I don't intend to try and write the story of Gallipoli--I haven't the
equipment or the experience--John Masefield has written the only book
that need be read, and only a man who was in that outstanding
achievement of the landing on the 25th of April has a right to the
honor of associating his name in a chronicle of "_What I did!_" What I
am going to attempt to do is just to picture it as a "winning of the
spurs" by the youngest democracy on earth.

There was something peculiarly fitting in the fate that ordained that
this adolescent nation of the South Seas should prove its fitness for
manhood in an adventure upon which were focussed the eyes of all
nations. The gods love romance, else why was the youngest nation of
earth tried out on the oldest battlefield of history? How those young
men from the continent whose soil had never been stained with blood
thrilled to hear their padres tell them as they gathered on the decks
of the troop-ships in the harbor of Lemnos, that to-morrow they would
set foot almost on the site of the ancient battlefield of Troy, where
the early Greeks shed their blood, as sung in the oldest battle-song in
the world.

These young Australians were eager to prove their country's worth as a
breeder of men. Australians have been very sensitive to the criticism
of Old World visitors--that we were a pleasure-loving people, who only
thought of sport--that in our country no one took life seriously, and
even the making of money was secondary to football, and that we would
all rather win a hundred pounds on a horse-race than make a thousand by
personal exertion. Practically every book written on Australia by an
Englishman or an American has said the same thing, that we were a
lovable, easy-going race, but did not work very hard, and in a serious