Funeral Service of the Unknown Australian Soldier
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 miltary 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.
