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HE was a typical Canadian — young, straight, strong, muscular, and clean. His eyes were clear. His mouth was firm. His mind was simple. He vexed his soul with no unnecessary questions. He took life as he found it, made the best of it, fought when he had to fight, took his luck quietly; whether it was good or bad, accepted it. That was the way he struck me anyway; that is the way that Canada strikes me. Large and simple.

   Gladly, without the slightest difficulty, he told me all the things I should have liked to ask him. He had no mock-modesty — he was entirely unself-conscious. All that he could tell me of the War he told me, quite aware that he had seen the merest corner of it, yet retaining his impressions, reserving to himself the right to criticize and hold his own opinion — modestly.

   I noticed that the thing he spoke of in Englishmen was their silence. That was what he liked and most admired about them.

   "Fine!" he said — that absolutely last superlative of Canada's praise — "the way the English hold their tongues!"

   And when I ventured to demur a little Canada's eyes sparkled, and he shook his head at me.

   "Fine!" he said again. The way he said it this time was unanswerable.

   He had come back on leave, and had been at home in Canada for just a week; and in three more short weeks his wounds, he thought, would be in need of getting near the fighting-line again. At home a week, and hardly that, and his chief thought was how to get back across the ocean. He hankered for another taste of War.

   "There's a fascination!" he kept saying. "All the time you're there you hate it just like sin, but when you're home again you can't be happy!"

   His body was in Canada — he loved his country as Canadians do — and yet the rest of him, his thoughts, his dreams, and his desires, were back in France where he had spent his strength in fighting. When I asked him where the fascination was, he merely shook his head.

   "Quite a story that!" he said, and exercised his gift of silence.

   He had gone over with the First Contingent — Canada's first offering of fighting-men to England. He told me how he had been keen to join, throw his business over, take to soldiering, learn to fight. He had that quietly business-like exterior that is so characteristic of Canada's new- made military men. He had that sort of look, not so much military as just ready. He had the handiness of Canada transferred to khaki: he was a man who incidentally has become a soldier, not the soldier who incidentally chances to be man.

   The thing he really loved to talk about was all the early time when he had everything to learn, and War lay spread before him as a distant promise. He talked about the difficulty of getting in at all at first.

   "Why," he said, "a bad tooth, a cor'rn" — he had the crisp Canadian r— "would tur'rn a fellow down two years ago!" And then he looked at me and smiled. "Some change since that!"

   When he had told me of the farewell march in undress — semi-dress perhaps! — he puffed a little while in silence, for I need hardly say that the start and finish of our conversation was in cigarettes.

   "I sometimes wish our folks had seen us when we'd worked a bit." He looked at me with straight young eyes. "We looked some different when we got to France." Then, in a minute, he said, "They'll not see us now," and sighed a little — just a very little. "Seems a pity some way!" Then as his words came home to him, in the same breath he added, "What does it matter? It's all right, of course."

   I like him for first thinking one and then the other. I think the truth is either way you look at it. I glanced at him and guessed the way his company looked: a bit of the Dominion disciplined and ordered; the big Canadians swinging into action; boys eager for the taste of life and death before them.

   Next Valcartier. Valcartier, the virgin wilderness on Monday, the military camp on Tuesday. He loved it. He could have talked for ever of it, he was untiring when he even thought of it.

   "The best camp yet!" he said. "Roads, shower- baths for the men, electric light!" And his eyes shone. The thing that touches a Canadian to the heart is, not so much his country, as his country blossoming straight from wilderness to city. When he was talking of the camp you saw the picture of it in his mind — that great primeval bush, the wilderness, the blazing of the trails, the labour and the sweat and toil of it; and then the finished roads, the baths, the light — order made out of chaos in a week or two. He talked of it and in his voice was Canada's pride of conquest in the earth. I saw the boys, willing, good-tempered, clean as a tree is clean, strong as an animal is strong, hewing and blasting, cursing and laughing, taking life elementally. Workers in land, strong pioneers, that's what Canadians are. That's what gives Canada her business look in War.

