The national memorial for conscientious objectors is a welcome addition to the steps above George St and Albany St, Dunedin.
Since the official opening of the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden on October 29, 2021, the site has quickly established itself as an important national and local landmark.
The central feature in the garden is a powerful statue titled “We Shall Bend but Not Be Broken,” created by Arrowtown sculptor Shane Woolridge.
The statue commemorates the mistreatment of Baxter for his refusal to go against his convictions and take up arms in World War 1.
An information plaque explains the context and the form of field punishment (known as Field Punishment No 1), which Baxter experienced in Flanders in 1918.
Baxter describes the experience in his book We Will Not Cease (1939):
“My hands were taken from round the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position … I was strained so tightly against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch.”
For Woolridge to craft such an evocative representation of field punishment that is appropriate to display in a public place is a remarkable achievement.
The design invites the onlooker to reflect on what it would be like for someone to be stretched and bent in this way for hours.
Baxter’s son, the poet James K. Baxter, describes field punishment as a “torture post” and it was known colloquially as “crucifixion”. However, the visual image of the memorial — and the inscription which accompanies it — are expressions of human dignity, not just pain and suffering.
Baxter is not depicted directly and but his experience is suggested in two different ways.
First, the upright pole is constructed from 70 stacked stone discs. These are suggestive of the compressed vertebra disks of a person constrained on the field punishment pole for hours.
The message is understated but clear for those who wish to reflect on it.
Second, a bronze sphere hanging from the top of the structure recalls the well-known images of Baxter during field punishment, especially the painting Field Punishment no 1 by Bob Kerr, depicting both field punishment and Baxter himself in this indirect and understated way manages to convey the suffering he experienced without being too overwhelming for a public memorial in a prominent location.
At the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson spoke on the tragic irony that because Baxter was determined to stand up for his principles, he was forced to bend in pain for many hours.
Archibald Baxter
Baxter’s son, the poet James K. Baxter, describes field punishment as a “torture post” and it was known colloquially as “crucifixion”. However, the visual image of the memorial — and the inscription which accompanies it — are expressions of human dignity, not just pain and suffering.
Baxter is not depicted directly and but his experience is suggested in two different ways.
First, the upright pole is constructed from 70 stacked stone discs. These are suggestive of the compressed vertebra disks of a person constrained on the field punishment pole for hours.
The message is understated but clear for those who wish to reflect on it.
Second, a bronze sphere hanging from the top of the structure recalls the well-known images of Baxter during field punishment, especially the painting Field Punishment no 1 by Bob Kerr, depicting both field punishment and Baxter himself in this indirect and understated way manages to convey the suffering he experienced without being too overwhelming for a public memorial in a prominent location.
At the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson spoke on the tragic irony that because Baxter was determined to stand up for his principles, he was forced to bend in pain for many hours.
Robertson recognised this as an inspiration for all who call New Zealand their home.
Baxter and the other conscientious objectors exemplify what Robertson described as “standing upright as a New Zealander”.
Emeritus Prof Kevin Clements has noted the appropriateness of the memorial’s elevated position just above George St. One can look across the harbour to the Fallen Soldier’s memorial (1923) at the crest of the peninsula horizon.
The two memorials, nearly 100 years apart in age, both speak to the courage and the cost paid by those they remember in different ways.
Clements is chairman of the Archibald Baxter Trust, and it is the trust which had the vision for this public gift. It undertook the fundraising, commissioned the work and liaised with the Dunedin City Council to make it possible.
I first encountered Baxter’s story when I was invited to offer the Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust lecture in 2015.
This annual lecture is held each year on or close to International Peace Day, September 21.
After the lecture, my Otago colleague Associate Prof John Stenhouse encouraged and guided my research into Baxter’s religious views.
It was a fascinating journey.
In his later years, Baxter became Catholic, but he is usually described as an atheist because for much of his life he was not a member of a church and did not identify as religious.
It is clear that he was not religious in a conventional way, but there is also evidence that, in some ways, he always had a strong personal faith.
When he was categorised as an agnostic in Wellington jail, he declared this was wrong.
His wife, Millicent, said that he would insist that he was not a member of a church but said, “I am a believer”.
During the lowest point of suffering during field punishment, Baxter appears to have derived personal support from religion, but he said he did not act for religious reasons.
Because Baxter was so reticent about his beliefs, it is hard to know for sure what he made of religion.
In the biography of Millicent Baxter, Out of the Shadows, Penny Griffiths details a revealing story.
Archie and Millicent converted to Catholicism in 1965, and Archibald took the baptismal name Francis, after Francis of Assisi.
However, his niece insists that her father (Archie’s brother Donald) never knew about his conversion until his funeral in 1970.
Religion was seen as a very private matter.
While the national memorial is not about Baxter’s religious faith— or his presumed lack of religious faith — the sense of restraint it shows with regard to field punishment is very fitting for how Baxter himself viewed public expressions of faith.
Under the surface, there is much more than is first apparent.
- David Tombs is the Howard Paterson Professor of theology and public issues at the University of Otago.
- First published in the ODT. Republished with permission.
- David Tombs, ‘Under the Surface: Archibald Baxter’s Religious Faith’ in Geoff Troughton (ed.),Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacebuilding in New Zealand, 1814-1945. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017, pp. 122-43. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/10523/12755