As for the men, they sprang to the call. The State of Victoria showed the way with a great recruiting campaign, with the avowed object of getting a thousand men per day. At the end of a fortnight the record was 18,970 applications, of which 13,810 were accepted. On the same scale of recruiting, the United Kingdom would yield nearly 500,000 soldiers in a fortnight. The figures, in proportion to population, seem almost incredible, but they are accurate.
The Mother State of New South Wales followed with a similar campaign. One city of less than 100,000 people—the city of Newcastle—provided 363 applicants in one day. On the same lines recruiting was organized all over Australia; as these words are written it is going on with such enthusiasm that there can be no doubt of the result. The farmers and stock-raisers were facing the best season the country had ever seen. They left their bumper harvest to ripen and be gathered by the women and boys; it is for them to see this business through "on the gun-bristled hills of Gallipoli."
The spirit of Australia can best be gauged by reading an extract from a letter written to the Australian wounded by a young lady who is a teacher at the High School in Ballarat, and which was cabled all over the world, since it echoes truly the pride of Australia in its heroes, and the determination of the Commonwealth that all shall be worthy of their devotion and grand patriotism. The letter was received at the hospital at Malta, and runs as follows:—
"May 12.
"Dear Australian Boys,—Every Australian woman's heart this week is thrilling with pride, with exultation, and while her eyes fill with tears she springs up as I did when the story in Saturday's Argus was finished and says, 'Thank God, I am an Australian.' Boys, you have honoured our land; you, the novices, the untrained, the untaught in war's grim school, have done the deeds of veterans. Oh, how we honour you; how we glory in your matchless bravery, in your yet more wonderful fortitude, which the war correspondent says was shown so marvellously as your boatloads of wounded cheered and waved amid their pain as you were rowed back to the vessels!
"What gave you the courage for that heroic dash to the ridge, boys? British grit, Australians' nerve and determination to do or die, a bit of the primeval man's love of a big fight against heavy odds. God's help, too, surely.
"Dear boys, I'm sure you will feel a little rewarded for your deeds of prowess if you know how the whole Commonwealth, nay, the whole Empire, is stirred by them. Every Sunday now we are singing the following lines after 'God save the King' in church and Sunday school. They appeared in the Argus Extraordinary with the first Honour Roll in it:
God save our splendid men!
Send them safe home again!
Keep them victorious,