As the Premier of England, as Secretary of Ireland and as the leader of the House of Commons Mr. Balfour displayed great intellectual agility, but at no time was credited with having displayed the industry which spurred on such men as Lloyd George to success. He is of the aristocracy and his position in English politics came to him as the nephew of Lord Salisbury.
He was born in 1848 and educated at Eton and Cambridge and entered the House of Commons at the age of 26. Mr. Balfour was known in his early years as a philosophically and religiously inclined young man, and it occasioned some surprise when he followed the traditions of his family by entering politics.
Some years after taking his seat he joined what was known as the Fourth Party, a conservative rebel faction, consisting of three members, Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and Sir John Gorst. This group constituted a sort of mugwump element that voted independently on every party question and that tried to rouse the Conservatives from their party prejudices and narrow leanings.
To Mr. Balfour belonged the distinguished honor of attending the Berlin Conference of 1878 as private secretary to Lord Salisbury. In 1885 he became President of the Local Government Board. The Conservatives were thrown out of power for a short time at this juncture, but when they were restored in 1886 Balfour became Secretary for Scotland. Shortly after he was promoted to be Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Despite his gentle manners and quiet ways, the new Chief Secretary ruled the then disturbed Ireland with an iron hand. He was known as "Bloody Balfour" by the Irish agitators until he began to show his milder ways upon the restoration of peace. He remained in Ireland until 1891. He had endured abuse and faced threats and had come away triumphant. From Ireland Mr. Balfour went to England as First Lord of the Treasury.
Arthur James Balfour showed his friendship for the United States when, in 1897, as Acting Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he refused to give England's consent to a continental proposal that Spain be permitted to govern Cuba as she chose.
LIBERALS COME INTO POWER.
When Lord Salisbury died in 1902 Mr. Balfour succeeded him as Prime Minister. He remained in that office until 1905, when the Liberals came into power. In the coalition Ministry formed since the outbreak of the European War, he was nominated First Lord of the Admiralty. He showed remarkable ability in this office. Upon the resignation of Mr. Asquith's Cabinet, Mr. Balfour became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He is an enthusiastic sportsman and has written a book on golf.
The other English envoys who accompanied Mr. Balfour to Washington were Rear Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, and Lord Walter Cunliffe, Governor of the Bank of England.
Rear Admiral de Chair was born August 30, 1864. He entered the Royal Navy at the age of 14, and received his early training aboard His Majesty's Ship Britannia. He served in the Egyptian war and was naval attache at Washington in 1902.
Admiral de Chair commanded the Bacchante, Cochrane and Colossus successively in the years between 1905 and 1912. From 1912 to 1914 he acted as Assistant Controller of the Navy and subsequently he was the Naval Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty. At the outbreak of the war he became Admiral of the training services and of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron. Admiral de Chair is a member of the Royal Victorian Order and a Companion of the Bath.
LORD WALTER CUNLIFFE.
Lord Walter Cunliffe, Governor of the Bank of England, is 52 years old. He received his education at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with the degree of Master of Arts. He is a Lieutenant of the City of London.
Lord Cunliffe has been active in the banking field for many years and is a member of the firm of Cunliffe Brothers. He is a Director of the North Eastern Railway Company and has been a Director of the Bank of England since 1895. He became Deputy Governor of the bank in 1911 and has been Governor since 1913. Lord Cunliffe is the first Governor of the Bank of England to receive the honor of re-election after serving his term of two years. In 1914 he was created the First Baron of Headley.
Among the dominating characters of the war and upon whose judgment and ability the destinies of France and the Allies depended for a long period is General Robert Nivelle, Commander of the French armies, and who succeeded General Joffre. General Nivelle is a man of silence; he speaks little. General Nivelle is four years younger than Joffre.
As a boy of fourteen he could not take part as did Joffre and Gallieni and Pau and Kitchener also, in the tragical war of 1870. Joffre studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris; Gallieni, at Saint Cyr, without the walls; Nivelle studied at both; he may claim to belong to all arms, artillery, infantry—even cavalry. And, in his youth, he was not only a magnificent all-round athlete, as indeed he still is, but also a headlong rider of steeplechases, in which, had he been fated to break his neck, his neck would infallibly have been broken. This is a trait he shares with General Brussiloff, and, like the great Russian General, he was famous for the skill with which he tamed and trained cavalry mounts.
SERVES AS JUNIOR OFFICER.
As a junior officer Nivelle saw service in the French General Staff; his part in the expedition to China we have recorded; he also served in Northern Africa. So that, like Joffre, Gallieni, Lyantey, Roques and so many leaders of French armies, Nivelle gained an invaluable element of his training in the out-of-the-way corners of France's vast colonial empire, which has outposts in every continent and measures nearly five million square miles.
At the outbreak of the World War Nivelle, with the rank of Colonel, commanded the Fifth Regiment of Artillery, which is the artillery element of the Seventh Army Corps, the corps of Besancon and the old Franche-Comte, under the Jura Mountains, at the corner of Switzerland and Alsace.
It was, in fact, in the section of Alsace invaded and retaken by the French army of General Pau—who lost an arm in Alsace in the war of 1870—that Nivelle struck the first of many hard blows which made him Field Commander of the splendid army of France. He directed the guns of his Fifth Regiment with such deadly accuracy against a group of German guns that he first scattered their gunners in flight and put them out of action, and then led them off in triumph, twenty-four guns in all, the first great trophy won by the arms of France.
In the battle of the Ourcq, fought with superb tenacity and dash by Manoury and his men, the first decisive blow of the great battle, the first definite victory, was gained; General von Kluck's right wing was smashed in and out-flanked, with the result that the whole German line was dislocated and sent hurtling backward.
In that battle and victory Colonel Nivelle, as he then was, had his part; but it was on the Aisne, a few days later, that a strikingly brilliant act brought him into especial prominence. The Seventh Corps was attacked by exceedingly strong enemy forces and forced backward over the Aisne. Colonel Nivelle, commanding its artillery, saw his opportunity, and, himself leading on horseback, brought his batteries out into the open, right between the retreating Seventh Corps and the strong German forces that were pursuing them, already sure of victory.
VICTORY TURNED TO SLAUGHTER.
With that calm serenity which is his dominant characteristic in action, he let the Germans come close up to his guns in serried masses. Then he opened fire, at short range, with deadly precision, so that the expected victory was turned into a slaughter. The broken German regiments, fleeing to the woods beside the Aisne for safety, ran upon the bayonets of the rallied Seventh Corps, inspired to splendid valor by the magnificent action of their artillery. Of 6000 Germans who made that charge few indeed returned to their trenches.
This was on September 16, 1914. Before the New Year the Artillery Colonel had been made a General of Brigade, and in January, 1915, the new General distinguished himself by stopping the tremendous and unforeseen German drive against Soissons. He was forthwith recommended for further promotion, and on February 18 was gazetted General of Division. Shortly after this be gained new laurels by capturing from the Germans the Quenevieres salient.
This great commander was the son of Colonel Nivelle—and an English mother, a former Miss Sparrow, whose family lived at Deal, on the English Channel. In his married life General Nivelle has been exceedingly happy.
