The ANZAC spirit or ANZAC legend is a concept which suggests that Australian and New Zealand soldiers possess shared characteristics, specifically the qualities those soldiers allegedly exemplified on the battlefields of World War I. These perceived qualities include endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, and mateship. According to this concept, the soldiers are perceived to have been innocent and fit, stoical and laconic, irreverent in the face of authority, naturally egalitarian, and disdainful of British class differences.Robert Manne, The war myth that made us, The Age, 25 April 2007 A body of Australian scholarship argues that the Anzac legend functions as a national origin myth that displaces and silences the history of frontier violence and dispossession of Aboriginal Australians.
The ANZAC spirit also tends to capture the idea of an Australian and New Zealand "national character", with the Gallipoli Campaign sometimes described as the moment of birth of the nationhood both of Australia and of New Zealand.Andrew Leach, The Myth of the Nation It was first expressed in the reporting of the landing at Anzac Cove by Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett; as well as later on and much more extensively by Charles Bean. It is regarded as an Australian legend, although its critics refer to it as the ANZAC myth.Tony Smith, Conscripting the Anzac myth to silence dissent, Australian Review of Public Affairs, 11 September 2006.Ben Knight, Breaking through our Gallipoli 'myth', ABC news, 2 November 2008Matt McDonald, 'Lest We Forget': Invoking the Anzac myth and the memory of sacrifice in Australian military intervention, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association's 50th Annual Convention "Exploring the Past, Anticipating the Future", New York Marriott Marquis, New York City, NY, USA, 15 February 2009.Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology, St Lucia: API Network and UQP, 2004.
Historical development of the concept The British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett provided the first reports of the landing at Anzac Cove by the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). His report was published in Australia on 8 May 1915: They waited neither for orders nor for the boats to reach the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore, and, forming some sort of rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy's rifles. Ashmead-Bartlett's account of the soldiers was unashamedly heroic:
There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and the storming of the heights... General Birdwood told the writer that he couldn't sufficiently praise the courage, endurance and the soldierly qualities of the Colonials. [The Australians] were happy because they had been tried for the first time and not found wanting.
Also in 1915, in response to the reporting of the efforts of the Australian troops, the Australian poet Banjo Paterson wrote "We're All Australians Now", including the verse: The mettle that a race can show Is proved with shot and steel, And now we know what nations know And feel what nations feel.
The ANZAC spirit was particularly popularised by Charles Bean, Australia's official war historian. For the soldiers at Battle of Gallipoli, Bean argued, life would not have been worth living if they had betrayed the ideal of mateship. Despite the loss at Gallipoli, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were seen to have displayed great courage, endurance, initiative and discipline. The ANZAC rejected unnecessary restrictions, possessed a sardonic sense of humour, was contemptuous of danger, and proved himself the equal of anyone on the battlefield. Bean encapsulated the meaning of Anzac in his publication ANZAC to Amiens:
ANZAC stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.National Library of Australia, "Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean"
1958 saw the publication of Russel Ward's The Australian Legend. Promoting the egalitarianism of the Australian bush and its permutation into the ANZAC soldiers as the Australian Legend, it soon became a landmark book in Australian historical writing.John Arnold, "Australian History in Print: a bibliographical survey of influential twentieth-century texts" , National Inquiry into School History, Government of Australia During the 1960s and 1970s, due to lack of observance of ANZAC Day in general society, the idea of a unique Anzac spirit began to fade. Especially among baby boomers, interest in ANZAC Day reached its lowest point in the aftermath of the anti-war demonstrations over Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. A resurgence in popular commemoration of ANZAC Day in the 1980s (possibly linked to the release of the film Gallipoli) brought the idea of an ANZAC spirit back into prominence in Australian political discourse. There has been an increase in people, especially youth, attending ANZAC Day Dawn Services in Australia and New Zealand,Anne-Marie Hede and John Hall, "Anzac Day and Australian nationalism: assessing the marketing lifecycle of this cultural phenomenon", Deakin University: www.deakin.edu.au/research/stories/hede/anzac-vietnam.doc where the ANZAC spirit is often invoked."Thousands mark Anzac Day at Gallipoli", Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2007
National identity Coming just fourteen years after the Federation of Australia, the Gallipoli campaign was one of the first international events that saw Australians taking part as Australians. As such, it has been seen as a key event in forging a sense of national identity. According to history professor Dr Frank Bongiorno:
The Gallipoli campaign was the beginning of true Australian nationhood. When Australia went to war in 1914, many white Australians believed that their Commonwealth had no history, that it was not yet a true nation, that its most glorious days still lay ahead of it. In this sense the Gallipoli campaign was a defining moment for Australia as a new nation."ANZAC Day", Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal
Ernest Scott's influential A Short History of Australia, which remained a standard school text for nearly four decades from 1916 and went through six editions in its author's lifetime, clearly enunciated this concept. In the preface to the book's first edition, Scott linked the European settlement of Australia with the idea of Australia becoming a nation on the battlefields of Gallipoli:
This Short History of Australia begins with a blank space on the map and ends with the record of a new name on the map, that of ANZAC.
