THE SPIRIT OF ANZAC

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 96, 24 April 1935, Page 8

THE SPIRIT OF ANZAC

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the landing of the Australian and Nlew Zealand forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the beginning of their long and trying ordeal in all the hardships and vicissitudes of the world's greatest war. As such it was fittingly chosen as the one day in the year,on which the peoples of Australia; and New Zealand should qelebrate their own particular part in the struggle, with special reference to Gallipoli. Though the official history of that campaign has been written, controversy is revived each year, as the day comes round, with speculations as to the wisdom, of the whole venture and the conduct of the various operations. Once more the luckless Commander-in-Chief of* the Allied Armies on the Peninsula, Sir lan Hamilton, bewails, in a cabled interview, the evacuation as

strategically the" most ghastly .blunder ever perpetrated in the history of the world. . . . Just a few divisions of reinforcements and we should have gone right through and finished it. Yet the

blindness of the men whose minds were fixed on the Western Front to the exclusion of all else prevented it. The men on Gallipoli knew that with a little more backing they, could have won the War. Hundreds of them told me so.

It. is the old, old story of "ifs" and "might have beens," but the loser in the game is apt to forfeit sympathy by protesting' too much. Strategically, the conception of striking at the heart of the Turkish Empire and opening a path to relieve and re-arm hard:pressed Russia was, no doubt, sound enough, but the tactical execution of the operation was full of "ghastly blunders." These may well be left to the military historians to discuss. What has never yet been sufficiently stressed is that the Turks on Gallipoli were defending their own native soil with their backs to the wall at the very gates, in a military sense, of their beloved Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Empire and the seat of Government. It was as if New Zealanders should be called on to defend Wellington against an enemy disembarked at Makara and on the slopes of Terawhiti. The Turks were led, moreover, by one of the very few truly great soldiers and patriots the War produced, Mustapha Kemalj First Citizen and. national hero of the Turkish Republic and the regenerator of his people. Never elsewhere in the War did the Turks fight so well as on Gallipoli. Against such opponents under such a leader it was no disgrace to a hardfought field. There; need be no regrets about Gallipoli except so far as defeat there may have prolonged the War.

Apart from its tragic outcome for the Allies, Gallipoli was the noblest episode of the War,, fought fairly and squarely with many incidents of chivalry between armies, that re-1; speeted one another. If there be any virtues in war, they were revealed on Gallipoli, and warfare there never sank to the depths it reached in later developments on the Western Front Authentic or not, the famous reported tribute of the Turks "To oiir heroic enemies" was typical of the spirit in which Gallipoli was fought and lost and won, with none of the bitter aftermath so laWntable a spectacle since in the rest of Europe. It is this spirit that tempers, a little the sad memories of bereavement roused by Anzac Day.