Today’s trip down the history path was about the Archibald Fountain in Sydney Hyde Park because it plays a part in my new novel – “Mabel of the ANZACS” I’ve lived in Sydney for 50 years and I didn’t know this bit of history. My novel is set in 1948 and I wanted to know when the fountain was created
The Archibald Fountain is located in Hyde Park North at the centre of ‘Birubi Circle’, and at the intersection of the main avenues crossing Hyde Park. The fountain, by French sculptor Francois Sicard, commemorates the association between Australia and France in World War 1. It draws its themes from Greek antiquity and is an important example in Sydney of the classical revivalist sculpture of the 1920’s and 1930’s, known as Art Deco. The fountain is approximately 18 metres in diameter and is in the shape of a hexagon. A bronze Apollo, the central raised figure standing approximately six metres high on a central pedestal, dominates the other mythical figures of Diana, Pan and the Minotaur. Behind Apollo a large arch of fine spray represents the rising sun and accentuates his dominant position. At Apollo’s feet, water sprays from horses’ heads into a series of three basins. Tortoises in the large hexagonal basin, and dolphins in the middle one, direct jets of water towards the centre. Apollo was surrounded by three groups of figures, the first featuring Diana bringing harmony to the world; the second, Pan watching over the fields and pastures; and the third, Theseus conquering the Minotaur, symbolic of sacrifice for the common good.
A tablet attached to the large base supporting the figure of Theseus reads: This fountain is the gift of the late / J.F. Archibald / to his fellow countryman and is intended in terms of / his will to commemorate the association of Australia / and France in the Great War 1914-1918. It was erected in / 1932 and is the work of Francois Sicard, Sculptor, Paris.
The following is from the ANZAC Memorial here in Sydney. It’s a place I have visited often. It’s an emotional place and this statue reminds me of the sacrifice that was rendered. Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. It’s not the glory of war because there is no glory in war but in the sacrifice of those that served and died.
The details below are from the Anzac Memorial Page describing why this statue was created and why it’s in the Memorial:
The sculpture ‘Sacrifice’ encapsulates the message at the heart of the Anzac Memorial. Designed by sculptor George Rayner Hoff the sculpture is based on the story of the Spartan warrior from ancient Greece. Spartan men were raised as warriors from boyhood and, when marching to war, were told to come home with their shield or on it – a warning to be victorious or die in the attempt. Rayner Hoff has created an image that depicts the weight of the dead young warrior carried on his shield by his mother, sister and wife nursing infant child. The sculpture Sacrifice uses the analogy of the Spartan warrior being returned to his loved ones dead on his shield to evoke the emotion experienced by the families of the young men who died in the Great War 1914-18.
In the BOOK OF THE ANZAC MEMORIAL published in 1934. The sculpture Sacrifice is described “with great dramatic power it portrays the recumbent form of an Anzac whose soul has passed to the Great Beyond, and whose body, borne aloft upon a shield by his best loved – mother, sister, wife and child – is laid there as a symbol of that spirit which inspired him in life, the spirit of Courage, Endurance and Sacrifice. There is no pomp, no vain glory, no glamour in this group; rather is there stark tragedy, grim reality and bitter truth. But it is the truth which tells not only of the brutality of war and of the suffering it engenders, but of the noblest of all human qualities – self-sacrifice for duty.”
The New Yorker magazine has a very interesting article. The Root of All Cruelty? Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse.
A recent episode of the dystopian television series “Black Mirror” begins with a soldier hunting down and killing hideous humanoids called roaches. It’s a standard science-fiction scenario, man against monster, but there’s a twist: it turns out that the soldier and his cohort have brain implants that make them see the faces and bodies of their targets as monstrous, to hear their pleas for mercy as noxious squeaks. When our hero’s implant fails, he discovers that he isn’t a brave defender of the human race—he’s a murderer of innocent people, part of a campaign to exterminate members of a despised group akin to the Jews of Europe in the nineteen-forties.
