Joe Thorp had got a job in the general merchant’s office in Hobart. In a letter he mentioned the enormous excitement over the war, with newspaper specials. “The military are taking their chance and using all their influence and power over the people for defence purposes, whilst the numbers up at the military camp, Pontville, for those going to the front, increase every day, and it is so difficult to get away from the fact that Australia is a warlike nation (as well as an amusement-loving nation!).”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine