Reflections on Anzac Day

Anzac day is on the date that the Anzacs landed on the beach at Gallipoli in 1915. Fierce fighting against the Turkish forces followed. However, in a previous war Australians fought on the side of Turkey. In the game of war allies in one war can be enemies in another war.

In the Crimean War (October 1853 – February 1856) Britain allied with Turkey and others fought Russia. The immediate cause of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine then controlled by Turkey. Although Russia lost the war the Orthodox church gained control of the Christian churches in dispute. This showed that the immediate cause was not the real cause.

The actual cause was British and French opposition to Russia gaining power and territory at the expense of a weakening Turkish Empire. Although the Turks gained twenty years respite from Russian pressure their defeat in WW1 saw the Turkish domains reduced to Anatolia.

Hundreds of Australians are believed to have joined British regiments, but most of Australia was not involved in that war. However, a few individuals spoke out against offering Britain even moral support. One of them was the Reverend Dr. John Dunmore Lang, a Presbyterian minister in Sydney, who recommended that the Australian colonies should declare neutrality and not be dragged into every conflict that Britain had with other European powers. Charles Gavan Duffy, the premier of Victoria, also called for a neutral Australia in 1870 when he chaired the royal commission on colonial defence.

Tennyson celebrated the heroism of the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in poesy. His poem contained the lines:

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,

If the masses of Britain and France who supported the war had reasoned why, there would have been no war. The heroism and tragedy of the Light Brigade would not have happened.

Between the Crimean War and the cataclysm of WW1 there were those who were aware of pressures leading to war and the senselessness of people doing their best to kill people who might have been their friends under other circumstances. Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) published in1909:

The Man He Killed

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because -
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps -
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

Thomas Hardy wrote the above, but in 1914, at the request of the British Government, Hardy (by then 74 years old) began writing patriotic verse in order to support the work of the propaganda bureau.

In WW1 Australia as part of the British Empire found itself fighting the Turks and their allies. One of the few voices in opposition at the beginning of WW1 was Frank Anstey of the Labor Party. He saw the war as a product of the machinations of capitalists and warned that workers would suffer the most.

Others joined in to oppose the war. Churchmen and freethinkers together established the Australian Peace Alliance (APA) in October 1914. John Curtin, prime minister of Australia during WW2, was a member. The APA coalition grew from thirteen groups in 1914 to fifty-four groups in 1918. Two women's groups also appeared – the Sisterhood of International Peace (SIP) inspired by the Reverend Dr. Charles Strong and the Woman's Peace Army (WPA). SIP appealed to the middle class and concentrated on educating children to the ideals of peace. Eleanor Moore and others in SIP spoke at anti-war and anti-conscription meetings. The WPA protested more vigorously. Led by Vida Goldstein, the first woman to stand for federal parliament, WPA engaged in militant street demonstrations and committed acts of civil disobedience.

Men were not leaving farms, factories and firms fast enough to fuel the furnace of war. Between October 1915 and February 1916, nine recruitment marches were held starting from various points in NSW; the most notable was the first march from Gilgandra, known as the Cooee march. There was also a similar march in south-eastern Queensland. The social pressure on young men to join these marches must have been enormous. How many died because they were made to feel ashamed not to go?

The opposition to the war was strong enough so that Australians voted against the referenda to institute conscription of 28 October 1916 and 20 December 1917.

After the war the only organisation established during the period that continued operation was SIP. In 1920 it became the Australian branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). During peace people are not impelled to work against war. However, the pressures for it continue. As long as this world is in arms we are not living in a time of peace.

In the words of President Eisenhower who was the commander of the allied forces in Western Europe during WW2:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The costof one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushelsof wheat. We pay for a single destroyerwith new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

One can find these words on the website of The Australian War Memorial:

https://www.awm.gov.au/

During the Centenary period, the name of each of the 62,000 Australians who gave their lives during the First World War will be projected onto the façade of the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial.

What was the point of the war?

