Kitabı oku: «Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War», sayfa 15

Some day the manœuvres which led to the destruction of the German Pacific squadron will be described by an expert, and the world will know what part the Australia played in bringing about that desired consummation. A cruise of 48,000 miles, by which the marauders were swept ever farther East, was the share of the battle cruiser of the Commonwealth. She burned 5,000 tons of coal and 6,000 tons of oil fuel, and had the satisfaction of overhauling and sinking a big German liner, of the Woermann line, which was fitted as a store ship and laden with all sorts of necessaries for the German warships. Later she was visible at a British port, where, after an official inspection, Admiral Patey was complimented on the fact that her guns were still in better order than those of any vessel of his Majesty's fleets. She is now serving the Empire many thousands of miles from her own waters, and when next the New Zealand is heard of, it may well be that the Australia also will be there.

The Melbourne and the Sydney returned, somewhat unwillingly, to undertake that convoy work which, incidentally, resulted so disastrously for the Emden. The present outlook promises that much will still be found for them to do in this direction, for the passage of Australasian troops through the Indian Ocean has now been regularized, and the supply is in course of being enormously increased.

The fate of Submarine AE1 was later shared by AE2, in a bold attempt to enter the Sea of Marmora, having pierced the Dardanelles as far as the Narrows. AE2 possessed, it is claimed, the record for a submarine in distance covered, for her operations during the war extended over a distance of 30,000 miles. Before misfortune overtook her, she had rendered excellent service at the Dardanelles, and was the first submarine to penetrate the Straits and enter the Sea of Marmora. Her officers, and all her crew save nine, fell into the hands of the Turks, and are now in Turkish prisons.

Such has been the performance in twelve months of the vessels which form the nucleus of a fleet which will one day consist of fifty-two vessels and be manned by 15,000 men. It is intended by Australia that the warships shall be manned and officered by Australians, and with that end in view, training establishments for navel cadets and for sailors have been established in the Commonwealth. The Australian Naval College is still in its infancy, but it occupies a magnificent position at Jervis Bay, about eighty miles south of Sydney, on the coast of New South Wales.

An area of nearly fifteen square miles has been reserved for the establishment, and modest buildings have already been erected for the future Australian middies. A fine stream flows into the bay, and bathing and boating facilities are admirable. The College was occupied in March, 1915, and a start was made with twenty-four boys of thirteen years of age, selected from a large number of applications. The quality of the boys is illustrated by an incident of the first few months.

One youngster, during a game of cricket, was injured so seriously by the ball that an operation was immediately necessary. The lad walked into surgery, and saluted the doctor, who informed him that an anæsthetic would be necessary. The boy drew himself up proudly. "For the credit of the service, sir," he said, "I must decline."

This naval college – the only one in the Dominions – will in 1916 have 150 picked lads in training.

The Royal Australian College is open to all classes. In the first quota of Cadet Midshipmen – it should be noted that in Australia the English term "Naval Cadet" has a different meaning – more than one half were pupils of State Schools. The cadets enter the College at the age of thirteen and from that day all their expenses are borne by the Commonwealth Government, even to the munificent grant of one shilling a week in pocket money. In return the boy is required to remain in the navy for a period of twelve years on attaining the age of eighteen, that is, on completing a four-year course at the College. A penalty of £75 for each year's training undergone will be imposed on parents or guardians who withdraw a cadet midshipman without the consent of the Australian Naval Board.

Appointments to the College are made by the Minister for Defence, upon the recommendation of the Naval Board, from such candidates as are considered suitable by the Selection Committee, and who have afterwards passed a qualifying examination in educational subjects. Nominations bearing a certain proportion to the number of midshipmen required for the College in any particular entry are allotted by the Governor-General in Council, as nearly as possible in the following proportions: – New South Wales, 38 per cent.; Victoria, 31 per cent.; Queensland, 12 per cent.; South Australia, 10 per cent.; Western Australia, 6 per cent.; Tasmania, 3 per cent.

For the selection of the most promising youths an interviewing committee, on properly advertised dates, sits at Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Hobart; Adelaide doing duty also for Western Australia, and Brisbane for the Northern Territory and Papua. The interviewing committee consists of the Captain of the College, Captain of Training Ship, District Naval Officer, Director of Education (with consent of the State Government), and a Naval Medical Officer.

On a similarly adequate basis, arrangements have been made for the instruction of sailors on training ships at several of the chief ports. The quality of the young Australian sailors on the Australia and the Sydney was one of the most satisfactory features of the fine service rendered by those vessels.

Such, in brief, are the main features of the scheme now in successful operation for the establishment of an adequate Australian Navy. What has been written above is written in no sense of useless recrimination or vainglorious boasting. The Dominions are asking for a conference with the Imperial authorities to discuss matters of Empire defence. One of the reasons which impels them to press for it now, and not hereafter, may be found in a conversation in which a leading citizen from Overseas voiced an opinion too little heard in Great Britain, but familiar enough to those who are in touch with Oversea ideals.

