One hundred years ago this week, Australian enthusiasm for the war was waning and almost everywhere recruiting was dwindling to an unpatriotic-looking trickle.

Captain P. R. Wedd, recruiting officer for the region, gave this cranky, rally-attempting letter to the Queanbeyan Age. He appended to it a shame-making list of how few men various regional towns and hamlets had enlisted in the previous week. Queanbeyan had contributed just three and Cooma and Adaminaby just one each.

"The far-off notes of a bugle sound/And the pulse of the distant drum/Are not the call of those that have gone,/But to those that have yet to come./Our duty is calling, vengeance is calling,/Its cry will never he stilled/Till the last of the gaps in Australia's ranks/By Australia's sons are filled."

"These lines by a soldier at Gallipoli should be a rallying call for all patriotic Australians. The figures shown in the daily press for enlistments are like a valley of dry bones. Who is to blow the breath of life into them and make them a mass of pulsing humanity eager to serve for the Empire and King?

"A very large number of our Recruiting Associations are troubled with cold feet. [When will we] rise to the occasion, grasp the substance and drop the shadow?"