[Page 514]
[At the top of this and following pages of this letter is the word "Girls". Not transcribed.]
its saucepan is vertically below the star around which it swings. The W at twighlight is well above the North-Eastern horizon, and by 1 a.m. has moved high up in heavens vault. All the constelations is these parts revolve round the Pole star, that which marks the North, and which is the first in the handle of the small bear. When walking across the grounds in the early hours of the morning, my eyes often look up into the Eastern sky, there they finds reminder of you, because the Pleiades, these seven sisters, a few weeks since but twinkling just above the horizon, are now in full blaze of all their glory, while just to the South of them is the A in the head of the bull, and still further to the South Orion can be mapped out midst the other luminaries of the bright blue sky. You; Sydney, Macquarie street, fill anew spaces in my mind, wherefrom you are bidden good night, God Bless You is formed as a sentence oft repeated, and memory dwells with you afar off and wonders what you do and how you are. Mirabile dictu! Thoughts in their speed outstrip this lightening, and with equal rapidity pictures appear to illustrate them. Pleasur comes in that wise to the wanderer far far from his happy home. God's wise provision.
The fighting at Galipoli has been great with but little result. There has been fighting here within the Australian hospital staffs ever since the units started on their military career, a crisis was reached a few days back, when Ramsay Smith and Barrett were with one stroke deposed, the former is an officer of long service, the later is a Lieut Colonel of but few months military experience but he has been much in the military eye since he commenced, he is the only man who has been promoted here. The two appeared to me to be a combination which did the best of work in Cairo, & I looked forward to promotion for each of them rather than to the denoument which has come like a thunderbolt. Ramsay is staying at Sheppheards deprived of his command. Barrett has gone to Alexandria to recover from the shock. I have not been able to get at the truth in the matter, I have not time to wander round and mix with the intiguing that plays so large a part in human existance, you know that my part in it at home is very small, so it is here, too underhand it is for my tastes. I fear me that there has been some underhand work going on, and for the time it has gained the upper hand. And these tin pot things occupy places in mens minds when the Empire of which each of us is a citizen is threatened at its very roots by a foe who will stop at nothing to make of us secondraters. By jove 'tis odd. Yet there be minds so small that cannot mark the difference between the wee and the large; their mental vision not getting beyond that which is compassed by the question. Is this for my personal advantage?