Correspondence.

• Author: Hensley, Gerald
• Position: Letter to the editor

Sir,

In an otherwise thoughtful review of Australia's recently-completed history of the Great War in five volumes (vol 42, no 1), Dr Ian McGibbon ends with a surprising attack on the New Zealand centenary effort, now in progress, criticising it as a 'cobbled together effort' lacking coherence.

The New Zealand Centenary History Programme, a collaborative enterprise by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Massey University, the New Zealand Defence Force and other partners, does indeed have a somewhat different aim; that is, to present not just the well-known battles of Gallipoli and the Western Front, but also to cover such less 'coherent' topics as the New Zealand soldiers' own view of the war, the huge military organisation that had to be built up, hospital ships, the war at sea, the medical support including the veterinary services for the large number of horses and of course the home front.

As Dr McGibbon implies this is a larger canvass than the Australian volumes. It consciously aims to provide a much more comprehensive picture of the war than was done by the official histories of the time. This ambitious programme is underway and making good progress. Of the fourteen volumes planned, six have been published to date, including Dr McGibbon's excellent history of the Western Front. Authors have been commissioned and are at work on the remaining eight volumes including the war with the Ottoman Empire, the war in the air, Maori in the First World War, the home front and the war at sea.

The Australian volumes were fully funded by the Australian Army to an amount understood to be several million dollars. By way of comparison the New Zealand programme has not enjoyed such largesse and has had to fund each volume individually, relying especially on the generosity of Massey University, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the New Zealand Defence Force as well as contributions from other institutions such as the Auckland War Memorial Museum and individual donors. Nonetheless, despite this piecemeal approach to funding, the project as a whole is on target.

The aim throughout has been to publish histories which are both enjoyable for the general reader and maintain the highest standards of scholarly rigour and historical scholarship. Literary effort is notoriously open to dispute but Dr McGibbon's is the only complaint made so far. We remain very proud of the work published to date and confident that the series will add greatly to New...