THE AUSTRALIANS IN FRANCE.* NoTmNG pleases a father so much
as a gift from a grown-up son. It is not that he has doubted the child's affection, or that he desires any return for the care that he has expended on the boy's upbringing. He is gratified by the proof that his task as a father is accomplished, and that the son, grown to min's estate, is able and willing to carry on the good family tradition. Senti- ments of this kind moved the British people at home as they followed with eager interest the doings of the Dominions in the war. The great achievements of the voluntary Armies of Canada and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, on various battlefields testified to the success of the British Empire as a propagator of strong democratic nations. Australia and New Zealand, which had no histcry before British people colo- nized them, and which knew nothing of the racial complications that perplexed the other Dominions, flattered the pride of the Mother Country. In those favoured lands, with a mild and equable climate and with unlimited room for expansion, the British stock seems to have found a peculiarly congenial environ- ment. The tall and sinewy Australian, with not an ounce of
• (1) The Australian Victories in France in 1015. By Sir John Monash. tondon : Hutchinson. [24s. net.]—(2) The Story of the Fifth Australian Division. By Captain A. D. Ellis. London : Dodder slid Stoughton. [15s. net.]
superfluous flesh on his bones, is the very type of Briton that we admire most. His frank independence, his love of adventure, his passion for sport, are racial traits which we value all the more because we cannot now exhibit them to the full in our own densely populated country. The old race seems to have renewed its youth in Australia, whose record in war, as in peace, forms one of the most memorable chapters of .British history.
There will be many eager readers for two substantial volumes recounting part of the work of the Australian Army in France. In one of these Sir John Monash, the Australian Commander- in-Chief, describes the magnificent services of the five Australian divisions in 1918. In the other Captain Ellis records the work of the Fifth Australian Division from its arrival in France in 1916 to the Armistice. The story will remain incomplete until officers of the other divisions do for them what Captain Ellis has done for the Fifth. But the Australians, like the other British troops, were at their best in 1918, and the two books together give a good idea of their supreme achievement. It may be noticed that Captain Ellis devotes a chapter to " The Battle of Fromelles," July 19th and 20th, 1916, officially reported as " some important raids," but amounting, in the author's view, to a " severe local reverse " in which his division and the Sixty-first Division failed, as others had failed a year before, to take the outworks of the Aubers Ridge. The Fifth Division had reason to remember the action, as it lost 5,513 officers and men. Six battalions lost more than half their strength. The attack probably served to detain in Flanders a German division or two which might have been sent to the Somme. It also taught the necessity of very thorough preparation for any enterprise against the German trench-lines. At Polygon Wood in the autumn of 1917 the Fifth Division was more successful. But the full effects of their hard training and dearly bought experience were not manifested till the last year of the war, when the Australians, now as methodical as they were daring, proved irresistible when- everthey attacked, even at the main Hindenburg Line. Sir John Monash, who led the Third Australian Division until May, 1918, and then succeeded Sir William Birdwood as the Corps Com- mander, attributes their victories in no small degree to the fact that the Australian divisions were at last brought together in a corps—four of them in April, 1918, and all five on the eve of the offensive of August 8th which convinced General Ludendorff that the game was up. We-may be sure that the Australians had learned a great deal in fighting side by side with British, Canadian, and French divisions and under the guidance of experienced British officers, as indeed Sir John Monash acknow- ledges in many complimentary passages. But as the war went on the Australians were able to train officers of their own for the higher commands, and it was natural and fitting that in the last campaign they should wish to show the world what the Australian Corps could do by its own efforts. Sir John Monash gives a minute and most interesting account of his preparations for the attack of August 8th, 1918, in which the Australian Corps was the centre of the Fourth Army, occupying a front from the Somme southward to the Amiens-Roye railway. His plan involved a double " leap-frog " of divisions. The Fourth and Fifth Divisions held the line. The Third and Second Divisions attacked through them and stopped on the " green line." The Fourth and Fifth Divisions then took up the running and attacked through the Third and Second, stopping on the " red line." Two reserve brigades of the Fourth and Fifth were then to push forward, if circumstances permitted, to the " blue line." This very difficult operation was carried out with such skill and vigour that in a few hours the Australians, preceded by a host of tanks, overran all the German positions in an area twelve miles wide and seven miles deep, so that, in General Ludendorff's words, six or seven German divisions were " com- pletely battered." We have all heard how the armoured cars penetrated far behind the enemy's lines, shooting down German Staff officers as they sat at lunch and wrecking convoys miles away from the fighting. Sir John Monash tells us that this was no accident. Special gangs of men, following close behind the tanks and the advancing infantry, cleared and repaired the main road as soon as the enemy fell back. Within four hours from " zero " the road was ready, and the armoured cars could set out on their amazing adventure, which prevented the enemy from rallying. The Australian commander was not satisfied. There was some delay, he says, in the Third Corps north of the Somme, so that his left flank was enfiladed from Chipilly and obstructed in its advance. In view of Sir John Monash's criti- cisms, it is only fair to the 58th (London) Division to say that they met with a desperate resistance from a Prussian division in the wooded country below the steep Chipilly Ridge, where tanks could not be used. The remnant of the Londoners with some Americans nevertheless captured the ridge next day. In their attack on the 8th, the Australians alone took 8,000 prisoners and enormous quantities of artillery and supplies, and they had. only 1,200 casualties.
