Anzac Day

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 305, 27 April 1945, Page 5

Anzac Day

HE thirtieth anniversary of TT Anzac landing raised more questions than we can answer in three or four hundred words. We risk absurdity by looking at two or three. One of them many people have already answered, and answered wrongly: Should there ever have been a landing? History we think will say yes. The mistakes and failures of the succeeding weeks-indecision in the field and in London-brought the expedition to complete disaster; but Gallipoli was never a gamble with lives. It was a boldly conceived and carefully drafted plan, and one important factor in the failure was an excessive regard for lives-Britain’s traditional lack of ruthlessness in driving through obstacles. Nor is a negative answer the right one to the other obvious question: Was the war itself worth while? It does not often happen that nations have a clear choice in such matters: but even if it had been possible for Britain to pause and ask in 1914 whether four years of war would be worth while, it is a shallow and short-sighted view that the answer would have been a clear No. It is just as certain that the 1914-1918 struggle was the beginning of the end of all wars as it is that Germany’s two defeats ‘are the beginning of the end of the desire for conquest. No one is wise enough to say when the end of such things will come, but it requires no great wisdom to see that it is coming and is indeed well on the way. The cost of Anzac was heavy — very heavy by the standards of the present war. Those who paid (as victims and as relatives) might not have paid so readily if they had been able to see 30 years ahead; but they might if they had been able to see twice or thrice 30. Anzac Day, therefore, can be a mockery and it can be a sign. It is a mockery if we have become the whited sepulchres of the faith that gave it to us; a sign if we still believe.