Nothing to Sniff At Robert Darroch

From Rananim December 1999, Vol 7, No 1 + March 2000, Vol 8, No 1

(Being the paper he was to have delivered at the 7th International DH Lawrence Conference in Taos in July 1998)

TO address a non-Australian audience on the factual background of Lawrence's Australian novel, Kangaroo, poses some difficulties, or at least apparently so.

In attempting to link what Lawrence says in the novel with what was happening in Sydney at the time he was there, one needs, perforce, to have some appreciation of, and information about, the contemporary historical scene.

If you do not know, for example, who Jock Garden was, and what he represented in the politics of Australia in 1922 (he was the main socialist agitator of the day), then telling you that Willie Struthers is the spitting image of Garden, and that what Lawrence puts into the "fictional'' mouth of the main socialist character in the novel is precisely what Garden was saying at the time, will have little meaning.

It will do little to convince you that Lawrence was leaning on contemporary Australian reality - and heavily so - when he conjured up the political plot of Kangaroo.

This difficulty extends to literary commentators generally. lf you are not an historian, nor have read widely the history of the period, then you can be excused for not connecting that very localised history with what Lawrence says in the novel. That is not your area of expertise.

Yet there is an even greater difficulty here, and on the surface an almost intractable one. The political plot of Kangaroo centres on the existence in Sydney of a secret army - one whose existence is not generally known.

It is difficult enough to base an (intrinsically unlikely) literary argument on the relationship between what Lawrence writes in Kangaroo and what is known about the contemporary scene, it is immeasurably tougher to base such an argument on a relationship between what is found in Kangaroo and a history that is not generally known, and which in fact has been deliberately kept from public scrutiny.

Nevertheless a credible - and I would argue ultimately convincing - attempt can be made, and this is the topic of this paper.

Not a little research has been done on the period, some useful history written, and there is, especially if you know where to look, further supporting evidence on which to base such a linkage. And here, to lighten the somewhat heavy historical load of what follows, I have an anecdote to relate.

In Sydney in 1930-32, during the Depression, a radical socialist government was in power. It posed all sorts of threats to the middle and upper-middle classes. It is now known - and no history of the period would gainsay this - that a secret army called "the Old Guard'' was active behind the scenes.

One day in 1931 the leaders of the Old Guard decided to organise a march-past of their secret army units. Now I ask you, how might one organise a march-past of a secret army - especially as it was decided that the venue for this unique event was to be the main street of Sydney, during the crowded lunch-hour?

Rather cleverly, as it turned out. They arranged for the units to come by a "saluting dais'' - the steps of a city office block - one-by-one, and as they passed they "saluted'' by taking out a handkerchief and blowing their nose, thereby identifying themselves.

This incident shows several things, resourcefulness apart. It demonstrates how difficult it might be to detect the presence of a secret army in the midst of an apparently normal, workaday society. To know it was there, you must be privy to its special signs and secrets.

It also highlights the problem of getting information about such clandestine bodies. History comes mainly from recorded events - events that you might read about in contemporary newspapers or other documentation. lf there is no record (and secret armies are understandably shy about such things), then finding out about them can be very difficult indeed.

Unless someone blabs, or you stumble across something.

Now, all this talk about secret armies and plotting may seem remote from this time and place (Taos). And from D.H. Lawrence scholarship. But I can bring it a little closer to you.

Recently two books were published that pooh-poohed any suggestion that Lawrence came across an actual secret army in Sydney in 1922 and based Kangaroo on such an encounter - a proposition that has become known as "the Darroch Thesis''.

The first was the CUP edition of Kangaroo, in the introduction of which Australian academic Professor Bruce Steele said, dismissively, that the so-called Darroch Thesis had "now been shown to be without foundation''. This line has been repeated, with embellishment, in the recently-published third volume of the CUP biography of Lawrence, edited by English academic David Ellis.

l won't go into their arguments in detail here, except to focus on what might be called the "crown jewel'' of their counter-thesis, which is that in a work written shortly before he arrived in Sydney, Lawrence had conjured up a "league of comrades'' that bears a striking similarity to the organisational structure of the secret army organisation outlined "fictionally'' in Kangaroo.

Those who had been wanting to wax sceptical about the Darroch Thesis breathed an almost audible sigh of relief when Professor Steele unveiled this gem.

Alas, its seductive gleam is a false dawn, as I will now show.

In one respect, however, Professor Steele and David Ellis were right - the secret army in Kangaroo did originate in America. But not out of some Whitmanesque, slap-my-knees, Kibbo-Kiftish league of comrades. No - it derived from something far less benign.

For if today you wanted to find some published source akin to Kangaroo and its "fictional'' secret army of Diggers Clubs and Maggies Squads, then l suggest you read The Price of Vigilance by Joan Jensen, published in 1968 by Rand McNally. It is the story of the United States' own secret army, the American Protective League.
Many of you may not have heard of the American Protective League, but in its heyday - between 1917 and 1920 - it was a very extensive and powerful organization. It came into existence due to a particular set of wartime circumstances in America.

