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‘Not Substantially of European Origin or Descent’: How Race Came to Shape Australian Enlistment during World War I

Sophie Couchman

Introduction

On 19 November 1914, Senator Thomas Bakhap spoke out in parliament about how insulting it was that those born in Australia but ‘not substantially of European origin or descent’ (NSEOD) were ‘exempt’ from service during World War I (WWI).¹ He was speaking from the heart. Bakhap’s paternity was not recorded, but he was brought up by a Chinese stepfather and embraced the language and culture of his adoptive father as his own.² He knew it was possible to be a so-called ‘coloured’ Australian and share in a sense of Australian national pride:

Irrespective of the fact that certain people may be native born Australians, may have been educated in Australia, may perhaps have lived all their lives here, and may be willing to serve in our Military Forces, they are exempted from duties other than those of a non-combatant nature in a most insulting fashion, and they are told, legislatively, that they may perhaps be taken to the battlefield very much as the Spartans took their helots.³

Bakhap accused the government of hypocrisy for sending troops on ships crewed by ‘Asiatics’ and yet barring them from service except in a non-combat capacity. His objections fell on deaf ears. No-one engaged with his argument and his comments were declared out of order, as the debate concerned amendments to unrelated sections of the Commonwealth Defence Act 1903.

Bakhap was speaking five years too late to have any impact on the clauses of the Defence Act to which he was referring, as these had been introduced in 1909 and 1910. Nor did he fully appreciate that the ‘native born Australians’ to whom he referred were British subjects and that, in barring their enlistment, the government was curtailing the legal rights and obligations of its own subjects. He was also wrong about it being the Defence Act that determined enlistment in Australia’s expeditionary forces in WWI; it was actually military orders issued after the start of the war. This chapter is about why these two commonly held misunderstandings are important.

Like Bakhap, historians continue to attribute the racial bar on enlistment during WWI to the Defence Act or, more specifically, to a clause added in 1910 that exempted those NSEOD from compulsory service in Australia’s defence forces ‘in times of war’.⁴ Some have argued that there was some ‘ambiguity’ as to whether, by being exempt, these men were also barred from volunteering in Australia’s expeditionary forces, but this distinction is not noted as being significant.⁵ The 1910 Defence Act exemption, and an earlier one introduced in 1909 for compulsory military training, were certainly pivotal, marking the first time that participation in Australia’s military forces was legislatively constrained by race. As Morag Loh observed, the ‘legislation which established independent armed services also institutionalised racism within them’.⁶

These exemptions did not, however, set enlistment criteria into Australia’s two expeditionary forces during WWI – the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) and the 1st Australian Imperial Force (AIF) – except in a few isolated instances.⁷ As stipulated in the Defence Act, when Australian forces operated outside the Commonwealth, enlistment had to be voluntary.⁸ One cannot be exempt from something that is voluntary unless the meaning of ‘exempt’ is distorted from something ‘free from an obligation or liability imposed on others’⁹ into something that is a ‘a barrier or restriction to an action’. In assuming, and not seriously questioning, that the Defence Act set enlistment criteria, scholars have missed the fact that it was a military order, not introduced until after the first contingent of AIF soldiers had been sent overseas, that introduced the racial bar. Shifting attitudes and approaches to the participation of those NSEOD in Australia’s military forces have also been obscured by the assumption that this racial bar was static and unchanging.

Exemptions in the Defence Act and the military orders that barred and then loosened restrictions on the enlistment of those NSEOD constrained the legal and moral rights and obligations of Australia’s subjects based on their race. For many, this racism is simply another strand in the tapestry of the White Australia policy. However, this overlooks the deception and complexity of how people of colour have been discriminated against in Australia. It does not help us understand how it was that significant numbers of men who were NSEOD did enlist and serve during WWI.¹⁰ Moreover, it overlooks the gradual process whereby something written into legislation in 1909 and 1910 as an exemption came to be used as a bar during WWI. Through an examination of legislation, military orders and individual cases, this chapter reveals how legislation and regulations were applied in practice, often via bureaucratic decisions made behind closed doors, and sparked by specific cases as people NSEOD encountered these mechanisms. It shines a light on how British subjects in Australia came to be treated differently according to their race as part of this process. It was not an accident that Bakhap misunderstood the processes that excluded those NSEOD. As we shall see they were deliberately kept obscure.

