Before you hit the buffalo, find out where the rest of the herd
is.—_Proverb._
This particular fold of downs behind Salisbury might have been a hump of
prairie near Winnipeg. The team that came over the rise, widely spaced
between pole-bar and whiffletrees, were certainly children of the
prairie. They shied at the car. Their driver asked them dispassionately
what they thought they were doing, anyway. They put their wise heads
together, and did nothing at all. Yes. Oh, yes! said the driver. They
were Western horses. They weighed better than twelve hundred apiece. He
himself was from Edmonton way. The Camp? Why, the camp was right ahead
along up this road. No chance to miss it, and, ‘Sa-ay! Look out for our
lorries!’
A fleet of them hove in sight going at the rate of knots, and keeping
their left with a conscientiousness only learned when you come out of a
country where nearly all the Provinces (except British Columbia) keep to
the right. Every line of them, from steering-wheel to brake-shoes,
proclaimed their nationality. Three perfectly efficient young men who
were sprinkling a golf-green with sifted earth ceased their duties to
stare at them. Two riding-boys (also efficient) on racehorses, their
knees under their chins and their saddles between their horses’ ears,
cantered past on the turf. The rattle of the motors upset their
catsmeat, so one could compare their style of riding with that of an
officer loping along to overtake a string of buck-wagons that were
trotting towards the horizon. The riding-boys have to endure sore
hardship nowadays. One gentleman has already complained that his
‘private gallops’ are being cut up by gun-wheels and ‘irremediably
ruined.’
Then more lorries, contractors’ wagons, and increasing vileness of the
battered road-bed, till one slid through a rude gate into a new world,
of canvas as far as the eye could reach, and beyond that outlying clouds
of tents. It is not a contingent that Canada has sent, but an
army—horse, foot, guns, engineers, and all details, fully equipped.
Taking that army’s strength at thirty-three thousand, and the Dominion’s
population at eight million, the camp is Canada on the scale of one to
two hundred and forty—an entire nation unrolled across a few square
miles of turf and tents and huts.
Here I could study at close hand ‘a Colony’ yearning to shake off ‘the
British yoke.’ For, beyond question, they yearned—the rank and file
unreservedly, the officers with more restraint but equal fervour—and the
things they said about the Yoke were simply lamentable.
From Nova Scotia to Victoria, and every city, township,
distributing-centre, and divisional point between; from sub-tropical
White River and sultry Jackfish to the ultimate north that lies up
beside Alaska; from Kootenay, and Nelson of the fruit-farms, to Prince
Edward Island, where motors are not allowed; they yearned to shake it
off, with the dust of England from their feet, ‘at once and some time
before that.’
I had been warned that when Armageddon came the ‘Colonies’ would ‘revolt
against the Mother Country as one man’; but I had no notion I should
ever see the dread spectacle with my own eyes—or the ‘one man’ so tall!
Joking apart, the Canadian Army wants to get to work. It admits that
London is ‘some city,’ but says it did not take the trip to visit London
only. Armageddon, which so many people in Europe knew was bound to come,
has struck Canada out of the blue, like a noonday murder in a small
town. How will they feel when they actually view some of the destruction
in France, these men who are used to making and owning their homes? And
what effect will it have on their land’s outlook and development for the
next few generations? Older countries may possibly slip back into some
sort of toleration. New peoples, in their first serious war, like girls
in their first real love-affair, neither forget nor forgive. That is why
it pays to keep friends with the young.
And such young! They ran inches above all normal standards, not in a few
companies or battalions, but through the whole corps; and it was not
easy to pick out foolish or even dull faces among them. Details going
about their business through the camp’s much mud; defaulters on fatigue;
orderlies, foot and mounted; the procession of lorry-drivers; companies
falling in for inspection; battalions parading; brigades moving off for
manœuvres; batteries clanking in from the ranges; they were all supple,
free, and intelligent; and moved with a lift and a drive that made one
sing for joy.