A caricaturist for The Bystander captures the captain of the Oxford men’s hockey team during a match in Kent, in 1923
Smith Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Post-war government support saw ex-servicemen head to university by the tens of thousands. Their distinct perspective – and their numbers – shaped 1920s student life
The U.S. military is handing the keys over to Afghan forces.
Joe Marek/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
For much of the country’s history, Americans won their wars decisively, with the complete surrender of enemy forces and the home front’s perception of total victory.
British runner Albert Hill winning the 800-meter run at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-13 (727)
The IOC was under considerable pressure to host the 1920 games. While a noble goal, it resulted in significant hardships for war-torn Belgium and the athletes themselves.
Eugene Debs, at center with flowers, who was serving a prison sentence for violating the Espionage Act, on the day he was notified of his nomination for the presidency on the socialist ticket by a delegation of leading socialists.
George Rinhard/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
Free speech is a long American tradition – but so are attempts to restrict free speech. A First Amendment scholar writes about measures a century ago to silence those criticizing government.
In the wake of COVID-19, the 2020s may be a time when we reconsider how we work, run governments and have fun, just as the 1920s were. This illustration of a flapper girl, created by artist Russell Patterson in the 1920s, captures the style of that era.
(Library of Congress)
A century ago, the end of the 1918 flu pandemic was followed by a period of prosperity, cultural flourishing and social change known as the Roaring ‘20s. Will the end of COVID-19 launch a similar era?
Rowan Light, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
As trans-Tasman borders re-open and in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, Anzac Day gains new meaning and presents new challenges – just as it has always done.
Avenues of Honour were planted to remind us of the sacrifice and suffering of our servicemen and women. But as the years wore on, many declined or disappeared.
An unusually sturdy and comfortable CCS during the first world war.
Australian War Memorial
While no Australian nurses died in service on the Western Front, the horror of what they saw and treated on the front lines caused tremendous suffering and pain.
Amid the trauma and boredom of war, soldiers turned to reading — often magazines they wrote themselves.
Crowds ahead of the dawn service at Canberra’s National War Memorial in 2018. Attendance at the service fell from 120,000 in 2015 to 35,000 in 2019.
Rohan Thomson/AAP
Beautifully directed, powerfully acted, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli still captures the devastating emotional toll of war, 40 years after it first premiered.
Spanish Flu spread around the world in 1918 and 1919. At least 20 million died.
Vintage_Space/Alamy
When the honour of Australia’s revered soldiers is questioned, so, too, is the national self-image. But war is an ugly business, and we pay a price for tethering it so tightly to our identity.
The Adoration of the Shepherds by Guido Reni (1642).
Wikimedia
A new book looks at the physical and psychological impact of the Great War on soldiers as the experience left them changed, broken and often traumatised.
‘Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, May 1919, oil on wove paper.
(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-223, Copy negative C-141851)
After Canadian painter Mary Riter Hamilton was rejected for service as a war artist because she was a woman, she trekked battlefields to create more than 320 works that recall the missing soldiers.
Dispatch rider with pigeons leaving for firing line, His Majesty’s Pigeon Service, November 1917, location unknown.
(William Rider-Rider. Canada. Department of National Defence. Library and Archives Canada, PA-002034)
British poet Wilfred Owen told readers there is no peace for the dying soldier until we fight against the lie that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.