At the time, as the designation of the Australian forces (AIF) implies, we thought ourselves part of the Empire, somwhat wayward sons. So the notion that we were fighting someone elses war is idiotic. The UK’s war was our war because we were still part of the UK in most ways, shapes and forms.

Gallipoli is important and became memorialised soon after because it was our first innings and we gave a good account of our selves, notching up a reasonable score on an “away” pitch in a losing side. It showed we could play well as a small national team in the greater team of Empire.

No doubt the game itself (great power war) sucks. But thats not the way people thought at the time. And subsequent behavior of the auld enemy gives substance to that way of thinking.

thus the projection isn’t merely retrospective myth-making. (People who have studied History may be able to confirm this).

Well, I don’t know if it isn’t just retrospective myth-making, without seeing some 1915 sources, but it’s certain myth-making. Even the people making some sort of argument that the Keating was wrong in saying what he was saying argue in terms of myth.

E.g. Scott@19

It should also be considered that Gallipoli is merely a representive battle for Australia’s wars. We could just as well use a WWII battle, or indeed something like Long Tan. Its just that Gallipoli was Australia’s first major engagement, and therefore it stands for all that follows.

If it “stands for all that follows” well what follows from that it is that it’s a symbol – in fact stronger that that, that’s what the phrase actively states. Gallipoli is a symbol of Australian involvement in wars in general.

In other words, it’s a story that we tell about ourselves in order to define a certain part of who we are as a nation (or people, or ethnic group, or whatever collective identity you wish to place within this framework). It’s creating group identity, the core function of mythology.

It’s the whole reason this argument becomes so contested. For the supporters of the ‘ANZAC Legend is our Sacred Foundational Myth and Leave It Alone’ school, Keating’s words are as if you told a 5th Century B.C.E. Greek that Homer is crap poetry anyway, too many good Greeks died pointlessly, the war against Illium was unjust and contained no honour, it was none of their business who Helen ran off with, and why the bloody hell couldn’t they have just left the poor buggers alone?

Of course, we know that Gallipoli is an actual historical event, and Troy is just a myth that maybe is or isn’t ‘historical’, but the Greeks felt (or at least acted as if) it was historical, so the emotional comparison can be made. And the historicity of the actual fight, and even of particular events, in no way detracts from the mythological nature of the stories that are told about them.

Again, it’s of no surprise that nearly ALL of the ‘history wars’ are fought over grounds that are rich fields for the national myth-making. Colonial foundation, frontier expansion, the conquest of the natives, and wars for the Motherland in Far Off Places. The Greeks and Romans all had exactly those types of myths (especially the Greeks). Remember we were also founded by a country that saw itself, quite deliberately, as the new Roman Empire. If you require confirmation and you are in Sydney just go and look at the Governor Phillip fountain in the south-western corner of the Botanic Garden.

The fact that the campaign was a fiasco from beginning to end adds to its lustre. A thumping great victory only teaches the victors to glorify war; a loss speaks of war’s tragedy and invites reflection. As we’ve seen in this thread, there’s room in the legend for all sorts of morals to be drawn and argued for, even opposing ones.

Katz, when has Australia ever waged a ‘national campaign’, defined in your terms? John Monash is widely considered to have been the best Allied General on the Western Front, but he was under the command of Field Marshal Haig. In WW2, Kokoda was instigated by Douglas MacArthur, and our troops were ultimately under his command as ‘Supreme Allied Commander in the South-West Pacific Area’.

My point precisely, Paulus.

However, there are different levels of Australian dependency. Originally, Australia was not even accorded a seat at the Versailles Conference. Hughes muscled in, much to Lloyd George’s and Wilson’s chagrin. During WWII, even though operationally Australian forces served under the supreme command of MacArthur, still Australia was accorded the status of a full-fledged sovereign power during WWII, and claimed it by several means, including as an original member of the UN.

Thus a clear distinction needs to be made between operational subservience and the eclipse of national sovereignty.

Curtin ratified in 1942 the Statute of Westminster (1931), an act that declared Australian sovereignty in a way that had been anathema to Robert Menzies, even though offered to the Dominions by the British Government itself. Tellingly, Curtin backdated the application of the Act to 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared War on Germany. According to this formulation, the last constitutionally binding thing that the British government did in the name of Australia was to declare war on Germany.

This fact raises some questions:

1. Why was Australia not repreented at the Paris peace talks between the powers that supported South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese? Gorton and McMahon didn’t even know that secret talks were going on despite the fact that Australian troops were fighting and dying in South Vietnam.

2. As I mentioned earlier, why isn’t Australia represented on policy-making bodies for the war in Afghanistan?

3. Doesn’t Australia have vital interests that might be voiced in such forums?

Thus, after a short period during and after WWII when Australia asserted its sovereignty, Australia has reverted to the role of compliant and voiceless suppliers of cannon fodder just like they had at Gallipoli.

This is one of the corrosive elements of the Gallipoli myth because it encourages this subservient behaviour.

As opposed to fighting Nazism.

And let me clarify my mention of Japan. They never wanted to occupy Australia, and we could, if necessary, have let them have PNG (which we had no right to anyway as a colonial occupier, hmmm?). So it is hypothetically possible that we could have stayed out of the Pacific War by severing our ties with the British Empire in the 1930s. Would you have supported that?

Australia could (hypothetically) have gone through WW2 like the Republic of Ireland, fighting no one, and, at the end, sending our condolences to Germany over the sad death of Herr Hitler (as Éamon de Valera did in 1945).

That’s where you end up if you take the view that only “direct threat to Australia” justifies military action.

Ive never understood why people assert Australia was ” never under direct threat from the Japanese”.

Actually, that’s an easy one. Most of these blockheads had relatives who served in Egypt (i.e. from Victoria and other places) rather than northern NSW or Queensland. Lots of those (primarily rural sourced) divisions from QLD for example ended up fighting alongside the Dutch in joints like Ambon, where we had our bottoms kicked and thousands of our POWs died in horrific circumstances. But since history is written out of Victoria, it just isn’t on the radar.

Furthermore, if someone asked you to speak at a conference or shoved a mic under your nose and asked you what you thought about something, I am fairly confident that you would not say ‘No thanks / no comment.’ And you’re not even a former PM.

I wonder how many of us could resist the temptation to sound off? People asking one’s opinion is oh so very edifying.