Despite legislation and military orders covering anyone deemed NSEOD, scholarship has tended to focus on individual racial groups rather than examining such peoples’ experiences as a whole, although Timothy Winegard has compared the involvement of First Nations peoples across the British dominions to show the reluctance of all countries, to differing degrees, to embrace their enlistment.¹¹ The lack of engagement between historians of Aboriginal history and military history observed by Joan Beaumont and Allison Cadzow is mirrored within Chinese Australian history.¹² After First Nations peoples, Chinese Australians were the next largest group who might be defined as NSEOD. They were followed, although to a much lesser extent, by descendants of ‘non-European races’ such as ‘Hindus’, ‘African Negroes’ and ‘Polynesians’ (which included ‘Papuans’, ‘Māoris’ and ‘Fijians’).¹³ Research into the involvement of these other groups is still in its infancy, mostly providing accounts of the lives and service of the men who enlisted.¹⁴ Bringing together the experiences of men of different backgrounds during WWI helps give us a more complete picture of how legislation, regulations and military orders operated in practice.

There are deep and significant differences in racial attitudes towards different groups understood to be ‘NSEOD’, and this is particularly noticeable for First Nations peoples and immigrant groups. The lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the legislative frameworks that surrounded them were shaped by a history of violent dispossession and ongoing processes of colonial oppression that were different to immigrant groups who, while not racially ‘white’, were themselves also colonisers.¹⁵ Views about hierarchies of race shaped how ‘evolved’ each of these groups were believed to be.

The argument that Australian citizenship did not automatically ensure equal civil rights within the military is well known within Aboriginal historical scholarship, and Joan Beaumont has also explored how the bar on women’s participation in military service shaped the nature of their citizenship.¹⁶ While understood, this history is less well articulated within Chinese Australian scholarship, which tends to focus on the racially discriminatory nature of legislation for people born in China rather than how the rights of their Australian-born descendants were curtailed. Important exceptions to this are works by Kate Bagnall, who explores how fluid understandings of race shaped the experiences of Australian-born Chinese and mixed-race Chinese Australians travelling under the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act 1901, and Peter Prince, who has shown how the term ‘alien’ was deliberately given racial meanings and illegally applied so that the rights of ‘coloured’ British subjects were curtailed.¹⁷ Chinese immigrants were increasingly denied access to naturalisation in different colonies from the 1880s and eventually at the federal level under the 1903 Naturalization Act, in part to curtail perceived immigration fraud.¹⁸ One of the reasons why citizenship was not defined and incorporated into the Australian Constitution was to prevent full participation of Chinese and Australian-born Chinese people in Australia as citizens.¹⁹ The full implications of this, such as access to pensions and other benefits, have only been broadly touched on, with racism, rather than denial of equal civil rights, used as an explanation. Military service is one of the key elements of citizenship; however, the ways in which the Defence Act and military orders curtailed the rights of those NSEOD as British subjects and full legal members of the Australian community has not been emphasised outside Aboriginal historical scholarship.

Australia’s armed forces were established within a context of racial paranoia and the construction, through legislation and political nation-building, of a White Australia.²⁰ Prior to the introduction of compulsory military training in 1909, Australia relied on Britain for its military defence. However, in the first decade of Australia’s Federation, politicians became increasingly concerned about military threats from Asia – from China and, after their defeat of Russia in 1905, especially from Japan – a fear, as Helen Irving argues, that was ‘more metaphorical than based in reality’.²¹ Britain was also building closer economic and military ties with Japan and politicians feared Britain’s desire to maintain the economic success of its empire might leave Australia vulnerable if it was threatened by an Asian power. In pushing for compulsory universal training in 1909, Minister for Defence Joseph Cook argued:

We have set up a White Australian ideal … But we are dealing for maintenance [of it] with a country of the world that is unable to close its doors to the coloured labour of the world as we do. We are depending on a nation that opens its doors wide to the world.²²

Australia’s politicians imagined that White Australia would need to protect itself from attack from its Asiatic neighbours as part of a war between the races. They also believed that Australia’s so-called coloured population would not wish to serve in a defence force designed to protect White Australia. Embedded in this attitude was a belief that members of military armies should reflect the citizenry of the country.²³ For a newly federated Australia that dreamed of being ‘white’, that meant a white defence force.

