AUSTRALIA IN THE WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18022, 22 February 1922, Page 7

AUSTRALIA IN THE WAR.

MR. C. E. W. BEAN'S HISTORY.

TRIBUTE BY lAN HAMILTON.

Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. CBecd. 2.52 p.m.) LONDOU, Feb. 20.

General Sir lan Hamilton reviewing Mr. C. E. W, Bean'a -"History of the Australian Imperial Force" describes the author as "the Kinglako of the Antipodes."

"Typical of Mr. Bean," says Sir lan, "was his effort to help General Bridges to maintain discipline in Egypt in January. 1915, by giving to the Australian press the naked facts about the conduct of a small section of Australians when it would have been easy for him to have remained popular by blaming the general staff. An example of how it should be done is never complete without an example of how it should not be done, and there ii another letter by another Australian journalist, not a war correspondent, to the Prime Minister of Australia which one day will supply that foil. That letter is one skeleton key which opens a certain locked cupboard in each of three biographies that are to be. Then everybody will be able to understand the difference between an appeal to Australian prejudice and an appeal, like that on which Mr. Bean stakes his all, to her patriotism."

Sir lan Hamilton bears testimony to the value of the chapters on the pre-war organisation of Australia and the creation of the Australian Imperial Force. The book as a war record, lie adds, is in a class by itself. R, is cast on intensely individualistic lines. It also stands alone for the very full account it supplies of Turkish plans, movements, and losses.

| Sir lan Hamilton disagrees with Mr. Bean in thinking that 150,000 troops were needed for the Gallipoli undertaking, and speaking with this new evidence before him, he emphatically declares: "If I had been given the Gurkha Brigade I asked for and the East Lancashire Division that was idling in Egypt we could have done it right there. The Dardanelles was thrown away because the Gallipoli army did not reap the benefit of the increasing output of guns and trench mortars. These were asked for on March 22 and each Anzac battalion could have had a j couple by the date of the landing."