Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

however, ease the burdens of the mother country in the defence
of her Empire and if need be, come to the help of defending it
against its European enemies. Australia had its own supporters
of Lord Roseberry's Liberal-Imperialist movement, begun in 1901
to ally the traditional Liberal view of individualism and
Laissez-faire to an acceptance of state power as a means for
the extension of the British Empire. Roseberry had called for
the creation of an "imperial race", people of healthy bodies,
energetic and industrious capacities, able to ensure the expansion
and defence of the Empire. These sentiments were echoed
by the militarist lobby in Australia and it became their crusade
to promote schools as the nurseries of the "imperial race”.
These views and sentiments would have found fertile ground in
the mind of Adamson.
Empire Days at Wesley were celebrated in considerable
style, distinguished by the Wesley code of strenuousness and
sentiment. The day was accorded the rank of a public festivity
that was invariably highlighted by Adamson's readings of a
series of patriotic poems by Kipling, Henley, Newbolt and Lyle,
and the suitable response of "prolonged cheers" from the assembled
boys. 61
A regular procedure was followed annually whereby
the whole school gathered at the front of the building to watch
the march past of the cadets and the salute to the Union Jack.
With this background and training it was therefore not surprising
that Wesley pupils and old boys were some of the first to
Line up at the Melbourne recruiting offices in August 1914. In
the initial contingent of 20,000 Australian troops that left in
September to train in Egypt and fight in the Great War, there
were seventy-eight "Wesley boys”. 62
Adamson gave them a farewell
dinner at the school, bringing "our soldiers from the
College" from the camp at Broadmeadows where they had been in
training for less than a month. The programme for the evening
was not unlike other banquet nights called to honour winning
sport teams, only that on this occasion the players were to be
sent off to 'the beginning of the Great Adventure'. 63
There
were toasts drunk to "The King", "Our Empire's Cause", and "The
Australian Imperial Force", all interspersed with a wealth of
words from Henley, Churchill, Begbie and Newbolt, evoked in
justification of 'the cause' they were about to take up.
a
64
58