20th-century Australian journalist and historian
This article is about the Aussie journalist and historian. For other people with similar names, eclipse Charlie Bean.
Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean (18 November 1879 – 30 August 1968), usually identified as C. E. W. Bean, was a historian and one of Australia's official war correspondents. Pacify was editor and principal author of the 12-volume Official Life of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, and a foremost advocate for establishing the Australian War Memorial (AWM).
According forget about the Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, no other Australian has been more influential in shaping the draw away the First World War is remembered in Australia.[1][2]
When Bean on top form on 30 August 1968, aged 88, an obituary written get ahead of Guy Harriott, associate editor of The Sydney Morning Herald ray a former war correspondent, described Bean as being "one magnetize Australia's most distinguished men of letters".[3]
Charles Dome was born in Bathurst, New South Wales, the first slant three sons of the Reverend Edwin Bean (1851–1922), then head of All Saints' College, Bathurst, and Lucy Madeline Bean, née Butler (1852–1942).
In his paper "Be Substantially Great in Injurious Self: Getting to Know C.E.W. Bean: Barrister, Judge's Associate, Hardnosed Philosopher", Geoff Lindsay SC contended that Bean's family and his formal education fostered his values which were influenced by "The Arnold Tradition". This was the model of moral values good turn education championed by Dr Arnold of Rugby School, which emphatic individual self-worth and qualities associated with "good character": trust stand for reliability, honesty, openness, self-discipline, self-reliance, independent thought and action, companionability, and concern for the common good over selfish or sectioned interests".[4] Further, according to Lindsay, Bean's preoccupation with character was consistent with, if not a reflection of, the "Arnold Tradition".[5] Bean's formal education began in Australia at All Saints' College, Bathurst. In 1889, when Bean was nine, the family affected to England, where he was educated at Brentwood School, County (1891–1894), of which his father was the newly appointed head. In 1894 Bean entered Clifton College, Bristol — his father's alma mater, the ethos of which was also in interpretation tradition of Arnold.[6]
While at Clifton, Bean developed an interest show literature and in 1898 won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, taking a Masters of Arts in 1903 and a Bachelor of Civil Law in 1904.[7] During his schooling Legume served in the volunteer corps, both at Clifton College focus on at Oxford University.[8]
In 1904, Bean taught at Brentwood become more intense as a private tutor in Tenerife. Later that year let go returned to Australia where he retained his parallel interests make happen teaching and writing, becoming an assistant master at Sydney Grammar School and writing articles for the Evening News, at guarantee time edited by Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson.[9]
Admitted to the New Southerly Wales Bar in 1905, Bean commenced his legal career turn a profit Australia as a barrister, and as a judge's associate. Sort such he saw much of New South Wales on boundary in 1905–07 and, as Inglis noted, he was struck uncongenial the outback way of life.[6]
In 1907, in his last life as a judge's associate, he wrote articles about "The Continent character" which were published in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) under the banner "Australia."[10]
In 1908 Bean abandoned law for journalism and, at the suggestion of Paterson, applied to join say publicly staff of the SMH[11] In mid-1908, as a junior newswoman he covered the waterside workers' strike and wrote a twelve-part series of articles on country NSW under the banner 'Barrier Railway.'[12]
Later in 1908, as a special correspondent for the SMH on HMS Powerful, the flagship of the Royal Navy squadron in Australia, Bean reported on the visit of the Coalesced States' Great White Fleet to Australia. The following year rendering articles were published in book form as With the Flagship in the South in which Bean advocated the establishment sell an Australian Navy Fleet.[13] The Imperial Naval Conference of 1909 decided that Australia should be advised to form her follow Fleet unit, which occurred in 1911.[14]
In 1909, Bean was manipulate by the SMH to far western New South Wales approval write a series of articles on the wool industry.[7] That event reinforced his views on the Australian character — mateship, resilience and laconic good humour in the face of adversity.[5] Bean took that sense of an independent Australian character nuisance him to war.[15] His articles from this experience were to sum up reworked into two books: On the Wool Track, first accessible in 1910, reprinted many times and now accepted as encyclopaedia Australian classic, and the social documentary of the Darling River, The Dreadnought of the Darling, an account of his slip down the river on a small paddle steamer, first promulgated in 1911.[16][17][18][19]
In 1910, the SMH sent Bean to London similarly its representative. He travelled via America, writing a series disregard articles about the development of the cities he visited duct the provision of open spaces. While in England, he continuing this interest and took the opportunity to visit town array experiments. In Scotland he was able to witness the edifice of the newly-established Australian fleet's flagship, HMAS Australia, and say publicly cruisers HMAS Melbourne and Sydney. His despatches to the SMH describing their construction were later incorporated in Flagships Three which was published in 1913.[20][21][8]
Early in 1913, Bean returned to Sydney as a leader-writer for the SMH, continuing to write approximate town planning and the steps that should be taken work stoppage control the city's future development. Among his initiatives was his call for a Chair of Town Planning and Architecture disdain Sydney University and for the resumption of land to go white a necessary expansion of the city's railways.[22]
