While official speeches commonly cite ‘democracy’ among the causes for which Australians and our allies have always fought, we are free to wonder if that is not ‘the lie in the soul’ this Remembrance day.

Remembrance Day ceremonies, especially at a local level, sincerely seek to honour the war dead, and to offer solace to the grieving. Worthy objectives.

But the top-drawer ceremonies, in each state capital, and in Canberra at the ‘Remembrance Day National Ceremony’, often show the dead hand of the old Establishment still weighing on the day.

It is presented as a ‘holy day’ in a civic religion. Crowds watch sombre-faced dignitaries, and admire the well-drilled catafalque guard, as a band plays funereal hymns. One ‘Honourable’ after another lays a wreath. In Canberra, these wreaths rest against a stone carved with Kipling’s choice of biblical consolation, ‘Their Name Liveth Forever More’.

But there is a strange dissonance. The official party includes top-ranking members of the political class, those who make decisions to deploy. Today they look so sad, about every dead soldier, sailor, and aviator; but many of the same people with the long faces express support – on other days – for every past deployment and every projected deployment. They don’t wish to democratise the power to deploy.

Everyone is respectful. Remembrance Day is clearly not the day to think any critical thoughts – about how Australia has got into past wars, or may get into future wars. Supposedly, that would be disrespectful.

Would it be? Today, the ‘Commemorative Address’ will praise the ‘supreme sacrifice’ but shun any questioning of our past descents into war.

Is this true respect for the Anzacs? Surely the most searching criticism of war, its causes and our war aims, should be at the heart of true respect.

As Remembrance Day marks the armistice of 1918, let us reflect especially upon Australia’s First World War.

Today, as many speeches refer to ‘the armistice that ended World War I’, we are free to remember that it didn’t: because famine, civil wars, and ethnic cleansing raged on across Central, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Today, with the vice-regal representatives often presiding, standing in for King Charles III, we might think about monarchy as the handmaiden of war. For example, we might discover that George V, our King-Emperor, boasted to the US envoy Colonel House in May 1915 that London had ‘hesitated between peace or war’ in August 1914, but that ‘he urged them to declare for war’.

Today, while ministers of defence, defence industry, and the military top-brass stand on the official dais, hands on hearts, lamenting war, perhaps we might speculate if these same ministers and officers will soon shift into lucrative positions with the great armament firms, or the strategic ‘think tanks’ that urge ever more arms spending, as many have shifted before them. The path-breaker on this road to wealth was Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Ottley , who in 1912 controversially left the top position of Secretary of the British Committee of Imperial Defence, where Australia’s defence was planned, and shifted to a directorship of the arms firm Armstrong-Whitworth. He is much imitated.<

Today, while official speakers lament the losses of war, on other days they renew their faith in deterrence as the only way to preserve peace. We might choose to recall the huge boost in arms spending before 1914, during the era of the industrialisation of warfare and of the increasing dominance of private firms in the manufacture of armaments – that failed to deter war. We are free to wonder who was enriched by the dogma of deterrence, that is, the British, French, and American banks that floated the huge international loans that funded the pre-1914 armaments race, in Russia, Japan, Britain, France, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans – that failed to deter war in 1914.

Today, while our political leaders who support the spending of $368 billion on our AUKUS nuclear submarines are solemnly laying wreaths, our minds are free to contemplate the gigantic vested interest, the military-industrial-financial conglomerates, that AUKUS will enrich. We might even recall the bribery scandals, price-gouging, collusion, scaremongering, and influence peddling that bedevilled the giant UK weapons-makers and shipbuilders of the pre-1914 era, such as Vickers, Armstrong-Whitworth, and others , from which Australia purchased its new ships and weapons.

Today, while representatives of both sides of politics sit together, both promising that Australia’s sovereignty is absolutely unimpaired by AUKUS, we might reflect upon the similar public promises given before 1914. For example, prime minister Andrew Fisher proudly voiced his imperial loyalty, but he told the parliament in 1911 that the best policy was for Britain ‘to leave to the self-governing Dominions the right and the power to say what they shall do in all circumstances. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both sides of Australian politics agreed to prepare an Expeditionary Force for service abroad under British command, and promised to hand over the newly constructed  Royal Australian Navyto the British Admiralty as soon as war broke out – and did so.

Today, with the announcements of billion-dollar purchases of missiles from US arms firms fresh in our minds, we might contemplate the massive diversion of public funds from social programs this involves, so reminiscent of Australia’s decisions before 1914. For example, Australia’s last pre-war budget for 1913-14 showed that our British-built battlecruiser HMAS Australia cost £2 million, and defence as a whole cost £5.7 million for the year, at a time when the Commonwealth spent just £2.2 million a year on old-age pensions and only £412,000 on maternity allowances.

Today, while the newspaper empires offer special supplements for Remembrance Day, with touching stories of family loss and stoicism, we might remember that their forebears, the newspaper empires of 1914-18, campaigned furiously against any negotiated peace throughout the war. For example, the ‘Trove’ newspaper database shows that the Australian press showered the public with 2,909 articles warning of the peril of a ‘premature peace’, 2,008 articles denouncing an ‘inconclusive peace’, 1,603 articles attacking any ‘patched-up peace’, and an astonishing 11,067 articles condemning German ‘peace offensives’.

Today, while official speeches commonly cite ‘democracy’ among the causes for which Australians and our allies have always fought, we are free to wonder if that is not ‘the lie in the soul’. For instance, the US decision to enter the First World War was trumpeted as transforming it into a struggle to ‘make the world safe for democracy’. We may reflect that US entry in 1917 was also the choice of the financial interests behind the boom in war loans and war trade. It was W. H. Page, the US Ambassador in London, who burst into honesty in March 1917 as he advised Wilson: ‘Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present preeminent trade position can be maintained and a panic averted.’

Today, while the hymn ‘ O Valiant Hearts’ is sung, with its claim that our soldiers enlisted because they ‘had heard God’s message from afar’, we are free to roll our eyes.

Today, while John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ is read, we are free to reject McCrae’s plea that we ‘take up our quarrel with the foe’ and not ‘break faith’ with the dead – and to doubt the idea that the war dead are leaning over the edge of the clouds of heaven and calling for more war.

Today, while Laurence Binyon’s ‘Ode’ is recited, we may care to remember that, as a Quaker’s son, he was sympathetic to the peace movement. When he wrote ‘For the Fallen’ in September 1914, British casualties stood at 57,000. By November 1918 the British dead numbered 888,000. The total killed is put at more than 17.8 million. No remembering, at the going down of the sun, or in the morning, could heal that wound.

In the 1960s, Val Noone, the prominent critic of Australia’s war in Vietnam, advised his friends in the peace movement to remember this maxim: you must respect the warrior; you may disrespect the war.

Useful advice on Remembrance Day.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-lie-in-the-soul-true-respect-on-remembrance-day/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLay8Cm9h04