Trooper Bluegum at the Dardanelles. Oliver Hogue

Among the legacies, good and evil, tragic and inspiring, which the Great War of Nations is destined to hand down to posterity, one of the most valuable and permanent in its influence will be the Literature which this Armageddon will have brought forth. In that fountain of knowledge the world will have command of vast stores of intellectual treasure—History, Poetry, the Drama, Philosophy, Fiction—which will continue to fascinate, to appal, to instruct, so long as books are read and the crimes, the virtues, the calamities and follies of mankind are subjects of human interest.

Such a literature, sanctified by the blood of millions of heroes—the world's best manhood—and by sacrifices and sufferings that have literally staggered humanity, will comprehend and crystallize events, compared with which all former world-cataclysms will seem but passing ripples on the ocean of life.

While in its inception and progress this greatest breach of the world's peace has exhibited a section of mankind as hardly at all removed from fiends incarnate, it has also shown men inspired by the highest virtues and striving for the loftiest ideals; and it has produced women only a little lower than the angels. Thus we seem to see, in all its naked deformities as well as in its beauty and majesty, the very soul of nations.

Not to "the future historian," but to whole battalions of historians will it fall to relate the tragic story of this mighty conflict, to pass judgment on the guilty authors of it, while giving to valour and the champions of right their due. They will have ample material to work upon, and they should have little difficulty in sifting out from the mass of evidence before them that which is true from that which is false, certainly as to the real instigators of the rupture.

As to the conduct and prosecution of this war of big battles, the fighting over (and under) thousands of miles of land and ocean, and in the air, the work of the armies of war correspondents has been, on the whole, worthy of the highest traditions of that dangerous class of literary work. In many respects it has even surpassed that of the great war chroniclers of the past, from Russell and Forbes onwards, who have shed lustre on British and foreign journalism. The old race of war correspondents has passed away, but their spirit survives. A new school has been founded. They who graduate in it must accommodate themselves to new conditions of warfare, wherein the Censor plays his part.

To the work of these writers the historians of the war will be largely indebted for their material in relating the operations of the opposing hosts. The private letters of soldiers throw a clear light on minor phases of the engagements in which they took part. These provide intensely interesting reading, too often of a painfully absorbing kind, their authors the eyewitnesses of and actors in the scenes they describe.

The "Trooper Bluegum" contributions to the literature of the war were written for and have appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. They are the work of a Sydney native, a trained journalist, who for the time gave up a responsible position on the literary staff of that journal to enlist as a trooper and serve at the front. As a military writer his reputation had been well on in the making when General Sir Ian Hamilton, a few years ago, came to Australia to inspect the Commonwealth Forces. Here came his chance as a military critic and descriptive writer on training operations. For his insight into

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