rely predominantly on volunteer service.⁴¹ Still, this was an extremely ambitious plan that called for a massive change and expansion of the forces.

... the goal for the Universal Training era was a peacetime strength of about 80,000 personnel, expanding to 135,000 upon war breaking out.

At a tactical and operational level the army was changing too, and had been gradually since Hutton’s departure. In 1906 the Australian military had started a process of more closely following the example and model of the British Army. This was reflected in several ways, not the least of which was the gradual acceptance at the 1907, 1909 and 1911 Imperial conferences of the idea that the British and Dominion armies be aligned as closely as possible in their organisation, training and doctrine. It was a process that had led in part to the creation of the Imperial General Staff to help such coordination. There were other changes too, and the primacy of the mounted soldier that Hutton had established in his Field Force, and which had been encapsulated in his own locally produced mounted service manual, had not survived much beyond his tenure. The infantry, apparently dismayed with the idea of mounted drill, seem to have devolved themselves of the mounted infantry role the moment Hutton sailed for Britain.⁴² A reorganisation of the Field Force brigades in 1906 had also changed the proportions of infantry and light horse available in each state, effectively calling into doubt the idea of a ‘move anywhere’ mobile federal force and suggested that the defence of each state would depend on units raised there.⁴³ The introduction of the Kitchener scheme completely removed the last vestiges of the Hutton horse-mounted columns and relegated the mounted branch to a more conventional supporting role,⁴⁴ leaving the model of the Boer War and nineteenth century cavalry theorising behind.

the primacy of the mounted soldier that Hutton had established in his Field Force, and which had been encapsulated in his own locally produced mounted service manual, had not survived much beyond his tenure.

The new scheme commenced for the senior cadets in 1911 and for the Citizen Force in 1912. Not surprisingly, however, the demands of establishing the Universal Training plan were manifold and difficult to overcome. There were too few permanent officers and non-commissioned officers to administer and train the men being brought into the ranks; a situation made worse by the requirements of controlling a massive increase in the cadets. The long-standing problems of militia officer quality were perhaps exacerbated by the scheme as the good ones were diluted into a larger force where they were called on to do more.⁴⁵ The light horse faced a fundamental manning crisis brought on by the pay cut of the new scheme that did not come close to compensating for the costs of horse ownership. Moreover, as the new Inspector-General, the imperial officer Major-General G M Kirkpatrick, toured the country in 1912 and 1913 he found that the forces were, by and large, as poorly trained and inefficient as they had been since Federation.⁴⁶

When in 1914 General Sir Ian Hamilton visited to inspect the Australian forces his report did not necessarily make happy reading. Though it is often cherry-picked for the encouraging and supportive comments he made, less is usually made of the grave deficiencies he highlighted in manning, logistical underpinnings, training, unit cohesion and tactical competence. Referring to the mounted branch he worried that any attempt at manoeuvre by anything larger than a squadron-sized body would quickly degenerate into ‘disarray and confusion’.⁴⁷ In 1917 the Military Board, made wise by the realities of fighting a terrible war, looked back at the militia of 1914 and realistically concluded that ‘at the outbreak of war it would not have been possible to take a Militia Regiment as it stood and put it in the field at once against an efficient enemy, without disaster’.⁴⁸ Clearly if the force was going to be required, a substantial period of mobilisation and training would be necessary to get it ready.

‘at the outbreak of war it would not have been possible to take a Militia Regiment as it stood and put it in the field at once against an efficient enemy, without disaster’.

