In 1948 Copland returned to Australia from Chunking. He was to now refight – and this time win – a contest for Vice-Chancellorship.

Ten years earlier Copland had been defeated in his pursuit of the Vice-Chancellorship of the University of Melbourne. This was a major trauma in an unquiet life.

A full-time Vice-Chancellor’s position had only been created in 1933, and the first holder of the new office, Raymond Priestly, was presented with an institution that was ‘small, woefully understaffed and financially starved’ (Serle 1993, p. 19). Consequently a struggle between modernisers and the old guard began; or, alternatively, between ‘professionals’ versus ‘amateurs’. The ‘amateurs’ were concentrated in Council. The Professorial Board was the base of the ‘professionals’. And Copland was chairman of the Board. The outcome of this wrestling was undecided in 1938 when Priestly suddenly resigned over the refusal of the Victorian Government to fund his expansion proposals.^[10]

The choice of his replacement as vice-chancellor would constitute a test of strength of the rival parties. Copland was the choice of the modernisers. His victory seemed assured. He was already Acting Vice-Chancellor. And there were no other candidates: Clunies Ross and a swathe of economists, including J. B. Brigden, R. C. Mills and Herbert Heaton, were out of the running. Who else but Copland? But the vehemence of the ‘amateurs’ bred an ‘anybody but Copland’ movement. Sir Alan Newton, a foundation fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, produced the name of John (‘Jack’) Medley.

The son of a Glasgow professor, Medley had obtained a First in ‘Greats’ at Oxford, where he befriended Ronald Knox and Harold Macmillan. In 1914 he was granted a grace and favour fellowship at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, on the expectation that he would expose ‘the damnable heresies of Lowes Dickinson’. Instead he joined up. With the help of his cousin Viscountess Milner he secured a commission and spent the war in a series of staff jobs that a frontline solder might describe as ‘cushy’. Demobbed and footloose, he accepted an uncle’s offer of a commercial position in Australia. He slipped easily into the local social network (including the Melbourne Club), but his excursion into the antipodean world of business was miserable and abortive. Relief came in his appointment of Headmaster of Tudor House preparatory school, the alma mater of Patrick White and Malcolm Fraser.

Medley became, in K. H. Bailey’s words, ‘the favourite candidate of those who opposed Copland’. A bitter brawl ensued.

The Professorial Board unanimously carried a motion saying that university experience was a necessary qualification. (The Council replied that it was none of the Board’s business.) The Age and the Herald were brought in to provide editorial support for Copland. Scuttlebutts were disposed of. ‘Some of the reports of Copland’s unpopularity in the business world were in particular cruelly damaging, and we spent a good deal of time gathering comments in rebuttal’ (UMA KHB 4 June 1938). Sir Colin Fraser of Collins House mining declared his confidence in Copland. Priestly ‘strongly advised’ a vote for Copland over Medley (Priestley 2002, p. 430).

On 21 March 1938 there came the day when the 30 Council members were to make a decision. Priestly was ‘convinced’ that the vote would fall 19:10 in favour of Copland. K. H. Bailey, not long after, wrote that ‘on a repeated scrutiny of the Council list I had come to the conclusion that the worst possible result would be 15 to 14 in Copland’s favour’ (UMA KHB 4 June 1938).

In the debate of Council Copland’s supporters dismissed alleged ‘rough angles and edges to his personality’; one spoke ‘at very considerable length and some heat – unfortunate heat’ (Priestly 2002, p. 436). One of them slighted Medley’s personal capacity in insulting terms. For their part, the Medley faction’s Sir James Darling – head of Geelong Grammar – announced: ‘[I] would rather choose a man who knew what a university ought to be than one who knew what this one actually was’.

The voting was by ballot. Bailey told Giblin: ‘I myself was dumbfounded when the voting went 15 to 14 in favour of Medley’.^[11]

The decision was, indeed, extraordinary. The candidate who was prolific in publication, dedicated in teaching, massively experienced in university administration, honoured by invitations to lecture at Cambridge and Harvard, and with extensive academic contacts (Keynes, Schumpeter, Einaudi), had been refused in favour of a prep school head who had not stepped inside a university in 24 years. As Medley put it: ‘There can certainly never have been a previous case of a Headmaster of a Preparatory School being promoted to the Vice-Chancellorship of a University’ (quoted in Serle 1993).

