So he becomes resourceful, inventive, open to suggestion. He is certain there is a counter to every blow delivered by Fate, if one could but discover it. To expect to fight, to realize that there is always a chance to win, but a reasonable expectation of defeat, to seek expedients without being discouraged by failure; all these things make good training for soldiering. They are all part of the daily life of the Australasian, even of the Australasian of the cities. Disaster, sudden and swift; change, inexorable and sweeping; disappointment, bitter and undeserved; he recognizes them all as everyday factors in his existence. The fighting spirit cannot be held long in abeyance if they are to be countered and overcome.
Then the Australasian has the fighting equipment. He is superbly healthy, in spite of his leanness and the drawn look due to the lines that life bites into the faces of even the young men. These men of the sun-dried plains and the rocky ranges look upon illness as something unnatural, something to be ashamed of and concealed; they seem almost to have the instinct that prompts the sick animal to hide from its fellows, and sometimes impels the hale beasts to slay the sick one for the reason that illness is unnatural, dangerous, and an offence. Australasia has the lowest death-rate of the world, a significant fact in the health record of a nation. A nation of athletes! Swift runners, fast swimmers, tall lean men whose movements are made with incredible and deceptive swiftness, inured to the saddle and to long marches under a tropical sun. Compare a regiment of them with a regiment of home-bred Britons, and the advantage in smartness of appearance would lie with the latter. The Australasian is inclined to be loose-jointed and slabby; they use the word "lanky" themselves. They are inclined to economy of physical effort, to walk with a slouch and a swing. Do not be misled by the lack of "snap" in their movements; it is deceptive.
Enterprise and daring are theirs by heredity. They have descended from a race of adventurers. Their immediate forbears were those whom the love of adventure drew to new and little known countries, who were not content to rust out in quiet English villages, to economize for a lifetime on oatmeal and potatoes in a Scottish croft, or to die of rheumatism on the edge of an Irish bog. They married brave girls, and crossed the long oceans to become pioneers of the newer races, transmitting their health and love of adventure to a whole nation.