"I am desired by the New Zealand Government to acknowledge your Majesty's gracious message, and to say that, come good or ill, she, in company with the other Dominions and Dependencies of the Crown, is prepared to make any sacrifice to maintain her heritage and her birthright.
Australia made a specific offer of 20,000 men as a first instalment for an expeditionary force, which was promptly accepted, as was the offer of the Australian navy. New Zealand offered 8,000 men as a first instalment, and these were also accepted promptly. The work of selecting the best men from the many thousands of eager applicants was a difficult one. New Zealand had 30,000 men in camp at the time, training under the system of compulsory national service. They volunteered for service abroad practically to a man. No immature boys were selected, the age limit being twenty; and in the end it was necessary to ballot for places among the large number of suitable men who applied for places in the Expedition.
In Australia equal enthusiasm was shown. The age limit here was nineteen, which excluded a large number of the youths training under the Australian system of compulsory service. The medical tests were very severe, as were the tests for horsemanship in the cavalry brigades. Australia had to deny thousands of highly suitable men the privilege of serving in the first contingent, but 10,000 of these were put into training at once in order to be ready for a second instalment.
An example of the eagerness to enlist was afforded by the case of a young Queensland grazier, who mounted his horse and, as a preliminary, rode 460 miles from his place at Cooper's Creek to the nearest railway station, whence he travelled by train to Adelaide. He wished to join a Light Horse regiment, and finding there was no vacancy in South Australia, he set off to Hobart, in Tasmania, by boat. There he was also unsuccessful, solely because all the vacancies were filled. Not to be denied, he took boat to Sydney, where he found his place at last, after having travelled over 2,000 miles, on horseback, by train, and by steamer, to serve as a private soldier in the Empire's cause.
The instance is not unique; it is rather typical. Men went willingly under the surgeon's knife for the removal of physical excrescences or defects which were held to incapacitate them for service. Those who could not find a place in the Australasian armies took their passages literally by hundreds to Great Britain, there to enlist in the new armies that were being gathered by Lord Kitchener for training. Others obtained promises of places in future contingents, and at once went into camp for practical training in all the duties of a soldier on active service. The men selected for the first contingent threw themselves into the work of preparation with a splendid ardour, that shortened the time of preparation and permitted a speedy dispatch of the troops to the old world. The actual work of embarkation began on October 17, and was concluded on October 22, so that 20,000 men and 9,000 horses were got on the transports in five days, a sharp bit of work. Before the actual departure, General Bridges sent the following message to the people of Australia: —
"I hope to report that the conduct of the Australians, both in camp and on the field, is worthy of the trust imposed upon them by the people of the Commonwealth. The men are a fine lot, soldierly and patriotic. I am grateful to the soldiers and citizens for the help they have given me in organizing and preparing the force now about to do its part for the good of the Empire. I venture to express the hope that no matter how great the demands on their patience, the Australian people will see to it that there is no diminution of their determination to face their responsibility. This spirit cannot fail then to pervade the troops."
Mr. Pearce, the Minister for Defence, sent to the troops on their departure the following message: —
"Upon the force devolves the honour and responsibility of representing Australia and of performing Australia's share in the great Imperial effort in the interests of justice, honour and international integrity. The ultimate issue of that undertaking can never be in doubt, but its attainment demands a steadfast display of the British qualities of resolution and courage, which are yours by right of heredity. The people of Australia look to you to prove in battle that you are capable of upholding the traditions of the British arms. I have no fear that you will worthily represent the Commonwealth's military forces. Your presence among the Imperial forces has, however, a wider significance, as representing the solidarity of the Empire and the Imperial spirit of loyalty to the King."
And now the men of Australasia are embarked on their mighty adventure. Six months later they were to thrill the Empire with a feat of arms as brave and brilliant as anything contained even in the annals of this, the greatest war of all times. So much they hardly dared to hope then, but they strove by every means in their power to keep themselves fit for the ordeal to come, when they would be matched against the trained soldiers of the greatest and proudest military Power history has ever known.
A glance around those forty troopships would reveal an interesting object lesson in the production of new types of the great Anglo-Saxon race. These are all picked men, whose parentage consisted of the same kind of Britons, drawn from the four root stocks of the islands of Great Britain. But the wide range of climate permitted between the tropical plains of North Queensland and the rugged fastnesses of the mountains of the New Zealand Southland has already produced types so divergent that it is hard to believe that they sprang from the same stock.
Compare McKenzie of Townsville, Queensland, with McKenzie of Dunedin, New Zealand, and the difference is apparent. They may be cousins: such things occurred in that wonderful army of Australasia; but the Northerner is dark, slight, lean and wiry. The lines are bitten in his browned face by exposure to many a glaring day in the merciless direct rays of a tropical sun. His broad shoulders and narrow hips make him an ideal athlete, but he is loosely built. He walks with a swing; his movements look slower than they really are; the sun has given him something of a languor that is not all graceful. But the fire of a high courage burns in his dark eyes, and the sea breezes have already brought a touch of colour to the pallor of his cheek. He is in superb physical health, for all that he is so sallow and hard bitten.
McKenzie of Otago weighs two stone more, though he has no whit of advantage in height. He carries no spare flesh, but is a big-boned, thick-set fellow, brought up on mutton and oatmeal. His cheeks are rosy and tanned with the salt wind that never ceases to blow over the wholesome island where he grows rich harvests of grain and tends his plentiful flocks. He is a stiff, great fellow, as hard as nails, and as healthy as a big bullock. His keen blue eyes look out from under a smooth brow unfurrowed by any care. He comes from a land where there is no want; his million or more of fellow New Zealanders have not yet built a big city or created a huge fortune. Easy prosperity, an abundance of physical well-being, and a continual strife for high moral excellence are the characteristics of his country, where the death-rate is the lowest in the world and the sale of intoxicants is subject to closer restriction in peace time than anywhere else in the Empire.
Between these two extremes are all sorts of modifications; the Tasmanian, who grows apples on the sunny borders of the beautiful Huon river and enjoys a country that resembles in many of its features the rustic beauty of the best parts of Southern England. He is a big, stocky fellow, this Tasmanian, with something of the rustic simplicity of an English yeoman. But he is not by any means as simple as he appears. Now look at Tommy Cornstalk from New South Wales, tall and lanky, slow of speech and swift as a miracle in action. Hear his queer slang as he talks of his "cobbers" or mates; and shrewdly reckons his chances of seeing Australia again within a reasonable number of years. The Victorian from the rich Western plains is a stouter man, who has an intimate acquaintance with that exasperating animal the cow. Butter has been to him a means of realizing prosperity; from his early youth he has milked so many cows every morn and evening. And when he wishes to express his opinion of the Germans he calls them cows. It is his last term of abuse.
The West Australians, for some reason not yet apparent, are, as a class, the heaviest and stoutest of Australians. They number many a jack-of-all-trades in their ranks, for they have learned to turn their hands to many things. They are bronzed by a climate where the sun seldom fails to shine brilliantly; healthy, shrewd, sane and full of reckless courage. The South Australians approximate more nearly to the Cornstalk type, and from them are drawn some of the finest riders in the ranks of Australia's celebrated Light Horse.
The speech of these Australasians varies remarkably. The short-clipped speech