Cirrus@Austlit

This article’s purpose is to examine the formative years – culminating with his frontline service – of an Australian First World War veteran. The intention is to reveal how they influenced his subsequent life and helped to re-define his persona as an anti-war pacifist, expatriate scholar and prominent translator. The study uses a life-study or biographical approach drawing from a rich vein of primary and secondary sources – personal correspondence, unpublished and published war records and other contemporary documents. How he came to translate into English Erich Maria Remarque’s significant novel Im Westen nichts Neues to make it a phenomenal commercial success worldwide is explored as the pinnacle of his scholarly life and as a major contribution to the literature of disenchantment with war. [From the journal's webpage]