Thank you very much. Les Carlyon, ladies and gentlemen. We all know that Les Carlyon is a great and beautiful writer, but this book, which I have read from cover to cover, is a masterpiece. I believe it will be seen in time as an epic work of Australian history. His beautiful style shines through in all of the chapters in the book.
We know as Australians what profound an influence the Great War had on the shaping of this nation. The Lost Boys was the subtitle employed by one paper over the weekend to capture the scale of the losses that a very young nation suffered and in every detail, Les has done this traumatic and lasting story justice. As with Gallipoli, he has traced through the narrative of the battles, he's traced the personal stories of scores of Australians. He's put the attitude of the nation to the war in context. We supported it, we believed it was justified and on any objective test it was justified in Australia's interests. But the scale of the losses was too great for such a small and young country and on two occasions, the nation rejected conscription.
The remarkable thing about the Great War is that even 90 years on, it is still possible to feel anger when reading the graphic accounts of the pitiless slaughter in so many of the battles, and in that sense, it is a great anti-war work, as well as the other descriptions that can possibly be given to it.
The book brings out, of course, the underlying paradox of our remembrance as a nation of those events. We remember, of course, Gallipoli, and rightly so because that was the first great encounter and did define our country in an indelible way. We remember Pozieres and Fromelles, the futility and tragedy of the loss of life in those two battles, and collectively the allies remember the Somme and Passchendaele.
Yet in relative terms, and certainly so far as Australia is concerned, the feats achieved in 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux, Mont St Quentin, the Hindenburg Line, where Australians undeniably carried a disproportionate share of the burden, are by comparison not as remarked and as remembered.
The book is balanced and objective. He appropriately honours, because it's the truth, the extraordinary role played by the Australian Imperial Force and its shouldering of a disproportionate burden and the huge role that it played in the ultimate victory in 1918. But he is generous to others. He's generous to the French for the role they played in 1918 in the second Marne battle which he described as the tipping point, if there were one.
He's generous to the Canadians and particularly their senior General Currie who he ranks alongside Monash as being one of the outstanding, if not the outstanding two Generals of World War I. And he's also appropriately generous to the British Midland Regiment for the role that it played in the final stages of the battle for Peronne.
I found fascinating the historical contextualising of so many stories and the one that sticks mostly in my mind is the heart-wrenching story of the doctor who treated the Sarajevo assassin Princip as he was dying in what became Poland. And the doctor was Jewish and 25 years later he was to return to that very place in a Nazi concentration camp.
The detail is extraordinary down to a detailed examination in the different texture of the mud in the Somme compared to the mud in Passchendaele. He goes in some detail into some of the more fascinating personal rivalries and I found his description of the attempts of Bean and Murdoch to torpedo Monash's appointment as Commander of the Australian Corps quite fascinating.
Some of the personal exchanges are extraordinary. I was struck by his account of Haig's interview with Australian journalists after the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux where the focus of Haig's interview was the need for the Australian Government to authorise the introduction of the death penalty as a method of discipline.
How does he treat the individuals? I think he's very objective, warts and all in relation to Monash, but undeniably he emerges as our greatest figure of that war at a senior level and probably still the greatest field commander of World War I. The reputations of Haking and Gough remain justifiably very dim. He's fair to Haig, rather more balanced than some have been.
Ludendorff emerges in a very unflattering light. Lloyd George, about which so much has been written, I must say comes from Les' account in a rather more unflattering way. He was continually unhappy with his Generals yet he did nothing about it, and it's a reminder to all of us that at the end of the day, it's political leaders who make declarations of war and commit military forces and in the end, they have to accept overall responsibility.
As to our own inimitable Billy Hughes, he got him right I think. He's got all the good stories about Billy Hughes and a few more, particularly the one of him lounging on the grass after the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux looking some of the Australians up in his own particular style.
It is a wonderful book. I found it intensely absorbing. We all know what a wonderful writer Les is, and he's really quite excelled himself. And I couldn't commend the reading of the book to you more enthusiastically.
That terrible conflict had a lasting impact on our nation. It permeated our society for generations and still does so. For so long after it, it was very hard for people who had been involved to speak of it. And perhaps only it's been in the last 20 years that we have begun to put it into a greater context and to understand the scale of the sacrifice of our own country, the character of our people who came through and no Australian can read this book without feeling a sense of great respect and admiration for the fighting men of this country. And that is the finest description that I can give of a masterpiece by a wonderful Australian writer.
Thank you.
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