"You shout with rage," he said, "when some big German cruisers slip across the sea in the night and pump a few shells into a one-horse town like Scarborough. But when a little ashcan like the Emden holds up the proudest ports in your wide Empire, and gets off scot-free with her little 4-inch guns, you chuckle and say her captain is a fine sport. A conference is wanted to teach some of your big men a little Empire sense."

Perhaps there is something in that.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HEART OF EMPIRE STIRRED

If Australasia sought reward for the devotion and heroism displayed in the time of the peril of the whole Empire, other than the consciousness of duty done ungrudgingly and continuously, that reward has surely been accorded by the proud Mother Country. From the King himself down to the humblest of his subjects, Britons have shared with the Southern nations all the sentiments that have been elicited by the performance of Australasians in their first great essay at waging war.

London, the very Heart of the Empire, has been from time to time profoundly stirred as the news of some exploit by the representatives of Australasia has been received. It laughed with glee at the discomfiture of the boasting captain of the Emden, and gladly recognized the maiden prowess of the young Australian fleet. It thrilled with sympathetic pride for the great charge up the cliff at Gaba Tepe; and accepted without cavil the generous estimate of one of the foremost British war correspondents: "It is certainly the most remarkable climb in the history of war since Wolfe stormed the heights of Quebec."

Most grateful of all to hundreds of sorrowing hearts in Australasia, London turned aside from its own countless griefs to mourn with Australasia the loss of the brave dead from the South. Nothing was more eloquent of the profound stir at the Heart of the Empire than that solemn memorial service to the Australasian dead held in St. Paul's Cathedral on the evening of June 15, 1915. In that sacred building, where repose the mortal remains of Nelson, Wellington, and many another great one who died for the Empire that Australasia is so proud to serve, there gathered an assemblage of mourners come to pay a spontaneous tribute to the brave young men who had laid down their lives for a great ideal. The King was represented there; and the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Bonar Law, himself born in the Dominions Overseas, attended on behalf of the Government. Great men and noble women of all shades of opinion thronged in the aisles to pay their tribute to the heroes dead, but never to be forgotten. And the citizens of the greatest city of the world were represented by their Lord Mayor, as by many a humble sympathizer who gained a place in the thronged building as a mark of loving kindness to mourners so far away, yet so near to the Empire's heart.

Some hundreds of Australasian soldiers were there – men who had fought bravely by the side of the dead ones the Empire was mourning, and had themselves sustained grave wounds in that Empire's defence. The rays of the setting sun lit their dull khaki as it lit the brilliant scarlet uniform of the bandsmen of the Grenadier Guards. The hush of true mourning was on the mighty building, and every sentence of the impressive sermon preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury could be heard in the farthest corner.

The Primate, who took for his text St. John xv. 13 – "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" – said:

"We are met to-night for a definite and a very sacred purpose. Here at the centre and hub of the Empire's life, we desire to thank God together for the splendid devotion of our brothers from Australia and New Zealand, who in the cause whereto we as a people have set our hand regarded not their lives unto the death. It is as Christians that we are here to-night, as men and women, that is, who hold definitely to certain great truths, and are not ashamed to say so. We are firm in the belief that the bit of life which we spend here – be it, on man's reckoning, long or short – is not all. This part of it is of vital moment. It is a great opportunity. It is a high trust. It is capable of splendid use. But it is quite certainly – as we Christians view it – not all. It is part of something larger, something with a nobler range.

"And Christ has to do with all of it, here and hereafter, and He made it clear that in His eyes it matters vitally how we spend and use this part of it, how we devote it, how, if need calls, we lay it down. He spoke of those things to His friends on the night before He died, when the full moonlight was flooding the upper room, and He was bidding them farewell. This is only a part, He told them, but it ought to be a glad and bright part, of the larger life. And its gladness, its joy, would depend, in each man's case, upon whether he had learned the greatness of its value as something to be used, devoted, laid down, if need be, for the sake of other people. That was the key to His life, His joy; it would be the key to theirs. He bid them try to understand it so. That, He says, was why He had been reminding them of what He had come to do. 'These things I have spoken unto you.' Why? 'That my joy' – the joy of ready sacrifice for others, the true test of love – 'might remain in you, and that your joy might be full… Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'

"You see, my brothers and sisters, how all that bears upon the thought which is just now sweeping across and through us as a people, and which helps to crowd these seats to-night. We want, as Christians, to say together in St. Paul's this evening that we honestly, deliberately, believe these fearful perils, these wounded or stricken bodies of our best and bravest, these saddened hearths and darkened homes, to be worth while. And if they are 'worth while,' they are right. The offering, terrible as it is, ought to be made without reserve for the sake of what is, as we deliberately judge, the cause of truth and honour, the cause of good faith and ordered liberty among the peoples of Europe and of the world. It is a duty grave, inspiring, urgent, which ought to rally us every one.

