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We do not know
this Australian's name and we never will. We do not know his
rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, or
precisely how and when he died. We do not know where in
Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the
battlefields of Europe. We do not know his age or his
circumstances - whether he was from the city or the bush;
what occupation he left to become a soldier; what religion,
if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not
know who loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we
do not know who they are. His family is lost to us as he was
lost to them. We will never know who this Australian was.
Yet he has always been among those we have honoured. We know
that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the
Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who
volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the
324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war, and one
of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of
the 100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.
He is all of them. And he is one of us.
This Australia and the Australia he knew are like foreign
countries. The tide of events since he died has been so
dramatic, so vast and all-consuming, a world has been
created beyond the reach of his imagination.
He may have been one of those who believed the Great War
would be an adventure too grand too miss. He may have felt
that he would never live down the shame of not going. But
the chances are that he went for no other reason than that
he believed it was his duty - the duty he owed his country
and his King.
Because the Great War was a mad, brutal, awful struggle
distinguished more often than not by military and political
incompetence; because the waste of human life was so
terrible that some said victory was scarcely discernible
from defeat; and because the war which was supposed to end
all wars in fact sowed the seeds of a second, even more
terrible, war - we might think that this Unknown Soldier
died in vain.
But in honouring our war dead as we always have, we declare
that this is not true.
For out of the war came a lesson which transcended the
horror and tragedy and the inexcusable folly.
It was a lesson about ordinary people - and the lesson was
that they were not ordinary.
On all sides they were the heroes of that war: not the
generals and the politicians, but the soldiers and sailors
and nurses - those who taught us to endure hardship, show
courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in
ourselves, to stick together.
The Unknown Australian Soldier we inter today was one of
those who by his deeds proved that real nobility and
grandeur belongs not to empires and nations but to the
people on whom they, in the last resort, always depend.
That is surely at the heart of the Anzac story, the
Australian legend which emerged from the war. It is a legend
not of sweeping military victories so much as triumphs
against the odds, of courage and ingenuity in adversity. It
is a legend of free and independent spirits whose discipline
derived less from military formalities and customs than from
the bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity.
It is a democratic tradition, the tradition in which
Australians have gone to war ever since.
This Unknown Australian is not interred here to glorify war
over peace; or to assert a soldier's character above a
civilian's; or one race or one nation or one religion above
another; or men above women; or the war in which he fought
and died above any other war; or of one generation above any
that has or will come later.
The Unknown Soldier honours the memory of all those men and
women who laid down their lives for Australia.
His tomb is a reminder of what we have lost in war and what
we have gained.
We have lost more than 100,000 lives, and with them all
their love of this country and all their hope and energy.
We have gained a legend: a story of bravery and sacrifice
and with it a deeper faith in ourselves and our democracy,
and a deeper understanding of what it means to be
Australian.
It is not too much to hope, therefore, that this Unknown
Australian soldier might continue to serve his country - he
might enshrine a nation's love of peace and remind us that
in the sacrifice of the men and women whose names are
recorded here there is faith enough for all of us.
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