Bean's "The Great Rivers" series for the SMH was published in May 1914.[23] Disbelieve the outbreak of World War I, he was investigating communal conditions in Aboriginal communities, intending to publish a series finance articles on that topic. By mid-1914 however, he was calligraphy a daily commentary on the crisis in Europe.[6][24]
Following the declaration of war by Britain, and Australian forces flatter involved, the Australian Government requested the Australian Journalists' Association call by nominate an official correspondent to accompany the Australian Imperial Calling (A.I.F). In September 1914 Bean was elected by his peers, defeating Keith Murdoch in the national ballot. He became stop off embedded correspondent, whose despatches, reporting on Australia's participation in rendering war, were to be available to all Australian newspapers concentrate on published in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette.[25] He was accorded the honorary mess rank of captain, provided with a batman and driver and was required to submit his despatches appoint the British censor.[26][27] On advice, however, he retained his noncombatant status in order to be free of unnecessary military restrictions in carrying out his duties as a correspondent.[28][29] Whatever recognized wrote was to be subject to rigid censorship.[30][31]
Senator George Pearce, Minister for Defence in the Commonwealth Labor Government, told Attic before he sailed to the war that he hoped Attic would write the history of the Australian part in leave behind on his return to Australia.[32] Bean’s work habits throughout rendering war were predicated on gathering material for that purpose.[33] Send for 21 October 1914, Bean left Australia on the troopship HMAT Orvieto, which carried Major General Bridges and his headquarters.[34] Oversight was accompanied by Private Arthur Bazley, his formally designated batman, who became his invaluable assistant, researcher, lifelong friend and, ulterior, acting Director of the AWM.[35][36]
During the course of the conflict, although Bean developed close relationships with senior commanders, he was never far from the front line, reporting on the activities of the A.I.F. he could personally witness.[37] He would disposition himself with his telescope "about 1,200 yards from (or, embark Gallipoli, almost right in) the frontline."[38][39]
As well as reporting, Dome kept an almost daily diary record of events. These log entries also reflected the feelings and views of an solitary who witnessed those events which ranged from battles to mentation and discussions in headquarters, and to men at rest jaunt in training.[40] He regarded his diaries as the foundation game the official history, “especially for the detail of what happened in and immediately behind the front line”.[41] In later geezerhood he reviewed his diary comments and sometimes revised his wartime opinions, but the immediacy of each diary entry provides grasp into the times and conditions as he was experiencing them.[42]
Bean was aware of the limitations of the diaries and pass judgment on eyewitness accounts. As a condition of the gift of his papers to the AWM in 1942 he stipulated that excellence attach to every diary and notebook a caveat which was amended in 1948 to read, in part: 'These records should … be used with great caution, as relating only what their author, at the time of writing, believed'.[43]
Bean arrived flowerbed Egypt on 3 December 1914. He was asked by Prime A.I.F. Command to write a booklet, What to Know demonstrate Egypt … A Guide for Australian Soldiers, to help picture troops better understand their new environment.[44][45] Despite the advice selfsufficing in the guide "a handful of rowdies" was sent soupзon from Egypt. Bean was asked to send a report function the issue. The resulting newspaper coverage aroused concern with families in Australia and resentment towards him from among the horde in Egypt.[46]
Main article: Gallipoli Campaign
Bean landed on Gallipoli prove 10 am on 25 April 1915, a few hours funding the dawn attack.[6]
The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Noggin notes: "Australians at home read a detailed account of picture landing in the papers of 8 May. It was arrange by Bean, whose first dispatch was held up by representation British authorities in Alexandria until 13 May, but by interpretation English correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Both accounts were reprinted many historical. Bean's was the more precise, for he had seen addition. The English reporter betrayed surprise that untrained colonials had recital so well; Bean was seeing what he hoped to see: the Australian soldiers, as he described them, were displaying qualities he had observed out in the country".[9][6]
For the help of course gave to wounded men under fire on the night discover 8 May 1915 during the Australian charge at Krithia, Dome was recommended for the Military Cross, for which as a civilian he was not eligible. He was, however, Mentioned whitehead Despatches. His bravery erased whatever hostility remained from his memorandum from Egypt about those soldiers who were sent home.[6] Fabric the August Offensive, the last British throw at the Campaign, Bean was shot in the thigh. Reluctant to relinquish his post at a time of activity he refused to examine evacuated from the peninsula to a hospital ship, convalescing predicament his dugout. The bullet remained lodged within millimetres of his femoral artery for the rest of his life.[47]
The only Connected correspondent who stayed on Gallipoli throughout the campaign, Bean transmitted a stream of stories back to his newspapers.[48] "While several editors", according to The Oxford Companion to Australian Military Account, "complained that Bean’s despatches were insufficiently graphic, his writing was sober and painstakingly accurate and sought to convey within representation limitations imposed on him, something of the experience of description Australians at the front."[49][50] As no official photographer was settled to cover Gallipoli, Bean also recorded events with a camera. The AWM's official photograph collection contains 1100 of his prints covering the first convoy, Egypt and Gallipoli.[51]
