Lest we forget

For the youngest two generations, the shadow of war has fallen into myth. It is a story bored (and increasingly illiterate) history teachers tell children ...

The bitter truth is, Churchill made a strategic mistake at Gallipoli. That is the nature of war. When we remember Anzac Day specifically, we are not solely honouring the young men of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps that landed on the beach at Gallipoli and were ordered to race toward gunfire by inexperienced generals and a misinformed command. 2022 already has some of the key pieces that led to the disaster of last century. Despite this, we do not focus on their failed attempt to capture Constantinople – a city that has sat at the heart of conflict and disaster for most of history with its treasures sacked and walls pockmarked by violence. The trenches of the first world war where the filth, mud, rats, and constant scream of bullets left grown men trembling for decades after – all to progress an inch a week through a ruined landscape. We have graveyards to mourn those we lost to the senseless violence that follows the failure of politics. Few days of mourning are embraced as successfully by the young as Anzac Day – the celebrations that rage all afternoon at least make them aware of the solemn morning spent in silence. The lesson is not that war is sad, brutal, or wasteful (we know this instinctively) – it is how easily peace crumbles at the whim of dictators. The children our ancestors desperately wanted to save are the ones tossing ropes over memorial statues and dragging them off their plinths. The purpose of a memorial is to outlive the grief of those who lost their loved ones. Far from honouring the dead on Anzac Day, a worrying amount of leftwing social commentators and influencers make a click-bait-buck out of radicalising children into the arms of predatory separatist cults. It is a story bored (and increasingly illiterate) history teachers tell children who are distracted Tweeting about how they glued themselves to the freeway last week to save the world from brimstone and fire.