   Valcartier broke down his silence, and we lingered there. He told me of the beauty of the wilderness, and then he told me of the beauty of the telephone. He loved his Camp! There he had lived and worked. There he had learned his job. There he had longed for War. From there he went to join the ships that took the First Contingent over, and he loved it. He had the kind of pride in it that a mother has when with astonishment she sees her work her child — grown into use of road and shower bath and electric light. She sees her child a man and feels that he has made him! Yes, the Canadians love their country with a kind of mother-love. They see it in the rough and in the making — actually make it. Europe comes into cities for the most part ready-made — or did until two years ago — but Canada starts from bed-rock, builds from the earth, views possibilities in hills and streams and falls, and loves her country for the very trouble she has had in shaping her.

   September and October in Valcartier, then sailing orders.

   "We were over-officered," he said. "We thought that some of us would have to stay behind." And even at two years' distance his eyes widened at the thought of it. "I might have had to stay!" His voice said, "Think of it!"

   "But if you had? You loved it there and you were happy. Were you so anxious to be fighting? Couldn't you have stayed in Camp and worked there —–" I caught his eye and my voice died away. "Oh," I said. The incident closed in silence. A woman forgets sometimes how a man feels towards fighting. "There's a fascination in it!" As I looked at him I wondered — where.

   Then he told me how they went aboard: how he came up on deck at dawn one morning, saw the ships in Gaspé Bay, and watched the sun come up on them.

   "It was all grey," he said, "and then the sun came up." He stopped a moment. "Pretty things! They stood there in the rising sun three lines of them, ten transports to each line, and each line with a little warship at the head of it." His eyes grew soft. "A fleet, with us Canadians aboard!" He smiled a little. "Pretty things!" he said again.

   He turned and looked away from me a minute, out at the trees — great trees of Canada — waving. He looked, through the branches out through the summer sunshine, up to the blue, blue sky beyond. In his mind's eye he looked, I think, at Gaspé Bay again, and at that fleet of ships full of Canadians bound for France. He thought a minute; then he turned to me and said:

   "Don't you forget that was our job." He paused a second. "Over there" — he jerked his head up England way — "they'd say to us, 'Good of you to come!' Good!" and he looked intently at me. "It was our job. We were in it. Our fight too." He paused again, struggling against his inarticulateness. "See here, we went because we wanted to — it was our scrap."

   I nodded to him. "Yes, I know."

   "But do you know? The Empire was at War, and we don't want to have you think that it was good of us to come. It wasn't that way that we came. We came because we wanted to."

   "I know," I said again.

   Our eyes met — they spoke to one another, and he smiled a little.

   "That's all right," he said, and struck a match. "I like to have that clear with every one — it was our scrap just as much as England's. Don't forget it!" He struck another match, for he had been so keen that I should understand Canada's war-time spirit that he had forgotten for a moment even to puff, and his cigarette was out!

   Then came the trip across — nineteen days of perfect weather. And once again his eyes turned inward, as we all look to see our pictures of the past inside us. This time I fancy he was looking at the good things War has brought us: comradeship, willing service, men working all together for a common end. He saw the drill, the daily training, the beauty of the sea, the great majestic fleet of ships making it's way across the ocean; and, above all, he felt again that sense of being closely linked to other men. Such things as that ran through his mind as he sat looking past them to the trees.

   The branches just outside the window stirred and waved a little, and the shadow of a breeze came wafting in on us. We were quite silent, and when he turned to me his eyes were bright and full of memories.

   "Nineteen days," he said, "of perfect weather. It was good to be alive! I shan't forget it." Then he added simply," I was happy." As they neared England a big new battle cruiser came to meet them, the first that most of them had ever seen, he said. And then he told me how the tars had all lined up on her and cheered, and that made them feel that they were coming home.

