ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
CHAPTER I.[ToC]
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE.
It began with a wish. That takes me back to a pleasant day in early August, 1914, and a verandah at Ravenscrag, Muskoka—a broad, cool, verandah overlooking dancing dark waters. A light breeze stirred the leaves and gently wafted to us the smell of the pines and the woods, mingled with the sweet odours of the scented geranium, verbena, and nicotine in the rock-girt garden. But my mind was far removed from the peacefulness of my immediate surroundings: the newspaper I held in my hand was filled with kaleidoscopic descriptions of the great European tumult. Unconsciously I voiced aloud the thought that was uppermost in my mind: "I would gladly give ten years of my life if I could serve my country in this war." "Do not say that," warned my hostess, looking up from her magazine, "for everything comes to you on a wish," and nothing more was said of the matter at the time.
That day was a very quiet one with our little house-party. We made our usual launch trip through the lakes but nobody talked much. Each was busy with his own thoughts, wondering what England could do in the great emergency. Could she, or could she not, save France from the invading hosts of Germany? And deeper in each mind was the unspoken fear, "Perhaps it is already too late to save France—perhaps, even now, the question is 'Can England save herself?'" The great depression in men's minds during those early days of the war when the bottom seemed to have dropped out of life and men strove to grasp at something upon which to reconstruct a new system of thought and life and work, had enveloped us like a chill evening mist.
Those were ghastly days. While France, Russia and England were feverishly mobilizing, the brave little force of Belgians was being steadily rolled up by the perfectly equipped German war machine and the road to France hourly becoming easier. England had commissioned K. of K. to gather together a civilian army of three million men, and Canada had called for one division to be mobilized at Valcartier Camp, a place somewhere in the Laurentian Hills near the city of Quebec. Little did any of us dream how prophetic was to be that apparently chance remark of our hostess. But the first greeting from the maid when we reached home that evening was, "There is a long distance call for you, sir." The Minister of Militia had asked me to report in Ottawa immediately. Next morning I waved my friends, "Au revoir." That return was far from being as speedy as we expected, for my wish very shortly came true.
The greeting of the Minister of Militia, Sir Sam Hughes, as he turned from the desk where he sat in shirt-sleeves, with typewriters on all sides of him, was a cordial handshake and a slap on the back. Would I go down to the new camp at Valcartier and look after the purification of the water supply? I was delighted to get the chance.