Anzac to Understanding

"Anzac, the Play: A Saga of War and Peace in the 20th Century", was written in Berkeley in 1969, published in 1971 and produced at the Globe Playhouse Los Angeles in 1984 with readings at the Lankershim Arts Center, No-Ho, North Hollywood in 1996. Accompanying the play, is historical documentation of the lives of the families from whom the characters were drawn as well as war letters of Willie Augustus Mann, 1914-1919, his own story and relevant pages from the Anzac Book, written by the Anzacs themselves, published in 1916.

"A Quest for Understanding" is rooted in this Great War, the First World War, the war to end all wars. In Australia, half the eligible young men enlisted. Their casualties were horrific but they brought Australia on to the world stage. They were called Anzacs, members of the Australian, New Zealand Army Corps, a name coined on the Gallipoli Peninsular, Turkey in 1915. Theirs was a shining light of naked courage, an epiphany of what it meant to be human beings who had earned their own freedom and freedom for the world. To be a child of Anzac was a privilege and a great joy. The quest for the understanding of why war by one of these children began with the Second World War in 1939. It would go back to the Greeks, to the origins of English Literature, through halls of learning across two continents, to the great religions and recent scientific advances and into the heart of a woman. It ended with a Practical Philosophy of Life based upon the understandings: reverence for life, gender differences, the female as the guardian of ethics, and the in-organic nature of money. It offers the individual conscience as humanity's inherent connection to the Life Force of the Universe, or God.