Happy Dispatches

Author’s Foreword

Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson

THE ROADS of the world lie open to those who, like Kipling’s marine¹, are prepared to buy a ham and see life. In the past forty years there have been opportunities of seeing a good deal, and the writer of these memoirs, though he may not have seen as much as some people, certainly saw a lot more than others. The walrus did not eat as many oysters as the carpenter, but he ate all that he could get.

A looker-on, they say, sees most of the game; and a writer who is not very proficient in the game may be able to say something about the players. In the course of the last four decades, the author has had the luck to see some of the great men of the world stripped of their official panoply and sitting, as one might say, in their pyjamas. Such men as Lord Allenby, Winston Churchill, “Chinese” Morrison, Rudyard Kipling and Lords Roberts, French and Haig, all had their human side. From notes made at the time, a series of lightning sketches of those celebrities, and lesser ones, are here presented. The interest in the subject may compensate for some crudity in draughtsmanship.

It should be explained that the author started on his travels unencumbered by any knowledge of the world, other than what could be gleaned from life in the Australian bush and in a solicitor’s office in Sydney: without any knowledge of war other than that learnt by watching sham fights in Australia. Consequently, if anything educational has got into this book it is only by accident. The various wars are only utilized as backgrounds for the great soldiers who stalked across the stage. One cannot write about great generals without mentioning wars.

Happy Dispatches - Contents    |     Chapter I. Sir Alfred Milner