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Chapter XII Of Sundry Reflections on the Campaign at Anzac

—Masefield: Gallipoli.

No doubt professional soldiers will for many years debate the wisdom of this and that detail of the strategy and tactics of the campaign. But all this will have less and less interest for the average man who is concerned far more with the feelings and sufferings of men, with their valour in face of the imminent death, their steadfastness in the hour of uttermost trial, their patience when helpless in weakness and agony, and their brotherliness toward each other when all hope of comfort in material things had passed, and their shaken souls had no refuge save in God and in each other. For us of New Zealand the fighting at Anzac must always remain in the nature of an epic. It was a tragedy that moved through terror and exultation and triumph to failure and defeat. And now nearly twenty years afterwards we are realizing that the failure, after all, probably did not make very much difference. The page 120accumulated hatred and ignorance of the peoples were bent upon blind destruction, and victory or defeat at Anzac made little difference to the ruinous storm of fury that was destroying the destructable things in an unsound civilization.

The historical process is a continuous one, stretching from the dim past through the present to the most distant future. How men were to die on Chunuk was determined largely by how men and women had lived on the farms and in the towns of New Zealand for forty and sixty and eighty years before. But it was affected also by the way men of our race had died from Aylesford to the little tent on the frozen waste of the Antarctic; and for our Maori brethren by the deeds of their ancestors stretching from the remote past to the earthen parapets of Orakau and the three days of valour. But the way men died on Chunuk is shaping the deeds yet to be done by the generations yet unborn who will fill this land of ours in the great days to come. There can be no greater test of the worth of their national feeling than that they should, for sufficient reason and a good cause, be ready and able to die bravely. Such, after all, is the supreme virtue; because, where it is voluntarily embraced for the sake of others it is the finest manifestation of brotherhood; and brotherhood in action is of all things the highest and most beautiful thing that we men can attain to. Anzac was an epic of valour, and the seed of valour sown on those barren hills of death was to blossom redly through the murky darkness of the years of battle.

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When the New Zealanders went to war, they were ignorant of its causes, and innocent of its meaning. No alternative was suggested by the politicians, or the Press, or the parsons. To crowds of ordinary boys there seemed to be no other possible or decent thing to do but to go and fight. And yet blinded though they were, they clung at least to the belief that the way of sacrifice is the way of life—at least for others. And so, however shocking was the disintegrating effect of war upon many of the finer virtues of life, this clinging to the necessity of valour has left, as it were, a remnant which can be made the foundation of greater things in the life of a people still young enough to be plastic to great experiences.

Before the war it might be said that the men and women living in New Zealand were unaware of the fundamental underlying unities which bound them together as a people. They had no definite sense of nationality. They were "colonists;" Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, who had left their homelands behind them but still felt that they belonged to the old lands. After the Maori war the settlement had gone on so quietly and steadily that men had not perceived in the busy life of the colony with its rapid material expansion, the subtle blending of blood and culture, the almost imperceptible establishment of an environment different from anything existing in Britain and yet growing naturally from it, any difference to the things they had known. And yet these differences had developed, and it needed only some catastrophe, some great suffering, borne page 122together, some great deed done in common, to make the New Zealanders conscious of their identity as a nation. Such a deed and such suffering they found on the slopes of Sari Bair. When the August fighting died down there was no longer any question but that the New Zealanders had commenced to realize themselves as a nation. The process was not complete, but it was well begun.

This developing sense of nationality gave to the New Zealanders a more critical outlook upon the deeds and doings of other peoples. It was, of course, inevitable that comparisons should be drawn with regard to the English battalions. As these were in the main unfavourable, it is difficult to say those things which would be of most value, because on the one hand it may be considered arrogance, and on the other a lack of courtesy and of charity. Most of the British troops at Anzac were Territorial or New Army battalions. These were in the main composed of volunteers who had received much the same training and had had much the same experience as the New Zealanders.

But the difference between the English and New Zealand troops was marked. Our men were taller and stronger, deeper-chested, better muscled, capable of greater and more prolonged physical effort. They were better able to withstand the fatigue of marching and digging and fighting. They were more resolute in attack, stronger in defence. Their general standard of intelligence was much higher. Among the New Zealanders it was difficult except on close acquaintanceship to pick out a man of university edu-page 123cation from those who had not had more than the ordinary course at a primary school; and more often than not the latter made up in general intelligence for their lack of technical or academic knowledge. There was no dialect—either of the Oxford or Cockney variety.

Beside them the English looked like adolescent boys. As soldiers the English failed repeatedly. The disaster at Suvla Bay was partly the result of weak leadership on the part of the Corps Commander; but it was also due to inability on the part of the troops to stand up to the demands made upon them by the exigencies of the situation.

Now why was this? After all, Englishmen and New Zealanders were of one blood. Very few of the men from the Dominion were three generations from the Old Country—not so very many were even two. The majority were probably only one. It might be argued that the original colonists were above the average. Many of them were certainly extraordinarily fine men and women but it is doubtful whether the rank and file were greatly superior. The climate of New Zealand is not dissimilar to that of the British Isles. To the writer, the difference that has developed would seem to be mainly due to the following factors:

Practically all New Zealanders are well fed from infancy. We are a food-producing country, and even under the worst economic conditions we have experienced, there has usually been food—and good food —available in sufficient quantities. Housing conditions, even when somewhat rough, are at least page 124healthy. There are no great cities with overcrowded slums. A very large percentage of the population work at healthy out-of-door occupations, and those in shops and offices usually participate in some branch of sport. There is probably far more actual playing of games in New Zealand than almost anywhere else. It is only recently that there has even been a suggestion of any very serious development of professionalism in sport with the consequent degradation of fine games to gladiatorial exhibitions before crowds of non-players. Our educational system in the primary and secondary departments has reached a high level. True, there are grave weaknesses in the university system, yet a high percentage of our people avail themselves of the facilities offered. Then, too, the fact that class distinctions are very slight makes for a greater freedom and for the development of a strong sense of self-respect within the individual. All these things working together have tended to raise the general level of physique and intelligence.

In England, on the other hand, the steady process of industrialization under the prevailing conditions of capitalism has tended to make an environment, destructive to the possibility of developing the best life possible to the community at large. There seems recently to have been much serious thought among Englishmen concerning the problem. A great authority has even gone so far as to say that one man in every ten is useless from the point of view of economic efficiency. If the reasons that have been advanced for the high standard of the New Zealanders are valid, it would appear that the substitution of page 125a better environment can within one generation do much to improve a general standard.

For nearly a hundred years we have been fortunate, and the courage and steadfastness and foresight of our pioneer fathers have given to us foundations of national character and strength, but to-day we stand at a critical point in our development. The level that has been fairly easy to reach so far, will become increasingly difficult to maintain in the future, and we can only continue to grow if we have a great development of the spirit of brotherhood that was so marked a feature of our life at Anzac.