GLORY OF GALLIPOLI

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 58, Issue 72, 27 April 1929, Page 5

GLORY OF GALLIPOLI

United Service.

TIME REYEALING THE TRUTH. Stateraent By Sir Ian Hamilton.

LONDON, April 25. Sir Ian Hamilton, proposing the toast of the Twenty-ninth division at a Gallipoli Day dinner, said he hoped the evidenee taken by the Dardenellcs Commission would soon be published. "Only very slowly is the complete sxory of Gallipoli escaping the censor s clutclies. Howevei', the first volume of the offieial history, published to-day, looks well. Rneouraged therebj7, we may hope the evidenee belore tbe commission jnay be allowed to seo the light. Tlie public imagine they have seen the evidenee because tliey have read tlie oommission's report. They haven't. It gives us priceless information of a cliaracter unobtainable elsewhere." Sir Ian Hamilton contrasted dining amid all the refinements of civilisation, besidc the survivors of the incomparable Twenty-ninth with the circumstances of the landing. He cited desperate moments of his long military career. He said, nevertheless, that the landing stood alone as something quite different. "Tlie date, April 24, and the Twenty-ninth Division not only defy but thrive upon time's jiassage. This is all the stranger because from the

UUlMJu iOl LCS ^lOllLlAcll iAIU. U Llltil V\ iat. were interested in keepiug the landing in shadow, while they turned the limelight from gaJlantry on to skill and fiom attack 011 to evasion. "Yet even while J. speak of war as an adventure 1 may be singing the swan song of that side of its existence. The static wars of the trenches, with barbed wire, flame throwens and poison gas, will never more poison civilisation, ex-service men won't have it. Remarque's work, 'All Quiet On the Western Front,' has definitely killed it The author deserves the Nobel peace prize lor ten years in succession, When all this immense war literature has been shaken down sufliciently in the sieve of time tbere will rernain one big soft shining ruby caught in the meshes — namely, the landings at Gallipoli."