Arthur St. John Adcock

“ It is our duty to make it clear, in this enlightened age, that no State is above morality; that there are natural, human laws which cannot be broken with impunity, and are not to be set aside by any the most self-important State that ever reared itself under heaven. This feeling is growing in intensity in the hearts and minds of Britain and her Allies, and nowhere is it held with a more passionate conviction than among the great democratic peoples of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. ”

“ The surest way to end war is to strip it of its glamour, treat it as the blackguardly crime it is, and punish the criminals. The German savages have not even stopped short at murder on the field of battle, and I for one shall lose some faith in the democracies of the world if, in due season, von Bissing does not take his stand in the dock of an international police-court and undergo his trial and sentence for the assassination of Edith Cavell, as any common butcher would for any common murder ”

“ When we are all at peace again–when the Great War is a thing of yesterday and tales of its thousand fights have passed into the history and folk-lore of the nations that took part in it–then, I think, perhaps Germany may be glad to forget about the hundreds of women and children slaughtered by her runaway warships in bombarding defenceless English coast towns without warning, by her midnight Zeppelins with bombs that were dropped on peaceful villages and unfortified towns, by the torpedoes fired by her dishonoured submarines into helpless passenger steamers ”

“ Between the attacks there were endless bomb-throwing, tempests of shells from big guns and howitzers, sniping, withering outbursts of machine gun fire, subtle sapping and mining, in which now one side, then the other successfully blew up trenches, and, dashing for the breach, made grim onslaughts that had to be held off and beaten and cleared out of the way before the shattered defences could be repaired. ”

“ No longer daring to press an attack home, the Turks devoted much of their energy to persistent firing from caves and sheltering holes on the hill-sides, to crawling out into the scrub and, lying low in the plentiful cover of that uneven country, sniping the Australians and New Zealanders in their shelter trenches. ”

“ If it were otherwise–if we were the cravens that a few of our noisy, irresponsible journalists would make us out to be–do you imagine that the manhood of those new countries, sons of the great men who were our fathers also, would have risen so spontaneously to save from destruction the Empire of a generation so unworthy of their past, and the civilisation for which we and our Allies stand? ”

“ From the shore of the Canal to the distant hills, discarded stores and baggage, broken carts and abandoned guns marked the tracks by which the beaten army had fled. And all about the sands lay the Turkish dead. They carried hundreds of wounded away with them, left hundreds of prisoners in our hands, and had lost over a thousand slain, including their German commander, Major von den Hagen. ”

“ It must have puzzled the Turks considerably to find themselves confronted by trenches filled with apparently naked warriors, and to ascertain, when they came to the test, that these naked warriors were as tough and as full of ginger as the men in khaki who had mysteriously vanished. Possibly they suspected this was a new wild race of secretly landed reinforcements from some remote end of the British Empire, especially after a few weeks, when the skins of the Anzacs had become so tanned and burnt by the sun that they were as dark as the Maoris. ”

“ The adult mind knows that the way of conquest is never so smoothly paved; that the best and bravest, coping with a powerful and subtle enemy, must needs be often baffled, but what matters is that he is only baffled to fight better, knowing that if he does so no check is a defeat, for in the long run it is only the final victory that counts.
There have been rumours that, because the Suvla Bay attempt did not achieve its objective and, for the moment, a condition of stalemate prevails there, the Dardanelles campaign is to be abandoned, but they find no favour in Australia or New Zealand. ”

“ He was so good a sailor, and knew the sea and the ways of the sea so well, that, instead of making his captures one by one, he occasionally contrived to round up four or five at a time, shepherded them into suitable proximity, went through them in succession, helped himself liberally from their cargoes, collected all the passengers and crews on one of them, which he politely set at liberty, and swiftly sunk the remainder and was off again about his business. He had a sense of humour, and that invariably goes with humanity. ”

