Australian soldiers on the Western Front, World War One

Overnight, lights went out across Europe to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I in 1914.  The most devastating war in human history, every town in Australia paid a price, gutted of its young: at the University of Adelaide when it was over, every school and faculty began the 1919 academic year with painful gaps in its staff and student body, each marking a scholar who had not survived.

While those who enlisted did so in a gush of patriotic enthusiasm, none returned the same: universally, those who fought were transformed in horror, and returned determined to convince us all there should never be such a war again.

It was to be “the War to end all wars”, a lesson and a pledge to all humanity.  Yet looking at our world today, at Gaza, Syria, the Ukraine, and elsewhere, we know that these 10 million dead and 21 million wounded would be devastated by how far short of their hopes their grandsons and granddaughters have fallen.

How little we have learned.  How badly we have failed them.

As a University, let us recommit to the peace, tolerance and civility for which they sacrificed.

–wb