How Good Of A Reflection Was Film, Gallipoli
...1901, though their still divisions within the country from the states. Australia may have just become a separate colony from the British but it was still in a state of disunity. We still didn't really have any history to be proud of, so when war broke out in 1914, it was the perfect opportunity to come along as a nation.
Initially, the reaction from Australians to the war breaking out during August 1914 was a positive one. There was a rush to enlist in the armed forces, as there was the widespread belief that the war would be over by Christmas. Young Australian men rushed to enlist for various reasons. Most Australians had some sort of British background with around 95 % being born in Great Britain, so this provided a basis for their sentimental loyalty. The biggest reason however was that at the outbreak of the war there were plenty of young men out of work, hungry and homeless. The war provided not only an opportunity to be clothed, fed and paid for a length of time but also gave these men the prospect of going overseas on what was perceived to be an adventure. Enlistment had been so popular in fact that the army had to turn down men and only accepted the best recruits. By the time December came 417 000 men had enlisted and 30 000 men were already in uniform.
The film captures the sentiment of Australians quite well, in the period leading up to the war. Gibson and his mates are well representative of young Australians during the early 1910's. They were railway workers, who lived by the side of the tracks in appalling conditions, with very little future ahead of them. At first they are enticed to go to war by the newspaper, which report on the evils committed by the Turkish troops. This would just have been another example of the media and governments propaganda in trying to get support for the war, and the film demonstrates how successful it was, with a...
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