The dominating figure in the English army when America entered the fray was Sir Douglas Haig. He succeeded Sir John French.
Sir Douglas Haig was born under so favorable a star that he has long been known as "Lucky" Haig. Not that he has depended upon his luck to push him ahead in the army, for his record as a student and a worker wholly disproves this. But nevertheless fortune has showered many favors upon him. Among these favors the first and by no means the least is his very aristocratic lineage and the consequent high standing he has had in royal and influential circles.
HAIG'S FAMILY TREE.
Haig's family tree dates back at least six centuries and he comes of the very flower of Scotch stock. The virtues of the "Haigs of Bamersyde" were extolled by the poets of the thirteenth century. And to discuss this feature of his career without giving due credit to the position and influence of his wife would be ungallant as well as unfair. She was the Hon. Dorothy Vivian, daughter of the third Lord Vivian, and maid-of-honor to Queen Alexandra, and the pair were married in Buckingham Palace.
He did not enter the army until after his graduation from Oxford and then he took service in the cavalry, the usual choice of the English "gentleman." When twenty-four years old, he received his commission as a Lieutenant in the Queen's Own Hussars, one of the ultra-fashionable regiments. Six years later he was made a Captain and then decided to take a regular military course at the Staff College.
In 1898 he took part in Kitchener's campaign up the Nile and in the Soudan as a cavalry officer. He was then thirty-seven years old. He distinguished himself in several engagements, was "mentioned in the dispatches," was awarded the British medal and the Khedive's medal and was promoted to Major.
His career in the Boer war, which followed that in Egypt, was characterized by distinguished services and numerous rapid promotions. It was during this latter war that Haig became attached to the staff of Sir John French, whom he succeeded in France and Flanders. He came out of the war in South Africa a full-fledged Colonel, and with a fresh supply of medals and "mentions." Then he was sent to India as Inspector General of Cavalry.
DIRECTOR OF MILITARY TRAINING.
He remained in the Indian service three years, and then was given a post at the war office in London, with the title of "Director of Military Training." He remained in London three years, when he was sent to India as Chief of the Staff of the Indian Army. Three years later he returned to England and was given what was known as the "Aldershot Command," which, in fact, was the command of the real active British army. He had this post when the war broke. His assignment as Commander of the First Army Corps under Sir John French soon followed.
The man, who next to the Kaiser had more to do with Germany's plans for world domination, is Dr. Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg, Imperial Chancellor of Germany.
The elevation of Hollweg to the Chancellorship came when Prince Bulow stood in the way of complete domination of Germany's policies by the militarists, headed by the Kaiser. Prince Bulow was dismissed and Bethmann-Hollweg became Chancellor in 1909. From that time on he dedicated his life to the achievement of a single aim—the completion of Germany's plans of aggression.
Bethmann-Hollweg comes from an old Prussian family ennobled in 1840. He was born about 1855 and was a student with the Kaiser at the University of Bonn. He studied law at Gottingen, Strassburg and Berlin, and for several years followed the law and was appointed a judge at Potsdam.
APPOINTED PRUSSIAN HOME SECRETARY.
In 1905 he was appointed Prussian Home Secretary, and it was then that his name first became familiar to the man in the street in Berlin. Shortly afterward he was appointed Assistant Chancellor of Prince Bulow, who was then Chancellor.
It was during his service as Home Secretary that Bethmann-Hollweg became largely converted to all that the most advanced Prussian militarism stood for. Ultimately he became a far more ardent Pan-German even than Prince Bulow. In a speech at Munich in 1908 he declared that though Germany was then happily free of all immediate anxiety so far as her foreign relations were concerned, her present and future position as a great Power must ultimately rest on her strong arm and though the strength of her arm was greater than it ever had been it must grow yet stronger.
It was a speech after the Kaiser's own heart—provocative and boasting to a degree. It had, as a matter of fact, it is said, been prepared by the Emperor, and was delivered by the Kaiser's order for the special benefit of Prince Bulow, who had at that time fallen out of favor with the Emperor.
Grand Admiral Von Tirpitz is said to be the man who made the German navy. Having won the recognition of the Kaiser in 1894 he was promoted to Chief of Staff in the German navy, and was placed in command of Kiel. He was made Secretary of State in 1898 and immediately began the building up of the navy. New and modern methods of engineering were developed and finally he made such an impression with the Kaiser that he was ennobled. Von Tirpitz was the principal advocate of Germany's plans during a decade for having the navy powerful enough to equal the combined powers of any three great naval powers.
Sir John Jellicoe, Vice Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the British Naval Home Fleet had served more than forty years in the navy when the war broke out. He was a Lieutenant at the bombardment of Alexandria and was a member of the Naval Brigade which participated in the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, for activity in which he was presented with the Khedive's Bronze Star for gallant service. He was in command of the naval brigade which went to China in 1898 to help subdue the Boxers and was shot at Teitsang, where he was decorated by the German Emperor, who conferred upon him the Order of the Red Eagle. He was Rear-Admiral of the Atlantic Fleet in 1907-08, and Commander of the Second Home Squadron in 1911-12. To Admiral Jellicoe is given credit for having developed a high degree of efficiency among the gunners in the English navy.
ADMIRAL HUGO POHL.
Admiral Hugo Pohl, of the German navy, was born at Breslau in 1855. He became a Lieutenant in the Imperial German navy when but 21 years of age. He gained rapid promotion, and within a few years was Commodore in charge of the scouting ships. He had charge of setting up the now famous German naval stations from Kiel to Sonderberg in Schleswig in 1908 and was afterwards made Vice Admiral. He wears the medal of the Order of the Crown, bestowed upon him by the Kaiser for admirable service.
One of the men whose names will be forever linked with the war, particularly with relation to the adoption of new methods of warfare, is that of Count Zeppelin, who died on March 8, 1917, and who was the father of the Zeppelin or dirigible balloon. The idea for the big airship did not originate with Count Zeppelin, but with David Schwartz, a young Austrian, who built his first dirigible in 1893. He tried to arouse interest in his aircraft in Russia, but failed and finally went to Berlin, where he interested the then Baron Zeppelin. A balloon was made, but Schwartz fell ill and died. Zeppelin was later accused of attempting to steal the young Austrian's patents, and the courts made an award to Schwartz's widow of $18,000.
Count Zeppelin's first airship came out about 1898. It was 300 feet long and had an aluminum frame. Short cruises were made in 1899 and 1900, and the craft maintained a speed of about sixteen miles an hour. A second airship was completed in 1905, and later a third aircraft was finished. This dirigible made a cruise of 200 miles at an average speed of twenty miles. The success led Count Zeppelin to make his most ambitious attempt and he tried to cross the Alps carrying sixteen passengers.
IN THE AIR THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS.
He succeeded and passing through hailstorms, crossing eddies and encountering cross-currents he traveled 270 miles at an average speed of twenty-two miles an hour. Subsequently he made a flight to England, remaining in the air thirty-seven hours. Fate played him false, however, in many of his ventures and he returned home after making remarkable voyages, only to have his craft destroyed at its very landing place.
