Canada in Flanders, Volume I

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

*****

At the beginning of August the men were cheered by a welcome visitor from home—Major-General Sir Sam Hughes, K.C.B., whom the men naturally regard as the father of the Canadian Contingent.

The passionate love of country, the lofty, if inarticulate, patriotism which called men from the lumber camp and the mine, the desk and the store, was expressed in the formation of great armies, by the guiding hand of the Minister of Militia.

At that supreme moment in our country's history, when Canada was at the cross roads of her destiny, she was indeed happy in the possession of the man who gathered in and marshalled, with a speed and noble energy seldom, if ever, equalled, the hosts of willing but untrained civilians who came rushing from the Pacific Coast, the Rockies, the grain-belt, the Western Prairie, and the fields and forests and cities of the East, to offer themselves to the Empire in her hour of need.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the efforts which in a few weeks assembled the first armies of Canada, armies which were in a brief period to prove that they were able to meet on equal terms the military brood of the great Frederick. Indeed, properly to enforce the true spirit and meaning of Canada's great arming, one cannot insist too strongly on the wonderful fact that by a supreme effort of organisation, men who had, in the main, passed their lives in peaceful pursuits, were forged into an army fitted to face with honour and success the highly trained hordes of a nation steeped for centuries in the traditions of militarism.

These gallant men of ours have displayed a valour which has never been surpassed; they have become versed in the arts of war with a thoroughness and swiftness which gives them a superb confidence, even when faced by overwhelming numbers of the Kaiser's hosts. And they are full of a great joy and a great pride when they consider that new-born civilian armies have done so much.

Every Canadian soldier, too, is heartened by an appreciation of the fact that in every detail of arms, equipment, and supply, the organisation behind him works ceaselessly to make every Canadian unit as perfect a fighting machine as can be. They know that, thanks to Major-General Carson, the Agent of the Militia Department in England, all their requirements for fighting purposes are thought out in advance, and provided to the last detail in more than good time. Such confidence makes for material well-being, and a spirit of intuitive military flair does the rest.

General Hughes is a business soldier, though he possesses a true soldier's heart. A soldier is popularly supposed to be a silent man. When the statesmen and the politicians have ceased talking, when all their speeches have been of no avail and it is left to the guns to speak "the last word of Kings," the civilian believes that his military leaders are not in the habit of speechmaking. That idea, however, is profoundly mistaken. A study of military history shows that all great leaders who have inspired troops to resist to the death when disaster appeared to be certain, and all great leaders who have victoriously led assaults which seemed the very children of despair, have had the capacity of making what in armies is known as a "soldier's speech."

It is an art which cannot be cultivated. It is the instinctive knowledge of precisely the right road to the soldier's heart at the supreme moment when an appeal may make all the difference between success or failure.[[1]]

War makes men's minds simple and sentimental. Without sentiment, armies could never, in free communities, be got together, and armies could never be led. Lord Kitchener proved that he had a very great understanding of the art of the "soldier's speech" when he issued his message to the Expeditionary Force on the eve of its sailing for France. It made an ineffaceable impression on the men, and its inspiration saw them through the bitter hours of the long retreat from Mons.