   Home! Canada's name for England. And this time the Canadians came, not just as tourists, but as workers. They came home again to serve the country they had heard about from childhood. That was their England. Queer to think that English forbears were to send Canadians back — men strange to England and yet deeply English in their blood and bone and sentiment! He looked at me with those intelligent eyes of his.

   "Would you believe that the place was black with people just to welcome us Canadians!" His eyes sparkled. "Black with 'em, cheering. And the women with their hands full of flowers and cigarettes and fruit to give us. Such a welcome that — so hearty."

   I wish the Falmouth women could have heard him say it. For that was Canada's thanks to England for her welcome-home again.

   Three months they worked in England. "We had everything to learn," he said.

   "Green troops — my, we were green! We swallowed everything they told us." He laughed a little.

   "Well, you've learned since then?"

   "We've learned."

   They lived and worked in England. But by the time the New Year came the men were keen as razor-edges to be gone. They were tired of Salisbury Plain. They liked England, but they missed the spaciousness of Canada, the dry clear air, the frost and snow, the sun shine; and they had come to fight.

   "They were good to us," he said, "but we were keen to get to France. That's what we came for, and the time seemed long to have to wait for it. When the orders came" — he drew a breath — "well, we were ready."

   He told me of the breathless eagerness with which they waited news. He told me how great six-foot men broke down and cried like children when they heard they had to stay behind.

   "They had to stay, for we were over officered. That was too bad!" he said.

   "Did you all long so much to be in France?"

   "Right in the trenches there. That's where we longed to be." He flicked his ash off. "Oh, we were sick and tired of waiting. It was fighting we were after — fighting that we came for. Poor chaps! It was hard luck on them. I was the lucky one!"

   Keen, as he said, as razor-edges. Keen to see the desperate game, and play it desperately. He was the lucky one — to be allowed to take his life in his two hands and risk it.

   Then came the step to France. The ocean had been good to them; not so the Channel. They put off in the best thing England had to give them — an old cattle-boat — and, once aboard, the winds and waves saw to it that the orchestra played up. It blew and buffeted, the tub pitched and tossed. There was no room for anything — no place to lie, no inch on which to call your soul your own. Men wrapped themselves in anything that they could find and lay down anywhere, and, keen as razor-edges as they might have been, I dare say there were moments when they wondered why they had ever left their homes, why they had ever thought that they'd like fighting, why they had ever troubled to be born at all.

   "That was unique," he said. "When I came staggering up on deck next morning — Phew! that was a sight."

   So these Canadians came to France. They landed at a port they hadn't meant to land at, weary and sick, with broken legs and arms amongst them. But they landed — that was the main thing. If wind and waves had driven them out of the course the captain meant to take them — one port did as well as any other. It was France. If men had broken legs and arms — bones mend. They had come to where they longed to be. All through the summer months in Canada they had worked for this; for this they made their camp out of the virgin wilderness; for this they gave up work at home, left their people, changed their clothes and ways of thinking, toiled at new ways of work and thought — turned from peace-loving citizens into soldiers. They were there, with Canada behind and France in front of them, close to the fighting-line at last.

* * * * * *

   Now that he was across the ocean and in France and Flanders his way of speaking changed a little. He was young and strong and full of eagerness to see and feel and know. He had longed for fighting. His heart was at the fighting- line and in the trenches; but, when he got there and actually lived a soldier's life, he changed his attitude of mind a little. There was a fascination in it, as he said; and in the midst of it he felt the fascination — even three thousand miles away it drew him back again. Yet when he came face to face with grim reality he saw War differently. Much that he saw was fine, but it was fineness without glamour. It was a skeleton of life he saw there and, though bones are beautiful, to most of us they're grim without the flesh. From this time on he told about the War as he had seen it in the trenches. It was no narrative of things he liked to talk about and linger over: it was brief, terse, scraps here and there, confused, sometimes a picture, but far more often just a welter of sensation, sentences half begun and broken off again, hints — and silence. He told me rather of the way War struck him than of War itself. Once he said, "It's a fool thing, War!" And once, "it's grand!"

