GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY!
There is no need for any other details as few are surprised by the announcement. The news is the result of months of posturing and three days of ultimatum by Britain to Germany.
On Monday 3 August, Germany declares war on Russia. On Tuesday 4 August, Britain issues an ultimatum to the German High Command following their invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg.
On Wednesday 5 August, by 12.30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, Germany has failed to respond to the British initiative and war is declared on Germany. Telegrams are sent out by the War Office to the dominions to arrive at 12.30 p.m. in Australia, too late for the newspapers, so that the nation has to wait until the following morning, 6 August, to learn that it is officially at war.
The Herald is high on rhetoric and filled with earnest injunctions for every able-bodied man to do his duty to King and Country in the war to end all wars.
Though nobody seems able to give a sensible reason why Australia, or anyone else for that matter, should go to war, this doesn’t cut any mustard with the prevailing sentiment. The Australian public is overwhelmingly in favour of getting involved in the fray, going to the aid of the mother country whatever the reason.
In the heat and fervour of the moment the nation seems more than happy to sacrifice the flower of its youth willy-nilly, in what will later seem the silliest of quarrels between a bunch of old men. It will result in the loss of countless young lives.
The hostilities all began with the assassination in Sarajevo of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In itself, his death is no sound reason for even the most junior cabinet minister to get out of bed and put on his slippers to read the telegram telling of the Archduke’s murder.
But the assassination comes after months of squabbling and quibbling between the major nations, Germany, Russia, France and Great Britain. There is by now so much confusion, cross-accusation and name-calling that the almost comic death of a minor prince seems as good a reason as any to fight each other. It’s simply the spark needed to set the dry tinder of failed diplomacy alight. The entire matter is not unlike two schoolboys calling each other names and threatening each other in the playground, until eventually they are required to fight or be declared humbugs.
All this has been said by the more sober news columns in the weeks leading up to the declaration of war. But now, the sheer stupidity of the warring factions is forgotten. The call to arms takes on an urgency and there is a feeling of elation and adventure in the air. Australia will join the mother country to show the Hun who’s the boss and no bloody mucking about. Old men tweak their moustaches and polish their medals in anticipation and young boys think of the grand adventure to come. The government has agreed to supply twenty thousand fully equipped fighting men and there is a veritable stampede to get to the recruitment centres in time to enlist before the quota is exceeded.
A poster appears on hoardings all over Sydney and Melbourne — and soon in every small dusty town and church hall in the land — showing a grandly moustached General Kitchener, scowling under a stiff-brimmed cap, his forefinger pointed directly outwards. ‘Your Country Needs You!’ the poster proclaims. And s
o starts the first day of the greatest slaughter of men in the history of human warfare.
Factory workers, clerks, shop assistants, hat-maker apprentices, stable hands and dock workers walk off the job and line up, jostling each other for places in the long queues outside the recruitment centres. In the country, stockmen, rouseabouts, bullock drivers, shearers and ploughmen make for the nearest country town to join up, walking from the scrub farms and the sheep runs, others simply leaving the mobs they’re driving to the older men. Their mood is infectious and they call out ‘Cooee!’ to their mates, urging them to come along to join what a popular recruitment poster calls ‘The grand picnic in Europe’. In three days the shutters come down, the government can take no more volunteers. Australia has answered the call of Mother England.
Inside the same day’s newspaper, on the right-hand column on page nineteen, the sub-editor’s clever little headline ‘Simple Simon meets the hangman’ announces the execution, at dawn that very morning at His Majesty’s Prison, Long Bay, of William D’arcy Simon, late of Lachlan River and Yanco. The briefest details follow, only sufficient for a reader seeking some relief from the high-blown rhetoric of war, to know that justice has been served in society’s other little battle against people who kill people for no apparent reason. Poor Billy Simple, he hasn’t even got the timing of his execution right. On any other day a hanging would make the news headlines, but today he rates no more than half a column in the deep interior of the famous Sydney newspaper.
Jessica has risen before dawn on this same morning.
It is bitterly cold in the little tin hut and as she prepares to light a fire she realises she hasn’t brought in any wood the previous night. She goes outside, to see that the moon is still up and that its silver glow makes the frost on the paddock look like winter snow, an enchantment of pure white under a full moon on the bitter morning of Billy’s death.
Her teeth chatter and her fingers grow numb as she removes the topmost logs to find dry wood beneath them. She wants to be wide awake when they hang Billy, to be sitting thinking of him when they release the trapdoor and poor Billy’s worries are finally over. Jessica’s quite certain that if she thinks about Billy hard enough he’ll somehow know he’s not alone. Jessica isn’t aware yet that war has been declared and so she doesn’t know that Jack, too, is being taken away from her, destined to sail with the very first contingent of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade. They will be sent to Britain where they will undergo further training.
Jessica has been in the tin hut now for two weeks. Joe, who visits her every three days to bring her rations, has not mentioned when she can return to the homestead. She has asked him on two previous occasions but he has simply replied, ‘Not yet.’ Now she’s vowed not to ask him again.
Joe has brought a milking cow and calf over to provide her with milk and, except for the bitter cold at night, she is reasonably comfortable. Jessica’s relationship with her father during the past couple of months has grown steadily worse and, if the truth be known, she’s grateful to be away from the lot of them.
Where the hut is located has always been one of her favourite places on the selection, situated .on the banks of a creek where the water flows most of the year. It’s still too cold for mosquitoes and the frost has killed most of the fly larvae, so surroundings are close to idyllic. Jessica knows that the conditions will deteriorate in the summer, but she expects to be back in the homestead by the time the warm weather comes.
Joe has brought her the newspapers a couple of times and she is busy re-reading each of her books yet again. Joe’s also carted in several rolls of chicken wire and instructed her to build a turkey run. ‘Keep you busy, no point in sittin’ around moping,’ he says. Jessica is increasingly heavy with child and, though she enjoys the work, her progress is slow. Carting her big belly about causes her to tire easily.
The next three months pass without Joe once suggesting that it’s time to come home. The turkey run at the back of the hut is completed though no turkeys are in evidence. Jessica reluctantly accepts that she will remain in the tin hut until the birth of the baby, a prospect which frightens her enormously.
‘Who’s gunna help me give birth?’ she asks Joe.
‘Your mother,’ he answers brusquely, ‘she’s been reading up on it.’
‘Can’t I have the midwife, like Dr Merrick said? You know what he said about my hips an’ all?’
‘Nah, you’ll be orright, your mother’s a sensible woman.’
‘But she doesn’t know nothing about delivering babies,’ Jessica protests.
‘Why not? She’s had the two of yiz!’ Joe answers implacably.
‘Father, we can’t keep it a secret forever. Folks will know soon enough.’
‘Don’t worry your head about that. You never know what could happen, girlie.’