ANZAC

“ The Anzac striding—or limping—along with rakish hat and challenging glance, for the first time brought Australasia actually home to the Mother Country. These Australasians, the men of the Bush, were as remarkable, as significant almost, as the Dacians in the army of another Imperial nation two thousand years ago. Easily can they be picked out. They walk the streets with a slightly obvious swagger. When they are awed a little, it is a point of honour not to show it. When they are critical a little, it peeps out. ”

“ Away to the northward at Suvla on the shoulder of Chocolate Hills the British divisions are getting ready to retire. On Hill 60, which saw so much sanguinary fighting, the stolid Indians are awaiting orders. This way a bit the New Zealand and Australian Division has started its first parties towards North Beach. On the right above Anzac and opposite Gaba Tepe the Australians were streaming away; all but the rearguard and the final "die-hards." Before the morning Anzac will have seen a great tragedy, or else the greatest bluff in history.... ”

“ Already the little cove in which the landing had been made had been christened "Anzac Cove," "Anzac," of course, was formed by taking the first letters of the official designation of the colonial forces—Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The spirits of the men were high, despite the awful experience they had gone through, and they frequently exchanged cheery messages with the gunners of the warships who were pounding away at the Turkish positions, although not accomplishing any great damage in their blind firing. ”

“ In the same way anyone who is in touch with them knows that to speak of the feats of "an Anzac" or of "the Anzacs" is unpopular with the men to whom it is applied. You will never hear the men refer to themselves as Anzacs. They call themselves simply Australians or New Zealanders. ”

“ First it was rumoured that the East Lancashire Division, associated with us in Egypt, was coming to Anzac; then the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade from the Suez Canal; but Helles absorbed these. Worst still! On May 5 the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and the 2nd Australian Brigade were taken out of Anzac to assist in the thrust towards Krithia. On the left flank of Anzac, two weak battalions of the Royal Naval Division took over the line the New Zealand Brigade had vacated. ”

“ Australia and New Zealand's part does not, in actual accomplishment or in personal daring and endurance, outclass the doings of these others, the larger half of the army. But there is a romance and a glow about the "Anzac" exploits that (rail at the injustice of it as you may) makes a human-interest story that will elbow out of the mind of the "man in the street" what other troops did. In fact, every second man one meets has the idea that the Australians and New Zealanders were the only men there. ”

“ The cove of Anzac itself, between the headlands of Hell Spit and Ari Burnu, though often swept by Turkish fire, was concealed from the enemy’s view by overhanging cliffs. To the northward, however, the beach was commanded throughout its length by the heights of the Chunuk Bair, and men moved on it by daylight at their peril. In order to facilitate movement by day, Australians [95] and New Zealanders working by night had dug a sap wide and deep enough to hold a mule, which ran northward parallel with the sea for nearly a mile. ”

“ The plan of campaign was for one section of the force to push on straight across the Peninsula whilst another section moved to the south-east towards Anzac, whence the Australians and New Zealanders were to fight a way up and join them.
The Anzacs carried out their part of this arrangement with a dash and daring that were irresistible. They had been reinforced {86} by a brigade of Gurkhas and by regiments of our new armies, and it was resolved to make a beginning by sending the First Australian Infantry Brigade to attack the Lone Pine plateau. ”

“ The Australians have been having high old times in Cairo. We have to pay for their extraordinarily fine fighting qualities, but it’s a pity that they can’t be more quiet.... They admire General Birdwood, who’s got a difficult job. We owed a lot to their initiative at Anzac, when all their officers were killed. Salutes, after all, matter less than fighting. In peace they resent General Godley’s discipline, and that’s natural, but it’s inevitable, and they know it, when it comes to fighting. ”

“ From the tents and huts on the beach, where the stores are kept, they have made good roads up the cliffs to facilitate the labour of transport. Behind their first line of trenches they have turned the bit of territory they have won and hold so tenaciously into a queer little town of snug caverns and bomb-proof shelters, and have made all the place so peculiarly their own that somebody has been {76} happily inspired to christen the district Anzac, a name formed from the initials of the force, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps ”

“ Generally in the news dispatches, the Anzacs have been referred to as Australians. They are described as fearless, daring and fierce fighters, whose presence added pep to every engagement in which they participated. No more picturesque group has ever been written into the history of armies. Composed of men who were bushrangers, cattlemen, miners and hardy outdoor workers, many of whom served in Egypt, India and wherever the British flag floats, their character is indicated by the fact that they have been at times called the "Ragtime Army." ”

“ As a matter of fact, we drove slap into the mix-up in a gharri, and before we got shut of it the battle had developed into a first-class slather-up. The street was packed full of Australians and New Zealanders, with here and there little groups of badly scared effendis working overtime in their efforts to get clear of the struggling mass of grim Colonials, who, to an ear-splitting accompaniment of yells, cat-calls and coo-ees, were devoting their energies to an all-round wrecking and smashing game. ”

“ You don't shoot down the chaps from the Colonies and get away with it: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," is the motto of the men from Down Under.
Our little party now came to the conclusion that it was time to take the back trail. We could foresee what was likely to happen. Already strong mounted pickets were coming in from the New Zealand camp. ”

“ They breed men on the fringes of our Empire. Hence I wasn't surprised when I saw a notice in the papers calling on all New Zealanders, or men who had seen service with the Maorilanders in South Africa, to roll up at the High Commissioner's office in London, to be trained for service with the "Down Under" contingents. Well, I had lived for years in New Zealand, and had fought Boers time and again side by side with New Zealand troops, so I sent in my name right away. ”

