Then there was Sir Thomas Blamey, now a civilian. He was placing on celluloid the crowd which never seems to grow old.
They responded to the cheers with smiles, and one of them improved on the occasion by trying to make a moving camera record of the occasion. in cars at the head of the procession, what did they think? Did they begrudge the price of Victory? Not if appearances mean anything. Those incapacitated men who were carried by members of the R.A.C.V. The realisation of them was deep in the subconscious mass realisation of the people or else there was no justification for the Victory march.Įach unit in the march, each man and woman who participated, must have had thought particular to personal experience. It is not suggested here that the thousands who marched yesterday, and the hundreds of thousands who cheered and celebrated, consciously thought exactly those things. It is doubtful if Australia could similarly have survived Japanese occupation in great numbers for four years. In each instance there was some racial link, some eugenic common denominator between the invaders and the invaded.
They, too, will revive, if slowly, and can be much the same as they were. The Philippines were invaded and despoiled by the Japanese. European states have been invaded and occupied for a few years by the Nazi Germans. This victory, after all, was slowly won from a great peril.įor the first time in our short history we Australians were threatened with invasion by a merciless, sadistic, rapacious, and at times cannibalistic, Japanese foe. While it included those things, it marked the victory. Whether it will be merged into Anzac day, as seems likely, or whether a new national occasion will be selected, those will commemorate the fallen, express the spirit of the race, the traditions of the services. No doubt there will be marches again of veterans of the Second World War – though the term scarcely applied to the proud, lissome young women who marched yesterday – marches with the bands and bunting, the troopers, the aircraft overhead and the cheering crowd. Yesterday’s march was one of the kind that cannot be repeated it marked the end of the years of belligerency when we were fighting for survivals, the completion of the task. Each has been repeated in similar setting many times. One was a march of civilians the other of soldiers as yet unblooded. Here, also, in 1940, we saw the first march of boys of the Second A.I.F. marching in tribute to their mates who did not return. Here it was on Anzac Day, 1926, that we stood beside two young, then known as the Duke and Duchess of York, now King and Queen of Great Britain and the Dominions, and saw Sir John Monash lead 25,000 veterans of the first A.I.G. It was, above all, spiritual victory hope for a safer, cleaner, more just world for which men strove and died.īrighter, sunnier, more tumultuous marches have passed the saluting base on the steps of Parliament House, Melbourne. They were vindication of the faith and courage of the common people in a total war which did indeed involve Churchill’s “blood and sweat and toil and tears” a challenge to press on to an assured peace. Victory day celebrations in this city, throughout this State, this continent, and the British Commonwealth contained much more than the exultant cry of the triumphant warrior over his prostate foe.
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