Making New Zealanders through commemoration: Assembling Anzac Day in Auckland, 1916–1939

© 2006 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2006 The New Zealand Geographical Society Inc. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

New Zealand Geographer

(2006)

62

, 3–12 10.1111/j.1745-7939.2006.00044.x

Blackwell Publishing Asia

Research Article

Making New Zealanders

Research Article

Making New Zealanders through commemoration: Assembling Anzac Day in Auckland, 1916–1939

Matthew Henry

Geography Programme, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Abstract:

Anzac Day in New Zealand has been traditionally framed within a nationalist dis-course, in which the events of the day have provided the medium for the remembrance ofa singular national event. Moving beyond this interpretative tradition the paper examines AnzacDay as a moment in the exercise of an ongoing governmental power concerned with issuesof contemporary conduct. Focusing on interwar Auckland the paper traces the assemblage oftime, space and rhetoric, which enabled the production of a commemorative, governmentallandscape.

Key words:

Anzac Day, Auckland, commemoration, governmentality, New Zealand.

Travelling through New Zealand’s towns andcities one is struck by the silent calls to memorythat stand on roadsides, outside town centres,and at school gates (Maclean & Phillips 1990).Yet these memorials are not silent, rather theyare eloquent markers of the experience of warin shaping New Zealanders. The experiencesof war, and the pursuit of peace, that suchplaces signify have only recently come to theattention of historians (Montgomerie 2003), andhardly at all to geographers. As part of thatexperience Anzac Day in New Zealand hasbeen the focus of work by Sharpe (1981) andmore recently Worthy (2002), but geographerswith their considerations of the mutually con-stitutive entanglements of space and society havelargely been absent (for an exception, seePawson 1991). With this absence in mind thispaper seeks to interpret the work of these com-memorative places by examining the assem-blage of Anzac Day in Auckland between theworld wars.

In a recent survey of published New Zea-land war histories Montgomerie (2003) asks:what has been the effect of Anzac Day and

more specifically Gallipoli as a

memento mori

on New Zealand’s cultural landscape? On thisquestion Ormond Burton (1935: 122) famouslyconcluded that between Gallipoli and theSomme, New Zealand had become a nation, anationhood which had required a ‘catastrophe,some great suffering, borne together, somegreat deed done in common’. Conversely, forGibbons (1992) mourning over the war’s sacri-fices had hindered the growth of a distinctiveNew Zealand identity after World War I. Morerecently Belich (2001: 116) also noted the traumaof loss, writing that as a consequence of theindustrial slaughter on the Western Front, ‘Acult of 18 000 Kiwi Christs emerged, whosesacrifice simply

had

to have been for a noblecause’ (on a similar point, see King 2003). It isthis sense that the commemoration of warinvolved more than the simple remembrance ofpast heroics, but rather served as an exemplarfor, and intervention in, the present, whichshapes this paper.

To frame this discussion the paper drawsupon Foucault (2001) in order to fashion a gov-ernmental interpretation of the organization

Note about the author: Matthew Henry is a lecturer in Massey University’s Geography Programme. He is currentlyworking on a project that explores the genealogies of New Zealand’s border spaces.

E-mail: [email protected]

© 2006 The AuthorJournal compilation © The New Zealand Geographical Society 2006.

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M. Henry

of Anzac Day. Here the paper contends thatrather than representing a landscape that sim-ply reflected and reinforced cultural trauma,the emergent assemblage of Anzac Day wasshaped in such a way as to help enable workon the conduct of individuals. It is in this con-cern with conduct, as expressed through theforging of memory, which renders Anzac Daya governmental moment. To this end the paperbegins by adumbrating a governmental concernwith conduct. It then examines the tripartiteassemblage of Anzac Day in Auckland. First,the creation of Anzac Day as a commemorativetime in New Zealand’s calendar is outlined.Second, the paper turns to the production ofa specific, commemorative site for the per-formance of Anzac Day in Auckland. Third, itexplores the public rhetoric that accompaniedAuckland’s Anzac Day ceremonies. In tracingthese parts the paper argues that embeddedin each of them was a governmental interest inshaping individual and community conduct inorder to enable an improving, self-sacrificingethos to be restored to the post-war nation.

