G.H.Q. AND THE DOMINION ARMIES.
Our Parliament at the Club--A discussion of the Dominions, particularly
of Australia--Is the Englishman shy or stand-offish?--How the "Anzacs"
came to be--The Empire after the War.
It was quite a little Parliament in its way, the Officers' Club at
Montreuil, and one of its pet subjects of discussion was the Dominion
soldier and the effect that the campaign would have on British Imperial
relations. The talk covered a wide field and was sprinkled with
anecdotes; it came up many evenings out of all sorts of incidents.
"The Dominion men, many of them, are too touchy," says an officer who
has come back from a _liaison_ visit. "A Canadian officer--the talk
arising out of I do not know what incident--complained to me to-day:
'The Canadians do not seem to take on with the English.' 'Well, the
Canadians have a very taking way with them at the Front,' I replied,
hoping the allusion to Vimy Ridge would soothe him. But it didn't. I
hear from the Australians, too, the same complaint--that the English
people 'do not like them.'"
"What greedy young men they are," comments another. "What more do they
want than the abject Anzac-worship and Canadian-worship among the
British people? If anything ever went to the heart of the old Mother
Country and dimmed her spectacles for her, it was the way in which the
colonial troops came into the fighting line."
A Dominion officer at the table hazards that the British do seem
"stand-offish" until you know them.
A British officer explains that the English are a shy people and a
people with a high ideal of personal liberty and individualism; that the
Englishman loves a corner seat in a train not so much because it is more
comfortable but because it leaves his shyness, and his desire to keep
himself to himself, safe on one side; that he does not like to be
bothered, that he is very shy from the fear of bothering other people.
"Those cold English passing you awkwardly by, my huffy Australians or
Canadians, are very proud of you, and they do not go up to shake you by
the hand and say so because they fear you would take it as a liberty."
A staff officer who did _liaison_ work between Australians and the
British during the first battle of the Somme thinks that one of the
results of the Somme was the moulding during its course of a truly
Imperial Army. Forces of differing types went into the cauldron. One
type came out. All did a full share in the offensive, and by what they
taught and by what they learned had their influence in moulding this
"Imperial" Force. He blamed some newspapers for having devoted well
meant but mischievous energy to spoiling the work of this amalgamation.
A good deal of newspaper effort, if it had been taken seriously, he
says, would have fostered among the various troops a spirit of
third-class theatrical jealousy, as if they were a mob of people
competing for public favour and public notice: "Since the issue has been
raised in other quarters, let it be said that between Dominion troops
and British troops there was a fine emulation in skill and courage, and
that no sound judge could give the palm to any one section over another.
There were differences in method of courage and skill, no differences in
degree."
We all agreed on that; and that the spirit of comradeship between all
was firm. Someone noted as a curious thing that there seemed to be an
understanding that what is known among soldiers as "chipping" should be
dropped in inter-imperial relations. A Durham might explain--with no
real but all apparent seriousness--how lucky it was for the Yorks to
have the Durhams to lean upon; and the Yorks would respond in kind. In
the next trenches a New-South-Waler might, with a vigour that concealed
well the want of earnestness in his _blague_, explain the hopelessness
of the Victorians. But between British, Canadian and Australian this
"chipping" was dropped. They were good comrades, but felt that their
mutual intimacy had not yet grown to a stage which allowed of "ragging"
or "chipping."
* * * * *
Officers' Club G.H.Q. was inexhaustibly interested in the "Anzacs." They
were frequently under discussion. There was far more talk of them than
of their fellow colonials, the Canadians. They seemed to have more
dramatic interest. Their rakish hats challenged notice, and their rakish
actions.
Almost every day there was some fresh yarn of the Anzacs, a yarn of some
fine feat told admiringly, a yarn of some classic bit of impudence told
tolerantly. One tells a tale of the Anzacs' curious ideas of discipline.
Another caps this with the reminder that the Australian corps has the
best Salvage Record in the Army--that is to say is the most industrious
in rag-picking, shell-case gathering, waste-paper collecting, and so on.
"I don't wonder," the first speaker retorts. "They're always after
records. They'd go over and raid the Boche trenches for Salvage sooner
than play second fiddle."
"They did marvels saving the French harvest this year under shell-fire."
"Yes, they are all right if you keep them busy. But they are the very
devil in rest camp. Now in Cairo----"
But the table refuses to hear the story of Cairo again, because it is
not a very pleasant story.
The conclusion I came to is that the British officer had really a very
soft spot in his heart for the "wild Colonial boys"--Canadians and
Australians. I was always being appealed to, as knowing Australia, to
"explain" the Anzac, which I did at great length on various occasions,
and here is the substance of it all:
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. Two by two, they keep one another in
countenance and are fairly comfortable. Catch one alone and you may see
in his eyes a hunger for a mate, a need for some other Anzac. For all
his _bravura_ air, the Anzac has no great self-confidence; and he has a
child's shy fear of making himself ridiculous by a false step. The same
fear makes him difficult to know. He will often set up, as a protective
barrier against a real knowledge of him, a stubborn taciturnity, or a
garrulous flow of what Australasians call "skite" and Londoners call
"swank."
