10 
LAND & WATER 
May 25. 1916 
storied past. She had had a share in the South African 
war, but long before July. 1914. it had come to be recog- 
nised as a small share in a small campaign. No possible 
inspiration to thought of war was to be had by her people, 
either from the poUtical experiments in which they were 
constantly engaged, or from the steady flow of prosperous 
years in which their wealth grew and multiplied. Still 
less was there of such inspiration in the easy circum- 
stances of a life swathed in .\ustralia's natural surrounding 
of soft airs and abiding sunshine. Yet, and in spite of all, 
influences of sterner motive were undoubtedly abroad. 
Tliere was alwavs, for one thing, the incalculable in- 
fluence of Australian loyalty to Britain. For the most 
pa-t dormant, it was easily awakened and obviously 
alive. No one doubted that if ever a day should demand 
of it something more than the singing of national songs 
and the waving of national flags, that demand would be 
met, and met not less, but more willingly by reason of 
the growing sturdincss of a definitely Australian national 
spirit. Graduallv, too, the leaders of Australian political 
thought had begun to measure the antagonistic possi- 
bilities of other races of the Eastern seas. In the eves of a 
constitutionally easy-H\dng people this was little more 
than a far-off menace, escape from which seemed, in 
any case, to be a matter almost wholly beyond the 
capacity of their limited numbers. By reason of it, 
nevertheless, the seed of the defence preparation of 
Australia was sown, and the fruit of it became visible 
when, in 1909, the Royal Australian Navy came into 
being, and when in i()io, the historic \-isit of Lord 
Kitchener led to the Defence Act of that year and its 
proN-ision for compulsory training. 
Kitchener's Scheme 
For the most part, the Kitchener scheme and the Act 
based upon it were measures for a so distant future that 
their bearing upon the actual war demand of 1914 is to be 
found not in the region of facts, but among those other 
less tangible influences which have played so great a part 
in the arming of Austraha. For the Military College of 
Duntroon established under the Act, had no more than 
begun its work in 1914, while the Citizen Defence Force 
was to be built up gradually by drafts of the cadets who 
had been trained for a specified term of four years between 
the ages 14 to 18. But from its very beginning the com- 
pulsory training scheme had a moral effect upon the 
nation. It lifted the thoughts of hundreds and thousands 
of Australians to things beyond their accustomed range. It 
strengthened the fibres of Australian nationality no less 
than it improved the physique of Austrahan boyhood. 
It reminded a people almost too easily circumstanced 
that danger might lurk unobserved, and that the respon- 
sibihties of nationhood could not for ever be avoided. 
And in every one of those details it was a compelling 
influence upon the mind and heart of Australia when the 
])low fell and the Empire call rang across the world. 
Not the only influence, of course, for there were many 
influences, and all the influences together surged into a 
common irresistible impulse, so that Britain's entrance 
upon war, at a stroke and from one end to the other of 
the continent, transformed this peaceful, peace-loving 
Australia into a land aflame with the ardour of battle. 
Space will allow no more than a bint of that sudden 
fierce enthusiasm — how it issued first m the Government's 
immediate offer of an E.xpeditionary Force, and after- 
■ wards in ten thousand subsidiary enthusit^^ms, how ac 
the signal men came hurrying from near and far lo offer 
their fighting services, men of the cities and men of the 
bush, men of the silent mountains, and men of the great 
plains, men of cultivated profession, and men of the 
humblest callings, picturesque men of all kinds and con- 
ditions from across the unrivalled inner picturesque lands 
of Australia, men who lived at touch with the grandeur of 
its magnificent distances, men who sweated in the 
dusts and heats of its desert wastes, lonely men from 
west of sunset, and men of the crowded highways of life — ■ 
left all and came flooding in at the word of need. Nor can 
more be said of the Australian enthusiasm of liberality, 
an enthusiasm which set the whole nation at work for 
others and for their own, and which has subscribed nearly 
four millions sterling to war funds and contributed many 
miliicms of articles of fodO. and clothing to whomsoever 
seemed to deserve or desire them. And only a word, too, 
of the stress and strain of Governments, and of all in 
authority ; or of the completeness of the offer which has 
promised 300.000 Australian soldiers to Bntam and 
has despatched a great proportion of that number fully 
equipped and partially trained, what time the financial 
burden of it all upon the five million people of Australia 
calls for repeated War Loans and foreshadows an ex- 
penditure for the current year of £75,000,000. 
