ISSUE 75 : Mar/Apr - 1989 - Australian Defence Force Journal

The Rt Hon Sir George Foster Pearce (1870-1952)Trials and Triumphs of an Australian Defence MinisterBy Major Warren Perry, RLIntroductory RemarksIT is our business tonight to commemoratethe centenary of the birth of Senator Pearce 1and to do this by examining a few of hisachievements, as Minister of State for Defencein the Commonwealth of Australia, and topaint, by way of conclusion, some kind of wordpicture of his personality.Any discussion of Australia's defence historysince Federation would be incomplete if it failedto mention, and to mention often, the nameof Senator Pearce. Yet today his part in makingthis history does not seem to be widely knownin any detail. Indeed he may be himself partlyto blame for this situation for in discharging hisministerial duties in the Department of Defencehe does not seem to have considered anythingbeyond the demands of good day to day publicadministration and he certainly did nothing toseek publicity for himself. He kept no privatediaries; he kept no personal papers in anysystematic way; and so what he bequeathed toposterity in the way of personal records of hispublic life were disappointing quantitatively.George Foster Pearce was born in humblecircumstances on the 14 January 1870 at MountBarker in South Australia. It was later in thatyear that the British Government withdrew thelast detachments of its troops from duty inAustralia. 2 Pearce was 11 years old when he leftschool to become at first a farm labourer andlater an apprentice carpenter; he was 31 yearsold when the Commonwealth of Australia wasinaugurated in 1901; he was 44 years of agewhen, in August 1914, the War of 1914-18began and he became, in the following month,Minister for Defence; and in his 69th year heleft, for the last time in June 1938, the Parliamentof the Commonwealth of Australia in theSenate of which he had sat continuously as anoriginal member since 1901.Pearce's political career, although a successfulone in terms of tenure and achievementsas a cabinet minister, was one of sustained conflictin a political environment of friction, provocationand hostility. He knew the hisses ofthe ill-informed crowd; he endured the intoleranceand rancour of political opponents;he felt the private silence of former politicalfriends; and he long knew well the truth of theGerman proverb that "Ingratitude is thereward of the world". A weaker and less practicalman than Pearce would have sunk underthe load of undeserved unpopularity andunmerited abuse that he had to bear throughouthis long ministerial career; but especially duringthe War of 1914-18, when he crossed the floorof the Senate. Indeed, there were few contemporarieswhose public work was more persistentlymisinterpreted, more bitterly assailedor more ignorantly judged than that of SenatorPearce. But like President Truman later,Senator Pearce withstood "the heat in the kitchen"and survived politically until the electionsof 1937.Although in his post-war parliamentarycareer Senator Pearce was Minister for Homeand Territories on one occasion and on a laterone Minister for External Affairs and Territories,he is more widely remembered probablyfor his work, as Minister for Defence,which occupied the greater part of hisministerial career. We will be concerned,therefore, solely with his work as a ministerialhead in administering the Department ofDefence. We will not be concerned with his activitieswithin the political parties to which hebelonged; and we will be concerned very littlewith his activities on the government and oppositionbenches in Parliament.Mr John Merrit of Western Australia said in1963, in his unpublished thesis, George FosterPearce: Labour Leader, that: "No attempt hasbeen made to study in detail Pearce the administrator."In December of that year,however, an important paper was published entitled"Sir George Pearce as Administrator" bySir Peter Heydon' of Canberra who had beenSenator Pearce's private secretary duringPearce's last year or so as a minister in 1936-37.I propose, therefore, to proceed to an examinationof six major areas of Senator