In Your Hands, Australians is a small book about post-war reconstruction in which Australia’s Official World War 1 Correspondent, C.E.W. Bean exhorted Australians to pursue the aims of peace with the dedication, organisation and tenacity with which they had fought what was then known as the Great War. Author Charles Bean was a noted journalist, special correspondent, leader-writer with the Sydney Morning Herald and published author before his appointment in 1914 as Australia’s Official World War 1 Correspondent. As the Official War correspondent, Bean became a prodigious and respected writer. His works included an astounding outpouring of dispatches, war reports cables, papers, correspondence, and records of interviews with the men of the AIF and, almost daily, detailed entries in his more than 220 war time diaries. During the war Bean wrote What to Know in Egypt A Guide for Australian Soldiers (Cairo 1915), and he was associated with three official publications: The Anzac Book (London 1916); From the Australian Front (London 1917) and the miniature newspaper, The Rising Sun. In 1917 he reworked and published a selection of his dispatches as a book entitled Letters from France, (London, 1917.) Bean’s proceeds from his war-time books were donated to the A.I.F. rehabilitation and patriotic funds. At the conclusion of the war, Bean left London in early January 1919 returning to Australia via Gallipoli where he led the Historical Mission which recorded and reported on the findings of the Mission’s on-site research of the 1915 campaign. On arrival back in Australia in May 1919, Bean’s recommendation for the writing of an official history was accepted by the Australian Government. His aim with the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914- 1918 was to create a perpetual memorial to the A.I.F and to ‘crystallise for all time’ the war's revelation of Australian character. Bean was animated by a guiding principle: that the history was to be a memorial to those who had served, suffered and died. Bean’s recommendation for the establishment of a national war memorial that ‘for all time … [would] hold the sacred memories of the A.I.F.’ was also accepted. On 11 November 1941, just before the final volume of the official history was published, Bean witnessed the opening of the Australian War Memorial. During his life Bean was active both in prose and person in a wide variety of civic and war-related works, causes and organisations. Most reflected