“ So immature is her conception of Empire that she took it as a sign of weakness in us when, after spending blood and treasure in the South African War, we withdrew and left the Boers and our own people living there to join hands and make their own laws and govern themselves. "The low-Dutch are in the ascendant in South Africa now," wrote the egregious Bernhardi, and he pronounced that when Germany launched her legions against England the South Africans would be quick to seize the occasion and rise and strike for freedom.
But people do not strike to obtain what they possess. ”

“ They are less shackled than we are by old use and wont, by conventions and precedents that hamper our onward movement; but they know their ideal is ours, for they lit their torch at our fire, and they are breasting the onslaught beside us at this hour because they know it, and could by no means stand aside and see that fire trampled out under the hoofs of a race in whom the brute savagery and primitive ideals of war and domination are so damnably renascent. ”

“ The land lay almost invisible in the black depths of the night; no sound came out to them, and no light glimmered anywhere. Silently and shrouded in the shadows the warships took up their appointed positions in readiness, at the right moment, to cover the landing with a hail of shell-fire; the steam pinnaces, with their strings of boats loaded to the gunwale with eager troops, glided past them towards the coast; and after a brief interval a flotilla of destroyers crept on their track, packed with more men to be rushed ashore as soon as the covering parties had obtained a footing. ”

“ But if there are those who doubt, let me say this: it is better that we should perish in the trenches than contemplate the possibility of succumbing in the struggle that is now before us."
That is the authentic voice of Australia–of all the young democracies who are joint heirs and will more than ever in the future be joint sharers with us of the destinies of the British Empire. They have some sentimental regard for the old country, but they are not drawn to us in this business merely by that; their motives are higher, their ideals rooted in a deeper emotion. ”

“ They have burrowed the rugged hill-sides into human warrens, and when they are not on duty in the trenches return to a manner of life that was natural to the ancient cave-dwellers before the dawn of civilisation. Here and there, between the hills, great pits that have been excavated by bursting shells are transformed into convenient bathing-places; but it has been a common thing to see parties of men come joyously down, released from the firing line, to wash the feel of dust and grime from them in the cool waters of the adjacent sea ”

“ The boats with their loads of troops were nearing the shore, and squads of Turks could be dimly seen scattering about the beach to intercept them. Their firing from below and the fire of rifles and machine guns from the heights was terribly effective, but, with their comrades falling dead or wounded beside them, the men in the boats remained grimly, resolutely silent, their coolness and steady discipline never for an instant shaken. ”

“ I hope, when we have gained peace, the Allied Governments, acting in the interests of civilisation, will avail themselves of so unprecedented an opportunity to declare that the public law of Europe is no longer a law without sanction and without punishment, but that those who break the public law of Europe are to be treated like criminals who break any other law. I hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing some of the members of the German Ministry placed upon their trial for wilful murder and brought to account for the various acts committed at their instigation. ”

“ It could not well have been otherwise, led by such officers as they had and under a commander so gallant and so genially considerate of them as General Birdwood, who from the outset, as Sir Ian Hamilton testifies, "has been the soul of Anzac. Not for one single day has he ever quitted his post. Cheery and full of human sympathy, he has spent many hours of each twenty-four inspiring the defenders of the front trenches, and if he does not know every soldier in his force, at least every soldier believes he is known to his chief." ”

“ We realise, in these days, that, except when it is in self-defence and for the freedom not of one race but of all, war is plain murder, and the wholesale murderer should and must be amenable on that count at the bar of civilisation. ”

“ It is no ordinary body of men. It is essentially Imperial in its composition, and only the British Empire could have brought together such a force from all corners of the earth. Also the majority of the men are volunteers and Colonials. It is the great counter-attack of Australia against the enemy in the east whilst our regular armies are holding the line so gallantly in the west.... I do not suppose that any country in its palmiest days ever sent forth to the field of battle a finer body of men than these Australian, New Zealand, and Tasmanian troops. ”

“ Even here, however, the Canal is over 200 ft. wide, and the problem for the invaders was how to span that space, in face of gun and maxim and rifle fire, effect a landing on the other side, dash up an embankment that rose to a height of 40 ft., and drive out of their trenches at the point of the bayonet thousands of the hardiest and most coolly determined troops in the British Army. More impossible-looking attempts have succeeded before now, but the Turks, after sticking to it heroically for forty-eight hours, found that it could not be done. ”

