Australia's "Yes or No" Campaign



The "Yes" "No" campaign was a political debate about Australia's involvement in World War One. In two referendums (1916,1917), Prime Minister Billy Hughes offered Australians the chance to vote for conscription .




Yes Badges

 

Strong ideas about the war were being passed around at the time. The Australian Government already had the power to conscript soldiers in defence of Australia; what they couldn't do was conscript men to fight overseas. This is what Hughes was trying to achieve.

The major Australian newspapers, The Argus and The Age, supported the vote for conscription, as did representatives from every political party.

Arguments in favour of conscription included:

• It was Australia's duty to support Great Britain
• Australia's good reputation would be maintained
• Voluntary recruitment had failed
• Conscription ensured an equal sacrifice from all Australians
• Other countries, such as New Zealand, Canada and particularly Great Britain already had conscription.
  
  

As Australia was a colony of Great Britain, patriotism played a major role in pro-conscription arguments.

Anti-conscription supporters argued that:

• It was an unjust war and conscription was an unjust policy
• No one had the right to send someone else to their death
• An absence of men would see women and non-European men entering the workforce, causing wages to fall and worsening work conditions
• Too many Australians had already died or been seriously wounded.

Both the 1916 and 1917 referendums were defeated by very close margins. As a result, conscription was not used in World War One.

Voluntary Recruitment: Why it Wasn't Enough

Conscription is the compulsory enrollment of personnel into a national service, usually involving the military. Its origins can be traced all the back to ancient times. Military conscription was widely used in warrior societies such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Japan in the time of the samurai and the Aztec Empire. Conscription found its way into Europe during the middle ages.

At the beginning of the first world war, all European countries aside from Britain had the system of conscription in place. During the first two years of the war, over three million British men had volunteered into the army. However due to heavy losses on the Western Front, in 1916, Britain was forced to introduce compulsory military conscription for healthy men between the ages of 18-41.

Australia, a devoted colony of the British Empire, faced similar problems.

An Australian Recruitment Poster

In Australia, many men wanted to join the army and fight for the country. Sadly most could not because the entry requirements were very strict. Half of the contingent had to have had some sort of war experience. The rest of them had to be physically fit, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five and be over 167cm in height. Because of these restrictions, the number of enlistments for the army declined. However, when the Gallipoli campaign was started, the physical requirements were slackened and the number of enlistments increased again.

World War One saw 416,809 men volunteering to fight in the Australian army.