The capture of Mont St. Quentin, held by picked men of the Prussian Guards, on August 31st, 1918, was unquestionably one of the decisive moments of the war. General Rawlinson, according to Sir John Monash, had said : " And so you think you're going to take Mont St. Quentin with three battalions ! What presumption ! However, I don't think I ought to stop you ! So go ahead and try !—and I wish you luck." The Australians had the luck. Two weak battalions of the Fifth Brigade stormed the hill in the dark hours of the early morning and clung to the position, while other brigades fought desperately to the north and south of the hill, breaking many furious enemy attacks. The Thirty-second British Division meanwhile lined the Somme opposite Peronne and distracted the enemy's atten- tion. The capture of the hill made the town untenable, and the fall of Peronne meant that the Germans must abandon the Somme and fall back to the Hindenburg defences. To breach these was the last and most difficult task set the Australians. Sir John Monash's account of the fighting on September 29th, 1918, on the Hindenburg Line between Bellicourt and Le Catelet, where the St. Quentin Canal runs underground, is new and important. The First and Fourth Divisions had been withdrawn to refit, and had been replaced in the corps by two American divisions, the Thirtieth and the Twenty-seventh. The American troops were naturally good fighting-men, but they were new to war, and they were unacquainted with the tech- nique of a modern offensive which the Allies had learned by bitter experience. In particular, they were too eager to advance and did not pay enough attention to the " mopping up " of enemy dug-outs as they went along. Sir John Monash points out, too, that the Twenty-seventh Division, having failed two days before the battle to reach the whole of the Hindenburg outpost line from which the main attack was to start, had too far to go when the attack began, and was not properly guarded by a barrage. He wanted, he says, to postpone the attack for a day, but found that this was impossible. The Americans advanced with great gallantry and broke into the enemy's lines, but the Germans hiding in the tunnels and dug-outs emerged when the Americans had passed and attacked them from the rear. Thus the Twenty-seventh Division suffered very heavy losses, and the Third Australian Division, which was to pass through the Americans and complete the victory, had two days of very desperate fighting in the Hindenburg works before it could attain its objective. We may notice in this connexion the finest compliment that Sir John Monash pays to British troops. He says, referring to the section of the canal south of Bellicourt, that he " regarded it as unlikely that the deep canal itself could be stormed except at great cost," and that he " was not prepared to commit any Australian troops " to such an enterprise. He therefore moved his corps to the next sector northward. But what seemed impossible even to the Australian commander was done by our Forty-sixth Division, who, as he says, " achieved an astonishing success." The Midlanders' heroic feat in crossing the deep canal by means of lifebelts, rafts, and boats, and in driving the strong enemy forces from their seemingly impreg- nable works on the far side, was indeed of incalculable value to the Australians on their left. The combined efforts of the _Ninth Corps and of the Australians and Americans at this vital part of the enemy line ensured victory. When the Hindenburg defences had been overrun, the Germans had lost the war. The Second Australian Division was withdrawn from the line on October 5th, 1918, after it had captured Montbrehain, and the Australians were not called upon to fight again. They had done their part.
Sir John Monash concludes his excellent book with a very warm tribute to his officers and men, and takes occasion to answer the " very stupid comment " on Australian military discipline. We may agree with him in thinking that " the mere outward forms of discipline " may become a fetish, and that in modern war the private soldier's individual initiative must not be suppressed. But it does not follow, of course, that the Australian methods would suit other armies, in war or in peace. Each army has its own conception of what is meant by discipline.
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