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diff --git a/47269-8.txt b/47269-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b4f9316..0000000 --- a/47269-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1652 +0,0 @@ - OVER THE CANADIAN BATTLEFIELDS - - - - -This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at -http://www.gutenberg.org/license. If you are not located in the United -States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are -located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Over the Canadian Battlefields - Notes of a Little Journey in France, in March, 1919 -Author: John W. Dafoe -Release Date: November 07, 2014 [EBook #47269] -Language: English -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE CANADIAN BATTLEFIELDS -*** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines. - - - - - -[Illustration: A Landmark of the Canadian Battlefields] - -These ruined towers of the Church and Monastery of Mont St. Eloi--relics -of the revolutionary wars of France--overlook the Battlefields of Vimy -Ridge and Arras, and were a familiar landmark to tens of thousands of -Canadian soldiers during the war. - - - - - *Over the - Canadian Battlefields* - - _*Notes of a Little Journey in France, - in March, 1919*_ - - - By - - JOHN W. DAFOE - - - - THOMAS ALLEN - TORONTO - - - - - COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1919 - BY THOMAS ALLEN, TORONTO - - - - PRINTED IN CANADA - - - - - TO - GENERAL SIR ARTHUR CURRIE, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., - THE CIVILIAN COMMANDER OF THE - CONQUERING CANADIAN CIVILIAN ARMY - THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED - BY THE AUTHOR - IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF - COURTESIES EXTENDED TO HIM. - - - - - *AUTHOR'S FOREWORD* - -The articles which go to make up this little book were written for -newspaper publication immediately following the journey over the -battlefields, in France in March, 1919, which I had been enabled to -make, through the courtesy and kindness of the Canadian Corps Commander. -They were published in April, 1919, in the Manitoba _Free Press_, -Winnipeg; and are now republished at the request of many friends who -have asked that they be made available in more permanent form. - -Though the articles reveal their journalistic origin alike in their form -and in a certain evanescent timeliness, already partly out of date, it -has not been considered advisable, under the circumstances, to re-cast -them into more permanent form. They are re-published as written save -for some slight textual corrections. - -J.W.D. - - - - - *CONTENTS* - - -A Landmark of the Canadian Battlefields . . . _Frontispiece_ - -Dedication - -Author's Foreword - -Chapter I. A Hurried Pilgrimage -Chapter II. The Battlegrounds of the Souchez -Chapter III. The Abomination of Desolation -Chapter IV. The Marks of War -Chapter V. The Canadian Hammer Strokes -Chapter VI. The Civilian as Warrior -Chapter VII. Compensations - - - - - *OVER THE - CANADIAN BATTLEFIELDS* - - - - *CHAPTER I* - - *A HURRIED PILGRIMAGE* - - -In the first days of March, 1919, I made hurriedly a pilgrimage that -will be made in more leisurely manner by thousands of Canadians in -coming years. For while the memory of the Great War endures and Canada -retains her national consciousness, Canadians, generation after -generation for centuries to come, will follow the Canadian way of glory -over the battlefields of France and Flanders, with reverent hearts and -shining eyes, learning anew the story of what will doubtless always -remain the most romantic page in our national history. For lack of time -I had to forego my visit to the bitter battlefields of Flanders: Ypres, -where the Canadians held the line against all odds when German hopes for -the Channel ports appeared for the moment to be on the point of -fulfilment; Festubert, St. Eloi and Sanctuary Wood, the scenes of -desperate encounters where the Canadians learned hard lessons in the art -of beating the Boche; and Passchendaele, where the very doubtful and -questionable Flanders campaign of 1917 had a victorious finale by the -resounding achievement of the Canadian corps in capturing the ridge -which had so long defied assault. But the other Canadian battle-fronts -I saw, albeit hurriedly and under weather conditions which were far from -propitious; and perhaps some notes of my impressions may not be entirely -lacking in interest to the Canadian public. - -But before going on to this something might be said on the general -subject of visits to the Canadian battlefields of the western European -front. At the moment of course this area is sealed to visitors. It -constitutes a military zone which can only be entered under the -authority of a "white pass." Unless one is accompanied by a member of -the military staff he cannot get this pass nor would it be of use to him -because there is in this belt of wilderness which lies athwart one of -the oldest and most populous areas in Europe no means of transportation -and no accommodation for the unattached civilian. But this of course is -a condition that will speedily pass. - -In a year's time, or less, the tides of travel will pour over these -highways; and among the travellers will be all sorts and conditions of -men; from the idle sightseers seeking a new sensation amidst these mute -memorials of human conflict to the reverent pilgrim following step by -step the road of sacrifice and glory trodden by his countrymen in the -Great Crusade. - -It is desirable that for Canadians making this pilgrimage there should -be, so to speak, a beaten path which they can follow with the certainty -that, with a minimum of time, they can bring away with them something -approaching adequate understanding of Canada's contribution to the great -European campaigns. There is a proposition, not without strong support -in army circles, that Canada should erect and maintain in perpetuity a -number of battle shrines which would be stations on this pilgrimage. The -suggested sites are Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Bourlon Wood and some point in -the district of Amiens, either in Courcelette or further south, in the -track of the Canadian avalanche of August 8, 1918. These shrines, it is -proposed, should contain plans of the adjoining battle-fields in -topographical relief, maps, diagrams, detailed histories of the actions, -information as to the Canadian cemeteries in the neighborhood--they -should be the headquarters for all that a Canadian, ten, twenty or fifty -years hence, will want to know. If this plan is carried out there -should also be available official Canadian guides fully equipped to tell -the story of Canadian achievement. - -The project is one well worth careful consideration. Canada's -participation in the war is a fountain from which succeeding generations -should drink deep, learning thereby lessons in valor, sacrifice, -patriotism and national pride; and nothing will make this living -inspiration more available than maintaining in perpetuity upon the -European battle-fields authentic records of the deeds done there. It is -a reasonable expectation that once normal conditions of life are resumed -thousands of Canadians will yearly make the tour of the Canadian -fronts--visiting in turn the Flanders battlefields; the scenes of the -heroic achievements around Vimy and Lens; that portion of the tragic -field of the Somme "which is forever Canada" by virtue of our dead; and -finally following step by step the Canadian advance during the One -Hundred Days, which saw Germany's military effort pass, by successive -disasters, from the high tide of the July offensive to the hopeless ruin -of the November surrender. Even a casual inspection will take several -days for, during their 42 months of war, the Canadian troops ranged wide -and shed the glamor of their achievements upon many localities. The -names of these places, many of them already storied from battles long -ago, make a list full of significance to the Canadians of today and -tomorrow. Langemarck, St. Julien, Festubert, St. Eloi, Sanctuary Wood, -Courcelette, Regina Trench, Vimy, Hill Seventy, Passchendaele, Amiens, -Arras, Monchy-le-Preux, Bourlon Wood, Cambrai, Valenciennes, Mons. - -In my three days flying trip in a motor out from Paris and back again I -covered in some sort the more southern fields of Canadian operations. -We struck into the battle-fronts from the west having gone north from -Paris by the traditional road to England--out St. Denis Gate and north -through Beauvais, crossing the Somme at Abbeville and then turning -eastward towards Arras. At St. Pol, which was the extreme limit of the -range of a high powered German naval gun, the first signs of shell fire -were seen. Thereafter mile by mile, as we sped through a countryside -familiar to Canadian troops as a rest area, the evidences of war damage -increased until we ran into the battlefields of the Souchez and saw the -slope of Vimy rise gently to the sky-line. From there our course ran -over the Ridge to that huge pile of red-brick rubble that was Lens--once -a city of 50,000 souls; thence on through Douai and