The Great War, 1914-19 / by C.E.W. Bean

Creator
Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow), 1879-1968
Call Number
FERG/3708 2 copies
Created/Published
Melbourne : Govt. Printer, [1919?]
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[To be read on the occasion of Presentation of Peace Souvenir Medals.]  

THE GREAT WAR, 1914-19.  

By Mr. C. E. W. BEAN  

Official War Correspondent with the Australian Imperial Force.  

(Written at the request of the Commonwealth Peace Celebrations Committee.)  

IT is over. The enormous effort of the men- —yes, and women and children—of every decent nation  

is finished. • The last gun has sounded. The last troop-train winds homewards. The last big  

transports, turned homeward, are punching white foam out of the southern rollers. The vast  

ammunition factories will presently settle down to enrich the world with peaceful goods. The trains  

will carry busy passengers and commerce the big steamers will move about the world with teeming  

holds; the little trawlers will unship their guns and go forth to their fishing the earth will become  

itself again and Australia will settle down to carve out her new and splendid future. For the  

submarines which scattered murder across the seas are now safely chained in British port. And  

the Army which almost forced wicked religion upon the world is beaten and harmless through the  

heroism of the world’s good men. We are free to be happy again. Sixty thousand Australians bought  

us this happiness with their lives.  

Some of you may remember how, five years ago, when war fell upon the world,* there  

marched past our windows men in every sort of civilian dress, with their white shirt sleeves rolled up  

and carrying wooden rifles. They drilled, they practised, they exercised. Some people even laughed  

at them. Nobody laughs at them to-day.  

For they were Australians who rushed forward to prevent dreadful thing from happening in  

the world. The rulers of Germany determined that, because Germany was mighty power, therefore  

she should have her way whether right or wrong. small sister nation had offended her and she  

determined to try upon the world her wicked rule that whoever stood in the way of strong nation,  

right or wrong, should be crushed. She knew that she was strong—and that was all she cared for.  

She had practised soldiering with all her people and had prepared huge cannon and immense factories  

of ammunition. In that fateful week in August, 1914, when France and Russia were deeply occupied  

with other things, she fell on them swiftly at full strength. She had small chance with the French  

forts and mountain barriers. But because the little Belgian nation, which lay near by, possessed  

flat country to march through, and was too weak to keep their great armies out of it, the Germans  

suddenly marched into its land which they had promised to protect, and struck at France vile blow  

in the back. And when the Belgian nation, small though it was, struck back a*t them, they burned  

the villages and killed the people in order to cow them into quietness.  

Britain hated war and was hesitating to fight. But, on the moment when they heard of what  

happened in Belgium, the British people flung themselves straight in beside the French across the  

path of the Germans. In Australia and in New Zealand, 12,000 miles away, men said “So long as  

we are alive in the world we shall give all we have so that this sort of thing shall not happen in it.”  

They left their offices, their tools and farms, and hurried to offer themselves to cross the sea. They  

drilled in their shirt sleeves. In two months they were formed into regiments and the first splendid  

force of them sailed from the West.  

So it was that this small army from the barely known lands of the South ranged itself by the  

side of every good and great nation of the world. Beside the splendid army of France the slender  

British line, barely one man deep in its early water-filled trenches, amongst the sodden ditches and  

hedgerows, with scarcely ammunition even for its few guns, was holding the Germans who looked down  

C. 10536.  

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http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37870383

APA citation

Bean, C. E. W & Commonwealth Peace Celebrations Committee (Australia). (1919). The Great War, 1914-19 Retrieved April 23, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37870383

MLA citation

Bean, C. E. W and Commonwealth Peace Celebrations Committee (Australia). The Great War, 1914-19 Melbourne: Govt. Printer, 1919. Web. 23 April 2025 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37870383>

Harvard/Australian citation

Bean, C. E. W & Commonwealth Peace Celebrations Committee (Australia). 1919, The Great War, 1914-19 Govt. Printer, Melbourne viewed 23 April 2025 http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37870383

Wikipedia citation

{{Citation
  | author1=Bean, C. E. W.
  | author2=Commonwealth Peace Celebrations Committee (Australia).
  | title=The Great War, 1914-19
  | year=1919
  | section=2 leaves ; 35 cm.
  | location=Melbourne
  | publisher=Govt. Printer
  | url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-37870383
  | id=nla.obj-37870383
  | access-date=23 April 2025
  | via=Trove
}}

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