THE STEREOPTICON AND THE SLIDE
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR ARTHUR CURRIE
The war was a great cosmic artist of infinite satire, making of humanity little stereopticon slides which he slipped in front of his calcium and flashed upon the clouds for a screen. When the war was done the stereopticon was smashed. The slides remain. What shall we do with them?
One of the most world-interesting characters in the magic lantern of war was Lieut.-General Sir Arthur Currie, who in 1914 locked his real estate desk in Victoria, B.C., and in 1919 came back to Canada admittedly one of the ablest commanders in a war which made the exploits of Wellington seem like comic opera in simplicity.
Whatever partial, prejudiced or private opinions some Canadians may have about Sir Arthur Currie, it must be generally admitted that he was perhaps the most remarkable of all the slides slipped into the stereopticon of the war artist. To quote from "Canada's Hundred Days", by J. F. B. Livesay, concerning the secret strategy of Sir Arthur Currie for the great Amiens show in August, 1918:
"That afternoon the Corps Commander had a talk with the two Canadian correspondents. Before him was a large scale map and the barrage map. It was all very clear and lucid. We take up our line here; and our first objective is there; 'zero' hour was named; our final objective for the day over there—constituting a world record for a first day's advance. . . .
"So at last all is ready. The story goes that the Corps Commander was asked how soon he could deliver the Corps in fighting trim at the appointed place. 'By the tenth,' he had said. 'Too long; do it by the eighth.' And he did it. . . .
"And it was all done secretly and by night. For an entire week the men of Canada were passing south from their old front, taking circuitous and puzzling routes. None knew where they went. They sang as they marched—a thing they had not done for two years.
"Foremost that night of nights was one's sense of wonder at how it had been done; how of many tangled threads of railway and lorry and march, all that great and intricate machine—more complex far than Wellington had gathered on the field of Waterloo—had been assembled in perfect order to the minute. . . .
"Up the winding hill go all the impedimenta of war—marching battalions, traction-engines towing great guns, ammunition trains, long lines of Red Cross lorries; everywhere the pungent odour of petrol. From every little wood belch forth men. They march silently. They might be phantoms, dim hordes of Valhalla, were it not for the spark of a cigarette, a smothered laugh. There is no talking. All is tense excitement. For miles and miles in a wide concentric sweep every road and lane and bypath is crowded with these slow-moving masses. Over the bare hillsides lumber the heavy tanks, just keeping pace with the marching men.