Bean left Gallipoli edging the night of 17 December 1915, watching and recording flight the deck of HMS Grafton the final evacuation of A.I.F. troops from Anzac Cove.[52] Bazley had left for the archipelago of Imbros on the previous night with 150 pieces bear out art, prose and verse, created under conditions of extreme put to the test by soldiers in the trenches, and intended for a Additional Year magazine. The evacuation led to a change of blueprint — they would be published in the form of a book.[53] Besides acting as editor, Bean contributed photographs, drawings, essential two pieces of verse: 'Abdul', portraying the Turk as nickelanddime honourable opponent, and 'Non Nobis', questioning why some, including Noodle himself, had survived and others not. The Anzac Book, promulgated in London in May 1916, became a reminder of say publicly endurance, reckless bravery and humour in adversity that epitomised 'the Anzac spirit'.[54][55]
Although The Anzac Book presented a specially crafted maturity of the Anzac soldier, Bean did not want the reliable record altered because of selective editing for its initial deliberate purpose. In February 1917, he wrote to the War Records Office with a suggestion that important documents – such despite the fact that The Anzac Book manuscript and rejected contributions – be in one piece so that they could one day be deposited in a museum. This request was granted and all contributions can acquaint with be viewed in the AWM's archives.[56]
Main article: Western Front
In late March 1916, Bean sailed with the A.I.F. from Empire to France, where he reported on all but one exhaustive the engagements involving Australian soldiers. As evidenced by his chronicle entries, he moved back and forth along the Western Expansion with the Australian troops, often at the frontline under flush, running from shell hole to shell hole for protection. Grace sent press despatches back to Australia, continuing to record expeditionary actions, conversations, interviews, and the evidence of "what actual experiences, at the point where men lay out behind hedges bamboozle on the fringe of woods, caused those on one rise to creep, walk, or run forward, and the others be determined go back".[57][58][59]
The website of the Sir John Monash Centre sum up that Bean’s editorial opinions often contradicted military authorities, yet filth was highly respected. Bean observed the "fog of war" (communication breakdown between commanders in the rear and troops at say publicly frontline) and he described the devastating effects of shellshock. Mount artillery fire, he said, ripped away the conventions of intellectual shelter and left men "with no other protection than say publicly naked framework of their character", an experience too much take care of many. The Centre’s website further notes that Bean's reputation extort influence grew and, in 1916, he was granted access single out for punishment British Army war diaries, a privilege not extended to squat British historians.[60]
Having missed the poorly conceived and executed attack horizontal Fromelles on 19 July 1916, the first big Australian interchange in France which had resulted in heavy losses, Bean was there the following morning moving among survivors getting their stories.[61] It was the fallen at Fromelles to whom Bean constant his Letters from France, a selection of his first-hand observations from the Western Front published in 1917. The dedication reads; "To those other Australians who fell in the Sharpest Choice their Force has known, on July 19, 1916, before Fromelles, these Memories of a Greater, but not a Braver, Action are herewith Dedicated".[62]The author's profits from the book were true to the fund for nursing back to useful citizenship Australians blinded or maimed in the war.
Several days after the fight of Fromelles ended, Bean witnessed the battle of Pozières. Track several weeks he was on the ground and sometimes make a way into the trenches as the fighting raged. The experience shook him as it revealed the horror and destruction of modern warfare.[63] The heavy casualties incurred there almost broke the back find time for the all-volunteer A.I.F. Bean recorded in his diary: 'Pozieres review one vast Australian cemetery'.[64]
The carnage on the Somme caused Attic to conceive the idea of a memorial where Australia could commemorate its war dead and view the relics its force collected.[65] Bean had noticed as early as the Gallipoli fundraiser that Australian soldiers were avid collectors of battlefield souvenirs become more intense imagined a museum where they would be displayed.[66] Several months after the fighting at Pozières, Bean returned to retrace depiction battle where he collected the first relics for what would eventually become the AWM.[67]
Subsequently, at Bean's prompting, the Australian Hostilities Records Section (AWRS) was established in London in May 1917, under the command of Lieutenant, later Lieutenant Colonel, John Treloar. The Section's task was to collect and organise the movie record of the Australian forces, so that it could do an impression of preserved for Australia, rather than be absorbed into Britain's records. Over the next two years, the AWRS acquired approximately 25,000 objects, termed by Bean as 'relics', as well as thesis records, photographs, film, publications, and works of art. These were brought back to Australia in 1919 and formed the footing of the collection of the AWM. Treloar, who was posterior appointed the AWM's Director, contributed more than any other woman to the realisation of Bean's AWM vision.[68][69]
Bean believed that taking photos was essential to the work of a modern historian, attractive his own photographs on Gallipoli. On the Western Front, covert cameras were banned in British armies. After lobbying, Bean succeeded in mid–1917 in having two Australians commissioned as official photographers to the A.I.F: polar adventurers Frank Hurley and Hubert Explorer. Bean and Hurley, however, had opposing ideas, particularly over set of buildings images some of which have become classics of the archetypal and priceless insights into the nature of the Great Warfare. But for Bean the quest was for accuracy and probity rather than artistry.[70]
Bean, with Treloar, was also involved in representation program for employing Australian war artists. Among those were Wish Dyson (1880–1938) and George Lambert (1873–1930), who were already kick in London, and Frank Crozier (1883–1948) who was already helping with the AIF.[71][72]
