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CHAPTER XXIII
THE AUSTRALASIAN SOLDIER

 
And Southern Nation, and Southern State aroused from their dream of ease,
Shall write in the book of Eternal Fate their stormy histories.
 

"The Australasians are possibly the finest troops in the world."

The considered judgment of an observer at the Dardanelles, Commander Josiah Wedgwood, M.P., deliberately pronounced for publication in the Press, caught the attention of many readers of newspapers in this country. Cabled out to the Southern Hemisphere, it was reproduced in every newspaper in Australia and New Zealand, where a thrill of pride and gratitude vibrated from end to end of the country, radiating back to the most remote township at the very Back of Beyond.

This was generous appreciation indeed, and accepted in the same spirit of generosity in which it was tendered. The vow, "Our last shilling and our last man," with which Australasia had solemnly entered upon the Great War was as solemnly renewed. The Southern Britons quivered with comprehensible pride at the generous and timely praise; it was more than they would have claimed – much more – but it carried a message of consolation to many a stricken home ten thousand miles away from the blood-stained battlefields of Europe. "Good soldiers, none better!" Then they have not died for nothing if they have merited that epitaph from the Motherland.

Nature, as well as the deliberate plan of the Australasians themselves, has ensured that an army of Australasians must necessarily compose a very fine fighting force. It may be that the qualifications of the soldier of the future shall consist of an incredible callousness of heart, and an extended knowledge of all the detestable forms that can be assumed by the most hideous of human crimes. But the qualifications of a warrior have not yet been so far modified by the Great War that he has been converted into a poisoner. It is still assumed that he is a man who risks his life in the fair fight he wages with fair-minded men, whom unfortunate circumstances have made his foes for the time being. Coolness and resource in danger, magnanimity in the glory of victory, and stoutheartedness in the first abashment of defeat may still be called the soldier's virtues; and the oldest excuse for war, that the soldier kills without murder in his heart, can still be pleaded by the Briton who takes up arms in defence of his country.

Soldiering of this sort has always been an instinct with the Southern Briton. The individual citizen there is under no misapprehension about the preparedness of his country for war; he looks around and sees for himself. To desire to retain a great continent for ever for the exclusive use of the white races is a privilege involving heavy responsibilities. There is an obvious danger in excluding one's neighbours because they do not conform to the high ideals of civilization adopted by the Briton. Very deliberately the Australasian has adopted this provocative attitude toward his coloured neighbours, who far outnumber him, though possessing only very restricted areas of territory for their habitation, as compared with the spacious elbow room which the Australasian reserves for himself.

From his early boyhood the young Australasian is made familiar with the possibility of taking up arms in self-defence. Whatever may be thought of the measures he takes for the development of his holding, in proof of his title to it, there can be no difference of opinion as to his readiness to fight for his spacious heritage. He knows what such a war would mean to his country, with its long stretches of undefended coastline, and the sparse population of the country behind them. These coasts are so obviously vulnerable spots that only a purblind fool could ignore their terrible significance. And the Australasian is certainly no fool.

There are other circumstances, too, in his daily life that may be partly responsible for his curious readiness to take off his coat and fight. The uncertainty of his surroundings may be responsible for his belief that life is one long fight with circumstance. He goes forth to his daily occupation with the light of battle in his eye; there is something pathetically cynical in his creed that it is necessary to fight for what he gets, even after he has fairly earned it by more peaceful means. He gives his admiration to the man he calls a "battler," and reserves a contemptuous surprise for the man who expects to get anything at all without fighting for it.

Wherever he comes into contact with Nature, the Australasian finds justification for his idea that life is a long struggle against adverse conditions, a struggle which must only be relinquished at the merciful call of Death itself. Considering the fewness of his numbers, he is engaged in the most terrific task that engages any of the nations of the world. He is developing a vast unknown continent, and contending with conditions that are most curiously fickle. The unconsidered circumstances of one year become the determining factors of the next, and that by some whimsical no-law that baffles all intelligent prevision. In another century he may have mastered some of the tricks that climate and environment, to mention but two of his ever-present problems, are playing with his means of livelihood; for the present they make his existence one long uncertain struggle.