Denain to -Valenciennes. This was the way of the German retreat; at every -crossroads hasty repairs to the paved way bore witness to their scheme -of systematic destruction; over every canal and stream the road was -carried on improvised bridges, the original structures sprawling in -ruined heaps athwart the waterways. From Valenciennes--relatively -damaged but slightly--we ran into Cambrai, the latter half of the road -through villages that bore ample marks of the rear-guard actions between -the Germans and the onward-pressing Canadians. From Cambrai--a shell of -a city systematically destroyed by fire by the Germans as they fell -back--the road to Arras took us through the centre of the great -battlefield over which the Canadians drove the Huns in the fighting of -late August and September--to the left a huge blur on the sky-line seen -through the driving rain was Bourlon Wood; to the right the ruins of the -villages where the desperate German counter-attacks at the end of -September were stopped; further on, three huge streaks of blackened wire -stretching across the gaunt countryside marked the once-vaunted -impregnable Hindenburg line; then to the right rose the high ground of -Monchy-le-Preux, wrested out of hand from the Germans by the Third -Division in the early hours of a bloody August day; all about, on both -sides of the road as far as the eye could see stretched the tortured and -scarred countryside over which the tide of carnage flowed and ebbed for -two years; and so to Arras--a ghost city where the shattered houses, no -longer habitable, stand in their empty loneliness. From Arras we went -to Bapaume by a road which crossed diagonally the old German-British -front line; from Bapaume to Albert, across the waste of the Somme -battlefield; on to Amiens in which the tides of business are again -feebly flowing; along the highway to Roye, with the great Canadian -battlefield of August stretching along the left for ten miles--a road -memorable, too, to Canadians because along every mile of it Canadian -cavalry and motor machine-gun men fought against the German flood in -March 1918; in every copse hereabouts there lie Canadian dead. From -Roye southward to the Oise we passed through a countryside which was -fought over, foot by foot twice last year--to say nothing of the battles -of earlier campaigns; everywhere there were ruin, desolation and the -marks of death. After crossing the river the ruins of war diminished, -but not until we passed Senlis--where the marks of the beast left by the -Hun high tide in 1914 are still to be seen--did we leave them behind; -and so came back to Paris by the old Roman road over which the legions -marched to Flanders nearly 2,000 years ago. - - - - - *CHAPTER II* - - *THE BATTLEGROUNDS OF THE SOUCHEZ* - - -The storming of Vimy Ridge on that wintry April morning two years ago -was neither in its actual achievement nor in its military consequences -the greatest feat of the Canadian Expeditionary Force; but it holds, and -it may continue to hold, a unique place in the Canadian consciousness. -It was the first cleancut definite stroke by the Canadian Corps acting -as a recognized unit of the greater British army; and there was in the -achievement something dramatic and climacteric which riveted the -attention of all watchers of the long-continuing duel between the great -armies along the western front. For Vimy, before it had any Canadian -associations, was a tragic name! It was the western-most bastion of -German power in Europe. Against its gently rising slopes the fierce -French valor that had conquered the valley of the Souchez and its -bordering uplands, had dashed itself in vain; the hillside was white -with the unburied bones of the men who won the ridge in October, 1915, -for a day, only to be swept back by a German counter-attack of -overwhelming force. The Germans proudly boasted the impregnability of a -position which protected their strangle-hold upon the coalfields of Lens -and gave them a jumping-off place for a further adventure westward to -the Channel ports. When the greater portion of the Ridge was stormed in -a fierce sustained assault by the Canadian troops on the morning of -April 9, 1917, the reverberation of the achievement went round the -world; and its echoes will long persist. - -Vimy Ridge--a swell of land five miles in length which rises so -gradually on the southern slopes that one hardly realizes the elevation -until he stands upon the crest and notes how the ground falls sheer away -to the eastward--marks the eastern rim of one of the bloodiest -battlegrounds of the whole war. Many Canadians have but the haziest -knowledge of the battles that were fought hereabouts in the early summer -of 1915; but the flower of the highly trained armies with which France -and Germany entered the war lie buried here. - -When, after the German defeat on the Marne in September, 1914, and the -check to the Allies on the Aisne, the race to the northern sea began -with the Germans keeping a step in advance and thus blocking the -constant French attempt to outflank them from the west, all the high -ground in this region was occupied by the Germans; and when the fronts -became rigid the French found themselves in a dangerously insecure -position with the German possession of the high hill of Notre Dame de -Lorette threatening all the coal fields of northern France and the -southern shore of the Channel. During the winter of 1914-15 the French -organized their attack, and in the early summer they set themselves -doggedly to the task of turning the Germans out of these strong places. -The enemy held the towering hill of Notre Dame and the cluster of houses -known as Ablain St. Nazaire at its foot; across the little Souchez river -the village of Carency on a slight eminence; a mile or so to the south -the hamlet of Neuville St. Vaast, on the crest of a swell in the ground; -southward from the latter point and stretching eastward almost to the -base of Vimy Ridge they had prepared a huge network and maze of trenches -and redoubts which acquired a sinister renown under the name of the -Labyrinth. - -For weeks during the summer of 1915 the battle raged here continuously; -and literally the French drove the Germans foot by foot and yard by yard -from these positions; out of Carency and down the Souchez valley; back -step by step from the heights of Notre Dame; trench by trench the -Labyrinth was wrested from them; and by the late summer the Germans had -withdrawn behind the great ridge of Vimy which lay athwart the path of -the advancing French. There they stood savagely at bay, and when the -French, in unison with the British attack at Loos, north of Lens, -essayed in October to storm the hill, they exacted a bloody revenge for -their earlier defeats. Afterwards this area became part of the British -front, when the French moved to the south bank of the Somme; and after a -year of inactivity, varied by a single unsuccessful attack upon a -portion of the ridge's defences by a British brigade, the Canadians, in -the winter of 1916-17, took over this sector and set themselves the task -of taking the Ridge as their initial contribution to the great spring -offensive that was foreshadowed. - -I stood almost in the centre of this huge battlefield in the closing -hours of a sombre March day; a light mist was shrouding the crests of -the uplands; in the valleys the darkness of night was already falling; -for fleeting moments the dying sun, through a breach in the cloud -battlements, threw gleams of wintry sunshine over the scene. Nearby were -the abandoned ruins of what was once the hamlet of Carency. To the -right Vimy Ridge rose slowly to the sky line, flaring up at its northern -end into the steeper slopes of "the Pimple." Next came a narrow valley; -and then the ridge resumed, turning now almost due west and rising to -the height of Notre Dame de Lorette that dominated the landscape. At -the base of the sloping terraces that came down from the hill-top the -little river Souchez ran, turning north-easterly through the gorge and -onward towards Lens. This little stream has known its current dammed by -the wedged bodies of dead men; its banks have brimmed with human blood. -Beyond the stream at the foot of the hill were the ruins of Ablain St. -Nazaire; and nearby all that remained of the sugar factory about which -raged an Homeric struggle, noted in the battle bulletins of those days. -Up those slopes, now so still in the fading daylight, the French pushed -their way day by day and week by week until they planted their flag on -its crest. To the south and east they fought their way over Neuville -St. Vaast and through the tangled mazes of the Labyrinth. Within a -radius of three miles from the place upon which we stood, over one -hundred thousand French soldiers who fell in six months' fighting in -1915 lie buried. These incredible figures were vouched for by an -officer of high rank. - -When the Canadians moved into this area in the winter of 1916-17 they -made their homes amidst the wreckage of these battlefields. They took -over the trenches along the lower slopes of Vimy Ridge which were -reachable only by communication