Getting back to topic.
Today is ANZAC Day. I've just come back from the Dawn Service in my town. A lot of people came to the service in ages from five to ninety-five. My town has a very strong tradition of remembrance becasue it was from here that the first citizen's recruiting march of WWI began. https://cooeemarch1915.com/ In a while. I'll go back into town for the daytime service at which there will be a lot more people.
However, as I was listening to the radio on the way home this morning there was talk of how the change in origin of our population is going to reduce the importance of ANZAC Day to the national identity. To be brutally honset, ANZAC Day is something that relates to those of us who have links to a British ancestry. Aboriginal people did participate, but thier descendants do not seem to want to be involved. The organisers of the serices in my town have tried to simply get the local Aboriginal community to provide a flag to be flown alongside the Australian and New Zealand flags, but to no avail. I don't want to dwell on that point, so don't you.
There are only a few people in town from what we might call the immigrant countries. They are good citizens, but do not have the heritage of ANZAC Day. I suspect that in our major cities the ratio of Anglos to non-Anglos is weighted towards the non-Anglos. Those non-Anglos are Australians. Think of the Italians, Greeks, Germans, Dutch, Hungarians etc who came here after WWII. Their decendants are dinki-di. In the future those whose parents came from India, Africa and Asia will reformulate what an Australian is. But I think that the ANZAC tradition will not be a big ingredint in that fomula.
Is that a bad thing? Lamentable, perhaps, but as a nation's character evolves, some traits disappear. Should we cling stubbornly to the Past, or accept an evolving Future. I know that you will have strong feelings about this due to how you were brought up, but soon we will be gone. Will our descendants have teh same feelings. Considering what the make up of the Nation will be in say, 50 years, will the clebration of ANZAC Day be important?