BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

NOTES FROM
AN AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL

BY

HECTOR DINNING

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD.
1918

To
AUSTRALIA

These sketches were not originally written for publication in the formof a book; and there has been little opportunity of revising them withthat object. The idea of collection and publication came late, afterthey (most of them) had appeared in the daily press or in some otherjournal; and it came rather by suggestion from friends than on thewriter's initiative.

The collection is rough and inconsecutive. It does not attempt to givea complete picture of what was to be seen by an Australian at any stageafter embarkation from Australia. It is a series of impressions gainedfrom an outlook necessarily limited. I wrote about the things thatimpressed me most, chiefly for the reason that they impressed me; therewas also the motive of conveying to a small circle of friends somenotion of what I saw.

In the light of the offensive fighting of 1917 in Western Europe,a great deal of this book will appear feeble, and even flippant.Descriptions of Egyptian cities and of the Canal-Zone will seem akind of impertinence, in a book from the War-area, after tales of thefighting in Picardy. But they are published with the belief that afterPeace has broken out some soldiers may find an interest in awakeningthe memory of their first-love in the world outside Australia. For mostof them Egypt was that; and though in the desert they often declaredthemselves "fed-up" with Egypt, it was a transient and liverishjudgment, and their relationship with this first-love was never stodgy.For the East of the sort they stumbled across in Cairo and on theCanal, Australians discovered in themselves a liveliness of interestthat was almost an affinity.

But no apology for reminiscences of Anzac is called for, let thefighting at Pozieres be never so fierce. It is certain that Gallipoliis overshadowed by the fierce intensity and ceaselessness of thestruggle in France. But it is only the intensity of the Turkishfighting that is overshadowed. No intensity of the struggle on theSomme will ever eclipse the intense pathos of that ill-starredadventure on the ridges of Anzac.

These sketches were written hurriedly and in the midst of a good dealof distraction. There has been no time to attend to considerationsof style or arrangement of the matter within the limits of singlearticles. Often I was stuck for leisure, and sometimes for paper.Most of the Anzac sketches were written in the dug-out at nights incircumstances that would have contented transitorily the most Bohemianscribbler. Those from Egypt were mostly scrawled in a desert camp. Ineither case there was the Censor to reckon with. That is seized asanother excuse for inconsecutiveness.

My acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Cassell and Company for theirpermission to include in this volume the sketch of Anzac which appearedin the Anzac-Book.

HECTOR DINNING.

Somme,
December, 1917.