Governing citizens

Foucault (1977) famously declared that theuse of spectacle as the pre-eminent tool oforder had been ushered aside by the banal cal-culations of disciplinary power. Yet as Bennett(1995) argues the sequestration of public punish-ment during the 19th century coincided with theemergence of exhibitionary complexes shapedby the logic of disciplinary power, but whose

raison d’être

lay in staging a worldly, pedagogicspectacle (Mitchell 1989). Similarly, Osborne(1998) argues that the 20th century saw anefflorescence of public performances linked tothe disciplined performance of collective identityand remembrance (Winter 1995; Handelman1998). As these authors suggest,

pace

Foucault(1977), the use of spectacle as a tool of orderingdid not disappear, but rather became trans-formed around the orchestration of history asa moment of collective and individual govern-ance. It is in trying to understand this work oforchestration, the effort to create the collectiveconditions under which such orchestration waspossible, and the concomitant governmentaliza-tion of memory that we can turn to Foucault’s(2001) account of governmental power.

Governmental power represents a means ofunderstanding the changes in the rationality,and practice, of government in Europe thatemerged during the 16th and 17th centuries(Foucault 2001). Discerned in responses toMachiavelli’s (1516/2003)

The Prince

, Foucaultargues that there emerged a concerted effortto articulate a rationality of governing thatseparated the exercise of government from thesimple maintenance of rule. In this shift thepurpose of governing was to be, ‘not the act ofgovernment itself, but the welfare of the popu-lation, the improvement of its condition, theincrease of its wealth, longevity, health, and soon’ (Foucault 2001: 217). Here the art of govern-ing was predicated on the effort to find diverseways of managing and securing those rhythmsinternal to that which was to be governed.

Governmental power can be thought of asencompassing an intense interest in myriadforms of conduct,

and

the means through whichthat conduct can be shaped (Dean 1999). Thisdoubling is crucial because governmental poweris marked by both the effort to govern, and theconstant reflection on the means used, and thesuccess or failure of those efforts. This interestranges from the government of oneself, one’shousehold, one’s children or the governmentof a state; and encompasses both the governedand the governors. Such moments are not iso-lated, but rather there exist, ‘interconnectionsand continuities between these different formsof government’ (Burchell 1993: 267). Govern-ment in this sense is practised through thosemultiple points of contact where states, andincreasingly non-state agents, have come toembrace individuals in their infrastructuralpower (Mann 1993; Torpey 1998).

Governmental moments are not necessarilycharacterized by domination. Rather, arguesDean (1999), modalities of liberal governanceare marked by efforts to work through an indi-vidual’s capacity for self-government and self-improvement. Liberal governance to this endworks through structuring the field of possibil-ities – space, time, language and knowledge –within which individuals can learn to createthemselves as disciplined, and discipliningsubjects (Rose 1999). In this varied interest inconduct, governmental thought presents atopographical understanding of power, wherethe power to shape conduct, rather than being



5

centrally co-ordinated and distributed, is to befound assembled and at work in dispersedplaces. It is this understanding which leadsOgborn (1998) to advocate for the need toexamine the emergence of hybrid spaces inwhich the ongoing effort to order is under-taken, but within which the production oforder is never assured.

It is this combination of ideas – that govern-mental power is marked by an ongoing inter-est in shaping conduct under the rubric ofimprovement rather than aggrandisement, andthat such power is assembled and performedin diverse places – which frame the followingexamination of Anzac Day. This examinationrevolves around three elements through whicha concern with conduct has been embeddedinto the performance of Anzac Day. First, thepaper highlights the production of a commemor-ative time marked by a concern with delineatingthe nature of appropriate action on Anzac Day.Second, the paper turns to sketch the debatesover sacredness that swirled around the Auck-land War Memorial Museum (AWMM) andCenotaph. Finally, the paper traces the mannerin which rhetorical calls to memory drew onmetaphors of debt so as to provoke individualsto work on their own conduct.

