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Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
NOVEMBER 11
Armistice Day
I have always been fascinated by the date of Armistice Day, the 11th day of the 11th month. Even the moment of silences observed by millions around the world is significant, 11 am. As well as the pleasing symmetry, it is also my youngest grandson, Mason’s birthday. His brother was born on August 6, Peace Day!
Since late 1914 Mother England had been at war with Germany and her Axis allies; a pledge of allegiance to Britain was made early on by the Australian Government, to wild popular approval. This is in spite of most Australians never even having seen one of the hated Hun, let alone be threatened by hint (‘Hun’ originally meant Asiatic, they couldn’t even get their pejoratives right!).
The resultant 5-year unprecedented slaughter robbed the infant nation of the pride of its young manhood – 60,000 dead, 150,000 seriously wounded. And no-one could calculate the psychological damage to the soldier, and the resultant pain to his family.
The defining moment of true nationhood – the spiritual realization – was the infamous storming of the heights of Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. As mentioned in the Anzac Day chapter, unlike the failed assault, the ignominious retreat eight months later was a textbook operation. The bemused Turks woke up· one morning to find everyone gone! This military debacle, but triumph of sacrifice, added a golden thread to the tapestry which is the Australian character – and no-one seems to know why?
That’s where, as unlikely as it seems, the Australian folk spirit really came of age – a collective consciousness which has waxed stronger with time.
Australia had a 68.5 percent casualty rate – more than two out of three! – the greatest ratio for any country in the First World War. This period has special significance for me, my grandfather, Charles Robert Smith, fought in the mud and blood of France; and his oldest son, Warwick, perished there. How different a person would I have been had I known my uncle Warwick?
How, as a child, I gently handled the fragile brown silk kerchief given to me by my grandfather. How bright the embroidery still was of the British and French flags, nearly a century later! This is living history, something tangible that evokes far more, or different at least, than the most vivid descriptions.
An iconic Australian (well, Welsh, really!) character who emerged from the bloodshed and turbulence of the time was Billy Hughes, ‘the little digger’. He changed parties from reform to conservative on the basis of his support for conscription.
This plummeted the young nation into irreconcilable polarization, especially with the two referenda he forced – and thankfully lost – on the issue. The Catholic position, under Archbishop Mannix, declared that the whole of this unprecedented global conflict was merely a ‘sordid trade war’, and refused to support it.
The Protestants, under Prime Minister Hughes, claimed in almost demented fervor that it was ‘a religious war’! Many Irish Catholics were even tacitly pro-German.
It was Hughes, the first Australian to stride the world stage, who – stridently indeed – pressured at Versailles in 1919 for onerous reparations against Germany. This was one of the major factors which subsequently ignited World War II.
Rudolf Steiner predicted it at the time and must have thought Australia a nation of asses. Mind you, Hughes did get New Guinea for Australia from the Germans – and $360,000,000. Alas only a measly $10,000,000 was paid by 1932. And we’ve yet to see another penny!
Australia had a legal obligation to support Britain in the war; as it did in the Boer War a few decades earlier. But did Andrew Fisher, P.M. at the beginning of the conflict, have to go to the extreme of stating his blind support for the Empire would be ‘to the last man and the last shilling’!
My grandfather enlisted in the AIF (Australian Infantry Forces) late in life, when he was almost 44 years old. He was born in 1872. I knew both my grandmother and grandfather very well as a child. She died in 1950 when I was nine, her husband four years later at 82. Charles was a private in the army serving in the 12thReinforcements Brigade, 3rd Infantry Battalion, which later formed part of the 1st Division AIF. He enlisted on September 27, 1915, at Holdsworthy, Liverpool. This was just five months after the first Gallipoli landings.
At the time he was the father of eight children, with another son, Victor, being born after he returned from the Front. Charles was small of stature, being only 5 feet 6 inches tall, he weighed 138 pounds, was of tan complexion, with blue eyes and brown hair. He was Church of England. I know many of these details from his Military Records.
He embarked for Cairo from Sydney on HMAT Medic; returning to Australia on HMAT Borda on the 25th ofNovember 1917, and was discharged, due to “medical unfitness” (“overage and rheumatism” – “myalgia”), on the 20th of March 1918.
He embarked on the Transylvania for the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces) from Alexandria on the 29th ofMarch 1916, disembarking at Marseilles on the 4th of April. On the 19th of May, from the 1st Australian Base Depot, he proceeded to join his unit at Etaples, on the Channel coast south of Calais.