Charles Bean also propagated this view, extending the notion to suggest that New Zealand nationhood was also born in the First World War. In 1924 Bean wrote that:
ANZAC Day now belongs to the past and during the war all energy was concentrated on the future but the influence of the Gallipoli Campaign upon the national life of Australia and New Zealand has been far too deep to fade… it was on the 25th of April 1915 that the consciousness of nationhood was born.
The popular belief that the ANZACs, through their spirit, forged Australia's national character, is still today frequently expressed. For example, in 2006 the Governor-General of Australia, Michael Jeffery gave an address in which he said that although the ANZACs lost the campaign they created a lasting identity for Australia:
We are summoned to recall the battle sacrifices of Australian farmers and tally clerks, teachers and labourers and to commemorate outstanding courage and strength of character in the face of sustained adversity... [The campaign] won for us an enduring sense of national identity based on those iconic traits of mateship, courage, compassion and nous.
An extension of this belief is the idea that the ANZACs set an example for future generations of Australians to follow, laying the bedrock of "Australian values". In 2007 the Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson articulated this view, stating that the Anzacs "forged values that are ours and make us who we are, reminding us that there are some truths by which we live." Nelson had earlier argued that the story of Simpson and his donkey rescuing wounded men at Gallipoli "represents everything that's at the heart of what it means to be an Australian".'Teach Australian values or "clear off", says Nelson', PM, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 24 August 2005.
The ANZAC spirit is also sometimes said to be exhibited during Australian civilian crises. For example, the Returned and Services League of Australia states: The Spirit of the ANZAC continues today in times of hardship such as cyclones, floods and bush fires. At those times Australians come together to rescue one another, to ease suffering, to provide food and shelter, to look after one another, and to let the victims of these disasters know they are not alone.
In New Zealand, the ANZAC spirit is similarly pointed to in some quarters as forming an important component of New Zealand national identity. The New Zealand Government's Ministry of Culture and Heritage states:
New Zealand soldiers distinguished themselves with their courage and skill, establishing an enduring bond with the Australians they fought alongside ... Great suffering was caused to a small country by the loss of so many of its young men. But the Gallipoli campaign showcased attitudes and attributes - bravery, tenacity, practicality, ingenuity, loyalty to King and comrades - that helped New Zealand define itself as a nation, even as it fought unquestioningly on the other side of the world in the name of the British Empire. After Gallipoli, New Zealand had a greater confidence in its distinct identity, and a greater pride in the international contribution it could make. And the mutual respect earned during the fighting formed the basis of the close ties with Australia that continue today.Government of New Zealand, Anzac Day
Criticism Professor Manning Clark, in his influential work A History of Australia, suggested a contrasting image of the innocent and honourable Anzac soldier. From a range of sources he provided evidence of the soldiers' bad behaviour. For example, he documented that, as recruits, some indulged in sex orgies with an 18-year-old girl at the Broadmeadows camp before being shipped to war. Others confronted police in violent scuffles on the streets of Melbourne. Clark also recorded that in Egypt some soldiers burned the belongings of local people, brawled, got drunk and rioted.
Other scholars such as professor of politics at La Trobe University, Robert Manne, have also questioned the veracity of the Anzac legend, arguing that it is more accurate to describe the concept as a mythology. Dr Dale Blair of Deakin University suggests that:
While traits such as egalitarianism, resourcefulness and initiative are assumed and maintained in the nation's popular memory as a truthful representation, not only of Australia's First World War soldiers, but also, of the national character, they were not sufficiently evident in the experience of the 1st Battalion [at Gallipoli] to justify their advancement as characteristics general to Australian soldiers or the nation.Peter Edgar, "Review of Dinkum Diggers: an Australian battalion at war" by Dale Blair , Australian War Memorial Journal