The morning showed no sun--showed nothing farther than six yards away. Men showed a face above demolished canvas and drew back hastily, stung and half-choked by the driving grit. In those tents still standing the furniture could not be judged by appearances. Thick dust covered everything as with a garment. Regimental office tents that had fallen before the gale had lost documents that could not be replaced or easily recreated. Food in the mess was inedible; no one ate except to satisfy the more urgent demands of hunger. The outdoor work had to proceed. You couldn't see more than in a North Sea fog. Collisions were inescapable. You couldn't smoke; you couldn't speak, without swallowing the gale. Men got disgusted with continuing to live. On the third morning the desert smiled at you as though nothing had happened. The quiet and the purity of the air were like release from pain. Men set to work at cleaning their hair and alleviating a desert throat. Anzac Day came upon us at Serapoeum--the first anniversary of the day of that landing which has seized and fired the imagination of the Empire. No doubt there are other empires than the British which marvelled at the impetuousness of that maiden proving of Australian temperament; for it was temperament that carried us up. The world had no sound ground for being surprised at success on the 25th of April, except in so far as the world was ignorant of Australian temperament. Yet surprise contended with adoration in the newspaper headings which announced our success in planting a foot on Turkish ridges. But inaccuracy in a use of terms is a quality not inseparable from journalistic headlines in times of public excitement. The fact is that, notwithstanding the world's expectation of the fatal elaborateness of the Turkish preparation to receive us, there was no call for surprise at the event in people that knew Australian conditions of life and resultant Australian character. And, granting that as known, the fact that we were fleshing virgin swords was no legitimate further ground for surprise, though it was commonly published as such. It should have been anything but that. People knowing Australians would be due to recognise that, in all the circumstances, they would fight better, under the eyes of the world, in a probationary struggle calculated to establish their reputation than would experienced soldiers who knew more than they of what the task exacted and of its possibilities. Ignorance of warfare other than theoretical was in no sense a handicap to men of Australian temperament: to such men it was material aid. In a word, Australians could not help themselves at the Landing. Were it otherwise, our troops would not have overstepped requirements to the extent of unorganised and spasmodic pursuit of the routed enemy. Success at the Landing was the inevitable result of temperament rather than the contrived result of qualities deliberately summoned up on the occasion....