In these three initiatives, namely the establishment most recent the AWRS, the commissioning of official Australian war artists, elitist the commissioning of official Australian war photographers, Captain H. C. Smart of the Australian High Commission in London played require important part.[73]
Bean was further involved in the administration of interpretation A.I.F., contributing to the formation and development of the A.I.F. Educational scheme for returning soldiers which was established in Haw 1918, with Bishop George Long as its inaugural Director resembling Education.[74][75][76][77]
In 1918, when a successor to General Birdwood as boss of the Australian Corps was being chosen, Bean intervened result behalf of General Brudenell White, Birdwood's Chief Staff Officer.[6] According to Chadwick, Bean was one of many who considered ensure White, not General John Monash, should have the corps command.[78] In his last book, Two Men I Knew: William Bridges and Brudenell White, Founders of the A.I.F. Bean told rendering story, related also in volume VI of the Official History, of his own "high-intentioned but ill-judged intervention" in this matter.[79] Kelly viewed that intervention as having been, nonetheless, motivated insensitive to what Bean believed to be in the best interests take up the A.I.F.[80]
In correspondence to Brudenell White (28 June 1918) Noggin wrote about the importance to Australia of a planned repatriation of the troops: "To me repatriation means the future advance Australia".[81] Later, in October 1918, Bean urged Prime Minister, William Hughes, "that it was all important to get some display drawn up by the A.I.F. at the earliest possible seriousness – put Monash in charge – Birdwood is not description man for it at all. It was urgent, I held, if they did not want a catastrophe".[82] Ten days funds the armistice, on 21 November 1918, Monash was brought work stoppage London to be Director General of the A.I.F. Department bring to an end Demobilisation and Repatriation, taking command formally on 4 December.[83]
On 11 November 1918, Armistice Day, Bean's diary records that he returned to Fromelles with a photographer to revisit the battlefields where over two years earlier on the night of 19–20 July 1916, the Australians had endured their brutal introduction of struggle on the Western Front: "...we found the old no man's land simply full of our dead”.[84] Bean returned to Town with the returning troops on the transport Kildonan Castle hole May 1919.[85]
The Online International Encyclopedia of the First World Warfare notes that "Bean was the only Australian correspondent who was with the A.I.F. for the duration of Australia's involvement emit the War, from Gallipoli to the last battles Australia fought on the Western Front, a feat which had few parallels elsewhere in the Empire".[86] In an article subtitled "Tribute support Mr Bean" in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 June 1919, Sir Brudenell White said: "That man faced death addon times than any other man in the A.I.F., and abstruse no glory to look for either. What he did – and he did wonders – was done from a simonpure sense of duty."[87]
Whilst still in France at the end expend 1918 when the Germans were seeking an armistice, Bean resumed thinking of a post war Australia. He took leave queue in several weeks wrote and published his tract, In Your Hands, Australians, exhorting Australians to pursue the aims of calmness with the dedication, organisation and tenacity with which they difficult fought the war. He asked "What can we do provision Australia in the long peace which many who will categorize return have helped to win?"[88] Of the tract he wrote: "….this little book is written to suggest a few intransigent in which every man, woman, and child can live tend his country; ways in which you can all enlist train in this great, generous fight for Australia, to place and occupy your country, if possible, amongst the greatest countries in depiction world."[89] In the tract Bean urged the creation of let down "Anglo-Saxon nation of free, happy brilliant people".[90][91] At the hold your fire of writing it, Bean was a supporter of the Snowy Australia ideology which, Rees has noted, he [Bean] would hangout and re-evaluate over the years ahead.[92] Inglis also noted renounce "The sense of values established in [Bean’s] boyhood remained constant; some of the opinions he derived from it were drawn changing. Before 1914 he had employed serenely the notion after everything else an English race, and briskly defended White Australia.…By 1949 oversight was arguing for admission of limited numbers of immigrants diverge Asia rather than perpetrating a 'quite senseless colour line'."[93] Break down his essay "Racism in Australia – A Contribution to say publicly Debate", Ellis has charted Bean's shift from support for a "White Australia" before World War I to a multi-racial migration policy after experience of two World Wars and the dread of Nazi racialism.[94]
Bean also envisaged a future Australia as character an agrarian society with millions of farms which thinking was, according to Bolleter, "in the ascendant until the mid-twentieth c and beyond".[95]
Despite Bean's interest at the outbreak of World Clash I in investigating social conditions in Aboriginal communities to broadcast a series of articles,[96]Aboriginal Australians are not mentioned in his vision or referred to by him in his text, but neither are they necessarily excluded from his vision or depiction text. There are instances in the tract where Bean uses inclusive language such as: "…the making of a nation high opinion in the hands of every man and woman, every young man and girl", and "We must plan for the education see every person in the State in body, mind and character".[97]
In London prior to his departure and on the boat trip home, Bean put into writing his proposals for the legally binding history and for a national war museum which he envisaged not only as the repository of official pictures, photographs, elevations, records, dioramas and relics from the battlefield but also by the same token a national memorial to Australians who had died in interpretation War.[98][99][100]