Even before it became obvious at the beginning of 1917 that America would soon be at war with Germany, the problem of German agents and foreign sabotage had caused concern in Washington.

At that time there were only two bodies charged with protecting the nation against such threats - the Secret Service, and the fledgling Bureau of Investigation attached to the Department of Justice (earlier, the U.S. Army had had to hire the Pinkerton organisation to look after military intelligence).

But neither the Secret Service nor the Bureau of Investigation could cope with the looming problems of a large and potentially "disloyal'' German immigrant population, with enforcing conscription, and with policing Federal wartime regulations gen- erally.

In Chicago, for example, the local Bureau of Investigation office could muster only 15 men to cover the entire States of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota - States with large German-born populations. That, however, changed one day in Febuary 1917 when a man called Albert Briggs, vice-president of Outdoor Advertising lnc, walked into the Chicago office of the Bureau and offered to organise some civilian help for the over-stretched Bureau. Initially he offered to supply 10 or 20 cars driven by "quiet men, who would work without pay'' to assist Bureau activities. The offer was gratefully accepted. Local businesses apparently supplied the men and vehicles.

In March, as war drew closer, Briggs reappeared with a far more grandiose proposal. He offered to organise a secret, America-wide organisation that would work with the Justice Department to combat espionage, disloyalty and potential civil unrest. It was to be called the American Protective League.

This is not the place to describe the APL's activities in detail, except to say that it bears a very much closer similarity to Kangaroo's Australian secret army of Diggers and Maggies than does Steele and Ellis's league of comrades, which, when you examine it (especially the part that Steele omitted in his CUP Kangaroo) looks more like a boy scouts troop than a secret army.

The APL, for example, had an elaborate hierarchy of chiefs, captains, lieutenants and "operatives'', similar to that described in Kangaroo. It had levels or cells of secrecy, and a recruiting regime very like that outlined in Kangaroo. It co-operated with local police (bashing unionists, Wobblies, etc), very much like Lawrence describes in the "Row in Town" chapter.

By November 1918 the Web (for that is what the APL came to be called) had spread into every State, city and town in America. It had been responsible for tracking down hundreds of thousands of "slackers'', Wobblies and other supposed dissidents. In Chicago alone it boasted 16,000 members - a veritable private army. Nationwide, its numbers ran to more than 100,000. Its Hollywood branch was ran by Cecil B. DeMille. When the war was over, it remained active, mainly in the cause of fighting Bolshevism. J. Edgar Hoover (the Bureau of Investigation soon became the FBl) employed large numbers of ex-APL men to fight the communist threat in the early 1920s.

The index to Jensen's history of the American Protective League contains one reference to Australia, on p. 234, where she says: "Word of this volunteer army spread beyond the shores of the United States, and at least two other countries, Canada and Australia, sent government representatives to study APL methods, with a view to their possible adoption.''

We know who from Australia went to the APL's headquarters to find out about "the Web''. It was a Melbourne businessman, R.C.D. Elliott, who had been dispatched by Australian Prime Minister Hughes to Chicago to see if the APL might have an answer to a problem that had arisen in wartime Australia.

Like America, the Federal Government in Australia lacked any infrastructure to enforce wartime emergency measures, such as combating disloyalty, sabotage, civil unrest, etc. Constitutionally, such enforcement was in the (inept) hands of the State Governments.

Here the difficulty was that at least one State Government was in socialist hands, and was obdurately refusing to arrest trouble-makers, dissidents, IWW members, and so on. In any case, the Federal authorities felt they could not rely on normal, orthodox measures to prosecute their exigent wartime needs. Something more forceful and dependable seemed called for.

Elliott met the APL leaders in Chicago in November 1917 and brought back to Melbourne a report on their organisation, including details of its scope and effectiveness. His report was sent on to Australia's military and security authorities for their comments, and they apparently added their support to the idea that something similar might be tried in Australia.

Consequently, on May 29, 1918, a meeting was convened in the Melbourne office of the acting Prime Minister to "consider a proposal to form an 'Australian Protective League' on the lines of a war body operating in the United States of America''. (I show a copy of a letter convening this crucial meeting. It happens to be one of the few documentary items we have that shows that the APL model was reproduced in Australia - a rare fragment of light in a story otherwise shrouded in almost Stygian darkness.)

The precise steps that followed in setting up a simulactrum of the APL in Australia are not fully known. The next item - the next point of light - is a note in the archival file of a Melbourne businessman, Herbert Brookes, who seems to have been given, or taken on, the job of organising what indeed came to be called the Australian Protective League (henceforth the APL, Australian version).

In October 1918 Brookes again met with the acting Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence in Melbourne. Apparently at this meeting Brookes put forward a detailed plan for setting up a modified version of the American Protective League across Australia . Brookes's record of the meeting is marked with the crucial words "when this suggested scheme was adopted''.