Constructing Anzac Day: A time apart

Anzac Day represented a marking off of amoment in time from the quotidian calendar.As a special time Anzac Day has a monument-ality which appears as eternal as the stonememorials that pepper New Zealand’s com-munities. Yet like those memorials whose silentsolemnity hides a contingent, contested his-tory, Anzac Day contains an intricate history,assembled not simply to recall the past, butrather designed to yoke time to the task ofshaping the present. It is to this sequestration,and the governmental intent wrapped into it,that we first move.

The first anniversary of the Gallipoli land-ings was marked by widespread, but largelyunofficial remembrance events, for examples see:

Manawatu Evening Standard

1916;

New ZealandHerald

1916;

The Press

1916;

Taranaki Herald

1916;

Wairarapa Daily Times

1920. The govern-ment did, however, gazette a half-holiday. In

announcing the half-holiday the Prime Minis-ter, William Massey, opined that the govern-ment’s intent was that the day, ‘should not bemarked by the holding of sports or similarforms of entertainment’, but rather, ‘the occa-sion is one upon which opportunity should betaken for all recruiting bodies and others toarrange patriotic meetings for the evening, notonly to commemorate the anniversary, but alsowith a view to assisting the recruiting campaign’(

New Zealand Gazette

1916: 977). Massey’scontention that Anzac Day should be theoccasion for solemn, purposeful reflection,rather than vicarious entertainment, would pro-foundly shape the assemblage of a distinctive,commemorative time.

Between 1917 and 1920 the New ZealandReturned Servicemen’s Association (NZRSA)lobbied a reluctant government for Anzac Dayto be set aside irrevocably as a day of nationalcommemoration (Anon. 1918a, 1918b, 1919a,1920a). Under sustained pressure, Massey’s gov-ernment introduced the Anzac Day Bill to cre-ate a ‘close’ holiday in August 1920. The tenorof the parliamentary debate accompanying theBill was exemplified by one MP (Member ofParliament) who contended that, ‘We ask thatthis day shall be kept in memory of them in amanner as you keep a Sunday – that it shallnot be a day for an extra race meeting or a dayfor jollification’ (NZPD 1920: 128). In this veinMassey (NZPD 1920: 129) called for the day tobe considered a holy day rather than a holiday,and hoped that, ‘the law of the country will makeit impossible for any one to indulge in sport aswe are in the habit of holding on ordinary holi-days’. Here was being articulated a powerfuldesire to ensure that a sacred, national time wascreated for Anzac Day; and that this time wouldbe categorically different from both the profanecommerce that marked everyday life, and theentertainments that characterized other holidays.

The emergent ‘close’ character of Anzac Daymirrored the strict sabbatarianism that charac-terized New Zealand social life between the wars(Belich 2001). The ‘close’ character of AnzacDay was a deliberate decision to constitute theday as a sacred time; sacred not necessarily inreligious terms, but rather in the remembrance,reflection and sanctification of sacrifice. Herethe Anzac Day Act 1920 (ADA 1920) pro-vided part of the logistical infrastructure – the


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M. Henry

sequestration of time – for the singular per-formance of commemoration. Into this organ-ization of time, animated by the work of theNZRSA, was wrapped a governmental concernwith conduct. In particular there was the con-cern, exemplified in the parliamentary debates,that Anzac Day would provide the means ofenabling the display of appropriate conduct;conduct marked by a disavowal of enjoymentand a concomitant solemnity and reflection uponthe nature of loss and sacrifice.

