Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just over 75 years ago, on 8 October 1931, Labor Prime Minister James Scullin rose in the House of Representatives and announced the death of Sir John Monash, Australia’s great wartime general. Amidst emotional scenes in the federal parliament, Joe Lyons, soon to become Prime Minister, said the death of Sir John Monash was a great loss and he recorded this tribute:

He was a great soldier, a great engineer, a great scholar and above all a great Australian.

Similar sentiments were expressed when the Leader of the Senate, Senator Barnes, brought forward the condolence motion. He said:

Nothing that I might say would enhance his glory; he was so well known to all the people of Australia, and has so endeared himself to every section of the community, that I feel it would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to do more than express our profound sorrow at his death.

Indeed, this nationwide outpouring of grief was evident when, on Friday, 9 October 1931, Sir John Monash’s body was brought to the Victorian Parliament House. The Age reported:

Guarded by four soldiers, day and night, the body of Sir John Monash lies in state at Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, while the whole Australian nation mourns the loss of Australia’s great citizen.

Many men with returned soldiers badges, and a great number of women and children, were in the queue when, at 5 pm, they were allowed to enter Queen’s Hall to file past the coffin and pay their tributes. On Sunday the funeral procession commenced after a brief service at Parliament House. The Age reported that the Parliament House steps were thronged with people as far as the eye could see. The gun carriage on which the coffin was placed was drawn by six horses, with the cap and sword of the dead commander laid upon the flag draped bier. His riderless charger, with the boots reversed in the stirrups, followed slowly behind.

Indeed, the newspapers at the time demonstrated the remarkable outpouring of grief from all groups in Australian society. Page after page was filled with eulogies and photographs, first of the lying in state in Queen’s Hall and then of the funeral procession. Photographs published in the newspapers showed vast crowds lining St Kilda Road. The Argus estimated ‘some hundreds of thousands of people must have been there’. The crowds at Monash’s funeral were certainly the largest ever seen in Australia up to that time, and have probably never been equalled at a commemoration of the death of an individual. Geoffrey Serle, Monash’s biographer, wrote:

If the King had died, he could not have been shown more respect than that given the boy from Richmond and Jerilderie of Jewish-Prussian patronage.

Australians of the 1930s had little doubt that Sir John Monash was one of our greatest sons. Above all, they admired his magnificent leadership, his role in the Allied victory in the Great War and his great concern for the welfare of the ordinary soldier. The career of General Monash was covered in great detail by the printed press. The Argus, for example, pointed out that in the closing days in September the corps under General Monash’s command was 200,000 men—‘exceeding, more than fourfold, the whole of the British troops under Wellington’.

Let me quote from an address given by Roland Perry at the commemoration service at the Victorian parliament held last Friday, when he spoke of the stunning victory at the Battle of Amiens which was planned by Monash in August 1918. Roland Perry said of Monash:

... it was his achievement 88 years ago on the 8th day of the 8th month of 1918, as the commander and planner of the most decisive battle of World War One, that eclipsed all else.

Monash was made Commander of the Australian Army in May 1918. Before he took command, we had five divisions, each of about 30,000 men, placed with the British armies in Belgium and France along the Western Front, the line separating the combatants.

On one side of the Front were the British and French forces (and late in 1918, the Americans too).

On the other side were the Germans, Bulgarians and Turks.

Until Monash took charge, the Australians, the diggers, had been used as cannon fodder in many poorly planned battles that often ended in loss and stalemate.

At this critical moment, Monash fought to get all the diggers from those five Australian divisions together as one army for the first time. It became the biggest of the 20 Allied Army Corps on the Western Front. With all that mighty manpower under his control, Monash put up to the British High Command his master-plan for a major counter-attack.

The Allies had not won a major breakthrough battle, that is, a really damaging victory, in the entire war. Only the Germans a few months earlier, on the 21st of March 1918, had won a big one. They destroyed the British Fifth Army, and disabled the Third Army.

Monash’s plan for the Battle of Amiens, 120 kilometres North of Paris, was adopted.

He used the infantry in support of the technology of war, communications, 800 planes for aerial reconnaissance and bombing, several hundred tanks, along with artillery, machine guns and other weaponry. Because of this brilliantly engineered combination, the Australians, with Canadians in support, defeated two German Armies in one mighty Blitzkrieg. It took 48 hours.

The head of all German forces, General Ludendorff, said that the 8th of August was “the blackest day of the war”—

and, of course, the blackest day for the Germans—

Monash’s breakthrough meant that “the German army could not now win the war. It could only defend.”

Roland Perry concluded, in his address:

The First AIF under Monash took on 39 German Divisions, including the crack Prussian Guard, from 4th July to 4th October 1918, and defeated every one of them. There were one million German soldiers in those 39 Divisions, the equivalent of the entire German Army on the Russian front.

This is why Roland Perry called his recent biography of General Monash Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War.

In recent years a great deal has been done to commemorate this magnificent Australian. Each year on the anniversary of Monash’s death a service is now held in the Victorian parliament, and I must pay tribute to the organisers of this particular event. I think it has now been going for three or four years, and they have done a magnificent job in bringing to the attention of the wider public the achievements of General Monash.

I am also pleased to report that my colleague the Hon. Bruce Billson, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, is currently working at developing a program to commemorate the historic battles of 1917 and 1918 which involved the Australian Imperial Forces. I have no doubt that the events of 8 August 1918 will be a centrepiece of these commemorations and should do much, once again, to bring to the attention of the public how much the world as we know it today owes General Monash, his officers and his men for bringing to an end the carnage of the First World War.

I think this is important; I think that to the current generation of Australians the historic battles of 1918, and particularly the breakthrough on 8 August 1918, are not well known. Australians know well the events at Gallipoli, and that is a very good thing. But I think it would be wonderful if there could be greater knowledge about the magnificent victory that General Monash planned, orchestrated and led. I believe it was the first time an Australian led the five Australian divisions on the Western Front. That was a truly historic battle. The anniversary is in 2008, and I have no doubt that Bruce Billson, who is an excellent minister, will ensure that this very important battle—important not only to Australians but also, as I said, to the world as we know it today—will be appropriately marked and commemorated. Hopefully many more Australians will learn of the achievements of this very great man.