CANADA AT VIMY.
T'jubilee of the Dominion of Canada, which came into being on July 1st, 1867, has fallen due at an auspicious moment. We do not need to consult Canada's statistics of population and trade to find out how the great measure of Confederation, which the statesmen of the several Colonies drafted by common consent in London, has benefited her and strengthened the Empire. The proof of its success is written in the records of the Canadian Corps in France. When the Dean, at Monday's impressive memorial service at the Abbey, pointed to Wolfe's monument draped with the colours of the Canadian battalions now at the front, he recalled in that gesture the full meaning of Canadian loyalty and liberty. Canada, as a self-governing nation, has proved her power and her loyalty in the defence of the Ypres Salient against overwhelming odds and in the taking of the terrible Vimy Ridge, which had defied all assault for more than two years. In time of peace the Dominion grew and prospered mightily. She has now stood the stern test of war, and her great Army, commanded by a Canadian General, is destined to play a prominent part in achieving our final victory. Of the spirit of that Army we have an admirable reflection in the Cavendish Lecture on " A Day's Work," which was read the other day by Dr. Andrew MacPhail, of McGill University, to the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society, and is printed in full in the Lancet. Dr. MacPhail left his professorial chair to serve in the Canadian Army Medical Corps when the war broke out, and no man knows better what the Canadians have done and suffered. His " day's work " was nothing less than the capture of Vimy. Yet he is careful not to claim all the credit for his countrymen. " By a piece of good fortune," he says, " it fell to our division to act as the point of the spear." Scottish troops were on one flank. With the Canadians were some English troops—" those wondrous English soldiers who work in a rage and then fall into silence." On that April morning " the business of the Canadian Corps was to pivot upon its left flank and drive the enemy into this old sea bottom, which was done according to schedule in 468 minutes—I say minutes because the plans were drawn as rigidly as that." There are no heroics in Dr. MacPhail's narrative. The Canadians, having " by a piece of good fortune " to do this job in 468 minutes, simply did it, storming up a bare, steep slope seamed with trenches and studded with strong points under the fire of a desperate enemy who had been ordered to hold the Ridge to the last man. Their medical officer takes it as a matter of course. It is the habit
• of our race to achieve these impossibilities and not to brag about them. In this respect New Canada is but Old England —and Old France—writ large. It is significant, we think, that Dr. MacPhail recurs again and again to the value of organization, and to the elaborate care with which, in less than three,years, every detail of the work of our new Armies has been thought out and provided for. We had to improvise these Armies to meet a danger
that few men foresaw, but the stage of improvisation is now long past. ." It was by no accident that the Vimy Ridge was won. It was carried by the same methodical process by which a piece of land is farmed, a dinner-party made a Success, or a stage performance a triumph." Every man among the Canadians had his own definite piece of work to do, and knew how to do it. The modern infantry attack is, as soldiers know, an intricate business, which requires very careful training of every unit in a section. But the men behind the infantry have their vital functions too. Dr. MacPhail mentions, for example, the Staff Major, whose duty it was to see that the Canadians, after taking the Ridge, should
be at once supplied with drinking-water. In the winter he began collecting petrol tins, and many a night I have heard him adjuring marauders to leave them untouched. To snake quite sure, he had them stored behind his own but until he had accumulated a pile as big as a church. One by one he had them burned out. He had special pack-saddles made to accommodate six tins. He filled these tins with sterilized water and had them loaded on mules. The pack- train was ready before the battle began, and the men drank water in the hour of their need." That was one small detail of the work of preparation, and yet it was essential to the success of the enterprise, for without water the men could not have held what they had won. The medical arrange- ments with . which Dr. MacPhail was specially concerned proved in the end to be far more extensive than was necessary. The enemy were so quickly flung out of their positions and off the Ridge that the great dressing-stations in special dug-outs, impervious to gunfire, were not used. The wounded were not only far fewer than was anticipated, but they were removed from the firing-line, attended by surgeons at the advance dressing-station, and made ready for removal to hospital with such speed that the transport proved temporarily in- sufficient. Dr. MacPhail justly claims this as a triumph for the Medical Service, which " has yielded an army without sickness " and has done more for the wounded than has ever been done in the history of war. Nor does the work behind the firing-line ever cease. Every advance means a new programme of work for the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. When Fied-Marshal Haig reports that a position has been consolidated, he sums up in a phrase an infinity of toil. To correct the civilian's impatience at the slowness of the advance after a victory, Dr. MacPhail mentions as a detail that the morning after the battle he saw, as he was struggling through the shell-craters, a boy gathering flints in a sandbag. The flints were to make cementefor the wheel-bases of the big guns, which could not be brought forward until roads were made through the shattered waste and foundations provided for new positions. Trivial instances like this help the civilian to realize that modern war, besides requiring the highest courage from the soldier, calls for the display of organizing power in a supreme degree. In both respects the men of Canada have proved their powers.
There is no uncertainty about Dr. MacPhail's view of the war. Like all men who have served at the front, he is superbly confident of victory. " By that day's work on Vimy Ridge we convinced ourselves, and proved to the enemy, that we cannot be beaten. After that other, and later, day's work on the Messines Ridge—a ridge I watched for eleven weary months—we can say with surety that we shall win, that the enemy will be defeated, that be will defeat himself in the slow eEuxion of time." He does not predict an easy victory, for the German, " docile yet courageous, hating other lands yet loving his own, hysterical yet obstinate," is still a formidable foe. The German will not be starved out, for " what is comfort to him is penury to us," and he is intelligent enough to change his tactics after every defeat. Dr. MacPhail recommends civilians to cease from troubling about the date when peaos will return :— " My counsel is that you should close your eyes to the end. Look upon war as a normal condition. Forget it, as ell normal things are forgotten. Cease praying for a speedy end--a, peace, Was you will acquire what the French call the psychopathy of the barbed wire. Peace and the end will come when your unhampered armies shall have performed their task."
This is a hard saying, and yet it is profoundly true. We civilians cannot shorten the course of the war by a single week, however much we talk about it. General Brussilofl'a Galician thrust last Sunday has done more to end the war and save Russian freedom than five months of speech-making in Petro- grad. Besides, the "psychopath of the barbed wire " is apt to impede the soldier in his task, and thus to postpone the en i which both of them seek. Dr. MacPhail does not preach
Business as usual "—far from it—but, as a Canadian addressing the Homeland, he urges us to be ourselves—" to
defy power which seemed omnipotent, never to change, nor falter nor repent." As the citizen of a new country, he admires us because our country is old, with the proud tradition of a thousand years behind us. On the Somme we were fighting where Henry V. fought five hundred years ago. In Piers Plowman our Canadian sees " as in a looking-glass the situation in which we find ourselves to-day." He does not offer us new schemes for our improvement. " It is for England we all are fighting, the England of history, not for a Utopia or any figment of disordered minds." He warns us against the " danger of insidious revolution," against such deterioration as came upon victorious Germany in the past half-century, against the " lesser intellectual breeds " and their vagaries. Above all, he warns us in the name of Canada that " by nature we are Royalists " and that " the Crown has become the seal and bond of Empire." To Englishmen, burdened always with a diffidence that the foreigner too often regards as hypocrisy, and only too conscious of the many imperfections of our system, this cheery Canadian pronouncement comes as a trumpet-call. The Old Country is proud of her children. It is good to know that the children are proud of her.
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