Sydney Glanville Fielding

Almost more of a tract than a novel, this is a dystopian nightmare written as propaganda during WWI. Sydney Fielding was an Anglican clergyman caught up - as almost all Australians were - in a fierce debate about conscription. The Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, argued fiercely in favour of conscription; Australia was running out of men to send over to Europe, and he felt it was everyone's patriotic duty. But the "no" camp, championed by Catholics, Socialists, and others, felt that enough Australians had died in a war which had little impact on their everyday life, and that the government should never have the power to compel people to join its military. It was one of the most bitter debates of the Australian 20th century, especially when a referendum was held in which the "no" vote succeeded, and then Hughes forced his way to a second referendum on the same issue.

Fielding's novel allegorises this situation by jumping into the far future: that mythical year 2000, where the government sets a referendum to abolish Christianity, on the grounds that it has become a destabilising, weakening force distracting the country from its focus on capitalism and power. Of course, once the people vote yes, all horrors break out. The message is less than subtle: don't weaken the state, guys!

Alas for Fielding, the people did vote to weaken the state. They rejected conscription, and Europe had to fight its own war on its own merit. What a shame, eh?… (més)