Home Front

Most New Zealanders supported the country’s entry into the war, only a minority of socialists and anti-militarists publicly opposed it. The first nine months at home were uneventful, the war yet to make an impact. Gallipoli soon changed that, the shocking casualty lists giving an instant reality check. As the casualties continued to mount during 1915, the number of men volunteering declined significantly and many soon demanded an ‘equality of sacrifice’. In August 1916 the government introduced conscription under the Military Service Act, which provided for a system of compulsory service for men aged 20-46 years. The National Register compiled in 1915 was used to classify the reservists into two divisions – the first made up of unmarried and recently married men (including widowers and divorcees without children), the second made up of the rest. Ballot selection was at first confined to the first division, but in October 1917 was extended to the second division (for married men without children). Upon selection for service the conscript underwent a medical examination, however 65% of these recruits were declared unfit during this initial examination.

With the introduction of conscription, conscientious objection quickly became a contentious public issue. Provision was made in the Act for the exemption of members of religious bodies who had declared their objection to military combatant service before the war. Only 73 religious objectors had been exempted by war’s end. Conscientious objectors who refused to enlist faced a tough, carefully regulated system of punishment designed to ‘educate the obdurate’ in their ‘duty to the country’. After a short period of detention they faced court martial, sentences of hard labour imprisonment, and if they still refused to enlist they faced further imprisonment or were forcibly sent to the front. Fourteen conscientious objectors were transported to the Western Front in 1917 and endured various attempts to break their spirits including Field Punishment No.1 (hard labour, lost pay & privileges, and tied to a pole, fence or wagon wheel), assaults, food deprivation, and warnings they would be shot. Only two held out, one of which was Archibald Baxter, father of poet James K. Baxter, who was repatriated in 1918 after suffering a physical and mental breakdown. When the war ended 273 ‘conchies’ remained in prison in New Zealand, the last conscientious objector not released until November 1920.

Censorship was imposed during the war on newspapers, publications and soldiers’ mail with the aim of denying the enemy information of military importance, and to maintain civilian morale and suppress internal opposition to the war effort. In 1916 anti-sedition war regulations made illegal “any public utterance or action that might discourage the prosecution of the present war to a victorious conclusion”. Anti-war literature was confiscated and distributors prosecuted, and newspapers had to submit articles to the censor to be passed fit for publication. The horrors of war and the dreadful circumstances in which many soldiers died were largely hidden from public view. The need to uphold public morale, to recruit more soldiers, and to support the war effort was reinforced by the war rhetoric used in newspapers, public events, and in the churches.

Censorship also applied to images of the war with official photographs, film, and works of art being heavily controlled and censored. In 1917 Henry Armytage Sanders was appointed official New Zealand photographer and cinematographer in France, but under strict conditions. He was not permitted to develop his own photographs or films, all material to be sent to General Headquarters to be developed and censored. Consequently official photographs from the First World War show little of the death and desolation

Soldiers were not supposed to have cameras at the front, but many took pictures that provided poignant and graphic views of the war, in direct contrast with the official photographs where depictions of death and desolation were rare. The official war artists were instructed not to include dead bodies in their work, which was hard for some to come to terms with.

“Why may not the real horrors of battle be illustrated? Every time I have painted the reality I have been requested to alter it. Why? Nothing would prevent wars so much as for the masses to see the torn and mangled forms. Heads and limbs blown away from their bodies and other terrible mutilation of horses and men I have had the sorrow of seeing. It is the false picturing of battles that fans the cursed war fever because only the glorious side of it is shown or realized except by those who have lost their dear ones or those who have been mutilated.” (Art and the War, Capt. A. Pearse, NZRB, 1919)

When his time as an official war artist was over George Butler found a way to reconcile the constraints of censorship, with what he had seen, by repainting a scene he had done earlier. In 1918 as a war artist he painted Sunken Road at Solesmes under the conditions of his position, but in 1920 free of restrictions he repainted the exact same scene as he had originally seen it, including the bodies of the dead.