'Owning' Military History

[Mike Cecil]

Gents,

I look at a site called 'Armoured Advocates' from time to time. It is a web-blog written by Lt Col Bruce Cameron MC (rtd) wherein he comments on a broad range of matters relating to current and not-so-current issues of interest to him. A day or so ago, he posted a commentary that ended with the statement:

"This raises the question (more a moral one than anything else) as to the extent that private individuals should be allowed to ‘own’ Australia’s military history for personal gratification."

Now, I know the author is not a collector, and indeed from the statement above, appears to have little understanding of a collectors mind-set, but the fundamental aspect he seems to have overlooked in that statement is that we 'collectors' collect what our various governments SELL and collect the cash for, and that once legally in private hands, are no longer the concern of government (or anyone else, for that matter). Trucks, tanks, aeroplanes, manuals, paperwork, tents, rifles .... all sold off by governments and legally collected by the likes of us. (Medals/medal collecting is a little different: given by a grateful nation to an individual, who is then, in most instances, able to dispose of them at some later date as they see fit.)

And if it wasn't for the likes of us collectors .... would there be much held in public collections? I know when I was at the AWM, we were very, very grateful to the collecting fratenity, as they were a constant source of items for the collection, items that Government has not seen fit to 'collect' at the time the items left service.

Given the broad range of experience and expertise on this forum - museum professionals, small and large scale collectors, researchers and authors - I'm interested in your comments about the 'moral' question raised by Lt Col Bruce Cameron MC (rtd) .....

Mike