If there is one thing that I want to remember more than anything else about this Conscript Camp it is the spectacle I witnessed and took part in this evening.

Fancy if you can Tower Hill with its big headquarters building snuggled in among the scattered and gaunt pines, the tall, ungainly water-tank propped up on all too spindly-looking stilts. On top of this a single figure thrown in bold relief by the golden yellow light of a big watch-fire, beating time with his baton, and below him, clothing the slopes of the hill five thousand men, his chorus, thundering forth across the starlit night “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” That chorus was wonderful; that crowd was wonderful; everything about it was wonderful.

We were all singing; thousands of fellows in khaki, some snuggled in their big army overcoats, some puffed out like pouter pigeons with the sweaters they had piled on under their tunics against the cold chill of night. Intermingled were the lumber jacks and labourers from the civilian camp, most of them in gay mackinaws and caps; with now and then an officer immaculately clad in clean cut uniform, or a Y. M. C. A. man in grey-green suit with red circle and triangle gleaming in the firelight. And how well they could sing; I have never heard a more stirring chorus and as we raised our voices loud and clear shivery thrills raced up and down our spines, and we were stirred to the highest pitch of patriotic fervor. Indeed, there were some among us who could find no better way of expressing the emotion that swelled within save by tears. They cried. I was one of them.

“America” and “Dixie” and “Maryland” followed and every one produced its own thrill and its own heartache. Never was there anything more stirring, Never was there anything finer. We sang till our voices were husky and the great chorus surged loud and clear across the night, until it must have echoed against the crags of the Rhine and caused the Hun to shudder.

Then the breaking up of the big meeting, when groups detached themselves and wandered out of the fitful flicker of the dying firelight into the misty blue blackness of the night, still singing. Out through the streets of the camp we tramped, stepping to the cadence of our own songs. We were all happy, very, very happy and draft or no draft, down in our hearts we all knew that we were in the very place we were meant to be, and we were doing the very things that we should do, and that when the time came we would do other and greater things with as much eagerness and enthusiasm as we had sung up there on Tower Hill to-night.

The whole camp was singing even after the concert, but the character of the songs changed. “Over There” swelled forth everywhere and “The Yankees Are Coming” was chanted in every street. Out toward our own barracks our little group swung, passing the railroad siding where, partly shrouded in the canvas jackets, new artillery pieces were waiting to be moved in the morning. A cheer for these and a cheer for everything and anything that suggested patriotism, and on we tramped, brimming over with enthusiasm.

And now I’m back to the barracks again, but the mysteries of the night and the spell of the whole wonderful occasion is still over me and I know I shall lie awake a long, long time and think and dream of all that waits for me in the not very distant future. And the promises I made myself up there on Tower Hill will all be fulfilled, that’s certain.