Book Review: Monash the Outsider Who Won a War

Paperback edition Published 2014

Author: Roland Perry

Publisher: Random House

Reviewed by Brian Morgan

I am the first to admit that I have, until recently, shown little interest in the history of Australia’s heroes. As I grow older, however, I am finding a treasure trove of great interest to me. This book was a recent gift. To say that I was mesmerised by it would be an understatement.

We have all heard of Sir John Monash. But, if you had asked me what he was famous for, I would not have been able to do more than mutter something about a military background.

Sir John was one of Australia’s most versatile and successful people, graduating with degrees in arts, law and engineering. Prior to World War 1, he had conducted his own business, which was primarily involved with designing and building bridges, but his legal acumen was such that he was often used as a mediator or as counsel in building or engineering disputes.

At the same time, he was heavily involved in the military through the University Company of the Royal Australia Regiment.

This is a book which chronicles his time from a student, and an average university student he was, in that he was easily distracted from his studies, to his lifetime interest in the military, in what, today, we would call the Army Reserve, to his moulding together his military experiences and his civilian expertise to make him into the most formidable of soldiers.

Sir John was very quick to adopt “modern” techniques such as the use of tanks, rather than mounted cavalry. He was an officer at Gallipoli and despaired at the hopelessness of his British superiors who, one quickly realises, were singularly incompetent and seemed to believe that soldiers were there to be cannon fodder.

Monash’s attitude was quite different.

Like most complex people, he was not without his faults. His personal life, in what seems to this reviewer to have been a marriage devoid of love, included a long running affair with a close friend of his wife’s. This occurred whilst he was stationed in Europe during the war. It continued after his return to Australia and culminated in the lover becoming his consort from the time of his wife’s death until Monash’s own death.

The book is necessarily a commentary on Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, who was worried that Monash might challenge him at the next Federal election, so popular had he become, and of Keith Murdoch, father, of course, of Rupert.

I have seen journalists lose objectivity and try to make things occur the way that they would like them, rather than reporting what they have observed. Murdoch displayed this quality in spades. Murdoch took an early dislike to Monash and reported in a less than objective manner when he sought to influence the Government to appoint another General in preference to Monash as the first Australian leader of the Australian corps.

When Monash returned from the war, he was virtually ostracised by the politicians, but remained, until his death an absolute hero to the soldiers who had served under him.

This is a seriously interesting book to read and it is made more so by the way it is written. There are times when the author leaves us in no doubt what he thinks but he justifies his views so that even if you were tempted to disagree with him, his thinking is quite transparent.

I commend the author and the book as a story which we should all know.