Brookes's modified APL had certain unusual features, designed to better fit the American model into the Australian political scene. lts most distinctive change was that it was to be divided into two: an "official'' side (linked to the security services), and a connected but separate "voluntary arm''. The objective of the latter, according to the Brookes notes, was "to stimulate a public or semi-public organisation to do some work which might be necessary (my emphasis).''

Further, the voluntary arm was to be organised in a particular way. The overall "organiser'' (Brookes) would "set up the voluntary organisation throughout Australia'' by approaching "the executive heads of the known loyal societies and associations'' and, after swearing them to secrecy, "invite them to form their own State organisation.'' Behind this screen of loyalist bodies a volunteer army of "vigilantes'' - Brookes specifically uses the term - would be assembled.

The end of the war in November 1918, however, led to further refinements in Brookes's APL proposal. In particular, it led to an alteration in focus - away from anti-war dissidence towards post-war civil unrest, particularly the threat of radical socialism and Bolshevism, of strikes and possible revolution. The government's apparent involvement retreated into the background, and the APL took on a more civilian - and even more secretive - nature.

Brookes spent the next few months setting up the APL in the various Australian States. His immediate concern, however, was Queensland, where the only non-conservative State Government was in power. There Brookes's local representative was the State Police Commissioner, Urquhart.

Brookes went up to Queensland in early 1919, following which Urquhart reported (in a letter to Brookes) the fruits of his visit: "...upwards of 30 societies have given their adhesion (sic)...and yesterday three of their leaders came along...and told me that they would have 60 societies joined up...they wish to go pretty far - not only uphold the Constitution by peaceful means, but to have a formidable striking force ready if required (my emphasis).''

A little over a month later - and here the documentary evidence (mainly the Brookes papers) peters out, and we have to rely mostly on inferential evidence - a series of violent street clashes broke out in the State capital, Brisbane. Basically it was a Labor dispute over the right to display the red (ie, communist) flag at demonstrations and marches (hence the name given to the clashes - "the Red Flag Riots''). Next, a handful of local Russian Bolsheviks became involved, and the conservative "Ioyalists'', who were clearly spoiling for a fight, decided to confront what they chose to call this "outbreak of disloyalty''.

The Brisbane newspapers reported that an umbrella "loyalist'' organisation had been formed, initially called the United Loyalist Executive, and this, Queensland historians such as Trevor Botham and Raymond Evans now believe, was the organisation Urquhart was referring to in his February letter to Brookes - in other words, the local expression of the APL.

Within days a force of around 2000 ex-servicemen - World War 1 veterans - had been mobilised and they began physically attacking local radicals, targeting in particular the Brisbane Russian areas supposedly harbouring the local Bolsheviks. Several people were killed and many injured before the police stepped in. Meanwhile the umbrella "loyalist'' organization had changed its name to the King and Empire Alliance. (I would ask you to keep this name in mind in considering what follows.)

The next link in this chain of documentary and inferential evidence occurred in New South Wales (the most populous Australian State) over a year later when, in March 1920, to the dismay of the conservatives, a very left-wing government came to power after narrowly winning a snap election.

At that time - the early 1920s - Australia was in the throes of political and religious turmoil. The leadership of the labor movement, which had split in 1916 over conscription, had turned very radical, espousing extreme socialist, even revolutionary, ideas. Strikes were breaking out seemingly everywhere - even in the police force. The Australian Communist Party was formed (by Jock Garden) in 1921. The lrish-Catholic element of society (making up around a quarter of the Australian population) appeared vehemently opposed to everything British, and the local Anglo-protestants (who also made up most of the business community and con- servative establishment) were equally opposed to everything Irish, Catholic and/or socialist.

The first sign of reaction against the new Labor government was observed at a Labor-Catholic rally which was held in a Sydney park to protest against the deportation of a Catholic priest of German extraction. The rally was disrupted - violently - by organised bands of ex-servicemen who assaulted speakers and tried to "count them out'' (in a similar fashion to that described in Kangaroo's "Row in Town'' chapter). Prominent in the anti-Catholic melee, as subsequently reported in the local newspapers, were two ex-Army officers, Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal and Major W.J.R. Scott. (And, again, l would ask you to keep these two names in mind.) Scott was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald of May 31 as saying that after the Germans had been cleared out "the loyalty of certain citizens...should be taken up''.

Two months later - on July 19, 1920 - these same two men were on the platform of a public meeting in the Sydney Town Hall which had been called to "form an organisation of Empire Loyalists''. The SMH reported: "Scenes of extraordinary enthusiasm marked the great crowded meeting in the Town Hall last night, when there was launched, in affiliation with similar bodies in other Australia States, an organisation to be known as the King and Empire Alliance, having as its objects broadly the welfare of the British Empire and the counteracting of attempts to encourage disloyal doctrines.'' (In this context, "disloyalty'' referred specifically to the Irish/Catholic/Labor community.)