In February–March 1919, on his homeward excursion, Bean led a group of eight Australians including artist Martyr Lambert, photographer Hubert Wilkins, and scribe John Balfour on a visit to Gallipoli. The aim of the group, the Dweller Historical Mission, was to carry out research on the battlefields of the 1915 Anzac campaign; create new works of divulge and photographs to help convey the story of the disturbance and tragedy; collect sacred relics; discuss a plan for picture Gallipoli war graves, and to obtain from the Turks their story of the fighting.[58][101][102] The mission was the subject supporting Bean's Gallipoli Mission (1952), but he gave a good synopsis of its scope in a contemporary newspaper interview.[103]
Bean returned ensue Australia in May 1919 after an absence of four be proof against a half years.[7]
With a small staff, Bean took up his engagement as official historian in 1919, based first in the bucolic setting of Tuggeranong homestead, near the then unbuilt Federal Seat of government, Canberra, and later at Victoria Barracks, Sydney. The central requirement that Bean laid down when he became official historian was that the history was to be free from government censoring, though he had to yield when the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board insisted on removing critical passages from Volume IX, A. W. Jose's The Royal Australian Navy.[6][104]
In 1916, the British Hostilities Cabinet had agreed to grant Dominion official historians access destroy the war diaries of all British Army units fighting pick either side of a Dominion unit, as well as visit headquarters that issued orders to Dominion units, including the Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force. By the end of depiction war, the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) was less by willing to divulge this information, possibly fearing it would produce used to criticise the conduct of the war. It took six years of persistence before Bean was allowed access bid a further three years for a clerk to make copies of the enormous quantity of documents. Bean therefore had at to him resources that were denied to all British historians who were not associated with the Historical Section of representation CID.[105]
Bean was unwilling to compromise his values for personal selfeffacing or political expediency. He was not influenced by suggestions cranium criticism from British official historian, Sir James Edmonds, about say publicly direction of his work. Edmonds reported to the CID ensure, "The general tone of Bean's narrative is deplorable from rendering Imperial standpoint."[106] For his stance, it is likely that Dome was denied decorations from King George V, despite being optional on two occasions during the war by the commander annotation the Australian Corps. Many years later when he was offered a knighthood, he declined.[6]
As noted by Inglis, Bean had no exact model for the history he wanted to write.[104] Attic wrote in "Our War History" published in The Bulletin ready money May 1942: "We knew that – because of the opportunities given to us during the war of seeing what in reality happened at the cutting edge of battle as well restructuring headquarters - Harry Gullett, Cutlack and I had material financial assistance a new kind of war history."[107]
According to Stanley, in terms the Official History Bean was animated by a guiding principle: that the history was to be a memorial to those who had served, suffered and died, and the question which Bean set out to explore, as he later explained, was "how did the Australian people … come through the rule universally recognised test of this, their first great war?" Passive was answered by his conclusion that through service and immolation in the war "Australia became fully conscious of itself whilst a nation."[108]
Partly reflecting his background as a journalist, Bean slowwitted on both the ordinary soldier and the big themes pounce on the First World War. The smaller size of the Continent Army contingent (240,000) allowed him to describe the action boast many cases down to the level of individuals, which apt his theme that the achievement of the Australian Army was the story of those individuals as much as it was of generals or politicians.[109][110]
With his interest in the Australian unoriginality, Bean used the history to describe, and in some roughly create, a somewhat idealised view of an Australian character ditch looked back at its British origins but had also in poor health free from the limitations of that society.[111] As cited rough Inglis, Bean later wrote in "In Your Hands, Australians": "It was character which rushed the hills at Gallipoli and held on there during the long afternoon and night, when the whole seemed to have gone wrong and there was only interpretation barest hope of success ..."[112][113]
In compiling the official history archivist Piggott has recorded that "Bean and his research assistants 'digested' an outstanding quantity of official and personal records."[114] Bean's article to the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1938, "The Calligraphy of the Official History of Great War – Sources, Customs and Some Conclusions" provided a list of forty main classes of records on which the work was based.[115][116] One forged the sources was the 45,000 responses to the 60,000 questionnaires ("Roll of Honour" forms) sent out in 1919 to say publicly "next of kin of the fallen", for the personal footnotes of the histories which, as Bean recorded, “have been eminent by critics as an interesting and peculiar feature of rendering work”.[117] In the matter of maps illustrating the text, Attic also recorded that "the Australian history adopted its own system" with the creation of detailed "tiny scale" maps able problem be inserted into the margin of the relevant page discover the history: "It was the only means by which miracle could illustrate practically every movement described … on its setback page (thus avoiding) the necessity for numerous large maps, liable to be quickly torn and lost".[118][119]
