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Tilting at Windmills:

Secret Armies in Depression-era


Victoria
By Tom Franklin

In Cervantes novel Don


Quixote the titular hero is a
man who has read so much
chivalric poetry that he
goes mad and tries to
navigate 17th century Spain
as a questing Knight. In
one of the more famous
passages Don Quixote spots
some windmills in the
distance and mistakes
Figure 1: Adrien-Luis Demont’s ‘Don Quixote’, on display in
them for monstrous giants.
the N.G.V.
He is told by his servant
that they are not giants but windmills. Don Quixote is too eager to find a
monster to slay in the chivalric tradition and so he charges the first
windmill. At that moment a light breeze picks up and one of the arms of
the windmill strikes him, shattering his lance and unhorsing him. This
image has remained in the popular imagination and has even made its
way into English idiom: ‘tilting at windmills’. It is an amusing image, and
we are meant to laugh and Don Quixote’s ill-advised goal of reviving an
anachronistic tradition and his foolish attempt to fight wholly imagined
foes. Presumably the reader would never do anything that ludicrous. I
would like to draw your attention to strange happenings in early 1931
when many Victorians were essentially, dressing up in battle garb and
‘tilting at a windmill’ like Don Quixote.
A secret army

In early 1931 a private militia formed in regional Victoria to combat


an imagined mounting threat. These people believed there was an
unholy alliance between the Catholics, Labor, and international
communist groups. On one night in particular this ‘White army’
mounted a pre-emptive defense in North West Victoria that involved
patrols and other military manoeuvres. After this point the Army
quickly lost its steam as members began to realize a battle would not
be forthcoming. This sounds farcical, but in truth it is an interesting
and curious event that tells us much about some of the roles former
A.I.F. infantrymen played in society in the interwar period. It also can
show us the anxieties protestant Australians had during the great
depression. Lastly, it can remind us that Communism was a bogeyman
on the national radar well before the cold war.

Figure 2: An article from Smith’s Weekly.

Both the Government’s Investigations Branch in 1931 and later historians would
name this army ‘The White Army’.1,2 While today this might suggest racialised
connotations the nomenclature speaks to Australian fears in 1931. The White Army
was the name given to the forces that fought against the Russian revolutionaries, the
Red Army, in 1917 revolution. It is hard to be completely certain what name the
scattered members of this Australian organization used. A newspaper article in
Smith’s Weekly titled ‘What in Ellen’s name is this about?’ describes an organization
in Victoria mobilizing to fight ‘a common enemy’.3 It details some of the bizarre
codewords and countersigns spoken by members of a secret militia. In the article
this organization is called the League of National Safety. This was referred to in the
basic password: “Hist! do you know Ellen?”4 Essentially ‘Ellen’ or ‘Ellens’ equals:
L.N.S. However, ‘the White Army’ appears in the primary sources as well. In
Defending the National Tuckshop, author Michael Cathcart interviews a few former
members who refer to it as ‘The White Army’.5 So too does inspector Roland Browne
in his letters to the Attorney General, albeit in quotation marks.6 The fact that both
external sources and former member refer to the army thus is informative. It’s a
testament to the one of the group’s main aims: to combat communism.
A real army?
Within this even, the term ‘Army’ is one that invites a certain scepticism. Fringe
political groups will sometimes use the word Army in their name to adopt a more
militant tone. While the White Army was indeed motivated by politics, the term army
is actually more descriptive. The 21st century understanding of armed forces makes the
idea of a rogue army in Australia hard to imagine. However at this time Australia was
full of veterans and officers who served in the Great War. This distinction of rank was
not abandoned once soldiers returned to civilian lives but often carried a certain level
of respect and authority7,8. The groups that make up the White Army were separate
cells and often centred around their local towns. The common thread between them
was that the officers were ex-AIF.9 This also perhaps explains how vigilante justice
was legitimized in the eyes of its members. They were returning to old grooves they
were used to and appealing to traditional authorities. The oath new members were
sworn in by had a distinct military tone: recruits were to swear to the king and the
constituted authority.10
The Evidence
The most valuable primary source for the existence and nature of the White Army is the
correspondences between the Attorney General’s office and Inspector Roland Browne.
Inspector Browne was with the government’s Investigations Branch, a pre cursor to ASIO
today. These letters describe local witness accounts of White Army activity which illuminate
their aims and the local interactions with them. The very fact that investigations branch felt
that this required an investigation demonstrates how seriously the government was taking
this issue. Browne in the correspondences is committed to finding out how large and
motivated this organization is. The stories collected within paint a fascinating picture. They
are mostly from the perspective of those negatively affected by the army who subsequently
reported these things to their local priest or police station, which was in turn followed up by
the Investigations agent. The accounts can be divided into two broad categories.

Figure 3: Top secret Investigations Branch files, now declassified.