However, Australia’s politicians were wrong – not only about who Australia would be fighting but also about who would want to fight on Australia’s behalf. How Australia was imagined was contested even when views about White Australia were at their strongest.²⁴

Exemptions to Military Service and the Defence Act 1903

While the construction of a White Australia bound Australia’s colonies together at its Federation in 1901, the original Commonwealth Defence Act passed in 1903 contained no racial bars or exclusions on military participation (see Table 2.1). It consolidated earlier colonial laws to establish a small federal defence force to support Britain’s forces in defending Australia.²⁵ Under the Act, all men who were British subjects of a particular age could be called upon to serve. These men could be British subjects by birth (natural-born) or by naturalisation. Each of Australia’s colonies had separate naturalisation laws until the Commonwealth Naturalization Act 1903. Being born or naturalised within the British Empire, including in places like Hong Kong and British Malaya, also made one a British subject. However, naturalisation was not necessarily recognised. And, as we shall see, distinctions between an individual’s naturalisation status, their birthplace and their race were often blurred.

Under the principal Defence Act, those whose religious doctrines forbad them to ‘bear arms or perform military service’ were exempt and the governor-general could, by regulation, also exempt others from military service.²⁶ This appreciation that some of Australia’s subjects should be allowed to be exempt from compulsory military service was something carried over from the earlier, and ultimately abandoned, 1901 Defence Bill (see Table 2.1). This Bill did not contain any racial language and clearly stated that an ‘exemption shall not prevent any person from serving, if he desires it and is not disabled by bodily infirmity’.²⁷ This wording was not used in the 1903 Defence Act, but it was still up to the individual to claim the exemption.²⁸ Exemptions were imagined as a special privilege an individual could apply for rather than an exclusion imposed on them.

While there might not have been a racial bar written into the Defence Act in 1903 or the associated regulations, Dick McDonald’s case shows how men could still face racial discrimination in its application.

Table 2.1: Exemptions to military service in Defence Bills and Acts, 1901–10

Dick McDonald, 1906–8

Dick McDonald, whose father was ‘European’ and mother was ‘Aboriginal’, attempted to enlist in the Commonwealth Military Forces in 1906.²⁹ In 1908, after being refused for the second time, he spoke with, then wrote to, his local Australian Labor Party (ALP) member, Danish-born Niels Rasmus Wilson Nielsen. Dick wanted to know if he was eligible to enlist because he had not been told why he had been refused. He explained: ‘I did not ask why. But I think it is colour.’³⁰ If Dick McDonald was rejected because of his race (this was never made clear), his letter illustrates the inconsistency with which race could be interpreted and applied:

they have one men [sic] in the company who is a coloured man he is what they call a fair half-cast and then there is one man in the senior cadets here who is darker than I and I find it very hard to think that I’m debared [sic] from enlisting.³¹

Perhaps race was not always a consideration, or skin colour was not the only factor considered, when making enlistment decisions?

Regardless, the final advice from the Department of Defence was that ‘legally there is no objection to anyone being enlisted whose father is a European and whose mother is an aboriginal native of the Commonwealth’.³² However, an important corollary was added to this decision: ‘The question of acceptance of any man in a regiment rests with the commanding officer.’³³ Dick ended up serving in the 37th Infantry Band at Kiama. Technically, he served in the military by playing in the band in a non-combatant capacity (as specified under soon-to-be-passed amendments to the Defence Act).³⁴

Although Dick McDonald was barred from full participation, the decision-making was inconsistent. We know that other Aboriginal men, as well as some Australian-born Chinese men, succeeded in serving in colonial and early federal military units.³⁵ And, while prevented from full enlistment prior to WWI, Dick successfully enlisted in the 1st AIF as part of the Waratah recruiting march in December 1915.³⁶

1909 and 1910 Amendments to the Defence Act

A year after Dick McDonald wrote to Nielsen, amendments to the Defence Act (passed in 1909) introduced compulsory military training for boys and men. Exemptions were granted to particular groups, including those NSEOD. The governor-general could also exempt people from particular geographic areas and could withdraw exemptions (see Table 2.1). It was now ‘medical authorities’ who judged whether an individual qualified for an exemption, although the burden of proof still fell on the person claiming the exemption. In other words, an exemption was still considered something that people NSEOD could apply for rather than something that was imposed on them. Exemptions did not cover non-combatant duties. Other exempted groups were not minorities subject to discrimination and all were treated differently to those convicted of ‘any disgraceful or infamous crime’ or ‘of notoriously bad character’, who were not permitted to serve at all. These exemptions were not written to be punitive.