The secretary of the new body was Sir Charles Rosenthal and the Treasurer was Major W.J.R. (Jack) Scott (who had been Rosenthal's deputy when the former was in charge of repatriating the Australian troops from France). It is now believed that this NSW King and Empire Alliance body was a Brookes-style APL "front", and that behind its public facade a secret army was being organised (as per the Brookes plan).

Today, the principal evidence for this lies in the correlations between Lawrence's "fictional'' Diggers-Maggies organisation and what we now know about the Rosenthal-Scott organisation and its subsequent manifestations. And here the strongest argument is probably the parallels between the novel's main Australian characters - Ben Cooley and Jack Callcott - and the real-life figures of Rosenthal and Scott.

As I have endeavoured to demonstrate in a series of articles over the past 20 years or so (in particular my article "The Man Who was Kangaroo'' in Quadrant [September 1987] and a number of subsequent articles in our Australian DHL journal, Rananim), there can be little doubt that Lawrence based his two main Australian characters, Cooley and Callcott, on Rosenthal and Scott.

The first person, in public, to point out the striking similarities between Rosenthal and Cooley was the Australian historian Don Rawson, who in a 1968 article "Political Violence in Australia'' remarked on the parallels between Rosenthal and Cooley.

A few years earlier, the involvement of Rosenthal's organisation, the King and Empire AIliance, in political violence of the period had been also noted (in Meanjin) by Curtis Atkinson, who pointed out the similarity between, on the one hand, a clash of "organised bands of ex-servicemen'' and socialist demonstrators in the Sydney Domain in 1921 and, on the other hand, the "Row in Town'' chapter in Kangaroo, written 12 months later.

As it turns out, Rosenthal and Cooley are about the same age (early 40s), have the same (distinctive) physical characteristics, maintain offices in the same street in Sydney (and on the same floor), are both of Jewish appearance (though there is some doubt about their actual Jewishness), are both professional men, had been officers in the Army, were physically strong, had booming voices, and so on.

Even where there are differences (ie, in rank and marital status), we can account for these via Lawrence's "reversal'' disguise technique (mentioned in my recent "Nomenclature'' article in Rananim). The fact that they are both head of a public anti-socialist organisation with a secret military core - and have similar deputies in Scott/Callcott - must convert possibility into all-but-certainty.

The parallels between Scott and Callcott are, if anything, even closer (though, again, with several tell-tale reversals). I will detail these in a moment. First, however, l want to outline some other correlations between the Rosenthal/Scott King and Empire/APL organisation and Lawrence's Cooley/Diggers/ Maggies arrangements, keeping in mind that my purpose here is to establish, with a high degree of probability, that the latter is a real-life reflection of the former.

On the (public) executive of the NSW King and Empire Alliance, along with Secretary Rosenthal and Treasurer Scott, was Brigadier-General George Macarthur-Onslow. Later (as Dr Andrew Moore has shown) he was commander of the Old Guard's military side - 1930-32 secret army. His presence of the KEA executive would imply that he was in charge of its military side, too.

In Kangaroo the only other NSW secret army leader mentioned by name is a "Colonel Ennis". Lawrence describes him as a cavalry man, the name ''Maggies'' (from the black-and-white bird, the magpie) supposedly being derived from his white riding breeches and black jacket. Moreover, the "distinctive badge'' of the Maggies is a white hat, topped with a white feather. Such an outfit, colour apart, was the distinctive uniform of the Australia Light Horse, of which Macarthur-Onslow was the NSW general-in-charge (also see below). Thus it is highly likely that Lawrence modelled Ennis (who also had a Scottish name - George Macneil) on George Macarthur-Onslow.

Another correlation is the period the Diggers-Maggies had been in existence, ''fictionally''. Lawrence in the novel says that this was "About 18 months - nearly two years altogether''. The KEA was formed, as we have seen, at a series of meetings beginning in July 1920. Its magazine - its public face - was launched in January 1921. The period spanned by these two events is precisely 18 months to two years (prior to Lawrence's arrival in Sydney). Lawrence in the novel can be referring to nothing else other than the formation and launching of the KEA.

Another parallel is to be found in chapter V where Callcott tells Somers about the Australia-wide organisation of which the Diggers-Maggies is a part. He says the national organisation is headed by "the Five'', ie, the leaders of the five State bodies. But there are six States in Australia, not five. However, just prior to the public launch of the KEA, Rosenthal was quoted in the SMH as saying that similar organisations had been established in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. He pointedly omitted the sixth State, Western Australia.

In Kangaroo it is made clear that Cooley's main role in the Diggers-Maggies is titular. While Colonel Ennis busied himself training the secret army side, Cooley "slaved at the other half of the business'', which involved touring around NSW promoting discussions on subjects like "Australia and the Reds''. One of Rosenthal's principal roles in the KEA was to go round its 30 or so branches giving talks on such topics as Australia and the danger of Red revolution.

