"You Canadians have done it all. We know that. We know that the English are hanging back and have done nothing."
I am ashamed when people talk to me in such a strain. I am ashamed of their lack of intelligence, ashamed that they will allow themselves to be so deceived.
"You Canadians were asked by England to go and help her. When you got there they put you in front and stayed in safety themselves."
Think of it! Think of the base lie. Think of believing such twaddle. At first I did not trouble to deny the statement; then, as it was repeated again and again, I began to deny it.
The British Empire is in this fight. Canada is doing her share of it, and nothing more than her share. We were not asked to send men over. We declared war upon Germany ourselves, because we are an independent dominion. We have had on the battle-field at one time some one hundred and ten thousand men—that is the greatest number at any one time, though of course nearly five hundred thousand are in khaki. At Vimy Ridge we held the longest portion of trenches that we have ever held before or since—five miles. To right and left of us there were Imperial troops, Anzacs, Africans, and they held over fifty-five miles of line. We advanced four miles, and papers on this continent blazed with the news. The English advanced nine miles on the same day, and there was not so much as a paragraph about it on this side of the Atlantic.
For every overseas soldier wounded on the western front there are six of the Imperial troops wounded. This is true except at Lens, where the overseas casualties were considerably heavier.
All this about Canada being in front is a German "terminological inexactitude" which is so despicable that we in Canada are ashamed that it should be said of us. It will injure us after the war; it will injure our prestige in the empire, which is now higher than ever before. We are not boasters and egotists, we are fighters. We are fighting men who live straight and who are proud to fight straight, and who are disgusted at lies such as this.
The British, the Imperial troops, have done magnificently. They have done more than their share. The original agreement with France was to place fifty thousand men in that country should Germany ever attack. The British have five million troops under arms, of which only one-fifth are overseas. They have some five hundred thousand more men in France than have the French themselves.
The British are fighting on many fronts. They are not fighting one war; they are fighting in German West Africa, they are in German East Africa. It was English troops who fought in the Cameroons. They are fighting in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. They have an army at Saloniki and in the Holy Land, and they have, of necessity, a large army in India, because the borders of that empire must be protected.
And then we hear that the English are not doing anything! The English are feeding their own prisoners in Germany, because the Germans were starving them. They have been keeping some of their Allies in munitions and money. They have been sheltering refugees from every nation that has been devastated and overrun by the mad Huns. They have Belgians and French and Serbians and Poles—a vast concourse of all nations is sheltered on the little island which is the Motherland. It would be a poor thing if the dominions could not protect themselves.