On any given Anzac Day, it’s fair to assume you will hear at Dawn Services or later in the morning the sort of speech we are accustomed to hear on Anzac Day; you will hear of sacrifice, of loss and of valour.
You will hear that the flower of our nation heeded the call to arms to defend our way of life and that many paid the supreme sacrifice in serving their country in this mighty war, the first to be given the label World War.
And this is exactly as it should be. It is right that we should honour the sacrifices made by our fathers, grandfathers, sons and brothers in this and subsequent wars. (The direct victims of war have, historically, mostly been men but the role of women in or near the battle and at home has been recognised much more starkly in recent times, and this too is as it should be)
There have been attempts over the years to belittle or denigrate Anzac Day; there have been claims that it glorifies war; that it takes away a focus on other ways in which Australians can, and have, contributed to our nation-building. These attempts have never been successful because they miss the point of what we are commemorating; we are mourning the loss of loved ones, or the loss of a generation of young men; we are recognizing bravery and mateship at its best and drawing the attention of our leaders to their responsibility to find, within their ability, other and better ways to settle disputes among nations.
The question I have posed in the title of this talk “Was it worth it?” can be answered, I think, with reference to those three ideas that we are commemorating – mourning loss, recognizing bravery and mateship and avoiding future wars. Let’s look at each in turn.
Mourning loss is both personal and national. In the first few decades after the war the personal losses will have dominated the thinking and attitudes towards what Anzac Day was all about as parents, widows, siblings and children remembered the soldiers who did not return to march with their mates. The mates too were likely to be thinking about personal losses. The losses of World War 2, beginning just two decades after the first horror was finished added new numbers to those for whom Anzac Day was a day to remember personal loss. And this process has continued through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, not in anything like the same numbers but no less in the extent of the impact on those affected.
But there is another aspect to this sense of loss and this emerged quite early in the way Anzac Day is remembered. We also remember the enormous national loss the war inflicted on this country (and indeed on all the countries which were caught up in the conflict). From our population of about 4.8 million we enlisted 416,809 servicemen of whom 331,781 “took the field”. 64.8% (215,000) of those men became battle casualties, killed or wounded, the highest proportion of all the British Empire countries. This situation had a serious effect on Australian life, on our economy and on our demography. In money, the cost to Australia during 1914 to 1919 was assessed at Pds 364 million by the Paris Peace Conference. The post-war cost, up to the beginning of the Second World War was about Pds 270 Million. This was made up of pensions, to returned soldiers and to the families of the dead and incapacitated, education and training programs, War Service Homes and the Soldier Settlement Scheme. When WW2 broke out there were still 2000 WW1 servicemen under treatment in Australian hospitals, mostly in the Repatriation Hospitals established in each state. In addition, about 50,000 attended at some time during the year as outpatients. Ex-service organisations, such as the RSSILA and Legacy also provided help to returned men and their families. A significant amount of national effort and national treasure was deployed in the huge task of dealing with the aftermath of the war.
It’s worth remembering here that although the war saw action on every ocean and most continents, most of the fighting, dying and destruction occurred in Europe. The figures I’ve just quoted for Australia (measured in a few hundreds of thousands at most) were replicated in Europe in millions and tens of millions. The absence of millions of young men led to millions fewer children and a falling birth rate, exacerbated by the turbulent economic conditions in the post war years; it has never recovered. It is interesting that from about 1700 to 1914, Europe sustained a remarkable population boom that fuelled its rise to world dominance. By 1914, about 40% of all humans were white Europeans or of white European ancestry. WW1 ended that boom and over the following decades the tremendous growth of the Asian, African and Latin American populations transformed the world into a place Europeans could no longer dominate.
The demographic shocks weakened the workforce of Europe and left its economy significantly less productive. Manufacturing output was well down across Europe and took many years to recover to pre-war levels. The continent was awash with debt; all of the participants had financed the war with loans and the economy was such that being a creditor was no better than being a debtor if the debt could simply not be paid. The changes in Europe were enormous, some were good, some definitely not.
The redrawing of the map of Europe led to a net increase of six fully independent states; Montenegro was subordinated to Serbia in the new Yugoslavia; Austria separated from Hungary; Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland and the three Baltic republics were created. Internal revolution was also dramatic; the Europe of 1914 had only two republics, the Europe of 1919 featured eleven republics and of the five most significant states only Britain and Italy were still monarchies. The centuries old Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Romanov dynasties disappeared, never to reign again. And that was probably not a bad thing.