They were, however, part of a growing raft of legislation implemented in the early decades of the twentieth century aimed at building a White Australia. These amendments can be viewed as part of a trend whereby Australian legislators, wary of criticism and interference from the British Government, became more circumspect with how they chose to racially discriminate against non-white groups within legislation. British concerns about maintaining smooth relations with Japan, China and India meant that the Australian Government had to be careful to not overtly discriminate against ‘coloured’ groups, particularly those within the British Empire.³⁷ The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 marked a significant early example of this. Under pressure from the British Government, the text of the Act did not use racial language in its definition of a ‘prohibited immigrant’ and instead used a dictation test.³⁸ Officials were instructed to give the test to ‘coloured’ arrivals in a language not spoken by the entrant.³⁹ Although the British Government did not challenge the racial exemptions introduced into the Defence Act, had they, Australia could have argued that people NSEOD had a choice as to whether to be exempt or not. Racial discrimination occurred in the application of the Act, not in the Act itself.

Those NSEOD were also among those exempt from compulsory service within the Commonwealth during times of war after amendments to the Defence Act were passed in 1910 (see Table 2.1). Again, these exemptions did not extend to activities of a non-combat nature. And, again, other exempt persons were not from groups usually subject to discrimination. There was considerable parliamentary debate about whether conscientious objectors would be eligible for exemption under these amendments but no discussion about people NSEOD. In wording these amendments to the Defence Act, politicians imagined they would have to restrict the number of people claiming exemptions from compulsory training or service. Exemptions were, therefore, a boon granted to people, not something imposed on them. This changed, however, when the laws were put into practice.

Charlie Chung Quong, 1911

In 1911, as a natural-born British subject, Charlie Chung Quong turned up to compulsory cadet training as required under the 1909 amendments to the Defence Act; however, as someone NSEOD, he was told that he would be given administrative duties – not combat training.⁴⁰ Rather than something requested by Charlie, the exemption clause was imposed on him. Charlie stopped attending training – accounts vary as to why. As a result, his superiors took him to the Children’s Court. They wanted to make an example of him. He was fined £5. Mr Howit, a benefactor of the Chung Quong family, pleaded the boy’s case to the Department of Defence, arguing that the family could not afford the fine and that Charlie needed to work to support his family. The department remitted Charlie’s fine. The department also decided that it was now ‘advisable’ that boys who were NSEOD would not be called up for training – not even in a non-combatant capacity as allowed for under the Act. District commandants were duly notified of this decision in August 1912.

Anecdotal reports show officials were inconsistent in how they interpreted this. While some Australian-born boys with Chinese ancestry were barred because of their heritage, others participated in cadets. Sam Tong Way from Ballarat and Frank Chinn from Melbourne described the hurt and humiliation they felt when they were prevented from training as cadets.⁴¹ When WWI was declared, Sam Tong Way persisted and eventually succeeded in enlisting, alongside his brother Hedley, but Frank Chinn chose not to try, wishing to avoid further humiliation.⁴² Conversely, Harry Hoyling and Herbert Henry Goon, both of Chinese descent, served as senior cadets for three years and three and a half years, respectively.⁴³ Yet, in barring even a few boys from training as cadets for being NSEOD, military bureaucrats established an important precedent: they turned a voluntary exemption from compulsory participation into an exclusion or bar to participation.

Wider Adoption of the Phrase ‘NSEOD’ as a Bar to Participation

After the phrase ‘not substantially of European origin or descent’ appeared in the Defence Act, it was then applied to other aspects of military and naval operations and was increasingly used as a bar to full participation in military life.⁴⁴ Amendments to the Defence Act in 1910 had also established military training colleges – the Royal Military College at Duntroon in 1911 and a naval college in 1913.⁴⁵ Both introduced regulations that barred those NSEOD from enrolling.⁴⁶ Brigadier General William Throsby Bridges, who established the college at Duntroon, was involved in drafting the 1909 and 1910 amendments and was charged with the creation of the AIF. Bridges also drove the introduction of the regulation that barred the enrolment of those NSEOD into Duntroon. This was in response to the attempted enrolment of Abdul Hamid Wade (1900–1982) in 1913. Bridges sought legal advice from Robert Garran, Australia’s first federal attorney-general who had also been involved in drafting the Australian Constitution and played a primary role in drafting Australia’s federal laws from 1901 until his retirement in 1932.⁴⁷

Abdul Hamid Wade, 1913

Abdul Hamid Wade was born in Australia. His mother, Emily, was Dublin born and his father, also Abdul, was a naturalised British subject (1902). Abdul senior was born in Afghanistan when it was a British protectorate and had lived in Australia for over 30 years.⁴⁸ Abdul senior wrote to the minister of defence in March 1913 asking whether his son was eligible to enrol as a cadet.⁴⁹ The department acknowledged receipt of the letter in April and contacted Bridges, commandant of the college, for advice. The college rushed through changes to the regulations related to cadet entry criteria so that the department could state in reply to Abdul senior that ‘the Regulations do not permit of the admission of your son’.⁵⁰ No further explanation was provided.

