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which were, at the time, very emotive on topics such as conscription, allegiance to Great
Britain and supporting the conflict as an act of patriotism.
5.8.5 Discourses of death.
WWI saw the largest loss of life from any conflict ever in the world, and is commonly
attributed to the enormous military technological power developed whilst traditional fighting
methods were maintained (for, example, close combat fighting alongside machine gun
technology). To explicitly place the post-WWI textbooks in their own historical context, the
school students learning from textbooks such as A story of the Australian people (Cramp,
1927) and New syllabus history for seventh grade (Dunlop & Palfrey, 1932a), would be of
the age where, although too young to remember WWI in detail, would undoubtedly have
experienced the consequences of this conflict in terms of family members, family friends and
neighbours’ experiences. Many would also have experienced the consequences of a death of a
family member, serious wounding and/or post traumatic impacts of returned service
personnel. So, the aftermath of WWI is not a foreign experience for many of the school
students during this era. However, despite this, discourses of death are presented in an
unemotional, detached way, with the tone ignorant of the impact this conflict has had on the
students most likely to be reading the text. For example, A story of the Australian people
reads:
Altogether, 330,000 men—all volunteers—were embarked from this continent for
the front, another 80,000 had been raised and were under training at the time of the
Armistice. Not fewer than 60,000 were killed, while the percentage of the casualties
was greater among the Australians than for any other part of the British Empire. The
war cost us about £400,000,000. No fewer than 63 soldiers were awarded the highest
decoration—the Victoria Cross. (Cramp, 1927, p. 220)
Despite the huge loss of life experienced as a result of WWI of “Not fewer than 60,000 were
killed” (Cramp, 1927, p. 220); with 4.87 million the total population of Australia in 1913, this
represents a significant portion of the military aged male population. This loss is justified
through the phrase, “the percentage of the casualties was greater among the Australians than
for any other part of the British Empire” (Cramp, 1927, p. 220) written without emotion or
reflection of the impact on families and the community, describing the loss of life is
acceptable due to an ambiguous attribute of the soldiers of their “motive was pure” (Cramp,
1927, p. 218). The perspective communicated here, and throughout A story of the Australian
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