Gallipoli Correspondent: The Frontline Diary of C.E. W. Bean Selected and annotated by Kevin Fewster. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin Australia, 1983, $19.95.
It is now twenty years since K.S. Inglis complained that the work of the historian C.E.W. Bean had been undeservedly neglected by students of cultural history. He himself went some way to setting things right with the publication of a small monograph in 1970, and that has been followed by what might be called Beanery on a considerable scale. We now have a biography, paperback reprints of his Official History, and a reprint of his shorter history, Anzac to Amiens.
But the interest seems to take two quite different forms. It may be seen, firstly, as a consequence of the growth of Australian cultural history and the recognition of the importance of the role that ideology plays in social life. Those concerned with analysing twentieth-century Australian nationalism, and its relations with colonialism and patriotism, (such as Richard White in Inverting Australia) have identified Bean's work as a rich and influential source of myth. But such a source has other uses; the other reason why Bean is considered relevant today is the rise of a strong and often overtly right-wing nationalism. This phenomenon is self-consciously historical — that is, it justifies its presence by 'the' past: 'tradition'. The Australian 'tradition' of hard work, 'common sense', pragmatism, of an egalitarianism based on racism and androcentrism; all these components of the national culture are of tremendous political significance now. The extent to which they depend on the idea of an acceptable and inspiring 'History' is particularly apparent in such television campaigns as the now comparatively old ‘Have a Go' 'community announcements'. Bean is a particularly important figure in this conception of history: his 'discovery', appraisal, and affirmation of what he saw as the basic characteristics of Australians — masculinity, Englishness, mateyness — becomes a decisive event; he becomes a great writer. All that remains to be done is to restate what he said — the sole purpose of the film Gallipoli. Restatement also occurs at the academic level: readers of the Australian War Memorial Journal could be forgiven for thinking that it was one of that magazine's main concerns.
This fact — that Bean's interpretation of the Gallipoli campaign as the triumph of the Australian character is crucial to both academic and non-academic representations of the past — probably explains one peculiarity of Gallipoli Correspondent It is a large-format book, with wide margins, end-papers beautifully printed in colour, and numerous illustrations: just the thing to bring Bean to the coffee-
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table. But the academic tone of Fewster's introduction — not to mention his bibliography, biographical notes, end-notes, and table of abbreviations — immediately re-asserts the book's claims to a place on an academic bookshelf.
It's the academic value of the book which Fewster stresses in his introduction. The diaries Bean wrote at Gallipoli are, in his opinion, the 'pre-eminent record' of that campaign. Bean's perspective is, on the whole, honest and democratic: 'My job is to tell Australia the truth'. There is a comparatively lengthy discussion of the extent to which Bean succeeded in telling 'the people' 'the truth'. What Fewster concentrates on is Bean's epistemology, his rigorous methodological procedures, and the gaps discernible in his account. The problem is dealt with almost entirely at the level of the personal and particular: one man, Bean, the masculine empiricist, searching out the truth. As the blurb has it:
Throughout the fiercest battles, he would sit in the dirt or mud of the frontline trench taking notes or making sketches... When his luck ran out and he was wounded, he refused to be evacuated.
Fewster himself is not quite so racy, but what he says adds up to the same thing. He says little about the other press correspondents at Gallipoli, except to point out that while Bean — Solo Man of war journalism — took the risks in the trenches, they spent their time safely on the battleships offshore. He has even less to say on the general questions raised by the experience of the war correspondents, and of the official correspondents in particular. This is strange, because Bean's diaries would make rich material for a study of battlefront journalism. As is well known, modern wars are fought in two places: on the military battlefield, and on the complex and difficult terrain of the national ideological battlefield. Winning the war at home is just as important as winning the other one, and the two struggles are connected. What is crucial is the flow of information from one site of conflict to another. So it is that the new American Right claims that the Vietnam War was lost at home, by irresponsible journalists writing nasty things about the conduct of the war and lowering morale and confidence; and so Mrs Thatcher rebuked journalists during the Falklands War for wanting 'more information'. Their job, she pointed out, was to rejoice in the glory of the British victories.
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Bean would have been upset by Thatcher's illiberal righteousness; for him the issue was less a political than a moral one. The job of the official war correspondent was, as he understood it, to provide Australians with a knowledge of 'what is really happening in the war', as long as useful information was not given to the enemy, and families at home were not 'needlessly distressed'. The final principle over-rode everything: there could be no criticism of the conduct of the war; straight-forward reporting of the facts was all that was appropriate.
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The diaries add up to an interesting story — not so much the story of the diggers, but the story of Bean's attempt to put his liberal principles into practice. There is, in fact, far more space in the diaries given over to the issue of what the correspondent's role should be, than to the 'powerful descriptions of battle' promised in the blurb. It is the story of constant disputes with the military bureaucracy over what Bean should be allowed to do and say. He was at no stage a radical, nor did he ever speak out in the manner of Keith Murdoch. But there was a fundamental disagreement between him and the authorities over the ultimate responsibilities of the official correspondent: whether they were to the 'Australian people', or the War Office. Bean seems to have been convinced that the press correspondents' camp on the island of Imbros near Gallipoli was infiltrated by a spy controlled by the English military press officer.
I think it is this aspect of Bean's diaries which will be of interest to* cultural and social historians. Fewster's concern seems to be with the relation the diaries bear to the Official History Bean was later to write, and to the Anzac Legend as a whole:
The genesis of Bean's Anzac Legend lay in his travels through outback New South Wales and the books he wrote pre-1914 about those experiences. Gallipoli clarified his thoughts. The process of exploration and confirmation can be traced clearly through the pages of his diary.
So the emphasis is on Bean the man; we see him, frozen, in the very act of discovering the real significance of the Australian character. This is all very well, and is probably the way Bean himself saw his work. But in the present political climate, such a representation of cultural identity merely re-affirms the dominant discourse of 'Australianness'. Australians should be white, male, self-sacrificing, and willing to work with their mates. Bean's morality seems well-suited to the day of the wage-pause. It is a morality, and a politics, which is perhaps best challenged by those groups in a position to take the argument right back to Bean's own ground, to question not only conservative politics today, but the myths which give conservative politics a place to speak from. The Women's Peace Camp at Pine Gap and the Women Against Rape in War campaign are good examples of the kind of radical action which may succeed in thawing Bean out, or even cooking him.
Fewster's book should be read in the context of these struggles. It is worth reading as a record of an interesting episode in the history of journalism; but its perspective on the complex and important set of myths known as the 'Anzac Legend' is inadequately critical and inadequately questioning. Consequently it succeeds only in re-asserting them.
Julian Thomas is a student at ANU.
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