In a long survey of Australian historical writings published recently in The Pattern of Australian Culture, Professor John Ward does not mention the vast enterprise of the war histories. Not even in passing does he refer to the man who has published more words and reached more readers than any other Australian historian: C. E. W. Bean. Dr Bean has not been without personal honour for his work as official his­torian of Australia’s part in the first World War, but the praise that means most to an historian is use; and his writings have not been much used by other students of our society.

If the war histories were written for the specialist student of military matters, their neglect would not be surprising. But they were not; ‘our volumes’, Dr Bean has said, ‘were written for the general reader’. That was his purpose, and his achievement. His accounts of the battles of Gallipoli and France are intelligible to the reader who has no acquain­tance with the theory or practice of warfare, and they have proved popular. Can it be, then, that the war histories are narrowly anti­quarian, to be read as school magazines are read, to be savoured as family photographs are savoured, reminders of an experience to those who took part in it but having nothing much to say to the rest of us, aids to nostalgia rather than understanding?