The Fourth Year of the Investigation 1914–1915

Abstract

Political unrest in Europe had been increasing since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the first decade witnessing increasing turbulence, distraction and uncertainty. With the outbreak of World War 1 on 28th July 1914, the focus of key people in government and the public service was not necessarily on McAlpine’s investigation and added to his workload. The outbreak of war coincided with the start of the BAAS conference. McAlpine anticipated an influx of friends and overseas colleagues from July to October to attend the British Association Congress during August and September at Melbourne University (Fig. 14.1). This coincided with the busy period of setting up field trials and experiments for 1914/1915 without the assistance of numbers of key field workers who had help establish and maintain experiments in each State. The following 3–4 years were a period of increasing difficulty and stress.