For instance, a bag of seed wheat brought from another district may contain a few seeds of a harmless weed, known for many years to be innocent; not worth worrying about one way or the other. The transfer to new conditions of soil and atmosphere suddenly transforms this inoffensive plant into a vegetable pest, that climbs over all saner growths and chokes them out of existence with the ineradicable monstrosity of its new functions. Fertile farms are rendered useless, and the product of the work of whole lifetimes negatived by such malevolent miracles; but they give the Australasian the fighting spirit. Two or three men will go out and face a roaring bush fire with a two-mile front, in the apparently hopeless task of holding it in check till further assistance can be procured. Drought, flood and pestilence are fought in the same uncompromising way, for the race has the instinct of grim battle implanted deep down in its nature. The Australasian knows there is always something to contend with; he knows it is no use to expect a soft time; he must fight.

So he becomes resourceful, inventive, open to suggestion. He is certain there is a counter to every blow delivered by Fate, if one could but discover it. To expect to fight, to realize that there is always a chance to win, but a reasonable expectation of defeat, to seek expedients without being discouraged by failure; all these things make good training for soldiering. They are all part of the daily life of the Australasian, even of the Australasian of the cities. Disaster, sudden and swift; change, inexorable and sweeping; disappointment, bitter and undeserved; he recognizes them all as everyday factors in his existence. The fighting spirit cannot be held long in abeyance if they are to be countered and overcome.

Then the Australasian has the fighting equipment. He is superbly healthy, in spite of his leanness and the drawn look due to the lines that life bites into the faces of even the young men. These men of the sun-dried plains and the rocky ranges look upon illness as something unnatural, something to be ashamed of and concealed; they seem almost to have the instinct that prompts the sick animal to hide from its fellows, and sometimes impels the hale beasts to slay the sick one for the reason that illness is unnatural, dangerous, and an offence. Australasia has the lowest death-rate of the world, a significant fact in the health record of a nation. A nation of athletes! Swift runners, fast swimmers, tall lean men whose movements are made with incredible and deceptive swiftness, inured to the saddle and to long marches under a tropical sun. Compare a regiment of them with a regiment of home-bred Britons, and the advantage in smartness of appearance would lie with the latter. The Australasian is inclined to be loose-jointed and slabby; they use the word "lanky" themselves. They are inclined to economy of physical effort, to walk with a slouch and a swing. Do not be misled by the lack of "snap" in their movements; it is deceptive.

Enterprise and daring are theirs by heredity. They have descended from a race of adventurers. Their immediate forbears were those whom the love of adventure drew to new and little known countries, who were not content to rust out in quiet English villages, to economize for a lifetime on oatmeal and potatoes in a Scottish croft, or to die of rheumatism on the edge of an Irish bog. They married brave girls, and crossed the long oceans to become pioneers of the newer races, transmitting their health and love of adventure to a whole nation.

The Australasians have been accustomed to the weapons of the soldier all their lives; they are part of the daily life of many of them. The rifle and the entrenching tool pass into accustomed hands, which know just how to make the best use of them. Their far-sighted eyes detect little signs of the country through which they pass; their trained minds, versed in all the lore of the country-side, draw the just conclusions. All the work of the camp comes naturally and easily to their hands; many of them are practised guides and scouts. They find the shortest and best way from one place to another by an uncanny kind of instinct; they select the best paths by some natural process that cannot be explained.

When the Australasians were first submitted to the practical test of campaigning to prove their worth in actual warfare, they were held by experts to have failed in one particular, due to their lack of special training. One requisite of the modern soldier was wanting in their composition; they were deficient in discipline. They insisted on ignoring many of the formalities in behaviour exacted from the trained soldier; they protested that they could not see the necessity for them. It would have been easier to underestimate this disadvantage than to correct it, had the Australasians adhered to their original schemes of national defence. But before a second time of testing had come round, they had made differences of a vital kind in their military system, and in the change the defect in training had been remedied.