Behind the scenes we see that Bridges sought to change enlistment regulations so that ‘only persons of pure European descent’ could be admitted. He also incorrectly advised the department that if Abdul Hamid was born before his father was naturalised, then he was not a ‘natural born British subject’ under the Defence Act:

As a matter of policy, I think only persons of pure European descent should be admitted as cadets and if the Regulation quoted does not secure this, then it should be amended without delay.⁵¹

When the department contacted Robert Garran, secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department, for advice, he corrected Bridges and explained that, being born in Australia, Abdul Hamid was a natural-born British subject regardless of his father’s naturalisation status. Further, he pointed out that a regulation based on the concept of ‘pure European descent’ would:

raise considerable difficulties – and would, if strictly interpreted, involve complete investigation in ancestry for an indefinite number of generations. E.g. a Maori great-grandmother, or a remote North American Redskin ancestor, would debar a candidate who to all appearance was a full-blooded European.⁵²

So, rather than adopt Bridges’s more restrictive wording, the amendments to the regulations followed Garran’s recommendations and used the weaker phrase ‘not substantially of European origin or descent’ to introduce a racial bar to enrolment at Duntroon.⁵³ Garran observed that:

However precise the rules as to eligibility were made, there will always be cases where a candidate, though eligible as a matter of law, is undesirable as a matter of policy.⁵⁴

And this is what happened, the legislation operating in a way that achieved Bridges’s objective to keep Duntroon ‘white’.⁵⁵

On Garran’s recommendation, a deliberate decision was made not to provide Abdul senior with a reason for the department’s refusal. The department simply stated that ‘Regulations’ barred his son from admission. A year and a half later, well into WWI, Abdul senior told the Daily Telegraph that his son’s application to Duntroon was refused ‘on the grounds of his father’s nationality’, even though his son was an ‘Australian native’.⁵⁶ The article was republished in at least three other newspapers but Abdul senior’s incorrect attribution of his son’s rejection to ‘nationality’ rather than ‘race’ was never corrected or questioned. As Peter Prince has shown, this blurring of race and nationality has had serious ongoing repercussions today.⁵⁷

Military Orders and the Racial Bar to Enlistment

By the start of WWI, the application of the NSEOD exemption clause in the Defence Act carried none of the nuance it might have had in 1901 or even 1910. That those NSEOD, despite being British subjects, were barred from enlisting in Australia’s expeditionary forces was no longer remarkable. On 16 October 1914, nearly a month after the start of the war, Colonel E. T. Wallack issued a military order to the 2nd Military District (New South Wales) that: ‘Only British subjects substantially of European origin or descent are to be accepted for service with the expeditionary forces.’⁵⁸ Three days later, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that ‘in the future only British subjects substantially of European origin or descent are to be accepted for service with the expeditionary forces’, confirming that this was a new regulation and a change in enlistment practice.⁵⁹ More surprising than the bar itself was the delay in its introduction. This is perhaps best understood as bureaucratic oversight – a delay in realising that, despite what policymakers imagined, those NSEOD not only wanted to enlist but also were actually being enlisted in Australia’s expeditionary forces.

Although military orders and regulations were developed within the authority of the Defence Act, their use gave defence officials flexibility, as they could be modified as needed without requiring parliamentary approval and there were also differences in how they were implemented across military districts. On 8 May 1917, after three years of heavy losses, low enlistment rates and one failed attempt to introduce conscription, another military order was issued to the 2nd Military District that ‘half-castes’ could enlist provided the examining medical officers were satisfied that ‘one of the parents is of European origin’.⁶⁰ The wording of these military orders varied across military districts. During WWI, Australia was divided into military districts broadly corresponding to each state and territory. Each district issued separate military orders, although, unfortunately, not all have survived. AIF District Standing Orders in 1916 for the 3rd Military District (Victoria) stated: ‘Men not “substantially of European origin” or descent are not to be enlisted’—but without reference to British subjecthood.⁶¹ An instruction booklet for enlisting officers published in Brisbane the same year stated: ‘Aboriginals, half-castes, or men with Asiatic blood are not to be enlisted. This applies to all coloured men.’⁶² Finally, when restrictions were loosened, the Western Australian Recruitment Committee decided to ignore them; however, men NSEOD did still successfully enlist in Western Australia.⁶³