The German Government and the Kaiser joined in giving him a grant of money to carry on his work, and a plant was built at Frederichshafen. But while Count Zeppelin's name will be forever identified with aeronautics the successes which he attained were not enduring, for the Zeppelins proved not entirely satisfactory in military warfare in competition with the aeroplane.
In the counsels of Greece the outstanding figure from the beginning of the war was Eleutherois Venizelos. He is credited with being responsible for the national revival in Greece when the country seemed doomed after the Turkish war of 1897. He was the leader of the country in the movement to join the Allies in the fight against German domination and he swayed the nation and held them as few men have. He was born in the Island of Crete in 1864, and according to tradition, his family descended from the medieval Dukes of Athens. He was educated in Greece and Switzerland and became active in Cretan politics, and won recognition as the strong man of the "Great Greek Island."
TRANSFORMS A NATION.
In less than three years after the distress in which the country found itself in 1909 he transformed the nation into one of solidarity. There had been meaningless squabbles of corrupt politicians and a sordid struggle for preferment. The army was degenerating and the popular fury became so great that there was an uprising of the army, which under the title of the "Military League," ousted the Government and took control of the country. The heads of the League brought forward Venizelos. The League dissolved and reforms were instituted which started the country on a new path, and when the Balkan war broke in 1912 Greece made a record and emerged in many respects the leader of the Balkan states.
Sir John French is one of the English commanders who have rendered yeoman service in the war. He is one of the most striking military figures in England. He has seen service in India, Africa and Canada, and was one of the uniformly successful commanders in the Boer war. At the Siege of Kimberly he was shut up in Ladysmith with the Boer lines drawing closer. He managed to secrete himself under the seat of a train on which women were being carried to safety. Outside the lines he made his way to the Cape, where he was put in charge of cavalry and in a terrific drive he swept through the Free State and reached Ladysmith in time to save the day.
He originally entered the navy, but remained for a short time. He commanded the 19th Hussars from 1889 to 1903 and then rose steadily in rank until he was made General Inspector of the Forces and finally Field Marshal in 1903.
There should be no discrimination in naming those who have represented America in the country's activities at war, but because they came into the world's line of vision by being sent abroad for service there are some American commanders whose names will ever be remembered.
Vice-Admiral William S. Sims is one of these. He is a Pennsylvanian who was born in Canada. His father was A.W. Sims, of Philadelphia, who married a Canadian and lived at Port Hope, where Admiral Sims first saw the light of day. He went to Annapolis when he was 17 years of age and was graduated in 1880. After this he secured a year's leave of absence and went to France, where he studied French. Subsequently he was assigned to the Tennessee, the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron and passed through all grades of ships. He received promotion to a Lieutenancy when he was about 30 years of age. For a time he was in charge of the Schoolship Saratoga, and later was located at Charleston Navy Yard, and also with the receiving ship at the League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia. After this he went to Paris as Naval Attache at the American Embassy. He was similarly Attache at the American Embassy at St. Petersburg.
Admiral Sims was relieved of his European assignment in 1900 and joined the Asiatic fleet, and while abroad studied the methods of British gunnery. When he returned to America later he inaugurated reforms which increased the efficiency of the gunnery in the service 100 per cent. His successful efforts led to his appointment as Naval Aide to President Roosevelt. He made a report on the engagement between the British and German naval fleets at Jutland which was startling, and declared that the British battle cruisers had protected Great Britain from the invasion of the enemy.
When he reached the European waters in command of the United States naval forces, with a destroyer flotilla, and the British officers who greeted him asked when the flotilla would be ready to assist in chasing the submarine and protecting shipping, Admiral Sims created a surprise by tersely replying: "We can start at once." And he did. Admiral Sims married Miss Anne Hitchcock, daughter of Former Secretary of the Interior. The couple have five children.
Major General John J. Pershing, of the United States Army, Commander of the forces in France and Belgium, is one of the most picturesque figures in American military circles. "Black Jack" Pershing is what the officers call him, because he was for a long time commander of the famous Tenth Cavalry of Negroes, which he whipped into shape as Drillmaster, and which saved the Rough Riders from a great deal of difficulty at San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. He was also at the battle of El Caney where he was given credit for being one of the most composed men in action that ever graced a battlefield. He served with signal results in the campaign against the little "brown" men in the Philippines; was in charge of the expedition which chased Villa into Mexico.
General Pershing was born in 1864 in Laclede, Missouri, and is tall, wiry and strong. Every inch of his six feet is of fighting material. He is a man of action and has a penchant for utilizing the services of young men rather than staid old officers of experience. Pershing is a real military man, and has been notably absent from such things as banquets and other functions where by talking he might get into the lime light. It is true that he was jumped over the heads of a number of officers by President Roosevelt, but he has carved his way by his own efforts, and no man could have more fittingly been sent to take charge of the American forces abroad than "Jack" Pershing.
CHAPTER XX.
CHEMISTRY IN THE WAR.
Substitutes for Cotton—Nitrates Produced from Air—Yeast a Real Substitute for Beef—Seaweed Made to Give up Potash—A Gangrene Preventative—Soda Made Out of Salt Water—America Chemically Independent.
It is when men are put to the test that they develop initiative and are inspired to great things. In the stress of circumstances there were created through and in the great war many unusual devices and much that will endure for the benefit of mankind in the future. It is probable that the advancements made in many lines would not have been attained in years but for the necessity which demanded the exertion of men's ingenuity, and in no field was this advancement greater than in that of chemistry.
Any struggle between men is, in the last analysis, a battle of wits, but it remained for those planning and scheming to defeat their fellow men or protect themselves in the world conflict to make for the first time in history the fullest use of the chemist's knowledge. Largely the successes of the war have been due to the studies and activities of the chemists, working in their laboratories far from the actual field of strife.
Not only has their knowledge been turned to the creation of tremendously destructive explosives, the like of which have never before been known in warfare, but the same brains which have been utilized to assist man in his death-dealing crusades have been called upon to thwart the efforts of the warring humans and save the lives of those compelled to face the withering fire of cannon, the flaming grenade and the asphyxiating gas bomb.
In the food crisis which confronted the nations, chemists drew from the very air and the waters of the river and sea, gases and salts to take the place of those which became limited in their supply because of the demands of the belligerents.
The chemist is one of those who fights the battles at home. The resisting steel, the penetrating shell, the poisonous gas, the power-producing oil, the powerful explosive—all these are his contributions to the war's equipment, but he also is the magician who waves the wand and out of the apparently useless weeds and vegetable matter produces edibles. He turns waste products into valuable chemicals or extracts needed chemicals from by-products.
GERMANY'S GREAT PRIVATION.
Germany, deprived of many imports by the sea power of England, first transformed herself into a self-supporting nation through the agency of the chemist. Substitutes had to be provided for food products which the Germans could not get, and it is said that the ability of the Kaiser and his henchmen to withstand the attacks of the Allied forces was due as much to the service rendered by the chemists as by the army and navy.