The first category features signs of mobilization such as secret meetings
where Catholics are forbidden entry, drills and marching behind fire stations,
talk of arms and munitions, etc.11 More illuminating to White Army
philosophy is the second category, what we might call ‘incidents. They range
from incidents recognizable as mean-spirited bigotry, such as Catholic
children being told by protestant classmates that their fathers would be in
real trouble if a revolution started, to accounts that are farcical. 12 For
example the documents relate that on March 3rd, in the town of Swan Water
a lieutenant colonel Duggan, a local parishioner of a Catholic church in the
area got a strange phone call. It was from Mr Mollroy who was a state
official in charge
of Unemployment
Relief in the area.
Mr Mollroy
wanted to meet
Col Duggan in
nearby St Arnaud.
Upon asking the
reason why
Mollroy said that
he, Duggan, would
be the one man
who ought to
know about this:
Figure 4: The offending convent in St Arnaud, allegedly stockpiled with “I have it on good
service rifles. authority that St
Arnaud convent
and Donald
convent are stocked with service rifles.” The Colonel, baffled, simply replied
“Nonsense. Where did you get such an absurd story? The sisters would be
frightened to death if anyone fired a pea rifle near them let alone service
rifles.” Mr Mollroy then became abusive with Col. Duggan.13 Such dizzying
heights of Protestant paranoia may be hard for the modern reader to
imagine in Australia. And indeed, whilst the idea of Convents being
stockpiled with arms for revolutionaries is an extreme case, The White Army
is a reminder that anti-Catholic sentiment used to be a major feature of
Australia’s social landscape.
The Sectarian Scar

Still, why were Catholics so important to the White Army? How did this tie in
to their aims of anti-communism? Catholicism and Communism are not
philosophies that generally align, and the Catholic church was famously quite
hostile to communism in Europe in the early 20th century. In truth this
imagined union says more about the tenor of the times in Australian politics
than anything else. Post First World War Australia was trying to find its place
in the Empire, while reconciling its new sense of nationalism forged in the
conflict. This often manifested itself as expressions of loyalty: loyalty to King
and Country and to the troops themselves.14 This can be seen in the White
Army in the oath as previously mentioned. On a national scale these expressions
were not universal and returned servicemen split along existing divisions, such
as class and religious divides.15 For example: being loyal to the troops could
mean an argument from the Left, in supporting new welfare policies for
returned soldiers. However political issues soon became framed around the lens
of ‘disloyalty’.16 The ‘Red Scare’ had communism as an infiltrating and
subversive force. It was characterised as an intellectual contagion that had to be
stopped. For ‘Loyalists’, any movement based on class rather than country
undermined the idea of the nation. It is from a similar angle that these political
agitators laid charges of disloyalty at the feet of Catholics. Catholicism was
ever caricatured as having a supranational influence. Supposed papist influence
would make the Catholic more loyal to the Vatican than to their countrymen.
By the late twenties the British Empire had been rocked by two Catholic
rebellions at its heart, the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland and the subsequent
Irish revolution. These events would have been fresh in the minds of the White
Army as much as the Communist revolution in Russia. Catholics in Australia
would have been acutely aware of this too as many thought of their
Catholicism as being intrinsically linked to their Irish origins.17 Moving away
from this international scope back to Australia we can see more local reasons for
this marrying these loyalist enemies. The two major parties emerging in the
first half of the twentieth century, Liberal and Labor, were preferred by
Protestants and Catholics respectively.18 This is also a reflection of how these
parties operated and the kind of voices they catered to.19 For the White Army
this was the crucial link that warranted harassment of their Catholic
neighbours: a fatal pre-disposition to vote for Labor.
Figure 6: De Groot’s Glorious charge into history.

Figure 5: A caricature of NSW


Premier Jack Lang.
The Labor party was the major party in Australia
that positioned itself as supporting the working
class. The most controversial Labor figure of this
era was Jack Lang, premier of N.S.W.20 His policies to combat the depression were not
well received by the Right in Australia.21 He was a notorious figure outside his own
state, as he made his way into White Army rhetoric in Victoria.22 A sister
organisation to the White Army, known as ‘The New Guard’ formed in NSW partially
as a response to Jack Lang and growing labour movements. The New Guard is worthy
of its own essay, but for the purposes of this discussion the New Guard offer an
interesting contrast to the White Army. They were a more public entity with a vocal
figurehead, Eric Campbell. Campbell too is an interesting figure and would later try
his hand at politics with little success. Both the New Guard and Jack Lang have their
own quixotic episode during the opening of the Sydney harbour bridge in 1932.
Before Premier Lang could cut the ribbon to open the bridge, a former lieutenant
Francis De Groot, who was a member of the New Guard rode up on a horse in his
army uniform and cut the ribbon himself with a sabre.23 This was in protest to Lang
and a tacit rejection of his authority. The whole affair was treated with a derision by
the newspapers.24 The New Guard was now set firmly in the sights of the press.
Thanks to the De Groot and Campbell the New Guard remain in the public
consciousness in a way that The White Army failed to match. Both groups however
demonstrate the kinds of extremes anti-labour movements would go to in the early
thirties.
A Night of Mirrors

