I just read on the BBC News site that William Evan Allan, the last surviving Aussie veteran of both World Wars who saw active service passed away. The webpage on Allan’s demise then mentioned this in the second last paragraph.
Australia's Minister for Veterans Affairs, De-Anne Kelly, said his death meant an entire generation who left Australia to defend their nation and the British Empire had been lost.
It was this line that stood out. I think this is the essence of history. 90 years after Allan enlisted, the British Empire is nowhere to be seen. In its place, the Anglo-American hegemony tramples roughshod over the globe, but the sun did set on the British Raj. How many countless young Englishmen died in the jungles of the Orient with a copy of Kipling in their backpacks? How many men did England summon to her bidding and their untimely demise through the clarion call of Empire? While this line does evoke images of a grand empire, benevolent yet stern, a forbidding edifice of civilization beckoning men to die at her feet, one must remember that even the most seemingly eternal of empires have crumbled and gone. And therein, my dear chaps, lies History’s greatest lesson.