trenches and sunken roads over open -ground in plain view in daylight of the Germans who held the crest of -the ridge and its western slopes half-way down. Behind this active -front they built their secondary positions on the battlegrounds of 1915. -Thus the First Division was encamped upon the ground of the Labyrinth; -the divisional headquarters were in a German dug-out thirty-nine steps -downward from the surface. The reshifting of trenches and dugouts in -this neighborhood was not, the Canadians found, to be lightly attempted; -for the place was one huge--if unmarked--cemetery where French and -Germans by the thousand had been buried where they fell. - -Over this area for a distance of miles the Canadian corps had planted -its camps as the line moved forward in front. Along the roads which -cross in all directions one could read the sign-posts of the regiments -pointing the way to collections of Nissen huts and smaller wooden -structures. Here, too, were defensive trenches and strong redoubts -prepared for the reception of the enemy in the event of a German -advance. One could easily imagine how busy this scene had been in the -summer and autumn of 1917 when the Canadian corps were encamped -hereabouts. But on the March evening when I saw it, it was bleak and -cheerless beyond the power of words to express. The tide of war had -flowed past and left the wrecked countryside vacant--the huts empty and -the camps abandoned save for, here and there, a handful of men engaged -in salvage work; the roadways, once swarming with life, deserted and -silent! Over all desolation and loneliness rested like a pall; -everywhere the wreckage of battle, the debris of destruction; everywhere -the sense of man's mortality! A grim and melancholy expanse; yet withal -holy ground, for here men by the tens of thousands died for mankind! - - - - - *CHAPTER III* - - *THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION* - - -Wherever in our flying trip we touched the border line between the -actual battlefields and the secondary districts of the war--as for -instance Amiens and Valenciennes--we saw human life finding its way into -normal channels; but over the areas of continued and desperate fighting -there was still the abomination of desolation. Here in the very centre -of an ancient populous civilization there stretches for miles in every -direction a wilderness--not the empty loneliness of a new land awaiting -the inflowing of human life, but a man-made desert speaking of the -ruthless savagery of man in the sway of his passions. Here there are -ruined farmsteads, vanished villages, once fair forests shredded into -pulp, huge piles of debris marking the site of storied cities, destroyed -temples--and hardly a sign of human life except the last dribbles of the -great tide of uniformed men that once poured over these highways. Thus -an afternoon drive from Arras to Cambrai was through a profound silence. -Here was a wide highway running straight between two famous French -cities through the heart of an ancient land. In the whole distance we -met only two or three military cars engaged in the aftermath of war; and -a few small working parties of "Chinks" thousands of miles from their -native Manchuria. - -Standing on the motor's seat, one looked north and south, east and west -to the skyline. Everywhere silence, profound, brooding, fateful! Not a -curling smoke-wreath on the horizon bespoke a human habitation. The -country is open, rolling upland--in its physical conformation it seemed -to me almost the counterpart of southern central Manitoba as it was -30-odd years ago before the industry of man dotted it with thriving -farmsteads. - -The acme of destruction is to be witnessed at Lens. This was the work -of the Canadian artillery. In October, 1915 campaign the British drove -for Hill Seventy, north of Lens, and the French for Vimy Ridge, both -fruitlessly, despite initial success. It was assumed in all the -"expert" military writing of that date that the possession by the Allies -of these two hills would force the evacuation of the Lens coalfields by -the Germans. The Canadians took Vimy Ridge in April, 1917; they pushed -down the reverse side of the ridge and across the level ground to the -outskirts of Lens within the next three months; in August they stormed -Hill Seventy by one of the most brilliant minor operations of the war. -But the Hun, contrary to the forecasts of the strategists, refused to -quit Lens. It was half ringed by the Canadians, who kept it drowned in -poison gas and buried under a constant rain of artillery projectiles; -but the Germans, hidden in the rabbit warrens with which they -honeycombed the foundations of the city, held on, and to every attempt -to take possession of the ruined town they opposed a desperate and -successful resistance. The Canadian plans included the storming in -October, 1917, of Salumines Hill to the south-east of the city. Had -this been done--and no Canadian staff officer had any doubt of the -practicability of the enterprise--the Germans in Lens would have been -trapped like rats; but the demands of the higher strategy intervened and -the Canadians were shifted to the mud of Flanders, where they achieved -the brilliant but fruitless distinction of taking Passchendaele ridge. - -So the Germans stayed on in Lens, and the Canadians, when they returned -to their sector, resumed their daily occupation of spraying them with -gas and pounding them with shell--with the result that when the line -gave further south and the Germans had to fall back, the Allied armies -entered Lens to find it the completest expression of the destructive -possibilities of artillery fire that was supplied by any theatre of war. -In this city, which once housed 50,000 people, not a single house -remains--it is one huge red mass of red brick rubble through which -roadways have been painfully excavated by labor battalions. Yet a few -of the original inhabitants have crept back and can be seen standing in -little disconsolate groups around the dust heaps which were their -homes--living meanwhile in the German dugouts under the town. As I -drove through the town on a blustering March morning, there still -lingered in the air, four months after the firing of the last shot, the -faint smell of human mortality. For in these huge rubbish heaps, if -they are ever cleared away, will be found hundreds of Germans buried by -the shells that destroyed them. - -One hears controversy amongst the experts as to whether Lens or Arras is -the most affecting illustration of what war does to organized human -society. There is much to be said for both sides of the argument. In -Lens ruin is so complete as to almost blur the sense of human -association; but Arras is the pitiful spectacle of a huge collection of -uninhabitable houses--domestic shrines from which the fire has gone cold -and can never be revived. There they stood gaunt, tottering and -cheerless--windows out, doors hanging awry, gaping holes in the walls, -the roofs fallen in, the broken and sagging floors and all the pitiful -and touching relics of destroyed domestic life, pictures still hanging -on the walls, broken furniture, torn and destroyed clothing. The Grande -Place of Arras--a succession of attractive buildings in the Spanish -style all built to a plan, with a wide colonnaded walk beneath them -around the square--is a dreadful, heart-rending ruin. An occasional -building in Arras affords shelter to returning refugees; and there is -here a considerable and increasing population. In one narrow street a -number of shops have reopened and make as brave a showing as is possible -among the ruins. - -Lens and Arras are the ruins of war--the by-product of great powers in a -death-grip. But Cambrai is a ruin of another sort. It is a monument to -the malignant spirit of the Hun in defeat. As the British and the -Canadians closed in from the south and the north they spared the city -which they knew was fated to fall to them; no shell fell in its borders -save by inadvertence. But this did not avail to save this ancient -famous town. The Canadians entered it to find it deserted, all the -civilian population having been carried off, and on fire from a hundred -conflagrations systematically set with the aid of inflammable bombs, -petrol and firewood; and while the Germans fell back towards their own -land a pillar of smoke from the burning city bespoke their rage at being -robbed of their prey. Cambrai is the burned-out shell of a town--a mere -wraith of its former charms. All these cities--and to them may be -added, St. Quentin, Albert, Ypres, and a hundred smaller places--will -have to be rebuilt from the foundations upward; but first they will have -to be demolished stone by stone and the rubbish carried away--a huge -task which is not yet begun, awaiting perhaps the reparation money which -will be of right the first after-the-war charge against the resources of -Germany. - -In the track of the war machine there was no sign as we passed of any -attempt to repair the ravages of four campaigns--it will take no -trifling outlay in money, labor and ingenuity, for instance, to turn the -battlefield of the Somme into