The philosopher David Livingstone Smith, commenting on this episode on social media, wondered whether its writer had read his book “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others” (St. Martin’s). It’s a thoughtful and exhaustive exploration of human cruelty, and the episode perfectly captures its core idea: that acts such as genocide happen when one fails to appreciate the humanity of others.
When I was doing research for my first book “In The Blood of the Greeks” – I wanted to give my character, Zoe Lambros, a role model that she was inspired by. I just love research and this led me down a whole different rabbit hole.
I discovered the heroic Laskarina Bouboulina – with a name like that you have to be special. Laskarina Bouboulina was a Greek naval commander, heroine of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and allegedly first woman-admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. Pretty nifty.
On this day in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. 6 MILLION innocent Jews and others such as gyspies, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual men (lesbians were not imprisoned), political prisoners and other people had lost their lives.
1.1 MILLION were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. January 27 was designated by the UN as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
My friend Steven L Sears posted this on his Facebook page. Please read “This Room At Dachau”.
Doesn’t this article just break your heart? I shed so many tears I filled a bucket. The poor Nazis couldn’t get to sleep because there was too much light. Isn’t that shocking? It’s a human right to sleep in the dark without intrusive lights interrupting their sleep.
Someone should have given me a gun and I would have sent them to sleep very easily. The searchlights would not have bothered them although the fires of hell are far more brutal and difficult to get to sleep than a little searchlight. The following Nazi sob story was in the Guardian Newspaper
Letter released to National Archives reveals how chancellor of West Germany complained about conditions for inmates including Albert Speer
Nazi war criminals in Spandau prison ‘could not sleep due to searchlights’
Letter released to National Archives reveals how chancellor of West Germany complained about conditions for inmates including Albert Speer
Nazi war criminals held in the infamous Spandau prison after the second world were treated “exceedingly harshly”, and could not sleep because of constant security searchlights, according to Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first postwar chancellor, in a letter released by the National Archives.
Inmates at the Berlin jail – the running of which was shared on monthly rotation between the Allied powers of UK, US, France and Soviet Union – were also prohibited from conversing or reading, Adenauer complained to Allied officials in the letter, dated 21 June 1950.
Food, which “had always been bad during the Russian months”, had become “very bad and deficient” again, he said.
Adenauer’s intervention on behalf of the prisoners, which at that time included Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess, is among a cache of documents from the Allied administration of Berlin that have been declassified.
The West German chancellor also complained that clergymen were not permitted to visit inmates. “The pope some time ago had his blessings transmitted to one of the prisoners,” he wrote. “The prisoner was never informed of this but heard it only when his daughter visited him.
“For humanitarian reasons,” Adenauer added, “I feel moved to ask [that] the governments [the Allied occupying powers] to cause conditions in the military prison at Spandau to be investigated and to take steps to ensure that penal practice be adapted to the principles prevailing in civilised countries.”
British, French and US authorities who met the following day to assess the complaints partially blamed the Soviets for the conditions. The three western powers agreed to reduce the frequency with which the lights were turned on at night.
In July 1950, the secretariat of the Allied High Commission for Germany wrote back to Adenauer. “Contrary to the information which appears to have been given to you, it is neither prohibited for prisoners … to talk or read,” he said. “Their food is quite adequate during the months of management by the western powers and even during the Soviet month the regular amount of calories is provided.”
However, the chancellor was informed, lampshades would in future be provided for lights in the men’s cells and the frequency of night security searches would be “reduced to a minimum”.
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The New Yorker magazine has a very interesting article. The Root of All Cruelty? Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse.
When I was doing research for my first book “In The Blood of the Greeks” – I wanted to give my character, Zoe Lambros, a role model that she was inspired by. I just love research and this led me down a whole different rabbit hole.
On this day in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. 6 MILLION innocent Jews and others such as gyspies, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual men (lesbians were not imprisoned), political prisoners and other people had lost their lives.
Letter released to National Archives reveals how chancellor of West Germany complained about conditions for inmates including Albert Speer