In pre-war days an Australian in England might have felt himself a
little of the barbarian in so smooth a comity, where people loved
moderately and hated very moderately; walked always by paths; were
somewhat ashamed of their own merits and suavely tolerant of others'
demerits; and were nervous of allowing patriotism to become infected
with the sin of pride. But England at war understood them better--the
Anzacs, the young of the British. The young of the British, not of the
English only, though that is the master element of the breed. The Anzac
is a close mixture of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh colonists, with
practically no foreign taint.
There is, however, a wild strain in the mixture. One of the first great
tasks of Australasia was to take the merino sheep of Spain and make a
new sheep of it--a task brilliantly carried out. A concurrent task was
to take black sheep from the British Isles and make good white stock out
of them. The success in this was just as complete. The "rebels" of the
Mother Country--Scottish crofters, Irish agrarians, English Chartists
and poachers--mostly needed only full elbow room to become useful men.
Even for the Micawbers a land of lots of room was regenerative.
Was it Charles Lamb's quip that the early population of the British
Colonies should be good "because it was sent out by the best judges?"
That was a truth spoken in jest. The first wild strain was of notable
value to a new nation in the making. It came to Australasia not only
from the original settlers but also from the rushes to the goldfields.
And--note here the first sign that the Anzac people were to be dominated
by the British spirit and were to keep the law even while they forgot
conventions--there was never a Judge Lynch in an Australasian mining
camp. The King's writ and Trial by Jury stood always.
The Anzac started thus with good blood. To carry a study of the type to
the next stage, to note how the breed was influenced by environment, it
is necessary at the outset to put away the idea that the Australasian
people are engaged, to the exclusion of all other interests, in the task
of subduing the wildnesses of their continent. They have done, continue
to do, their pioneer work well, but have always kept some time for the
arts and humanities. To ignore that fact is, I think, a common mistake,
even in the days when every European opera-house of note had heard an
Australasian singer or musician, every European salon had shown
Australian pictures, and there was even a tiny representation of
Australian Art in pre-war Montreuil.
"Does anybody in Australia then have time to read Greek?" a
schoolmaster's wife in England asked once with surprise.
She was answered with another question: "Who is the great Greek scholar
of the day?"
"Professor Gilbert Murray."
"Well, he is an Australian."
It was a specious argument, for one swallow does not make a summer. But
the truth--that Australasia produces at a high rate mental as well as
physical energy--could have been proved categorically.
The Australian is not only a pioneer wrestling with the wilderness. He
is a creature of restless mental energy, keenly (perhaps with something
of a spirit of vanity) eager to keep in the current of world-thought,
following closely not only his own politics but also British and
international politics; a good patron of the arts; a fertile producer
and exporter of poetasters, minor philosophers, scientists, writers, and
artists. There is nothing that the Anzac, nationally, resents more than
to be regarded as a mere grower of wool and wheat, a hewer of wood and
digger of minerals. He aspires to share in all the things of life, to
have ranches and cathedrals, books and sheep. Above all, perhaps, he has
a passion for _la haute politique_.
All this was in the blood. The "wild strain" was not only of men who
found in the old country a physical environment too narrow. It was
partly of men who desired a wider mental horizon. Some very strange
minor elements would show out in a detailed analysis of early
Australasian immigration--disciples of Fourier who gave up great
possessions in England to seek an idealistic Communism in the Antipodes:
recluse bookworms who thought they could coil closer to their volumes in
primitive solitudes. But one element was strong--the political and
economic doctrinaire; and the conditions of the new country encouraged
the growth of this element particularly, so that Australia soon won
quite a fame for political inventions (_e.g._, the "Australian Ballot"
and the "Torrens Land Title"). But the general growth of what may be
termed a "thinking" class was encouraged by the very isolation which, it
would seem at first thought, should have an opposite effect. Whilst
other young countries lost to older and greater centres of population
their young ambitious men, Australasia's antipodean position preserved
her from the full extent of the drain of that mental law of gravity
which makes the big populations attract the men who aspire to work with
their brains more than with their hands. Australasia will always be
claiming attention not only as a producer of wheat, wool and well-knit
men, but also of ideas.
The ideas of this young nation of the British, nurtured in the
Australasian environment, would strike the pre-war England of five years
ago as naively reactionary. The Anzac, faced by natural elements which
are inexorably stern to folly, to weakness, to indecision, but which are
generously responsive to capable and dominating energy, had become more
resourceful, more resolute, more cruel, more impatient than his British
cousin. The men who followed the drum of Drake were much akin to the
Australasian of to-day.