George Kong Meng’s complaint against his rejection from the AIF on the basis of being ‘NSEOD’ represented a significant challenge to the military order barring the enlistment of those NSEOD. It received the most publicity of any objection to the bar at the time and remains one of the most-cited examples today.⁶⁴ It is considered particularly significant because, at the time George was rejected for service, his brother was already serving on the front. The crucial point missed is that his brother, Herbert, enlisted on 1 September 1914, a month and a half before the military order that barred the enlistment of those NSEOD.

George Kong Meng, 1916

In September 1915, George Kong Meng tried to enlist but was rejected with no reason provided in surviving documentation.⁶⁵ At over 38 years old, George was only eligible to enlist once age restrictions were relaxed in June 1915, making men up to 45 years eligible. After being rejected a second time on 14 January 1916 (no official documentation on this attempt survives), he wrote an angry letter to Melbourne’s Argus and Age newspapers. He explained how, without being asked his ancestry, he had been rejected and given a certificate stating he was ‘not substantially of European origin’ signed by the medical officer.⁶⁶ George was a British subject born in Victoria to a Tasmanian-born mother of British ancestry and a Chinese-Malay father, born in Penang under British colonial rule. His father was arguably the wealthiest Chinese merchant in the nineteenth century and was well known and highly respected within Victoria. In the letter, George argued that he was a natural-born British subject with parents who were also British subjects, that he had six years training with the ‘old Victorian Mounted Rifles, and 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment’, that his brother was already serving and, finally, that England and France were using ‘coloured troops’ so why not Australia?

His case put considerable public pressure on the Department of Defence’s decision. We know that letters were written to the department about his case over the next few months: for example, letters were received from E. Stewart of Prahran in February, Mr Garrett of Longwood in April and Joseph Cook MP (leader of the federal opposition) in June. Unfortunately, no details of their arguments or the government’s response have survived archival culling.⁶⁷ George Kong Meng’s letter was also widely discussed and reproduced in other Victorian newspapers.⁶⁸ The only positions that did not call for a reassessment of the decision were taken by newspapers in Sydney and Perth that did not engage with the merits of the case.⁶⁹ Responses in Victorian newspapers, where George and his family were known, were supportive, and commentary pointed out various contradictions and inconsistencies in how the Department of Defence was dealing with race, nationality and enlistment. Those supporting George felt that being born in, and growing up in, Australia made him a suitable military candidate and a loyal subject, regardless of his racial background. Melbourne’s Punch, better known for its racist cartoons, was surprisingly forthright in its support for George:

The system that bars George Kong Meng from serving his country at the front certainly shrieks for immediate revision. Mr. Kong Meng is of Chinese blood, but he is of Australian birth, is married to an Australian, and all his interests are Australian. He is denied the privilege of fighting for his native country because his father was an oriental. This is preposterous.⁷⁰

Questioning the high number of enlistment rejections, the Argus suggested that there was ‘no good and sufficient reason’ why George Kong Meng should not serve with ‘his fellow Australians’ and was critical of the medical officer who acted ‘without tact and without proper inquiry as to Mr Meng’s nationality’.⁷¹ The article urged the minister for defence to review the matter. The Euroa Advertiser was convinced that George had been ‘inadvertently’ turned down and ‘felt sure’ that he would ‘receive immediate notification of acceptance of his services as soon as the official enquiries have been made’.⁷² The Euroa Gazette similarly felt that his enlistment would be assured ‘when proper inquiries have been made’.⁷³ One correspondent used George’s case to show the inconsistency of government policy when it came to those with German ancestry.⁷⁴ Writing from Sydney, another quipped, ‘try Sydney’, as Arthur Quong Tart, the Sydney-born son of the late Quong Tart and his Lancashire-born wife Margaret, had succeeded in enlisting there.⁷⁵