First Successes 
With no more than this in respect of achievements 
and sacrifices which in themselves are of the essence of 
national revolution, one passes to a word in remembrance, 
of achievement in actual war and the supreme sacrifice 
inseparable from it. The first Australian successes were 
those by which, in October, 1914, Australia possessed 
herself of the important German colonies of New Guinea 
and New Britain. On November 9th, -too, the wholly 
admirable activities of the Royal Australian Navy were 
crowned by the ^^ctory of the cruiser Syd)icy over the 
notorious Emdcn, a dramatic event which fully and 
finally established the infant Australian Navy in the 
affections of the Australian people, who, besides, are 
proud to think that ships of their's are now in battle-line 
in the North Sea with the mighty fleet of Britain. 
The men who had rushed by the thousand to the first 
enlistments were soon in training camps near the capital 
cities, available to them the more conveniently by reason 
of the Defence organisation, of whose machinery they 
and many of the officers at their service were a part. 
But the work of the camps had to be short and sharp. 
For it was no far cry from those fateful days of August 
to the night of December 6th, when the fleet of transports 
bearing the first Austrahan troops to fight on European 
fields stole in line through the Suez Canal, and no farther 
cry to the days that followed, when the sands of the 
desert, and the waters of the Nile, and the stones of 
immemorial temples and tombs —the whole vast solemnity 
of ancient Egypt— were the familiar surrounding of the 
youngest army of the Empire come from the newest 
nation of the world. 
Their work in the sands and the sun of the Egyptian 
training grounds was hard and unceasing. But it re-made 
them. It built them and those who followed them, 
detachment after detachment, a steady stream of re- 
inforcements—tens of thousands of Australians in arms — 
into the soldiers they meant to be. It gave them, more- 
over. General Birdwood, now their leader of leaders. It 
sent them, under him, to the Dardanelles and GallipoH, 
there, on April 25th, 1915, to make the glorious entrance 
into battle which has immortalised them, there to fight 
through months of unflinching gallantry in almost every 
hour of which was an act of heroism, in some hours at least 
of which— as in those of the unforgettably bloody days 01 
last year's August— hundreds of Australian lads fell 
without a murmur and died without a cry. Through 
eight months of bitter fighting, varied by unescapable 
lingering sickness, the (lallipoli campaign wore to its 
ignominious end. Out of the mouth of the hell of it the 
Australian soldiers came, in Deceml^er last, unsullied, 
established in a fighting fame as glorious as any. 
They left behind them thousands of their dead, the 
graves of whom are an abiding sorrow of the kinsfolk 
and friends who, though '.hey sent them forth gladly 
risking all were wholly without thought of such a tragedy 
on such u oodle. 
The way of Australia, however, under this shock of war, 
is a great way. It covers its strange new grief with 
silence. The 11,000 Australian sick and wounded who 
have been nursed back to health in British hospitals, or 
invalided home, cover theirs with a smile. Such as are 
fit once more have joined their fellows in the pleasanter 
fields of France, obviously happy in the thought of a new 
campaign. In Australia they will be remembered less 
with anxiety than with confidence and pride. For 
Australia was never more proudly at war than now. 
Still her soldiers come. Still she gathers and trains and 
equips and sends them forth. She makes munitions of 
war. Out of her fertility she feeds the comrade peoples 
half across the world. Her call for men and still 
more men is a matter of ordered campaigning 
by the legislatures of all her States, and if appeals 
should fail she will not hesitate to compel. In all regards. 