Then there are the numbers Lawrence cites in Kangaroo. He makes two stabs at describing the structure of the Diggers-Maggies organisation: in chapter V and chapter X. Both times Somers confesses he "didn't follow this (secret army organisation) business very well''. The descriptions in both chapters give figures for members, clubs squads, and so on. These seem very muddled. At the top is "The Five" supported by two more levels of five; all-up there are 1400 men in the "private squads''; each "club'' is made up of 50 members; 30 people can form a new club; each squad consists of 20 men; a "section'' consists of 10 clubs; and so on. All very confusing and, one might wonder, if it were all invention, why would Lawrence bother introducing such apparently vague and meaningless numbers? The difficulty Somers has, twice over, in comprehending these arcane arrangements would seem to add little to the plot.

On the other hand, numbers such as these have a great deal of significance to historians familiar with secret army structures in Australia. Take Lawrence's mention that each club had 50 members, and that 10 clubs make a section. The figure 500 crops up again and again in secret army activity between the wars. A strike-breaking force Scott and another secret army activist, Eric Campbell, organised in 1925 at the behest of tile Bruce-Page government comprised "1500 stalwart ex-servicemen''. In 1930, just before Campbell broke away from Scott and formed his own private army, the pair had recruited 1000 men (plus 12 staff officers - ie, two levels of five, plus themselves). And later, when Campbell mobilised an "action unit'', it consisted of 500 men.

Of course, this could be coincidence, for the decimal system is a natural one for any organisation, fictional or real (for example, Lawrence's "league of comrades'' was arranged in groups of 10). Nevertheless, Lawrence's other "fictional'' numbers are also meaningful in a secret army and KEA context. For example, new KEA branches could be formed if they had 30 prospective members. Could Lawrence really have got that figure 30 - specifically mentioned in chapter X - from anywhere else than the KEA? Surely not.

The squads of the 1930 Old Guard and the 1923 Victorian secret army the White Guard were arranged in units of five men, mainly because that was the number of men who could fit comfortably into a car - the essential item common to all secret armies in Australia (and elsewhere) - the secret army phenomenon primarily being a secret mobilisation plan, designed to bring force to bear in the quickest time possible - hence perhaps the nickname given to Scott's organisation: "the garage'' (see also below), and hence too perhaps the fictional Callcott's job: "garage proprietor".

There are other parallels and correlations, some of which l will mention later. (There is also, as Sandra Jobson will revealed in her research about Lawrence in Western Australia, a possible answer to the question of how, of all people, a literary stranger like Lawrence could have so quickly encountered people such as Rosenthal and Scott on his arrival in Sydney in late May, 1922.)

Given the above, l believe it is now fair to conclude that not only is it highly probable that there was a real secret army in NSW when Lawrence arrived, but that this actual secret army - the KEA/APL organisation - is the one that Lawrence portrays in Kangaroo. At this point I could almost rest my case. Lawrence's choice of a secret army plot for his Australian "romance'' is so unexpected and unprecedented that almost any correlation with a real secret army should be sufficient to establish that in describing the Diggers-Maggies organisation he was leaning on some sort of local actuality.

Indeed, I would argue that we now have good reason to conclude that "this gramophone of a novel'', as he describes it, is in fact a fictionalised diary - the composition technique he had recently espoused to Mollie Skinner and Catherine Carswell - of what happened to him in Sydney and Thirroul, and that the secret army part of the plot is just as "real'' as the other, obviously autobiographical parts, such as "The Nightmare Chapter''. This is largely what the Darroch Thesis set out to establish.

But my research also set out to uncover how Lawrence came across this highly-sensitive secret army material - and to then go on to try to reconstruct what actually happened to Lawrence and Frieda in Sydney and Thirroul between May 27 and August 11 , 1922 - how, in short, Kangaroo came to be written.

To answer the first question it is now necessary to consider who in Sydney whom Lawrence might have encountered knew what was behind the public facade of the KEA, and who might thus have divulged some of this information about it to him.

A careful reading of the newspapers of the time reveals no hint of any public knowledge of a contempory secret army. Memoirs and other published works are similarly mute, as are the standard histories, at least up to the 1960s, when the first suspicions arose. So it is fair to conclude that Lawrence, an utter stranger to Sydney, could not have picked up his detailed information about the secret army behind the KEA from any casual or readily-available source - in a bar or barber shop, for instance (the "sceptics''' alternative suggestion to how Lawrence might have come to include in Kangaroo "some'' local secret army actuality). Such organisations had a strict, cell-like structure, and only those at the top knew tile complete picture. Thus it is reasonable to conclude - and this is vital to the Darroch Thesis - that Lawrence could only have obtained the structural detail he reveals in Kangaroo from one of the KEA's leaders.

In Kangaroo the person who tells Somers about the Diggers-Maggies organisation (on the pretext of enducing him to join - to write for them) is Jack Callcott, the character in the novel whom we now have good reason to believe is (partly) based on Jack Scott. So the crucial question is: could Lawrence encountered Jack Scott in Sydney in May 1922, and struck up a friendship with him? (for only that would explain what happened).