With the introduction of national service in Australasia, provision was also made for the local production of the implements and munitions of warfare, and for military equipment. Their local supply of the raw material for such purposes is unequalled in the world, and thus it came that the Australian forces in the Great War were equipped in a style of serviceable comfort that was the admiration of all who examined it. In short, the Australasian forces who were sent to participate in the Great War were first-class material, well-trained and excellently found, a body of men of whom it was reasonable to expect fine deeds should the chance ever come their way.

The other factors to be taken into consideration are important ones. The first was their fine youthful pride in the opportunity of serving side by side with the soldiers of the Mother Country, and of the proud European nations allied to her. There will always be generous rivalry between the troops of two great nations fighting side by side in a just cause. But the spirit in which the Australasians went out to the service of the Mother Empire goes deeper and further still. It holds nothing questioning or calculated, it is the conduct of men who hail as a proud privilege the opportunity of laying down their lives for the underlying principles on which the structure of the British Empire is reared. The danger note had only to be sounded and these men hastened to record their eagerness to serve; more, they well knew why they were so keen. With them duty and inclination walked hand in hand.

Finally, the people of Australasia are well assured of the justice of the cause for which they fight. Nowhere was more interest displayed in the speeches that explained the causes to which the war is due, nowhere is there a public better informed of the efforts made to preserve peace, and of the deliberate flouting of them by Germany. Small nations themselves, the Southern Britons fully comprehend the danger to the small nations of Europe from the grasping aggression of their strong unscrupulous neighbours. They claim as part of their heritage those pages of British history which tell how gloriously Great Britain has espoused the cause of the weak in the past. There is no quarrel in which the men of Australasia would more gladly take up arms with the Mother Country than one for the innocent weak against the guilty strong. And such a quarrel, they are well persuaded, is the root cause of the Great War in which they are now fighting.

CHAPTER XXIV
FILLING THE GAPS

 
From Blackboy to Mena, from Mena to where
They drew the first blood with the bayonet,
They hoisted the heathen foe out of his lair
Who'd the Germanized courage to stay in it.
From Suez they scattered the truculent Turk,
To far Teheran and to Tripoli;
And at last they beheld British Jackies at work
On the gun-bristled hills of Gallipoli:
On the gun-bristled hills of Gallipoli,
A minute of wading in bullet-splashed waves,
The Cooees of Motherland thrilling 'em.
But those minutes cut holes in that brown line of braves
And – What about filling 'em?
 

So wrote one of Australia's bards when the first news of the battle of Brighton Beach reached the Commonwealth. The practical patriotism of Australia at once grasped the fact that there must be wide gaps in the ranks, and that the best reward the Commonwealth could make to those who had upheld the honour of Australasia so nobly was to support them with all the additional men and money required for the completion of the task so nobly begun.

It has already been stated that the original Expeditionary Force from Australasia totalled 28,000 men in all; but even before they had left Southern waters, arrangements for further contingents were well advanced. As a matter of fact, the second contingent, which was 10,000 strong, had arrived in Egypt in time to take part in the training at Mena, and was part of the landing force of April. With the New Zealanders the infantry of this contingent served under General Sir A. J. Godley as the 4th Brigade, and reference has already been made to their gallant defence of the central position at the battle of Quinn's Post, where Sanders Pasha led the Turks to an irretrievable disaster.