a habitable countryside; it is now "mere -land desperate and done with," like "the ominous tract" through which -Childe Roland rode to his fate. But on the borders of the actual -battlefields work was going forward to prepare the ground for the coming -crop. Between Lens and Douai the Germans had scarred the country with a -series of defensive positions; and gangs of German military prisoners -were busily engaged, under the watchful eye of overseers, in refilling -the deep trenches and smoothing the fields. That was a sight often -repeated as we passed from the battle wilderness to the less damaged -belt about it; and there was about it a touch of satisfying ironic -fitness! For these trenches were built by forced French labor of old -men, women and children under German taskmasters. For the first ten or -fifteen miles out of Amiens along the road to Roye--the scene of a sharp -battle in the open which did relatively little damage to the -country--many gangs of German prisoners were at work with their spades; -while the French farmers were busily turning furrows in the fields upon -which armies met in furious conflict last August. Here and there a -small tractor could be seen at work. Almost invariably as the motor went -by the German prisoners stopped their work and with wistful eyes watched -it pass down the road to the outside world of freedom. It was not -difficult to read the thoughts in the minds of these men, most of them -young and many of them not unintelligent in looks. This was the end of -their dream of world domination, their reward for their surrender of -life and thought to the homicidal maniac who reigned at Potsdam and now -hides in fear and trembling from the wrath of the world in an obscure -retreat in Holland. - - - - - *CHAPTER IV* - - *THE MARKS OF WAR* - - -A British general who fought through the whole war recently observed in -the British House of Commons, of which he is now a member, that "war is -a most disgusting, barbarous and preposterous state of affairs." One -feels how true this is as he passes through the war area with its -all-too-clear record of death, loss, famine and incalculable human -suffering when he is not under the control of boundless admiration for -the valor, sacrifice, tenacity, endurance and ingenuity evoked by this -war in men who five years ago seemed ordinary men and will tomorrow be -again plain citizens. One swings between the two emotions as he travels -in the wake of War and takes note of the sign-manuals which it has left -everywhere along the way. - -It seems incredible that life should have been at all possible along the -front as one goes over these battlefields and takes note of conditions. -The trenches have partly fallen in; but it takes little imagination to -recreate the scene. Here are the abominable mud ditches which were -dignified by the name of trenches, the funk-holes in the mud walls, the -dug-outs, the long winding and partly sunken roads of approach, the -slightly more commodious trenches in reserve and the camps behind. -Judged by any accepted standard of living in 1913--or 1923--one would -say that a Hottentot or an Australian bushman, indurated to living under -the most primitive conditions, would find life intolerable here in a -fortnight's time apart altogether from any question of danger from -external causes. That gently-nurtured men from homes, where loving -mothers or assiduous wives made the mustard plaster or the hot-water -bottle the sure sequel for an inadvertent wetting, should have "toughed" -it here for months and years under all the variegated brands of European -weather, including that damnable combination of rain, fog, damp and -chill which they call winter in those parts, under the always imminent -possibility of sudden and terrible death without becoming brutalized is -a heartening proof of the greatness of the human soul and its power over -the influences that make for baseness. It was not incredible to me that -Canadian men should have stormed Vimy Ridge, breaking through the -elaborate German defences as though they were made of pack-thread; what -was incredible was that they had lived under conditions of constant -danger and never-relaxing strain in burrows along the foot of the hill -for months before the attack, with their food and supplies brought in -precariously at night over level fields completely dominated by the -German guns on the top of the hill. It was the high faith that failed -not by the way even more than the iron valor that prevailed in the hour -of battle that reveals most surely the heroic qualities of our soldiers -in the field. Some few miles of the original battlefields showing the -opposing fronts, the original trenches, the deep pock-marks of the shell -holes, no man's lands with its markings of secret, nightly warfare -should be kept intact in order that posterity may appreciate in some -little measure what life in the front line meant in the Great War. - -Everywhere as one goes through the battle area, there can be seen one -ever-recurring mark of battle that will endure--the graves of those who -fell. The war area is in truth one vast cemetery. Look almost where -one will from the road and he will see, here and there, the white cross, -or clusters of them, showing where soldiers were buried where they fell. -(A stick driven in the ground with a helmet on the top of it--there are -almost forests of these along the Cambrai road--marks the grave of a -German soldier). There was never a war where so much care was taken to -keep a record of the resting place of fallen soldiers; and as time -passes bodies will be taken from their isolated graves on the -battlefields and placed in great military cemeteries where they will -receive in perpetuity the care of a reverent posterity. In the main the -unplaced dead will be those who fell in territory which, as the result -of the action, passed into enemy hands for the time being. Everywhere -along the roadways there are small Canadian graveyards, many of which -will doubtless remain undisturbed for all time. Thus no one will ever -propose to disturb the slumbers of the seventy or eighty -Canadians--among them Lance-Corporal Sifton, V.C.--who rest in a huge -mine crater on Vimy Ridge. The crater has been rounded and smoothed; a -huge cross outlined on the earth at the bottom of the hole marks the -common grave; and at the rim of the crater, visible from the roadside, -is a modest, temporary memorial bearing the names of the fallen. - -As we crossed the battlefields of Courcelette by the Bapaume-Albert -highway Canadian soldiers in numbers appeared by the roadside. Upon -inquiry we learned that nearly 400 Canadians, representing most branches -of the service, were engaged in collecting the Canadian dead of the -Somme battlefields into one large cemetery which will be maintained by -the Canadian authorities. Further along the road towards Albert we came -to two wayside cemeteries. One to the right showed a profusion of white -crosses arranged not in orderly rows but in little groups, showing that -the soldiers whose graves were thus marked had been buried where they -fell. This marked the resting place of the Tyneside-Scottish battalion -which was wiped out in the attack upon La Boisselle on July 1, 1916--the -opening day of the Somme battle. The other graveyard, on the other side -of the road further on, was in neat and perfect order behind a trim -railing. Here there are Canadians, British, South African and -Australian graves--the Canadians predominating although the striking -large cross which marks the cemetery is erected to the memory of the -Australian Expeditionary Force. The place made such an appeal that we -stopped for a closer inspection. As I stepped through the gate into the -trim enclosure the first name I saw was that of an old personal friend -and fellow-craftsman--brave, gentle, kindly, generous John Lewis, editor -of the _Montreal Star_, who fell in October, 1916. Lewis, American-born -but Canadian by adoption and by the great sacrifice, sleeps between two -young Canadians--to the left the young son of the Bishop of Quebec, to -the right Lieutenant Outerson, of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Among the -other graves here is that of Lieutenant H. H. Scott, of Quebec, whose -body was retrieved from the battlefield by his own father, Canon -Frederick George Scott--churchman, poet and hero--and by him buried in -this God's acre where dust of the British race from the uttermost parts -of the earth and the isles of the sea slumbers in the "rest after -stormie seas," bespoken by the poet as a high measure of human felicity. - -These notes on the mementoes which war has left in its train may be -perhaps closed by one more cheerful and hopeful in character. This was a -scene on the Roye-Amiens highway midway between these towns; not in -itself unique for we saw it repeated elsewhere in what might be called -the sub-area of war. It had within it the promise of a future that -will, so far as this is now possible, repair the past. We had just -passed the "front" as it was during the summer of 1916. First come two -shallow French trenches not strongly guarded by wire