Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War

by E. C. Buley

Shall write in the book of Eternal Fate their stormy histories.

"The Australasians are possibly the finest troops in the world."

The considered judgment of an observer at the Dardanelles, Commander Josiah Wedgwood, M.P., deliberately pronounced for publication in the Press, caught the attention of many readers of newspapers in this country. Cabled out to the Southern Hemisphere, it was reproduced in every newspaper in Australia and New Zealand, where a thrill of pride and gratitude vibrated from end to end of the country, radiating back to the most remote township at the very Back of Beyond.

This was generous appreciation indeed, and accepted in the same spirit of generosity in which it was tendered. The vow, "Our last shilling and our last man," with which Australasia had solemnly entered upon the Great War was as solemnly renewed. The Southern Britons quivered with comprehensible pride at the generous and timely praise; it was more than they would have claimed—much more—but it carried a message of consolation to many a stricken home ten thousand miles away from the blood-stained battlefields of Europe. "Good soldiers, none better!" Then they have not died for nothing if they have merited that epitaph from the Motherland.

A New South Wales Battalion, ready for the Front.

Nature, as well as the deliberate plan of the Australasians themselves, has ensured that an army of Australasians must necessarily compose a very fine fighting force. It may be that the qualifications of the soldier of the future shall consist of an incredible callousness of heart, and an extended knowledge of all the detestable forms that can be assumed by the most hideous of human crimes. But the qualifications of a warrior have not yet been so far modified by the Great War that he has been converted into a poisoner. It is still assumed that he is a man who risks his life in the fair fight he wages with fair-minded men, whom unfortunate circumstances have made his foes for the time being. Coolness and resource in danger, magnanimity in the glory of victory, and stoutheartedness in the first abashment of defeat may still be called the soldier's virtues; and the oldest excuse for war, that the soldier kills without murder in his heart, can still be pleaded by the Briton who takes up arms in defence of his country.

Soldiering of this sort has always been an instinct with the Southern Briton. The individual citizen there is under no misapprehension about the preparedness of his country for war; he looks around and sees for himself. To desire to retain a great continent for ever for the exclusive use of the white races is a privilege involving heavy responsibilities. There is an obvious danger in excluding one's neighbours because they do not conform to the high ideals of civilization adopted by the Briton. Very deliberately the Australasian has adopted this provocative attitude toward his coloured neighbours, who far outnumber him, though possessing only very restricted areas of territory for their habitation, as compared with the spacious elbow room which the Australasian reserves for himself.

From his early boyhood the young Australasian is made familiar with the possibility of taking up arms in self-defence. Whatever may be thought of the measures he takes for the development of his holding, in proof of his title to it, there can be no difference of opinion as to his readiness to fight for his spacious heritage. He knows what such a war would mean to his country, with its long stretches of undefended coastline, and the sparse population of the country behind them. These coasts are so obviously vulnerable spots that only a purblind fool could ignore their terrible significance. And the Australasian is certainly no fool.

There are other circumstances, too, in his daily life that may be partly responsible for his curious readiness to take off his coat and fight. The uncertainty of his surroundings may be responsible for his belief that life is one long fight with circumstance. He goes forth to his daily occupation with the light of battle in his eye; there is something pathetically cynical in his creed that it is necessary to fight for what he gets, even after he has fairly earned it by more peaceful means. He gives his admiration to the man he calls a "battler," and reserves a contemptuous surprise for the man who expects to get anything at all without fighting for it.