Constructing Anzac Day: Spaces apart

The ADA (1920) was the result of reflectionupon both the nature of appropriate conduct,and the means to provide for it through theorchestration of time. As such the productionof sacred time was supported by the produc-tion of commemorative landscapes throughoutNew Zealand (Maclean & Phillips 1990).However, whilst a national, sacred time couldbe centrally proclaimed, the territorializationof permanent and singular commemorativelandscapes proved more difficult. Part of thisdifficulty lay in the reluctance of the centralgovernment to become involved in financinglocal war memorials. Other problems swirledaround the nature of commemoration, andhow sacrifice could be materially embedded inmemorials designed to link past and present. Itis to this issue of the appropriate inscription ofsacrifice that this section focuses.

Work by Maclean and Phillips (1990) suggeststhat debates over the appropriate form formemorials was largely split between utilitarianand ornamental visions of commemoration.Utilitarian proponents argued that the role ofa memorial would be best expressed througha utilitarian function that would enable self-development and progress. Such a role wasspelt out in the NZRSA’s journal –

QuickMarch

– by a correspondent who called for theconstruction of institutions such as hospitalsto provide a material means of assisting thecomrades of those who had died (A Soldier’sMother 1919). For others, however, utilitarianschemes simply represented local improvementsmasquerading as memorials (Anon. 1919b). Inthis vein an ultimately dominant, ornamentalstrand held that memorials should display the

spiritual values for which the sacrifices of thewar had been made (

pace

Fussell 1975, on thispoint see Winter 1995). Acting Prime MinisterSir James Allen advocated such an ornamentalapproach at the inaugural New Zealand townplanning conference in 1919. Allen noted thatwhilst many people supported the provision ofutilitarian schemes such as hospitals, univers-ities or other institutions, such schemes would beenacted through the normal progress of nationallife. However, given the extraordinary natureof the sacrifices made by New Zealanders, ‘Wewant something that represents to us dutydone’ in order that we, ‘could pass them ontothe generations we have yet to come, as a meansof ennobling our characters and making usrealize what it is to sacrifice ourselves for thegood of the whole’ (Allen 1919: 31). This wasa point supported by Seager (1920: 84), whoconcluded in

Quick March

that, ‘A memorialis not in any sense a reward for the honoureddead … but our memorials, if they are worthy,[will provoke] inspiration in those who studythem’.

In the emergent hegemony of ornamentalapproaches we can see clear links between theprocess of memorialization and the sequestra-tion of commemorative time. For one thereemerged an emphasis on singularity in whichboth commemorative time and space would beorganized so as to be distinct from everydaylife. Second, there is a concern with conduct en-compassing both those who would be ‘inspired’by memorials; and those who would seek toinspire through their designs.

When the Auckland City Council’s (ACC)War Memorial Committee met in June 1919it faced conflicting proposals for memorials,including: the provision of university scholar-ships, a cross city boulevard, a waterfrontmaterial akin to Nelson’s Column, and a newmuseum (ACC 182 1919). Under the guidanceof Auckland’s energetic Mayor, James Gunson,the committee resolved that the city’s mainwar memorial would be incorporated into anew museum to be located above the city inthe Auckland Domain; an area long used byAucklanders to perform and renew the intricateties of a masculine militarism (Daley 1999).

The ACC had actually entered into negoti-ations with the Auckland Institute & Museum(AI&M) about building a new museum on the



7

Domain site in 1913, but plans had beenshelved during World War I (ACC 275, 1919).However, following the ACC’s (1919) decisionthe City Engineer drew up an initial designfor the proposed war memorial museum; adesign which elicited vigorous debate. ‘Citi-zen’ writing in Auckland’s

New ZealandHerald

(

NZH

) concluded that the responsibil-ity for designing such an important edifice wasvery great, and that if Aucklanders cededresponsibility for the design to the ACC and AI& M then they might find themselves, ‘wakingup some morning to find a ferro-concrete “Odeto the Dead”, towering in grim reality aboveus’ (NZH 1920a: 6). ‘Silent Tribute’ (NZH1920b: 6) articulating an ornamental position,criticized the museum plan on the basis that,‘Our soldiers fought and died for nobler thingsthan can be expressed in museums, technicalschools, or libraries’.

