"ABSURD STATEMENT"

Evening Post, Issue 11, 13 July 1936, Page 9

"ABSURD STATEMENT"

AUSTRALIAN FAILURE AT

GALLIPOLI

MELBOURNE, July 12. Commenting on Sir Charles Rosenthal's lecture placing blame on Australia for the failure at Gallipoli, General Sir Talbot Hobbs, who was commander of the First Australian Division, said he entirely disagreed that it was Australia's responsibility.

"To say that the absence of the four guns Sir Charles Rosenthal mentioned was the cause of our failure at the landing is to my mind absurd," he said. "I think that if Sir Charles inspected the ground from Cape Helles to Suvla Bay he would realise that there were many more ridges beyond Gun Ridge and that the whole area was a vast, natural fortress garrisoned by brave and resolute soldiers led by efficient generals who knew the ground and were experts in defence. Australia did her best and all she was able to do."

Lecturing in London, Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal, said: "Australia carries a grave responsibility for the failure at Gallipoli. I say that deliberately and without fear of contradiction.- If howitzers had been landed to support the Anzacs on their first day on the Peninsula, the war might have been shortened by two or three years." Major-General Rosenthai, who served as ah officer at the landing, explained that before the war he was in command of a special howitzer battery which had been formed in New South Wales. He urged the military commander that these guns should be' taken abroad with the troops. "If on the first morning at Gallipoli we had had howitzers on the beach I am certain our infantry would have reached their objective, Gun Ridge, on the same morning," he added.