Everyman as soldier: how men in suits in drawing rooms conned the people – and their families – into fighting on in WW1.
May 30, 2021David Stephens reviews Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and the Lost Peace: A Defiant Soldier and the Struggle against the Great War.
The commemoration industry in Australia is too much about how we fight and not enough about the far more important questions of why we fight and whether it was worth it. Douglas Newton’s new book shows how problematic that ‘why’ question really is. If we fought our wars for the reasons Newton provides evidence for, it is no wonder that our governments then and our Anzackery[1]-peddlers now have preferred to steer away from that crucial ‘why’ question.
Dr David Stephens is a member of Defending Country Memorial Project (DCMP) Inc. and editor of the Honest History website. The other members of DCMP are Noel Turnbull, Professor Peter Stanley, Dr Carolyn Holbrook, and Pamela Burton. Its founding Patrons are Professors Megan Davis, Clare Wright, and Henry Reynolds.
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