But before we go into that, let us establish beyond any reasonable doubt that Callcott is indeed a portrayal (in part - see below about Robert Moreton Friend) of Jack Scott, Rosenthal's deputy, and the co-founder of the KEA.

I have interviewed both of Scott's stepsons, several others who lived in his house, and others who knew him personally and as a businessman and a soldier, both secret and regular. He is mentioned in a number of books and memoirs, and in security and other recently-released files. We have a number of photos of him. After 20 years of intensive research, we now know quite a bit about him, and you will have to believe me when I assure you that he is, without question, the model of Jack Callcott in Kangaroo.

For the record, however, I will briefly detail the parallels. The most obvious one I have already mentioned - his position as deputy to Rosenthal. In addition, Scott is identical physically to Callcott - like Callcott he was tall, loose-limbed, with lean, aquiline features. Like Callcott, he wore expensive suits. Like Callcott, he "had been through the Australian High School course''. Like Callcott, he was an expert on Japan. He had been a captain in the Army, just like Callcott. He was a compulsive gambler, as Lawrence describes Callcott. He was prone to violent outbursts, just as Callcott was. He had a fine tenor voice and sang at functions, as Lawrence describes Callcott. Scott was a notorious "ladies' man'', and Lawrence talks about Callcott's "loves''. And in May-June 1922, when Lawrence was in Sydney, Scott was living in a house in Sydney that had a most distinctive, and probably unique, feature: a Harbour lookout perched on top of a fern-house - and in Kangaroo just such a distinctive lookout is described, giving a view identical to that which was to be had from Scott's backyard eyrie.

Perhaps Scott's most embarrassing characteristic - his impotence - is also mentioned in Kangaroo, though it is transferred to another character - Callcott's "best mate'', Fred Wilmot, who never appears in the novel. Later, after he left Australia, and perhaps felt safe from any retribution, Lawrence did portray Scott's impotence, for the portrait of Jack Strangeways in the second version of Lady Chatterley (where Strangeways is described as a secret army aficionado who lacks his "testi-monials'') is clearly based on Jack Scott - just as Major Charles Eastwood in The Virgin and the Gypsy is most likely a thinly-disguised portrait (in part) of Charles Rosenthal.

Yet can we place Scott and Lawrence together in Sydney in May 1922, and thus provide the opportunity for the start of the transfer of information that resulted in the secret army plot of Kangaroo? I believe we can, with a high degree of probability.

We know that the day after Lawrence arrived in Sydney, he did something most unusual - he embarked on a leisurely excursion by ferry and tram to the then remote seaside suburb of Narrabeen. What was so unusual about this trip was that he was in desperate need of cheap accommodation, for he and Frieda had decided - were obliged - to stay in Sydney or its environs for a number of weeks, perhaps months, and Lawrence was almost flat-broke. To waste precious house-hunting time on a sightseeing trip up the northern beaches seems quite odd.

However, from the description of this trip in Kangaroo - where Somers and Harriett look at houses "2 let'' and "4 sale'' - it is highly probable that this excursion was made at someone's suggestion, and that its objective was indeed to inspect or explore a possible solution to Lawrence's urgent accommodation problem.

Fictionally, they go to a house overlooking a lagoon (though later "facing the sea'') for afternoon tea, and it is there that they meet Jack Callcott and what turns out to be the other main Australian characters in the novel.

The novel's description of this house - "the end house...sideways facing the lagoon...with a large room with settles around a bay window'', etc - tallies exactly (according to Scott's stepsons) with the house where Scott regularly visited his future second wife in Collaroy, the next suburb south (and within walking distance) of Narrabeen. (lt was at this house, that first Sunday in Sydney, that Lawrence, we now believe, learned that Wyewurk in Thirroul was available, and would provide a much more suitable accommodation prospect than anything in Sydney - hence Lawrence's otherwise inexplicable decision to catch the late train down to Thirroul the following day.)

From the above (and clearly l do not have time to outline all the relevant research) l believe it is fair to conclude that there is a convincing body of inferential evidence, combined with a small amount of documentary evidence, that supports the contention that Lawrence encountered Jack Scott in Sydney on Sunday May 28, and that the secret army plot in Kangaroo is the consequence of that encounter.

But the evidence is still only circumstantial. We have no letters from Lawrence or Scott to prove that it happened that way (though I believe that letters were written, and indeed might still be in existence). What we do have, however, is a significant body of further evidence, some anecdotal, some documentary, which corroborates such a hypothesis.

The first item of possible corroboration came in 1977, after the publication of one of my early, speculative articles on the possible factual background to the secret army plot in Kangaroo. A gentleman from Melbourne wrote to me saying: "l believe the name of the man who told Lawrence about Kangaroo (ie, 'Cooley') is on the passenger list of the ship in which they sailed from Perth to Sydney.''

