Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

the Australian services-men and women ali~n all theatres of war, who fought and died for their country. They went whithersoever they were called by duty and loyalty. Wherever they went, they made a name for themselves for their courage and dedication when in the firing line and also, I may say-because Australian soldiers have always been human beings first and soldiers second-for their often somewhat unruly behaviour when out of the firing line. It is not easy to find an infallible yardstick for soldierly achievement, because so many acts of bravery in war go unhonoured and unsung; but, if we take the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration in the Empire and the Commonwealth, as a measure, their achievements automatically reveal themselves. In the South African or Boer War at the turn of the century, six VCs were awarded to Australians; in the Great War-sixty-four, including nine at Gallipoli; in the North Russian campaign in 1919-two more; in the Second World War-twenty, one of which, I am proud to be able to say, went to my own Battalion Commander, Col. Charles Anderson; and finally six in the Vietnam W?-r. A total of ninety-eight-not a bad record for a small country. We can remember those who received them with pride and respect. Poets can often express in a line or two, far more than less gifted mortals can say in pages of prose. Twenty-three years before the birth of Christ, the Roman poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, whom we call more simply Horace, wrote in one of his odes these memorable and moving words: 'It is a sweet and proper thing to die for one's country'. Almost two thousand years later, another poet, a young Englishman named Julian Grenfell, wrote a poem entitled 'Into Battle', just a few days before he himself was killed leading his men in France-one of those, as Virgil said of an earlier generation of heroes, 'cut down like scarlet poppies before the plough'. The first stanza ends with these lines: And he is dead who will not fight And who dies fighting has increase Although so many hundreds of years separate these two men, Horace and Grenfell, they are both saying to us much the same thing. They are not glorifying war. They are saying that for the people we love, for the things we cherish, for the ideals in which we believe, for the country that has given us our being, for all these things we must be prepared to fight and, if necessary, to die. They are saying, moreover, that war, for all its cruelty and horror, does bring out, in the heat of batde. in both men and women, qualities of courage, endurance, selflessness and compassion far beyond the ordinary, often indeed far beyond what those who have exhibited them thought themselves capable. These are some of the things we should remember when we think of those Australians who have fallen in battle, and Anzac Day is the day when we would especially remember them. 146