entanglements; then -500 yards of no-man's-land; then the formidable German defences--three -offensive lines of entrenchments heavily wired; and after a short -interval two further lines equally strong. It must be admitted that the -Germans were watchful and industrious. The wire, weather-beaten by -exposure, stretched across the countryside like wide black ribands. - -As we passed into the relatively unharmed country beyond we saw, -standing by the roadside, a one-horse wagon piled high with simple -household necessities--bedding, furniture and food. Around it was a -family group, with actually shining, smiling faces--a rarity this, these -days, in the once gay land of France. There were the middle-aged father -and mother, a young man in war-worn uniform, safely home from the wars, -a fair young girl of perhaps seventeen and a younger girl. They were -busily engaged in unloading the wagon and carrying their household -goods--where? No building was anywhere in sight--nothing but the -inevitable pile of rubbish by the roadway. But on a closer look we saw -that the cellar of the house that had once stood there had been fitted -over with a rude temporary roof and to this refuge this reunited family, -after the hardships and perils of the war, had come home with a joy and -thanksgiving that shone in their eyes. This was Home! - -Thus the human heart, unconquerable by adversity, resolutely sets about -repairing the ravages of time and war! Man rebuilds his ruined home, -sets up again the family altars, renews the sweet amenities of life, -refills the fields. The soldier, husbandman once more, turns the brown -furrow--"God-like making provision for mankind"--and sees the cheerful -smoke from his household fires mark the citadel of his happiness, the -shrine of his desires! Behind lies the wreckage, the pain, the terrors -of those impossible, those unimaginable years of war--ahead stretches -the future of clean and fruitful work, the dear rewards of love and -affection, the blessings of a healing and fruitful Peace, never to be -broken again--else these millions have died in vain--by the trumpets of -the Lords of War! - - - - - *CHAPTER V* - - *THE CANADIAN HAMMER STROKES* - - -The epic of the Canadian achievement in the last hundred days of the -Great War must be written if there is in Canada a man capable of writing -it. It must be accurate in its technique; but no technical accuracy -will suffice to tell the story. There must be told not only the record -of the actual achievements, but their relationship to the wider strategy -of the war. Their impact upon the final issue of this super-human -struggle must be interpreted, that the Canadians of to-day and their -posterity forever may know what contribution Canada made to the freeing -of the world from the menace of Prussianism. All Canadians know that in -August the Canadian corps made an unexampled advance near Amiens in the -great offensive on the British front; that nearly a month later they -smashed their way through the "impregnable" Drocourt-Queant line; that -by a brilliant tactical stroke they crossed the Canal du Nord and -captured Bourlon Wood; that they outflanked Cambrai from the north -compelling its evacuation; that they wrested Valenciennes from the enemy -by a concentric movement from the north and south; that, assisted at -times by two British divisions, they, four divisions strong, met and -defeated during the three months 47 German divisions with immense -captures of men, guns and supplies. - -These, considered by themselves, were great feats worthy of -commemoration but it is only when they are viewed in their relation to -the great struggle that raged from the Alps to the sea that their full -significance and value are revealed. These achievements were a series -of successive hammerstrokes upon the whole western German position; and -more than any other related series of military operations they -contributed to the collapse, at a date far earlier than the most hopeful -had dared to fix, of that huge fortress which for four years had defied -the genius, the resourcefulness and the valor of the Allied western -powers. This is the plain, simple truth; and it is the business of -Canada to see that in the final telling of the last phases of the war -this fact--of such immense bearing upon our future national development -and our status in the world--is not allowed to be obscured. - -The Canadian corps came into the final campaign with certain very -evident advantages which stood them in good stead. They had suffered no -losses--apart from the cavalry and machine-gun sections--in the terrible -battles of March and April when the German drives down the valley of the -Somme and through Flanders towards the sea were stopped just before they -culminated in allied disaster. This does not mean that during this -anxious period the Canadian corps, as some seem to think, enjoyed a -luxurious and reposeful existence removed from the perils and anxieties -of war. When the German offensive began the Canadians were holding a -front along Vimy Ridge of 9,000 yards; when it ended they were in charge -of 35,000 yards of front line trenches. They did no fighting because the -Germans did not attack them; had they done so they would have got a warm -reception. During this anxious period the Canadians deepened their -defensive position by five miles--in the rear of Vimy Ridge the new -trenches then dug can be seen on every side; they reorganized their -machine-gun detachments, increasing their fighting power by fifty per -cent.; and they had organized every Canadian in the area down to the -cooks into fighting bodies--all inspired by a common determination to -resist until the death. In those dark days, they served by standing and -waiting! - -Nevertheless they profited, of course, by their happy escape at that -time from the fearful sacrifice which other British divisions on the -western front had to make. When the time came to take their place in the -line for the great--and as it developed--the decisive offensive, they -were in splendid condition--divisions over-strength, thoroughly -equipped, hardened by an iron discipline cheerfully borne and uplifted -by a consciousness that the days of inaction were over and that their -hour had struck. - -As the Canadian troops moved south from their long-held positions at -Vimy to take their place in the line of battle at Amiens one -phenomenon--which was rightly interpreted as a portent of victory--was -noted. The troops began again spontaneously to sing as they covered the -miles along the straight undeviating French roads which are -heartbreaking to infantry on the march. In the early days the Canadian -was a singing army; but as the iron of war entered its soul it fell -silent and the long marches to the battlefields were made in dogged -silence. But in those bright days in early August serene confidence in -their power to conquer filled the hearts of the Canadian soldiers; and -their cheerful and confident voices filled the air with Canadian songs. -From then to the end the Canadians sang as they fought their way from -victory to victory. - -The participation by the Canadian corps in the battle of Amiens was a -well-kept secret until they went over the top. The Germans were misled -by a calculated manoeuvre into believing that the Canadians had been -moved north into Flanders; the French lining up for their drive forward -south of the Roye road did not know until the eve of the battle that the -troops immediately to their left across the highway, which were to move -forward with them, were the Canadians. The news was not unwelcome to -them; for the reputation of the Canadians as shock troops of the first -order was already established. The road runs through the large -semi-open wood where the whole Canadian army remained hidden during -August 7th; with the falling of darkness they moved forward in the -charge of guides to their appointed posts--the ground being quite -unfamiliar to them. The plan of battle called for the advance at zero -hour by the Canadians between the Amiens-Roye road and the Amiens-Ham -railway, an initial front of 7,000 yards; on the left beyond the railway -were the Australians and on the right across the road were the French. -The dividing line of the highway was not rigidly observed. The 9th -brigade, forming the extreme right of the Canadian force, delivered its -attack from the right of the road and captured Rifle Wood--a daring and -successful stroke well worth the telling which had much to do with the -almost instantaneous success all along the line of the Canadian advance, -and further along the road on the following day the Canadians stormed -across the road in support of the French and taking the Germans on the -flank and in reverse made possible a break through at one of the most -obstinately defended points of the enemy front. - -This was the first occasion upon which the Canadians met the enemy in -open fighting; and the German expectation that troops experienced only -in trench fighting would be at their mercy in field manoeuvres developed -at once into a catastrophic disappointment. Of all the battlefields of -the war the terrain here