Copland’s failure has been ascribed to his personality. Some economist colleagues allowed that he was ‘difficult to work with’ (Hytten 1971). But this is not entirely unusual among successful administrators. An even-handed historian later summarised several of Copland’s positive personal qualities: ‘He had the courage of a lion, inexhaustible energy, extraordinary patience with staff, and a better mind and more fineness of sentiment than he was usually credited with’ (Foster and Varghese 1996).

It would be truer to say that Copland lost in a clash of social formations, which might be variously described as classics versus moderns; culture versus trade; gentlemen versus players; the man from New College, Oxford versus the man from the University of New Zealand, Timaru.^[12]

Copland’s supporter, Bailey, put what was at stake in more precise terms: ‘It is tempting to explain the whole contest in terms of a struggle for power between the academic and lay members of Council’. Bailey explained the perversity of the outcome: ‘In that view, it was Copland’s own impressive record of achievement and his tried strength of character which caused his defeat’.

It has been suggested that Copland had only himself to blame. This was the view of the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Priestly. ‘If Copland had been clubbed by someone two months ago he would have awaked after one month to have found himself Vice Chancellor! Unfortunately, no one thought of doing it’ (quoted in Serle 1993, p. 24). Priestley’s claim may be true, and yet be irrelevant. A candidate may cause his own failure, without deserving to fail. The decision to prefer Medley over Copland was a marvel.

Whether it was, in retrospect, a bad decision is another question. Medley did have ‘what is called “charm”’ (Bailey). With his charm he balmed and bound the torn flesh of the University. In the following decade his playful nonchalance proved a useful opiate to ideological aches that wracked the University. He is fondly remembered, especially by one section of political opinion (Cain and Hewitt 2004).

Copland assured Giblin that he had not been taken aback by his defeat. ‘I feared that the enemy would triumph and would have withdrawn my name had I had my own way a few days before the meeting’ (UMA DBC 29 March 1938). But Bailey believed Copland had been confident of victory. Bailey reported to Giblin (then in Cambridge): ‘The whole thing has hit Copland exceedingly hard … His first reactions were quite magnificent, but he has not been able to maintain the nonchalance with which he met the first blow’ (UMA KHB 4 June 1938). Copland felt so badly humiliated he did not attend Commencement, and ‘his absence was very obvious’ (Priestley 2002, p. 453). Copland wrote to Giblin: ‘It is a thousand pities that you were not here and that your steadying hand is not available at the moment’ (UMA DBC 19 March 1938).

To the alarm of his supporters, Copland began to plan a devastating counter-attack. ‘He would have liked, himself, to see us all lead an attack, not only on the actual decision itself, but on the whole University administration, and what I think he had in mind was an eventual government enquiry which would result in the complete discredit of the existing regime’ (UMA KHB 4 June 1938). Copland also planned to mimeograph copies of the proceedings of the selection committee and the relevant Council meeting, and send them to his professorial peers overseas.

Presumably thwarted in these desperate moves, Copland resolved to leave the University, and on 7 April 1938 cabled Giblin in Cambridge:

But Cambridge, it seemed, would not offer a position.

By his own choice, Copland’s academic career appeared to be over. ‘I feel my future here [in Australia] does not lie in academic work at all’ (UMA DBC 29 March 1938). He took leave, and in 1940 presented his resignation.^[13]

Copland’s academic career was revived 10 years later by one of the quixotic visions of Australian ‘nation building’: the Australian National University.

The original plan for Canberra had called for a national university, seated at the foot of Black Mountain. In June 1926, with the translation of the ‘seat of government’ to Canberra imminent, a committee was gathered to report on a provision of university facilities for residents in the new capital. The committee was composed of what Giblin later described as stars of the first magnitude: Mungo Macallum (Challis Professor of Literature at Sydney University) and R. S. Wallace (Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne, and Chief Film Censor). ‘I was added as a twinkle’, said Giblin. The report recommended the establishment of a small teaching university in Canberra, instructing introductory students in Arts, Law and Commerce. The proposal was in essence accepted. A modestly named University College crept silently and unnoticed into the world, an outpost of the University of Melbourne.

But with the advent of war a more sweeping project gripped imaginations. Australia would have a research university in her national capital, to enlighten her citizens and government.

