Former Australian PM Paul Keating Says World War One Was European Folly 'Devoid of Virtue'

Former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Former Australian PM Paul Keating says World War I was "devoid of any virtue" and Australians will not be used as cannon fodder again

Paul Keating, Australia’s former prime minister, has used a memorial ceremony speech to lash out at the Great War as a European folly which was "devoid of any virtue", lamenting the use of Australian troops as “cannon fodder”.

Criticising European tribalism and racism, Mr Keating said Australia fought out of loyalty to imperial Britain but had already moved away from European values by the time of the war. He said the nation had developed an “Australian-ness” which was “free of the dismal legacy of Europe's ethnic stigmatisation and social stratification”.

"The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism," he said.

"A complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism."

Mr Keating, a staunch republican with a passion for history and oratory, used his Remembrance Day address in Canberra to declare that young Australians were now “too wise to the world to be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became”.

“One thing is certain: young Australians, like [young] Europeans… can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen,” he said. » | Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney | Monday, November 11, 2013