shows the least signs of conflict--due to the -rapid retirement of the Germans once their front lines were smashed. -From the highway most of the battlefield can be seen; and the story of -the extraordinary advance of the Canadians by which a huge wedge was -driven into the German front can be easily told by a competent guide--of -which there never should be any lack. No Canadian making a pious -pilgrimage over the Canadian front should overlook the Amiens -battlefield. An eminent military authority has made the prediction that -in the ultimate judgment of the historian of the tactical developments -of the 1918 campaign, the complete smashing of the German defence at -this point by the Canadian corps in the early hours of August 8, will be -regarded as one of the decisive turning points of the campaign. It is -worth noting, in this connection, that Berlin despatches, quoting from -advance proofs of his book on the war, credit Ludendorff with the -statement that the success of the Franco-British offensive at Amiens on -August 8th destroyed the last hope of the Germans for final victory. -The Canadians were the spear-head of that attack and made the deepest -advance, on the opening day of the offensive, into the enemy's -territory. - -Within ten days the Canadian contribution to the Allied offensive in the -Amiens sector was completed. On August 22, the decision was reached by -the high command to shift the whole Canadian force north to Arras in -preparation for the attack upon the Drocourt-Queant position; in the -early hours of August 26--less than 100 hours later--the Canadians burst -through the early morning mist upon the astonished Germans, who thought -them fifty miles away, and wrested the high ground at Monchy le Preux -and the positions in alignment with it from them. From this jumping-off -place the Canadians advanced resolutely and steadily towards Cambrai; in -a week's time the much vaunted Hindenburg line was behind them; towards -the end of September, upon the very morning upon which the Germans -planned the recovery of lost ground the Canadians forestalled them, -pushed across the Canal du Nord and enveloped Bourlon Wood where the -British advance a year earlier had been stayed; then driving forward -across the Arras-Cambrai highway they put in jeopardy the German control -of Cambrai, the pivot upon which the whole western German defence swung. -There followed the desperate attempt by the Germans to save Cambrai by -the recapture of Bourlon Wood; their failure involved the evacuation of -the city and the undermining of the defensive lines to the south. At -Cambrai the Canadians passed the crest of the hill--thereafter the -"going" was rapid and comparatively easy to a goal already in sight. -The capture of Valenciennes was an interesting incident in a widespread -advance by the whole Allied front from the Meuse to the sea; and the -last day of the war found the Canadians as the advance guard of the -British forces victoriously encamped upon the very ground where in -August, 1914, the Old Contemptibles--that immortal vanished army--first -threw the British sword into the rapidly-rising scale in a -determination, amply vindicated by legions animated by their example and -inspired by their achievements who followed them, to right the balance. -This completion of the full circle of British sacrifice in the last -hours of the war by the troops of an overseas Dominion which, when the -first shots were fired, had no military history and dreamed not of its -aptitude for war is one of those profound historic coincidences which -make an appeal, to be felt rather than expressed, to that sense of -Destiny which in times of Fate takes possession of the human soul. - - - - - *CHAPTER VI* - - *THE CIVILIAN AS WARRIOR* - - -Not the least astonishing of the many surprises of the war to the -Germans was the, to them, incredible capacity for swift preparation for -war which was shown by the democratic and unmartial British nations -under the spur of deep national feeling plus driving necessity. In -their careful preparation for sudden war and overwhelming victory they -had believed with reason, judging by all that the past could teach, that -their margin of advantage, because of their mighty armies and the vast -numbers of their trained officers, could never be overcome by those -nations which in time of peace had failed to educate their people into a -psychological readiness for the mass war and to equip them to wage it. -They remembered how vain had been the rally of the French levies under -Gambetta's leadership in 1871. For Kitchener's army, when Great Britain -set herself to create out of nothing but the valor and willingness of -the people a buckler to stem the German flood, the German chiefs -expressed a contemptuous and pitying scorn; while they did not give even -this measure of regard to the Dominions' contingents when they rushed -overseas to take their part in the defence of civilization. These they -regarded as mere mobs of untrained militia men, unkempt, undisciplined -and without competent leaders, who would be scattered, like leaves -before the tempest, by a mere handful of drilled and well-bullied German -soldiers. At that time no German mind could have conceived the -possibility of such an impossible fact as that within two years it would -be a fixed rule of the German army that Canadian troops in the front -line trenches must always be faced, across No Man's Land, by Prussian -Guards or Bavarian shock troops. - -Nor was the low opinion of the military worth of these volunteer armies -confined to arrogant Germans; there were doubters a-plenty at home. -Thus a Canadian public man held forth despairingly to me at that time -upon the hopelessness of opposing to the highly-trained German armies -these hastily organized battalions of men summoned from civil -occupations. For one thing was it not a fact, confirmed by all military -experience and accepted as veritable holy writ, that an officer, capable -of commanding men, could not be made in less than seven years? Unless -the French, who were a military nation, had a sufficient surplusage of -officers partly to equip the British armies it would be nothing but -slaughter to pit these untrained hordes against the Prussian hordes. -Nor was this Jeremiah alone in his gloom! - -One can recall that there was a certain nervous trepidation among -Canadians when, the early months of 1915, it became known that the -Canadian troops were in the front line and likely at any moment to be -put to the test of actual fighting. The men of this first division were -separated from their civilian pursuits by barely half a year of time; -they were, by all the standards of European war as to training, mere -militia. The test came in April, 1915, when the Germans under a rolling -barrage of poison gas--a new and terrifying weapon of war--sought to -break through the allied front in the Ypres salient at a point where it -was held partly by French African troops and partly by the new levies -from Canada. The story need not be re-told to Canadians. The gas terror -broke the nerve for the moment of the African troops, and they fled in -panic; the Canadians plugged the line and held it against all odds until -reinforcements came up and the danger was past. It was said at the time -that the reason why the Canadians held on was that they did not know -enough about the rules of the war game to realize that they would be -justified under the conditions in falling back. Of all the myriad -emotions that filled the hearts of the Canadians during those days of -sheer stark horror fear was the most absent. An officer, now of high -rank, who talked with me in France about the battle of Ypres said that -the first solid fact that emerged from the confusion of the surprise -attack was the instant resolution by Canadians of all ranks to stand -their ground whatever might betide. Non-combatants hurried to their -officers to ask what they could do to help. "From that moment," said the -officer, "I had no doubts whatever about the Canadian army; I knew that -not potentially but actually they were troops of the first rank." - -In the War Memorials paintings shown in London in December--to be housed -later in Ottawa in some fitting setting--there was a picture which, -despite its cubist freakishness, put on canvas, for all men to see, the -soul of Canada at war. Everything about the picture was wrong except -its symbolism which was compelling in its truth. The canvas, shrieking -with its high hues, was filled with Turcos in panic flight crowding one -another in their terror, while over them billowed the yellow poison pall -of death; but in the midst of the maelstrom the roaring Canadian guns -stood, immovable and unyielding, served by gunners who rose superior -alike to the physical terrors of the battle and the moral contagion of -fear. The foundations of the world were rocking but the guns stood -firm! - -Ypres, indeed, revealed the basic quality upon which the achievements of -the Canadians in the field rested--that fortitude, moral and physical, -which in the day of battle and the hour of trial triumphed over every -human weakness and made them