WAR BOOKS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1930, Page 2

WAR BOOKS

SIR lAN HAMILTON’S PROTEST.

A GRAVE DANGER

LONDON, May 2

Among those who have protested against the deluge of war books of questionable character is General Sir lan Hamilton.

Speaking at an Anzac Day reunion held at Australia House by the London branch of Anzne Fellowship df Women, Sir lan suggested that a Royal Commission of Enquiry, should be appointed. Authors of this type of story should he made, he proposed, to appear before this tribunal for crossexamination.

Having referred to the “raging controversy” about war bocks, Sir lan said:— “Of this we stand clear. There was no scope for drink nr immorality on Gallipoli—only for immorality. Those who wanted to sling mud had to go sixty miles back to the base at Madras where a civilian wrote home to Australia. ‘Officers are wallowing in ice with wounded soldiers dying of thirst bard by’, and where someone else said of the sh : p Aragon in Mudros bar’ our that there was so much whisky drun'on board of her that she ran aground upon her own empty bottles. “Luckily for us there was a judicial enquiry—the Royal Commission oil the Dardanelles. They enquired into these matters and found them to he lies, “Now for me it seems that it would be better for the holding together of this Empire than there shouM be a new llaval Commission to enquire into the conduct of the war on the Western front than that these stories of smokies. murders, drunkards, executions immorality, should carry on unchecked.

“Then some n.f those clever writers would be put through the mill of cross examination by a clever counsel and the public would then see—either true pictures of a re'al war. or Mammon dis ■'uised in the uniform of an old sold-

“I have Celt bound to he serious because these shockers confront our Empire with a grave danger. Yog, our overseas sisters, are wonderful people. When the desperate need arises you let. your husbands, brothers, or sons risk wounds and death for the sake of the Old Country. “Rut you will refuse to let them come a third time to our aid if you think they are going to risk demoralisation ns well as disablement.” ATTACKING A SYSTEM. Brigadier-General Crozier, author of “A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land,” replies to his critics: “People,” lie said, “who think that my book disparages those who fought in the war have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I have deliberately attacked a system which I consider to be vicious and bad, and that system is called war. Ido not attack the victims of that system.

“It is impossible to invent fairy tales as to how the disease hospitals became full during the war; or as to how the Expeditionary Force canteens,, despite the fact that they suffered huge losses of stock from enemy action, made millions out of selling spirits to boys who should have been at school or at work, or, at any rate, in a comparatively sheltered environment,

“People are such humbugs. They will not face the truth. Those who have attacked me know perfectly well that what I have written is true.

“War is a gigantic compromise with the Devel. Daring a war a Christian country ceases to bo Christian. For that reason I maintain that chaplains are quite out of place during a war There is no doubt that mAny parsons .supported the idea rtf war and fed the blood lust. I am pleased to see, however, that the Churches are now supporting the idea of pence.”

OFFICERS AND WHISKY. A statement regarding the consumption of spirits in Expeditionary Force canteens has been made by Mr Phillip B. Durnford, formerly secretary to the canteens.

“During the Inst year of the war elaborate calculations were made to ascertain the nverage weekly consumption of whisky by officers on all the fighting fronts. It was assumed, a very generous assumption* that 2o per cent, of the total number of officers drank no whisky at all. On this basis the amount consumed per head per week for the remainder worked out at three-quarters of a bottle. “When reading General Crozier’s l ook and similar publications which emphasise the widespread drunkenness of those who were fighting for their country’s cause, the public may perhaps care to hear the above-mentioned facts in mind.”