   They landed, entrained, and reached their billets. There they found cold for a welcome, rain and mud and bully beef and biscuits, and very little room to live in.

   "They told us we could hear the guns," he said, "you bet we listened!"

   "And you heard them?"

   "Heard them? The great big fellows! They had me scared to death."

   Then, nearer, they heard rifle-firing. He aaw his first man hit — and fetched the stretcher bearer.

   "Blood-curdling rather — that!"

   And then the trenches.

   As he saw more and more of War, I noticed that he spoke a great deal less of what he felt himself. Sometimes he said it was exciting, or called a new experience interesting, but what he chiefly talked of, as the time went on, was how his men felt; how they feared; whether they were comfortable; what he could do for them; whether he was doing all their lives with one another. Those who are last come first — the first most willingly come last. In danger and discomfort they are one.

   So they got in — by kindness of their English kinsmen; learned how it feels to hear a bullet whizzing past you, got their first baptism of rain and mud, knew the first war-time feeling half eagerness, half fear. And then he told me of the first round he took, that first impression of real soldiering — preparation no longer, but the real thing.

   "We were green troops; green!" He paused. "And my, that English crowd was kind!"

   And then we fell on one of those tiny incidents that take us all by storm, and leave a memory for life. It was a dinner that he had had — not bully beef and biscuit, but a real live dinner. As he talked of it I saw the English officer asking him to come and dine with him, the shanty where the mess-room was, the little banquet — soup and roast and vegetables too! — and his immense enjoyment. That dinner is a part of that first night: the way up to the trenches, the anticipation, the nervousness and the excitement, the unaccustomed English ways of speech, the kindness of the older soldiers, the darkness, the confusion — the unknown No Man's Land beyond the parapet. Never will Canada taste soup like that or roast like that, all his life long, but he will see that scene in Flanders, and feel that fluttering at the heart which the bravest man is not ashamed to feel at such a time. Queer the way such little things take hold of us, and queer the way they bring the big things up in us. He told me more about that dinner than he ever told me of the trenches; and any picture of the trenches that I have from him came through that dinner and by means of it. Trenches, perhaps, are indescribable; so by instinct he drew a picture of them by describing things I knew. At any rate for me, too, his dinner is a part of that first night — a part of War.

   He told me of the things we all have read about since War began — of climbing over parapets to see the wire entanglements. Exciting that, but nervous work! He told me of the "stand to" before daybreak — more like a nightmare than a healthy dream. He told me of trench raids, well-loved by the Canadians the fierce excitement of the rush when feeling is dead in you, and everything is concentrated in the sure eye, swift foot, quick hand, and rapid intuition of the next thing.

   He tried to tell me how it feels to have no feeling, to have thought blotted out, to be an animal for the moment, alert in all the senses, rapid, wary, fierce.

   He told me about Ypres and Festubert. And, as one speaks of casual incidents that pass before one, he mentioned how he had been gassed and wounded twice, laid up with rheumatism after lying in the trenches, first knocked to pieces, then patched up again.

   "Sometimes you feel," he said, "as if it can't be real. I've seen things — watched them — and felt nothing." He paused. "It's like a Movie. It's not real — you feel it can't be. Sometimes you want to feel and can't." He paused again. "It isn't like that all the time, of course. There's times you feel just scared. You're frightened stiff. You lie there in the trenches — you're wet and cold, and shells come pounding down on you. You lie and wonder where the next'll land. You're scared. So's the man next you. You're all scared —–"

   He caught my eye and saw, I think, a look there of surprise.

   "Yes," he said, "I know. You folks back here at home all think it's charging and recklessness and rush and feeling nothing. Well, it isn't —– Don't you see that it's far finer just the way it is? The men are scared to death and cheery. They're frightened stiff, and yet they do the things. God knows they haven't much to joke about, and yet they're cheery all the time. The men — they're fine! You never saw the like of them. They're brave, they're frightened and they have the courage of the devil, they do the things. What they do! Oh, they're —–" He hesitated for the word. "They're irresistible. They're fine."

