This year was the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings which ANZAC Day was founded to commemorate. From that time onwards thousands of communities, in towns and cities across New Zealand and Australia, have faithfully honoured it.
The Great War lasted more than four years, killing 16 million, including an estimated 6 million civilians, with a further 20 million wounded and maimed. Over 102,000 New Zealanders served in that war – with distinction, often heroically – some 10% of the population. More than 18,500 lost their lives. Many more were wounded or gassed, returning as amputees, blind and/or suffering psychological disorders. Heartbreak and sorrow were visited onto thousands of New Zealand homes.
Nearly all of New Zealand’s dead were buried overseas and more than five thousand of them have no known grave. That is why, after the Great War, New Zealand became a land of war memorials.
The historian Michael King wrote: In cities, towns and country villages the war memorials went up. Scarcely a surname was not represented in the names engraved; some represented a family’s entire crop of young manhood. As one writer has commented, “The next generation did not need to be told that the angel of death had passed over the land: they heard the beating of its wings."
One wonders what long-term damage was done losing so many of our best and bravest from such a small population – so much potential talent – in that war and the Second World War that followed. Four generations on, one wonders whether this loss weakened the fabric of our nation?
During the period of the centenary of the Great War, from 2014 to 2018, there was much reflection and debate by historians and academics about its causes. Numerous books were published attempting to explain what drove all the great powers of Europe into this disaster. In the end, there was no agreement.
In the midst of this debate, I recalled someone wrote a letter to a newspaper. I didn’t keep a copy unfortunately. The letter said in so many words, ‘if you really want to know why all these countries went to war, just read what their newspapers had been telling their readers about their enemies’.
When one thinks about it, there could be more than a kernel of truth in that.
And if the newspapers of the time were able to whip up a war psychosis among their populations to demonise the enemy, today we have the corporate media, much more powerful, much more sophisticated – in print, on line, with talkback radio and the 24-hour television news cycle – and, of course, Hollywood.
The ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ lie sold to the public in 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq which killed over 600,000 people and left countless numbers wounded maimed and dying of cancer from depleted uranium, is just one example.
Could constant media conditioning be the reason why the international peace movement, once very active across the world, has, at this particularly dangerous time for humanity, seemingly melted away? Could it be a reason why today many liberal-minded people have become convinced that this war or that is worth supporting?
It is important to remember that the civilisational disaster that came to be called the First World War was in reality a European war which dragged the rest of the world into it. Sadly, it seems little has been learned. The old hatreds and ethnic quarrels of Europe persist, so much so that they threaten again to drag us into another World War – a nuclear war. While attempts are being made to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, we are told the reason for this is to better focus on military confrontation in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the unspeakably cruel violence inflicted on the people of Gaza continues unabated despite the pleas of many, including the late Pope Francis. And no-one seems willing or able to stop it.
Last year we are told global spending on defence and armaments soared to 2.46 trillion US dollars, with no end in sight. This desperate situation is surely as US President Eisenhower described it: ‘Under the threat of War; humanity hanging from a cross of iron'. If humanity is to survive on this planet, surely we must turn away from war and towards peace. Would this not be the greatest way to honour the fallen? (MIKE LEE)
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