Regardless, the ambition had not disappeared. The Universal Training scheme had made no specific proposals for the establishment of divisions, but there was provision for divisional mounted troops and a close correlation between the number of battalions and brigades required, and what would be required if divisions were to be formed.⁴⁹ Establishments prepared in 1912 had hinted at such a step for the infantry, but nothing was then done about it.⁵⁰ The idea clearly stayed around though and on 1 July 1914, just a few weeks before the outbreak of war, the Military Board met and recommended that a divisional organisation be adopted. At that meeting a memorandum prepared by the Director of Military Operations, Major CBB White, and submitted by the Chief of the General Staff, Brigadier JM Gordon, stated that as the division was the ‘approved military organization for the Empire ... its adoption is therefore recommended.’⁵¹ Though it recognised the problems that would come with creating higher formations in a part-time citizen army in which even brigades were perhaps still more theoretical than real, the scheme went on to propose the establishment of a ‘Field Army’ of three light horse brigades and two infantry divisions to be drawn from the 2nd and 3rd Military Districts (essentially New South Wales and Victoria). District Field Forces, which in the 1st and 4th Military Districts (Queensland and South Australia) included under-strength infantry divisions were also be to established in the smaller states. It was recommended that the commanders and their divisional staffs be appointed from the ranks of the Australian permanent forces by reorganising the existing military district headquarters (which had replaced the older state-based commands of the immediate post-Federation era). In conclusion the submission recommended that this structure be adopted as the basis for planning until 1920.51 The plan was apparently cut off by the events of August 1914, but did not disappear entirely and throughout the war the military authorities issued revised national establishments that set out the organisation of a force made up of two light horse divisions and six infantry divisions.⁵²

Whether this scheme for a divisional army could have been attained, and the problems that Hamilton identified overcome, is impossible to know, as the outbreak of war dramatically altered the situation and the chance to correct the deficiencies of what still a very new system was taken away by the demands of the moment. The Defence Act’s ban on sending troops outside Australia without their specifically volunteering precluded a war role for the militia and a specially-created expeditionary force, the Australian Imperial Force, would instead serve in Europe and around the Mediterranean. In a sense the pre-war Citizen Force gave this new force everything it had to give, from its best and most able officers, and much of its manpower, to its materiel, and eventually its financial lifeline. In other ways it also gave it very little. Though many officers of the Great War started their military careers in the citizen forces, and though the militia experience gave the military an administrative and organisational framework to work with in 1914 and 1915, it is difficult to conclude that what eventually became the very effective Australian Imperial Force that existed by 1917 and 1918 in both France and Palestine owed much of its competence to the pre-war militia.

 the chance to correct the deficiencies of what still a very new system was taken away by the demands of the moment.

The militia did not disappear with the war. Although the goal was to continue with what had been started, gutted of its best soldiers and officers, and increasingly lacking resources as the war went on, the militia in 1918 was nothing like what had been hoped for.

Before Federation the Australian colonial forces were enthusiastic and often popular, but small in an age of mass armies, largely parochial in their outlook, established with minimal official support, and, with some possible exceptions, not very competent. In the dozen or so years that passed after Federation (a not very long period of time for a peacetime army) successive governments, ministers of defence and senior British and Australian officers sought to dramatically reform this inauspicious material into first a national army, a difficult task in itself, and then into an efficient and effective force capable of defending the nation. The obstacles were manifold and many are familiar to all armies throughout history—a lack of money, waxing and waning interest from governments, and insufficient or obsolete equipment. More fundamentally, however, the great weakness was a continuing reliance on the model of part-time military service. For men and units that practised their martial pastime eight, ten, sixteen or twenty days a year, efficiency and competency were always going to remain elusive objectives. The Universal Training scheme attempted to overcome this problem by extending training to a decade-long process where it was hoped that at each stage improvements could be based on what had already been learnt. It was worth a try and a feasible idea, but it seems unlikely that it would ultimately have worked.

About the Author

Jean Bou is a historian at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, based at the Australian Command and Staff College. He is co-writing a forthcoming volume of the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations. He has a PhD in history from the University of New South Wales (at the Australian Defence Force Academy) and is the author or co-editor of several books on Australian military history including Light Horse (2010), Australia’s Palestine Campaign (2010), Australian Peacekeeping (2009), Duty First (2nd edition, 2008), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2nd edition, 2008) and a Century of Service (2007). As an Army Reserve officer he is a member of the Australian Army History Unit.

Endnotes

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1    Major WF Everett, ‘The Future Use of Cavalry, and our Light Horse’, Journal and Proceedings of the United Service Institution of New South Wales, XXI, Lecture LXXXVIII, 1909, 91-103, at p. 91. The light horse were organised as an abbreviated form of cavalry known at the time as mounted rifles. Mounted infantry, as understood at the time, was merely infantry made more or less permanently mobile by the addition of horses or some other riding animal. For more see Jean Bou, Light Horse, A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2010, pp. 69–71.