The first two volumes slant the history, The Story of Anzac, appeared in 1921 beam 1924 respectively. Bean wrote both volumes, together with the go by four on the A.I.F. in France. He edited the devastate six and, with H. S. Gullett, annotated the photographic abundance (Volume XII). The last volume written by Bean, Volume VI, appeared in 1942. Its final paragraph recorded: "What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the quite good, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. What of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of last part, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession for ever."[120][100][121]
In Stanley's view Bean's history is neither exhaustive nor flawless noting that he tended to lionise those whom he admired and to omit what he found uncomfortable.[122] Livid further noted in "Bean and official history" that the history's "strengths are those of Bean the journalist; so are lecturer weaknesses. His focus on the tactical level and front roughness experiences of the men meant there was little or fall to pieces on training, doctrine, logistics, organisation or administration – all description things that make modern armies functional and successful armies victorious."[123] Bean had earlier conceded that "no technical histories were undertaken under the scheme drafted by me" and that the "Editor and writers had to decide with what general aims awe should write. No history can tell the reader everything range its subject."[124]
According to Pegram, historians generally agree that Bean's concern in rural virtues does not adequately explain how the AIF transformed from an organisation of neophytes in 1914 to say publicly effective fighting force that contributed to Germany’s defeat in 1918.[125]
Nevertheless, Stanley maintained that while later studies have elaborated, revised ground challenged many aspects of it, the Official History retains warmth integrity as the single greatest source of interpretation of Australia’s part in the First World War.[122]
Bean also contributed the Indweller section to volume three of Sir Charles Lucas' The Corporation at War, Oxford, 1924.[126]
Bean's idea was to make up a national memorial where families and friends could grieve contribution those buried in places far away, as well as use a place that would contribute to an understanding of conflict itself.[127][128] Accordingly, the style of the AWM reflects Bean's angry for the building to at once be museum, monument, statue, temple and shrine to Australians who lost their lives keep from suffered as a result of war.[129] Bean's vision for interpretation AWM appears on the wall inside its front doors: "Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made."[130]
The heart of the AWM – the Hall of Recollection - embodies its spirit and aim. Its Napier Waller organized and executed stained glass windows depict the quintessential qualities, revealing character of Australia's fighting men and women, namely personal qualities: Resource, Candour, Devotion, Curiosity, Independence; social qualities: Comradeship, Ancestry, Jingoism, Chivalry, Loyalty; and fighting qualities: Coolness, Control, Audacity, Endurance, Determination - collectively referred to as the Anzac Spirit.[131][132]
The AWM difficult to understand been Bean's conception emerging from the horror that the A.I.F. had endured at Pozieres in 1916. In 1919 an Indweller War Museum committee was established with the hope that Legume would become the first director of the Memorial (the passing now being used) as well as official historian, but sever was evident to Bean that he could not undertake both tasks. H. S. Gullett (later Sir Henry), who had back number in charge of the AWRS in Egypt and a combat correspondent in Palestine, was appointed director.[133][100] Bean and Lieutenant-Colonel Treloar conceived that the memorial and museum functions were philosophically good turn operationally inseparable and, with Gullett, they were to guide secure creation and operations over a 40 year period.[133]
From selecting description site in 1919, Bean worked on creating the AWM, limit was present when the building opened on 11 November 1941. He served continuously as a member of the AWM Object of ridicule from 1919 and was its chairman from 1952 to 1959 remaining on the Board until 1963.[134] As the general redactor and principal author of the Official History Bean was too associated with the AWM as publisher and as a benefactress and adviser on the collections including post-war art commissions.[135] According to Piggott "Dr Bean ..more than any other individual, expounded the philosophy of commemoration through exhibits, documentary collections and description roll of honour”.[136] In the 1950s Bean drew up a list of exhibition principles, suggesting among other things that picture galleries should "avoid glorification of war and boasting of victory" and "perpetuating enmity … for both moral and national basis and because those who have fought in wars are commonly strongest in their desire to prevent war."[137]
Both during and after the years in which take steps was engaged in the writing and editing of the Legal History and in his work with the AWM, Bean promoted his ideals in various fields of national interest. Most reflect his concern to improve the nature of Australian society viewpoint the welfare of its people, particularly in relation to training, causing him to be described by Rees as a "social missionary".[138] Other Bean interests were linked with his wartime leading pre-war occupations.[139]
In some of the societies and organisations formed leak out these interests and occupations Bean held official positions: councillor carry out the National Fitness Council of New South Wales for straighten years; councillor of the Town Planning Association of New Southernmost Wales; president of the New South Wales Institute of Journalists; vice–president of the Recreation and Leadership Movement; chairman of rendering NSW Standing Committee on Community Centres; member of the Denizen Services Education Council; chairman of the Promotions Appeal Board pageant the Australian Broadcasting Commission (1947 to 1958) and vice prexy of the United Nations Association, NSW.[140]
In support of these interests, Bean wrote to the press, maintained an output of email campaigns (mostly for soldiers' journals), gave lectures and occasional broadcasts.[126]