“ So, with every German wireless station in the Pacific put out of action, and the British flag flying over all enemy territory in those waters, the Australian fleet was free to render more assistance to the New Zealand, the British, and French fleets in their dogged hunt after the German commerce raiders, and presently added a new glory to its name by overtaking, giving battle to, and sinking that most dashing raider of them all, the Emden. ”

“ The moment the word of alarm flashed over the seas, Canada, Australia, New Zealand leaped to arms and were ready, and sent their thousands forth and are sending them still to hold inviolate the Empire that is theirs no less than ours. ”

“ The warships swing watchfully at anchor in the bitter lakes through which it flows, and the hundred miles of posts and trenches on the western bank are still peopled with vigilant men in khaki who have held their own there triumphantly and may be trusted to go on holding it till the war-drums throb no longer and the German menace is a tale of yesterday.
In the first seven months of the war the sons of Australia and New Zealand, fighting beside the soldiers of the homeland and of India, had won a decisive victory and saved Egypt to the Empire ”

“ It is so easy to be wise after the event that I don't suppose many of us are much impressed by the aggressive wisdom of those critics in our midst who are still noisily telling us of the naval and military blunders made in the inception and development of the Dardanelles campaign and with what beautiful simplicity they might all have been avoided. One has no patience with such chatter and no use for such cheap sagacity. ”

“ The marvel is that after living and fighting in such a dreary spot for six months the men are still as high-spirited and as fertile in contriving ways to amuse their leisure as if they had never known anything better or fuller than the precarious, perilous existence on this barren patch of land. ”

“ Two of them were now attached to the officers of the gun crew, and throughout the action with the Emden they were as eager and as perfectly cool as the hardiest seaman of them all. One of these youngsters was told off to help in carrying ammunition to the guns, and he went briskly, capably to and fro on his job, with the enemy's shells bursting around and overhead, and never even seemed to think of attempting to take cover. The fearful joy of battle possessed him as it possessed the rest of the crew. ”

“ If ever England were involved in a big war nearer home, the shrewd Bernhardi was quite convinced that the self-governing Colonies would naturally consult their own interests and decline to take any part in it. He laid it down emphatically that, at all events (to quote from Mr. Allen H. Powles's translation of his "Germany and the Next War") , "the Colonies can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theatre of war."
All which indicates what a strange gulf there must be between the fossilised Prussian mind and the mind of a modern civilisation. ”

“ The fervent desire of all ranks to close with the enemy, the impetuosity of their onset, and the steadfast valour with which they maintained the long struggle, these will surely make appeal to their fellow-countrymen all over the world. The gallant capture of the almost impregnable Lone Pine trenches by the Australian Division, and the equally gallant defence of the position against repeated counter-attacks, are exploits which will live in history. ”

“ A dozen times the Turks flung themselves forward in dense masses, and when they shattered and came thundering in over and past the wire entanglements, the British leaped from their trenches to meet them and fell upon them with spades and bayonets till they fled panic-stricken, leaving their dead and wounded heaped about the ground. ”

“ Hughes, the new Australian Premier, replying to questions in the House of Representatives at the end of October, spoke for all Australasia when he said, amidst tumultuous cheering, "Our business is to carry out the instructions of the Imperial Government, and to give the Government the enthusiastic support we owe it as a duty. We must refrain from criticising the actions of men placed in a position of frightful responsibility, and also from {95} listening to the thousand-and-one critics who have not the slightest authority to speak." ”

“ No tocsin sounded in any dark hour of attack ever called forth such myriads and such more than willing myriads of defenders as have rallied from all quarters of the earth to the cry that went up from those violated homes of Belgium. Australia and New Zealand in generous rivalry made haste to subscribe funds for the relief of the Belgian refugees, and to send them shipments of food, blankets, and clothing. ”