Silent Tribute

’s com-ments echoed a wider concern, especially fromthe NZRSA, that the ACC’s choice of a com-bined war memorial museum would dilute thesingular work of commemoration through thepairing of a memorial with a profane, utilitar-ian institution.

Public reaction to the City Engineer’s planeventually forced Gunson to describe it asmerely the preliminary framework for a designcompetition (NZH 1921: 8). Eventually the win-ning design came from the Auckland partner-ship of Grierson, Aimer and Draffin (Neil 1987).Returned servicemen themselves, their neo-classical design for the Auckland War MemorialMuseum (AWMM) deliberately avoided imi-tating an English style in order to signify theemergence of a distinctive commemorativeexperience which metaphorically connectedtwo mythologies: that of classical Greece, andthat of an emergent Anzac pantheon (Blackley1997). This connection was made explicit whenthe Chair of the Citizens’ War Memorial Com-mittee, A.S. Bankart, in opening the AWMMin 1929 noted that, ‘on a site as commanding asthe Acropolis of Athens’ the building’s designrepresented, ‘a heritage from Ancient Greece,where men were taught to value freedom’(NZH 1929a: 15). However, despite the com-memorative intent that was inscribed into thedesign of the AWMM, concerns still existedthat the institution’s dual role detracted froma singular focus on commemoration.

A temporary Cenotaph, modelled on theone in Whitehall, had been a feature of theAnzac Day services held at the Town Hall from1922 onwards (ACC 182 1922: 763). Ongoingconcern about the AWMM as the focus of com-memoration lay behind the ACC’s decision toadd a Cenotaph, and Court of Honour, to theoriginal AWMM design. That the permanentCenotaph would amplify the war memorialcharacter of the AWMM was a feature ofcomments during the AWMM’s opening inNovember 1929. Here A.S. Bankart statedthat the purpose of the AWMM was to, ‘per-petuate for all time the deeds of the men andwomen who had answered the call of theEmpire and of civilization itself’ (NZH 1929b:15). The Cenotaph, he continued, representeda ‘furtherance of the special war memorial fea-tures’ (NZH 1929b: 15). Other speakers alsocommented on the role of the Cenotaph. Forthe Governor-General, Sir Charles Ferguson, thecenotaph represented both the glory of sacrifice,and, ‘to all of us an appeal to duty’ (NZH 1929c:15). Likewise, Archbishop Averill’s specialCenotaph prayer contained the sentiment that:‘May it be a constant reminder of the price paidfor our freedom and an incentive to nobler living,lest we lose or abuse that dearly bought free-dom’ (NZH 1929d: 15). In these words we cansee the transformation of material expressions ofcommemoration into a governmental moment;a moment in which commemoration would beshaped by the desire to ensure a singularity offocus, and the effort to animate the concernsof the present around the conduct of past.

Fine rhetoric did not ensure a sacred sin-gularity outside sequestered Anzac time. Onecontroversy emerged around the supposed lackof respect given to the Cenotaph by childrenattending the AWMM (NZH 1929e). Conse-quently, Auckland’s Town Clerk wrote to theAuckland Education Board Secretary askingthat steps be taken to remind school childrenof the sacredness of the site (see letter dated12 December 1929, ACC 275 1928). In replythe Radio Broadcasting Corporation’s GeneralManager indicated that two separate radioannouncements had been made expressing theneed to pay respect to the Cenotaph (see letterdated 24 December 1929, ACC 275 1928). TheAuckland RSA (ARSA) was also involved infurther attempts to amplify the sacredness of


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M. Henry

the Court of Honour. For example, they sug-gested to the Town Clerk that brass tabletscarrying the following inscription be placed atthe four corners of the Cenotaph:

They whom this stone CenotaphCommemorates were numbered amongThose who at the call of King and CountryAll that was dear to them, enduredHardness, faced danger and finallyPassed out of the sight of men by the pathOf duty and self-sacrifice, giving upTheir own lives that others might liveIn freedom.

