THE PREPARATION OF THE CANADIANS.

We spent the first two days among the Canadians. Let me recall a few of their performances. They sustained, in front of Ypres, the first great gas attack launched by the Germans. During the offensive in Picardy, being sent into the front line on the 15th of September or thereabouts, they stormed Courcelette and Martinpuich, and consolidated their forward positions on one side towards Grandcourt, on the other towards Le Sars. The rest of them kept the enemy contained.

To sum them up—an Army full of robust qualities, an Army of young athletes, inured by their own home-life to the physical hardships of the trenches, regardless alike of cold, fog and mud. An Army, too, of formidable size, since to-day its numbers are greater than those of the whole British Expeditionary Force of 1914.

We saw them in their lines—in camp. Our guides were certain young officers from Quebec, who spoke an archaic, melodious French, that was most pleasant to hear. Their names also sounded oddly in our ears; more than one of them recalled the old sailor names of Cherbourg, Saint Malo and Lorient. They told us what joy they found in fighting for their two Homelands—England and France.

While we were crossing a wood near A——, one of them told me, gravely: "I have been here since our good God made the little apples to grow, but I have known neither regret nor weariness. Rather has this life in France this springhead of my race, made me know myself each day more truly."

These men and their leaders, indeed, do neither their training nor their fighting from any other motive than duty. Their fighting has a kind of mystical quality, the passion of a young people, which makes them, behind their battle lines, a family of brothers, and, when they engage, an army of warriors who will lay down their lives for one another.

A few miles from the enemy, behind a redoubt, where thousands of French graves lie scattered, one of their divisions occupied some huts which our engineers had built. Almost everywhere the notices were written in French. In one immense system there were trenches of a hundred shapes all jumbled together. We saw, here, a demonstration of a surprise attack against a machine-gun emplacement on a redoubt of the German pattern. This manoeuvre was no more than an illustration of theory. The captain who had charge of it had, during the previous night, himself led an attack against the Germans. From it he had returned with three things—a slight wound, two prisoners and the Military Cross.

Elsewhere, at the edge of a mine-crater, we listened to a lieutenant grounding his men in the art of trench-digging. A trench should be made irregularly, in accordance with the natural variations of the soil. All of which the lieutenant summed up thus: "To do this job well you must do it badly."

A company of Canadian gunners were practising with a trench-digging machine, invented in England, which had done well on the Somme. Suddenly one of them, to his horror, perceived that a shell which stood among a hundred others was smoking. By some unaccountable means its fuse had caught fire, the match was burning, and in a few seconds, perhaps in one, the shell would burst. Were it to do so, the whole of this store of ammunition must go aloft, with the gunners and us and all.

And so this gallant little Canadian who has seen the danger, gives the alarm, and while we flatten ourselves into the mud, picks up the shell in his plucky hands and throws it with all his strength out in front of the battery, where it bursts—and no one a penny the worse.

We could have fallen, for very joy, upon the neck of the gallant lad who had just saved all our lives. It would have been so silly to be killed in such a fashion, miles away from the enemy!

Farther on they were learning to handle a new trench-mortar. We were privileged to observe a little barrage fire. It made a noble shindy in the fog and a magnificent disturbance of the soil. These guns have been only recently introduced, but they are installing great numbers of them along the whole British front with a view to the winter campaign, for they have been an immense success. The Germans, in this field, at least, of experimental operations, have acquired this information at considerable cost to themselves.

In the same way we followed the open-air training of the machine-gun men. More or less every man has to go through it, so that if necessary he may be able to do this work. It is the picked gunners, who have shown what they can do in actual fighting, who teach the beginners the use of this terrible weapon, and it is with a most entertaining air of "the old soldier" that they give their instruction.

We saw the periscope rifles at work, the bomb-throwing and grenade-throwing rifles and other strange and terrible weapons of which one may not tell. What a rare museum we will be able to make up after the war! The collections of arms from the Middle Ages will sink into insignificance beside it. It would appear that for inventing ways of killing his fellows, the imagination of Man knows no bounds.

We came upon some sturdy Canadians, their hats stuck in their belts. A stout band of leather was round their heads. Slung across his shoulders one carried two heavy boxes loaded with shells; another, without any effort, carried one of his comrades. These exercises were explained to us in this way. "It is the method of the Red Indians that the Canadians have cleverly adapted to the purposes of supplying their trenches or carrying their wounded. With it, one has no need to be a Hercules." With this system, strength yields to skill. They showed us a man who can in this way walk easily with a piano on his back. "It would come in handy for shifting a broken-down tank!" said our guide with a grin.

Here we are at the Canadian Headquarters, an 18th-century chÂteau whose walls are hung with early Flemish masters.

"France sends us welcome guests."

The man who gives us this genial reception is none other than General Byng, Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian detachment in France. He is a handsome fellow, slender, solidly built. In him an immense strength is found united to an exquisite courtesy.

Hardly have we become his guests before he is showing his confidence in us by permitting us to share in his secrets.

He has brought us in front of a huge map representing the field of his operations. On it he shows us, with a most worthy pride, the dispositions of all his divisions, brigades and battalions.

While we are chatting, an officer of the Intelligence comes in. He has an unfortunate piece of news for the general, and so for us—the fall of Bucharest.

"At dawn this morning," he says, "the Boches began cheering in their trenches. Then they pushed up above their parapets placards which told us that the Rumanian capital had been taken. Also, one of our listening-posts got a German wireless put purposely into English, which said: 'Bucharest is taken. Hurrah!'"

For a serious moment or two we are silent.

Then someone ventures: "That's a nuisance!"

Another silence. The square jaws set a little more firmly. Then: "Carry on!" says our host.