This is my absolute all-time favourite anti-war song, and sums up my somewhat unpatriotic attitude to Anzac Day, particularly as the song was banned in Australia in WWI:

I didn't raise my son to be a soldier
I raised him up to be my pride and joy
Why should he put a musket to his shoulder
To kill another mother's darling boy
Why should he fight in someone else's quarrels
It's time to throw the sword and gun away
There would be no war today
If the nations all would say
No I didn't raise my son to be a soldier

I didn't raise my son to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause that he will never understand
Why should he fight another rich man's battle
While they stay at home and while their time away
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose
For I didn't raise my son to be a soldier

I didn't raise my son to be a soldier
To go fighting heathens round the Horn
If God required to prove that boys are bolder
They'd have uniforms and guns when they were born
Why should we have wars about religion
When Jesus came to teach us not to kill
Do Zulus and Hindoos
Not have the right to choose
For I didn't raise my son to be a soldier

I didn't raise my son to be a soldier
I raised him up to be a gentleman
To find a sweet young girl and love and hold her
Bring me some grandchildren when they can
Why can't we decide that the Empire
Is just as large as it requires to be
And I'd rather lose it all
Than to see my laddie fall
For I didn't raise my son to be a soldier

Yes, but in WW1, we were on the wrong side. In those days, Australia, Argentina, the US and Germany all led the world by far in socio-economic justice, labor rights, education, welfare, and standard of living. The British Empire was doing whatever it could to keep us all down then, and continues to do so now.

SJF quotes: "Why can't we decide that the Empire - Is just as large as it requires to be".

Why not smash Empire and all its vulgar pomposities, injustices and pretensions? Ah, but to have done that, we Australians should have started by declaring true independence, then forcing imperialists to be loyal or just kicking them out of our country. And the war would have thereby become instead a "Just War" as we deployed to break Empire's strangleholds on Africa, and on the Middle and Far East, helping Turkey, Germany and Austria-Hungary (and Ireland from 1916) to break Empire's local European blockades and corruptions which ultimately compelled the Schlieffen Plan as a "do-or-die" of survival. We would have had our markets open to fair price instead of British Empire monopolies and plunder. Moreover, our contribution to the anti-imperialist cause would have helped prevent the later degradation and rape of Germany in particular, and the later nightmares which followed when rabid imitators there tried frantically to beat Empire at its own sick, nasty and racist games.

Of course, toadies of Empah would object, keenest of all to mystify ANZAC as some pseudo-Calvary of vague "sacrifice for our freedoms", or equally vague but existential "birth of nationhood". But from strategic and meta-historical perspectives, and the vivid accounts of Gallipoli, Fromelles, etc., we may better understand ANZAC as an imperialists' "abortion of nascent nationhood". Fitting that it was arch-imperialist and eugenicist Churchill who devised the incompetent Dardanelles Campaign: the whole enterprise was a vast atrocity committed against the good will, energy and innocence of most ANZAC participants. And remember: Churchill tried feverishly to prevent the campaign's withdrawal, insisting that the force should stay on!

[cont.}

What kind of "Australian" would seek to perpetuate association with such imperialistic barbarism? What would we hear from those Australian spirits recently unearthed near Fromelles, after their rest gave their views greater lucidity, and their torments at the front greater maturity?

When Australians have the benefits of information and time to know better, backing and justifying that original, ghastly imperialist war is tantamount to treason, and a treason of the lowest and dirtiest variety.

Liam Clancy's version of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda gets my vote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFCekeoSTwg

mil-observer

Just some personal reflections springing from your posts … although I warn I’m going off on a tangent.

‘Of course, toadies of Empah would object, keenest of all to mystify ANZAC as some pseudo-Calvary of vague "sacrifice for our freedoms", or equally vague but existential "birth of nationhood".’

True, of course. But I find that criticisms like this of the Anzac mystique only scratch the surface. I don’t believe that men are challenging their own war hero conditioning anywhere near enough. However, it’s understandable. Unlike women, men do not tend to have a tradition of questioning how their society uses and abuses them as a gender.

I tend to think that the Anzac myth, or ‘gallipolism’, is just one manifestation of the universal war cult, which is in turn a culturally nurtured form of male masochism. It’s a male equivalent of the selfless, ever-giving, self-denying mother-Madonna cultural icon that so many women are conditioned to live up to.

Both the cult of the stoic foot soldier and the cult of the stoic selfless mum are imbued with a cultural sanctity that endeavours to make the whole charade criticism-proof – and largely succeeds, because to do so then becomes not a criticism but a sacrilege.

online_east

Yes, I always cry when I hear ‘The Band played WM’. It’s such a beautiful song, and this version is sung by a great singer. (Interesting that Liam Clancy is Irish and Eric Bogle, the writer, is a Scot – at least, until he was 28.)

One problem I have with this type of war song, however – moving and all as it is – is that it continues the ‘war is hell’, ‘war is futile’ male martyrdom ethos (see my comments to Mil above).

What I love about ‘I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier’ is that it boldly strips away all this war mystique and reveals the prosaic ruthlessness of men’s cultural conditioning to view war as essential to their identity

SJF: I disagree with your gender-based concerns about a presumed "universal war cult"; there are many female combat veterans who would scoff too, especially those many who fought and beat such beasts as fascism, colonialism and racism.

But these are cross threads here, and interesting ones. For a more thorough reply, I already posted elsewhere (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8826#139957).