THE Great War of 1914-18 affected all Australians and decisively changed the new nation.
They were termed the “crying years” by writer Zora Cross, who lost her brother in 1917.
In his new book The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War, historian Peter Stanley has compiled a visual history of the era, weaving a compelling narrative around many never-before-seen images.
Using documents, photographs, artefacts and images from the National Library’s collection, Stanley connects the war overseas with the equally bitter war at home, for and against conscription.
“But the war did not only happen at Gaba Tepe, Fromelles, Beersheba or Villers-Bretonneux,” Stanley writes.
“It ‘happened’ in every home where a man told his family that he was enlisting, in workplaces where mates fell out over conscription, on farms plagued by mice, in internment camps, at rallies for peace, at rallies for recruits and in streets where clergymen became the objects of war.”
Women bore the burdens of waiting and worrying, of working for charities or of voting to send men to their deaths. Even children were drawn into the animosities as communities fractured under the stress.
This book is a highly visual account of World War I featuring cartoons, photographs, letters, leaflets, maps, postcards, advertisements, badges and works of art.
- The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War, by Peter Stanley (NLA Publishing), RRP $44.99.