These tablets, they continued, could be linkedtogether by sunken brass strips carrying thewords, ‘Remember – This is Holy Ground –Tread not upon it except in Reverence’ (seeletter dated 8 April 1930, ACC 275 1930). Thisidea was not enacted, but a modified schemeincorporating brass tablets placed around theCourt of Honour served to remind peopleusing the AWMM on a day-to-day basis thatthe place was consecrated ground.

The sensitivity over the commemorativerole of the AWMM, which had prompted theerection of the Cenotaph, also surfaced in theinstitution’s nomenclature (NZH 1929f). Inearly April 1930 the ACC Town Clerk wroteto the Secretary of the Auckland TransportBoard (ATB) noting that there had been com-plaints over the incorrect wording of the signsdirecting people to the AWMM, and request-ing that the ATB change the signs’ wordingfrom ‘To Museum’ to ‘To War Museum’ (seeletter dated 4 April 1930, ACC 275 1930).Later that year the ACC’s Works Committeereceived a proposal from a Mr W. Swan regard-ing the planting of rosemary, poppies and NewZealand veronicas around the War MemorialMuseum and Court of Honour (see letter dated16 May 1930, ACC 275 1930). Such plantingshe averred would add to the space’s solemnitythrough their evocation of Gallipoli, Franceand New Zealand. In considering this proposalthe Assistant Superintendent of Parks wroteto the Town Clerk indicating that he consid-ered that area around the memorial should bekept bare of planting because, ‘The Cenotaphin the Domain possesses a beauty and simpli-city of its own, from the nature of its setting, a

reverential solitariness should ever remain’ (seeletter dated 4 June 1930, ACC 275 1930). Evenhere nature was to be bent to the purpose ofcreating and maintaining a singular, separatespace of commemoration.

The sensitivity surrounding the AWMM,and the effort to maintain its sacredness, wasexpressed in both the high rhetoric that sur-rounded its opening and in the ongoing concernsover disciplining those who used its spaces. Suchsensitivity indicated an implicit questioningover the appropriateness of using a museum asthe focus for a putatively singular commemor-ative space. Indeed we can interpret the decisionto build the Court of Honour as an effort toensure the appropriate level of sacredness byproviding a dedicated commemorative spacelinked to the AWMM, but distinct from theAWMM. It was in this singular, ornamentalspace that the governmental work of Anzac Daycould be enacted, unimpeded by doubts overthe AWMM’s sacredness.

Constructing Anzac Day: Articulating the meaning of

sacrifice

Debates over the production of singular com-memorative time, the appropriate landscapes ofcommemoration, and the governmental intentembedded in such assemblages were also evidentin discussions about the performance of AnzacDay ceremonies. Building on calls by theNZRSA’s President, Reverend Boxer (Anon.1920b), that there should be a uniform servicethroughout New Zealand, by the mid-1920s theritual form of Anzac Day had become rela-tively well set (Sharpe 1981). However, withinan increasingly stable ritual form, Anzac Dayaddresses provided a moment of discursivefluidity. Thus, whilst they were framed by per-formative expectations, their precise contentcould be shaped around the work of (re)fash-ioning the present under the shadow of thepast. This final section examines such work inthe context of Auckland’s interwar Anzac Daycommemorations.

Initial Anzac Day commemorations weredeeply elegiac, and this sentiment was reflectedin the tone of those speaking at the services(Sharpe 1981). However, in reviewing theirorganization of Anzac Day in 1923, the ACC’s



