Anzac Day

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 357, 26 April 1946, Page 5

Anzac Day

T calls for some courage to ] celebrate Anzac Day in 1946, but for no more than we require for most of our other solemn occasions. All such observances are acts of faith and, if we cease keeping Anzac. Day because we have not in 31 years realised its high hopes, very few holy days will rémain on the Calendar. It will soon be 2000 years since the highest hopes of all were held out to us, and no one would suggest that they have yet been realised. But very few suggest that we should cease talking about them or observing the special days that bring them periodically to our minds. We go on hoping, striving, believing that a day will come which justifies our centuries of faith. So it is with Anzac Day, within the limits of its humbler hopes. It was never a victory celebration so much as a memorial and a dedication. If it had been for victory only we could in fact have kept it more easily, since victory is still with us; but we need not lose heart if the hopes with which we first kept it now seem a little vain. No one knows when wars will cease or free men enjoy a free world. We know that millions have died, since the first Anzac Day, to bring these things to pass, and we cannot quite escape the fear that millions more may die in the same cause. But the goal is nearer in 1946 than it was in 1915, since the whole world is now fearfully searching for it. We did not quite know what the first Anzac Day meant-as a man who has never been sick does not know what a sudden and dangerous illness means. But we knew afterwards that we had survived the illness, taken the shock and endured the pain, and we have not ceased in 31 years to search for the cause of such a calamity. Now we have an appalling new reason for looking farther and deeper, and Anzac Day is one of the influences that rally us when we falter. /