The Duntroon establishment was an efficient rather than a showy establishment; its modest wooden bungalows, in which the officers were quartered, contrasting strangely with the elaborate arrangements at similar establishments such as Sandhurst or West Point. But the teaching was remarkably thorough for such a young institution. The democratic tendencies of Australia are illustrated by the fact that tuition at Duntroon is absolutely free, the parents of the young officer being not even asked to supply him with pocket money, since an allowance of 5s. per week is made by the Government to each cadet in training. The course of instruction is one of four years' training, and necessitates the daily application of six hours to instruction, and two hours to military exercises. A vacation of two months is observed at Christmas time, the height of the Australian summer, and there are frequent camps for practical instruction in all branches of field work.
Cadets are required to make their own beds, clean their own boots, and keep their kit in order. Special emphasis is laid upon the value of character, and any cadet, however able in acquiring knowledge or brilliant in physical exercises, must, if he lacks the power of self-discipline, be removed as unfit to become an officer who has to control others. The College was opened in June, 1911, with forty-one cadets, and has since been employed by the New Zealand Government for the training of its young officers, a step in co-operation which is likely to show the way to still closer relations between the Dominion and the Commonwealth in many matters relating to defence.
The Commandant of the College was the late General Bridges, whose death in action at Gaba Tepe is so universally mourned by Australians. Writing of him and the College in the Sydney Morning Herald, V. J. M. says:—
"Duntroon is his masterpiece. To have left it as he did, after a bare four years, represents the greatest educational feat yet accomplished in Australia. Before attempting it he studied the greatest colleges in Europe and America—Sandhurst, Woolwich, West Point, Kingston, Saint-Cyr, L'Ecole Polytechnique, L'Ecole Militaire, die Grosslichterfelder Kadettenanstalt—all were visited and carefully investigated by him. His endeavour was to incorporate, so far as local conditions would allow, the best of each in Duntroon. How far he has succeeded is well known. In the opinion of Viscount Bryce, Sir Ian Hamilton, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson, and others, it stands out one of the most efficient military schools—some say the most efficient—in the world. Four years ago there were a station homestead and a rolling sweep of lonely country. What a strong driving force must have been behind it all. The crisis found Duntroon ready. Already seventy-one officers from its class-rooms and training fields are at the front, of whom some twenty have fallen. So excellent has been the work of these young soldiers in the desert camp that, in a recent letter, General Bridges mentioned that General Birdwood has specially written of them to the King. Australia will have reason in the troublous years ahead to be thankful that her great military school was conceived by a man of broad grasp and wide knowledge. The soldiers of the future will be moulded and the armies of the future organized by its graduates. He meant it to be, and it is, a great military university."
The precedent that Australasian soldiers should take part in the wars of the Mother Country was set in 1883, when the State of New South Wales sent a contingent of 800 infantry and artillery to the Soudan. The initiative in this matter was due to Mr. W. B. Dalley, then Premier of New South Wales. The force, after being reviewed by Lord Loftus, the State Governor, sailed from Sydney on March 3, 1883, on the transports Iberia and Australasian. The services rendered by them were comparatively slight; indeed, they were treated by the Imperial authorities as rather a gratuitous nuisance, intruding where their presence was not required. But the precedent had been set, and was followed by all the Dominions Overseas, on the outbreak of the African war.
Once again the War Office was inclined to regard the Greater Britons as useless interlopers, and the offer to provide cavalry was met with the historical cable that in Africa "foot soldiers only" were required. It is further a matter of history that the authorities very sensibly revised this estimate as the war progressed, and were glad of the services of every man who could ride and shoot. Contingent after contingent was despatched from Australasia, New Zealand especially providing a wealth of fine soldiers. In proportion to population, the Dominion supplied more men to fight the Empire's battle in South Africa than any part of the British realm.
CLEARING THE PACIFIC