9

Anzac Day Commemoration Committee (whosemembers included Councillors, serving militaryofficers, and representatives from the RSA)concluded that expressions of sorrow neededto be counterpointed by more positive messagesthat emphasized the emergence of nationhood(ACC 182 1923: 779–80). Consequently thefollowing year, Bishop Averill, a constant pres-ence at Auckland’s interwar Anzac Day cere-monies, addressed a packed Town Hall withthe message that the sacrifices of the Anzacshad left the country with a tremendous legacyin which patriotism had been raised abovemere chauvinistic nationalism. He went on toargue that the example offered by the deadtaught New Zealanders that life was not sim-ply about material comfort, but about, ‘makingthe full use of opportunities and talents for theservice of mankind’ (NZH 1924: 13). Nation-hood also featured in Archbishop Averill’s 1925address in which he described Anzac Day asthe day ‘when we substantiated our claim tobe regarded as a nation in the great family ofthe British Empire’ (NZH 1925: 8). As with the1923 address, however, Archbishop Averill wentbeyond the trope of nationhood to observethat whilst many of the present audience mightbe disappointed with the aftermath of the war,those who died did so, ‘with the vision of abetter and more noble world before their eyes.Do not let our disappointment destroy theirvision’ (NZH 1925: 8). It is the claims as to theemergence of a distinctive nationhood that hascaptured our imagination when we consider thesignificance of Anzac Day. Archbishop Averill’s1923 and 1925 addresses, however, indicate anongoing effort to use the sacred singularity ofAnzac Day as a means of exhorting individualsto reflect on their own conduct vis-à-vis theexample offered by the dead and by the collec-tive experience of war.

Archbishop Averill’s speeches contained asearching problematization of the conditionsof the present; a problematization couched interms of a failure to acknowledge the debt owedby the present to the past. It was a problemat-ization whose solution would emerge througha recommitment to the virtue of sacrifice inindividual conduct. Thus, for example, sur-rounded by returned soldiers providing abodyguard around the memory of Anzac,Archbishop Averill contended that New Zea-

landers needed ‘to sacrifice ourselves for peaceas we worked and sacrificed for war and vic-tory’ (26 April, NZH 1927: 15). He reiteratedthe point in 1932, a fortnight after a Depres-sion sparked riot in Auckland’s Queen Street,arguing that New Zealanders needed to main-tain loyal to the memory of the dead, not simplyby their attendance at Anzac Day ceremonies,but rather by backing ‘up their ideals in ourlives – the ideals for which they fought anddied’ (NZH 1932b: 11). Calls to revitalize thevirtue of sacrifice in individual conduct werewidely articulated. The Reverent E.D. Patchett,for example, claimed that Anzac Day ‘shouldlead men and women to judge in their ownlives the measure of the debt they owed to thefallen’ (NZH 1931: 11).

The intended work of such reflection onthe virtue of sacrifice was made clear by theGovernor-General, Lord Bledisloe, who main-tained that Anzac Day should not be ‘an occa-sion of mourning for the dead, still less ofwhining over transient misfortune or hardship,but rather a clarion call for disciplined energy,self-reliance and helpful, sympathetic stimulat-ing comradeship’ (NZH 1932a: 11). In thesewords, and in the words of Reverent Thomsonwho imagined the remembrance of Anzac as‘a challenge to action’ (NZH 1936: 12), AnzacDay was shaped as a moment of work. Workon individuals, through the calls to virtue andsacrifice, and work on the body of society so asto produce a better world.

The intersection of time, space and rhetoricin the creation of a governmental moment wasstrikingly evident in the ARSA’s instigation ofthe Dawn Service in Auckland in 1939. Takingplace in the early morning gloom the DawnService served to link the sacred space of Auck-land’s Cenotaph with the trenches of Gallipoli,and provide a liminal moment of reflection(NZH 1939b: 1). The Dawn Service concludedwith the Anzac Dedication. Taken from LaurenceBinyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’ the dedicationends with the words ‘They shall grow not old,as we who are left grow old/Age shall notweary them, nor the years condemn/At thegoing down of the sun and in the morning/Wewill remember them’. Binyon’s words are theculmination, and best-remembered portion ofthe dedication, but they are preceded by thefollowing:


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M. Henry

At this hour, upon this day, Anzac received itsbaptism of fire and became one of the im-mortal names of history. We who are gatheredhere think of the comrades who went outwith us to the battlefield of two great wars,but did not return. We feel them still near usin the spirit. We wish to be worthy of theirsacrifice. Let us therefore once more dedi-cate ourselves to the service of the ideals forwhich they died. As dawn is even now aboutto pierce the night, so let their memory in-spire us to work for the coming of the newlight into the dark places of the world. Wewill remember them (NZH 1939a: 17).