the implacable and irresistible vindicators -of divine justice. In the early summer of 1918 when there was imminent -danger of the whole western front being crushed under the weight of the -German advance, Sir Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian corps, -in a speech at a Canadian dinner in London, made a remark which shocked -and thrilled his hearers. He said he was the proudest man in the world -because he commanded the Canadian corps; and the saddest because it was -doomed to die. Thus he gave notice that, if the line were overwhelmed, -the Canadians would die fighting. That was the darkest hour that comes -before the dawn. No such glorious but tragic fate awaited the -Canadians. The future held for them not the guerdon of inexpugnable -heroism in disaster but the bright badge of victory. When they struck -camp and unfurled their banners for the new campaign they marched not to -Thermopylae but to Waterloo. - -But much more than the capacity to conquer in the actual clash of the -battlefield went to the making of the victorious Canadian army. These -civilians, called from the bench, the office, the farm and the forest -showed an aptitude for war--exemplified also in varying degrees by all -the democratic armies--that must have seemed uncanny to the German High -Command, hopelessly committed by training and inclination to the view -that great and conquering armies could only be created in nations as the -result of precedent and long-continuing conditions: among them the -constant familiarizing of the popular mind with the idea of war as a -weapon of national policy, the universal training of men of military -age, the careful cultivation of an officer class, the maintenance of a -general staff of highly equipped experts and strategists who devoted -their lives to the art of war. Considering their environment and -viewpoint it was inevitable that they should regard it as simply -preposterous that a civilian army officered and commanded by men of -their own type and class--farmers, artisans; clerks, bankers, lawyers, -doctors, engineers, journalists, real estate agents--should be able to -dispute the field with the disciplined legions of Germany. They could -not realize what this war has established beyond all question, that the -general principles upon which war is waged are simple and easily -grasped. - -War is a proposition to apply to a very definite and distinguishable -object, all available power. It thus becomes in its essence a huge -business problem, fundamentally one of engineering and organization. It -was speedily demonstrated in the war that the qualities which make for -success in civilian life in almost every field of endeavor are also the -qualities which are necessary for successful leadership in war. The -civilian mind with its initiative, its readiness to improvise means to -an end, its disregard for precedent as such, its willingness to -subordinate venerable sacred theories to modern hard facts, did not -suffer in the clash with the stereotyped military mind despite its -larger equipment of technical knowledge. All the democratic armies were -fertile in inventions and expedients, which were gradually incorporated -in the practice of the armies to their great good. A lengthy article--or -a book--could be filled with a record of Canadian contributions to the -art of war--many of them rapid improvisations when issues turned on -minutes. One hears much about them as he goes about in France--and not -always from Canadians either. - -Thus I was much entertained at Arras by a British officer of artillery -who told me how one of his fellow-officers, a young Canadian, had pitted -his profound knowledge of artillery fire, which he brought from an -insurance office in Winnipeg, against the inherited and assembled wisdom -of the higher-ups to their ultimate conversion after an actual test had -vindicated his theory. I shall not here recount how the Canadian -soldiers at Ypres were supplied with ready-made gas masks upon the -occasion of the first gas attack though it will doubtless be duly -recorded in some grave history of the war. The trench raid, which came -to be one of the constant factors of the war, was a Canadian invention. -It was a Canadian doctor, transferred from civil practice to the front, -who first showed the way to cope with trench feet, a war disease which -at one time threatened to destroy the British army. The Canadian army -led the way in the skilful application of machine-gun power to the -necessities of attack and defence; and its system of massing the -machine-guns in units instead of distributing them through companies, -with their accompanying employment for barrages and indirect fire, would -have been extended to the whole army if the war had continued. These are -noted only as illustrations; the whole question of Canadian -resourcefulness in the field, with its possibilities of infinite -interest, cannot be dealt with here. - -One lesson of this war is thus of vast significance to Canada and to all -democracies. It is in brief that a country of free men, engaged and -proficient in the countless occupations of civil life, is always -potentially formidable in war. When we build our country for peace we -build it for war, too, if the need arises. Our sure defence is not the -soldier in his uniform but the patriot citizen in his plain civilian -attire. The vindication of this profound truth has been upon a scale of -such magnitude that it is difficult to think that ever again in the -history of the human race any aspiring kaiser or Napoleon--white or -yellow--will dream that he can, by enslaving his own people, provide -himself with a weapon with which to conquer the world. - - - - - *CHAPTER VII* - - *COMPENSATIONS* - - -I rode out to the Canadian battlefields from a city where for seven -weeks there had been going on a determined, though partly hidden, -tug-of-war between conflicting ambitions, some of them far from -high-minded; and, after my pilgrimage over the grounds where men by the -hundreds of thousands died for an idea, which many of them only vaguely -realized though they felt its influence in their hearts, I returned to -the same atmosphere of controversy where the keenest discussions turned -upon the degree of the reward that should be allotted to this or that -country for the services of the men who had made for themselves the -utter and complete sacrifice. The contrast could not but suggest -reflections upon the relative contributions to the future security of -the world--which was supposed to be their common object--of the soldiers -who won the war and the statesmen who were building a peace upon their -achievements. There was some satisfaction in recalling that the Prime -Minister of Canada was reported to have said, at a certain meeting, that -not a single Canadian soldier had died in order that any country might -add a mile of land to its territory. - -In one of his addresses to the Plenary Conference President Wilson made -a striking reference to the United States soldiers. "As I go about the -streets here," he said, "I see everywhere the American uniform. Those -men came into the war after we had uttered our purpose. They came as -crusaders, not merely to win a war but to win a cause." This language -applies still more aptly to the soldiers of Canada. No participant in -the war has so clear a record of disinterestedness as Canada. The -United States came in late after repeated and deliberate attacks upon -its national honor really left no alternative to a proud nation; but -Canada, in keeping with a deep and true instinct, drew her sword at the -first blast of the war trumpet. There was no calculation about Canada's -entrance into the war; nor was there ambition for territory or trade or -glory. There was an intuitive recognition that this was Armageddon; and -that if the powers of hell were not to overturn the world there would be -need of us. - -There is much idle discussion as to who won the war. The answer is that -it was won by the allies; and that the help of every one of them was -essential to the final result. During the war we were told, by little -Canadians and would-be-shirkers, that in a conflict of such range and -violence the contribution of Canada, however great it might be in -relation to the country's resources, could not be a deciding factor; and -that, therefore, our canny course was to turn the war to our advantage -by supplying goods and war materials to the allies at war prices. That -counsel of infamy was spurned by a generous people, and Canada made her -sacrifice of life and treasure to the last ounce of her power. The war -is over and won, and the cost is known--a huge debt that will long -burden us, a great army of maimed men and sixty thousand Canadian graves -in France and Flanders. Was the sacrifice worth while? Are there -compensations for our grief and loss? There is an answer to these -questions from the battlefields and it is one of consolation. - -It would be ludicrous to say that Canada won the war; but the view that -if Canada had kept out or had limited her contribution to a mere nominal -participation the war would not have been won, can be held