“ What power on earth could stop such men? Not the Turks, anyway. With imploring cries of "Allah!—Allah!" they abandoned their trenches and scurried up through the scrub, the panting Colonials straining every nerve to overtake them.
It is difficult to understand the Australasian character. He will joke even in the midst of danger, nay, death. He is, as a rule, a "hard doer"; and even his best friends must admit that he is often a hard, and fairly original, swearer. Nothing is safe from him when looking for a butt ”

“ Zanzibar, the capital of the African dominions of the Imâm of Muskat, in latitude 6° 28′ S. and longitude 39° 33′ E., exports gold, ivory, drugs, coir, cocoa-nuts, gums, bees-wax, tortoise-shell, spice, rice from Pemba, sesame-seed from Angoxa, and a great quantity of timber annually to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
In 1818 cloves were introduced into Zanzibar from Mauritius; they thrive so well that the cultivation of them has in a great measure superseded that of the sugar-cane, and even the cocoa-nut. ”

“ Though a city of something over one hundred thousand people, with the major portion of the trade of East Africa in its hands, Zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili boatmen. There are no words in the language adequate to describe the scene [Pg 145] which takes place on the beach bordering the harbour when a mail steamer comes in. The passengers—white-helmeted tourists; pompous, drill-clad officials ”

“ The British territory extended north from Wanga on the sea as far as the mouth of the Juba River, a distance of about 450 miles, thence inland as far as the Congo State. These two great divisions of Africa, now converted into British and German territory, included the major part of the area wherein the slave trade of the east central part of the continent so long flourished. The countries west of Lake Nyassa, extending westward to Portuguese territory and south to the Zambezi, conceded to the great South African Company, absorbed the remainder of the slavery area. ”

“ The well-remembered undulating ridges, and the gentle slopes clad with palms and mango-trees bathed in warm vapor, seemed in that tranquil, drowsy state which at all times any portion of tropical Africa presents at first appearance. A pale-blue sky covered the hazy land and sleeping sea as we steamed through the strait that separates Zanzibar from the continent. Every stranger, at first view of the shores, proclaims his pleasure. ”

“ For the charm of Zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, and a firm government under a benign [211] and gentle Sultan, they have done all of this without destroying one flash of its local color, or one throb of its barbaric life, which is the showy, sunshiny, and sumptuous life of the Far East. ”

“ The more extensive Zang (Zenj) empire, of which the name Zanzibar (Zanguebar) is a lasting memorial, extending along the sea-board from Somaliland to the Zambezi, was also extinct. The Arabs had established themselves firmly on the coast, and thence made continual slave-raids into the interior, penetrating later to the Congo. The Swahili, inhabiting the coast-line from the equator to about 16° S., are a somewhat heterogeneous mixture of Bantu with a tinge of Arab blood. ”

“ Its magnificent basin is formed by one of those small coralline islands which, from Suez to Cape Corrientes, have long been the centres of commerce with peoples who, brutalized by barbarism, and incapable of civilization, would have converted mainland depôts into scenes of rapine and bloodshed. Of this chain the principal links, the Tyre, the Alexandria, and the Araduses of East Africa, are Masawah, old Zayla, Berberah—in the 16th century an islet—Makdishu, Lamu, Wasin, ancient Mtanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafiyah, the original Kilwa, and Mozambique. ”

“ The partition of Africa among the European powers [by the Berlin Conference of 1885 and the Anglo-German Convention of 1890] ... was the first effective blow dealt to the slave trade in inner Africa. See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891. The east coast, whence a few years ago the slaves marched in battalions to scatter over the wide interior of the continent for pillage and devastation, is to-day guarded by German and British troops. The island of Zanzibar, where they were equipped for their murderous enterprises, is under the British flag. ”

“ These people, who are divided into half-a-dozen clans, occupy a fine high country which extends westward to Usumbara: they dwell in large villages, fenced to keep out the Wamasai, and they are agriculturists, fond of Jete, or public markets, at which they dispose of their grain to the coast-traders. Those whom we saw were poor-looking men: their bows were well turned and bent, with brass knobs and strings of cowgut; the notched and neatly feathered arrows had triangular iron piles. ”

“ In Zanzibar Island Kisawahili is most corrupted; the vocabulary, varying with every generation, has become a mere conglomerate which combines South African, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, and even Portuguese, an epitome of local history. On the coast it greatly varies, being constantly modified by the migration and mixture of tribes. Like the Malay of the Indian Islands, it has become the Lingua Franca, the Lingoa Geral of commerce from Ra’as Hafun to the Mozambique and throughout Central Intertropical Africa. ”

“ In about an hour we had turned and started back toward Zanzibar. Four Swahilis carried Coningsby swung in a hammock across their shoulders. I wish I could describe to you the events of that fearful morning. Picture if you can the silent trails of the jungle, dark as twilight, although it was early morning. Through the grim forest fifty natives push their way, loaded with supplies and the necessary camp implements. And among that motley throng only two white men, one lying in a hammock burning with fever, cursing and raving in a manner truly frightful. ”

“ Between the two latter and German West Africa and Angola, the territories of British South Africa and British Central Africa in the interior extend northward to the Congo State and to German East Africa, which occupies the east coast north of Lake Nyassa and the Ruvuma River. The Orange River and Vaal River colonies adjoin Natal and British South Africa. North of German East Africa lies British East Africa, which touches on the north the British sphere of influence in the Sudan, Abyssinia, and on the coast, Italian Somaliland. ”

“ In East Africa there are two forms of this traffic, the export and the internal trade. For the former slaves are collected like ivories throughout the length and breadth of the land. They are driven down from the principal depôts, the island of Kasenge, Ujiji, Unyanyembe, and Zungomero to the coast by the Arab and Wasawahili merchants, who afterwards sell them in retail at the great mart, Zanzibar. The internal trade is carried on between tribe and tribe, and therefore will long endure. ”