given--the motive, which keeps him trying day after day, is the desire
that no man shall say a word against Australia. I don't know if his
country is thinking of him--a good part of it must be--but he is
thinking of his country all the time. Australia has made her name in the
world during this war--the world knows her now. It is these men--not the
men who shout at stadiums and race meetings at home, but the simple,
willing men who are described in this letter--who are making Australia's
name for her--and just at present holding on to it like grim death.

Even the life of a duck in a farmyard drain becomes in a wonderful way
supportable when you tackle it as cheerfully as that. It comes to the
Australian as a shock, at the first introduction--the Manning River
country after the Manning River flood has subsided is, as a New South
Welshman suggested, the nearest imitation that he has ever seen. But
then there was blue sky and dazzling sun over that; whereas here the
whole grey sky seems to drip off his hatbrim and nose and chilled
fingers and the shiny oil sheet tied around his neck, and to ooze into
his back and his boots. It is all fairly comfortable in the green
country from which he starts. There has been a fairly warm billet in the
half dark of a big barn, where the morning light comes through in
strange shafts and triangles up in the blackness amongst the gaunt roof
beams. There was a canteen--which is really an officially managed shop
for good, cheap groceries--in an outhouse at the end of the village;
there were three or four estaminets and cafés, with cheerful and
passably pretty mademoiselles, and good coffee, and very vile wine,
labelled temporarily as champagne. There was also--for some who obtained
leave--a visit to a neighbouring town.

The battalion moved off early--its much-prized brass band at its
head--and the men who didn't obtain leave at the tail. The battalion is