{"id":5557,"date":"2025-05-27T03:39:27","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T03:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/?p=5557"},"modified":"2025-05-27T03:49:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T03:49:16","slug":"1945-the-price-of-peace-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/1945-the-price-of-peace-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"1945: The Price of Peace Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Reading time: 3 minutes<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1945: The Price of Peace \u2013 a new exhibition by the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library is now on show in the TL Robertson Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eighty years on from a monumental year, our new exhibition commemorates key events of the last part of World War II, and the final months of John Curtin\u2019s life. On 28 February 1945, Prime Minister John Curtin declared in parliament: \u2018There is a price the world must pay for peace &#8230; I shall not attempt to specify the price, but it does mean less nationalism, less selfishness, less race ambition.\u2019<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"592\" height=\"571\" src=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Picture-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5558\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Curtin died on 5 July 1945 after a long illness, having led Australia through the Second World War since October 1941. Our exhibition includes a touching letter from Curtin\u2019s political opponent, Robert Menzies, written a week before Curtin\u2019s death, urging him to take a \u2018real holiday\u2019, and condolence telegrams to Curtin\u2019s widow, Elsie, from UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman. A panorama of Curtin\u2019s funeral at Karrakatta Cemetery gives a sense of a nation in mourning; 20,000 people were estimated to be in attendance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Curtin\u2019s death came after the Allies had defeated Germany but six weeks before Victory over Japan was declared. On display is the diary kept by sixteen-year-old Hazel Masterton of Mt Hawthorn, future wife of Prime Minister Bob Hawke. She was at a dance when the first rumours rippled through about the Japanese surrender and wrote, \u2018Everyone in the hall joined in a big ring &amp; sang, \u201cAuld Lang Syne\u201d then \u201cThere\u2019ll always be an England\u201d &amp; \u201cLand of Hope &amp; Glory\u201d.\u2019 The prominent place of religion in Australian society is shown in hymn-sheets for the May 8th Victory in Europe and for the August Victory in the Pacific thanksgiving services. Alongside celebrations of victory it was a time of remembering the dead \u2014 at least 35 million people worldwide \u2014 in solemn ceremonies such as a service held at the State War Memorial in King\u2019s Park, captured in two photographs in our exhibition. Paper cranes, symbols of peace and hope in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are another aspect of the exhibition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"632\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Picture-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5559\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The exhibition on Level 3 of the TL Robertson Library near the Reading Room runs until November 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading time: 3 minutes<br \/>\n1945: The Price of Peace \u2013 a new exhibition by the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library is now on show in the TL Robertson Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":5562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[47,18,39,46,48,3],"class_list":["post-5557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-library","tag-47","tag-18","tag-exhibition","tag-jcpml","tag-john-curtin","tag-library"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5557"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5566,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions\/5566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}