"I do not pause to ask whether the sacrifice would be worth while if this life on earth were all. I think it would, but I need not dwell upon that now. It is as Christians that we meet to-night, and to a belief in the larger life lying behind and around and beyond what we see, a Christian, however bewildered he feel about how it can all work out, is clearly pledged. Most of us, I suppose, whisper longingly at times, perhaps in hours like this we say out, almost imperatively, 'We want to know more, a great deal more, about the nature, even the particulars, of that other life. They are so difficult to picture in plain words in their relation to what we are familiar with here, and the more we try to work out the vision the more bewildered we grow. Is there nothing in the Bible to tell us plainly how it all will be, or, rather, how it all is?'

"The answer is not difficult. The Bible does not furnish any such detailed answer to our longing inquiry. It gives us unchallengeably the sure and certain faith in that greater life. That faith underlies as a firm basis the whole New Testament. But neither in vision nor parable is the veil wholly drawn aside. As the old seer said, 'The secret things belong unto the Lord our God,' and these are among the secret things. We know little; but what we do know we know for certain. Remember this. We are loyal to our Lord Christ, Whose life was the light of men, and Whose words and teaching are our strength and stay. We believe Him whatever else we doubt.

"Now, take any section, say, any five chapters of the Gospel story, about what He said and did. Read them anew, trying, as you read, to destroy or do without the basis and background of that other larger life, and you will find the account, I do not hesitate to say, simply unintelligible as words of truth. The belief, the knowledge as to that larger life underlies and colours the whole, and makes it literally true to say that if we are Christians, if we are believers in Him at all, that certitude which He gives us is and must be ours. Without it you cannot advance a yard in the understanding of what His Gospel meant. On that last evening He told them He was going away. But why? 'I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am there ye may be also.' That is to say, 'You are to live on and to work on.' What meaning else for some of the most uplifting and inspiring of the parables which He had given them? 'Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' What meaning for the story of the rich man and Lazarus? What meaning for the words of definite and uplifting promise to the thief upon the cross? 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.' And so we might run on. Brothers, to us Christians it is not a hope only, it is a sure and certain hope.

"It is well to remember that this is so when in the cloudy and dark day we are fretting and wondering and seem only to stretch lame hands and grope. But we perhaps ask: 'Why, why, this absence of some clear exposition of it all?' Well, what if, to our present faculties, such knowledge would be literally unconveyable in terms that we could understand? Many here are familiar with – some perhaps have ere now quoted – a certain picture-parable which belongs specially to this Cathedral. Just two centuries ago, the Christian philosopher, George Berkeley, a singularly clear thinker, was standing, as he tells us, in St. Paul's Cathedral, where he noticed a little fly crawling on one of those great pillars. He had been uplifted in thought by the overwhelming grandeur of symmetry and design in pier and arch and dome and gallery, and the relation of each part to each and to the whole. And then he watched the little crawling fly, to whom no understanding of the whole was possible, who could see nothing of its harmonies, and to whom, as he puts it, 'nothing could appear but the small inequalities in the surface of the hewn stone, which in the view of the insect seemed so many deformed rocks and precipices.' Here, he thought, is the likeness of each human being as he creeps along. The sorrow which, like some dreadful precipice, interrupts our life, may turn out to be nothing but the joining or cement which binds the portions and sections of the greater life into one beautiful and harmonious whole. The dark path may be but the curve which, in the full daylight of a brighter world, will be seen to be the inevitable span of some majestic arch. 'Now I know in part,' and what a very little part it is, 'but then shall I know even as also I am known.'

"Does all that seem poor and vague and cheerless to the young wife across whose sunny home the dark shadow has fallen, to the mother who, through all her brave faith, looks out dazed and dry-eyed upon the shattering of the hopes which had been her daily happiness and strength? The message is not – or it will not always be – vague and cheerless if the firm and even glad courage with which a few months ago she offered willingly what she loved best on earth, be transmuted now into trustful prayer and into loyal proud thankfulness for duty nobly done, and into quiet awaiting of the ampler life beyond, with the answer it must bring in His good time to the questions of the aching heart. Which of us but has been inspired already by what Our Father has shown us to be possible – nay, rather to be actually attained – in the ennobled lives of those whom He 'out of weakness has made strong.' There is, for we are seeing it every day, as real a heroism of the stricken home as the heroism of the shell-swept trench, or of the quivering deck. For that, too, for those brave women in England, or in the Southern Seas, we are upon our knees to-night, thanking 'the God of all comfort Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.'