2    Comments made Colonel G Lee; Everett, ‘The Future Use of Cavalry, and our Light Horse’, p. 102.

3    Everett, ‘The Future Use of Cavalry, and our Light Horse’, p. 99.

4    The best overall treatment of pre-Federation forces remains that of Craig Wilcox. See his For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia 1854–1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998 and his PhD thesis, ‘Australia’s Citizen Army, 1889–1914’, Australian National University, 1993. See also, DH Johnson, Volunteers at Heart: the Queensland Defence Forces 1960–1901, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia 1975.

5    Craig Wilcox, ‘Hutton, Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Thomas Henry’ and Stephen Clarke, ‘Colonial Commandants’ in Peter Dennis et al., The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 139–43, 271; A J Hill, ‘Hutton, Sir Edward Thomas Henry (1848–1923)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hutton-sir-edward-thomas-henry-6779/tex…;, accessed 16 September 2011; Carmen Miller, ‘Hutton, Sir Edward Thomas Henry’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, <http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=8205&gt;, accessed 16 September 2011.

6    Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, National Archives of Australia (NAA).

7    Major-General J Bevan Edwards, ‘Correspondence Relating to the Inspection of the Military Forces of the Australasian Colonies’, Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, August 1890, British Parliamentary Papers, 1890,

C. 6188.

8    Wilcox, ‘Australia’s Citizen Army’, p. 157.

9    Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, NAA. The war establishment of the Field Force was 26,019 men, with 15,334 of these in the three infantry brigades and 10,485 in the six light horse brigades.

10  Albert Palazzo, The Australian Army: A History of its Organisation 1901–2001, Oxford University Press, 2001, Melbourne, pp. 22, 32.

11  Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, NAA; Defence Scheme for the Commonwealth of Australia, July 1914, B168, 1904/185, NAA.

12  Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, NAA.

13  Major-General Edward Hutton, The Defence and Defensive Power of Australia, Angus & Roberston, Melbourne, 1902, pp. 15–19; Bou, Light Horse, pp. 30–1, 61–2. For more on mounted troop theory during this period see Gervase Phillips, ‘“Who Shall Say That The Days of Cavalry are Over”: The Revival of the Mounted Arm in Europe, 1853–1914’, War in History, Vol. 18, No. 5, 2011, pp. 5–32, at 29–30; and Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008. The contemporary literature is large, but for an example that seems to have been influential with Hutton see George T Denison, Modern Cavalry: Its Organisation, Armament and Employment in War, Thomas Bosworth, London, 1868. The American experience was not the only inspiration, but it was a prominent one.

14  Australian Regulations and Orders of the Military Forces of the Commonwealth, provisional edition, 1904, part 8, section 11, A2657, vol. 1, NAA.

15  Militia and Volunteer Peace and War Establishments, B168, 1902/2688, NAA; Australian Regulations and Orders of the Military Forces of the Commonwealth, provisional edition, 1904, part 8, sections 8 & 10, A2657, vol. 1, NAA.

16  Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, NAA.

17  Australian Regulations and Orders of the Military Forces of the Commonwealth, provisional edition, 1904, part 8, section 37, NAA, A2657, vol 1, NAA; Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, B168, 1902/2688, NAA.

18  Hutton, ‘Minute Upon the Defence of Australia’, NAA, B168, 1902/2688.

52  Tables of Peace Organisation and Establishments 1915–16, issued with Military Order 245, 1915, A1194, 21.20/6895, NAA. The cover of the tables is in fact in error and they were actually issued with Military Order 244, 27 April 1915; Tables of Peace Organisation and Establishments, 1916–17, issued with Military Order 176, 1916, A1194, 21.20/6896; Tables of Peace Organisation and Establishments, issued with Military Order 575, 1918, A1194, 21.20/6897; Tables of Peace Organisation and Establishments, 1919–20, issued with Military Order 463, 1919, A1194, 21.20/6898, NAA.