An obsessively patriotic Charles served on the Western Front in various battlegrounds, including the infamous Somme in France, and Ypres in Belgium, for the next 14 months. The 3rd Battalion’s first major action was at the village of Pozieres, beginning in July 1916.
“Anzac Corps entered the Somme battlefield in the fourth week of the offensive. The Anglo-French attack had bitten out a large piece of the German line, but strong enemy positions on both flanks had temporarily checked a complete breakthrough. Against the left flank – the rubble of Pozieres Village – the 1st Australian Division launched an ·attack at 12:30am on Sunday 23rd July. The Division achieved all its objectives by about 5:30am on the 24th and then successfully cleared the Germans from the rest of the village. Unfortunately, the attacking formations on either side had not kept pace and the Australians now found themselves dangerously exposed and subject to counter-attacks from the front and either flank. Attack now became defense as for the next four days the 1st Division beat off repeated determined German counterattacks and was subject to the heaviest and most concentrated shelling of the war.
Despite this, the Division held on and was relieved by the 2nd Australian Division on 27th July”.
Charles’s stepson, Warwick McLeod, my uncle, after serving in Gallipoli, was a member of the 2nd Division. What a sad irony that father and stepson fought on the very same battleground, one of the worst in history, with Warwick’s 2nd Division relieving Charles’s valorous 1st.
Charles somehow survived, while Warwick perished. On the 15th of August 1916 the 1st Division, including Charles’s 3rd Battalion, moved into the infamous Battle of Mouquet Farm:
”Having secured Pozieres, the plan was to take Mouquet Farm, situated about 1.7 kilometers north-west of Pozieres village.
By the due date for the attack on the Farm itself the Australians were still fighting to capture the trench system around it. The task given to the rt Division was to consolidate gains and make two attacks: one northward to the strong German trench system known as the Fabeck Graben (to surround Mouquet Farm), and the second east to capture the new German trench line opposite the Windmill. However, no attack could be contemplated until the communication system was restored.
The artillery had in many areas obliterated all trench systems, making communications, movement, and supply very difficult. A counterattack by the Germans on the 16 August failed to dislodge the Australians but did throw into confusion their plans for their own attack. Confusion over the true location of the front line also saw some of the preliminary bombardment for the 18th of August attack fall short onto the trenches occupied by the 3rd Battalion, with disastrous consequences. The 1st Australian Division launched their attack at 9pm in two directions . … The lack of any landmarks made the whole planning process very difficult. The supporting artillery – notably the Anzac heavy artillery – continued to pound the Australian front line while insisting they were shelling the German held objective.”
”All the Divisions, in turn or together, struggled hard for possession of Mouquet Farm. Twice during August, they won it, but were forced to leave it again.
On 3rd September the 13th Brigade entered the farm but could not hold it. The position was taken in the general offensive some weeks later. In five weeks fighting 19 attacks were launched, nearly all at night and on narrow fronts. In these, the three Australian Divisions lost 23,000 men.”
“Later the 3rd Battalion fought at Ypres in Flanders, before returning to the Somme for winter. Here active operations had died down under winter conditions. A few difficult attacks in the quagmire about Fiers … interspersed the grim business of holding this line during the bitterest winter on the Western Front.
The Somme mud and cold tried all troops more severely than any of the other evils of the war. Trenches and shell-torn fields dissolved into muddy bogs where men and beasts were not infrequently drowned or died of exhaustion.”
“The 3rd Battalion participated in a short period of mobile operations following the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in early 1917 but spent much of that year fighting in increasingly difficult conditions around Ypres.”
“The Hindenburg (or Siegfried) Line was a chord shortening the main salient of the German Front in France. It comprised several lines of bold earthworks with large, deep dugouts and immense belts of barbed wire, linking up fortified villages.”
From the 3rd to the 17th of May 1917, the 3rd Battalion took part in the famous Battle of Boulecourt (Bullecourt).
“On the 3 of May a second and mightier effort was made by the Allies to break the Hindenburg Line between Queant and the Scarpe; the Australians were again launched on the right, between Bullecourt and Queant. Again, they entered the Hindenburg Line. … One Australian brigade after another defended and increased the hold gained by the 6th.
Only on the 12th of May, after very severe fighting for nine days, and after repeated efforts which drew in all local Australian reserves, was Bulle court finally captured…
On the 15th May the Australians had repulsed a massed attack on their right flank by the 3rd Prussian Guards Division. Australian losses in the two battles of Bullecourt were 3000 and 7000 men respectively. At the end of May 1917, 1 Anzac Corps was withdrawn for its longest rest in the war.”
