I suppose that I am the proudest man in the British Isles to-night, but I am not the happiest. I am the proudest man because I command the finest fighting force in all the Allied armies. An officer of Canadian birth, who has spent the whole of his military career with the British Army, and married an English wife, told me the other day that he was proud to be a Canadian, for everywhere he went men spoke of the deeds of the Canadian Army Corps. When the women with their children and the old men were fleeing before enemy forces on the Western Front on a not very distant occasion, and learned that the troops meeting them were Canadians, they turned round and went back home. On another occasion, when visiting a British Headquarters, I saw a Brigadier sitting by the roadside, tired, and dirty, and wan. He called out, "Who's that coming along?" When the reply was, "General Currie", he said, "Are the Canadians coming down here?" Told that they were, he threw his hat in the air and declared, "Then we are all right now".
When we came to England first, we were not regarded as the finest fighting soldiers. We had many things said about us unjustly; and suggestions were put about that it was improbable we should ever become good soldiers. Everywhere to-day, at General Headquarters and all other places, it is recognized that Canadian soldiers are fit to take their place beside the veteran soldiers of the British Army, with whom we are proud to serve.
I know that it has been said that Canadians and other Overseas troops are placed in the hottest parts of the war area. The greatest fighting of the war has been this year, and we have not taken any particular part in it. The Boche has not attacked the Canadian Front. He knows that he has never yet met the troops from Canada without suffering severely. The turn of the Canadian Corps must come. The temper of the Canadian soldier is that there is no position he is asked to take that he will not take; and I know that the Boche will not take any part of our line, except over the dead bodies of your Canadian fellow-citizens. That is why I am not the happiest man in the British Isles to-night. The Canadian Corps is going to die. It is simply a question of who can stand killing the longer.
I have never seen the Corps in finer fighting fettle than it is to-day. The Canadians are now more efficient than ever; and we could not be in that position unless we were backed up by General Sir Richard Turner and his staff in England. There is a feeling of co-operation now that never existed before; and the better the liaison we have between France, England, and Canada, the better it is for the fighting forces.
And so we stand in a great cause, on the eve of great events. We have to preserve the British Empire. It would be a terrible calamity if anything should happen that would make the peoples of the British Empire hesitate at such a juncture. The British Empire must be saved.
THE AIR MEN
(This poem was written before 1914, but it so well portrays the conditions which prevailed in the last year of the Great War that it is here reproduced.)
We brought great ships to birth,