On August 30, 1914, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald deputized 30 women in Folkstone to hand out white feathers to men not in uniform. The purpose of this gesture was to shame "every young ‘slacker’ found loafing about," and to remind those "deaf or indifferent to their country’s need" that British soldiers are "fighting and dying across the channel.” Fitzgerald’s warned the men of Folkstone that there is a "danger awaiting them far more terrible than anything they can meet in battle," for if they were found "idling and loafing to-morrow" they would be publicly humiliated by a lady with a white feather.

A poster designed for the mayor of London put the same message bluntly. Addressing "The Young Women of London," the mayor asked: "Is your ‘Best Boy’ wearing Khaki? If not, don’t YOU THINK he should be? If he does not think that you and your country are worth fighting for—do you think he is worthy of you? Don’t pity the girl who is alone—her young man is probably a soldier fighting for her and her country—and for You. If your young man neglects his duty to his King and Country, the time may come when he will Neglect You. Think it over—then ask him to JOIN THE ARMY TO-DAY!"

The battles at Gallipoli (1915) during the First World War are often seen to represent the moment of independence for the Australian nation, offering a chance for its true national character to emerge. Despite its Federation in 1901, Australia had not yet succeeded in producing a unique identity. Ken Inglis: "The altar had not yet been stained with crimson as every rallying center of a nation should be." After the huge loss of life at Gallipoli, Australia’s hopes of a national identity born of blood and sacrifice were realized.

The idea that sacredness and power are born from a willingness to die are fundamental to the ideology of sacrifice. The sacrificial victims embody the entire group collective. Thus, the horrors of Gallipoli are made noble, and acts of slaughter are neither murder nor suicide.

During the First World War, Walter Flex felt that death in war made life meaningful, even if that life was devoid of meaning until the moment of sacrifice. Modern war became an extraordinary event that enabled men to reach for higher things.

The quest for "higher things" separated the front-line soldier from those leading ordinary lives. War was considered a cosmic process. Within this process, the cult of the fallen occupied a central position. In war cemeteries and war monuments, the abstract became concrete and could be touched and worshipped.
The cult of the fallen assimilated the basic themes of Christianity. The exclamation "Now we are made sacred" implied an analogy of the sacrifice in war to the passion and resurrection of Christ. The war, according to Walter Flex, was the Last Supper: one of the chief revelations through which Christ illuminates the world. The sacrificial death of the best of our people, he continued, is only a "repetition of the passion of Christ."