Charles Bean - Contribution To The Australian War Memorial

Contribution To The Australian War Memorial

Charles Bean played an essential role in the creation of the Australian War Memorial. After experiencing the First World War as the official Australian War Historian, he returned to Australia determined to establish a public display of relics and photographs from the conflict. Bean dedicated an enormous portion of his life to the development of the Australian War Memorial, now one of Australia's major cultural icons.

It was during the time spent with the First Australian Imperial Force in Europe, that Bean started thinking seriously about the need for an Australian war museum. A close friend of his during this time, A.W. Bazley, recalled, "on a number of occasions he talked about what he had in his mind concerning some future Australian war memorial museum" . Bean envisioned a memorial that would not only keep track of and hold records and relics of war, but would also commemorate the Australians who lost their lives fighting for their country.

In 1917, as a result of Bean's suggestions to the Defence Minister, Senator George Pearce, The Australian War Records Section was established. The AWRS was set up to guarantee that Australia would have its own collection of records and relics of the First World War being fought. This department arranged for the collection of relics from the field, and the appointment of official war photographers and artists. Many of the numerous relics collected, and photographs and paintings produced, can be seen in the Australian War Memorial today. The quality of paintings from the First World War is attributed in large part to the "quality control" exercised by Bean.

The basis of the building known today as the Australian War Memorial was completed in 1941. The Memorial's website describes the building plan as "a compromise between desire for an impressive monument to the fallen and a budget of only £250,000". Bean's dream of a memorial in recognition of Australian soldiers who fought in the Great War had finally been realised. However, when it was realised that the Second World War was of a magnitude to match that of the first, it was understood that the memorial would have to commemorate servicemen from the latter conflict, despite the original intentions.

The Hall of Memory, completed in 1959, could not have fulfilled Bean's dream of commemoration more completely. It adhered to Bean's view that war should not be glorified, but that those who died fighting for their country should be remembered. Bean's moral principles such as this, and the fact that the enemy should not be referred to in derogatory terms, alongside with many others, greatly influenced the philosophical angle that the Australian War Memorial has always taken, and would continue to take.