Resumen de Another Perspective on Australian Discipline in the Great War: The Egalitarian Bargain
Culture as an underlying factor in Australian discipline during the Great War deserves further exploration. Most accounts relate a poor disciplinary record compared with Australia’s British and Dominion allies. A new perspective, proposing a different underlying attitude to leadership and service, is offered as one element contributing to the explanation of the different attitudes to discipline. Based on the discourse in one cultural artefact, the prose literature of the war, this paper investigates how Australian egalitarian expectations contrasted with the paternal-deferential relationship between British officers and their men. Three factors in particular contributed to the Anzac attitude to discipline: the explicit egalitarian values of Australian society, the Anzac conception of the war as work rather than a crusade, and the Australians’ persistent citizen self-identity.