   He paused a minute.

   "And you can't tell what a man's feeling. There was a chap I knew, the finest boy that ever stepped, dare-devil, up to everything, scared at nothing, first there and last to come away again." He smoked a minute. "One day I asked him, 'Are you never scared same as the rest of us?' He looked at me and laughed. 'Scared!' he replied, 'I'm scared stiff all right. There's never been a day, an hour, since I've been out that I'm not scared and frightened all to bits.'" He puffed another moment silently. "Don't you see that's fine?" He puffed again. "And he's dead too. In the end they got him."

   We waited while the trees outside went on waving and the world looked golden in the summer sunshine.

   "That was the finest chap that ever stepped. He was my chum."

   And he was silent.

   After a bit he started in again. His eyes met mine. He smiled.

   "Of course," he said, "I see the way you mean it — and it's true too. There are fellows — great lumber-jacks and guides and trappers — out-door men. They don't feel frightened.

   "Why," he said, "they love it." He paused again. "But then, you see, they've got no nerves."

   To look at him, you would have said he waa a creature unconscious of a nervous system you would have sized him up as healthy. Only when he said a thing like that, and you looked closely at him, then you saw in him the marks of having suffered. I don't mean wounds they heal. I mean that in his face — across his brow, under his eyes, and round his mouth were lines: the lines that come on older faces naturally, lines that mean apprehension, fear, suffering, memories that no man cares to speak of or look back to. I was silent.

   He turned from me and looked out at the trees again. The heat was breathless. There was a golden haze on everything.

   "The noise out there," he said," the noise! That knocks you out."

   And he was silent too. We sat there quietly for a bit; and, when he turned to me again, his face was young. He laughed.

   "I know the kind of thing you think. It's Bill!" He laughed again. "You think we're all like Bill."

   "Who's Bill?" I asked.

   Then he told me of a day of shelling. Great eight- inch shells came pounding in on them.

   "The world's end come at last! You couldn't speak, you couldn't think, you couldn't breathe for noise — and so you joked about it."

   And in the midst of this he made his rounds.

   "Down in a dug-out there," he continued, "I found two men, and one of them was shouting, bawling, roaring. What he kept saying when he got his voice above a shell was 'Dinner, Bill; wake up!' 'Who's asleep,' I asked, 'in all creation?' And, seeing I said something, he just pointed to Bill." He laughed and when he laughed like that he was quite young again. "'Wake up,' the fellow said, and shook his chum and pounded him, 'wake up — it's dinner.' Bill turned and yawned and stretched and said some truck about the Germans. When I roared at him to ask him, 'Don't you mind the shells?' he shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'like 'em, mister. They're a mother's lullaby to me. When they start shelling I get awf to sleep — and stay asleep till they stop awf again.' Then he said, 'Wha'at's for dinner, Joe — old Bully?'"

   Canada laughed again.

   "That finished me," he said. And then, with mischievous laughter in his eyes, he looked at me. "That is just the way you folks at home think all the armies act, and every man amongst 'em!" His eyes grew graver. "I tell you now," he said emphatically," it isn't. Don't forget it."

   There was just one thing I felt I had to ask him still: and that was where the fascination was. For I kept wondering. And while I hesitated in what words to clothe my question I saw him glance down at his wrist-watch, and then straighten up. The time had nearly come for him to go.

   He looked at me. His eyes were friendly.

   "I'm kind of sorry that I've told you nothing, but it's hard to talk. It's hard to tell things. And, besides —–" He thought a moment. "Well, there is no story in it — that's the truth. War's just a crowd of little things all happening together. Believe me, there is no one big thing to tell you."

   He paused.

