History, Ideas, Attitudes In A Nation's Flag

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30568, 10 October 1964, Page 5

History, Ideas, Attitudes In A Nation's Flag

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ROBERT PAYNE

in the "Sydney Morning Herald." Reprinted

by arrangement.)

j?OR nearly half a century the Canadian Parliament has been debating whether Canada should have a new flag and what form it should take Recently, Prime Minister Pearson stirred up a hornet’s nest by reviving the controversy.

Instead of the tradition Red Ensign, with the Union Jack at the hoist and a shield with maple leaves and the emblems of Britain and France on the red flag, he has proposed a white

flag with three maple leaves in the centre, with vertical blue borders symbolising dominion from sea to sea.

Mr Pearson has made it clear that he is prepared to risk the life of his Government over the question of the flag.

Meanwhile, tempers are inflamed. There are no characteristically British symbols on the flag and this annoys the descendants of the British settlers.

The descendants of French settlers, while approving the white background—white being the colour of France under the Bourbon kings—naturally deplore the absence of the fleur-de-lis.

Mr Pearson remains unimpressed. He wants a purely Canadian flag with no vestige of national rivalries.

SINCE people die for their flags, it is not surprising that they should sometimes quarrel violently over their designs. Each flag contains a multitude of ideas, of histories, of attitudes. A national flag is the supreme totem around which the clans gather in times of danger or celebration, but it is much more than a totem. It represents the continuity of a people, their common purpose, their traditions, their way of looking at the world, their defiance against their enemies, but this is only the beginning. It is as though a flag were a living and breathing thing, free as the air, and very mortal. Sadly it comes down at nightfall, triumphantly it rises at dawn.

Once flags were no more than the banners used to rally troops to battle. Today, as our civilisation becomes more complex, so too do the meanings attached to the flag until it seems that those meanings are almost inexhaustible. Not Known To this day, we do not know who first designed the Stars and Stripes. We know it was not in existence at the time of the Declaration of Independence. It seems to have appeared first two years later.

For nearly 20 years confusion remained. Then, at last, the third Congress sitting in Philadelphia in 1794 decided to speak out authoritively; Vermont and Kentucky had been added to the Union, and so there were now 15 stars: “Be it enacted. That from and after the first day of May, Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and ninety-five, the flag of the United States be 15 stripes, alternate red and white. That the Union be 15 stars, white in a blue

field.” In 1818, when six more States had been added to the Union, it was decided to restrict the number of stripes to 13 and to add a new star whenever a new State entered the Union. It had taken 40 years to design the flag.

The French tricolour has an equally complicated history, though it took only five years to develop. We think of it as the ageless and perfect symbol of France—red for blood, white for purity, blue for the French skies—but we know almost to the precise moment when the three colours were put together. First Tricolour It happened about noon on July 17, 1789, three days after the fall of the Bastile, in the Hotel de Ville, in Paris, when King Louis XVI was being received by Jean Sylvain Bailly, the sombre, thin-faced astronomer who had become mayor of Paris.

The revolutionaries wore a red and blue cockade. Bailly, hoping to please the king, inserted the white, the colour of the Bourbons, and presented it to the king with the words, “Sire, I have the honour to present Your Majesty with the distinctive symbol of the French.” The King accepted the cockade and stuck it in his hat.

In the next year, the tricolour became the revolutionary flag, but not in the form we are accustomed to see it, for it had the red strip at the hoist and the blue at the fly. Four years later, the design was reversed. No-one remembered or cared that the white strip represented the Bourbons and Bailly was no longer there to remind the revolutionaries that he was the first to put the colours together; he perished in the Terror. The red flag of international communism has an even odder history. On July 17, 1791, exactly two years after he had presented the King with the tricolour, Bailly learned that there was rioting in the Champs de Mars, and he ordered the red flag to be flown from the Hotel de Ville, a sign that martial law had been proclaimed. He summoned the National Guard, which marched to the Champs de Mars, flying a red flag. Suddenly someone in the crowd fired at the National Guard, Lafayette gave the order to fire back. There was a massacre, and some 200 people were killed. This mas-

sacre provided the revolution with its first martyrs, and in the following year the revolutionaries in memory of the Champs de Mars, took the red flag for their own. When Lenin introduced his Communist regime in Russia in 1917, he regarded the red flag as the inevitable symbol of communism. When he died, two red flags, which had once hung in the Hotel de Ville in Paris, were placed in his mausoleum in Moscow.

Hitler’s swastika flag was one of the very few to be designed quickly for a deliberate purpose. The purpose was to inspire terror. The black, square-armed swastika in a white disk surrounded by a blood-red field had a peculiarly malevolent effect, resembling pulsating hammers. Hitler believed the swastika to be an ancient Aryan symbol; it was nothing of the kind. It could be found in nearly every corner of the globe. The Union Jack took many centuries to grow. At first, at the time of the Crusades, the English flew the cross of St. George, a red cross on a white field. At the time of the union of England and Scotland under James I, the cross of St Andrew, white on blue, was added. White Strips Since St. Andrew’s cross did not rest comfortably with the cross of St. George, thin white strips were added along the borders of the red cross in obedience to the law of heraldry which ordered that the crosses should not appear to touch. The flag flew for nearly two centuries. On January 1, 1801, King George 111 proclaimed the union of Great Britain and Ireland, and the designers were faced with the problem of adding the cross of St. Patrick, blue on a white field, to a flag that already contained a white cross on a blue field. It was the Admiralty, slightly modifying the original design, which came up with the Union Jack as we know it today. When flying in a high wind, the scarlet, blue and white

reinforcing one another, it becomes an abstract design of quivering excitement. It is probably the most successful design ever employed on a flag. Australia’s flag is the result of a competition, sponsored by private business.

When Cook landed at Botany Bay in 1770, he naturally raised the British flag. The original penal settlement grew under its colours. But with the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia the need of a new, national flag was felt. A number of firms, supported by the Federal Government, invited suggestions for its design. 30,000 Entries Thirty thousand entries were received. They were displayed at a special exhibition in Melbourne in September, 1901. Five of them were considered of equal merit and the first prize was thus shared by five people, among them three youths, from Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland.

A huge flag, incorporating all the features suggested by the five winners, was hoisted over the Melbourne Exhibition building on the day the awards were announced. It was the birth of the Australian flag which with slight adjustments, has remained the same ever since.

As a symbol of British settlement, it made use of the Union Jack. But most conspicuously it displayed the five stars of the Southern Cross. An additional large, white star, placed in the hoist, was symbolic of the Australian Commonwealth; its seven points representing the six states and the territories. Today with new nations and consequently new flags coming into existence every week, the problem of flagdesigning has become acute. Perhaps the answer lies in using designs with flowers and the animals which are not beasts of prey. Western Australia has a swan. Uganda has a rooster. It seems the better way. In an age when nations profess their peaceful intentions, there is no harm in having flags with peaceful emblems. What could be more peaceful and more satisfying than three red maple leaves?