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An evaluation of Anzac Day may best be found in how Australians remember and honour, all who serve their country in war. None more significantly than the ethos surrounding the Unknown Soldier. Some may ask, who is this man? His name, rank and battalion are unknown. His place of birth, or precisely how and when he died; where he lived in Australia, and when he left its shores for the battlefields of Europe; who knows? His age and circumstances; religion if he had one; not known. Did he come from the city or the bush? What occupation did he leave to become a soldier; who knows? Were his loved ones, and those who loved him; not known? His family is lost to Australia, as he was lost to his family.

Who knows this Australian? He has always been among those honoured, since he is one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. One of the 416,000 who volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war, and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. Also one of the 100,000 who died in wars up until now. He represents all of them, and is a fellow Australian. Yet, the Australia he knew, and the Australia now, are like foreign countries. The tide of events since he died is dramatic, vast and all-consuming, an emergence of a world beyond the reach of his imagination. He may have been one of those who believed that the Great War would be an adventure too great too miss, and could never live down the shame of not participating. Yet the chances are, that he went for no other reason than he believed it was his duty. The duty he owed his country and his king. The Great War was a mad, brutal, awful struggle, "distinguished more often than not by military and political incompetence". Since the waste of human life was so terrible; some believed that "victory was scarcely discernible from defeat". And "the war that was supposed to end all wars in fact, planted the seeds of a second, even more terrible war". Did the Unknown Soldier die in vain?

Australians still honour their war dead just as in the past, and so declare that he did not die in vain. For out of the war came a lesson that "transcends the horror, tragedy and inexcusable folly". It was a lesson about "ordinary people, who were not ordinary". All in all, they were the heroes of war; (not the officials and the politicians) the soldiers, sailors, stretcher bearers and nurses; those who demonstrated how to endure

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