Their General expressed his personal opinion of the services of the gallant 4th at Anzac on June 2, when he gathered the men together and delivered to them the following inspiriting address: —

"Colonel Monash, officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the Fourth Australian Infantry Brigade: – I have come here to-day to tell you all with what great pride and satisfaction I have watched your performances for the past five weeks, and to tell you also that not only your comrades in this division, but also those of the whole Australasian Army Corps, have looked on with the greatest admiration at your gallant doings, from the moment that you landed in the Gallipoli Peninsula. You have been for five weeks continuously in the front trenches, fighting particularly hard the whole of that time. Never have troops been subjected to such heavy shell and rifle fire, not to speak of bombs and hand grenades; you have lived and fought in a din and turmoil which would have sorely tried most men. You began your fighting immediately on landing, pitchforked, I might say, into the middle of the battle, with the whole brigade scattered in small fragments in different parts of the firing line, as the several units landed. You were in the firing line continuously for seven days with nothing but what you carried on you. It took days of hard work for the brigadier and his staff to collect the battalions together and to consolidate the section of defence allotted to this brigade. During this time many deeds of heroism, many acts of gallantry were performed, which will remain unknown and will go unrewarded, and many of your comrades were killed and wounded. Again, on May 2 and 3, this brigade undertook a sortie from its lines which was very far-reaching in its results, and which shattered the enemy's plans for a combined assault most effectually. Again, on May 9, this brigade made another highly successful sortie, and only a few days ago, during the greater part of May 18 and 19, you bore the brunt of the very severe Turkish attack by which the enemy hoped to drive this army corps into the sea.

"Yours is a fine record, and one of which you yourselves, and the whole of the people of Australia, have the fullest reason to be proud. You have made, and are making, the military history of Australia – a history equal to that of any other brigade or body of troops in the Empire, or in the world – and you have performed deeds, and achieved successes, of which the Commonwealth will surely be proud. Pope's Hill position is named after the gallant commander of the 16th Battalion, which held it so long against such odds; Courtney's Post will for ever be associated with the 14th Battalion, which has defended it against all attacks for the whole period; the most difficult post of all – Quinn's Post, named after Major Quinn, who bravely died at this post in the service of his country, and who, I am sure, would have preferred no more glorious death – this post will be for ever associated with the name of Lieut. – Colonel Cannon, and the 15th Battalion. Nor will be forgotten the gallant behaviour of the 13th Battalion, under Lieut. – Colonel Burnage, who, among many other fine performances, held on for a night and a day in a difficult advanced position, which they had stormed, and from which they did not withdraw until ordered to do so in view of the subsequent course of the operations.

"Among so many whose names are worthy of record and distinction, it has been very hard to single out individuals, but as commander of this division, I have had the honour of sending on the names of some twenty officers and men, from that of your brigadier downwards, for special and honourable mention in despatches for most meritorious service and conspicuous gallantry.

"It has pleased his Majesty the King to confer upon this brigade eleven honours, comprising two Distinguished Service Orders, two Military Crosses, and seven Distinguished Conduct medals. These rewards, earned between the landing of the brigade on April 25 and May 5, are surely a rare and enviable distinction.

"On behalf of the Imperial Government, because of the great services you have rendered to the glory of the Empire – greater services than you probably yourselves realize – I thank you, Colonel Monash, your staff, your commanding officers, and all your personnel from the highest to the lowest, for the work you have done during the past five weeks."

This second contingent, which distinguished itself so remarkably from the time of its landing, was followed by yet a third, also of 10,000 men, led by Colonels Spencer Browne, C.B., V.D.; W. Holmes, D.S.O., V.D.; and Linton. They were of physique equal in every respect to their forerunners, and may be trusted to render an equally good account of themselves.

These supplementary contingents are to be regarded as additions to the first Expeditionary force, for the Australian method of filling the gaps is to send monthly reinforcements, sufficient to replace all men lost in battle. The original estimate was for 3,000 a month, but when the Australian Government grasped the serious nature of the operations in which their men were engaged, and the extent of the casualty lists, they increased this number to 4,000 monthly. These steps were taken before the full accounts of the Gallipoli fighting had reached Australia; they provided merely for what was thought a serious operation bearing a prospect of success at no remote date in the future.

