STORY OF ANZAC.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 February 1922, Page 1

STORY OF ANZAC.

■REVIEWED lIV GENERAL

HAMILTON

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE Afl80(;.„rt0N

LONDON, Feb. 20

Sir lon Hamilton, reviewing .Captain Bean’s war hook on The Australasians at Gallipoli, .describes the author as “The Kinglake of the Antipodes.” “Typical of Bean,” he writes, “was his effort to help General Brigades to maintain discipline in Egypt in January of 1915, by giving the Australian press .the naked facts about the conduct of a small sec-

tion of the Australians, when it would have been easy for him to remain popular by blaming the General Staff.

An example of how it should be done, is never complete without an example of how it should not lie done; am? there 5 was another letter, by another .tftistralian journalist, not a war correspondent, to the Prime Minister of Aus- 1 tralia, which one day will supply that foil. That letter is the one skeleton key which opens a certain locked cupboard in each of throe biographies that■ are to he. Then everybody will ho able to understand the difference hot aeon* an appeal to Australian prejudice and an ap|xial like that on which Bean •stakes his all to her patriotism.”

Sir lan Hamilton bears testimony to the value of the chapters in the bookmi the pre-war organisations in Australia and the creation uf an Australian Imperial Force. He says the book, as

a war record, is in a class by itself. It is east on intensely individualistic lines. Tt also stand.- ah ue for the very full account it supplies of the Turkish plans, movements, and losses. Sir [an Hamilton disagrees with Captain Bean in thinking that it needed 150,000 men for the job. Remarking that lie is speaking with new evidence before him, Sir Inn Hamilton emphatically declares that if lie had been given a Gliurka Brigade which lie asked for, and an East Lancashire Division that was lying idle in -Egypt , “we could have done it right there.” “The Dardanelles,” he says, “was thrown away because Gallipoli had not reaped the benefit of the increasing output of guns and trench mortars. These were asked for on March '22nd. Each An/.ac liatfali' ii could have had a couple by the date of the landing.”