The fall of Warsaw has been foreshadowed for some time, and it is useless for us to deny the Germans have achieved a success—which they intended to achieve six or nine months ago.
This fall will mean that all will put forth greater efforts and determination. In the early months of the war we failed to estimate the enormous military power of a nation, highly disciplined and thoroughly organised for war as well as for peace. The idea of the people of these islands was to send across the Channel an expeditionary force not exceeding 160,000 men.
Do any of you, who have not had the responsibilities of office, realise what it means to provide guns, rifles, ammunition, and equipment for a force ten times as great—with, perhaps, another force in reserve of equal number? I know something of those responsibilities. We in Canada have our difficulties, not in finding men ready to fight for the cause, but because we find it difficult to provide the guns, rifles, ammunition, and equipment.
When you increase your proposed expeditionary force by ten or twenty times, you must realise that for that purpose it is necessary that the whole power of the nation shall be concentrated on the task.
I hold this profound conviction—that, regiment for regiment and man for man, our forces can hold their own, and more than hold their own, with the best and most efficient troops of the enemy.
If we speak of the disappointments we had at the start of the war, let us never forget to realise that the disappointments of the enemy must be ten times greater. And if we are discouraged from time to time, let us remember we have accomplished one great work which outweighs a thousandfold that, and that is the clearness and security of the pathways of the seas. The clearance of the seas means as much to the Allies as to ourselves.
APPENDIX IV
LT.-GENERAL E. A. H. ALDERSON, C.B.,
COMMANDING THE CANADIAN CORPS.
The following is the text of the speech made to the Canadian troops under his command after twelve strenuous days and nights of fighting, from April 23rd to May 4th, 1915.