Despite the high level of public support, numerous calls for review and the range of arguments posed, the Department of Defence doubled down on its decision. The minister simply restated that ‘the rule in force was that recruits for the Australian Imperial Force must be substantially of European origin’.⁷⁶ The only explanation as to why George’s brother had succeeded in enlisting was that there had been a ‘lack of co-ordination between departments’.⁷⁷ Barry Mackinnon, chairman of the State Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, acknowledged that while some men NSEOD had successfully enlisted, they ‘desire[d] no more’: ‘Those of Asiatic origin, though born in Australia, will not be eligible.’⁷⁸ This was a distortion of the actual rule that stated that if you were ‘substantially of European origin’ you were eligible. While some rejected men did eventually succeed in enlisting, George Kong Meng was not one of them.⁷⁹

While commentators observed that George’s brother Herbert (1866–1954) had succeeded in enlisting, they missed the fact that he had enlisted prior to the military order barring the enlistment of those NSEOD.⁸⁰ They also overlooked the fact that Herbert had lied about his age; he lowered it by 10 years, claiming he was 38 and thus eligible to enlist.⁸¹ Even more significant was the fact that 11 days after George was rejected for service and two days after his letter was printed, not just one but four of Chin Langtip’s Australian-born sons (from Port Albert) successfully enlisted in Melbourne.⁸² Ernest Walter Langtip’s application form has a handwritten note stating that he was ‘of substantial European origin’, even though only one of his parents was of ‘European origin’. All have annotations stating that their applications had been ‘re-examined’ at the Melbourne depot, having passed medical assessments locally. Unfortunately, George Kong Meng’s 1916 enlistment documentation no longer survives so we are not able to compare the steps he went through in Melbourne to assess differences in administrative process. Inconsistent enlistment decisions like this were commonplace during WWI, an inevitable outcome of the nature of the system established to bar those NSEOD from enlisting – a system largely closed to scrutiny, poorly defined and described, and open to subjective decision-making.

George Kong Meng’s letter was the most significant public challenge to the bar to enlistment of those NSEOD but there were others. Newspaper editors and members of the public disagreed with and questioned the racial bar in other situations too, and were supported by sympathetic readers. Other cases considered unjust included the rejections of William Frederick Pow of Glen Valley in May 1915;⁸³ Mansfield-born Thomas Brooks of French and West Indian ancestry in July 1915;⁸⁴ and Charles Lionel Fooke, who had a Cantonese-born father and English mother, in January 1916. Charles Fooke successfully enlisted and passed the follow-up medical examination in Melbourne only to be rejected after being casually questioned by an officer at the barracks.⁸⁵ These cases, each of which was reported in the press, provide insight into the disconnect between the position of members of the public and the Department of Defence. The public supported the enlistment of these men – even if their often racialised language suggested that they did not view them as equals. Newspaper articles show a sustained questioning of the applicability of the racial bar on the enlistment of ‘half-castes’ throughout the war, calls for more flexibility in its interpretation, and sympathy and support for the men rejected. However, there is no evidence that the Department of Defence altered its official position in response to any of these calls. Nor did the department offer any public clarification about how it was interpreting the bar.

At the end of August 1915, Senator Thomas Bakhap once again addressed the Senate, this time during question time, calling for the removal ‘at the first opportunity’ of the ‘reference to men of Australian birth but of Asiatic extraction’ from the Defence Act.⁸⁶ The minister for defence, Senator George Pearce, responded that the Act ‘contains no such reference’ to ‘persons of Asiatic extraction’ only to ‘persons of European nationalities’. Pearce closed the discussion by stating: ‘I do not think it either wise or expedient that I should make any further statement on the matter.’⁸⁷ Newspapers reported the interaction but there was no public commentary on it. It is unfortunate that Bakhap did not read the Defence Act more closely and reflect more deeply on the difference between subjecthood and race because his argument had a sound basis. But Pearce’s response was incorrect too. The Act did not reference ‘European nationality’ but its opposite. His comment, whether deliberate or not, obfuscated the important distinction between nationality and race. We know from indexes to Department of Defence correspondence files that the department investigated Bakhap’s question further, but the results of this investigation have been lost.⁸⁸

Conclusion

In September 1916, as part of public discussions related to the government’s attempt to introduce conscription, Reg H. Meaburn, a regular correspondent to the Mercury in Hobart, argued that ‘all Chinese and other Asiatics naturalised in the Commonwealth should be liable to serve when called upon’. He suggested that this was something Senator Bakhap should be looking into.⁸⁹ ‘Naturalisation’, Meaburn observed, ‘has its duties as well as its privileges’. His comments touch on the overarching argument of this chapter: that, in barring the participation of those NSEOD in military service during WWI, the Australian Government created a third category of people, those who were British subjects in law but, because they were not white, were considered to lack allegiance to Australia and were treated as ‘aliens’ despite their birth rights or naturalisation status.⁹⁰