This, we now believe, was a false lead, but in a subsequent letter he said that "Jack Scott fits the description I had of the man on the wharf who took the Lawrences to stay on the north shore for three days before they went to the south coast.''

Again, this is a garbled version of what happened. The significant thing, however, is that he was reporting a conversation he had over-heard as a young boy at one of his mother's literary parties in the 1930s. The informant, he believed, was a senior executive of one of Australia's largest companies (the main financial backing of the 1920-22 and later secret armies in NSW came from CSR, then Australia's largest company).

Another piece of corroboration was revealed to DrAndrew Moore when he was researching his book on the Old Guard. He interviewed the widow of a left-wing activist, a Mrs Jeffrey. She recalled that at bridge parties at her parent's home on Sydney's North Shore in the 1930s Jack Scott was "ribbed'' by others at the table over his portrayal as Jack Callcott in Kangaroo.

Dr Moore also found someone else who knew that there was more to Kangaroo than a mere "thought adventure''. In 1978 the historian of the NSW Country Party, Ulrich Ellis, wrote to him in response to a query about his brother Malcolm's involvement in the APL (Malcolm Ellis was a crony of Jack Scott, and in the Ellis papers there is a letter from Ellis to Scott referring to "the garage".) Ulrich Ellis replied: "In my youth I did not know that the [APL] existed. Later I heard rumours about it. [Probably when he was doing research into people like Macarthur-Onslow.] Years ago I read a novel which tells of a group who formed an organisation along the same lines as the APL. I found it this morning in the Tamworth Library - D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo...it would seem that Lawrence knew the APL story."

A further item of corroboration surfaced only recently. In a radio programme broadcast in Sydney in September last year [1997] an elderly lady, a Mrs Elsie Ritchie, was interviewed about the involvement of her family in the 1930-32 Old Guard. During the interview she recalled her mother telling her that her grandfather, Major Jack Davies, had been first recruited to a secret army in 1922 (my double emphasis) when he was visited by Brigadier Macarthur-Onslow and asked to take on the job of organising a branch of the secret army in his district. Later, she said, the local members of the secret army were known as "the lads from the garage".

Were that the end to the evidence - inferential, documentary, circumstantial, corroborative - the matter would be left, to some minds, in limbo. That would be very unsatisfactory. However, I have left the major supporting evidence to the end. It is that there is proof, documentary proof, that Lawrence did meet Scott and Rosenthal, and that Kangaroo's secret army plot is based on actuality.

But here l have a problem. l know that proof exists, I have certain evidence of it, and I know where it is to be found. The trouble is that I am denied access to it.

The proof that proof exists is contained in a series of letters, the originals of which I have, between, initially, DrAndrew Moore, and then me, and the archivist at one of Sydney's leading private boys' schools, The King's School.

The archivist is Peter Yeend. And as this talk will conclude on this point, I hope you will bear with me a little longer as I explain the importance of this series of letters. For they are significant not only for what they reveal about the factual background and content of Kangaroo, but also because they serve to explain, in part at least, one of the enduring mysteries about Kangaroo and the secret army people whom Lawrence stumbled upon - so incredibly - in Sydney in May-June 1922.

The mystery is, of course, how was such a sensational story kept so secret for so long?

As the extracts I am about to cite will show, in fact there is a dichotomy in Australian secret army circles. It was perhaps illustrated by the hankie-blowing incident I cited earlier. It is that while they, the secret army people, are still determined, at all cost, to keep secret what they and their colleagues and, these days, their fathers and uncles, were doing, yet at the same time they also feel an itching need to tell someone something (or to demonstrate it) - maybe that streak of indiscretion that Lawrence so vividly portrays in Kangaroo.

The first Yeend letter was dated October 1993, on King's School (TKS) notepaper, and was enclosed with a covering note to Dr Moore's publishers. The letter (which was sparked by Yeend's recent purchase of Dr Moore's remaindered secret army book) mentioned that almost 20 years earlier he had interviewed an school "old boy'' named Wright who had told him about the Old Guard and of a curious literary connection with it, which was (and I quote verbatim from Yeend's notes, written down in May 1974) that "Lawrence, the Lady Chatterley's Lover author, had used material about 'this pseudo-military movement' in his Australian novel, Kangaroo.''
Dr Moore subsequently interviewed Yeend who told him that he had also learned, apparently from the same source, that members of a leading Sydney family, the Friends, had been responsible for taking Lawrence and Frieda down and installing them in Wyewurk in Thirroul. After this, Dr Moore handed Yeend over to me, this being more my area of research.

I first wrote to Yeend in mid-1994, enclosing an (unpublished) article l had written speculating about a possible link between the Friends and Lawrence (a link I had long suspected existed). He wrote back saying that the Friend family had deposited certain material in the school archives, but with strict instructions that it was not to be used for any purpose other than research on TKS matters. He went on: "Now my predicament is...l do hold a strong piece of evidence which your thesis needs.''