Through the use of the pronoun ‘we’ thededication was directed at those who served.This mirrored the practice in Australia whereparticipation in the Dawn Service was oftenlargely restricted to those who had served. InAuckland, however, the inaugural service in1939 was marked by the widespread gatheringof Aucklanders. The

NZH

described thescene thus: ‘Well before four o’clock motor-carsbegan to arrive from all directions, numbers ofthem bearing wayfarers picked up on theroad. Pedestrians and people who had comefar in trams and buses swelled the throng, andit seemed that nearly the whole Domain wasbustling with activity’ (NZH 1939a: 17). In thissetting the dedication spoke to a wider audi-ence than just the returned. The dedicationlooked back to those who fell, and deployedthem as exemplars for the future. It was thesefallen who stood above society casting a pano-ptic gaze upon the present, and it was underthat gaze that the conduct of the present wasto be problematized and subject to the moraltechnologies of suasion.

Conclusion

Anzac Day may seem an odd choice to displayan interest in the practice of governmentalpower for it seems to stand outside an asser-tion of the shift away from the spectacular andsovereign to the creeping, banal certitude of cat-egorization and cataloguing as the pre-eminentmodality of government. There is, however, noparticular reason to assume that the spectacularsomehow lies outside the practice of govern-mental power, its concern with conduct, and

the assemblage of forces designed to shapeconduct. In the specific case of Anzac Day itmight be tempting to consider such assemblagesas providing a cloak of mourning, militarismand nationalism in order to avoid more seriousquestions about the experience of war. Yet toreduce Anzac Day in such a way is to missprecisely the intricate articulations of practiceand intent through which Anzac Day was trans-formed into a field of governmental intervention.

Anzac Day is a signifier of a popular,national emergence. But it is also a contingent‘assembled tradition’ knitted together from time,space and performance to create a momentduring which memory could be deployed inthe work of shaping individual conduct. Herewe can talk of a governmentalized memory:where memory has been transformed froman object to be shaped, to a means of shapingconduct in itself. Thus, in highlighting the callsfor New Zealanders to reflect upon, and trans-form their own conduct which marked AnzacDay, the paper has also talked of the ongoingreflection on the assemblage of memory, andhow memory could be organized to enabledesired forms of conduct. It is in this linkage ofpast and present, and the connection betweenthe efforts of the past and the refashioning ofthe present that we can discern the govern-mental work of Anzac Day being done.

Anzac Day provides a spectacle; the extra-ordinary spectacle of a panoptic host mobilizedin examination over individuals who are beingasked to judge and refashion their daily conduct.Such a spectacle should cause us to examinemore closely the recent revival of Anzac Dayin New Zealand, especially as the aura ofexperience gradually disappears from the day.In doing so we should be prepared to recog-nize that there is no space outside of power,but that the power to shape takes many forms,questions different actions, provides varyingremedies, and is translated into places that wemight expect to be beyond its embrace.

References

Anon. (1918a). Anzac Day.

Quick March

1

, 16.Anon. (1918b). Anzac Day.

Quick March

1

, 3.Anon. (1919a). Anzac Day.

Quick March

2

, 30.Anon. (1919b). War memorials.

Quick March

2

, 31.Anon. (1920a). Anzac Day.

Quick March

2

, 43.Anon. (1920b). Anzac Day.

Quick March

2

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Making New Zealanders through commemoration: Assembling Anzac Day in Auckland, 1916–1939

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Transcript of Making New Zealanders through commemoration: Assembling Anzac Day in Auckland, 1916–1939