Not only were artificial foodstuffs manufactured, but natural food products previously neglected were prepared for use. What had been regarded as useless weeds were found to possess food value. A dozen wild-growing plants were found that might be used as a substitute for spinach, while half a dozen others were shown to be good substitutes for salads. Starches were obtained from roots, and cheap grades of oils and fatty wastes of all sorts were turned into edibles.
Up until the advent of the present war cotton formed the base of most of the so-called propellant explosives used in advanced warfare. Such terrible explosives as trinitrotoluene occasionally mentioned in the published war reports, as well as many others, have as the principal agent of destructive force guncotton, which is ordinary raw cotton or cellulose treated with nitric or sulphuric acid, though there are, of course, other chemicals used in compounding the various forms of deadly explosives.
At the same time there are innumerable explosives which are of a distinct class. Lyddite, mentioned occasionally as one of the modern death-dealing explosives, has for a base picric acid. The Lyddite shells referred to occasionally in various articles about the war are shells in which Lyddite is used as the explosive. The largest percentage of explosives used in modern gunnery are those formed of nitrated cellulose—guncotton.
TWO GREAT FACTORS.
Therefore any shortage in the supply of cotton and cellulose is a serious matter in war time, for the country which has the most plentiful supply of ammunition is the one that has the greatest relative advantage. It was, for instance, stated from Washington several times after the war started and the United States commercial and industrial forces were being mobilized, that America could make enough almost unbelievably powerful explosives to blow Germany off the face of the European map, were it possible to transport the dangerous materials. Dozens of new explosive compounds were placed before the Government for consideration and in application for patents. One of the new ones, it was said, was so powerful that little more than a pinch of it exploded beneath such an immense structure as the Woolworth Building, New York, would destroy the entire edifice.
The curtailment of the supply of cotton to Germany when the war started, because of England's blockade, and later when America entered the conflict, threatened disaster to the "Fatherland." The German chemists began working immediately to supply substitutes for cotton, to be used both in the manufacture of explosives and fabrics. They developed the processes of producing cellulose from wood pulp to take the place of cotton for making guncotton, and certain forms of wood fiber and paper were used in the textile trades. Willow bark was one of the substances utilized to a limited degree in making fabrics.
Likewise synthetic—or artificial—camphor to take the place of that secured from nature's own laboratory—the camphor tree—was also produced of necessity, for camphor is an ingredient largely used in making smokeless powder. Before the war most of the camphor was obtained from Japan.
Compounds—alloyed steel, iron and aluminum—have also been used in the industrial world to supplant copper. In America we have been educated to regard copper as the ideal metal for conducting electrical power, but in Europe aluminum was used successfully in a large way, even before the war. After the conflict started in all of the countries where there was a scant supply of copper, substitutes were developed by the metallurgists and chemists.
POTENCY OF MODERN CHEMISTRY.
The acids and salts used in powder making and the creation of explosives were also secured from new places. Nitric acid, which is necessary to the manufacture of guncotton, for many years was made principally with saltpeter and sulphuric acid. Modern chemists, however, made it from nitrogen of the very air we breathe, and in Germany it was made during the war from ammonia and calcium cyanamide, both of which may be obtained from the air.
Many such methods of obtaining acids were known and tested before the war, but the processes had not been perfected to such an extent as to make them commercially profitable. However, the increased prices of chemicals, due to the excessive demands of war, and the absolute necessity for producing them inspired the chemists to get the required results, and Germany by the development of these sources of supply found the acids necessary for her own use in war, whether for explosive making or medical purposes.
Great quantities of sugar are used in making powder and explosives, too, and when the supply became limited the German chemists began producing in larger quantities the chemical substitute—saccharine. Later even this sweet was denied the population because the chemicals were needed for war uses. So in every line Germany found use for everything which its chemists and chemical laboratories could produce.
The terrible gas and liquid fire bombs which the Germans were first reported using contained chemical compounds invented for the purpose by the chemists. Some of the chemicals and the gases produced when the bombs exploded were so powerful that men and animals in the range of the fumes were killed instantly. The effect was to paralyze them in some cases and it was reported that many of the soldiers were found dead standing upright in the trenches or in the attitudes which they had assumed at the moment they were overcome.
BASIC PRINCIPLE OF BOMBS.
Nitrous-oxide, or chlorine, in some chemical form is supposed to have been the base of the bombs, and concerning the liquid fire it was reported in connection with the dropping of bombs on London from a Zeppelin, that some of the bombs contained what is chemically known as Thermit, which is a mixture of aluminum and iron oxide used in brazing and welding. When ignited the oxygen is freed from the iron and combines with the aluminum with great rapidity. During the chemical reaction an intense heat is produced—a heat so great that it almost equals that of an electric arc.
So in the world of agriculture and industry the German chemists, recognized leaders of the world, actually made or produced from the air and other unsuspected sources things without which they could not have withstood the siege against them for a single year. In the absence of concentrated foods for cattle and humans, the chemists produced absolute substitutes. They took the residue or waste from the breweries and extracting the bitter hops taste from the dried yeast produced a substitute for beef extract.
So also they secured ammonium sulphate by a direct combination of nitrogen and hydrogen in the air. At the same time they utilized other minerals than those usually available for the manufacture of sulphuric acid and placed the country on an independent footing.
But Germany was not alone in its advancement. The United States, which found itself without quantities of dye-stuffs and many other chemically produced things when the war came on, took the lesson unto itself and is today nearer self-supporting than it ever was in the history of the nation. The Department of Agriculture has experimented and produced from yeast, vegetable boullion cubes, which taste like beef extract and contain greater nutriment.
DOMESTIC DYE-STUFFS.
America, too, has extracted sulphate of ammonium from the air and the dye-stuffs which we could not get from abroad are being made at home. Two of the things which America found lacking when war developed were potash and acetone, both of which are factors in powder and explosive making. The former is used in the ordinary black gunpowder, but the latter is necessary in the making of the smokeless powder. England wanted Cordite, one form of this powder which the British think is the best propellant in the world. It is made of guncotton and nitroglycerine and acetone is one of the chemicals required in its manufacture. England turned to the United States for quantities of this explosive and also for the acetone, but America did not produce anywhere near enough, and England wanted this country to make something like 20,000,000 pounds of the explosive.
A number of mushroom chemical plants were developed by the powder company to produce the desired acetone—one very much like a vinegar plant near Baltimore, and another at San Diego, California, where the munitions maker's chemists refined acetone and potash extracted from kelp, or sea weed, and besides supplying the powder and the chemicals which the English needed America developed a permanent industry.
RELIEVED BY AMERICAN INGENUITY.
Carbolic acid, too, was one of the badly needed chemicals of the war, not only for medical purposes, but also for explosive making. Again the ingenuity of America asserted itself and Thomas A. Edison produced the plans for two benzol-absorbing plants which were erected at great steel works and within a few months these plants were turning out benzol and Mr. Edison's carbolic-acid plant was being supplied with the raw material.
And then it was believed that America could not make dyes to take the place of those which came from Germany. All the United States, it was said, would have to wear white stockings. The country just could not produce the dyes necessary, and the product of the American plants was inferior. But America could make the same dyes. She is making them. Right now she is making practically as great a variety as Germany ever sent over here.
