A shade over 110 years since the Gallipoli landings, Anzac Day is a day of mourning for many. Respect is due. And more. If we listen to the original Anzac voices, we may recognise voices of warning – relevant today.

The Anzac story warns us of what may happen to a small country that offers unfaltering loyalty to a great power. That loyalty can degrade to servility. Those in uniform pay the price.

The voices at the top remind us: war can incite recklessness. Our leaders may debase themselves before our allies and spend carelessly our young people’s blood.

A handful of examples must suffice. In November 1914, the defeated federal Liberal leader Joseph Cook told a crowd in Mosman that Australia must send not 20,000 men, but rather 100,000 men, because “we are engaged in a war of extinction”.

In December 1915, after Gallipoli, prime minister Billy Hughes circulated an extraordinary “Call to Arms”. He claimed that “had the number of our forces been doubled… the Australian armies would long ago have been camping in Constantinople, and the world war would have been practically over”.

In April 1916, Hughes spoke in London’s Guildhall: “The British race has found its soul. The war has saved us from moral and physical degeneration and decay. We were in danger of losing our greatness and of becoming flabby… The war has enabled us to find ourselves.”

His booster, Keith Murdoch, lamented that Australian troops only narrowly voted for conscription in December 1917. Race to the rescue: Murdoch told General Birdwood it was because they were fighting “against an enemy who is not to them nearly as great an object of enmity and dread as the Japanese”. Hughes was enraged that Australians had twice voted down conscription. He howled to Murdoch: “And war weariness … war weariness in a people who have escaped all the consequences of this awful war!”

We may praise Australian military endeavour. But we should not forget that our generals urged the government to change the law, so they could execute at the front. General Sir John Monash himself told his wife in July 1917 he had argued for firing parties “in some clear case of cowardly desertion” in order to “stop the rot”.

How very different are the actual Anzac voices! Through recorded interviews, held principally at the Australian War Memorial, these men speak to us. We can hear the fervent egalitarianism, the fierce democratic instinct, and the radical mutuality.

Some remind us bluntly: it’s mostly low-paid men who fight. Private Jesse Palmer told his interviewer why he enlisted: “Well … there’s so much unemployment… It was a case of having three meals a day, two changes of raiment, and five bob.”

The big-noting of Anzac repelled some. Private Frank Molony of the 1st Field Ambulance was revolted by the guff in the Anzac Bulletin. He had “terrible nightmares” after reading of “a successful, Christ, successful”! – a successful, God the word shivers horror, bombing of enemy hutments and billets.” He treated men with self-inflicted wounds. He hid them. “They shoot for cowardice, and award for heroism, and everyone has come to know the vague invisible dividing line.”

Scores described shell-shock. Private Eric Abraham remembered one officer who “got a direct hit… His hands were shaking violently … He was a pitiful sight, completely broken. With every shell blast he ducked and eventually tucked himself in the corner cringing…”

Some denounced the war-at-any-price politicians prolonging the war. In October 1916, Private Ted Ryan from Broken Hill, a shell-shock victim, wrote to Ramsay MacDonald MP, praising his stand for peace-by-negotiation: “Why shouldn’t we know what terms of peace we are fighting for, why shouldn’t we discuss what terms we are supposed to accept?” Facing a death sentence at his court martial in 1917, Ryan explained his dissent. He had enlisted to defend “the ideals of humanity and civilisation”. But Britain was insisting on crushing Germany, so “it was no longer a war of resistance”. Ryan was one of a great throng. The total number of courts-martial in the Australian Institute of Fitness is estimated at 23,000 for the 331,000 enrolled.

The men’s sympathies ran deep. Sergeant Eric Evans recorded in June 1918 an attempted suicide in his unit. “A chap cut his throat yesterday in the wood at the bottom of the camp.” He had been “very depressed and threatened to do it”. He was found “lying naked, covered in blood” – and was saved. Evans refused to condemn him.

Many extended their solidarity with suffering to the enemy. In October 1918, Private Charlie Mance escorted German prisoners to a dressing station. “One bloke showed me his wife’s photos… Well, when you look at it, when we got down there … and you see a lot of Germans, wounded, and blokes was reading the last rites on them, they’re just the same as you. Young blokes! I could see a couple of our blokes laying there. No different!”

Stan Nixon of the 16th Battalion remembered the Germans in retreat in late 1918. He was sickened by what he saw, “day after day. It is just this murder”. He resolved “to fire at their legs”. Why? “They got a woman and kids at home, just the same.”

Some dodged the killing altogether. Private Ernest Morton, a Gallipoli veteran, encountered a “mortally wounded” German officer in July 1918, “a young chap, be in his late teens”. He spoke English. “He prayed to me to kill him. Put him out of his misery.” Morton could not. From that moment he refused to fire his machine gun. “I’m not going to have anything at all to do with this.”

Many refused the consolations of victory. An interviewer asked Sergeant Jack Lockett: “What do you think the war achieved?” “Bloody well nothing,” he replied. “I couldn’t see much out of it. Some of these bloody heads [bigwigs] ought to be put in it.”

Some resolved never to fight overseas again. After four years service, Archie Barwick reflected: “Never no more for me, the only time I would fight again is in defence of my own country, I would never go out of ‘Aussie’ again seeking stoush, I have had my fill of it.”

Original Anzac voices – for Anzac Day. We should listen, and be wary of those who seek to hijack Anzac, sacralising the “Anzac spirit”, while promoting hyper-individualism, neoliberalism, widening inequality, privilege, and tax rorts. The Anzacs practised their radical collectivism – in war and peace.