Interwar Period
Melbourne's mood was also darkened by the terrible sacrifices of World War I, in which 112,000 Victorians enlisted and 16,000 were killed. There were bitter political divisions during the war, with Melbourne's Irish-born Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix leading opposition to conscription for the war and the Labor Party suffering a traumatic split. Another 4,000 Victorians died in the Spanish flu epidemic which followed the war. There was a modest revival of prosperity in the 1920s, and the population reached 1 million in 1930, but in 1929 the Wall Street Crash ushered in another Depression, which lasted until World War II.
During these years Melbourne acquired another great landmark, the Shrine of Remembrance in St Kilda Road, largely built by unemployed workers during the Depression. The population stagnated again, and was still only 1.1 million in 1940.
Read more about this topic: History Of Melbourne
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