[Illustration: OCTOBER IN SERBIA
The Austro-German-Bulgarian attack on Serbia began in October, which in
Holland is called the “butcher’s month,” as the cattle are then killed
preparatory to the winter.]
“Just a moment--I’m coming”
Here is a drawing that ought to be circulated broadcast throughout
Australia and New Zealand, that ought to hold a place of honour on the
walls of their public chambers; should hang in gilded frames in the
houses of the rich; be pinned to the rough walls of frame-house and
bark humpy in every corner of “The Outback.” It should thrill the heart
of every man, woman, and child Down Under with pride and thankfulness
and satisfaction, should even bring soothing balm to the wounds of
those who in the loss of their nearest and dearest have paid the
highest and the deepest price for the flaming glory of the Anzacs in
Gallipoli.
Here in the artist’s pencil is a monument to those heroes greater than
pinnacles of marble, of beaten brass and carven stone; a monument that
has travelled over the world, has spoken to posterity more clearly,
more convincingly, and more rememberingly than ever written or
word-of-mouth speech could do. It is to the everlasting honour of the
people of the Anzacs that they refrained from echoing the idle tales
which ran whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a
cruel blunder, that the blood of the Anzacs’ bravest and best had been
uselessly spilt, that their splendid young lives had been an empty
sacrifice to the demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in
Australia who in their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven
in the rumours--that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were
wasted on a task foredoomed to failure--let this simple drawing bring
the comfort of the truth.
The artist has seen deeper and further than most. The Turkish armies
held from pouring on Russia and Serbia, from thumping down the scales
of neutrality in Greece and Roumania perhaps, from massing their troops
with the Central Powers; the Kaiser chained on the East and West for
the critical months when men and munitions were desperately lacking
to the Allies, when the extra weight of the Turks might have freed
the Kaiser’s power of fierce attack on East and West--this is what we
already know, what the artist here tells the wide world of the part
played by the heroes of the Dardanelles. In face of this, who dare hint
they suffered and died in vain?