Читать книгу There and Back: The Story of an Australian Soldier 1915-35 - Edward Lording - Страница 4

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Greatly I appreciate having been asked to pen this foreword to There And Back, a story which, I am confident, is crowned already with that most difficult distinction, great usefulness. Some outstanding quality must justify any narrative, but, it seems to me, in this one all such qualities are so inextricably mixed that it is impossible to select confidently the impression that stirs one most, for the humorous precocity of the author's initial attempt to enlist is quite overshadowed by an awed comprehension of the lurid dangers into which he was rushing headlong, and the glowing eagerness of his youthful ambition is somehow made pitifully poignant by the cruel price of suffering he was made to pay.

But valour, endurance, and intelligence are the qualities that shine most conspicuously and all unconsciously in these pages, and these things must be an inspiration to every youth who gets this book in his hands. No better trial for manhood could ever be devised than a twelvemonth of service with a wartime battalion of Australian infantry, and the manner in which "Ted" stood this testing, while still only a boy, should strike an inspiring note in the heart of every young man.

Living recklessly, the dangers he faced were tenfold, but the only way a youth can win the admiring confidence of mature men is illuminated here with a clarity unmistakable. The one brief period of strutting and aping at the vices of older men is the clear background against which his sober determination to excel and prosper shows best, and any experienced soldier will instantly descry in him those particular qualities of conduct that were so highly esteemed by Australian fighting troops.

Self-reliance, confidence, and alert service brought him preferment shrewdly bestowed, and ready humour and efficiency retained it.

Any word-monger's easy flowing fancy can capture on dexterous pen the fictitious poses of an ideal hero, but few men can aptly express their own sufferings. The very intensity of this author's agony seeps unknowingly into his words and they sear the heart. Understanding of the awful price in suffering the war made some men pay, should awake anew a watchfulness that the things they held for us are not despised; and a brief comparison of the grim facts in this story with the settled security of our common lives to-day should win an instantaneous sympathy for the author's tale.

While its merits should win a ready praise, it is the humour that flashes in patches of brightness that brings an indescribable stamp of conviction to this narrative, and it builds up a certitude that the writer has told his message in the most fitting way as

The happy warrior...

Whose high endeavours are an inward light

That makes the path before him always bright.

And the characters that live with him also are all striking types recognizable anywhere to-day among returned soldiers, and their story moves with a swinging rhythm, a provocative march-time lilt, that must captivate all veterans of the old A.I.F., as, out from the strange confusion of early camp days, the narrative gathers gradually increasing cohesion and momentum in passing over the seas and crossing Egyptian sands, until, like a curving, rushing wave, it bursts at last with a surging shock on those German breastworks at Fromelles.

Ah, what a tragedy was there, when all Australia felt the crushing weight of war's blundering futility. What a realization it was that war was waged by incompetent men as it always is, for war is a peculiarly incompetent activity. So we must now remember it not as a glory, not as a defeat, but as a cruel punishment for the crime of insufficient understanding of the problem of war. We know now that our strong hand methods have failed, the weapons we used destroyed more than we gained, but this we did, we proved that the problem of war is a moral one, that it is a rotten thing based on rottenness, yet a just scourge from which the world is not yet worthy to be free.

"AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER."