EDITORIAL: ‘Anzac spirit’ is as relevant and alive as ever

It is tempting, when contemplating the special place in our national psyche occupied by our Anzac legend, to fall back onto cliches.

Because there are no words that can adequately capture the sacred reverence with which we regard that piece of our history.

So we rely on a few well-worn platitudes. About the ”Anzac spirit” embodying what it means to be Australian.

We speak of the Anzac values of mateship, of courage and of sacrifice.

The familiarity of these phrases to us doesn’t make them less true. But it can take away some of their power.

We repeat these solemn phrases, but we don’t stop to truly examine their meaning.

It can pay to go back to the source.

Writing before such cliches took root in our collective vernacular, the dispatches of Australia’s official war historian Charles Bean from near Gallipoli’s front lines were influential in forging the Anzac myth that in turn shaped our national identity.

Of the evacuation of Anzac Cove, Bean wrote: “. . . Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.”

He predicted rightly that the Anzac tradition would be an enduring one, remembered and honoured by Australians for decades to come.

“The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession for ever.”

This Anzac Day, as we do every year, we will contemplate the story of our Diggers, its goodness and its badness, its greatness and smallness.

But that story has special resonance this year. World events remind us that peace is a precious commodity. War is once again raging in Europe and the Middle East. Old alliances look to be on shaky ground and the security we have sometimes taken for granted is less certain than it once was.

Peace is fragile and is can be hard-won.

For well over a century, Australian servicemen and women have worked to protect peace.

In those long-ago conflicts in Europe, to Korea, Vietnam and more recent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have fought and sacrificed.

Attendance at dawn ceremonies has ebbed and flowed over the years in correspondence with the vagaries of public opinion and fashion.

As the number of living veterans dwindled, younger Australians in particular felt disconnected from our Anzac history. Perhaps that estrangement is in part due to the overuse of those cliches.

In seeking to describe the indescribable, we inadvertently made the humanity behind the legend inaccessible to generations untouched by war.

But they are returning. After a sharp fall last decade, attendance numbers are trending up again.

This Anzac Day, push past the platitudes and allow the Anzac spirit to rise, as Charles Bean predicted it would, our nation’s possession forever.