Australia now officially recognises two special days to commemorate our national history of being at war but neither of them is Sorry Day.
The Australian history of engagement in war is primarily honoured on Anzac Day, which has been observed as a public holiday since the 1920s, and is now joined by Remembrance Day, for which the Governor General issued a Proclamation Declaration as recently as 1997, even though it commemorates the armistice that ended World War 1 on 11 November 1918.
The belatedness of the Official Proclamation is interesting.
At one level it might be understood as an attempt to reconcile the apparent contradiction of the messages conveyed by Remembrance Day and Anzac Day, the first mourning the destruction and loss of life in war and celebrating its end, the second acclaiming war as a creative force, giving birth to our nation.
In the last ten years, Remembrance Day has been actively incorporated into the crowded calendar of commemorative events – for example, Boer War Day, VP Day, Vietnam Vets Day, Battle for Australia Day – that tell the larger story of Anzac, of war as central to nation-building.
The peculiar work of Anzac as national mythology has been to reconcile the contradictory messages about war and to sanctify military service whatever the cost. It thus also works effectively to disarm the critics of war.
The shadows of the slope
Armistice Day was once the focus of grieving families who vowed that never again should valuable lives be wasted. In the 1920s and 1930s it became an occasion for peace activists around the world to rally in support of disarmament.
HB Higgins, the radical judge of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court was one of those affected. When he learnt that his boy Mervyn, his only child, had been killed at the front, just two days before Christmas in 1916, his grief was bitter.
“Now, no hope more”, he wrote in a poem titled The Shadows of the Slope, “the dreaded thing has come”. In the heroic phrases Glorious War and Survival of the Fittest he could only see cant and hypocrisy. “What is the offset to the dreadful cost”, he asked. “The pain is of the living; not the dead”. How to assuage that pain?
For Higgins, the result had to be a renewed commitment to the prevention of war, forsaking the divisive national creeds for the brighter hope of internationalism.
“I feel that the best vengeance my dead boy could hope for would be an integrated world, an organized humanity”, he wrote to his Austrian-born, American friend, the Harvard Law Professor Felix Frankfurter.
The next year, moved by “a desire that our American friends shall see what our boy was like” he sent Frankfurter a photograph of Mervyn, adding in a note of painful intimacy, “I feel secure when I commit a thing so sacred to you”.
War to end all wars
Higgins knew that grief such as his was widespread. More than 60,000 Australians died in World War 1 while many more thousands were wounded and permanently disabled. War memorials throughout the countryside, some bearing the names of several boys from the same family, serve to remind us of the terrible impact of the war in Australia, on families and communities, on social, economic, political and cultural life.
After the war, Armistice Day became an occasion when families mourned their lost boys and committed themselves to the cause of peace. The world disarmament movement attracted thousands of supporters in Australia and HB Higgins became president of the local branch of the World Disarmament Movement.
With more Australians dying in the war seemingly without end in Afghanistan – and now at the hands of those who are meant to be their local allies – critics of Australian participation are once again raising their voices to ask why are we there and whether the sacrifice of our young men and women is worth the cost.
On this Remembrance Day we should remember all those who have lost their lives in the numerous foreign wars Australians have fought since 1901, some of them ill-considered, some deeply unpopular and divisive and vow now in 2011 to support our soldiers by bringing them home.
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Comments (8)
John Lamp
(logged in via Facebook)
I had two grandfathers who survived WWI, neither of whom would have anything to do with ANZAC Day, but both observed Nov 11 as Remembrance Day. One later lost a son in WWII (after whom I was named). I always remember Tasmania's Quaker community asserting the peace message of Nov 11.
The increasing vogue for tours of the ANZAC battlefields worries me, as they seem to be celebrating the "great adventure" and "national coming of age" views, rather than the waste of life.
James Walker
(logged in via Facebook)
Yes, peace activists used 11/11 during the 20s and 30s - and are ultimately responsible for starting WWII, by sabotaging any chance of stopping the dictators from getting the resources they needed to start that war.
If you desire a 'sorry day' for european actions, will you also include a 'thank you' day? My own Aboriginal ancestors depended on white police and settlers to stop other tribes from wiping them out, and I value modern medicines, education and technology far more than a claim to the land that my ancestors took at spearpoint from other Aboriginal tribes long before European settlement occurred.
The PropheticKleenex
(logged in via Twitter)
My forefathers killed plenty of Aborigines when it was the done thing, and also fought in the wars. (Including Beersheba, which noone seems to remember anymore.)
I'm not sure you really need to mix the 2 issues.
Sandra Kwa
student (logged in via email @exemail.com.au)
Yes, I also expect some follow-up to the "Sorry Day" reference. However, an important message overall is conveyed, and for me the best quote is from Higgins: “I feel that the best vengeance my dead boy could hope for would be an integrated world, an organized humanity”, he wrote...
The Australian Govt is funding major projects to commemorate the approaching centenary of ANZAC. It is an interesting question why Armistice is not considered as important an event.
Thank you Marilyn Lake.
Mat Hardy
(Lecturer in Middle East Studies at Deakin University)
I'm not quite sure what the reference in the lead par to "Sorry Day" is? Who is saying sorry to who? Or is this is a reference to colonisation?
The PropheticKleenex
(logged in via Twitter)
I think she got caught up in the emotion and started waving her aboriginal flag by accident
Rob Crowther
Architectural Draftsman (logged in via email @westnet.com.au)
Luckily I never went to war but did serve for 9 years.
That is something I am neither proud of, particularly remember, or chastise myself about. It is simply something I did given my world view at the time.
Twenty years on, I have a distaste for war. My personal view is it only happens because politicians or diplomats are either too inept to prevent it or think they are somehow important by sending other peoples children off somewhere to possibly die.
In terms of bringing solders home, I think…
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Marilyn Lake
(Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University)
Thanks to those who have responded to my article. I appreciate your input and reflection. Re the reference to Sorry Day I was pointing to the fact that Australians only commemorate the wars in which we fought overseas, rather than recognise through commemoration that the British and then Australians fought wars of conquest and occupation against Indigenous Australians.