Two months later, on the 7th of July 1917, Charles Smith was evacuated to hospital, arriving in England on the 25th of July.
3rd Battalion Battle Honors
The 3rd Battalion’s Battle Honors issued by the British and Australian military, that included my grandfather were: Battle of the Somme – July 1 to November 18, 1916. Campaign honor acknowledging involvement in the whole series of battles associated with the major British offensive on the Western Front during 1916. Battle of Bullecourt – May 3 to May 17, 1917.
Awarded for involvement in the second Battle of Bullecourt; two weeks of bitter trench fighting which eventually, and at the cost of 2,250 Australian casualties, cleared and held part of the Hindenburg Line.
In part as a consequence of the tremendous losses incurred during the Somme offensive in 1916, German forces on the Western Front between Cambrai and St Quentin withdrew to a new defensive line during February and March 1917 called the Siegfried Stellung (Line) by the Germans. This complex system of defensive fieldworks and mutually supporting fortifications was named the Hindenburg Line by the Allies. This withdrawal straightened the German line, reducing its length by 25 miles and releasing 13 Divisions for service in reserve.
Remarkably, in spite of having endured an unbelievable litany of horrors in the mud and blood of the worst war in history, on his return home my grandfather never seemed to suffer the notorious post-traumatic stress syndrome, or ‘shell shock’.
As I knew him very well throughout my childhood, I can verify this -perhaps the operative word being “seemed”! As well, like so many men who suffered the worst that follow human beings can hurl at them, and suffering natural privations without peer, Charles Robert Smith never, to my knowledge mentioned the war in any personal detail. This presumably remained a private chamber of the soul to be shared only with brothers in anus, if at all: though he did regularly march on Anzac Day.
People around the world recognize Armistice Day each year by the wearing of a red poppy in the lapel. These flowers were common in the battlefield areas – before they were blown to smithereens! Rudolf Steiner gave greater depth to this mystery – long before it became a tradition – by describing the departing souls of soldiers who died as resembling ascending red poppies.
***
If the 19th Century is known as the Industrial Age, what is the 20th? In military terms at least, the Atrocity Age, certainly. Many if not most countries around the world with a century-plus military tradition bear the immovable stains of one or many terrible war crimes. Among the happy few that do not bear this collective guilt and shame is Australia. Take Russia for example. While watching those giant cavalcades of military triumphalism in Moscow, how can the cheering onlookers forget the World War II murder by soldiers of the USSR of tens of thousands of Polish officers.
Or the order from on high to their conquering troops in Berlin in 1945 to rape every German woman they could find?
And what if one were Serbian? Is it possible for one’s heart to beat with pride at the achievements of their army knowing that these same men, just a decade ago, slaughtered 8000 civilian Muslim men and boys and tried to conceal their crime by dumping their bodies in mass graves?
This is just a tiny sampling of the legion, as it were, horrendous acts of criminality committed by soldiers on both sides of most major conflicts over the last hundred years. And that’s before we peer into the unparalleled catalogue of calumny and catastrophe visited on the world by the Axis powers, Germany, and Japan, for over five terrible years. Do these two countries have an equivalent Anzac Day? If so, how do they justify it?
Because of this national perfidy it is unlikely that either nation would be welcome to take part in our Anzac Day March, unlike some other more honorable adversaries, like the Turks. Thankfully our fighting men (women are almost blame-free in this exposition) have, with a few minor exceptions, behaved over the decades with decency and fair-play in the killing fields to which they have been committed. Even poor old Breaker Morant, an Australian executed for the war crime of shooting prisoners in the Boer War, was, aptly, at the time under British command. Because of this absence of war crimes, Australians can be justifiably proud as we watch our ·one Day of the Year memorials on April 25. But why is this so? Why, when the dogs of war are unleashed, do Aussie soldiers not descend to the bestial, as do so many others? Sorry: but this article has no answer to this enigma; rather being a celebration of it.
Disclaimer: I have no connection to the military, Australian or otherwise. Though, as revealed earlier, my maternal grandfather was a Digger on the Western Front, and my uncle fought at Gallipoli, and later in France, where he was killed. Throughout the last hundred years, Australian militarism has evolved through three distinct phases, with some exceptions. The first was principally that of invader, the classic example being our nascent major adventure, Gallipoli.
The second plateau is as defender, as seen in our life-and-death struggle against the invading Japanese in World War II.
