The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914, was the Mother's call to her children. Swifter than lightning it passed through the waves and on the wings of the wind. The settler left his lonely cabin, the gold-digger his shovel, the prospector his surveying instruments, the rancher his herds, the missionary his church, the teacher his school, the clerk his office, and all made for the nearest port. Within a month there was not a ship on the wide seas but was bearing loyal sons back to their Motherland's defense. I have met, in France, British soldiers from every country under heaven. I bent over a dying soldier near Arras who was a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. And one night on the Somme a fine young fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept by my side. He was one of the most charming and handsome men I have ever met, and had come from Durban. He had fought with Botha in Southwest Africa, and at the conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home. Next day I took him to Delville Wood for he wanted to see the place where his brother had died. I found that he was of my own communion and we talked about some of my college friends who had gone out to Natal. Two days later, he died of wounds in a dressing station. Most of the transport officers in our Division have come home from abroad, and have been given their posts because they are accustomed to horses. One was prospecting in Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a third on a plantation in South America.
In addition to Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders, who have come by the hundred thousand at the call of the Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands who have come singly, or in small parties, from remote corners of the earth. For five weeks I was a patient in a Canadian hospital in France. The entire staff was Canadian. Some were Canadian born; others had gone out to that country years ago. All were of British blood. The colonel was a magnificent specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in which city he had been born. He would sit on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow-land. Sometimes he would scold us for being so blind to the greatness of the Empire and tell us what Canada thought of the Motherland. One of the night orderlies would, on occasion, recite to us some poem such as "Jim Bludso," before the lights went out. Then he would come to my locker and take "Palgrave's Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to regale his soul during the long watches of the night. He was of the full stature of men and straight as a pine. He had gone out from Ireland as a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch in the United States. One day there was trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a bullet clean through his chest. The moment war was declared he left his roving herds of cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and traveled hundreds of miles to Winnipeg to enlist. The doctor looked at him. "What is this scar on your chest?" he asked. "Oh," replied the cowboy, "I fell off a wagon and knocked the skin off." The doctor turned him round and put his finger in the scar on his back where the bullet had passed out. "And what is this scar at the back? Did you fall off another wagon?" And the two men understood one another and laughed. The doctor could not find it in his heart to send the cowboy back to his ranch, so he was passed into the Canadian contingent.
One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother." She had gone to Canada five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for us that it had. Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C. His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the Motherland. Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army. "Anzac" was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian. He was in the Flying Corps. He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land of his fathers.
In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China. But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they had never seen, and came post haste to her help. Sitting near me as I write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm, is a gold wound-stripe. Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight. Another at our table was born in Australia. He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death. He has already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not put into graves but are buried alive in their sons. We felt the call to defend our race as our fathers did in their day. It was a master instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature. Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live, the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend her, in her hour of need.
"They came as the winds come
When forests are rended;
They came as the waves come
When navies are stranded."
IX
THE TERROR BY NIGHT
June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me. I had a little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived. The rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown shelter. Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron and ground-sheets. The Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to say. It was a shape never seen on earth before. It had no ancestor and it could have no descendant. Such a design could not occur twice. Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by them the regimental stores. It was so hot that we all wore our lightest clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.
All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky. We had guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the regiment in the trench. Other officers had come down to stay with us on their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave." We were, therefore, a very merry party. It was almost like camping on the Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles. To those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great distances. The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with encampments. These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the regiments and batteries in the line. The circle of the horizon was bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville, Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy. We could see the flashing of our own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.
All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be seen except through strong field glasses. We watched a German aeroplane circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns. Soon the streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of troops. The firing only lasted a few minutes, however. One of our aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing and head over tail, utterly out of control.