“Bordering on Treason”? Sir Raphael Cilento and Pre-Second World War Fascism in Australia PHILLIP DEERY Victoria University JULIE KIMBER Swinburne University of Technology Sir Raphael Cilento died on 16 April 1985 at the age of ninety-two. The notice in the Canberra Times spoke of Cilento’ s “worldwide” reputation in tropical medicine, his contribution to the public health service in Queensland, and his role with the United Nations in the immediate post-war years. In short, he was an “eminent son of Australia”. But Sir Raphael Cilento’ s halo has been tarnished by his persistent eugenicist beliefs and his later association with the anti-Semitic League of Rights. There were also lingering allegations and rumours about his apparent pre-war association with Fascism. Without the evidentiary “smoking gun”, this association has occasionally been alluded to by scholars but never fully examined. Drawing on an unreleased, previously classified security file, this article addresses this question in Cilento’ s life. Through an examination of what the security service and military intelligence knew of Cilento’ s activities, the article argues that Cilento was at best an active fellow traveller and at worst a card-carrying Fascist who narrowly escaped internment. By his mid-forties, Sir Raphael Cilento was hailed as one of South Australia’ s most “distinguished sons”. 1 His rise to fame accompanied his growing reputation in the fields of tropical and social medicine. A third-generation Italian migrant, Cilento, against the odds, graduated from Adelaide University with a MD and served with the Tropical Force in Rabaul. He was a medallist of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine (1922-1924), and later the Commonwealth Division of Tropical Hygiene (1928-1934). Cilento was knighted in 1935. Two years later, Cilento was appointed Professor of Tropical and Social Medicine, University of Queensland. Credited with ushering in Queensland’ s public health system, Cilento was, arguably, “one of Australia’ s most important health administrators”. 2 Indicative of his immense contribution, the Royal Australian College of Medical Administrators has, since 1981, hosted an annual Cilento Oration. 3 A complex and controversial figure, Cilento’ s “fatal flaw”, as Mark Finnane attests, was his embrace of eugenicism: “he was and remained a eugenic © 2019 The University of Queensland and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. DOI:10.1111/ajph.12563. 1 “ About Interesting People”, Chronicle (Adelaide), 21 May 1936, p.15. 2 A.T. Yarwood, “Sir Raphael Cilento and The White Man in the Tropics”, in Roy Macleod and Donald Denoon, eds, Health and Healing in Tropical Australia and Papua New Guinea (Townsville, 1991), p.63. 3 Gold Coast Dante News, February 2017, p.6. Australian Journal of Politics and History: 2019.