There were now 27 currencies in Europe, formerly 14, and an additional 20,000 km of international borders. These new frontiers disrupted pre-war economic patterns by blocking raw materials from factories, farms from consumers and agricultural and industrial exports from seaports. All this contributed to the delay or prevention of economic recovery. And here is the ultimate irony: in a generation, these same borders would have to be defended militarily because most of the new or newly expanded countries were too poor or too weak to protect the territories they had claimed in 1918-19.
I hope I have shown that, both in Australia and throughout the world there was, in 1918 and even now, so much to mourn. Personal losses, the national loss of a generation of young people and the economic disruption that impoverished nations and people were all brought on by the horror of WW1. Was it worth it? I’ll try to answer that in a moment but what about that second reason to observe Anzac Day, the recognition of bravery and mateship.
At the Dawn Service on Anzac Day, 2009, at Gallipoli, the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith addressed the gathering and summed up the significance of the day this way:
“Every year now, as Australians throughout the world gather to commemorate Anzac Day and remember lives lost, we also celebrate our national characteristics, our values and our virtues: the great Australian notion of a fair go, of looking out for one’s mates, of a sense of humour in adversity and the sure and certain knowledge that however bad our circumstances might be, there is always someone else worse off who needs a helping hand”
This seems like a pretty good summary of what we believe are the character and nature of Australians. Whether we are all really like that is at least arguable but it’s what we believe of ourselves and it is, in any case, a worthwhile goal to aim for. It is certainly on these traits, together with the special nature of discipline in the Australian forces, that overall success in battle and the many examples of individual bravery can be seen to be based. This discipline and its success was based on a close level of trust and shared hardship between officers and men and that the troops wanted the objectives and understood the methods of achieving them almost as thoroughly as their leaders. Discipline was always compatible with initiative and a readiness to take risks.
Does the incidence of great bravery and successful feats of arms, however proud we are of them, make the whole bloody horror of the war worthwhile? Does the discovery or adoption of a set of admirable personal and national characteristics, summed up as “mateship” justify the loss and destruction? Once again let me delay my answer to that question while I examine the third reason to commemorate Anzac Day.
This phrase has been repeated so often it’s become a cliché and it is mocked for its signal failure. “The war to end all wars” was on many lips and no doubt was a genuinely held aspiration but the world leaders meeting in Paris in 1919 who said it most publicly also took decisions that contributed, in only two decades and in no small way to the next conflagration, this one more destructive than the last.
But let’s start with the 11th November 1918. News of the armistice set off wild celebrations worldwide with the biggest crowds assembling in the capitals of the victorious Allies. In Paris and London, Rome and New York tens of thousands gathered and there was merriment and infectious joy at the silence of the guns and the end to war’s horrors. But here is an interesting counterpoint. In a letter to his mother, an American officer who wrote from Paris on 11th November, said
“… Thank God, thank God the war is over. I can imagine all the world is happy…I only hope the soldiers who died for this cause are looking down upon the world today. It was a grand thing to die for. The whole world owes this moment of real joy to the heroes who are not here to help enjoy it…”
“It was a grand thing to die for”. Really? I wonder if he meant that each of the millions of deaths was a worthwhile contribution to a great beneficial outcome, or, if you had to die in a war it was best to be on the side of the good guys and/or the winners. I doubt very much that his mother would have shared that sentiment if he had been one of the fallen. But back to the main game, to what would nowadays be called the geostrategic issues arising from the war and vital to a future peace.
In the ten weeks that passed between the conclusion of the armistice and the opening of the Paris Peace Conference enormous changes were made in the world’s political scenes, and especially in Europe; perhaps the most eventful ten weeks in modern world history. Germany and Austria established new democratic governments and held general elections; Britain also held a general election; in all three, women were able to vote for the first time. Russia continued to be embroiled in civil war and countries around its fringe scrambled to make their claims to statehood and independence at the conference. In the ruins of the Dual Monarchy, Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia squabbled over the spoils along with Italy, Serbia, Romania and Poland. From Africa to the Middle East to East Asia and the Pacific governments sought to solidify gains or build cases for why the Peace Conference should overturn existing territorial realities. In Germany parties of the right and left squabbled and struggled for support and events of this winter of 1918-19 set the political parameters for inter-war Germany. The resulting Weimar Republic constitution and the government it created were never fully supported by a significant number of Germans. This instability and lack of national cohesion was a significant contributing factor in the rise of Nazism and Hitler.