   "One way," he said, "War's a fool thing — there is no sense to it. Take it the other way — it's grand. You take the lying in the trenches there — that's a mean, miserable, dirty trick. You lie there and you wait. And miles away a chap that never sees you, never even knows whether his shot has got out, works his gun the way he's told to do. And you lie there and stop it p'r'aps, and die, or you get mangled up, or else they clean you up a bit and take you home and patch you. Look at it that way, and War is mean. It's poor, it's dirty, and there's nothing to it. That's Trench War. Just an affair of high explosives — no fun, no dash, no anything."

   He paused again.

   The War down Mexico way's a bit of fun, I guess, and p'r'aps there is some dash to War like that. But there's no fun in lying in the mud and waiting. That's all you do. Just lie there, watch the shells, and wonder when they'll get you. That's the life out there."

   He waited quite a long time. Then he spoke again.

   "But there's another side. There's the things that happen, there's the men. The things they'll do —–" He turned and looked full at me, and in his eyes was knowledge bought with flesh and blood, wisdom and grief. "Think of a fellow with his leg blown off, just lying there and waiting. And when the stretcher-bearers come at last, think of his saying, 'Leave me, there's lots of fellows worse — take them.' There's lots like that. Or take a man, a bad 'un, drunk, profane, always in trouble. One that would fire right off the handle. Take it one day when bombs were falling in like hell on us, and men were dying there like flies, and there were stretcher- bearers wanted, take it a chap like that came up and volunteered. Take it he knew enough to give first aid, brought in the wounded — worked. And take it that when a shell was coming, then he threw himself atop of two of 'em and saved them. Think of it, just a man like that —–"

   He stopped and looked away from me.

   "Oh," I said, "he wasn't killed?"

   "Sure he was killed. He knew he would be killed. That's only one of thousands that you never hear of."

   He sat there smoking for a long long time.

   "Yes. War's a fool thing. But when it comes, then some one has to do it. And, by the time you're all stirred up, you do it. Some one has to. But don't think," he turned to me, "that men go doing it out there with any glamour or illusion — truck like that. That's for the folks at home. The men out there just do it, and they feel — we feel — every one of us that's been out there —–    We feel there couldn't be another War like this. No there couldn't be, for when you've seen it, it's a dirty job. It is, it is."

   He spoke quite quietly, but behind his voice were waves of feeling.

   "You go out there, all full of expectation. You wonder, and you have the fool ideas we all have till we've been there. You go. You see men killed all round you — worse than killed — your chums, some of them just kids —–" His eyes were shining — tears are no shame to men in war-time. "Life's not the same for us, for any of us that come home again, mind that. It's not the same. How can it be? We've lost our chums, we've — seen things. But once you're in it, you go through with it. And when you sit back here and think of all the men out there, bearing the brunt of it, working and sweating, and making fun and joking there — and dying —–"

   His young mouth quivered and he set his teeth upon his lip.

   "You asked me where the fascination was," he said. "Well, there's the fascination, if you want to know — the sharing. And the grand equality." He looked at me intently. "Out there it's mud and rain in winter, and it's heat and sand in summer, and it's noise and suffering and wounds and blood. But there's the sharing. It's waste — but we're all in it just together."

   He stopped and searched for words to say it with.

   "Out there's the only time I've ever known the way it feels to be all just the same. Equal. That's where War is grand." He threw his smoked-out cigarette away. "We're all soldiers there. We're equal. Every man has got his chance — to die."

   He stood up — big, strong, powerful — a bit of his own virgin wilderness come to life and walking.

   "There," he said, "you have it. That's the fascination. Back here it's pretty and it's nice and comfortable, but we're not the same as one another. We don't want to share. And when you get out there it's horrible and terrible and wicked too, but you can share and die and be as good as any man. Out there we help and want to, that's what makes the difference. And when you've been all through it and you've come back home and think it over, the —–" He looked at me. His eyes were clear again. His mouth was set. "Well, when you're through, by God, it's worth it." He's sailed again. He's almost at the Front by this time. If he has to give his life before War's over, as he said, he's learned the value of it. For he gives life gladly — perhaps it's worth it.

 
[THE END]