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[Page 2]
The time is the month of May 1916 and the place is Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt where on the 13th September 1822 the Egyptian Army under Arabi was broken by two Squadrons of the Dragoon Guards. Almost on the site of that historic event there is a wide-spread camp of Australian soldiers. The country is a desert with a railway passing through it like a great artery for the flow of the vital blood of progress. There is, too, thanks to the bounty of the merciful Nile, a canal of life-giving water flowing like a stream of silver through the pale gold of the sun-bleached desert sand.
The air is pure and sweet. The sky is like no other sky in the world: it is an illusion and a reality that grips and confounds. It is a pageant of light: light that bleaches with ruthless and terrific power, that gilds with transcendent glory,