It must ever be remembered, to the credit of Australia, that its leading men were the first to recognise this characteristic of our Officers, and to lend them all the influence of their public as well as private countenance and sympathy.

It is this fact which makes it a permanent pleasure to record their kindnesses to The General.
"Came on to Melbourne, on my way to Sydney.

Met a body of representative men to lunch, amongst them Sir James McBain, President of the Upper Chamber, Mr.Deakin, an ex-Cabinet Minister, a very nice fellow indeed, a man who appears to me to have more capacity than any one I have yet met in the Colonies.

He made a speech, and at the close drew me on one side, and said he wanted to do something for us, and if I could only tell him what it should be on my return to Melbourne, he would be very glad to do it.
"I am sure he is prepared to be a good friend.

He is a coming Prime Minister, I should think." (The General had no idea then that all Australasia would, so soon, be united into one Commonwealth, much less that Mr.Deakin would, for so many of the next ten years, be Premier of the whole.) But a remark he once made respecting the reported scepticism of some highly-placed Colonials might be made with regard, alas! to many "statesmen" of Christian lands nowadays, and we cannot but see in that fact, and in the friendliness of so many such persons with us, a token of the meaning both of the scepticism, and The Army's position.