Letters from France | Page 3

struggle is
ended--what is there in that? If it were not for the dear ones whom he
leaves behind him, mightn't a man almost pray for a death like that?
The newspapers too often call us heroes, but we know we are not
heroes for having come, and we do not want to be called heroes. We
should have been less than men if we hadn't."
The rapt, unconscious approval in those weather-scarred upturned faces
made it quite obvious that they were with him in every word. In those
simple sentences this man was speaking the whole soul of Australia. He
looked up for a second to the wide sky as clear as his own conscience,
and then looked down at them again. "Isn't it the most wonderful thing
that could ever have happened?" he went on. "Didn't everyone of us as
a boy long to go about the world as they did in the days of Drake and
Raleigh, and didn't it seem almost beyond hope that that adventure
would ever come to us? And isn't that the very thing that has happened?

And here we are on that great enterprise going out across the world,
and with no thought of gain or conquest, but to help to right a great
wrong. What else do we wish except to go straight forward at the
enemy--with our dear ones far behind us and God above us, and our
friends on each side of us and only the enemy in front of us--what more
do we wish than that?"
There were tears in many men's eyes when he finished--and that does
not often happen with Australians. But it happened this time--far out
there on a distant sea. And that was because he had put his finger, just
for one moment, straight on to the heart of his nation.
CHAPTER II
TO THE FRONT
France, April 8th.
So the Australians are in France. A great reception at the port of
landing, so we hear. A long, weary train journey in a troop train which
never alters its pace, but moves steadily on, halts for meals, jogs on
again, waits interminably outside strange junctions. Some days ago it
landed the first units, somewhere behind the front.
We reached France some time after the first units. The excitement of
seeing an Australian hat had long since evaporated. A few troops had
been left in camp near the port, and we met some of those on leave in
the big town. They might have been there since their babyhood for all
they or the big town cared.
And there we first heard mentioned the name of a town to which our
troops were supposed to have gone. It was quite a different town from
the one which we had heard of on board ship. It was snowing up there
where our men were, they said.
The train took us through beautiful country not yet touched by the
spring of the year. There were magnificent horses in the rich brown
fields--great draught horses such as I have never seen in any country

yet. But the figure that drove the harrow was always that of an old man
or a young boy; or, once or twice, of a woman. There were women
digging in the fields everywhere; or trudging back along the roads
under great bundles of firewood. The country was almost all cultivated
land, one vast farming industry. And they had managed to get through
the whole year's work exactly as if the men were there. As far as we
could see every field was ploughed, every green crop springing. It is a
wonderful performance.
We had not the least idea where we were going until in the end we
actually got there. Travelling in France is quite different from travelling
in Egypt or England. In Egypt you still exercise your brain as to which
train you shall travel by and where you will stay and where you will
change. But in France there is no need for you to think out your own
journey--it is useless for you to do so. The moment you reach France
the big hand of General Headquarters takes hold of you; and from that
instant it picks you up and puts you down as if you were a pawn on a
chessboard. Whatever the railway station, there is always a big British
policeman. The policeman directs you to the Railway Transport Officer
and the Railway Transport Officer tells you how long you will stay and
when you will leave and where you will go to next. And when you get
to the next place there is another policeman who sends you to another
Railway Transport Officer; until you finally come to a policeman who
directs you from the station and up the