© Protected - Selected Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

  A Personal Reminiscence Captain J F Walsh (left) and Lieutenant N T Svensen (right) leading files of 'A' Company, 15th Battalion during a march through Melbourne, 17th December 1914 shortly before embarkation for the Great War Turkish front. Two children are in the right foreground. Major Nikolai Theodor Svensen (1878-1966)  You may like to glance through this personal reminiscence of mine on a day of immortal memories https://gallipoliviking.blogspot.com/ 

This is a particularly significant, symbolic and resonant All Saints Day and All Souls Day, recumbent in the shadow of war. I have found it so difficult to sleep in recent weeks and particularly last night. In Ukraine accurate reports are difficult to unearth, concealed for 'security reasons' but in the conflict sources indicate hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed so far. In the Middle East there are even more terrible statistics concerning Palestinian civilians and now horrors in Lebanon. The flawed human consciousness of the sacred nature of life throws me into despair.  Death and injury is barbarously forced upon thousands of blameless children.  And the appalling silence concerning the barbarism, loss and displacement of millions on an unimaginable scale in Sudan ...  This situation  has thrown me into complete mental confusion, horror and repugnance. The repetition of hatreds I thought had gone forever break like a wave once ...