AustLit

Editor's note: In Happy Dispatches Paterson describes his adventures in foreign wars. He recalls starting on his travels 'unencumbered by any knowledge of the world, other than what could be gleaned from life in the Australian bush and in a solicitor's office in Sydney'. But it was a self-styled man of the world - the friend and confidant of Winston Churchill - that in 1901 the Boer War veteran gravitated to China to cover the Boxer Rebellion. His stay was brief and belated, the real action of the uprising having already taken place before his arrival. But the trip gave him the opportunity to meet the legendary Australian journalist, G. E. 'Chinese' Morrison, who had reported the Rebellion as the Peking correspondent for The Times of London.

From Chapter V: A Dutch Consul (60-63) and Chapter VII: 'Chinese' Morrison (87-94, 96-97)