"One observer has argued that the strongest focus of New Zealand civil religion has not been the conventional churches, nor the queen whose image and superscription grace the currency, nor even rugby, but Anzac day and it's rites-and has noted that curiously the monuments found in virtually every town to the tragically large number of New Zealanders killed in the two world wars tend to be not Christian but pagan in style, not crosses but Egyptian obelisks or Roman arches, as though these were more suitable to fallen warriors"

-Robert S. Ellwood 'Islands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand' pg.192, summarising M.R. Sharpe, "Anzac Day in New Zealand: 1916-1939," New Zealand Journal of History 15, no. 2 (October 1981):97-144.