A few miles outside of Philadelphia, at Marcus Hook, on the busy Delaware river where the ships of the world are being made, the Benzol Products Company turns out large quantities of aniline oil. The aniline oil, the essential basis of aniline dyes, is made into tints as fair and perfect as any the wizards of Germany ever conjured out of their test tubes.
The tale about America's inability was proved to be a fable. The Marcus Hook plant is one of three which sprang up when the war began. Others are the Schoellkopf Aniline and Chemical Works at Buffalo and a third is the Becker Aniline and Chemical Works at Brooklyn. The three are now merged into one great operating company and Germany will have some difficulty in getting back her dye trade when she is ready to again fight for the world markets.
Moreover, the world-famous duPont Company, which has made powder and chemicals for all the nations, turned in and purchased the Harrison Chemical Works in 1917, and besides making "pigments" has entered the coal tar dye industry. The company made an intensive study of the dyeing industries—cotton, calico printing, wool, silk, leather, paper, paints, printing inks, &c., and made plans to meet the requirements of each. The Harrison plant is but one of the immense group operated by the duPont Company and it has been famous for the manufacture of white lead and acids.
A CHEMICAL DISCOVERY.
There is in fact no line in which the chemists of America did not rise to the emergency and the "romances of the industrial" world are not more entrancing than are those of the medical and other fields. Chemistry, for instance, discovered an antitoxin for the deadly gangrene, or gas bacillus, poisoning of the battlefields. The discovery was made by research workers in Rockefeller Institute.
It is one of the most important discoveries in medical research as applied to war, having an even greater bearing on the treatment of war wounds than the Dakin-Carrel treatment of sluicing wounds previously referred to. The serum works on the same principle as the anti-tetanus serum used to prevent lockjaw. The gangrene antitoxin is injected to prevent the development of gangrene poisoning.
The serum was developed by Dr. Carrel Bull and Miss Ida W. Pritchett, of the Rockefeller Institute, by immunizing horses by the application of the bacillus germs, then obtaining the resultant serum from the horses. The new serum displaces, in a measure, the Dakin-Carrel method of treating wounds. As soon as a soldier is picked up wounded, the plan is to give him an injection of the serum so that he can be rushed to the rear ambulances with no fear that the deadly gas infection will develop.
The use of the serum means the wiping out of the big death rate from infection, with death resulting merely from wounds that are in themselves fatal. The gas bacillus was discovered by Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, 25 years ago. The bacillus frequently is present in soil and when carried to an open wound germinates quickly, developing into bubbles of gaseous matter, whence comes the name "gas bacillus." The bubbles multiply rapidly, a few hours often being sufficient to cause death.
A WOUND-FLUSHING SYSTEM.
Possible gangrene poisoning has been offset by the Dakin-Carrel system of constantly flushing the open wounds, but patients are frequently too far off to be given the advantage of the flushing method and this is where the serum is chiefly valuable. The ambulance or medical corps "shoots" the serum into the wounded soldier even before they douse his wound with iodine.
The progress that has been made along these lines is indicated by the statement of Lord Northcliffe, who after a visit to the front declared that the annual death rate in the English army was 3 per cent of 1000 and that the average illness, including colds and influenza, was less than in London, despite the discomforts of the trenches.
In the past disease has been as destructive as battles. Biology and pathology, to say nothing of surgery and therapeutics, have made such strides that disease has been virtually eliminated as a factor in warfare. War takes medical science into the field, where the control of large masses of men enables it to develop the highest efficiency.
Even in normal peace conditions biological and pathological science has been accomplishing results not popularly understood. Individual cures by surgery and medicine appeal to personal interests, but these are negligible compared to the prevention of plagues like smallpox, typhus and tuberculosis. If such diseases had not been successfully combated by science three out of four of the present civilized population would not be in existence at all. The organized and intensive application and developments of science, of preventive medicine, constitute the strictly neutral work in this war by which all humanity will profit for all time to come.
In passing it is interesting to note that the great power supplied by Niagara Falls is being utilized to produce some of the chemical marvels. One great industry there is making soda by the electrolytic process. That is, salt brine is pumped from the saline deposits in western New York and piped to the works. This is run into electric cells and through these a current of electricity is led. The salt, which is composed of chlorine and sodium, decomposes under the electric attack. The sodium goes to one pole and combines with water to form caustic soda, whereas the chlorine escapes at the other pole. Let us follow the chlorine, which is a yellowish-green gas, more than twice as heavy as air, and has found a new use as poison gas in the great war—for which all the world should be ashamed.
It is collected and compressed to a liquid form and shipped in containers under pressure for use in chemical works and bleacheries and for the purification of drinking water. It has been found above all things effective in destroying noxious bacilli. A surprisingly small amount of the gas dissolved in the water is enough. In New York city the water has been chlorinated and no single case of typhoid fever has been traced to the supply.
CHAPTER XXI.
OUR NEIGHBORING ALLY.
Canada's Recruiting—Raise 33,000 Troops in Two Months—First Expeditionary Force to Cross Atlantic—Bravery at Ypres and Lens—Meeting Difficult Problems—Quebec Aroused by Conscription.
The world has marvelled at the achievement of Canada at Valcartier camp near Quebec and the dispatch across the Atlantic Ocean of a fully equipped expeditionary force of 33,000 men within two months of the outbreak of war between Great Britain and Germany. But the magnitude of that feat cannot be appreciated properly until one considers that on August 4, 1914, Canada had a permanent force of only about 3500 men.
These soldiers, who for the most part were instructors and men on guard duty, provided a nucleus for a training organization. In addition to its "standing army," the Dominion had an active militia numbering approximately 60,000 men. Their training consisted of what has been aptly called "after-supper soldiering." Members of city regiments drilled for one night each week, participated in an annual church parade and spent two weeks every year in summer camp.
The training of the rural regiments consisted almost entirely of the two weeks in summer camp. Yet from these militia units were drawn a large proportion of the men in the first Canadian oversea contingent, while the militia regiments, to a large extent, formed the basis of Canada's recruiting organization after the outbreak of hostilities.
Enlistments during the first two years in the expeditionary force numbered approximately 415,000, while probably 150,000 applicants were rejected as physically unfit.
Immediately upon the declaration of war Major General Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia, telegraphed the officers commanding the militia regiments to commence recruiting for oversea service. After the recruits were signed up and accepted, they lived at home and drilled during the day at the armories throughout the Dominion.
Meanwhile, Valcartier camp was being prepared for the gathering army. The building of this great military center almost overnight was an engineering feat of no mean magnitude. Two weeks after work was started, troops recruited by the militia regiments began to arrive, and before the end of a month Valcartier was a tented city of 25,000 soldiers.
There were some complaints, of course. They were inevitable in an encampment so hastily prepared. But the essentials were there, and when the contingent sailed from Gaspe, on the coast of Quebec, on October 3, it was a well-trained, efficient body of soldiers, besides being the largest army that ever crossed the Atlantic at one time.
AN EFFICIENT COMMANDER.
