RICHARD FLANAGAN. Australians in WWI didn't die for Australia. They died for Britain. (Part 1 of 2)

April 22, 2018

And so, the Monash Centre, for all its good intentions, for all the honour it does the dead, is at heart a centre for forgetting. It leads us to forget that the 62,000 young men who died in world war one died far from their country in service of one distant empire fighting other distant empires. It leads us to forget that not one of those deaths it commemorates was necessary. Not 62,000. Not even one. (The following are extracts from Richard Flanagan's address to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.)