The captains and the kings have departed now and it is a great pity that such sombre occasions are politicised, from the glossy brochures sent out by Government politicians, written to promote the Anzac saga but which were also unsubtle  vehicles for Party promotion, to the speechifying by various national leaders.

Our Prime Minister's claim that the "Gallipoli landing was in an important sense the birth of our nation. Certainly it was the coming of age" is put into a proper perspective by the Director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson when he says "It is certainly not correct to say that Australia was born at Gallipoli - - - -  centuries of indigenous history, we've got (all) the stories of the making of the nation in every sense of the word.'

The tumult and the shouting was in the rhetoric of politicians, who sadly use such occasions to define their own national agendas and of these speeches, I thought the words of the Prime Minister of New Zealand to be the most apt  as he mentioned among other things that the Anzac landing was an invasion, that the Turks as well as the Australians and New Zealanders were gallant foes and also sustained heavy losses.

The bottom line with all of this is that, along with the bravery and loss of all the participants, is the complicity of the cynical politicians, "the captains and the kings', who were responsible for such slaughters and who mostly never came within a bull's roar of any action where they were in harm's way.

So it continues and the words from that prescient song "When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?" ring ever true.