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PREFACE
The main purpose of
writing this book is to give Canadians, in particular, a fair idea
of the part that they and the people of the British Empire have
played in the great world war recently ended, and to give it its
proper relationship to the war as a whole.
The Canadians won the war; so did Britain, France, the United States
and the other Allies: no one of them singly, all of them jointly.
The work of each nation was of vital consequence at certain stages
of the war, and many times “the war was saved.” In that sense the
Belgians, by delaying the German army in the first days of the
struggle and thereby enabling the French and British armies to
mobilize, saved the situation. At the Marne the French, assisted by
the British, definitely wrecked the German plan of winning an early
victory. The Russians in the east, by their offensive, kept the
Allies on the western front from being crushed by sheer weight of
numbers. The assistance of Japan in supplying the Russians with
munitions and equipment helped that nation to keep its armies in the
field when its own supplies were inadequate.
The British at the first Battle of Ypres and the Canadians at the
second Battle of Ypres prevented the enemy from winning the Channel
ports and bringing about a possibly fatal situation. The Italians
broke the Austrian army and put Austria-Hungary out of business. In
the last great crisis the Americans undoubtedly turned the tide with
their moral and material resources.
And away and above all, the British fleet from the day war was
declared made the seas safe, thereby making it possible for land
operations to be carried on.
Yet though Canada, like any other country, did not of herself win
the war it was generally acknowledged even by the highest British
authorities that the Canadian Corps was the most effective fighting
machine on the western front. Whenever there was a hard nut to crack
the Canadian Corps was almost certain to be called upon to be the
hammer. The Canadian Corps took Passchen-daele when all other troops
had failed to take it. The Canadian Corps seized the powerful
bastion of Vimy Ridge which had cost the lives of thousands of
French and British soldiers in futile efforts to capture it. In the
great Somme offensive Canadian divisions were given some of the
hardest positions to win, and Regina trench, Moquet farm, Zollern
redoubt, Hessian trench and Courcelette stand to their credit.
During the great German offensive the Canadian Corps, according to
Field Marshal Haig’s official report, was kept behind the most vital
sector of the British front ready to be thrown into line if a break
should occur. During that period the Canadian Corps was humorously
called “The Salvation Army.”
In the first great offensive of the Allies in July, 1918, the
Canadian Corps, in company with the Australian Corps, tore through
the German lines in front of Amiens to a depth of 14,000 yards,—the
greatest advance ever made in a single day during the war. The
Canadian Corps was selected to break the Drocourt-Queant switch
line, considered by the Germans to be impregnable, and in an hour
the Canadian boys had swept through that tangled jungle of wire and
trenches. The Canadians were given the formidable Hindenburg line to
smash and they did it, bursting through it at Cambrai in perhaps the
hardest fought battle of the war.
Such was the record which resulted in the Canadian Corps being
called “the spear-head of the British army.”
With the exception of two sacrifice guns placed in the front
trenches at Mt. Sorrel, the Canadians never lost a gun. They never
permanently lost a position. During the last two years they were
never driven out of a captured position once consolidated and
consequently never went backward. These are facts.
The glorious deeds of Canadians in the war need no fulsome
praise—“Good wine needs no bush.” The plain narrative is sufficient
to make one estimate them at their true value, and they should be
known and appreciated by every Canadian. With that object in view it
has been my pleasant endeavor, during many months of what would have
otherwise been a long and tedious convalescence, to set down, in as
simple and direct form as possible, the plain story of the deeds of
Canada’s sons and the British Empire.
Canada's Sons and Great
Britain in the World Warr (pdf) |
