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On ANZAC Day the Library is pleased to launch its first collection/book of the month.Anzac Day is commemorated by Australia and New Zealand on 25 April every year to remember members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. Anzac Day is also a public holiday in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.
The Ellis Ashmead Bartlett papers (ICS 84) are listed on the ULRLS Archives Database, and include diaries, reports and photographs of the battles at Gallipoli as well as documentation on the aftermath of this unsuccessful campaign.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was born in 1881. He began his career as a war correspondent in 1904, covering the siege of the Russian port of Port Arthur by the Japanese, and entering the city with the victors. His account, Port Arthur: the siege and capitulation (London 1906) was well received. For the next few years he mixed a full social life in London and the country and in Paris (as described in his diaries) with periods as a war correspondent and writer and a developing political career. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Ashmead-Bartlett returned from Bucharest to volunteer for his old regiment, but was turned down for medical reasons. He was selected by the National Press Association as the London Press representative on the Dardanelles Campaign, which began in March 1915. He was soon critical of the conduct of the campaign by the Allied commander Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Staff. Returning to London in June 1915 (having survived the sinking of the 'Majestic' on 26 May) he discussed the campaign with senior ministers and politicians (Asquith, Balfour, Carson, Bonar Law, Churchill, Kitchener) and presented a memorandum on the subject to the cabinet. Ashmead-Bartlett returned to the Dardanelles at the end of June, his equipment now including a movie camera which he used to make the only moving pictures of the campaign. Further disastrous landings and assaults in August and, in his view, the continued mismanagement of the campaign led him to make another attempt to influence the government, by sending a letter to the Prime Minister with Australian correspondent Keith Murdoch. Though the letter was seized by the military authorities, Murdoch wrote another version from memory, and this was delivered to Asquith via the Australian PM Fisher. Ashmead-Bartlett was dismissed as a war correspondent in the Dardanelles on 30 September 1915 (he had already unsuccessfully applied to the NPA to be relieved). Exactly how much effect his interventions had will probably remain unclear, but Ashmead-Bartlett might have been partly responsible for the withdrawal from Gallipoli in 1915 and the subsequent resignation of Churchill. The issue of Ashmead-Bartlett's role in the campaign continued to be raised well after it ended. He was invited to give evidence to the Dardanelles Commission in 1917 and the publication of his books, Ashmead Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (1916) and The Uncensored Dardanelles (1928), and those of Sir Ian Hamilton and others usually caused a flurry of articles and letters in the press. Ashmead-Bartlett claimed that the War Office persecuted him after his dismissal and in 1916 attempted to prevent him delivering a series of lectures on the Dardanelles campaign in England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
The collections held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library include a substantial amount of material relating to Ashmead-Bartlett's involvement in the Gallipoli campaign as well as other material relating to the rest of his career. The collection includes diaries, which include covedrage of the Dardanelles campaign (1915) and the subsequent lecture tour of America, Australia and New Zealand (1916); correspondence (1892-1930, predominantly 1907-1930), relating mainly to journalistic activities, particularly in the Dardanelles; articles and writings (1900-1930) written by Ashmead-Bartlett, mainly as war correspondent; and a large collection of photographs taken during the Dardanelles campaign, including the one above.