with a clear -mind by every Canadian. The war was almost lost many times; it was -saved on occasions by the narrowest of margins, both as to time and -force. It was saved by the defence of Liege by the Belgians; by the -miraculous rally of the allied forces at the Marne; by the holding of -the line by the British in the first battle of Ypres; by the repeating -of this achievement at the second battle of Ypres by the Canadians; by -the glorious resistance by the French at Verdun; by the tenacity with -which the bent line was held a year ago; and by that marvelous rally of -all the allied powers, in which Canada joined, after the narrow escape -from disaster last year, which supplied as though from inexhaustible -reservoirs the resources in men and material that crushed the Germans in -the summer offensive. Canada has the compensation of knowing that the -first object of her war contribution--the infliction of complete and -overwhelming defeat upon Kaiserism--was fully realized in part by her -exertions. But the soldiers--not only of Canada but of all the -democratic countries--were inspired by something more than a -determination to defeat and punish the Germans. They all had in some -measure the feeling that they were engaged in a crusade for the making -of a better world in which wars of aggression should cease. They -fought, many of them consciously, for a peace which should endure -because it would rest upon justice and fraternity. It rests with the -statesmen of Paris to keep faith with the aspiration which turned -millions of peace-loving men into militant crusaders. If they succeed -only in patching up the old order under a pretentious false front, it -will be only too true that much of the sacrifice will have been in vain. -But though the conditions in Paris are far from cheerful, it is still -possible to hope for a peace that will achieve the immediate object of -the war--the just punishment of Germany and her allies; and will have in -it, as well, the healing qualities that will safeguard the world against -the repetition of these horrors. The responsibility that rests upon the -world's elder statesmen, in session in Paris, is immeasurable; and -pitiful will be their place in history if, in the judgment of posterity, -they turn to base uses the high devotion that strewed the battlefields -of Europe with the bones of the generous youth of their countries. - -The national compensations to Canada for her participation in the war -would not in themselves justify the sacrifices; but they are a -substantial reinforcement to the considerations that supply the actual -justifications. We have won a new status among the nations of the -world; which is the outward sign of that strong national spirit, evoked -by the war, which is to-day vitalizing our common life in all its -manifestations--political, commercial, intellectual, spiritual. It is -something, too, to have learned in the sternest of tests, that we have -been building our nationhood on sound lines; that our conception of a -democratic people, with equality of opportunity and status, endures -while autocracy, based upon the subjection of man, has crumbled in the -fierce fires of war. We know now that everything that makes the normal -and happy citizen in peace--good schools in youth, just living -conditions, opportunities for advancement to honest work, wise laws, the -cultivation of the spiritual life--makes also the unconquerable soldier -when he is called upon to defend his home. Canada derives from the war -the profound satisfaction that she gave essential help in protecting the -world from a political and spiritual reaction that would have set the -clocks of human progress back a thousand years; the hope, still -confident, that she has helped to usher in a new international order -under which democratic institutions can have a peaceful and fruitful -evolution to better things for all; and a knowledge of her own -capacities and possibilities which gives her confidence to go forward to -a great career amongst the nations of the world. - -The financial burdens of the war, heavy though they be, need give us -little concern. They can be borne--or better still, largely removed--if -Canadians in grappling with this problem, show, in any degree, the -qualities of patriotism, unity and sacrifice which gave so sharp an edge -to their war effort. We all helped in the war but the actual fighting -was done by the men who could fight. We shall all help to carry the war -debt but most of the paying will have to be done by those who can pay. -The war debt may be no calamity whatever if we are driven by necessity -to juster methods of taxation, greater co-ordination of national -energies and wise development of the country's resources. - -The hard question is where the recompense is for the men who will never -come back--who rest in the countless cemeteries which dot the -battlefields of France. The answer--if answer there be--must be given -by fighting men themselves who counted in advance the cost and accepted -the price with proud humility; let them speak! Julian Grenfell, before -going into battle to his death, put the case of the young man to whom -duty calls in two ever memorable lines: - - "He is dead who will not fight, - And who dies fighting has increase." - - -The passion of man for his country which makes death in her defence a -high honor burns in Vernede's "Petition"--a prayer that was granted: - - "Grant thou one thing more; - That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendor, - Unversed in arms, a dreamer such as I - May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy - England, for thee to die." - - -It must be a deep instinct, not to be judged by finite tests, that sent -the young men to battle with joyous hearts and shining faces. "Now God -be thanked that has matched us with His hour!" cried Rupert Brooke, now -asleep in Scyros in the far Aegean seas. And the stoicism with which -the young soldier foresaw death on the battlefield was never expressed -in finer terms than by the British officer in the letter which he wrote -to his parents the night before his death: - -"It is impossible to fear death out here when one is no longer an -individual but a member of a regiment and an army. I have been looking -at the stars and thinking what an immense distance they are away. What -an insignificant thing the loss of, say, 40 years of life is compared -with them! It seems hardly worth talking about!" - -Here are four voices, all now from the shades! Do they not, taken -together, tell us something of the high exaltation with which the young -hero makes his sacrifice. He welcomes the hour that makes his arms his -country's shield, scorning the recreant who shuns the test; and -measuring time by eternity he renounces life as a garment to be laid -aside. If the poet and the seer can speak for them, the lost do not ask -us for pity or for hopeless grief: - - "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: - Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. - At the going down of the sun in the morning - We will remember them." - - -For those who mourn for the unreturning brave there are secret springs -of consolation! The ending of the full-lived life is not tragic; the -symbol of poignant grief is the broken column that bespeaks the day that -ended in the morning. But for those who die for their country there is -not this sense of irremediable loss, this feeling of the unlived life, -the unfulfilled dream. There is an instinct deep-hidden in human life -which tells the mourner that for the man who falls upon the field of -honor his life has come full circle whatever the tale of his years; and -that somewhere in the divine scheme of things there is compensation for -the lost experiences and achievements. - -If the dead gave their lives without bitterness and the living are -consoled Canada, the common mother of both, is richer for all time for -their sacrifice. In the life of the race a single generation passes -like a heart-beat; but the chosen few from this generation, whose names -are in the lists of the lost, are secure in their fame and in their -power. They have set for all time for Canada the standards of service -and of sacrifice; their example will, now and forever, sweeten our civic -life and if the occasion calls will nerve the youth of Canada to emulate -their deeds on the stricken field. A thousand years from now Canadian -youths will read the story of their deeds with hearts uplifted and with -kindling eyes. Safe in such an immortality what matters it that they -sleep far from Canada upon the battlefields of France! - - - - Warwick Bro's & Rutter, Limited, - Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE CANADIAN BATTLEFIELDS -*** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47269 - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so -the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. -Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this -license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg(tm) -electronic works to protect the Project Gutenberg(tm) concept and -trademark. 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