But the full grandeur of Australian patriotism was only to be realized when it was gathered that the whole Turkish army was mustered in defence of the Straits of the Dardanelles, and that Australasia was called upon to bear a very considerable share of a separate war, waged against the full strength of a desperate warrior nation. Then Australasia became one vast recruiting ground; and military enthusiasm reached a pitch which has not yet been realized in the Mother Country.

It would be a salutary lesson to that section of the London Press which persisted in a sour pessimistic view of the whole of the Dardanelles adventure to be made to reprint a few columns of the sane but ardent patriotism with which the Australians were spurred by their worthy Press to shoulder the load apportioned to them. There were none of those hints of possible failure which so appalled the unsophisticated Briton during the summer months of 1915. A nation of 5,000,000 people that prepares to put 250,000 men down on the spot, and back them with its last shilling, cherishes no such unworthy doubts. A more splendid answer to croakers than that given by Australasia could hardly have been devised.

Perhaps, though, the spirit of calm and unshaken resignation with which Australia and New Zealand accepted the tidings of the evacuation of Anzac was even a better answer still. The assurances of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth and the Dominion that the reverse would but nerve those countries to still greater effort rang through the Empire like a clarion call. Australia decided to increase its quota of 250,000 men to 300,000, and New Zealand made a similar increase, in proportion to population. And throughout the width and breadth of those great Dominions went the call for more men still.

Only cabled accounts of that wave of recruiting energy, which converted Australia into a great armed camp, have yet reached this country. But they make the heart swell with pride at the indomitable courage with which the Southern Nations are preparing to tackle the problem of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The cost was laid before Parliament and, after consideration, approved without question. An expenditure of £40,000,000 was faced without a murmur. "In three months' time," said a responsible minister, "Australia would be paying more per head for the war than the people in England." The statement was received with cheers. The suggestion of a war tax met with no opposition in the House of Parliament; nor from the mass of the Australian people. The money is to be found without any grumbling.

As for the men, they sprang to the call. The State of Victoria showed the way with a great recruiting campaign, with the avowed object of getting a thousand men per day. At the end of a fortnight the record was 18,970 applications, of which 13,810 were accepted. On the same scale of recruiting, the United Kingdom would yield nearly 500,000 soldiers in a fortnight. The figures, in proportion to population, seem almost incredible, but they are accurate.

The Mother State of New South Wales followed with a similar campaign. One city of less than 100,000 people – the city of Newcastle – provided 363 applicants in one day. On the same lines recruiting was organized all over Australia; as these words are written it is going on with such enthusiasm that there can be no doubt of the result. The farmers and stock-raisers were facing the best season the country had ever seen. They left their bumper harvest to ripen and be gathered by the women and boys; it is for them to see this business through "on the gun-bristled hills of Gallipoli."

The spirit of Australia can best be gauged by reading an extract from a letter written to the Australian wounded by a young lady who is a teacher at the High School in Ballarat, and which was cabled all over the world, since it echoes truly the pride of Australia in its heroes, and the determination of the Commonwealth that all shall be worthy of their devotion and grand patriotism. The letter was received at the hospital at Malta, and runs as follows: —

"May 12.

"Dear Australian Boys, – Every Australian woman's heart this week is thrilling with pride, with exultation, and while her eyes fill with tears she springs up as I did when the story in Saturday's Argus was finished and says, 'Thank God, I am an Australian.' Boys, you have honoured our land; you, the novices, the untrained, the untaught in war's grim school, have done the deeds of veterans. Oh, how we honour you; how we glory in your matchless bravery, in your yet more wonderful fortitude, which the war correspondent says was shown so marvellously as your boatloads of wounded cheered and waved amid their pain as you were rowed back to the vessels!

"What gave you the courage for that heroic dash to the ridge, boys? British grit, Australians' nerve and determination to do or die, a bit of the primeval man's love of a big fight against heavy odds. God's help, too, surely.