Did the 62,000 give their lives or were their lives taken from them? How many medals were awarded to enemy soldiers for their bravery in killing Australians? How many medals were awarded to Australians for their bravery in killing the enemy? How many civilians died as a result of the conflict? These are also numbers worth remembering.

Australians and Turks doing their best to kill each other in Gallipoli and Australians and Russians doing their best to kill each other in the Crimea made no sense.

One can say that WW2 was different, and that Australia was attacked. However, WW2 was in many respects a continuation of WW1. It is doubtful that WW2 would have been waged if nations had managed to avoid WW1.

Generally wars are the result of too many people fighting for too few resources. Differences in religion, nationality and ideology fuel the conflict. Soldiers on all sides are encouraged to fight for God, country, the monarchy, the constitution and other abstractions. They are told that mothers, fathers, spouses and children back them and are proud of them. It is hard to resist the pressure for glory.

In my view the following is an example of the inane and stupid way some go to war:

From To Lucasta, Going to the Warres:

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Honor translates to killing and being killed.

I am writing this article in reaction to ANZAC day. I think it would be a more suitable way to remember the 62,000 and the many others killed in Australia's wars to try to lessen the possibility of future wars rather than have dawn services, parades, speeches and monuments.

We could examine the background to find out why we went to war.

There are many things that can be done to lessen the likelihood of future wars. No doubt many will disagree with my following recommendations. I hope others will make their own recommendations.

1. Control population growth. So far the only major government that has recognised this as a problem is that of China. We know ways to limit population. Educate girls. Provide contraceptive information. Provide economic security. Provide pre and postnatal medical care. In an uncertain world people may have many children knowing many will not grow up.
2. Curb the arms trade. It might wither under the lamp of publicity. Australia's arms trade is shielded from view. Arms export licenses and purchases are mainly commercial-in-confidence so the trade is not open to public scrutiny.
3. Exploit both emotion and critical thinking to recognise war as a plague rather than a noble enterprise. The poems have been included in this essay to recognise that the arts can promote humanity or the lack of it. http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm contains William James essay, The Moral Equivalent of War. It is well worth reading.
4. Teach critical thinking in the schools. A thinking population will be better able to resist propaganda that inflames the passions.
5. Remember those such as Reverend Dr. John Dunmore Lang, Charles Gavan Duffy, John Curtin, Reverend Dr. Charles Strong, Eleanor Moore, Vida Goldstein and others who have worked for peace. Their monument would be to continue their work.
6. Protect the environment. Our sustenance depends on it. Scarcities produced by environmental destruction can be a source of conflict.
7. Support peaceful means of resolving international conflicts.Promote an equitable distribution of the earth's resources.Support separation of religion and state. In the above essay religious figures have been mentioned as working for peace. If the church is the handmaiden of the state its voice of conscience is muted.
8. Remember those who have died in and as a result of Australia's wars and question how wars many need not have been fought. Ask how they could have been prevented. History is often presented with clichés that fail to recognise the past. Let us look at our past as clearly and honestly as possible.
9. Let us avoid euphemisms and recognise reality. In an uncertain and often hostile world we need our military. However, it is a euphemism to call an army a defence force. Armies may threaten, attack, defend, occupy, provide flood relief and perform many other functions. We do not have a defence force. We have a military force. Let's recognise it and call it what it is.
10. Let us recognise that Australian soldiers have not always fought for freedom. In the Boer War, for example, Australian soldiers fought to take away freedom from others.
11. Some politicians on ANZAC Day tell us that the soldiers fought for various causes they espouse. Every soldier's death is individual, and every soldier had his own reasons for being there. We can ask what caused them to be there.
12. In every country there are likely to be political figures who are suspicious of diplomacy, mistrustful of foreign and domestic enemies, leery of conflict resolution and believe conflicts should be won, not "resolved". People must learn to recognise them and keep them out of office.
13. Let us work for agreements in which here is a mutual reduction of armaments.

Let us speak respectfully of the dead and mourn them. Let us work for peace.