In his next letter, dated June 15, 1994, he explained further: "I was given a strong hint last night by one of the Friend family that their problem is they want no publicity...I tried to explain that the chaps in the 1920s were, from their point of view, keeping Communism at bay...I'lI let you know if anything more eventuates.''

At the same time that Yeend was reporting progress, or lack of it, he was also dropping hints, such as: "The point of Jack Scott and Rosenthal being responsible for the repatriation of forces from Europe should not be lost on you....Rosenthal had his three sons at TKS...The Friends were known to General Rosenthal on a personal basis...Rosenthal's second son was at school with Walter and Robert Friend...".

Something more than a hint was dropped in the next letter, dated October 1994. He said that Wyewurk had been built by a TKS old boy and that Robert Friend had once owned the dwelling. He went on to say that he had had a chat with Robert Friend's son at a TKS committee meeting and that "His final word went along these lines - well what my father and Uncle Walter did as young chaps can't be held against them...''. And Yeend added: "I also saw Walter Friend's elder son Bill last Saturday - no progress.''

The next letter explained how closely TKS boys bonded together, and went on to say that "TKS boys were excellent material for anyone organising a secret army...''. He concluded: "I'll keep trying to help the truth to surface.''

In March 1995, after Bruce Steele's CUP Kangaroo was published, I sent Yeend a copy of the lntroduction in which Steele said that Cooley may have been based on the Victorian Army general, Sir John Monash. Yeend commented: "The Monash theory is just not on...Steele doesn't understand the TKS community which is one extended family". He added that if Steele and "the other sceptics" understood the TKS mentality they "might see how Rosenthal, Friend, et al fit the mould".

A week or so later came a crucial letter: "I have thought long and hard about your recent letter and find l have no solution. While I remain custodian of this School's records l am bound by the ethics of the task. When I am no longer custodian l cannot get my hands on the material to prove your case.'' He then put forward what he called "a supposed scenario, all supposition of course...'', and he went on: "...my guesses would be your guesses with a few refinements''.

He then said that he understood that a well-known Sydney legal firm (Minter Simpson) was the organisational base for the secret army, and he went on to drop a few more names and extra hints. He concluded: "The basis of the Friend objection is the association with a force which might be seen as overthrowing the legally constituted government. Their wishes must be respected. Thus l end where l began but l feel you will be vindicated in the end.''

A little later came a note "in great haste'': "No change in the Friend position...I still have the matter in my daily work file, for you are right, but we are prevented from proving it.''

In April 1996 came Yeend's penultimate letter, saying he was referring the correspondence to the TKS headmaster. Then silence for over a year - a year in which the reaction against the so-called Darroch Thesis gathered strength. I knew what Steele had said, and had an inkling of what Ellis might say. The truth was in dire danger of being crushed under the weight of CUP authority.

Finally, in some frustration, l wrote to Yeend about the middle of last year (1997) enclosing a letter l had drafted to the Friend family, saying that I had the Yeend letters and might use their contents unless they agreed to release (under conditions favourable to them) the TKS material.

This led to the final (formal, typewritten) letter, which was obviously meant to close the correspondence. "My position has not changed,'' he wrote. "I see little purpose in you writing to the Friend family....I can suggest no practical solution.''

That is where the matter stands. I did write to the Friends, but got no reply. However, l think you will agree that the Yeend letters, taken with the other evidence I have outlined, strongly - I would say conclusively - support the argument that Lawrence did run across a real secret army in Sydney in 1922, and that Kangaroo is the result of that encounter. Yet the story of precisely how it happened is, alas, privy only to the silverfish in The King's School archives.

Thank you.



A Slip or a Tip?

In his letter of 28/9/94 Peter Yeend referred to Jack Scott as "Bob Scott'' (see p. 16).

Was this a "Freudian'' slip - or a subtle tip?

The point here is that, as Yeend's later letters coyly reveal, the man who met Lawrence at Collaroy that first Sunday, and probably took him down to Thirroul the following day and installed him in Wyewurk, was Robert Moreton Friend.

Indeed, it is, no doubt, "Bob'' Friend's memoir that the silverfish now have exclusive access to in the King's School archives.

And it is "Bob'' Friend who, we now realise, provided Lawrence with the "other half" of the character Jack Callcott in Kangaroo, alongside Lawrence's other character ingredient, Jack Scott.

(interestingly, almost all the Australian characters in the novel turn out to be amalgams of two real-life people Lawrence encountered in Australia - that literary subterfuge being Lawrence's then current method of "disguising'' where in fact he got the character elements for his very odd novel of Australia.)

It also points to the probable answer to another mystery about Lawrence, Kangaroo and the secret army, which is why Lawrence did so little to disguise Scott (and why he never went back and chaged anything, even after he realised what Scott's position was in the secret army).

The answer is that the portrait of Callcott in Kangaroo is not really of Scott, but of Robert Moreton Friend.

Scott, in fact, is the "cover" or disguise for "Bob" Friend.