WAR BOOKS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18554, 29 April 1930, Page 9

WAR BOOKS.

DENOUNCED BY BRITISH LEADERS. (Ualttd Prtia Association—By * .Ctrl. Tatygraph—Copyright.) LONDON, April 25. “There was no scope for drink or immorality on Gallipoli, but only for immortality,” declared General Sir lan Hamilton in a feeling reference to the raging controversy on “war books” at the Anzac Day reunion at Australia House.

"Those who wanted mud-slinging had to go sixty miles to the base at Mudros, where, as a civilian wrote home to Australia, ‘the officers are wallowing in ice, with wounded soldiers dying of thirst hardby’ and where another referring to the ship Aragon in Mudros harbour said, ‘So much whisky was drunk aboard, that she grounded upon her own empty bottles.' Luckily the Royal Commission of Inquiry proved that these were lies.

“It would be better for the holding together of the Empire that there should be a Royal Commission to inquire into the Western Front rather than that the stories of suicides murders, drunkards, executions and immorality should be unchecked. Then some of the clever writers would go through the mill of a public cross-examination.” Sir lan Hamilton said that he was impelled to make these remarks because the "shockers” confronted the Empire with a grave danger. England’s overseas sisters had been wonderful, had allowed their husbands, brothers and sons to risk death and wounds for the sake of the Motherland, but they would refuse a third time, if they thought that they risked demoralisation as well as disablement. The reunion was arranged by Dr Mary Booth and was attended by Sir G. de L. Ryrie and Lady Ryrie, the agents-general and the test players. Sir lan Hamilton conversed with the cricketers, particularly Oldfield, the only ex-Digger.