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[Page 583]

[At the top of this and most following pages of this letter is the word "Mollie". Not transcribed.]

of their number one might well be ashamed.
At 11 a.m. I have to inspect the ship with the Colonel Commanding & the Sea Captain. Occupying a few moments in chatting with you.

There are some fifty officers on board of all arms in the Service. The clergyman I have noticed in the distance, Anglican I should say, he did not look happy on deck about 10 a.m. Most of them bound for Anzac.

One steamer is astern of us just on the horizon, she was closer at 6 a.m., we are going faster than she. We presume that Artillery are on board, bound for somewhere
in the same direction as are we. Poor beggars many of the men horses & guns will never see home again. Home what a long way to home? Yet some of us must be here, the wise alone stay midst friends and surroundings where submarines are not and the wide wide world intervenes between them & this land of foreign devils, their ancestors heroes of our youthful imaginations. Wonder do those of byegone ages look down upon their descendants of today? If so do they recognise in them the same blood, that we filled them with when they fought at Troy, Marathon, and other fields whereof historians and poets have written and sung. Were they as we in fancy painted them? Or is it all a myth? What is the use of asking such questions? It is best to have the picture in the mind as the chivalry of youth painted them, imagining Hellen to be of the most beautiful, Paris of the most gallant, and the rest warriors of the highest class.

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