Controlling Civilian Volunteering: Canada and Australia During the Second World War

Abstract

"Uncontrolled and undirected people, in their patriotic exuberance, started to create a host of patriotic organizations. They all needed money and proceeded to try and get it from the public in a variety of ways. The public soon began to exhibit impatience and the Government realised that it had a problem which had to be solved." In a speech broadcast on Australian radio in January 1943, the Canadian High Commissioner to Australia, Tommy Davis, articulated a general concern for wartime governments. As the above extract suggests, controlling the patriotic civilian volunteer effort on the home front was a vexing question for national governments during the Second World War. After the outbreak of war in September 1939 the Australian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Robert Menzies, decided to regulate the patriotic funds. There was some concern over what had happened in the previous war in terms of accountability and duplication; and, as defence activities were a Commonwealth responsibility, legislation was considered necessary. The major patriotic funds of the First World War - the Australian Red Cross Society, the Salvation Army, the Australian Comforts Fund (ACF), and the YMCA - had become, from 1938, the designated war charities to work with the armed forces in the event of war. It was argued within government circles that these nationwide organisations should come under the control of the Commonwealth government.