Giblin was dead against the project (Giblin 1941). Where were the students for such a venture? He pointed out the slender student base of the existing University College. ‘Canberra University College has no full time students’, and the existing (part-time) enrolments were the equivalent of only 50–60 full-timers. And who would be the staff? Why should anyone want to come to Canberra?’ Melbourne University, he observed, ‘cannot now attract first-class people … You might offer 50 per cent more salary and still he won’t come’. He disallowed any significance of the location of the proposed university. ‘It is suggested that Canberra can contribute something. Canberra cannot contribute very much.’^[14] And he disputed the viability of a pure research institution. ‘In general, research is built around and grows out of a teaching organisation. Few things are better for research than stating difficulties for students and seeing how to overcome them. Research and teaching mutually help one another.’

He concluded that the project is ‘extraordinarily difficult’, ‘pretty hopeless’, ‘verging on the impossible’. The ‘policy of Canberra should not be at this time to push for a national university, but to go on developing the Canberra University College, expanding facilities, until the Govt. really means to make Canberra a go’. Giblin was much more attracted to prodding Cambridge to be more accommodating to Australian students seeking to study there.

But Giblin’s nay-saying was without influence. An Act was passed in 1946. Four ‘Advisers’ – Howard Florey, Marcus Oliphant, Keith Hancock and Raymond Firth – were to advise the Interim Council on the selection of a Vice-Chancellor.

The clear favourite for the position of Vice-Chancellor had been H. C. Coombs, then Director-General of the Department of Postwar Reconstruction. But he was soon to become the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, and Coombs declined the position.

It was David Rivett, a professorial colleague of Copland at Melbourne in the 1920s, who suggested Copland. This suggestion caused some consternation. ‘Copland was known to everyone – and that was his major problem’ (Foster and Varghese 1996). Copland’s ‘rather beefy, beery and in some ways brash outlook’ was ‘very uncongenial’ to the ‘Adviser’ who had responsibility for economic studies, W. K. Hancock. Thanks to Hancock, the name of Copland became problematic to some who were not acquainted with Copland. Florey, who had never met Copland, acquired the belief that he was not a ‘gentleman’. Did Copland perhaps recall that the bitterest opposition to his appointment as Vice-Chancellor in Melbourne had come from the medicos?

Coombs presented another difficulty for Copland. Coombs claimed to ‘like’ Copland, despite considering him ‘pompous’. But he keenly backed his former boss at the Commonwealth Bank, Leslie Melville, for the vice-chancellorship. Unable to attend the critical meeting of Council, he cablegrammed the Registrar: ‘When Question of Vice-Chancellor is discussed at December meeting glad if you would inform Council that I strongly urge appointment of Melville’.^[15]

Was Melville now to play Medley? He was an infinitely more plausible candidate than the prep school head. But Council contained more strong allies of Copland (Rivett; Bailey; Eggleston) than adversaries. The Advisors might have the prestige, but they didn’t have the power. Most of the Interim Council wanted Copland, and it was finally he who was offered the job. He accepted with alacrity. In March 1948 he commenced as first Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University.

In retrospect, it is clear that Copland was the correct choice for the task of establishing a new university. His energy, entrepreneurial skills, and extensive contacts in academia, in business and government, both in Australia and worldwide, were to prove indispensable in the transformation of some acres of scrub and a few wooden huts into what was later to be recognised as Australia’s pre-eminent university.^[16]

But the victory of Copland’s appointment did not mean the end of his struggles. A new difficulty arose involving one of the advisers who had been doubtful of his appointment, Keith Hancock. The object of the struggle was the guiding philosophy of the new Research School of Social Sciences. A question arose which was absent in Physical Sciences or the Medical School. Would the inspiration to research be specific (and local), or universal (and global)? Briefly, would it be Australian or internationalist? It was not surprising that Copland and Hancock would fall on different sides of this question. Hancock was an Australian native who had been captivated by Oxford. He had assimilated himself to the English environment, and shed the Australian accent that so pained his ears.^[17] He now shuddered at the blatancy of the patriotism in the name of the infant institution: the Australian National University. Localism was parochialism in Hancock’s reckoning, and when it came to senior appointments, he would seek the best in the world.

These differences crystallised over the appointment of the inaugural chair in economics. Hancock insisted on making the appointment, and in order to keep control over it, refused Copland’s wish to advertise the position. Instead he sounded out some of the best talents worldwide: Paul Samuelson, Nicholas Kaldor, A. E. G. Robinson, James Meade, Brian Reddaway. In reaction to Hancock’s strategy, Eggleston in January 1949 complained to Copland that Hancock was ‘trying to get brilliant specialists’. Copland replied, saying: ‘I agree very fully with you that we do not want who you call an ‘all-star cast’’. Copland wished to reverse the ‘bias’ Hancock was imparting ‘in favour of examining the Australian environment’.