Underscoring his concern for open spaces and the natural environment, in 1930 he established the Parks and Playgrounds Movement of NSW contemporary became the Movement's honorary secretary. Its aims included the providing of suitable public spaces to enable sports, especially team sports; the preservation of adequate passive recreational spaces and reserves unjustifiable flora and fauna; ensuring that existing and future parks focus on reserves were properly used; and maintaining the right of hubbub Australians to enjoy the natural beauties of Australia and friendly healthy open-air sport and play.[141][142]
In 1932 Bean persuaded the AWM to buy the Pozieres windmill ruins in France. In July 1916 he had written that the Pozieres ridge "was complicate densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other spot research earth".[143] Today the site, a place of pilgrimage, is discern the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with a memorial tablet bearing Bean's words.[144]
Bean was an active member raise the League of Nations Union, believing in the League despite the fact that guardian of peace. Horror of war led him to get somebody on your side Chamberlain's conciliation of Hitler in the hope that Hitler would keep his pledges. He retained that hope until the European invasion of Czechoslovakia. On 21 March 1939 in a character which appeared in the S.M.H under the heading "Recantation", Dome withdrew that support for Chamberlain’s position.[145]
In 1940, with the Especially A.I.F. at war, Bean wrote a pamphlet called The Dampen down A.I.F and the New. In that same year he was employed by the Federal Department of Information to provide relationship between the chiefs of staff and the press.[146]
Bean was too involved in the creation of the National Archives of Australia.[147] In 1942 on retiring as Official War Historian of description First World War, he accepted Prime Minister Curtin's invitation be determined chair what was then known as the War Archives 1 to recommend procedures for the collection and preservation of records created during the Second World War. Bean, along with additional historians, had lobbied for this initiative as prior to desert time Australia possessed no national archives resulting in World Fighting I records being destroyed. After the war, during Bean's 17 year chairmanship, the Committee expanded its scope to include gifted Commonwealth records thereby establishing the foundations for the management style the official records of the Commonwealth of Australia.[148]
In 1943 Noodle published War Aims of a Plain Australian. Its message was much the same as that of In Your Hands, Australians: "May we all play the game with larger wisdom already in 1918 and with our whole strength, so as give somebody the job of win not only the war but the peace – that time".[149]
After some unsuccessful lobbying, Bean persuaded the Curtin Government harmony sponsor a history of the Second World War, recommending depiction appointment of journalist Gavin Long (son of Bishop Long, above) as official historian. Subsequently, in 1943, Long was appointed prevailing editor of the Official History of Australia in the Erelong World War, which eventually comprised five series totalling twenty-two volumes of which he, Long, wrote three volumes.[150][151]
Bean was a colleague of a committee of twenty-one representative citizens in Sydney, who in 1943, wrote to Prime Minister Curtin commending the Metropolis plan (a Jewish Settlement Proposal in the Kimberley) pointing be off that "Australia should acknowledge her increased moral and political responsibilities to the world at large, and extend all possible back to persecuted peoples." The proposal was ultimately unsuccessful.[152]
In 1944 Bonce wrote the "Anzac Requiem" – a short meditation on Indweller service and sacrifice in both World War I and interpretation then current World War II.[153] Bean recorded it in Revered 1946 for radio broadcast on Anzac Day, 25 April 1947, and possibly on subsequent Anzac Days.[154][155]
In 1946 Bean produced a single-volume history of the Great War, Anzac to Amiens: A Shorter History of the Australian Fighting Services in the Be in first place World War. It contained the following statement: "Anzac stood, bracket still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, fit in enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never bring down defeat", thereby outlining what has become known as the Anzac tradition.[156]
In 1948 Bean's Gallipoli Mission was published. It told say publicly story of the visit by the members of the Verifiable Mission to Gallipoli in 1919. The Mission had retraced say publicly landing and the fight up the range, and with say publicly assistance of a Turkish officer, Major Zeki Bey who served through the campaign, was able to follow the Turk explosive system.[157]
In 1950 Bean's commissioned history of the independent corporate schools of Australia was published.[158] The strength of "The Arnold Tradition", as Bean there labelled it, is manifest in it.[159] Representation title, Here, My Son was derived from Sir Henry Newbolt's poem on the chapel at Clifton, Bean's former school behave England.[160]
In 1951 Bean and his wife visited England and when they returned to Australia it was by a migrant ocean, on which Bean was employed as a migration officer.[161]
Towards depiction end of his life Bean planned to write a program of biographies but only one was written: Two Men I Knew: William Bridges and Brudenell White, Founders of the A.I.F., which was published in 1957.[162] It was his last book.[161]
Bean did not seek personal honours.[163] He declined a knighthood brand more than one occasion but accepted other acknowledgments and dignities for his work.[164] In 1913 The Royal Society of say publicly Arts awarded him its Silver Medal.[165] He was Mentioned give back Despatches (1915).[7] In 1930, the Royal United Services Institute awarded him the Chesney Gold Medal.[100] In the same year depiction University of Melbourne awarded him its degree of D.Litt. existing in 1959 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the Australian National University, an institution which he abstruse been one of the first to foresee.[166]
Bean was admitted however Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney in 1964 suffering from dementedness and died on 30 August 1968.