In response to Meaburn, someone calling themselves ‘TASMAN’ wrote that naturalised British subjects who were ‘Asiatic’ were treated differently and were barred from enlistment under the Defence Act.⁹¹ Meaburn, in turn, replied that if it was only a matter of changing the Defence Act ‘then it is quite time it was altered’, suggesting that the Chinese community could appeal to the Australian Parliament to have it changed.⁹² Neither Bakhap, the Chinese Australian community in Tasmania nor Chinese Australians elsewhere took up this suggestion. This is noteworthy given that Chinese Australian communities mobilised against discriminatory legislation in many other circumstances. This serves as a reminder that not all Australians who were NSEOD would have wanted to enlist.

When drawing up Australia’s defence legislation in the early twentieth century, politicians and government bureaucrats assumed that Aboriginal Australians and other ‘coloured’ Australians would not want to enlist because they had been excluded from an Australia imagined as a white nation. The Australian Government imagined that Australia would be defending itself against an Asian enemy and that it would be the white citizens within this newly forged nation that would rise up to defend it. This was not so. We know Australia’s First Peoples and those with Chinese, Indian and Syrian ancestry all sought to enlist during WWI and that many succeeded. Tracing changes in the Defence Act, we see that Australia’s defence forces were not initially constructed with racial constraints but that this changed over time. White Australians of British and European (ironically, largely German) ancestry were to be included; excluded were those NSEOD – that is, Aboriginal Australians and those with Chinese ancestry, as well as those with Indian, Japanese, Syrian and Polynesian or other South Sea Islander ancestry.

Exemptions to compulsory military training and service in the Defence Act of 1909/1910, including racial ones, were written into legislation as a boon, a choice. Was the fledgling Australian Government being magnanimous and giving those NSEOD the opportunity to excuse themselves from participating in White Australia? If so, they failed to recognise that their imagined White Australia was not shared by all, and that non-white Australians would nevertheless want to defend their own imagined Australia – one that included them. It is more likely that the Australian Government intended to bar those NSEOD from Australia’s defence forces but needed a discreet way to hide this fact from the British Government, which was intent on maintaining its empire and building its relationships with Asia, particularly Japan.

In the end, the war Australia had been preparing for was a European one, outside the Commonwealth, and so it was not Australia’s defence forces that were used but two expeditionary forces (the AIF and the AN&MEF). Enlistment was voluntary and enlistment criteria were set out in a series of evolving military orders. As Peter Stanley has observed, while the orderly volumes of regulations, military and standing orders might suggest that the AIF worked like a machine, the reality was far from it – it was ‘more like a plant, needing constant tending and pruning’.⁹³

On 16 October 1914, after the first contingent of soldiers was sent to the war, a military order was issued that barred those NSEOD from enlisting with the expeditionary forces. Sporadically throughout the war, examples of men refused enlistment because of their race were criticised in newspapers as unjust. The inconsistencies and contradictions of Department of Defence decisions were highlighted, but the department did not shift its stance until May 1917. In the face of plummeting enlistment rates, and before a second attempt to introduce conscription in December 1917, restrictions were eased and Aboriginal people of mixed descent were permitted to enlist.

Little archival evidence survives to help us unravel what the government’s specific intentions were. Through a close reading of changes to the Defence Act, military orders and instructions, and analysis of pivotal cases, we can see how an exemption that started as voluntary came to be employed as an exclusion or bar to participation. The cases examined here shed light on how lived experiences shaped administrative policy and decision-making, contributing to a hardened stance. By the start of WWI, many people, including Senator Thomas Bakhap, assumed that exemption clauses within the Defence Act determined enlistment. The Department of Defence did nothing to dispel this notion. In discussions about enlistment in newspapers, government correspondence and parliamentary debates, concepts of race and nationality were often used interchangeably. The difference between these concepts was not well understood, or perhaps even deliberately misunderstood, as nobody tried to publicly correct or clarify errors. When people questioned the racial bar on enlistment, they were largely ignored. This may well have been a deliberate ploy on the part of the government to ensure that laws and regulations were fluid and open to interpretation so that officials could make subjective decisions with little oversight and behind closed doors. In doing so, the Australian Government was able to obscure the fact that they had created a category of people who were British subjects in law but, because of their race, were not given equal rights.