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ANZAC Day can change your life : Comments
By Rod Benson, published 25/4/2005Rod Benson reflects on the meaning of ANZAC Day and how reflection can shape us as better people
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Posted by Pericles, Monday, 25 April 2005 1:39:05 PM
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"At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
we will remember them."
were "...from Lawrence Binyon's 'For the Fallen' - one of the many recruitment-aiding elegies written in September 1914".
That we now use the words of a recruitment poster - written before the first trench had been dug - to honour the dead seems a litle odd. Shows just how long we have been exposed to government propaganda and "message spin".
Rod Benson captures the emotion behind ANZAC day perfectly. He describes in detail the opportunity that it presents, to reflect a little on the values we - as a nation - now hold to be central to our existence, compared to the selfless sacrifice our forebears took to be their duty.
What needs to be glossed over and glamourized in this process are the dirty facts of the war itself, particularly the duplicity of those who waged it using human lives as political - as well as literal - cannon fodder.
Sadly, our government still uses the same tactics today: glorifying the sacrifice of the individual "in defence of our way of life", while continuing to pack them off to fight in defence of someone else's way of life. The parallels with that poetic 1914 recruitment slogan are exact.