There was, however, no call for anxiety about the arrival of an ‘all-star cast’ of ‘brilliant specialists’. The best in the world had no interest in applying for the chair at the Australian National University. Indeed, on many occasions they had no interest in replying to Hancock’s nudging letters. ‘One of the disheartening things in this search is the number of people who are not sufficiently interested to answer letters’ (ANUA KH to DBC 4 April 1949). Arthur Smithies told Hancock: ‘I have been completely at a loss to think of anyone who would be willing to go to Australia and whom I would recommend’ (quoted in ANUA WKH 21 March 1949). Copland must have been reminded of his trials in seeking an overseas economist to fill the Ritchie chair in 1928.

In the face of this failure, Copland did in 1948 what he had done in 1928: he turned to champion his own local candidate. ‘Do you know Roland Wilson at all well?’ he asked Hancock (ANUA DBC 18 November 1948). But Hancock was not interested. ‘We discussed him here, but I doubted [the] wisdom of trying to steal from the Commonwealth Government one of its most senior servants’ (ANUA WKH 27 November 1948). Copland sought to persuade Hancock that the Commonwealth Government would be no obstruction to Wilson’s appointment. ‘I had the opportunity of talking to the Prime Minister … the Prime Minister said that if Wilson preferred to go over to the national University he would in no way oppose the move’ (ANUA DBC 21 December 1948). Hancock procrastinated. ‘There will be, I am afraid, a delay at the approach of Roland Wilson’. For Hancock had found a potential taker in G. D. MacDougall, now best remembered for empirical studies of comparative advantage. But there Hancock had no success either; MacDougall was angling for a Fellowship at Balliol.

The fundamental problem was that while Hancock knew well what he wanted, he was hopelessly unaware of what he could get.^[18] This is illustrated by how he – unable to supply a professor – instead turned on Copland over the ‘old point of domestic service’. Oblivious to the acute labour shortages in post-war Canberra, he chided Copland: ‘It is no private fancy of my own to insist that good professors will not long continue to do their best work unless they are reinforced by good charwomen … Experience convinces me that the charwoman is the bottleneck. Everywhere good people are frittering away their possibilities by doing many chores’. Copland responded patiently: ‘You will be aware of the fact that a matter of this kind requires very careful handling under present circumstances’ (ANUA DBC 18 August 1948).

So the approach to Wilson was finally made. It was the tenth offer made.^[19] It was to receive the tenth rejection. Wilson was in low spirits at this time. He had written to Giblin in 1947: ‘As to my future movements, God only knows at the present stage. There are a lot of possibilities ahead but none of them sound attractive as lazing away the days at Seven Mile Beach or some other sylvan retreat’ (RWA RW 10 March 1947). Not long before the offer came Giblin told his wife that ‘Roland [was] very gloomy’. ‘Roland seems almost nauseated by Canberra – general inefficiency, short of all goods and services … much worse than other capitals, much worse than Canberra in 1945. Everyone returning to Canberra from US – or even from the UK – feels it a drop into barbarism’ (NLA LFG 27 October 1949). ‘I think he has also fallen out with most people or is suspicious of them’.^[20]

With Wilson’s rejection, there seemed nothing left. As Giblin said to Wilson: ‘Copland has no alternative. He has a sticky job at present to get anything going’ (RWA LFG 19 March 1949). It was perhaps Wilson who gave impetus to the notion of appointing Trevor Swan. Hancock granted it was ‘even conceivable’ that Swan ‘might a few years hence be ready for a chair’. Swan was, in fact, appointed in June 1950. Hancock, in Giblin’s summarising words, had not turned out to be an asset.

But Hancock managed to settle the scores. In his memoirs of 1954 he managed to convey to his readers that it was Copland’s fault that Australia had forfeited his involvement in the ANU. Wilson dismissed the relevant passages as ‘unwise, mischievous and childish’ (Foster and Varghese 1996, p. 128). But the newspaper headlines shouted: ‘Canberra Lost a Brilliant Brain’: ‘Who Froze Out This Brilliant Australian?’.^[21] These journalist champions of academic standards need not have lamented: in 1957 Hancock returned to the ANU as director of the Research School of Social Sciences.