When World War I was about to begin 100 years ago, it was front-page news in the Sydney Morning Herald, but not front-page headlines.
Front pages were not then generally devoted to news, and the Herald did not make Page 1 a page devoted primarily to news until April 15, 1944. But it began filling the first column of Page 1 with one-sentence summaries of the major news from January 1903. On August 3, 1914, the ‘Summary’ column began: “Germany has declared war against Russia.”
Editorially, the Herald declared it as “the gravest crisis that has faced the British people since first they became members of a world-wide empire” and the Melbourne Argus said that the European conflict had “undergone a startling change”.
In an era when news headlines were generally single-column, the Argus had a three-column, six-deck headline, all in capitals, beginning: ‘RUSSIA AND GERMANY. WAR DECLARED ON SATURDAY. GREAT BRITAIN’S DECISION AWAITED.’ The Adelaide Advertiser did not mince words: ‘ARMAGEDDON! EUROPE ABLAZE. GERMANY JOINS AUSTRIA. DECLARES WAR AGAINST RUSSIA.’
Three days after its first front-page mention of war, the Herald ‘Summary’ began with grimmer news that Great Britain was now involved. Readers had to turn to Page 7 for the story, with a wandering single-column headline, but a concise introduction: “Britain is at war with Germany.”
For the Australian newspaper industry, World War I radically changed the economic basis of operations and made a major impact on journalistic techniques. Imports of newsprint fell by half over four years while prices for it rose by 600 per cent between July 1914 and July 1921. Cable charges also jumped 600 per cent. While actual sales of papers increased, advertising revenue tended to fall, but not savagely. For Queensland country papers, the war was a period of “grave anxiety”.
During the war, both the volume of news and the hunger for detailed news from the front grew. Because the competition to be first in publishing the news increased, many cable messages that would ordinarily have been sent at standard rates were now sent at urgent rates. One result was a terser journalism. Proprietors, faced with rising costs, increased sales and newsprint shortages, cut the size of newspapers. Terseness became a necessity, not an experiment.
In country districts not served by daily newspapers, the demand for daily war-news bulletins was high. Parents, relatives and friends of those who had enlisted to serve in the Australian Infantry Force wanted the latest news from the different battle fronts. For instance, in NSW, the bi-weeklies at Hay and Gundagai and the weekly at Molong were publishing daily war-news ‘extras’ by the end of August 1914.
At Hay, the Riverine Grazier began posting short cable messages about the war daily, or more frequently, on its noticeboard. On August 25, 1914, the Grazier announced: “At the request of a number of the townspeople, we have decided to issue a daily ‘extra’, containing the latest telegraphed news of the progress of the war.” The newspaper charged 1s 6d (15c) a week for the extras but delivery was limited to the main part of Hay.
It was much the same at the Gundagai Times which asked on August 28 for “40 volunteers to contribute 1/- (10c) per week each, say for three months, in order to prevent any curtailment of the messages, or the fixing of a charge for the extraordinaries issued daily to the public”. The Molong Express was making “a small charge” for its daily extras and the weekly Snowy River Mail at Orbost, Victoria, charged a penny for each of its daily extras. The Coleraine Albion also charged a penny, but its extras did not appear daily.
Study Australian newspapers published during World War I, especially after April 1915, and you can almost hear the pages toll with a muffled drumbeat as they present the daily war casualty lists. Your eyes flick down the sub-headings: ‘Killed’, ‘Wounded’ and the scores of names listed.
Australians today know the Gallipoli campaign began on April 25, 1915, but the news of the landing and its significance trickled through at the time. On April 30, 1915, Melbourne’s Argus carried in small type in the left-hand ear of its masthead: “Australians under fire/Landed at Gallipoli/Fighting against Turks/Conduct commended.” The story on Page 7 gave little indication of the full significance of the landing.
The immediate cost of Gallipoli became clearer in the Argus a few days later: “41 die of wounds” (May 4); “49 killed; 40 wounded” (May 6). But a much fuller sense of what Australians look back on as a turning point in the nation’s history did not come until May 8 when the Argus published (on Page 19 of a 24-page edition) British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett’s report of the Gallipoli landing. A banner headline ran across the top of his report: “Australians at Dardanelles: Thrilling deeds of heroism”. Various books, such as Harry Gordon’s An Eyewitness History of Australia, carry extracts from the Ashmead-Bartlett report which is attributed with helping to create the legend of Anzac.
Referring to the Australians as “these raw colonial troops” and “this race of athletes”, the reporter observed there had been “no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and storming the heights, above all holding on while the reinforcements were landing”.
Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, who narrowly defeated Keith Murdoch in the contest to become Australia’s official war correspondent, went ashore at Anzac Cove five-and-a-half hours after the first landing and was the only correspondent to stay until December. He later wrote the official history of Australia in the war. A journalist of a later era, Les Carlyon, has written two outstanding books on the war, Gallipoli (2001) and The Great War (2006).
The war produced an interesting sidelight on the so-called power of the press. In 1916 and 1917, just about every newspaper in the nation gave solid editorial support for a “Yes” vote for conscription of young men to serve in the war. Both referenda were defeated.
Apart from the economic cost of the war, many papers were left short of qualified production staff because so many men enlisted in the AIF. At John Fairfax, 97 of the 446 employees enlisted, with 21 being killed and 28 wounded.
Fortunately, the war came when mechanised typesetting was becoming the norm in country papers. Linotypes, and variations of them, were reducing the number of compositors needed.
Nationally, the number of newspapers reached a peak immediately before World War I, declined slightly by 1919, and continued to decline over the next 60 years. The war, a period of grave anxiety, had long-term impacts on Australian newspapers and for Australia’s social fabric.