More than 8500 Australians were to die on Gallipoli and 100 years ago this week the Gallipoli campaign was emerging as a blunder, a tragedy. It infuriated a grieving Jane Miller, writing in Melbourne's Woman Voter that Winston Churchill (since sacked but previously as First Lord of the Admiralty, an architect of the invasion) was still enthusing over the campaign.
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" 'No operations in history,' says Winston Churchill, 'are worthier of being pushed on with the utmost vigour, and an utter disregard for life, than those at Gallipoli. I regarded it as a legitimate war gamble for a prize of inestimable value' .
"I think it was then, reading that, that iron entered my soul, and I finally decided what my life's work should be. Was it my loved one's life they 'gambled' with? Was his one of the lives to be 'utterly disregarded'? How do I, his mother – how do all the mothers – live through it all? What a degradation to motherhood!
"Women, work as you never worked before for the abolition of war ... war that makes this kind of thing [Gallipoli's horrors] possible. Remember that your beloved lad faced death for what he conceived to be his duty. Will you then shrink from saving other mothers in the future from this horror? Thus can you ensure that the sufferings of our dear young Australians shall not have been in vain if the hearts of the peoples are turned through you against the iniquity of war for ever."
