A DIVIDED NATION
The experience of the First World War split the nation in two. There were those, like the Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who felt that Australia's role was to support Britain. He believed that we should do so unconditionally, using all the manpower available to us. There were others who felt Australians should only be forced to go to war if they were defending their own country. The issue was so divisive that the Federal Government was forced to call a referendum on the issue of conscription. The Government lost to those who argued Australians should not support conscription. John Curtin, who had resigned from the Timber Worker's Union in 1915, had become the Secretary of the Anti-Conscription League and was at the forefront of the fight against conscription. The issue was one that emerged again in 1917 with a second referendum that the anti-conscriptionists won even more conclusively.

JOHN CURTIN AND THE BATTLE AGAINST CONSCRIPTION
John Curtin's arrest in 1916 gives us a clue to the strength of his political beliefs. He was prepared to go to prison rather than register for military service,

believing that war was against the interests of the workers. He argued that Australians should not be conscripted into a capitalist, imperial war, a war which was doing nothing to help the Australian worker. Luckily for John Curtin, he stayed in prison for only three days due to the failure of the 1916 referendum in which a narrow majority of Australian people voted against conscription. The experience, however, was enough to send him into a long bout of depression.

Claude Marquet, "I'll have you!" An anti conscription cartoon, Australian Worker, 13 December 1917, p.9.
Courtesy of the Newspaper Collection, State Library of Victoria.