In The Man of La Mancha, a play based on Don Quixote, the protagonist is finally
defeated by the Knight of Mirrors. He lifts his mirror shield to Don Quixote, showing
the man how ridiculous he is. For the White Army this foe would be called the night
of March the 6th. Acting on information from a source in Melbourne the various cells
were called to mobilize, as Melbourne was on the brink of being taken over by Papist-
Bolsheviks.25 In Donald, St Arnuad, Ouyen and other towns in Victoria men started
patrolling and setting up defensive positions.26 Cathcart records a former member
who recalled driving two men up to Wedderburn reservoir.27 They hid up a gum tree
with a rifle to protect the water supply from the oncoming hordes. The proverbial
mirror came in the morning as men started to wake up to the fact that their various
towns were distinctly un-ravaged. A night of seeing no one save for fellow patrols
(then presumably asking whether or not they knew Ellen) had left them feeling
sceptical about this organisation. The conclusion they were coming to is perhaps best
summed up by Inspector Browne:

“One cannot help feeling that the panic protective measures were grotesquely
unnecessary, while the apparent childish belief in the existence of a moving and
devouring Red Army on the part of men regarded and sane and solid seems beyond
belief.”28

For Catholics however, the whole experience would have been unedifying and
upsetting. For modern audiences The White Army is worth remembering as public
history. It provides an interesting snapshot into a sectarian divide that has all but
disappeared. It is also an interesting example of the lengths some people will go to
when acting on their worst prejudices on very little information.
Images:
Figure 1 - ‘Don Quixote’ by Adrien-Luis Demont, 1893. Courtesy of the National
Gallery of Victoria.
Figure 2 - Smith’s Weekly, 1933. Courtesy of Trove.
Figure 3 - Partial scan of Letter to AG re: White Army (Vic), 1931. Courtesy of the National
Archives of Australia.
Figure 4- St. Arnaud Convent, [c1920-1954] Courtesy of Trove.
Figure 5- Caricature of Jack Lang, 1932. Courtesy of Trove.
Figure 6 - Francis De Groot at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1932. Courtesy of
Trove.

Endnotes:
1. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble
publishers, 1988) p1-13
2. NAA: A395, NN, p3
3. ‘What in Ellen’s name is this about?’, Smith’s Weekly, Saturday 25 March 1933, page 3,
in Trove [online database] accessed 30/09/18
4. Ibid
5. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble
publishers, 1988) p1—45
6. NAA: A395, NN, p3
7. Stephen Garton, ‘Demobilization and Empire: Empire Nationalism and Soldier
Citizenship in Australia after the First world War - in Dominion Context’, Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol 50/1 (2015) p136
8. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble
publishers, 1988) p24
9. Ibid
10. NAA: A395, NN, p13
11. Ibid p3-13
12. Ibid p7
13. Ibid p9
14. Stephen Garton, ‘Demobilization and Empire: Empire Nationalism and Soldier
Citizenship in Australia after the First world War - in Dominion Context’, Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol 50/1 (2015) p136
15. Ibid p136-138
16. Ibid p136
17. Siobhan McHugh, ’Not in Front of the Altar’, History Australia, Vol 6/2 (2009) p42.7
18. Ibid p42.18
19. Judith Brett ’Class, Religion and Foundation of the Australian Party system: a Revisionist
Interpretation’, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol 37/1 (2002) p170
20. ‘Mr Lang is dismissed’ Australasian, 21st of May 1932, page 10, in Trove [Online Database]
accessed 16/10/18
21. Ibid
22. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble publishers,
1988) p1, 99
23. ‘De Groot Fined’ Kargoolie Miner, 7th of April 1932, page 4, in Trove [Online Database]
accessed 16/10/18
24. Ibid
25. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble publishers,
1988) p12, 24
26. ‘Rumours of Danger’, Horsham Times, 20th of March 1931, page 3, in Trove [Online Database]
accessed 16/10/18
27. Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble publishers,
1988) p12
28. NAA: A395, NN, p13

Bibliography

Primary sources:
’De Groot Fined’ Kargoolie Miner, 7th of April 1932, page 4, in Trove [Online Database] accessed
16/10/18
‘Mr Lang is dismissed’ Australasian, 21st of May 1932, page 10, in Trove [Online Database] accessed
16/10/18
NAA: A395, NN
‘Rumours of Danger’, Horsham Times, 20th of March 1931, page 3, in Trove [Online Database]
accessed 16/10/18
‘What in Ellen’s name is this about?’, Smith’s Weekly, Saturday 25 March 1933, page 3, in Trove
[online database] accessed 30/09/18
Secondary sources:
Brett, Judith, ’Class, Religion and Foundation of the Australian Party system: a Revisionist Interpreta-
tion’, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol 37/1 (2002)
Cathcart, Michael, Defending the National Tuckshop (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble publishers,
1988)
McHugh, Siobhan, ’Not in Front of the Altar’, History Australia, Vol 6/2 (2009) p42.7
Stephen Garton, ‘Demobilization and Empire: Empire Nationalism and Soldier Citizenship in Australia
after the First world War - in Dominion Context’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 50/1 (2015)
p136

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