"Dear boys, I'm sure you will feel a little rewarded for your deeds of prowess if you know how the whole Commonwealth, nay, the whole Empire, is stirred by them. Every Sunday now we are singing the following lines after 'God save the King' in church and Sunday school. They appeared in the Argus Extraordinary with the first Honour Roll in it:

 
God save our splendid men!
Send them safe home again!
Keep them victorious,
Patient and chivalrous,
They are so dear to us:
God save our men.
 

"What can I say further? With God the ultimate issue rests. Good-night, boys. God have you living or dying in His keeping. If any one of you would like to send me a pencilled note or card I'll answer it to him by return. – Your countrywoman,

"Jeanie Dobson."

That Australian purses were opened with Australian hearts is proved by the remarkable total of gifts in money and kind made by Australia to various funds on behalf of sufferers by the war. In the first ten months the Commonwealth contributed in cash the sum of £2,329,259 to the various funds arising out of the war, apart from immense gifts in kind, the value of which is not estimatable. The State contributions are totalled as follows: – New South Wales, £980,889; Victoria, £850,000; Queensland, £200,825; South Australia, £127,540; Tasmania, £36,750; and Western Australia, £133,255. Total, £2,329,259.

The Australian care for the wounded is the subject of a testimony from Sir Frederick Treves, which may be included here to show the appreciation with which this care has been met by the most eminent surgeon in the Empire: —

"The generosity with which Australia has provided motor ambulances for the whole country, and Red Cross stores for every one, British or French, who has been in want of the same, is beyond all words. I only hope that the people of Australia will come to know of the admirable manner in which their wounded have been cared for, and of the noble and generous work which that great colony has done under the banner of the Red Cross."

New Zealand is no whit behind Australia; indeed, in proportion to population, the Dominion supplied more men during the first ten months of the war than even the Commonwealth. The troops actually sent on active service by this community of a little more than a million people were: —

Throughout this period the Dominion held a valuable reserve in hand, for the minimum age had been kept at twenty years. This excluded a fine body of young men between the age of eighteen and twenty, all of them well trained under the compulsory system; as grand a body of young soldiers as the world can show. Their number is estimated at 22,000, and over 90 per cent. of them have volunteered for service abroad. At the time of writing the question of lowering the age limit to eighteen was being considered in New Zealand, though the number of recruits of the standard age was still so satisfactory that the step was not necessary. New Zealand is preparing, like Australia, to send out five per cent. of its whole population to fight the battles of the Empire abroad; that is a force of 50,000 men. The whole number of men of military age in the Dominion is less than 200,000.

Those who remain for the defence of the Southern nation are now busy in preparing munitions for the Great War. The factories of the young nations have already been converted into arsenals under the control of Munitions Boards, and hosts of volunteers are working long hours to supply the men of Australasia with every requisite for victory.

Lastly, Australasia has not forgotten that the duty of providing the Empire's food is one of the most important within her province. The year of the outbreak of war saw her producing industries hampered by a disastrous drought, so that the harvest failed and less than twenty per cent of the anticipated wheat supply was garnered. The year 1915 saw quite a different state of affairs; bountiful rains prepared the way for huge crops, and the farmers had sown lavishly, so that full advantage might be taken of this favourable state of affairs.

The wheat crop of 1915-16 nearly doubled the previous record for an Australian harvest. It was garnered by boys and old men and women. Over 200,000 tons of this precious wheat was placed at the disposal of the Allied nations, its freighting and sale being made a national affair. Thus Australia was able to supply 200,000 tons of wheat as one contribution to the fighting forces of the Allies, and was a price as obtained never before approached in the history of Australian agriculture, the Commonwealth was the better able to bear the burden of warfare the Australians had so generously taken on themselves.

Thus Australasia keeps a watchful eye on the gaps wherever they occur, and sets about filling them with a single-minded devotion to the great object which has obliterated all other consideration in the minds of those young nations of the peaceful lands beneath the Southern Cross.