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A procession in Flinders Street East, Townsville, to commemorate Armistice Day,
November 1918.
Photo: Townsville City Libraries.
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The signing of the
armistice between Germany and the Allies on November 11, 1918, brought the First
World War (then known as the Great War) to an end. In 1919, on the first anniversary
of the armistice, at the request of King George V, two minutes’ silence was
observed for the first time, at 11am. This was the hour that hostilities had
ceased the previous year.
In the decade that
followed the Great War Australians dutifully observed two minutes’ silence on
Armistice Day. Whilst on the surface it
was a day to remember those who had been lost, the commemoration of Armistice
Day also carried the hope that the conflict had been a “war to end all war”.
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| Procession in Flinders Street, Townsville, to commemorate the Armistice that ended World War I, November 1918. Photo: Townsville City Libraries. |
In 1939 Australia was
at war again, and commemorating Armistice Day while the Second World War raged
on, seemed incongruous to many people, marking as it did the cessation of
fighting in one war, even though we were once again embroiled in another. So the
RSL began calling for the day to be more appropriately named Remembrance Day.
After the end of the
Second World War, Armistice Day was changed to Remembrance Sunday, at the
behest of the British monarch, King George V. In 1946, newspapers throughout
Australia reported that:
“In accordance with
the wishes of his Majesty the King, Armistice Day will in future be observed on
the Sunday nearest November 11. This day will be known as Remembrance Sunday.”
Not everyone was
pleased with the change, which first took effect in November 1947. An editorial
in the Townsville Daily Bulletin in November
1948 noted the “pathetic passing of a once-honoured day”, remarking that the
idea behind the Armistice Day anniversary was “both dramatic and beautiful” and
that the people who remembered the first Armistice Day would “never forget it”.
“This year's
Armistice, or Remembrance Day, was celebrated last Sunday, and so little of its
former glory remains that practically no notice was taken of its observance
throughout Australia,” the Bulletin
wrote.
The change to
Remembrance Sunday seems to have led to some confusion, and according to the Bulletin:
“Although church
congregations in Townsville were larger for the Remembrance Day services on Sunday,
only a small official body was in attendance at the Cenotaph at 12 noon for the
laying of wreaths.”
In Brisbane, where
only 175 people gathered at the Shrine of Remembrance in Anzac Square, the
State President of the RSL, Mr R.D. Huish, felt that the crowd was small
because people were still confused over the replacing of Armistice Day with
Remembrance Sunday.
In 1949, the RSL
sought to have the commemoration reverted to November 11 each year. Mr Huish
said that the league believed the change had “brought about a loss of
significance to the Armistice commemoration.”
By November 11, 1950,
the Federal Government had bowed to pressure from nearly all the State Governments,
the RSL and Church authorities, to revert to November 11 as the day of
commemoration, which has since that date been referred to as Remembrance Day.
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