The contingent was in command of Lieutenant-General Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson. He was born at Ipswich in 1859 and began his military career with the Militia, going to the regular army in 1878. He joined the Royal West Kent Regiment as Second Lieutenant and rapidly won promotion. He served in the Transvaal, later in Egypt and participated in actions at Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir, receiving the Khedive's bronze star. Service in South Africa and in India followed, during which General Alderson successively became Captain, Major and Lieutenant Colonel. He became a Colonel in 1903 and was placed in charge of the Second Infantry Brigade, and in 1908 commanded the Sixth Division, Southern Army of India, having meantime been given the rank of Major General.
After the departure of the first contingent recruiting was continued by the militia regiments, and during the winter the men were quartered in exhibition grounds, Y.M.C.As., sheds, etc. In the spring of 1915 existing camps were enlarged and new ones opened.
During this period the recruiting machinery developed from the militia regiments. Through the latter officers were recommended to command new battalions. These O.Cs. selected most of their subordinate officers from their own militia regiments and used the parent organization as a general basis for recruiting operations, headquarters being located at the regimental armories.
The keen competition existing between the militia units was maintained between the new oversea formations, and battalions were raised in a few weeks. For months enlistments all over Canada averaged more than 1000 men daily, and with recruits coming forward at this rate, there was no necessity of protracted delay in bringing battalions up to strength.
DIFFICULTY OF RECRUITING.
There was a disposition, especially in military circles, to attribute the increasing difficulty of the recruiting situation during the winter of 1915-16 and since to a change of system and the introduction of the so-called "political colonels." The change, however, was rather the result of new conditions than the cause of it. Recruiting had slowed down—largely from natural causes.
A new appeal was needed to reach a class of eligible men who had not yet enlisted. The recruiting problem apparently had outgrown the facilities of the militia organizations. Rightly or wrongly, the government commissioned a number of well-known men, without military experience, to raise battalions. Their popularity and local confidence in them were the excuses for their appointment—and the experiment was in the main successful.
Perhaps there was a suggestion of politics about it, although it may be stated emphatically that politics had not been a serious influence in connection with the recruiting, training or leadership of Canada's oversea forces. That such is the case stands to the enduring credit of Major General Hughes.
The attempt to "popularize" recruiting was soon found to entail serious evils. Competition for recruits in an already well-combed field became very keen. The new political colonels realized that their reputations were at stake, and in the effort to fill up their battalions various undignified and regrettable expedients were employed. Cabarets, bean-counting contests, lotteries and callithumpian methods generally marked a period in Canada's recruiting history not pleasant to review, and which brought discredit upon the entire voluntary enlistment system as a permanent method of filling up armies.
TRAINING SERIOUSLY DELAYED.
Besides the moral influence of such schemes to get men in khaki, the recruiting efforts of the political colonels had a serious effect in delaying the training of new men. With their personal reputations as organizers involved, the commanding officers were reluctant to admit inability to fill up the ranks of their units, and repeatedly pleaded for more time.
For months partly recruited battalions made little or no progress with their training, while the officers devised new recruiting "stunts" and while men were being sought in the highways and byways.
The situation was complicated by allowing a number of infantry battalions to recruit in the same area at the same time, with the result that the new men came in driblets, valuable time was lost and much money wasted. In some cases it has taken well over a year from the date when they were authorized before battalions were dispatched oversea—due very largely to ineffective recruiting methods. Battalions were allowed to continue the heart-breaking quest for recruits long after they should have been amalgamated and sent to England. Such amalgamations came ultimately, battalions retaining their identity when leaving Canada only when 600 or more strong.
The high cost of recruits was a direct consequence of competition among battalions recruiting independently in the same territory at the same time. The government allowance was not adequate to maintain the pace and had to be supplemented by private funds.
There was in Toronto a certain group of fifty recruits referred to as the "$10,000 squad," because it is estimated that the cost of recruiting them averaged nearly $200 each, the money coming from private funds of officers and their friends. Perhaps the estimate involves some exaggeration, but many units added to their ranks only at a cost of $50 or more per recruit.
Some idea of the waste of such a system may be secured when it is stated that, with men coming forward freely, the cost of recruiting is considerably less than $10 per man, even after allowing a generous bonus to the recruiting sergeants. More serious than the cost in money was the delay in training men needed at the front.
A POLITICAL IMPOSSIBILITY.
Canada's experience constitutes a severe indictment of the voluntary system of recruiting, although sterner measures at the outset were a political impossibility. The free-will enlistment plan had to be given a thorough test, and its inadequacy demonstrated and repeatedly emphasized before public opinion would support resort to compulsion.
English-speaking Canada at least learned that lesson, and it is extremely doubtful whether the United States would have adopted the selective draft system at the commencement of its participation in the war, if it had not been that the experience of Canada and the United Kingdom established the weakness inherent in the voluntary system.
Besides the camp at Valcartier, a great artillery camp was set up at Petewawa, where the best facilities existed for long range gun practice. Ontario saw two camps at Niagara and Camp Borden; Manitoba saw one on the plains, Alberta another in the picturesque district near Calgary, while British Columbia had its camp at Vernon.
INADEQUATE RECRUITING.
The volunteer recruiting in Canada, in its incipiency, while resultful, was soon found to be not adequate. Under it, however, there was a widespread response that stirs the blood, for men hurried to the lines from the Yukon and the Peace Rivers; from Hudson's Bay and the farther hinterlands, from prairie and mountain; white men and the red men; cowboys and city chaps, harvesters and hunters, mechanics and mountaineers, backwoodsmen and frontwoodsmen. And also among the enlisters were thousands of Americans who fought side by side with Canadian, Briton and Frenchman.
Canada has large German settlements, including 300,000 German and Austrian settlers in the western provinces. Prompt action was taken on the outbreak of the war to deal with the alien element that might prove dangerous and disloyal. Nearly 10,000 were speedily interned, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. A large proportion were Austrian laborers who had been railway navvies. These were placed in western camps and used in building trails and roads in national parks, or in clearing the forest for future settlement in Northern Ontario.
Many individuals of known pro-German sympathies were also put out of harm's way, and some famous trials were held which served to give salutary warnings to all others that freedom of speech has its limitations in times of war, and that the rumors that the sinking of the Lusitania was being celebrated behind closed doors was hardly palatable.
Others, again, were caught in attempts to destroy property and it is to the credit of police and military vigilance that few succeeded in their nefarious designs. The internment camp proved a wholesome example, and the pro-German in Canada took the advice of the United States Government to its German subjects "to keep their mouths shut." It is also a fact that the occupants of the detention camps in the Dominion were well fed and treated, in striking contrast to the disturbing reports that leaked through as to the way Canadian war prisoners in Germany fared.
CANADA'S WAR FINANCIERING.
Next, the story of how Canada is financing her share of the war, for it is a costly business. Three domestic war loans, totaling $450,000,000, were voluntarily subscribed, each in fact being doubly underwritten, and yet the savings of the people in the banks is (1917) the highest on record—over a billion and a quarter. Part of the war revenue is being raised by war taxes on letters, checks, legal documents and some articles of import. Happily the normal revenue of the country was never so large nor the trade of the Dominion so buoyant. All these factors are helping to carry the war burden.