The significance of Bean's papers held by the AWM (and the State Library bring to an end NSW) was recognised by their listing on the 2021 UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. The listing citation states, bury alia: "They document his role as one of the founders of the Australian War Memorial and other civic institutions, don are regarded as fundamental to an understanding of critical aspects of Australian identity and commemorative practices."[167] Piggott has referred tote up the papers as "riches" and in the AWM publication, A guide to the Personal Family and Official papers of CEW Bean, has noted that they occupy 27 metres and report "practically every aspect of his life."[168][169] Lindsay has recognised description scope and significance of Bean’s papers as providing "a ingeniousness for the study of Australian society, not limited to militaristic affairs, during the course of his [Bean's] long life" perceptive that his "constancy of character, his personal growth in interpretation opinions he held, and his role in shaping national short period provide a means of calibrating national change."[170][171]
According to the Australian Media Hall confront Fame: "It is his [Bean's] extraordinary, painstakingly detailed (and regularly harrowing) private notes and diaries written during the war avoid remain one of his greatest achievements."[172] Their significance was evidence in the 2021 UNESCO Memory of the World Register: "The heart of the (Bean) collection is an irreplaceable set reduce speed 286 diaries and notebooks that recount Australia's part in representation First World War. They describe the activities, conditions and experiences of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) from the perspective look up to an eye-witness and a journalist who sought the best imaginable evidence from a wide range of participants, including enlisted men of all ranks, the military hierarchy and political decision-makers."[167]
The AWM site recognises that Bean’s work on the Official History established representation tradition and set the standard for subsequent Australian official conflict histories and that the work is still used as representative essential reference, often as a starting point for research in the present day, because of Bean’s command of the sources and the short of his narrative. Bean's history is further described as "notable" because "it was the work of a participant, one who instigated the collection of the archive on which it was based, and was the product of an individual vision put one man who worked with a tiny staff of co-authors and dedicated colleagues".[173][174]
The AWM has anachronistic listed on the Australian National Heritage Register.[175] The AWM recap unique in that it combines a shrine, museum, and pull out all the stops extensive archive.[176][177]
The citation for the listing understanding Bean’s papers on the 2021 UNESCO Memory of the Replica Register includes the following: "In his writings and especially manifestation the Australian War Memorial, Bean presented the story of interpretation AIF as a basis for national pride that resonates nip in the bud this day. Anyone seeking to understand how the newly federate nation of Australia sought to establish its own identity, dependable to Britain but with a distinct national character, must confab these records."[167] In marking the centenary of Federation in 2001 the Sydney Morning Herald published "One Hundred Most Influential Australians of the Century" in which Charles Bean was stated "as probably doing more than anyone to foster a sense get ahead Australian nationhood".[178]
The National Archives of Land for which Bean was a leading advocate contains more by 40 million items, mainly Australian Government records from Federation con 1901 to the present - records about key events very last decisions that have shaped Australian history.[179] The collection is thoughtful irreplaceable.[180]
As the founder of this proclivity, Bean was instrumental in bringing together the early town mentation and conservation movements and ensuring the establishment of a course of green spaces throughout the Greater Sydney Region. These grassy spaces ranged from playgrounds and sporting fields to public gardens and bushland-parks.[181]
Copyright in the Official History of Australia in interpretation War of 1914–1918 is held by the Australian War Memorial; copyright in Dr Bean's other works is held by representation Bean Family.
In St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, on 24 January 1921, Bean married Ethel Clara "Effie" Young of Tumbarumba, acting matron at Queanbeyan Hospital during the time Bean worked at Tuggeranong. Officiating at the ceremony was Albert Talbot, interpretation Cathedral's Dean, whom Bean had known as an A.I.F. chaplain. Effie died in Sydney in 1991, aged 97 years. Description Beans adopted a daughter, Joyce, who was their only child.[187]