Australian Imperialism, in truth, must have had for some years past a
fussy air to the cooler and calmer minds of England; though the good
sense and good humour of the Mother Country rarely allowed this to be
seen. When New South Wales insisted on lending a hand in the little
Soudan War she was not snubbed. Nor was Victoria, pressing at the same
time a still more unnecessary naval contingent. In the South African War
Australian eagerness to take a part was more than generously recognised,
and when Australia next insisted on giving help also in the suppression
of the Boxer Rising, room was patiently found for her naval contingent.
About this here is an illustrative story, which is welcomed as "quite
Australian." When the Australian Gunboat "Protector" arrived in Chinese
waters the British admiral went on board to pay his compliments and was
not stinting in praise of Australian military and naval prowess.
Thereupon the Australian band is said to have struck up with a tune from
"The Belle of New York:" "Of course _you_ can never be quite like us."
It is perhaps a true story; certainly possible. There is a touch of gay
impudence in the Australian character which an ex-Governor confessed he
loved "because it was so young."
Always one comes back to that word "young." It is the key to an
understanding of the Anzac--youth with its enthusiasms, rashnesses,
faults, shynesses; youth, raw, if you will, but of good breed and high
intentions.
Australasian life leads to a certain hardness of outlook. Life is
prized, of course, but its loss--either of one's own or of the other
fellow's--is not regarded with any superstitious horror. Certainly it is
not regarded as the greatest evil. To go out with a mate and to come
back without him and under the slightest suspicion of not having taken
the full share of risk and hardship would be counted greater. Living
close up to Nature (who can be very savage with tortures of fire and
thirst and flood), the back-country Anzac--who sets the national
type--must learn to be wary and enduring and sternly true to the duties
of mateship. The Bedouin of tradition suggests the Anzac in his ideals
of mateship and of stoicism. The Anzac follows the same desert school of
chivalry in his love for his horse and dog and his hospitality to the
stranger within his gates. He will share his last water with the animal
he is fond of; and in the back-country the lonely huts of the boundary
riders are left open to any chance caller, with a notice, perhaps, as to
where to find the food stores, and to "put the treacle back where the
ants cannot get to it." It is, of course, a point of honour not to take
except in case of need.
* * * * *
An English padre who put in two years in the "Back of Beyond" of
Australia as a "Bush Brother" confesses that his first impression was
that the Anzac of the Bush was cruel and pagan. His last impression was
that the Anzac was generally as fine a Christian as any heaven for human
beings would want. An incident of this parson's "conversion" (he
related) was the entry into a far-back town of a band of five men
carrying another on a stretcher. The six were opal miners with a little
claim far out in the desert. One had been very badly mauled in an
explosion. The others stopped their profitable work at once and set
themselves to carry him in to the nearest township with a hospital The
distance was forty-five miles. On the road some of the party almost
perished of thirst, but the wounded man had his drink always, and always
the bandages on his crushed leg were kept moist in the fierce heat of
the sun. One of the men was asked how they had managed to make this
sacrifice.
"It was better to use the water that way than to hear the poor blighter
moan."
* * * * *
Many a night we speculated to what degree the different Dominion types
will approximate as a result of this war. Certainly when the Dominion
and British troops were in contact tidal currents of knowledge flowed to
and fro which left both the gainers. Points which had been particular
property became common: regarding economy in the use of the
water-bottle, the art of making a bed in a shell-hole, informal methods
of acquiring horses, the best tracks towards the soft side of Ordnance,
the true dignity of salutes, sniping as a sport, the unpatriotism of
recklessness, and other matters. Slang was pooled and trench language
much enriched. In all things the essential kinship of the British race
was disclosed.
We agree that after the war, the British Empire will have more of a
general likeness. Colonial ideas will have penetrated more strongly into
the Mother Country. British ideas will have permeated the Colonial
restlessness and impatience. What an ideal race the British could be
with a constant coming and going from the Mother's home to the
children's houses; an exchange of good grey wisdom with eager
enthusiasm, the equable spirit of green and cloudy England mingling with
the ardency of the Dominions.
Finally a Dominion officer sums up:--
"I do not think an Empire managed on the old British lines could survive
another great shock. It is charming to be so equable and good-tempered
and to love your enemy as yourself and to do good to those who hate you.
But it brings a nation too close to the fate which overcame the
Peruvians under the Incas (they were a charmingly equable and
good-tempered and confiding race). Yet those who hope for an Empire
managed on Canadian lines, or on Australian lines, leave me cold. I want
good wheat crops and cathedrals, the best of the new and of the old
spirit. And just as the sole real advantages of being rich are that one
can be honest and generous, there would be no use at all in being a
great Empire and yet not feeling strong enough to 'play the game' fairly
and chivalrously. I hate hearing the talk--which is the swing back from
the excess of British tolerance--of a cold-blooded and merciless
efficiency as the ideal of national life. Better to perish than to be a
German Empire trampling on the faces of women and babes to the throne of
power."