The generosity of the people, under the heavy strain, was most marked. Many millions were given to the various war help funds, chiefly to the Red Cross and the Canadian Patriotic Fund, of 700 branches, which supplements the Government separation allowance to soldiers' dependents by other grants. Canada had, up to that time, by the way, the highest paid soldiery in the world, privates getting $33 a month.
It is interesting to note that there are several branches of the Canadian Patriotic Fund in the United States, which looked after the families and dependents of Americans who enlisted in the Canadian ranks.
Canadian total givings in cash and kind to their own, as well as to the Belgians, French, Servian, Armenian and other funds and Governmental grants of grain and provision, would represent a very much larger figure than that here mentioned.
The orders placed in Canada averaged $1,500,000 worth for every day in the year.
The women of Canada in every way render practical patriotic service. Hundreds of nurses were placed in overseas and home hospitals. The farmers' wives raised large sums of money as did the school children. Organizations of all kinds came into existence, not alone collecting money, but contributing vast quantities of war material and soldiers' comforts, and sending packages of food and clothing regularly to Canadian prisoners in German camps.
Still another war problem was the care of the returned wounded soldiers, and a serious problem it was. The procession of the disabled was a pathetic one. Military convalescent hospitals were set up in many centres, in addition to the opening of private homes for the same beneficent purpose.
CANADA PART OF AMERICA.
Canada may be an English possession, but to us it is part of America, and certainly no two countries have rested side by side in greater friendship than the "Dominion" and the United States. You can find no great fortifications along the 3000 odd miles of border between Canada and the United States. The countries have lived in peace and harmony and together, or side by side they have battled for peace on the fields of Flanders.
All the world knows what Canada has done on the battlefields abroad, fighting with those troops from Australia, New Zealand, India and lesser English territory, to drive the ruthless Germans back and crush the Empire to which they swear allegiance.
The Canadian troops were taken after landing in France to a point within the country between St. Omer and Ypres, where they served with honor to themselves, their presence having a salutary effect on the British soldiery, who had been facing the German forces. At the battle of Neuve Chapelle the Canadians held part of the line allotted to the first army, and while not engaged in the main attack, rendered valuable help, their artillery being very active, and at the battle of Ypres in April, 1915, they took a notable part.
In the latter part of April, the Canadian division held a line of about 5000 yards, connecting with that of the French troops, and faced the memorable gas attack of the Germans, which was the first noted in the war. The asphyxiating gas was projected into the trenches by means of force pumps and pipes laid under the parapets, the German sappers having carefully placed these conductors. The bulk of the gas was directed against the French, largely made up of Turcos and Zouaves, who were driven back, suffering agonies.
POSITION BRAVELY HELD.
The Canadians suffered to some extent from the poison, and though there were in the commands lawyers, college professors, business men, clerks and workers of all sorts, who had been turned into soldiers within a few months, and without previous military experience, they held their position bravely. The Canadians were, of course, compelled to change their position after the French fell back, and the Allied troops were, to all effects and purposes, routed. But when the Germans, recognizing the weakened position of the Canadians, attempted to force a series of attacks, the Canadian division, as a matter of record, fought through the day and through the night, for forty-eight consecutive hours, and finally, in a counter-attack, drove the Germans back and regained a position which had been lost by the British troops in the earlier conflict.
Later, in the face of a devastating fire, in which many officers were killed, battalions of the Canadians carried warfare to the first line of German trenches, and in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle won the trench. This attack, it is said, secured and maintained during the most critical moment of the campaign the integrity of the Allied line.
In connection with the experience of the Canadians with the gas fumes, it is necessary to note that at that time they were unprovided with gas masks, or means of protecting themselves against the fumes, and the best they could do was to stuff wet handkerchiefs in their mouths. The fumes, although extremely poisonous, were not so effective with the Canadians as on the French lines, largely because of the position of the Canadians, and the direction of the wind, but in the several attacks a number of the Canadians were asphyxiated.
HEROES WIN RECOGNITION.
So, all through the Ypres campaign, the Canadians faced the shot, shell and poisonous gases of the Germans, and won recognition for their heroic conduct which will stand to the credit of Canada for all time. At Festubert, Givenchy, and, last but not least, Lens, the Canadians, step by step, kept pace with the Allied advances.
In their general advance on Lens the Canadians occupied the strongest outpost in the defense of that place, and pushing their troops on toward La Coulotte, entered that village. The Germans withdrew in this neighborhood from a line about one and three-quarters miles long.
The task of the Canadians was to capture German outposts southwest of Reservoir Hill. The attack was evidently expected. The Germans scuttled, abandoning ground upon which machine gun fire was immediately turned by Germans located on the hill. This was speedily followed by heavy artillery fire, which continued during the night in the vicinity of the Lens electric station.
The enemy's dugouts were searched, found to be empty, and wrecked.
The German retirement ceased during the night. Patrols sent out opposite Mericourt and to the south found the enemy's front line strongly held. The Germans made huge craters at all cross roads in Avion and leading towards Lens.
Patrols which were sent out reached the summit of Reservoir Hill without opposition and pushed on down the eastern slope and the strong Lens outpost was effectively occupied. Meanwhile, south of the Souchez River the Canadians drove forward on the heels of the retiring Germans. Railway embankments east of Lens electric station were occupied. The advance was then continued toward La Coulotte. As night fell strong parties were sent out to consolidate the positions occupied, while patrols were sent forward to keep in touch with the Germans.
WANTON DESTRUCTION.
Several days previous the Germans were known to be destroying houses in the western part of Lens, with the object of giving a wider area of fire for their guns. It was their intention of clinging to the eastern side of the city and prolonging the struggle by house-to-house fighting.
Under a protecting concentration of artillery fire, Canadian troops successfully stormed and captured the German front line before Avion, a suburb of Lens. By the advance the British line was carried forward to within one mile of the centre of Lens.
The Canadians, heartened by successes gained in a few days at a relatively small cost, decided to attack across the open ground sloping upwards to Avion and the village of Leauvette, near the Souchez River. They met with opposition of a serious character at only one point, where a combination of machine gun fire and uncut wires delayed the advance. The attack was not intended to be pressed home at this particular spot, as the ground specially favored the Germans, so that the delay did no harm. The assaulting troops comprised men from British Columbia, Manitoba, Central Ontario and Nova Scotia.
The attack was made along a two-mile front. On the extreme left, Nova Scotians pushed their way up the Lens-Arras road to the village of Leauvette. Here they took a number of prisoners. At the other end of the line, east of the railway tracks, enemy dugouts were bombed. Their occupants belonged to the crack Prussian Guards Corps, the Fifth Guard Grenadiers, who refused in most cases to come out and surrender.
At daybreak, Canadian airplanes, flying low over Avion, saw few Germans there. Craters which had been made by mine explosions at the crossroads, seriously hindered them in bringing up troops from Lens for counter-attacks.
GERMAN AVIATIK DEFEATED.
