Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 509
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[Page 509]
Mediterranean expeditionary force). The cabled items are interesting and such as we never see here. For instance, the information in regard to the 600,000 tons of anthracite coal for Sweeden. There is no reason why it should not be correct, there is plenty of coal being produced in Germany, and it is probable that the miners under William II worked while the Welshmen were squabling about what they should be paid. Training has told adown every age of the world, and it is likely to do so in favour of the Teuton in our time. What will be the result to the map of Europe? Far other than that which is expected at the present moment by heaps of the amateur field marshals who criticise the acts of the mighty and puny alike. Such creatures as Springthorpe.
I may add a few words to this tomorrow, meanwhile good night.
Tabbie [A line of Xs and Os.] Jordan [A line of Xs and Os.] Kitty [A line of Xs and Os.]
15.8.15. 9.30. p.m. What will you people say when you read the casualty list that is being built up during these days at Gallipoli, the number estimated, of Australians and N. Zealanders amounts to 15,000, just think of it, fifteen thousand. What a large number of families that will effect. The two sets of barracks next to me have been taken from the Egyptian authorities and have been converted within few days into an hospital where five or six hundred patients can be received. Cairo will have a vast number of men under treatment within the next few weeks, and when one thinks about the other hospitals that are in Egypt and elsewhere it makes him place the number of men under treatment at a very high figure. It is sad. The flower of a country striken even unto death for the sake of what, for the cause of right against might. Will there ever be an end to war? Never until the nature of man is changed, and the ideas of the unit and the crowd agree upon what is right. Pilot asked long ago: What is truth? So to day might any common man ask: What is right? As no answer was given more than nineteen hundred years ago, so none can be given to day, that would be worth the uttering. The young and uninstructed could tell you at once, but the statement would be so devoid of knowledge that it would not be worth listening to. It is not to be thought possible by any sane mind that the different persons in even one line of thought can agree upon every point, and if they cannot then there will always be cause for quarrel mongst the sons of men. This is the greatest of all wars but it will not be the last, the last in my time, mayhap not in yours, the memory of it will exist for one generation it may be for two, but after that period it will be forgotten and the people of the newer time will find cause for quarrel, just