The controversial vote for the first time challenged Australia’s undying commitment to Britain – and plenty were not prepared to let go of the apron strings.

In an election speech just before the outbreak of World War I, Opposition leader Andrew Fisher declared: “Should the worst happen, after everything has been done that honour will permit, Australians will stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling”.

Two years later and after 26,111 casualties at Gallipoli, including 8141 deaths, and the bloodbaths at Fromelles and Pozieres in France Fischer’s unbridled enthusiasm for the slaughter was not as widely shared now reality of war with machine guns and howitzers was hitting home.

The division the vote created in the community was reflected in a report in The Daily Advertiser as the results started flowing in two days after polls closed.

“Strangely enough, the bulk of those around the Wagga booth were made up of men of military age, a fact which was often warmly commented on by ladies present who were proconscriptionsits,” the report said.

“’Why shouldn’t every single fit man without ties in that crowd of men be conscribed  and sent to the front?’ said one lady with an expression of absolute disgust on her features.

“She was more than a mother by name. Out of three of her sons two were at the front, and if it were at all possible to spare the third, he would be there, too.”

Mothers were in the middle of the fight, with anti-conscriptionists appealing to their motherly instincts not to condemn a man to death.

Wagga voted 1626 to 1418 in favour of conscription, but the wider Hume electorate rejected it by 11,230 votes to 9489.

Smaller communities, such as Tumut (1270 against and 372 for), Gundagai (693-377), The Rock (286-264) and Cootamundra (1020-587) carried the vote against conscription in the district, angering the newspaper.

“We wonder how those farming communities which have callously voted against the Empire and for the hateful betrayal of the Australian troops in the trenches would feel if Britain were to turn around now and hit them with their own weapons? Britain can do without Australia, but Australia cannot do without Britain,” the paper said in its editorial.

Michelle Maddison, who curates the Museum of the Riverina’s World War I exhibitions at the Botanic Gardens site, said the conscription votes in 1916 and again in 1917 caused division in the Wagga district community that lasted at least 10 years.

“There was a split between the Catholics (who were against conscription) and the Protestants, and the working class may have felt they were the ones who were going to be sent away and be cannon fodder,” Ms Maddison said.

“The upper class were given commissions, with the feeling they were likely to come home.

“You can understand how it could cause a division when people’s lives are at stake.

“Some people thought that because Britain had conscription and it was the mother country we should follow their lead.

“Other Australians did not want to do something they were being forced into doing.

“I don’t think we like being ordered around by authority.

“There were some men who volunteered before the vote because they did not want to be seen as having been forced to enlist.

“It really boils down to Australians not liking to be told what to do by the government, and I don’t think times have changed.”

Ms Maddison thinks Gallipoli played a role in Australians narrowly voting down conscription in 1916 by 1,160,033 votes to 1,087,557.

“I know it got much worse on the Western Front, but Gallipoli hit home that the people who had enlisted – your sons, your brothers, your fathers – may not come home because they have been slaughtered on the battlefield,” she said.

“When the maimed soldiers started coming back from Gallipoli the government could not hide that from people and I think they got scared.”

Ms Maddison points to the Plunkett family, of Yerong Creek, as an example of the pressure put on communities to send all their young men off to war.

The eldest Plunkett son, then Sergeant-Major Gunning Plunkett, wrote to his mother, Matilda, in late 1915 as Billy Hughes began to ramp up pressure for conscription amid voluntary enlistments falling well short of what was required for reinforcements.

With two of his three brothers in the army, Plunkett urged his mother to allow the fourth son – 17-year-old Argyle – to enlist.

“I know how extra good you have been in sparing your other three sons, but it is a time for big sacrifices, and good solid men are badly wanted,” Plunkett wrote.

“Young and all he is, there are younger boys here.”

Gunning Plunkett and brothers John and Frederick survived the war, but Argyle was killed in France in September, 1918.

“I wonder if the mother felt the same towards Gun after his brother was killed,” Ms Maddison said.

“I think it would be human nature to feel some resentment against him.”

Ms Maddison said the majority of soldiers on the Western Front voted against conscription in 1916.

“They knew the hell that the trenches were,” she said.

“Then there were others who said ‘we know there are shirkers in Wagga, but we don’t want them here, we know they are cowards.”

“The view on conscription was very personal.”

So important was Wagga in the conscription debate that Billy Hughes visited the city five days out from the vote and spoke for conscription at the Strand Theatre.

The theatre was packed and “several thousands were unable to gain admittance”, the Advertiser reported on Tuesday, October 24.

“The fewer men you send the more the casualties; the more men you send the fewer the casualties,” Mr Hughes said.

And he attacked the notion that women were being asked to send a man to his death by voting yes to conscription.

“She is asked to send a man to to save a man from death,” Mr Hughes said.

He also played the coward card, trying to shame men into voting yes.

“What manner of men are we going to breed in the future – heroes or cowards?” he asked.

“Every country in the world has adopted conscription, and so must we.”

In December, 1917, Mr Hughes asked Australians a second time to vote for conscription but he was defeated by 1,181,747 votes to 1,015,159.