"But in this great gathering to-night we want another note besides that. We must have the triumph-note for those whose self-sacrifice has meant so much to their country and to those who honour them. It has been theirs, in enthusiastic eager self-surrender, to reach what Christ marks as the highest grade of human love. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Gratefully and reverently we remember that heroism now. That is what brings us here for thanksgiving and for prayer. Among the lives laid down could be found, as always, bright examples of the young leadership to which we had looked for upholding among their fellows the spirit which sets manliness upon the surest basis, the basis of personal loyalty to Christ. For those lives and for the footprints which they have left upon the sands of time we give praise to God to-day.

"But it would be unnatural, untrue, to claim for all who thus gave their lives in their country's cause, the character of stainless purity, or of the saintliness which we sing of in our hymns. Some of them, perhaps many of them, were not 'saints' at all. They were manly sons of the greatest Empire in the world. They were brave and buoyant, with plenty of the faults and failures which go so often with high spirit. They need, as we shall need, forgiveness and cleansing and new opportunity, and they are in their Father's keeping, and He knows and cares. Be it theirs – shall we not pray it with all our hearts? – be it theirs, under His good hand, to pass onward in the new and larger life from strength to strength.

 
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence lack:
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show:
We find in our dull road their shining track;
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good.
 

"Do these words seem too high for what we are remembering? I think not. This vast war, without parallel in history for the horrible scale and sweep of its devastating bloodshed, is unparalleled in other ways as well. The feat of arms which was achieved on the rocky beach and scrub-grown cliff of the Gallipoli Peninsula in the grey dawn of St. Mark's Day, April 25, was a feat, we are assured, whose prowess has never been outshone, has scarcely ever been rivalled, in military annals. As the open boats, under a hail from hidden guns, poured out their men in thousands on the beach, below perpendicular cliffs of tangled scrub, the task of breasting those heights looked, to many expert eyes, a sheer impossibility. But by the dauntless gallantry of brave men the impossible feat was accomplished, and the record of those hours and of the days which followed is now a portion of our Empire's heritage for ever.

"And who did it? It was not the product of the long discipline of some veteran corps of soldiers. It was mainly the achievement of men from sheep-stations in the Australian Bush, or from the fields or townships of New Zealand, who a few short months ago had no dream of warfare as, like other civilians, they went about their ordinary work. But the call rang out, and the response was ready, and the result is before us all. 'I have never,' says one competent observer after the battle, 'I have never seen the like of these wounded Australians in war before. They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time, and had not been found wanting. No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, the storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on to the position thus won while reinforcements were poured from the transports.'

"It is high praise, but the witness is true, and those Australians and New Zealanders are enrolled among the champions whom the Empire, for generations to come, will delight to honour. One of the best traits of all is the generous tribute given by each group to the indomitable valour of the rest. To quote from the private letter of a young New Zealander: 'The Australians were magnificent, and deserve every good word that is said of them.' And all unite to praise the officers, midshipmen, and men who formed the beach parties in that eventful landing, each boat, we are reminded, 'in charge of a young midshipman, many of whom have come straight from Dartmouth after only a couple of terms.'

"But of necessity it was at fearful cost that these gallant deeds were done, and the great roll of drums under this dome to-night will reverberate our reverent and grateful sympathy to the Empire's farthest bound. This memorable act of stoutest service gives response already to the rallying call of the poet-bishop of Australia:

 
By all that have died for men,
By Christ who endured the Cross,
Count nothing but honour gain,
Count all that is selfish loss.
 
 
Take up with a loyal heart
The burden upon you laid;
Who fights on the side of God
Needs never be afraid.
 
 
Be true to the great good land,
And rear 'neath the Southern sun
A race that shall hold its own,
And last till the world be done.²
 

"When in conditions the hardest and the most unpromising, Australia and New Zealand came successively to the birth a century ago, as a living part of the British Empire, who would have dared to fashion in remotest vision the stern, yet romantic, story of 1915? The eager manhood of the young raw Commonwealth, the product of our own time, first carried with swift safety across the successive seas, then disciplined and prepared for action under the shadow of the world-old Pyramids, and then gaining their first experience of the shock of the onset within sight and hearing of the plains of Troy – an almost inconceivable intermingling of the old world and the new. The bare story is itself a stimulus and a reminder of what the lessons of history and the trust of Empire mean.

"God give us grace so to bear ourselves as a united people that we may be building out of this welter of fearful pain and strife the walls of His greater kingdom upon earth, the kingdom that is to endure: when the nations of the earth, and not least our own peoples – Britain and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and South Africa and India – bring into it, each of them, their honour and their glory, the distinctive powers and blessings that God has given to each several one, to make glad the city of our God, the habitation of the Prince of Peace."

At the conclusion of the Archbishop's sermon the band of the Guards played the Dead March in "Saul"; the bugles rang out in the "Last Post," and the mourners reverently left the building. So London paid its tribute to Australasia's dead.