In an air duel fought at probably the highest altitude at which aviators, up until that time, had met in combat, nearly four miles, a Canadian triplane pursued and defeated a German two-seated Aviatik. The German machine had sought safety by climbing upward and the triplane pursued. At a height of 20,000 feet the pilot of the German craft either fell or jumped from it and disappeared at the moment of the first burst of fire from the gun on the Canadian. The German observer then was seen to climb out upon the tail of the machine, where he lost his hold and plunged headlong. The Aviatik turned its nose down and fell.
It is meet that some note be taken of the fact that while the Canadian soldiers were battling for humanity and the preservation of the British Empire in Flanders there was being celebrated in their native land the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Dominion. All Canada took part in the celebration on June 1, 1917, as did large numbers of men from the United States officers' training camp at Niagara, where recruits were preparing to receive Commissions in Uncle Sam's Army.
Up until 1867 Canada had been the scene of bitter strife between the French and British. At that time the provinces were brought quite closely together, and commenced a new era of prosperity. The foundation was then laid for a wonderfully prosperous country, one filled with almost limitless possibilities.
The confederation of Canada had its birth in a meeting of delegates from all over British North America, which was held in 1864, and these delegates, after deliberating for nearly three weeks, passed a large number of resolutions which formed the basis of what eventually became the Act of Union. In the following January these resolutions were submitted to the Legislature of Canada and after due debate there was passed in both chambers of Parliament a measure for the purpose of uniting the provinces in accordance with the provisions of the Quebec resolutions. The meeting was in Quebec.
PLAN OF UNION PASSED.
A number of difficulties were encountered, so that it was 1867 before the plan of union was submitted to the Imperial Parliament, where it was warmly received and passed without alteration of any description within a few days. The royal assent was given on March 29, and the act constituting the new Canada went into effect on July 1, which day has since become known as Dominion Day, and is the chief of all Canadian holidays.
The federal Constitution of Canada is contained in an Imperial Act of Parliament, known as the British North America Act, and it is based very largely upon that of the mother country. The ministry of the day holds office at the pleasure of the House of Commons, the members of which are elected by the people. At the head of the affairs is a Governor-General, who is appointed by the Crown and paid by the people of Canada. As is the case with the British sovereigns, he acts with and on the advice of the ministers for the time being, and also like the King, he can dissolve the Parliament.
The number of members of the House of Commons is regulated by the following clauses of the act: "On the completion of the census in the year 1871, and of each subsequent decennial census, the representation of the four provinces shall be readjusted by such authority in such a manner, and from such time as the Parliament of Canada from time to time provides."
Previous to the passing of the British North America Act, the great Dominion had consisted of a conglomeration of provinces, some of them of almost fabulous extent, into which the white man from the West had penetrated. Tradition has it that some thousand years ago a Norseman, by name Leif Ericson, coming in his great beaked galley, through the northern seas, from Greenland, was the first white man to stand on Canadian soil.
Another five centuries were, however, to pass before John Cabot, sailing from Bristol, in the days of Henry Bolingbroke, brought the first British ship into a Canadian port. After him the fishermen of Europe came in increasing numbers to the great banks, with the result that little by little, as their tiny vessels touched the American shores, the great continent began to be known to the people of Europe.
DOMINION'S FOUNDATIONS LAID.
It was not really, however, until the year 1534 that the foundations of the Dominion may be said to have been sunk. In that year Jacques Cartier sailed from the port of St. Malo, with two little ships, intending to attempt the northwest passage to Japan. Francis the First was then ruling in Paris, and there was great adventure in the air of France. Cartier did not make the northwest passage, but he did touch the coast of Canada, or, to be more exact, the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. It was then the 10th of May, and having sailed around the island, he steered south, and crossing the gulf entered the bay which, by reason of the great heats of midsummer, he named Des Chaleurs. Holding along the coast, he came to the little inlet of Gaspe, and here, at the entrance to the harbor, he erected a huge cross surmounted by the arms and lilies of France. He could find no passage, however, to the northwest, and so he turned his ship, and sailed back to St. Malo.
The Court in Paris heard his story with interest. His cause was taken up by the King; and, as a result, in the succeeding May, he sailed again to the new world with three well found ships. On the day of Saint Lawrence he entered the great bay, to which he at once gave the name of the Saint, and passing on came, in September, to anchor in the Isle of Orleans.
REAL FOUNDER OF CANADA.
The man, however, with whose name the early history of Canada is most fully connected, had not as yet been born. Nor was it until the year 1567 that, at Brouage in Saintonge, Samuel de Champlain came upon the scene. In the year 1603, when Elizabeth was ruling in England, and Henry of Navarre in France, Champlain came to Canada. He had been a soldier of le Bearnais, in the great wars with the League, an officer of marine, and a man with no little knowledge of natural science, as knowledge was then accounted. He came now in command of an expedition, fitted out by the merchants of Rouen, with the idea of forming a Canada company, as England had her Barbary Company, her Eastland Company, her Muscovie Company, or her Turkey Company. And in this way the French came into Canada.
Thus there began those American wars between the two countries, divided at home only by the English Channel, which went on century by century, largely through the employment of the Indian tribes, until that September night when Wolfe's boats drifted in, from the fleet to the shore, and the battle on the Plains of Abraham permanently settled the question of domination in favor of the British.
The British conquest of Canada did not, however, mean the cessation of fighting. There came, presently, the war between Great Britain and the American colonies, one of the most amazing exploits of which was the marvelous march of Arnold and Montgomery through the forests of Maine to the St. Lawrence, ending in the wonderful siege, of the year 1775, and the heroic failure to storm the defenses by scaling the rocks from the river bed. Eventually the boundary between the United States and the British possessions was settled by the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, just twenty years after an earlier Treaty of Paris had recorded the surrender of Canada by France to Great Britain.
CANADA, FROM COLONY TO DOMINION.
For the last century and a half the story of Canada has been the story first of a British colony and then of a British Dominion. A great flood of new colonists had come into the country after the victory of the States in the War of Independence, when many of the royalists of New England crossed the border. As a result, there had grown up the two new provinces of Upper Canada, now known as Ontario, and New Brunswick. The relations between all the provinces were, however, far from harmonious, with the result that what between quarrels among themselves and risings against the British authority, the condition of Canada was anything but promising, when, after the Rebellion of 1837, Lord Durham was sent over to try to evolve order out of chaos.
He found the "habitant" still unreconciled to the British rule; he found a condition of many little Pontiacs, all very much as was that famous village on the summer evening when Valmond threw the hot pennies to the children, as the auctioneer and monsieur le cure came down the street; he found another Canada of British colonists with so little sympathy for the habitant, that, he declared, the two never met save in the jury box, and there only to obstruct justice.
It was then that Lord Durham, by a great stroke of statesmanship, brought peace to Canada. A democratic form of representative government was bestowed on the people. The division of Quebec into two provinces, which the habitant had desired when they were one, and resented when they were two, was annulled, with the result that the ground was prepared for the union which was to come just thirty years later.
Lord Durham made history and made a nation, for the confederation, when it came, was the inevitable superstructure built upon the foundations of his laying, but he ruined a reputation. His contempt for the conventions of politics, the radicalism of his methods, his failure to make any obeisance to the governmental deities, official or ex-official, combined with his almost superhuman tactlessness, gave his enemies every opportunity they could desire.