STORY OF ANZAC.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15113, 23 December 1921, Page 6

STORY OF ANZAC.

THE AUSTRALIAN HISTORY. VOL I. From Messrs Angus and Robertson, Ltd., of Sydney, through Mr W. Carson, we have received the first vol- • uine of the "Official History of Australia in the War of 1914—1918." It deals with the memorial story of Anzac and is the work of Mr C. E. W. Bean. It will be remembered that during- those stirring days quite the most graphic description of the operations came from the pen Of this distinguished journalist and the history promises to add to his already great reputation. The opening chapters give a splendid picture of Australia stripping for the fight. The Australian was a man of peculiar independence. In them "the characteristic resourcefulness of the British was perforce developed further. They had lived in lonely places, where it was necessary to solve each difficulty without help and in the process they learned to hold no practical problem insoluble." -There follows a a vivid picture of the* mobilisation, . the training, the organisation, • the staff, the command •of the famous ;AJ.F. There is a generous tribute ;to the late Sir George Reid who was responsible for the- stoppage of the troops for training in Egypt. For it was he who, seeing the losses and hardships endured by the Canadians in the Salisbury Plain camp, the destination of the Australasians, waited on Lord Kitchener, breaking all rules of access, and insisted on the diversion to Egypt, where he declared the completion of the men's training could be done far more comfortably. The story of the severe training in the desert is passed perhaps too hurriedly. The reader's desire is to reach the famous landing of the Gallipoli expeditions Mr Bean says: —* Wherever the navy might have disembarked them, the troops could not have reached the colossal objectives proposed. The main reason for the failure of the plans, both at Helles and Anzac, was the enormous extent of the objectives which were set for the covering force, and the. contempt in which the Turkish army was held by those who' made the plans. . . Such objectives as Hamilton's Army could reasonable* have attained would almost certainly have fallen short of those necessary for forcing the Dardanelles. In other words, as Colonel White, and possibly a few others, realised before the landing, it needed 150,000 men to effect at that time what Hamilton sought to do with 70,000. The exaggerated scope of the objectives and the under-esti-mate of the Turks, due to optimism inherent in the British character, would probably have been avoided had there been time to study the matter adequately. The fact that it was not so studied was due to the manner in which the military expedition was launched —without time for due thought *or preparation, against an enemy already prepared for it by the earlier naval attack. Referring to the tragic fact that the cost to Australia and New Zealand of the Anzac landing was 9000 men, of whom at least 2500 were killed, Mr Bean says: "They were men whom their countries could ill afford 'to. lose. But with their lives they purchased a tradition beyond all human power to appraise, and set for all time the! standard of conduct for the Australian and New Zealand soldier." There follows an eloquent passage: —

- Long before the end of this great battle the Australian soldier had revealed to himself, his own officers, and to a few of those outsiders who Avatched him closely, what manner of lighter he was. He had not the" astonishing mastery ° of the soldier's craft which marked him in 1918. But he had scattered to the winds once and for all the notion, often reiterated, that an Australian force would be ineffective through lack of discipline. In flame of the whitest heat was tested the discipline of this new force, raised suddenly from a people unaccustomed to restraint, naturally haters of the. system of cast-iron subordination on which most armies are trained. It was not the discipline of habit which made either Australians or New Zealanders endure. What motive sustained them, the historian asks. It was not love of a fight; that soon loses its glamour. It was not desire for fame. They knew that many must fill unmarked graves. This is the writer's answer: It lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the sort of man who would give way when <-his mates were trusting to his firmness; to be the sort of- man who would fail when the line, the whole force and the Allied cause required his endurance; to have made it necessary for another unit to do his own unit's work; to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he had set his hand to the soldier's task and had lacked the grit to carry it through that was the prospect which these men would not face. Life was very dear/but .

life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood. The volume is beautifully bound and copiously illustrated with photographs, and maps, and sketch maps. It is a splendid record of a splend.u force.