From this experience our military today takes the collective title, the Australian Defense Force, or ADF. The third stage, the most reassuring of all, is that of “peacekeeper”. This wonderful term even has associative scriptural connotations:
“Blessed be the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
As peacekeepers (or “peacemakers”), how proud we are as Australians to see our men and women toiling away in far-off hot and dirty hellholes, particularly in our main sphere of influence, South-east Asia, and the South Pacific. Here they feed and clothe the hapless, build houses, bridges, and roads, and protect them against armed assault of various kinds.
This peacekeeper phase does not preclude the first two. The day may well come when an invasion of foreign shores by Australia could be conceived of as being not only justified, but imperative. Perhaps even our contentious role in Afghanistan could be seen in this light, liberating people, especially women and girls, from the theocratic jackboot of the Taliban. In regard to Phase Two, of course the military must remain ever ready to defend the country, and even our wider interests, such as our shipping.
As well as overseas peacekeeping, the modem Australian military can justify its existence closer to home. What a force for good our service-people play when deployed into disaster areas within Australia, or even overseas. How relieved must people be, besieged by fire or flood, to know that the mighty power of their esteemed military has been mobilized to help them.
It is in considering the above that one must place in context the perennial scandals revealed by the media of bastardization and mistreatment of women in some of our otherwise honorable military establishments. While not wishing to diminish the heinous nature of these incidents, they do not by extension brand all service-people as “bastards”. One of the worst spin-offs of these alleged rapes, bashings, extreme humiliations, and victimizations – too often leading to suicide – is that they besmirch an institution which has been, in its long-term avoidance of war-time atrocities, a lofty moral example to the world.
Punishment for the guilty of these often-shocking domestic crimes is obviously required. This is especially necessary to provide justice for the victims and their families.
The greater function of harsh penalties for the guilty is, however, to give assurance to the wider community that it is safe to commit their sons and daughters to a meaningful career in the army, navy, or air force. But there is still more that can be done to inform non-military. Australians of the validity and indeed nobility of the armed forces. This is with education.
For example, some high schools have included a unit on Military Science in their Social Science stream. This is usually taught to Grade 12 students by a resident teacher with military experience. Though, it is sometimes necessary to invite such a person in to take the unit, often in a shared teacher role.
Year 12 is considered the best time to teach this seemingly controversial content due to younger students, especially boys, being more likely to succumb to the sensationalism of war; guaranteed to eclipse a more philosophical understanding.
The subject matter can be as varied as the teacher and school requires. Though it should have an historical segment, showing, if briefly, the evolution of human combat, from its earliest days to the present. The emphasis must, however, be on the Australian military experience. This is not history in the normal sense, where battles play such a large part in both ancient and modem history, but an exploration of the development of military consciousness as such.
For instance, in the birth of the Australian military in the Great War, the soldiers dying in such great numbers were not actually fighting for Australia, but for the Motherland, Britain. This arms-length loyalty is inconceivable in the 21st Century. In contrast to this seeming indifference of yesteryear, today both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader both find it necessary to attend every funeral for every fallen Australian soldier.
Even though the core of the lesson must remain the expectation of the highest moral code of military engagement and function, the technical aspects must also be taught, such as the different promotional hierarchies of the three services. The lesson would also be unbalanced without discussion on military tactics and weaponry, though not in a glorifying sense, merely as a means to an end.
That end, ideally, is to defend the weak against the strong. Knowledge is an effective armor against the blandishments of an unrealistic gung-ho military tradition. It is a case of not so much “lest we forget”, but “best we know”.
My own equivalent Military Science education was in the early 1950s, when our teacher would pin continuity maps, with their relative strategies, on the wall showing the advance and retreat of Australians in the Korean War. Better than nothing, I suppose.
If students subsequently choose to join the ADP, after an enlightening Military Science lesson unit (approximately 20 hours), they do so relatively clear-eyed. In an ideal world one would prefer the subject of Military Science not be taught at all. But we do not live in Utopia, but too often in a conflict-ridden Dystopia.
There is a quantum difference between young people joining the military in peacetime than in war. The former is regarded as a vocation, it’s worth depending on person and circumstances.
The second, with the foe at the gate, is a national and personal imperative, whether drafted or volunteer. A Military Science unit would prepare as nothing else the 18-year-olds, whether gifted or otherwise, whether ·girls or boys, for whatever military experience they may encounter. For this reason alone, and there are many others, a comprehensive unit on Military Science should be part of every school’s Year 12 curriculum. It might even help perpetuate Australia’s shining tradition of war without the war crimes.
Warwick James McLeod, the author’s uncle,
Gallipoli veteran, died at Pozieres, August 1916.
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