Anzac Day 2003

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
27 Apr 2003

Christians regularly use Easter categories to think about war: good or evil, redemptive or futile, the fruit of pride or high principle.

Australian casualties in the First World War are outside our comprehension. With a population of less than 5,000,000, Australia had 60,000 war dead and 320,000 casualties. 8,000 Australians died at Gallipoli.

This is why every Australian town has its First World War memorial. The wave of suffering united forever the English and Irish, the Catholics and Protestants in Australia, now known as the Anglo Celts. The Canadians have no sense of unity like Australians and they have no Anzac Day.

Television has changed the public attitude to war. A free press, television and the internet mean that it is almost impossible to hide the horrors of war now. Before television, it was writers and especially poets who best expressed what war was like.

Recently there has been a wonderful exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London entitled "Anthem for Doomed Youth. Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War".

The 12 poets were a mixed bunch. Most had an excellent education in the classics, but not all. One was an Irish nationalist. Some were poor. They differed about the morality of the Great War as we differ over Iraq. Almost none were then deeply Christian; indeed few understood the consolations of religion, although two later became Catholics. One or two loved hunting and violence, others were driven to madness by it. Most died during the War, but a few survived to be haunted and tormented by their memories.

Originally the best known of them was Rupert Brooke, who died on the way to Gallipoli. 300,000 copies of his work were sold. He captures the high minded patriotism, the belief that sacrifice is purifying which then dominated public opinion.

"Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour
and caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,"

But as the war dragged on, the poetry changed. Wilfred Owen, the greatest of them all, wrote "All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poets must be truthful."

Owen was a brave man, winner of the Military Cross, who was killed just before the Armistice, but the scale and futility of the slaughter sharpened his sensitivity.

At the young man, gassed and dying, "guttering, choking, drowning".

"Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues".

His "Anthem for Doomed Youth" begins with the famous lament,

"What passing bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle."

War is sometimes necessary, but it is always terrible for the victims.