Meanwhile in the United States, President Woodrow Wilson decided to attend the conference to push for his 14-points peace plan but he had little support at home. He had received a stinging rebuke in the mid-term Congressional elections with Republican majorities elected in both houses. His Secretary of State advised against his going to Paris but instead remain aloof and dominate from Washington. However, Wilson remained confident and ignored all the contrary advice, and he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds in Italy, France and Britain and hailed as a peacemaker. When the conference convened it considered a huge range of issues, borders, armaments, reparations and colonies and considered them in great detail. I won’t pursue all the detail here of what happened at the conference but I will make some comments on the outcomes.
There are many historians critical of the Versailles Treaty; their arguments are along these lines. The treaty was a colossal failure for Wilson and for the future of a world that had hoped it might be governed by principles of freedom and self-determination. The document Wilson took home was profoundly flawed. It failed to embrace any of the elevating moral vision that he had brought over with him. In his efforts to win acceptance of the League of Nations he compromised on almost everything else that he and other peacemakers were trying to create in the world. We continue to pay the price even now.
By their off-hand treatment of the non-European world they stirred up resentments which the West is still dealing with today. They took pains over the borders in Europe even if they did not satisfy everyone. However, in Africa they carried on the old practice of handing out territory to suit the imperial powers; in the Middle-East they threw together peoples who still have not managed to cohere into a civil society, Iraq and Palestine for example. But they could not see the future and they certainly could not control it. That was up to their successors. When war came in 1939, it was the result of twenty years of decisions taken or not taken, not just the arrangements made in 1919.
After all, Hitler did not wage war because of the Treaty of Versailles, although it was a fruitful source of propaganda material. Even if Germany had been left with its old borders, even if it had been allowed whatever military forces it wanted, even if it had been permitted to join with Austria, he still would have wanted more: he wanted the destruction of Poland, control of Czechoslovakia, above all, conquest of the Soviet Union. He would have demanded room for the German people to expand and the destruction of their enemies, whether Jews or Bolsheviks. There was nothing in the Treaty of Versailles about any of that.
I think we can conclude that the peacemakers of Versailles certainly tried to create a world in which war was not a first-choice solution to international problem solving. For the most part their intentions were good but their results were flawed, compromised by the pursuit of national self-interest. Whether or not the Treaty of Versailles contributed significantly to the outbreak of the Second World War it is sadly the case that the statesmen of the day were not able to make good on the idea of a “war to end all wars”.
So where does all this leave us in our search for an answer to the question” So Much Blood, So Much Bravery: was it worth it?”
Was the blood and the bravery worth “it”. The answer depends very much on what that second “it” is. If the answer is that “it” represents a successful defence of our way of life based on democracy, the rule of law, justice, prosperity and of course the elements of our special quality of mateship. Perhaps that makes all the blood and sacrifice worthwhile. But it was such a temporary, fragile and flawed peace that came out of the war; does that mean it was worth it? I would be very surprised if all, or any, of the mothers who lost sons in this or any other war would agree with the American officer who told his mother “it was a grand thing to die for”.
I also doubt if the discovery or adoption by Australia of the admirable qualities associated with mateship could not have been discovered in ways that did not involve loss of life on this horrific scale.
So, the three aspects of Anzac Day commemoration, mourning our personal and national loss, recognizing bravery and mateship and trying to avoid future wars don’t seem to add up to a persuasive set of reasons that make war worthwhile. Of course, they don’t!
So, I am drawn to the conclusion that “was it worth it?” is the wrong question. It implies that there is, or was, a transactional bargain entered into consciously or unconsciously by the participants in this war. Were young bright-eyed recruits asked by the enlisting officer “Are you prepared to trade your life for the safety of Australian democracy? You are? Good. That’s the contract, sign here”. There may have been people who sincerely believed that their life was a fair exchange for the greater good but I doubt there were many.
I believe a better question would be “Did our national leaders act morally and with integrity, knowing the possible consequences, both good and evil, when they committed Australia to the war?” I believe the answer is “Yes”. Wars are not started by democracies, democracies respond to aggression either in their own defence or in the defence of friends and allies who are under threat from an aggressor. The choice by a democratic government to go to war is not, or at least shouldn’t be, taken lightly. Why and how the Australian government arrived at its decision to join in the war in Europe is a worthwhile question to ask.
ANZAC DAY presentation to the Pipeclay Club by Pipeclay member and MHHV President, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Buckridge (Rtd)
Contact Military History and Heritage Victoria about this article.
